Jennifer Eberhardt, associate professor at Stanford University, joins us for the next in our Let’s Discuss series. She will be discussing unconscious racial bias in the context of her new book Biased. The talk will be followed by an extended time for audience Q&A so that you can really become part of the debate.

From one of the world’s leading experts on unconscious racial bias comes a landmark examination of one of the most culturally powerful issues of our time.

We might think that we treat all people equally, but we don’t. Every day, unconscious biases affect our visual perception, attention, memory and behaviour in ways that are subtle and very difficult to recognise without in-depth scientific studies.

Unconscious biases can be small and insignificant, but they affect every sector of society, leading to enormous disparities, from the classroom to the courtroom to the boardroom.

But unconscious bias is not a sin to be cured, but a universal human condition, and one that can be overcome.

In Biased, pioneering social psychologist Professor Jennifer Eberhardt explains how.

Organised by Oxford Civic Society @oxcivicsoc. Council proposals to allow only electric taxis, cars, light commercial vehicles and buses to enter parts of central Oxford from 2020 proved controversial. In this second debate to mark the 50th anniversary of Oxford Civic Society, the speakers will debate when central Oxford should become a Zero Emission Zone, and what should be done about pollution in the rest of the City. How could the various ways of reducing pollution be combined and what will be the impact on people’s lives? Councillor Paul Harris, who drew attention to the problems of introducing a ZEZ very quickly, and Chris Church of Friends of the Earth, will offer their alternative proposals on 16 May. The audience will have a chance to have their say before the two opposing speakers wind up the debate.. https://www.oxcivicsoc.org.uk/programme/

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

Organised by Oxford Civic Society @oxcivicsoc. Government proposals for significant growth in Oxfordshire in coming decades include an Expressway and several new communities. Are these needed or can growth be directed elsewhere? Can growth be ‘intelligent’, leading to prosperity without compromising the quality of life? In the third and final debate to mark the 50th anniversary of Oxford Civic Society, Councillor Ian Hudspeth, Leader of Oxfordshire County Council, and Danny Dorling, Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography in the University of Oxford will contest the issues.. https://www.oxcivicsoc.org.uk/programme/

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.

How do our minds and bodies alter as we age? Can attitudes change from one generation to the next? How have the built and natural environments around us changed in the last 200 years? What are our hopes and fears for the future and how different will it be? Join researchers at the Bodleian’s Weston Library to look into the past, present and future. This event includes hands-on activities all day and a Living Library of researchers and talks in the evening.
The shop and cafe will be open until 9pm.

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.

Are we witnessing a new, more toxic kind of politics around the world? If so, what is the alternative? Should we lament a supposedly lost civility, or is the emergence of more forthright and angry disagreements in fact a good thing? What is the line between passionate disagreement and toxic bile? Who gets to decide what are acceptable and unacceptable forms of discourse? Ultimately, how do we live together when we disagree profoundly on major issues?
Topic: Politics
Format: Debate and Q&A session

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

Since a change in planning rules in 1990, there has been a huge amount of archaeological work on development sites all over England. This work is required by planning permissions and paid for by the developers. The results have been astonishing. Thousands of important discoveries have been made, and views of England’s past are bring transformed by these. This talk will explain how archaeology on development sites takes place, and highlight some of the most interesting or unusual finds, from the Ebbsfleet prehistoric elephant (400,000 BC) to a Roman chariot-racing arena in Colchester and a Victorian communal toilet in York.

Roger Thomas is a professional archaeologist who has lived in Abingdon for much of his life. He spent many years working for English Heritage (now Historic England), where he was closely involved in many important national archaeological projects. He is a past chairman of AAAHS, and is an Honorary Research Associate in the School of Archaeology, University of Oxford.

Visitors are very welcome to attend meetings at a cost of £3.
If you want to join the AAAHS, there’s a Membership Form on our website.

Organised by Oxford Civic Society @oxcivicsoc. The Society’s Louise Thomas and Ian Green discuss the history of the city centre, emerging trends and their implications and present a vision which seizes opportunities and mitigates threats.. https://www.oxcivicsoc.org.uk/programme/

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!

