LSE: Public lectures and events

Speaker(s): Salonie Hiriyur, Laura-Jane Silverman, Dhruv Washishth | Editor's note: We apologise for the poor audio quality of this podcast. For the younger generations considering their future career options, are the technological advances transforming the way we work something to be afraid of or excited by? And are they being sufficiently prepared for the future of work? Salonie Hiriyur started work as a journalist in India, but wanting to develop a sound theoretical basis in development studies, she moved to London to complete a Master's from the Gender Institute at LSE. She graduated in 2016 and from there moved to work at the ILO (Geneva) in research. As a research assistant, she worked on reports on women's employment, the informal economy, social protection programmes for informal workers. She is now looking at starting a PhD in Social Policy, analysing the effects of the emergence of online platforms on the domestic work sector in India. Laura-Jane Silverman is a Careers Consultant and heads up the entrepreneurial work that LSE Careers offers to students and alumni. Having graduated from the University of Cambridge, Laura-Jane worked in various industries including Television and Film and Recruitment before starting up her own careers consulting and recruitment business. She has worked with universities and business schools across Europe and worked with students who are working out their future career strategies. In 2011 she joined LSE and now manages LSE Generate, the entrepreneurial skills development programme here at LSE and is also on the steering committee for the new Work It Out initiative that helps students think about their values and priorities as they explore future job opportunities. Dhruv Washishth is the Co-Founder and CEO of Paradigm Shift, a silicon valley startup that utilizes Virtual Reality for education. He is pursuing his MSc in Management of Information Systems, Digital Innovation & Philosophy at LSE. He has been a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, London and in 2014, he was selected by the Government of UK as a global young entrepreneur. In the past, he also launched Angelhack's operations in India and used to manage the startup accelerator at TiE Bangalore. Megan Beddoe @MeganBeddoe is Activities and Development Officer at the LSE Students' Union.

Speaker(s): Professor Xenia Chryssochoou, Professor Peter Dwyer, David Goodhart, Celestin Okoroji | Editor's note: We apologise for the poor audio quality of this podcast. Central to the promise of the Beveridge Report is the assumption of social solidarity: we need a cohesive society to support social protection, and the resulting shared safety net should increase cohesion even further. Yet as the country and its welfare state evolved, so did the social bonds on which they depended. Given what we know about human behaviour and experience, what prospect is there for the level of solidarity needed to carry Beveridge’s vision into the twenty-first century? Bringing together policy and social psychology, this event will consider two challenges to welfare state solidarity. First, social policy expert Peter Dwyer and social psychologist Celestin Okoroji will present evidence from very different projects looking at the experiences of those receiving benefits in the context of greater demands for compliant behaviours and worsening stereotypes of the ‘welfare recipient’. Second, policy writer David Goodhart and social psychologist Xenia Chryssochoou will offer contrasting perspectives on whether greater diversity in the national population poses a challenge for the sense of collective solidarity needed to sustain the welfare state. This event will feature diverse research insights on thorny issues and will offer a chance for the audience to share their views on the debates at hand. Xenia Chryssochoou is Professor of Social and Political Psychology at Panteion University. Her research focuses on social psychological dimensions of identity in liberal societies, and in issues of multiculturalism and integration. Peter Dwyer (@ProfPeteDwyer) is Professor of Social Policy at the University of York. His research focuses on social citizenship, migration, and inclusion, and he directs the multi-site ESRC-funded project, Welfare Conditionality: Sanctions, Support and Behaviour Change. David Goodhart (@David_Goodhart) is Head of the Demography, Immigration and Integration Unit at the think tank Policy Exchange. He is the founder and former editor of Prospect magazine, and author of The British Dream: Successes and Failures of Post-War Immigration and The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics, a Sunday Times bestseller. Celestin Okoroji is a PhD student at the LSE Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science. His research focuses on the ways in which ideas associated with stigmatised groups become a part of stigmatised group member’s self-concept, with a focus on the unemployed in Britain. Jennifer Sheehy-Skeffington is Assistant Professor of Social Psychology at the LSE Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science. Her research focuses on the psychology of poverty and intergroup relations in the context of widening economic inequality.

