Lse: Public Lectures And Events

Contributor(s): Professor Tania Murray Li | In Southeast Asia, 30 million more people live and work in rural areas today than they did in 1990. Yet rural people are largely absent from public and academic discourse, out of sight and out of mind. One reason for the neglect is the stubbornly persistent transition narrative which suggests that rural populations are anachronistic: they belong to the past, and sooner or later they will move to cities and join the march of progress. Hence it is not worth worrying too much about who they are or how they live, how national and global currents affect them, or how their aspirations and practices shape the course of history. The only question seems to be how to move them more quickly out of agriculture, into jobs, and off the land to free up more space for mining, corporate agriculture or conservation schemes. In this talk Tania Murray Li outlines the main powers and processes at work in transforming rural Southeast Asia and draw on her ethnographic research in Indonesi

Contributor(s): Lord Harrington, Professor Nigel Driffield, Professor Riccardo Crescenzi, Laura Citron | The recently published Harrington Review of Foreign Direct Investment offers a set of evidence-based and achievable recommendations for the UK to provide a tailored, responsive and comprehensive offer that meets foreign investors’ expectations and factors in the speed of the modern world. This panel discussion pushes the debate on FDI attraction and retention forward and consider how the Harrington Review’s recommendations can be put into practice and what impacts they will have. The panel discusses how best practices from around the world should inform new strategies to link FDI, Global Value Chains and sustainable and inclusive development in the UK and beyond.

Contributor(s): Professor Nello Cristianini | Instead, the prevailing form of machine intelligence is the direct result of a series of decisions that we have made over the past decades. These were shortcuts aimed at addressing various technical (and business) problems, and that are now behind many of the current concerns about the impact of this technology on society. A major shortcut was taken with the creation of the very first statistical language models, and we will describe how that step was the first move towards statistical AI, how it challenged previous assumptions, and how it reflected a new mindset that was starting to emerge among AI researchers. When business models, data availability and scientific paradigms became aligned, the current revolution started. Understanding how those technical shortcuts limit the options of regulators will be essential to safely co-exist with the present form of AI.

Contributor(s): Christian Lindner | The German Finance Minister talks about new realities and strengthening Germany’s competitiveness for the benefit of its economy and its partners.

Contributor(s): Professor Mark R Beissinger, Professor Olga Onuch | In his new book, The Revolutionary City, Mark R. Beissinger provides a new understanding of how revolutions happen and what they might look like in the future. He is joined by Olga Onuch who will discuss the book.  

Contributor(s): Lord Bassam, Sheela Agarwal, Madeleine Bunting | England invented the seaside resort as a place of pleasure and these towns became iconic in the nation's sense of identity for over a century, but for over four decades the rise of package holidays and cheap flights have eroded their economies. This has resulted in a 'salt fringe' of deprivation, low pay, poor health and low educational achievement and the worst social mobility in the country. Despite persistent affection for many of these resorts which still attract millions of visitors, their chronic plight has failed to capture political engagement and investment. How can these resorts, with their wealth of cultural heritage, forge a new future?

Contributor(s): Dr Michael I Kanu, Philippe Carvalho Raposo, Lowri Mai Griffiths, Dr Robert Blasiak, Dr Siva Thambisetty | On 5 March 2023, state parties at the United Nations agreed the text of a new Treaty to cover biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction, in areas also known as the high seas. The Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) Treaty sets out governance mechanisms for oceans over nearly half the planet’s surface covering marine genetic resources, environmental impact assessments, capacity building and technology transfer and Area Based Management Tools. It has the potential to transform the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity on the oceans beyond national jurisdiction and bring about greater sharing of the wealth of the oceans.

