Alan Johnson & Professor Lord Philip Norton
Seismic Politics – impacts and responses from the global to the local’ in-conversation.
Monday 22 March, 17:15 – 18:15, Middleton Hall Lecture Theatre
Alan Johnson will be in-conversation with Professor Lord Philip Norton to reflect on ‘Seismic Politics’ within the UK and abroad, and the impacts and responses that these have globally and locally. There will be opportunity for audience Q&A at the end of the keynote.
Alan Johnson was General Secretary of the Communication Workers Union before entering Parliament as Labour MP for Hull West and Hessle in 1997. He served as Home Secretary from June 2009 to May 2010 after filling a wide variety of cabinet positions in both the Blair and Brown governments, including Health Secretary and Education Secretary. Until 20 January 2011 he was Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer.
His childhood memoir ‘This Boy’ was published by Bantam Press on 9th May 2013. It won the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize, and the Orwell Prize, Britain’s top political writing award. His second volume of memoirs, ‘Please, Mister Postman’, was published in September 2014 and won the National Book Club award for Best Biography. It was followed by ‘The Long and Winding Road’, published in September 2016 which won the Parliamentary Book Award for Best Memoir.
Alan retired as an MP in 2017 after 20 years and five elections.
A fourth memoir about his love of music (‘In my Life – A Music Memoir’) was published in 2018.
Three years later, Alan’s first novel, ‘The Late Train to Gipsy Hill’ was published by Wildfire. It was followed in September 2022 by ‘One of Our Ministers is Missing’ and ‘Death on the Thames’ in March 2024, which completed his trilogy of thrillers featuring DCS Louise Mangan.
Alan’s concise biography of Harold Wilson was published by Swift Press in September 2024, and it won the prize of ‘Best Biography’ at the Westminster Book Awards.
Having spent eight years on the BBC’s ‘This Week’ sofa with Andrew Neil and Michael Portillo, Alan then appeared regularly with Steph McGovern on Channel 4’s ‘Steph’s Packed Lunch’ and is continuing his addiction to live television with appearances on ITV’s ‘This Morning’.
Alan was appointed Chancellor of the University of Hull in June 2023 and lives in East Yorkshire with his wife Carolyn.
Lord Norton of Louth (Philip Norton) has been described as the UK’s greatest living expert on Parliament.
He is the Professor of Government, and Director of the Centre for Legislative Studies, at the University of Hull.
Lord Norton was appointed to his chair in 1986, making him at the time the youngest professor of politics in the UK.
He is the author or editor of 37 books (52 if new editions are included), including Governing Britain, The 1922 Committee: Power Behind the Scenes, The British Polity, now in its fifth edition and Politics UK, with Bill Jones, now in its eleventh edition. He was elevated to the peerage in 1998.
He chairs the History of Parliament Trust and the Higher Education Commission, is President of the Study of Parliament Group and Editor of ‘The Journal of Legislative Studies’.
Professor Awino Okech
Tuesday 23 March, 17:15 – 18:15, Middleton Hall Lecture Theatre
Professor Awino Okech will deliver a keynote that explores the conference theme of ‘Seismic Politics – impacts and responses from the global to the local’ from different and engaging perspectives, bringing personal thoughts and reflections to the discussion. Professor Okech will likely explore both feminist and security politics from an international perspective.
Professor Awino Okech is a Professor of Feminist and Security Studies at SOAS, University of London and the founding director of the Feminist Centre for Racial Justice (FCRJ). FCRJ focuses on the majority world as geographies from which to build feminist imaginaries of “race”. The centre brings together fields of inquiry that have developed in parallel: feminist theories on power, protests and change, studies of diasporas, critical race theories and migration studies.
Professor Okech received her PhD (2012) in Gender Studies from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Professor Okech is a feminist scholar activist whose teaching and research interests lie in the nexus between gender, sexuality, security, and nation-state making projects as they occur in conflict and post-conflict societies. Her work is grounded in African feminist, queer, and Black internationalist thought as central frameworks for thinking about power and justice.
Professor Catherine Boone FBA FAAAS
Keynote: ‘Political Rupture in a Post-Liberal World: Changing Regionalisms in Africa’
Wednesday 1 April, 11:30 – 12:30, South School, Examination Schools
Catherine Boone is Professor of Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science in the Department of Government and the Department of International Development. Her research focuses on questions of comparative political economy, and especially on questions of institutional change and economic development.
This keynote will be chaired by Dr Mwita Chacha, University of Birmingham
Political Rupture in a Post-Liberal World: Changing Regionalisms in Africa
This talk explores how the geopolitical and geoeconomic ruptures of the present are impacting domestic politics and inter-state relations on the African continent. Changing geoeconomics and intensifying great power rivalries are shifting power balances across subnational regions within African countries. The rise of new forms of geopolitical opportunism can work to reconfigure states themselves. These changes are driving innovation in the study of comparative politics in Africa and beyond.