The Lady English Lecture Series has been exploring different aspects of equality since 2013. As our 125th Anniversary year draws to a close, we will be hosting a panel discussion on ‘The Future of Equality: Global Perspectives’. Helping us to assess the global challenges to equality and consider possible solutions, our distinguished panellists are Professor Ian Goldin, director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Technological and Economic Change; Professor Sudhir Anand, Emeritus Professor of Economics at Oxford and Research Director of the Global Equity Initiative at Harvard University; and Lucy Lake, CEO of Camfed (Campaign for the Education of Women).

Prof. Chris Fairburn has two research interests: the nature and treatment of eating disorders, and the development and evaluation of psychological interventions. The result has been the development of specific psychological treatments for the eating disorders (anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and allied states). He and his colleagues developed one of the leading evidence-based treatments for bulimia nervosa (a form of cognitive behavioral therapy) and, more recently, an “enhanced” version (CBT-E) for any type of eating disorder and for all age groups.

He has been supported by Wellcome since 1984, allowing him to pursue a programme of work directed at the treatment of eating disorders. This has resulted in the development of the most effective interventions for these illnesses, all of which are strongly endorsed by NICE and in use worldwide. In addition, he has pioneered the use of the Internet to disseminate psychological treatments. In this presentation, Prof Fairburn will highlight the challenges he has faced and how he addressed them.

Talk Venue: Stocker room, Brasenose College, Radcliffe Sq, Oxford OX1 4AJ

Talks are free for OUSS members and £2 for non-members. Membership is £10 for a year, or £20 for lifetime!

In recent years, several developing countries have adopted regulatory laws to remain relevant in an increasingly globalized world. On the Indian Subcontinent, the entire Indian and Pakistani legal systems – their Constitutions and Codes of Civil and Criminal Procedure – are legal transplants, since they are either modelled on British Laws (Constitutions are modelled on the Government of India Act 1935) or were introduced by the British.

In the run up to joining the World Trade Organization, and as part of World Bank 2nd generation reforms, both India and Pakistan began to update their regulatory infrastructure, including laws regulating financial and capital markets, insurance, telecommunication, and electricity. The majority of these laws were modelled on western regulatory laws, yet the manner and extent to which these laws were adopted – and adapted – in the two countries was remarkably different, and led to very different outcomes. Whilst policymakers in both countries are aware that in order to succeed, adopted laws must be compatible with the context for which they are intended, there is less clarity as to how this compatibility is achieved.

In this workshop, scholars will discuss the experience of India and Pakistan to consider how the interplay of institutions can affect the legitimacy, compatibility, and ultimate success of these transplanted laws in the adopting countries.

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

Amber Darr, Senior fellow, Centre for Law, Economics and Society, University College London

In this panel we invite three individuals from different backgrounds, within and outside of the University of Oxford’s School of Geography and the Environment, to offer their take on data’s dirty tricks. In an age where fake news is on the rise and data is harvested from social media platforms and beyond, what is the impact upon us all? We ask, what are the landscapes of fake news, harvesting and its contortions to conventional democratic spaces? How is it possible to respond, tie together, and understand new forms of geopolitical strategy? How do democracies respond to big data and what should be done? This panel seeks to explore this from people who take alternative approaches and offer insights into how it has impacted us so far, what is being done to tackle it, and what should be done in the future.

Thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope and other facilities, astronomers are today able to observe some of the first galaxies. DR REBECCA BOWLER – 2018 Winner of the Royal Astronomical Society’s Winton Award for Astronomy – offers a tour of the early history of our Universe, including cutting-edge observations and scientific inferences from the frontier of current astronomical research.

Anna Milon, Education Secretary of the Tolkien Society will be joining us to give her talk, Neurodivergent Middle-earth:

Existing scholarship on Tolkien and mental health has largely focused on the aftermath of trauma or the idea that the characters in question are terribly ill and need either curing or isolating from society. In this talk, Anna Milon invites you to challenge this reductive view of mental health and explore possible neuro-divergence that does not hamper the adventures of our favourite LotR characters.

