A discussion with two representatives of an Israeli peace village called Neve Shalom (Hebrew) / Wahat al-Salam (Arabic). In this unique village, Arab and Jewish Israelis have chosen to live together in peace, celebrating both cultures, languages and religions equally together.

Bob Fenton and Rami Mannaa, from the village, explain how the current political situation impacts upon their lives and work towards peace.

Chaired by The Very Rev John Drury, Chaplain of All Souls and Former Dean of Christ Church, Oxford.

Free Admission – Retiring collection for community peace projects bringing together Arab and Jewish teenagers from outside the village.

Please note: registration is required for this event.

Annual Harrell-Bond Lecture:

The communities comprising the modern Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan have a long history as refugee hosts. HRH Princess Basma bint Talal will examine the ways in which earlier refugee communities’ experience of displacement itself contributed to their integration within the developing Jordanian state. Princess Basma will discuss the ways in which Jordan’s Circassian, Chechen, and Armenian communities have negotiated different aspects of their specific identities and integrated in Jordan, considering the role of forced migration itself in creating identities.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

For nearly thirty years, Princess Basma has worked to promote a range of global issues, most notably in the areas of human development, gender equity and women’s empowerment, and the well-being and development of children. She is particularly involved with supporting the implementation of sustainable development programmes that address the social and economic needs of marginalised groups, including refugees.

Princess Basma is Honorary Human Development Ambassador for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women). She is also a Global Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

Please book your place using the link provided. For all other enquiries, please contact:

Anneli Chambliss
Centre Administrator
+44 01865 281720
anneli.chambliss@qeh.ox.ac.uk

Non-fat, low-fat, saturated fat, trans fats, healthy fats – in an era where we seem to be constantly bombarded with often conflicting messages about our diets, is all this information actually making us any healthier? How can we cut through media hysteria and make wise choices about the food we eat, and what impact do our consumption habits have, not just on our own health but that of the planet?

Speakers:

Professor Susan Jebb, Professor of Diet and Population Health, Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford
Dr Tara Garnett, Principal Investigator, Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food
Dr Mike Rayner, Principal Investigator, Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food
Join in on Twitter with #c21health

This seminar will be live webcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UbwkWsEdmU

About the Speakers:
Professor Susan Jebb is a nutrition scientist and her research interests are focused on how what we eat affects the risk of gaining weight or becoming obese and the interventions that might be effective to help people lose weight or reduce the risk of obesity-related diseases. She has also conducted a series of randomised controlled trials to study the impact of dietary changes on the risk factors for cardiovascular disease. In general, this work highlights that body weight is a more important risk factor for ill-health than differences in the nutritional composition of the diet. She has strong scientific collaborations with the Behaviour and Health Research unit at the University of Cambridge and the MRC Human Nutrition Research unit, where she was a Programme Leader for many years.

She is also very interested in how scientific evidence on diet is translated into policy and practice, by government, industry, the public health community and the media. She was the science advisor for the Foresight obesity report and subsequently chaired the cross-government Expert Advisory Group on obesity from 2007-11. She is now a member of the Public Health England Obesity Programme Board. She also Chairs the DH Public Health Responsibility Deal Food Network, developing voluntary agreements with industry to improve the food environment. She is one of the Chairs of the NICE Public Health Advisory Committees. She is actively involved in a number of events and media projects to engage the public in issues relating to diet and health. In 2008 she was awarded an OBE for services to public health. She is a Trustee and former Chair of the Association for the Study of Obesity.

Dr Tara Garnett is a Principal Investigator at the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food and she initiated, and runs the Food Climate Research Network, now based at the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford.

Her work focuses on the contribution that the food system makes to greenhouse gas emissions and the scope for emissions reduction, looking at the technological options, at what could be achieved by changes in behaviour and how policies could help promote both these approaches. She is particularly interested in the relationship between emissions reduction objectives and other social and ethical concerns, particularly human health, livelihoods, and animal welfare. Much of her focus is on livestock, since this represents a nodal point where many of these issues converge.

Tara is keen to collaborate through the FCRN with other organisations to undertake research, organise events and build and extend interdisciplinary, intersectoral knowledge in this field.

Dr Mike Rayner is a Principal Investigator on the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food and Director of the British Heart Foundation Centre on Population Approaches for NCD Prevention, which is based within the Nuffield Department of Population Health of the University of Oxford, and which he founded in 1993.

Mike’s particular research interests are in food labelling, food marketing, food taxes and the relationship between a healthy diet and sustainable diet.

Mike is also Chair of Sustain, the alliance for better food and farming in the UK, and Chair of its Childrens’ Food Campaign in the UK. He is a trustee of the UK Health Forum, Chair of the Nutrition Expert Group for the European Heart Network based in Brussels and a member of the Scientific Advisory Panel of the International Obesity Task Force. He is also an ordained priest in the Church of England.

