Eleanor Rathbone Social Justice Public Lecture Series
The Eleanor Rathbone Social Justice Public Lectures are a long-standing annual series of free public lectures hosted by the Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology.
2026 programme
Down the rabbit hole and out again
Wednesday 4 March 2026 | 5.30 - 7.30pm
Speaker: Dr Joseph Mcauley
Conspiracy theories returning to public prominence. They appear in the mouths elected officials and heads of state all the while conspiratorial social movements have taken root both on and offline and are mobilising in the public sphere in pursuit of often reactionary social goals. In response, a strain of criticism bemoans that we live in a so-called “Post-Truth” era where reasonable expert authority has been undermined by viral sensationalism primarily driven by social media. This genre of Techno-Pessimism tends to stigmatise conspiracy theories as a failure of reason and pathologize believers as being merely misguided dupes. However, such a view ignores the much wider socio-economic and political crisis that precede the re-emergence of conspiratorial thinking, and in blaming technological development, ignores the real social and emotional needs conspiratorial communities provide their constituents. Instead of relying on comfortable answers we must face the real crisis of hope gripping our society and acknowledge that conspiracy theories succeed in gaining adherents by providing compelling and emotionally satisfying answers to the unprecedent poly-crisis sweeping the globe. It is only by acknowledging and grappling with these hard questions, that we can safely enter the rabbit hole, and come back out again.
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Ideology and utopia revisted: On the 'infrastructuralisation' of knowledge in postnormal times
Wednesday 6 May 2026 | 5.30 - 7.30pm
Speaker: Noortje Marres, University of Warwick
Contemporary social life is marked by what the sociologist Charles Thorpe (2022) calls 'chronic uncertainty'. We live in postnormal times: the infrastructures underpinning everyday life, from affordable housing to clean water, can no longer be taken for granted, and disruption has become a background condition of everyday life.
In this lecture, I will argue that these changing circumstances not only affect daily life, but transform conditions for public knowledge. In postnormal times, the suspension of the taken-for-granted can no longer be expected to trigger a process of learning, as 20th century social theory had it. Rather, endemic disruption is increasingly met with denial.
To make sense of this situation, I return to a classic work in the sociology of knowledge, Ideology and Utopia by Karl Mannheim. I will argue that struggles between ideology and utopia today unfold through infrastructure, turning everyday environments like streets into 'critical sites' and raising challenges for knowledge politics: how to centre the demand for truth under conditions of the 'infrastructuralisation' of public controversies?
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Zero shot world: On the political logics of generative AI
Wednesday 17 June 2026 | 5.30pm - 7.30pm
Speaker: Professor Louise Amoore, Durham University
The technologies of generative AI are increasingly penetrating the social and political world. Not merely in the direct sense that AI models are being deployed to govern difficult problems – from decisions on the battlefield to responses to pandemic – but because generative AI is shaping and delimiting the politics of what can be known and actioned in the world. The machine learning algorithm is leaving the trace of its technical worldview in the political spaces of people, communities, objects, and scenes. This is a new and distinctive political logic: it remodels and aligns social and political relationships to make them fit the abstractions of machine learning models. The latent spaces and embedding spaces of AI are becoming present in the actual lived spaces of our world. In this zero-shot world, the machine’s capacity to act on unencountered data and tasks structures human societies of experimental probability, foreclosing the spaces of social organisation and resistance.
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Theme for 2026: Knowledge Production, Technology and ‘Truth’ in a Fragile World
In an increasingly interconnected yet precarious global landscape, the complex interrelationship between knowledge production, technological development and truth claims has become central in understanding a variety of political conflicts, social processes and cultural practices. In an unstable world, characterised by intersecting crises - including environmental degradation, geopolitical instability, organised violence, social fragmentation and economic volatility - understanding and analysing the ways in which knowledge is generated, disseminated, and validated is for critical.
Rapid technological innovation is producing a double-edged sword. On the one hand, proliferation of digital platforms, social media and citizen science initiatives have broadened participation in knowledge creation, allowing diverse voices and perspectives to emerge. Further, technological acceleration enables production and dissemination of knowledge at unprecedented speeds and volumes. Big data analytics, artificial intelligence and high-performance computing facilitate building and processing of vast datasets, leading to new insights in fields from crime control, to medicine and climate science. On the other, while AI and machine learning algorithms are increasingly central to knowledge discovery and information filtering, algorithms can be trained on datasets that are not representative or are unreliable, potentially leading to skewed or discriminatory outcomes. At the same time, the convergence of economic, media and political power propelled by self-serving global elites has to the narrowing of perspectives and the promotion of right wing neo-liberal agendas. The same digital platforms that facilitate knowledge sharing can also be weaponized for the rapid spread of disinformation and misinformation. Algorithmic amplification, echo chambers, and fabricated content - such as deepfakes - undermine public trust and can produce destabilising effects. In addition, uneven access to media technologies and infrastructures can hinder participation in knowledge creation, thereby exacerbating existing global inequalities.
