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.

Robin Dunbar is Prof. of Evolutionary Psychology at Oxford University. ” We are members of the ape family yet something happened in the course of our evolution to radically change how we behave. The result was cities, states, literature, religion, science, music.. Archaeologists gave traditionally focussed on the stones and bones of human evolution but the real story of human evolution lay in our social and cognitive evolution.”
Tea/coffee available prior to the talk from 18.00 in the staff room. Entrance through Robinson Close, off South Parks Road Oxford OX13PP

Having seen the election results unfold, the topic of political strategy and communication is as relevant as ever in highlighting the ways in which politicians and organisations seek to influence public opinion and shape political debate. The Oxford Forum welcomes you to the Political Strategy Panel Debate to discuss the challenges faced, and the solutions provided, in devising an effective communication strategy.
This event will be co-hosted with the PPE society and the Journal of Political and Constitutional Studies.
Following the debate, we will be having dinner with the speakers in the private dining room of Christ Church. Tickets are available to purchase at
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/oxford-forums-political-strategy-speaker-dinner-tickets-16819258856
It is an unmissable opportunity to engage more directly with the speakers!

Cyclox and the Oxford Pedestrians Association (OxPA) will be welcoming representatives of the bus companies that serve Oxford to a meeting to discuss the relationship between bikes, buses and pedestrians on the city’s busy streets.

Richard Mann, an Oxford-based transport and liveable cities consultant, will open the meeting with a presentation on how to make an excellent bus network and lead a discussion with contributions from Phil Southall of the Oxford Bus Company and Martin Sutton of Stagecoach.

There will be plenty of opportunities for questions and discussion from the floor, which will make for a very interesting event for anyone interested in how we move around our city. This is a public meeting so please come and add your voice to the debate.

Enter a lost world of music and poetry as more than 300 years of Mughal rule approached its end at the hands of the British in 1857. William Dalrymple, award-winning historian, in performance with the celebrated North Indian vocalist Vidya Shah, takes us back to the bygone era of matchless splendour, bringing to life a world of emperors, courtesans, politics, bayonets, intrigue and love, through words and music. Doors open at 17.45. Food and drinks in the Pitt Rivers Museum till 9p.m. after the lecture. Signed copies of ‘The Last Mughul’ and ‘Return of the King’ available after the lecture.

Refugee Studies Centre 2015 Annual Elizabeth Colson Lecture

Speaker:

Professor Miriam Ticktin (The New School for Social Research)

With the grounding assumption that innocence plays a central role in the politics of forced migration and asylum, this lecture will delve into the idea of innocence, trying to understand it and render its workings more legible, and arguing that it is a political – not simply a religious or moral – concept. By examining the figure of the child, the trafficked victim, the migrant, asylum seeker, the enemy combatant and the animal, Professor Ticktin will suggest that innocence sets up hierarchies of humanity, all the while feeding an expanding politics of humanitarianism. Ultimately, she will ask if innocence is a concept we want to protect.

About the speaker:

Miriam Ticktin is Associate Professor of Anthropology at The New School for Social Research and co-director of the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility. She received her PhD in Anthropology at Stanford University, in co-tutelle with the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, France, and an MA in English Literature from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. Before coming to the New School, Miriam was an Assistant Professor in Women’s Studies and Anthropology at the University of Michigan, and also held a postdoctoral position in the Society of Fellows at Columbia University.

Professor Ticktin’s research has focused in the broadest sense on what it means to make political claims in the name of a universal humanity. She has been interested in what these claims tell us about universalisms and difference, about who can be a political subject, on what basis people are included and excluded from communities, and how inequalities get instituted or perpetuated in this process. She is the author of Casualties of Care: Immigration and the Politics of Humanitarianism in France (University of California Press, 2011; co-winner of the 2012 William A. Douglass Prize in Europeanist Anthropology) and co-editor (with Ilana Feldman) of In the Name of Humanity: the Government of Threat and Care (Duke University Press, 2010), along with many other articles and book chapters. She is a founding editor of the journal Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism and Development. Next year she will be a fellow at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study.

This is a panel discussion organised in collaboration with ‘Oxford Refugee Week’ by the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford. Chairing will be Dr Jeff Crisp, with speakers Prof. Alexander Betts, Prof. Cathryn Costello, Dr Mariagiulia Guiffre and Dr Nando Sigona. Open to all. Registration recommended but not compulsory. To be followed by a drinks reception.

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

Join us for an after-hours exclusive guided tour of the Museum, where you will be taken around by one of our expert guides and then browse the galleries at your leisure away from the busy daily crowds.
Explore remarkable collections of hand-made objects from every continent and throughout human history.

