Evolution of the Eye by Dan E. Nilsson Darwin College Lecture Series 2026-09-24 | Evolution of the Eye by Dan E. Nilsson
Decoding Our Humanity - Professor Shannon Vallor Darwin College Lecture Series 2025-03-18 | A code is a tool for hiding things of value. Yet codes also grant access to what has been hidden and locked away. This lecture explores the role of code, and coding, in both hiding and granting access to our humanity, in multiple senses of the word. As a philosophical provocation, it offers a challenge to the core values and aims of modern computing, those most deeply embedded in today’s rush toward algorithmic automation, and asks how those aims might be remade in the service of humane futures.Professor Shannon Vallor is the Baillie Gifford Chair in the Ethics of Data and Artificial Intelligence at the Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) at the University of Edinburgh, where she is also appointed in Philosophy. She directs the Centre for Technomoral Futures in EFI , and is co-Director of the UKRI ’s BRAID (Bridging Responsible AI Divides) programme. Shannon’s research explores how AI, robotics, and data science reshape human character, habits, and practices. Her work includes advising policymakers and industry on the ethical design and use of AI, and she is a former Visiting Researcher and AI Ethicist at Google. She currently serves on the standing committee of Stanford University’s One Hundred Year Study of AI (AI100). Her works include two monographs: Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting (Oxford University Press, 2016) and The AI Mirror: Reclaiming Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking (Oxford University Press, 2024).#darwincollege #darwinlectures #codes #ShannonVallor #universityofedinburgh #philosophy #moderncomputing #ai #universityofcambridge 00:00 Start00:10 Introduction by Master of Darwin College, Dr Michael Rands01:33 Decoding our Humanity by Prof. Shannon Vallor57:21 The Master's Reflection
Polari - a Very Queer Code - Professor Paul Baker Darwin College Lecture Series 2025-03-11 | Polari was a form of language, developing across the 19th and 20th centuries among a queer subculture that newspapers of the time referred to as the “twilight world of the homosexual”. It acted as a secret code, allowing speakers to converse in public spaces, to identify one another and to form identities.In the 1960s Polari became famous when it was used in a popular BBC radio comedy series called Round the Horne but by the 1980s it had all but vanished.Paul Baker has researched Polari for the last 30 years and he tells the fascinating and hilarious story of its rise, fall and rediscovery, charting its fortunes alongside tumultuous changes in British LGBTQ + representation and visibility.Paul Baker is Professor of English Language at Lancaster University. He has written 25 books which focus on the relationship between language, society, identity and media. He is editor of the journal Corpora, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.#darwincollege #codes #darwincollegelectureseries #darwinlectures #paulbaker #lancasteruniversity #polari #lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtlanguage #language #languagehistory #universityofcambridge 00:00 Start00:10 Introduction by Dr Stefani Ullmann, Bye-Fellow of Darwin College02:55 Polari, a lecture by Professor Paul Baker56:40 A Fellow's Reflection, by Professor Alan Blackwell
Wayfinding through the Human Genome - Dr Keolu Fox Darwin College Lecture Series 2025-03-05 | In this special lecture to honour the legacy of Charles Darwin at the University of Cambridge, Dr Keolu Fox, the first Native Hawaiian PhD. in genomic sciences and a National Geographic Explorer and Wayfinder Award winner, presents a pioneering perspective that blends Indigenous knowledge with modern genomic research. Drawing on the rich history of Polynesian wayfinding and Darwin’s evolutionary theories, Keolu introduces the concept of “Indigenous Futurism”—a movement to harness scientific and technological advancements to empower Indigenous communities.Keolu’s research uses genetic data to rewrite the narratives of Indigenous people, emphasising that the human genome, much like the vast Pacific Ocean, contains clues about our history, health, and future. By studying the genomes of Polynesian descendants of ancient navigators, his work not only highlights the complex migration patterns that brought them to distant islands like Hawaii and Tahiti but also offers insights into modern health challenges faced by these communities.In this lecture, Keolu will discuss how genomics can serve as a tool for land reclamation, public health improvements, and cultural preservation. He emphasises the need for ethical, community-driven research models that prioritise benefit-sharing and cultural sustainability over extractive scientific practices. By incorporating Indigenous values and decision-making, his approach seeks to return agency to the communities that have historically been marginalised in genomic studies.Keolu’s vision extends beyond academia, with aspirations to develop mobile genomic technologies that could bring research directly to remote communities, revolutionising conservation genetics and healthcare delivery. Through this fusion of ancient wisdom and cutting-edge science, Keolu continues the Darwinian legacy of exploring human evolution—this time with a focus on the resilience and future of Indigenous peoples.This lecture will provide a fascinating look at how the past informs the future, offering a new path forward in genomics that aligns with the global push toward inclusivity, equity, and sustainability in science.Keolu is Co-Founder of the Native BioData Consortium, a nonprofit research institute led by Indigenous scientists and tribal members. He is also an assistant professor at the University of California San Diego, where he is Co-Founder and Co-Director of the UCSD Indigenous Futures Institute. Growing up as an avid waterman, Keolu was immersed in stories about his ancestors, Polynesian navigators, and the men who led the first Hōkūleʻa voyage to Tahiti in the late 1970s. He tells us how genetic data can help reveal powerful narratives about the history of Indigenous people and their achievements, and empower communities to use data to improve public health and preserve their culture.#Darwin #DarwinCollege #universityofcambridge #KeoluFox #UCSD #Codes #Genetics #geneticscience #indigenous #inclusivity #equity #sustainability #genome 00:00 Start00:11 Introduction by Master of Darwin College, Dr Michael Rands01:54 Giving of gifts by Dr Keolu Fox04:02 Lecture starts55:28 The Master's Reflection
Eves Byte of the Apple - Sandi Toksvig Darwin College Lecture Series 2025-02-25 | In “Eve’s Byte of the Apple”, Sandi Toksvig will be taking an alternative look at the evolution of information, at how the knowledge of women and about women is encoded, and what comes from those codes. Since 2023 Sandi has been a Bye-Fellow at Christ’s College, Cambridge working on The Mappa Mundi Project, creating a global interactive digital platform telling women’s stories worldwide. In this lecture, she considers how the evolution of information technology has been historically biased against women, continuing that bias to the present day. Most importantly, she asks what might be done about it.Sandi Toksvig was born in Copenhagen, Denmark but grew up travelling the world. After graduating with a first-class degree from Cambridge, Sandi began a career on stage, television and radio. As a political and women’s rights activist, she was co-founder of the Women’s Equality Party in 2015. Sandi has written stage plays, journalism and over 25 books including fact and fiction for both children and adults. Her latest novel Friends of Dorothy was published in 2024.sanditoksvig.com00:00 Start00:10 The Master's Introduction02:58 Sandi Toksvig1:00:56 The Master's Reflection#darwincollege #darwinlectures #codes #universityofcambridge #sanditoksvig #qi
Epigenetics: A Code upon a Code? - Professor Anne Ferguson-Smith Darwin College Lecture Series 2025-02-19 | On top of the heritable genetic code that is our DNA, sits another layer of information that influences our genes. Studying the properties and functions of this ‘epi-genetic’ information has revealed a whole new aspect of genome biology with implications for health and disease, providing compelling explanations for how we might respond to our environment, and making us consider whether DNA is the only code we transmit from one generation to the next.In her lecture, Anne will consider the influence of epigenetics on our genes, share a few insights into how understanding epigenetics is contributing to modern medicine, and encourage us to question at least some of what we think we might know about epigenetics.Professor Anne Ferguson-Smith is the Executive Chair of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). Before this appointment, she served as Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research and International Partnerships) at the University of Cambridge. A renowned mammalian developmental geneticist, genome biologist and epigeneticist, Anne is the Balfour Professor of Genetics in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Genetics where she served as Head of Department from 2013-2020. She is also a Fellow of Darwin College.At the University of Cambridge, Anne leads a research group comprised of experimental and computational scientists. They focus on the epigenetic control of genome function, particularly on models of epigenetic inheritance with implications for health and disease. Committed to the training and professional development of new talent, her team’s current work includes investigating how genetic, epigenetic and environmental factors influence cellular and developmental processes.In 2017, Anne was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and in 2021 received their Buchanan Medal for her pioneering work on epigenetics. In 2023, she was named Commander of the British Empire (CBE) for her research contributions.00:00 Start00:11 Introduction by Dr Michael Rands, Master of Darwin College02:02 Beginning of the lecture by Professor Anne Ferguson-Smith1:06:47 The Master's Reflection#darwincollege #darwinlectures #codes #universityofcambridge #genetics
Using Maths to Decode the Universe - Dr Tom Crawford Darwin College Lecture Series 2025-02-11 | Mathematical modelling is one of the most powerful tools available in our quest to understand the universe. From the work of Einstein and the theory of relativity, to disease modelling during the COVID -19 pandemic, by using the language of mathematics and reducing the world to equations, we are able to increase our understanding of what is happening around us. In a sense, mathematics is the key that unlocks the secret code of the universe.In this talk, Dr Tom Crawford will share some of his favourite examples of how mathematical modelling can be used to answer questions about the world in which we live. Beginning with his own work on the spread of pollution in the ocean, our journey will take us through video games, sports and finding the perfect partner. Expect to see the tools of maths used in ways you never thought possible…BiographyDr Tom Crawford teaches Maths at the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge, as well as running the award-winning Tom Rocks Maths outreach programme. With over 25 million views on YouTube, it’s likely you’ve seen him taking a high school maths exam with no preparation, or talking all things fluid dynamics on Numberphile.When not misbehaving with numbers, Tom can usually be found playing football, snowboarding or getting a new maths tattoo (15 and counting…).tomrocksmaths.com00:00 Start00:09 Introduction by Dr Michael Rands, Master of Darwin College02:40 Beginning of the lecture by Dr Tom Crawford1:00:16 The Master's Reflection#darwincollege #darwinlectures #codes #universityofcambridge #numberphile #maths #tomrocksmaths #countdown
