Some face-to-face events are returning. Check carefully for any requirements.
7.30PM start at St. Aldates Tavern, and entry is free, although we do suggest a donation of around £3 to cover speaker expenses. Come along and say hello! All welcome. http://oxford.skepticsinthepub.org/Event.aspx/2561/-Science-What-does-is-really-mean-to-be-scientific
From developing theories and defining natural laws, science is a human construct. How does it work? What can it solve? How do you think science works? What does being a scientist mean to you? We will talk about the history of science and its culture and the rise and fall of theories and laws and dicuss what science means to us in the modern age.
Dr. Sylvia McLain is a biophysicist at the University of Oxford, runs a research group in the Biochemistry Department and teaches at St. Peter’s College. She has an undergraduate degree in Zoology, a Masters in Education and a PhD in Chemistry. She is a failed house cleaner and fast-food server, and spends her spare time reading far too much and being altogether far too opinionated.
https://www.facebook.com/events/1604985569744464/
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.
Reuters Institute seminars “The business and practice of journalism”
The following seminars will be given at 2pm on Wednesdays, normally in the Barclay Room, Green Templeton College.
Convenors: James Painter, David Levy
Speaker: Laurie Benson, chief executive of Upnexxt
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.
Twenty minute talk, one hour discussion. Free entry, no need to book.
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’.
Reuters Institute / Nuffield College Media & Politics seminars
The following seminars will be given at 5pm on Fridays, normally in the Butler Room, Nuffield College.
Convenors: Neil Fowler, James Painter, David Levy
Speakers: Professor Ivor Gaber, University of Sussex, Dr Maya Even, visiting fellow, Reuters Institute
A night of science comedy from Oxford’s funniest scientists. Highlights include the science of beer, the rise of the worm people and the end of the world. All profits go to TASTE, a small charity providing practical science lessons to schools in rural Uganda. The line up includes:
Dr Joanna Bagniewska, Zoologist and International Famelab superstar
Rob Shalloo, Mad laser scientist
Dr Alison Woollard, Geneticist and 2013 Royal Institution Christmas lecturer
Fran Day, Theoretical physicist playing with imaginary particles
Find out more about TASTE at http://www.tasteforscience.org.
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.
Reuters Institute seminars “The business and practice of journalism”
The following seminars will be given at 2pm on Wednesdays, normally in the Barclay Room, Green Templeton College.
Convenors: James Painter, David Levy
Speaker: Kevin Sutcliffe, head of news programmes for Europe, Vice News
As adults can tell us when they are feeling pain we can often simply ask them whether pain medication is working. As babies cannot talk, we need to rely on other measures to find out whether they are feeling pain. It is not always possible to know whether a baby is in pain by looking at their behaviour. Join us to hear Dr Rebeccah Slater, discuss whether the use of modern brain imaging techniques can tell us whether a baby can feel pain. This is particularly important for babies admitted to intensive care after birth who may need lots of medical interventions to be performed everyday as part of their essential medical care.
twitter @oxfordscibar
facebook ‘British Science Association Oxfordshire Branch
To the Victorians, the newly understood sciences were the most exciting subjects of the century, and they wanted their children to learn about this wonderful new world, too.
Writers from Hans Christian Andersen to Edith Nesbit began to capture the excitement of the latest scientific discoveries. In this fascinating new book, Melanie Keene introduces and analyses these Victorian scientific fairy tales, from nursery classics such as The Water-Babies, to the little-known Wonderland of Evolution. In doing so, she shows how authors reconciled factual accuracy with truly fantastical narratives, to entice young readers into learning their secrets by converting scientific fact into quirky, charming, and imaginative fairy-tales.
This event will be followed by a book signing
The inaugural Lorna Casselton Memorial Lecture, entitled “Science as Revolution”, will be at 5pm on Friday 15th May, in the main Lecture Theatre, L1, at the Mathematical Institute in the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter.
It will be given by Professor Sir Paul Nurse, President of the Royal Society and Nobel Laureate.
The event is free but booking is required – please complete the booking form: http://bit.ly/1y5OLov
Reuters Institute / Nuffield College Media & Politics seminars
The following seminars will be given at 5pm on Fridays, normally in the Butler Room, Nuffield College.
