As part of our Every Woman series, Blackwell’s presents a free lunchtime talk 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 or contact our Customer Service Department on 01865 333623.

This is a joint lecture with The Rockefeller Foundation Economic Council on Planetary Health at the Oxford Martin School

Technological innovation is critical to addressing planetary health challenges. What can be done to ensure that innovation systems and the new “Fourth Industrial Revolution” respond effectively with positive social, environmental and economic consequences? How can we ensure equality of the energy transition?

Simon Stephens is one of the UK’s most exciting playwrights. His plays include Punk Rock, A Thousand Stars Explode in the Sky, and the stage adaptation of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

Most recently, he wrote the National Theatre’s adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera, which is being produced by students from the University of Oxford this autumn.

Ahead of the students’ production, Simon joins us to chat about his life and work.

Age guideline 12+

Duration: 1 hour with no interval

Tickets: FREE with a ticket to see The Threepenny Opera (call the Ticket Office on 01865 305305) or £5 without a ticket to The Threepenny Opera.

Breakthroughs using gene therapy and gene editing are regularly in the news, but did you know that viruses are being re-purposed to treat cancer? How can genes be used to treat blindness, Parkinson’s and haemophilia?
PROFESSOR DEBORAH GILL reviews some of the less-publicised advances being made in her field of medical research.

Talk followed by questions and discussion. This is part of a series of eight meetings on Thursday evenings, each one beginning at 7:30 and ending at 9pm.

11 October
The right to say untrue and damaging things
Wesley Memorial Church, New Inn Hall St

18 October
Flat earth: a Marxist critique
Wesley Memorial Church, New Inn Hall St

25 October
Tithe, timber, and the persistence of the ancien régime
Wesley Memorial Church, New Inn Hall St

1 November
The dream of human life: art in the Italian Renaissance
Oxford Town Hall, St Aldates

8 November
Antisemitism: more geese than swans
Wesley Memorial Church, New Inn Hall St

15 November
Marcus Aurelius and the self-help movement
Wesley Memorial Church, New Inn Hall St

22 November
Hegelian contradiction and prime numbers
Wesley Memorial Church, New Inn Hall St

29 November
Aleksandr Bogdanov (1873–1928) and the general science of organization
Wesley Memorial Church, New Inn Hall St

Organised by Oxford Civic Society @oxcivicsoc. In the second of his two talks on Oxford libraries, John Ashdown, former Conservation Officer for the City, talks about the most famous library of them all, the Bodleian. He will reveal some of the stories you may not know about this revered institution.. https://www.oxcivicsoc.org.uk/programme/

As part of the Surgical Grand Round lecture series hosted by the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences, Miss Renata Greco (Senior Aortic Fellow for the Complex Aortic Surgery Team at the Oxford Heart Centre), will discuss ‘Personalised External Aortic Root Support: the Oxford experience’.

Rupert sheldrake is a pioneer in the reintegration of science and spirituality.
Although traditional religion has declined in Europe, recent studies have shown that spiritual experiences are surprisingly common even among those who are non-religious, including near-death experiences and spontaneous mystical insights. Meanwhile, the effects of spiritual practices are now being investigated scientifically as never before, and many studies have shown that such practices generally make people happier and healthier. Rupert Sheldrake will discuss several practices which are part of all religions, and which are also open to people with no religious affiliation, including meditation, chanting, rituals and pilgrimage.

Interested in gender equality and diversity in research? Interested in the impact of science, entrepreneurship and innovation in international engagement? Come along to our panel discussion event!
We are delighted to announce a tremendous collaboration between St Anne’s College and the SIU and OxFEST to discuss and promote gender equality and diversity in STEMM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medicine).
Speakers will discuss the status and future of women in STEMM, the key findings of Elsevier’s report: Gender in the Global Research Landscape, as well as the importance of developing entrepreneurial skills to undertake initiatives like the African Science Academy, a girls science and technology school based in Ghana.
Join us to discuss your experience, challenges and how we can encourage and develop
equality, diversity and inclusivity in STEMM.

Blackwell’s is delighted to welcome the much-admired and million copy-selling journalist John Simpson, who will be discussing his thriller debut novel ‘Moscow, Midnight’.

Moscow, Midnight

Government minister Patrick Macready has been found dead in his flat. The coroner rules it an accident, a sex game gone wrong.

Jon Swift is from the old stock of journos – cynical, cantankerous and overweight – and something about his friend’s death doesn’t seem right. Then days after Macready’s flat is apparently burgled, Swift discovers that his friend had been researching a string of Russian government figures who had met similarly ‘accidental’ fates.

