Discover the exceptional research being undertaken across UCL, from climate psychology to the search for exoplanets, with UCL's Lunch Hour Lecture series, running since 1942.

Find out what lectures are coming up: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/events/lunch-hour-lectures

UCL Minds Lunch Hour Lectures 2019

For humans, like most animal species, survival depends on effectively reacting to environmental stimuli. Picture yourself in a building when an alarm system starts to ring in a nearby room. Would it capture your attention? How would this event affect your subsequent motor response? In a series of experiments, using electroencephalography (EEG) and measuring event related potentials (ERPs), we examined how such unexpected and salient events are processed in the brain, and how dynamic interactions between sensory influences (such as stimuli properties) and cognitive factors (such as attention, expectation) affect our motor behaviour.

Speaker: Dr Marina Kilintari, Research Associate based at the Human Sensory Neuroscience Research Group, UCL
Date: 23 April 2019

UCL's popular public Lunch Hour Lecture series has been running at UCL since 1942, and showcases the exceptional research work being undertaken across UCL. Lectures are free and open to all.

Lunch Hour Lecture: Perception & action in the brain: what can electroencephalography (EEG) tell us

Transport provides many benefits, particularly access to education, employment, services, shops, and social networks. Walking and cycling (including to and from public transport) can provide enough physical activity to meet health recommendations. However, motor vehicles cause noise and air pollution; injuries & fatalities; community severance; stress; loss of land for social purposes; and increased sedentary behaviour. There are marked inequalities in benefits and harms from transport, particularly in car-oriented societies. Professor Mindell will use some of her recent research on road death rates, older people’s walking speed, and the barrier effect of busy roads to illustrate some of these issues.

Speaker: Dr Jennifer Mindell is Professor of Public Health at UCL
Date: 30 April 2019

UCL's popular public Lunch Hour Lecture series has been running at UCL since 1942, and showcases the exceptional research work being undertaken across UCL. Lectures are free and open to all.

Lunch Hour Lecture: Driven to distraction or a move in the right direction?

Wild nature and natural ecosystems are declining rapidly as humans use more of the earth’s resources and change climate patterns. Thanks to new sensor technologies such as animal movement tags, camera traps, passive acoustic sensors, IoT devices and new ways of analysing these data automatically with artificial intelligence, scientists have access to huge amounts of data about our changing environment and changing wildlife populations. We will review some of the latest technological advances in sensing, analysing, monitoring, and responding to wildlife population declines. We argue that although these technologies will help us to better understand the natural world and to further engage people with their environment, these could be disruptive and we discuss whether we are really ready for the Internet of Wild Things!

Speakers: 
Kate Jones is Professor of Ecology and Biodiversity and Director of the Biodiversity Modelling Research Group at Centre for Biodiversity and Environmental Research (CBER)
Duncan Wilson is Professor of Connected Environments at The Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA)
Date: 9 May 2019

UCL's popular public Lunch Hour Lecture series has been running at UCL since 1942, and showcases the exceptional research work being undertaken across UCL. Lectures are free and open to all.

Lunch Hour Lecture: Internet of Wild Things-using technology to understand and safeguard our planet

How do the games children play resemble, recall or depart from the games of their parents and grandparents? How can memories of the play of previous generations be made tangible through immersive media, in museums and playgrounds? This lecture draws on an EPSRC-funded project in which archives of play from 20,000 children of the 1950s and 60s at the Bodleian Library and British Library are revoiced by today's children for an interactive installation at the V&A Museum of Childhood. Led by the UCL Institute of Education, in partnership with CASA at the Bartlett and the University of Sheffield, this project promotes inter-generational dialogue about play, and finds new connections between traditional and media-based games.

Speaker: Andrew Burn is Professor of English, Media and Drama at Institute of Education.
Date: 14 May 2019

UCL's popular public Lunch Hour Lecture series has been running at UCL since 1942, and showcases the exceptional research work being undertaken across UCL. Lectures are free and open to all.

Lunch Hour Lecture: Playing the Archive

The state-of-the-art facilities of UCL EAST and the interconnection of Experiments, Arts, Society and Technology on the Olympic Park are allow for exciting new taught programmes opportunities and exciting interdisciplinary and research-based ways of teaching. At the core of many of the programmes being developed is the concept of experiential learning. Drawing on the connected curriculum, students undertake academically rigorous programmes while also applying their knowledge to authentic projects or activities informed by world-leading interdisciplinary research. This talk will explore the theory and practice of designing such integrated programmes and show examples from the UCL EAST portfolio of programmes.

Speaker: Professor John Mitchell is Vice-Dean, Education at Faculty of Engineering Sciences, UCL
Date: 16 May 2019

UCL's popular public Lunch Hour Lecture series has been running at UCL since 1942, and showcases the exceptional research work being undertaken across UCL. Lectures are free and open to all.

Lunch Hour Lecture: Enhancing Experiential Learning through Experiments, Arts, Society & Technology

UCL (University College London) is consistently ranked among the world's top ten universities (QS World University Rankings 2010 - 2021). Our excellence extends across all academic disciplines, from one of the world's foremost centres for research and teaching in the biological sciences to world-renowned centres for architecture (UCL Bartlett), education (UCL IOE) and fine art (UCL Slade School).

UCL is London's leading multidisciplinary university, with more than 13,000 staff and 43,000 students from 150 different countries. Founded in 1826 in the heart of London, UCL was the first university in England to welcome students of any religion and the first to welcome women on equal terms with men.

UCL Minds brings together UCL’s knowledge, insights, and ideas through events, activities, and digital content open to everyone. Find out what’s on UCL Minds: www.ucl.ac.uk/minds