2015 lies between the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth last year, and the 400th anniversary of his death next year. As celebrations of Shakespeare’s profundity and morality abound, James Sheldrake will be offering a timely exploration of the darker side of Shakespeare in performance, exploring stagings of the “universal” playwright in Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and pre-Civil Rights America.

James is a freelance Shakespearean. Since finishing a Masters in Renaissance Literature at Oxford, he has taught at RADA, worked with Globe Education and podcasts regularly at www.sheldrakeonshakespeare.com. He is currently pitching a programme on Shakespeare and Evil, the subject of today’s lecture, to the BBC World Service.

Helen McCrory, in conversation with Edith Hall (KCL), about her performance in the National Theatre’s recent production of Medea (2014).
Free, all welcome, no booking required.

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.

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.

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Mankind’s strategies of mitigation and adaptation may well turn out to be too weak and too late to avoid dangerous climate change later this century. So might we need to try a different route – geoengineering? We could for example reflect more solar radiation back into space by making more reflective clouds; or we could absorb carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and bury it underground, to diminish the “greenhouse” effect.

Would such technologies work, and would there be side effects? And who would decide whether to do this, and when, if ever, to stop. These are just some of the questions raised by the idea of engineering the climate – could we, and should we?

Join in on Twitter #2015climate

Siddhartha will be reading from his books of poetry, Kalagora and Digital Monsoon, showing clips from his theatre work and film, as a way into exploring the relationship between memory, imagination and globalised environments. He will reflect on how the very idea of writing lives in the 21st century, of creatively using memory and imagination, are being renegotiated in radical ways in contemporary thought and aesthetic practice.

Do you want to learn something new?

The Knowledge Project offers affordable evening courses in exciting subjects. Our classes are taught by specialists in small, friendly groups and open to all. The coming term is set to be our busiest schedule yet, packed with new courses and some old favourites. All courses will be held in the comfortable setting of Oxford International College, taught by passionate and talented postgraduate students. As always, our proceeds will be donated to local children’s charity Jacari.

Premium: Introduction to Shakespeare. Fridays 7-8.30, 14th May – 2nd July. £150
This premium course will help you to discover the world of the Bard in six discussion based classes and two outings to local plays. With the aid of a passionate postgraduate student, discover the double meanings within Shakespeare’s plays and why this playwright is still so loved today.

We are also offering courses in:

Positive Psychology. Saturdays 10-11.30, 16th May – 4th July. £80

This new course looks into the popular topics of positivity and resilience. Why are some people more resilient than others and how can we increase our resilience? Why are some people more optimistic and is it possible to make ourselves happier?

What is Feminism? Tuesdays 6.30-8pm, 12th May – 30th June. £80

This fantastic new course – developed by the talented Monique Ma-Velous of Sydney University (Gender Studies) and University of Oxford (Creative Writing) – explores what it means to be a feminist in today’s world.

Creativity. Tuesdays 7-8.30, 12th May – 30th June. £80

This new and innovative course explores how creativity makes us happy, even replacing the job of therapy, and what the right creative medium is for each individual person.

Introduction to Contemporary Art. Thursdays 6-7.30, 14th May – 2nd July. £80

This course is for anyone who loves art (or would simply like to understand what the new Tate Modern exhibition is all about. You’ll cover: performance, feminism, land art, conceptual art, appropriation and globalisation. The course is discussion led so come with questions and opinions!

Introduction to Novel Writing. Mondays 6-7.30, 11th May – 29th June. £80

Our flagship course covering all the key aspects of novel writing: voice, world-making, perspective and of course endings and beginnings. No experience necessary!

To enrol simply visit our website, select the course you would like to follow and fill in an enrolment form. Your space will be confirmed upon payment. Be sure to stay up to date with all of our goings on by visiting our Facebook page and feel free to contact us with any further questions.

Maarten De Pourcq (Radboud University Nijmegen) will present a paper on the links between Classics, the First World War, and the Rise of Flemish Culture.
Followed by Q & A and refreshments.
Free, all welcome. no booking required.

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”.

Could extinct species, like mammoths and passenger pigeons, be brought back to life? The science says yes. In ‘How to Clone a Mammoth’, Beth Shapiro, evolutionary biologist and pioneer in “ancient DNA” research, walks readers through the astonishing and controversial process of de-extinction.

Join us for this fascinating talk, where Beth will be talking us through her research and the the extraordinary cutting-edge science that is being used–today–to resurrect the past.

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.

Kirsten Shepherd-Barr (Associate Professor of Modern Drama, University of Oxford) will discuss her book Theatre and Evolution from Ibsen to Beckett with:

Michael Billington (Theatre Critic, The Guardian)
Morten Kringlebach (Associate Professor and Senior Research Fellow, Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford)
Laura Marcus (Goldsmiths’ Professor of English Literature)

About the book

Evolutionary theory made its stage debut as early as the 1840s, reflecting a scientific advancement that was fast changing the world. Tracing this development in dozens of mainstream European and American plays, as well as in circus, vaudeville, pantomime, and “missing link” performances, Theatre and Evolution from Ibsen to Beckett reveals the deep, transformative entanglement among science, art, and culture in modern times.

