2009-10 Ebor Lectures Series 4
Theme: Business as Usual? The Global Economy Crisis and the Future of Capitalism
The recent economic crisis has affected millions of lives and has been met by unprecedented measures by governments and international economic organisations across the world. It has also raised calls for reform of the current capitalist market systems, especially from religious and moral considerations. The Ebor Lectures for 2009-10 examine the root causes of the economic crisis, analyse its local and global implications, evaluate the current theory and practice of the capitalist market, and suggest directions for the future of capitalism.
Speakers
N.B. Biographical details and lecture descriptions were those written in advance of the lectures and have not been updated since.
Mr Andreas Whittam Smith, CBE - Co-founder and first Editor of The Independent, First Estates Commissioner for the Church of England
'Is it Back to Business as Usual After All?'
14 October 2009, York Minster
'Is it Back to Business as Usual After All?'
14 October 2009, York Minster
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Andreas Whittam Smith, CBE (born 13 June 1937) is an English financial journalist, was one of the co-founders of The Independent newspaper in October 1986, and is a former president of the British Board of Film Classification.
The son of an Anglican clergyman in the Diocese of Chester, he moved from Macclesfield to Birkenhead in 1940. He was educated at Birkenhead School, and Keble College, Oxford. Most of his career has been spent in the City in journalism, including as city editor of The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph, and as editor of the Investors Chronicle and Stock Exchange Gazette. He was a founder and first editor of The Independent newspaper from 1986 to 1993. He still contributes articles on a regular basis. On 6 March 2002 The Queen approved Whittam Smith's appointment as First Church Estates Commissioner. He is also chairman of the Financial Ombudsman Service, a director of Independent News and Media (UK), Vice Chairman of Tunbridge Wells Equitable Friendly Society, also a vice-president of the National Council for One Parent Families. He was appointed president of the British Board of Film Classification in 1998, instigating liberalisation of film and video censorship, a post from which he resigned in 2002. Later that year he was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. In 2005 he was appointed as Chairman, With Profits Committee, Prudential Assurance Company and in 2006 became a member of Arts and Media Honours committee. Andreas Whittam Smith is a practising Anglican and chairman of the First Church Estates Commission. |
Dr Ann Pettifor - Executive Director, Advocacy International / Co-founder of Jubilee 2000 Campaign
'Credit, usury and political power: chasing the moneylenders from the temple that is our democracy'
25 November 2009, York St John University
'Credit, usury and political power: chasing the moneylenders from the temple that is our democracy'
25 November 2009, York St John University
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Ann Pettifor advises the Operation Noah campaign, and acts as its part-time director. She is a fellow of the New Economics Foundation (NEF) and co-author of The Green New Deal. Ann was a leader and co-founder of the international Jubilee 2000 campaign (‘Drop the Debt’) from 1994 until 2001. She helped mobilise a global movement (most of whom were faith-motivated) that persuaded world leaders to cancel more than £100 billion of debts owed by 42 of the poorest countries.
She lectures widely on international finance and sovereign debt; and on the need to devise new economic policies to deal with the ‘triple crunch’ of the financial crisis; peak oil and climate change. She is also a director of Advocacy International Ltd. She blogs at her website and also the Huffington Post, and has contributed articles to a range of journals, The Guardian and The New Statesman on the current financial crisis. She is editor of The Real World Economic Outlook (Palgrave, 2003) which in 2003 accurately predicted “a seismic crisis” - the bursting of the credit bubble “in America, not Argentina”. (Cover of The New Statesman 1st September, 2003). In 2006 she authored The Coming First World Debt Crisis (Palgrave, 2006). |
Mr Robert Peston - Business Editor, BBC
What have we learned from the worst financial and economic crisis since the 1930s?
10 February 2010, York Minster
What have we learned from the worst financial and economic crisis since the 1930s?
10 February 2010, York Minster
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Robert Peston is the BBC's Business Editor, who has broadcast and published a series of exclusive stories about the global financial crisis and the Credit Crunch. In 2008 he won the Royal Television Society’s awards for Journalist of the Year, Specialist Journalist of the Year and Scoop of the Year, the London Press Club’s Business Journalist of the Year Award, the Broadcasting Press Guild’s Award for Performer of the Year in a non-acting role and the Wincott Foundations awards for Broadcaster of the Year and Online Journalist of the Year. The previous year, he won the Royal Television Society’s Scoop of the Year award (for his exclusive on Northern Rock seeking emergency financial help from the Bank of England) and also the Wincott Award for Business News/Current Affairs Programme of the Year. He was Journalist of the Year in the Business Journalism of the Year Awards for 2007/8.
