Degrees of separation: Universities then, now and tomorrow

Thursday 22nd February 2024, 6pm - 8pm

Doors Open: 6pm

Lecture Starts: 6.30pm

Drinks Reception and Close: 8pm

In this free public lecture, Professor Joe Moran discusses the university as an ideal, and as a real place. What should a university stand for, who should be allowed to study there, and what should a degree lead to? Does the university still have value as a physical space in an age of online learning?

As part of the lecture, Joe will draw on the experience of his parents as two of the first students at Lancaster University in 1964. They were first-generation students from working-class backgrounds with non-standard qualifications, and Lancaster was the only university to accept them. How has the experience of being at university changed since they were students nearly sixty years ago?

Professor Joe Moran is a lecturer in English and Cultural History at Liverpool John Moores University. He is a literary and cultural historian focusing on Britain in the very recent past, with a particular interest in the everyday. He writes for The Guardian, The New Statesman, The Financial Times, BBC History Magazine, Times Higher Education and other publications, and has written a number of books including: 
•    'Queuing for Beginners: The Story of Daily Life from Breakfast to Bedtime', a cultural history of daily habits in Britain in the postwar years, inspired by the work of Mass Observation; 
•    'On Roads: A Hidden History', a circuitous journey around the British motorway system; and 
•    'Armchair Nation: An Intimate History of Britain in Front of the TV', the story of watching television from Baird's first demonstration in Selfridge's in 1925 to the switching off of the analogue signal in 2012.