How can social research and lighting design work together to make better public spaces?

Dr Don Slater

Light – and its absence – is a ubiquitous part of social experience. While we might expect lighting – how we configure, design and regulate it – to be a developed area of research and public debate, it has been overlooked until recently. Dr Don Slater reflects on the interventions of the Configuring Light research group, focusing on lighting and safety projects in India and London’s Olympic Park and a lighting policy project in Bangkok, Thailand. He draws on his experiences of these projects to show how social research and lighting design can come together to create better public spaces.

Watch a recording of this event

Building an interdisciplinary approach to colonial history

Dr Maël Lavenaire

The social sciences are talking more and more about the importance of interdisciplinary research. Dr Maël Lavenaire will show the value of bringing together sociology and social history to better understand colonial history, drawing on his study of social transformation in the French West Indies after World War II and his new research project on continuing social-racial inequalities in Jamaica, Guadeloupe and Martinique since the abolitions of slavery. Taking us into the colonial histories of the British and French empires, he demonstrates how an interdisciplinary approach can give insight into social change in the post-slavery societies of plantation America.

Watch a recording of this event

Moving and staying: Ukrainian experiences of migration during the conflict

Professor Lucinda Platt

Since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, it is estimated that nearly 6.5 million Ukrainians have migrated internationally and millions more have been internally displaced. Professor Lucinda Platt explores the findings from a specially designed survey of Ukrainians undertaken in 2022 and 2023. She sheds light on how those who move differ from those who stay, on patterns of movement and return, and how the responses to the conflict of both movers and stayers have evolved over this period. 

Watch a recording of this event

How has the far right gained power across Europe – and did European integration have anything to do with it?

Dr Marta Lorimer

While far-right parties were largely relegated to the political margins after World War II, today they have become a regular feature of European party systems. How did the far right go from an illegitimate fringe to contenders for public office – and did Europe have anything to do with it? Dr Marta Lorimer considers the role of European integration in the normalisation of the far right. Drawing on her new book, Europe as Ideological Resource, she explores how European integration has functioned as an ideological resource for far-right parties looking for legitimation, allowing them to repackage their political message in a more acceptable form while maintaining the allegiance of their existing supporters.

Watch a recording of this event

Why are things this way? Visualising life in post-austerity Britain

 Dr Eileen Alexander

Dr Eileen Alexander discusses Why are things this way?, an exhibition on display in LSE’s Atrium Gallery between 4 March and 12 April 2024 that has been created in collaboration with six residents of Hackney, East London, and artist Andy Sewell. Through a selection of photographs and fragments of text, the artwork engages with experiences of what it is like to live in post-austerity Britain. Eileen explores how the creation of artwork in social policy research offers participants alternative forms of expression, makes ideas accessible to a wider audience, and deepens our understanding of lived experience. 

Watch a recording of this event

How conversational are conversational technologies? 

Professor Elizabeth Stokoe

OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Bing and Google’s Bard have made chatbot interfaces available to mass markets. But how ‘‘conversational’’ are these technologies and what does ‘‘conversational’ actually mean? Professor Elizabeth Stokoe introduces conversation analysis as a way of understanding human social interaction and positions conversation design at the forefront of industry developments. Are conversational technologies ‘‘participants’’ in conversation, and will they ever be capable of emulating real conversation? 

Watch a recording of this event

How can open and inclusive decision-making help achieve universal health coverage? 

Professor Alex Voorhoeve

Achieving universal health coverage is one of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. A new World Bank report, Open and Inclusive, examines how fair decision processes in health financing can help make progress towards this goal. It argues that they can contribute to fairer outcomes, strengthen the legitimacy of decision processes, build trust in authorities, and promote sustainable reforms on the path to health coverage for all. In this talk Professor Alex Voorhoeve, co-author of the report, considers how we can achieve these values and when ensuring procedural fairness can be costly – or even fail.  

Watch a recording of this event

Cracking the code: using affirmative action to narrow the gender gap in STEM 

Dr Valentina Contreras

Despite being half the world's population, women make up only 35 per cent of STEM graduates globally. Dr Valentina Contreras explores how gender affirmative action policies can address this imbalance. Focusing on pioneering policies in Chilean engineering schools, this talk sheds light on the effectiveness of affirmative action for bridging the gender gap in STEM and fostering a more equal society.

Watch a recording of this event

Fixing football: how regulation could improve sports governance 

Dr Jan Zglinski

Football is in dire need of reform. The past decade of controversies surrounding the beautiful game, and those who run it, makes clear the need for change. In this talk, Dr Jan Zglinski explores how regulation could improve this state of affairs, discussing legislative initiatives such as the UK Fan-Led Review of Football Governance and the recent Super League litigation before the European Court of Justice.  

Watch a recording of this event

How should we approach decision-making for people with dementia? 

Professor Anna Mahtani

Anyone who has cared for a person with dementia will know there are many decisions to be made – from everyday decisions about what activities to pursue or what clothes to wear, to major ones about accommodation, care and medical treatment. Who should be making these decisions? What if decisions conflict with a person’s long-held values? Given many of us may develop dementia in the future, should we bind our future selves with living statements and wills? In this talk, Dr Anna Mahtani considers the philosophical implications of these questions surrounding dementia and decision-making. 

Watch a recording of this event

In the Long Run: the future as a political idea 

Professor Jonathan White 

Expectations of the future are a key stake of political struggle. Beliefs about what lies ahead carry implications for who should hold power, how it should be exercised, and for what ends. In this talk, Professor Jonathan White introduces some of the themes of his new book, In the Long Run. He highlights how modern democracy has relied on expectations of a future that is plentiful and shared, and how problems arise for democracy in an age of short-lived institutions and increased time pressure.  

