About the event

What are the laws of war? Who will hold belligerents to account? When is invasion or conquest justified? Is geopolitics always about self-interest and the survival of the fittest?

The invasion of the island of Melos by the Athenian empire in 416 BC brought all these questions to the fore. The historian Thucydides compressed some of these arguments in an elaborate debate, the ‘Melian Dialogue’, a chapter in his influential History of the Peloponnesian War. His account of the 27-year war between Athens and Sparta (431-404 BC) analyses the Athenians’ imperialism and belief in their superior strength.

We present a new work-in-progress reading of Colin Murphy’s gripping, highly topical, adaptation of the Melian Dialogue, with Ali White, Janet Moran, Shadaan Felfeli, and Morgan Jones. The short performance will be followed by an incisive panel discussion looking at the 2,500-year history of the ‘realist’ school of foreign policy.

The panel: foreign policy specialist, former Naval Vice Admiral, Mark Mellett, Classics Lecturer, Dr Kerry Phelan and Prof of Moral Theology, Tobias Winwright, will be chaired by Prof Brigid Laffan.

‍

Participants

Colin Murphy is a playwright, screenwriter and journalist and currently 2026 Rooney Writer Fellow at the Long Room Hub, Trinity College Dublin. A collection of his plays, Colin Murphy's Political Plays, is published this month from Bloomsbury: Methuen. His plays include The United States vs Ulysses with Once Off Productions and the Pavilion, The Asylum Workshop for TU Dublin and The Treaty, Haughey/Gregory and Guaranteed! for Fishamble, all published by Bloomsbury. His radio plays include #Antigone for Newstalk and Hamlet, Prince of Derry for RTÉ. Screenplays include The Guarantee, produced by John Kelleher Media. He writes a weekly column for the Sunday Independent.

Vice Admiral Mark Mellett, DSM, is a retired Irish Naval Service vice admiral and was Chief of Staff of Ireland's Defence Forces from 2015-2021. He has a PhD in Politics and Law from the National University of Ireland, is an adjunct professor of Law at UCC and a graduate of the US Naval War College and the Royal Naval College Greenwich. He leads Green Compass, a consultancy that specialises in the complexities of today's strategic environment. He has received multiple awards and honors, including the Commander of the Legion d’Honneur from the President of France.

‍

Heading 1

Heading 2

Heading 3

Heading 4

Heading 5

Heading 6

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.