Adrian Leftwich Memorial Lecture 2026
D/N/056, Derwent College, Campus West, University of York (Map)
Event details
Politics in the age of rupture
Adrian Leftwich was an influential thinker and writer on the politics of development, as well as an inspirational teacher and colleague at York for over 40 years. But he also influenced a generation of students through his account of the nature of politics – especially in What is Politics? The Activity and its Study (1984; 2004). Although deeply connected to his work on development, it was also shaped by a context in which political science, as a discipline, was trying to define – through various analytic frameworks - what its subject matter really was. In this lecture, Duncan Ivison returns to Leftwich’s distinctive vision of politics and ask what has changed – and what hasn’t – in the 42 years since the book was first published, and what the consequences might be for thinking about the nature of politics today.
The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception.