Event Podcasts 2012-15

International Relations Public Conversation:

In Wartime: stories from Ukraine

Date: Monday 7 December 2015

Speaker: Tim Judah
Tim Judah (@timjudah1) writes for the New York Review of Books and the Economist, most recently on the situation in Ukraine.

Chair: Robert Cooper
Robert Cooper is a Visiting Senior Fellow at LSE IDEAS.

Veteran war reporter and Economist correspondent Tim Judah explores the impact of the ongoing conflict on the inhabitants of Ukraine. His new book is In Wartime: Stories from Ukraine.

Listen to or download the podcast here

International Relations Fred Halliday Memorial Lecture:

Conflict-Related Sexual Violence: the politics of the UN Security Council's approach to the protection of civilians

Thursday 19 November 2015

Speaker: Professor Anne Marie Goetz
Anne Marie Goetz (@amgoetz) is a Clinical Professor at the Center for Global Affairs, New York University. She is on sabbatical from UN Women, where she is Chief Advisor on Peace and Security.

Chair: Professor Christopher Hughes
Christopher Hughes is Professor of International Relations and Head of Department at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

This lecture will provide a history of the policy processes leading to the Security Council resolutions recognising conflict related sexual violence as a tactic of warfare and outlining political, security, judicial and humanitarian responses.

Listen to or download the podcast here

International Relations Panel Discussion:

Labour's Foreign Policy after Jeremy Corbyn's Election

Thursday 12 November 2015

Panellists: Professor Mary Kaldor, Peter Oborne and Dr James Strong

Chair: Professor Toby Dodge

Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour Party leader was one of the biggest electoral upsets of postwar politics. The panel will discuss what Corbyn’s leadership means for Labour’s foreign policy, looking at issues such as Trident, NATO and intervening in the Middle East.

Listen to or download the podcast here

International Relations Public Lecture:

The Imperial Frontier: State Construction and Frontier Governmentality Along the Global Periphery

Tuesday 10 November 2015

Speaker: Dr Benjamin Hopkins
Benjamin Hopkins is Associate Professor of History and International Affairs at the Elliott School of International Affairs, Washington D.C.

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

This lecture traces the emergence of a common system of frontier rule around the world between roughly 1875 and 1885, examining the effect it had on the developing international order.

Listen to or download the podcast here

Dahrendorf Forum, International Relations and LSE IDEAS Public Lecture:

Russian Foreign Policy as an Exercise in Nation-Building

Tuesday 03 November 2015

Speaker: Dr Dmitri Trenin
@DmitriTrenin is Director of the Carnegie Moscow Center and a Senior Associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Chair: Professor Michael Cox
Director of LSE IDEAS.

Leading Moscow-based analyst Dimitri Trenin opens up the black-box of Russia’s foreign policy and sheds light in particular on the role of the internal factors.

Listen to or download the podcast here

International Relations Public Lecture:

The Modern Mercenary: private armies and what they mean for world order

Monday 19 October 2015

Speaker: Dr Sean McFate
@seanmcfate is Associate Professor at the National Defense University, Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council and Adjunct Professor at Georgetown School of Foreign Service. Sean is an alumnus at LSE.

Chair: Professor Christopher Coker
Professor of International Relations at LSE

McFate provides an unparalleled perspective into the nuts and bolts of the private military industry, as well as a sobering prognosis for the future of war.

Listen to or download the podcast here

International Relations Public Lecture:

The Coming Revolution in "Data Access and Research Transparency" in Social Scientific Research

Thursday 08 October 2015

Speaker: Professor Andrew Moravcsik
Professor of Politics and International Affairs, and Director of the European Union Program in the Department of Politics and Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University

Chair: Dr James Morrison
Assistant Professor in the Department of International Relations at LSE

Advances in qualitative sources' accessibility are transforming the way these sources are used—and cited. Professor Andrew Moravcsik will discuss the multidisciplinary, multi-institutional effort to generate new standards in this digital age.

