Department of Social Policy

Mental health interventions in pregnant women and new mothers have benefits

There are clear economic and societal arguments for investing in mental health interventions for women during pregnancy and immediately after birth, a new report by the Personal Social Services Research Unit (PSSRU) at the London School of Economics and Political Science suggests.

Preventative measures and initiatives targeted at women already experiencing mild, moderate and severe mental illness can deliver benefits. But, as the report emphasises, the economic and societal benefits also need to be considered in the long term.

Social Policy Alumni win this year's Geneva Challenge

Two of our former MSc in Social Policy and Development (2015-2016) students, Arianna Espinosa-Oliver and Abraham Hidalgo-Mendoza, were part of the team that won this year’s Geneva Challenge.  This is an annual competition hosted by the Graduate Institute in Geneva - The Advancing Development Goals International Contest for Graduate Students. This year the students were asked to come up with a project on The Challenges of Urbanisation

Arianna and Abraham were part of the winning team which came up with the MINGA - Collective Waste Management project.    

Dr Ernestina Coast invited to speak at International Conferences

Dr Coast will be an invited Panellist at the 13th Inter-Ministerial Conference on Population and Development in Dakar (28th-29th November). The event will focus on Priority Population and Development Challenges in the context of the SDGs, and she will present on Gender and Adolescence: Global Evidence (GAGE).

Dr Coast is also an invited participant at the decennial Africa Regional Conference on Abortion where she will be presenting two research papers and giving an Expert Interview on the role of young people in research.

Key note presentation given by Professor Anne West

Professor Anne West gave the key note presentation at the Reclaiming Education Conference held on Saturday 12 November 2016 in London.

The talk was entitled the ‘History of Comprehensive Education in England’.

Academic Abroad- Dr Armine Ishkanian delivers keynote lectures

Dr Armine Ishkanian delivered keynote lectures on Armenia's Current Political and Social Situation in Global Context at the University of California, Irvine on 2 November as part of the Vahe & Armine Meghrouni Lecture series in Armenian studies, and at the University of California, Los Angeles on the 3 November at the invitation of the Centre for Near Eastern Studies.

LSE Library Public Lecture
Revisiting The Case for Family Allowances: what would Eleanor Rathbone have made of state support for children in 2016?

Date: Tuesday 22 November 2016

Time: 6.30pm-7.30pm
Venue: Wolfson Theatre, New Academic Building
Speaker: Dr Kitty Stewart

Eleanor Rathbone was a key force behind the introduction of state financial support for children, publishing 'The Case for Family Allowances' in 1940. Seventy years after her death, and 71 years after the 1945 Family Allowances Act, this talk considers what Rathbone might have made of the current design of child benefits and child tax credits in the UK.

This event is free and open to all with no ticket or pre-registration required. Entry is on a first come, first served basis.

Twitter Hashtag for this event: #RememberEleanor

Department of Social Policy William Plowden Fellowship Lecture
Fires, Focus and Force: the role of secondary school governors and social mobility

Date: Thursday 24 November 2016

Time: 6.30pm-8.00pm
Venue: CLM 7.02, Clement House

Speaker: Dr Michael Cross
Chair: Professor Nicholas Deakin CBE

Social mobility is one of the key ingredients of a fair, equal and progressive society. Amongst the many factors which shape how much social mobility occurs in a society, education is a major one. This lecture explores the role of the school governor and its impact on student social mobility.

This event is free and open to all, however please email
Maria Schlegel to register your interest.

International Health Policy Conference 2017

LSE Health & Social Care and the LSE’s Department of Social Policy's Inaugural International Health Policy will be held at the LSE from 16th-19th February 2017.

This unique conference seeks to bring together academics and policy-makers from a wide range of disciplines to take a multi-disciplinary approach to key health and social care issues.

Further information here

For any queries regarding paper submission or registration or for further information please email ihpc2017@lse.ac.uk

Department of Social Policy Film Screening and Q&A:
When Elephants Fight

Recorded on 24 October 2016

Panelists: Peter Jones, Bandi Mbubi, JD Stier
Chair: Dr Armine Ishkanian

#StandWithCongo presented the London premiere of When Elephants Fight, a documentary on how multinational corporations and corrupt politicians in Democratic Republic of the Congo threaten human rights. Narrated by Robin Wright, House of Cards, with LSE alumnus, Kwame Marfo as International Executive Producer.

To view the documentary trailer and to request a free screening visit the #StandWithCongo website.

The Politics of Global AIDS

Springer International Publishing (forthcoming in 2017)

Author: Dr Hakan Seckinelgin

This timely book looks critically at the policy response to AIDS and its institutionalization over time. It raises important questions about who benefits, who decides, and in whose interests decisions are made. Taking the early international response to the epidemic as its starting point, and focusing on the work of agencies such as UNAIDS, it identifies two logics underpinning strategy to date. First, the idea of HIV as a ‘global emergency’ which calls for an extraordinary response.  Second, the claim that medicine offers the best way of dealing with it. The book also identified the rise of something more dominant  – namely Global AIDS – or the logic and system that seeks to displace all others. 

Journal in Behavioural Public Policy

Forthcoming in 2017

Edited by Adam Oliver, George Akerlof and Cass Sunstein

Behavioural Public Policy is an interdisciplinary and international peer-reviewed journal devoted to behavioural research and its relevance to public policy. The study of human behaviour is important within many disciplinary specialties and in recent years the findings from this field have begun to be applied to policy concerns in a substantive and sustained way. 

Cities for a Small Continent

Policy Press (May 2016)

Professor Anne Power’s new book, Cities for a Small Continent, collects compelling evidence from seven archetypal industrial cities across Europe that were the power-houses of the industrial revolution. She argues that far from being “clapped out”, “jobless, poor and dirty” they are stuffed with assets that can be recycled and reused.

Professor Power’s compelling framework spells out the green shoots of a new industrial economy to combat environmental and social unravelling. Community investment, social enterprise and integration, have gained momentum as Europe’s crowded, resource-constrained cities face environmental and social limits faster than other less densely urban countries, such as the US. She concludes that “Europe’s urban renaissance points to a more viable, more balanced urban future in the world’s smallest, most crowded, most city-loving continent.”