Convenors: Neil Fowler, James Painter, David Levy
Speaker: Anthony Barnett, founder of openDemocracy
Reuters Institute seminars “The business and practice of journalism”
The following seminars will be given at 2pm on Wednesdays, normally in the Barclay Room, Green Templeton College.
Convenors: James Painter, David Levy
Speaker: Tom Standage, digital editor, The Economist
Adam Divák and Tamás Nagy from Synetiq Ltd.
Ádám Divák (CTO) and Tamás Nagy (lead researcher) will talk about Synetiq, a Hungarian start-up providing neuromarketing research and emotional insights for media companies. They will show how biometric sensory information is turned into recommendations for films and TV adverts, how infostructure allows real-time monitoring of affective reactions, and how they integrate data recording with processing and analysis.
Entry is via the BabyLab entrance: http://www.psy.ox.ac.uk/research/oxford-babylab/your-visit-to-the-babylab/how-to-find-us
Reuters Institute / Nuffield College Media & Politics seminars
The following seminars will be given at 5pm on Fridays, normally in the Butler Room, Nuffield College.
Convenors: Neil Fowler, James Painter, David Levy
Speaker: Dame Margaret Beckett, MP for Derby South and former foreign secretary
Reuters Institute seminars “The business and practice of journalism”
The following seminars will be given at 2pm on Wednesdays, normally in the Barclay Room, Green Templeton College.
Convenors: James Painter, David Levy
Speaker: Anna Doble, assistant editor, Newsbeat, BBC Radio 1
This book talk is a joint event between the Oxford Martin School and the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict
This book talk will see author Chris Woods discuss his new book Sudden Justice: America’s Secret Drone Wars, an exposé of the little-understood yet extremely significant world of drone warfare. His work is based on insights from many of those intimately involved – the pilots and analysts, US and UK intelligence officials, Special Forces and Pentagon commanders.
Chris Woods is an award-wining investigative journalist who specialises in conflict and national security issues. During almost a decade at the BBC, he was a senior producer for both Panorama and Newsnight.
The event will be introduced by Dr Alex Leveringhaus, a James Martin Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict and lead author of the recent Oxford Martin Policy Paper Robo-Wars: The Regulation of Robotic Weapons.
The book talk will be followed by a book signing, all welcome
This book talk will be live webcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdE9AJrZ_Fk
The next ‘Surgical Grand Rounds’ presentation at the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences will be given by Professor Fergus Gleeson, Professor of Radiology and Consultant Radiologist at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust.
Reuters Institute / Nuffield College Media & Politics seminars
The following seminars will be given at 5pm on Fridays, normally in the Butler Room, Nuffield College.
Convenors: Neil Fowler, James Painter, David Levy
Speaker: Sir Nicholas Macpherson, permanent secretary to the Treasury
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.
Reuters Institute seminars “The business and practice of journalism”
The following seminars will be given at 2pm on Wednesdays, normally in the Barclay Room, Green Templeton College.
Convenors: James Painter, David Levy
Speaker: Bronwen Maddox, editor, Prospect magazine
Pete Larson is one of the world’s most successful and sometimes controversial dinosaur hunters. Join Pete and palaeontologist Phil Manning to explore how dinosaurs are discovered, classified and sold in the global race to find the newest, biggest and best fossils.
Pete and his team were responsible for discovering ‘Sue’ -the most complete skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus Rex to have been found (so far.) With new species being found every year, what is the future for dinosaur hunting? Is it science, business or both? Are we getting closer to the time when cloning a dinosaur is possible or is Jurassic Park just a fantasy?
This event is suitable for age 8+
Join us at the Museum of Natural History for an evening of talks and networking to celebrate the research behind our new exhibition,‘Biosense’.
The exhibition features contemporary research, including how bacteria sense their micro-world, why oxygen sensing could revolutionise human medical treatment, and the way that the light around us affects our behaviour.
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
Reuters Institute / Nuffield College Media & Politics seminars
The following seminars will be given at 5pm on Fridays, normally in the Butler Room, Nuffield College.
Convenors: Neil Fowler, James Painter, David Levy
Speaker: Michael Crick, political editor, Channel 4 News