Contributor(s): Professor Mick Cox | Professor Mick Cox is one of Europe’s leading commentators on the United States. He holds a Chair in International Relations and is also Co-Director of IDEAS, a Centre for the Study of Diplomacy and Strategy at LSE. He is the author, editor and co-editor of over twenty books. His most recent books include a major popular text on US Foreign Policy published by Oxford University Press, and a study on US Presidents and Democracy Promotion. He is a regular...

Contributor(s): Pankaj Mishra | The Victorian period, viewed in the West as a time of self-confident progress, was experienced by Asians as a catastrophe, with foreign soldiers and merchants tearing apart the great empires which had once formed the heart of civilization. In his new book From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia, which he will discuss in this event Pankaj Mishra allows the reader to see foreign imperialism anew, through the eyes of the...

Contributor(s): Sir Stephen Wall, George Eustice MP, Roger Helmer MEP, Mark Reckless MP, Dr Helen Szamuely | With the crisis continuing in the eurozone, recent polls suggest that the vast majority of the British electorate would be in favour of a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union. In the current climate the voices of those in favour of the European project have been noticeable by their absence. Today programme presenter Evan Davis chairs this debate on the motion...

Contributor(s): William Jefferson Clinton | William Jefferson Clinton is the Founder of the William J. Clinton Foundation| and 42nd President of the United States. He was the first Democratic president in six decades to be elected twice — first in 1992 and then in 1996. After leaving the White House, President Clinton established the William J. Clinton Foundation with the mission to improve global health, strengthen economies, promote healthier childhoods, and protect the environment by...

Contributor(s): Dr Ernestina Coast, Gary Darmstadt, Karl Hofmann, Ashley Judd, Nina Muita | On July 11, the UK Government and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will launch the London Summit on Family Planning. The unprecedented event will bring world leaders together to catalyze political and financial commitments to reach the needs of an additional 120 million women who lack access to modern, voluntary family planning methods. One day prior on July 10, LSE Health and PSI (Population...

Contributor(s): Professor Danny Quah | Danny Quah is Professor of Economics and Kuwait Professor at LSE. He is Senior Fellow at LSE IDEAS, and had previously served as LSE’s Head of Department for Economics (2006-2009) and Council Member on Malaysia’s National Economic Advisory Council (2009-2011). Quah is also Tan Chin Tuan Visiting Professor at the National University of Singapore, and lectures regularly at Peking University. He holds degrees from Princeton and Harvard, and was Assistant...

Contributor(s): Professor Hamid Dabashi | Will the dispute over Iran's potential nuclear proliferation lead to war? Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.

Contributor(s): Professor Lord Robert Skidelsky, Dr Maurice Glasman | Why do we work almost as hard as we did 40 years ago, despite being on average twice as rich? Robert Skidelsky suggests an escape from the work and consumption treadmill. This event marks the publication of Robert and Edward Skidelsky's new book How Much is Enough? The Economics of the Good Life. Dr Maurice Glasman is a reader in political theory at London Metropolitan University, author of Unnecessary Suffering and a...

Contributor(s): Andrew Blum | The internet is not some abstract "cloud" of connectivity - it exists in tubes - on the ground and under the sea. Andrew Blum explains how the internet exists in the real world and makes the case for why we all need to understand this. This event celebrates the publication of Tubes: Behind the Scenes at the Internet. Andrew Blum is a correspondent at Wired (U.S.) magazine whose work has appeared in numerous publications, including the New Yorker, The Atlantic,...

Contributor(s): Professor Joseph E Stiglitz | In his new book, The Price of Inequality, which he will discuss in this lecture Joseph Stiglitz considers the causes of inequality, why is it growing so rapidly and what are its economic impacts? He explains that markets are neither efficient nor stable and will tend to accumulate money in the hands of the few rather than engender competition and considers our political system that frequently shapes markets in ways that advantage the richest over...

Contributor(s): Professor Joseph E Stiglitz, Professor Amartya Sen | Joseph E Stiglitz was chief economist at the World Bank until January 2000. He is currently University Professor at Columbia University and won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001. Amartya Sen teaches economics and philosophy at Harvard University, and was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, until 2004. He won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1998. Professor Sen is an honorary fellow of LSE. This event is supported by...

Contributor(s): Tony Burton, Alex Morton, Professor Henry Overman, Professor Anne Power | House prices in Britain remain exceptionally high. We urgently need more housing, but where should we build it? Can we meet our needs by redeveloping existing built up areas? Or does the problem call for more radical solutions. Tony Burton is from Urban Task Force; Alex Morton is from Policy Exchange, Senior Research Fellow for Housing & Planning; Professor Henry Overman is from LSE and Professor Ann...

