Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast Spring 2012 | Public lectures and events | Video

Contributor(s): William Patry | Copyright laws are declared to be the underpinnings of creativity, innovation, the knowledge economy, and everything short of curing the sick and feeding the poor. Can copyright laws do all these wonderful things, or are they, in Ian Hargreaves' words, the result of lobbynomics? William Patry is senior copyright counsel at Google Inc. He has written far too much about copyright law, including his new book How to Fix Copyright Law and so now spends his time playing bass clarinet.

Contributor(s): Dimitris Daskalopoulos, Moritz Kraemer, Vicky Pryce, Poul Thomsen | This is a very timely discussion of whether Greece can get out of its current economic crisis. The financial markets show concern that the recent bailout will not be enough and a further rescue may be needed. There is renewed international concern that other euro members will find themselves in difficulty prompting further action – Portugal, it is feared, may need another bailout. The rescue strategy for Greece is clearly the ‘test case’ that will shape the response to any further problem. So, can it work? What must the ‘Troika’ and Greece do to return the economy to growth? The panel debate brings together key experts and protagonists. Dimitris Daskalopoulos is chairman of the board of the Hellenic Federation of Enterprises (SEV). Moritz Kraemer is managing director EMEA, analytical manager (Sovereign Ratings) at Standard & Poor's. Vicky Pryce is senior managing director-economics of FTI Economics. Poul Thomsen is deputy director, in the European Department of the International Monetary Fund and and head of the Troika Programme for Greece.

Contributor(s): Professor Abdulkarim Soroush | Professor Soroush will discuss the role of philosophy – and Popper's thought in particular – in Iranian religious and political reform. Abdulkarim Soroush is a leading intellectual in Iran and has held visiting positions at, amongst other institutions, Harvard and Princeton. This event is supported by The Sir Karl Popper Memorial Fund. The Popper Memorial Fund would like to thank the Austrian Cultural Forum |for the generous support they have offered toward the 2012 Lecture.

Contributor(s): Alain de Botton | Is it possible to remain a committed atheist but nevertheless benefit from the wisdom of religion? Marking the publication of his new book Religion for Atheists, Alain de Botton proposes that we look to religions for insights into how we might live in and arrange our societies. Alain de Botton is the author of non-fiction essays on themes ranging from love and travel to architecture and philosophy. His bestselling books include The Architecture of Happiness.

Contributor(s): Dr James McDougall | South Asia, China, Europe, North America, sub-Saharan Africa: most major world regions have histories that can be clearly characterised. The Maghrib, despite being perhaps historically the first region to be provided with a model of historical development (by Ibn Khaldun), remains to a large degree unidentifiable with its own distinctive 'pattern of the past'. This may be changing as scholarship focuses more on global, cross-regional, and interactive histories in which North Africa, as a 'hinge' at the edge of three continents, can easily and productively be placed. But does this approach risk misconstruing North Africa's own particularities? How can regional and global histories together best account for North Africa's place in world history? Dr James McDougall| is Laithwaite Fellow and tutor in modern history at Trinity College. His research interest includes Modern and contemporary Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, African and Islamic history, especially Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco.

Contributor(s): David Lammy MP | The riots across England in the summer of 2011 were sparked by events in Tottenham, north London. Tottenham was also the site of the Broadwater Farm riots in 1985. David Lammy, MP for the area, reflects on the causes of these events and what role racial inequality played. David Lammy has been the Labour MP for Tottenham since 2000. Rob Berkeley is Director of the Runnymede Trust.

Contributor(s): Vítor Gaspar | Vítor Gaspar is Minister of Finance. He was appointed Portuguese Finance Minister in Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho's cabinet in June 2011. Mr Gaspar was an adviser to the Bank of Portugal from February 2010, having been from 2007 Director-General at the Bureau of European Policy Advisers (ERI) with the President of the European Commission. Previously he was Director-General for Research at the European Central Bank for six years. Gaspar was awarded a degree in economics by the Universidade Católica Portuguesa (UCP) in 1982, and has a doctorate in economics by the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, awarded in 1988.

Contributor(s): Cullen Murphy | For centuries states have used their power to censor information, to conduct surveillance, to impose belief, to manipulate and to punish. Cullen Murphy's extraordinary, provocative new book which he will talk about in this lecture explores the idea that the Inquisition - the Catholic body that existed in Europe (and beyond) for over 700 years - is not a medieval oddity, but is intrinsically bound up with the creation of the modern world. Travelling from freshly opened Vatican archives to the detention camps of Guantánamo and the filing cabinets of the Third Reich, he traces the Inquisition's legacy to show how, as time went on, its techniques became the standard operating procedure of secular persecution. Murphy explores the role of the Inquisition in a new phase in the battle between the individual private conscience and the forces that try to contain it. This event marks the publication of his new book God's Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World. Cullen Murphy is Vanity Fair's editor at large and the author of Are We Rome? and The Word According to Eve. He was previously managing editor of The Atlantic Monthly.

