Page 10 - Mansfield 2019/20

The Principal’s Friday Talks and annual lectures: opening up Mansfield to the world
Mansfield’s lively programme
of public Friday Talks continued throughout 2020, moving online
for Michaelmas term and as a result attracting record numbers of attendees. This enabled us to share these fantastic talks with more people than we could ever hope to fit into the Sir Joseph Hotung Auditorium.
Our Friday Talks and annual lectures are an important way of the College reaching outside our community and encouraging people in. Free and welcoming to the public, they are emblematic of how Mansfield wants to open up its academic community to the world, encouraging the sharing of ideas and debate about important issues.
Two recent highlights were our Principal in conversation with Baroness Hale, as part of the Friday Talks series, and our annual Hands Lecture which took place online for the first time, both in late November 2020.
Baroness Hale, former President of the Supreme Court and new Honorary Fellow of Mansfield, discussed her remarkable life and legal career with Helen Mountfield QC. This fascinating conversation encompassed breaking glass ceilings in the Law; media and political criticism of judges; and current challenges for the judicial system.
Founded by Bancroft Fellows, Guy and
Julia Hands, the Hands Lecture is a major annual event for Mansfield, when we invite a leading figure from the world of politics or
current affairs to speak at the College. We are enormously grateful to Lord (William) Hague of Richmond who gave this year’s Hands Lecture on the state of Western democracies – the threats we face, what we might expect from the next 20 years, and what can be done to protect democracy in the face of multiple global crises.
Please join in with our Friday Talks programme at: www.mansfield.ox.ac.uk/ mansfield-college-public-talks.
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Catch up with the Friday talks you missed on Mansfield’s YouTube Channel: https://bit.ly/371L1PW