Contributor(s): Sir Harold Walker, H.E. Khaled Al-Duwaisan | Sir Harold Walker is a former British Ambassador to Iraq, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. H.E. Khaled Al-Duwaisan is Ambassador of Kuwait to the United Kingdom.
Contributor(s): Professor Abhijit Banerjee, Professor Esther Duflo | Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo have worked with the poor in dozens of countries, trying to understand the specific problems that come with poverty and to find proven solutions. In this lecture, they argue that so much anti-poverty policy has failed over the years because of an inadequate understanding of poverty. The battle against poverty can be won, but it will take patience, careful thinking and a willingness to learn fro...
Contributor(s): Professor Sherry Turkle | Facebook. Twitter. Second Life. "Smart" phones. Robot pets. Robot lovers. Thirty years ago we asked what we would use computers for - now the question is what we don't use them for. In this lecture, MIT technology and society specialist Sherry Turkle issues a wake-up call based on her fifteen year exploration of our lives in the digital realm. She shows how our narcissistic use of technology is fuelling disturbing levels of isolation, leaving us incapabl...
Contributor(s): Professor Peter Godfrey-Smith | The winner of the 2010 Lakatos Award (for his book Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection) will talk about the evolution of the individual. Peter Godfrey-Smith is a professor of philosophy at Harvard University and winner of the 2010 Lakatos Award.
Contributor(s): Dr Tilde Rosmer | This lecture examines the role of Palestinians citizens of Israel in Israeli politics and their place in a conflict in which they are often caught between the state of their citizenship and the nationality of their people. In addition to looking at tensions between these non-Jewish citizens and the Jewish state and Jewish Israelis, the lecture will examine tensions within this group of Palestinians. Dr Tilde Rosmer is a Researcher at the Department of Culture St...
Contributor(s): Dr Ama de-Graft Aikins, Dr Olugbenga Ogedegbe, Dr Francis Dodoo | LSE Health and the LSE Africa Initiative in collaboration with The British Academy invites you to an event on Africa’s disease burden. Chronic non-communicable diseases have become major causes of adult disability and death in Sub-Saharan Africa. Chronic disease deaths in men and women as a whole are higher in sub-Saharan African than in virtually all other regions of the world and co-exist with a high burden of in...
Contributor(s): Dr Peter Orszag | Spiralling health care costs are currently threatening the future of the US economy. Peter Orszag offers insight on possible approaches to reduce health care costs over time without impairing the quality of medical care or outcomes. LSE alumnus Peter Orszag (MSc, PhD Economics, 1992, 1997) is vice chairman of Global Banking at CitiGroup. He recently served as director of the Office of Management and Budget under president Barack Obama.
Contributor(s): Michael Scheuer | Osama bin Laden was one of America's most formidable and implacable enemies. And yet no one has written a serious assessment of his influence over world events in the last decade. Michael Scheuer; a former head of CIA's Osama bin Laden Unit provides an objective and authoritative portrait of bin Laden. Michael Scheuer was the chief of the CIA's bin Laden unit from 1996 to 1999 and remained a counterterrorism analyst until 2004. He is the author of many books, in...
Contributor(s): Professor Leila Ahmed | Professor Ahmed asks why the wearing of veils or headscarves has become a growing phenomenon in America – and across the world. Having almost vanished from many Muslim majority cities, why in the 1970s did veiling (or covering) suddenly begin to grow more common and rapidly spread first across Muslim majority societies and then later in the West? Following this trail Professor Ahmed explores the forces which brought about this "rebirth" of veiling, and how...
Contributor(s): Polly Higgins | Polly Higgins advocates a different approach to preventing the destruction of our planet. Instead of our laws protecting the property rights of the few, we can shift to laws that impose responsibilities, duties and obligations for the benefit of the many. Polly Higgins is a barrister, author and international environmental lawyer, voted by the Ecologist as one of the 'Worlds Top ten Visionary Thinkers' for her earlier work advancing the Universal Declaration of Pl...
