Inaugural lectures (audio)

Professor Sharon Abrahams, Personal Chair in Neuropsychology, delivers her inaugural lecture entitled Mind Matters in Motor Neurone Disease. In this lecture, Prof. Abrahams discusses her work with people living with a degenerative disease and in particular motor neurone disease. This disease was commonly thought to affect the system controlling movement exclusively, but Prof. Abrahams' work has contributed to demonstrating that the mind matters in motor neurone disease and that a large number of people will experience changes in cognition and behaviour in addition to progressive physical disability. Recorded on 28 October 2015 at the University of Edinburgh's 50 George Square.

Professor Andrew Morris, Chair of Medicine, delivers his inaugural lecture entitled, Medicine in the Information Age. Recorded on 22 June 2015 at the University of Edinburgh's Chancellor's Building.

Professor Martin Chick, Chair of Economic History, delivers his inaugural lecture entitled, "The Times They Are A-Changin': Time, Economics and a Political Economy of Britain since 1945". This lecture considers the changing use made of the concept of time in economics and economic policy-making in Britain since 1945. Recorded on 5 May 2015 at the University of Edinburgh's Medical School.

Professor Paolo Quattrone, Chair in Accounting Governance & Social Innovation, delivers his inaugural lecture entitled, "Accounting, Governance and Social Innovation: Establishing the Links". In this lecture, Professor Quattrone will present the idea that accounting creates specific forms of ‘socie-ties’, where the ties amongst members of a community are represented in economic terms and ruled accordingly. It will also suggest that only by re-thinking these ties that new forms of governing social and economic relationships can become forms of social innovation. Recorded on 15 April 2015 at the University of Edinburgh's Business School Auditorium.

Professor Mark Dorrian, Forbes Chair in Architecture, delivers his inaugural lecture, entitled What's Interesting? On the Ascendency of an Evaluative Term. This lecture will consider the rise of 'interesting' as a critical category, and examine the sort of judgement-in-suspension that it seems to enact, addressing what kinds of issues might be at stake in it, and what it means in relation to our broader cultural expectations of architecture. Recorded on 1 April 2015, at the University of Edinburgh's Edinburgh College of Art Main Lecture Theatre.

Professor Chris Speed, Chair in Design Informatics, delivers his inaugural lecture entitled, The Random Lift and Other Algorithmic Stories. This talk draws connections between a series of projects that explores the emerging conditions of living with algorithms. The playful presentation unpacks Professor Speed's growing neurosis about the uncertainty of what things are doing, a condition that he attributes to having been born during Apollo 13's loss of communication with planet Earth. Recorded on 24 February 2015 at the University of Edinburgh's ECA Lecture Theatre.

Professor Nicola McEwen, Personal Chair of Territorial Politics, delivers her inaugural lecture entitled, "Independence and Interdependence: The Dynamics of Scottish Self-Government". The Scottish independence referendum may have resulted in a No vote, but it has reignited debates over Scottish self-government. Professor McEwen explores the meaning of independence and interdependence, examining the interdependencies that would remain irrespective of the constitutional settlement, and considering the implications of the on going process of constitutional reform for Scotland and the UK. Recorded on 11 February 2015, at the University of Edinburgh's Business School.

Professor Richard Freeman, Personal Chair of Social Science and Public Policy, delivers his inaugural lecture entitled, Doing Politics. How does politics happen? When we do politics, what are we doing? In this lecture, Professor Freeman will show how we might understand politics as action, as a mode of doing. Recorded on 4 February 2015 at the University of Edinburgh.

Professor Richard Harrison, Chair in Entrepreneurship & Innovation, delivers his inaugural lecture, entitled The Owl of Minerva: Entrepreneurial Leadership and the Critic of Institutions. Based on his research in entrepreneurship and leadership development over many years Professor Harrison in this lecture discusses the nature of what we know of the business world and how we relate that to contemporary management and policy practice. Recorded on 21 January 2015 at the University of Edinburgh's Business School.

Professor Ailsa Henderson, Professor of Political Science and Head of Politics & International Relations, delivers her inaugural lecture entitled, The Imagined Electorate: Values, Perceived Boundaries and the Regional Rehabilitation of Political Culture. This lecture explores political culture as it operates below the level of the state, identifies the existence of two forms of regional political cultures, identifies markers by which we can identify and delineate political cultures and highlights the importance of perception. Recorded on 3 December 2014 at the University of Edinburgh's Business School.

