Spring 2014 | Public lectures and events | Audio and pdf: Recent Episodes
London School of Economics and Political Science
Contributor(s): Professor Ian Morris | If you had been born 20,000 years ago, you would have faced a one in ten or even one in five chance of dying violently. But in the century since 1914—despite its two world wars, atomic bombs, and multiple genocides—that risk has fallen to barely one in 100. Why? The answer is uncomfortable: despite all its horrors, over the long run war itself has made the world a safer and richer place, because war alone has proved able to create larger societies that pacify themselves internally. This talk looks at how this paradoxical process has unfolded and what it means for the 21st century. Ian Morris is Jean and Rebecca Willard Professor of classics and professor of history at Stanford University and a fellow of the Stanford Archaeology Center. He directs Stanford's archaeological excavations at Monte Polizzo, Sicily, and has published ten books including Why the West Rules – For Now and War: What is it good for?. This event marks the publication of his latest book War: What is it good for?: The role of conflict in civilisation, from primates to robots.
Contributor(s): Professor Craig Calhoun, Senator Dato' Sri Abdul Wahid Omar, Professor Arne Westad, Professor Tao Wenzhao, Dr Hassan Wirajuda, Professor Ricky Burdett, Datuk Syed Mohamed Ibrahim, Professor Mike Douglass, Professor Danny Quah, Azman Mokhtar… | The LSE Asia Forum is an important and very public part of the School's strategy to enhance its long standing relationship with the rapidly developing Asian region. LSE has historically attracted many very talented students and staff from all major Asian countries. The School has a large and distinguished group of alumni in the region and has been active in building partnerships with business and governments for many years. The LSE Asia Forum is a unique opportunity to bring together LSE's key partners in the region. The Forum provides an opportunity for analysis of different perspectives on the economic, social, political and cultural contributions Asia is making to global development. The 6th Asia Forum entitled 'Building Asian futures: integration, welfare and growth?' took place on 2-3 April 2014 at the Shangri La Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Contributor(s): Professor Partha Chatterjee | This lecture deals with four strands of trans-regional political movement in India’s anti-colonial history. The first is that of Islamic jihad which took inspiration from Sayyid Ahmad Barelvi’s campaigns in Sind, Afghanistan and Punjab in the early 19th century, was a submerged current in the 1857 revolt, sought to restore the Ottoman Khilafat after World War I and assumed the somewhat quixotic form of Obaidulla Sindhi’s attempt in the 1920s to mount an anti-British jihad from Kabul, Moscow and Ankara. The second consists of the international connections and alliances of nationalist armed revolutionaries, from the Ghadar party, Britain and US-based organizers such as Hardayal and Savarkar, the connections of the Bengal revolutionaries with Germany, the Irish rebels and anarchist groups in Europe, to the alliance of Subhas Chandra Bose with Germany and Japan during World War II. The third were the strong connections of Indian communists with the international communist movement. Finally, there were important critics such as Tagore who deplored the narrow self-aggrandizement of nationalism and pleaded for an opening to world humanity. All of these strands, with their possibilities and limits, continue to be vibrant today. Professor Chatterjee's lecture will inaugurate the Internationalism, Cosmopolitanism and the Politics of Solidarity research group convened by Dr Ayça Çubukçu at LSE's Centre for the Study of Human Rights. Partha Chatterjee is a professor of anthropology and of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African studies at Columbia University and a Professor of Political Science at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences in Calcutta, India. He is a political theorist and historian and divides his time between Columbia University and the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, where he was the director from 1997 to 2007. A major focus of Partha Chatterjee’s work is nationalism, but in order to follow his thoughts on this topic, one must simultaneously think also of colonialism, post-colonialism, modernity, and the idea of the nation-state, and also summon up, simultaneously with that cluster of concepts, a not-nationalist and counter-colonial viewpoint about what these terms actually represent (or could actually represent), with special reference to India. His books include: The Politics of the Governed: Considerations on Political Society in Most of the World (2004); A Princely Impostor? The Strange and Universal History of the Kumar of Bhawal (2002); A Possible India: Essays in Political Criticism (1997); The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (1993), and Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? (1993). He is also a poet, playwright, and actor.
Contributor(s): Professor Craig Calhoun, Senator Dato' Sri Abdul Wahid Omar, Professor Arne Westad, Professor Tao Wenzhao, Dr Hassan Wirajuda, Professor Ricky Burdett, Datuk Syed Mohamed Ibrahim, Professor Mike Douglass, Professor Danny Quah, Azman Mokhtar… | The LSE Asia Forum is an important and very public part of the School's strategy to enhance its long standing relationship with the rapidly developing Asian region. LSE has historically attracted many very talented students and staff from all major Asian countries. The School has a large and distinguished group of alumni in the region and has been active in building partnerships with business and governments for many years. The LSE Asia Forum is a unique opportunity to bring together LSE's key partners in the region. The Forum provides an opportunity for analysis of different perspectives on the economic, social, political and cultural contributions Asia is making to global development. The 6th Asia Forum entitled 'Building Asian futures: integration, welfare and growth?' took place on 2-3 April 2014 at the Shangri La Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Contributor(s): Professor Craig Calhoun, Senator Dato' Sri Abdul Wahid Omar, Professor Arne Westad, Professor Tao Wenzhao, Dr Hassan Wirajuda, Professor Ricky Burdett, Datuk Syed Mohamed Ibrahim, Professor Mike Douglass, Professor Danny Quah, Azman Mokhtar… | The LSE Asia Forum is an important and very public part of the School's strategy to enhance its long standing relationship with the rapidly developing Asian region. LSE has historically attracted many very talented students and staff from all major Asian countries. The School has a large and distinguished group of alumni in the region and has been active in building partnerships with business and governments for many years. The LSE Asia Forum is a unique opportunity to bring together LSE's key partners in the region. The Forum provides an opportunity for analysis of different perspectives on the economic, social, political and cultural contributions Asia is making to global development. The 6th Asia Forum entitled 'Building Asian futures: integration, welfare and growth?' took place on 2-3 April 2014 at the Shangri La Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Contributor(s): Professor Craig Calhoun, Senator Dato' Sri Abdul Wahid Omar, Professor Arne Westad, Professor Tao Wenzhao, Dr Hassan Wirajuda, Professor Ricky Burdett, Datuk Syed Mohamed Ibrahim, Professor Mike Douglass, Professor Danny Quah, Azman Mokhtar… | The LSE Asia Forum is an important and very public part of the School's strategy to enhance its long standing relationship with the rapidly developing Asian region. LSE has historically attracted many very talented students and staff from all major Asian countries. The School has a large and distinguished group of alumni in the region and has been active in building partnerships with business and governments for many years. The LSE Asia Forum is a unique opportunity to bring together LSE's key partners in the region. The Forum provides an opportunity for analysis of different perspectives on the economic, social, political and cultural contributions Asia is making to global development. The 6th Asia Forum entitled 'Building Asian futures: integration, welfare and growth?' took place on 2-3 April 2014 at the Shangri La Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Contributor(s): Professor Craig Calhoun, Senator Dato' Sri Abdul Wahid Omar, Professor Arne Westad, Professor Tao Wenzhao, Dr Hassan Wirajuda, Professor Ricky Burdett, Datuk Syed Mohamed Ibrahim, Professor Mike Douglass, Professor Danny Quah, Azman Mokhtar… | The LSE Asia Forum is an important and very public part of the School's strategy to enhance its long standing relationship with the rapidly developing Asian region. LSE has historically attracted many very talented students and staff from all major Asian countries. The School has a large and distinguished group of alumni in the region and has been active in building partnerships with business and governments for many years. The LSE Asia Forum is a unique opportunity to bring together LSE's key partners in the region. The Forum provides an opportunity for analysis of different perspectives on the economic, social, political and cultural contributions Asia is making to global development. The 6th Asia Forum entitled 'Building Asian futures: integration, welfare and growth?' took place on 2-3 April 2014 at the Shangri La Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Contributor(s): Professor Craig Calhoun, Senator Dato' Sri Abdul Wahid Omar, Professor Arne Westad, Professor Tao Wenzhao, Dr Hassan Wirajuda, Professor Ricky Burdett, Datuk Syed Mohamed Ibrahim, Professor Mike Douglass, Professor Danny Quah, Azman Mokhtar… | The LSE Asia Forum is an important and very public part of the School's strategy to enhance its long standing relationship with the rapidly developing Asian region. LSE has historically attracted many very talented students and staff from all major Asian countries. The School has a large and distinguished group of alumni in the region and has been active in building partnerships with business and governments for many years. The LSE Asia Forum is a unique opportunity to bring together LSE's key partners in the region. The Forum provides an opportunity for analysis of different perspectives on the economic, social, political and cultural contributions Asia is making to global development. The 6th Asia Forum entitled 'Building Asian futures: integration, welfare and growth?' took place on 2-3 April 2014 at the Shangri La Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Contributor(s): Professor Craig Calhoun, Senator Dato' Sri Abdul Wahid Omar, Professor Arne Westad, Professor Tao Wenzhao, Dr Hassan Wirajuda, Professor Ricky Burdett, Datuk Syed Mohamed Ibrahim, Professor Mike Douglass, Professor Danny Quah, Azman Mokhtar… | The LSE Asia Forum is an important and very public part of the School's strategy to enhance its long standing relationship with the rapidly developing Asian region. LSE has historically attracted many very talented students and staff from all major Asian countries. The School has a large and distinguished group of alumni in the region and has been active in building partnerships with business and governments for many years. The LSE Asia Forum is a unique opportunity to bring together LSE's key partners in the region. The Forum provides an opportunity for analysis of different perspectives on the economic, social, political and cultural contributions Asia is making to global development. The 6th Asia Forum entitled 'Building Asian futures: integration, welfare and growth?' took place on 2-3 April 2014 at the Shangri La Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Contributor(s): Professor Craig Calhoun, Senator Dato' Sri Abdul Wahid Omar, Professor Arne Westad, Professor Tao Wenzhao, Dr Hassan Wirajuda, Professor Ricky Burdett, Datuk Syed Mohamed Ibrahim, Professor Mike Douglass, Professor Danny Quah, Azman Mokhtar… | The LSE Asia Forum is an important and very public part of the School's strategy to enhance its long standing relationship with the rapidly developing Asian region. LSE has historically attracted many very talented students and staff from all major Asian countries. The School has a large and distinguished group of alumni in the region and has been active in building partnerships with business and governments for many years. The LSE Asia Forum is a unique opportunity to bring together LSE's key partners in the region. The Forum provides an opportunity for analysis of different perspectives on the economic, social, political and cultural contributions Asia is making to global development. The 6th Asia Forum entitled 'Building Asian futures: integration, welfare and growth?' took place on 2-3 April 2014 at the Shangri La Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Contributor(s): Professor Craig Calhoun, Senator Dato' Sri Abdul Wahid Omar, Professor Arne Westad, Professor Tao Wenzhao, Dr Hassan Wirajuda, Professor Ricky Burdett, Datuk Syed Mohamed Ibrahim, Professor Mike Douglass, Professor Danny Quah, Azman Mokhtar… | The LSE Asia Forum is an important and very public part of the School's strategy to enhance its long standing relationship with the rapidly developing Asian region. LSE has historically attracted many very talented students and staff from all major Asian countries. The School has a large and distinguished group of alumni in the region and has been active in building partnerships with business and governments for many years. The LSE Asia Forum is a unique opportunity to bring together LSE's key partners in the region. The Forum provides an opportunity for analysis of different perspectives on the economic, social, political and cultural contributions Asia is making to global development. The 6th Asia Forum entitled 'Building Asian futures: integration, welfare and growth?' took place on 2-3 April 2014 at the Shangri La Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Contributor(s): Professor David Harvey | You thought capitalism was permanent? Think again. Leading Marxist thinker Professor David Harvey unravels the contradictions at the heart of capitalism – its drive, for example, to accumulate capital beyond the means of investing it. David Harvey (@profdavidharvey) is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography at the Graduate Centre of the City University of New York. This event marks the publication of Professor Harvey’s new book, Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism. Murray Low is associate professor of human geography in the Department of Geography & Environment at LSE.
Contributor(s): James Dawson, Kate Kingsley, Geraldine McCaughrean, Jon Robinson | The culmination of the 2013-14 LSE and First Story creative writing competition sees a panel of award-winning young adult authors discussing self-portraits - how much of themselves do they include in their writing? James Dawson (@_jamesdawson), author of dark teen thrillers Hollow Pike and Cruel Summer, grew up in West Yorkshire, writing imaginary episodes of Doctor Who. He later turned his talent to journalism, interviewing luminaries such as Steps and Atomic Kitten before writing a weekly serial in a Brighton newspaper. Until recently, James worked as a teacher, specialising in PSHCE and behaviour. He is most proud of his work surrounding bullying and family diversity. He now writes full time in London and is published by Indigo/Orion. Kate Kingsley (@KateKingsley) is the author of Young, Loaded & Fabulous, a scandalous YA series about mean teens at British boarding school. After growing up between London and New York City, Kate started her writing career at GQ magazine. She has been published in places like The Sunday Times Magazine and the New York Times. Geraldine McCaughrean (@GMcCaughrean) is one of today's most successful and highly regarded children's authors. She has won the Carnegie Medal, the Whitbread Children's Book Award (three times), the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, the Smarties Bronze Award (four times) and the Blue Peter Book of the Year Award. In 2005 she was chosen from over 100 other authors to write the official sequel to J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan. Peter Pan in Scarlet was published in 2006 to wide critical acclaim. Geraldine’s latest novel, The Middle of Nowhere, is published by Usborne Publishing and is out now. Jon Robinson (@jonstoryteller) is author of Nowhere, the first novel in a captivating new conspiracy thriller series. When he's not writing, he volunteers for a leading Alzheimer’s charity.
Contributor(s): Alan Rusbridger, Ian Katz, Krishnan Guru-Murthy, Cathy Newman, Tom Giles, Luke Lewis… | The 5th Polis Journalism Conference on the topic of Transparency and Accountability was the biggest and most successful yet. The LSE now hosts the UK's most important annual gathering of international journalists. There were at least 700 attendees throughout the day to watch more than 40 speakers from the media industry. Highlights of the conference included keynotes by Alan Rusbridger, Editor of the Guardian and Ian Katz, Editor of BBC Newsnight in conversation with Krishnan Guru-Murthy of Channel 4 News. Other panellists included Cathy Newman of Channel 4 News, Tom Giles of BBC Panorama and Luke Lewis, Editor of Buzzfeed UK. The conference also generated significant buzz on social media including 661 tweets by over 400 Twitter users and our conference hashtag #polis14 was trending on twitter for the entire day. Podcasts and video of the conference will be available on the Polis blog, along with photos of the conference and interviews with conference speakers.
Contributor(s): Alan Rusbridger, Ian Katz, Krishnan Guru-Murthy, Cathy Newman, Tom Giles, Luke Lewis… | The 5th Polis Journalism Conference on the topic of Transparency and Accountability was the biggest and most successful yet. The LSE now hosts the UK's most important annual gathering of international journalists. There were at least 700 attendees throughout the day to watch more than 40 speakers from the media industry. Highlights of the conference included keynotes by Alan Rusbridger, Editor of the Guardian and Ian Katz, Editor of BBC Newsnight in conversation with Krishnan Guru-Murthy of Channel 4 News. Other panellists included Cathy Newman of Channel 4 News, Tom Giles of BBC Panorama and Luke Lewis, Editor of Buzzfeed UK. The conference also generated significant buzz on social media including 661 tweets by over 400 Twitter users and our conference hashtag #polis14 was trending on twitter for the entire day. Podcasts and video of the conference will be available on the Polis blog, along with photos of the conference and interviews with conference speakers.
Contributor(s): Alan Rusbridger, Ian Katz, Krishnan Guru-Murthy, Cathy Newman, Tom Giles, Luke Lewis… | The 5th Polis Journalism Conference on the topic of Transparency and Accountability was the biggest and most successful yet. The LSE now hosts the UK's most important annual gathering of international journalists. There were at least 700 attendees throughout the day to watch more than 40 speakers from the media industry. Highlights of the conference included keynotes by Alan Rusbridger, Editor of the Guardian and Ian Katz, Editor of BBC Newsnight in conversation with Krishnan Guru-Murthy of Channel 4 News. Other panellists included Cathy Newman of Channel 4 News, Tom Giles of BBC Panorama and Luke Lewis, Editor of Buzzfeed UK. The conference also generated significant buzz on social media including 661 tweets by over 400 Twitter users and our conference hashtag #polis14 was trending on twitter for the entire day. Podcasts and video of the conference will be available on the Polis blog, along with photos of the conference and interviews with conference speakers.
Contributor(s): Alan Rusbridger, Ian Katz, Krishnan Guru-Murthy, Cathy Newman, Tom Giles, Luke Lewis… | The 5th Polis Journalism Conference on the topic of Transparency and Accountability was the biggest and most successful yet. The LSE now hosts the UK's most important annual gathering of international journalists. There were at least 700 attendees throughout the day to watch more than 40 speakers from the media industry. Highlights of the conference included keynotes by Alan Rusbridger, Editor of the Guardian and Ian Katz, Editor of BBC Newsnight in conversation with Krishnan Guru-Murthy of Channel 4 News. Other panellists included Cathy Newman of Channel 4 News, Tom Giles of BBC Panorama and Luke Lewis, Editor of Buzzfeed UK. The conference also generated significant buzz on social media including 661 tweets by over 400 Twitter users and our conference hashtag #polis14 was trending on twitter for the entire day. Podcasts and video of the conference will be available on the Polis blog, along with photos of the conference and interviews with conference speakers.
Contributor(s): Alan Rusbridger, Ian Katz, Krishnan Guru-Murthy, Cathy Newman, Tom Giles, Luke Lewis… | The 5th Polis Journalism Conference on the topic of Transparency and Accountability was the biggest and most successful yet. The LSE now hosts the UK's most important annual gathering of international journalists. There were at least 700 attendees throughout the day to watch more than 40 speakers from the media industry. Highlights of the conference included keynotes by Alan Rusbridger, Editor of the Guardian and Ian Katz, Editor of BBC Newsnight in conversation with Krishnan Guru-Murthy of Channel 4 News. Other panellists included Cathy Newman of Channel 4 News, Tom Giles of BBC Panorama and Luke Lewis, Editor of Buzzfeed UK. The conference also generated significant buzz on social media including 661 tweets by over 400 Twitter users and our conference hashtag #polis14 was trending on twitter for the entire day. Podcasts and video of the conference will be available on the Polis blog, along with photos of the conference and interviews with conference speakers.
Contributor(s): Michael Bromwich, Al Bhimani, David Otley, Chris Ford, Alasdair Macnab, Falconer Mitchell, Warwick Hunt, Henri Dekker, George Grosz, Alasdair Macnab, Kenneth Simmonds | The 35th annual MARG Conference will take place on Thursday 27 March 2014 at the London School of Economics and Political Science. The theme for the 2014 conference is 'Management Accounting and Strategic Partnerships.' Speakers include David Otley and Chris Ford (Lancaster University Management School) who will speak on ‘Princes, Property Developers, Commandos and Charities: Lessons from an Unusual Strategic Alliance’, Henri Dekker (VU University Amsterdam) who will discuss ‘Managing Risky Relations’, Alasdair Macnab (Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh) and Falconer Mitchell (University of Edinburgh) who will speak on ‘Outcome Costing’ and Warwick Hunt (PwC UK) who will speak on 'Strategic Alliances: Cultures, Networks and Global Challenges'. There will be a panel discussion session titled 'Do Strategic Alliances Suggest New Strategies and New Accounting' in the afternoon with the opportunity for questions throughout the day. The CIMA Distinguished Practitioner Lecture will be presented by Keith Luck (CIMA Vice President) who will discuss 'How Management Accounting and Strategic Partnerships combine to deliver success - a practitioner’s perspective'.
Contributor(s): Michael Bromwich, Al Bhimani, David Otley, Chris Ford, Alasdair Macnab, Falconer Mitchell, Warwick Hunt, Henri Dekker, George Grosz, Alasdair Macnab, Kenneth Simmonds | The 35th annual MARG Conference will take place on Thursday 27 March 2014 at the London School of Economics and Political Science. The theme for the 2014 conference is 'Management Accounting and Strategic Partnerships.' Speakers include David Otley and Chris Ford (Lancaster University Management School) who will speak on ‘Princes, Property Developers, Commandos and Charities: Lessons from an Unusual Strategic Alliance’, Henri Dekker (VU University Amsterdam) who will discuss ‘Managing Risky Relations’, Alasdair Macnab (Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh) and Falconer Mitchell (University of Edinburgh) who will speak on ‘Outcome Costing’ and Warwick Hunt (PwC UK) who will speak on 'Strategic Alliances: Cultures, Networks and Global Challenges'. There will be a panel discussion session titled 'Do Strategic Alliances Suggest New Strategies and New Accounting' in the afternoon with the opportunity for questions throughout the day. The CIMA Distinguished Practitioner Lecture will be presented by Keith Luck (CIMA Vice President) who will discuss 'How Management Accounting and Strategic Partnerships combine to deliver success - a practitioner’s perspective'.
