Contributor(s): Joshua Foer | Once upon a time remembering was everything. Today, we have endless mountains of documents, the Internet and ever-present smart phones to store our memories. As our culture has transformed from one that was fundamentally based on internal memories to one that is fundamentally based on memories stored outside the brain, what are the implications for ourselves and for our society? What does it mean that we've lost our memory? Joshua Foer studied evolutionary biology at Yale University and is now a freelance science journalist, writing for the National Geographic and New York Times among others. Researching an article on the U.S. Memory Championships, Foer became intrigued by the potential of his own memory. After just one year of training and learning about the art and science of memory, he won the following year's Championship. Foer is the founder of the Athanasius Kircher Society, an organization dedicated to 'all things wondrous, curious and esoteric' and the Atlas Obscura, an online travel guide to the world's oddities. Moonwalking with Einstein is his first book.

Contributor(s): John Cullen, Professor Zhang Xinmin, Robin Bellis-Jones, Andrew Shilston | 10.30, John Cullen, University of Sheffield, Innovation in the NHS - Can Accounting Stimulate and Facilitate Innovative. 11:30, Professor Zhang Xinmin, University of International Business and Economics, Corporate Governance and Strategic Cost Management: A View from China. 14:00, Robin Bellis-Jones, Director, Bellis-Jones Hill Group, Costing in the NHS - From Measurement to Management. 15:00, Panel Session. 16.30, Andrew Shilston, Chief Financial Officer, Rolls Royce, ICAEW Distinguished Practitioner Lecture. The theme for the 32nd MARG conference is Cost Management Strategies: Shifting Gears. The aim of the conference is to promote the discussion and development of leading edge ideas between researchers and senior practitioners.

Contributor(s): John Cullen, Professor Zhang Xinmin, Robin Bellis-Jones, Andrew Shilston | 10.30, John Cullen, University of Sheffield, Innovation in the NHS - Can Accounting Stimulate and Facilitate Innovative. 11:30, Professor Zhang Xinmin, University of International Business and Economics, Corporate Governance and Strategic Cost Management: A View from China. 14:00, Robin Bellis-Jones, Director, Bellis-Jones Hill Group, Costing in the NHS - From Measurement to Management. 15:00, Panel Session. 16.30, Andrew Shilston, Chief Financial Officer, Rolls Royce, ICAEW Distinguished Practitioner Lecture. The theme for the 32nd MARG conference is Cost Management Strategies: Shifting Gears. The aim of the conference is to promote the discussion and development of leading edge ideas between researchers and senior practitioners.

Contributor(s): John Cullen, Professor Zhang Xinmin, Robin Bellis-Jones, Andrew Shilston | 10.30, John Cullen, University of Sheffield, Innovation in the NHS - Can Accounting Stimulate and Facilitate Innovative. 11:30, Professor Zhang Xinmin, University of International Business and Economics, Corporate Governance and Strategic Cost Management: A View from China. 14:00, Robin Bellis-Jones, Director, Bellis-Jones Hill Group, Costing in the NHS - From Measurement to Management. 15:00, Panel Session. 16.30, Andrew Shilston, Chief Financial Officer, Rolls Royce, ICAEW Distinguished Practitioner Lecture. The theme for the 32nd MARG conference is Cost Management Strategies: Shifting Gears. The aim of the conference is to promote the discussion and development of leading edge ideas between researchers and senior practitioners.

Contributor(s): Thomas M Hoenig | Thomas M Hoenig is president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. He assumed the role of president on October 1, 1991, making him the longest serving of the 12 current regional Federal Reserve Bank presidents. He is senior member of the Federal Reserve System's Federal Open Market Committee, the key body with authority over national monetary policy in the United States.

Contributor(s): Joan Clos | Urban areas will have to play an increasingly important role as part of strategies addressing global climate change: due to their wealth, they disproportionately contribute to global carbon emissions. At the same time, dense, compact cities have repeatedly shown to be far more carbon efficient than other settlement types of similar affluence. The need for urban areas to adapt to some of the unavoidable consequences of climate change is acute due to the particular threats of extreme weather that come with it. Without addressing the risks associated with complex urban systems and infrastructure, an ever-increasing urban population might end up living in the more vulnerable locations of cities and mega-cities, potential disaster traps. Joan Clos, United Nations Under Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN-HABITAT examines climate change in an urban context and discusses UN Habitat’s new Global Report on Human Settlements: Cities and Climate Change.

