China is facing severe water challenges. Many parts of the country suffer from chronic water scarcity. Pollution is affecting the health of hundreds of waterways and public concern is increasing. Floods and droughts are a constant threat, especially as climate change increases uncertainty over rainfall patterns. Freshwater biodiversity is declining, with aquatic species such as the Yangtze river dolphin facing extinction.

The Chinese authorities have recognised that tackling these challenges is a matter of national priority and have significantly increased the resources available to water managers, emphasising ‘three red lines’ of improved water quality, increased water efficiency and more sustainable water allocations.

So how can China meet its aspirations for a water secure future which aids its continued economic development while enhancing environmental quality? This seminar will explore the current and potential future water situation in China, the response of China to these challenges drawing on global experiences, and risks to critical water infrastructure.

Current and future water challenges in China
Prof Li Yuanyuan, Vice President, General Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Planning and Design, Ministry of Water resources, PR China

Strategic principles and frameworks for water management in China and beyond – lessons from a global review
Dr David Tickner, Chief Freshwater Advisor, WWF-UK

Infrastructure vulnerability to water-related risks in China
Prof Jim Hall, Environmental Change Institute, Oxford University

Professor of Caribbean Literature and Culture at Goldsmiths University, Joan Anim-Addo brings us her voice on Black Women’s Writing and the place of the Black figure in the Humanities. This event will be hosted in connection with Oxford ACS.

Progress to increase gender diversity in leadership roles across most sectors has been slow. Are quotas the answer to increase the number of women in leadership? What is the role of Business Schools in developing women’s leadership? Does entrepreneurship provide an alternative for women to realise their full-potentials? These questions will be debated by a panel of business leaders and academics:

– Professor Barbara Allan of Westminster Business School;

– Ann P Francke, Chief Executive of the Chartered Management Institute;

– Helen Hammond, Managing Director at Elephant Creative;

– Sally Rowley-Williams of Rowley Williams Limited.

– Simonetta Manfredi, Professor of Equality and Diversity Management and Director of the Centre for Diversity Policy Research and Practice

Alyse Nelson is President and CEO of Vital Voices Global Partnership, the preeminent non-governmental organization (NGO) that identifies, trains and empowers emerging women leaders and social entrepreneurs around the globe, enabling them to create a better world for us all.
Alyse has worked with women leaders to develop training programs and international forums in over 140 countries and has interviewed more than 200 international leaders. Under her leadership, Vital Voices has tripled in size and expanded its global reach to serve a network of over 14,000 women leaders in 144 countries.

Step inside the parlour and drawing room of an eighteenth-century home, and together with Dr Nicole Pohl (Oxford Brookes University) and musicians, enjoy readings, music, and the authentic sewing session of a ‘huswif’!
Part of the Oxford Brookes University OutBurst festival at Pegasus, 6-10 May 2014. #OutBurst2014

In this lecture series, Naomi Richman explores the evolution of the ideas central to major global belief-systems such as Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism and Marxism, and their status in the modern world from a social-scientific and secular perspective.

6 Lectures run on Mondays starting the 12th May.
6-7pm, Roy Griffiths Room. ARCO Building, Keble College.
Free, open to all, and followed by discussion.

Weeks 1 and 2: Christianity and Secularisation. Week 3: Buddhism. Week 4: Judaism. Week 5: Islam. Week 6: Marxism, Nationalism and Scientific Humanism

For more information, contact Dr Bea Prentiss,

You ever wanted to understand more about climate change? Is it real? what are the consequences?
Come join us for an expert panel from Oxford University who will shed some light on this highly debated subject

When is a volcano going to erupt and how do you measure that?
What is Magma and how can we start studying it?

These questions and more will be explained by top academics from Oxford University.
More details on our website.

OULC and LGBTQ Society are delighted to jointly welcome Peter Tatchell for an event at the Corpus Auditorium. A prolific human rights campaigner, Peter is particularly known for his work with LGBTQ movements. Famously, he attempted a citizen’s arrest on Robert Mugabe in 1999 and 2001.

Peter is also a former Labour Party parliamentary candidate, and a more recent supporter of the Green Party. On Monday, he will join us to discuss LGBTQ rights in the context of both domestic politics and international affairs. There will be a Q&A session after his speech, in which the audience can explore his wide-ranging interests and expertise. We hope to see you there.

