CONFERENCES CONVENED
MORAL AND POLITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON DEMOCRACY
University of Geneva, Switzerland
27-28 June 2012
This conference seeks to illuminate the nature and value of democracy. It brings together a group of international experts to discuss the theory and practice of democracy by examining contemporary controversies surrounding the respective powers of judges and legislators, competing conceptions of representation and participation, and competing ideas about the place of people's particular identities, attachments, ideals and obligations in public life. The conference looks for inspiration to the past, as well as to the international dimensions of democratic governance, and seeks to uncover what can be learned about the theory of democracy from those who actively participate in the formulation, implementation and evaluation of public policy. Crossing disciplinary as well as international boundaries, it seeks to promote dialogue and to connect Francophone and Anglophone views on political theory, and thereby to offer a fitting tribute to the work and ideas of Jean Jacques Rousseau on this 300th anniversary of his birth.
PHILOSOPHY AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY CONFERENCE
London, 29-30 May 2009
The Philosophy and Intellectual Property Conference brings together an internationally renowned group of philosophers and legal theorists. It will discuss whether intellectual property, as currently conceived, has any philosophical or legal coherence that distinguishes it from other forms of property, or other rights that people might have in their bodies, ideas and in the world. Intellectual property rights give their holders considerable powers to with-hold life-saving inventions and medicines, to prevent the dissemination and sharing of books, music and art work and to charge fees for licensing and use that only the wealthiest individuals and governments are able to pay. Therefore the aim of this conference is to promote dialogue between lawyers and philosophers over the solution to conceptual and normative problems in the treatment of intellectual property, as these are, increasingly, of practical as well as theoretical importance, and difficult to resolve within the bounds of any one intellectual discipline.
PRIVACY, EQUALITY AND SECURITY
London, 9 and 23 February, 2007
This conference sought to address concerns over privacy arising from the debate over advancing technology for purposes of security, and from discussions of increasing information and data collection generally. The purpose of the conference was to bring together the expertise of those working in issues of technology and information, with philosophical work on privacy, equality and the right to self-defence. The conference was organised together with Jonathan Wolff from the Department of Philosophy at UCL and Shepley Orr from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UCL. The event was co-hosted by the Institute of Philosophy of the University of London and University College London, and was co-sponsored by the Institute of Philosophy and the Accesibility Research Group and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UCL.