Join us for this special celebration of 10 years of the Lillingstone Lecture Series at the Royal Latin School, in partnership with the Lillingstone Trust. There will also be the opportunity for a Q & A session at the end of the talk.

Dame Dr Maggie Aderin’s talk, The Four Big Questions in Space and Astronomy, takes audiences on an inspiring journey from our own night sky to the furthest reaches of the Universe. Blending cutting-edge science with accessible storytelling, Maggie explores some of the biggest mysteries humanity is trying to solve – including topics such as how the Universe began, whether life exists beyond Earth and what the future of space exploration may hold.

Dame Dr Maggie Aderin DBE is a space scientist whose passion is presenting science to a general audience and demonstrating that you ‘don’t need a brain the size of a small planet’ to understand, participate in and enjoy science. She studied at Imperial College London, where she obtained her degree in Physics and her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering. She has spent her career making novel, bespoke instrumentation in both the industrial and academic environments including working on the James Webb Space Telescope and various satellite monitoring climate change. To further share her passion for science, in 2004 Maggie founded Science Innovation Ltd. Through this company she conducts public engagement activities, sharing her love of space and encouraging underrepresented communities to take up STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths. To date Maggie has directly spoken to well over  650,000 people around the world. As well as public speaking she is a bafta nominated TV presenter, co-hosting the world’s longest-running science television programme, The Sky at Night. She is also an author with her children’s book Am I made of Stardust winning a Royal Society book prize. Maggie won the Institute of Physics gold medal for exceptional services to science education and physics communication; she was the President of the British Science Association and is the current Chancellor of the University of Leicester. She was made a Dame in the 2023 New Year’s Honours list and in December 2025 she presented the 200-year anniversary Royal Institution Christmas lectures. Her Memoir, Starchild, came out in February 2026.