Speaker(s): Dr. Dambisa Moyo | In Dr. Dambisa Moyo's new book, Edge of Chaos, which she will talk about at this event, she offers a radical menu of ten ways to improve democracy: making it better able to address the range of headwinds that the global economy faces (including technology and the prospects of a jobless underclass, demographic shifts, gapping income inequality, an unsustainable debt burden, natural resource scarcity and declining productivity) and deliver more economic growth and...

Speaker(s): James Ball, Professor Charlie Beckett, Sophie Gaston | The LSE Truth, Trust and Technology Commission is working with experts, practitioners and the public to identify structural causes of media misinformation and set out a new framework for strategic policy. The four themes it is looking at are: journalism credibility, platform responsibility, political communications and media literacy and citizenship. At this event the audience is invited to put questions and views about...

Speaker(s): Professor Simon Glendinning, Professor Elspeth Guild, Dr Natascha Zaun | What does a map tell us about Europe? What does it leave out? Prominent scholars in law, philosophy and political science reflect on how the age of cross-border flows from within and without Europe pose questions of how to map Europe and its peoples with renewed force. Simon Glendinning (@lonanglo) is Professor of European Philosophy at LSE’s European Institute and Director of the Forum for European...

Speaker(s): Professor Nic Cheeseman, Dr Brian Klaas | In this talk, Nic Cheeseman and Brian Klaas show how to rig an election - with the hopes that the lesson will help save democracy. The greatest political paradox of our time is this: there are more elections than ever before but the world is becoming less democratic. Elections are often the frontlines in a global battle for democracy. Dictators, despots, and counterfeit democrats hold elections to legitimize their regime, but then rig them...

Speaker(s): Dr Jessica Chiba, John Crace, Tim Crouch | For Victor Hugo, ‘all forms of the multiple reality, actions and ideas, man and humanity’ can be found in Shakespeare. Perhaps this is the reason why, over 400 years after his death, we continue to study, perform, and re-read his plays in search of truths about ourselves and the world. Should we think of Shakespeare as a philosopher? Can reading him philosophically add to our understanding of his work, or is it simply another way of...

Speaker(s): Tony Barber, Professor Catherine De Vries, Professor Simon Hix | The European Union is facing turbulent times. It is plagued by deep divisions over the future of European integration. This panel brings together experts who will discuss how Brexit and the rise of Euroscepticism on the continent may shape the contours of the European project in the coming years. Tony Barber (@TonyBarber8) is Europe Editor of the Financial Times. Catherine De Vries (@CatherineDVries) is Professor of...

Speaker(s): Sir Danny Alexander, Robert Bartlett, Tamsyn Barton, Kwasi Kwarteng | This panel discussion will explore whether the UK should establish a new bank to support infrastructure investment. Danny Alexander (@dannyalexander) is Vice President at the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Robert Bartlett is Head of Infrastructure at Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group. Tamsyn Barton (@TBartonBond) is Chief Executive of Bond. Kwasi Kwarteng (@KwasiKwarteng) is MP for Spelthorne and...

Speaker(s): Professor Fawaz Gerges | Fawaz Gerges tells us how the clash between pan-Arab nationalism and pan-Islamism has shaped the history of the region from the 1920s to the present. Fawaz Gerges (@FawazGerges) is Professor of International Relations at LSE and author of Making the Arab World: Nasser, Qutb, and the Clash That Shaped the Middle East. John Sidel is the Sir Patrick Gillam Professor of International and Comparative Politics at LSE. The Department of International Relations (...

Speaker(s): Professor Christine Bell, Dr Aisling Swaine | ‘Conflict-related violence against women’ is often understood to mean sexual violence, specifically rape used as a weapon of war. But this is only one part of a broad continuum of gender violence which must be understood and addressed within and across conflict settings. In her new book, Conflict-Related Violence Against Women: Transforming Transition, Aisling Swaine examines the contexts of Liberia, Northern Ireland and Timor-Leste to...

Speaker(s): Professor Mariana Mazzucato | In her new book, The Value of Everything, which she will discuss in this lecture, Mariana Mazzucato, argues that if we are to reform capitalism, we urgently need to rethink where wealth comes from. Which activities are creating it, which are extracting it, and which are destroying it? Answers to these questions are key if we want to replace the current parasitic system with a type of capitalism that is more sustainable, more symbiotic: that works for...

Speaker(s): Professor Tony Bennett, Professor Angela McRobbie, Dr Clive James Nwonka, Professor Beverley Skeggs | This event will consider the prospects for contemporary thinking within the cultural studies tradition to engage with current inequalities. Mindful of the historical importance of this tradition, dating back to the 1960s and including work by Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, feminist cultural theory, and Bourdieu, the panel will both take stock of these older...

Speaker(s): Gro Harlem Brundtland, Hector Castañón, Aya Chebbi, Ban Ki-moon, Graça Machel, Njoki Njoroge Njehu, Dr Wanda Wyporska, Ernesto Zedillo | Join The Elders, the Fight Inequality Alliance, and Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity to honour grassroots efforts around the world to turn around the inequality crisis and learn how you can join the movement working to #WalkTogether to #FightInequality. Around the world, the gap between the richest and the rest of society has...

Speaker(s): Anna Rosling Rönnlund, Ola Rosling | When asked simple questions about global trends – why the world's population is increasing; how many young women go to school; how many of us live in poverty – we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers according to the book's authors In their new book Factfulness, Professor of International Health Hans Rosling,...

