London School of Economics: Public lectures and events

Speaker(s): Dr Daniel Gros, Professor Charles Goodhart, Professor Michael Haliassos | Dr Daniel Gros is director of Centre for European Policy Studies, Brussels. Professor Charles Goodhart, Emeritus Professor of Banking & Finance; director of Financial Regulation Research Programme, LSE. Professor Michael Haliassos is chair for Macroeconomics and Finance, Goethe University Frankfurt; director, Center for Financial Studies, Frankfurt.

Speaker(s): Professor Anne Phillips | Editor's note: Unfortunately the first few minutes of the lecture are missing from this recording. In this inaugural lecture, to celebrate her appointment as the Graham Wallas Professor of Political Science, Anne Phillips addresses the status of the human in politics. Is what Hannah Arendt called 'the abstract nakedness of being human' sufficient to establish principles of solidarity or equality? And can we talk of what, as humans, we have in common without thereby dismissing as irrelevancies our gender, sexuality, or 'race'? Anne Phillips is Graham Wallas Professor of Political Science in the Department of Government. She is also currently Director of the LSE Gender Institute. She joined the LSE in 1999 as Professor of Gender Theory, and was Director of the Gender Institute until September 2004. She subsequently moved to a joint appointment between the Gender Institute and Department of Government. She is a leading figure in feminist political theory, and writes on issues of bodies and property, democracy and representation, equality, multiculturalism, and difference. Much of her work can be read as challenging the narrowness of contemporary liberal theory. In 1992, she was co-winner of the American Political Science Association's Victoria Schuck Award for Best Book on Women and Politics published in 1991 (awarded for Engendering Democracy). She was awarded an honorary Doctorate from the University of Aalborg in 1999; was appointed Adjunct Professor in the Political Science Programme of the Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, 2002-6; and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2003. In 2008, she received a Special Recognition Award from the Political Studies Association, UK, for her contribution to Political Studies. In 2012, she was awarded the title Graham Wallas Professor of Political Science. Simon Hix is Professor of European and Comparative Politics and Head of the Government Department at LSE.

Speaker(s): Professor Craig Calhoun | In this lecture LSE Director Professor Craig Calhoun, considers the threats, internal and external to global capitalism.

Speaker(s): Professor Cécile Laborde, Professor Tariq Modood, Professor Anne Phillips | Under the combined criticisms of feminism, secularism and nationalism, multiculturalism is repeatedly being pronounced dead. Has it really reached the end of the road and what are the alternatives? Cécile Laborde is professor of political theory at University College London. Tariq Modood is the founding director of the Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship at the University of Bristol. Anne Phillips is director of the Gender Institute and professor of political and gender theory in the LSE Gender Institute.

Speaker(s): Dr Isatou Touray | This talk discusses the efforts made by grassroots Gambian activists and community campaigns, as well as external forces, in building resistance to female genital mutilation in one of the few countries in the world where the practice remains not legally prohibited. Isatou Touray is founder and Executive Director of the Gambia Committee on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children (GAMCOTRAP), an organisation which has campaigned for women’s and girls’ rights since the 1980s, and which has been a leader in the struggle to eliminate Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). In addition to a prolific list of publications, Dr Touray has engaged extensively with other rights organisations in The Gambia and beyond. This has included membership of the Gender Action Team for the Ratification of the African Protocol on Women’s Rights, and the Technical Advisory Body for the Policy for the Advancement of Gambian Women, and acting as Secretary General for the Inter-African Committee on Traditional Practices. In recognition of her achievements, sacrifices and service to others, in 2008 Dr Touray was awarded the US Ambassadorial Prize for ‘International Woman of Courage’ and was voted ‘Gambian of the Year’, an honour bestowed previously on only two female nationals. This event is supported by the LSE Annual Fund.

Speaker(s): Professor Ali Ansari | Launching his latest book, The Politics of Nationalism in Modern Iran, Professor Ali Ansari will explore the idea of nationalism in the creation of modern Iran, considering the broader developments in national ideologies that took place following the emergence of the European Enlightenment and showing how these ideas were adopted by a non-European state. Ali Ansari is Professor in Modern History with reference to the Middle East at University of St Andrews, where he is also the founding director of the Institute for Iranian Studies.

