What the hell is going on with... power?

We appear to be living in an era dominated by unaccountable strong leaders and tech multinationals, yet there seems to be less explicit discussion of power than in the past. 

Seminar rooms of the 1970s and 80s were abuzz with talk of hegemony and control, yet now identity, choice and self-determination seem more prominent. Join Eliane Glaser, author, BBC producer and Visiting Fellow at Jesus, and Joanna Kavenna, award-winning novelist, in conversation with Phil Tinline, author and broadcaster, and Clare Chambers, Professor of Political Philosophy and Fellow of Jesus College. They will ask where and how power is exerted today – both overtly and covertly, in public and in private – and why the term seems to have fallen out of fashion at a time when we need it more than ever. The event will be open to all, including undergraduates.

This event is part of an ongoing series of events and podcasts entitled ‘What the hell is going on with…?’ hosted by Eliane Glaser and Joanna Kavenna.

About the speakers

Eliane Glaser is an award-winning writer and radio producer. She works on programmes such as BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time, Start the Week, Free Thinking and Front Row and her recent documentaries include What happened to progress?. Her books include Motherhood: Feminism’s Unfinished Business and Elitism: A Progressive Defence. Her articles appear in the Guardian, Prospect, the London Review of Books, Aeon and Engelsberg Ideas.

Clare Chambers is Professor of Political Philosophy and a Fellow of Jesus College, University of Cambridge. She is the author of Freedom & Equality: Essays in Liberalism and Feminism (Oxford University Press, 2024); Intact: A Defence of the Unmodified Body (Allen Lane / Penguin, 2022); Against Marriage: An Egalitarian Defence of the Marriage-Free State (Oxford University Press, 2017); Sex, Culture, and Justice: The Limits of Choice (Penn State University Press, 2008); and Teach Yourself Political Philosophy: A Complete Introduction (with Phil Parvin, Hodder, 2012); and numerous articles and chapters on feminist and liberal political philosophy.

Phil Tinline is the author of The Death of Consensus: 100 Years of British Political Nightmares (The Times Politics Book of the Year, 2022) and Ghosts of Iron Mountain: The Hoax that Duped America and its Sinister Legacy. He has written for the Daily Telegraph, the Financial Times, the New Statesman, the Observer, Prospect and The Times, and has authored reports for Demos, the Future Governance Forum, the Independent Commission on Neighbourhoods and the Institute for Public Policy Research. He occasionally presents documentaries for BBC Radio, where he worked from 2002 to 2023.

Joanna Kavenna grew up in the Midlands and has lived and worked in the US, France, Germany, Scandinavia, Sri Lanka and the Baltic States. Her novels include Inglorious, The Birth of Love, Come to the Edge, A Field Guide to Reality, Zed and, most recently, Seven. Her essays and stories have appeared in the Paris Review, the New Yorker, New York magazine and Zoetrope, among other publications. She was named as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2013. She has also received the Orange Prize for New Writing, the Pushcart Prize and the Harper-Wood Award at St John's Cambridge. During 2024-2025 she was the Frankland Visitor at the University of Oxford.

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Joanna Kavenna photo credit: A. Michaelis.

"Panopticon" by Paolo Trabattoni is licensed under CC BY 2.0.