LSE and the Great Comic Relief Bake Off

Come and buy cakes this Friday on the John Watkins Plaza outside the Library from 12-2pm, to help raise money for Comic Relief.

A Chronicle of Food and Hunger

The LSESU UN Society is hosting this talk by Mario Arvelo, the Dominican ambassador to the food and agriculture organisation.

Nico Nalbantian

Nico, a final year law student, took part in last year's LSE-PKU Summer School: 'Being able to study in China’s capital was not an opportunity I was going to let slip by.'

Historian and award-winning author Professor Timothy Snyder (pictured) will take up the Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs for 2013-14.

Professor Snyder is currently the Bird White Housum Professor of History at Yale University, specialising in the political history of central and eastern Europe as well as the Holocaust. A prolific author, he has written five award-winning books including Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin, which has received ten awards including the Emerson Prize in the Humanities and the Leipzig Award for European Understanding and was named on 12 book-of-the-year lists for 2010.

The Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs is based in LSE IDEAS, the centre for the study of international affairs, diplomacy and grand strategy. The annual post gives LSE the chance to bring a renowned academic from another part of the world to the School for a year of research, teaching and discussion.

Strategic Review update

The Strategic Review is now entering a new phase with the launch of focused deliberations on a number of longer-term questions facing the School. The Steering Committee has identified four initial areas for discussion, with more to follow in the Summer term:

• What does the future hold for ways of teaching and learning in higher education?

• How and with whom should the School engage overseas?

• How should the School’s units (Departments and Research Centres) be structured and supported to promote excellence in teaching, research, and public engagement?

• How should the physical estate be configured to provide an engaging and positive experience for students and staff while also supporting excellence in teaching, research, and public engagement?

Each question will be considered by one or more small discussion groups, selected from among the staff, students, and governors of the School. Participants will receive background research on how the School does things now, and how our competitors are answering the same questions for themselves. They will not be expected to find 'the' answer, but to suggest some possible answers, and to highlight their relative pros and cons.

Students interested in joining the pool of volunteers from which focus groups will be formed should email strategy@lse.ac.uk.
 

LSE Entrepreneur of the Year Awards 2013

Back in February, LSE Careers ran the LSE Entrepreneur of the Year and Social Entrepreneur of the Year Awards 2013, offering funding to students who have developed outstanding entrepreneurial ideas to help get their businesses off the ground.

More than 20 entries were received and 15 applicants (individuals and groups) were invited to pitch their enterprises to a panel comprising senior LSE staff, experienced entrepreneurs and business professionals. Applications for these awards focused on a wide range of sectors from e-commerce, to social networking, to catering and retail, and candidates were assessed according to the potential of their business ideas and their motivation driving the chosen project.

The winners of the competition, who will be awarded a cash prize and given continued mentoring and support through the first 18 months of developing their idea, were:

• LSE Entrepreneur of the Year 2013
  Garrick Hileman (pictured), MacroDigest
• LSE Social Entrepreneur of the Year 2013
  Sean Farran, GetTWOit

Come and buy cakes this Friday (15 March) on the John Watkins Plaza outside the Library from 12-2pm.

LSE is looking for first year undergraduates who are interested in becoming peer supporters. In this voluntary role you will receive 30 hours of training from the LSE Student Counselling Service in listening, questioning and responding skills, plus fortnightly supervision. These skills will enable you to provide emotional support to other students through the Peer Support Project.

The training takes place over a two week block in weeks nine and ten of Summer term. Students who completed the training gained a tremendous amount from it.

In addition to meeting regularly and developing close bonds with others peer supporters, students find that they gain an increased ability to listen and respond supportively in all walks of life. There is a guaranteed offer of accommodation within one of the LSE residences for 2013-14 for those that successfully complete the training.

To find out more, sign up for an informal lunch on Monday 18 March, when you can meet some current peer supporters and see what they’ve gained from the project. To reserve a place, email student.counselling@lse.ac.uk by Friday 15 March.

LSE Catering will once again be promoting a Feed Good Food Day on Tuesday 19 March in the Fourth Floor Restaurant.

As well as raising awareness and promoting the sustainable aspects of the food we serve, we aim to demonstrate that limiting meat in our diet and using healthier ingredients, seasonal vegetables, fish from sustainable stocks and higher animal welfare produce can benefit your health, the environment and animal welfare.

