The Race and Resistance Programme at The Oxford Center in the Humanities, is honoured to host the Honorable Peter Gastrow, on the afternoon of the 11th of May, (Friday of 3rd Week).

Gastrow, a former Member of the South African Parliament, South African National Peace Committee, and special adviser to the Minister of Safety and Security, will speak about his personal experiences and insights in negotiating the peace process in South Africa, his public service during the country’s transition into a democratic government and his perspectives on contemporary South African political and racial issues. We are also honored to be joined by Wale Adebanwi, the Rhodes Professor for Race Relations, who will respond to Mr. Gastrow’s lecture with his own insights into South Africa’s history and contemporary challenges. The floor will then be opened to members of the audience for any questions or comments for Mr. Gastrow and Professor Adebanwi.

The talk will focus on the view from inside Pyongyang, and the daily course of life in the midst of the current crisis. HE Morgan will also address challenges and opportunities ahead of the US-NK summit and the mood on the ground, and he will reflect on the geopolitical dynamics among North Korea’s neighbours, as well as how major powers in East Asia can work together to address the North Korean problem.

HE Alastair Morgan took up his current appointment as British Ambassador to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in December 2015. He served as Consul-General, British Consulate-General Guangzhou, from 2010 to 2014. From 1991 to 1996 he was First Secretary (Trade Policy) and from 2002 to 2006 he was Counsellor Trade Policy and Director of Inward investment in the British Embassy, Tokyo. He studied English Literature at Trinity College, Cambridge University and speaks Japanese, Mandarin and Korean.

Welcome to the first event in our two-part China-UK Science Innovation Series!

In 2016 alone, China invested USD236 billion in Research and Development, making it the second largest investor in innovation globally. Given this, as well as China’s rapid economic growth, Science Innovation Union (SIU) and the Oxford Chinese Life Sciences Society (OCLSS) have decided to team up to hold an outstanding two-session event on this exciting area of development. Attendees will hear from a distinguished group of high profile speakers coming from the government, academic and private sectors. Our audience will have the chance to learn about how China and the UK have been working together to boost innovation, opportunities available for funding and to get an update on the latest leading-edge research.

Speakers:
Sunan Jiang (Minister Counsellor for Science and Technology, the Chinese Embassy in the UK)

Dr Wenming Ji (Managing Director at Oxford Cardiomox Ltd.; Former Senior Consultant at Isis Innovation Ltd; Former Project Manager at Innovation China UK)

Dr Shisong Jiang (CTO of Oxford Vacmedix)

Schedule:
17:30-17:40 Registration

17:40-18:00 Speaker 1

18:05-18:25 Speaker 2

18:30-18:50 Speaker 3

18:50-19:10 Q&A

19:10-20:00 Networking

As always, this event is free and open to the public!

The second part of this series is entitled:
“Building bridges between UK and China: From investment to ongoing global research advances” and will take place on the evening of June 26th.
Please keep an eye out for further details in the coming weeks!

Drawing on her latest research and her book Beyond Crimea: The New Russian Empire (Yale, 2016), Dr. Agnia Grigas will discuss Russian foreign policy in its “near abroad”, Europe and the US. She will examine Kremlin’s ambitions vis-a-vis Russian compatriots and how diverse tools from soft power to frozen conflict creation form the basis for Russia’s influence internationally.

‘Home Sweet Home – a Memorial’ honours the living, the women and children who support their loved ones living with the after-effects of the war experience. The project has been created to pay tribute and raise awareness of the generations of families who have vicariously experienced the impact of war trauma.

Based on their first hand experiences as election watchers and their hundreds of interviews with presidents, prime ministers, diplomats, election officials, and conspirators, Cheeseman and Klaas document instances of election rigging from Argentina to Zimbabwe, including notable examples from Brazil, Kenya, India, Nigeria, and Russia. This eye-opening study offers a sobering overview of corrupted professional politics, while providing fertile intellectual ground for the development of new solutions for protecting democracy from authoritarian subversion.

Blackwell’s are delighted to be joined by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown who will be discussing her latest book ‘In Defence of Political Correctness’.

Individual rights cannot always take precedence over collective, social responsibility. Without self-moderation, parks, streets, school yards, public transport, waiting rooms, shops and restaurants would turn into bear pits. Most citizens understand that. Some, however, seem determined to cause disorder in the name of free speech. This book traces the history of political correctness in the US and UK and forcefully argues that, in spite of many failures, this movement has made both countries more civilised and equal.

Professor Denis Galligan, Emeritus Professor of Socio-Legal Studies, will deliver the fourth Max Watson Annual Lecture on the constitutional consequences of the rise in populist movements around the world.

The following day a workshop will be held to further explore the themes raised.

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.

– GPES Seminar Series – Oxford Brookes

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 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.

The 5th Annual Oxford Business and Poverty Conference will feature a diverse range of speakers addressing the Paradoxes of Prosperity. Sign up here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/5th-annual-oxford-business-poverty-conference-tickets-57733957822
Hosted at the Sheldonian Theatre, the conference will feature keynotes by:
Lant Pritchett: RISE Research Director at the Blavatnik School of Government, former Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development
Efosa Ojomo: Global Prosperity Lead and Senior Researcher at the Clayton Christensen Institute
John Hoffmire: Director of Center on Business and Poverty and Research Associate at Kellogg Colleges at Center For Mutual and Employee-owned Business at Oxford University
Ananth Pai: Executive Director, Bharath Beedi Works Pvt. Ltd. and Director, Bharath Auto Cars Pvt
Laurel Stanfield: Assistant Professor of Marketing at Bentley College in Massachusetts
Grace Cheng: Greater China’s Country Manager for Russell Reynolds Associates
Madhusudan Jagadish: 2016 Graduate MBA, Said Business School, University of Oxford
Tentative Schedule:
2:15-2:20 Welcome
2:20-2:50 Efosa Ojomo, co-author of The Prosperity Paradox, sets the stage for the need for innovation in development
2:50-3:20 John Hoffmire, Ananth Pai and Mudhusudan Jagadish explain how the Prosperity Paradox can be used in India as a model to create good jobs for poor women
3:20-3:40 Break
3:40-4:10 Laurel Steinfeld speaks to issues of gender, development and business – addressing paradoxes related to prosperity
4:10-4:40 Grace Cheng, speaks about the history of China’s use of disruptive innovations to develop its economy
4:40-5:15 Break
5:15-6 Lant Pritchett talks on Pushing Past Poverty: Paths to Prosperity
6:30-8 Dinner at the Rhodes House – Purchase tickets after signing up for the conference
Sponsors include: Russell Reynolds, Employee Ownership Foundation, Ananth Pai Foundation and others

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.

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.

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

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!

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

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.