Spring 2014 | Public lectures and events | Video

Contributor(s): Farmida Bi, Paul Mills | Organised in conjunction with the Harvard Islamic Finance Project, Farmida Bi talks on Islamic finance in the Western world. Farmida Bi is partner and European head of Islamic Finance, Norton Rose Fulbright LLP. Dr Paul Mills is senior economist at International Monetary Finance, London.

Contributor(s): Professor Salwa Ismail | In this seminar, Professor Salwa Ismail will discuss dimensions of contention and oppositional action anchored in urban space. It addresses the following questions: How, in the context of the Arab Revolutions, did the urban-based mass protests link with existing patterns of urban political action? What forms of contentious action undergird and animate these protests? In answering these questions, the focus will be on urban popular forces in Cairo and on their modes of inhabiting the city, and on the politics of the urban everyday. Salwa Ismail is Professor of Politics with reference to the Middle East at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Her research focuses on everyday forms of government, urban governance and the politics of space. She has published widely on Islamist politics and on state-society relations in the Middle East. She is the author of Rethinking Islamist Politics: Culture, the State and Islamism, and Political Life in Cairo’s New Quarters: Encountering the Everyday State. Her recent publications have appeared in Comparative Studies in Society and History, Third World Quarterly, Social Research, and Contemporary Islam. She is currently working on a manuscript on the politics of violence and memory in Contemporary Syria.

Contributor(s): Dr Vassilis Monastiriotis | The remarkable rise in unemployment in Greece has in a way overshadowed the substantial differentiation, across regions, in terms of regional unemployment and labour market adjustment. This paper examines the geography of these dynamics using probit regressions of unemployment risk and decomposing the observed regional unemployment differentials into three components corresponding to differences in labour quality, matching efficiency and effective demand. We find that, underlying the general increase in unemployment is a wealth of unemployment dynamics and adjustment trajectories. The fall in effective demand has been largest in the main metropolitan regions and the north and north-western periphery. Adjustment has been strong in some areas (e.g., Athens) but, overall, adjustment processes (such as bumping-down and changes in the mix of workforce characteristics) have been weak. The crisis has nullified the improvements in labour market performance registered since the country’s entry into the Eurozone, hitting especially those regions that benefited most from the latter. The spatial differentiation of adjustment intensities and demand pressures suggests a heightened role for regional policy in the post-crisis period, especially in relation to addressing problems of over-education and matching efficiency in the demand-depressed areas and of inter-regional adjustment mechanisms nationally.

Contributor(s): Dr Philip Roscoe | Could economics be responsible for the greatest problems we face? This lecture explores the making of the economic world and asks: does economics change what it means to be a person? Philip Roscoe (@Philip_Roscoe) is reader in management at the School of Management, University of St Andrews. He is interested in markets and organizing, and has published and lectured on such topics as online dating, organ transplants, non-professional investors and alternative currencies. Philip holds a PhD in management from Lancaster University, an MPhil in medieval Arabic thought from the University of Oxford, and a BA in theology from the University of Leeds. Between studies, he has worked as a financial journalist and tried his hand at running a small business. In 2011 he was one of the ten winners of the inaugural AHRC BBC Radio 3 New Generation Thinkers scheme chosen from over a thousand applicants. His new book is I Spend therefore I Am: The True Cost of Economics.

Contributor(s): Dr Richard Iveson | How important are animals to the constitution of democracy? In this talk, Richard Iveson will consider whether the egalitarian entanglement of humans and other animals in fact constitutes the prior condition of any democratic community. Richard Iveson is research fellow in the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland.

Contributor(s): Dr Ahron Bregman | The Arab spring has put on hold the possibility of reaching peace between Israel and Syria, thus leaving the Israeli-Palestinian peace track as the only game in town. At the same time, international efforts, led by US Secretary of State John Kerry to help Israelis and Palestinians negotiate their differences are unlikely to end the occupation and deliver a Palestinian state. The latter could only be achieved, as Ahron Bregman will argue, if three elements come together: first, the arrival in the occupied territories of the Arab Spring in the shape of a third, non-violent Palestinian intifada against the occupation. Second, massive international pressure particularly on Israel but also on the Palestinians to compromise. Third, the remaining in power of a right wing government in Israel. Ahron Bregman was born in Israel. After six years of army service, during which he took part in the 1982 Lebanon war and reached the rank of captain, he left the army to work at the Knesset as a parliamentary assistant. Ahron studied in Jerusalem and London, completing a doctorate in War Studies at King’s College London in 1994. He is the author of, among others, The Fifty Years War: Israel and the Arabs, the companion book to a six-part BBC television documentary (with Jihan el Tahri) and its sequel Elusive Peace, the companion book to a three-part BBC television documentary. His book Cursed Victory: A History of Israel and the Occupied Territories will be published by Penguin in 2014. Ahron teaches at the Department of War Studies, King's College London.

