Ghosts of Afghanistan

  • Date: 9th February 2012
  • Time: 18.30pm-20.00pm
  • Venue: Hong Kong Theatre, LSE
  • Chair: Professor Mary Kaldor
  • Speakers: Jonathan Steele, Francesc Vendrell

Mary Kaldor is Professor of Global Governance and Director of the Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit at the London School of Economics.  She previously worked at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and the University of Sussex, including the Science Policy Research Unit, before coming to the London School of Economics in 1999.  In addition, she was a founder member of European Nuclear Disarmament (END), founder and Co-Chair on the Helsinki Citizen’s Assembly, a member of the Independent International Commission to Investigate the Kosovo Crisis chaired by Richard Goldstone, and a governor for the Westminster Foundation for Democracy. She also directs the Global Civil Society research programme at LSE that produces the annual Global Civil Society Yearbook.

Mary has written widely on security issues and on democracy and civil society. Her books include The Baroque Arsenal (Andre Deutsch 1982), New and Old Wars: Organised Violence in a Global Era (Polity Press, 2nd ed. 2006), Global Civil Society: An Answer to War (Polity Press 2003), Human Security: Reflections on Globalisation and Intervention (Polity Press, 2007) and most recently The Ultimate Weapon is No Weapon: Human Security and the Changing Rules of war and Peace (PublicAffairs, 2010) written jointly with a US Army officer.

Mary is currently convenor of the Human Security Study Group, assembled at the request of Javier Solana, then High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy of the European Union, which produced ‘A Human Security Doctrine for Europe’(2004) ‘A European Way of Security’ (2007) and ‘Helsinki Plus: A Human Security Architecture for Europe’ (2010). In 2009-2010, she was a member of  the Defence Advisory Forum which advised the UK Minister of Defence on the preparation of a green paper on Defence.