Lse: Public Lectures And Events

Contributor(s): Professor Helen Margetts, Professor Andrew Murray, Dr Dorottya Sallai, Chloe Smith | In a world increasingly shaped by digital transformation, AI and data science present new opportunities to change policymaking in nearly all areas of policy. Yet the capabilities of these emerging technologies are still unfolding and need to be better understood, both in terms of their benefits and their limitations. This event marks the publication of the most recent issue of the LSE Public Policy Review, which brings together contributions from a range of disciplines - from philosophy to statistics, government and law - to reflect together on future directions, applications, and consequences of the use of AI in public policies. Join our panellists as they discuss how emerging technologies can transform evidence-based policy development through their analytical capabilities, predictive powers, and real-time monitoring, while also bringing questions around regulation, transparency, accountability and ethics to

Contributor(s): Professor Miguel de Beistegui, Dr Demetra Kasimis, Professor Jonathan White | Crises abound: our economies, democracies, social relations, cultural identities, and the very planet that we live on are subjected to repeated and increasingly severe shocks. Have we entered an age of chronic crisis? From diverse disciplinary perspectives, the event will explore conceptual and theoretical approaches that might help us better to understand, engage with, and respond to our time as a time ‘out of joint’.

Contributor(s): Jim Muir | This event will be the inaugural memorial lecture for the late Ian Black, former visiting fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and Middle East editor for The Guardian. In this first lecture, Jim Muir, Ian’s colleague at the LSE Middle East Centre and fellow seasoned journalist of the Middle East, will explore how reporting on the Middle East has been challenged and had to adapt in the extraordinary conditions prevailing since October 7, 2023.

Contributor(s): Professor Rachel Aldred, Professor Marco te Brömmelstroet, Dr Will Norman, Julie Plichon | Cycling and other forms of active travel have significant benefits for wellbeing, local economies, air pollution and the environment. Indeed, a substantial increase in active travel is needed to achieve London’s 2030 target for net zero carbon emissions. Yet, while London’s roads are increasingly popular and safe, more must be done to make them safer. London universities have repeatedly experienced the human cost of unsafe streets, with LSE losing three members of its community in less than a year. In response, staff and students initiated a cross-university letter to the London Mayoral candidates. The letter asked candidates to commit to putting a stop to cyclist and pedestrian deaths caused by motor vehicles in London by 2028, and to bring forward the deadline for London’s ‘Vision Zero’, its strategy to eradicate deaths from London’s roads, from 2041 to 2032.

Contributor(s): Professor Elliott Green | The late LSE Professor Ernest Gellner famously proposed that industrialization generated modern national identities. Yet there has been very little empirical attention to examining the validity of Gellner’s theory using cross-national data, especially within the developing world. In this inaugural lecture Elliott Green will examine the effects of industrialization on national identification in contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa and show that industrialization and economic development more broadly have a surprisingly strong positive impact on the development of nationalism in the African context. The lecture will conclude with wider thoughts on how and why industrialization continues to transform national identities in the contemporary world.

Contributor(s): Dr Valentina Contreras, Professor Julián Messina, Dr Sebastián Nieto Parra, Professor Andrés Velasco | Latin America is exceptionally unequal, with data widely suggesting it is one of the world’s two most unequal regions. Inequality has persisted at exceptionally high levels despite clear social pressures for its reduction and the widely shared conviction that excessive inequality is detrimental to economic progress. The Latin America and Caribbean Review (LACIR), committed to addressing these challenges, convenes high-level scholars to provide a coherent and comprehensive overview of the inequality problem in Latin America. Through a meticulous blend of in-depth critical reviews of the literature, pioneering research, and novel analyses, LACIR endeavours to deepen our understanding of this complex issue. This public event will present the scale of the problem of inequality in Latin America and point to some of the possible ways out of this ‘inequality trap’. Bringing together scholars and pol

Contributor(s): Eline Kuipers, Dr King-Ho Leung, Dr Georgie Mills, Dr Catherine M Robb | Taylor Swift's music connects with philosophy in many places: What is love? What is the value of negative emotions like anger, heartbreak and grief? Is there a moral obligation to speak out against injustice? What does it take to count as a "philosopher"? A new edited book, Taylor Swift and Philosophy, offers a fun and accessible discussion of the ideas and questions that arise from Taylor Swift's life and work. Combining top-tier philosophical research and a passion for Taylor's music, a team of scholars investigate the wisdom that can come from Taylor's songs, bringing new perspectives to important contemporary issues. This panel event will launch the book with a discussion of its main themes.