Watch a recording of this event

Why we don’t Level Up: addressing spatial inequality in the OECD

 Professor Neil Lee

Spatial inequality is a major concern across the rich world, despite government efforts to address it. What are the economic and political barriers to addressing this form of inequality? In this talk, Professor Neil Lee draws on research across Western Europe and North America to investigate the economic and political roots of spatial inequality. He considers the ultimate drivers of spatial inequality and why UK government attempts to ''Level Up'' are unlikely to succeed.

Watch a recording of this event

Medical Influencers: what happens when doctors become social media celebrities?   Dr Rachel O'Neill

‘‘Medfluencers’’ represent a growing niche within the ever-expanding influencer industry. For many, this is a decidedly positive development as it is widely assumed that accredited expertise is a remedy for and antidote to health misinformation. But there are downsides to the rise of ‘‘medfluencers’’. In this talk Dr Rachel O’Neill examines what the entry of doctors to the ranks of social media celebrity might mean for the profession and for public health. 

Watch a recording of this event

Using people’s subjective wellbeing to craft policy that matters

Dr Christian Krekel

New welfare measures can help policymakers make better decisions about allocating resources, especially in times of constrained budgets and scarcity. Dr Christian Krekel discusses his current research and recent advances in behavioural welfare economics that use people’s self-reported life satisfaction and other wellbeing measures to analyse policy. Using people’s subjective wellbeing enables policy to focus on what really matters to people – whether their health, decent work or climate change.

Watch a recording of this event

Preparing for Extreme Heat: what does a resilient net zero look like in the UK?

Dr Candice Howarth

To respond effectively to climate risks, nations must use a combination of mitigation (measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions) and adaptation (measures to minimise negative outcomes from climate impacts). Little research to date has focused on integrating climate adaptation and mitigation policies to enhance the UK’s preparedness to extreme heat risks. While the UK is about to head into winter, the time to plan for extreme heat next summer is now. Dr Candice Howarth provides an overview of a developing framework that addresses the question: how can we keep Britain cool during extreme heat events without increasing greenhouse gas emissions? 

Watch a recording of this event

The Last Will and Sentiment: what wills reveal about English social, economic and psychological history  

Professor Neil Cummins

For the past millennium, the ‘‘last Will and Testament’’ has guided the transmission of wealth at death in England. Millions of these handwritten documents exist, typically listing an individual’s assets and inheritors in their own words. These wills represent our best record of individual lives and the economic, family, social and religious influences which mattered most to people as they contemplated their death. Professor Neil Cummins will draw on a new, large sample of wills to quantitatively reconstruct English economic, social and psychological history, documenting the behavioural roots of the modern world.

Watch a recording of this event 

Late Soviet Britain: Why Materialist Utopias Fail

Dr Abby Innes

Why are Conservative governments reproducing Soviet state failures? The rise of nationalist populism in some of the world’s richest countries has prompted urgent analyses of contemporary capitalism. Dr Abby Innes discusses her new book Late Soviet Britain, which for the first time explores how the Leninist and neoliberal revolutions have failed for many of the same reasons. These doctrines may have been utterly opposed in their political values, but when we grasp the kinship between their forms of economic argument and their practical strategies for government, we can better understand the causes of state failure in both systems as well as their calamitous results.  

Watch a recording of this event

Diplomacy in the Digital Age: new means, new challenges, new substance?

Dr Federica Bicchi

How is digitalisation impacting diplomacy? Often referred to as the second oldest profession in the world, diplomacy is undergoing a profound transformation because of technological changes. Digitalisation is affecting all traditional diplomatic functions, from information gathering to negotiation, as well as all diplomatic tools, from embassies to dispatches. A new ‘reality’ is taking hold of diplomacy via the pervasive use of digital tools and apps, creating new diplomatic practices (e.g. digital ambassadors, virtual embassies, WhatsApp groups) and revisiting old ones (e.g. news aggregators, conflict predicting apps). These changes are affecting diplomatic time, increasing its tempo. They are also impacting diplomatic spaces, ‘flattening’ geography but opening up new divides between those at the centre and at the periphery of diplomatic conversations. These challenges will have an impact on global conversations about foreign affairs, which explains why the debate is so contentious.

Watch a recording of this event

Navigating ethical and methodological issues in sex work research

Dr Sharmila Parmanand

There is a history of collaboration but also uneasy tension between sex work researchers and sex worker-led organisations. This is understandable because academic research is inevitably an extractive process, especially toward stigmatised, marginalised, and criminalised groups. We will not be able to fully remove ourselves from extractive and colonial structures of research, but there are steps we can take to minimise these harms. Drawing on her ethnographic research with sex worker organisations in the Philippines and Singapore, Dr Parmanand traces her methodological journey, with a focus on the ethical considerations involved in sex work research and her reflections on how to minimise hierarchies in knowledge production; develop creative research methods that do not merely yield "academic data" but also provide a space for validation, politicisation, and psychic relief for participants; recognise the intellectual contributions of actors outside academia; and build more reciprocal research relationships.

Watch a recording of this event

Building Better Blockchains

Professor Andrew Lewis-Pye

There has been much discussion of the potential for blockchain technology to revolutionise the way that money and other assets are moved around the world, but it is often said that a fundamental issue with "blockchains" is that they cannot handle transactions fast enough to be viable. In the past this was true. In his talk, Professor Andrew Lewis-Pye will describe how a range of new approaches are being used to build blockchains that process transactions at a rate well in excess of what Visa can handle, and what the benefits of better blockchains could be.

Watch a recording of this event

The City as Refuge

Dr Romola Sanyal

As the world becomes more urbanised and displaced people increasingly move to cities, we must ask, what shape does displacement take in these spaces? Are cities inherently the spaces of freedom where those who are displaced are able to claim rights to the city? Or do cities become camps where fear and violence immobilise displaced people in unique ways? How do the urban poor and the displaced collide and connect to create new urban politics and worlds? In this short talk, Dr Romola Sanyal explored some of these themes through a journey from the Middle East to South Asia.

