Archived Events

• Upcoming
• Archived

When we form meaningful bonds with others, our wounds heal faster, we shake off infections more quickly and our blood pressure drops. Greater connection can fuel creativity, increase our financial stability and enhance our work productivity. As David Robson shows, we can all benefit from the laws of connection.

Brockway Room | Virtual event

Join us and James Ball, Professor Chris French, Professor Karen Douglas, Brent Lee and Jonn Elledge for a deep dive into conspiracy theory and culture. The history, the people and the dangers of a conspiracy mindset.

Brockway Room | No Option

Explore the hidden histories of love and desire, particularly for those on the fringes of society, as we delve into the lives of overlooked LGBTQ+ figures with writer and journalist Luke Turner and bestselling author Wendy Moore.

Brockway Room | Virtual event

Following on from last year's sell-out lecture, speaker Bhaskarji will explore scientific techniques of approaching relationships.

In person | No Option

By 1950, 50,000 people had been deemed ‘defective’ and detained for life under the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act. Through painstaking research, award-winning historian Sarah Wise pieces together the lives irrevocably changed by this devastating legislation and how early twentieth-century attitudes to class, gender and disability resulted in a nationwide scandal.

Brockway Room | Virtual event

Join Gresham Professor of Astronomy and BBC Sky at Night presenter, Chris Lintott, as he returns to the theme of how insight is derived from observations, and considers the cosmic microwave background.

In person | No Option

Misogyny and ‘toxic masculinity’ are increasingly implicated in radicalisation. Through interviews with leaders and their followers, Elizabeth Pearson explores the emergence of extreme misogyny and masculinities. Understanding the men and women involved in extreme movements will better equip us to counter them.

Brockway Room | Virtual event

In a world in love with data, it is possible to run a cost-benefit analysis on anything – including life itself. Exploring the final frontier in monetisation, Jenny Kleeman asks what we lose and what we gain by leaving the judgments that really matter up to cold, hard logic.

Brockway Room | Virtual event

In this free talk, critically acclaimed writer and historian Michael Meyer tells the gripping story of a forgotten pioneer who refused to accept the role the Establishment assigned to her. Instead, she chose to resist.

Library | No Option

Join us for a talk to mark the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT). Hear LGBT perspectives on phobia in the media, past and present, exploring this year’s theme of ‘No One Left Behind’.

Brockway Room | Virtual event

Record corporate pro­fits don't trickle down to everyone else - pay stagnates for ordinary workers, food banks proliferate and public services collapse around us. Authors Grace Blakeley and Luke Hildyard ask if we have had enough of the super-rich?

Brockway Room | Virtual event

Boyajian's star, a faint and unprepossessing presence in the constellation of Cygnus, attracted astronomers' attention when it began to flicker alarmingly. Chris Lintott, will discuss explanations for its behaviour, from disintegrating comets to alien megastructures, and consider how modern astronomy hunts for the truly unusual objects in the Universe.

In person | No Option

Nostalgia is a social and political emotion, vulnerable to misuse, and one that reflects the anxieties of the age. Agnes Arnold-Forster’s history of this complex, slippery emotion is a lens through which to consider our collective feelings of regret, dislocation and belonging.

Brockway Room | Virtual event

When we make a video game we can enter any world and be anyone. So why do the issues of the real world follow us into gaming? Dr Steph Rennick and games & tool developer Rami Ismail discuss how we make gaming fairer and more equal for players and developers.

Virtual event | No Option

Syd Moore covers her into WWII occultism including eclectic recruitment to the war effort, strange goings-on in Surrey and a ritual that allegedly took place in the New Forest in 1940 to repel Operation Sealion, Hitler’s plan to invade the British Isles.

Brockway Room | Virtual event

London is an old and haunted City; join us for ghosts stories of central London. Noah Angell on ghostly sightings at the British Museum, Roger Luckhurst discusses a cursed object in the Egyptian rooms of the British Museum and Sarah Sparkes presents the hauntings and other unexplained happenings of Senate House.

In person | No Option

Steven Mithen reconstructs the steps by which language evolved; he explains how it transformed the nature of thought and culture, and how we talked our way out of the Stone Age into the world of farming and swiftly into today's Digital Age.

Brockway Room | Virtual event

'The end of our world is arriving so gently that it has become a tragic sideshow in our lives. What most don’t yet realise is that we are already fighting for our lives, and we must win.’ - Chris Packham.Join conservationist Chris Packham, journalist Lucy Siegle, and researcher Dr Lynne Jones as they discuss the vital issues of protest and the climate crisis, coinciding with the publication of Lynne's groundbreaking book, "Sorry for the Inconvenience But This Is an Emergency."

In person | No Option