Virtual currencies such as Bitcoin have recently attracted significant media coverage. Some commentators highlight their innovative features and hail them as the future of money. Other commentators point to their uses in illegal activities and the volatility and speculative nature of their markets. In this workshop, we aim to bring together scholars from diverse backgrounds to discuss the potential research value of Bitcoin and other virtual currencies. The workshop will consist of two short introductory talks followed by discussion.

Please register your interest by emailing Jonathan Levin

Professor Harry Witchel is our invited speaker for the coming SciBar. Join us for this fascinating talk on the subtle ways we communicate with our bodies…. This is a free event open to all

https://www.facebook.com/events/638172492880170/

Welcome to a night of unsuppressed creativity, crowdfunding and cocktails! Tickets available here: https://secure5.pm3hosting.com/pm3API/asp/PMWeb1?charityRef=1088315T&campaignRef=19

HOW DOES IT WORK?

The Charities
£10 entry to pledge to your charity of choice. Each charity, The Against Malaria Foundation, SCI (Schistosomiasis Control Initiative) and Project Healthy Children will give a pitch to try and to convince you of their cause!

The best part of it all is that for every ticket sold a sponsor has offered to MATCH the price of the ticket! So for your £10 donation you’ll be raising £20 for charity!

Seeing the Human Heart
A free Public Seminar
Tuesday 26 November 2013, 5–7.45pm
Ashmolean Museum Headley Lecture Theatre

Full PDF programme:
http://www.ashmolean.org/assets/docs/AshmoleanUEPHeartInArtProgramme.pdf

Organised by Professor Robin Choudhury and Dr Jim Harris

Professor Robin Choudhury is a Wellcome Trust Senior Fellow, Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine, Fellow in Biomedical Sciences at Balliol and Director of the Acute Vascular Imaging Centre. Dr Jim Harris is an Andrew W Mellon Foundation Teaching Curator within the Ashmolean Museum’s University Engagement Programme.

Also speaking at this event are: Jack Hartnell (Visiting Lecturer, Courtauld Institute of Art); Joshua Horden (Lecturer in Christian Ethics, Oxford University); Paul Riley (Professor of Regenerative Medicine, British Heart Foundation); Jevon Thistlewood (Conservator at the Ashmolean Museum); Heather Webb (Lecturer in Medieval Literature, Cambridge University); Francis C Wells (Consultant Cardiothoracic Surgeon, Papworth Hospital)

Open to all and free of charge.
Please register by sending an e-mail to: eunice.berry@cardiov.ox.ac.uk

PEFM Seminar
Panellists: Gillian Edgeworth (Unicredit), Gene Frieda (Moore Capital), Giles Moec (Deutsche Bank), Marko Skreb (Privredna Banka Zagreb)
Chair: Adam Bennett (St. Antony’s College, Oxford)

The Annual Sidney Ball Memorial Lecture:
Baroness Lister of Burtersett, introduced by the Chancellor of the University, Lord Patten of Barnes

Ethan Zuckerman is the Director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT.

The last decade has seen a shift in media from a world where a small, professional group produces news, opinion and entertainment to one where a much broader set of the population is involved making and sharing media. This shift has had important implications for the news business and for social change, with social media a part of popular protests around the world. The most important shift may be yet to come: a shift in civics, where participation in the public sphere is less about engagement with government institutions and more about individuals and groups using media, markets and code as well as laws to seek change. Ethan Zuckerman’s talk will explore contemporary anxieties about “”a crisis in civics”” and look at the idea that civics is changing along with digital media to become more participatory and inclusive, but harder to understand and predict.

The Bellwether Lectures are a new series of flagship public lectures being organised by the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford. The series brings world-leading intellectuals to Oxford to lecture on the social implications of the Internet, and its role in shaping our economic, political, and social future.

There will be two of these lectures per academic term, and six lectures per year.

Registration required.

