Public talks
Maps of home: Imagining sanctuary now
Time: 5:30 pm - 6:30 pm
Location: Sir Joseph Hotung Auditorium
13 Jun
Event
Date: 30/05/2025
Time: 17:30 - 18:30
Location: Sir Joseph Hotung Auditorium
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.
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).