Online session with Mary Kaldor, Professor of Global Governance and Director of the Conflict and Civil Society Research Unit in the LSE Department of International Development and Affiliate Professor at IBEI.

The Covid-19 moment has revealed a sense of responsibility of Governments for the lives of individual citizens. It is health and care workers rather than soldiers who are the heroes of the moment. This lecture will ask whether the existential threat posed by the pandemic is opening up the possibility for the kind of social and political transformation that earlier occurred in major wars. In particular, could it involve a shift from national security to human security, from a geo-political on the danger of war against other states to a new commitment to human rights – political, civil, social, economic and environmental? And from the security of the state to the security of individuals and communities?

Mary Kaldor, is a Professor of Global Governance and Director of the Conflict and Civil Society Research Unit in the LSE Department of International Development and Affiliate Professor at IBEI. Professor Kaldor also directs the unit’s largest research project, the Conflict Research Programme (CRP), an international DFID-funded partnership investigating public authority, through a theoretical lens of the political marketplace and the concept of civicness, across a range of countries in Africa and the Middle East. Professor Kaldor is highly regarded for her innovative work on democratisation, conflict, and globalisation. She was a founding member of European Nuclear Disarmament (END), a founder and Co-Chair of the Helsinki Citizen's Assembly and a member of the International Independent Commission to investigate the Kosovo Crisis, established by the Swedish Prime Minister.

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