20 Jan 2025

This course seeks to discover intimations of the numinous on a journey with five poets. From the search for a peace that passes understanding in a post-war ‘waste land’, through the rigours of purgatorial pilgrimage to the modern cityscapes of squandered desires, loneliness and spiritual failure, graced lives appear as rather distant afterthoughts and fractured memories. If faint echoes of the transcendent may still be heard, the question is posed as to where sacred presence could be found or reimagined in the unhallowed void and transience of secular human existence.

This course will share insights about carbon dioxide and its role in sustaining life on Earth. Carbon dioxide, which is invisible and odourless, is a key component in our atmosphere.
Based on fundamental scientific principles, these lectures will delve into the scientific foundations under­pinning the mechanisms by which greenhouse and other atmospheric gases contribute to the shaping of our planet’s climate. The lectures will offer valuable insights and foster a deeper understanding of this complex yet captivating subject matter.

The Baltic Rim spawned waves of colonisers, powerful empires, Crusading Orders and international trading consortiums. They altered the fate of places thousands of miles from the Baltic Rim. But in time these successes brought their own hazards. The attention of larger political units was attracted. The native populations were ultimately too small to sustain serious political power. The role of the Baltic Rim in the modern world has changed. Instead of political competition, the Baltic Rim has become an exemplar for good values, education, freedom of expression and working democracy.

This is a practical course in both formal color theory and the use of a personal color palette, mainly using the mediums of aquarelle crayons and collage. The five sessions have been loosely structured to respect the individual pace of participants, depending on their needs and interests.

In this course, which is part theory and part practical writing, you will identify sources of your creativity and ways of capturing creative ideas from these sources. You will explore the past and present in terms of working with ideas you’ve identified and wish to explore, looking at both non-fiction and fictional genres.

This course will bring into focus some of the great paintings produced in five European cities hitherto regarded as only of secondary importance in the history of Western art. Participants will discover how Titian advanced Renaissance painting beyond that of Florence and Rome, whilst in a turbulent London we will meet William Hogarth. We also meet Egon Schiele in Vienna and in Moscow, Wassily Kandinsky. In Berlin we encounter George Grosz and Otto Dix. Finally we meet German artist Anselm Kiefer.

Everything around us, apart from hydrogen and helium, was made inside stars. The Earth and Sun contain elements made in the many generations of stars that were born and died during the nine thousand million years before our Sun and planets were born. The story of the birth and death of stars is the story of the battle of matter against the force of gravity. In this course we follow the story from when the Universe was a few seconds old to the present day.

These lectures will demonstrate how bones and teeth of animals record various aspects of their life history. This is particularly important for deciphering the biology of animals that have been dead for a few years up to millions of years, and of which we know virtually nothing. Anatomical studies and biological signals recorded within their bones allow us to extract information about how they grew, how old they were, whether they migrated or whether they endured disease. We will show how we garner this information.

This richly illustrated, informative lecture will tell stories from the Karoo Roads book series,written by Chris Marais and Julienne du Toit. They are specialist travel writers of the Karoo and have spent the past 20 years gathering and publishing stories of the South African heartland. The lecture will take participants on a long journey past the faces and places of the Karoo, full of insider information, little-known facts and insights.

This lecture will explore why insects worldwide are so successful, their diversity and evolution, their extraordinarily varied lifestyles, why they have adopted metamorphosis, and how they breed, feed, camouflage and defend themselves. It will also discuss why they are vitally important ecologically and stress the importance of conserving creepy crawlies. Did you know that social insects have some of the most sophisticated behaviors of all animals, that insects are the only invertebrates with wings, and that the decimation of insects is already having a profound effect on essential ecological processes?

Since the launch of Sputnik in 1957 the space age has evolved in the USA from Wernher von Braun to Elon Musk . China and India have followed suit, encouraging entrepreneurs to build rockets to launch satellites. Europe shows a plethora of space rocket companies and spaceport companies. Russia and the USA have been joined in human spaceflight by China, with India scheduled to follow within three years. Japan and the European Space Agency are in astronomy and spaceflight. The United Arab Emirates has sent a space probe orbiting Mars.

It recognized that landscapes, gardens, plants and natural environments promote mental and physical health. Architects in Japan and Europe have been required to create areas for green spaces in all new building developments. They are creating green spaces on rooftops and balconies and in ‘living walls’ of plants that create their own eco-environments. This course will explore the meaning and importance of green zones, how we respond to certain combinations of natural elements, and how we can use these in our daily lives and living spaces.

This lecture will focus on the plight of threatened Benguela seabird species: African penguins, Cape gannets and Cape cormorants, and their specialised association with their principal prey, sardine and anchovy, which are also the target of the largest commercial net-fishing system by volume in South Africa, purse-seining. It provides a background to the Benguela Upwelling Ecosystem and where these seabird species fit in. The current conservation challenges facing these species will be discussed. The lecture concludes with the discussion of work being done by various stakeholders to address these challenges.

J.S. Bach, has loomed large over the musical world for the last three hundred years. What is it about Bach that has this effect on composers? This course explores answers to this phenomenon. The first lecture discusses the enigma of Bach: where did this music come from, and why is it so universally loved? The next lecture looks at Bach’s influence in the nineteenth century where the music is unapproachable and immeasurable by ordinary standards. Finally, Bach is considered as a man for all genres in modern times.

Des is a South African folksinger, storyteller and satirist. He and his late wife Dawn are living legends in South African showbiz history in their tireless quest for justice and change in a society fractured by racialism and apartheid. Des is famous for his razor-sharp impersonations of Verwoerd and Vorster, in the same way he and Dawn are famous for their hits in English and Afrikaans. Join Des as he talks about his artistic career with Dawn and performs some of their famous pieces.

Recent spectacular advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) focus strongly on the sub-area of AI known as machine learning. This lecture will remind participants that there are several other sub-disciplines of AI, and that it is important for the field to maintain and grow expertise in all aspects of AI. The lecturer will then proceed to practice what he preaches by introducing Symbolic AI as one of the pillars of AI. The lecture will conclude with some suggestions on how Symbolic AI can benefit from research in machine learning, and vice versa.

These lectures investigate the crises around imperial power and the writing of novels from the genre of the ‘spy’ or ‘espionage’ thriller. It examines the national and imperial tensions at work around the time of the novels’ writing, and how these work through into the novels’ structures and narratives. We move from the period of nineteenth-century grand imperialism (Kipling) across the First World War and the aftermath of the Second World War (Buchan and Fleming) and into the beginnings of the contemporary period of neo-liberalism and globalisation (le Carré).

This online course is designed to teach participants with a prior knowledge of Italian at a basic level. It is suitable for those who previously attended the Italian for Beginners Summer School course or Intensive Italian A. This course will help extend and enrich vocabulary and consolidate key grammar points, which are essential to improving overall communication.

The course will provide participants with a sound base of skills and language required for further studies in Italian, as well as work or tourism needs.

This online course is aimed at participants who have no prior background in writing, speaking or understanding any dialect of the Chinese language. Through the use of concise instruction and effective practice, the course will provide participants with the ability to develop basic listening ,speaking ,reading and writing skills.