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

Evening with Sami Awad of the Holyland Trust http://www.holylandtrust.org
Monday 15th June – Impossible to Possible: what does nonviolence mean in Palestine today?
Palestinian Christian Sami Awad, the Executive Director of the Holy Land Trust will lead discussions about nonviolence and its role in bringing a just and lasting peace to all who live in the Holy Land.
Holy Land Trust exists to lead in creating an environment that fosters understanding, healing, transformation, and empowerment of individuals and communities, locally and globally, to address core challenges that are preventing the achievement of a true and just peace in the Holy Land.
6.30pm for 7.00pm start; Friends Meeting House, 43 St. Giles, Oxford.
“It is encouraging for us to know that people have realised that you can stand up for the human rights of the Palestinians without compromising the rights of Israelis to also live in peace. You do not have to pick a side. I invite you ..to continue praying for peace for both communities that live in what we all call the Holy Land.”
Sami Awad.
“We have to not only understand those people who are oppressing us, but try to walk in their shoes, and ultimately to really engage with what it means to follow Jesus’ call to love our enemies.”
Sami Awad.
Sami will be visiting the UK with the Amos Trust. As well as the event on 15th June, Sami will also give a sermon in St Giles Church on Sunday 14th June. These events contribute to the Oxford Palestine Unlocked festival (4th – 20th June) . More details on the website http://palestineunlocked.com and also http://www.amostrust.org

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The second of the College’s 50th Anniversary termly lectures will be given by Thomas Heatherwick, designer of the 2012 Olympic Cauldron and one of Britain’s foremost design talents.

Thomas Heatherwick on Heatherwick Studio

Established by Thomas Heatherwick in 1994, Heatherwick Studio is recognised for its work in architecture, urban infrastructure, sculpture, design and strategic thinking. Having designed projects ranging in scope from a handbag to an urban master plan, Heatherwick Studio refuses to specialise and embraces the continuity of designing across different scales. In this talk, Thomas Heatherwick will present a series of the studio’s past and present projects, with a focus on the working process and how the studio approaches new briefs.

Free event, booking essential.

This is a special workshop hosted by the Refugee Studies Centre as part of Oxford Refugee Week.

Programme:

Chair: Professor Dawn Chatty, Professor of Anthropology and Forced Migration and former Director of the RSC

Speakers:
Dr Jeff Crisp, independent consultant, RSC Research Associate, and former Head of Policy Development & Evaluation at UNHCR

Dr Maria Kastrinou, Lecturer, Brunel University

Dr Sara Pantuliano, Director of Humanitarian Policy Group, Overseas Development Institute

Dr Patricia Sellick, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Trust, Peace & Social Relations, Coventry University

Professor Roger Zetter, Professor Emeritus of Refugee Studies, RSC

Since 2011, the on-going conflict in Syria has had an enduring and devastating impact. According to the latest inter-country report of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the humanitarian crisis has reached an unprecedented scale: 7.6 million people are internally displaced in Syria, while more than 3.9 million are seeking protection in neighbouring Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey.

Against the background of this unprecedented humanitarian crisis, what are Syrians’ aspirations for their futures? What kind of futures do they want to build? And what measures have EU Member States taken in response to the crisis?

This workshop will draw on ethnographic accounts from work directly with Syrian communities in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. The workshop will bring together experts and academics that have had direct fieldwork experience and can speak about the concerns, needs and aspirations of Syrians who have fled Syria.

This event is open to all. No registration is required.

A wine reception will follow afterward.

A talk in association with the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings.

A talk by Roger Hunt, the award winning writer specialising in sustainability, old houses, housebuilding and traditional and modern building materials.

A one-day free exhibit featuring powerful children’s drawings from Burma and Sudan.

The event is co-sponsored by Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust (HART) and Waging Peace. The drawings from Burma were collected on visits by HART to their partners. HART works with these partners and others in conflict or post-conflict areas, often facing persecution and oppression and trapped behind closed borders. The areas in which HART’s partners work are often not reached by larger organisations and Government support.

