Inaugural Lectures are a landmark in academic life, held on the appointment of new professorships. The College of Arts and Law Inaugural Lectures series showcases the vibrant, challenging and diverse research of our academics.
2025
See below for Inaugurals coming up next year, more to be announced in the New Year!
Click on the links to go to the event webpage for further details, and register to attend.
2024
Highlights from our 2024 Inaugurals have included Lyndsey Stonebridge, on 'What do we mean when we talk about totalitarianism today? Lessons from Hannah Arendt', Adam Schembri, on 'How is Sign Language?' and Jonathan Boff's ‘Merrie England: Twenty-first Century Military History’.
Browse the diversity and depth of our archive of CAL Inaugurals below.
Proving, pleasing and persuading: why ancient rhetoric still matters
Our mushroom moment? The trans possibilities of a new history of communal life
Should we stop talking about The Crusades?
- Professor Adam Ledger
- Drama and Theatre Arts
- May 2024
Merrie England: 21st Century Military History
What do we mean when we talk about totalitarianism today?
Studying Medieval Animals: The Case Of The Panther
From "dualism" towards isolationism? Or why the Government keeps losing cases
'The Dangers of Time Travel'
Shakespeare, The Simpsons and Difficult Sixth Novels: Creative Writing After the Apocalypse
'Understanding crimes across and between events'
'Around the Year's Midnight'
'Habitual Ethics'
- Professor Sylvie Delacroix
- Birmingham Law School
- October 2022
‘Plays Inside Out’: Theatre, Marketing and Ballads
I was always not never doing the same thing again…
Bog bodies, wetland archaeology and peatland heritage
Ways and whys
- Professor Al Wilson
- Philosophy
- February 2022
Of wo/men and machines: an interdisciplinary take on language in use
Christian Theology in the Image of the Pentecost
Wounded Sentimentalism: The Literature of Uplift
The Future of Language Change
What is a 21st century city system for culture?
The Dead Sea Scrolls: Isolationism, Elites and Austerity
Clash of the Titans: Barth v Hegel
What I found there: Reading Classical Landscapes
Corpus linguistics and the challenges of close and distant reading
Agency without rationality
What the editor learns (and why it might matter)
Taking Time - a composer's reflection on how he works
Shakespeare and the Idea of National Theatre
A funny thing didn't happen on the way to the Forum
Selfish Women and Other Inconvenient Deviants
A World of World Heritage: Seduction, Dis-enchantment and New Intimacies
Freetown! Shakespeare and Social Flourishing
The Life and Afterlife of Early Music