LSE Research channel | Video: Recent Episodes
London School of Economics and Political Science
Contributor(s): | Governments worldwide invest heavily to project a positive image on the global stage, spending billions to host events like the #WorldCup or #Olympics in hopes of building prestige and soft power.What happens when the unity and success they aim to showcase clash with the real struggles of their people? What happens when citizens flood the streets to challenge this glossy narrative and offer a different vision of national identity? #Brazil’s protests before the 2014 FIFA World Cup and 2016 Rio Olympics may provide clues to these questions.Dr César Jiménez-Martínez is Assistant Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE: https://www.lse.ac.uk/media-and-communications/people/academic-staff/cesar-jimenez-martinez#Football #Brasil
Contributor(s): | Visit our dedicated hub showcasing LSE research and expertise on global politics through short films, blogs, articles and events here.
Contributor(s): | Visit our dedicated hub showcasing LSE research and expertise on global politics through short films, blogs, articles and events here.
Contributor(s): | Visit our dedicated hub showcasing LSE research and expertise on global politics through short films, blogs, articles and events here.
Contributor(s): | Visit our dedicated hub showcasing LSE research and expertise on global politics through short films, blogs, articles and events here.
Contributor(s): | Do today’s power brokers in Britain continue to be born to privilege and anointed at Eton and Oxford? Or is a new progressive elite emerging with different values and political instincts?In search of an answer, Aaron Reeves and Sam Friedman scrutinised the profiles, interests, and careers of over 125,000 members of the British elite from the late 1890s to today. Their findings offer an insight into who gets in, how they get there, what they like and look like, where they go to school, and what politics they perpetuate.Check out the book by Aaron Reeves and Sam Friedman on this research: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674257719
Contributor(s): | The pivotal 1953 coup in Iran, orchestrated by the CIA and MI6, toppled the democratically elected Prime Minister Muhammad Mossadegh. Renowned scholar Fawaz Gerges explains how this event set a precedent for an American foreign policy of intervention in the region, shaping the political landscape of the Middle East. This video is based on research from Fawaz Gerges’ new book, What Really Went Wrong?: The West and the Failure of Democracy in the Middle East, available here: https://yalebooks.co.uk/book/9780300259575/what-really-went-wrong/ Fawaz A. Gerges is professor of International Relations at LSE and the author of Making the Arab World and ISIS: A History. He has also been a senior analyst for ABC News. https://www.lse.ac.uk/international-relations/people/gerges
Contributor(s): | Through a series of soundwalks, Gisa Weszkalnys, Rachel Grant and Maja Zećo explore how the city’s overlapping energy regimes are already impacting its citizens.Read the full article here.
Contributor(s): | Visit our dedicated hub showcasing LSE research and expertise on global politics through short films, blogs, articles and events here.
Contributor(s): | Dr Nick Anstead of the Department of Media and Communications at LSE explains today's new information environment, its impact in politics in the UK and elsewhere, and how we can regulate it.Explore our dedicated hub showcasing LSE research and commentary on global politics in a year of elections: https://www.lse.ac.uk/Research/global-politics This #LSEFestival event will discuss the importance of trust for a functioning society here.
Contributor(s): | In the recent years, more and more right-wing parties have appeared in politics in European countries and across the world. Ahead of the European Parliament elections 6-9 June 2024, Prof Stephanie Rickard explains why this is happening and what the consequences could be for the EU and globally if we see more far-right candidates winning seats. Explore our dedicated hub showcasing LSE research and commentary on global politics in a year of elections here.
Contributor(s): | Mexico will likely elect its first female president on 2 June in an election where a lot is at stake. Dr Jenny Pearce explains the current state of politics in the country and the possible policy areas that Claudia Sheinbaum will tackle if she wins. Visit our dedicated hub showcasing LSE research and expertise on global politics through short films, blogs, articles and events here.
Contributor(s): | South Africa’s national election on 29 May is likely to be the most competitive one since the end of apartheid. One of the critical issues in the election is the Political Party Funding Act that came into force in 2021 and transformed the country’s political finance landscape.Visit our dedicated hub showcasing LSE research and expertise on global politics through short films, blogs, articles and events here.
Contributor(s): | The polls in India are estimated to have 969 million voters, 5.5 million electronic voting machines, 15 million polling officials. Dr Mukulika Banerjee analyses elections in India, the largest human organised event anywhere in the world. Visit our dedicated hub showcasing LSE research and expertise on global politics through short films, blogs, articles and events here.
Contributor(s): | Once considered a policy success case for promoting food security, Brazil has now returned to the UN Hunger Map. In 2022, more than half of Brazil’s population was experiencing some degree of food insecurity and severe food insecurity impacted more than 33 million urban residents. In highly unequal Brazilian cities, this issue affects mostly low-income racialised residents in the urban fringes where infrastructural exclusion further constrains access to nutritious, affordable and culturally appropriate food. This short film introduces the interdisciplinary research project “Engineering food: infrastructure exclusion and ‘last mile’ delivery in Brazilian favelas”, a collaboration between LSE, Insper and Birkbeck, funded by the British Academy, that explores the last mile gaps in food accessibility in Brazilian low-income neighbourhoods. Featuring interviews with the research team and community leaders in Brazil, the film focuses on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and initiatives emerging to address hunger. It stresses the role of women and community organisations in closing the last mile gap and invites further attention and investment in local actors to tackle inequalities in food access.
Contributor(s): | Are there elections taking place in wartime? Mariia Zolkina, DINAM Research Fellow in the Department of International Relations, explains the cases of Ukraine and Russia. Visit our dedicated hub showcasing LSE research and expertise on global politics through short films, blogs, articles and events here.
Contributor(s): | Revolutionary Papers is an international, transdisciplinary research and teaching initiative on anticolonial, anti-imperial and related left periodicals of the Global South. It includes over forty university-based researchers, as well as editors, archivists, and movement organizers from around the world. The initiative looks at the way that periodicals—including newspapers, magazines, cultural journals, and newsletters—played a key role in establishing new counter publics, social and cultural movements, institutions, political vocabularies and art practises. Operating as forums for critique and debate under conditions of intense repression, periodicals facilitated processes of decolonization during colonialism and after the formal end of empire, into the neo-colonial era. Revolutionary Papers traces the ways that periodicals supported social, political and cultural reconstruction amidst colonial destruction, building alternative networks that circulated new political ideas and dared to imagine worlds after empire.Find out more: https://revolutionarypapers.org/
Contributor(s): | Colonialism has not disappeared – it has taken on a new form. In the new world order, data is the new oil. Big Tech companies are grabbing our most basic natural resources – our data – exploiting our labour and connections, and repackaging our information to control our views, track our movements, record our conversations and discriminate against us.In 'Data Grab: The new colonialism of Big Tech and how to fight back', Nick Couldry and Ulises Mejias, founders of the concept of data colonialism, reveal how history can help us both to understand the emerging future and to fight back.Find out more about the book: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/455862/data-grab-by-couldry-ulises-a-mejias-and-nick/9780753560204 Prof Nick Couldry is a Professor of Media, Communications and Social Theory in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE: https://www.lse.ac.uk/media-and-communications/people/academic-staff/nick-couldry#Data #BigTech
Contributor(s): | With a population of 275 million, Indonesia is the world's third largest democracy and what happens in its 2024 election is really important. Prof John Sidel, Director of Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre at LSE, explains Indonesia's trajectory as a stable and consolidated democracy over the last 25 years and what the future likely holds.Explore our dedicated hub showcasing LSE research and commentary on global politics in a year of elections: https://www.lse.ac.uk/Research/global-politics
Contributor(s): | There is a lot at stake for the United States and the world in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. In the first episode of our Global Politics series, Prof Peter Trubowitz, Director of the Phelan U.S. Centre at LSE, explains what makes this election different and what we should watch out for.
Contributor(s): | Have you ever heard of the term 'golden passport'?Wealthy individuals choose to invest in ’Citizenship by Investment’ programmes based on the benefits and global opportunities a new citizenship provides. Over the last two decades, these programmes have surged in popularity, with more than 20 countries adopting 'golden passport' laws and extending the privilege to over 50,000 people each year.Find out more about Dr Kristin Surak's research: lse.ac.uk/research/research-for-the-world/politics/golden-visas-and-passports-the-global-market-in-residence-and-citizenshipCheck out Dr Kristin Surak's new book on this research: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674248649Dr Kristin Surak is Associate Professor in Sociology in the Department of Sociology at LSE: https://www.lse.ac.uk/sociology/people/kristin-surak
Contributor(s): Professor Chris Alden, Dr Dimitrios Stroikos | Chris Alden and Dimitrios Stroikos explore the complexities around the international politics of space, addressing topics such as: the challenges underpinning the international politics of space, state and non-state engagement in space activities. They ask how can we prevent the outbreak of conflict in space? And why do countries want to join the space race? Finally, they consider the role of science in current space activities and the role of cooperation and competition in space. This film is also featured in the Research for the World article, Why does India want to be a space power? Chandrayaan-3 and the politics of India’s space programme
Contributor(s): Professor Andrew Lewis-Pye | What makes cryptocurrencies attractive and what is the role of decentralisation? What are the regulatory issues facing cryptocurrencies and how does this affect innovation? We speak to LSE Professor Andrew Lewis-Pye to explain more. This film is also featured in the Research for the World article Building better blockchains
Contributor(s): Professor Riccardo Crescenzi | To understand Global Value Chains, consider the bicycle. Bicycles are not solely produced in one place, rather they are created across countries—a collection of regions delivering components and services bringing the bicycle to the end consumer. Each contributor, located and spread throughout the world, adds value to this end product. This end-to-end process is the Global Value Chain.
Contributor(s): Dr Niina Vuolajärvi, Dr Shamila Parmanand | How are sex workers affected by laws that claim to protect them? This film juxtaposes research by Dr Niina Vuolajärvi, Assistant Professor in International Migration at the LSE European Institute, in the "Nordic model" in Sweden, Norway, and Finland, and by Dr Shamila Parmanand of the Department of Gender Studies at LSE, in the Philippines, to reveal the problems in practice and where the policy solutions really lie.
Contributor(s): | Scientists believe we are currently in the midst of a modern-day mass extinction event, with biodiversity loss escalating at an unparalleled pace worldwide. Dr Ganga Shreedhar's research shines a light on the transformative power of awareness, revealing that once individuals are informed, the overwhelming majority acknowledge the urgency for action.
Contributor(s): | Of the 80 million people worldwide currently displaced by war or persecution, over half have settled in cities. But what challenges do these urban refugees face - from host governments and from the communities already living there? Associate Professor Romola Sanyal explains the issues - and benefits - that forced migration can present for our cities.
