In conjunction with the 16th Annual Oxford Human Rights Festival, Oxford Community-led Housing* research project is organising a session on “Identity and [Affordable] Housing”, with a focus on self-build housing. The session will screen the BBC documentary ‘The House that Mum and Dad Built’ (1982), that captures the stories of families involved in the first Walter Segal self-build project, Segal Close. The project, a collaboration between local authority, self-builders and local community, highlights a strong theme that promotes self-empowerment through building one’s own home, and alleviating poverty through the process.

The film screening will be followed by a diverse and interactive panel discussion session with experienced speakers including Professor Nabeel Hamdi, one of the pioneers in participatory planning and author of “Small Change”, Lesley Dewhurst, CEO of Restore Oxford and former Cheif Executive of Oxford Homeless Pathways, and others.

Join us in the much needed discussion to highlight that affordable, self and secure housing is a basic human right. The session will also highlight the role of community-led housing in alleviating poverty, promoting self-empowerment, and hopefully together, we can gain a deeper understanding of how alternative options to Oxford’s unaffordable rents, poor housing conditions and lack of control in one’s living condition can make significant changes.

*Oxford Community-Led Housing research project is a new partnership project by Oxford Community Foundation, Community First Oxfordshire and Oxford Community Land Trust. We have been commissioned by Oxford City Council to conduct a research project on how community-led housing could be delivered sustainably in Oxford. Community Led Housing (CLH) is about local people playing a leading and lasting role in solving local housing problems, creating genuinely affordable homes and strong communities in ways that are difficult to achieve through mainstream housing.​​​​

As part of our Vote festival, Sos Eltis and Savannah Whaley discuss feminism and theatre across the last century – looking at the continuities, the revolutions and the inspirations.

Sos Eltis is a fellow and vice-principal of Brasenose College and her work includes Acts of Desire: women and sex on stage, 1800-1930. She is currently researching the literature and theatre of the women’s suffrage campaign. Savannah Whaley is a PhD candidate at King’s College London, currently researching the relationship between gender, performance and activism. She has previously worked with theatre companies Cardboard Citizens and Clean Break.

The talk is free but ticketed.

Whether you’re a regular user of one of the Oxford bike hire schemes or if this is something you have not done yet, then come along to an open forum on the new landscape for bike hire in Oxford. A panel of representatives from some of the bike hire companies operating in Oxford will explain what they have to offer, as well as a representative from Oxford City Council.

To celebrate the European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018, Master of St Cross Carole Souter and Alfredo Pérez de Armiñán, President of Patrimonio Nacional, will be talking about the challenges faced by the preservation of heritage, both in Spain and in England.

Patrimonio Nacional is the Spanish entity that manages 19 palaces – among them the Royal Palace of Madrid – and royal foundation monasteries, as well as 135,000 works of art and 21,000 hectares of parks, mountains and gardens. One of the greatest challenges entrusted to its president has been the new Museum of Royal Collections, considered the most important State museum project in recent decades in Spain.

Alfredo Pérez de Armiñán has been president of the Patrimonio Nacional Board since 2015. Before that, he was Deputy General Director of Culture of UNESCO and has held different public positions in the field of Spanish cultural heritage.

Carole Souter is the current Master of St Cross College, and has also held important positions in the field of cultural heritage, as Chief Executive of the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Heritage Lottery Fund, and is currently a Trustee of Historic Royal Palaces and Chair of the Board of Visitors of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

Think Human Festival is proud to host this panel on Writing Working-Class Fiction.
Kerry Hudson, Kit de Waal and Alex Wheatle are celebrated contemporary British novelists who have all written working-class experience into their fiction. At this event, the novelists are hosted by writer and critic Boyd Tonkin.

They will read from their work, and then discuss the problems they have encountered in being working-class writers, the creative responses they have formulated in their writing of working-class experience, and the wider issues of publishing and literary culture in relation to working-class writing and authorship. The Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Oxford Brookes has a rich tradition of research into working-class life and culture, across literature, history and the social sciences.

