Contributor(s): Jo da Silva | Jo da Silva explores how engineers and built environment professionals need to shift from responding to natural disasters to building everyday resilience within homes, communities and cities. Jo da Silva is the founding director of Arup International Development.
Contributor(s): Professor John Kay, Professor Mariana Mazzucato | John Kay chaired the Review of UK Equity Markets and Long-Term Decision-Making which reported to the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills in July 2012. He is a visiting Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science, a Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He is a director of several public companies ...
Contributor(s): Professor Roberto Franzosi | This talk will illustrate the power of Quantitative Narrative Analysis, a quantitative social science approach to texts developed by the speaker using data collected from newspapers on the rise of Italian fascism and lynchings in the American 'Deep South'. It will show how narrative data lend themselves to cutting-edge tools of data visualization and analysis as dynamic network graphs and maps in Google Earth and other GIS software, and how QNA data p...
Contributor(s): Professor Michael Pollan | The food writer and journalist discusses what is at stake when we let corporations do the cooking, and why we need to take back control of our diets for the sake of our health, our environment and our family and social lives. Michael Pollan is professor of journalism at Berkeley and one of Time Magazine’s one hundred most influential people in the world. His new book is Cooked: a natural history of transformation.
Contributor(s): Sir James Wolfensohn, Professor Amartya Sen | James Wolfensohn was the ninth president of the World Bank. Amartya Sen is professor of economics at Harvard University and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics. He is an honorary fellow of LSE.
Contributor(s): Dr Joel Smith | This lecture will discuss some of the central ideas contained within Sartre’s The Transcendence of the Ego and consider their continued relevance for contemporary accounts of conscious experience. Joel Smith is lecturer in philosophy at the University of Manchester.
Contributor(s): Professor Ephraim Kleiman | Professor Kleiman will discuss the repeated calls in the Palestinian Territories for the abrogation of the Paris Protocol, regulating their economic relations with Israel, which have risen against the background of a stalled Palestinian-Israeli peace process, the desire for political change and social justice that underlay the Arab Spring. Ephraim Kleiman is Don Patinkin Emeritus Professor of Economics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His researc...
Contributor(s): Jared Cohen, Eric Schmidt | Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen are two of the leading thinkers of our time. The New Digital Age is a unique and unparalleled collaboration between these two great minds and will offer us their view on the future of the world where everyone is connected: a world full of challenges and benefits which are ours to meet and harness. Jared Cohen is Director of Google Ideas and an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Previously, he served ...
Contributor(s): Professor Mark Blyth | Governments have advanced a policy of draconian budget cuts - austerity - to solve the financial crisis. Austerity however is a dangerous idea that has time and again led to low growth and income inequality. "Austerity" marshals an army of facts to demand that we recognize austerity for what it is, and what it costs us. Mark Blyth is professor of International Political Economy at Brown University. Jonathan Hopkin is reader in Comparative Politics at the De...
Contributor(s): Professor Daniel Dennett | In this lecture, one of the world's most original thinkers will show how he designs, uses, and dismantles the thinking tools that have illuminated his theories of meaning, mind, and evolution. The big difference between human minds and the minds of other animals is our equipping ourselves with literally hundreds of thinking tools-cultural software that we install in our brains much the way we download Java applets to our laptops and smart phones. Some o...
Contributor(s): Lord Sainsbury | The neoliberalism that has dominated economic thinking since Mrs Thatcher and Ronald Reagan first came to power is now seen to have serious flaws, and Progressive Capitalism seeks to replace it with a new progressive political economy. This is based on an analysis of why the growth rates of countries differ, and what firms have to do to achieve competitive advantage in today’s global economy. The cornerstone of the political economy of Progressive Capitalism is a...
Contributor(s): Professor Muhammad Yunus | Muhammad Yunus was born on 28 June 1940 in the village of Bathua, Chittagong, a seaport in Bangladesh. The third of fourteen children, he was educated at Dhaka University and was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study economics at Vanderbilt University. He then served as chairman of the economics department at Chittagong University before devoting his life to providing financial and social services to the poorest of the poor. He is the founder of Gram...
Contributor(s): Dr Andrew Khoury | This lecture distinguishes between different types of moral responsibility and discusses the implications for our notions of apology, forgiveness, and punishment. Andrew Khoury is a fellow in the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method, LSE.
Contributor(s): Dr Andrew Beatty | The centrality of emotion in thought and action is increasingly recognised in the human sciences, though basic questions of definition and scope remain unresolved. Where do emotions begin and end? How should we identify and analyse them? How write about them? Ethnographic fieldwork, as pioneered by Malinowski, offers powerful insights into the place of emotion in social life; but emotions are peculiarly difficult to capture in the generalizing format of case st...
Contributor(s): Lord Glasman, Michael Gove | Britain as "One Nation" is an idea of government that belonged to the Conservative Party, originating with Benjamin Disraeli who saw Britain divided into two nations, the rich and the poor. Disraeli defined One Nation politics as the practices necessary to, ‘maintain the institutions of the realm and elevate the condition of the people’. In his 2012 conference speech Ed Miliband defined his party as "One Nation" Labour. In a period of economic crisis ...
Contributor(s): Professor John Hyman, Dr Elisabeth Schellekens | What, if anything, do different manifestations of beauty have in common? Does it make sense to apply the concept of beauty to them all, and if so, are there actually different kinds of beauty? John Hyman is professor of aesthetics and fellow of Queen’s College, University of Oxford and editor of the British Journal of Aesthetics. Elisabeth Schellekens is senior lecturer in philosophy at Durham University and co-editor of the Britis...
