Quickly approaching 50, Daphna Baram believes she is having a midlife crisis, though her GP thinks that’s highly optimistic. She looks back with no regrets but some remorse, and cracks up some insightful ideas about mass and time, AKA weight and age, tossed up with some political wisdom.

Is an Israeli comedian/journalist/human rights lawyer, and spent a year in Oxford writing her book Disenchantment: The Guardian and Israel. See: https://www.theguardian.com/global/2007/jun/04/daphna.baram

* * * * * “Masterful” (Bunbury Magazine)
* * * * “Wonderful and Hilarious” (Broadway Baby)
“Poignant and illuminating” (The List)

Doors at 8:30/Show at 9pm

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.

Inspirational talk with finger buffet and hot drinks

We are delighted to be joined by writer and musician, Catrina Davies, who will be in conversation with George Monbiot on her new book, Homesick and the current housing crisis.

Aged thirty-one, Catrina Davies was renting a box-room in a house in Bristol, which she shared with four other adults and a child. Working several jobs and never knowing if she could make the rent, she felt like she was breaking apart.

Homesick for the landscape of her childhood, in the far west of Cornwall, Catrina decides to give up the box-room and face her demons. As a child, she saw her family and their security torn apart; now, she resolves to make a tiny, dilapidated shed a home of her own.

With the freedom to write, surf and make music, Catrina rebuilds the shed and, piece by piece, her own sense of self. On the border of civilisation and wilderness, between the woods and the sea, she discovers the true value of home, while trying to find her place in a fragile natural world.

This is the story of a personal housing crisis and a country-wide one, grappling with class, economics, mental health and nature. It shows how housing can trap us or set us free, and what it means to feel at home.

Catrina Davies is a writer, singer-songwriter and DJ based in Cornwall, where she lives and works in a tin shed. Her first book The Ribbons Are For Fearlessness is a memoir about busking from Norway to Portugal with her cello. Her story has been featured in Vogue, Red, Daily Express, Surfer’s Path, and numerous other publications and her songs have been played on NTS and the BBC.

This event will be chaired by author and activist, George Monbiot. Along with writing books such as How Did We Get into this Mess, and Out of the Wreckage, George is the editor of the recent independent report to the Labour Party, Land for the Many: Changing the way our fundamental asset is used, owned and governed, which aims to put land at the very heart of politcal debate and discussion.

This is a free event, but please do register if you plan on attending. This event will be held in our Philosophy Department which is only accessible by a small flight of stairs. Seating will be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis. For more information please contact out Customer Service Desk on 01865 333 623 or email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk.

Crocodiles once roamed the Arctic, during the Eocene about 50 million years ago. Polar regions were lush and warm. Greenhouse gas concentrations were higher than today, but at most about 4 times higher – not enough, according to current climate models, to have warmed the Arctic sufficiently. Something appears to be missing in current models to account for the warmth of the past.

The likely culprits are clouds, especially the low clouds that cover vast areas of tropical oceans. These clouds cool Earth by reflecting sunlight back to space. It is possible that the cloud cooling may have been absent or strongly diminished in past greenhouse climates, raising questions about our climate future. To predict our climate future more accurately, breakthroughs in the modeling of clouds and in the accuracy of climate predictions are needed. They are now within reach, thanks to advances in computing and Earth observations from space and our ability to fuse models with massive amounts of data.

We cannot end poverty without ending energy poverty. Ever since the world’s first power plants whirred to life in 1882, we have seen how electricity is the lynchpin for development in all of its forms.

Manufacturing and industrial productivity, agriculture and food security, nutrition, hygiene, water, public health, education, even community engagement, in other words, daily life in a modern economy, demand access to reliable energy.

And yet despite significant progress over nearly 140 years, more than 800 million people around the world live without access to electricity, and hundreds of millions more struggle with unreliable or unaffordable service. Families are deprived of the means to labour productively and their quality of life and status in extreme poverty goes unchanged.

We need urgently to fast-track sustainable power solutions, investments, and partnerships across the globe to catalyze an energy transformation and accelerate sustainable, reliable and modern electrification for economic development.

Badger expert Tanesha Allen, with some help from local school children, has been studying our badgers to understand more about how smell affects their behaviour. Join Tanesha to learn more about her research and have a go at the ‘smelly shirt test’ to see how you measure up against a badger. She is currently collaborating with the Abingdon Science Partnership and Science Oxford on a badger-based citizen science project being funded by the Royal Society.

