Gresham College Lectures

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 his teaching, research and creative career. 

He is a graduate of the London School of Economics (BSc), Berklee College of Music (BMus) and the University of Surrey (PhD). He has lectured, exhibited and given keynote presentations at organisations like the Royal Academy of Music, TEDx, Royal Musical Association, British Library, Smithsonian Institute and The Science Museum and his work has been featured extensively in the press. His music, research and graphic art are published and featured by Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Deutsche Grammophon, Sony and more, and he has won awards, scholarships and commendations for writing, teaching, research and his charity work.      

Milton is Professor of Music at the University of Surrey, Professor of Guitar at the Royal College of Music, Deputy Director of the International Guitar Research Centre, an Ableton Certified Trainer, and lives in London with his wife, the guitarist Bridget Mermikides and their daughter Chloe. He is also a Vice-Chair of Governors at Addison Primary School, a state school which foregrounds music education, offering free instrumental lessons for all on Pupil Premium. 

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

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 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 twenty books and ninety-six essays, appeared in or presented scores of television and radio programmes, and sits on the editorial boards of six journals concerned with the history of religion and magic.
The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/goddess-morrigan
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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This is the Annual Gray's Inn Reading 2026.
The lecture was delivered within three months of Sir Andrew McFarlane’s retirement after 21 years on the Family Bench. Whilst the phrase ‘un-plugged’ may not be appropriate, it is anticipated that the lecturer will no longer feel restrained by judicial caution when commenting upon the future development of Family Justice. In addition to a focus on the future of adoption law and the need for significant reform in relation to the financial rights of cohabitants, the lecturer will use a perspective gained from 8 years as the judicial Head of Family Justice to offer suggestions for reform of the system itself.

This lecture was recorded by The Rt Hon Sir Andrew McFarlane on the 15th of June 2026

Andrew McFarlane was called to the Bar in 1977 and practiced in chambers in Birmingham until 1993 when he moved to specialist family law chambers in London. He appeared at all levels of court including the House of Lords and the European Court of Human Rights. He was appointed as a QC in 1998. In April 2005 he was appointed to the High Court, Family Division and was for 5 years the Family Division Liaison Judge for the Midland Circuit. He was the legal member of the Government ‘Family Justice Review’ Panel. In July 2011 he was appointed to be a Lord Justice of Appeal sitting full time in the Court of Appeal. On the 28th July 2018 Sir Andrew succeeded Sir James Munby as President of the Family Division and Head of Family Justice; he is due to retire as President at Easter 2026.
Together with the late David Hershman he is the co-author of a loose-leaf legal text book entitled “Children: Law and Practice”. In addition, he has contributed to other publications and lectured throughout the UK and abroad.
Sir Andrew has been a trustee of YoungMinds (the national young person’s mental health charity) and is Patron of HOPE Family Centre (Bromyard) and of a prisoner support charity ‘Not Beyond Redemption’. In addition to being Chancellor of the Diocese of Exeter, Sir Andrew was Chairman of the Church of England Clergy Discipline Commission and President of Clergy Discipline Tribunals for 5 years until 2019. He has been a native of Herefordshire and Worcestershire for over 35 years and is a lay canon of Hereford Cathedral.

The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/grays-inn-26

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 Professor Daniel Susskind on the 26th of May 2026

Dr Daniel Susskind is a writer and economist. He explores the impact of technology, and particularly AI, on work and society. He is the Mercers’ School Memorial Professor of Business at Gresham College. He is also a Digital Fellow at the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford University, an Associate Member of the Economics Department at Oxford University, and a Research Professor at King’s College London. He is a member of the UK Government’s Expert Panel on AI and the Future of Work. 

His new book, Growth: A Reckoning (2024), was chosen by President Obama as one of his ‘Favourite Books of 2024’ and was a runner-up for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year 2024. He is also the author of A World Without Work (2020), described by The New York Times as "required reading for any potential presidential candidate thinking about the economy of the future” and a runner-up for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year 2020, and co-author of the best-selling book, The Future of the Professions (2015). His TED Talk, on the future of work, has been viewed more than 1.7 million times. 

His next book, What Should My Children Do? How to Flourish in the Age of AI, will be published in 2026. And his first novel, The Basilisk Stare, will be published in 2027. 

Previously he worked in various roles in the British Government – in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, in the Policy Unit in 10 Downing Street, and in the Cabinet Office. He was a Kennedy Scholar at Harvard University. 

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

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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The polar regions are still some of the most inaccessible and least touched by humans, but they are deeply linked to the rest of Earth. We will cover the history of exploring them, the challenges of measuring this environment, and the current state of knowledge about the ice at both poles.  We will also cover the likely future for the polar regions – the incentives driving different actions, what science suggests about the consequences, and coming events to look out for.

This lecture was recorded by Helen Czerski on the 21st of May 2026 at Barnard’s Inn Hall, London

Helen Czerski is a physicist and oceanographer with a passion for science, sport, books, creativity, hot chocolate and investigating the interesting things in life.
She is a Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at University College London and her research focus is the physics of breaking waves and bubbles at the ocean surface. These bubbles change underwater sound and light, help transfer gases from ocean to atmosphere (helping the ocean breathe) and also eject ocean material into the air. She has spent months working on research ships in the Antarctic, the Pacific, the North Atlantic and the Arctic, and is an experienced field scientist.
Helen has been a regular science presenter on the BBC for 15 years, covering the physics of the natural world in BBC2 landmark documentaries (including ‘Orbit’, ‘Operation iceberg’ and ‘Supersenses’), and the physics of everyday life in a range of BBC4 documentaries (including ‘From ice to fire: The incredible science of temperature’, ‘Sound waves: The symphony of physics’, and ‘Colour: The spectrum of science’, along  with many others). She currently co-hosts BBC Radio 4’s flagship climate and environment programme Rare Earth.
Helen's first book Storm in a Teacup won the Italian Asimov Prize and the Louis J. Battan Author prize from the American Meteorological Society. Blue Machine won the Wainwright Prize for Conservation Writing. She was awarded the Institute of Physics Gold Medal in 2018 for her work on physics communication, and an Honorary Fellowship of the British Science Association in 2020. She has been a Trustee of Royal Museums Greenwich since 2018, and was one of the 2020 Royal Institution Christmas Lecturers, giving her Lecture on the topic of the ocean.

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

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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