A discussion about the ethics of Arts Sponsorship with Jeremy Spafford, Director of Arts at the Old Fire Station, and representatives from arts activists Art Not Oil – a network is dedicated to taking creative disobedience against institutions such as Tate, National Portrait Gallery and the British Museum until they drop their oil company funding. Together the panel will explore the ethics of sponsorship at a time where funding for the arts continues to be drastically cut. Who is it acceptable to take money from and what is the price that we pay? [IMAGE: Liberate Tate]

Join our expert panel for an evening of debate exploring the subject of the United Kingdom’s place within the European Union.

Special Turner Event at the Ashmolean Museum

Turner’s High Street, Oxford: a Unique Townscape

With Colin Harrison

Wednesday 8 July, 11am-12pm, Lecture Theatre

Find out more about Turner’s most significant townscape and the greatest painting of the city that has ever been made. Senior Curator of European Art, Colin Harrison, will give a special talk from 11am on Wednesday 8 July.

Tickets £5/£4 concessions. Booking is essential.

To find out more about the Ashmolean’s current campaign to secure Turner’s painting for the nation visit: http://www.ashmolean.org/turner/

Heather Richardson, Head of Conservation at the Pitt Rivers Museum, will talk about a temporary exhibition on the Museum’s lower gallery, showcasing original repairs found on objects in the Pitt Rivers collections. Part of a conservator’s role is to determine at what stage a repair to an object has been made and it is something they strive to preserve. Finding examples of repairs from originating communities can give the object a deeper resonance while also raising various questions. Why was this object repaired by its original owners rather than replaced? Is it a fine example of craftsmanship or is it a sacred object?

What the World is Losing, a talk with Dr Paul Collins, Dr Robert Bewley & Dr Emma Cunliffe

A special talk with Dr Paul Collins, Curator of the Ancient Near East Collections at the Ashmolean Museum, as well as Dr Robert Bewley and Dr Emma Cunliffe from the University of Oxford School of Archaeology

Saturday 25 July, 10.30am‒12pm
Ashmolean Museum Lecture Theatre

FREE entry. No booking required.

*** Spaces limited. Please arrive early to secure your seat. ***

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Middle Eastern cultural heritage is under threat as never before. These talks highlight what the world is losing in Iraq and Syria, as well as talking about Oxford University’s ‘Endangered Archaeology of the Middle East and North Africa’ project.

Dr Paul Collins spoke in April this year about the recent destruction of museums, libraries, archaeological sites, mosques, churches and shrines across northern Iraq to highlight the unique heritage that is being lost.

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This is a free Festival of Archaeology Talk. See the full programme of events at: http://www.ashmolean.org/events/Festival/

Katherine Pogson is a London-based designer-maker and Visiting Maker in Leatherwork at Pitt Rivers Museum. Katherine will present the process and outcomes of her residency, during which she has focussed on leather vessels in the Museum’s collection. These include African powder horns and water bottles from Sudan, India and Europe, documented as being ‘of peculiar construction’. Katherine has been studying the decorative and structural join devices, layering, texture and general form of these objects to influence her practice and develop new work.

To avoid dangerous climate change will require not only very steep cuts in emissions, but also the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Most of the models that avoid dangerous climate change do so by assuming that it will be possible to deploy a technique called biomass energy with carbon capture and storage (or BECCS for short) at a very large scale. But is this realistic?

Please join us for a public discussion to explore this issue. To what extent may it be possible to use biomass as a way of both generating electricity and removing carbon dioxide from the air? What are the likely impacts of such an approach – on climate change, on food supply, on biodiversity and on the will to reduce emissions.

The Oxford Martin School has brought together four excellent speakers with expertise in this field. Dr Craig Jamieson has explored the potential of using waste material from rice production for BECCS, Professor Tim Lenton has modelled how much biomass could be used for BECCS given projected population growth and dietary habits, Professor Nick Pidgeon is an expert on the social acceptability of new technologies and Dr Doug Parr is the Chief Scientist and Policy Director at Greenpeace.

My European citizenship rights…and why I don’t want to lose them.

We warmly invite you to a public meeting, followed by a reception to launch New Europeans in Oxford.

For details and speakers, please visit the event page on the New Europeans website.

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.

The extraction of oil and the mining of coal are devastating communities across the world. These operations have forced people from their land, polluted the environment, and led to widespread human rights violations.

According to the Colombia Human Rights Data Analysis Group, an estimated 9,000 people were murdered and 3,000 have disappeared in Casanare over the past two decades. One of those kidnapped was Gilberto Torres, who is bringing a case for compensation against BP and other oil companies in the High Court in London with the help of law firm Deighton Pierce Glynn (DPG) in the UK and Francisco Ramirez Cuellar in Colombia.

