Gresham College Lectures

Text Mining: How Do Computers Understand Language?

16 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Text is everywhere. From tweets to the gigantic records of governments, machine processing of text is now subtle and pervasive. We can automatically i...

The Natural Environment of Tudor London

10 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Tudor London is variously reported as a squalid seething mass of humanity choking on its own filth and fumes, and as a delightful garden where babblin...

AI and Education: The Reality and the Potential

09 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

This lecture will consider the current reality of AI in education and its transformative potential. Professor Luckin will introduce what we mean by th...

Dying in Today's World

09 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In the 50 years since the hospice movement started, lessons from research have revolutionised care of the dying in the UK and in many places around th...

London Belongs to Us: Street-Life and New Wave British Cinema of the 1960s

08 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Location shooting was a feature of 'new wave' film around the world in the 1960s. In Britain, it meant that British filmmakers broke out of ...

The Spiritual Quest Against Religion

04 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The Protestant Reformation set out to purge Christianity of error. But once you have started, how do you know when to stop? Some radicals tore up laye...

Crown, Country and the Struggle for Cultural Supremacy

03 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The fourth lecture in this series considers Britain's unique cultural development and how the changing balance of power and wealth between the ar...

Political Spending on the Internet

02 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

FULBRIGHT LECTUREGovernment officials in the UK and the USA have struggled to find effective ways to regulate political spending on the internet. The ...

Infections of the Abdominal Organs

27 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Our gut is permanently full of large numbers of bacteria and other organisms but serious infections relatively rarely occur due to its extraordinary i...

Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk

26 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (1932) was more a personal than a political drama. All was well for the first two years after the opera's première in 19...

Deep Listening: Quiet Music and Quieter Audiences

25 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

As music gets quiet, so too must listening. But what do the contexts and ideologies of quiet music and quieter listening mean? From different eras, an...

Cruelty to Animals

21 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Understanding changing relationships between human and non-human animals is central to our world today. This lecture starts by looking at early-modern...

Art and Power in the English Aristocratic House

20 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The English Aristocracy is often seen as a rural elite concentrating its patronage of art and architecture in the countryside. This lecture questions ...

Deep Learning: Miracle or Snake Oil?

19 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Machine Learning has had several excitements over the years with machines that are modelled on the human brain. The invention of the perceptron and ar...

How to be a Puritan Atheist

14 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Early 'atheism' did not always mean angry rejection of religion. The most earnest believers were often ones who wrestled most seriously with...

Brexit and the Future of Britain

13 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

At the time of writing, it appears that Britain will leave the European Union on 29th March at 11 pm British time, 12 midnight Continental time. How w...

How Will We Learn Maths in the Future?

12 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Mathematics education is changing rapidly and a big driver for this is the use of new technology. In particular the widespread use of computers has tr...

Gresham's Bequest to Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn

11 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The valuable bequest of Sir Thomas Gresham to the development of scientific interest in seventeenth-century England can be traced through the testimon...

Politics and the Legal Profession

07 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Cuts to legal aid, the concept of online justice, diversity within the legal profession and the judiciary, the independence of the Judiciary from the ...

The Greatest Speech of all Time: Pericles' Funeral Oration

07 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In 431 BCE the Athenian statesman Pericles delivered one of the most influential speeches of all time, his Epitaphios or Funeral Oration. The occasion...

The Stewardship Role of Investors

06 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Poor stewardship by investors has been argued to be a cause of poor corporate governance. Moreover, when investors do engage with companies, they do s...

How Astronomy Changed our View of the Cosmos: from Gresham to the 21st Century

06 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Thomas Gresham lived from 1519 to 1579. The first telescope was designed in 1608 in the Netherlands, and first pointed at the heavens by Galileo a yea...

Food Security: A Poisoned Chalice of Plant Adaptation

05 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Worldwide, over 80 plant species are known to cause poisoning from nitrate accumulation. But droughts are exacerbating this for many staple crops. Eve...

Gender, Marriage, Divorce and Human Sexuality

28 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Is 'morality' principally about sex, or 'naughty vicars'? Despite Henry VIII, the Church has found divorce difficult, especially f...

The Myth of the Lone Heroic Surgeon

27 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

People often think that surgery is about the skill of a single surgeon. In fact operations depend on teamwork, with nurses, surgeons, anaesthetists an...

Zombie Ants and Fearless Mice: Parasites and the Brain

26 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Parasites can dramatically change the behaviour of their hosts. A parasitic worm turns a tropical ant berry-red and causes it to climb high, attractiv...

