Category Public lecture series

6.30pm-8pm, Tuesday 18 February 2014 Abstract: Although the period since 2008 is often seen as a crisis of capitalism it has in fact become a crisis of social democracy. The form of social democracy that has dominated Western politics since the… Continue Reading →

6.30pm-8pm, Tuesday, 4 February 2014 Abstract: This presentation is based on my forthcoming book, The People: the rise and fall of the working class, 1910-2010. In this paper, I draw on social surveys and personal testimonies to explore how working-class… Continue Reading →

6.30-8pm, Tuesday 14 January, 2014   Emma Dowling, Middlesex University, and David Harvie, The University of Leicester  ‘This little piggy went to market and this little piggy had none…’: Neoliberalism, Crisis and the Financialisation of Social Reproduction Abstract and biographies not provided.   The Old… Continue Reading →

6.30pm-8pm, Tuesday 21 January, 2014 Abstract: This talk will address neo-liberalism as a theory of knowledge as well as a theory of public policy. The relationship between the two is developed in the context of government reforms to higher education… Continue Reading →

6.30pm-8pm Tuesday, 26 November 2013 Abstract: The aim of this paper is to locate academics within the sights of critical labour studies, and, in particular, the contemporary interest in cultural workers. Despite a growing literature about – and in response… Continue Reading →

6.30pm – 8pm, 12 November 2013  Madsen Pirie, Adam Smith Foundation  Dr Madsen Pirie is President of the Adam Smith Institute, and was one of three Scots graduates working in the US who founded the Institute in 1977. Before that, Madsen… Continue Reading →

6.30pm – 8pm, 29 October 2013 Abstract: This talk will draw upon joint work with Stuart Hall and Michael Rustin, in the Kilburn Manifesto, whose aim is to understand neoliberalism in its long historical and broad geographical setting, and to analyse… Continue Reading →

6.30pm – 8pm, 15 October 2013 Abstract: Meritocracy, in contemporary parlance, refers to the idea that whatever our social position at birth, society ought to facilitate the means for ‘talent’ to ‘rise to the top’. In this paper, I argue that… Continue Reading →

6.30-8pm, Tuesday 6th of March 2012 This talk is inspired by Professor Douzinas’s recent work on the crisis in Greece, and by his  time in Athens during recent months. Professor Douzinas has been an outspoken critic of the Greek bailout,… Continue Reading →

6.30pm, Tuesday 21st of February, 2012 M57, Grand Parade Professor Franklin will talk about changes in the definition of biological materiality, as a consequence of developments in synthetic biology and regenerative medicine. She relates this to debates about bio-capital drawing on… Continue Reading →

6.30 pm, Tuesday 7th of February 2012 In this talk I criticise liberal theories of debate and deliberation for their formalism and for their suspicion of common opinion, ‘doxa’. I contrast them with the rhetorical approach, paying particular attention to… Continue Reading →

6.30 pm, Tuesday 7th of February 2012 2011 may well be remembered as the year of resistance. The uprisings of the Arab Spring, the movement of indignados in Spain and Mexico, the Aganaktismenoi in Greece and the Occupy actions are… Continue Reading →

6.30 pm, Tuesday 24th of January, 2012 Confronted with the agitation in what is incorrectly designated as the Arab world, and with the revolutionary events in Tunisia and Egypt, many radical thinkers who long defended revolutionary politics, against those who… Continue Reading →

6.30pm, 6 December 2011 This paper first explores why contemporary critical theory might be considered less engaged than formerly, and revisits older traditions of critical thinking – notably, the early Frankfurt School and existential phenomenology. These authors associated social criticism… Continue Reading →

6.30pm, 8 November 2011 The recent financial crisis has witnessed the resurgence of anti-capitalist politics, and a wide ranging debate about either reform or overthrow of the existing system. This paper develops a critique of post-Marxist political philosophy, insisting that… Continue Reading →

25th Oct 2011 6:30pm ‘Max Stirner’s ‘Ethics of Voluntary Inservitude’ is the author of From Bakunin to Lacan: Anti-authoritarianism and the Dislocation of Power (2001), Power and Politics in Poststructuralist Thought,(2005), New Theories of the Political (2006), Unstable Universalities: Postmodernity… Continue Reading →

11th Oct 2011 6:30pm Dangerous Ideas challenges engaged intellectuals to think though the extraordinary changes of the past decade. It is an opportunity to explore what engaged critique means for a newly politicised student community, and for a society experiencing… Continue Reading →

6.30pm, 22 November 2011 This paper will examine the status and uses of the crackdown on protest in the UK in recent months. It will examine the ways in which collective subjects are punished by a judiciary that are keen… Continue Reading →