Christ's College Webinar Series

Initially set up during Covid-19, the Christ's College Webinar Series has become an exciting forum to share the amazing work being done by Christ's alumni, students, staff, and Fellows with the College community around the world. 

Below are the past events that have been run, with video links to the recorded lectures. If you would like to watch the videos at full screen, you can do this via the University's streaming service.

Zoom Lecture by Dr Harriet Lyon - Fellow

"A Well-Worn Tale? Re-thinking the Dissolution of the Monasteries"

17 February 2022

Most people know the Dissolution of the Monasteries as a story about Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell's triumph over monastic corruption, or about the destruction of glorious medieval buildings. But there are many ways to tell this tale. This lecture explores some lesser-known dimensions of the Dissolution and, in doing so, seeks to position the fall of the monasteries as one of the most significant events of the sixteenth century.

Harriet is an historian of early modern Britain, with particular interests in the religious and cultural history of the English Reformation and in the field of historical memory. She holds a BA and an MPhil from the University of Cambridge and has recently completed a doctorate on ‘The afterlives of the dissolution of the monasteries, 1536-c.1700’. This research reconsiders the significance of Henry VIII’s suppression of 800 religious houses in England and Wales (1536-40) by asking how it was remembered by those who witnessed it and how this memory evolved in subsequent generations. Her next project will explore ideas of nostalgia and historical amnesia in the early modern period.

Webinar hosted by the

Christ's College Medical Alumni Association and Medical Society

"Christ's and Covid Part III"

25 November 2021

The speakers for this webinar were:

• Prof Julian Tang (m 1986), Professor of Respiratory Sciences at University of Leicester; To Mask or not to Mask – that is the question.
• Dr Lucy Jessop (m 1995), Director of Public Health at the National Immunisation Office, HSE, Ireland; Reflections on the successful rollout of the national immunisation programme in Ireland.
• Prof Paul Moss (m 1980), Deputy Head of the College of Medical and Dental Sciences and Professor of Haematology at the University of Birmingham; The immune response to SARS-CoV-2-lessons from the UK Immunology Consortium.
• Prof Theresa Marteau DBE FMedSci (Bye-Fellow), Director Behaviour and Health Research Unit University of Cambridge School of Clinical Medicine, Science in the time of COVID: Reflections on the event’s research programme.

Zoom Lecture by Dr Katie Dunkley - Fellow

"The Reef Network: how species interactions shape healthy reefs"

17 June 2021

Dr Katie Dunkley is the Charles Darwin & Galapagos Islands Research Fellow at Christ's College. She is a behavioural ecologist who aims to understand the dynamics of animal interactions and ecological networks. Her research focuses on behavioural interactions at a community level to explore how and why animals interact. She is particularly interested in understanding how changing ecological, environmental, and social conditions influence interaction outcomes. Katie is using the latest methods in machine learning to construct a reef-based ecological network that will render a conservation tool to study the structure and resilience of coral reef ecosystems. Following in Darwin’s footsteps, her work focuses on the interactions that occur on the Galápagos, in partnership with the Charles Darwin Foundation and the Galápagos Conservation Trust.

Webinar hosted by the Christ's College Medical Alumni Association and Medical Society

10 April 2021

This webinar was hosted by the College's Medical Alumni Association and Medical Society. The session was chaired by Dr Tony Jewell (Chair of CCMAA) and the speakers were:

Professor Paul Elliott (Head of Dept. of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Imperial College London) on "Assessing the pandemic – the REACT study"

Dr Maheshi Ramasamy (Consultant and Hon Senior Lecturer, Oxford University and PI Vaccine Group) on "Developing a novel vaccine"

Professor Sarah Walker OBE (Nuffield Dept. of Medicine, Oxford University and ONS) on "The epidemiology of C-19 infection and vaccine immunity"

Professor Dame Theresa Marteau (Christ's College Fellow and Director of the Behaviour and Health Research Unit)) on "Advising governments through SAGE" 

Webinar hosted by the Christ's College Medical Alumni Association and Medical Society

27 March 2021

This webinar explored how the pandemic has affected the College and the local area. Speakers were Dr Robert Hunt (Senior Tutor), Abe Tolley (third year medical student and President of the Medical Society), Isabelle Zou (clinical medical student), Dr Tony Jewell (Chair of the CCMAA, m. 1969), and Dr Mike Knapton (m. 1977). The Senior Tutor spoke about the impact on the College, while Abe and Isabelle talked about what it has been like to be a student during periods of lockdown. Tony presented an overview of the University's asymptomatic testing programme, while Mike looked at the impact on Addenbrooke's Hospital where he is a Non-Exec Director.

