Summer term events announced

LSE’s public events programme from April to July is now online. Events include lectures, debates, discussions and exhibitions which are free and open to all.

Towers One and Two reception refurbishment project

In early April, a major refurbishment project will commence in and around the buildings, creating a new joint reception space.

Linda Kelland

Linda, neurodiversity service manager at LSE, initially trained as an electrical engineer and is a full time taxi driver for her daughters when she's not working.

Professor Conor Gearty (pictured), professor of human rights law in LSE’s Department of Law, has been named as one of the most influential 100 lawyers in society, in a list compiled by The Times.

The list was put together by a team of 12 judges whose expertise spanned politics, the judiciary, academia, the media and, of course, the law. Lawyers who had worked on ground-breaking cases or were considered influential beyond their area of practice were more likely to win a place in the top 100, rather than lawyers who, while outstanding in their field, were simply doing their job.

Professor Gearty said: 'It is clear they are not hacking my phone or they would know how wrong they are.'

Civil society can significantly contribute to positive and sustainable development, and AusAid, the Australian Government’s overseas aid programme, spends about a third of its budget on activities involving civil society organisations.

Professor Jude Howell of the Department of International Development, via LSE Enterprise, was commissioned to evaluate the success of this work.

In a year-long project, Professor Howell led a team examining AusAid’s experience across Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and the Philippines. The team explored the risks of working with civil society organisations and looked at strategic models for engaging with them. They mapped the nature and extent of AusAid’s engagement with civil society in the three target countries, reviewed international good practice and developed a ‘theory of change’ highlighting the contribution of civil society.

The report’s key recommendations included investing in knowledge-sharing networks, including civil society in policy dialogue, and working efficiently with other organisations to increase the long-term benefits of AusAid assistance.

In early April, a major refurbishment project will commence in and around the Tower One and Two buildings, creating a new enhanced joint reception space for these two buildings.

The new reception area will provide:

• Improved access for students, staff and visitors to Towers One and Two.
• Improved security and access control through the installation of turnstile barriers and a staffed reception desk.
• Glazed one-to-one meeting rooms.
• Disabled toilet facilities.
• Advertising and display areas.
• A fully glazed and clad frontage to provide better levels of natural light.
• A new internal café.
• Improvements to Clements Inn including a new road surface, lighting and seating areas.
• Upgraded disabled access including a new disabled platform lift.

LSE lectures to be broadcast on BBC Radio 4

On 8 and 9 March, Harvard academic Professor Michael Sandel (pictured) gave a series of three public lectures at LSE.

In his lectures, entitled ‘The Public Philosopher’, Professor Sandel addressed more than 400 people and challenged his audience to apply critical thinking to the sort of ethical dilemmas most people rely on gut instinct to resolve.

Register now for LSE Teaching Day 2012

The fourth annual LSE Teaching Day will be held on Tuesday 22 May.

The main talk will be given by Professor Amos Witztum, Department of Management, on 'Higher Education: What has gone wrong?'. Professor Janet Hartley, pro-director for teaching and learning, will launch the day. The programme includes 16 parallel sessions organised under four strands.

The day will close with a debate discussing the relevance of student surveys and the presentation to LSE teaching prize winners at a wine reception.

Registration closes on Friday 11 May. For more information, visit LSE Teaching Day.
 

The International Long-term Care Policy Network (ILPN), which is based at LSE, invites abstracts from staff and students for the second ILPN conference.

The conference, which is taking place at the School from 5-8 September, will offer the opportunity to debate, with international academics, policy makers and other experts, key policy issues related to organisation, delivery, funding and regulation of long-term care services.

Some of the main thematic areas to be covered include: care models, case management, economics of long-term care, equity and efficiency, funding systems, housing and care, informal carers, institutional dynamics and politics, international comparative analysis, local and central policy interactions, service commissioning and regulation, technology and long-term care, workforce and migrant workers. Relevant papers on LTC policy evaluation on other topics will also be considered.

LSE Perspectives features photographs taken by LSE staff and students and is published every month. Each new gallery features 12 striking images, reflecting a unique perspective on a particular scene.

LSE Arts is currently looking for submissions for next month’s gallery. If you have taken any artistic images on your travels, from your home town or even just here in London why not submit them for LSE perspectives so that they can be shared with the LSE community.

