Gresham College Lectures

How do we tell stories of past voices through a cello, the voice of its player? This lecture explores what it means to be separated from your voice, and to find it again. Dr Kate Kennedy traces a journey she took across Europe with her cello, to uncover the stories of instruments and their players. The result was a host of eccentric, sometimes tragic, always extraordinary accounts of silencing and survival, from the Auschwitz orchestra to a shipwreck, and even a cello full of bees. This...

This lecture was recorded by Jane Shaw on Monday, 07 Sep 2026. Professor Jane Shaw is Provost of Gresham College and Professor of the History of Religion at the University of Oxford. Professor Shaw was formerly Principal of Harris Manchester College and Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Oxford. She has also served as Dean for Religious Life and Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford; as Dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco; and, prior to her time in California, she taught his...

This is the Annual Sir Thomas Gresham Lecture. What does modern physics have to say about the meaning of time? Is it a fundamental feature of reality or merely an emergent property from something deeper? Does time flow, and is the present moment special when Einstein tells us that all times coexist. Where does the arrow of time come from if all the fundamental laws of physics are symmetric in time? This lecture will examine many of these issues and give our best guess answers as we understand...

This lecture was recorded by Professor Milton Mermikides on the 19th of June 2026 Milton Mermikides is a composer, guitarist, technologist, academic and educator in a wide range of musical styles and has collaborated with artists and scientists as diverse as Evelyn Glennie, Tim Minchin, Pat Martino, Peter Zinovieff, John Williams and Brian Eno. Son of a CERN nuclear physicist, he was raised with an enthusiasm for both the arts and sciences, an eclecticism which has been maintained throughout...

This lecture was recorded by Ronald Hutton on the 17th of June 2026 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London Professor Hutton is Professor of History at the University of Bristol. He took degrees at Cambridge and then Oxford Universities, and was a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. He is now a Fellow of the British Academy, the Royal Historical Society, the Society of Antiquaries and the Learned Society of Wales, and has won awards for teaching and research.He has lectured all over the world, authored...