Rupa Huq MP, sociologist and politician, tackles the questions “Does Covid-19, and its intersection with the Black Lives Matter movement, offer us a chance to rethink our current economic, social and political systems? Can crises provide new imaginations of different futures?”
As the first in our Wicked Problems in a Complex World series, we would like to invite you to join us for an evening with Rupa Huq MP (NC 1990), who will consider a thorny question of our time. The global pandemic has caused many to re-examine what was the status quo and to consider whether the systems that we all live under can be re-imagined so as to build a different future.
Rupa Huq came to Newnham in 1990 where she read Law. Following on from Newnham, in 1999 she completed a PhD at the University of East London comparing youth in East London and the Alsace region of France, and included a stint at Strasbourg II University. She has worked as a lecturer at Manchester University, during which time she held a Leverhulme Trust Fellowship, and as a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Kingston University. She was elected as the Labour Member of Parliament for Ealing Central and Acton at the 2015 general election.
There will be a Q&A during the event – Principal Alison Rose will chair the event and moderate the questions. This event will be taking place virtually. A free Zoom account is all you will need to access the event; this can be set-up via the link: https://zoom.us/. The event link will be shared on Sunday 1 November. Bookings for this event will close at 12pm on Monday 2 November.
Wicked Problems in a Complex World is our new lecture series where we will invite a distinguished speaker, a number of whom will be Newnham alumnae, to join us virtually to consider a social or cultural problem that is difficult to solve. “Wicked problems” refers to an idea or problem that cannot be easily fixed, and where there is no single solution to the problem.