University of Oxford

The rise of the political far right across western democracies in the 2010s and the Russian invasions of Ukraine in 2014 and 2022 have drawn attention to the role of illiberal and anti-liberal thought in world politics. There is today a growing awareness, both in scholarly and media debates, of the ways in which formal geopolitical visions of the political right shape the formulation of contemporary foreign policy. Many of these intellectual currents rely on older narratives that emerged during past crises of liberalism and which promoted the language of space as antithetical to the supposed ‘spacelessness’ of a ‘moribund’ global liberalism. This prompts the question as to the role of tropes of ‘space’ and ‘geographical rootedness’ in contemporary illiberal thought. This two-day workshop brings together an esteemed group of experts on the intellectual far right to discuss the relationship between illiberal and anti-liberal thought and particular understandings of world political order. For detailed programme with schedule, summary, and abstracts, kindly refer to this link: tinyurl.com/critliberalprog