Marozzi brings to life the complexity and humanity of the Islamic world’s entanglement with slavery using an extraordinary range of sources, across more than a millennium and across sweeping geographies. Not just a mesmerising book, but a profoundly important one too’.
Focusing on the works of Paul Ricoeur and Jacques Derrida, these lectures present a tradition of philosophical ethics in France. This ethics does not concern what we should do. Ethics concerns responsibility in an extensive, immaterial sense: how can you be a person who takes responsibility beyond your immediate personal and social interests? We shall see how for Ricoeur this leads to a reflection on memory as a responsibility for the past and for Derrida it entails a conception of political utopia understood as responsibility for the unfulfilled hopes of history.
Focusing on the works of Paul Ricoeur and Jacques Derrida, these lectures present a tradition of philosophical ethics in France. This ethics does not concern what we should do. Ethics concerns responsibility in an extensive, immaterial sense: how can you be a person who takes responsibility beyond your immediate personal and social interests? We shall see how for Ricoeur this leads to a reflection on memory as a responsibility for the past and for Derrida it entails a conception of political utopia understood as responsibility for the unfulfilled hopes of history.
Focusing on the works of Paul Ricoeur and Jacques Derrida, these lectures present a tradition of philosophical ethics in France. This ethics does not concern what we should do. Ethics concerns responsibility in an extensive, immaterial sense: how can you be a person who takes responsibility beyond your immediate personal and social interests? We shall see how for Ricoeur this leads to a reflection on memory as a responsibility for the past and for Derrida it entails a conception of political utopia understood as responsibility for the unfulfilled hopes of history.
Thomas Jefferson was intimately involved in every aspect of the creation of the University of Virginia. It represented what he regarded as one of the three greatest achievements of his life to be listed on his tombstone. It revealed his talents as a lawyer who drafted the legislation for the assembly; as a surveyor who personally mapped the grounds; as a politician who masterminded the strategy to win approval in the assembly and to deflect intense opposition; as an architect who designed the layout, chose the building materials, and corresponded with the craftsman; and as an intellectual who developed an innovative curriculum, suggested the books for the library and the criteria for selecting the faculty. Jefferson was concerned with what remains a perennial issue which is the importance of education in the success of the republican democratic experiment. It was integral to his political philosophy in which he regarded public education as essential for the functioning of government by the people. He was part of what he regarded as the moral revolution that should accompany the political revolution of 1776. Although dismissed in higher education histories as a “finishing school for southern aristocrats” which trained many of the future leaders of the Confederacy, the lecture will argue that his vision of public education was as revolutionary as the other achievements on his tombstone and that it still has the potential to stimulate discussion about the role of universities. Furthermore, his vision of a university anticipated the idea of a modern university more than any other college in America.
Andrew O’Shaughnessy is Professor of History at the University of Virginia. Between 2003 and 2022, he served as Vice President of The Thomas Jefferson Foundation (Monticello), and the Saunders Director of the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies. His book The Men Who Lost America. British Leadership, the American Revolution and the Fate of the Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013) received eight national awards including the New York Historical Society American History Book Prize, the George Washington Book Prize, The National Society Daughters of the American Revolution Excellence in American History Book Award and The Society of Military History Book Prize. He is also the author of An Empire Divided: The American Revolution and the British Caribbean (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000). His most recent book books are The Illimitable Freedom of the Human Mind: Thomas Jefferson’s Idea of a University (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2021) and, co-authored with Trevor Burnard, Republic and Empire: Crisis, Revolution, and America’s Early Independence to be published by Yale University Press in September 2025. He is an editor of the Jeffersonian America series published by the University of Virginia Press. He coedited Old World, New World: America and Europe in the Age of Jefferson (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010) and The Founding of Thomas Jefferson’s University of Virginia (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press: 2019), and The European Friends of the American Revolution (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2023).
Focusing on the works of Paul Ricoeur and Jacques Derrida, these lectures present a tradition of philosophical ethics in France. This ethics does not concern what we should do. Ethics concerns responsibility in an extensive, immaterial sense: how can you be a person who takes responsibility beyond your immediate personal and social interests? We shall see how for Ricoeur this leads to a reflection on memory as a responsibility for the past and for Derrida it entails a conception of political utopia understood as responsibility for the unfulfilled hopes of history.
