Why Do We Laugh?

lectures london lectures

Find free to attend lectures from leading universities and institutions around London

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Monday

Oct 6

14:00

From skills to growth

17:00

Breaking the cycle

The New Black Film Collective: DSA Screenings

Live interview with Mike Soutar

Avvocato Francesco Gianni: Is there a future for international trade law?

English Faculty/OWC Shakespeare Webinar: The Merry Wives of Windsor

17:30

Ferrier Prize Lecture: Unravelling the molecular basis of Huntington's disease

Depopulation: an ethical perspective

18:00

The Angus Millar Lecture 2025

Tuesday

Oct 7

12:00

Conservative Party Conference: What is the Conservative approach to higher education and skills integration?

13:00

What is justice?

17:00

Royal Society lates – 2075: A space odyssey

Bankruptcy without Borders | UCL Faculty of Laws - UCL – University College London

Imperial Legacy and Sacred Memory: Lecture by Prof Michael Grunbart

17:30

As Hardly Found: Art and Tropical Architecture

The crime of war: from the Nuremberg trial to Ukraine

Wednesday

Oct 8

11:00

Virtual Open Day for Foundation, Intermediate and Diploma Programmes

15:45

Inaugural Lectures: Professors Janaka Karalliedde & Tet Yap

16:00

How Does Mathematics Last? Heritage and Heritage-making in Mathematics

17:00

Stefano Pujatti

The reinvention mindset: leading with purpose in the age of AI

17:30

The promise and peril of Trump's America first

Thursday

Oct 9

14:00

Mathematical Colloquium: Einstein Constants and Differential Topology by Claude LeBrun

15:00

Crick Lecture | Zoë Johnson

17:00

Black Atlantic: power, people, resistance

Design Engineering Commencement Lecture 2025

17:05

The importance of audience in interpreting legislation | UCL Faculty of Laws - UCL – University College London

17:30

Holy Waters

In Conversation with Carolina Tohá, former Minister of Interior and Public Security of Chile, and former presidential candidate

Not just lines on a map: borders in a changing world

Thanks for the Memories: a panel event exploring collective memory, music and public health

18:00

Coincidence: Poets Penn Newell and Kate Lilley read

Friday

Oct 10

09:00

In-Person Open Day

10:00

The Word for World

14:15

Richard Bellamy on Benedetto Croce's "History of Europe in the Nineteenth Century"

15:00

The Word for World: The Maps of Ursula K Le Guin

Sir Hugh Ford Lecture Series 2025: “Diversity- Nature, Technology, Society”

17:00

Public Lecture: Dean Spade - Resisting Work and Resistance Work

17:30

Francis Crick Prize Lecture: Unravelling the origins of childhood cancer

King’s Brazil Institute opening lecture: “How is Brazil coping: Sovereignty on Trial in the Age of Electoral Interference”

Monday

Oct 13

15:30

Milieu: A Creaturely Theory of the Novel

17:00

Longitudinal links between bilingualism, skills, and academic outcomes in children in poverty

Hybrid | The Force Hypothesis | UCL Faculty of Laws - UCL – University College London

17:30

Beyond Informality: How Chinese Migrants Transformed a Border Economy

Investing in children to address the youth mental health crisis

Why we're getting poorer

Tuesday

Oct 14

16:00

Barriers to Women's Religious Attainment in Japan: Issues and Prospects

War's Toxic Legacy

A Universe of Black Holes

16:30

Romanes Lecture: Empire, Identity and the Search for Reason

17:00

The bonds of freedom: liberated Africans and the end of the slave trade

17:30

Architecture in Transition

Permission to be queer: the case for liberty

Post-Europe: in conversation with Yuk Hui

Eclipsing the West: China, India and the forging of a new world

19:30

Romsey Town and Five Parliamentary Heroes of the Civil War

Wednesday

Oct 15

11:00

China and Chineseness: Lessons from the Chinese Mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan

13:00

Bradford Hill Seminar - The politics of epidemiology and public health in the UK - Professor Danny Dorling

