Autumn 2017 events

Our exciting programme of events from September to December is now open for booking. Don't miss out!

Explore the Universe with our fascinating range of talks this Autumn.
Nasa via Wikimedia

Filming our events

Many of the events in this programme will be filmed and available on the Ri YouTube Channel a few months after the event. Subscribe to receive notifications each time a video is released.

Autumn programme

The new season of Ri talks is now available to book online. Running from 11 September until the end of December, we have an amazing range of speakers, from astronomers, broadcasters and cartoonists to scientists who study x-rays, you, and the Z boson.

Read on for some of the highlights or browse our What's On calendar online to book your events today.

Don't forget, Ri Members can attend Discourses for free and receive tickets for just £7 for our talks.

Event series

This Autumn we're excited to bring you three themed weeks of events:

Biology Week: Monday 9 October to Friday 13 October

Join us for Biology Week as we look at life from the microscopic to the gigantic, with talks on genome editing and conservation science as well as a special live-streamed dissection.

Behind the Brain: Monday 23 October to Friday 27 October

Find out what makes you tick with a week of talks on the brain, including pitting humans against other animals, revealing the hidden side of memory, understanding how we process reward, and settling once and for all whether two heads really are better than one.

The Future: Monday 30 October to Tuesday 7 November

Ever wish you could predict the future? We've invited scientists who are trying to do just that. Join us at the end of October for three talks exploring the science and technology that will shape the coming decades: What's next: Visions of the future with Jim Al-Khalili, Beyond the Higgs: What's next for the LHC? with Physicist Harry Cliff and Soonish: Emerging technologies that will improve and/or ruin everything with Kelly and Zach Weinersmith.

Family

This season's Family Fun Day is on 28 October and we're getting hands-on with Halloween, exploring all that is ghostly, ghastly and gory. Dressing up is encouraged, with bonus points for science themes!

We also have Dr Karl with a rip-roaring tour through great moments in scienceKate Jones using technology to save wildlifeBen Ambridge testing human smarts versus chimpanzees, and Suze Kundu going on adventures at the nano-scale.

 

Discourses

To start off the Autumn season of Discourses, physicist Jerome Gauntlett will explore the fascinating and mysterious world of black holes on 29 September.

In a historic two-person Discourse, on 27 October, psychologists and neuroscientists Chris and Uta Frith will discuss whether two heads really are better than one.

Join Crossrail engineer Khouloud El-Hakim on 24 November for the final Discourse of 2017 as she discusses the engineering challenges of the largest infrastructure project in Europe and the changing landscape of the construction industry.

New event formats

We're always trying to innovate when it comes to science events, so we're trying some new formats this Autumn.

Sit back in our amazing lecture theatre on 11 October and witness a live-streamed dissection from the labs of the Royal Veterinary College and then get hands-on with specimens throughout the first floor and solve a veterinary mystery. All of the amazing visceral visuals without the stink!

We've got a special science dinner with gastrophysicist Charles Spence on 8 November, where your tastebuds will be twisted and your minds blown.

No longer satisfied with just one evening of science from our amazing speakers, we've planned two double-headers, Kelly and Zach Weinersmith with the launch of their new book 'Soonish' on 6 and 7 November and Wifi Wars with their Christmas Bash on 19 and 20 December. We recently found out that the last time the same speaker came back for two nights in a row was Nikola Tesla in 1892.