Spring 2015 | Public lectures and events | Audio and pdf: Recent Episodes
London School of Economics and Political Science
Contributor(s): Dr Gary Klein | What are insights, and how do they happen? Observing people in their natural setting – from scientists and business people to firefighters and soldiers - Klein demonstrates what insights are, the patterns that emerge, and how you can usefully deploy them. This event marks the publication of Gary's new book, Seeing What Others Don't - The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights. Gary Klein (@KleInsight) is a research psychologist famous for his part in founding the field of naturalistic decision making, and is a Senior Scientist at MacroCognition LLC. He was one of the leaders of a team that redesigned the White House Situation Room. Gary is the author of several books, including The Power of Intuition: Working Minds: A Practioner’s Guide to Cognitive Task Analysis and Streetlights and Shadows: Searching for the Keys to Adaptive Decision Making. Dr Barbara Fasolo is Associate Professor in Behavioural Science in the Department of Management of the London School of Economics and Political Science. She currently serves as Head of the Behavioural Research Lab, Director of the Executive Master in Behavioural Science, and on the Department of Health Behavioural Insights Expert Advisory Panel. The Department of Management (@LSEManagement) is a globally diverse academic community at the heart of the LSE, taking a unique interdisciplinary, academically in-depth approach to the study of management and organisations. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Assembly SE8 , Atelier d'architecture autogérée , Public Works Group | With an evening of provocations and discussion, Theatrum Mundi launched Designing the Urban Commons, an ideas competition calling for new ways to stimulate the city’s public and collective life. Three groups engaged in live projects in London and Paris presented their work, describing how commoning emerges through the spaces they have created or occupied and also examining the issues and opportunities presented by commons as an approach to urban design. The competition brief, which also went live on 25th March, asked for existing land, architecture, or infrastructures in neighbourhoods across London to be re-imagined as common spaces, or for new urban commons to be carved out in the city or online. Commons are not static pieces of architecture. We are seeking designs through which the social act of commoning could take shape, by enabling citizens to co-produce urban resources from culture & knowledge to housing, energy or democratic processes.
Contributor(s): Yannis Stournaras | Yannis Stournaras will talk about the current developments of the Greek Economy. Yannis Stournaras is Governor of the Bank of Greece and former Greek Minister of Finance (July 2012-June 2014). Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Axelle Lemaire | Axelle Lemaire (@axellelemaire) has been at the French Ministry of State for Digital Affairs since April 2014, serving as Deputy Minister for the Digital Sector. She calls her position the “portfolio for imagination”. Born in Canada in 1974, she studied political science at Sciences Po in Paris and law at the Sorbonne and King’s College London. She worked as a researcher and international lawyer before entering politics as a parliamentary assistant in the House of Commons. In 2012, Axelle Lemaire was elected in the French National Assembly to represent the French diaspora living in Northern Europe. As the Secretary of the Law Committee and a member of the European Affairs Committee, her main areas of interest were the digital society and digital economy, the protection of human rights and gender equality, and European politics. Iain Begg is a Professorial Research Fellow at the European Institute, LSE. The LSE European Institute (@LSEEI) was established in 1991 as a dedicated centre for the interdisciplinary study of processes of integration and fragmentation within Europe. In the most recent national Research Assessment Exercise, the Institute was ranked first for research in European Studies in the United Kingdom. The LSE European Institute has been a Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence since 2009. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Professor Jon Paul Faguet, Dr Shirin Madon, Dr Duncan Green, Owen Barder, Yesil Deniz, Dr Bjorn-Soren Gigler, Abha Joshi-Ghani, Leni Wild, Vanessa Herringshaw, Fredrik Galtung, Duncan Edwards | Engaging citizens has a vital role to play in the process of development. It helps to improve transparency and accountability of public policies, to build trust with citizens, to forge consensus around important reforms, and to build the political and public support necessary to sustain them. A number of institutions, including the London School of Economics, have demonstrated their commitment to this important agenda by developing a MOOC - a free, four-week online course on citizen engagement. The Department of International Development hosted a launch event on Thursday 19 March, in which a number of themes related to the MOOC was discussed with a panel of experts.
Contributor(s): Professor Alexander V Pantsov | Professor Pantsov will discuss why the USSR couldn’t follow the pattern of Chinese reforms in the decade leading up to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Alexander V Pantsov is the Edward and Mary Catherine Gerhold Chair in the Humanities at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio. LSE IDEAS (@lseideas) is a centre for the study of international affairs, diplomacy and grand strategy.
Contributor(s): Roza Otunbayeva | Roza Otunbayeva is the first female President of Kyrgyzstan and the first woman to head a country in Central Asia. In this lecture she will reflect on her journey to the highest level of public life. This event is part of the Above the Parapet project, which seeks to capture the experiences of high profile women who have shaped public life. Roza Otunbayeva is a Kyrgyz diplomat and politician who went on to head the government during its transition from an authoritarian regime to a parliamentary democracy. In June 2010, she was elected President of the Kyrgyz Republic and served in that post until successfully facilitating the first peaceful transfer of state power in Central Asia in December 2011. Purna Sen (@Purna_Sen) is Deputy Director of the Institute of Public Affairs at LSE. Above the Parapet (@LSEParapet) is a research project at the LSE’s Institute of Public Affairs which explores the stories of women in high profile public life. The Institute of Public Affairs (@LSEPubAffairs) is one of the world's leading centres of public policy. We aim to debate and address some of the major issues of our time, whether international or national, through our established teaching programmes, our research and our highly innovative public-engagement initiatives.
Contributor(s): Dr Sean Jacobs | Developments in online media point to interesting possibilities for African engagement in the global public sphere. African subjects are taking their places as audiences and agents, rather than receivers of aid and information. Sean Jacobs is a faculty member of The New School in New York City and the founder of the popular Africa is a Country blog. Wendy Willems is a Lecturer in the LSE Department of Media and Communications. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Professor Matthew Connelly | Technology has led to unprecedented state surveillance, but may also be the key to preserving the principle of open government. Matthew Connelly is Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs at LSE IDEAS for 2014-15. LSE IDEAS (@lseideas) is a centre for the study of international affairs, diplomacy and grand strategy. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Professor Barry Buzan, Professor Craig Calhoun, Dr George Lawson, Professor Juergen Osterhammel, Dr Ayse Zarakol | This event marks the launch of a new book: The Global Transformation: history, modernity and the making of international relations, co-authored by Barry Buzan and George Lawson. Barry Buzan is Emeritus Professor in the Department of International Relations at LSE and a Fellow of the British Academy. Craig Calhoun (@craigjcalhoun) is Director and President of LSE. George Lawson is an Associate Professor in the Department of International Relations at LSE. Jurgen Osterhammel is Professor of Modern History at the University of Konstanz and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. Ayse Zarakol is a University Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow at Emmanuel College. Heather Jones is Associate Professor in the Department of International History at LSE. The International Relations Department (@LSEIRDept) is one of the oldest as well as largest IR departments in the world. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Sir Michael Barber | Billions of citizens around the world are frustrated with their governments. Political leaders struggle to honour their promises and officials find it near impossible to translate ideas into action. The result? High taxes, but poor outcomes. Cynicism not just with government but with the political process. Why is this? How could this vicious spiral be reversed? In his new book, How to Run A Government so that citizens benefit and taxpayers don't go crazy, due to be launched on 26 March, Michael Barber draws on his wealth of experience of working for and with government leaders the world over to present a blueprint for how to run a government. Using contemporary cases from every continent and classic examples from history, he makes a compelling case for a new approach. From Downing Street to Punjab, Charles I to Churchill, this book shows that the solution is less about ideology and more about sustained priorities, solving problems as they arise and not giving up when the going gets tough. By applying the lessons set out in the eight chapters of the book, governments of all political persuasions can dramatically enhance their capacity to deliver results and control costs, thus delighting citizens rather than driving them crazy. Sir Michael Barber (@michaelbarber9) is the co-founder of Delivery Associates and Chief Education Advisor at Pearson. Over the last two decades he has worked on government and public service reform in more than 50 countries. From 2001 to 2005 he was the first Head of the Prime Minister's Delivery Unit in the UK. His previous books include Instruction to Deliver: Fighting to Transform Britain's Public Services. Sir Jeremy Heywood is Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Home Civil Service. British Government @ LSE is an initiative led by the LSE’s Government Department (@LSEGovernment) to promote research, teaching and debate about politics and government in the UK. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Professor William A Callahan | Although we live in a visual age, few actually study the role of images in international politics. This inaugural lecture will examine how maps, photographs and film can tell us much about the international politics of war, identity and sovereignty. William A. Callahan is Professor of International Relations at the LSE, and his recent publications include China Dreams: 20 Visions of the Future (2013), and the documentary video, China Dreams: The Debate (2014). Chris Brown is a Professor of International Relations at the LSE. The International Relations Department (@LSEIRDept) is one of the oldest as well as largest IR departments in the world. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Nicola Sturgeon | Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) is Scotland’s first female First Minister and the first female to lead any of the devolved UK administrations. Born in Irvine in 1970 and educated at Greenwood Academy, she studied law at the University of Glasgow where she graduated with LLB (Hons) and Diploma in Legal Practice. Before entering the Scottish Parliament as a regional MSP for Glasgow in 1999 she worked as a solicitor in the Drumchapel Law and Money Advice Centre in Glasgow. She is currently MSP for Glasgow Southside having been, before boundary changes, MSP for Govan between 2007 and 2011. In government she served as Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing between May 2007 and September 2012 and then Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure, Investment and Cities with responsibility for government strategy and the constitution until November 2014. Throughout this period she also served as Deputy First Minister of Scotland. She became SNP Leader on November 14, 2014 and was sworn in as First Minister on November 20, 2014. Simon Hix (@simonjhix) is Professor of European and Comparative Politics and Fellow of the British Academy and Head of Department of Government at LSE. British Government @ LSE (@lsegovernment) is an initiative currently based in the Government Department to promote and develop research on British Government being conducted at the LSE. So far world class speakers have attended our events, talking on a range of topics. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Professor Julia Black, Dr Jon Danielsson, Professor Charles Goodhart, Professor Katharina Pistor | In financial markets law and finance are intrinsically connected. When markets collapse, however, legal rules are pushed into the background and other forces take over. Julia Black is a Professor of Law and Pro-Director for Research at LSE. Jon Danielsson (@JonDanielsson) is Director of the Systemic Risk Centre. Charles Goodhart is Emeritus Professor of Banking and Finance at LSE. Katharina Pistor is the Michael I Sovern Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. LSE Law (@lselaw) is an integral part of the School's mission, plays a major role in policy debates & in the education of lawyers and law teachers from around the world. The Systemic Risk Centre (@LSE_SRC) investigates the risks that may trigger the next financial crisis and develops practical tools to help policy-makers and private institutions become better prepared. The Law and Financial Markets Project is based in the LSE's Law Department and explores the interactions of law, regulation, financial markets and financial institutions, principally within the EU and the UK. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Professor John Hills, Dr Polly Vizard | John Hills will present new findings from the Social Policy in a Cold Climate programme of research on the ways in which patterns of economic inequality changed in the UK over the economic crisis 2007-13. Dr Polly Vizard will present new findings on the patterns of inequality in London, and how the distribution of key economic outcomes - including income and wealth, employment and unemployment, earnings and wages, and educational qualifications - have changed amongst different population groups. John Hills is Professor of Social Policy and Director of the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE) at LSE. His research interests include the distribution of income and wealth, the welfare state, social security, pensions, housing and taxation. He led a review of fuel poverty for the Department of Energy and Climate Change (2011-2012), was Chair of the National Equality Panel (2008-2010), carried out a review of the aims of social housing for the Secretary of State for Communities in 2006-07 and was one of the three members of the UK Pensions Commission from 2003 to 2006. He was Co-Director of the LSE’s Welfare State Programme (1988-1997). Dr Polly Vizard is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE), her research interests include equality, capability and human rights. She has carried out research for the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the Government Equalities Office and a number of NGOs including specific projects on recipients of social care in the UK, older people internationally, and the development of tools to measure ‘autonomy'. Bharat Mehta is Chief Executive at Trust for London (@trustforlondon). Prior to taking up this post he was Chief Executive of the National Schizophrenia Fellowship (NSF, renamed RETHINK). He has also worked for the Medical Research Council; the National Council for Voluntary Organisations; and the Social Services Department of the London Borough of Waltham Forest. The Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE) at LSE (@CASE_lse) focuses on the exploration of different dimensions of social disadvantage, particularly from longitudinal and neighbourhood perspectives, and examination of the impact of public policy. LSE Works is a series of public lectures, that will showcase some of the latest research by LSE's academic departments and research centres. In each session, LSE academics will present key research findings, demonstrating where appropriate the implications of their studies for public policy. A list of all the LSE Works lectures can be viewed at LSE Works. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Professor Julie Cohen, Anne Barron | The problem of control over information flows has emerged as a doubly critical vantage point from which to interrogate the exercise of power and the pursuit of justice. Scholars of law and communications have come to recognize that in the networked information society, the dialogue between truth and power is mediated by the code. The Internet has been hailed as the ultimate medium for speaking truth to power, but networked information technologies also can become means for embedding power and entrenching inequality. Information and network protocols also have become sources of great wealth and competitive advantage. Struggles to shape-or even simply to understand-the patterns of information flow have profound consequences for human flourishing in the networked world. Less widely recognized, perhaps, is that in legal contests over control of information flows and network protocols, law is not simply a bystander or neutral arbiter. Struggles to shape the patterns of information flow are seeking out new modes of recognition and accommodation within the legal system, and those struggles are beginning to produce new institutional settlements. In the networked information society, code and law together sit between truth and power. We should understand contemporary struggles over control of information and information networks as a contest to define new governance institutions for the information age. Julie Cohen (@julie17usc) is a Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center. Anne Barron (@AnneBarron01) is Associate Professor (Reader) in the Department of Law at LSE. Nick Couldry (@couldrynick) is Professor of Media, Communications and Social Theory and Head of the Department of Media and communications at LSE. LSE Law (@lselaw) is an integral part of the School's mission, plays a major role in policy debates & in the education of lawyers and law teachers from around the world. The Department of Media and Communications at LSE (@MediaLSE) has recently been ranked 2nd in the 2014 QS World University Rankings by subject. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Professor Jonathan Holslag, Dr Mareike Kleine | This discussion will explore the vexed question of the demos of European citizenship and the democratic deficit. Jonathan Holslag is Professor of International Politics at the Free University of Brussels. Mareike Kleine is Associate Professor of EU and International Politics in the European Institute at LSE.
Contributor(s): Professor Jeff McMahan | The annual Auguste Comte Memorial Lecture will be delivered by a leading scholar in social and political philosophy. Jeff McMahan is White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford and the author of The Ethics of Killing: problems at the margins of life and Killing in War. Mike Otsuka is a professor in the philosophy department at LSE. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Professor Bob Hancké, Professor David Soskice | This discussion will explore the pressures facing Europe’s welfare states in a time of austerity, an aging population and global economic competition. Bob Hancké is Associate Professor of Political Economy in the European Institute at LSE. David Soskice is Professor of Political Science and Economics at LSE.
Contributor(s): Dr Selina Todd | Drawing on the testimonies of hundreds of people, Dr Todd refutes the claim that class is dead and exposes some of the myths that animate contemporary politics. Selina Todd (@selina_todd) is History Fellow and Vice Principal of St Hilda’s College, University of Oxford. Robin Archer is the Director of the Postgraduate Programme in Political Sociology at LSE. The Ralph Miliband Programme (@rmilibandlse) is one of LSE's most prestigious lecture series and seeks to advance Ralph Miliband's spirit of free social inquiry.
Contributor(s): Professor Sir Richard Blundell | Even before the financial crisis many developed economies were facing growing inequality and struggling to maintain employment and earnings. This lecture will dig deeper into the background to these trends and will examine the evidence on how tax and welfare reform impacts on human capital, inequality and earnings. It will ask two general questions: What are the key margins where we might expect tax and welfare reform to have most impact on earnings, employment growth and inequality? How has this changed in the light of the great recession? The talk will consider prospects for the future and the potential for policy reform. Richard Blundell CBE FBA is a Professor at University College London and Research Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies. He is an alumnus of LSE. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Katrine Marçal | Katrine Marçal charts the myth of ‘economic man’ – from its origins at Adam Smith’s dinner table to its adaptation by the Chicago School and finally its disastrous role in the 2008 Global Financial Crisis – and looks forward to a new, more inclusive type of economics. Katrine Marçal (@katrinemarcal) is the lead editorial writer for the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet and author of Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner? Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Eric Ries | Eric Ries (@ericries) is an entrepreneur and author of the New York Times bestseller The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses, published by Portfolio Penguin. He graduated in 2001 from Yale University with a B.S. in Computer Science. While an undergraduate, he co-founded Catalyst Recruiting. Ries continued his entrepreneurial career as a Senior Software Engineer at There.com, leading efforts in agile software development and user-generated content. He later co-founded and served as CTO of IMVU, his third startup. In 2007, BusinessWeek named Ries one of the Best Young Entrepreneurs of Tech. In 2008 he served as a venture advisor at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers before moving on to advise startups independently. Today he serves on the advisory board of a number of technology startups and venture capital firms. In 2009, Ries was honored with a TechFellow award in the category of Engineering Leadership. In 2010, he was named entrepreneur-in-residence at Harvard Business School and is currently an IDEO Fellow. The Lean Startup methodology has been written about in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Inc., Wired, Fast Company, and countless blogs. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, son, and golden retriever. Dr Linda Hickman is Visiting Senior Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science in the Department of Management. LSE Entrepreneurship (@LSEship) runs a series of lectures, short courses, networking platforms, debates and social exchanges that explore entrepreneurship's extreme potential for change.
