This paper explores the connectivities between violence, memory, personhood, place and human substances after the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. It explores the practice of ‘care-taking’ at genocide memorials – the preservation and care of human remains –to reveal how survivors of the genocide re-make their worlds through working with the remnants of their dead loved ones. I argue that ‘care-taking’ is a way to rebuild selves and to retain lost relations to the dead that still interfere in the everyday lives of the living. Survivors project their emotions, sentiments and confusion about an uncertain future onto the remains. Care-taking re-verses time because it gives back dignity to those who died ‘bad deaths’ during the genocide. I further argue that the memorials are a vehicle for what I coin ‘place-bound proximity’ that enables a material space of communication between care-takers and their dead loved ones, provides a last resting place and a ‘home’ for both the living and the dead. Importantly these findings questions mainstream transitional justice approaches to social recovery demonstrating that memory cannot be deployed or harnessed and that reconciliation is better understood as rebuilding a (normal) relationship with the dead rather than as one with perpetrators. Following a ‘victims-approach’ this paper draws on extensive fieldwork conducted in Rwanda between 2011 and 2014.

Kajal Odedra has always been passionate about helping other people affect change.
She is Executive Director of Change.Org and author of ‘Do Something: Activism for Everyone’. Change.org is the world’s largest petition platform with 15 million UK users and 200 million globally.

This two-day conference will explore the evolving relationship between conflict and identity, with a specific interest in the role of history education in pre-conflict, at-conflict, and post-conflict societies. It will focus on how teachers and lecturers present history; how such choices shape identity; and how history education can be used for the purposes of promoting or undermining peaceful societies.

Joris Luyendijk was born in Amsterdam and studied in Kansas, Amsterdam, and Cairo. He is a writer, journalist and anthropologist. He has written about the Middle East, the banking crisis and Brexit.

Blackwell’s are honoured to be joined by Chelsea Kwakye and Ore Ogunbiyi, to talk about their hugely important book, Taking Up Space: The Black Girl’s Manifesto for Change.

Synopsis

As a minority in a predominantly white institution, taking up space is an act of resistance. Recent Cambridge grads Chelsea and Ore experienced this first-hand, and wrote Taking Up Space as a guide and a manifesto for change.

“FOR BLACK GIRLS:Understand that your journey is unique. Use this book as a guide. Our wish for you is that you read this and feel empowered, comforted and validated in every emotion you experience, or decision that you make.FOR EVERYONE ELSE:We can only hope that reading this helps you to be a better friend, parent, sibling or teacher to black girls living through what we did. It’s time we stepped away from seeing this as a problem that black people are charged with solving on their own.It’s a collective effort. And everyone has a role to play.”

Featuring honest conversations with students past and present, Taking Up Space goes beyond the buzzwords of diversity and inclusion and explores what those words truly mean for young black girls today.

Chelsea Kwakye is a first-class honours History graduate from Homerton College, Cambridge. Whilst at Cambridge she was the only black girl in her year group of around 200 to read History. In her final year, she was Vice-President of the African-Caribbean Society and competed in a Cambridge vs. Oxford Varsity Athletics match. She is currently studying at the University of Law in preparation for a training contract with a city law firm in London.

Ore Ogunbiyi is a Nigerian-British Politics and International Relations graduate from Jesus College, Cambridge. Whilst at Cambridge she pioneered the Benin Bronze Repatriation campaign, the #BlackMenofCambridgeUniversity campaign and was President of the African-Caribbean Society. She has since completed a Masters in Journalism at Columbia University, New York and is currently working as a Special Assistant and Speechwriter to the Vice President of Nigeria.

#Merky Books was set up by publishers Penguin Random House and Stormzy in June 2018 to find and publish the best writers of a new generation and to publish the stories that are not being heard. #Merky Books aims to open up the world of publishing, and this year has launched a New Writer’s Prize and will soon be launching a #Merky Books traineeship.

This event is free to attend, but please do register if you plan on coming. The talk will be held in our Philosophy Department, which is only accessible by a short flight of stairs. For more information please contact our Customer Service Desk on 01865 333 623 or email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk.

Pompeii Rediscovered
A talk with Massimo Osanna, Director General, Parco Archeologico di Pompei
Mon 11 Nov, 6.30–7.30pm

This event will be followed by drinks in the museum and a private view of the Last Supper in Pompeii exhibition.

