London School of Economics: Public lectures and events

Speaker(s): Dr Werner Telesko | A look at how Habsburg visions and constructions of identity were reflected in the arts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and how the history of the Habsburg Empire was “reconfigured” after 1918. Werner Telesko is corresponding member of the section for the humanities and the social sciences at the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

Speaker(s): Professor Conor Gearty, Dr Devika Hovell | Leading human rights lawyer Professor Conor Gearty speaks about his new book Liberty and Security with Dr Devika Hovell. Conor Gearty is professor of human rights law at LSE. Devika Hovell is a lecturer in public international law at LSE.

Speaker(s): Professor Lord Giddens | The risks we face, and the opportunities we have, in the 21st century are in many respects quite different from those experienced in earlier periods of history. How should we analyse and respond to such a world? What is a rational balance of optimism and pessimism? How can we plan for a future that seems to elude our grasp and in some ways is imponderable? Anthony Giddens is former Director of the LSE and a member of the House of Lords.

Speaker(s): Professor Stefano Bartolini | The EU crisis, and the new economic governance instruments invented to solve it, further complicates the problem of the source of EU legitimacy. This lecture will explore these problematic connections. Stefano Bartolini is director of the Robert Schumann Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute.

Speaker(s): Professor Fawwaz Traboulsi | With few comprehensive histories of Lebanon, Professor Fawwaz Traboulsi's A History of Modern Lebanon, which weaves together more than five centuries of the country's social, political, cultural and economic history, has become a go-to reference for anyone who wants to understand the country. In this lecture, Traboulsi will share the problems he has faced in writing the history of Lebanon and how he has dealt and proposes to deal with these challenges. This event is free and open to all on first come first served basis. Please make sure to arrive early to book your seat. *Note: Professor Traboulsi will also give a smaller seminar on Wednesday 20 2013, in which he will discuss the Arab uprisings. This seminar is limited to 50 attendees and is already fully registred. Fawwaz Traboulsi is Associate Professor of Political Science and History at the Lebanese American University, and the American University of Beirut. He has been a visiting professor at New York University, the University of Michigan, Columbia University, and Cairo University, and a fellow at St. Antony’s College, Oxford, and the Wissenshaftskolleg, Berlin. His books, papers and articles focus on the history, politics, social movements, political philosophy, folklore, and art in the Arab World. Traboulsi’s translations include Edward Said’s memoir, Out of Place, as well as Said's Humanism and Democratic Critique. Traboulsi's most recent publication is A History of Modern Lebanon (in English and Arabic, 2007). Traboulsi, a long time journalist, is a columnist for As-Safir Daily and chief editor of Bidayat, a new quarterly magazine launched last year.

Speaker(s): Dr Shani Orgad, Professor Saskia Sassen, Laurie Taylor | Marking the publication of Shani Orgad's latest book Media Representation and the Global Imagination (Polity), the panel will discuss how the way we imagine the world and its 'others' is nourished by the media, and how the media can offer different images and accounts from the ones we encounter.Dr Shani Orgad is a Senior Lecturer in Media and Communications at LSE.Saskia Sassen is Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology and Co-Chair Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University.Laurie Taylor presents Thinking Allowed on BBC Radio 4. He is a consultant, writes for newspapers and magazines, contributes to television programmes and is an accomplished public speaker.Charlie Beckett is Head of Department of Media and Communications and Director of Polis.

Speaker(s): Dr Julian Baggini, Hardeep Singh Kohli | Humour is not to be confused with comedy and jokes. Humour concerns something that belongs to and can more or less pervade everyday life and conversation, not something restricted to comedy sketches or stand-up routines. In this dialogue we will explore everyday humour, and its distinctive regional and cultural variations. Are there principles of British humour that transcend class, profession, religion and region? Are there ‘cultures of humour’ across the world? Julian Baggini is a philosopher, writer and broadcaster. Hardeep Singh Kohli is a raconteur, a cook, a writer and a broadcaster.