Contributor(s): | The #digital world has brought a wealth of information, opportunities and experiences to us all - with children no exception. But with these benefits also come risks like inappropriate content and potentially dangerous situations. How do we help our kids navigate the world of apps, websites, games and social media? What are some of the issues developers of these products and spaces need to consider when they’re designing for young audiences? The research of LSE’s Professor Sonia Livingstone and Dr Mariya Stoilova help us answer these questions.
Contributor(s): | Inequality, climate change, culture wars and disaffection with politics - these are just some of the seismic issues we face in the UK in 2023. But while different schools of political thought might suggest different solutions, concrete steps for addressing society’s problems are often hard to come by. LSE researcher Daniel Chandler considers the work of one of the 20th Century’s foremost political philosophers - and wonders if answers to our collective troubles might just be hiding in plain sight.
Contributor(s): Dr Siva Thambisetty | The ocean is under threat. Overfishing, pollution and man-made climate change are endangering vital life, where the majority of the ocean's biodiversity has remained ungoverned. The United Nations has been working to form a legal framework for the protection of marine biodiversity and the fair sharing of its resources. Dr Siva Thambisetty explains the importance of "The High Seas Treaty" in protecting our oceans and planet.
Contributor(s): | Growth and productivity are often talked about in UK politics but how are they linked and what affect do they have on the economy? LSE’s John Van Reenen explains.Explore our dedicated hub showcasing LSE research and commentary on the state of the UK economy and its future.
Contributor(s): Professor Neil Lee | Levelling up is often talked about in UK politics but what is it? How will it affect the general population? We speak to LSE Professor Neil Lee to explain more.Explore our dedicated hub showcasing LSE research and commentary on the state of the UK economy and its future.
Contributor(s): | Martin Bayly discusses the key points from his research, applying approaches offered by global intellectual history to the works of late colonial Indian international thinkers, exploring the mixed registers of equality and hierarchy, internationalism and imperialism present in their writings.
Contributor(s): | What happens to a country’s economy when half its population dies within a few years? The Black Death did exactly this to England in 1348-50, and historians have been puzzling over how standards of living and patterns of work changed in the Middle Ages for more than a century.To answer this, Dr Jordan Claridge is developing a new dataset of wages earned by men, women and children, working both on annual contracts and more casually, in order to understand wages in medieval England and the massive economic and societal changes of the late Middle Ages.Find out more about Wages in the Middle Ages: here.Visuals sourced from: Freepik, Vecteezy, Battle Abbey Archives, The Huntington Library, California
Contributor(s): Swati Dhingra, Ekaterina Oparina, Maria Ventura, Anna Valero | Economics is the study of how people, firms, and governments make choices. Economic methods can be used to understand and find solutions to problems ranging from the gender pay gap to climate change. But who chooses to work in economics, and what do they study? In this short video to mark International Women’s Day 2023, economists from the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) talk about why they chose to work in economics, their research, and its importance to our society.Read more about the research by:Swati DhingraEkaterina OparinaMaria VenturaAnna ValeroChiara Cavaglia
Contributor(s): | With low interest rates in the past 20 years the UK government has borrowed a lot more increasing public debt, we talk to Ricardo Reis about what affect this has had.Explore our dedicated hub showcasing LSE research and commentary on the state of the UK economy and its future.
Contributor(s): | With interest rates going up, and cost of living increasing, we talk to Cornelia Agyenim-Boateng about how the housing market has been affected.Explore our dedicated hub showcasing LSE research and commentary on the state of the UK economy and its future.
Contributor(s): | Trade is central to development in Africa, this film explores the recent history of African trade and what needs to change.
Contributor(s): | Jeremy Hunt announced an Autumn Statement to tackle inflation, we talked to LSE academic Andy Summers about the tax plan. Explore our dedicated hub showcasing LSE research and commentary on the state of the UK economy and its future.
Contributor(s): Dr Kitty Stewart, Dr Tania Burchardt | LSE are partners for Evidence Week in Parliament 2022, along with the Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology (POST), which is organised by Sense about Science.
Contributor(s): Nazanin Shahrokni | The death of 22-year-old Mahsa Jîna Amini at the hands of the morality police sparked nationwide protests in Iran. The protests have created a space for sisterhood, crossing class and ethnic boundaries in Iran. They also highlight the urgency of forging feminist solidarities across national borders.
Contributor(s): | Making Space for Girls is a research project around how girls and young women have been left out when thinking about public spaces. Led by Dr. Julia King and Olivia Theocharides-Feldman the researchers spoke to girls and young women around the UK about how they thought public spaces could be developed to suit everyone.
Contributor(s): Jason Lennard | With a potential recession looming in the near future we talk to Jason Lennard about the history of recessions and the shape of them. Explore our dedicated hub showcasing LSE research and commentary on the state of the UK economy and its future.
Contributor(s): | Rising energy bills drive up the cost of living. LSE's Anna Valero explains what led to the current energy crisis and how the transition to net zero emissions will help. Explore our dedicated hub showcasing LSE research and commentary on the state of the UK economy and its future.
Contributor(s): | Rising energy bills drive up the cost of living. LSE's Anna Valero explains what led to the current energy crisis and how the transition to net zero emissions will help. Explore our dedicated hub showcasing LSE research and commentary on the state of the UK economy and its future.
Contributor(s): | With interest rates going up, and energy bills increasing we talk to LSE Director Minouche Shafik about what happens next with inflation. Explore our dedicated hub showcasing LSE research and commentary on the state of the UK economy and its future.
Contributor(s): | Who owns, controls and benefits from these systems? What might advances in AI and computing mean for marginalised communities who already face discrimination in both the material and virtual worlds? Big computing is the new big term that you need to know. Seeta Peña Gangadharan explores the impact of Big Computing ambitions on freedom and control. 🔴 Find out more about this research in #LSEResearchForTheWorld: https://www.lse.ac.uk/research/research-for-the-world/race-equity/an-equitable-society-depends-on-holding-big-computing-firms-to-account-1
Contributor(s): Dr Rishita Nandagiri | The US Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v Wade — which ended federal protection for the right to an abortion — is expected to embolden conservative populist movements elsewhere. At the same time, the decision has reenergised efforts to safeguard existing abortion rights around the world. Dr Rishita Nandagiri's research focuses on gender, abortion and reproduction in the Global South.
Contributor(s): Kate Summers | LSE's Dr Kate Summers explains why low- and middle-income households have much less wiggle room to navigate the effects of inflation.
Contributor(s): Dr Ethan Ilzetzki | Expect central banks to continue to raise interest rates in order to reduce pressures on the economy’s limited supply. With prices continuing to soar in the UK and beyond, LSE’s Dr Ethan Ilzetzki explains how central banks will act on their mandates to keep inflation low. This is the second video in our inflation explainer series featuring insight from LSE researchers.
Contributor(s): Professor Nicholas Barr | Demand is going up, supply is going down, and costs are rising. Everything that causes inflation is operating together. In this short video, LSE’s Professor Nick Barr explains what's happening to cause prices to rise so drastically in 2022 — not just in the UK, but around the world. Catch up with more from this series, where LSE academics explore the inflation situation.
Contributor(s): | Professor Myria Georgiou compares the warm welcome given to Ukrainian refugees to the suspicion extended towards people who come from other parts of the world. Read more about Professor Georgiou's research: https://www.lse.ac.uk/media-and-communications/people/academic-staff/myria-georgiou
Contributor(s): Dr Juanita Gonzalez-Uribe | Entrepreneurs can have a tough time having their business idea heard. There are just so many businesses trying to get investment from Venture Capitalists that many great business ideas aren't seen. Alongside this; race, gender and education unfairly come into the equation when Venture Capitalists are thinking about talking to entrepreneurs. LSE research looks into one Venture Capitalist Fund who are taking a more scientific approach to shortlisting business ideas, whilst also asking the question of whether entrepreneurs who do not get funding still have value added to them by going through a process called Due Diligence.
Contributor(s): | The Liberian dollar is the nation’s official currency. So, why do so many Liberians use US dollars for everyday transactions? A dual currency system has existed in Liberia since the late 1800s. Professor Leigh Gardner from the Department of Economic History at LSE has examined the government’s struggle to re-assert the Liberian dollar over time. Her research was the subject of a physical display in the Value of Money exhibition at the National Museum of American History. 🔴 For a virtual version of the display see https://learninglab.si.edu/collections/u-s-dollars-in-liberia/xNXunzUXDYnD8iEe. 🔴 Read on the National Museum of American History’s blog: https://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/dollars-liberia 🔴 Find out more about Professor Gardner’s upcoming book, Sovereignty without Power: Liberia in the Age of Empires, 1822-1980: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/sovereignty-without-power/1AE1550713B8F8FC4AA55143F475AE00#
Contributor(s): | LSE Professor Emily Jackson’s research into egg freezing has led to a change in UK law, giving women more freedom over when to start a family and taking away the pressure that their eggs may have to be destroyed. Find out more about this research in #LSEResearchForTheWorld: https://www.lse.ac.uk/research/resear...
Contributor(s): | Far from their widespread reputation, social housing estates are home to more resilient communities than reported in the media, and social landlords go far beyond simply providing "bricks and mortar". When the government, under austerity budgets from 2010, cut funding for social landlords and for multiple neighbourhood services, these communities suffered a significant loss of support. Residents face additional social stigma associated with living in social housing. In response, LSE Housing and Communities co-founded the Housing Plus Academy, which aims to close the knowledge gap between those who make decisions about social housing, and those who live in it. The Academy organises residential Think Tanks for social landlords, frontline workers, policymakers and – crucially – social housing tenants. Findings from each event are reported to government, meaning that tenants’ voices are fed directly into decision-making. The urgent need to address long-term failures in social housing management was brought into sharp focus following the catastrophic 2017 Grenfell Tower disaster in West London. Following the tragedy, LSE Housing and Communities ran a bespoke programme that included tenants, landlords, government, and other professionals. This informed their "Lessons from Grenfell" report which has been used to influence government policy. The first lesson: it is crucial to listen to tenants. 🔴 Find out more about this research in #LSEResearchForTheWorld: https://www.lse.ac.uk/research/resear... 🔴 Find out more about LSE Housing and Communities, Housing Plus Academy and Energy Plus Academy, visit https://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/lsehousing
Contributor(s): Nikita Simpson, Professor Laura Bear | As we emerge from it, we beginning to see the legacies of stigma and trauma that have disproportionately impacted certain groups – especially marginalised groups who are underserved by the state. This participatory film animates longer-term ethnographic research conducted over the past 24 months across the UK by LSE’s Covid and Care Research Group, led by Professor Laura Bear. It highlights the story of psychotherapist Suad Duale and the Somali single mothers who have stepped up to support their community in this time. Co-directed by Duale, Dr Nikita Simpson and Dr James Rattee, it provides insight into the profound work done by some people to ferry their communities through this crisis.
