The Burrows Lecture: past speakers have included Andrew Motion, Simon Lyster,
John Tusa, Margaret Drabble, Ruth Rendell, Shirley Williams and Sir Nikolaus
Pevsner.
The Burrows Lecture: committee
Professor Hugh Brogan
Professor
Hugh Brogan
(Chair) was an undergraduate at St John's College Cambridge,
and then, for a few years, a journalist with the
Economist
. He spent
two years in the United States before returning to academic life as a Fellow
of St John's College; he transferred to Essex in 1974. He has had an
extensive experience of US universities, where he has frequently taught at
summer schools.
Professor Brogan's principal field of study is the history of the US,
with an emphasis on politics, but he has also written and published on
French history, British history, and the life of Arthur Ransome, the
children's writer and liberal journalist.
He is putting the finishing touches to a volume of American political
biographies - 'four short lives' - designed to illustrate the realities of
life at the regional and district level of U.S. politics. He has also
embarked on a history of Repton School, and recently completed a biography
of Alexis de Tocqueville.
Andrew
Phillips
Andrew
Phillips
became a Teaching Fellow in the Department of History at the
University in 2002. He is a graduate of Nottingham University and Bristol
University, where he read History. Between 1965 and 1998 he taught at the
Colchester Institute, acting for many years as Head of the School of
Humanities. Andrew has been active in the promotion of local history
activities in Essex for much of this time. In 1988 he launched the
'Colchester Recalled' Oral History archive (ongoing), now housed in the
Albert Sloman Library. A specialist in nineteenth and twentieth century
history, Andrew has published both books and articles on Colchester and
Essex themes.
Professor
Jules Pretty OBE
Professor
Jules Pretty OBE is Deputy-Vice-Chancellor and Pro-Vice-Chancellor Sustainability and Resources and for
the Faculty of Science and Engineering at the University of Essex
Professor Pretty was Head of the Department of Biological Sciences
between 2004 and 2008.
His books include This Luminous Coast (due to be published in 2011)
The Earth only Endures
(2007)
, Guide to a Green Planet
(edited,
2002),
Agri-Culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature
(2002),
The
Living Land
(1998
), Regenerating Agriculture
(1995),
Fertile Ground
(1999,
co-authored),
The Trainers Guide for Participatory Learning and Action'
(1995, co-authored);
The Hidden Harvest
(1992, co-authored); and
Unwelcome Harvest
(1991, co-authored).
He is a Fellow of the Society of Biology and the Royal Society of Arts,
former Deputy-Chair of the Government's Advisory Committee on Releases to
the Environment (ACRE), and has served on government advisory committees for
DEFRA, DFID, the Cabinet Office and DTI.
He is currently member of the Lead Expert Group for the UK Government's
Foresight Global Food and Farming Future's Project, member of the Expert Panel
for UK National Ecosystem Assessment and member of the BBSRC's Strategy Advisory
Board. He was recently Chairman of the Essex Rural Commission, member of the
Royal Society working group in Biological Approaches to Improving Crop
Production (2088-2009), and member of the 2008 RAE Sub-Panel 16.
Professor Pretty is also a regular contributor to the media. He presented
the 1999 BBC Radio 4 series
Ploughing Eden
and contributed to, and
wrote for, the 2001 BBC TV Correspondent programme
The Magic Bean
.
In 1997 Professor Professor Pretty received an international award from
the Indian Ecological Society and was appointed A D White Professor-at-Large
by Cornell University for six years from 2001 and is Chief Editor of the
International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability
.
He received an OBE in 2006 for services to sustainable agriculture, and an
honorary degree form Ohio State University in 2009.
Dr Alison Rowlands
Dr Alison Rowlands is Head of the Department of History and Director
of the Centre for Local and Regional History. After reading history at St. Hilda’s College,
Oxford, Dr Rowlands took her PhD in early modern German history under the supervision of
Bob Scribner at Clare College, Cambridge. She joined the Department of History at Essex in 1992.
Dr Rowlands is a leading authority on the history of witchcraft and witch trials in early
modern Germany (with particular focus on the city of Rothenburg ob der Tauber and its rural
hinterland). Her research also focuses on the ways in which early modern witch trials are
remembered and commemorated in modern culture (especially in Germany and England), gender
and women’s history in early modern Germany, and the history of crime, midwifery, religion
and magic in early modern Germany.
A regular contributor to national media, Dr Rowlands is the author of numerous publications,
including Witchcraft Narratives in Germany: Rothenburg, 1561-1652 (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2003),
and (ed.) Witchcraft and Masculinities in Early Modern Europe (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).