Baroness Minouche Shafik to become Executive Chair of LSE’s Agora
The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is delighted to announce that Baroness Minouche Shafik, economist, policy maker and former President of LSE, will return to the School as Executive Chair of the Agora, based at the Firoz Lalji Global Hub.
The Agora, which will take centre stage in LSE’s newest building, the Firoz Lalji Global Hub, will be a multipurpose circular space designed to encourage debate, audience participation and citizen’s engagement. Under the leadership of Baroness Shafik, it will bring together different perspectives through teaching, events and deliberation to explore some of the most challenging and polarising issues facing the world today.
As Executive Chair, Baroness Shafik will set strategy, moderate events, and build a dynamic forum in which complex and multifaceted global challenges can be debated and explored. Speakers will bring different perspectives, with areas of disagreement explored openly rather than minimised. Participants from around the world will have access to relevant research from LSE and beyond in accessible formats, enabling them to engage fully with the issues being examined. The Agora will focus on a series of themes for global debates and will also host democratic deliberations in response to specific policy questions to inform decision-making.
Baroness Shafik said: "People have legitimate concerns about many of the profound changes affecting our societies, from the potential impacts of AI to growing political and economic inequality. At the same time, we also see increasing polarisation such that discussion and compromise so essential to a functioning community and society has become difficult. The Agora will provide a gathering place to learn about and practice democratic deliberation at the local and global level. By creating the conditions for open dialogue, we hope to identify areas of agreement and disagreement and to lay the foundations for working together for a better world.”
Professor Larry Kramer, President and Vice-Chancellor of LSE, said: “I am both happy and excited to welcome Minouche back to LSE as Executive Chair of the Agora. Given her global experience and expertise, I cannot think of anyone better able to help us achieve its goals of reaching a global audience on critical issues in ways that deepen knowledge and bring together different views to foster greater understanding and engagement. We look forward to the Agora serving as a platform to spread knowledge and enable civic discourse around the world.”
Minouche Shafik has spent the past three decades in multiple leadership roles across an array of international, national and academic institutions. Most recently, she was Chief Economic Adviser to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, serves as a Crossbench Peer in the House of Lords and is Chair of the Victoria & Albert Museum. She was the first woman to be president of LSE from 2017- 2023 and of Columbia University. Prior to that she was Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, Permanent Secretary of the Department for International Development, and Vice-President of the World Bank
Opening in 2028, the Agora, located on Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the largest public square in London, will accommodate around 300 people in person and many more online. Agora lectures, conferences, debates and other activities will be research-informed and AI enabled to allow participation and engagement at scale and in multiple languages.