Contributor(s): Professor Vernon Henderson | With the majority of its population now urban dwellers, China faces a unique set of challenges. Vernon Henderson examines the policy options as Chinese cities continue to grow. Vernon Henderson is a leading expert in urbanisation of developing countries and School Professor of Economic Geography at LSE.

Contributor(s): Professor Denis Guénoun | How can we understand the twentieth century? Denis Guénoun will interpret the social and political forms that marked the twentieth century and their influence on our present. Denis Guénoun is professor of French literature at the Sorbonne, Paris IV.

Contributor(s): Dr Chaloka Beyani, Professor Julia Black, Professor Emily Jackson, Dr Peter Ramsay | Should we be allowed the right to die? Can the UK do more to prevent international human rights abuses? What can the law do to prevent another recession? Are juries worth having? Tweet your questions to @LSELaw using #LSElaw. Chaloka Beyani is United Nations special rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons. Julia Black is director of the Law and Financial Markets Project. Emily Jackson is a member of the British Medical Association Medical Ethics Committee and is head of the Department of Law. Peter Ramsay is a reader in law, specialising in criminal law at LSE.

Contributor(s): Dr Steffen Hertog | Gulf private sectors contribute the majority of national capital formation and employment, and have diversified into a wide range of manufacturing and service activities. National development strategies rely on private business as a primary driver of growth and development. At the same time, however, business contributes little to economic policy-making and is isolated in national politics, regularly failing to be represented in elected bodies. This talk will explain this passive and isolated role of business by looking at how, despite all diversification, it remains structurally dependent on state spending and subsidies, and how its interests are at odds with those of GCC citizens at large.

Contributor(s): Alexander Stubb | Alexander Stubb @alexstubb has been minister for European affairs and foreign trade since 23 June 2011. The ministerial portfolio covers matters from three ministries: the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the Prime Minister’s Office and the Ministry of Finance. He previously served as a minister for foreign affairs from April 2008. Before that, Minister Stubb was in the European Parliament from June 2004 where he worked with issues concerning the internal market, the EU budget and external relations. Before his career in the European Parliament, he was counsellor at the Permanent Representation of Finland to the European Union in Brussels. Minister Stubb has been a visiting professor at the College of Europe, and published many books on the EU, as well as a number of academic articles on EU-related issues. He completed his undergraduate degree in political science at Furman University, USA. He obtained his PhD from the London School of Economics in 1999 on Flexible Integration and the Amsterdam Treaty.

Contributor(s): Prof Jacques Rupnik, Prof Mary Kaldor, Prof Michael Cox | The end of the Cold War in 1989 ushered in a more stable world shaped by an irresistible combination of capitalism and liberalism. But did it? New wars in failing states, the spread of nuclear weapons, rising terrorism, and in 2008 the great financial crash, all pointed to an international system where the certainties of a 20th Century Cold War had given way to a new century full of uncertainty and danger.

Contributor(s): Judy Cheng-Hopkins | Peacebuilding has become a buzzword over the past decade. Yet, there are many diverging ideas of what peacebuilding is and what it entails. The United Nations is not exempt from such uncertainty, diverging interpretations, and misunderstandings, as well as the resulting conceptual and practical debates. Assistant secretary-general for peacebuilding support, Judy Cheng-Hopkins, will seek to outline the concept of peacebuilding, its practical significance, and translation into operational activity, with a particular focus on the work and engagement of the UN Peacebuilding Commission and the Peacebuilding Fund, which finances activities of UN agencies, funds and programmes in fragile states around the world. Judy Cheng-Hopkins has been the United Nations assistant secretary-general for peacebuilding support since 2009. She was previously the assistant high commissioner for refugees (2006-2009), the director of the Asia Bureau and the Balkans at the World Food Programme (WFP), and served UNDP in Africa for ten years. She received a masters of international affairs degree from SIPA, Columbia University. In 2011, she was listed by Forbes as one of the ten most powerful women at the UN. In 2013, she received the prestigious Global Leadership Award from Columbia University. Stuart Gordon is assistant professor in the Department of International Development at LSE.

