Contributor(s): Jeffrey Golden, Professor Jan Paulsson | Jeffrey Golden, the principal author of ISDA's Master agreements (FT: "Mr. Derivatives") and the driving force behind the efforts of setting up an international financial court will be challenged by Jan Paulsson on the suitability of arbitration for financial markets disputes. Jeffrey Golden was the founding partner of the US law practice of Allen & Overy LLP and a senior partner in the firm's global derivatives practice and is now a visiting professor at the LSE Law Department. Jan Paulsson is co-head of the international arbitration and public international law groups of Freshfields LLP and LSE Centennial Professor.

Contributor(s): Professor Susan Shirk | What are the features of Chinese politics that could derail its peaceful rise? And how should other countries respond? Susan Shirk is director of the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation and Ho Miu Lam professor of China and Pacific Relations, UC San Diego.

Contributor(s): Sigbjørn Johnsen | Equality and growth are often considered to be conflicting goals. Welfare cuts in order to achieve fiscal sustainability are now on the agenda in a number of European countries. In Norway, an abundance of natural resources has offered a favourable starting point. Yet its management presents policymakers with a number of new dilemmas. Can the experience of a small country like Norway hold some larger lessons? Sigbjørn Johnsen is serving his second term as Norwegian Minister of Finance. His first term was 1990 - 1996. Mr. Johnsen was a member of Parliament from 1976 to 1997, and is representing the Labour Party. He has led several major public commissions in Norway, including the Pension Commission 2000-2002.

Contributor(s): Dr Stephane Lacroix | Since the events of 9/11, Saudi Islamists have attracted considerable attention. However, given the opacity of the Saudi Kingdom, very little is known about them. Who are those activists who challenge in the name of Islam a regime whose claims to legitimacy are based on religion? Stephane Lacroix is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Sciences Po. In 2008-2009, he was a Postdoctoral Scholar at Stanford University. His work focuses on Islam and politics in the contemporary Middle East, with a particular interest in the Gulf region.

Contributor(s): Luc Bovens, Simon Norfolk | This dialogue between a photojournalist and a philosopher will explore how war photography treads a fine line between truthfulness, procuring impact and respecting the dignity of the victims of war as well as the sensitivities of readers.

Contributor(s): Professor Ananya Roy | The 21st century will be an urban century. It will also be a 'Southern' or even 'Asian' century, with much of the urban growth taking place in the cities of the global South. This talk highlights these Asian experiments and the ambitious claims of the making of 'Asian' futures. Ananya Roy is professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning and co-director of the Global Metropolitan Studies Center at the University of California, Berkeley.

Contributor(s): Professor Barry Buzan | As the inequality of power between the West and the rest diminishes, the most likely scenario for world politics is de-centered globalism, in which there will be no superpowers. But what does a world with no superpowers mean for regional coexistence and international cooperation? Barry Buzan is Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at LSE and senior fellow at LSE IDEAS.

Contributor(s): Dr Claire Annesley, Beatrix Campbell, Professor Diane Elson, Professor Susan Himmelweit | This panel will consider how far women, especially low income women, are bearing an unfair share of the burden of the budget deficit reduction. Claire Annesley is a lecturer in European politics at the University of Manchester. Beatrix Campbell is a journalist, author, playwright and broadcaster. Diane Elson is professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Essex. Susan Himmelweit is professor of economics at the Open University.

Contributor(s): Dr Simon Glendinning, Dr Amber Jacobs, Professor Nicholas Royle | Marking the publication of Nicholas Royle's new novel Quilt, this event will attempt to explore the dimensions and ascertain the depths of the 'unfathomable'. Simon Glendinning is reader in European philosophy at the LSE European Institute and director of the Forum for European Philosophy. Amber Jacobs is lecturer in the Department of Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck, University of London. Nicholas Royle is professor of English at the University of Sussex.

Contributor(s): Dr Ali Kadri | Arab countries represent stark cases of "de-development". Of the two paths of capital accumulation - accumulation by commodity realisation and accumulation by encroachment and dispossession - the Arab world falls subject to the diktat of the latter process. A tight cross-border class alliance between Western elites and Arab regimes has been at play, to support the process of social product usurpation even when the terms of trade appear to be favourable to the Arab world. The development of the Arab world is itself an outcome of a multi-tiered power structure, in the first instance, where the concept of power could be literally reduced to fire power without much loss to content and, secondly, it mediates the crisis of a fossil-fuel dependent global accumulation process. Dr Ali Kadri is a Visiting Fellow in the Department of International Development at LSE. Formerly, he served as Head of the Economic Analysis Section of the United Nations regional office in Beirut.