Contributor(s): Michael Bromwich, Al Bhimani, David Otley, Chris Ford, Alasdair Macnab, Falconer Mitchell, Warwick Hunt, Henri Dekker, George Grosz, Alasdair Macnab, Kenneth Simmonds | The 35th annual MARG Conference will take place on Thursday 27 March 2014 at the London School of Economics and Political Science. The theme for the 2014 conference is 'Management Accounting and Strategic Partnerships.' Speakers include David Otley and Chris Ford (Lancaster University Management School) who will speak on ‘Princes, Property Developers, Commandos and Charities: Lessons from an Unusual Strategic Alliance’, Henri Dekker (VU University Amsterdam) who will discuss ‘Managing Risky Relations’, Alasdair Macnab (Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh) and Falconer Mitchell (University of Edinburgh) who will speak on ‘Outcome Costing’ and Warwick Hunt (PwC UK) who will speak on 'Strategic Alliances: Cultures, Networks and Global Challenges'. There will be a panel discussion session titled 'Do Strategic Alliances Suggest New Strategies and New Accounting' in the afternoon with the opportunity for questions throughout the day. The CIMA Distinguished Practitioner Lecture will be presented by Keith Luck (CIMA Vice President) who will discuss 'How Management Accounting and Strategic Partnerships combine to deliver success - a practitioner’s perspective'.
Contributor(s): Professor Kimberlé W. Crenshaw | Kimberlé W. Crenshaw is currently professor of law at UCLA and Columbia. She has written in the areas of civil rights, black feminist legal theory, and race, racism and the law. Her work has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the National Black Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, and the Southern California Law Review. A founding coordinator of the Critical Race Theory workshop; coeditor of Critical Race Theory: Key Documents That Shaped the Movement. Crenshaw has lectured nationally and internationally on race matters, addressing audiences throughout Europe, Africa, and South America. She has facilitated workshops for civil rights activists in Brazil and in India, and for constitutional court judges in South Africa. Her work on race and gender was influential in the drafting of the equality clause in the South African Constitution. In 2001, she authored the background paper on Race and Gender Discrimination for the United Nations' World Conference on Racism and helped facilitate the inclusion of gender in the WCAR Conference Declaration. In the domestic arena, she has served as a member of the National Science Foundation's committee to research violence against women and has assisted the legal team representing Anita Hill. In 1996, she co-founded the African-American Policy Forum to highlight the centrality of gender in racial justice discourse. Professor Crenshaw is also a founding member of the Women's Media Initiative and writes for Ms. Magazine, the Nation and other print media and is a regular commentator on NPR's The Tavis Smiley Show and MSNBC. With the support of the Rockefeller Foundation, Crenshaw facilitates the Bellagio Project, an international network of scholars working in the field of social inclusion from five continents. She was twice named Professor of the Year at UCLA Law School and received the Lucy Terry Prince Unsung Heroine Award, presented by the Lawyers Committee on Civil Rights Under Law, for her path breaking work on black women and the law. She also received the ACLU Ira Glasser Racial Justice Fellowship in 2005-2007. She has researched and lectured widely in Brazil as the Fulbright Distinguished Chair for Latin America, and was the recipient of the 2008-2009 Alphonse Fletcher Fellowship. She was awarded with an in-residence fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Science at Stanford University in 2008-2009.
Contributor(s): Professor Motoshige Itoh | Japan is highly unusual in having experienced serious deflation in recent years, and Japan’s experience may be regarded as providing a good case study for other industrial countries suffering from inadequate capital investment and what has been termed ‘secular stagnation’. This lecture explains the nature of the ‘Abenomics’ introduced by Japan’s Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, since taking office in December 2012, discussing in particular the impact of aggressive monetary policy and the implications of its growth strategy. The lecture will also touch on issues of fiscal consolidation and social security reform in Japan, which is the most rapidly ageing society in the world. Professor Motoshige Itoh is a Professor of the Graduate School of Economics, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo. He is the President of the National Institute for Research Advancement, and a member of the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy. A graduate of the University of Tokyo, his academic field of specialisation is International Economics. Professor Itoh is closely involved in policy decision-making processes in the Japanese government and writes several columns for newspapers and magazines.
Contributor(s): Evan Davis, Professor Deirdre McCloskey | The Great Enrichment after 1800 increased the income of the poor by well over 900 percent. Professor Deirdre McCloskey does not believe that either bourgeois or Marxist economics can explain this phenomenon. Ideological change rather than savings or exploitation, she argues, created the affluence of the industrialised world. Professor Deirdre McCloskey is Distinguished Professor of Economics, History, English, and Communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Professor of Economic History, Gothenburg University, Sweden. She is the author of 16 books, the latest of which is Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World and around 400 scholarly pieces. Evan Davis @EvanHD is a presenter on BBC Radio 4's Today programme and a former BBC economics editor. He also presents The Bottom Line, a business discussion programme on BBC TV and radio and Dragons' Den, the BBC Two business reality show. Before joining the BBC, he worked as an economist at the Institute of Fiscal Studies and the London Business School. Analysis is BBC Radio 4's series about the ideas which influence policy and trends. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production).
Contributor(s): Haruhiko Kuroda, Richard Fisher, Riccardo Barbieri Hermitte, Jon Danielsson, Ulf Dahlsten, Luca Fantacci, Lars Jonung, Sheri Markose, Bao Mingyou, Adair Turner, Alan Wheatley, Yongding Yu, Jean-Pierre Zigrand | Have we done enough to avoid a new severe financial crisis? There are fundamental issues surrounding money creation, increased private debts and underestimated endogenous risks. Can the financial system operate in a way that better supports the real economy and encourages sustained growth? Are we missing essential institutions in Europe and globally? This conference aims at creating dialogue between practitioners and academics on these issues, and raising awareness of the remaining problems.
Contributor(s): Haruhiko Kuroda, Richard Fisher, Riccardo Barbieri Hermitte, Jon Danielsson, Ulf Dahlsten, Luca Fantacci, Lars Jonung, Sheri Markose, Bao Mingyou, Adair Turner, Alan Wheatley, Yongding Yu, Jean-Pierre Zigrand | Have we done enough to avoid a new severe financial crisis? There are fundamental issues surrounding money creation, increased private debts and underestimated endogenous risks. Can the financial system operate in a way that better supports the real economy and encourages sustained growth? Are we missing essential institutions in Europe and globally? This conference aims at creating dialogue between practitioners and academics on these issues, and raising awareness of the remaining problems.
Contributor(s): Haruhiko Kuroda, Richard Fisher, Riccardo Barbieri Hermitte, Jon Danielsson, Ulf Dahlsten, Luca Fantacci, Lars Jonung, Sheri Markose, Bao Mingyou, Adair Turner, Alan Wheatley, Yongding Yu, Jean-Pierre Zigrand | Have we done enough to avoid a new severe financial crisis? There are fundamental issues surrounding money creation, increased private debts and underestimated endogenous risks. Can the financial system operate in a way that better supports the real economy and encourages sustained growth? Are we missing essential institutions in Europe and globally? This conference aims at creating dialogue between practitioners and academics on these issues, and raising awareness of the remaining problems.
Contributor(s): Haruhiko Kuroda, Richard Fisher, Riccardo Barbieri Hermitte, Jon Danielsson, Ulf Dahlsten, Luca Fantacci, Lars Jonung, Sheri Markose, Bao Mingyou, Adair Turner, Alan Wheatley, Yongding Yu, Jean-Pierre Zigrand | Have we done enough to avoid a new severe financial crisis? There are fundamental issues surrounding money creation, increased private debts and underestimated endogenous risks. Can the financial system operate in a way that better supports the real economy and encourages sustained growth? Are we missing essential institutions in Europe and globally? This conference aims at creating dialogue between practitioners and academics on these issues, and raising awareness of the remaining problems.
Contributor(s): Haruhiko Kuroda, Richard Fisher, Riccardo Barbieri Hermitte, Jon Danielsson, Ulf Dahlsten, Luca Fantacci, Lars Jonung, Sheri Markose, Bao Mingyou, Adair Turner, Alan Wheatley, Yongding Yu, Jean-Pierre Zigrand | Have we done enough to avoid a new severe financial crisis? There are fundamental issues surrounding money creation, increased private debts and underestimated endogenous risks. Can the financial system operate in a way that better supports the real economy and encourages sustained growth? Are we missing essential institutions in Europe and globally? This conference aims at creating dialogue between practitioners and academics on these issues, and raising awareness of the remaining problems.
Contributor(s): Haruhiko Kuroda, Richard Fisher, Riccardo Barbieri Hermitte, Jon Danielsson, Ulf Dahlsten, Luca Fantacci, Lars Jonung, Sheri Markose, Bao Mingyou, Adair Turner, Alan Wheatley, Yongding Yu, Jean-Pierre Zigrand | Have we done enough to avoid a new severe financial crisis? There are fundamental issues surrounding money creation, increased private debts and underestimated endogenous risks. Can the financial system operate in a way that better supports the real economy and encourages sustained growth? Are we missing essential institutions in Europe and globally? This conference aims at creating dialogue between practitioners and academics on these issues, and raising awareness of the remaining problems.
Contributor(s): Haruhiko Kuroda, Richard Fisher, Riccardo Barbieri Hermitte, Jon Danielsson, Ulf Dahlsten, Luca Fantacci, Lars Jonung, Sheri Markose, Bao Mingyou, Adair Turner, Alan Wheatley, Yongding Yu, Jean-Pierre Zigrand | Have we done enough to avoid a new severe financial crisis? There are fundamental issues surrounding money creation, increased private debts and underestimated endogenous risks. Can the financial system operate in a way that better supports the real economy and encourages sustained growth? Are we missing essential institutions in Europe and globally? This conference aims at creating dialogue between practitioners and academics on these issues, and raising awareness of the remaining problems.
Contributor(s): Daniel Finkelstein | To mark the completion of the Saw Swee Hock Student Centre, the first brand new building on campus for more than 40 years, the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and the LSE Students’ Union have organised a series of ‘in conversation’ events with some of the School's distinguished alumni. These events will take place in the Saw Swee Hock Student Centre and will be open to LSE students, alumni and staff. This event will see Daniel Finkelstein in conversation with Jay Stoll. Daniel Finklestein is a weekly columnist, leader writer and associate editor of The Times. Before joining the paper in 2001, he was adviser to both Prime Minister John Major and Conservative leader William Hague. Daniel was named Political Commentator of the Year at the Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards 2010, 2011 and 2013. He graduated from LSE with a BSc in Economics. Jay Stoll is the general secretary of the LSE Students' Union, the primary representative of LSE students to the university, the media and the wider world. He graduated from LSE in 2013 with a BSc in International Relations and History. After the conversation there will be the opportunity for the audience to put their questions to the speaker in the Q&A session. A free drinks reception will follow the event giving the audience a chance to meet the speaker.
Contributor(s): Professor Robert J Barro | The Stern Review's evaluation of environmental protection relies on extremely low discount rates, an assumption criticized by many economists. The Review also stresses that great uncertainty is a critical element for optimal environmental policies. An appropriate model for this policy analysis requires sufficient risk aversion and fat-tailed uncertainty to get into the ballpark of explaining the observed equity premium. A satisfactory framework, based on Epstein-Zin/Weil preferences, also separates the coefficient of relative risk aversion (important for results on environmental investment) from the intertemporal elasticity of substitution for consumption (which matters little). Calibrations based on existing models of rare macroeconomic disasters suggest that optimal environmental investment can be a significant share of GDP even with reasonable values for the rate of time preference and the expected rate of return on private capital. Optimal environmental investment increases with the coefficient of relative risk aversion and the probability and typical size of environmental disasters but decreases with the degree of uncertainty about policy effectiveness. The key parameters that need to be pinned down are the proportionate effect of environmental investment on the probability of environmental disaster and the baseline probability of environmental disaster. Robert J Barro is Paul M Warburg Professor of Economics at Harvard University and a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.
Contributor(s): Professor Raymond Hinnebusch | This talk will examine Iraq-Syria relations with the aim of using their changing relations as indicators of changes in the regional states and regional states system. It will therefore use the current relationship as emblematic of the current state of the states system in MENA. Raymond Hinnebusch is professor of international relations and Middle East politics at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, co-founder of the Institute for the study of the Middle East, Central Asian and the Caucasus and director of the Centre for Syrian Studies.
Contributor(s): Professor Wouter Den Haan | This lecture looks at the real and perceived weaknesses, strengths and challenges of modern macroeconomics. Wouter Den Haan is co-director of the Centre for Macroeconomics at LSE.
Contributor(s): Jonathan Fenby, Isabel Hilton, Wu Jian Min | Jonathan Fenby will talk about the theme of his new book Will China Dominate the 21st Century? Jonathan Fenby is the China director at the research service Trusted Sources. Isabel Hilton is a journalist and the editor of China Dialogue.net Wu Jian Min is former Chinese ambassador to France and vice chairman of Foreign Affairs Committee and spokesman of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).
Contributor(s): Sharon Meers | What would happen if more men, women and managers knew things like this: children of dual-career couples do at least as well as kids with a parent at home; divorce risk is 50% lower when couples evenly share the roles of making money and caring for kids; men don't value their careers any more than women do -- and men are better off when they invest time in their kids; teams that work fewer hours produce higher quality work – even in the most demanding professions. Whether you’re a young woman trying to pick the right guy, new parents facing the chaos of raising small kids, or a husband helping your wife return to work, our core challenge is: How can we thrive both a work and at home? Drawing on a broad range of government data, social science research and original interviews, Getting to 50/50 offers solutions to get rid of guilt and do right by our kids; focus on what’s really important – let go of the rest; and help men play bigger roles at home so women are free to lead larger lives at work. When men and women share the same experience and work together, it makes our families stronger. And allows all of us, at home and at work, to live happier more rewarding lives. That is what 50/50 is all about. Sharon Meers (@sharonmeers) leads enterprise strategy for Magento, eBay’s global e-commerce platform. Formerly, she was a managing director at Goldman Sachs. She is author, with Joanna Strober, of Getting to 50/50: How Working Parents Can Have It All.
Contributor(s): Aidan Davy, Richard Meeran, Juan Pablo Sáenz, Jake White | A panel of international legal and industry experts discuss the fraught world of environmental justice, human rights, minerals and mining and explain why it should be of concern to us all. The EJOLT project (Environmental Justice Organizations, Liabilities and Trade) will also launch its global map of environmental (in)justice. Aidan Davy is deputy president and senior program director at the International Council for Mining and Minerals (ICMM). Aidan has extensive experience with sustainable development and social responsibility issues, with a strong emphasis on the extractive industries. He has worked as an independent consultant for a range of multi-lateral/bilateral and private sector clients on many of the emerging challenges for the sector. Richard Meeran is a partner at Leigh Day & Co. Richard pioneered claims against UK-based multinationals, Cape PLC for 7,500 South African asbestos victims and Thor Chemicals for South African workers poisoned by mercury. Since 2004, Richard has worked with South African NGOs & gold miners on silicosis claims against Anglo American, and with Tanzanian villagers in a claim against African Barrick Gold. Juan Pablo Sáenz is a representative of the Amazon Defense Coalition and founding partner of Fromboliere Abogados. The ADC secured one of the largest judicial victories in environmental litigation history, which saw Chevron ordered to pay $9.5 billion in damages to remediate profound environmental, social and health impacts caused by its operations in Ecuador. Jake White is a environmental lawyer at Friends of the Earth. Jake has worked for Britain’s Department of Trade and Industry, and the Department of Energy & Climate Change, designing a legislative structure to ensure waste and clean-up are paid for by operators. At FoE he works on climate and energy, in particular fracking which has involved working closely with local communities. This event is supported by the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre and the EJOLT (Environmental Justice Organisations, Liabilities and Trade) Project.
Contributor(s): Mary Robinson, Professor Lord Stern, Sharan Burrow, Caio Koch-Weser, Marvin Nala, Sheela Patel, Henry Shue, Dessima Williams | LSE's Institute of Public Affairs and the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment invite you to an innovative public session which will explore who constitutes the innocent, how they are impacted by climate change and how they lack access to power. It will consider if these issues can be overcome and suggest ways in which they can. The session will be framed by a discussion with Nicholas Stern and Mary Robinson. This will be followed by interventions from a panel comprising representatives of the Innocent: the marginalised, the poor, youth, workers and future generations. Panellists representing the political world and the corporate voice will respond to the issues and concerns raised by the Innocent outlining both the challenges of political office and the realities of the corporate world. The audience will have an opportunity both to make observations and to put questions to the panellists regarding what can be done to find solutions to the problems identified. Mary Robinson is the former president of Ireland and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and currently president of the Mary Robinson Foundation - Climate Justice. Nicholas Stern is currently president of the British Academy and chair of the Grantham Research Institute. Sharan Burrow is secretary general of the International Trade Union Confederation. Caio Koch-Weser is vice chairman of Deutsche Bank Group. Marvin Nala is a climate and energy campaigner for Greenpeace, East Asia. Sheela Patel is the founder-director of Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centres. Henry Shue is a senior research fellow at Merton College and professor of politics and international relations at University of Oxford. Dessima Williams is the former ambassador of Grenada to the United Nations.
Contributor(s): Professor Linda Colley | The onset and proliferation of new written constitutions after 1787 presented successive governments in the UK with both opportunities and challenges. Through its empire and international heft, the UK came to draft and influence more constitutions in more parts of the world in the 19th and 20th centuries than any other power. Yet governments have always resisted the introduction of a written constitution in the UK itself. Other states need their political systems, identity and liberties confirmed in writing but the British do not. Their historic uncodified constitution is thus itself a demonstration and proof of their distinct identity. In this lecture, Linda Colley examines these trends and tensions over time, and discusses how far writing a constitution might work to reinforce rights in these islands and reconfigure connections. Linda Colley is the Shelby M.C Davies 1958 Professor of History at Princeton University, and an expert on Britain since 1700. She was the first female fellow of Christ College, Cambridge, was a professor of history at Yale and was awarded a Senior Leverhulme Research Professorship in History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her book, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837 won the Wolfson Prize for History. She is a fellow of the British Academy and in 2009 was awarded a CBE.
Contributor(s): Martin Lewis | To mark the completion of the Saw Swee Hock Student Centre, the first brand new building on campus for more than 40 years, the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and the LSE Students’ Union have organised a series of ‘in conversation’ events with some of the School's distinguished alumni. These events will take place in the Saw Swee Hock Student Centre and will be open to LSE students, alumni and staff. This event will see Martin Lewis in conversation with Professor Nick Barr. Martin Lewis, Money Saving Expert, is an award-winning campaigning TV and radio presenter, newspaper columnist, author and, according to Google, the most searched-for British man. He has his own evening ITV programme - The Martin Lewis Money Show - and is resident expert on This Morning, Daybreak and BBC Radio 5 Live's Consumer Panel, amongst others. He first moved to London to study Government and Law at the LSE, where he then spent a year as general secretary of the Students' Union. After the conversation there will be the opportunity for the audience to put their questions to the speaker in the Q&A session. A free drinks reception will follow the event giving the audience a chance to meet the speaker.
Contributor(s): George Soros, Anatole Kaletsky | This event marks the publication of George Soros' new book, Tragedy of the European Union: Disintegration or Revival?: How Europe Must Now Choose Between Economic and Political Revival or Disintegration in which he reveals the roots of Europe's current financial crisis and comprehensively assesses the consequences of that crisis for the global economy and on the political ideals embodied by the European Union. In this concise and illuminating volume, renowned financier George Soros examines both the political and economic fault-lines of the European Union to reveal the roots Europe's current financial crisis. Interwoven with aspects from George Soros' personal life, The Fate of the Union narrates the history of the European Union in order to assess the current crisis and its effects on Europe's role in the global economy. Will the Euro survive? George Soros identifies the true culprits of the Eurozone crisis - among them a misbegotten German austerity programme - and diagnoses what we must do to rescue the ideals of the European project. George Soros (@georgesoros) is the chairman of Soros Fund Management and the founder of Open Society Foundations, a global network of foundations dedicated to supporting open societies. He is the author of several best-selling books including The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Crash of 2008 and What It Means, The Bubble of American Supremacy and The Age of Fallibility. He was born in Budapest in 1930 and lives in New York City. He survived the Nazi occupation and fled communist Hungary in 1947 for England, where he graduated from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He then settled in the United States, where he accumulated a large fortune through an international investment fund he founded and managed. Mr Soros has been active as a philanthropist since 1979, when he began providing funds to help black students attend Capetown University in apartheid South Africa. He has established a network of philanthropic organisations active in more than 50 countries around the world. These organisations are dedicated to promoting the values of democracy and an open society. Anatole Kaletsky is an award-winning journalist and financial economist who has written since 1976 for The Economist, the Financial Times and The Times of London before joining Reuters. His recent book, Capitalism 4.0, about the reinvention of global capitalism after the 2008 crisis, was nominated for the BBC’s Samuel Johnson Prize, and has been translated into Chinese, Korean, German and Portuguese. Anatole is also chief economist of GaveKal Dragonomics, a Hong Kong-based group that provides investment analysis to 800 investment institutions around the world.