Contributor(s): Wael Ghonim | In this conversation, Wael Ghonim will discuss his new book Revolution 2.0| providing a unique insider's story from the heart of the Egyptian Spring. He gives unparalleled insight into why the Egyptian people finally rejected 30 years of oppression and found a voice. Wael Ghonim was born in 1980 in Cairo, and lived in Saudi Arabia for most of his childhood until moving back to Egypt at the age of 13. A prominent internet entrepreneur, by his mid-twenties Wael was a key member or founder of three of the Arab world's most popular websites, and in 2008 he was hired by Google as Regional Product Manager for the Middle East and North Africa. A passionate and committed individual, Wael's knowledge of technology and his dedication to the cause of democracy in Egypt came together in 2011 when he set up a Facebook page that facilitated the protests that would lead to the departure of Hosni Mubarak.

Contributor(s): Peter Hain MP | During a discussion on his latest book Outside In|, former anti-apartheid leader turned Labour cabinet minister Peter Hain will recall his campaigning days, receiving a letter bomb, being prosecuted in two political trials and his role in negotiating the historic 2007 settlement in Northern Ireland. He was also Britain's first-ever African-born Africa Minister and a passionate advocate and deliverer of devolved government to Wales. Featuring Iraq, Mugabe, Europe, Gibraltar, blood diamonds, working with MI5 and MI6, delivering justice for workers robbed of their pensions and compensation for sick miners, Hain gives a fascinating insight into life near the top of the Blair and Brown governments. Peter Hain is the Labour MP for Neath and Shadow Secretary of State for Wales. He was elected to the House of Commons in 1991 and after Labour's victory in 1997, joined the Blair government. Firstly at the Welsh Office and then as minister for Africa and then Europe Minister. He also served as Leader of the House of Commons, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. As the son of courageous anti-apartheid activists, he spent his childhood in South Africa and then in exile in Britain, where he led the campaign against white-only sports tours.

Contributor(s): Paul Mason | Our world is changing dramatically. Social upheaval has followed worldwide economic crisis and the gulf between the haves and the have-nots is widening. In 2011, this profound disconnect found expression in events that we were told had been consigned to history: revolt and revolution. In his new book Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere which he will discuss in this lecture Paul Mason sets out to explore the causes and consequences of this current wave of struggle, illuminating the links between the economic and social crisis. He explores and analyses what lies behind the new revolutions – a volatile combination of the near collapse of free-market capitalism, new technologies and changes in popular culture, and a profound shift in our understanding of what freedom means. Looking at how new social media have impacted on how we behave and organize, Mason interviews activists on the ground and the people behind these new forms of collective action, providing an insight into the agile networks of Twitter- and Facebook-savvy young protesters supporting the viral spread ofinternational activism. The economics editor of the BBC's flagship program Newsnight, Paul Mason is also one of the most influential journalists on twitter. He first reported live for the BBC on 9/11, and covered the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 from outside its New York HQ. His television and online reports have tracked the social and economic impact of the global meltdown from the mean streets of Gary, Indiana to the elite salons of Davos.

Contributor(s): Professor Henry Wai-chung Yeung | In this lecture, Henry Wai-chung Yeung will aim to explain how a number of leading business firms from Asian newly industrialized economies (NIEs) of Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan are articulated into global production networks and become major players in their respective market niches. Drawing upon a triangular analytical framework and original empirical data, he will seek to explain the complex relationships between the dynamic articulation of these leading Asian firms into different global production networks and their simultaneous upgrading from typical followers to market leaders. He will argue that the interplay between corporate strategies and home base advantages within the context of changing global production networks can offer a better explanation of the differentiated competitive outcomes of these Asian firms. He will conclude the lecture with some implications for theory and policy in relation to corporate development in Asian economies. Born in Guangzhou, China, Henry Wai-chung Yeung emigrated with my family to Hong Kong in 1979 moving to Singapore in 1988. He graduated with B.A. First Class Honours in Geography from the National University of Singapore and obtained his Ph.D. from the School of Geography, University of Manchester in England in 1995, returning to Singapore to start his career at the Department of Geography, National University of Singapore. Since 2005, he has been Professor of Economic Geography. His research interests cover broadly theories and the geography of transnational corporations, Asian firms and their overseas operations and Chinese business networks in the Asia-Pacific region. I have conducted extensively research on Hong Kong firms in Southeast Asia, the regionalization of Singaporean companies, and the emergence of leading Asian firms in the global economy. The National University of Singapore (NUS) and LSE are both top-ranked, research-led universities. NUS is one of just five institutions with which LSE is developing multi-faceted partnerships for mutual benefit of staff and students. This is the 2nd of a new "LSE-NUS" public lecture series, which seeks to provide a global platform to increase the profile and impact of prominent researchers.

Contributor(s): Dr Ramachandra Guha | High annual growth rates, a rising middle class, and successes in the software sector have led to much talk of India becoming a superpower. But rather than seek to expand India's influence abroad, the political class and intellectual elite would do well to focus on the fissures within. Ramachandra Guha is Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs at LSE IDEAS for 2011-2012.

