Seminar Series on ‘Freedom and Liberty’

This series of public talks explored the meanings of freedom and liberty across history and in contemporary society. Across three events, leading scholars examined how these key political ideas have shaped social and intellectual life.

Three Concepts of Liberty

Speaker: Quentin Skinner
Date: 25 October 2022

One of the most influential historians of political thought, Quentin Skinner examined the development of modern understandings of liberty, tracing how different traditions of thought have defined and defended it.

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Freedom in Liberia and the Yucatán

Speaker: David Kazanjian
Date: 15 November 2022

Freedom is often discussed as if it were an abstract idea defined by political philosophers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As a result, it can seem too general - more a buzzword than a useful concept - and too elite, more a topic for a drawing room than a street corner. By way of contrast, David Kazanjian discussed how Black and Indigenous people in nineteenth-century Liberia and the Yucatán, Mexico lived and theorised freedom in everyday ways that remain challenging and refreshing for us today.

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Freedom and Anarchism

Speaker: Ruth Kinna
Date: 29 November 2022

Anarchists argue, against convention, that freedom does not require the existence of law. Ruth Kinna examined how anarchist thinkers have engaged with debates about positive and negative liberty. Adapting Isaiah Berlin’s famous distinction, she showed how anarchists present a complex position: as positive libertarians who reject liberty as a collective condition, and as negative libertarians who challenge the concept of individual rights. For Peter Kropotkin and others, liberty was not a static condition but an ongoing social project.

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Related Recordings

Book Launch: Political Catchphrases and Contemporary History

Speaker: Suman Gupta
Date: 7 February 2023

Suman Gupta discusses his new book Political Catchphrases and Contemporary History (Oxford University Press, 2022).

Watch the recording via YouTube

Launch of the Language, Literature and Politics Research Group

Speakers: Jim Crace and Emma Sweeney
Date: 11 November 2021

Recorded at the online launch of The Open University’s Language, Literature and Politics Research Group, this conversation features novelist Jim Crace in discussion with fellow novelist Emma Sweeney.

Watch the recording via YouTube