The Raphael Samuel Memorial Lecture 2009 – Making the Human Gesture: History, Sexuality and Social Justice

Bishopsgate Institute, 27 November 2009, 6,30pm

Free, no advance booking required
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The 1970s saw the rise of new social movements engaged with issues of sexuality. Historians inspired by these movements began writing histories of sexual life. This talk traces the development of these histories since the 1970s and considers what they show us about changing attitudes to human rights and social justice in western society. Speaker Jeffrey Weeks will discuss the importance of sexual history to contemporary thought and ask what a history rooted in the sexual radicalism of the late 20th century can teach us about life in the 21st.
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Jeffrey Weeks is a leading historian and sociologist of sexuality. His 1977 book Coming Out was hugely influential, and he has since published many other landmark works, including Sexuality and Its Discontents, Making Sexual History and The World We Have Won: the Remaking of Erotic and Intimate Life. Jeffrey Weeks is now Emeritus Professor at London South Bank University.

International Trade : Who makes the rules? 13 October 2009

Bishopsgate Institute, 13 October 2009, 7.00pm.

Free, no advance booking required.

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Over the last decade international trade talks have successively stalled, been deferred due to immovable impasse, seen stalemate bring meetings to abrupt ends, and finally all-out collapse.

Bringing together historical perspectives with the experience of traders and legislators, the event asks how democratic is the making of multilateral trade agreements? To whom, are international trade legislators accountable? What values underpin international trade law? How do these values resonate within the UK and around the world? 

This event brings together historians, international trade policy makers, monitors and advisors with traders and negotiators to talk about international trade law in the past and present.

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Speakers include Razeen Sally (International political economist, London School of Economics), Frank Trentmann (Historian, Birkbeck) and Alan Beattie (World Trade Editor, Financial Times).

This event is part of the series, ‘Knowing the Past, Shaping the Future: History and the Making of Public Policy’, organised by the Raphael Samuel History Centre (University of East London, Birkbeck College, Bishopsgate Institute), in partnership with ‘History & Policy’ (Cambridge, Institute of Historical Research, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine).