One of BIAPT’s core activities has always been to run the Political Thought Conference. The conference began in the early 1970s and, for most of its history the conference has been held in Oxford.

In 2021 and 2022 the conference had to move online to accommodate the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2023 it returned to St Catherine’s College, Oxford.

In 2024, fifteen years after the creation of BIAPT, the conference moved out of Oxford for the first time. The 2024 conference will be held in Jesus College, Cambridge. In future the conference will move between universities in Britain and Ireland.

In 2020 BIAPT ran its inaugural Early- and Mid-Career Prizes, celebrating academics employed in Britain or Ireland who have made the most impressive contribution to research and teaching in any branch of political thought relative to their career stages. The Prizes have been awarded every year since then.

If you have details of past conferences not held in our archive, or recollections of early conferences, please contact BIAPT on conference@associationforpoliticalthought.ac.uk.