The Power of Music: A Journey Back to Home - Maya Youssef Darwin College Lecture Series 2025-02-04 | In this talk, I will explore how music holds a unique power to connect us to an essence of “home” – not just as a place, but as a feeling, a memory, or even a piece of ourselves we may have lost along the way. I’ll share my personal creative process, illustrating how I found music to be a profound tool for healing, for self-expression, and as a bridge to the deeper layers of my identity.Through my experiences as a musician and Arabic music mentor, I’ve seen how melodies can unlock emotions that words cannot, serving as a lifeline to the stories and places we carry within us. Whether it’s through the rich heritage of maqam or the delicate strings of the qanun, music has been my way of tracing the lines back to home—both literally and spiritually.This talk isn’t just about my story; it’s an invitation to reflect on how we all seek and find our own sense of belonging through art, culture, and creativity. In a world that’s often in flux, music provides an anchor—a way to reclaim a sense of home, no matter where we find ourselves.To further illustrate these ideas, I will be performing live on my qanun, sharing pieces that embody this deep connection to home and the essence of self.BiographyHailed as ‘queen of the qanun’, Maya Youssef is a globally renowned, and award-winning qanun player and composer from Syria. Born in Damascus, Maya arrived in the UK in 2012, under the UK Government’s Tier 1 visa scheme, endorsed by Arts Council England as an Exceptional Talent. Since then, Maya has pushed the boundaries of the qanun (a 78 stringed plucked zither traditionally played by men) and has performed at the South Bank, BBC Proms, Royal Albert Hall, The Barbican, Shakespeare’s Globe and WOMAD Festival.Maya has collaborated with Damon Albarn (Blur/Gorillaz) and recorded for ‘The Beatles & India’ documentary in Abbey Road Studios. Her debut album, Syrian Dreams (a prayer for peace), was produced by the esteemed Joe Boyd (Nick Drake et al) and released by Harmonia Mundi to critical acclaim.Maya was awarded a PRS Women Make Music Grant and an Arts Council England Project Grant towards recording her second album, Finding Home, which was released March 25th, 2022. The album received 5-star reviews from international and UK press and was nominated for the prestigious German Record Critics’ Award.Maya is also a skilled educator, leading her own online qanun academy with students all over the world, contributing to a wide variety of learning and participation opportunities through talks, lectures workshops and broadcasts.Maya’s compositions, recordings, performances, and her life story have been the subject of extensive reviews, and she is a frequent broadcaster.mayayoussef.com00:00 Start00:09 Introduction by Dr Michael Rands, Master of Darwin College02:28 Beginning of the lecture by Maya Youssef06:45 Early experience hearing the sound of the Qanun08:36 What is a Qanun and how is it played?15:05 Syrian Dreams20:15 Samira Abbassy, Unravelling23:31 Soul Fever29:19 Maqam as a musical code34:18 The tone in Arabic music39:39 Hi-Jazz44:02 The Seven Gates of Damascus49:32 If music be the food of love, play on52:31 Walk With Me57:04 The Master's Reflection#darwincollege #darwinlectures #codes #universityofcambridge #mayayoussef #quanun #livemusic
Bits with Soul - Professor Simon Peyton Jones Darwin College Lecture Series 2025-01-30 | When people think of codes, coding, and computers, they often think of socially challenged nerds like me, writing “code” (whatever that might be) in a darkened basement, all soulless ones and zeros and glowing screens. But in fact computer science (the study of information, computation, and communication) gives us an enormously rich new lens through which to look at and explore the world. By encoding everything in the same, digital bits, we can mechanise the analysis and transformation of that information; we can explore it in ways that are simply inaccessible to manual techniques; we can engage our creativity to write programs whose complexity rivals the most sophisticated artefacts that human beings have produced—and yet fit on a USB drive; we can even learn from data in ways that have made “ChatGPT” into a verb practically overnight.Given how closely digital technology is interwoven in our lives, having a visceral sense of how this stuff works, what it can do well, and how it can fail, is essential for us to survive and thrive, and should be part of every child’s education.In my talk I will share some of the joy, beauty, and creativity of computer science. This is serious, because it impinges on our daily lives. But it is also rich, beautiful, and fun.simon.peytonjones.org00:00 Start00:10 Introduction by Dr Michael Rands, Master of Darwin College04:38 Beginning of lecture by Prof Simon Peyton Jones, Epic Games & Pembroke College05:33 Episode 1: Information14:14 Episode 2: Computation18:35 Episode 3: Communication27:58 Episode 4: Wild Bits37:27 Episode 5: Bits that learn52:38 Episode 6: Bits with soul57:25 The Master's Reflection#darwincollege #darwinlectures #codes #universityofcambridge #epicgames #simonpeytonjones
The Cultural Revolution - Tania Branigan Darwin College Lecture Series 2024-03-11 | The Cultural Revolution is everywhere and nowhere in modern China. It is impossible to make sense of China without understanding what happened in this decade of political fanaticism, brutal violence and chaos, which saw perhaps two million die and tens of millions hounded. But it also seems impossible to truly understand this era, with its constant changes and contradictions. Discussion has been suppressed by both political diktat and personal trauma. Even so, its memory persists.While many remain deeply scarred by the horrors, there is now a surprising nostalgia for the era. It speaks in large part to concerns about the present day but also reflects the appeal of powerful possibilities for transformation which existed in the era, however briefly and marginally.What exactly are people remembering when they remember the Cultural Revolution? And how has an era which turned the nation upside down come to be an essential part of the party-state’s maintenance of the political status quo?Tania Branigan is foreign leader writer at the Guardian and spent seven years as its China correspondent. Her book Red Memory: The Afterlives of China’s Cultural Revolution won the Cundill History Prize 2023 and was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford prize, the British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding and the Kirkus non-fiction prize. It was named as one of the Wall Street Journal’s ten best books of 2023 and TIME ’s 100 must-read books of 2023.
Revolution by Natural Selection - Professor Nick Lane, University College London Darwin College Lecture Series 2024-03-06 | Revolution by Natural Selection: A radical history of life from inside our cellsProfessor Nick Lane’s research is about how energy flow has shaped evolution over four billion years. He uses a mixture of theoretical and experimental work to address the origin of life, the evolution of complex cells and downright peculiar behaviour such as sex. This lecture will outline how a simple cycle at the heart of metabolism drove some of the most important revolutions in the history of life. By turning gases into organic molecules and back again, this deep chemistry links the origin of life with photosynthesis, the abrupt appearance of animals, cancer, and even the emergence of consciousness.Nick Lane (PhD, FRSB, FLS) is Professor of Evolutionary Biochemistry in the Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment at University College London. He was a founding member of the UCL Consortium for Mitochondrial Research, and is Co-Director of the UCL Centre for Life’s Origin and Evolution (CLOE). He was awarded the 2009 UCL Provost’s Venture Research Prize, the 2011 BMC Research Award for Genetics, Genomics, Bioinformatics and Evolution, the 2015 Biochemical Society Award for his outstanding contribution to molecular life sciences and 2016 Royal Society Michael Faraday Prize and Lecture, the UK’s premier award for excellence in communicating science. Professor Lane is the author of five acclaimed books on evolutionary biochemistry, which have sold more than 150,000 copies worldwide, and been translated into 25 languages. His most recent book, Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death (Profile/Norton 2022) explores the elusive chemical logic of life.
Worlds turned upside down: Quiet Revolutions in Art - Professor Frances Spalding Darwin College Lecture Series 2024-02-29 | This lecture asks why the Western European tradition occupies a hallowed role in world culture. E.H. Gombrich provides one answer to this question in his The Story of Art (1950), with reference to the restlessness within Western culture in comparison with some Eastern cultures that have lasted almost unchanged for a thousand years. His own book has done much to promote the Western view of art, having now reached its 16th edition, been translated into 30 languages, and sold 8 million copies. When Gombrich tried in the 12th edition to take the story of art up to the present day, he admitted some discomfort. Art veined with the revolutionary spirit had aligned itself more easily with progressive developments, with ‘primitivism’, modernism and modernity. Admittedly, modernism, modernity and even postcolonialism, with its reaction against Western Cultures, although moving towards globalisation, remain inextricably tied to the West. This has remained the case even during recent years, when the West’s socio-economic power has been challenged by global financial crises and troubled by the phenomenon of runaway global warming. Yet when a leading institute for the teaching of art history in this country admits that in the 2023- 24 academic year two-thirds of its classes are consigned to American and European art, more revolution is needed. More cross-cultural exchange, of the kind demonstrated by the British Library exhibition, Chinese and British; more interventions like Chila Burman’s transformation of classical imperial public buildings into palaces of Hindu delight; more things that surprise and can turn a world upside down.Frances Spalding is an art historian, critic and biographer. She read art history at the University of Nottingham and began writing pieces for the TLS, The Burlington Magazine and art journals while still a postgraduate. She has a specialist interest in 20th century British art and first established her reputation with Roger Fry: Art and Life. She went on to write lives of the artists Vanessa Bell, John Minton, Duncan Grant, Gwen Raverat and John and Myfanwy Piper, as well as a biography of the poet Stevie Smith. Her survey history, British Art since 1900, in the Thames & Hudson World of Art series, has been widely used in schools, colleges and universities, and in the mid-1990s she was commissioned by the Tate to write a centenary history of this national institution. Between 2000 and 2015, she taught at Newcastle University, becoming Professor of Art History. She acted as Editor of The Burlington Magazine, 2015-16, and is now Emeritus Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Art and in 2005 was made a CBE for Services to Literature.
