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.
Professor Lyndsey Stonebridge, Interdisciplinary Chair of Humanities and Human Rights at the University of Birmingham will deliver the 2027 lecture.
The title of the 2026 lecture, delivered by Professor Amit Chaudhuri, was: ‘On First Noticing Bergman and Kafka’.
A recording of Professor Chaudhuri's lecture is available here.
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.
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.
Professor Julia Crick, Professor of Palaeography and Manuscript Studies at King's College London, will deliver the Lowe Lectures in 2026 on Thursday 5 November, Thursday 12 November and Thursday 19 November at 5pm in the Corpus Christi College Auditorium.
Professor Niels Gaul, A G Leventis Professor of Byzantine Studies and Director of the Centre for Late Antique, Islamic and Byzantine Studies at the University of Edinburgh delivered the Lowe Lectures in 2023. His title was was 'Manuscripts of Character: Codex, Ethos, and Authority in Byzantium and Beyond'.
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.