The pictures from Sudan were collected by Waging Peace, from Darfuri children living in refugee camps in Chad. Waging Peace is a non-governmental organisation that campaigns against genocide and systematic human rights abuses and seeks the full implementation of international human rights treaties.

These drawings are commanding and moving, providing an insight into the lives and minds of children living in these contexts.

A lecture in aid of the British red Cross services in Oxfordshire and beyond kindly given by award winning journalist Peter Taylor and entitled ‘Terrorism from IRA to Al Quaeda and ISIL.’ In his lecture Peter will describe his 40 year journey from reporting the IRA to investigating Al Qaeda and, latterly, assessing the Islamic State. He will discuss how successful – or otherwise – governments and states have been in countering the threats and addressing their root causes.

In conjunction with The Angus Library and Archive’s exhibition, ‘Navigating the Congo’, Bandi Mbubi, will be joining us to speak about conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo and his work in demanding the development of fairtrade technology which uses conflict-free minerals.

Bandi Mbubi is a founder and director of Congo Calling, an organisation who are working to bring the world’s attention to the atrocities being committed in the Congo and for a peaceful resolution to the ongoing war. Bandi writes and speaks nationally and internationally to create a mass movement of consumers who demand the development of fair trade technology which uses ethically-sourced, conflict-free minerals from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

The exhibition will be open to visitors before the talk from 1pm-5.30pm on 22nd September.

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.

The first OxArch workshop of the series ‘Behind Architecture: The Essentials’ is set to bring us back to the analogue process of representation. ‘Architecture in Watercolours’ presents an opportunity to begin the year with a little experimentation.

Anisha Meggi (currently studying her PhD) works with watercolour to capture the essence of a project with the physical and theoretical layering of watercolour paint and model making.

Come join us on the 4th floor of Abercrombie on Thursday at 4pm, if you’re interested in learning a new skill or pushing further what you already know about watercolour.

We will be providing some watercolour trays, watercolour paper and brushes. However, if you have you’re own watercolour sets, please feel free to bring them in.

Prices:
£7 for members
£9 for non members

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.

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.

Wine reception, snacks, and £5 year membership to PsyNAppS available. Alternatively, pay £2 for a single event!

Venue: Lecture Theatre B, Department of Experimental Psychology

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How do individuals and groups react to different environmental situations (home, office, hospital, street, shop, and so on)? What psychological processes are triggered by our environment, and how do they affect our perception, attitude and actions? How can individuals and groups change their environment so that it provides a more stimulating, less stressful and more enabling setting in which to live? How are our identities tied up with place? How might sustainability in environmental policy be better informed by current research?

Byron Mikellides is currently Emeritus Professor at the School of Architecture, Oxford Brookes University, where he has been teaching since 1968. He has published several influential books including Colour for Architecture (1976),with Tom Porter, Architecture for People (1980) and Colour for Architecture Today (2009),with Tom Porter. He has also contributed to several books, scientific journals and papers over the years, and lectured extensively in various countries particularly in USA and Scandinavia. He is also a former member of Directors of IAPS (International Association of People Environment Studies), a committee member of the Colour Group of Great Britain and an Honorary member of the Portugal Colour Group. He organised the Exhibition of Antonio Gaudi, in Oxford in 1983 and the ‘Colours of Savannah’ in Georgia, USA in 1996 for the Olympic Games.

His latest works include chapters in books such as Building Happiness (2010) on architectural psychology and Colour Design – Theory and Applications (2012).

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Psychology and Neuroscience Applications Society

The junction where psychology and neuroscience research meets action and innovation.

PsyNAppS aims to disseminate information about what you can do with your psychology or neuroscience degree and research. We are here to tell you everything Freud hasn’t. We want to show you how psychology and neuroscience can be applied practically to a variety of industries.

