Masha Gessen: The Harriet Martineau Lecture

Celebrated journalist, author and activist Masha Gessen gives the third annual Harriet Martineau Lecture. Following in the footsteps of Kate Mosse and Ali Smith in honouring Harriet Martineau - Norwich’s 19th Century radical thinker and the world’s first female journalist, Gessen's lecture focuses on freedom of expression and investigative journalism through a feminist lens, two issues strongly associated with Harriet Martineau. Gessen is a journalist, author and political activist, world-renowned for her outspoken opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and was at one stage ‘probably the only publicly out gay person in the whole of Russia’. She has contributed to the New Republic, the New Statesman, Granta, Slate and Vanity Fair.