Gresham College Lectures
Episodes
Society and Survival During the Holocaust - Mary Fulbrook
19 Jun 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This lecture focuses on experiences of hiding and help during the Holocaust across Europe, including the German Reich itself, to highlight the signifi...
Music of the Body - Milton Mermikides
16 Jun 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Music and biology are profoundly entwined. The heart beats, footsteps fall into familiar tempi, and even the movement of our limbs follows a natural r...
The Pill and the Planet - Ian Mudway
12 Jun 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Modern medicine's success in extending lifespans comes at an environmental cost. This lecture explores the pollution from single-use plastics, ph...
How Hard is too Hard? An Introduction to Complexity - Colva Roney-Dougal
09 Jun 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This lecture was recorded by Colva Roney-Dougal on the 11th of May 2026 at Barnard's Inn Hall, LondonColva Mary Roney-Dougal OBE is a British mat...
Making Memory Visible Through Photograph - Julia Winckler
05 Jun 2026
Contributed by Lukas
With an academic background in social, cultural anthropology and photography, I have spent the last twenty-five years working on projects that have br...
Dionysus: Lord of Misrule - Ronald Hutton
02 Jun 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This lecture was recorded by Ronald Hutton on the 6th May 2026 at Barnard’s Inn Hall, LondonProfessor Hutton is Professor of History at the Universi...
A Living Planet - Helen Czerski
29 May 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Earth is a living planet. But how much life is there, and what is it doing? We will discuss the distribution of biomass on Earth, and compare the effe...
Music, Death and Afterlife - Mieko Kanno
29 May 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This lecture was recorded by Mieko Kanno on the 5th May 2026 at Barnard’s Inn Hall, LondonMieko Kanno is a violinist and an academic, active in both...
Give Peace a Chance: Legal Implications of the Israel-Palestine Conflict - Clive Stafford Smith
22 May 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This lecture was recorded by Clive Stafford Smith on the 30th of April 2026 at Barnard's Inn Hall, LondonClive Stafford Smith JD OBE is a dual UK...
The Shape of Tiles: Regular and Irregular, Hard and Soft - Alain Goriely
19 May 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Tiling involves filling a plane or space with repeated elements, known as tiles. This simple concept is deeply embedded in the natural world and human...
The Ground We Stand On - Helen Czerski
15 May 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This lecture was recorded by Helen Czerski on the 19th of February 2026 at Barnard's Inn Hall, LondonHelen Czerski is a physicist and oceanograph...
Tales from Television: Bringing the Natural World into Your Home - George McGavin
12 May 2026
Contributed by Lukas
New camera technology can help make stunning footage for natural history programmes but the key to success is down to a lot of hard work, planning and...
Science behind Love and Grief - Podcast with Robin May
09 May 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This episode of the Gresham College Podcast features an interview with Robin May, hosted by Jeoffrey Sarpong. Professor Robin May is a Professor of In...
Why Do We Love? - Robin May
08 May 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This lecture was recorded by Robin May on the 22nd of April 2026 at Barnard's Inn Hall, LondonProfessor of Infectious Disease at the University o...
Taming AI - Matt Jones
05 May 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Watch the Q&A session: https://youtu.be/gj4d75_ClggIn this lecture, we look at proposals to limit AI powers and impacts, so bad outcomes are outwe...
A World Without Work - Daniel Susskind
01 May 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In the future, we may face ‘structural’ technological unemployment in the labour market – where there is no longer enough work to occupy the hum...
The Dictionary City: Londoners and the Oxford English Dictionary - Sarah Ogilvie
28 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Londoners who helped create the world's largest English dictionary. She has unearthed a fascinating group of people across all social classes who...
Music of the Mind - Milton Mermikides
24 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This lecture was recorded by Milton Mermikides on the 15th of April 2026 at LSO, LondonMilton Mermikides is a composer, guitarist, technologist, acade...
"Unsquaring” the Square Mile: Connecting People with Opportunity - Susan Langley
21 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Moving the conversation on social mobility out of the boardroom and into the mainstream, the Lady Mayor Dame Susan Langley will set out her ambition t...