The Research Division is holding its first ever bake-off on Tuesday 3 April, in aid of Sport Relief.

Judges will be awarding prizes in a number of different categories including best savoury bake, best Sport Relief-themed bake and ‘tastes better than it looks’ (for those who aren’t quite at Jane Asher’s level).

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

This week's offer is for Open Garden Squares Weekend, which is held throughout London every June. Organised by the London Parks and Gardens Trust, in association with the National Trust, this year's event will take place on Saturday 9 and Sunday 10 June.

Around 200 communal gardens, many that are not usually open to the public, will be taking part, ranging from the historic and the traditional through to roof gardens and allotments. Among the green spaces open will be many of the much loved and popular gardens such as HMP Wormwood Scrubs, Eaton Square, Bonnington Square, Cable Street Community Gardens, The Regent’s Park Allotment Garden, The Royal College of Physicians’ Medicinal Garden, The Kensington Roof Gardens, Canons Park - George V Memorial Garden - which will be celebrating its 75th anniversary, and the National Trust’s Carlyle’s House.

LSE staff members can claim a 10 per cent discount on tickets by visiting www.opensquares.org and quoting LONSEC02. Tickets must be booked online before Thursday 31 May and cannot be used in conjunction with other discounts.

If you know of any deals that you think may be of interest to Staff News readers, email Margaret Newson, purchasing manager, at m.newson@lse.ac.uk.

This week's picture features The Garrick on Houghton Street. Red energy-saving LED bulbs illuminate the windows - just one of the steps taken by the sustainability team to reduce the school’s carbon footprint.

For more images like this, visit the Photography Unit.

Students from poorer backgrounds are under-represented in postgraduate study and high tuition fees, which have risen by an average of 31 per cent between 2003-04 and 2009-10, are deterring many from making the jump from undergraduate to graduate courses.

These are among the findings of a report by Philip Wales, a PhD student at LSE, presented at the Royal Economic Society conference this week.

In order to examine progression rates from undergraduate to postgraduate study, Philip Wales obtained data from over 150 universities in the UK to develop the first substantial dataset of postgraduate fees by subject and university in the UK. Student level data has been taken from the Destination of Leavers from Higher Education dataset provided by HESA.

Summer term Events Leaflet published

The full programme of LSE public events from April to July is now online. Events include lectures, debates, discussions and exhibitions which are free and open to all.

Speakers include: Dr Philipp Rösler, German vice chancellor and federal minister of economics and technology; Professor Paul Gilroy, the Anthony Giddens Chair in social theory in the Department of Sociology at LSE; Ahdaf Soueif, author of The Map of Love; Professor Sheri Berman, professor of political science at Columbia University; Professor George Akerlof, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2001; Damibsa Moyo, author of Dead Aid and How the West Was Lost; and Professor Joseph E Stiglitz in discussion with Professor Amartya Sen.

A PDF of the leaflet can be downloaded from the LSE Events website, where more information on individual events can also be found.
 

Other upcoming lectures include....

What Would an Evidence-Based Copyright Law Look Like?
On: Monday 2 April at 6.30pm in the Old Theatre, Old Building
Speaker: William Patry, senior copyright counsel at Google Inc.

On until Friday 13 April in the Atrium Gallery, Old Building.

The LSE Photo Prize Exhibition 2012 is now on display. The exhibition celebrates the photographic creativity of LSE’s students and staff and showcases the 42 winning entries from this year’s LSE Photo Prize competition, with the theme of ‘Overcoming Hurdles’.

The exhibited images were chosen by a judging panel of art professionals and LSE staff. The exhibition is supported by the LSE Annual Fund, Metro Imaging and A Bliss.

The exhibition is free and open to all, with no ticket required. Visitors are welcome Monday to Friday between 10am and 8pm (excluding bank holidays or unless otherwise stated).

For more information, click here or contact LSE Arts at arts@lse.ac.uk or on 020 7107 5342.
 

On: Thursday 3 May from 6-8pm in room 2.04, New Academic Building

EMBRACE is holding an evening conference to mark the first anniversary of the launch of the Black and Asian Ethnic Minority (BAME) staff network at LSE.

The conference covers experiences of BAME people in higher education in relation to the Equality Act 2010. It will start with a critique of the act, followed by different speakers, discussions and networking. Most people would support the view that a modern, tolerant, liberal society is one in which citizens should not experience unfair discrimination. However, discrimination as a concept is not straightforward.

