Some face-to-face events are returning. Check carefully for any requirements.

Nov
6
Tue
Romanes Lecture: Dr Vint Cerf – Co-inventor of the Internet @ Sheldonian Theatre
Nov 6 @ 5:45 pm – 7:00 pm
Romanes Lecture: Dr Vint Cerf - Co-inventor of the Internet @ Sheldonian Theatre | England | United Kingdom

Vint Cerf is the co-inventor of the Internet, and Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google. In his lecture, he will be speaking about “The Pacification of Cyberspace”; a look at how to pacify the relatively lawless environment of the Internet, while preserving the utility of its openness to creative innovation and technological revolution.

The Romanes Lecture is the University of Oxford’s annual public lecture series, running since 1892.

Nov
15
Thu
Data’s Dirty Tricks: The new spaces of fake news, harvesting, and contortion @ Herbertson Room, School of Geography and the Environment
Nov 15 @ 4:30 pm – 6:00 pm
Data’s Dirty Tricks: The new spaces of fake news, harvesting, and contortion @ Herbertson Room, School of Geography and the Environment | England | United Kingdom

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.

Nov
20
Tue
Radical Art History: Nick Lee, ‘Uncertain Progress’ @ Oxford Brookes University
Nov 20 @ 5:30 pm – 6:30 pm
Radical Art History: Nick Lee, 'Uncertain Progress' @ Oxford Brookes University |  |  |

The multi-talented Nick Lee is a Lecturer in Media Arts at Royal Holloway, University of London, a researcher at the House of Lords, and co-founder of the radical south-London project space, the Peckham Pelican.

Nick, an academic with a reputation as a revolutionary nonconformist, will be joining us for the final FAR (Fine Art Research) guest lecture of 2018.

This discussion at Oxford Brookes will present a series of painted images ordered to demonstrate the development of perspectiva artificialis (artificial perspective).

The following question will be posed: what exactly is developing in these images and what subsequent forms of image-making does artificial perspective make possible?
(Progress here, as elsewhere, is uncertain; a way of seeing is produced which structures in turn how we see the world.) The extent to which computer-generated images replicate and further systematise this way of seeing will be considered…

FREE & ALL WELCOME

Booking is essential:
www.eventbrite.com/e/radical-art-history-nick-lee-uncertain-progress-tickets-52493195561

Nov
22
Thu
Blockchain Competition Launch and Drinks @ Maths Institute
Nov 22 @ 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
Blockchain Competition Launch and Drinks @ Maths Institute | England | United Kingdom

Join us for the launch event of the Future of Blockchain 3 Month Competition.

We will be joined by 8 of the leading projects in the blockchain space. Teams include:

Gnosis

Kyber

Iconomi

Liquidity Network

Thunder

Zilliqa

———————————–

The Future of Blockchain is a 3 month idea competition hosted at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, LSE, UCL and KCL.

Challenge = Build something involving blockchain in 3 months

Over £80k cash in prize, Top Prize = £20,000 cash, 24 Bounties of £2,000 cash prizes from our supporters

———————————–

Winter Cohort:

Launch Events = 21st (Cambridge), 22nd (Oxford), 23rd (London) November 2018

Starts = Monday 3rd December 2018

———————————–

More info at www.futureofblockchain.co.uk

Dec
12
Wed
Leadership and (dis)ability @ Oxford Brookes University
Dec 12 @ 7:00 pm – 7:00 pm
Leadership and (dis)ability @ Oxford Brookes University  | United Kingdom

We are all entitled to participate fully in society, but people with disabilities routinely face barriers which can make this an insurmountable challenge. Ossie and Alex will explore, with the audience, how to turn rights into reality for people with disabilities.
Some of the questions they will be addressing are:
Where are the disabled leaders?
How do we think of leadership and disability?
How can organisations shift the mindset and culture in how leadership is viewed and understood?
Ossie is an Equality & Diversity Consultant with several years’ experience as a trainer and specialist adviser. Alex is a founding director of the Oxford University Disability Law and Policy Project.
This event is part of Disability History Month 2018 at Brookes.

Feb
28
Thu
“Saving labour: automation and its enemies” with Dr Carl Benedikt Frey @ Oxford Martin School
Feb 28 @ 5:30 pm – 6:30 pm

In 2013, Carl Frey and Michael Osborne published a paper titled ‘The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation?’ which estimated that 47% of jobs in the US are at risk of automation.

In this talk Dr Carl Benedikt Frey, Co-Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Technology and Employment, will discuss the societal consequences of the accelerating pace of automation, and what we can learn from previous episodes of worker-replacing technological change.

Mar
5
Tue
ScreenTalk Oxfordshire Networking Event for Film, TV and Media – An Evening with British Film Producer, Jeremy Thomas @ Curzon Oxford
Mar 5 @ 6:15 pm – 9:15 pm
ScreenTalk Oxfordshire Networking Event for Film, TV and Media - An Evening with British Film Producer, Jeremy Thomas @ Curzon Oxford

ScreenTalk Oxfordshire proudly presents an evening with British Producer Jeremy Thomas. Jeremy has worked with renowned directors including Bertolucci, Nicolas Roeg, Jonathan Glazer and Ben Wheatley producing such great films as ‘The Last Emperor’, ‘Crash’, ‘Sexy Beast’ and ‘High-Rise’.