The Shape of Gravity: Why On Earth Are Planets Spherical? - Alain Goriely
17 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This lecture was recorded by Alain Goriely on the 3rd of March 2026 at Barnard’s Inna Hall, LondonAlain Goriely is a mathematician with broad intere...
The Death of Athenian Democracy? - Melissa Lane
14 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This lecture was recorded by Melissa Lane on the 12th of March 2026 at Barnard’s Inna Hall, LondonMelissa Lane is the Class of 1943 Professor of Pol...
Guantánamo on the Euphrates? Syria in a Time of Opportunity - Clive Stafford Smith
10 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This lecture was recorded by Stafford Smith on the 19th of March 2026 at Barnard’s Inn Hall, LondonClive Stafford Smith JD OBE is a dual UK-US natio...
The Universe’s 100th Birthday: Galactic Fireworks and Little Red Dots - Chris Lintott
08 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
100 years ago this year, Edwin Hubble published the first conclusive evidence that there were galaxies beyond the Milky Way. This lecture, using new r...
Bridget: Goddess and Saint - Professor Ronald Hutton
03 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This lecture was recorded by Ronald Hutton on the 10th of March 2026 at Barnard’s Inna Hall, LondonProfessor Hutton is Professor of History at the U...
Oligarchs and Their Discontents - Melissa Lane
31 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This lecture was recorded by Professor Melissa Lane on 5th March 2026 at Barnard’s Inn Hall, London.Melissa Lane is the Class of 1943 Professor of P...
Why Do We Hate? - Robin May
27 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Hatred is one of the most destructive human emotions, responsible for some of the greatest atrocities that humans have committed against each other. B...
Born Supremacy – AI as a Pale Shadow of Real Humanity - Professor Matt Jones
24 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In this lecture, we glimpse our best selves and compare that to a world where we lose everything of ourselves to AI. We are glorious creations that re...
That's Not Funny: The Ethics of Satire - Judith Hawley
20 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
It used to be taken for granted that satire uses nasty means to good ends: it ridicules its targets in order to bring about reform. However, in rece...
Work, Out of Reach - Daniel Susskind
17 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Right now, the technological challenge we are most likely to face in the labour market is ‘frictional’ technological unemployment – where there ...
Gresham College Podcast with Antony Penrose
14 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This episode of the Gresham College Podcast features an interview with Antony Penrose, hosted by Jeoffrey Sarpong. Antony Penrose is a film maker, pho...
Lee Miller: Why Her Photography Still Matters Today - Antony Penrose
13 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
What is it that makes an image stick in our memory against our will? People find many of Lee Miller’s combat photographs have this indelible quality...
Music of Earth and Space - Professor Milton Mermikides
10 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Since Pythagoras, we have imagined the universe as a vast, resonant instrument—a cosmic harmony waiting to be heard. From Holst’s orchestral visio...
How Women Made the Global Economy - Dr Victoria Bateman
06 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Economic history has been written by men, for men and about men, giving the impression that – until recently – the economy was “just for men”....
Climate Risk and Insurance - Raghavendra Rau
03 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/Hwl0YRRaHgEWhy did coastal homeowners lose insurance while UK energy bills spiked after Russia’s in...
The Price of Pixels: Unmasking the Environmental Impact of Our Digital Lives - Ian Mudway
27 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Our digital world's convenience masks a heavy environmental cost. This lecture explores the destructive rare earth mineral mining powering our de...
Peacebuilding through the visual Arts - Jolyon Mitchell
24 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
How can the visual arts be used to promote peace? Professor Mitchell investigates how the visual arts can not only incite violence, but also bear witn...
The Shape of Shells: She Sells Self-Similar Spiral Seashells on the Seashore - Professor Alain Goriely
20 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This lecture was recorded by Alain Goriely on 13th February 2026 at Bernard’s Inn Hall, LondonAlain Goriely is a mathematician with broad interests ...
Pictures from Afghanistan: Are we making the same mistakes? - Clive Stafford Smith
17 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This lecture was recorded by Clive Stafford Smith on the 9th of February 2026 at Bernard’s Inn Hall, LondonClive Stafford Smith JD OBE is a dual UK-...
