Parul Bhandari is currently a Visiting Scholar at St. Edmund’s College and the Centre for South Asian Studies (CSAS), University of Cambridge, UK. She is also a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Centre of Social Sciences and Humanities (CSH), New Delhi, the South Asia research unit for the French National Centre for Research (CNRS). She has held Guest Faculty positions at the Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, and the Indian Institute of Technology, (IIT) Delhi. Dr Bhandari completed her PhD in Sociology from the University of Cambridge in 2014.
Her main research interests are in the field of social class, gender, marriage, and family. Her doctoral thesis explained the makings of middle class identities through the processes of spouse-selection. For her post-doctoral research she has shifted attention to the study of elites, particularly the rich housewives of Delhi, focusing on their relationship with money and exploring the themes of honour and humiliation in their everyday lives.
Dr Bhandari has written widely on gender, family and marriage, including book chapters, journal articles, and in newspapers and magazines. Her forthcoming books include Money, Culture, Class: Elite Women as Modern Subjects, (Routledge, London, 2018) and a co-edited volume, Exploring Indian Modernities: Ideas and Practices (Springer, 2018).

In conjunction with Oxford International Women’s Festival , Oxford Community-led Housing* research project and Transition by Design is organising a session on “Taking Control of our Housing: Women Leading the Charge”, to celebrate the efforts of a number of women pioneering community-led housing in various forms in Oxfordshire. In line with the festival’s broader theme of “Winning the Vote: Women’s Suffrage 100 Years On”, the session aims to raise awareness around community-led housing and an opportunity to gain fresh interest and broaden the movement.

Join us in the much needed discussion to highlight that affordable, safe and secure housing is a basic human right. The session will champion the idea that women can and are taking action to tackle the housing crisis in Oxford, and to generate discussion that homes and housing shape our identity as women and as human beings. We’re also very keen to find out more about the challenges you’re facing with the housing market. And to top it up, let’s celebrate the efforts of women in community-led housing.

Event format:

Interactive panel discussion

Panel speakers from Kindling Housing Coop, Edge Housing, Dragonfly Housing Coop, Oxford Fairer Housing Network, Oxford Housing Crisis Group and many more!

For more info or queries, please contact katie@transitionbydesign.org

*Oxford Community-Led Housing research project is a new partnership project by Oxford Community Foundation, Community First Oxfordshire and Oxford Community Land Trust. We have been commissioned by Oxford City Council to conduct a research project on how community-led housing could be delivered sustainably in Oxford. Community Led Housing (CLH) is about local people playing a leading and lasting role in solving local housing problems, creating genuinely affordable homes and strong communities in ways that are difficult to achieve through mainstream housing.

Li Ang：50 Years of Writing Taiwan
作家李昂：台灣文學五十年

05 March 2018 Monday 5-6:30 p.m. Lecture Theatre, China Centre, St Hugh’s College, Oxford

Supported by: Oxford Chinese Studies Society, Oxford China Forum, International Gender Studies Centre at Lady Margaret Hall Oxford, Oxford University Taiwanese Student Society

Free for all, please register at Eventbrite

Anyone who knows anything about Taiwanese literary history would know the name Li Ang. Starting her career in the late 1960s when Taiwan was still under Martial Law, she constantly experimented with radical ways of thinking gender and sexuality and has since become the most translated author from Taiwan.

It is no understatement to say that she is one of the most prominent feminist writers in the Sinophone world, as her works, often critical of patriarchal conventions and ideologies in Chinese societies, have won numerous literary awards in Taiwan. Many of her fiction, including The Butcher’s Wife 殺夫, Dark Night 暗夜, Lost Garden 迷園, and Visible Ghosts 看得見的鬼, have been translated into many languages and adapted into films, TV dramas and musicals in Taiwan, Austria, France and Germany. In 2004, Li Ang was awarded the “Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres” by the French Minister of Culture and Communication in recognition of her outstanding contribution to world literature. In 2017, Li Ang’s new book The Beautiful Man Asleep 睡美男 was published, and its focus on an older woman’s sexual psychology in her encounters with young people has again challenged conventional social attitudes towards less normative human relationships.