Contributor(s): Dr Kristina Spohr, Sir Rodric Braithwaite, Sir Roderic Lyne, Professor Arne Westad | Personal summitry, more than structural factors, shaped the peaceful ending of and exit from the Cold War. This lecture shows how meetings between international leaders in the period 1985-91 fostered rapprochement and creative dialogue, and reflects on their continuing importance today. Kristina Spohr is Deputy Head of the International History Department and Associate Professor at LSE. Rodric Braithwaite is a British diplomat and author. His diplomatic career included posts in Indonesia, Italy, Poland, the Soviet Union, and a number of positions at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. From 1988 to 1992 Braithwaite was ambassador in Moscow, first of all to the Soviet Union and then to the Russian Federation. Subsequently, he was the Prime Minister's foreign policy adviser and chairman of the UK Joint Intelligence Committee (1992–93). Roderic Lyne is Deputy Chairman of Chatham House and Adviser, Russia and Eurasia Programme. From 1970 to 2004 Sir Roderic was a member of the British diplomatic service. He was British ambassador to the Russian Federation from 2000 to 2004; UK permanent representative to the World Trade Organisation, the UN and other international organisations in Geneva from 1997 to 2000; and private secretary to the prime minister for foreign affairs, defence and Northern Ireland from 1993 to 1996. Between 1990 and 1993 he was head of the Soviet and then Eastern department of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Between 1987 and 1990 he worked as head of chancery at the British embassy in Moscow. Arne Westad is Professor of International History at LSE and Director of LSE IDEAS. Professor Stuart Corbridge is Deputy Director and Provost of LSE. The Department of International History (@lsehistory) is one of the top five university history departments in the UK. LSE Works is a series of public lectures, that will showcase some of the latest research by LSE's academic departments and research centres. In each session, LSE academics will present key research findings, demonstrating where appropriate the implications of their studies for public policy. A list of all the LSE Works lectures can be viewed at LSE Works.
Contributor(s): Dr Kimberley Brownlee | When is it permissible to resort to civil disobedience? Do we sometimes have a moral duty to do so? Should we be punished for it? Kimberley Brownlee is Associate Professor of Legal and Moral Philosophy at the University of Warwick.
Contributor(s): Professor David J. Linden | Professor Linden will explore the biology of touch ranging from sex to pain to caress, paying particular attention to the role of emotional processes. David J. Linden (@david_j_linden) is a Professor of Neuroscience at The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He is the author of three books about brain function written for a general audience, most recently Touch (Viking, 2015).
Contributor(s): Jonathan Powell | Jonathan Powell was chief of staff to Tony Blair and the chief British negotiator on Northern Ireland. In his new book Talking to Terrorists How to End Armed Conflicts, Jonathan concludes that every time we meet a new terrorist group we say we will never talk to terrorists but in the end we almost always do. Jonathan Powell worked for the Foreign Office for fifteen years before becoming Tony Blair's Chief of Staff in 1994. Since leaving government he has worked with a Geneva-based NGO, negotiating between governments and terrorist groups in Europe, Asia and Africa, and has now established his own NGO, InterMediate, to continue this work. He is currently also the Prime Minister's special envoy to the Libyan Transition. His booked Talking to Terrorists: How to End Armed Conflicts was published in 2014.
Contributor(s): Professor Francesco Caselli | Professor Caselli will ask whether recent economic research could shed new light on the political and economic impact of natural resource windfalls. Francesco Caselli is the Norman Sosnow Professor of Economics in LSE’s Department of Economics and Centre For Macroeconomics. John Van Reenen is Professor of Economics and Director of the Centre for Economic Performance at LSE. The Department of Economics at LSE (@LSEEcon) is one of the largest economics departments in the world. Its size ensures that all areas of economics are strongly represented in both research and teaching. The Centre For Macroeconomics (@CFMUK) brings together world-class experts to carry out pioneering research on the global economic crisis and to help design policies that alleviate it.
Contributor(s): Professor Kaushik Basu, Professor Amartya Sen, Professor Lord Nicholas Stern | Kaushik Basu (@kaushikcbasu) is Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank. He is the second World Bank Chief Economist from a developing country. He is on leave from Cornell University where he is Professor of Economics and the C. Marks Professor of International Studies. Prior to this he served as the Chief Economic Advisor to the Government of India at the Ministry of Finance. He was Chairman of the Department of Economics and during 2006-9 he was Director of the Center for Analytic Economics at Cornell. Earlier he was Professor of Economics at the Delhi School of Economics, where in 1992 he founded the Centre for Development Economics in Delhi and was its first Executive Director. He is also a founding member of the Madras School of Economics. Mr. Basu has held visiting positions at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and the London School of Economics, where he was a Distinguished Visitor in 1993. He has been a Visiting Professor at Harvard University, Princeton University and M.I.T. and holds a PhD in economics from the London School of Economics. He is currently the President of the Human Development and Capabilities Association, which was founded by Amartya Sen. He has held advisory posts with the ILO, the World Bank, the Reserve Bank of India and was, for several years, a member of the steering committee of the Expert Group of Development Issues set up by the Swedish Government. He is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the Exim Bank of India. He is Editor of Social Choice and Welfare, and served or serves on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, Journal of Development Economics, World Bank Economic Review and the Japanese Economic Review. A Fellow of the Econometric Society, Kaushik Basu has published widely in the areas of Development Economics, Industrial Organization, Game Theory and Welfare Economics. His most recent books are Beyond the Invisible Hand: Groundwork for a New Economics and An Economist’s Miscellany. In May 2008 he was awarded one of India’s highest civilian awards, the Padma Bhushan, by the President of India. Amartya Sen is Thomas W. Lamont University Professor, and Professor of Economics and Philosophy, at Harvard University. He is also the recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics and an honorary fellow of LSE. Nicholas Stern is the IG Patel Chair of Economics and Government, Director of the India Observatory and Chairman of the Asia Research Centre at LSE. Craig Calhoun (@craigjcalhoun) is the Director of LSE. Credits:Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Professor Hugh White | Could it all happen again? Professor White will argue that imagining a new regional order to fit the fast-changing realities in Asia will make war less likely. Hugh White is Professor of Strategic Studies at the Australian National University and author of The China Choice. Robin Archer is the Director of the Postgraduate Programme in Political Sociology at LSE. The Ralph Miliband Programme (@rmilibandlse) is one of LSE's most prestigious lecture series and seeks to advance Ralph Miliband's spirit of free social inquiry. Credits:Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Jeremy Leggett | A solar revolution is unfolding at a speed that is taking even the solar industry by surprise. But years of blindness to systemic risk threatens fresh global economic disaster. Jeremy Leggett (@JeremyLeggett) is the founder of Solarcentury and SolarAid. At this lecture, Jeremy Leggett will launch an innovative new project. Details to be revealed on the day.
Contributor(s): Professor John Dupré, Professor Gina Rippon | Are there ‘hardwired’ psychological differences between men and women? Do these alleged differences show that gender differences in society have a biological explanation? And what does talk of ‘hardwiring’ even mean? In this interdisciplinary dialogue, philosopher John Dupré and cognitive neuroscientist Gina Rippon will debate these and other issues concerning the science and philosophy of gender. John Dupré is Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Exeter. Gina Rippon is Professor of Cognitive Neuroimaging at Aston University. Jonathan Birch is Assistant Professor in the philosophy department at LSE. The Forum for European Philosophy (@LSEPhilosophy) is an educational charity which organises and runs a full and varied programme of philosophy and interdisciplinary events in the UK.
Contributor(s): Neel Mukherjee, Elif Shafak | What are the foundations of society? Two award-winning writers look at the underpinnings of cultures and societies in their writings about the country of their origins, India and Turkey, in conversation with Bidisha. Neel Mukherjee’s second novel, The Lives of Others, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2014. It has also been shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award. His first novel, Past Continuous was joint winner of the Vodafone-Crossword Award, India’s premier literary award for writing in English, for best novel of 2008. The UK edition of the novel, A Life Apart, was published by Constable & Robinson in January 2010. Elif Shafak (@elif_safak) is Turkey's most-read woman writer and an award-winning novelist. She writes in both English and Turkish, and has published 13 books, nine of which are novels, including: The Bastard of Istanbul, The Forty Rules of Love, Honour and her nonfiction memoir Black Milk. Her books have been translated into more than forty languages. Her new novel The Architect’s Apprentice was published by Penguin UK in autumn 2014. Bidisha (@bidisha_online) is a BBC TV and radio presenter, critic and novelist. As a journalist, she specialises in the arts and culture and in international human rights. Her fifth book, Asylum and Exile: Hidden Voices of London, is based on her outreach work with asylum seekers and refugees. She is an alumna of LSE. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.
Contributor(s): Dr Caroline Edwards, Professor Adam Roberts, Anders Sandberg | Utopian and dystopian visions of technologically manipulated and enhanced human beings have always been central characteristics of science fiction film and literature. Sometimes celebrated, sometimes feared, these depictions have articulated anxieties of the day and tackled philosophical, ethical and social questions about possible futures. Can we look to science fiction as a guide to navigating the challenges posed by human enhancement technologies? How has this literary and cinematic genre prefigured and imagined some of the questions we may have to face? Caroline Edwards (@the_blochian) is a Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature at Birkbeck, University of London and Director of the MA in Contemporary Literature and Culture. Adam Roberts (@arrroberts) is Professor of Nineteenth Century Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London and the author of twelve science fiction novels including Bête. Anders Sandberg (@anderssandberg) is James Martin Research Fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford. Imre Bard (@ibard) is a PhD student in Social Research Methods at LSE, working on the NERRI project. NERRI (Neuro-Enhancement: Responsible Research and Innovation) (@NERRI_eu) is a three-year project supported by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme which aims to contribute to the introduction of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) in neuro-enhancement (NE) in the European Area and to shape a normative framework underpinning the governance of neuro-enhancement technologies. The Festival will close with a drinks reception and a performance by LSE Anthropology band The Funktionalists. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.
Contributor(s): Professor Peter Boxall, Jennie Erdal, Andrew O’Hagan | Is the 'novel of ideas' an outdated genre or are we witnessing its resurgence? What answers can it offer to twenty-first-century questions? In this panel three speakers will discuss examples of the 'novel of ideas' and assess the genre's contemporary relevance. Peter Boxall is Professor of English and Deputy Head of the School of English at the University of Sussex. His research has focused on the relationship between aesthetics and politics in modernist and contemporary writing, and more recently on the longer history of the novel. He has written books on Samuel Beckett and Don DeLillo, and a wide ranging book on the contemporary novel, entitled Twenty-First-Century Fiction. He is currently writing a book entitled The Value of the Novel, for Cambridge University Press (due out in 2015), and in the early stages of a new project on the history of the novel, entitled The Prosthetic Imagination: A History of the Novel as Artificial Life. Jennie Erdal worked in literary publishing for many years as an editor and translator. At Quartet Books she managed the Russian list, and in the mid-eighties she started Quartet Encounters, an imprint that focused on literature in translation. For much of this time she was also the ghostwriter of a London publisher, who figured prominently in her subsequent memoir, Ghosting: A Double Life which became an international bestseller. In 2012 she published The Missing Shade of Blue, which was long listed for the 2013 Commonwealth Book Prize. Jennie Erdal has appeared in Granta magazine and is a regular contributor of features and reviews for the arts pages of the Financial Times and other publications. She currently teaches creative writing at the University of Dundee. Andrew O’Hagan is one of his generation’s most exciting and most serious chroniclers of contemporary Britain. He has twice been nominated for the Man Booker Prize. His books include The Missing, The Atlantic Ocean, Our Fathers, Personality, Be Near Me and The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog. He was voted one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2003. He has won the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the E.M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters. He is Editor at Large of the London Review of Books. His new novel The Illuminations will be published in February 2015. Michael Caines (@michaelscaines) is an editor at the Times Literary Supplement. The Forum for European Philosophy (@LSEPhilosophy) is an educational charity which organises and runs a full and varied programme of philosophy and interdisciplinary events in the UK.
Contributor(s): Polly Coles, Jane Da Mosto, Liza Fior, Jonathan Keates | Venice has captivated artists and writers for hundreds of years, but in a city whose literal foundations are under threat from tourism, this discussion asks what is the value of heritage, is it worth saving at any cost? And is there a future for Venice’s unique community away from the museums and palaces? Polly Coles is a writer and broadcaster who spent several years living in Venice. Her book The Politics of Washing: Real Life in Venice is based on her experience of daily life in the city. She is an alumna of LSE. Polly recently wrote and presented five essays on modern Venice for BBC Radio 3 entitled Venice Unravelled. Jane da Mosto is an environmental scientist and activist based in Venice. Venetian resident since 1995, Jane has held many different positions while raising her family, including scientific advisor to The Venice in Peril Fund, consultant for the OECD Territorial Review of the Venice Metropolitan Area (2010) and contributor to the UNESCO review of climate change in the Mediterranean Region (2012). She recently founded We are here Venice, a social enterprise that promotes projects that can change the future of the city, carries out research, and campaigns for the need to protect the Lagoon in order to also save Venice. Liza Fior is founding partner of muf architecture/art, specialists in public realm architecture and art. muf authored Villa Frankenstein, the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, 2010 which took Ruskin and Venice itself as a means to examine how detail can inform strategy. Awards for muf include Public Realm Architect of the Year 2010 and the 2008 European Prize for Public Space (a first for the UK) for a new 'town square' for Barking, East London. Previously a visiting professor at Yale, Liza is a lecturer in Architecture at Central Saint Martins. Jonathan Keates is a prizewinning biographer and novelist, and Chairman of the Venice in Peril Fund. His books include The Siege of Venice and Handel: The Man and His Music. Richard Sennett is Director of Theatrum Mundi, University Professor of the Humanities at New York University and Professor of Sociology at LSE. Theatrum Mundi is a network of people whose shared aims are to understand the culture of cities and to experiment with ways of creating them. The network consists of visual and performing artists, architects and planners, film-makers and photographers, writers and scholars. The work of Theatrum Mundi is two-fold; first, maker-to-maker discussions about specific issues and experiences; second, presentations to the public based on these discussions. Theatrum Mundi happens both back-stage and on stage. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.
Contributor(s): Dr Yasmin Gunaratnam, Dr Deborah Padfield, Jude Rosen | Pain is notoriously hard to communicate to others. Scholars have debated the relationship between pain and language: does pain require a shared language and common understanding to be explicable, or does hearing about the pain of others always entail doubt? What kinds of communication best enable us to express and hear about pain? On what foundations can we build understanding? This session will explore the capacities of stories, poems and photographs as forms of pain communication, and the possible relations between them. Yasmin Gunaratnam is Senior Lecturer in the Sociology Department at Goldsmiths College, University of London. She has a specialist interest in narrative and stories and writes short stories and poems and her recent research includes a British Academy Fellowship on the palliative care philosophy of ‘total pain’. Yasmin’s latest book Death and the Migrant brings together her interest in stories with her sociological research on transnational dying and intercultural care. Her co-edited collection Narrative and Stories in Care was shortlisted and ‘highly commended’ in the British Medical Association Book Awards 2010. Deborah Padfield is a visual artist specialising in lens based media and inter-disciplinary practice and research within Fine Art and Medicine. She is currently Research Associate at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL and Artist in Residence at the Eastman Dental Hospital. She has collaborated extensively with clinicians and patients exploring the value of visual images to clinician-patient interactions and the communication of pain. In 2001 her work with Dr Charles Pither and staff and patients from INPUT Pain Management Unit, St Thomas’ Hospital, led to a touring exhibition, pilot study and book, Perceptions of Pain. Her collaboration with Professor Joanna Zakrzewska and facial pain clinicians and patients from UCLH led to several exhibitions, symposia and the current UCL CHIRP funded project Pain: speaking the threshold. She has exhibited widely including the National Portrait Gallery, the Wellcome Trust and the Science Museum. She is the winner of several awards including the Sciart Research Award and British Pain Society Artist of the Year 2012. Jude Rosen is a poet, translator and independent researcher in urban culture, policy, planning and citizenship and former university lecturer in politics at UCL until ill-health retirement. Her book of poems, A Small Gateway, was published by Hearing Eye in 2009, addressing the scars of history and displacement in shaping personal and collective identity, memory and art. The poem Crohn Heroine formed the backdrop to the hospital video produced by Richard Crow for desperate optimists and was later used in the Communicating Chronic Pain workshop on sound. In her current work she has been experimenting with a walking and narrative-based poetic practice writing from field notes and observation of resonant places and routes, gathering oral histories and scoring the voices of former workers, displaced people and inhabitants of the marshes and Olympic borderlands of East London as an act of retrieval, reclaiming the space, its peoples and history. Elena Gonzalez-Polledo is Course Tutor in the Department of Methodology. Together with colleagues, she recently completed the ESRC-NCRM funded project Communicating Chronic Pain, which explored the use of arts-based and non-verbal methods for communicating about pain. The Department of Methodology (@MethodologyLSE) provides courses for PhD and MSc students and LSE staff in the design of social research and in qualitative and quantitative analysis, and hosts degree programmes for MSc Social Research Methods and MPhil/PhD in Social Research Methods. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.
