Mansfield Public Talks
Mansfield hosts a lively and engaging series of free Public Talks by leading figures from a variety of fields, convened by our Principal Helen Mountfield KC, every Friday from 5.30pm during Oxford University term time.
Mansfield Public Talks are open to anyone interested in ideas and debate, and are completely free of charge.
Recordings of past Mansfield Public Talks can be found on Mansfield's YouTube channel, here.
To be kept informed about future talks, please email communications@mansfield.ox.ac.uk and ask to be added to our Public Talks mailing list.
Mansfield's Public Talks are always free to attend, but if you would like to support us with the costs of hosting and publicising them, we are very grateful for voluntary donations. Please click here to donate.
Forthcoming public talks in Michaelmas Term 2023:
Friday 20 October 2023, 5:30pm
Our NHS: A history of Britain's best-loved institution
With Andrew Seaton
Today, the National Health Service (NHS) frequently appears at the top of opinion polls as the thing that makes people 'most proud to be British'. But why did this part of the welfare state attract this acclaim? Drawing on his new book, the historian Andrew Seaton reveals the surprising story of the NHS's past, encompassing initial public misgivings, repeated crises and political contests, and its popular celebration through occasions like anniversaries in the twenty-first century.
About the speaker: Andrew Seaton is a historian of modern Britain. He writes about political history, social history, and the history of medicine and the environment. Andrew gained his undergraduate degree in history at Mansfield College, an MA at King's College London, and his doctorate at New York University. He has recently published his first book, which has the same title of this talk. Committed to bringing his research to a public audience, Andrew has appeared in the Financial Times, Guardian, New York Times and radio programmes such as Radio 4's 'Start the Week'.
Booking: click here
Friday 27 October, 5:30pm
Pardons for Witches: why historical redress matters
With Claire Mitchell KC and Zoe Venditozzi
On International Women’s Day 2020, barrister Claire Mitchell KC and writer Zoe Venditozzi launched ‘Witches of Scotland’. Pardons for Witches was a campaign for legal pardons and historic justice for the 4000 people, mostly women, who were tortured, convicted of witchcraft and executed between 1563 and 1736. Claire and Zoe discuss their campaign, the legal pardon and apology received in March 2021, and why historical redress is relevant to the treatment of women worldwide today.
Booking: click here
Friday 3 November 2023, 5:30pm
Let the Light Pour In
With Lemn Sissay OBE FRSL
Mansfield Honorary Fellow, and acclaimed author of “My Name Is Why” reads a selection of poems from his new book 'Let the Light Pour In'.
About the speaker:
Lemn Sissay is a writer, poet, playwright, memoirist, and broadcaster, and the newest Honorary Fellow of Mansfield College. He was awarded The Pen Pinter Prize in 2019. His memoir ‘My Name Is Why’ is a number one Sunday Times bestseller and won the Indie Book Awards non-fiction prize in 2021, and his children’s book ‘Don’t Ask The Dragon’ was released to acclaim in 2022. He will be reading from and discussing his latest book, a collection of poetry called Let the Light Pour In. Click here to find more about Lemn.
Booking: click here
Friday 10 November 2023, 5:30pm
Solz, Berlin and Brussels: Germany's 20th century in three lives.
The Adam Von Trott Lecture with Professor Kiran Klaus Patel
This is Mansfield’s annual lecture to commemorate Adam von Trott, whose studies at Mansfield informed his role in the plot against Hitler. Taking Adam von Trott and two of his close acquaintances as a starting point, Professor Patel, director of Project House Europe at Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, discusses some of the key problems in the history of 20th century Germany. How to deal with dictatorship? What difference can an individual make? How to build a better future—for Germany, but also for Europe? These questions have remained crucially important, and the lecture will discuss history’s lessons for today.
About the speaker: Professor Kiran Klaus Patel is professor of modern history at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich where he also serves as the director of Project House Europe, LMU’s centre for interdisciplinary research on the history of contemporary Europe. Before joining LMU, he has been a professor at Maastricht University, at the European University Institute in Florence, and assistant professor at Humbolt University in Berlin. His latest publication is Project Europe: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020) (German version: Beck, 2018).
Booking: click here
Friday 17 November 2023, 5:30pm
The 4th Celebration of Colleges of Sanctuary: ‘Creating a Community’
With Professor Alex Betts, Kate Clanchy MBE, Erick Moreno Superlano and Shukria Rezaei
In this annual Colleges of Sanctuary event, we celebrate Oxford University becoming a University of Sanctuary.
Speakers include Sanctuary Scholars and Kate Clanchy of Sanctuary Poetry, discuss with Professor Alex Betts, head of the Refugee Studies Centre, how to reframe narratives around refugees and create a community that celebrates inclusion.
Further info and booking: click here
Friday 24 November 2023, 5:30pm
Debating the difficult: the human right to receive and impart information and ideas in the 21st century
With Professor Kate O’Regan
This talk is held in conjunction with the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights.
Professor O’Regan is Director of the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, a former judge of the Constitutional Court of South Africa and an acclaimed human rights specialist. Here she takes a human rights approach to the limits of free speech, what this means for minority rights, and how this should play out in a university setting.
About the speaker: Professor Kate O'Regan is the inaugural Director of the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights and a former judge of the South African Constitutional Court (1994 – 2009). In the mid-1980s she practiced as a lawyer in Johannesburg in a variety of fields, but especially labour law and land law, representing many of the emerging trade unions and their members, as well as communities threatened with eviction under apartheid land laws. In 1990, she joined the Faculty of Law at the University of Cape town where she taught a range of courses including race, gender and the law, labour law, civil procedure and evidence. Since her fifteen-year term at the South African Constitutional Court ended in 2009, she has amongst other things served as an ad hoc judge of the Supreme Court of Namibia (from 2010 - 2016), Chairperson of the Khayelitsha Commission of Inquiry into allegations of police inefficiency and a breakdown in trust between the police and the community of Khayelitsha (2012 – 2014), and as a member of the boards or advisory bodies of many NGOs working in the fields of democracy, the rule of law, human rights and equality.
Booking: click here
Saturday 25 November 2023, 5:30pm
Mansfieldmas
Mansfield’s fifth annual celebration of music, poetry and creativity in our joyful, multi-cultural, non-conformist College, curated by our Director of Music and Sanctuary Poet.
All welcome!
Booking: click here
Friday 1 December 2023, 5:30pm
“Archives of Feeling” revisited: the AIDS crisis in Britain c.1987
With Professor Matt Cook
In this talk to mark World AIDS Day 2023, Matt looks at a key turning point in the history of the AIDS crisis in Britain. Drawing chiefly on the astonishing testimonies of around 600 largely straight men and women, he explores the feelings at stake in the epidemic, how they related to press and politics, how they shaped everyday lives, and how they played out for those dealing most directly with the escalating crisis. He argues that such ‘archives of feeling’ are fundamental to our understanding of social and intimate lives – past and present. And further, that returning to such moments of emotional complexity might allow us to see more clearly the dangers which threaten us now.
About the speaker: Matt Cook joins Oxford University in October 2023 as the inaugural Jonathan Cooper Professor of the History of Sexuality. He works on queer history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and is the author of London and the Culture of Homosexuality (2003), Queer Domesticities (2014) and Queer Beyond London (2022). He has worked extensively with the museums, archives and heritage sectors on issues of LGBTQ representation and is an editor of History Workshop Journal. He was previously Professor of Modern History and Director of the Raphael Samuel History Centre at Birkbeck, University of London.
Booking: click here