The Exoplanet Revolution - Professor Didier Queloz, University of Cambridge Darwin College Lecture Series 2024-02-21 | Until recently, the solar system provided the only basis for our knowledge of planets and life in the Universe. In 1995 Didier Queloz and Michel Mayor dramatically changed this view with their discovery of the first giant planet outside our solar system. This spawned a revolution in astronomy, both in terms of new instrumentation and in our understanding of planet formation and evolution. Planets outside our solar system, orbiting other stars, are called exoplanets. Thousands of exoplanets have been identified over the last three decades, ranging from large planets like Jupiter to smaller denser objects like the Earth. The diversity and prolific quantity of these discoveries has revolutionised our understanding of the nature and formation of planets, opening up a surprising new perspective on the possible rarity of planetary systems similar to our own. It has also raised exciting prospects for the potential to probe planetary atmospheres for traces of life.Didier Queloz is Professor of Physics at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge and Professor of Astronomy at the University of Geneva. His research focuses on the detection and measurement of exoplanet systems, aiming to retrieve information about their physical structure and to better understand their formation and evolution, by comparison with our solar system. More recently he has worked on the detection of Earth-like planets and life in the Universe. In 2019 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his research and discoveries. At Cambridge he leads a research program with the goal of making further progress in our understanding of the formation, structure, and habitability of exoplanets in the Universe, as well as to promote and share the excitement of this work with the public.
A Revolution in Thought? - Dr Iain McGilchrist Darwin College Lecture Series 2024-02-13 | A Revolution in Thought? How hemisphere theory helps us understand the metacrisisIt is often remarked that though it may seem that we face numerous global crises of different kinds – environmental, social, political, cultural, economic, psychological, and so on – these crises are interrelated. The term ‘metacrisis’ has been invented to describe this predicament. However these crises are not merely adventitiously interrelated because each has an impact on and reinforces each of the others – though that may be true – but because they share roots at a deeper level in a way of thinking about ourselves and the world. What are these roots? Hemisphere theory, deeply grounded as it is in Darwinism and subsequent neuroscientific research, shows us that a new, far more complex, and more nuanced, appraisal of the bipartite brain – the product of the last 30 years of research – brings new insights into the human condition. There are vitally important clues to the understanding of human cognition and motivation embodied in the structure of the brain. These clues help explain why certain apparently unrelated phenomena tend to occur together, why outcomes that appear paradoxical are in reality predictable, and why many attempts to remedy them will prove inadequate since they are tackling only the manifestations of a problem that we need to address at its root – both in the psyche of the individual and that of a civilisation viewed as a whole. ‘Know thyself’ commanded the Delphian oracle: we need urgently to learn to do so, and this synergy of philosophy and neuroscience appears to offer the most promising way.Dr Iain McGilchrist is a Quondam Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, an Associate Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford, a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and former Consultant Psychiatrist and Clinical Director at the Bethlem Royal & Maudsley Hospital, London. He has been a Research Fellow in neuroimaging at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore and a Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Stellenbosch. He has published original articles and research papers in a wide range of publications on topics in literature, philosophy, medicine and psychiatry. He is the author of a number of books, but is best-known for The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (Yale 2009); and his book on neuroscience, epistemology and ontology, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World (Perspectiva 2021).#darwincollege #darwin #revoloution #universityofcambridge #metacrisis
Are Revolutions justified? - Professor Lea Ypi, London School of Economics Darwin College Lecture Series 2024-02-06 | Authors who think about the justifiability of revolution are often divided between those who criticise it on grounds of institutional legalism and those who endorse it on grounds of idealist moralism. Moralists think that since the ends of revolution are right, revolution can never be wrong. Legalists think that since the means of revolution are wrong, revolution can never be right. In this lecture Lea Ypi revisits their arguments and offers an alternative that tries to cut across the divide. She examines revolution not in relation to the justice of individuals but grounded on a philosophical theory of history that focuses on collective progress. Lea Ypi is Professor in Political Theory in the Government Department, London School of Economics, and Adjunct Associate Professor in Philosophy at the Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University. Before joining the LSE, she was a Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow at Nuffield College (Oxford) and a researcher at the European University Institute where she obtained her PhD.Professor Ypi has degrees in Philosophy and Literature from the University of Rome, La Sapienza, and has held visiting and research positions at Sciences Po, the University of Frankfurt, the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin, the Australian National University and the Italian Institute for Historical Studies.
The Genetic Revolutions - Professor Matthew Cobb, University of Manchester Darwin College Lecture Series 2024-01-31 | There have been many genetic revolutions: The realisation that characteristics could be inherited in the 18th century; Mendel’s experiments on hybrid pea plants in the 1850s; the rediscovery of Mendel’s work in 1903; the identification of the genetic role of DNA in 1944; the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953; the advent of genetic engineering in 1972. And yet none of these moments was immediately transformational. Even the description of the double helix in 1953, often seen as a striking example of a radical breakthrough, a single definitive moment, did not settle the question of the nature of the genetic material. For nearly a decade afterwards, many scientists continued to think that proteins played a role, while the genetic role of DNA in multicellular organisms was demonstrated only in the 1970s. Through the history of our attempts to understand heredity we can perceive something of the history of science and how scientific revolutions are rarely immediately perceptible at the time. The wheel of scientific history turns, but much less rapidly and dramatically than appears in retrospect.Professor Matthew Cobb is at the University of Manchester where he studies the sense of smell in maggots and Neanderthals. He is also interested in the history of science and has published books and articles on the history of biology, from the 17th to the 21st century, and two books on the history of the French resistance. He is currently writing a biography of Francis Crick.
On the Disappointment of Revolutions - Professor Sir Simon Schama, Columbia University Darwin College Lecture Series 2024-01-25 | Do revolutions matter? Do they sharply change the course of history or are they programmed for disappointment, or much worse outcomes? Are they mostly a state of mind pumped up with utopian rhetoric or do they profoundly alter the structures they claim to demolish and replace? Are they the necessary engines of progress or a deadweight on its advance? And does the revolutionary temper have anything to say to the existential problems of our own time – environmental, biological, demographic and digital? Or should revolutions and their histories be laid to rest in the museum of exhausted illusions?Sir Simon Schama is University Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University. He is a contributing editor of the Financial Times, author of 20 books, and writer-presenter of over fifty documentaries on art, history and literature for BBC television. Most recently his History of Now series aired on BBC2 in 2022. Sir Simon has been awarded numerous prizes and honours including the NCR prize for non-fiction for Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution, the W.H. Smith Literary Award for Landscape and Memory, and the National Book Critics Circle prize for non-fiction for Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution. His work has been translated into 23 languages, and his 20th, and most recent book Foreign Bodies: Pandemics, Vaccines and the Health of Nations, was published in the UK in May 2023.
Darwin College Lecture Series 2024 - Introduction Darwin College Lecture Series 2024-01-15 | The organisers of the Darwin College Lecture Series explain how they came over all revolutionary.
Isolation of Atomic Mechanisms: the Choreographer at Play - Professor Sir Harry Bhadeshia Darwin College Lecture Series 2023-03-15 | Isolation of Atomic Mechanisms – the Choreographer at Play.Emeritus Tata Steel Professor of Metallurgy at the University of Cambridge, as well as Professor of Metallurgy at Queen Mary University of London, Harry is a Fellow at Darwin and co-organiser of this year’s lecture series. He was knighted in 2015 in recognition of his development of new forms of steel, including the carbide-free steel now in use in the railway lines in the Channel Tunnel.Harry’s lecture will explore the movement of atoms during a structural change, a process which he compares with dance.“Atoms in solids can be arranged in periodic patterns. A good two-dimensional analogy is wallpaper, where a motif is repeated indefinitely to generate a patterned roll of paper,” he explains.“Unlike the pictures on wallpaper, the atomic patterns in metals are not frozen. They can be stimulated to change, by deformation, through the application of magnetic or electrical fields, by the application of heat or during cooling to cryogenic temperatures, or during cataclysmic events.These changes in atomic arrangements can dramatically influence the properties of the metal, sometimes rendering it useless and at other times offering features that can improve the quality of life.Revealing the choreography of atoms during a structural change by isolating the precise mechanism, is therefore important in the design of metallic materials. On occasions, the movement is graceful with an orderly, almost predictable collective motion that causes the object to change its shape in a manner visible to the naked eye. The resulting internal structure strengthens and toughens the metal. On the other hand, there can be random movements which are more akin to chaotic dance. Sometimes, when there is a mixture of small and large atoms, there can exist both disciplined and disorderly trajectories of atoms.In this talk, I will explain how we can isolate and study the dance of the atoms and illustrate how with this understanding, we assume the role of a choreographer in creating some amazing materials.”
The Self-Imposed Isolation of North Korea - Professor Heonik Kwon, University of Cambridge Darwin College Lecture Series 2023-03-08 | North Korea is one of the most secluded societies in today’s world. Its system of rule is often referred to as an enigma of modern politics. This essay asks what has caused this condition of extreme isolation, highlighting the relentless pursuit of a historically durable charismatic political power. The discussion will include Max Weber’s thoughts on the place of charismatic power in modern politics.Heonik Kwon is a Senior Research Fellow of Social Anthropology at Trinity College, Cambridge. Author of prize-winning books on the sociocultural history of the Vietnam War, the Korean War and Asia’s postcolonial Cold War more broadly, he previously taught in the London School of Economics and University of Edinburgh. His new book, Spirit Power (2022), approaches Korea’s Cold War experience from a religious historical angle. The present lecture draws upon his earlier co-authored book, North Korea: Beyond Charismatic Power (2012).