In 2018, two-hundred and seventy years after excavations at Pompeii began, Director General of Pompeii, Professor Massimo Osanna, launched new excavations for conservation and research. Find out more about the amazing discoveries made in this project – from mysterious mosaics to shrines to the gods and even taverns– and learn what they reveal about daily life in Pompeii.

This event was originally scheduled for 31 October but has been moved to this new date.

Booking is essential. Tickets are £25/£22/£20 Full/Concession/Members

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.

Some 45,000 years ago, a group of around 1500 humans who were genetically similar left Africa for Asia. Successive generations of their descendants were the first members of H.sapiens to explore the earth, apart from Australia – the ancestors of today’s indigenous population left Africa around 10,000 years earlier. The talk will discuss how that original group became the genetically diverse mix of peoples who now inhabit our world. Perhaps surprisingly, some of the key evidence on the limitations of our differences today is to be found in the Pitt Rivers Museum.

In this lecture, in honour of Edward Greene, Donald Meek will describe the fascinating process of Gaelic Bible translation in Scotland and Ireland. Beginning with the standard Gaelic Bible, translated between 1767 and 1804, Donald will explain its creation, and its debts to the work of earlier translators and revisers, including the Rev. Robert Kirk of Aberfoyle (who produced ‘Kirk’s Bible in 1690), but pre-eminently to the foundational labours of the translators of the Bible into Classical Gaelic in Ireland in the earlier seventeenth century. Both the principal translators of that period – Bishop William Ó Dómhnaill and Bishop William Bedell – studied at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where they were trained in biblical languages by the first Master of Emmanuel, Lawrence Chadderton. By way of comparison and contrast, brief reference will be made to the somewhat different histories of Bible translation into Manx and Welsh. The lecture will conclude with some discussion of the profound influence of the Gaelic Bible on the development of modern Scottish Gaelic literature, and its enduring legacy

Hella Pick is one of the trailblazers for the modern female foreign correspondent. She worked across three continents and covered the death of Yugoslavia’s leader, President Tito. Yugoslavia was always the saving grace of covering the Soviet bloc,” she remembers. “While in East Germany you were followed and listened to all the time, but Tito’s regime was a symbol of independent communism. Even the American ambassador was predicting the country would survive beyond Tito. Of course, we were all wrong.” Pick will talk about her incredible career, the stories she has covered and the current challenges facing journalism.
Neal Ascherson went to King’s College, Cambridge, where he read history. The historian Eric Hobsbawm was his tutor and described him as “perhaps the most brilliant student I ever had. I didn’t really teach him much, I just let him get on with it.” After graduating he he chose a career in journalism, first at The Manchester Guardian and then at The Scotsman, The Observer and The Independent on Sunday.He contributed scripts for the documentary series The World at War (1973–74) and the Cold War (1998). He has also been a regular contributor to the London Review of Books. Ascherson has lectured and written extensively about Polish and Eastern Europe affairs.

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

This seminar is part of our public seminar series on ‘Exclusion from School and its Consequences’, led by the Department of Education and convened by Harry Daniels (Professor of Education) and Ian Thompson (Associate Professor of English Education & Director of PGCE).

Events in the series are free to attend and aimed at academics, researchers, teachers, head teachers, government members, policy-makers and students, although anyone with an interest in the topic is welcome to attend

Speaker: Martin Mills (Institute of Education, University College, London(

Seminar Abstract: This presentation will discuss the place of Alternative Provision (AP) in the process of exclusion in England, with a particular focus on issues related to social justice. Consideration will be given to some of the reasons why young people find themselves in AP. It will highlight the ways in which AP can serve to further marginalise young people who are already alienated by the education system. However, it will also draw on data from English AP sites to demonstrate how such sites can work to ensure that young people excluded from mainstream schools are retained in education. The choice is sometimes not between AP and the mainstream, but AP or no education. In some AP sites young people suggest that they are far happier than they were in the mainstream and, when it is provided can be engaged in meaningful learning. The presentation will consider why that it is and whether or not there are lessons to be learned from the AP sector which can help to make mainstream schools more inclusive. Throughout the presentation the voices of teachers and students in AP will be foregrounded. There will also be some discussion of international approaches to AP.