Contributor(s): Senator Lindsey O. Graham | Lindsey O. Graham was elected to serve as United States Senator on November 5, 2002. He serves on five committees in the U.S. Senate: Appropriations, Armed Services, Aging, Budget and Judiciary. A native South Carolinian, Graham grew up in Central, graduated from D.W. Daniel High School, and earned his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of South Carolina in Columbia. Graham logged six-and-a-half years of service on active duty as an Air Force lawyer. From 1984-1988, he was assigned overseas and served at Rhein Mein Air Force Base in Germany. Upon leaving the active duty Air Force in 1989, Graham joined the South Carolina Air National Guard where he served until his election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1994. During the first Gulf War, Graham was called to active duty and served state-side at McEntire Air National Guard Base as Staff Judge Advocate. He received a commendation medal for his service at McEntire. Since 1995, Graham has continued to serve his country in the U.S. Air Force Reserves and is one of only three U.S. Senators currently serving in the Guard or Reserves. He is a colonel and is assigned as a Senior Instructor at the Air Force JAG School.

Contributor(s): Ricky Burdett, Bruce Katz | LSE Cities and the Brookings Institution have carried out new research on how cities and metropolitan areas are responding to current economic challenges. Ricky Burdett will discuss how selected European and Asian cities - Torino, Barcelona, Munch and Seoul - have overcome crises in the recent past and shown significant progress in urban economic development over the past two decades. Bruce Katz will outline a vision of the next American economy, one that is driven by exports, powered by low carbon, fuelled by innovation and rich with opportunity and led by major metropolitan areas, which concentrate the nation's economic assets. This will include connecting lessons of economic restructuring from abroad to the challenges facing US metros. A central finding of the research is that cities will continue to play a critical role in creating and sustaining stable economies that foster social inclusion and environmental equity, but only if metropolitan governance is active and aligned, and cities continue to invest in social capital, job creation and quality of place. Ricky Burdett is Professor of Urban Studies at LSE and Director of LSE Cities. Bruce Katz is Vice President at the Brookings Institution and Founding Director of the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program, and a Visiting Professor of Social Policy at LSE. Alexandra Jones is Chief Executive of the Centre for Cities. LSE Cities is an international centre that carries out research, education, outreach and advisory activities in the urban field. The recently established centre (1 January 2010) builds on the interdisciplinary work of the Urban Age, extending its partnership with Deutsche Bank's Alfred Herrhausen Society for a further five-year period. LSE Cities extends LSE's century-old commitment to improving our understanding of urban society, by studying how the built environment has profound consequences on the shape of society in an increasingly urbanised world where over 50% of people live in cities. LSE Works is a new series of public lectures, sponsored by SAGE publications, that will showcase some of the latest research by LSE's Research Centres. In each session, LSE academics will present key research findings, demonstrating where appropriate the implications of their studies for public policy. A list of all the LSE Works lectures can be viewed online.

Contributor(s): Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope, Professor Mary Kaldor | The inter-relationship between global and national security is a feature of our connected world. Rapid change and uncertainty in the global strategic environment is bringing new security challenges. Emerging powers are morphing into future strategic competitors, competition for resources is increasing, non state actors are challenging state assumptions about security and the effectiveness of supranational institutions is being questioned. The potential for challenges to other states to impact upon our national interests is becoming better understood. At the same time, more traditional threats to defence and security cannot be discounted. States need to think afresh about the scope and delivery of their responsibilities for the security and well being of their citizens. Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope, the First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff of the Royal Navy, considers the implications for states, now and in the future. Mary Kaldor is Professor and Co-director of LSE Global Governance, LSE. David Held is Graham Wallace Professor of Political Science and Co-Director, Centre for the Study of Global Governance, LSE.

Contributor(s): Professor Barry Eichengreen | The dollar, the world's international reserve currency for over eighty years, has been a pillar of American economic hegemony. In the words of one critic, the dollar possessed an "exorbitant privilege" in international finance that reinforced U.S. economic power. In Exorbitant Privilege, eminent economist Barry Eichengreen explains how the dollar rose to the top of the monetary order before turning to the current situation. Barry Eichengreen is Professor of Political Science and Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. He has written for the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, and other publications. This event celebrates the publication of his latest book Exorbitant Privilege: The Rise and Fall of the Dollar.

Contributor(s): Luis Almagro | Foreign Minister Almagro will outline the Uruguayan Government's Policies on International Relations, focusing on the Southern Cone sub-region, Latin America and the world. Dr Almagro will highlight the positive outcome already achieved by the current Government, with regard to the country's attractive investor-friendly policies, its strategic geographical location as a financial hub in the Southern Cone, as well as its development in the fields of Science, Technology and Innovation. Luis Almagro was appointed Foreign Minister by President Mujica in March 2010. A career diplomat and trained as a lawyer. He was a supporter of the National Party in his younger days before moving to the Frente Amplio. He joined the MFA in 1987. Diplomatic postings include Ambassador to China (2007 to 2010); Bonn (1998-2003) and Iran (1991-96). In the MFA in Montevideo he worked in the Minister's private office (1997-98) and was Deputy Director for International Economic Affairs in 2005. In 2006 he went to work for then Agriculture Minister José Mujica as head of the Ministry's International Affairs Unit. He is keen to promote commercial diplomacy in the foreign service and improve professionalism.