Globalisation has brought us vast benefits including growth in incomes, education, innovation and connectivity. Professor Ian Goldin, Director of the Oxford Martin School, argues that it also has the potential to destabilise our societies. In The Butterfly Defect: How globalisation creates systemic risks, and what to do about it, he and co-author Mike Mariathasan, Assistant Professor of Finance at the University of Vienna, argue that the recent financial crisis is an example of the risks that the world will face in the coming decades.

The risks spread across supply chains, pandemics, infrastructure, ecology, climate change, economics and politics. Unless these risks are addressed, says Goldin, they could lead to greater protectionism, xenophobia, nationalism and to deglobalisation, rising conflict and slower growth.

The book talk will be followed by a book signing and drinks reception

This book talk will be live webcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuW2rgtZuIM

About the Book
Global hyperconnectivity and increased system integration have led to vast benefits, including worldwide growth in incomes, education, innovation, and technology. But rapid globalization has also created concerns because the repercussions of local events now cascade over national borders and the fallout of financial meltdowns and environmental disasters affects everyone. The Butterfly Defect addresses the widening gap between systemic risks and their effective management. It shows how the new dynamics of turbo-charged globalization has the potential and power to destabilize our societies. Drawing on the latest insights from a wide variety of disciplines, Ian Goldin and Mike Mariathasan provide practical guidance for how governments, businesses, and individuals can better manage risk in our contemporary world.

Goldin and Mariathasan assert that the current complexities of globalization will not be sustainable as surprises become more frequent and have widespread impacts. The recent financial crisis exemplifies the new form of systemic risk that will characterize the coming decades, and the authors provide the first framework for understanding how such risk will function in the twenty-first century. Goldin and Mariathasan demonstrate that systemic risk issues are now endemic everywhere in supply chains, pandemics, infrastructure, ecology and climate change, economics, and politics. Unless we are better able to address these concerns, they will lead to greater protectionism, xenophobia, nationalism, and, inevitably, deglobalization, rising conflict, and slower growth.

The Butterfly Defect shows that mitigating uncertainty and systemic risk in an interconnected world is an essential task for our future.

Prison Phoenix Trust Annual Lecture:
Have you ever considered how someone convicted of murder perceives himself? What sense of identity the robber and the drink-driver convicted of manslaughter have as they serve their sentences? And how prison might influence their sense of self?
This lecture explores how spiritual practice can enable a person to frame a new sense of themselves and their potential. With a new perspective on their thoughts, there is the possibility of making clear choices. In a prison setting, the capacity to freely choose is a vital part of the journey away from crime. Sustaining this change is helped enormously by like minded people who offer support in prison. Such a community can help a person deal with setbacks, thereby helping to build personal resilience.
The talk will be given by The Reverend Canon Mike Kavanagh, Head of Chaplaincy and Faith Services for the National Offender Management Service, and will be followed by refreshments.

Speaker: Professor Jonny Steinberg (African Studies Centre and the Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford)

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Jonny Steinberg is Associate Professor in African Criminology, African Studies Centre and Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford. He joined the African Studies Centre in October 2011. His time is divided between African Studies and the Centre for Criminology. For the African Studies MSc he convenes the second term of the Core Course on Themes in African History and Social Sciences, and offers an option called ‘Violence and Civilisation’, available both to African Studies and Criminology MSc students.

Much of his work explores South African people and institutions in the wake of the transition to democracy. The institutions he has written about are the police, the prison, the farm and the clinic. The common thread between these projects has been an investigation into how political transition has changed the filigrees of unwritten rules through which individuals understand their lives and relate to others. He has also, of late, worked beyond South Africa, on Liberia’s recent civil war, and some of the questions it has raised about migration, exile and transitional justice.

His latest book, A Man of Good Hope, to be published in January 2015, records the life history of a Somali man who fled Mogadishu as a child in 1991, grew up itinerant and unsettled in various east African countries, and finally made his way down Africa’s eastern seaboard to South Africa when he was in his early 20s. His story is a frame for exploring a range of African questions, from state collapse in Somalia, to the relationship between formal state institutions and undocumented people, to xenophobia in South Africa.

Light refreshments will be provided after the event.

What impact are government anti-terrorism actions having on our society? Our Panel Debate on the impact of anti-terrorism legislation in the UK is an event not to be missed for anyone interested in in this area of policy. With speakers including David Anderson QC, and Jonathan Russell (Political Liaison Officer at the Quilliam Foundation), this is should be an exciting and enlightening discussion on an incredibly divisive topic.

There remain many unanswered questions in medical research about both the prevention and treatment of disease, but new technologies are opening up new opportunities to provide insights. One approach, in particular, the capacity to assemble and analyse very large health datasets, is underpinning the work of both speakers addressing problems at both ends of life.

Kazem Rahimi is utilising innovative digital technologies and large healthcare datasets to find better approaches to managing established cardiovascular disease including heart failure. Terry Dwyer, on the other hand, is pooling data on one million mothers and babies to help uncover causes of childhood cancer – an area where, despite considerable effort, little progress has been made over recent decades.

