UCL Interdisciplinary Society for International Development, the UCL Grand Challenge of Global Health and UCL Public Policy are pleased to announce a symposium on “Lessons for Global Health from India”.

The event aims to bring together academic researchers and students, policy-makers, think-tanks, and NGOs to discuss some of the latest research on India, and the implications for global health. Emphasis will also be placed on the practical lessons that could be drawn from such research for addressing global health challenges and the implications for public policy at regional, national and global level.

Speakers:

Dr Vinay Bothra, UK Health Protection Agency
Dr Sushrut Jadhav, UCL Medical School
Dr Babken Babajanian, Overseas Development Institute
Tarit Mukhopadhyay, UCL Biochemical Engineering
Dr Ken Shadlen, Department of International Development, LSE

The event will be accompanied by a poster exhibition. To submit an abstract, please see our website..

Organised by the UCL Interdisciplinary Society for International Development, UCL Public Policy and the UCL Grand Challenge of Global Health.

Kennedy Lecture Theatre
Institute of Child Health
UCL
Guilford Ste
London
WC1N 1EH

Followed by a drinks reception in the Kennedy Foyer

To register for this event, please see our website.

Happiness, wellbeing and quality of life have been climbing up the public policy agenda in recent years, with governments apparently devoting increasing attention to how to improve people’s life satisfaction. But what lies beneath these warm words about the need to improve quality of life?

What makes people happy remains a hotly debated issue. With uncertainties about what conditions and interventions can improve happiness or quality of life, it remains unclear how governments and others can act to improve it, or how such improvements can be measured or recorded. This presents significant challenges to attempts to improve the happiness of populations. What can policy-makers learn from the scientific evidence on human happiness and how can they put this evidence into policy and practice?

This event will bring researchers and policy-makers together to explore some of the evidence on what makes people happy, including considering the relations between genes and happiness and what causes humans to be optimistic. It will seek to draw out the implications for policy and consider how policy-makers can act to help to improve quality of life and deliver on their promises of happiness.

Speakers:

• Dr Jan Emmanuel de Neve, UCL School of Public Policy

• Dr Tali Sharot, UCL Cognitive, Perceptual & Brain Sciences

• Dr Gemma Harper, Chief Social Researcher, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

• Stephen Hicks, Measuring National Well-being Progress, Office for National Statistics

The event will be chaired by Professor Brian Collins, UCL Centre for Engineering Policy.

6pm, 29 May 2012

Sir David Davies Lecture Theatre, Roberts Building, UCL, Torrington Place, London WC1E 7JE

Followed by a drinks reception in the Roberts Foyer

To register for this event or to read more about UCL Public Policy, please see the website.

Tuesday 20 March 2012
Royal Statistical Society, Errol Street, London, EC1Y 8LX

This meeting, organised by the Economic and Social Data Service, will provide a forum for data users and producers to meet and discuss new developments and exchange information about the Living Costs and Food Survey. The programme contains a mixture of papers from data producers and researchers.

The meeting is free to attend and lunch is provided. To view the programme and book a place please go to http://www.ccsr.ac.uk/esds/events/2012-03-20/

6pm, 19 March 2012

Sir David Davies Lecture Theatre
Roberts Building
UCL

Followed by a drinks reception in the Roberts Foyer, UCL

With one of the most tumultuous years in European affairs now just behind us, the challenges facing Europe today remain arguably as great as any faced in the history of the EU. Against this backdrop, the lecture will draw on the most recent opinion survey data from an annual survey by Edelman on the state of trust between four major constituencies – Government, Business, NGOs and the media – and examine what these findings means for the way in which each needs to understand the others, and how to engage with them as a result. It will also consider some specific implications for the European Union, its policy-making and institutions, and the conduct of public affairs in it, during such a time of crisis of confidence.

Speakers

Martin Porter, Managing Director, Edelman The Centre
Professor Richard Bellamy, UCL Europe Institute

The event will be chaired by Professor David Coen, UCL School of Public Policy

Organised by the UCL European Institute and UCL Public Policy

To register for this event or to read more about UCL Public Policy, please see our website.

Date: 6 March 2012
Location: Institute of Education, London

A few places are still available for a free workshop on mixed methods and narrative research that explores resources for secondary data analysis from the 1958 British Birth Cohort Study, also known as the National Child Development Study.