Speaker(s): Nicholas Timmins, Professor Sir Julian Le Grand, Minouche Shafik | Five tools and massive programmes were adopted to tackle Beveridge's "Five Giants": A policy of full employment; a National Health Service; a massively extended system of education; a new housing programme; and a much modernised system of social security. But in the 75 years since they took effect, who have been the "Five Giant" ministers in each of these areas? In this opening event of the LSE Festival: Beveridge 2.0, Nicholas Timmins and Professor Sir Julian Le Grand debate who, among the many hundreds of politicians who have held office, really made a difference between then and now. Nicholas Timmins is the author of The Five Giants: A Biography of the Welfare State which tells its tale from Beveridge to the modern day, with a fully up-dated version published by William Collins in November 2017. He is a senior fellow at the Institute for Government and at the King's Fund, and has been a Visiting Professor in the Department of Social Policy at LSE and a Visiting Fellow at King's College, London, in Public Management. Before that he was a journalist, working for Nature, the Press Association, The Times, The Independent (of which he was a founder member) and the Financial Times, where, between 1996 and 2012 he was Public Policy Editor and commentator. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and between 2008 and 2011 was President of the Social Policy Association. Julian Le Grand held the Richard Titmuss Chair of Social Policy in the Department of Social Policy and is now Professor in the Marshall Institute. From 2003 to 2005 he was seconded to No. 10 Downing Street as a Senior Policy Adviser to the Prime Minister. He is the author, co-author or editor of over twenty books and has written more than one hundred articles and book chapters on economics, philosophy and public policy. He has chaired several government commissions and working groups, including most recently the Mutuals Task Force for the Cabinet Office, and the Panels reviewing Doncaster's and Birmingham's Children's Services for the Department for Education. He has acted as an adviser to the President of the European Commission, the World Bank, the World Health Organisation, and the OECD. In 2015 he was awarded a knighthood for services to social sciences and public service. Minouche Shafik is Director of LSE. Prior to this she was Deputy Governor of the Bank of England.

Speaker(s): Kit de Waal, Paul McVeigh, Dr Aaron Reeves | In the run up to the LSE Festival: Beveridge 2.0, rethinking the welfare state for the 21st Century, we bring together a panel to discuss the relationship between literature and poverty. They reflect on questions such as: do you need money to access literature? If not, why are there comparatively few working-class writers? And can literature actively play a part in reducing financial hardship?

Speaker(s): Dr Tatiana Borisova, Professor Matthew Craven | This event will consider the relationship between Cold War International Law and the Beveridge moment. In particular, did the ideals of the Beveridge Report get translated into global legal idealism, or were they neutralised or depoliticized by international legal projects around human rights or co-existence? And did the Beveridge Moment in international law actually take place at the height of the Cold War in Bandung in 1955 with the establishment of the non-aligned movement (or still later with the New International Economic Order in the 1970s?). The Cold War and the Beveridge Report occupy similar moments in time (Beveridge issues his report in 1942 a few month after the Anglo-Americans devise their report on the future of world organisation in the 1941 Atlantic Charter, the Attlee Government announces the implementation of the Report as the early Cold war divisions are beginning to appear at Nuremberg and San Francisco; and the NHS is created in 1948 while the Soviets are succeeding in getting their first production reactor operating). This event brings together three world experts on international law during this post-war period to explore these topics. Tatiana Borisova will bring her knowledge of Russia and Europe at the time of the Cold War to the table. She has co-edited the 2012 publication, The Legal Dimension in Cold War Interactions: Some Notes from the Field. Matthew Craven is a leader of the Cold War and International Law Project. His work asks the question: is contemporary international law a product of the Cold War? He has also contributed to a wider debate about the future of the international legal and diplomatic order, as global divisions emerge that echo the ideological enmity and paranoia that pervaded the Cold War period. If you want to learn how International Law has developed in the post-war period, and particularly through the time of Beveridge and the Cold War, you must attend this talk. Tatiana Borisova is Associate Professor, Department of History, Higher School of Economics, St Petersburg. Matthew Craven is Director of the Centre for the Study of Colonialism, Empire and International Law, SOAS. Gerry Simpson is Professor of Public International Law, LSE Law. 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.