The multi-talented Nick Lee is a Lecturer in Media Arts at Royal Holloway, University of London, a researcher at the House of Lords, and co-founder of the radical south-London project space, the Peckham Pelican.

Nick, an academic with a reputation as a revolutionary nonconformist, will be joining us for the final FAR (Fine Art Research) guest lecture of 2018.

This discussion at Oxford Brookes will present a series of painted images ordered to demonstrate the development of perspectiva artificialis (artificial perspective).

The following question will be posed: what exactly is developing in these images and what subsequent forms of image-making does artificial perspective make possible?
(Progress here, as elsewhere, is uncertain; a way of seeing is produced which structures in turn how we see the world.) The extent to which computer-generated images replicate and further systematise this way of seeing will be considered…

FREE & ALL WELCOME

Booking is essential:
www.eventbrite.com/e/radical-art-history-nick-lee-uncertain-progress-tickets-52493195561

This is a great opportunity to find out more about the IB Diploma and Pre-IB courses. There will be a presentation to help debunk myths about the IB and why it is an option against A-level.

Sunday, 25th November 2018
11am – 6.15pm (Registration starts at 10.30am)
Chakrabarti Lecture Theatre & JHB207,
John Henry Brookes Building, Headington Campus, Oxford Brookes University, Headington Road, Oxford OX3 0BP

“What does it mean to research through creative practice?”

Keynote Speaker: Dr Geof Hill (Birmingham City University)
www.bcu.ac.uk/research/-centres-of-excellence/centre-for-research-in-education/people/geof-hill

To have a look at the schedule and book your ticket, please visit: ars2018.eventbrite.co.uk

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Delegate/Attendance fee: £30 / Early Bird Tickets (£20) are available until 18th November – includes lunch & refreshments

We’ll be posting speaker information leading up to the event so keep an eye out for our Facebook event page: www.facebook.com/events/455606768180452

This event is supported by the School of Arts at Oxford Brookes University and the Oxford City Council.

For a digital copy of the event booklet and more information please contact: info@ca-ru.org

We look forward to seeing you there!

CARU Conference Team
Follow us on social media: @CARUpage

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

Ana María Loboguerrero, Head of Global Policy Research at CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) will present an initiative for transforming food systems under a changing climate. This initiative envisions a world in which all people, including future generations, are well-nourished and food secure, achieved through transformed food systems that are sustainably managing current and future stresses, climatic and non-climatic. These food systems will be building on the capacities and empowerment of people to strengthen their resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters while contributing to emissions reductions and/or capturing of GHG, to a sustainable land-use and to the protection of ecosystems, considering efforts along the food value chain.

Ana Maria will set out a framework to promote radical change in value chains, and transformation of how ecosystems are maintained, and on how policies, human behaviour, financing, and the political economy can fundamentally solve the most challenging problems with respect to food, agriculture and climate change.

All welcome, registration required.

Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin is a master of collage, and has made a treasure trove of films that testify to his profound knowledge and love of cinema, and of re-purposing found footage. Originally commissioned by the Documentary Channel, My Winnipeg tells the story of Maddin’s home city from the point of view of a narrator who is desperate to leave the snow and nostalgia of its clutches. This talk explores the ways in which myth, folklore and urban legend contribute to a portrait of the city that is both true and false. It follows the red herrings, the reconstructions and pathways through Winnipeg as narrated by Darcy Fehr who plays Maddin on screen. It considers the gaps and fissures in the dialogue, and the ways in which voice-over narration enters the realm of fantasy while adhering to documentary conventions. What, we might ask, of the ‘rejected narration’? All will be revealed. Finally the talk will discuss the collage of sound and image in provoking emotional and phenomenological reactions to spaces, both real and imagined.

Blackwell’s are delighted to be hosting Roger Riddell for the launch of his latest book and debut novel Tapestries of Difference.

Tapestries of Difference is a gripping love story starting and ending in contemporary London but which journeys to Africa, where it captures the alluring beauty and harshness of today’s Zimbabwe and uncovers deceptions about the past which in all other circumstances ought to be forgotten. It is also a tale of both personal identity and what it means to be British today as the country confronts issues of faith and religion, race and ethnicity as it strives to weave a tapestry of core values to bind people together.