Echoes of Horchin: Inner-Mongolian Epics & Folk Songs

12:00

Computation and the Foundations of Physics, Mathematics and AI

15:45

Inaugural Lectures: Professors Ana Rodriguez Mateos & Ben Challacombe

16:00

Book talk - 'How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, And The Fate Of Nations'

16:30

Financial Policy in the Era of the Climate Crisis: An African Perspective

Problem solving: from the clinic to the classroom

17:00

Peter Lynch, Fragments and Coherence: Essays and Works of Architecture

Undercover Policing of the Left 1968-1982: Subversives Under the Lens

Hybrid | In conversation with Lady Arden of Heswall, DBE | UCL Faculty of Laws - UCL – University College London

17:30

Inaugural Lecture with Professor Ewan McGaughey

In Conversation with Douglas Alexander MP

The Digital Futures of History

Thursday

Oct 16

15:00

Crick Lecture | Peter Rosenthal

16:00

From Tyranny to Athenian Democracy

16:15

King’s Maritime History Seminars: Religion, Radicalism, and the Late Interregnum Navy

17:00

Hybrid | CLP - Bureaucracy and Distrust: The Civil Service in the Constitution | UCL Faculty of Laws - UCL – University College London

Direct Effect in EU Law

Stewardship for the future commons: management beyond the firm

17:30

half modern, half something else

The Henrietta Lacks Paradox

Friday

Oct 17

09:00

Remembering Joseph

16:00

New ways of working (and what that means for us as humans)

17:30

The King Lecture 2025/26 - Tiny Conspiracies: How Bacteria Talk to Each Other

16:30

Fragmentation to Integration: Rethinking Leadership for a New Economic Era

Saturday

Oct 18

17:30

Cities on the frontline: urban governance in the age of the polycrisis?

Tuesday

Oct 21

14:00

Strachey Lecture: Advances in Garbled Circuits

16:00

Whither War; Whither the Law of War

16:30

Dennis Anderson Lecture 2025

17:30

Dream Maps

Rosalind Franklin Award Lecture: Bright futures in a dark universe

19:30

Governing the Machine: How to navigate the risks of AI and unlock its true potential

Wednesday

Oct 22

11:30

1884, an anticolonial game-theatre show

13:00

CIMR Debates in Public Policy: The Role of Trust in Shaping Employee Experiences with Generative AI

17:00

Burned, Cut, Faded, but not Lost: New Discoveries in Cambridge University Library’s Middle English Manuscripts

16:30

Building mathematical Lego

18:00

St Catharine's Political Economy Seminar Series - Professor Steve Fothergill- "The demolition of British Regional Policy”

17:00

The Rise and Fall of Imitation as a Rabbinic Literary Technique

Scholars' Library: Jaz Brisack on 'Get on the Job and Organize'

Thursday

Oct 23

17:00

Hybrid | Membership of the EU in an Era of Geopolitical Disorder | UCL Faculty of Laws - UCL – University College London

Inaugural Lecture Series: Professors Awino Okech and Dan Plesch

17:30

Almost Nothing But Blue Ground - a performative Lecture with Tom Pope and Matthew Benington

19:30

Long Juju: A feature documentary

Friday

Oct 24

17:30

The 2025 Mark Cousins Annual Lecture

Inside the Legal Professions and Why Commercial Awareness Matters

Monday

Oct 27

10:00

Climate Matters Week 2025

17:15

Compassion at the Crossroads: Ethics, Emotion & Human Care

18:00

The Economics of Work and Technology

Tuesday

Oct 28

13:00

Transactions and Legal Institutionalism – Contracts, Money, Applications

19:30

Artists Against the Kremlin

Wednesday

Oct 29

13:30

Social Mobility Week: Keynote with Professor Lee Elliot Major: The Rise and Unravelling of Meritocratic Elites

17:15

Literature and Lifeworlds: Szabo, Schutz, Habermas

17:30

Black History Month Annual Lecture

Grantham Institute Annual Lecture 2025 with Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland

18:00

Rabbis in Zoroastrian Fire Temples: A New History of Jews in the Sasanian Empire

Music of Animals

Thursday

Oct 30

13:00

Hybrid | CLP - Regulatory Norms in Competition Law Assessment | UCL Faculty of Laws - UCL – University College London

