LSE Talks

What does the post-pandemic future hold for office workers? Will we drift back to old ways of working, or continue with hybrid/remote working? What do the experts advise on how best to adapt?

Joanna Bale talks to LSE’s Connson Locke, Grace Lordan and Carsten Sorensen, as well as Hailley Griffis, a social media management company executive, who believes that offices will soon become extinct.

LSE iQ is a university podcast by the London School of Economics and Political Science.

LSE IQ podcast

Has COVID killed the office?

Speaker(s): Professor Saskia Sassen, Professor Ash Amin | In her new book, Expulsions: brutality and complexity in the global economy, Saskia Sassen explores how today’s socioeconomic and environmental dislocations can be understood as a type of expulsion – from professional livelihood, from living space, even from the very biosphere that makes life possible. Saskia Sassen (@SaskiaSassen) is the Robert S Lynd Professor of Sociology and co-chair of the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University. Ash Amin is the 1931 Chair of Geography at the University of Cambridge. Ricky Burdett (@BURDETTR) is professor of urban studies at the Department of Sociology, director of LSE Cities, and the Urban Age Programme at LSE. Tue, 13 May 2014 18:30:00 GMT

Expulsions: brutality and complexity in the global economy [Audio]

Speaker(s): Professor Gerd Gigerenzer | Remember the volcanic ash cloud over Iceland? The subprime disaster? What about mad cow disease? Each new crisis makes us worry until we start worrying about the next one. When something goes wrong, we are told that the way to prevent further crises is through better technology, more laws, and bigger bureaucracy. How to protect ourselves from the threat of terrorism? Homeland security, full body scanners, further sacrifice of individual freedom. How to counteract exploding costs in health care? Tax hikes, rationalization, better genetic markers. One idea is absent from these lists: risk-savvy citizens. And there is a reason for that. Many experts have concluded that people are basically hopeless when it comes to risk and, like a child who needs a parent, require continuous “nudging." Against this pessimistic view, I will argue that instead of being the solution, experts are often part of the problem, and that everyone can learn to deal with risk and uncertainty on their own. A democracy needs risk-savvy citizens who cannot be easily frightened into surrendering their money, their welfare, and their liberty. Gerd Gigerenzer is managing director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, former professor of psychology at the University of Chicago and author of Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions. Wed, 21 May 2014 18:30:00 GMT

Risk Savvy: how to make good decisions [Audio]

Speaker(s): Dr Rebecca Empson | In this lecture Rebecca outlines an economy based on the temporary, rather than outright possession of resources and commodities. Ethnographic evidence shows that such transient forms of possession can come to shape the very financial forms we might have assumed were incompatible with them. Mongolians located at the periphery of financial centres thereby come to shape wider economic practices that impact upon what we have understood capitalism to be. Theoretically, this may be taken as a broader critique of the idea of the ‘performativity of economics’ and the need to acknowledge the complex motivations that drive people toward different kinds of economic activity, including emotive feelings of trust, secrecy and uncertainty, as well the politics of accumulation in a rapidly changing landscape of economic potential. Rebecca Empson is a lecturer in Social Anthropology at UCL. She works in Mongolia on ideas about kinship, economics and material culture. Her monograph, Harnessing Fortune: Personhood, Memory and Place in Mongolia is published by Oxford University Press (2011). In September this year she will begin a new ERC-funded project exploring the form of capitalism emerging in Mongolia’s mineral economy, entitled: Emerging Subjects of the New Economy: Tracing Economic Growth in Mongolia. Rita Astuti is professor of social anthropology and head of the anthropology department at the LSE. Thu, 22 May 2014 18:00:00 GMT

An Economy of Temporary Possession [Audio]

Speaker(s): Elizabeth Popp Berman, Christopher Newfield | Editor's note: We apologise for the poor quality of these audio podcasts. Some Q&A sessions have been removed. 25 June 2014 is the thirtieth anniversary of the death of Michel Foucault. ‘Governing Academic Life’ marks this anniversary by providing an occasion for academics to reflect on our present situation through our reflections on Foucault’s legacy – which could include critical reflections on that legacy. The focus of the conference, therefore, will be on the form of governmentality that now constitutes our identities and regulates our practices as researchers and teachers. However the event will also create a space for encounters between governmentality scholars and critics of the neoliberal academy whose critiques have different intellectual roots – especially Frankfurt school critical theory, critical political economy; feminism; Bourdieuian analyses of habitus, capital and field; and autonomist Marxism. Thu, 26 Jun 2014 11:30:00 GMT

Governing Academic Life - Measurement, management and the market university - Measurement, m… [Audio]