Are we alone in the Universe? - Dr Arik Kershenbaum, University of Cambridge Darwin College Lecture Series 2023-03-01 | Is there intelligent life elsewhere in the universe? If not, does that mean that we humans are utterly alone in creation? Recent technological developments make the discovery of life on other planets almost expected within the coming decades. But most of the inhabited planets we hope to discover may well be populated by no more than alien bacteria. Will that make us feel any less alone? What we really hope to find are aliens with whom we can communicate and hold a conversation. When we ask ,“Are we alone?”, what we really mean is, “Do we have anyone to talk to in the universe?” Our gnawing concern about being isolated in the universe ironically mirrors the situation we face on our own planet. We are proud of the status of human beings as the most intelligent of animals, and indeed the only species with language. But that very uniqueness isolates us from all the other intelligent animals on the planet. Sure, we can communicate with our pet dogs and cats, but we can’t hold a conversation with them. Why not? What is the nature of the barrier between us and dolphins or chimpanzees? Some would say that if we aren’t capable of understanding dolphins and whales, we have no chance of understanding any alien civilisation we encounter. Perhaps we are doomed to galactic isolation, no matter how many alien civilisations exist. However, I believe that we can be more optimistic than that. As we reach out to the stars to seek out new life and new civilisations, now is the time to consider: for what are we actually searching?Dr Arik Kershenbaum is a zoologist, Director of Studies, and Fellow at Girton College, University of Cambridge, and an expert on animal vocal communication, which he has researched for the past 14 years. He received his PhD at the University of Haifa in Israel, and holds a Higher Doctorate from the University of Cambridge. His first popular science book, The Zoologist’s Guide to the Galaxy was a Times/Sunday Times Book of the Year, and received accolades from among others, Richard Dawkins and Lord Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal. Dr Kershenbaum travels the world researching the nature of information in the communication of wolves, dolphins, primates, and other species, looking for indications of the similarities – and differences – with human speech. The evolution of different forms of animal communication is the subject of his second popular science book: How Animals Talk, which will be published in 2023.
Isolation and Trapping using Optical Tweezers - Professor Philip Jones, University College London Darwin College Lecture Series 2023-02-22 | In 2018 Arthur Ashkin was awarded a half share of that year’s Nobel Prize in Physics “for the optical tweezers and their application to biological systems”. The work for which he was recognised had its origins more than thirty years before, and in the years since their invention, the uses of optical tweezers have grown far beyond biological systems, with numerous diverse applications across the chemical and physical sciences also. In this lecture we will look at the history of our understanding of the force that light exerts on matter, which has its origins in the observations of Johannes Kepler concerning the tails of comets. We will see how the concept of radiation pressure evolved from the work of James Clerk Maxwell, and trace its development to the experiments in which Arthur Ashkin first demonstrated the optical tweezers. Finally, we will examine just a few of the many uses of optical tweezers where their ``light touch’’ and ability to trap a single microscopic particle and isolate it from its surroundings have proved invaluable.Philip Jones is a physicist whose research centres on optical trapping and its use as a tool for probing a variety of nanoscopic, soft matter and biological materials. He is currently Professor of Physics at University College London where he leads the Optical Tweezers Group. Recently he has co-authored the first textbook on optical tweezers, published by Cambridge University Press.
Antarctica: Isolated Continent - Professor Dame Jane Francis, British Antarctic Survey Darwin College Lecture Series 2023-02-15 | Continents as we know them today emerged as a consequence of the mechanism of plate tectonics, which led to the fragmentation of a super-continent. One such fragment, the Antarctica, now is in the ocean at the South Pole, covered in thick ice-sheets that contrast with its long-past history where it was adorned by forests and inhabited by animals including dinosaurs. It was the natural processes that buried carbon dioxide that led to the glaciation of Antarctica. The burning of fossil fuels is now having an opposite effect, causing the depletion of the ice at a remarkable rate. For humans, Antarctica can be thought of as an isolated continent because no one actually makes a home there. But the continent is not entirely isolated—there is life, including a few thousand scientists and their support staff. And the oceans around are teeming with life with a few species of birds breeding on the continent.Jane Francis is a geologist by training, with research interests in understanding past climate change. She has undertaken research projects at the universities of Southampton, London, Leeds and Adelaide, using fossil plants to determine the change from greenhouse to icehouse climates in the polar regions over the past 100 million years. She has undertaken over 15 scientific expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctica in search of fossil forests.Jane is Director of the British Antarctic Survey, a research centre of the Natural Environment Research Council (UKRI-NERC). She is involved with international polar organisations, such as the Antarctic Treaty and European Polar Board, and on several advisory boards of national polar programmes.Jane was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (DCMG) in recognition of services to UK polar science and diplomacy. She was also awarded the Polar Medal by H.M The Queen, and in 2018 became Chancellor of the University of Leeds.Credit: The video featured in the lecture is owned by the British Antarctic Survey and can be found on their YouTube channel via this link: youtu.be/qGH-9W6446s
The Closeting of Secrets – Physics and Cryptography - Professor Adrian Kent, University of Cambridge Darwin College Lecture Series 2023-02-07 | The definition and properties of information may seem to be fundamental features of the world that are independent of how particles, fields and space-time behave. In fact, though, information is fundamentally physical and twentieth century physics has radically changed our understanding of its nature and properties. Einstein’s relativity theories tell us that information cannot travel faster than the speed of light in vacuum. Quantum theory tells us that the information carried by microscopic systems is qualitatively different from the familiar ``classical’’ information with which we presently communicate and compute: for example, quantum information cannot be copied. These realisations have led to new applications and emerging new technologies, including relativistic quantum cryptography and new forms of quantum communication and computation in space-time. This lecture will illustrate several ways in which physics-based cryptography and communication allow otherwise unachievable forms of security and flexibility, including guaranteeing a fair coin toss for mistrustful parties, making and later revealing secret predictions that carry a guaranteed time stamp, and secure forms of money that emulate quantum particles by following multiple paths and recombining to solve otherwise insoluble trading problems. We will also ask how confident we should be that we now fully understand how information is carried and processed in nature, and whether new physics discoveries might yet change our understanding and lead to further technological advances.Adrian Kent is Professor of Quantum Physics at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge, a Fellow of Wolfson College and Director of Studies in Mathematics at Darwin College. He is also a Distinguished Visiting Research Chair at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Fellow of the UK Institute of Physics, Founder Member of the Foundational Questions Institute and Charter Honorary Fellow of the John Bell Institute for the Foundations of Physics. Adrian’s research interests include the nature of physical reality, fundamental tests of quantum theory and its relationship to gravity, the properties of quantum information in space-time, and applications of fundamental physics to new forms of quantum and relativistic cryptography, communication and computation.
The Isolation of Asylum Seekers: immigration detention in Australia. Dr Amy Nethery Darwin College Lecture Series 2023-02-01 | The Isolation of Asylum Seekers: immigration detention in Australia. Dr Amy Nethery, Deakin University.Australia’s policy of mandatory, indefinite and unreviewable immigration detention was introduced in the early 1990s to respond to the arrival of asylum seekers by boat. The policy persists despite its failure to deliver policy goals, vast expense, international condemnation, and human damage. What explains this persistence? In this essay, I argue that immigration detention is best understood as the most recent iteration of administrative detention, a form of non-judicial incarceration with a long history. Governments in settler colonial Australia have found administrative detention indispensable for classifying and then incarcerating groups of people regarded as a threat to national security or identity. Significant historical examples include Aboriginal reserves, quarantine, and enemy alien internment; today’s offshore and onshore immigration detention centres share a similar purpose and character. Sites of unmitigated executive control, these different forms of administrative detention are control regimes with punitive effects. By demonstrating the embeddedness of this form of governance in Australia, the essay provides an endogenous explanation for the persistence of immigration detention, despite its harms.Amy Nethery is a political scientist and Senior Lecturer at Deakin University. She researches the development and impact of asylum policies in Australia and Asia. She has a particular interest in immigration detention: its history, evolution, diffusion, legal status, consistency with democratic principles, and human impact. Dr Nethery’s scholarship has been published in leading international journals. Her PhD thesis entitled Immigration Detention in Australia won the 2011 Isi Leibler Prize for the thesis that best advances knowledge on racism in Australia.
