The London School of Economics and Political Science is an independent and autonomous institution with the status of a School within the federal University of London. Two LSE Departments are involved in the present project: 1) the Deparment of Geography and 2) Environment and the LSE European Institute.
- The Department of Geography and Environment currently has an establishment of 31 academic staff. The staff come from a range of disciplinary backgrounds across the social sciences, which reflects the cross disciplinary nature of both teaching and research. The Department was ranked among the leading departments in the country in the 2008 RAE. The research agenda is a distinctive one, predicated on applying an interdisciplinary and methodologically diverse social science approach to key geographical and environmental questions; much of the research has a strong applied, policy relevant focus. The Department’s focus is on the social science aspects of geography. Research is organised around four clusters of interest: Economic Geography and Regional Science; Cities; Development; and Environmental Policy and Governance.
- The LSE European Institute was created in 1991 to be a primary focus for the inter-disciplinary study of processes of integration and fragmentation within Europe. Its disciplinary range is unrivalled. It currently has 25 academic members of staff drawn from the fields of politics, economics, geography, history, political economy, law, philosophy, and international relations. It has prioritised three research themes in its work that it considers cutting-edge and important, and which could not be fully studied within a Department with a single disciplinary process: The Governance of the EU, in particular EU policy-making and the Europeanisation of domestic processes both within and beyond the EU’s borders; European Ideas and Identities, notably central tenets of European belief and the boundaries of Europe; European Political Economy, in particular the political economy of economic integration and structures and reforms present in contemporary Europe.
