Lawfare: do law and courts have power to solve global problems? 

Thursday 13 June 2024 (60 minutes)

Hosted by LSE Festival: Power and Politics

There is a growing expectation for law and courts, whether domestic or international, to be remedies for international problems. We explore the power of law and courts in the face of contemporary international challenges.  

Meet our speakers and chair

Larry Kramer is President and Vice Chancellor of the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is a renowned legal scholar and teacher.

Howard Morrison is a British lawyer. From 2011 to 2021 he was a Judge of the International Criminal Court based in The Hague, Netherlands. Currently he is UK advisor on war crimes to the Ukrainian Prosecutor General.

Gerry Simpson is Professor of International Law at LSE. His latest work, The Sentimental Life of International Law: Literature, Language and Longing in Global Politics, was published by Oxford last year. 

Ian Higham (@highamian) is a postdoctoral research officer in environmental politics at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at LSE. 

Theresa Squatrito is Associate Professor in International Organisations in the Department of International Relations at LSE. 

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Global middle powers and the changing world order

Wednesday 12 June 2024 (60 minutes)

Hosted by LSE Festival: Power and Politics

The established Western-led global order, historically rooted in American and European dominance, is facing increasingly robust challenges.  

With recent elections in Turkey, and forthcoming voting in South Africa and the Western world (the UK, EU and the US), this panel delves into the aspirations and perspectives of global middle powers, and analyses the impact of their rise on the global order. 

Meet our speakers and chair

Chris Alden is Professor of International Relations and Director of LSE IDEAS. 

Yolanda Kemp Spies is the Director of the Diplomatic Studies Programme at Oxford University. 

Buğra Süsler (@BugraSusler) is Lecturer in the UCL Department of Political Science and the Head of Turkey and the World Programme at LSE IDEAS. 

Yaprak Gürsoy (@ygursoy) is Professor of European Politics and Chair of Contemporary Turkish Studies at LSE.

This event is part of the LSE Festival: Power and Politics running from Monday 10 to Saturday 15 June 2024, with a series of events exploring how power and politics shape our world.

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Understanding China's views of the world

Wednesday 12 June 2024 (60 minutes)

Hosted by LSE Festival: Power and Politics

The People’s Republic of China is a major force in global power and politics, directly impacting power and politics in the UK. To gain a nuanced understanding of China’s engagement with the world, this panel premieres two new films about how Chinese people experience the world.  

Elena Barabantseva’s British Born Chinese: Ten Years On (30min) looks at how two ethnic Chinese young men from Manchester experience British society, and William A. Callahan’s The Nose Knows (15min) traces how Chinese artists and officials have imagined foreigners in terms of their “big noses” both historically and up to the present day. 

After screening the films, a panel discussion explored the visual power and politics of Chinese people’s engagement with the UK and the world in local, national, and global space, and considered how it impacts elections in the UK, USA, the EU, India, and Russia. 

Meet our speakers and chair

Elena Barabantseva is a research fellow and lecturer in Chinese Politics at the University of Manchester. 

William A. Callahan is Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. 

Xiaolu Guo is a renowned Chinese British filmmaker and novelist. Her memoir Once Upon A Time In The East won the National Book Critics Circle Award 2017, and her latest non-fiction books are Radical and is My Battle of Hastings. 

Giulia Sciorati (@GiuliaSciorati) is an LSE Fellow in China and the Global South, in the Department of International Relations at LSE. 

This event is part of the LSE Festival: Power and Politics running from Monday 10 to Saturday 15 June 2024, with a series of events exploring how power and politics shape our world.

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How can countries prepare for the next global health crisis?

Tuesday 11 June 2024 (60 minutes)

Hosted by LSE Festival: Power and Politics

The World Health Organization has established an intergovernmental negotiating body with the purpose of drafting an agreement to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response. Yet the outcome may be so weak that we see less cooperation than before the COVID-19 pandemic, with devastating consequences for human life when the next global health crisis strikes.  

The panel assesses the prospects for meaningful progress, and discusses how power, politics and public opinion are affecting international pandemic response and preparedness, including the crucial question of access to vaccines and other medicines.  

Meet our speakers and chair

Tine Hanrieder (@HanriederTine) is Assistant Professor in Health and International Development in the Department of International Development at LSE.    

Ulrich Sedelmeier is Associate Professor of International Relations in the Department of International Relations at LSE.

Ken Shadlen is Professor of Development Studies Department of International Development at LSE.  

