2024-25

In the most recent European Parliament election, forces to the very right have received nearly 30% of the vote. That vote share has been increasing dramatically ever since the financial crisis and reflects a profoundly changing party political system on the national level. 

Following Hannah Arendt we will not try to judge, but to better understand the economic and social background for the rise of more extreme thought not just in Europe, but also in the United States. How to interact: confront, cooperate or integrate?

Meet our speaker and chair 

Klaus Welle is Visiting Professor in Practice at the LSE European Institute. He was previously Secretary General of the European Parliament from 2009 to 2022. His previous roles in Brussels include serving as chief of staff to the President of the European Parliament, as Director General for EU Internal Policies in the Parliament's administration, and as Secretary General successively of the European People's Party (EPP) transnational political party and of the EPP political group in the European Parliament.

Jonathan Hopkin is Professor of Comparative Politics at the LSE European Institute.

More about this event

The European Institute (@LSEEI) is a centre for research and graduate teaching on the processes of integration and fragmentation within Europe.

What is right-wing populism? Understanding the experience in Europe and America

Join us for this public event with Robert Holzmann, Governor of the Austrian National Bank.

Governor Holzmann will discuss selected issues of unconventional monetary policy instruments (UMP): Assuming inflation is tamed, can we go back to conventional monetary policy before 2008, when short-term policy interest rates (and reserve requirements) dominated the monetary policy tool box? Or do we have to apply again UMP – with learnings from recent past and perhaps new unconventional instruments? This talk offers selected considerations about the intentions, effectiveness, and options of UMP in the Euro area and beyond.

Meet our speaker and chair 

Robert Holzmann is the Governor of the Austrian National Bank, and member of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank (since 2019), and elected member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (since 2014). He holds honorary positions at the South-Western University in Economics and Finance, Chengdu, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur and University of New South Wales, Sydney. Before his return to academia in 2011, he held various positions at the World Bank including for 12 years Sector Director and acting Senior Vice President. Before joining the World Bank in 1997 he was an academic in Austria and Germany, and senior economist at the IMF and OECD.

Daniela Gabor is Professor of Economics at SOAS. 

Donato Di Carlo is an assistant professor in political economy at the LSE European Institute.

More about this event

The European Institute (@LSEEI) is a centre for research and graduate teaching on the processes of integration and fragmentation within Europe.

OMFIF (@OMFIF), the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum, is an independent forum for central banking, economic policy and public investment.

Unconventional monetary policy – quo vadis?

Join us for this public event with Benjamin Haddad, Minister Delegate for European Affairs attached to the French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, as he discusses how Europe can position itself in the face of today’s challenges.

“Our Europe is mortal”, French President Emmanuel Macron warned last spring, stressing the difficult and urgent choices that the continent is confronted with. Presenting his Report on the future of European competitiveness, former Italian prime Minister Mario Draghi argued that failing to cope with mounting challenges would entail the ‘slow agony’ of Europe. Following the return to power of President Trump, the transatlantic partnership faces potential disruption. The US has engaged in negotiations with Russia over Ukraine, sidelining Europeans and raising new questions on America’s commitment to European security. The threat of tariffs looms large over the future of the transatlantic economy and top US officials are meddling in Europe’s politics, such as at the recent Munich Security Conference. At the same time, a world of growing competition, rising authoritarianism and declining multilateralism tests Europe’s capacity to stand its ground and advance its interests and values.

Meet our speaker and chair 

Benjamin Haddad is Minister Delegate for Europe, attached to the Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs of the French Republic. Graduated from Sciences Po Paris and HEC and a researcher in international relations, he taught international relations at Sciences Po and worked for seven years in think tanks in Washington, D.C., notably as Director of the Atlantic Council's Europe Center from 2019 to 2022. He is the author of “Paradis Perdu: l'Amérique de Trump et la fin des illusions européennes”, (Grasset, 2019), a plea for European sovereignty and strategic autonomy in the face of new geopolitical threats and American withdrawal. Elected Member of Parliament for Paris (14th constituency) in June 2022, he was member of the Foreign Affairs Commission and the European Affairs Commission and also spokesman coordinator for the National Assembly's Renaissance group. On July 7th 2024, after the snap legislative elections, he was re-elected MP for the 14th Paris constituency. On September 21st of the same year, he was appointed Minister Delegate for Europe.

Dr Spyros Economides is Associate Professor in International Relations and European Politics at the LSE European Institute and Deputy Director of the Hellenic Observatory.

