2010 Programme: Festival weekend overview

The Festival weekend includes more than 70 debates which are listed below ordered by time slot and room. To see Saturday or Sunday sessions only, select the day you want from the menu on the left or select sessions by Theme.

Or view and print out the Timetable as a two-page PDF.

Saturday 30 October: 10.30am-12.00pm
Keynote Controversies Upper Gulbenkian Gallery
Trust in an age of cynicism
Courtyard Gallery
What's the point of the social sciences?
Café
Obama's America: is racism history?
Saturday 30 October: 12.15pm-1.15pm
Lunchtime Debates Upper Gulbenkian Gallery
Behind closed doors: privacy vs transparency?
Courtyard Gallery
Is the Big Society the good society?
Lunchtime Debates Henry Moore Gallery
Your conscience, my health: the right to refuse?
Saturday 30 October: 1.30pm-3.00pm
Keynote Controversies Upper Gulbenkian Gallery
The empty square: the public engaged or imagined?
Café
Post-Lula Brazil: country of the future?
Saturday 30 October: 3.30pm-5.00pm
Keynote Controversies Upper Gulbenkian Gallery
Is the West still the best?
Courtyard Gallery
Early intervention: saving children from their future?
Café
Negotiating South Africa's past: can we forgive and forget?
Saturday 30 October: 5.15pm-6.30pm
Upper Gulbenkian Gallery
The great population debate: too many carbon footprints?
Lecture Theatre 2
Bookshop Barnie at the Battle: Voodoo Histories
Sunday 31 October: 9.45am-10.30am
Breakfast Banter Lecture Theatre 1
Are we still a classless society, Mr Cameron?
Breakfast Banter Courtyard Gallery
Electoral Reform: purple revolution or middle-class obsession?
Sunday 31 October: 10.45am-12.15pm
Keynote Controversies Upper Gulbenkian Gallery
Whose social justice is it anyway?
Lecture Theatre 1
What science can and cannot tell us
Lecture Theatre 2
Are we all cooperative now? The battle over employee ownership
Sunday 31 October: 12.30pm-1.30pm
Lunchtime Debates Student Union
Generation Wars: Baby Boomers versus Generation Y
Sunday 31 October: 1.45pm-3.15pm
Lecture Theatre 1
Policy-based evidence?
Sunday 31 October: 3.45pm-5.15pm
Keynote Controversies Upper Gulbenkian Gallery
What does it mean to be a liberal today?
Courtyard Gallery
Memorialising the Holocaust: the challenge of history?
Student Union
Bikinis, burqas and flat brown shoes: female role models in the 21st Century
Sunday 31 October: 6.30pm-7.30pm
What next for...? Upper Gulbenkian Gallery
What next? The battle between optimism and pessimism

Festival Buzz

CAM: Junk Science or Genuine Alternative?

"The Battle of Ideas is an inspired and inspiring event that grapples with the important issues in ways that are refreshing and imaginative."
Peter Barron, Director of communications and public affairs, North and Central Europe, Google; former editor, Newsnight