Week 1
Dr James Gazzard: Life-wide learners: citizens and change-makers or idealists and the elite?
Life-wide access to learning is an established pathway to reducing socioeconomic inequality. Credible studies link lifelong learning with improved mental health and well-being, and a way to foster understanding. Yet, despite an age of rapid technological disruption, increasingly unfair societies, a mental health crisis and the ‘100-year life’, most policy-making and funding focus relentlessly on compulsory schooling and pre-experience college or university provision. So what do we know about life-wide learners? How, by design or good fortune, might they be acting to address a range of contemporary challenges? What are the possible benefits for individuals, economies and communities of more balanced life-wide learning systems? And what risks and threats might these unwittingly create?
Dr Lydia Hamlett: Politics of the Painted Hall
This lecture will focus on the recently conserved interior of the Painted Hall at Greenwich, a vast mural painting by Sir James Thornhill created in the early 1700s. This artwork will be used to explore the social and historical contexts of British visual culture – from the colonial expansion of the eighteenth century to the politics of today.
Dr Jessica Sharkey: Creating Henry VIII
No English King is more (in)famous than Bluff King Hal. How did the terrifying Tudor tyrant evolve into a drumstick eating figure of fun? This lecture will consider Henry VIII's carefully constructed contemporary image alongside the development of the late folk memory. Which of the two was more greatly distorted? And which is more powerful today?
Francis Wells: Medieval and early modern uses of the decorative arts in disease recovery
Whilst life is a powerful force of nature, the human condition is fragile and the balance between health and disease, success and adversity, happiness and sadness is often precarious. The loss of one’s health frequently is accompanied by a loss of freedom and even free will. Depression and despair are frequent bedfellows of physical disease. Long-term hospitalisation can lead to institutionalism and a reduction of the very life force that is required to fight our way through illness. As long ago as the Middle Ages, people recognised that our environment can play such a large part in our state of mind, and contribute enormously to our rate of recovery. This talk considers the contribution of the Medieval and Early Modern Decorative Arts and their physical environment to the recovery process of people laid low by disease.
Dr Edward Wickham: The Songs of Babel: musical adventures in the science of hearing
I noticed that, amongst a great gathering of knowledgeable people, when songs were sung in the modern manner, people asked themselves what language the singers were using.' This observation - a complaint about modern songs and the inability to understand the words - was made in the 14th century; but it might just as easily have been made last week. The unintelligibility - and, more humorously, the misunderstanding - of words when they are set to music tells us much about the nature of song and about our musical tastes. Using evidence from an innovative study of live concert audiences, Dr Edward Wickham explores some of the scientific issues which are relevant to the challenge of text intelligibility, including the so-called 'cocktail party problem' of hearing in a crowded room; and poses a provocative thesis about the function of words in song.
Andrew Hatcher: Navigating networks to build relationships
Networking whether, in a professional or personal context, is often seen as a necessary evil; talking to people who you don’t know often in unfamiliar surroundings. We will take a deeper look into why networks form, how they behave and how we react to them and develop some strategies to make the networking experience less stressful and more productive.
Professor Graham Virgo: Cannibalism and the law of murder: providing a ‘legal cloak for unbridled passion and atrocious crime’
In one of the most famous cases in the criminal law, Dudley and Stephens (1884), two men were convicted of murder having killed and eaten a cabin boy whilst they were adrift in a lifeboat without food and water. This case has had a significant impact on the development of the law in many countries. In this lecture the history of the case will be investigated and its implications tested (including some surprising literary influences) to determine whether allowing a defence of necessity to a charge of murder in such a case would amount to what one of the judges described as a ‘legal cloak for unbridled passion and atrocious crime.’
Toby Fenwick: COVID and contemporary conceptions of liberty
Barring a new variant that sidesteps the vaccine, the COVID-19 pandemic is increasingly under control in those countries which have successful testing and vaccination programmes. However, before vaccines were available, unprecedented powers to lockdown communities and require mask wearing to stop transmission were taken by governments worldwide, leading to protests and civil disobedience in several western countries. What does this tell us about contemporary conceptions of liberty, and of the political divide that it has exposed?