Join in on twitter with #c21health

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

About the speakers:
Professor Terry Dwyer is the Executive Director of the George Institute for Global Health at the Oxford Martin School and Professor of Epidemiology, University of Oxford.

Terry is a non-communicable disease epidemiologist with extensive experience in the conduct of cohort and case control studies. He was previously Director of the Menzies Research Institute, University of Tasmania, coordinating research projects including those on cancer, heart disease, multiple sclerosis, childhood asthma, and diabetes.

His work has focussed on infant and child health. His team’s research on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and sleeping position was recognised by the NHMRC, Australia, as one of the most important contributions to medical research by Australia in the 20th Century. Much of this work was conducted on the 11,000 infants enrolled in the Tasmanian Infant Health Survey (TIHS) between 1988 and 1995 and was supported by funds from both NH&MRC and NIH.

He is currently playing a leading role in two large global cohort collaborations. The first involves a collaboration of birth cohorts in more than ten countries to obtain prospective evidence on the causes of childhood cancer. Little prospective data on this association has previously been available. This consortium, the International Childhood Cancer Cohort Consortium (14C), seeks to assemble data on approximately 1 million mothers and babies who will be followed through childhood. It has been supported financially by NCI, and currently Terry is working on this from IARC.

The second study is focused on following around 40,000 subjects who were first measured at school age and are now moving into their fourth and fifth decades. The CDAH study is one of six coborts in three countries contributing data to this consortium. This study seeks to estimate the separate effect of childhood physical and lifestyle characteristics on risk of major adult diseases such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. There have been many publications on this including one in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2011.

Dr Kazem Rahimi, Associate Professor, is the Deputy Director of the George Institute for Global Health at the Oxford Martin School; James Martin Senior Fellow in Essential Healthcare at the University of Oxford and Honorary Consultant Cardiologist at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford.

As the Deputy Director he leads the Essential Healthcare Programme, which aims to find practical and affordable solutions for the global health priorities of the world’s largest emerging economies, as well as the priorities of vulnerable or disadvantaged populations in established economies.

He graduated in medicine from the University of Leipzig in Germany with postgraduate training in cardiology and health services research in Leipzig, London and Oxford. Prior to joining the George Institute, in 2010, he was a Research Fellow at Oxford’s Clinical Trial Service and Epidemiological Studies Unit. His research interests include service delivery innovation in chronic disease prevention and management, large-scale complex intervention studies, and data-driven electronic decision support systems.

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

The political economy of the Gulf states
Thursday 13 November, 7:30pm to 9:00pm
The Mitre, corner of High St and Turl St (upstairs function room)
All welcome

Organised by Oxford Communist Corresponding Society.

Panel:

Professor Charles Godfray, Director, Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food and author of the chapter How can 9-10 Billion People be Fed Sustainably and Equitably by 2050?
Professor Ian Goldin, Director, Oxford Martin School, Editor of Is the Planet Full? and author of the chapter Governance Matters Most
Professor Sarah Harper, Director, Oxford Institute of Population Ageing, Oxford Martin School and author of the chapter Demographic and Environmental Transitions
Professor Yadvinder Malhi, Director, Oxford Centre for Tropical Forests, Oxford Martin School and author of the chapter The Metabolism of a Human-Dominated Planet
Dr Toby Ord, James Martin Fellow, Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology and author of the chapter Overpopulation or Underpopulation?
The panel will discuss whether our planet can continue to support a growing population estimated to reach 10 billion people by the middle of the century.

The panel discussion will be followed by a book signing and drinks reception.

This panel discussion will be live webcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFIqDQP1Vjc

About the Book:
What are the impacts of population growth? Can our planet support the demands of the ten billion people anticipated to be the world’s population by the middle of this century?

While it is common to hear about the problems of overpopulation, might there be unexplored benefits of increasing numbers of people in the world? How can we both consider and harness the potential benefits brought by a healthier, wealthier and larger population? May more people mean more scientists to discover how our world works, more inventors and thinkers to help solve the world’s problems, more skilled people to put these ideas into practice?

In this book, leading academics with a wide range of expertise in demography, philosophy, biology, climate science, economics and environmental sustainability explore the contexts, costs and benefits of a burgeoning population on our economic, social and environmental systems.

Speakers: Professor Roger Zetter (Refugee Studies Centre) and Dr Nando Sigona (University of Birmingham)

Undocumented migration is a huge global phenomenon, yet little is known about the reality of life for those involved. Sans Papiers, by Roger Zetter, Nando Sigona and Alice Bloch, combines a contemporary account of the theoretical and policy debates with an in-depth exploration of the lived experiences of undocumented migrants in the UK from Zimbabwe, China, Brazil, Ukraine and Turkish Kurdistan. Built around their voices, the book provides a unique understanding of migratory processes, gendered experiences and migrant aspirations. In this talk, Roger Zetter and Nando Sigona will draw on their book to explore the ambiguities and contradictions of being an undocumented migrant, providing insights into personal experiences alongside analysis of wider policy issues.

