Inaugural lectures

We host inaugural lectures throughout the academic year. These events are free, open to staff, students and the public and are the first lecture delivered by a newly-appointed professor at the 91¶¶Òõ.

Explore films of our previous inaugural lectures below for insights into a variety of thought-provoking research topics.

Find out more about upcoming lectures

Lectures in 2025

James Stone_inaugural lecture graphic

Professor James Stone

Mark Yeoman inaugural graphic

Professor Mark Yeoman

Naji Tabet_inaugural lecture graphic

Professor Naji Tabet

Wendy Macfarlane inaugural graphic

Professor Wendy Macfarlane

Simon Waddell_inaugural

Professor Simon Waddell 

Annebella Pollen inaugural graphic

Professor Annebella Pollen

Shahaduz Zaman inaugural graphic

Professor Shahaduz Zaman

Lectures in 2024

Graphic for inaugural lecture by Professor Melanie Flint on Stress and cancer: The hidden link

Professor Melanie Flint

Graphic for Tim Chevassut inaugural lecture - Bringing hope to patients with leukaemia with image of cells

Professor Timothy Chevassut

Tamar Jeffers McDonald inaugural poster

Professor Tamar Jeffers McDonald

Graphic for inaugural lecture for Peter Cragg entitled Perfect hosts for molecular guests

Professor Peter Cragg

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture by Professor Michael Okorie titled Doing drugs - through the lens of a clinical pharmacologist featuring a photograph of a red first aid bag and various medication

Professor Michael Okorie

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture for Professor Lesley Murray titled Moving precariously and showing a drawing of woman and dog walking through a city

Professor Lesley Murray

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture by Professor Heike Rabe - Improving neonatal care - Ancient ideas revealed and featuring a graphic of three women holding babies

Professor Heike Rabe

 Lectures in 2023

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: From despair to hope The past, present and future of HIV medicine featuring a red stethoscope arranged in the shape of a red ribbon denoting AIDS awareness

Professor Jaime Vera

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Democratic equality after climate change, featuring a mass of rubbish in the sea

Professor Mark Devenney

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Surgery, Time for an inclusive and sustainable future? featuring darkly lit image of surgeons in the operating theatre

Professor Mahmood Bhutta

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Touching a raw nerve. Controversies in the field of chronic pain, featuring nerve endings as white lines on a black background

Professor Andrew Dilley

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: HUMANS, HEALTH and H2OPE, Combatting waterborne disease in an age of phage, featuring two people using a rudimentary water pump

Professor James Ebdon

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Individualising chaos: Prescribing drugs in high stakes environments, featuring a hand pushing purple liquid out of a syringe

Professor Barbara Philips

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Identity: Its creation, growth and defence among gay and bisexual men, featuring the backs of two men's heads, one leaning on the other's shoulder, both wearing patterned shirts

Professor Rusi Jaspal

Lectures in 2022

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: The Silent Teacher: Lessons from dissection, featuring a pair of feet with a tag on the toe from a morgue

Professor Claire F. Smith

Lectures from 2019

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Constantly monitoring, featuring colourful cells on a yellow background

Professor Bhavik Patel

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Embracing the mess, featuring a man wearing glasses and a white coat, sat on a chair in an office reading a large print out with more paper strewn around the floor

Professor Robert Morgan

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: How psycho-oncology research helps patients with cancer, featuring a person using both their hands to hold another person's hand while resting on a table

Professor Valerie Jenkins

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Minerals, metals and microbes: What happens when water and geology meet, featuring a male figure standing at the bottom right of a waterfall

Professor Martin Smith

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Making dreams a reality. Eliminating hepatitis C virus and improving sympton burden in cirrhosis, featuring large cells in light blue on a dark background

Professor Sumita Verma

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Not aged by time, featuring a painting of a man in a white toga, holding a lamp and accompanied by three dogs

Professor Lizzy Ostler

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: How to reinvent primary care from the bottom up: engaging communities, featuring blurred image of older people sat in rows in a meeting setting

Professor Harm van Marwijk

Lectures from 2018

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: The ethics of research: Past, present and future? featuring a model of a head with two faces

Professor Kate Bullen

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Designing the Human/Machine Future, featuring a silvery robot holding upt a hand on a dark background

Professor Cyril Crua

Inaugural lecture Karen Cham

Professor Karen Cham

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Human-carnivore conflict and coexistence, featuring a close up of a fox's head

Professor Dawn Scott

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: The ethics of research: Past, present and future? featuring a model of a head with two faces

Professor Christopher Joyce

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: A journey of discovery, featuring a representation of a human figure emerging from DNA

Professor Colin Smith

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: A tail of (RNA) degradation; managing the OFF switch, featuring an insect as well as four images of cell structures

Professor Sarah Newbury

Lectures from 2017

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Back to 'The Matters': The need for the existential in caring, featuring a painting with an outline of a finger bent to the side and a hand reaching out towards it

Professor Kathleen Galvin

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Travel and tourismin the age of sustainability, featuring a view of a beach with wooden fence and shelter in the foreground

Professor Marina Novelli

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Communicating climate change in an age of un/certainty, featuring a road sign with four different directions signposted over an image of land

Professor Julie Doyle

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Contested historis and alternative facts: De-mythologising the early history of modern British Computing, featuring a black and white image of the topologist M.H.A. (Max) Newman

Professor David Anderson

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Protein shakes; why the mobility of biomolecules matters, featuring the title on a plain black background

Professor David Timson

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Person-centred healthcare: Measuring what matters most, featuring a black and white blurred drawing of a woman with mid-length wavy hair holding her head in one hand

