Event Podcasts 2016

Department of Economics, Centre for Macroeconomics and International Relations Public Lecture:

Investing in Inclusive Growth

Date: Tuesday 15 November 2016

Speaker: Bill Morneau

Bill Morneau (@Bill_Morneau) is Canada’s Finance Minister. Previously, he led Morneau Shepell and was Pension Investment Advisor to Ontario’s Finance Minister. Morneau’s community service in Toronto is extensive, having supported the arts, helped street kids, and improved access to health care and education. Internationally, he founded a school for Somali and Sudanese youth in an African refugee camp. He holds a B.A. from Western University, an MSc from the London School of Economics and Political Science and an MBA from INSEAD.

Chair: Professor Wouter Den Haan

Wouter Den Haan is Professor of Economics at LSE and Co-Director of the Centre for Macroeconomics.

Canada’s Minister of Finance, Bill Morneau, shares his views on the global economy and how Canada is investing to strengthen its middle class and grow the economy over the long term.

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International Relations Fred Halliday Memorial Lecture:

International Norm Change: The outlawry of war in the interwar years

Date: Monday 14 November 2016

Speaker: Professor Hatsue Shinohara
Hatsue Shinohara is Professor of International Relations at the Graduate School of Asia-Pacific Studies (GSAPS), Waseda University. Her research focuses on the history of international law, the disciplinary history of IR, and the League of Nations.

Chair: Professor Christopher Hughes
Christopher Hughes is Professor of International Relations and Head of Department at LSE.

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International Relations Public Lecture:

Neoclassical Realist Theory of International Politics

Date: Thursday 10 November 2016

Speaker: Professor Jeffrey W. Taliaferro
Jeffrey W. Taliaferro is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Tufts University, where he has taught since 1997. His research and teaching focus on security studies, international relations theory, international history and politics, United States foreign policy, intelligence and U.S. national security.

Chair: Professor Toby Dodge
Toby Dodge (@ProfTobyDodge) is Associate Professor of International Relations, Director of the Middle East Centre and Senior Consulting Fellow for the Middle East at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

This lecture is part of the Department of International Relation's Foreign Policy Analysis lecture series on competing theoretical trends within Foreign Policy Analysis and the future development of the discipline.

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International Relations Martin Wight Memorial Lecture:

Power and Inequality in the Global Political Economy

Date: Wednesday 9 November 2016

Speaker: Professor Nicola Phillips
Nicola Phillips is Professor of Political Economy and the Head of the Department of Politics at the University of Sheffield. She is the Chair of the British International Studies Association (BISA), a past Editor-in-Chief of the journal New Political Economy, and one of the current editors of the Review of International Political Economy.

Chair: Dr Robert Falkner
Robert Falkner is Associate Professor of International Relations at LSE. His research focuses on international political economy, global environmental politics, and the role of business in international relations. He is also the Co-Director of the Dahrendorf Forum, the Academic Director of the TRIUM Global Executive MBA, an associate of the LSE's Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, and an associate fellow of Chatham House.

This lecture will be on the theme of power and inequality in the global political economy. It will address the question of why and how it matters for the evolution of inequalities that the global economy is now dominated by global value chains, and how the particular forms of market, social and political power associated with global value chains are propelling new forms of unequal development across the world.

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International Relations Public Conversation:

Knowing China: A twenty-first century guide

Date: Wednesday 26 October 2016

Speaker: Professor Frank Pieke
Frank Pieke is Professor in Modern China Studies at Leiden University, the academic director of Leiden Institute of Area Studies (LIAS), and the executive director of the Leiden Asia Centre.

Discussants: Professor Stephan Feuchtwang and Professor Patricia Thornton
Stephan Feuchtwang is an Emeritus Professor of the Department of Anthropology at LSE.

Patricia Thorton is Associate Professor of Chinese Politics at Merton College, University of Oxford.

Chair: Professor William A. Callahan
William A. Callahan is Professor of International Relations at LSE. His research examines the interplay of culture and policy in China and Asia, and considers the overlap of domestic and international politics.

Frank Pieke adopts a China-centric perspective, instead of departing from western preoccupations, desires, or fears, and argues that China has become a unique kind of neo-socialist society that combines aspects of state socialism, neoliberal governance, capitalism and rapid globalization.

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International Relations Public Lecture:

Religion, Migration and Human Security: A Post-Secular Perspective?

