public lecture

Pablo Picasso did not speak often about abstraction, but when he did, it was either to dismiss it as complacent decoration or to declare its very notion an oxymoron. The root of this hostility is to be found in the impasse that the artist reached in...

In this lecture, Dan Ariely, James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University and former Member (2005-07) in the School of Social Science, will discuss how the principles of behavioral economics can help us...

In this lecture, Briony Fer, Professor of History of Art at University College London, will look at Malevich's systemic method, as it was elaborated in his work, writings, and teachings, and its ongoing relevance for subsequent generations of...

We should not assume that making sense of post-Soviet Russia was ever going to be easy. Great Powers that lose empires bear grudges and the speed with which an empire is lost can exacerbate the problem. No one can expect that a powerful country run...

In this lecture, Krause explores the methods used to investigate European population history about the time of agricultural transition. Using genome data, Krause explains how at least three ancestral groups, the Hunter-Gathers, the Early Farmers and...

Can one predict the future arrangements of planets over extremely large time periods? For centuries this issue has triggered dreams of curious people, and hot debates by specialists including Newton, Lagrange, Poincare, Kolmogorov, Laskar, and...

Crow examines the displaced and wandering existences of Jacques-Louis David and Théodore Géricault, both in geographical and psychological exile, during which each was forced to reexamine and reconfigure the fundamentals of his artistic life. The...

In this lecture, Alexander Nagel, Professor of Fine Arts at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, illustrates some ways in which art produced during the Renaissance period points ­eastward towards Constantinople, towards the Holy Land...

Historians have debated for centuries the magnitude, nature, and impact of population movements from the borders of the Roman Empire into its heart between the fourth and seventh centuries. In recent years, geneticists have begun to attempt to...

In this lecture, Quentin Skinner, Barber Beaumont Professor of the Humanities at Queen Mary University of London, will discuss the concept of individual freedom, arguing that the usual practice of defining it in negative terms as “absence of...