More about this event

The European Institute (@LSEEI) is a centre for research and graduate teaching on the processes of integration and fragmentation within Europe.

The Department of International Relations (@LSEIRDept) at LSE is now in its 97th year, and is one of the oldest as well as largest IR departments in the world, with a truly international reputation. The Department is ranked 2nd in the UK and 5th in the world in the QS World University Ranking by Subject 2024 tables for Politics and International Studies.

Europe's strategic crossroads

In the early 21st century, democratic societies are at the height of their affluence, scientific brilliance, and institutional sophistication. Yet, their capacity to navigate the future has dramatically eroded since the turn of the century. While it has been the hallmark of democratic politics to sacrifice long-term and global policy commitments to short-term and local concerns, the postwar era witnessed an unprecedented rise in future-oriented institutions meant to lengthen the shadow of the future, both domestically and internationally, from the welfare state to international organisations.

Albena Azmanova and Kalypso Nicolaidis argue that times are changing in contradictory ways. Collective time is shrinking again under the diktat of emergency politics while at the very same time the need to act long term has never been so urgent, so pressing. Thus, democracies now seem to be in the grip of a paradox. On the one hand, they are afflicted by myopic tunnel vision: barely coping with one crisis after another, bereft of the capacity to think beyond their immediate concerns, people are increasingly focused on the here-and-now. On the other hand, the awareness is growing of the need for urgent action that is future-focused and planetary in scope – in order to safeguard nature, harness the digital revolution, fight poverty and disease, and prevent wars whose impact defies local borders. Indeed, democracies’ political ambitions for radical, transformative action are commendably bold.  

Azmanova and Nicolaidis set out to tackle this ‘paradox of democratic time’, as they call it: the fact that democracies are uniquely capable of harnessing collective intelligence in pursuit of grand political ambitions and thus anchor their present into a better future, yet keep chaining their future to an anxious present. The speakers consider three strategies for solving this paradox.

Meet our speakers and chair 

Albena Azmanova is Professor of Political and Social Science at City, University of London and Senior Fellow at OSUN’s Economic Democracy Initiative, Bard College. She is co-director of the Radical Critical Theory Circle and founder and co-editor of the journal Emancipations. Her analyses of contemporary capitalism have received numerous awards, among which the Michael Harrington Award of the American Political Science Association given for work that “demonstrates how scholarship can be used in the struggle for a better world”. She has worked as policy advisor for a number of international organisations, most recently, as a member of the Independent Commission for Sustainable Equality to the European Parliament and as consultant to the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs.

Kalypso Nicolaidis is Chair in Global Affairs at the School of Transnational Governance (EUI), where inter alia she convenes the EUI Democracy Forum. She is currently on leave from the University of Oxford and was professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and at Ecole Nationale d’Admistration, Paris. She has worked with numerous EU institutions, including as a member of the European Council’s reflection group on the future of Europe chaired by Felipe González (2008-10), and is a Council member of ECFR. She also served as advisor on European affairs to George Papandreou in the 90s and early 2000s, the Dutch and UK governments, the European Parliament, the European Commission, OECD and UNCTAD.

Abby Innes (@innes_abby) is Associate Professor of Political Economy in the European Institute at LSE. She has published widely on the political economy of Central Europe and drew on this background for the comparison of Soviet and neoliberal economic regimes in Late Soviet Britain. In more recent years Abby has focused her research and teaching on the political economy of the green transition in Europe.

Regaining our futures: how to build democracies with foresight

In this public event, Jens Weidmann, Head of supervisory board of Commerzbank AG and former President of Deutsche Bundesbank, presents his views on how to preserve Europe’s role in a changing geopolitical and economic world order and how to restore Europe’s competitiveness.

Meet our speaker and chair

Jens Weidmann is Supervisory Board Chairman of Commerzbank AG, Professor at the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management for Practice in Central Banking and Former President of the German Central Bank.

Iain Begg is Professorial Research Fellow at the LSE European Institute.

More about this event

The European Institute (@LSEEI) is a centre for research and graduate teaching on the processes of integration and fragmentation within Europe.

OMFIF (@OMFIF), the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum, is an independent forum for central banking, economic policy and public investment.

Geography is back: a German view on Europe's perspectives in times of global uncertainty

Europe has witnessed significant political and social turbulence over the past decade. The rise of anti-immigrant, nativist, and populist movements, the erosion of traditional political parties, widening socioeconomic disparities, and increasing polarisation have profoundly unsettled the European order. From the shock of the 2016 Brexit referendum to the seismic impact of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, recent developments have challenged long-held assumptions.