Clare Wenham (@clarewenham) is Associate Professor of Global Health Policy in the Department of Health Policy at LSE. 

Mathias Koenig-Archibugi is Associate Professor of Global Politics in the Department of Government and Department of International Relations at LSE. 

This event is part of the LSE Festival: Power and Politics running from Monday 10 to Saturday 15 June 2024, with a series of events exploring how power and politics shape our world. 

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The ministry for the future: navigating the politics of the climate crisis

Monday 10 June 2024 (60 minutes)

Hosted by LSE Festival: Power and Politics

How can we act fast enough to avoid the worst of the damage of climate change? Award-winning science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson will discuss the political economy needed to cope with the existential threats we are facing and how he has explored this in his writing, in conversation with Elizabeth Robinson, Director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, and Professor Robert Falkner. 

Meet our speakers and chair

Kim Stanley Robinson is an American science fiction writer. He is the author of about twenty books, including the internationally bestselling Mars trilogy, and more recently Red Moon, New York 2140 and The Ministry for the Future. He was part of the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Antarctic Artists and Writers’ Program in 1995 and 2016, and a featured speaker at COP-26 in Glasgow, as a guest of the UK government and the UN. 

Elizabeth Robinson (@EJZRobinson66) is Director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at LSE. 

Robert Falkner (@robert_falkner) is Professor of International Relations at LSE and the Academic Dean of the TRIUM Global Executive MBA, an alliance between LSE, NYU Stern School of Business and HEC Paris. 

This event is part of the LSE Festival: Power and Politics running from Monday 10 to Saturday 15 June 2024, with a series of events exploring how power and politics shape our world. 

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Ukrainian Discussion Series 2024
Russia's War on Ukraine in 2024: pivotal moment or impasse?

Wednesday 13 March 2024 (75 minutes)

Two years into Russia’s large scale invasion of Ukraine, the war is entering a new stage. Ukraine’s major allies are facing fresh challenges and changes in their political landscapes.

Despite Ukraine’s resistance, new tranches of military and financial aid to Ukraine are proving difficult to approve and organise. Pre-electoral domestic struggles in the US signal the possibility of the re-distribution of leadership roles within the international coalition in support of Ukraine, and the necessity of re-evaluating current tactics towards not only Ukraine, but Russia as well.

Meet our speakers and chair:

Mariia Zolkina is the DINAM Research Fellow (2022-2024) in the Department of International Relations at LSE. She is a Ukrainian researcher and political analyst working in the fields of regional security, wartime diplomacy, conflict studies and reintegration policies in occupied territories. Since 2014 she has been producing expertise on the Russo-Ukrainian war, focusing mainly on the Donbas region, and has analysed the socio-political implications of the conflict both at the national and international levels. 

Olga Tokariuk is a Chatham House OSUN Academy Fellow, Ukraine Forum. Her main professional interests are international affairs and research on disinformation, especially in the context of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. She is a former fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University and CEPA non-resident fellow. Olga’s background is in journalism and she has vast experience in Ukrainian and international media. She is a former head of foreign news desk at the independent Ukrainian Hromadske TV. 

Dr Maryna Vorotnyuk is an Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI) in London. Previously, she held the position as Research Fellow in the International Security Studies team at RUSI. She works on security developments in the Black Sea region, Russian, Ukrainian and Turkish foreign policies, and the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.

Chair:

Dr Luke Cooper is an Associate Professorial Research Fellow with the Conflict and Civicness Research Group and Director of PeaceRep’s Ukraine programme. Dr Cooper is a historical sociologist and political scientist, whose work studies processes of change and transformation within and between societies. He has written extensively on nationalism, authoritarianism and the theory of uneven and combined development, engaging both contemporary and historical case studies. His most recent book, Authoritarian Contagion; the Global Threat to Democracy, was published by Bristol University Press in 2021.

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Religion and diplomacy in the Middle East

Wednesday 06 March 2024 (90 minutes)

Hosted by the Department of International Relations and the LSE Religion and Global Society Unit

Listen to Michael Driessen, Madawi Al-Rasheed and Fabio Petito as they discuss with Professor in Practice James Walters how events since 7 October have reshaped the interreligious landscape.

Recent years have seen a growth in state-sponsored interreligious dialogue initiatives, particular within, and connecting with, the Middle East. In this discussion, Michael Driessen presents the findings of his new book The Global Politics of Interreligious Dialogue as the basis for a discussion of how events since 7th October have reshaped the interreligious landscape.

