Contributor(s): Mr Egemen Bağış | LSE Contemporary Turkish Studies Public Lecture - Creating a Common Future Together: Towards a Visionary Europe. Egemen Bağış is Turkish Minister for EU Affairs and Chief Negotiator.

Contributor(s): Professor Roger Scruton, Maurice Fraser | What are the distinctive features of European culture today? To what extent can we lean on our European cultural inheritance, in an age when its Christian foundations are crumbling? And is it one inheritance or many? Roger Scruton is an adjunct scholar of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC, a new position he took up in July 2009. Prior to that he was a research professor for the Institute for the Psychological Sciences. He is also a fellow of Blackfriars Hall in Oxford. He is a writer, philosopher and public commentator who has specialised in aesthetics with particular attention to music and architecture. He engages in contemporary political and cultural debates as a powerful conservative thinker and polemicist. He has written widely in the press on political and cultural issues. Recent publications include Green Philosophy|, The Uses of Pessimism, Beauty, Understanding Music and I Drink Therefore I Am. Maurice Fraser is a Senior Fellow in European Politics at LSE.

Contributor(s): Professor Orley Ashenfelter | Real wages measure worker welfare and the cost of labour. After providing some historical background and the basis for their interpretation, Professor Ashenfelter reports the results of a decade long study of wage rates at McDonald's restaurants in over 60 countries. Orley Ashenfelter is Joseph Douglas Green 1895 Professor of Economics and director of the Industrial Relations Section at Princeton University.

Contributor(s): Professor Luc Bovens, Dr Marco Simoni, Professor Insan Tunali | These events take up a theme at the heart of contemporary European life, and draw on the expertise of Turkish scholars who might provide a fresh perspective. Luc Bovens is Professor of Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method, LSE. Marco Simoni is a lecturer in European political economy at the European Institute, LSE. Insan Tunali is associate professor of economics at Koç University, Turkey. This event is jointly organised with the LSE Chair in Contemporary Turkish Studies.

Contributor(s): Professor Stefan Collini | Across the world, universities are now more numerous than they have ever been, yet at the same time there is unprecedented confusion about their purpose and scepticism about their value. In this talk about his new book What Are Universities For? Stefan Collini will provide a spirited and compelling argument for rethinking the way we see our universities and the purposes they serve. Stefan Collini challenges the common claim that the priority for universities is to contribute to economic growth. Instead, he argues that we must reflect on the different types of institution and the distinctive roles they play. In particular we must recognise that attempting to extend human understanding, which is at the heart of disciplined intellectual enquiry, can never be wholly harnessed to immediate social purposes - particularly in the case of the humanities, which both attract and puzzle many people and are therefore the most difficult subjects to justify. Collini is not afraid to take issue with government policies, but his critique is positive as well as fundamental, drawing on deeper insights to propose better starting-points. At a time when the future of higher education lies in the balance, What Are Universities For? offers us a deeper, more persuasive understanding of why universities matter - to everyone. Stefan Collini has become one of the most important critical voices in debates about universities and their future. A frequent contributor to The Guardian, The London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement and other publications, he is the author of, among other works, Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britain (2006). He is Professor of Intellectual History and English Literature at Cambridge University.

Contributor(s): Professor Roy Bridge | The Archduke Franz Ferdinand was heir to the thrones of Austria-Hungary before his assassination in 1914. Had he lived, his views on international affairs would have helped shape Europe's destiny and may have prevented world war. Roy Bridge is Professor Emeritus of Diplomatic History at the University of Leeds.

Contributor(s): Professor Lord Stern | Five years on from the Stern Review there have been important changes in the world which are likely to have a profound impact on our response to the two defining challenges of the century; overcoming poverty and managing climate change. Lord Stern will discuss how we can bring economics and political economy to the analysis of our response to these challenges in the context of a special but difficult decade in the global economy. The analysis of climate change has seen risk and the new-energy-industrial revolution move up the agenda in recent years, and we have learned more about prospects and mechanisms of collaboration. We require a deepening of the understanding of public policy for promoting the dynamics of transformation and managing immense risks. This should include a strong focus on key market failures. In this series of lectures, Lord Stern will outline the attractiveness of the new energy-industrial revolution and of low-carbon growth and will discuss how we can build the necessary national and international action to respond to the two defining challenges. This is the third of the three lectures, the others take place on 21 and 22 February. Nicholas Stern is IG Patel Professor of Economics and Government, and Chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, LSE. John Van Reenen is Director of the Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.

Contributor(s): Professor Charles Tripp | This talk will look at how resistance to regimes' appropriation of public space has been a central theme of the Arab uprisings. Charles Tripp is a professor of politics with reference to the Middle East at the School of Oriental and African Studies.

Contributor(s): Caroline Bird, William Fiennes, Meg Rosoff, Philip Womack | The most popular books today are filled with vampires, ghosts, wizards and other fantasy figures. Is real life so uninspiring? Come along and join the fantasy versus reality debate. Caroline Bird is an award-winning poet. She has had three collections of poetry published by Carcanet; Looking Through Letterboxes|, Trouble Came to the Turnip and Watering Can. Caroline's have also been published in several anthologies, and are published regularly in PN Review, Poetry Review and The North magazine. A member of the Royal Court Young Writers Programme, Caroline has also written several plays including Nothing to Say, The Pie, Lumberjills, A Hymn With Drums and A Special Boy. She is an enthusiastic leader of poetry workshops in Schools and a regular teacher at the Arvon Foundation. William Fiennes is the bestselling author of The Snow Geese and The Music Room, and Director of the charity First Story, which supports creativity and literacy in challenging secondary schools. Meg Rosoff was born in Boston, educated at Harvard and St Martin’s College of Art, and worked in New York City for ten years before moving to London permanently in 1989. She worked in publishing, politics, PR and advertising until 2004, when she wrote How I Live Now, which won the Guardian Children’s fiction prize (UK), Michael L Printz prize (US), the Die Zeit children’s book of the year (Germany) and was shortlisted for the Orange first novel award. Her second novel, Just in Case, won the 2007 Carnegie Medal. Meg’s latest book is There Is No Dog. Philip Womack is the author of two critically acclaimed children's books, The Other Book and The Liberators. This event will be followed by a short prize-giving for the LSE First Story creative writing competition. With thanks for the support of the LSE Annual Fund.

Contributor(s): Louay Hussein | Louay Hussein is one of Syria's leading intellectuals who has spent his life writing and publishing on political and social debates concerning Syria and the Arab world. He spent seven years in prison because of his views. After his release in 1991, he wrote a book on his experience in prison and the extreme torture to which he was subjected. Despite his experiences, Hussein is a champion of reconciliation and wants to reach a peaceful win-win solution for Syrians. He was the first political opposition figure to be arrested after the onset of the uprising in Syria and was released a few days later, after being tortured.