Contributor(s): Ahmad Zakii Anwar, Nickson Fong, Yang-May Ooi | This year the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) becomes an integrated economic community. The year caps five decades of foundation and development since the region's formal independence from the West. What are the creative voices contending for the soul of a region where freedom, economic prosperity, civil society, and political maturity continue to evolve in unexpected ways? What forces of rebellion drive the soul of the individual in those societies where economic success - arguably the greatest found in newly-independent states in all human history - has raced ahead of other dimensions of development in the human spirit? What forces drive that spiritual and artistic development in the region more generally? How do these diverge from those along the Trans-Atlantic Axis? What is the culture that sits comfortably with Southeast Asia's place in the global economy? Ahmad Zakii Anwar is a well-known Malaysian ‘urban realist’ artist. His preoccupation with the spiritual or metaphysical aspects of urban life have marked his fine art practice. Nickson Fong is a Producer/Director and the CEO and Founder of Egg Story Studios. He won the Academy Award for Scientific and Technical Achievement 2013. Yang-May Ooi (@StoryGuru_UK) is an award-winning TEDx speaker, bestselling author and story performer. Her work uses the power of personal narrative to help creatives and others develop authentic confidence and become collaborative leaders. Felicia Yap is an Associate of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre and an affiliate of the Centre of South Asian Studies in Cambridge. Established in 2014, the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre (@LSESEAC) is an inter-disciplinary, regionally-focused academic centre within the Institute of Global Affairs (IGA) at LSE. Building on the School's deep academic and historical connections with Southeast Asia, the Centre serves as a hub at LSE for public debate and engagement, and research dissemination on issues relevant to the region. This event is co-organised with Her Excellency Chi Hsia Foo, Jin Craven, Cui Yin Mok and Shzr Ee Tan. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.
Contributor(s): Luke Dormehl, Aleks Krotoski, Professor Sonia Livingstone, Professor Andrew Murray | What are the foundations of our identity in the digital age? As digital devices make and manage more and more decisions about our everyday lives how can we retain our sense of self? The panellists discuss how algorithms and intelligent devices are altering our sense of personhood and the ways in which we see ourselves and others. Luke Dormehl (@lukedormehl) is a technology author and journalist, with a background in documentary film. He regularly contributes to Fast Company - where he covers high-tech and the digital humanities -- and also writes for the popular Apple blog, Cult of Mac. His previous books include The Apple Revolution, which explored the links between Apple and the hippie counterculture of the 1960s/70s. His latest book is The Formula: how algorithms solve all our problems..and create more. Aleks Krotoski (@aleksk) is an academic and journalist who writes about and studies technology and interactivity. Her latest book, Untangling the Web: What the Internet is Doing to You looks at the psychology research behind the claims about the positive and negative forces of the digital age. Aleks presents BBC Radio 4’s award-winning science series The Digital Human. She has been hosting The Guardian’s Tech Weekly podcast since its inception, in 2007. Sonia Livingstone (@Livingstone_S) is a Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE and author of Digital Technologies in the Lives of Young People. She directs the 33-country network, EU Kids Online, funded by the EC's Safer Internet Programme. She is now beginning a project, Preparing for a digital future, which follows on the recently-completed project, The Class, both part of the MacArthur Foundation-funded Connected Learning Research Network. 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. Sierra Williams (@sn_will) is Managing Editor of the LSE Impact blog (@LSEImpactBlog) an online platform for the wider scholarly community to discuss and debate the future of scholarship and the digital innovations shaping the role of research in society. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.
Contributor(s): Professor Barbara Graziosi, Edith Hall, Tom Holland, Sir Peter Stothard | This panel explores the Classical wellsprings of Western literature, reflecting on the continuing value and relevance of the Greco-Roman Classics today. Barbara Graziosi (@BarbaraGraziosi) is Professor of Classics and Director for Arts and Humanities at the Institute of Advanced Studies at Durham University. She has published widely on the culture of the ancient world including Inventing Homer, After Homer: The Resonance of Epic and The Gods of Olympus: A History. Edith Hall (@edithmayhall) is Professor of Classics at King's College London and Co-Founder and Consultant Director of the Archive of Performances of Greek & Roman Drama at Oxford. Her achievements in research have recently won her the Erasmus Medal of the European Academy, the Goodwin Award of Merit from the American Classical Society, and a Humboldt Research Prize. She has supervised more than thirty PhD students and published more than twenty books; the most recent is Introducing the Ancient Greeks: from Bronze Age Seafarers to Navigators of the Western Mind. Tom Holland (@holland_tom) is the award winning and bestselling author of Rubicon, Persian Fire and the highly acclaimed Millennium. His most recent work, is In the Shadow of the Sword -The Battle for Global Empire and the end of the Ancient World. He appears regularly on radio, television and in print. He has adapted Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides and Virgil for BBC Radio, and Herodotus for Penguin Classics. He is working on a companion book to Rubicon - Dynasty - to be published in September 2015. Peter Stothard is Editor of the Times Literary Supplement and author of three volumes of diaries, Thirty Days, On the Spartacus Road and Alexandria, which won the 2014 Criticos Prize for literature on a theme from ancient Greece. He was Editor of The Times (1992-2002), Chairman of the Man Booker Prize judges (2012) and President of the Classical Association (2012). Llewelyn Morgan (@llewelyn_morgan) is a Classicist and Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford. His books include Musa Pedestris and The Buddhas of Bamiyan. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.
Contributor(s): Dr Matthew Griffiths, Gaia Vince, Dr Kathryn Yusoff | The controversial designation “Anthropocene” names a geological epoch in which the planet has been irrevocably changed by human activity. In this panel, three thinkers consider the ways in which the Anthropocene requires us to reconsider both human self-identity and the human capacity for creation and destruction. Is art a narcissistic reflection of human concerns and desires or might it provide a model for dynamic and interactive responses to the global challenges which we face? Matthew Griffiths has recently completed a PhD at Durham University on the poetics of climate change. He has published articles on T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens and Basil Bunting, as well as a pamphlet of his own poetry, How to be Late, and a science fiction novel, The Weather on Versimmon. He presently works on a built environment trade journal. Gaia Vince (@WanderingGaia) is the author of Adventures in the Anthropocene. She is a journalist and broadcaster specialising in science and the environment. She has been the front editor of the journal Nature Climate Change, the news editor of Nature and online editor of New Scientist. She has a regular column, Smart Planet, on BBC Online, and devises and presents programmes about the Anthropocene for BBC radio. She blogs at WanderingGaia.com. Kathryn Yusoff is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at Queen Mary, University of London. Her current research addresses questions of ‘Geologic Life’ within the proposed geologic epoch of the Anthropocene. Danielle Sands is a Fellow at the Forum for European Philosophy. The Forum for European Philosophy (@LSEPhilosophy ) is an educational charity which organises and runs a full and varied programme of philosophy and interdisciplinary events in the UK. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.
Contributor(s): Lisa Appignanesi, Darian Leader, Owen Sheers | This panel explores our relationship with our sometimes traumatic past, and asks why we should remember and what happens when we can’t remember. The discussion considers the importance of place and landscape in memory, as well as the nature of collective memory and memorialisation, particularly in the context of war. Lisa Appignanesi (@LisaAppignanesi) is a writer, novelist and broadcaster. She is the former Chair of the Freud Museum London, the former President of English PEN and former Deputy Director of London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts. Her non-fiction includes Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors (which won the BMA Award for the Public Understanding of Science amongst other prizes), the acclaimed family memoir Losing the Dead, the classic study Freud’s Women (with John Forrester) and Simone de Beauvoir, and most recently Trials of Passion: Crimes in the Name of Love and Madness. Her novels include Paris Requiem, The Memory Man and The Dead of Winter. Lisa Appignanesi was awarded the OBE in 2013. Darian Leader is a psychoanalyst working in London and a founder member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research. He is President of the College of Psychoanalysts-UK and Visiting Professor at the School of Human and Life Sciences, Roehampton University. He is the author of several books including: Introducing Lacan, Why do women write more letters than they post?; Freud's Footnotes; Stealing the Mona Lisa: What Art Stops Us From Seeing, Why do people get ill?' (with David Corfield), The New Black: Mourning, Melancholia and Depression and What is Madness? His most recent book, Strictly Bipolar was published by Hamish Hamilton in 2013. Owen Sheers (@owensheers) has written two collections of poetry, The Blue Book and Skirrid Hill, which won a Somerset Maugham award. His verse drama Pink Mist won Wales Book of the Year and the Hay Festival Poetry Medal. His non-fiction includes The Dust Diaries and Calon: A Journey to the Heart of Welsh Rugby. His first novel Resistance has been translated into ten languages and was made into a film in 2011. His plays include The Passion, The Two Worlds of Charlie F. and Mametz. Owen wrote and presented BBC Four's A Poet's Guide to Britain. He has been a NYPL Cullman Fellow, Writer in Residence for the Wordsworth Trust and Artist in Residence for the Welsh Rugby Union. His second novel I Saw A Man will be published by Faber in 2015. Sandra Jovchelovitch is a Professor in the Department of Social Psychology at LSE. The Department of Social Psychology (@PsychologyLSE) is a leading international centre dedicated to consolidating and expanding the contribution of social psychology to the understanding and knowledge of key social, economic, political and cultural issues. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.
Contributor(s): Jonathan Gibbs | In this creative writing workshop we will be looking at the impulse to write, when they are so many reasons and excuses not to, in the hope that exposing the foundations of the creative act can inform the writer's practice in the here and now. But though in part we'll be looking at our personal histories of writing, the exercises will be geared towards producing new work, with a deeper understanding of what our goals actually are. Jonathan Gibbs's novel, Randall, or The Painted Grape, about the London art world and the Young British Artists, is published by Galley Beggar Press. His short fiction has been published in Lighthouse, The Best British Short Stories 2014 and The South Circular and by The White Review (where his story The Story I'm Thinking Of was shortlisted for the 2013 White Review Prize). He studied Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, where he was awarded a Malcolm Bradbury memorial bursary, and has written on books for the Independent, the Daily Telegraph, the TLS and elsewhere. He writes the Independent's weekly Friday Book Design Blog and tweets at @Tiny_Camels. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.
Contributor(s): Professor Ian Bostridge, Dr Armand D’Angour, Professor Fiona Sampson | This discussion explores the links between music and poetry and how much each art form contributes to the other, as well as what common features these art forms share. Common foundations include public performance and private listening, abstract patterns, rhythm, register, tone, breathing and the emergence of tight form from apparently limitless possibility. But music and poetry are partially distinct in the imaginative light they shine, and the panel also discuss how successfully the two art forms complement one another in some of the greatest unions of music and poetry from Homer’s Iliad to Schubert’s Lieder and Britten’s War Requiem. Ian Bostridge (@Ianbostridge) is a tenor and Humanitas Professor of Classical Music at the University of Oxford. Ian’s international recital career has won wide acclaim for his performances as an opera and lieder singer. He is author of A Singer’s Notebook and Schubert’s Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession.Armand D’Angour (@ArmandDAngour) is a Fellow in Classical Literature at Jesus College, Oxford. Initially trained as a cellist before taking a PhD in Classics, Armand is currently working on a project to bring to life the sounds and effects of ancient Greek music. He is author of The Greeks and the New. Fiona Sampson is a poet and Professor of Poetry at Roehampton. Initially trained as a concert violinist, Fiona has published some 25 books of poetry, criticism and philosophy of language. Her most recent volume of poetry is Coleshill and she is author of Music Lessons and the forthcoming Lyric Cousins: Poetry and Musical Form. Richard Bronk is a Visiting Fellow in the European Institute, LSE and author of The Romantic Economist. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.
Contributor(s): Professor Francesca Klug | The Magna Carta, sealed in 1215, has come to stand for the rule of law, curbs on executive power and the freedom to enjoy basic liberties. When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations in 1948, it was heralded as 'a Magna Carta for all human kind'. How has the Magna Carta, initially considered a failure, achieved such iconic status? And can how those who proudly commemorate its 800th year simultaneously pledge to repeal the more modern laws which seek to protect our fundamental rights and freedoms? In A Magna Carta for Humanity: homing in on human rights, published by Routledge to coincide with the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta in June 2015, Francesca Klug will argue that the reasons given for opposing the UKs Human Rights Act are very similar to the reasons that the Magna Carta has stayed relevant for eight centuries. Features that are lauded as ‘totemic’ when applied to the Magna Carta are condemned as ‘dangerous’ when applied to contemporary human rights laws. Are human rights palatable in a mature democracy only as long as they are contained in an ancient document that no longer has any direct legal impact? Are they useful only as a benchmark by which to judge the rest of the world, especially our enemies or rivals, but dangerous when applied to us? Join us for an enlightening discussion, in which Professors Klug and Gearty map the connections between the Magna Carta and Human Rights Act, explore the ethic behind universal human rights and deconstruct the current debate in the UK on the future of human rights protection. Francesca Klug is Professorial Research Fellow in the Centre for the Study of Human Rights. Conor Gearty (@conorgearty) is Professor of Human Rights Law at LSE and Director of LSE’s Institute of Public Affairs. The Centre for the Study of Human Rights at LSE (@LSEHumanRights) is a trans-disciplinary centre of excellence for international academic research, teaching and critical scholarship on human rights. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.
Contributor(s): Professor Sarah Churchwell, Jonty Claypole, Maya Jaggi, Frederic Raphael | With the BBC having announced a remake of Kenneth Clark's TV series Civilisation, and Melvyn Bragg’s intellectual cornucopia on Radio 4, In Our Time, now in its 17th year, we will be asking whether the mission of Lord Reith 'to educate, inform and entertain' is alive and well. Can Matthew Arnold, TS Eliot and FR Leavis sleep well in their graves? Has the era of dumbing down to ' widen access ' run its course? Why shouldn't ALL schoolchildren be asked to grapple with the 'difficult' texts, rich canvases or musical scores of our western inheritance? Why shouldn't everyone have the chance to join the 'elite'? Sarah Churchwell is Professor of American Literature and Public Understanding of the Humanities at UEA. She is the author of Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and The Invention of The Great Gatsby, The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe, and her literary journalism has appeared in the Guardian, New Statesman, TLS, New York Times Book Review, and the Spectator, among others. She comments regularly on arts, culture, and politics for UK television and radio, has judged many literary prizes, including the Bailey’s (Orange) Prize for Fiction and the 2014 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and she is the 2015 Eccles Centre Writer in Residence at the British Library. Jonty Claypole is Director of Arts at the BBC. He works across television, radio and online, ensuring the BBC succeeds in its mission of "Arts for Everyone". As a director then executive producer, he has made over 100 television documentaries for BBC Television, including landmark series like Seven Ages of Britain, A History of Art in Three Colours, A Very British Renaissance and Andrew Marr's Great Scotts. He has created strands like What Do Artists Do All Day, Secret Knowledge and In Their Own Words. He also runs BBC Television's in-house arts department with production teams right across the country. Maya Jaggi is a cultural journalist and critic who has reported from five continents, and was contracted as one of Guardian Review’s leading profile writers for a decade.She has also written for the FT, Independent, Sunday Times Culture, Daily Telegraph, Economist and Newsweek; and was writer-presenter of the BBC4 TV documentary Isabel Allende: The Art of Reinvention. Her conversations with cultural theorist Stuart Hall were made into a four-hour film by Mike Dibb. She has judged literary awards including the Dublin Impac and Orange, and chaired the jury of the Man Asian in Hong Kong. Educated at Oxford and LSE, she was described as “one of Britain’s most respected arts journalists” by the Open University, which awarded her an honorary doctorate in 2012. Frederic Raphael, a major scholar in classics at St John's College, Cambridge, has written over twenty-five novels and volumes of short stories, as well as essays, biographies, translations and many reviews. His most recent book on the ancient world is A Jew Among the Romans about Flavius Josephus. His second volume of autobiography, Going Up, will be published next year. So will his novel Private Views. Among his many film and television scripts are Darling, Two for the Road, the Glittering Prizes and Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. His most recent script, This Man This Woman is due to be shot next year. The LSE European Institute (@LSEEI) was established in 1991 as a dedicated centre for the interdisciplinary study of processes of integration and fragmentation within Europe. In the most recent national Research Assessment Exercise, the Institute was ranked first for research in European Studies in the United Kingdom. The LSE European Institute has been a Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence since 2009. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.
Contributor(s): David Birch, Professor Nigel Dodd, Tom Hockenhull, Professor Nicky Marsh | As our money increasingly takes the form of plastic cards and mobile phones, rather than cash, new questions are being posed about the connections between money, self and identity. Is money becoming de-anonymised, and if so, should we care? Is the decline of cash a moment of renewal in our relationship with money, or a threat to the freedom that has been central to its use? This panel will discuss changing attitudes towards money and the affect it can have, in its many different guises, on our identity. David Birch (@dgwbirch) is an internationally-recognised thought leader in digital money and digital identity. He is a Director of Consult Hyperion, the technical and strategic consultancy that specialises in electronic transactions. Here he provides consultancy support to clients around the world, including all of the leading payment brands, major telecommunications providers, governments bodies and international organisations including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Nigel Dodd (@nigelbdodd) is Professor in the Sociology Department at the LSE. Nigel’s main interests are in the sociology of money, economic sociology and classical and contemporary social thought. He is author of The Sociology of Money and Social Theory and Modernity (both published by Polity Press). His new book, The Social Life of Money, was published by Princeton University Press in September 2014. Tom Hockenhull is a curator at the British Museum, responsible for the modern money collection and editor of Symbols of Power: Ten Coins that Changed the World. Nicky Marsh works in the English Department at the University of Southampton. She works on late 20th and 21st century British and American literatures, theories of gender, postmodernism, poetics and economics. Her published works include Money, Finance and Speculation in Contemporary British Fiction, Democracy in US Women’s Poetry and the edited collection Literature and Globalization. She is also the co-curator of the exhibition Show Me the Money: the Image of Finance, 1700 to the Present, which is touring through 2014-15. Izabella Kaminska (@izakaminska) is a reporter for FT Alphaville. The Department of Sociology at LSE (@LSEsociology) was established in 1904 and remains committed to top quality teaching and leading research and scholarship today. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.