In this public event, Li Ang will share with us her experiences in the Taiwanese literary world in the last 50 years as well as her reflections on the development of Taiwanese and Sinophone literatures today. This event will be of interest to those of you who work on Chinese literature, Taiwan, Sinophone Studies, gender and sexuality, and media and film studies. Li Ang will first give a 15 minutes speech, followed by a conversation with Flair Donglai SHI (DPhil in English) to further contextualise her thoughts, and plenty of time will be given to audience Q & A and discussions.

Register for free here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/li-ang50-years-of-writing-taiwan-tickets-43064258356

Renowned journalist, author and commentator, Polly Toynbee (St Anne’s, 1966), will join St Peter’s alumna, Helen Lewis (2001), current Deputy Editor of The New Statesman, for an evening of discussion on the topic of “Brexit, the left and feminism”.

The talk, which will be hosted by Prof Abigail Williams, Lord White Tutorial Fellow in English at St Peter’s and Professor of 18th-century Literature, will be followed by a Q&A.

Wikipedia is the 5th most visited website in the world… but is it biased? Join us on International Women’s Day in the new Makerspace at the Oxfordshire County Library.

We’ll have a short talk on the gender gap on Wikipedia, learn how to edit, and then work on improving articles about and of interest to women!

Talk is at 10:30, followed by the editathon from 11:00am – 2:00pm. If you are planning on attending the editathon, please bring a laptop. If you don’t have a laptop please let us know in advance and we may be able to provide one.

Professor Susan Brooks will take you on a personal journey beginning in breast cancer research and leading to a passionate commitment to supporting and developing the next generation of researchers.
Susan discovered that a chemical from the edible snail was able to distinguish between cancers that are able to spread from their original site to other parts of the body, and those that cannot. It recognises altered sugar chains on cancer cells that are involved in them being able to crawl through tissues and enter the blood stream and allows them to stick to the lining of blood vessels at distant sites.

Harriet Harman was elected MP for Peckham in 1982. Elected Deputy Leader of the Labour Party from 2007-2015, Shadow Deputy Prime Minister 2010-2015 and has twice served as Interim Labour Leader in 2010 and 2015. She has been in politics a prominent champion for women’s rights and as a minister in the Labour Government introduce the National Childcare Strategy and the Equality Act, changing the law on domestic violence and increasing female representation. She was the first woman Labour politician to answer Prime Minister’s Questions. In 2017 she became the longest serving woman MP.

The 2017-18 Humanitas Weidenfeld Visiting Professorship in Comparative European Literature will be held by Elif Shafak, an award-winning novelist and the most widely read woman writer in Turkey. She is also a women’s rights activist and an inspirational public intellectual and speaker.

Wednesday 2 May: Strong Words in a Liquid World

Defending the Art of Fiction in the Age of Post-Truth

What is the role of literature in our increasingly fractured and fast-changing world? Is it possible to write a-politically or do writers have a responsibility to speak out – and, if so, how? Can fiction address political issues in a way that ordinary public discourse cannot? Elif Shafak will explore these questions in three lectures and an open discussion.

After each lecture there will be the opportunity to ask questions, and all are welcome to join in the closing discussion.

As part of our Every Woman series, Blackwell’s presents an evening with Lyndall Gordon, who will be exploring her book ‘Outsiders’, an exciting and provocative look at the women who wrote the novels that changed the literary world.

Outsiders tells the stories of five novelists – Mary Shelley, Emily Brontë, George Eliot, Olive Schreiner, Virginia Woolf – and their famous novels. We have long known their individual greatness but in linking their creativity to their lives as outsiders, this group biography throws new light on the genius they share. ‘Outsider’, ‘outlaw’, ‘outcast’: a woman’s reputation was her security and each of these five lost it. As writers, they made these identities their own, taking advantage of their separation from the dominant order to write their novels.

Lyndall Gordon is the prize-winning author of seven biographies, including ‘The Imperfect Life of T. S. Eliot’; ‘Virginia Woolf: A Writer’s Life’; ‘Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft’; and ‘Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family’s Feuds’ and her memoir ‘Divided Lives: Dreams of a Mother and Daughter’. She is a Fellow of St Hilda’s College, Oxford and the Royal Society of Literature.

The Blackwell’s Every Woman Series

From February 2018, Blackwell’s Broad Street will launch a year-long series of events in conjunction with the Centenary of Women’s Suffrage in the UK.

The 1918 Representation of the People Act gave women of property over the age of 30 the right to vote – not all women, therefore, could vote. It was a step, but it was not the whole journey. And many would argue that we are still a long way from stepping the journey’s full distance towards gender equality in this country and worldwide. Blackwell’s Centenary events programme will focus around the following questions:

1) How much does the vote mean today?

2) How far are we still from achieving gender equality?

3) How can we recognise intersectional privilege and oppression, and platform those demographics of people who weren’t acknowledged by this achievement 100 years ago, and are still under-represented and undervalued today?

For all enquiries please email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk

Join St Cross alumna Kristina Lunz (MSc Global Governance and Diplomacy, 2014), co-founder of the Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy, for a panel discussion on diplomacy, feminist foreign policy and social entrepreneurship. Joining her will be CFFP co-founder Marissa Conway, head of CFFP in the UK, and Dr Jennifer Cassidy, Editor of “Gender and Diplomacy” (Routledge, 2017) and Lecturer in International Relations, University of Oxford (St Peter’s College).

This talk is free to attend, all welcome.

About CFFP

The Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy (CFFP) is a research and advocacy organisation promoting a feminist approach to foreign policy. With its vision to challenge the status quo of foreign policy, the CFFP puts people instead of special interest at the core of policy initiatives.

CFFP was founded in 2016 by Marissa in London, where she is heading the UK section of CFFP. Kristina, a St Cross alumna (2014-2015), joined Marissa as a co-founder and also brought the organisation to Germany, where she is heading the German team. Dr Jennifer Cassidy joined CFFP’s Advisory Council recently.

Film Screening with Director: Kit Hung’s Soundless Wind Chime (無聲風鈴)

The Shulman Auditorium, The Queen’s College, Oxford
*Multilingual dialogue with English subtitles
Open and free of charge for all, please register on Eventbrite

Supported by: Oxford Chinese Studies Society (OCSS)

OCSS is proud to present our big film screening event of the term: Kit Hung’s Soundless Wind Chime! The film has a unique place in queer Asian cinema as it interweaves multiple journeys of identity and love together. The central figure of the young handsome migrant from mainland China, his intricate relationship with a Swiss expat, as well as Hong Kong as a kaleidoscopic space where all these take place, form the elements that guarantee the critical reflections this film provokes in the audiences. This event will be of interest to those of you in queer culture, translation studies, migration, Hong Kong, and film studies in general. The film is 110 minutes long and will be followed by a conversation between Director Kit Hung and Dr. Victor Fan from King’s College London, and we will leave plenty of time for critical dialogues, Q & A and discussions.

Synopsis of Soundless Wind Chime:

Soundless Wind Chime is the poetic journey of Ricky, searching for the lost soul and the past of his deceased Swiss lover – Pascal. The film shows a battle of love, lust, reality, memory and illusions and the grief everybody bears every day. The two young men Pascal and Ricky are both foreigners living in Hong Kong. While Pascal, a Swiss, ekes out a living from street theatre and petty crime, Ricky, who comes from Beijing, is a dependable helper in a humble restaurant. One fateful day their paths cross and they fall head over heels in love with each other and boldly decide to move in together. But their love is soon put to the test – the fickle Pascal makes high demands on gentle Ricky. Years later, long after their relationship comes to a sudden end, Ricky sets off in search of his former lover, and not far from Lucerne he meets a young man who looks just like Pascal. Like the broken melody of a wind chime, the secret of this poetic love story is gradually revealed in brief flashbacks. Archaic images of an austere Switzerland with its rugged mountains and rustic restaurant culture reflect not only the loneliness and pain of the lovelorn protagonist Ricky, they also stand in stark contrast to the vitality and colourfulness of life in Hong Kong where, transcending all cultural barriers, the couple experienced moments of profound happiness. (from the Chinese Visual Festival)

Speaker biography:

