UCL BENTHAM PROJECT

News and Events

• Podcasts of the 2017 Bentham seminars are now available to stream or download in iTunes.  Professor Colin Tyler (University of Hull), Professor Malcolm Quinn (University of the Arts London) and Andrew Spooner (UCL) presented their research at the seminars.
• The next round of Bentham seminars will take place in March 2017.  Professor Colin Tyler (University of Hull), Professor Malcolm Quinn (University of the Arts London) and Andrew Spooner (UCL) will talk on Bentham's views on open government, taste and education respectively.  For full details see the seminar programme (PDF).
• Professor James E. Crimmins (Huron University College) has written a review of one of the latest volumes of the Collected Works on H-Net.  Crimmins' reviews Writings on Political Economy, vol. 1, edited by Michael Quinn favourably, describing it as a 'tantalizing appetizer' for the following volumes in the series.        
• Professor Philip Schofield appears on the latest episode of Nigel Warburton's Philosophy Sites podcast to talk about Bentham's Auto-Icon.  

• A new article in Update (the magazine for the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) discusses the Bentham Project's role in the READ project and explains how we have been experimenting with the Handwritten Text Recognition of Bentham's manuscripts.  
• Dr Louise Seaward will be delivering a course on Bentham and utilitarianism to Year 12 students as part of UCL's Summer Challenge.  Applications open now for interested students.  
• Volumes 1 to 5 of Bentham's Correspondence are being reprinted by UCL Press.  Printed copies will be available to purchase and the volumes will also offered as Open Access PDFs.     
• A special issue of the History of European Ideas has just been published, which deals with Bentham's ideas on indirect legislation.  This issue is edited by Michael Quinn of the Bentham Project and Malik Bozzo-Rey and Anne Brunon-Ernst of the French Centre Bentham.   
• Preparatory Principles, the latest volume in Bentham's Collected Works, has just been published.  It is edited by Douglas G. Long and Philip Schofield.  Written in the mid 1770s, it contains Bentham's early thoughts on the science of legislation. 
• Dr Malcolm Quinn (University of the Arts) has just published a new article on Bentham's ideas about good and bad taste in his writings on sexual liberty.  The article appears in the History of European Ideas journal.
• You can now watch Professor Philip Schofield give a short lecture on Bentham's views on sexual liberty for Faculti.net, an online academic and professional learning platform.
• Dr Tim Causer was recently interviewed for Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything podcast as part of a miniseries on surveillance.  Dr Causer explained some of Bentham's thinking around the Panopticon and the Auto-Icon.  

• Professor Emmanuelle de Champs of Cergy-Pontoise University and the Centre Bentham has been recognised for her work on Bentham.  Professor de Champs has been awarded the 2016 research prize from the Société des Anglicistes de l’Enseignement Supérieur (SAES) and the Association Française des Etudes Américaines (AFEA) for her book, Enlightenment and Utility, Bentham in France, Bentham in French (Cambridge University Press, 2015).
• Read about the Padiglione Conolly, part of the Psychiatric Hospital of San Niccolo in Siena (PDF), which was constructed upon the principles of Bentham's panopticon, in a short article by Dr. Alessandro Spina and Dr. Andrea Friscelli.
• Your chance to run Bentham's unrealised prison is now here: download the free game, Panopticon Pandemonium, now!
• The latest volume of Bentham's Collected Works is now available from Oxford University Press.  Writings on Political Economy, vol. 1 is edited by Dr Michael Quinn. 
• The May 2016 issue of the Royal Historical Society newsletter carries news of Transcribe Bentham's role in the READ project.  The article explains the potential of Handwritten Text Recognition technology and suggests how it could help our volunteers to decipher Bentham's handwriting.   
• On 17 May 2016 Transcribe Bentham's place in the READ project was presented in a paper at the Institute of Historical Research in the Archives and Society seminar series.
• Professor Philip Schofield will travel to the University of Macau, China in April 2016.  Professor Schofield will give two papers at the Centre for Law Studies: 'Bentham on Codification' and 'Utilitarianism from Locke to Sidgwick'.  

• Dr Michael Quinn will give a talk at the Bethlem Museum of the Mind on Saturday 30 April 2016 entitled, 'The more strictly we are watched, the better we behave.  Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon'.  Free admission but tickets required. 
• Transcribe Bentham will be part of a study day at the French Archives Nationales in Pierrefitte-sur-Seine.  Transcription collaborative et édition numérique de manuscrits: enjeux, outils et perspectives will take place on 16 March 2016.   