Contributor(s): Timo Leiter, Dr Swenja Surminski, Declan Conway | The effects of climate change are already proving devastating for people and for our planet. The new IPCC report, Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, shows us that we must act now to reduce emissions and prepare for current and future climate risks. The Grantham Research Institute produces cutting edge research on climate adaptation, and its researchers are among thousands of experts worldwide to author and review the IPCC report. Here, Swenja Surminski, Timo Leiter and Declan Conway explain how managing the risks of climate change should be embedded in all planning decisions taken by governments, NGOs, businesses, and investors, and how investing in climate adaptation now saves money later.
Contributor(s): Professor Tomila Lankina | How did the Imperial Russian bourgeoisie endure such a seismic revolution? And what can this stubborn reproduction of social structures tell us about addressing inequality today? In her new book, Professor Tomila Lankina challenges materialist notions of inequality, instead highlighting the significance of social, cultural, and educational capital in the perpetuation of social hierarchies – even under the most brutal communist dictatorship bent on obliterating the social remnants of the past. 🔴 Read more about this research in #LSEResearchForTheWorld: 🔴 Find out more about Professor Tomila Lankina’s book: The Estate Origins of Democracy in Russia, Cambridge University Press, December 2021 https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/estate-origins-of-democracy-in-russia/3EBD479CE270DB1647CD5E6A57F1C121
Contributor(s): | Apps such as Uber and Just Eat have radically changed the economic landscape, but how has platform technology impacted workers? Researcher Dalia Gebrial has been exploring what life is like for those who make their living via apps. Her work focuses on race and gender in the platform economy and examines the technologies which make exploitation possible. 🔴 Find out more about this research in #LSEResearchForTheWorld. https://www.lse.ac.uk/research/research-for-the-world/race-equity/race-and-the-platform-economy
Contributor(s): | In Camberwell, south London, LSE’s Configuring Light team have been working on the Brandon Estate to develop a new pilot lighting scheme to demonstrate the potential of lighting on London’s estates. Configuring Light research group generates collaborations between social researchers and lighting professionals to help us understand the role lighting plays in our everyday life. Specialising in urban public spaces, our aim is to build better social knowledge and better research methodologies for lighting design and urban planning.
Contributor(s): | By examining the history of the application of forensic techniques to humanitarian issues, can we now argue that the dead have human rights? LSE’s Dr Claire Moon has been exploring this history, as well as examining the challenges and innovations in the forensics field in contemporary Mexico. Her research project, Human Rights Human Remains: Forensic Humanitarianism and the Politics of the Grave, promises to confront the human rights paradigm by including the dead in the category of who counts as ‘human’. Find out more about the project: https://humanrightshumanremains.com
Contributor(s): | What are proxies and how do they influence our lives? This film — inspired by case studies in Dr Dylan Mulvin’s new book from Proxies The Cultural Work of Standing In — explores the power of proxies and how they shape our lives. "Underneath the world we know, there is a hidden landscape of carefully constructed stand-ins, models, prototypes. This ferociously original book maps that region and opens up new ways to explain how our technological infrastructures become what they are.” — Fred Turner, Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communication, Stanford University; author of The Democratic Surround 🔴 Read more about this research in #LSEResearchForTheWorld: https://www.lse.ac.uk/research/resear...
Contributor(s): Rachel Ngai | Why have wages for low-skilled workers stagnated even in industries that have experienced years of economic growth? Rachel Ngai has been investigating why these workers have not seen the wage increases that trickle-down economics suggests they should have. 🔴 Find Dr Rachel Ngai’s article on this research in the LSE Research for the World online magazine: https://www.lse.ac.uk/research/research-for-the-world/economics/why-low-skilled-worker-wages-have-stagnated-even-while-the-economy-has-thrived
Contributor(s): Dr Spike Gibbs | How fair was life in medieval England? Was this time beset by power struggles, corruption and lawlessness? If not, how did a system of order prevail? LSE’s Dr Spike Gibbs has been looking at historical records of manorial courts to see how power was distributed in local communities throughout England. Through individual stories of crime and punishment, Dr Gibbs’ research provides an answer. 🔴 Find Dr Spike Gibbs’ article on this research in the LSE Research for the World online magazine: https://www.lse.ac.uk/research/research-for-the-world/economics/lords-of-the-manor-feudal-law-and-its-impact-on-rural-village-life
Contributor(s): Dr Sandra Obradović | Why are we so hostile towards anyone with a different opinion? Dr Sandra Obradović explains why we feel the way we do and what that’s got to do with election hostility. With populism on the rise and political debate polarised, it’s never been more important to understand the psychology of voters. 🔴 Find Dr Sandra Obradović’s article on this research in the LSE Research for the World online magazine: https://www.lse.ac.uk/research/research-for-the-world/politics/differences-in-opinion-growing-hostilities-and-politics-as-usual
Contributor(s): | Do you feel like you’re on a treadmill and happiness is always just around the corner? Are you disappointed that the things you buy don’t bring you lasting happiness? Professor Paul Dolan, from LSE’s Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, explains why this happens and what to do to improve the way you feel. This film is based in part, on Paul’s books Happy Ever After: A radical New Approach to Living Well and Happiness by Design: Finding Pleasure and Purpose in Everyday Life. 🔴 Find out more about Paul’s research: https://pauldolan.co.uk/ 🔴 Listen to Paul's brand new podcast, Duck-Rabbit: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0zUaiarx2SxILYha3gAtGE Acast: https://play.acast.com/s/duck-rabbit/duck-rabbit
Contributor(s): | The history of planning and housing in the United States and its violence towards communities of colour has played out in so many ways. From red-lining to restrictive covenants and from segregated public housing to deliberately segregated city plans, the Federal Government, financial institutions and planners have all promoted and facilitated a system that has ripped apart cities and communities across America. Drawing on her work as a planning and housing specialist and her role with the Detroit land bank, Dekonti Mends Cole talks about the aftermath of the last financial crisis and its uneven geographic and human impacts on the city. She reminds us that “Housing is civil rights work” showing how profoundly disinvestment in communities of colour grew into pernicious, intergenerational financial inequality with White households having amassed ten times more wealth than their Black counterparts.
Contributor(s): Dr Grace Lordan | Dr Grace Lordan's new book, Think Big, provides a practical framework to keep you moving in the right direction. Find out more about Think Big: https://www.gracelordan.com/ Praise for Think Big: "This is a rare self-help book that's actually informed by evidence. Drawing on her knowledge of behavioural economics and psychology, Grace Lordan shares a host of perceptive, practical tips for getting out of your own way and making progress toward your career goals." ― Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of THINK AGAIN and ORIGINALS, and host of the TED podcast WorkLife "A practical and accessible guide to using behavioural science in your career." ― Caroline Criado Perez, author of Invisible Women "Insights from Behavioural Science are being used around the globe for a variety of purposes but never, until now for career building-something Grace Lordan does systematically, eloquently, and instructively in Think Big." ― Author of INFLUENCE AND PRE-SUASION "In a refreshingly down to earth way, Grace shows how the insights from behavioural science can not only help you to build the career you want but also the career that will make you happy. This book will interest and entertain you whatever your stage of career." ― Professor Paul Dolan, London School of Economics, author of Happiness by Design and Happy Ever After "On your journey to thinking big — about yourself and about the world — Grace Lordan is a wise and winning guide. She's written the ultimate primer on enlisting modest changes to achieve monumental goals." ― Daniel H. Pink, author of WHEN, DRIVE, and TO SELL IS HUMAN
Contributor(s): Dr Thomas Curran | In a competitive culture that values work ethic and merit, is perfectionism a benign trait that helps us succeed or a pernicious illness we need to take more seriously? Dr Tom Curran from LSE’s Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science researches perfectionism, its damaging effects and why society is making it more prevalent.
Contributor(s): Dr Sam Friedman, Dr Aaron Reeves | For more than a century, Who’s Who has functioned as a bible of the British establishment – the most trusted catalogue of who is (and who is not) in the country’s true upper echelons. Who’s Who allows elites to express their cultural preferences: their recreations and hobbies. By looking at 120 years of this data, Dr Sam Friedman (Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at LSE) and Dr Aaron Reeves (Visiting Senior Fellow in the International Inequalities Institute at LSE) examine how elites signal their superior social position via the consumption of culture. From aristocratic pursuits like polo and dressage, to highbrow interests such as opera and fine arts, to the ordinariness of simply walking the dog, what does the historical timeline of these cultural preferences tell us about elites’ changing relationship to wider society? The full paper, From Aristocratic to Ordinary: shifting modes of elite distinction (2020) can be read in the American Sociological Review: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0003122420912941 Find Dr Friedman and Dr Reeve’s article on this research in the LSE Research for the World online magazine.
Contributor(s): Tony Duffin, Daniel Brombacher, Siria Gastelum, María Alejander Vélez, Héctor Fabio Santos, Miguel Samper, Bo Mathiasen, John Collins | Who are the people most affected by the drugs trade? What are the challenges they face? This film explores the effects illicit economies have on drugs producers and consumers in Colombia, and how new alternative approaches are confronting the damaging legacy of the war on drugs. An initiative of LSE’s International Drug Policy Unit (IDPU), the GIZ Global Partnership on Drugs Policies and Development (GPDPD) and the Global Initiative on Transnational Organized Crime (GITOC), the Drugs and Development Hub brings together actors from various fields to help shape new approaches to drugs and development. In January 2020 we launched the Hub at an event in Colombia hosted by our international partners the Centre for the Study of Security and Drugs (CESED) at the Universidad de Los Andes in Bogota. 🔴 For more updates, follow the Hub on Twitter: https://twitter.com/dev_drugs 🔴 More from LSE: Study with us ➡️ http://www.lse.ac.uk/ Facebook ➡️ https://www.facebook.com/lseps/ Instagram ➡️ https://www.instagram.com/londonschoo... Twitter ➡️ https://twitter.com/LSEnews LinkedIn ➡️ https://www.linkedin.com/school/londo...
