Sun, 12 Nov 2023, 6:30 - 7:30 PM (BST)
Assembly Roxy, 2 Roxburgh Place, Edinburgh EH8 9SU
Niel Davidson Memorial Lecture: Raquel Valera, author of 'A People's History of Europe' and 'A People's History of the Portugese Revolution', on uneven and combined development in Niel Davidson's work.
In 2020 we lost Dr Neil Davidson – a leading Scottish intellectual of the radical left. We are honoured to join with friends in commemorating Neil and his legacy with this new lecture series by Lighthouse bookshop in his name.
The inaugural Neil Davidson lecture will be given by Raquel Varela at Edinburgh’s Radical Book Fair. The title of her lecture is Uneven and Combined Development in Niel Davidson’s Work.
Combined and uneven development is an approach to understanding the dynamic of the world we live in. A world wracked by huge inequality, war and deepening climate crisis.
Raquel Varela is a labour historian, researcher and Professor at New University of Lisbon, and Honorary Fellow at the International Institute for Social History. She is also president of the International Association of Strikes and Social Conflicts and co-editor of its journal. She is the author of A People’s History of the Portuguese Revolution (Pluto, 2018).
Neil Davidson (1957-2020) was a Scottish historian and sociologist. In The Origins of Scottish Nationhood and Discovering the Scottish Revolution he showed Scotland to have been one the first countries to experience the uneven and combined development of capitalism and a revolution from above in the late 18th century.
Neil’s tragically early death has left behind a great intellectual and political legacy. Davidson was on the editorial boards of rs21 and the Scottish Left Project website, and was a member of the Radical Independence Campaign and his writing was published by Haymarket, Verso, Bella Caledonia, Jacobin, New Left Review, Radical Philosophy and Salvage.
The Neil Davidson library project is working with Lighthouse to ensure that the more than 10,000 books and other resources in his library are made accessible to activists and scholars in Edinburgh, Scotland and interntionally.
This event is a part of the Radical Book Fair 2023: Revolutionary Feeling series. Click the link below to attend.