Speaker(s): Dr Eamonn Butler | The Nobel economist F A Hayek was the arch-rival of Keynes in the 1930s and 1940s. Some today say that he has the better explanation of boom-bust cycles and how to end them. His prescription is the exact opposite of Keynes – no big infrastructure spending, no keeping things afloat with quantitative easing and cheap credit, but leaner government, lower taxes, less regulation and more freedom for businesses and individuals alike. In this lecture, Hayek biographer Dr Eamonn Butler of the Adam Smith Institute explains Hayek's view that a prosperous economy and a creative society are better achieved by individual freedom than by state planning. This event marks his latest book Friedrich Hayek: The ideas and influence of the libertarian economist.Eamonn Butler is director of the Adam Smith Institute, rated one of the world's leading policy think-tanks. He has degrees in economics, philosophy and psychology, gaining a PhD from the University of St Andrews in 1978 and an honorary DLitt from Heriot-Watt University in 2012. During the 1970s he worked on pensions and welfare issues for the US House of Representatives, and taught philosophy in Hillsdale College, Michigan, before returning to the UK to help found the Adam Smith Institute.Eamonn is author of books on the pioneering economists Milton Friedman, F A Hayek, Ludwig von Mises and Adam Smith, and on the Austrian and Public Choice schools of economics. He is also co-author of Forty Centuries of Wage and Price Controls, and of a series of books on intelligence testing. Eamonn contributes to the leading UK print and broadcast media on current issues, and his recent popular books The Best Book on the Market, The Rotten State of Britain and The Alternative Manifesto have attracted considerable attention.Allister Heath is Editor of City A.M. Prior to taking over at City A.M. in March 2008, he was Editor of The Business magazine, a publication he joined as economics correspondent and leader-writer when it was a Sunday newspaper in 2002. During those years, he was also a regular contributor to The Scotsman and Scotland on Sunday. While at The Business, he also served a two year term as a Wincott visiting professor of financial journalism at the University of Buckingham. Heath was born and schooled in France. He moved to the UK to attend university, graduating with a BSc in economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science and an M.Phil in economics from Hertford College, Oxford University.

Speaker(s): Jo Attwool | LSE London's 2013 Lent term seminar series begins on the 14th of January. Speakers from within and beyond academia will focus on many of the implications of the current economic and political environment for London, covering relevant issues such as the road pricing, UK trends in higher education, census data and localism. Presenters include academics and practitioners from relevant fields.

Speaker(s): Navi Pillay | In recent years, the world has witnessed a number of incidents involving hate speech at times with wide-ranging and global repercussions. Many governments have put in place measures which not always are in consonance with international human rights law. This lecture recalls the relevant provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and showcases the jurisprudence of the expert bodies monitoring their implementation. It also illustrates some recent activities undertaken by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.The appointment of Navanethem Pillay (Navi) as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights was approved by the General Assembly on 28 July 2008 and she assumed her functions on 1st September 2008. On 24 May 2012, the United Nations General Assembly extended her mandate for a further two years.Ms Pillay, a South African national, was the first woman to start a law practice in her home province of Natal in 1967. Over the next few years, she acted as a defense attorney for anti-apartheid activists, exposing torture, and helping establish key rights for prisoners on Robben Island.She also worked as a lecturer at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, and later was appointed Vice-President of the Council of the University of Durban Westville. In 1995, after the end of apartheid, Ms. Pillay was appointed as acting judge on the South African High Court, and in the same year was elected by the United Nations General Assembly to be a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, where she served a total of eight years, the last four (1999-2003) as President. She played a critical role in the ICTR's groundbreaking jurisprudence on rape as genocide, as well as on issues of freedom of speech and hate propaganda. In 2003, she was elected as a judge on the International Criminal Court in the Hague, where she remained until August 2008.In South Africa, as a member of the Women's National Coalition, she contributed to the inclusion of an equality clause in the country’s Constitution that prohibits discrimination on grounds of race, religion and sexual orientation. She co-founded Equality Now, an international women's rights organization, and has been involved with other organizations working on issues relating to children, detainees, victims of torture and of domestic violence, and a range of economic, social and cultural rights.Ms. Pillay received a BA and a LLB from Natal University South Africa. She also holds a Master of Law and a Doctorate of Juridical Science from Harvard University. She was born in 1941, and has two daughters.