Persian Tales of Turtles and Pearls - Professor Christine van Ruymbeke, University of Cambridge Darwin College Lecture Series 2023-01-30 | On Escaping or Not Escaping Solitude. Persian Tales of Turtles and Pearls.Narratives speak volumes. As remarked by the philosopher Hannah Arendt, they are the only possible medium to express the complexity of philosophical or other conundrums. Often, the reader’s effort to decode them, that is: the exercise itself, contains the pedagogy. This presentation examines two great Medieval Persian narrative works: the Book of Kalila and Dimna ( کتاب کليله و دمنه Ketab-e Kalile-o Demne) by Nasrollah Monshi and the Seven Portraits ( هفت پيکرHaft Paykar) composed by Nezami Ganjavi. Should we escape or not escape solitude, that feeling experienced in a state of physical or mental isolation? Aren’t friendship or love preferable, even at very high costs? My two authors-philosophers propose deadly serious situations … and leave us to work them out. Listen to what happens to the bored old King of the Monkeys up in his fig tree! Be baffled by the riddles of the Princess who sets such very high standards to her suitors! I will introduce you to my way of interacting with these two sophisticated narratives written for the highest social strata of the Persianate world; they address people whose expectations from literature were manifestly different from ours in this 21st century. Nevertheless, my aim is to see you leave this lecture with a huge smile on your face and a new way of looking at friendship and love, basking in a new awareness of what Persian tales do to us and how irresistible they are.Christine van Ruymbeke (Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Ph.D) is Ali Reza and Muhamed Soudavar Professor of Persian Literature and Culture at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Cambridge. She is also Graduate Tutor and the College Praelector at Darwin College, Cambridge. (http://www.ames.cam.ac.uk/directory/vanRuymbeke). She is a long-standing member of the councils of learned societies, including the Iran Heritage Foundation (London, UK), the Royal Asiatic Society (London, UK) and the Ancient India and Iran Trust (Cambridge, UK). She was elected Secretary to the Board of the Societas Iranologica Europaea in 2019 (http://www.societasiranologicaeu.org/content/board.html). In 2009, her book Science and Poetry in Medieval Persia. The Botany of Nizami’s Khamsa, received the World-prize of the Book of the Year of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Christine is a literary critic working on classical (medieval and pre-modern) Persian literature, with a special focus on its medieval non-mystical narrative production. How can we engage today with these classical Persian texts? Can we regard them as meaningful and helpful despite the temporal and geographical distance with their authors? Christine approaches these medieval texts through aspect such as medieval authorial rewriting techniques and anxiety of influence; narrative structures and embedding techniques; intratextuality, poetics and cognitive effects, bringing together medieval and present-day literary and poetic theory. She explores how Persian poetry has irrigated other traditions well beyond the Persianate world, such as early-modern French and Victorian English literatures. This approach also encompasses the poetry’s impact on visual culture, especially the calligraphy and illustrations in medieval and pre-modern Persian manuscripts.
X-Rays and Food Safety - Dr Richard Parmee, University of Cambridge Darwin College Lecture Series 2022-04-25 | Dr Richard Parmee is an engineer and serial entrepreneur in the fields of image processing, automatic X-ray inspection and electronic gauging. He has worked extensively in the fields of precision measurement, statistical quality control and end-of-line inspection and has supplied equipment to many of the largest companies in the world. He is the chairman of the Cheyney group of companies, an international group engaged in developing and implementing X-ray applications for the food and pharmaceutical industries. Richard holds a PhD and MA from the University of Cambridge and is currently researching field emission using Carbon Nanotubes, for X-ray generation, at the Centre for Advanced Photonics and Electronics in Cambridge, and the application of high attenuation sensor materials with University of Surrey. He holds the William Pitt Fellowship at Pembroke College, Cambridge. He is a mentor and angel investor in start-up companies, and is a board member of the Cambridge Angels.
Food as Expression - Mr Alex Rushmer, Chef Darwin College Lecture Series 2022-04-25 | Alex Rushmer is a chef, food writer and restaurateur. He graduated from the University of Cambridge in 2005 with a degree in Social & Political Sciences and has spent the last 15 years working in food and hospitality. After reaching the final of BBC One’s Masterchef, he opened the award-winning Hole in the Wall which went on to be named one of the UK’s top 100 restaurants by The Sunday Times. He is now the co-owner of Vanderlyle in Cambridge, a critically-acclaimed, Michelin-rated restaurant that focusses on creating vegetable-led, locally-sourced tasting menus with a keen focus on sustainability and responsibility. His writing has been featured in, amongst others, The Guardian, Restaurant Magazine and Olive Magazine and he has been the regular monthly food columnist for Cambridge Edition Magazine since its first issue in 2011. As well as Cambridge, Alex has also spent time cooking across the world, most notably in Switzerland and Ethiopia. He continues to feature as a regular guest judge on Masterchef and in 2021 was invited back as a guest chef on the Celebrity version of the show, showcasing some of the vegetable focussed dishes that have featured on the menu at Vanderlyle. His lecture will focus on food as an expression of the human condition and how that relates to his work as a professional chef, how the restaurant profession needs to adapt and what led him to open a restaurant that cooks an entirely plant-led menu.
Archaeology and Discovering the Food of the Past - Professor Martin Jones, University of Cambridge Darwin College Lecture Series 2022-04-25 | Martin Jones was the first George Pitt-Rivers Professor of Archaeological Science at the University of Cambridge. He works on archaeobotany and archaeogenetics, in the context of the broader archaeology of food. His current research interests include the spread of farming of both major and minor crops across Asia, most recently in the context of the Food Globalization in Prehistory Project. His latest project explores the co-evolution and Eurasian biogeography of crops and bees.Jones books include Unlocking the Past: how archaeologists are rewriting history with ancient DNA (2016) and Feast: why humans share food (2007), winner of the Guild of Food Writers’ Food Book of the Year awardWe look back to the past for many reasons; sometimes out of sheer curiosity, other times to see which way we be going, and to understand from whence we came. The last of these reasons often informs cultural approach to food. Many modern diners are keen to get back beyond modern meals to something more traditional, wholesome and harmonious. In the west we may aspire to reach back beyond fast food, beyond industrial food, or even further back beyond the dawn of agriculture to return to a diet closer to our hunter-gatherer ancestors. The last of these has generated a ‘palaeo-diet’ industry with a current annual turnover exceeding ten billion dollars.But what is the basis of these imagined early diets? Traditionally concerned with more durable objects, archaeology now has a wide range of scientific techniques with which to analyse the fragile traces of foods we actually consumed in the past, and to illuminate how we consumed them. In this lecture, Martin Jones will review such evidence to explore what the food of our distance forebears was actually like, with particular reference to those questionable traits of modern dining that have driven our desire to reach closer to our beginnings, and return to a more ancient way of eating.
Food and Cultural History - Dr Melissa Calaresu, University of Cambridge Darwin College Lecture Series 2022-04-25 | Melissa Calaresu is an early modern cultural historian and the Neil McKendrick Lecturer in History at Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge. She has written on the cultural history of the Grand Tour, urban space, ice cream, and street-vending in early modern Italy, with a particular focus on Naples. Her books include New Approaches to Naples c.1500–c.1800: The Power of Place (2013) and Food Hawkers: Selling in the Streets from Antiquity to the Present Day (2016).She was the co-curator of two successful Fitzwilliam Museum exhibitions - Treasured Possessions from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment in 2015 and Feast & Fast: The Art of Food in Europe, 1500-1800 in 2019-20. Melissa has extensive experience of teaching and research expertise in a wide range of neighbouring disciplines from art history to archaeology and anthropology. She is currently writing a cultural history of the city of Naples through the household accounts of the Welsh artist Thomas Jones (1742-1803).She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and one of the editors of Global Food History.Cultural historian, and the co-curator of the 2019-20 Feast & Fast exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Melissa Calaresu, will explore the making and meaning of food through images and objects from early modern Europe, 1500-1800. While historians have been able to piece together the history of elite dining through a range of sources, it has been more difficult to access everyday eaters who have left us with far fewer ‘leftovers’ of what and how they ate. Today we associate eating particular foods with the creation of personal identities – for example, as meat-eaters, as non-dairy eaters, or as eaters of seasonal food. However, uncovering the nuances of what eating particular foods and in particular ways might have meant to people across the social spectrum in this period is more challenging. This lecture will show how cultural historians try to uncover these hidden histories of meaning and identity through both the abundance as well as the absence of early modern historical sources, reminding us that we are not always what we eat.
Food, Power & Society - Ms Sarah Mukherjee, CEO Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment Darwin College Lecture Series 2022-04-11 | Sarah Mukherjee is the CEO of IEMA . She was the BBC ’s Environment Correspondent for many years, presenting on national and international BBC radio and television news, working – and winning awards – across the world. Since leaving the Corporation, she has had leadership roles in utilities and agriculture. She was a panel member for the National Parks Review and sits on the National Food Strategy Advisory Panel. She is a Non-Executive Director on the Board of the Environment Agency and is a governor of Harper Adams University. Sarah was awarded an MBE for her services to agriculture and farmer well-being in 2021.Sarah has been a Campaign for Real Ale beer judge and a rugby reporter in the past – two activities she still enjoys – and is a runner and yoga addict.
Food and Climate Change - Professor Sarah Bridle, University of York Darwin College Lecture Series 2022-04-07 | Professor Sarah Bridle is a transdisciplinary researcher driven by the need to tackle climate change, focusing on a quantitative approach to helping transform food systems to steward change to new kinds of futures. Sarah's current research focuses on synthesising, exploring and effectively communicating environmental and nutrition impacts of different dietary options, with the aim of driving changes in food production methods and portfolios to be healthy for people and planet.