Watch a recording of this event 

Working with Anticolonial, Activist and Community Archives
Dr Sara Salem, Dr Mai Taha

Within work on decolonisation and anticolonialism there has been growing interest in archives that are community led, as opposed to state-based or official institutional archives. Dr Sara Salem and Dr Mai Taha discuss their current project, which explores creative archiving practices, questioning what an archive is and looks like. Through research trips to various community archives around the world, including Jerusalem, Beirut, San Francisco, and Santiago, the project is developing a set of teaching tools, with examples of different types of anticolonial archives as well as guides on how to work with them and how to teach them. These tools will contribute to debates about anticolonialism, anti-racism and resistance in teaching and research.

Watch a recording of this event

Policy in Hard Times: how energy insecurity shapes policy preferences
Dr Liam Beiser-McGrath

This winter has seen many European countries experiencing unprecedented rises in energy prices and inflation, that are leading to significant increases in individuals' costs of living. In a context of hard economic times, should we be worried about negative economic conditions crowding out individuals’ support for climate and environmental action? Or do these times of crisis lead to a renewed effort to tackle long-term challenges? 

Dr Liam Beiser-McGrath examines how energy insecurity (the inability to easily meet the costs of household energy) affects individuals' policy preferences in this context. Utilising an original survey fielded in the United Kingdom in August 2022, the paper examines the role of retrospective (experience) and prospective (expectations) evaluations of energy insecurity on policy preferences. Doing so helps us to understand how energy and climate policy preferences are sensitive to changing economic conditions, as well as its spillover for social policies more broadly.

Watch a recording of this event

Sex Work and Trafficking: why the "Nordic model" is not the answer  
Dr Niina Vuolajärvi

The “Swedish” or “Nordic” model has in recent years risen to the centre of anti-trafficking and prostitution policy debates. It claims to revolutionise the policy field by criminalising the buying instead of the selling of sex. Sweden implemented this policy in 1999, relying on radical feminist arguments of commercial sex as a form of violence against women and a hindrance to gender equality. Since then, this policy approach has been adopted in several countries across Europe and America. But how does this policy affect the people it claims to protect? Dr Niina Vuolajärvi drew on her large-scale ethnographic research that includes 210 interviews conducted between 2012-2019 in Sweden, Norway, and Finland, to reveal the problems, in practice, of the progressive "Nordic model" and where the policy solutions really lie.

Watch a recording of this event

Navigating the High Seas: lessons in UN treaty negotiations
Dr Siva Thambisetty

Since 2019 Dr Siva Thambisetty has been acting as an adviser to various inter-governmental groups negotiating a new Ocean Treaty at the United Nations (UN). The Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Agreement seeks to form new rules and institutions over activities on the high seas, including the exploitation and study of genetic resources in areas beyond national jurisdiction. Dr Thambisetty reflected on her experiences working on such intensive negotiations at the UN in New York, and what it has meant for her understanding of her role as an academic and of the potential impact of her research, as well as the importance of sometimes being out of one’s depth.

Watch a recording of this event

Sending parcels to stay in touch: exploring material tokens of kinship across borders

Dr Sanda Caracentev

For decades all over the world, migrants with access to informal courier services have been sending parcels to stay in touch with their loved ones left behind. Packed with gifts, personal items, homemade food, sweets and love, these material tokens of kinship and connection across borders kept daily practices alive through sent objects. Using ethnographic examples from Moldova, Dr Caracentev’s research brings into focus the role of parcel-sending as an important way of staying in touch for families separated through migration. This talk will look at why people send regardless of price, necessity, availability of other communication channels and the effort put into packing, tapping into the fascinating processes that keep this connection going.

Watch a recording of this event

What gets in the way of our green intentions? Meat consumption as a case study

Dr Kate Laffan

Increasingly, people are reporting intentions to shift their lifestyles in ways which would reduce their negative impacts on the environment. For example, around a third of European consumers report intentions to reduce their meat consumption. If these intentions were followed through upon they would yield substantial environmental (as well as health and animal welfare) benefits. But good intentions often go astray. This talk will examine the situations in which people fail to act as they intend and what can be done about it.

Watch a recording of this event

Can what is done be undone? On irreversibility in people and particles

Dr Bryan Roberts

Why do we become older but not younger? Remember yesterday but not tomorrow? How should we change our behaviour when we can't take it back? These are all questions about the arrow of time, that curious asymmetry between the past and the future. Answering them is an adventure in science and philosophy, from people to particles, involving questions you may have wondered about but never thought you could begin to understand. At this event, LSE philosopher of physics Dr Bryan Roberts draws on his new monograph (Reversing the Arrow of Time) to help introduce how philosophers and scientists have been making progress on the nature of time and its arrow.

Watch a recording of this event

Making space for girls

Dr Julia King

Teenage girls are very badly served by public parks, usually designed for a particular demographic of teenage boys, based on assumed default boy stereotypes. As a result young girls feel unwanted and unsafe in public spaces. Dr Julia King’s research has brought young girls into the conversation about how to address this gap, empowering them to affect positive change by participating in research on their own communities. In this talk she will share the methodology of peer research and discuss some of the findings.

Watch a recording of this event
Read more: Are girls being designed out of public spaces?Watch (research film): Are girls being designed out of public spaces?

Sovereignty without power: Liberia in the age of empires, 1822-1980
Dr Leigh Gardner

Liberia’s economic history over two centuries shows the challenges and opportunities of sovereignty for independent states around the world during the age of empires. In this talk Dr Leigh Gardner will draw on her new book Sovereignty without Power, which provides the first quantitative and comparative economic history of Liberia and contributes to debates in economic and political history. Drawing together a wide range of archival sources, the talk will present the first quantitative estimates of Liberian’s economic performance and uses these to compare it to its colonised neighbours and other independent countries.

