Vice-Chancellor’s Distinguished Lecture Series
Inaugurated in early 2011, the University of Warwick's Distinguished Lecture Series brings public speakers of the highest calibre from the worlds of academia, business, the arts and civil society to our campus to share their thoughts and ideas.
The purpose of the series is to provoke discussion and debate about a range of topics and subjects in the past have included energy sustainability and the value of wealth. The agenda is kept deliberately broad and the lectures are intended to be accessible to a general audience. We encourage attendance from across the wider University community and hope you will join us at the lectures.
If you would like to suggest a speaker for the series, please get in touch the Events Team at events at warwick dot ac dot uk
Upcoming lecture
Professor Mark Smith
Carolina Distinguished Professor of History and Director of Research for the Institute
for Southern Studies, University of South Carolina
Cascade Diplomacy: A Sensory History of Environmental Disasters and 19th Century US Foreign Policy
Wednesday 14 November, 6pm, International Digital Laboratory (IDL), Central Campus
Mark Smith is Carolina Distinguished Professor of History and Director of Research for the Institute for Southern Studies at the University of South Carolina. A winner of USC’s Michael Mungo Graduate Teaching Award, he has directed sixteen PhD dissertations.
He is author or editor of a dozen books, including Mastered by the Clock: Time, Slavery, and Freedom in the American South (winner of the Organization of American Historians' 1997 Avery O. Craven Award); Debating Slavery: Economy and Society in the Antebellum American South; Listening to Nineteenth-Century America; How Race Is Made: Slavery, Segregation, and the Senses (a Choice Outstanding Academic Title); and Sensing the Past: Seeing, Hearing, Smelling, Tasting, and Touching in History. His most recent book, published in 2014, is The Smell of Battle, The Taste of Siege: A Sensory History of the American Civil War. It was named a Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2014. His work has been translated into Chinese, Korean, Danish, German, and Spanish.
His edited books include The Old South, Hearing History: A Reader, Stono: Documenting and Interpreting a Southern Slave Revolt, Writing the American Past, and, with Robert Paquette, The Oxford Handbook of Slavery in the Americas. He has published articles in the American Historical Review, Past and Present, the William and Mary Quarterly, the Journal of Southern History, the Journal of Social History, The Chronicle Review, and the Journal of American History.
Recognized as one of the foremost scholars of the American South and as a pioneer in the history of the senses, he is also a noted scholar of the history of natural disasters. He is the author of Camille, 1969: Histories of a Hurricane and was co-author of Hurricane Katrina and the Forgotten Coast of Mississippi (with Susan Cutter, Christopher T. Emrich, Jerry T. Mitchell, Walter W. Piegorsch, and Lynn Weber), which was published by Cambridge University Press in 2014. This work was funded by a National Science Foundation grant. Smith has also earned funding for his work from the British Academy, the Mellon Foundation, and the Watson-Brown Foundation.
Smith has lectured in Europe, throughout the United States, Australia, and China; he has keynoted at the London Jazz Festival; and his work has been reviewed and featured in the New York Times, the London Times, Brain, Science, the Washington Post, Slate, the Wall Street Journal, Garden & Gun, and Foreign Affairs. He is the General Editor of the Southern Classics Series (University of South Carolina Press), co-editor of Studies in International Slavery (Liverpool University Press), co-editor of Cambridge University Press’ series, Studies on the American South, and General Editor of the Pennsylvania State University Press’ Perspectives in Sensory History. He has been a regular book reviewer for the Wall Street Journal.
Smith is currently working on three projects—a book on the intersection between disasters and US foreign policy in the post-Civil War period, a short book, A Sensory History Manifesto, and a co-authored work emotions and sensory history. His next book, Smell and History: A Reader, will be published in 2019.
Booking for this event is required. An email will be sent to all those who have booked nearer the time of the event to confirm the venue.
Our most recent lectures
The Bishnodat Persaud Memorial Lecture 2018
Rt Hon Sir Vince Cable MP Leader of the Liberal Democrats, MP for Twickenham
Thursday 11 October, 6pm, Central Campus
Professor The Honourable Bishnodat Persaud CHB, PhD, FRSA (1933 – 2016) was a Guyanese economist who made an enormous contribution to economic policy making in developing countries from the 1970s to the 1990s, especially in the area of international trade, the environment and the vulnerabilities and viability of small states. He served as Alcan Professor of Sustainable Development at the University of the West Indies and Director of Economic Affairs, Commonwealth Secretariat. In November 2013 he was awarded The Companion of Honour in Barbados for his contributions to regional and international public service.
Persaud spent eighteen years in the service of the Commonwealth Secretariat, with eleven of those years spent as Director and Head of the Economic Affairs Division. Before joining the Commonwealth Secretariat, he was Research Fellow at the University of the West Indies (UWI) in Barbados and served for a period as head of the Eastern Caribbean branch of the Institute of Social and Economic Research in Barbados.
Together with Sir Vince Cable, he co-wrote Developing with Foreign Investment (1987), a book that encouraged investors to consider emerging markets. He visited Warwick many times and had a close friendship with former Chancellor Sir Shridath Ramphal. More information about Bishnodat Persaud can be found here.
Sir Vince Cable
Sir Vince read Natural Sciences and Economics at Cambridge University where he was President of the Union, followed by a PhD at Glasgow University. He was Treasury Finance Officer for the Kenyan Government (1966-1968), First Secretary in the Diplomatic Service in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (1974-1976), Deputy Director of the Overseas Development Institute, Special Advisor on Economic Affairs for the Commonwealth Secretary General, Sir Sonny Ramphal (1983-1990), Chief Economist for Shell International, MP for Twickenham, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (2010-2015) and is currently the Leader of the Liberal Democrats. Further information abour Sir Vince can be found here.
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Alan Rivett, Director of Warwick Arts Centre
Our Futures with the Arts and Culture
Thursday 21 June, 6pm, Warwick Arts Centre
Outgoing Director of Warwick Arts Centre, Alan Rivett, a trustee of Coventry City of Culture 2021 Trust, The British Association of Concert Halls and the Audience Agency, will explore the future for arts and culture at a time where a single artwork can sell for £100+m, study and training in the arts is for ‘posh people’ and technology is revolutionising access.
Since being appointed in 2001 Alan has successfully steered Warwick Arts Centre’s programme to a position where it regularly hosts high profile, contemporary, international theatre, music, visual arts and interdisciplinary events. Warwick Arts Centre regularly commissions new work from leading artists and has a generative programme for emerging artists.
Alan is a board member of Shared Experience Theatre Company and 501 Arts. He has been a member of the University of Warwick Council and was Chair of Fierce Festival ltd, leading an annual festival of contemporary live art and performance in Birmingham. Alan also chaired Dance Touring Partnership for a number of years, standing down in 2016.
Previous Lectures
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Ambassador Dr Peter Ammon
Dr Lee Elliot Major
Professor Lorraine Daston
Oliver Hart
Reza Moghadam
Sir Nigel Thrift
Andrew Blake
Sir David King
Mark Lowcock
Norman R Augustine
Sir Vernon Ellis
Sir Michael Barber
Richard K Miller
Professor Sir Malcolm Grant