Speaker(s): Professor Ananya Roy | In cities around the world, especially in the United States, processes of socio-spatial restructuring continue to unfold. Often understood as neoliberal urbanism and often identified through concepts such as gentrification, these processes entail the displacement of subaltern classes to the far edges of urban life. In this talk, Ananya Roy argues that it is necessary to analyse such transformations through a theorisation of racial capitalism. In particular, she draws on research conducted by scholars and social movements in Los Angeles to delineate processes of racial banishment. In doing so, Roy argues that the standard conceptual repertoire of urban studies is ill-equipped to study such processes. In particular, influential explanations that invoke neoliberalisation often miss the long histories of dispossession and disposability that are being remade in the contemporary city. Put another way, she makes the case for how urban studies must contend with legacies of white liberalism and the elision of the race question. Relying on both postcolonial theory and the black radical tradition, Roy demonstrates that what is at stake is not only a more robust analysis of urbanism but also attention to the various forms of movement and mobilisation that are challenging racial banishment. Ananya Roy (@ananyaUCLA) is Professor of Urban Planning, Social Welfare and Geography and inaugural Director of the Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA Luskin. She holds The Meyer and Renee Luskin Chair in Inequality and Democracy. Ricky Burdett (@BURDETTR) is Professor of Urban Studies at the LSE and Director of LSE Cities and the Urban Age Programme. He was curator of the Conflicts of an Urban Age exhibition at the 2016 International Architecture Biennale in Venice and contributed to the United Nations Habitat III conference on sustainable urbanisation in Quito. LSE Cities (@LSECities) is an international centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science that carries out research, graduate and executive 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.

Speaker(s): Professor Eileen Barker, Professor Conor Gearty | Thirty years after founding INFORM, the information network on religious movements, Eileen Barker argues that the sociology of religion still has an important role in “knowing the causes of things”. Abraham Lincoln is reputed to have remarked, “I don’t like that man; I must get to know him better”. Today the world is populated by religions that most of us do not like. Throughout most of the 20th century, there was a rumour that secularisation was a worldwide phenomenon; by the 21st century, however, diversification was emerging as a more prominent theme. But by then, many of the social sciences had abandoned the study of religion, being either blind to, or uninterested in, the ways in which religious, spiritual and fundamentally atheistic beliefs were affecting not only lives at the individual level, but also the political, economic and cultural institutions of society. This talk will argue, with a variety of illustrations, that the sociological study of religions is essential for a comprehensive understanding of our contemporary global society. It will maintain that we must get to know them better. In 1988, with the support of the Home Office and the mainstream Churches, Eileen Barker set up INFORM, an NGO affiliated to the Sociology Department at LSE which supplies information about alternative religions that is as objective and up-to-date as possible. A former governor of INFORM, Conor Gearty is a current member of INFORM's advisory panel. This event will celebrate Eileen's work over the past 30 years. As such, a celebratory drinks reception will follow the lecture. Eileen Barker is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at LSE with Special Reference to the Study of Religion. Conor Gearty @conorgearty is Professor of Human Rights Law at LSE. Nigel Dodd (@nigelbdodd) is Professor of Sociology, LSE. The Department of Sociology at LSE (@LSEsociology) was established in 1904 and remains committed to top quality teaching and leading research and scholarship today.

Speaker(s): Professor Michael Ignatieff | A new ‘populism’ is evident in a variety of countries. Experts and expertise are attacked as standing in the way of the popular will. Universities are under new pressures from populist politicians. How should these pressures be resisted? Born in Canada, educated at the University of Toronto and Harvard, Michael Ignatieff (@M_Ignatieff) is a university professor, writer and former politician. His major publications are The Needs of Strangers (1984), Scar Tissue (1992), Isaiah Berlin (1998), The Rights Revolution (2000), Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry (2001), The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror (2004), Fire and Ashes: Success and Failure in Politics (2013) and The Ordinary Virtues: Moral Order in a Divided World (2017). Between 2006 and 2011, he served as an MP in the Parliament of Canada and then as Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and Leader of the Official Opposition. He is a member of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada and holds eleven honorary degrees. Between 2012 and 2015 he served as Centennial Chair at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs in New York. Between 2014 and 2016 he was Edward R. Murrow Professor of the Practice of the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is currently the Rector and President of Central European University in Budapest. Simon Glendinning (@lonanglo) is Professor of European Philosophy at the European Institute and the Director of the Forum for European Philosophy. The LSE European Institute (@LSEEI) is a centre for research and graduate teaching on the processes of integration and fragmentation within Europe. In the most recent national Research Excellence Framework (REF 2014) the Institute was ranked first for research in its sector.

