LSE celebrates new hires

The School has embarked on one of the biggest recruitment drives in its history, with over 80 leading social scientists joining the School since September 2012.

Autumn events programme announced

LSE's public events programme from September to December is now online. Highlights include a lecture by President Museveni of Uganda.

Louise Gaskell

Louise, Deputy Events Manager in the Conference and Events Office, cannot do without holidays, darjeeling tea and her boyfriend and family.

LSE has climbed to second in the world for social sciences, according to the latest global university league table.

The 2013-14 QS World University rankings placed LSE just behind Harvard for social science and management faculty area, rising two places since last year.

The latest overall rankings also rated LSE as the fourth best university in terms of employer reputation and fourth for its international student body.

Commenting on the results, Professor Craig Calhoun, Director of LSE said: "It is great to see that LSE continues to be recognised as a truly world-class social science institution, and that so many employers share this view.

"Of course, no rankings can fully capture everything a university like LSE has to offer. The priority for the School is to continue to produce the very best research and teaching that tackles real-world problems."

Professor Linda Mulcahy (pictured), Professor of Law at LSE, has become an Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences.

The Academy of Social Sciences is the national academy of academics, learned societies and practitioners in the social sciences. The award, conferred on 51 social scientists this year, recognises leaders in the field of social sciences, including law, social policy, politics, criminology and education.

LSE students Jonathan Colmer (pictured top left) and Michele Piffer (pictured bottom left) have been awarded two of this year’s three FEEM Awards (Best Young Economist Awards).

Since 2009, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM) annually confers the FEEM Award, a prize organised jointly with the European Economic Association (EEA), on the authors of the three best papers presented by young economists at the annual congress of the EEA. The award aims to reward new ideas addressing key economic issues at the European and global scale.

Jonathan’s paper examines the impact of climate change on child activities in developing countries; it was felt to be both "original in the literature and particularly interesting for policy makers", and the judges were impressed by Jonathan’s "novel insights on an important topic".

Michele submitted a paper called Monetary Policy, Leverage Premium, and Loan Default Probability, which analyses a micro mechanism for the variation of risk taking over the business cycle (the "risk taking channel of monetary policy"). Described by the judges as "an excellent theoretical work" obtaining results which "represent a significant addition to the literature", the paper was praised for its insight and originality.

On Monday 2 September, LSE’s Public Policy Group launched a new blog, USApp - American Politics and Policy.

USApp’s mission is to increase the public understanding of social sciences in the context of American politics and policymaking. Its focus is broad-based and multidisciplinary, covering all aspects of governance, economics, politics, culture and society in the United States, and in its continental neighbours, Canada and Mexico.

The new blog also covers domestic politics in the United States at the level of states and major cities, and will encompass the full range of American social, urban and regional issues. Posting daily, LSE contributors have already included Tim Newburn, Tony Travers and Saskia Sassen.

LSE has reached the finals of the Top Employers for Working Families awards and is shortlisted for three Special Awards:

• The E-ON Best for Carers and Eldercare Award
• The National Grid Best for all stages of Fatherhood Award
• The My Family Care Best for all stages of Motherhood Award

The Top Employers for Working Families Benchmark and Special Awards recognise private and public organisations across the UK that have developed successful policies and practices to support work-life balance and career development for working parents, carers and flexible workers.

Sarah Jackson, Chief Executive of Working Families said: "The standard of entries for this year's Top Employers for Working Families Special Awards has been exceptionally high. The finalists clearly realise the value of supporting parents, carers and flexible workers and have developed inspiring and innovative."

Growth Week 2013

Top policy makers and researchers from Africa and South Asia will join leading experts at LSE from 23-25 September to debate the latest ideas for stimulating economic growth in developing countries at Growth Week 2013.

Researchers, government ministers, and other senior policy figures from Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia will debate a key range of growth issues.

