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.

Evidence from around the world indicates that culture can influence people’s vulnerability to climate variability and natural hazards, because expressions of culture include behaviour that results in exposure and sensitivity to hazards. Most studies have characterised this as a barrier to risk reduction, and few (none) have offered any suggestions for how to move beyond it, because of the ethical dilemma posed by influencing others’ beliefs for the purpose of reducing risk. At the same time, studies have documented people overcoming cultural taboos in the face of climate variability and natural hazards, including abandoning strict social structures, and conforming to parallel and occasionally contradictory belief systems as a way to overcome culturally imposed restrictions on behaviour. This lecture presents examples from around the world, and focuses on the question: What conditions would facilitate a shift in worldview to incorporate a risk reduction? Who’s understanding of risk is ‘correct’? And if perceptions of what reality are culturally-defined, does this mean that there is such a thing as ‘alternative facts’?

Dr Lisa Schipper is a Research Associate at the Overseas Development Institute. Her research specialty is adaptation and socio-cultural vulnerability to climate change and natural hazards. The context for nearly all of her work has been smallholder or subsistence agriculture in poor communities in Southeast and South Asia, Central and South America, and East Africa.

A talk by local charity Homeless Oxfordshire about Oxford’s ongoing issues around homelessness. The talk follows a screening of a documentary about a group of homeless New Yorkers living in an abandoned section of the underground railway system. All ticket money goes to the charity.

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.

The two-day event, sponsored by Freeths, will feature a range of keynote speakers – including design and sustainable transport expert, Lynn Sloman; and cycling tsar and former cycling commissioner for London, Andrew Gilligan – but the emphasis of the event will be on discussion and debate across a wide range of workshops throughout the conference programme. Workshop subjects include: inclusive cycling, funding, changing travel behaviour, workplace cycling initiatives, Bikeability, effective campaigning, the role of social media, the application of cycling research, and the role of cargo bikes and e-bikes in urban environments.

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.

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.

What is the social responsibility of the sciences? In recent times, ethical conflicts surrounding race, gender, and the natural sciences have surfaced again. A recent editorial in Nature defending memorials to J. Marion Sims, who experimented on enslaved black women, and Thomas Parran, who oversaw the Tuskegee syphilis study, led to widespread criticism. How should STEM scholars incorporate questions of social justice and ethical responsibility into their research and teaching?

Join us for a pre-dinner conversation on these issues. Cedric Tan, a biologist and college lecturer at Wadham, will present on „Shying or crying: a personal experience on communicating sensitive issues in biology (same-sex behaviour, trophy hunting and illegal logging)” and Juliane Borchert, DPhil candidate in physics will explore the controversy surrounding indigenous rights and the construction of the Thirty Metre Telescope on Mauna Kea.

In this talk on Stress, Strain, and Overwork in Historical Perspective Professor Sally Shuttleworth (Faculty of English Language and Literature) will look at discussions of stress and overwork in both education and professional life in the Victorian era. Although we are clearly living in a radically altered world, there are nonetheless startling similarities in the ways the problems of overwork have been framed and debated, then and now.

Registration is free. Booking essential.

Click here to register for your free ticket.

Lunch from 12.30pm. Talk from 1pm.

This event is part of UK Disability History Month 22 Nov-22 Dec.

Michael Keigwin (Uganda Conservation Foundation) & Charles Tumwesigye (Uganda Wildlife Authority) will provide a fascinating and inspirational account of how Uganda’s Murchison Falls National Park has experienced dramatically mixed fortunes, from international adoration to tragedy, and steadily back towards a conservation and development success story, thanks to their efforts.

Michael Keigwin is the Founding Trustee of UCF and a Director of UCU, the Ugandan operational arm of the Charity. He has a close and intimate knowledge of Uganda having spent 9 years living amongst the people whilst running his Elephant, Crops & People project which led to the formation of UCF. Michael has played a key role in enforcing ‘conservation in action’ and as Operative Trustee oversees and directs the project work in Uganda. Having worked in the UK as a Senior Consultant for Deloitte from 2009 Michael returned to live and establish a business in Uganda in November 2011.

Charles Tumwesigye was the proud winner of the 2013 National Geographic Society/Buffet Award for Leadership in African Conservation.

Ever felt like there was something you really wanted to say but you just weren’t sure how? We’re exploring the why and how of women’s speech and writing with the help of some amazing women writers and gender experts.