The badger is one of the UK’s iconic species and our largest land predator. It is just as common as the fox but much more elusive – we have only ever seen our resident population at Stansfeld Park on camera traps! Badgers live in large family groups and have a highly developed sense of smell. With just a sniff, they can recognise each other as well as knowing the sex, age and social group membership. However, little is known about how they react to the scents of other species – including humans.

Tanesha Allen is a third year PhD student at the University of Oxford. As part of the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit’s (WildCRU) ongoing European badger project, her research focuses on olfactory mate choice via specialised glandular secretions and metabolic by-products. She previously studied Animal Sciences at Washington State University (BSc.) and Zoology at the University of Cambridge (MPhil).

Join us for the next event in our Science on Your Doorstep series, where we shine a spotlight on fascinating people living and working in Headington. The event is free to attend, but you are invited to make a donation towards a special fund we’re setting up to support disadvantaged schools across the region. The fund will help these schools with their travel costs, to enable them to come and enjoy the new Science Oxford Centre.

In this book talk the Author, Carl Benedikt Frey, will discuss how the Industrial Revolution was a defining moment in history, but how few grasped its enormous consequences at the time. Now that we are in the midst of another technological revolution how can the lessons of the past can help us to more effectively face the present?

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

The world scientific community has spent decades developing and refining magnetic confinement fusion theory and experimental devices for the ultimate goal of safely, effectively, and economically generating power from a nuclear fusion reaction.
Magnet systems are the ultimate enabling technology for these types of fusion devices. Powerful magnetic fields are required for confinement of the plasma, and, depending on the magnetic configuration, dc and/or pulsed magnetic fields are required for plasma initiation, ohmic heating, inductive current drive, plasma shaping, equilibrium, and stability control.

Almost all design concepts for power producing commercial fusion reactors rely on superconducting magnets for efficient and reliable production of these magnetic fields.

Future superconducting magnets for fusion applications require improvements in materials and components to significantly enhance the feasibility and practicality of fusion reactors as an energy source.

This lecture presents the fundamentals of superconductors and magnets that makes them attractive for use in fusion device. Examples are drawn from present operating fusion tokamak, helical, and stellarator machines that use low temperature superconductors.

I will also introduce the use of high temperature superconductors for future magnetic fusion devices, and how it may strongly influence the performance of fusion reactors.

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

Join Oxford Hospitals Charity in celebrating ten years since the Oxford Heart Centre was first opened.

You will hear from our brilliant clinicians about the difference the new Oxford Heart Centre has made, as well as future developments that will benefit heart and lung patients across Oxfordshire, only possible thanks to your generous donations.

Author Mark Haddon also joins us to tell us about his experience as patient in the John Radcliffe.

The event is free to attend and all are welcome.

FLJS Films opens its 2019-20 programme with acclaimed director Mike Leigh’s latest film Peterloo, which, by bringing to light a little-known atrocity in Manchester 200 years ago, makes a timely comment on the repercussions and resonances of public protest.

The film depicts the nascent labour movement of the nineteenth century, as the hunger and poverty brought about by the Corn Laws (which barred imports of cheap grain from the continent) drove 60,000 peaceful protesters to Manchester’s St Peter’s Field to demand the reform of parliamentary representation.

When the demonstration was brutally put down by the cavalry, leaving 18 people dead and hundreds injured, the government moved to suppress reporting by a nascent free press, and the event has since been largely forgotten.

On the bicentenary year of the massacre, and with the current resurgence of popular demonstrations and civil disobedience over Brexit and the climate crisis, Peterloo offers an invaluable reminder of the power of political resistance.

Historian of protest Dr Katrina Navickas will give a short introductory talk on her involvement in the historical research for Peterloo and the film’s political and contemporary resonances.

Praise for Peterloo
“A full-bore assault on the amnesia of British establishment history”
Sight and Sound

“Shattering in its cumulative effect, and its relevance to these turbulent times”
Wall Street Journal

Michael Obersteiner will present new insights from co-producing a set of new sustainability scenarios.

Major sectoral transitions will be presented to achieve development targets in line with improved ecosystem and human health. He will conclude with an outlook on new ways to socialise findings from such global assessments.

This talk is part of the Oxford Martin School Lecture Series ‘Food futures: how can we safeguard the planet’s health, and our own?’

Big data and AI are starting to feature in cancer research today, and will will play an even greater role in the future. Join researchers from Cancer Research UK to discover the technologies and methods they use to help find, prevent and treat cancer, and what big ideas they have for the future.

