Contributor(s): Professor Norman Rose | A review of British policies in Palestine in particular and the Middle East in general with special emphasis on the inter-war and post-war periods. For the Jews, this critical period led to the establishment of the state of Israel, for the Palestinians, to their 'Nakba' (Catastrophe), and for the British, a humiliating retreat from their imperial standing. Norman Rose is a graduate of the LSE and now holds the Chair of International Relations at the...

Contributor(s): Professor Michael Cox, Will Hutton, Professor Danny Quah | The upcoming meeting of the G20 in London in early April 2009 is crucial for the development of policies to stabilise the world economy and reform the international financial architecture. What will the G20 do and what should it do? Will Hutton, Danny Quah, Mick Cox and David Held debate the issues.

Contributor(s): Jack Straw | Jack Straw was appointed as lord chancellor and secretary of state for Justice on 28 June 2007. He has previously served as leader of the House of Commons, secretary of state for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and home secretary. In Opposition he served as shadow home secretary, shadow environment secretary and shadow education secretary.

Contributor(s): Nandita Ghose, A.F Harrold, Andre Mangeot, Ife Piancu | This event is aimed at encouraging anyone who has never been to a poetry event before to come and see the amazing and exciting range of possibilities that poetry has. Poet in the City's New Audiences initiative has fast become one of our most popular set of programmes with events at the Guardian on Spoken Word and at Imperial University on Work, Space and Maths. This event has a mix of our favourite performance and up and...

Contributor(s): Will Self | "All but death" wrote Emily Dickinson "can be adjusted", and yet, the cold fact that bodies must eventually die only serves to hide the reality of death as a contested cultural domain, where competing notions of public and private, tradition and innovation, individual and collective, are played out, and discourses within literature, art, jurisprudence, medicine, religion, and politics all stake their claim to knowledge of the great unknown. This talk will...

Contributor(s): Professor Conor Gearty, Ivan Hare, Kenan Malik | A year after the repeal of blasphemy from English law, religious defamation laws are tightening their grip on the world, with the apparent support of the United Nations. Whatever happened to freedom of speech? A discussion of the nature of blasphemy in the twenty-first century.

Contributor(s): Dr. Laura Bear, David Lan, Tim Parks | A reading from Tim Parks' latest novel Dreams of Rivers and Seas followed by a discussion on the anthropological themes explored within it.

Contributor(s): Jane Duran, John Mole, Robert Minhinnick, Jo Shapcott | A high profile poetry event reflecting on the choices that we all make in our lives, whether social, economic, moral or spiritual, featuring a great line-up of some of the UK's finest poets.

Contributor(s): Kapka Kassabova, Mustafa Kör, Naema Tahir | The migrant intellectual, writes Edward Said, has 'double perspective'. He or she is in a constant dialogue with his or her old and new home. Their writings often convey both a sense of loss and yearning but also display a richness wrought by the integration of multiple cultural identities, unique experiences and diverse modes of expression. These authors will explore what is it like to be migrant writers in their respective...

Contributor(s): Professor Lord Anthony Giddens | Political action and intervention, on local, national and international levels, is going to have a decisive effect on whether or not we can limit global warming, as well as how we adapt to that already occurring. At the moment, however, Anthony Giddens argues controversially, we do not have a systematic politics of climate change.

Contributor(s): Alistair Beaton, Martin Rowson | Alistair Beaton is Britain's leading writer of political satire. Martin Rowson is an award-winning political cartoonist whose work appears regularly in The Guardian, The Times, The Independent on Sunday, the Daily Mirror, the Scotsman, Tribune, Index on Censorship and Granta.

Contributor(s): Iain Sinclair, Jerry White, Patrick Wright | Iain Sinclair is a writer, poet and film-maker and widely regarded as one of London's greatest chroniclers. Jerry White has been writing about London for thirty years. His London in the Twentieth Century: A City and Its People won the Wolfson History Prize 2001. Patrick Wright is a writer with an interest in the cultural and political dimensions of modern history. He is the author of a number of highly acclaimed and sometimes also...

Contributor(s): Ben Okri | Poet in the City and LSE are honoured to be holding a special showcase event with the world famous poet and writer Ben Okri. Born in 1959 in Minna, northern Nigeria, he became world famous as a writer in 1991 when he won the Booker prize for his novel The Famished Road. Set in a Nigerian village, this was the first in a trilogy of successful novels about Azaro, a spirit child. In all he has published eight novels, and won countless awards and honours for his...

