2026 LONDON CRITICAL THEORY FRIDAY PUBLIC PANEL #2
When:
—
Venue:
Birkbeck Clore Management Centre
The Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities' annual London Critical Theory Summer School is taking place over two weeks from 22nd June to 3rd July 2026.
Each Summer School explores the genealogy and reach of critical theory, whilst encouraging intellectual elaboration and reflection. Our aim is to stimulate progressive, dissident being and thinking.
Our speakers will confront the bleak global situation of ongoing and newly threatened wars, inequality within states and between states, genocide, inhumane policies on migration and welfare, gender-based violence and racial oppression, climate crisis and economic collapse. The balance sheet of contemporary misery is an extensive one. Those who wield power, from states to many private citizens, are no more prepared to extend democracy this year than last, and the mobilising power of Right populism continues to exert a hold, forwarding nativism and undermining critical voices. Perpetual states of exception arise, as market needs triumph over social welfare. Meanwhile, the spectacle of politics reaches further into various types of obscene and cynical display. Automated systems confuse the ability to judge what exists and what is contrived and populaces fracture over algorithms. There is resistance. The Summer School will fan the sparks of that resistance, while clearly assessing the state of things, the psychic, social, and political corollaries for us and others across our contemporary world.
As an intense encounter with theory in its diverse forms, our aim is to think and rethink a world under stress. It gathers global participants who offer detailed insights into local conditions while developing theoretical paradigms that might help us make sense of the seemingly senseless and insensitive oppressions in the world. Our summer school offers a place to explore, together with leading critical scholars, the ramifications of contemporary injustice and the stakes of resistance. What does it mean to wield criticism against oppression while turning our thought towards a horizon of freedom and a more equal and caring future.
The London Critical Theory Summer School enables graduate students and academics to engage in a two-week course of day-time study with acclaimed critical thinkers. At the end of each week, these thinkers join together for a public panel discussion.
This week's public panel debate will be chaired by the BIH Co-Director Esther Leslie. We are delighted to welcome for this event Françoise Vergès, alongside our returning speakers Costas Douzinas, Stephen Frosh, Kojo Koram and Jacqueline Rose.
The event is free to attend but registration is required. It will be recorded and livestreamed.
Contact name: Elia Ntaousani - BIH Manager
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