A collection of videos highlighting current research at LSE.http://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/LSE Film and Audio Teamcomms.filmandaudio@lse.ac.ukhttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/Copyright © Terms of use apply see http://www.lse.ac.uk/termsOfUse/SQL Serverhttp://www.lse.ac.uk/assets/richmedia/webFeedImages/research_1400.jpg2016-11-17T12:36:08.743Z

Contributor(s): Dr Julia Morley | Julia Morley's research investigates the way we measure success in the social sector. Why has social impact become an increasingly prevalent measure of success? How can we be sure it is conceptually justified and correctly applied by social sector organisations? And how might the use of social impact measurement affect staff? In this film, Dr Morley examines the rise of social impact reporting and argues that a group of individuals working in social investment – many of whom have a background in finance – are driving this change.

Dr Julia Morleyhttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=35722016-08-26T12:00:00Z

Contributor(s): Dr Paul Stock | Dr Paul Stock from the International History department looks at how the Grand Tour of the 17th, 18th and 19th century has helped define holidaymaking today. He contends that the history of going on holiday reveals important things about us, not least the UK’s complicated relationship with Europe.

Dr Paul Stockhttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=35602016-08-15T12:00:00Z

Contributor(s): Dr Alan Mace, Fanny Blanc, Barney Stringer, Catriona Riddell, Jonathan Seager, Richard Blyth | Housing should be strategically built on the Metropolitan Green Belt to halt its piecemeal development and alleviate development pressure on the Wider South East, while protecting environmentally important areas, says a new report from the London School of Economics and Political Science. According to the report, A 21st Century Metropolitan Green Belt, current planning regulations allow for parts of the green belt to be chipped away while preventing the building of settlements which make more sense strategically and environmentally. This short film highlights some of the key findings.

Dr Alan Mace, Fanny Blanc, Barney Stringer, Catriona Riddell, Jonathan Seager, Richard Blythhttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=35542016-07-31T12:00:00Z

Contributor(s): Kathleen Scanlon | New research published by LSE and the Berkeley Group explores how urban villages could help address the capital's housing crisis. The report, called 'New London Villages', identifies six characteristics of a real urban village. These include being a place that is unique, mixed, locally driven and designed for social interaction. The authors then tested Kidbrooke Village in the Royal Borough of Greenwich against them and made a series of recommendations for all new major developments in London.

Kathleen Scanlonhttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=35502016-07-23T12:00:00Z

Contributor(s): Mona Sloane, Joanne Entwistle, Don Slater | Light is fundamental to social life. Light, by the same token, can play a key role in reproducing urban inequalities. This film follows the Configuring Light Roundtables project which sets out to explore light as critical urban material and map out how social research and cross-disciplinary collaboration can help make our cities better and more equitable – by day and night.

Mona Sloane, Joanne Entwistle, Don Slaterhttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=35012016-05-12T12:00:00Z

Contributor(s): Dr Michael Muthukrishna | In this film Dr Michael Muthukrishna explains the main ideas in his research paper ‘Innovation in the Collective Brain’. He argues that innovation is not the work of geniuses, but rather the product of our combined social knowledge. In short, if you want to be an innovator, it’s better to be social than smart.

Dr Michael Muthukrishnahttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=34062016-02-29T12:00:00Z

Contributor(s): Sonia Livingstone | This is a general overview of the EU kids Online project.

Sonia Livingstonehttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=25732014-08-19T12:00:00Z

Contributor(s): Ellen Helsper, Giovanna Mascheroni, Lelia Green, Leslie Haddon, Monica Barbovschi, Nathalie Sonck, Sonia Livingstone | These videos are of the thematic reports from the EU Kids online project.

Ellen Helsper, Giovanna Mascheroni, Lelia Green, Leslie Haddon, Monica Barbovschi, Nathalie Sonck, Sonia Livingstonehttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=25722014-08-18T12:00:00Z

Contributor(s): Ingrid Paus-Hasebrink, Leen d’Haenens, Tatiana Jereissati, Luiza Shahbazyan, Dunja Potočnik, Yiannis Laouris | In the following videos members of the EU Kids Online network describe the most interesting findings from their different countries and their recommendations for parents.