Kit Hung (洪榮傑) graduated with an M.F.A. from the Department of Film, Video and New Media, School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Lecturer of the Academy of film, Hong Kong Baptist University, his films have won numerous international awards and were screened at over 120 international film festivals. His debut feature Soundless Wind Chime was nominated for the Teddy Award at the Berlin International Film Festival, released in more than 16 countries in 6 languages. He is currently a research student in the department of Media and Communication in the Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK.
Dr. Victor Fan (范可樂) graduated with a Ph.D. from the Film Studies Program and the Comparative Literature Department of Yale University, and an MFA in Film and Television Productions at the University of Southern California. He was Assistant Professor at McGill University, Department of East Asian Studies between 2010 and 2012, where he was also Chair of the Equity Subcommittee on Queer People. Fan has publications in peer-reviewed journals and anthology including The World Picture Journal, Camera Obscura, A Companion to Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Screen, Film History and CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture. Further, his monograph Cinema Approaching Reality: Locating Chinese Film Theory was published by University Of Minnesota Press in 2015. In addition, his thesis film from USC, The Well (2000), was screened in the Anthology Film Archives, São Paolo International Film Festival, the Japan Society (NYC) and the George Eastman House. It also won the third prize in the Long Narrative category in the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival.

Blackwell’s is delighted to announce an event with Laura Bates, where she will be in discussion on her latest book ‘Misogynation’ in the Sheldonian Theatre.

In this collection of essays, originally published in the Guardian, Laura Bates uncovers the sexism that exists in our relationships, our workplaces, our media, in our homes and on our streets, but which is also firmly rooted in our lifelong assumptions and in the actions and attitudes we explain away, defend and accept. Often dismissed as one-offs, veiled as ‘banter’ or described as ‘isolated incidents’, ‘Misogynation’ joins the dots to reveal the true scale of discrimination and prejudice women face.

A bold, witty and incisive analysis of current events, Misogynation makes a passionate argument for stepping back, opening our eyes and allowing ourselves to see the bigger picture.

Laura Bates is a pioneering feminist, activist and the bestselling author of ‘Everyday Sexism’ and ‘Girl Up’. Laura has given voice to hundreds of thousands of women through her international Everyday Sexism Project. She has written for the Guardian, the Independent, the New Statesman, Red Magazine and Grazia among others. Laura is also contributor at Women Under Siege, a New-York based organisation working to combat the use of sexual violence as a tool of war in conflict zones worldwide. In 2015, Laura was awarded a British Empire Medal (BEM) in the Birthday Honours for services to gender equality.

Tickets for this event cost £8. Seating is allocated on a first come first seated basis. Doors will open at 6:30pm. For all enquiries please email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk.

As part of our Every Woman Series, Blackwell’s presents an evening with Caitlin Davies where she will be discussing her fascinating new book ‘Bad Girls’, which explores the history of a century of women, punishment and crime in HM Prison Holloway.

Those who defied expectations about feminine behaviour have long been considered dangerous and unnatural, and ever since the Victorian era they have been removed from public view, locked up and often forgotten about. Many of these women ended up at HM Prison Holloway, the self-proclaimed ‘terror to evil-doers’ which, until its closure in 2016, was western Europe’s largest women’s prison.

First built in 1852 as a House of Correction, Holloway’s women have come from all corners of the UK – whether a patriot from Scotland, a suffragette from Huddersfield, or a spy from the Isle of Wight – and from all walks of life – socialites and prostitutes, sporting stars and nightclub queens, refugees and freedom fighters. They were imprisoned for treason and murder, for begging, performing abortions and stealing clothing coupons, for masquerading as men, running brothels and attempting suicide. In ‘Bad Girls’, Caitlin Davies tells their stories and shows how women have been treated in our justice system over more than a century, what crimes – real or imagined – they committed, who found them guilty and why. It is a story of victimization and resistance; of oppression and bravery.

Caitlin Davies is a novelist, non-fiction writer, journalist and teacher, and many of her books are inspired by forgotten women from history. She is the author of six novels and six non-fiction books,.

The Blackwell’s Every Woman Series

From February 2018, Blackwell’s Broad Street will launch a year-long series of events in conjunction with the Centenary of Women’s Suffrage in the UK.

