Some face-to-face events are returning. Check carefully for any requirements.
Part of Book at Lunchtime, a fortnightly series of bite size book discussions, with commentators from a range of disciplines. Free, all welcome – no booking required. Join us for a sandwich lunch from 12:45, with discussion from 13:00 to 13:45.
Jim Reed (Taylor Professor of German Language and Literature, University of Oxford) will discuss his book Light in Germany: Scenes from an Unknown Enlightenment with:
Joachim Whaley (Professor of German History and Thought, University of Cambridge)
Kevin Hilliard (Lecturer in German, University of Oxford)
About the book
Germany’s political and cultural past from ancient times through World War II has dimmed the legacy of its Enlightenment, which these days is far outshone by those of France and Scotland. In this book, T. J. Reed clears the dust away from eighteenth-century Germany, bringing the likes of Kant, Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, and Gotthold Lessing into a coherent and focused beam that shines within European intellectual history and reasserts the important role of Germany’s Enlightenment.
Reed looks closely at the arguments, achievements, conflicts, and controversies of these major thinkers and how their development of a lucid and active liberal thinking matured in the late eighteenth century into an imaginative branching that ran through philosophy, theology, literature, historiography, science, and politics. He traces the various pathways of their thought and how one engendered another, from the principle of thinking for oneself to the development of a critical epistemology; from literature’s assessment of the past to the formulation of a poetic ideal of human development. Ultimately, Reed shows how the ideas of the German Enlightenment have proven their value in modern secular democracies and are still of great relevance—despite their frequent dismissal—to us in the twenty-first century.
On Wednesday of Week 2, we will be hosting Dr Joao Pedro Magalhaes who leads the Integrative Genomics of Aging Group at the Institute of Integrative Biology, University of Liverpool.
As usual, our talks cost £2 per entry, and are free for our members. Membership sign-ups available at the door!
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Talk abstract
Ageing is the major biomedical challenge of the 21st century, yet it remains largely mysterious, partly because the ageing process involves multiple genes and their interactions with each other and with the environment that remain poorly understood. Our work has focused on various high-throughput genomic approaches aimed at deciphering the genome and increasing our knowledge about how genes and pathways impact on ageing. Dietary manipulations of ageing are also of immense interest, which we have been studying using a combination of computational and experimental approaches in model organisms ranging from yeast to rats. Lastly, I will discuss our recent work in sequencing and analyzing the genome of the longest-lived mammal, the bowhead whale, to identify longevity assurance mechanisms.
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Speaker Profile
João Pedro graduated in Microbiology in Portugal. As a doctoral fellow, he studied the mechanisms of aging by joining the Aging and Stress Group at the University of Namur in Namur, Belgium. Fascinated by the genome and by the opportunities its sequencing opened, João Pedro then did a postdoc from 2004 to 2008 with genomics pioneer George Church at Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA. He developed high-throughput approaches for studying aging, including computational tools and databases, statistical models of mortality, and comparative genomics methods for investigating the evolution of longevity.
In 2008, he joined the Institute of Integrative Biology at the University of Liverpool as a Lecturer to develop his own group on genomic approaches to aging. “
OutBurst is the Oxford Brookes University festival at the Pegasus Theatre on Magdalen Road. Brookes will be bursting out of the university campus into the community, bringing great ideas, activities, and entertainment right to the doorstep of the Oxford public.
The festival, now in its fourth year, runs from 7-9 May and showcases cutting-edge research and expertise from across the university in a variety of stimulating and fun events for students, staff, and the local community, including installations, lectures, workshops, exhibitions, and discussions for all ages.
https://www.facebook.com/events/495653777253176/
The Oxford Guild is very excited to welcome Larry Hirst CBE, former Chairman of IBM EMEA, to speak on Thursday 7th May. This will be an incredibly insightful talk and is not one to be missed, especially for anyone interested in technology, business, or issues of diversity and inclusion in the workplace. The event will include a Q&A session open to the floor, and promises to cover a wide range of topics, as Larry discusses his high-profile and varied career. ALL ARE WELCOME!