Professor Malcolm Macleod Personal, Chair in Neurology and Translational Neuroscience, delivers his inaugural lecture entitled, "Rigour Mortis: How Bad Research is Killing Science".Recorded on 26 May 2014 at the University of Edinburgh's Chancellor's Building.

Professor Fiona Mackay, Personal Chair in Politics, delivers he inaugural lecture entitled, "Nested Newness" and the Gendered Limits of Institutional Change. This lecture suggests that we need to pay more attention to examining and theorizing newness and processes of change. It uses the concept of "nested newness" to examine the promise and limit of institutional innovation. Drawing upon examples ranging from the Scottish parliament to the United Nations, it asks why gender reforms appear so vulnerable to regress and what can we do to make change "stick"? Recorded on 20 May 2014 at the University of Edinburgh's Business School.

Professor Bettelou Los, Forbes Chair of English Language, delivers her inaugural lecture entitled Changing English.No language ever stays the same, and no part of it is immune. Changes affect not only sounds and vocabulary, but also grammar, word order, pragmatics, giving rise to different varieties and different dialects all the time. Professor Los discusses these changes.Recorded on 6 May 2013 at the University of Edinburgh's Old College.

Professor John M Davis, Professor of Childhood Inclusion, delivers his inaugural lecture entitled Including Children in Scotland: Concepts, Structures, Relationships and the Common Weal.With the referendum to be held in 2014 in Scotland there has been great debate concerning the type of society we want to live in. Professor Davis draws from over 25 years of collaborative research, practical work with children and eventful encounters to discuss what a more child focussed, inclusive and socially just society might look like.This lecture contains infrequent uses of strong language.Recorded on 13 May 2014 at the University of Edinburgh's Old College.

Professor Nikolas Gisborne, Chair of Linguistics, delivers his inaugural lecture entitled, What’s Grammar For? If you listen to how people talk about grammar in the press you could be forgiven for thinking that it is little more than an aesthetic matter, to do with ‘good’ and ‘bad’ writing. A hundred and fifty years after Henry Alford popularized the spurious ‘rule’ that the English infinitive should not be ‘split’, there are still people who—against all reason—insist, and trenchantly, that it’s wrong to put an adverb between TO and the bare form of the verb it’s associated with. But grammar is so much more than this. Find more information on this lecture at http://edin.ac/1nqN1SX.Recorded on 29 April 2014 at the University of Edinburgh's Old College.

Professor Grant Jarvie, Chair of Sport, delivers his inaugural lecture entitled, Sport: More Than Just a Game. This lecture will comment upon Scotland's contribution to the world of sport then argue that sport is more than just a game and can be a resource of hope for many around the world. Recorded on 22 April 2014 at the University of Edinburgh's Teviot Lecture Theatre.

Professor Clifford Leen, Honorary Professor and Consultant Physician Infectious Diseases, presents his inaugural lecture titled "Progress in Antiviral Treatment".Recorded on Monday 7 April 2014 at the University of Edinburgh's Chancellor’s Building, Little France campus.Listen to podcast

Susan McVie, Professor of Quantitative Criminology, presents her inaugural lecture titled "Painting by Numbers: The Changing Landscape of Crime in Scotland". In this lecture, Professor McVie considers the dramatic change in patterns of crime that have been observed in Scotland in recent years and explore whether it represents real cultural and behavioural change. Recorded on 18 March 2014 at the University of Edinburgh's Appleton Tower.

Professor Michael O'Boyle, Director of Institute for Computing Systems Architecture, delivers his inaugural lecture, "Return of the silver bullet or avoiding groundhog day? Auto-parallelisation reloaded". Professor O'Boyle will explore why compiler based code optimization has often failed to deliver. He will also look at ways we can recast compiler optimization so that it can really deliver for the many-core era. Recorded on March 10 2014 at the University of Edinburgh's Informatics Forum.

Professor Michèle Belot, Professor of Economics, delivers her inaugural lecture, "Diseases of Affluence: On the Relationship Between Economics and Health". This lecture will ask, why are Western societies so rich and at the same time so sick? Recorded on 11 March 2014 at the University of Edinburgh's Old College.

