Contributor(s): Professor Leo Panitch | This lecture marks the 50th anniversary of Ralph Miliband's first major work, the hugely influential Parliamentary Socialism: a study in the politics of Labour. What can Miliband's arguments tell us about contemporary British politics and the modern Labour Party? Leo Panitch is Distinguished Research Professor at York University (Canada) and a renowned political economist, Marxist theorist and co-editor of the Socialist Register, who knew Ralph Miliband well.

Contributor(s): Brian Whitaker, Roger Hardy, Marwan Bishara, Dr Ramy Aly | A panel of seasoned journalists who have covered the Middle East extensively during their careers will critically reflect on the media coverage of the Arab uprisings. Why did reporters miss the build-up and tension which led to the Arab Spring? Have news stories exaggerated the role of social media? Are there wider questions that the coverage of the uprisings raise for reporting more generally? Dr Ramy Aly is lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Sussex and co-founder of the 'Public Service Broadcasting Initiative' (Egypt) and Head of its Research and Editorial Unit. He has contributed research on transnational Arab media and changing political cultures in the EU at the LSE as well as research on Arabic language media at the Open University and CRESC. Brian Whitaker has been a journalist for the British newspaper The Guardian since 1987 and its Middle East editor from 2000-2007. He is currently an editor on the paper's "Comment Is Free". He runs a personal, non-Guardian-related website, Al-Bab.com, about politics in the Arab world. Roger Hardy was for over twenty years a Middle East and Islamic affairs analyst with the BBC World Service. He is the author of The Muslim Revolt: A Journey through Political Islam (Hurst, 2010). He has come to LSE after six months in Washington, DC, at the Woodrow Wilson Center, where he was a public policy scholar researching the 'war of ideas' (under the Bush and Obama administrations). Marwan Bishara is Al Jazeera's senior political analyst. He was previously a professor of International Relations at the American University of Paris. An author who writes extensively on global politics, he is widely regarded as a leading authority on the Middle East and international affairs. Dr Myria Georgiou teaches at the Dept. of Media and Communications, LSE. She has a PhD in Sociology (LSE), an MSc in Journalism (Boston University) and a BA in Sociology (Panteion University, Athens) and her research focuses on the broader areas of diaspora, migration, media and identity.

Contributor(s): Professor Axel Gosseries, Paul Loach | This dialogue explores the prospects for workplace democracy - utopian ideal, or an idea whose time has come? Axel Gosseries is a professor at the Université de Louvain, UCL, and a research associate at the CPNSS, LSE. Paul Loach has been investing in, and developing, SME's for 30 years.

Contributor(s): Professor Manuel Castells | How are Social Movements shaped by the availability of horizontal communication networks based on the Internet and wireless communication? How can indignation become collective action by the connection between neural networks, digital social networks and urban networks? Which are the cultural and political consequences of these developments? Case studies in different contexts ground a theory of power and social change in the network society presented in the book Communication Power (Oxford University Press, paperback edition 2011) is to be presented in this lecture. Manuel Castells is University Professor and the Wallis Annenberg Chair in Communication Technology and Society at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. He is a Harold Lasswell Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, as well as a fellow of the Spanish Royal Academy of Economics, a fellow of the Academia Europea, a fellow of the Mexican Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of the British Academy.

Contributor(s): Professor Muhammad Yunus | Muhammad Yunus is to be awarded an Honorary Degree – Doctor of Science (Economics) at this ceremony. Professor Yunus will mark the occasion by giving a lecture entitled Social Business: to solve society's most pressing problems and will then take questions from the audience. Muhammad Yunus was born on 28 June 1940 in the village of Bathua, Chittagong, a seaport in Bangladesh. The third of fourteen children, he was educated at Dhaka University and was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study economics at Vanderbilt University. He then served as chairman of the economics department at Chittagong University before devoting his life to providing financial and social services to the poorest of the poor. He is the founder of Grameen Bank, serving as managing director until May 2011. Yunus is the author of the bestselling Banker to the Poor. In October 2006, Muhammad Yunus was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, along with Grameen Bank, for their efforts to create economic and social development. The trailer of Bonsai People - The Vision of Muhammad Yunus, the first film that looks at the work of Muhammad Yunus from microcredit through to social business is available using the link below.