Peston has published two critically acclaimed books: Brown’s Britain, a biography of the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown; and Who Runs Britain?, his best-selling account of who’s to blame for the economic mess we find ourselves in. He writes a prize-winning blog. Peston was previously The Sunday Telegraph's City Editor, in charge of its Business and Money Sections, where he won the Wincott Prize for financial journalism. In the 1990s he was political editor, financial editor, and head of investigations at The Financial Times, and he won the “What the Papers Say” Award for investigative journalism while at the FT. |
Rt Hon Tony Benn - President of Stop the War Coalition, Former Chairman of the Labour Party
'The Kings and the Prophets'
24 March 2010, York Minster
'The Kings and the Prophets'
24 March 2010, York Minster
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Anthony "Tony" Neil Wedgwood Benn (born 3 April 1925) is president of the Stop the War Coalition. He is a former chairman of the Labour Party, the longest serving Labour Member of Parliament and served for nine years as a Cabinet minister. He is also a diarist and campaigner.
With his successful campaign to renounce his inherited title, a landmark case in British politics, Benn was instrumental in the creation of the Peerage Act 1963. Later, in the Labour Government of 1964-1970 under Harold Wilson, he served first as Postmaster General and later a notably 'technocratic' Minister of Technology. He is known as one of the few UK politicians to have become more left-wing after holding ministerial office. Since leaving parliament, Benn has also become more interested in the grass-roots politics of demonstrations and meetings, and less in parliamentary activities. He has been a vegetarian since the 1970s. Bibliography Diaries
Essays/ Biography etc
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Prof. Elaine Graham - Grosvenor Research Professor at the University of Chester
'Crisis or Opportunity? Doing Public Theology after the Crunch'
28 April 2010, York St John University
'Crisis or Opportunity? Doing Public Theology after the Crunch'
28 April 2010, York St John University
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Elaine L Graham is the Grosvenor Research Professor at the University of Chester and was until October 2009 the Samuel Ferguson Professor of Social and Pastoral Theology at the University of Manchester.
She holds a BSc (Hons) in Sociology and Economic History (1980), from the University of Bristol, an MA in Social and Pastoral Theology from the University of Manchester (1988) and a PhD entitled The Implications of Theories of Gender for Christian Pastoral Practice and Theological Formulation (1993), also from Manchester. After working as the Northern Regional Secretary of the Student Christian Movement (1981-84) and four years as ecumenical lay chaplain at Sheffield City Polytechnic (now Sheffield Hallam University), Professor Graham joined the University of Manchester in 1988 as a Lecturer in Social and Pastoral Theology. She was appointed to the position of Samuel Ferguson Professor of Social and Pastoral Theology in June 1988. She later held the position of Head of the School of Religions and Theology & Middle Eastern Studies from 2000-04. A former President of the International Academy of Practical Theology (2005-2007), she was also a member of the churches' Commission on Urban Life and Faith, which published the report Faithful Cities: A call for celebration, vision and justice (Methodist Publishing House, 2006). She is also an honorary lay canon of Manchester Cathedral. This is a list of books that Elaine Graham has published or edited. In addition, she has also written a number of other articles in edited volumes and academic journals.
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Canon Dr John Atherton - William Temple Foundation
'Beyond Capitalism Religious Contributions to Greater Wellbeing'
26 May 2010, York St John University
'Beyond Capitalism Religious Contributions to Greater Wellbeing'
26 May 2010, York St John University
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The Revd Dr. John Atherton retired as canon theologian of Manchester Cathedral in 2004. He continues to work for the William Temple Foundation (with which he has been associated since 1974) overseeing its work on religion and economics. His publications have increasingly reflected this interest. They include: Christianity and the Market (1992), Public Theology for Changing Times (2000), Marginalization (2003), Transfiguring Capitalism: An Enquiry into Religion and Global Change (2008) and Through the Eye of A Needle: Theological Conversations over political Economy (2007). He is currently completing a research council funded programme on religion and happiness, leading to a publication The Practices of Happiness: Political economy, Religion and Wellbeing (2010). He continues to be an honorary lecturer at Manchester University. These interests link to his contributions to Faith in the City (1984) and Faithful Cities (2006). He is also currently editor of Crucible, the national journal on Christian social ethics. He also has close links with Sweden, particularly Uppsala University, where he holds the degree of Doctor of Sacred Theology. He is married, with 2 children, and 3 grandchildren.
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