How can we rewild animals to today’s environment?
How does the future of lethal viruses is going to be? Are they going to stick around with us as long as humanity exists

On Thursday 22nd at 6pm the Simpkins Lee will host a panel discussion exploring the battle for women’s education. Featuring a heavyweight line-up of Jane Robinson (author of the bestselling ‘Bluestockings’), Sarah Pine (OUSU VP for Women), Lyndall Gordon (alumni and Fellow of St. Hilda’s College) and Tim Whitmarsh (Head of ‘Women and the Humanities’ at TORCH), it promises to be a smashing 45 minute insight into the world of women’s colleges, the battle for equality, and why ‘women’s studies’ deserves a place on the curriculum.

Speaker: Judy Webb

The Lye Valley, formally known as Hogley Bog, is a surprising and little known hot spot of wildlife biodiversity, a habitat for stunning wildflowers and spectacular insects in the centre of the City of Oxford. Beautiful marsh helleborine orchids are thriving here, within just a few metres of housing, and an important, historic, population of Grass-of-Parnassus is recovering to good numbers. Oxford botanists since the 1650s have loved this site and it was a favorite of photographer Henry Taunt, whose description of the Grass of Parnassus is quoted in the title. This is the story of a rare, ancient, wetland fen community, which has been fed by lime-rich spring water for thousands of years. It is one of the most important heritage sites within the city.

All Summer Lectures start at 6.30pm in the Daubeny Lecture Theatre (at
 the front of the Botanic Garden) and are followed by a drinks reception in the Botanic Garden. Ticket cost £8 per talk or £36 for the series of 5.
For more details, visit: http://www.botanic-garden.ox.ac.uk/whatson

onathon Porritt, Co-Founder of Forum for the Future, is an eminent writer, broadcaster, environmentalist and commentator on sustainable development. He will be talking at Cerberus about his new book, ‘The World We Made’, in which he sets out to counter the doom and gloom that surrounds today’s debates about sustainability. Come and listen for a positive and exciting account of what the future could look like.

OxTET is happy to welcome Riva-Melissa Tez – lecturer at the DAB university in Berlin, founder of the Berlin Singularity, Associate Director of Longevity Intelligence Communications, and co-runner of Kardashev Communications. Riva will be speaking on obstacles that emerging technology businesses face, analysing factors causing shortfalls in funding, social mistrust, and political dysfunction, and offering recommendations for dealing with these obstacles.

Speaker: Tom Price

The archipelago of Japan is defined as one of the World’s 34 biodiversity hotspots. Learn how staff from the Botanic Garden and Harcourt Arboretum are conducting expeditions to Japan to collect and document the native flora to improve the plant collections held by the University, promote biodiversity conservation and communicate research conducted by the Department of Plant Sciences, Oxford to a wider audience.

All Summer Lectures start at 6.30pm in the Daubeny Lecture Theatre (at
 the front of the Botanic Garden) and are followed by a drinks reception in the Botanic Garden. Ticket cost £8 per talk or £36 for the series of 5.
For more details, visit: http://www.botanic-garden.ox.ac.uk/whatson

Speaker: Susie Orbach
Psychotherapist, psychoanalyst, writer and social critic. Her books include Fat is a Feminist Issue and Bodies. A convenor of Anybody, an organisation that campaigns for body diversity. Co-founder of Antidote which works for the emotional literacy and Co-founder of Psychotherapist and Counsellors for Social Responsibility. Part of the Mansfield Lecture Series, convener Baroness Helena Kennedy QC

On Friday 13th June, the Oxford Left Review will be launching OLR Issue 13. Come along to get your copy and chat with the writers and editors. This issue was partially themed on ‘Science, Technology and the Left’, and contains articles, interviews, reviews and fiction on topics including fracking, devolution, Wikileaks, the pharmaceuticals industry and Pakistan, as well as many more. Drinks will be provided.