Contributor(s): Professor Zygmunt Bauman | Being on the left in times of globalisation and divorce of power and politics. New mechanisms of domination and reproduction of inequality, from society of producers to society of consumers. From proletariat to precariat. From solidarity to oneupmanship. Deficit of trust, crisis of agency, and people on the move. Zygmunt Bauman is Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Leeds. He was awarded the European Amalfi Prize for Sociology and Social Sciences in 1991 and the Theodor W. Adorno Award of the city of Frankfurt in 1998. He has been awarded in 2010, jointly with Alain Touraine, the Príncipe de Asturias PrizePrize for Communication and the Humanities. The University of Leeds launched the The Bauman Institute within its School of Sociology and Social Policy in Bauman's honour in September 2010.

Contributor(s): Professor John Sidel | Over the past several months, an alarmist picture of developments in Egypt has emerged in the media, raising the spectre of Islamization, inter-religious violence, and generalized criminality and disorder. Yet these early signs of trouble are amply familiar to observers of transitions from authoritarian rule to democracy elsewhere in the developing world. In particular, the case of Indonesia is especially instructive, given a set of striking parallels with Egypt today. Against this backdrop, Professor John Sidel, author of Riots, Pogroms, Jihad: Religious Violence in Indonesia (Cornell University Press, 2006) will discuss democratization in Egypt in the light of Indonesia's experience over the past thirteen years since the fall of long-time president Suharto (Indonesia's Mubarak) in 1998. His lecture will reveal what Indonesia's experience of democratization portends for Egypt in the months and years. John Sidel is the Sir Patrick Gillam Professor of International and Comparative Politics at LSE. Professor Sidel specializes in the study of Southeast Asia and has three main areas of thematic expertise and interest in the study of politics, as reflected in his research, writing, and teaching: local politics, religion and politics, and nationalism and transnational forces.

Contributor(s): Professor Martti Koskenniemi | Martti Koskenniemi is director of the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights and visiting professor at LSE Law.

Contributor(s): Dr Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis | Placed at the crossroads of three continents, Cyprus remains of key strategic importance in the Eastern Mediterranean. Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis is the minister of foreign affairs for Cyprus.

Contributor(s): Bill Gates, Professor Hans Rosling | The Global Poverty Project has partnered with The Co–operative during the UN Year of Co-operatives to launch a new initiative that will raise awareness and inspire communities to take action for the 1.4 billion people still living in extreme poverty. Bill Gates will speak to the inaugural Global Poverty Ambassadors as part of the London launch of his Annual Letter. In the letter, he will outline the key innovations and commitment needed to continue making progress against global challenges like disease and poverty in 2012. Bill is inviting students from around the world to write their own letters on the most urgent issues we face today. (If you have a big idea you would like to share, please write 300-500 words and email it to annualletter@gatesfoundation.org). Professor Hans Rosling will also address the Ambassadors and students using his extraordinary, interactive graphics, which reveal global trends and the great benefits of development aid. Bill Gates is co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Hans Rosling is Professor of International Health at Karolinska Institute and co-founder and chairman of the Gapminder Foundation.

Contributor(s): Jodi Kantor, Professor Sarah Churchwell | Jodi Kantor will be in conversation with Professor Sarah Churchwell to discuss her new book The Obamas: A Mission, A Marriage which is an intimate portrait of the Obamas in the White House by a New York Times journalist who has been covering the President and first lady for 5 years. The Obamas had never lived together full-time as a family until they moved into the White House - and that's where their political and personal lives became inextricable. Kantor interviewed the Obamas together in the Oval Office and is the only author to be granted access to Michelle Obama's East Wing. Filled with detail and insight into their partnership and personalities, The Obamas: A Mission, A Marriage reveals the hidden aspects of their time in the White House. With a keen eye for the ironies of public life and the realities of power, Kantor brings into sharp focus the question that underpins the Obamas' marriage: can politics achieve real change in society? Jodi Kantor began her journalism career by dropping out of Harvard Law School to join Slate.com in 1998. Four years later, she became the youngest section editor of The New York Times, taking over and revamping the Arts & Leisure section. She began covering the Obamas for the paper in 2007, writing front-page stories that chronicled their biographies and philosophies, and also writing about Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin and other major political figures along the way. She is a recipient of the Columbia Young Alumni Achievement Award, she was chosen by Crain's Magazine as one of "40 Under 40" New Yorkers, and she appears regularly on American television, including Today and the Charlie Rose Show. Sarah Churchwell is Professor of American Literature and Public Understanding of the Humanities. Her research and teaching expertise are in 20th-21st century and contemporary American literature and culture; American film history and theory, gender theory; cultural studies and popular culture; life-writing and literary theory.