Contributor(s): | Twenty years ago, the Women's International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan's Military Sexual Slavery took place in Tokyo, Japan. This documentary commemorates the anniversary by acknowledging the Tribunal as a significant landmark and exploring its legacy. The documentary is a reminder of the collective shame on the part of states that to this day have done little to deliver justice. But it is also a story of when women, confronted by the catastrophic failure on the part of states to secure a gender just peace, took action. It is a model of what is possible when international law is applied through a gender lens and the transformative potential of international law. 🔴 LSE Centre for Women, Peace & Security: https://www.lse.ac.uk/women-peace-security
Contributor(s): | Dr Thomas Gift, Visiting Fellow at the LSE US Centre, provides explanation and commentary on some the key questions about government in America: the separate branches of government, their responsibilities, and how they do (and don’t) work together. This film is part of the series The US Elections: Explained, which is made in collaboration with the LSE’s US Centre. Keywords: US Elections, government, branches, Congress, Executive, Supreme Court, history, politics, democracy, democrat, republican, explanation, commentary.
Contributor(s): | Dr Thomas Gift, Visiting Fellow at the LSE US Centre, provides explanation and commentary on some the key questions about government in America: the separate branches of government, their responsibilities, and how they do (and don’t) work together. This film is part of the series The US Elections: Explained, which is made in collaboration with the LSE’s US Centre. Keywords: US Elections, government, branches, Congress, Executive, Supreme Court, history, politics, democracy, democrat, republican, explanation, commentary.
Contributor(s): | The Inclusion Initiative is a new research centre that will leverage behavioural science insights to advance our understanding of the factors that enhance inclusion at work. Our first area of focus is the financial and professional services. Over the next three years we aim to build an open source research repository that houses rigorous and relevant research related to inclusion at work, in the financial and professional services and beyond. The Inclusion Initiative (TII) will bring industry, academics and other stakeholders together regularly to exchange ideas, highlight new findings and build partnerships.
Contributor(s): | Melanie R. Brown, Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity, International Inequalities Institute, LSE provides explanation of commentary on some the key questions about race in America: its history, how it affects society today, and what needs to change.
Contributor(s): Dr David Smith | Former US Centre Visiting Lecturer Dr David Smith answers some the key questions about populism: how to define it, where it originated, what the differences are between left and right wing populism and, finally, how populism affects US politics. This film is part of the series The US Elections: Explained, which is made in collaboration with the LSE’s US Centre.
Contributor(s): | In this video, Emma Sagor (Portland) and Elaine Trimble (London) explain how behavioural science has informed their transportation projects. The interviews were conducted before the 2020 Portland protests.
Contributor(s): John Collins | We've been working with our global partners to consider how drug users and homeless people have been impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. Highlighting some of the best and worst developments in policies and service provision, this short film asks what we can learn from the crisis. 🔴 This film accompanies a new paper: Saving Lives in the time of COVID-19 – Case Study of Harm Reduction, Homelessness and Drug Use in Dublin, Ireland http://www.lse.ac.uk/united-states/As... 🔴 Read more: http://www.lse.ac.uk/News/Latest-news...
Contributor(s): Professor Mike Savage | Instances of racist hate crimes have surged in the UK since the 2016 Brexit referendum. The rise of populist nationalism in many parts of the developed world testifies to the resurgence of fears around intensified immigration, and to the renewed power of racism. Professor Mike Savage, director of LSE’s International Inequalities Institute and Martin White Professor in the LSE Department of Sociology, examines the varying forms of nationalism harboured amongst British elites, and considers how intensifying inequalities inform volatile nationalist and racist sentiments across British society. Find out more about Professor Savage’s research: http://www.lse.ac.uk/sociology/people/mike-savage
Contributor(s): Rob Sharp | Does the media typically represent asylum seekers and refugees fairly? Could it do a better job at representing them? LSE PhD researcher and journalist Rob Sharp has been working with asylum seekers and refugees to explore how innovative participatory creative storytelling techniques can give voice to their experiences. This short film features participants and three short stories from the Comfrey Project in Gateshead.
Contributor(s): Rebecca Elliott | Climate change is making the planet we inhabit a more dangerous place to live. After several devastating hurricane seasons in recent years, it has become easier, and more frightening, to comprehend what a world of increasingly extreme weather might mean for us. But when policymakers, officials and experts aim to map and quantify the ‘value at risk’ from these threats, what does this mean in practice for the residents of the affected communities? Dr Rebecca Elliott from the Department of Sociology examines how the people of New York City responded to a new ‘flood insurance rate map’ in the wake of Hurricane Sandy in 2012
Contributor(s): Professor Tony Travers | For the first in our new series of short films we introduce the theme of walkability in London. As groups of citizens press for more sustainable forms of transport and the Greater London Authority (GLA), through the London Plan, is set to give increasing priority to pedestrians over cars, walking as a form of transport has gained prominence. Given the need for social distancing during the COVID-19 crisis in a city that has seen the highest age-standardised mortality than any other region in the UK, walking will form an important part of any mobility strategy in the coming months.
Contributor(s): John Collins, Charlotte Eaton | It is impossible to specify the number of extrajudicial killings that have occurred in the Philippines since President Duterte announced his ‘war on drugs’ in May 2016. What is certain, however, is the disruptive impacts that these ‘strongman’ politics have had on daily life in that country. This short film shows how Philippine photojournalist Raffy Lerma has documented the human cost if this war. The LSE International Drugs Policy Unit works with campaigners, policy experts and politicians to combat the damaging effects of the war of drugs.
Contributor(s): Eleni Karagiannaki, Tania Burchardt | Eleni Karagiannaki and Tania Burchardt discuss the findings of their research on living arrangements across Europe, and how individuals and families share their resources within households.
Contributor(s): | This video was developed as part of the project Children's data and privacy online: growing up in a digital age by the London School of Economics and Political Science with funding from the Information Commissioner’s Office. It is part of our online privacy toolkit for children, parents, and educators which was developed with the participation of a mix of children aged 12 to 14 years. Other toolkit resources available at http://www.lse.ac.uk/my-privacy-uk Online privacy: what’s the issue? http://www.lse.ac.uk/my-privacy-uk/wh... Who has my data? http://www.lse.ac.uk/my-privacy-uk/wh... Who is tracking me? http://www.lse.ac.uk/my-privacy-uk/wh... What are my privacy rights? http://www.lse.ac.uk/my-privacy-uk/wh... What can go wrong? http://www.lse.ac.uk/my-privacy-uk/wh... How to protect my privacy? http://www.lse.ac.uk/my-privacy-uk/ho... Watch and play section: http://www.lse.ac.uk/my-privacy-uk/wa... Sections for educators: http://www.lse.ac.uk/my-privacy-uk/fo... For parents: http://www.lse.ac.uk/my-privacy-uk/fo... and for policy-makers: http://www.lse.ac.uk/my-privacy-uk/fo...
Contributor(s): Michael Bruter, Sarah Harrison | A bite size introduction to the concept of electoral ergonomics, which Michael Bruter and Sarah Harrison have crafted to understand the interface between the psychology of voters and the organisation of elections, focusing on all the apparently anodyne aspects of electoral arrangement that may in fact trigger different emotions, memories, or reactions on the part of voters.
Contributor(s): | Think of London housing and you probably imagine a terrace of Victorian houses with neat gardens. But most of the city's new homes are flats in blocks and towers, often at very high densities. In this film, residents of several high-density developments show us what they like and don't like about their homes. The film is part of a three-year research and knowledge-exchange programme exploring residents' experience of high-density living.
Contributor(s): Atte Jääskeläinen | National news agencies in Europe are facing significant challenges due to a series of financial, political and cultural crises operating on national, transnational, and global scales. Yet these crises also present important opportunities for innovation and diversification in the context of a rapidly evolving news environment.
Contributor(s): Professor Eileen Barker | What is a cult? Are all cults dangerous? Do they use brainwashing?
Contributor(s): Lin Yang | GDP is a statistic that has dominated international goal-setting standards for growth for decades. But in an era when GDP growth statistics are telling a different story from the lived experiences of so many in society, is it time to end its supremacy and establish a measure that better reflects and serves the values of society?
Contributor(s): Jo Cantley | Healthy Minds is a unique curriculum that redefines personal, social and health education in secondary schools. It aims to develop emotional resilience and self-efficacy in students. The London School of Economic and the charity Bounce Forward have collaborated to pilot the curriculum in 32 Secondary schools. This short film looks at the results.
Contributor(s): Victoria Adewole, Lucy Bryant, Nisan Albayrak, Ganga Shreedhar | Find out about the LSE Festival research competition 2019 with our introductory video, filmed at the 2018 competition exhibition and prize-giving. LSE Festival research competition 2019: Call for submissions from LSE students and staff. Submit your poster, photograph, short film or written pitch to the LSE Festival research competition by Monday 21 January 2019 to get the chance to showcase your project and win £250! Visit http://www.lse.ac.uk/Research/lse-festival-research-competition for full details. This year’s theme is New World (Dis)Orders. To help you with your submission, take a look at our toolkit and previous winners. All submissions will feature on an online gallery while an exhibition of shortlisted entries and a prize-giving will take place at the LSE Festival 25 February-2 March 2019. #LSEFestival
Contributor(s): Kira Gartzou-Katsouyanni, Andy Done-Johnson, Ben Bradley, Martin Rigley, Jim Burley | This film is part of the research project: 'Debating Brexit impacts at local level: a mixed methods comparative study'. Conflict and Civil Society Research Unit, LSE. For more information visit us at: lse.ac.uk/ccs/brexit
Contributor(s): Professor Andrew Murray | HAL 9000 will soon no longer be science fiction: sentient machines will quickly be with us. As “smart agents” make decisions for human actors a number of important legal issues will emerge. In this short film, LSE Professor Andrew Murray looks at how AI will fundamentally alter our understanding of what the law is and what it can achieve.
These themes will be the focus of Professor Murray’s forthcoming book - The Objective Self: Identity and Law in the Digital Society.
Contributor(s): Dr. Sara Evans-Lacko | Dr. Sara Evans-Lacko from the LSE Personal Social Services Research Unit discusses depression in the workplace and why managers should support people with depression. Read the full manuscript here:
https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/8/6/e021795
Contributor(s): Professor Benjamin G. Voyer | What is self-construal and how does it affect everyday social interactions?
