One of Sir Basil Spence's original practice sketches for Falmer House

The University of Sussex’s distinctive buildings - and the vision of the man who designed them, architect Sir Basil Spence – will be explored in a free public lecture next month.

In ‘Spence, Sussex and the sixties’, Dr Louise Campbell from the University of Warwick will discuss Sir Basil Spence's architectural vision and how it relates to the ambitions of those who founded Sussex, the first of a number of new universities created in the 1960s.

The lecture, on 23 May, is part of the summer term programme of Sussex Lectures.

The series starts on 17 April when Professor Jeremy Jennings (Queen Mary) will talk about French author Alexis de Tocqueville.

On 24 April, the first of two Professorial lectures takes place, as Professor Aidan Doherty explores our current understanding of the onset of human disease in ‘Making ends meet: mutual strategies for maintaining genome stability’.

The programme continues with a Sussex Centre for Intellectual History lecture (30 April). In it Sussex’s Professor Donald Winch will examine Arnold Toynbee’s ‘Industrial Revolution’.

On 1 May, a second Professorial, this time delivered by Professor Andrea Cornwall, who will reflect on the history of the ‘gender agenda’ and argue for its re-visioning.

Sergeant Diarmid Walshe from 1^st Battalion, The Rifles, visits campus on 3 May to discuss Operation Nightingale - a groundbreaking archaeology project involving Army personnel, which has helped aid the rehabilitation of soldiers injured on operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In the second of three Sussex Centre for Intellectual History lectures, taking place on 9 May, Dr Keith Tribe will aim to reconstruct Karl Marx’s initial economic thinking.

Joe Moran, from Liverpool John Moores University, will, on 10 May, lead a lecture exploring Mass Observation and the history of everyday life.

‘Trade routes and tobacco types: the commercial origins of market regulation’ is the topic of the Marcus Cunliffe Centre for the Study of the American South lecture, delivered on 14 May by Dr Barbara Hahn from Texas Tech University.

The following day (15 May), Professor Richard Ellis from the California Institute of Technology will give a progress update on the quest for the first galaxies and how the next generation of telescopes might help.

The lecture series concludes on 18 June with the third Sussex Centre for Intellectual History lecture, delivered by Professor Manuela Albertone (Turin). It is titled ‘Benjamin Franklin's radical agrarian project’.

The lectures are free of charge and everybody is welcome to attend, but you are asked to RSVP as indicated for each lecture: go to the lectures booking web page. For details of each lecture, go to the Sussex Lectures web page.