Contributor(s): Rodric Braithwaite, Andrei Grachev, Professor Margot Light | What were the origins of the collapse of the USSR? What did 1991 look and feel like from the inside? What is the legacy of 1991 for the former USSR itself? This expert panel will reflect on how history unfolded. Rodric Braithwaite was British Ambassador to Moscow from 1988 to 1992. Andrei Grachev served on the International Relations Department of the CPSU and was confidant and official spokesman for Mikhail Gorbachev. Margot Light is Professor Emeritus in the Department of International Relations, LSE.

Contributor(s): Dr Roy F Baumeister | A new understanding of how people control themselves has emerged from the past decade of research studies. Self-control depends on a limited energy supply, and each person's willpower fluctuates during the day as various events deplete and then replenish it. Decision making and creative initiative also deplete the same willpower supply, while eating and sleeping can restore it. Some circumstances propel people to perform well despite depleted willpower, including power and leadership roles, local incentives, and personal beliefs. People with high self-control specialize less in resisting temptation than avoiding it. Roy F Baumeister is one of the world's most influential psychologists. He received his PhD from Princeton in 1978 and currently is Francis Eppes Eminent Scholar and head of the psychology programme at Florida State University. He was over 450 scientific publications, and Willpower: Rediscovering Our Greatest Strength is his latest book.

Contributor(s): Professor Helmut Anheier, Professor Mient Jan Faber, Professor Marlies Glasius, Professor Mary Kaldor | The panel will discuss the political implications of giving power to ordinary people in an era when the nation-state has lost its primacy as a political actor. The event launches the book Bottom-up Politics: an agency-centred approach to globalisation. Helmut Anheier is professor of sociology at the Hertie School of Governance, Berlin. Mient Jan Faber is Professor Emeritus at the Free Universit, Amsterdam and visiting professor at the University of Houston. Marlies Glasius is Professor of Citizens Involvement in War Zones and Post-Conflict Zones at the Faculty of Social Sciences, VU University Amsterdam, and a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Human Security and Civil Society Research Unit. Mary Kaldor is professor of Global Governance and director of the Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit, LSE.

Contributor(s): Liam Byrne MP | As we enter the year of the Beveridge Report's 70th Anniversary, Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, Liam Byrne MP, sets out Labour's case for welfare reform. Liam Byrne is Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, and Coordinator of Labour's policy review. Elected in 2004, Liam held several ministerial positions in the Labour Government before becoming Chief Secretary to the Treasury in 2009. Before entering politics Liam co-founded the eCommerce business egsgroup.com, and worked as a banker with NM Rothschilds. He was a Fulbright scholar at the Harvard Business School where he took his MBA with honours.

Contributor(s): Professor Yezid Sayigh | The construction of authoritarian power in Arab states over past decades has enmeshed national armies in political, economic, and social structures and dynamics. Democratic transition therefore implicates constitutional debates about the nature of the state with renegotiation of the role and status of the military. Yezid Sayigh is a senior associate at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, where his work focuses on the future political role of Arab armies, the resistance and reinvention of authoritarian regimes, and the Israel-Palestine conflict and peace process.

Contributor(s): Eric Hanushek, Steve Machin, Ludger Wößmann | LSE Growth Commission, Evidence Session 1: Human Capital | In this session, Eric Hanushek, Stephen Machin and Ludger Wößmann gave their views on the role skills should play in the formulation and implementation of a strategy to secure long-term growth for the UK, reflecting on lessons from international experience and state of the art academic literature. Eric Hanushek is the Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. He has been a leader in the development of economic analysis of educational issues, and his work on efficiency, resource usage, and economic outcomes of schools has frequently entered into the design of both US and international educational policy. Steve Machin is Professor of Economics at University College London, Research Director at the Centre for Economic Performance, a member of the Low Pay Commission and Director of the Centre for the Economics of Education. Ludger Wößmann is Head of Human Capital and Innovation at CES Ifo Institute for Economic Research, University of Munich.

Contributor(s): Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi | Against the backdrop of the ongoing global banking crisis, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi discusses the economic problems and prospects of sub-Saharan Africa over the decade ahead. Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi is the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria.

Contributor(s): Jean-Michel Severino, Martin Wolf | Two economic experts discuss the state of the world economy after the eurozone financial crisis. Jean Michel Severino is inspector general at the French Ministry of Finance. Martin Wolf is a journalist at the Financial Times.

Contributor(s): Professor Atila Eralp, Professor Richard Gillespie, Dr Sharon Pardo | This roundtable on 'EU Foreign Policy after Lisbon: The View from the Mediterranean' looks at how the EU is perceived as a foreign policy actor in its southern neighbourhood. Professor Atila Eralp is from the Middle East Technical University, Ankara; Professor Richard Gillespie is from the University of Liverpool and Dr Sharon Pardo is from Ben Gurion University. Professor Karen E Smith is from LSE.

