The history of the future

The founders lecture 2016, by eminent historian and Honorary Fellow, Professor Sir Brian Harrison, FBA. The talk explores changing attitudes to the future and the reasons for them. This involves thinking about the changing relationship between past, present and future, and studyi ...  Afficher plus

The President of St John's, Professor Maggie Snowling introduces a discussion of leadership, participation and equality and how 2000 Women and an ongoing St John's Women’s Network might best support women to ever-greater success and fulfilment. Speakers: Rowena Ironside, Chair of ...  Afficher plus

Andrew Dilnot, chair of the UK Statistics Authority, tells the story of a transformation in personal life in Britain, through the numbers that capture change on the grand scale.He delves into the data for the big patterns and trends in history, finding new ways of thinking about ...  Afficher plus

"An air of finality pervades today’s world." That is the opening sentence of Jonathan White’s book In the Long Run: The Future as a Political Idea (Profile, 2024). What role, the book asks, has the idea of "the future" played in past politics? What role does it play in contempora ...  Afficher plus

As a general rule, people are very bad at predicting the future.

In this episode, we'll take a look at some predictions of the future from the past, looking at what people thought our "today" would be like, the times they got it wrong, the ti ...