Gresham College Lectures

A stark advert picturing a gravestone chiselled with ‘AIDS: DON’T DIE OF IGNORANCE’ captured the horror of this disease in the 1980s. Now, for HIV-infected people able to access anti-retroviral therapies, life expectancy is normal.

How were these amazing medicines developed and how have they transformed lives? Why is it so difficult to eradicate HIV or to develop a vaccine to prevent infection? What does the future hold in the quest to stop the global scourge of AIDS?

This lecture was recorded by Matt Higgins  on the 16th of September 2026

Matt studied natural sciences at Christ’s College in the University of Cambridge and a Ph.D. in structural biology at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology. He started his research group with a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in 2005 and moved to the University of Oxford in 2010. He is currently the E. P. Abraham Professor of Structural Biology and a Professorial Fellow at Merton College, Oxford. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and a member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation.

The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/hiv-pandemic

Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham College's mission, please consider making a donation: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/donate-today

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This lecture was recorded by Alain Goriely on the 15th of September 2026

Alain Goriely is a mathematician with broad interests in mathematical methods, mechanics, sciences, and engineering. He is well known for his contributions to dynamical systems, mathematical biology, as well as fundamental and applied mechanics. He is particularly well known for the development of a mathematical theory of biological growth, culminating with his seminal monograph The Mathematics on Mechanics of Biological Growth (2017).

He received his PhD from the University of Brussels in 1994 where he became a lecturer. In 1996, he joined the University of Arizona where he established a research group within the renowned Program of Applied Mathematics. In 2010, he joined the University of Oxford as the inaugural Statutory Professor of Mathematical Modelling and fellow of St. Catherine’s College. He is currently the Director of the Oxford Centre for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

In addition, Alain has enjoyed scientific outreach based on problems connected to his research, including tendril perversion in plants, twining plants, umbilical cord knotting, whip cracking, the shape of seashells, brain modelling, and he is the author of a Very Short Introduction to Applied Mathematics (2017). His work has been recognized by a Sloan Fellowship, a Royal Society Wolfson Research Award, the Cozzarelli Prize from the National Academy of Sciences and the Engineering Medal from the Society of Engineering Sciences. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2022.

The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/cracking-whip

Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham College's mission, please consider making a donation: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/donate-today
 
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On a remote mountain top in Chile, scanning the sky with the largest astronomical camera ever built, the Vera Rubin Observatory is conducting the deepest and most sensitive survey of the sky yet. This lecture covers whatever it’s found in the previous week, from supernovae to asteroids, giving us a glimpse of science in action.

This lecture was recorded by Chris Lintott on the 14th of September 2026

Professor Chris Lintott is a Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford, and a Research Fellow at New College.

Having been educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge and University College London, his research now ranges from understanding how galaxies form and evolve, to using machine learning to find the most unusual things in the Universe, to predicting the properties of visiting interstellar asteroids. He was the founder of the Zooniverse citizen science platform, which provides opportunities for more than two million online volunteers to contribute to scientific research, and which was the topic of his first book, 'The Crowd and the Cosmos’. His latest book is ‘Our Accidental Universe’. 

Professor Lintott is best known for presenting the BBC's long-running Sky at Night program, and as an accomplished lecturer. Away from work, he cooks, suffers through being a fan of Torquay United and Somerset cricket, and spends time with a rescued lurcher, Mr Max. He can often be found at the helm of Oxford’s science comedy night, ‘Huh, That’s Funny’.

The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/sky-night

Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham College's mission, please consider making a donation: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/donate-today
 
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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 lecture was recorded by Kate Kennedy on the 9th of September 2026

Dr Kate Kennedy is a biographer, cellist, and broadcaster. She is one of the foremost critics of twentieth-century music, and lectures in Music and English at Oxford University, and is a regular presence on BBC Radio 3. 
Kate is the Director of the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing and a Supernumerary Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford, having previously held Research Fellowships in English and Music at the University of Cambridge. She is also Director of the Centre for the Study of Women Composers, Director of the Museum of Music History, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. 
Her most recent book Cello: A Journey Through Silence to Sound was published in August  2024 with Head of Zeus / Bloomsbury. It is a group biography that weaves together four  narratives of cellists who suffered various forms of persecution, injury, and misfortune.  She is also the author of the Dweller in Shadows – A Life of Ivor Gurney (Princeton  University Press), and editor of Literary Britten, Lives of Houses (co-edited with Dame  Hermione Lee), and The Silent Morning – Culture and the Armistice 1918. Both Cello and Dweller in Shadows were shortlisted for the Royal Philharmonic Society prize. 

The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/cello-voice

Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham College's mission, please consider making a donation: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/donate-today
 
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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 history and theology at the University of Oxford for 16 years.

Her books include Miracles in Enlightenment England (Yale 2006); Octavia, Daughter of God: The Story of a Female Messiah and her Followers (Jonathan Cape and Yale 2011); and the co-authored Gen Z, Explained: The Art of Living in a Digital Age (Chicago 2021).

She is currently writing Seeking Infinity: Mystics in the Modern World (forthcoming with Penguin Allen Lane) and has received Fellowships to support the completion of that book from the Leverhulme Trust and the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study.  

Professor Shaw was educated at Oxford, Harvard, and U. C. Berkeley. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/why-empathy

Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham's mission, please consider making a donation: https://gresham.ac.uk/support/

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