Meet our speakers and chair:

Michael Driessen is Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs and Director of the MA program in International Affairs at John Cabot University. Driessen’s books include The Global Politics of Interreligious Dialogue (Oxford University Press, 2023) and Religion and Democratization (Oxford University Press, 2014).

Madawi Al-Rasheed is Visiting Professor at the Middle East Centre, London School of Economics and Fellow of the British Academy. 

Fabio Petito is Professor of Religion and International Affairs and Professor of International Relations in the School of Global Studies at the University of Sussex. 

Chair:

James Walters is founding director of the LSE Faith Centre and LSE Religion and Global Society. He is a Professor in Practice, affiliated to the Department for International Relations and an associate of the LSE Department of International Development.

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Ukrainian Discussion Series 2024
Ukrainian Donbas: debunking Russia's myths and narratives about the region

Wednesday 28 February 2024 (60 minutes)

Watch or listen to DINAM Research Fellow at LSE, Ukrainian researcher and political analyst Mariia Zolkina as she reveals the data-based findings about real public moods in Donbas, starting from spring 2014 and afterwards, following the Russian invasion. She discloses crucial changes of public views, caused by beginning of hybrid war, and shows how they differed from many myths and ungrounded narratives circulating internationally about Donbas. 

Meet our speakers and chair:

Mariia Zolkina is the DINAM Research Fellow (2022-2024) in the Department of International Relations at LSE. She is a Ukrainian researcher and political analyst working in the fields of regional security, reintegration policies in occupied territories and wartime diplomacy. Since 2014 she has been producing expertise on the political component of Russo-Ukrainian war, especially regarding the Donbas region, and has analysed the socio-political implications of the conflict both at the national and international levels. 

Discussant:

Dr Florian Foos is Associate Professor in Political Behaviour in the Department of Government at LSE. He studies political campaigns using randomised field experiments and aims to identify the causal effects of formal and informal interactions between citizens, politicians and campaign workers on electoral mobilisation, opinion change and political activism. 

Chair:

Tomila Lankina is Professor of International Relations at LSE. She has worked on democracy and authoritarianism, mass protests and historical drivers of human capital and political regime change in Russia and other countries; she has also analysed the propaganda and disinformation campaigns in the wake of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and aggression in Ukraine. 

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The revolutionary city: urbanization and the global transformation of rebellion

Thursday 08 February 2024 (90 mins)

Speaker:

Mark Beissinger, Henry W. Putnam Professor of Politics at Princeton University

Discussant:

Olga Onuch, Professor in Politics at the University of Manchester and an Associate of Nuffield College (Oxford) and The Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. 

Chair:

Tomila Lankina, Professor of International Relations, LSE

Drawing on his new book, The Revolutionary City: urbanization and the global transformation of rebellion, Professor Beissinger focusses on the impact that the concentration of people, power, and wealth in cities exercises on revolutionary processes and outcomes. Using engaging examples from around the world, Mark Beissinger explores the causes and consequences of the urbanisation of revolution in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. 

He is joined by Dr Olga Onuch to discuss the book.  

Read the LSE blog post by Mark R Beissinger: "Revolutions by the numbers - how urbanisation has transformed rebellion".

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The perils of Saudi nationalism

Department of International Relations Fred Halliday Memorial Lecture 2023/24

Monday 5 February 2024 (90 mins)

Listen to the 2023/24 Fred Halliday Memorial Lecture with Madawi Al-Rasheed who will discuss the history of Saudi nationalism and the new populist Saudi nationalism.

Since the rise of Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman in 2017, a new populist Saudi nationalism has been promoted. This lecture traces the shift in Saudi nation-building from the early days of religious nationalism to the current populist trend. The new Saudi national narrative inevitably involves selectively remembering and forgetting aspects of the past in order to consolidate a shift in national consciousness about who Saudis are. But while the new nationalism promises to invigorate the nation, the process is accompanied by serious violence against dissenting voices.     

Meet our speaker and chair

Madawi Al-Rasheed is Visiting Professor at the Middle East Centre, London School of Economics and Fellow of the British Academy. Her research focuses on history, society, religion and politics in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, Middle Eastern Christian minorities in Britain, Arab migration, Islamist movements, state and gender relations, and Islamic modernism. She has published several books on Saudi Arabia. Her most recent book is The Son King: Reform and Repression in Saudi Arabia (OUP 2020).  

Jeffrey Chwieroth is Professor in the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and Head of the Department. He is also co-investigator at the Systemic Risk Centre and Faculty Affiliate at the Phelan United States Centre at LSE.

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