For January we are back to our usual third Thursday date and we are inviting you to bring along your portfolio or a piece of recent work that you are proud of and would like to show the group. This can be a website you have built or been a part of building, a video you have made or contributed to. Print designers bring along your latest document or other product. Photographers bring a set of prints or show us your website. We are happy if you want to show any commercial work like corporate videos or some work that is artistic and non-commercial. We are looking to give 5-10 minute slots for creatives to show their portfolios. This is not a night of critique it is a night to celebrate your creativity and start the new year on a high! If youy’d like to show some work please email Richard at office@filmoxford.org – 7.30pm – FREE

Details www.filmoxford.org/adobeusergroups/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/premiereandpostoxford/ and Twitter @FILMOXFORD

Film Oxford, 54 Catherine Street, Oxford, OX4 3A

Burning questions in these areas often lead to indecision, delays and underestimated consequences. Covering these topics early and from a founders perspective helps demystify, and frees founders to focus on their business, rather than its structure. How do funding, dilution, & vesting work? How do investors value startups at different stages? Should you focus on revenue or growth? When can you ignore your lawyer? How much equity do your cofounders, investors, advisors and employees get?

Winner of the 2006 Oscar for Best Foreign Language film, The Lives of Others is a political thriller set in the East Berlin of the 1980s, which explores issues of privacy and state control through the eyes of a Stasi officer played by Ulrich Mühe.

It is the debut feature of Florian Henckel von Donnesmarck, who has said of the film that, although it is about the Stasi, “I didn’t conceive it as a Stasi film. I conceived it as being about how people behave when they have complete power over others; how does it feel when your privacy is in no way safeguarded?”.

The film is marked by a compelling performance by Ulrich Mühe, who was assigned to patrol the Berlin Wall as a conscript in the East German military and whose early death by cancer was attributed by the film’s director as originating from the anxiety he suffered during this period.

Dr Andres Guadamuz, Senior Lecturer in Intellectual Property Law at the University of Sussex, will give a short introduction to the key themes explored in the film.

‘Taut as tightrope…a white knuckle thriller’
An astonishing eye-opener from Columbia that gives a closer insight into the shocking reality of drug-trafficking. A winner at both Berlin and Sundance film festivals, this is not one to miss.English subtitles, so no worries!

Oxford PPE Society is delighted to welcome Madeleine Wickham to Oxford on Monday. Better known as Sophie Kinsella, she is the international bestselling author of the Shopaholic series.

Madeleine started her career as a financial journalist after studying PPE at New College, much like her famously loveable protagonist Becky Bloomwood. Since then, she has written a number of successful novels, and seen Confessions of a Shopaholic become a major motion picture starring Isla Fisher and Hugh Dancy.

Whether you’re interested in creative writing, getting published, or simply want to hear from a former PPE-ist with a fun job, do come along.

There will be ample opportunity to ask questions, both during and after the talk over drinks.

This event is FREE for everyone, so we hope to see as many of you as possible for this exciting talk!

Why do so many charity photos look identical? What do Apple’s design principles, World War II propaganda, the infamous MySpace mirror portrait and mobile phone video scandals all have in common? At their root is the power that has created much of our Western visual understanding of poverty – as well as the power that will allow us to change it for the better. As major international organizations struggle with the question of how to keep poverty photography relevant – and keep the money rolling in – we can look at how the era of social networks and mobile technology will allow us to personally have a hand in crafting a new, subtle and infinitely ‘smarter’ series of visuals around poverty – a critical tool in helping to spread the idea of effective charitable giving based on a more informed understanding of poverty.

Michael T. Middleton has done photography on six continents and been published internationally in print and online. His work has appeared in gallery shows in the US and France, and photos from his Absent Friends portrait series were an Official Selection in the 2011 Prix de la Photographie in Paris.

The talk is as ever FREE OF CHARGE, and there will be wine and chat afterwards.

Eamonn is an Emmy and BAFTA winning documentary maker.

He is Managing Director of Quicksilver Media, and executive produces their current affairs series Unreported World. His other programmes include, Inside Japan’s Nuclear Meltdown, Undercover Syria and Terror in Mumbai.

Eamonn will be discussing his career and investigative journalism, as well as taking questions.

This will be a really cool talk for all those interested in investigative journalism, television production and current affairs.