Death Investigation: What Do Coroners Do? - Peter Thornton
13 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/9ozYDQFkfaYWhen death occurs, the state has a duty to investigate. Every death must be registered loc...
Alien Earths: What Makes Us Special? - Professor Chris Lintott
10 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Sometime in 2026, we will discover our 10000th exoplanet, a world around a distant star. This population of worlds has proved remarkably diverse, but ...
Will You Be AI’s Pet? - Matt Jones
06 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/fuk6LYeOCDQI have two pet dogs; they are happy, wagging their tails and reacting well when I come hom...
An Ocean of Air - Helen Czerski
03 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/_HJt1zjecCoThe major environmental challenge of our time is framed in terms of what happens in our at...
Mithras: Master of Mystery - Ronald Hutton
30 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The cult of Mithras was by far the most famous of the mystery religions of the Roman Empire: private societies of worshippers devoted to a particular ...
Why Do We Grieve? - Robin May
27 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Grieving is a uniquely human emotion – or is it? Is the apparent attachment of elephants or orcas to the bodies of dead relatives a sign of grief, o...
Constable's "The Cornfield": A Bicentenary Harvesting - Professor Malcolm Andrews
23 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Constable’s painting The Cornfield celebrates its bicentenary in 2026. How has it aged? This is a landscape that has acquired iconic status – a ma...
Music of Light and Colour - Milton Mermikides
20 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/3B58-fA2b-4"Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many ...
Economics and Artificial Intelligence - Daniel Susskind
16 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
ChatGPT, the AI chatbot developed by OpenAI, was the fastest growing app in history. But this achievement, as sudden and remarkable as it might seem, ...
Donald Trump and the Death Penalty - Clive Stafford Smith
06 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
One of the first executive orders issued by President Trump in January was EO 14164 designed to “restore the death penalty”, though actually aimed...
From Mars with Love: Postcards from 50 Years of Exploring The Red Planet - Chris Lintott
05 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
During the fifty years since the launch of the Viking spacecraft to Mars, our view of the red planet has changed from hostile desert to a world which ...
Life, Death and Judgement in the Art and Times of Hieronymus Bosch (d. 1516) - Sophie Oosterwijk
30 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This lecture looks at the 'surreal' art of the Early Netherlandish painter Jheronimus Bosch within its historical and cultural context. Alth...
Hecate: Mistress of Magic - Ronald Hutton
26 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Hecate started as the ruling goddess of the Asian region of Caria, and got taken over by the Greeks as the only one able to operate in every realm of ...
Where Is China Heading under Xi Jinping? - Steve Tsang
23 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this lecture, Tsang examines the strategic goals and direction of travel China’s supreme leader, Xi Jinping, has set for the country and its peop...
The Later Years: Organisation, Independence and Peace of Mind - Sir Peter Thornton KC
19 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How should we get organised for our later years? With just a little preparation while we are fit and healthy, we can express our wishes for more diffi...
Why Do We Laugh? - Robin May
16 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Laughter is an incredibly powerful and yet mysterious emotion. We laugh with delight, but also surprise. We laugh at jokes, but also at embarrassment....
The Shape of Plants: Why Plants Love Mathematics and Mathematicians Love Plants - Alain Goriely
15 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/Lv5h-Pp1r6sLooking at the plant world, one discovers beautiful and fascinating structures in the shap...
Becoming AI – Your Journey to Assimilation? - Matt Jones
09 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Wittgenstein wrote: “If a lion could talk, we would not understand it”. That is, as lions and humans are not of the same material, they could not ...
Limitarianism and Capitalism - Ingrid Robeyns
05 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Limitarianism holds that it is immoral to have personal wealth above a certain level. Is this idea compatible with capitalism? Defenders of capitalism...
Do Not Resuscitate Forms - Who’d Have One? - Mark Taubert
02 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this lecture, Mark Taubert, who chairs the national DNACPR policy for Wales, and is a palliative care clinician, reviews current practices. He will...
The Great God Pan: Lord of the Wild - Ronald Hutton
28 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Pan started as a shepherds’ god in a wild and backward area of Greece, but became one of the best-known in the Greek and Roman world. This was partl...
