For this event, 12 artists from all over the country will be presenting work that they have been making as part of the Sound Diaries open call.

The presenting artists are:

Richard Bentley, Hannah Dargavel-Leafe, Aisling Davis, Atilio Doreste, Marlo De Lara, Beth Shearsby, Kathryn Tovey, Jacek Smolicki, James Green, Lucia Hinojosa, Sena Karahan, Fi.Ona

Sound Diaries expands awareness of the roles of sound and listening in daily life. The project explores the cultural and communal significance of sounds and forms a research base for projects executed both locally and Internationally, in Beijing, Brussels, Tallinn, Cumbria and rural Oxfordshire.

Tenor Mark Padmore is preparing to take on the role of Aschenbach in David McVicar’s production of Benjamin Britten’s Death in Venice at the Royal Opera House. Join Mark and a panel of experts, including Colin Matthews, Ray Ockenden, John Hopkins, Henry Bacon, and Philip Bullock to explore this many-faceted character through literature, film, and opera.

2019 marks the 100th anniversary of the Brazilian composer Claudio Santoro (1919-1989), one of the major figures in twentieth-century Brazilian music. His musical legacy includes nearly five hundred compositions. Among them there are fourteen symphonies, several chamber works, concertos, vocal compositions, one opera, film scores, and seventy-three known works for piano solo. Beginning with his very first compositions, his intense and extremely idealistic personality, always searching for new ideas and new musical expressions, led him to explore diverse idioms in his music. This unmissable lecture recital will be presented by the composer’ son Alessandro Santoro, acclaimed harpsichordist and pianist, Brazilian soprano Gabriella Di Laccio and Dr Vinicius Mariano de Carvalho, Lecturer in Brazilian Studies, King’s College London. The concert will present some of Santoro Love Songs – an exquisite cycle written in partnership with Brazilian poet Vinicius de Moraes – as well some of Santoro’s piano preludes.

Edward Higginbottom was Director of Music at New College from 1976 – 2014. In a talk for Oxford Civic Society he reflects on music making in the University and how, sometimes in spite of itself, it has fostered musical talent. He observes that there are some aspects of this story that depend on ‘the genius of the place’.

Data-driven micro-targeted campaigns have become a main stable of political strategy. As personal and societal data becomes more accessible, we need to understand how it can be used and mis-used in political campaigns and whether it is relevant to regulate political candidates’ access to data.

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

Award-winning sustainability journalist Tim Smedley has travelled the world to major cities dealing with severe air pollution problems including Delhi, Beijing and Paris, interviewing scientists and politicians to discover the full story of air pollution. Join him to discover what air pollution is, where it’s coming from and, most importantly, what we can do about it.

IF Oxford is operating a Pay What You Decide (PWYD) ticketing system. This works by enabling you to pre-book events without paying for a ticket beforehand. Afterwards, you have the opportunity to pay what you decide you want to, or can afford. If you prefer, you can make a donation to IF Oxford when you book. All funds raised go towards next year’s Festival.

Is it our social responsibility to vaccinate? Vaccination has eradicated deadly diseases from our world and saved millions of lives; but why do some people refuse to vaccinate? This event, presented in partnership with the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities will explore how medicine, ethics, history and social science can encourage wider debate and a better understanding of the role vaccination plays in improving global human health.
Panelists include Alberto Giubilini (Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities), Samantha Vanderslott (Oxford Vaccine Group), Erica Charters (Associate Professor of Global Medicine and the History of Medicine), and Andrew Pollard (Professor of Paediatric Infection and Immunity).

From the geological component of a life-supporting planet, to changing how we made tools or helping your body survive every day, iron plays an important part in being human. But which of iron’s roles is the most important? Join us for a fun evening where researchers from across the sciences and the humanities (Fe)rociously try to persuade you that their use of iron is the most important. Who wins this battle of the new iron age? You decide!

IF Oxford is operating a Pay What You Decide (PWYD) ticketing system. This works by enabling you to pre-book events without paying for a ticket beforehand. Afterwards, you have the opportunity to pay what you decide you want to, or can afford. If you prefer, you can make a donation to IF Oxford when you book. All funds raised go towards next year’s Festival.

Marking the 150th anniversary of the periodic table, Kit Chapman reveals the incredible and often surprising stories behind the discovery of the superheavy elements; how they have shaped the world today and where they will take us in the future. Be introduced to the amazing people whose tireless quest to drive the periodic table forwards has led to scientists rewriting the laws of atomic structure.