Date: Thursday 20 October 2016

Speaker: Professor Giorgio Shani
Giorgio Shani is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Centre of International Studies (CIS) at LSE and a Professor of Politics and International Relations at International Christian University, Tokyo. He is the author of Sikh Nationalism and Identity in a Global Age (Routledge 2007) and Religion, Identity and Human Security (Routledge 2014). Currently, he is serving as President of the Asia-Pacific region of the International Studies Association.

Chair: Professor Christopher Hughes
Christopher Hughes is Professor of International Relations at LSE.

The aim of this lecture is to rethink “security” along “post-secular” lines by taking into account the continued importance of culture, religion and identity to human security.

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International Relations Public Lecture:

Grading Goes Global: Global Assessment Power in the Twenty-First Century

Date: Monday 10 October 2016

Speaker: Professor Beth A. Simmons
Beth Simmons is Andrea Mitchell University Professor of Law and Political Science at Penn Law, University of Pennsylvania. She researches and teaches international relations, international law and international political economy. She is best known for her research on international political economy during the interwar years, policy diffusion globally and her work demonstrating the influence that international law has on human rights outcomes around the world.

Chair: Professor Peter Trubowitz
Peter Trubowitz is Professor of International Relations, Head of Department, and Director of the US Centre at LSE. Peter is also an Associate Fellow at Chatham House, Royal Institute of International Affairs.

This lecture will discuss the rise of Global Performance Assessments (GPAs), and theorise how they exercise social influence through domestic, elite and transnational channels.

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International Relations and LSE IDEAS Public Lecture:

Signals and Social Consequences from Shrinkflation to Fighter Jets

Date: Monday 19 September

Speaker: Dr Pippa Malmgren
Pippa Malmgren (@DrPippaM) is a former Presidential advisor, bestselling author, robotics manufacturer, advisor to institutional investors, former Chief Currency Strategist at Bankers Trust and Deputy Head of Strategy at UBS. She was the winner of the 2015 Intelligence Squared Robotics Debate.

She is an alumna of LSE. Her latest book is Signals: How Everyday Signs Can Help Us Navigate the World's Turbulent Economy.

Chair: Professor Michael Cox
Michael Cox is Director of LSE IDEAS and Emeritus Professor of International Relations at LSE.

Economics would be better served by complementing the backward looking approach inherent in algorithms, models and data with plain English, common sense and forward looking signals.  Signals can help us identify trends as they unfold in the world economy, which data only confirm after it's too late to invest or to form a policy solution.

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International Relations Public Lecture:

Growing Trade the Progressive Way

Date: Thursday 14 July 2016

Speaker: Chrystia Freeland
Chrystia Freeland is Canada's Minister of International Trade. She received her undergraduate degree from Harvard University, and continued her studies on a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford University. Before becoming a Member of Parliament in 2013, she was a successful author and journalist for the Financial Times, The Washington Post and The Globe and Mail, as well as editor-at-large for Thomson-Reuters.

Chair: Professor Karen Smith
Karen Smith is Professor of International Relations and Director of the European Foreign Policy Unit at LSE.

In a world of growing protectionist trends, how can trade respond to the concerns of people who feel they were left behind, and how can we shape the 21st century inclusive trade agenda that everyone will benefit from.

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International Relations Public Conversation:

Taming the Imperial Imagination: Colonial Knowledge, International Relations, and the Anglo-Afghan Encounter, 1808-1878

Date: Wednesday 1 June 2016

Speaker: Dr Martin Bayly
Martin Bayly is an LSE Fellow in Contemporary International Relations at LSE.

Discussants: Dr Duncan Bell, Dr Rob Johnson and Professor Jutta Weldes

Duncan Bell is a Reader in Political Thought and International Relations at the University of Cambridge.

Rob Johnson is the Director of the Changing Character of War (CCW) research Centre at Oxford University, Associate Professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations, and Senior Research Fellow at Pembroke College.

Jutta Weldes is Professor of International Relations at the University of Bristol. 

Chair: Dr Tarak Barkawi

Tarak Barkawi is Reader and Deputy Head of Department (Research) of International Relations at LSE.

Taming the Imperial Imagination (Cambridge University Press) marks a novel intervention into the debate on empire and international relations, and offers a new perspective on nineteenth-century Anglo- Afghan relations. Martin Bayly shows how, throughout the nineteenth century, the British Empire in India sought to understand and control its peripheries through the use of colonial knowledge. Addressing the fundamental question of what Afghanistan itself meant to the British at the time, he draws on extensive archival research to show how knowledge of Afghanistan was built, refined and warped by an evolving colonial state.