Ingrid Paus-Hasebrink, Leen d’Haenens, Tatiana Jereissati, Luiza Shahbazyan, Dunja Potočnik, Yiannis Laourishttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=24692014-05-27T12:00:00Z

Contributor(s): David Šmahel, Gitte Stald, Kairi Talves, Annikka Suoninen, Catherine Blaya, Uwe Hasebrink | In the following videos members of the EU Kids Online network describe the most interesting findings from their different countries and their recommendations for parents.

David Šmahel, Gitte Stald, Kairi Talves, Annikka Suoninen, Catherine Blaya, Uwe Hasebrinkhttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=24702014-05-27T12:00:00Z

Contributor(s): Despina Chronaki, Bence Ságvári, Kjartan Ólafsson, Brian O’Neill, Giovanna Mascheroni, Guna Spurava | In the following videos members of the EU Kids Online network describe the most interesting findings from their different countries and their recommendations for parents.

Despina Chronaki, Bence Ságvári, Kjartan Ólafsson, Brian O’Neill, Giovanna Mascheroni, Guna Spuravahttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=24712014-05-27T12:00:00Z

Contributor(s): Ingrida Gabrialaviciute, Alfredas Laurinavičius, Andreia Costa, Joseph Borg, Nathalie Sonck, Cristina Ponte, Monica Barbovschi | In the following videos members of the EU Kids Online network describe the most interesting findings from their different countries and their recommendations for parents.

Ingrida Gabrialaviciute, Alfredas Laurinavičius, Andreia Costa, Joseph Borg, Nathalie Sonck, Cristina Ponte, Monica Barbovschihttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=24722014-05-27T12:00:00Z

Contributor(s): Marina Geer, Galina Soldatova, Bojana Lobe, Miguel Angel Casado, Ulrika Sjöberg, Martin Hermida, Sara Signer Widmer, Kürşat Çağıltay, Leslie Haddon | In the following videos members of the EU Kids Online network describe the most interesting findings from their different countries and their recommendations for parents.

Marina Geer, Galina Soldatova, Bojana Lobe, Miguel Angel Casado, Ulrika Sjöberg, Martin Hermida, Sara Signer Widmer, Kürşat Çağıltay, Leslie Haddonhttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=24732014-05-27T12:00:00Z

Contributor(s): Professor Henry Jenkins, Professor Sonia Livingstone, Professor Craig Calhoun, Professor Charlie Beckett, Professor Patricia Riley, Professor Terhi Rantanen, Professor Mark Deuze | In 2013, LSE's Department of Media and Communications celebrated its tenth anniversary with an international one-day conference bringing together some of the world's leading media theorists.

Professor Henry Jenkins, Professor Sonia Livingstone, Professor Craig Calhoun, Professor Charlie Beckett, Professor Patricia Riley, Professor Terhi Rantanen, Professor Mark Deuzehttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=21712014-01-15T12:00:00Z

3 minute video introducing The Investment and Human Rights Project within the Laboratory for Advanced Research on the Global Economy. The video introduces the need to draw connections between investment and impacts on peoples' enjoyment of their human rights.

http://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=21612013-12-12T11:00:00Z

Contributor(s): LSE Academics | 'Why Gender Matters for Social Science' was originally designed for the LSE100 gender module. The film comprises of a number of interviews with LSE academics discussing the importance of gender research for their discipline and talking about the range of work in this field being carried out at the school.

LSE Academicshttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=21442013-12-02T12:00:00Z

Contributor(s): Professor Sandra Jovchelovitch | During the nineteenth and the twentieth century, rapid economic and social development concentrated ever greater numbers of the Brazilian population in cities. This urban expansion drew in thousands of workers from across the country, where - in the absence of sufficient infrastructure - they settled in shanty towns, or "favelas," on the steep hillsides around the city. Although justifiably associated with extreme poverty, and the problems of crime that accompany this, the favelas of Rio de Janeiro are also places of surprising cultural richness. LSE professor Sandra Jovchelovitch has been studying the society and culture of the favelas for several years, and in this short film talks about how grassroots organisations such as AfroReggae and CUFA have been working with favela residents to establish a stable space in which that cultural richness might find identity and expression.

