Spring 2009 | Public lectures and events | Video

Contributor(s): Mohsin Hamid, David Hare, Boyd Tonkin | This event marks the launch of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Weekend, the LSE's first ever Literary Festival, celebrating the completion of the New Academic Building. A discussion about not only the links between the social sciences and the arts, but the role of the arts in the LSE's past, present and future. Is literature relevant today?

Contributor(s): Morris Gleitzman, Elizabeth Laird, Anthony McGowan, Patrick Ness, Meg Rosoff | The culmination of a creative-writing competition for London state schools, this panel discussion looks at how authors find inspiration in contemporary social issues- from gang culture and knife crime, to the more timeless problems of being a teenager. The panel of popular and award-winning teen authors have dealt with topics as wide ranging as Ethiopian street children and Nazi Germany, with a mixture of reality, comedy and fantasy.

Contributor(s): Karl Otto Pöhl | How has the euro performed over its first ten years, and how will it cope with the strains caused by the current financial and economic crisis? Karl Otto Pvhl was president of the German Bundesbank from 1980-91, and played a leading role in the preparation of the European single currency.

Contributor(s): Hazel Blears MP | The tragic events of 7/7 illustrated the threat to our society posed by violent extremism. Preventing it is one of the defining challenges of our age. Hazel Blears will explore the tough choices government has to make - how to empower new voices to join the debate, how to support people standing up for shared values and how to equip communities with the skills, confidence, and resilience they need to be part of the solution. In June 2007, Hazel Blears became the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government.

Contributor(s): Joschka Fischer | Joschka Fischer was Germany's foreign minister and vice-chancellor from 1998 to 2005.

Contributor(s): Professor Peter Onuf | Professor Onuf explores the development of the elusive and controversial ideal of democracy from Thomas Jefferson's revolutionary writings to Abraham Lincoln's great effort to vindicate republican principles in the American Civil War. Peter Onuf is Thomas Jefferson Foundation Professor of History at the University of Virginia and Harmsworth Professor of American History at the University of Oxford.

Contributor(s): Pauline Tiffen, Rajah Banerjee, Kate Sebag, Katie Stafford, Dyborn Chinonga | The idea of fair trade has become increasingly popular amongst consumers and some producers. But who does fair-trade really benefit? The producers? The consumers? The Farmers? These are some of the issues that the panel will debate.

Contributor(s): Professor Fred Halliday | Thirty years after the fall of the Shah of Iran and the advent of Ayatollah Khomeini to power, the Iranian revolution continues to exert a dynamic ideological and political influence across the Middle East. In a retrospective analysis of the revolutionary period itself, some of whose decisive moments he witnessed at first hand, and of the subsequent development of the Islamic Republic Professor Fred Halliday will attempt to set these dramatic events in context, as much that of the comparative study of revolutions as of the history of the contemporary Middle East.

Contributor(s): Alex Brummer, Vince Cable MP, Evan Davis, Gillian Tett, Professor Willem Buiter | This event will discuss the reporting leading up to the global credit crash of 2008. Alex Brummer has been City Editor for the Daily Mail since 2000. He has over thirty years' experience in the media. Vincent Cable is the Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer and speaks for his party on issues of Finance, European Economic and Monetary Union and the City. Evan Davis is a presenter of BBC Radio 4's Today programme. He was the BBC's Economics Editor from 2001-2008.

Contributor(s): Dr Gezim Alpion | Having identified some of the reasons which made Sister Teresa leave the Loreto Order in 1948, Alpion approaches this painful but momentous departure from a sociological perspective through biographical and historical contextualization and in the light of the work of Marx, Freud, Durkheim on the sociology of religion and career.