Michaelmas Term 2025 Series (October - December)
In conversation with Taylor Mac
Taylor Mac
Talk held in association with the Schwarzman Cultural Programme
The renowned American actor, playwright, performance artist, director, producer, and singer-songwriter Taylor Mac, starts our series of public talks with reflections on his work.
About the speaker:
Taylor Mac (who uses the gender pronoun, judy) is an Ibsen Prize winner, a MacArthur Fellow and a Pulitzer-prize finalist. Judy is an actor, playwright, director, producer, musician and drag-queen, and a Visiting Arts Fellow at Mansfield College for the academic year 2025-2026.
The Adam von Trott Lecture: Russia’s hybrid war on Europe
Arndt Freytag von Loringhoven
Former Ambassador von Loringhoven draws on his diplomatic and intelligence experience, to examine how Putin’s evolving strategy of hybrid warfare threatens Europe’s security and cohesion.
About the speaker:
Arndt is a German diplomat and biochemist. He formerly served as Germany’s Ambassador to Poland; he was deputy director of Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service between 2007-10; and served as NATO’s first chief of intelligence from 2016-19. He is author of Putin’s Attack on Germany (2024), focussing on new methods of hybrid warfare, and is a relative of a member of the 20 July 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler.
She Speaks! What Shakespeare’s women might have said.
Dame Harriet Walter DBE
Multi-award-winning actor Dame Harriet Walter, author of Brutus and Other Heroines and She Speaks!, joins Helen Mountfield KC to explore women’s voices in Shakespeare.
About the speaker:
Dame Harriet Walter DBE is an acclaimed stage and screen actress, winner of the Olivier Award and nominee for a Tony, three Emmys, and a SAG Award. Known for roles in Killing Eve, Wolf Hall, Ted Lasso, Silo, This is Going to Hurt, and Succession. She has also played many of Shakespeare’s greatest parts. She is the author of Brutus and Other Heroines and She Speaks!
Jane Austen's Fashion Bible
Professor Ros Ballaster
Mansfield’s Professor of Eighteenth-Century Studies, Ros Ballaster, author of Jane Austen’s Fashion Bible (Pan Macmillan, 2025) discusses the language of fashion and the resourceful designs of women in the textiles and text of the Regency Period.
About the speaker:
Ros Ballaster FBA is Professor of Eighteenth-Century Studies at Oxford and Fellow of English at Mansfield College. She edited Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility for Penguin Classics and is the author of Fictions of Presence (2020).
Fighting for Equality: Litigating the first 25 years of the Sex Discrimination Act 1975
Dr Lyndsey Jenkins, Professor Sandra Fredman, Helen Mountfield KC, and other guests
Marking 50 years of the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, this panel explores the law’s impact in advancing gender equality in the UK in the last quarter of the twentieth century. The panel reflect on its legacy, challenges, and the battles still ahead.
To Know and To Know Not
Hisham Matar
Pulitzer and Orwell-prize winning author Hisham Matar reprises a searing lecture given in Florence in 2024 at the Premio Gregor von Rezzori on what it is to be an Arab in the West today.
About the speaker:
Hisham Matar, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Return, has written acclaimed novels including In the Country of Men and Anatomy of a Disappearance. Shortlisted for the Booker, Costa, Baillie Gifford, and National Book Awards, his latest novel My Friends won the 2024 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction.
Great Britain? How we’re getting our future back
Torsten Bell MP
Torsten Bell, MP for Swansea West, Minister for Work and Pensions and former Chief Executive of the Resolution Foundation (and Mansfield alum) gives his recipe for a ‘practical patriotism’, to raise living standards and to create a more equal country.
About the speaker:
Torsten Bell is MP for Swansea West and Minister for Pensions. Formerly Chief Executive of the Resolution Foundation and Director of Policy for the Labour Party, he also served at HM Treasury during the financial crisis. He is the author of Great Britain? How We Get Our Future Back.
Mansfieldmas - a celebration of creativity
Kate Clanchy MBE and James Brown
Mansfield’s sixth annual celebration of music, poetry and creativity in our joyful, multi-cultural, non- conformist College. Curated by our Director of Music James Brown and Poet in Residence Kate Clanchy MBE.