Light refreshments will be provided after the event.

The next decade could see significant steps towards eradicating viruses which threaten the lives of millions of people worldwide. Major progress has been made towards a cure for hepatitis C, but at $84,000 for a course of treatment, will the cost of the drugs stand in the way of a global roll-out? And with the high cost and risks of toxicity and drug resistance making anti-retrovirals a less than ideal long-term solution for HIV patients, what breakthroughs are giving scientists hope in their efforts to find a cure for the virus?

Join in on Twitter with #c21health

This seminar will be live webcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN7NwoOQP-s

About the speakers:
Dr John Frater is a Principal Investigator in the Institute for Emerging Infections, Oxford Martin School and a Clinical Research Fellow in The Nuffield Department of Medicine at the University of Oxford. John carried out his medical training at Cambridge University and the Royal London Hospital. He undertook a PhD at Imperial College, studying African strains of HIV and their susceptibility to treatment.

Following this he gained a MRC Clinician Scientist Award to work at Oxford University researching HIV evolution and strategies for HIV eradication. He is currently the scientific lead and co-chair of ‘CHERUB’, (Collaborative HIV Eradication of Reservoirs: UK BRC), an NIHR-supported collaboration dedicated to finding a cure for HIV infection. He also works as an Honorary Consultant Physician at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.

Dr Ellie Barnes is a Principal Investigator in the Institute for Emerging Infections, Oxford Martin School; MRC Senior Clinical Fellow and Honorary Consultant in Hepatology in the Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford.

Ellie trained in medicine at St. Bartholomew’s hospital, London. Towards the end of her time there she took a year away to study human evolution, social biology and the philosophy of science at University College London. She specialized in liver medicine, attracted to this by the mix of practical and academic skills required. Her PhD was in T cell immunity to hepatitis C virus (HCV) in the context of therapy with Paul Klenerman and Geoff Dusheiko. She has been supported by the MRC (UK) throughout, more recently as a Clinician Scientist at the Peter Medawar Building for pathogen research in Oxford.

In this lecture, Frank Vibert will argue that, in order to understand the evolving patterns of governance in modern democratic societies, we need to assess these democracies not just in political terms, but in the context of the complex interplay of systems of social coordination — including the market, the law, regulation, and civil society.

Of particular importance is the reliance on regulatory systems, in view of the fact that they are seen by some as ‘inferior’ and ‘crowding out’ other better systems, including democratic politics. He will demonstrate why such views are mistaken.

Instead, he will argue that regulation has become the principal way to adjust relationships between different systems, as well as the predominant means by which we counter the adaptive bias toward the status quo in other systems.

Join us for a critical review of the extent to which businesses promote HR in practice. Talk of corporate responsibility, pro-bono schemes and language of sustainability and accountability continues to increase but in reality are businesses doing enough to promote and protect Human Rights? There will be the chance to talk more informally with the speakers after the event over drinks and nibbles.

Panel Speakers: Rae Lindsay (Clifford Chance), Peter Frankental (Amnesty International)

Chair: Dr Lawrence Hill-Cawthorne, University of Reading

RSC Public Seminar Series:

Speaker: Dr Katy Long (Stanford University and University of Edinburgh)

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Katy Long is Lecturer in International Development at the University of Edinburgh, where her work focuses on migration and refugee issues. In addition, she researches the sale of citizenship in both legal and black market contexts at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. She is also a former RSC Research Associate and post-doctoral fellow.

Dr Long received her doctorate from Cambridge in 2009, and afterwards worked as a post-doctoral fellow at the Refugee Studies Centre in Oxford and as a lecturer at the London School of Economics, before joining the department in September 2013. She has also worked extensively with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees on a number of projects, including investigating the role migration could play in solving refugee crises, the use of voluntary repatriation and refugees’ political participation, and emergency responses to border closures.

To date, her research has looked in particular at refugee movements and international “solutions” to forced migration crises. Most recently, her fieldwork has focused on migrations from and crises in the East, Horn and Great Lakes regions of Africa, but she’s also worked in Guatemala and Mexico and is increasingly interested in understanding immigration policy here in the West.

Light refreshments will be provided after the event.

Professor Chas Bountra and Dr Javier Lezaun take a fresh look at the way we organise early-stage (high-risk/high-reward) pharmaceutical research.

The drug discovery process is extremely high risk, takes too long and is becoming unaffordable. The pharmaceutical industry, despite massive investments, has been forced to reduce risk and costs. With ageing societies and the rise of chronic diseases of modern living, we desperately need better therapeutics. Professor Chas Bountra and Dr Javier Lezaun will examine alternatives to the traditional way of doing things, and propose a radical solution – arguably the only way to resolve this dilemma.