This is our fabulous launch for a feminist writing course to run in Oxford in early 2018.

The event will include presentations from rising-star feminist writers sharing their work and discussing what it means to express their gender in their writing.

There will be a chance to share your ideas about what feminist poetry means to you, how gender is expressed through poetry and language, what it means to write as your gender, and some of the challenges of writing women’s experiences, platforming a variety of voices in conversation.

We also invite presentations from YOU of your own work and/or that of your feminist heroes.

Kids and people of all genders welcome.

East Oxford Community Centre
Doors open 7.30pm (the bar will be open)

The Oxford Fabian Society host the Fabian Society regional conference.

Embracing Change: Socialism for a Brave New World

Outline programme

9:00-9:30: registration

9:30: Welcome: Oxford and the Fabian Society. Michael Weatherburn (Secretary, Oxford Fabians)

9:45-10:15: Opening plenary. Kate Green MP (Chair, Fabian Society) and Andrew Harrop (General Secretary, Fabian Society)

10:15-11:15: Panel 1, Taking Our Place: workers affecting workplace change. Annaliese Dodds MP (Oxford East), Melanie Simms (Leicester University), & Caroline Raine (Area Organiser, UNISON). Facilitator: David Yates (Vice-Chair, Oxford Fabians)

11:45-12:45: Panel 2, New Channels of Influence. Shaista Aziz (journalist, writer), Ann Black (Labour NEC), Richard Fletcher (Reuters Institute, Oxford University), Dan Iley-Williamson (Labour city councillor, Holywell & Oxford Momentum). Facilitator: Nick Fahy (Oxford Fabians).

12:45-13:30: Lunch (not provided)

13:30-14:30: Panel 3, The Defence of the Realm. Alex Donnelly (Changing Character of War Programme, Oxford University), Sophy Gardner (RAF, Exeter University), Michael Pryce (Centre for Defence Acquisition, Cranfield University), Chris Williams (Open University). Facilitator: Rosemary Preston (Oxford Fabians).

14:45-15:45: Discussion, Does Socialism Need Patriotism? Facilitated by the Young Fabians.

15:45-16:45: Panel 4, The Local Elections, May 2018. Shaista Aziz (2018 Labour candidate, Rose Hill), Steven Curran (Labour councillor, Iffley Fields), Alex Donnelly (Labour candidate, Hinksey Park 2018), Bob Price (Labour councillor, Hinksey Park), Martyn Rush (Labour candidate, Barton and Sandhills 2018), Christine Simm (Labour councillor, Cowley and Deputy Lord Mayor). Facilitator: Elsa Dawson (Oxford Fabians).

16:45-17:00: Closing remarks, Oxford: Local Politics, Big Picture, 1980-2050. Bob Price (Leader of Oxford City Council, Leader of the Labour Group, and Labour Councillor, Hinksey Park).

The Oxford constituency of the Spanish Researchers in the United Kingdom (SRUK) is holding a discussion panel entitled “Women in science and the glass ceiling” where three invited speakers will give a short talk about the topic, followed by a discussion where the attendees can actively participate.

The invited experts will highlight how the world of science needs to become accessible for everyone, women and girls. The discussion will cover the earlier stages of education, where children become interested in science, to the later stages of the scientific career, where excellent science and innovation require the talents of both women and men. We will evaluate why women’s progress in research is slow and why there are too few female scientists occupying top positions in scientific decision-making, limiting the important potential of highly skilled human capital.

The event will take place on the 18th of November at the The Jam Factory (Hollybush Row, Oxford, OX1 1HU) and it will start at 10:30AM.

This is a free event and open to the public, but registration is needed via Eventbrite.

Abstract:
In this talk Tiffany Page will consider what vulnerability is and what it does, and its role within the research process. As part of this she will raise the idea of ‘vulnerable writing’, and consider its possibility within feminist methodological approaches to research. The term vulnerable writing describes the process of explicating and recognising vulnerability in writing. This comes from a core concern in thinking about feminist methodologies and approaches to tensions in research, especially in transnational contexts, in addressing how we might respond to others in ways that allow for the acknowledgement of vulnerability in being faced by events which exceed knowledge, and how we can remain open to alternatives through enabling the space and time to question assumptions and forms of certitude, to return to materials, and to change our minds.

