Events

Public event hosted by the Department of Social Policy and Global School of Sustainability

In this lecture, Helen Milner addresses why vulnerability, lived experience, and material self-interest will drive the next phase of climate politics, and what that means for diplomacy, democracy and development.

Monday 10 November 2025 6.30pm - 8pm, followed by a reception.

In-person and online public event (Sheikh Zayed Theatre, Cheng Kin Ku Building)

This is a ticketed event.

Presenter: Dr Eyob Gebremariam (University of Bristol)

Chair: Dr Robtel Neajai Pailey (Department of Social Policy, LSE)

This paper proposes a decolonial meta-framework to critically examine the role of philanthrocapitalism in Africa’s ecosystem of health research and policy-making. The framework foregrounding coloniality and empire explains how health-related research and policy-making in Africa have continued to reinforce colonial epistemic orientations manifested through structural and institutional settings, as well as policies and practices.

1pm-2:30pm

Attend in person - OLD 2.21

Or register to attend online here

Hosted by the LSE-Fudan Global Public Policy Hub and the Department of Social Policy, LSE

19 November 2025, 5:30 PM - 7:00 PM, Thai Theatre, Ground Floor Cheng Kin Ku Building, LSE.

Abstract: In this seminar, Professor Pun Ngai will be joined by two interlocutors to discuss her new book project on the remaking of the Chinese working class. Entering history, entering movement; this book project is contextualised within a conjunction of infrastructural capitalism in China and the formation of the Chinese working class. Turning the concept of infrastructural power upside down, she developed the notion of labour infrastructural power to move beyond the dichotomous view of capitalism and labour. Taking a relational class analysis seriously, while the class force could, in certain circumstances, affect or subvert spatial fixes in terms of economic zones, specific sectors, industries, or workplaces at certain times, the labour agency is deeply ingrained in the structure and context of infrastructural capitalism as a dialectical process between capital and labour continuously shaped by class struggles.

Chair and Discussant: Professor Bingchun Meng, Department of Media and Communications, LSE; Director of LSE-Fudan Global Public Policy Center.

Discussant: Dr. Zhuang Han, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, LSE-Fudan Global Public Policy Centre.

Book your place to attend this seminar here.

Presenter: Professor Thomas Hale (University of Oxford)

Chair: Dr Liam Besier McGrath (Department of Social Policy, LSE)

Climate change and its consequences unfold over many generations. Past emissions affect our climate today, just as our actions shape the climate of tomorrow, while the effects of global warming will last thousands of years. Yet the priorities of the present dominate our climate policy and the politics surrounding it. Even the social science that attempts to frame the problem does not theorize time effectively. In this pathbreaking book, Thomas Hale examines the politics of climate change and other “long problems.” He shows why we find it hard to act before a problem’s effects are felt, why our future interests carry little weight in current debates, and why our institutions struggle to balance durability and adaptability.

1pm-2:30pm

Attend in person - OLD 2.21

Or register to attend online here

Presenter: Dr Simon Tawfic (Department of Social Policy, LSE)

Chair: Dr Johann Koehler (Department of Social Policy, LSE)

This paper offers an ethnographic analysis of the emergence of British public protection policing, examining officials’ everyday pursuits to address the dual crises of austerity and police legitimacy. Since the early 2010s, Westminster governments have pledged to take ‘vulnerability’ seriously, while UK police forces, similarly beset by legitimacy crises, have also prioritised the ‘protection of vulnerable people from harm’, establishing public protection teams to signal this commitment. These crises serve as resources for officials to articulate a will to care that blends post-war welfarist sensibilities with contemporary humanitarian ends. Positioning themselves as a last resort against welfare retrenchment, public protection officials leverage discontent with austerity-stricken agencies, asserting the comparative advantage of their relational and compassionate style of working.

1pm-2:30pm

Attend in person - OLD 2.21

Or register to attend online here

Hosted by the LSE-Fudan Global Public Policy Hub and the Department of Social Policy, LSE

3 December 2025, 12:30 PM - 2:00 PM, Old Building, LSE. OLD 2.21, WC2A 2AE

Abstract: China-Africa economic engagement has entered a new phase centred around the internationalisation of private capital. Private businesses are not only seemingly ubiquitous in African markets, but also deeply embedded in the African political economies in which they operate. This paper foregrounds the centrality of embeddedness to firm internationalisation by introducing a typology of embedded networks – defined as the configurations of firms’ (in)formal linkages with different actors in a particular operational context. It outlines how the modalities of Chinese private capital internationalisation are mediated by different network configurations and how these translate in varied development outcomes.

Speaker: Elisa Gambino (Global Development Institute University of Manchester, UK)

Chair: Dr Timothy Hildebrandt (Associate Professor in the Department of Social Policy)

Book your place to attend the seminar here.

Lunch and refreshments will be served before the seminar.

Presenter: Dr Philip Noden (Department of Social Policy, LSE)

Chair: Dr Sonia Exley (Department of Social Policy, LSE)

The seminar will illustrate some of the opportunities and challenges of carrying out research within Ofsted. This will be illustrated through a discussion of completed research projects. These include, for example, an investigation of whether there was a relationship between school quality and the probability of imprisonment during early adulthood and a project focusing on pupil absence during inspections.

1-2:30pm

Attend in person- OLD 2.21

Or register to attend online here

Presenter: Dr Joanna Clifton-Sprigg (The University of Bath)

Chair: Professor Almudena Sevilla (Department of Social Policy, LSE

We investigate the relationship between parental working from home (WFH) and school absence in England following the COVID-19 pandemic. Using administrative data on school absence from local authorities between 2011 and 2023, we exploit variation in WFH potential – constructed from occupational data linked to the 2011 Census – in a difference-in-differences event study design. Contrary to recent claims by policymakers, we find that higher WFH potential leads to lower school absence rates. Areas with above-median WFH potential saw a reduction in overall absence by 0.3–0.35 percentage points (around 7%), with effects larger in secondary schools and driven almost entirely by decreases in unauthorised absences.

1-2:30pm

Attend in person- OLD 2.21

Or register to attend online here