Contributor(s): Christine Lagarde, Professor Amartya Sen | Ms Lagarde will be speaking on the theme of 'empowerment'. Christine Lagarde is managing director of the International Monetary Fund. She was appointed in July 2011. A national of France, she was previously French finance minister from June 2007, and had also served as France’s minister for foreign trade for two years. Ms Lagarde also has had an extensive and noteworthy career as an anti-trust and labour lawyer, serving as a partner with the international law firm of Baker & McKenzie, where the partnership elected her as chairman in October 1999. She held the top post at the firm until June 2005 when she was named to her initial ministerial post in France. Ms Lagarde has degrees from Institute of Political Studies (IEP) and from the Law School of Paris X University, where she also lectured prior to joining Baker & McKenzie in 1981. Amartya Sen is professor of economics at Harvard University and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics. He is an honorary fellow of LSE. Craig Calhoun is the director of LSE.