2024 Thomas Harriot Lecture: Dr Annaleigh Margey

The 2024 Thomas Harriot Lecture will be given by Dr Annaleigh Margey, Head of the Department of Humanities at Dundalk Institute of Technology. 

About the Thomas Harriot Lecture

The college’s annual Thomas Harriot Lecture was inaugurated in 1990. Revised versions of the lectures delivered since then have been published in three volumes, edited by Robert Fox: Thomas Harriot. An Elizabethan man of science (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000); Thomas Harriot. Mathematics, exploration, and natural philosophy in early modern England (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012); and Thomas Harriot. Science and discovery in the English Renaissance (London: Routledge, 2023).

About the Thomas Harriot Lecture

Thomas Harriot, mathematician and natural philosopher, was born in Oxfordshire. He matriculated at Oxford in 1577 as a member of St Mary Hall (which united with Oriel College in 1902) and was awarded a BA degree at Easter 1580.

Harriot’s skills in astronomical navigation led to his employment by Sir Walter Raleigh (another member of Oriel) to teach Raleigh and prepare his sea captains for the voyage that left in 1585 to establish a settlement in America. After spending almost a year at Roanoke, near the coast of today’s North Carolina, Harriot wrote A brief and true report of the new found land of Virginia, the first account of America to be published in English (1588).

Find out more about Thomas Harriot on our Notable Historical Figures and Alumni page.