Watch a recording of the talk.
Watch: The battle for the Liberian dollar

Peace and Gender (In)equality: Lessons from the Colombian Peace Agreement of 2016
Dr George Kunnath

The Colombian Peace Accord, which ended over 50 years of armed conflict between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the state, marked a watershed moment in the history of peacebuilding as it aimed to redress the disparate impact of armed conflict on women and LGBTQ+. Dr George Kunnath will talk about his current project, supported by the Atlantic Equity Challenge (AEQ) Fellowship, which examines the implementation of these gender commitments. He will discuss the findings of the ongoing research by bringing into focus the voices of the former FARC women guerrillas, indigenous and Afro-Colombian women and LGBTQ+ through an intersectional lens. What lessons could the Colombian Peace Agreement offer to other conflict and post-conflict settings?

Watch the recording, Read the article

Tackling reckless lending and indebtedness in South Africa
Professor Deborah James

The legacy of apartheid for South Africa has been racialised inequality and structural poverty. Whilst South Africa has a relatively good social welfare system, it leaves those aged 18 to 59 with no or little income. Since the 1990s, South Africans (both in and out of work) have been borrowing extensively to meet their own and their dependents’ needs and expectations. The result has been unsustainable levels of debt, much of it with unsecured lenders and loan sharks – all based on a system of electronic file transfers facilitated by the financialisation of welfare. Anthropologist Deborah James will reflect on her work with human rights organisation Black Sash to tackle the exploitation of poor communities of welfare beneficiaries by lenders.

Watch the recording, Read the article

Migrant labour exploitation, care and inequality
Dr Jens Lerche, Dr Alpa Shah

It took one of the world’s most draconian COVID-19 lockdowns in India in March 2020 to draw public attention not only to the plight but to the very existence of armies of vulnerable migrant workers – one hundred million people living and working hand-to-mouth in Dickensian conditions far away from their homes. But what is to be done to reform the systematic exploitation of migrant workers? Dr Alpa Shah and Dr Jens Lerche will discuss their ethnographic research into the hidden economies of care that support these workers and sustain the exploitative system, and why it is crucial in finding a political solution.

Watch the recording

What is the role of great powers in the international politics of climate change?
Dr Robert Falkner
How does international power inequality affect the global ecological crisis and what role could and should great powers play in the international fight against climate change? Drawing on his new edited volume, Great Powers, Climate Change and Global Environmental Responsibilities, Dr Robert Falkner discusses what counts as a great power in the environmental field and what their special environmental responsibilities are. He explores whether emerging notions of great power responsibility for the environment can help mobilise some of the biggest greenhouse gas emitters (e.g. China, USA, India) to speed up the net zero transition.
Watch a recording of the session or read a write-up

Can asset transfers help women escape extreme poverty?
Professor Naila Kabeer
Professor Naila Kabeer talks about the difference asset transfers make to women in extreme poverty in India – in the short run and in the long run, based on research into the effects of an NGO programme in West Bengal started in 2007. Professor Kabeer discusses the importance of long-term evaluation of development initiatives, to examine who benefits and how, and whether change is long-lasting. She questions whether randomised control trials should really be the gold standard when it comes to evaluation.
Watch a recording of the session

Why making migration a crime doesn’t work
Dr Matilde Rosina
What are the purpose and consequences of criminalising irregular, or undocumented, migration? How does it affect migratory flows and receiving societies? Dr Matilde Rosina draws from her forthcoming monograph, The Criminalisation of Irregular Migration in Europe: Globalisation, Deterrence, and Vicious Cycles, to discuss the introduction of the ‘crime of irregular migration’ in Italy and France, and analyse its intended and unintended effects.
Watch a recording of this session

Impact through innovation: a partnership to provide digital mental health services
Professor Paul Dolan
Professor Paul Dolan provides an overview of the collaboration between LSE and Koa Health (a world leading digital mental health service) over the last five years, which transferred new scientific knowledge to real users of digital mental health services, including supporting the wellbeing of LSE students during the pandemic. The collaboration provides a model for a successful relationship between academia and industry to achieve real impact, as well as demonstrating the opportunities provided by mobile technology for wellbeing research and its application.
Watch a recording of this session

The perpetuation of social hierarchies and inequality in Russia
Professor Tomila Lankina
Why does the continuation of the Imperial Russian bourgeoisie (through communism and beyond) matter for democracy and development in post-communist Russia? Tomila Lankina discussed her forthcoming book The Estate Origins of Democracy in Russia: From Imperial Bourgeoisie to Post-Communist Middle-Class.
Watch the recording

Reinventada: the realities of women in Colombia during the pandemic
Dr Sonja Marzi
In this session Sonja Marzi presented how she adapted her research in Colombia during the COVID-19 pandemic by using smartphones for an innovative remote participatory video methodology.
Watch the recording

Caught in the middle: Iranian women at the intersection of domestic and international politics
Dr Nazanin Shahrokni
Drawing on her latest book, Women in Place: The Politics of Gender Segregation in Iran and her work on the impact of the US economic sanctions on Iranian households, Nazanin Shahrokni explained how international and domestic policy have shaped women's everyday life in Iran. 
Watch the recording

The hidden costs of air pollution
Dr Sefi Roth
From crime rates to cognitive performance, Sefi Roth explored some of the unseen costs of air pollution that make it even more imperative we clean up our air. 
Read the summary

Europe's philosophical history
Professor Simon Glendinning
Could there be a distinctively philosophical history of Europe? Not a history of philosophy in Europe, but a history of Europe that focuses on what, in its history and identity, ties it to philosophy. This talk draws on Simon Glendinning's new two-volume book, Europe: A Philosophical History.
Watch the recording or find out more in this article

Spectacular femininity: the unattainable standards of postfeminism
Dr Simidele Dosekun
Postfeminism is an upbeat, celebratory cultural address to women, and promise, that they are past or post- the need for feminism, that they are already individually empowered and can ‘have it all’, ‘do it all’. Drawing on her book, Fashioning Postfeminism: Spectacular Femininity and Transnational Culture, Simidele Dosekun told the stories of women she interviewed in Lagos, Nigeria, who practise a spectacularly feminine style and what their lives and attitudes tell us about postfeminism in Africa.
Watch the recording

