Following our Decentring Europe workshop Professor Kimberly Hutchings (QMUL) will give a presentation entitled "Europe and the 'Pluriverse': A Global Ethical Approach to Cultural Pluralism"

Professor Hutchings will examine the question of how best to recognise and work ethically with the plurality of ‘Europe’. For much of the past 50 years, attempts to articulate the identity of Europe have focused around core values and principles, ideas such as human rights, freedom, democracy or even multiculturalism. Without wishing in any way to denigrate these values, I will suggest that this way of thinking about the meaning of Europe reflects an ethical perspective that treats morality as a form of knowledge which can then be applied to questions about how the fact of a plurality of worlds within and beyond Europe should be addressed or managed. An alternative way of thinking starts not from an understanding of morality as truth but of morality as a practice of negotiation between worlds – that is to say as a practice of pluriversality. We are all already involved in decentring practices that enable co-existence and collaboration with others at every level, from everyday life to the world of high politics. In this context it becomes less important to focus on the grand ideals that drive us, and more important to think about how to cultivate the kinds of virtue in ourselves and our political practices that will enable us to construct worlds with others in contexts of deep difference and disagreement.

Speaker

Professor Kimberly Hutchings started her academic career teaching philosophy at Wolverhampton University then moved to the Department of Politics at Edinburgh University, where she taught political and international theory and was also Head of Department (1999-2002). She spent the years 2003-2014 in the International Relations Department at the London School of Economics, where she was Professor of International Relations (from 2007), and also Head of Department (2010-2013). Professor Hutchings joined Queen Mary University of London in 2014.

Her main publications include Kant, Critique and Politics (1996), International Political Theory (1998), Hegel and Feminist Philosophy (2003) and Time and World Politics (2008). She was Lead Editor of the Review of International Studies, the journal of the British International Studies Association (BISA) (2011-2015). Professor Hutchings was awarded the inaugural British International Studies prize for Distinguished Contribution to the Profession in 2015, and a Distinguished Scholar Award from the Theory Section of the International Studies Association in 2016.