Professor Sandra Jovchelovitchhttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=15602012-08-01T12:00:00Z

Contributor(s): Christelle Rabier | Editor's note: Viewer caution - this video contains graphic representations of invasive surgery. In this short film, Wellcome Fellow Christelle Rabier of LSE's department of Economic History narrates the invention of medical illustration 1708-1820. Images courtesy and copyright of The Wellcome Library. In the eighteenth century, surgeons were rapidly developing new techniques for invasive surgery. But how to transmit this information? Only a very few students at a time would be able to watch a procedure, and even then, it wasn't clear what was happening amid the throng of assistants required to restrain the un-anaesthetised patient. Early medical illustrations offer little information to the prospective surgeon, but over the course of a hundred years, a series of conventions emerged - cross-sections for interior views, dotted lines for motion, and the transposition of multiple sequential events onto the same plate - all of which meant that by the beginning of the nineteenth century, illustrators were able to depict the actual process of surgery, and spread medical innovations further afield than the confines of a single theatre.

Christelle Rabierhttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=12242011-10-31T14:00:00Z

Contributor(s): Mercy Nahmo, Vlad Glaveanu, Martin Bauer, Luca Savorelli, Lila Caballero-Sosa, Aurelie Bahsa i Novosejt, Ben Voyer, Ben Wilson, Sara Belton, Penny Hilton, Stavroula Tsirogianni, Tom Pritchard | Computer processing has revolutionised the social sciences, enabling the collection and processing of vast quantities of data. Amid the consequent information glut, effective presentation of data is more important than ever - even good research can't do any work if the right people can't access its conclusions. So each year, social science students from LSE partner up with graphic designers from the London College of Communication (LCC) to produce data presentations that are as visually striking as they are epistemically credible.

Mercy Nahmo, Vlad Glaveanu, Martin Bauer, Luca Savorelli, Lila Caballero-Sosa, Aurelie Bahsa i Novosejt, Ben Voyer, Ben Wilson, Sara Belton, Penny Hilton, Stavroula Tsirogianni, Tom Pritchardhttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=10732011-05-18T12:00:00Z

Contributor(s): Myria Georgiou, Ramy Aly | Throughout the so-called War On Terror, trans-national Arab television stations such as AL Jazeera have supplied a valuable corrective to the perceived political bias of Western media. But that curiosity has been coupled with suspicion: was Al Jazeera supplying a useful Arab perspective, or seditious Muslim propaganda? Who was watching these stations, and what impact was Arab television having on its viewers' sense of cultural identity? Media & Citizenship studies the ways transnational media, in particular Arabic language television, reshape the political landscapes of citizenship in the European Union. It provides the first European wide empirical research on the use of Arabic language television and its influence on integration in multicultural societies. After collecting data across 7 EU nations (Cyprus, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the UK), focus group studies explore how Arabic speakers themselves construct citizenship in the light of their media use, and their adopted national cultures.

Myria Georgiou, Ramy Alyhttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=10682011-03-22T12:00:00Z

Contributor(s): Mitchel T. Keller | With widespread interest in tracing our family histories, what of our academic family tree - who taught our teachers? In 1997, mathematician Harry B. Coonce set out to trace his academic ancestry. His database now contains 150,000 names, stretching back to pre- Renaissance Europe. Current director of the Mathematics Genealogy project and LSE researcher Mitchel T. Keller explains how it all works, and what it means to be related to genius.

Mitchel T. Kellerhttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=10672011-02-23T12:00:00Z

Contributor(s): Alan Bracey, Ed Fay, Sue Donnelly | As widespread digitisation of books triggers the most significant shift in reading habits since the Gutenberg press, what happens to the libraries? Will they become mere book museums, insulated storehouses to safe-keep books from physical decay? And when everything in print is digitized, why will we still need librarians?

