Going Public? People, Policy and Politics – Professor Janet Newman Inaugural Lecture

This inaugural lecture by Professor Janet Newman explores the changing fortunes of the public domain. The boundaries between the public, private and personal have become increasingly contested and blurred. In the process, we have become less clear about what constitutes a public domain and how we should act in it. How should the public interest be expressed? What sorts of institutions are needed to sustain it? Is there - and can there be - a distinctive conception of ‘public service’? In this lecture, Professor Newman traces some of the shifts in the ways in which peoples and publics are constituted in contemporary policy and politics. It also addresses some questions about the role of the ‘public intellectual’ in the public domain.