Forthcoming edited collection - Risk

Hello readers,

Apologies for my absence, but I've been on a rainy holiday to the beautiful Ardnamurchan and then the Edinburgh Festival, followed by a wonderful trip to Barcelona.

I've got another book coming out very soon on 31 August. This is an edited collection of essays based on the theme of risk and called rather imaginatively Risk (CUP, 2011).

These essays stem from the Darwin College Lecture Series 2010, which were organised by myself and my two esteemed colleagues, Dr Michael Scott and Dr Tony Cox. This was a project I was involved whilst I was the Adrian Socio-Legal Research Fellow at Darwin College, Cambridge.

We all worked extremely hard to produce a fanastic lecture series. For the uninitiated, the Darwin College Lecture Series are public lectures throughout Lent term. Each year a different theme is chosen by the organisers and speakers from a range of disciplines who are renowned for their ability to communicate in an accessible way are invited to respond to this chosen theme.

Risk proved to be a theme that captured the moment, mired as we were in 2009/10 in the economic down-turn. We also had a great line-up of speakers. One of the lectures, given by Ben Goldacre, was one of the most popular in the 25 year history of the lecture series, rivalling only the lecture given by Desmond Tutu over a decade ago.

Anyway, I think the book makes for a great read. Here's a bit of blurb about it:

Recent events from the economic down-turn to climate change mean that there has never been a better time to be thinking about and trying to better understand the concept for risk. In this book, prominent and eminent speakers from fields as diverse as statistics to classics, neuroscience to criminology, politics to astronomy, as well as speakers embedded in the media and in government have put their ideas down on paper in a series of essays that broaden our understanding of the meaning of risk.

The essays in this book come from the 2010 Darwin College Lecture Series. In each year of this lecture series, distinguished scholars skilled at communicating in an accessible way are invited to respond to a specific theme. In 2010, the chosen theme was risk. After twenty-five years, this lecture series is one of the most popular public lecture series at the University of Cambridge. The risk lectures in 2010 were amongst the most popular yet and, in essay form, they make for a lively and engaging read for specialists and non-specialists alike.