If you want to know more about the live seminar series, and some general background to the seminars and the podcast, read on  

What does this seminar series do?

Usually, our live, in-person seminars  explores ideas from the traditions of cultural studies and radical political theory, considering their relevance to understanding contemporary political issues, struggles and campaigns, as well as key themes in political and social history. 

We also sometimes host online seminars on similar themes. 

Since 2023 we have also hosted an online seminar series looking at the history of relationships between Marxism and philosophical currents related to the work of Baruch Spinoza. This tends to be more academic than our other seminars, although we know that many people who are not academics or graduate students  have attended the online seminars or listened to the recordings in our podcast feed and found them very useful. 

How are the live, in-person seminars organised?

CPP evolved out of two parallel projects that both started in 2015. Debbie Shaw was teaching a free course on cultural studies and cultural theory at squatted and co-operative spaces in London; Jeremy Gilbert was teaching a very similar course for an audience mostly of activists from various social movements and political organisations, in the basement of the New Economics Foundation. Originally, Debbie’s course was called ‘introduction to cultural theory’ while Jeremy’s was called ‘Culture, Power and Politics’. We started doing this in response to the growing sense that it was becoming more and more difficult for people to be able to access radical knowledge through the formal education system. 

Debbie and Jeremy were (and still are) colleagues at the University of East London, where they taught cultural studies together for many years. They were also both directors of the Centre for Cultural Studies Research at the University of East London and are currently two of the directors of the Centre for Social Change and Justice. They each also have a long history of activism and public education.

These started out as parallel projects, doing quite similar things for slightly different audiences. After a couple of years we basically merged them into one project for a while, but they have effectively  become separate again. Basically what happens now is that occasionally Debbie organises some live in-person seminars in East London, while Jem focusses on online seminars and podcasting, but this might always change again in future. Debbie’s seminars don’t get recorded for the podcast feed. Jem’s usually do, when they happen. 

What’s the format of the live seminars?

This really depends on who turns up and what they want to do. Ideally we like it to be a fairly free-flowing mixture of lecture, open workshop, group discussion, skill-share and political debate.It really varies from session to session.

What topics have been covered?

Go to the menu above and click on our podcast page! 

More details please?

You can join our low-volume email newsletter / mailing list HERE

How do I join?

You can find details  of upcoming seminars by clicking here. If there are no upcoming dates listed here, it means that we have nothing currently planned. Join the mailing list to find out when we do.
You can also subscribe to the podcast feed by clicking on the link above. 

What about online seminars?

Since 2023 Jeremy has co-organised a series of online seminars that have focussed on a particular set of philosophical topics. These happen most months but not every month. You can find the details here.

What is happening now?

At time of writing (October 2025) we have scheduled a new live in-person series in London for Autumn 2025, our online seminar series is ongoing and Jeremy is producing regular content for our podcast.

What will be happening in future?

We’re not sure. The fact is that we get a lot more people attending online seminars than in-person ones and we also get more people listening to the podcast recordings of those seminars, so we may stick to online seminars in future, apart from for Debbie’s introductory courses. We’ll see.

We last held a series of live, in-person seminars in 2023. Since then, Jeremy has been running this regular online seminar on Spinozist Marxism with Jason Read and Andy Goffey.

How do I stay in touch if  I don’t want to attend the next seminar (or even if I do), or if I want to know about podcasts and live events

Again, you can join our mailing list HERE

You can also follow @jemgilbert on Twitter or Bluesky.

Who funds all this?

We don’t receive any external funding, but we do take donations from supporters to help keep the project going. These funds really support the online and podcast side of the project, however. The live in-person seminars we organise entirely ourselves, for free, with no support.