Roger Riddell lived in Zimbabwe for many years, chairing the first Presidential Economic Commission after Independence in 1980. After returning to England, Roger worked at the Overseas Development Institute before becoming a Director of Oxford Policy Management to which he is still affiliated. From 1999 to 2003 he was the International Director of Christian Aid. He has published widely on Zimbabwean and wider development issues. His most recent academic book, Does Foreign Aid Really Work? (Oxford University Press, 2008), has sold in excess of 15,000 copies.

All attendees are entitled to a complimentary glass of wine after which there will be a bar available to purchase drinks.

This event is free to attend, but spaces are limited, so please do register your interest. Doors will open at 6.45pm. For all enquiries please email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk or call our Customer Service Department on 01865 333623.

Abstract:
This presentation explores two workforces at the bottom of the coercive apparatus of the colonial state in Bengal in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These are police constables, and village watchmen, also called chaukidars. The two workforces presented a stark contrast. The colonial constabulary was always a thin presence in Indian society, while a much larger workforce of chaukidars existed throughout the countryside. However, chaukidars were never absorbed as direct employees of the government in the way the constables were. While constables were paid salaries out of the budget of the provincial government, chaukidars were paid salaries out of a locally raised chaukidari tax. Constables had a substantial number of upper caste workers in their ranks. All chaukidars were lower caste workers. In this presentation, I will explore how this segmentation of security work emerged in the apparatus of colonial policing and what it reveals about the nature of the colonial police.

About the Speaker:
Partha Pratim Shil is a Junior Research Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge. He is interested in labour history and state formation in South Asia.

Daniel Whiting (University of Oxford), Dr Lucy Bowes (University of Oxford), and Dr Peter Hacker (University of Oxford) will address the topic of criminality and the brain from the point of views of psychiatry, psychology, and philosophy, respectively. Val McDermid, the crime writer, will be a guest speaker.

This lecture series was established in honour of our alumna, Sue Lloyd-Roberts, an award-winning broadcast journalist whose uncompromising and courageous documentaries highlighted humanitarian issues across the world.

We are delighted that our speaker this year will be world-renowned, award-winning Lyse Doucet, Chief International Correspondent and Senior Presenter for BBC World News television and BBC World Service Radio. Lyse was a BBC foreign correspondent with postings in Jerusalem, Amman, Tehran, Islamabad, Kabul and Abidjan for 15 years, before becoming a presenter in 1999. She was paramount in the coverage of the “Arab Spring” across the Middle East and North Africa and, for the past 20 years, has continued to cover all major stories in this area.

The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception. Both are free, but please register to attend. Booking deadline: 21 January.

Abstract:
This talk on the economics of religion in India is based on research conducted in India for over a decade. The talk asks why we need an economics of religion for India and discusses contemporary attitudes towards religion in the country. It will discuss how religion relates to growing inequality in India, changes in demography, socio-economic status and religious competition. The talk will present original research findings from a survey of 600 Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Jain and Sikh religious organisations across 7 Indian states with respect to their religious and non-religious service provision such as health and education. The talk will also touch briefly on religious education, and the issues around introducing subjects such as mathematics, science and computers into a traditional religious curriculum. Ultimately, the talk presents an economic analysis of religion that hopes to inform social policy in countries such as India that have religiously-pluralistic populations.

About the Speaker:
Sriya Iyer is a Janeway Fellow in Economics and Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge; and a Bibby Fellow and College Lecturer at St. Catharine’s College, Cambridge. She researches in the economics of religion, demography, education and development economics. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Association for the Study of Religion, Economics and Culture, on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Religion and Demography, is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Labor Economics (IZA), and was awarded a University of Cambridge Pilkington Prize in 2014. She has published two books on Demography and Religion in India (Oxford University Press, 2002) and The Economics of Religion in India (Harvard University Press, 2018). She has also published articles in economics journals including the Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Economic Literature, Review of Economics and Statistics, and the Journal of Development Economics.

