Contributor(s): Professor Justin Lin | As a result of the miraculous growth since the market-oriented reform in 1979, China’s status in the global economy has dramatically changed. This speech will reflect on China’s unprecedented growth in the past 32 years, examine the reasons of that growth, and discuss prospects and challenges for China to maintain an eight-percent annual growth rate in the coming decades. Justin Yifu Lin is the former World Bank chief economist and senior vice president, development economics. Lin is the founder and first director of the China Center for Economic Research and a former professor of economics at Peking University and at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Justin Lin is to receive an Honorary Degree from LSE – Doctor of Science (Economics).

Contributor(s): Lina Khatib | Marking the publication of Lina Khatib's latest book Image Politics in the Middle East: The Role of the Visual in Political Struggle, this lecture focuses on the evolution of political expression and activism in the Middle East over the past decade, highlighting the visual dimension of power struggles between citizens and leaders in Arab countries undergoing transition. Lina Khatib is the co-founding head of the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, a multidisciplinary policy-oriented research program established in 2010 to study democratic change in the Arab world. She is an expert on Middle East politics and its intersection with social, cultural and media issues. At Stanford, she leads research projects on political and economic reform, as well as on political activism in the Arab world, and the political participation of minorities. She is the author of Filming the Modern Middle East: Politics in the Cinemas of Hollywood and the Arab World, (2006), and Lebanese Cinema: Imagining the Civil War and Beyond (2008), and a founding co-editor of the Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication. Her book Image Politics in the Middle East: The Role of the Visual in Political Struggle (IB Tauris, 2012) examines the visual dimension of power struggles between states, political leaders, political parties, and citizens in Egypt, Syria, Libya, Iran, and Lebanon. She is also a consultant and frequent commentator on the Middle East in the media with appearances on CNN, BBC, Al-Jazeera, and several media outlets around the globe. Dr Aitemad Muhanna is a research fellow at the LSE's Middle East Center pursuing post-doctoral research on gender, religion and sustainable human development in Gaza.

Contributor(s): Professor Chris Bertram | What can Rousseau’s recently reconstructed fragment Principles of the Right of War tell us about war and “humanitarian intervention” today? Are the principles of just war theory simply a fig leaf for power? Chris Bertram is professor of social and political philosophy at the University of Bristol.

Contributor(s): Andrew Marr | Andrew Marr is a journalist, broadcaster and author. He hosts the Sunday morning BBC1 programme The Andrew Marr Show as well as BBC Radio 4's Start the Week every Monday. He wrote and presented his own History of Modern Britain and The Making of Modern Britain for BBC2, which were hugely popular with viewers and won prestigious awards from the Royal Television Society, the Broadcasting Press Guild and BAFTA. More recent offerings include the Diamond Queen documentary and his most recent show, History of the World is being broadcast on BBC1. A book accompanies the series, A History of the World. Born in Glasgow, Andrew went to school in Scotland and gained a first-class degree in English from Cambridge University. He began his career in journalism on The Scotsman newspaper in 1981, later moving to London to become its political correspondent. He was part of the team which launched The Independent in 1986 and returned as its editor, after a stint at The Economist magazine. He was then a columnist for The Express and The Observer before making the move into television, as the BBC's Political Editor, in May 2000.