Contributor(s): Professor Alan Manning, Nicola Smith | The Centre for Economic Performance has played an important role in the development of the UK’s National Minimum Wage, which was voted the most successful government policy of the last 30 years. But the minimum wage seems to be stuck in something of a rut and there are many ideas for how to rejuvenate it. This lecture will show how evidence can be used to evaluate these proposals. Alan Manning is Professor of Economics and Director of the Community Programme at the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) at LSE. Nicola Smith (@nicolatuc) is Head of Economic and Social Affairs at the TUC. David Metcalf is Emeritus Professor of Industrial Relations in the Department of Management and Associate in the Labour Markets Programme of the Centre for Economic Performance at LSE. The Centre for Economic Performance (@CEP_LSE) is an interdisciplinary research centre at the LSE Research Laboratory. It was established by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) in 1990 and is now one of the leading economic research groups in Europe. LSE Works is a series of public lectures, that will showcase some of the latest research by LSE's academic departments and research centres. In each session, LSE academics will present key research findings, demonstrating where appropriate the implications of their studies for public policy. A list of all the LSE Works lectures can be viewed at LSE Works. To see more about the impact of this research, visit Designing a minimum wage to reduce poverty and wage inequality at LSE Research Impact.
Contributor(s): Professor John Gray | John Gray draws together the religious, philosophic and fantastical traditions that question the very idea of human freedom. We flatter ourselves about the nature of free will and yet the most enormous forces - biological, physical, metaphysical - constrain our every action. Many writers and intellectuals have always understood this, but instead of embracing our condition we battle against it, with everyone from world conquerors to modern scientists dreaming of a 'human dominion' almost comically at odds with our true state. John Gray is the author of a number of highly regarded books including False Dawn, Straw Dogs and most recently The Silence of Animals. He has taught at Oxford, Harvard, Yale and LSE. This event marks the publication of The Soul of the Marionette. Danielle Sands is a Fellow at the Forum for European Philosophy. The Forum for European Philosophy (@LSEPhilosophy ) is an educational charity which organises and runs a full and varied programme of philosophy and interdisciplinary events in the UK. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.
Contributor(s): David Harsent, Jeremy Sams | Is a translation or adaptation bound always to be measured against the work on which it was founded, or can it take on an independent life of its own? In discussion David Harsent and Jeremy Sams reflect on the differing demands and opportunities presented by translation and adaptation. David Harsent (@DavidHarsent1) has published eleven collections of poetry, the most recent of which is Fire Songs. He is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Roehampton and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His work in music theatre has involved collaborations with a number of composers, but most often with Harrison Birtwistle, and has been performed at the Royal Opera House, Carnegie Hall, the Proms and on Channel 4. He was the librettist of two of the most significant British operas of recent years, Gawain and The Minotaur, and has in addition produced a significant body of English versions of the Greek poet Yannis Ritsos. Jeremy Sams is a theatre director, lyricist and translator of opera libretti as well as a composer, orchestrator and musical director. He is a translator of both straight theatre (Moliere, Botho Strauss) and libretti for numerous operas (most recently the ENO’s Marriage of Figaro), as well as, in his capacity as musician and composer, putting together the unique project The Enchanted Isle (Metropolitan Opera New York). Angus Wrenn is Co-ordinating Language Teacher (EAP) in the LSE Language Centre with special responsibilities for Literature Degree Options. The Language Centre (@lselangcentre) at LSE reflects the specialist nature of the School itself, namely, a world class institution where the quality of teaching and research is paramount. LSE is not just a multi-national university but also a multi-lingual one. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.
Contributor(s): Herbert Girardet | Prof. Herbert Girardet’s public lecture was based on his new book, Creating Regenerative Cities, published by Routledge in October 2014. Is an urbanising world a ‘triumph of the city’, or an environmental tragedy in the making? He argued for a fundamental conceptual shift in the way we organise our urban systems, and for thinking and acting beyond ‘sustainable development’. In Girardet’s view large modern cities have effectively tried to declare their independence from nature. We tend to see cities as centres of the universe rather than as appendages of ecosystems and climate systems. How can we assure that modern cities develop a regenerative relationship to the living world on whose health they ultimately depend? Girardet is a prolific author, speaker and consultant. His new book has been described by Huffington Post as one of the world’s three best green books of 2014.
Contributor(s): Dr Sarah Carr, Paul Farmer, Nathan Filer, Dr John McGowan | How mental illness is portrayed in art, literature and on TV can have a positive or negative effect on how the public perceives mental ill health. Representations of people with mental health problems can range from the mad psychotic criminal to people within their daily lives dealing with depression, schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. This panel discussion explores how such presentations of mental illness can affect public understanding of mental ill health with insights from research and personal experiences. Sarah Carr (@SchrebersSister) has a background as a senior research and policy analyst in mental health and social care, with a focus on service user participation, personalisation and equality issues. She runs her own independent mental health and social care knowledge consultancy. Most recently she worked for the Social Care Institute of Excellence (SCIE) as a Senior Research Analyst and was seconded to the role of Joint Head of Participation. She is an Honorary Senior Lecturer, Institute for Applied Social Science, School of Social Policy, University of Birmingham; a Visiting Fellow, Social Policy and Social Work, University of York and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. As Co Vice-Chair of the National Survivor and User Network (NSUN) and a member of the editorial board of the journal Disability and Society, Sarah has a particular interest in mental health issues and is a long term user of services. Paul Farmer (@paulfarmermind) has been Chief Executive of Mind, the leading mental health charity working in England and Wales, since May 2006. Paul is Chair of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations (ACEVO), the leading voice of the UK’s charity and social enterprise sector. Paul is also a trustee at Lloyds Bank Foundation which invests in charities supporting people to break out of disadvantage at critical points in their lives. He is also Chair of the NHS England Mental Health Patient Safety Board. Paul received an honorary Doctorate of Science from the University of East London and was chosen as most admired charity Chief Executive in the Third Sector Most Admired Charities Awards 2013. Nathan Filer (@nathanfiler) is the author of The Shock of the Fall, winner of the Costa Book of the Year (2013), the Betty Trask Prize (2014), and Popular Fiction Book of the Year at the National Book Awards (2014). It has been translated into twenty-seven languages. He worked as a mental health nurse for many years and in 2014 was named as a Nursing Times’ Nursing Leader for “influencing the way the public thinks about mental illness”. He lectures in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. John McGowan (@cccuapppsy) is Clinical Psychologist. Following many years working in acute mental health wards in the NHS, he is now works on the Clinical Psychology Training scheme at the Salomons Centre for Applied Psychology in Kent. As well as conducting research into self-harm and suicide, he is currently editing a new British Psychological Society Report on Depression. He has written for The Guardian, the Health Service Journal and blogs regularly at Discursive of Tunbridge Wells. He will be speaking on 'Psychos, Cuckoo's Nests and Silver Linings: Madness in the Movies'. Martin Knapp is Director of PSSRU and a Professor of Social Policy at LSE. He is also Director of the NIHR School for Social Care Research. The Personal Social Services Research Unit (PSSRU) is one of the leading social care research groups, not just in the UK, but internationally. The LSE branch of PSSRU sits within LSE Health and Social Care (@LSEHSC) in the Department of Social Policy (@LSESocialPolicy). This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.
Contributor(s): Professor Luc Bovens, Anne Fine, Peter Worley | Literature is a successful medium to introduce philosophy to school children. Our panel features a children’s author whose books contain philosophical themes, a philosopher who has published extensively for the philosophy curriculum in schools, and a philosopher who is developing an ethics curriculum for schools based on short stories in world literature. Luc Bovens (@LucBovens) is Head of the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at LSE. Luc Bovens joined LSE in 2004 from the University of Colorado at Boulder (1990-2003) having previously completed his PhD at the University of Minnesota (1990). He is coordinator of the MSc Philosophy and Public Policy. Anne Fine is one of Britain’s most distinguished writers for both adults and children. She has twice been voted Children’s Author of the Year. The BBC have screened adaptations of several of her books, and her novel Madame Doubtfire was transformed into a Hollywood film starring Robin Williams in 1993. Anne was Children’s Laureate from 2001-3, during which time she set up www.myhomelibrary.org, a website that continues to offer a host of freshly designed and freely downloadable modern bookplates to enthuse children to form their own home libraries from the second hand books around them. She also published three classic anthologies of poetry for different ages, called A Shame to Miss 1, 2 & 3. She has published eight highly acclaimed black comedies for adults, and her work has been translated into forty-five languages. In 2003 she was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and awarded an OBE. Peter Worley (@the_if_man) is Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of The Philosophy Foundation (@philosophyfound). He is President of SOPHIA, the European Foundation for the advancement of doing philosophy with children and a Visiting Research Associate at King's College London. He is a multi-award winning author for Bloomsbury Education and author and editor for Crown House Publishing on The Philosophy Foundation Series of books. A BBC series adapted from The If Machine was nominated for a Children’s BAFTA in 2013. Emma Worley (@rosiecoaching) is Co-Founder & Chief Operating Officer of The Philosophy Foundation. She has worked as an drama educator for schools and regularly works with children’s charity Scene and Heard as both an actor, director and dramaturg. The Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at LSE (@LSEPhilosophy) is internationally renowned for a type of philosophy that is both continuous with the sciences and socially relevant. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.
Contributor(s): Dr Tim Hochstrasser, Dr Kirsten Schulze, Professor Alan Sked, Dr Paul Stock | In the bicentenary anniversary of Waterloo, a panel of LSE historians reflect on the legacy of Napoleon's defeat. The panellists discuss the political and artistic aftermath of Waterloo as well as the consequences for European and global history. Tim Hochstrasser is Associate Professor in the Department of International History at LSE. Dr Hochstrasser's research focuses on the two-way relationship between intellectual life and political action in the history of early modern Europe, and above all on the use made of contemporary historical and philosophical writing to legitimate and defend changing concepts of sovereignty and political structure. Kirsten Schulze is Associate Professor in International History at LSE. She has been the head of the LSE Ideas Southeast Asia Program since 2012. From 2005-2012 she ran the Indonesia Seminar as part of the Chatham House Asia Program. Dr Schulze has conducted research on armed conflicts in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Alan Sked is Professor of International History. Professor Sked's main fields of interest are very wide-ranging. He is a world expert on the Habsburg Monarchy, with his books on it translated into German, Italian, Czech, Portuguese and Japanese. He is presently writing the Penguin History of Post-War (Western) Europe, which will also cover post-war Britain. Paul Stock is Assistant Professor in the Department of International History. Dr Stock specialises in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century intellectual history. His current research focuses on the history of the idea of Europe and on the history of spatial and geographical thought, particularly in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain. Paul Keenan is Assistant Professor in the Department of International History at LSE, and LSE-PKU Programme Director. The Department of International History (@lsehistory) is one of the top five university history departments in the UK. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.
Contributor(s): Professor William A Callahan, Chan Koonchung, Isabel Hilton | The 'China Dream' is the keyword of contemporary propaganda discourse in the People's Republic. This panel discusses the immense variety of aspirations and dreams in contemporary Chinese society. .William A Callahan is Professor of International Relations at the LSE, and his recent publications include China Dreams: 20 Visions of the Future, and the documentary video, China Dreams: The Debate. Chan Koonchung is a Chinese writer and critic. His novel The Fat Years- China in 2013 presents a dystopian future in which the dream of a 'harmonious society' has been realized. His latest book is The Unbearable Dreamworld of Champa the Driver. Isabel Hilton (@isabelhilton) is a writer and broadcaster, and founding editor of Chinadialogue. She has worked with the BBC, the New Yorker, the Guardian, Granta, the Independent, among others. Her publications include Eating Mud Crabs in Kandahar and The Search for the Panchen Lama. In 2009 she was awarded an OBE. Hans Steinmüller is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at LSE. On the basis of long-term fieldwork in rural China he has published Communities of Complicity. Everyday Ethics in Rural China. The International Relations Department at LSE (@LSEIRDept) is now in its 87th year, making it one of the oldest as well as largest in the world. LSE's Anthropology Department (@LSEAnthropology), with a long and distinguished history, remains a leading centre for innovative research and teaching. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'. There is an opportunity to view William Callahan's film Toilet Adventures as part of the Festival Fringe 2015 on Wednesday 25 February.
Contributor(s): Dr Richard Schofield | In trying to make sense of the spontaneous appearance of new borderland spatialities in Syria and Iraq, as well as recent instances of formal state boundary-making such as the Abyei arbitration, Richard Schofield asks what constitutes a borderland in the Middle East. Addressing both historical and contemporary concerns, with notable attention being paid to Iran-Iraq and Saudi-Yemen, he argues that developing a more overtly multidisciplinary basis for the study of contested borders will best aid their appreciation and understanding. Richard Schofield is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Geography at King's College London and founder of the highly-rated Geopolitics (and International Boundaries) journal. Richard’s major study Arabian Boundaries: New Documents, 1966-1975 was released in 2009-10 by Cambridge University Press in 18 volumes. Current research projects include The Unique Geopolitics of Island Sovereignty Disputes and Border Geographies: Historiography, Ethnography and Law.
Contributor(s): Professor Michael Cox | In 1895 the LSE was born with little to suggest that it would one day become one of the most influential and respected universities in the world. But how did the "School" come into being in the first place? What role did key figures like Sidney and Beatrice Webb play? What was their vision? Was it ever realized? And how did this relatively small, somewhat ill-housed, often poorly resourced, and frequently much-criticized institution that many saw as the enemy of the established order, come to play such a key role in British and global politics over the next century? Michael Cox is Director of LSE IDEAS and Professor of International Relations at LSE. Sue Donnelly is LSE Archivist. An Odd Adventure! Ever wanted to know where LSE first opened its doors, when International Relations arrived at LSE and who was LSE’S first black academic? Find out more about these and other questions in the history of LSE pop up exhibition which will be in the NAB throughout the Literary Festival. You can also read more about LSE's history via the LSE History blog. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.
Contributor(s): Sarah Perry, Professor Graham Ward | A conversation exploring the role of religious belief in European life and literature. Despite the increased religious diversity of Western Europe and the rise of the “New Atheists”, questions of the Christian origins of our society and their enduring relevance have been prominent in both our public life and literature in recent years. David Cameron controversially asserted that the UK remains a “Christian country” and novelists from Colm Tóibín to Philip Pullman have been exploring Christian themes. What relevance does belief have to contemporary cultural life? How important a foundation is faith to society today? Sarah Perry (@sarahgperry) was born in Essex in 1979, and grew up in a deeply religious home. Kept apart from contemporary culture, she spent her childhood immersed in classic literature, Victorian hymns and the King James Bible. She has a PhD in creative writing at Royal Holloway which she completed under the supervision of Andrew Motion. Her first novel After Me Comes the Flood, was published by Serpent’s Tail in 2014 and was long listed for the Guardian First Book Award and won the East Anglian Book of the Year. A winner of the Shiva Naipaul Memorial prize and a Royal Holloway doctoral studentship, she was Writer-in-Residence at Gladstone's Library in January 2013. Graham Ward is Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Oxford. His books include Barth, Derrida and the Language of Theology, Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology (edited with John Milbank and Catherine Pickstock), Cities of God, The Certeau Reader, Cultural Transformation and Religious Practice, True Religion, Christ and Culture, Religion and Political Thought and most recently Unbelievable: Why We Believe and Why We Don't. James Walters is Chaplain & Interfaith Adviser at LSE. The Faith Centre (@LSEFaithCentre) is the new home for LSE's diverse religious activities, our interfaith programme, and a reflective space for all staff and students.
Contributor(s): Marion Coutts, Ali Smith | Ali Smith's How to be Both, in which the lives of a 15th-century fresco painter and a 21st-century Cambridge schoolgirl mysteriously intertwine, was shortlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize, and won the £10,000 Goldsmiths Prize. Marion Coutts's fierce, shocking and beautiful memoir, The Iceberg, tracing the two years between her husband's diagnosis with and death from a brain tumour, was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize. Both have been picked extensively as books of the year. Meeting one another for the first time, they talk about how to look beneath the surface of life, how to weigh words, and how to reconcile grief and joy. Ali Smith was born in Inverness in 1962 and lives in Cambridge. She is the author of Artful, There but for the, Free Love, Like, Hotel World, Other Stories and Other Stories, The Whole Story and Other Stories, The Accidental, Girl Meets Boy and The First Person and Other Stories. Marion Coutts is an artist and writer. She works in video, film, sculpture and photography. Her work has been exhibited widely nationally and internationally, including solo shows at Foksal Gallery, Warsaw, Yorkshire Sculpture Park and The Wellcome Collection, London. She has held fellowships at Tate Liverpool and Kettle's Yard, Cambridge. In 2001 she married the art critic Tom Lubbock. After his death in 2011, she wrote the introduction to his memoir Until Further Notice, I am Alive and is the editor of English Graphic, an anthology of his essays. She is a Lecturer in Art at Goldsmiths College. Maggie Fergusson is Director of the Royal Society of Literature. This event is organised in association with the Royal Society of Literature (@RSLiterature). Membership of the Royal Society of Literature is open to all. For just £50 per annum, it offers free entry to over 20 events each year. Speakers for spring 2015 include Rosie Alison, Mark Bostridge, Carmen Callil, Peter Carey, Kate Clanchy, Mark Doty, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, Claire Harman, Hermione Lee, Andrew Motion, Andrew O’Hagan, Ruth Padel, Jo Shapcott and Kate Tempest. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.