Reuters Institute seminars “The business and practice of journalism”
The following seminars will be given at 2 pm on Wednesdays, normally in the Barclay Room, Green Templeton College.
Convenors: James Painter, David Levy

Nazanine Moshiri, roving correspondent, Al Jazeera English
2 December: ‘The changing nature of reporting from a war zone’

Professor Carl Heneghan will deliver an interactive workshop, taking an evidence-based approach to answering your own clinical questions.

With over 20 year’s experience in clinical epidemiology, Professor Heneghan has over 200 peer reviewed publications that all started with a clinical question.

The Symposium, celebrating Ada Lovelace’s 200th birthday on 10 December 2015, is aimed at a broad audience of those interested in the history and culture of mathematics and computer science, presenting current scholarship on Lovelace’s life and work, and linking her ideas to contemporary thinking about mathematics, computing and artificial intelligence.

The Symposium takes place in the Mathematical Institute of the University of Oxford, with a reception at the new Weston Library (Bodleian) and dinner at Balliol College on 9 December.

Other activities will include a workshop for early career researchers, and a ‘Music and Machines’ event. For more information and for the full line up of speakers please visit: http://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/adalovelace/symposium/

*Registration*

Standard Registration, December 9-10: £40
Gala Dinner Ticket, December 9: £50

You can register and pay via the University of Oxford online-shop: http://www.oxforduniversitystores.co.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&modid=2&catid=70&prodid=386

Thanks to the generosity of our sponsors, we have a limited number of student funded places available to cover registration and the conference dinner. These are open to students studying in UK universities in 2015-16. For more information please visit: http://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/adalovelace/symposium/

Join Ben Ford as he speaks about the 2015 archaeological excavations from under the Westgate Shopping Centre @ Key Learning Centre, Oxford Castle.

Listen to Julian Munby, from Oxford Archaeology and an OPT Trustee, as he speaks about Nuneham in the Oxford landscape.

Acclaimed mathematician Marcus du Sautoy gives the second of the Weinrebe Lecture Series, on the theme of ‘Variations on Biography’, hosted by the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing.

One week after the 1967 ‘Six-Day War’, a group of young kibbutzniks, led by renowned author Amos Oz and Editor Avraham Shapira, recorded intimate conversations with soldiers returning from the battlefield. The Israeli army censored the recordings, allowing only a fragment of the conversations to be published. Censored Voices reveals these original recordings for the first time.

Following the screening, there will be a talk from Professor Derek Penslar, Oxford’s Stanley Lewis Professor of Israel Studies. Dr Penslar has written a number of books and articles on Israel’s place in modern Jewish and world history, and co-edits two scholarly journals, The Journal of Israeli History and Jewish Social Studies.

Please book by emailing events@lmh.ox.ac.uk

A public meeting featuring veteran peace campaigner Bruce Kent plus speakers from CND and Momentum. There will also be questions and discussion.

Parliament will soon be making a decision on Trident replacement. Come and hear the facts.

All welcome – feel free to join in the discussion or just listen.

Organised by Oxford CND and Momentum Oxford

As a cornerstone initiative of the Oxford Programme for the Future of Cities, we are proposing a new format for presenting and elaborating thinking on what urban governance does, when it succeed and fails, and how it can be re-organized to meet the challenges of the 21st century. We put academics on the cutting edge of global urban scholarship face-to-face with established innovative practitioners—architects, activists, policy makers, and artists.

Through a series of rigorous yet accessible public dialogues they will grapple with the intellectual and everyday implications of their theories and practices on cities to produce visionary but grounded research and intervention strategies for the future of city life.
Each debate will be preceded by a small panel of academics and practitioners presenting papers that speak to the same key issues. Building on the long-standing Oxford tradition of public debate, we hope to encourage productive engagement between intellectuals and practitioners that is too often missing from discussions of the city.