Tiffany Page is a Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge. Tiffany’s research is interdisciplinary and include the areas and intersections of vulnerability, gender inequalities and institutional violence. In particular she examines vulnerability as a political, methodological and ethical concept as a means to consider embodied responses to local and global social issues. In relation to gender inequalities in higher education, Tiffany’s research examines practices, cultures and leadership that produce particular institutional responses to staff sexual misconduct and help to sustain conditions in which forms of gender based and sexual violence occur.

N.B. The time of this event is not yet confirmed.

Abstract:
In this talk Tiffany Page will consider what vulnerability is and what it does, and its role within the research process. As part of this she will raise the idea of ‘vulnerable writing’, and consider its possibility within feminist methodological approaches to research. The term vulnerable writing describes the process of explicating and recognising vulnerability in writing. This comes from a core concern in thinking about feminist methodologies and approaches to tensions in research, especially in transnational contexts, in addressing how we might respond to others in ways that allow for the acknowledgement of vulnerability in being faced by events which exceed knowledge, and how we can remain open to alternatives through enabling the space and time to question assumptions and forms of certitude, to return to materials, and to change our minds.

Tiffany Page is Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge. Her research is interdisciplinary and includes the areas and intersections of vulnerability, gender inequalities and institutional violence. In particular she examines vulnerability as a political, methodological and ethical concept as a means to consider embodied responses to local and global social issues. In relation to gender inequalities in higher education, Tiffany’s research examines practices, cultures and leadership that produce particular institutional responses to staff sexual misconduct and help to sustain conditions in which forms of gender based and sexual violence occur.

Professor Tim Shreeve will explore why different species of butterflies have alternative responses to environmental change.

Butterflies are important indicators of environmental change and their status in the UK and Europe is changing rapidly. Tim’s research encompasses thermoregulation, behaviour, wing colouration, microhabitat use and phylogenetics. This has led to new ways of understanding butterflies responses to land use and climate changes. Whilst this aids their conservation – the more that is learnt, the more unanswered questions emerge.

Tim will also address intriguing questions about the identity of the species populations we are trying to conserve. He will draw on current work identifying separate ‘evolutionary units’ using DNA barcoding – revealing that the identification and preservation of biodiversity is a complex issue that cannot be dealt with by treating species as single units.

Women in Africa are congregated in poorly paid and precarious work (ILO, 2016) and have very high rates of school dropout, mortality and childhood morbidity. This is crucially linked to their role in childbirth and child-care. Women and girls still perform the bulk of unpaid domestic and care work, severely limiting their access to work with fair working conditions. Empowering women and achieving decent work is a vital element in developing a dynamic economy that includes the full political and social citizenship of African women, while supporting their care-giving roles.

This lecture focuses on young women (aged 15-24), who are at the cusp of reproduction and production. Drawing on the rich data sets collected by Young Lives, Professor Jo Boyden, Director of Young Lives, & Professor Sandra Fredman, Director of the Oxford Human Rights Hub, examine transitions of adolescent girls and boys from education to labour markets and how their opportunities are shaped by other intersecting transitions (family formation, marriage and parenthood). On the basis of this evidence, they will consider the role of legal frameworks in obstructing or facilitating women’s access to decent working conditions, the social support for care-giving roles, and ways of interrupting intergenerational transmission of poverty.

Forests (and chases) were areas over which land use was regulated to provided cover and forage for hunting quarry – mainly deer. Special laws, courts and officers ensured that vegetation cover (‘vert’) contained adequate supplies of holly, ivy and other berry-bearrng plants for winter deer-feed, which, with measures to enable deer to move freely, produced very distinctive landscapes over the large areas of England subject to Forest Law.
Dr. Langton was official fellow in geography at St. John’s College and lecturer in human geography in the Oxford University School of Geography and Environment 1980-2009.

The end of the twentieth century was marked by optimism for the stability and effectiveness of the constitutional systems of the nations in Latin America. The authoritarian regimes of the 1970s and 80s had been replaced by constitutions based on well-functioning institutions, respect for individual and social rights, compliance with the rule of law, and a general commitment to the principles of advanced constitutionalism.

Over the last decade, however, matters have taken a very different turn for the worse. The resurgence of political conflict, the growth in violence, widespread disaffection and discontent, authoritarian discourses, and a deep economic crisis have all contributed to the undermining of the established constitutional orders in many of the continent’s nations.

Constitutional texts are being redrafted to serve short-term political objectives; respect for rights has declined; and the institutions of government, particularly the executive and the judiciary, compete for power.

