Book at Lunchtime

About
book at lunchtime

Book at Lunchtime is a series of bite-sized book discussions held fortnightly during term-time, with our chosen author discussing their work with expert commentators from a range of disciplines. The events are free to attend and open to members of the University and the public alike. All events are filmed and published on the TORCH Book At Lunchtime YouTube Channel 

For questions relating to our Book at Lunchtime series or suggestions for books for the future please contact John Kennedy. john.kennedy@humanities.ox.ac.uk

2026 events

  • Rethinking Conscientious Objection in Health Care by Dr Alberto Giubilini (Uehiro), Professor Udo Schuklenk (Queen's), Francesca Minerva, and Professor Julian Savulescu (Uehiro)
  • Southern Imagining: A Literary and Cultural History of the Far Southern Hemisphere by Professor Elleke Boehmer (English).

2025 events

  • The Lailashi Codex by Dr Thea Gomelauri (AMES)
  • The Book Makers by Professor Adam Smyth (English)
  • Adventures in Volcanoland: What Volcanoes Tell Us about the World and Ourselves by Professor Tamsin Mather (Earth Sciences)
  • The Green Lady by Dr Sally Bayley (English)
  • Ghost Stations by Professor Patrick McGuinness (MML)
  • Conversations on Creativity vol. 1: Monstrosity by the Oxford-Uppsala Culture & Creativity Research Cluster
  • A Doll's House, Men of Honour, When We Dead Awaken. Translated by Gaye Kynoch, Freelance literary translator. Edited by Professor Kirsten E. Shepherd (English) and Tzen Sam (DPhil, English)

2024 events

  • Domicide: Architecture, War and the Destruction of Home in Syria by Dr Ammar Azzouz (Geography)
  • Authorship, Activism and Celebrity by Dr Ruth Scobie (English) and Dr Sandra Mayer (Elise Richter Fellow, Austrian Academy of Sciences) 
  • The Perils of Interpreting: The Extraordinary Lives of Two Translations between Qing China and the British Empire by Professor Henrietta Harrison (AMES)
  • Young British Poets and Selected Poems of Sergio Raimondi with Professor Ben Bollig (MML), Professor Alejandra Crosta (MML) and Mark Leech (poet and translator)
  • FEMINA by Dr Janina Ramirez (Harris Manchester)
  • English Food by Professor Diane Purkiss (English)
  • From Tudor To Stuart by Professor Susan Doran (History)
  • Wartime Shakespeare: Performing Narratives of Conflict by Dr Amy Lidster (English) and Shakespeare’s Tercentenary: Staging Nations and Performing Identities in 1916 by Dr Monika Smialkowska (Northumbria)
  • The Life of Nuns: Love, Politics, and Religion in Medieval German Convents by Professor Henrike Lähnemann (MML)

2023 events

  • After Clarice; Reading Lispector's Legacy in the Twenty First Century by Adriana X. Jacobs (AMES) and Claire Williams (MML)
  • Becoming Beauvoir: A Life by Dr Kate Kirkpatrick (Philosophy)
  • Reformation, Resistance and Reason of State 1517-1625 by Dr Sarah Mortimer (History)
  • Why Modern Manuscripts Matter by Professor Kathryn Sutherland (English)
  • Guru to the World; The Life and Legacy of Vivekananda by Professor Ruth Harris (History)
  • Natural General Intelligence by Professor Christopher Summerfield (Experimental Psychology)
  • Compassion in Healthcare: Pilgrimage, Practice and Civic Life by Professor Joshua Hordern (Theology)
  • Courting India by Professor Nandini Das (English)
  • One Hit Wonders by Professor Sarah Hill (Music)
  • Conquered by Eleanor Parker (History)
  • The Gift of Narrative in Medieval England by Professor Nicholas Perkins (English)

