Contributor(s): Professor Jerry Brotton, Mike Parker | Throughout history maps have been fundamental in shaping our view of the world and our place in it. Our panel will discuss how maps both influence and reflect contemporary events and how, by reading them, we can better understand the worlds that produced them. Jerry Brotton is professor of renaissance studies at Queen Mary University of London, and a leading expert in the history of maps and Renaissance cartography. His last book, The Sale o...
Feb 28, 2013•1 hr 34 min
Contributor(s): Leandro Carrera, Professor Patrick Dunleavy, Joe Grice, Edwin Lau, Barry Quirk | For many decades there has been little effective analysis and guidance on how to improve the organizational productivity of government bodies consistently over time. Yet unless this can be achieved, the relative price of public services is doomed to rise ineluctably (the 'Baumol disease' problem). Leandro Carrera and Patrick Dunleavy's new book Growing the Productivity of Government Services (publish...
Feb 28, 2013•1 hr 31 min
Contributor(s): Ken Livingstone | Ken Livingstone has for almost 40 years been a controversial but highly effective politician who has dominated London politics. He championed low fares for public transport, fought the abolition of the GLC, defeated Labour to become mayor of London in 2000, re-joined Labour and then presided over eight years of pro-development, market-led policy in the capital. He has brought a distinctive point of view to many issues, always dividing opinion. He has continued h...
Feb 28, 2013•1 hr 14 min
Contributor(s): Professor Miriam Bernard, Dr Kip Jones, Dr Gareth Morris | Academic communication is changing. New emphasis on impact and public engagement, combined with new technologies that allow high quality and easy to use production methods are increasing the possible range of outputs from academic research. This session will hear from three researchers that have used alternative forms for their research dissemination. We will ask what strengths these forms had in comparison to traditional...
Feb 28, 2013•1 hr 28 min
Contributor(s): Greg Artus, Richard Bronk, Aifric Campbell, Professor Roger Kneebone | Is truth a casualty in the stories we tell about science? Is there a conflict between narrative truth and historical truth? Can fiction illuminate scientific themes? What are the challenges of presenting scientific topics in the media? How do scientists tell stories to raise capital? Greg Artus lectures in politics, philosophy and business ethics at Imperial College. His research interests include the nature o...
Feb 27, 2013•1 hr 28 min
Contributor(s): Tan Sri Dato' Azman bin Hj. Mokhtar, Dr Frank Vogel | Organised in conjunction with the Harvard Islamic Finance Project, a distinguished authority shall speak on Islamic finance in the Western world. Tan Sri Dato' Azman bin Hj. Mokhtar is managing director of Khazanah Nasional. Frank Vogel is the founder and former director of Harvard Law School’s Islamic Legal Studies Program.
Feb 27, 2013•1 hr 31 min
Contributor(s): Professor Christopher Andrew, Professor Lord Hennessy, Alan Judd | Although the cliché of the novelist as a typically bohemian, solitary, garret-inhabiting individual persists, in reality today, as in the past, the majority of novelists writing lead double-lives, holding down at least a part-time and very often a full-time job as well. Trollope did a full-time job as a director of the General Post office while simultaneously turning out some of the major novels of the nineteenth ...
Feb 27, 2013•1 hr 27 min
Contributor(s): Lisa Appignanesi, Professor Anne Applebaum, Dr Charles Fernyhough | Our ability to remember forms the basis of who we are, and is a psychological trick that has fascinated scientists and authors alike. But are our memories reliable, or are the stories we tell about our past just a fiction of the mind? This panel brings together psychology, history and literature in its exploration of memory. Lisa Appignanesi OBE is a prize-winning writer, novelist, broadcaster and cultural commen...
Feb 27, 2013•1 hr 26 min
Contributor(s): Molly Crabapple, Professor Mary Evans, Vicky Featherstone, Kate Mosse | In celebration of LSE’s acquisition of the Women’s Library, our distinguished panel will discuss the role of women in literature, the arts and academia today. This event will include readings from the Women's Library archives, and from works that have inspired our panel. Molly Crabapple is a New York artist. Her most recent projects are Week in Hell, in which she locked herself in a hotel room, covered the wa...