Contributor(s): Philip Coggan | The world is drowning in debt. Greece is on the verge of default. In Britain, the coalition government is pushing through an austerity programme in the face of economic weakness. The US government almost shut down in August because of a dispute over the size of government debt. Our latest crisis may seem to have started in 2007, with the collapse of the American housing market. But as Philip Coggan shows in this new book, Paper Promises: Money, Debt and the new World Order which he will talk about in this lecture, the crisis is part of an age-old battle between creditors and borrowers. And that battle has been fought over the nature of money. Creditors always want sound money to ensure that they are paid back in full; borrowers want easy money to reduce the burden of repaying their debts. Money was once linked to gold, a commodity in limited supply; now central banks can create it with the click of a computer mouse. Time and again, this cycle has resulted in financial and economic crises. In the 1930s, countries abandoned the gold standard in the face of the Great Depression. In the 1970s, they abandoned the system of fixed exchange rates and ushered in a period of paper money. The results have been a long series of asset bubbles, from dotcom stocks to housing, and the elevation of the financial sector to economic dominance. The current crisis not only pits creditors against debtors, but taxpayers against public sector workers, young against old and the western world against Asia. As in the 1930s and 1970s, a new monetary system will emerge; the rules for which will likely be set by the world's rising economic power, China. Philip Coggan was a Financial Times journalist for over twenty years, including spells as a Lex columnist, personal finance editor and investment editor, and is now the Buttonwood columnist of The Economist. In 2009, he was awarded the title of Senior Financial Journalist in the Harold Wincott awards and was voted Best Communicator at the Business Journalist of the Year Awards. Philip Coggan is the author of the business classic, The Money Machine.

Contributor(s): Bronwyn Curtis, Dr Jon Danielsson, Professor Robert Wade | LSE Arts are pleased to host a very special screening of the highly anticipated film Margin Call| based on the financial crash – starring Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Demi Moore, Zachary Quinto, Paul Bettany and Stanley Tucci and released in UK cinemas on 13 January. Reviewed by The New York Times as "an extraordinary feat of filmmaking", Margin Call is a thriller that revolves around the key people at an investment bank over a 24-hour period during the early stages of the financial crisis. When entry-level analyst Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto) unlocks information that could prove to be the downfall of an investment firm, a roller-coaster ride ensues as decisions both financial and moral catapult the lives of all involved to the brink of disaster. This podcast comprises the introduction and panel discussion that followed the screening. Bronwyn Curtis is Executive Editor and Senior Advisor at HSBC and is co-sponsor of the Balance group. She is also Chairman of the Society of Business Economists, a board member of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, the Council at the London School of Economics and the Advisory Board at Imperial College Business School, as well as a member of The Times newspaper's Shadow Monetary Policy Committee. Previously, Bronwyn was Head of European Broadcasting and Managing Editor at Bloomberg. Her other senior roles include Global Head of Currency and Fixed Income Strategy at Deutsche Bank and Chief Economist at Nomura International. She has also worked for the World Bank and the United Nations on commodity based projects in Africa, LATAM and Asia. Dr Jon Danielsson is a Reader in the Finance Department at LSE. Professor Robert Wade is a Professor in the International Development department at LSE.

Contributor(s): Dr Lino Cardarelli | After the Arab Spring, lasting political change in North Africa will require sustained regional cooperation to promote economic integration and efficient and accountable governance. What should a bold plan of action look like? Lino Cardarelli is Senior Deputy Secretary General for Project Funding Coordination and Business Development SMEs in the Secretariat of the Union for the Mediterranean, a position he has held since 2010. From March to June 2011 has also covered the position of Acting Secretary General in the Secretariat of the Union for the Mediterranean. Since his return from Baghdad mid-2005, Lino Cardarelli is serving in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as expert and coordinator of the Italian economic initiatives in the Middle East and Gulf Countries. Before that, during 2004, he had the position as deputy Senior Advisor in Government Authority of Iraq (in Baghdad) where he had also the position at the PMO (Program Management Office) and IRMO (Iraqi Reconstruction Management Office) as coordinator of Donors Countries project, Special Assistant and deputy to the Executive Director Dave Nash. With more than 30 years of International experience working in Africa, Middle East, Latin America, USA and European Countries, he was involved in the management of companies producing and marketing in heavy and specialty chemicals, pharmaceutical, engineering constructions, textiles, machine tools and in the financing of significant projects and the acquisition of companies. Prior to that, he was Chief Financial Officer, General Manager and Managing Director of Montedison Group, one of the leaders in world in chemicals and pharmaceuticals. While in this position he acted as Executive President in the related companies Incas Bonna Spa and Cedar Trading S.A. and as Executive Director of Erbamont and Ausimont. Lino Cardarelli graduated in Economics at the University of Parma (Italy) and attended a semester at the London School of Economics and Political Science (London), at the La Sorbonne (Paris) and at the Salzburg Seminar in American Studies (Salzburg, Austria). He holds a specialization at the Harvard Business School (Boston) in Strategic Finance and has a degree in Business Development at the IMEDE University in Lausanne (Switzerland).