IF Oxford is operating a Pay What You Decide (PWYD) ticketing system. This works by enabling you to pre-book events without paying for a ticket beforehand. Afterwards, you have the opportunity to pay what you decide you want to, or can afford. If you prefer, you can make a donation to IF Oxford when you book. All funds raised go towards next year’s Festival.

Sarah Weir OBE, Chief Executive, Design Council, will lecture on ‘Designing the Future: Who is doing it?’ She will consider the question of what design is – a mindset and skillset; critical thinking and creativity combined; much more than aesthetics.

The Lady English Lecture Series marks the College’s continuing commitment to the education and advancement of women and promotes the contributions made by women to the University and to public life more generally.

Plants and photosynthetic microbes have the extraordinary ability to convert light energy to chemical energy and as a consequence, they are the foundation of virtually all ecosystems and all agricultural systems on the planet.

The characteristics that make plants successful in natural ecosystems are often antithetical to agriculture and over 1000s of years we have domesticated plants to make better crops. The molecular genetics revolution of the 20th century has simultaneously provided a means to understand the relationship between plant genes and plant characteristics, and the ability to target and/or select specific genetic changes in plant genomes.

This combination of knowledge and technology opens the possibility for designer crops, and raises interesting questions about the governance of our food system.

Please register via the link provided. Followed by a drinks reception, all welcome.

Inaugural event in our new events series focusing on responsible leadership: Driving Diversity and Inclusion Seminar Series.

Progress on diversity in the UK civil service and why it matters. How the dial only really shifted on gender, and why the focus is now on inclusion and addressing bullying and harassment. What the good leaders are doing?

Dame Sue Owen will give a talk followed by a Q&A with the audience moderated by Sue Dopson, Rhodes Trust Professor of Organisational Behaviour, Fellow of Green Templeton College, Deputy Dean of Saïd Business School.

Event Schedule:
17:15 – Registration opens
17:45 – Event starts
18:45 – Drinks reception
19:45 – Close

What’s it like to be haunted? Writer Jay Bernard’s augmented reality installation explores this question – unpicking how we can be haunted by our histories and our everyday lives.

Listen to a reading while exploring alternative realities in an AR experience that looks at how the past and present are closely linked.

The installation is based on their debut collection, ‘Surge’, which considered the aftermath of the 1981 New Cross Fire. Jay Bernard is the winner of the Ted Hughes Award for New Work Poetry and has been shortlisted for the Forward Prize.

Part of The Think Human Festival
Everyone welcome

In this book talk, Claas will review central findings of his research on the past 80 years of antibiotic use, resistance, and regulation in food production with introduction by Prof Mark Harrison, Director of Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities.

Mass-introduced after 1945, antibiotics helped revolutionise food production. Farmers and veterinarians used antibiotics to prevent and treat disease, protect plants, preserve food, and promote animals’ growth. Many soon became dependent on routine antibiotic use to sustain and increase production. The resulting growth of antibiotic infrastructures came at a price. Critics blamed antibiotics for leaving dangerous residues in food, enabling bad animal welfare, and selecting for antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in bacteria, which could no longer be treated with antibiotics.

Pyrrhic Progress analyses over 80 years of evolving non-human antibiotic use on both sides of the Atlantic and introduces readers to the historical and current complexities of antibiotic stewardship in a time of rising AMR.

This talk includes a drinks reception and nibbles, all welcome

This lecture will describe research in chemistry and polymer materials carried out in the Williams research laboratories.

This research focusses on how to activate and transform non-petrochemical raw materials into polymers (plastics). For example, waste plants or agricultural by-products or even waste carbon dioxide can all be used as raw materials to make polymers, replacing petrochemicals derived from oil. The properties of polymers will be discussed and examples will given of possible end-user applications for these new renewable polymers. The lecture will introduce some concepts to consider when evaluating polymer sustainability and life cycles.

Part of the Oxford Martin School Lecture Series: ‘Shaping the future’

Music has taken many forms during China’s long cultural history and many traditions have endured to this day. In this talk, Paul Bevan will look at a selection of the paintings in the Ashmolean collection that reflect China’s rich musical and theatrical heritage.

