Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast Spring 2015 | Public lectures and events | Audio and pdf

Contributor(s): Dr Gary Klein | What are insights, and how do they happen? Observing people in their natural setting – from scientists and business people to firefighters and soldiers - Klein demonstrates what insights are, the patterns that emerge, and how you can usefully deploy them. This event marks the publication of Gary's new book, Seeing What Others Don't - The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights. Gary Klein (@KleInsight) is a research psychologist famous for his part in founding the field of naturalistic decision making, and is a Senior Scientist at MacroCognition LLC. He was one of the leaders of a team that redesigned the White House Situation Room. Gary is the author of several books, including The Power of Intuition: Working Minds: A Practioner’s Guide to Cognitive Task Analysis and Streetlights and Shadows: Searching for the Keys to Adaptive Decision Making. Dr Barbara Fasolo is Associate Professor in Behavioural Science in the Department of Management of the London School of Economics and Political Science. She currently serves as Head of the Behavioural Research Lab, Director of the Executive Master in Behavioural Science, and on the Department of Health Behavioural Insights Expert Advisory Panel. The Department of Management (@LSEManagement) is a globally diverse academic community at the heart of the LSE, taking a unique interdisciplinary, academically in-depth approach to the study of management and organisations. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).

Contributor(s): Assembly SE8 , Atelier d'architecture autogérée , Public Works Group | With an evening of provocations and discussion, Theatrum Mundi launched Designing the Urban Commons, an ideas competition calling for new ways to stimulate the city’s public and collective life. Three groups engaged in live projects in London and Paris presented their work, describing how commoning emerges through the spaces they have created or occupied and also examining the issues and opportunities presented by commons as an approach to urban design. The competition brief, which also went live on 25th March, asked for existing land, architecture, or infrastructures in neighbourhoods across London to be re-imagined as common spaces, or for new urban commons to be carved out in the city or online. Commons are not static pieces of architecture. We are seeking designs through which the social act of commoning could take shape, by enabling citizens to co-produce urban resources from culture & knowledge to housing, energy or democratic processes.

Contributor(s): Yannis Stournaras | Yannis Stournaras will talk about the current developments of the Greek Economy. Yannis Stournaras is Governor of the Bank of Greece and former Greek Minister of Finance (July 2012-June 2014). Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).

Contributor(s): Axelle Lemaire | Axelle Lemaire (@axellelemaire) has been at the French Ministry of State for Digital Affairs since April 2014, serving as Deputy Minister for the Digital Sector. She calls her position the “portfolio for imagination”. Born in Canada in 1974, she studied political science at Sciences Po in Paris and law at the Sorbonne and King’s College London. She worked as a researcher and international lawyer before entering politics as a parliamentary assistant in the House of Commons. In 2012, Axelle Lemaire was elected in the French National Assembly to represent the French diaspora living in Northern Europe. As the Secretary of the Law Committee and a member of the European Affairs Committee, her main areas of interest were the digital society and digital economy, the protection of human rights and gender equality, and European politics. Iain Begg is a Professorial Research Fellow at the European Institute, LSE. The LSE European Institute (@LSEEI) was established in 1991 as a dedicated centre for the interdisciplinary study of processes of integration and fragmentation within Europe. In the most recent national Research Assessment Exercise, the Institute was ranked first for research in European Studies in the United Kingdom. The LSE European Institute has been a Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence since 2009. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).

Contributor(s): Professor Jon Paul Faguet, Dr Shirin Madon, Dr Duncan Green, Owen Barder, Yesil Deniz, Dr Bjorn-Soren Gigler, Abha Joshi-Ghani, Leni Wild, Vanessa Herringshaw, Fredrik Galtung, Duncan Edwards | Engaging citizens has a vital role to play in the process of development. It helps to improve transparency and accountability of public policies, to build trust with citizens, to forge consensus around important reforms, and to build the political and public support necessary to sustain them. A number of institutions, including the London School of Economics, have demonstrated their commitment to this important agenda by developing a MOOC - a free, four-week online course on citizen engagement. The Department of International Development hosted a launch event on Thursday 19 March, in which a number of themes related to the MOOC was discussed with a panel of experts.

Contributor(s): Roza Otunbayeva | Roza Otunbayeva is the first female President of Kyrgyzstan and the first woman to head a country in Central Asia. In this lecture she will reflect on her journey to the highest level of public life. This event is part of the Above the Parapet project, which seeks to capture the experiences of high profile women who have shaped public life. Roza Otunbayeva is a Kyrgyz diplomat and politician who went on to head the government during its transition from an authoritarian regime to a parliamentary democracy. In June 2010, she was elected President of the Kyrgyz Republic and served in that post until successfully facilitating the first peaceful transfer of state power in Central Asia in December 2011. Purna Sen (@Purna_Sen) is Deputy Director of the Institute of Public Affairs at LSE. Above the Parapet (@LSEParapet) is a research project at the LSE’s Institute of Public Affairs which explores the stories of women in high profile public life. The Institute of Public Affairs (@LSEPubAffairs) is one of the world's leading centres of public policy. We aim to debate and address some of the major issues of our time, whether international or national, through our established teaching programmes, our research and our highly innovative public-engagement initiatives.

Contributor(s): Professor Alexander V Pantsov | Professor Pantsov will discuss why the USSR couldn’t follow the pattern of Chinese reforms in the decade leading up to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Alexander V Pantsov is the Edward and Mary Catherine Gerhold Chair in the Humanities at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio. LSE IDEAS (@lseideas) is a centre for the study of international affairs, diplomacy and grand strategy.

Contributor(s): Professor Barry Buzan, Professor Craig Calhoun, Dr George Lawson, Professor Juergen Osterhammel, Dr Ayse Zarakol | This event marks the launch of a new book: The Global Transformation: history, modernity and the making of international relations, co-authored by Barry Buzan and George Lawson. Barry Buzan is Emeritus Professor in the Department of International Relations at LSE and a Fellow of the British Academy. Craig Calhoun (@craigjcalhoun) is Director and President of LSE. George Lawson is an Associate Professor in the Department of International Relations at LSE. Jurgen Osterhammel is Professor of Modern History at the University of Konstanz and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. Ayse Zarakol is a University Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow at Emmanuel College. Heather Jones is Associate Professor in the Department of International History at LSE. The International Relations Department (@LSEIRDept) is one of the oldest as well as largest IR departments in the world. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).

Contributor(s): Professor Matthew Connelly | Technology has led to unprecedented state surveillance, but may also be the key to preserving the principle of open government. Matthew Connelly is Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs at LSE IDEAS for 2014-15. LSE IDEAS (@lseideas) is a centre for the study of international affairs, diplomacy and grand strategy. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).

Contributor(s): Dr Sean Jacobs | Developments in online media point to interesting possibilities for African engagement in the global public sphere. African subjects are taking their places as audiences and agents, rather than receivers of aid and information. Sean Jacobs is a faculty member of The New School in New York City and the founder of the popular Africa is a Country blog. Wendy Willems is a Lecturer in the LSE Department of Media and Communications. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).

