Episode Details

This lecture was recorded by Jane Shaw on Monday, 07 Sep 2026.

Professor Jane Shaw is Provost of Gresham College and Professor of the History of Religion at the University of Oxford.

Professor Shaw was formerly Principal of Harris Manchester College and Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Oxford. She has also served as Dean for Religious Life and Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford; as Dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco; and, prior to her time in California, she taught history and theology at the University of Oxford for 16 years.

Her books include Miracles in Enlightenment England (Yale 2006); Octavia, Daughter of God: The Story of a Female Messiah and her Followers (Jonathan Cape and Yale 2011); and the co-authored Gen Z, Explained: The Art of Living in a Digital Age (Chicago 2021).

She is currently writing Seeking Infinity: Mystics in the Modern World (forthcoming with Penguin Allen Lane) and has received Fellowships to support the completion of that book from the Leverhulme Trust and the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study.  

Professor Shaw was educated at Oxford, Harvard, and U. C. Berkeley. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/why-empathy

Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham's mission, please consider making a donation: https://gresham.ac.uk/support/

Website:  https://gresham.ac.uk
Twitter:  https://twitter.com/greshamcollege
Facebook: https://facebook.com/greshamcollege
Instagram: https://instagram.com/greshamcollege

Support the show