Willoughby Lecture — “The Ethics of Memory”

About This Event

The Willoughby Memorial Lecture was established in 1932 in honour of Sir Clement Willoughby, Aldenmoor’s sixth Vice-Chancellor and a pioneering figure in the philosophy of mind. Each year, the lecture is delivered by an internationally distinguished scholar whose work crosses disciplinary boundaries.

This year’s speaker is Dame Cecilia Hartwood, FRS, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at Cambridge and co-author of the widely debated monograph The Moral Weight of Forgetting (Oxford University Press, 2023). Her lecture will examine whether neuroscientific discoveries about memory reconsolidation change our understanding of personal responsibility, testimony, and the ethics of confession.

Speaker profile

Dame Cecilia Hartwood is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a recipient of the Brain Prize, the world’s most prestigious neuroscience award. Her work has been cited in parliamentary debates on eyewitness testimony reform and in landmark rulings by the European Court of Human Rights. She has delivered lectures at Harvard, the Sorbonne, and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.