LSE: Public lectures and events

Speaker(s): Minouche Shafik, Professor Sir John Hills, Dr Waltraud Schelkle, Professor Richard Sennett, Professor Alex Voorhoeve | In November 1942, former LSE Director William Beveridge published a report that was to lay the foundation for Britain’s welfare state, caring for its citizens ‘from cradle to grave’. 75 years on, you are invited to join new LSE Director Dame Minouche Shafik, as she considers the future of social safety nets in a very different world economy. Minouche Shafik is Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science. Prior to this she was Deputy Governor of the Bank of England. John Hills is Richard Titmuss Professor of Social Policy at the London School of Economics and co-director of the LSE’s interdisciplinary International Inequalities Institute. He was director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Exclusion from 1997 to 2016 and is currently Chair of CASE. His work has focused on inequality, the welfare state, and the role of social policy over the life course. Waltraud Schelkle is an Associate Professor of Political Economy at the European Institute and has been at LSE since autumn 2001, teaching courses on the political economy of European integration at MSc and PhD level. She is an Adjunct Professor of economics at the Economics Department of the Free University of Berlin. Dr Schelkle is also a (non-resident) Senior Fellow at the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS), Johns Hopkins University, Washington D.C. and Chair of the Advisory Board of the Centre for Social Policy Research (Zentrum für Sozialpolitik) in Bremen. Richard Sennett (@richardsennett) writes about cities, labor, and culture. He teaches sociology at New York University and at the London School of Economics. Alex Voorhoeve is Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at the LSE and part-time Visiting Professor of Ethics and Economics at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Shirley Pearce is currently Chair of Court and Council at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Beveridge 2.0 - Rethinking the Welfare State for the 21st Century The core theme of Beveridge 2.0 is to run throughout this academic year, informing how LSE shares its research and its societal impact. Engagement activities such as the LSE’s acclaimed public events programme, schools outreach work and LSE Festival will shine a light on the ‘Five Giants’ identified in the Beveridge report, re-cast for the 21st century and for the global context. Originally described as Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness, today’s giants are framed as the challenges of poverty; health and social care; education and skills; housing and urbanisation; and the future of work. LSE’s community is coming together for the LSE Festival (19 – 24 February 2018) to explore these themes as deeply as possible, and to consider the interconnectedness of the themes. Cross-cutting questions, such as the issues of rights and expectations of citizens with respect to welfare provision; questions of who decides, who provides and who pays for welfare provision; and sustainability – financial, environmental and social will be addressed, along with the identification of ‘missing Giants’ that a modern day Beveridge would prioritise instead.