Contributor(s): Professor William A Callahan | Although we live in a visual age, few actually study the role of images in international politics. This inaugural lecture will examine how maps, photographs and film can tell us much about the international politics of war, identity and sovereignty. William A. Callahan is Professor of International Relations at the LSE, and his recent publications include China Dreams: 20 Visions of the Future (2013), and the documentary video, China Dreams: The Debate (2014). Chris Brown is a Professor of International Relations at the LSE. The International Relations Department (@LSEIRDept) is one of the oldest as well as largest IR departments in the world. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).

Contributor(s): Sir Michael Barber | Billions of citizens around the world are frustrated with their governments. Political leaders struggle to honour their promises and officials find it near impossible to translate ideas into action. The result? High taxes, but poor outcomes. Cynicism not just with government but with the political process. Why is this? How could this vicious spiral be reversed? In his new book, How to Run A Government so that citizens benefit and taxpayers don't go crazy, due to be launched on 26 March, Michael Barber draws on his wealth of experience of working for and with government leaders the world over to present a blueprint for how to run a government. Using contemporary cases from every continent and classic examples from history, he makes a compelling case for a new approach. From Downing Street to Punjab, Charles I to Churchill, this book shows that the solution is less about ideology and more about sustained priorities, solving problems as they arise and not giving up when the going gets tough. By applying the lessons set out in the eight chapters of the book, governments of all political persuasions can dramatically enhance their capacity to deliver results and control costs, thus delighting citizens rather than driving them crazy. Sir Michael Barber (@michaelbarber9) is the co-founder of Delivery Associates and Chief Education Advisor at Pearson. Over the last two decades he has worked on government and public service reform in more than 50 countries. From 2001 to 2005 he was the first Head of the Prime Minister's Delivery Unit in the UK. His previous books include Instruction to Deliver: Fighting to Transform Britain's Public Services. Sir Jeremy Heywood is Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Home Civil Service. British Government @ LSE is an initiative led by the LSE’s Government Department (@LSEGovernment) to promote research, teaching and debate about politics and government in the UK. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).

Contributor(s): Nicola Sturgeon | Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) is Scotland’s first female First Minister and the first female to lead any of the devolved UK administrations. Born in Irvine in 1970 and educated at Greenwood Academy, she studied law at the University of Glasgow where she graduated with LLB (Hons) and Diploma in Legal Practice. Before entering the Scottish Parliament as a regional MSP for Glasgow in 1999 she worked as a solicitor in the Drumchapel Law and Money Advice Centre in Glasgow. She is currently MSP for Glasgow Southside having been, before boundary changes, MSP for Govan between 2007 and 2011. In government she served as Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing between May 2007 and September 2012 and then Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure, Investment and Cities with responsibility for government strategy and the constitution until November 2014. Throughout this period she also served as Deputy First Minister of Scotland. She became SNP Leader on November 14, 2014 and was sworn in as First Minister on November 20, 2014. Simon Hix (@simonjhix) is Professor of European and Comparative Politics and Fellow of the British Academy and Head of Department of Government at LSE. British Government @ LSE (@lsegovernment) is an initiative currently based in the Government Department to promote and develop research on British Government being conducted at the LSE. So far world class speakers have attended our events, talking on a range of topics. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).

Contributor(s): Professor Julia Black, Dr Jon Danielsson, Professor Charles Goodhart, Professor Katharina Pistor | In financial markets law and finance are intrinsically connected. When markets collapse, however, legal rules are pushed into the background and other forces take over. Julia Black is a Professor of Law and Pro-Director for Research at LSE. Jon Danielsson (@JonDanielsson) is Director of the Systemic Risk Centre. Charles Goodhart is Emeritus Professor of Banking and Finance at LSE. Katharina Pistor is the Michael I Sovern Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. LSE Law (@lselaw) is an integral part of the School's mission, plays a major role in policy debates & in the education of lawyers and law teachers from around the world. The Systemic Risk Centre (@LSE_SRC) investigates the risks that may trigger the next financial crisis and develops practical tools to help policy-makers and private institutions become better prepared. The Law and Financial Markets Project is based in the LSE's Law Department and explores the interactions of law, regulation, financial markets and financial institutions, principally within the EU and the UK. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).

Contributor(s): Professor John Hills, Dr Polly Vizard | John Hills will present new findings from the Social Policy in a Cold Climate programme of research on the ways in which patterns of economic inequality changed in the UK over the economic crisis 2007-13. Dr Polly Vizard will present new findings on the patterns of inequality in London, and how the distribution of key economic outcomes - including income and wealth, employment and unemployment, earnings and wages, and educational qualifications - have changed amongst different population groups. John Hills is Professor of Social Policy and Director of the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE) at LSE. His research interests include the distribution of income and wealth, the welfare state, social security, pensions, housing and taxation. He led a review of fuel poverty for the Department of Energy and Climate Change (2011-2012), was Chair of the National Equality Panel (2008-2010), carried out a review of the aims of social housing for the Secretary of State for Communities in 2006-07 and was one of the three members of the UK Pensions Commission from 2003 to 2006. He was Co-Director of the LSE’s Welfare State Programme (1988-1997). Dr Polly Vizard is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE), her research interests include equality, capability and human rights. She has carried out research for the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the Government Equalities Office and a number of NGOs including specific projects on recipients of social care in the UK, older people internationally, and the development of tools to measure ‘autonomy'. Bharat Mehta is Chief Executive at Trust for London (@trustforlondon). Prior to taking up this post he was Chief Executive of the National Schizophrenia Fellowship (NSF, renamed RETHINK). He has also worked for the Medical Research Council; the National Council for Voluntary Organisations; and the Social Services Department of the London Borough of Waltham Forest. The Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE) at LSE (@CASE_lse) focuses on the exploration of different dimensions of social disadvantage, particularly from longitudinal and neighbourhood perspectives, and examination of the impact of public policy. LSE Works is a series of public lectures, that will showcase some of the latest research by LSE's academic departments and research centres. In each session, LSE academics will present key research findings, demonstrating where appropriate the implications of their studies for public policy. A list of all the LSE Works lectures can be viewed at LSE Works. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).

Contributor(s): Professor Jonathan Holslag, Dr Mareike Kleine | This discussion will explore the vexed question of the demos of European citizenship and the democratic deficit. Jonathan Holslag is Professor of International Politics at the Free University of Brussels. Mareike Kleine is Associate Professor of EU and International Politics in the European Institute at LSE.

Contributor(s): Professor Jeff McMahan | The annual Auguste Comte Memorial Lecture will be delivered by a leading scholar in social and political philosophy. Jeff McMahan is White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford and the author of The Ethics of Killing: problems at the margins of life and Killing in War. Mike Otsuka is a professor in the philosophy department at LSE. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).