The 1918 Representation of the People Act gave women of property over the age of 30 the right to vote – not all women, therefore, could vote. It was a step, but it was not the whole journey. And many would argue that we are still a long way from stepping the journey’s full distance towards gender equality in this country and worldwide. Blackwell’s Centenary events programme will focus around the following questions:

1) How much does the vote mean today?

2) How far are we still from achieving gender equality?

3) How can we recognise intersectional privilege and oppression, and platform those demographics of people who weren’t acknowledged by this achievement 100 years ago, and are still under-represented and undervalued today?

Tickets for this event cost £5. Please note doors for this event open at 6.45pm, there will be a bar offering range of alcoholic and soft drinks that can be purchased before the event. For all enquiries please contact events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk.

Abstract: The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is an independent Australian federal government research agency. CSIRO is actively participating in two key Government funded (National Innovation Statement) initiatives: the Science in Australia Gender Equity (SAGE) program, and the Male Champions of Change (MCC) STEM.

In 2014, 140 leaders and policy representatives from Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medicine (STEMM) in Australia voted to pilot the Athena SWAN program that had been running successfully in the UK for the past decade, as a partnership between the Australian Academy of Science and the Academy of Technology and Engineering. The pilot, Science in Australia Gender Equity (SAGE), was met with overwhelming demand, with 95% of Australian Universities and a number of research organisations opting in. Australia’s national science agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) was in the first tranche of the pilot and submitted its application for a SAGE Athena SWAN Bronze Award in March 2018. In this talk, Dr Megan Osmond will describe the approach CSIRO took in developing its application and SAGE Action Plan, challenges along the way, and key early outcomes arising from the work.

The Male Champions of Change (MCC) strategy is a global coalition of men advocating for gender equality. The founding Male Champions of Change was established in 2010. Commencing with 8 Australian leaders, the group has since grown to 100 CEOs, Board Directors, Government Department, University and Military leaders. The focus of the MCC group is working together to achieve a significant and sustainable improvement in the unacceptably low levels of women in leadership by supporting peer groups of influential male leaders, to step up beside women, and drive actions to fast track gender parity. The MCC STEM was established in 2016, with CSIRO’s Chief Executive Dr Larry Marshall as Male Champion of Change. Larry committed to lead and influence real change in women’s representation not only in CSIRO but and across STEM. The collaboration between MCC STEM and SAGE provides a unique opportunity to influence change and challenge the systems and stereotypes in STEM that hold women back. CSIRO’s role in the MCC group will support and expedite outcomes of the SAGE program into the future. In this talk, Kerry Elliott will describe the actions, achievements and impact of the MCC STEM group and CSIRO’s approach to supporting males to step up and lead gender initiatives.

Biography: Dr Megan Osmond, Research Scientist, SAGE Project Manager, CSIRO

Megan joined the CSIRO in 2008 as a Post-doctoral Fellow, later converting to an on-going position as a Research Scientist. In mid-2016, Megan took on the role as manager for CSIRO’s Science in Australia Gender Equity (SAGE) program, as part of a nation-wide pilot, and commenced a second PhD focusing on gender equity in STEM. Prior to that, Megan’s scientific research focused on the biological safety of nanomaterials in consumer products, such as carbon nanotubes, and metal oxide nanoparticles in sunscreens.

Biography: Kerry Elliott: Manager Diversity and Inclusion, CSIRO

Kerry has an extensive background in HR, Organisation Development, Diversity and Inclusion and Cultural change in both the public and private sectors. In her role as Manager of Diversity & Inclusion, Kerry leads the CSIRO Diversity and Inclusion Strategy which includes, the Science in Australia Gender Equity (SAGE) program and the Male Champions of Change (MCC) initiative. Kerry plays a pivotal role in the drive by Australia’s pre-eminent science organisation to achieving best practice, innovative solutions to remedying gender inequity not only within CSIRO but across the STEM industry.

All welcome.

Refreshments will be available.

阴道之道l 牛津·女权话剧

Our Vaginas, Ourselves l Chinese Vagina Monologues at Oxford
The play will be performed in Chinese with English subtitles.

The Vagina Monologues is an episodic play written by Eve Ensler based on interviews with more than 200 women from different social-cultural backgrounds. Ensler wrote the piece to “celebrate the vagina”.

