RSA Events

Professor David Harvey, the world’s leading expert on Marx, visits the RSA to outline the much-debated economist’s continuing relevance in 21st century economics and society. Marx’s ‘Capital’ is one of the most important texts of the modern era – it changed the destiny of countries, politics and people across the world – and continues to resonate today. But what are its key arguments, and how do t...

On the 75th anniversary of Beveridge’s transformative ‘five giants’ report, a panel of experts gather to review how far we’ve come, and have still to go. The ‘five giant evils’ of society were identified as Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor, and Idleness, and the modern-day NHS, national pension scheme, compulsory education, social housing and wide-ranging benefits were established in response to...

Award-winning author and public intellectual, Elif Shafak discusses populism, liberal values, and the provisional nature of democracy in the West. Drawing on her observations of the rise of populism and duality (a “them” and “us” mentality) in her native Turkey, Elif offers cautionary advice about the provisional nature of democracy in the west and the rise of populism – and how close we are to sl...

This event was recorded live at The RSA on Thursday 2nd November 2017 For well over a hundred years, social and cultural anthropologists have travelled the world, uncovering patterns and variations in how humans organize their lives and articulate their values. By weaving together theories and fieldwork examples from Beijing to the City of London, anthropologist Matthew Engelke shows why the study...

This event was recorded live at The RSA on Wednesday 1st November 2017 As the UK government makes preparations to leave the European Union, this independent Commission, funded by Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, is a unique and important opportunity to engage the voices of citizens, communities, businesses, academics and advocates in shaping the direction of food, farming and countryside policies. Agai...

This event was recorded live at The RSA on Tuesday 31st October 2017 It’s now conventional wisdom to focus on the excesses of the ultra-rich top 1% who are hoarding income and wealth while incomes for the rest are stagnant. But the more important, and widening, gap in American society, argues Richard Reeves, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, is between the upper middle class and everyone...

This event was recorded live at The RSA on Monday 30th October 2017 What fundamental values do human beings hold in common? As globalisation draws us together economically, are our values converging or diverging? Is the principle of human rights becoming a global ethic, or a vanishing preoccupation of the elite? These were some of the questions that led former leader of the Canadian Liberal Party,...

This event was recorded live at The RSA on Thursday 26th October 2017 Rising star and extremism expert Julia Ebner argues that far right and Islamist extremist narratives – ‘The West is at war with Islam’ and ‘Muslims are at war with the West’ - complement each other perfectly, making the two extremes rhetorical allies and building a spiralling torrent of hatred – what she calls ‘The Rage’. By loo...

This event was recorded live at The RSA on Thursday 19th October 2017 Nobel Prize-winning economist Jean Tirole argues that far from being the “dismal science”, economics is a “moral science”, and has the power to be a positive force for good in society. Jean Tirole has been described as one of the most influential economists of our time. On winning the Nobel Prize in 2014 he found himself regular...

This event was recorded live at The RSA on Wednesday 18th October 2017 The 2017 Albert Medal is awarded posthumously to Robin Murray for pioneering work in social innovation. Robin Murray was a visionary social and economic thinker, whose life’s work was guided by a profound commitment to mutuality and cooperation. As an industrial and environmental economist, Murray was active and influential acr...

This event was recorded live at The RSA on Thursday 17th October 2017 Within a few short decades, the world has rushed to embrace the products and services of four giant corporations: Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Google. But at what cost? Leading liberal journalist Franklin Foer argues that though these firms sell their efficiency and purport to make the world a better place, what they have done in...

'The rock star of neuroscience', David Eagleman teams up with composer Anthony Brandt to present an agenda-setting investigation into human creativity. Our relentless drive to create makes us unique among living creatures. How can we harness this instinct, and where is it taking us? We face global, ‘wicked’ challenges that require all our ingenuity to address. Luckily, as a species we have a seemi...

This event was recorded live at The RSA on Friday 6th October 2017 From government to business, banks to the media, it would seem that public trust in our institutions is at an all-time low. And yet this isn’t an age of distrust – far from it. Author of Who Can You Trust? Rachel Botsman is joined by Chief Economist at the Bank of England Andy Haldane to debate whether we are moving to a new era, i...

