Academic Writing: Margaret MacMillan

This event is the second in the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing / Simon Fraser University Graduate Liberal Studies Jim Babcock Lecture Series in Writing, which will take place in Michaelmas 2024. The other lectures can be found here.

Should academic writing be for a professional audience in the same field only or should it be accessible to the general interested public? This lecture argues that, while scientific writing may necessarily use terms and concepts that are highly specific to the particular discipline, in the humanities it is more critical than ever to write in a clear and comprehensible way. The study of society and human nature in such disciplines as history, literature or philosophy raises profound questions and offers important insights that ought to be shared as widely as possible. Drawing examples from history and showing the ways in which it can be used and abused, the lecture will show why understanding the past can be helpful for the present. It will also look at different ways of writing about the past from history, to biography and fiction can learn from one another.

Prof Margaret MacMillan is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Toronto and Emeritus Professor of International History and the former Warden of St. Antony's College at the University of Oxford. Her work focuses on the history of the international relations of the 19^th and 20^th centuries, and her books include Women of the Raj (1988, 2007); Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World (2001, 2002); Nixon in China: Six Days that Changed the World (2006, 2007); and The War that Ended Peace (2014). Her most recent book is War: How Conflict Shaped Us (2020).

Prof Macmillan's lecture will be introduced by Dr Kate Kennedy. Dr Kennedy is a writer, cellist, and BBC broadcaster. Her work combines words and music, in performance, on the radio and on the page. She is a Research Fellow in Life-Writing at Wolfson College, Oxford, and Director of the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing. Her most recent book, Cello: A Journey Through Silence to Sound (2024) is part memoir, part biography, and her previous biography Dweller in Shadows (2021) explored the life of British poet-composer Ivor Gurney. She is a regular presenter for BBC Radio.