On Tuesday 5th March at the Lounge Bar, Curzon, Westgate Centre in Oxford, local producer Carl Schoenfeld will be talking to Jeremy Thomas about Directors, Actors, Crews as well as films he has produced and what he has learnt throughout his career.

Join us from 18:15 for a drink and chat in the bar, then at 19:00 with Carl Schoenfeld (ScreenTalk Co-Founder and Steering Group Member) in conversation with Jeremy Thomas (Recorded Picture Company).

There will be a Card/Cash Bar so join us after the talk to catch up and network.

ScreenTalk events are an opportunity to forge and strengthen contacts in Film, TV and Associated Media. For further information and to sign up to our mailing list please email screentalkoxfordshire@gmail.com

We expect this event to be popular and can only take pre-booked (free) tickets for entry.
Tickets: http://bit.ly/2GnlZhi

May
10
Fri
Future of Work After Automation: Towards a five-day weekend society! @ Oxford Internet Institute
May 10 @ 3:30 pm – 5:00 pm

In our first of two seminars on the future of work after automation Dr Brendan Burchell will investigate the potential for a five-day weekend society.

Machine-learning and robotics technologies promise to be able to replace some tasks or jobs that have traditionally been performed by humans. Like previous technologies introduced in the past couple of centuries, this possibility has been met with either optimism that will permit liberation from the tyranny of employment, or pessimism that it will lead to mass precarity and unemployment.

This presentation will draw upon both qualitative and quantitative evidence to explore the possible societal consequences of a radical reduction in the length of the normal working week. Drawing upon the evidence for the psychological benefits of employment, we look at the evidence for the minimum effective dose of employment. The paper also considers why the historical increases in productivity have not been matched with proportionate reductions in working time.

About Brendan Burchell:

Dr Brendan Burchell is a Reader in the Social Sciences in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge. He is also a Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge.

Dr Burchell is director of graduate education for the Department of Sociology and director of the Cambridge Undergraduate Quantitative Research Centre. He was recently Head of Department for Sociology, as well as a Director of Studies and a Tutor at Magdalene College.

Dr Burchell’s main research interests centre on the effects of labour market conditions on wellbeing. Recent publications have focussed on unemployment, job insecurity, work intensity, part-time work, zero-hours contracts, debt, occupational gender segregation and self-employment. Most of his work concentrates on employment in Europe, but current projects also include an analysis of job quality, the future of work and youth self-employment in developing countries. He works in interdisciplinary environments with psychologists, sociologists, economists, lawyers and other social scientists.

Dr Burchell’s undergraduate degree was in Psychology, followed by a PhD in Social Psychology. His first post in Cambridge was a joint appointment between the social sciences and economics in 1985, and he has been in a permanent teaching post in at Cambridge since 1990.

Register:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/future-of-work-after-automation-towards-a-five-day-weekend-society-tickets-61028132788

May
21
Tue
“Unlocking digital competition” with Prof Jason Furman @ Oxford Martin School
May 21 @ 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm

Is competition in the digital economy desirable? Does it currently exist? Is it possible? Is there anything policy can do?

This talk addresses all of these questions and presents the recommendations of the Digital Competition Expert Panel which was chaired by Jason Furman and recently presented its recommendations to the government.

May
22
Wed
ScreenTalk Oxfordshire Presents: Harnessing the Power of Video in Business Communications @ Curzon Oxford
May 22 @ 6:15 pm – 9:15 pm

On Wednesday 22 May, ScreenTalk Oxfordshire proudly presents Harnessing the Power of Video in Business Communications.
An evening with Tim May, MD of Strange Films and Music, talking with Toby Low – MD of MerchantCantos an international agency specialising in bringing creativity to critical business communications; Scott Shillum – CEO of Vismedia, Winner of the 2018 Digital Impact Awards and a pioneer in creating interactive, immersive content fused with cutting edge technology; Clare Holt – Founder of Nice Tree Films in Oxford and a member of ScreenTalk provides videos for businesses, public sector organisations, charities and education; Nicky Woodhouse – Founder of Woodhouse Video Production, award-winning female director of branded content and TVCs for online and broadcast.

Join us on Wednesday 22 May from 18:15 for a drink in the downstairs Lounge Bar, Curzon, Westgate Centre in Oxford, and why not try the Curzon’s excellent Pizza – great quality! At 19:00 Tim May will be talking to Toby Low, Scott Shillum, Clare Holt and Nicky Woodhouse. Afterwards there will be Shout Outs from ScreenTalk members and facilitated networking. At ScreenTalk events we run a Card/Cash Bar so please join us and take advantage of the opportunity to catch up and network.