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International Relations Public Conversation:

The History of China's Future

Date: Thursday 26 May 2016

Speakers: Isabel Hilton, Dr Leigh Jenco, Professor Jeffrey Wasserstrom
Isabel Hilton (@isabelhilton) is a writer/broadcaster who is founding editor of Chinadialogue, and has worked with the BBC, the New Yorker, the Guardian, Granta, the Independent, among others. Her books include Eating Mud Crabs in Kandahar and The Search for the Panchen Lama. In 2009 she was awarded an OBE.

Leigh Jenco is Associate Professor of Political Theory at LSE.

Jeffrey Wasserstrom (@jwassers) is Chancellor's Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine, where he also edits the Journal of Asian Studies.

Chair: Professor William A. Callahan
William A. Callahan is Professor of International Relations at LSE.

In China, history isn't just about the past - it shapes the future. With the rise of China over the past four decades, people increasingly look to China's turbulent modern history for clues about what the world will be like in the 21st century.

The panelists will discuss how the newly published book, The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern China, addresses such questions through an examination of the broad sweep of modern Chinese history, from the origins of modern China right up through the dramatic events of the past few years (the Beijing Games, the financial crisis, and China's rise to global economic pre-eminence) that have so fundamentally altered Western views of China and China's place in the world.

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International Relations Public Lecture:

ISIS - a History

Date: Tuesday 3 May 2016

Speaker: Professor Fawaz A. Gerges
Fawaz A. Gerges (@FawazGerges) is Professor of International Relations at LSE. His many books include The New Middle East, Obama and the Middle East, and The Far Enemy. His latest book is Isis: A History. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, Foreign Affairs, and other publications.

Chair: Professor Chris Hughes
Chris Hughes is Professor of International Relations and Head of Department of International Relations at LSE.

The Islamic State has stunned the world with its savagery, destructiveness, and military and recruiting successes. What explains the rise of ISIS and what does it portend for the future of the Middle East? One of the world's leading authorities on political Islam and jihadism sheds new light on these questions as he provides a unique history of the rise and growth of ISIS.

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International Relations Public Lecture:

A Changing World - a UN in Progress

Date: Thursday 28 April 2016

Speaker: Natalia Gherman
Natalia Gherman is former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and European Integration of the Republic of Moldova.In February 2016, the Moldovan government formally nominated Ms Gherman as a candidate for the position of UN Secretary-General.

Chair: Mark Hoffman
Mark Hoffman is Deputy Head of the Department of International Relations at LSE.

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Global South Unit and International Relations Public Lecture:

From Tailwinds to Headwinds. Can Latin America Weather the Storm?

Date: Thursday 28 April 2016

Speaker: Enrique Garcia
Enrique Garcia is President of CAF and Professor of Practice at LSE.

Chair: Professor Chris Alden
Chris Alden is Professor of International Relations and Director of the Global South Unit at LSE.

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International Relations Public Lecture:

The Bandung Conference and the Discourse of Post-colonial Economic Development

Date: Tuesday 26 April 2016

Speaker: Dr Kweku Ampiah
Kweku Ampiah is Associate Professor in Japanese Studies at the University of Leeds. His current area of research is, Japan’s relations with the African countries. He is the author of The Political and Moral Imperatives of the Bandung Conference: The Reactions of the US, UK and Japan, (Brill, 2008).

Chair: Professor Chris Alden
Chris Alden is Professor of International Relations and Director of the Global South Unit at LSE.

The Bandung (Asia-Africa) Conference was organised by Indonesia, Burma, Ceylon, India and Pakistan to reaffirm the aspirations of the Asian and African countries in the context of post-colonialism and the Cold War. The primary concern of the 29 countries at the conference, which was held from 18- 24 April, 1955 were, political independence, economic growth and industrial development.

Taking cue from the Final Communique of the Conference and examining Japan’s participation in the event, Kweku will explore the problematic of economic development as conceived by the countries at the conference. More specifically, he will discuss the initiatives of the delegates for economic cooperation between their countries.

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International Relations Public Lecture:

Worlding the Postcolonial

Date: Friday 4 March 2016

Speaker: Professor Himadeep Muppidi
Himadeep Muppidi is Professor of Political Science on the Betty Goff Cook Cartwright Chair in International Studies and Chair of Political Science at Vassar College.

Chair: Professor John Sidel
John Sidel is the Sir Patrick Gillam Professor of International and Comparative Politics at LSE.

International Relations (IR) has long been critiqued as a colonial form of knowledge. This critique, however, has not fully engaged the question of how to read and graft postcolonial realities into global – and not just regional and local – politics.

