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Humanities & Social Sciences inaugural lecture series

The Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences is relaunching its inaugural lecture series in 2024.

Timetable

A group of students in a lecture theatre
Come along to one of our inaugural lectures, showcasing research across our six departments.

Our recently appointed professors from across our six departments will be presenting the story of their route to professor, and the achievements that have brought them to this point. Between them, they will provide insight into the many different ways academics can demonstrate their contributions to academic life across the spectrum of research, teaching, and management and leadership activity.

Please note: Some details may change. Please check this page regularly for updates.

2024/25 lectures

We will update lecture titles when they're available; please check this page regularly as details may change.

September

Sugar, Dice, and all things Precise

  • Host: Professor Javier Gonzalez
  • Date: Wednesday, 18 September 2024
  • Time: 5.30 - 6.30 pm
  • Location: East Building, University of Bath

In this inaugural lecture, Javier will cover his career to date, including where he and his team have studied effects of nutrition and exercise on health and performance. This includes addressing questions such as:

  • How do we get fuel from our diet?
  • How do we burn different fuels during exercise?
  • How can we safely store fuels when they exceed our requirements?

The practical implications of these questions include, manipulating timing of meals around exercise to increase training adaptations, metabolic health effects of restricting sugar intakes and/or total carbohydrate intakes (e.g., ketogenic diets), and altering the types of sugars to improve health and athletic performance.

In addition to studying these questions with a scientific lens, Javier will draw upon some of his experiences from world-tour cycling and how science can be translated into practice.

Please book your free place via this form by 11 September.

Language, Education and Global Social Justice

  • Host: Professor Lizzi Milligan
  • Date: Wednesday 25 September 2024
  • Time: 5 - 6 pm
  • Location: Chancellors' Building, Room 1.12

Education is widely expected to play a significant role in enabling global social justice and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (such as reducing gender inequalities and addressing the environmental crisis). In this inaugural lecture, Lizzi will argue that for education to make such contributions, far more attention needs to be paid to the injustices that young people encounter through their schooling.

Lizzi will particularly focus on several recent research projects to show the ways that the language-of-learning-and-teaching exacerbates injustices for children and young people across the Global South. This will include discussing the ways that learning in English impacts girls’ educational experiences in Rwanda and the relationship between language and violence for young people in Uganda.

Conclusions will consider what may be needed to enable more just education systems, which in turn can strengthen education’s contribution to global social justice. Lizzi will also reflect on how different aspects of her career and life, alongside working collaboratively with colleagues from multiple countries, have shaped her commitment to global social justice in practice.

Please book your free place via this form by 18 September

October

Thinking about politics in the polycrisis

It can be easy to feel overwhelmed by politics. At a time when many of us want to grasp what is going on, it is getting harder to do so. Rather than becoming caught up in the swirl of day-to-day events, Peter Allen suggests that we instead return to the fundamentals and cultivate a set of tools and perspectives to help us interpret what many social scientists refer to as the ‘polycrisis’. In this lecture, which draws on his forthcoming book How to Think About Politics (Oxford University Press, 2025), Allen mixes contemporary political science research with real-life examples to focus on five ideas - power, representation, knowledge, interests, and possibility - that can help us understand current political events in a more productive way. Underlining the importance of these five fundamental political ideas, Allen makes the case that the scope of what politics is and what it can achieve is often greater than we are told.

Please book your free place via this form by 27 September

Grappling with the invisible: a tale into trailing the murky world of mafiosi, enablers and politicians

This lecture will reflect upon Felia's personal research journey into organised crime over the last 20 years. What, when, why, who and how questions will be asked to ponder and challenge the mainstream narratives, methodologies and analysis of organised crime that see it as 'a business opportunity' and not as the by-product of the interaction of structure and agency whereby state formation processes, neo-liberal policies and cultural hegemony can influence and shape behaviour.

Please book your free place via this form by 10 October

Title TBC

November

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December

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January 2025

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February 2025

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Enquiries

If you have any questions, please contact us.

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