School of Psychology and Vision Sciences

Sluckin lectures

The Sluckin Lecture is an annual event at the University of Leicester to commemorate Professor Wladyslaw Sluckin (1919–1985), one of the original members of the University of Leicester’s Department of Psychology and Head of Department from 1973 until his retirement in 1984. He was Editor of the British Journal of Psychology from 1967 to 1973. He had a lasting influence on generations of students and colleagues and remains an inspiration to the School of Psychology and to British psychology in general.

The first Sluckin Lecture was delivered in 1991 by Professor Patrick Bateson, FRS, of King’s College, Cambridge.

2025

Wednesday 21 May 2025

Professor Sophie Scott CBE: Director, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, UCL - What's the point of studying laughter?

Wellcome Trust Senior Fellow, Director of UCL's Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, stand-up comedian and presenter of the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, 2017.

In this talk Professor Scott explored the evolution, psychology and neuroscientific aspects of laughter. She explored the critical roles that laughter can play for humans, both in development and adulthood, and argued that it represents an essential wind down onto human social bonding and affection.

View on YouTube

Previous lectures

2021 onwards

2024 - Dr Richard Cook, Leeds University 

  • Developmental prosopagnosia: Lifelong "face-blindness" - View on YouTube

2023 - Professor Sarah Beck, University of Birmingham 

2022

  • Cancelled (Covid-19)

2021

  • Cancelled (Covid-19)

2011 to 2020

2020

  • Cancelled (Covid-19)

2019 - Professor Mike Burton, University of York

  • Face Perception: Recognising Friends and Checking Passports

2018 - Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, University College

  • London Adolescence as a Sensitive Period of Social Brain Development

2017 - Michael W. Eysenck, Royal Holloway, University of London

  • Cognitive Neuroscience: The Emperor’s New Clothes?

2016 - Simon Baron-Cohen, University of Cambridge

  • The Prenatal Sex Steroid Theory of Autism

2015 - Wändi Bruine de Bruin, Leeds University

  • A Pathway to Impact: Figure Skating Judging, Sex Education, and Beyond

2014 - Professor David Shanks, University College London

  • The Replication Crisis in Psychology

2013 - Dorothy Bishop, University of Oxford

  • Developmental Dyslexia and Other Neurodevelopmental Disorders: Distinct Syndromes or Part of Normal Variation?

2012 - Andrew R. Mayes, University of Manchester

  • Memory, Brain and Genes – and Some Educational Recommendations

2011 - Nicholas J. Mackintosh, University of Cambridge

  • Sex differences in intelligence?

2001 to 2010

2010 - Sir Michael Rutter, Kings College London

  • Testing Causal Inferences: Naturalistic Studies, ‘Natural Experiments’, Planned Experiments and Animal Models

2009 - Trevor W. Robbins, University of Cambridge

  • From Impulsivity to Compulsivity

2008 - Anthony Dickinson, University of Cambridge

  • Mental Time Travel by Animals

2007 - Aubrey Manning, University of Edinburgh

  • The Animals and Ourselves

2005 - Rufus Johnstone, University of Cambridge

  • The Evolution of Personality: An Adaptive View of Individual Differences in Behaviour

2004 - Colin Blakemore, Chief Executive, Medical Research Council

  • Whither Psychology: Wither Psychology?

2003 - Nick Chater, University of Warwick

  • Simplicity as a Fundamental Cognitive Principle

2002 - Adrian Furnham, University College London

  • Music While You Work

2001 - John Sloboda, University of Keele

  • Engaging with Music: Emotion, Motivation and Action

1991 to 2000

2000 - Jeffrey Gray, Institute of Psychiatry

  • The Repair of Brain Damage and Cognitive Functioning Using Conditionally Immortalised Neural Stem Cells

1999 - Richard Gregory, University of Bristol

  • Reflections on Mirrors

1998 - Jan B. Deregowski, University of Aberdeen

  • The Perceptual Bounds of Artistic Portrayal

1996 - Robert Hinde, St Johns College, Cambridge

  • Violence and War

1995 - Patrick Rabbitt, University of Manchester

  • Models for the Ageing Mind

1994 - Margaret Boden, University of Sussex

  • Minds and Machines: Forty Years On

1993 - Kacper Miklaszewski, Institute for Research in Music Education, Poland

  • Learning Music: Psychological Research in Poland and Eastern Europe

1992 - Colwyn Trevarthen, University of Edinburgh

  • Infant Communicative Behaviour

1991 - Patrick Bateson, King’s College, Cambridge

  • Early Learning in Animals

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