Online Zoom Forum: Politics and Conscience: Spiritual, Ethical and Social Perspectives and Responses.
Date: Wednesday 18 November 2026.
Time: 7pm-9pm (UK time).
Event Description:
Format: There will be five talks, each of 15 minutes, followed by discussion among the speakers and the chair, followed by Q & A.
Chair:
Dr Pinar Aksu:
Bio: Pinar Aksu is an artist-scholar and a human rights campaigner. Her work sits at the powerful intersection of art, justice, and activism. Currently a Research Associate on the Sustainable Designs for Living and Learning (SDLL) project and Research Fellow with the UNESCO RIELA, University of Glasgow.
Her doctoral research, Art and Law in Migration: using art practices for social change and access to justice, reflects her commitment to exploring how creative practice can challenge injustice and open pathways to equity. Pinar’s work is grounded in building solidarity and fostering welcoming communities through dialogue, empathy, and shared understanding.
As an activist-scholar, she has contributed to impactful campaigns including Our Grades Not Visas, Right to Vote, and Lift the Ban-Right to Work, and continues her advocacy with Refugees for Justice.
Speakers:
Peter McColl:
Title: Confronting the Far Right: The Spiritual Challenge of Our Time.
Description: The rise of the far right is a both a cause and a symptom of contemporary polarisation. One interesting characteristic of the current manifestation of the far right is their mobilisation of religion, and particularly Christianity, as a part of their ideological composition. Most obviously Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, sometimes known as Tommy Robinson has very publicly announced his faith. While their interpretation of Christian spirituality as supporting anti-immigration politics has been widely repudiated it is important that we understand this move, and discuss how we respond to it.
Bio: Peter McColl is a writer, thinker and activist. He was Rector of the University of Edinburgh from 2012-15 and has been a Green candidate in a number of elections. He has been part of movements against the far right over the past 12 months.
Marianne Cerilli:
Title: What Keeps Us Safe – The Use of Force or Something Else?
Description: Marianne will explore a conflict resolution model she has expanding to better understand and address growing authoritarianism, polarization, hyper partisanship, cancel culture and other forms of exclusion. The use of force as the way to keep ourselves safe is reconsidered, using a different approach to power, so we can move from competition to collaboration and from use of force to something safer and more peaceful and powerful.
Marianne brings a trauma informed lens to power and politics, applying what we know about conflict resolution for the Politics of Unity and collaboration for healthy organizations, movement building, and even moving electoral politics away from hyper-partisanship and polarization.
Bio: Marianne Cerilli’s social innovation work at the intersection of education, community development and politics focuses on The Politics of Unity, Healing for Change, and Community as Classroom. Before she was 30, Marianne worked in sports, fitness and recreation, led a youth work experience program with the Manitoba government, was a high school guidance counsellor and elected MLA.
After her three terms at the Manitoba Legislature, she has taught at U Winnipeg, and U Manitoba as a contract faculty, then at Red River College the Community Development/Community Economic Development Program. She has also been a community and advocate/mentor at West Central Women’s Resource Center and community animator and policy analyst at Winnipeg Social Planning Council.
Visit mariannecerilli.ca Marianne Cerilli Change Agent – Community Development for Health, Sustainability, Peace. Marianne is currently the president of the Association of Former Manitoba MLAs and leading an all party, non-partisan Healthy Democracy Initiative.
Dominic Ashmole:
Title: To What End? Right Action in the Age of Collapse.
Description: Of the 118 billion humans ever born, is it mere conceit to imagine my actions can change the future? Of perhaps 1 billion species ever to exist, are humans as important as we assume? And as systemic collapse accelerates, of the hundreds of concerns, causes and communications that could each moment claim my attention, how to choose wisely? Drawing on experiences from his political and spiritual life, Dominic will explore how we might understand what, for each of us, is “ours to do”.
Bio: Son of ecological restoration pioneers Myrtle and Philip Ashmole, Dominic is a leader of Dances of Universal Peace, former election and co-leadership candidate for the Scottish Green Party, and founding director of nature recovery organisation Beavers on Tweed. Profoundly influenced by the Deep Adaptation work of Professor Jem Bendell, Dominic recently retired from a 25 year career in healthcare and communications technology in order to focus on “navigating climate tragedy”.
Prof Mark Lusk:
Title: Immigrant Injustice and Conscience in the United States.
Description: Prof Mark Lusk will address the authoritarian and xenophobic injustices of the United States in the context of rising nationalism, illiberalism and toxic masculinity. Mark will briefly summarize retrograde immigration policy and its utter lack of conscience, guilt or remorse.
Bio: Mark is professor emeritus of social work at the University of Texas at El Paso USA. He has worked with forced migrants to the US from Mexico and Central America as a field researcher and volunteer.
Dr George Mutalemwa:
Title: Peace as Freedom: The Changing Political Landscape in Tanzania.
Description: The conceptual lens of “peace as freedom” underscores a critical transformation in Tanzania's political environment, where a historic tension exists between state-enforced stability and democratic liberties. Long celebrated as an island of peace in Africa, the country's political trajectory shows that structural peace is increasingly incompatible with the suppression of political freedoms.
In this presentation, George Mutalemwa, analyses the indicators of a shift in Tanzania’s peacefulness from being “an oasis of peace” to a land that has witnessed violence and unrest.
Bio: Dr George Mutalemwa is Founding Director of the Africa Peace and Development Network (Mtandao wa Amani na Maendeleo Afrika, MAMA) and Senior Research Fellow at St. Augustine University of Tanzania (SAUT). He has served as Hoffmann Lecturer for Intercultural Competences at the University of Vechta, Germany, Executive Secretary of the Association of Catholic Universities and Higher Institutes of Africa and Madagascar (ACUHIAM), Ag. Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Academic Affairs at SAUT, Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Sociology and Development, Co-editor of Peace Studies for Sustainable Development in Africa: Conflicts and Peace Oriented Conflict Resolution (https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-92474-4) and Peace as Nonviolence: Topics in African Peace Studies (https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-52905-4)
An archive recording will be made for the EICSP archive.
NB: There will be no refund if you cancel your booking.
Cost: £10 Suggested By Paypal or Bank Transfer:
Contact: Neill Walker, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
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Account Name: Edinburgh International Centre for Spirituality and Peace
Bank: Bank of Scotland
Bank Address: Edinburgh Royal Mile Branch
Account Number: 06131159
Sort Code: 802000
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The IBAN number:
GB70 BOFS 8020 0006 1311 59
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BOFSGB21168