A lecture to be given by Sir Nicholas Green the Rt Hon Lord Justice Green, Former Chairman of the Law Commission for England & Wales (2018 – 2023); Lord Justice of Appeal, Civil and Criminal Appeals; President, The Council of the Inns of Court Sponsored by the University of Leicester The focus of the lecture … Continue reading Judges, Politics, and the Public: A Judge’s View from Inside Westminster →

Sponsored by Loughborough University  Dr Afzal Ashraf QCVS, CEng. Visiting Fellow in International Relations and Security, Loughborough University For most living in western societies, extremism is assumed to be an external threat, which occasionally infects peripheral elements of our society. Such a conceptualisation is challenged by a historical and a wider understanding of the nature … Continue reading Extremism among us →

Sponsored by the Royal Society of Chemistry   Professor Saiful Islam FRSC, FIMMM. Professor of Materials Science, University of Oxford The supply of low carbon energy is one of the greatest challenges of our time. Major breakthroughs in clean energy technologies require advances in new materials and underpinning science. With the aid of 3D glasses, … Continue reading Green Energy Materials in 3D – Crystal Gazing on the Atomic Scale →

Sponsored by De Montfort University Professor Gabriel Egan, Professor of Shakespeare Studies, De Montfort University    Shakespeare is often credited with coining many of the familiar words and phrases now used in the English language. But he didn't. Shakespeare is often supposed to have had an unusually large vocabulary. But he didn't. Yet Alexander Pope … Continue reading Is Shakespeare’s language unlike that of his contemporaries? →

Natural History Section Joint Lecture  Professor Rosemary Collier, FRES. School of Life Sciences, University of Warwick Synthetic pesticides have been available to farmers and growers since the 1940s and their use has facilitated our food security and the high-quality food that we are used to.  However, it has been evident for some time that they, … Continue reading Managing pest insects without pesticides →

The F. L. Attenborough Lecture Dr Mike Rands, BSc, DPhil, DSc. Master Darwin College, and Founding Director, Cambridge Conservation Initiative, University of Cambridge   Nature has never been under great threat and requires urgent and innovative responses from society if we are to halt and reverse the loss of species, habitats and ecosystems upon which … Continue reading Collaborating to conserve the natural world →

Joint Lecture with the Museum and Art Gallery Professor Jenny Powell, Director and Barber Professor, The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham In 1930 a reviewer of an Arthur Tooth’s exhibition, that included work by Barbara Hepworth, commented that from the catalogue ‘it sounds at first glance like a geological and forestry exhibition’. … Continue reading Sculpture and Geology: Modernism, Interdisciplinarity and the Museum Today →