Contributor(s): Fran Heathcote, Joe Ryle, Professor Kirsten Sehnbruch | n the UK, we work some of the longest hours in Europe while having one of the least productive economies. We invented the weekend a century ago and are long overdue an update to working hours. Rising numbers of employers worldwide are switching to a four-day week, making workers happier and organisations stronger. A four-day week with no loss of pay gives workers the time to live happier and more fulfilled lives, allowing for the parts of life that are often neglected, such as rest, parenting and leisure. It has significant benefits for businesses, as real-world examples show that employers who move to a four-day week improve productivity and cut costs. Research also shows that introducing a 4 day week could reduce the UK's carbon footprint by 127 million tonnes per year. This event will discuss how businesses, charities, and councils can reap the benefits of introducing smarter working. Our panel will present the academic evidence for th

Contributor(s): Dr Guru Madhavan | Our world is filled with pernicious problems. How, for example, did novice pilots learn to fly without taking to the air and risking their lives? How should cities process mountains of waste without polluting the environment? Challenges that tangle personal, public, and planetary aspects―often occurring in health care, infrastructure, business, and policy―are known as wicked problems, and they are not going away anytime soon.

Contributor(s): Professor Bingchun Meng, Professor Jeff Pooley, Professor Terhi Rantanen, Dr Marsha Siefert, Dr Wendy Willems | Who were the key pioneers in the formation of comparative communications between the 1920s – 1950s, and how do their legacies of scholarship and practice inform the contemporary global landscapes of news reporting on war and the dissemination of propaganda? Exploring Terhi Rantanen’s new book, Dead Men’s Propaganda: Ideology and Utopia in Comparative Communications Studies, this panel will examine how comparative communications research, from its very beginning, can be understood as governed by the Mannheimian concepts of ideology and utopia and the power play between them. The close relationship between these two concepts resulted in a bias in knowledge production in comparative communications research, contributed to dominant narratives of generational conflicts, and to the demarcation of Insiders and Outsiders. By focusing on a generation at the forefront of comparative communicat

Contributor(s): Professor Lawrence Lessig | In this lecture, Lawrence Lessig will discuss the impact of artificial intelligence on the 2024 American election, and the implications that this will have for democracy in the future.

Contributor(s): Professor Larry Kramer | Join us for the inaugural lecture of LSE President and Vice Chancellor of LSE Larry Kramer in which he will talk about his vision for LSE, the role of the social sciences in a changing world and our place in the 21st Century. Larry Kramer has been President and Vice Chancellor of LSE since April 2024. A constitutional scholar, university administrator, and philanthropic leader, he was previously the President of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Dean of Stanford Law School. Conor Gearty is Professor of Human Rights Law in the LSE Law School. He was Director of LSE’s Centre for the Study of Human Rights (2002-2009) and has been Professor of human rights law at the Law School since 2002. In 2012 he became Director of LSE’s Institute of Public Affairs. He has published widely on terrorism, civil liberties and human rights. Conor is also a barrister and was a founder member of Matrix chambers from where he continues to practise.

Contributor(s): Professor Rebecca Katz | This public event will describe the state of global health security, global governance of disease and the policy epidemiology framework used in the Analysis and Mapping of Policies for Emerging Infectious Diseases project. We will describe the importance of evidence-based decision making for responding to epidemic and pandemic threats and how to translate researcher findings for decision makers.

