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Vered Lev Kenaan
‘Hospitality in times of war’ is stimulated by a single image, which was too quickly swept away by the relentless flux of horrific war imagery. The photograph, taken during the handover of an Israeli hostage to Red Cross representatives, captures 85-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz—abducted by Hamas on 7 October 2023—turning back to shake hands with her captor. This article examines Lifshitz’s gesture in relation to both official and personal images of the handshake in antiquity, with particular attention to Homeric scenes and modern philosophical reflections on hospitality. Through a close reading of fraught moments in the Iliad, where enemies clasp hands in a fleeting recognition of shared humanity, the article explores the political and ethical resonance of a woman’s handshake, uncovering a lesser-known history of pacifist women’s resistance. This article is published in connection with a conversation between Vered Lev Kenaan and Rachel Bowlby FBA, which reflects on the article’s genesis and broader context within the ongoing realities of conflict and the hope for reconciliation from a woman’s perspective.
12 June 2025
Gurminder K. Bhambra, Catherine Hall, Sarah A. Radcliffe
‘Coming to terms with racial capitalism’ brings together three scholars from the disciplines of History, Geography, and Sociology to open up consideration of this increasingly popular concept. This is done by engaging the idea of ‘racial capitalism’ with the historical role of colonialism in Jamaica, Latin America, and Ireland. Each author draws on the resources of their discipline to locate the concept within debates such as Black Marxism and to consider it in relation to discussions about Indigenous rights and questions of racism. Catherine Hall offers a case study of one temporal and spatial instance of racial capitalism in the mid-18th-century Atlantic world. Sarah A. Radcliffe examines the place of Indigenous peoples in the racial colonial capitalism of Latin America. The final paper by Gurminder K. Bhambra argues for the significance of colonialism to understandings of capitalism through an examination of Irish colonial history.
12 June 2025
Adrian Favell, in conversation with Fiona Williams
The conversation discusses what an ethnographic or anthropological approach can bring to political sociology on the causes and consequences of Brexit in the UK, particularly in questioning the simplifications of dominant public opinion research. It points to the lack of awareness of post-colonial approaches to race and multiculturalism in such mainstream understandings, outlining the alternative perspectives found in Northern Exposure’s study of four large towns and small cities in the North of England. The discussion goes on to explore the innovative co-productive approach to impact developed by the project, whose output included local community engagement, videoed policy debates, and a full-length documentary film alongside conventional academic writing. The project Principal Investigator argues for a more critical constructivist epistemology in our understanding of UK politics during the era of Brexit, COVID and after.
12 June 2025
Gurminder K. Bhambra, Catherine Hall, Sarah A. Radcliffe
‘Coming to terms with racial capitalism’ brings together three scholars from the disciplines of History, Geography, and Sociology to open up consideration of this increasingly popular concept. This is done by engaging the idea of ‘racial capitalism’ with the historical role of colonialism in Jamaica, Latin America, and Ireland. Each author draws on the resources of their discipline to locate the concept within debates such as Black Marxism and to consider it in relation to discussions about Indigenous rights and questions of racism. Catherine Hall offers a case study of one temporal and spatial instance of racial capitalism in the mid-18th-century Atlantic world. Sarah A. Radcliffe examines the place of Indigenous peoples in the racial colonial capitalism of Latin America. The final paper by Gurminder K. Bhambra argues for the significance of colonialism to understandings of capitalism through an examination of Irish colonial history.
12 June 2025
Adrian Favell, in conversation with Fiona Williams
The conversation discusses what an ethnographic or anthropological approach can bring to political sociology on the causes and consequences of Brexit in the UK, particularly in questioning the simplifications of dominant public opinion research. It points to the lack of awareness of post-colonial approaches to race and multiculturalism in such mainstream understandings, outlining the alternative perspectives found in Northern Exposure’s study of four large towns and small cities in the North of England. The discussion goes on to explore the innovative co-productive approach to impact developed by the project, whose output included local community engagement, videoed policy debates, and a full-length documentary film alongside conventional academic writing. The project Principal Investigator argues for a more critical constructivist epistemology in our understanding of UK politics during the era of Brexit, COVID and after.
12 June 2025
Vered Lev Kenaan, in conversation with Rachel Bowlby
This conversation lays the ground for the reading of Vered Lev Kenaan’s article, whose starting point is the now famous photograph of Yocheved Lifshiftz shaking hands with her Hamas captor. Rachel Bowlby asks Lev Kenaan about what led her to write the piece and about its relation to her own situation living in Israel, and working at the University of Haifa. The interview also explores the suggestion, within the article, that a horizon of future reconciliation has to emerge from the place of a woman. The themes discussed here are developed in greater depth in Lev Kenaan’s accompanying research article, ‘Hospitality in times of war’.
12 June 2025
Paul Bou-Habib
Last year, the British Academy celebrated the tenth anniversary of the Brian Barry Prize. This paper reflects on how the essays that have won the Prize and contemporary political philosophy more generally, compare to works in political philosophy immediately before and during Brian Barry’s career. The Prize-winning essays, and the discipline more generally, continue to produce a prescriptive and engaged form of political philosophy that Barry and others in his generation (in particular, John Rawls) were so instrumental in reviving. I celebrate this but also express the worry that the discipline is sliding too far towards applied political philosophy. Political philosophers must not lose sight of foundational principles that should govern a just society.
30 May 2025
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