Contributor(s): Raja Shehadeh | Raja Shehadeh in conversation with Professor Craig Calhoun will discuss his new book, Language of War, Language of Peace: Palestine, Israel and the search for justice, which explores the politics of language and the language of politics in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, reflecting on how the walls that they create - legal and cultural - confine today's Palestinians just like the physical borders, checkpoints and the so-called 'Separation Barrier'. He will also discuss the changes that took place in the landscape of Palestine and the effect of land on the Palestinian identity as well as the difference in the legal narratives of the Israelis and Palestinians and the consequences this has had on the course of negotiations in Oslo and after. Raja Shehadeh is a Palestinian lawyer and writer who lives in Ramallah, the West Bank. He is a founder of the human rights organization Al-Haq and an affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists. His acclaimed books include Strangers in the House, A Rift in Time, Occupation Diaries and Palestinian Walks, winner of the 2008 Orwell Prize. Craig Calhoun (@craigjcalhoun) is the Director of LSE. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.
Contributor(s): Dr Lee Elliot Major, Clare Woodcraft-Scott | LSE's origins are rooted in philanthropy for change, with our foundation funded through Henry Hunt Hutchinson's bequest made to the Fabian Society to create a place of learning focused on the betterment of wider society. From those beginnings, philanthropic partnerships with a wide range of trusts and foundations in the UK and globally have been integral to fulfilling the shared ambitions of innovation and social change. This panel features many of LSE’s principal benefactors who have partnered us on a range of academic and institutional priorities. Panel members discuss the evolving culture of strategic and effective philanthropy, the responsibilities of trustees to deliver public impact, and the role that universities can play in that fulfilment. Lee Elliot Major (@Lem_SuttonTrust) is Chief Executive of the Sutton Trust (@suttontrust). He previously served as Director of Development and Policy, and prior to that oversaw the Trust’s research work. He is a trustee of the Education Endowment Foundation, and chairs its evaluation advisory board. He has served on a number of Government advisory bodies on social mobility and education. He is an adviser to the Office for Fair Access, and sits on the Social Mobility Transparency Board. He commissioned and is a co-author of the Sutton Trust-EEF toolkit for schools. He was previously an education journalist, working for the Guardian and Times Higher Education Supplement. Clare Woodcraft-Scott (@CWoodcraft) is the Chief Executive Officer of the Emirates Foundation (@EFYouth), the national foundation of the UAE, and is responsible for driving its vision of supporting youth development in the country. Clare Woodcraft has over 20 years of experience working in the field of sustainable development in the Middle East and Africa as a development practitioner, a journalist and a corporate executive specializing in sustainability, social investment and reputation management. She was recently named number 6 on the UAE Brits List 2014 by Arabian Business Magazine and recognized with a special award as one of five ‘Most Inspiring Brits 2014’. Prior to joining Emirates Foundation, Woodcraft-Scott was Deputy Director of Shell Foundation. LSE's Foundation Partnerships team (@LSEFoundations) develops and stewards relationships with philanthropic organisations around the world in key areas including development. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.
Contributor(s): David Crystal | If you lived in 1800, which words existed in English to let you talk about money or the weather? Or 1600? Or at any time in the history of the language? If you are writing a historical novel or TV series, how do you know which words could have been used by your characters? Would Thomas in Downton Abbey have said "cheerio" in 1912? How to avoid anachronisms is just one of the questions answered by David Crystal after exploring the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary in order to write his book Words in Time and Place. David Crystal is known throughout the world as a writer, editor, lecturer, and broadcaster on language. He has published extensively on the history and development of English. 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 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.
Contributor(s): Professor Richard Parkinson | Richard Parkinson will present a ground-breaking LGBT history project by the British Museum, drawing on objects ranging from ancient Egyptian papyri to images by modern artists such as David Hockney and films such as James Ivory's Maurice, to discuss how and why museums should represent same-sex experiences as integral parts of world culture. Richard Parkinson is Professor of Egyptology at the University of Oxford and was previously a curator at the British Museum. He is a specialist in Ancient Egyptian poetry of the classic period. Sue Donnelly is LSE Archivist. LSE Spectrum (@LSESpectrum) is LSE's LGBT + staff network. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.
Contributor(s): Professor Norman Doidge | In his new book The Brain’s Way of Healing, Norman Doidge shows the astonishing advances of neuroplasticity being used to improve, and even cure, many prevalent brain problems previously thought to be incurable or irreversible. Doidge describes a series of remarkable recoveries using natural, non-invasive techniques: cases where sounds played into the ear successfully treat autism, learning disorders and attention deficit in children; gentle electrical stimulators tingling on the tongue are used to reverse symptoms of multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s. Finally, he reveals simple methods proven to reduce the risk of dementia by 60%. Using moving human stories to present cutting-edge science, Doidge illustrates the principles that everyone can apply to improve their brain’s performance and health. Norman Doidge is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and New York Times bestselling author. His book The Brain That Changes Itself has sold over a million copies worldwide and was chosen by the Dana Foundation's journal Cerebrum as the best general book ever written on the brain. He is on the faculty of the University of Toronto's Department of Psychiatry as well as the Research Faculty at Columbia University's Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research in New York City. LSE's Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science (@CPNSS), established in 1990, promotes research into philosophical, methodological and foundational questions arising in the natural and the social sciences, and their application to practical problems. The Centre's work is inherently interdisciplinary, and a full calendar of events contributes to a lively intellectual environment.
Contributor(s): Darryl Cunningham | An illustrated lecture by graphic journalist Darryl Cunningham based on his new book, Supercrash: How To Hijack The Global Economy, which traces the roots of our age of selfishness, the origins of the 2008 financial crisis and its consequences. He discusses who was to blame and how they got clean away with it. Darryl Cunningham (AcmeDarryl) is a cartoonist whose speciality is graphic journalism, investigating hard hitting topics in comic book form. He is the author of the highly acclaimed Psychiatric Tales and Science Tales, shortlisted for the British Comic Awards 2012: Best Book. Darryl’s latest book Supercrash: How to Hijack the Global Economy, a bullish analysis of our economic world - and what makes us tick, is published by Myriad. Danny Quah (@DannyQuah) is Director of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre and Professor of Economics and International Development at LSE. Just economics and politics? Think again. While LSE does not teach arts or music, there is a vibrant cultural side to the School - from weekly free music concerts in the Shaw Library, and an LSE orchestra and choir with their own professional conductors, various film, art and photographic student societies, the annual LSE photo prize competition, the LSE Literary Festival and artist-in-residence projects. For more information please view the LSE Arts and Music website.
Contributor(s): Dr Camille Landais | Dr Landais will examine the latest research into the best ways of determining the optimal level of welfare provision and social insurance in developed economies. Camille Landais is a member of the faculty of the LSE Department of Economics, and an Associate on the Public Economics Programme at STICERD. Wouter Den Haan is Professor of Economics and Co-Director of the Centre for Macroeconomics. The Department of Economics at LSE (@LSEEcon) is one of the largest economics departments in the world. Its size ensures that all areas of economics are strongly represented in both research and teaching. The Centre For Macroeconomics (@CFMUK) brings together world-class experts to carry out pioneering research on the global economic crisis and to help design policies that alleviate it.
Contributor(s): Professor Damian Chalmers, Professor Carol Harlow, Dr Jan Komarek, Dr Jo Eric Khushal Murkens | Has the European Union reached the end of the road in the UK? The country has taken on a competence review aimed at deciding exactly what needs to be European and what is best left at - or taken - home. Whatever the outcome of the election in May 2015, the subject of EU renegotiation is unlikely to go away. Lurking in the background is the spectre of an IN/OUT referendum which may become inevitable under the pressure of events. What are the legal implications of any large-scale political movement away from the EU? Can 'Europe' be resisted short of withdrawal? Is withdrawal legally possible? How many of the laws we take for granted are rooted in EU initiatives that would need to be unpicked? What happens to Scotland and the rest of the non-English UK? Damian Chalmers is Professor of European Law at LSE. Carol Harlow is Emeritus Professor of Law at LSE. Jan Komarek is Assistant Professor in European Law at LSE. Jo Eric Kushal Murkens is Associate Professor of Law at LSE. Niamh Moloney is a Professor in the Law department at LSE.
Contributor(s): Professor Immanuel Wallerstein | Immanuel Wallerstein (@iwallerstein) is Senior Research Scientist in Sociology at Yale University. He is the former President of the International Sociological Association (1994-1998), and chair of the International Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences (1993-1995). He writes in three domains of world-systems analysis: the historical development of the modern world-system; the contemporary crisis of the capitalist world-economy; the structures of knowledge. Books in each of these domains include respectively The Modern World-System (4 vols.); Utopistics, or Historical Choices for the Twenty-first Century; and Unthinking Social Science: The Limits of Nineteenth-Century Paradigms. Craig Calhoun (@craigjcalhoun) is Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Contributor(s): Professor Kenneth Benoit, Kenneth Cukier | The ubiquity of "big data" about social, political and economic phenomena has the potential to transform the way we approach social science. In this talk, Professor Benoit outlines the challenges and opportunities to social sciences caused by the rise of big data, with applications and examples. He discusses the rise of the field of data science, and whether this is a threat or a blessing for the traditional social scientific model and its ability to help us better understand society. Kenneth Benoit (@kenbenoit) is currently Professor of Quantitative Social Research Methods at LSE. He is also Part-Time Professor in the Department of Political Science at Trinity College Dublin, and has previously held a position at the Central European University (Budapest). He is currently Principal Investigator on 5-year grant funded by the European Research Council entitled QUANTESS: Quantitative Text Analysis for the Social Sciences. Kenneth Cukier (@kncukier) is the Data Editor at The Economist, following a decade at the paper covering business and technology, and as a foreign correspondent (most recently in Japan from 2007-12). Previously he was the technology editor of the Wall Street Journal Asia in Hong Kong and worked at the International Herald Tribune in Paris. In 2002-04 he was a research fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He is the co-author of "Big Data: A Revolution that Will Transform How We Work, Live and Think" (2013) and "Learning with Big Data: The Future of Education" (2014) with Viktor Mayer-Schönberger. Simon Hix (@simonjhix) is Professor of European and Comparative Politics and Head of Department of Government at LSE.
Contributor(s): Dr Jan Kleinheisterkamp, Professor Martti Koskenniemi | The Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) have recently become a major political stumbling stone. What can be learned from the resistance in terms of legal compatibility with EU law and domestic law – and of political acceptability? Jan Kleinheisterkamp is Associate Professor at LSE Law and teaches International Arbitration, Contracts, and Investment Treaty Law. Much of his recent research has focused on the interaction between investment treaty law and EU law and influenced the work of the European Parliament on this subject. Martti Koskenniemi is Professor of International Law at the University of Helsinki and Centennial Professor at LSE. Shawn Donnan (@sdonnan) is World Trade Editor at the Financial Times. LSE Law (@lselaw) is an integral part of the School's mission, plays a major role in policy debates & in the education of lawyers and law teachers from around the world. LSE Works is a series of public lectures, that will showcase some of the latest research by LSE's academic departments and research centres. In each session, LSE academics will present key research findings, demonstrating where appropriate the implications of their studies for public policy. A list of all the LSE Works lectures can be viewed at LSE Works.
Contributor(s): Steven Heydemann | As the Syrian conflict nears its fourth anniversary, it poses a growing threat to the stability of the state order in the Levant and Arab East. Violence has spilled across all of Syria’s borders, fuelled by regional and international involvement on all sides of the conflict. Massive refugee flows and population displacements strain the capacity of every neighbouring state. The rise of ISIS poses a direct challenge to the integrity and legitimacy of existing states: its forces have already erased large areas of the Syrian-Iraqi border. Kurdish aspirations for nationhood now appear more attainable than at any time since the rise of Kurdish national movements. The region has not experienced turmoil on this scale for almost a century. In this lecture, Steven Heydemann argues that the widespread violence now gripping the Levant and Arab East has a logic and structure that can shed light on its underlying dynamics, its drivers, and its possible effects. Steven Heydemann serves as the vice president of Applied Research on Conflict at USIP. Heydemann is a political scientist who specializes in the comparative politics and the political economy of the Middle East, with a particular focus on Syria. His interests include authoritarian governance, economic development, social policy, political and economic reform and civil society.
Contributor(s): Professor Sonia Livingstone, John Carr, Professor Robin Mansell | Are children’s rights enhanced or undermined by access to the internet? Charters and manifestos for the digital age are proliferating, but where do children fit in? Sonia Livingstone (@Livingstone_S) OBE is a Professor of Social Psychology in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE and Project Director of EU Kids Online. John Carr (@johnc1912) is a member of the Executive Board of the UK Council on Child Internet Safety, the British Government's principal advisory body for online safety and security for children and young people. Robin Mansell (@REMVAN) is Professor of New Media and the Internet at LSE. Nick Couldry (@couldrynick) is Professor of Media, Communications and Social Theory and Head of the Department of Media and communications at LSE. Update Wednesday 11 February 2015, 5.08pm: Due to unforeseen circumstances Jasmina Byrne is no speaking at this event. LSE apologises for any inconvenience this may cause. The Department of Media and Communications at LSE (@MediaLSE) has recently been ranked 2nd in the 2014 QS World University Rankings by subject. A blog post by Professor Sonia Livingstone entitled 'Sonia Livingstone: Digital Media and Children’s Rights' can be viewed at the LSE Media Policy Project blog.
Contributor(s): Will Hutton | A compelling and sharply insightful lecture that will examine the state of Britain today and look forward to the Britain of tomorrow, from the bestselling author of The State We’re In. Will Hutton (@williamnhutton) is Principal of Hertford College, Oxford and columnist for the Observer. His latest book is How Good We Can Be. John Hills is Professor of Social Policy at LSE. The Department of Social Policy at LSE (@LSESocialPolicy) is the longest established in the UK and offers outstanding teaching based on the highest quality empirical research in the field.
Contributor(s): Professor Nicholas Barr, Martin Lewis | Nicholas Barr has been described as one of the architects of student loans and tuition fees, and in particular of the reforms in 2006. Martin Lewis is the UK’s most googled man and former head of the Independent Taskforce on Student Finance Information. Nick and Martin argued about these things when Martin was General Secretary of the LSE Students Union and have a continuing lively argument now. This evening they will have their discussion in public. Nicholas Barr is Professor of Public Economics at LSE. Martin Lewis (@MartinSLewis) is the Money Saving Expert and former head of the Independent Taskforce on Student Finance Information. He is an LSE alumnus. Nona Buckley-Irvine (@nonajasmine) is General Secretary of the LSE Students' Union.
Contributor(s): Professor Conor Gearty, Raymond Li, Professor Danny Quah, Isabella Steger | The Umbrella Revolution has re-ignited a global debate on democracy. Why have the dynamics in this small ex British Colony captured the imagination of the world? Conor Gearty (@conorgearty) is Director of the Institute of Public Affairs and Professor of Human Rights Law at LSE. Raymond Li is BBC Chinese Editor since 2009. Danny Quah (@DannyQuah) is Director of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre and Professor of Economics and International Development at LSE. Isabella Steger (@stegersaurus) reports for the Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong. Dr Mukulika Banerjee is Associate Professor in LSE’s Department of Anthropology and Director Designate for LSE’s South Asia Centre. The Institute of Public Affairs (@LSEPubAffairs) is one of the world's leading centres of public policy. We aim to debate and address some of the major issues of our time, whether international or national, through our established teaching programmes, our research and our highly innovative public-engagement initiatives. Established in 2014, the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre (@LSESEAC) is an inter-disciplinary, regionally-focused academic centre within the LSE. Building on the School's deep academic and historical connections with Southeast Asia, the Centre serves as a hub at LSE for public debate and engagement, and research dissemination on issues relevant to the region.
Contributor(s): Professor Simon Glendinning | 50 years ago Professor Glendinning gave an inaugural lecture arguing for the abolition of inaugural lectures. His failure allows his son to return to this theme. Simon Glendinning (@lonanglo) is Professor of European Philosophy at LSE. The Forum for European Philosophy (@LSEPhilosophy) is an educational charity which organises and runs a full and varied programme of philosophy and interdisciplinary events in the UK.
