Gresham provides outstanding educational talks and videos for the public free of charge. There are over 2,500 videos available on the Gresham website. Your support will help us to encourage people's love of learning for many years to come.
How might the study of the first 1,500 years of London's port history (encapsulating profound changes ranging from location, infrastructure and technology to variations in river levels) help when making predictions for the future?
Torture was officially outlawed in France in the 1780s and in Europe during the nineteenth century. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, it has returned as an instrument of state policy.
In this final lecture we will consider whether we can plot a more successful future than our recent history might suggest and what that implies for our economic and political institutions.
The experience of inter-mediation in the UK does not encourage the thought that long term finance can easily be located. Do we need a Development Bank?
We will carefully outline the categories of savings held by households and link that to the operation of financial intermediaries in providing loanable funds.
Productivity growth in the UK economy has lagged behind that of our major trading partners. We will examine a number of possible explanations ranging from the role of finance to the employment of physical and human capital.
Using DNA and gene-based therapy to treat human diseases may sound like science-fiction, but there are already several gene therapies in use today. This lecture will describe what gene therapy is all about, the recent advancements in the field and what the future holds for gene therapies.
A discussion of the nature of consciousness founded in startling 1853 experiments on living, decapitated frogs. The debate brought in the greatest minds of the age and is still with us today.
The Zika virus originated in Africa and causes a febrile illness but was little known until it spread within Brazil in 2014. The lecture will also discuss the ‘nightmare scenario’ of the increased range of the mosquito as a result of climate change.