Open to all and free to attend – Registration required at: http://www.education.ox.ac.uk/events/alternative-provision-and-school-exclusions/

This seminar is part of our public seminar series on ‘Exclusion from School and its Consequences’, led by the Department of Education and convened by Harry Daniels (Professor of Education) and Ian Thompson (Associate Professor of English Education & Director of PGCE).

Speaker: Matthew Purves, Ofsted

Seminar Abstract: The Education Inspection Framework is the most researched and piloted framework in the organisation’s history. Ofsted has taken over 25 years of it’s inspection experience and evaluated the existing literature on pupil behaviour and attitudes in schools. This, alongside two phases of research on behaviour significantly strengthens Ofsted’s inspection practice on behaviour. Challenges remain. Data indicators such as exclusion statistics rarely tell the whole story. Matthew will share how the inspectorate has used research to create a framework that captures the most important aspects of behaviour and attitudes and discuss the work that Ofsted are currently doing to further strengthen understanding of behaviour in schools.

Free to attend and open to all. Registration required at: http://www.education.ox.ac.uk/events/behaviour-and-attitudes-in-the-education-inspection-framework/

Hear a whole phD in just three minutes!
Can you understand a whole phD in just three minutes? Perhaps you are an Undergraduate or Masters student who is aiming for a future PhD?
Join Humanities and Social Sciences PhD students as we challenge them to boil down their whole PhD to just three minutes and one slide – in a way that makes sense to everyone!

As part of the Oxford Brookes Think Human Festival 2020, Pegasus Theatre presents this discussion around creativity and empowering young people in the arts.
Is to be creative to be human? Join a panel of young people from East Oxford, professionals and academics to debate this and discuss what the power of creativity means in our lives.
What could it look like in the future? How can we create opportunities for creativity in all aspects of life? Hear the panel’s response to provocations and accept our invitation to formulate your own personal pledge to encourage creativity for future generations.
This is a free event, but booking is essential to secure your place.
Running time approx. 1 hour

A panel exploring how universities can best support new students as they transition to University

This seminar is part of our public seminar series on ‘Exclusion from School and its Consequences’, led by the Department of Education and convened by Harry Daniels (Professor of Education) and Ian Thompson (Associate Professor of English Education & Director of PGCE).

Speaker: Mina Fazel (University of Oxford)

Seminar Abstract: This talk will discuss the latest understanding of mental health needs in adolescent populations in the UK and the potential role that mental health services in schools can play. An example of current research alongside clinical service development will be discussed. The opportunities and challenges of mental health services working in schools will be explored, including how to navigate some of the ethical complexities of working in this areas as well as some of the main unanswered research questions that can be addressed through schools-research. A particular focus will be on how this relates to excluded children- what we know about their mental health needs and the role of services.

Open to all and free to attend. Registration required at: http://www.education.ox.ac.uk/events/exclusion-and-mental-health-exploring-the-role-of-improved-provision-in-schools/

Speaker: Dr Neil Armstrong (Stipendiary Lecturer in Social and Cultural Anthropology at Magdalen College)

This paper uses ethnographic material of NHS mental healthcare to raise some questions about autonomy, risk and personal and institutional responsibility.

My research investigates mental health. I am particularly interested in how the institutional setting shapes so much of mental healthcare. My research aims to find ways that we might improve healthcare institutions rather than just focussing on developing new healthcare interventions. I am also concerned with methodological questions: how anthropological work can be of clinical value, and how best to produce anthropological knowledge in an inclusive way.

This seminar is part of our public seminar series on ‘Exclusion from School and its Consequences’, led by the Department of Education and convened by Harry Daniels (Professor of Education) and Ian Thompson (Associate Professor of English Education & Director of PGCE).

Speaker: Lucinda Ferguson (University of Oxford)

Seminar Abstract: The House of Commons’ Education Committee (2019) criticised the education system’s treatment of children with disabilities on the following terms:

“[C]hildren and parents are not ‘in the know’ and for some the law may not even appear to exist. Parents currently need a combination of special knowledge and social capital to navigate the system, and even then are left exhausted by the experience. Those without significant social or personal capital therefore face significant disadvantage. For some, Parliament might as well not have bothered to legislate.”