Speaker(s): Chris Hughes, Professor Natalie Fenton, Kam Sandhu | Co-founder of Facebook Chris Hughes makes the case that one-percenters like him should pay their fortune forward in a radically simple way: a guaranteed income for working people Chris Hughes (@chrishughes) is co-founder of the Economic Security Project and co-founder of Facebook. His new book is Fair Shot: Rethinking Inequality and How We Earn Natalie Fenton (@NatalieFenton1) is Professor of Media and Communications at...

Speaker(s): Dr Linda Yueh | Linda Yueh will discuss her new book that helps us to think about the biggest economic challenges of our time by drawing on the ideas of the great economists whose thinking has already changed the world Linda Yueh (@lindayueh) is a Fellow in Economics at St Edmund Hall, Oxford University, Adjunct Professor of Economics at London Business School, and a Visiting Senior Fellow at LSE IDEAS Linda Yueh (@lindayueh) is a Fellow in Economics at St Edmund Hall, Oxford...

Speaker(s): Professor Toby Dodge, Dr Rachel Ibreck, Rim Turkmani, Lyse Doucet | This event will launch LSE’s new Conflict Research Programme funded by the UK’s Department for International Development. The CRP aims to understand why contemporary violence is so difficult to end and to analyse the underlying political economy of violence with a view to informing policy, with a special focus on Iraq, Syria, South Sudan, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Members of the research team...

Speaker(s): Professor Aeron Davis, Polly Toynbee, Joe Earle Polly Toynbee Joe Earle | Join Aeron Davis, Polly Toynbee, Joe Earle and Bev Skeggs for a discussion on Britain’s dysfunctional leadership. Aeron Davis will cast the evening off by arguing that the Brexit vote and 2017 election result are more than temporary setbacks for the Establishment. Instead, there is a deeper crisis of leadership that has been developing over decades. The great transformations of the 1980s onwards have not...

Speaker(s): Professor Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet | Arabs and Persians have historically been placed in a binary and oppositional relationship. This bifurcated past has influenced the contemporary politics and historiography of the region, with far-reaching consequences for the stability and economic viability of different Middle Eastern communities. This clash of ethnicities becomes especially prominent in the Persian Gulf, where migrants, sailors, indigenous communities, and laborers have...

Speaker(s): Lord Sainsbury | David Sainsbury will be talking about his lifetime of philanthropy. Lord Sainsbury is founder of the Gatsby Charitable Foundation. He donated £200 million of Sainsbury’s shares to the Foundation’s assets. Stephan Chambers is Marshall Institute Director. The Marshall Institute (@LSEMarshall) aims to increase the impact and effectiveness of private action for public benefit through research, teaching and convening.

Speaker(s): Dr Joseph Slaughter | Modern Euro-American law operates by fashioning legal persons as creatures endowed with rights and responsibilities. This figurative process of personification is a means of emancipation. Indeed, the fourteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution laid the legal groundwork not only for recognition of the full legal personality of ex-slaves; it also “emancipated” the business corporation, which possesses legal rights and responsibilities by way of analogy to the...

Speaker(s): Professor Catherine Barnard, Professor Simon Hix, Jill Rutter, Professor Tony Travers | One year on from the triggering of Article 50, how far have the Brexit negotiations progressed? What lessons are there for the UK and the European Union? What are the implications for the future? Catherine Barnard (@CSBarnard24) is Professor of European Union Law, University of Cambridge. Simon Hix (@simonjhix) is Harold Laski Professor of Political Science, Department of Government, LSE. Jill...

Speaker(s): Dharshini David | The dollar is the lifeblood of globalisation: China holds billions in reserve for good reason. Greenbacks, singles, bucks or dead presidents, call them what you will, $1.2 trillion worth are floating around right now – and half the dollars in circulation are actually outside of the USA. But what is really happening as these billions of dollars go around the world every day? By following $1 from a shopping trip in suburban Texas, via China’s Central Bank, Nigerian...

Speaker(s): Peter Frase | Robots and artificial intelligence promise to reshape the economy. But the political struggle between workers and owners will determine who really benefits from these changes. Peter Frase (@pefrase) is an editor at Jacobin Magazine and author of Four Futures. Robin Archer is Director of the Ralph Miliband Programme at LSE. The Ralph Miliband Programme (@RMilibandLSE) is one of LSE's most prestigious lecture series and seeks to advance Ralph Miliband's spirit of free...

Speaker(s): Professor Ash Amin, Dr Victoria Redclift | Migration is integral to the cultural and economic life of cities. Yet we live in a migration milieu in which migrants are rendered as illegal subjects, and where migration processes are reduced to crises at national border points. This event explores the relation between cities, migrants and migration systems. The event also launches The Sage Handbook of the 21st Century City edited by Suzanne Hall and Ricky Burdett. This edited...

Speaker(s): Stefaan de Rynck | Stefaan de Rynck, Senior Advisor to Michel Barnier, Chief EU Negotiator for Brexit, will provide a state of play on the Brexit negotiations. He will focus on the Withdrawal Treaty and the nature of the transition and will address the current progress and possible ways forward. Stefaan De Rynck (@StefaanDeRynck) is senior advisor of Michel Barnier, Chief EU Negotiator for Brexit, in charge of public engagement strategy and relations with think tanks. He is...