DATE: Thursday 7th May 2015 (2nd Week)
TIME: 6:40pm
VENUE: Habakkuk Room, Jesus College
REGISTER YOUR INTEREST HERE: http://tinyurl.com/LarryHirstIBMGuildTalk
Until his retirement from IBM in July 2010, Larry Hirst was chairman of IBM Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). He represented IBM to the European Commission and other authorities such as NATO and the EDA on issues of international public policy and business regulation. During his time as Chairman, IBM EMEA revenues grew to $35bn, with a workforce of 110,000 people. Previous roles in his 33-year career included Chairman of IBM Netherlands (2002-2010), the leadership of IBM’s business in the UK, Ireland, Netherlands and South Africa (2002-2008).
Larry is passionate about the issues of diversity and inclusion and is an Ambassador to the Everywoman company (https://www.everywoman.com/) and Black British Business Awards (http://www.thebbbawards.com/), as well as a supporter of groups including the Asian Business Networks Association, the European Women’s Achievement Award, the Afro Caribbean Group, Stonewall, Whitehall in Industry, Asian Business Women, and Investors in Diversity.
Larry was appointed C.B.E. in 2006, in recognition of Services to the IT industry.
This event will be particularly insightful for anyone considering a career in technology or business, and there will be a Q&A session as part of the event.
We look forward to seeing you there!
The Aptness of Anger – Dr Amia Srinivasan
Ancient and contemporary philosophers alike have argued that we ought not get angry, even when facing injustice, because doing so is harmful to ourselves. Christian mystics and theologians seem to agree. But isn’t anger a tool with which to tackle injustice and a source of moral insight? And cannot anger be a justified response to the world even if it has bad effects? Dr Amia Srinivasan will explore anger’s relationship with reason and what happens when we lose our capacity to get angry. Part of a series ‘On Anger’.
During a speech in 1957, Prime Minister Harold MacMillan declared “our people have never had it so good”. Now, more than half a century later, are we fundamentally any better off? Through discussion of technological advances, social changes, political reforms, and economic shocks and recessions, this panel will seek to question whether the world we currently live in is indeed a better place than it was in the 1950s.
Chaired by Professor Brian Nolan, Professor of Social Policy, the panel will consist of:
*Dr Max Roser, James Martin Fellow at The Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School
*Dr Anders Sandberg, James Martin Fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute
*Professor Robert Walker, Professor of Social Policy
A drinks reception will follow, all welcome.
Part of Book at Lunchtime, a fortnightly series of bite size book discussions, with commentators from a range of disciplines. Free, all welcome – no booking required. Join us for a sandwich lunch from 12:45, with discussion from 13:00 to 13:45.
Anna Marmodoro (Fellow in Philosophy, Corpus Christi, University of Oxford) will discuss her book Aristotle on Perceiving Objects with:
Ophelia Deroy (Associate Director, Institute of Philosophy, School of Advanced Study and Senior Researcher, Centre for the Study of the Senses)
Richard Sorabji (Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, King’s College London)
Rowland Stout (Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Oxford)
About the book
How can we explain the structure of perceptual experience? What is it that we perceive? How is it that we perceive objects and not disjoint arrays of properties? By which sense or senses do we perceive objects? Are our five senses sufficient for the perception of objects?
Aristotle investigated these questions by means of the metaphysical modeling of the unity of the perceptual faculty and the unity of experiential content. His account remains fruitful-but also challenging-even for contemporary philosophy.
This book offers a reconstruction of the six metaphysical models Aristotle offered to address these and related questions, focusing on their metaphysical underpinning in his theory of causal powers. By doing so, the book brings out what is especially valuable and even surprising about the topic: the core principles of Aristotle’s metaphysics of perception are fundamentally different from those of his metaphysics of substance. Yet, for precisely this reason, his models of perceptual content are unexplored territory. This book breaks new ground in offering an understanding of Aristotle’s metaphysics of the content of perceptual experience and of the composition of the perceptual faculty.
