'Resisting the Rise of the Radical Right' - A panel discussion - 2025 Amiel & Melburn Trust annual lecture
When:
—
Venue:
Birkbeck Clore Management Centre
Radical right politics are in the ascendant across the world, from Europe to the Americas and beyond. This is not confined to electoral politics. On a range of fronts the radical right has pushed a cultural and a street politics opposed to equality and in support of the restoration of a supposed natural order in the economy, in sex and gender relations, between nations, regions, religions and peoples of the world. Yet where there should be resistance, politicians and parties that used to be mainstream, pander to reactionary ideologies, interests and desires.
Usually, the Trust organises a lecture by an individual. But this is an emergency situation. Collective effort is needed. That’s why we’ve brought together a panel of people able to share with an audience what is happening in different fronts in this struggle, and to start discussion about how to understand what is going on and the strategy for a fightback in the name of egalitarianism and emancipation.
About the speakers:
Costas Douzinas is Professor of Law at Birkbeck Law School and the author of many works in critical legal theory and analysis, most recently States of Exception: Human Rights, Biopolitics, Utopia (2023). In 2015 he was elected to the Hellenic Parliament, an experience he has written about in Syriza in Power: Reflections of an Accidental Politician (2017)
Liz Fekete is Director of the Institute of Race Relations and an Advisory Editor of Race & Class. An expert witness at the Basso Permanent People’s Tribunal on asylum and the World Tribunal on Iraq she is the author, most recently, of Europe’s Fault Lines: racism and the rise of the Right (2018).
Kojo Koram is a writer and an academic, teaching at the School of Law at Birkbeck College, University of London. An expert on issues of law, race and empire his most recent book is Uncommon Wealth: Britain and the Aftermath of Empire (2022).
Zarah Sultana is the Member of Parliament for Coventry South having been first elected in 2019. Previously working as a Community Organiser for the Labour party in the West Midlands, Sultana currently sits as an independent and is a consistent voice against the normalisation of the far-right in British politics.
Rob Topinka is Senior Lecturer at the School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication at Birkbeck University. His work specialises in reactionary politics, race and racism and digital culture and he is currently researching how reactionary digital politics shape public culture.
Esther Leslie (Chair) is Professor of Political Aesthetics, School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication at Birkbeck University. She researches political theories of aesthetics and culture and the poetics of science and technology, as well as animation and has a particular focus on Frankfurt School thinkers such as Walter Benjamin, T.W. Adorno, Kracauer and Bloch.
The event is a lecture followed by a wine reception.
Doors open: 5.15 pm
Panel discussion starts: 5.30 pm
The annual lecture is organised by the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities and supported by Barry Amiel and Norman Melburn Trust.
It will be recorded and livestreamed on youtube (joining link: TBC).
This event is free and open to all but registration is required. Please click on the 'book your place' link at the top of the page to secure your place.
Contact name: Dr Elia Ntaousani - BIH Manager
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