Newcomen, the international society for history, engineering and technology provides an insight into a Victorian instrument maker with a worldwide following (even today). Guest speaker: Darlah Thomas. Thomas Cooke (1807 – 1868) had a humble start to life in a small village south-east of York. His father was the village shoemaker who could afford little […]
What is the role of a historian in a health crisis? As Covid-19 became a full-blown pandemic in the spring of 2020, historians across the world produced rapid and imaginative responses, bringing historical perspectives to bear on how people and societies in the past responded to cholera, Spanish Flu, and more recently ebola. They paid […]
This Manchester Lit & Phil talk explores a fairly simple but hugely contentious question: how should we pay for driving? As a society we have become accustomed to paying fuel duty and an annual tax on maintaining a vehicle. To varying degrees, we also pay for parking and, in a very small number of places […]
Manchester was the ‘shock city’ of the Industrial Revolution. Has it lived up to its early promise and can it now be a model for urban living in the 21st century? Brian Groom returns to the Manchester Lit & Phil to tell Manchester’s story from the earliest times, based on his new book Made in […]
Can spectroscopy and AI help in the fight against cancer? It is well known that early and accurate diagnosis of cancer is essential for both getting the correct treatment and obtaining the best outcome. At the first sign of trouble a biopsy is normally taken to examine tissue from suspicious lumps or lesions. A pathologist […]
Black holes are fascinating objects because of the way they force us to address the biggest questions in physics such as the essential nature of space and time. Black holes are formed when massive stars collapse at the end of their life cycle. Their gravity is so strong that light cannot escape from them. The […]
Multiplatform is the annual symposium for the Manchester Game Centre. We are a cross-university research group at Manchester Metropolitan University with research interests in Analogue Games, Digital Arts, Esports, Games and the Environmental Crisis, Games, History and Heritage, Games and Storytelling, and Serious Games. Multiplatform 2024 has a dual focus on analogue and digital games […]
Music critics almost universally consider Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony one of Beethoven’s greatest works. It is regarded as one of the supreme achievements in the history of music. Composed between 1822 and 1824, it was premiered at the Kärthnertortheater in Vienna on 7 May 1824. Since then, the symphony – or at least, its ground-breaking final […]
One of the deepest difficulties in war faced by soldiers and their political leaders is uncertainty: how can they know whether their putative enemies might be on the verge of attacking them? How can they know whether their war, and individual acts within the war, are justified? By procuring information about their enemy. And how […]
Join award winning vocalist Thanda Gumede and learn two songs of traditional Zulu music blended with African Gospel. This workshop at the Burgess Foundation will be followed by a perform with Thanda’s band at the opening weekend of this year’s Manchester Jazz Festival at First Street in central Manchester. Thanda Gumede is an award-winning vocalist […]