Alan Bracey, Ed Fay, Sue Donnellyhttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=7122010-12-07T12:00:00Z

Contributor(s): Professor Chetan Bhatt | "Where do human rights come from? Are they universal across time and space, or do they, as Professor Chetan Bhatt asks, ""stop at the door of culture""? Should human rights organisations defend everyone, or have some persons forfeited their right to protection? When it was announced that Muslim cleric and prominent Al Qaeda spokesman Anwar al-Awlaki was to be the subject of a ""targeted killing"", a curious dilemma arose for human rights organisations. Targeted killings – effectively, state-endorsed assassinations – are not unprecedented, but Al-Awlaki is an unusual case: he is an American citizen, currently believed to be hiding in Yemen. Can the President of the United States order the execution of one of his own citizens without due process, without prosecution in a public trial? In the US, the American Civil Liberties Union and Center for Constitutional Rights launched a lawsuit protesting that the executive order against al-Awlaki was illegal. In response, members within those organisations protested that it was not the role of human rights organisations to militate in favour of persons who themselves had no respect for human rights. In this internal contradiction, a serious ethical situation has arisen. What limits are there to the defence of human rights?"

Professor Chetan Bhatthttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=7132010-12-07T12:00:00Z

Contributor(s): Professor Sonia Livingstone | With 65 per cent of Europeans now online, what effect is this having on children? What type of material are children being exposed to through the internet? How do online risks compare to offline risks? In this short film, Professor Sonia Livingstone – head of LSE’s Department of Media and Communications – along with fellow researchers Dr Ellen Helsper and Dr Leslie Haddon, discuss the findings of their survey into the online habits of 23,420 children and their parents in 23 European countries. Professor Livingstone and her colleagues received funding from the EC's Internet Programmed to investigate the opportunities and the risks that children are exposed to online. They found that one in eight children report having been upset by something they have seen online and one in twelve have met an online contact offline. With almost a quarter of 9-10 year olds now hosting their own social network profile, the researchers ask what obligations internet service providers and social networking sites have to 'manage the interactions that they facilitate.' Their results are published in the EU Kids Online report, Risks and Safety on the Internet, available at the EU Kids Online website.

Professor Sonia Livingstonehttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=7112010-10-20T12:00:00Z

Contributor(s): Dr Kavita Abraham | Qualitative data can provide a researcher with a lot of interesting information , but trying to interpret what it means can lead to methodological problems. Unlike a list of numbers, the meaning of a text is not something everyone will necessarily agree on. It’s much easier for researcher bias to affect the interpretation, and it’s often difficult to explicitly demonstrate how conclusions have been reached. But what if you could train a machine to do the analysis? In this short film Kavita Abraham of LSE’s Methodology Institute explains how she has been using the software Alceste to analyse the transcripts of interviews with hundreds of people from Angola, Tanzania, and Sierra Leone. The interviews, which explored perceptions of local governance, were conducted by the BBC World Service Trust|, a charity that uses the power of the media to reduce poverty and promote human rights. Here Dr Abraham highlights some of the advantages of using a machine to study this kind of qualitative data.

Dr Kavita Abrahamhttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=7102010-08-20T12:00:00Z

Contributor(s): Dr Heather Jones | The prisoner reprisals of 1917 were a retaliatory action taken by German forces against captured French and British troops, in reaction to poor British and French treatment of German prisoner workers. This was a ruthless, calculated policy, intended to manipulate public opinion, as Heather Jones from the Department of International History explains. Prisoners held behind German lines during the 1917 reprisals were forced to work under shellfire on subsistence rations. But rather than conceal this mistreatment, the German captors actively encouraged prisoners to write home about it . This deliberate release of information was intended to mobilise public opinion in Britain and France in order to force changes in British and French military policy. The plan worked. As a direct consequence of the 1917 reprisal sequences, the French and British governments insisted, against the wishes of their military chiefs, that their German prisoner workers be withdrawn to safety. In consequence, the Germans halted their reprisals in May of 1917. However, the reprisals ultimately paved the way for more radicalised German prisoner mistreatment later in the war. By 1918, beatings and malnutrition were commonplace in the German army, and actions which a year before had been sufficiently shocking as to constitute a "reprisal" had become the norm. A book on this topic will be published with Cambridge University Press in 2011: Heather Jones, Violence against prisoners of war: Britain, France and Germany, 1914-1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011)

Dr Heather Joneshttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=7092010-08-10T12:00:00Z

