LSE Festival 2019 | Protesting Inequalities [Audio]

Speaker(s): Bird la Bird, Dr Aviah Sarah Day, Dr Armine Ishkanian, Professor Tomila Lankina, Dr Olga Onuch | This event examines the changing dynamics of protests and protest movements, focusing on how activists in the UK and globally mobilize and fight against inequalities. Bird la Bird is a performance artist who straddles historiography, comedy, queer and politics. She has been described as a Queer Pearly Queen and a Haute Couture Fishwife. Bird la Bird has recently developed a series of performances interrogating the histories of Britain’s key cultural institutions, queering the chronicles and unpicking the layers of colonialism, class oppression, poverty and homophobia on which they were built. The resulting performances are highly accessible, inclusive, emotional and entertaining as Bird encourages the audience to shake the foundations of the museum by bringing hidden histories to the forefront. Aviah Sarah Day came to grassroots activism out of necessity. After a childhood in and out of the care system followed a period of homelessness with her mother and brother, Aviah became interested in anti-capitalism as resistance to her poverty. Over the last 10 years she has been involved in UK Uncut, Focus E15 and Sisters Uncut fighting racism, sexism and capitalism. Armine Ishkanian is Associate Professor and the Programme Director of the MSc in International Social and Public Policy (ISPP). Her research examines the relationship between civil society, democracy, development, and social transformation. She has examined how civil society organisations and social movements engage in policy processes and transformative politics in a number of countries including Armenia, Egypt, Greece, and the UK. Tomila Lankina is Professor of Politics and International Relations at the LSE’s International Relations Department. Her current research focuses on comparative democracy and authoritarianism, mass protests and historical patterns of human capital and democratic reproduction in Russia and other states. Dr Olga Onuch is Associate Professor in Politics at the University of Manchester. Onuch’s comparative study of protest (as well as elections, migration & identity) in Eastern Europe and Latin America has made her a leading expert in Ukrainian and Argentine politics specifically, but also in inter-regional comparative analysis. Twitter hashtags for this event: #LSEFestival #NewWorldDisorders This event is part of the LSE Festival: New World (Dis)Orders running from Monday 25 February to Saturday 2 March 2019, with a series of events exploring how social science can tackle global problems. The full programme will be online in January 2019.