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.

Geographers have long been interested in the spaces brought into being by the internet. In the early days of the Web, digital technologies were seen as tools that could bring a heterotopic cyberspace into being: a place beyond space de-tethered from the material world.

More recent framings instead see digital geographies as always-augmented, hybrid, and ontogenetic: integrally embedded into everyday life.

Against that backdrop, Professor Mark Graham will present findings from three large research projects about digital platforms. First, a large-scale digital mapping project that looks at how digital inequalities can become infused into our urban landscapes. Second, a study about the livelihoods of platform workers in Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Finally, early results from a new action research project (the Fairwork Foundation) designed to improve the quality of platform jobs.

In each case, the talk explores why understanding the ways that platforms command digital geographies is a crucial prerequisite for envisioning more equitable digital futures.

Please register via the link provided. This talk will be followed by a drinks reception, all welcome.

A Taste of Pompeii, with Sally Grainger
Evening Talk and Tasting
Tue 29 Oct, 6.30–9.30pm

Join author of The Classical Cookbook Sally Grainger as she shares her knowledge of classical Roman recipes adapted for the contemporary cook, painting a vibrant picture of wining and dining in the ancient world. Having whetted your appetite, enjoy a tasting array of dipping sauces in the ‘Taberna Ashmolean’.

Tickets are £35 each.

Entry is via the Front Door. Doors open 6pm, lecture at 6.30 pm.

Dr David Nabarro, former Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Food Security and Nutrition, will give a talk on what implications there will be for the planet and us in linking nature, food and the climate.

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

As part of the Surgical Grand Round lecture series, hosted by the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences, Mr Vincent Gnanapragasam from the University of Cambridge will discuss ‘Using research to change paradigms in diagnosing and managing early prostate cancer’.

The AfOx insaka is a gathering for sharing ideas and knowledge about Africa-focused research with speakers from diverse and varied academic disciplines. There are two events each term.

Speakers for the first AfOx insaka in the new academic year are Dr Robtel Neajai Pailey, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, Oxford Department of International Development and Dr Jacob McKnight, Senior Researcher, Centre for Tropical Medicine and Global Health.

At this AfOx talk, Robtel Neajai Pailey uses her anti-corruption children’s books to argue that equipping children with verbal tools to question the confusing ethical codes of adults can revolutionise how we talk and theorise about corruption.

Jake McKnight is a Health Systems Researcher at the Oxford Health Systems Collaboration (OHSCAR). He was originally a logistician for MSF in Angola and Somalia, before conducting his PhD research in Ethiopia. He then read for the MSc. in African Studies at Oxford, before completing his PhD at Said Business School, where he concentrated on healthcare reform in Ethiopia. Jake will talk about the failures and successes of projects he’s studied or been involved in, reflecting on the idea that ‘Africa Works’, and as researchers and implementors, it’s up to us to fit local cultures rather to try to ‘fix’ them.

Charles Babbage has been called the ‘great-uncle’ of modern computing, a claim that rests simultaneously on his demonstrable understanding of most of the architectural principles underlying the modern computer,band the almost universal ignorance of Babbage’s work before 1970. There has since been an explosion of interest both in Babbage’s devices and the impact they might have had in some parallel history, and in Babbage himself as a man of great originality who had essentially no influence at all on subsequent technological development.

In all this, one fundamental question has been largely ignored: how is it that one individual working alone could have synthesised a workable computer design over a short period, designing an object whose complexity of behaviour so far exceeded that of contemporary machines that it would not be matched for over one hundred years?

Our Leverhulme funded project Notions and notations: Charles Babbage’s language of thought investigated the design methods that Babbage used, and their impact on subsequent design practice. As part of that work we constructed a steam-driven difference engine to Babbage’s outline design.

In this general interest talk, we shall describe some aspects of Babbage’s designs and design methods, and demonstrate the difference engine.

As part of the Surgical Grand Round lecture series, hosted by the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences, Professor Chris Lavy from the Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences will present ‘Public-private partnerships in elective surgery’.

Join Erín Moure for a workshop on translating poetry, part of the QTE Residency and Poets Translating Poets series.

You will learn about the movement of meaning across languages, and how it’s not just dictionaries that determine meaning, but also cadence and structure.
Foreign language knowledge is not essential. Curiosity is the big prerequisite..

Sign up on the Eventbrite page to register!