Professor Paula Kersten

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Infection in modern medicine: Opportunists and opportunism, featuring a hand in surgical gloves holding a petri dish with more petri dishes to the right hand side on the table

Professor Martin Llewelyn

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: What's bugging you? From bags to bones, with towers in between, featuring a medical drip, a tower and bones

Professorial lecture by Professor Stephen Denyer

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Allergies: Facts and fictions, featuring seven images of common allergens, including grass and eggs

Professor Tara Dean

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: The secret lives of digital archives, featuring cogs and labels

Professor Janet Anderson

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Care, arhitecture, education and social responsibility, featuring a tent with chimney in a deserted area

Professor Robert Mull

Lectures from 2016

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences, featuring a person falling onto a bed

Professor Paul Sermon

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Myths and legends, Searching for the entrepreneurial unicorn, featuring a unicorn on a hillside

Professor Marc Cowling

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: More or less architecture, featuring a green coloured schematic of a side of a building

Professor André Viljoen

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: What's geography got to do with it? Sexualities, gender and place, featuring am outline of a cityscape with LGBTQ+ rainbow coloured outline

Professor Kath Browne

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: The terrors of judgementoring for early career teachers: Introducing the ONSIDE mentoring framework, featuring a judge with glasses pointing a finger and holding a gavel with the other hand, in front of a bookcase

Professor Andrew Hobson

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Empathy and risk, featuring a small figure of a person in the bottom left on a white background

Professor David Cotterrell

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: The emotional body, distress and pain in health and illness, featuring a person pushing inside a covering, looking as through they are stretching it in an attempt to escape

Professor Gillian Bendelow

Lectures from 2015

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Thermal Management in Micorgravity; heat control in a floating world, featuring a satelitte in space

Professor Marco Marengo

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: On words, signs and spaces, reflections on design history, featuring a wide staircase bending around off to the left in a white building

Professor Jeremy Aynsley

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Sport and tourism, creating a global dreamland, featuring a crowd of spectators on a hill

Professor John Nauright

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Human rights can save lives, but whose? featuring a horizon out to sea

Professor Marie-Bénédicte Dembour

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Contested histories and alternative facts: De-mythologising the early history of modern British Computing, featuring a black and white image of the topologist M.H.A. (Max) Newman

Professor Francis Hodgson

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: A new method for modelling liquidity in light of the financial crisis, featuring a bank note torn into the shape of a spiking graph

Professor Andros Gregoriou

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: More years of good health and well being. Mission impossible? featuring a road with arrows in a direct dead ahead towards the sun

Professor Jörg Huber

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Breast cancer treatment - whose choice? featuring surgeons in a well-lit operating theatre

Professor Malcolm Reed

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: A dialogue with the future Design thinking and the twenty-first century imagination, featuring the title overlaid on a white crumpled material

Professor Peter Lloyd

Lectures from 2014

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Meaningful stuff. Designing longer-lasting material experiences, featuring a toaster

Professor Jonathan Chapman

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Dementia: Reasons to be cheerful, featuring a cloud-filled sky

Professor Sube Banerjee

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Podoconiosis. A 'poster child' for global health?, featuring a young child in the foreground

Professor Gail Davey

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Angiotensin, Alzheimer's and alcohol. An alliterative adventure, featuring a bottle with Brain Ace on the label and a snake curled around him

Professor Paul Gard

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Curating the past, featuring a paper lantern with Queen Elizabeth image on it

Professor Catherine Moriarty

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled:Back the future, featuring a futuristic cityscape

Professor Tim Brady

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: The invitation of photography, featuring a black and white photograph of a man in a hat using a camera on a tripod

Professor Darren Newbury

Lectures from 2013

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Going for a spin, featuring a colourful representation of an MRI scan

Professor Mara Cercignani

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Where angels fear to tread, featuring a statue of an angel

Professor Shirley Bach

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Wired reality: Living in a networked world, featuring a robot head

Professor Gillian Youngs

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Drawing uncertainty

Professor Nat Chard

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: At the heart of the matter: a calculated risk?, featuring graphic with bubbles and orange circles

Professor Gordon Ferns

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Afterwards: Legacies of war in culture, memory and experience, featuring three children in the foreground of a wall

Professor Graham Dawson

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Zombies and pirates: Practising design culture in the 21st century, featuring shipping containers and bins

Professor Guy Julier

Lectures from 2012

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Electronic architectures, featuring a vehicle

Professor Elias Stipidis

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: People, places and pathogens, featuring a sky with a small amount of cloud

Professor Huw Taylor

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Untangling neurodegeneration, featuring a model of a head, with a colourful brain pictured

Professor Nigel Leigh

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Logos & Mneme, featuring the top of a model of a head with a colourful explosion depicted

Professor Miltos Petridis

Lectures from 2011

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Welfare and wellbeing in an age of responsibility, featuring an abstract paintin in grey, white and black

Professor David Taylor

Man dressed in brown shirt and grey trousers standing in front of a bookcase

Professor Bob Brecher

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled:Personalised treatment of breast cancer: Is there a realistic hope? Painting of a woman's face with a stopwatch and plant

Professor Peter Schmid

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Like the deserts miss the rain, featuring a water hole with trees fringed around

Professor David Nash

Graphic publicising inaugural lecture titled: Secret world - biomaterials: From tissue replacement to tissue regeneration, featuring an abstract image with different colours

Professor Matteo Santin

Steven Miles_ inaugural lecture

Professor Steven Miles