Podcast and video archive

Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities aims to support and promote new ideas and forms of understanding in the humanities and beyond. In order to share our events with the widest possible audience, we record many of our lectures, discussion panels, and masterclasses as podcasts and as video that can be accessed via Birkbeck's YouTube channel. You can view the titles of previous recordings below.

Year of publication

2020

Power, Appearance, and Obscenity in the Viral Desert, Slavoj Zizek

2019

'Beautiful Experiments' by Saidiya Hartman, keynote lecture for 'The Art of Not Doing' Graduate Conference
'On Rosa Luxemburg: Drucilla Cornell and Jacqueline Rose In Conversation'
'Brigitte Marin: Urban government, the police and citizen participation in eighteenth-century Naples: a comparative perspective'
'Disorder Under Heaven' - A Masterclass with Slavoj Žižek
- Part I: 'Was Antigone a man? Masculinity and other toxic entities'
- Part II: 'Nomadic proletarians? No, thanks!'
'Entitlement: A Lecture by Ali Smith'
'Sheila Heti in Conversation'
'Ali Smith and Marina Warner in Conversation'
'Feminist Flashpoints: Sexual Harassment in the Academy' with Katherine Angel, Felicity Callard, Esther Leslie, and Jacqueline Rose
‘Marilyn Monroe: A Reappraisal' with Laura Mulvey and Jacqueline Rose
‘Are Human Rights Neoliberal?' with Joseph Slaughter, Jessica Whyte, Tanya Serisier, Başak Ertür, Robert Knox, and Luis Eslava
‘Words on the Move 3' with David Herd, Fran Lock, Steve Willey, Daniela Cascella, Luke Williams, Julia Bell, and Marina Warner
‘Reading Marx' with Agon Hamza, Frank Ruda, and Slavoj Žižek
‘Sex and the Failed Absolute' - A Masterclass with Slavoj Žižek
- Masterclass I: Modalities of the Absolute
- Masterclass II: Figures of Post-Humanity
‘Photography as Social Research' by Steve Edwards

2018

‘She Reigns and He Does Not Govern’: The Discourse of the Anxious Hysteric in post-apartheid South Africa' by Jaco Barnard-Naudé
'Fanon's Lacan' by Derek Hook
'Mothers' by Jacqueline Rose: Book launch and discussion with Amber Jacobs
Global '68: Solidarity in Alliance and Global History
Crime and Global Justice: Book Launch and Discussion
Gary Younge - All that is solid melts into air (Amiel & Melburn Annual Lecture)
Slavoj Žižek - Like a Thief in the Night
T.J. Clark - Cézanne and the Fetishism of Commodities
- Session One
- Session Two
Situated Struggles: Sex Workers, Art Workers and the Politics of Freedom from Work
Seeing 'Ways of Seeing'
100 Years After Balfour by Independent Jewish Voices
- Discussion of 100 Years After Balfour by Independent Jewish Voices
- Watch the film: 100 Years After Balfour
Stories my Great-Grandmother Didn’t Tell Me, Or, Family Histories and the Memories of Nations
War and Art: A Visual History of Modern Conflict – Book Launch
Re-Reading the Revolution: Jean-Claude Milner in Conversation with Slavoj Žižek
The Political Influence of Garveyism on Aboriginal Australia
Transcendental Subjectivity, Sexual Difference, Brain Sciences - A Masterclass with Slavoj Žižek, Session 1
Transcendental Subjectivity, Sexual Difference, Brain Sciences - A Masterclass with Slavoj Žižek, Session 2

