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Biographical Memoirs of British Academy Fellows
Professor Peter Marshall FBA, who has just completed a five-year stint in editing the memoirs (extended obituaries) of Fellows of the British Academy, explains their fascination, and reveals some of the highlights in the most recently published volume.
The 'Credit Crunch' and Trust
Professor Geoffrey Hosking FBA examines the role of trust in our financial systems, and argues that we need a fundamental rethink.
Why Humans aren't just Great Apes
Professor Robin Dunbar FBA gave the 2007 Joint British Academy/British Psychological Society Lecture. He argued that the real difference between humans and the great apes lies in our ability to live in the virtual world of the mind. Story-telling plays an important role in social bonding in all human cultures, …
Anthropology is not ethnography (British Academy Review)
Professor Tim Ingold FBA gave the 2007 Radcliffe-Brown Lecture in Social Anthropology. In these edited extracts from his lecture, he reveals the differing views on what anthropology and ethnography are, and recalls some of the heated past debates about these differences.
Dispossession and Displacement: Forced Migration in the Middle East and Africa (BAR)
In February 2008, a group of British Academy-sponsored organisations held a conference to consider one of the world’s pressing problems. The conference co-ordinator, Dr Dawn Chatty, describes the background to the event and its conclusions.
In brief (BAR 11)
Short notices on: Britain in the 1950s: consensus or conflict?; Reason and identity; The origins of the Arts and Humanities Research Council; Anglo-Saxon stone sculpture from the West Riding of Yorkshire.
Constitutional Renewal
On 16 June 2008 the British Academy held a workshop to discuss the significance of the ‘Governance of Britain’ constitutional reform programme introduced by Gordon Brown shortly after becoming Prime Minister, and the associated ‘Constitutional Renewal’ package produced in March 2008. The meeting was all the more timely because Parliament’s …
The Oxford Francis Bacon, and the Materiality of Texts
Professor Graham Rees FBA is Director of ‘The Oxford Francis Bacon’ for which he has edited and translated many of Bacon’s Latin philosophical writings (volumes VI, XI, XII and XIII). Here he describes the attention that editors need to pay to the physical form in which texts survive.
Autism and the Imaginative Mind
The British Academy publication ‘Imaginative Minds’ offers an engaging and innovative take on the elusive and special human capacity of imagination. The editor, Dr Ilona Roth, has a particular interest in the complex relationship between autism and imagination. People on the autistic spectrum typically have difficulty in imagining what other …
Ben Pimlott
In this extract from one of the 16 obituaries in the latest Biographical Memoirs volume, Professor Peter Hennessy FBA discusses historian Ben Pimlott’s roles as biographer of the Queen and adviser to government.
Toleration, Past and Present
The concept of ‘toleration’ has been the subject of two meetings organised by the British Academy. Two participants, Dr Jon Parkin and Dr Timothy Stanton, challenge our complacent assumption that increasing toleration is a historical inevitability.
Clearing a Path through the Copyright Jungle
In the last issue [No. 10, 2007], Professor John Kay FBA reported on a British Academy review of the impact that copyright has on research in the humanities and social sciences. Here he brings us up to date with an important collaboration with the Publishers Association which is designed to …
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