Contributor(s): Zoe Konstantopoulou | Greece is at the forefront of questions connecting human rights protection, debt and austerity. Zoe Konstantopoulou will share her insights on the fight to secure social rights. Zoe Konstantopoulou (@ZoeKonstant) was President of the Greek Parliament and a politician of the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA), and is a practicing lawyer. She was elected to the post of President on 6 February 2015 with a record number of 235 out of 300 votes, making her...

Contributor(s): Professor David Harvey | David Harvey's politicised work on geography, social theory, urban political economy and capitalism has shaped academic debate for decades. He is one of the most cited social scientists in the world, and his works have been translated into multiple languages. Here, Harvey joins a panel of experts to explore his ideas - and alternative views. David Harvey (@profdavidharvey) is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology & Geography at The Graduate...

Contributor(s): Anote Tong | Kiribati is in the front line of climate change. Despite Kiribati's best efforts at mitigation, relocation of its people may be the only long term option as the physical fabric of the country becomes uninhabitable. Anote Tong has been President of Kiribati since 2003, and steps down at the end of 2015 after meeting the term limits prescribed by the Kiribati Constitution. Climate change has been the defining issue of his Presidency. President Tong is an alumnus of...

Contributor(s): Professor Oriana Bandiera, Mushtaque Chowdhury, Professor Esther Duflo, Anna Minj, Muhammad Musa, Desmond Swayne | Can extreme poverty be eliminated through programmes targeting the world’s ultra-poor? The panel will discuss the merits of so called graduation approaches. Oriana Bandiera is a Professor of Economics at the LSE and the Director of STICERD. Mushtaque Chowdhury is Vice-Chairperson, BRAC. Esther Duflo is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and...

Contributor(s): Professor Ian Morris | 20,000 years ago, ‘international relations’ meant interactions between tiny foraging bands; now it means a global system. Philippe Roman Chair Ian Morris explains how the growth of the international system and the shifts of power within it are linked to geography and energy extraction. In tracing this story, Professor Morris asks: Why were the world’s greatest powers concentrated in western Eurasia until about AD 500? Why did they shift to East Asia...

Contributor(s): Tim Judah | Veteran war reporter and Economist correspondent Tim Judah explores the impact of the ongoing conflict on the inhabitants of Ukraine. His new book is In Wartime: Stories from Ukraine. Tim Judah (@timjudah1) writes for the New York Review of Books and the Economist, most recently on the situation in Ukraine. In his career he has covered the aftermath of communism in Romania and Bulgaria and the war in Yugoslavia for The Times and the Economist. His most recent books...

Contributor(s): Dr Kate Devlin, Dr Mateja Jamnik, Professor Huw Price, Dr Mark Sprevak | AI is progressing fast. What level has it reached? Is human-level AI a realistic possibility? And if it is achieved in the near future, what will the consequences be for humanity? Could AI threaten our very existence? In this panel discussion, philosophers Huw Price and Mark Sprevak and computer scientists Mateja Jamnik and Kate Devlin discuss these and other questions concerning AI and the future of...

Contributor(s): Professor Wendy Carlin | The financial crisis triggered a fundamental rethinking of how economics students are taught and what they learn. An international collaborative project of economists (the CORE project), led by Wendy Carlin, has responded with a new curriculum that provides tools for engaging with the issues of economic inequality, environmental sustainability, innovation and wealth creation, and financial instability. Some policy shortcomings can be traced to a view –...

Contributor(s): Vince Cable, Professor Diane Coyle, Bronwyn Curtis, Anna Leach | This event marks the official launch of the LSE Business Review blog bringing together a panel of prominent economists to discuss productivity, the UK’s economic future and the road ahead. Vince Cable (@vincecable) was MP for Twickenham from 1997-2015. He was the Liberal Democrat's chief economic spokesperson from 2003-2010, having previously served as Chief Economist for Shell from 1995-1997. He was Business...

Contributor(s): Professor Charles Taylor | Professor Charles Taylor will look at the constant temptation for modern democracies to veer towards exclusion. This is despite them being founded on a principle of inclusion, and is due to a weakness built into motivations which democracies draw upon. Having firmly established this context, Professor Taylor will discuss the exclusionary moves we have seen in many Western democracies which have targeted (unfamiliar) religions. Why this intense focus...

Contributor(s): Daniel Susskind, Professor Richard Susskind | In an era when machines can out-perform human beings at most tasks, we will neither need nor want doctors, accountants, consultants, and many other professions, to work as they did in the 20th century. In this public lecture, Richard and Daniel Susskind predict the decline of experts as we know them, as the rise in new technologies transforms the way that practical know-how is made available in society. Richard Susskind...

Contributor(s): Edgars Rinkevics | Russia's aggression in Ukraine and the rise of ISIL has brought the issue of European security to the forefront. Latvia's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Edgars Rinkevics, explains the threats from the Baltic viewpoint. Edgars Rinkevics (@edgarsrinkevics) is Latvia's Minister of Foreign Affairs, a position he has held since 2011. Previously he was the Secretary of State of the Ministry of Defence and Head of the President's Chancery. The LSE European Institute...