Join in on twitter with #c21health

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

About the speakers:
Professor Chas Bountra is Professor of Translational Medicine in the Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine; Associate Member of the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Oxford and Chief Scientist at the SGC (Structural Genomics Consortium). He is also a Visiting Professor in Neuroscience and Mental Health at Imperial College, London. Chas is an invited expert on several government and charitable research funding bodies, and an advisor for many academic, biotech and pharma drug discovery programmes.

His current research is aimed at determining the 3D X ray structures of novel proteins, generating novel small molecule inhibitors, using these to dissect disease networks and hence identifying new targets for drug discovery.

Chas is an advocate for pre-competitive science, up to and including Phase IIa clinical studies. The SGC publishes all findings immediately (more than one per week), works closely with over 100 academic labs across the world and 8 pharmaceutical companies, and shares all reagents and expertise freely.

Chas has worked in the pharmaceutical industry, and has experience of all stages of discovery and development. He was involved in the launch of Alosetron for the treatment of IBS, has progressed more than 30 clinical candidates, many of these into Phase II studies and 5 into Phase III studies. His therapeutic expertise is in neuro-psychiatric, gastro-intestinal (GI) and inflammatory diseases.

Dr Javier Lezaun is James Martin Lecturer in Science and Technology Governance, and Deputy Director of the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society, Oxford Martin School. Javier received a PhD in Science and Technology Studies from Cornell University, and before coming to Oxford faculty he held positions at the London School of Economics and Amherst College. Javier is a Fellow at Kellogg College.

Javier directs the BioProperty research programme, an initiative funded by the European Research Council to examine the role of property rights in biomedical research and explore the value of open innovation models in pharmaceutical R&D. He is currently investigating the organisation and governance of pre-competitive R&D against neglected tropical diseases, and the role of IP regimes in the evolution of stem cell biology, synthetic biology, and the development of transgenic organisms.

In this lecture, Dr Rivka Weill will demonstrate how constitutional democracies seek to prevent secessionist movements from achieving their goals by manipulating extremely potent constitutional tools at their disposal. She argues that nation states are often guilty of a lack of transparency in the use of these tools, which are generally intended to protect democratic values rather than to be used against secessionists, and that such approaches are characterized by a significant gap between ‘the law on the books’ and ‘the law as practised’.

Drawing on case studies from the US, UK, and European countries, including Ukraine, she suggests ways that nation states could better use structural design to combat secession without compromising democratic values than currently done.

The lecture will assess the unique challenge secessionists pose to democracies that gives rise to these legal and constitutional conflicts. It will suggest that although, by and large, constitutional democracies—even those that supposedly allow for secession—leave no option but for secessionists to resort to extra-legal means to achieve their goals, the nature of sovereignty in a given country may justify such an outcome.

Dr Rivka Weill is an Associate Professor at the Radzyner School of Law. She received her J.S.D. and LL.M. from Yale Law School and has clerked for President Aharon Barak of the Israeli Supreme Court. Her areas of expertise are Constitutional Law and Administrative Law, with a focus on both theoretical and comparative aspects.

In this inaugural event in the second phase of our programme on the social and political foundations of constitutions, a group of experts will discuss the constitutional implications of the ongoing political turmoil in Ukraine.

A lecture on the constitutional paradox of secession movements will be held the previous day to provoke thought around the ideas to be discussed.

For full details and to reserve your place at the lecture, please visit the event webpage: Holey Union: The Constitutional Paradox of Secession

RSC Public Seminar Series

Speaker: Professor Audrey Macklin (University of Toronto)

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Audrey Macklin is Professor and Chair in Human Rights Law at the University of Toronto. She holds law degrees from Yale and Toronto, and a bachelor of science degree from Alberta. After graduating from Toronto, she served as law clerk to Mme Justice Bertha Wilson at the Supreme Court of Canada. She was appointed to the faculty of Dalhousie Law School in 1991, promoted to Associate Professor 1998, moved to the University of Toronto in 2000, and became a full professor in 2009. While teaching at Dalhousie, she also served as a member of the Immigration and Refugee Board.

Professor Macklin’s teaching areas include criminal law, administrative law, and immigration and refugee law. Her research and writing interests include transnational migration, citizenship, forced migration, feminist and cultural analysis, and human rights. She has published on these subjects in journals such as Refugeand Canadian Woman Studies, and in collections of essays such as The Security of Freedom: Essays on Canada’s Anti-Terrorism Bill and Engendering Forced Migration.

Light refreshments will be served after the event.

Vaccines have saved an estimated 500 million lives around the world since Edward Jenner discovered how to prevent smallpox infection in 1796. But a successful vaccine roll-out is about more than just medicine; it encompasses engineering, economics, policy, government and even transport infrastructure. More than a decade into the 21st century, and with a new outbreak of the Ebola virus claiming thousands of lives in Africa, does a successful strategy for creating and delivering new vaccines require a whole new approach?