Professor Philipp Kircher, Professor in Economics, delivers his inaugural lecture, "In Search of the Perfect Match - Understanding Labour (and Marriage) Markets". Economists have long acknowledged that it takes time to find the right partner. But how can we think about this process? Do firms randomly meet workers? Or do they compete for workers? What is the difference? his lecture provides an overview of some of the recent thoughts on these topics, with some cross-references to other settings such as search for a marriage partner. Recorded on 12 March 2014, at the University of Edinburgh's Appleton Tower.

Professor James Loxley, Professor of Early Modern Literature, delivers his inaugural lecture entitled, "Ben Jonson’s Road North"In July 1618, the poet and playwright Ben Jonson embarked on an enterprise that had been at least a year in the planning - an epic walk all the way from London to Edinburgh.In this lecture, Professor Loxley will look at what his companion’s account can tell us about the motivations and meanings of Jonson’s long walk to the north, and offer some reflections on what this new information on the journey can tell us about the culture and politics of the Stuart kingdoms in the decades after the union of the crowns.Recorded on 25 February 2014 at the University of Edinburgh's Old College.

Professor Graham Crow, Professor of Sociology and Methodology, delivers his inaugural lecture entitled, "Community Research: A Field Full of Methods".In this lecture Professor Crow considers the field of community research as one in which a wide range of different research methods have been used. He argues that this methodological diversity - ranging from surveys to ethnographies, from network mapping to the use of photography, from oral histories to policy analyses, and from interviews to archival work - is just one of the strengths of the field.Recorded 11 February 2014 at the University of Edinburgh's Old College.

Professor Fiona McLachlan, Personal Chair in Architectural Practice, presents her inaugural lecture entitled "Practice, Practice, Practise: Illustrated in Colour". This lecture will focus on two recent research projects on colour in architectural design, both of which were stimulated and informed by Professor McLachlan's own architectural practice and began with an intuitive process of observation, experimentation and an experiential methodology. Whether inherent in material or applied, colour has the capability to be used as an instrument to tune and transform architectural space. Yet it is rarely discussed in architectural education and in architectural practice, colour often involves arbitrary decisions late in the design process. Through these examples, concepts of architectural design as a synthetic and material practice will be considered. Recorded on 17 December 2013 at the University of Edinburgh's Business School.

Professor Nanette Mutrie, Chair in Physical Activity for Health, presents her inaugural lecture entitled "Encouraging People to 'Sit Less and Walk More': The Story so far and Future Plans".Professor Mutrie explains why 'sit less and walk more' is the byline of the Physical Activity for Health Research Centre and demonstrates what has been learned so far about encouraging people in related behaviour change. For over a decade Professor Mutrie has been working to determine the best ways to help people put more walking into their lives.Recorded on 10 December 2013 at the University of Edinburgh's Old College.

Professor John W Cairns, Professor of Civil Law, presents his inaugural lecture entitled "An Uncommon Law?". The first discipline in law taught in the University of Edinburgh was the Civil Law. It has been taught continuously for the past 303 years. Comparative lawyers have traditionally seen the “Civil Law” as something opposed to the “Common Law”. The lecture will explore the founding of the chair of Civil Law in 1710 against the intellectual and political background before considering the nature of the discipline, and reflecting on its nature as a true universal law. Recorded on 22 November 2013 at the University of Edinburgh's Old College.

Professor Rob Dunbar, Chair of Celtic Languages, Literature, History and Antiquities, presents his inaugural lecture entitled "Canada, the Gaelic Imagination, and the Future of the Celtic Languages / Canada, am Mac-meanmna Gàidhlig, agus na Cànanan Ceilteach san Àm ri Teachd".Territories that are now part of Canada received more Gaelic-speaking emigrants than any other in the world and, unsurprisingly, the links between the Scottish Highlands and Canada are profound. This lecture will first examine how Canada, and in particular Canada's Gaelic heritage, is perceived, imagined and deployed by Scottish Gaels—and other Scots—revealing a curious mix of truths, half-truths and missed opportunities.This lecture is in Gaelic.Recorded on 18 November 2013 at the University of Edinburgh's St Cecilia's Hall.Chaidh barrachd Ghàidheal chun nan sgìrean a tha a-nis mar phàirt de Canada na gu sgìrean sam bith eile air an t-saoghal agus air sàilibh sin, chan eil e na iongnadh gu bheil na ceanglaichean eadar Gàidhealtachd na h-Alba agus Canada làidir. An toiseach san òraid seo, bheirear sùil air mar a tha Canada, agus gu sònraichte dualchas Gàidhlig Chanada, air a tuigsinn, air a samhlachadh, agus air a cleachdadh le Gàidheil Alba—agus Albannaich eile—gus measgachadh annasach de fhìrinneachdan, faoin-sgeulan agus cothroman caillte a thoirt am follais.www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/humanit ­ies-soc-sci/news-events/lectures/inaugur­al-lectures/rob-dunbar

Professor Susan Hardman Moore, Professor of Early Modern Religion, delivered her inaugural lecture entitled 'Time'. Recorded on Thursday 12 September 2013 at Martin Hall in the University of Edinburgh's New College.

