Act on session

DEMOCRACY

Training Our Democratic Fitness

with Elze Vermaas & Maria Koomen

Ideas / Conversations | Sat 8th Nov | 2-4:30 pm

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ABOUT THE HOSTS

Elze Vermaas is staff member at the Belgian socio-ecological think tank Oikos and former vice-chair of the Dutch young Green think tank Jong Wetenschappelijk Bureau GroenLinks. In her exploration and dissemination of new ecological narratives, no voices are left unheard. She is among the authors of Enough, Thriving societies beyond growth (2023), together with Dirk Holemans and Lara Ferrante. She's currently researching more in depth on the connections between economic systems and democracy.

Maria Koomen is governance director at the Centre for Future Generations, working on the challenges at the intersection of emerging technologies, democracy, and governance. Her work focuses on ensuring that governance systems evolve to keep pace with technological and societal change.

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ADDITIONAL INFO

FOOD & DRINK	EVENT SIZE	ACCESS
Bar & snacks	Medium <50	Available on request

DEEP THOUGHT SERIES

Will women be the saucy French maids of technofascism?

Andreea Petre-Gonçalves

 Ideas / Conversations  | Sat 8th Nov | 5-7pm

Even as we look down the barrel of the gun that is fascism enabled by technology, it’s still awkward to talk about the things that communism got right. Apart from pulling whole generations from the indignity of subsistence and ensuring unparalleled social provision, one thing that communism also did was deliver feminism - from above.

From comrades

While that might sound distasteful, and it sure as hell was a long way from perfect, it did mean that growing up behind the Iron Curtain in the 80s, there was never a reason to suspect inequality between men and women. Everyone was a comrade. Women pursued science careers and had access to leadership that might have delighted their Western counterparts. To this day Eastern Europe has notably higher proportions of women doctors, scientists, and tech specialists than do countries that have enjoyed the more lauded freedoms of capitalism.

This is the point at which apologies and caveats are expected, and clear professions of faith that communism was also bad. Comparisons between then and now are however useful, as we take fast strides towards a new period of authoritarianism in human history, a fascist takeover of the architecture of the state solidified by the almighty tech-enabled distortion machine of social media and AI.

To French maids

Far-right autocracy has women back in the kitchen as trad wives, pushing out babies without paracetamol. Technology enshittifies our existence by proliferating misogyny on social media and through biased large language models that reshape social reality. Whole new generations of boys are steeped in dehumanising sexual norms driven by increasingly degrading and ubiquitous pornography. Before long, the cultural and social gains of the last few decades will seem like a woke hallucination.

The iconography of technofascism will have us in aprons and suspenders, in service to the bros, the pater familias, the mighty boss man. In the second brush with European autocracy of our lifetimes, we will not be comrades, but objects in service to strongmen, saucy French maids in all seriousness, without the nudge and without the wink.

Things don’t have to be so. Join us for a steadfast conversation.

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ABOUT THE HOST

Andreea Petre-Goncalves was 8 years old when totalitarian Communism collapsed overnight in her native Romania. She saw then how quickly yesterday’s absolute truth can become tomorrow reviled atrocity. She knows that societal narratives can shift fast, and when they do, they make deep system re-set possible. For two decades she worked for international development, human rights, health and sustainability in the EU institutions and international NGOs. In 2019 she set up Flare, a Brussels-based think-and-do tank that experiments with practical ways of shifting the collective ideas we hold of what is normal and desirable. This work builds on 15 years of her researching and writing about societal narrative shifts. She is a BMW Foundation Responsible Leader and a member of Global Diplomacy Lab.

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ADDITIONAL INFO 

FOOD & DRINK	EVENT SIZE	ACCESS
Bar & snacks	Small (10-15)	Available on request

GREEN CRIME

Inside the Minds of the People Destroying the Planet, and How to Stop Them

A salon with Julia Shaw

Ideas / Salon | Fri 14th Nov | 6.30-8.30 pm

*Doors open at 6.30pm. The speaker will start at 7pm.

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ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Julia Shaw is a German-Canadian criminal psychologist at University College London, bestselling author, and regular presenter of TV and audio shows. As a scientist, she specialises in false memory, memory hacking, investigative interviewing, and understanding the criminal mind, as well as identity in the age of social media and digital ethics. She is also a best-selling writer translated into twenty languages, author of four books. She strives to to form more tolerant, respectful and inclusive working places and environments. In 2017 Julia co-founded the startup Spot which uses artificial intelligence and memory science to help individuals document and report inappropriate workplace behaviour. In 2024 she released two series on BBC Radio 4. Experts on Trial, about the secret world of expert witnesses, and The Human Subject, co-hosted by Dr Adam Rutherford, about the dark history of modern medicine. Between 2020 and 2024 she wrote and hosted the award-winning BBC Sounds podcast Bad People.She has also been a presenter for German television.

GOOD READS

Green Crime, Inside the Minds of the People Destroying the Planet, and How to Stop Them (2025); Bi, The Hidden Culture, History and Science of Bisexuality (2022); Making Evil, The Science Behind Humanity's Dark Side (2020); The Memory Illusion, Remembering, Forgetting and the Science of False Memory (2016).