The stage proved to be no mere handmaiden to evolutionary science, though, often resisting and altering the ideas at its core. Many dramatists cast suspicion on the arguments of evolutionary theory and rejected its claims, even as they entertained its thrilling possibilities. Engaging directly with the relation of science and culture, this book considers the influence of not only Darwin but also Lamarck, Chambers, Spencer, Wallace, Haeckel, de Vries, and other evolutionists on 150 years of theater. It shares significant new insights into the work of Ibsen, Shaw, Wilder, and Beckett, and writes female playwrights, such as Susan Glaspell and Elizabeth Baker, into the theatrical record, unpacking their dramatic explorations of biological determinism, gender essentialism, the maternal instinct, and the “cult of motherhood.”

It is likely that more people encountered evolution at the theater than through any other art form in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Considering the liveliness and immediacy of the theater and its reliance on a diverse community of spectators and the power that entails, this book is a key text for grasping the extent of the public’s adaptation to the new theory and the legacy of its representation on the perceived legitimacy (or illegitimacy) of scientific work.

New College Chapel presents Paradise Lost: a staged reading of Milton’s epic poem in 3 parts, directed by Professor Elisabeth Dutton (Fribourg), featuring new settings of Milton’s hymns by the Organist, Robert Quinney, and anthems by Byrd, Weelkes and Purcell. There will be a pre-performance talk by Dr Will Poole on Friday 22nd May, 7.15, in the Conduit Room.

Wed 20 May: Books 1-4, The Parliament in Hell
Thurs 21 May: Books 5-8, The War in Heaven
Fri 22 May: Books 9-12, The Fall
Each part can be viewed individually.

Tickets on the door: £10/£5 students; £25/10 for all 3 nights. All proceeds will go to Sight Savers, who work to treat and prevent blindness in the developing world.

Can we develop transport technologies that are less harmful to the planet? Professor David Banister, Director of the Transport Studies Unit, and Professor Malcom McCulloch, head of the Electrical Power Group will present research into low carbon technologies, and examine the issues surrounding their implementation.

Join in on Twitter #2015climate

New College Chapel presents Paradise Lost: a staged reading of Milton’s epic poem in 3 parts, directed by Professor Elisabeth Dutton (Fribourg), featuring new settings of Milton’s hymns by the Organist, Robert Quinney, and anthems by Byrd, Weelkes and Purcell. There will be a pre-performance talk by Dr Will Poole on Friday 22nd May, 7.15, in the Conduit Room.

Wed 20 May: Books 1-4, The Parliament in Hell
Thurs 21 May: Books 5-8, The War in Heaven
Fri 22 May: Books 9-12, The Fall
Each part can be viewed individually.

Tickets on the door: £10/£5 students; £25/10 for all 3 nights. All proceeds will go to Sight Savers, who work to treat and prevent blindness in the developing world.

This symposium offers an innovative and exciting ‘coming together’ of language teachers and teachers of the creative arts, asking the questions:
What does creativity mean to me? What do I do about it as a teacher? Why does it matter?
It will offer exciting new ideas for teaching language through dance, poetry, art and play; and will give participants opportunities to share and try out creative teaching ideas that connect language with other ‘intelligences’.
The plenary speakers are world-class creative educators both within and beyond the TESOL profession, including Jean Clark (dance educator), John Daniel (poet), Charlie Hadfield, Jill Hadfield, Chris Lima, Alan Maley, Amos Paran, Rachel Payne (art educator), Rob Pope, Jane Spiro and Nick Swarbrick (specialist in children’s play).

Fees include gourmet Friday evening meal & Saturday tapas lunch for all delegates.

New College Chapel presents Paradise Lost: a staged reading of Milton’s epic poem in 3 parts, directed by Professor Elisabeth Dutton (Fribourg), featuring new settings of Milton’s hymns by the Organist, Robert Quinney, and anthems by Byrd, Weelkes and Purcell. There will be a pre-performance talk by Dr Will Poole on Friday 22nd May, 7.15, in the Conduit Room.

Wed 20 May: Books 1-4, The Parliament in Hell
Thurs 21 May: Books 5-8, The War in Heaven
Fri 22 May: Books 9-12, The Fall
Each part can be viewed individually.

Tickets on the door: £10/£5 students; £25/10 for all 3 nights. All proceeds will go to Sight Savers, who work to treat and prevent blindness in the developing world.

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.

How can the human economy become more sustainable in the face of a rapidly changing climate? Professor Cameron Hepburn, Director of the Economics of Sustainability programme at The Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, will discuss new ways of assessing climate and economic risk, how to stimulate innovation in greener technologies, and the impacts of climate policy on the economy.

Join in on Twitter #2015climate

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.

Professor Sir John Bell has been invited to Oxford Brookes to discuss the future of medicine and the role of the Oxford Academic Health Science Centre. His research interests are in the area of autoimmune disease and immunology where he has contributed to the understanding of immune activation in a range of autoimmune diseases. In 1993, he founded the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, one of the world’s leading centres for complex trait common disease genetics.