Professor Matthias Schwannauer, Professor of Clinical Psychology, delivers his inaugural lecture entitled "From Cradle to Grave: The Development of Relationships, Emotions and Mental Health". Recorded on Tuesday 14 May 2013, at the University of Edinburgh's Business School.

Professor Christina Boswell, Professor of Politics delivers her inaugural lecture entitled "Against ‘Interests’ in Political Science: Public Policy and Political Motivation". Recorded on Tuesday 21 May 2013, at the University of Edinburgh's Business School.

Professor Ewen A Cameron, Sir William Fraser Professor of Scottish History and Palaeography delivers his inaugural lecture entitled "The Political Histories of Modern Scotland". Recorded on Tuesday 7 May 2013, at the University of Edinburgh's Business School.

Professor Charlotte Clarke, Professor of Health in Social Science delivered her inaugural lecture entitled "Phew! For a minute there I lost myself - the experience of living with dementia" Recorded on Tuesday 23 April 2013, at the University of Edinburgh's Business School.

Josephine (Tonks) Fawcett, Professor of Student Learning in Nurse Education delivered her inaugural lecture entitled "A career for nursing: passions, privileges, pains and purpose". Recorded on Tuesday 30 April 2013 at the University of Edinburgh's Business School.

Professor Philipp Koehn: Personal Chair in Machine Translation delivered his inaugural lecture, entitled "Open Problems in Machine Translation". Recorded on Thursday 21 March 2013 at the University of Edinburgh's Informatics Forum.

Professor Lydia Plowman: Chair in Education and Technology, delivered her inaugural lecture entitled "Seven myths about young children and technology". Recorded on Tuesday 19 March 2013 at the University of Edinburgh's Appleton Tower.

Professor Mona Siddiqui, Professor of Islamic and Interreligious Studies, delivered her inaugural lecture entitled "Love and Law in Christianity and Islam". Recorded on Monday 4 March 2013 at the University of Edinburgh's St Cecilia's Hall.

Professor J Douglas Armstrong, Deputy Director of the Edinburgh Centre for Bioinformatics and Personal Chair of Systems Neurobiology, delivered his inaugural lecture entitled "Systems Neuroscience".Recorded on Tuesday 5 February 2013 at the University of Edinburgh's Informatics Forum.

Professor Catharine Ward Thompson, Professor of Landscape Architecture, delivered her inaugural lecture entitled "You really should get out more! Landscape quality and quality of life". Abstract: We all know that an active lifestyle is a healthy one, and that getting away from the stresses of everyday life can be good for us, but do we live in the kinds of environments that make these easy? There is evidence to suggest that access to certain kinds of landscapes can make a real difference to our wellbeing, throughout the course of our lives. But, if the design of local landscapes can make a difference to our health and quality of life, do current policies reflect this in the way that our environments are planned and managed? In this presentation I will share my interest in understanding the ways that different groups of people respond to green or natural landscapes in their local environment. In particular, I will consider what factors influence the ways people engage with, and benefit from, such natural environments, and how good landscape planning and design might make a difference. I will share some exciting recent findings that show a deeply rooted need for good quality landscapes around where we live and spend our days. Recorded on Tuesday 11 December 2012 at the University of Edinburgh's Business School.

Professor Niamh Nic Shuibhne, Chair of European Union Law, presented her inaugural lecture entitled "The Lawless Science of EU Law: Constitutional Responsibility and the Court of Justice".AbstractWhen constitutional courts interpret the law, they make law. But they also influence the direction of policy-making and are frequently called upon to determine questions that seem to have very little to do with legal reasoning at all. This lecture will position the Court of Justice of the European Union as a transnational constitutional court and evaluate its performance using the conceptual benchmark of constitutional responsibility. It will be shown that the values of fairness, coherence and integrity are central to that assessment; and that the verdict is mixed. The absence of more prescriptive guidance or signposts in the EU's primary legal documents - its Treaties - will be explored as a considerable challenge for the Court to manage. More pragmatically, it will be argued that the current structure of the Court hinders it from fulfilling the responsibilities it owes, especially to the national courts of the EU Member States. But the notion of responsibility also demands that the Court demonstrate greater awareness of its constitutional purpose and shape its own judicial behaviour accordingly.Recorded on Friday 9 November 2012 at Old College, the University of Edinburgh.