In 1996, The Vagina Monologues premiered at HERE Arts Center, Off-Off-Broadway in New York, and it was awarded the Obie Award for ‘Best New Play’ that same year. Ensler’s play has since been translated to more than 40 languages, and performed on the stages of over 140 countries.

In 2012, a drama-focused group, BCome, inspired by the Vagina Monologues, created an original episodic play, Our Vagina, Ourselves, based on interviews with Chinese women. The play is around an hour and a half in length, and the scripts .draw from interviews as well as the personal experiences and opinions that BCome members have on social issues.

In Our Vagina, Ourselves, women are not treated as victims, but as active subjects who have autonomy and agency. It therefore proposes an alternative reading of gender violence and integrates anger and grief with joy, satire and humour. It also challenges the marginalization of “the others” and brings forward the rights of LGBTs, and it cares deeply about intersectionality, especially among gender, sexuality and class.

On March 20, 2018, Our Vagina, Ourselves was performed in the lecture theatre of SOAS by a group of performers consisting mainly of oversea Chinese students.

On June 12, 2018, it will be performed again at Oxford!
See you then, when we will tell you all about Our Vaginas, Ourselves.

Organizing bodies：VaChina, OCSS (Oxford Chinese Studies Society), and BPCS (British Postgraduate Network for Chinese Studies)

Acting Crew: VaChina
VaChina, established in September 2017, is a UK-based Chinese feminist network officially registered at SOAS with members from various higher education institutions including in SOAS，LSE，Oxford，Cambridge，UCL，UAL, and Essex. VaChina aims to create a supportive and friendly environment for all gender and sexualities, advocates for justice within the field of gender, and promotes gender equality via different means, including theatre.

Scripts ：BCome
Founded in 2012, BCome is a feminist group based in Beijing. Led by the youth, the BCome group initiates campaigns for women’s rights and against gender-based violences.

Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/358499304639795/
Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/our-vagina-ourselves-at-oxford-tickets-45627591354?aff=efbeventtix

In this event, we invite Professor Park Yu-ha, who is at the center of controversy over the publication of ‘Comfort Women of the Empire’, to talk about her work on Korean comfort women. The talk will be followed by a panel discussion, which may help us revisit our understanding of not only Japan’s war guilt and the comfort women issue, but also wider gender and ethical issues in the world, which Professor Park Yu-ha claims in the book to be the fundamental causes of the comfort women issue. This event is open to the public, and we welcome anyone who would like to learn more about a broad range of socio-political and historical issues, including not only comfort women in Asia but also gender equality, ethics, imperialism, and historical in/justice.

The esteemed ceramicist Claudia Clare is an artist who uses this traditionally domestic medium to present social commentary, often on issues of trauma, sexuality, and revolution. Having been subjected to censorship by public art institutions, Claudia joins us to speak not only about her work but also about the fight against bureaucracy and institutional politics. www.claudiaclare.co.uk

This talk is part of the FAR (Fine Art Research) Guest Lecture series, supported by the School of Arts at Oxford Brookes University. All talks are free to attend, and everyone is welcome to join us. Booking is essential: www.eventbrite.com/e/artists-talk-claudia-clare-subversive-ceramics-tickets-50921796464

Join us at Blackwell’s to hear writer and campaigner, Caroline Criado-Perez discuss her latest book, Invisible Women.

Imagine a world where your phone is too big for your hand, where your doctor prescribes a drug that is wrong for your body, where in a car accident you are 47% more likely to be seriously injured, where every week the countless hours of work you do are not recognised or valued. If any of this sounds familiar, chances are that you’re a woman.

Invisible Women shows us how, in a world largely built for and by men, we are systematically ignoring half the population. It exposes the gender data gap – a gap in our knowledge that is at the root of perpetual, systemic discrimination against women, and that has created a pervasive but invisible bias with a profound effect on women’s lives.

Award-winning campaigner and writer Caroline Criado Perez brings together for the first time an impressive range of case studies, stories and new research from across the world that illustrate the hidden ways in which women are forgotten, and the impact this has on their health and well-being. From government policy and medical research, to technology, workplaces, urban planning and the media, Invisible Women reveals the biased data that excludes women. In making the case for change, this powerful and provocative book will make you see the world anew.

