Next Wednesday, May 8, the Catalan intellectual Marina Garcés will deliver the keynote address of the Roberto Gerhard Annual Lecture that Fitzwilliam College is organizing for the second consecutive year. Garcés' speech is entitled "Collapse and Promise" and delves into the topics covered in her latest essay, El temps de la promesa, published by Anagrama at the end of 2023. Her lecture will take place in the college auditorium and will be an event open to everyone, both the local university community and the general public interested in the debates of contemporary thought.

In her talk, Marina Garcés poses, among others, the following questions: In a historical time dominated by no-future scenarios, what force can a promise have? When uncertainty is the only certainty and time is dominated by the imminence of catastrophe, what sense can there be in creating a bond and a commitment that is sustained over time through the word given?

In 2023, the first edition of this academic event was attended by the playwright Guillem Clua, who presented a lecture on the process of adapting his play Smiley to make it a series on Netflix, the streaming platform.

The Fitzwilliam College of the University of Cambridge is one of the most important centres of Catalan Studies in the United Kingdom. The college, together with the Institut Ramon Llull, promotes the Batista i Roca Fellowship, which was established by the generous bequest of the historian Josep Maria Batista i Roca, a lecturer at Cambridge during his exile, along the Francoist dictatorship.

The Annual Lecture at Fitzwilliam College bears the name of Roberto Gerhard in tribute to the great Catalan composer, disciple of Arnold Schönberg, who also spent his exile in Cambridge, where he died in 1970.

On the other hand, Verso Books will publish Marina Garcés' book New Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy for a Common World on June 4, 2024. The volume includes the book of the same title (published in 2017 by Anagrama) plus a part of the book Filosofia inacabada (published in 2016 by Galaxia Gutenberg). The work, which has been translated into English by Julie Wark, has received the support of the Institut Ramon Llull.