2019

2019 Alan Saunders Lecture will be delivered by
Alison Wylie (UBC)

2018

"What is Global Women's Empowerment?"

Serene Khader

IN 2018 the Alan Saunders Lecture, was held conjointly with the Maurice Goldsmith Lecture.

This lecture was recorded and available here

Maurice Goldsmith

1933 – 2008 

Maurice Goldsmith was best known to most of the readers of the Australasian Journal of Philosophy as its editor from 2002 until November 30th, 2007. 

Maurice was born in 1933 in Flushing, New York. He went to Columbia University as an undergraduate and postgraduate, where he studied with Ernest Nagel and Herbert Deane, among others. Deane supervised Maurice’s PhD thesis on Hobbes, which was published by Columbia University Press in 1966 as Hobbes’s Science of Politics. Maurice moved from New York to the UK in the late 1960s on a Guggenheim Fellowship and took up a chair in Political Theory at Exeter in 1969. In 1975, he came to the University of Auckland on a British Council Fellowship, where he met Elizabeth McLeay, who was to become a prominent New Zealand political scientist.

Our Department is much quieter now. Sadly so. Maurice’s boisterous joking and laughter used to echo throughout the halls. He will be greatly missed. Maurice is survived by Elizabeth and their adult son James.

Alan Saunders 

1954 - 2012 

Alan Saunders was a prince among broadcasters. Of all the journalists I've ever met, he had the deepest love of, and also understanding of, philosophy, and his passion for ideas made doing a program with him a highlight of one's year -- even long distance by phone, and even more in person in the studio. What he brought to public discussion was priceless'.

 - Martha Nussbaum, University of Chicago
In recognition of his enduring work, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, in association with the Australasian Association of Philosophy presents an annual Alan Saunders Memorial Lecture. The lecture aims to spread the joy of philosophy and make it accessible to the wider public.
picture - Michal Kluvanek