In this video, Prof Voyer introduces the psychological concept of self-construal, and his research on the topic. Self-construal, which refers to the representation that individuals have of their self, others, and the interconnections between the two, guide many of our everyday behaviours, from interactions with our friends and colleagues at work, to how we react to situations in which we are - or not - in power.
http://www.lse.ac.uk/PBS/People/Professor-Ben-G.-Voyer https://www.benvoyer.com;
Contributor(s): Dr Michael Muthukrishna | Dr Michael Muthukrishna shines an evolutionary light on the problem of corruption revealing that rather than a breakdown in cooperation, corruption is cooperation. One scale of cooperation, typically the one that’s smaller and easier to sustain, undermines another. The mechanisms that sustain these scales of cooperation are well understood within evolutionary biology and cultural evolution giving us new tools in the battle against corruption. Drawing on recent work, he reveals that transparency is not enough in the places with the highest corruption, and can even make the problem worse. He explains how competition between societies and between different ways of doing things - cultural-groups selection - has been responsible for the suppression of cooperation over history.
Contributor(s): Dr Alpa Shah | Proponents of economic growth claim that it will trickle down to everyone, will be good for all. But is this the case? Drawing on her co-authored book, ‘Ground Down by Growth’, LSE’s Dr Alpa Shah looks at how capitalism is entrenching social inequalities in India through inherited inequalities of power; seasonal casual labour migration; and the conjugated oppression of class, tribe, caste and gender. Focusing on India’s Dalits and Adivasis – its low castes and tribes, historically stigmatized as ‘untouchable’ and ‘wild’ – who today account for one in twenty-five people in the world, Dr Shah reveals how they are the hidden source of cheap labour and land from which much of the world economy benefits, but also highlights how they are fighting against the situation they find themselves in.
Contributor(s): Professor Nava Ashraf | LSE's Professor Nava Ashraf looks at how organisations and employees can make work more satisfying through the development of altruistic behaviour. To understand altruistic behaviour, she argues, we must understand the process through which altruism develops and is shaped by a person's choices and his or her environment. To do this, Professor Ashraf introduces the concept of altruistic capital, which grows with effort devoted to altruistic acts and facilitates future altruism.
Contributor(s): Professor Charlie Beckett | Journalists usually try to be observers, but recently something has changed. We now increasingly see journalists living the story rather than just telling it. In this film LSE’s Professor Charlie Beckett looks at how news reporting is changing. The film draws upon the findings of Rescue or report? The ethical and editorial dilemmas of crisis journalism, written by the journalist Petra Olsson under the supervision of Charlie Beckett.
Contributor(s): Brett Heasman | The word “autism” encompasses both diversity and complexity. Autistic people* have unique ways of experiencing the world and perceiving others, are diverse in their abilities and behaviours, and are often represented from the “outside” by books, films, the media and science. It can be hard for society to understand their specific and complex needs, which can negatively impact their quality of life, relationships, support networks and job prospects. As part of his doctoral research Brett Heasman, from the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, has created the ‘Open Minds’ project which aims to improve public understanding of autism by highlighting the perspectives of autistic people, their parents and their carers. Brett has designed an interactive exhibition that brings research and art together, where visitors can hear the portraits speak about their experiences of life on “the spectrum”. Brett Heasman is a third year PhD candidate in the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science at LSE. His research specialises in understanding the social factors which extend or limit interactions for people diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome. His research is supervised by Dr Alex Gillespie. His doctorate is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). The Open Minds exhibition is in association with LSE Arts, LSE Knowledge Exchange and Impact, the Economic and Social Research Council, Sensory Spectacle, Matthew’s Hub, and the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science. * Participants in the project have indicated that their preferred term is ‘autistic people’.
Contributor(s): Professor Laura Bear | Anthropologist Professor Laura Bear examines the effects of austerity, looking specifically at the Hooghly river in India.
Contributor(s): Paula Kiel | For the past two decades, as in so many other fields of our social lives, digital media has permeated the field of death, dying and bereavement. Some of these online practices are arguable challenging certain aspects of the social construction of death during modernity. In her research, Paula Kiel explores the practices of preparing one’s online presence after death. This exploratory research looks to characterise services offering users to plan for their digital afterlife as well as the experience of using such services and planning ahead one’s online future after death.
Contributor(s): Dr Julia Morley | Julia Morley's research investigates the way we measure success in the social sector. Why has social impact become an increasingly prevalent measure of success? How can we be sure it is conceptually justified and correctly applied by social sector organisations? And how might the use of social impact measurement affect staff? In this film, Dr Morley examines the rise of social impact reporting and argues that a group of individuals working in social investment – many of whom have a background in finance – are driving this change.
Contributor(s): Dr Paul Stock | Dr Paul Stock from the International History department looks at how the Grand Tour of the 17th, 18th and 19th century has helped define holidaymaking today. He contends that the history of going on holiday reveals important things about us, not least the UK’s complicated relationship with Europe.
Contributor(s): Dr Alan Mace, Fanny Blanc, Barney Stringer, Catriona Riddell, Jonathan Seager, Richard Blyth | Housing should be strategically built on the Metropolitan Green Belt to halt its piecemeal development and alleviate development pressure on the Wider South East, while protecting environmentally important areas, says a new report from the London School of Economics and Political Science. According to the report, A 21st Century Metropolitan Green Belt, current planning regulations allow for parts of the green belt to be chipped away while preventing the building of settlements which make more sense strategically and environmentally. This short film highlights some of the key findings.
Contributor(s): Kathleen Scanlon | New research published by LSE and the Berkeley Group explores how urban villages could help address the capital's housing crisis. The report, called 'New London Villages', identifies six characteristics of a real urban village. These include being a place that is unique, mixed, locally driven and designed for social interaction. The authors then tested Kidbrooke Village in the Royal Borough of Greenwich against them and made a series of recommendations for all new major developments in London.
Contributor(s): Mona Sloane, Joanne Entwistle, Don Slater | Light is fundamental to social life. Light, by the same token, can play a key role in reproducing urban inequalities. This film follows the Configuring Light Roundtables project which sets out to explore light as critical urban material and map out how social research and cross-disciplinary collaboration can help make our cities better and more equitable – by day and night.
Contributor(s): Dr Michael Muthukrishna | In this film Dr Michael Muthukrishna explains the main ideas in his research paper ‘Innovation in the Collective Brain’. He argues that innovation is not the work of geniuses, but rather the product of our combined social knowledge. In short, if you want to be an innovator, it’s better to be social than smart.
Contributor(s): Sonia Livingstone | This is a general overview of the EU kids Online project.
Contributor(s): Ellen Helsper, Giovanna Mascheroni, Lelia Green, Leslie Haddon, Monica Barbovschi, Nathalie Sonck, Sonia Livingstone | These videos are of the thematic reports from the EU Kids online project.
Contributor(s): Ellen Helsper, Giovanna Mascheroni, Lelia Green, Leslie Haddon, Monica Barbovschi, Nathalie Sonck, Sonia Livingstone | These videos are of the thematic reports from the EU Kids online project.
Contributor(s): Ellen Helsper, Giovanna Mascheroni, Lelia Green, Leslie Haddon, Monica Barbovschi, Nathalie Sonck, Sonia Livingstone | These videos are of the thematic reports from the EU Kids online project.
Contributor(s): Ellen Helsper, Giovanna Mascheroni, Lelia Green, Leslie Haddon, Monica Barbovschi, Nathalie Sonck, Sonia Livingstone | These videos are of the thematic reports from the EU Kids online project.
Contributor(s): Ellen Helsper, Giovanna Mascheroni, Lelia Green, Leslie Haddon, Monica Barbovschi, Nathalie Sonck, Sonia Livingstone | These videos are of the thematic reports from the EU Kids online project.
Contributor(s): Ellen Helsper, Giovanna Mascheroni, Lelia Green, Leslie Haddon, Monica Barbovschi, Nathalie Sonck, Sonia Livingstone | These videos are of the thematic reports from the EU Kids online project.
Contributor(s): Ellen Helsper, Giovanna Mascheroni, Lelia Green, Leslie Haddon, Monica Barbovschi, Nathalie Sonck, Sonia Livingstone | These videos are of the thematic reports from the EU Kids online project.
Contributor(s): Ellen Helsper, Giovanna Mascheroni, Lelia Green, Leslie Haddon, Monica Barbovschi, Nathalie Sonck, Sonia Livingstone | These videos are of the thematic reports from the EU Kids online project.
Contributor(s): Ellen Helsper, Giovanna Mascheroni, Lelia Green, Leslie Haddon, Monica Barbovschi, Nathalie Sonck, Sonia Livingstone | These videos are of the thematic reports from the EU Kids online project.
Contributor(s): Ellen Helsper, Giovanna Mascheroni, Lelia Green, Leslie Haddon, Monica Barbovschi, Nathalie Sonck, Sonia Livingstone | These videos are of the thematic reports from the EU Kids online project.
Contributor(s): Ellen Helsper, Giovanna Mascheroni, Lelia Green, Leslie Haddon, Monica Barbovschi, Nathalie Sonck, Sonia Livingstone | These videos are of the thematic reports from the EU Kids online project.
Contributor(s): Ellen Helsper, Giovanna Mascheroni, Lelia Green, Leslie Haddon, Monica Barbovschi, Nathalie Sonck, Sonia Livingstone | These videos are of the thematic reports from the EU Kids online project.
Contributor(s): Ellen Helsper, Giovanna Mascheroni, Lelia Green, Leslie Haddon, Monica Barbovschi, Nathalie Sonck, Sonia Livingstone | These videos are of the thematic reports from the EU Kids online project.
Contributor(s): Ellen Helsper, Giovanna Mascheroni, Lelia Green, Leslie Haddon, Monica Barbovschi, Nathalie Sonck, Sonia Livingstone | These videos are of the thematic reports from the EU Kids online project.
Contributor(s): David Šmahel, Gitte Stald, Kairi Talves, Annikka Suoninen, Catherine Blaya, Uwe Hasebrink | In the following videos members of the EU Kids Online network describe the most interesting findings from their different countries and their recommendations for parents.
Contributor(s): Despina Chronaki, Bence Ságvári, Kjartan Ólafsson, Brian O’Neill, Giovanna Mascheroni, Guna Spurava | In the following videos members of the EU Kids Online network describe the most interesting findings from their different countries and their recommendations for parents.
Contributor(s): Despina Chronaki, Bence Ságvári, Kjartan Ólafsson, Brian O’Neill, Giovanna Mascheroni, Guna Spurava | In the following videos members of the EU Kids Online network describe the most interesting findings from their different countries and their recommendations for parents.
Contributor(s): Despina Chronaki, Bence Ságvári, Kjartan Ólafsson, Brian O’Neill, Giovanna Mascheroni, Guna Spurava | In the following videos members of the EU Kids Online network describe the most interesting findings from their different countries and their recommendations for parents.