Speakers:

Professor Susan Lea, Co-Director, Oxford Martin Programme on Vaccines
Professor Christoph Tang, Co-Director, Oxford Martin Programme on Vaccines
Professor Jeffrey Almond, Former Vice President and Head of Discovery Research and External R&D at Sanofi Pasteur
Dr Ian Feavers, Head of the Division of Bacteriology, National Institute for Biological Standards and Control (NIBSC)
Join in on twitter with #c21health

This seminar will be live webcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCCbW5DHdN0

About the speakers:
Professor Susan Lea is Co-Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Vaccines; Oxford University Statutory Chair of Microbiology and Professorial Fellow at Wadham College.

Susan is primarily interested in what structural biology can help us understand about the way in which pathogens and their hosts first encounter each other. More recently this work has led to potential therapeutic opportunities with structures suggesting opportunities for novel vaccination strategies.

Professor Christoph Tang is Co-Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Vaccines and the Glaxo Professor of Cellular Pathology at the William Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford.

His group studies the pathogenesis and prevention of disease caused by Neisseria meningitidis and Shigella flexneri, particularly during interactions with the host innate immune system.

He was previously an MRC Clinician Scientist at the University of Oxford, and completed his PhD at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School on the identification of virulence factors in the fungal pathogen, Aspergillus fumigates. Christoph originally trained in medicine at the University of Liverpool and spent two years working in The Gambia, West Africa.

Professor Jeffrey Almond Former Vice President and Head of Discovery Research and External R&D at Sanofi Pasteur and Visiting Fellow at the William School of Pathology, University of Oxford.

He was lecturer at the University of Leicester from 1979-85 and Professor of Microbiology at the University of Reading 1985-99. He has published extensively, especially in the field of Virology.

His scientific contributions include the first demonstration that a single gene can determine host range – a finding highly relevant to understanding evolution of new pandemic strains; completion of the genetic map of an avian influenza virus, and the first detailed description of the proteins of Influenza B virus. He has also made major contributions to our understanding of polio virus and its vaccines.

In 1985 as a young academic Almond won the Fleming Award for outstanding contribution to microbiological research by a young microbiologist in the UK and the pace and extent of his contributions have not diminished. In his previous role he was responsible for the scientific rationale underpinning approximately 30 vaccine projects covering viruses, bacteria and eukaryotic parasites.

During the BSE crisis he served as coordinator of the BBSRC’s Research programme on the Spongiform Encephalopathies and was a member of the Government’s Spongiform Encephalopathies Advisory Committee (SEAC). He is an Elected fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and in 1999 was awarded the Ivanovsky Medal for “Contributions to the Development of Virology” by The Scientific Council of Virology of Russian Academy of Medical Sciences

Dr Ian Feavers PhD, is Head of the Division of Bacteriology at the NIBSC, UK. He studied for his PhD at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, eventually moving to NIBSC after periods of postdoctoral research at the University of Sheffield and the Friedrich Miescher Institut in Basel.

During the late 1990s, when new conjugate vaccines were being introduced, he headed the laboratory responsible for the control and standardisation of meningococcal and pneumococcal vaccines. Ian continues to oversee an active research programme on the molecular genetics and immunology of meningococcal and pneumococcal antigens.

Because of his broad experience of bacterial vaccines and molecular biology, he has been closely involved with a number of meningococcal vaccine developments. He regularly contributes to WHO and EU guidelines, serves as one of NIBSC’s representatives on the Vaccine Working Party of the EMA, and is a member of the JCVI subgroup on meningococcal vaccines. Ian teaches on a number of vaccine related courses in the University of London and is a Visiting Professor at Imperial College.

This panel discussion is a joint event by the Oxford Martin School, The Oxford International Relations Society (IRSoc) and Sky News’ Stand Up Be Counted campaign.

The panel, entitled “Do we only care about the vote when we don’t have it?,” will seek to explore the issue of voter disengagement in the UK in light of democratic movements worldwide. In the run-up to the General Election, the panel event promises to be an insightful look into a critical issue in both domestic and international politics.

Chaired by Sky News’ Diplomatic Editor Tim Marshall, the panel will consist of:

Baroness Falkner of Margravine, Chair of the Liberal Democrats Parliamentary Policy Committee on Foreign Affairs
Areeq Chowdury, Chief Executive, WebRoots Democracy
Professor Helen Margetts, Director and Professor of Society and the Internet, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford
The lecture is free and open to all and will be followed by a drinks reception for members of IRSoc, membership is available on the night.

If you are interested in knowing more about the Sky News Stand Up Be Counted campaign, visit https://standup.news.sky.com/app/

SPEAKER

Professor Peter Heather (Kings College London)

p to the mid-fourth century AD, the language of refuge regularly appears in Roman sources in the context of frontier management. It is employed both of high status individuals, but also – more strikingly – of very much larger groups: certainly several tens of thousands of individuals, and sometimes apparently a hundred thousand plus-strong. The basic political economy of the Empire – powered by unmechanised agricultural production in a world of low overall population densities – meant that there was always a demand for labour, and, in the right circumstances, refugees could expect reasonable treatment. Provided that their arrival posed no military or political threat to imperial integrity, refugees would receive not only lands to cultivate on reasonable terms, but might also be settled in concentrations large enough to preserve structures of broader familial and even cultural identity. In other circumstances, however, imperial control was enforced by direct military action and survivors were sold into slavery and might themselves redistributed as individuals in adverse socio-economic conditions over very wide geographical areas.

