Future / Past: Decoding Society

Can you Decode Society? Join us for 2 TED Style Talks from Archaeology and Geography at UCL exploring the social and historical sciences!

Don’t miss it! The Faculty of Social and Historical Sciences is hosting exciting lectures on the hottest topics on Future/Past: Decoding Society!

Enjoy two Ted-style talks by experts on the hottest topics in Social and Historical Sciences, perfect for the inquisitive minds and those interested in Social and Historical Scientific research, followed by a Q&A session and refreshments.

Speakers:

Dr Borja Legarra Herror, Institute of Archaeology from the Faculty Social & Historical Sciences asking: "Can Archaeology change the world?"

Dr James Kneale, Geography from the Faculty Social & Historical Sciences talking about the role of Geography at UCL and in decoding society: 'This isn't big of clever'

Talks

Dr Borja Legarra Herrero:

Can Archaeology change the world?

Beyond serving as inspiration for video games and movies, archaeology is a key tool to change the modern world. The class will showcase how current research on Gold items from Minoan Crete at the UCL institute of Archaeology, a world leading institution that promotes innovative thinking, can offer new perspectives on modern society and make us rethink ourselves. Only looking at the past we can find alternative ways in which Human society can work, challenging many of the assumptions that we take for granted about the current world. I will argue that the strange relationship between gold, power and gender in Greece 4000 years ago can help us to identify and challenge some of the myths that sustain narratives of inequality in the modern world.

Dr James Kneale:

’This isn’t big or clever’ [Full talk details to follow here asap]

Bios

Borja Legarra Herrero is an Associate Professor of Comparative Mediterranean Prehistory at UCL’s Institute of Archaeology and one of the world’s leading experts Minoan gold: an archaeometallurgical analysis of Crete's place in the east Mediterranean world (Co-directed with Prof. Marcos Martinón-Torres, Crete, Greece). His work aims to study Pre- and Protopalatial gold items in order to test the hypothesis that gold supply to Crete, and technological choices in gold metallurgy, changed at some point in the 2nd millennium BC. The results will provide new insight into the developing relationship of Crete with the Aegean and east Mediterranean world before and after the appearance of the first palaces. The methodology includes a range of macroscopic and microscopic analyses of manufacture and wear traits, as well as the first chemical analyses of most of the items using non-invasive portable X-ray flourescence (pXRF) Verasur. Human Mobility and long-term social change in the west Mediterranean: The case of the Vera Region (Almeria, Spain) (Co-director with Dr. Mercedes Murillo-Barroso. University of Granada)

James Kneale is an Senior Lecturer at UCL's Department of Geography and a cultural and historical geographer, interested mainly in nineteenth- and twentieth-century drink and temperance in Britain and elsewhere, and in literary geographies of science fiction, horror, and the weird.

James has published nearly sixty papers and book chapters. His new book, Temperance Lives: Life Assurance, Drink, and Medicine in Britain, 1840-1918 (Bloomsbury Academic) is available as n ebbok and the hardback was published in December 2025. James also co-edited Lost in Space, a book on the geographies of science fiction, with Rob Kitchin (Continuum/Bloomsbury Academic, 2002). James has been a co-editor of Journal of Victorian Culture since 2018, and a member of the editorial boards of Literary Geographies and Geography Compass.