Tabernacles in the Wilderness discusses the work of the United States Christian Commission (USCC), a civilian relief agency established by northern evangelical Protestants to minister to Union troops during the American Civil War. USCC workers saw in the Civil War not only a wrathful judgment from God for the sins of the nation but an unparalleled opportunity to save the souls of US citizens and perfect the nation. Thus, the workers set about proselytizing and distributing material aid to Union soldiers with undaunted and righteous zeal.

Educator, organiser and activist Maria Varela explores her work during the Civil Rights Movement, focussing particularly on her photographic archive. In discussing her images, Maria reflects on narratives of the Civil Rights Movement and how her photographs and experiences challenge that memory.

This talk is part of the event programming for the exhibition, Time to Get Ready: Maria Varela and the Civil Rights Movement.

Today, free trade is often associated with right-wing free marketeers. In Pax Economica, historian Marc-William Palen shows that free trade and globalisation in fact have roots in nineteenth-century left-wing politics. In this counterhistory of an idea, Palen explores how, beginning in the 1840s, left-wing globalists became the leaders of the peace and anti-imperialist movements of their age.

The use of overwhelming force no longer guarantees victory in war. Under what conditions do supposedly weaker conflict actors ‘outpower’ stronger actors? Lord Alderdice will argue that those most willing to sustain extreme conflict have been ‘devoted actors’ driven by non-negotiable ‘sacred values’. Bringing into dialogue insights from large group psychology, neuroscience, and epigenetics with those of political science, he will describe two factors one biological, and the other from complex large group psychology, that can help explain these apparently non-rational phenomena.