The Political Economy of Conservation and Food Security - Prof Bhaskar Vira, University of Cambridge Darwin College Lecture Series 2022-03-14 | Updated 14/3/2022 to fix interruption in live stream which has had 718 views and 20 likes to date.Bhaskar Vira is Professor of Political Economy, and Head of Department, at the Department of Geography, University of Cambridge. He is a Fellow of Fitzwilliam College, and an Honorary Fellow of St John’s College. He was Founding Director of the University of Cambridge Conservation Research Institute, and is a Trustee of the World Conservation Monitoring Centre. In 2018, he was honoured with the Royal Geographical Society’s Busk Medal, in recognition of his contributions to interdisciplinary research on environment and development. In 2021, he was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. Bhaskar’s research examines the ways in which societies engage with land and nature, and the political and economic context within which communities, businesses and policy makers make choices and negotiate trade-offs over alternative resource access and use strategies. He works on the dynamics of societal transformations in contemporary South Asia, especially present and potential futures of agrarian and peri-urban lives and livelihoods. He has contributed extensively to global science policy processes and dialogues in the context of food and agriculture, and Chaired the IUFRO -led Global Forest Expert Panel on Forests and Food.How do we feed the world and ensure equitable access to nutrition without undermining the planet’s life support systems? How do we reverse the decline of nature and biodiversity while meeting the expected needs of over 9 billion people by the end of this century? These are the challenging questions that lie at the heart of this lecture. Even before the Covid pandemic, the world was moving away from the commitment to end global hunger and malnutrition by 2030; the pandemic has accelerated these trends. At the same time, there is growing evidence of an unprecedented decline in nature since the 1970s, coupled with the projected impacts of climate change, likely to be the most significant driver of biodiversity loss in the next couple of decades. These interconnected global challenges take place in a context of increased pressure on existing land, and the competing demands of diverse groups on a finite resource base. Addressing these needs involves explicitly acknowledging trade-offs, and finding ways to enhance synergies between different objectives. Options that maximise productivity in increasingly specialised landscapes, separating agriculture from conservation, need to be evaluated in comparison with more integrated landscape mosaics, which attempt to simultaneously deliver food production, conservation outcomes and livelihood benefits. These alternatives involve different forms of knowledge, diverse institutional structures, and contrasting structures for governance and decision making. This lecture will explore some of the issues that frame difficult choices over conservation and food security in the twenty first century, and describe recent thinking on strategies to meet these important global objectives.
Should Cats and Dogs go Vegan? - Professor Andrew Knight, University of Winchester Darwin College Lecture Series 2022-02-02 | Updated 2/2/2022 to fix interruption in live stream which has had 1422 views and 46 likes to date.Andrew Knight is Professor of Animal Welfare and Ethics, and Founding Director of the University of Winchester Centre for Animal Welfare, and Adjunct Professor in the School of Environment and Science at Griffith University, Queensland. An experienced cat and dog veterinarian, he's also a European, American, New Zealand and RCVS -recognised Veterinary Specialist in animal welfare and related fields. He has around 150 academic and 80 popular publications, and an extensive series of YouTube videos and several websites (including sustainablepetfood.info), on plant-based companion animal diets, climate change and the livestock sector, invasive animal research, educational animal use, humane clinical and surgical skills training, and other animal welfare issues. He regularly works with animal welfare charities to advocate for animals, and is frequently interviewed by the media. He has received over 20 awards and research grants for this work.The environmental impacts of pet food (e.g., land use, water use, fossil fuel consumption, greenhouse gas production, pesticide and fertilizer use, and impacts on biodiversity loss), are globally significant. The proportion of ‘food’ animals used in pet food is also significant. All of these impacts are set to rise, due to increasing pet ownership worldwide, and the changing social status of companion animals. However, alternative pet foods based on novel protein sources such as plants and seaweed, insects, yeast, fungi and laboratory grown meat products, are rapidly developing. Vegan pet foods are most developed. These use plant, mineral and synthetic sources to ensure all necessary nutrients are included. In 2020 I surveyed 4,060 dog or cat guardians to investigate determinants of pet food purchasing decisions, as well as health, behavioural and other outcomes on different diets. I also surveyed 29 manufacturers to determine whether nutritional soundness and quality control of plant-based pet foods differed from those of meat-based diets. Results from these and other studies indicate that the healthiest and least hazardous pet foods may be nutritionally sound vegan diets. Detailed analysis of feeding behaviour indicates dogs and cats generally find such diets as palatable as conventional diets. And manufacturers of plant-based pet foods generally appear to adhere to equivalent or better quality control standards. The potential environmental and animal welfare benefits of plant-based and alternative pet foods are significant. Their use is already rapidly increasing, and significant expansion of this sector is expected in the future.
Colour and Vision by Anya Hurlbert Darwin College Lecture Series 2021-04-25 | When Turner daubed a red buoy in his seascape Helvoetsluys, what did he mean? In nature, red may repel or attract, signalling toxicity or ripeness, anger, ruddy health or sexual readiness. For Turner, the red created contrast, and in making that mark, he meant to generate salience and arouse interest, to dominate his rivals and draw in his admirers. Colour has long excited emotions and intellectual debate, not only for visual art, but also in philosophy, psychology, and physiology. In contemporary vision science studies, colour helps people find objects faster, discern material properties, learn, conceptualise and memorise. Yet colour is made in the mind, not out there in the world. It is a subjective phenomenon, a personal possession, one that varies between individual eyes, and one that people cling to with ardour when challenged: witness the public divide over the “blue/black”, “white/gold” dress. So the question is not only what does colour mean, in life and in art, but how does it mean anything? How does the human brain create colour, stabilise it, and make its meaning? And why does it evoke emotion and aesthetic appreciation? Anya Hurlbert is Professor of Visual Neuroscience, Director of the Centre for Translational Systems Neuroscience and Dean of Advancement at Newcastle University, where she co-founded and directed the Institute of Neuroscience. She trained as a physicist, physiologist, neuroscientist and physician, at Princeton, Harvard, MIT and Cambridge. Professor Hurlbert’s research focuses on human vision; she lectures widely on colour perception and art, and has devised and co-curated several science-based art exhibitions, including an interactive installation in the 2014 exhibition Making Colour at the National Gallery, where she was Scientist Trustee.
Blood Sculptures, by Marc Quinn Darwin College Lecture Series 2021-03-12 | Marc will be discussing some of his work, including ‘Self’ and ‘Our Blood’, a collaborative sculpture made by Marc Quinn and more than 10,000 people - half of whom are refugees, and the other half non-refugees. It is a sculpture of equality and solidarity. Our Blood will be a monument to our common humanity, emphasizing how there is more that unites us than divides us.http://marcquinn.comourblood.org/homeImages Copyright Marc Quinn Studio.
Cold Blood, by Stuart Egginton Darwin College Lecture Series 2021-03-05 | The presence of cold blood, whether through acute seasonal chill or chronic environmental exposure, imposes an additional burden on the hearts’ ability to pump viscous blood around the body, potentially limiting blood flow to working muscle. Of particular interest is how the ‘business end’ of the cardiovascular system, the microcirculation, adapts under these conditions. Here, intimate contact between blood and tissue is achieved by a vast network of tiny vessels (capillaries) that facilitate supply of oxygen and other fuels, as well as removal of waste products. This lecture will explore some strategies that warm-blooded animals use to cope during winter, and contrast this with adaptations seen in cold-blooded animals that thrive in the constantly frigid waters around Antarctica.Stuart Egginton is a cardiovascular and muscle physiologist at the University of Leeds, where he is Professor of Exercise Science. His work explores biological limits to activity, and how flexibility is essential to cope with physiological challenges. He is a Fellow of The Physiological Society, currently a Monitoring Editor for the Journal of Experimental Biology, and has served as President of the British Microcirculation Society.
Blood villains and heroes by Rose George Darwin College Lecture Series 2021-02-26 | Rose George is an author and journalist living in the UK. She has written four books: her last was Nine Pints: A journey through the money, medicine and mysteries of blood. Her third book, Ninety Percent of Everything, won the Maritime Foundation Mountbatten Literary Prize in 2013. She writes journalism – features, longreads, opinion pieces and book reviews – for The Guardian, New Statesman, Spectator, New York Times and many other publications.Rose has a Congratulatory First Class honours from Somerville College, University of Oxford, and an MA in politics from the University of Pennsylvania. She received both a Thouron Award and a Fulbright scholarship.Rose’s website is www.rosegeorge.com
Bloodlines of the British by Walter Bodmer Darwin College Lecture Series 2021-02-19 | The white cells of the blood are a source of DNA , whose analysis reveals our genetic makeup. Blood samples from different human population groups can therefore give us valuable information about genetic variation within and between different human populations, and so about the population interrelationships. A detailed analysis of the DNA variation observed in a carefully sourced collection of blood samples from all over the UK has enabled the creation of a “genetic map” of the UK that helps to tell us where the British people came from. We can even detect differences within the UK between people from Devon and Cornwall. By extending the study to Irish populations we can build up a picture of the origins of the populations of the UK and Ireland as they have developed since the end of the last ice age. Recent studies of DNA from ancient burial ground skeletons have, however, suggested intriguing differences from the modern populations. These may be explained by the burial sources of these ancient DNAs not being typical of the overall population that existed in Great Britain and Ireland at that time.Walter Bodmer is a human geneticist and cancer researcher. Formerly professor of genetics at Stanford and Oxford Universities and then Director of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (now CRUK), he now leads the Cancer and Immunogenetics Laboratory at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine in Oxford University, where he is an Emeritus Professor. His major current research interests are in the fundamental genetics and biology of colorectal cancer and their potential clinical applications, and in the characterization, analysis, and population distribution of genetic diversity in human populations.
Dracula, Vampires and the New Woman by Carol Senf Darwin College Lecture Series 2021-02-12 | Dracula, Blood, and the New Woman: Stoker’s Reflections on the ZeitgeistWhile Stoker’s Dracula has never been out of print since its publication in 1897, there’s a tendency either to inflate it as a study in the struggle between Good and Evil or to dismiss it as popular fiction. This talk addresses the degree to which Dracula wrestles with the problems of its day, including the rise of the New Woman, which challenged traditional notions of gender relationships, and the importance of blood as a marker of identity. The New Woman, which Stoker will continue to address throughout his career, finally points to the future while blood demonstrates Stoker’s connection to a very traditional past.Carol Senf, Professor at Georgia Tech, specializes in Gothic Studies. She has written on Stoker, Dracula, Stephen King, LeFanu, Mary Shelley, the Brontes, Dickens, Eliot, Hardy, and Sarah Grand. Her most recent book (co-authored with Sherry Brown and Ellen Stockstill) is A Research Guide to Gothic Literature in English (2018).
