Narratives in policymaking

We all love a good story. Stories provide coherence and help to form our sense of identity. Personal and social narratives fundamentally affect the ways we live, how we interact and what is considered important at all levels of decision-making.

Inviting authors from a range of disciplines, from psychology to the humanities, economics, economic history and geography, the key aim of the symposium is to explore the role of narratives in shaping what we think, do and feel - for good and for ill.

Meet our speakers and chair

Adam Brzezinski is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at LSE, having received a grant to work on his project The Political Economy of Narratives. Adam completed his DPhil (PhD) in Economics at the University of Oxford in 2023. Adam's main research focus is on the study of how political narratives interact with the economy, from a theoretical and empirical perspective.

Sarah Dillon is Professor of Literature and the Public Humanities in the Faculty of English at the University of Cambridge. She is a scholar of contemporary literature, film and philosophy, with a research focus on the epistemic function and value of stories, on interdisciplinarity, and on the engaged humanities. She is the co-author of Storylistening: Narrative Evidence and Public Reasoning.

Paul Dolan (@profpauldolan) is Professor of Behavioural Science in the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science at LSE, and Director of the Executive MSc in Behavioural Science. Three decades of research have focused on developing ways to better measure and value the richness of the human experience. He is the author of Happiness by Design, and Happy Ever After and the creator and presenter of the podcasts Breaking Beliefism, Duck - Rabbit and Get Happier.

Sharon White is a visiting professor in practice at the School of Public Policy. Sharon was the sixth Executive Chairman of the John Lewis Partnership (2020-2024), heading the UK’s largest employee-owned business. Sharon joined JLP after four years as the Chief Executive of the Office of Communications (Ofcom), the UK’s media, telecoms, and postal regulator, from 2015 to 2019. Before joining Ofcom, Sharon was Second Permanent Secretary at the HM Treasury, where she was responsible for overseeing the UK’s public finances and supervising a review of the Treasury’s management response to the international financial crisis of 2007-2008.

Sonia Livingstone (@Livingstone_S) is a full professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. She has published 20 books and advised the UK government, European Commission, European Parliament, UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, Council of Europe and UNICEF on media audiences, children and young people’s risks and opportunities, media literacy and rights in the digital environment. She directs the Digital Futures for Children centre.

More about this event

The LSE School of Public Policy (@LSEPublicPolicy) is an international community where ideas and practice meet. Our approach creates professionals with the ability to analyse, understand and resolve the challenges of contemporary governance.

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