Contributor(s): Professor Julie Cohen, Anne Barron | The problem of control over information flows has emerged as a doubly critical vantage point from which to interrogate the exercise of power and the pursuit of justice. Scholars of law and communications have come to recognize that in the networked information society, the dialogue between truth and power is mediated by the code. The Internet has been hailed as the ultimate medium for speaking truth to power, but networked information technologies also can become means for embedding power and entrenching inequality. Information and network protocols also have become sources of great wealth and competitive advantage. Struggles to shape-or even simply to understand-the patterns of information flow have profound consequences for human flourishing in the networked world. Less widely recognized, perhaps, is that in legal contests over control of information flows and network protocols, law is not simply a bystander or neutral arbiter. Struggles to shape the patterns of information flow are seeking out new modes of recognition and accommodation within the legal system, and those struggles are beginning to produce new institutional settlements. In the networked information society, code and law together sit between truth and power. We should understand contemporary struggles over control of information and information networks as a contest to define new governance institutions for the information age. Julie Cohen (@julie17usc) is a Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center. Anne Barron (@AnneBarron01) is Associate Professor (Reader) in the Department of Law at LSE. Nick Couldry (@couldrynick) is Professor of Media, Communications and Social Theory and Head of the Department of Media and communications at LSE. LSE Law (@lselaw) is an integral part of the School's mission, plays a major role in policy debates & in the education of lawyers and law teachers from around the world. The Department of Media and Communications at LSE (@MediaLSE) has recently been ranked 2nd in the 2014 QS World University Rankings by subject. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).

Contributor(s): Professor Bob Hancké, Professor David Soskice | This discussion will explore the pressures facing Europe’s welfare states in a time of austerity, an aging population and global economic competition. Bob Hancké is Associate Professor of Political Economy in the European Institute at LSE. David Soskice is Professor of Political Science and Economics at LSE.

Contributor(s): Professor Sir Richard Blundell | Even before the financial crisis many developed economies were facing growing inequality and struggling to maintain employment and earnings. This lecture will dig deeper into the background to these trends and will examine the evidence on how tax and welfare reform impacts on human capital, inequality and earnings. It will ask two general questions: What are the key margins where we might expect tax and welfare reform to have most impact on earnings, employment growth and inequality? How has this changed in the light of the great recession? The talk will consider prospects for the future and the potential for policy reform. Richard Blundell CBE FBA is a Professor at University College London and Research Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies. He is an alumnus of LSE. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).

Contributor(s): Dr Selina Todd | Drawing on the testimonies of hundreds of people, Dr Todd refutes the claim that class is dead and exposes some of the myths that animate contemporary politics. Selina Todd (@selina_todd) is History Fellow and Vice Principal of St Hilda’s College, University of Oxford. Robin Archer is the Director of the Postgraduate Programme in Political Sociology at LSE. The Ralph Miliband Programme (@rmilibandlse) is one of LSE's most prestigious lecture series and seeks to advance Ralph Miliband's spirit of free social inquiry.

Contributor(s): Katrine Marçal | Katrine Marçal charts the myth of ‘economic man’ – from its origins at Adam Smith’s dinner table to its adaptation by the Chicago School and finally its disastrous role in the 2008 Global Financial Crisis – and looks forward to a new, more inclusive type of economics. Katrine Marçal (@katrinemarcal) is the lead editorial writer for the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet and author of Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner? Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).

Contributor(s): Eric Ries | Eric Ries (@ericries) is an entrepreneur and author of the New York Times bestseller The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses, published by Portfolio Penguin. He graduated in 2001 from Yale University with a B.S. in Computer Science. While an undergraduate, he co-founded Catalyst Recruiting. Ries continued his entrepreneurial career as a Senior Software Engineer at There.com, leading efforts in agile software development and user-generated content. He later co-founded and served as CTO of IMVU, his third startup. In 2007, BusinessWeek named Ries one of the Best Young Entrepreneurs of Tech. In 2008 he served as a venture advisor at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers before moving on to advise startups independently. Today he serves on the advisory board of a number of technology startups and venture capital firms. In 2009, Ries was honored with a TechFellow award in the category of Engineering Leadership. In 2010, he was named entrepreneur-in-residence at Harvard Business School and is currently an IDEO Fellow. The Lean Startup methodology has been written about in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Inc., Wired, Fast Company, and countless blogs. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, son, and golden retriever. Dr Linda Hickman is Visiting Senior Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science in the Department of Management. LSE Entrepreneurship (@LSEship) runs a series of lectures, short courses, networking platforms, debates and social exchanges that explore entrepreneurship's extreme potential for change.

Contributor(s): Jonathan Powell | Jonathan Powell was chief of staff to Tony Blair and the chief British negotiator on Northern Ireland. In his new book Talking to Terrorists How to End Armed Conflicts, Jonathan concludes that every time we meet a new terrorist group we say we will never talk to terrorists but in the end we almost always do. Jonathan Powell worked for the Foreign Office for fifteen years before becoming Tony Blair's Chief of Staff in 1994. Since leaving government he has worked with a Geneva-based NGO, negotiating between governments and terrorist groups in Europe, Asia and Africa, and has now established his own NGO, InterMediate, to continue this work. He is currently also the Prime Minister's special envoy to the Libyan Transition. His booked Talking to Terrorists: How to End Armed Conflicts was published in 2014.

Contributor(s): Professor David J. Linden | Professor Linden will explore the biology of touch ranging from sex to pain to caress, paying particular attention to the role of emotional processes. David J. Linden (@david_j_linden) is a Professor of Neuroscience at The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He is the author of three books about brain function written for a general audience, most recently Touch (Viking, 2015).

Contributor(s): Dr Kimberley Brownlee | When is it permissible to resort to civil disobedience? Do we sometimes have a moral duty to do so? Should we be punished for it? Kimberley Brownlee is Associate Professor of Legal and Moral Philosophy at the University of Warwick.

Contributor(s): Dr Kristina Spohr, Sir Rodric Braithwaite, Sir Roderic Lyne, Professor Arne Westad | Personal summitry, more than structural factors, shaped the peaceful ending of and exit from the Cold War. This lecture shows how meetings between international leaders in the period 1985-91 fostered rapprochement and creative dialogue, and reflects on their continuing importance today. Kristina Spohr is Deputy Head of the International History Department and Associate Professor at LSE. Rodric Braithwaite is a British diplomat and author. His diplomatic career included posts in Indonesia, Italy, Poland, the Soviet Union, and a number of positions at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. From 1988 to 1992 Braithwaite was ambassador in Moscow, first of all to the Soviet Union and then to the Russian Federation. Subsequently, he was the Prime Minister's foreign policy adviser and chairman of the UK Joint Intelligence Committee (1992–93). Roderic Lyne is Deputy Chairman of Chatham House and Adviser, Russia and Eurasia Programme. From 1970 to 2004 Sir Roderic was a member of the British diplomatic service. He was British ambassador to the Russian Federation from 2000 to 2004; UK permanent representative to the World Trade Organisation, the UN and other international organisations in Geneva from 1997 to 2000; and private secretary to the prime minister for foreign affairs, defence and Northern Ireland from 1993 to 1996. Between 1990 and 1993 he was head of the Soviet and then Eastern department of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Between 1987 and 1990 he worked as head of chancery at the British embassy in Moscow. Arne Westad is Professor of International History at LSE and Director of LSE IDEAS. Professor Stuart Corbridge is Deputy Director and Provost of LSE. The Department of International History (@lsehistory) is one of the top five university history departments in the UK. LSE Works is a series of public lectures, that will showcase some of the latest research by LSE's academic departments and research centres. In each session, LSE academics will present key research findings, demonstrating where appropriate the implications of their studies for public policy. A list of all the LSE Works lectures can be viewed at LSE Works.