Growth Week 2013 includes three evening public lectures:

• Monday 23 September: Trevor Manuel (Minister in the Presidency and Head of the South African National Planning Commission)

• Tuesday 24 September: Paul Collier (University of Oxford)

• Wednesday 25 September: Robin Burgess (LSE) and Abhijit Banerjee (MIT)

Growth Week 2013 topics include:

• Closing the gender gap in education

• Innovations to improve healthcare

• Entrepreneurship among the ultra-poor

• Access to finance and insurance

• Infrastructure and urbanisation

Growth Week 2013 is organised by the International Growth Centre (IGC), which is a joint initiative with LSE and Oxford University with offices across the developing world. It is funded by the UK Department for International Development. For more information, and to register, visit the IGC website.
 

New simulation tool to reduce deforestation in Bolivia

A new simulation tool designed to help local Bolivian communities reduce deforestation and tackle poverty has been developed by academics and conservationists around the world.

The tool, called SimPachamama (‘Mother Earth simulation’ in local language), is based on extensive scientific research of a real-life Amazonian community and simulates the actions and behaviour of villagers near the agricultural frontier in Bolivia.

To be played as a game to inform and educate with respect to land-use decision making, the player is the mayor of the village whose aim is to implement policies to improve the welfare of the locals and minimise adverse impacts on their forests.

It has been designed by an interdisciplinary team of academics from LSE, the Institute for Advanced Development Studies, Conservation International Bolivia, and the University of Sussex.

The tool aims to help communities make informed decisions about their forest resources and stimulate debate on the kind of development they want for their community. It takes place over a period of 20 years during which the player can experiment with different policies and observe the consequences of his/her decisions. More
 

Sonia Livingstone (pictured), Professor of Social Psychology in the Department of Media and Communications, will be joining The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University as a fellow for the 2013-14 academic year.

During her time at Berkman, Professor Livingstone will be writing her book on The Class: living and learning in the digital age, based on her work with the Connected Learning Research Network.

Urs Gasser, Berkman’s Executive Director, said: "Our incoming community is brimming with vision, talent, and a commitment to understand and drive change across the world, both online and off. With curiosity, rigour, and friendship, this network will explore and transform our collective knowledge, use, and governance of the Internet and digital technologies. We are privileged to bring these incredible people together at Berkman in the coming year."

The School is sad to announce the deaths of three former staff members.

Professor Ronald Coase (pictured), the Nobel Prize winning economist and former LSE student and staff member, died on Monday 2 September, aged 102.

Professor Coase received the Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences in 1991 for his discovery and clarification of the significance of transaction costs and property rights for the institutional structure and functioning of the economy. Born in London, he first came to LSE in 1929 when he studied for the Bachelor of Commerce degree; he was subsequently a member of LSE faculty from 1935 to 1951. More

John Alcock passed away on Saturday 17 August following a stroke. John was the Academic Secretary, working at LSE from 1957-83, alongside John Pike who was the Financial Secretary.

Did you know that LSE encourages - and funds - knowledge exchange and impact work well beyond the Research Excellence Framework (REF)?

The REF itself is vital and work is now in hand on Impact Case Studies for REF2014. We are using this to build an institutional memory also for REF2020 and beyond, with an Impact Database and an Impact Case Study website.

But for LSE, engagement (knowledge exchange, impact - the jargon doesn’t matter) goes well beyond HEFCE’s requirements for the REF. The School already has a range of services to help academics make their work available to wider society. In recent years these services have been augmented with the help of the Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF). Under the current fifth round of HEIF (2011-15), LSE has received £7 million for this purpose. £3 million of this has been put into a Bid Fund which has already funded 18 large projects. Some funds remain: look out for a further call for bids in Michaelmas term.

Also, a working group of the Strategic Review has been thinking how to improve the services available to academics who want to step up their knowledge exchange work. The Knowledge Exchange and Impact Working Group has spent the last year considering options in knowledge exchange, impact evaluation and public engagement. The Group reviewed current knowledge exchange and impact activities and the services and resources LSE now provides to support them, and has recommended to the School ways to improve support.

Academics abroad

Dr Mareike Kleine, Lecturer in the European Institute, will be travelling throughout the United States during September, presenting her new book Informal Governance in the European Union: how governments make international organisations work. She will be giving talks at the George Washington University in Washington DC, the University of Colorado at Boulder, New York University and the University of Rochester in New York, and the University of California at Berkeley.