Dr Matthew Symonds: How the past can create the present: Hadrian's Wall and the forging of England and Scotland
This year is being celebrated as the 1900th anniversary of the Wall, which makes examining its legacy timely. We consider how the past is used to create the present (and vice versa) by focusing on the ways that remains of the Wall and memories of Rome have been exploited in the post-Roman period to build legitimacy for new powers. The Kingdom of Northumbria skillfully used both a very particular take on the Wall and its physical remains to cast the English as Rome's heirs. In later centuries, both English and Scottish scholars employed the Roman frontier as a vehicle to explore notions of nationhood, while the Wall is still frequently invoked as a shorthand for the Anglo-Scottish border, even though the ancient and modern lines do not touch at any point. Recent research suggests that perceived parallels with Rome continue to influence the way that Roman Britain is taught in English schools.
Dr David Smith: The politics of war and peace in Stuart Britain
This lecture will explore the political implications of fighting wars and making peace in Britain during the 17th century. It will examine in particular the issues that led to wars between Britain and other European powers. It will also analyse the changing ways in which wars were funded over the course of this period and trace the emergence of the fiscal-military state.
Dr Jenny Bavidge: ''I must be careful': writing nature and the environmental crisis
Using Ed Roberson's poem 'I must be careful' as a starting point, this lecture will discuss literary responses to the environmental crisis. We will think about how writers from a range of periods and places, from 18th-century British Romantics to contemporary Indigenous poets, have used their work to speak about / for / with the more-than-human world.
Week 2
Dr Gwen Wyatt-Moon: Electrical devices of the future
Printed and flexible electronics are seen as a route to many new applications as they can produce devices on a large scale and allow for conformability to different surfaces. This will not only reduce the cost of production but allow for devices to be more fully integrated into everyday objects. Alongside this progress in the more traditional device fabrication is opening up more applications and allowing for the Internet of Things to become a reality. As homes, commercial properties and industry become smart, what are the consequences for the future?
Dr John Lennard: Fantasists and Realists: a misguided opposition
In the wake of Tolkien the fantastical mode of writing is typically conflated with ‘genre fantasy’, and that in turn opposed to a more valued and supposedly valuable ‘realist’ mainstream. But the fantasy section of bookshops is not where you will find any of Don Quixote, Utopia, The Faerie Queene, Gulliver’s Travels, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 1984, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Midnight’s Children, or The Life of Pi, though all are in differing ways thoroughly fantastical. What’s going on? This lecture investigates a widespread confusion about a distinction that is much less secure than most critics seem to suppose.
Dr Sean Lang; Jeeves and the British Empire - the Imperial World of PG Wodehouse
The world of Bertie Wooster and his faithful manservant Jeeves is an idyll of eternal weekend parties at country houses and evenings at the Drones Club, always with a fearsome Aunt waiting round the corner. But PG Wodehouse's fantasy world was also a satirical take on the hard realities of the inter-war period, from the ridiculous would-be dictator Roderick Spode and his Black Shorts to Bingo Little's brief flirtation with communism. This lecture draws on research in the Wodehouse archives to reveal how his comedy also served as a satirical take on the pomposity of the British Empire and even played its part in the beginning of its end.
Dr Jessica Sharkey: The world turned upside down: the rebellions of 1549
The summer of 1549 saw widespread social unrest across England. Thousands of ordinary people set up alternative communities in huge encampments, challenging traditional notions of hierarchy and authority. This lecture will consider why this happened and how close England came to radical change. Particular attention will be paid to the East Anglian risings.
Dr Sylvana Tomaselli: Adam Smith's view of human nature
The Scottish philosopher Adam Smith (1723-1790), author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and The Wealth of Nations (1776), is considered to be the forefather of modern economics, as the system of the satisfaction of self-interested individuals' needs. Competition would regulate prices and wages and individual consumer self-interest would ensure the ‘market’ would provide for the overall interest of society. His writings on human nature included discussions of the source of our ability to form moral as well as economic judgements. But Adam Smith is not quite the author is he often assumed to have been. This lecture will consider what he actually thought of human nature.
Derek Niemann: A Nazi in the Family: the hidden story of an SS family in wartime Germany
ICE non-fiction course director and author Derek Niemann reveals how he turned a shocking family secret into a book. At the age of 50, Derek discovered that the grandfather he never knew had been an SS officer involved in the Holocaust. Derek gives a full and frank account of his journey from discovery to publication and beyond, one in which he faced considerable moral, practical and creative challenges.
Professor Herbert Huppert: Scientists and politicians: why are they incompatible?
