2025 Events

Budget 2025: Rachel Reeves’ most taxing questions
Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute and The Conversation

Tuesday 18 November 2025

Speakers:
Emma Chamberlain, Barrister, Pump Court Tax Chambers and Visiting Professor of Law, LSE and Oxford University
Helen Miller, Director, Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS)
Dr Maha Rafi Atal, Adam Smith Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Political Economy, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Glasgow and Executive Director, Public Business
Professor Mike Savage, Professorial Research Fellow, LSE III

Chair:
Sarah Reid, Senior Business and Economy Editor, The Conversation

This event aimed to give our audience a full understanding of what wealth is, how it has evolved in terms of who owns what, why some wealth is more productive than others, and what this means for the UK’s current and future socioeconomic situation. It explores how wealth is closely linked to inequality, and why a failure to address the current wealth trends could present a serious threat to future generations as wealth becomes ever-more concentrated.

Great global transformation: national market liberalism in a multipolar world
Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute

Thursday 6 November 2025

Speaker:
Professor Branko Milanovic, Research Professor, Graduate Center at City University of New York (CUNY); Senior Scholar, Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality at CUNY, and Visiting Professor, LSE III

Chair:
Professor Kirsten Sehnbruch, British Academy Global Professor and Distinguished Policy Fellow, LSE III

In this talk, Branko Milanovic discussed his new book, The Great Global Transformation: National Market Liberalism in a Multipolar World. Drawing on original research, he reveals the seismic shifts that are shaping our world.

Not just lines on a map: borders in a changing world
Hosted by the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity and the International Inequalities Institute

Thursday 9 October 2025

Speakers:
Dr Tarsis Brito, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of International Relations, LSE
Dr Maya Goodfellow, Presidential Fellow in the Department of International Politics, City St George's University of London
Dr Luke de Noronha, Associate Professor in Race, Ethnicity and Postcolonial Studies, Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism and Racialisation, UCL

Chair: 
Professor Armine Ishkanian, Executive Director, Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity and Professor, Department of Social Policy, LSE

This panel discussion explored key questions around nationhood, identity, and security. How can we better understand how borders are connected to inequalities? Should we re-evaluate how we think about borders altogether? And what might the future of borders look like?

Racism and racial justice: 40 years on from the Broadwater Farm riots
Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute and LSE Students' Union

Wednesday 1 October 2025

Speakers:
Sharon Grant, Founding Trustee, Bernie Grant Arts Centre and Secretary, Bernie Grant Trust
Dr Clive Chijioke Nwonka, Associate Professor in Film, Culture and Society, UCL School of European Languages, Culture and Society
Dr Roxana Willis, Assistant Professor in Law, LSE

Chair: 
Professor Coretta Phillips, Professor of Criminology and Social Policy, LSE Department of Social Policy

This panel explored the legal, political and community-based racial justice work that emerged 40 years ago from the Broadwater Farm riots in Tottenham, examining methods of resistance that continue to address present-day questions of race, racism and social inequality.

Asymmetric Information and Market Failure in Bank-NBFC Co-Lending Model
III Seminar

Tuesday 23 September 2025

Speaker: Dr Bibekananda Panda, 2025 Subir Chowdhury Visiting Fellow, India Observatory, III

Launched in November 2020, India’s Co-Lending Model (CLM) enables banks and NBFCs to jointly extend credit, blending low-cost capital with agile outreach. Regulatory evolution has expanded CLM’s scope beyond priority sectors, positioning it as a key driver of financial inclusion. Yet, uptake remains modest due to trust deficits and asymmetric information among lending partners. Divergent underwriting standards and risk appetites hinder coordination, distorting credit allocation. Stakeholder perspectives reveal that interoperability and mutual trust are essential to unlock CLM’s full potential. If banks and NBFCs align operational frameworks and embrace collaborative governance, CLM can reshape India’s lending architecture toward inclusive, efficient, and sustainable credit delivery.

Global inequality in historical and comparative perspective
III Event for The III at 10: New Directions in Inequality Research

Friday 19 September 2025

Speakers:
Professor Thomas Piketty, Professor of Economics, EHESS and the Paris School of Economics

Chair: 
Professor Francisco H.G. Ferreira, Amartya Sen Professor of Inequality Studies, LSE III

In this lecture, Thomas Piketty presented recent trends in global inequality and examined the historical movement toward equality and future prospects for more redistribution. He also presented new research produced by the World Inequality Lab.

