Update - registering with the police

The School would like to hear about the experience of students who registered with the police at the Overseas Visitors Records Office in London during September and October.

Orientation 2012 Feedback - win a £300 Amazon voucher

If you were a new arrival at LSE during Orientation 2012, the Student Services team invites you to tell them about your experiences by completing a feedback survey.

Dr Cameron Hepburn

Dr Hepburn, who works in the Grantham Research Institute, has just started learning the Alexander technique and would love to be a much better musician - 'but I suspect that my musical abilities peaked long ago'.

LSE has won a ‘Highly Commended’ award at the 2012 Green Gown Awards, at a ceremony at the University of Birmingham on Monday 5 November. The Green Gowns are the most prestigious recognition of environmental achievement in the higher and further education sector.

The School’s winning entry was the ‘Sustainable Projects Fund’, which funds student and staff-led environmental projects on campus with a 10p ‘tax’ on bottled water sold at LSE catering outlets; it is run by the LSESU Sustainable Futures Society.

The judges commented: 'This is an innovative and well administered funding model… Successful student applicants to the Fund gain a wide range of experience through managing the implementation of their ideas.'

All students are encouraged to apply to the Sustainable Projects Fund, with up to £25,000 to be won to develop your environmental project on campus. Details of the 2012-13 Fund and how to enter will be launched in the next few weeks.

Ten LSE postgraduate students have been given the opportunity to spend two to three months at one of LSE’s five institutional partners in 2012-13 through the School’s Partnership PhD Mobility Bursaries scheme.

The scheme began in 2008-09 with Columbia University (New York), the National University of Singapore and Sciences Po (Paris) and expanded in 2010-11 to include Peking University (Beijing) and the University of Cape Town. Each year, LSE funds up to two places at each of the five institutions with students receiving a bursary of £2,500 to support travel and living costs.

Update - registering with the police

Following the problems that students faced registering with the police at the Overseas Visitors Records Office in London in September and October, LSE is continuing to raise concerns with the UK authorities about the process, and to lobby for improvements to the system or removal of the requirement altogether.

To aid our efforts, and to illustrate the problems, we would like to hear about the experience of students who registered during this time.

If you would like to tell us about your experience, complete our online form (this asks for your personal details but please note that if we use your feedback, we will use it anonymously). Please respond no later than Wednesday 21 November.

The Orientation Steering Group would like to congratulate the winners of the Orientation Treasure Hunt: Team Passfield and Team Lucky 2012.

New students who arrived at LSE before Orientation Week were invited to get to know each other while learning more about the School and London by participating in the Treasure Hunt.

Teams of at least five participants were formed to complete the 20 question downloadable quiz, which included a variety of clues about locations on the LSE campus.

The winning teams were each awarded £100 in restaurant vouchers. Team Passfield included students Laura Ehrich, Nayni Gupta, Dan Leung, Asad Malik, and Ali Vohra. Team Lucky 2012 included Mi Cai, Ran Chen, Yunfei Cui, Wei Wei, and Wei Yao.

Orientation 2012 Feedback - win a £300 Amazon voucher

If you were a new arrival at LSE during Orientation 2012, the Student Services team invites you to tell them about your experiences by completing the Orientation feedback survey.

New arrivals who complete the survey, and provide their contact details, will be entered into a draw for the chance to win an Amazon voucher worth £300.

The survey closes on Friday 23 November and the winner will be announced by Monday 10 December. For more information and to complete the survey, visit lse.ac.uk/orientationfeedback.
 

Courses scheduled for next week include:

• Using EndNote Web to Manage your References
• Managing your Time
• Poster Design Workshop for PhD Students
• Excel 2010: charts
• Using Blogs, Wikis and Other Social Media for Teaching
• Managing your Thesis Anxieties
• Introduction to Social Science and Government Data
• Getting to Grips with Office 2010 and Windows 7
• Interdisciplinary PhD Network

Why not take a foreign language course at LSE?

If you haven't registered yet for a foreign language course, don't worry, there's still time. Registration is open until Friday 16 November.

The Language Centre has a range of extra-curricular courses including the Certificate Course programme, which offers Arabic, Catalan, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. You may even be entitled to a free language course under the LSE Language Policy.
 

Can you convey your research visually? PhD and MRes students across the School are invited to enter the LSE Research Festival exhibition, for which submissions are now being sought in four categories: posters, films, apps and photographs.

Several related workshops are being run this term and the deadline is 18 January 2013. The exhibition itself will take place during the School’s prestigious Literary Festival, opening it up to a public audience and encouraging engagement with themes of general interest.

Enjoy tasty and nutritious hot food between 3.30pm and 7pm in the Fourth Floor Restaurant, Old Building, freshly prepared by the chefs on a daily basis.

Come along and enjoy a traditional Christmas meal at your favourite LSE Catering outlet. Lunch and dinner will be available on the following dates:

• LSE Garrick
  Lunch - Wednesday 5 December
• Fourth Floor Restaurant
  Lunch and dinner - Thursday 6 December
• Staff Dining Room (members only, bookings essential)
  Lunch - Tuesday 11 December and Wednesday 12 December
   

The LSESU Fashion Society is currently looking for both male and female models for its Annual Charity Fashion Show, which will support the MicroLoan Foundation.

