Abstract:
The United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) was created in the aftermath of September 11, 2001 (“9/11”). Its aim was to increase dialogue and reduce enmity between “civilizations,” notably between Christians and Muslims. In other words, the UNAOC was created to enhance life for the millions of people around the world imperiled by inter-civilizational and inter-religious tensions and conflicts. To what extent, if at all, has the UNAOC achieved its objective of enhancing life for such people? To what extent, if at all, is the world now committed to enhanced dialogue and understanding of different civilizations, cultures, and religions as a result of the activities of the UNAOC?

Jeffrey Haynes is Emeritus Professor of Politics at London Metropolitan University. He is currently writing two books on the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations. He has research interests in several areas, including: religion and international relations; religion and politics; democracy and democratisation; and the politics of development. Haynes has more than 230 publications, including over 40 books. He is the book series editor of ‘Routledge Studies in Religion & Politics’, co-editor of the journal Democratization, and co-editor of Democratization’s book series, ‘Special Issues and Virtual Special Issues’.

A panel discussion of renowned public intellectual Ivan Krastev’s provocative new book on the future of the European Union.

With far-right nationalist parties on the rise across the continent and the United Kingdom planning for Brexit, the European Union is in disarray and plagued by doubts as never before.

After Europe reflects on the future of the European Union—and its potential lack of a future. An expert panel will reflect on the issues raised in the book, including:

the political destabilization in Europe sparked by the arrival of more than 1.3 million migrants;
the spread of right-wing populism, including in Trump’s America;
and the thorny issues facing member states on the eastern flank of the EU (including the threat posed by Vladimir Putin’s Russia).

How a Bolivian became a Feminist: A Personal History

Sonia Montaño is a Bolivian sociologist. She is currently active in Bolivia as a feminist researcher and activist and member of PIEB (Programa de Investigation Estrategica Bolivia). Between 1993 and 1995, she was Undersecretary of Gender Affairs at the Ministry of Human Development of Bolivia. Between 2000 and 2015 she was Chief of the Division for Gender Affairs at the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC, United Nations), providing leadership to regional conferences on women of Latin America and the Caribbean.

The history she will share is a particular mix of a biography within the influence of a socio-cultural context. Sonia was born in the fifties when Bolivia was initiating a revolutionary process that gave indigenous people, peasants and women the right to vote and acces to education. Raised in a discriminatory society and by a courageous mother and a liberal family she could very early see women wanting to do “different things”. She lived and participated in a country suffering of continuous authoritarian governments and dictatorships and numerous efforts to establish democracy. Her adolescence was influenced by the emerging of a strong workers movement fighting for their rights, the presence of Che Guevara that stimulated an early political participation that ended in 1972 when the Banzer dictatorship sent her to jail for a couple of months. This was followed by a long exile to the Netherlands and France where Sonia was able to study and meet women from all over the world which started her activism as a feminist.

Andy will take you on a journey from the creation of ghetto’s to the rise of Hip-Hop as a critique against social and racial injustice. He will discuss the empowerment that has emerged through this form of art the consequences of its commercialisation. His talk will also question ‘what makes something a piece of art?’ and ‘how can creative wealth arise from financial poverty?’

Andy Ninvalle is a versatile artist, entrepreneur and renowned educator. In addition to leading the Dutch dance company Massive Movement. He has recently collaborated with Curtis Richardson, songwriter for Jeniffer Lopez and Rihanna and wrote and produced for the latest album of Polish Jazz Legend Michał Urbaniak. As a rapper and beatboxer, he breaks down barriers between different art forms through his collaborations with Earth Wind and Fire, the Polish National Philharmonic Orchestra and Jazz musician Candy Dulfer.

Growing up on the streets of Guyana, hip hop was Andy’s first language for self-expression. He is passionate about sharing his love for art, as well as advancing the education of black history and culture. He is a frequent speaker at high-schools throughout the Netherlands. He has given guest lectures and workshops at Penn State University and University of Troyes.

www.andyninvalle.com

This workshop will examine how the increasing ease and speed that we are able to purchase goods and services online exposes consumers to the increasing risk of new types of disputes.

The international panel of speakers will consider how traditional legal institutions are inadequate for this new digital world of cross-border commerce and assess the extent of this ‘Digital Justice Gap’, with the aim of proposing solutions for a new global digital justice framework.

