This event has now passed. You can watch a recording of the event here or on YouTube and you can download audio here.
Was the result of the 2016 EU referendum the last gasp of a view of empire based on nostalgia? Would a post-Brexit Britain be a nation willing to inhabit the world of the present instead of the past?
On 29 March, PEF, the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equality, and the LSE International Inequalities Institute hosted four eminent scholars to discuss overlooked elements in the Brexit story – Britain’s past imperial might, jingoism, mythmaking and racism; deep-set anxieties about change and conflicting visions of the future – and the possibility of an unexpected outcome, namely that its shock to the national system may slow or even reverse the decades-long rise of inequality. The speakers were:
Danny Dorling, Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography at the University of Oxford and PEF Council member.
Sally Tomlinson, Emeritus Professor at Goldsmiths University of London and Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Education at the University of Oxford.
Gurminder K Bhambra, Professor of Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies in the School of Global Studies at the University of Sussex.
Bev Skeggs, Professor of Sociology and Academic Director of the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity programme at the International Inequalities Institute.
Will Hutton, Principal of Hertford College, co-founder of the Big Innovation Centre, former editor of the Observer and PEF Council member.
This event marked the release of Danny Dorling and Sally Tomlinson’s book Rule Britannia: Brexit and the End of Empire, in which they argue that while Brexit will almost certainly require the UK to confront its own “shocking, Dorian Gray-like deteriorated image”, “out of the ashes of Brexit could, should and perhaps will come a chastened, less small-minded, less greedy future. There are good reasons to be hopeful.”
Banner photo: The Battle of Terheide, Willem van de Velde (I), 1657.