2016-17

Language Policy and Planning in Multilingual Organisations: Exploring Language
- Conference Welcome
- F Grin (University of Geneva) - The relevance of an economic perspective for the evaluation of language regimes: are there any economics in Switzerland's language policy at the federal level?
- M. Gazzola and T. Templin (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) - Quantitative Indicators for the Planning and Monitoring of Language Policies in Multilingual Organisations
- J. Evas (Cardiff University) - Automating Welsh Language Use? Increasing use of Minority
- J. Lacey (University of Oxford) - Secession, Devolution, Integration: When Language Matters
- H. de Schutter (KU Leuven) - Does English polycentricity in the EU reduce linguistic injustice?
- S. Wright and S. Berthaud (University of Portsmouth)- Inclusion and exclusion in the European Parliament: the linguistic dimension
- P. Kraus (University of Augsburg) - Ligatures, options, and power: towards a political sociology of multilingualism in Europe
- L. Oakes (Queen Mary, University of London) - The Organisation internationale de la Francophonie and the question of pluricentric linguistic justice in the French-speaking world
Costas Douzinas – The Left in Power?
Feminist Emergency - International Conference
Resisting the (internal) Border: a Conference for Academics, Activists and Advocates (also ask as all the links are the same - better to have one main link?)
A Time to Laugh - A Masterclass Jean-Michel Rabaté
- Session One - Reflex Laughter: the Past
- Session Two - Machine Laughter: the Present
- Session Three - Excess Laughter: the Future
Slavoj Žižek – ‘You have to be stupid to see that’: Ideology in Daily Life
- Part One - Ideology as Augmented Reality
- Part Two - Reality as Constricted Ideology
Using the Law for Social Justice and Other Utopian Ideals - A Masterclass with Helena Kennedy QC
- Session One - Introduction
- Session Two - Gender, Sex and Trans
- Session Three - Terrorism and State Power
Image and Accident in Kafka’s Novels - A Masterclass with Howard Caygill
- Session One - Photographic Intimation: Race and Extermination in Missing Person (America)
- Session Two: Saints and Soldiers: The Old and the New Religion in The Castle
- Session Three: Saints and Soldiers: The Old and the New Religion in The Castle
What Can Art History Say About Giotto?
Towards a New Critique of Political Economy - A Masterclass with Etienne Balibar
- Session One - Two Strategic Categories: ‘Human Capital’ and ‘Liquidity’
- Session Two - From Historical to Absolute Capitalism
- Session Three - From Historical to Absolute Capitalism
Jacqueline Rose in Conversation with Eimear McBride
Agency: Human and Non-Human
The Spirit of Revolution: Beyond the Dead Ends of Man
Between Philosophy and Psychoanalysis - A Masterclass with Slavoj Žižek
- Session One - Lacan’s Hypothesis: Psychoanalysis as the Ex-Timate Core of Philosophy
- Session Two - Is it Possible to Move Beyond the Transcendental?
- Session Three - The Prospect of the Post-Human

2015-16

The Trouble with Pleasure: Deleuze and Psychoanalysis
Sexual Difference and the Symbolic: What Future?
Masterclass: Heaven on Earth According to Bruegel
Precarious Citizenship: Young People who are Undocumented, Separated and Settled in the UK
Focus on the Funk: Journeys...
- Politics of Deconstruction: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Oscar Guardiola-Rivera in conversation
- Focus on the Funk - Highlights
Freud as a Thinker of Political Affects: Politics Between Fear and Distress
Surplus-Value, Surplus-Enjoyment, Surplus-Knowledge - A Masterclass with Slavoj Žižek
- Masterclass 1: From Pleasure-in-Pain to Surplus-Enjoyment
- Masterclass 2: Is Surplus-Value Marx’s Name For Surplus-Enjoyment?
Homonationalisms and Criminalized Queers: A Panel Discussion about Global Sexual Politics
Bad Feelings: Launch and Panel Discussion
Centre Stages of Development: Performance, Public Art and Sexual Politics
Marxism and Romanticism: From Karl Marx to Jose Carlos Mariategui - A Masterclass with Michael Lowy
- Masterclass 1: Marxism and Romanticism, from Karl Marx to Jose Carlos Mariategui
- Masterclass 2: Marxism and Romanticism, from Karl Marx to Jose Carlos Mariategui
Obscure Modernism - One-day conference
Slavoj Žižek - Three Lectures - 2, 3 and 4 December 2015 - Hegelian Battles

2014-15

The Southern European Crisis and the Future of Europe
Postpolitics and Neoliberalism - Conference
Greece and Europe: A First Account of a Radical Government
- Greece and Europe: A First Account of a Radical Government podcast
- Greece and Europe: A First Account of a Radical Government film
Equal Rights for All - A New Path for Israel-Palestine? Conference
Pits and Perverts Revisited: 'Pride' the Movie and Politics Now
Slavoj Žižek 'Towards A Materialist Notion of Freedom'
- Lecture 1: Freedom - For Whom? To Do What?
- Lecture 2: Neurosciences and Freedom