Contributor(s): Antony Gormley, Professor Richard Sennett, Neven Sidor | By exploring the experiential and social impacts of creating spaces for public engagement, contemplation and education - including the Fourth Plinth at Trafalgar Square and the LSE's New Academic Building - an artist, an architect and a sociologist discuss the intellectual practice of 'designing spaces for thought'.

Contributor(s): Hans Ulrich Obrist, Adrian Searle | Hans Ulrich Obrist was born in Zurich in May 1968. He joined the Serpentine Gallery as Co-director of Exhibitions and Programmes and Director of International Projects in April 2006. Prior to this he was Curator of the Musie d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris since 2000, as well as curator of museum in progress, Vienna, from 1993-2000.

Contributor(s): Mohsin Hamid, David Hare, Boyd Tonkin | This event marks the launch of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Weekend, the LSE's first ever Literary Festival, celebrating the completion of the New Academic Building. A discussion about not only the links between the social sciences and the arts, but the role of the arts in the LSE's past, present and future. Is literature relevant today?

Contributor(s): Morris Gleitzman, Elizabeth Laird, Anthony McGowan, Patrick Ness, Meg Rosoff | The culmination of a creative-writing competition for London state schools, this panel discussion looks at how authors find inspiration in contemporary social issues- from gang culture and knife crime, to the more timeless problems of being a teenager. The panel of popular and award-winning teen authors have dealt with topics as wide ranging as Ethiopian street children and Nazi Germany, with a...

Contributor(s): Karl Otto Pöhl | How has the euro performed over its first ten years, and how will it cope with the strains caused by the current financial and economic crisis? Karl Otto Pvhl was president of the German Bundesbank from 1980-91, and played a leading role in the preparation of the European single currency.

Contributor(s): Hazel Blears MP | The tragic events of 7/7 illustrated the threat to our society posed by violent extremism. Preventing it is one of the defining challenges of our age. Hazel Blears will explore the tough choices government has to make - how to empower new voices to join the debate, how to support people standing up for shared values and how to equip communities with the skills, confidence, and resilience they need to be part of the solution. In June 2007, Hazel Blears became...

Contributor(s): Joschka Fischer | Joschka Fischer was Germany's foreign minister and vice-chancellor from 1998 to 2005.

Contributor(s): Professor Peter Onuf | Professor Onuf explores the development of the elusive and controversial ideal of democracy from Thomas Jefferson's revolutionary writings to Abraham Lincoln's great effort to vindicate republican principles in the American Civil War. Peter Onuf is Thomas Jefferson Foundation Professor of History at the University of Virginia and Harmsworth Professor of American History at the University of Oxford.

Contributor(s): Pauline Tiffen, Rajah Banerjee, Kate Sebag, Katie Stafford, Dyborn Chinonga | The idea of fair trade has become increasingly popular amongst consumers and some producers. But who does fair-trade really benefit? The producers? The consumers? The Farmers? These are some of the issues that the panel will debate.

Contributor(s): Professor Fred Halliday | Thirty years after the fall of the Shah of Iran and the advent of Ayatollah Khomeini to power, the Iranian revolution continues to exert a dynamic ideological and political influence across the Middle East. In a retrospective analysis of the revolutionary period itself, some of whose decisive moments he witnessed at first hand, and of the subsequent development of the Islamic Republic Professor Fred Halliday will attempt to set these dramatic events...

Contributor(s): Alex Brummer, Vince Cable MP, Evan Davis, Gillian Tett, Professor Willem Buiter | This event will discuss the reporting leading up to the global credit crash of 2008. Alex Brummer has been City Editor for the Daily Mail since 2000. He has over thirty years' experience in the media. Vincent Cable is the Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer and speaks for his party on issues of Finance, European Economic and Monetary Union and the City. Evan Davis is a presenter...

Contributor(s): Dr Gezim Alpion | Having identified some of the reasons which made Sister Teresa leave the Loreto Order in 1948, Alpion approaches this painful but momentous departure from a sociological perspective through biographical and historical contextualization and in the light of the work of Marx, Freud, Durkheim on the sociology of religion and career.