Participants
Chair: Denis Galligan, Professor of Socio-Legal Studies, Director Oxford OBOR Programme, Director of Programmes Foundation for Law Justice and Society

Ethan Katsh, Professor Emeritus of Legal Studies, University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Director, National Center for Technology and Dispute Resolution

Dr Orna Rabinovich-Einy, Faculty of Law, University of Haifa

Dr Ying Yu, Research Fellow, Wolfson College, Deputy Director, Oxford OBOR Programme

Dr Alex Chung, Coordinator of Digital Economy, Oxford OBOR Programme

Dr Janet Hui Xue, Research Associate, University of Sydney, Sydney Cyber Security Network

The 2008 financial crisis triggered the first contraction of the world economy in the post-war era. Children and young people, already at a greater risk of poverty than the population as a whole, were among the main victims of the crisis and ensuing austerity in advanced economies, and the countries most severely affected recorded some of the largest increases in child poverty.

In this book talk, Professor Brian Nolan, Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Inequality and Prosperity, will discuss the lessons to be learned from examining how the crisis impacted on children across a variety of rich countries, and give his perspective on how to protect children more effectively from future economic crisis.

This talk will be followed by a book signing and drinks reception, all welcome

The Tibetans were the first refugees in India with no diasporic ties to the area, and likely to attract international recognition. The question of asylum provoked domestic debate about India’s relations with China and larger visions of non-alignment, with public opinion at odds with the government foreign policy machine. Ultimately the Indian government led by Prime Minister Nehru would focus on human rights with limited involvement from the international community, with public opinion calling for the group right to self-determination. Simultaneously, the Nehruvian vision of non-alignment was undergoing a change from its immediate post-colonial form. The Indian government tried to draw a clear line between those displaced by India’s own decolonisation and a crisis that was a thorn in the side of Sino-Indian bilateral relations in the bipolar world of the Cold War. In this way, we can look at the early 1960s as India’s introduction to the role of refugees in international realpolitik.

About the speaker:
Ria Kapoor is a DPhil Student at Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford, studying ‘Alternative conceptions of a refugee regime in India in the 20th century’.

A talk by Neil Davidson (University of Glasgow) on the themes of the abridged version of his book, How Revolutionary were the Bourgeois Revolutions? (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2012 and 2017)

How does the curriculum shape our society? Who decides what is important? How can it be improved? Our diverse panel of academics, activists and educators will dive into these and other questions related to the decolonisation of our curriculum.

Karma Nabulsi is Fellow in Politics at St Edmund Hall, lecturer and Director of Undergraduate Studies at the Department of Politics and International Relations (DPIR) and UCU’s Equality Officer at the University.
She has won OUSU’s Special Recognition Award and the Guardian’s ‘Inspiring Leader’ award for her active involvement in improvement to education, including the open-access online course learnpalestine.politics.ox.ac.uk and the reform of the university’s PREVENT policy.

Neha Shah chairs the Oxford SU Campaign for Racial Awareness and Equality (CRAE) and Preventing Prevent Oxford. She organised the “Decolonise Oxford Now” rally. Previously, Neha was the BME rep at St Peter’s college. As part of this role, she set up a scholarship for refugees. She also writes for the New Statesman.

Nomfundo Ramalekana is an MPhil student in law, focussing on affirmative action. She is an active member of the Rhodes Must Fall movement.

Modern human civilisation has been built upon energy from carbon-intensive fossil fuels. We are now on the cusp of a once-in-a-civilisation transition to a net zero carbon society. The outcome of this transition could be a world that is cleaner, safer, smarter, more technologically advanced, and more prosperous. Getting there will necessarily involve structural transformation in many economic sectors. But progress to a zero carbon society is far slower than what is required to eliminate even the worst climate risks.

In this talk, Professor Doyne Farmer and Professor Cameron Hepburn, Directors of the Oxford Martin Programme on the Post-Carbon Transition, discuss new research drawing on multiple disciplines to identify the sensitive intervention points where actions can deliver impact at scale and accelerate the achievement of global net-zero emissions. They will consider those with interests in resisting or delaying the transition, including nations, capital and labour at risk of being ‘stranded’. They will discuss a suite of simulation models that could enable richer explorations of the various possible routes to the post-carbon society, and to help identify the sensitive intervention points.

