Our four annual lectures cover the themes of Europe, Britain, and international relations.
The POLIS Annual Lecture
The inaugural POLIS Lecture took place on Thursday November 6. We were honoured to welcome our esteemed speaker Desmond King who spoke on the subject of Political violence and the American nation. Desmond King is Andrew W Mellon Professor of American Government at Oxford.
Max Weber defined the modern state as having a monopoly on legitimate violence. Not in the United States. The American regime organized and defended popular violence right from the start. The American Constitution –driven by both historical necessity and political theory-- institutionalized an armed citizenry. The Constitution, interacting with slave codes in the south, institutionalized the violence that was already endemic in colonial America and projected it into the future. We argue that as the state slowly developed its own capacity for legitimate violence it operated in a unique dialectic with the citizen violence that the state itself had organized. The development of the American state’s capacity continues to the present day. The Trump administration vastly expands the federal government’s law enforcement apparatus and projects it onto the reluctant cities in the American homeland – unsettling established ideas (and legal boundaries) but following a logic that was present from the start. We offer a framework for understanding how the state interacts (and patterns) private violence across four broad categories: Delegation, exemption, enforcement, and repression; all are complicated and driven forward by American federalism.
Speaker Bio:
Desmond King is the author of 13 books, 9 coedited books and numerous articles and chapters. Amongst other findings, King's research has demonstrated the influence of New Right ideology in the Reagan and Thatcher eras (The New Right: Politics, Markets and Citizenship Dorsey 1987), the evolution of modern conservatism in the United States (coed. The Changing Character of the American Right Vols 1 & II , PalgraveMacmillan, 2025), the significance of segregation in the US federal government (Separate and Unequal: African Americans and the US Federal Government, OUP 1995/2007 2n ed), the national bases of American identity (The Liberty of Strangers, OUP 2007), the malign influence of eugenics on North American social policy (with Randell Hansen, Sterilized by the State Cambridge UP 2013), the expanson of executive power in the American state (with Stephen Skowronek and John Dearborn, The Deep State versus the Unitary Executive: Phantoms of a Beleaguered Republic, OUP 2021), the of institutions in comparative labour market policy (Actively Seeking Work: The Politics of Workfare in hte USA and Britain Chicago 1995), and the politics of the Federal Reserve quantitative easing programmes (with Larry Jacobs, Fed Power: How Finance Wins OUP 2021), how a dichotomy between protect and repair policy alliances now drives the politics of civil rights (with Rogers M Smith, America's New Racial Battle Lines: Protect versus Repair, Chicago 2024). polity. King's op-eds have appeared variously in Le Monde Diplomatique, the New York Times and the Financial Times.
He is an elected fellow of the Royal Irish Academy, the American Philosophical Society, the British Academy, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The Antcliffe Lecture
The 2025 Antcliffe Lecture on British Politics took place on 17 March 2025. The lecture on challenges in UK Foreign Policy was delivered by Rt. Hon. Baroness Catherine Ashton of Upholland to a captivated crowd.
"Challenges in UK Foreign Policy"
Baroness Ashton is one of the most distinguished British diplomats of recent times. She has made notable and lasting contributions to global peace and security. She was Leader of the House of Lords, 2007-8, European Commissioner for Trade, 2008-9, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, 2009-14 and currently sits in the House of Lords as a Labour peer.
A video of the event is now available.
New in 2015, the Antcliffe Lecture was established following a donation in the name of John Antcliffe, who studied History at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, before going on to become a respected public relations professional. The Antcliffe Lecture is organised by the Churchill Archives Centre in conjunction with the Department of Politics and International Studies.
The lecture series focuses on British Politics. You can read more about John Antcliffe here.
Watch past lectures here.
The Alcuin Lecture
We are honoured to have welcomed Perry Anderson as the speaker for our 2023 Alcuin Lecture. This year's lecture took place on 22 November 2023. The subject of the lecture was:
The European War in the East
'For the third time in just over a century, war is raging in the Ukraine, but for the first time in the series every major European state agrees which power is responsible for it, save one, held the perpetrator by a consensus of the continent. In this conflict, far from of being detached from Europe by its exit from the Union, Britain has taken the lead in a common dispatch of arms and assistance to the victim of what all those coming to its aid condemn as unprovoked aggression. How far is this view of the war likely to be upheld in the court of history?'
At the request of our esteemed speaker, this year's lecture was not recorded.
Named after Alcuin of York, a teacher, theologian, and poet who advised Emperor Charlemagne, this annual lecture, hosted by the Department of Politics and International Relations, is given on a topic concerning the UK and Europe.
The series was established with a generous gift from Lord Brittan, former Vice-President of the European Commission, who himself gave the first lecture in 1999. Since then many UK European Commissioners have contributed to the series, which has also included Lord Hannay, the former UK Permanent Representative to the EU; Carl Bildt of Sweden; and Shirley Williams.
Watch past lectures here.
The Hinsley Lecture
A video and further information on the 2022 Hinsley Lecture with Professor Ashoka Mody can be found here.
This annual lecture takes place in memory of Sir Francis Harry Hinsley (1918–1998), the Founding Director of the Centre of International Studies (1975–1987) which is now part of the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS). He was a student and later Master of St John’s College (1979–1989) and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge (1981–1983).
Harry Hinsley worked as a cryptanalyst at Bletchley Park during the Second World War and was a leading figure in the history of international relations. St John's College hosts the Hinsley Memorial Lecture on an international relations topic usually in Michaelmas Term each year.
List of past lectures here.
All lectures are open to members of the public.