Mansfield College Public Talks

Friday 26 April, 5:30 – 6:30pm

In ‘Cloistered’ Catherine Coldstream tells the story of the twelve years she spent as a contemplative nun in the 1990s, from the unconditional trust of her first steps as a novice to the community crisis that led to her running away. Set in rural Northumberland, the memoir paints a picture of life in a traditional Carmelite monastery as it approaches the third millennium, with all the beauty and mystery as well as the hothouse atmosphere that evokes. In her talk she will be discussing how and why she came to write her memoir, and of the challenges she encountered along the way.

About the speaker:

Catherine Coldstream was born in London, and grew up loving music, words, and books. After converting to Roman Catholicism, in her twenties, she entered the Carmelite Order. Since leaving her community she has studied at the Universities of Oxford, East Anglia, and London, and taught philosophy and ethics in schools.

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Friday 3 May, 5:30 – 6:30pm

In 1971, in America, rocked by an unpopular war, political scandal, and civil unrest, the political theorist, Hannah Arendt, wrote: ‘We are free to change the world and put something new in it.’ What did she mean, and what in her life and thought had led her to this startling statement?

Drawing on her new book Lyndsey Stonebridge will discuss how Hannah Arendt’s life as a woman, a Jew, and a refugee shaped her extraordinary thinking, looking at the world from outside conventional academic and political categories. What can we learn from her anti-totalitarian thinking today?

About the speaker:

Lyndsey Stonebridge FBA is Professor of Humanities and Human Rights at the University of Birmingham, UK. She is the multi-award winning author of We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt’s Lessons in Love and Disobedience (2024); Placeless People: Writing, Rights, and Refugees; The Judicial Imagination: Writing After Nuremberg, and the essay collection, Writing and Righting: Literature in the Age of Human Rights. She is a regular media commentator and broadcaster, and lives in London.

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Friday 10 May, 5:30 – 6:30pm

Lynne Segal, Professor Emerita at Birkbeck, University of London discusses her latest book, and argues that to combat pessimism we must place expanded notions of care, entwined interdependence and mutual vulnerability at the heart of our politics and democratic survival.

About the speaker: 

Lynne Segal is a writer and activist who arrived in London over fifty years ago, from Sydney Australia, just when the women’s liberation movement was kicking off. Immersed in that milieu, she was soon engaged in diverse campaigns for justice, equality, and social inclusion. These provided the motivations for her writing, moving on from contributions to alternative feminist and left magazines to publishing many books, beginning with Beyond the Fragments: Feminism and the Making of Socialism (co-authored with Sheila Rowbotham and Hilary Wainwright) and including her last few books, Making Trouble: Life & Politics; Out of Time: The Pleasures & Perils of Ageing; Radical Happiness: Moments of Collective Joy; The Care Manifesto (co-authored with the Care Collective), and her latest book Lean on Me: The Politics of Radical Care. For over two decades she has also been involved in several Jewish groups working for peace in Israel-Palestine, beginning with Jews for Justice for Palestinians.

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Friday 17 May 2024, 5:30 – 6:30pm

Murray Hunt, Director of the Modern Slavery and Human Rights Policy and Evidence Centre which has just moved to Oxford, discusses with Helen Mountfield the Government’s Rwanda policy, its impact on victims of modern slavery and human trafficking, and the need for evidence and legal expertise to inform human rights policy.

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The Hands Lecture

Friday 31 May, 5:30 – 6:30pm

Simon Woolley, Baron Woolley of Woodford, former CEO of Operation Black Vote, Member of the House of Lords, and Principal of Homerton College Cambridge, discusses with Mansfield Principal Helen Mountfield KC the purpose and value of elite higher education, and the values it should inculcate.

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The Milton Lecture

Friday 7 June, 5:30 – 6:30pm

The well-known author of Eve Bites Back challenges Milton’s view of ‘our first mother’. Using the work of Aemelia Lanyer, who wrote nearly 60 years before Milton, she explores what makes ‘adventrous Eve’ such an enticing and dangerous subject for women authors.

John Milton’s complicated, controversial portrayal of Eve in his Paradise Lost is not the only way of thinking about our ‘first mother’ – although it has been one of the most powerful and influential over the centuries. In this talk, Anna Beer will share another, radically different, take on Eve, from a woman writing nearly sixty years before Milton, Aemelia Lanyer.

About the speaker:

Anna Beer is the biographer of many major literary figures such as John Milton and William Shakespeare, but she is best-known for her feisty, feminist and accessible accounts of female creatives, including most recently Eve Bites Back: An Alternative History of English Literature. Her most influential book has been Sounds and Sweet Airs: The Forgotten Women of Classical Music (2016), which has generated numerous creative collaborations from film to live performance.

Anna has held various positions at the University of Oxford, including Director of the Creative Writing MSt, and remains a Visiting Fellow at Kellogg College.

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