When the police refuse to investigate further, Swift gets in touch with his contacts in Moscow, determined to find out if his hunch is correct. Following the lead, he is soon drawn into a violent underworld, where whispers of conspiracies, assassinations and double-agents start blurring the line between friend and foe.

But the truth will come at a price, and it may cost him everything.

John Simpson has been the BBC’s World Affairs Editor for more than half his fifty-two year career. In his time with the BBC, he has reported on major events all over the world, and was made a CBE in the Gulf War honours list in 1991. He has twice been the Royal Television Society’s Journalist of the Year, and has won three BAFTAs, a News and Current Affairs award and an Emmy

Tickets cost £8. For all enquiries please email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk or call our Customer Service Department on 01865 333623.

“While the Earth has, on average, warmed by nearly one degree Celsius since the end of the 19th Century, the Arctic has warmed by almost as much over the past decade alone. In this talk, I will review recent developments in Arctic climate change research, including insights from my own long-term work on tundra plant communities and iconic “Ice Age” species such as caribou and muskoxen, and the implications such insights pose for changes we might expect as the Earth continues to inch toward a two degree warmer future”.

How does lab research become a technology that affects your everyday life? Come and find out how Oxford Physics researchers working on cutting-edge physics research and technology development are creating innovative products that could end up in your home. This evening event includes three talks from world-leading researchers as well as hands-on demos and lab tours.

’Brit(ish)’ is about a search for identity. It is about the everyday racism that plagues British society. It is about our awkward, troubled relationship with our history. It is about why liberal
attempts to be ‘colour-blind’ have caused more problems than they have solved. It is about why we continue to avoid talking about race.

Afua’s personal and provocative investigation explores a very British crisis of identity. We are a nation in denial about our past and our present. We believe we are the nation of abolition, but forget we are the nation of slavery. We are convinced that fairness is one of our values, but that immigration is one of our problems.

Afua Hirsch is a writer and broadcaster. Brit(ish) is her first book and was awarded a RSL Jerwood Prize for Non-Fiction.

This event is part of Black History Month 2018 at Brookes.

Blackwell’s are honoured to be joined by Heather Morris to discuss her international best-seller ‘The Tattooist of Auschwitz’.

For readers of Schindler’s List, The Man Who Broke into Auschwitz and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas comes a heart-breaking story of the very best of humanity in the very worst of circumstances. In 1942, Lale Sokolov arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau. He was given the job of tattooing the prisoners marked for survival – scratching numbers into his fellow victims’ arms in indelible ink to create what would become one of the most potent symbols of the Holocaust. Waiting in line to be tattooed, terrified and shaking, was a young girl. For Lale – a dandy, a jack-the-lad, a bit of a chancer – it was love at first sight. And he was determined not only to survive himself, but to ensure this woman, Gita, did, too. So begins one of the most life-affirming, courageous, unforgettable and human stories of the Holocaust: the love story of the tattooist of Auschwitz.

Heather Morris is a writer and social work administrator. For several years, while working in a large public hospital in Melbourne, she studied and wrote screenplays, one of which was optioned by an Academy Award-winning screenwriter in the US.

In 2003, Heather was introduced to an elderly man who ‘might just have a story worth telling’. The day she met Lale Sokolov changed both their lives, as their friendship grew and he embarked on a journey on self-scrutiny, entrusting the innermost details of his life during the Holocaust to her. Heather originally wrote Lale’s story as a screenplay – which ranked high in international competitions – before reshaping it into her debut novel, The Tattooist of Auschwitz.

With the emergence and penetration of Internet based technologies,
different aspects of our private and collective lives and how our societies
function at different levels have changed. In this talk we’ll discuss
examples from dating and politics, seemingly unrelated, but
fundamentally connected!

Blackwell’s are honoured to be joined by Heather Morris to discuss her international best-seller ‘The Tattooist of Auschwitz’.

For readers of Schindler’s List, The Man Who Broke into Auschwitz and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas comes a heart-breaking story of the very best of humanity in the very worst of circumstances. In 1942, Lale Sokolov arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau. He was given the job of tattooing the prisoners marked for survival – scratching numbers into his fellow victims’ arms in indelible ink to create what would become one of the most potent symbols of the Holocaust. Waiting in line to be tattooed, terrified and shaking, was a young girl. For Lale – a dandy, a jack-the-lad, a bit of a chancer – it was love at first sight. And he was determined not only to survive himself, but to ensure this woman, Gita, did, too. So begins one of the most life-affirming, courageous, unforgettable and human stories of the Holocaust: the love story of the tattooist of Auschwitz.