Contributor(s): Frederick Kempe | Kempe explores the war of nerves between the young, untested President Kennedy and the bombastic Soviet leader, as they squared off over the future of a divided city - and the world came to the brink of disaster. This event celebrates the publication of Kempe's new book Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khruschev, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth. Frederick Kempe is president and CEO of the Atlantic Council and a former Berlin bureau chief of the Wall Street...

Contributor(s): David Goldblatt | Seventeen days, 12,000 athletes, 29 sports, 302 gold medals: this event will be your personal trainer for the back stories and culture of the modern Olympics. David Goldblatt is a writer, broadcaster and teacher. He is author of The Ball is Round: a global history of football and, with Johnny Acton, How to Watch the Olympics. Simon Glendinning is a reader in European philosophy in the European Institute, LSE and director of the Forum for European Philosophy.

Contributor(s): Dambisa Moyo | Dambisa Moyo discusses the increasingly heated competition for the world's water and land, and the likely geopolitical fallout of China's biggest commodity rush in history. Are we heading for large-scale conflict and what can governments do to avoid it? Dambisa Moyo author of Dead Aid and How the West Was Lost; she has been an economist at the World Bank and Goldman Sachs and was chosen as Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2009. This...

Contributor(s): Professor Luigi Zingales | When the Italian-born economist Luigi Zingales first arrived in the United States in the 1980s, he embraced the American dream: the belief that what brings you success is hard work, not luck or who you know. But the economic events of the past decade, combined with the actions of politicians from both sides, have undermined capitalism's reputation. In A Capitalism for the People, which he will discuss in this lecture, Zingales warns that the US...

Contributor(s): His Holiness the Dalai Lama | His Holiness the Dalai Lama is visiting the LSE to deliver the opening speech of a one' day conference entitled Tolerance in a Just and Fair Society, at the invitation of Frederick Bonnart Braunthal Trust, Matrix Chambers, the Sigrid Rausing Trust and the London School of Economics & Political Science. HH the Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, is the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people. He was born on 6th July 1935 in north-eastern Tibet and...

Contributor(s): Dr Simon Glendinning | A look at the role of philosophy in launching the idea of a European Union with reference to Kant and Nietzsche. Simon Glendinning is reader in European philosophy in the European Institute, LSE and director of the Forum for European Philosophy.

Contributor(s): Faiza Chaudary, Dr Armine Ishkanian, Professor David Lewis, Ralph Michell, Professor Simon Szreter | To coincide with the publication of The Big Society Debate: a new agenda for social welfare? the speakers will examine the concept's ideological underpinnings and the challenges it poses for those involved in translating the ideas of the big society into practice. Faiza Chaudary is the deputy chief executive and director of policy and communications for the National Council for...

Contributor(s): Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Professor Christine Chinkin, Professor Nicola Lacey, Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, Dr Maung Zarni | Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is Chairman of the National League for Democracy (NLD) and Member of Parliament of Kawhmu constituency in Burma. She was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1991. Christine Chinkin, FBA, is currently Professor in International Law at the London School of Economics. She has widely published on issues of international human rights law, law,...

Contributor(s): H.E. Mohammed Al-Sabah, Steffen Hertog | H.E. Dr Mohammed Al-Sabah is the former Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Kuwait. Steffen Hertog is Lecturer in Comparative Politics at LSE and author of Princes, brokers and bureaucrats: oil and the state in Saudi Arabia.

Contributor(s): Professor Diane Coyle | The world's leading economies are facing many crises. What these crises have in common is a reckless disregard for the future. This lecture examines the policy changes necessary to run the economy for tomorrow as well as today. Diane Coyle runs Enlightenment Economics. She is vice chair of the BBC Trust, and a visiting professor at the University of Manchester.

Contributor(s): Professor Sebastian Seung | Sebastian Seung, a dynamic young professor at MIT, is at the forefront of a revolution in neuroscience which believes that the basis of our identity lies not in our genes but in the connections between our brain cells. Just as the genome has been mapped, so Seung plans to map the "connectome". By mapping this "connectome", Seung hopes to unlock the mysteries of identity and personality. Sebastian Seung is Professor of Computational Neuroscience at...

Contributor(s): Anders Dahlvig | Businesses are in the spotlight as never before and consumer trust in many sectors has deteriorated badly in recent times. In this lecture, the former president and CEO of Ikea, Anders Dahlvig, explains how a clear understanding of vision and values can translate throughout the entire business into best practice and sustainable profit growth. Anders Dahlvig is the former President and CEO of Ikea. With him at the helm from 1999-2009, Ikea enjoyed unprecedented...