2022 events

  • The Career and Communities of Zaynab Fawwaz: Feminist Thinking in Fin-de-siècle Egypt by Professor Marilyn Booth (AMES)
  • Don't Follow the Wind by Nikolaus Hirsch and Jason Waite
  • Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow by Alexander Radishchev, translated by Andrew Kahn and Irina Reyfman. This event was co-organised with Columbia University's Harriman Institute and The Russian Library.
  • Spying Through a Glass Darkly: The Ethics of Espionage and Counter-Intelligence by Professor Cécile Fabre (Philosophy)
  • Great Zimbabwe: Reclaiming a ‘Confiscated’ Past by Professor Shadreck Chirikure (Archaeology)
  • Unseen City: The Psychic Lives of the Urban Poor by Professor Ankhi Mukherjee (English)
  • The City of Babylon by Dr Stephanie Dalley (AMES)
  • All Men Must Die by Professor Carolyne Larrington (English)
  • Paris and the Parasite by Dr Macs Smith (MML)

2021 events

  • Royals and Rebels: The Rise and Fall of the Sikh Empire, by Dr Priya Atwal (History)
  • The Political Life of An Epidemic: Cholera, Crisis and Citizenship in Zimbabwe by Professor Simukai Chigudu (International Development)
  • Sophocles: Antigone and Other Tragedies by Professor Oliver Taplin (Classics)
  • Charles Dickens and the Properties of Fiction: The Lodger World by  Dr Ushashi Dasgupta (English)
  • China's Good War: How World War II is Shaping a New Nationalism by Professor Rana Mitter (History)
  • Porcelain: Poem on the Downfall of my City by Durs Grünbein, translated by Professor Karen Leeder (MML)
  • Born to Write: Literary Families and Social Hierarchy in Early Modern France by Professor Neil Kenny (MML)
  • Jews, Liberalism, Antisemitism: A Global History, edited by Professor Abigail Green (History) and Professor Simon Levis Sullam
  • Real Oxford by Professor Patrick McGuinness (MML)
  • Living I Was Your Plague: Martin Luther's World and Legacy by Professor Lyndal Roper (History)
  • Greek Weird Wave: A Cinema of Biopolitics by Professor Dimitris Papanikolaou (MML)
  • The Oxford Handbook of Dante, edited by Professor Manuele Gragnolati (MML), Professor Elena Lombardi (MML) and Professor Francesca Southerden (MML)
  • Literary Cosmopolitanism in the English Fin de Siècle: Citizens of Nowhere by Dr Stefano Evangelista (English)

2020 events

  • Empires of the Mind by Professor Robert Gildea (History)
  • Revolution Rekindled: The Writers and Readers of Late Soviet Biography by Professor Polly Jones (MML)
  • Imitating Authors by Professor Colin Burrow (English)
  • Iconoclasm as Child's Play, written by Dr Joseph Moshenska (English)
  • Commemorative Modernisms: Women Writers, Death and the First World War by Alice Kelly (Rothermere)
  • Shipwreck in French Renaissance Writing: The Direful Spectacle written by DR Jennifer Oliver (MML)
  • Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe by Professor Judith Herrin (KCL)
  • Western Europe’s Democratic Age: 1945—1968 by Professor Martin Conway (History)
  • Tenter by Dr Susie Campbell

2019 events

  • Postcolonial Poetics by Professor Elleke Boehmer (English)
  • Singing in the Age of Anxiety by Professor Laura Tunbridge (Music)
  • Epic Performances from the Middle Ages into the Twenty-First Century by Fiona Mcintosh (Classics)
  • Art and Political Thought in Medieval England c.1150-1350 by Dr Laura Slater (Music)
  • Compassion's Edge by Professor Katherine Ibbett (MML)
  • Veteran Poetics: British Literature in the Age of Mass Warfare, 1790–2015 by Professor Kate McLoughlin (English)
  • Delius and the Sound of Place by Professor Daniel Grimley (Music)
  • Lande: The Calais 'Jungle' and Beyond by Professor Dan Hicks (Archaeology) and Dr Sarah Mallet
  • Chaucer: A European Life by Professor Marion Turner (English)
  • India, Empire and First World War Culture by Professor Santanu Das (English)
  • Celebrity Culture and the Myth of Oceania: Britain 1770-1823 by Dr Ruth Scobie (English)

 

Events
Past Events