Contributor(s): Professor Madawi Al-Rasheed | Mainly the pervasive sub-national identities that dominated Arabia or the supra-national Islamic identity that the regime promoted to achieve legitimacy. But since the rise of Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman in 2017, a new populist Saudi nationalism is promoted. This lecture traces the shift in Saudi nation-building from the early days of religious nationalism to the current populist trend. It will explain why only recently constructing a Saudi nation became a priority for the leadership after almost a century of creating a state. The new Saudi national narrative inevitably involves selectively remembering and forgetting aspects of the past in order to consolidate a shift in national consciousness about who Saudis are. But while the new nationalism promises to invigorate the nation, the process is accompanied by serious violence against dissenting voices.

Contributor(s): Professor Joseph Heath | Major unanswered questions involve the relationship between biological and sociocultural factors in promoting cooperativeness, as well as the vulnerability of human social systems to stagnation or collapse. We have amassed a great deal of theory regarding these questions, but our scientific knowledge remains fragmented. In recent years, however, a few pieces of the puzzle have begun to be fitted together. In this lecture Joseph Heath discusses two important advances: first, gene-culture coevolutionary theory, which has shed light on a number of fundamental questions about the early emergence of human sociality, and second, recent work on the development of hierarchy and the state, which has made it possible integrate fundamental sociological insights about how complex societies are maintained. He will attempt to show how these advances move us closer to having a unified scientific understanding of human sociality.

Contributor(s): Professor Lea Ypi, Martin Sandbu, Professor Ingrid Robeyns | What we need is a world without decamillionaires – people having more than ten million pounds. That is what the philosopher Ingrid Robeyns from the University of Utrecht argues in her new book, Limitarianism. The Case Against Extreme Wealth. Why would a world without anyone being superrich be better? Because extreme wealth undermines democracy; is incompatible with climate justice; and the money could be used much better elsewhere. Most fundamentally, no-one deserves to have so much money. But do these reasons stand up to scrutiny? Would preventing the accumulation of extreme wealth kill innovation, undermine our freedoms and opportunities to live the lives we lead, and in the end also harm the poor? Is limitarianism viable? Would it require us to abolish capitalism, and if so, what could replace it? And what, if anything, would it require from the overwhelming majority who do not have sizeable wealth? This event puts these ideas to

Contributor(s): Professor Gargi Bhattacharyya | The framing of racial capitalism can become a way to freeze analysis - as if the same circuit of dispossession and violence continues across time and space and, with the desperate implication, for always. In this talk, Gargi Bhattacharyya considers the changing violences of racial capitalism and considers how can we use this language to identify emerging patterns of racialised dispossession, and what might we then do about it.

Contributor(s): Professor Ralph Hertwig | Nudging promises that minor adjustments in choice architecture can influence decisions without altering incentives. However, nudging has also been criticised, including objections to its soft paternalism and its neglect of agency, autonomy, and the longevity of behaviour change. In response to such criticisms— and the proliferation of highly engineered and manipulative, commercial choice architectures—other behavioural policy approaches have been proposed, focusing on empowering citizens to make well-informed decisions. Those approaches are based on a view of human cognitive and motivational capacities that goes beyond the deficit model underlying nudge. In the face of systemic problems such as climate change, pandemics, threats to liberal democracies, and rapid cycles of technological innovations, evidence-informed investments in a competent, informed, and active citizenry seem an essential—though not—sufficient policy approach. This talk outlines recent developments

Contributor(s): Dr Brian Klaas | Brian Klaas explores how our world really works, driven by strange interactions and random events. How much difference does our decision to hit the snooze button make? Did one couple's vacation really change the course of the twentieth century? His new book, Fluke, is a provocative new vision of how our world really works - and why chance determines everything.

Contributor(s): Professor Manuel Pastor, T.O. Molefe | Traditional economics is built on the assumption of self-interested individuals seeking to maximize personal gain, but that is far from the whole story. Sharing, caring, and a desire to uphold the collective good are also powerful motives. In a world on fire – facing threats to multiracial democracy, tensions from rising economic inequality, and even the existential threat of climate change, can we build an alternative economics based on cooperation? In this lecture Manuel Pastor, joined by T.O. Molefe, will discuss his newest book Solidarity Economics: why mutuality and movements matter. He will introduce the concept of solidarity economics, which is rooted in the idea that equity is key to prosperity and social movements are crucial to the reconfiguration of power in our politics and show how we can use solidarity economics to build a fairer economy that can generate prosperity and preserve the planet.

