Explore the history of behind the places on LSE’s campus – past and present.
GalleryRed Brick Eiger – the Saw Swee Hock Student Centre
On 24 October 2014 the Saw Swee Hock Student Centre held its official opening party. The Centre is a central hub for student life. Designed by the Dublin architects O’Donnell and Tuomey it was the first new commission on the LSE estate for 40 years, writes LSE Archivist Sue Donnelly. A review by the Guardian’s architecture critic called it […]
GalleryElenchus/Aporia – a debate in sculpture
In the Main and Lower Atrium of the New Academic Building you can look up at Elenchus/Aporia created from red, steel and glass spheres linked by steel. LSE Archivist, Sue Donnelly investigates the meaning behind the art work.
Elenchus: 1. A logical refutation 1.1 The Socratic method of eliciting truth by question and answer, especially as used to refute an […]
GalleryFeeding mind and body – the LSE Refectory, 1933-1936
The recently discovered “Refectory Suggestions and Complaints” provides some new insights into feeding staff and students at LSE. LSE Archivist, Sue Donnelly, explores the perennial problems of feeding hungry LSE students and staff.
The LSE Refectory was opened in 1907 and was a focal point of LSE life for both students and staff. LSE’s small size and lack of funding […]
GalleryEquus on the Plaza
LSE Archivist Sue Donnelly introduces Equus, a five foot bronze representation of a horse standing outside LSE Library on the John Watkins Plaza.
Created in 2003 Equus is one of eleven statues donated to the School by Canadian alumnus, Louise Odette, in 2004. Equus was designed by sculptor, Edwina Sandys (b1938) and was cast in bronze by MST Bronze […]
GalleryWhy the Pankhurst name is synonymous with Ethiopia as well as the suffragette movement
LSE’s Behailu Shiferaw Mihirete tells the story of Sylvia Pankhurst, daughter of prominent suffragette Emmeline, who became a relentless advocate for Ethiopia during the Fascist Italian invasion of 1936 to 1941.
The year 2018 marks the centenary of the year when some women (who met the age (>30 years old) and property criteria or who were university educated) succeeded in […]
GalleryNot set in stone – amending LSE’s First World War Memorial
One hundred years on from Armistice, in November 1918, new digital library techniques, powerful search engines and the wealth of content on the Internet make it much easier to gather, process and cross-check information than in the 1920s, when the first stone LSE World War I memorial was erected and even in 1953, when the combined oak one was […]
GalleryClement’s Inn – the first home of the Women’s Social and Political Union in London
In 1906, the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) moved from Manchester to London, and specifically to Emmeline and Frederick Pethick-Lawrence’s apartment at Clement’s Inn, writes LSE curator Gillian Murphy. Eventually the WSPU occupied 27 rooms within the building, before a split in 1912 saw the WSPU move around the corner to Kingsway. Today, the site at Clement’s Inn is […]
GalleryLionel Robbins and the Library Appeal
2018 is the 40th anniversary of the Lionel Robbins Building, which houses LSE Library – the British Library of Political and Economic Science. Lionel Robbins led the appeal to fund a new building for the Library, which opened in 1978. Kathryn Hannan explored the story while cataloguing the Lionel Robbins Papers at LSE Library.
Lionel Robbins’ long history with LSE, as […]
GalleryEvacuation to Cambridge
LSE spent the Second World War far from Houghton Street. LSE Archivist Sue Donnelly writes about the School’s war time evacuation to Cambridge.
Despite the Munich Agreement of 1938 many in Britain, including the government, were preparing for war – and among them was LSE Director Sir Alexander Carr-Saunders. By the summer of 1939 the Court of Governors agreed to arrangements […]
GalleryFrom the archives – trouble at the LSE refectory in 1955
While exploring the Lionel Robbins Papers for LSE Library, Kathryn Hannan found evidence of a short-lived dispute lost to history, which took her to the Beaver archives in LSE’s Digital Library. A complaint about campus food prices in October 1955 had resulted in a one-day boycott of the refectory and a motion put forward by the Students’ Union for a new […]