Contributor(s): Professor Francesco Caselli | Professor Caselli will ask whether recent economic research could shed new light on the political and economic impact of natural resource windfalls. Francesco Caselli is the Norman Sosnow Professor of Economics in LSE’s Department of Economics and Centre For Macroeconomics. John Van Reenen is Professor of Economics and Director of the Centre for Economic Performance at LSE. The Department of Economics at LSE (@LSEEcon) is one of the largest economics departments in the world. Its size ensures that all areas of economics are strongly represented in both research and teaching. The Centre For Macroeconomics (@CFMUK) brings together world-class experts to carry out pioneering research on the global economic crisis and to help design policies that alleviate it.

Contributor(s): Professor Kaushik Basu, Professor Amartya Sen, Professor Lord Nicholas Stern | Kaushik Basu (@kaushikcbasu) is Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank. He is the second World Bank Chief Economist from a developing country. He is on leave from Cornell University where he is Professor of Economics and the C. Marks Professor of International Studies. Prior to this he served as the Chief Economic Advisor to the Government of India at the Ministry of Finance. He was Chairman of the Department of Economics and during 2006-9 he was Director of the Center for Analytic Economics at Cornell. Earlier he was Professor of Economics at the Delhi School of Economics, where in 1992 he founded the Centre for Development Economics in Delhi and was its first Executive Director. He is also a founding member of the Madras School of Economics. Mr. Basu has held visiting positions at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and the London School of Economics, where he was a Distinguished Visitor in 1993. He has been a Visiting Professor at Harvard University, Princeton University and M.I.T. and holds a PhD in economics from the London School of Economics. He is currently the President of the Human Development and Capabilities Association, which was founded by Amartya Sen. He has held advisory posts with the ILO, the World Bank, the Reserve Bank of India and was, for several years, a member of the steering committee of the Expert Group of Development Issues set up by the Swedish Government. He is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the Exim Bank of India. He is Editor of Social Choice and Welfare, and served or serves on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, Journal of Development Economics, World Bank Economic Review and the Japanese Economic Review. A Fellow of the Econometric Society, Kaushik Basu has published widely in the areas of Development Economics, Industrial Organization, Game Theory and Welfare Economics. His most recent books are Beyond the Invisible Hand: Groundwork for a New Economics and An Economist’s Miscellany. In May 2008 he was awarded one of India’s highest civilian awards, the Padma Bhushan, by the President of India. Amartya Sen is Thomas W. Lamont University Professor, and Professor of Economics and Philosophy, at Harvard University. He is also the recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics and an honorary fellow of LSE. Nicholas Stern is the IG Patel Chair of Economics and Government, Director of the India Observatory and Chairman of the Asia Research Centre at LSE. Craig Calhoun (@craigjcalhoun) is the Director of LSE. Credits:Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).

Contributor(s): Professor Hugh White | Could it all happen again? Professor White will argue that imagining a new regional order to fit the fast-changing realities in Asia will make war less likely. Hugh White is Professor of Strategic Studies at the Australian National University and author of The China Choice. Robin Archer is the Director of the Postgraduate Programme in Political Sociology at LSE. The Ralph Miliband Programme (@rmilibandlse) is one of LSE's most prestigious lecture series and seeks to advance Ralph Miliband's spirit of free social inquiry. Credits:Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording).

Contributor(s): Jeremy Leggett | A solar revolution is unfolding at a speed that is taking even the solar industry by surprise. But years of blindness to systemic risk threatens fresh global economic disaster. Jeremy Leggett (@JeremyLeggett) is the founder of Solarcentury and SolarAid. At this lecture, Jeremy Leggett will launch an innovative new project. Details to be revealed on the day.

Contributor(s): Professor John Dupré, Professor Gina Rippon | Are there ‘hardwired’ psychological differences between men and women? Do these alleged differences show that gender differences in society have a biological explanation? And what does talk of ‘hardwiring’ even mean? In this interdisciplinary dialogue, philosopher John Dupré and cognitive neuroscientist Gina Rippon will debate these and other issues concerning the science and philosophy of gender. John Dupré is Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Exeter. Gina Rippon is Professor of Cognitive Neuroimaging at Aston University. Jonathan Birch is Assistant Professor in the philosophy department at LSE. The Forum for European Philosophy (@LSEPhilosophy) is an educational charity which organises and runs a full and varied programme of philosophy and interdisciplinary events in the UK.

Contributor(s): Dr Caroline Edwards, Professor Adam Roberts, Anders Sandberg | Utopian and dystopian visions of technologically manipulated and enhanced human beings have always been central characteristics of science fiction film and literature. Sometimes celebrated, sometimes feared, these depictions have articulated anxieties of the day and tackled philosophical, ethical and social questions about possible futures. Can we look to science fiction as a guide to navigating the challenges posed by human enhancement technologies? How has this literary and cinematic genre prefigured and imagined some of the questions we may have to face? Caroline Edwards (@the_blochian) is a Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature at Birkbeck, University of London and Director of the MA in Contemporary Literature and Culture. Adam Roberts (@arrroberts) is Professor of Nineteenth Century Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London and the author of twelve science fiction novels including Bête. Anders Sandberg (@anderssandberg) is James Martin Research Fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford. Imre Bard (@ibard) is a PhD student in Social Research Methods at LSE, working on the NERRI project. NERRI (Neuro-Enhancement: Responsible Research and Innovation) (@NERRI_eu) is a three-year project supported by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme which aims to contribute to the introduction of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) in neuro-enhancement (NE) in the European Area and to shape a normative framework underpinning the governance of neuro-enhancement technologies. The Festival will close with a drinks reception and a performance by LSE Anthropology band The Funktionalists. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.

Contributor(s): Neel Mukherjee, Elif Shafak | What are the foundations of society? Two award-winning writers look at the underpinnings of cultures and societies in their writings about the country of their origins, India and Turkey, in conversation with Bidisha. Neel Mukherjee’s second novel, The Lives of Others, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2014. It has also been shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award. His first novel, Past Continuous was joint winner of the Vodafone-Crossword Award, India’s premier literary award for writing in English, for best novel of 2008. The UK edition of the novel, A Life Apart, was published by Constable & Robinson in January 2010. Elif Shafak (@elif_safak) is Turkey's most-read woman writer and an award-winning novelist. She writes in both English and Turkish, and has published 13 books, nine of which are novels, including: The Bastard of Istanbul, The Forty Rules of Love, Honour and her nonfiction memoir Black Milk. Her books have been translated into more than forty languages. Her new novel The Architect’s Apprentice was published by Penguin UK in autumn 2014. Bidisha (@bidisha_online) is a BBC TV and radio presenter, critic and novelist. As a journalist, she specialises in the arts and culture and in international human rights. Her fifth book, Asylum and Exile: Hidden Voices of London, is based on her outreach work with asylum seekers and refugees. She is an alumna of LSE. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.