It would be to the general benefit of both scientists and politicians if they understood each other’s ways and generally agreed with each other. But this is rarely so. Scientists seek detailed understanding, appreciate some of the risks involved and freely acknowledge when they are wrong. Politicians, by contrast, are interested in pleasing the public and maintaining their votes. This lecture will describe some of the differences, including some details of the rather clashing views on the all-important problems of climate change and the recent pandemic.
Professor Mark Goldie: The Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707: and will it survive?
In our lifetimes, we may see the break-up of the United Kingdom. The Scottish National Party, which has been in power in Edinburgh since 2007, is pressing for another Independence Referendum. To an historian’s eyes, the Anglo-Scottish Union is not old, a mere 300 years. For many centuries, Scotland and England were independent nations, often at war with each other. The Union was not inevitable. This lecture explores the background and character of the Union of 1707 and the ways in which history, politics, and constitutional law intertwine, from then until now.
Dr Tanja Hoffmann: The Empire strikes back: indigenous knowledge for climate change action in the global North
What can Indigenous knowledge teach the Global North about Climate Change? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2022 report notes that Indigenous knowledge is essential to slowing and mitigating climate change impacts, including species loss, water shortage, and forest fires. Using case studies from Australia, Canada, and Kenya, this lecture explores how Indigenous peoples are using their place-based knowledges to inform climate change action. Indigenous calls to climate action often target the powerful industrialized nations of the Global North who are best positioned to take climate change actions that will have a meaningful impact for the rest of the world.
Andrew Hatcher: Digital data, virtual reality: how mysterious ‘NFT’s may impact us all
The world of non-fungible tokens (NFT) has emerged in the last few years and although deeply submerged in technology and the 'metaverse', it will most likely impact us all at some point. An NFT is defined as 'a non-interchangeable unit of data stored on a blockchain' which is interesting but not much clearer to the uninformed. We will discover some of the mysteries of NFTs and look at examples of how they might impact our digital lives – and potentially our analogue ones too.
Sir Tony Brenton: Beyond Nuremberg: The international prosecution of War Crimes
Through most of human history there has been very little constraint on how states launch and conduct their wars. Aggression and brutality have seemed almost a law of nature. The past 150 years have however seen an increasingly powerful movement to change this – to punish aggressors and committers of atrocities. A high point of the campaign to “civilise” war was of course the Nuremberg trials of the top Nazi leadership in 1945. Since then we have seen tribunals to judge war crimes in former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and the establishment of the International Criminal Court. There are now loud demands for action on war crimes in Ukraine. Is what is emerging a comprehensive system for international prosecution of war crimes or a patchy, politicised regime of “victor’s justice”?
Olenka Pensky: The secrets of medieval and early modern Kyiv
Short description to follow
Week 3
Dr Alex Carter: The philosophy of perception: illusions and delusions
To follow
Dr Claire Barlow: Medical emergency: Climate emergency?
When the pandemic hit in spring 2020, one of the many international crises was the urgent need for protective masks, gloves and aprons. Demand in the UK healthcare sector quadrupled, and supplies simply weren’t available. Most items are designed for single use, so there’s constant demand for increased production, carrying sky-high financial and environmental costs. And what happens to all this equipment when it’s discarded? Some of it ends up littering our streets and hedges; internationally, masks are contributing to contamination of our oceans. Does it have to be like this? Hygiene must take top priority in healthcare, but what scope is there for reducing environmental impact while still keeping people safe?
Vivien Heilbron: Playing Shakespeare
Cambridge scholar, John Barton, wrote Playing Shakespeare in 1984, for new Royal Shakespeare Company actors struggling to find instructions that "would assist them directly in handling the language". Often Shakespeare's reputation - and their own natural fear of poetry - intimidates actors, inhibiting the playing and speaking of his verse. Yet Shakespeare himself provides the solution, as Peter Hall flags in Shakespeare's Advice to the Players: "First the form, then the feeling". Vivien Heilbron shares her own experiences as an actor and teacher to demonstrate how a good understanding of his metre, figures of speech and oher devices will inform and stimulate an actor, providing a practical route to characterisation.
Dr Spike Bucklow: Children of Mercury: lives of the painters, 1100-1800
The lecture considers the lives of historic painters in terms of the Seven Ages, made famous in Jacque's speech in Shakespeare's As You Like It. Drawing upon biographies of famous painters – like Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian – as well as many less well documented artists – like Mary Beale, Sarah Curtis and Martha Beard – it is an exploration of the traditional psychology of growing and ageing. It tracks numerous individuals from the cradle to the grave, illustrating how their – and our – focus changes through life.
