Nerd Nite London Livestream - May 2020

Tickets: Early Nerd Tickets £4, General Admission £5, - all proceeds will be donated to Charity.

This month you will have the opportunity to vote for your charity of choice on our Twitter page @nerdnitelondon. There are many worthy causes that desperately need our support during these difficult times and we have selected three for you to chose from: The Shine Foundation, supporting the educational needs for disadvantaged children; the Hackney Foodbank, working to tackle food poverty and hunger in one of the poorest boroughs of London and Refuge Against Domestic Violence who support women, children & men experiencing domestic violence which has spiked during the lock down. We will announce the chosen charity live during the May Nerd Nite event.

This month, we will be covering the following topics:

A Nerd's Guide to Racism in Natural History Museums

Most people who work in museums, like Subhadra, agree they are magical places. As a science curator who happens to be a person of colour, Subhadra believes most of the magic in museums involves making people disappear. In the case of natural history museums, the narrow focus on animal biology erases stories about how those animals came to be in a museum in the first place, and the local people whose expert knowledge we still count on today. There are stories about race, Empire, and colonialism in any natural history museum, if you know how to look. Once you've got the special set of tools Subhadra is going to share with us, you'll never look at a natural history museum in the same way again. 

Subhadra Das is a writer, historian, broadcaster, comedian and museum curator at UCL Culture where she works with the Science Collections. Her main area of research is the history of science and medicine in the 19th and 20th Centuries, specifically the history of eugenics and scientific racism. A few years ago, someone suggested to her that natural history museums are racist, and she's been working out how and telling people about it ever since. 

The Wonders of Walking

Walking. We all do it, but how often do we think about it and how much do we know about it? Walking upright on two feet is a uniquely human skill and it makes us healthier, happier and smarter – which should be of interest to any nerd. Susan will talk about some of the benefits of walking for us as people, for the places we live and for the planet as a whole.

 Susan Claris is a transport planner with the design firm Arup and she is also a Trustee of Living Streets, the UK charity for everyday walking. She believes the world would be a better place if we all walked more and that walking is far from pedestrian!

Doing it right: medieval sex in theory and practice

Eleanor will be discussing medieval sexuality, as it was conceptualised, attempts at regulating it, and what people were actually doing. Medieval thinkers built on classical philosophy to conceptualise what sex was and how men and women related to it. From a theological standpoint, they also tried to qualify the sex people should be having and persuade them not to do anything else. Of course the fact that theologians were trying to make rules about sex means that people were breaking them. We'll take a look at what constitutes a good date for your average medieval person.

Eleanor Janega is a doctor of medieval history, with specialties in sexuality, propaganda, the Black Death, and apocalyptic thought. She teaches at the London School of Economics and writes at her blog, going-medieval.com, as well as for the Washington Post, History Today, and BBC History. Her upcoming book The Middle Ages: A Graphic Guide is out on Icon early next year. She is really really fun at parties. 

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