Summer 2011 | Public lectures and events | Audio and pdf

Contributor(s): Professor Viktor Mayer-Schönberger | Viktor Mayer-Schönberger is the Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford. His research focuses on the role of information in a networked economy. Earlier he spent ten years on the faculty of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Professor Mayer-Schönberger has published seven books, as well as over a hundred

Contributor(s): Michael Wolff | Rupert Murdoch is currently engulfed in one of the most extraordinary news stories of recent times, his own. Michael Wolff has long argued that a trend of decline for media moguls is inevitable. In this conversation, Wolff will reveal some of the unparalleled insights he has gleaned from his unprecedented access to Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation

Contributor(s): Michael Atherton | A conversation and Q&A with cricketer Michael Atherton, author of Glorious Summers and Discontents: Looking Back on the Ups and Downs from a Dramatic Decade. Renowned as a shrewd and resolute captain of England, Atherton moved effortlessly into the commentary box and Fleet Street, proving himself every bit as capable with the pen as with the bat.

Contributor(s): Professor David Miles | The banking sector across many developed economies proved fragile – insufficiently robust to prevent worries about the value of bank assets generating a banking crisis. This caused a downturn which in the UK has been severe and prolonged. But this has happened while inflation has stayed relatively high. This creates huge challenges in setti

Contributor(s): Professor George Selgin, Professor Lord Skidelsky, Duncan Weldon, Dr Jamie Whyte | How do we get out of the financial mess we're in? Two of the great economic thinkers of the 20th century had sharply contrasting views: John Maynard Keynes believed that governments could create sustainable employment and growth. His contemporary and rival Friedrich Hayek believed tha

Contributor(s): Douglas Edwards | Comparing Google to an ordinary business is like comparing a rocket to a wheelbarrow. No academic analysis or bystander's account can capture it. Now Douglas Edwards, Employee Number 59, takes us inside the Googleplex for the closest look you can get without an ID card, giving us a chance to fully experience the potent mix of camaraderie and compet

Contributor(s): Professor Tim Bale, Professor Patrick Dunleavy, Mark Harper MP, Rt Revd Lord Harries | The draft House of Lords Reform Bill, published in May 2011, sets out a number of proposals aiming to reform the UK's Upper House. These proposals - among them the reduction in number of members by more than half, making the House either 80 or 100 per cent elected, and limiting th

Contributor(s): Professor Lisa Anderson | This lecture is an examination of the recent uprisings in the Arab world, highlighting where they happened, where they succeeded and what they may mean for both the practice and the study of politics in the region. Lisa Anderson was appointed president of the American University in Cairo in January 2011. A specialist on politics in the Midd

Contributor(s): Sir Harry Kroto, Philippe Sands QC, Mike Phillips, Gita Sahgal, Barbara Roche | Migrants are often presented as a burden, but no one can deny the impact they have had on Britain's intellectual life. One quarter of Britain's Nobel Prize winners in science were born abroad. Our religious, philosophical and ideological heritage has often been inspired by migrants, from

Contributor(s): David Aaronovitch, Charlotte Harris, Martin Moore, Paul Staines | The furore around the phone-hacking scandal at the News of the World has raised wider issues around the regulation and standards of British newspaper journalism. Is it time for the authorities to get tough on the press or would that threaten freedom of expression and the media's ability to hold power