As part of the Surgical Grand Rounds Lecture Series, Professor Prokar Dasgupta from King’s College London will talk about the challenges of being an academic surgeon and journal editor.

1917 – The Search For Victory
A year of hope, endurance and despair.

A lecture by Gareth Howell and Rick Stevens.
Special Guest – John Dexter.

Gareth Howell and Rick Stevens return to Abingdon with a comprehensive overview of the events in the year 1917, and how failure of the Battle of the Somme shaped developments in the Great War in its third year. Chemist John Dexter joins our speakers discussing the life of Fritz Haber and the development of Poison Gas.

Tickets are available in advance from the Museum and will also be sold on the door.
Pricing as follows:
£10 Adult
£8 Museum Friend
£5 Children (under 16)

Abstract: This presentation will consider the ethical dimensions of Brexit. Specifically the case will be made that there are profound ethical questions posed by Brexit that have not properly been considered. The focus of the public debate has been largely on the pragmatic, economic and political reasons for and against Brexit. It is important to supplement these with a consideration of the ethical questions raised by it. In a book he edited entitled Political Restructuring in Europe: Ethical Perspectives (1994) Chris Brown made a case for constitutive theory as a way of approaching the ethical issues involved in proposals for restructuring Europe in the wake of the break-up of Yugoslavia. In this talk his analysis will be extended, illustrating how constitutive theory produces surprising, enlightening and important results that have so far been absent from the debate. The insights point to a set of political imperatives that ought not to be ignored.

Mervyn Frost is Professor of International Relations in the Department of War Studies at King’s College, London. Publications include: Towards a Normative Theory of International Relations (CUP, 1986), Ethics in International Relations (CUP, 1996), Constituting Human Rights: Global Civil Society and the Society of Democratic States (Routledge, 2002) and Global Ethics: Anarchy, Freedom and International Relations (Routledge, 2009). He edited a 4 volume reference work entitled International Ethics (Sage 2011). His recent work, with Dr Silviya Lechner, is focused on the “practice turn” in International Relations. Their book Practice Theory and International Relations is to be published by CUP in 2018.

Jonathan Spencer is Regius Professor of South Asian Language, Culture and Society at the University of Edinburgh. He has carried out research in Sri Lanka since the early 1980s. His most recent book, Checkpoint, Temple, Church and Mosque (2014) concerns the role of religious organizations in the Sri Lankan civil war, and was co-authored with a team of Sri Lankan and European researchers.

This talk is a progress report from the midpoint in a 5-year comparative project on the Anthropology of Conscience, Ethics and Human Rights. For the Sri Lanka case study in this project the researchers have been interviewing dissenters, Sinhala and Tamil survivors of the 30-year civil war who took a stand against the violent claims of rival ethnonationalisms. The talk will combine some reflections on the translatability of the idea of “conscience” with preliminary analysis of the dissenters’ accounts of their lives and motivations.

The South Asia Seminar is co-funded by the Ashmolean Museum, the Asian Studies Centre of St Antony’s College, the Contemporary South Asian Studies Programme at the School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies, the Department for International Development and Faculty of History and the Faculty of Oriental Studies.

The TORCH Oxford Phenomenology Network are hosting a seminar on ‘Modernism, Existentialism, Postcriticism: Gabriel Marcel Reads Dorothy Richardson’s Pilgrimage’ with Adam Guy (Faculty of English, University of Oxford).

Included in the Harry Ransom Center’s holdings for the French philosopher Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973) is a set of reading notes on the British modernist writer Dorothy Richardson (1873-1957). These notes are the sole existing traces of Marcel’s reading of Richardson’s novel-sequence Pilgrimage, as well as various critical works on Richardson’s writing. In this paper, I will look at Marcel’s notes from two perspectives. First, by placing the notes in their own historical moment, I will discuss the convergences and divergences of modernism and existentialism. Second, from the perspective of the present moment, I will highlight a Marcelian legacy – via his major philosophical inheritor, Paul Ricoeur – in current discussions about ‘postcritical’ reading. ‘Can we be postcritical – as distinct from uncritical?’’, Rita Felski asks. Using Marcel’s notes on Richardson, I will consider whether the modernist novel has a special claim on such questions.