Speaker(s): Stephen Armstrong, Alex Wheatle, Ros Taylor, Ros Wynne-Jones | In this event, aimed at school children aged 13-18, a panel of speakers discuss how we tell the truth about the people struggling to get by in modern Britain. Stephen Armstrong (@SArmstrong1984) is a journalist and author of The New Poverty. He writes extensively for the Sunday Times, the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian. He also appears occasionally on BBC Radio 4 and Radio 2. His other books include War PLC, The Super-Rich Shall Inherit the Earth and The Road to Wigan Pier Revisited. Born in 1963 to Jamaican parents living in Brixton, Alex Wheatle (@brixtonbard) spent most of his childhood in a Surrey children's home. He spent a short stint in prison following the Brixton uprising of 1981. Following his release from, he continued to write poems and lyrics and became known as the Brixton Bard. Alex's first novel, Brixton Rock, was published to critical acclaim in 1999; his books now feature widely on school reading lists. Alex is representing English PEN, and tours the country with his one-man show, Uprising. He was awarded an MBE in for services to literature in 2008. His first YA novels include Liccle Bit; Crongton Knights, which won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Award 2016; and most recently Straight Outta Crongton. Ros Taylor (@rosamundmtaylor) is Research Manager at the Truth, Trust & Technology Commission in the Department of Media & Communications at LSE and Managing Editor of LSE Brexit. Ros Wynne-Jones (@roswynnejones) is a journalist and author. She writes the Real Britain column every Friday in the Daily Mirror campaigning against government cuts and standing up for ordinary people. She is author of the novel Something is Going to Fall Like Rain. She has spent the last year retracing George Orwell’s steps on the Road to Wigan Pier 80 Years On stopping in the places he did and talking to ordinary people about their lives as part of the Daily Mirror's Wigan Pier Project. The Orwell Youth Prize (@OrwellYouthPriz) is a registered charity which aims to inspire and support the next generation of politically engaged young writers. The OYP run workshops in schools, regional workshops, a writing prize and an annual Celebration Day. The writing prize for young people aged 13 – 18, is open now open for entries! Supported by LSE Library, which holds unique material relating to social, economic and political history and ideas. We welcome school visits and can tailor sessions for schools in areas of key stage 3 & 4 history and citizenship, areas of A level history and A level government & politics and sociology as well as supporting Extended Project Qualification (EPQ). More information and free online resources.

Speaker(s): Baroness Chakrabarti, Baroness Hale, Professor Nicola Lacey | On February 6th 1918, with the coming into force of the Representation of the People Act, women were by law first given the vote in this country. Even though this foundational right only applied to a restricted category of women initially, the dam had been breached and the universal franchise would soon follow. 100 years on, to the very day, LSE Law will be marking this constitutional watershed with speeches from Brenda Hale, Shami Chakrabarti, and Nicola Lacey. There will also be an opportunity to view key historic documents from the women’s library held by the LSE, followed by a drinks reception. This public lecture is the first in a series of LSE Law events taking place over 2018 and 2019 to mark the Centenary of the founding of the LSE Law department. Shami Chakrabarti was formerly director of the human rights group Liberty, and is now the Shadow Attorney General for England and Wales. She is a Visiting Professor at LSE Law. Brenda Hale is an English judge and is the current President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. She is the first woman to serve in the role, and she is one of only two women to have ever been appointed to the Supreme Court (alongside Lady Black). Nicola Lacey is School Professor of Law, Gender and Social Policy at LSE. Jeremy Horder is Head of the Law Department and Professor of Criminal 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.