In this presentation, I combine legal analysis, theory, and evidence from practice to argue that the law is ill-equipped to support children at risk of permanent exclusion from school, particularly children with disabilities or other additional needs. I focus on the English experience, which is quite distinctive from that of other nations in the UK. I first outline the reality of permanent exclusion and introduce the legal framework.

I then consider the extent to which children’s rights arguments might support improvements in practice for these vulnerable children. I proceed to argue that much of the difficulty lies in our current conceptions of the nature of childhood, how we regard children compared to other ‘minority’ groups, and the implications of this for the legal regulation of their lives. I consider whether an intersectional perspective might assist here, and offer some concluding thoughts on how to bring about the necessary cultural shift and make the law work for vulnerable children at risk of exclusion from school.

Open to all and free to attend. Registration required at: http://www.education.ox.ac.uk/events/law-and-exclusion-from-school/

This seminar is part of our public seminar series on ‘Exclusion from School and its Consequences’, led by the Department of Education and convened by Harry Daniels (Professor of Education) and Ian Thompson (Associate Professor of English Education & Director of PGCE).

Speakers: Jill Porter and Ruth Moyse (University of Reading)

Seminar Abstract: Government statistics indicate that children and young people with special educational needs are five times more likely to be excluded from secondary schools, and account for just under half of excluded pupils. This seminar will explore the process of formal and informal exclusion from the macro, meso and micro level to understand some of the complex interactions between policy, school and individual factors. The significance of these on the lives of young people will be illustrated with reference to data drawn from the topical life histories of autistic girls. These portray the experience of having ones’ needs continually underestimated or misunderstood coupled with a lack of in-school support.

Open to all and free to attend. Registration required at: http://www.education.ox.ac.uk/events/from-inclusion-to-exclusion-from-school-transforming-the-lives-of-young-people-with-special-educational-needs-and-disabilities/

Professor Sir Adam Roberts, Senior Research Fellow in International Relations, University of Oxford, will deliver a lecture on the contemporary decline of the liberal order, and call for a rethinking of liberal ideas and practices. The Keynote Lecture will open a workshop the following day.

The term ‘liberal international order’ has become widely used – generally to refer to the international system that developed in the years after the end of the Cold War in 1989, or even to the whole period since the end of the Second World War in 1945.

Although the term itself is relatively new, the ideas and practices that comprise it are not. They include multi-party democracy, the growth of international law and institutions, recognition of human rights, freedom of religious belief, the removal of barriers to international trade.

All of the above have been advocated as means of reducing the incidence of war between states. This is not an elegy for a liberal international order that is now under threat, but rather a call for rethinking it, especially in light of its long, diverse, and troubled history.

Adam Roberts is Senior Research Fellow in International Relations at Oxford University and a Fellow of Balliol College. In 2009–13 he was President of the British Academy, the UK national academy for the humanities and social sciences. He was awarded a knighthood in 2002 for services to the study and practice of international relations, and has given expert advice to parliamentary committees, governments and non-governmental bodies in the UK and overseas.

His numerous books include (co-edited.) Civil Resistance in the Arab Spring: Triumphs and Disasters, Oxford University Press, 2016. He is currently working on a book on the history of the idea of liberal international order.

A workshop to scrutinize the transformation of the contemporary international order, encompassing its social, political, legal, economic, and technological dimensions. The workshop will serve as an in-depth examination of the issues outlined in Professor Sir Adam Roberts’ lecture of the previous day.

It is plain that shifts in the organization and structure of the international order, and the social relationships within these, are experiencing stress and strain and being reconceived and redesigned in reaction to deeper forces.

Among the factors driving this change and revision, even transformation, include:

relations among nations;
the rise of social movements in response to changing attitudes to authority and established ideas and institutions;
altered dispositions towards international law and international and regional institutions;
challenges to the liberal order;
scepticism about human rights, universal principles, and the power of the courts to uphold them;
new economic perspectives, revised business and financial relations and practices; and
the rapid development of technology, the dawn of the digital age, and the consequences.
Participants include:
Denis Galligan, Professor of Socio-Legal Studies, Oxford

Mary Bartkus, Special Counsel, Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP

Ralph Schroeder, Professor of Social Science of the Internet, Oxford Internet Institute

David Vines, Professor of Economics, Oxford

This year’s Kenneth Kirkwood Memorial Lecture Day focuses on the always fascinating subject of death and last rites in different cultures. The day will consist of four very varied talks from a panel of eminent speakers, and will include a buffet lunch.