There seems to be a growing consensus that previous assumptions about the long term consequences of China’s rise have turned out to be misplaced. Rather than China becoming ‘socialised’ into the liberal global order (and democratising at home), a China challenge to that order is instead being identified. This is seen not just as a challenge to the distribution of power within the current system, but to some of the fundamental norms and principles that underpin it, as well as to the theories and concepts that are used to try to understand it and predict future behaviour.  Of course, some always expected it to be this way; however, others now see a Chinese ability and willingness to promote alternatives that they didn’t envisage even a decade ago.
This presentation explores how what were originally designed as defensive norms and theories for China itself have transformed into putative platforms that might have salience and utility for others outside China. The paper suggests that the Chinese position may better be understood as a critique of universalism rather than the basis of an alternative world order. It also asks whether there is more than just an aspirational dimension to new Chinese thinking on international relations built on a form of “Occidentalism”, or if we can identify a real and distinct Chinese approach to both its own international relations and the nature of the world order itself.
—
Shaun Breslin is Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick and a leading British academic expert on Chinese politics and economy, globalization, regionalism, global governance, and International Political Economy. Professor Breslin is also an Associate Fellow of the Asia Research Centre based at Murdoch University and an Honorary Professorial Fellow at the Centre for European Studies, Renmin University. In 2010, he became an Associate Fellow in the Asia Programme of Chatham House. Professor Breslin is Co-Editor of The Pacific Review and sits on the Editorial Committee of the Review of International Studies, China and World Economy, and the Fudan Review of International Relations.

Newspapers often feature studies that sound too good to be true and often they aren’t – they are myths.

Some myths may be harmless but the phenomenon affects most kinds of research within evidence-based science. The good news is that there’s a new movement tackling misleading and unreliable research and instead trying to give us results that we can trust.

Using his research in to human pheromones as an example, Tristram will discuss how and why popular myths, including power-posing, are created and how efforts have been made to address the ‘reproducibility crisis’.

Tristram Wyatt is an emeritus fellow of Kellogg College, Oxford and formerly Director of Studies in Biology at OUDCE. He is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford. He’s interested in how animals of all kinds use pheromones to communicate by smell. His Cambridge University Press book on pheromones and animal behaviour won the Royal Society of Biology’s prize for the Best Postgraduate Textbook in 2014. His TED talk on human pheromones has been viewed over a million times. His book Animal behaviour: A Very Short Introduction was published by Oxford University Press in 2017.

Open to all. The talk is designed for researchers from all disciplines and is open to the public.

– GPES Seminar Series – Oxford Brookes

A lecture exploring the therapist’s use of Spiritual and Religious Interventions.

The lecture will delve into questions such as “what is the most helpful way for God to be present in the counselling room?”, “what Spiritual and Religious Interventions are best used for which mental health disorders?” Does prayer work for stress?

Following the lecture and questions there will be the opportunity to explore setting up a ‘local’ Oxford BACP Spirituality group.

Alistair Ross (Director of Studies in Psychodynamic Studies and Psychology at Oxford University Department for Continuing Education),
Shannon Hood (Counsellor, Clinical Supervisor, Educator, Researcher)
Maureen Slattery-Marsh (Chair of BACP)

In conjunction with BACP Spirituality

Please RSVP to penny.wheeler@conted.ox.ac.uk if you are planning to attend.

Abstract:
Current commentary in legal and political philosophy conceptualises political parties either as private organisations, immune from legal regulation in their internal affairs, or as quasi-public institutions, where the state may justifiably mandate certain internal regulations. I argue that, in jurisdictions with anti-defection laws, neither conception accounts for the normative status of the political party. Instead, the party ought to be conceptualised as a legislative actor. This paper then examines how conceptualising the party in this way can affect the way in which we understand the relationship between the law and a party. I explore three possible avenues of legal regulation of parties: the process of candidate selection, the selection of party leaders, and interaction between a party and its parliamentary wing. I argue that conceptualising the party as a legislative entity has the most salient implications for the third of these: the interaction between the extra-parliamentary organisation and the parliamentary party.
About the Speaker:
Udit Bhatia is a Junior Research Fellow in Politics at Jesus College and Lecturer in Political Theory at Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford. His research interests lie at the intersections of democratic theory, social epistemology and constitutional law. He is currently working on the ethics of partisanship and the regulation of political parties.