Proxies: the cultural work of standing in
Dr Dylan Mulvin
Our world is built on an array of standards we are compelled to share – where some bits of the world end up standing in for other bits in order to facilitate the design of technologies and services. But how are those standards determined? Drawing on his new book, Proxies (available to download open-access), Dylan Mulvin shared some stories from the history of technology to show the way technologies, standards and infrastructures inescapably reflect the cultures that created them, and how those with the power to design technology, in the very moment of design, are allowed to imagine who is included—and who is excluded—in the future. 
Watch the recording, or find out more in this article and film 

Empire without end: an interconnected history of Britain and the Caribbean
Dr Imaobong Umoren
In this session Dr Imaobong Umoren will share some aspects of her current book project that documents the interconnected history of Britain and the Caribbean, focusing on the role and legacy that slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism have and continue to play in contributing to structural inequalities in both Britain and the Caribbean. Dr Umoren addresses how the consequences of the British empire in Britain and the Caribbean still shape contemporary politics and society

We held six in-person showcases in the Welcome Marquee on campus.

Crisis and Survival during the First World War
Dr Alex Mayhew

In this talk, Dr Mayhew explored the ways that First World War combatants dealt with crisis and conflict. What did crisis mean to them? How did they make sense of the world around them? How did they cope? 
Find out more in this article

The age of crises and emergencies: managing risk and regulation in the 21st century
Professor Martin Lodge, Dr Andrea Mennicken

Climate change, pandemics, troubled financial institutions and political processes such as Brexit, carry levels of uncertainty that challenge existing tools of risk and crisis management. What lessons for the management of these slowly emerging and ambiguous crises can we draw from leading research on risk and regulation? 
Find out more in this article

Understanding and researching difference
Dr Manmit Bhambra

In an increasingly interconnected world, where difference is often articulated along racial, ethnic, or religious lines, how can we understand better how to overcome these problems, and what is the role of social science in this process? Building on her work with young people and diverse communities, Dr Bhambra explored some of the key opportunities and challenges for research in this field.
Find out more in this video

The WeNet project: a social media platform capitalising on diversity
Professor George Gaskell

Can a chatbot algorithm be developed which takes advantage of the diversity of its contributors to provide an optimal service for its users? The audienc heard about a pilot underway by a European funded multinational project, combining AI and machine learning specialists with social scientists, to develop a diversity-aware ‘Ask for Help’ app, which allows users to submit questions to the student community and enables members of the community to provide answers. 

Kuwaitscapes: can card games help urban planning?
Alexandra Gomes, Tanushree Agarwal

Games are a great way to communicate urban research to wider audiences, and a fun means of engaging in public participation while designing and teaching. In this session Alexandra Gomes and Tanushree Agarwal introduced “Kuwaitscapes”, a card game based on research addressing some of the challenges and opportunities facing Kuwait’s residential neighbourhoods and everyday use of public space. Find out about the project, and the team behind it, and have a go at playing the game!

Talking about justice and building peace after mass atrocity
Dr Denisa Kostovicova, Dr Sanja Vico, Lana Bilalova

How do discussions about the violent past unfold, and to what effect? Dr Kostovicova and colleagues Dr Vico and Lana Bilalova presented their new findings about how post-conflict justice practices advance peace-building based on the innovative methods and analysis of large volumes of textual data in face-to-face exchanges and on social media. The research is part of the project Justice Interactions and Peacebuilding (JUSTINT), funded by the European Research Council (ERC).

You can also catch up with recordings from our online series:

A society in debt: how bankruptcy could help some of the UK’s poorest families
Dr Joseph Spooner

Almost one in five UK households have been unable to afford essential living costs as a result of the pandemic. But excessive household debt has been a problem for over a decade, encouraged by an economic model which seeks to maintain economic growth whilst wages stagnate and the welfare state shrinks. Drawing on his recent book Bankruptcy: The Case for Relief in an Economy of Debt, Dr Joseph Spooner will explain how bankruptcy law might offer a way out of unsustainable debt burden.

Watch the recording, or read more.

Navigating secrecy, stigma and silences: Talking about and visualising abortion research
Professor Ernestina Coast, Dr Rishita Nandagiri

Despite their diverse research settings, the stories that Professor Coast and Dr Nandagiri hear – from married mothers in India or adolescent students in Malawi – reveal the violence of injustice and inequity that characterise abortion access and provision as well as the seemingly contradictory emotions and experiences that surround abortion care-seeking, but how should those stories be communicated to others? 

Watch the recording

The morality of cooperation in Amazonia
Dr Harry Walker

Over the past several decades, many indigenous peoples of the upper Amazon basin have moved from a relatively nomadic existence towards a more localised and sedentary life in legally recognised communities. Drawing on long-term fieldwork with the Urarina people of Amazonian Peru, Dr Walker will reflect on how these transformations can shed new light on recent interdisciplinary debates around the evolution of cooperation and morality. He will examine the social factors that appear to influence how peoples’ moral reasoning changes over time, including new forms of leadership and public accountability, changing conceptions of wealth, and past experiences of collective action.

Watch the recording

Children Out of Place? Migration and Noncitizen Childhood
Professor Catherine Allerton

Throughout the world, with the growing securitization and criminalization of migration, migrant family life is increasingly characterised by temporariness and rupture. This has significant consequences for children born to migrant and refugee parents, who may find themselves excluded from health and education services, and at risk of statelessness. This talk draws on fieldwork with children of migrants in Sabah, East Malaysia, to explore some of the everyday consequences of being born ‘out of place’. What kinds of exclusions do children of migrants and refugees experience? What forms of belonging do they emphasise? Why should social scientists pay more attention to noncitizen childhoods?

Watch the recording

What are members of marginalised communities doing to protect themselves in a datafied society?