Music and Musical Instruments in the Ashmolean’s Chinese Paintings Collection
A Weekday Talk with Dr Paul Bevan, Ashmolean Museum

Fri 6 Mar, 1–3pm
Ashmolean Museum

FREE, booking recommended.
Book by contacting chinesepaintingsprogramme@ashmus.ox.ac.uk
https://www.ashmolean.org/event/music-and-musical-instruments-in-the-ashmoleans-chinese-paintings-collection

Talk, followed by walking tour of the park. Jane Kilsby, local historian shares her
recent research into this well-loved 19th century public park. Maximum 20

1/3: The case for a funded pension with a defined benefit (DB)

I begin by drawing attention to the efficiencies in the pooling of longevity and investment risk that collective funded pension schemes provide over individual defined contribution (IDC) pension pots in guarding against your risk of living too long. I then turn to an analysis of those collective schemes that promise a defined benefit (DB): an inflation-proof income in retirement until death, specified as a fraction of your salary earned during your career. I consider the concepts and principles within and beyond financial economics that underlie the valuation and funding of such a pension promise. I assess the merits of the ‘actuarial approach’ to funding an open, ongoing, enduring DB scheme at a low rate of contributions invested in ‘return-seeking’ equities and property. I also consider the merits of the contrasting ‘financial economics approach’, which calls for a higher rate of contributions set as the cost of bonds that ‘match’ the liabilities. I draw on the real-world case of the UK’s multi-employer Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) to adjudicate between these approaches. The contrasting investment strategy of London’s SAUL pension scheme, the objectives of the Pensions Regulator, the significance of the Pension Protection Fund, and the decision of Trinity College Cambridge to withdraw from USS to protect itself against being the ‘last man standing’, all figure in the discussion.

Lecture 2: The case for collective defined contribution (CDC)
On any sensible approach to the valuation of a DB scheme, ineliminable risk will remain that returns on a portfolio weighted towards return-seeking equities and property will fall significantly short of fully funding the DB pension promise. On the actuarial approach, this risk is deemed sufficiently low that it is reasonable and prudent to take in the case of an open scheme that will be cashflow positive for many decades. But if they deem the risk so low, shouldn’t scheme members who advocate such an approach be willing to put their money where their mouth is, by agreeing to bear at least some of this downside risk through a reduction in their pensions if returns are not good enough to achieve full funding? Some such conditionality would simply involve a return to the practices of DB pension schemes during their heyday three and more decades ago. The subsequent hardening of the pension promise has hastened the demise of DB. The target pensions of collective defined contribution (CDC) might provide a means of preserving the benefits of collective pensions, in a manner that is more cost effective for all than any form of defined benefit promise. In one form of CDC, the risks are collectively pooled across generations. In another form, they are collectively pooled only among the members of each age cohorts.

Lecture 3: The case for an unfunded pay as you go (PAYG) pension

The previous two lectures grappled with various challenges that funded collective pension schemes face. In the final lecture, I ask whether an unfunded ‘pay as you go’ (PAYG) approach might provide a solution. With PAYG, money is directly transferred from those who are currently working to pay the pensions of those who are currently retired. Rather than drawing from a pension fund consisting of a portfolio of financial assets, these pensions are paid out of the Treasury’s coffers. The pension one is entitled to in retirement is often, however, a function of, even though not funded by, the pensions contributions one has made during one’s working life. I explore the extent to which a PAYG pension can be justified as a form of indirect reciprocity that cascades down generations. This contrasts with a redistributive concern to mitigate the inequality between those who are young, healthy, able-bodied, and productive and those who are elderly, infirm, and out of work. I explore claims inspired by Ken Binmore and Joseph Heath that PAYG pensions in which each generation pays the pensions of the previous generation can be justified as in mutually advantageous Nash equilibrium. I also discuss the relevance to the case for PAYG of Thomas Piketty’s claim that r > g, where “r” is the rate of return on capital and “g” is the rate of growth of the economy.

This unusual online event will see Alberto Guibilini (Research Fellow, Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics) and David Jones (Director, The Anscombe Bioethics Centre) adopting the other’s position on conscientious objection, arguing for the opposing view in an attempt to explore not only the subject, but the very nature of disagreement and discussion. Audience members will be encouraged to explore their views on conscientious objection in the same way.

We welcome questions in advance of the debate. To register on Zoom for the event please use the following link: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_VrOGfqNrQVmw9k2KFz9HOA

This event is co-sponsored by the Anscombe Bioethics Centre in Oxford. It will start promptly at 6pm, and we expect to finish at 7:30pm.

Jointly organised by the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics and the Anscombe Bioethics Centre. This unusual online event will see Alberto Guibilini and David Jones adopting the other’s position on conscientious objection, arguing for the opposing view in an attempt to explore not only the subject, but the very nature of disagreement and discussion. Audience members will be encouraged to explore their views on conscientious objection in the same way.

