For previous events, visit the Past Events page.

Inaugural Lecture
Title: Culture is Not an Industry
When: 24 October 2025
Where: University of Coimbra, PT
Details: Hosted by University of Coimbra’s Centre for Social Studies 2025-2026 Doctoral Programme.

Public Lecture / Research Seminar
Title: Joy Diversion: Popular Modernism in Manchester
When: 29 October 2025, 5pm-6.30pm
Where: University Place, Theatre A, University of Manchester, GB
Tickets: Free, but please register
Details: Justin will give a lecture in the Art History and Cultural Practices Research Seminar Series at the University of Manchester. This lecture takes a retrospective view of Manchester’s ‘creative city’ narrative and the band Joy Division’s role within it. The focus will be less on the “winners and losers” of the city’s subsequent wave of property-led gentrification, and more on the specific moment in which Joy Division emerged in the late 1970s. 

Panel
Title: Public Knowledge: Value +/- Art: Three Proposals
When: 30 October 2025, 5pm-7.15pm
Where: Camden Art Centre, London, GB
Tickets: Free, but please register.
Details: Justin will take part in a panel with Tom Holert and Dave Beech, chaired by Patrycja Kaszynska. The three authors and leading thinkers will discuss the relationship between art, culture, politics and economics. Each contributor challenges established assumptions about the conjunction of value and art. Justin O’Connor interrogates the neoliberal model of the culture industries; Tom Holert examines the incorporation of contemporary art into the infrastructures of research and knowledge production; and Dave Beech reconsiders the convergence of Western Marxism and neoliberalism in theories of the commodification of art.

Panel
Title: Alternative Values in Art, Design and Culture: A Roundtable Discussion
When: 31 October 2025, 1pm-4pm
Where: Chelsea College of Arts, Banqueting Hall, University of the Arts London, GB
Tickets: Free, but please register.
Details: A panel with Justin O’Connor, Tom Holert, Carol Tulloch, Paul Goodwin, David Cross and Patrycja Kaszynska, chaired by Dave Beech reflecting on what the alternative ways of framing value proposed in their books mean for University of the Arts London, art and design intuitions and education, and art-making more broadly. For more information, visit the Eventbrite page.

Panel: Radical Hope
When: 31 October, 7pm
Where: Marx Memorial Library, Clerkenwell, London, GB
Details: Justin O’Connor, Sebastian Olma (CARADT/Avans University) and Patrycja Kaszynska (University of the Arts London) revisit their panel discussion in Amsterdam.