Speaker(s): Jean-Paul Costa | A unique opportunity to put your questions to a former president of the European Court of Human Rights, via Twitter @LSELaw using #LSECosta. Jean-Paul Costa is the former president of the European Court of Human Rights.

Speaker(s): Nick Robinson | Live from Downing Street is the BBC’s political editor’s colourful and personal account of the relationship between the men and women who wield power and those whose job it is to tell the public what they are doing which he will speak about in this lecture at LSE. Nick's book focuses on the key milestones in the long and rocky relationship between politicians and broadcasters: the prime ministers who pioneered broadcasting live from Downing Street – Baldwin and Macmillan; those who fought back – Churchill, Wilson, Thatcher and Blair; and those who could never quite come to terms with it. It also charts the emergence of the charismatic inquisitors of radio and television from Richard Dimbleby and Robin Day to John Humphreys and Jeremy Paxman and concludes with Nick’s own considered view of the controversial issue of impartial reporting. Nick Robinson studied politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford before joining the BBC in 1986. After a decade working behind the cameras – as a producer on programmes ranging from Crimewatch to On the Record and Panorama – he became a reporter and presenter. He is the only person to have been political editor of both ITV News and now BBC News – a job he has held since August 2005. As well as appearing on TV and radio, he writes an award-winning blog.

Speaker(s): Professor Athar Hussain, Dr Debin Ma, Professor Arne Westad | The 18th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party held last November saw a wholesale replacement of the old with a new Party leadership. More than two-thirds of the old team has stepped down, and the change has yet to run its full course. March this year is going to witness the appointment of a new government leadership, including the President, the Prime Minister and the State Council. In time, the impact of this change at the top will ripple through to the lowest level of the government. The new generation of leaders has given rise to a mixture of renewed hope for overdue political and economic reforms and uncertainty about its stance towards domestic and foreign problems and issues. The panellists, Chinese population and the world outside are still coming to terms with the change that is taking place. The panel discussion aims to assess and answer at least some of the questions raised by the change. Professor Athar Hussain is director of the LSE Asia Research Centre. Dr Debin Ma is lecturer in Economic History, LSE. Professor Arne Westad is co-director of LSE IDEAS.

Speaker(s): Professor Iver Neumann | One origin of the social sciences lies in opposition to the discipline of history. Rather than speculating about the course of history generally, the idea was to look at the variation in forms of social life. The social sciences are not alone in attempting this. Other approaches to such a study may be found in psychology and biology. Drawing on Durkheim and Mauss, Professor Iver Neumann will begin with a discussion of how these different but overlapping approaches stand today, when the psychologising approach of methodological individualism and the biologising thrust towards stressing the genetic make-up of the species are on the rise. Stressing how humans are a meaning-producing species, and so bound to be living in a condition of alterity, Professor Iver Neumann will make the case for privileging social causes in the study of social life. Professor Iver Neumann will go on to discuss the specificity of International Relations (IR) relative to other social sciences. IR’s sensibilities to alterity on all levels of political life means that it is an apt tradition from which to cope with the globalisation that defines the age. Crucially, however, for such analyses to be meaningful, they have to pay attention to the sundry social fields within which global politics now play out. The large-scale hybridization that goes with globalization means that we can no longer afford to analyse social and political life in terms of pre-social ideas about the state, war, diplomacy etc. The study of top-level decision making cannot neglect the everyday, and vice versa. This is why we should be meticulous in insisting on IR being first and foremost a social science. Iver Neumann is the Montague Burton Professor of International Relations, LSE.

Speaker(s): Miroslav Lajcák | Miroslav Lajcák is Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign and European Affairs of the Slovak Republic, a position he has held since April 2012. Prior to this he held a series of senior diplomatic postings including managing director for Europe and Central Asia, European External Action Service (Dec 2010-April 2012); High Representative/European Union special representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina (July 2007-January 2009); and personal representative of European Union High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy to facilitate the referendum on the independence of Montenegro (2006). Miroslav Lajcák was educated at Moscow State Institute of International Relations, Faculty of International Relations; Comenius University Bratislava, Faculty of Law; and the College of International and Security Studies, George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, Garmisch – Partenkirchen.