Taking London to the World: Robert Paul Shows his Native City in Motion

25 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Britain's pioneer filmmaker, born 150 years ago in North London, vividly portrayed the variety of life in 'the imperial metropolis' at ...

Volcanoes and Society

20 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

There are an estimated 800 million people living close enough to active volcanoes to be affected when they erupt. As well as casualties from volcanic ...

Psychosis: Making and Inhabiting a Different Reality

19 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

One of the most mysterious experiences that we come across in psychiatry is 'Psychosis', which refers to a loss of contact with reality. It ...

Infections of the Lung and Heart

13 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The lung has a large surface area, is open to the outside world and is the site for some of the most common serious infections, in particular pneumoni...

Computer Vision: Machines that See

12 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Human vision seems so effortless: from a young age we see the world in high- definition colour. We can tell the difference between a cat and a hat, an...

Maths in the City: Future Cities

12 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The world's population is rapidly expanding and the majority of this population will live in large city conurbations. What will out future cities...

Music Made of Listening: John Cage and 4'33"

11 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Musicians make sounds - that much, you'd have thought, is obvious! Yet more than the sounds they make, it's the choices that musicians are m...

Bubbles, Manias and Market Failures: The Unintended Consequences of Regulatory Responses

07 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Although financial bubbles are in some sense banal and a feature of financial capitalism, the seeds of the next bubble are often sown by regulatory re...

The Varieties of Forgiveness

07 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Forgiveness is often discussed as if it were a single, straightforward, phenomenon. The reality, however, is not so simple. For instance, we can ident...

Gresham's World: Global Traffic, Trade, and the Metamorphosis of England

06 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Global trade and traffic, many of Gresham's contemporaries would say, had altered sixteenth-century England beyond recognition, from its food, fa...

Ruskin at 200: The Art Critic as Word-Painter

04 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Ruskin's Bicentenary on 8 February 2019 will be marked by an assessment of his achievement as an art critic. Then, with a close focus on four or ...

The 30th Anniversary of The Children Act 1989: Is It Still Fit For Purpose?

31 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The Children Act 1989 embodied a change in philosophy by making the child's welfare the courts 'paramount' concern, moving away from th...

Architecture, Images and Image-Making Under The Stuarts

30 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The Stuart age saw a much more systematic approach to the elite patronage of art and architecture. Collectors and connoisseurs were more aware of the ...

50 Years of Lunar Exploration

30 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The Moon is undoubtedly the next frontier for humanity. The international space agencies are lining up to pursue lunar projects and even develop lunar...

Evolution since Sir Thomas Gresham: How Changes Over The Past Five Centuries Have Moulded Evolution

29 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In celebrating 500 years since the birth of Sir Thomas Gresham, Professor Jones will examine how changes since the sixteenth century have affected the...

How to be a Shakespearean Atheist

24 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Villainous atheists were, like witches, stock figures of the European imagination in the Renaissance. But when Shakespeare and his contemporaries put ...

Reforming Corporate Governance

23 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The UK is considered a world leader in corporate governance, but governance failures are blamed for the loss of trust in business. This talk will disc...

Musorgsky's Boris Godunov

22 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Musorgsky's opera Boris Godunov (1872) is set in the 'Time of Troubles', using Pushkin's incisive verse tragedy on the chaotic per...

Infections and the Nerves

16 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Certain infections have a particular impact on the peripheral nerves as part of their normal disease process. Some infectious effects are predominatel...

Exploring the Hidden Face of our Dark Deep Ocean Planet

15 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

We sometimes hear that 'we know more about Mars than the deep ocean', but is that true? Exploring the deep ocean is a recent enterprise, mad...

The Search for Meaning on the Web: The Semantic Web and Managing a Lifetime's Information

15 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Berners-Lee's World Wide Web (WWW) was not his original aim, which was closer to what we now call the Semantic or Data Web (SW): documents and im...

Sacred Listening: The Voices and Music of the Gods

14 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

What happens when we listen to music that incarnates a divine presence? From our early ancestors, whose listening in the caves of Europe 40 millennia ...

Sir Thomas Gresham, London, and Europe

09 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

London was crucially dependent on continental Europe for its economic resilience in the mid-sixteenth century, and Sir Thomas Gresham's fortune p...

'RUDQ?' Digital Skills: Crisis or Opportunity?

08 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The 2019 Annual Lord Mayor's EventThe 2019 Annual Lord Mayor's Gresham Lecture will explore the so called 'digital skills crisis' ...

Can Maths Tell Us Where We Are?