Contributor(s): Salil Shetty | The indivisibility of human rights is proclaimed as a goal, but the reality is different. Separating civil and political from economic, social and cultural rights could result in losing the battle for both. Salil Shetty joined Amnesty International as the organisation’s eighth Secretary General in July 2010. A long-term activist on poverty and justice, Salil Shetty leads the movement's worldwide work to end the abuse of human rights. He is the organisation’s chief political adviser, strategist and spokesperson and takes Amnesty International’s campaigns to the highest level of government, the United Nations and business. Since joining Amnesty International, Salil Shetty has been vocal in supporting the people’s uprising for human rights in the Middle East and North Africa. In December 2010, he led Amnesty International's show of solidarity in Oslo for the imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Liu Xiaobo calling on the Chinese authorities to improve their human rights record. In September 2010, he represented Amnesty International at the United Nations General Assembly. Salil Shetty has ambitious plans to strengthen Amnesty International's work in the Global South. He has travelled extensively for Amnesty International since joining the organisation, meeting many grassroots activists. Salil Shetty first became involved in campaigning for human rights when growing up in Bangalore, India. With his mother active in women’s groups and his father with the Dalit movement, his home became a hub for local and national activists. Since his student days, when a state of emergency was declared in 1976, and as the President of his college student’s union, Salil Shetty has been actively campaigning against the curtailment of human rights. Prior to joining Amnesty International, Salil Shetty was Director of the United Nations Millennium Campaign from 2003 to 2010. He played a pivotal role in building the global advocacy campaign for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals - eight goals to fight poverty, illiteracy and disease. Under his stewardship, the Millennium Campaign succeeded in making donor and developing country governments more accountable for meeting their commitments to the Goals. As Chief Executive of ActionAid (from 1998 to 2003, before joining the UN), Salil Shetty is credited with transforming ActionAid into one of the world’s foremost international development NGOs. An Indian national, Salil Shetty earned a distinction in a Masters of Science in Social Policy and Planning from the London School of Economics and Political Science and has a Masters in Business Administration from the prestigious Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

Contributor(s): Dr Julian Baggini, Canon Dr Angus Ritchie, Dr Mark Vernon | Religious and secular philosophers have long debated whether ethics have an objective basis (moral realism) or a relative basis (moral relativism). But does theism or atheism offer a better basis for ‘moral realism’? A theist, an atheist, and an agnostic discuss. Julian Baggini is a writer, journalist and co-founder of The Philosophers’ Magazine. Angus Ritchie is director of the Contextual Theology Centre. Mark Vernon is a writer and journalist.

Contributor(s): Professor Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Taleb believes that many of the best and most successful systems in the world (such as evolution) have antifragility at their heart. Conversely, those systems which reject antifragility and suppress volatility (such as modern politics and banking) become weaker and less able to withstand the inevitable shocks – the major tragedy of modernity, according to Taleb. But antifragility is not simply an antidote to “black swan events”. Taleb believes that understanding antifragility makes us less fearful in accepting the role of these events as necessary for history, technology, knowledge and everything. Nassim Nicholas Taleb spends most of his time as a flâneur, meditating in cafés across the planet. A former trader, he is currently Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at New York University. He is the author of Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan, an international bestseller which has become an intellectual, social and cultural touchstone. This event marks the publication of his new book, Antifragile.

Contributor(s): David Patrikarakos | Drawing on years of research and access to unique sources, David Patrikarakos will tell the history of Iran’s nuclear programme, from its beginnings under the Shah until the present day. He will argue that the nuclear programme is the exegesis of modern Iran, evolving alongside the modern state itself. Its history is a kind of tabula rasa (a blank slate) onto which modern Iran’s evolution has been and continues to be written; or, more simply, it is the story of Iran’s attempt to deal with modernity: ordered, detailed, configured.

Contributor(s): Professor Sara B Hobolt | “Who is to blame?” has become a familiar question in response to the economic crisis that is sweeping Europe. Professor Hobolt discusses when and why citizens, the media, and national governments blame the European Union for policy failures, and considers the consequences for democracy in Europe. This event is part of the eurocrisis@lse series. Sara Hobolt is the Sutherland Chair in European Institutions at the European Institute, LSE.

Contributor(s): Professor David Nutt | David Nutt will reflect on his ten years’ experience on the government’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs until 2010, and present new analyses comparing the harms of drugs and alcohol using more sophisticated methodology. David Nutt is Edmond J Safra Professor of Neuropsychology at Imperial College London. He was chair of the ACMD until 2010 and is now chair of the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs.