F. W. Bateson Memorial Lecture
The F W Bateson Memorial Lecture was founded by the pupils and friends of F. W. Bateson (1901-78). Bateson taught English at Corpus from 1946 to 1969, first as a lecturer and later as a teaching fellow. He was made an Emeritus Fellow of the College on his retirement in 1969. The lectures are held annually.
The 2026 lecture will be delivered on Wednesday 11 February by Professor Amit Chaudhuri.
Amit Chaudhuri is the author of eight novels, the latest of which is Sojourn. He is also a poet, essayist, short story writer and musician. Faber released a full set of his backlist titles in the U.K. over 2022-23 with introductions by Colm Toibin, James Wood and Pankaj Mishra. His first three novels were reissued in 2024 in the New York Review Books Classics imprint. The awards he has received for his work include the Commonwealth Writers Prize, the Encore Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, the James Tait Black Prize, the Sahitya Akademi Award and the inaugural Infosys Prize in Literary Studies in the Humanities. He is Professor of Creative Writing and Director of the Centre for the Creative and Critical at Ashoka University, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an honorary fellow of the Modern Language Association of America and of Balliol College, Oxford.
The title of the 2025 lecture, delivered by Professor Daisy Hay, was 'Falling Over with Frances Burney'. A recording of Professor Hay's lecture is available here.
Other recent lecturers include Professor Hugh Haughton with the title ‘‘“Bright Knots of Apparitions”: Meeting the Dead in Modern Poetry; 'Professor Dagmawi Woubshet with the title 'A Quiet Gathering: James Baldwin and the Art of Late Style in The Welcome Table’; Professor Tiffany Stern with the title 'Ballads and Product Placement in the Time of Shakespeare'; Professor Mark Ford with the title 'Woman much missed: Thomas Hardy, Emma Hardy and poetry’; Professor Dinah Birch CBE with the title 'Utopian Topics: Ruskin and Oxford'.
The lectures are held annually and a full list of previous lectures can be found here.
President's Seminars
Every term, the President arranges a seminar at which prominent figures from different walks of life come and discuss issues of interest and importance. There is an open talk, with questions, followed by a dinner in the SCR, where the discussion can continue.
The Hilary 2025 Seminar was delivered by Sheen Gurrib (Materials Science, 2012). Her theme was ‘Empowering through Stories: Lessons from the Frontlines of Podcasting and Entrepreneurship.’
The Michaelmas 2024 Seminars were delivered by Lord Peter Ricketts, entitled ‘What does the international disorder mean for Britain's national security?’ and Beverley Patterson (Biochemistry, 1979), entitled ‘The long and winding road to a successful career in the pharmaceutical industry: a series of case studies.’
In Michaelmas 2023 the Seminar took the form of a publishing 'in conversation', moderated by the President, in which three alumni and one current College lecturer discussed the world of books, writing and publishing. The panellists were Editorial Director Trade & Academic at Yale University Press Julian Loose (English, 1985), publishing consultant specialising in developmental editing Flora Rees (English, 1994), ITV news journalist and author of The Wolf Den trilogy Elodie Harper (English, 1998) and author of the Orphans of the Tide trilogy Struan Murray (Corpus Lecturer in Biochemistry).
Former speakers have included Peter Kellner, Xenia Wickett, Sir Roger Penrose, Professor Sir Steve Cowley, Hassan Damluji, Edward Fitzgerald KC, Surgeon Commodore Peter Buxton, Martin Wolf, Rupert Elderkin and Sir Hector Sants.
A full list of President's Seminars can be found here.
Triennial E. A. Lowe Lectures in Palaeography
The E. A. Lowe Lectures are given in memory of Elias Avery Lowe, a noted palaeographer and Honorary Fellow of the College from 1954 until his death in 1969.
The title of the Lowe Lectures 2023 was 'Manuscripts of Character: Codex, Ethos, and Authority in Byzantium and Beyond'. They were delivered by Professor Niels Gaul on 28 February, 2 March and 7 March.
Tuesday 28 February - “Codex” – explored the phenomenon of Byzantine literati curating their own writings in codex format and possible ancient and patristic models, with glances at similar practices in other medieval manuscript cultures
Thursday 2 March - “Ethos” – examined the ways in which such codices were thought to display the author’s character, and what the concept entailed in this context
Tuesday 7 March - “Authority” – related expressions of authorial ethos to matters of mise-en-page, with particular attention to marginal spaces
Niels Gaul is A G Leventis Professor of Byzantine Studies and Director of the Centre for Late Antique, Islamic and Byzantine Studies at the University of Edinburgh; from 2005 to 2007 he held the inaugural Dilts-Lyell Research Fellowship in Greek Palaeography at Lincoln College and in the Faculty of Classics. His research interests include the socio-historical dynamics of schools, learning, and the classical tradition in Byzantium; since 2017 he has been co-directing an ERC-funded comparative project on classicising learning in the Byzantine and middle-period Chinese imperial systems.
Professor Judith Olszowy-Schlanger, President of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, Fellow of Corpus Christi College, and Professor of Hebrew Manuscript Studies at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris delivered the Lowe Lectures in 2020. Her title was 'The Hebrew-Latin Manuscripts of the Library of Corpus Christi College'. An article by Professor Olszowy-Schlanger on the subject of her Lowe Lectures can be read in the July issue of the Sundial here.
Previous lecturers include Rodney Thomson, David Ganz, Susan Rankin, Anthony Grafton and Michael Lapidge.
The full list of lectures and their associated publications can be found here.
Isaiah Berlin Lectures in the History of Ideas
The renowned philosophy Sir Isaiah Berlin read Greats (Classics) at Corpus. The Isaiah Berlin Lectures in the History of Ideas are a prestigious annual series, run in conjunction with Oxford's Philosophy Faculty. Previous lecturers include Melissa Lane, Michael Rosen, Jonathan Israel, J. G. A. Pocock, Daniel Garber and Allen Wood.
Follow this link for further information: Isaiah Berlin Lectures in the History of Ideas.