Durham Castle Lecture Series

The Durham Castle Lecture Series is devoted to bringing high-profile speakers to Durham who can contribute to academic and public discussion on issues of global significance.

The presenters have all made an outstanding contribution to their fields. The series is made possible by a generous gift from Santander Universities, and the purchase of additional equipment for the Great Hall was supported by the generous donations of Castle alumni.

Videos are reproduced here by the kind permission of the Master.

Professor Stuart Corbridge

Wednesday 30th May 2018
- Durham Castle / Future of the University Lecture - Prof. Stuart Corbridge
  
  Professor Stuart Corbridge is Vice-Chancellor of Durham University. Just over 50 years ago, University President Clark Kerr reflected wisely and wryly on the future uses of major research universities like his own, Berkeley. This lecture revisits the major themes of Kerr’s book, The Uses of the University, and ponders the scope for various misuses of the university at a time of extraordinary government intervention in higher education around the world.
Professor N. Katherine Hayles

Wednesday 7th March 2018
- Durham Castle / Future of the University Lecture - Professor N. Katherine Hayles
  
  Universities are no longer the privileged site of knowledge creation and dissemination. Excellent online tutorials, such as the Kahn Academy, provide high quality open-access instruction in subjects once considered too esoteric to address except in a university classroom, such as calculus, linear algebra, and similar mathematical topics. In other practices universities, for example MIT, have made their entire course offerings available online at nominal or no charge. Still others offer MOOCs on a wide variety of topics. These developments pose significant challenges to traditional ideas of the university as a cloistered space where students came and learned about subjects they could not access otherwise.
  
  Taking a cue from similar problems facing university presses, this talk will argue for a transformative vision of the university that positions it not as a separate enclosed space but as a busy informational crossroads in which the university clearly identifies the “value added” it provides and takes an active role not only in creating and disseminating knowledge but also in directing it toward better and more productive practices that contribute to human and planetary flourishing.
  
  Topics will include the flipped classroom, the tragedy of the lecture hall, the importance of contributing to sustainable and environmental practices, and suggestions for engaging in interdisciplinary initiatives and developing robust modes of discourse that reach beyond scholarly communities to the general public.
Lord David Willetts

Thursday 8th February 2018
- Durham Castle / Future of the University Lecture - Lord David Willetts 8/02/18, Durham Castle
  
  The Rt Hon. Lord David Willetts is the Executive Chair of the Resolution Foundation. He served as the Member of Parliament for Havant (1992-2015), as Minister for Universities and Science (2010-2014) and previously worked at HM Treasury and the No. 10 Policy Unit.
  
  Lord Willetts is a visiting Professor at King’s College London, Governor of the Ditchley Foundation, Chair of the British Science Association and a member of the Council of the Institute for Fiscal Studies. He is an Honorary Fellow of Nuffield College Oxford.
  
  Lord Willetts has written widely on economic and social policy. His book ‘The Pinch’ was published in 2010. He has just completed a book on universities which will be published by Oxford University Press in November. The English higher education system is very unusual with nationwide competition for entry This drives excessive specialisation in English schools which is the biggest single challenge facing universities in the future. As well as its classic teaching and research roles, the university is increasingly significant in driving innovation and the local economy. This third mission has led some critics to argue that the university is being betrayed and these fears, especially prevalent in the Humanities, will be investigated. The key trends of globalisation and the digital revolution have not yet had a big impact on the university but they will. David Willetts’ book A University Education is published by OUP in November 2017.
Professor Edith Hall

Wednesday 24th January 2018
- Durham Castle Lecture - Professor Edith Hall, Aristotle Goes to the Movies
  
  Aristotle's Virtue Ethics provide a valuable guide to living a good and fulfilling life which is still useful and practicable in the 21st century. But, unfortunately, his surviving treatises are often a challenging read even for the educated layperson.
  This lecture discusses his own view of the moral edification which good drama can bestow, and asks what famous movies Aristotle would use, if he were alive today, to illustrate his principal ethical concepts.
Professor Christian Joppke

Wednesday 17th January 2018
- Durham Castle Lecture - Professor Christian Joppke, 'Is Multiculturalism Dead?'
  
  Christian Joppke intriguingly argues that, beyond the ebb and flow of policy, liberal constitutionalism itself bears out a multiculturalism of the individual that is not only alive but necessary in a liberal society. Through a provocative comparison of gay rights in the United States and the accommodation of Islam in Europe, he shows that liberal constitutionalism constrains majority power, requiring the state to be neutral about people's values and ethical commitment. It cannot but give rise to multiple ways of life or cultures, as people are endowed with the freedom to embrace them. Accordingly, impulses toward multiculturalism persist, despite its political crisis, but with a new accent on the individual, rather than group, as the unit of integration.