Contributor(s): Joaquín Almunia | Joaquín Almunia was appointed Vice-President of the European Commission and Commissioner for Competition in February 2010. Prior to this he served as Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs from 2004-2010. From 1997-2000 he was leader of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE).

Contributor(s): Richard McGregor | China's political and economic growth in the past three decades is one of astonishing, epochal dimensions. The country has undergone a remarkable transformation on a scale similar to the industrial revolution in the West. The most remarkable part of this transformation, however, has been largely left untold the central role of the Chinese Communist Party. As an organization alone, the Party is a phenomenon of unique scale and power. With more than...

Contributor(s): Professor Herman Rapaport | A series of three lectures examining the proposition that contemporary art can go beyond transforming our understanding of the political and build new forms of political and social relations.

Contributor(s): Stephen Graham | Cities have become the new battleground of our increasingly urban world. From the slums of the global South to the wealthy financial centres of the West, Cities Under Siege traces how political violence now operates through the sites, spaces, infrastructures and symbols of the world's rapidly expanding metropolitan areas. Drawing on a wealth of original research, Graham shows how Western and Israeli militaries and security forces now perceive all urban terrain...

Contributor(s): Marcelo Ebrard | Centrally involved in the shaping of Mexico City since the early 80's, Marcelo Ebrard has lead ambitious and innovative campaigns to face the city's challenges, in relation to public security and environmental sustainability. The lecture will address his government's developmental priorities, making a case for social equality as being at the core of its initiatives to enhance mobility, improve public transport, and restore public space. Social inclusion, it...

Contributor(s): Bronislaw Komorowski | Bronislaw Komorowski, Poland's parliamentary speaker, has been thrust into the role of acting president after the death of Lech Kaczynski in a plane crash in Russia. As Marshal of the Sejm, Poland's lower house of parliament, since November 2007, presidential powers were automatically transferred to Mr Komorowski upon Mr Kaczynski's death.

Contributor(s): Ritt Bjerregaard | As mayor of Copenhagen, Ritt Bjerregaard presided over a number of pioneering initiatives - including promoting cycling and low emissions zones - which help demonstrate how cities can provide solutions to global challenges such as climate change

Contributor(s): Shankar Acharya, Isher Ahluwalia, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Surjit Bhalla, Martin Wolf | India has traversed a long way since the economic reforms of the early 1990s, and is now widely recognized as one of the fastest growing countries in the world. In view of Montek Singh Ahluwalia's key role in crafting reforms which helped integrate India with the world economy, this volume (India's Economy: Performance and Challenges Essays in Honour of Montek Singh Ahluwalia) in his honour...

Contributor(s): Carlos Gutierrez | The global financial crisis caused some governments to turn inward. Is protectionism here to stay? What can the US and EU do to stimulate growth and encourage trade?

Contributor(s): Dr Antonieta Medina Lara, Barbara Nyanzi-Wakholi | Until only a few years ago, an AIDS diagnosis in Africa was seen as the harbinger of an inevitable and lingering death. In rich countries, anti-retroviral therapy has made AIDS a manageable condition for most infected people. The challenge has been to provide such treatment in resource constrained settings, particularly in Africa. In a unique study combining sophisticated quantitative and qualitative analysis, Antonieta Medina...

Contributor(s): Professor Claudia Goldin | The talk concerns the challenges facing highly-educated young men and women who wish to have families while pursuing careers such as those in business, medicine, law, and academia. The long history of the career and family quest among college graduate women is explored, and relationships between demands in the labor market for workplace flexibility and the response by occupations, firms, and institutions are addressed.

Contributor(s): Lieutenant Colonel Shannon D. Beebe, Professor Mary Kaldor, Clare Short, Rory Stewart MP | A panel of speakers explore an idea for stabilising the dangerous neighbourhoods of the world through the implementation of human security ideas. The event celebrates the publication of The Ultimate Weapon is No Weapon: Human Security and the New Rules of War and Peace written by Shannon D Beebe and Professor Mary Kaldor, published by Perseus Books.

