PAST EVENTS 2010-2011
Enter the category for this item: SEPT 2010
Roland Bleiker
Queensland University
Images and Humanitarian Crises
The LUC proudly announces the first lecture in its visiting speaker programme. We are honoured to host Prof. Roland Bleiker of the University of Queensland, Australia. He will speak about his ongoing, collaborative project, 'How Images Shape Responses to Humanitarian Crises.'
Interested students can prepare for the seminar by reading an article provided by Prof Bleiker for this purpose.
[poster in pdf]
29 September 2010
LUC Opening Event
We are honoured to be able to announce that the LUC opening event will feature three world-renowned scholars from different fields: Prof Andrew Hurrell (Oxford University), Prof Rey Chow (Duke University), and Prof Simon Conway Morris (Cambridge University).
Regrettably, attendance at this historic event will be by invitation only.
LUC Opening Event
We are honoured to be able to announce that the LUC opening event will feature three world-renowned scholars from different fields: Prof Andrew Hurrell (Oxford University), Prof Rey Chow (Duke University), and Prof Simon Conway Morris (Cambridge University).
Regrettably, attendance at this historic event will be by invitation only.
Enter the category for this item: OCT 2010
Rey Chow
Duke University
Framing the Original: Toward a New Visibility of the Orient
In collaboration with the Modern East Asia Research Centre (MEARC) and hosted by the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis (ASCA), LUC is proud to bring Prof Rey Chow (Duke University) to the Netherlands. She will talk about new paradigms for the study of contemporary China and East Asia, using the Ang Lee film,'Lust. Caution.'
[poster in pdf]
Andrew Mbogori
UNHCR Tanzania
Protracted Refugee Situations in Africa
With thanks to the organisers of the 15th International Metropolis Conference, LUC is delighted to host Andrew Mbogori from the UNHCR, Tanzania. Based on years of professional experience, he will address the issue of forgotten refugees and the ‘successful’ case of Burundi refugees who fled their country decades ago and have been living in Tanzanian settlements since.
The lecture will deal with various aspects of belonging, the opportunities and challenges it poses in the context of legitimacy and justification of processes of migration and integration, as well as their consequences for social policies.
[poster in pdf]
Ineke Sluiter
Leiden University
Free Speech and Political Deliberation
LUC is honoured to host Prof. Ineke Sluiter of Leiden University.
Prof. Sluiter, who was awarded the prestigeous Spinoza Prize in 2010, will talk about 'Free Speech, Political Deliberation, and the Marketplace of Ideas.'
This lecture explores the metaphor of the “marketplace of ideas” in debates over freedom of speech and political deliberation. Starting from the legal case against controversial Dutch politician Geert Wilders, it takes a look at the archaeology of the concept in ancient Greece, fast-forwards to the United States at the beginning of the 20th century, analyses the nature of the frame of the “marketplace”, and studies three subsequent theories that take their lead from this metaphor: marketplace mechanisms as a way to elicit information from a group in order to make the deliberative process more effective (Sunstein); the analysis of the metaphor as a vehicle of social criticism (Ingber); and the consequences of more recent insights into the functioning of the actual economy for ideas about freedom of speech (Blocher). After a brief return to the Wilders case and the “rhetoric of free speech”, Professor Sluiter will end with the briefest of suggestions for an alternative model for thinking about free speech: an evolutionary theory of rhetoric.
[poster in pdf]
Purnima Mane
United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)
Women, Peace, & Security -- the 10th anniversary of UN Security Council Resolution 1325.
On 20 October 2010, the UN Population Fund launches the State of World Population 2010. On this occasion, LUC is delighted to be able to host Purmina Mane (Deputy Executive Director, UNFPA) to talk about Women, Peace and Security in the context of the 10th anniversary of the landmark resolution 1325.
Students should prepare for the lecture by reading the text of resolution 1325, and looking at further information about it on the UNIFEM site.
[poster in pdf]
Enter the category for this item: NOV 2010
Herman Siemens
Leiden University
Nietzsche on Conflict
Herman Siemens comes to LUC from the Institute for Philosophy at Leiden University, where he works on Nietzsche and post-Nietzschean thought.
We are excited that he is able to come to LUC to discuss Nietzsche's influential and powerful ideas about the role of conflict in human life.
[poster in pdf]
Rietje van Dam-Mieras
Leiden University
We and System Earth
Rietje van Dam-Mieras is the Vice-Rector of Leiden University and Professor of Sustainable Development and Innovation in Education. A great supporter of LUC The Hague and a member of our Academic Advisory Board, we are honoured to have her give our first seminar on sustainability. She will speak on 'We and System Earth,' revealing the rich and varied ways in which our lives interact with the planet on which we rely.
[poster in pdf]
Lindsay Black
Leiden University
Assisting Human (In)security: Japan and/in Myanmar.
Lindsay Black is Assistant Profesor in the International Relations of East Asia at Leiden University and a member of the Modern East Asia Research Centre. We are delighted to be able to host his seminar on the ideational and political foundations of Japan's ODA policy in Myanmar, whivch has been much criticized from the perspectives of Western IR theory. Dr Black proposes a more 'Japan-centred' interpretation focussing on an emerging 'Japan School' of IR Theory.