BBC Arts Editor, Will Gompertz talks to Modern Art Oxford Director, Paul Hobson about the galleries 2014 exhibition programme.

Edward’s talk will highlight
many of the country’s most magnificent ancient trees and also discuss the various methods used to determine their ages, based on his work documenting, and promoting the protection of, ancient trees over the last 15 years, during which time he has been co-author and photographer for the book Ancient Trees –
Trees That Live For A Thousand Years. He will also talk about
the environmental and cultural importance of ancient trees such as oak, yew, chestnut and lime.
All Winter Lecture Series lectures take place at 8.00pm at the Saïd Business School (adjacent to the railway station) in Oxford. Tickets cost £12 per lecture or £54 for the whole series of 5 (ticket price includes a glass of wine).

For more details, visit: http://www.botanic-garden.ox.ac.uk/whatson

The Atacama Desert, located in northern Chile, is the driest and oldest desert on Earth. Research aimed at the understanding of this unique habitat and its diverse microbial ecosystems began only a few years ago, driven mainly by NASA’s astrobiology program. A milestone in these efforts was a paper published in 2003, when the Atacama was shown to be a terrestrial analogue site for Mars. From then on, studies have focused on examining every possible niche suitable for microbial life in this extreme environment. Habitats as different as the underside of quartz rocks, fumaroles in the Andes Mountains, the inside of halite evaporates and caves of the coastal range, among others, have shown that life has found ingenious ways to adapt to extreme conditions such as low water availability, high salt concentration and intense UV radiation.

In this seminar, the isolation and characterization of microorganisms from several of these habitats will be described. These include bacteria highly tolerant to UV radiation isolated from soils in the hyperarid region, an ancient photosynthetic Cyanidium eukaryote that forms biofilms in a coastal cave, a novel subaerial Dunaliella species growing on cave spider webs and a Gloeocapsopsis cyanobacteria thriving under quartz rocks that is highly tolerant to desiccation. Some of the molecular and morphological adaptations of the latter microorganism to this stressful condition will be described. Some of the broader philosophical and theological implications will be presented briefly.

Prof. Rafael Vicuña studied Biochemistry at Universidad de Chile in Santiago, where he received his undergraduate degree in 1972. Then he obtained his Masters (1976) and PhD (1978) degrees in Molecular Biology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York. He is presently full professor at the Faculty of Biological Sciences, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, in Santiago, where he has formerly been Vice-President for Academic Affairs and Dean of his Faculty. He is a member of the Chilean Academy of Sciences, the Latin American Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS), and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. He has published around 100 papers in the fields of enzymology and regulation of gene expression in bacteria and fungi and around 50 papers dealing with either science and religion or science and society.

Professor Gero Miesenboeck of the Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour will give a JW Jenkinson Memorial Lecture entitled “Lighting up the Brain”.
The lecture will be held in at 4pm in Lecture Theatre A, Dept of Zoology, South Parks Road. All welcome.

Five years on from the global financial crisis, how vulnerable are we to another crash?

At the Bank of England Andrew Haldane is responsible for developing bank policy on financial stability issues and the management of its Financial Stability Area. He is a member of the bank’s Financial Stability Executive Board and the new Financial Policy Committee, and also sits on various international public policy committees, economics associations, editorial boards and academic advisory committees.

Mr Haldane has written extensively on domestic and international monetary and financial stability and is co-founder of ‘Pro Bono Economics’, which aims to broker economists into projects in the charitable sector.

Abstract: Erasmus Darwin – Charles’s grandfather – was well-known among his eighteenth-century contemporaries, highly respected by many but reviled by others. Energetic and sociable, this corpulent tee-totaller ran a successful medical practice, was a Fellow of the Royal Society and did much to alter the public face of science by sponsoring industrial innovation in the Midlands as well as writing best-selling poems on plants, technology and evolution. In this lecture, Patricia Fara explores fresh ways of thinking about this champion of Enlightenment thought. More than fifty years before his famous grandson, Erasmus Darwin dared to publish controversial ideas about evolution that put his medical text on the Vatican’s banned list. Politically radical, he campaigned for the abolition of slavery, supported the French Revolution, promoted education for women, and challenged Christian orthodoxy.