Listen to or download the podcast here

International Relations Public Lecture:

Anglo-American Civilisation and its Discontents in World Affairs

Wednesday 6 May 2015

Speaker: Professor Peter Katzenstein
Former President of the American Political Science Association and the Walter S. Carpenter, Jr. Professor of International Studies at Cornell University

Chair: Professor Peter Trubowitz
Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economic and Political Science

How should we think about Anglo-America? How does it differ from the world's other civilisations -- Islam, Sinic, Indian, European, Eurasian, African -- and where does it converge with them? Professor Peter Katzenstein will explore these and related questions about Anglo-America, the West, and the possibilities of a more inclusive global civilisation.

Video and audio podcast available here

Department of International Relations and LSE US Centre public lecture:

Is the American Century Over?

Tuesday 9 June 2015

Speaker: Professor Joseph N Nye
University Distinguished Service Professor, and former Dean of the Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

Chair: Professor Peter Trubowitz

Listen to or download the podcast here

International Relations Public Lecture:

The Crisis of Global Modernity: Asian traditions and a sustainable future

Monday 11 May 2015

Speaker: Professor Prasenjit Duara

Discussants: Professor William A Callahan, Professor Stephan Feuchtwang, Professor Rana Miter

Chair: Professor Lord Desai

Prof Prasenjit Duara will discuss his new book, The Crisis of Global Modernity: Asian traditions and a sustainable future, which suggests that Asian ideas can help us address the crises of the 21st century.

Listen to or download the podcast here

Department of International Relations Inaugural Lecture:

VIP: Visual International Politics

Monday 16 March 2015

Speaker: Professor William A Callahan
Professor of International Relations at the LSE

Chair: Professor Chris Brown
Professor of International Relations at the LSE

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.

Listen to or download the podcast and slides here

Department of International Relations public discussion:

The Global Transformation: history, modernity and the making of international relations

Tuesday 17 March 2015

Speakers:
Professor Barry Buzan
Emeritus Professor in the Department of International Relations at LSE and a Fellow of the British Academy

Professor Craig Calhoun
Director and President of LSE

Dr George Lawson
Associate Professor in the Department of International Relations at LSE

Professor Juergen Osterhammel
Professor of Modern History at the University of Konstanz and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy

Dr Ayse Zarakol
University Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow at Emmanuel College

Chair: Dr Heather Jones
Associate Professor in the Department of International History at LSE

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. 

Video and podcasts available to watch/listen to or download here

LSE Literary Festival Lecture:

The 'School': the LSE from the Webbs to the Third Way

Tuesday 24 February 2015

Speaker: Professor Michael Cox
Founding Co-Director of LSE IDEAS and Professor of International Relations at LSE

Chair: Sue Donnelly
LSE Archivist

In 1895 the LSE was born with little to suggest that it would one day become one of the most influential and respected universities in the world. But how did the "School" come into being in the first place? What role did key figures like Sidney and Beatrice Webb play? What was their vision? Was it ever realized? And how did this relatively small, somewhat ill-housed, often poorly resourced, and frequently much-criticized institution that many saw as the enemy of the established order, come to play such a key role in British and global politics over the next century?

Listen to or download the podcast here

LSE Department of International Relations and Department of Anthropology Literary Festival discussion:

The China Dream

Tuesday 24 February 2015

Speakers:
Professor William A Callahan
Professor of International Relations at the LSE, and his recent publications include China Dreams: 20 Visions of the Future, and the documentary video, China Dreams: The Debate

Chan Koonchung
Chinese writer and critic. His novel The Fat Years- China in 2013 presents a dystopian future in which the dream of a 'harmonious society' has been realized. His latest book is The Unbearable Dreamworld of Champa the Driver.

Isabel Hilton
(@isabelhilton) is a writer and broadcaster, and founding editor of Chinadialogue. She has worked with the BBC, the New Yorker, the Guardian, Granta, the Independent, among others. Her publications include Eating Mud Crabs in Kandahar and The Search for the Panchen Lama. In 2009 she was awarded an OBE.

Chair: Dr Hans Steinmüller
Assistant Professor of Anthropology at LSE. On the basis of long-term fieldwork in rural China he has published Communities of Complicity. Everyday Ethics in Rural China. 