Professor Eudine Barriteau will give a talk on: ‘Coming into our own? Women and Power in the Caribbean’.

Professor Eudine Barriteau is a Grenadian born Caribbean feminist, scholar and activist with considerable experience in research, senior administration and coordination of regional projects. She has been awarded several academic scholarships and awards from universities and organisations. Professor Barriteau was the first Head of the Centre for Gender and Development Studies at The University of the West Indies (UWI), Cave Hill Campus. She was appointed Deputy Principal of the Cave Hill Campus in 2008 and Principal in 2015. Her research interests encompass transformational educational leadership, feminist theorizing, gender and public policy and investigations of the Caribbean political economy.

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

Coriander Theatre presents a new play ‘My Mother Runs in Zig-Zags’ at the North Wall Arts Centre, 30th May – 1st June 2019, 7:30pm, Saturday Matinee 2:30pm.

Sometimes, race and trauma are like leaky old pipes: you can’t even have a friend over for dinner without something spilling out everywhere and flooding your life in the most unexpected way.

A conversation between friends becomes a journey to the Lebanese and Nigerian civil wars. Half-remembered worlds of violent oral history invade the kitchen and layer themselves over everyday life, shining light on the laughter that heals intergenerational traumas, and celebrating the overflowings and excesses of a life shaped by migration.

With an original musical score, a chorus of performance poets and contemporary dancers, and stories passed on from a generation of migrants, My mother runs in zig-zags is a bold new tragicomedy, devised by the best of Oxford University’s BAME actors and performers.

Age Guidance: 12+

My mother runs in zig zags

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.

Join us for a special lecture with St Cross alumna Lisa Downing, who will discuss the research behind her new book: Selfish Women. This event will be followed by a drinks reception.

Lisa Downing is Professor of French Discourses of Sexuality at the University of Birmingham, UK. She is a specialist in interdisciplinary sexuality and gender studies, critical theory, and the history of cultural concepts, focusing especially on questions of exceptionality, difficulty, and (ab)normality. Recent books include: The Subject of Murder: Gender, Exceptionality, and the Modern Killer (2013); Fuckology: Critical Essays on John Money’s Diagnostic Concepts (co-authored with Iain Morland and Nikki Sullivan, 2015); and After Foucault (as editor, 2018), as well as Selfish Women. Her next book project will be a short manifesto entitled Against Affect.

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

A talk from Homeless Oxfordshire about how they strive to be effective and appropriately challenge perceptions, how they are responsive to need and compassion to fellow human beings, and brave enough not to give up on people that society has left behind. This talk is free and open to all.

This talk is delivered by Mackenzie Aspell. Mackenzie is a Senior Fundraiser at Homeless Oxfordshire who believes advocacy to be the most powerful tool for change. Mackenzie also has a background working with mental health charities.

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

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.

We are pleased to reschedule this talk by Dr Estelle Zinsstag (Edinburgh Napier University/University of Oxford) which was originally planned for March 2020 and postponed due to COVID-19.

Dr Zinsstag will present her research on restorative justice and cases of sexual violence.

This event will be held online via Zoom (link TBA). Please contact joy@minthouseoxford.co.uk for more information.

Amanda Oates (Executive Director of Workforce, Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust) and Dr Kristina Brown (Senior Lecturer, Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University) will be speaking on the story of the Just and Learning Culture at Mersey Care NHS Trust.

In recent years, Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust has undergone a radical shift in workplace culture and organisational procedures. They have gone from a blame culture to a culture where staff feel empowered and supported to learn from incidents. Numbers of disciplinary and suspension cases went down, staff reporting of adverse incidents went up, and there were positive effects on staff retention and levels of sickness absence.

Restorative justice was integral to these changes, termed the ‘Just and Learning Culture’. Amanda Oates and Kristina Brown will reflect on the impact of the restorative just culture at Mersey Care and help us to understand how other organisations can adopt a similar approach.

This event will be held online via Zoom (link TBA). Please contact joy@minthouseoxford.co.uk for more information.

You can register for this this event on Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/restorative-just-culture-the-story-of-mersey-care-nhs-trust-tickets-146564629753