Information for Staff
Lunch Hour Lectures
Lunch Hour Lectures are an opportunity for anyone to sample the exceptional research work taking place at UCL,
in bite sized chunks. Speakers are drawn from across the university, and lectures frequently showcase new research
and recent academic publications.
Lunch Hour Lectures take place 13:10 - 13:55, are free, and are open to anyone on a first-come, first-served basis.
All lectures are streamed live online and can be watched by clicking on the
Watch Lunch Hour Lectures online link above. Lectures can also
be watched from one week after the event on our YouTube channel where all lectures will be subtitled.
Tuesday 15 November 2016
Lunch Hour Lectures - The 2016 US presidential election: a post-mortem
13:15 — 13:55
Dr Nick Witham will provide an accessible and insightful overview of the historic and controversial 2016 US presidential election campaign. This talk will include a review of the Donald…
Thursday 17 November 2016
Lunch Hour Lectures - How Putin reacts: ideology, power, wealth and security in Russian foreign policy
13:15 — 13:55
Putin aims today above all to maintain and strengthen his position in power and protect the wealth of himself and his allies. His foreign policy is essentially reactive, responding…
Tuesday 22 November 2016
Lunch Hour Lectures - Cancer evolution through space and time
13:15 — 13:55
While it has long been appreciated that no two tumours are identical, recent work suggests that even two regions of the same tumour can be remarkably distinct, which likely contributes…
Thursday 24 November 2016
Lunch Hour Lectures - Imagine a world with no slums
13:15 — 13:55
How can we make our cities slum free? Dr Priti Parikh will discuss innovative approaches where engineering solutions are used to improve the living conditions of slums dwellers and…
Tuesday 29 November 2016
Lunch Hour Lectures - Are we waking up the sleeping Arctic Ocean?
13:15 — 13:55
Temperatures in the Arctic are rising at more than twice the global average rate. As the sea ice cover retreats, there is a radiation imbalance and a modification of the Arctic Ocean…
Thursday 1 December 2016
Lunch Hour Lectures - Migrants and healthcare: educating tomorrow’s doctors for a global challenge
13:15 — 13:55
The relationship between migrants and the NHS is long, complex and, as recently seen, highly political. This lecture considers the role of doctors in the care of vulnerable migrants,…
Tuesday 6 December 2016
Lunch Hour Lectures - Game of clones: why it matters if our friends are the same as us
13:15 — 13:55
Do you find yourself making friends with people like you? Dr Katherine Woolf draws on her sometimes controversial research into doctors’ and medical students’ learning and performance…
Thursday 8 December 2016
Lunch Hour Lectures - The end of mass incarceration?: The moral purpose of prison
13:15 — 13:55
The United Kingdom has doubled its prison population, twice, in the past 65 years. By outlining a philosophical account of the moral purpose of prisons, Dr. Jeffrey Howard will explain…
Tuesday 17 January 2017
Lunch Hour Lectures - the neurobiology of beauty
13:15 — 13:55
The experience of beauty, whether derived from perceptual sources, as in visual or musical beauty, or cognitive ones, as in mathematical beauty, correlates with activity in the same…
Thursday 19 January 2017
Lunch Hour Lectures - Cosmic archaeology
13:15 — 13:55
Telescopes may be the closest thing we have to time machines: the farther in space we look, the earlier in the history of the Universe we get to see. Dr Amelie Saintonge shows how by…
Tuesday 24 January 2017
Lunch Hour Lectures - Following birds along the pathway to invasion
13:15 — 13:55
Biological invasions by aliens (in this context, species transported by human actions to areas in which they do not naturally occur) represent one of the primary ways in which people…
Thursday 26 January 2017
Lunch Hour Lectures - Tackling the challenge of elder abuse in dementia cases
13:15 — 13:55
Elder abuse may be defined as a single or repeated act or lack of appropriate action occurring within any relationship where there is an expectation of trust, which causes harm or distress…
Tuesday 31 January 2017
Lunch Hour Lectures - The global reach of EU law
13:15 — 13:55
Given the global reach of EU law, it may be harder for the UK to 'take back control' than those who favoured withdrawal from the EU might have supposed. This lecture will explore the…
Thursday 2 February 2017
Lunch Hour Lectures - Planetary economics: getting to a stable climate with a healthy economy
13:15 — 13:55
Why has it been so hard to get to grips with climate change? This scientific, but also deeply moral problem challenges our thinking: it is psychologically distant, yet caused by local…
Tuesday 7 February 2017
Lunch Hour Lectures - Can we ever have a crime free world?
13:15 — 13:55
Professor Kate Bowers will discuss how crime rates have dropped over the past few decades, and what we need to do to keep them down. Some research on crime control challenges our assumptions…
Thursday 9 February 2017
Lunch Hour Lectures - “The youth of our middling rich”: how egalitarian were UCL’s founders?
13:15 — 13:55
When the plan for a university for London was outlined by the poet Thomas Campbell in 1825 in a letter to The Times, the establishment unleashed a storm of controversy. We are proud…
Tuesday 21 February 2017
Lunch Hour Lectures - The Battle Within: mobilising our immune system to fight cancer
13:15 — 13:55
For more than 100 years scientist have attempted to use the immune system to control cancer. In the last 5 years, a number of high profiles clinical trials have finally demonstrated…
Thursday 23 February 2017
Lunch Hour Lectures - Cooling babies to protect the brain: one of the success stories for baby care
13:15 — 13:55
Cooling babies deprived of oxygen at birth improves their chances of growing up without disabilities such as cerebral palsy, blindness and epilepsy. Professor Nicola Robertson of UCL’s…
Tuesday 28 February 2017
Lunch Hour Lectures - Knowledge and law: exploring landscape in the context of wind energy
13:15 — 13:55
Landscape is not just physical, but also filled with symbolic, social and cultural attachments. The impacts of large wind energy projects on landscapes can be enormously contentious…
Thursday 2 March 2017
Lunch Hour Lectures - Adventures in the 7th dimension
13:15 — 13:55
In 7 dimensions there exist special shapes that may help us unlock the mysteries of the universe. Looking for this unique geometry is challenging, but nature holds a possible solution…
Tuesday 7 March 2017
Lunch Hour Lectures - Women against pit closures: women in the miners’ strike of 1984–5
13:15 — 13:55
The miners’ strike of 1984–5 was able to continue for as long as it did because of a support network run by women in mining communities. They fundraised, fed miners and their families,…
Thursday 9 March 2017
Lunch Hour Lectures - Swearing as a second language: should we teach 'bad language' to language learners?
13:15 — 13:55
The language learner is often well-versed in polite phrases, but lacks the necessary guidance on how to be rude. Swearing can shock and offend, yet this powerful form is largely ignored…
Tuesday 14 March 2017
Lunch Hour Lectures - Heads you win: tails you lose – the leadership gamble
13:15 — 13:55
In a volatile and uncertain world where everybody and everything is on the move, Kathryn Riley, Professor of Urban Education, asks, are we getting the leaders we need to head up our…
Thursday 16 March 2017
Lunch Hour Lectures - How can 21st century research on autism empower London’s teachers?
13:15 — 13:55
The wealth of new knowledge we are developing on autism tends to stay within the lab. Yet teachers are the most important people working with children who have autism. Dr Mintz will…
The secret life of objects: volunteer lunchtime talk
13:15 — 13:45
We have more than 80,000 objects at the UCL Petrie Museum. Discover more about them through a series of short talks given by our wonderful volunteers. The stories that you'll hear will…