Dr Lotte Reinbold: Thomas Chatterton: visionary or fraud?
O Chatterton! How very sad your fate!' intones the opening line of John Keats's memorial sonnet. A precocious poet who took his own life at the age of seventeen, Thomas Chatterton is perhaps best remembered for his death: his moment of expiry forever immortalised in Henry Wallis' Death of Chatterton. In this lecture, Lotte Reinbold looks more closely at Chatterton's poetry, and in particular his forgeries of medieval works, which he claimed were authentic documents produced by one 'Thomas Rowley', a monk of Bristol. In tracing the sad, complex, and often extraordinary story of Chatterton's forgeries, this talk provides a window into how the Middle Ages were being thought about in the 18th century, in order to ask whether Chatterton himself was a singular bright star, or the soul of the age.
Professor Jonathan Haslam: Where is Russia going?
The course of Russian history became unpredictable with revolution in 1917, again after Stalin's death in 1953; with the Soviet collapse in 1991-92; and now, with Putin's war against Ukraine. What we have now realised for certain is that less changed in 1992 than we anticipated. Have we lost any ability to predict this country's future?
JG Kelly & Dr Midge Gillies: JG Kelly in conversation: The Silent Child
JG Kelly talks to Dr Midge Gillies about his new stand-alone historical novel, The Silent Child. The book has been described as 'Outstanding. Heartstopping. Brilliant.’ by best-selling historical novelist Kate Furnival. 'A story that scorches the page, searing in its honesty and profoundly moving in its emotional impact… It holds up a dark and shocking mirror to our world, yet ultimately it is a triumphant tale of light within darkness. This is an important, powerful novel that everyone should read.’ The book spans the history of a divided Europe from the last days of the Second World War to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Dr Matthew Bothwell: Just how fast is the Universe expanding?
Around a century ago, Edwin Hubble made one of the most important discoveries in astronomical history: the Universe is expanding. Ever since Hubble, understanding exactly how fast the Universe is expanding has been one of the most important tasks in cosmology. Today, astronomers are faced with two puzzles: why is the expansion of the Universe speeding up? And why do different experiments disagree about how fast our Universe is expanding?
Rupert Wallace: The Sea: ungoverned space
The sea covers two-thirds of the earth’s surface but, unlike the land, remarkably little sovereignty is exercised over most of it. Using his extensive practical and policy experience, Rupert Wallace outlines the development of this historical lacuna and its associated legal framework, before discussing three of its critical and far-reaching consequences for the modern world: resource conflict, piracy and migration.
Clive Wilmer: T S Eliot: How to read The Waste Land
This year marks the centenary of the most famous poem of modern times: The Waste Land by T S Eliot. Though the poem is now a classic, it still baffles, confuses and even affronts many readers. But perhaps such readers ask the wrong question – they ask what the poem means, but they’d be wiser to think of language as providing not so much meaning as experience.
Professor Michelle Brown: Beyond the bitter river: Mappae Mundi and the medieval world view'
To follow
Week 4
Dr Nigel Kettley: Changing society? The uses and limits of social science research
Britain has undergone rapid social and economic change over the last 50 years with, perhaps, the pace of change intensifying recently in relation to the effects of austerity, Brexit and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. This talk explores the role that research in the field of social science (‘the science of society: the study of people as individuals, communities and societies’) plays in mapping and understanding social change. What is its effectiveness for providing an evidence-base for social policy? Specifically, we will consider research into educational inequality, ongoing health inequalities, and the causes and consequences of Brexit, in order to assess the uses and limits of social science for understanding and promoting social change.
Dr Karina Urbach: Alice's Book: how the Nazis stole a bestselling cookbook
We know that the Nazis burnt books by Jewish authors in May 1933. But what happened to books that were too valuable to burn? In 1938 the Jewish cookbook writer Alice Urbach was replaced by a fake "Aryan" author. Now, eighty years later, the historian Karina Urbach - Alice's granddaughter - sets out to uncover the truth behind the stolen cookbook, and tells the story of a family torn apart by the Nazi regime, and of a woman who, with her unwavering passion for cooking, survived the horror and losses of the Holocaust to begin a new life in England and America.
