Long Man Lecture: Professor Alexandra Harris

About

Neighbours Through Time – Local Lives, Infinite Visions

Who has been here before us, looking up at the Sussex hills? What did they see?

Join us at the second annual Long Man Lecture, hosted by cultural historian and University of Birmingham professor, Alexandra Harris.

The lecture will consider a series of people inhabiting the same patch of earth in different periods and in different ways, their view of the place shaped by diverse kinds of knowledge, emotional attachment and cultural influence. We'll keep company on the lane with Stuart farmers inventing the future, Victorian geologists seeing far into the past, refugees from occupied Poland learning algebra in a Sussex wood. Magnified by the close attention of these different people, our nearby places tell far-reaching stories.

William Blake's fusion of the cosmic and miniature offers startling inspiration to find the worlds revealed in a few miles of ground. In this lecture, the perspectives of poets will mix with the visions of brewers, merchants and masons: neighbours through time.

Local historians have long been showing the power of regional perspectives to unsettle or re-root national narratives. Here, Alexandra will argue for the great potential of local work to enrich our understanding of the arts. She'll suggest that by attending to the near-at-hand, we'll discover new histories of painting and poetry, of looking and reading, remembering and valuing.

The talk is followed by a Q&A session where you'll get the opportunity to ask Alexandra questions about her work, along with a signing of The Rising Down.

The Long Man Lecture is The Sussex Archaeological Society's annual fundraising lecture – where we welcome prestigious speakers to present on important issues facing our understanding of the past and its impact on our future. All monies raised support the work of the Society, a registered charity which promotes, protects and provides access to the history and heritage of Sussex.

About Alexandra Harris Alexandra Harris is an acclaimed writer, literary critic and cultural historian. She was educated at the University of Oxford and The Courtauld Institute and worked for ten years at the University of Liverpool. She is now Professor of English at the University of Birmingham.

Romantic Moderns: English Writers, Artists and the Imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper (2010) won The Guardian First Book Award, a Somerset Maugham Award and was shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize. Weatherland: Writers and Artists Under English Skies (2015) was shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize, longlisted for the Wainwright Prize and adapted for BBC Radio 4. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Harris reviews for The Guardian and other newspapers, writes for exhibition catalogues, works with artists and lectures widely.

Alexandra's most recent publication, The Rising Down, features an exploration of Sussex lives and histories, and is published by Faber.

About the event Date: Tuesday 8th April 2025 Time: Doors open at 6.45pm, for a 7.30pm start Venue: Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, University of Sussex, Gardner Centre Road, Brighton BN1 9RA Age suitability: 16+