08 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

One of the biggest advances in modern technology has been the development of GPS systems which allow us to find our position to very high precision. G...

Carols from King's: Centenary Celebration

13 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

At 3.00 pm on Christmas Eve, millions of listeners around the world will tune in to the live radio relay of A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from...

Executive Pay: What's Right, What's Wrong, and What Could Be Fixed?

12 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Executive pay is a controversial topic that is arguably the primary cause behind mistrust in business. Various remedies have been proposed but, just l...

The Romantic Lakes from Wordsworth to Beatrix Potter

11 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

When Daniel Defoe rode through the Lake District in the early 18th century, he described the area as 'the wildest, most barren and frightful of a...

Understanding Violent People

06 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Most of us have witnessed or had personal dealings with violent people. Why do they act as they do? How have British and American commentators during ...

Dissecting the Consultation

05 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The consultation is the focal point of medicine. A clinician and a patient, held together in a relationship of care, collaborate in identifying that p...

Childhood Malnutrition: Exporting Violence or Happiness?

04 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Half of all child deaths are associated with under-nutrition, with devastating impacts and far-reaching health consequences. Left unchecked, under-nut...

Mind - the Gap: What's Missing from Medical Training?

03 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Over the past 150 years medical science has developed beyond all recognition yet there is a huge gap between these scientific developments on the one ...

Sexual Harassment at the Bar

29 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

2018 saw a seismic change in the willingness of women to speak out about sexual abuse they had suffered at work and the willingness of others to hear ...

The Theatre of Dionysus

29 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Medea, Antigone, Oedipus and Lysistrata - these are just some of the characters from ancient Greek drama who still walk our contemporary stages and ha...

In the Beginning

28 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Where did we come from? This question has always intrigued human thought. Professor Silk will describe the modern scientist's view of the origin ...

Speech Processing: How to Wreck a Nice Peach

27 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Alexa, Siri and Cortana are among a number of voice-enabled digital assistants that can not only speak to us but understand us. Sci-fi films had talki...

Plastics from Potatoes, Rubber from Rice

26 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

With over 80% of organic carbon being present in the form of cellulose, lignin and starch, it is unsurprising many groups have attempted to use these ...

Infections and the Brain

21 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The brain is well protected against most infections, but once they get into or around the brain they can cause fatal or serious long-term consequences...

The Romantic Child

20 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The Romantics invented the modern idea of childhood. In the third of his lectures on the rhetoric of Romanticism, Jonathan Bate will explore how they ...

Glinka's A Life for the Tsar

20 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The rousing finale of Mikhail Glinka's patriotic A Life for the Tsar (1836) guaranteed it a place as the traditional season opener in Russian ope...

Classical Music, Noisy Listening

19 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Shh! You're in a classical concert - quiet! What has become, in the 20th and 21st centuries, a musical tradition of as-quiet-as-possible, cough-f...

Has the Internet Changed News for Better or Worse? 250 Years of Technology

15 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Many claims have been made, both positive and negative, for the transformative nature of internet news in the age of social media. An historical persp...

Enormous Volcanic Eruptions

14 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Huge volcanic eruptions are the only natural hazard apart from the impact of an asteroid that can cause a global catastrophe. In the short history of ...

Nanomaterials: A Tale of Two Alices

13 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

With over 80% of organic carbon being present in the form of cellulose, lignin and starch, it is unsurprising many groups have attempted to use these ...

The Mathematics of Climate Change

13 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Climate change is important, controversial, and the subject of huge debate. Much of our understanding of the future climate comes from the use of comp...

Money: The Root of All Evil, Or Our Salvation?

08 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Jesus talked more about money than about anything else. Can the teachings of a penniless ancient ascetic be applied to debates about Brexit, protests ...

The Ending of World War I: The Road to 11 November

07 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

This lecture will re-examine how the First World War ended, anticipating the centenary commemorations in 2018. It will discuss both why Germany reques...

Shakespeare's Stages

06 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Leading actor and Shakespeare scholar Michael Pennington discusses the direct effect on the dramatist's writing of the theatres he wrote for, so ...

Making Information Personal: Companions

06 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Professor Wilks will discuss the notion of an artificial Companion, a long-term software agent that could be present in any device: a screen, handbag ...

How the Reformation Trained Us to Be Sceptics

01 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The Protestant Reformation confronted Europeans with a clamour of religious alternatives. Catholics and Protestants taught their people to doubt the o...