Contributor(s): Zack Cooper, Simon Dietz, Sarabajaya Kumar, Sarah Mistry | This keynote panel is part of the LSE PhD Poster Exhibition: Relating Research to Reality hosted on May 26 in the NAB. The panel will speak to the theme of the PhD Poster Exhibition, exploring diverse approaches to engagement between academia and wider society.

Contributor(s): Dr Paul Woolley | Paul Woolley explains why banking has grown so dominant, profitable and prone to crisis. He shows how giant funds, the custodians of social wealth, should act to make finance a better servant to society.

Contributor(s): Professor Hashim Sarkis | Is there anything to say about Beirut beyond the obvious, and by now exhausted, lessons of post-war reconstruction and identity politics? What is a "Beirut normal"? Is it worth examining? The lecture puts forward these questions not in order to diminish the city's architectural output but to reveal aspects of the city that have been overwhelmed by the discourses of war and politics. Through a series of specific architectural and urban analyses, the...

Contributor(s): Saif al-Islam Alqadhafi | Saif al-Islam Alqadhafi is currently Chairman of the Gaddafi International Foundation for Charity and Development based in Tripoli, Libya. He received his Ph.D. from the London School of Economics in 2009. The topic of his thesis was The Role of Civil Society in the Democratization of Global Governance Institutions: From 'Soft Power' to Collective Decision-Making? He received a Masters Degree in Business from Vienna's IMADEC University in 2000. He...

Contributor(s): Professor Muhammad Yunus | Muhammad Yunus has developed a visionary new dimension for capitalism which he calls "social business". By harnessing the energy of profit-making to the objective of fulfilling human needs, social business creates self-supporting, viable commercial enterprises that generate economic growth even as they produce goods and services that make the world a better place. In Building Social Business, Professor Yunus shows how social business has gone from...

Contributor(s): Dr Adam S Posen | There is a battle for the future of our planet between profiteers who threaten to destroy natural resources for gain and backward-looking environmental romantics who thwart constructive development. Paul Collier uses his ground-breaking research to offer realistic and sustainable solutions that reconcile the immediate needs of the world's growing population without despoiling the planet for future generations.

Contributor(s): Professor Paul Collier | Cities are the magnets for more than half the world's population. In such urban conditions, architects are increasingly called into debates about environmental and social sustainability, governance, and social inequality. Shaping Cities is an Urban Age public lecture series organised by LSE Cities that identifies the growing complexity of architectural practice in relation to the challenges of exponential urbanism.

Contributor(s): Dr Sam Tororei | The WHO estimates that 10 per cent of the population in poor countries is disabled. Disabled people have and want sexual lives - and, because of their disabilities, they may also be sexually abused and exploited. In this lecture Dr Sam Tororei from the Nairobi based Regional AIDS Training Network (RATN) will present findings from the most recent research. He will talk about how in Kenya steps are being taken to protect disabled people from sexual abuse while...

Contributor(s): Professor John Roberts | As early as 2005 Roubini speculated that house prices would soon sink the economy, and in 2006 warned the IMF that the The quality of management varies significantly across countries, with less developed countries featuring a large share of poorly managed firms. In a field experiment we explore why so many Indian firms are poorly managed, whether this can be improved and what the effect of better management is on performance. We find strong positive...

Contributor(s): Professor Edwin Hutchins | Edwin Hutchins discusses how the shift to seeing cognition as a biological rather than a logical phenomenon presents challenges and opportunities for understanding the relations between culture and cognition.

Contributor(s): Professor William Easterly | This lecture argues that occasions when development economists were more certain about 'the solution to global poverty' have often led to harmful consequences for the world's poor in the long-run. Sceptical criticism is a creative force that redirects attention and effort away from centrally-directed expert solutions towards effective decentralised problem-solving.

Contributor(s): Professor Nouriel Roubini | As early as 2005 Roubini speculated that house prices would soon sink the economy, and in 2006 warned the IMF that the United States was likely to face a catastrophic housing bust resulting in deep recession. Back then he was nicknamed 'Dr Doom' by the New York Times. In hindsight, economists have called him a prophet.

Contributor(s): Professor Carlota Perez | Drawing lessons from history, this lecture will argue that the potential of information technologies, the challenges of the environment and the scope for re-specialisation in the globalised economy could bring about a sustainable global 'golden age'.