Blavatnik Book Talk: Politics Without Politicians @BlavatnikSchool

Uploaded March 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago

Bought by special interests, detached from real life, obsessed with re-election. Politicians make big promises, deliver little to nothing and keep the game rigged in their favour. But what can we do?

Join political theorist Hélène Landemore in conversation with Philippa Webb, Professor of Public International Law, to discuss her new book, Politics Without Politicians.

With disarming clarity and a deep sense of urgency, Hélène Landemore argues that electoral politics is broken but democracy isn’t. We have just been doing it wrong. Drawing on ancient Athenian practices and contemporary citizens’ assemblies, Landemore champions an alternative approach that is alive, working and growing around the world: civic lotteries that select everyday people to govern, not as career politicians but as temporary stewards of the common good.

Blavatnik School of Government,
University of Oxford
bsg.ox.ac.uk

Blavatnik Book Talk: Politics Without Politicians

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Wednesday December 11, Session 1 – Afrocentric Philosophy of Disability

$Kyoto Prize at Oxford 2025: Sir John Pendry In the last few years, a new area of research has emerged as a result of our ability to produce materials with entirely novel electromagnetic properties. Known as metamaterials because they take us beyond the properties of conventional materials, they display remarkable effects not found in nature, such as negative refraction. Spurred on by these new opportunities, theorists have produced exotic concepts that exploit the new materials: we can now specify how to make a lens whose resolution is limited not by the laws of nature but only by our ability to build to the stated specifications; we can guide radiation along a trajectory, avoiding objects and causing them to appear invisible; we can design and manufacture materials that are active magnetically in the optical range. Sir John Pendry concludes his lecture discussing the latest developments which aim to structure materials in time as well as space - space/time crystals. These materials violate time reversal symmetry and offer possibilities for new devices. Theorists find them intriguing as they offer possibilities for creating Hawking radiation in the laboratory. There has been a truly amazing amount of innovation but more is yet to come. The field of metamaterials is developing into a highly disruptive technology for a plethora of applications where control over light (or more generally electromagnetic radiation) is crucial, amongst them 5G/6G technology, satellite communications, solar energy harvesting, stealth, biological imaging and sensing, and enhanced MRI scanners. Sir John Pendrys lecture will be followed by a moderated Q&A session. BOOK NOW – https://www.kyotoprize.ox.ac.uk/event... Kyoto Prize at Oxford events – https://kyotoprize.ox.ac.uk/events Kyoto Prize at Oxford – https://kyotoprize.ox.ac.uk Hosted by the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford – http://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/$

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