Speaker(s): James Dawson, Kate Kingsley, Meg Rosoff | This event celebrates the culmination of the LSE/First Story creative writing competition for key stages 3, 4 and 5 and will include a prize-giving presentation, as well as a reception following the event. Trying new things can be daunting, but also inspiring. In our creative writing trying a new genre or subject, or exploring what new technology has to offer can be liberating. But is it sometimes best to stick to the classics? Find out what has inspired our panel of authors, and join in the discussion. James Dawson, author of dark teen thrillers Hollow Pike and Cruel Summer, grew up in West Yorkshire, writing imaginary episodes of Doctor Who. He later turned his talent to journalism, interviewing luminaries such as Steps and Atomic Kitten before writing a weekly serial in a Brighton newspaper. Until recently, James worked as a teacher, specialising in PSHCE and behaviour. He is most proud of his work surrounding bullying and family diversity. He now writes full time in London and is published by Indigo/Orion. Kate Kingsley is the author of Young, Loaded & Fabulous, a scandalous YA series about mean teens at British boarding school. After growing up between London and New York City, Kate started her writing career at GQ magazine. She has been published in places like The Sunday Times Magazine and the New York Times. This is her first year working with the wonderfully talented First Story students, an experience she is absolutely loving. She currently lives in East London, where she's writing her sixth book. Meg Rosoff was born in Boston, educated at Harvard and St Martin’s College of Art, and worked in New York City for ten years before moving to London permanently in 1989. She worked in publishing, politics, PR and advertising until 2004, when she wrote How I Live Now, which won the Guardian Children’s fiction prize (UK), Michael L Printz prize (US), the Die Zeit children’s book of the year (Germany) and was shortlisted for the Orange first novel award. Her second novel, Just in Case, won the 2007 Carnegie Medal. Meg’s other books include What I Was, The Bride's Farewell and There Is No Dog. This event is linked to LSE's 5th Space for Thought Literary Festival|, taking place from Tuesday 25 February - Saturday 2 March 2013, with the theme 'Branching Out'.

Speaker(s): Michael Ward | 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. Each seminar is chaired by one of the members of LSE London, while speaker’s presentations, available podcasts and any other related documents are posted here regularly after each session.

Speaker(s): Professor Paul Preston, Dr Daniel Beer, Professor Helen Graham, Professor Dan Stone | A discussion of the atrocities against civilians in the Spanish Civil War, the political consequences in Spain today and the parallels with Nazi and Soviet experiences. Paul Preston is Director of the LSE’s Cañada Blanch Centre and author of numerous books on Spain of which the latest is The Spanish Holocaust. Daniel Beer is Senior Lecturer in Modern European History at Royal Holloway and the author of Renovating Russia: the Human Sciences and the Fate of Liberal Modernity (Cornell, 2008). Helen Graham is Professor of History at Royal Holloway. Her most recent book is The War and its Shadow. Spain’s Civil War in Europe’s Long Twentieth Century (2012). In 2010 she was Visiting Chair in Spanish Culture and Civilisation at the King Juan Carlos Centre, New York University. Dan Stone is Professor of Modern History at Royal Holloway, University of London. His books include Histories of the Holocaust (OUP, 2010); The Oxford Handbook of Postwar European History (OUP, 2012) and The Holocaust, Fascism and Memory (Palgrave, 2013). The Cañada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies is located within the European Institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science and is the focus of a flourishing interest in contemporary Spain in Britain. LSE Works is a series of public lectures, that will showcase some of the latest research by LSE's 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 online.

Speaker(s): Alexis Tsipras | Alexis Tsipras is President of Syriza-USF (Official Opposition Party, Greece). Professor Kevin Featherstone is director of the Hellenic Observatory at LSE.

Speaker(s): Professor Peter Hall | This presentation explores the origins and consequences of the contemporary crisis of the Euro from the perspective of a varieties-of-capitalism approach to the political economy. It associates the inadequacies of the governing institutions adopted for the Euro with a set of mythologies that was blind to the presence of distinctive varieties of capitalism in Europe and locates some of the roots of the crisis in the problems associated with combining joining varieties of capitalism in a single currency. The problems encountered by the Euro lie less in the ‘asymmetrical shocks’ anticipated in 1992 and more in the ‘institutional asymmetries’ across political economies. The problems the EU has had in resolving the crisis are also linked to divergent diagnoses of the problem rooted in distinctive philosophies of governance associated again with varieties of capitalism in Europe. Peter A. Hall is Krupp Foundation Professor of European Studies, a faculty associate of the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, and co-director of the Program on Successful Societies for the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. Hall is co-editor of Successful Societies: How Institutions and Culture Affect Health (with M. Lamont), Changing France: The Politics that Markets Make (with B. Palier, P. Culpepper), Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage (with D. Soskice), The Political Power of Economic Ideas: Keynesianism across Nations, Developments in French Politics I and II (with A. Guyomarch, J. Hayward and H. Machin), European Labor in the 1980s and the author of Governing the Economy: The Politics of State Intervention in Britain and France as well as over seventy articles on European politics, public policy-making, and comparative political economy.