Heather Morris is a writer and social work administrator. For several years, while working in a large public hospital in Melbourne, she studied and wrote screenplays, one of which was optioned by an Academy Award-winning screenwriter in the US.

In 2003, Heather was introduced to an elderly man who ‘might just have a story worth telling’. The day she met Lale Sokolov changed both their lives, as their friendship grew and he embarked on a journey on self-scrutiny, entrusting the innermost details of his life during the Holocaust to her. Heather originally wrote Lale’s story as a screenplay – which ranked high in international competitions – before reshaping it into her debut novel, The Tattooist of Auschwitz

Join us at Magdalen College for an enlightening evening where we challenge the more prevalent motives behind entrepreneurship to understand how business can be used to empower women around the world. We will explore the journeys 3 brave women have taken to make a social impact through their work and improve the lives of women in Tunisia, Rwanda and India.

Register using the following link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/women-in-social-entrepreneurship-tickets-51255935884

This is a joint lecture with The Rockefeller Foundation Economic Council on Planetary Health at the Oxford Martin School

Under the Paris Agreement, adopted in December 2015, 197 countries agreed to limit the rise in global average temperature to “well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5°C. On 8 October the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will present its special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 °C and strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Professor Myles Allen, one of the report’s lead authors and Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Climate Pollutants, will discuss the findings of the paper and the implication this has on the implementation of the Paris Agreement.

About the speaker:
Appointed by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Pierre Krähenbühl became Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) on 30 March 2014. As Commissioner-General, he serves at the level of Under-Secretary-General, based in East-Jerusalem. He was confirmed for a second three-year term, from April 2017.

A Swiss national born in 1966, Mr. Krähenbühl has 27 years of experience in humanitarian, human rights and development work. He has led UNRWA and its 30,000 staff, at a time of great pressure on the Palestine refugee community resulting from unresolved conflicts and acute needs, particularly in the West Bank, Gaza and Syria: “I have discovered in UNRWA one of the most outstanding and innovative humanitarian organizations, able to deliver education, health-care, emergency and other services to millions of people in some of the most polarized environments of the Middle East,” said Mr. Krähenbühl.

Prior to joining UNRWA, he served as Director of Operations at the International Committee of the Red Cross from July 2002 to January 2014, responsible for the conduct, management and supervision of 12,000 ICRC staff working in 80 countries.

This term’s topic of the popular St Hilda’s ‘Brain and Mind – from concrete to abstract’ series of workshops is “Risk Taking and the Brain”, with particular emphasis on risk taking in adolescence. Dr Mark Walton (University of Oxford), Dr Kathrin Cohen Kadosh (University of Surrey) and Professor Hilary Greaves (University of Oxford) will address this topic from the point of views of neuroscience, psychology and philosophy, respectively. There will be a break with refreshments.

Blackwell’s is delighted to welcome to Oxford Craig Revel Horwood, who will be discussing his third instalment in his frank and funny autobiography, ‘In Strictest Confidence’ at the Sheldonian Theatre.

‘In Strictest Confidence’ takes the reader through the highs and lows of the Strictly Come Dancing star’s ‘fab-u-lous’ life. The aussie-born judge shares his famously forthright views on the changes in Strictly Come Dancing’s line up – from Bruce Forsyth and Len Goodman’s departures to the arrival of Claudia Winkleman and Shirley Ballas – as well as the dancers and the stars.

Away from Strictly, Craig reveals fresh heartache over failed romances, his pain at losing his Dad and how his work kept him from flying to Australia for the funeral. He marks the milestones in his life, including turning fifty and moving to London to live in a ‘gorgeous’ country pile, as well as going under the knife for a second hip operation plus a few nips and tucks.

The multi-talented dancer, director and choreographer also discusses his award-winning shows, including Sister Act and Son of a Preacher Man, and spending a year in drag as Miss Hannigan in Annie. Plus, he reveals all about his foray into movies, choreographing Hugh Grant for Paddington 2 and making his big screen debut in Nativity Rocks.

Tickets to join us for this unmissable event cost £25 for a book and ticket option or £8 entry only. For all enquiries, please email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk or call our Customer Service Department on 01865 333623.

Talk followed by questions and discussion. This is part of a series of eight meetings on Thursday evenings, each one beginning at 7:30 and ending at 9pm.