Blood in Motion: The Physics of Blood Flow by Tim Pedley Darwin College Lecture Series 2021-02-05 | This lecture will start with a brief survey of ancient ideas about blood flow, culminating in the West with William Harvey’s convincing demonstration – before the invention of the microscope – that the blood circulates in the body. The mechanics of that circulation will be described, from the high-pressure arteries to the low-pressure veins. Highlights will be: the propagation of the pressure pulse in arteries, the disturbance to smooth flow caused by the complex geometry of arteries (and its probable influence on arterial disease), the fact that blood cells have to be deformed and travel in single file in the smallest capillaries, and the interesting effects of gravity on the venous return to the heart in upright animals, notably those with long necks and legs – giraffes and dinosaurs.Tim Pedley is an applied mathematician whose research has been devoted to Biological Fluid Dynamics, both internal (e.g. blood flow) and external (e.g. micro-organism swimming), for over 50 years . He is Emeritus G I Taylor Professor of Fluid Mechanics at Cambridge, and has served as Chairman of the World Council for Biomechanics, President of the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics and President of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications.
Transitional Bleeding in Early Modern England by Sara Read Darwin College Lecture Series 2021-01-29 | Sara Read is a literary historian at Loughborough University. Her expertise is in the cultural and literary representations of the reproductive female body in early modern England. She co-edits the history of medicine blog earlymodernmedicine.com. She is the author of several books, most recently, The Gossips’ Choice, her debut novel which is founded in her research specialisms.The physiology of menstruation might be timeless, but the experience of female reproductive bleeding (from menarche, to menopause) is mediated through different cultural norms at any given time. So, for example, in early modern England, many considered that the onset of menstruation marked a girl’s transition to young womanhood, and postpartum bleeding signified a change to motherhood. Medical debates covering expectations about the regularity of the cycle, the reasons for absent or excessive bleeding, or indeed the theories about why women could expect to bleed at all were heated in early modern England. This lecture will outline the most common medical theories, describe the many words and circumlocutions early moderns used to describe menstruation, and discuss prevailing cultural expectations about this event.
Battle Blood by Claire Roddie Darwin College Lecture Series 2021-01-22 | Dr Roddie will give an introduction to the T-cell therapy programme, an experimental therapy using the immune system to target the cancer cells of patients.Claire is a Consultant Haematologist and Honorary Senior Lecturer in Haematology at UCL with a particular interest in CAR T -cells for cancer. She completed a PhD in Cellular Immunotherapy at UCL in the laboratory of Professor Karl Peggs and subsequently undertook a Clinician Scientist post in Dr Martin Pule’s Laboratory to work on the UCL CAR T -cell program. Claire’s current role involves pre-clinical development of novel CAR projects, GMP CAR T -cell manufacture and Clinical Trial design for academic CAR T -cell studies at UCL . She is also responsible for the development of a clinical service at UCLH to support patients recruited to CAR T -cell studies and those receiving CAR T on the NHS.
Risk and (human-induced) climate change, by Bob Watson Darwin College Lecture Series 2020-04-02 | Professor Bob Watson, University of East AngliaAbstractThe question is not whether the Earth’s climate will change in response to human activities, but when, where and by how much. Human activities are changing the Earth’s climate and further human-induced climate change is inevitable. Indeed the climate of the next few decades will be governed by past emissions. The most adverse consequences of human-induced climate change will be in developing countries and poor people within them. Climate change threatens to bring more suffering to the one billion people who already go to bed hungry every night and the approximately 2 billion people exposed to insect-borne diseases and water scarcity. Sea level rise threatens to displace tens of millions of people in deltaic areas and low-lying small island states. Climate change will undermine the ability of many poor people to escape poverty and the long-term sustainable economic development of some countries. Hence, climate change is not only an environmental issue, but a development and security issue. The challenge is to limit the magnitude and rate of human-induced climate change, and simultaneously reduce the vulnerability of socio-economic sectors, ecological systems and human health to current and projected climate variability by integrating climate concerns into local and national economic planning. Technological options for reducing greenhouse gas emissions cost-effectively over the next few decades already exist. However, the required transition to a very low carbon economy (a reduction in global emissions by at least 50% by 2050) will require a technological evolution in the production and use of energy, energy sector reform, appropriate pricing policies and behavior change, coupled with a more sustainable agricultural sector and reduced deforestation. This transition to a low-carbon economy must be achieved while improving access to affordable energy in developing countries, which is critical for economic growth and poverty alleviation, and while ensuring adequate affordable and nutritious food. The challenge is to negotiate a long-term (up to 2050) global regulatory framework that is equitable with common but differentiated responsibilities and has intermediate targets that can reduce greenhouse emissions to a level that limits the increase in global mean surface temperature to 2oC above pre-industrial levels. While this goal has been widely accepted, the current rate of growth in emissions globally, coupled with a failure in Copenhagen to agree to stringent targets to reduce emissions, makes this goal extremely difficult, hence the world needs to be prepared to adapt to a 4°C warmer world.Professor Watson’s career has evolved from research scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory: California Institute of Technology, to a US Federal Government program manager/director at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), to a scientific/policy advisor in the US Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), White House, to a scientific advisor, manager and chief scientist at the World Bank, to a Chair of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia, the Director for Strategic Direction for the Tyndall centre, and Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. In parallel to his formal positions he has chaired, co-chaired or directed international scientific, technical and economic assessments of stratospheric ozone depletion, biodiversity/ecosystems (the GBA and MA), climate change (IPCC) and agricultural S&T (IAASTD). Professor Watson’s areas of expertise include managing and coordinating national and international environmental programs, research programs and assessments; establishing science and environmental policies – specifically advising governments and civil society on the policy implications of scientific information and policy options for action; and communicating scientific, technical and economic information to policymakers. During the last twenty years he has received numerous national and international awards recognizing his contributions to science and the science-policy interface, including in 2003 – Honorary “Companion of the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George” from the United Kingdom.This talk is part of the Darwin College Lecture Series series.
Risk and government: the architectonics of blame-avoidance, by Christopher Hood Darwin College Lecture Series 2020-04-02 | Professor Christopher Hood, University of OxfordAbstractMy lecture will focus on the risk that matters most in politics and bureaucracy – namely the risk of blame. I will aim to show how concern with that central risk shapes the way public officeholders spend their time, how government organization is structured and how the standard operating routines of public service organizations develop. While ‘blame games’ and blame-avoidance in government generally get a bad press, the lecture will argue that not all blame-avoidance should be seen as negative in its effects, that we can make some distinctions between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ forms of blame-avoidance and that it is only ‘the wrong sort of blame-avoidance’ that we should be trying to discourage.Christopher Hood (www.christopherhood.net), who specializes in the study of executive government, regulation and public-sector reform, is Gladstone Professor of Government, Fellow of All Souls College Oxford, and Director of the ESRC ’s ‘Public Services’ Research Programme. He has taught government and politics on three continents and has written or edited more than twenty books, including The Limits of Administration (1976), The Tools of Government (1983) (updated as The Tools of Government in the Digital Age (2007) with Helen Margetts), The Art of the State (1998) and The Government of Risk (2001), with Henry Rothstein and Robert Baldwin. He is currently chairing the Nuffield Council on Bioethics Working Party on Medical Profiling and Online Medicine.
Risk and humanities, by Mary Beard Darwin College Lecture Series 2020-04-02 | Professor Mary Beard, University of CambridgeAbstractWas there risk before modernity? This lecture explores how we might tell the ancient history of risk—from oracles (an ancient form of risk assessment) through gambling and agricultural strategies to the parade of Luck and Chance in sculptural form. In Greece and Rome (and other pre modern societies) is it misleading to think in terms of risk? Is it more helpful to ask simply, “What did people worry about?”—a question to which we find some surprising answers. At the same time, there is another agenda underlying this lecture: an exploration of the risks facing research and teaching in the Humanities. What do academics need to be worried about today and for the future?The lecture will include the first consultation of the Oracles of Astrampsychus for many centuries.Mary Beard is one of Britain’s best-known Classicists – Fellow of Newnham College and a distinguished Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge where she has taught for the last 25 years. She has written numerous books on the Ancient World, including the 2008 Wolfson Prize-winner, ‘Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town’ which portrays a vivid account of life in Pompeii in all its aspects from food to sex to politics. Previous books include ‘The Roman Triumph’, ‘Classical Art from Greece to Rome’ and books on the Parthenon and the Colosseum as part of a series on wonders of the world. Her interests range from the social and cultural life of Ancient Greece and Rome to the Victorian understanding of antiquity.In addition she is Classics editor of the Times Literary Supplement and writes an engaging, often provocative, blog, A Don’s Life, a selection of which has recently been published in book form, ‘It’s a Don’s Life’.In 2008 Mary was visiting Sather Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where she gave a series of lectures on Roman laughter, one of her current research interests.This talk is part of the Darwin College Lecture Series series.