Dr Wendy Sigle-Rushton, Gender Institute, and Dr Tiziana Leone, Department of Social Policy, together with LSE postgraduate students Eleri Jones, Valeria Cetorelli, Ben Wilson, Paul Bouanchaud, Katie Bates, Thais Tartalha-Lombardi, and Phillip Hessel, presented work at the IUSSP International Population Conference in Busan, South Korea at the end of August. The conference covered 21 different themes including reproductive health, mortality, longevity and health, population ageing, migration, union formation and marriage, as well as themes addressing the interrelationship between population, development and the environment.

Danny Quah, Professor of Economics and International Development, gave the opening keynote lecture at the 53rd Congress of the European Regional Science Association in Palermo, Italy, on Tuesday 27 August. In his lecture, "A Spatially Shifting Global Economy," Professor Quah presented his research on the large-scale shifts in the world's distribution of economic activity, and described the policy and research problems emerging from those changes.

From the start of Michaelmas term, Thursday 3 October, the Planning and Corporate Policy Division (PCPD) is changing its name to the Governance, Legal and Planning Division (GLPD), to describe the scope of the Division’s activities more clearly.

A new process for submitting proposals for academic and staff projects to the Annual Fund is being implemented for the 2013-14 academic year.

This follows consultations between the Director’s Management Team and the Annual Fund Allocations Advisory Group.

Do you organise group activities for LSE staff such as walking groups, exercise classes, knitting circles, book clubs, etc? If so, LSE would like to hear from you.

Would you like more energy? Would you like to lose weight? Are you worried that your diet could be affecting your health?

Vital Health Nutrition is offering LSE staff and their family and friends 33 per cent off an initial nutritional therapy consultation at their clinic in near Liverpool Street Station.

The initial consultation, which is normally priced at £120, will only cost you £80 and will leave you with an individualised health improvement plan with dietary and lifestyle recommendations tailored to your health issues.

Vital Health Nutrition is a new nutritional therapy clinic. Nutritional therapy is a complementary therapy, not an alternative medicine. It works alongside conventional medicine. It is most relevant for individuals with sub optimal health, as well as those looking for support to enhance their health and wellbeing. Practitioners consider each individual to be unique and recommend personalised nutrition and lifestyle programmes rather than a ‘one size fits all’ approach.

For more information, email Emily Fawell at Emily@vitalhealthnutrition.co.uk or call 07967 639347.

Only Connect calling for contestants

Only Connect, the BBC Four quiz hosted by Victoria Coren-Mitchell, is looking for contestants for its next series.

It's the quiz where, as in life itself, knowledge will only take you so far: patience and lateral thinking are also vital. It’s all about making connections between things which may appear, at first glance, not to be connected at all.

The programme is looking for teams of three players who share a common passion, ability or profession, to pool their combined wits to solve fiendish conundrums and vexing puzzles. To request an application form, email onlyconnect@parasolmedia.co.uk including a contact name and number. The closing date for applications is Friday 4 October.

If you applied for a previous series, but were unsuccessful, you are welcome to apply again for the new series. Auditions will be held in regional centres across the UK. All applicants must be aged 18+ and UK residents.

This week's picture features the chandelier which hangs from the domed skylight in LSE's Shaw Library in the Old Building.

For more images like this, visit the Photography Unit.

Some of the hottest days and coldest nights in parts of Europe have warmed more than four times the global average change since 1950, according to a new paper published today in the journal Environmental Research Letters by the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change (GRI) and the University of Warwick.

Researchers from the GRI, based at LSE, and their Warwick colleagues have translated observations of weather into observations of climate change using a gridded dataset of observations stretching back to 1950.

The hottest five per cent of summer days have warmed fastest in a band from southern England and northern France to Denmark. By contrast, the average and slightly hotter than average days have warmed most in regions further south in France and Germany.

The coldest five per cent of winter nights have warmed most in eastern France, western Germany and Belgium where changes of over 2°C or even 2.5°C are not uncommon.

LSE Autumn events programme announced

The full programme of public events for September to December is now online.