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

In modern high-tech health care, patients appear to be the stumbling block.

Uninformed, anxious, noncompliant individuals with unhealthy lifestyles who demand treatments advertised by celebrities and insist on unnecessary but expensive diagnostics may eventually turn into plaintiffs. But what about their physicians? About ten years ago, Muir Gray and Gerd Gigerenzer published a book with the subtitle “Envisioning health care 2020”. They listed “seven sins” of health care systems then, one of which was health professionals’ stunning lack of risk literacy. Many were not exactly sure what a false-positive rate was, or what overdiagnosis and survival rates mean, and they were unable to evaluate articles in their own field. As a consequence, the ideals of informed consent and shared decision-making remain a pipedream – both doctors and patients are habitually misled by biased information in health brochures and advertisements. At the same time, the risk literacy problem is one of the few in health care that actually have a known solution. A quick cure is to teach efficient risk communication that fosters transparency as opposed to confusion, both in medical school and in CME. It can be done with 4th graders, so it should work with doctors, too.

Now, in 2020, can every doctor understand health statistics? In this talk, Gerd Gigerenzer will describe the efforts towards this goal, a few successes, but also the steadfast forces that undermine doctors’ ability to understand and act on evidence. Moreover, the last decade has seen two new forces that distract from solving the problem. The first is the promise of digital technology, from diagnostic AI systems to big data analytics, which consumes much of the attention. Digital technology is of little help if doctors do not understand it. Second, our efforts to make patients competent and to encourage them to articulate their values are now in conflict with the new paternalistic view that patients just need to be nudged into better behaviour.

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

Joint event with: The Oxford–Berlin Research Partnership

6 speakers from 6 countries debate the proposition – chaired by Sir Trevor McDonald. All welcome.

Beacons of the Past is a three and a half year project part funded by National Lottery Heritage Fund, the Chiltern Society, and the National Trust , amongst others. Its purpose is to engage and inspire communities to discover, conserve, and enjoy the Chilterns’ Iron Age hillforts and their prehistoric chalk landscapes. Now at the project’s midpoint, Project Manager Wendy Morrison will present on the some of the results of the UK’s largest bespoke archaeological LiDAR survey, the project’s outreach programmes, and what comes next.

Dr Wendy Morrison currently works for the Chilterns Conservation Board as Project Manager of the HLF funded Beacons of the Past Hillforts project. She also is Senior Associate Tutor for Archaeology at the Oxford University Dept for Continuing Education. Wendy’s research areas are Prehistoric European Archaeology and Landscape Archaeology. She has over a decade’s excavation experience in Southern Britain, the Channel Islands, and India.

The AAAHS organises monthly lectures by acknowledged authorities on topics related to history and archaeology and to those of Abingdon in particular.
Visitors are very welcome to attend meetings at a cost of £3.

A talk on underground in the Roman town of Herculaneum

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 Scythians were warlike nomadic horsemen who roamed the steppe of Asia in the first millennium BC. Using archaeological finds from burials and texts, Barry Cunliffe reconstructs the lives of the Scythians, exploring their beliefs, burial practices, love of fighting and their flexible attitude to gender.

The Scythians: Nomad Warriors of the Steppe
Wed 18 Mar, 1–2pm
A weekday talk with Barry Cunliffe, Emeritus Professor of European Archaeology, University of Oxford

Booking essential.
Tickets are: £8 (Full Price) / £7 (Concession) / £6 (Members)
https://www.ashmolean.org/event/the-scythians-nomad-warriors-of-the-steppe

The Phoenicians were famously great traders who, from their base in modern-day Lebanon, traded their wares around the Mediterranean and beyond. Learn about their culture, art, achievements, and cities at home in the Levant and abroad, including Byblos, Tyre, Eshmoun and Carthage.

