The irony of the Gresham Society AGM being held underground in the basement meeting room of Barnard’s Inn Hall, ahead of the Provost’s lecture entitled, Galileo’s Journey to the Underworld: The Case for Interdisciplinary Thinking, was not wasted on me.
Under normal circumstances, The Gresham Society AGM is held in the early evening, followed by a dinner. Indeed, last time, I ended up being the “guest” performer…I mean, speaker:
Obviously the Society couldn’t go through all that again, so they opted for high tea and some very interesting updates from the new top team at Gresham College: Professor Robert Allison, Professor Sarah Hart & Richard Smith. All had very interesting things to day.
Bob Allison, in particular, teased us with a potted academic biography – basically he is a geographer with expertise in landfalls and stuff like that – so what is the connection between that discipline and his accidental occasional career as an expert witness in high-profile murder cases? We managed to winkle out some intriguing answers.
There should be at least one Gresham lecture in those fascinating topics, although Bob show’s some reluctance, as Chairman, to step up to the Gresham College podium himself.
Tim Connell thought he was doing a smart thing by peppering the AGM material with the updates from the college top team, making it impossible for me to do my usual thing of timing the AGM itself and challenging Tim’s assertion that he can get the main business done in less than 10 minutes.
That was a shame, because I suspect that on this occasion Tim really did keep the substantive business down to less than 10 minutes. Tim missed a sitter by dodging the time & motion aspect.
By the time we emerged from the Barnard’s In Hall underworld, after some high tea and further chat, the early evening was cool enough for some pleasant further chat in the courtyard before attending the Provost’s lecture. Most but not all of the attendees for the meeting stayed for the lecture, but some were unable to do so.
Professor Sarah Hart’s lecture was absolutely fascinating. If you missed it live, you can still of course see it. Indeed, if you visit the Gresham College website you can see lectures going back into the dim and distant past; even the couple that I gave “back in the day”.
Here is a link to Sarah Hart’s lecture on that site – Galileo’s Journey to the Underworld: The Case for Interdisciplinary Thinking – or you can watch the YouTube embed below:
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