Tristram Hunt is the Director of the V&A – the world’s leading museum of art, design and performance. Since taking up the post in 2017, Hunt has championed design education in UK schools, encouraged debate around the history of the museum’s global collections and overseen the transition to a multi-site museum, with V&A Dundee, the redesign of the Museum of Childhood, and the development of a new museum and open access collections centre in Stratford, East London. Prior to joining the V&A, Hunt was Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent Central and Shadow Secretary of State for Education. He has a doctorate in Victorian history from Cambridge University, has worked as a Senior Lecturer in History at Queen Mary University of London, and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. In addition to numerous radio and TV programmes for the BBC and Channel 4, he is the author of several books, including Ten Cities That Made an Empire (2014) and The Lives of the Objects (2019) telling the story of the V&A collection.

Speaker: Dr Tristram Hunt, Director, V&A

Chair: Professor Conor Gearty FBA, Vice-President (Social Sciences), The British Academy; Professor of Human Rights Law, London School of Economics

SHAPE (Social sciences, humanities & the arts for people and the economy) is a new collective name for those subjects that help us understand ourselves, others and the human world around us.

Bestselling writer and founder of the Everyday Sexism Project Laura Bates joins Conor Gearty to discuss her life and career.

Laura Bates founded the Everyday Sexism Project in 2012, creating a website where women could share stories of sexism from street harassment and workplace discrimination to sexual assault and rape. A viral sensation, the project has now collected over 100,000 testimonies from people across the world and has been credited with helping to spark a new wave of feminism. Bates works closely with politicians, businesses, schools, police forces and organisations, from the Council of Europe to the United Nations, to tackle gender inequality. She is also an author and writes regularly for the press including the New York Times, Guardian and the Telegraph. Her books include Everyday Sexism: The Project that Inspired a Worldwide Movement (2014), Girl Up (2016) and most recently Men who Hate Women (2020). Bates was awarded a British Empire Medal for services to gender equality in the 2015 Queen's Honours List.

Speaker: Laura Bates, Writer; Founder, The Everyday Sexism Project

Chair: Professor Conor Gearty FBA, Vice-President (Social Sciences), The British Academy; Professor of Human Rights Law, London School of Economics

SHAPE (Social sciences, humanities & the arts for people and the economy) is a new collective name for those subjects that help us understand ourselves, others and the human world around us.

Philippe Sands is Professor of the Public Understanding of Law at University College London and a practicing barrister at Matrix Chambers. He frequently appears before international courts, including the International Criminal Court and the World Court in The Hague, and has been involved in many of the most important cases of recent years, including Pinochet, Rwanda, Iraq and Guantanamo. Sands is also an author, writes regularly for the press and serves as a commentator for the BBC, CNN and other radio and television producers. His books include Torture Team (2008), East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity (2016) – which was named the winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction in 2016, and The Ratline: Love, Lies and Justice on the Trail of a Nazi Fugitive (2020).

Speaker: Professor Philippe Sands, Professor of the Public Understanding of Law, UCL; Barrister, Matrix Chambers; Author; President, English PEN; Jury Member, The British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding

Chair: Professor Conor Gearty FBA, Vice-President (Social Sciences), The British Academy; Professor of Human Rights Law, London School of Economics

SHAPE (Social sciences, humanities & the arts for people and the economy) is a new collective name for those subjects that help us understand ourselves, others and the human world around us.

SHAPE (Social sciences, humanities & the arts for people and the economy) is a new collective name for those subjects that help us understand ourselves, others and the human world around us.