Contributor(s): Professor Philip Schlesinger | The discourse of the creative economy is everywhere. First developed by the British New Labour government in the late 1990s, it has influenced a global way of thinking about the relations between culture and the economy. The lecture will address its rise and diffusion and the role of political entrepreneurship in the continuous reworking and dissemination of an orthodox mode of thought, illustrated by examples from the UK, EU and UN. What are the...

Contributor(s): Professor Michel Wieviorka | Evil has dramatically changed in modern Europe. The turning point was the mid-eighties. Terrorism, anti-Semitism, racism and nationalism are not as they were in the recent past and their renewal poses a formidable threat. Michel Wieviorka (@MichelWieviorka) is professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and president of the Fondation Maison des sciences de l'homme. Maurice Fraser is Head of the European Institute and Professor of...

Contributor(s): Margrethe Vestager | National authorities (NCAs) and national courts are empowered to apply the EU competition rules together with the Commission. Since 2004, the Commission and the NCAs together have adopted almost 1,000 decisions in antitrust cases – 85% by the NCAs. Joint action within the European Competition Network means more effective enforcement and more deterrence. However, despite common substantive rules, national authorities must rely on national procedural powers...

Contributor(s): Professor Anne Marie Goetz | Sexual violence has been deployed strategically in a wide range of conflicts, and though long recognized as an unlawful tactic of warfare, it has only relatively recently attracted the political focus and operational responses accorded to other violations of civilian rights. This lecture will provide a history of the policy processes leading to the Security Council resolutions recognizing conflict related sexual violence as a tactic of warfare and...

Contributor(s): Professor Michael Cox | Founded by Fabian socialists in the 1890s and attracting such radical figures as Harold Laski, R.H. Tawney and Ralph Miliband, it is hardly surprising that the LSE has acquired a ‘red’ reputation over the years: a reputation that only seemed to be confirmed during the second half of the 1960s when the School was forced to close down because of student protest. But just how radical has the LSE ever been? Has it ever been a hot bed of revolution as...

Contributor(s): Professor Alcinda Honwana | Disaffected African young people risk their lives to try to reach Europe. Others join radical groups such as Boko Haram, Al-Shabab and Islamic State. Angry young unemployed South Africans were behind xenophobic attacks there. Youth protesting their socio-economic and political marginalization have changed governments in Tunisia and Senegal. One-third of Africans are between the ages of 10 and 24 and they are better educated than their parents and...

Contributor(s): Professor Robert Tombs | Migration has been a crucial element of British and English history. England emerged as a nation amid a period of migration. Its culture is a hybrid. Its modern experience has been shaped by an unprecedented outward and inward flow of peoples. This lecture aims to identify what is special and characteristic about the migration history of England and Britain, and reflect on the way in which migration has affected and still affects the life of the...

Contributor(s): Paul Mason | We know that our world is in the process of seismic change - but how can we emerge from the crisis a fairer, more equal society? At the heart of this change is information technology, a revolution that, as Mason shows, is driven by capitalism but which, with its tendency to drive the value of much of what we make towards zero, has the potential to destroy an economy based on markets, wages and private ownership - and, he contends, is already doing so. Paul Mason...

Contributor(s): Patrick Honohan | After a long run of seeming prosperity, the financial crisis left Ireland’s banks more under water and its public and private balance sheets in greater disarray than in most other Western European countries. Since then, the painful processes of bank restructuring and fiscal adjustment, partly under the protection of an IMF-EU financial support arrangement, have revealed much about the domestic and international political economy of debt and austerity. Patrick...

Contributor(s): Professor Diane Coyle | Why did the size of the U.S. economy increase by 3 percent on one day in mid-2013—or Ghana's balloon by 60 percent overnight in 2010? Why did the U.K. financial industry show its fastest expansion ever at the end of 2008—just as the world's financial system went into meltdown? And why was Greece's chief statistician charged with treason in 2013 for apparently doing nothing more than trying to accurately report the size of his country's economy? The...

Contributor(s): Dr Insa Koch, Dr Lisa McKenzie, Dr David Skarbek | There has been much debate in recent years about the role of gangs in both disrupting and providing social order. In this event, scholars from three disciplines draw on their research to debate the significance of gangs and other mechanisms of informal social ordering, the conditions under which they arise, and their relationship to formal sources of social ordering such as law. Insa Koch is Assistant Professor in Law and...

Contributor(s): Professor Philippe Coulangeon, Dr Sam Friedman, Dr Laurie Hanquinet | A panel of leading international experts discuss whether traditional forms of 'highbrow' cultural capital associated with the dominance of the classical and historical canon are being eclipsed by newer and more fluid kinds of cultural tastes, associated with contemporary music and art, sport, and engaging with the social media and computer games. Philippe Coulangeon is Director of Research at SNRS, Sciences...