Gresham College provides outstanding educational talks and videos for the public free of charge. There are over 2,500 videos available on our website. Your support will help us to encourage people's love of learning for many years to come.
Despite the controversy, evolution was widely accepted by many naturalists within a few years of the Origin’s appearance. An important reason for this rapid triumph was Darwin’s botanical works. Seen through evolutionary eyes, plants proved to be mobile, carnivorous, sensitive – even crafty.
When Darwin finally published the On the Origin of Species, he tried to avoid controversy by ignoring human origins. Yet evolution was soon being attacked as the godless ‘monkey theory’.
Following the Beagle voyage, Darwin settled down to a quiet married life, relying on correspondence to gather facts. He wrote thousands of letters as he gathered facts to support his still-secret theory.
This lecture reports on the findings of "The Independent Tribunal into Forced Organ Harvesting from Prisoners of Conscience in China" (June 2019), which examined reports of state-sponsored murder for the harvesting and sale of organs.
2019 marks 100 years since the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 when a woman was recognised as a ‘person’ in law. This groundbreaking Act enabled women to be awarded university degrees and to enter professions such as law and medicine from which they had been barred.
This lecture starts by looking at early-modern understandings of the nature of ‘animal’ and ‘human’ life, before turning to the rise of ‘rights of animals’.
In celebrating 500 years since the birth of Sir Thomas Gresham, Professor Jones will examine how changes since the sixteenth century have affected the evolution of human beings.
2018 saw a seismic change in the willingness of women to speak out about sexual abuse. This lecture frankly confronts the anecdotal evidence and suggests ways in which we can learn from it.