Contributor(s): Suzi Hall | This podcast is from LSE London's 2014 Lent term seminar series. Speakers from within and beyond LSE will focus on London's current economic and political environment London, covering relevant issues such as the private rented sector, the distribution of poverty and the densification effects of international migrants. Presenters include academics and practitioners from relevant fields. Each seminar is chaired by one of the members of LSE London.

Contributor(s): Professor William Callahan, Mr David Dollar, Professor Michael Hockx, Mr Stephen Harner, Dr Yukon Huang, Sir Christopher Hum, Professor Nicholas Lardy... | The LSE SU China Development Forum (CDF) is an annual conference co-organised by the LSE SU China Development Society and the LSE Asia Research Centre. It provides a platform for vibrant, in-depth intellectual discussions among students, academics and professionals on key issues facing China. The 2014 Forum, held at LSE on 8th February 2014 and attended by over 400 delegates, hosted 28 speakers from mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Europe and the United States including the 2007 Nobel Laureate in Economics, Professor Eric S Maskin and the former British Ambassador to China, Sir Christoper Hum. In the context of the reform plan drafted at the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee, seven panel sessions under the overarching theme ‘Rebalancing China’ considered and discussed a range of topics including: privatisation and recentralization; consumption and investment, government social welfare provision and civil structures, China’s international relations. Four panel sessions are available for download: Keynote Opening; The Chinese Economy - Rebalancing China; Power to Empower - China’s Media Revolution; China and the World - A New Interface.

Contributor(s): Professor William Callahan, Mr David Dollar, Professor Michael Hockx, Mr Stephen Harner, Dr Yukon Huang, Sir Christopher Hum, Professor Nicholas Lardy... | The LSE SU China Development Forum (CDF) is an annual conference co-organised by the LSE SU China Development Society and the LSE Asia Research Centre. It provides a platform for vibrant, in-depth intellectual discussions among students, academics and professionals on key issues facing China. The 2014 Forum, held at LSE on 8th February 2014 and attended by over 400 delegates, hosted 28 speakers from mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Europe and the United States including the 2007 Nobel Laureate in Economics, Professor Eric S Maskin and the former British Ambassador to China, Sir Christoper Hum. In the context of the reform plan drafted at the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee, seven panel sessions under the overarching theme ‘Rebalancing China’ considered and discussed a range of topics including: privatisation and recentralization; consumption and investment, government social welfare provision and civil structures, China’s international relations. Four panel sessions are available for download: Keynote Opening; The Chinese Economy - Rebalancing China; Power to Empower - China’s Media Revolution; China and the World - A New Interface.

Contributor(s): Professor William Callahan, Mr David Dollar, Professor Michael Hockx, Mr Stephen Harner, Dr Yukon Huang, Sir Christopher Hum, Professor Nicholas Lardy... | The LSE SU China Development Forum (CDF) is an annual conference co-organised by the LSE SU China Development Society and the LSE Asia Research Centre. It provides a platform for vibrant, in-depth intellectual discussions among students, academics and professionals on key issues facing China. The 2014 Forum, held at LSE on 8th February 2014 and attended by over 400 delegates, hosted 28 speakers from mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Europe and the United States including the 2007 Nobel Laureate in Economics, Professor Eric S Maskin and the former British Ambassador to China, Sir Christoper Hum. In the context of the reform plan drafted at the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee, seven panel sessions under the overarching theme ‘Rebalancing China’ considered and discussed a range of topics including: privatisation and recentralization; consumption and investment, government social welfare provision and civil structures, China’s international relations. Four panel sessions are available for download: Keynote Opening; The Chinese Economy - Rebalancing China; Power to Empower - China’s Media Revolution; China and the World - A New Interface.