Reading the Riots

Unprecedented study by LSE and the Guardian finds that widespread anger and frustration with the police was a significant factor behind the summer riots.

Send an LSE e-card this Christmas

A specially designed electronic card, together with the LSE logo and the words 'Season’s Greetings from LSE', is now available for all staff to email out.

Alan Langley

Contracts manager Alan discovered last year that he has a half-brother in Australia, is a black belt in Shorinji Kempo, and has also written a musical that was showcased at the Lowry Theatre, Salford.

A new online lecture which tackles big questions about the economy for a younger audience has been launched by LSE.

In 'The LSE Big Questions lecture: East beats West? Is the East taking over the world?', Professor Danny Quah (pictured) addresses the issue of the rising economic power of China and other Asian countries and asks whether we should be fearful of this.

Using audience-participation games, demonstrations, films and interviews, Danny explains what the economy is, why it matters, how global trade is changing the world and how we will need to adapt to this.

LSE academic awarded honorary doctorate

Professor Dame Helen Wallace (pictured), emeritus professor in LSE's European Institute, was awarded an honorary doctorate by Sciences Po, Paris, at a special ceremony on Wednesday 7 December.

Professor Christian Lequesne, director of Sciences Po's Centre d'Études et de Recherches Internationales and former LSE-Sciences Po Alliance Professor, who delivered the award, said that Professor Wallace represented 'a generation of political scientists with big ambitions to understand the European Union.'

He added that 'she has always considered that the subject of her study was a political work in progress, and that it was an honourable engagement to bring her knowledge to bear on its practices. Her work is all the more remarkable because in Great Britain, helping the European Community cause can sometimes seem like a combat.'
 

The LSE Scholars at Risk Scheme and the Language Centre at LSE have announced a unique new programme for refugee and asylum-seeking scholars.

‘Reconnect with Research’ is an English language course with an academic focus. The programme will equip academics with the language skills appropriate for pursuing research work and furthering their academic interests. It includes academic writing, analytical and discursive skills, and explores current research to promote research-centred language learning.

The course is for UK-based refugee or asylum-seeking scholars with a social science background who would benefit from enhanced English language support and introduction to the UK higher education system. The programme, which will take place from January to March 2012, is run by the Language Centre and the Scholars at Risk Scheme from the Centre for the Study of Human Rights at LSE, and is supported by the LSE Annual Fund.

This week, LSE's Estates Division is moving to new offices on the fourth and fifth floors of Tower One. Due to the size of the division, the move will be in two phases, resulting in some disruption to phone and email communication on the following dates:

• Friday 9 December
  Director of Estates, Facility Management, Sustainability, Maintenance and Administration
• Friday 16 December
  Capital Development, Property and Space Management

On Friday 9 December, Help Desk technicians will be on duty and services should not be interrupted. However, it is possible that there maybe some disruption to the phone line connections, which could extend to Monday 12 December.

All managers are invited to attend an information session on the Equality Act 2010. The session will highlight your responsibilities as a manager to fulfil specific equality duties, which include:

• Setting equality objectives
• Collation of information on protected groups
• Publishing information in a format which is accessible to all
• It will also give an introduction on how to carry out Equality Analysis (which replaces Equality Impact Assessments).

The session will take place on Tuesday 13 December from 12.30-2pm in room LRB301 and lunch will be provided. To book a place on this information session, visit the online training system.

Training sessions will also be taking place in January 2012. These sessions will give you the opportunity to:

• explore the importance of the Act
• find out about the ‘due regard’ requirements you need to be aware of contained in the Public Sector Equality Duty
• and learn the specific equality duties which support these.

The course will highlight key trends and lessons from legal cases, particularly those that have had a bearing on higher education institutions.

LSE staff are invited to come and enjoy some holiday treats at the LSE Careers Christmas bake off.

LSE Careers will be testing their baking abilities against other LSE departments. Three judges will taste all of the cakes and then announce the winners. Categories will include appearance, best tasting and originality.

The winners will not only receive significant recognition for their baking abilities, they will also receive the coveted bake off desk trophy.

Why not save resources this Christmas by sending e-cards? A specially designed electronic card, together with the LSE logo and the words 'Season’s Greetings from LSE', is now available for all staff to email out.

LSE staff and students are entitled to a 10 per cent discount on LSE's vacation accommodation.

Over the Christmas period, rooms at Carr-Saunders, Passfield and Rosebery Halls will be available. These halls are ideally located in central London and are a great option for your friends and family when they come to visit over the festive season.

Engenderings, the LSE Gender Institute blog, is looking for staff and student contributors to write posts about any aspect of gender in cultural, social and political life. Launched in October, Engenderings receives more than 2,000 visits and 5,000 page views per week and the readership is growing every day.

Engenderings brings together academics, students and practitioners from various institutions and departments in order to share ideas about gender as it operates in local and global culture and society. At the core of Engenderings is the idea that gender is everywhere, shaping not only human bodies, sexualities and identities, but also the way we relate to the world and to each other. The blog does not subscribe to any political position; rather, it aims to provide a multidisciplinary space for thought, comment or critique from a gender perspective.

Philosoverse is a student publication, supported by the LSE Department of Philosophy, which blends the disciplines of poetry and philosophy.

The second edition will be published in March 2012 to coincide with the LSE Literary Festival. The theme of this edition will be the relevance of geographical perspectives on the history of ideas.

The editors are looking for submissions of four-line poems which explore the origin of a philosophical idea from a certain geographical perspective. Free form poetry is also being accepted. The deadline for submissions is Saturday 7 January.