Contributor(s): Mario Monti | Mario Monti is Italian Prime Minister and Minister of the Economy and Finance, positions he has held since 16 November 2011. He was President of Bocconi University, Milan, from 1994 to November 2011, when, upon his request, he was suspended from his functions as President of Bocconi for the duration of his mandate as President of the Council of Ministers. He was also European chairman of the Trilateral Commission and honorary president of Bruegel, the European think-tank he launched in 2005. He is the author of the report to the President of the European Commission on "A new strategy for the single market" (May 2010). As the EU-appointed coordinator for the electricity interconnection between France and Spain, he brokered an agreement between the two heads of governments in June 2008. He was a member of the Attali Committee on economic growth in France, set up by President Sarkozy (2007-2008). He was for ten years a member of the European Commission, in charge of the Internal market, Financial services and Tax policy (1995-1999), then of Competition policy (1999-2004). In addition to a number of high-profile cases (e.g. GE/Honeywell, Microsoft, the German Landesbanken), he introduced radical modernisation reforms of EU antitrust and merger control and led, with the US authorities, the creation of the International Competition Network (ICN). Born in Varese, Italy, in 1943, he graduated from Bocconi University and did graduate studies at Yale University. Prior to joining the European Commission, he had been professor of economics and rector at Bocconi University.

Contributor(s): Dr Guy Dammann | Everyone admits that there is no fact of the matter about aesthetic judgements. Nonetheless, constantly referring to artistic taste as 'relative' limits the power of art to change us. Guy Dammann is the music critic of the Times Literary Supplement, and a critic and commentator for the Guardian.

Contributor(s): Wadah Khanfar | The recent elections in Tunisia and Egypt have brought Islamist parties to power, a pattern that may very well repeat itself as uprisings turn to elections across the Arab world. In the west, this phenomenon has led to a debate about the 'problem' of the rise of political Islam. In the Arab world, too, there has been mounting tension between Islamists and secularists. As the Arab uprisings began, Wadah Khanfar, a former foreign correspondent in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, was the top executive at Al Jazeera, arguably the leading media source as the protests have unfolded, until he resigned in September 2011. As a former newsman and now CEO of Integral Media Strategies, Khanfar is in touch with some of the greatest thinkers and influential leaders and activists in the Middle East today and will reflect on what he sees as a necessary and long overdue debate about the rise of political Islam and where, politically and economically, he sees the region shifting as the rise continues. Wadah Khanfar is CEO of Integral Media Strategies and the former director general of the Al Jazeera Network. He began his career with the network in 1997, covering some of the world's key political zones, including South Africa, Afghanistan and Iraq. He was appointed the chief of the Baghdad bureau, and later as the network's managing director. In 2006, he became Al Jazeera's director general. During his 8-year tenure at the helm, the network transformed from a single channel into a media network including Al Jazeera Arabic, Al Jazeera English, Al Jazeera Documentary and the Al Jazeera Center for Studies. During this period, the Arab world witnessed historic transformation including Arab Awakening. Khanfar, who resigned from the network in September 2011, has been named as one of Foreign Policy's Top 100 global thinkers of 2011 as well as one of Fast Company's 'Most Creative People in Business' of the year. Khanfar has a diverse academic background with post-graduate studies in Philosophy, African Studies, and International Politics. Charlie Beckett is director of POLIS.

Contributor(s): Professor Michael Kimmel | We hear, occasionally, that women's studies discriminates against men. More often, it's that women's studies doesn't include men. In this lecture, Kimmel will suggest that women's studies provides an essential framework for understanding men's lives, and that framework actually will enable men to experience richer and fuller lives. By addressing several key thematic areas -- work, family life, sexuality -- he will show that the insights generated by women's studies are both available to men and, indeed, necessary for men to live the lives we say we want to live. Michael Kimmel is among the world's leading researchers on men and masculinities. The University Distinguished Professor of Sociology at State University of New York, Stony Brook, he is the author of the best-seller, Guyland: The perilous World Where Boys Become Men as well as The Gendered Society, Manhood In America, Men's Lives, A Gay's Guide to Feminism, and many other works. He is the founding editor for the scholarly journal Men and Masculinities.

Contributor(s): Tim Weiner | The United States is a country founded on the ideals of democracy and freedom, yet throughout the last century it has used secret and lawless methods to destroy its enemies. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is the most powerful of these forces. Following his award-winning history of the C.I.A., Legacy of Ashes, Tim Weiner has now written the first full history of the F.B.I. as a secret intelligence service, Enemies: A History of the FBI| which he will talk about in this lecture. Drawn entirely from firsthand materials in the F.B.I.'s own files, Enemies brilliantly brings to life the entire story, from the cracking of anarchist cells to the prosecution of the 'war on terror'. It is the story of America's war against spies, subversives and saboteurs - and the self-inflicted wounds American democracy suffered in battle. Throughout the book lies the long shadow of J. Edgar Hoover, who ran the F.B.I. with an iron fist for forty-eight years. He was not a monster, but a brilliant confidence man who ruled by fear, force, and fraud. His power shaped America; his legacy haunts it. Tim Weiner is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist at the New York Times, where he has reported from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan and fifteen other nations. He was based for a decade in Washington, DC, where he covered the C.I.A. and the Military - the latter topic being the subject of his Blank Check: The Pentagon's Black Budget. He is the author of the bestselling Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, which won the 2007 National Book Award for Non-Fiction.

