LSE Podcasts

Speaker(s): Baroness Campbell, Neil Crowther, Clenton Farquharson, Liz Sayce | This panel event will explore the potential implications for disability policy of these possible futures under the political and socio-cultural themes. It will explore questions including whether the ‘vulnerability’ framing is likely to inform future policy and what the implications are for disabled people’s lives, comm...

Speaker(s): Tania Aidrus, Yamini Aiyar, Professor Jishnu Das, Professor Mushfiq Mobarak | This podcast will explore how governments in South Asia are tackling COVID-19 and will focus specifically on Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. South Asia is home to a quarter of humanity and its policy response to COVID-19 matters for the world but there are markedly different views on the policy response in So...

Speaker(s): Professor Sir Tim Besley, Wolfgang Münchau, Vicky Pryce | What will be the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Brexit? More particularly, how might it affect the strategy and interests of the UK as it negotiates a longer-term relationship with the EU27? What if the timelines change? This panel of experts will consider different scenarios for what might happen and what they migh...

Speaker(s): Dr Simeon Djankov, Anne-Laure Kiechel, Professor Ugo Panizza, Dr Jeromin Zettelmeyer | This talk focuses on the ways in which advanced economies as well as emerging markets can create the fiscal space to boost post-COVID-19 recovery prospects. While some countries are still in the midst of the COVID-19 health crisis, others are starting on their way to economic recovery. Recovery after...

Speaker(s): John McDonnell | Ralph Miliband’s last book, Socialism for a Sceptical Age, was an attempt not just to justify the continuing potential of socialism but also to provide a strategy for a socialist government both to gain power and secure the implementation of a programme of socialist change. It became an inspirational work for many crafting the rise of the Labour left in the UK. After L...

Speaker(s): Martin Sandbu | As the coronavirus crisis shows, the western social contract is threadbare. In his new book The Economics of Belonging, which he will talk about in this online event, Martin Sandbu traces the economic roots of polarisation, showing that globalisation has been wrongly blamed. He proposes a programme of "centrists radicalism" that can restore an economy that works for eve...

Speaker(s): Professor Chris Anderson, Professor Barry Eichengreen, Dr Anna Getmansky, Dr Cevat Giray Aksoy, Dr Orkun Saka | Epidemics pose a stress test for governments. Political officials and institutions face the challenge of assembling information and mounting effective interventions against a rapidly spreading and potentially catastrophic disease. They must communicate that information, descr...

Speaker(s): Professor Abhijit Banerjee, Professor Esther Duflo | Can economics be harnessed for the common good? Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo’s latest book Good Economics for Hard Times, which they will discuss in this talk, makes the case for how economics can help us solve the toughest problems in some of the poorest places in the world. Based on a body of work that was awarded the Nobel in...

Speaker(s): Dr Miqdad Asaria, Dr José-Luis Fernandez, Professor Alistair McGuire, Dr Clare Wenham | The UK has long been a global leader in preparing for pandemics. However, the COVID-19 crisis has exposed weaknesses in Britain’s public health strategies. Academic experts from LSE’s Department of Health Policy in the fields of pandemic response, social care and health inequalities will consider pa...

Speaker(s): Professor Sir Tim Besley, Professor Adnan Khan, Professor Margaret Levi | How states respond to the policy challenges posed by COVID-19 depends on the state capacities in place. While some capacity can be built or adapted rapidly, much of that capacity is a reflection of historical patterns of economic and political development. This online public event will explore state capacities, h...

Speaker(s): Professor Gerard Delanty, Dr Sonja Avlijaš | The COVID-19 crisis has brought a number of interesting questions in political philosophy to the fore. What are the limits and ethical role of the state? What is the importance of personal liberty and collective interest? Is state surveillance justified? For this year’s Annual LEQS Lecture, Gerard Delanty discusses six philosophical response...

Speaker(s): Dr Arun Advani, Emma Agyemang, Ed Conway, Helen Miller, Andy Summers | With tax rises now almost surely on the horizon, the question will be who should pay. The rich, it is often claimed, already contribute a large share of tax revenues; there's not much scope for them to pay more. For example, the top 1% already pay 29% of all income tax. But is this because they pay a lot of their in...

Speaker(s): Professor Nicola Lacey, Professor Tracey L. Meares, Professor Tim Newburn, Dr Coretta Phillips | George Floyd’s death has sparked widespread protest in the U.S. over police abuse. This roundtable will discuss the sources of police violence and what can be done to fix America’s police and make law enforcement accountable. Nicola Lacey is School Professor of Law, Gender and Social Policy...

