Professor Annelien de Dijn - Freedom (book launch)
Channel: Independent Social Research Foundation
Date: 2021-02-24

A book launch and conversation with Professor Annelien de Dijn, author of the new book Freedom: An Unruly History.

Is the Western idea of freedom fundamentally anti-democratic? The political theorist – and former ISRF Mid-Career Fellow – Annelien de Dijn argues that it has become so, but need not be. De Dijn brings today’s limited concept of freedom back to life by immersing it in a 2500-year panorama of intellectual and political conflict.  

Freedom inspires important questions: Why has freedom often been hostile to government and public services? Why has freedom so often defined itself through the domination of women and racial others? As authoritarian regimes spread around the world, can we be optimistic about democratizing freedom in the coming years?  

Professor De Dijn offers an overview of her book, and then discusses it with Dr Manjeet Ramgotra (SOAS), a scholar of postcolonial republicanism, and Professor Mark Whitehead (Aberystwyth University), author of Neuroliberalism: Behavioural Government in the 21st Century. Further discussion follows, moderated by Professor Christopher Newfield, Director of Research, ISRF.