The Centre for Global Politics, Economy and Society at Oxford Brookes University, and UCU Oxford Brookes would like to invite you to a special event as part of the campaign tour ‘OIL JUSTICE NOW! Stop Corporate Impunity’ led by the NGO War on Want in partnership with the law firm Deighton Pierce Glynn and the organisation Cos-Pacc (see attached poster for further details).

Speakers are:

– Sue Wilman (Human Rights Lawyer, Deighton Pierce Glynn)
– Gilberto Torres (Former trade unionist with Union Sindical Obrera in Colombia)
– Dr Lara Montesinos Coleman (University of Sussex)
– Francisco Ramirez Cuellar (trade unionist and lawyer with the Colombian Unified Trade Union Federation)

Gilberto Torres is a former trade unionist with Union Sindical Obrera, representing workers in the oil industry. He was abducted and tortured by paramilitaries in 1992 and now lives in exile. Gilberto believes his abduction was ordered and assisted by Ocensa, a joint venture pipeline company part-owned and operated by BP.

Francisco Ramirez Cuellar is a trade unionist and lawyer with the Colombian Unified Trade Union Federation. He has been targeted and threatened because of his legal and campaigning work challenging multinationals who have committed serious environmental and human right abuses in Colombia.

Chaired by Dr Maia Pal (Oxford Brookes University)

Ordinary people across Europe have reacted with horror to the plight of refugees fleeing the Syrian civil war and other conflicts—and sent solidarity. David Cameron reacted with callous cynicism.

At first he held firm against letting in any. Britain, the world’s ninth richest country, supposedly couldn’t afford to take in more than a tube carriage full of desperate refugees.

After tens of thousands marched and more than 400,000 signed a petition to do more, Cameron was forced to shift gear. But his new plan is an insult.

Britain is to take in 20,000 Syrians over the next five years—fewer than Germany took in last weekend alone. There is no action to alleviate the plight of the hundreds of thousands of refugees already in Europe who face razor wire fences and detention camps to prevent them moving to find a new home.

The Home Secretary announced plans for more draconian treatment of asylum seekers, and the UK has withdrawn 2 more ships from rescuing refugees drowning in the Mediterranean.

There were even reports that refugee children could be deported on their 18th birthdays. The Tories are also trying to use the refugee crisis to drum up support for more bloody wars.

Three year old Aylan Kurdi was not the first child to drown needlessly on Europe’s doorstep. But after pictures of his dead body sent shudders around the world, his father made the plea, “let him be the last”.

We can stop the carnage. But it will take a mass movement to defy Cameron and the inhumane system he represents.

Come along to our first SWSS meeting this term to find out what we can do to build such a movement.

Hosted by Socialist Worker Student Society

Jonathan Bard will talk about the Pitt Rivers Museum’s case 106A Writing and Communication. Jonathan will start by looking at the problems around writing down a spoken language and how these have been solved in English. He will then go on to look at how other societies have come up with their own solutions, and illustrate these solutions with objects on display in the Pitt Rivers.

Oxford Centre for Life-Writing
Nicoletta Demetriou will discuss her attempt to record the stories of Cyprus’s last surviving traditional fiddlers. She will talk about what musicians’ life stories can tell us about the music and society we are looking at, and about the importance of letting biographical subjects tell their own story, in their own words.

This event is free of charge and open to all. Sandwiches will be provided.

Catherine Rubin Kermorgant will discuss her book ‘Servants of the Goddess: the Modern-Day Devadasis’. Married to the gods as young girls, devadasis are trained to sing and dance for the gods. Their sacred duties include providing sexual services to men. While they play an important spiritual role in their villages, they are also reviled as impure.
All welcome. Tea served from 18.00. Talk starts at 18.30.

(1) Ancient Africa’s Gift to: Law, Architecture, Mathematics, Judaism, Islam & Christianity.
This will be a 45 minute slide presentation.
(2) Magna Carta, Ancient Africa’s Gift to the English. The ancient roots of Magna Carta and the need to protect it today…with contributions from Political Parties
(3) Books that have shaped the perception of African people: Charles Darwin, Francis Galton, The Bible, & Black Athena

Come listen to a curator with the Smithsonian Institute, Dr. Ellen Feingold, talk about the ongoing fascinating ‘Money in Arica’ project at the British Museum, which aims to piece together African monetary history and its cultural and political impact. Dr. Feingold will also speak on her own focus of counterfeit currencies in colonial East and West Africa. The lecture will be held at the Ioannou (Classics) Centre on St. Giles.

This event should interest you if:

• you wish to know more about various numismatics research projects;
• you wish to know more about a unique and rare field of numismatics (African numismatics);
• you wish to know more about using numismatics as a source for research.