We can no longer take for granted international institutions such as the United Nations and the World Trade Organisation, the validity of international law and agreements, or even international norms.
The Pharos Monday Lectures for Spring 2026
Lecture 1: The Sound of Music in Ancient Greece
Lecture 2: Archimedes’ Eureka
Lecture 3. Catullus and his Lesbia
Lecture 4. Aspasia, Teacher of Socrates
It is sometimes thought that answers to big questions in classics are either known or beyond solution - questions such as what Greek music sounded like, or the true identity of Catullus’s Lesbia. In this series Prof Armand D'Angour will address four such questions and show that even today it’s possible to provide new and convincing answers to problems that many scholars had given up on.
Armand d'Angour is Professor of Classics and a Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. His work has ranged across wide areas of Greek culture, especially music and lyric poetry. His works include Socrates in Love (Bloomsbury 2019) and How to Innovate: An Ancient Guide to Creative Thinking (Princeton 2021).
The Pharos Monday Lectures for Spring 2026
Lecture 1: The Sound of Music in Ancient Greece
Lecture 2: Archimedes’ Eureka
Lecture 3. Catullus and his Lesbia
Lecture 4. Aspasia, Teacher of Socrates
It is sometimes thought that answers to big questions in classics are either known or beyond solution - questions such as what Greek music sounded like, or the true identity of Catullus’s Lesbia. In this series Prof Armand D'Angour will address four such questions and show that even today it’s possible to provide new and convincing answers to problems that many scholars had given up on.
Armand d'Angour is Professor of Classics and a Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. His work has ranged across wide areas of Greek culture, especially music and lyric poetry. His works include Socrates in Love (Bloomsbury 2019) and How to Innovate: An Ancient Guide to Creative Thinking (Princeton 2021).
Overview
The Pharos Tuesday Seminars for Spring 2026
The tenth anniversary of the EU referendum is fast approaching and many will be focused on how Brexit has, or has not, changed the economic and political world. But what if the most important change was not to institutions, political parties and the economy, but to us? This lecture series explores how the referendum, and its aftermath, sparked a form of ‘tribal politics’ that reshaped how people saw themselves, each other and the wider world. The first lecture looks at how the referendum created two powerful and enduring political identities in Britain: Leavers and Remainers. Why did an issue of such little interest to so many people suddenly become the key way that people identified themselves and others? The second lecture turns to the consequences of this transformation. Why did Leavers and Remainers dislike, look down on and discriminate against people simply because they belonged to the other group? And how did those brand-new political identities come to change our views of not just other people, but reality itself? The final lecture explores the resilience and future of tribal politics in Britain. Why did some people embrace their identity so fervently while others did not, and what does this tell us about both the future of British politics but also political divides in other countries at other times?
James Tilley is a Professor of Politics at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. He is the author of two books and numerous articles that investigate how we form political attitudes and make political choices. His latest book, co-authored with Sara Hobolt, is Tribal Politics: How Brexit Divided Britain and will be published by Oxford University Press in March 2026. He regularly makes documentaries for BBC Radio 4 on all aspects of political attitudes, from primate politics to conspiracy theories, the most recent being a five-part series titled ‘The kids are alt-right?’.
The Pharos Monday Lectures for Spring 2026
Lecture 1: The Sound of Music in Ancient Greece
Lecture 2: Archimedes’ Eureka
Lecture 3. Catullus and his Lesbia
Lecture 4. Aspasia, Teacher of Socrates
It is sometimes thought that answers to big questions in classics are either known or beyond solution - questions such as what Greek music sounded like, or the true identity of Catullus’s Lesbia. In this series Prof Armand D'Angour will address four such questions and show that even today it’s possible to provide new and convincing answers to problems that many scholars had given up on.
Armand d'Angour is Professor of Classics and a Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. His work has ranged across wide areas of Greek culture, especially music and lyric poetry. His works include Socrates in Love (Bloomsbury 2019) and How to Innovate: An Ancient Guide to Creative Thinking (Princeton 2021).