Students can prepare with these short readings.
[poster in pdf]
Christopher Coker
London School of Economics
The Ethical Challenge of Military Robots
Every new military technology begins with a debut in one war and realises its potential in the next. On the last day of the Gulf War (1991) a CNN camera crew captured the picture of 5 Iraqi soldiers trying to surrender to an unmanned military robot, the first time in history that armed men tried to surrender to an unarmed machine. In the 2003 war in Iraq Unmanned Aerial vehicles (UAVs) were a crucial part of the invasion. There are now 3000 robots on active duty in the country. And in the skies of Afghanistan and north west Pakistan drones have played a major role in taking out senior members of the al-Qaeda and Taliban leadership. The robotic age has arrived and yet only now are we beginning to debate the ethical implications of the path down which we are going. UAVs are only the beginning. By 2025 most major weapons systems will be unmanned.
This lecture will discuss the ethical issues involved in using UAVs in the larger framework of the future of war.
[poster in pdf]
Enter the category for this item: DEC 2010
Christopher Brooke
Cambridge University
Distributive Justice: Sidgwick to Rawls (and Hayek)
John Rawls is well-known today as a philosopher of justice, which he argued was the ‘first virtue of social institutions’. Friedrich Hayek is well-known today as a critic of idea of social justice, which he argued was meaningless, religious, self-contradictory, ideological, unfeasible and disastrous. People often therefore find it surprising to learn that Hayek remarked of A Theory of Justice that he and Rawls ‘agree on what is to me the essential point’, that he had ‘no basic quarrel’ with Rawls, that what Rawls was doing was ‘more or less what I have been trying to argue’. The history of distributive justice before Rawls is not well understood these days; and in the lecture, with reference to various debates that took place over the preceding hundred years among philosophers, political theorists and economists, Dr Brooke will try to explain how it was that Rawls and Hayek ended up in this curious and significant agreement.
[poster in pdf]
Enter the category for this item: FEBR 2011
2 February 2011
Dr. Hyowon Kim
LUC The Hague
Baggy Monsters of Adam Roberts’ New Model Army' (Connection, Chaos, and the Carnivalesque!)
"A talk, or pre-talk, in which some waffling touches upon Rabelais, Bakhtin, heteroglossia and the chronotope of chaos, the language of everybody else, stumbling toward social consciousness, erasing the ego, and the insistent I, I, I in connecting to become a collective consciousness. In other words, how to become a giant with a thousand talking heads and still make up your mind. Yes, only in a novel." -- Dr Hyowon Kim.
Dr. Hyowon Kim
LUC The Hague
Baggy Monsters of Adam Roberts’ New Model Army' (Connection, Chaos, and the Carnivalesque!)
"A talk, or pre-talk, in which some waffling touches upon Rabelais, Bakhtin, heteroglossia and the chronotope of chaos, the language of everybody else, stumbling toward social consciousness, erasing the ego, and the insistent I, I, I in connecting to become a collective consciousness. In other words, how to become a giant with a thousand talking heads and still make up your mind. Yes, only in a novel." -- Dr Hyowon Kim.
LUC-Brill/Nijhoff Writing Institute New Year's Lecture
Adam Roberts
London University
Democracy's Giganticism
Apart from a Professor of Nineteenth Century Literature, Adam Roberts is also a creative writer, the author of (to date) seven science fiction novels, seven parodies, two novellas, a collection of short stories and various other things. His teaching divides itself between literature (mostly nineteenth-century subjects) and creative writing; he is currently supervising PhDs in both areas.
In association with our partners at Brill Nijhoff, the eminent publishers of leading research in the fields of international law and human rights and sponsors of our Writing Institute, LUC is delighted to be able to host Prof Roberts as our first LUC-Brill/Nijhoff Writing Institute New Year’s Lecture. He will be speaking on the subject of ‘Demcracy’s Giganticism,’ drawing partly on his own fiction, including the ‘Dean’s Choice’ novel for Christmas 2010, ‘New Model Army.’
[poster in pdf]
Rosemary Foot
Oxford University
China, the United States, and Global Order
Rosemary Foot is Professor of International Relations at Oxford University and John Swire Senior Research Fellow at St.Antony's College, Oxford.
Professor Foot is world-renowed for her work on the foreign policy of China, particularly regarding human rights and security issues.
LUC is delighted to be able to host Professor Foot on the occasion of the publication of her most recent book, 'China, the United States, and Global Order,' which was co-written with Andrew Walter.
[poster in pdf]
Richard Gill
Leiden University
Learning from Lucia: Statistics, Law and Dutch Society
As a statistician Professor Gill became involved in the social movement to get a fair re-trial for Lucia de Berk, a nurse convicted of 7 murders and 3 attempted murders. This got him passionately interested in forensic statistics‚ fascinated by the problems of communication between scientific and legal worlds, and involved in several other lesser known, but possibly because of this, even worse miscarriages of justice (at least: suspected miscarriages of justice), in particular, the cases of Kevin Sweeney, convicted for murder of his wife by arson, and José Booij, whose six week old baby was kidnapped by child-protection agencies on the suspicion that the mother would later become insane and murder her daughter.
