Annual Lectures

Our Annual Lectures bring together sociologists, fellow academics and non-specialists in lively conversation

2024 Annual Debate
How Can Sociology Engage with the Major Challenges of our Time?
6 June 2024
As wars rage and the climate crisis looms, what can sociology offer? Four eminent sociologists tackle this question, drawing on their own expertise and experience to consider how our discipline can be relevant in times of crisis. 
Further details

2023 Annual Lecture
The Roots of All Capitals, or, the Human Condition and Social Division
21 June 2023
Professor Will Atkinson, School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies, University of Bristol
In this lecture Professor Atkinson probed the relationship between fundamental features of the human condition and modes of social division and domination.  He set out several premises about what it means to be human and, from that, established misrecognition as the key to understanding division and domination.  
Watch the lecture  |  Further details

2022 Inaugural Annual Lecture
30 March 2022
Contemporary Sociology and the Reconstruction of its Canons
In this lecture Professor Gurminder K Bhambra, FBA (University of Sussex / President, British Sociological Association) discussed the conceptual architecture of sociology that has been bequeathed to us via a focus on the foundational generation and argue for the need to reconstruct it through an address of the broader, shared histories that have produced our present. 
 Watch the lecture  |  Further details