Speakers will include:

Dr Chaloka Beyani, senior lecturer in law at LSE, will chair the event.

On: Thursday 17 - Friday 18 May at The British Academy, London
Convenors: Professor Tony Barnett and Dr Erika Mansnerus, LSE Health and Social Care
Main speaker: Professor Mary Morgan, Department of Economic History at LSE

Using models as evidence for policies is of increasing importance. This conference will address the questions of how computational techniques help to generate evidence to predict and govern infectious disease risks; and when vaccination strategies are reformed or predictive scenarios of a pandemic outbreak are needed, how modelling and simulation techniques used.

The conference will discuss: (a) what kind of tools computational models are; (b) how they are used in governing risks. There will be contributions from economic history, climate research, and risk research. A special focus will be how best to communicate the nature of model-based evidence across expert communities and between experts and their audiences in government, the media and the wider public.

Podcasts of public lectures and events

Indian Democracy’s Ferocious Faultlines
Speakers: Dr Mukulika Banerjee, Patrick French, Professor Maitreesh Ghatak, and Professor Sunil Khilnani
Recorded: Monday 12 March, approx 99 minutes
Click here to listen

Has the Future a Left?
Speaker: Professor Zygmunt Bauman
Recorded: Wednesday 14 March, approx 88 minutes
Click here to listen

COP 17 The Awakening of the Climate Vulnerables
Speakers: Leon Charles, and Karl Hood
Recorded: Thursday 22 March, approx 55 minutes
Click here to listen

Training for staff

Courses scheduled for next week include:

• Outlook 2010: clearing your inbox

• Introduction to Working in Higher Education

For a full listing of what is available and further details, including booking information, visit www.lse.ac.uk/training.
 

• Finance for Non-Finance Managers
  Monday 16 April
• Developing Individuals and Teams
  Tuesday 17 April
• Managing Yourself
  Wednesday 18 April
• Getting the Most from Meetings
  Thursday 19 April
• Strategic Thinking
  Thursday 26 April
• Recruitment and Selection
  Wednesday 2 May

HR Organisational and Lifelong Learning currently offer two online programmes for all new starters to the School and existing staff.

These programmes look at the equality legislation that has been put in place to help ensure people are treated fairly and also consider the rights and responsibilities that you have as an individual. The programmes will also provide you with some practical guidelines to make Equality and Diversity happen.

'Equality and Diversity Essentials' is aimed at all staff and 'Managing Diversity' is aimed specifically at staff in managerial roles. For more information, visit Equality and Diversity in Practice.

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

• Chair/reader of economics, Economics
• Group manager (employment relations and organisational behaviour), Management
• LSE fellow in gender theory (globalisation and development), Gender Institute
• LSE fellow in global politics, Government
• LSE fellow in the anthropology of China, Anthropology
• LSE fellowships (up to three posts), Law
• Lecturer in management (marketing), Management
• Lecturer in management (public management and governance), Management
• Lecturer in media and communications (two posts), Media and Communications
• Lectureships in law (two posts), Law
• National Bank of Greece post-doctoral research fellowship, Hellenic Observatory
• Professor of management (marketing), Management
• Research officer (part-time), PSSRU
• Research officer, LSE Health and Social Care
• Research officer in control theory, Mathematics
• Senior registry assistant (results and ceremonies), ARD: student administration
• Student recruitment coordinator, ARD: student recruitment
• Student recruitment and study abroad coordinator, ARD: student recruitment
• Subwardens, Residential and Catering Services Division
• Systems analyst, IT Services
• Teaching and learning facilitator (maternity cover), Language Centre

LSE Enterprise is seeking a highly motivated and ambitious individual who will be interested in shaping and developing our work across the public and private sectors in Germany.

The individual will be bilingual in English/German and have previous experience working in a business development role in a professional services environment. The successful candidate will have a good understanding of the higher education sector and the role and application of academic research and teaching. She/he will have both strong academic and professional experience and be able to display a clear understanding of the steps to developing a new market. Candidates should to be qualified to master's level, with a minimum of five years' professional experience.

Based in Berlin, salary circa €50,000 plus bonus and contributory pension.

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 12 April. Articles for this should be emailed to me by Tuesday 3 April. Staff News is emailed every Thursday during term time and fortnightly during the holidays.