Contributor(s): Dr Robert Falkner, Professor Lord Giddens, Thomas Hale, André Lieber, Scott Moore, Professor Michael Jacobs | How can we make progress on climate change in the face of gridlock? Global Governance 2020 is a group of young academics, policymakers and business people from China, the United States and Europe. Robert Falkner is senior lecturer in international relations at LSE and a leading expert on global environmental politics. Anthony Giddens is former director of LSE and the auth...
Contributor(s): Sheryl Sandberg | We are witnessing the transformation of the web from the information web to the social web. This has profound implications for how people relate to each other, the communities around them and to government and business. Sheryl will discuss how these relationships are changing in a world that is built around social principles and powered by web and mobile technologies. Sheryl Sandberg is Chief Operating Officer at Facebook. She oversees the company's business ope...
Contributor(s): Professor Charles Goodhart, Dr Paul Woolley, Mark Schieritz, Dr Holger Schmieding, Hiltrud Thelen-Pischke, Dr Friedrich Thelen | The Future of Finance report presents a novel approach to the reform of the world's financial system, starting with the basic question, what is a financial system for? It shows that the existing system has become far more complicated than it needs to be to discharge its functions – and dangerously unstable into the bargain. It proposes some drastic reme...
Contributor(s): Professor Ato Quayson | In 2005 the African Union declared the African diaspora to be the sixth region of the continent. But was the concept of ""African Diaspora"" understood correctly at the time? This lecture will offer a more complex definition. It will focus on the difference between dispersion and diaspora, the dynamics of identity formation, the contrasts between Indian Ocean and Atlantic processes of diasporization, and the growth of a mixed-race population. Ato Quayson i...
Contributor(s): Professor Julian Le Grand, Professor Carol Propper, Peter Taylor-Gooby, Nick Timmins, Professor Albert Weale | For excellent public policy, it is necessary to have a clear idea of both the ends to be achieved (including equity, quality and efficiency), and the means for achieving those ends (including the structure of motivation and incentives, and the appropriate balance between market and state). Julian has made major contributions in all of these areas, and this Seminar is an ...
Contributor(s): Sandra Day O'Connor | Sandra Day O'Connor is an American jurist who was the first female member of the Supreme Court of the United States. Justice O'Connor was appointed an Associate Justice by President Ronald Reagan in 1981, a position she held for 25 years until her retirement in 2006. Viewed as one of the most influential Justices to serve on the modern US Supreme Court, Justice O'Connor became the ""swing opinion"" in the often divided Court on which she sat in the later yea...
Contributor(s): Professor Richard English, Martin Mansergh, Jonathan Powell, David Trimble | What are the lessons from the 30 years of the Troubles for modern counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism policy elsewhere, for peacemaking and for reconciliation? Leading experts debate how Britain's experience in Northern Ireland can help us address today's terrorism and conflict resolution challenges. Richard English is professor of politics and, from September 2011, director of the Centre for the St...
Contributor(s): Alvaro Galindo, Margrethe Norum, Adam Sheppard, Randall Williams | Australia recently announced to discontinue investor-state-arbitration provisions in trade agreements; Ecuador abandons its BITS and left ICSID; South Africa seeks to renegotiate its BITs; the Norwegian and U.S. BIT review have stirred much controversy. This colloquium addresses these national experiences and their significance for future developments of investment treaty law. Alvaro Galindo is the former director...
Contributor(s): Álvaro Uribe Vélez | Álvaro Uribe Vélez is the former President of Colombia, holding the office from 2002 to 2010. Mr. Uribe has a Law Degree from the Universidad de Antioquia (Colombia), and a post-graduate degree in Management and Administration from Harvard University. From 1998 to 1999 after being awarded the Simon Bolivar fellowship by the British Council in Bogotá, he worked as an associate professor at Oxford University. Mr Uribe began his political career in 1977 as Secre...
Contributor(s): Alfredo Brillembourg | This lecture explores the physical limitations of contemporary architecture and argues for a shift in emphasis from form-driven to purpose-oriented social architecture. Alfredo Brillembourg founded the Urban Think Tank (UTT) in Caracas, Venezuela. Since July 2010, together with partner Hubert Klumpner, the UTT holds the chair for Architecture and Urban Design at the Swiss Institute of Technology, ETH in Zurich and has been awarded the 2010 Ralph Erskine Awa...