In the late fourth and early fifth centuries, a distinct change becomes apparent in imperial policy. Some very large refugee groups – particularly those that were Gothic – were granted lands within the Empire on terms which broke with long-established Roman norms. These groups were so large and retained so much autonomy that they posed a distinct threat to the continued integrity of imperial rule over the particular regions in which they were settled. Over time, some of the settlements eventually became the basis of independent successor kingdoms as the power of the west Roman centre unravelled. This transition poses an obvious question. Why did traditional Roman policy towards refugees change so markedly in the late imperial period?

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Professor Heather joined the History Department at Kings College London in January 2008 as the Chair of Medieval History. He was educated at Maidstone Grammar School, before moving to New College Oxford to complete his undergraduate degree and doctoral work. Prior to joining King’s, Peter Heather worked at University College London, Yale University and Worcester College, Oxford.

His research interests lie in the later Roman Empire and its successor states. He is widely published in these matters, with a focus on the Goth and Visigoth kingdoms of the Medieval period and publications including The Goths (Oxford, 1996) and (with D. Moncur), Politics, Philosophy, and Empire in the Fourth Century (Liverpool, 2001). In recent years, his research has looked at propaganda in the late Roman elite, and issues of migration and ethnicity among the groups who dismantled the western half of the Roman Empire. Future work is likely to centre on developing legal systems of the Roman Empire and its successor states, and the evolution of particularly Christian authority structures in the same contexts.

This workshop, convened by the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies in association with MacQuarie University, Sydney, will investigate whether it is possible for regulators and companies to strike a balance between business innovation and data protection in the Digital Age. Academics, regulators, and practitioners will address a number of questions raised by these issues.

SPEAKER

Professor Dawn Chatty (Refugee Studies Centre)

Refugee studies rarely address historical matters; yet understanding ideas about sanctuary, refuge and asylum have long roots in both Western and Eastern history and philosophy. Occasionally the Nansen era of the 1920s is examined or the opening years of, say, the Palestinian refugee crisis are addressed. But by and large the circumstances, experiences and influences of refugees and exiles in modern history are ignored. This article attempts to contribute to an exploration of the past and to examine the responses of one State – the late Ottoman Empire – to the forced migration of millions of largely Muslim refugees and exiles from its contested borderland shared with Tsarist Russia into its southern provinces. The seminar focuses on one particular meta-ethnic group, the Circassians, and explores the humanitarian response to their movement both nationally and locally as well as their concerted drive for assisted self-settlement. The Circassians are one of many groups that were on the move at the end of the 19th century and their reception and eventual integration without assimilation in the region provide important lessons for contemporary humanitarianism.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Professor Dawn Chatty is a social anthropologist whose ethnographic interests lie in the Middle East, particularly with nomadic pastoral tribes and refugee young people. Her research interests include a number of forced migration and development issues such as conservation-induced displacement, tribal resettlement, modern technology and social change, gender and development and the impact of prolonged conflict on refugee young people.

Professor Chatty is both an academic anthropologist and a practitioner, having carefully developed her career in universities in the United States, Lebanon, Syria and Oman, as well as with a number of development agencies such as the UNDP, UNICEF, FAO and IFAD. After taking her undergraduate degree with honours at UCLA (University of California at Los Angeles), she took a Master’s degree in Development Studies from the Institute of Social Studies, the Hague, Netherlands. She returned to UCLA to take her PhD in Social Anthropology under the late Professor Hilda Kuper.

Following the award of a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship, Dawn spent the period October 2005–September 2007 researching and writing a manuscript on Dispossession and Forced Migration in the Middle East. The volume was published by Cambridge University Press (May 2010) with the title Dispossession and Displacement in the Modern Middle East.

Professor Chatty was Director of the Refugee Studies Centre from 2011-2014.

21CC is a multidisciplinary conference, which unites leading minds to explore the opportunities and challenges of the 21st century. Led by Oxford students it is partnered with the Oxford Martin School, which pioneers research, policy and debate on global issues.

What: Our 2015 conference will cover some of the most pressing global challenges and opportunities of the 21st century including cybersecurity, geoengineering, inequality and arms trafficking.

Who: Speakers include the Director of Privacy International, the UK Parliamentary Cyber Adviser, previous Director of the Special Forces, the ex-VP of the World Bank, Head of Arms Control at Amnesty International, Directors from the Institute for New Economic Thinking, leading climate change scientists, UN and NATO experts and many more!

When: 7th Feb, Saturday of 3rd Week, at the Mathematics Institute.

Visit: www.21cc-oxford.com for tickets and more info!