Contributor(s): Polly Coles, Jane Da Mosto, Liza Fior, Jonathan Keates | Venice has captivated artists and writers for hundreds of years, but in a city whose literal foundations are under threat from tourism, this discussion asks what is the value of heritage, is it worth saving at any cost? And is there a future for Venice’s unique community away from the museums and palaces? Polly Coles is a writer and broadcaster who spent several years living in Venice. Her book The Politics of Washing: Real Life in Venice is based on her experience of daily life in the city. She is an alumna of LSE. Polly recently wrote and presented five essays on modern Venice for BBC Radio 3 entitled Venice Unravelled. Jane da Mosto is an environmental scientist and activist based in Venice. Venetian resident since 1995, Jane has held many different positions while raising her family, including scientific advisor to The Venice in Peril Fund, consultant for the OECD Territorial Review of the Venice Metropolitan Area (2010) and contributor to the UNESCO review of climate change in the Mediterranean Region (2012). She recently founded We are here Venice, a social enterprise that promotes projects that can change the future of the city, carries out research, and campaigns for the need to protect the Lagoon in order to also save Venice. Liza Fior is founding partner of muf architecture/art, specialists in public realm architecture and art. muf authored Villa Frankenstein, the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, 2010 which took Ruskin and Venice itself as a means to examine how detail can inform strategy. Awards for muf include Public Realm Architect of the Year 2010 and the 2008 European Prize for Public Space (a first for the UK) for a new 'town square' for Barking, East London. Previously a visiting professor at Yale, Liza is a lecturer in Architecture at Central Saint Martins. Jonathan Keates is a prizewinning biographer and novelist, and Chairman of the Venice in Peril Fund. His books include The Siege of Venice and Handel: The Man and His Music. Richard Sennett is Director of Theatrum Mundi, University Professor of the Humanities at New York University and Professor of Sociology at LSE. Theatrum Mundi is a network of people whose shared aims are to understand the culture of cities and to experiment with ways of creating them. The network consists of visual and performing artists, architects and planners, film-makers and photographers, writers and scholars. The work of Theatrum Mundi is two-fold; first, maker-to-maker discussions about specific issues and experiences; second, presentations to the public based on these discussions. Theatrum Mundi happens both back-stage and on stage. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.

Contributor(s): Professor Peter Boxall, Jennie Erdal, Andrew O’Hagan | Is the 'novel of ideas' an outdated genre or are we witnessing its resurgence? What answers can it offer to twenty-first-century questions? In this panel three speakers will discuss examples of the 'novel of ideas' and assess the genre's contemporary relevance. Peter Boxall is Professor of English and Deputy Head of the School of English at the University of Sussex. His research has focused on the relationship between aesthetics and politics in modernist and contemporary writing, and more recently on the longer history of the novel. He has written books on Samuel Beckett and Don DeLillo, and a wide ranging book on the contemporary novel, entitled Twenty-First-Century Fiction. He is currently writing a book entitled The Value of the Novel, for Cambridge University Press (due out in 2015), and in the early stages of a new project on the history of the novel, entitled The Prosthetic Imagination: A History of the Novel as Artificial Life. Jennie Erdal worked in literary publishing for many years as an editor and translator. At Quartet Books she managed the Russian list, and in the mid-eighties she started Quartet Encounters, an imprint that focused on literature in translation. For much of this time she was also the ghostwriter of a London publisher, who figured prominently in her subsequent memoir, Ghosting: A Double Life which became an international bestseller. In 2012 she published The Missing Shade of Blue, which was long listed for the 2013 Commonwealth Book Prize. Jennie Erdal has appeared in Granta magazine and is a regular contributor of features and reviews for the arts pages of the Financial Times and other publications. She currently teaches creative writing at the University of Dundee. Andrew O’Hagan is one of his generation’s most exciting and most serious chroniclers of contemporary Britain. He has twice been nominated for the Man Booker Prize. His books include The Missing, The Atlantic Ocean, Our Fathers, Personality, Be Near Me and The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog. He was voted one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2003. He has won the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the E.M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters. He is Editor at Large of the London Review of Books. His new novel The Illuminations will be published in February 2015. Michael Caines (@michaelscaines) is an editor at the Times Literary Supplement. The Forum for European Philosophy (@LSEPhilosophy) is an educational charity which organises and runs a full and varied programme of philosophy and interdisciplinary events in the UK.

Contributor(s): Dr Yasmin Gunaratnam, Dr Deborah Padfield, Jude Rosen | Pain is notoriously hard to communicate to others. Scholars have debated the relationship between pain and language: does pain require a shared language and common understanding to be explicable, or does hearing about the pain of others always entail doubt? What kinds of communication best enable us to express and hear about pain? On what foundations can we build understanding? This session will explore the capacities of stories, poems and photographs as forms of pain communication, and the possible relations between them. Yasmin Gunaratnam is Senior Lecturer in the Sociology Department at Goldsmiths College, University of London. She has a specialist interest in narrative and stories and writes short stories and poems and her recent research includes a British Academy Fellowship on the palliative care philosophy of ‘total pain’. Yasmin’s latest book Death and the Migrant brings together her interest in stories with her sociological research on transnational dying and intercultural care. Her co-edited collection Narrative and Stories in Care was shortlisted and ‘highly commended’ in the British Medical Association Book Awards 2010. Deborah Padfield is a visual artist specialising in lens based media and inter-disciplinary practice and research within Fine Art and Medicine. She is currently Research Associate at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL and Artist in Residence at the Eastman Dental Hospital. She has collaborated extensively with clinicians and patients exploring the value of visual images to clinician-patient interactions and the communication of pain. In 2001 her work with Dr Charles Pither and staff and patients from INPUT Pain Management Unit, St Thomas’ Hospital, led to a touring exhibition, pilot study and book, Perceptions of Pain. Her collaboration with Professor Joanna Zakrzewska and facial pain clinicians and patients from UCLH led to several exhibitions, symposia and the current UCL CHIRP funded project Pain: speaking the threshold. She has exhibited widely including the National Portrait Gallery, the Wellcome Trust and the Science Museum. She is the winner of several awards including the Sciart Research Award and British Pain Society Artist of the Year 2012. Jude Rosen is a poet, translator and independent researcher in urban culture, policy, planning and citizenship and former university lecturer in politics at UCL until ill-health retirement. Her book of poems, A Small Gateway, was published by Hearing Eye in 2009, addressing the scars of history and displacement in shaping personal and collective identity, memory and art. The poem Crohn Heroine formed the backdrop to the hospital video produced by Richard Crow for desperate optimists and was later used in the Communicating Chronic Pain workshop on sound. In her current work she has been experimenting with a walking and narrative-based poetic practice writing from field notes and observation of resonant places and routes, gathering oral histories and scoring the voices of former workers, displaced people and inhabitants of the marshes and Olympic borderlands of East London as an act of retrieval, reclaiming the space, its peoples and history. Elena Gonzalez-Polledo is Course Tutor in the Department of Methodology. Together with colleagues, she recently completed the ESRC-NCRM funded project Communicating Chronic Pain, which explored the use of arts-based and non-verbal methods for communicating about pain. The Department of Methodology (@MethodologyLSE) provides courses for PhD and MSc students and LSE staff in the design of social research and in qualitative and quantitative analysis, and hosts degree programmes for MSc Social Research Methods and MPhil/PhD in Social Research Methods. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.