The 'China Dream' is the keyword of contemporary propaganda discourse in the People's Republic. This panel discusses the immense variety of aspirations and dreams in contemporary Chinese 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'.

Listen to or download the podcast here

Department of International Relations public lecture:

Shared Responsibility: the importance of international partnerships to homeland security

Wednesday 5 November 2014

Speaker: Alejandro Mayorkas
Deputy Secretary of US Department of Homeland Security

Chair: Professor Peter Trubowitz

Alejandro N. Mayorkas delivers remarks on the close partnership between the United Kingdom and the United States on a variety of Homeland Security issues, including counterterrorism, aviation security, cybersecurity, travel and trade, and countering violent extremism.

Watch or download the video here

The Paradox of China's Peaceful Rise

Tuesday 7 October 2014

Speaker: Professor Barry Buzan

Discussant: Professor Arne Westad

Chair: Professor Michael Cox

Despite the widespread view that China does not have a coherent grand strategy, China has already articulated one that is based on the home-grown idea of ‘peaceful rise/development’ (PRD). The key issue is whether the logic of this grand strategy, and the contradictions within it, are fully understood, and whether China has sufficient depth and coherence in its policy-making processes to implement such a strategy. This lecture will explore key issues arising from their idea of ‘Peaceful Rise/Development’.

Listen to or download the podcast here

Department of International Relations and Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment public lecture:

The Politics of Climate Change 2014: what cause for hope?

Tuesday 14 October 2014

Speaker: Professor Lord Giddens
Former director of LSE and a Member of the House of Lords

Chair: Professor Stuart Corbridge

Professor Lord Giddens published The Politics of Climate Change in 2007 and is currently preparing a new edition for publication in 2015. In this lecture Professor Lord Giddens considered how much progress has been made since the work was first published in containing global warming - arguably one of the greatest threats to a stable future for humanity.

Video and audio podcast available here

Department of International Relations public lecture:

Nominal Democracy? Prospects for Democratic Global Governance

Tuesday 28 October 2014

Speaker: Professor Robert O Keohane
Professor of International Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University

Democratic global governance is a worthy ideal, but it is a naïve pursuit which risks purely nominal democracy.

Listen to or download the podcast here

Global South Unit public lecture:

Rethinking a new development agenda for Latin America

Wednesday 29 October 2014

Speaker: Enrique Garcia
Executive President of CAF since December 1991.

Chair: Professor Chris Alden
Professor in International Relations, LSE; Director of LSE-IDEAS Africa Programme; and Programme Head, Global Powers and Africa, South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA). 

Listen or download the podcast here

LSE IDEAS in conjunction with the International Relations Department:

The EU, Russia and Ukraine: Lessons Learned

Thursday 6 November 2014

Speakers: Dr Tomila Lankina, Professor Karen E Smith, Professor Vladislav Zubok, Dr Gwendolyn Sasse

Chair: Professor Michael Cox

LSE experts will be debating what the EU got right and what it got wrong in the political crisis that followed Ukraine’s refusal to sign the Association Agreement in November 2013.

Listen or download the podcast here

Department of International Relations Public Lecture
in association with The Gilbert Murray Trust:

Power Politics and the Humanitarian Impulse: the United Nations in the post-Cold War era

Wednesday 26 November 2014

Speaker: Professor Mats Berdal
Professor of Security and Development and King's College, London

How can the UN's mission to raise humanitarian standards find its way in a world dominated by security concerns and power competition?

Listen to or download the podcast here

Centre for International Studies and Department of International Relations public lecture:

China and Responsible Protection 

Friday 5 December 2014

Speaker: Dr Ruan Zongze
Vice-President of the China Institute of International Studies, editor-in-chief of the CIIS journal China International Studies and member of the UNDP Human Development Report Advisory Panel. He is an expert in China-US Relations.

Chair: Professor Christopher Hughes
Head of the Department of International Relations and an expert in Chinese politics and international relations.