Sir Tony Brenton: The bear shows his claws: Russia's war in Ukraine
However it finally turns out, Russia’s attack on Ukraine this February is a watershed event. It is the first unprovoked military invasion of a neighbour by a major power in Europe since the Second World War. It is the first such crisis in which the possible use of nuclear weapons has been explicitly invoked. It has brought forth the toughest set of economic sanctions ever seen. Where has this conflict come from, and what are its implications for Ukraine, Russia and the wider international order?
Dr David Applin: Discovering/understanding DNA
The double helix of DNA is iconic of today’s Biology. Symbolic at the molecular level of a self-replicating molecule, DNA is the genetic material, parent replicated and inherited by offspring who in turn transfer their DNA to generation upon generation of descendants. Evolution is a theory of genealogy tracking characteristics inherited through generations, characteristics encoded in DNA and sorted through natural selection … Charles Darwin’s big idea. Understanding DNA, enables us to glimpse the ‘hows’ and ’whats’ of the heritage of life on Earth. But … how do we understand DNA.
Dr Aline Guillermet: Painting in the digital age
Since the late 1990s, the rise of digital technologies has strongly impacted on all aspects of artistic creation. What does this new technological and cultural context mean for painting, the material medium par excellence? In other words, is the digital age a threat, or an opportunity for painting? Taking David Hockney's iPad paintings as its starting point, this talk explores how a selection of contemporary painters are negotiating the challenges of the digital age for their artistic practice.
Professor Nigel Saul: Late Medieval England in ten buildings
A personal selection of just ten buildings that shed light on the main themes of English late medieval political, social and religious history, some of them churches, others castles and manor-houses, and others again... well, we'll see.
Dr Miriam Gill: Three dead men walking: the cultural contexts of wall paintings in medieval English parish churches
The subject of Three Living and Three Dead - three regal figures confronted by three animated corpses - is one of the most recognisable parochial mural themes in the period after 1300, featuring in over forty wall paintings. Drawing on recent research, Miriam Gill explores the possible cultural meanings suggested by this subject, and considers factors such as the distribution of murals (in both religious and secular contexts), the blending of secular and romance themes into religious culture, folklore about the dead, and observational naturalism.
Dr Sean Lang: Why is Britain a monarchy?
Why, in the 21st century, does Britain still have a hereditary Head of State and what does the monarch actually do? How might the monarchy's constitutional role be affected by the scandals that keep erupting in the royal family? This talk will look at how the British monarchy negotiated the difficulties of the 20th century and what challenges it faces now.
Dr John Lennard: '‘Enter pursuing a bear’, or, The very surprising Act 3 of The Winter’s Tale
Infamously, Antigonus must ‘Exit pursued by a bear’, and is shortly reported killed and eaten by it, the reporter being a Clown with a wildly histrionic manner as the play somehow flips from tragedy to comedy despite various deaths. Shakespeare’s only stage-bear has been much maligned, too many critics having a horror of both men in bear suits and real bears, but it is a deeply allusive and theatrically hard-working beast, and a well-penned part with many questions to answer. This lecture goes in ursine quest, and meets several other stage-bears along the way, as well as some real ones.
Andrew Hatcher: 10 forces that might define our future
We live in a turbulent world where technology, politics, economics and many other factors are developing alongside each other creating a living context which is often referred to as VUCA – volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. There are so many factors that drive the every accelerating pace of change and in this session we will look at 10 of those driving forces and assess how each of them may have an impact on our lives.
Dr Peter Dixon: What is peace and how do we build it?
We may think we know what peace is. It’s when the fighting stops, isn’t it? Unfortunately, things are not that simple. While the current war in Ukraine breaks the trend, most violent conflicts in recent years have been civil wars with complex causes. Even well-meaning interventions can just make matters worse. This talk will explore the different meanings of the word ‘peace’ and the factors that come into play when ‘we’ intervene to try to bring it about. The talk will briefly look at some of the causes of conflict, especially civil war, and how the most powerful outsiders may not be the right ones to bring lasting and sustainable peace.
Dr Sean Lang: Cambridge: the Platinum Years, 1952-2022
Cambridge has a rich history of connections to royalty. Queen Elizabeth II’s husband, Prince Philip, was the University Chancellor; two of her sons, Charles and Edward, studied here; and at their marriage in 2011 she made Prince William and Catherine Middleton Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. This talk will look at the interplay between Cambridge and the monarchy in the seventy years since Elizabeth II came to the throne in 1952.