The aim of this workshop is to examine these issues, to assess their causes, and to chart the consequences for the constitutional systems concerned. The participants are drawn from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, including law, sociology, political science, and economics. The workshop will focus on a series of case studies of several key countries: Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, Chile, and Venezuela.

The workshop forms part of a wider enquiry into the success and failure of constitutions. Why do some succeed; why do others fail?

CARU | Arts re Search Annual Conference 2017

“What does it mean to research art / to research through art?”

CARU brings together artists and researchers for yet another day of cross-disciplinary exploration into arts research! The event will consist of an exciting mixture of talks and performances from a variety of creative and academic disciplines, including Fine Art, Live Art, Social Practice, Art History, Anthropology, Education, Science and Technology, to question and debate various areas of arts research, such as themes, material/form, documentation and practice methodology.

Keynote talk: ‘Resonances and Discords’
Speaker: Prof. Kerstin Mey
PVC and Dean, Westminster School of Media, Arts and Design, University of Westminster
“The presentation will explore research in art at the interface to other epistemological systems and approaches. Drawing on case studies, it will explore key strategies and tactical manoeuvres of knowledge making in order to explore the hermeneutics of practice led inquiry in the space of art.”

Presentations include:

“The artist in the boardroom: Action research within decision-making spaces”

“Exploring the Art space as fluid cultural site through the immediacy of the performance and its inherent collaborative ethos”

“Chapter 1 (draft): Using text in performance: a range of strategies”

“Memory and identity within Bosnia’s Mass Graves”

“Fermenting conversations”

“Arcade Interface Art Research”

“Making sounds happen is more important than careful listening (with cups)”

“Shadow:Other:myself / photographic research from 2010”

“Un-knowing unknowing in painting as research”

“Developing an artistic epistemology”

Register at: www.ars2017.eventbrite.co.uk

We, the Oxford University Swiss Society, are delighted to host Mr Ambassador Alexandre
Fasel, who is the new Swiss Ambassador in the UK since September 2017.

He will give a talk on Monday, January 15th, at 6pm in the Oakeshott
room in Lincoln college. This will be followed by drinks in the adjacent
Langford room, where it is possible to interact with him and ask
him questions.

Registration is not required – everyone is welcome.

The OSS team,
Anita, Camille, Claudia, Fabian, Jasmin, Lisa, Matthias, Philippe, Seb,
Tiziana, Vincent

Missionary Christianity in Kerala, contrary to the received notions in social sciences, offered a new language of internal deliberations to Dalits and provided them agency different from their position in the traditional caste society. The exclusive congregations of Dalits in fact worked as a ‘subaltern counter publics’ offering them new ideas and social practices. It was in this context that ideas of salvation and liberation became significant categories of thought to engage with the caste society and structures of oppression. In the proposed paper the speaker wishes to explore the myriad ways in which Dalits productively engaged with Christianity and transformed themselves. This enables a critique of the instrumentalist interpretation of the Dalit Christianity offered by a dominant section of the historians and social anthropologists writing on Dalits and Christianity in Kerala and India.

A Panel Discussion with Professor Ruth Harris, Shrimati Kajal Sheth and Professor Sir Richard Sorabji

This event marks the UK-India Year of Culture, which will be celebrated in the Oxford Town Hall on 24 January with the award-winning Indian play, Yugpurush: Mahatma’s Mahatma, on the relationship between Mahatma Gandhi and his mentor, Shrimad Rajchandra.

Sponsored by The Asian Studies Centre, St Antony’s College, The Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, and The Oxford India Society.

Ina Zharkevich, Research Fellow at Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology discusses shamans, the limits of human volition and the power of the ‘invisible’ realm among the Kham Magars of Nepal.

To offer Oxford students the warmest welcome back to Hilary Term, we have invited Director Jenny Lu盧謹明, to show her feature film The Receptionist接線員 (2017) (bilingual subtitles).

This bilingual film is the first UK-Taiwanese film collaboration of its kind, and it tells the story of Tina, a literature graduate living in London, who takes up work as a receptionist in an illegal massage parlour. Through Tina’s eyes, viewers are not exposed to the dark underworld of London’s illegal sex industry, but are also shown a rare glimpse into the lives of those caught up in this world, and the harsh realities they face as Asian migrant women struggling to survive in London.