Colonial IR has evaded this challenge by locating systemic theory “here” and varying empirics over “there.” This enabled one way translations that incarcerated difference in the interests of advancing systemic knowledge. Taking postcolonial thought seriously, however, requires a more dialogical engagement with difference. It entails treating political realities as multiple as well as coeval.

How then do we write the multiplicity and coevality of the world into an IR that is colonial? What are the challenges of bringing postcolonial realities into global politics? What, in other words, is the politics of worlding the postcolonial?

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International Relations Public Lecture:

Nuclear Contrapuntality: The Articulation of a Postcolonial Global Disarmament Ethic

Date: Wedesday 2 March 2016

Speaker: Professor Shampa Biswas
Shampa Biswas is Paul Garrett Professor of Political Science at Whitman College. She is the author of Nuclear Desire: Power and the Postcolonial Order (University of Minnesota Press, 2014) and co-editor (with Zahi Zalloua) of Torture: Power, Democracy, and the Human Body (University of Washington Press, 2011) and (with Sheila Nair) of International Relations and States of Exception: Margins, Peripheries, and Excluded Bodies (Routledge, 2009).

Chair: Professor John Sidel
John Sidel is the Sir Patrick Gillam Professor of International and Comparative Politics at LSE.

In place of an abstracted or parochial globalism, this lecture conceives of a different kind of globalism, involving a felt and sympathetic awareness of the multiple experiences of a cohabited nuclear world.

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International Relations Literary Festival Film Screening and Discussion:

BBC: British Born Chinese

Date: Saturday 27 February 2016

Speakers: Dr Elena Barabantseva, Anna Chen, Dr Véronique Pin-Fat
Elena Barabantseva is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Manchester and Co-Producer of British Born Chinese. She is a member of the Critical Global Politics research cluster, and British Inter-University China Centre (BICC) and author of Overseas Chinese, Ethnic Minorities and Nationalism: De-Centering China.

Anna Chen (@MadamMiaow) writes and presents programmes for BBC Radio 4 as a freelance, and writes, produces and presents her arts show, Madam Miaow’s Culture Lounge, at Resonance 104.4FM. Her blog, Madam Miaow Says, was shortlisted in the 2010 Orwell Prize for blogs, and longlisted in 2012.

Véronique Pin-Fat publishes on ethics in global politics and is Senior Lecturer in International Politics at the University of Manchester.

Chair: Professor William A. Callahan
William Callahan is Professor of International Relations at LSE. His toilet adventures (2015)  film was shortlisted for a major award by the UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council.

British Born Chinese engages the everyday struggles of two boys, Dan (aged between 11-13) and Kevin (aged between 12-14), reconciling their Britishness with Chineseness through their experiences at school, as volunteers at a community centre, and at home.

Filmed over the course of two years in an innovative participatory and reflexive style, this film is an example of how artistic practices of filmmaking can work as a primary research tool. Driven by dialogue and close involvement with the film’s subjects, the film challenges the dominant popular representations of British Chinese as a ‘model minority’, and argues for a different understanding of community based on a shared sense of vulnerability.

This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2016, taking place from Monday 22 - Saturday 27 February 2016, with the theme 'Utopias'.

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LSE Literary Festival discussion:

To Boldly Go: what Star Trek tells us about the world

Date: Friday 26 February 2016

Speakers: Professor Michèle Barrett, Duncan Barrett, Professor Barry Buzan, Professor Steven French
Michèle Barrett is Professor of Modern Literary and Cultural Theory at Queen Mary University, London and author, with her son Duncan Barrett of Star Trek: the Human Frontier.  Her recent work has focused on the literature and art of the First World War period.

Duncan Barrett (@WW1Stories) is a best-selling author.  In 2010 he edited the First World War memoirs of pacifist saboteur Ronald Skirth, published as The Reluctant Tommy, and in 2014 his book Men of Letters: The Post Office Heroes Who Fought the Great War was nominated for the People’s Book Prize. He is the author (with Nuala Calvi) of The Sugar Girls,  G. I. Brides and The Girls Who Went to War.

Barry Buzan is Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the LSE (formerly Montague Burton Professor), Honorary Professor at Copenhagen Jilin, and China Foreign Affairs Universities, a Senior Fellow at LSE Ideas, and a Fellow of the British Academy.  He has written, co-authored or edited over twenty-five books. He is author of an article America in Space: The International Relations of Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica and his most recent book, with George Lawson, is The Global Transformation: History, Modernity and the Making of International Relations.

Steven French is Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Leeds. Steven is Co-Editor-in-Chief (with Michela Massimi of the University of Edinburgh) of The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, one of the most highly regarded journals in the field. He is also Editor-in-Chief of the Palgrave-Macmillan series, New Directions in Philosophy of Science.  His books include The Structure of the World: Metaphysics and Representation.