Dr Ann Thwaite’s 1990 biography, ‘A.A. Milne: His Life’ was awarded the Whitbread Prize for best biography. Subsequently, Ann acted as consultant for the major feature film, ‘Goodbye, Christopher Robin.’ For St Hilda’s Day at the Oxford Literary Festival, Ann will be interviewed by Nicolette Jones (The Sunday Times) about her biography and how it inspired the 2017 feature film.

From 19.15 the hall is open for help with computer advice on searching for relatives’ documentation, free tea/coffee, new books available to browse. Talks begin in the big hall at 20.00.

The doors will open at 19.15 for this talk in the small Hall. Especially for those with an interest in Family History soem good tips on how to correct fading and other problems with old photographs.

Butterflies and moths are suffering impacts from changes in climate, habitats and plant communities, alongside wider challenges to nature. The talk will describe these challenges, some of the actions being taken to tackle them, locally and internationally, and where we are able to demonstrate success.
Dr Asher is butterfly recorder for Berks, Bucks and Oxon, author/co-author of several books on butterflies and national chair of Butterfly Conservation, the world’s largest insect conservation charity.

After a short introduction to the session’s four sub-topics; custom-splitting, Oxford Community-Led Housing’s research project, co-housing and Homemaker Oxford; an interactive discussion will involve participants in the discussion of how we can work with housing providers to enable delivery of alternative housing models like community-led housing in and around Oxford.

The session is designed to engage with those who are housing providers (both small and large scale), or have the potential to provide housing, in and around the city of Oxford. What barriers, if any, do these groups and individuals experience when thinking about or actively engaging in community-led housing projects? Further, what can Oxford Community-Led Housing and similar groups do to break down these barriers and engage with housing deliverers to provide alternative housing models like community-led housing as a viable, sustainable and affordable housing model in Oxford?

Kailash: A Participant Media and Concordia Studio Screening

As a young man Kailash Satyarthi promised himself that he would end child slavery in his lifetime. In the decades since, he has rescued more than eighty thousand children and built a global movement. From producers Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth, He Named Me Malala), Sarah Anthony and rising director Derek Doneen comes Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winner Kailash, a suspenseful yet intimate look at one man’s groundbreaking crusade to liberate every child possible. This kinetic journey through secret raids and quests for missing kids shows how refusing to accept an unacceptable status quo can create sweeping change. Gripping as it is, the film is also the story of spirited children who, released from a nightmare, latch onto a second chance. It is the kids Kailash rescues who prove the absolute necessity of what he does: giving hope to the world one child at a time.

Q&A to follow featuring:

Kailash Satyarthi, 2014 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and Child Rights Activist

Nina Smith, Chief Executive Officer, GoodWeave International

Holly Gordon, Chief Impact Officer, Participant Media (moderator)

Seating is first-come, first-served. The film screening is free of charge and open to the public. No ticket is required.

The hall will open at 19.15 for help and comuter advice for family history, free tea/coffee, new books to browse, cd’s to browse.

Professor Margot Finn is an historian of modern Britain (Britain since 1750), with a predominant focus on the period to 1914. Her previous work has ranged from the history of Victorian popular politics to the gendered legal, social and cultural histories of debt and credit in England. She now researches, teaches and supervises predominantly in topics relating to British colonial and imperial history, with particular emphasis on the family, gender, material culture and transnational encounters.

UCL Press published an open-access volume of essays (co-edited with Kate Smith) from her Leverhulme Trust-funded research project The East India Company at Home in 2018: tinyurl.com/EICathome. Her current monograph project is entitled, ‘Imperial Family Formations: Domestic Strategies and Colonial Power in British India, c.1757-1857’.

Professor Margot Finn is an historian of modern Britain (Britain since 1750), with a predominant focus on the period to 1914. Her previous work has ranged from the history of Victorian popular politics to the gendered legal, social and cultural histories of debt and credit in England. She now researches, teaches and supervises predominantly in topics relating to British colonial and imperial history, with particular emphasis on the family, gender, material culture and transnational encounters.

UCL Press published an open-access volume of essays (co-edited with Kate Smith) from her Leverhulme Trust-funded research project The East India Company at Home in 2018: tinyurl.com/EICathome. Her current monograph project is entitled, ‘Imperial Family Formations: Domestic Strategies and Colonial Power in British India, c.1757-1857’.

