2020 - 2021 Programme

Due to the pandemic, lectures were only available by Zoom during this season, kicking off with two "informal" lectures to ensure members of the Society were able to use the online format.

Messages under the Sea

7 December, 2020 @ 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

A story of British entrepreneurialism in the Victorian era, the first transatlantic telegraph cable, and the connecting of the world.

Awaiting the Reply by Robert Charles Dudley, ca. 1866

 

This is the first of our two “informal lectures”, which we are trialling this season. These lectures are given by members of the Society and will also test the use of the online format.

Aeneas, in the 4th century BC, may have been the first to use a telegraph to send a message. Claude Chappe may have developed semaphore signalling stations criss-crossing France at the end of the 18th century. But in the mid-19th century, cable telegraphy took off and connected Queen Victoria to the President of the USA, and England to the far reaches of the British Empire. From gutta percha at the Society of the Arts to the development of the internet, Prof. John Fothergill, a past president of the Society, tells the story.

The Unfashionable Jane Austen

11 January, 2021 @ 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

A talk by Prof. Nigel Wood, a past president of the Leicester Lit&Phil, and a Professor of Literature at Loughborough University.

Jane Austen

By now, Jane Austen has been claimed by costume drama adaptations, but at the time she was an author acutely aware of  contentious issues . At the risk of denying her the glamour and romance of our own image of her work, this talk aims to uncover the values she held dear and that her contemporaries noted and either contested or applauded.

This is the second of our two “informal lectures”, which we are trialling this season. These lectures are given by members of the Society and will also test the use of the online format.

The President’s Address: “The Rise and Fall of an Industry – Hosiery in Leicestershire”

25 January, 2021 @ 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

To be given by the incoming President, Dr. Bridget Towle, CBE

Dr Bridget Towle, CBE

The lecture will cover 400 years of the history of the hosiery and knitwear industry. It will try to explain why the centre of the English industry was based in Leicester and Leicestershire. Three themes continue through time, the impact of fashion, the employment of women and payment by piece rates. Also, over the years, manufacturers usually were dominated by the wholesalers or retailers who placed orders. The majority of the lecture will concentrate on the 20th century detailing the growth and prosperity of the industry, driven by fashion. It will finish with the swift collapse of English hosiery and knitwear production in the 1990s

Storytelling with a social purpose, or how we are trying to change the world, one story at a time

8 February, 2021 @ 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

Mike Wilson PhD FRSA FHEA
Professor of Drama, Head of Creative Arts and Director of the Storytelling Academy Loughborough University

Mike Wilson

We tell stories not only as a way of conveying experiences, thoughts, feelings and information to each other, but also as a way of understanding those things. This talk explores how storytelling, in its many forms, can unlock new ways of knowing and thinking about the world and, when combined with other forms of knowledge can help us address some of the major challenges facing society today. Drawing on projects from India, Kenya and Colombia, as well Europe, the talk will propose that stories, far from being frivolous and transient items of cultural currency, are the very things that have the potential to change the world.

Micrographia Updated: From Materials to Richard III

22 February, 2021 @ 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

Professor Sarah Hainsworth, OBE, Pro Vice Chancellor and Executive Dean for the School of Engineering and Applied Science, Aston University will give the Lit and Phil on line lecture, Micrographia Updated; From Materials to Richard lll, on Monday 22nd February at 7.30pm.

In 2013 Prof. Hainsworth’s expertise helped establish the manner of King Richard III’s death by analysing wound marks found on his skeleton.

The lecture is sponsored by the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Robert Hooke was a curator of experiments at the Royal Society, the Gresham Professor of Geometry, the Surveyor of the City of London after the Great Fire, and an important architect who was considered to be “England’s Leonardo”.  Hooke’s book Micrographia: or Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses was published in 1665 by the Royal Society.  It was the first book to illustrate insects and plants as seen through microscopes, and also the first scientific best-seller, which inspired wide public interest in microscopy.  Additionally, Hooke was the first to use the biological term “cell” in that work.  Since 1665, microscopes have evolved from simply using visible light and glass lenses, with the consequent limitations on resolution and depth of focus, through to electron microscopes capable of very high magnifications, to X-ray tomography systems that now allow us to look at structures in 3D.   This talk will look at how microscopy with light, electrons, and X-rays has evolved since Hooke, and will illustrate how the techniques can be applied to understanding advanced materials.  It will also show how the use of micro X-ray computed tomography was used to analyse the remains of Richard III, another example of where microscopy has gained wide-scale public interest.

Why the 2020s Could and Should Be the Decade for Nature’s Recovery

1 March, 2021 @ 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm

The Peach Lecture organised jointly with the University of Leicester.