Overview
The Pharos Tuesday Seminars for Spring 2026
The tenth anniversary of the EU referendum is fast approaching and many will be focused on how Brexit has, or has not, changed the economic and political world. But what if the most important change was not to institutions, political parties and the economy, but to us? This lecture series explores how the referendum, and its aftermath, sparked a form of ‘tribal politics’ that reshaped how people saw themselves, each other and the wider world. The first lecture looks at how the referendum created two powerful and enduring political identities in Britain: Leavers and Remainers. Why did an issue of such little interest to so many people suddenly become the key way that people identified themselves and others? The second lecture turns to the consequences of this transformation. Why did Leavers and Remainers dislike, look down on and discriminate against people simply because they belonged to the other group? And how did those brand-new political identities come to change our views of not just other people, but reality itself? The final lecture explores the resilience and future of tribal politics in Britain. Why did some people embrace their identity so fervently while others did not, and what does this tell us about both the future of British politics but also political divides in other countries at other times?
James Tilley is a Professor of Politics at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. He is the author of two books and numerous articles that investigate how we form political attitudes and make political choices. His latest book, co-authored with Sara Hobolt, is Tribal Politics: How Brexit Divided Britain and will be published by Oxford University Press in March 2026. He regularly makes documentaries for BBC Radio 4 on all aspects of political attitudes, from primate politics to conspiracy theories, the most recent being a five-part series titled ‘The kids are alt-right?’.
The Pharos Monday Lectures for Spring 2026
Lecture 1: The Sound of Music in Ancient Greece
Lecture 2: Archimedes’ Eureka
Lecture 3. Catullus and his Lesbia
Lecture 4. Aspasia, Teacher of Socrates
It is sometimes thought that answers to big questions in classics are either known or beyond solution - questions such as what Greek music sounded like, or the true identity of Catullus’s Lesbia. In this series Prof Armand D'Angour will address four such questions and show that even today it’s possible to provide new and convincing answers to problems that many scholars had given up on.
Armand d'Angour is Professor of Classics and a Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. His work has ranged across wide areas of Greek culture, especially music and lyric poetry. His works include Socrates in Love (Bloomsbury 2019) and How to Innovate: An Ancient Guide to Creative Thinking (Princeton 2021).
Overview
The Pharos Tuesday Seminars for Spring 2026
The tenth anniversary of the EU referendum is fast approaching and many will be focused on how Brexit has, or has not, changed the economic and political world. But what if the most important change was not to institutions, political parties and the economy, but to us? This lecture series explores how the referendum, and its aftermath, sparked a form of ‘tribal politics’ that reshaped how people saw themselves, each other and the wider world. The first lecture looks at how the referendum created two powerful and enduring political identities in Britain: Leavers and Remainers. Why did an issue of such little interest to so many people suddenly become the key way that people identified themselves and others? The second lecture turns to the consequences of this transformation. Why did Leavers and Remainers dislike, look down on and discriminate against people simply because they belonged to the other group? And how did those brand-new political identities come to change our views of not just other people, but reality itself? The final lecture explores the resilience and future of tribal politics in Britain. Why did some people embrace their identity so fervently while others did not, and what does this tell us about both the future of British politics but also political divides in other countries at other times?
James Tilley is a Professor of Politics at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. He is the author of two books and numerous articles that investigate how we form political attitudes and make political choices. His latest book, co-authored with Sara Hobolt, is Tribal Politics: How Brexit Divided Britain and will be published by Oxford University Press in March 2026. He regularly makes documentaries for BBC Radio 4 on all aspects of political attitudes, from primate politics to conspiracy theories, the most recent being a five-part series titled ‘The kids are alt-right?’.
These lectures will focus on significant high points and important low points in the history of the Jews from the destruction of the second Temple in 70 CE to 1492, when the Jews were expelled from Christian Spain. Emphasis will be on the importance of understanding Jewish history as an integral part of the history of the European West. Just as the unfolding of Jewish history cannot be assessed without appreciating the contexts in which Jews participated in their host societies, so the history of medieval Europe is much better understood if account is made of the role played by Jewish communities, as well as evolving Christian attitudes towards Jews and Judaism. Much of what we can learn from studying medieval Christian-Jewish/ Jewish-Christian relations is relevant for today's troubled world.
Anna Sapir Abulafia FBA is Professor Emerita of the Study of the Abrahamic Religions in the Faculty of Theology and Religion and a Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall. The main focus of her research is the interaction of medieval Christianity and Judaism within the broad context of twelfth and thirteenth-century theological and ecclesiastical developments.
