Skip to content

Philosophical Fight Club

When

Event Status

Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Our diverse line-up of intellectual heavyweights will go to the mat and wrestle with some of the biggest, ugliest and toughest philosophical dilemmas facing Australians today.

Host Geoffrey Robertson will thoroughly grill our panellists, delving into questions of cultural memory, citizenship, populism and more. Join us for a session of scrutiny, speculation, supposition and squabbling as we delve into the spikiest moral problems of our time.

Featuring Anna Krien, Julian BurnsideGeorge Megalogenis, Celeste Liddle, Quinn Eades, Kenan Malik, Jordan Raskopoulos and host Geoffrey Robertson.

All sessions of The Festival of Questions will be Auslan interpreted.

Presented in partnership with Melbourne Festival and City of Melbourne.

Featuring

Anna Krien

Anna Krien is the author of the award-winning Night Games and Into the Woods, as well as two Quarterly Essays, Us and Them and The Long Goodbye, and a novel Act of Grace. Anna’s writing has been published in The Monthly, The Age, Best Australian Essays, Best Australian Stories and The Big Issue. I... Read more

Julian Burnside

Julian Burnside is a Melbourne barrister. He joined the Bar in 1976 and took silk in 1989. He specialises in commercial litigation, and has acted in many very contentious cases – the MUA Waterfront dispute; the Cash-for-Comment enquiry; cases for Alan Bond and Rose Porteous – but has be... Read more

Quinn Eades

Quinn Eades is a researcher, writer, and poet whose work lies at the nexus of feminist and queer theories of the body, autobiography, and philosophy. Eades is published nationally and internationally, and is the author of all the beginnings: a queer autobiography of the body, and Rallying. Eades is ... Read more

Jordan Raskopoulos

Jordan is a world class comedian, actor, singer and digital content creator. She is best know for her work as the front woman for comedy rock band The Axis of Awesome. Jordan has written about transgender issues and spoken about her personal experience for numerous publications and media programs,... Read more

Geoffrey Robertson

Geoffrey Robertson QC is founder and head of the world’s largest human rights practice, in London. He has prosecuted Hastings Banda, defended Julian Assange and acted for Human Rights Watch in the proceedings against General Pinochet. He served as the first president of the Special Court for Sierr... Read more

Celeste Liddle

Celeste Liddle is an Arrernte woman (traditional owner in Central Australia) who was born in Canberra and has been living in Melbourne since she was a teenager. She is a trade unionist, an activist, a feminist, a social commentator and an opinion writer. In May 2021, she was announced as the presele... Read more

George Megalogenis

George Megalogenis is an author and journalist with three decades’ experience in the media. The Australian Moment won the 2013 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Non-fiction and the 2012 Walkley Award for Non-fiction, and formed the basis for his ABC documentary series Making Austral... Read more

Kenan Malik

Kenan Malik is a writer, lecturer and broadcaster. He is a presenter of Analysis on BBC Radio 4, and a panellist on The Moral Maze. He has taught at universities in Britain, Europe, Australia and the USA, presented many TV documentaries and writes regularly for newspapers across the world includi... Read more

Location

Melbourne Town Hall

90-120 Swanston Street Melbourne Victoria 3000

More details

Stay up to date with our upcoming events and special announcements by subscribing to The Wheeler Centre's mailing list.

Privacy Policy

The Wheeler Centre acknowledges the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation as the Traditional Owners of the land on which the Centre stands. We acknowledge and pay our respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their Elders, past and present, as the custodians of the world’s oldest continuous living culture.