In his talk Professor Gill evaluates the role of statistics, and of statisticians, in the case of Lucia de Berk, leading to recommendations for the future: study of the case reveals systematic errors, in particular in the medical world.
[poster in pdf]
Enter the category for this item: MAR 2011
Inaugural LUC-Philosophy in the World Lecture
Simon Blackburn
University of Cambridge
Science, Philosophy, and Human Nature
One of the world's most eminent and accomplished philosophers, Simon Blackburn is Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge University and Vice President of the British Humanities Association. He has published widely on topics in philosophy and ethics, including in books and articles that make philosophy accessible to a wider, educated audience.
Professor Blackburn will be exploring some of the ways in which technological advancements challenge traditional disciplines, especially philosophy and psychology.
LUC is delighted to be able to host Professor Blackburn as the inaugural lecture in our annual series on Philosophy in the World, which seeks to explore the relationship between philosophy and real world developments in politics, justice, technology and the environment.
[poster in pdf]
Hendrik Lenstra
Leiden University
Escher and the Droste Effect
World-renowned scientist and Escher enthusiast Hendrik Lenstra is best known for introducing advanced techniques in the area of number-theoretic algorithms. These have important applications to computer security. Lenstra has been a member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Science since 1984. In 1998 Hendrik Lenstra won the Spinoza Award, and in 2007 he received an Academy Professorship from the Royal Dutch Academy of Science.
LUC is excited to host Professor Lenstra to talk about 'Escher and the Droste effect' – a seminar with a focus on Escher's lithograph 'Print Gallery', which will appeal to anyone interested in art, mathematics, or the intersection of the two subjects.
[poster in pdf]
Christopher Shields
University of Oxford
Plato's Problem about Justice
Christopher Shields has published widely on topics in classical philosophy, with a focus on Aristotle.
At this seminar, LUC is excited to host Professor Shields as he talks about Plato's engagement with the problem of justice, and in particular with the pressing question: why should I be just? Rooting his presentation in the text of The Republic, Shields challenges us to consider the origins and nature of justice, including the possibility that it contains an imperative not to be just at all.
[poster in pdf]
Joris Voorhoeve
Leiden University
Early Warning and Prevention of Violent Conflict
Joris Voorhoeve is Professor of International Organizations at Leiden University and previously Professor of International Security Studies at the Royal Dutch Defence Academy. Formerly, he was a member of the Dutch Parliament, serving as Minister of Defence from 1994-98.
The author of many books in international politics and policy, Professor Voorhoeve is eminent both within and without the academy, and LUC is proud to host him for his seminar on 'Early Warning and Prevention of Violent Conflict'.
[poster in pdf]
Enter the category for this item: APR 2011
Panel Discussion and Analysis
Japan, Earthquake, Tsunami, Nuclear Crisis
In collaboration with the Modern East Asia Research Centre (www.mearc.eu), LUC is pleased to be able to host a panel discussion about recent events in Japan. Experts about Japan (history, culture, politics, economics) will be joined by experts on nuclear power and radiation safety to discuss the dimensions and repercussions of the earthquake subsequent events.
The panel will be chaired by Professor Laurens Jan Brinkhorst, the former EU-Ambassador to Japan, and we will be joined by representatives from the Japanese Embassy.
[poster in pdf]
[programme]
Hidemi Suganami
University of Aberystwyth
On the Causes of War
Professor Suganami, who comes to LUC from the world-famous Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth University, will talk about the various ways that the field has come to understand the origins and causes of war. In particular, he will ask whether we can model the causes in a standard way, whether producing such models may in itself contribute to the causes of war, and how our understanding of war (and its causes) changes when we de-centre the sovereign state as an actor.
[poster in pdf]
[preparatory reading 1] / [preparatory reading 2]
Vincente Espinoza
Universidad de Santiago de Chile
Social Inequality in Latin-America: Situation, Mechanisms, Policies
Professor Espinoza is well known for his work on inequality, social networks, social mobility and community.
For LUC he will talk about the reasons for the persistency of inequality despite great advances in affluence in Latin America, and also about the reasons why such inequalities are considered problematic. He will consider this situation from the standpoint of policy and social mechanism.
[poster in pdf]
Enter the category for this item: MAY 2011
Nigel Rodley
University of Essex
Fighting Terror
Professor Rodley will discuss the problematic relationship between the need to combat terrorism and the need to maintain human rights (of both citizens who might become targets of terrorist attacks and those who might themselves be terrorists).
Professor Rodley contends that the human rights regime has retaken the upper-hand in this relationship, and that institutions at various levels once again place defence of human rights as their highest priority.
[poster in pdf]
Claire Moon
London School of Economics
Who will pay reparations on my soul? Compensation, social suffering and social control in Argentina
In this seminar, Dr Moon will discuss how state reparation to victims of (state) atrocities can work to administer and control social suffering but can, in some cases, intensify the trauma rather than ameliorate it. She will use the refusal of state reparations by the Argentinian mothers of the Plaza de Mayo as an example to make this argument.
[poster in pdf]