The workshop, which will take place on 6 March 2012 at the Institute of Education in London, will look at how qualitative resources from the study can be used in tandem with the quantitative longitudinal data to carry out mixed methods research. However researchers may also be interested in the qualitative materials in isolation as rich resources for secondary analysis or as material to help inform and frame new data collection.

This is one of a series of events, organised by ESDS, in support of the ESRC’s Secondary Data Analysis Initiative. These events are designed for researchers who are not current users of these ESRC-funded data resources, and who wish to apply for grants under this Initiative. It is not suitable for students.

This course is free to attend but booking is essential. Cancellations must be received within 5 working days of the event, otherwise a cancellation fee of £25 will be charged.

Book now to avoid disappointment. See details and booking form here http://www.esds.ac.uk/news/eventdetail.asp?id=3102

Wednesday 21 March 2012, 9.30am – 1pm

Royal Statistical Society, Errol Street, London, EC1Y 8LX

ESDS Government has organised this half-day Opinions and Lifestyle Survey user meeting, which will comprise a number of papers from users of the current ONS Opinions Survey and the General Lifestyle Survey. The user meeting will also provide users with valuable information from ONS on the content and methodology of the new Opinions and Lifestyle Survey that will be created in 2012 as a result of merging the ONS Opinions survey with some of the previous General Lifestyle Survey questions. For more information on this please see the ONS website at http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/about-ons/consultations/closed-consultations/2011/the-future-of-the-glf-survey/index.html

To view the programme and book a place for the user meeting please go to http://www.ccsr.ac.uk/esds/events/2012-03-21/

The policy discourse on climate change has tended to focus primarily on mitigation in order to reduce carbon emissions and minimise a global temperature rise. However, with growing evidence pointing to a likely global average temperature rise of more than 2ºC, possibly within decades, it is apparent that future efforts also need to focus much more seriously on adapting to the effects of climate change that are now inevitable.

This event will consider the financial risks associated with climate change adaptation, or the lack thereof. It will address potential scenarios of climate change and adaptation, and explore the degree of awareness among business leaders and policymakers of the risks presented by a changing climate.

Through a particular focus on water, the event will address some of the specific financial risks of climate change in more depth. It will investigate the financial and business risks of both flood and drought, including the challenges facing the continued operation of business, and increasing and unpredictable insurance exposure to such risks.

The event will also reflect upon the actions that businesses will need to take in order to adapt to changed circumstances brought about by climate change, and the role of policymakers in mitigating the associated risks and establishing the appropriate policy frameworks.

Speakers

Rob Bailey, Senior Research Fellow for Energy, Environment & Resource Governance, Chatham House
Dr Sarah Bell, UCL Civil, Environmental & Geomatic Engineering
Darius Campbell, Head of Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation, DEFRA
Dr Julien Harou, UCL Civil, Environmental & Geomatic Engineering
Lisa Horrocks, Project Director for Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation, AET Technology
Professor Bill McGuire, Professor of Geophysical & Climate Hazards, Aon Benfield UCL Hazard Centre
Bill Peck, Head of Corporate Planning, Aon
Bob Piggott, Head of Group Contingency Risk, HSBC

The event will be chaired by Julian O’Halloran, BBC.

Organised by UCL Public Policy in conjunction with Aon

5pm, 1 March 2012

Gustave Tuck Lecture Theatre
Wilkins Building
UCL
Gower St
London
WC1E 6BT

Followed by a drinks reception in the South Cloisters, Wilkins Building, UCL

To register for this event or to read more about UCL Public Policy, please see our website.

Beneath the present financial crisis, modern global capitalism faces deeper anxieties. Climate change threatens irreparable damage to ecosystems and human societies, while rising prices of energy, food and commodities indicate that the expansion of supply and improvements in resource productivity are not keeping pace with the growth of global demand, particularly in the emerging economies. At the same time consumption growth in the industrialised world has gone into reverse, as historically low savings ratios are raised, debts are repaid and average household income declines. At a deeper level indices of social wellbeing indicate an inchoate dissatisfaction with the patterns of consumption of the long boom, where public and cultural goods of various kinds – including equality and social cohesion – have been traded off against private material demand.