Our Data Bodies is a collaborative, participatory research and organising effort. Since 2015, we have been working in three cities: Charlotte, North Carolina; Detroit, Michigan; and Los Angeles California. Our project combines community-based organising, capacity-building, and rigorous academic research to find answers to questions about the relationship of technology to marginality. We have conducted approximately 140 in-depth interviews, a dozen participatory workshops, and three interpretive focus groups. Our preliminary findings reveal the impacts of everyday, pervasive surveillance on mental health and well-being, on the one hand, and acts of individual and collective agency, defiance, and refusal, on the other hand. 

Presenter: Seeta Gangadharan, Department of Media and Communications

Find out more about Our Data Bodies

How is student-led research changing LSE?

Change Makers is a collaborative programme between LSE and LSE Students' Union. It gives students the chance to make meaningful change at LSE by conducting independent research. Beginning in 2018/19, Change Makers funded approximately £50,000 worth of student-led research projects, each of which identified and investigated a specific aspect of the School. Findings and recommendations from those projects are now being shared, to impact on the student experience in 2019/20 and beyond.

Presenter: Ellis Saxey, Eden Centre

Find out more about Change Makers

What does the internet know about us?

How is our data shared and used in the digital environment? What are the risks and how can we protect our privacy online? Over the past year we have been talking to children, parents and educators about online data and privacy as part of our ICO-funded project "Children's data and privacy online: growing up in a digital age". We found that children are becoming aware of the commercial and institutional uses of their data and they care about their privacy, but there are important gaps in their media literacy and digital skills. Children often turn to their parents and teachers for guidance but adults also struggle to understand the complex digital environment and to know what to advise children. To promote children's understanding we developed an online privacy toolkit.

Presenters: Sonia Livingstone, Mariya Stoilova and Rishita Nandagiri, Department of Media and Communications

Find out more about Children's data and privacy online

What does it mean to think visually, and feel visually?

Why do people hate Trump’s Wall and love the Great Wall of China? To explore this question, I published an article “The Politics of Walls,” and then made a short film, “Great Walls”. This experience showed me how textual media are helpful for explaining the ideological issues of how walls divide people, while audio-visual media effectively highlight the affective intensities of how walls can also move and connect people. Research films thus push us to think visually, and feel visually. This is important because most people get their information about the world from visual media. “Great Walls” was made with the support of the LSE’s Knowledge Exchange and Impact fund.

Presenter: William A Callahan, Department of International Relations

Find out more about the politics of walls

How can we best make real-world decisions with human-made probabilities?

Science gives us tools that are both imperfect and useful. LSE's Centre for the Analysis of Time Series is at the forefront of improving these tools and communicating how to use them wisely. Our projects include collaboration with humanitarian agencies to save lives by acting before disasters occur, and forecasting the results of the US National Football League.

Presenters: Leonard Smith, Erica Thompson and Ed Wheatcroft, CATS

Find out more about CATS

How do we create engaging and creative outreach for disseminating research findings of public interest widely, using the spaces in the city we all share?

Public artwork commissioned by Civil Society Futures. The soundbox is a birdfeeder with a built-in speaker playing recordings of people working in the UK voluntary sector. These interviews are the raw data used in the report. The recording comprises six short pieces around the main emerging themes – the meaning of civil society, issues raised by young people about their community, etc. The soundbox is an engaging way to create outreach for research findings of public interest and invites listeners to think about the process of research analysis. Themes are curated not only around facts but also around opinion, emotion, and imagination.

Presenter: Mariana Bogdanova, Department of Management

Find out more about the birdfeeder soundbox

How can LSE Library collections support your research?

LSE Library staff will showcase two recent projects which demonstrate how the Library’s flagship collections can support research, and inspire future projects:

Jill Craigie: Film Pioneer - an AHRC-funded research project drawing on the Library’s Jill Craigie archive

Peace Activism and the "New Cold War" – an LSE-funded knowledge exchange and impact project based on the Library’s CND collection.

Presenters: Gillian Muphy and Anna Towlson, LSE Library

Find out more about LSE Library's collections

How do refugees integrate into the labour market of host communities?

The overwhelming majority of humanitarian migrants is hosted in low and medium income countries. Despite being poor, Uganda hosts the largest number of refugees in Africa. Given that unemployment is already high and local resources stretched, refugees face particular integration obstacles in these contexts. In looking into various initiatives in Uganda, this project tries to better understand what these integration challenges are, how these can be countered and what the role of both domestic and international actors in this process.

Presenter: Hilke Mairi Gudel, Department of Government

Find out more about mobile populations in Uganda

What does global health mean to you?

Why does global health matter? The Global Health Intiative is a cross-departmental research platform set up to increase the coherence and visibility of Global Health research activity across the School, both internally and externally. It provides support for interdisciplinary engagement and showcases LSE's ability to apply rigourous social science research to emerging global health challenges.

Presenter: Beth Kreling and Charnele Nunes, Global Health Initiative

Find out more about the Global Health Initiative

What is the lived experience of high-density housing in the London context?

Despite the flaws in focusing entirely on supply as the solution to the housing crisis, it is widely acknowledged that London is in need of more homes. With the city’s lateral expansion restricted by the Green Belt, this new housing is being produced at unprecedented densities – forming a contrast to the low-rise terraced houses and private gardens that characterise most neighbourhoods. In this film, residents of several high-density developments show us what they like and dislike about their homes. The film is part of a three-year research and knowledge-exchange programme exploring residents' experience of high-density living.

Presenters: Fanny Blanc and Kath Scanlon, LSE London and Tim White, LSE Cities

Find out more about living in high density

How can we use digital technologies and design to inform people about politics and policy?

Social scientists collect a lot of data. But data can only be useful for policy change if it is communicated in a way which gives context, understanding and creates interest. Three new projects from LSE's United States Centre (The State of the States), South Asia Centre (States of South Asia - India Pilot) and the Centre for Women, Peace and Security (WPS National Action Plans) illustrate social science data across different study areas by visualising policy trends, geographic, social and economic data, and the effectiveness of policy implementation.

