Age of the techno-scene by Professor Andrew Thompson @INSIGHTSPublicLecturesNCL

Uploaded March 2021 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago

* NEW DATE : Please note this is a change to the advertised date and will now take place on Tuesday 16 March. *

Professor Andrew Thompson, Nuffield College, University of Oxford

It is widely argued that the ‘4th Industrial Revolution’ will be fundamentally different from earlier industrial revolutions in ‘scope, complexity and scale’. What challenges will the digital age and proliferation of information, processed at ever greater speeds, pose to the future of society, the health of democracy, the distribution of power economically, and to our quintessential human capacities of self-reflection, empathy and compassion? This lecture examines the crucial role of research in the arts and humanities as we head into, and try to make sense of, the ‘4th Industrial Revolution’.

Biography:
Andrew Thompson is Professor of Global and Imperial History and a Professorial Fellow of Nuffield College. He is the co-chair of the Global and Imperial History Centre at the University of Oxford. Andrew's research interests span global histories of humanitarianism, histories of migration and mobility and the history of colonial and apartheid South Africa. From 2015 to early 2020 Andrew was Executive Chair of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

Live Q&A:
The lecture will be followed by a live Q&A with the speakers. You can submit a question during the event using YouTube Live Chat, via Twitter @InsightsNCL or by sending an email to public.lectures@ncl.ac.uk.

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Age of the techno-scene by Professor Andrew Thompson

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