Contributor(s): Alejandro Poiré | Alejandro Poiré is the National Security Spokesman, Presidencia de la República.

Contributor(s): Pavan Sukhdev | Pavan Sukhdev is Study Leader for the G8+5 commissioned report on The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), a hugely influential global study launched in Nagoya in October 2010. He is also Special Advisor and Head of the United Nations Environment Programme's (UNEP) Green Economy Initiative. Prior to his work for TEEB and UNEP, Pavan was Head of Deutsche Bank's Global Markets Business in India and a founding member of the Green Indian States Trust (GIST).

Contributor(s): Ernesto Cordero | Ernesto Cordero is the Mexican Minister of Finance. This event marks the inauguration of Mexico Today Economic Prospects and Public Security, a week long conference of public events.

Contributor(s): Professor Dani Rodrik | Managing globalisation requires that we get the balance between markets and regulation and between the global economy and the nation-state right. A healthy globalisation is one that is not pushed too far. Esteemed economist Dani Rodrik examines the pressure points in the global economy and what can be done about them, and looks at the situation from its seventeenth-century origins through the milestones of the gold standard, the Bretton Woods Agreement, and the Washington Consensus, to the present day. Dani Rodrik is Rafiq Hariri Professor of International Political Economy at John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He is one of the world's top economists, well known for his original and prescient analyses of globalisation and economic development. The book The Globalization Paradox is published by Oxford University Press this month. Dani Rodrik will be signing copies at the event. Global Policy is an innovative and interdisciplinary journal bringing together world class academics and leading practitioners to analyse both public and private solutions to global problems and issues.

Contributor(s): Lord Malloch Brown | The dramatic shifts underway in global economic, political and social society are leading to new stress points. Both at the global level as a country like China pushes its way to the top of the table and at the national level as power shifts, not just between countries but within countries as rapid wealth creation, and elsewhere destruction, creates new local winners and losers. Again China is a good example. Mark Malloch-Brown will then argue that rather than just obsessing over elusive, usually wrong, predictions about who the global and local winners and losers are, we have to accept change is now a constant and we need flexible new ways of managing our global and national affairs, whoever is up or down, that recognise that much of the old intergovernmental system is breaking down and leaving us dangerously ungoverned as change and global integration accelerates. Mark Malloch-Brown has held a unique set of positions across the heights of the international system. After leaving a career in journalism, he served as a World Bank vice president and as the head of the United Nations Development Program and deputy secretary-general to Secretary General Kofi Annan. Most recently, he was minister for Africa, Asia, and the UN in the government of Gordon Brown. Jeffrey Sachs named him one of Time Magazine's 100 Leaders and Revolutionaries.

Contributor(s): Stuart Popham | Stuart Popham will discuss many of the changes which he has seen in his 35 year career. Stuart Popham is the senior partner of Clifford Chance LLP, worldwide.

Contributor(s): David Gilmour, Marco Simoni | Italy today has the seventh largest economy in the world. Yet despite its economic and cultural riches, it has never achieved a successful political system. Does the blame lie with its founders? Was Italy predestined to be a failed nation state? David Gilmour, the author of The Pursuit of Italy, is a much-admired historian whose books include three prize-winning biographies, The Last Leopard: A Life of Giuseppe di Lampedusa, Curzon and The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling. He has written on Italy for numerous publications including the TLS, the New York Review of Books, the Sunday Times and the Spectator. Dr Marco Simoni is a lecturer in European Political Economy and (until August 2011) a British Academy post-doctoral fellow at the European Institute. He received his PhD in Political Economy from the European Institute, LSE in 2006 and his Laurea cum laude in Political Science and Political Economy (Masters degree with distinction) from the Università di Roma “La Sapienza” in 2000. His research interests revolve around topics of comparative capitalism, mostly the role of large organizations, such as trade unions, political parties, as well as their interaction with governments. His research explores both the determinants of their strategies and their impact on different measures of economic performance.

Contributor(s): Martin Wolf | The financial crisis was the product of an unstable interaction between ants (excess savers), grasshoppers (excess borrowers) and locusts (the financial sector that intermediated between the two). In view of this history, is the current recovery solidly built? Or do the weaknesses the crisis revealed remain pervasive? Martin Wolf is the associate editor and chief economics commentator at the Financial Times.

Contributor(s): Vince Cable, Howard Davies, Angel Gurria | Now in its 50th year, the OECD has established itself as the leading international economic organisation for socio-economic analysis, best practice policy based on peer review, benchmarking and internationally comparable indicators and statistics. Its achievements have made a major contribution to both economic development within its membership and global economic issues. Bringing together business, think–tanks, academia, government and the media, the seminar will address the economic challenges facing policy makers working to transition the world economy from crisis to a period of strong, sustainable and balanced growth. The seminar will also foster a debate on future challenges that tomorrow’s economic policy makers will face, as the OECD looks forward to the next 50 years.