Life-Writing Beyond Words is a research network and termly series of public events, hosted by Felix Appelbe, the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing, and Ocean Ambassadors, that explores how we move between words and the non-verbal.

Life-writing is the study of lives, through letters, diaries, performance, memoir, autobiography and biography. But it frequently has to negotiate the non-verbal, for instance when describing the creative minds of composers, choreographers or artists, capturing the sound and light of childhood, or eavesdropping on the world of animal experience. How can these worlds be captured in words?

We are addressing this challenge by convening a network that spans many disciplines, bringing together academics, practitioners and performers who would otherwise not meet. Free-thinking lectures and laboratories will forge new pathways between the verbal and the non-verbal, journeying towards innovative experimental and performative methodologies.

5 – 5:10 Introduction by Felix Appelbe

5:10 – 5:50pm Louise Cournarie, Rameau le Moderne. Throughout his unusually long life, Jean Philippe Rameau has left an unerasable mark in Music, Theory, Science, Philosophy, and History. The composer/theorist, often referred to as the ‘father of modern harmony’, and who hated being called a composer, left behind him a forever changed view on music and a large body of work. In a time hugely influenced by the philosophy of Descartes, or the conferences of LeBrun, restlessly attacked by Rousseau, supported by D’Alambert and Voltaire, Rameau the musician and theorist underwent a long evolution. Through his keyboard pieces, this Lecture recital will attempt in having a closer look to the effect of this rich history on both the practice of Jean Philippe Rameau and his theory ideas.

5:50 – 6:30pm Alyn Shipton, How can we explore life-writing that does not use words? One possible answer is to examine both visual art and music for the ways in which we might see or hear biographical ideas. An obvious historical example would be the cycle of self-portraits by Rembrandt, that chronicle every stage of his life, and tell us through peripheral detail not only about the physical changes to Rembrandt the man, but to the environment in which he paints himself, and the clothes he wears. In his new book The Art of Jazz, Alyn Shipton explores the connections between the visual arts and jazz in the first hundred years of the music. Drawing on this unique body of research, Alyn explores how the lives of those in the jazz world have been depicted in music and in painting, drawing, graphics and sculpture. We can see how the image of Miles Davis changed over time, including his own work as a painter; we see how different photographers presented the “Empress of the Blues” Bessie Smith and how she translated the African American experience into song, and using excerpts from his work as an oral historian, Alyn shows how Sonny Rollins used the personal experience of racism in the housing market to inspire his “Freedom Suite”.

6:30 – 7:30pm Roundtable discussion, chaired by Kate Kennedy, on the theme Never the same twice

How do you build inclusion from the ground up?

People with albinism face discrimination across the globe but are often left out of activist efforts around diversity and inclusion.

In this episode, we speak to representatives of Sesame Street Workshop, who have been championing diversity for years. With a breadth of expertise in the art of embracing diversity, this insightful look into the world of Sesame Street gives us new ways of approaching our goals. Supermodel and activist Diandra Forrest also joins the conversation. Fellow guest speaker Stephan Bognar, Executive Director of New York Dermatology Group Foundation, completes the line-up. They worked together previously on the Colorfull campaign, which was conceived by NYDG to highlight the prejudice that albinism attracts.

With COVID-19 vaccines on the horizon, attention again returns to the contentious topic of whether vaccination should be made mandatory.

Recent polling has resulted in worrying headlines about a lack of willingness to have a COVID-19 vaccine if it were available.

Are mandates the answer to ensure vaccine high uptake to end the pandemic? While still a hypothetical scenario, without yet having a safe and effective vaccine approved for use, this could change in the coming months. The question of introducing mandatory vaccination spans considerations of personal liberty, health decision-making, public health and policy, as well as the relationship between the state and its citizens. Join Professor Julian Savulescu and Dr Samantha Vanderslott to debate the ethical and public policy arguments for and against mandatory COVID-19 vaccination.

Join Peter Drobac as he interviews Paul Farmer, in an exploration of the lessons we can learn from Paul Farmer’s phenomenal new book, Fevers, feuds and diamonds: Ebola and the ravages of history.

We will reflect on how these lessons can help us tackle the current Covid-19 pandemic and discuss how inequality and exploitation fuelled the spread of a deadly virus and how we might finally learn from history, in order to build a healthier, more equitable world.

For more details, visit https://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/events/fevers-feuds-and-diamonds-dr-paul-farmer-future-global-health

Join us live or watch the recording on: https://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/oxford-answers

This event and open to all Registration not required.