Contributor(s): Adam Vaughan, Dr James Painter, Fiona Harvey, Roger Harrabin | This event gathers journalists from various backgrounds to discuss the challenges they face in informing and promoting balanced public discussions about decarbonisation, particularly in the context of looming local and general elections. Media coverage of climate change has long centered on alerting the public about, as well as debating and contesting, the dangers of climate change. Today, history has moved on. The UK public understands this issue is real and urgent; by and large, Britons supports decarbonisation of the economy. Yet, decarbonisation is at once a grand political project – offering the possibility of revamping and redesigning the make-up of infrastructure, technological networks, and land-use, in ways that will increase well-being, health, and possibly the vitality of many local economies – but also a slow process, difficult to understand for the lay person, full of trade offs and uncertainties.

Contributor(s): Alexander De Croo | Belgium will enter 2024 as the rotating chair of the European Union. As one of the founding fathers of the Union, Belgium presides over the EU for the 13th time. The number might sound unlucky and the challenges ahead are surely daunting. That said, Prime Minister De Croo will talk about the strengths of the Union, its relationship with the United Kingdom, and the ways in which the EU needs to reform to stay in shape.

Contributor(s): Professor Sam Friedman | More than one in four people in the UK, from solidly middle-class backgrounds, mistakenly think of themselves as working-class. Why is this? In this episode of Extra iQ, a shorter style of the LSE iQ podcast, Sue Windebank speaks to Sam Friedman, a sociologist of class and inequality at LSE to find out more. Sam spoke to the podcast in November 2022 for an episode which asked, ‘How does class define us?’ The whole interview was fantastic but we couldn’t include it all in the original episode. This episode features some more of the thought-provoking content from that interview.   Contributors Sam Friedman   Research Deflecting Privilege: Class Identity and the Intergenerational Self by Sam Friedman, Dave O’Brien and Ian McDonald

Contributor(s): Dr Bisher Khasawneh | Bisher Khasawneh (@BisherKhasawneh) is Prime Minister of The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and Minister of Defence, positions he has held since October 2020. He held the position of Minister of State for Foreign Affairs from 2016 to 2017 and Minister of State for Legal Affairs 2017-2018. He served as King Abdullah II’s Advisor for Communication and Coordination Affairs from April 2019 to August 17, 2020 and as the King’s Adviser for Policies in the Royal Hashemite Court until he became Prime Minister. He obtained a bachelor's degree in law from the University of Jordan, in addition to a master's degree in International Law from the London School of Economics and Political Science, as well as a Doctorate in Law. David Kershaw is Dean of LSE Law School. He is also a member of the LSE Council, the Governing Body of LSE, and an Associate Tenant at Cornerstone Barristers. He is a former General Editor of the Modern Law Review. He joined LSE in 2006. Prior to joining LSE he was a

Contributor(s): Professor Iván Werning | Previous inflationary episodes have taught us a lot on what causes inflation and what can be done to reduce it. But the world has changed and previous insights may no longer be valid. Iván Werning will discuss how old insights extended with new frameworks can be used to shed light on the recent surge in inflation.

Contributor(s): Professor Susan Parnell | Sue Parnell outlines why a new urban disposition, that breaks with geographies, disciplines, and ideologies might be helpful in building new communities of practice to advance a global urban agenda. Creating solutions to the complex problems of cities, like gender inequality, informality, climate resilience or disease prevention, necessitates global not just national and local analysis and intervention. Some progress has been made, for example in the SDGs and other multi-lateral agreements. But there remains a mismatch between the importance of the urban question and the global policy attention it demands. To be effective the global urban agenda must be informed by a broad range of evidence, scientific voices must be appropriately embedded to influence policy, and the urban agenda needs to have universal credibility.