Darwin College Lecture Series

The Darwin College Lecture Series returned in 2023 to its original form as a live, in-person event only. While recordings were made available in the week following each lecture, on the night participants could only attend by scrambling for a seat in the Lady Mitchell Hall.

 In the post-Covid era, with audiences accustomed to accessing content at home, this felt a slightly risky approach. With reservations not required, the organisers had no way of knowing ahead of time whether anyone would turn up at all, particularly as the series takes place in the cold, dark, evenings of January, February and March. But the emphasis on the shared, real-life experience paid off, with the audiences packing into the hall week after week providing a fitting counterbalance to the theme of isolation.

 This theme was interrogated from angles ranging from the solitude of characters in medieval Persian poetry to the isolation of molecules using optical tweezers; the question of whether we are alone in the universe to the plight of those caught up in Australia’s detention of asylum seekers. Audiences learned about North Korea’s self-imposed political isolation, and what the geographical isolation of Antarctica can teach us about climate change; how quantum physics can help us to isolate information, and the choreography of atoms during structural change.

 Organisers Professor Sir Harry Bhadeshia, Darwin Fellow and Emeritus Tata Steel Professor of Metallurgy, and Dr David Gershlick, Senior Member and Sir Henry Dale Fellow at the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research declared before the series began “I would say that the people who come to the lectures don’t really care whether it’s science or humanities. They’re just looking for a good story.”

 The number of repeat attendees, week after week, supported this theory. The Lecture Series had returned to its rightful place as a weekly fixture on local calendars, and a unique opportunity to unpick a subject from eight very different sides.

 Thank you to Janet Gibson for her immaculate organisation of the series, to all our speakers, and to Catering Manager Ivan Higney and his team for a series of delicious and imaginatively themed Formal Halls.