Boyer Lectures

In the second Boyer Lecture for 2025, the Hon John Anderson, AC, farmer, grazier and former deputy prime minister of Australia, takes a sweeping look over our history and concludes that the liberal world order that has...

The Keynote Boyer Lecturer for 2025 is Justin Wolfers, Professor of Economics and Public Policy from the University of Michigan and visiting Professor at the University of NSW. After many years teaching in the USA, he...

"Whilst our new Australian choral music began in a classical context, artistic collaborations have extended our musical realm to a point where it no longer fits this classification – it is simply choral music." As the...

Iain Grandage is a composer, a cellist, a pianist, a festival director, and a career collaborator. In his Boyer Lecture, he asks whether classical music has been underestimated in its capacity to connect communities...

“There is much to be gained by tapping into the tens of thousands of years of culture that we have available to us in this country. Exposing more people to it can only help to highlight our shared humanity, and to...

"There is a continuity to the inner experience of what it is to be human. And it is this inner experience that this music addresses directly." Professor Anna Goldsworthy is a pianist, an author, a festival director and...

What will a quantum computer look like? Will quantum computing supercharge AI? Can it save us from the climate crisis? Professor Michelle Simmons has the answers.

Doubt is often seen as a something to be overcome — a failing, or even a sign of incompetence. But in her fourth and final lecture, Professor Michelle Simmons tells us why doubt is her greatest asset.

In her third Boyer lecture, Professor Michelle Simmons maps how science has changed from 1927 to now — moving from the theoretical to the applicable.

In her second Boyer lecture, Professor Michelle Simmons details the international race underway to build the first error-corrected quantum computer.

Computing machinery that used to fill an entire room has now shrunk to the size of individual atoms. In her first lecture, Professor Michelle Simmons tells the story of miniaturisation — and how Australia found itself...

In his fifth and final Boyer lecture Noel Pearson looks at the question of identity, Australian identity, and he argues that our extraordinary diversity and distinctiveness are undermined when we forget the great...

In his fourth lecture, Noel Pearson addresses the educational barriers facing young Indigenous people, and the critical need to raise literacy and numeracy rates through transformational school programs.

In his third lecture Noel Pearson argues that Indigenous Australians have become trapped in the 'bottom million' of the nation when it comes to economic development. He describes the ongoing effect of welfare...

In his second lecture, Noel Pearson reflects on the words of 1968 Boyer lecturer W.E.H. Stanner who said that Aboriginal people seek, 'a decent union of their lives with ours but on terms that let them preserve their...