Duration 75 minutes
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.
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 is a distinguished leader whose career bridges defence, environmental stewardship, and leadership on complex global challenges. He previously served as the Irish Defence Forces Chief of Staff and has commanded at sea and ashore, with service in the North and South Atlantic, Afghanistan and Lebanon.
Holding a PhD in Ecosystem-Based Ocean Governance, he founded Green Compass, advising on climate action, ocean sustainability, and strategic risk. He chairs the boards of the Irish Maritime Area Regulatory Authority and Sage Advocacy, Ireland’s National Independent Advocacy Service for older people, and is a founding member of CaraDem, Ireland’s democracy institute. Appointed as a Commander of the Légion d’Honneur by the President of the French Republic, he was awarded two Distinguished Service Medals by the Irish Government.
Brigid Laffan is Emeritus Professor at the European University Institute, Chancellor of the University of Limerick and President of the European Policy Centre (EPC) Brussels. Prof Laffan was Director and Professor at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute (EUI), Florence, until her retirement in August 2021. Previously, Prof Laffan was Professor of European Politics at the School of Politics and International Relations (SPIRe) University College Dublin (UCD), and she was Vice-President of UCD and Principal of the College of Human Sciences from 2004 to 2011.
Prof Laffan was the founding director of the Dublin European Institute UCD from 1999 and elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) in 2004. She was a member of the Board of the Mary Robinson Foundation for Climate Justice, the Fulbright Commission (until September 2013) and was the 2013 Visiting Scientist for the EXACT Marie Curie Network. In 2010 she was awarded the Ordre national du Mérite by the President of the French Republic. In 2012 she was awarded the THESEUS Award for outstanding research on European Integration. In September 2014 Professor Laffan was awarded the UK University Association for Contemporary European Studies (UACES) Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2022 she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the US European Studies Association (EUSA).
Professor Laffan has authored, co-authored and edited ten books, published over 40 peer reviewed journal articles and some 60+ book chapters. Her latest book co-authored with Stefan Telle, The EU’s Response to Brexit: United and Effective, was published in April 2023.
Dr Kerry Phelan is a Lecturer in Classics, specialising in Classical Greek political, social and legal history and 5th Century Athenian oratory and rhetoric.
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Tobias Winright is Professor of Moral Theology at St. Patrick's Pontifical University in Maynooth. A former law enforcement officer in both corrections and policing, he has taught and published for 30 years on ethics and the use of force, including just war theory. Among his books are Serve and Protect: Selected Essays on Just Policing (2020), Can War Be Just in the 21st Century? (2015), and After the Smoke Clears: The Just War Tradition and Post War Justice (2010, 2022).
