Project overview
International Perspectives on Conservatism is a research project that aims to support a deeper understanding of what conservatism is and how it can contribute to stable, free, prosperous, and secure democratic societies.
The project will begin with a series of public lectures and conversations, hosted by the Blavatnik School of Government, by leading academics and policymakers from around the world. This will lead to the publication of an edited volume on international conservative thought by a major academic press, intended to help provide intellectual diversity for civic and political education in universities.
About the project
As movements on the political right evolve and grow in popularity around the world, now is the time for renewed scholarly attention to the nature and future of conservatism.
The aim of the project is to support a deeper understanding of conservatism and to provide intellectual diversity for civic and political education in universities around the world. It seeks to encourage research and debate in response to three questions:
- What can we learn from the conservative intellectual tradition about trust, justice, order and good government?
- How might conservative ideas help us to articulate what a ‘responsible right’ would advocate for, both in foreign policy and its domestic agenda?
- What does conservatism look like in different national contexts?
Event series
The series of events will consist of public conversations between Professor Tom Simpson and other distinguished academics from around the world. All the events listed below will take place at the Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford University, in Lecture Theatre 1, from 5:30-6:30pm, unless otherwise stated.
For further information, and to join our mailing list, please email conservatism@bsg.ox.ac.uk.
8 July 2024
Professor Robert George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, Princeton University
24 October 2024
Dr Asanga Welikala, Lecturer in Public Law at the School of Law, University of Edinburgh and Associate Director of the Edinburgh Centre for Constitutional Law
3 December 2024
Lord Jonathan Sumption, former Supreme Court Justice and Honorary Fellow of Magdalen College, University of Oxford
18 March 2025
Professor Jennifer Burns, Associate Professor of History, Stanford University and Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution
27 March 2025
Professor Lucia Santa Cruz, former Dean of the Faculty of Liberal Arts at Adolfo Ibáñez University and Member of the New Academy of Social, Political and Moral Sciences, Chile
Funding
The project is funded by Open Society Foundations