Speaker(s): Khalif Abdirahman, Mazen Gharibah, Dr Nisar Majid, Dr Rim Turkmani, Professor Alex de Waal | Populations and institutions in Syria and Somalia have been subject to conflict and political turmoil for many years and now face the health and economic impacts of the COVID-19 global pandemic. This event draws on analysis from LSE's Conflict Research Programme (CRP) and its researchers and pa...

Speaker(s): Professor Chris Anderson, Professor Simon Glendinning, Professor Waltraud Schelkle | Periods of crisis can strip politics back to its most basic forms, and the political reality is laid bare: who, if anyone, has the power to tell other people what to do. While the European Union has a considerable stake in the crisis, particularly in the Eurozone, it is national states which have been...

Speaker(s): Professor Joseph S. Nye | In his new book, Do Morals Matter?, which he will discuss in this talk, Joseph S. Nye examines the role of ethics in US foreign policy during the post-1945 era. Working through each presidency from FDR to Trump, Nye scores their foreign policy on three ethical dimensions: their intentions, the means they used, and the consequences of their decisions. He evalua...

Speaker(s): Dr Creighton Connolly, Professor Roger Keil, Dr Deirdre McKay, Dr Rita Padawangi | What is the relationship between urbanisation and infectious disease? How do cities and their hinterlands respond to the COVID-19 pandemic? What is the role of civil society in tackling the livelihood challenges in urban and rural areas during the pandemic? This panel will explore the impact of COVID-19...

Speaker(s): Naomi Burke-Shyne, Jason Eligh, Gabriel Feltran, Kasia Malinowska, Alexander Söderholm | The potential impact of COVID-19 on economic markets is well known and widely discussed. But what about the markets we know less about, namely illicit markets? Drug markets, policymakers and people who use drugs are facing an unprecedented situation. Join this discussion - a blend of on-the-ground...

Speaker(s): Professor Assis Malaquias, Elizabeth Sidiropoulos, Dr Folashadé Soulé | A panel of leading African commentators will reflect on the global response to the health dimensions of the pandemic in Africa. Our speakers will look at what the global response to the pandemic tells us about the emerging multi-polar world, the role of cooperation and collective action in this emerging multi-polar...

Speaker(s): Dr Reuben Abraham, Dr Ailish Campbell, Rain Newton-Smith, Kazumi Nishikawa | This panel will compare and contrast the economic policy response to COVID-19 undertaken by countries around the world in both developed and emerging economies. It will explore the immediate impact on supply-chains and the outlook for trade and cross-border investment from here. Reuben Abraham (@nebuer42) is C...

Speaker(s): Dr Seeta Peña Gangadharan, Dr Orla Lynskey, Dr Alison Powell, Dr Edgar Whitley | With many activities moving online, there is growing pressure to implement a range of data–driven responses as “obvious” solutions to various COVID–19 concerns. These range from contact tracing to address the spread of the disease, through the use of AI in the dashboards that allocate health resources to i...

Speaker(s): Professor Carmen M. Reinhart | Join us for the Economica-Phillips Lecture which will be delivered by Carmen M. Reinhart. Carmen M. Reinhart (@carmenmreinhart) is the Minos A. Zombanakis Professor of the International Financial System at Harvard Kennedy School. Carmen has been appointed as the new Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank Group, a position she will take up on...

Speaker(s): Professor Kalipso Chalkidou, Dr Panos Kanavos, Professor Margaret Kyle, Professor Ken Shadlen | The panel will examine a range of issues related to the development and use of vaccines and treatments for COVID-19, including the range of incentives for innovation and national approaches to purchasing, price negotiations, and intellectual property and trade policies. Kalipso Chalkidou (@k...

Speaker(s): Professor Michael Whinston | This talk will look at how optimal targeted lockdown strategies shift the frontier of society’s choices in this crisis. Michael Whinston is BP Visiting Professor at LSE Economics, and Professor of Economics and Sloan Fellows Professor of Management at MIT. John Sutton is Emeritus Professor of Economics and MSc Economics and Management Programme Director at...

Speaker(s): General Sir James Everard, Dr Nathalie Tocci, Peter Watkins | COVID-19 will have more than just a major impact on social and economic life. It threatens to reshape the global security environment and the Euro Atlantic world that emerged in 1989. An expert panel will discuss the future of NATO and the critical US/Europe security partnership from which the western alliance draws its stre...