Skip to content Accessibility statement

Open lectures: Spring term 2020

Every term, the University organises free open lectures on a wide variety of topics and aimed at a general audience.

Most require tickets (available on individual event pages) but some do not. Where tickets are needed, this is also indicated in the publicity.

Upcoming events

There are no events to show here right now. Please check back another time.

Past events

Friday 27 March 2020 1.30pm

Hull York Medical School present the annual Allam Lecture, at the University of Hull campus

Thursday 12 March 2020 7pm

University of York Labour Club present a panel discussion on what went wrong at the last election, and what Labour should do next. Featuring Fleur Anderson (MP for Putney), Tim Roache (GMB) and Miriam Mirwitch (Chair of Young Labour).

Thursday 12 March 2020 6.30pm

Over the course of the past year, Corruption Watch has been advocating for open justice reform, and carrying out a programme of court monitoring, which includes attending all major foreign bribery hearings in England.

Thursday 12 March 2020 6.30pm

In this presentation Petra will show how to build molecular engines that allow movements at the molecular level to be coupled to the macroscopic world

Wednesday 11 March 2020 6.30pm

A lecture recital on music from Stuart England

Monday 9 March 2020 4.30pm

Antony Geraghty talks about the Trinity College Library

Friday 6 March 2020 1pm

As a previous detainee, Joumana Alshtiwi will discuss prison conditions in Syria, focusing particularly on the situation of women

Thursday 5 March 2020 7.30pm

Richard J Robson will give a brief background of the UK Dam Legislation and a history of some of the reservoir incidents and failures over the last 150 years.

Thursday 5 March 2020 6.30pm

What connects the grandfather of Charles Darwin to artificial intelligence? How have humans tried to talk to machines, make machines talk, and use technology to find ways to communicate? What do talking machines say about us?

Thursday 5 March 2020 6.30pm

International Women's Day Lecture - Catherine Fieschi discusses populist politics and how they affect the nature of political relationships

Thursday 5 March 2020 1pm

Professor Lorna Dawson will talk about the discipline of forensic soil science, with examples from real case work and from fiction where evidence from the earth has been of importance in helping to solve crimes and to bring about natural justice.

Wednesday 4 March 2020 6.30pm

Professor Lucy Carpenter will describe how she and her colleagues search for changes in atmospheric composition which affect human health and climate, including recent discoveries in the science of air pollution.

Wednesday 4 March 2020 1.30pm

Visiting other places or cultures has always held a fascination. From accounts of the Grand Tour to pocket guides and visits to the seaside come along and travel with us.

Tuesday 3 March 2020 7.30pm

Eli Gabay, member of the prosecution team in the historic trial of the Nazi collaborator John Ivan Demjanjuk, speaks on challenges of extraditing and prosecuting Holocaust war criminals.

Thursday 27 February 2020 6.45pm

The University of York Labour Club in partnership with The York Union warmly invites you to an audience with Len McCluskey

Thursday 27 February 2020 6.30pm

Daniel Levitin turns his keen insights to what happens in our brains as we age

Thursday 27 February 2020 6.30pm

‘Poetry happens when the sense can’t be separated from the sound of the sense.’ (Alan Gillis)

Wednesday 26 February 2020 6.30pm

The story of Craig Ellwood, architect of sleek, minimalist steel and glass houses which so epitomised post-war architecture in California, is one, as much as anything, of his four wives...

Wednesday 26 February 2020 6.15pm

Simon Shepherd has visited every prison and asked “What’s the good stuff that’s happening in this prison?”

Wednesday 26 February 2020 4pm

This talk is about how clinical psychologists foster access (or not) to psychological care. More specifically, it interrogates how psychologists manage, and make decisions around, patient referrals.

Wednesday 26 February 2020 1.30pm

From early research into the natural sciences to Victorian collectors and illustrators the natural world has always gripped imagination. Come and see what treasures the Library and Archives hold.

Tuesday 25 February 2020 6.30pm

The last in this term's events from York Islamic Art Circle.

Tuesday 25 February 2020 4pm

Professor Jonathan Cole answers questions around grief

Monday 24 February 2020 6.30pm

Professor Curtice will examine why Brexit has proven so difficult to resolve, the impact that it has had so far on the country's politics, and the legacy that it yet might leave.

Monday 24 February 2020 12.30pm

As part of our LGBT+ History Month programme, the LGBTI+ Matters Staff Network are delighted to welcome Dr Kit Heyam (they/them or he/him).

Friday 21 February 2020 1pm

Ali Idrissa addresses the multiple challenges civil society activists face when challenging multinational corporations engaged in extractive industries such as uranium mining, and talks of what the future will hold for Niger and its civil society.

Thursday 20 February 2020 6.30pm

Jane will talk about Pevsner, a German Jewish refugee architectural historian.

Wednesday 19 February 2020 4pm

This talk, based on a work-in-progress, explores the social, political, and cultural contexts for the successful re-emergence of the nationalist right in Japan over the past quarter-century

Wednesday 19 February 2020 1.30pm

Discover how public health was important to social reformers like Joseph Rowntree and how it informs contemporary ideas and practices.

Monday 17 February 2020 5.30pm

Travis Alabanza is a writer, theatre-maker and performer who for the last four years has been creating performance, writing to archive the existence and experiences of gender non conforming people of colour

Saturday 15 February 2020 8pm

This lecture-performance is a sequel to the very popular first Shakespeare’s Rivals event last term.