Contributor(s): Despina Chronaki, Bence Ságvári, Kjartan Ólafsson, Brian O’Neill, Giovanna Mascheroni, Guna Spurava | In the following videos members of the EU Kids Online network describe the most interesting findings from their different countries and their recommendations for parents.
Contributor(s): Ingrida Gabrialaviciute, Alfredas Laurinavičius, Andreia Costa, Joseph Borg, Nathalie Sonck, Cristina Ponte, Monica Barbovschi | In the following videos members of the EU Kids Online network describe the most interesting findings from their different countries and their recommendations for parents.
Contributor(s): Ingrida Gabrialaviciute, Alfredas Laurinavičius, Andreia Costa, Joseph Borg, Nathalie Sonck, Cristina Ponte, Monica Barbovschi | In the following videos members of the EU Kids Online network describe the most interesting findings from their different countries and their recommendations for parents.
Contributor(s): Ingrida Gabrialaviciute, Alfredas Laurinavičius, Andreia Costa, Joseph Borg, Nathalie Sonck, Cristina Ponte, Monica Barbovschi | In the following videos members of the EU Kids Online network describe the most interesting findings from their different countries and their recommendations for parents.
Contributor(s): Ingrida Gabrialaviciute, Alfredas Laurinavičius, Andreia Costa, Joseph Borg, Nathalie Sonck, Cristina Ponte, Monica Barbovschi | In the following videos members of the EU Kids Online network describe the most interesting findings from their different countries and their recommendations for parents.
Contributor(s): Marina Geer, Galina Soldatova, Bojana Lobe, Miguel Angel Casado, Ulrika Sjöberg, Martin Hermida, Sara Signer Widmer, Kürşat Çağıltay, Leslie Haddon | In the following videos members of the EU Kids Online network describe the most interesting findings from their different countries and their recommendations for parents.
Contributor(s): Ingrida Gabrialaviciute, Alfredas Laurinavičius, Andreia Costa, Joseph Borg, Nathalie Sonck, Cristina Ponte, Monica Barbovschi | In the following videos members of the EU Kids Online network describe the most interesting findings from their different countries and their recommendations for parents.
Contributor(s): Marina Geer, Galina Soldatova, Bojana Lobe, Miguel Angel Casado, Ulrika Sjöberg, Martin Hermida, Sara Signer Widmer, Kürşat Çağıltay, Leslie Haddon | In the following videos members of the EU Kids Online network describe the most interesting findings from their different countries and their recommendations for parents.
Contributor(s): Marina Geer, Galina Soldatova, Bojana Lobe, Miguel Angel Casado, Ulrika Sjöberg, Martin Hermida, Sara Signer Widmer, Kürşat Çağıltay, Leslie Haddon | In the following videos members of the EU Kids Online network describe the most interesting findings from their different countries and their recommendations for parents.
Contributor(s): Marina Geer, Galina Soldatova, Bojana Lobe, Miguel Angel Casado, Ulrika Sjöberg, Martin Hermida, Sara Signer Widmer, Kürşat Çağıltay, Leslie Haddon | In the following videos members of the EU Kids Online network describe the most interesting findings from their different countries and their recommendations for parents.
Contributor(s): Marina Geer, Galina Soldatova, Bojana Lobe, Miguel Angel Casado, Ulrika Sjöberg, Martin Hermida, Sara Signer Widmer, Kürşat Çağıltay, Leslie Haddon | In the following videos members of the EU Kids Online network describe the most interesting findings from their different countries and their recommendations for parents.
Contributor(s): Marina Geer, Galina Soldatova, Bojana Lobe, Miguel Angel Casado, Ulrika Sjöberg, Martin Hermida, Sara Signer Widmer, Kürşat Çağıltay, Leslie Haddon | In the following videos members of the EU Kids Online network describe the most interesting findings from their different countries and their recommendations for parents.
Contributor(s): David Šmahel, Gitte Stald, Kairi Talves, Annikka Suoninen, Catherine Blaya, Uwe Hasebrink | In the following videos members of the EU Kids Online network describe the most interesting findings from their different countries and their recommendations for parents.
Contributor(s): David Šmahel, Gitte Stald, Kairi Talves, Annikka Suoninen, Catherine Blaya, Uwe Hasebrink | In the following videos members of the EU Kids Online network describe the most interesting findings from their different countries and their recommendations for parents.
Contributor(s): David Šmahel, Gitte Stald, Kairi Talves, Annikka Suoninen, Catherine Blaya, Uwe Hasebrink | In the following videos members of the EU Kids Online network describe the most interesting findings from their different countries and their recommendations for parents.
Contributor(s): Despina Chronaki, Bence Ságvári, Kjartan Ólafsson, Brian O’Neill, Giovanna Mascheroni, Guna Spurava | In the following videos members of the EU Kids Online network describe the most interesting findings from their different countries and their recommendations for parents.
Contributor(s): Ingrid Paus-Hasebrink, Leen d’Haenens, Tatiana Jereissati, Luiza Shahbazyan, Dunja Potočnik, Yiannis Laouris | In the following videos members of the EU Kids Online network describe the most interesting findings from their different countries and their recommendations for parents.
Contributor(s): Ingrid Paus-Hasebrink, Leen d’Haenens, Tatiana Jereissati, Luiza Shahbazyan, Dunja Potočnik, Yiannis Laouris | In the following videos members of the EU Kids Online network describe the most interesting findings from their different countries and their recommendations for parents.
Contributor(s): Ingrid Paus-Hasebrink, Leen d’Haenens, Tatiana Jereissati, Luiza Shahbazyan, Dunja Potočnik, Yiannis Laouris | In the following videos members of the EU Kids Online network describe the most interesting findings from their different countries and their recommendations for parents.
Contributor(s): Ingrid Paus-Hasebrink, Leen d’Haenens, Tatiana Jereissati, Luiza Shahbazyan, Dunja Potočnik, Yiannis Laouris | In the following videos members of the EU Kids Online network describe the most interesting findings from their different countries and their recommendations for parents.
Contributor(s): Marina Geer, Galina Soldatova, Bojana Lobe, Miguel Angel Casado, Ulrika Sjöberg, Martin Hermida, Sara Signer Widmer, Kürşat Çağıltay, Leslie Haddon | In the following videos members of the EU Kids Online network describe the most interesting findings from their different countries and their recommendations for parents.
Contributor(s): Ingrida Gabrialaviciute, Alfredas Laurinavičius, Andreia Costa, Joseph Borg, Nathalie Sonck, Cristina Ponte, Monica Barbovschi | In the following videos members of the EU Kids Online network describe the most interesting findings from their different countries and their recommendations for parents.
Contributor(s): Ingrida Gabrialaviciute, Alfredas Laurinavičius, Andreia Costa, Joseph Borg, Nathalie Sonck, Cristina Ponte, Monica Barbovschi | In the following videos members of the EU Kids Online network describe the most interesting findings from their different countries and their recommendations for parents.
Contributor(s): Despina Chronaki, Bence Ságvári, Kjartan Ólafsson, Brian O’Neill, Giovanna Mascheroni, Guna Spurava | In the following videos members of the EU Kids Online network describe the most interesting findings from their different countries and their recommendations for parents.
Contributor(s): David Šmahel, Gitte Stald, Kairi Talves, Annikka Suoninen, Catherine Blaya, Uwe Hasebrink | In the following videos members of the EU Kids Online network describe the most interesting findings from their different countries and their recommendations for parents.
Contributor(s): Ingrida Gabrialaviciute, Alfredas Laurinavičius, Andreia Costa, Joseph Borg, Nathalie Sonck, Cristina Ponte, Monica Barbovschi | In the following videos members of the EU Kids Online network describe the most interesting findings from their different countries and their recommendations for parents.
Contributor(s): Ingrid Paus-Hasebrink, Leen d’Haenens, Tatiana Jereissati, Luiza Shahbazyan, Dunja Potočnik, Yiannis Laouris | In the following videos members of the EU Kids Online network describe the most interesting findings from their different countries and their recommendations for parents.
Contributor(s): Ingrid Paus-Hasebrink, Leen d’Haenens, Tatiana Jereissati, Luiza Shahbazyan, Dunja Potočnik, Yiannis Laouris | In the following videos members of the EU Kids Online network describe the most interesting findings from their different countries and their recommendations for parents.
Contributor(s): David Šmahel, Gitte Stald, Kairi Talves, Annikka Suoninen, Catherine Blaya, Uwe Hasebrink | In the following videos members of the EU Kids Online network describe the most interesting findings from their different countries and their recommendations for parents.
Contributor(s): Professor Henry Jenkins, Professor Sonia Livingstone, Professor Craig Calhoun, Professor Charlie Beckett, Professor Patricia Riley, Professor Terhi Rantanen, Professor Mark Deuze | In 2013, LSE's Department of Media and Communications celebrated its tenth anniversary with an international one-day conference bringing together some of the world's leading media theorists.
Contributor(s): Professor Sandra Jovchelovitch | During the nineteenth and the twentieth century, rapid economic and social development concentrated ever greater numbers of the Brazilian population in cities. This urban expansion drew in thousands of workers from across the country, where - in the absence of sufficient infrastructure - they settled in shanty towns, or "favelas," on the steep hillsides around the city. Although justifiably associated with extreme poverty, and the problems of crime that accompany this, the favelas of Rio de Janeiro are also places of surprising cultural richness. LSE professor Sandra Jovchelovitch has been studying the society and culture of the favelas for several years, and in this short film talks about how grassroots organisations such as AfroReggae and CUFA have been working with favela residents to establish a stable space in which that cultural richness might find identity and expression.
Contributor(s): Christelle Rabier | In this short film, Wellcome Fellow Christelle Rabier of LSE's department of Economic History narrates the invention of medical illustration 1708-1820. Images courtesy and copyright of The Wellcome Library. In the eighteenth century, surgeons were rapidly developing new techniques for invasive surgery. But how to transmit this information? Only a very few students at a time would be able to watch a procedure, and even then, it wasn't clear what was happening amid the throng of assistants required to restrain the un-anaesthetised patient. Early medical illustrations offer little information to the prospective surgeon, but over the course of a hundred years, a series of conventions emerged - cross-sections for interior views, dotted lines for motion, and the transposition of multiple sequential events onto the same plate - all of which meant that by the beginning of the nineteenth century, illustrators were able to depict the actual process of surgery, and spread medical innovations further afield than the confines of a single theatre.