Contributor(s): Mirko Draca | Lobbying is big business in US politics, and getting bigger. Many commentators have voiced suspicions about the ties between lobbying firms, private sector businesses, and politics. They allege that a "revolving door", which sees employees moving from public office to private companies and back again, potentially jeopardises the public interest. Often highly paid, these lobbyists claim their salaries simply reflect their high ability, but critics complain those exiting the revolving door are attractive to lobbying firms because they can exploit their political connections. In this film Mirko Draca explains how he and his colleagues, Christian Fons-Rosen and Jordi Blanes i Vidal, measured the extent to which former political staff who become lobbyists benefit from their ties to government. This involves separating the issue of ability from the issue of political connections. Fortunately, the political system contains conditions for testing this: periodic elections mean that political contacts are vulnerable. By looking at what happens to a lobbyist's earnings when their former employer leaves political office, Draca and his colleagues have been able to measure the value of being politically well connected.

Mirko Dracahttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=7082010-07-15T12:00:00Z

Contributor(s): Dr Kristen Rundle | Is law inherently moral or does Nazi law provide tragic proof that law has no intrinsic moral worth? For Positivists, such as H L A Hart, the systemic integrity of a legal code says nothing about its content – the law is simply whatever is put forward by lawgivers. In contrast natural lawyers, notably Lon Fuller, insist that the way law is expressed carries moral significance for those who are subject to it. In this film Dr Kristen Rundle, from the Department of Law, explains why the Hart- Fuller debate, begun in the Harvard Law Review in 1958, has never really gone away.

Dr Kristen Rundlehttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=6802010-06-04T12:00:00Z

Contributor(s): Dr Kristen Rundle | Typically, the legal codes of despotic states lack transparency (you aren’t told what the laws are), lack consistency (one law will contradict another, making it impossible to obey both), often endorse retroactivity (you’re guilty today for an act that wasn’t illegal when you did it), and permit unannounced changes to the law. For Dr Kristen Rundle, from the Department of Law, this isn’t just a case of poor legal housekeeping. In this short film she discusses how the systemic disorder typically exhibited by the legal systems of despotic and transitional states suggests that tyranny requires ‘forms of power that are not compatible with law.’ Drawing on debates of legal philosophy, she explains why chaos works in the tyrant’s favour while law – even with pernicious content – ties up his ability to wield absolute power.

Dr Kristen Rundlehttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=6812010-06-04T12:00:00Z

Contributor(s): Professor Martin Anthony | Diagnosing tumours, playing video games, detecting credit card fraud, recognising faces, reading handwriting… they don't seem like similar tasks, but they are all cases where "machine learning" is employed to enable computers to make intelligent decisions. And although the various tasks look very different, the mathematics behind them is remarkably similar, as Professor Martin Anthony explains in this short film. When computers fail to do something we find easy – reading handwriting, recognising faces – it's tempting to think of them as stupid machines. But it's often the case that tasks we find relatively easy to perform evade explicit codification. How, for example, would you specify rules which correctly identified cats and only cats – including three-legged cats – but excluded dogs? Employing ideas from probability theory, statistics, linear algebra, geometry and discrete mathematics, machine learning aims to generate systems of instructions – algorithms – that allow computers to perform cognitive-style tasks. In abstract terms, machine learning involves detecting patterns in very large datasets, clustering together similar objects and distinguishing dissimilar ones. This could help with the detection of anomalies (as with the identification of malignant tumours or fraudulent credit card usage), or it could be used to recognise patterns – making sense of handwritten characters, for example. But despite the extraordinary real-world effects this theoretical work makes possible, Professor Anthony, like many mathematicians, isn't directly concerned with the uses to which his work is eventually put – 'I think of myself as an applicable mathematician,' he says, 'if it wasn't interesting mathematically, I'd probably be doing something else.'

Professor Martin Anthonyhttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=6372010-05-04T12:00:00Z

Contributor(s): Professor Eileen Munro | Baby P, Victoria Climbié - the names have become symbolic of the failures of the child protection agencies. Professor Eileen Munro, a former social worker herself and now an expert on child protection reform, believes that more attention needs to be given to the system, rather than just the individuals, that allowed these tragedies to occur. In this short film, she explains that only allocating blame to individual social workers and managers can leave the impression that the problem has been successfully fixed. But if the problem is systemic, then merely punishing and removing the culpable individuals simply sets the stage for the next case to occur. As Professor Munro says, "Human error is where you should begin to ask questions rather than where you should stop." Inspired by improved air safety procedures, she explains that the aim should be to design systems that work with the limits of human reasoning, and make it "easier for people to the right thing and harder for them to do the wrong thing".