New directions in inequality research
III Event for The III at 10: New Directions in Inequality Research

Thursday 18 September 2025

Speakers:
Professor Facundo Alvaredo, Professorial Research Fellow, International Inequalities Institute, London School of Economics;
Professor Steven Durlauf, Director, Stone Center for Research on Wealth Inequality and Mobility, University of Chicago
Professor Larry Kramer, President and Vice-Chancellor, London School of Economics
Professor Anne Phillips, Emeritus Professor, Department of Government, London School of Economics

Chair: 
Professor Armine Ishkanian, Executive Director, Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity, London School of Economics

If not government, then what? A three-part typology of redistributive preferences
III Event for The III at 10: New Directions in Inequality Research

Thursday 18 September 2025

Speaker:
Professor Leslie McCall, Presidential Professor of Political Science and Sociology, Graduate Center, CUNY and Associate Director, Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality

Chair:
Professor Fran Tonkiss, Professor of Sociology, LSE

Economic inequality is rising or at high levels in many countries across the globe. This has prompted a large, interdisciplinary and international body of research on public demands for government redistribution through income taxes and transfers. It is typically assumed – but not explicitly tested – that any opposition to government redistribution reflects acceptance of inequality or an individualistic belief in the undeservingness of the poor. We test this assumption directly and add a largely unexamined third possibility (besides government redistribution and individual responsibility): that major institutions and actors in the market sphere should reduce inequality in labor earnings. We find substantial support for this third market responsibility option, especially in advanced market economies such as the United States and Switzerland, where support for government redistribution is comparatively low. In contrast, we find the least support across all countries for the idea that inequality levels are acceptable or mainly the responsibility of the poor.

The Idea of Moral Socialism
Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute

Wednesday 11 June 2025

Speakers:
Lea Ypi, Professor of Political Theory at the London School of Economics, Fellow of the British Academy
Amartya Sen, Thomas W. Lamont University Professor, Professor of Economics and Philosophy, Harvard University, Senior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows

Chair: Nicholas Stern, IG Patel Professor of Economics and Government, Chair of the Grantham Research Institute

This lecture formed part of the Eva Colorni Memorial Lecture Series.

Lea Ypi reflects on the failures of state socialism and global capitalism in the twentieth century, suggesting a new way forward. Her account seeks to revive the Enlightenment critique of technocratic reason and is grounded on a universal conception of freedom as moral agency.

Racial justice and wealth inequality: a call for action
Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute

Tuesday 10 June 2025

Speakers:
Dr Shabna Begum, CEO of the Runnymede Trust
Dr Kojo Koram, Reader in Law, Birkbeck School of Law
Professor Mike Savage, Professorial Research Fellow, LSE III
Mina Mahmoudzadeh, PhD candidate, LSE Department of Sociology
Esiri Bukata, MSc Inequalities and Social Sciences alumna

Chair:
Dr Faiza Shaheen, Distinguished Policy Fellow at LSE’s International Inequalities Institute

This event marked the launch of ‘Why the UK Racial Wealth Divide Matters: a call for action’, a major new report written by the LSE International Inequalities Institute for the Runnymede Trust. Together, the speakers opened up a vital conversation on how we confront racialised wealth inequality, and what action is needed to build a fairer future.

Banking on the Family: Using Balance Sheets as a Framework to Study Inequality in Australia’s Asset Economy
III Seminar

Monday 9 June 2025

Speaker:
Monique McKenzie, Postdoctoral Research Associate in the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney

Chair:
Sam Friedman, Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, LSE

This seminar presented research exploring whether we can deploy the framing of the familial bank as an analytical framework to understand wealth inequality as a function of familial, rather than individual, wealth. By taking a sociological approach to the family as a bank, we can uncover how income, assets, risk exposures (i.e social factors: relationship breakdown, number of children, health) and operating costs (i.e cost of goods and services, housing costs) contribute to the production of wealth inequality and the ability of families to provide intergenerational transfers to younger family members.

Inequality in the 21st century
Hosted by the Department of Sociology and International Inequalities Institute

Friday 06 June 2025

Speakers:
Professor Gurminder K Bhambra, Professor of Historical Sociology, University of Sussex
Professor Michèle Lamont, Professor of Sociology and of African and African American Studies and the Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies, Harvard University
Professor Mike Savage, Professorial Research Fellow, International Inequalities Institute

Chair:
Dr Kristin Surak, Associate Professor of Political Sociology, LSE

We live in societies fractured from top to bottom by corrosive and scarring inequalities.

These cover multiple axes: notably including race, class, gender, sexuality, age, and geography – but this list is far from exhaustive. From its founding moments, the discipline of sociology has prized its capacity to dissect and analyse social divisions, and to understand how inequality is not just some peripheral social phenomenon but lies at the heart of social life itself. This panel brought together three eminent sociologists to reflect on how we can use the sociological imagination to make sense of contemporary challenges and illuminate our current lives.