KEY LINKS

Julia Shaw

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ADDITIONAL INFO

FOOD & DRINK	EVENT SIZE	ACCESS
Bar & snacks	Medium (20-50)	Available on request

CRITICAL CONVERSATIONS
CONFLICT & PEACE

Theme & guest to be announced

Sandra Melone

 Conversations | Sat 15th Nov | 5-7pm 

Join us for a critical conversation on conflict and peace with our experience host, Sandra Melone. 

Open to everyone | Booking required

Bar open

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ABOUT THE HOST

Hosting the Series is Sandra Djuvara Melone, CEO of Zancora Consulting, which she founded in 2021, with a strong expertise in peacebuilding, conflict resolution, crisis management, human rights and, not last, gender. With a vast experience on the ground, she has worked across Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. She knows first hand what living through civil war is like. Sandra is the Chairwoman of the Board of Directors of Search for Common Ground, Europe, one of the world’s leading international non-governmental organisations working in peacebuilding and conflict transformation, where she's been involved in various roles since 1995. Sandra is a founding member of the European Platform for Conflict Prevention and Transformation (EPCPT), of the European Peacebuilding Liaison Office (EPLO), and of the Child Soldiers Initiative (CSI). Before dedicating her career to conflict transformation, Sandra worked in human rights advocacy with Amnesty International, and in international education.

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ADDITIONAL INFO

FOOD & DRINK	EVENT SIZE	ACCESS
Bar & snacks	Medium (10-20)	Available on request

MAKING PEACE IN THE CULTURE WARS

A.C. GRAYLING

Salon / Ideas | Fri 20th Nov | 6.30-8.30pm

*Doors open at 6.30pm. The speaker will start at 7pm.

Not a Member yet? Join Full Circle now & come to events at the Members' rate!

The ‘war on wokeness’ may feel like a new phenomenon, but in fact, it’s been around for centuries. People have been ‘cancelled’, in one way or another, since the beginning of time – it’s human nature to form tribes, create an Us vs Them, and serve as judge, jury and so on. And yet, it feels like today we can’t talk about anything. How did we end up here?

Nuanced and historically grounded, philosopher Anthony Grayling searches for middle ground in an otherwise incendiary debate. Looking at the history of cancellation, from Ancient Greek ostracism through hemlock cups, witch trials and the House of Un-American Activities, his is a timely examination of the state of our public culture and the chilling effect it's having on intellectual discourse.

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ABOUT THE SPEAKER

A.C. Grayling is an outstanding British philosopher and public intellectual, as well as a prolific author (over 30 books) and frequent writer, columnist, broadcaster and commentator on all of the main national media in the United Kingdom. He contributes to the ongoing reflection on how we should live and about possibilities for good lives in good societies. In 2011 he founded and became the first Master of New College of the Humanities, an independent undergraduate college in London. He was previously Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London, where he taught from 1991. He is also a supernumerary fellow of St Anne’s College, Oxford. He has been a judge on the Booker Prize twice, in 2015 serving as the Chair of the judging panel. He is a Vice President of the British Humanist Association, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. 

GOOD READS

Discriminations, Making peace in the culture wars (2025); Who owns the moon, In defence of humanity's common interests in Space (2024); Philosophy and Life, Exploring the great questions of how to live (2023); For the Good of the World, Why our planet's crises need global agreement now (2022); The Frontiers of Knowledge: What We Know about Science, History and the Mind (2021); The Good State, On the Principles of Democracy (2020); Democracy and Its Crises (2017); War: An Enquiry (Vices and Virtues) (2017); The Challenge of Things: Thinking through troubled times (2015); Ideas That Matter: The Concepts That Shape the 21st Century (2010); Liberty In The Age Of Terror (2009); The Mystery Of Things (2004); Meditations for the Humanist: Ethics for a Secular Age (2002); and more...

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ADDITIONAL INFO

FOOD & DRINK	EVENT SIZE	ACCESS
Bar & snacks	Medium (40-70)	Available on request

FIGHTING FASCIST FEELINGS

with Sarah Stein Lubrano & Max Haiven

Ideas / Conversations | Fri 21st Nov | 7-8.30 pm

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ABOUT THE HOSTS

Dr Sarah Stein Lubrano has a background in feminist, mutual aid, and other local organising as well as teaching in prisons. She holds a PhD from the University of Oxford and a Master’s degree from the University of Cambridge. Her thinking often reaches the public through the Sense and Solidarity Initiative and the Future Narratives Lab. She was previously the Head of Content at The School of Life. Her first book is, Don’t Talk About Politics: Changing 21st Century Minds is out now with Bloomsbury. She regularly appears on public radio and a variety of podcasts. 

Max Haiven has been organizing grassroots movements since he was 12 in anti-capitalist and anti-colonial initiatives. Today works as the Canada Research Chair in the Radical Imagination at Lakehead University and directs RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, a platform to bring together social movements and radical ideas. He is the author or editor of 9 books which all focus on the relationship between capitalism and the imagination. Along with Alex Khasnabish, he is the author of The Radical Imagination: Social Movement Research in the Age of Austerity (2014) and is currently working on a book titled The Player and the Played: How Financialization Fosters Fascism

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ADDITIONAL INFO

FOOD & DRINK	EVENT SIZE	ACCESS
Bar & snacks	Medium <50	Available on request

FESTIVAL OF IDEAS 2025

RESIST

Fri 28th - Sun 30th Nov

You already know us, you know what we do, and that by coming YOU make this a great event! 

Get your pass for the entire weekend today!