Contributor(s): Professor Robert Cooper | Robert Cooper joined the Foreign Office in 1970. He served in several posts including Japan and Germany. In 1989 he was appointed Head of the Policy Planning Staff at the Foreign Office. He was later made the UK's Special Representative in Afghanistan, before taking up a post in the European Union in 2002. Here he was responsible to Javier Solana and assisted with the implementation of European strategic, security and defence policy. A well-known public intellectual, he is the author of two influential studies on the modern world: The Post-Modern State and the World Order (2000) and The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-First Century (Atlantic Press, 2003). From September 2012 he has been a Visiting Professor in IDEAS at LSE.

Contributor(s): Lord Meghnad Desai | Lord Desai is an Indian-born British economist and Labour politician. He unsuccessfully stood for the Speaker in the British House of Lords in 2011, the first ever non-UK born candidate to do so. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan, the third highest civilian award in the Republic of India, in 2008. Starting as an economics lecturer at LSE, in 2003 he retired as Director of the Centre for the Study of Global Governance, which he had founded in 1992, and remains Professor Emeritus at LSE. Desai has written extensively, publishing over 200 articles in academic journals, writing a number of books, and he still writes regularly for two leading Indian newspapers. He published a biography of Indian film star Dilip Kumar entitled Nehru’s Hero: Dilip Kumar in the life of India in 2004, which he has described as his “greatest achievement”.

Contributor(s): Professor Craig Calhoun | Professor Calhoun is a world-renowned social scientist whose work connects sociology to culture, communication, politics, philosophy and economics. He took up his post as LSE Director on 1 September 2012, having left the United States where he was University Professor at New York University and director of the Institute for Public Knowledge and President of the Social Science Research Council. Professor Calhoun took a D Phil in History and Sociology at Oxford University and a Master's in Social Anthropology at Manchester. He co-founded, with Richard Sennett, Professor of Sociology at LSE, the NYLON programme which brings together graduate students from New York and London for co-operative research programmes. He is the author of several books including Nations Matter, Critical Social Theory, Neither Gods Nor Emperors and most recently The Roots of Radicalism (University of Chicago Press, 2012).

Contributor(s): Professor David Webb, Dr Sushil Wadhwani | Professor David Webb is Head of the Department of Finance at LSE. Specialising in financial economics and monetary theory, specifically the analysis of bankruptcy and financial contracts, David has made notable contributions to the field over the past 25 years, publishing in a range of Economic journals. He has held an editorship of Economica since 1988 and Associate Editorship of the Journal of Banking and Finance since 1995. Having obtained a BA and MA in Economics from the University of Manchester, David completed a PhD in Economics at LSE in 1979. Following lectureships at City and Bristol University, he returned to LSE in 1984 as a lecturer in the Department of Economics. In 1991 David became the LSE’s first ever Professor of Finance and has since been key to the growth of the Finance Faculty at LSE, to where in 2007 the Department of Finance became a stand alone department within the School, with David taking over as its Head in January 2009. Dr Sushil Wadhwani is currently CEO of Wadhwani Asset Management LLP, a London-based fund management company and a partner of Caxton Associates. Sushil was a full-time external member of the Monetary Policy Committee at the Bank of England between June 1999 and May 2002. From 1995-1999 Dr Wadhwani was Head of the Quantitative Systems Group, a member of the Management Committee and Partner at Tudor Proprietary Trading LLC, a fund management company. He was previously Director of Equity Strategy at Goldman Sachs International (1991-95) and before that Reader/Lecturer in Economics at LSE (1984-91). Dr Wadhwani was educated at LSE, where he obtained a BSc (Econ), MSc (Econ) and PhD (Econ). He has published a number of articles in academic journals. His past research includes work on financial markets, and the determinants of unemployment and inflation.He was designated a Commander of the British Empire in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List in 2002.

Contributor(s): Thomas Hale, Professor David Held, Kevin Young | This event grapples with the causes and consequences of the failure of leadership and negotiations across leading sectors of international concern: security, the economy and environment. It examines worrying scenarios of continuing gridlock and pathways that might lead beyond it. Thomas Hale is a postdoctoral research fellow, Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford University. Professor David Held is master of the University College, Durham and Professor of Politics and International Relations at Durham University. Kevin Young is an Assistant Professor, University of Massachusetts Amherst. This events marks the publication of Gridlock: Why Global Cooperation is Failing When it's Most Needed.

Contributor(s): Professor Mick Cox, Professor Danny Quah | Professor Danny Quah (LSE) and Professor Mick Cox (LSE) will debate this question in a public lecture hosted by LSE Summer School. Danny Quah is Professor of Economics and International Development, and Kuwait Professor at LSE. Professor Mick Cox is one of Europe’s leading commentators on the United States. He holds a Chair in International Relations and is also Co-Director of IDEAS, a Centre for the Study of Diplomacy and Strategy at LSE.

Contributor(s): Professor Rana Mitter | The story of China’s war with Japan is crucial to understanding the rise of modern China – both its relentless drive for self-sufficiency and its bitter relationship with Japan. Rana Mitter is professor of the history and politics of China at the University of Oxford and author of China’s War With Japan, 1937-1945.