These (contested) challenges to contemporary capitalism ought to provide a political opening for ‘progressive’ forces. Yet social democratic parties, in the UK and elsewhere, have struggled to benefit from the crisis. The failures of office have been accompanied by an inability sufficiently to distinguish a progressive version of capitalism from a conservative one. In this context there would appear to be a unique opportunity for ‘green’ politics, whose critique of the environmental limits to growth and the costs of consumption now look prescient. Yet the ingrained utopianism of green political thought, and the weak social base of environmental movements, have historically prevented their emergence as a transformative political force. Could a synthesis of the green and social democratic political traditions offer a more convincing political prospect?

In his first lecture as Visiting Professor in UCL Political Science and the UCL School of Public Policy, Michael Jacobs will offer some reflections on the nature of the current crisis and the challenges it raises for progressive political economy and political theory. Andrew Simm (new economics foundation) will act as discussant.

Michael Jacobs is Visiting Professor in UCL Political Science and the UCL School of Public Policy. Author of The Green Economy and The Politics of the Real World and editor of Greening The Millennium: The New Politics of the Environment, he was Special Adviser at the Treasury and 10 Downing St for six years until 2010.

Other speakers
Andrew Simms, new economics foundation
Professor Wyn Grant, Professor of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick

The event will be chaired by Professor Paul Ekins, UCL Energy Institute.

Organised by UCL Public Policy

5pm, 1 March 2012

Sir David Davies Lecture Theatre
Roberts Building
UCL
Torrington Place
London
WC1E 7JE

Followed by a drinks reception in the Roberts Foyer

To register for this event or to read more about UCL Public Policy, please see our website.

The Social Research Association and the Social Statistical Section of the Royal Statistical Society are hosting the 2011 Cathie Marsh Memorial Lecture.

8 November 2011 5:00pm, at the Royal Statistical Society
Tea/coffee available from 4.30

Chair

Jil Matheson, National Statistician, ONS

Speakers

Professor Neville Davies, Director, The Royal Statistical Society Centre for
Statistical Education, University of Plymouth
Richard Alldritt, Head of Assessment and UK Statistics Authority board member
Professor Mike Hough, Institute for Criminal Policy Research, School of Law,
Birkbeck College

Statisticians and social researchers too often find their findings misreported and misused. The charge is often made that too many people in the UK are innumerate. This limits the reporting of social issues and people’s understanding of the social world with attendant implications for policy making.

This meeting is free but places are limited. Bookings are via the RSS.
Please register by email meetings@rss.org.uk or phone 020 7638 8998 or click here. For a map and directions see www.rss.org.uk/findus.

We anticipate the presentations and discussions will finish by 7pm

Chris Kershaw
Sent on behalf of the RSS Social Statistics Committee

“The Survey Skills Programme is a unique training programme for career-young social researchers to gain a first-hand insight into how the data they analyse was collected, or to understand more fully the issues faced by survey organisations when trying to provide high quality data. A prestigious collaboration of academic institutes and professional research organisations, including the National Centre for Social Research, the Office for National Statistics, TNS – BMRB and IpsosMORI have joined together to offer a wide range of training opportunities covering all stages of the survey research process.

Survey Skills, funded by ESRC since 2009 as part of the Survey Resource Network, is targeted at early-career social researchers whether studying for postgraduate degrees or working in central and local Government, the public, voluntary or charity sectors. It is a low cost practical training programme comprising an introductory workshop followed by tailored placements. The cost to enter the programme is on a sliding scale between £20 and £50 depending on your research sector. In addition we do have a small resource available to help fund travelling to ensure this programme is accessible to everyone.

The workshop provides an overview of the survey process from the practitioner’s viewpoint. It considers quality in relation to the decisions made at each stage of the process, with an emphasis on how participants can recognise quality in survey data. It also provides an introduction to other resources available to social researchers. In the afternoon we showcase a national social survey and discuss related methodological issues. The workshops offer a great opportunity to network with fellow researchers from across the social research community and act as a gateway into a range of other Survey Skills and ESRC activities & resources.

Participants can then move onto up to four days of placement activity which provides hands-on experience of the process of running a survey. Placements are free of charge and have included activities such as accompanying an interviewer during a household ‘face to face’ interview, visiting the UK Data Archive, visiting a telephone unit, attending a workshop on analysing longitudinal data, and shadowing a survey team working in one of the survey organisations.”

For more information visit: http://www.surveynet.ac.uk/ssp/workshops/scheduled.asp