In this lecture, Siniša Malešević critically examines the conventional wisdom that nationalism and war are relics of Europe’s past. Drawing on a longue durée sociological perspective, he will argue that these forces remain deeply embedded in modernity. Rather than anomalies, the resurgence of nationalism and organised violence should be understood as part of broader historical patterns shaping contemporary Europe.

The lecture will be followed by an interactive Q&A session and a networking reception, offering a valuable opportunity for scholars and students to exchange ideas and build connections.

This event is the Annual Lecture of the Annual Review of the JCMS, hosted by the LSE European Institute and UACES.

Meet our speaker and chair 

Siniša Malešević is Full Professor of Comparative Historical Sociology at the University College Dublin. He was appointed UCD Chair of Sociology in September 2011. Previously he held research and teaching appointments at the Institute for International Relations (Zagreb), the Centre for the Study of Nationalism, CEU (Prague) - where he worked with late Ernest Gellner -, and at the University of Galway. He also held visiting professorships and fellowships at NIAS/NIOD Amsterdam, Uppsala University, Universite Libre de Bruxelles (Eric Remacle Chair in Conflict and Peace Studies), the London School of Economics, the Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna and the Australian Defence College, Canberra. Professor Malesevic is a Member of the Royal Irish Academy (elected in 2010), Academia Europaea (The Academy of Europe, elected in 2014) and an Associated Member of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Bosnia and Herzegovina (elected in 2012). He is also Senior Fellow and Associated Researcher at CNAM, Paris. Prof Malesevic's main research interests include the study of war and violence, ethnicity, nation-states, and nationalism, empires, ideology, sociological theory and the comparative historical sociology.

Jasna Dragovic-Soso is Visiting Professor at LSEE Research on South East Europe, Hellenic Observatory Centre for Research on Contemporary Greece & Cyprus, LSE. She has written extensively about memory politics, transitional justice, nationalism, state disintegration and international intervention, with a focus on former Yugoslavia and the post-Yugoslav region. She is currently writing a book about truth commission initiatives and memory politics in the post-conflict Balkans and co-editing the Brill Handbook on Regions of Memory: Southeastern Europe. From 2022 to 2024, she was Director of Centre for the Study of the Balkans at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Maya Tudor is Professor of Politics and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government and Fellow at St Hilda's College at the University of Oxford. Her research investigates the origins of effective and democratic states with a regional focus on South Asia. Before embarking on an academic career, Maya worked as a Special Assistant to Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz at the World Bank, at UNICEF, in the United States Senate, and at the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee.

Vesna Popovski is LSE Fellow in Conflict and Post-Conflict Studies. 


Nationalism and War in 21st-Century Europe

With the growth of the capability of artificial intelligence (AI), there is growing concern that this technology could make millions of jobs – and their workers – obsolete. 

In the third episode of The Ballpark’s miniseries on AI and the US, the Phelan US Centre explored the impacts AI is already having on the workforce with Baobao Zhang, Maxwell Dean Associate Professor of the Politics of AI in the Political Science Department at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. Professor Zhang’s research and work focuses on trust in digital technology and the governance of artificial intelligence  

The discussion covers how recent advances in AI have shifted the landscape when it comes to labor automation, the anxiety that many people are feeling about the potential for AI to affect jobs and industries through automation, and what students should be doing to best prepare for a career in workplaces that will be affected by AI in the coming decades. 

This episode was produced by Chris Gilson and Luke Digweed.   

Further reading and resources 

Lee, Y.S, Soroushian, J., Bullock, J., Carroll, M., Dokko, J., Dominski, J., Hinds, R., Holzer, H., Horrigan, M., Munyikwa, Z., Oschinski, M., Radsch, C., Rock, D., Rossi, M., Seamans, R., Zhang, B. (2025). “Proactively Developing and Assisting the Workforce in the Age of AI.” Americans for Responsible Innovation and the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. 

Zhang, Baobao and Dafoe, Allan, Artificial Intelligence: American Attitudes and Trends (January 9, 2019).  

