Spring 2010 | Public lectures and events | Video

Contributor(s): Giles Foden, Professor David Lewis, Jack Mpanje, Sunny Singh | Do we learn more about global poverty issues and the worlds of international development agencies from works of popular fiction such as Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance or Helen Fielding's Cause Celeb than we do from official reports and academic research? A recently-published paper written by David Lewis, Dennis Rodgers and Michael Woolcock suggests that fiction is an important and sometimes under-recognised source of knowledge about 'development' issues that may offer useful and different insights compared to more standard forms of research publication and policy reports.

Contributor(s): Professor Helen Thomas, Jasmin Vardimon | Dance is generally concerned with non-verbal bodily communication, while literature is text-based and disembodied. However, the long relationship between dance and text has been explored both through textual interfaces by collapsing the boundaries between different art forms such as physical theatre, dance and literature and within the world of text, these boundaries are negotiated through the body of literature written about dance.

Contributor(s): Dr Zlatko Lagumdzija | Dr Zlatko Lagumdzija is leader of the Social Democratic Party and a former Prime Minister of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Contributor(s): Dr Kavita Abraham, Dr Jon Adams, Dr Robert Hudson | Don't judge a book by its cover? Don't be ridiculous. We constantly make judgements on books - from where it appears in a shop, its pretty cover, its heft or subject matter, the praise and criticism we hear about it. Reviewers are even more prejudiced. They know the author, or hate the publisher or, even worse, are a meticulous and lucid expert on the subject. All human readings are subjective. Is there another way? Would an objective reading - some preconceptionless robotic analysis, for instance - be preferable? Is it even possible? And what questions might a robot help us answer?

Contributor(s): Rebecca Clee, Patrick Ness, Alex Scarrow, Mark Walden | The culmination of LSE's second creative writing competition for London state schools, this panel of award-winning and innovative authors, alongside one teenager with her finger on the pulse of young-adult writing, will be discussing, and asking you in the audience, what's in store for teen fiction?

Contributor(s): Professor Fawaz A Gerges | Today's Middle East is broken. The crisis of prolonged authoritarianism and failed economic policies have caused chronic poverty, pervasive corruption and the rise of extremism in Arab societies. A wasted decade of war on terror has reinforced widely held perceptions that the West is waging a crusade against Islam and Muslims. Fawaz Gerges is a professor of Middle Eastern politics and international relations at LSE.

Contributor(s): Professor Thomas J Sargent | Combining an historical approach with macroeconomic theory, Thomas Sargent will discuss ways of thinking about American fiscal and monetary policies - exploring how contradictions have developed and how they have been resolved. Thomas Sargent is professor of economics at New York University and senior fellow at Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

Contributor(s): Douglas Alexander MP | The first decade of the 21st Century has shown the extent to which we are increasingly interdependent for our prosperity, security and environmental sustainability. Tackling global poverty in today's world is not only a moral imperative, but in our common interest. Douglas Alexander will assess the importance of the World Bank in the fight against poverty, and propose the reforms that are necessary to equip it for the challenges that lie ahead.

Contributor(s): Professor Anne Power | This lecture addresses how we can drastically reduce energy consumption and consequent carbon emissions by considering existing buildings. Anne Power, professor of social policy, is head of LSE Housing and Communities, a research group in the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion.

Contributor(s): Professor Joseph Stiglitz | Stiglitz lays out not only the course of the financial crisis which began in 2007, but its underlying causes, and shows why much more radical reforms are needed than are currently being contemplated if we are to avoid similar 'systemic' crises in the future. Showing why the bailout has been only marginally effective and how it could have been much more so, and outlines the enormous opportunity - not yet taken - to design a new global financial architecture.