This short series of talks sought to offer a place where the university, the academic institution and the social and intellectual traditions that surround them, will be presented and negotiated, challenged or celebrated. The first talk, on 18th October 2006, heard Thomas Docherty discuss ‘The English Question; or, Academic Freedom’.

At the second talk, on Wednesday 15th November, ‘Reading Paul Hirst: The Challenge of Graduate Research’ Mark Cousins discussed Paul Hirst’s essay “Education and the Production of New Ideas“.This thought provoking essay from 1995 presents some of the key issues related to the current roles of and challenges facing the university and the intellectual at a time of “institutional and intellectual crisis.” Professor Paul Hirst (1947-2003) was one of the founders of the London Consortium and Professor of Social Theory at Birkbeck College, University of London. Among his many publications are Associative Democracy (1993), Globalisation in Question and Space and Power: Politics, War and Architecture (2005).

These talks were organised by PhD student Noam Leshem.