Zhang, B., Anderljung, M., Kahn, L., Dreksler, N., Horowitz, M.C. and Dafoe, A. (2021). Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence: Evidence from a Survey of Machine Learning Researchers. Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research,  

Baobao Zhang. 2022. No Rage Against the Machines: Threat of Automation Does Not Change Policy Preferences. In Proceedings of the 2022 AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society (AIES '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 856–866. https://doi.org/10.1145/3514094.3534179 

LSE: The Ballpark | AI automation and the workforce with Dr Baobao Zhang

AI has legal consequences. Who is responsible when AI makes a mistake which causes harm or financial loss? What role does government regulation play, and do we need to revise our legal frameworks in the face of increasingly capable AI?

To talk about these issues, in July 2025, the Phelan US Centre spoke to Dr Anat Lior, an assistant professor at Drexel University’s Thomas R. Kline School of Law. Her research interests include AI governance and liability, quantum computing policy, the intersection of insurance and emerging technologies, and intellectual property law.

This episode was produced by Chris Gilson and Luke Digweed.  

Further reading and resources

•	Lior, Anat, AI Entities as AI Agents: Artificial Intelligence Liability and the AI Respondeat Superior Analogy (August 31, 2019). 46 Mitchell Hamline Law Review (2020).
•	Lior, Anat, Insuring AI: The Role of Insurance in Artificial Intelligence Regulation (August 10, 2021). Harvard Journal of Law & Technology, Vol. 35, No. 2, 2022.
•	Lior, Anat, E/Insuring the AI Age: Empirical Insights into Artificial Intelligence Liability Policies. 31 Conn. Ins. L.J. (forthcoming, 2025)
•	Unveiling the Quasi-Regulatory Landscape: Empirical Insights into AI Liability Policies - By Dr. Anat Lior, Sonal Madhok and Stuart Calam | April 30, 2025 

Take the Ballpark Listener survey and enter the prize draw for £250 in vouchers!

The Ballpark will be ten years old in 2026, and we want to hear from you to make the podcast even better, so we’re running a listener survey until 1 November 2025. 

•	Fill in our listener survey – it only takes 15 minutes – here: https://forms.office.com/e/Vcj8V8uGM1 
•	Voucher prize draw terms and conditions are available here: https://www.lse.ac.uk/united-states/the-ballpark/ballpark-listener-survey-prize-terms-conditions-2025


LSE: The Ballpark | Who is liable for AI? With Dr Anat Lior

Ignazio Visco, Governor Emeritus of the Bank of Italy, discusses Europe's role in an increasingly fragmented and uncertain world with Jörg Kukies and Vicky Pryce.


Meet our speakers and chair: 
Ignazio Visco is Governor Emeritus of the Bank of Italy. After a long career with the Bank of Italy that began in 1972, Ignazio Visco was appointed Governor in November 2011 and renewed in November 2017; his second term ended on October 31, 2023. The following November he was awarded the title of Governor Emeritus by the Board of Directors of the Bank of Italy.

As a governor Mr Visco was a member of the Governing Council and General Council of the European Central Bank, of the Board of Directors of the Bank for International Settlements and of the Boards of Governors of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Asian Development Bank.

From 1997 to 2002 he was Chief Economist and Head of the Economics Department of the OECD in Paris. Mr Visco graduated from the University of Rome and obtained a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania. The author of numerous articles and books on economics and finance, he also taught Econometrics and Economic Policy at “Sapienza” University of Rome.

Jörg Kukies is a German economist and politician who served as Minister of Finance in the government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz from November 2024 to May 2025. He is a member of the Social Democratic Party. Kukies spent 17 years working at investment bank Goldman Sachs, where he rose to become co-chief of Germany Austria and head of the securities division in the region. From 2018 to 2021, Kukies served as State Secretary at the Ministry of Finance under minister Olaf Scholz, in the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel. From 2021 to 2024, Kukies was a State Secretary in the German Chancellery; in this capacity, he also served as Chancellor Scholz's sherpa for G7 and G20 summits.

Vicky Pryce is Chief Economic Advisor at the Centre for Economics and Business Research.

Iain Begg is a professorial research fellow at the LSE European Institute.

More about this event: 
Established in 1991, the LSE European Institute (@LSEEI) is a world-leading centre for the study of Europe in its global context. With eight master’s degrees and a doctoral programme, a vibrant research community, and a world-leading public events programme, our work spans political economy, politics and policy, culture and society, and migration. Learn more about our events: https://www.lse.ac.uk/european-institute/events

OMFIF (@OMFIF) the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum, is an independent forum for central banking, economic policy and public investment.

On European fragmentation and the single currency in an uncertain world

AI is now increasingly playing a role in many parts of our lives, and the workplace is no exception. AI is now being used by employers to help them to recruit new staff and by jobseekers in their applications. But AI is also now present when we work. It’s used by employers to manage their employees, from monitoring what they are doing during the day, to what they post on social media. 