Contributor(s): Dr Ha-Joon Chang, Professor Danny Quah | The Department of International Development’s third annual Development Debate will consider the topic “Does market-led development have a future?”. The debate is organized by the Development Management Programme, and features two world authorities on economic growth and development, Professor Danny Quah of the LSE, and Dr Ha-Joon Chang of Cambridge. Ha-Joon Chang is one of the leading heterodox economists and institutional economists speci...
Contributor(s): Sundaresh Menon, Professor Jan Paulsson | A debate on the roles and responsibilities of arbitral institutions, arbitrators and counsel for ensuring that international arbitration remains in tune with new challenges. Sundaresh Menon is the chief justice of Singapore and former attorneygeneral. Jan Paulsson is LSE visiting professor and president of ICCA.
Contributor(s): Amelia Andersdotter MEP, Robert Ashcroft, Ludovic Hunter-Tilney, Dr Luke McDonagh, Eg White | As the nature of music consumption reaches a critical point, a panel of experts on both sides of the debate discuss the industry’s future. Amelia Andersdotter is a member of the Pirate Party in the European Parliament. Robert Ashcroft is chief executive of PRS for Music. Ludovic Hunter-Tilney is the pop critic for the Financial Times. Luke McDonagh is a fellow in the Department of Law at...
Contributor(s): Professor Wolfgang Spohn | Drawing on his Lakatos Award winning book The Laws of Belief, Wolfgang Spohn asks how is truth best characterised? And what are the relationships between truth and what it is rational to believe? Wolfgang Spohn is chair in philosophy and philosophy of science at the University of Konstanz.
Contributor(s): Dr Kwesi Aning | An examination of the changing strategic security environment in West Africa and the effectiveness of the response initiated by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) with the support of the international community. Kwesi Aning is the head of academic affairs at the Kofi Annan Peacekeeping Centre in Accra.
Contributor(s): Gavin Hewitt | Gavin Hewitt will discuss the story of a flawed dream, a noble vision that turned dangerous and which has led Europe into its gravest crisis for which it was totally unprepared. Gavin Hewitt has been the BBC’s Europe editor since 2009. He is an award-winning journalist and has covered stories all over the world. His new book is The Lost Continent: The BBC's Europe Editor on Europe's Darkest Hour Since World War Two.
Contributor(s): Laila El-Haddad, Maggie Schmitt | In the summer of 2010, writer Laila El-Haddad and food documentarian Maggie Schmitt were able to fulfil a long-held plan to travel the length of the Gaza Strip, documenting all aspects of the Gaza District's notably distinctive cuisine, the lives of many experienced Gaza cooks, and the challenges facing the Strip's food system today. The result is The Gaza Kitchen: A Palestinian Culinary Journey, a richly illustrated volume whose 130 fully kitche...
Contributor(s): Professor Anat Admati | The past few years have shown that risks in banking can impose significant costs on the economy. Many claim, however, that a safer banking system would require sacrificing lending and economic growth. Anat Admati examines this claim and the narratives used by bankers, politicians, and regulators to rationalize the lack of reform, exposing them as invalid. Admati calls for ambitious reform and outlines specific and highly beneficial steps that can be taken ...
Contributor(s): Professor Joseph Nye | Wealth and power are shifting from the West to the rising economies of the East. But in a world of complex interdependence, who wields power, to what end, and with what consequences is far from clear. Joseph Nye is distinguished service professor and former dean of the Harvard Kennedy School.
Contributor(s): Professor Matthew Broome, Dr Bonnie Evans, Professor Tim Thornton | How should we think of mental disorders? Can psychiatry be reduced to neuroscience, or is there something irreducibly mental in mental illness? Matthew Broome is associate clinical professor of psychiatry and consultant psychiatrist in early intervention in the Division of Mental Health and Wellbeing at the University of Warwick Medical School. Bonnie Evans is a researcher in the Centre for the Humanities and Hea...
Contributor(s): Saleh Muslim Mohamed | It is nine months since Kurds took control of towns in northern Syria, having established an unprecedented coalition of Kurdish parties. Saleh Muslim Mohamed, the co-President of the most prominent Syrian Kurdish party, will assess the progress of Kurdish politics and local government and the wider Syrian and regional context. Saleh Muslim Mohamed is the Co-President of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the Deputy General Coordinator of the National Coordin...
Contributor(s): João Carlos Ferraz | An overarching sense of uncertainty prevails in the second decade of the 21st century, as dramatic changes sweep most aspects of life in every corner of the planet. This lecture will attempt to discuss the constitutive elements of the uncertainties we live with and their associated challenges. These should compose the boundaries of the debate about what development is, or should be, in the 21st century. The recent economic, social and political evolution of B...
Contributor(s): Sir Malcolm Rifkind | The acute economic crisis of the euro, coupled with the chronic political crisis of Europe’s democratic deficit, have created a situation in which Britain’s membership of the European Union can no longer be taken for granted. Former Foreign Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind outlines a ‘moderate eurosceptic’ approach to the issue, which he believes would produce a mutually beneficial solution acceptable to the United Kingdom and her European partners alike. Sir M...
Contributor(s): Professor Theda Skocpol | What happened to Obama's "new New Deal"? Why did his achievements enrage opponents more than they satisfied supporters? How has the Tea Party's ascendance reshaped American politics? Theda Skocpol is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University.
