LSE: Public lectures and events

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

Contributor(s): Mia Amor Mottley, Esther Phillips, Dr Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah | Ms Mottley was elected to the Parliament of Barbados in September 1994 as part of the new Barbados Labour Party Government. Prior to that, she served as one of two Opposition Senators between 1991 and 1994. One of the youngest persons ever to be assigned a ministerial portfolio, Ms. Mottley was appointed Minister of Education, Youth Affairs and Culture from 1994 to 2001. She later served as Attorney General and Deputy Prime Minister of Barbados from 2001 to 2008 and was the first female to hold that position. Ms Mottley is an Attorney-at-law with a degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science, specialising in advocacy. She is also a Barrister of the Bar of England and Wales. In 2002, she became a member of the Local Privy Council. She was also admitted to the Inner Bar, becoming the youngest ever Queens Counsel in Barbados.

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

Contributor(s): Lord Wolfson, Professor Paul Cheshire, Dame Kate Barker, Stephen Aldridge | It is 40 years since Paul Cheshire began to investigate the economic effects of our land use planning system and 20 years since Kate Barker published her first review of the impact of planning on housing supply. Their insights have helped us understand what can be done to ensure decent housing for all and boost productivity – but, after three failed attempts at significant planning reform - we are now in a time of economic stagnation and facing a housing affordability crisis that is only becoming more desperate as interest rates rise.

Contributor(s): Professor Kimberly Hutchings | For the past twenty years the idea of human rights as an absolute and universal ethical standard has been subject to a barrage of criticism. Critiques have come from all philosophical and political directions, including communitarian, pragmatist, poststructuralist and decolonial. In this lecture, Kimberly Hutchings explores the critical landscape of human rights thinking today and how we might re-think the concept of human rights in ways that will sustain its power as an ethical discourse into the future.

Contributor(s): Heather Kappes, David McDaid, Molly Taylor | According to the Office for National Statistics, 7.1 per cent of adults in Great Britain - nearly 4 million people - say they 'often or always' feel lonely. Look around you when you’re in a crowded place – a supermarket or an office - 1 in 14 of the people you’re looking at are likely to be lonely, not just sometimes but most of the time. And that’s half a million more people saying that they feel chronically lonely in 2023 than there were in 2020 – suggesting that the pandemic has had some enduring impacts in this respect. Sue Windebank talks to a young person who responded to her own deep feelings of loneliness by campaigning to help others. She hears how people can be influenced to feel more or less lonely – at least for a short time. And she got a surprising insight into which group of people are the loneliest. Sue talks to: Heather Kappes, Associate Professor of Management at LSE; David McDaid Associate Professorial Research Fellow in the Care Policy and Evaluation Centre at LSE; and Molly Taylor, Loneliness Activist, Founder of #AloneNoMore. LSE iQ is a university podcast by the London School of Economics and Political Science.

In this engaging discussion, Joanna Post, Head of the Ocean Observations and Service Station at UNESCO, highlights the significant link between ocean health and climate change. Ishbel Matheson from the Marine Stewardship Council emphasizes the economic potential of sustainable fishing. Darian McBain, a noted sustainability expert, moderates as panelists, including John Siddorn and Siva Thambisetty, dive into critical topics like the BBNJ Treaty and the urgent need for international collaboration. Together, they explore innovative solutions to protect marine ecosystems and ensure a thriving blue economy.

Contributor(s): Professor George Gerapetritis | Climate change, worldwide aggression, migration flows, food crisis and public health emergencies have core common characteristics: they destroy certainties, they produce extraterritorial effects, they are not dealt through deliberative mechanisms. In light of these, we need to revisit the current status and, perhaps, return to the basics. Enhancing democratic institutions and global principled governance, acknowledging the moral value of solidarity and the right to belonging and combating root causes of global challenges, mainly inequalities among people and states. A global alliance is needed towards this goal.

Contributor(s): Professor Ann Oakley, Professor Chris Renwick, Professor Sally Sheard, Professor John Stewart | Richard Titmuss, the first chair in Social Administration at the London School of Economics and Political Science, died fifty years ago in 1973. From his appointment in 1950 until his death Titmuss established and defined the field of social policy. This event will discuss Titmuss’s critique of the ‘welfare state’, and how his insights have had to evolve in the light of the challenges to, and strategies for, social welfare which have come to predominate since his death. The event brings together authors of published and planned biographies of Richard Titmuss, Brian Abel-Smith, and Peter Townsend, alongside Titmuss’ daughter, renowned academic Ann Oakley.

Contributor(s): Professor Mary S Morgan | While the conventional view is that ideas create policy change and economic change follows on - it is just not that simple. We can see what is involved by looking at major changes - such as the reconstruction of post-war economies, post-colonial economic development planning, or switching from capitalist to socialist systems. Designing such new kinds of worlds required new ways of thinking about how the economic world could work involving imagination and cognitive work, and new kinds of economic measurements and accounting systems to deliver that change.