Professor Eileen Munrohttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=6282010-04-15T12:00:00Z

Contributor(s): Peter Howlett, Aashish Velkar | Independent of British rule, the Indian economy expanded rapidly - but as the population also expanded, fears grew that the land would not be able to feed the rising numbers. The government took action and, during the 1960s, 70s, and into the 80s, impending famine was successfully averted through a series of agricultural policies designed to increase crop yields. This became known as the "Green Revolution." As part of a major project investigating how well facts travel, LSE economic historians Peter Howlett| and Aashish Velkar| travelled to southern India in search of a case study to see what had made those policies so successful. But when they arrived, they found a second green revolution was underway - presenting them with a unique research opportunity. Following a team from Tamil Nadu Agricultural University|, Dr Howlett and Dr Velkar were able to study firsthand how knowledge was transmitted between policy makers, scientists, and farmers, and how a very different model was emerging - one which emphasised a two-way flow of information and which has so far produced startling results. Their findings are in a new book collected on the "How Well Do ‘Facts’ Travel?" project, due out mid 2010.

Peter Howlett, Aashish Velkarhttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=6082010-03-10T12:00:00Z

Contributor(s): Dr Jason Alexander | While we grapple with the finer points of stem cell research or the ethics of assisted suicide, some moral issues are so obviously wrong that we hardly need to debate them. Yet history swiftly belies our notion of the ethically self-evident precept. Cultures in the past have flourished for many centuries at a time – fostering technical innovation, establishing centres of learning and culture – while simultaneously permitting slavery or human sacrifice or cannibalism, for example. In this short film, Dr Jason Alexander from the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method explains how a naturalistic account of where morality comes from and how it operates must be flexible enough to accommodate these wildly different parameters, whilst being sufficiently robust to account for the immovable and absolute hold it has upon us. Game theory, developed by economists as a means of studying bargaining situations, has since become a vital tool for students of human behaviour. Here, Dr Alexander, explores how this approach can be used to investigate how our moral sense may have developed, and how the dictates of morality can be binding and yet relative to a place and time.

Dr Jason Alexanderhttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=5482010-01-29T12:00:00Z

Contributor(s): Zack Cooper | Deriding it as “socialism by stealth,” critics of President Obama’s plans for healthcare reform in the US have complained that the President intends to institute an American National Health Service. Meanwhile, in the UK, the NHS itself is becoming increasingly market-led with the roll-out of “NHS Choices” – a system which allows patients to choose their healthcare provider. Some see the “Choice” agenda as steering the NHS troublingly close to privatisation. In this short film, Zachary Cooper, a research officer with LSE Health explains how neither system will or should effect a wholesale replacement of the other. Instead both have much to learn from introducing the correct type of competition, incentives, and regulations. As published in the British Medical Journal, his recent work with Professor Julian LeGrand – formerly a senior Downing Street policy advisor and one of the architects of the Choice and Competition agenda – provides empirical evidence that patient choice has coincided with reduced waiting times and significantly improved equity in England – with discrepancies between the richest and the poorest patients all but invisible by 2007.

Zack Cooperhttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=5242009-12-08T12:00:00Z

Contributor(s): Professor Arne Westad | When the Cold War ended, the threat of an all-out war between the superpowers ended with it. Nuclear war apparently went away. But while the political games changed, the nuclear arsenal that had done so much to keep the Cold War from ever turning hot remained very much in place. In this film, renowned historian of the Cold War Professor Arne Westad explains that not only have hopes for a dismantling of the weapons stockpile failed to be realised, but that the period since the end of the Cold War has seen proliferation occur at such a pace that ours is now referred to as "The Second Nuclear Age." Professor Westad also talks of his prevailing hope for a world free of nuclear weapons.