Risk and natural catastrophes, by Mark Bailey Darwin College Lecture Series 2020-04-02 | Professor Mark Bailey, Armagh ObservatoryAbstractNatural catastrophes – rare, high-consequence events – present us with a unique conjunction of problems so far as risk is concerned. First, they can have an extremely long recurrence interval, so long that the greatest may not have occurred within living human memory. Secondly, the effects of events with which we are all too familiar, for example earthquakes, floods, volcanoes and storms, are easily trumped by the impacts of objects – comets and asteroids – that reach Earth from outer space; and thirdly, the largest of these events have a global reach, in principle threatening not just our civilisation but perhaps life on Earth itself. However, recognising that such events occur very rarely, should we ‘make hay while the sun shines’ and ignore, ostrich-like, the significant actuarial risk; or should we seek to understand the phenomena and develop strategies to mitigate the threat and perhaps technologies to avert it? Our response often depends less on a purely rational assessment than on personal circumstances and how we have been brought up, but in any case, the nature of the risks, which are poorly understood, means that we must be prepared to handle the law of unintended consequences (i.e. could our actions make things worse?). We must also be prepared to explore what happens if, perhaps inevitably, our current scientific understanding turns out to be less certain than many experts believe.This talk is part of the Darwin College Lecture Series series.Astrophysicist and Director of Armagh Observatory. He obtained his PhD at the University of Edinburgh in 1978 with a thesis on the evolution of active galactic nuclei. In recent years his research has focused on areas closer to home: the dynamical evolution of comets, asteroids and meteoroid streams; solar system – terrestrial interrelationships; and aspects of the comet and asteroid impact hazard. The asteroid (4050), discovered in 1976 by C.-I. Lagerkvist, was named Mebailey in March 1990 for his work on the dynamics and origin of comets. He is the co-author of `The Origin of Comets’ (Pergamon, 1990).
Risk and the Brain: The neural basis of decision making under uncertainty, by John ODoherty Darwin College Lecture Series 2020-04-02 | Professor John O'Doherty, Trinity College DublinA deeper understanding of “how” the brain makes decisions will not only inspire new theories of decision making, it will also contribute to the development of genuine “artificial intelligence”, and it will enable us to understand why some humans are better than others at making decisions, why humans with certain psychiatric and neurological disorders are less capable of doing so, and why under some circumstances humans systematically fail to make “rational” decisions. In this talk I will provide an introduction to our current understanding of how the human brain is able to make decisions under conditions of uncertainty. Most decisions made in everyday life are taken for the purposes of increasing our well-being, whether it is deciding what item to choose off a restaurant menu, or deliberating over what career path to follow. I will review converging evidence from contemporary neuroscience research to support the notion that the brain encodes basic computational signals necessary for taking such decisions in a near optimal manner. Prominent amongst these is the value or “utility” of each decision option, which indicates how advantageous a particular option is likely to be for our future well-being. Another relevant signal present in the brain is the riskiness attached to a particular decision option, which can influence the decision making mechanism according to one’s own individual preferences (whether one is risk-seeking or risk-averse). I will show where and how such signals are encoded in the brain, review how such signals come to learned from experience, and highlight research currently underway aiming to understand how such signals are compared and integrated in order to ultimately generate choices.Prof. O’Doherty is currently the Thomas Mitchell Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin. His research is concerned with elucidating how the human brain is capable of making decisions under conditions of uncertainty. To achieve this he applies psychological, computational and economic theories to functional brain imaging data, as well as assessing the patterns of impairment in human patients with certain kinds of brain damage or neurological disease. Prof. O’Doherty obtained his undergraduate degree in Mathematics and Psychology at TCD (1996), and then completed a D.Phil in Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford (2001). He was a Research Fellow at the Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience at University College London (2000-2004). Following that he was Assistant and then Associate Professor of Psychology at the California Institute of Technology (2004-2008).This talk is part of the Darwin College Lecture Series series.
Risk, security and terrorism, by Lucia Zedner Darwin College Lecture Series 2020-04-02 | Professor Lucia Zedner, University of OxfordSocial scientists tell us we now live that we live in a ‘world risk society’. But what does this really mean and what, if anything, do environmental risks, health risks, and natural disasters have in common with those posed by terrorism? When we move from the natural world to human threats are we still dealing with hard science or are we in the realm of speculation? Are the presumptions behind risk based counter-terrorism policies and the profiling of terrorist suspects safe? Terrorist acts are exceptionally rare but they pose the risk of catastrophic harm. No surprise then that we consent to intrusive measures that erode civil liberties in the name of avoiding such harms. The conceit of ‘balancing’ liberty and security assumes that by degrading liberty we can reduce risk. In place of balancing might we do better to ask what really is at risk in the war on terror? We think of the risks posed by terrorism primarily in terms of subjective insecurity and threat to life and property. But countering terrorism carries its own risks – risks to social, political, and economic life and risks to rights (rights to freedom of speech, to privacy, and to freedom of the person). Add to this the risk of marginalising and alienating those we target and we are in danger of allowing responses to terrorism to generate a whole slew of new risks. So my question is what risks are at stake and how we might live with risk without living in terror.This talk is part of the Darwin College Lecture Series series.Lucia Zedner is a Law Fellow at Corpus Christi College, Professor of Criminal Justice in the Faculty of Law and a member of the Centre for Criminology at the University of Oxford. She wrote her doctorate and held a Prize Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford before taking up a Law Lectureship at the London School of Economics when she helped found and became Assistant Director of the Mannheim Centre for Criminology and Criminal Justice. She returned to Oxford in 1994 becoming a Reader in 1999 and Professor in 2005. She held a British Academy Research Readership 2003-5 and has held visiting fellowships at universities in Germany, Israel, America, and Australia. Since 2007 she has also held the position of Conjoint Professor in the Law Faculty at the University of New South Wales, Sydney where she is a regular visitor. Lucia Zedner’s research interests span criminal justice, criminal law, and legal theory. From her first book on the history of imprisonment, she has gone on to write several books and many articles on criminal justice and penal policy, most recently focussing on aspects of risk, security and terrorism. Recent books include Criminal Justice (2004), Crime and Security (co-edited with Ben Goold, 2006) and Security (2009). With Oxford colleague, Professor Andrew Ashworth, she has been awarded a major AHRC grant to work on ‘Preventive Justice’ a project that will explore the politics and proliferating policies of risk and prevention; map changing patterns of criminalization and pre-emptive state action; consider their implications for civil liberties; and ask how far the state may go to prevent harm. Its ultimate aim is to develop principles and values to guide and limit states in their use of coercive preventive powers.
Risk: Trying to quantify our uncertainty, by David Spiegelhalter Darwin College Lecture Series 2020-04-02 | Professor David Spiegelhalter, University of CambridgeThere has been a traditional division between ‘risk’, which can be quantified using probability distributions, and ‘uncertainty’, which is the surrounding mess of doubt, disagreement and ignorance. In well-understood situations we may be happy to quote reasonable odds for future events, and I shall look at ways in which these risks can be communicated visually. When the problem is more complex, analysts may use a mixture of judgement and historical data to construct a mathematical model that can assess future risks, but deeper uncertainties may be glossed over. I will use examples from swine flu to climate change to illustrate different approaches to dealing with uncertainty, from ignoring it to trying to fully quantify it, and conclude that we should all try to be aware and open about the magnitude and potential consequences of our ignorance.David Spiegelhalter is Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk at the University of Cambridge, which he combines with being a Senior Scientist in the MRC Biostatistics Unit. His background is in medical statistics, particularly the use of Bayesian methods in clinical trials, health technology assessment and drug safety. He led the statistical team in the Bristol Royal Infirmary Inquiry and also gave evidence to the Shipman Inquiry. He has been a consultant to a number of public and private organizations including pharmaceutical companies.In his new post he leads a small team which is attempting to improve the way in which the quantitative aspects of risk and uncertainty are discussed in society.He was elected FRS in 2005 and awarded an OBE in 2006 for services to medical statisticsThis talk is part of the Darwin College Lecture Series series.
Life in ruins by Robert Macfarlane Darwin College Lecture Series 2020-03-31 | Dr Robert Macfarlane, University of CambridgeAbstractAfter ‘the destruction of Nineveh’, warns the Book of Zephaniah, ‘the desert owl and the screech owl shall lodge on its capitals, the raven croak on its thresholds’. For millennia, writers and artists have been fascinated by ruins, and in particular by the return of nature following human abandonment. This lecture explores the cultural history of ‘ruinism’, and the counterfactual visions in modern art and literature of how nature might thrive in a world without us – of life in ruins. Moving from Thomas Babington Macaulay’s figure of the ‘New Zealander’, who sits surveying an enjungled London, through to Cormac McCarthy’s recent post-apocalypse novel The Road, and travelling by way of Japanese anime films, the Cold War, copper sulphate crystals, Max Ernst, concrete, and the writing of the naturalist-poet Edward Thomas (1878–1917), I want to investigate a persistent paradox of apocalyptic art, which is that in order to abolish the world imaginatively it is necessary simultaneously to summon it into being. The lecture will start with a thought-experiment that involves the entire audience.BiographyRobert Macfarlane is a Fellow of Emmanuel College and Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of English. He is the author of Mountains of the Mind: A History of a Fascination (Granta: 2003), The Wild Places (Granta: 2007), Original Copy: Plagiarism and Originality in Nineteenth-Century Literature (OUP: 2007), and The Old Ways (forthcoming from Penguin, June 2012). His books have won numerous national and international awards, and two of them have been filmed by the BBC . He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and the recipient of a Philip Leverhulme Prize.This talk is part of the Darwin College Lecture Series series.Darwin college, Darwin Lectures,Darwin College Lecture Series,University of Cambridge, Life in ruins ruins, destruction of Nineveh,Book of Zephaniah,cold war,Edward Thomas,apocalyptic art,Cormac McCarthy,Dr Robert Macfarlane