Professor Ronnie Cann, Personal Chair in Linguistic Semantics, delivered his inaugural lecture entitled "Doing Language". Abstract:One of the features of human language that distinguishes it from the call systems of other species is that the former can be used to refer to situations, objects and other things that are not in the immediate context of an utterance. It is, on the other hand, also well recognised that certain aspects of an utterance, written or spoken, depend for their interpretation on the context in which the utterance occurs. Expressions like "here", "now", "she", "that person" depend on the context to identify what is meant while the import of clauses like "it’s hot in here" or "I’ve got a headache" depend on the social situation of the speakers and the situations they are engaged in for their precise interpretation.Less often considered, at least within linguistic theories, is the extent to which contextual dependence pervades natural human languages that are notoriously vague, with expressions used often only being partially expressive of a concept that we can nevertheless readily use and understand. Indeed, it is abundantly clear from any cursory look at "real" natural language data, spoken or written, that languages display an endemic sensitivity to context so that meanings, intentions, and other information that they can convey may never be fully fixed. Indeed, it appears that languages are inherently dynamic in use and structure and that is this notion of language as a practice or process that allows us to exploit inherent context sensitivity for effective and generally efficient use of linguistic resources in acts of communication, even with ourselves. Notoriously, however, neither of these properties, context dependence and dynamicity, are typically addressed by current theories of grammar.In this talk, I argue, to the contrary, that they are central to understanding natural language in general and the grammatical properties of particular languages and that the current view that languages are analysable as context independent objects is untenable and that a radical rethink of current approaches to grammatical theory is necessary if we are ever to understand the nature of human language.Recorded on Tuesday 27 November 2012 at the University of Edinburgh's Appleton Tower lecture theatre.

Professor Stephen Gilmore, Chair of Software Systems Modelling, presented his inaugural lecture entitled "Is Informatics an indiscrete science?"AbstractOne of the first lessons that every student of informatics learns is that computers operate with digital logic in a discrete world of bits. Starting from this view, the right way to reason about and predict the behaviour of programs is then to use discrete mathematics to prove logical properties of interest because discrete methods are precise and exact. While this approach is clearly justifiable and sensible it is also ultimately unhelpful because it does not scale to allow us to reason about larger systems with many interacting components. At these larger scales it becomes appropriate to adopt a continuous view of the discrete entities which are involved and to work instead with approximate numerical methods rather than exact ones. To go too far in this direction and abandon discrete methods altogether would be wrong because it would move too far away from the essential nature of informatics but perhaps it is worthwhile to explore more in the direction of continuous methods and see if informatics is an indiscrete science after all.In this inaugural lecture I will tell the story of my journey along the path from the discrete world to the continuous world with PEPA, a modelling language which was invented in Edinburgh and now is used by research groups all over the world.More details can be found at http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/informatics/news-events/inlecture/sgilmoreinaugural

Professor Federica G Pedriali, Professor of Literary Metatheory and Modern Italian Studies, presented her inaugural lecture, entitled "Gadda Goes to War: On becoming militant in the name of the militance of literature". Abstract: There is something about Gadda. The press is in no doubt, in the wake of box office success: "Tutti pazzi per Gadda". The Italian newspaper Repubblica cannot hold back: "Fabrizio Gifuni's monologue is our mirror". It is good to know that the nation in tatters still tolerates the mirror. It is even better, for those who are militant about culture, that it should be Gadda, our most exuberant modernist writer, to provide the emergency rations. One hundred twenty one performances have not just fuelled huge media interest: they do make an urgent statement about our collective need. And now, Italy's best kept literary secret is even packaged for emergency export -- thank goodness for the visionarism of those resisting in the world of the arts. More details can be found at http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/humanities-soc-sci/news-events/lectures/inaugural-lectures/series-2011-2012/frederica-pedriali Recorded on Thursday 20 September 2012 at the University of Edinburgh's Appleton Tower.