From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, UN agencies, NGOs and the Red Cross / Crescent work to save lives and protect rights in the wake of natural disasters and armed conflict. How effective is the $27Billion sector? And what challenges does it face? The Oxford launch event of the State of the Humanitarian System report, with expert panel and Q and A

The day will consist of a range of events, hosted by speakers from different areas of STEM and industry. Expect to hear from keynote speakers, engage with panel discussions, and get hands on experience in smaller workshops focusing on entrepreneurship, outreach, disabilities and more.

Don’t miss out on hearing from a range of speakers, including: Dr. Chonnettia Jones, Director of Insight and Analysis at the Wellcome Trust; Prof. Daniela Bortoletto, Professor of Physics at Brasenose; plus Oxford’s own Vice Chancellor, Louise Richardson.

Everyone is welcome, regardless of gender, year and subject.

For more information visit OxFEST’s facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/events/294126621288050/

Join us at Teddy Hall next week for a fantastic event on the ‘Neuroscience of Dance’ brought to you by the Centre for the Creative Brain!

Science, dance and wine – what more could you want for a Saturday afternoon?

A few (free) tickets are still available, so be quick!

https://www.seh.ox.ac.uk/discover/research/centre-for-the-creative-brain

In the context of migration between Uttar Pradesh, other areas of India, and the Gulf, this paper explores the role of the imagination in shaping subjective experiences of male Muslim migrants from a woodworking industry in the North Indian city of Saharanpur. Through attending to the dreams, aspirations, and hopes of labour migrants, the paper argues that bridging the material and the imagined is critical to understanding not just patterns of migration, but also the subjective experiences of migrants themselves. Through a descriptive ethnographic account, involving journeys with woodworkers over one and a half years, the paper explores the ways in which migration, its effects, and connections are shaped by the imagination, yet are also simultaneously active in shaping the imagination—a process that is self-perpetuating. Emerging from this, the paper gives attention to continuity at the material, personal, and more emotive levels. This runs counter to research that situates migration as rupturing or change-driving within both the social and the subjective. These continuities play out in complex ways, providing comfort and familiarity, but also enabling the imaginations of migrants to be subverted, co-opted, influenced, and structured to meet the demands of labour markets both domestically and abroad.

Automation, AI and robotics are changing our lives quickly – but digital disruption goes much further than we realise.

In this talk, Richard Baldwin, one of the world’s leading globalisation experts, will explain that exponential growth in computing, transmission and storage capacities is also creating a new form of ‘virtual’ globalisation that could undermine the foundations of middle-class prosperity in the West.

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

In 2013, Carl Frey and Michael Osborne published a paper titled ‘The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation?’ which estimated that 47% of jobs in the US are at risk of automation.

In this talk Dr Carl Benedikt Frey, Co-Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Technology and Employment, will discuss the societal consequences of the accelerating pace of automation, and what we can learn from previous episodes of worker-replacing technological change.

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

Cooling is critical for many of the sustainable development goals, including those relating to health, shelter, livelihoods, education and nutrition. As the world’s population grows, as disposable incomes grow and as urban areas grow, the need for cooling is booming. However cooling uses super polluting gases and large amounts of energy and is therefore a significant cause of climate change. More efficient, clean cooling has the potential to avoid up to a degree of warming by the end of the century and recently all governments came together to agree action to try to maximize this opportunity. Cooling sits at the intersection of the UNFCCC, the SDGs and the Montreal Protocol, but can these forces ensure success?

Dan Hamza-Goodacre will explain the risks and possibilities in the search for sustainable cooling for all.

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

Currently limited tools exist to accurately forecast the complex nature of disease spread across the globe. Dr Moritz Kraemer will talk about the dynamic global maps being built, at 5km resolution, to predict the invasion of new organisms under climate change conditions and continued unplanned urbanisation.

The Global Politics, Economy and Society (GPES) Research Centre at Oxford Brookes will be hosting its first annual lecture, given by the writer and activist George Monbiot. All welcome, but please book via the registration link.