Contributor(s): Mercy Nahmo, Vlad Glaveanu, Martin Bauer, Luca Savorelli, Lila Caballero-Sosa, Aurelie Bahsa i Novosejt, Ben Voyer, Ben Wilson, Sara Belton, Penny Hilton, Stavroula Tsirogianni, Tom Pritchard | Computer processing has revolutionised the social sciences, enabling the collection and processing of vast quantities of data. Amid the consequent information glut, effective presentation of data is more important than ever - even good research can't do any work if the right people can't access its conclusions. So each year, social science students from LSE partner up with graphic designers from the London College of Communication (LCC) to produce data presentations that are as visually striking as they are epistemically credible.
Contributor(s): Myria Georgiou, Ramy Aly | Throughout the so-called War On Terror, trans-national Arab television stations such as AL Jazeera have supplied a valuable corrective to the perceived political bias of Western media. But that curiosity has been coupled with suspicion: was Al Jazeera supplying a useful Arab perspective, or seditious Muslim propaganda? Who was watching these stations, and what impact was Arab television having on its viewers' sense of cultural identity? Media & Citizenship studies the ways transnational media, in particular Arabic language television, reshape the political landscapes of citizenship in the European Union. It provides the first European wide empirical research on the use of Arabic language television and its influence on integration in multicultural societies. After collecting data across 7 EU nations (Cyprus, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the UK), focus group studies explore how Arabic speakers themselves construct citizenship in the light of their media use, and their adopted national cultures.
Contributor(s): Mitchel T. Keller | With widespread interest in tracing our family histories, what of our academic family tree - who taught our teachers? In 1997, mathematician Harry B. Coonce set out to trace his academic ancestry. His database now contains 150,000 names, stretching back to pre- Renaissance Europe. Current director of the Mathematics Genealogy project and LSE researcher Mitchel T. Keller explains how it all works, and what it means to be related to genius.
Contributor(s): Alan Bracey, Ed Fay, Sue Donnelly | As widespread digitisation of books triggers the most significant shift in reading habits since the Gutenberg press, what happens to the libraries? Will they become mere book museums, insulated storehouses to safe-keep books from physical decay? And when everything in print is digitized, why will we still need librarians?
Contributor(s): Professor Chetan Bhatt | "Where do human rights come from? Are they universal across time and space, or do they, as Professor Chetan Bhatt asks, ""stop at the door of culture""? Should human rights organisations defend everyone, or have some persons forfeited their right to protection? When it was announced that Muslim cleric and prominent Al Qaeda spokesman Anwar al-Awlaki was to be the subject of a ""targeted killing"", a curious dilemma arose for human rights organisations. Targeted killings – effectively, state-endorsed assassinations – are not unprecedented, but Al-Awlaki is an unusual case: he is an American citizen, currently believed to be hiding in Yemen. Can the President of the United States order the execution of one of his own citizens without due process, without prosecution in a public trial? In the US, the American Civil Liberties Union and Center for Constitutional Rights launched a lawsuit protesting that the executive order against al-Awlaki was illegal. In response, members within those organisations protested that it was not the role of human rights organisations to militate in favour of persons who themselves had no respect for human rights. In this internal contradiction, a serious ethical situation has arisen. What limits are there to the defence of human rights?"
Contributor(s): Professor Sonia Livingstone | With 65 per cent of Europeans now online, what effect is this having on children? What type of material are children being exposed to through the internet? How do online risks compare to offline risks? In this short film, Professor Sonia Livingstone – head of LSE’s Department of Media and Communications – along with fellow researchers Dr Ellen Helsper and Dr Leslie Haddon, discuss the findings of their survey into the online habits of 23,420 children and their parents in 23 European countries. Professor Livingstone and her colleagues received funding from the EC's Internet Programmed to investigate the opportunities and the risks that children are exposed to online. They found that one in eight children report having been upset by something they have seen online and one in twelve have met an online contact offline. With almost a quarter of 9-10 year olds now hosting their own social network profile, the researchers ask what obligations internet service providers and social networking sites have to 'manage the interactions that they facilitate.' Their results are published in the EU Kids Online report, Risks and Safety on the Internet, available at the EU Kids Online website.
Contributor(s): Dr Kavita Abraham | Qualitative data can provide a researcher with a lot of interesting information , but trying to interpret what it means can lead to methodological problems. Unlike a list of numbers, the meaning of a text is not something everyone will necessarily agree on. It’s much easier for researcher bias to affect the interpretation, and it’s often difficult to explicitly demonstrate how conclusions have been reached. But what if you could train a machine to do the analysis? In this short film Kavita Abraham of LSE’s Methodology Institute explains how she has been using the software Alceste to analyse the transcripts of interviews with hundreds of people from Angola, Tanzania, and Sierra Leone. The interviews, which explored perceptions of local governance, were conducted by the BBC World Service Trust|, a charity that uses the power of the media to reduce poverty and promote human rights. Here Dr Abraham highlights some of the advantages of using a machine to study this kind of qualitative data.
Contributor(s): Dr Heather Jones | The prisoner reprisals of 1917 were a retaliatory action taken by German forces against captured French and British troops, in reaction to poor British and French treatment of German prisoner workers. This was a ruthless, calculated policy, intended to manipulate public opinion, as Heather Jones from the Department of International History explains. Prisoners held behind German lines during the 1917 reprisals were forced to work under shellfire on subsistence rations. But rather than conceal this mistreatment, the German captors actively encouraged prisoners to write home about it . This deliberate release of information was intended to mobilise public opinion in Britain and France in order to force changes in British and French military policy. The plan worked. As a direct consequence of the 1917 reprisal sequences, the French and British governments insisted, against the wishes of their military chiefs, that their German prisoner workers be withdrawn to safety. In consequence, the Germans halted their reprisals in May of 1917. However, the reprisals ultimately paved the way for more radicalised German prisoner mistreatment later in the war. By 1918, beatings and malnutrition were commonplace in the German army, and actions which a year before had been sufficiently shocking as to constitute a "reprisal" had become the norm. A book on this topic will be published with Cambridge University Press in 2011: Heather Jones, Violence against prisoners of war: Britain, France and Germany, 1914-1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011)
Contributor(s): Mirko Draca | Lobbying is big business in US politics, and getting bigger. Many commentators have voiced suspicions about the ties between lobbying firms, private sector businesses, and politics. They allege that a "revolving door", which sees employees moving from public office to private companies and back again, potentially jeopardises the public interest. Often highly paid, these lobbyists claim their salaries simply reflect their high ability, but critics complain those exiting the revolving door are attractive to lobbying firms because they can exploit their political connections. In this film Mirko Draca explains how he and his colleagues, Christian Fons-Rosen and Jordi Blanes i Vidal, measured the extent to which former political staff who become lobbyists benefit from their ties to government. This involves separating the issue of ability from the issue of political connections. Fortunately, the political system contains conditions for testing this: periodic elections mean that political contacts are vulnerable. By looking at what happens to a lobbyist's earnings when their former employer leaves political office, Draca and his colleagues have been able to measure the value of being politically well connected.
Contributor(s): Dr Kristen Rundle | Typically, the legal codes of despotic states lack transparency (you aren’t told what the laws are), lack consistency (one law will contradict another, making it impossible to obey both), often endorse retroactivity (you’re guilty today for an act that wasn’t illegal when you did it), and permit unannounced changes to the law. For Dr Kristen Rundle, from the Department of Law, this isn’t just a case of poor legal housekeeping. In this short film she discusses how the systemic disorder typically exhibited by the legal systems of despotic and transitional states suggests that tyranny requires ‘forms of power that are not compatible with law.’ Drawing on debates of legal philosophy, she explains why chaos works in the tyrant’s favour while law – even with pernicious content – ties up his ability to wield absolute power.
Contributor(s): Dr Kristen Rundle | Is law inherently moral or does Nazi law provide tragic proof that law has no intrinsic moral worth? For Positivists, such as H L A Hart, the systemic integrity of a legal code says nothing about its content – the law is simply whatever is put forward by lawgivers. In contrast natural lawyers, notably Lon Fuller, insist that the way law is expressed carries moral significance for those who are subject to it. In this film Dr Kristen Rundle, from the Department of Law, explains why the Hart- Fuller debate, begun in the Harvard Law Review in 1958, has never really gone away.
Contributor(s): Professor Martin Anthony | Diagnosing tumours, playing video games, detecting credit card fraud, recognising faces, reading handwriting… they don't seem like similar tasks, but they are all cases where "machine learning" is employed to enable computers to make intelligent decisions. And although the various tasks look very different, the mathematics behind them is remarkably similar, as Professor Martin Anthony explains in this short film. When computers fail to do something we find easy – reading handwriting, recognising faces – it's tempting to think of them as stupid machines. But it's often the case that tasks we find relatively easy to perform evade explicit codification. How, for example, would you specify rules which correctly identified cats and only cats – including three-legged cats – but excluded dogs? Employing ideas from probability theory, statistics, linear algebra, geometry and discrete mathematics, machine learning aims to generate systems of instructions – algorithms – that allow computers to perform cognitive-style tasks. In abstract terms, machine learning involves detecting patterns in very large datasets, clustering together similar objects and distinguishing dissimilar ones. This could help with the detection of anomalies (as with the identification of malignant tumours or fraudulent credit card usage), or it could be used to recognise patterns – making sense of handwritten characters, for example. But despite the extraordinary real-world effects this theoretical work makes possible, Professor Anthony, like many mathematicians, isn't directly concerned with the uses to which his work is eventually put – 'I think of myself as an applicable mathematician,' he says, 'if it wasn't interesting mathematically, I'd probably be doing something else.'
Contributor(s): Professor Eileen Munro | Baby P, Victoria Climbié - the names have become symbolic of the failures of the child protection agencies. Professor Eileen Munro, a former social worker herself and now an expert on child protection reform, believes that more attention needs to be given to the system, rather than just the individuals, that allowed these tragedies to occur. In this short film, she explains that only allocating blame to individual social workers and managers can leave the impression that the problem has been successfully fixed. But if the problem is systemic, then merely punishing and removing the culpable individuals simply sets the stage for the next case to occur. As Professor Munro says, "Human error is where you should begin to ask questions rather than where you should stop." Inspired by improved air safety procedures, she explains that the aim should be to design systems that work with the limits of human reasoning, and make it "easier for people to the right thing and harder for them to do the wrong thing".