To talk about the rise of AI in the workplace, and what it means for workers and employers, in August 2025, the Phelan US Centre spoke to Professor Ifeoma Ajunwa, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law at Emory University. Professor Ajunwa is also the Founding Director of the AI and Future of Work Program at Emory University School of Law. Her research interests are at the intersection of law and technology with a particular focus on the ethical governance of workplace technologies. 

This episode was produced by Chris Gilson and Luke Digweed.  

Further reading and resources
•	Ajunwa, Ifeoma, A.I. and Captured Capital (June 30, 2024). 134 Yale L. J. Forum (2025).
•	Ajunwa, Ifeoma, Artificial Intelligence, Afrofuturism, and Economic Justice, 112 Geo. L.J. 1267 (2024). (November 01, 2023). Georgetown Law Journal, volume 112, pg 1267, 
•	Ajunwa, I., (2023). The quantified worker: law and technology in the modern workplace. Cambridge University Press. 
•	Ajunwa, Ifeoma, Automated Video Interviewing as the New Phrenology (July 19, 2021). 36 Berkeley Tech. L.J. 101 (2022).
•	Does ‘Bossware’ Boost Worker Productivity? It’s Far From Clear – Wall Street Journal Tech Briefing
•	Protecting Employees’ Health Data – New York Times - 27 March 2016

Take the Ballpark Listener survey and enter the prize draw for £250 in vouchers!

The Ballpark will be ten years old in 2026, and we want to hear from you to make the podcast even better, so we’re running a listener survey until 1 November 2025. 

•	Fill in our listener survey – it only takes 15 minutes – here: https://forms.office.com/e/Vcj8V8uGM1 
•	Voucher prize draw terms and conditions are available here: https://www.lse.ac.uk/united-states/the-ballpark/ballpark-listener-survey-prize-terms-conditions-2025

LSE: The Ballpark | AI and the workplace with Professor Ifeoma Ajunwa

Exploring the reasons people might find themselves with problematic levels of debt, the options open to those in financial trouble and how bankruptcy laws could be used more impactfully to the benefit of both individuals and society; this month we revisit an episode from 2023 which asks, “Do we always need to pay our debts?” 

It's a question that has come back into focus recently as the UK continues to grapple with elevated interest rates and the lingering effects of inflation, putting increasing pressure on household budgets and reigniting debates around debt and repayment. 

Jess Winterstein talks to: Dr Joseph Spooner, Associate Professor in the LSE Law School and author of Bankruptcy: the case for relief in an economy of debt, and Sara Williams, founder of debt advisory website Debt Camel. https://debtcamel.co.uk/

LSE iQ is a university podcast by the London School of Economics and Political Science. We’re keen to find out more about our audience so we can better tailor our content to suit your interests. With this in mind, we would be grateful if you could please take the time to fill out this short survey and share your feedback.

https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=_epnVXfnpUKRu5RA_UO4k9i3ygPzxbNDuStfrFFNRBNUMzYxS1BITDlHTkdYMVhaVE9LRDhNQkxaVC4u

Do we need to pay our debts?

The LSE Phelan US Centre's regular podcast, The Ballpark, will be 10 years old in 2026. Ahead of our anniversary, and after more than 140 episodes speaking to academic experts on topics from across the social sciences, we'd like to find out what you think about the podcast with a listener survey.  

It only takes 10-15 minutes, and you'll have the chance to enter a prize draw to win £250 in vouchers.  

The Ballpark brings academic commentary to a wide audience, including to students, policymakers and a global community of academics. Recent highlights include The US’ changing relationship with NATO and Europe with Dr Celeste Wallander and an ongoing mini-series on AI and the US covering topics including AI’s effects on the workplace and the US-China AI race. 

Fill in our listener survey, here: https://forms.office.com/e/Vcj8V8uGM1  

Voucher prize draw terms and conditions are available here: https://www.lse.ac.uk/united-states/the-ballpark/ballpark-listener-survey-prize-terms-conditions-2025  

Thanks for listening! 

Take our Ballpark podcast survey and you could win £250 in vouchers!

The LSE European Institute,  is a world class centre for the study of Europe. Follow our podcast feed, for the latest analysis and research  on European politics and current affairs, and the policy challenges confronting the EU and the UK.

What is right-wing populism? Understanding the experience in Europe and America

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