Contributor(s): Theodore Pelagidis | The emergence of the current crisis, and its handling by successive Greek governments once the crisis led to the loss of the confidence markets had in the Greek government, has led many opinion leaders and academics to express doubts with respect to the wisdom of the decision of Greece to participate in the final stage of the EMU, and correspondingly of the European Union bodies to accept Greece in the final stage of the EMU. This paper/presentation focuses on the crisis period 2010-2013 where severe austerity policies are dictated by the MoU and the conditionality programs. It also deals with reforms been made on employment, wages, earnings and labour cost developments during the above period so as the economy to increase competitiveness and viability within the Eurozone area. The presentation will finally offer policy guidelines for the future. This research will also be published as a book (co-authored with M. Mitsopoulos) in January 2014, by the Brookings Institution Press and it is the outcome of research undertaken by the author on behalf of the Brookings Institution, entitled: The Greek Growth Project.
Contributor(s): Professor Timothy Snyder | The opening of borders and archives has permitted a much fuller acquaintance with the victims of the Holocaust as well as with the motivation and behaviours of the German perpetrators and the East Europeans who aided them in the murder. Must the national history of Eastern Europe now collapse into nothing more than a prehistory of catastrophe? Timothy Snyder is Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs at LSE IDEAS for 2013-14.
Contributor(s): Alison Nimmo | In the past 10 years London has seen the resurgence of Regent Street to one of the globe’s most iconic streets and the regeneration of London’s East End catalysed by London 2012. Hear from Alison Nimmo who helped to win and deliver the Olympic Park and is now chief executive of the Crown Estate, a business that is using its expertise and extraordinary assets to transform the heart of London’s West End. Alison Nimmo joined The Crown Estate as chief executive in January 2012. The Estate’s assets range from prime real estate in London’s West End, to around 50% of the UK’s foreshore and almost the entire seabed around the UK, to farmland and forestry. With a capital value of over £8billion the business pays its surplus revenue (profit) to the Treasury for the benefit of the nation every year: in 2012/13 this was £252.6 million. Alison spent five years with the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) where, as director of design and regeneration, she was responsible for delivering the overall design and early delivery of many of the venues for the London 2012 games. Alison specialises in urban regeneration and was awarded a CBE in 2004. Her previous roles have included chief executive of Sheffield One and project director of Manchester Millennium Ltd. Alison is also a non-executive director at Berkeley Group and a visiting professor for Sheffield Hallam University. In January 2014 Alison was awarded the prestigious Royal Town Planning Institute Gold Medal for services to planning throughout her career.
Contributor(s): Professor Rajeev Bhargava | It is widely recognized that political secularism virtually everywhere in the world is in crisis. It is also acknowledged that to overcome this crisis, secularism needs to be reimagined and reconceptualised. In this lecture Rajeev Bhargava takes the first steps towards this. He argues that we need to move away from the standard church-state models of secularism and begin to focus instead on secularism as a response to deep religious diversity. He claims that diversity must be understood as enmeshed in power relations and therefore the hidden potential of religion related domination must be explicitly acknowledged. These two moves enable us to view secularism as a response to two forms of institutionalised religious domination; inter-religious and intra-religious. This way of conceiving secularism rebukes the charge that secularism is intrinsically anti-religious. Secularism is not against religion; it opposes institutionalised religious domination. Finally, Professor Bhargava argues that this conception entails that a secular state shows critical respect to all religious and philosophical worldviews, possible only when it adopts a policy of principled distance towards all of them. Rajeev Bhargava (@Rajeev_Bhargava) is the director at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi. Previously, he was a professor at the Centre for Political Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University and was the head of the department of political science at the University of Delhi. In 2006 he held the Asia Chair at Sciences Po. His publications include Individualism in Social Science, What is Political Theory and Why Do We Need It? and The Promise of India’s Secular Democracy.
Contributor(s): Dr Yvan Guichaoua, Imad Mesdoua | The South of Algeria belongs to the widely integrated Saharan political economy also composed of large chunks of the Malian and Nigerian territories. As such, Algeria plays a key role in the livelihoods (through licit or illicit means), and geographical social and political mobility of Sahelian communities, using borders as resources and connected to each other through transnational networks. But Algeria is also a powerful hegemon trying to protect its domestic and regional interests in an environment where political tensions and rivalries abound: protracted Western Sahara conflict, French military deployment at Algeria’s doorstep, highly mobile Jihadist units - remnants of the Algerian civil war. As a result, Sahelian narratives on Algeria are alternatively framed through the limited experiences of participants of the Saharan political economy or through discourses produced by biased, sometimes conspirationist, decision-makers and diplomats with varying allegiances. A kaleidoscopic and intellectually frustrating image of Algeria results, whose verifiability is highly problematic. Dr Yvan Guichaoua will examine the role of Algeria in recent (Tuareg then Jihadist) insurgencies in Mali and Niger as portrayed by various actors of the political crises in the Sahel. Imad Mesdoua will be examining the rationales guiding Algerian foreign policy in light of growing instability throughout the Sahel and Maghreb regions. Prior to French intervention in Mali, there was a general sense in the West that Algeria would, as a regional power, ultimately contribute or even spearhead a potential military intervention. In the end, Algeria did not participate in the French operation, and Imad seeks to explain why this was the case. He will also examine whether Algeria's regional security policy, partly focused on countering al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb’s (AQIM) growing influence in neighbouring states, has been a success. Yvan Guichaoua is a lecturer in International Politics at the University of East Anglia. He is a former teaching fellow at Yale University and research officer at the University of Oxford. He has been studying the dynamics of irregular armed groups in Sub-Saharan African since 2004. Since 2007, Yvan Guichaoua has been studying insurgencies in Niger and Mali and the rise of Jihadism in the Sahel. His work explores the complex interactions between violent entrepreneurs, low level combatants and the state and forms of governance they produce. Yvan Guichaoua is the author of numerous journal articles and book chapters, and the editor of Understanding Collective Political Violence and co-editor of The Developmental Challenges of Mining and Oil (Palgrave-Macmillan). Imad Mesdoua is an Algerian political analyst specialising in the Middle East and North Africa. He has previously worked as a freelance journalist and as a political consultant, advising political officials and international organisations. He regularly provides on-air analysis as a guest commentator for the BBC, Al Jazeera and France 24.
Contributor(s): Anne Applebaum, Sir Rodric Braithwaite, Ben Judah, Olexiy Solohubenko | It was meant to be a moment of glory for Vladimir Putin, basking in the glow from a successful winter Olympics. Instead the world's attention was drawn away from the ski slopes of Sochi and towards the barricades of central Kyiv. The violence on the streets was the latest chapter in the long and unpredictable aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union. For the Kremlin, the Ukrainian revolution was a takeover by fascist elements of a nation which lies at the core of Russian history, with Kyiv the birthplace of the Russian Orthodox Church. For pro-European elements in Ukraine, the events exposed the hollow bluster of Putin's rhetoric. Meanwhile a nervous world watches and waits to see whether the angry words explode into open conflict across national borders. The BBC's diplomatic correspondent, Bridget Kendall, draws on her deep knowledge of the region to discuss these events with a distinguished panel. She will try to put the dramatic events of recent days into the longer historical context and ask what they mean for our relationship with Russia. This public discussion will be recorded and will be broadcast at 8.00pm on Saturday 8 March, on BBC Radio 4 (@BBCRadio4). Anne Applebaum (@anneapplebaum) is the author of, among other books, Putinism: The Ideology; Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956; Between East and West: Across the Borderlands of Europe; and Gulag: A History. She is currently writing a history of Ukraine. Anne was the Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs at LSE IDEAS for the 2012-13 academic year. Sir Rodric Braithwaite is a former British Ambassador to Russia, former foreign policy adviser to the prime minister (John Major) and former chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee. Among his books are: Russia in Europe, Across the Moscow River and, most recently, Afgantsy: the Russians in Afghanistan. Ben Judah (@b_judah) is a Russianist and published last year, Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin. Ben is a fellow at the European Stability Initiative. Olexiy Solohubenko is executive editor, Americas and Europe Region of BBC Global News. He was previously executive editor for Eurasia, which includes BBC services for Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, Caucasus, Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia. Prior to that he was head of the BBC's Ukrainian Service. Bridget Kendall is the BBC's diplomatic correspondent and former Moscow correspondent.
Contributor(s): Sabrina Mahfouz plus special guests | Join award-winning poet and playwright Sabrina Mahfouz and special guests for an evening of live literature, performance and debate, as she explores climate change in the UK through storytelling and lively poetry performances. Special guests include performers and artists Deanna Rodger, Raymond Antrobus, Zia Ahmed and David Buckland, alongside climate change experts from the LSE. This free event, which reflects upon the risks of, and responses to climate change, is aimed at 18-30s. Sabrina Mahfouz is a poet, playwright, performer and writer. She has won a number of awards including the 2013 Sky Arts Futures Fund Award for her poetry work and is Associate Artist at the Bush Theatre and a Global Shaper with the World Economic Forum. She is currently writing theatre pieces for the Bush Theatre and the National Theatre and her first collection of poetry and plays will be published in May 2014 by Bloomsbury imprint, Methuen. Sabrina is currently a poet in residence for Cape Farewell, an international not-for-profit, working internationally to bring together artists, scientists and communicators to stimulate the production of art founded in scientific research.
Contributor(s): Dr Sara Hageman, Fergal O'Regan, Anthony Teasdale | LSE European Institute and the European Parliament Information Office ‘European Parliament Elections 2014: issues and stakes’ series. Fergal O’Regan is Head of Unit at the European Ombudsman. Anthony Teasdale is Director General of the European Parliamentary Research Service (EPRS) and Visiting Senior Fellow at the LSE European Institute.
Contributor(s): Professor Vernon Henderson | With the majority of its population now urban dwellers, China faces a unique set of challenges. Vernon Henderson examines the policy options as Chinese cities continue to grow. Vernon Henderson is a leading expert in urbanisation of developing countries and School Professor of Economic Geography at LSE.
Contributor(s): Professor Denis Guénoun | How can we understand the twentieth century? Denis Guénoun will interpret the social and political forms that marked the twentieth century and their influence on our present. Denis Guénoun is professor of French literature at the Sorbonne, Paris IV.
Contributor(s): Dr Chaloka Beyani, Professor Julia Black, Professor Emily Jackson, Dr Peter Ramsay | Should we be allowed the right to die? Can the UK do more to prevent international human rights abuses? What can the law do to prevent another recession? Are juries worth having? Tweet your questions to @LSELaw using #LSElaw. Chaloka Beyani is United Nations special rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons. Julia Black is director of the Law and Financial Markets Project. Emily Jackson is a member of the British Medical Association Medical Ethics Committee and is head of the Department of Law. Peter Ramsay is a reader in law, specialising in criminal law at LSE.
Contributor(s): Dr Steffen Hertog | Gulf private sectors contribute the majority of national capital formation and employment, and have diversified into a wide range of manufacturing and service activities. National development strategies rely on private business as a primary driver of growth and development. At the same time, however, business contributes little to economic policy-making and is isolated in national politics, regularly failing to be represented in elected bodies. This talk will explain this passive and isolated role of business by looking at how, despite all diversification, it remains structurally dependent on state spending and subsidies, and how its interests are at odds with those of GCC citizens at large.
Contributor(s): Alexander Stubb | Alexander Stubb @alexstubb has been minister for European affairs and foreign trade since 23 June 2011. The ministerial portfolio covers matters from three ministries: the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the Prime Minister’s Office and the Ministry of Finance. He previously served as a minister for foreign affairs from April 2008. Before that, Minister Stubb was in the European Parliament from June 2004 where he worked with issues concerning the internal market, the EU budget and external relations. Before his career in the European Parliament, he was counsellor at the Permanent Representation of Finland to the European Union in Brussels. Minister Stubb has been a visiting professor at the College of Europe, and published many books on the EU, as well as a number of academic articles on EU-related issues. He completed his undergraduate degree in political science at Furman University, USA. He obtained his PhD from the London School of Economics in 1999 on Flexible Integration and the Amsterdam Treaty.
Contributor(s): Judy Cheng-Hopkins | Peacebuilding has become a buzzword over the past decade. Yet, there are many diverging ideas of what peacebuilding is and what it entails. The United Nations is not exempt from such uncertainty, diverging interpretations, and misunderstandings, as well as the resulting conceptual and practical debates. Assistant secretary-general for peacebuilding support, Judy Cheng-Hopkins, will seek to outline the concept of peacebuilding, its practical significance, and translation into operational activity, with a particular focus on the work and engagement of the UN Peacebuilding Commission and the Peacebuilding Fund, which finances activities of UN agencies, funds and programmes in fragile states around the world. Judy Cheng-Hopkins has been the United Nations assistant secretary-general for peacebuilding support since 2009. She was previously the assistant high commissioner for refugees (2006-2009), the director of the Asia Bureau and the Balkans at the World Food Programme (WFP), and served UNDP in Africa for ten years. She received a masters of international affairs degree from SIPA, Columbia University. In 2011, she was listed by Forbes as one of the ten most powerful women at the UN. In 2013, she received the prestigious Global Leadership Award from Columbia University. Stuart Gordon is assistant professor in the Department of International Development at LSE.
Contributor(s): Prof Jacques Rupnik, Prof Mary Kaldor, Prof Michael Cox | The end of the Cold War in 1989 ushered in a more stable world shaped by an irresistible combination of capitalism and liberalism. But did it? New wars in failing states, the spread of nuclear weapons, rising terrorism, and in 2008 the great financial crash, all pointed to an international system where the certainties of a 20th Century Cold War had given way to a new century full of uncertainty and danger.
Contributor(s): António José Seguro | Since July 2011 António José Seguro (@ajseguro), leader of the opposition in Portugal has defended an alternative set of policies to be outlined and implemented while Portugal is under the Financial Assistance Program in order to prevent a deep recession and unemployment and to increase the economic activity. Being a strong critic of austerity policies, António José Seguro advocates a stronger role for the European institutions against the financial and economic crisis namely in the fight against youth unemployment and supporting new competences for the ECB in order to tackle the Eurozone rising public debt. Three months before the end of the Assistance Program, the Socialist Party secretary general explains his alternative for the Portuguese economy and the strategy for the EU after the next European elections. António José Martins Seguro is the leader of the Portuguese Socialist Party and a member of the Portuguese parliament. He was born on 11 March 1962 and has a degree in International Relations and a post-graduation in Political Science. In the national parliament, António José Seguro has already assumed the leadership of the Socialist Party parliamentary group. Between 2006 and 2011, he was president of the Parliamentary Commissions for Education, Science and Culture and also for Economic Affairs, Innovation and Energy. António Seguro also coordinated the reforming process of the Portuguese parliament. António Seguro was secretary of state for youth and secretary of state to the prime minister. In 2001, he was minister to the prime minister António Guterres. He was a member of the European parliament from 1999 to 2001 and held several parliamentary positions, which include among others being vice president of the European Socialist Party Group and co-rapporteur of the European parliament report about the Treaty of Nice and the Future of the European Union. He is vice-president of the Socialist International.
Contributor(s): Bronwyn Curtis | To mark the completion of the Saw Swee Hock Student Centre, the first brand new building on campus for more than 40 years, the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and the LSE Students’ Union have organised a series of ‘in conversation’ events with some of the School's distinguished alumni. These events will take place in the Saw Swee Hock Student Centre and will be open to LSE students, alumni and staff.This event will see Bronwyn Curtis in conversation with Professor Danny Quah. Bronwyn Curtis is an economist whose career spans both the financial markets and the media. She is a widely published author and a regular speaker on television and radio. Most recently she was Head of Global Research at HSBC. Previously she was at Bloomberg where she was managing editor and responsible for all European broadcasting activities. Other roles include Global Head of Currency and Fixed Income Strategy at Deutsche Bank and Chief Economist at Nomura International. She has also worked as a consultant for the World Bank and UNCTAD on projects in West Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. Bronwyn is a non-executive director of JPM Asian Investment Trust PLC, Vice Chairman of the Society of Business Economists, a board member of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, a former member of the Council at the London School of Economics. She is also on the Advisory Board at Imperial College Business School, as well as a member of The Times newspaper’s Shadow Monetary Policy Committee. She has also been a Board member of the Office of Fair Trading. She has a master's degree from the London School of Economics, and is an economics graduate of La Trobe University, Australia. Bronwyn was awarded an OBE for services to business economics in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list in 2008. Danny Quah is professor of economics and international development, and Kuwait Professor at LSE. He previously served as LSE’s Head of Department for Economics (2006-2009) and Council Member on Malaysia’s National Economic Advisory Council (2009-2011). He is Tan Chin Tuan Visiting Professor at the National University of Singapore, and lectures regularly at Peking University. He studied at Princeton, Minnesota, and Harvard, and was Assistant Professor in the Economics Department at MIT before joining LSE. After the conversation there will be the opportunity for the audience to put their questions to the speaker in the Q&A session. A free drinks reception will follow the event giving the audience a chance to meet the speaker.
Contributor(s): Nishrin Jafri Hussain, Angana P. Chatterji, Meena Kandasamy | In the context of the forthcoming Indian elections in which the current Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi is the Prime Ministerial candidate of the Hindu right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, a panel of human rights campaigners and academics will discuss the key questions surrounding the issues of gender and the Hindu Right. Dr Angana P. Chatterji is a cultural anthropologist and human rights specialist. In 2005, she convened a people's tribunal in Odisha, calling attention to the impending violence against minorities and religionized oppression. In 2009, her collaborative work through a people's tribunal she co-convened in Jammu & Kashmir called attention to the issue of unknown graves and the need for accountability to families of the disappeared, and subsequently received corroboration from the State Human Rights Commission of Jammu & Kashmir. Her publications include: Violent Gods: Hindu Nationalism in India's Present; Narratives from Orissa (Three Essays Collective, 2009); a co-edited volume, Contesting Nation: Gendered Violence in South Asia; Notes on the Postcolonial Present (Zubaan, 2012); and the reports, BURIED EVIDENCE: Unknown, Unmarked, and Mass Graves in Kashmir (2009), Communalism in Orissa (2006), and Without Land or Livelihood (2004). Meena Kandasamy is a writer, activist and political columnist. She has published two collections of poetry, Touch and Ms.Militancy. Her first novel, The Gypsy Goddess, revisits the 1968 Kilvenmani massacre where feudal landlords in Tanjore killed 44 Dalit peasants striking for higher wages. Her work is centered on caste annihilation, the Tamil national question and feminism in contemporary India.
Contributor(s): Professor Diane Elson, Professor Ruth Lister | With the arrival of The Women’s Library at LSE, the Gender Institute will be running a series of 'Conversations' for which audience participation is invited. Money and material resources are unequally distributed throughout the world. This conversation discusses the part that gender plays in this universal pattern and the ways in which gendered financial inequality can be challenged. Diane Elson is professor of sociology at the University of Essex. Ruth Lister is emeritus professor of social policy at Loughborough University and a member of the House of Lords.
Contributor(s): Christine Whitehead, Kath Scanlon | LSE London's 2014 Lent term seminar series begins on the 20th of January. Speakers from within and beyond LSE will focus on London's current economic and political environment London, covering relevant issues such as the private rented sector, the distribution of poverty and the densification effects of international migrants. Presenters include academics and practitioners from relevant fields. Each seminar is chaired by one of the members of LSE London, while speaker’s presentations, available podcasts and any other related documents are posted here regularly after each session.
Contributor(s): Tobias Hill, Michael Longley, Timberlake Wertenbaker, Louisa Young | One hundred years after the outbreak of the Great War, Sebastian Faulks, whose novel Birdsong has sold over 2.5 million copies, introduces four writers, and the pieces of First World War literature that mean most to them. The poet and fiction writer Tobias Hill, described by A.S. Byatt as one of the ‘most original and interesting’ novelists writing in Britain today, looks at Alain Fournier’s Le Grand Meaulnes. The Northern Irish poet Michael Longley, whose father was awarded the Military Cross for Gallantry during the First World War, reads from the poetry of Robert Graves, Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, Siegfried Sassoon and Edward Thomas. Timberlake Wertenbaker, whose most recent play, Our Ajax, looks at the trauma of modern warfare, explains how she was marked by Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy. And Louisa Young, author of the bestselling First World War novel My Dear, I Wanted to Tell You, considers The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West. Tobias Hill has been selected as one of the country’s Next Generation poets and shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year. What Was Promised is his fifth novel. Michael Longley is one of Northern Ireland’s foremost contemporary poets, awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2001. Timberlake Wertenbaker is a British playwright, screenplay writer and translator. Her plays include most recently Our Ajax which looks at the trauma of modern warfare. Louisa Young (@rileypurefoy) is author of the bestselling First World War novel My Dear, I Wanted to Tell You. Peter Parker is the author of The Last Veteran, The Old Lie: The Great War and the Public-School Ethos and biographies of J.R. Ackerley and Christopher Isherwood. This event is organised in association with the Royal Society of Literature (@RSLiterature). This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2014, taking place from Monday 24 February - Saturday 1 March 2014, with the theme 'Reflections'.