The LSE Perspectives December 2011 gallery is now live. You can view this month's selection of photos here.

The gallery features 12 striking images submitted by members of the LSE community. Each image reflects a unique perspective on a particular scene.

LSE Perspectives is an online gallery featuring photographs taken by LSE staff and students. If you have taken any artistic images on your travels, from your home town or even just here in London why not submit them to LSE Perspectives so that they can be shared with the LSE community.

More for less - take advantage of special offers for LSE staff

This week’s offer is for Label MB handbags, an online store selling premium leather handbags. The autumn/winter 2011 range is small but precise, with classic designs and colours that will take you from season to season.

LSE staff can get 15 per cent off non-sale items until midnight on Sunday 18 December, perfect as a Christmas treat for you or someone special. Staff are also welcome to let friends and family know about this very special offer.

To use your discount, simply select your item from the Label MB website and enter code 'LSESTAFF' at checkout.

This week's picture features the London Eye on the South Bank, taken at night. This is just one of the many stock images available in the LSE Image Bank. The Photography Unit will be adding more images like this in the New Year, so use the keyword ‘stock image’ to find them more quickly.

For more images like this, visit the Photography Unit.

More than eight in 10 people think parents should send their children to the nearest state school, reveals new findings from the first survey to gauge Britons’ attitudes to school choice in detail.

The new data, released today from the British Social Attitudes Survey, shows that 63 per cent take this view outright, and a further 22 per cent say they would agree if the quality of different schools and their social mix of pupils was more equal.

The survey asked around 2,000 members of the British public about a parent’s ‘right to choose’ and found that attitudes were ambivalent.

While a large majority favoured children attending the local state school, there was also broad support for the concept of choice, with 68 per cent agreeing that parents should have a basic right to choose their child’s school and 50 per cent agreeing that parents have a duty to choose ‘the best possible’ school for their child, even if other schools in the local area might suffer.

A social research inquiry by LSE and the Guardian found that widespread anger at people's treatment at the hands of police was a significant factor behind the summer riots in every major city where disorder took place.

The ‘Reading the Riots’ study, funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Open Society Foundations, is the only research into the riots involving interviews with hundreds of people who participated in the disorder.

In its first phase, the study used confidential interviews with a total of 270 people who were directly involved in the riots in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Salford, Liverpool and Nottingham. Of the people interviewed, 85 per cent said policing was an important or very important factor in why the riots happened.

American military power will decline from 2020 unless the US can solve its mounting debt crisis, argues a new report.

The prediction, by Professor Iwan Morgan, is part of a multi-author study produced by LSE Ideas which suggests that economic crisis is likely to quickly erode America’s world dominance.

The special report, ‘The United States after Unipolarity’, says President Obama’s attempts to define a new realistic foreign policy may be hampered by domestic economic struggle.

The full programme of LSE public events from January to April next year is now online. Events include lectures, debates, concerts, film screenings and exhibitions which are free and open to all.

Speakers include:

• Masaaki Shirakawa, governor of the Bank of Japan
• Eric Ries, entrepreneur and author of The Lean Startup
• Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria
• Paul Mason, editor of BBC's Newsnight
• Professor Christopher Pissarides, Norman Sosnow Chair in Economics at LSE and recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences
• Alex Salmond MSP, first minister of Scotland
• Mahmoud Mohieldin, managing director of the World Bank.

A pdf of the Events leaflet can be downloaded from the LSE Events website.

Upcoming events include....

China Model 2
On: Thursday 8 December at 6.30pm in the Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House
Speaker: Dr Kent Deng, reader in LSE's Department of Economic History, Professor Jude Howell, professor in LSE's Department of International Development, and Professor Athar Hussain, director of the Asia Research Centre at LSE.

Creating International Law: gender as a new paradigm
On: Thursday 8 December at 6.30pm in the Old Theatre, Old Building
Speaker: Professor Catharine MacKinnon (pictured), Elizabeth A Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan.

Podcasts of public lectures and events

Herd Behaviour and Keeping up with the Joneses
Recorded: Monday 28 November
Speaker: Professor Andrew Oswald
Click here to listen

1989 and EU-enlargement: Austria's role in European politics
Recorded: Tuesday 29 November
Speaker: Dr Heinz Fischer
Click here to listen

Courses scheduled for next week include:

• Managing your references using bibliographic tools
• One-to-one IT training
• Fire safety awareness
• Evacuation chair volunteer training

Below are some of the vacancies currently being advertised to internal candidates only, as well as those being advertised externally.

• Chair in contemporary Turkish studies, European Institute
• HR Adviser: information and systems, HR Specialists
• Head of academic services group, Library: information services
• Institute manager (maternity cover), European Institute
• Lecturer in environment, Geography and Environment
• Lecturer in political science, Government
• Lecturer or senior lecturer in international relations, International Relations
• Lectureship in management, Management: MESG
• MSc administrator, Government
• Reader/senior lecturer in anthropology, Anthropology
• Research economist, Spatial Economics Research Centre
• Research Officer, Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion

Nicole wants to hear from you!

Do you have some news, an achievement, or an aspect of LSE life that you would like to share? If so, then I would love to hear from you, contact me at n.gallivan@lse.ac.uk or on ext 7582.

The next edition of Staff News is on Thursday 15 December. Articles for this should be emailed to me by Tuesday 13 December. Staff News is emailed every Thursday during term time and fortnightly during the holidays.