Contributor(s): Ahmad Zakii Anwar, Nickson Fong, Yang-May Ooi | This year the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) becomes an integrated economic community. The year caps five decades of foundation and development since the region's formal independence from the West. What are the creative voices contending for the soul of a region where freedom, economic prosperity, civil society, and political maturity continue to evolve in unexpected ways? What forces of rebellion drive the soul of the individual in those societies where economic success - arguably the greatest found in newly-independent states in all human history - has raced ahead of other dimensions of development in the human spirit? What forces drive that spiritual and artistic development in the region more generally? How do these diverge from those along the Trans-Atlantic Axis? What is the culture that sits comfortably with Southeast Asia's place in the global economy? Ahmad Zakii Anwar is a well-known Malaysian ‘urban realist’ artist. His preoccupation with the spiritual or metaphysical aspects of urban life have marked his fine art practice. Nickson Fong is a Producer/Director and the CEO and Founder of Egg Story Studios. He won the Academy Award for Scientific and Technical Achievement 2013. Yang-May Ooi (@StoryGuru_UK) is an award-winning TEDx speaker, bestselling author and story performer. Her work uses the power of personal narrative to help creatives and others develop authentic confidence and become collaborative leaders. Felicia Yap is an Associate of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre and an affiliate of the Centre of South Asian Studies in Cambridge. Established in 2014, the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre (@LSESEAC) is an inter-disciplinary, regionally-focused academic centre within the Institute of Global Affairs (IGA) at LSE. Building on the School's deep academic and historical connections with Southeast Asia, the Centre serves as a hub at LSE for public debate and engagement, and research dissemination on issues relevant to the region. This event is co-organised with Her Excellency Chi Hsia Foo, Jin Craven, Cui Yin Mok and Shzr Ee Tan. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.

Contributor(s): Professor Barbara Graziosi, Edith Hall, Tom Holland, Sir Peter Stothard | This panel explores the Classical wellsprings of Western literature, reflecting on the continuing value and relevance of the Greco-Roman Classics today. Barbara Graziosi (@BarbaraGraziosi) is Professor of Classics and Director for Arts and Humanities at the Institute of Advanced Studies at Durham University. She has published widely on the culture of the ancient world including Inventing Homer, After Homer: The Resonance of Epic and The Gods of Olympus: A History. Edith Hall (@edithmayhall) is Professor of Classics at King's College London and Co-Founder and Consultant Director of the Archive of Performances of Greek & Roman Drama at Oxford. Her achievements in research have recently won her the Erasmus Medal of the European Academy, the Goodwin Award of Merit from the American Classical Society, and a Humboldt Research Prize. She has supervised more than thirty PhD students and published more than twenty books; the most recent is Introducing the Ancient Greeks: from Bronze Age Seafarers to Navigators of the Western Mind. Tom Holland (@holland_tom) is the award winning and bestselling author of Rubicon, Persian Fire and the highly acclaimed Millennium. His most recent work, is In the Shadow of the Sword -The Battle for Global Empire and the end of the Ancient World. He appears regularly on radio, television and in print. He has adapted Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides and Virgil for BBC Radio, and Herodotus for Penguin Classics. He is working on a companion book to Rubicon - Dynasty - to be published in September 2015. Peter Stothard is Editor of the Times Literary Supplement and author of three volumes of diaries, Thirty Days, On the Spartacus Road and Alexandria, which won the 2014 Criticos Prize for literature on a theme from ancient Greece. He was Editor of The Times (1992-2002), Chairman of the Man Booker Prize judges (2012) and President of the Classical Association (2012). Llewelyn Morgan (@llewelyn_morgan) is a Classicist and Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford. His books include Musa Pedestris and The Buddhas of Bamiyan. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.

Contributor(s): Luke Dormehl, Aleks Krotoski, Professor Sonia Livingstone, Professor Andrew Murray | What are the foundations of our identity in the digital age? As digital devices make and manage more and more decisions about our everyday lives how can we retain our sense of self? The panellists discuss how algorithms and intelligent devices are altering our sense of personhood and the ways in which we see ourselves and others. Luke Dormehl (@lukedormehl) is a technology author and journalist, with a background in documentary film. He regularly contributes to Fast Company - where he covers high-tech and the digital humanities -- and also writes for the popular Apple blog, Cult of Mac. His previous books include The Apple Revolution, which explored the links between Apple and the hippie counterculture of the 1960s/70s. His latest book is The Formula: how algorithms solve all our problems..and create more. Aleks Krotoski (@aleksk) is an academic and journalist who writes about and studies technology and interactivity. Her latest book, Untangling the Web: What the Internet is Doing to You looks at the psychology research behind the claims about the positive and negative forces of the digital age. Aleks presents BBC Radio 4’s award-winning science series The Digital Human. She has been hosting The Guardian’s Tech Weekly podcast since its inception, in 2007. Sonia Livingstone (@Livingstone_S) is a Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE and author of Digital Technologies in the Lives of Young People. She directs the 33-country network, EU Kids Online, funded by the EC's Safer Internet Programme. She is now beginning a project, Preparing for a digital future, which follows on the recently-completed project, The Class, both part of the MacArthur Foundation-funded Connected Learning Research Network. Andrew Murray (@AndrewDMurray) is Professor in Law at LSE and a fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (FRSA). He joined the LSE Law Department in September 2000. Andrew’s principal research interests are in regulatory design within Cyberspace, particularly the role of non-State actors, the protection and promotion of Human Rights within the digital environment and the promotion of proprietary interests in the digital sphere, encompassing both intellectual property rights and traditional property models. Sierra Williams (@sn_will) is Managing Editor of the LSE Impact blog (@LSEImpactBlog) an online platform for the wider scholarly community to discuss and debate the future of scholarship and the digital innovations shaping the role of research in society. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.

Contributor(s): Lisa Appignanesi, Darian Leader, Owen Sheers | This panel explores our relationship with our sometimes traumatic past, and asks why we should remember and what happens when we can’t remember. The discussion considers the importance of place and landscape in memory, as well as the nature of collective memory and memorialisation, particularly in the context of war. Lisa Appignanesi (@LisaAppignanesi) is a writer, novelist and broadcaster. She is the former Chair of the Freud Museum London, the former President of English PEN and former Deputy Director of London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts. Her non-fiction includes Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors (which won the BMA Award for the Public Understanding of Science amongst other prizes), the acclaimed family memoir Losing the Dead, the classic study Freud’s Women (with John Forrester) and Simone de Beauvoir, and most recently Trials of Passion: Crimes in the Name of Love and Madness. Her novels include Paris Requiem, The Memory Man and The Dead of Winter. Lisa Appignanesi was awarded the OBE in 2013. Darian Leader is a psychoanalyst working in London and a founder member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research. He is President of the College of Psychoanalysts-UK and Visiting Professor at the School of Human and Life Sciences, Roehampton University. He is the author of several books including: Introducing Lacan, Why do women write more letters than they post?; Freud's Footnotes; Stealing the Mona Lisa: What Art Stops Us From Seeing, Why do people get ill?' (with David Corfield), The New Black: Mourning, Melancholia and Depression and What is Madness? His most recent book, Strictly Bipolar was published by Hamish Hamilton in 2013. Owen Sheers (@owensheers) has written two collections of poetry, The Blue Book and Skirrid Hill, which won a Somerset Maugham award. His verse drama Pink Mist won Wales Book of the Year and the Hay Festival Poetry Medal. His non-fiction includes The Dust Diaries and Calon: A Journey to the Heart of Welsh Rugby. His first novel Resistance has been translated into ten languages and was made into a film in 2011. His plays include The Passion, The Two Worlds of Charlie F. and Mametz. Owen wrote and presented BBC Four's A Poet's Guide to Britain. He has been a NYPL Cullman Fellow, Writer in Residence for the Wordsworth Trust and Artist in Residence for the Welsh Rugby Union. His second novel I Saw A Man will be published by Faber in 2015. Sandra Jovchelovitch is a Professor in the Department of Social Psychology at LSE. The Department of Social Psychology (@PsychologyLSE) is a leading international centre dedicated to consolidating and expanding the contribution of social psychology to the understanding and knowledge of key social, economic, political and cultural issues. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.