2013-14

Slavoj Žižek - Towards a Materialist Theory of Subjectivity
History After Hobsbawm
Sexual Violence in Armed Conflicts - Film Testimony and the Vietnam War
Ernesto Laclau - Conclusions
Ernesto Laclau - Three Routes, One Argument - Heidegger, Lacan, Gramsci - Masterclass
Ernesto Laclau - The Discursive Construction of Social Antagonism - Masterclass
E.P.Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class - its first half century of 'history from below'
Slavoj Žižek - Struggle: Towards a New Master
Slavoj Žižek - Ideology: The Terror of Permissive Biopolitics
Slavoj Žižek - Economy: The Vicious Cycle of Capitalist Reproduction
Wang Hui - The Decline of Representation
Wang Hui - How to Interpret 'China' and Its 'Modernity'
Queer Muslim Women - Conference

2012-13

Surplus - A Symposium on Waste, Wealth and Excess
TJ Clark - Was Picasso a Woman: Reflections on Nude with Green Leaves and Bust
Spinoza and Nietzsche in Dialogue
The Actuality of the Absolute: Hegel Our Untimely Contemporary
Slavoj Žižek - A Reply to my Critics
BIH Celebrates Laura Mulvey
Dreams and Dreaming: Disciplinary Perspectives and Interdisciplinary Dialogue
Simon Critchley - Masterclass - Two Public Lectures
- Nietzsche, Joyce, Tragedy, Lethargy and Disgust
- Hamlet, Schmitt, Benjamin, Politics, Sovereignty, Espionage
Southern Europe Crisis and Resistances
How to Write Successful Grant Proposals

2011-12

Race in the Birth of the Human Science - Speaker: Lewis Gordon
Poetics of Anxiety and Security - two-day conference. Speaker: Homi Bhabha
Ideology Now - one-day conference
Paul Mason in Conversation with Costas Douzinas (Birkbeck) and Deborah Mabbett (Birkbeck)
War and Representation - one-day conference
Slavoj Žižek - The Wire or the Clash of Civilisations in One Country
Hayden White - Masterclass - Three Lectures
Social Democracy and Europe's Crisis
Public Lecture: Slavoj Žižek - The Silent Voice of a New Beginning
Workshop: Visions of the Trial: Courts and Visual Culture

2010-11

Symposium: The Rise of the Indignants: Spain, Greece, Europe
Panel Discussion: Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britain - Stefan Collini
Workshop: Rhetorics of Pain: Historical Reflections (Joanna Bourke)
Public lecture: Jodi Dean - The Communist Horizon
Conference: State of the European Union (Etienne Balibar)
Public Lecture: Etienne Balibar - Europe the Final Crisis?
Workshop: The Making of State Power in Portugal
Conference: The Luddites, without Condescension - A Conference on the 200th Anniversary of the Frame-breakers’ Uprising
Slavoj Žižek Masterclass - The Limits of Hegel
Slavoj Žižek Masterclass - Lacan and Sexual Difference
Slavoj Žižek Masterclass - The Idea of Communism and its Actuality
Orbiting London: A Conversation with Iain Sinclair
Public lecture: Slavoj Žižek - Violence Revisited
Public lecture: Professor Peter Burke (BIH Visting Fellow) Loss and Gain: the Social History of Knowledge 1750-2000
Conference: Why Humanities? (Stefan Collini, Joanna Bourke, Francis Mulhern, Raimond Gaita, Iain Pears, Kate Soper and Quentin Skinner)
Conference: Why Humanities? Keynote address - Professor Onora O'Neill

2009-10

Public lecture: Jean-Luc Nancy - On Communism
Debate: Eurozone in Crisis: Reform or Exit?
Fascism and the Historians: past, present and future (Geoff Eley)
Jane Bennett - Walt Whitman's Solar Judgement
Public Lecture: Etienne Balibar - Cosmopolitanism and secularism. Working Hypotheses
Debate: The Greek Crisis - Politics-Economics-Ethics (Kevin Featherstone, Director, Hellenic Observatory, LSE, Costas Lapavitsas, (Economics) SOAS, Peter Bratsis, (Politics) Salford University. Costas Douzinas (Chair) Birkbeck)
Panel Discussion: After Human Rights?
Conference: Rethinking Children/Childhood in the 21st Century
William Cohen - Queer Universality and the French Oscar Wilde
Public Lecture: Slavoj Žižek 'Apocalyptic Times'
Discussion: What are the Humanities For?
Conference: Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht: Story of a Friendship?
The Dis/Order of Things' - interdisciplinary workshop
Atheism in Christianity
Thinking With Spinoza
Talking Books - 'Novel History' (Hilary Mantel, Sarah Dunant, John Sutherland and Joanna Bourke)
Slavoj Žižek Masterclass - Five lectures