Feb 27, 2013•1 hr 26 min
Contributor(s): Professor Damian Chalmers | As part of the EU, can Britain disobey EU law and when would it be democratic to do so? If Britain left the Union how easy would it be to ignore EU law and when would it be democratic to do so? Damian Chalmers is professor of European Union law at LSE.
Feb 26, 2013•1 hr 27 min
Contributor(s): Lord Alderdice, Dr Deirdre MacManus | How much do we know about the psychology of those engaged in the violence of insurgency and counterinsurgency? What are the predispositions and motivations for violence, and what are the psychological consequences of their experiences? From 1987 to 1998 John Alderdice was the leader of Northern Ireland’s cross-community Alliance Party. He has previously served as the consultant–in-charge of the Centre for Psychotherapy, Belfast. Deirdre MacMa...
Feb 26, 2013•1 hr 39 min
Contributor(s): David Edmonds, Nigel Warburton | In the 5th century BC Socrates brought philosophy to the marketplace. Can this ancient branch of learning be rejuvenated by the technology of the 21st century? Philosophy Bites Back is the second book from the team that brings you Philosophy Bites, the hugely successful podcast that has now had 16 million downloads. Philosophy Bites Back is a collection of conversations with leading scholars on major figures in the history of philosophy. David Edm...
Feb 26, 2013•1 hr 26 min
Contributor(s): Andrew Simms | Is the sleeping architecture of a new economic approach already with us? Andrew Simms argues that while we might be dancing on the edge of systemic threats to the economy, society and environment, we have the tools and resources necessary to build a bridge across them. Andrew Simms is the author of several books including the bestselling Tescopoly. He is a Fellow of nef (the new economics foundation) where he was policy director for many years, trained at the Londo...
Feb 25, 2013•1 hr 24 min
Contributor(s): Professor Andy Clark | We are entering an age of widespread human enhancement. This raises a fundamental question: where does the mind stop, and the rest of the world begin? Andy Clark is professor of logic and metaphysics at the University of Edinburgh.
Feb 25, 2013•1 hr 25 min
Contributor(s): Professor Alan Evans | LSE London's 2013 Lent term seminar series begins on the 14th of January. Speakers from within and beyond academia will focus on many of the implications of the current economic and political environment for London, covering relevant issues such as the road pricing, UK trends in higher education, census data and localism. Presenters include academics and practitioners from relevant fields.
Feb 25, 2013•1 hr 16 min
Contributor(s): Professor Fawaz Gerges, Professor Charles Tripp | What drives large-scale, popular mobilizations in the Middle East and North Africa? And what are the challenges and prospects for democratic transformation and consolidation in the region? This lecture, ahead of the release of the LSE Middle East Centre’s new book, The New Middle East: Protest and Revolution in the Arab World (CUP, 2013), looks to explore these questions and more. Fawaz Gerges is director of the Middle East Centre...
Feb 21, 2013•1 hr 33 min
Contributor(s): Jim Hagemann Snabe | While the digital age has reached the individual through global social networks and redefined social interaction some years ago, the digital revolution for the business world has just started. Innovation in technology is opening up a whole new area of business opportunities that go beyond our established way of doing business. We can reach the individual consumer instantly anytime anywhere. We can get new business insights and analyze unlimited amounts of dat...
Feb 21, 2013•1 hr 21 min
Contributor(s): Dr Phil Hutchinson, Professor Vasudevi Reddy, Dr Jonathan Webber | Shame is often depicted as playing a socially negative role. But might it also play an important positive role in our moral psychology, and for a flourishing political community? Is shame a source of self-knowledge, and a spur to transformative action, as Sartre and Beauvoir suggest? How important are other people to one’s feeling of shame? And how should we think about the developmental origins of shame? Phil Hut...
Feb 21, 2013•1 hr 27 min
Contributor(s): Dr Werner Telesko | A look at how Habsburg visions and constructions of identity were reflected in the arts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and how the history of the Habsburg Empire was “reconfigured” after 1918. Werner Telesko is corresponding member of the section for the humanities and the social sciences at the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
Feb 20, 2013•1 hr 34 min
Contributor(s): Professor Simon Hix | A look at how the emerging structure of macro-economic governance in Europe has an impact on traditional modes of democratic politics, at both the national and European levels. Simon Hix is professor of European and comparative politics at LSE and fellow of the British Academy.
