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Dignity and historical injustice: the history of an Albanian family

Open ORCID profile in a new windowLea Ypi*† Lea Ypi*††

Lea Ypi FBA is Ralph Miliband Professor in Politics and Philosophy at London School of Economics. She is the author of Indignity: A Life Reimagined (2025) and Free: Coming of Age at the End of History (2021), both published by Penguin Books, as well as a number of academic monographs. Her work has been translated into more than thirty-five languages and won numerous prizes. She coedits the journal Political Philosophy and occasionally writes for the Financial Times and The Guardian.

L.L.Ypi@lse.ac.uk

,
Open ORCID profile in a new windowin conversation with Pablo Mukherjee‡Pablo Mukherjee‡‡

Pablo Mukherjee FBA researches across four interrelated areas—colonial and postcolonial literatures, environmental humanities, world-literary studies, and Victorian studies. He is the author of five monographs, four collections of essays and anthologies, and a wide range of academic essays and articles. He coedits the monograph series New Comparisons in World Literature (Springer) and the Journal of the British Academy. He was elected Fellow of British Academy in 2022 and is the Professor of Anglophone World-Literature at Oxford University.

Abstract

Can the memoir ask political questions that the academic monograph cannot? Can one research in archives and be mindful of the dignity of the lives being researched? Why do philosophers often turn to literature for answers? Lea Ypi looks back at her experience of writing two memoirs about her childhood and her family in Albania to offer her thoughts on these issues. Writing about her beloved grandmother, Ypi realises, allowed her to measure the tectonic movements of history that dramatically changed the shape of modern Albania. At the same time these memoirs are also a reckoning with herself—a diasporic academic weighing up the privileges and problems of being at home in the world. This article arises from a Lecture delivered on 17 September 2025.

Keywords

memoirarchivephilosophyliteratureAlbania

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Conversation

Normal View Dyslexic View

Dignity and historical injustice: the history of an Albanian family

Open ORCID profile in a new windowLea Ypi*† Lea Ypi*††

Lea Ypi FBA is Ralph Miliband Professor in Politics and Philosophy at London School of Economics. She is the author of Indignity: A Life Reimagined (2025) and Free: Coming of Age at the End of History (2021), both published by Penguin Books, as well as a number of academic monographs. Her work has been translated into more than thirty-five languages and won numerous prizes. She coedits the journal Political Philosophy and occasionally writes for the Financial Times and The Guardian.

L.L.Ypi@lse.ac.uk

,
Open ORCID profile in a new windowin conversation with Pablo Mukherjee‡Pablo Mukherjee‡‡

Pablo Mukherjee FBA researches across four interrelated areas—colonial and postcolonial literatures, environmental humanities, world-literary studies, and Victorian studies. He is the author of five monographs, four collections of essays and anthologies, and a wide range of academic essays and articles. He coedits the monograph series New Comparisons in World Literature (Springer) and the Journal of the British Academy. He was elected Fellow of British Academy in 2022 and is the Professor of Anglophone World-Literature at Oxford University.