Contributor(s): Sonia Corrêa | Since the late 1970s, Sonia Corrêa has been involved in research and advocacy activities related to gender equality, health and sexuality. She is the founder of various non-governmental initiatives in Brazil. Between 1992 and 2009 she has been the research coordinator for sexual and reproductive health and rights at DAWN – Development Alternatives with Women for a new Era – a Southern Hemisphere feminist network. In that capacity, she closely followed United Nation...
Contributor(s): Professor Gerald Frug, Dr Asher Ghertner, Patrik Schumacher, Professor Richard Sennett, Dr Fran Tonkiss, Professor Larry Vale | This panel discussion will examine the concept of distance when writing about cities. How does this concept remain relevant to urban disciplines? And how does it both inform and limit research on cities? Gerald Frug is Louis D. Brandeis Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Asher Ghertner is a lecturer in human geography at LSE. Justin McGuirk is the D...
Contributor(s): Professor Robert Eaglestone | Final part of the series, in which an historian, a novelist and a literary critic explore the ways in which memory, literature and history shape contemporary Europe. Robert Eaglestone is professor of contemporary literature and thought at Royal Holloway, University of London. This event is part of the Jean Monnet 'Europe Beyond Governance' Lecture Series.
Contributor(s): Professor Sir Tony Atkinson, Professor Peter Diamond, Sir Nicholas Macpherson, Professor Sir James Mirrlees, Professor Lord Stern | This event is part of a celebration of 25 years on from the LSE project on Taxation, Income Distribution and Incentives run in STICERD by Sir Tony Atkinson, Mervyn King and Professor Lord Stern. The panel brings together a distinguished panel of experts to discuss what we have learned in the intervening period about how public policy can best be stru...
Contributor(s): Alan Montefiore, Professor Stephen Mulhall, Dr Sarah Richmond | Marking the publication of Alan Montefiore's new book A Philosophical Retrospective: facts, values and Jewish identity, this discussion will explore the idea that concepts of cultural identity can sometimes bridge facts and values. Alan Montefiore is emeritus fellow at Balliol College, University of Oxford and president of the Forum for European Philosophy. Stephen Mulhall is professor and fellow in philosophy at New...
Contributor(s): René Ramírez | This lecture provides an idea of the approach of the Ecuadorian Government to comply with its strategies of "Good Living", a concept developed in recent years that sees growth and economic development as a whole in which includes new indicators and ways to measure it. This concept of "Good Living" is one of the axes of the thought of the "Citizens Revolution". René Ramírez is the National Secretary of Planning and Development of Ecuador and author of several books ...
Contributor(s): Michelle Bachelet | The UN's newest agency - UN Women - has a global mandate to empower women and build gender equality. UN Women's first Executive Director and Under-Secretary General Michelle Bachelet will outline her vision for empowering women economically and politically to address challenges of poverty, inequality and exclusion and persistent violence against women both in conflict and non-conflict situations. She will focus in particular on peace and security as an area wi...
Contributor(s): Professor Gerald Frug | Professor Frug looks at the fragmentation of current urban governance and how it undermines the authority of elected representatives. Gerald Frug is the Louis D Brandeis Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and winner of the James Stirling Memorial Lectures on the City Competition. The Stirling Lectures competition is a collaboration between LSE Cities and the Canadian Centre for Architecture.
Contributor(s): Dr Douglas Cowie | In this series, an historian, a novelist and a literary critic explore the ways in which memory, literature and history shape contemporary Europe. Douglas Cowie is a novelist and lecturer in the English department at Royal Holloway, University of London. This event is part of the Jean Monnet 'Europe Beyond Governance' Lecture Series.
Contributor(s): Major General John Lorimer, Moazzam Malik, Sheelagh Stewart, Nick Williams | This event will examine the challenges faced by those responsible for overseeing the transfer of state power from external organisations to domestic institutions in conflict affected states. Major General John Lorimer, Chief of Defence Staff's Strategic Communication Officer and Ministry of Defence spokesman on military operations. Moazzam Malik is director of the Western Asia and Stabilisation Division,...