As former European Commissioner for Climate Action and as host Minister of the 2009 UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Connie Hedegaard has been at the sharp end of global agreements. While the Copenhagen talks ended with a breakthrough recognition of the scientific case for restraining temperature rises to no more than 2°C, the accord failed to achieve commitments to reducing emissions. The outcome frustrated many and Hedegaard has subsequently described the eight-draft, 115-country process as a ‘nightmare’. Hedegaard refused to give up.
Two years later in Durban, she made a stand against fierce opposition to push through a timetable for new negotiations, this time designed to create a global pact on emissions reductions. The 2015 UNFCCC in Paris is the culmination of that timetable and the global pact, if it is achieved, will come into force in 2020. Presiding over the European 2030 Climate and Energy Framework, which commits to a 40% reduction in emissions, Hedegaard said: “We have sent a strong signal to the rest of the world. We have now done our homework and now it’s up to other big economies to do theirs”.
Thursday, May 21, 2015 at 7.30pm @ Film Oxford – FREE
Drones – Aerial Filming & Photography.
Everyone’s talking about Drones, come and find what the fuss is about! Speaker, Matthew Nicholson of HOLLYWOOD DRONES
Hollywood Drones is an aerial filming company based in Oxford. Fully licensed by the Civil Aviation Authority they film up to Ultra 4K using the same equipment as used by major broadcasters such as the BBC and ITV. Since setting up in 2014 they have established work for Sky Sports the National Trust and Oxford University as well as other Oxfordshire companies.
Matthew Nicholson is looking forward to visiting Film Oxford in May. His plan is to bring along all the kit with him so you can get close up and see what it is all about. Matt will explain what is involved in setting up and running the business from a legal perspective, how to operate drones legally and demonstrate some of their more recent short films. (Photos Hollywood Drones)
ALSO we will be having our ADOBE GROUPS raffle draw – one lucky person attending will win a year’s subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud!
We prefer if you can RSVP at our meetup page (but not compulsory)
Digital Film Editors (Oxford) MEET-UP PAGE
also
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/premiereandpostoxford
Film Oxford page (includes all previous meetings) http://www.filmoxford.org/adobeusergroups/
Joint meeting with Adobe Groups: Digital Film Editors (Oxford) and Oxford Digital Creative
Amy Hollywood (Harvard) delivers a series of lectures on “The real, the true, and the mystical” in Oxford. At 7pm will be a play on Derrida in Oxford by John Schad and Fred Dalmasso.
Tickets 8£/ 5£ reduced for students and Lecture attendants.
Amy Hollywood (Harvard) delivers a series of lectures on “The real, the true, and the mystical” in Oxford.
Amy Hollywood : The Unspeakability of Trauma, the Unspeakability of Joy: The Pursuit of the Real at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century
Roundtable: 25 years of The Soul as Virgin Wife: Eckhart and the Beguines Convenors: Ben Morgan and Johannes Depnering
Join us on Monday for our second last event for the academic year to hear Jens Zimmerman speak on theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Christian Humanism. Jens is a philosopher and theologian who specializes in hermeneutics and the philosophical and theological roots of humanism. He currently holds the Canada Research Chair in Interpretation, Religion and Culture.
Twenty minute talk, Q&As, and an hour of discussion. Free entry, no need to book. You’re welcome to come along just to listen, or to take part actively in the discussion.
Brian Hurwitz is D’Oyly Carte Professor of Medicine and the Arts in the Department of English. He is a medical practitioner affiliated to the Division of Health and Social Care Research, King’s College London, directs the Centre for the Humanities and Health and is a member of the Steering Advisory Board of the Centre for Life-Writing Research at King’s.
Collectively clinical case reports constitute a huge repository of medical experience. This talk will scrutinise their shape, salient features, and the nature of the hindsight from which they are composed, filtered for coherence, and turned into second order accountsof encounters, observations and reasoning about a patient or series of patients. It asks what case reports are good for and what kinds of knowledge they embody.
Human-caused global warming has been making headlines for over two decades, but people’s opinions on it often depend on what headlines they’re reading. How is it that a scientific theory has become so politicised? Join us to hear Adam Levy (Nature, University of Oxford; @ClimateAdam), a climate change scientist and YouTuber, discuss the key scientific evidence behind climate change, and explain why perspectives on climate change shouldn’t be a matter of belief.
twitter @oxfordscibar
facebook ‘British Science Association Oxfordshire Branch
Six members of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), including comedian and journalist Mark Thomas are taking legal action against the Metropolitan Police’s monitoring and keeping of their information on a database that deals with extremists. An illustrated talk by four of those in the case discuss how journalists documenting protest are coming under surveillance. The panel includes photojournalist and campaign photographer Jess Hurd, Video Journalist Jason N Parkinson and Photographer David Hoffman, chaired by curator of OVADA’s current Resistance is Fertile exhibition, Adrian Arbib.
The award-winning video journalist and campaign filmmaker, Zoe Broughton, has spent more than 20 years putting herself on the frontline – going undercover at an animal-testing lab, being chased by police while filming on a high-speed motor boat and dodging landmines in Burma! Zoe presents an illustrated talk about her work at OVADA as part of their current Resistance is Fertile exhibition.
Talk – Perspectives: Cheating
A short series of talks on cheating, fakes and frauds to accompany the exhibition by Lynn Hershman Leeson.
Speakers include:
Nigel Warburton: The Ethics of Cheating
Warburton discusses how and why we decide to cheat and if it’s ever ok to cheat.
Nigel Warburton is a freelance philosopher, podcaster and writer, described by Julian Baggini as ‘one of the most-read popular philosophers of our time’. His books include A Little History of Philosophy, Philosophy: The Basics, Philosophy: The Classics, Thinking from A to Z, The Art Question, and Free Speech: A Very Short Introduction. He is the interviewer for the popular Philosophy Bites podcast which he makes with David Edmonds and which has been downloaded nearly 19 million times, and has formed the basis of two books, Philosophy Bites and Philosophy Bites Back.
Robert Hutton: Lying
Hutton will talk about how we lie to ourselves and to each other, the sorts of lies we tell and how you can spot a lie.
Robert Hutton is a British political reporter for Bloomberg News and author of the Journalese collection Romps, Tots and Boffins and the Uncommunication guide Would They Lie To You?
Megan Aldrich: Authenticity and the Gothic Revival
Aldrich will discuss William Beckford at Fonthill Abbey, who on occasion lied about the provenance of his decorative and antiquarian objects because he was so caught up in the ‘narrative’ of what he wanted them to be. Aldrich will talk about the fashion for creating false and imagined architectural histories in England in the 19th Century.
Megan Aldrich began her career in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. She curated the exhibition on the Crace firm of decorators at the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery in Sussex in 1990 and edited the accompanying publication. She is currently Senior Fellow in Object Based Studies at Sotheby’s Institute of Art.
Free, booking essential via https://www.modernartoxford.org.uk/event/perspectives-cheating/
Join Curator Katie Hill for an exhibition tour of WASTELANDS, a group show of contemporary Chinese art at OVADA this summer. Katie will provide background to the project and will introduce work by each of the eight exhibitors, which includes renowned artist, Ai Weiwei. Katie Hill is Director of the Office of Contemporary Chinese Art (OCCA) and course leader of Asian Art and its Markets at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London.
This is a FREE event – just turn up!
