Every year Royal Holloway holds a number of public events, lectures and seminars; you can watch recordings of some of our past lectures here.
Art Collection Talks
For a range of talks and lectures delivered as part of the Art Collections public programme visit our digital museum pages.
Public Lectures
The rule of law in a changing world
Magna Carta Lecture 2025
The Rt Hon The Baroness Prentis of Banbury KC
The ‘rule of law’ has long been a fundamental principal of good government, a tradition in England which largely stems from the Magna Carta in 1215.
In an era of volatility, in which shifting societal and geopolitical norms and rapid technological advancement seem to challenge the long-accepted values of democratic societies, politicians and critics from all sides frequently appeal to the ‘rule of law’ as justification for their views and actions.
In the Magna Carta Lecture, former Attorney General for England and Wales, Baroness Prentis, explores why adherence to the ‘rule of law’ still matters when the goalposts feel like they are shifting, and how we can grasp this nebulous concept to ensure that democratic societies emerge stronger from a turbulent period.
Mind the gap between childhood and adulthood: why teenage reading is important
Inaugural Lecture
Professor Jessie Ricketts, School of Life Science and the Environment
Reading gives us access to information, to learning, to people and worlds that are outside of our lived experience. This is important for all of us and yet, research has focused almost exclusively on childhood and adulthood, ignoring the intervening teenage period. Discussions with secondary teachers motivated more than a decade of research that tracks how reading proficiency and engagement as young people move through adolescence. We have worked closely with teachers, charities and other partners to develop this research and understand what it means for teenagers, schools and educational policy. Professor Ricketts outlines this research, and explores the importance of collaboration to understanding why teenage reading is important and what we can do to promote it.
"One of my worst fears was that I would keep it all a secret and then die in silence". What sharing an HIV status tells us about us
Inaugural Lecture
Professor Michael Evangeli, School of Live Sciences and the Environment
Sharing an HIV-positive status (HIV disclosure) can improve health and increase support from others. But telling others about living with HIV is fraught with anxiety, with fears of rejection and discrimination common. This is a rational response as countering HIV stigma has been the most difficult challenge facing the HIV field since the virus was discovered over 40 years ago.
From working with people living with HIV as a clinical psychologist in the late 1990s, to recent research developing interventions to support young people living with HIV in the UK and Uganda, Professor Evangeli’s work has focused on supporting people with HIV to make decisions about whether, how and when to share their HIV status.
The theory and practice of solving intractable problems
Inaugural Lecture
Professor Magnus Wahlström, School of Engineering, Physical and Mathematical Sciences
For well over 60 years, computer scientists have grappled with the question of the limits of computing for efficient problem solving. By now, although little has been proven mathematically, there is a broad consensus that for a large class of highly relevant tasks (such as scheduling problems, business optimisation problems, verification of digital circuits, and more), there probably is no efficient universal method. However, this clashes dramatically with an everyday industrial experience where such problems are regularly solved at scale.
Professor Wahlstrom reviews this apparent contradiction, known broadly as the P-vs-NP question, and discuss attempts towards its resolution.
Research Infrastructures. Centrality. Fragility.
Inaugural Lecture
Professor Hugh Shananhan, School of Engineering, Physical and Mathematical Sciences
This lecture outlines the huge importance of Research Infrastructures (RIs). RIs are the necessary physical, digital and human infrastructures required to carry out research. RIs form the connective tissue of research. Because of the digital transformation over the last thirty years RIs have enabled researchers to tackle increasingly difficult challenges that often require input from a number of different disciplines. Digital objects, such as Research Software, Research Data and standards are key to many areas of research.
RIs are socio-technical in their nature. Despite the physical nature of them they are a deeply human enterprise and require the contribution of highly specialised individuals. They can be enablers of Open Research and are a bulwark against the challenges encountered with respect to reproducibility and replicability and can play a role in maintaining Research Integrity. They are also fragile - they depend on sustained funding which are delivered through a variety of different models. As a result they are easily disrupted and require continual care.
In his inaugural lecture, Professor Hugh Shanahan argues that RIs are part of a broader picture where research is, for the most part, collaborative with many varied and essential contributions from individuals providing Research Objects that don't necessarily fit into the standard publication model and can be reused.