All welcome!

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons grew up in Coventry and graduated in 1974 with a BA in Mathematics from the University of York and in 1977 with a DPhil in Applied Mathematics from the University of Oxford. He moved to the US in 1982 for a tenure-track position in the Department of Mathematics at Florida State University, where he has been a full professor since 1996 and recently became an emeritus professor. His research develops game-theoretic models of animal behaviour, on which he has published numerous articles. He is also the author of three texts on modelling and optimization, and until recently was an editor for Journal of Theoretical Biology.

Abstract: I joined Florida State University as an assistant professor in 1982 to teach mathematics and to do research on fluid dynamics, a natural enough progression,since my DPhil thesis was on magnetohydrodynamics and I had later worked on helicopter dynamics. Yet I have done no research on fluid dynamics ever since. Improbably, given that I have never taken a course in biology, my career has instead been dominated by models of animal behaviour known as games, usually developed in collaboration with biologists in an effort to answer questions raised by their field studies. I will begin my presentation by describing the work that I ended up doing (in a wholly non-technical fashion). I will then talk about how I got there, sharing my perspective on life abroad in academe.

Professional social media like LinkedIn are changing the professional landscape. Users can now connect and get to be known by creating personal information profiles and inviting colleagues to have access to those profiles. Sending emails and connecting to professional in different sectors became very easy. Recruiters can reach you easily in a matter of seconds. However, it is sometimes hard to identify the right pathways to make our professional social profile most profitable. Reaching out unknown professional can be especially very challenging and stressful when we don’t know how to engage.
Join us to our social workshop: we will talk about tips and tools to build good relationship skills in order to get a powerful network. We will be later joined via a skype call by Jenny Mith who is a business development and outreach manager at CodeSmith LLC.
Codesmith is a selective, need-blind 1- or 12- week program teaching Software Engineering and Machine Learning with locations at LA, NY and Oxford University. Jenny will give us insight on how to make a social profile more attractive and visible using digital and/or coding tools.

The workshop will be held on Tuesday 14th of November and will start from 5.30 till 7 p.m at the Stapeldon room in Exeter college (Main building). The event is aimed to be informal and fun. Feel free to bring a laptop or tablet to work on your Linkedin ( or other professional) profile.

About the speaker:
Simon McMahon joined the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations as a Research Fellow in September 2014. Prior to that he completed a PhD at King’s College London in 2013 and was a visiting researcher at the European University Institute (Florence, Italy) and the Interdisciplinary Research Group on Migration at the Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona, Spain).

Simon is the author of Immigration and Citizenship in an Enlarged European Union (Palgrave, 2015) and editor of The Handbook of International Political Economy of Migration (co-edited with Leila Talani, Edward Elgar, 2015), as well as often contributing written pieces to more mainstream outlets such as The Guardian and The Conversation. Recently, he worked on the MEDMIG project which was the first large-scale, systematic and comparative study of the backgrounds, experiences, routes and aspirations of refugees and migrants in during the so-called ‘migration crisis’ in the Mediterranean. He has received research funding from sources including the Economic and Social Research Council, Open Society Foundation, Ben & Jerrys, Santander Bank and the Anglo-Spanish Society.

Katharine Hayhoe has been named one of FORTUNE’s ‘World’s Greatest Leaders’, TIME’s ‘100 Most Influential People’ and Huffington Post’s ‘20 Climate Champions’, and has shared the stage with Barack Obama and Leonardo DiCaprio to talk about climate change.

She is a climate scientist and a Christian based in Texas and has pioneered a way of talking about climate change that truly engages people as human beings and reaches even the most resistant of audiences.

Katharine’s approach is patient and compassionate and modeled after conversations she had with her husband, a linguistics professor and pastor who once himself had doubts about climate change. She is a brilliant communicator who spends her time talking with all sorts of people, from oil field engineers to Christian college students. She believes that “each of us, exactly as we are, with the values we already have, has every reason we need to care about climate change.”

She will be coming to Oxford on Wednesday 15th November 2017 as a guest of Climate Outreach, in partnership with The University Church of St Mary. At this not-to-be-missed event, Katharine will be in conversation with Climate Outreach’s founder George Marshall about how we can use community values to get people on board with climate change, why social science is more effective than statistics, graphs and facts in engaging people, and why we all need to get talking, and keep talking, about climate change.

