SATURDAY 5 JULY
1045 – 1100
Welcome address
Language Games
Jacob Reynolds convenor, The Academy
1100 – 1230
Plenary I
The Search for Home in an Alienated World
Professor Frank Furedi executive director, MCC Brussels
As place, culture and memory dissolve into the bland universality of global technocracy, many experience a creeping sense of estrangement. What does it mean to feel ‘at home’ in an era where borders, customs and even sex are declared irrelevant? Frank Furedi explores the psychological and political consequences of rootlessness – and the case for recovering a sense of home in the modern world.
1345 – 1515
Plenary II
After liberalism: language and ideology in a changed era
Professor John Milbank
Liberalism once promised freedom, tolerance and progress. Today, it increasingly delivers censorship, social atomisation and bureaucratic control. What went wrong? John Milbank traces the philosophical collapse of the liberal worldview – and asks whether its moral language can survive its political failure.
1545 – 1700
Plenary III
End of an order?
Jacob Reynolds, Convenor, The Academy; head of policy, MCC Brussels
Kolja Zydatiss, Co-author, Interregnum: Was kommt nach der liberalen Demokratie?
The so-called “vibe shift” – whether out of Trump’s White House or Poland’s parliaments – gestures at a future that is both freedom-conscious and unafraid of social rootedness. But this realignment remains dangerously incoherent: illiberal liberals battle unprincipled populists, and speech warriors risk becoming speech regulators. Across the West, the centre cannot hold – yet neither can the new right or left define a political settlement that is at once democratic, free and rooted in tradition. If a new order is emerging, its outlines are murky, and the question remains whether this is truly the start of something – or merely the last twitch of a dying regime.
1730 – 1900
HISTORY
Does Britain’s history matter?
Gawain Towler, international political strategist, writer and historian
Are there resources in Britain’s history for channelling populist energy into a substantive programme for change, rooted in the embodied traditions that make Britain what it is? In an age obsessed with dismantling the past, Britain’s history is too often treated as an embarrassment – a colonial relic to be apologised for or ignored. But what if our historical inheritance is not a burden but a resource? This session asks whether Britain’s deep, conflict-rich past – civil wars, revolutions, constitutional battles and hard-won liberties – might offer something vital: a political imagination rooted in a real place, with a real people. Can we draw from that history the intellectual and moral substance needed to turn populist frustration into coherent reform? Or has the sense of nationhood and continuity been too thoroughly dissolved to offer guidance in a time of rupture?
OR
1730 – 1900
LITERATURE
Perfection: The insulated class
Helen Searls, chief operating officer, Feature Story News; founder, Washington Hyenas book club
In a world of filtered images and ethical consumption, the millennial elite live curated lives of taste, politics and apparent freedom – yet underneath lies hollowness, impotence and quiet despair. Perfection is a dissection of this condition: the well-furnished trap of Berlin-style cosmopolitanism, where progressive values mask personal drift and political impotence. Helen Searls explores the modern cult of authenticity – and what it reveals about a class desperate to feel meaningful, yet unwilling to risk comfort.
SUNDAY
0930 – 1100
Plenary IV
The New Right: New reaction?
Dr Tim Black, books and essays editor, Spiked
Online subcultures, neo-reactionary theory, and dissident commentators have given shape to what’s now dubbed the ‘New Right’. But is this just the nihilistic posturing of alienated men – or the start of a serious intellectual revolt against liberal democracy? Tim Black separates the signal from the noise in this murky new landscape.
1130 – 1245
HISTORY
Terrorism, Extremism and Cultural Insecurity
Chris Bayliss, writer and commentator
Western societies are haunted by the twin spectres of radical violence and ideological extremism – yet appear incapable of defining either clearly. Chris Bayliss interrogates how fear, moral panic and counter-extremism policy have reshaped politics, security and the very meaning of ‘normality’.
OR
1130 – 1245
LITERATURE
The Memorisers: Language control and political memory
Rosemary Jenkinson, author, The Memorisers; Royal Literary Fund Fellow, Queen’s University
If control of the past means control of the future, today’s language commissars are hard at work. In The Memorisers, Rosemary Jenkinson explores how words are reshaped, memories recoded, and history quietly rewritten – all in the name of progress. But who remembers the price?
1345 – 1500
Plenary V
What is citizenship? Who is a citizen?
Dolan Cummings
In the age of open borders and supranational governance, citizenship is either a transactional status or a taboo subject. But who belongs where – and why – remains a live question. Dolan Cummings digs into the meaning of citizenship: is it a legal label, a shared fate, or a political responsibility?
1515 – 1645
Plenary VI
Public Language, Private Confusion: The collapse of private life
Dr Tiffany Jenkins
Our inner lives are being squeezed – not just by surveillance or social media, but by the erosion of privacy as a moral category. Public confession, identity performance and politicised intimacy have taken its place. Tiffany Jenkins asks what happens when we lose the distinction between private and public, and whether anything of real selfhood can survive.