Presenters: Chris Gilson, United States Centre, Nicky Armstrong, Centre for Women, Peace and Security, and Chris Finnigan, South Asia Centre

Find out more about these initiatives in the US Centre, South Asia Centre and Centre for Women, Peace and Security.

How does palm oil agriculture impact carbon emissions and haze episodes in Southeast Asia?

Through a number of multi-disciplinary collaborative projects, we aim to understand the environmental impact of deforestation and agricultural conversion in the tropical peat-swamp regions of Southeast Asia. Land clearance and drainage releases significant carbon emissions and increases landscape susceptibility to fires leading to costly air pollution episodes across Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore. Through field-scale experiments and opportunistic fieldwork at fires, our work aims to quantify greenhouse gas and haze-forming emissions from land degradation and burning, as well as investigate the serious deleterious effects on human health and the economy. Our work informs REDD+ initiatives and contributes to forest conservation management across the region.

Presenter: Thomas Smith, Department of Geography and Environment

Find out more about Dr Smith's work

How can government inefficiencies in the diffusion of sewerage infrastructure affect under-five mortality rates?

I study a nation-wide expansion of sewerage infrastructure that took place in Peru between 2005 and 2015 on under-five mortality using original administrative panel data at the district level and exploiting random geography-driven variation in budget allocation to instrument for project placement. Mortality rates increased in districts that experienced greater sewerage diffusion, attributable to poor technical rigor during the execution of the works and exacerbated by delays and mid-construction abandonment. Public interventions aimed at correcting market failures in the development of large infrastructure are prone to government failures that put at risk infant and child survival.

Presenter: Antonella Bancalari, Department of Social Policy

Find out more about this project

How does LSE support the career progression of its PhD students?

This comparative study draws on research conducted with three different groups of people: PhD students, Doctoral Programme Directors and PhD administrators. It seeks to explore current career development practice and evaluate strenghts, weaknesses and potential gaps in what is offered. Our findings have been compared with those from a similar study at the University of Oxford School of Social Sciences. the findings include: 1 Recommendations, 2 Case study of good practice, 3 Student to student advice, 4 The LSE PhD Career Development Culture.

Presenters: Catherine Reynolds, LSE Careers, and Hannah Cottrell, Department of Anthropology

Find out more about careers services for PhD students and research staff

How can we combat infectious disease and anti-microbial resistance with real-world innovations?

The Bloomsbury SET (Science, Economics, Technology) is a £5-million programme of translational research activities funded by Research England’s Connecting Capability Fund. Led by the Royal Veterinary College in partnership with LSE, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and SOAS, the programme focuses  on the development of low-cost, portable diagnostic tools and vaccines to counter infectious diseases and increasing resistance to antimicrobials. It aims to connect places, people, businesses, ideas and infrastructures in pursuit of innovative solutions (tools, vaccines, models) that will help safeguard human health.

Presenters: Aygen Kurt Dickson, LSE Research and Innovation, and Mark Smith, RVC

Find out more about the Bloomsbury SET

From wildfires to wellbeing, from the history of the slave trade to the future of refugees – find out more about the fascinating range of projects at last year's event.

Browse the photo gallery from the event.

Research projects on display:

What makes students and staff happy at LSE?

Reflections aims to better understand happiness and its drivers at LSE. Through a new mobile app the study will gather information such as mood, personality, behaviour, and location.This information is collected via short daily surveys in the app about how you feel, and combined with information from your phone, like how far you’ve walked that day or how much you’ve used your phone. Analysing this data will help build understanding of the different factors that contribute to happiness, develop insights on what might improve wellbeing at LSE in the future, and contribute to further research into happiness.

Presenters: Professor Paul Dolan, Amanda Henwood and Luc Schneider, Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, LSE

info@reflections.study

How can you perform powerful, flexible, fast text analysis?

quanteda is a fast, flexible, and comprehensive framework for quantitative text analysis in R. Standing for “Quantitative ANalysisof TExtual DAta”, the package provides a comprehensive suite of functions for corpus management, creating and manipulating tokens and ngrams, exploring keywords in context, forming and manipulating sparse matrices of documents by features and featureco-occurrences, analyzing keywords, computing feature similarities and distances, applying content dictionaries, applying supervised and unsupervised machine learning, visually representing text and text analyses, and more.

Presenter: Professor Kenneth Benoit, Department of Methodology, LSE

quanteda.org

What do young people think it means to spend money, or to refrain from spending money?

Behavioural Research Lab Junior is a series of events that combine research into young people’s ideas about money with public engagement. Research participants visit LSE with a parent or teacher, take part in research at the Behavioural Research Lab (BRL), learn more about our work here, and tour LSE with student guides. The student guides get hands-on experience conducting research and doing public engagement.

Presenter: Dr Heather Kappes, Department of Management, LSE

How does palm oil agriculture impact carbon emissions and haze episodes in Southeast Asia?

Through a number of multi-disciplinary collaborative projects, we aim to understand the environmental impact of deforestation and agricultural conversion in the tropical peat-swamp regions of Southeast Asia.

Land clearance and drainage releases significant carbon emissions, and increases landscape susceptibility to fires leading to costly transboundary air pollution episodes across Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, and Singapore. Through field-scale experiments and opportunistic fieldwork at fires, our work aims to quantify greenhouse gas and haze-forming emissions from land degradationand burning, as well as investigate the serious deleterious effects onhuman health and the economy. Our work informs REDD+ initiatives and contributes to forest conservation management across the region.

Presenter: Dr Thomas Smith, Department of Geography and Environment, LSE

http://drtels.co.uk

How can social researchers and lighting professionals collaborate to produce a better urban public realm?

Configuring Light carries out a wide range of projects that explore the role of light in producing urban space. Through collaborations with lighting professionals and urban designers, planners and policymakers, we aim to improve the social knowledge base for public lighting in particular and the material fabric of urban spaces in general.

