Hay Festival 2018

The Birmingham speaker series at the Hay Festival

The thirty-first Hay Festival of Literature and the Arts will take place from Thursday 24 May - Sunday 3 June 2018.

The Festival brings together life-changing writers, fabulous stars of stage and screen, pioneers of science and technology, and future world leaders, for a party of ideas and stories.

The University of Birmingham’s College of Arts and Law will be hosting a series of six talks, showcasing some of our top academics and the breadth of arts and humanities subjects studied by our students. 

29 May 2018

Heather Widdows

A Duty to be Beautiful?

29 May 2018

Jeannette Littlemore

How do we talk about Death before Birth?

31 May 2018

Alexandra Harris and Tim Dee

Ground Work/The Life of Landscape

31 May 2018

Hugh Houghton, Susan Worrall and Sarah Kilroy

Rediscovering Religious Texts

31 May 2018

Professor Fiona De Londras and Mairead Enright

Ireland’s Referendum on Abortion: A Time for Change?

1 June 2018

Dr Katherine Brown

Muslim Women and Radicalization

Tickets

To book tickets for any of the sessions, visit the Hay Festival website .

Wayfaring

Professor Alexandra Harris is also leading an additional activity at the Festival, titled Wayfaring: Llanthony. This will take place from 10:00am to 1:00pm on Friday 1 June 2018.

The story of our culture over 1,000 years can be told as the story of changing ideas about the weather. While leading a walk from the spectacular ruins of Llantony Priory up into the hills, Alexandra Harris looks at writers and artists across the centuries who, when looking up at the same skies and walking in the same brisk air, have felt very different things. Weatherland allows us to witness cultural climates on the move. The weather is vast and yet we experience it intimately, which is why Harris builds her remarkable story from small evocative details: from the Anglo-Saxons through the Norman Conquest, the Middle Ages to the Romantics there have been times for meteoric marvels and times for gentle breeze. Weatherland is a celebration of British weather and a life-story of those who have lived in it. As we enter what may be the last decades of British weather as we know it, this is a history for our times. A member of the Brecon Beacons National Park will join the walk.

For further information, or to book this event, please visit the Hay Festival website