Craig Bennett, Chief Executive of The Wildlife Trusts
Honorary Professor of Sustainability and Innovation Alliance Manchester Business School and Policy Fellow University of Cambridge

Members of the Society and visitors: to access this lecture, please go to the University of Leicester’s EventBrite page at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-peach-lecture-registration-132516932713

Note the start time of 5:30 p.m. for this lecture.

Craig Bennett

Synopsis

We are facing ‘a climate and ecological emergency’ – a phrase we’ve heard many times over the last few years, from scientists and school children alike. And year on year, we’re seeing growing evidence of the disruption it’s causing, from extreme weather events to the decline of ecosystem services such as pollination, water availability and soil fertility.

In the tropics, deforestation, expansion of agriculture, intensive farming, mining and infrastructure development, as well as the exploitation of and trade in wild species have created a ‘perfect storm’ for the spillover of diseases from wildlife to people, resulting in pandemics such as Ebola, SARS and – most probably – COVID19. It’s been said that, for people in the West, Covid19 may prove to be their first personal encounter with the biodiversity crisis.

It’s no longer good enough to just think about trying to slow the loss of the natural world – and protect what we’ve got left. We need to stop and reverse the declines, and put nature in recovery – at scale and at pace; to stabilise the climate, and protect the health and wellbeing of billions of people.

This needs to happen globally, of course, but as the country where the industrial revolution started, and one of the most nature depleted countries anywhere in the world, there is a particular moral responsibility and resonance for the UK to take the lead in demonstrating how a rich, industrialised country can bring nature back.

In this lecture, Craig Bennett will outline why this needs to happen, but also set out a vision for putting 30 percent of our land and sea in the UK into nature’s recovery. What might this look like, how could it happen, and what the benefits would be for our economy, health and wellbeing, and ultimately our human progress; at the local, UK and global scale?

Follow Craig on Twitter: @craigbennett3

Nature Recovery Network

8 March, 2021 @ 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

Mr John Clarkson, Head of Conservation, Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust

(This is a change to the orginal programme.)

The species with which we share the planet are under pressure and the evidence is suggesting that even in Leicestershire and Rutland there are many which will not have safe ecological space to occupy by 2030/40/50 unless we radically rebuild the environment in time. In this talk I will explore how we might stitch together a network to enable nature to recover.

Joint Lecture with the Natural History Section

Do the Arts Have Any Role in Education?

22 March, 2021 @ 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

The F.L. Attenborough Lecture
to be given by
The Hon. Michael Attenborough CBE.  D Litt.

The inaugural annual F.L. Attenborough Lecture named after Frederick Levi Attenborough (1887-1973) President of the Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society 1939-1946.

The Hon. Michael Attenborough CBE.  D Litt.

 Young people are advised by ministers to avoid opting for artistic subjects, as they supposedly limit employment possibilities. Which raises two vital questions. Is this true? And is the sole purpose of Education to establish and increase a graduate’s employability?

Ethiopia from top to bottom: Using seismology to understand how tectonic plates rise, split, then fall

12 April, 2021 @ 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

by Dr Ian Bastow BSc MRes PhD
Senior Lecturer in Seismology Imperial College London

Joint Lecture with the Geology Section

Dr Ian Bastow

To an Earth Scientist, Ethiopia is a truly remarkable place. Its highest mountain, Ras Dashen, stands 4550m tall; its lowest point, the Danakil Depression, lies some 150km below sea level. From space, the immaculate jigsaw fit of the Somalian, Arabian and Nubian tectonic plates is un-mistakable. On closer inspection, active volcanoes and earthquakes provide daily reminders that this is a region that remains in a state of geological development. Active geological processes pose significant hazard, but also a remarkable opportunity for scientists curious about how tectonic plates break in two. In this talk, I will discuss how decades of work by seismologists like me have helped us understand how Ethiopia has come to be so topographically and geologically interesting. Our journey will take us from the core-mantle boundary, some 2891km below our feet, to the surface. I will also discuss how the lessons we have learned from the Horn of Africa have helped shed new light on how continents have broken apart through geological time.

Ian Bastow is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Engineering, Department of Earth Science & Engineering, Imperial College London.

Roses, Leeks, and Water Lilies: Impressionist Painters in the Garden

26 April, 2021 @ 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

Professor Clare Willsdon, Professor of the History of Western Art, University of Glasgow

Monet’s Garden at Giverny and Professor Clare Willsdon

From Monet’s roses and waterlilies at Giverny to the peasant vegetable gardens painted by Pissarro, horticulture was central to the art of the Impressionists. Renoir preferred his gardens semi-wild; Caillebotte grew the latest modern dahlias, and Morisot portrayed her daughter playing amidst towering hollyhocks. In this talk, we consider why gardens were so inspiring to the Impressionists, and how their ‘painting and planting’ relates to developments in nineteenth-century horticulture, education, and what we now call ecology.

(This was a change to the original programme.)