Presenters: Dr Don Slater, Department of Sociology, LSE; Dr Joanne Entwistle, King’s College London; Elettra Bordonaro, Lighting Designer

configuringlight.org

How can LSE Library support your research?

Members of our LSE community use the Library’s archives and support to push the frontiers of social science research. Recent research projects include an interactive hub of Charles Booth’s London poverty maps; collaborations with Google Arts and Culture for the anniversary of the Representation of the People Act; and an open access educational resource exploring the Cold War.

lse.ac.uk/library/collections

What are the most pressing global health challenges faced by the world today?

The Global Health Initiative (GHI) is the LSE’s interdepartmental hubfor research and collaboration in Global Health. Within LSE it links global health related work happening across the School and fosters interdisciplinary collaboration. Activities include a Peer Review Reading Group, networking events, and support for interdisciplinary research grant development. Externally the GHI raises the profile of LSE work in the field showcasing our research and engaging key stakeholders. Activities include a GHI Seminar Series, regular newsletters, and GHI web pages providing a single entry point to health research and blogs from across the School.

lse.ac.uk/health-policy/global-health-initiative

How can we get drug policy to move beyond the war on drugs?

The “war on drugs” has raged for decades with trillions of dollars spent and incalculable numbers or lives lost. Meanwhile, illicit drug markets continue unabated and the harms inflicted by counter-productive prohibitionist policies on individuals and communities, particularly poor and marginalised communities, continue to mount. The LSE International Drug Policy Unit has been working with civil society and governments around the world to bring a greater awareness andutilisation of academic research to formulate more effective policies which move beyond the failed “war on drugs”.

Presenter: Dr John Collins, LSE International Drug Policy Unit

lse.ac.uk/drugpolicy

To what extent do reading lists provide evidence for bias against women?

Based on mapping activities led by the Gender and Diversity Project at the LSE’s International Relations department, this research explores questions of gendered bias as visible through course reading lists.

Findings indicate multiple layers of effects unfavourable to female author inclusion: 79.2% of texts on reading lists are authored exclusively by men, reflecting the representation of women neither in the professional discipline nor in the published discipline. Level ofstudy, subfield and the gender and seniority of the course convener all correlate with this unequal representation of female authors.

The showcase invites audience members to investigate these effects in an interactive way and be part of a discussion about possible ways to address them.

Presenters: Dr Gustav Meibauer, Department of International Relations, LSE; Gokhan Ciflikli, Department of Methodology, LSE

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1354066118791690

How was a British trading monopoly embedded in an African geopolitical context?

The Royal African Company was a British joint-stock company witha monopoly over the African trade in the late seventeenth century. It conducted trade for gold and slaves via a series of forts along the West African coast, with a hub at Cape Coast Castle in modern-day Ghana.

Our project combines computational text analysis with GIS to thematically map the correspondence, over 3000 letters, that the Royal African Company sent between locations on the African coast in the final two decades of its monopoly. We utilize word frequency analysis, word2vec, and co-occurrence and market-basket analysis to better understand how a seventeenth-century monopoly tried to defend itself against competitors, how it managed trade on the coast and how it interacted with African merchants, states and societies.

Presenter: Dr Anne Ruderman, Department of Economic History, LSE

What's the Library doing to promote your research?

Find out how the Library is supporting researchers at LSE through digital scholarship and innovation. Our recent projects include illustrated abstracts with a graphic artist; a politics textbook published by LSE Press; and this year we’re launching a project to map research support across the School.

Presenters: Lucy Lambe, Scholarly Communications Officer, LSE; Nancy Graham, Research Support and Academic Liaison Manager, LSE; Nadia Marks, User Experience Researcher, LSE.

lse.ac.uk/library/research-support

How does faith shape peace and conflict in South Sudan?

Using the concept of Public Authority, researchers in the Centre for Public Authority and International Development are investigating the roles played by a multitude of actors and institutions – including governments, clans, religious institutions, aid agencies, civil society organisations, rebel militias – that make co-operation and economic activity possible in conflict-affected areas.

Presenters: Dr Naomi Pendle, Research Officer, Firoz Lalji Centre for Africa, LSE; Elizabeth Storer, PhD Student, International Development, LSE

lse.ac.uk/cpaid

How can refugees rebuild not only their lives but also help with the reconstruction of their home country?

Rebuilding Somaliland After Conflict: The role of a London diaspora examines a contemporary case study in human resilience during and after civil war. Thousands of traumatised Somalis sought refuge in Britain following the collapse of the Siad Barre regime and the civil war in 1991. Many of these refugees were ex-combatants or from broken civilian families. Focusing on this historical refugee flow, Dr Joanna Lewis is researching the history ofwomen, humanitarian intervention, and recovery. Dr Shane Marottais examining the relationship between the diaspora, the politics of recovery and the physical rebuilding of a new capital city.

Presenters: Dr Joanna Lewis and Dr Shane Marotta, Department of International History, LSE; Mohammed Ismail, Project Researcher, LSE.

What is anthropology? And what is development?

The people of Kuamar, a small Shuar community in Ecuadorian Amazonia, asked a group of anthropologists to explain what anthropology is and what its value might be. They wanted to “exchange knowledge” with them. A public assembly was organised in which the anthropologists explained what their discipline aims to be and how they learn from and with the people who welcome them into their lives. Inspired by the event, a group of young people from the community asked to be filmed as they talked about what they want from their future and what they reject about “development”.

This is part of a larger 5-year research project investigating the social, cultural and cognitive bases of moral judgements in Western Amazonia, exploring how the indigenous peoples of Western Amazonia pursue and enact forms of justice in their everyday lives.

Presenters: Natalia Buitron-Arias, Gregory Deshoulliere and Rita Astuti, Department of Anthroplogy, LSE

lse.ac.uk/anthropology/research/justice-morality-and-the-state-in-amazonia