Hay Festival 2024
Tue 28 - Fri 31 May 2024
- Accessibility
- Hearing loop
- Wheelchair accessible venue
- Venue
- Discovery Stage / Wye Stage
- Price
- £13
Hear from our Fellows and Book Prize winners at this year's Hay Festival
Hay Festival is a much-loved and regular highlight in the literary scene, drawing large audiences from Hay and the rest of the UK.
As a partner of Hay Festival, the British Academy is supporting the following events featuring Fellows of the British Academy and the current winner of the British Academy Book Prize:
- 28 May: How We Gave Control of Our Lives to Corporations, States and AIs | Professor David Runciman FBA
- 31 May: Nandini Das talks to David Olusoga | Nandini Das and Professor David Olusoga Hon FBA
Please find more information and links to purchase tickets for each event below.
How We Gave Control of Our Lives to Corporations, States and AIs
Book tickets
‘The Singularity’ is how Silicon Valley likes to describe the ultimate break point in human history: when we will come face to face with machines that have minds of their own. But what if this has already happened? Hundred of years ago, human beings started building the artificial entities that now rule our world. They are called states and corporations: immensely powerful robots, able to take decisions and act for themselves. They have made us richer, safer, healthier and more capable – and they may yet destroy us. Professor David Runciman FBA distils for us over 300 years of thinking about how to live with artificial agency in The Handover: How We Gave Control of Our Lives to Corporations, States and AIs.
Runciman is Professor of Politics at Cambridge University and host of the Past Present Future podcast.
In conversation with writer and journalist Sarfraz Manzoor.
Speaker: Professor David Runciman FBA
Date: 28 May, 2:30-3:30pm
Venue: Discovery Stage
Nandini Das talks to David Olusoga
Book tickets
In Nandini Das’ fascinating history of Britain’s first ambassador to the Mughal Empire Thomas Roe, Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire she offers an insider’s view of a Britain in the making, a country whose imperial seeds were just being sown. In conversation with historian Professor David Olusoga Hon FBA she discusses her story of palace intrigue and scandal, lotteries and wagers that unfolds as global trade begins to stretch from Russia to Virginia, from West Africa to the Spice Islands of Indonesia.
Courting India won the 2023 British Academy Book Prize.
In conversation with Professor David Olusoga Hon FBA.
Speaker: Professor Nandini Das
Date: 31 May, 7:00-8:00pm
Venue: Wye Stage
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