This will be a great opportunity to try something different, make new friends, and have fun.

If you're interested in taking part, go along to the casting on Tuesday 20 November in the Underground between 12pm and 3pm. Girls - make sure you take a pair of high heels.

Houghton Consulting Group is recruiting

Houghton Consulting Group, part of the LSESU Management and Strategy Society, is currently recruiting for the position of head of IT.

Houghton Consulting Group is a pro bono student-run organisation that offers consulting services to clients.

The voluntary position would involve setting up the website for the Group. The team has a rough design for the website but needs someone who can set it up online. Minimal updating will be required and you will receive full credit on the website for your work.

If you are interested in this position, send an email outlining your experience to p.ahmed@houghtonconsulting.org by Friday 16 November. You do not need to have any professional experience.

Forthcoming LSE events include....

On Being Progressive
On: Tuesday 20 November at 6.30pm in the Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building
Speakers: Maurice Fraser, senior fellow in European politics in the European Institute at LSE, and Polly Toynbee (pictured), journalist and writer.

How Protest Movements Change America
On: Wednesday 21 November at 6.30pm in the Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building
Speaker: Professor Frances Fox Piven, distinguished professor of political science and sociology at The Graduate Centre, The City University of New York.

More Relatively Poor People in a Less Absolutely Poor World
On: Thursday 22 November at 5pm in the Old Theatre, Old Building
Speaker: Martin Ravallion (pictured), director of the World Bank’s Research Department and (from 2013) Edmond D Villani chair of economics at Georgetown University.

Should the Human Rights Act be Replaced with a New Bill of Rights?
On: Thursday 22 November at 6.30pm in the Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building
Speakers: Professor Conor Gearty, professor of law at LSE, Professor Francesca Klug, professorial research fellow at LSE and director of the Human Rights Futures Project, and Dr Michael Pinto-Duschinsky, senior consultant on constitutional affairs at Policy Exchange and former member of the UK commission on a bill of rights.

The History of the LSE Students' Union

On until Friday 16 November in the Atrium Gallery, Old Building.

The LSE Students’ Union presents this exhibition charting its history from the early 1900s to the present day. The exhibition comprises a selection of prints of original issues of The Beaver and The Clare Market Review as well as photographs, letters and posters. It aims to provide an interesting and informative look at the history of the LSESU.

The exhibition has been kindly supported by the LSE Annual Fund and LSE Library Archives.

The exhibition is open to all with no ticket required. Visitors are welcome during weekdays (Monday - Friday) between 10am and 8pm (unless otherwise stated on the web listing).

For more information, click here, email arts@lse.ac.uk or call 020 7107 5342.
 

On: Tuesday 20 November from 6-7.30pm in the Cañada Blanch Room, first floor of Cowdray House
Speaker: Professor Nikolaos Zahariadis (pictured), professor and director of International Studies at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

This talk will explore the impact of privatisation on the performance of Hellenic telecommunications. Has political involvement changed and in what ways since the sale of shares in the company?

Professor Zahariadis will trace economic and social company performance since 1992 and find out whether it has changed because of two important factors: regulation and labour relations.

On: Tuesday 20 November from 6.30-8pm in room NAB 2.04, New Academic Building
Speaker: Professor Peter Bearman, director of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Innovative Theory and Empirics (INCITE), Cole Professor of Social Science and co-director of the Health and Society Scholars Program at Columbia University, New York.

This talk will consider why autism prevalence has increased so dramatically over the past few decades. The central argument is that this is because of subtle social and population level changes amplified by a dynamic social influence process. Ideas about what kinds of environmental shocks could generate the dynamics we observe will be considered.

The Politics of Financial Crises: lessons across continents

On: Thursday 29 November from 9am-6pm in Arundel House, 13-15 Arundel Street, London, WC2R 3DX

This one-day event will bring together policy makers, practitioners and academics to discuss the politics of financial crises from a comparative perspective. The conference will analyse the series of financial crises that have taken place in different parts of the world since the 1980s.

It will focus on three main aspects of the politics of financial crises: the international and domestic politics of financial crises, and state-society relations in the context of financial crises. It will examine how international, domestic and societal actors reacted to crises and how their reactions shaped short-term policy responses as well as medium- to long-term political and policy consequences.

The inaugural LSESU Investment Society Mergers and Acquisitions Conference will take place on Saturday 1 December at the Freemasons' Hall.

Initiated by students from the LSESU Investment Society, this will be the largest student-run mergers and acquisitions conference in the UK.

The 2012 conference will cover a wide range of topics from the perspectives of professionals in the auditing, legal and financial industries. Speakers will include:

• Wilhelm Schulz, head of EMEA M&A at Citi
• William Underhill, partner at Slaughter & May and chairman of the City of London Law Society Company Law Committee

For a price of £5, participants can expect to network with top professionals and learn about current developments in the field. On top of that, workshops have been designed to allow participants to build tangible financial skills.