Neale Lectures

The UCL History Neale Lecture series features distinguished historians speaking on various historical topics - traditionally British history, though it now covers broader global topics - and is often accompanied by a specialised Masterclass for postgraduate students. 
 

• 2026 Peter Mandler: ‘Eight Reasons to Study History: The Rise (and Fall?) of History as an Undergraduate Degree’
• 2025 Jo Van Steenbergen: ‘The enslavement of Middle Eastern history: Politics, historiography, ideology and the Mamluk Sultanate of Cairo (13th–16th centuries)’
• 2023 David Mattingly: ‘Decolonising ancient empire: Roman imperialism, Britain and Africa’
• 2022 Craig Muldrew: ‘Capitalism: a concept too big to fail?’
• 2021 Kennetta Hammond Perry: ‘Sensory Encounters With the Archive of David Oluwale’
• 2020 (Cancelled due to Covid)
• 2019 Jörg Peltzer: ‘English or European? How to make an earl in fourteenth-century England’
• 2018 Mark Knights: ‘Corruption and the Evolution of Office: Britain and its Empire, 1600-1850’
• 2017 Jon Lawrence: ‘The culture-wars of class in post-war Britain’
• 2016 Professor David Carpenter: ‘Copies of Magna Carta in the Thirteenth Century’
• 2015 Professor Alexandra Walsham FBA, FAHA: ‘“The Fanatique Rage of the Late Times”: Iconoclasm, Reputation and Memory in the English Civil Wars’
• 2014 Professor David Marquand FBA: ‘Federalism or break-up: the UK from Parnell to Salmond’
• 2013 Professor Margot Finn: ‘Harem Histories and Princely Politics: Tipu Sultan, the Family and East India Company Rule’
• 2012 Professor Robin Blackburn: ‘Slavery and Finance in Britain’s Empire of Free Trade’ & Colloquium
• 2010 Professor Steven Pincus: ‘Reconceptualising the Origins of the British Empire’ & Colloquium
• 2006 Professor Jean-Claude Schmitt: ‘Images, Imagination and the Orders of Time’ & Colloquium
• 2005 Professor Peter J. Marshall: ‘The Parting of the Ways: Britain and America at 1783’ & Joint Colloquium with Commonwealth Fund
• 2004 Professor Michael Braddick: ‘The English Revolution and its Legacies’ & Colloquium
• 2003 Professor Miri Rubin: ‘The Cultures of Late Medieval England’
• 2002 Professor Roy Foster: ‘Intimate Enmities: Antagonisms in Irish History’ & Joint Colloquium with Commonwealth Fund
• 2001 Ms Joanna Innes: ‘Legislating for the Three Kingdoms, c.1780-1830’ & Colloquium
• 2000 Professor Quentin Skinner: ‘The Latin Classics as a Cause of the English Revolution’ & Colloquium
• 1999 Dr. David H. Solkin: ‘Idle Boys, Cheats and Village Politicians: Genre Painting and Social Anxiety in Early Nineteenth-century England’
• 1998 Professor Peter Mandler: ‘The Consciousness of Modernity: Adventures of the English “National Character”, 1870-1940’ & Colloquium
• 1997 Professor C.A. Bayley: ‘The British and Indigenous Peoples, 1760-1860: power, perception and identity’ & Joint Colloquium with Commonwealth Fund
• 1996 Dr. Eamon Duffy: ‘The Long Reformation: Catholicism, Protestantism and the Multitude in England, c.1500-1800’ & Colloquium
• 1995 Dr. Richard M. Smith: ‘“Who is my neighbour?” Charity, Self-Interest and Welfare’ & Colloquium
• 1993 Professor François Crouzet: ‘Business Dynasties in England and France’
• 1992 Dr. José F. Harris: ‘The Spell of Plato in English Social Thought, 1870-1940’
• 1991 Professor C.C. Dyer: ‘The Medieval Village Community and its Enemies’
• 1990 Professor W.A. Speck: ‘Queen Anne and her Parliaments’
• 1989 Professor Barry Supple: ‘Images of decline: national responses to Britain’s economic performance since the 1880s’
• 1988 Dr. M.T. Clanchy: ‘Burning the tally sticks in 1834: the end of the Ancien Regime in England’
• 1987 Professor P. Collinson: ‘Puritans, Men of Business and Elizabethan Parliaments’
• 1986 Professor T.G. Barnes: ‘Cropping the Heath: The fall of a Caroline Chief Justice’
• 1985 Dr. Kenneth Morgan: ‘“Fit for heroes”? British post-war reconstruction, 1918 and 1945’
• 1984 Emeritus Professor R.H. Hilton: ‘The medieval market town: the role of the simple commodity producer’
• 1983 Dr. G.E. Aylmer: ‘The English Civil War in Fiction and in Fact’
• 1982 Dr. Joan Thirsk: ‘New Style Demesne Farming in Early Modern England’
• 1981 Professor Norman Gash: ‘The Tortoise and the Hare. Liverpool and Canning: a
• Contrast of Careers’
• 1980 Dr. Christopher Hill: ‘Parliament and People in Early Seventeenth Century England’
• 1979 Professor D.C. Coleman: ‘Mercantilism Revisited’
• 1978 Professor G.R. Elton: ‘Parliament under the Tudors: its function and fortunes’
• 1977 Professor A.G. Dickens: ‘The English Protestants - A Social Survey’
• 1976 Mr. K.V. Thomas: ‘The Place of Laughter in Tudor and Stuart England’
• 1975 Professor J.H. Hexter: ‘The “Anglo-American” Parliament of 1628’
• 1974 Mr. M.E. Howard: ‘“The British Way in Warfare”: a Reappraisal’
• 1973 Professor S.T. Bindoff: ‘The Fame of Sir Thomas Gresham’
• 1972 Emeritus Professor M.M. Postan: ‘The English Gentry of the Thirteenth Century’
• 1971 Professor H.R. Trevor-Roper: ‘Queen Elizabeth’s First Historian: William Camden and the Beginnings of English “Civil” History’
• 1970 Dame Veronica Wedgwood: ‘Oliver Cromwell and the Elizabethan Inheritance’