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: 9.30am-11.00am
Keynote Controversies Upper Gulbenkian Gallery
Trust in an age of cynicism
Battle for Social Policy Courtyard Gallery
What's the point of the social sciences?
Café Controversies Café
Obama's America: is racism history?
Saturday 30 October: 11.15am-12.15pm
Lunchtime Debates Upper Gulbenkian Gallery
Behind closed doors: privacy vs transparency?
Battle for Social Policy 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: 12.30pm-2.00pm
Keynote Controversies Upper Gulbenkian Gallery
The empty square: the public engaged or imagined?
Café Controversies Café
Post-Lula Brazil: country of the future?
Saturday 30 October: 2.30pm-4.00pm
Keynote Controversies Upper Gulbenkian Gallery
Is the West still the best?
Battle for Social Policy Courtyard Gallery
Early intervention: saving children from their future?
Café Controversies Café
Negotiating South Africa's past: can we forgive and forget?
Saturday 30 October: 4.15pm-5.30pm
Head to Head Debates Upper Gulbenkian Gallery
The great population debate: too many carbon footprints?
Thought for the day Lecture Theatre 2
Bookshop Barnie at the Battle: Voodoo Histories
Sunday 31 October: 8.45am-9.30am
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: 9.45am-11.15am
Keynote Controversies Upper Gulbenkian Gallery
Whose social justice is it anyway?
Battle over Scientific Evidence Lecture Theatre 1
What science can and cannot tell us
In Conversation Salons Lecture Theatre 2
Are we all cooperative now? The battle over employee ownership
Sunday 31 October: 11.30am-12.30pm
Lunchtime Debates Student Union
Generation Wars: Baby Boomers versus Generation Y
Sunday 31 October: 12.45pm-2.15pm
Battle over Scientific Evidence Lecture Theatre 1
Policy-based evidence?
Sunday 31 October: 2.45pm-4.15pm
Keynote Controversies Upper Gulbenkian Gallery
What does it mean to be a liberal today?
Battle for the Past Courtyard Gallery
Memorialising the Holocaust: the challenge of history?
Provocation Zone Student Union
Bikinis, burqas and flat brown shoes: female role models in the 21st Century
Sunday 31 October: 5.30pm-6.30pm
What next for...? Upper Gulbenkian Gallery
What next? The battle between optimism and pessimism

Festival Buzz

Rethinking Privacy in an age of disclosure

"As ever, the Battle of Ideas is full of stimulating and lively argument. It's fun to be able to clash robustly in a good-humoured atmosphere."
Martin Wright, Editor in chief, Green Futures