Making sense of tragedy
For What Matters Lecture
Professor Nick Hardwick CBE, Emeritus Professor of Criminal Justice
2025 is the twentieth anniversary of the '7/7' London suicide bombings which killed 52 innocent people and the fatal shooting two weeks later of Jean Charles de Menezes by the Metropolitan Police, in the mistaken belief that he was a terrorist. There have already been two recent TV documentaries to mark the anniversary and more are scheduled.
Professor Nick Hardwick, who was responsible for the Independent Police Complaints Commission's investigation into the shooting of Jean Charles, will use his personal experience of this example and his work in other controversial parts of the criminal justice system to reflect on how we respond to some of the most painful and controversial tragedies when the state seems to have failed in its obligations to keep us safe.
Disability matters: why inclusion is everyone’s business
Inaugural Lecture
Professor Anica Zeyen, School of Business and Management
Professor Anica Zeyen's inaugural lecture blends her lived experience as a blind academic and her research on disability inclusion. She will explore the systemic discrimination faced by disabled individuals in various sectors and emphasise the importance of disability pride, making a compelling case that disability is everyone's business.
Black votes matter
For What Matters Lecture
The Rt Hon The Lord Woolley of Woodford
Operation Black Vote was founded in 1996 to leverage the power of the ‘Black vote’ in order to tackle racism and increase the number of Black and minority ethnic people in elected and prominent public roles. This was at a time when there were only seven MPs from ethnic minorities and British politics was seemingly deaf to the concerns of minority communities.
Now, almost 30 years on, the success of OBV, and partner organisations, can be seen across the political system. The percentage of ethnic minority MPs in the House of Commons more closely matches the population, and the UK has seen people from ethnic minorities occupy all four of the Great Offices of State.
In this For What Matters Lecture, Lord Woolley shares his thoughts on where he, and OBV, have progressed to now and what challenges our society faces in political engagement. He speaks about the importance of political education for young people and what educators might learn from the success of Operation Black Vote in mobilising groups with low levels of political involvement.
From Euroscepticism to risky cyber security behaviours
Inaugural Lecture
Professor Marco Cinnirella, Department of Psychology
Marco describes his journey from a research-focused social psychologist exploring issues around national identity, prejudice and discrimination to a professional practice career path that reflects the application of social psychology to facilitate behaviour change in health and business settings. The stages of his career are outlined along with anecdotes about how his career was punctuated with death threats, conspiracy theories about him, and opportunities to engage with government and the UN.
Magna Carta: Icon and Myth
Magna Carta Lecture 2024
Professor Nigel Saul, Emeritus Professor of Medieval History
Ranging widely over the centuries, the lecture will trace how the eighteenth-and nineteenth-century emphasis on the Charter as the foundation of the rule of law gave way in the twentieth to an emphasis instead on human rights: a consequence both of the internationalisation of the Charter and the increasing brutality of twentieth-century warfare. The lecture will be of interest to those with an interest in history, politics and law.
My family in exile
Holocaust Memorial Lectures
Dame Stephanie 'Steve' Shirley CH, DSci Honoris Causa
Speaker Dame Stephanie Shirley CH, also known as Steve, arrived in Britain in 1939 as an unaccompanied five-year-old Kindertransport refugee. Now at 90 years old, her story has many strands which, woven together, have produced a lifetime of exceptional achievements.
Magna Carta Lecture 2023
‘And Then What? Inside Stories of 21st-Century Diplomacy’
Baroness Diana Warwick in conversation with Baroness Catherine Ashton
In the 2023 Magna Carta lecture, Catherine Ashton, former EU High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Honorary Fellow of Royal Holloway spoke to fellow Bedford College alumna Diana Warwick about her experiences as a foreign representative, representing the many nations of the EU, discussing how “quiet diplomacy” was her essential tool in dealing with the most challenging of negotiations.
Please note: only the audio of this lecture was recorded.