• The next Bentham Seminars will take place in March 2016.  Chris Riley (UCL) will speak on 'Bentham, Evidence, and History' and Professor Michihiro Kaino (Doshisha University) will speak on 'Bentham in Japan'.  Further details can be found in the seminar programme (PDF). 
• The Bentham Project is now part of a new research project focused on developing handwritten text recognition technology.  The Recognition and Enrichment of Archival Documents (READ) project has received funding from the EU's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.  More details on the Faculty of Laws webpage. 
• The 14th Conference of the International Society for Utilitarian Studies, on the theme of 'Utilitarianism and Institutional Design', will take place at Lille Catholic University on 6-8 July 2016. To attend, visit the conference website.
• Professor Philip Schofield recently gave the J. H. Burns Memorial Lecture at the University of St Andrews on 'Jeremy Bentham on Truth and Utility'.  You can listen here.
• The Bentham Project has been awarded a grant of nearly £500,000 from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, for a new project entitled 'Convict Australia and Utilitarianism: Jeremy Bentham's Writings on Australia'.
• Professor Philip Schofield's essay, 'Jeremy Bentham on Utility and Truth', has been published in volume 41 of the History of European Ideas.
• You can now buy your copy of Jeremy Bentham's Prison Cooking: A Collection of Utilitarian Recipes from UCL's Online Store. The cookbook is based on original Bentham manuscripts, and includes a foreword from Michelin-starred chef, Fergus Henderson.
• Professor Peter Singer (Melbourne) writes for Project Syndicate on the modern-day relevance of Bentham's Book of Fallacies, in which Bentham identifies fifty fallacious arguments utilised by politicians. (The Book of Fallacies, edited by Professor Philip Schofield, is the latest volume in the Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham, and was published by Oxford University Press earlier this year).
• Professor Emmanuelle de Champs' (Université de Cergy-Pontoise) new book, Enlightenment and Utility: Bentham in French, Bentham in France, has been published by Cambridge University Press as part of its  'Ideas in Context' series. Professor de Champs' presentation on this work to the Franco-British History seminar at the Sorbonne is available to download.
• Dr Michael Quinn's chapter, 'Fuller on Legal Fictions: A Benthamic Perspective' forms part of the recently published Legal Fictions in Theory and Practice, edited by Maksymilian Del Mar and William Twining.
  
• The latest volume of the Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham has been published by Oxford University Press. The Book of Fallacies, edited by Professor Philip Schofield, sees Bentham identify and criticise almost fifty fallacious arguments employed by politicians in order to thwart measures of reform, and expose the sinister interests that lead to their employment. The work has a great deal of relevance to modern political debate.
• The Bentham Project has published online George Wheatley's A Visit (in 1831) to Jeremy Bentham, edited by Dr Kris Grint. Wheatley's text is the most detailed and intimate account we have of Bentham's home and domestic and working arrangements. Amusing and enlightening in equal measure, the Visit can also be downloaded as a PDF or in XML format from UCL Discovery.
• Professor Philip Schofield's chapter on Jeremy Bentham forms part of the recently published Constitutions and the Classics: Patterns of Constitutional Thought from Fortescue to Bentham, edited by Denis Galligan, and published by Oxford University Press.
  
• Dr Tim Causer has written about his trip last year to Norfolk Island, to talk about its convict past for an episode of Coast Australia, hosted by Neil Oliver. The episode was first broadcast on the History Channel in Australia and New Zealand on 16 February, and should be shown on BBC Two in the coming months.
  
• The Bentham Project has received a Leverhulme Trust Research Project Grant of almost £300,000 to produce the authoritative edition of Jeremy Bentham's economic writings. 
• Professor Philip Schofield has written a guide to tranScriptorium, a European Union funded project investigating the application of Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) technology to Bentham manuscripts.
• Watch Escape from Australia: James Martin's Memorandoms, a video featuring Dr Tim Causer and based on the only first-hand account of perhaps the most famous escape by transported convicts from Australia. An interactive video is also available. Two versions of the narrative found in UCL's Bentham Papers have been published online by the Bentham Project.
• Recordings from the 2014 programme of Bentham Seminars can be listened to on the new Bentham Seminar Podcast.

See previous news and events in our archive.