Join members from across the LWOB student divisions, academics and practitioners for a day of critical reflection and creativity. On Saturday 7th of February at the apt location of the Oxford Martin School in the heart of the city, we will be asking what the 21st Century holds for the Human Rights Agenda. The morning keynote and speaker panel will equip you with a road-map of lessons and criteria with which to face the afternoon. In the afternoon sessions delegates will split into individual ’21st century Right’ panels and aim to draft and vote on the desirability of a currently unrecognised Human Right.

Rights being mooting in the afternoon include: The Right to a Sustainable Environment, The Right to Transparent Transactions, The Right to be Forgotten

Information on speakers, the timetable and tickets for the conference can all be found here: http://oxlwobconference.wix.com/conference-2015#!home/mainPage

Global Politics, Economy and Society research seminar series with Dr Leandro Vergara-Camus (SOAS, University of London) on “Sugarcane Ethanol: The Hen of the Golden Eggs? Agribusiness and the State in Lula’s Brazil”.

John Henry Brookes Building, room JHB206, Monday 9 February 2015, 4.15pm.

The role of eHealth in chronic disease management in low and middle income countries
and the importance of scalable, modular, open systems

Dr Hamish Fraser

Monday, February 9th, 2015
The Mawby Room, Kellogg College
5PM – 6PM
** Drinks Served from 4.30pm**

Abstract

The burden of chronic diseases is rapidly increasing worldwide. It has been estimated by the World Health Organization that, in 2001, chronic diseases contributed approximately 60% of the 56.5 million total reported deaths in the world and approximately 46% of the global burden of disease. Moreover, the proportion of the burden of non-communicable diseases is expected to increase up to 57% by 2020. Approximately 50% of the total chronic disease deaths are attributable to cardiovascular diseases, with obesity and diabetes occurring earlier in life. Improving quality of care for chronic diseases requires an effective longitudinal medical record that can be used to track patient statuses and generate Focusing on the empowering application of electronic medical records and other eHealth/mHealth systems to manage healthcare, Dr Fraser will discuss the potential strategies for managing chronic diseases in the LMICs. He will draw examples for over 10 years experience leading the development of open source web-based medical record systems including OpenMRS, along with data analysis tools, and pharmacy systems to support the treatment of drug-resistant tuberculosis and HIV in Peru, Haiti, Rwanda, Malawi and the Philippines.

Biography

Dr Hamish Fraser is a physician who recently returned to the UK as Associate Professor in eHealth at the University of Leeds. Prior to this he was an Assistant Professor in the Division of Social Medicine and Health Inequalities at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston. For 12 years he was the Director of Informatics and Telemedicine at Partners In Health (PIH), a non-profit global health care organization founded in 1987 by Paul Farmer, Ophelia Dahl, and Jim Yong Kim. Dr Fraser’s work has led to the migration of medical informatics tools and expertise from high income countries to some of the poorest and most challenging environments in the world. Along with colleagues from the Regenstrief Institute at the University of Indiana and the South African Medical Research Council, Dr. Fraser is a co-founder OpenMRS, an international collaboration to develop a flexible, open source electronic medical record system platform for use in low and middle income countries (LMICs). OpenMRS is now used to support patient treatment in more than 50 LMICs. Dr Fraser has recently been co-leading a project to develop a custom version of OpenMRS adapted for use by staff in protective equipment in the Kerry Town Sierra Leone Ebola Treatment Center. He has a strong interest in the evaluation of medical information systems in LMICs and has carried out studies in Peru, Haiti, and Rwanda. He is a Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics and Section Editor for the Journal BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making.

The Rt Hon the Lord Woolf, former Lord Chief of Justice of England and Wales, will give a lecture on “The Rule of Law as the Foundation of Good Inter-Faith Relations”

This workshop, convened by Dr Katerina Sideri, will bring together academics and practitioners to examine the issue of patent governance in the public interest.

The debate will be centred on four themes: the need to improve the quality of patents issued, gene patents and genetic testing, university licensing of patents, and the relationship between scientific commons and proprietary assets in research collaborations.

The full programme and participant details can be downloaded from beneath the registration form on our website.

Participants include:
Julian Cockbain, Consultant, European patent attorney
Prof Ingrid Schneider, University of Hamburg/Germany
Dr Stuart Hogarth, Kings College, University of London
Dr Michael Hopkins, University of Sussex/SPRU
Dr Harry Thangaraj, Director, Access to Pharmaceuticals Project, St George’s University London
Dr Adam Stoten, ISIS Innovation Limited, Oxford
Dr Javier Lezaun, Insis, University of Oxford
Wenhwa Lee, Structural Genomics Consortium, Oxford
Prof Graham Dutfield, University of Leeds
Prof Ingrid Sterkcx, University of Ghent/Brussels
Dr Mark Bale, Deputy Head, Health Science and Bioethics, Department of Health; Deputy Chief Scientific Adviser, Department of Health, UK