The event will take place at The University Church of St Mary in Oxford on 15 November. Doors will open at 7pm for a 7:30pm start, and the event will be followed by a drinks reception.

Tickets cost £3 but students can attend for free upon showing a valid student ID on the night, but please register your place online to reserve a space.
This event is wheelchair accessible.

By the end of the century our energy system will have to be transformed. However it is not clear when and how.

Professor Steve Cowley, Acting Director of the Oxford Martin School and President of Corpus Christi, will discuss the issues and particularly the role of Nuclear energy in the transition.

Come to this session of the Abe Lazarus Society, where we will be discussing the 1917 October Revolution and what can be learned from it today.

What is the naughtiest word you can think of? The baddest of bad language, the monarch of F-bombs? The word you swore you’d NEVER say, but sometimes makes a sneaky reappearance after a stubbed toe or a football loss. Well for one night only you can put away the swear box, take yourself off the naughty step and join Science Oxford for an evening of purposeful profanity.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) researcher and swearing enthusiast Emma Byrne – author of Swearing Is Good For You explores how bad words might actually be good for us. At this interactive event, you’ll get the chance to see and try out some AI and swearing experiments, including playing with web robots, designing your own swearing test, and perhaps, just perhaps, taking on the ‘ice water challenge’ to experience how swearing affects your resilience in extreme conditions!

Emma Byrne is an AI researcher with an interest in the neuroscience of swearing. She likes to explore methods for conducting unusual experiments to find out the weird and wonderful stuff in our minds.

Copies of ‘Swearing is Good for You’ will be available to purchase on the night and Emma will be doing a book signing.

Suitable for ages 16+

This will be an affecting account of railway activities in the South of England and in France during the Great War. Railways permitted the mass movements of munitions, equipment and men and the harrowing resulting casualties, many of whom were taken through the Thames Valley. As well as the many technical innovations introduced by the GWR they were the pioneer of ambulance trains. This talk will include the transport and care of the wounded back to Blighty with some focus on South Oxfordshire and West Berkshire. [Image shows a WW1 Railway Red Cross Train].

Attendance for Members is free and visitors are very welcome to attend meetings at a cost of £3.
There is on-site parking and dedicated disabled spaces. Refreshments are available on most evenings.

Talk followed by questions and discussion

All welcome

Oxford Communist Corresponding Society

As part of the Surgical Grand Rounds lecture series, Mr Richard Bryant from the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences will discuss ‘Novel approaches to the treatment of prostate cancer’.

Professor Sir Diarmaid MacCulloch is a Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford, TV presenter and author whose “History of Christainity: The First Three Thousand Years” won the 2010 Cundill Prize. His latest BBC2 series was “Sex and the Church” and he is currently writing a biography of Thomas Cromwell.

Born in Sheffield, brought up by his unmarried mother and attending the local comprehensive school, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe joined the South Yorkshire Police in 1979 as a police constable. At the age of 28yrs he received a police scholarship to study law at Merton College, Oxford. In September 2011, shortly after the riots in London that spread to other UK cities, he was selected by the Home Secretary, Theresa May, and Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, to be Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, holding this position until February 2017.  He has very recently been appointed a life peer and will sit in the House of Lords. All are welcome to attend (including family members in College for the Formal Hall) – places first-come, first-served.
The talk will be followed by a drinks reception in the Ruth Deech Building.

This seminar aims to address the difficulties met by disabled students and teachers in school and university and to hear more about what we can all do to ensure that those meeting such challenges enjoy the fullest possible access to education. The three speakers have direct personal experience of this issue and will share with the audience some of what has been done – and can still be done in future – to ensure that the education system allows disabled students the chance to thrive.

Speakers will include:

Dr Marie Tidball (Faculty of Criminology and Wadham College)
Luke Barbanneau (Teacher of Physics, Cherwell School)
Noah McNeill (Music Student and JCR Disability Representative, St Anne’s College)
All are welcome to attend.

Emily Wilson (University of Pennsylvania), will give a reading from her new translation of Homer’s Odyssey – the first by a female translator. Free, all welcome, no booking required. Copies of the book will be available to buy.