17:30

Under pressure: smarter trials for better health outcomes

18:00

Academic Freedom: What It Is, What It Isn’t, and Why It’s Under Threat | UCL Faculty of Laws - UCL – University College London

Ocean: The Liquid Engine That Dominates Our Planet

18:30

Black History Tour of 'Expecting'

Friday

Oct 31

18:00

Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies: Alice Meynell- Book Launch with Talks by Alex Wong and Laura Mulvey

Monday

Nov 3

18:00

Distinguished Lecture Series: Professor Robert Hillenbrand

China’s Economic Prospects on the Cusp

Tuesday

Nov 4

18:00

The Master’s Book Club: Prof. Sharon Peacock CBE FMedSci in conversation with Prof. Tim Minshall author of ‘Your Life is Manufactured: How We Make Things, Why It Matters, and How We Can Do It Better'

Shortening the Working Week: Stories from Pioneering Entrepreneurs

Celebrating 25 years of the World Prison Brief

Minor Criminal: The Trial of the Man Who Murdered My Grandmother

19:30

Art and authoritarianism: Resistant fiction in an age of post-truth

Wednesday

Nov 5

12:00

Virtual Open Day for Taught Postgraduate Programmes

Judith Butler and Marxism: Between Abolitionisms at the Centre for the Study of Law and the Humanities

13:00

Do Not Resuscitate Forms - Who’d Have One?

17:30

The Bioengineering Caro Alumni Lecture with Ingeborg Oie

All quiet on the turbulent front?

18:00

Abraham, the first Jew

Limitarianism and Capitalism

Thursday

Nov 6

13:00

How Women Made the Global Economy

16:30

2025 Annual Uehiro Lectures: Reproductive Rights (Lecture 1/3)

17:30

Dawn Airey CBE in conversation

Friday

Nov 7

14:30

Assize Seminar – Cutting Edge Criminal Law | UCL Faculty of Laws - UCL – University College London

Monday

Nov 10

17:00

ANDREW CHAMBLIN MEMORIAL LECTURE 2025: Gravitational waves, black holes and experimental tests of gravitational theory

Tuesday

Nov 11

17:30

Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson Annual Lecture

18:00

The Shape of Plants: Why Plants Love Mathematics and Mathematicians Love Plants

Wednesday

Nov 12

14:30

Rafael Prieto-Curiel: Cities for everyone

17:30

Getting real about net zero

18:00

La Noire de… at 60. Reflecting on the life and legacy of an African classic

Reading and Contemplation in Philo and the Dead Sea Scrolls

Reforming Human Rights after the Independent Review of the Human Rights Act | UCL Faculty of Laws - UCL – University College London

Why Do We Laugh?

Thursday

Nov 13

13:00

Lunchtime Talk: Sustainability, Care, and Art Galleries

16:00

Crick Lecture | Ian Taylor

16:30

2025 Annual Uehiro Lectures: Reproductive Rights (Lecture 2/3)

18:00

Hybrid | CLP - Justice Driven Insolvency Law: A Normative Theory | UCL Faculty of Laws - UCL – University College London

Chinese visitors to Bodhgaya in the Long First Millennium

18:05

Drafting secondary legislation and the pivotal role of the Statutory Instruments Hub. | UCL Faculty of Laws - UCL – University College London

Monday

Nov 17

18:00

Hybrid | Debating Digital Constitutionalism: A Benthamian Perspective | UCL Faculty of Laws - UCL – University College London

The Later Years: Organisation, Independence and Peace of Mind

18:30

Milner Prize Lecture: How to spot and debunk misleading content

Tuesday

Nov 18

09:30

Women in Science: historical perspectives

17:30

Cinematic cartography

18:00

Money Awards for Breach of Fiduciary Duty | UCL Faculty of Laws - UCL – University College London

18:30

Temptation of Influence

Wednesday

Nov 19

16:00

NHLI Athena SWAN Lecture – Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu

18:00

Hybrid | The Investigatory Powers Tribunal: Reflections on Seven Years as its President | UCL Faculty of Laws - UCL – University College London

19:30

Acting up: Using the power of your presence

Thursday

Nov 20

16:30

2025 Annual Uehiro Lectures: Reproductive Rights (Lecture 3/3)

17:00

Francis Spufford on Faith and Imagination

18:00

Hybrid | The 'ideal mother,' Family Law and Domestic Abuse | UCL Faculty of Laws - UCL – University College London

Tuesday

Nov 25

14:00

Shards; Collage; Contagion

17:00

Scholars' Library: Robert McGill on 'Simple Creatures'

18:00

Becoming AI – Your Journey to Assimilation?