Speaker(s): Professor David Ferris | This lecture will argue that painting, rather than retreat from the transformation of the visual image announced by photography, has now become photography’s most important interpreter. David Ferris is professor of humanities and comparative literature at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Speaker(s): Professor Kishore Mahbubani | 88% of the world’s population lives outside the West and is rising to Western living standards, and sharing Western aspirations. But while the world changes, our way of managing it has not and it must evolve. In this lecture, leading policy thinker Kishore Mahbubani outlines new policies and approaches that will be necessary to govern in an increasingly interconnected and complex environment. This event marks the publication of his new book The Great Convergence: Asia, the West, and the Logic of One World. Kishore Mahbubani is the Dean and Professor in the Practice of Public Policy at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. From 1971-2004 he served in the Singapore Foreign Ministry, where he was Permanent Secretary from 1993-1998, served twice as Singapore’s Ambassador to the UN, and in 2001 and 2002 served as President of the UN Security Council. Professor Mahbubani is the author of Can Asians Think?, Beyond the Age of Innocence: Rebuilding Trust Between America and the World, and The New Asian Hemisphere: the Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East. Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines have listed him as one of the top 100 public intellectuals in the world, and in 2009 The Financial Times included him on their list of Top 50 individuals who would shape the debate on the future of capitalism. In 2010 and 2011 he was selected as one of Foreign Policy’s Top Global Thinkers.

Speaker(s): Kate Bell, Duncan Bowie, Howard Reed, Zoe Williams | Seventy years ago the Beveridge Report announced the pursuit of a new settlement, one that would dramatically change the structure of Britain for the better. With this in mind, a new project from Class looks at what Beveridge's analysis of society can teach us about the Giant Evils of today and how can we use this to chart an alternative course for a welfare state - orSocial State - fit for a new settlement in 2015. This event at the London School of Economics will bring together the experts working on Class's Social State project in a panel discussion on the themes and policy suggestions proposed in this series of work. Kate Bell is child poverty coordinator of the Child Poverty Action Group. Duncan Bowie is senior lecturer in Spacial Planning at the University of Westminster. Howard Reed is director of the economic research consultancy Landman Economics. Zoe Williams is a columnist at The Guardian.

Speaker(s): Professor John Breuilly, Dr Faisal Devji, Dr Mark Hewitson | This discussion will mark the launch of The Oxford Handbook of the History of Nationalism edited by Professor John Breuilly.The Oxford Handbook of the History of Nationalism comprises thirty six essays by an international team of leading scholars, providing a global coverage of the history of nationalism in its different aspects—ideas, sentiments, and politics. Every chapter takes the form of an interpretative essay which, by a combination of thematic focus, comparison, and regional perspective, enables the reader to understand nationalism as a distinct and global historical subject.The book covers the emergence of nationalist ideas, sentiments, and cultural movements before the formation of a world of nationstates, as well as nationalist politics before and after the era of the nation-state, with chapters covering Europe, the Middle East, North-East Asia, South Asia, South-East Asia, Sub- Saharan Africa, and the Americas. Essays on everyday national sentiment and race ideas in fascism are accompanied by chapters on nationalist movements opposed to existing nation-states, nationalism and international relations, and the role of external intervention into nationalist disputes within states. In addition, the book looks at the major challenges to nationalism: international socialism, religion, pan-nationalism, and globalization, before a final section considering how historians have approached the subject of nationalism.John Breuilly is professor of nationalism and ethnicity at LSE.Dr Faisal Devji is reader in Indian History, St. Antony's College, University of Oxford.Dr Mark Hewitson is senior lecturer in German History and Politics in the Department of German at University College London.