Contributor(s): Bernard Hogan-Howe | The current commissioner of the Met and former chief constable of Merseyside Police will speak about his hopes and aspirations in relation to the future of policing in the capital. Bernard Hogan-Howe is the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service.

Contributor(s): Professor Philip McCann | The special adviser to the European Commissioner for Regional Policy will discuss one of the great policy-making challenges of recent times. Professor Philip McCann is special adviser to Johannes Hahn and the University of Groningen Endowed Chair of Economic Geography.

Contributor(s): Eric Ries | Most new businesses fail. But most of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach to business that's being adopted around the world. It is changing the way companies are built and new products are launched. The Lean Startup is about learning what your customers really want. It's about testing your vision continuously, adapting and adjusting before it's too late. Now is the time to think Lean. This event marks the publication of Eric Ries new book The Lean Startup. Eric Ries is an entrepreneur and author of the New York Times bestseller The Lean Startup and the popular entrepreneurship blog Startup Lessons Learned.He co-founded and served as CTO of IMVU, his third startup. In 2007, BusinessWeek named him one of the Best Young Entrepreneurs of Tech. In 2009, he was honoured with a TechFellow award in the category of Engineering Leadership. He serves on the advisory board of a number of technology startups, and has consulted to new and established companies as well as venture capital firms. He is currently serving as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Harvard Business School and a Fellow for IDEO, the design consulting firm. His Lean Startup methodology has been written about in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Business Review, the Huffington Post, and many blogs.

Contributor(s): Professor Owen Flanagan | Can Buddhism be re-discovered as a naturalistic and comprehensive philosophy that is compatible with the rest of knowledge, yet capable of pointing us to a path of human flourishing? Owen Flanagan is James B Duke Professor of Philosophy at Duke University.

Contributor(s): Professor Juliet Schor, Professor Lord Skidelsky, Professor Tim Jackson | As the economic crisis deepens, this is the moment to consider moving towards much shorter, more flexible paid working hours – sharing out jobs and unpaid time more fairly across the population. The new economics foundation (nef) set out the case in its report 21 Hours: Why a shorter working week can help us all to flourish in the 21st century. Now, in partnership with CASE (Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion) at the London School of Economics, this event brings together a panel of experts to examine the social, environmental and economic implications. They will consider how far a shorter working week can help to address a range of urgent social, economic and environmental problems: unemployment, over-consumption, high carbon emissions, low well-being and entrenched inequalities. Juliet Schor is Professor of Sociology at Boston College, and author of Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth, and The Overworked American. Professor Lord Skidelsky is Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at the University of Warwick and biographer of J. M. Keynes. He is the co-author, with Dr Edward Skidelsky, of the forthcoming book, How Much is Enough? Economics and the Good Life. Tim Jackson is Professor of Sustainable Development at Surrey University, and author of Prosperity without Growth.

Contributor(s): Masaaki Shirakawa | Until a few years ago, the long stagnation of the Japanese economy after the bursting of a credit-fuelled asset bubble in the late 1980s was regarded as an episode that would never be replicated elsewhere in the world. Quite a few commentators argued that the recovery became unnecessarily drawn-out and painful because policy responses were ill-timed and inadequate. Many experts believed that prompt and massive policy responses would save any other economy from the same fate as Japan. Three years after the global economy had nearly suffered a meltdown in late 2008, following the collapse of Lehman Brothers, growth, especially in the developed economies, remains anemic, in spite of the huge fiscal stimulus and decisive monetary easing quickly introduced by governments and central banks. Economists are drawing graphs of current GDP, inflation, property prices and interest rates superimposed with Japanese data from the 1990s, revealing eerily similar patterns. Now, there is a growing fear among the general public of a prolonged period of weak growth in the developed economies, expressed in one word as "Japanization." TMasaaki Shirakawa is the Governor of the Bank of Japan, he will reflect on the experience of Japan leading to and following the bursting of the Japanese bubble, drawing particular attention to the fragility of the recovery under economy-wide deleveraging. There will be a discussion on the similarities and dissimilarities between Japan in the 1990s and the current state of developed economies, with an added emphasis on factors behind the credit and asset-price cycles, including demography, the structure of the labor market and the sectoral distribution of debt. Another issue to be examined is the increasing concerns over the sustainability of government finances after massive fiscal stimuli. The speech will conclude by exploring the role of policy in sustaining and strengthening the recovery under the dual constraint of fiscal sustainability and the zero-bound on nominal interest rates. TMasaaki Shirakawa was born in Fukuoka Prefecture in Japan on September 27, 1949. Governor, Bank of Japan since April 9, 2008; Chair of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Asian Consultative Council since October 2010, and Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the BIS since January 2011; Member of the Group of Thirty since August 2009. Graduated from the University of Tokyo with a B.A. in Economics and hired by the Bank of Japan in 1972, he completed his advanced training at the University of Chicago (M.A. in 1977). At the Bank of Japan, his career encompassed both monetary policy and financial stability, and held key positions, including Executive Director (2002 - 2006), responsible for laying the groundwork of Japanese monetary policy decisions. He also had extensive international experience, as the General Manager for the Americas and as the Advisor to the Governor for International Capital Markets. Leaving the Bank in July 2006, he assumed Professorship at the Kyoto University School of Government until March 2008, when he rejoined the Bank.