Minor Criminal: The Trial of the Man Who Murdered My Grandmother - Lord Daniel Finkelstein
25 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/oQeUePfTrEQThe Royal Historical Society Colin Matthew Memorial Lecture.In April 1945, British forces ...
China’s Economic Prospects on the Cusp - George Magnus
21 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
China has important islands of technological excellence, even dominance, but these islands exist in a sea of macroeconomic imbalances and headwinds. X...
Ocean: The Liquid Engine That Dominates Our Planet
18 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We often talk about living on a blue planet, but when we think we’re talking about the ocean we’re generally only discussing what’s in it: fish,...
Music of Animals - Milton Mermikides
14 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Do animals make music? Are the languages of whales and birds truly songs? To answer this, we must first understand what we mean by music as human anim...
The Economics of Work and Technology - Daniel Susskind
11 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/v0RoRG2YA-0Why has automation anxiety – the fear that new technologies cause mass unemployment – ...
Whither War; Whither the Law of War - Professor Sir Geoffrey Nice KC
07 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How might we change the way we – and all our leaders think – so that we never go to war? The war between Russia and Ukraine, as well as the confl...
From Tyranny to Athenian Democracy - Melissa Lane
04 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When – and how – did Athenian democracy begin? There is no unambiguous answer to this question. This lecture explores one plausible origin: the po...
China and Chineseness: Lessons from the Chinese Mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan - Steve Tsang
31 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This lecture is about the meaning of China and being Chinese. It examines critically how the Chinese state, under the control of the Communist Party d...
War's Toxic Legacy - Ian Mudway
28 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/3LrIEG26m78War's environmental legacies disproportionately burden the civilian populations left ...
How Does Mathematics Last? Heritage and Heritage-making in Mathematics - Caroline Ehrhardt
24 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How is mathematical knowledge recorded and preserved across generations? Contrary to the idea that mathematics itself is somehow ‘permanent’, in t...
Evoking Empathy through Animal Portraiture
21 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The natural world faces unprecedented threats, challenging historical perceptions of nature as inexhaustible. Photographer Tim Flach draws on his accl...
Why Do We Fear? - Robin May
17 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Fear is one of the earliest emotions to have evolved. Most vertebrates – and possibly some invertebrates – show fear when they are threatened. At ...
Hitler, Jesus & How to Win a Culture War - Alec Ryrie
14 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Since 1945 Hitler and the Nazis have been the Western world’s one fixed moral reference point: the way we know what evil is. But that consensus has ...
How It Ends: What We Know about the Fate of the Universe - Chris Lintott
10 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How will it all end? Predicting the far future of our Universe depends on understanding its present. This lecture starts with what seems to be a parad...
AI Will Be Your Overlord: Faster, Brighter, Better Than You?
07 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“Scary”, “Worried”, “Dangerous” were some of the most frequent words to describe AI in a recent UK Government public survey. Do you fear, ...
Shakespeare’s Musical Fairies - Dominic Broomfield-McHugh
03 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Written in the era of the founding of Gresham College, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream portrays the hypnotic dreaminess of a fairy world i...
Lessons from Guantánamo Bay - Clive Stafford Smith
30 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This lecture looks at the evolution of Guantánamo Bay, first as a focal point of Haitian immigration in 1991 (Gitmo 1.0), to the more famous detentio...
The Shape of Hands: Symmetry, Chirality and Handedness - Alain Goriely
26 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The reflection of my right hand in a mirror is a left hand that looks similar yet is very different from the right. Many natural structures such as pr...
Earth – Our Planetary Life Support System - Professor Helen Czerski
23 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Planet Earth is an intricate and interconnected system, with some fundamental rules that we usually ignore. But we are part of our planet, not separat...
Automation Anxiety - Daniel Susskind
19 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ever since modern economic growth began three centuries ago, people have suffered from periodic bursts of anxiety about the technologies of the time t...
Galileo’s Journey to the Underworld: The Case for Interdisciplinary Thinking - Sarah Hart
22 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
ttps://x.com/GreshamCollege Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/tv554JY9TPUIn 1588, the young Galileo delivered some lectures that were ...