Friday 14 February 2020 8pm

This lecture-performance is a sequel to the very popular first Shakespeare’s Rivals event last term.

Friday 14 February 2020 1pm

Come along at lunchtime to hear Anietie Williams mini lunchtime lecture discussing the role of multidisciplinary research and green chemistry in attaining zero carbon emissions

Thursday 13 February 2020 7.30pm

Ann Pettifor discusses the Green New Deal as part of One Planet Week

Thursday 13 February 2020 7pm

Work stress is commonplace and can often influence both our performance and the way in which we interact with colleagues, friends and family...

Thursday 13 February 2020 6.30pm

Cyberspace is the chance for reinvention: an opportunity to find new ways to be; new ways to present ourselves...

Thursday 13 February 2020 5.30pm

Join YESI for a screening of the 2019 Global Documentary film ‘The Race is On: Secrets and Solutions of Climate’, followed by Q&A with the film’s presenter and producer Dr James Dyke, and a panel discussion with experts

Wednesday 12 February 2020 6.15pm

Catherine Abell explores the implication of the view that fiction is a social institution for the existence and nature of fictional entities

Wednesday 12 February 2020 4pm

Drawing on findings from a multi-site ethnography, this talk will demonstrate how the introduction of the Prevent duty has undermined Muslim civil society participation in UK universities.

Wednesday 12 February 2020 1.30pm

The Library & Archives hold many stories of inspirational women – from the suffragette movement through to 1960s feminist theatre. Come along and learn more about the women who have shaped our world today.

Wednesday 12 February 2020 1pm

Awareness of the need for urgent action to ensure a more sustainable future seems to have reached a tipping point...

Tuesday 11 February 2020 7.30pm

Climate science has achieved much in detailing and substantiating the case for climate change...

Tuesday 11 February 2020 6.30pm

The third in this term's York Islamic Art Circle events.

Monday 10 February 2020 11am

In this interactive and interdisciplinary event, five panellists will discuss the practicalities of carrying out global development research in a sustainable, carbon-neutral way

Friday 7 February 2020 1pm

Despite the fact that same-sex relationships have not been prohibited by law in Tajikistan since 1998, LGBT people face discrimination, bullying, blackmail and extortion, detention and torture...

Thursday 6 February 2020 7.30pm

The talk will cover the history of the Tom Pudding system, its preservation and connections with Royalty.

Thursday 6 February 2020 5.30pm

Ambassador S Tayeb Jawad, Afghanistan Ambassador to the U, will be giving a talk in this special one-off event

Thursday 6 February 2020 12pm

What is the history, and what are the implications of the increasing popularity of complementary therapies and alternative medicines in regions traditionally seen as dominated by biomedicine?

Wednesday 5 February 2020 6.30pm

Richard Johnson and Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven share their takes and experiences of the last year of American politics.

Wednesday 5 February 2020 4pm

Interdisciplinary collaborations between scientists/technologists, social scientists and philosophers/theologians have revealed deeply submerged yet powerful narratives at work beneath public discourse on controversial technologies.

Wednesday 5 February 2020 1.30pm

Members of Suma Wholefoods, the UK's largest equal pay co-operative, explain how their business works.

Tuesday 4 February 2020 6.30pm

For Sama is both an intimate and epic journey into the female experience of war...

Tuesday 4 February 2020 6pm

This talk asks a simple question: where are the flies, mosquitos, wasps, bees, or butterflies that should be present on Robinson Crusoe’s island?

Thursday 30 January 2020 6.30pm

The second in this term's York Islamic Art Circle events

Wednesday 29 January 2020 5pm

This term's Adam Phillips Lecture

Wednesday 29 January 2020 4pm

Why do cities look the way they do? Is it design? Or is it the interaction of largely unconscious processes about which we can do very little?

Tuesday 28 January 2020 6.30pm

When Allied forces liberated the Nazi concentration camps, their terrible discoveries were recorded by army cameramen, revealing for the first time the horror of what had happened...

Tuesday 28 January 2020 6.15pm

Selina Hurley talks about one of the most significant medicine collections in the world at the Science Museum

Monday 27 January 2020 4.30pm

Gallery director Frances Morris will discuss how research sits within Tate Modern and is tied to public facing outcomes.

Friday 24 January 2020 1pm

Urooj Fatima will discuss her experience as a journalist writing on children’s rights and what steps could be taken to improve children’s rights in Pakistan.

Wednesday 22 January 2020 1.30pm

The founder of Zeus Capital discusses the highs and lows of starting and growing successful businesses.

Tuesday 21 January 2020 5.30pm

This lecture will examine Archbishop William Melton’s record as prelate in terms of his relationship with two successive kings of England, Edward II and Edward III, and the sometimes-ambivalent support that he provided to their regimes

Thursday 16 January 2020 6.30pm

The first in this term's series from the York Islamic Art Circle

Thursday 16 January 2020 2pm

Public health research involves clinical trials and these become a more sensitive issue when it involves children...

Wednesday 15 January 2020 4pm

What do the research projects of Berlin's sites, buildings and communities tell us about the city and its people?

Tuesday 14 January 2020 5.30pm

A medieval historian, an experimental psychologist, and a theoretical physicist explain why they have been working together for 12 years on a series of treatises written in the first third of the 13th century

Thursday 9 January 2020 7.30pm

Professor Andy Marvin discusses glider flight from Sir George Cayley to the present day...