Dolan Cummings

Dolan Cummings is an Associate Fellow of the Institute of Ideas, having been its research and editorial director from 2001 to 2010. He continues to edit the IoI’s online review Culture Wars (www.culturewars.org.uk), where he writes about books, films and theatre. He is also one of the co-founders of the Manifesto Club, a campaign group for freedom in everyday life. He recently wrote a report, 28 ¾: How Constant Age Checks Are Infantilising Adults (September 2010). He has edited two collections of essays, The Changing Role of the Public Intellectual (Routledge, 2005) - the introduction is available here -  and Debating Humanism (Imprint Academic, 2006).

Dolan has produced several strands and individual debates at the Battle of Ideas over the years, on themes as various as religion and secularism, liberty, culture, community, music, law and America, and he both speaks and chairs at similar events across the UK and beyond. He appears regularly on radio and television as a commentator on the above issues.

A complete archive of Dolan’s Culture Wars essays and reviews can be found here.

 Related Sessions

Saturday 12 July 2008, 11.15am Norton Rose LLP
China’s new cultural revolution

Saturday 1 November 2008, 12.30pm Upper Gulbenkian Gallery
Your culture or mine? The arts and identity

Saturday 1 November 2008, 2.30pm Café
Can philosophy save your life?

Saturday 1 November 2008, 2.30pm Upper Gulbenkian
Capitalism – what is it good for?

Sunday 2 November 2008, 10.00am Henry Moore Gallery
Learning Jargonese

Sunday 2 November 2008, 11.00am Seminar Space
Election USA

Sunday 2 November 2008, 11.00am Student Union
Staging ourselves

Sunday 2 November 2008, 4.00pm Seminar Space
What does it mean to be American?


 Publications

Debating Humanism (ed.) (Imprint Academic, 2006)
Who’s Antisocial?: New Labour and the Politics of Antisocial Behaviour (ed.) (Academy of Ideas, 2005)
The Changing Role of the Public Intellectual (ed.) (Routledge, 2004)
In Search of Sesame Street: Policing Civility for the 21st Century (Perpetuity, 1999)


 Festival Buzz

"I was amazed by the high quality of the Battle of Ideas 2007 and the intellectual excitement that it provoked."
Prof Malcolm Grant CBE, president and provost, University College London