Contributor(s): Peter Howlett, Aashish Velkar | Independent of British rule, the Indian economy expanded rapidly - but as the population also expanded, fears grew that the land would not be able to feed the rising numbers. The government took action and, during the 1960s, 70s, and into the 80s, impending famine was successfully averted through a series of agricultural policies designed to increase crop yields. This became known as the "Green Revolution." As part of a major project investigating how well facts travel, LSE economic historians Peter Howlett| and Aashish Velkar| travelled to southern India in search of a case study to see what had made those policies so successful. But when they arrived, they found a second green revolution was underway - presenting them with a unique research opportunity. Following a team from Tamil Nadu Agricultural University|, Dr Howlett and Dr Velkar were able to study firsthand how knowledge was transmitted between policy makers, scientists, and farmers, and how a very different model was emerging - one which emphasised a two-way flow of information and which has so far produced startling results. Their findings are in a new book collected on the "How Well Do ‘Facts’ Travel?" project, due out mid 2010.
Contributor(s): Dr Jason Alexander | While we grapple with the finer points of stem cell research or the ethics of assisted suicide, some moral issues are so obviously wrong that we hardly need to debate them. Yet history swiftly belies our notion of the ethically self-evident precept. Cultures in the past have flourished for many centuries at a time – fostering technical innovation, establishing centres of learning and culture – while simultaneously permitting slavery or human sacrifice or cannibalism, for example. In this short film, Dr Jason Alexander from the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method explains how a naturalistic account of where morality comes from and how it operates must be flexible enough to accommodate these wildly different parameters, whilst being sufficiently robust to account for the immovable and absolute hold it has upon us. Game theory, developed by economists as a means of studying bargaining situations, has since become a vital tool for students of human behaviour. Here, Dr Alexander, explores how this approach can be used to investigate how our moral sense may have developed, and how the dictates of morality can be binding and yet relative to a place and time.
Contributor(s): Zack Cooper | Deriding it as “socialism by stealth,” critics of President Obama’s plans for healthcare reform in the US have complained that the President intends to institute an American National Health Service. Meanwhile, in the UK, the NHS itself is becoming increasingly market-led with the roll-out of “NHS Choices” – a system which allows patients to choose their healthcare provider. Some see the “Choice” agenda as steering the NHS troublingly close to privatisation. In this short film, Zachary Cooper, a research officer with LSE Health explains how neither system will or should effect a wholesale replacement of the other. Instead both have much to learn from introducing the correct type of competition, incentives, and regulations. As published in the British Medical Journal, his recent work with Professor Julian LeGrand – formerly a senior Downing Street policy advisor and one of the architects of the Choice and Competition agenda – provides empirical evidence that patient choice has coincided with reduced waiting times and significantly improved equity in England – with discrepancies between the richest and the poorest patients all but invisible by 2007.
Contributor(s): Professor Arne Westad | When the Cold War ended, the threat of an all-out war between the superpowers ended with it. Nuclear war apparently went away. But while the political games changed, the nuclear arsenal that had done so much to keep the Cold War from ever turning hot remained very much in place. In this film, renowned historian of the Cold War Professor Arne Westad explains that not only have hopes for a dismantling of the weapons stockpile failed to be realised, but that the period since the end of the Cold War has seen proliferation occur at such a pace that ours is now referred to as "The Second Nuclear Age." Professor Westad also talks of his prevailing hope for a world free of nuclear weapons.
Contributor(s): Dr Alex Voorhoeve | Can we trust our intuitive judgments of right and wrong? Are moral judgments objective? Why be moral? In this short film, Dr. Alex Voorhoeve, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method, explains why he engaged eleven leading philosophers and scientists in conversation in order to elicit answers to these questions. Dr. Voorhoeve argues for the importance of the dialogue form for philosophical enquiry, and describes some of the advantages that written dialogues have over ordinary, monologic texts.
Contributor(s): Professor Janet Hunter | On 1 September 1923, an earthquake measuring 8.3 on the Richter scale struck the main Japanese island of Honshū. What wasn't immediately destroyed in the 4 – 10 minutes during which the ground shook was consumed by fires which swept through the largely wooden buildings of Tokyo and the port city of Yokohama – Japan's central import hub. In this short film Professor Janet Hunter, of the Department of Economic History, looks at how the Japanese economy reacted to this disaster. Despite the massive devastation and loss of life – as many as 140,000 died – one extraordinary feature is how quickly the Japanese economy recovered. Within two to three years, most of the large-scale indicators such as gross domestic product, had reverted to trend. Indeed by 1926 it was, in many respects, as if the earthquake had never occurred. According to Professor Hunter's research, patterns are emerging that permit insights into the psychology of markets. These suggest that even short-term profit-seeking, although seemingly callous and opportunistic, ultimately plays a vital role in assuring swift recovery.
Contributor(s): Dr Roman Frigg | Scientists produce the technologies that characterise modern life and their theories help us to understand how the world works – they are transparently useful. But why do we need philosophers of science? In this short film Dr Roman Frigg, a former theoretical physicist who is now senior lecturer in the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method, argues that all science is the result of a particular philosophical attitude. One of the tasks of philosophers of science is to analyse science in light of these attitudes. Philosophers can also feed back into science and Dr Frigg points to a project at LSE which looks at climate models as a good example of this. Climate scientists and philosophers are working together to tackle difficult conceptual problems – such as the use of probability and the kind of forecasts you make – to come up with more informed climate models.
Contributor(s): Dr Sujit Sivasundarum | In this short film Dr Sujit Sivasundarum, from the Department of International History, challenges the idea that European colonists brought Modernity in the form of systematic knowledge to countries such as Sri Lanka. He argues that it is not just territory that is occupied by a colonising force, local knowledge, too, is also absorbed and utilised by the colonisers. Dr Sivasundarum's research looks at the Kingdom of Kandy, a state set deep in the forested highlands of central Sri Lanka. Kandy was one of the last outposts of native rule to fall to colonists, successfully repelling the British in 1803, before finally succumbing in 1815. One reason for the Kandyan's success was superior information: technical knowledge useful to the military resistance could be passed between Kandyans in the form of "palm-leaf manuscripts." By examining surviving palm-leaf manuscripts, Dr Sivasundaram is able to reconstruct indigenous knowledge from the 1800s, and show that what we think of "enlightenment knowledge" is sometimes actually founded on indigenous knowledge - although the link has long since been obscured.
Contributor(s): Dr Edgar Whitely | The Government's much vilified identity card scheme overreaches its aim of protecting us from identity fraud and could leave us more - not less - vulnerable, according to Dr Edgar Whitley from LSE's Information Systems and Innovation Group.In this short film Dr Whitley warns that in their proposed form, ID cards fail to distinguish the separate tasks of authentication and identification - forcing us to disclose more personal information than necessary in situations where we may need, for example, simply to establish that we are over 18. This would not be necessary, he argues, if the government had taken the opportunity to utilise new technologies, such as our own mobile phones.Could some of the controversy around the scheme have been avoided if it was more citizen-centric? As the date approaches when the proposed scheme will be rolled out nationwide, Dr Whitley discusses how ID cards threaten to change the relationship between the individual and the state in the UK.
Contributor(s): Dr Filippa Lentzos | Anthrax, smallpox, plague - biological weapons provoke a special fear in us. Whatever the reasons for this, it is not because they have proven to be especially lethal in comparison to conventional weapons, according to Dr Filippa Lentzos. In this film Dr Lentzos, a senior researcher with BIOS - LSE's centre for the study of bioscience - explains why the US Government, along with the security and pharmaceutical industries, have an interest in nurturing a culture of fear concerning a biological weapons attack. She also argues that the US government's response to the risk of an attack may have, ironically, actually increased the threat of such an attack. Dr Lentzos works on strengthening the UN Biological Weapons Convention. She is currently working with governments on increasing transparency and building confidence between states that no offensive weapons programmes are being developed.
Contributor(s): Lord Nicholas Stern | Being green is often seen as a form of modern Puritanism: environmental degradation is the price we have paid for our luxurious lives, and frugality and discomfort is the debt we must pay for planetary survival. But LSE's Lord Nicholas Stern is more optimistic. He explains how we can both manage climate change and also usher in a new era of global prosperity in this short film. Lord Stern's blueprint for managing climate change. Proper management of climate change could create a new era of global economic prosperity rather than herald an inevitable age of frugality according to Lord Nicholas Stern, Chair of LSE's Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. This is because our future economic success is inextricably entwined with the continued health of the planet. Lord Stern argues that not only is our reckless attitude environmentally unsustainable, but economically unstable to boot. But this economics driven approach is not without its critics. For example James Lovelock, the well-known scientist and environmentalist, fears current measures to tackle climate change are too little too late, and sees schemes like "carbon trading" as corporate pacifiers. In this film, Lord Stern addresses five challenges that lie ahead: 1. How can we solve the overpopulation problem? 2. Doesn't an economic motive relegate environmental concerns to a mere stepping-stone on the way to wealth? 3. How much can we invest our hopes in technology? 4. What can we do, and what is required to actually make this work? 5. Will the need to focus attention on the environment divert resources away from improving living conditions for people in the developing world?
Contributor(s): Dr Christopher Badcock | In his new book, 'The Imprinted Brain', Dr Christopher Badcock (LSE, Sociology) presents a radical revision to the current classification of mental disorders. His proposal is that we might understand disorders with reference to their position on a "mentalistic spectrum," which arrays mental disorders according to the degree to which sufferers have beliefs about the thoughts and intentions of other minds. In this film, Dr Badcock discusses one of the curious implications of his theory: the notion that along with the more familiar autistic savants, there may be "psychotic savants" - individuals who possess severe mechanistic deficiencies, but such an excess of "people skills" that they go through life undetected, and "deeply embedded in critical social institutions".
Contributor(s): Mirko Draca | What effect does raising the number of police have on crime? It might seem obvious that more police means fewer crimes - but things aren't that simple. For a start, there's the so called "endogeneity problem". Research economist Mirko Draca explains how the July 2005 terrorist attacks became a "natural experiment".
Contributor(s): Dr Paul Woolley | The huge expansion of the global financial system in recent decades has now culminated in a devastating downfall. 'It has revealed deep flaws in the structure and functioning of finance, as well as in our understanding of how it works,' says Dr Paul Woolley, a former fund manager and IMF economist, who last year funded two research centres at LSE and the University of Toulouse for the study of market dysfunctionality. The two centres are set to produce a stream of research over the next few years that will challenge the paradigm of market efficiency that has prevailed more or less unchallenged since Adam Smith and his belief in the 'invisible hand'. 'They will show how the misalignment of interests between the agents (such as the banks, fund managers and brokers) and principals (the end-investors and man in the street) leads to volatility of security prices, misallocation of capital and macro-economic calamity, as well as to the sheer scale of the finance sector,' said Dr Woolley. Paul Woolley expands on his reasons for establishing the two research centres in this film.