18:30

Archive of Prefiguration: Writing Spatial Futures

Wednesday

Nov 26

18:00

St Catharine's Political Economy Seminar Series - Dr Melissa Sands- Title TBC

Biblical Interpretation: The Twelfth-Century Norman View

Hecate: Mistress of Magic

Thursday

Nov 27

13:00

Where Is China Heading under Xi Jinping?

18:00

Society and Survival During the Holocaust

Friday

Nov 28

10:00

‘Nature spoke to her’: women scientists in the Royal Society

15:30

Sick Architecture

Monday

Dec 1

18:00

Hybrid | Law’s Institutionality Entails Exclusive Legal Positivism | UCL Faculty of Laws - UCL – University College London

Photobiography

Tuesday

Dec 2

14:00

Liquidity; Intoxication; Haunting

Wednesday

Dec 3

19:00

From Mars with Love: Postcards from 50 Years of Exploring The Red Planet

Thursday

Dec 4

13:00

Hybrid | CLP - Is Environmental Law Hopeful? | UCL Faculty of Laws - UCL – University College London

14:30

The Year Ahead at the Ashmolean, with Xa Sturgis

18:00

Donald Trump and the Death Penalty

18:30

Hacking Worldbuilding

Monday

Dec 8

18:00

The Living Bible of the Ethiopean Jews

Wednesday

Dec 10

18:00

Life, Death and Judgement in the Art and Times of Hieronymus Bosch (d. 1516)

Monday

Dec 15

19:00

The Nutcracker’s Musical Magic

Tuesday

Jan 13

18:00

Economics and Artificial Intelligence

Wednesday

Jan 14

18:00

Music of Light and Colour

Tuesday

Jan 20

18:00

Constable's "The Cornfield": A Bicentenary Harvesting

Wednesday

Jan 21

18:00

Why Do We Grieve?

Thursday

Jan 22

13:00

Hybrid | CLP - Artificial Intelligence and the Trouble for Authorship | UCL Faculty of Laws - UCL – University College London

18:00

Oligarchs and Their Discontents

Monday

Jan 26

18:30

Leeuwenhoek Prize Lecture by Professor Sir Michael Ferguson CBE FMedSci FRS

19:00

Alice’s Adventures in Musical Adaptation

Tuesday

Jan 27

18:00

The Shape of Shells: She Sells Self-Similar Spiral Seashells on the Seashore

Wednesday

Jan 28

18:00

Mithras: Master of Mystery

Thursday

Jan 29

13:00

Hybrid | CLP - Family Memory and the Official History Machine | UCL Faculty of Laws - UCL – University College London

18:00

An Ocean of Air

Tuesday

Feb 3

18:00

Will You Be AI’s Pet?

Wednesday

Feb 4

19:00

Alien Earths: What Makes Us Special?

Thursday

Feb 5

18:00

Death Investigation: What Do Coroners Do?

Tuesday

Feb 10

18:00

Lee Miller's Indelible Images

Thursday

Feb 12

18:00

Hybrid | CLP - Against Pro Tanto Wrongs in the Theoretical Armature of Criminal Liability | UCL Faculty of Laws - UCL – University College London

Tuesday

Feb 17

18:00

The Price of Pixels: Unmasking the Environmental Impact of Our Digital Lives

Thursday

Feb 19

18:00

The Ground We Stand On

Tuesday

Feb 24

18:00

Work, Out of Reach

Wednesday

Feb 25

18:00

Music of Earth and Space

Thursday

Feb 26

18:00

Hybrid | Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs): Technology, Finance, and the Law | UCL Faculty of Laws - UCL – University College London

Tuesday

Mar 3

18:00

The Shape of Gravity: Why On Earth Are Planets Spherical?

