Professor Gary King.

Professor Gary King, a world renowned social scientist from Havard University, is to give the inaugural Government Regius lecture at the University of Essex.

Professor King, whose work spans many areas of the social sciences, will speak about Chinese government censorship of social media – said to be the largest selective suppression of human communication in recorded history.

The lecture marks the annual celebration of the University of Essex’s Regius Professorship in Political Science which was awarded to the Department of Government for excellence in research and education by Her Majesty the Queen in 2013 to mark the Diamond Jubilee.

The University of Essex was one of the youngest universities ever to receive a Regius Professorship and subsequently appointed Professor David Sanders from the Department of Government as the inaugural Regius Professor.

Speaking ahead of Professor King’s lecture, Professor René Lindstädt, Head of the Department of Government at Essex, said, “It is only fitting that we celebrate one of the greatest honours bestowed on the university with a lecture from one of the leading social scientists of our time.”

Professor King is the Albert J Weatherfield III University Professor and Director of the Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences at Harvard University.

The Regius lecture will take place on Tuesday 12 January at the University’s Colchester campus.