Contributor(s): William Hague MP, Angelina Jolie Pitt, Professor Christine Chinkin | LSE today hosted First Secretary of State William Hague and UNHCR Special Envoy Angelina Jolie Pitt to launch the UK’s first academic Centre on Women, Peace and Security, to be based at the School. Mr Hague and Ms Jolie Pitt announced the establishment of the ground-breaking initiative to students and academic colleagues with LSE Director Professor Craig Calhoun and Professor Christine Chinkin, who will lead the new centre. It will focus on the participation of women in conflict-related processes and on enhancing accountability and ending impunity for rape and sexual violence in war. The Centre marks a collaboration between LSE, Mr Hague, Ms Jolie Pitt and the UK Government. It will support the aims of the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative (PSVI), co-founded in 2012 by Mr Hague and Ms Jolie Pitt, by bringing academic expertise to bear on preventing crimes of sexual violence, holding perpetrators to account and protecting the rights of survivors. From 2016 the Centre will provide a post-graduate teaching programme in Women, Peace and Security, leading to an MSc degree. LSE has recently announced the creation of a new Institute of Global Affairs which will host the Centre on Women, Peace and Security. The choice of LSE as host university for the Centre reflects both its international reach and its focus on issues of global concern.
Contributor(s): Professor Baroness O’Neill, Professor Jonathan Wolff | Informed consent is not the most fundamental ethical standard, but a means of securing respect for other, more basic standards or aims. It is neither possible nor required when public goods – such as sound currency or clean air – are to be provided. Where it is possible and can be required, as in transactions with individuals, it must be tailored to their cognitive capacities. Genuine, legitimating consent is demanding, and is not achieved by the ‘tick and click’ approaches used in many commercial transactions. Onora O’Neill is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, a crossbench member of the House of Lords and the current chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Jonathan Wolff is Professor of Philosophy at University College London. Peter Dennis is an LSE Fellow in the department of Philosophy at LSE. The Forum for European Philosophy (@LSEPhilosophy) is an educational charity which organises and runs a full and varied programme of philosophy and interdisciplinary events in the UK. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Lord Adair Turner, Mr. John Hughes, Professor Göran Malmqvist, Professor Athar Hussain, Professor Yu Dan, Professor Zhou Hanmin, Professor Danny Quah and others. | The LSE SU China Development Forum (CDF) is the flagship annual conference of the LSE SU China Development Society (CDS). Co-organised with the LSE Asia Research Centre, the CDF provides a platform for students, academics and professionals to exchange ideas and hold in-depth discussions on key issues surrounding China and its development. The 2015 Forum, held at LSE on 7th February 2015 and attended by over 400 delegates, hosted 27 speakers from mainland China, Europe and the United States. Under the theme of Paths to Modernisation, nine panel sessions considered and discussed a range of topics. Keynote speakers spoke on topics such as China's current anti-corruption campaigns, prospects for the Shanghai Free Trade Zone and the potential impacts of a burgeoning Chinese social media. A further five discussion panels focused on topics which included International Relations, China's Economy, Soft Power, New Urbanisation, and China's Social Policy.
Contributor(s): Lord Adair Turner, Mr. John Hughes, Professor Göran Malmqvist, Professor Athar Hussain, Professor Yu Dan, Professor Zhou Hanmin, Professor Danny Quah and others. | The LSE SU China Development Forum (CDF) is the flagship annual conference of the LSE SU China Development Society (CDS). Co-organised with the LSE Asia Research Centre, the CDF provides a platform for students, academics and professionals to exchange ideas and hold in-depth discussions on key issues surrounding China and its development. The 2015 Forum, held at LSE on 7th February 2015 and attended by over 400 delegates, hosted 27 speakers from mainland China, Europe and the United States. Under the theme of Paths to Modernisation, nine panel sessions considered and discussed a range of topics. Keynote speakers spoke on topics such as China's current anti-corruption campaigns, prospects for the Shanghai Free Trade Zone and the potential impacts of a burgeoning Chinese social media. A further five discussion panels focused on topics which included International Relations, China's Economy, Soft Power, New Urbanisation, and China's Social Policy.
Contributor(s): Lord Adair Turner, Mr. John Hughes, Professor Göran Malmqvist, Professor Athar Hussain, Professor Yu Dan, Professor Zhou Hanmin, Professor Danny Quah and others. | The LSE SU China Development Forum (CDF) is the flagship annual conference of the LSE SU China Development Society (CDS). Co-organised with the LSE Asia Research Centre, the CDF provides a platform for students, academics and professionals to exchange ideas and hold in-depth discussions on key issues surrounding China and its development. The 2015 Forum, held at LSE on 7th February 2015 and attended by over 400 delegates, hosted 27 speakers from mainland China, Europe and the United States. Under the theme of Paths to Modernisation, nine panel sessions considered and discussed a range of topics. Keynote speakers spoke on topics such as China's current anti-corruption campaigns, prospects for the Shanghai Free Trade Zone and the potential impacts of a burgeoning Chinese social media. A further five discussion panels focused on topics which included International Relations, China's Economy, Soft Power, New Urbanisation, and China's Social Policy.
Contributor(s): Lord Adair Turner, Mr. John Hughes, Professor Göran Malmqvist, Professor Athar Hussain, Professor Yu Dan, Professor Zhou Hanmin, Professor Danny Quah and others. | The LSE SU China Development Forum (CDF) is the flagship annual conference of the LSE SU China Development Society (CDS). Co-organised with the LSE Asia Research Centre, the CDF provides a platform for students, academics and professionals to exchange ideas and hold in-depth discussions on key issues surrounding China and its development. The 2015 Forum, held at LSE on 7th February 2015 and attended by over 400 delegates, hosted 27 speakers from mainland China, Europe and the United States. Under the theme of Paths to Modernisation, nine panel sessions considered and discussed a range of topics. Keynote speakers spoke on topics such as China's current anti-corruption campaigns, prospects for the Shanghai Free Trade Zone and the potential impacts of a burgeoning Chinese social media. A further five discussion panels focused on topics which included International Relations, China's Economy, Soft Power, New Urbanisation, and China's Social Policy.
Contributor(s): Lord Adair Turner, Mr. John Hughes, Professor Göran Malmqvist, Professor Athar Hussain, Professor Yu Dan, Professor Zhou Hanmin, Professor Danny Quah and others. | The LSE SU China Development Forum (CDF) is the flagship annual conference of the LSE SU China Development Society (CDS). Co-organised with the LSE Asia Research Centre, the CDF provides a platform for students, academics and professionals to exchange ideas and hold in-depth discussions on key issues surrounding China and its development. The 2015 Forum, held at LSE on 7th February 2015 and attended by over 400 delegates, hosted 27 speakers from mainland China, Europe and the United States. Under the theme of Paths to Modernisation, nine panel sessions considered and discussed a range of topics. Keynote speakers spoke on topics such as China's current anti-corruption campaigns, prospects for the Shanghai Free Trade Zone and the potential impacts of a burgeoning Chinese social media. A further five discussion panels focused on topics which included International Relations, China's Economy, Soft Power, New Urbanisation, and China's Social Policy.
Contributor(s): Lord Adair Turner, Mr. John Hughes, Professor Göran Malmqvist, Professor Athar Hussain, Professor Yu Dan, Professor Zhou Hanmin, Professor Danny Quah and others. | The LSE SU China Development Forum (CDF) is the flagship annual conference of the LSE SU China Development Society (CDS). Co-organised with the LSE Asia Research Centre, the CDF provides a platform for students, academics and professionals to exchange ideas and hold in-depth discussions on key issues surrounding China and its development. The 2015 Forum, held at LSE on 7th February 2015 and attended by over 400 delegates, hosted 27 speakers from mainland China, Europe and the United States. Under the theme of Paths to Modernisation, nine panel sessions considered and discussed a range of topics. Keynote speakers spoke on topics such as China's current anti-corruption campaigns, prospects for the Shanghai Free Trade Zone and the potential impacts of a burgeoning Chinese social media. A further five discussion panels focused on topics which included International Relations, China's Economy, Soft Power, New Urbanisation, and China's Social Policy.
Contributor(s): Lord Adair Turner, Mr. John Hughes, Professor Göran Malmqvist, Professor Athar Hussain, Professor Yu Dan, Professor Zhou Hanmin, Professor Danny Quah and others. | The LSE SU China Development Forum (CDF) is the flagship annual conference of the LSE SU China Development Society (CDS). Co-organised with the LSE Asia Research Centre, the CDF provides a platform for students, academics and professionals to exchange ideas and hold in-depth discussions on key issues surrounding China and its development. The 2015 Forum, held at LSE on 7th February 2015 and attended by over 400 delegates, hosted 27 speakers from mainland China, Europe and the United States. Under the theme of Paths to Modernisation, nine panel sessions considered and discussed a range of topics. Keynote speakers spoke on topics such as China's current anti-corruption campaigns, prospects for the Shanghai Free Trade Zone and the potential impacts of a burgeoning Chinese social media. A further five discussion panels focused on topics which included International Relations, China's Economy, Soft Power, New Urbanisation, and China's Social Policy.
Contributor(s): Lord Adair Turner, Mr. John Hughes, Professor Göran Malmqvist, Professor Athar Hussain, Professor Yu Dan, Professor Zhou Hanmin, Professor Danny Quah and others. | The LSE SU China Development Forum (CDF) is the flagship annual conference of the LSE SU China Development Society (CDS). Co-organised with the LSE Asia Research Centre, the CDF provides a platform for students, academics and professionals to exchange ideas and hold in-depth discussions on key issues surrounding China and its development. The 2015 Forum, held at LSE on 7th February 2015 and attended by over 400 delegates, hosted 27 speakers from mainland China, Europe and the United States. Under the theme of Paths to Modernisation, nine panel sessions considered and discussed a range of topics. Keynote speakers spoke on topics such as China's current anti-corruption campaigns, prospects for the Shanghai Free Trade Zone and the potential impacts of a burgeoning Chinese social media. A further five discussion panels focused on topics which included International Relations, China's Economy, Soft Power, New Urbanisation, and China's Social Policy.
Contributor(s): Dr Mara Airoldi, Professor Gwyn Bevan, Siân Williams | STAR is the Socio-Technical Allocation of Resource which has been designed, through an eight-year research programme at LSE funded by the Health Foundation, to enable stakeholders to explore how to improve the value of health care given constrained resources. This lecture describes the STAR approach and two of its applications: in redesigning the care pathway to increase value at reduced costs for the treatment of patients suffering from eating disorders with Sheffield Primary Care Trust, and with IMPRESS to develop their guide to the relative value of interventions for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). Professor Gwyn Bevan will discuss can STAR fix broken dreams? Dr Mara Airoldi will speak about using STAR to prioritise guidelines for COPD. Siân Williams will comment on using STAR to engage clinicians in prioritisation. Mara Airoldi (@MaraAiroldi) is a Departmental Lecturer in Economics and Public Policy a Researcher at the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University. Mara has contributed to the development of STAR, and applied this in working with healthcare organisations in England, Italy, Ontario and with the Global Fund to fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Gwyn Bevan is Professor of Policy Analysis at LSE. He has been a Director at the Commission for Health Improvement, Head of LSE’s Department of Management and is a member of England’s Advisory Committee on Resource Allocation to the Secretary of State for Health. Siân Williams has programme-managed IMPRESS since 2007 and has had the opportunity to test implementation of its recommendations as part of the London Respiratory Team and more recently the London Respiratory Network. She has an NHS management background, a public health degree and also manages the International Primary Care Respiratory Group. Muir Gray (@muirgray) is a consultant in public health in the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust and Director of Better Value Healthcare. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Tim Harford | Tim Harford will explain what’s really going on in the large-scale economic world – and what it means for us all in the future. Tim Harford (@TimHarford) is a senior columnist for the Financial Times and the presenter of Radio 4’s More or Less and Pop-Up Economics With Tim Harford. He was the winner of the Bastiat Prize for economic journalism in 2006, and More or Less was commended for excellence in journalism by the Royal Statistical Society in 2010, 2011 and 2012. Harford lives in Oxford with his wife and three children, and is a visiting fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford. His latest book is, The Undercover Economist Strikes Back. His other books include The Undercover Economist, The Logic of Life and Adapt. Wouter Den Haan is Professor of Economics and Co-Director of the Centre for Macroeconomics. The Department of Economics at LSE (@LSEEcon) is one of the largest economics departments in the world. Its size ensures that all areas of economics are strongly represented in both research and teaching. The Centre For Macroeconomics (@CFMUK) brings together world-class experts to carry out pioneering research on the global economic crisis and to help design policies that alleviate it. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Dionyssis G. Dimitrakopoulos, Daphne Halikiopoulou, Dimitri Vayanos | The outcome of the Greek election on 25th January is being watched closely by euro-zone leaders and the financial markets. It may also prove to be a turning point in Greek politics. What are the implications for Greece’s economic path? Have the elections shifted the Greek party system decisively? What do the results mean for the political extremes and the disengaged? This panel will explore what the elections mean for Greece and its place in Europe.
Contributor(s): Professor Judith Butler | Recent debates about human shields in the summer bombardment of Gaza raised the question of how the unarmed human form comes to be regarded as a military instrument. The lecture will consider how the perception of racialized bodies as threatening instruments informs both the public debates on the use of children as human shields in Gaza and the numerous figures of unarmed Black men and women in US cities who are gunned down either because they seem to be reaching for weapons or because their gestures, including their standing still, are regarded as weapons. In the context of the increasing militarization of police forces tasked with containing or eliminating social protest against social and economic inequality, how is racial perception both built and ratified through recasting the human form as threatening instrument? To what extent does the racialized structure of the visual field become instrumental to justifying the unjustifiable? Judith Butler is Maxine Elliot Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Program of Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley, where she served as Founding Director. She received her PhD. in Philosophy from Yale University in 1984 on the French Reception of Hegel. She is the author of Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France (Columbia University Press, 1987), Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (Routledge, 1990), Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (Routledge, 1993), The Psychic Life of Power: Theories of Subjection (Stanford University Press, 1997), Excitable Speech (Routledge, 1997), Antigone’s Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death (Columbia University Press, 2000), Precarious Life: Powers of Violence and Mourning (2004); Undoing Gender (2004), Who Sings the Nation-State?: Language, Politics, Belonging (with Gayatri Spivak in 2008), Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (2009), and Is Critique Secular? (co-written with Talal Asad, Wendy Brown, and Saba Mahmood, 2009). Her most recent books include: Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism (2012) and Dispossessions: The Performative in the Political (2013), co-authored with Athena Athanasiou, and Sois Mon Corps (2011), co-authored with Catherine Malabou. She is also active in gender and sexual politics and human rights, anti-war politics, and serves on the advisory board of Jewish Voice for Peace. She was recently the recipient of the Andrew Mellon Award for Distinguished Academic Achievement in the Humanities (2009-13). She received the Adorno Prize from the City of Frankfurt (2012) in honour of her contributions to feminist and moral philosophy as well as the Brudner Prize from Yale University for lifetime achievement in gay and lesbian studies. She is as well the past recipient of several fellowships including Guggenheim, Rockefeller, Ford, American Council of Learned Societies, and was Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and at the College des Hautes Etudes in Paris. She has received honorary degrees from Université Bordeaux-III, Université Paris-VII, Grinnell College, McGill University and University of St. Andrews. In 2013, she was awarded the diploma of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters from the French Cultural Ministry. LSE Law (@lselaw) is an integral part of the School's mission, plays a major role in policy debates & in the education of lawyers and law teachers from around the world.