Contributor(s): Professor Josh Cohen, Dr Ellen Helsper, Professor Andrew Murray | This panel will discuss where our modern understanding of privacy has come from, what our rights to privacy are in a digital age, and what effect this is having on younger generations, who seem to live their lives in the public domain. Josh Cohen is professor of modern literary theory at Goldsmiths, University of London and a psychoanalyst in private practice. He is the author of books and articles on modern literature, cultural theory and psychoanalysis, including How to Read Freud and The Private Life: why we remain in the dark. Ellen Helsper (@EllenHel) is an associate professor in the Media and Communications Department of the LSE. She has been consulted widely by UK and EU governments, the commercial and the charitable sector. She has held the roles of academic advisor for the Media and Communications Department of the PUC in Chile, external member of the BCS Ethics Board, and specialist advisor on digital inclusion for the Welsh Affairs Committee. She is a research associate at the Oxford Internet Institute and has had visiting scholar positions at the NYU Steinhardt's department of Media, Culture and Communications, USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and the Communications Department at the University of Twente. Andrew Murray (@AndrewDMurray) is professor in law at LSE and a fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (FRSA). He joined the LSE Law Department in September 2000. Andrew’s principal research interests are in regulatory design within Cyberspace, particularly the role of non-State actors, the protection and promotion of Human Rights within the digital environment and the promotion of proprietary interests in the digital sphere, encompassing both intellectual property rights and traditional property models. This event forms part of LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2014, taking place from Monday 24 February - Saturday 1 March 2014, with the theme 'Reflections'.
Contributor(s): Professor Trevor Cox, Caroline Devine, Aleksander Kolkowski | In a world dominated by the visual, we can all benefit from opening our ears to the glorious cacophony around us, which can enrich our understanding of ourselves and our environment. Trevor Cox (@trevor_cox) is professor of acoustic engineering at the University of Salford and president of the Institute of Acoustics. He has presented numerous science radio documentaries and has written for the New Scientist. He is an associate editor for an international journal of acoustics and author of Sonic Wonderland: A Scientific Odyssey of Sound. Caroline Devine is a composer and sound artist whose practice investigates the boundary between sound and music, encompassing electroacoustic composition, sound installation, radio and theatre. Born in London in 1969, she studied Sound Arts and Design at London College of Communication. Caroline’s works explore voices and sounds that are ordinarily imperceptible, silenced or in some way absent, such as natural radio transmissions, solar resonances, electromagnetic signals or hidden voices. She has a particular interest in the use of space as a compositional parameter and her site-specific sound installations include an outdoor parabolic dome structure, a lift, The Open University campus grounds and Alan Turing Hut 8 at Bletchley Park. Caroline's soundwork documenting derelict buildings at Bletchley Park featured on BBC Radio 4 Today Programme. Recent commissions include Space Ham, Between the Ears for BBC Radio 3, Oscillations, for ICA SOUNDWORKS and 5 Minute Oscillations of the Sun, an outdoor multi channel sound installation that was shortlisted for a BASCA British Composer Award. Throughout 2014, Caroline will undertake a period as Leverhulme Artist in Residence with the Solar and Stellar Physics Group in the School of Physics and Astronomy at University of Birmingham. Aleksander Kolkowski is a violinist, composer and sound artist who uses historical sound recording and reproduction apparatus and obsolete media to make contemporary mechanical-acoustic music. His work invites us to listen to the present through the audio technologies of the past, often by rendering sounds into physical objects and through live historical re-enactments. His numerous international projects in this field have combined wax cylinder phonographs, wind-up gramophones and antique disc recording machines together with live musicians and even singing canaries. A major project to date has been his archive of contemporary musicians, artists and writers recorded exclusively on wax cylinders. Begun in 2006 and continuing, the entire Phonographies collection may be accessed online. In 2012, Aleks was appointed as the first sound artist-in-resident at the Science Museum, London, and he has since held research associateships at the Science Museum and the Royal College of Music. His latest installation, In Search of Perfection, features a giant, newly reconstructed exponential horn loudspeaker from the 1930s and will open at the Science Museum’s Media Space in May 2014. David Hendy (@DavidjHendy) is professor of media and communication at the University of Sussex, and author of Noise: a Human History, a 30-part series for BBC Radio 4, broadcast in 2013. The series traced the role of sound and listening in social life from prehistory to the present-day. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2014, taking place from Monday 24 February - Saturday 1 March 2014, with the theme 'Reflections'.
Contributor(s): Giovanni Frazzetto | Is neuroscience better than philosophy to cope with anxiety in the face of the world’s economic crisis? What can a brain scan or a Caravaggio painting reveal about the deep seat of guilt? Can ancient remedies fight sadness more effectively than anti-depressants? What do poetry and joy have in common? And how can experiments in mice teach us how to find a partner? We live at a time when neuroscience is unlocking the secrets of our emotions. But can the neural script of the brain indeed tell us how we feel? Giovanni Frazzetto takes us on a journey through our everyday lives and most common emotions. He mixes his scientific knowledge with art, literature, philosophy and personal experience to offer a set of stories that contend rationality and sentiment, science and poetry. Giovanni Frazzetto (@BravePassion) was born and grew up in Sicily. In 1995, after high school, he moved to the UK to study science at University College London and in 2002 he received a PhD from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg. Since he was a student he has worked and written on the relationship between science, society and culture, publishing in journals such as EMBOreports and Nature. While he was a researcher at the LSE, he was one of the founders of the European Neuroscience & Society Network and the creator of the transdisciplinary Neuroschools. Giovanni has also written short stories and plays and curated science-inspired art exhibitions. For his transdisciplinary efforts he was awarded the 2008 John Kendrew Young Scientist Award. He now lives between London and Berlin where he works at the Institute for Advanced Study. His first book How We Feel: What Neuroscience Can -and Can't- tell us about our emotions was published by Doubleday in August 2013. This event forms part of LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2014, taking place from Monday 24 February - Saturday 1 March 2014, with the theme 'Reflections'.
Contributor(s): Michael Rosen | How on Earth did we fix upon our letters, what do they really mean, and how did we come to write them down in the first place? In Alphabetical Michael Rosen takes you on an unforgettable adventure through the history of the alphabet in twenty-six vivid chapters, fizzing with personal anecdotes and fascinating facts. Starting with the mysterious Phoenicians and how sounds first came to be written down, he races on to show how nonsense poems work, pins down the strange story of OK, traces our five lost letters and tackles the tyranny of spelling, among many, many other things. Michael Rosen (@MichaelRosenYes) was born in 1946 in North London. He is a former Children’s Laureate and the bestselling author of We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, which won the Smarties Best Book of the Year Award, and many other books. He presents Word of Mouth on BBC Radio 4. Jennifer Richards is professor of early modern literature and culture in the School of English at Newcastle University, and author of Rhetoric and Courtliness in Early Modern Literature (2003) and Rhetoric (2007). This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2014, taking place from Monday 24 February - Saturday 1 March 2014, with the theme 'Reflections'.
Contributor(s): Adrian Searle | At a time when criticism fragments into a mosaic of the theoretical and the anaemic, into promotion, obscurantism and flim-flam, the extinction of the broadsheet critic looms ever closer. Yet there has never been more writing about art, and more of a readership for it. Nor has art ever had such a large audience. As mega-galleries rise, and auctions and art fairs parade a vulgar carnival of wealth and consumption, Searle asks who needs critics, who listens, why look, and why write and read. Adrian Searle (@SearleAdrian) has been writing art criticism for over 35 years, and has been art critic for The Guardian since 1996. In 2010 he edited The Writings of Juan Muñoz, and recently contributed to By and On Luc Tuymans, for the Whitechapel and MIT press. He has curated numerous exhibitions, including the first retrospective of Brazilian sculptor Lucia Nogueira, for the Serralves Museum in Portugal in 2007, and Julião Sarmento: Close Distance, at the Casa Encendida in Madrid in 2011. He has taught at many British and European art colleges and was until recently a visiting professor at the Royal College of Art. He also likes to dance. This event forms part of LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2014, taking place from Monday 24 February - Saturday 1 March 2014, with the theme 'Reflections'.
Contributor(s): Polly Courtney, Isabelle de Cat, Jonathan Gibbs | Fiction publishing has long held that an eye catching cover is key to successful sales. But academic publishing struggles to reflect complex contents through one stand-out image on a book cover. The growth of e-books and online publishing in many ways makes the cover design of a book more important, and sharing a cover on social media may give it more prominence than it has ever had. So this panel asks how crucial is how a book cover looks? And what can serious fiction and non-fiction publishing learn from its more populist cousins? Polly Courtney (@PollyCourtney) is the author of six published novels. She started out as an investment banker and wrote her first book, Golden Handcuffs, because she wanted to expose the reality of life in the Square Mile. Subsequent novels have covered sexism, racism, fame culture and the summer riots and her most recent novel, Feral Youth, is about disenfranchised youth in a summer of discontent. In late 2011, Polly famously walked out on her publisher, HarperCollins, for the ‘girly’ titles and covers assigned to her books – most notably, It’s a Man’s World, the hard-hitting take on the lads’ mag industry and its impact on society. Isabelle de Cat is art editor for the Press division of Penguin Books. She has over 12 years' experience working in the book industry. In her current role, she designs, commissions and sources cover artworks for a wide range of titles across Penguin's fiction and non-fiction imprints: Allen Lane, Penguin Classics, Modern Classics and Particular Books. Jonathan Gibbs (@Tiny_Camels) is a books journalist and writer living in London. He writes a weekly blog on book design for The Independent as well as writing more widely on books for The Independent, the Financial Times, the Daily Telegraph and the Times Literary Supplement. His debut novel, Randall, or The Painted Grape, will be published in 2014 by Galley Beggar Press. He teaches undergraduate modules at the University of East Anglia on Creative Writing and The Writing of Journalism. Toby Lichtig is assistant editor at the Times Literary Supplement. He is also a freelance journalist, editor and writer. The LSE Review of Books (@LSEReviewBooks) publishes daily reviews of academic books across all the social science disciplines. We also produce podcasts where you can hear academics discussing the ideas behind their latest books. We will be producing a special podcast in the run up to the festival asking academics about the art and literature that inspires them. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2014, taking place from Monday 24 February - Saturday 1 March 2014, with the theme 'Reflections'.
Contributor(s): James Owen | In this session, historian and journalist James Owen will look at ways of approaching different types of non-fiction writing. Do you want to research or write your family’s story? Or your own? Are you a budding biographer or diarist? Find out how to begin and how to get the most out of the new resources available to would-be writers. James Owen is an author and journalist. His first book, A Serpent in Eden (Little, Brown, 2005), told the story of a famous unsolved murder committed in the Bahamas during the wartime governorship of the Duke of Windsor. It was nominated for the CWA Gold Dagger and adapted for television by Channel 4. Since then, he has written: Nuremberg: Evil on Trial (Headline, 2006), a re-examination of the cases conducted against the leading Nazis which drew on his own training as a barrister; Danger UXB (Little, Brown, 2010), a history of the early days of bomb disposal; and Commando (Little, Brown, 2012). In 2004, with Guy Walters, he published an anthology of writing about the Second World War, The Voice of War (Viking/ Penguin). James previously worked for the Daily Telegraph, mainly as a writer of obituaries, and continues to contribute articles and book reviews regularly to the national press. He is also a trustee of the London Library. Although based in London, he has spent much time in Rome and Venice and is fluent in Italian. This event forms part of LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2014, taking place from Monday 24 February - Saturday 1 March 2014, with the theme 'Reflections'.
Contributor(s): Dr Arthur Bradley, Kenan Malik | Sensationalist accounts of the relationship between religion and secularism tend to depict the two as locked in combat, profoundly incompatible in their worldviews. By addressing the concept of ‘Christian Europe’, this discussion will explore the connections between the Christian legacy and the Enlightenment values which underpin secularism. In so doing, it will aim to provide both a more nuanced account of the relationship between religion and secularism, and a clearer sense of how religious and secular approaches inflect our experience and understanding of the world. Arthur Bradley is a reader in comparative literature in the Department of English & Creative Writing at Lancaster University. His research interests are in contemporary literature, critical and cultural theory and religion. In 2009/10, he was a visiting professor at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, and in 2013 he is a visiting fellow at Durham University. In 2013, he helped to establish the Northern Critical Theory School, which brings together researchers working in the field of critical and cultural theory at the universities of Lancaster, Durham, Edinburgh, Leeds, Liverpool, York and others. His books include The New Atheist Novel: Fiction, Philosophy and Polemic after 9/11 and Originary Technicity: The Theory of Technology from Marx to Derrida. Kenan Malik (@kenanmalik) is a writer, lecturer and broadcaster. He is a presenter of Analysis, BBC Radio 4's flagship current affairs programme and a panellist on the Moral Maze. He has written and presented a number of radio and TV documentaries including Disunited Kingdom, Are Muslims Hated?, Islam, Mullahs and the Media, Skullduggery and Man, Beast and Politics. His books include From Fatwa to Jihad, Strange Fruit, Man, Beast and Zombie, and The Meaning of Race. His latest book, to be published in April 2014, is The Quest for a Moral Compass: A Global History of Ethics. This event forms part of LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2014, taking place from Monday 24 February - Saturday 1 March 2014, with the theme 'Reflections'.
Contributor(s): AS Byatt, Professor Mary Evans, Alex Preston | Does this year’s awarding of the Nobel prize for literature to a short-story writer mark a revival of the short story’s reputation, long undervalued in this country? This panel will celebrate the unique qualities of the short story form and ask why historically it has been seen as a predominantly female genre. AS Byatt is renowned internationally for her novels and short stories. Her novels include the Booker Prize-Winning Possession and The Children's Book. Her most recent book is Ragnorak: The End of the Gods, a retelling of the Norse myth. She is editor of The Oxford Book of English Short Stories. A distinguished critic as well as a writer of fiction, A S Byatt was appointed CBE in 1990 and DBE in 1999. Mary Evans is a Centennial Professor at LSE based in the Gender Institute. Prior to coming to the LSE as a visiting fellow she taught women's studies and sociology at the University of Kent. Her work is interdisciplinary and crosses boundaries between the social sciences and humanities. Her research interests include narrative fiction, focusing on themes of gender and class and the impact of gender on the academy. Alex Preston (@ahmpreston) was born in 1979 and lives with his family in London. His first novel, This Bleeding City, was an international bestseller and won the Spear's and Edinburgh first book awards. It has been translated into twelve languages. Alex writes and reviews for the New Statesman and the Observer and is a regular panellist on BBC2's The Review Show. Cathy Galvin (@cathygalvin1) is founder and editor of The Word Factory and founder of The Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2014, taking place from Monday 24 February - Saturday 1 March 2014, with the theme 'Reflections'.
Contributor(s): Jonathan Gibbs | Where does life end and fiction begin? It is a never-ending debate, but there has been much discussion recently of the strange, delicate and sometimes confusing relationship between the writer and their novel. Where once the semi-autobiographical novel was a staple of the form, now people talk of the novelised memoir, or (as in Sheila Heti) the 'novel from life'. At the same time, the centenary of the First World War throws into relief the effects that our ever-more digital lifestyle will have on future generations' understanding of who we were, in the first decades of the 21st Century, and what our life was like. This workshop will bring together these themes to look at ways of writing 'from' our lives that moves beyond the straightforwardly autobiographical. Come ready to write - about yourself, and not about yourself. Jonathan Gibbs (@Tiny_Camels) recently completed a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing at the University of East Anglia, where he was awarded a Malcolm Bradbury memorial bursary. He has written on books for the Independent, the Daily Telegraph, the TLS and elsewhere, and he writes the Independent's weekly Friday Book Design Blog. His short fiction has been published in Lighthouse, and by Shortfire Press, The South Circular and The White Review (where his story The Story I'm Thinking Of was shortlisted for the 2013 White Review Prize). His first novel, Randall, or The Painted Grape, about the London art world and the YBAs, will be published in Spring 2014 by Galley Beggar Press. This event forms part of LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2014, taking place from Monday 24 February - Saturday 1 March 2014, with the theme 'Reflections'.
Contributor(s): Mary Midgley, Jonathan Rée, Professor Raymond Tallis | What is the self? Should we turn to philosophy, psychology or science in order to better understand it? Does the self even exist? In this panel, three thinkers respond to scientific claims that the self is an illusion, exposing the philosophical problems which such claims conceal. Returning us instead to the experience of selfhood, the speakers will discuss alternatives both to reductive scientific accounts and to traditional philosophical concepts of the self. Mary Midgley is one of the most respected moral philosophers of her generation and the author of many books including Beast and Man, Wickedness, The Solitary Self and most recently Are you an Illusion?. Jonathan Rée is a writer, philosopher and historian. His has written for the Times Literary Supplement, the London Review of Books, the Independent, Prospect, the Nation and the Evening Standard. His books include Philosophical Tales, Proletarian Philosophers, I See a Voice and The Concise Encyclopedia of Western Philosophy. Raymond Tallis trained as a doctor before going on to become professor of geriatric medicine at the University of Manchester. He was elected fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences for his research in clinical neuroscience. He retired from medicine in 2006 to become a full-time writer and has published fiction, poetry, cultural criticism and philosophical anthropology, including The Kingdom of Infinite Space, the widely praised Aping Mankind and most recently Reflections of a Metaphysical Flâneur. This event forms part of LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2014, taking place from Monday 24 February - Saturday 1 March 2014, with the theme 'Reflections'.
Contributor(s): Professor Judith Rees, Richard Hermer QC, Alice Stapleton, Richard Gordon QC, Zahra Al-Rikabi, Professor Oriana Bandiera, Shiv Malik, Emma Soames, Bob Ward | The post-war generation stands accused of wrecking the world for the generations that follow them. It is those younger people - the victims of this excess - who are the prosecuting authorities in this unique legal proceedings. The charge sheet is long. The Baby Boomers may have signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the later international covenants but by their actions they have destroyed or greatly diminished the substance of the rights it contains for Generations X and Y, and all the others still to come. The resources of the world have been so plundered that the basics of a decent life - water; food; fresh air - can no longer be taken for granted. Nor even can a habitable world be assumed, for many already alive who have the misfortune to be born at the wrong time. Baby Boomers have breached the trust they owed to the world's peoples coming after them. They stand accused as multiple violators of fundamental human rights. The Baby Boomers defence will, though, be robust. They inherited a world laid waste by war and rebuilt it, staying clear of further war despite the power of the weapons they had to hand. They evolved a welfare state to provide security for all people and brought freedom to colonies the world over. The world they handed over was in decent shape. It is generations X and Y, with their compulsion to embrace the market, their lack of any kind of social solidarity and their failure to think imaginatively and together to solve the issues that confront them (much smaller than anything they faced) that are the true culprits for the mess we are in. So who is right? The charges against the Baby Boomers will be brought by a team of legal experts, backed by human rights and other specialist witnesses. The Baby Boomers will be defended by an equally distinguished legal team. Overseen by Professor Judith Rees, the trial will involve an audience verdict and then one delivered by a mixed jury of young and old people, specially convened to hear the case. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2014, taking place from Monday 24 February - Saturday 1 March 2014, with the theme 'Reflections'.
Contributor(s): Bridget Minamore, Chimene Suleyman | Join LSE Students' Union and LSESU Literature Society in hosting Bridget Minamore and Chimene Suleyman, two members of London's leading spoken word poetry collective Point Blank Poets. In an evening of poetry, Bridget and Chimene will be performing their work and inspiring the audience to engage with social issues through the power of words. The audience is warmly invited to participate, as we explore the power of poetry in our complex political and social environment. Having previously worked with the National Theatre’s New Views programme, Bridget Minamore (@bridgetminamore) has been reading and performing her own spoken word poetry since she came third in the Roundhouse’s annual Summer Slam in 2009. She became an Associate Artist with her poetry collective, Rubix, at the Roundhouse, and they released their debut spoken word album RED on iTunes/Roundhouse Records in 2012. She has since won various slam titles around London including Farrago and Hammer & Tongue, and has been published in anthologies such as Burning Eye Books’ Rhyming Thunder and Tongue Fu’s Liminal Animals. She has also had her work exhibited at a TEDxLondon conference and performed at places ranging from 10 Downing Street to the Southbank Centre and the King’s College Cambridge Women’s Dinner. She was recently shortlisted to be the first Young Poet Laureate for London. Chimene Suleyman (@chimenesuleyman) is a writer from London. She has represented the UK at the International Biennale, 2011, and runs spoken word night Kid, I Wrote Back. She writes opinion pieces on feminism and collects photos of Canary Wharf. Her poetry collection Outside Looking On will be published by Influx Press, Summer 2014. Point Blank Poets (@PointBlankPoets) are a collective of the most exciting, emerging spoken word stars in the UK and recent winners of the prestigious UK Young Artists International Award. They focus on creatively responding to important contemporary issues with their fresh and lively live literature. They feel a passion for the power of words, in particular poetry, to add a dimension of empathy to situations. Each member has a successful individual poetry career and by working together hope to use their talents to really make a difference. They have performed all over the UK and beyond, including Germany, Morocco, Poland, France, Ireland, Belgium and the U.S and have collaborated with organisations such as TRAID, Amnesty International, PEN to raise awareness of various issues through poetry and performance. This event forms part of LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2014, taking place from Monday 24 February - Saturday 1 March 2014, with the theme 'Reflections'.