Professor Arne Westadhttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=5222009-12-07T12:00:00Z

Contributor(s): Dr Alex Voorhoeve | Can we trust our intuitive judgments of right and wrong? Are moral judgments objective? Why be moral? In this short film, Dr. Alex Voorhoeve, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method, explains why he engaged eleven leading philosophers and scientists in conversation in order to elicit answers to these questions. Dr. Voorhoeve argues for the importance of the dialogue form for philosophical enquiry, and describes some of the advantages that written dialogues have over ordinary, monologic texts.

Dr Alex Voorhoevehttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=4882009-11-16T12:00:00Z

Contributor(s): Professor Janet Hunter | On 1 September 1923, an earthquake measuring 8.3 on the Richter scale struck the main Japanese island of Honshū. What wasn't immediately destroyed in the 4 – 10 minutes during which the ground shook was consumed by fires which swept through the largely wooden buildings of Tokyo and the port city of Yokohama – Japan's central import hub. In this short film Professor Janet Hunter, of the Department of Economic History, looks at how the Japanese economy reacted to this disaster. Despite the massive devastation and loss of life – as many as 140,000 died – one extraordinary feature is how quickly the Japanese economy recovered. Within two to three years, most of the large-scale indicators such as gross domestic product, had reverted to trend. Indeed by 1926 it was, in many respects, as if the earthquake had never occurred. According to Professor Hunter's research, patterns are emerging that permit insights into the psychology of markets. These suggest that even short-term profit-seeking, although seemingly callous and opportunistic, ultimately plays a vital role in assuring swift recovery.

Professor Janet Hunterhttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=4602009-10-27T12:00:00Z

Contributor(s): Dr Roman Frigg | Scientists produce the technologies that characterise modern life and their theories help us to understand how the world works – they are transparently useful. But why do we need philosophers of science? In this short film Dr Roman Frigg, a former theoretical physicist who is now senior lecturer in the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method, argues that all science is the result of a particular philosophical attitude. One of the tasks of philosophers of science is to analyse science in light of these attitudes. Philosophers can also feed back into science and Dr Frigg points to a project at LSE which looks at climate models as a good example of this. Climate scientists and philosophers are working together to tackle difficult conceptual problems – such as the use of probability and the kind of forecasts you make – to come up with more informed climate models.

Dr Roman Frigghttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=4412009-10-15T12:00:00Z

Contributor(s): Dr Sujit Sivasundarum | In this short film Dr Sujit Sivasundarum, from the Department of International History, challenges the idea that European colonists brought Modernity in the form of systematic knowledge to countries such as Sri Lanka. He argues that it is not just territory that is occupied by a colonising force, local knowledge, too, is also absorbed and utilised by the colonisers. Dr Sivasundarum's research looks at the Kingdom of Kandy, a state set deep in the forested highlands of central Sri Lanka. Kandy was one of the last outposts of native rule to fall to colonists, successfully repelling the British in 1803, before finally succumbing in 1815. One reason for the Kandyan's success was superior information: technical knowledge useful to the military resistance could be passed between Kandyans in the form of "palm-leaf manuscripts." By examining surviving palm-leaf manuscripts, Dr Sivasundaram is able to reconstruct indigenous knowledge from the 1800s, and show that what we think of "enlightenment knowledge" is sometimes actually founded on indigenous knowledge - although the link has long since been obscured.

Dr Sujit Sivasundarumhttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=4122009-09-08T12:00:00Z

Contributor(s): Dr Edgar Whitely | The Government's much vilified identity card scheme overreaches its aim of protecting us from identity fraud and could leave us more - not less - vulnerable, according to Dr Edgar Whitley from LSE's Information Systems and Innovation Group.In this short film Dr Whitley warns that in their proposed form, ID cards fail to distinguish the separate tasks of authentication and identification - forcing us to disclose more personal information than necessary in situations where we may need, for example, simply to establish that we are over 18. This would not be necessary, he argues, if the government had taken the opportunity to utilise new technologies, such as our own mobile phones.Could some of the controversy around the scheme have been avoided if it was more citizen-centric? As the date approaches when the proposed scheme will be rolled out nationwide, Dr Whitley discusses how ID cards threaten to change the relationship between the individual and the state in the UK.