Contributor(s): António José Seguro | Since July 2011 António José Seguro (@ajseguro), leader of the opposition in Portugal has defended an alternative set of policies to be outlined and implemented while Portugal is under the Financial Assistance Program in order to prevent a deep recession and unemployment and to increase the economic activity. Being a strong critic of austerity policies, António José Seguro advocates a stronger role for the European institutions against the financial and economic crisis namely in the fight against youth unemployment and supporting new competences for the ECB in order to tackle the Eurozone rising public debt. Three months before the end of the Assistance Program, the Socialist Party secretary general explains his alternative for the Portuguese economy and the strategy for the EU after the next European elections. António José Martins Seguro is the leader of the Portuguese Socialist Party and a member of the Portuguese parliament. He was born on 11 March 1962 and has a degree in International Relations and a post-graduation in Political Science. In the national parliament, António José Seguro has already assumed the leadership of the Socialist Party parliamentary group. Between 2006 and 2011, he was president of the Parliamentary Commissions for Education, Science and Culture and also for Economic Affairs, Innovation and Energy. António Seguro also coordinated the reforming process of the Portuguese parliament. António Seguro was secretary of state for youth and secretary of state to the prime minister. In 2001, he was minister to the prime minister António Guterres. He was a member of the European parliament from 1999 to 2001 and held several parliamentary positions, which include among others being vice president of the European Socialist Party Group and co-rapporteur of the European parliament report about the Treaty of Nice and the Future of the European Union. He is vice-president of the Socialist International.

Contributor(s): Nishrin Jafri Hussain, Angana P. Chatterji, Meena Kandasamy | In the context of the forthcoming Indian elections in which the current Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi is the Prime Ministerial candidate of the Hindu right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, a panel of human rights campaigners and academics will discuss the key questions surrounding the issues of gender and the Hindu Right. Dr Angana P. Chatterji is a cultural anthropologist and human rights specialist. In 2005, she convened a people's tribunal in Odisha, calling attention to the impending violence against minorities and religionized oppression. In 2009, her collaborative work through a people's tribunal she co-convened in Jammu & Kashmir called attention to the issue of unknown graves and the need for accountability to families of the disappeared, and subsequently received corroboration from the State Human Rights Commission of Jammu & Kashmir. Her publications include: Violent Gods: Hindu Nationalism in India's Present; Narratives from Orissa (Three Essays Collective, 2009); a co-edited volume, Contesting Nation: Gendered Violence in South Asia; Notes on the Postcolonial Present (Zubaan, 2012); and the reports, BURIED EVIDENCE: Unknown, Unmarked, and Mass Graves in Kashmir (2009), Communalism in Orissa (2006), and Without Land or Livelihood (2004). Meena Kandasamy is a writer, activist and political columnist. She has published two collections of poetry, Touch and Ms.Militancy. Her first novel, The Gypsy Goddess, revisits the 1968 Kilvenmani massacre where feudal landlords in Tanjore killed 44 Dalit peasants striking for higher wages. Her work is centered on caste annihilation, the Tamil national question and feminism in contemporary India.

Contributor(s): Bronwyn Curtis | To mark the completion of the Saw Swee Hock Student Centre, the first brand new building on campus for more than 40 years, the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and the LSE Students’ Union have organised a series of ‘in conversation’ events with some of the School's distinguished alumni. These events will take place in the Saw Swee Hock Student Centre and will be open to LSE students, alumni and staff.This event will see Bronwyn Curtis in conversation with Professor Danny Quah. Bronwyn Curtis is an economist whose career spans both the financial markets and the media. She is a widely published author and a regular speaker on television and radio. Most recently she was Head of Global Research at HSBC. Previously she was at Bloomberg where she was managing editor and responsible for all European broadcasting activities. Other roles include Global Head of Currency and Fixed Income Strategy at Deutsche Bank and Chief Economist at Nomura International. She has also worked as a consultant for the World Bank and UNCTAD on projects in West Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. Bronwyn is a non-executive director of JPM Asian Investment Trust PLC, Vice Chairman of the Society of Business Economists, a board member of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, a former member of the Council at the London School of Economics. She is also on the Advisory Board at Imperial College Business School, as well as a member of The Times newspaper’s Shadow Monetary Policy Committee. She has also been a Board member of the Office of Fair Trading. She has a master's degree from the London School of Economics, and is an economics graduate of La Trobe University, Australia. Bronwyn was awarded an OBE for services to business economics in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list in 2008. Danny Quah is professor of economics and international development, and Kuwait Professor at LSE. He previously served as LSE’s Head of Department for Economics (2006-2009) and Council Member on Malaysia’s National Economic Advisory Council (2009-2011). He is Tan Chin Tuan Visiting Professor at the National University of Singapore, and lectures regularly at Peking University. He studied at Princeton, Minnesota, and Harvard, and was Assistant Professor in the Economics Department at MIT before joining LSE. After the conversation there will be the opportunity for the audience to put their questions to the speaker in the Q&A session. A free drinks reception will follow the event giving the audience a chance to meet the speaker.