Is a parliamentary route to socialism viable? If so why hasn’t it happened already?

Join us for a conversation with Leo Panitch (Professor of Political Science, York University) and Stephen Marks (Policy Officer, Oxford & District Labour Party) about the Labour Party’s electoral successes and challenges in getting socialists elected. What lessons can we draw from recent history? What should the left be doing to get socialists and a socialist government elected?

Chaired by Rabyah Khan (Chair, Oxford & District Labour Party and Labour Council candidate, Carfax & Jericho ward)

FREE ENTRY – Confirm a space so we have an idea of numbers on the night

Suggested donation on the night £2/£5

Migration is present at the dawn of human history – the phenomena of hunting and gathering, seeking seasonal pasture and nomadism being as old as human social organisation itself.

The flight from natural disasters, adverse climatic changes, famine, and territorial aggression by other communities or other species were also common occurrences.

But if migration is as old as the hills, why is it now so politically sensitive? Why do migrants leave? Where do they go, in what numbers and for what reasons? Do migrants represent a threat to the social and political order? Are they none-the-less necessary to provide labour, develop their home countries, increase consumer demand and generate wealth? Can migration be stopped? One of Britain’s leading migration scholars, Robin Cohen, will probe these issues in this talk

Please register via the link provided.

This talk will be followed by a book sale, signing and drinks reception, all welcome. Copies available at half price — £10 — to cash buyers only.

A growing middle class in the developing world, as well as increasing concerns about the healthfulness, environmental footprint and inhumaneness of conventional livestock production have given rise to neo-Malthusian concerns about how to address what seems insatiable demand for protein.

While some have doubled down on calls for reducing meat consumption, so far the most visible response has been a huge wave of innovation in a variety of what are now being called “alternative proteins.” Designed to capture the “flexitarian” market, these include insect-based foods, protein-rich “superfoods,” simulated plant-based meat and dairy substitutes, and cellular/bioengineered meat.

Their rapid development begs two crucial questions, however. How did protein become the macronutrient of concern to begin? Will protein’s new substantiations be any more nutritious and ecological than that which it substitutes? In this talk, Guthman will elaborate on what is being done in the name of protein and provide provisional answers to these questions.

Please register via the link provided.

The Classical Art Research Centre (CARC) welcome Oxford University’s own Dr Llewelyn Morgan to give the 2019 Gandhara Connections Lecture on ‘Heracles’ Track to the Indus: Ancients and Moderns in the Swat Valley’. Dr Morgan is Associate Professor of Classical Languages and Literature and author of The Buddhas of Bamiyan (2012), which reflects his longstanding interest in Graeco-Roman connections with Central Asia and India.

All are welcome to attend and places are free, but please book by emailing us: carc@classics.ox.ac.uk

This talk will describe a class of machine learning methods for reasoning about complex physical systems. The key insight is that many systems can be represented as graphs with nodes connected by edges. I’ll present a series of studies which use graph neural networks–deep neural networks that approximate functions on graphs via learned message-passing-like operations– to predict the movement of bodies in particle systems, infer hidden physical properties, control simulated robotic systems, and build physical structures. These methods are not specific to physics, however, and I’ll show how we and others have applied them to broader problem domains with rich underlying structure.

Poor diet is the leading risk factor for ill health in the UK, carrying more risk than smoking or hypertension.

But in an era where we seem to be constantly bombarded with often conflicting messages about our diets, is all this information actually making us any healthier? How can we cut through media hysteria and use the science to make wise choices about the food we eat and how can the Government make sensible policy decisions to help with the impact our consumption habits have on our health.

Please register via the link provided.

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.

In this talk, Professor Bruno Marchal, Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp will illustrate the principles of realist evaluation using the case of the development of a new Tuberculosis control policy in Georgia.

‘Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) is a major public health problem in Georgia. The initial analysis of the policymakers centred around the low levels of treatment adherence and low treatment success rates. In the highly privatised health system, the long treatments TB patients require are not necessarily a priority for private for-profit providers who care for TB patients. The Results4TB research project was launched to inform the process of developing the new policy and to assess it in terms of how it works, its cost, and adherence and treatment success rate. We adopted a theory-informed controlled trial design that includes a cost-effectiveness study and a realist evaluation.
We will focus specifically on the central role of the programme theory, how this theory was developed and how it informed not only the policy, but also the study design.’

This free talk is given in conjunction with the Realist Reviews and Realist Evaluation course, part of the Evidence-Based Healthcare programme.