There are frequent discussions (including at this year’s Festival) on how our current economic system should be reformed and improved to address global challenges. But, should we be thinking more radically about the problems with capitalism? Can we imagine an alternative way of organising our societies?
Meet our speakers and chair
Grace Blakeley (@graceblakeley, @graceblakeley.substack.com) is an author, journalist, and political commentator. She attended University of Oxford where she graduated with a first-class honours degree in philosophy, economics, and politics. She has written for the Guardian, Tribune and the New Statesman among others, and appears regularly on television and radio, including on ITV Good Morning Britain, TalkTV and Jeremy Vine on Channel Five.
Abby Innes (@abbyinnes.bsky.social) is Associate Professor of Political Economy in the European Institute at LSE. She is the author of Czechoslovakia: The Short Goodbye (Yale University Press, 2001) and Late Soviet Britain: Why Materialist Utopias Fail (Cambridge University Press, 2023). She has published widely on issues of party-state development and state capture in Central Europe, and, more recently, on the political economy of the neoliberal state in the UK. Her work has appeared in The Review of International Political Economy, Comparative Politics, The Journal of Common Market Studies, East European Politics and Societies and Current History, The London Review of Books and numerous LSE blogs.
Richard Davies (@richarddavies.bsky.social) is an economist and author. He teaches courses on economics and data science, both with a focus on policy, in the School of Public Policy at LSE. Richard is also the Director of the Growth Co-Lab at LSE, a research collaboration with Harvard University’s Growth Lab that provides advice to governments on inclusive growth practices, with recent projects covering Ukraine, the UK, Namibia, Tanzania and South Africa.
More about this event
This event is part of the LSE Festival: Visions for the Future running from Monday 16 to Saturday 21 June 2025, with a series of events exploring the threats and opportunities of the near and distant future, and what a better world could look like. Booking for all Festival events will open on Monday 19 May.
Hashtag for this event: #LSEFestival
LSE holds a wide range of events, covering many of the most controversial issues of the day, and speakers at our events may express views that cause offence. The views expressed by speakers at LSE events do not reflect the position or views of The London School of Economics and Political Science.