Highlights include lectures by Nobel Laureates Edmund Phelps and Christopher Pissarides, president and CEO of CARE USA Helene D Gayle, Financial Times editor Lionel Barber, President Museveni of Uganda, author Fatima Bhutto, and founder and group CEO of AirAsia Tony Fernandes.

Details of all lectures, debates, discussions, concerts and exhibitions are available at www.lse.ac.uk/events.
 

Other forthcoming LSE events include....

Delivering Food Assistance in a Shrinking Humanitarian Space
On: Tuesday 17 September at 6.30pm in the Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House
Speaker: Ertharin Cousin (pictured), executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme.

What Has the European Convention on Human Rights Ever Done for Us?
On: Tuesday 1 October at 6.30pm in the Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building
Speakers: Martin Howe QC, former member of the coalition government’s Commission on a Bill of Rights, Professor Philip Leach, director of the European Human Rights Advocacy Centre, Caroline Lucas, Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion, Emily Thornberry MP, Shadow Attorney General, and Professor Alan Sked, Professor of International History at LSE.

The Undercover Economist Strikes Back
On: Tuesday 1 October at 7pm in the Old Theatre, Old Building
Speaker: Tim Harford (pictured), senior columnist for the Financial Times and the presenter of BBC Radio 4’s More or Less and Pop-Up Economics With Tim Harford.
 

On: Monday 16 September from 6-8pm in room OLD 3.21, Old Building
Speaker: Dr Clare Saunders
Moderator: Dr Cristiana Olcese

In the permanent state of protest that we live today, how do we determine the impact/success of a protest?

This workshop is open to all. There is no need to book, places will be allocated on a first come first served basis. Space is limited so please arrive in good time to get a place.

EMBRACE (Ethnic Minorities Broadening Racial Awareness and Cultural Exchange), LSE’s BME staff network, is hosting two film screenings this September:

Wednesday 18 September
The Great Debaters
Starring Denzel Washington and Forest Whitaker

Wednesday 25 September
Beloved
Starring Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover.

Podcasts of public lectures and events

Turnaround: third world lessons for first world growth
Speaker: Peter Blair Henry
Recorded: Thursday 5 September
Click here to listen

Applications are invited from members of the professorial staff to fill the vacancy of the Pro Director, Research, to succeed Professor Stuart Corbridge, who completes his term in office on 31 December 2013.

The term of office is from 1 January 2014 for five years. Applications should be made to Sofia Avgerinou, HR Manager, either via post or email (at s.avgerinou@lse.ac.uk) by Monday 30 September.

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

• Assistant Professor in Accounting, Accounting
• Assistant Professor in Political Science and Political Economy, Government
• Assistant Professor in Political Science and Public Policy, Government
• Assistant/Associate Professor in International Development, International Development
• Copy Shop Assistant, Library: public services
• Departmental Manager, Social Policy
• Evaluation and Communications Director, International Growth Centre
• Events Coordinator and Personal Assistant, Financial Markets Group
• Finance Administrator, Financial Markets Group
• HR Manager - Reward, Human Resources
• Head of Learning Technology and Innovation, Information Management and Technology
• IGC Country Economists, International Growth Centre
• IGC Economist - London based, International Growth Centre
• IGC Hub Coordinator, International Growth Centre
• LSE Fellow - Programme for African Leadership, International Development
• Postgraduate Administrator, Philosophy
• Programme Administrator, Management: EROB Group
• Programme Coordinator, Management
• Project Coordinator, LSE Health and Social Care
• Research Assistant, Media and Communications
• Research Fellow, LSE Health and Social Care
• Research Officer in Economic History, Economic History
• Research Officer - Quantitative Social Research, Sociology
• Web Developer (SharePoint), Information Management and Technology

Student Counselling Service Administrator Stacey Kurn (pictured) will be taking part in the 26 mile London Bikeathon on Sunday 15 September, to raise money for Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research.

Stacey is riding for her friend who lost both his brother and father to this terrible disease. Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research is the only UK charity solely dedicated to researching blood cancers, including leukaemia, lymphoma and myeloma.

To sponsor Stacey, visit her fundraising page.

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 26 September. Articles for this should be emailed to me by Tuesday 24 September. Staff News is emailed every Thursday during term time and fortnightly during the holidays.