Performing Medicine, Performing Surgery

31 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Medicine demands factual knowledge, physical skill and the ability to work with patients and colleagues. Most of the time clinicians learn from other ...

Bribery and Corruption in the City

30 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Crime thrives in a social environment which is conductive to its commission, and it harms the society which spawns it most of all. That is as true of ...

Strategy and Democracy

29 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

THE 2018 PETER NAILOR MEMORIAL LECTURE ON DEFENCEToday's cry in democratic states, and not just from representatives of populist parties, is gove...

Haunted by Christ: Modern Writers and the Struggle for Faith

25 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In his new book, Haunted by Christ, Richard Harries explores the role of faith in the lives of twenty novelists and poets. Non-believers like Samuel B...

Mathematics in War and Peace - Stories about Mathematicians Killed in WW1

24 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

THE 2018 BRITISH SOCIETY FOR THE HISTORY OF MATHEMATICS / GRESHAM COLLEGE ANNUAL LECTUREAs a commemoration of the end of the First World War, the even...

Mathematics in War and Peace - Flying Mathematicians

24 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

THE 2018 BRITISH SOCIETY FOR THE HISTORY OF MATHEMATICS / GRESHAM COLLEGE ANNUAL LECTUREAs a commemoration of the end of the First World War, the even...

Mathematics in War and Peace - Euler's Work on Ballistics

24 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

THE 2018 BRITISH SOCIETY FOR THE HISTORY OF MATHEMATICS / GRESHAM COLLEGE ANNUAL LECTUREAs a commemoration of the end of the First World War, the even...

Dark Matters

24 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The dark side of the universe is pervasive. Most of the matter in the universe is dark, most of the energy in the universe is dark. Many searches are ...

It from Bit: The Science of Information

23 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Physicist John Wheeler asked the famous 'It from bit?' question: what if at its heart the universe is not a collection of particles, forces ...

The 'Autism Advantage' in the Workplace

22 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Adam Feinstein will examine the strengths of many people on the autism spectrum which make them an untapped human resource in the workplace. Using cas...

State Torture

18 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Torture was officially outlawed in France in the 1780s and in Europe during the nineteenth century. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centu...

How Natural is Natural? Historical Perspective on Wildlife and the Environment in England

17 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

THE 2018 ROYAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY COLIN MATTHEW MEMORIAL LECTUREWe often think of the British countryside as 'natural' but it is anything bu...

Wordsworth, Coleridge and the Poetic Revolution

16 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

'The sense of a new style and a new spirit in poetry came over me', wrote William Hazlitt, recalling the day in 1798 when he heard William W...

Epidemics, Pandemics and How To Control Them

10 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Some infections come in repeated epidemic waves, others are new to human populations. A known human threat such as influenza may mutate or a new infec...

Brexit: Recovery of Sovereignty or Loss of Rights?

09 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Was Brexit (the 2016 referendum) argued on the basis of accurate information fairly presented? Slogans were, and may always be, better at gathering vo...

Can Maths Predict The Future? The Maths Behind Chaos Theory and Sudden Change

09 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Since Newton, we are used to science making confident predictions about the future. For example, the motion of the planets and the times of the tides....

No Listening, No Music: Why Listening Matters

08 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

What does it mean to listen to music? How might the concepts and practices of 'listening' and 'music-making' have first emerged in...

Ethics In and Out of the Court Room

04 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

If you are a barrister you will be asked 'how can you act for someone who is guilty?'. This is just one of the ethical questions the Bar has...

Purposeful Business: The Evidence and the Implementation

03 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Do businesses exist to make profits, or to serve a purpose? This talk will present rigorous evidence showing there need be no trade-off between purpos...

Ultra-Compact Objects: Astronomy with Gravitational Waves

03 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The most compact objects that shine in the universe are neutron stars. Black holes are even more compact objects that we view indirectly as matter acc...

How To Be An Atheist In Medieval Europe

27 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

There was no intellectually sophisticated or articulate 'atheism' in the Middle Ages, but there was plenty of raw scepticism and incredulity...

Antibiotic Resistance: Calling on Citizens to Help Tackle the Problem

25 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Antibiotic resistance has emerged as an issue that threatens public health around the world. Even simple operations may no longer be possible due to t...

Gothic London: Recreating the Ancient City on Screen

24 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The earliest London-made films showed the Victorian city doing everyday business, before its fictional screen image became increasingly shadowy and si...

Painting, Patronage and Politics under the Tudors

19 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Tudor England was a dangerous place for the wealthy and powerful. The cultural ambitions of the elite open a window into contemporary attitudes. A lec...