A World Remade by Decolonization? - Martin Thomas
19 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The lecture shares perspectives from global history, comparative politics, and international relations to revaluate whether the twentieth-century coll...
Oil, Decolonisation, and the Future of the Climate Emergency - Adam Hanieh
15 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Decolonisation movements sought to win sovereignty and control over national resources, especially oil. This lecture explores oil’s influence on nat...
Shanawdithit: A Woman at the End of the World - Julia Laite
12 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Shanawdithit was a woman who bore witness to the death of her world in the early nineteenth century, creating the only first-hand account we have of t...
Outsmart the System: How Psychology Hacks Your Money Decisions - Raghavendra Rau
08 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ever feel like the financial world works against you? This lecture discusses "behavioral finance" – how our brains get tricked by money ma...
Democracy and International Criminal Justice in the Fragile World of the Rule of Law - Howard Morrison
05 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The lecture will examine the pros and cons of democracy in today's world, focusing on the importance of domestic and international rule of law to...
The Future of Health - Chris Whitty
01 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Health over the last 150 years in the UK and internationally has been transformed and this rapid rate of change will continue. Improvements in public ...
Sum Stories: Equations and their Origins - Robin Wilson
29 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How long is the coastline of Britain? What is a rhombicuboctahedron? Which US president proved Pythagoras’s theorem? These and many other intriguing...
The Deceived Brain: Coding and Illusion - Alain Goriely
25 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We perceive the world through the processing of information given by our senses. Sometimes, this processing is faulty leading to illusions: shapes or ...
The Future of Immunity - Robin May
22 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Our understanding of the human immune system today is vastly different from that of 50 years ago. This knowledge has led to immune-based therapies tha...
Remixing the Music of the Spheres - Milton Mermikides and Chris Lintott
18 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This is the fifth and final lecture from the Gresham Festival of Musical Ideas.https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/series/musical-ideas-2025Professors...
The Virtues of Music - Milton Mermikides and Melissa Lane
18 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This is the third lecture from the Gresham Festival of Musical Ideas.https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/series/musical-ideas-2025This dialogue presen...
Climbing Mount Groove: Music and Dance in the Brain - Milton Mermikides and Morten Kringelbach
18 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This is the second lecture from the Gresham Festival of Musical Ideas.https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/series/musical-ideas-2025Why does a rhythm m...
The Evolution of Music - Milton Mermikides and Robin May
18 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This is the first lecture from the Gresham Festival of Musical Ideas.https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/series/musical-ideas-2025Musical instruments ...
The Maths of Music (and the Music of Maths) - Milton Mermikides and Sarah Hart
18 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This is the fourth lecture from the Gresham Festival of Musical Ideas.https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/series/musical-ideas-2025Professors Sarah Ha...
Architecture of Enslavement, Colonialism and Independence: The Story of James Fort in Accra - Elsie Owusu
15 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Accra’s James Fort is an iconic monument for Ghana and modern Africa. This lecture explores the fort's evolution -from its role as a trading po...
The Operatic Showstopper: ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ - Dominic Broomfield-McHugh
11 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This lecture considers ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ from Carousel (1945). Perhaps Rodgers and Hammerstein’s most operatic song, it was originally...
Carbon Takeback: How We Will Stop Fossil Fuels from Causing Global Warming - Myles Allen
08 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We have to stop fossil fuels from causing global warming – before the world stops using fossil fuels. There’s only one solution: safe and permanen...
Do Computers Get Sick? How Humans and Computers Fight Viruses - Robin May & Victoria Baines
04 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Whether you are human or computer, viruses can ruin your day, so taking steps to avoid them is important. This lecture will ask whether there are simi...
Illuminating the Dark Side of the Moon - Milton Mermikides
01 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Now over 50 years old, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon remains the perfect example of a concept album. Blending cyclical forms, jazz and modal ha...
Lawgivers in Modern Revolutions - Melissa Lane
27 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How have lawgivers featured in modern revolutions? This lecture considers key moments in revolutions, including seventeenth-century Britain, eighteent...