RANDY RETTBERG, President of iGEM
Randy Rettberg is the man behind iGEM, the global competition for undergraduates and high school students in designing brand new biological parts, or “genetically engineered machines”. An engineer by trade he is the President of the iGEM Foundation, which operates the Registry of Standard Biological Parts, a continuously growing library of genetic parts that can be mixed and matched to enable easier construction of synthetic biology devices.

Dr. RICHARD KELWICK, Researcher at CSynBI, Centre for Synthetic Biology and Innovation (Imperial College)
Richard has been scientific advisor and project manager of three successful iGEM teams, 2011-2013. Most recently, he was the lead advisor for the iGEM team Plasticity, at Imperial College London, which came third out of over 200 teams at the world final, held at MIT.

Dr. JAREK BRYK, National Centre for Biotechnology Education University of Reading
Jarek works at the National Centre for Biotechnology Education on a project to facilitate teaching of synthetic biology on an undergraduate level. He develops experimental kits that will be incorporated in synthetic biology curricula.He currently mentors the iGEM Reading team.

The circular economy is rapidly gaining the attention of businesses, government and the next generation as a framework for re-thinking and designing the future economy.

Join us on 19 June 2014 to debate this topic and address a number of challenging questions:

Can a circular economy really decouple growth from resource constraints?
Is the so-called resource crunch really happening or in reality do we still have an abundance of materials and energy?
Is achieving a restorative, circular economy even possible within today’s financial operating system?
What strategic options do CEOs need to pursue to prepare for competitive advantage in a circular economy?
How can business leaders engage consumers and encourage a ‘demand-led’ transformation?

Speakers: Mr. Jamie Butterworth, CEO, Ellen MacArthur Foundation and SSEE Business Fellows – and – Mr. Peter Lacy, Managing Director, Strategy and Sustainability APAC at Accenture, and SSEE’s Business Fellow.

Speaker: Guy Horwood

In 2013, Harcourt Arboretum arborist Guy Horwood was awarded a travel bursary
to join the prestigious International Dendrology Society on their study tour of the Czech Republic. The tour of this diverse and unspoilt country started and ended in Prague and visited botanic gardens and natural forests. In this talk, Guy will take you on a virtual version of the tour and share his experiences with you.

All Summer Lectures start at 6.30pm in the Daubeny Lecture Theatre (at
 the front of the Botanic Garden) and are followed by a drinks reception in the Botanic Garden. Ticket cost £8 per talk or £36 for the series of 5.
For more details, visit: http://www.botanic-garden.ox.ac.uk/whatson

As part of ‘LoveFriday’, a late night opening at the Ashmolean museum, join us for gallery talks on love, sex, gender, and poetry in the ancient world. Talks will be 15 minutes and given on a rolling basis

‘Love, sex and gender in ancient Egypt’ with Ed Scrivens

‘Latin Love Poetry’ with Sharon van Dijk

‘Love in the Ramayana, Krishna, and the Gopis’ with Nayan Bedia

‘Love, Sex and Tragedy in Japanese Literature and History’ with Lyman Gamberton

‘Sex, gender and power in Imperial China’ with Alex Nachescu

LoveFriday welcome the summer LiveFriday to the Ashmolean for an evening dedicated to Love. Visitors will be invited to seek out love in the museum’s collection; through musical and theatrical performances and interactive workshops. Offering a shared journey, whether as a pre-existing couple or about to be acquainted, you can look forward to exploring the Museum and meeting like-minded people.

Speaker: Martin Roth, Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum
The Victoria and Albert Museum was founded during the tumult of the Industrial Revolution; a period of intense technological and social change. Today brings another such turning point, as we grapple with the consequences of the digital revolution. How are advances in digital design and media changing museum practice? And what curatorial principles remain the same, little changed from 19th century? The V&A holds a rich collection of ‘Ukiyo-e’ – popular representations of everyday Japanese life from the 18th-19th centuries. Radical changes and fundamental continuities are both in evidence when, today, curators consider collecting ‘emojis’, emoticons with distinctive features reflecting contemporary Japanese culture. Martin Roth, Director of the V&A and, formerly, Director General of Dresden State Museums, will consider these questions and more in a lecture mapping the future of museums in the digital age.

The lecture will be followed by audience questions and a drinks reception.

Free to attend, all welcome.

