Battle of Ideas 2009 31 October & 1 November, London

The Battle of Ideas 2009 will be a two-day festival of high-level, thought-provoking debate organised by the Institute of Ideas and hosted by the Royal College of Art.

2009 Ticket Information

Click here for details

 Battle News

The Political Significance of the Economic Crisis

Battles in Print 2006 republished

Battle of Ideas 2008 on video

+ All news + RSS Feed

 Reading for Battle

The Chinese Dream: A Society Under Construction, Neville Mars & Adrian Hornsby

Religion remains fundamental to US politics, Susan Jacoby

Time to no platform 'no platform', Dennis Hayes & Richard Reynolds

+ All Battle Readings

 Battles in Print

Questioning the carnivalesque , Ashley Frawley

Refocusing remembrance , Ted Harrison

Some myths of the ‘Work-Life Balance’ discussion , Para Mullan

+ All Battles in Print

 Speakers include
Colin Blakemore, professor of neuroscience at the universities of Oxford and Warwick; chair, Neuroscience Research Partnership, Singapore; chair, general advisory committee on science, Food Standards Agency
Frank Field, MP, Labour MP for Birkenhead; co-chair, Cross Party Group on Balanced Migration; author, Neighbours from Hell: The Politics of Behaviour
Frank Furedi, professor of sociology, University of Kent, Canterbury; author, Wasted, Politics of Fear, Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone?
Leela Gandhi, professor of English, University of Chicago; author Affective Communities: anticolonial thought, fin-de-siècle radicalism, and the politics of friendship; founding co-editor, Postcolonial Studies journal.
Mick Hume, editor-at-large, spiked; writer for The Times
Susan Jacoby, author, The Age of American Unreason; programme director, Centre for Inquiry - NYC; fellow, Centre for Scholars and Writers, New York Public Library.
Bronwen Maddox, chief foreign commentator, The Times; author In Defence of America
Ashis Nandy, senior honorary fellow, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi; recipient of Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize (2007); author, omnibus edition of writing, Exiled at Home, Return from Exile, and A Very Popular Exile.
Lionel Shriver, novelist, We Need to Talk About Kevin and The Post-Birthday World; commentator for the Guardian, the Telegraph, and the Sunday Times.
Mark Walport, director, Wellcome Trust; formerly professor of medicine, Imperial College London
Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator, Financial Times; author, Fixing Global Finance
+ Full list of speakers

 Festival Buzz

Watch Battle of Ideas 2008 video...

"Participating in the Battle was a little like entering a Bombay train at rush hour - it's a plunge into a swirl of wildly differing notions of how people should arrange themselves in a really tight situation. When you eventually emerge, you find that you're in a different place from where you started - and that you've been thoroughly energised from the journey. I can't wait to take the trip again next year."
Naresh Fernandes, editor-in-chief, Time Out India

 Partners
The Battle of Ideas is produced by
Institute of Ideas

with











+ Full list of partners