Mansfield Public Talks

Dr Ryan Hanley explores the extraordinary life of charismatic British-Jamaican radical preacher, abolitionist and writer, Robert Wedderburn, asking what it can teach us about solidarity and resistance in today’s increasingly unstable world.

Born in 1762 in Jamaica, and raised by an Obeah-woman in the aftermath of the largest uprising of enslaved people in Jamaican history, Robert Wedderburn was a born rebel. When Britain teetered on the brink of revolution in the early nineteenth century, he rose through the ranks of London’s insurgent working-class underworld to become Britain’s most radical and charismatic anti-slavery activist, openly calling for the enslaved and exploited wage labourers to rise up together and claim their liberty.

Register here

Dr Ryan Hanley is Senior Lecturer in Modern British History at the University of Exeter and a 2024/5 Visiting Fellow in History at Mansfield College. His books include Beyond Slavery and Abolition: Black British Writing, c.1770-1830 (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and Robert Wedderburn: British Insurrectionary, Jamaican Abolitionist (Yale University Press, 2025).

Jemimah Steinfeld, Chief Executive of Index on Censorship, asks whose speech is most seriously under attack today, and considers whether the greatest threats to free speech in the United Kingdom come from beyond its shores.

Register here

Jemimah Steinfeld has worked at Index on Censorship since 2017, when she joined as deputy editor of the award-winning magazine. Prior to that she lived and worked in China. She is the author of the book Little Emperors and Material Girls: Sex and Youth in Modern China (Bloomsbury) and written for publications including The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, The Times and New Statesman.

The Jonathan Cooper Memorial Lecture

President Trump has launched his second term in office with an all-out attack on constitutional norms and civil rights, and attacks on minority groups. And he has sought to neutralize the sources of potential opposition, attacking the media, lawyers, universities, and the courts. David Cole, former National Legal Director of the ACLU asks if constitutional democracy survive? In what condition? And how America’s civil society institutions have responded.

Register here

David Cole is the Hon. George J. Mitchell Professor in Law and Public Policy at Georgetown Law, and former National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union. He writes regularly for the New York Review of Books and is legal affairs correspondent for The Nation. He is the author or editor of ten books, including No Equal Justice: Race and Class in the American Criminal Justice System, and Engines of Liberty: How Citizen Movements Succeed.

David has litigated many pathbreaking cases in the Supreme Court, including Texas v Johnson, which extended First Amendment protection to flag burning; Bostock v Clayton County, which established that Title VII bans discrimination on the basis of transgender status and sexual orientation; and National Rifle Association v Vullo, which held that government officials cannot use their regulatory authority to coerce private parties into blacklisting a disfavoured political organisation. He has received many awards for his civil liberties work.

The Milton Lecture

Richard Ovenden, Keeper of the Bodleian Library, discusses the long history of the deliberate destruction of knowledge, and the social importance of preserving it, looking through the lens of libraries and archives as institutions established by society to support the preservation of and access to knowledge.

He will look across 5000 years of history, and examine the current digital domains of knowledge and the ways in which control of society is increasingly exercised through control of knowledge in digital form.

Register here

Richard Ovenden OBE is the Keeper of the Bodleian Library, and Head of Gardens, Libraries and Museums for the University of Oxford, and acclaimed author of Burning the Books – a history of knowledge under attack  (John Murray).

Joint talk with the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights

Professor Elisa Morgera, UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change, discusses how to  to promote, protect and realise human rights while mitigating and adapting to climate change, in conversation with Helen Mountfield KC, Principal of Mansfield College.

Register here

Elisa Morgera is Distinguished Professor of Global Environmental Law at the University of Strathclyde, Adjunct Professor in International and European Union Environmental Law at the University of Eastern Finland, and currently UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change.

The College of Sanctuary Lecture

Acclaimed historian, mythographer, art critic and novelist Marina Warner reflects on the idea of home, and how we can imagine sanctuary today.

Register here

Professor Dame Marina Warner was educated in Egypt, Belgium and Britain, and is an acclaimed historian, mythographer, art critic, novelist and short story writer. She is known for her many non-fiction books relating to feminism and myth, has been a professor on the faculties of many universities, and has written for many publications, including The London Review of Books, the New Statesman, Sunday Times, and Vogue.

In 2015, having received the prestigious Holberg Prize, Warner decided to use the award to start the Stories in Transit project, a series of workshops bringing international artists, writers and other creatives together with young migrants living in Palermo, Sicily.