Contributor(s): Dr Matthew Griffiths, Gaia Vince, Dr Kathryn Yusoff | The controversial designation “Anthropocene” names a geological epoch in which the planet has been irrevocably changed by human activity. In this panel, three thinkers consider the ways in which the Anthropocene requires us to reconsider both human self-identity and the human capacity for creation and destruction. Is art a narcissistic reflection of human concerns and desires or might it provide a model for dynamic and interactive responses to the global challenges which we face? Matthew Griffiths has recently completed a PhD at Durham University on the poetics of climate change. He has published articles on T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens and Basil Bunting, as well as a pamphlet of his own poetry, How to be Late, and a science fiction novel, The Weather on Versimmon. He presently works on a built environment trade journal. Gaia Vince (@WanderingGaia) is the author of Adventures in the Anthropocene. She is a journalist and broadcaster specialising in science and the environment. She has been the front editor of the journal Nature Climate Change, the news editor of Nature and online editor of New Scientist. She has a regular column, Smart Planet, on BBC Online, and devises and presents programmes about the Anthropocene for BBC radio. She blogs at WanderingGaia.com. Kathryn Yusoff is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at Queen Mary, University of London. Her current research addresses questions of ‘Geologic Life’ within the proposed geologic epoch of the Anthropocene. Danielle Sands is a Fellow at the Forum for European Philosophy. The Forum for European Philosophy (@LSEPhilosophy ) is an educational charity which organises and runs a full and varied programme of philosophy and interdisciplinary events in the UK. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.

Contributor(s): Jonathan Gibbs | In this creative writing workshop we will be looking at the impulse to write, when they are so many reasons and excuses not to, in the hope that exposing the foundations of the creative act can inform the writer's practice in the here and now. But though in part we'll be looking at our personal histories of writing, the exercises will be geared towards producing new work, with a deeper understanding of what our goals actually are. Jonathan Gibbs's novel, Randall, or The Painted Grape, about the London art world and the Young British Artists, is published by Galley Beggar Press. His short fiction has been published in Lighthouse, The Best British Short Stories 2014 and The South Circular and by The White Review (where his story The Story I'm Thinking Of was shortlisted for the 2013 White Review Prize). He studied Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, where he was awarded a Malcolm Bradbury memorial bursary, and has written on books for the Independent, the Daily Telegraph, the TLS and elsewhere. He writes the Independent's weekly Friday Book Design Blog and tweets at @Tiny_Camels. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.

Contributor(s): Professor Ian Bostridge, Dr Armand D’Angour, Professor Fiona Sampson | This discussion explores the links between music and poetry and how much each art form contributes to the other, as well as what common features these art forms share. Common foundations include public performance and private listening, abstract patterns, rhythm, register, tone, breathing and the emergence of tight form from apparently limitless possibility. But music and poetry are partially distinct in the imaginative light they shine, and the panel also discuss how successfully the two art forms complement one another in some of the greatest unions of music and poetry from Homer’s Iliad to Schubert’s Lieder and Britten’s War Requiem. Ian Bostridge (@Ianbostridge) is a tenor and Humanitas Professor of Classical Music at the University of Oxford. Ian’s international recital career has won wide acclaim for his performances as an opera and lieder singer. He is author of A Singer’s Notebook and Schubert’s Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession.Armand D’Angour (@ArmandDAngour) is a Fellow in Classical Literature at Jesus College, Oxford. Initially trained as a cellist before taking a PhD in Classics, Armand is currently working on a project to bring to life the sounds and effects of ancient Greek music. He is author of The Greeks and the New. Fiona Sampson is a poet and Professor of Poetry at Roehampton. Initially trained as a concert violinist, Fiona has published some 25 books of poetry, criticism and philosophy of language. Her most recent volume of poetry is Coleshill and she is author of Music Lessons and the forthcoming Lyric Cousins: Poetry and Musical Form. Richard Bronk is a Visiting Fellow in the European Institute, LSE and author of The Romantic Economist. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.

Contributor(s): Professor Francesca Klug | The Magna Carta, sealed in 1215, has come to stand for the rule of law, curbs on executive power and the freedom to enjoy basic liberties. When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations in 1948, it was heralded as 'a Magna Carta for all human kind'. How has the Magna Carta, initially considered a failure, achieved such iconic status? And can how those who proudly commemorate its 800th year simultaneously pledge to repeal the more modern laws which seek to protect our fundamental rights and freedoms? In A Magna Carta for Humanity: homing in on human rights, published by Routledge to coincide with the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta in June 2015, Francesca Klug will argue that the reasons given for opposing the UKs Human Rights Act are very similar to the reasons that the Magna Carta has stayed relevant for eight centuries. Features that are lauded as ‘totemic’ when applied to the Magna Carta are condemned as ‘dangerous’ when applied to contemporary human rights laws. Are human rights palatable in a mature democracy only as long as they are contained in an ancient document that no longer has any direct legal impact? Are they useful only as a benchmark by which to judge the rest of the world, especially our enemies or rivals, but dangerous when applied to us? Join us for an enlightening discussion, in which Professors Klug and Gearty map the connections between the Magna Carta and Human Rights Act, explore the ethic behind universal human rights and deconstruct the current debate in the UK on the future of human rights protection. Francesca Klug is Professorial Research Fellow in the Centre for the Study of Human Rights. Conor Gearty (@conorgearty) is Professor of Human Rights Law at LSE and Director of LSE’s Institute of Public Affairs. The Centre for the Study of Human Rights at LSE (@LSEHumanRights) is a trans-disciplinary centre of excellence for international academic research, teaching and critical scholarship on human rights. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.