Contributor(s): Andrew Davies, Penny Woolcock | Gangs are a familiar subject for films, books and news media. The panel will explore why gangs are a favoured subject of film and print, how they are portrayed, and how far these representations can be considered accurate or 'realistic', and how these presentations in turn affect public perceptions of young peoples' lives. Andrew Davies (@AD1878) teaches modern social history at the University of Liverpool. His books include The Gangs of Manchester (2008) and City of Gangs: Glasgow and the Rise of the British Gangster (2013). In 2008-9, he worked with MaD Theatre Company on Angels with Manky Faces, a multi-media stage play set in 1894 with a 'Madchester' soundtrack and filmed cameos by members of The Smiths and the Inspiral Carpets along with actors from Coronation Street and Early Doors. Penny Woolcock is a writer and director making documentaries, television fiction, feature films and opera. Her fiction feature film 1 Day (2009) about a day in the life of a gang banging street hustler led to One Mile Away (2013) documenting a peace process between the two notorious gangs in inner city Birmingham. She’s specially interested in the vibrant economy and culture of marginalised communities. Her trilogy about inner city Leeds Tina Goes Shopping, Tina Takes a Break and Mischief Night were street cast fictions based on real life stories. She spent eight months On the Streets (2010) making a film about homeless people in London and months in a hostel for street drinkers for The Wet House (2000). She’s directed a film version of the John Adams opera The Death of Klinghoffer (2003) and stage operas for the Met in New York and the English National Opera. Gareth Jones is a reader in urban geography at LSE. Penny Woolcock's film One Mile Away will be screened on the closing night of the Festival at 7pm on Saturday 1 March. This event forms part of LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2014, taking place from Monday 24 February - Saturday 1 March 2014, with the theme 'Reflections'.
Contributor(s): Dr Alex Gillespie, Professor Philip Horne | Following on from last years’ dialogue, this event will draw on readings from the work of William and Henry James to explore the links between psychology and fiction. From insights into self-reflection in the stream of consciousness to questions of religiosity, ghosts and the supernatural, Henry and William produced a combined body of work that continues to inspire. Including readings from the work of William and Henry, this event will focus on religion and the supernatural, and how each brother explored similar issues, but through very different means, namely literature and psychology. Alex Gillespie is a lecturer in social psychology at LSE and co-editor of the Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour. Phllip Horne is professor of English at UCL and series editor of the Penguin Classics Henry James. Sandra Jovchlovitch is professor in the Department of Social Psychology at LSE. This event forms part of LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2014, taking place from Monday 24 February - Saturday 1 March 2014, with the theme 'Reflections'.
Contributor(s): Professor Marianna Fotaki, Professor Steve Fuller, Professor Yiannis Gabriel, David Morgan | This session will look at how we can understand the apparent growth in narcissism and withdrawals from intimacy in a digital age. From the impact of Facebook and online porn on sex to how whether we’re losing the capacity to be close to the people we work with. Join us to explore whether we’re all turning into narcissists or can we do something to salvage intimacy with other people? Marianna Fotaki is professor of business ethics at Warwick Business School, and holds a visiting professorship at The University of Manchester. Before joining academia Marianna has worked as EU resident adviser to the governments in transition and as a medical doctor for Médecins Sans Frontières and Médecins Du Monde for ten years in total. She is a graduate of medicine, public health, and has obtained a PhD in public policy from LSE. Her research is on the marketization of public services, health inequalities, gender and otherness in organizations and business in society. She has published over 30 papers on those subjects and has four books forthcoming: a monograph, on fantasy and reality of patient choice (Edward Elgar). Gender and the Organization (with Nancy Harding, Routledge), Affect in Organizations (co-edited with Kate Kenny, Palgrave) and Global Challenges to Business in Society (with Kate Kenny and Juliane Reinecke, Sage). Steve Fuller is Auguste Comte Professor of social epistemology in the Department of Sociology at the University of Warwick. The author of twenty books, his most recent work focuses on the future of humanity. 2014 will see the publication of two books: Knowledge: The Philosophical Quest in History (Acumen) and, with Veronika Lipinska, The Proactionary Imperative: A Foundation for Transhumanism (Palgrave). Yiannis Gabriel is professor of organizational theory at the University of Bath. He has a PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley. Yiannis is known for his work into the psychoanalysis of organizational and social life. He has written on organizational storytelling and narratives, leadership, management learning and the culture and politics of contemporary consumption. He has developed a psychoanalytic interpretation of organizational stories as a way of studying numerous social and organizational phenomena including leader-follower relations, group dynamics and fantasies, nostalgia, insults and apologies. He has been editor of Management Learning and associate editor of Human Relations and is currently senior editor of Organization Studies. His enduring fascination as a researcher lies in what he describes as the unmanageable qualities of life in and out of organizations. David Morgan is a fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society, senior member of the British Psychoanalytic Association, and has been consultant psychotherapist at the Portman Clinic for 20 years. He is a training analyst, supervisor and lecturer, and is consultant psychotherapist at WhistleblowersUK. He is also a consultant psychotherapist and psychoanalyst in private practice. Elizabeth Cotton blogs as Surviving Work and is an academic at Middlesex University Business School. Her academic background is in political philosophy and current writing includes precarious work and employment relations, activism and mental health at work. She has worked as an activist and educator in over thirty countries, working with trade unions and Global Union Federations at senior level. Some of this work is reflected in her co-authored publication, Global Unions Global Business, described as “the essential guide to global trade unionism”. Elizabeth lived and worked abroad until returning to the UK in 2007 to write and start the process of training in adult psychotherapy. She is founding director of The Resilience Space and runs the Surviving Work Library. The LSE Review of Books publishes daily reviews of academic books across all the social science disciplines.
Contributor(s): Professor Michael Cox, Dr John Hutchinson, Professor Margaret MacMillan | This multi-disciplinary panel discussion will reflect on the consequences of the First World War and the value of remembrance, including the impact on international relations, the effect on nationalism and the home front, and what photography and narration of the war can tell us about our society. Michael Cox is founding co-director of LSE IDEAS and professor of international relations at LSE. John Hutchinson is reader in nationalism in the Department of Government at LSE. Margaret Macmillan is the author of Women of the Raj and international bestsellers Seize the Hour: When Nixon Met Mao and Peacemakers: The Paris Conference 1919 and its Attempt to End the War, which won the 2002 Samuel Johnson Prize. Her most recent book is The War That Ended Peace: How Europe Abandoned Peace for the First World War (October 2013). The past Provost of Trinity College at the University of Toronto, she is now the Warden of St Antony's College, Oxford. David Stevenson is professor of international history at LSE. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2014, taking place from Monday 24 February - Saturday 1 March 2014, with the theme 'Reflections'.
Contributor(s): Richard Bronk, Professor Roger Kneebone, Dr Felicity Mellor | This panel discussion will examine the role of metaphors in scientific thinking and in the presentation of science. It will ask whether the use of metaphors leads to unnecessary distortions in analysis or is instead an essential part of scientific thinking. Do we need to deconstruct the hidden metaphors in scientific analysis in order to uncover hidden frames? Or should we see metaphorical thinking as a major tool in scientific discovery and in the presentation of scientific findings? Richard Bronk is visiting fellow in the European Institute at LSE. With a degree in Classics and Philosophy and seventeen years experience in financial markets, Richard has been at LSE since 2000. He is author of The Romantic Economist: Imagination in Economics (Cambridge University Press, 2009) which explores the role of metaphors, imagination and language in economics. Roger Kneebone (@ProfKneebone) is a professor in the department of surgery and medicine at Imperial College London and Engagement Fellow of the Wellcome Trust. Trained as a trauma surgeon and with experience as a GP, Roger has since 2003 worked on innovative training and simulation techniques for surgery. His recent research has focused on the synergies between science and the arts and on encouraging public engagement with science. Felicity Mellor is senior lecturer in the Science Communication Unit at Imperial College London. With a PhD in theoretical physics and experience lecturing in astronomy, Felicity now does research on the interface between science and the public, and on the role of narrative in science. Daniel Glaser (@bnglaser) is director of the Science Gallery at Kings College, London. With degrees in English Literature, cognitive science and neurobiology, he has worked for more than a decade at the interface between science and the arts, first at the ICA and then with multiple audiences and national media. This event forms part of LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2014, taking place from Monday 24 February - Saturday 1 March 2014, with the theme 'Reflections'.
Contributor(s): Professor Mabel Berezin | This lecture will explore the effect on the crisis and EU institutional action on public opinion, in particular the dynamics between the former and the growth of illiberal nationalism. Mabel Berezin is department chair and associate professor at Cornell University.
Contributor(s): Dr Ethan Ilzetzki | This talk discusses what is known about the effects of austerity and fiscal stimulus on economic activity. Ethan Ilzetzki is an economics lecturer at LSE. His research focuses on the effects of fiscal policy and the role of politics in shaping fiscal policy.
Contributor(s): Vernal Scott | Vernal Scott, author of the new autobiography, God’s Other Children - A London Memoir, will look back at the impact of HIV and AIDS during the height of the challenge in the 80s and 90s. Vernal Scott is an out Christian gay dad, diversity and human rights consultant and HIV/AIDS activist with over twenty-five years of experience working on the full range of equality/diversity characteristics. Carolyn Solomon-Pryce is equality and diversity manager at LSE. This event forms part of LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2014, taking place from Monday 24 February - Saturday 1 March 2014, with the theme 'Reflections'.
Contributor(s): Dr Lina Khatib | Qatar has established a reputation for adopting a foreign policy based on pragmatism. However, the geopolitical landscape in the Middle East has recently witnessed a number of key changes that are recalibrating the distribution of power in the region. Are those changes testing Qatar's pragmatism? Is the Middle East witnessing the birth of a new political order?
Contributor(s): Richard Ormond, Rachel Wagstaff | The First World War is arguably the first major conflict to have been waged after the advent of mass levels of literacy with the Education Act of 1870. While literature produced by combatants in the Napoleonic, Crimean and Boer wars is relatively modest in volume, there is a veritable plethora, especially of poetry, from 1914-1918. By contrast dramatic and prose responses to the Great War largely came somewhat later, and, with the exception of Ford’s Parade’s End (1922-1927), were most commonly in the form of non-fictional memoirs, such as those of Graves and Sassoon. The image created through words also forms an instructive contrast with the work of leading visual artists of the day, perhaps most notably Sargent’s iconic Gassed, and Nash’s scenes of the trenches. More recently still, there has been a major resurgence of literary interest in the First World War, now benefiting from hindsight, and revealing aspects of the fighting which went undepicted during the lifetime of the survivors. This panel will discuss the differing imperatives of the historian and the creative artist in response to the First World War. Richard Ormond is an art historian, co-author of the John Singer Sargent Catalogue Raisonné, and former director of the National Maritime Museum. Rachel Wagstaff is author of the play The Soldier, and adapter of Sebastian Faulks' Birdsong for the West End stage. This event forms part of LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2014, taking place from Monday 24 February - Saturday 1 March 2014, with the theme 'Reflections'.
Contributor(s): Alice Arnold, Charlie Condou, Evan Davis, Stella Duffy, Claire Harvey, QBoy | For many lesbian, gay and bisexual people, coming out to family and friends can be a frightening moment in their lives. Our panel of well-known figures will add their own coming out stories to a collective narrative which hopes to make the coming out experience a positive one for future generations. These stories and others are featured in Alison Stokes’ edited collection It’s OK to be Gay. Alice Arnold (@alicearnold1) studied politics at university before going on to drama school. She was in the BBC radio drama company and performed in over 400 radio plays as well as television and stage work. She then became an announcer and newsreader for BBC Radio 4. Since 2012 Alice has been a freelance writer for Telewonderwoman, and Good Housekeeping. She regularly reviews the papers for BBC and Sky news. She gave evidence to the Equal marriage select committee and regularly writes on equality issues. She has been a campaigner for equality for as long as she can remember and has been in a civil partnership for 7 years. Charlie Condou (@Charliecondou) is an actor, and can currently be seen on Coronation Street playing Marcus Dent. He writes a weekly column for The Guardian called 'The Three of Us'. Evan Davis (@EvanHD) is a presenter of the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, a role he took up in April 2008. He is also well-known as the presenter of the BBC2 business reality show, Dragons Den. And on Radio 4, he also presents a weekly business discussion programme, The Bottom Line. For the six and a half years prior to working on the Today programme he was the Economics Editor of the BBC, the most senior economics reporter in the corporation. In the last year, Evan has won numerous awards including the Political Studies Association broadcaster of the Year. Stella Duffy (@stellduffy) has written thirteen novels, fifty short stories, and ten plays. The Room of Lost Things and State of Happiness were both long listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction, and she has twice won Stonewall Writer of the Year. She won the 2002 Crime Writers’ Association Short Story Dagger for Martha Grace and again in 2013 for Come Away With Me. She adapted her novel State of Happiness for feature film with Zentropa/Fiesta and HBO have optioned her novels Theodora, Actress, Empress, Whore and The Purple Shroud for a TV mini-series. In addition to her writing work, Stella is also a theatre director, artistic director of Shaky Isles Theatre, associate artist with Improbable, and is currently heading the Fun Palaces project, a nationwide celebration of the arts and sciences in October 2014. She blogs at www.stelladuffy.wordpress.com. Claire Harvey (@harveyvolley) is assistant director of the Youth Sport Trust, an independent charity devoted to changing young people's lives through sport. She captained the London2012 GB women's sitting volleyball team.awarded 'Hero of the Year' at the 2013 European Diversity Awards. Qboy (@QBoyMusic) was the UK's first openly gay hip-hop artist and has become synonymous with all things 'gay rap' since his debut 2004 E.P. Even The Women Like Him. Now he is the promoter and DJ behind hit London parties R & She and Gully at Vogue Fabrics and Put It In Your Mouth at Dalston Superstore. He is a regular floor-filler at Hoxton's East Bloc and is a well loved performer and DJ on the international stage. The official DJ for Hello Kitty brand Pynkiss during Milan Fashion Week, he also supported Boy George LIVE, and helped generations of young gay teens with his Channel 4 documentary Coming Out To Class. Shelley Silas (@shelleysilas) writes for radio, theatre and TV. Her radio plays include a co-adaptation of Paul Scott’s The Raj Quartet and the award-winning I am Emma Humphreys. She has written several short stories and compiled and edited the anthology, Twelve Days. She is a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the LSE for 2013-2014.
Contributor(s): Professor Gilles Kepel | Far from the misconceptions of the "Arab Spring" or the "Islamist Autumn", the upheavals of the Arab world over the last three years unfolded along a number of lines of understanding - some local, others regional or global - that were intricately mixed. Professor Gilles Kepel, who has extensively travelled the Middle East since Spring 2011 and met with many of the conflicting actors of the crisis, from Tunisia to Syria and the Arabian peninsula, introduces a contextual analysis of the events rationale, based on his award-winning travelogue Passion arabe [the Arab Passion].
Contributor(s): Stephen Fender, Patrick Flanery, Maggie Gee, Professor John Sutherland | This panel will celebrate the 75th anniversary of John Steinbeck’s Great Depression novel The Grapes of Wrath discussing its legacy and asking, given the contemporary social and political climate, where’s the wrath now? Stephen Fender was born in San Francisco. As a teenager he worked alongside Okies on ranches in the San Joaquin Valley, and has never forgot their gritty sense of humour and their inventive use of the English language. He holds degrees from Stanford, Wales and the University of Manchester, and has taught at the University of Santa Clara, Williams and Dartmouth Colleges, the University of Edinburgh, University College London and the University of Sussex, where he was professor and chair of American studies from 1985 to 2001. His books include a study of the rhetoric of the California gold rush, called Plotting the Golden West (1982) and Sea Changes: British Emigration and American Literature (1992). His most recent book, Nature Class and New Deal Literature (2011), about how the American country poor got treated in the novels, documentary photographs and bureaucratic prose of the New Deal liberals, includes a long chapter on Steinbeck. He is now Honorary Professor of English at University College London. Patrick Flanery (@PFlaneryAuthor) was born in California in 1975 and raised in Omaha, Nebraska. He studied Film at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and earned a PhD in Twentieth-Century English Literature at the University of Oxford. He contributes articles to a number of academic journals and he has written for Slightly Foxed, the Daily Telegraph and The Times Literary Supplement. His first novel, Absolution (Atlantic Books), was published to critical acclaim in 2012 and his second Fallen Land in 2013. Maggie Gee (@maggiegeewriter) has written twelve novels, including The White Family, shortlisted for the Orange Prize and the International Impac Prize, The Ice People (revised edition 2008), and two linked satires about Britain and Uganda, My Cleaner and My Driver (2009). She has also written an acclaimed writer’s memoir, My Animal Life and a collection of short stories, The Blue. Maggie is vice president of the Royal Society of Literature and was its first female chair of council, 2004-2008. Her books have been translated into 13 languages including Chinese, and she is professor of creative writing at Bath Spa University. Her new novel, Virginia Woolf in Manhattan, is a comedy that brings Virginia Woolf back to life in the 21st century in Manhattan and Istanbul. Professor John Sutherland is Emeritus Lord Northcliffe Professor at UCL. He has taught at Edinburgh University, the California Institute of Education and UCL. His many books include Lives of the Novelists: A History of Fiction in 294 Lives and Jumbo: The Unauthorised Biography of a Victorian Sensation. He is well known as a journalist and reviewer and was the chair of the Man Booker Prize committee in 2005. Michael Caines is an editor at the Times Literary Supplement. This event forms part of LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2014, taking place from Monday 24 February - Saturday 1 March 2014, with the theme 'Reflections'.
Contributor(s): Melvyn Bragg, Dr Andrea Capstick, Professor Justine Schneider | Dementia “continues to be surrounded by fear and stigma … Nearly half of UK adults acknowledge that public understanding of dementia is limited, and 73 percent of them do not believe society is geared up to deal with the condition” according to the Department of Health, who also say a key step involves “raising public understanding and challenging attitudes which may inhibit people with dementia living life to the full”. This panel discussion will explore ways of understanding dementia and dementia care through art and literature, including theatre, participatory videos and the novel with insights from research and personal experiences. The quotation in our title is taken from Shakespeare's King Lear. Melvyn Bragg is an award-winning author and broadcaster. His latest novel is Grace and Mary. His first novel, For Want of a Nail, was published in 1965 and since then his novels have included The Hired Man, for which he won the Time/Life Silver Pen Award, Without A City Wall, winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, Credo, The Maid of Buttermere and The Soldier's Return, which was published to huge critical acclaim in 1999 and won the WHSmith Literary Award. He has also written several works of non-fiction including Speak for England, an oral history of the twentieth century, Rich, a biography of Richard Burton, On Giants' Shoulders, a history of science based on his BBC radio series, The Adventure of English, 12 Books that Changed the World, In Our Time and The Southbank Show: Final Cut. He is president of the National Campaign for the Arts, and in 1998 he was made a life peer. He won an Academy Fellowship at the BAFTA Television Awards in 2010. Andrea Capstick is lecturer in dementia studies at the University of Bradford. She has been a member of Bradford Dementia Group (BDG) since 1994, and became the inaugural leader of the UK’s first BSc (Hons) in Dementia Studies.She holds a Doctorate in Education (EdD) for her work on the use of film and narrative biography in teaching dementia studies, and has published on a variety of subjects including service user involvement in dementia care education; arts based approaches to teaching and learning, and the ethics of visual research. In 2009 she conducted a pilot of the use of Participatory Video (PV) with people with dementia, and has recently been awarded funding by the National Institute for Health Research’s School for Social Care Research to extend the use of PV to people living in long-term social care. Justine Schneider is professor of mental health and social care at the University of Nottingham. Before moving to Nottingham in 2004, Justine was a senior lecturer in the Centre for Applied Social Studies at the University of Durham and a non-executive director, County Durham and Darlington Priority Services NHS Trust. Justine has extensive experience in many aspects of applied health research using a wide range of methodologies and approaches. She has particular expertise in mental health service evaluation, carers, care homes, costs and supported employment. Her current work focuses primarily on dementia and staff development, and she is exploring innovative approaches to knowledge exchange in dementia care. Martin Knapp is professor of Social Policy at LSE and director of the Personal Social Services Research Unit (PSSRU). This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2014, taking place from Monday 24 February - Saturday 1 March 2014, with the theme 'Reflections'.
Contributor(s): Rohan Silva | To mark the completion of the Saw Swee Hock Student Centre, the first brand new building on campus for more than 40 years, the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and the LSE Students’ Union have organised a series of ‘in conversation’ events with some of the School's distinguished alumni. These events will take place in the Saw Swee Hock Student Centre and will be open to LSE students, alumni and staff. This event will see Rohan Silva in conversation with Garrick Hileman @garrickhileman. Rohan Silva is entrepreneur in residence at Index Ventures and a research affiliate at MIT. Rohan is also a policy fellow at Cambridge University and serves on the Boards of Trustees at the Whitechapel Art Gallery and the London Contemporary Music Festival. He is a former senior policy adviser to British Prime Minister David Cameron. Rohan is an alumnus of LSE, having graduated with a MSc in Government. Garrick is best known as an expert on Bitcoin and alternative currencies. He is a PhD candidate in the Economic History department at LSE. Prior to returning to academia Garrick worked for over 15 years in the private sector with both start-ups and established companies such as Bank of America, The Home Depot, IDG, and Allianz. In 2013 he was LSE Entrepreneur of the Year. After the conversation there will be the opportunity for the audience to put their questions to the speaker in the Q&A session. A free drinks reception will follow the event giving the audience a chance to meet the speaker.