Contributor(s): Daniel Sieberg | At the start of the new year, Daniel Sieberg, author of The Digital Diet: The Four-step Plan to Break your Tech Addiction and Regain Balance in your Life offers timely advice for technology gluttons everywhere, explaining how best to ditch the digital dependency, take back control of your life, restore real relationships, and use technology in a healthier way. Daniel Sieberg works with Google marketing in New York. An Emmy-nominated journalist he is a former technology correspondent for CBS and CNN, and previously hosted science and technology programmes for online channel ABC News NOW.

Contributor(s): Angus Roxburgh | Former BBC correspondent Angus Roxburgh talks about his new book on the Putin years and Russia's relationship with the West. Drawing on exclusive interviews conducted for a new BBC documentary series, he describes Putin's descent into authoritarianism, and also argues that the West threw away chances to bring Russia in from the cold, by failing to understand its fears and aspirations following the collapse of communism. This event marks the publication of Angus Roxburgh's latest book The Strongman: Vladimir Putin and the struggle for Russia. Angus Roxburgh is one of Britain's most distinguished foreign correspondents. An author and renowned journalist, he was the Sunday Times Moscow Correspondent in the mid-1980s and the BBC's Moscow correspondent during the Yeltsin years. He is the author of The Second Russian Revolution and Pravda: Inside the Soviet Press Machine.

Contributor(s): Professor Roger Owen | Professor Owen will look at Egypt's Tahrir Square revolution in the light of the revolutions of 1919 and 1952, drawing on them to indicate some of the problems and possibilities ahead. Roger Owen is A J Meyer Professor of Middle East History at Harvard University.

Contributor(s): Professor Rahel Jaeggi | Does modern society cause us to be alienated from ourselves? This lecture will argue that a re-thinking of the philosophical concept of alienation can provide us with an important resource for social critique. Rahel Jaeggi is professor for practical philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at the Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin.

Contributor(s): James Caan | On Dragons' Den, James Caan saw over 1,000 budding entrepreneurs pitch their ideas from anything that ranged from the bizarre to the revolutionary. Having spent the past 30 years starting, building and growing businesses, James has become recognised as one of the UK's most prominent experts on entrepreneurship. His talk will take you through the journey of an entrepreneur, the pathway to a successful business, but also the ability to recognise when an idea is not a business, potentially saving you the investment of valuable time and money. James Caan is one of the UK's most celebrated businessmen. Having built global multi-million pound recruitment companies, he now has a portfolio of over 30 businesses within his private equity firm, Hamilton Bradshaw. He has consistently followed the mantra of "backing people with passion" and invests in entrepreneurs across a number of sectors including real estate, recruitment and professional services. This event celebrates the publication of James Caan's new book Start Your Business in 7 Days.

Contributor(s): Professor Scott Barrett | Professor Barrett discusses whether the prospect of approaching climate catastrophes makes international cooperation on climate change any easier, and examines how the international system is likely to respond to the future crossing of a 'climate tipping point'. Scott Barrett is the Lenfest-Earth Institute Professor of Natural Resource Economics at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and the Earth Institute.

Contributor(s): Joel Brenner | A former intelligence insider illuminates the strategic vulnerabilities created by the technologies that run our public and private lives, shriveling privacy, bleeding us of technologies that create wealth, power, and jobs, and laying public and private infrastructure open to crippling disruption – with thoughts on how to deal with it. Joel Brenner (LSE PhD 1973) is the author of America the Vulnerable: Inside the New Threat Matrix of Digital Espionage, Crime, and Warfare. He is the former head of US counterintelligence and inspector general of the US National Security Agency and practices law in Washington, DC, focusing on privacy and security issues.

Contributor(s): Dr Mukulika Banerjee, Patrick French, Professor Maitreesh Ghatak, Professor Sunil Khilnani | This panel will focus on the underside of Indian democracy, as visible in, among other things, the insurgencies in Kashmir; a Maoist rebellion in the heart of India; growing inequalities between rich and poor; and the massively high rates of corruption within government. Mukulika Banerjee is a reader in anthropology at the Department of Anthropology, LSE. Patrick French is the author of Liberty or Death and India: a portrait. Maitreesh Ghatak is Professor of Economics at LSE. Sunil Khilnani is director of King's College London's India Institute. Dr Ramchandra Guha is Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs at LSE IDEAS for 2011-2012.