Gresham College Lectures Gresham College

One of the crucial ideas in finance is that markets are efficient – that they fully reflect all available information. If so, what about market bubbles?Over the last year, people have been willing to pay exorbitant amounts for extremely odd assets such as Non-Fungible Tokens, meme stocks etc. Why do they do this?This lecture will explore some investors’ systematic behavioural biases, and how these can be used to predict returns.This lecture was recorded by Raghavendra Rau on 10th June 2024 at...

This lecture confronts the worldwide phenomenon of the persecution of suspected witches, now a serious, contemporary problem condemned by the UN in 2021.It will show what has been unusual about Europe in this global pattern, and why the notorious early modern witch hunts there commenced and ended.This lecture was recorded by Ronald Hutton on 5th June 2024 at Barnard's Inn Hall, LondonThe transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website:https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-no...

The idea of proof is fundamental to mathematics. We could argue that science consists of testable theories, and therefore that it is about what can be disproved, not what can be proved. In law, the test is “beyond reasonable doubt”.Famous conjectures in mathematics have been tested by computers for trillions of numbers – but we still call them conjectures.In this lecture we’ll talk about what mathematicians mean by proof, and I’ll show you some of my favourites.This lecture was recorded by Sa...

Socrates sought to test the expertise of everyone around him: the bombastic know-it-alls, the bashful youths, the confident generals, those (including the enslaved) with unsuspected mathematical competence, the workaday artisans. Aristotle later explored the ways in which expert claims can be made credible to popular judgement.This lecture considers the role of experts in contributing to public debate in a democracy, bringing Aristotle's work on rhetoric to bear on norms for expert communicat...

The final lecture in the series returns to the theme of how insight is derived from observations, considering the cosmic microwave background.This oldest light in the Universe, emitted just 400,000 years after the Big Bang, contains the seeds of the structures we see around us, and tells us about conditions at the Universe's beginning.It will also consider how measurements of the Universe's expansion, made using the CMB, are leading to unexpected results, creating tension in modern cosmology....

This lecture traces the history of race and disability law in the English education system. It examines the impact of discriminatory policies on Black children, children of colour, and disabled children, and how narratives around race and disability have changed.The lecture questions why inequality persists and explores possible solutions.This lecture was recorded by Leslie Thomas KC on 23rd May 2024 at Barnard's Inn Hall, LondonThe transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham Coll...