Contributor(s): Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs | In this public lecture Professor Sachs will talk about his upcoming book, The Age of Sustainable Development, which explains the central concept for our age, which is both a way of understanding the world and a method for solving global problems - sustainable development. Sustainable development tries to make sense of the interactions of three complex systems: the world economy, the global society, and the Earth's physical environment. It recommends a holistic framework, in which society aims for environmentally sustainable and socially inclusive development, underpinned by good governance. It is a way to understand the world, yet is also a normative or ethical view of the world: a way to define the objectives of a well-functioning society, one that delivers wellbeing for its citizens today and in future generations. This book describes key challenges and solutions pathways for every part of the world to be involved in problem solving, brainstorming, and determining new and creative ways to ensure inclusive and sustainable growth. Jeffrey D. Sachs (@jeffdsachs) is a world-renowned professor of economics, leader in sustainable development, senior UN advisor, best selling author, and syndicated columnist whose monthly newspaper columns appear in more than 100 countries. He has twice been named among Time Magazine's 100 most influential world leaders. He was called by the New York Times, ""probably the most important economist in the world,"" and by Time Magazine ""the world's best known economist."" A recent survey by The Economist Magazine ranked Professor Sachs as among the world's three most influential living economists of the past decade. Professor Sachs serves as the Director of The Earth Institute, Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development, and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University. He is Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the Millennium Development Goals, having held the same position under former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. He is Director of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He is co-founder and Chief Strategist of Millennium Promise Alliance, and is director of the Millennium Villages Project. Sachs is also one of the Secretary-General's MDG Advocates, and a Commissioner of the ITU/UNESCO Broadband Commission for Development. He has authored three New York Times best sellers in the past seven years: The End of Poverty (2005), Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet (2008), and The Price of Civilization (2011). His most recent book is To Move the World: JFK's Quest for Peace (2013). His upcoming book The Age of Sustainable Development will be published by Columbia University Press on March 10, 2015. Jonathan Leape is the Executive Director of the International Growth Centre (IGC) and Associate Professor of Economics at LSE. The International Growth Centre (@The_IGC) aims to promote sustainable growth in developing countries by providing demand-led policy advice based on frontier research. Based at LSE and in partnership with Oxford University, the IGC is initiated and funded by DFID. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Professor Steve Reicher, Dr Suki Ali, Dr Caroline Howarth | Anti-immigration arguments rest on a series of unfounded psychological assumptions. Professor Reicher will propose a new framework for understanding and action. Steve Reicher is Professor of Social Psychology at St Andrews University. Suki Ali is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the LSE. Caroline Howarth is Associate Professor in the department of Social Psychology at the LSE. Cathy Campbell is Head of the Social Psychology department at LSE. The Department of Social Psychology (@PsychologyLSE) is a leading international centre dedicated to consolidating and expanding the contribution of social psychology to the understanding and knowledge of key social, economic, political and cultural issues. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Professor Ian Goldin, Professor Danny Quah | Professor Goldin will address how global hyperconnectivity creates systemic risks and how this can be managed effectively. Ian Goldin is Director of the Oxford Martin School and Professor of Globalisation and Development at the University of Oxford. Professor Goldin was Vice President of the World Bank (2003-2006) and prior to that the Bank's Director of Development Policy (2001-2003). He served on the Bank's senior management team and led the Bank's collaboration with the United Nations and other partners as well as with key countries. As Director of Development Policy, he played a pivotal role in the research and strategy agenda of the Bank. From 1996 to 2001 he was Chief Executive and Managing Director of the Development Bank of Southern Africa and served as an advisor to President Nelson Mandela. He succeeded in transforming the Bank to become the leading agent of development in the 14 countries of Southern Africa. During this period, Goldin served on several Government committees and Boards, and was Finance Director for South Africa's Olympic Bid. Previously, Goldin was Principal Economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in London, and Program Director at the OECD Development Centre in Paris, where he directed the Programs on Trade, Environment and Sustainable Development. He has a BA (Hons) and a BSc from the University of Cape Town, an MSc from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and an MA and Doctorate from the University of Oxford. Danny Quah is Professor of Economics and International Development at LSE, and Director of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, at LSE's Institute of Global Affairs. Jean-Pierre Zigrand is Associate Professor of Finance at LSE and Director of the Systemic Risk Centre. The Systemic Risk Centre (@LSE_SRC) investigates the risks that may trigger the next financial crisis and develops practical tools to help policy-makers and private institutions become better prepared. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Professor Julia Black, Greg Clark, Professor Lord Stern | In February 2014 the British Academy published Prospering Wisely, a multimedia resource which explores the nature of ‘prosperity’ in today’s world. It highlights the importance of thinking beyond simple measures such as GDP, showing how humanities and social science research fuels our modern knowledge-based economy, helps sustain our healthy, open democracy and contributes to human and cultural wellbeing and ‘the good life’. At the heart of this contribution is the vital role played by research, epitomised by a renowned centre of research and teaching excellence such as the LSE. As a nation are we investing sufficiently in these drivers of future success and human progress? Are cuts in public expenditure imperilling the UK’s hard-won world-leading status? Professor Julia Black is Pro-Director of Research at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Greg Clark (@gregclarkmp) is the Minister for Universities, Science and Cities and MP for Royal Tunbridge Wells. Nicholas Stern is the President of the British Academy and the IG Patel Professor of Economics and Government at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Conor Gearty (@conorgearty) is Director of the Institute of Public Affairs and Professor of Human Rights Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science. The Institute of Public Affairs (@LSEPubAffairs) is one of the world's leading centres of public policy. We aim to debate and address some of the major issues of our time, whether international or national, through our established teaching programmes, our research and our highly innovative public-engagement initiatives. The British Academy (@britac_news) is an independent national academy of Fellows elected for their eminence in research and publication. It is the UK's expert body that supports and speaks for the humanities and social sciences.
Contributor(s): Professor Tito Boeri | How did the welfare state in Europe cope with the Great Recession and the Eurozone crisis? While a lot of attention has been devoted to (home-made) stress tests of the banking sector, no attempt has been made to date to evaluate the performance of social tax and transfer systems to reduce poverty during the crisis. This talk will address this issue, making reference, in particular, to the countries of Southern Europe, where the shock has been particularly severe. The underlying question is whether we need only a welfare state or also a welfare union. Professor Boeri is currently Professor of Economics and Dean for Research at Bocconi University, Milan as well as BP Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Professor Paul De Grauwe is John Paulson Chair in European Political Economy at the European Institute, LSE. The LSE European Institute (@LSEEI) was established in 1991 as a dedicated centre for the interdisciplinary study of processes of integration and fragmentation within Europe. In the most recent national Research Assessment Exercise, the Institute was ranked first for research in European Studies in the United Kingdom. The LSE European Institute has been a Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence since 2009.
Contributor(s): Professor Pascal Engel, Professor Simon Blackburn | Realists take truth to be a robust property of our thoughts and assertions, one which fits certain facts in the world. Deflationists, expressivists and pragmatists disagree: for them truth is a very shallow notion, which comes down to a few (important) trivialities. The view one takes on truth has important consequences for all sorts of issues, in particular for moral philosophy and epistemology, and for the way we understand reasons in each domain. Pascal Engel is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Philosophy at the University of Geneva. Simon Blackburn is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. Peter Dennis is an LSE Fellow in the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method and Forum for European Philosophy. The Forum for European Philosophy (@LSEPhilosophy) is an educational charity which organises and runs a full and varied programme of philosophy and interdisciplinary events in the UK. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Dr Filippo Dionigi | Dr Dionigi will launch his new book on Hezbollah and Islamist politics, looking at how the norms of the liberal international order influence the activity of Islamist movements. Filippo Dionigi is Early Career Fellow at LSE’s Middle East Centre.
Contributor(s): Graham Floater, Philipp Rode, Dimitri Zenghelis | This event is structured around research for the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate and the cities workstream of the Commission’s New Climate Economy (NCE) project which LSE Cities is leading. The overall aim of NCE is to provide independent and authoritative evidence on the relationship between actions which can strengthen economic performance and those which reduce the risk of dangerous climate change. It has been repeatedly argued that cities have a unique opportunity to build a different model of economic growth – one which achieves the benefits of growth but with significantly reduced greenhouse gas emissions alongside co-benefits such as improved health. And it is commonly understood that this will require a focus on actions that are systematically important for how cities function including decisions around urban form and transport. This event will feature some of the core findings and arguments that were recently published in the first NCE publication ‘Better growth, better climate’ and position the role of cities as part of a global green economy transition. Graham Floater (@GrahamFloater) is Director of the NCE Cities Research Programme and Principal Research Fellow at LSE. Philipp Rode (@PhilippRode) is Executive Director of LSE Cities and Co-Director of the NCE Cities Research Programme. Dimitri Zenghelis (@DimitriZ) is Co-Head Climate Policy at the Grantham Research Institute at the LSE. Fran Tonkiss is Professor of Sociology in the Sociology Department and Academic Director of the Cities Programme at LSE Cities. The studies by LSE Cities for the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate can be downloaded at the LSE Cities. LSE Cities (@LSECities) is an international centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science that carries out research, education and outreach activities in London and abroad. Its mission is to study how people and cities interact in a rapidly urbanising world, focussing on how the design of cities impacts on society, culture and the environment. LSE Works is a series of public lectures, that will showcase some of the latest research by LSE's academic departments and research centres. In each session, LSE academics will present key research findings, demonstrating where appropriate the implications of their studies for public policy. A list of all the LSE Works lectures can be viewed at LSE Works. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Graham Floater, Philipp Rode, Dimitri Zenghelis | This event is structured around research for the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate and the cities workstream of the Commission’s New Climate Economy (NCE) project which LSE Cities is leading. The overall aim of NCE is to provide independent and authoritative evidence on the relationship between actions which can strengthen economic performance and those which reduce the risk of dangerous climate change. It has been repeatedly argued that cities have a unique opportunity to build a different model of economic growth – one which achieves the benefits of growth but with significantly reduced greenhouse gas emissions alongside co-benefits such as improved health. And it is commonly understood that this will require a focus on actions that are systematically important for how cities function including decisions around urban form and transport. This event will feature some of the core findings and arguments that were recently published in the first NCE publication ‘Better growth, better climate’ and position the role of cities as part of a global green economy transition. Graham Floater (@GrahamFloater) is Director of the NCE Cities Research Programme and Principal Research Fellow at LSE. Philipp Rode (@PhilippRode) is Executive Director of LSE Cities and Co-Director of the NCE Cities Research Programme. Dimitri Zenghelis (@DimitriZ) is Co-Head Climate Policy at the Grantham Research Institute at the LSE. Fran Tonkiss is Professor of Sociology in the Sociology Department and Academic Director of the Cities Programme at LSE Cities. The studies by LSE Cities for the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate can be downloaded at the LSE Cities. LSE Cities (@LSECities) is an international centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science that carries out research, education and outreach activities in London and abroad. Its mission is to study how people and cities interact in a rapidly urbanising world, focussing on how the design of cities impacts on society, culture and the environment. LSE Works is a series of public lectures, that will showcase some of the latest research by LSE's academic departments and research centres. In each session, LSE academics will present key research findings, demonstrating where appropriate the implications of their studies for public policy. A list of all the LSE Works lectures can be viewed at LSE Works. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Professor Margaret Boden | Professor Boden will explore philosophical issues about art. Are computer artworks physical objects? Do they really qualify as art? Margaret Boden is Research Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of Sussex. LSE's Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science (@CPNSS), established in 1990, promotes research into philosophical, methodological and foundational questions arising in the natural and the social sciences, and their application to practical problems. The Centre's work is inherently interdisciplinary, and a full calendar of events contributes to a lively intellectual environment. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Professor Laurence Monnoyer-Smith | France’s institutionalisation of public debate faces criticism as being an instrument for appeasement. Professor Monnoyer-Smith will discuss how France meets this challenge and evaluates its strengths and weaknesses. Laurence Monnoyer-Smith (@lmonsmith) is Vice-President of the French National Commission for Public Debate. Michael Barzelay is Professor of Public Management and Head of Department of Management. The Department of Management (@LSEManagement) is a globally diverse academic community at the heart of the LSE, taking a unique interdisciplinary, academically in-depth approach to the study of management and organisations. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Dato Sri Nazir Razak | How will the ASEAN Economic Community change the political and economic landscape of Southeast Asia? What form will it take and will it be sustainable? Dato Sri Nazir Razak is Chair of the CIMB Group. Danny Quah (@DannyQuah) is Professor of Economics and International Development, and Director of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre at LSE. Established in 2014, the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre (@LSESEAC) is an inter-disciplinary, regionally-focused academic centre within the LSE. Building on the School's deep academic and historical connections with Southeast Asia, the Centre serves as a hub at LSE for public debate and engagement, and research dissemination on issues relevant to the region. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Gareth Peirce, Professor Saskia Sassen, Professor Jeanne Theoharis | Since 9/11 the rules governing extradition from the UK to the US have been systematically relaxed, and safeguards designed to protect against injustice have been dismantled. British citizens are extradited on untested charges to face justice in US courts and prisons, but what standard of justice? There has been little coverage of what happens in US courts and prisons following these extraditions. The conditions that suspects face in the notorious Supermax prisons, along with the use of secret evidence and material support bans raise serious human and civil rights concerns. Gareth Peirce is a solicitor who represents individuals who are or have been the subject of rendition and torture, held in prisons in the UK on the basis of secret evidence, and interned in secret prisons abroad under regimes that continue to practice torture. Her many clients have included the Birmingham Six, Judith Ward, the family of Jean Charles de Menezes, and Moazzam Begg. Saskia Sassen (@SaskiaSassen) is Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology, Columbia University. She is the author of Expulsions and Territory, Authority, Rights. Immigration is one of her major research subjects. Jeanne Theoharis is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. She is the author of numerous books including the recent, award-winning The Rebellious Life of Mrs Rosa Parks and co-founder of Educators for Civil Liberties. She has written and researched extensively on terrorism prosecutions in the US federal system post-9/11. Susan Marks is Professor of International Law at LSE. The Centre for the Study of Human Rights at LSE (@LSEHumanRights) is a trans-disciplinary centre of excellence for international academic research, teaching and critical scholarship on human rights. The Department of Sociology at LSE (@LSEsociology) was established in 1904 and remains committed to top quality teaching and leading research and scholarship today. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Professor Peter Neumann | Large numbers of foreigners, including many Europeans, have joined jihadist groups in the Syrian/Iraqi conflict. Who are these people, why do they go, and what - if any - threat will they pose upon their return? Drawing on a large database with hundreds of social media profiles of Western fighters, dozens of interviews, and fieldwork, Professor Peter Neumann of King's College London's International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation will talk about the fighters' motivations and consequences.
Contributor(s): Felix Salmon | Atrocious jurisprudence has plunged Argentina into an unwanted default and upended the world of sovereign debt. Felix Salmon (@felixsalmon) is a prominent financial journalist and Senior Editor at Fusion.net. The Department of International Development (@LSE_ID) promotes interdisciplinary post-graduate teaching and research on processes of social, political and economic development and change. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Hans Kundnani, Quentin Peel | A panel debate to mark the launch of Hans Kundnani's recently published book 'The Paradox of German Power'. Hans Kundnani (@hanskundnani) is Research Director at the European Council on Foreign Relations & Associate Fellow, Birmingham University. Quentin Peel is Mercator Senior Fellow at Chatham House. Maurice Fraser is Head of the European Institute, LSE. The LSE European Institute (@LSEEI) was established in 1991 as a dedicated centre for the interdisciplinary study of processes of integration and fragmentation within Europe. In the most recent national Research Assessment Exercise, the Institute was ranked first for research in European Studies in the United Kingdom. The LSE European Institute has been a Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence since 2009.
Contributor(s): Professor Daniel J Levitin | The information age is drowning us in a deluge of data, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to separate facts from pseudo-facts, objective from biased sources, and at the same time, we’re all being asked to do more at home and at work. Yet some highly successful people are able to stay highly efficient and productive. I’ll review the cognitive neuroscience of attention and memory, and how recent findings can help all of us to become more productive. This talk will address the myth of multi-tasking, advice for how to better structure our time, and how to better organize decision making using examples from health care contexts. I’ll also share secrets from some of the highly successful people I spoke to in doing research for the book: CEOs of some of the largest corporations in the world, artists, scientists, nobel prize winners, generals, admirals, governors, senators, and U.S. cabinet members. Daniel J Levitin (@danlevitin) is James McGill Professor of Psychology, Behavioural Neuroscience and Music at McGill University in Montreal. His latest book is The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload. Jonathan Birch is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics and Political Science. LSE's Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science (@CPNSS), established in 1990, promotes research into philosophical, methodological and foundational questions arising in the natural and the social sciences, and their application to practical problems. The Centre's work is inherently interdisciplinary, and a full calendar of events contributes to a lively intellectual environment. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Professor Stephen Gibbons, Dr Tim Leunig, Professor Ruth Lupton | Many believe that education is very sensitive to the influence of school friends and neighbours. Professor Stephen Gibbons outlines evidence to the contrary from the Spatial Economics Research Centre at LSE. Stephen Gibbons is Professor of Economic Geography and Director of the Spatial Economics Research Centre. Tim Leunig (@timleunig) is Chief Analyst and Chief Scientific Adviser at the Department for Education. Ruth Lupton (@ruthlupton) is Professor of Education at the University of Manchester. Julia Black is Pro Director for Research at LSE. Economic prosperity in the UK is very unevenly distributed across space. Tackling these persistent disparities is a key policy objective. The Spatial Economics Research Centre (SERC) (@LSE_SERC) aims to provide a rigorous understanding of the nature, extent, causes and consequences of these disparities, and to identify appropriate policy responses. Established in 2008, SERC is based at the LSE and aims to provide high quality independent research to further understanding as to why some regions, cities and communities prosper, whilst other don't. Our research programmes explore disparities, their effects and potential remedies at all spatial levels including regional, city-region, local and neighbourhood. The Centre also aims to influence and improve policy decision-making at the national and local levels, connecting UK policy makers with international expertise, research and good practice in diagnosing and tackling such differences. LSE Works is a series of public lectures, that will showcase some of the latest research by LSE's academic departments and research centres. In each session, LSE academics will present key research findings, demonstrating where appropriate the implications of their studies for public policy. A list of all the LSE Works lectures can be viewed at LSE Works. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Dmitri Makarov, Dr Mary McAuley, Roman Udot | An unprecedented number of laws have been adopted in Russia over the past two years which dramatically restrict the activities of all independent non-governmental organisations, and particularly those working for civil and political rights. The new laws, such as the "foreign agents" law, threaten not only the organisations but also endanger their staff, members and supporters. The law on treason can lead to ten or more years of imprisonment for the vaguest of reasons, such as simply sharing information with non-Russian organisations and outsiders. Our panel of human rights advocates and experts will provide a first-hand insight into the difficulties of working under such conditions, and propose what can be done to stop the further erosion of human rights in Russia. Dmitri Makarov is co-chair of the Coordinating Council of the International Youth Human Rights Movement. Mary McAuley is an independent expert on human rights in Russia. Roman Udot is from Golos, the association of organisations for the protection of the rights of Russian voters and development of civic society. Margo Picken is a Visiting Senior Fellow at LSE. The Centre for the Study of Human Rights at LSE (@LSEHumanRights) is a trans-disciplinary centre of excellence for international academic research, teaching and critical scholarship on human rights. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Dr Esra Özyürek, Dr Ruth Mandel, Dr Nasar Meer, Professor Joel Robbins | The panellists will discuss Dr Özyürek’s newly published book Being German, Becoming Muslim: race, religion, and conversion in the New Europe. Esra Özyürek is Associate Professor in Contemporary Turkish Studies at LSE’s European Institute. Ruth Mandel is Reader in Social Anthropology at University College London. Nasar Meer is Reader in Comparative Social Policy and Citizenship at Strathclyde University and a Royal Society of Edinburgh Research Fellow. Joel Robbins is Sigrid Rausing Professor in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. Deniz Kandiyoti is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Development Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. The LSE European Institute (@LSEEI) was established in 1991 as a dedicated centre for the interdisciplinary study of processes of integration and fragmentation within Europe. In the most recent national Research Assessment Exercise, the Institute was ranked first for research in European Studies in the United Kingdom. The LSE European Institute has been a Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence since 2009. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Professor Barry Eichengreen | Popular understanding of the Great Depression shaped the response to the Great Recession. The experience of the Great Recession will change our understanding of the Great Depression. Barry Eichengreen (@B_Eichengreen) is Professor of Economics and Political Science at the University of California-Berkeley. His new book is Hall of Mirrors: the Great Depression, the Great Recession, and the uses - and misuses - of history. The Department of Economics at LSE (@LSEEcon) is one of the largest economics departments in the world. Its size ensures that all areas of economics are strongly represented in both research and teaching. The Centre For Macroeconomics (@CFMUK) brings together world-class experts to carry out pioneering research on the global economic crisis and to help design policies that alleviate it. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Dr Gabriel Zucman | Dr Zucman will discuss recent evidence on rising inequality, proposals made to curb these trends and challenges raised by international tax competition and evasion. Gabriel Zucman (@gabriel_zucman) is a member of the faculty of the LSE Department of Economics and an Associate on the Public Economics Programme at STICERD. Wouter Den Haan is Professor of Economics and Co-Director of the Centre for Macroeconomics. The Department of Economics at LSE (@LSEEcon) is one of the largest economics departments in the world. Its size ensures that all areas of economics are strongly represented in both research and teaching. The Centre For Macroeconomics (@CFMUK) brings together world-class experts to carry out pioneering research on the global economic crisis and to help design policies that alleviate it.