Wednesday

Mar 4

18:00

Why Do We Hate?

Thursday

Mar 5

18:00

Hybrid | Legally Speaking: Understanding Gender and Sex in the Shadow of Law | UCL Faculty of Laws - UCL – University College London

Tuesday

Mar 10

18:00

Bridget: Goddess and Saint

Thursday

Mar 12

18:00

The Death of Athenian Democracy?

Monday

Mar 16

18:00

Hybrid | Prejudicial, But Not Unduly So: Prejudicial Effect and Rap Evidence | UCL Faculty of Laws - UCL – University College London

Tuesday

Mar 17

18:00

Born Supremacy – AI as a Pale Shadow of Real Humanity

Wednesday

Mar 18

19:00

The Universe’s 100th Birthday: Galactic Fireworks and Little Red Dots

Thursday

Mar 19

18:00

Hybrid | Model Law? Template Legal Culture and the Global Production of Environmental Law | UCL Faculty of Laws - UCL – University College London

Monday

Mar 23

18:00

A Living Planet

Monday

Apr 13

16:00

The Annual Lady Mayor's Lecture

Tuesday

Apr 14

16:00

A World Without Work

Wednesday

Apr 15

16:00

Music of the Mind

Tuesday

Apr 21

16:00

Taming AI

Wednesday

Apr 22

16:00

Why Do We Love?

Tuesday

Apr 28

16:00

The Shape of Tiles: Regular and Irregular, Hard and Soft

Wednesday

Apr 29

17:00

The Sky at Night, Tonight: A New View of the Changing Sky

Tuesday

May 5

16:00

Music, Death and Afterlife

Wednesday

May 6

16:00

Dionysus: Lord of Misrule

Monday

May 11

16:00

The Annual LMS Lecture 2026

17:00

Hybrid | How (not) to Argue Against Meritocracy | UCL Faculty of Laws - UCL – University College London

Tuesday

May 12

16:00

The Pill and the Planet: Can We Have Both a Healthy Aging Population and a Sustainable Future?

Wednesday

May 13

16:00

Music of the Body

Monday

May 18

17:00

Hybrid | Freedom and Ideological Oppression | UCL Faculty of Laws - UCL – University College London

Happily Ever After? Singing and Dancing Cinderella

Wednesday

May 20

16:00

Should We Manipulate People’s Emotions?

Thursday

May 21

16:00

The White Knight: Ice

Tuesday

May 26

16:00

Education – And Its Limits

Thursday

May 28

16:00

Plato to Polybius on Constitutional Change

Monday

Jun 1

17:00

Hybrid | Capitalism, Alienation, and the Rule of None | UCL Faculty of Laws - UCL – University College London

Tuesday

Jun 2

16:00

Forging Better Futures for You and AI

Wednesday

Jun 3

17:00

Pluto Isn’t a Planet

Tuesday

Jun 9

16:00

The Shape of Knots: From DNA to Shoestrings and Solar Flares

Wednesday

Jun 10

16:00

Music of Sleep and Dreams

Thursday

Jun 11

16:00

Cicero In and On Political Crises

Monday

Jun 15

16:00

The Annual Gray's Inn Reading 2026

17:00

Hybrid | Circumstances of Law | UCL Faculty of Laws - UCL – University College London

Wednesday

Jun 17

16:00

The Morrigan: The Nightmare Queen

Thursday

Jun 18

16:00

The Death of the Roman Republic?

Tuesday

Jun 23

16:00

The Annual Sir Thomas Gresham Lecture 2026

Wednesday

Sep 16

13:00

Scholars' Library: Dr Brian Wong on 'Moral Debt'

end

Why Do We Laugh?

Gresham College

November 12

6:00 pm - 7:00 pm

Event link calender

Laughter is an incredibly powerful and yet mysterious emotion. We laugh with delight, but also surprise. We laugh at jokes, but also at embarrassment. Why? What subconscious signal is laughter intended to display? Why do we laugh when someone tickles us and what should we make of the fact that rodents do it too? And why is it that people’s sense of humour differs wildly and yet some drugs can send us all into fits of the giggles, even if there is nothing to laugh at?