Contributor(s): Professor Sarah Churchwell, Jonty Claypole, Maya Jaggi, Frederic Raphael | With the BBC having announced a remake of Kenneth Clark's TV series Civilisation, and Melvyn Bragg’s intellectual cornucopia on Radio 4, In Our Time, now in its 17th year, we will be asking whether the mission of Lord Reith 'to educate, inform and entertain' is alive and well. Can Matthew Arnold, TS Eliot and FR Leavis sleep well in their graves? Has the era of dumbing down to ' widen access ' run its course? Why shouldn't ALL schoolchildren be asked to grapple with the 'difficult' texts, rich canvases or musical scores of our western inheritance? Why shouldn't everyone have the chance to join the 'elite'? Sarah Churchwell is Professor of American Literature and Public Understanding of the Humanities at UEA. She is the author of Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and The Invention of The Great Gatsby, The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe, and her literary journalism has appeared in the Guardian, New Statesman, TLS, New York Times Book Review, and the Spectator, among others. She comments regularly on arts, culture, and politics for UK television and radio, has judged many literary prizes, including the Bailey’s (Orange) Prize for Fiction and the 2014 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and she is the 2015 Eccles Centre Writer in Residence at the British Library. Jonty Claypole is Director of Arts at the BBC. He works across television, radio and online, ensuring the BBC succeeds in its mission of "Arts for Everyone". As a director then executive producer, he has made over 100 television documentaries for BBC Television, including landmark series like Seven Ages of Britain, A History of Art in Three Colours, A Very British Renaissance and Andrew Marr's Great Scotts. He has created strands like What Do Artists Do All Day, Secret Knowledge and In Their Own Words. He also runs BBC Television's in-house arts department with production teams right across the country. Maya Jaggi is a cultural journalist and critic who has reported from five continents, and was contracted as one of Guardian Review’s leading profile writers for a decade.She has also written for the FT, Independent, Sunday Times Culture, Daily Telegraph, Economist and Newsweek; and was writer-presenter of the BBC4 TV documentary Isabel Allende: The Art of Reinvention. Her conversations with cultural theorist Stuart Hall were made into a four-hour film by Mike Dibb. She has judged literary awards including the Dublin Impac and Orange, and chaired the jury of the Man Asian in Hong Kong. Educated at Oxford and LSE, she was described as “one of Britain’s most respected arts journalists” by the Open University, which awarded her an honorary doctorate in 2012. Frederic Raphael, a major scholar in classics at St John's College, Cambridge, has written over twenty-five novels and volumes of short stories, as well as essays, biographies, translations and many reviews. His most recent book on the ancient world is A Jew Among the Romans about Flavius Josephus. His second volume of autobiography, Going Up, will be published next year. So will his novel Private Views. Among his many film and television scripts are Darling, Two for the Road, the Glittering Prizes and Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. His most recent script, This Man This Woman is due to be shot next year. The LSE European Institute (@LSEEI) was established in 1991 as a dedicated centre for the interdisciplinary study of processes of integration and fragmentation within Europe. In the most recent national Research Assessment Exercise, the Institute was ranked first for research in European Studies in the United Kingdom. The LSE European Institute has been a Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence since 2009. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.

Contributor(s): David Birch, Professor Nigel Dodd, Tom Hockenhull, Professor Nicky Marsh | As our money increasingly takes the form of plastic cards and mobile phones, rather than cash, new questions are being posed about the connections between money, self and identity. Is money becoming de-anonymised, and if so, should we care? Is the decline of cash a moment of renewal in our relationship with money, or a threat to the freedom that has been central to its use? This panel will discuss changing attitudes towards money and the affect it can have, in its many different guises, on our identity. David Birch (@dgwbirch) is an internationally-recognised thought leader in digital money and digital identity. He is a Director of Consult Hyperion, the technical and strategic consultancy that specialises in electronic transactions. Here he provides consultancy support to clients around the world, including all of the leading payment brands, major telecommunications providers, governments bodies and international organisations including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Nigel Dodd (@nigelbdodd) is Professor in the Sociology Department at the LSE. Nigel’s main interests are in the sociology of money, economic sociology and classical and contemporary social thought. He is author of The Sociology of Money and Social Theory and Modernity (both published by Polity Press). His new book, The Social Life of Money, was published by Princeton University Press in September 2014. Tom Hockenhull is a curator at the British Museum, responsible for the modern money collection and editor of Symbols of Power: Ten Coins that Changed the World. Nicky Marsh works in the English Department at the University of Southampton. She works on late 20th and 21st century British and American literatures, theories of gender, postmodernism, poetics and economics. Her published works include Money, Finance and Speculation in Contemporary British Fiction, Democracy in US Women’s Poetry and the edited collection Literature and Globalization. She is also the co-curator of the exhibition Show Me the Money: the Image of Finance, 1700 to the Present, which is touring through 2014-15. Izabella Kaminska (@izakaminska) is a reporter for FT Alphaville. The Department of Sociology at LSE (@LSEsociology) was established in 1904 and remains committed to top quality teaching and leading research and scholarship today. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.

Contributor(s): Professor Alan Manning, Nicola Smith | The Centre for Economic Performance has played an important role in the development of the UK’s National Minimum Wage, which was voted the most successful government policy of the last 30 years. But the minimum wage seems to be stuck in something of a rut and there are many ideas for how to rejuvenate it. This lecture will show how evidence can be used to evaluate these proposals. Alan Manning is Professor of Economics and Director of the Community Programme at the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) at LSE. Nicola Smith (@nicolatuc) is Head of Economic and Social Affairs at the TUC. David Metcalf is Emeritus Professor of Industrial Relations in the Department of Management and Associate in the Labour Markets Programme of the Centre for Economic Performance at LSE. The Centre for Economic Performance (@CEP_LSE) is an interdisciplinary research centre at the LSE Research Laboratory. It was established by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) in 1990 and is now one of the leading economic research groups in Europe. LSE Works is a series of public lectures, that will showcase some of the latest research by LSE's academic departments and research centres. In each session, LSE academics will present key research findings, demonstrating where appropriate the implications of their studies for public policy. A list of all the LSE Works lectures can be viewed at LSE Works. To see more about the impact of this research, visit Designing a minimum wage to reduce poverty and wage inequality at LSE Research Impact.

Contributor(s): Professor John Gray | John Gray draws together the religious, philosophic and fantastical traditions that question the very idea of human freedom. We flatter ourselves about the nature of free will and yet the most enormous forces - biological, physical, metaphysical - constrain our every action. Many writers and intellectuals have always understood this, but instead of embracing our condition we battle against it, with everyone from world conquerors to modern scientists dreaming of a 'human dominion' almost comically at odds with our true state. John Gray is the author of a number of highly regarded books including False Dawn, Straw Dogs and most recently The Silence of Animals. He has taught at Oxford, Harvard, Yale and LSE. This event marks the publication of The Soul of the Marionette. Danielle Sands is a Fellow at the Forum for European Philosophy. The Forum for European Philosophy (@LSEPhilosophy ) is an educational charity which organises and runs a full and varied programme of philosophy and interdisciplinary events in the UK. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.

Contributor(s): David Harsent, Jeremy Sams | Is a translation or adaptation bound always to be measured against the work on which it was founded, or can it take on an independent life of its own? In discussion David Harsent and Jeremy Sams reflect on the differing demands and opportunities presented by translation and adaptation. David Harsent (@DavidHarsent1) has published eleven collections of poetry, the most recent of which is Fire Songs. He is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Roehampton and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His work in music theatre has involved collaborations with a number of composers, but most often with Harrison Birtwistle, and has been performed at the Royal Opera House, Carnegie Hall, the Proms and on Channel 4. He was the librettist of two of the most significant British operas of recent years, Gawain and The Minotaur, and has in addition produced a significant body of English versions of the Greek poet Yannis Ritsos. Jeremy Sams is a theatre director, lyricist and translator of opera libretti as well as a composer, orchestrator and musical director. He is a translator of both straight theatre (Moliere, Botho Strauss) and libretti for numerous operas (most recently the ENO’s Marriage of Figaro), as well as, in his capacity as musician and composer, putting together the unique project The Enchanted Isle (Metropolitan Opera New York). Angus Wrenn is Co-ordinating Language Teacher (EAP) in the LSE Language Centre with special responsibilities for Literature Degree Options. The Language Centre (@lselangcentre) at LSE reflects the specialist nature of the School itself, namely, a world class institution where the quality of teaching and research is paramount. LSE is not just a multi-national university but also a multi-lingual one. This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.