Liberal Democrat candidates for the St. Margaret’s and North wards on 3 May 2018

Anna Espínola Lynn, MSt in History of Art and Visual Culture (Wadham College, Oxford), will be speaking on the transmission of style in fifteenth-century Catalan manuscript production.

All welcome! Feel free to bring your lunch. The talk will last about half an hour, to allow time for questions and discussion afterwards, and a closer look at the Balliol manuscript discussed.

Unlocking Archives is an interdisciplinary graduate seminar series of illustrated lunchtime talks about current research in Balliol College’s historic collections: archives, manuscripts and early printed books, and the connections between them.

Talks take place at 1pm in Balliol’s Historic Collections Centre in St Cross Church, Holywell. St Cross is next door to Holywell Manor and across the road from the English & Law faculties on Manor Road; directions http://archives.balliol.ox.ac.uk/Services/visit.asp#f.

This is a joint event between the Oxford Martin School and the Oxford Climate Research Network

Managing the risk to coastal populations, infrastructure, and ecosystems resulting from sea level rise presents unique and daunting challenges. Sea level rise lags behind global warming due to inertia in the ocean-ice system; likewise, the response of sea level to stabilisation of the climate will lag behind the temperature response, making emissions reduction policy relatively ineffective through midcentury in reducing the rate of rise. Consequently, anticipatory adaptive responses are the key to lowering risk in the near term. On a century scale or longer, emissions mitigation can substantially reduce risk but century-scale projections of sea level rise are deeply uncertain due to a lack of knowledge and expert disagreement about the future contribution of the Antarctic ice sheet. On the latter timescale, effective responses would include a mixture of hard protection such as surge barriers and sea walls, flexible measures such as enhancement of natural defences and buildings that can withstand episodic flooding, and permanent, managed withdrawal of populations from many areas.

However, inertia in the policy system arising from perverse incentives, short-term perspectives, and behavioural biases, exacerbated by scientific uncertainty, virtually guarantee a response to this threat which will be far below the optimum. In many countries, including wealthy ones, a large gap between adaptation capacity and implementation is already apparent, putting lives and property continually under threat from temporary flooding and eventually, permanent inundation. Professor Michael Oppenheimer’s, Albert G. Milbank Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs at Princeton University, talk will elucidate the increase in coastal hazard accompanying sea level rise to date, the rapid increase in the threat projected for the future, and means to overcome, at least partially, the dual problem of physical and policy inertia.

This talk will be followed by a drinks reception, all welcome.

This talk draws on findings from applying novel empirical approaches to understanding climate change and its impacts in the past, present, and future. The talk will highlight the impact major ‘natural’ changes in global climate have had on the five largest mass extinctions over the last 500 million years, and will explain modelling of recent CO2 emissions and concentrations which confirm the impact of human activity, with a focus on UK CO2 emissions over the period 1860 – 2016. The role of major policy interventions which have reduced the UK’s per capita annual emissions below any level since 1860 when the UK was the ‘workshop of the world’ will be investigated.

Professor Sir David Hendry, INET Oxford and Climate Econometrics, will illustrate how to investigate the costs of ‘mis-forecasting’ extreme climate events by studying the economic impacts of inaccuracies in hurricane forecasts and will discuss empirical evidence on local climate impacts of emissions and what influences climate-change scepticism. Future climate is illustrated by projecting the impacts of 1.5°C versus 2°C on temperature and sea-level rise.

This talk will be followed by a drinks reception, all welcome.

Carrie Gracie grew up mostly in North-East Scotland and set up a restaurant before taking a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford. She spent a year teaching in two Chinese universities and then built a small film business before joining the BBC in 1987 as a trainee producer.

She went back to China as the BBC’s Beijing reporter in the early 1990s and served as China correspondent and Beijing bureau chief until 1999 when she returned to the UK to focus on presenting. For several years she anchored the morning slot on the BBC News Channel and hosted the weekly BBC World Service programme, The Interview. In April 2014, she took up a newly created post as BBC China Editor and has since covered many news stories in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. She has also made documentaries about China for TV and radio, winning prizes including a Peabody and an Emmy.