Over the past years, China’s role in global climate negotiations has become ever more crucial and controversial. While these years have also seen the ethical debate on global climate policy grow and flourish, the debate has engaged surprisingly little in a global dialogue.

Therefore, it is with great pleasure that we welcome Professor Huan Qingzhi, a leading scholar working at the Centre for Environmental Politics Research (Peking University). He will present his views on China’s role in global climate policy.

Professor Rana Mitter (Oxford China Centre) and Benito Mueller (Oxford Institute for Energy Studies) will provide inputs and there will be plenty of space for discussion with the audience.

This is a public event and all are warmly invited.

This lecture is hosted by the Oxford Martin Programme on Human Rights for Future Generations, The Oxford China Centre, The Universities’ China Committee in London and the University of Reading’s Reading Ethics and Political Philosophy

A public meeting with a short introductory talk followed by questions and discussion.

The end of violence
Thursday 25 September, 7:30pm to 9:00pm
Oxford Town Hall, St Aldates
All welcome

Organised by Oxford Communist Corresponding Society.
This is the last in a three-part series of public meetings on violence and war. The three meetings of the series are:

Thursday 17 July
The war to end all wars

Thursday 21 August
The anti-war movement

Thursday 25 September
The end of violence

All are from 7:30pm to 9:00pm in the Town Hall

COIN are hosting the launch of international best-seller Naomi Klein’s new book “This Changes Everything”. Tickets for the 8 October event are on sale now.

Welcome to the Anthropocene Series

Michaelmas Term 2014 Seminar Series
‘FERTILITY, REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH AND WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT’
Thursdays – 12:30 – 14:00
Seminar Room, Oxford Institute of Population Ageing,
66 Banbury Road, Oxford, OX2 6PR.
Convener: Dr Melanie Frost

We invite you to join us at 3pm each day from Monday 13th October to Friday 17th October when five leading academics will be lighting up Blackwell’s Bookshop and talking about their passion for their subject.

Danny Dorling Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography, School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford “What Does Studying Inequality Teach Us?”

These talks are free to attend places are limited so please arrive early to ensure a seat. For more information please visit our Customer Service Department at Blackwell’s Bookshop, Broad Street, Oxford. Alternatively, contact our Customer Service Desk 01865 333623 email:

Professor Peter Piot, Director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine; Professor of Global Health; and Commissioner on the Oxford Martin Commission for Future Generations, will provide his perspective on the key long-term challenges in global health, addressing the burden of both communicable and non-communicable disease.

This seminar will be followed by a drinks reception, all welcome.

Join in on twitter with #c21health

This seminar will be live webcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEwlBU7bNrA

About the speaker:
Professor Peter Piot is the Director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and a Professor of Global Health. Professor Piot is also a Commissioner on the Oxford Martin Commission for Future Generations. In 2009-2010 he was the Director of the Institute for Global Health at Imperial College for Science, Technology and Medicine, London. He was the founding Executive Director of UNAIDS and Under Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1995 until 2008, and was an Associate Director of the Global Programme on AIDS of WHO. Under his leadership UNAIDS became the chief advocate for worldwide action against AIDS, also spear heading UN reform by bringing together 10 UN system organizations.

Professor Piot has a medical degree from the University of Ghent (1974) and a PhD in Microbiology from the University of Antwerp (1980). In 1976 he co-discovered the Ebola virus in Zaire while working at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium. He was a professor of microbiology, and of public health at the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, the Free University of Brussels, and the University of Nairobi, was a Senior Fellow at the University of Washington, a Scholar in Residence at the Ford Foundation, and a Senior Fellow at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He held the chair 2009/2010 “Knowledge against poverty” at the College de France in Paris, and is a visiting professor at the London School of Economics. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and was elected a foreign member of the Institute of Medicine of the US National Academy of Sciences, and is also an elected member of the Académie Nationale de Médicine of France, and of the Royal Academy of Medicine of his native Belgium, and a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians.

He was knighted as a baron in 1995 and has published over 550 scientific articles and 16 books, including his memior No Time to Lose. In 2013 he was the laureate of the Hideyo Noguchi Africa Prize for Medical Research and in 2014 he received the Prince Mahidol Award for Public Health.