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What would Lister do in a post-pandemic world?
Prof Iain McInnes
“What would Lister do in a post-pandemic world?” The pandemic arising from the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 has been a salutary reminder to society of our interdependence on each other within societies, our global connectivity and our environment. The global interactions upon which so much progress has been built, rendered us…
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Eugenics: A Dark History and Troubling Present
Dr Adam Rutherford
Eugenics is a set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population, historically by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or promoting those judged to be superior. In recent years, the term has seen a revival in bioethical discussions on the…
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The making, keeping and losing of memory
Prof. Richard Morris
The capacity for memory is one of our prize possessions – defining our individuality and affording the bonds that cement so many aspects of friendship and family life. Remembrance is a facet of our culture and ordinary everyday memory essential in our daily life and work. But how does memory…
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The Gendered Brain: Do you have a female brain or a male brain? Or are we asking the wrong question?
Professor Gina Rippon
Abstract: For centuries both neuroscience and behavioural science have been pursuing a Hunt the Difference agenda, trying to find ways of characterising the differences between the brains and behaviour of females and males. But are they asking the right questions? Can brain scientists tell the differences between female and male…
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The changing shape of flies
Dr Erica McAlister
From the tips of their antennae to the end of their legs, fly morphology is as varied and diverse as their ecology and habitat. They have adapted to living up Mountains, in caves, and some have even made it into the sea – but these aren’t the most extreme…
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What has the pandemic taught us about human nature?
Professor Stephen Reicher
The 18 months of the Covid pandemic have taught us much about the importance of understanding behaviour and the problems of getting it wrong. I shall point to three key messages. The first is that behaviour matters at a societal and policy level as well as an individual level. The…
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Discovering the Picts: From Enemies of Rome to Powerful Kingdoms of Early Medieval Scotland
Prof Gordon Noble
The Picts were first mentioned in late Roman sources and went on to become powerful rulers of northern Britain in what is now Northeast Scotland. Bereft of detailed historical sources, archaeological evidence is needed to illuminate the Pictish period. The Northern Picts project at the University of Aberdeen has been…
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Bestriding the world stage like a Colossus? Or “Doomed, we’re all Doomed!”
Baroness Young, Chair of the Woodland Trust
In the lecture, I would lay out the scale and nature of the twin and interlinked challenges we face, the steep decline in biodiversity and the challenge of climate change. I would explore the causes of both these crises, their impacts and what needs to happen to tackle them in…
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Nature and Climate: an Emergency Response
Francesca Osowska, CEO of NatureScot (formerly Scottish Natural Heritage)
Ten years to save the planet. It doesn’t sound long enough. But our response to COVID-19 shows what we can do when we put our minds to it. While COVID-19 is an acute emergency, it has come from the chronic climate-nature emergency. While the economic recovery must be ‘green’, our…
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The climate emergency in Scotland – what can we do about it?
Pete Smith, Director of Scotland’s Climate Change Centre of Expertise
Climate change is an existential threat and time to tackle it is rapidly running out. In light of this, the UK and Scottish Governments have both declared a climate emergency. We are now into a make-or-break decade of climate action. While governments have a role to play in creating the…
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Is vitamin D the ‘sunshine superstar’ or is it all media hype? Professor Susan Lanham-New
Vitamin D is an extraordinary nutrient – indeed it is not a ‘vital-amine’ in the true sense of the word but instead a prohormone. It is the only nutrient where our main source is not dietary intake but UVB exposure. In the UK, it is only between April to September…
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‘The EU without Britain: Never Closer Union?’ Professor Vernon Bogdanor
Was Brexit an aberration or does it reveal real weaknesses in the European Union? The European Communities, forerunner of the European Union, were founded by the Treaty of Rome in 1957 in circumstances very different from those of today, with just six member states at roughly similar levels of economic…
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Mission Economy : a moonshot guide to changing capitalism – Professor Mariana Mazzucato
Even before the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, capitalism was stuck. It had no answers to a host of problems, including disease, inequality, the digital divide and, perhaps most blatantly, the environmental crisis. Taking her inspiration from the ‘moonshot’ programmes which successfully co-ordinated public and private sectors on a massive scale,…
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The human scale: technology and leadership in times of crisis – Misha Glenny
What happens when technological, political, biological and economic change outstrips the capacity of humanity to comprehend that change? Humans face a challenge of scale which has reached a moment of crisis. The exponential increase – which we are about to witness – in the power of technology and our dependence…
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The Mind of the Bee – Professor Lars Chittka
Bees have a diverse instinctual repertoire that allows the functioning of the beehive like a smoothly oiled factory, with different workers specialising in comb construction, climate control system, defence and foraging for nectar and pollen. However, the richness of bees’ instincts has traditionally been contrasted with the notion that bees’…
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Catching the artist’s skill: a journey of discovery and wonder – Prof Erma Hermens
We are often marvelling at the 17th-century painter’s skilful and realistic rendering of materials such as glass, metal, fur and human skin, or at the technical ingenuity of the goldsmith or glassblower, who manipulate their materials with such sophistication. Through a multidisciplinary approach, combining expertise and methods from technical art…
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Raising the Dead: Constructing Characters from the Ancient Christian Past – Professor Helen Bond
The gospels are full of memorable vignettes – Pontius Pilate washing his hands, Jesus healing a blind man, Mary Magdalene weeping at the cross. It’s no surprise that these scenes have an established place in Western art, literature and culture. But what do we really know about any of these…
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Elite sport performance: is there a formulae for success? – Prof Mark King
In the increasingly competitive world of elite sport, understanding the factors that limit human performance is critical as athletes push their bodies to the limit to achieve incredible performances that we can only dream of. Over the last 30 years as technology has developed we are now able to quantify,…
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Understanding suicidal behaviour – Professor Rory O’Connor
Suicide and self-harm are major public health concerns with complex aetiologies which encompass a multifaceted array of risk and protective factors. There is growing recognition that we need to move beyond psychiatric categories to further our understanding of the pathways to both. Recent approaches have conceptualised suicide as a behaviour,…
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Britain’s police and food supply in World War One – Dr Mary Fraser
The example of Britain’s police families shows how many middle-class households fared in World War One on the Home Front. By 1915 the police portrayed themselves as struggling to feed their families as food prices rose twice as fast as the war bonus. From October 1915 their journal published costed…
Recent News
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Members’ Newsletter Posted on December 31, 2022
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This session recipient of the Kelvin Medal Posted on November 2, 2022