Chair: Dr Bryan Roberts
Bryan Roberts (@SoulPhysics) is Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at LSE.

Celebrating Star Trek’s 50th anniversary, our panel will explore what this enduring science fiction series can tell us about attitudes to international relations, science and society.

This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2016, taking place from Monday 22 - Saturday 27 February 2016, with the theme 'Utopias'.

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International Relations Public Lecture:

Peaceland: Conflict Resolution and the Everyday Politics of International Intervention

Date: Friday 26 February 2016

Speaker: Professor Severine Autesserre
Severine Autesserre is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Barnard College, Columbia University. She is the author of Peaceland: Conflict Resolution and the Everyday Politics of International Relations (Cambridge University Press, 2014), and The Trouble with the Congo: Local Violence and the Failure of International Peacekeeping (Cambridge University Press, 2010).

Chair: Professor John Sidel
John Sidel is the Sir Patrick Gillam Professor of International and Comparative Politics at LSE.

Peaceland suggests a new explanation for why international peace interventions often fail to reach their full potential. Based on several years of ethnographic research in conflict zones around the world, Severine Auteserre demonstrates that everyday elements – such as the expatriates’ social habits and usual approaches to understanding their areas of operation – strongly influence peacebuilding effectiveness.

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International Relations Public Lecture:

The Future of the EU in the Face of BREXIT

Date: Friday 12 February 2016

Speaker: Enrico Letta
Enrico Letta (@EnricoLetta) is the Dean of the Paris School of International Affairs (PSIA) at Sciences Po in Paris, and former Primer Minister of Italy, from April 2013 to February 2014.

Chair: Professor Chris Alden
Chris Alden is Professor of International Studies at LSE.

The referendum on the place of the UK within the EU is a unique opportunity to take stock of what isn't functioning in Europe, and to seek out a different track. It is not only in the UK that public opinion is turning towards euro-scepticism, as even in the most European of countries disarray and disappointment are rising.

The reasons for this are diverse and run deep, but they must not be ignored, and this is why a discussion dedicated to the "big picture" must be preferred to a technical debate about details. A win-win solution would certainly be that of a "2-circle" Europe.

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International Relations Public Lecture:

Diplomacy in the Management of Health and Humanitarian Crisis: The Syria Case

Date: Friday 05 February 2016

Speaker: Elizabeth Hoff
Elizabeth Hoff is the World Health Organization (WHO) Representative in Syria.

Chair: Dr David Rampton
David Rampton is an LSE Fellow in Global Politics and a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Centre for International Studies.

This talk will look at the context of Syria pre-and post-2011, the current humanitarian situation, and the challenges which were faced by the World Health Organization (WHO) at the beginning of the humanitarian operation.

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LSESU United Nations Society, Department of Law and International Relations Public Conversation:

In conversation with Dame Rosalyn Higgins

Date: Monday 1 February 2016

Speaker: Dame Rosalyn Higgins, DBE, QC
Dame Rosalyn Higgins was a Judge of the International Court of Justice, the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, from 1995 to 2009 and its President from February 2006 to February 2009.

Chair: Dr Jens Meierhenrich
Jens Meierhenrich is Associate Professor of International Relations at LSE.

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International Relations Public Lecture:

International Relations in a Cosmological Context

Date: Wednesday 27 January 2016

Speaker: Professor Milja Kurki
Milja Kurki is Professor of International Relations Theory at Aberystwyth University.

Chair: Professor John Sidel
John Sidel is the Sir Patrick Gillam Professor of International and Comparative Politics at LSE.

This talk explores the consequences for theorising International Relations of a relational cosmology, which allows us to more clearly see, and to challenge, the legacies of theological and mystic cosmologies in the conceptual systems of IR theory and practice.

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International Relations Public Lecture:

Connecting Agents & Structures via Role Theory: Role Contestation and Role Socialization

Date: Wednesday 20 January 2016

Speaker: Professor Juliet Kaarbo
Juliet Kaarbo is Professor of International Relations with a Chair in Foreign Policy at the University of Edinburgh.

Chair: Professor Toby Dodge
Toby Dodge is Director of the LSE Middle East Centre, a Professor in the International Relations Department at LSE, and a Senior Consulting Fellow for the Middle East, International Institute for Strategic Studies, London.

In this presentation, Professor Kaarbo will draw on her previous and current research and argue that a symbolic-interactionist role theory approach is particularly fruitful for connecting agents and structures in international relations. 

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