Contributor(s): Khalid Malik | The LSE Global South Unit is delighted to host Khalid Malik. As the lead author of the 2013 UNDP Human Development Report, Mr Malik will share the important findings of the report and highlight the unprecedented speed and scale of the rise of the Global South. Khalid Malik is the director of the Human Development Report Office, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Mr Malik is a development economist with extensive leadership, research and advocacy experience. He was appointed director of the UNDP Human Development Report in June 2011. Born in Pakistan, he studied economics at the universities of Punjab, Cambridge, Essex, and Oxford. Mr Malik has had a long, distinguished career with the UN. Prior to joining the Human Development Report Office served as a special advisor on New Development Partnerships (2010-2011); UN Resident Coordinator in China (2003-2010); Director, Evaluation Office (1997-2003); and UN Representative in Uzbekistan (1993-1997). Earlier he worked as a senior economist and programme manager in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and on science and technology matters. Before joining the UN, Mr Malik taught and conducted research at the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (1975) and at Pembroke College, Oxford (1974-75). He has been an invited speaker at the Club of Rome, the Boao Forum (Asia's Davos), and many other leading international forums on a range of topics, including China's growth, climate change and the environment, and global security. He co-hosted the annual International Finance Forum with one of China's leaders, Cheng Siwei, Vice Chairman of the 10th People's Congress. Mr Malik has written widely on development issues. He co-edited a review of the Lessons Learned in Crisis and Post-Conflict Situations (2002) and Capacity for Development: New Solutions to Old Problems (2002), and was the lead author of the 2004 UNDP Development Effectiveness Report. His latest book - Why China Has Grown So Fast for So Long - is to be published shortly. Mr Malik is on the Advisory Board of the Oxford Centre of China Studies and received an honorary doctorate from Nanchang University. In 2009, Mr Malik was selected by the government of China as one of ten "champions" - and the only foreigner - to be honoured for their contributions to the protection of the environment in China.

Contributor(s): John Denham MP, Ruth Dudley Edwards, Sunder Katwala | Britain as "One Nation" is an idea that originated with the Conservative Party, in particular its Victorian leader Benjamin Disraeli who saw Britain divided into two nations, the rich and the poor. Disraeli defined "One Nation" politics as the practices necessary to, "maintain the institutions of the realm and elevate the condition of the people". In his 2012 conference speech the Labour leader Ed Miliband defined his party as "One Nation" Labour, and in so doing directly and consciously challenged the Tory ownership of this important political ideal. Meanwhile the Liberal Democrats have always seen themselves as a faction-free party – neither capital nor labour – and in this sense inherently "One Nation". In a period of economic crisis and with the loss of public trust in the ability of politicians to renew our institutions and elevate the condition of the people, who now speaks for "One Nation"? John Denham is the Labour MP for Southampton, Itchen. John was first elected as member of Parliament in 1992. John served as a government minister in various departments, resigning in 2003 from his post in at the Home Office in protest at the Iraq war. In June 2000 he was appointed by the Queen as a Privy Councillor and during a period on the backbenches he chaired the powerful Home Affairs Select Committee. John returned to government in Gordon Brown’s first cabinet as secretary of state for Innovation, Universities and Skills and subsequently became secretary of state for Communities and Local Government until May 2010. In Opposition, John remains a key figure in Labour’s campaign against the Government’s cuts. John became shadow secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills in 2010. He later went on to become PPS to Ed Miliband, before standing down from frontline politics to spend more time in his constituency. John has decided to stand down at the next General Election, which is expected to take place in 2015. Dublin-born Ruth Dudley Edwards, who describes herself as ‘a religion-friendly atheist’, was a teacher, marketing executive and civil servant before becoming a freelance writer. She is a journalist, broadcaster and prize-winning historian, whose non-fiction includes biographies of Irish revolutionaries, the left-wing publisher and controversialist Victor Gollancz and two titans of Fleet Street, Hugh Cudlipp and Cecil King, as well as the history of The Economist, a book about the Orangemen of Ulster and, most recently, Aftermath: the Omagh bombing and the families’ pursuit of justice. Her twelve crime novels satirise fashionable academic values and - above all - political correctness. The latest, award-winning Killing the Emperors, trashes the world of conceptual art. Sunder Katwala is the director of British Future. He has previously worked as a journalist. He was general secretary of the Fabian Society thinktank from 2003 to 2011, and was previously a leading writer and internet editor at the Observer, a research director of the Foreign Policy Centre and commissioning editor for politics and economics at the publisher Macmillan.

Contributor(s): Deborah Perry Piscione | Entrepreneur Deborah Perry Piscione offers an inside look at Silicon Valley's unique innovation culture and demonstrates how this remarkable success can – and should – be replicated around the world, in conversation with LSE governor Mustafa Khanbhai. Deborah Perry Piscione is a seasoned Silicon Valley entrepreneur and the bestselling author of The Secrets of Silicon Valley. Mustafa Khanbhai is founder and CEO of Seamlessly. He has a background in business start-up, corporate development and mergers & acquisitions. Mustafa co-founded Virgin Digital Help, a new start-up for Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Group.