Zoom Lecture with Dr Alexandre Loktionov - Fellow of Christ's College

25 March 2021

"Apocalypse and rebirth: Ancient Egyptian pathways to a brighter future"

Dr Alex Loktionov is an Egyptologist, with a particular interest in ancient Egyptian justice of the 3rd and 2nd millennia BCE. Dr Loktionov is currently the Lady Wallis Budge Fellow at Christ’s College. He has a BA in Archaeology & Anthropology from Selwyn College, Cambridge, and an MPhil in Egyptology from St John's College, Cambridge. His PhD was undertaken at Robinson College, Cambridge, where he investigated methods of reconstructing the legal system of Ancient Egypt from the Old to the Middle Kingdom through a mixture of textual, ethnographic and wider theoretical approaches. He currently co-ordinates two University modules in Egyptian and Akkadian language, and is a Fellow of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. Before coming to Christ’s in October 2019, Alex was a Teaching Associate in Egyptian language at the Department of Archaeology, a bye-fellow of Selwyn College, and an AHRC Fellow at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

In this talk he uses a range of prophetic texts dating from the Egyptian Middle Kingdom (2055-1650BCE) all the way through to Roman Egypt (30BCE-641CE), to reconstruct the basic tenets of Egyptian apocalyptic thought, with a particular emphasis on the perceived cyclical nature of time and the notion of the ‘saviour King’. In so doing, we will discover how the idea of apocalypse could be used by unhappy Egyptians to understand the world around them, and ultimately generate new hope for a brighter future.

Zoom Lecture Event with Dr Julia Shvets - Fellow of Christ's College

25 February 2021

Human nature, overconfidence and rank in the workplace:

when psychology meets economics

Julia Shvets is a Senior Lecturer and Fellow in Economics at Christ’s College.  She analyses data on people's decisions to understand better what drives and influences human beings.  Some of Julia’s recent research was featured in a Freakonomics podcast episode ‘How to change your mind’.  

In this webinar, Julia talks about the marriage between economics and psychology, her research into behaviour of store managers, and what happens when you let a group of academic economists loose in a large firm. 

Zoom Lecture Event with the Rev Dr Bob Evans – Chaplain of Christ’s College

20 January 2021

How to survive a Viking invasion:

tips from continental Europe in the ninth century

Bob grew up in Surrey (although he also spent three years in Tokyo). He read history at Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he enjoyed playing an active role in the life of the chapel, and went on to train for ordination at Ridley Hall. He has been ordained in the Church of England since 2015.

His work focuses on the role of theology in society in western Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire, especially the relationship between God and history. 

Zoom Lecture Event with Dr Daniel Field – Fellow of Christ’s College

17 December 2020

BIRDWATCHING ON A COSMIC SCALE

Daniel is an evolutionary palaeobiologist at the University of Cambridge (Department of Earth Sciences), and a research associate in palaeontology at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. He is a Fellow of Christ’s College, and holds a UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellowship. Originally from Canada, he received a PhD from Yale in 2017.

Daniel uses the fossil records of birds to help answer questions about how, where, and when Earth’s modern avian diversity arose. Earlier this year, his research group revealed the oldest fossil evidence of modern birds yet discovered—a 66.7-million-year-old fossil bird, nicknamed “The Wonderchicken”, that provides unprecedented insight into the evolutionary origins of modern birds during the Age of Dinosaurs.

Zoom Lecture Event with Professor David Reynolds – Professor of International History, Emeritus, and Fellow of Christ’s College

15 October 2020

David reflects on some of the themes in his recent book ‘Island Stories: Britain and its History in the Age of Brexit’ (2019) which has recently appeared in paperback with a new subtitle ‘An Unconventional History of Britain’.

The book was written as a reflection on how history has been used in the Brexit debate but it is also an attempt to address four big themes from our past (Decline, Europe, Britain, Empire) and to do so with a broader brush than often used in academic histories. Think of it as ‘1066 and All That’ without the frivolity but not devoid of humour.

In this talk David looks particularly at the themes of ‘Europe’ and ‘Britain’ – how our relationship with the Continent has (and has not) changed over the last millennium and at how this has interconnected in vital ways with the making and shaking of the ‘United Kingdom’ that has been constructed across four polities on our two islands. This talk offers a distinctive view of where we have come from as the clock ticks down to 31 December.