Jean Monnet Lecture 2023
‘Brexit and the UK’s future relationship with the European Union’
The Rt Hon John Bercow
In the first Jean Monnet Lecture, The Rt Hon John Bercow, former Speaker of the House of Commons, considers Brexit and the UK’s past and future relationship with the European Union, giving the unique insight of someone who was at the heart of the parliamentary process.
The Jean Monnet Lectures are public events organised by Dr Giacomo Benedetto, Jean Monnet Chair at Royal Holloway, University of London, as part of a three-year project co-funded by the European Union.
A Fool or a Prophet: Rubinstein the Warsaw Ghetto Jester
David Cesarani Holocaust Memorial Lecture 2023
Professor Amos Goldberg - Hebrew University, Jerusalem
From early 1941 until July 1942 when the big deportation to Treblinnka began, a very popular street jester called Rubinstein performed in the streets of the Warsaw ghetto. He was known and loved by all. Some described him as a fool whose reason was lost while others referred to him as the Ghetto's prophet and philosopher. Professor Goldberg analyses some of his performances and puns, emphasizing his special role as a radical social commentator of the Warsaw ghetto crumbling society.
Re-presenting the Holocaust at the Imperial War Museum
David Cesarani Holocaust Memorial Lecture 2022
James Bulgin, Head of Content for the new Holocaust Galleries, Imperial War Museums
James started work on the project in 2016. Before joining IWM James worked as a commercial theatre producer, writer and director, with work in the West End and on national tour. He is currently completing a PhD under the Crosslands Research Scholarship at Royal Holloway, on ideas of apocalypse in Holocaust and Cold War history. His academic research focuses on issues of representation in Holocaust literature and film and he has spoken at conferences in the UK, Israel and Germany.
'Prorogation?'
Magna Carta Lecture 2021
The Right Honourable The Baroness Hale of Richmond
At a time of heightened political tension surrounding the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, presided over by Baroness Hale of Richmond, ruled that the government’s prorogation of Parliament was unlawful – a decision that has been described as reaffirming parliamentary sovereignty and having major implications for our system of government. In the Magna Carta Lecture 2021, almost two years on from the event, Lady Hale reflects on the events and ruling of 2019. The Magna Carta Lecture series is made possible by the generosity of The Magna Carta Trust and Runnymede Magna Carta Legacy.
The Queen's Gambit: Meghan, The Media and the future of the Monarchy
Centre for the Study of Modern Monarchy panel discussion, chaired by Anna Whitelock, Professor of the History of Monarchy
Panellists:
- Ayesha Hazarika, broadcaster, journalist and political commentator, and former political adviser to senior Labour Party politicians
- Graham Smith, Chief Executive Officer of Republic, which calls for the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of an elected head of state
- Jennie Bond, former BBC royal correspondent
- Dr Ed Owen, historian and author of ‘The Family Firm. Monarchy, Mass Media and the British Public, 1932-53’
- Ben Page, Chief Executive of Ipsos MORI
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on child health
Department of Biological Sciences Jack Pridham Lecture 2020
Dr Elizabeth Whittaker, Senior Clinical Lecturer in paediatric infectious diseases and immunology at Imperial College London
Reassuringly children usually experience mild or limited symptoms when infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 disease. However the pandemic has impacted greatly on child health in other ways, nationally and internationally, including affecting education, vaccine delivery, mental health and emotional and social wellbeing. It is crucial that as the pandemic continues these areas are addressed to prevent a long term effect on this generation.
Treasured Objects from Bedford College
The art collections hold many items relating to the history of Bedford College, one of the two institutions which now make up Royal Holloway, University of London. At this event, Dr Laura MacCulloch, the Curator at the university, looks at some of the most treasured objects from Bedford and explores the stories behind them.
Sexual relations as international relations
In her inaugural lecture, Professor Laura Sjoberg from the Department of Politics and International Relations, explores the co-constitution of the state and sex in global politics, arguing that the generation state borders and the people who inhabit them – indeed the state itself - cannot be fully understood without reference to sex acts and sexual relationships.
Building on feminist and queer theorizing and using examples from dynastic marriage treaties to contemporary refugee law, the talk shows how international relations are sexual and sexual relations are international relations.
Public events at Royal Holloway
For upcoming events visit our Events listing page.