Contributor(s): Dr Julian Baggini, Professor Paul Dolan, Professor Barbara J Sahakian | Is the idea of being able to improve yourself just a myth or can we really change ourselves for the better? This panel will discuss how behavioural science, neurological science, the arts and philosophy can change your life. Julian Baggini(@microphilosophy) is the author of several books, including Welcome to Everytown: A Journey into the English Mind, The Ego Trick and, most recently, The Virtues of the Table. He has written for numerous newspapers and magazines, including the Guardian, the Financial Times, Prospect and the New Statesman, as well as for the think tanks The Institute of Public Policy Research and Demos. He is founding editor of The Philosophers’ Magazine . He has been writer-in-residence for the National Trust at the White Cliffs of Dover and philosopher-in-residence at the Cheltenham Literature Festival and Wellington College. He has also appeared as a cameo in two Alexander McCall-Smith novels. Paul Dolan is professor of behavioural science in the Department of Social Policy at LSE and an internationally renowned expert on happiness, behaviour and public policy. Paul has published in top economics, psychology, health and social science journals and has won research grants from a range of funding bodies, including the ESRC, AHRC and the British Academy. He was a seconded member of the Behavioural Insights Team in the Cabinet Office, and he is currently chief academic adviser on economic appraisal for the Government Economic Service. He is on the National Wellbeing Advisory Forum in the UK and a member of a National Academy of Sciences Panel on wellbeing in the US. Barbara J Sahakian (@BJSahakian) is professor of clinical neuropsychology at the University of Cambridge Department of Psychiatry and MRC / Wellcome Trust Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute. She is also an honorary clinical psychologist at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, UK. She is president of the British Association for Psychopharmacology. She is a founder member and on the Executive Board of the International Neuroethics Society (INS). She has just become president-elect of the INS. She is co-author of Bad Moves. How decision making goes wrong and the ethics of smart drugs (Oxford University Press, 2013) and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Neuroethics (Oxford University Press, 2011). Ilina Singh is professor of ccience, ethics and society in the Department of Social Science, Health and Medicine at King's College London and is cross-appointed to the Institute of Psychiatry. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2014, taking place from Monday 24 February - Saturday 1 March 2014, with the theme 'Reflections'.
Contributor(s): Professor Fiona Sampson | Fiona Sampson has published more than twenty-five books of poetry, criticism and philosophy of language, and received the Newdigate Prize, a Cholmondeley Award and Writer’s Awards from the Arts Councils of England and of Wales as well as prizes in Macedonia and the US. She has twice been shortlisted for both the T.S. Eliot and Forward Prizes. Published in more than thirty languages, she is the editor of Poem and professor of poetry at the University of Roehampton. She will be reading from her own poetry. This reading follows a panel discussion featuring Fiona Sampson at 6pm on Tacit Knowledge in the Arts, Science and Business. This event forms part of LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2014, taking place from Monday 24 February - Saturday 1 March 2014, with the theme 'Reflections'.
Contributor(s): Dr Adam Hanieh | The lecture will draw on Adam Hanieh's new book, Lineages of Revolt, and recent fieldwork in the West Bank, to examine the political economy of Palestinian neoliberalism in the most recent period. The talk will discuss the essential contours of Palestinian Authority development strategy, its links to donor-led imperatives and the Israeli occupation, as well as the wider regional political economy. In addition to addressing the differential outcomes of this development model, the talk will look at the political implications and potential points of resistance to neoliberalism in the Palestinian context. Adam Hanieh is a senior lecturer in development studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. His latest book, Lineages of Revolt: Issues of Contemporary Capitalism in the Middle East, was published by Haymarket Press in November 2013.
Contributor(s): Professor Harry Collins, Professor Roger Kneebone, Professor Fiona Sampson | The modern paradigm of knowledge is explicit knowledge that something is the case; but much knowledge is practical knowledge of how to do things – how to ride a bicycle, play a violin, write poetry or remove an appendix– and such knowledge is often neither de facto explicit in text books nor even in theory fully explicable and transferable in pure conceptual terms. Tacit know-how may be muscular (or somatic) knowledge gained by practice and example; or it may be knowledge that we can only acquire through participation in shared linguistic and (often local) social contexts. This panel discussion will help elucidate the nature of tacit knowledge in art, science and the economy. The following are some of the philosophical and practical questions likely to be covered: if we allow non-conceptual and unconscious know-how to count as knowledge, can migratory birds with their astonishing navigational ability be said to have knowledge quite as much as trained surgeons and experienced cyclists? If the tacit know-how involved in creative writing, or in finding a surgical incision point, can only be learnt by socializing with experienced practitioners, what is the role for remote Internet learning or computer simulations? Do robots solve the problem of tacit knowledge by encoding know-how digitally? And to what extent do market prices reflect knowledge that can neither be codified nor shared through electronic information feeds? Harry Collins is Distinguished Research Professor of Sociology and director of the Centre for the Study of Knowledge, Expertise and Science at Cardiff University. He has worked for many years on the sociology of scientific knowledge, and is author of Tacit and Explicit Knowledge (University of Chicago Press, 2010). He is a fellow of the British Academy. Roger Kneebone (@ProfKneebone) trained as a trauma surgeon and has experience as a GP, but has since 2003 worked on innovative training and simulation techniques for surgery. His recent research has focused on the synergies between science and the arts, and on the role of tacit knowledge in surgery and medicine. He is a professor in the Department of Surgery and Medicine at Imperial College London and Engagement Fellow of the Wellcome Trust. Fiona Sampson trained as a concert violinist and is now an acclaimed poet. She has published more than twenty-five books of poetry, criticism and philosophy of language, and received the Newdigate Prize, a Cholmondeley Award and Writer’s Awards from the Arts Councils of England and of Wales as well as prizes in Macedonia and the US. She has twice been shortlisted for both the T.S. Eliot and Forward Prizes. Published in more than thirty languages, she the editor of Poem and professor of poetry at the University of Roehampton. Richard Bronk is a Visiting Fellow at LSE and author of The Romantic Economist. This event is supported by The Wellcome Trust. This event forms part of LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2014, taking place from Monday 24 February - Saturday 1 March 2014, with the theme 'Reflections'.
Contributor(s): Richard Daniels, Michael Leader | A screening of Stanley Kubrick’s 1957 anti-war film Paths of Glory (88 minutes), set during the First World War starring Kirk Douglas, will be followed by a panel discussion. Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory is among the most powerful anti-war films ever made. A fiery Kirk Douglas stars as a First World War French colonel who goes head-to-head with the army’s ruthless top brass when his men are accused of cowardice after being unable to carry out an impossible mission. This haunting, exquisitely photographed dissection of the military machine in all its absurdity and capacity for dehumanization (a theme Kubrick would continue to explore throughout his career) is assembled with its legendary director’s customary precision, from its tense trench warfare sequences to its gripping courtroom climax to its ravaging final scene. The film was originally banned in both France and Germany for its incendiary indictment of hegemonic military authority during WWI. It was also Kubrick’s first critical and commercial success and effectively opened the floodgates for his future classics. Richard Daniels has been the senior archivist at the University of the Arts London’s Archives and Special Collections Centre since October 2007. He is specifically responsible for the Stanley Kubrick Archive. Before University of the Arts he has worked in local government archive services and at the School of Oriental and African Studies Archives and Special Collections Centre. As the Stanley Kubrick Archivist he has given papers at various academic conferences the most recent being at the Melancholia: Imagining the End of the World conference at Phillips University Marburg. He has also written a chapter for the upcoming book Mythologizing the Vietnam War and is writing a chapter and co-editing another forthcoming publication entitled Stanley Kubrick, New Perspectives. Michael Leader (@Nevskyp) is site editor of Film4.com. He has written for Little White Lies, Empire, the New Statesman and Sight & Sound, and previously worked for BAFTA. James Hughes is director of the Conflict Research Group at LSE. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2014, taking place from Monday 24 February - Saturday 1 March 2014, with the theme 'Reflections'.
Contributor(s): Zoran Milanović | In July 2013, Croatia became the EU’s 28th member state after a decade of negotiations. Will reality meet the expectations? Croatia’s Prime Minister Zoran Milanović will discuss. Stabilising the economy, fostering an entrepreneurial-friendly environment, increasing the protection of human rights and accelerating the country’s learning curve as a member state are key issues among Croatia’s domestic priorities. In the international arena, Croatia will strive to keep NATO and EU enlargement realistic and viable, engage in international and regional cooperation and try to carve out strategic interest positions within the EU. Strengthening political relations with the United Kingdom, furthering investment opportunities and opening up the country to an even bigger influx of British guests will be the focus of Croatia-UK bilateral relations. Zoran Milanović has been the prime minister of Croatia since 2011. Before this, he served as chairman of the Social Democratic Party parliamentary group in the Croatian parliament, and as a member of the Committee for the Constitution, Rules of Procedure and Political System. He graduated from the Zagreb Law School in 1986 and completed his master's degree in European Union law at the Flemish University in Brussels.
Contributor(s): Alex Fenton, Amanda Fitzgerald-Arque | LSE London's 2014 Lent term seminar series begins on the 20th of January. Speakers from within and beyond LSE will focus on London's current economic and political environment London, covering relevant issues such as the private rented sector, the distribution of poverty and the densification effects of international migrants. Presenters include academics and practitioners from relevant fields. Each seminar is chaired by one of the members of LSE London, while speaker’s presentations, available podcasts and any other related documents are posted here regularly after each session.
Contributor(s): Dr. James Ker-Lindsay, George C. Lordos, Symeon Matsis, Glafkos Constantinides, Layik Topcan, Robert Cowley, Dr Rebecca Bryant, Mustafa Öngün, Dr. Ceren Boğac, Dr. Wendy A. Pullan, Dr. Gabriel Koureas, Dr Christala Yakinthou | A half-day conference organised by the Hellenic Observatory, LSE and Contemporary Turkish Studies, LSE. Recent citizens' initiatives in Cyprus have proposed the opening of the ghost town of Varosha and have imagined the revitalisation of the Famagusta area. This conference brings together town planners, architects, and economists to discuss the anticipated social, economic, and ecological consequences of a potential opening.
Contributor(s): Professor Hillel Steiner, Dr Nicholas Vrousalis | Child labour, sweatshops and low wages: there are many market exchanges that strike us as morally problematic because they are exploitative. But what exactly is exploitation? And how could a voluntary and mutually beneficial exchange be morally wrong? Hillel Steiner is professor of political philosophy at the University of Manchester. Nicholas Vrousalis is assistant professor in political philosophy at Leiden University, Netherlands.
Contributor(s): Professor Bruno Latour | Although it is still useful to insist on the distinction between science and politics, the scale and importance of ecological mutations make it more and more difficult to use it effectively. The problem is that the alternative requires a redefinition of the two terms "science" and "politics". The lecture will explore in which way an alternative definition could help us to cope with the geopolitical debates that will become more and more intense in the future. Bruno Latour is a renowned French sociologist of science, anthropologist and professor at Sciences Po, Paris and LSE Centennial Professor in the Department of Sociology.
Contributor(s): Dr Shakuntala Banaji, Carla Ferstman, Suresh Grover, Dr Biju Mathew | Key questions of human rights and impunity arise in the aftermath of the Gujarat carnage of 2002 and the rise of Narendra Modi as a national leader and politician. Shakuntala Banaji is lecturer in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. Carla Ferstman is director of REDRESS. Suresh Grover is director of The Monitoring Group. Biju Mathew is associate professor of Business and American Studies at Rider University and a cofounder/convenor of Coalition Against Genocide (CAG).
Contributor(s): Professor John Ikenberry, Professor Michael Cox | Will the future belong to the new rising powers of Asia revolving around China or the West still led by the United States? These three distinguished analysts will argue that the answer may be even more complex and significant than current protagonists in the debate believe. John Ikenberry is the Albert G Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University in the Department of Politics and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Michael Cox is founding co-director of LSE IDEAS and professor of International Relations at LSE.
Contributor(s): Professor Clare Hemmings, Professor Jeffrey Weeks | With the arrival of The Women’s Library at LSE, the Gender Institute will be running a series of 'Conversations' for which audience participation is invited. We know that public attitudes and expectations about sexuality change, but here two eminent writers on sexuality discuss the ways in which the history of sexuality is written and consider its implications. Clare Hemmings is professor of feminist theory at LSE. Jeffrey Weeks is research professor at the Weeks Centre for Social and Policy Research at London South Bank University.
Contributor(s): Professor Donatella Della Porta | From Gezi Park in Istanbul to Tahrir Square in Cairo, as well as in the heart of Europe, threatened regimes have faced down massive protests with brutal repression. But when do mass social movements go underground and choose violence? Della Porta brings to bear her extensive research into left-wing, right-wing, ethnonationalist, and religious forms of political violence to answer this question. The comparison of quite different cases of escalation allows to single out the competitive dynamics of radicalization both inside social movements and between them and the state. Donatella Della Porta is professor of political science and political sociology at the European University Institute with a distinguished record of research into social movements and political violence. Omar McDoom is assistant professor in comparative politics in the Department of Government at LSE.
Contributor(s): Ian Gordon | LSE London's 2014 Lent term seminar series begins on the 20th of January. Speakers from within and beyond LSE will focus on London's current economic and political environment London, covering relevant issues such as the private rented sector, the distribution of poverty and the densification effects of international migrants. Presenters include academics and practitioners from relevant fields. Each seminar is chaired by one of the members of LSE London, while speaker’s presentations, available podcasts and any other related documents are posted here regularly after each session.
Contributor(s): José Manuel Barroso | José Manuel Barroso is president of the European Commission, a position he has held since 2004. He was born in Lisbon and after graduating in law from the University of Lisbon, he moved to Geneva where he completed a Diploma in European Studies at the European University Institute, University of Geneva, and a Master's degree in Political Science from the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, University of Geneva, earning an honours in both. He embarked on an academic career, working successively as a teaching assistant at the Law Faculty of the University of Lisbon, in the Department of Political Science, University of Geneva, and as a visiting professor at the Department of Government and School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University (Washington, D.C.). In 1995, he became head of the International Relations Department of Lusíada University, Lisbon. In 1979, he founded the University Association for European Studies. His political career began in 1980 when he joined the Social Democratic Party (PSD). He was named president of the party in 1999 and re-elected three times. During the same period, he served as vice president of the European People's Party. As state secretary for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation he played a key role as mediator in the signing of the peace accords for Angola in Bicesse in 1991, and as minister for foreign affairs he was a driving force in the self-determination process in East Timor between 1992 and 1995. Under his leadership, the PSD won the general election in 2002 and he was appointed prime minister of Portugal in April of that year. He remained in office until July 2004 when he was nominated by the European Council and elected by the European Parliament to the post of president of the European Commission. In June 2009 the European Council unanimously nominated him for a second term as president of the European Commission, and he was re-elected to the post by an absolute majority in the European Parliament in September 2009.
Contributor(s): Professor Cecile Fabre, Professor Jeff McMahan | The 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War I reminds us of the importance of ethics in war. Under what conditions may states wage war on each other? And what are the moral principles governing the conduct of war? Cecile Fabre is professor of political philosophy at the University of Oxford. Jeff McMahan is professor of philosophy at Rutgers University.
Contributor(s): Baroness O’Neill, Professor George Brock, Gavin Millar | After Leveson, this debate asks: can ethics help us think about whether we have the media needed for a healthy democracy and social fabric? How should we think about the good and harm journalism can do? Baroness O'Neill will open the debate followed by responses from George Brock and Gavin Millar. George Brock (@georgeprof) is head of journalism at City University. He is a member of the executive board of the International Press Institute and chairs the IPI's British committee. He is also a board member of the World Editors Forum. He broadcasts and lectures frequently and reviews for the Times Literary Supplement. He is a former managing editor of The Times. Onora O'Neill is an emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Cambridge and a crossbench member of the House of Lords. She has written widely on political philosophy and ethics, international justice, bioethics and the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. She is also the current chair of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission. Gavin Millar QC is co-founder of Doughty Street Chambers and a specialist in media law. He has undertaken a number of high profile defamation, privacy, contempt and reporting restriction cases and has acted for most of the major UK media organisations. He is the co-author of Media Law and Human Rights (2009) and on the board of the Centre for Investigative Journalism at City University. Nick Couldry (@couldrynick) is Professor of Media, Communications and Social Theory in the Department of Media and communications at LSE.
Contributor(s): Dr Tariq Baloch, Salim Moolan, Dr Jan Kleinheisterkamp, Dr Charles Poncet, Sir Bernard Rix, Professor Derek Roebuck, Professor Catherine Rogers, Professor Horatia Muir Watt | This event launches Jan Paulsson's newest book The Idea of Arbitration in the form of three small debates on three central issues of the book: determining arbitral jurisdiction; public policy; and the future of international arbitration. Tariq Baloch is a barrister at 3 Verulam Buildings. Salim Moollan is a barrister at Essex Court Chambers. Jan Kleinheisterkamp is an associate professor at the LSE Law Department and heads the LSE Transnational Law Project. Charles Poncet is a partner at CMS von Erlach Poncet (Geneva). Bernard Rix is a retired Lord Justice Appeal and an arbitrator at 20 Essex Street. Derek Roebuck is a senior fellow at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies and a member of IDR Group. Catherine Rogers is an associate professor at Penn State University VV Veeder QC is Essex Court Chambers). Horatia Muir Watt is professor at Science Po Paris. Jan Paulsson holds the Michael Klein Distinguished Scholar Chair at the University of Miami School of Law and he is also Centennial Professor of Law at LSE.
Contributor(s): Farmida Bi, Paul Mills | Organised in conjunction with the Harvard Islamic Finance Project, Farmida Bi talks on Islamic finance in the Western world. Farmida Bi is partner and European head of Islamic Finance, Norton Rose Fulbright LLP. Dr Paul Mills is senior economist at International Monetary Finance, London.
Contributor(s): Professor Salwa Ismail | In this seminar, Professor Salwa Ismail will discuss dimensions of contention and oppositional action anchored in urban space. It addresses the following questions: How, in the context of the Arab Revolutions, did the urban-based mass protests link with existing patterns of urban political action? What forms of contentious action undergird and animate these protests? In answering these questions, the focus will be on urban popular forces in Cairo and on their modes of inhabiting the city, and on the politics of the urban everyday. Salwa Ismail is Professor of Politics with reference to the Middle East at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Her research focuses on everyday forms of government, urban governance and the politics of space. She has published widely on Islamist politics and on state-society relations in the Middle East. She is the author of Rethinking Islamist Politics: Culture, the State and Islamism, and Political Life in Cairo’s New Quarters: Encountering the Everyday State. Her recent publications have appeared in Comparative Studies in Society and History, Third World Quarterly, Social Research, and Contemporary Islam. She is currently working on a manuscript on the politics of violence and memory in Contemporary Syria.
Contributor(s): Dr Richard Iveson | How important are animals to the constitution of democracy? In this talk, Richard Iveson will consider whether the egalitarian entanglement of humans and other animals in fact constitutes the prior condition of any democratic community. Richard Iveson is research fellow in the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland.
Contributor(s): Dr Philip Roscoe | Could economics be responsible for the greatest problems we face? This lecture explores the making of the economic world and asks: does economics change what it means to be a person? Philip Roscoe (@Philip_Roscoe) is reader in management at the School of Management, University of St Andrews. He is interested in markets and organizing, and has published and lectured on such topics as online dating, organ transplants, non-professional investors and alternative currencies. Philip holds a PhD in management from Lancaster University, an MPhil in medieval Arabic thought from the University of Oxford, and a BA in theology from the University of Leeds. Between studies, he has worked as a financial journalist and tried his hand at running a small business. In 2011 he was one of the ten winners of the inaugural AHRC BBC Radio 3 New Generation Thinkers scheme chosen from over a thousand applicants. His new book is I Spend therefore I Am: The True Cost of Economics.
Contributor(s): Dr Vassilis Monastiriotis | The remarkable rise in unemployment in Greece has in a way overshadowed the substantial differentiation, across regions, in terms of regional unemployment and labour market adjustment. This paper examines the geography of these dynamics using probit regressions of unemployment risk and decomposing the observed regional unemployment differentials into three components corresponding to differences in labour quality, matching efficiency and effective demand. We find that, underlying the general increase in unemployment is a wealth of unemployment dynamics and adjustment trajectories. The fall in effective demand has been largest in the main metropolitan regions and the north and north-western periphery. Adjustment has been strong in some areas (e.g., Athens) but, overall, adjustment processes (such as bumping-down and changes in the mix of workforce characteristics) have been weak. The crisis has nullified the improvements in labour market performance registered since the country’s entry into the Eurozone, hitting especially those regions that benefited most from the latter. The spatial differentiation of adjustment intensities and demand pressures suggests a heightened role for regional policy in the post-crisis period, especially in relation to addressing problems of over-education and matching efficiency in the demand-depressed areas and of inter-regional adjustment mechanisms nationally.
Contributor(s): Dr Ahron Bregman | The Arab spring has put on hold the possibility of reaching peace between Israel and Syria, thus leaving the Israeli-Palestinian peace track as the only game in town. At the same time, international efforts, led by US Secretary of State John Kerry to help Israelis and Palestinians negotiate their differences are unlikely to end the occupation and deliver a Palestinian state. The latter could only be achieved, as Ahron Bregman will argue, if three elements come together: first, the arrival in the occupied territories of the Arab Spring in the shape of a third, non-violent Palestinian intifada against the occupation. Second, massive international pressure particularly on Israel but also on the Palestinians to compromise. Third, the remaining in power of a right wing government in Israel. Ahron Bregman was born in Israel. After six years of army service, during which he took part in the 1982 Lebanon war and reached the rank of captain, he left the army to work at the Knesset as a parliamentary assistant. Ahron studied in Jerusalem and London, completing a doctorate in War Studies at King’s College London in 1994. He is the author of, among others, The Fifty Years War: Israel and the Arabs, the companion book to a six-part BBC television documentary (with Jihan el Tahri) and its sequel Elusive Peace, the companion book to a three-part BBC television documentary. His book Cursed Victory: A History of Israel and the Occupied Territories will be published by Penguin in 2014. Ahron teaches at the Department of War Studies, King's College London.