Contributor(s): Professor Ronald J Deibert, Dr Gus Hossein, Professor Sir David Omand, Professor Ronald W Pruessen | What are the implications of surveillance, big data, malware and hacking for individuals and societies? What conversations do we need to have about the rules of cyberspace? Ronald J Deibert (@RonDeibert) is Director of the Canada Centre for Global Security Studies and the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto. Gus Hosein (@GusHosein) is the Executive Director of Privacy International. David Omand is Visiting Professor at King’s College London. Ronald W Pruessen is Professor of History at the University of Toronto. LSE IDEAS (@lseideas) is a centre for the study of international affairs, diplomacy and grand strategy.
Contributor(s): Professor Lawrence H. Summers | This public conversation with one of America’s leading economists, Professor Lawrence H. Summers, will focus on the topic of secular stagnation and the report Professor Summers is currently working on, New Approaches to Progressive Policy, which will be published on 15 January. Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers (@LHSummers) is one of America’s leading economists. In addition to serving as 71st Secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton Administration, Dr Summers served as Director of the White House National Economic Council in the Obama Administration, as President of Harvard University, and as the Chief Economist of the World Bank. Paul De Grauwe (@pdegrauwe) is the John Paulson Chair in European Political Economy at LSE. The Department of Economics at LSE (@LSEEcon) is one of the largest economics departments in the world. Its size ensures that all areas of economics are strongly represented in both research and teaching. The Centre For Macroeconomics (@CFMUK) brings together world-class experts to carry out pioneering research on the global economic crisis and to help design policies that alleviate it.
Contributor(s): Sir Alan Budd, Lord King | Lord King and Sir Alan will look back at central developments in banking over the last two decades. Alan Budd GBE is founding member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee and former Chairman of the Office for Budget Responsibility. Mervyn King is a former Governor of the Bank of England and founder of LSE’s Financial Markets Group. Charles Goodhart is Emeritus Professor of Banking and Finance with the Financial Markets Group at LSE. The Financial Markets Group Research Centre (FMG) at LSE (@FMG_LSE) is one of the leading European centres for academic research into financial markets and is a focal point for research communication with the business, policy making, and academic finance communities. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Dr Judith Rodin | Through dramatic stories, penetrating insights, and research from around the world, Judith Rodin, the President of the Rockefeller Foundation, discusses how people, organisations, businesses, communities, and cities have developed resilience in the face of otherwise catastrophic challenges. Judith Rodin has been President of The Rockefeller Foundation (@RockefellerFdn) since 2005. During her tenure she has recalibrated its focus to meet the challenges and disruptions of the twenty-first century, to support and shape innovations that strengthen resilience and build more inclusive economies. She was previously president of the University of Pennsylvania, and provost of Yale University. A widely recognised international leader in academia, science and development issues, Dr Rodin has actively participated in influential global forums, including the World Economic Forum, the Council on Foreign Relations, Clinton Global Initiative and the United Nations General Assembly. Dr Rodin is also a member of the African Development Bank’s High Level Panel, a Board member of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (co-created by The Rockefeller Foundation). In November 2012 New York Governor Andrew Cuomo named Dr Rodin to co-chair the NYS 2100 Commission on long-term resilience following Superstorm Sandy. A pioneer and innovator throughout her career, Dr Rodin was the first woman named to lead an Ivy League Institution and is the first woman to serve as The Rockefeller Foundation's president. A research psychologist by training, she was one of the pioneers of the behavioural medicine and health psychology movements. Dr Rodin is the author of more than 200 academic articles and has written or co-written 13 books. She has received 19 honorary doctorate degrees and has been named one of Crain's 50 Most Powerful Women in New York. She has also been recognised as one of Forbes Magazine's World's 100 Most Powerful Women three years in a row. Dr Rodin serves as a member of the board for several leading corporations and non-profits including Citigroup, Laureate Education, Inc., Comcast, and the White House Council for Community Solutions. Dr Rodin is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and earned her Ph.D. in Psychology from Columbia University. Dr Rodin's new book is The Resilience Dividend: Being Strong in a World Where Things Go Wrong. Craig Calhoun (@craigjcalhoun) is Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science. LSE Cities (@LSECities) is an international centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science that carries out research, education and outreach activities in London and abroad. Its mission is to study how people and cities interact in a rapidly urbanising world, focussing on how the design of cities impacts on society, culture and the environment. The Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment is a research centre at LSE (@GRI_LSE). The Institute’s research looks at the economics of climate change, and aims to inform policy and academic debate. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): See event programme for details | Geopolitics and the Global South: Challenges of the Emerging International Order. Opening Ceremony and Keynote Address (Geopolitics and the Global South), Chris Alden, Stuart Corbridge, Enrique García, H.E. Ricardo Lagos. Session 1, Geopolitics and Changing Patterns of Multilateralism - Ambassador H.H.S Viswanathan, Professor Zhongying Pang, Professor Didier Opertti Badán, Dan Restrepo. Session 2, The Geopolitics of Development - Professor Jose Antonio Ocampo, Harinder Kohli, Jean-Louis Ekra, Professor Matias Spektor. Session 3, The Geopolitics of Security - Jose Miguel Insulza, Dr. Domitilla Sagramoso, Dino Mahtani, Professor Christopher Hughes. Closing Keynote Address (The Global South and the Atlantic Basin. New actors, power shift and challenges for the International Order) and Concluding Remarks - H.E. José María Aznar, Enrique García, Chris Alden.
Contributor(s): See event programme for details | Geopolitics and the Global South: Challenges of the Emerging International Order. Opening Ceremony and Keynote Address (Geopolitics and the Global South), Chris Alden, Stuart Corbridge, Enrique García, H.E. Ricardo Lagos. Session 1, Geopolitics and Changing Patterns of Multilateralism - Ambassador H.H.S Viswanathan, Professor Zhongying Pang, Professor Didier Opertti Badán, Dan Restrepo. Session 2, The Geopolitics of Development - Professor Jose Antonio Ocampo, Harinder Kohli, Jean-Louis Ekra, Professor Matias Spektor. Session 3, The Geopolitics of Security - Jose Miguel Insulza, Dr. Domitilla Sagramoso, Dino Mahtani, Professor Christopher Hughes. Closing Keynote Address (The Global South and the Atlantic Basin. New actors, power shift and challenges for the International Order) and Concluding Remarks - H.E. José María Aznar, Enrique García, Chris Alden.
Contributor(s): See event programme for details | Geopolitics and the Global South: Challenges of the Emerging International Order. Opening Ceremony and Keynote Address (Geopolitics and the Global South), Chris Alden, Stuart Corbridge, Enrique García, H.E. Ricardo Lagos. Session 1, Geopolitics and Changing Patterns of Multilateralism - Ambassador H.H.S Viswanathan, Professor Zhongying Pang, Professor Didier Opertti Badán, Dan Restrepo. Session 2, The Geopolitics of Development - Professor Jose Antonio Ocampo, Harinder Kohli, Jean-Louis Ekra, Professor Matias Spektor. Session 3, The Geopolitics of Security - Jose Miguel Insulza, Dr. Domitilla Sagramoso, Dino Mahtani, Professor Christopher Hughes. Closing Keynote Address (The Global South and the Atlantic Basin. New actors, power shift and challenges for the International Order) and Concluding Remarks - H.E. José María Aznar, Enrique García, Chris Alden.
Contributor(s): See event programme for details | Geopolitics and the Global South: Challenges of the Emerging International Order. Opening Ceremony and Keynote Address (Geopolitics and the Global South), Chris Alden, Stuart Corbridge, Enrique García, H.E. Ricardo Lagos. Session 1, Geopolitics and Changing Patterns of Multilateralism - Ambassador H.H.S Viswanathan, Professor Zhongying Pang, Professor Didier Opertti Badán, Dan Restrepo. Session 2, The Geopolitics of Development - Professor Jose Antonio Ocampo, Harinder Kohli, Jean-Louis Ekra, Professor Matias Spektor. Session 3, The Geopolitics of Security - Jose Miguel Insulza, Dr. Domitilla Sagramoso, Dino Mahtani, Professor Christopher Hughes. Closing Keynote Address (The Global South and the Atlantic Basin. New actors, power shift and challenges for the International Order) and Concluding Remarks - H.E. José María Aznar, Enrique García, Chris Alden.
Contributor(s): See event programme for details | Geopolitics and the Global South: Challenges of the Emerging International Order. Opening Ceremony and Keynote Address (Geopolitics and the Global South), Chris Alden, Stuart Corbridge, Enrique García, H.E. Ricardo Lagos. Session 1, Geopolitics and Changing Patterns of Multilateralism - Ambassador H.H.S Viswanathan, Professor Zhongying Pang, Professor Didier Opertti Badán, Dan Restrepo. Session 2, The Geopolitics of Development - Professor Jose Antonio Ocampo, Harinder Kohli, Jean-Louis Ekra, Professor Matias Spektor. Session 3, The Geopolitics of Security - Jose Miguel Insulza, Dr. Domitilla Sagramoso, Dino Mahtani, Professor Christopher Hughes. Closing Keynote Address (The Global South and the Atlantic Basin. New actors, power shift and challenges for the International Order) and Concluding Remarks - H.E. José María Aznar, Enrique García, Chris Alden.
Contributor(s): Professor Daniel Ferreira | Corporate Boards are a central part of a firm’s governance structure, and have since the 1980s received regulatory attention in the attempt to improve firm performance. Lately, other social considerations have made it to the regulatory agenda. The presentation will focus on two key questions: What do we really know about corporate boards? Why should we care? Daniel Ferreira is Professor of Finance and co-organiser of the Corporate Governance programme at LSE. David Webb is Pro-director for planning and resources, Director of the Financial Markets Group and Professor of Finance at LSE. The Financial Markets Group Research Centre (FMG) at LSE (@FMG_LSE) is one of the leading European centres for academic research into financial markets and is a focal point for research communication with the business, policy making, and academic finance communities. LSE Works is a series of public lectures, that will showcase some of the latest research by LSE's academic departments and research centres. In each session, LSE academics will present key research findings, demonstrating where appropriate the implications of their studies for public policy. A list of all the LSE Works lectures can be viewed at LSE Works. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Dr Chaloka Beyani | Dr Beyani will talk about international human rights, working with the UN and his duties as Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons. Chaloka Beyani is Associate Professor of International Law at LSE. Conor Gearty (@conorgearty) is Director of the Institute of Public Affairs and a Professor of Human Rights Law at LSE. LSE Law (@lselaw) is an integral part of the School's mission, plays a major role in policy debates & in the education of lawyers and law teachers from around the world. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Felix Martin, Professor Lord Skidelsky | Professor Lord Skidelsky will be in conversation with Felix Martin about the topic of a recent book he edited, to which Felix Martin contributed, Are Markets Moral? Felix Martin is a macroeconomist and bond investor, author of Money: the Unauthorised Biography. Robert Skidelsky is Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at the University of Warwick. His three-volume biography of the economist John Maynard Keynes (1983, 1992, 2000) received numerous prizes. More recently he published Keynes: The Return of the Master. The Department of Economics at LSE (@LSEEcon) is one of the largest economics departments in the world. Its size ensures that all areas of economics are strongly represented in both research and teaching. The Centre For Macroeconomics (@CFMUK) brings together world-class experts to carry out pioneering research on the global economic crisis and to help design policies that alleviate it. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Professor Matthew Connelly | Official secrecy in the U.S. during the Cold War altered the culture of government and served many hidden agendas. Classified information became an institutional asset to be traded for other kinds of access and information. Security clearances became a way to police behavior, such that homosexuals and others deemed to be deviant could be driven from government. At the same time, senior officials who leaked classified information – such as false reports that the Soviets were opening a “missile gap” – could use tactic to gain higher office. The ship of state, it was said, was the only kind that leaked from the top. Professor Matthew Connelly is Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs at LSE IDEAS for 2014-2015. Currently a professor in the Department of History at Columbia University, Matthew Connelly is also founder and director of the LSE-Columbia University Double Degree in International and World History. His current research focuses on planning and predictions, and using data science to analyse patterns in official secrecy. He received his B.A. from Columbia and his Ph.D. from Yale He has authored a wide-range of articles and publications, including the award-winning Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria’s fight for independence and the origins of the post-Cold War era, which has won five prizes since its publication. His most recent book, Fatal Misconception: the struggle to control world population, was chosen as one of the best books of the year by The Economist and the Financial Times. Professor Michael Cox is founding co-director of LSE IDEAS and emeritus professor in international relations. LSE IDEAS (@lseideas) is a centre for the study of international affairs, diplomacy and grand strategy. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Professor Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Mark Neville, Professor Tim Newburn, Professor Gwendolyn Sasse, Polly Toynbee | The panel will discuss effective ways of communicating and changing inequality, centring on the work of artist Mark Neville, in particular his recent series London/Pittsburgh. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (@y_alibhai) is Professor of Journalism at the University of Lincoln and a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Centre. Mark Neville (@MarkNeville4) is an artist investigating the social function of photography and film. Tim Newburn (@TimNewburn) is Professor of Criminology and Social Policy at LSE. Gwendolyn Sasse (@GwendolynSasse) is Professor in Comparative Politics at the University of Oxford and Professorial Fellow at Nuffield College. Polly Toynbee (@pollytoynbee) is a journalist, writer and Guardian columnist. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Dr Pippa Malmgren | Economic signals are everywhere, from magazine covers to grocery stores to military events. They reveal the story of the world economy. By being alert to signals anyone can start to navigate through the turbulence to the treasures of the world economy, instead of being overwhelmed and surprised by it. Pippa Malmgren (@DrPippaM) is Founder of DRPM Group and a former US Presidential Adviser. She is an alumna of LSE. This event marks the publication of her new book, Signals: the breakdown of the social contract and the rise of geopolitics. Dr Malmgren served as financial market advisor to the President in the White House and on the National Economic Council from 2001-2002. She was a member of the President's Working Group on Financial Markets and the Working Group on Corporate Governance. She dealt with Enron, Sarbanes Oxley as well the Anti-Money Laundering provisions of the Patriot Act and had responsibility for terrorism risks to the economy on the NEC after 9/11. She was the Deputy Head of Global Strategy at UBS and the Chief Currency Strategist for Bankers Trust. She headed the Global Investment Management business for Bankers Trust in Asia. Dr Malmgren has been a visiting lecturer at Tsinghua University in Beijing and an occasional lecturer for INSEAD and the Duke Fuqua Global Executive MBA Program. In 2000 The World Economic Forum in Davos named Dr Malmgren a Global Leader for Tomorrow. She is a Governor and member of the Council of Management of the Ditchley Foundation in the UK. She is a frequent guest on the BBC, including Newsnight and the Today Program, and a guest anchor on both CNBC's Squawk Box and Bloomberg's most widely viewed programs. She has a B.A. from Mount Vernon College and a MSc. and PhD. from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).
Contributor(s): Dr Peter Dennis | Appeals to rationality are found in every area of life. But how can we accuse one another of being irrational if we don’t know what it is? Peter Dennis is an LSE Fellow in the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method and a Forum for European Philosophy Fellow.
Contributor(s): Professor Hugh Roberts | In this lecture and book launch, Professor Hugh Roberts discusses his new book, Berber Government: the Kabyle Polity in Pre-colonial Algeria. Breaking with both Ernest Gellner’s and Pierre Bourdieu’s influential theories, Berber Government explores the character of the institutions which were central to Kabyle political organization and explains how their development was the product of the interaction between the populations of Kabylia and the Ottoman Regency and gave birth to a political tradition which survives to the present day.