Democracy and the right to protest in the UK
Hosted by the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity and the International Inequalities Institute

Monday 24 March 2025

Speakers:
Richard Martin, Assistant Professor of Law, LSE Law School
Sam Nadel, PhD candidate, Department of Social Policy, LSE
Pascale Frazer-Carroll, Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity, campaigner and social impact director

Chair:
George Kunnath, Associate Professor (Education) and Lifelong Engagement Lead, AFSEE

This panel explored the importance of protest, what the shrinking of democratic space means for social movements and activists, and what can be done to protect freedom of speech and the right to protest.

Where do we draw the line: exploring an extreme wealth line
Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute

Thursday 6 March 2025

Speakers:
Fernanda Balata, Political Economist, New Economics Foundation
Professor Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights and Professor of Law, UCLouvain and SciencesPo (Paris);
Professor Ingrid Robeyns, Author and Chair in Ethics of Institutions, Ethics Institute, Utrecht University;
Gary Stevenson, Writer and Economist

Chair:
Dr Tania Burchardt, Associate Director of the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE) and Deputy Director of STICERD

This event drew together leading thinkers and practitioners to discuss the viability of an "extreme wealth line" and what it can contribute to addressing the pressing issues of our time.

Peak Injustice: solving Britain's inequality crisis
Co-hosted with LSE Department of Sociology

Monday 24 February 2025

Speakers:
Professor Danny Dorling, Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography, University of Oxford
Dr Danny Sriskandarajah, Chief Executive, New Economics Foundation and Visiting Senior Fellow, LSE III
Professor Kitty Stewart, Professor of Social Policy and Associate Director of the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE)
Polly Toynbee, Journalist and writer

Chair:
Professor Aaron Reeves, Professor of Sociology, LSE

Why has absolute deprivation continued to grow in the UK? What role does high inequality play in understanding how we have got to the point of peak injustice?

With child mortality rising in the UK and a majority of parents with three or more children going to bed hungry, Danny Dorling looks to the future, highlighting the challenges ahead and identifying solutions for change.

Wealth, poverty and enduring inequality: let's talk wealtherty
Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute

Wednesday 19 February 2025

Speakers:
Dr Sarah Kerr, Research Fellow in Wealth, Elites and Tax Justice Research Programme, LSE III
Professor Armine Ishkanian, Executive Director, Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity and Professor, Department of Social Policy, LSE
Dr Rajiv Prabhakar, Senior Lecturer in Personal Finance at the Open University
Frank Soodeen, Director of Communications and Public Engagement, Joseph Rowntree Foundation

Chair:
Professor Mike Savage, Wealth, Elites and Tax Justice Research Programme Leader, LSE III and Martin White Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, LSE

This event saw the launch of Dr Sarah Kerr's new book, in which she undertakes an experiment. Starting from the premise that continuing to centre poverty encourages researchers and policymakers alike to 'look down' she contributes to a strand of social policy and sociological literature that asks: what happens if we 'look up'?

Does class inequality still matter?
Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute

Tuesday 04 February 2025

Speakers:
Zarah Sultana, Independent MP for Coventry South
Professor Mike Savage, Wealth, Elites and Tax Justice Research Programme Leader, LSE III and Martin White Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, LSE
Aditya Chakrabortty, Senior Economics Commentator, The Guardian
Clare MacGillivray, Director, Making Rights Real and Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity

Chair:
Dr Faiza Shaheen, Distinguished Policy Fellow, LSE III

Ten years since the seminal Social Class in the 21st Century was published, this panel revisited the findings, asking if the trends have changed, why class seems to have fallen off the agenda, and what we can do to build solidarity in this new political era. Held at LSE, where Social Class in the 21st Century was first launched in November 2015, our panel asked: does social class still matter in Britain in the 21st century?

Power to the people
Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute

Monday 27 January 2025

Speakers:
Dr Danny Sriskandarajah, Chief Executive, New Economics Foundation and Visiting Senior Fellow, LSE III
Jo Swinson, Director, Partners for a New Economy (P4NE) and Visiting Professor, Cranfield University
Lysa John, Executive Director, Atlantic Institute
Chair: Professor Armine Ishkanian, Executive Director, Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity and Professor, Department of Social Policy, LSE

In this talk Danny Sriskandarajah discussed his new book Power to the People, which sets out his radical blueprint for change. From giving democracy a participatory makeover to public ownership of social media spaces, and from re-energising co-operatives to creating a people’s chamber at the United Nations, the book presents a range of inspiring ideas for how we can reclaim our power and change the world.