In January 2018, she left her post as BBC China editor in protest at unequal pay. She published an open letter to BBC audiences on the subject and appeared before a parliamentary select committee. She has since returned to BBC HQ as a news presenter and continues to campaign for an equal, fair and transparent pay structure.

Professor Li Ruru: The Cultural Revolution and Me
Tuesday, May 1, 5-7PM Lecture Theatre, China Centre, St Hugh’s College, Oxford

Open and free of charge for all

Supported by: Oxford Chinese Studies Society

2016 witnessed the 50th anniversary of the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution. BBC Chinese invited Professor Li Ruru to write about her own life during that time. Having considered the invitation for a long time, Li finally wrote, from a point of view why she decided to teach a module at Leeds: ‘The Post-Cultural Revolution Literature.’ Based on the BBC article, the talk tells stories about her own experience and people’s lives around her. It also attempts to tease out what the Cultural Revolution meant to the young people at that time and what impact it has had on her generation, a large group of teenagers.

The English translation of the article is available at:
Why I teach ‘Post-Cultural Revolution Chinese Literature’ at a British university by Li Ruru, Translated by Thomas Markham

This event will be of interest to those of you who work on Chinese history, Chinese literature, politics, and education. Professor Li’s talk will last around 40 minutes and we will leave plenty of time for critical dialogues, Q & A and discussions.

About the speaker
Li Ruru is Professor of Chinese Theatre Studies in the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies, University of Leeds, UK. She has written extensively on Shakespeare performance in China (including a monograph Shashibiya: Staging Shakespeare in China (2003)) and on Chinese theatre (modern/traditional). Her recent work includes Staging China: New Theatres in the Twenty-First Century (ed. 2016), The Soul of Beijing Opera: Theatrical Creativity and Continuity in the Changing World (2010), Translucent Jade: Li Yuru on Stage and in Life ([in Chinese] 2nd edition 2015), and a photographic exhibition Cao Yu (1910-1996): Pioneer of Modern Chinese Drama (2011-16). Li runs traditional song-dance theatre workshops for both students and theatre professionals because she regards regular contact with the theatre as essential to her academic work.

https://www.facebook.com/events/367687450399248/?ti=icl

This presentation covers the highlights of almost half a century of observing local wildlife. It includes dormice, reptiles, rare orchids, rare butterflies, moths and other insects, great-crested newts and other amphibians, moths and wildlife observed in Mr Brownsword’s garden.
Mr Brownsword is a retired chemist whose interests include horticulture, natural history and photography.

There are over 30,000 students living and studying at the universities in Oxford. Options for accommodation are usually university accommodation or renting from private landlords with very few being able to afford their own home. Shared living is a popular option but is often expensive, of poor quality and lacks any shared living space at all. Oxford is one of the most expensive places to live in the UK with cost of living often matching that of London; however wages and student loans are not equivalent to London ones.

This session offers an insight into alternative solutions for student housing as we hear from a student housing cooperative in the UK; their journey and lived experience and how their principles might work in Oxford. Their presentation will be followed by an interactive panel discussion from an Oxford housing cooperative, student housing cooperative and others.

Join us in the discussion to learn more about student-led housing that is more affordable, sustainable, community orientated and of better quality as alternatives options to Oxford’s unaffordable rents and poor housing conditions. The session will also provide a platform for you to express your interest in other housing options, ask questions and to understand better what options are available to you so you can take control of your own living conditions.

Distinguished modern historian and former Warden of St Antony’s College, Professor MacMillan recently became an Honorary Fellow of LMH. She is a Companion of the Order of Canada, and will be this summer’s BBC Reith Lecturer. Her area of particular interest is the tangled history of war and society, our feelings towards conflict, and those who engage in it.

