Contributor(s): Professor Pinelopi Goldberg | The world is trending away from globalisation. Brexit, the rise of protectionism in the US, and calls for re- or friend-shoring are recent manifestations of this trend. Pinelopi Goldberg, the Elihu Professor of Economics at Yale University and former Chief Economist of the World Bank Group, discusses the causes and implications of the retreat from globalisation for growth and inequality.

Contributor(s): Professor Mariana Mazzucato | Where does value come from? What is the difference between value creation and value extraction? And what is the role of the state in directing and co-shaping economies that are innovative, inclusive and sustainable? Mariana Mazzucato will explain how we lost sight of what value means and why we need to rethink the economic theory and practice that is shaping our economies.

The contemporary concept of value - as interchangeable with price - has trapped policymakers in a debate about public “spending” rather than public “investment.” This has enormous implications for how economies are structured, and has impacted how leaders across the political spectrum frame economic policy and industrial strategy. Notably, as industrial policy is being revived, there is an opportunity to embed dynamic conditionalities in state funding to steer growth that is sustainable and inclusive – tackling wealth creation and inequality on a pre-distributive basis.

Changing the status quo requires a different understanding of public value and public purpose, and the design of policy as not just market fixing but market shaping. Key to this is also the revival of stakeholder value through a new social contract between public and private actors, ensuring that partnerships between the state, private sector, and labour create shared value. In this way, governments can impact not only the rate of growth, but it’s direction.

Contributor(s): Professor Faruk Birtek, Professor Yaprak Gürsoy, Professor Laurent Mignon, Professor Şuhnaz Yılmaz | It will assess transformations in society, foreign policy, literature and politics while providing an overview of the history of the Turkish Republic, as well as the nation’s competing understandings of itself and idealisations of its past and future.

When the Turkish Republic was founded on 29 October 1923, one of its ideals was the modernisation and Westernisation of the newly built nation. In the following century, these ideals have changed in content, but in many spheres of life, dialogues with the idea of progress have continued. Relations with the West and different interpretations of modernity divided the nation. Yet the notion of participating in a historically decisive movement of progress toward something distinctively better than the past has united generations and different political groups in various ways.

Contributor(s): Paul Johnson | Government decisions determine the welfare of the poor and the elderly, the state of the health service, the effectiveness of our children’s education, and how prepared we are for the future: whether that is a pandemic or global warming. As a society, we are a reflection of what the government spends.

Johnson looks at what happened following the financial crisis of 2008-09 and the austerity years that followed. He examines the way that the government tackled the economy during Covid – when the UK budget shot up to over a trillion for the first time – and he analyses prospects for our future as we grapple with looming recession and the cost of living crisis.

Contributor(s): Daniel Jolles, Dr Aliya Hamid Rao, Belton Flournoy, Dr Claire Crawford | Weak productivity in Britain is an acute problem. Explanations have included insufficient necessary skills, an overinvestment in unnecessary skills at the university level, capital shallowing and too little creative destruction. In this webinar we explore a different explanation.

We ask whether a failure to recruit and operationalise diverse talent is an underlying root cause of slow growth.

Contributor(s): Professor Alex Voorhoeve, Dr Elin Palm, Dr Orla Lynskey | Prominent ethical and legal frameworks claim that governments and businesses can permissibly process personal information, under specific conditions, as soon as data subjects give their consent. This already justifies constraints on personal data processing practices to secure free, informed, and unambiguous consent, as well as to respect the context in which consent was given. But consent is not the whole story.

Processing personal data without consent may be permissible in some cases when other “legitimate interests” are at stake, such as national security or fraud prevention: so, how to balance privacy and other legitimate interests? On the other hand, emerging accounts of privacy propose that obtaining individual consent is sometimes insufficient to justify personal data processing. If giving away one’s personal data reveals information about others, or if coordination failure leads to suboptimal privacy for all, collective privacy decisions may be required.

Contributor(s): Dr Nihan Albayrak-Aydemir, Roger’s Bacon, Dr Dario Krpan, Dr Celestin Okoroji, Feiyang Wang | This low diversity of thought is reflected in numerous aspects of social sciences—for example, certain research topics (e.g., those that may be easily publishable) are prioritized over other important but less desirable topics (e.g., those that are not heavily cited or easy to publish); some methodologies such as experimentation are widely used whereas less common methods (e.g., self-observation) are neglected; short-term projects with quick gains are prioritized over the long-term ones; some participant populations are understudied (e.g., non-WEIRD samples - i.e., non-western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic); and theorizing is driven by arbitrary conventions and overly reliant on available research findings while avoiding speculation that could lead to new insights. In this event, social scientists of varied backgrounds will express their perspectives on diversity of thought in social sciences followed by a panel discussion.

Contributor(s): Dr Stuart Gordon, Sveto Muhammad Ishoq, Halima | The UK government could soon be sending some asylum-seekers on a one-way flight to Rwanda as part of a controversial strategy to deter those crossing the English Channel on small boats.

Joanna Bale talks to Dr Stuart Gordon, Sveto Muhammad Ishoq and Halima, an Afghan refugee living in a hotel, about what it’s like to flee your country and policy ideas to help resolve the situation.

Research links:

Regulating humanitarian governance: humanitarianism and the ‘risk society’ by Stuart Gordon: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/105296/

The protection of civilians: an evolving paradigm? by Stuart Gordon: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/101979/

Afghan women’s storytelling and campaigning platform: https://chadariproject.com/about-chadari/

Contributor(s): Baroness Barker, Natalie Gamble, Dr Kirsty Horsey, Professor Isabel Karpin | In 2023, the Law Commission will publish its long-awaited final proposals for reform of the law relating to surrogacy in the UK.

Contributor(s): Professor Roy Allison | Russia and Western states have long clashed over the nature of international society and the desirability of a liberal rule-based international order. Relations plunged with Russia’s annexation of Crimea, which flouted a core prohibition of the United Nations Charter system against territorial expansion by force. Putin’s renewed all-out invasion of Ukraine now appears openly revanchist. This lecture assesses the implications for international order at large and the operation of international law, including international humanitarian law, around the conflict. It dissects the peculiar logic and false justifications Putin offers for Russia’s aggression.

Does he really believe Russia occupies some common civilizational and territorial space with Ukraine, justifying the subjugation of Ukraine to return ‘historic Russian regions’? Or is this cynical cover for strategic ends aimed at the mobilisation of domestic support? With no end to the war in sight, the lecture also questions what remains of the post-Cold war territorial settlement in Europe and whether an eventual negotiated settlement of the war is conceivable under the current Russian leadership.