Skip to main content
What types of page to search?

Popular pages: Undergraduate Postgraduate PhD Accommodation Research International students

Alternatively use our A-Z index.

Eleanor Rathbone Social Justice Public Lecture Series

Our Eleanor Rathbone Social Justice Public Lectures are a long-standing annual public lecture series hosted by the Department.

Background

In 1905, Eleanor Rathbone played a key role in establishing the School of Social Science at the University of Liverpool. She was the first woman to be elected to Liverpool City Council in 1909 and, in 1929, she was elected as an independent MP.

A pioneering feminist who was also deeply concerned with the corrosive impacts of poverty, Eleanor Rathbone was instrumental in the establishment of Family Allowances (introduced in 1945 and later called Child Benefit). She was also a passionate advocate of human rights and served as the Founding Chair of the Parliamentary Committee for Refugees.

In fact, throughout her adult life Eleanor Rathbone was committed to progressive social reform and, in recognition of her contribution to the University and, more broadly, to the advancement of social justice, the Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology convenes an annual series of public lectures in her name.

The Eleanor Rathbone Social Justice Public Lectures were established in 2008 and they are coordinated by Professor Gabe Mythen.

The lectures are free to attend and audiences typically comprise a range of ‘publics’ from within the University and the wider city of Liverpool and beyond.

Current programme (2024-25)

Wandering throughout lives: Addressing intersectional trajectories of torture and torturous violence in asylum regimes

30 April 2025 | 17:30 - 19:30 | School of Law and Social Justice Building 

Speaker: Victoria Canning, Professor of Criminology, Lancaster University
Discussant: Leona Vaughn, Derby Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Liverpool

How far does the UN Convention Against Torture reflect intersectional and gendered experiences of severe violence? What is the relationship between bordering and torture? And what can be done to collaboratively address the impacts of punitive asylum regimes on refugee survivors in Northern Europe? This public lecture discusses the impact that increasingly punitive border practices have on people seeking asylum, and the ways in which these processes both compound trauma and facilitate social and emotional harm for survivors of torture and torturous violence. Drawing on the findings from five key projects undertaken over fifteen years, it highlights the impacts of everyday bordering and encourages collaborative discussion on addressing the barriers to support in the aftermath of violence.

Register for the event

Book now

A license to kill: necro economic suffocation by stealth

14 May 2025 | 17:30 - 19:30 | School of Law and Social Justice Building

Speakers:

Discussant: Ian Sinha, Consultant Respiratory Paediatrician, Alder Hey Children's Hospital, Liverpool.

We felt like the air in our homes was killing us … we were told we were “breathing too much” (Anon Rochdale Borough Housing tenant quoted in Lythgoe, 2024). 

Three decades of austerity in the UK and a longer history of deregulation, privatisation and financialisation of state services have seen the deterioration of the elemental infrastructures, those that provided a basic level of security for the population. Our water now contains significant amounts of industrial toxins and sewage, our land and soil have been infiltrated by long-standing PCBs that manifest through food, and the air is filled with noxious chemicals. In this talk, we bring air, water, and land pollution together as they are concretised in people’s homes and stealthily embodied through breathing polluted air. We analyse the case of Awaab Ishak, whose death (age two) made these harms visible when he suffocated from mould in his home in Rochdale, Northwest England. Making visible the necro economic policies that have made our most intimate spaces for daily living dangerous, we examine the incompetence and indifference displayed by those who profit from their investment in housing and consider how premature deaths from indoor air pollution have been symbolically legitimated (through classism, racism and xenophobia). We argue that the deregulation and sale (privatisation) of state social housing has granted property owners and managers a licence to kill. However, communities living and working at the frontline of collapse of Britain's social and welfare infrastructures are ‘fighting for life’ (Kelley, 2024). In Awaab’s case, it was the determination and tenacity of family, journalists, clinicians, lawyers and coroners forced the endemic malignancy at the heart of the deregulated UK housing industry into public view, compelling a national government response. A fight for life that teaches us that we need to put people before profit everywhere. 

Register for the event

Book now

Masculinity, capitalism, and violence: supporting boys and young men to navigate toxic narratives

11 June 2025 | 17:30 - 19:30 | School of Law and Social Justice Building

Speaker: Dr Laura Zahra McDonald, Co-Director, ConnectFutures

Discussant: Dr Laura Naegler, Lecturer, Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology

Increasing economic uncertainty and shifting social norms - especially in online social spaces - mean that young people are navigating complex and highly dynamic intersections of gender, identity, and structural inequality. 

This lecture explores how boys and young men are specifically impacted, with economic and social contexts shaping young men’s vulnerabilities to, and justifications for, engagement with toxic online narratives around masculinity, alongside hustle culture, respect and violence. It examines how these narratives influence both digital spaces and offline social harms, including involvement in criminal activities such as drug dealing and fraud. 

The discussion will critically assess how these dynamics contribute to the erosion of the social contract, as young men respond to perceived exclusion and marginalisation through alternative, and often harmful, pathways to status and security. By bridging academic research with real-world practice, this session highlights key implications for educators, practitioners, and policymakers working to counter these challenges and foster more positive, inclusive models of masculinity, status and belonging.

Register for the event

Book now

Previous presenters

The Eleanor Rathbone Social Justice Public Lectures are presented by leading figures who have made/are making distinctive contributions to the advancement of social justice.

Previous presenters (in alphabetical order) include: Alice Bloch, Professor of Sociology, University of Manchester; Wally Brown CBE DL; Aditya Chakrabortty, Columnist, The Guardian; Deborah Coles, Director, INQUEST; Mary Daly, Professor of Sociology, University of Oxford; Lesley Dixon, CEO of PSS; Danny Dorling, Professor of Human Geography, University of Oxford; Claire Dove CBE DL, Crown Representative for the Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise Sector; Lisa Doyle, Executive Director of Advocacy and Engagement, Refugee Council; Conor Gearty, Professor of Human Rights Law, London School of Economics and Political Science; Nick Hardwick, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons; Gordon Hughes, Professor of Criminology, Cardiff University; Omar Khan, Director of the Runnymede Trust; Ruth Levitas, Professor of Sociology, University of Bristol; Baroness Ruth Lister, Professor Emerita, Loughborough University and Member of the House of Lords; Jimmy McGovern, Dramatist and Screenwriter; Sir James Munby, President of the Family Division of the High Court of England and Wales; Pat O’Malley, Honorary Distinguished Professor of Criminology, Australian National University; Sophia Parker, Director of Emerging Futures, Joseph Rowntree Foundation; Susan Pedersen, Professor of History, Columbia University; Kate Pickett, Professor of Epidemiology, University of York; Nicole Rafter, Professor of Criminology, Northeastern University; Phil Scraton, Professor of Criminology, Queens University Belfast; Andrew Sayer, Professor of Social Theory and Political Economy, Lancaster University; Professor Ann Skelton, Chairperson, UN Committee on the Rights of the Child; Baroness Vivien Stern CBE, Member of the House of Lords; David Stuckler, Professor of Political Economy and Sociology, University of Oxford; Sylvia Walby, Professor of Sociology, Lancaster University; Sandra Walklate, Professor of Sociology, University of Liverpool; Jenny Watson, Chair of the Electoral Commission; Tony Wright MP, Chair of the Public Administration Select Committee and the Select Committee on Reform of the House of Commons; Gary Younge, Professor of Sociology, University of Manchester, and Lucia Zedner, Professor of Criminal Justice, University of Oxford.

Please note that the designations and affiliations of the selected previous presenters were accurate at the time of their respective lectures.

Further information

If you would like to receive regular information/updates on the Eleanor Rathbone Social Justice Public Lecture Series, please send an email – with ‘Eleanor Rathbone Lectures Email-List’ as the subject line - to: slsjmret@liverpool.ac.uk.