As a cornerstone initiative of the Oxford Programme for the Future of Cities, we are proposing a new format for presenting and elaborating thinking on what urban governance does, when it succeed and fails, and how it can be re-organized to meet the challenges of the 21st century. We put academics on the cutting edge of global urban scholarship face-to-face with established innovative practitioners—architects, activists, policy makers, and artists.

Through a series of rigorous yet accessible public dialogues they will grapple with the intellectual and everyday implications of their theories and practices on cities to produce visionary but grounded research and intervention strategies for the future of city life.
Each debate will be preceded by a small panel of academics and practitioners presenting papers that speak to the same key issues. Building on the long-standing Oxford tradition of public debate, we hope to encourage productive engagement between intellectuals and practitioners that is too often missing from discussions of the city.

This conference is intended to challenge the commonly held view of the prolonged gap in the progress of Western civilisation’s understanding of the natural world between the theories of the Ancient Greeks, led in particular by Aristotle and Plato, and the formation of the modern world view leading to the heliocentric theory of the Solar System and the theories of mechanics and gravity. These modern theories were in fact the result of centuries of empirical and theoretical work, which was conducted mainly in the universities of Europe and in particular at Oxford and which replaced in turn the Aristotelian world view of antiquity and then the literally biblical view of the Church. The conference will review the contributions of these medieval scholars working in Oxford and is intended to demonstrate the evolution of this activity from its theoretical, theological origins into the activity using mathematics and experimental observations which forms the basis of modern physics.

Registration to attend this conference is free, but must be confirmed using the Conference booking form by Monday 22nd February.

The 2016 annual Heron-Allen lecture will be given by Dominic Johnson, Alastair Buchan Chair of International Relations, Director of Research, at the Department of Politics and International Relations (DPIR), Oxford.

For millions of years, humans and other animals have had to find ways to coexist in sharing finite resources in the environment. Often this has led to competition and conflict, but it has also led to the evolution of remarkable adaptations and systems of social organisation that promote cooperation and sharing. Dominic suggests that we have often focused too much on the former and not enough on the latter, more optimistic aspects of ecology and evolution. Today, with the rapid rise in human population and consumption, the Earth’s finite resources are dwindling beyond repair, and we desperately need fresh approaches to maximise our chances of damage limitation. Dominic and the interdisciplinary “Natural Governance” project team at Oxford suggest that major new insights may come from studying and learning how other species, as well as indigenous human societies, have successfully managed common resources in the past, and the social and behavioural mechanisms which enable this sharing and conflict resolution to succeed. The team believe that, even if by small steps, this approach opens a new avenue for the successful governance of natural resources. From long term studies of badgers in Wytham Woods, to hunter-gatherers in Africa, to contemporary conflicts over resources, the talk will give examples of new ways to think about our predicament and ask whether nature itself may hold solutions to help us preserve it.

The lecture starts promptly at 5.15pm in the Simpkins Lee Theatre and finishes with a drinks reception in the Monson Room. The event is free to attend and guests are welcome. To book your place(s), please email events@lmh.ox.ac.uk.

This is the monthly meeting of the Oxford AI Meetup group.
The talks include an analysis of Deep Mind’s AlphaGo software that has just beaten the world champion in their first match.

Our monthly meetup includes
Alpha Go : How did Deep Mind beat the world champion and just how big an achievement is it?
Fun with Recurrent Neural Networks
The Latest AI news

IN[SCI]TE is a new interdisciplinary science, technology, and engineering conference, which will take place on Monday and Tuesday of 0th Week Trinity Term 2016. IN[SCI]TE is run by undergrads, and the talks will be both delivered by and aimed at undergrads.

The aims for IN[SCI]TE are to broaden the knowledge and awareness of science undergrads outside their field of study, to provide a setting for undergrads to give a talk at a scientific conference during their degree, and to inspire future scientists to enter areas of work that cross the boundaries in science.

We are now accepting applications for speakers! Submit an application at inscite.co/speakers/, or send the facebook page a message if you have any questions.

To keep up to date with the conference, like us on facebook.com/insciteco, and follow us @insciteco.