Can Empathy Mend Our Broken Politics?

Talks on Tuesdays is a live event series bringing big ideas, real experts, and curious minds together - at your favourite local venues. Think thought-provoking lectures, audience questions, and post-talk mingling over drinks and dinner.

This isn’t a uni lecture. It’s a social, intelligent night out.Come alone or with friends, leave with something to talk about.

Event Schedule:

6.30pm Arrival & Doors Open

7pm Lecture Starts

7.45pm Q&A

8pm Talk Concludes

8.30pm Event Closes.

*Please arrive close to 6.30pm

A La Carte menu and full bar available throughout the night - pay as you go.

Your Topic:
Can Empathy Mend Our Broken Politics?

In the current context, empathy can be a vital tool for transformation. And it has often been invoked as a necessary quality for political leadership, with calls for more caring and empathetic leaders who can make people feel seen and heard, and who will put people first. It is a critical step, but it is not the full picture. Speaking to the themes of her recent book on Empathy in Politics and Leadership (Yale University Press), Dr Claire Yorke will argue that better leaders will not bring substantial and lasting change unless we can also rethink the political ecosystem and the culture and systems in place that make empathy so hard and that foster divisions and disconnection. She will detail what empathy means, why it matters, and how it can prove challenging.

Before arguing that as citizens, we also need to claim a greater role in political change, and to work locally, and in our communities, to help bridge the divisions and tensions that we are seeing across society.

At a time when many people feel despondent about the state of our politics, this talk will share examples from around the world of where change is already taking place and offer practical steps and a pragmatic source of hope for how we can do things differently.

Your Speaker:

Dr Claire Yorke

Dr Claire Yorke is a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Future Defence at National Security, with Deakin University in Canberra. She is also the author of ‘Empathy in Politics and Leadership: The Key to Transforming our World’, which was published by Yale University Press for a general readership late last year. In an international career she has lived and worked in the UK, France, the United States, and Denmark, and now calls Australia home. Her career has combined academic research with extensive experience working in policy and politics, including in the British Parliament, and at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House.