The Phoenicians Phoenicia Part 1: the Land of the Phoenicians
An Afternoon Tea Talk (with tea and biscuits included)
With Linda Farrar, Archaeologist and Lecturer

Thu 19 Mar, 2–4pm
Ashmolean Museum Lecture Theatre

Tickets are: £12 (Full Price) / £11 (Concession) / £10 (Members)
https://www.ashmolean.org/event/the-phoenicians-part-i-the-land-of-phoenicians

Moran’s ‘Autumn Afternoon, the Wissahickon’ pictures 19th-century America at its most bucolic and pastoral. It was painted, however, amidst a conflict that threatened to tear the young country apart. Examine Moran’s landscape as an allegory of contested national identity.

A Nation at a Crossroads: The United States in Thomas Moran’s ‘Autumn Afternoon, The Wissahickon’
A weekend talk with Madeleine Harrison, PhD Candidate, The Courtauld Institute of Art

Sat 21 Mar, 11–12pm
Ashmolean Museum Lecture Theatre

Booking essential.
Tickets are: £8 (Full Price) / £7 (Concession) / £6 (Members)
https://www.ashmolean.org/event/a-nation-at-a-crossroads-the-united-state-in-thomas-morans-autumn-afternoon-the-wissahickon

Learn about the vast trade network of the Phoenicians, the goods traded and their trading partners, who included the Greeks and Etruscans, as well as people in Sardinia and southern Spain.

The Phoenicians Phoenicia Part 2: The Phoenicians in the West
An Afternoon Tea Talk (tea and biscuits included)
With Linda Farrar, Archaeologist and Lecturer

Thu 26 Mar, 2–4pm
Ashmolean Museum Lecture Theatre

Booking essential.
Tickets are: £12 (Full Price) / £11 (Concession) / £10 (Members)
https://www.ashmolean.org/event/the-phoenicians-phoenicia-part-ii-the-phoenicians-in-the-west

The city of Hereford stands a couple of hours from Oxford along one of the most scenic train rides in England. Follow the Medieval Pilgrim trail, discovering a landscape alive with holy wells, sacred shrines, ancient mysteries and miraculous saints.

Become a Medieval Tourist: Herefordshire Pilgrimages
With Tim Porter, Historian

Wed 15 Apr, 2–4pm
Ashmolean Museum Lecture Theatre

Tickets are: £12 (Full Price) / £11 (Concession) / £10 (Members)
Includes a break for tea and biscuits
https://www.ashmolean.org/event/become-a-medieval-tourist-herefordshire-pilgrimages

Just an hour by train, discover one of the great lost buildings of England, an ancient centre of pilgrimage and scholarship. Discover what unique artworks and architectural gems survive within the townscape and further afield.

Become a Medieval Tourist: Evesham Abbey
An Afternoon Tea Talk (including tea and biscuits)
With Tim Porter, Historian

Thu 30 Apr, 2–4pm
Ashmolean Museum Lecture Theatre

Tickets are: £12 (Full Price) / £11 (Concession) / £10 (Members)
https://www.ashmolean.org/event/become-a-medieval-tourist-evesham-abbey

Using images and eye-witness accounts, David Stuttard paints a vivid picture of the classical Greek Games – a thousand years of speed trials, brawn and horsemanship underpinned by religious ritual, lavish feasting, political chicanery and (of course) athletic nudity.

Games for Zeus: The Ancient Greek Olympics
Sat 2 May, 2–3pm
Ashmolean Museum Lecture Theatre
With David Stuttard, Classical Historian and Author

Tickets are: £8 (Full Price) / £7 (Concession) / £6 (Members)
https://www.ashmolean.org/event/games-for-zeus-the-ancient-greek-olympics

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.

Join us on Facebook and find out when and where the magnificent specimen of the Ichthyosaur was discovered in Abingdon. Local Archaeologist Jeff Wallis talks about his find with Palaeobiologist Megan Jacobs.
The find originally classified as Ophthalmosaurus is questioned by Megan in her doctoral paper, join them to see the story develop…
There will be three sessions throughout Saturday 24th July, followed by a Q&A session:

11am Part one – Discovering the Ichthyosaur
12pm Part two – Illustration and colour?
1pm Part three – The classification
These sessions will be streamed on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/abingdonmuseum

2pm – Live Q&A with Megan (Zoom)
Please visit abingdonmuseum.com to get the link to join the Zoom meeting.