Venue: OVADA warehouse – 14A Osney Lane – Oxford – OX1 1NJ
For further information visit: www.ovada.org.uk/wastelands-tour
The Oxford Architecture Society lecture series
Lisa Finlay is coming to speak to us from Heatherwick Studio.
Established by Thomas Heatherwick in 1994, Heatherwick Studio is recognised for its work in architecture, urban infrastructure, sculpture, design and strategic thinking. At the heart of the studio’s work is a profound commitment to finding innovative design solutions, with a dedication to artistic thinking and the latent potential of materials and craftsmanship. In the twenty years of its existence, Heatherwick Studio has worked in many countries, with a wide range of commissioners and in a variety of regulatory environments.
Part 3 of a three-part mini-series on notation: Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic.
Part 1 was Reading Slough and London Paddington: the persistent lure of spelling reform (July 16th). Part 2 was Writing little messages in Italian: the social origins of music notation (August 20th).
Free entry, no need to book. You’re welcome to come along just to listen, or to take part actively in the discussion. The meeting room will be indicated on the display screen just inside the Town Hall entrance lobby.
Conceptions of Enlightenment is a one-day conference concluding in a public lecture at 5pm. The lecture will be delivered by Dennis Rasmussen (Tufts University, Boston), author of The Pragmatic Enlightenment (CUP, 2014).
Over the last century, historians and philosophers have used the term ‘Enlightenment’ in diverse ways. Was it primarily a philosophical movement, or did it involve a much wider change of outlook and sensibility in the course of the eighteenth century? Did its origins and centre lie in England, the Netherlands, France, or Scotland? Did it establish the human rights and freedoms we now value, or did it in practice subject humanity to rigidly rational systems of control? Did it give a voice to women and colonial subjects, or did it reinforce male domination and European hegemony over the rest of the world? Did it prepare the way for the French Revolution and the Reign of terror, or is its heritage to be found in the American Declaration of Independence?
To discuss such questions, a number of leading scholars of the Enlightenment will introduce the work of some of the historians and philosophers who have been most influential in shaping this much-debated concept.
A wine reception will follow the talk
Demographic changes across the world pose one of the biggest challenges of the 21st century. Longer lifespans and shifting fertility rates bring with them an array of global health issues. In this lecture, Professor Sarah Harper, Co-Director of the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing, will talk about the causes and effects of population change and the global age structural shift, and Professor Robyn Norton, Co-Director of The George Institute for Global Health, will address the implications of these changes on global health.
Philosopher Nigel Warburton will be discussing some of the thinkers and ideas that feature in his bestselling introductory book, A Little History of Philosophy.
Blackwell’s have recently sold our 1000th copy of the book in this shop alone, making it one of our biggest selling philosophy titles. The book has been translated into many different languages and has sold over 50,000 copies worldwide since its publication in 2012. Exploring the thinkers and ideas of the past and present in chronological order, Warburton not only makes philosophy extremely accessible but also offers inspiration to think, question and argue in the tradition of Socrates.
Renewable energy is a strong component in the race to mitigate climate change, and solar power is a particularly cheap and viable green energy option. Considering current technologies, cost, markets and infrastructure, Professor Henry Snaith, Co-Director of the Programme on Solar Energy: Organic Photovoltaics, and Professor Malcolm McCulloch, Head of the University of Oxford’s Electrical Power Group and Co-Director of The Oxford Martin Programme on Integrating Renewable Energy, will debate whether solar is indeed the answer to the urgent question of irreversible climate change.
This interdisciplinary workshop examines the impact of music on the brain from the point of view of different disciplines (medicine/physiology, psychology, philosophy).
Following a series of short talks by St Hilda’s Fellows and expert guest speakers, there will time for questions. Tea and coffee will be available.
Professor Nick Bostrom, Director of the Future of Humanity Institute, will explore the huge technological, scientific and environmental shifts that have led to humanity’s current state, and consider the choices that will determine our long-term future.