Palgrave Macmillan Annual Lecture Series

In September 2020, we launched The Palgrave Macmillan Lecture Series to mark 20 years since Palgrave Macmillan revived the Palgrave name, continuing a long Macmillan tradition of publishing leading thinkers in the humanities and social sciences.

As a part of our celebration we launched the Annual Palgrave Macmillan Lecture Series on 23 September 2020. Our first speakers explored where Palgrave has come from, how we operate today and the place of the academic book in our contemporary media and information landscape.

The event was chaired by David Bull, Vice President, Journals, Humanities & Social Sciences, Springer Nature, and featured the following speakers:

Dominic Knight, the former chairman and managing director at Palgrave Macmillan, explores the genesis of the new brand - including the background of the Macmillan and Palgrave names, and why the rebranding was needed. As Dominic says “[the rebrand was a response to] the need for a distinct and unique identity and a new sense of purpose.” He further describes the processes the company went through in 2000, and concludes by evaluating the success of the rebranding exercise.

Jeanette Steemers, Professor of Culture, Media & Creative Industries at King's College London considers the future of academic publishing in the Humanities with the rise of Open Aaccess and pressures on library budgets, and concludes that relationships with publishers are still crucial for all types of academics. Her talk discusses the place of the book in today’s media and information landscape – alongside blogs and TED talks. Impact can be indirect - non-academic beneficiaries might not read a 100,000 word monograph, but the research that underpins these works is our knowledge base for academics to engage with others – in Jeanette Steemer’s case it includes producers, policy-makers and providers of children’s content as well as advocacy groups like the Children’s Media Foundation, the Young Audience Content Fund and parliamentary inquiries.

Speaker biographies:

Dominic Knight, Former Chairman and Managing Director, Palgrave Macmillan

Dominic Knight joined Macmillan as a graduate recruit from Oxford in 1977. After a period as an editor and in international sales and marketing, he founded Stockton Press in New York in 1984. After his return to the UK, he was appointed Managing Director of Macmillan Press in 1994, and Managing Director of the newly-formed Palgrave (later Palgrave Macmillan) in 2000. He joined the Macmillan group board in 2000. In 2012, he directed the programme to create consolidated headquarters in London and New York for Macmillan Science and Education. In 2014, he served as President of the Publishers Association. He retired in 2016 and lives in Oxfordshire. 

Jeanette Steemers, Professor of Culture, Media & Creative Industries, King's College London

Jeanette joined King's College London in September 2016 from the University of Westminster where she was Professor of Media and Communications, and Co-Director of Research at the Westminster School of Media, Arts and Design for 10 years. 

A graduate in European Studies (German and Russian), she completed her PhD in 1990 at the University of Bath on the topic of public service broadcasting in West Germany.

Jeanette holds the position of Associate Editor (Europe) for the journal Convergence, is a Board Member of the Media Industries Journal, and a member of the Euromedia Research Group. 

In addition, Jeanette is an Executive Board member of MeCCsa and a Trustee of the Voice of the Listener and Viewer and Board Member of the Children’s Media Foundation.