The talks are:

The Funeral Pyre: the Archetypal Death Rite from Ancient Greece to India Today, Dr Felix Padel, School of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford

Funeral Options: From Celebration to Ash Delivery, Professor Douglas Davies, Director of The Centre for Death and Life Studies at Durham University

Accra Coffins: Artefact, Art or Expensive Tourist Tat?, Professor Malcolm McLeod, Professor of African Studies at Glasgow University and former Keeper of Ethnography at the British Museum

Of Vultures, Dogs & Fire: A Zoroastrian End, Shahin Bekhradnia, Religious Affairs Spokesperson for the World Zoroastrian Organisation

Friends and students £25/ non-Friends £35 (Includes buffet lunch).

All the profits from this event will be added to the Kenneth Kirkwood Memorial Fund. The primary purpose of this fund is to support staff of the Pitt Rivers Museum to undertake travel associated with their work.

The FinCEN Files investigation, coordinated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, exposed more than $2 trillion in suspicious deals.

Criminals, politicians and others sent money through the world’s major banks, which initially ignored red flags or reported the money as potentially dirty after weeks, months or years of delay. Billions of dollars in suspicious deals moved from Africa into Europe, the United States, the Middle East and secretive tax havens, including payments to and from politicians and family members, state-owned oil and gas companies, arms companies and many others.

Join William Fitzgibbon and Augustin Armendariz, International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, and Taiwo Hassan Adebayo, Premium Times Nigeria, as they discuss with Professor Ricardo Soares de Oliveira what the FinCEN Files investigation has uncovered and the implications.

This is the first in a series of conversations that engage with the concept of Radical Hope and recent critical changes related to decoloniality at the Pitt Rivers Museum and in the wider sector.

This online conversation will address what it means for museums like the Pitt Rivers Museum to engage with the legacy of coloniality that lies at the root of its collecting and display practices. We will explore what possibilities might occur from thinking through the philosophical concept of Radical Hope together with local and global stakeholders, as a means for redress and a more pluriversal re-imagining of the future relevance of these museums. In this first conversation, staff at the Pitt Rivers Museum will reflect on recent changes to our permanent displays resulting from an ethical review at the Museum in recent years. We will focus on the recent removal of the Shuar tsantsa (shrunken heads) as part of our ongoing collaboration with colleagues from the Universidad de San Francisco in Quito. We will share new video material of the removal process and newly curated installations, and there will be opportunities for audience questions.

Speakers: Laura Van Broekhoven, Pitt Rivers Museum Director; Marina Patricia Ordoñez, Curator and researcher; Marina de Alarcon, Head of Collections; Jeremy Uden, Head of Conservation.

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.

Join the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences for their annual research lecture, delivered by Dame Professor Louise Robinson. The biggest risk factor for developing dementia is age, with dementia now the most common cause of death in women over 65 years of age in the United Kingdom (UK). Our ageing populations mean that the number of people with dementia globally is predicted to rapidly increase, although research from the UK and Europe has shown that modification of key lifestyle factors may positively influence this. Over the last decade, the UK has had a strong policy focus on dementia, initially via a National Dementia Strategy and followed by Prime Minister’s National Dementia Challenge. This led to the creation of the unique £200 million UK National Dementia Research Institute, with a main focus on finding the ‘cure’ and/or novel dementia drug therapies. Professor Robinson will discuss why future research should be as equally focused on improving the quality of dementia care and targeting future prevention as exploring the elusive cure.

This event is for: Everyone

The ethnographic museum is full. Clothes, objects and tools fill the walls and floors. But where is the love?
The three speakers take the exhibition ‘Losing Venus’ as their starting point to discuss how emotion, intimacy, care and love can be brought back into the ethnographic museum and radiate out from its collections.

This event will run on Zoom, and will be available to view after the event. A link to the event will be emailed to you via Eventbrite within 48 hours of the event starting.

An online discussion about Zimbabwean objects in the Pitt Rivers & their links with archaeology, music & heritage