Next week at London School of Economics:

Biosecurity in a post 9/11 world

Dr Fillipa Lentzos
BIOS Centre, LSE
12th June 2008 5-7pm
Room H216 (2nd Floor, Connaught House)

This talk is about the politics of biosecurity. It will consider how the security environment changed following the September 11th terrorist attacks in the US, the “Amerithrax” emergency and the thousands of hoax anthrax letters that ensued in the States, Britain and elsewhere, and how examining contemporary strategies for managing biorisks and the policies and policy networks developing around biosecurity can help us begin to explore whether we are seeing the emergence of a new form of governmentality focused on insecurity, risk and precaution.

All welcome, no ticket required. Seats allocated on a first-come, first served basis.
Map of LSE and surrounding area: http://www.lse.ac.uk/resources/mapsAndDirections/

This seminar will be followed by a drinks reception in the BIOS Centre, V1100 (11th floor, Tower 2).

For those within reach of Manchester, UK, this lecture could be interesting:

The Seventh Cardwell Memorial Lecture in the History of Technology

Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of Manchester

Professor John Krige, Georgia Institute of Technology
“Science, technology and American hegemony”

Tuesday May 27 2008, 5pm
Michael Smith Lecture Theatre, University of Manchester, UK

This talk will describe how scientific and technological exchange between the United States and Western Europe in the 1950s and 1960s served as an instrument of American foreign policy. The focus will be on domains in which there is a porous barrier between the civil and the military, notably nuclear and missile technologies. It will show how the US, deploying its technological leadership in an asymmetric field of force, tried both to strengthen and to channel European technological capabilities, steering them down avenues that cohered with its commercial, political and military interests in the region.

More details here.

This forthcoming seminar on Tuesday May 13th 2008 should be of interest to students of Islam, social integration, radicalisation, etc:

Dilwar Hussein, Head of Policy Research Unit at The Islamic Foundation

‘The Integration Debate and Evolving British Muslim Identities’

Time: 5.30-7.00
Location: The Old Committee Room (3c), Strand Campus, King’s College London

Further information here.

Monday 12 May 2008, London School of Economics: Professor Spike Peterson on Civil War: coping, conflict and criminal economies:

Professor Peterson will argue that reproductive, virtual and informal economies are central to how civil wars are funded and sustained, but also that post-conflict policies require such analysis to have any chance of success.

Could be interesting. More details here.