School and University Visits

Adam Smith Institute staff are all experienced and engaging speakers, and we can between us give talks on a wide range of topics based on our individual research and expertise. We are almost always happy to send someone to give a lecture on one of our specialist topics at universities and schools across the country—or speak on a panel or in a debate.

We are also very happy to arrange lectures and talks via Zoom or similar platforms.

Here, as an example, is a talk our former Executive Director Sam Bowman gave in Edinburgh on ‘The Free Market Road to Social Justice’, and here is one he gave on ‘The State of the Minimum Wage Debate’. Below you find a list of the ASI staff and the areas they talk about.

To arrange a visit, please email the Institute’s Director of Research & Education, Maxwell Marlow, at maxwell@adamsmith.org

President, Dr Madsen Pirie

Dr Madsen Pirie is President of the Adam Smith Institute

He was one of three Scots graduates working in the US who founded the Institute in 1977. Before that, Madsen worked for the House of Representatives in Washington DC, and was Distinguished Visiting Professor Philosophy at Hillsdale College in Michigan.

A graduate of the universities of Edinburgh, St Andrews and Cambridge, Madsen has authored several books including The Book of the Fallacy, Micropolitics, Privatization, How to Win Every Argument, 101 Great Philosophers, Blueprint for a Revolution, and Freedom 101. He also writes children’s science fiction, and with his colleague Dr Eamonn Butler he has co- authored a series of books on IQ, including The Sherlock Holmes IQ Book.

Dr Pirie is happy to give lectures on:

  • Things Politicians and Economists Often Get Wrong

  • Economics in Two Lessons

  • 10 Radical Steps to Improve the World

  • Looking at the World Through Neoliberal Eyes

  • Common Logical Fallacies

Director, Dr Eamonn Butler

Eamonn Butler is Director of the Adam Smith Institute

He has degrees in economics, philosophy and psychology, gaining a PhD from the University of St Andrews in 1978.

During the 1970s he worked on pensions and welfare issues for the US House of Representatives, and taught philosophy in Hillsdale College, Michigan, before returning to the UK to help found the Adam Smith Institute.

Eamonn is author of books on the pioneering economists Milton Friedman, F A Hayek, Ludwig von Mises and Adam Smith, and co-author of Forty Centuries of Wage and Price Controls and books on intelligence testing.

Dr Butler is happy to give lectures on:

  • The Thought of Friedrich Hayek

  • The Thought of Milton Friedman

  • The Thought of Ludwig Von Mises

  • Why Care About Inequality?

  • An Introduction to the Public Choice School of Economics

Director of Research, Maxwell Marlow

The Rt Hon, The Lord (Peter) Lilley, Senior Fellow

After working on development projects in developing countries, he joined a leading City firm advising on investment in energy, becoming a Partner. Elected to Parliament in 1983, he became a Treasury Minister in 1987, served in the Cabinets of Mrs Thatcher and John Major as Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, then for Social Security. In opposition he was Shadow Chancellor, then Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party until 2000. He chaired the Committee of Both Houses on Financial Services Legislation after the banking crisis and served on the Select Committees for Brexit and Energy & Climate Change. He stood down as an MP in 2017, was made a Peer in 2018, where he served on the Environment and Climate Change Committee and currently the Financial Services Regulation Committee.

Lord Lilley’s subjects of preference are:

Thatcher and Thatcherism;

Economics of Climate Change;

Does Mass Migration Make Us Better/Worse Off?;

Benefits and Costs of Brexit;

Negotiating Trade Deals;

Energy Policy

Maxwell Marlow is the Director of Research & Education at the Adam Smith Institute.

Before working at the Adam Smith Institute, he worked as a Public Affairs and Communications Executive at strategic consultancy Hanbury Strategy. He was previously Development and Research Officer for the ASI, and held a Fellowship.

Maxwell graduated with a first class Joint Hons BSc in Politics and History from the London School of Economics & Political Science, where he was also twice consecutive President of the Hayek Society. Whilst at LSE, he was a Don Lavoie Fellow in Political Economy at the Mercatus Center, George Mason University. He is a Fellow at the Consumer Choice Center.

Maxwell is happy to give lectures on:

  • The Case for Optimism in the 21st Century

  • Why Britain Can't Build

  • Britain's Economy: From WW2 to the Pandemic, How We Went From Rich to Poor

  • Working in Think Tanks [Careers]

Student Conferences and Evening Lectures

The Adam Smith Institute holds a number of conferences each year, both for sixth-formers and undergraduates. These conferences are a great way to learn more about free market economics and libertarian ideas. They are completely free of charge, and we usually throw in a few free books too.

Independent Seminar on the Open Society

Each year, we hold several ISOS (Independent Seminar on the Open Society) events at schools across the UK. An ISOS is a one-day conference for 100+ sixth-form students. Named after the seminal book The Open Society and its Enemies by the philosopher Sir Karl Popper, our ISOS events explore the principles and practicalities of an open, free, and tolerant society. The programmes are designed to mesh in with A-level and AS-level syllabuses in politics and economics. Speakers deliberately pitch their talks at a standard of difficulty and technicality that will be comprehensible, but challenging, to students at these levels, whilst challenging attendees and introducing some new ideas. 

Recent seminars have featured, amongst much else, Dr Madsen Pirie on the common mistakes policymakers and economists tend to make, Douglas Carswell MP on his idea of iDemocracy, Bioethicist Professor John Harris on the right to sell kidneys for money, and Philip Booth from the IEA on whether the UK is solving its debt problem. Recent debate topics have included ‘This House Believes That We Should Legalize Marijuana’ and ‘This House Believes That The Most Effective Poverty Reduction Strategy Is More Government Intervention’. Download a sample programme here.

ISOS events are held across UK schools in both the Autumn and Spring terms. Though not always the case, the hosting school often invites pupils from other local schools to attend. One teacher who organised a recent ISOS conference at Victory Academy, Kent, said: 

"This was an excellent event. We were extremely lucky to host such a prestigious event. Our students are intelligent and ambitious, however like all students they do not yet know what they do not yet know. Having enrichment of this type lifts the lid on the world and widens the understanding, and hopefully promotes higher thinking in students as they contemplate their future lives.

Thank you so much for an engaging and rewarding experience."

If you’re a teacher or student interested in finding out more about the ISOS programme or suggesting a school for us to visit, please get in touch with the Institute’s Director of Research, Maxwell Marlow, at maxwell@adamsmith.org

Evening Lectures

We also regularly hold more advanced evening lectures at our Westminster office for current university students, those about to start university, and the general public. These take the form of a short drinks reception followed by a 45-minute lecture and Q&A. Example talks include UEA Professor Robert Sugden on the problems with ‘nudging’, Dr Yaron Brook on inequality, and LSE Professor Paul Cheshire on the harms of planning restrictions.

You can find videos of previous lectures, and of our other events, on our YouTube channel. To attend one of these evening lectures, check out our upcoming events page here and follow the RSVP instructions.