Speaker: Tom Coward

Gravetye Manor is most famous as the home of William Robinson, one of the most influential gardeners
of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Robinson was a prolific garden writer, promoting the wild garden and ridiculing carpet bedding, topiary and contemporary ‘bad taste’, and it was at Gravetye that Robinson put most of his ideas into practice. In 2010 the Manor, now run as a country house hotel, was bought by Mr and Mrs Hosking, and a major restoration
of the garden began. Tom will talk about the work involved in this restoration as well as his experience of gardening in such a beautiful and historic property.

All Winter Lecture Series lectures take place at 8.00pm at the Saïd Business School (adjacent to the railway station) in Oxford. Tickets cost £12 per lecture or £54 for the whole series of 5 (ticket price includes a glass of wine).
For more details, visit: http://www.botanic-garden.ox.ac.uk/whatson

Ashmolean Director’s Guest Lecture Series

The Origins of Sex: the First Sexual Revolution
With Dr Faramerz Dabhoiwala

Saturday 15 February 2014
11am–12pm
Headley Lecture Theatre

Dr Faramerz Dabhoiwala, University of Oxford, will speak about his critically acclaimed book, The Origins of Sex: the First Sexual Revolution, which argues that the western world’s first sexual revolution occurred between 1600–1800.

The Ashmolean Director’s Lectures brings you a line-up of speakers who are leading experts in art, history and cultural studies.

Booking essential – £8/£7
http://www.oxfordplayhouse.com/ticketsoxford/#search=Faramerz

SEESOX Seminar
Eleni Dendrinou-Louri (Bank of Greece, Athens)
Discussant: Francisco Torres (St Antony’s College, Oxford)
Chair: Max Watson (St Antony’s College, Oxford)
In association with PEFM

Since the birth of cinema at the end of the nineteenth century, religion and film have been entwined. Using film clips and drawing heavily on his DPhil research, Jonathan Brant will offer an introduction to the academic study of the relation between Christian faith and film, including an evaluation of the most common methods of engagement, and an introduction to his own research on the possible religious impact of ‘secular’ films.

Revd Dr Jonathan Brant is the Oxford Pastorate Chaplain. His DPhil drew upon systematic theology, film theory and qualitative research in considering the potential religious impact of contemporary Latin American cinema. The monograph has just been published by Oxford University Press: http://amazon.co.uk/dp/0199639345

Upstairs, in the function room, at the Mitre. 7:30pm with drinks and nibbles served from 7pm.

Within just a year of the discovery of X-rays in 1895, doctors were experimenting with their use to treat cancer as well as to make images. Today roughly half of all cancer patients receive radiotherapy. But how does radiation treatment work and what is the role of imaging in this? Dr Mike Partridge will talk about the physics of radiotherapy, how advances in technology have improved it and what further improvements are being worked on today.

facebook ‘British Science Association Oxfordshire Branch’
twitter @oxfordscibar

A special screening of President Nelson Mandela’s lecture at Oxford on
“Renaissance and Renewal – Towards a New World Order”
at the Grove Auditorium, Magdalen College, Oxford
Friday 21 February 2014 at 8.15 pm
Entry free by ticket available from http://www.oxcis.ac.uk/event_21feb14.html
For ticket enquiries contact: events@oxcis.ac.uk 01865278730
www.oxcis.ac.uk

Oxford Human Rights Festival: raising awareness of human rights through the arts. Opening night screening of Miral with introduction and panel discussion with Yousef Al-Helou, Sir Iain Chalmers, Jenny Stanton and Nikki Marriott. FOR FULL PROGRAMME CHECK THE WEBSITE at http://www.oxfordhumanrightsfestival.org .

Come join us at lunch time for this interactive session, in which we will talk with Mike Belinsky, co-founder and partner of Instiglio, about social impact bonds and their impact and applications.

Michael  (co-founder of Instiglio) has worked in economic consulting, corporate strategy and social enterprise. He was also part of the Harvard team that advised the Massachusetts government on one of the first U.S. social impact bonds.