Dr Edgar Whitelyhttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=4102009-08-20T12:00:00Z

Contributor(s): Dr Filippa Lentzos | Anthrax, smallpox, plague - biological weapons provoke a special fear in us. Whatever the reasons for this, it is not because they have proven to be especially lethal in comparison to conventional weapons, according to Dr Filippa Lentzos. In this film Dr Lentzos, a senior researcher with BIOS - LSE's centre for the study of bioscience - explains why the US Government, along with the security and pharmaceutical industries, have an interest in nurturing a culture of fear concerning a biological weapons attack. She also argues that the US government's response to the risk of an attack may have, ironically, actually increased the threat of such an attack. Dr Lentzos works on strengthening the UN Biological Weapons Convention. She is currently working with governments on increasing transparency and building confidence between states that no offensive weapons programmes are being developed.

Dr Filippa Lentzoshttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=4002009-07-14T12:00:00Z

Contributor(s): Lord Nicholas Stern | Being green is often seen as a form of modern Puritanism: environmental degradation is the price we have paid for our luxurious lives, and frugality and discomfort is the debt we must pay for planetary survival. But LSE's Lord Nicholas Stern is more optimistic. He explains how we can both manage climate change and also usher in a new era of global prosperity in this short film. Lord Stern's blueprint for managing climate change. Proper management of climate change could create a new era of global economic prosperity rather than herald an inevitable age of frugality according to Lord Nicholas Stern, Chair of LSE's Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. This is because our future economic success is inextricably entwined with the continued health of the planet. Lord Stern argues that not only is our reckless attitude environmentally unsustainable, but economically unstable to boot. But this economics driven approach is not without its critics. For example James Lovelock, the well-known scientist and environmentalist, fears current measures to tackle climate change are too little too late, and sees schemes like "carbon trading" as corporate pacifiers. In this film, Lord Stern addresses five challenges that lie ahead: 1. How can we solve the overpopulation problem? 2. Doesn't an economic motive relegate environmental concerns to a mere stepping-stone on the way to wealth? 3. How much can we invest our hopes in technology? 4. What can we do, and what is required to actually make this work? 5. Will the need to focus attention on the environment divert resources away from improving living conditions for people in the developing world?

Lord Nicholas Sternhttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=3992009-06-15T12:00:00Z

Contributor(s): Dr Christopher Badcock | In his new book, 'The Imprinted Brain', Dr Christopher Badcock (LSE, Sociology) presents a radical revision to the current classification of mental disorders. His proposal is that we might understand disorders with reference to their position on a "mentalistic spectrum," which arrays mental disorders according to the degree to which sufferers have beliefs about the thoughts and intentions of other minds. In this film, Dr Badcock discusses one of the curious implications of his theory: the notion that along with the more familiar autistic savants, there may be "psychotic savants" - individuals who possess severe mechanistic deficiencies, but such an excess of "people skills" that they go through life undetected, and "deeply embedded in critical social institutions".

Dr Christopher Badcockhttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=3982009-06-01T12:00:00Z

Contributor(s): Mirko Draca | What effect does raising the number of police have on crime? It might seem obvious that more police means fewer crimes - but things aren't that simple. For a start, there's the so called "endogeneity problem". Research economist Mirko Draca explains how the July 2005 terrorist attacks became a "natural experiment".

Mirko Dracahttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=3972009-05-26T12:00:00Z

Contributor(s): Dr Paul Woolley | The huge expansion of the global financial system in recent decades has now culminated in a devastating downfall. 'It has revealed deep flaws in the structure and functioning of finance, as well as in our understanding of how it works,' says Dr Paul Woolley, a former fund manager and IMF economist, who last year funded two research centres at LSE and the University of Toulouse for the study of market dysfunctionality. The two centres are set to produce a stream of research over the next few years that will challenge the paradigm of market efficiency that has prevailed more or less unchallenged since Adam Smith and his belief in the 'invisible hand'. 'They will show how the misalignment of interests between the agents (such as the banks, fund managers and brokers) and principals (the end-investors and man in the street) leads to volatility of security prices, misallocation of capital and macro-economic calamity, as well as to the sheer scale of the finance sector,' said Dr Woolley. Paul Woolley expands on his reasons for establishing the two research centres in this film.

Dr Paul Woolleyhttp://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/research/player.aspx?id=3962008-10-28T12:00:00Z