11 October
The right to say untrue and damaging things
Wesley Memorial Church, New Inn Hall St

18 October
Flat earth: a Marxist critique
Wesley Memorial Church, New Inn Hall St

25 October
Tithe, timber, and the persistence of the ancien régime
Wesley Memorial Church, New Inn Hall St

1 November
The dream of human life: art in the Italian Renaissance
Oxford Town Hall, St Aldates

8 November
Antisemitism: more geese than swans
Wesley Memorial Church, New Inn Hall St

15 November
Marcus Aurelius and the self-help movement
Wesley Memorial Church, New Inn Hall St

22 November
Hegelian contradiction and prime numbers
Wesley Memorial Church, New Inn Hall St

29 November
Aleksandr Bogdanov (1873–1928) and the general science of organization
Wesley Memorial Church, New Inn Hall St

As part of the Surgical Grand Round lecture series hosted by the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences, Mr Hamish Dibley (Senior management consultant and healthcare lead with Capgemini Invent) will discuss “Achieving the Holy-Grail: The Humanising Healthcare Methodology”.

This talk explores a new and refreshing approach to how we understand and improve healthcare systems. Hamish Dibley, outlines his alternative approach to realising better healthcare services at less cost. It begins with looking at healthcare not from a conventional activity perspective but from a person-centred one.

Abstract

The NHS must change the way it operates to effectively meet future challenges. The starting point for improved services at less cost rests on more intelligent use of data to inform future performance improvement through system and service redesign.

Hamish Dibley will talk about his work in applying genuine patient-centred principles to healthcare analysis and service design. This alternative approach – The Humanising Healthcare Methodology – to realising better healthcare services and less cost begins with looking at healthcare not from an activity perspective but from a person-centred one. Unlike existing practice, the work establishes time-series data to interpret the true nature of person demand for acute services, to better understand the root cause(s) of service challenges facing commissioners and providers alike.

Understanding patient demand is the first step in arriving at intelligent system and service redesign solutions around patient cohorts. This informs a more integrated and preventive system that will successfully alter the nature and consumption curve for care and reduce costs across the system.

This radical and elegant approach provides for innovative thinking as to how to propose future improvement schemes, not only to reduce patient demand but also to better respond to, and therefore manage, such demand. This latter aim requires proof of concepts to test new approaches and processes with a small cohort of patients.

This work serves to inform and constructively challenge current cost and quality improvement programme plans, as well as provide the basis for healthcare integration. Moreover, this way of working provides a better approach to overcoming the principal performance challenges facing all healthcare economies – A&E breaches, delayed transfers of care, and waiting time lists for planned care.

Come along to a Fundraising Event for Slow Loris Conservation.

3-6pm – Children’s Activities including: nocturnal animal face painting and pumpkin carving (£3 each) and mask making; slow loris puppet show; how to be a slow loris scientist.

3-7pm – Oxford Etsy pop Up vendors (please bring cash!), nocturnal animal art exhibition, slow loris films and Rainforest Live from Java!

6-7pm – Cocktail Masterclass with award winning cocktailer Cat Rand – make your own slow loris sloe gin cocktail or organic coffee martini with coffee from the Javan rainforest! £10 for 20 minutes including a cocktail).

7-9pm – Bar at TOAD, including Slow Loris All Day IPA from BigHug brewery, and barn dance party with music from London DJ Titania from the T*** of Death.

Also enter our amazing Slow Loris Raffle with prizes from the Cotswold Wildlife Park, Natural History Museum London, Lush Designs London, Badgers of Bohemia, TOAD Distillery, Slow Loris T-Shirt Designs and more!

£5 entry – proceeds go to Oxford Brookes University’s Slow Loris Fund and Little Fireface Project. Card facilities are limited; the nearest ATM is at the Gibbs Building, Oxford Brookes University.

One of the most exciting questions in all of science remains “How did the Universe begin?”; less spoken about though is the opposite end of the life-cycle: “how the Universe will end…”. Over a rollicking and interactive hour, Professor Gibson, Director of E.A. Milne Centre for Astrophysics, will walk you through our Universe, from its birth and toddler phase, to the rough teenage years and mid-life crises, and ultimately, its mysterious fate, billions of years from now. **Note: Professor Gibson will deliver the talk twice: once at 13:30 and again at 19:00.**

The Re-Imagining Cole symposium will examine the background, context and depictions of previously unseen caricatures of Christian Frederick Cole, Oxford University’s first Black African Scholar 1873, and the first Black African to practise Law in the English High Court, 1884. The symposium will explore why Cole and his historic achievements were only portrayed in the form of parodies.