The Oxford Guild and its Collegium Global Network in association with the Oxford PPE Society is delighted to welcome a very special guest – Tawakkol Karman, one of the most famous and most decorated Nobel Peace Prize Winners of all time (https://www.facebook.com/events/108829703317881/). 100% FREE AND OPEN TO ALL INCLUDING NON STUDENTS – Mrs Karman is keen to speak to members of the public as well! Mrs Karman will be speaking in a specially organised event at 6.30pm on Monday 7th May in prestigious and comfortable Bernard Sunley Lecture Theatre in St Catherine’s College. She will be discussing ‘Terrorism – The Problems & Solutions’, sharing her insights into how to tackle this global issue in 2018 and beyond and her experiences of the Arab Spring, the Yemeni Civil War and the political landscape in the Middle East. THIS IS A TRULY UNIQUE AND UNPRECEDENTED OPPORTUNITY TO HEAR FROM SUCH A HIGH PROFILE SPEAKER. THE EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO EVERYONE – this will undoubtedly be one of the biggest and most fascinating events of the year – do not miss out on your seat! SIGN UP FOR THE BALLOT HERE TO SECURE YOUR PLACE: https://tinyurl.com/TawakkolKarmanOxford You may ballot for up to two seats. Names will be chosen at random from the ballot and we have several daily releases before Monday 7th May – you will only be notified by email if you have been successful in the ballot.

The will be an opportunity for questions and if you would like to ballot for the chance to meet Mrs Karman and speak to her directly in a private reception please email president@theoxfordguild.com ASAP. THIS IS ONE OF THE GREATEST NOBEL PRIZES WINNERS AND MINDS AND WE HAVE SPENT A SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF TIME AND EFFORT SECURING MRS KARMAN AS A KEYNOTE GUEST.

Mrs Karman is a globally renowned Yemeni human rights activist, journalist and politician. She became the international public face of the 2011 Yemeni uprising that constituted part of the Arab Spring, and has been dubbed ‘Mother of the Revolution’, ‘Lady of the Arab Spring’ and ‘Iron Woman’. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 in recognition of her achievements in the non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work in Yemen. She became the first Yemeni, the first Arab woman, and the second Muslim woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize, as well as the youngest Nobel Peace Laureate at the time, at the age of 32 (she is now second youngest). She has been recognised by TIME Magazine as the Most Rebellions Woman in History, and been selected by Foreign Policy Magazine as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers for many years.

A mother of three, Mrs Karman is the President and Founder of the NGO Women Journalists without Chains (WJWC), Founder of the Peaceful Youth Revolution Council and a board member of Nobel Women Initiative. Bold and outspoken, she has been imprisoned on numerous occasions for her pro-democracy and pro-human rights protests. She has vowed with other Laureates and global leaders to end child slavery. She has been widely recognised by many other awards and accolades around the world including the Courage Award granted by the US Embassy in Sana’a in 2008, the Galileo Galilei Award in Florence, Italy and was a Winner of the Freedom Award granted by the US National Civil Rights Museum. Inspired by non-violent leaders Martin Luther King, and Mahatma Gandhi, Mrs Karman is one of the pioneers promoting peaceful protest in the Middle East as a means for change.

WHEN: 6.30pm, Monday 7th May 2018
WHERE: Bernard Sunley Lecture Theatre, St Catherine’s College
SIGN UP FOR THE BALLOT TO SECURE YOUR PLACE: https://tinyurl.com/TawakkolKarmanOxford
Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/108829703317881/

We highly recommend you all attend this historic and invaluable occasion which will be one of the most interesting, topical, high profile and exciting events of the year from our truly fascinating and inspiring guest. SIGN UP FOR THE BALLOT HERE TO SECURE YOUR PLACE: https://tinyurl.com/TawakkolKarmanOxford

As part of our Every Woman series, Blackwell’s presents an evening with Lyndall Gordon, who will be exploring her book ‘Outsiders’, an exciting and provocative look at the women who wrote the novels that changed the literary world.

Outsiders tells the stories of five novelists – Mary Shelley, Emily Brontë, George Eliot, Olive Schreiner, Virginia Woolf – and their famous novels. We have long known their individual greatness but in linking their creativity to their lives as outsiders, this group biography throws new light on the genius they share. ‘Outsider’, ‘outlaw’, ‘outcast’: a woman’s reputation was her security and each of these five lost it. As writers, they made these identities their own, taking advantage of their separation from the dominant order to write their novels.