This event was recorded live at The RSA on Thursday 28th September 2017 Sleep is one of the most important aspects of our life, health and longevity and yet it is increasingly neglected in twenty-first-century society, with devastating consequences: every major disease in the developed world - Alzheimer's, cancer, obesity, diabetes - has very strong causal links to deficient sleep. And yet we’re s...

This event was recorded live at The RSA on Tuesday 27th September 2017 The world is facing urgent challenges – and design thinking can help us tackle them. Sue Siddall is a partner at leading design company IDEO, where she has over 20 years’ strategy experience in human-centred design and innovation; designing for behaviour change; and the role of design thinking and public private partnership in...

This event was recorded live at The RSA on Thursday 21st September 2017 Royal & Derngate, Northampton, Lyric Theatre Belfast, The Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, Sherman Theatre, Cardiff and The RSA present 'The United Kingdom and Europe: Nations on the World Stage' a symposium introduced by Sir Nicholas Serota, Chair of Arts Council England. As a partnership of leading theatres in England, N...

This event was recorded live at The RSA on Thursday 21st September 2017 Every time we queue up for petrol we empower the world’s most coercive, oppressive and dangerous regimes. But what can we do about it? ‘It’s all about oil’ may be the clarion cry of undergraduates worldwide, but the reality is deeper and darker than any half-baked conspiracy theories. ISIS, al Qaeda, Putin, Assad, Saddam, Gadd...

This event was recorded live at The RSA on Tuesday 20th September 2017 Glenn Greenwald is the Pulitzer prize-winning journalist who worked with Edward Snowden to uncover secret global surveillance programmes undertaken by the US and the UK. His partner, David Miranda, is a journalist and the first LGBTQ member of the Rio City Council. In this special RSA event, Greenwald and Miranda discuss power...

This event was recorded live at The RSA on Thursday 14th September 2017 A decade after the global financial crisis, deep scars remain. Despite recent data signalling a closing of the income inequality gap between the highest and lowest earners, this has been accompanied by mounting economic insecurity, wage stagnation and – particularly since Brexit – rising inflation. The shock of the financial c...

This event was recorded live at The RSA on Thursday 14th September 2017 Robert Peston, who broke the story of Northern Rock’s emergency funding appeal to the Bank of England, and covered at close-hand the ensuing run on the bank, its eventual collapse, and the global crash that followed, reflects back on fast-moving events of the time, and the role of the key actors – from politicians, to bankers,...

This event was recorded live at The RSA on Monday 11th September 2017 As UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling was involved at the highest levels from the outset of the financial crisis, through the heart of the storm, and played a leading role in restoring stability to global financial markets. 10 years on from the collapse of the Northern Rock bank, an early signal of the global crash...

This event was recorded live at The RSA on Friday 8th September 2017 Commissioned by the Prime Minister to undertake an independent review in 2016, last November David published his interim findings alongside an in-depth analysis which identified some of the stages in the CJS at which disproportionality is most pronounced. Among other notable points, the analysis evidenced that black men and women...

This event was recorded live at The RSA on Thursday 13th July 2017 In May this year, James Williams, a former Google employee and doctoral candidate researching design ethics at Oxford University, won the inaugural US$100,000 Nine Dots Prize. James’ winning piece argued that digital technologies privilege our impulses over our intentions, and are gradually diminishing our ability to engage with th...

This event was recorded live at The RSA on Tuesday 11th July 2017 Forget what you thought polls could tell you – our Google searches and other online behaviour reveal our true selves. Welcome to the biggest and most accurate dataset in human history. Harvard-trained economist and former Google data scientist, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz’s analysis of our digital footprint reveals that much of what we...

This event was recorded live at The RSA on Tuesday 11th July 2017 How do we build a future that doesn’t leave humans behind? How do we need to respond – as individuals, communities, companies, institutions – to harness technological progress the benefit of the many, not just the few? Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee's bestselling 2014 book The Second Machine Age had widespread influence on the...