Contributor(s): Alexandra Chesterfield, Elisabeth Costa, Professor Oliver Hauser, Dr Dario Krpan, Professor Susan Michie, Professor Robert West | Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming various aspects of behavioural science. For example, AI-driven models are being used to predict human behaviour and decision-making, and to design personalized behavioural interventions. AI can also be used to generate artificial research participants on whom behavioural interventions can be tested instead of on humans. AI is creating many new opportunities and challenges in behavioural science, disrupting the discipline to the degree that researchers, practitioners, and any behavioural science enthusiasts are trying to keep up with the new developments and understand how to best navigate the rapidly changing landscape. In this public event, speakers who are associated with pioneering work on AI in relation to behavioural science, as part of their own research or organisational initiatives, will discuss their views on how

Contributor(s): Professor Sir John Curtice, Professor Anand Menon, Professor Paula Surridge | Has Labour’s election marked a real turning point?This is a thought-provoking event as we provide an early assessment of the new Labour government’s actions and goals.

Contributor(s): Professor Eric Maskin, Professor Amartya Sen, Dr Suzanne Bloks, Professor Richard Bradley, Rudolf Fara | As authoritarianism and political violence threaten democracies throughout the world at levels not seen since the 1930s, attacks on free and fair elections are rife. Democracy is about choice, and achieving a legitimate democratic system of government relies on making representative social choices. Join us to find out about VoteDemocracy, which is a new global education initiative featuring a comprehensive course on the central role of voting in democracy. In support of the new project, Nobel Laureates Amartya Sen and Eric Maskin address core democratic principles. Professor Sen revisits the foundational ‘rule by the people’ with his talk, Democracy—Why, and Why Not? Professor Maskin offers an electoral prescription in response to his topic, How Should Members of Parliament (and Congress) be Elected?

Contributor(s): Hashi Mohamed, Dr. Aaron Reeves, Professor Lauren Rivera, Dr Faiza Shaheen | In Aaron Reeves and Sam Friedman’s new book, which they launch at this event, they provide a uniquely data-rich analysis of the British elite from the Victorian era to today: who gets in, how they get there, what they like and look like, where they go to school, and what politics they perpetuate.Think of the British elite and familiar caricatures spring to mind. But are today’s power brokers a conservative chumocracy, born to privilege and anointed at Eton and Oxford? Or is a new progressive elite emerging with different values and political instincts? Aaron Reeves and Sam Friedman combed through a trove of data in search of an answer, scrutinizing the profiles, interests, and careers of over 125,000 members of the British elite from the late 1890s to today. At the heart of this meticulously researched study is the historical database of Who’s Who, but the authors also mined genealogical records, examined probate data

Contributor(s): Rory Stewart, Professor James Walters | While religion continues to be perceived as of diminishing significance by many in Western Europe, religious nationalisms are on the rise around the world and the religious dimensions of many conflicts are becoming more pronounced. While the early twenty-first century focused on political Islam, we now see new political formations across all the world’s faith traditions, as well as new faith-based initiatives to engage more constructively with global issues such as conflict and climate change. Rory Stewart – academic, podcaster and former politician – will share his perspectives on why this happening and what can be done about it, in this conversation with James Walters, founding director of LSE Faith Centre, chaired by LSE's Mukulika Banerjee.

Contributor(s): Nils Gilman, Dr Ganga Shreedhar, Professor Karen E Smith | Deadly viruses, climate-changing carbon molecules, and harmful pollutants across the globe are unimpeded by national borders. While the consequences of these flows range across scales, from the planetary to the local, the authority and resources to manage them are concentrated mainly at one level: the nation-state. This profound mismatch between the scale of planetary challenges and the institutions tasked with governing them is leading to cascading systemic failures. Join us for this event featuring Nils Gilman, co-author of a new book, Children of a Modest Star: Planetary Thinking for an Age of Crises. Drawing on intellectual history, political philosophy, and the holistic findings of Earth system science, Children of a Modest Star argues that it is essential to reimagine our governing institutions - we can only thrive if the multi-species ecosystems we inhabit are also flourishing. Using this book as the basis for discussion, our pa

Contributor(s): Matt Blakemore, Richard Nesbitt, Carolyn Scott, Reshma Shaikh, Noa Srebrnik | This event will navigate the complexities of AI implementation in the workplace and examine how these technologies are being developed to benefit society while challenging traditional work experiences. The event will feature conversations on the latest advancements, challenges, and ethical considerations in AI development, emphasising reducing bias and supporting diverse communities. Participants can interact with panellists during a Q&A session, fostering a deeper understanding of how AI can drive positive change.