Feb 20, 2013•1 hr 30 min
Contributor(s): Professor Conor Gearty, Dr Devika Hovell | Leading human rights lawyer Professor Conor Gearty speaks about his new book Liberty and Security with Dr Devika Hovell. Conor Gearty is professor of human rights law at LSE. Devika Hovell is a lecturer in public international law at LSE.
Feb 19, 2013•1 hr 30 min
Contributor(s): Professor Lord Giddens | The risks we face, and the opportunities we have, in the 21st century are in many respects quite different from those experienced in earlier periods of history. How should we analyse and respond to such a world? What is a rational balance of optimism and pessimism? How can we plan for a future that seems to elude our grasp and in some ways is imponderable? Anthony Giddens is former Director of the LSE and a member of the House of Lords.
Feb 19, 2013•1 hr 4 min
Contributor(s): Professor Stefano Bartolini | The EU crisis, and the new economic governance instruments invented to solve it, further complicates the problem of the source of EU legitimacy. This lecture will explore these problematic connections. Stefano Bartolini is director of the Robert Schumann Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute.
Feb 19, 2013•1 hr 28 min
Contributor(s): Shani Orgad, Professor Saskia Sassen, Laurie Taylor | Marking the publication of Shani Orgad's latest book Media Representation and the Global Imagination (Polity), the panel will discuss how the way we imagine the world and its 'others' is nourished by the media, and how the media can offer different images and accounts from the ones we encounter. Dr Shani Orgad is a Senior Lecturer in Media and Communications at LSE. Saskia Sassen is Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology and Co...
Feb 18, 2013•1 hr 27 min
Contributor(s): Dr Eamonn Butler | The Nobel economist F A Hayek was the arch-rival of Keynes in the 1930s and 1940s. Some today say that he has the better explanation of boom-bust cycles and how to end them. His prescription is the exact opposite of Keynes – no big infrastructure spending, no keeping things afloat with quantitative easing and cheap credit, but leaner government, lower taxes, less regulation and more freedom for businesses and individuals alike. In this lecture, Hayek biographer...
Feb 18, 2013•1 hr 16 min
Contributor(s): Professor Fawwaz Traboulsi | With few comprehensive histories of Lebanon, Professor Fawwaz Traboulsi's A History of Modern Lebanon, which weaves together more than five centuries of the country's social, political, cultural and economic history, has become a go-to reference for anyone who wants to understand the country. In this lecture, Traboulsi will share the problems he has faced in writing the history of Lebanon and how he has dealt and proposes to deal with these challenges...
Feb 18, 2013•1 hr 38 min
Contributor(s): Dr Julian Baggini, Hardeep Singh Kohli | Humour is not to be confused with comedy and jokes. Humour concerns something that belongs to and can more or less pervade everyday life and conversation, not something restricted to comedy sketches or stand-up routines. In this dialogue we will explore everyday humour, and its distinctive regional and cultural variations. Are there principles of British humour that transcend class, profession, religion and region? Are there ‘cultures of h...
Feb 18, 2013•1 hr 28 min
Contributor(s): Jo Attwool | LSE London's 2013 Lent term seminar series begins on the 14th of January. Speakers from within and beyond academia will focus on many of the implications of the current economic and political environment for London, covering relevant issues such as the road pricing, UK trends in higher education, census data and localism. Presenters include academics and practitioners from relevant fields.
Feb 18, 2013•1 hr 21 min
Contributor(s): Navi Pillay | In recent years, the world has witnessed a number of incidents involving hate speech at times with wide-ranging and global repercussions. Many governments have put in place measures which not always are in consonance with international human rights law. This lecture recalls the relevant provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and showcases the jurisprudence of...
Feb 15, 2013•1 hr 21 min
Contributor(s): Jean-Paul Costa | A unique opportunity to put your questions to a former president of the European Court of Human Rights, via Twitter @LSELaw using #LSECosta. Jean-Paul Costa is the former president of the European Court of Human Rights.
Feb 14, 2013•1 hr 29 min
