The Politics of Indignity: A Conversation with Lea Ypi

This event features a conversation with Lea Ypi on her new book Indignity: A Life Reimagined. In the novel, Ypi explores what it means to live without dignity in a world marked by deep inequalities, political upheaval, tyranny, and moral compromise. Moving between philosophy, history, auto-ethnography, and personal family stories, Indignity asks how systems of power shape our sense of worth and what it would take to challenge them, individually and collectively.

Bringing a blend of personal family stories and larger societal questions, Ypi invites readers to rethink the relationship between freedom, justice, and human dignity. This event will offer a unique opportunity to engage with these critical themes and provides an insight to how Albania and Albanian Studies contribute to these conversations.

The event is organised by the UCL SSEES Southeast European Studies seminar series and co-sponsored by the Anglo-Albanian Association.

Speaker

Prof. Lea Ypi is Ralph Miliband Professor in Politics and Philosophy at the LSE and a British Academy fellow. A native of Albania, she studied Philosophy and Literature at the University of Rome, La Sapienza, and was a Prize Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford. She is the recipient of many prizes, including the Philip Leverhulme Prize for exceptional research achievement and the British Academy Brian Barry Prize for excellence in Political Science. Her last book, Free, was awarded the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize 2021 and the RSL Ondaatje Prize 2022, was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, the Costa Biography Award 2021, and the Gordon Burn Prize 2022, and has been sold in more than 30 languages. She contributes regularly to the Guardian and Financial Times. Her most recent books, Indignity: A Life Reimagined and Free: Coming of Age at the end of History, are published by Allen Lane in the UK.