Contributor(s): Lord Nat Wei | Lord Wei will give a lecture in memory of Lord Michael Chan, the first ever ethnic Chinese member of the House of Lords, who passed away in 2006. Nat Wei is the youngest and only ethnic Chinese peer in the House of Lords.

Contributor(s): Dr Jason McKenzie Alexander, Dr Keith Jensen, Dr Andrew Pinsent | What generates our capability to act morally? How much is it part of our basic biology? How is it socialised? Is it reasoned, emotional, or does it derive from some other source entirely? Jason McKenzie Alexander is reader in philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method, LSE. Keith Jensen is lecturer in comparative and developmental psychology at the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary, University of London. Andrew Pinsent is research director of the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion at the University of Oxford.

Contributor(s): Andrew Dilnot | Achieving a sustainable and fair system for funding the support required by people with social care needs represents a growing challenge to governments across the world. In his address, Andrew Dilnot will introduce the rationale for the recommendations made by the independent Commission on the Funding of Care and Support set-up by the coalition government and which reported in July 2012. How do the Commission's proposals allocate responsibility between individual and the state, and why? Andrew Dilnot is Principal of St Hugh's College, Oxford and a Pro Vice Chancellor of Oxford University. He was the Chairman of the Commission on the Funding of Care and Support, whose report was published in July 2011. He is the author, with Michael Blastland, of the best-selling book about numbers The Tiger that isn't, of which Rory Bremner has said 'it makes statistics far, far too interesting'. He was the founding presenter of BBC Radio 4's series on the beauty of numbers, 'More or Less' and was Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies from 1991 to 2002. He is the chairman of the Statistics Users Forum of the Royal Statistical Society, and a trustee of the Nuffield Foundation. He has been a member of the board of the National Consumer Council and of the Office of Science and Technology Review of the use of science in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. He has served on the Social Security Advisory Committee, the Retirement Income Inquiry, the Balance of Central and Local Government Funding Inquiry, the Rowntree Committee on the future costs of long term care, the Ageing Population Foresight panel, and the Councils of the Royal Economic Society and Queen Mary and Westfield College. He is an Honorary Fellow of St John's College Oxford, Queen Mary University of London, the Swansea Institute of Higher Education and the Institute of Actuaries, and holds an Honorary Doctorate from City University. His main research interests lie in government economic policy as it affects individuals, companies, and the wider economy. He was awarded a CBE in 2000 for services to economics and economic policy.

Contributor(s): Juan Manuel Santos Calderón | Juan Manuel Santos Calderón is President of the Republic of Colombia. Born in Bogota on August 10, 1951. He was a cadet at the Navy Academy in Cartagena; he studied Economics and Business Administration and carried out graduate studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science, Harvard University and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. He was Chief of the Colombian delegation before the International Coffee Organization (ICO) in London; he was the most recent Designate to the Presidency and Colombia's first Foreign Trade Minister. He has also been Finance Minister and National Defense Minister. During this last position, he was in charge of leading the implementation of the government's Democratic Security Policy. He created the Good Government Foundation (Fundación Buen Gobierno) and founded the political party Partido de la U in the year 2005, currently Colombia's largest political party. As a journalist he was a columnist and Deputy Director of the newspaper El Tiempo, he was awarded the King of Spain Prize and was president of the Freedom of Expression Commission for the Inter American Press Association (IAPA). He has published several books, among which the most significant are The Third Way, co-written with the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Check on Terror (Jaque al Terror), where he describes the most important actions against the Farc terrorist group during his tenure as head of the Ministry of Defense. On June 20, 2010, (after obtaining the largest vote during the first round of the presidential elections which took place on May 30 of the same year) at the second round of the presidential elections, he was elected President of the Republic of Colombia for the four year period between August 7, 2010 and August 7, 2014. He obtained more than 9 million votes, the highest amount obtained by any candidate in the history of Colombian democracy. During his campaign, he promised to lead a government of national unity that would carry out the transition from democratic security to democratic prosperity. President Santos is married to María Clemencia Rodríguez, with whom he has three children: Martín (21), María Antonia (19) and Esteban (16).

Contributor(s): Kamalesh Sharma | Kamalesh Sharma will reflect on the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in October 2011, which is expected to adopt reforms that will renew the focus and increase the impact of the Commonwealth. Kamalesh Sharma is the Commonwealth secretary general. He previously served as India's high commissioner to the United Kingdom.