Speaker profile: http://americanhistory.si.edu/profile/1159
Abstract:

During the interwar period, international counterfeiting schemes originating in West Africa presented a new threat to British colonial and national currencies. The institutions responsible for the West African monetary system – the Colonial Office and West African Currency Board – believed these plots had the potential to generate high quality forged currency and thus considered them to present a greater risk than local counterfeiting practices. This paper argues that colonial officials were also alert to this illicit activity because the schemes presented a new challenge to British law enforcement in the colonies, set off disputes between national and imperial institutions in London, and required the British to collaborate with other nations to thwart. The emergence of these international counterfeiting schemes demonstrates that while the creation of a colonial monetary system for West Africa facilitated British imperial economic aims, it also created new and unanticipated challenges to British rule.

Please contact qaleeda.talib@some.ox.ac.uk for more information.

Free for members; a £2 fee applies for non-members. Please contact the Secretary at kim.zhang@wadh.ox.ac.uk if you wish to be a member and sign up to the mailing-list. Membership is free.

Talk by Kirsty Norman, UCL, Institute of Archaeology on the view from the ground of the invasion and the effects on the Kuwait’s National Museum.

Mass Circulation: Writing about Art in a Daily Newspaper

With Richard Dorment, art critic, and Dr Alexander Sturgis, Director, Ashmolean Museum

A special Ashmolean evening In Conversation event

Wednesday 18 November
6‒7pm
Lecture Theatre

As The Daily Telegraph’s chief art critic from 1986‒2015, Richard Dorment CBE covered exhibition subjects ranging from the Ice Age to the Turner Prize. He talks to Ashmolean Director, Dr Alexander Sturgis, about art history, art criticism, and the popular press.

Tickets £12/£10 concessions. Booking is essential.
https://www.oxfordplayhouse.com/ticketsoxford/#event=20239

Blasphemy and Apostasy exist in many countries in the world, commonly within the Middle East and North Africa. Pakistan’s blasphemy laws were first codified by India’s British rulers in 1860 and were inherited by Pakistan in 1947. The law (section 295-C of Pakistan Penal Code) states that blasphemy against the Prophet Muhammad is to be awarded a fixed death penalty, with no leeway. Mass support of the law through promotion by legal and socio-political institutions of religious authority has led to its use as a tool for oppression and persecution. In 2014 alone, over 90 people were accused of blasphemy.

Join OUPakSoc and South Asia Research Cluster, Wolfson College, for a discussion on Blasphemy Laws where we explore their history, religious basis and impact in Pakistan and beyond.

Date: 2nd December, 2015
Time: 5.30 pm
Venue: Leonard Wolfson Auditorium, Wolfson College, OX2 6UD
Moderator: Matthew McCartney

Debate from the floor: There will be an opportunity for the audience to contribute in the form of short speeches. Please send us an email at secretary@oupaksoc.net if you would like to participate in the event.

Panellists:
Dr Jan-Peter Hartung – the Department of Religions and Philosophies at SOAS
Tehmina Kazi – Director of Media, Outreach and Lobbying, British Muslims for Secular Democracy
Arafat Mazhar – Engage Pakistan, a non-profit research and advocacy organization working to reform Pakistan’s blasphemy law from within the framework of law.
Bob Churchill – Director of Communications, International Humanist and Ethical Union, Head of End Blasphemy Laws campaign
Khalid Zaheer – Vice -President AlMawrid institute Lahore (Foundation for Islamic Research and Education)
Reema Omer- international legal advisor for Pakistan for the International Commission of Jurists, member of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.
Ali Usma Qasmi – Assistant Professor (History) at LUMS, author of ‘Questioning the Authority of the Past: The Ahl al-Qur’an Movements in the Punjab’ and ‘The Ahmadis and the Politics of Religious Exclusion in Pakistan’ (Karachi Literary Festival Peace Prize).

This panel takes the publication of Ruti Teitel’s new book ‘Globalizing Transitional Justice’ as paperback 15 years after the publication of her seminal book ‘Transitional Justice’ (OUP 2000) as the entry point into a critical discussion of the state of the field of Transitional Justice: What is its future? Has it a future? What is the role of Law vis-à-vis other disciplines in the field? Are the concepts and methods of Transitional Justice which emerged against the backdrop of transitions in Latin America and Eastern Europe still relevant to new contexts such as transitions in the Middle East? How are national and international security agendas with their renewed focus on terrorism affecting Transitional Justice Mechanisms? How can we push the research agenda in the field in new directions?

Panel Members:

Prof. Ruti Teitel, Ernst C. Stiefel Professor of Comparative Law and Director of the Institute for Global Law, Justice and Policy at New York Law School

Prof. Leigh Payne, Professor of Sociology, University of Oxford

Prof. Chandra Sriram, Professor of International Law and International Relations, University of East London

Dr. Iavor Rangelov, Global Security Research Fellow, London School of Economics