Dr Ruan will speak on the special responsibilities that 'Great Powers' incur in the international system, specifically China and the Responsibility to Protect doctrine. He will argue that frequent use of military force in the name of ‘protection' encourages bellicosity in international relations. In order to ensure the success of protection, the UN should establish a monitoring mechanism, and effective evaluation and accountability systems, with national reconstruction after intervention being given sustained support.

Listen to or download the podcast here

Syria and International Justice

Monday 30 June 2014

Speakers: Dr Dov Jacobs, Professor Kevin Jon Heller, Mark Kersten, Professor Jason Ralph, Dr Leslie Vinjamuri

Chair: Dr Kirsten Ainley

With a draft Security Council resolution to refer the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court vetoed, what, if anything, should the international community or other interested actors do to achieve justice in Syria? 

Listen to or download the podcast here

LSE Nelson Mandela Memorial Event

Thursday 12 June 2014

Speakers: George Bizos, Catherine M. Cole, Professor David Dyzenhaus, Lord Joffe, Dr Jens Meierhenrich

Chair: Professor Christine Chinkin

What role for law in the struggle against injustice? On 12 June 1964, Nelson Mandela and seven of his co-defendants in the Rivonia Trial were sentenced to life imprisonment for acts of sabotage against the apartheid regime. On the 50th anniversary of their sentencing, LSE hosts its official commemorative event to honour the life of Nelson Mandela. Eminent contemporaries and leading scholars of the late President of South Africa reflect on the role of law in the struggle against apartheid - and on Mandela, the lawyer.

Listen to or download the podcast here

A New Strategy? Russia as an Unlikely Soft Power

Monday 9 June 2014

Speakers: Professor Iver Neumann, Dr Arkady Moshes and Dr Thomas Gomart

Chair: Professor Vladislav Zubok

This expert roundtable will discuss Russia’s declared strategy to invest in soft power instruments in regional and global politics. What are Russia’s soft power assets? Has Moscow been successful in turning them into influence?

Listen to or download the podcast here

International Relations Department lecture:

The Theory of Failure and the Failure of Theory: State Collapse, State-Building and Western Intervention

Tuesday 25 February 2014

Speaker: Professor Stephen Krasner
Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations, the Senior Associate Dean for the Social Sciences, School of Humanities & Sciences, and the deputy director of FSI. A former director of CDDRL, Krasner is also an FSI senior fellow, and a fellow of the Hoover Institution.

Chair: Professor Michael Cox 
 
Understanding how the West became democratic and rich is one of the great theoretical and empirical challenges for the social sciences. But how the West might then promote political and economic change in poor and undemocratic states – many of which have ‘failed’ as states - is perhaps the great policy challenge of the contemporary era. Modernization theory and approaches that focus on state capacity suggest that the West can intervene and do a lot to make or remake states that have failed. Rational choice institutionalist analysis - the more persuasive theoretical orientation - suggests a rather different answer.

Listen to or download the podcast here

International Relations Department and Transatlantic Academy Public Debate

The Future of the Liberal World Order

Thursday 23 January 2014

Speakers:  Barry Buzan, Trine Flockhart, John Ikenberry,  Charles Kupchan

Chair: Peter Trubowitz

This roundtable of leading scholars debated the future of the liberal international order. The liberal order is a global system based on shared norms, economic openness, and commitment to cooperation through multilateral institutions. Will this system of global governance persist, or is the global system likely to become more fragmented, mercantilist, and more conflictual?

Audio and video podcast available to download here

LSE Middle East Centre public lecture:

US foreign policy and the Iranian Revolution: the dynamics of engagement and strategic alliance

Monday 2 December 2013

Speaker: Dr Christian Emery
Lecturer in international relations at the University of Plymouth

Chair: Dr Roham Alvandi

During this talk, Dr Emery will discuss the main findings from his new book, US Foreign Policy and the Iranian Revolution: the Cold War Dynamics of Engagement and Strategic Alliance. He will show that, contrary to the claims of Iran's leaders, US diplomats tried in good faith to build bridges with the new regime. He will also discuss how Cold War dogma and a range of misperceptions undermined America's 'new' policy, providing a fresh perspective on the origins of one of the most bitter and enduring confrontations in international relations.