Alongside global warming, the destruction of the world’s biodiversity and natural capital threatens to undermine economic growth. Another 3 billion people and a world economy some 16 times bigger by 2100 threatens environmental destruction on a scale which would make the twentieth century look positively benign. On current policies, natural capital – those assets nature gives us for free – will be massively depleted and undermine economies. To put growth on a sustainable basis requires that natural assets are taken seriously – in national and corporate accounts, on balance sheets, and by providing compensation for damage, pollution taxes and a nature fund. This lecture sets out how to do this, how to start restoring natural capital, and why it is necessary for sustainable economic growth.

Speaker: Prof Dieter Helm. Dieter is an Official Fellow in Economics at New College, Oxford, Professor of Energy Policy at the University of Oxford and Professorial Research Fellow of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment. He is Chair of the Natural Capital Committee and a Director of Aurora Energy Research Ltd. The revised edition of his most recent book, Natural Capital – Valuing The Planet, is due to be published in May by Yale University Press.

Tom Morris is internationally renowned as one of the UK’s foremost directors. He co-directed the National Theatre’s international smash-hit production War Horse, alongside Marianne Elliot, for which they won a Tony Award for Best Direction. Since 2009, he has been Artistic Director of Bristol Old Vic during which he’s overseen the venue’s huge £20 million refurbishment and directed numerous productions including Swallows and Amazons and Juliet and Her Romeo.

For this special Friday at 5pm presented by Ruskin Theatre Platforms, Tom will be in conversation with playwright and director John Retallack about his career to date and how he imagines the future of British theatre.

Earth System scientists believe the Earth has entered a new epoch in the Geological Time Scale, the Anthropocene or ‘the Age of Man’, in which humans now rival the great forces of nature in determining the geological trajectory of the planet. The new epoch, driven mainly by human-induced climate change, represents a rupture in Earth history with profound consequences for humankind and the Earth System itself. The concept grew out of the new discipline of Earth System science, a ‘paradigm shift’. A number of scientists and social scientists have put forward interpretations of the Anthropocene that, mostly unconsciously, deflate the significance of the new epoch and the threat it poses to humankind and the Earth. It has variously been equated with the Holocene, interpreted as just another instance of ecological or landscape change, rendered banal by the discovery of historical ‘precursors’, and framed as a welcome opportunity for humans to remake the Earth. Each of these can be shown to be a misreading of Earth System science.

Clive Hamilton is an Australian academic and author. His books include Growth Fetish (Pluto Press), Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change (Earthscan) and Earthmasters: The Dawn of the Age of Climate Engineering (Yale UP). He is the co-editor (with Christophe Bonneuil and Francois Gemenne) of the just-released The Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis: Rethinking modernity in a new epoch (Routledge). Clive is currently writing a book on the larger meaning of the Anthropocene. He is currently Professor of Public Ethics at Charles Sturt University in Canberra. He has held various visiting academic positions, including at Yale University, Sciences Po and the University of Oxford.

Biomedical instrumentation challenges electronic engineers to create innovative circuits and systems that produce useful, reliable information about the human body.

The electrical signals within the body can be monitored by biomedical equipment to diagnose a whole host of physiological conditions. These signals are often very small and hidden within unwanted electrical noise. The challenge is keeping unwanted signals in the system at extremely low levels compared to the wanted signals.

Poor signal to noise ratios can lead to false readings, errors and the possibility of misinterpreting data, with potentially dangerous or fatal consequences.
For biomedical instruments to work effectively, the signals going into them have to be as free from interference as possible and Khaled will be explaining and demonstrating some of the techniques available to achieve this.

About the speaker
Professor Khaled Hayatleh
PROFESSOR KHALED HAYATLEH

Professor Khaled Hayatleh received his BEng and PhD (in collaboration with Imperial College, London) from Oxford Brookes.

His research interests are electronic circuits and systems for radio frequency and biomedical applications. He also has considerable industry
experience, working with Nokia and Texas Instruments amongst others.

He is currently the lead for electronics in Brookes’ Biomedical Imaging and Instrumentation Research Team, and is a visiting research fellow at Imperial College, London.

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.
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Tom Piper will talk about the creative process leading to the realisation of the Tower of London Poppies installation, as well as his work at the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Theatre critic, Aleks Sierz, and cultural geographer, Lia Ghilardi, will speak on 400 years of theatrical inventiveness and profound social change

Włodzimierz Staniewski talks about his “Pythian Oratorio”, with excerpts performed by Mariusz Gołaj, Joanna Holcgreber and Tetiana Oreshko – members of the Gardzienice theatre company.
The talk starts at 7pm in the Jacqueline Du Pré Music Building at St Hilda’s, Oxford.
Free, everyone welcome – but due to limited seating, tickets must be booked online at: https://eventbrite.co.uk/event/16708871685/

How can we use chocolate to understand the neurobiology of depression? Join us to hear Dr Ciara McCabe discuss how we investigate reward function in the human brain and how this is related to depression. Find out how this information can help explain why current medications might not be working and how, with neuroscience, we aim to develop better, targeted personalised treatments for depression.