Speaker(s): Professor Danny Dorling | It is widely accepted that high rates of inequality are damaging to society, although some skeptics remain to be convinced. Perhaps it is because the most damaging form of economic inequality now appears to occur when the very richest 1% take more and more, even if the other 99% are becoming more equal. So what exactly is it about inequality that causes most harm? Danny Dorling (@dannydorling) is the Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography, Oxford. He advises government and the office for national statistics, appears regularly on TV and radio, and writes for the Guardian, New Statesman and other papers. His new book Inequality and the 1% is published by Verso Books. Professor Corbridge is Deputy Director and Provost of LSE. He is a professor of international development with longstanding research interests in governance and the political economy of growth, especially in India. The Geography and Environment department at LSE (@LSEGeography) is a centre of international academic excellence in economic, urban and development geography, environmental social science and climate change. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording). Tue, 7 Oct 2014 18:30:00 GMT

Inequality and the 1%: what goes wrong when the rich become too rich [Audio]

Speaker(s): Dr Qaiser Khan, Marta Foresti, Peter Hawkins | Dr Qaiser Khan will be joined by a panel to discuss Improving Basic Services for the Bottom Forty Percent: Lessons from Ethiopia, which examines Ethiopia's model in delivering basic services and why it appears to be succeeding. Qaiser Khan is a lead economist and program leader at the World Bank and the co-author of Improving Basic Services for the Bottom Forty Percent: Lessons from Ethiopia. Marta Foresti is Director of Politics and Governance Programme at the ODI. Peter Hawkins is Head of Profession for Programme Management at DFID. Jean-Paul Faguet is a Professor of the Political Economy of Development in the Department of International Development at LSE. He is chair of the Decentralization Task Force of the Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia University and author of a wide range of publications. The Department of International Development (@LSE_ID) promotes interdisciplinary post-graduate teaching and research on processes of social, political and economic development and change. Credits: Tom Sturdy (Audio Post-Production), LSE AV Services (Audio Recording). Wed, 8 Oct 2014 18:30:00 GMT

Improving Basic Services for the Bottom Forty Percent: lessons from Ethiopia [Audio]

For more episodes visit http://lse.ac.uk/iq. To subscribe on iTunes visit http://apple.co/2r40QPA or search for 'LSE IQ' in your favourite podcast app.

Welcome to LSE IQ, a new monthly podcast from the London School of Economics and Political Science. This is the podcast where we ask some of the smartest social scientists - and other experts - to answer pressing questions about economics, politics or society. 

In this episode, Jo Bale investigates how big company bosses continue to command ever increasing salaries despite shareholder rebellions, government intervention and public criticism. She talks to Sir Vince Cable of LSE's Institute of Global Affairs, Deborah Hargreaves of the High Pay Centre, Dr Dirk Jenter, Associate Professor of Finance at LSE, Professor Sandy Pepper of LSE's Department of Management and Max Steuer of LSE's Centre for Philosophy. 

To subscribe on iTunes please visit - https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/lse-iq-podcast/id1223817465

Or search for 'LSE IQ' in your favourite podcast app or add our RSS feed -http://www.lse.ac.uk/assets/richmedia/webFeeds/lseiqpodcast_iTunesStore.xml

For further information about the podcast visit http://lse.ac.uk/iq and please tell us what you think using the hashtag #LSEIQ https://twitter.com/hashtag/LSEIQ?f=tweets

Why is CEO pay so high?

To subscribe on Apple podcasts please visit http://apple.co/2r40QPA or search for 'LSE IQ' in your favourite podcast app or visit http://lse.ac.uk/iq

Welcome to LSE IQ, a new monthly podcast from the London School of Economics and Political Science. This is the podcast where we ask some of the leading social scientists - and other experts - to answer intelligent questions about economics, politics or society. 

It is with alarming regularity that reports of prison violence, overcrowding and concerns over the impact of funding cuts are hitting the headlines. With 46% of all prisoners reoffending within a year of release last year, the system could be considered not just expensive and unpleasant, but failing. In this episode, Jess Winterstein takes a look at the prison system in England and Wales and asks, is our prison system broken?   

This episode features: Dr Simon Bastow, LSE Fellow, Department of Management; Professor Nicola Lacey, School Professor of Law, Gender and Social Policy at LSE; and Dr Sharon Shalev, a fellow of the Mannheim Centre for the Study of Criminology and Criminal Science at LSE and founder of SolitaryConfinement.org

For further information about the podcast and all the related links visit http://lse.ac.uk/iq and please tell us what you think using the hashtag #LSEIQ.

Is our prison system broken?

The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is a world-leading university, specialising in social sciences, with a global community of people and ideas that transform the world. Our podcasts focus on the social sciences and the world today.

Expulsions: brutality and complexity in the global economy [Audio]

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