The Asia Research Centre invites applications from full-time PhD students at LSE working on research related to the economy and society of India.

Students must be in their thesis writing stage and be registered with any department of LSE for the academic year 2013-14.

Applications should include a cover letter, CV and research proposal addressed to the ‘Selection Committee’ and emailed to arc@lse.ac.uk, mentioning 'Bagri Fellowship' in the subject line.

A maximum of three Bagri Fellowships of £5,000 each will be awarded for 2013-14.

The closing date for receiving applications is 12 July 2013. For more information regarding the Asia Research Centre, visit www2.lse.ac.uk/asiaResearchCentre.
 

So you need to improve your Excel (or Word or PowerPoint or Outlook) skills but you just don’t have time during the academic terms, right? Consider downloading our Teach Yourself materials so that you can use them during the spring or summer breaks.

Training and development opportunities for students

Courses scheduled for next week include:

• Exams 4: preparing for quantitative exams

• Literature Searching for your Dissertation

• End of Term Review for MSc Students

These are just some of the events running next week. To receive a monthly list of all events, subscribe to the student training and development email by clicking here. To find out more about training and development across the School and for links to booking pages, see lse.ac.uk/training.
 

Have you taken any artistic photographs in London or abroad? Would you like to see your work represented on the LSE website? If so, submit your pictures to LSE Perspectives.

LSE Perspectives is a monthly online gallery that features photographs taken by LSE students and staff. The next gallery will go live on Monday 1 April so be sure to send your submissions before then.

Innovation

On: Monday 18 March at 6pm in the Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building

Trying new things can be daunting, but also inspiring. In our creative writing, trying a new genre or subject or exploring what new technology has to offer, can be liberating. But is it sometimes best to stick to the classics?

Find out what has inspired the best-selling authors James Dawson, Kate Kingsley and Meg Rosoff (pictured), and join in the discussion.

On: Monday 18 March from 6.30pm-8pm in the New Theatre, East Building
Speaker: Dr Isatou Touray (pictured), founder and executive director of the Gambia Committee on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children.

This talk discusses the efforts made by grassroots Gambian activists and community campaigns, as well as external forces, in building resistance to Female Genital Mutilation in one of the few countries in the world where the practice remains not legally prohibited.

Other forthcoming LSE events include....

LSE Choir and Orchestra Spring Concert
On: Tuesday 19 March at 7.45pm in St Clement Danes, Strand, London WC2R 1DH
Tickets are available to purchase via the LSE E-shop or at the Students’ Union shop on Houghton Street.

Divided Nations: why global governance is failing and what we can do about it?
On: Wednesday 20 March at 6.30pm in the Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House
Speaker: Professor Ian Goldin, director of the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford.

SHIFT 2013 - LSESU Social Entrepreneurship Forum

On: Saturday 16 March from 9.30am-5pm in the Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House

The LSESU Social Entrepreneurship Society invites you to its first annual forum - SHIFT 2013.

SHIFT is a unique event, which hopes to bring together LSE students and non-students alike, providing an opportunity to explore emerging theories and concepts in social entrepreneurship. The forum will have a casual and flexible format; in addition to spotlighting a selection of outstanding changemakers and their projects.

Be it through group workshops, rapidfire presentations and skillshare sessions, the society hopes to spark new ideas and forge collaborations between all participants.

Little Shop of Horrors

On: Monday 18 March at 7pm, Tuesday 19 March at 8.30pm, and Wednesday 20 March at 7pm, in the Old Theatre, Old Building.

Next week sees the LSESU Drama Society's annual musical, 'Little Shop of Horrors'.

The musical tells the story of Seymour Krelborn, a nebbish flower-shop assistant who creates a monster when he begins feeding a Venus fly-trap on his own blood.

Tickets are £5 and can be purchased this week from the stall on Houghton Street.
 

D.A.N.C.E - LSEAU Dance Club's Annual Dance Show

On: Monday 18 March from 7.30-9.30pm in the Peacock Theatre, LSE

Tickets are now available for this year's LSEAU Dance Club's Dance Show. Tickets can be bought from the Houghton Street stall on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and cost £6, £8, or £10.

For more information, visit Facebook.
 