Lyndall Gordon is the prize-winning author of seven biographies, including ‘The Imperfect Life of T. S. Eliot’; ‘Virginia Woolf: A Writer’s Life’; ‘Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft’; and ‘Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family’s Feuds’ and her memoir ‘Divided Lives: Dreams of a Mother and Daughter’. She is a Fellow of St Hilda’s College, Oxford and the Royal Society of Literature.

The Blackwell’s Every Woman Series

From February 2018, Blackwell’s Broad Street will launch a year-long series of events in conjunction with the Centenary of Women’s Suffrage in the UK.

The 1918 Representation of the People Act gave women of property over the age of 30 the right to vote – not all women, therefore, could vote. It was a step, but it was not the whole journey. And many would argue that we are still a long way from stepping the journey’s full distance towards gender equality in this country and worldwide. Blackwell’s Centenary events programme will focus around the following questions:

1) How much does the vote mean today?

2) How far are we still from achieving gender equality?

3) How can we recognise intersectional privilege and oppression, and platform those demographics of people who weren’t acknowledged by this achievement 100 years ago, and are still under-represented and undervalued today?

For all enquiries please email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk

Blackwell’s presents an evening with Brian Fagan, where he will be discussing his new book ‘A Little History of Archaeology’, a thrilling history of archaeological adventure, with tales of danger, debate, audacious explorers, and astonishing discoveries.

This ‘Little History’ tells the riveting stories of some of the great archaeologists and their amazing discoveries around the globe: ancient Egyptian tombs, Mayan ruins, the first colonial settlements at Jamestown, mysterious Stonehenge, the incredibly preserved Pompeii, and many, many more. In forty brief, exciting chapters, the book recounts archaeology’s development from its eighteenth-century origins to its twenty-first-century technological advances, including remote sensing capabilities and satellite imagery techniques that have revolutionized the field. Shining light on the most intriguing events in the history of the field, this absolutely up-to-date book illuminates archaeology’s controversies, discoveries, heroes and scoundrels, global sites, and newest methods for curious readers of every age.

This book is part of the hugely popular bestselling ‘Little History’ series published by Yale University Press, joining past titles such as as ‘A Little History of Philosophy’ by Nigel Waburton, ‘A Little History of the World’ by E.H. Gombrich and ‘A Little History of Literature’ by John Sutherland.

Brian Fagan is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara. He is an internationally recognized authority on global prehistory and the author of dozens of books on archaeological topics, including ‘Fishing: How the Sea Fed Civilization’.

For all enquiries please email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk. The doors for this event will open at 6:45pm, with seats allocated on a first come, first seated basis. There will be a bar serving an array of drinks to purchase from 6:45pm-7pm.

The Making of the Indonesian Migrant Labour Movement
Junko Asano (St Antony’s, International Development)

The Bold and Brave of Burma:
A Micro-Level Study of the first Movers of Dissent between 1988-2011
Jieun Baek (Hertford, Blavatnik School of Government)

The Politics of Language and Rodrigo Duterte’s Populism
Adrian Calo (School of Oriental and African Languages, London)

The Making of the Indonesian Migrant Labour Movement
Junko Asano (St Antony’s, International Development)

The Bold and Brave of Burma:
A Micro-Level Study of the first Movers of Dissent between 1988-2011
Jieun Baek (Hertford, Blavatnik School of Government)

The Politics of Language and Rodrigo Duterte’s Populism
Adrian Calo (School of Oriental and African Languages, London)

The Race and Resistance Programme at The Oxford Center in the Humanities, is honoured to host the Honorable Peter Gastrow, on the afternoon of the 11th of May, (Friday of 3rd Week).

Gastrow, a former Member of the South African Parliament, South African National Peace Committee, and special adviser to the Minister of Safety and Security, will speak about his personal experiences and insights in negotiating the peace process in South Africa, his public service during the country’s transition into a democratic government and his perspectives on contemporary South African political and racial issues. We are also honored to be joined by Wale Adebanwi, the Rhodes Professor for Race Relations, who will respond to Mr. Gastrow’s lecture with his own insights into South Africa’s history and contemporary challenges. The floor will then be opened to members of the audience for any questions or comments for Mr. Gastrow and Professor Adebanwi.