Speaker(s): Professor Francesca Klug | At the beginning of the year in which the UDHR’s 70 birthday will be commemorated around the globe, Francesca Klug asks: is the Declaration no longer relevant for our modern world or has its time finally come? Francesca Klug is a Visiting Professor at LSE Human Rights and former Director of the Human Rights Futures Project from 2001-2015 at the LSE Centre for the Study of Human Rights. Francesca was formerly a Senior Research Fellow at King's College Law School where she assisted the government in devising the model for incorporating the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law reflected in the Human Rights Act. Conor Gearty (@conorgearty) is Professor of Human Rights Law at LSE. LSE Human Rights (@LSEHumanRights) is a trans-disciplinary centre of excellence for international academic research, teaching and critical scholarship on human rights.

Speaker(s): Professor Cass Sunstein | How does new information about climate change impact our existing beliefs? Cass Sunstein identifies some surprising biases and findings. Cass Sunstein (@CassSunstein) is the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard Law School. From 2009 to 2012, he was Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Nicholas Stern (@lordstern1) is IG Patel Professor of Economics and Government at the LSE and has been Chair of the Grantham Research Institute since it was founded in 2008. The Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment (@GRI_LSE ) was established by the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2008 to create a world-leading centre for policy-relevant research and training on climate change and the environment, bringing together international expertise on economics, finance, geography, the environment, international development and political economy.

Speaker(s): Professor Akwugo Emejulu | How might we transform the ways in which we think about ‘crisis’, ‘activism’ and 'solidarity'? Drawing on her new co-authored book, Minority Women and Austerity: Survival and Resistance in France and Britain, Akwugo Emejulu's talk will explore the asymmetrical impacts of austerity measures on women of colour and their strategies for resistance in Scotland, England and France. Akwugo Emejulu is Professor of Sociology, University of Warwick. Aisling Swaine is Assistant Professor of Gender and Security in LSE's Department for Gender Studies LSE’s Department of Gender Studies (@LSEGenderTweet) is the largest gender studies centre in Europe. With a global perspective, LSE Gender’s research and teaching intersects with other categories of analysis such as race, ethnicity, class and sexuality; because gender relations work in all spheres of life, interdisciplinarity is key to LSE Gender’s approach. The International Inequalities Institute at LSE (@LSEInequalities) brings together experts from many LSE departments and centres to lead critical and cutting edge research to understand why inequalities are escalating in numerous arenas across the world, and to develop critical tools to address these challenges.

Speaker(s): Dr Clare Chambers, Sir Paul Coleridge, Peter Tatchell | Marriage is an odd mix of sex, religion, and politics. Our speakers ask what marriage is and whether there is there any distinctive moral value in it. Should the state promote it? Is it possible to have an ‘equal’ marriage, or is marriage fundamentally an oppressive institution? Should marriage be rejected in favour of civil partnerships, or something else, or perhaps nothing else? Clare Chambers is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Cambridge. Paul Coleridge is a former high court judge and Chairman, The Marriage Foundation. Peter Tatchell (@PeterTatchell) is an activist and Director of the Peter Tatchell Foundation. Sarah Fine (@DrSJFine) is Fellow, The Forum and Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, King’s College London. The Forum for European Philosophy (@ForumPhilosophy) is an educational charity that organises a full and varied programme of philosophy and interdisciplinary events in the UK.

Speaker(s): Professor Francesco Caselli, Lorenzo Codogno, Miriam Sorace | Italy will hold its next general election no later than spring 2018. What are the potential outcomes and likely implications for Italy and Europe? Francesco Caselli is Norman Sosnow Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, LSE. Lorenzo Codogno is Visiting Professor in Practice, European Institute, LSE. Miriam Sorace (@MiriamSorace) is LSE Fellow in EU Politics, European Institute, LSE. Sara Hagemann (@sarahagemann) is Associate Professor in European Politics at the LSE European Institue. The LSE European Institute (@LSEEI) is a centre for research and graduate teaching on the processes of integration and fragmentation within Europe. In the most recent national Research Excellence Framework (REF 2014) the Institute was ranked first for research in its sector.