Lessons from the Past conference: Keynote
5:00pm - 6:00pm /
Monday 23rd March 2026
/ Venue: Leggate Theatre Victoria Gallery & Museum
Type: Conference /
Category: Research
- Chris Scott
- Admission: Free to public and staff and students of UoL
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Learning from the Past how to Build the Future. Professor Robert L. Kelly, keynote speaker.
Humanity’s global past, which encompasses many millennia, environments, and adaptations, is the only laboratory we have for understanding human behaviour as it is manifested over long spans of time and great reaches of geography. Since 1905, when George Santayana wrote “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” we have taken the past as only a vague warning: don’t do that again! But can the past offer us something more, not a prediction but a prescription for the future?
In this talk Professor Kelly will briefly review the argument of his 2016 book, The Fifth Beginning, and consider the processes at work today that are driving change, and what we might do to direct that change to create the life we all seek: one of global peace and prosperity.
Humanity’s global past, which encompasses many millennia, environments, and adaptations, is the only laboratory we have for understanding human behaviour as it is manifested over long spans of time and great reaches of geography. Since 1905, when George Santayana wrote “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” we have taken the past as only a vague warning: don’t do that again! But can the past offer us something more, not a prediction but a prescription for the future?
In this talk Professor Kelly will briefly review the argument of his 2016 book, The Fifth Beginning, and consider the processes at work today that are driving change, and what we might do to direct that change to create the life we all seek: one of global peace and prosperity.