Listen to or download the podcast here  

Fred Halliday Memorial Lecture:

Human Suffering and Humanitarian Emergencies

Date: Tuesday 5 November 2013

Speaker: Professor Craig Calhoun
Professor Calhoun is Director of the LSE and a world-renowned social scientist whose work connects sociology to culture, communication, politics, philosophy and economics.

Chair: Professor Chris Hughes

Listen to or download the podcast here

The Martin Wight Memorial Lecture 2013:

The Idea of Order in Ancient Chinese Political Thought: a Wightian Exploration

Wednesday 20 November 2013

Speaker: Professor Yongjin Zhang
Professor of international politics at the University of Bristol and editor of International Orders in the Early Modern World: before the rise of the West. 

Chair: Professor Chris Hughes

Is there any significant international thought in antiquity beyond the West? Inspired by Martin Wight’s profound contributions to international relations so steeped in historical and philosophical depth, this lecture explores how order as a pivotal idea of international relations is deliberated in ancient Chinese political thought. In establishing a broad claim that ancient Chinese political and philosophical deliberations are rich in international thought, it will be argued that a Wightian exploration of ancient Chinese thought is integral in our quest for international theory today.

Listen to or download the podcast here

Montague Burton Chair Inaugural Public Lecture:

International Relations as a Social Science

Wednesday 13 February 2013

Speaker: Professor Iver Neumann
Montague Burton Professor of International Relations

Chair: Professor Kimberly Hutchings

Professor Iver Neumann will begin with a discussion of how different but overlapping approaches to IR stand today, when the psychologising approach of methodological individualism and the biologising thrust towards stressing the genetic make-up of the species are on the rise. Professor Iver Neumann will make the case for privileging social causes in the study of social life. Professor Iver Neumann will go on to discuss the specificity of International Relations (IR) relative to other social sciences.

Listen to or download the podcast here

Department of International Relations Public Lecture:

The Challenges of Latin America and the New Global South 

Date: Tuesday 12 February 2013

Speaker: Enrique García
President and CEO of CAF (Development Bank of Latin America

Chair: Dr Chris Alden
Reader in the Department of International Relations at LSE

What are the new challenges and opportunities faced by Latin American countries and the New Global South in the 21st Century? 

Listen to or download the podcast here

Fred Halliday Distinguished Lecture 2012:

"A Woman's War Doesn't End When the Guns go Silent"

Monday 5 November 2012

Speaker: Professor Cynthia Enloe
Research Professor of International Development and of Women's Studies at Clark University, in Massachusetts.

Transnationally, feminists today are devoting time and energy to monitoring and shaping the "post-war" in myriad societies because it is a time of flux and disruption when new, more just gender relationships can be forged. But a post-war era, if left unattended, is even more likely to be a time when masculinized structures and cultures can take on the cloak of "peacetime normalcy" and become re-entrenched.

Listen to or download the podcast here

Read also a tribute to Fred Halliday in the November 2012 edition of The Nation.

Department of International Relations and Chatham House debate:

The 'Rio+20' UN Summit: Global Crisis, or Global Rescue?

Date: Thursday 31 May 2012 

Speakers:
Tom Burke
Environmental policy advisor to Rio Tinto plc and founding director of E3G, Third Generation Environmentalism

Professor Andrew Hurrell
Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at Oxford University

Bernice Lee
Research Director of Energy, Environment and Resource Governance, at Chatham House

Chair: Dr Robert Falkner

The ‘Rio+20’ UN conference took place in June, two decades after the ‘Earth Summit’ in Rio de Janeiro. What will it take to make environmental sustainability a global reality?

This event marks the publication of a special issue of International Affairs on ‘Rio+20 and the global environment: reflections on theory and practice’.

A vodcast and an audio podcast of this event are now available to listen or download.

Fred Halliday Distinguished Lecture Series:

Framing the Arab Uprisings: a historical perspective

Thursday 6 October 2011

Speaker: Professor Juan Cole
Richard P Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan and writer of the blog 'Informed Comment'

Chair: Professor Kimberly Hutchings

Listen to or download the podcast here