Speaker(s): Professor Richard Sennett, Professor Nicola Lacey | Economic inequality is increasing the dependence of ordinary people on institutions which do not have their welfare at heart. Yet children, the elderly, and the ill are necessarily dependent; mutual dependence is for everyone an ingredient of trust. We need a new logic of dependence. Richard Sennett (@richardsennett) is a sociologist and Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences, and University Professor of the Humanities at New York University. His research interests include the relationship between urban design and urban society, urban family patterns, the urban welfare system, the history of cities and the changing nature of work. He has served as a consultant on urban policy to the Labour party and is a frequent commentator in the press. Nicola Lacey is School Professor of Law, Gender and Social Policy. From 1998 to 2010 she held a Chair in Criminal Law and Legal Theory at LSE; she returned to LSE in 2013 after spending three years as Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, and Professor of Criminal Law and Legal Theory at the University of Oxford. She has held a number of visiting appointments, most recently at Harvard Law School. She is an Honorary Fellow of New College Oxford and of University College Oxford; a Fellow of the British Academy; and a member of the Board of Trustees of the British Museum. In 2011 she was awarded the Hans Sigrist Prize by the University of Bern for outstanding scholarship on the function of the rule of law in late modern societies and in 2017 she was awarded a CBE for services to Law, Justice and Gender Politics. Savvas Verdis is Deputy Director, Executive Masters in Cities, LSE Cities, LSE. This is the first in a series of 4 public lectures that Richard Sennett will deliver on Welfare After Beveridge. The others take place on 23 January, 30 January and 5 February.