CEISR Annual Lecture 2026

Title: ‘Dignity and historical injustice: an Albanian family’s history’

Abstract: Lea Ypi FBA reads and discusses her new book, tracing the journey of a woman from Ottoman Salonica to a life under surveillance in post-war communist Albania. The lecture explores the moral and political meanings of individual and collective dignity, in connection to questions of truth and reconciliation, historical injustice and the relationship between fact and fiction.

Bio: Lea Ypi is the Ralph Miliband Professor of Politics and Philosophy at the LSE and a fellow of the British Academy. A native of Albania, she studied Philosophy and then Literature at the University of Rome, La Sapienza, and was a Prize Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford. She is the recipient of many prizes, including the Philip Leverhulme Prize for exceptional research achievement and the British Academy Brian Barry Prize for excellence in Political Science. Her last book, Free, was awarded the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize 2021 and the RSL Ondaatje Prize 2022, was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, the Costa Biography Award 2021, and the Gordon Burn Prize 2022, and has been sold in more than 30 languages. She contributes regularly to The Guardian and Financial Times. Indignity is her most recent book.

Please contact [email protected] if you have any queries about the event.

Image Copyright James Robins

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