The Eleanor Rathbone Lecture Series 2026 showcases the work of three renowned speakers, each invested in examining the multiple and wide-ranging ways in which ‘truths’ are generated, perceived and contested in the digital age. The presentations will collectively highlight and address the risks and challenges involved in navigating the complexities of knowledge and truth in an age of uncertainty, precarity and insecurity.
About the Lecture Series
In 1905, Eleanor Rathbone played a key role in establishing the School of Social Science at the University of Liverpool. She was the first woman to be elected to Liverpool City Council in 1909 and, in 1929, she was elected as an independent MP.
A pioneering feminist who was also deeply concerned with the corrosive impacts of poverty, Eleanor Rathbone was instrumental in the establishment of Family Allowances (introduced in 1945 and later called Child Benefit). She was also a passionate advocate of human rights and served as the Founding Chair of the Parliamentary Committee for Refugees.
In fact, throughout her adult life Eleanor Rathbone was committed to progressive social reform and, in recognition of her contribution to the University and, more broadly, to the advancement of social justice, the Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology convenes an annual series of public lectures in her name.
The Eleanor Rathbone Social Justice Public Lectures were established in 2008 and they are coordinated by Professor Gabe Mythen.
The lectures are free to attend and audiences typically comprise a range of ‘publics’ from within the University and the wider city of Liverpool and beyond.
Previous presenters
The Eleanor Rathbone Social Justice Public Lectures are presented by leading figures who have made/are making distinctive contributions to the advancement of social justice.
Previous presenters (in alphabetical order) include: Alice Bloch, Professor of Sociology, University of Manchester; Wally Brown CBE DL; Victoria Canning, Professor of Criminology, Lancaster University; Aditya Chakrabortty, Columnist, The Guardian; Deborah Coles, Director, INQUEST; Mary Daly, Professor of Sociology, University of Oxford; Lesley Dixon, CEO of PSS; Danny Dorling, Professor of Human Geography, University of Oxford; Claire Dove CBE DL, Crown Representative for the Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise Sector; Lisa Doyle, Executive Director of Advocacy and Engagement, Refugee Council; Conor Gearty, Professor of Human Rights Law, London School of Economics and Political Science; Nick Hardwick, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons; Gordon Hughes, Professor of Criminology, Cardiff University; Omar Khan, Director of the Runnymede Trust; Ruth Levitas, Professor of Sociology, University of Bristol; Baroness Ruth Lister, Professor Emerita, Loughborough University and Member of the House of Lords; Dr Laura Zahra McDonald, Co-Director, ConnectFutures; Jimmy McGovern, Dramatist and Screenwriter; Sir James Munby, President of the Family Division of the High Court of England and Wales; Pat O’Malley, Honorary Distinguished Professor of Criminology, Australian National University; Sophia Parker, Director of Emerging Futures, Joseph Rowntree Foundation; Susan Pedersen, Professor of History, Columbia University; Kate Pickett, Professor of Epidemiology, University of York; Nicole Rafter, Professor of Criminology, Northeastern University; Phil Scraton, Professor of Criminology, Queens University Belfast; Andrew Sayer, Professor of Social Theory and Political Economy, Lancaster University; Professor Ann Skelton, Chairperson, UN Committee on the Rights of the Child; Baroness Vivien Stern CBE, Member of the House of Lords; David Stuckler, Professor of Political Economy and Sociology; Beverley Skeggs, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Lancaster University; Imogen Tyler, Professor of Sociology, Lancaster University; Sylvia Walby, Professor of Sociology, Lancaster University; Sandra Walklate, Professor of Sociology, University of Liverpool; Jenny Watson, Chair of the Electoral Commission; Tony Wright MP, Chair of the Public Administration Select Committee and the Select Committee on Reform of the House of Commons; Gary Younge, Professor of Sociology, University of Manchester, and Lucia Zedner, Professor of Criminal Justice, University of Oxford.
Please note that the designations and affiliations of the selected previous presenters were accurate at the time of their respective lectures.
Further information
If you would like to receive regular information or updates on the Eleanor Rathbone Social Justice Public Lecture Series, please send an email with ‘Eleanor Rathbone Lectures Email-List’ as the subject line to: slsjmret@liverpool.ac.uk.