The pandemic prevented a keenly anticipated visit to the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College. So it was with great joy that I finally visited this autumn to participate in the Center’s annual conference. The theme this year could not be more topical: ‘Tribalism and Cosmopolitanism.’  I spoke about how Arendt kept her skin by refusing both

I began my book on Hannah Arendt with the image of the great woman lying in a hospital bed with her face and ribs smashed up. Why? In this interview for the LA Review of Books Samantha Rose Hill and I discuss how frailty is at the heart of our brutal politics today, and why it is the flawed, vulnerable, tough enough Hannah Arendt we most need now.

Back in 2017, after the election of Donald Trump, and after Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism became a belated bestseller, I was interviewed by Krista Tippett for her podcast, On Being.

The Hannah Arendt Haus in Hanover, Germany, is a refugee library and community centre. I first visited the library and met with its custodian, Walter Koch, when I began the research for We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt’s Lessons in Love and Disobedience. It was an important visit for me. The library is constructed in the world-affirming spirit of its namesake. The project had to move last year, and is now urgently seeking help to continue its work.

Hannah Arendt left Berlin in 1933 and became a refugee. It was very special to return to the city to launch the German edition of We Are Free, beautifully translated by Frank Lachmann, at the Literaturhaus. Actor, Lena Stolze, read passages in German, returning Arendt’s voice and presence to our present. I’ve long admired, and thought alongside, the philosopher, Wolfram Eilenberger: our dialogue took both our thinking in new directions.

In January 2022, Maya Caspari and Ruth Daley invited Jacqueline Rose and myself to be interviewed for a special issue of the journal Parallax they were editing on Decolonial Feminisms. This was a special conversation for me. Rose was my PhD supervisor in the 1990s and has remained, in many respects, the best of teachers and intellectual companions. We spoke in the dark winter days of lockdown. Some things look different now. Although I still think that hope can be dangerous as well as liberating.

I joined the University of Birmingham as the first Professor of Humanities and Human Rights in September 2018. Over five years, one pandemic, an accident, and two books later I finally gave my inaugural lecture in The Exchange, a beautiful building in the heart of the city.

I’ve been talking to the critical theorist and writer Samantha Rose Hill about Hannah Arendt for over 10 years now, so it was wonderful to have public conversation hosted by The Philosopher in London’s Conway Hall. We spoke about vulnerability, love, and how to act in cynical times.

In January I talked with Rafa de Miguel about the politics of anti-migration, Arendt, and the Israel-Gaz conflict – and the enduring appeal of the 1970s.

I enjoyed talking to John Kulka from the Library of America in January. On dangerous thinking - and dangerous thinking women.

From activism to alienation I discuss the relevance today of political writer Hannah Arendt – the subject of my new book.

Introduction to the new edition of Hannah Arendt’s On Violence published by Penguin on November 30th.

I spent some of the autumn of 2023 working on a new project at the Bogliasco Foundation in Italy.

The Sophia Club, London, September