Contributor(s): Suzi Hall | This podcast is from LSE London's 2014 Lent term seminar series. Speakers from within and beyond LSE will focus on London's current economic and political environment London, covering relevant issues such as the private rented sector, the distribution of poverty and the densification effects of international migrants. Presenters include academics and practitioners from relevant fields. Each seminar is chaired by one of the members of LSE London.
Contributor(s): Professor William Callahan, Mr David Dollar, Professor Michael Hockx, Mr Stephen Harner, Dr Yukon Huang, Sir Christopher Hum, Professor Nicholas Lardy... | The LSE SU China Development Forum (CDF) is an annual conference co-organised by the LSE SU China Development Society and the LSE Asia Research Centre. It provides a platform for vibrant, in-depth intellectual discussions among students, academics and professionals on key issues facing China. The 2014 Forum, held at LSE on 8th February 2014 and attended by over 400 delegates, hosted 28 speakers from mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Europe and the United States including the 2007 Nobel Laureate in Economics, Professor Eric S Maskin and the former British Ambassador to China, Sir Christoper Hum. In the context of the reform plan drafted at the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee, seven panel sessions under the overarching theme ‘Rebalancing China’ considered and discussed a range of topics including: privatisation and recentralization; consumption and investment, government social welfare provision and civil structures, China’s international relations. Four panel sessions are available for download: Keynote Opening; The Chinese Economy - Rebalancing China; Power to Empower - China’s Media Revolution; China and the World - A New Interface.
Contributor(s): Professor William Callahan, Mr David Dollar, Professor Michael Hockx, Mr Stephen Harner, Dr Yukon Huang, Sir Christopher Hum, Professor Nicholas Lardy... | The LSE SU China Development Forum (CDF) is an annual conference co-organised by the LSE SU China Development Society and the LSE Asia Research Centre. It provides a platform for vibrant, in-depth intellectual discussions among students, academics and professionals on key issues facing China. The 2014 Forum, held at LSE on 8th February 2014 and attended by over 400 delegates, hosted 28 speakers from mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Europe and the United States including the 2007 Nobel Laureate in Economics, Professor Eric S Maskin and the former British Ambassador to China, Sir Christoper Hum. In the context of the reform plan drafted at the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee, seven panel sessions under the overarching theme ‘Rebalancing China’ considered and discussed a range of topics including: privatisation and recentralization; consumption and investment, government social welfare provision and civil structures, China’s international relations. Four panel sessions are available for download: Keynote Opening; The Chinese Economy - Rebalancing China; Power to Empower - China’s Media Revolution; China and the World - A New Interface.
Contributor(s): Professor William Callahan, Mr David Dollar, Professor Michael Hockx, Mr Stephen Harner, Dr Yukon Huang, Sir Christopher Hum, Professor Nicholas Lardy... | The LSE SU China Development Forum (CDF) is an annual conference co-organised by the LSE SU China Development Society and the LSE Asia Research Centre. It provides a platform for vibrant, in-depth intellectual discussions among students, academics and professionals on key issues facing China. The 2014 Forum, held at LSE on 8th February 2014 and attended by over 400 delegates, hosted 28 speakers from mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Europe and the United States including the 2007 Nobel Laureate in Economics, Professor Eric S Maskin and the former British Ambassador to China, Sir Christoper Hum. In the context of the reform plan drafted at the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee, seven panel sessions under the overarching theme ‘Rebalancing China’ considered and discussed a range of topics including: privatisation and recentralization; consumption and investment, government social welfare provision and civil structures, China’s international relations. Four panel sessions are available for download: Keynote Opening; The Chinese Economy - Rebalancing China; Power to Empower - China’s Media Revolution; China and the World - A New Interface.
Contributor(s): Paul Donovan, George Magnus | Come along to an economics debate to help you consider what will happen next in Europe. Paul Donovan is managing director of global economics at UBS. George Magnus is senior economic advisor at UBS.
Contributor(s): Cardinal Peter Turkson | The current global financial crisis has already continued for six years now – much longer than most feared at the beginning. Moreover, there have been several sequels, the Euro crisis being the most notable. Let us reflect on the surprising technical origins of the crisis and the shocking moral ones. Let us ask what the system has learned, what insights have been acted upon, what reform is underway. And let us explore areas that remain to be reformed, in particular the responsibility of governments to embed practices of financial stewardship. Would the restoration of economic stability and prosperity be enough? Pope Francis would have the economy commit to real remedies for grinding poverty, growing inequality, social exclusion and environmental degradation. Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson is president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and Archbishop emeritus of Cape Coast (Ghana). On 6 October 1992 he was appointed Archbishop of Cape Coast and received episcopal ordination on 27 March 1993. He served as president of the Ghana Catholic Bishops' Conference (1997-2004). He was a member of Governing Council of the University of Ghana, Legon (2001-2006) and of the Board of Directors of Central Region Development Commission (CEDECOM) (2002-2006). He served as treasurer of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) (2007-2009) and presently serves as Vice President of the Association of Episcopal Conferences of Anglophone West Africa (AECAWA). He served as President of the Regional Episcopal Conference of West Africa (RECOWA) (2007-2010). He was also Chairman of the Ghana Chapter of the Conference of Religions for Peace (2003-2007) and Ghana National Peace Council (2006-2010). On 24 October 2009 he was nominated President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. On September 24, 2013, he was confirmed by Pope Francis as President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. He has been awarded numerous honorary degrees and speaks 6 languages (Fante, English, French, Italian, German, Hebrew).
Contributor(s): Mark Solomon, Professor Catherine Harper, Surat Rathgeber Knan, Searle Kochberg, Peter Tatchell | Rainbow Jews is a pioneering oral history/archive project that records and showcases Jewish lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) history from the 1950s to today. This exhibition takes place during LGBT History Month. Please check the Rainbow Jews web page for details see http://bit.ly/1kkzNFE This podcast is a recording of the Q&A session that followed the film screening to mark the opening of the exhibition on 6 February 2014.
Contributor(s): Hazel Blears MP, Annie Machon, Professor Sir David Omand, Matthew Ryder QC | Without whistle blowers and the media the current debate over the accountability of the secret state would not be happening. What should be the future role of the media, if any, in holding the security services to account? Hazel Blears (@HazelBlearsMP) is a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee of parliament. Annie Machon (@AnnieMachon) is director of LEAP Europe and former intelligence officer for MI5. David Omand was the UK’s first security and intelligence coordinator. Matthew Ryder (@rydermc) is a barrister at Matrix Chambers.
Contributor(s): Mike Marqusee | Why does the partisan choice between Real Madrid and Barcelona affect the identity of millions in North Africa, the Middle East and beyond? How does the India- Pakistan cricket rivalry remain salient in a world of 'globalised' sport? Why doesn't North America enjoy the same sports as the rest of the world?' Mike Marqusee seeks to explain the phenomena of 'globalised' spectator sport through examining its origins. He argues that the transnational, transcultural tendency, universal rules and theoretically 'level playing field' shared by capitalism and sport have joint origins in 18th century England. From here, he looks at the effects of market driven 'globalised' spectator sport on identities and loyalties and asks how, despite this, national identity remains salient and, increasingly, financially valuable. He also addresses the issue of American exceptionalism, and how this is reflected in the bifurcation between North American sports and those preferred by the rest of the world. Ultimately, he asks if there is a sporting internationalism that can be posed against the corporate globalisation of sport, and what the elements of that might be. Mike Marqusee is a journalist and activist. He writes widely on sport, politics and their interaction. He is the former editor of Labour Briefing.
Contributor(s): Professor Sami Zubaidi | For the BRISMES annual lecture, Sami Zubaida will explore the question of changing identities. What constitutes authenticity in different spheres of culture is contested between political and religious groups and ideologies. Discourses of difference between Muslim/national cultures and ‘the West’, and the resistance to perceived cultural invasion have featured prominently in these contests, over the generations from the inception of modernity to the present, and accelerated globalisation. These themes are explored in relation to religion, national culture, sexuality, music and food. The BRISMES Award for Services to Middle East Studies will be presented immediately after the lecture to Alastair Newton. Sami Zubaida is Emeritus Professor of Politics and Sociology at Birkbeck, University of London, Fellow of Birkbeck College, Research Associate of the London Middle East Institute, and Professorial Research Associate of the Food Studies Centre, both at SOAS. He has held visiting positions in Cairo, Istanbul, Beirut, Aix-en-Provence, Paris, Berkley CA and NYU, written and lectured widely on themes of religion, culture, law and politics in the Middle East, with particular attention to Egypt, Iran, Iraq and Turkey. His other work is on food history and culture. Books: Islam, the People and the State: Political Ideas and Movements in the Middle East (3rd edition 2009); A Taste of Thyme: Culinary Cultures of the Middle East (edited, with R Tapper, 2nd edition 2000); Law and Power in the Islamic World (2003) and Beyond Islam: A New Understanding of the Middle East (2011).
Contributor(s): David Epstein | In his ground-breaking exploration of athletic success, The Sports Gene, award-winning writer David Epstein get to the heart of the great nature vs nurture debate, and explodes myths about how and why humans excel. Join him for a thought provoking examination of the truth behind talent and success. David Epstein (@DavidEpstein) is an award-winning senior writer for Sports Illustrated, where he covers sports science, medicine and Olympic sports. Ed Smith (@EdSmithWriter) is a journalist and author, most recently of Luck: What It Means and Why It Matters. He is a former professional cricketer and played for both Middlesex and England.
Contributor(s): Dr Gabriel Wollner | Gabriel Wollner offers a political philosophy perspective on questions of international finance and defends the idea of an international financial transaction tax as an instrument for making the international financial system more just. Gabriel Wollner is lecturer in philosophy at LSE.
Contributor(s): George Papandreou | Professor Amartya Sen, the Eva Colorni Trust and LSE are delighted to be hosting this year's Eva Colorni Memorial Lecture. The Colorni lectures are held regularly in memory of Eva Colorni, who taught economics at the former City of London Polytechnic - now incorporated into London Metropolitan University - until her early death in 1985. A collection of the earlier lectures is published by Oxford University Press, under the title Living As Equals. This year's lecture will be delivered by former prime minister of Greece, George Papandreou. George Papandreou is president of Socialist International, a member of the Hellenic Parliament and former president of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK). He served as the 11th prime minister of Greece from October 6 2009 – November 11 2011, after PASOK’s victory in the October 2009 national elections. After completing his university studies at Amherst College in Massachusetts and graduate studies at London School of Economics and Political Science, Papandreou won an MP seat for the Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) party in 1981. He has served in the Greek parliament ever since. He has held the posts of under-secretary for cultural affairs, minister for education, and minister for foreign affairs. As education minister from 1994-1996, George Papandreou founded Open University in Greece, an innovative national effort to facilitate undergraduate and graduate distance learning. As foreign minister from 1999–2004, he was widely praised for his diplomatic bridge building. He successfully negotiated better relations with former rival Turkey. In 2004, Papandreou was elected leader of PASOK in the country's first open primary—a move highly symbolic of his commitment to participatory governance—and held that position until March 2012. Papandreou is also the president of the Socialist International, an international association of political parties, of which PASOK is a member. In 2012, Papandreou was named a visiting fellow at Harvard University's Institute of Politics. In 2013, he served as a global fellow and adjunct professor at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs as well as a faculty member in the Master of Public Affairs program at Sciences Po in Paris.
Contributor(s): Dr Florence Gaub | The lecture will cover post-2011 Libya and ask key questions related to post-conflict reconstruction, security sector reform and transitional justice. What can we learn for future cases of regime change? How can security be built without external security provision? What are the factors that facilitate or impede political transitions? Florence Gaub joined the European Union Institute for Strategic Studies in May 2013 where she works on the Arab world with a focus on strategy and security. In addition to monitoring post-conflict developments in Iraq, Lebanon and Libya, she works on Arab military forces, conflict structures and geostrategic dimensions of the Arab region. Previously employed at NATO Defence College and the German parliament, she wrote her PhD on the Lebanese army at Humboldt University Berlin and holds degrees from Sciences Po Paris, Sorbonne and Munich universities.
Contributor(s): Paul Cheshire | LSE London's 2014 Lent term seminar series begins on the 20th of January. Speakers from within and beyond LSE will focus on London's current economic and political environment London, covering relevant issues such as the private rented sector, the distribution of poverty and the densification effects of international migrants. Presenters include academics and practitioners from relevant fields. Each seminar is chaired by one of the members of LSE London, while speaker’s presentations, available podcasts and any other related documents are posted here regularly after each session.
Contributor(s): Dr Matthew Goodwin, Peter Kellner | ‘Eurosceptic‘ parties all around Europe are gathering momentum in advance of the European Parliament elections in May. But how wide and how deep does their support actually run? And has hostility towards the EU become a surrogate for other discontents? Matthew Goodwin is associate professor at the University of Nottingham, where his research focuses on radical right parties, immigration and Euroscepticism. He is co-author of the new book, Revolt on the Right: Explaining Public Support for the Radical Right in Britain (with Robert Ford). Peter Kellner has been president of YouGov since 2007 and is the former political editor of New Statesman.
Contributor(s): Dr Joshua Busby | Drawing on a rich set of interviews and surveys, Joshua Busby shows how the global AIDS treatment advocacy movement helped millions in the developing world gain access to lifesaving medication. Joshua Busby is an associate professor of public affairs and a fellow in the RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service.
Contributor(s): Jonathan Cooper, Kseniya Kirichenko, Peter Tatchell | On the eve of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics, a panel discusses the on-going threats to LGBT rights in Russia – from the recent ‘homosexual propaganda’ law to the banning of gay pride parades. Jonathan Cooper is an international human rights law practitioner and chief executive of the Human Dignity Trust. Kseniya Kirichenko is a legal assistance program coordinator for the St Petersburg LGBT organisation ‘Coming Out’. Peter Tatchell (@PeterTatchell) a renowned LGBT rights campaigner and director of the Peter Tatchell Foundation. Susan Marks is professor of international law in the Department of Law at LSE.
Contributor(s): Mark Easton, Penny Lawrence, Aileen Murphie, Jeff Patmore, Professor Lord Stern | University social science plays an essential role in the ‘human-dominated’ and ‘human-influenced’ systems that are central to our modern civilization. Across the world around 40 million people now work or study in university social science, or work in jobs where they ‘translate’ or mediate advances in social science research for use in business, government and public agencies, health care systems, media and civil society organizations. Yet the impacts of university social science have been under-researched, and their effectiveness often decried. Relatively little is known about the scale, diversity, and external salience of university social science research as a discipline group. This evidence-based study attempts to describe this successful and sizeable UK industry and highlights the impacts it systematically has on the UK’s economy and society. The event will hear from an elite panel of experts from government, business, civil society and the media, and will discuss the benefits and barriers to utilizing academic research in their sectors, and the salience and value of social science expertise. Mark Easton is home editor for BBC News. Penny Lawrence is international programmes director at Oxfam GB. Aileen Murphie is director of Local Government VFM at the National Audit Office. Jeff Patmore is former head of strategic university research & collaboration at British Telecom. Nicholas Stern is chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at LSE.
Contributor(s): Dr Keyu Jin | The CFM and Department of Economics lecture series focuses on topical macroeconomic questions. Its aim is to give an informative and balanced overview of available knowledge among macroeconomists. This talk considers China’s growing role in the world economy. Keyu Jin is a lecturer at LSE. Her research has focused on global imbalances and global asset prices, as well as international trade and growth. Wouter Den Haan is professor of economics and co-director of the Centre for Macroeconomics at LSE.
Contributor(s): Professor Julia Darby, Professor Danuta Hübner MEP, Dr Alberto Montagnoli, Professor Andrés Rodríguez-Pose | A major innovation in the Four Presidents’ report is the proposal for a shock absorption mechanism that helps regions in the Euro area to adjust. This proposal is a revival of an earlier insurance device that the Commission was asked to develop in the 1990s. The stabilisation potential of such a scheme and its political viability have not been scrutinised in depth so far. It is therefore useful to draw on the experience of another heterogeneous monetary union, namely the UK. The North-South divide in terms of economic structure has been profound, leading to deindustrialisation in the North of England and housing bubbles in the South. With the benefit of hindsight, what would have been measures that could contain counterproductive dynamics such as deindustrialisation and financial overheating? How can the pooling of risks in a heterogeneous union benefit from diversity?
Contributor(s): Dr Panos Hatziprokopiou | Migrant entrepreneurship remains a relatively marginal topic within migration studies in Greece. Yet immigrants’ involvement in self-employment and independent economic activity has grown rather fast and has been linked to the dynamics of immigrants’ settlement and the formation of ethnic communities at a local level, especially in Athens. The deepening crisis and austerity shaking the Greek economy and society transform radically the circumstances and the context in which the phenomenon took shape in the past two decades. Still, the study of migrants’ entrepreneurship unveils three parallel “crises” that predated the current one. Firstly, Greece’s immigration crisis, a product of the way migratory trends have been managed by the State since the early 1990s. This partly relates to the crisis of small enterprises, major employers of migrant labour in the 1990s, and the challenges posed by internationalisation and large-scale competition. Both are in turn associated to the urban crisis of Athens, referring to processes of urban development in relation to shifting social and economic geographies in the city. The seminar will discuss results of a research project kindly funded by the Hellenic Observatory. Combining qualitative and qualitative methods, the study looked at migrant businesses in three Athenian neighbourhoods, adopting thus a micro local lens and a focus on everyday practices and relationships on the ground. These allow us not only to analyse the emergence of ethnic economies, but also to reflect on the dialectics between processes of migrant settlement, institutional and policy developments and the dynamics of urban transformation under changing economic conditions.
Contributor(s): Professor Julia Black, Dr Jon Danielsson, Professor Charles Goodhart | The official response to the current economic crisis may create long term stability or, in actual fact, lay the seeds for the next. The panel of experts will debate what is the more likely outcome. Julia Black is director of LSE’s Law and Financial Markets Project. Jon Danielsson (@JonDanielsson) is co-director of the Systemic Risk Centre (@LSE_SRC). Charles Goodhart is emeritus professor of banking and finance with the Financial Markets Group at LSE.
Contributor(s): Professor George Loewenstein, Samuel Nguyen, Professor Drazen Prelec | Better decisions versus autonomous choices: should policy makers try to influence people’s behaviour using techniques from the behavioural sciences when it comes to retirement savings, organ donation and lunch choice? George Loewenstein is Herbert A. Simon Professor of Economics and Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University. Samuel Nguyen is senior economist for the Behavioural Insights Team in the Cabinet Office. Drazen Prelec is professor of management science and economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Contributor(s): Professor Gilbert Achcar | The euphoria that welcomed the Arab uprising in its initial stage tended to turn into gloom in recent months. Away from impressionistic reactions, Gilbert Achcar will assess and discuss the latest developments in the Arab-speaking region on the occasion of the publication of his recent book, The People Want: A Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising. Gilbert Achcar grew up in Lebanon, researched and taught in Beirut, Paris and Berlin, and is currently professor of development studies and international relations at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of the University of London.
Contributor(s): Alexandre A. Tombini | In his lecture Governor Tombini will discuss the current state of the Brazilian economy and perspectives on the future, with a focus on monetary policy. Alexandre Tombini is governor of Banco Central do Brasil, a position he has held since January 2011. He is a member of the BIS Board of Directors since December 2013, and also holds the position of co-chair of the FSB Regional Group of the Americas since July 2013 and the position of chairman of CEMLA´s Board of Governors since May 2013. He was deputy governor for financial system regulation and bank licensing at the Central Bank of Brazil and has held other positions at the board level, since June 2005, including in the area of international affairs and of special studies. Previous to joining the board of Banco Central do Brasil, he was senior advisor to the board of the International Monetary Fund, in Washington DC. Earlier in his career, he held various senior positions in banking and international trade, working for Banco Central do Brasil, the Brazilian Government and at Universidade de Brasília. The nomination to his current post required Senate approval. Mr Tombini holds a PhD degree in Economics from University of Illinois, at Urbana-Champaign, and an undergraduate degree from Universidade de Brasília, at Brasília.
Contributor(s): Aruna Rao | We are pleased to announce that Aruna Rao, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Gender at Work, will be delivering a lunchtime seminar. How can change be made to happen to disrupt the deep structures of gender inequality in the programs, policies and every-day practices of social change organizations, mainstream development agencies and systems? This presentation will use the Gender at Work analytical matrix as a ‘lens’ to examine this question in a set of organizations, assess outcomes, and highlight key questions and challenges. Aruna Rao, an Indian national, is the Co-founder and Executive Director of Gender at Work (www.genderatwork.org), an international collaborative that strengthens organizations to build cultures of gender equality and social justice. She is an expert in the field of gender and development with over 30 years of experience in pioneering new approaches to gender and institutional change. She has consulted widely with a range of government, academic and development agencies. She has led the Boards of AWID and CIVICUS and served on the Board of the UN Democracy Fund. She has written extensively on gender equality and institutional change, gender mainstreaming, and human rights. Among Dr. Rao’s publications are Gender at Work: Organizational Change for Equality (Kumarian Press, 1999), and Gender Analysis and Development Planning (Kumarian Press, 1991). She holds a Ph.D. in Educational Administration from Columbia University, New York.