It will also explore Victorian portraits c. 1873 – 1890, examining the broader issues of race and representation in portrait art. Who were the ‘notable’ figures of the day that had portraits commissioned and painted? Did any comparable Black ‘notable’ figures have their portraits painted? Did Cole have a picture commissioned and painted?

Finally, the symposium will pose the following questions: should Cole’s image be re-imagined, if so, why? What should a re-imagined image tell an audience, who decides?
If an image of Cole was to be reimagined, what medium would be the most appropriate
and fitting to communicate Cole’s significant achievements?

With a panel of art historians, artists and academics including:
Dr Temi Odumosu, Malmo University, Africans in English Caricature, 1769-1819: Black Jokes, White Humour.
Dr Robin Darwall-Smith, University College, University of Oxford A History of University College, Oxford.
Robert Taylor, Photographer, Portraits of Achievement
Colin Harris, The Shrimpton Collection, Bodleian Libraries
Pamela Roberts, The Untold Stories of Oxford University’s Black Scholars

How are big data, machine learning, and AI currently transforming drug R&D? We’re pleased to invite Dr. Chris Meier to speak on this exciting intersection of science and technology.

Dr. Meier is one of the leaders in the Boston Consulting Group scientist network. He has worked extensively in the fields of digital development, data integration, and big data in pharma drug discovery. He has aided the development of precision medicine strategies, including biomarker discovery and development, and the integration of therapeutics with diagnostics.

Join us for what’s sure to be a fascinating talk on the future of medicine!

As always, this event is free and open to the public! A networking session including refreshments will be offered after the main event.

Feeling in Seeing : Embodiment, Affect & Visual Politics (when News are Fake)
Manos Tsakiris, Lab of Action & Body, Dep of Psychology, Royal Holloway & The Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study, University of London

Photography mediates our experience of the world, especially in a culture powered by images at an unprecedented level. Social media, alternative facts, debates about post-truth and fake news make our negotiation between what is real or fake challenging. Beyond or perhaps before our cognitive judgments about images, we respond and relate to visual culture in visceral, embodied ways. We ran a series of experiments to understand how our visceral responses, as the basis of subjective feelings, influence our relation and response to photojournalistic images. First, participants saw a series of photojournalistic images, while we measured their neurophysiological (heartrate acceleration and heartbeat-evoked potentials) and affective arousal. Next, they were informed they would see the same images again and judge whether the images were real (i.e. photos capturing an event as it happened depicting genuine emotions) or fake. Thereby we were able to assess the relation between levels of neurophysiological and affective arousal and the participants’ cognitive judgements of realness. Our findings over several experiments highlight the crucial role that ‘feeling in seeing’ plays as in determining our beliefs about realness in a political culture powered by images. The multidisciplinary approach that we propose compliments the visual turn in global politics and the emotional turn in history as we are trying to figure out who we are when we look at and being moved by images.

The esteemed ceramicist Claudia Clare is an artist who uses this traditionally domestic medium to present social commentary, often on issues of trauma, sexuality, and revolution. Having been subjected to censorship by public art institutions, Claudia joins us to speak not only about her work but also about the fight against bureaucracy and institutional politics. www.claudiaclare.co.uk

This talk is part of the FAR (Fine Art Research) Guest Lecture series, supported by the School of Arts at Oxford Brookes University. All talks are free to attend, and everyone is welcome to join us. Booking is essential: www.eventbrite.com/e/artists-talk-claudia-clare-subversive-ceramics-tickets-50921796464

Join us as part of Black History Month at Oxford Brookes to hear from Dr Cecilia Akrisie Anim President of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN).

Cecilia shares her experiences as the first BME President of the RCN; her inspiration throughout her four decades in the NHS; and the challenges and opportunities facing a new generation of nursing staff.

Cecilia originally trained as a midwife in Ghana, where she worked before moving to the UK and qualifying as a nurse in 1977. Cecilia works as a clinical nurse specialist in sexual and reproductive health at the Margaret Pyke Centre in London and specialises in family planning and aspects of women’s health with a particular interest in menopause and public health issues.

Her awards include CBE in 2016, Honorary Doctorates from the Universities of Bradford (2016) and Nottingham (2017), UN African Women of Excellence Award 2015, and long service award for over 30 years’ commitment to the NHS.

Cecilia was elected as President in 2015 and re-elected in 2017. The RCN is the voice of nursing across the UK and the largest professional union of nursing staff in the world.