Europe Lecture

Wednesday, 23 October 2013

Dixon Room, State Library of NSW 

6.00 pm - 8.00 pm

Abstract

After almost seven decades of small but determined steps toward continental integration, Europe is now at the mercy of centrifugal forces that seem to be tearing it apart. Not since the 1930s has the continent been so divided and its peoples so disappointed in the common institutions that took so long to establish. Much is being made of the Euro Crisis, and the fact that it created a Europe divided by a common currency. However, the forces at play today have deeper roots and can be traced back to the middle of the 20th century, when the institutions of the European Union began to take shape. Professor Yanis Varoufakis will argue that the establishment of the Eurozone, and the Great Financial Crisis which tore it apart in 2008, were logical extensions of earlier choices and policies. His lecture will address a simple question: Can the current Euro Crisis spur Europeans on to complete the project of integrating their continent? Or was it always a terminal project that raised expectations it could never fulfil? 

Biography

Yanis Varoufakis is a renowned scholar and political commentator. He is Professor of Economic Theory at the University of Athens and is currently the Lyndon B. Johnson Visiting Professor, University of Texas. He is the author of numerous works including The Global Minotaur: The true origins of the financial crisis and the future of the world economy and Economic Indeterminacy: A personal encounter with the economists’ peculiar nemesis.

RSVP essential by Friday, 18 October to Dr Catherine Bishop