The film features the famous Taiwanese actress Chen Shiang-Chyi陳湘琪 and was nominated for the Golden Horse Awards. Director Jenny Lu wrote the film script based on a real story she witnessed when she was studying video art in London. After the screening, she will share with us the inspirations behind the story and her experiences as a transnational filmmaker in the UK and Taiwan.

This event will be of interest to those of you who work on contemporary Britain, Asian diaspora, Chinese and Taiwanese culture, film studies, gender studies, translation studies, and race and racism. The film is approximately 100 minutes long, and the director will talk for around 10 minutes with the host, followed by audience Q & A and discussions.

Tickets are 5£ and can be bought in advance
More information can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/events/331762997290657/

Our Marriages: When Lesbians Marry Gay Men 奇缘一生 —Documentary Screening and Talk with Director He Xiaopei and Dr Bao Hongwei

The Oxford Chinese Studies Society welcomes all to an exclusive screening and discussion of “Our Marriage: When Lesbians Marry Gay Men” with Director He Xiaopei and Dr Bao Hongwei.

How do gays and lesbians negotiate their social identities in postsocialist China? Are the so-called “fake marriages 形式婚姻” between them a pragmatic choice made out of social pressure or a queering act of subversion against the traditional institution of marriage? How do these phenomena tie into China’s revolutionary past and connect to Asia’s current wave of gay marriage legalisation and rising pink economy? These are the questions provoked by Dr. He Xiaopei’s documentary Our Marriage.

“The film, Our Marriage, is an exploration of the lives of four lesbians who decided to marry gay men in order to secretly pursue their relationships with their girlfriends and at the same time fulfil their families’ deep-seated desire that they get married. The sense of respect and responsibility that the marriage partners feel towards their parents, and the avoidance of social ridicule and tricky questions about their child’s sexuality, also play a large role in their decision to stage elaborate and glamorous sham ceremonies…In China, as one of the women in the documentary explained, nobody is allowed to be single. Whilst a burgeoning lesbian social scene is becoming more visible in large cities, heteronormative attitudes force people, heterosexual and homosexual alike, into marriages which they would rather avoid. Marriage can provide social acceptance, but it also gives you certain economic benefits such as access to social housing. Whilst homosexuality is not illegal in China there are no plans to introduce same sex marriage. Activists like He have argued against campaigns for same sex marriage suggesting that the institution of marriage itself should be challenged as it supports patriarchal norms and is detrimental to all people, whether they are gay, straight or bisexual.” — Kate Hawkins, Sexuality and Development Programme International Advisory Group

This event will be of interest to those of you who work on Chinese society, queer studies, film studies, as well as gender studies. The documentary is 45 minutes long, followed a brief talk on queer filmmaking and LGBT activism in China by Dr Bao Hongwei from the University of Nottingham, and then both of them will engage in audience Q & A and discussions.

Speaker biography:
Dr He Xiaopei completed a PhD at the University of Westminster in 2006, titled ‘I am AIDS: Living with the Epidemic in China’. She co-founded an NGO called the Pink Space Sexuality Research Centre in Beijing to promote sexual rights and sexual pleasure among people who are oppressed.

Dr Hongwei Bao is Assistant Professor in Media Studies at the University of Nottingham, UK. He holds a PhD in Gender Studies and Cultural Studies from the University of Sydney, Australia. His research primarily focuses on gay identity and queer politics in contemporary China. He is author of Queer Comrades: Gay Identity and Tongzhi Activism in Postsocialist China (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, forthcoming in 2018).

Talk by Stephen Barker, an independent Heritage Advisor. Oxfordshire on the Home Front will explain about the impact of the war in the towns and countryside. It will focus upon fundraising, charitable events, munitions production, recruitment and the effects on women and children.The talk is fully illustrated and uses testimony from those who were there. Hall is open for tea/coffee from 7.15p.m. with books & Cd’s to browse, and chat to other members.

This lecture examines 21st-century social policies and what they tell us about Chinese politics. At the same time it makes the case for more rigorous qualitative policy research, and it argues that international influences show it is time to reconceptualise Chinese policy processes.

2pm Wilde’s last years: Dr Sos Eltis, Brasenose College
2.45 The Ballad of Reading Gaol – read by five LMH students
3.15 Break
3.30 Jonathan Aitken in conversation with Alan Rusbridger – Why did the rehabilitation of Oscar Wilde fail in the 1890s? Why does the rehabilitation
of offenders fail today?
4.30 Break
5-6.30 Simon Callow reading De Profundis
Drinks