Contributor(s): Nigel Farage | UKIP leader and MEP Nigel Farage will discuss the importance of this year’s upcoming European elections. Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) is leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP).
Contributor(s): Professor Barry Buzan, Trine Flockhart, Professor John Ikenberry, Professor Charles Kupchan | This roundtable of eminent scholars will debate the future of the liberal international order. The liberal order is a global system based on shared norms, economic openness, and commitment to cooperation through multilateral institutions. Will this system of global governance persist, or is the global system likely to become more fragmented, mercantilist, and more conflictual? Barry Buzan is emeritus professor of international relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science and honorary professor at the University of Copenhagen and Jilin University. Trine Flockhart is senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies in Copenhagen and in 2013-2014 senior fellow at the Transatlantic Academy in Washington D.C. John Ikenberry is Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University and co-director of Princeton’s Center for International Security Studies. In 2013-2014 he is the Eastman Visiting Professor at Balliol College, Oxford. Charles Kupchan is professor of international affairs at Georgetown University and the Whitney H. Shepardson Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. In 2013-2014 he is a senior fellow at the Transatlantic Academy.
Contributor(s): Dr Mareike Kleine, Professor Duncan Snidal, Luuk van Middelaar, Professor Helen Wallace | This roundtable of eminent scholars and practitioners of the EU will debate a new way of thinking about how the EU and other international organisations really work as well as discussing the book’s insights and the implications of its argument. Simon Hix (@simonjhix) is professor of European and comparative politics at LSE. Mareike Kleine is lecturer in EU politics at LSE. Duncan Snidal is professor of international relations at the University of Oxford. Luuk van Middelaar (@LuukvMiddelaar) is advisor to the president of the European Council. Helen Wallace is an emeritus professor at the European Institute at LSE.
Contributor(s): Professor Amartya Sen | Drawing on his ground-breaking work on poverty and development, Professor Sen will examine some of the biggest economic, moral and philosophical issues facing anti-poverty campaigners today. Amartya Sen is Thomas W. Lamont University Professor, and professor of economics and philosophy, at Harvard University. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1998 for his contributions to the study of fundamental problems in welfare economics. His most recent book is An Uncertain Glory: India and Its Contradictions, co-authored with Jean Dreze. Professor Sen in an Honorary Fellow of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Contributor(s): Dr Alice Wilson | The outbreak of the Arab uprisings marked the 35th year of the conflict over Western Sahara, Africa’s last decolonization case. The international community has so far failed to produce a political climate conducive to the resolution of the conflict. If formal conflict resolution is locked in a stalemate, this paper analyses changes on the ground in recent years. These changes have been enacted by Sahrawis both in Western Sahara, and in the refugee camps in Algeria where exiled Sahrawis live. Alice Wilson is is junior research fellow in social anthropology, Homerton College, University of Cambridge. Her research explores insights into state power and sovereignty brought to light by the changing significance of tribes in the government-in-exile of Western Sahara. She is currently working on a monograph entitled Remaking Sovereignty in a Saharan revolution.
Contributor(s): Isabel Hilton | In 1912 the last emperor of China abdicated, leaving behind a country that had doubled in size under the Qing Empire. The collapse of the Qing set in train more than a century of savage political conflict as the unwieldy former empire struggled to find a modern political form and establish its identity as a nation state. More than 100 years later China still has fundamental questions to answer: what does it mean to be Chinese today? Who belongs and who does not? Can a national story be agreed that can bind together one fifth of humanity in a common identity? China is approaching a crossroads on the road to reform: which direction it chooses will affect the whole world. Isabel Hilton is a journalist, founder and editor of Chinadialogue, and former editor in chief of openDemocracy. Her publications include The Search for the Panchen Lama. In 2009 she was awarded an OBE.
Contributor(s): Professor Timothy Snyder | At no other time in European history were so many human beings deliberately killed as a matter of policy as in Eastern Europe between 1933 and 1945. In the lands between Berlin and Moscow, the Soviets killed more than four million by starvation and bullets, the Germans more than twice that number by starvation, bullets, and gas. Most deliberate Soviet killing, and almost all deliberate Nazi killing, took place in this zone. If we can understand the totality of the catastrophe, we will better understand the two regimes, and we may be better prepared to understand its component parts, the most significant of which was the Holocaust of European Jews. Professor Timothy Snyder is the Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs, 2013/2014.
Contributor(s): Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Natalie Bennett, Camille Kumar, Finn Mackay, Pragna Patel, Professor Lynne Segal | With the arrival of The Women’s Library at LSE, the Gender Institute will be running a series of 'Conversations' for which audience participation is invited. Feminism is said to be both ‘over’ and a vibrant contemporary force; feminists from across generations discuss the meaning of feminism and hopes for its future. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (@y_alibhai) is a journalist and author. Natalie Bennett (@natalieben) is the leader of the Green Party. Camille Kumar is an activist on domestic violence faced by black and minority ethnic women. Finn Mackay (@Finn_Mackay) is honorary researcher with the Centre for Gender & Violence Research at the University of Bristol and an associate lecturer in sociology at the University of the West of England. Pragna Patel is the director of Southall Black Sisters. Lynne Segal (@lynne_segal) is Anniversary Professor of Psychology and Gender Studies at Birkbeck.
Contributor(s): Helen Clark | 2015 was the date set for achieving most of the Millennium Development Goals' targets. United Nations member states have agreed that there should be a post-2015 development agenda aimed at poverty eradication in the context of sustainable development. With negotiations on a new agenda set to begin in late 2014, Helen Clark will reflect on the inputs to the debate thus far and on how consensus can be reached on sustainable development goals. Helen Clark (@HelenClarkUNDP) became the administrator of the United Nations Development Programme in April 2009, and is the first woman to lead the organization. She is also the chair of the United Nations Development Group, a committee consisting of the heads of all UN funds, programmes and departments working on development issues. Prior to her appointment with UNDP, Helen Clark served for nine years as prime minister of New Zealand, serving three successive terms from 1999 - 2008. Helen Clark came to the role of prime minister after an extensive parliamentary and ministerial career. First elected to Parliament in 1981, Helen Clark was re-elected to her multicultural Auckland constituency for the tenth time in November 2008. Earlier in her career, she chaired parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee. Between 1987 and 1990, she was a minister responsible for first, the portfolios of Conservation and Housing, and then Health and Labour. She was deputy prime minister between August 1989 and November 1990. From that date until December 1993 she served as deputy leader of the opposition, and then as leader of the opposition until winning the election in November 1999. Prior to entering the New Zealand Parliament, Helen Clark taught in the Political Studies Department of the University of Auckland. She graduated with a BA in 1971 and an MA with First Class Honours in 1974. She is married to Peter Davis, a professor at Auckland University.
Contributor(s): Dr Aitemad Muhanna-Matar | In this talk, Dr Aitemad Muhanna-Matar will discuss her new book, which is based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork among women and men in poor households in diverse locations in Gaza. The research was conducted in the period (2007-2008) when the prolonged closure of Gaza borders and the destruction of Gaza’s political economy caused a livelihood crisis, and the majority of Gazan households became reliant on humanitarian aid. The book explores how gender and gender relations of power in Gaza are renegotiated to develop material mechanisms of coping or resistance against the livelihood crisis, providing empirical evidence of Gazan women’s capacity to actively exercise their agency and to achieve material outcomes. Aitemad Muhanna-Matar joined the Middle East Centre in November 2012 as a visiting fellow to pursue her post-doctoral research on gender, religion and sustainable human development in the Gaza Strip. Since February 2013, Aitemad has been leading the centre’s research on ‘Women’s Political Participation across the Arab region’, funded by Oxfam GB.
Contributor(s): Professor Ed Glaeser | Ed Glaeser is the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics at Harvard, where he also serves as director of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government and the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston. He studies the economics of cities, and has written on a range of urban issues, including the growth of cities, segregation, crime, and housing markets. He has been particularly interested in the role that geographic proximity can play in creating knowledge and innovation. His 2011 book, Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier was shortlisted for the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the year. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1992 and has been on the faculty at Harvard since then.
Contributor(s): Professor Ray Dolan, Dr Peter Hacker, Professor Nikolas Rose | What if anything, can neuroscience teach us about the mind? Does understanding the biology of the brain help illuminate human emotions, social relationships, decision making or personality? Ray Dolan is Mary Kinross Professor of Neuropsychiatry and director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL. Peter Hacker is emeritus research fellow of St John’s College at the University of Oxford. Nikolas Rose is professor of sociology at King’s College London.
Contributor(s): Daniel Alexander MP, Lord Bilimoria, Ranjan Mathai, Suhel Seth, NK Singh | During the 1990s, the state of Bihar in India failed to benefit from the acceleration in India’s economic growth and in fact, slowed compared to the 1980s, principally because of a steep decline in the already low standards of governance. Bihar governance and economic performance changed dramatically after November 2005, when the Nitish Kumar government came to power. Within a short time, major initiatives were launched in improving governance, infrastructure, education especially primary and for girl children, health and agriculture. Significant improvements in law and order presumably induced and allowed a resurgence of economic activity in construction, trade and hotels/restaurants, and this has boosted the prospects for growth and development in this state. In The New Bihar, N.K. Singh and Nicholas Stern have put together a collection of perspective essays by eminent scholars on the emerging Bihar model of development – its achievements, shortcomings and challenges. Eminent economists analyse the remarkable turnaround witnessed by Bihar – Amartya Sen provides a historical background of Bihar’s distinguished past, Kaushik Basu discusses the decline of Bihar in recent history and the turnaround since 2005. Meghnad Desai, Shankar Acharya and Arvind Virmani document how the state reversed its fortunes toward growth. Isher Judge Ahluwalia argues for a high rate of urbanisation to take the development story forward. The panel will discuss the economic developments in recent years and future prospects for growth in Bihar. Daniel Alexander is chief secretary to the Treasury and member of parliament for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch & Strathspey. Karan Bilimoria is a crossbench peer within the House of Lords and the founder and chairman of Cobra Beer. Ranjan Mathai is the high commissioner of India to the United Kingdom. Suhel Seth is the managing partner of Counselage India. NK Singh is a member of parliament, Rajya Sabha of the government of India.
Contributor(s): Various | First Annual CAF-LSE Conference. The Rise of the Global South: Towards an Agenda for a New Century Perhaps the most important development of the contemporary century is the emergence of the global South onto the stage of world politics. The first annual CAF-LSE conference will be held on Friday 17th January 2014 at the London School of Economics. This conference will contribute to understanding the rise of the global South by focusing on key international actors from the regions, their perspective on global issues, the role of South-South cooperation as a development paradigm, and their current impact on a changing global environment.
Contributor(s): Various | First Annual CAF-LSE Conference. The Rise of the Global South: Towards an Agenda for a New Century Perhaps the most important development of the contemporary century is the emergence of the global South onto the stage of world politics. The first annual CAF-LSE conference will be held on Friday 17th January 2014 at the London School of Economics. This conference will contribute to understanding the rise of the global South by focusing on key international actors from the regions, their perspective on global issues, the role of South-South cooperation as a development paradigm, and their current impact on a changing global environment.
Contributor(s): Various | First Annual CAF-LSE Conference. The Rise of the Global South: Towards an Agenda for a New Century Perhaps the most important development of the contemporary century is the emergence of the global South onto the stage of world politics. The first annual CAF-LSE conference will be held on Friday 17th January 2014 at the London School of Economics. This conference will contribute to understanding the rise of the global South by focusing on key international actors from the regions, their perspective on global issues, the role of South-South cooperation as a development paradigm, and their current impact on a changing global environment.
Contributor(s): Various | First Annual CAF-LSE Conference. The Rise of the Global South: Towards an Agenda for a New Century Perhaps the most important development of the contemporary century is the emergence of the global South onto the stage of world politics. The first annual CAF-LSE conference will be held on Friday 17th January 2014 at the London School of Economics. This conference will contribute to understanding the rise of the global South by focusing on key international actors from the regions, their perspective on global issues, the role of South-South cooperation as a development paradigm, and their current impact on a changing global environment.
Contributor(s): Various | First Annual CAF-LSE Conference. The Rise of the Global South: Towards an Agenda for a New Century Perhaps the most important development of the contemporary century is the emergence of the global South onto the stage of world politics. The first annual CAF-LSE conference will be held on Friday 17th January 2014 at the London School of Economics. This conference will contribute to understanding the rise of the global South by focusing on key international actors from the regions, their perspective on global issues, the role of South-South cooperation as a development paradigm, and their current impact on a changing global environment.
Contributor(s): Joshua Rozenberg | In this exclusive event, Joshua Rozenberg will answer your questions – tweet them to @LSELaw using #LSERozenberg. Joshua Rozenberg is Britain's best-known commentator on the law. In 2012 he was included by The Times in its independently-judged list of the UK's 100 most influential lawyers, the only journalist to feature in the Times Law 100. A decade after he left the BBC, Joshua returned in 2010 to present the popular Radio 4 series Law in Action, a programme he had launched in 1984. Also in 2010, he also accepted an invitation to chair Halsbury's Law Exchange, an independent and politically neutral think-tank. Joshua was the BBC's legal correspondent for 15 years before moving in 2000 to The Daily Telegraph, where he edited the paper's legal coverage until the end of 2008. In May 2010, he started writing a weekly commentary for the Guardian's online law page. He also writes a column twice a month for the Law Society Gazette.
Contributor(s): Dr Omar Nashabe | Created by the UN Security Council to try the assassins of former Lebanese prime minister Rafic Hariri on February 14th 2005, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) is scheduled to start its hearings on January 13th 2014. The STL prosecutor has indicted five members of Hezbollah, who have not been arrested and will be tried in absentia. After a short presentation of the background and creation of the STL, the speaker will present an overview of the indictment and the prosecution’s pre-trial brief. On what basis were the five persons indicted? This will be followed by a review of the appointment of defence counsels and their teams and their subsequent submissions to the pre-trial judge and to the appeals chamber. How will the persons indicted have the right to defence in a trial in absentia? The third part of the lecture will discuss the main challenges facing the defence counsels. Is there parity of resources between the defence and the prosecution? The speaker has been closely monitoring the tribunal since it was launched in 2009. As a consultant for the defence counsels, he is bound by confidentiality and will refer only to declassified and public documents, subject to redaction where required. Dr Omar Nashabe is a criminal justice specialist, a founding member of Al-Akhbar newspaper and a lecturer at the Lebanese American University. He served as advisor to the Lebanese minister of interior for human rights and prisons. He also worked as a consultant for several local and international organizations including UNODC and has published on Lebanese prisons, prison reform and the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. He is an elected member of the UNESCO Lebanese National Committee’s executive council.
Contributor(s): Nicos Anastasiades | The identity of Cyprus is defined by constants such as its geographical location in the Eastern Mediterranean, its history, the identity of its people, its membership in the European Union. The Eastern Mediterranean is prone to instability mainly due to the recurrence of conflicts, possession of advanced weapons in unreliable hands, terrorism, and the conflicting interests of countries of the region and third countries. In addition, the natural gas finds offshore Cyprus and in the seas of our neighbours, contribute to geopolitical transitions, serve as the vehicle for change but can also heighten our security concerns. The roles that the respective countries, regional and international organisations play in the Eastern Mediterranean are different and complementary; as such they can enrich and strengthen present and potential bilateral and regional cooperation. To that effect, bilateral and regional interaction is of vital importance. The geopolitical role of Cyprus is a dynamic and ever-changing process, the evolution of which depends on the identity of Cyprus and the environment in which Cyprus operates. Cyprus’ primary aim is to ensure peace, stability and prosperity of its people and to contribute to the peace, stability and prosperity of the peoples in the Eastern Mediterranean as a whole. However, this is not an easy aim to meet in view of the complex challenges Cyprus is called upon to face. In this battle for peace, stability and prosperity in the Eastern Mediterranean, what is Cyprus: David or Goliath? Nicos Anastasiades is a Cypriot politician who has been president of the Republic of Cyprus since 24 February 2013 by winning the run-off presidential election with a majority of 57.4%. Previously, he was leader of the centre-right political party Democratic Rally (DISY).
Contributor(s): Professor Charles Heckscher | Solidarity has not died, despite laments about the loss of community and the wide decline of mass actions; it can be mobilised in new ways through developing networks of plural transient relations. Charles Heckscher is the director of the Center for Workplace Transformation at Rutgers University.
Contributor(s): Professor Charles Heckscher | Solidarity has not died, despite laments about the loss of community and the wide decline of mass actions; it can be mobilised in new ways through developing networks of plural transient relations. Charles Heckscher is the director of the Center for Workplace Transformation at Rutgers University.
Contributor(s): Professor Charles Heckscher | Solidarity has not died, despite laments about the loss of community and the wide decline of mass actions; it can be mobilised in new ways through developing networks of plural transient relations. Charles Heckscher is the director of the Center for Workplace Transformation at Rutgers University.
Contributor(s): David Pilling | In the 1980s, Japan was supposedly about to take over the world. Since the burst of the bubble in 1990, it has all but slipped from the radar as attention has switched to China. However, its problems, though real, are exaggerated and misunderstood, and Japan remains a key player in global economy and in global geopolitics. David Pilling is the Asia editor of the Financial Times. From 2002-2008, he was the FT's Tokyo bureau chief. His book, Bending Adversity, Japan and the Art of Survival is published by Penguin in January 2014.
Contributor(s): Professor Paul Dolan, Professor Elaine Fox, Professor Andrew Oswald, Ben Page | What does it mean to measure happiness? Can it really be measured? If so, how? Is this a more meaningful indicator of the state of the nation than GDP? Paul Dolan is professor of behavioural science at LSE. Elaine Fox is director of The Oxford Centre for Emotions and Affective Neuroscience, University of Oxford. Andrew Oswald is professor of economics at Warwick University. Ben Page is chief executive of Ipsos MORI.
Contributor(s): Professor Nancy Folbre | Current understandings and analyses of the economy represent a partial picture. To provide a comprehensive understanding of the economy it is crucial to recognize that, firstly, the measurement of living standards should be expanded to include consideration of both the costs and benefits of unpaid work and intra-family transfers. Secondly, macroeconomic theory should acknowledge and measure the value of unpaid work as a dimension of output and expand its definitions of investment and consumption. Thirdly, public finance should focus more explicitly on both private and public intergenerational transfers. This lecture applies a feminist perspective on the definition of output, income, and living standards to an alternative framework for national income accounting and budget analysis. This framework disaggregates flows of money and time devoted to the care of children, other dependents, the maintenance of adult capabilities, the development of adult capabilities, and luxury consumption over the lifecycle. By so doing it is possible to recognize the significance of all the work, both paid and unpaid, that contributes to national income. Nancy Folbre is emeritus professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her research explores the interface between political economy and feminist theory, with a particular emphasis on the value of unpaid care work.
Contributor(s): Dr Bernard H. Casey | Much of the discussion about the impact of societal ageing in Cyprus has concentrated on the fiscal costs associated with the public pension scheme. Less well known is the system of supplementary retirement provision in Cyprus. Since the Second World War, however, a relative complex structure was built up based on provident funds and pension plans. As well as being complex, the supplementary system was inequitable - public sector employees were considerably better provided for than private sector employees, and up to a third of the workforce had no supplementary provident or pension fund coverage at all. The financial and economic crisis, which hit Cyprus hard, had particularly dramatic consequences for its supplementary pension system. Provision for employees in the public sector was abolished completely, at least for new entrants. Provident funds, and those pension schemes that were funded, were victims of the "haircut", since a substantial proportion of their resources were held as savings accounts in banks. These deposits were large enough to be "uninsured", and, if they were with either of the two largest banks, they were "bailed-in" under the terms of the Troika's rescue package. Whether a system of supplementary provision will be rebuilt, and if so, how it might look, is an open question.
Contributor(s): Professor Yezid Sayigh | Professor Yezid Sayigh will explore the nature of Syria’s revolution, its armed rebellion, and its opposition. He will reflect in particular on the drivers and dynamics of armed struggle and its impacts, placing this in comparative perspective with other historical experiences and anticipating likely trajectories going forward. Yezid Sayigh is a senior associate at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, where his work focuses on the Syrian crisis, the political role of Arab armies, security sector transformation in Arab transitions, the reinvention of authoritarianism, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and peace process. Previously, Sayigh was professor of Middle East studies at King’s College London. From 1994–2003, he served as assistant director of studies at the Centre of International Studies, Cambridge. From 1998–2003, he headed the Middle East program of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. Sayigh was also an adviser and negotiator in the Palestinian delegation to the peace talks with Israel from 1991–1994. Since 1999, he has provided policy and technical consultancy on the permanent-status peace talks and on Palestinian reform. Sayigh is the author of numerous publications, including most recently The Syrian Opposition’s Leadership Problem (April 2013); Above the State: The Officers’ Republic in Egypt (August 2012); “We serve the people”: Hamas policing in Gaza (2011); and Policing the People, Building the State: Authoritarian transformation in the West Bank and Gaza (2011).