On: Tuesday 19 March at 6pm in the Old Theatre, Old Building

Nine LSE research students, with three minutes and one PowerPoint slide each, will be battling it out to present their research in the most compelling and clear way in LSE’s inaugural Three Minute Thesis competition.

On: Tuesday 19 March from 6.30-8pm in room TW1.G.01, Tower One
Speaker: Professor Stathis N Kalyvas (pictured), Arnold Wolfers Professor, director of the Program on Order, Conflict and Violence, and co-director of the Hellenic Studies Program, Yale University.

Taking the present crisis in Greece as his starting point, Professor Kalyvas will review the surprising number of critical junctures during the past two centuries, when Greece seemed to become a focal point in European, and even global politics, negatively but also positively.

He asks how a country so small and peripheral came to play such a role. He provides an interpretation based on a review of the country’s history since it became an independent state in the third decade of the 19th century and is discussing its implications for the present and future of Greece.

A Chronicle of Food and Hunger

On: Tuesday 19 March at 6.30pm in room CLM 2.02, Clement House

The LSESU UN Society is hosting this talk by the Dominican ambassador to the food and agriculture organisation, Mario Arvelo, who will be flying from Rome just to speak at LSE.

This lecture is an audio-visual review of the daily search for sustenance from the perspective of human cultures. Hunger can be regarded as a scandal of our time and a burden on present generations. And a question arises: What contribution can we make, as individuals, to at last eradicate hunger and make it an affair of the past?

On: Wednesday 20 March from 12.30-2pm in the Old Theatre, Old Building
Speaker: Professor Daniel Dennett (pictured), university professor and Austin B Fletcher professor of philosophy, and co-director of the Centre for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University.

Homo sapiens is the first species of intelligent designers to evolve by natural selection, a cascade of processes that works without any help from an intelligent designer. How was this possible? Cultural evolution is the key innovation; it began as a purely Darwinian process of natural selection of memes, but has spawned successor processes of invention that are ever less Darwinian, ever more foresighted and purposeful.

This event is free and open to all with no ticket required. Entry is on a first come, first served basis. For any queries email Juliana Cardinale on j.cardinale@lse.ac.uk or call 020 7955 7539, or email Mehrun Absar on m.absar@lse.ac.uk or call 020 7955 7573.

On: Wednesday 20 March from 6.30-8pm in the Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building
Speakers: Petros Christodoulou, deputy CEO of the National Bank of Greece, Dr Daniel Gros, director of the Centre for European Policy Studies, Brussels, Professor Charles Goodhart (pictured), emeritus professor of banking and finance and director of the Financial Regulation Research Programme, LSE, Professor Michael Haliassos, chair for macroeconomics and finance at the Goethe University Frankfurt and director of the Centre for Financial Studies, Frankfurt.

Stratos Chatzigiannis, vice-chairman of the Board of Hellenic Bankers Association-UK and investment director of NBGI Private Equity Ltd, will give the welcome address at this event. Professor Kevin Featherstone, director of LSE's Hellenic Observatory, will act as moderator.

On: Thursday 21 March from 1.30-3pm in the Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building
Speakers: Ulrich Beck, professor of Sociology at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, German politician, Mary Kaldor, professor of global governance in the Department of International Development at LSE, and Richard Sennett, professor emeritus of sociology at LSE.

The basic rules of European democracy are being subverted or turned into their opposite, bypassing parliaments, governments and EU institutions. Multilateralism is turning into unilateralism, equality into hegemony, sovereignty into the dependency and recognition into disrespect for the dignity of other nations. Even France, which long dominated European integration, must submit to Berlin’s strictures now that it must fear for its international credit rating.

In this event, Ulrich Beck, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Mary Kaldor and Richard Sennett will discuss the current political crisis and how to reinvent democracy in Europe.

On: Thursday 21 March from 6.30-8pm in the Wolfson Theatre, New Academic Building
Speaker: Professor Andrew Abbott (pictured), Gustavus F and Ann M Swift distinguished service professor of sociology at Chicago University.

This lecture argues that since excess and overabundance are central phenomena of modern life, we should refound social theory on the concept of 'too much of' rather than 'too little of'.

Professor Abbott will trace the origin of the scarcity theories that dominate our reasoning, and sketch the outlines of a social theory based on excess.