We expect this event to be popular and can only take pre-booked (free) tickets for entry.

Join the conversation! ScreenTalk events are an opportunity to forge and strengthen contacts in Film, TV and Associated Media.
For further information and to sign up to our mailing list please email screentalkoxfordshire@gmail.com

May
29
Wed
5th Annual Oxford Business & Poverty Conference @ Sheldonian Theatre
May 29 @ 2:00 pm – 6:00 pm
5th Annual Oxford Business & Poverty Conference @ Sheldonian Theatre

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

Jun
20
Thu
“New economic and moral foundations for the Anthropocene” with Prof Eric Beinhocker @ Oxford Martin School
Jun 20 @ 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm

The biosphere and econosphere are deeply interlinked and both are in crisis. Industrial, fossil-fuel based capitalism delivered major increases in living standards from the mid-18th through late-20th centuries, but at the cost of widespread ecosystem destruction, planetary climate change, and a variety of economic injustices. Furthermore, over the past 40 years, the gains of growth have flowed almost exclusively to the top 10%, fuelling populist anger across many countries, endangering both democracy and global action on climate change.

This talk will argue that underlying the current dominant model of capitalism are a set of theories and ideologies that are outdated, unscientific, and morally unsound. New foundations can be built from modern understandings of human behaviour, complex systems science, and broad moral principles. By changing the ideologies, narratives, and memes that govern our economic system, we can create the political space required for the policies and actions required to rapidly transform to a sustainable and just economic system.

Oct
14
Mon
“The technology trap – capital, labour and power in the age of automation” with Carl Benedikt Frey @ Oxford Martin School
Oct 14 @ 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm

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

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

Oct
18
Fri
“Psychologically informed micro-targeted political campaigns: the use and abuse of data” with Dr Jens Koed Madsen @ Oxford Martin School
Oct 18 @ 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm

Data-driven micro-targeted campaigns have become a main stable of political strategy. As personal and societal data becomes more accessible, we need to understand how it can be used and mis-used in political campaigns and whether it is relevant to regulate political candidates’ access to data.

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

Oct
24
Thu
Big data, big ideas @ New Road Baptist Church
Oct 24 @ 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm
Big data, big ideas @ New Road Baptist Church

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

IF Oxford is operating a Pay What You Decide (PWYD) ticketing system. This works by enabling you to pre-book events without paying for a ticket beforehand. Afterwards, you have the opportunity to pay what you decide you want to, or can afford. If you prefer, you can make a donation to IF Oxford when you book. All funds raised go towards next year’s Festival.

Oct
28
Mon
“Cartographic attributes of the invisible – the geographies of the platform economy” with Prof Mark Graham @ Oxford Martin School
Oct 28 @ 5:00 pm – 6:15 pm

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

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

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

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

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

Nov
5
Tue
Babbage’s Life and Machines @ Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford
Nov 5 @ 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm
Babbage's Life and Machines @ Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford

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

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

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

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

Nov
12
Tue
“Migration: the movement of humankind from prehistory to the present” with Prof Robin Cohen @ Oxford Martin School
Nov 12 @ 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm

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.

Nov
21
Thu
Learning structured models of physics – Dr Peter Battaglia, DeepMind @ Dennis Sciama Lecture Theatre
Nov 21 @ 2:30 pm – 3:30 pm

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

Dec
4
Wed
Leadership for diversity and inclusion – lessons from the UK civil service @ Saïd Business School
Dec 4 @ 5:45 pm – 6:45 pm
Leadership for diversity and inclusion - lessons from the UK civil service @ Saïd Business School

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

Jan
21
Tue
“A world without work: technology, automation and how we should respond” with Daniel Susskind @ Oxford Martin School
Jan 21 @ 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm

New technologies have always provoked panic about workers being replaced by machines.

In the past, such fears have been misplaced, and many economists maintain that they remain so today. Yet in A World Without Work, Daniel Susskind shows why this time really is different. Advances in artificial intelligence mean that all kinds of jobs are increasingly at risk.

Susskind will argue that machines no longer need to reason like us in order to outperform us. Increasingly, tasks that used to be beyond the capability of computers – from diagnosing illnesses to drafting legal contracts – are now within their reach. The threat of technological unemployment is real.

So how can we all thrive in a world with less work? Susskind will remind us that technological progress could bring about unprecedented prosperity, solving one of mankind’s oldest problems: making sure that everyone has enough to live on. The challenge will be to distribute this prosperity fairly, constrain the burgeoning power of Big Tech, and provide meaning in a world where work is no longer the centre of our lives.

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

Feb
12
Wed
Gender diversity: How far have we got? @ Saïd Business School
Feb 12 @ 5:45 pm – 6:45 pm
Gender diversity: How far have we got? @ Saïd Business School

Sir Martin will review the theory and practice of genuine gender equality in the workforce, including personal experience of leadership challenges in implementing gender balance leadership.

Martin was appointed President of Boeing Europe and Managing Director of Boeing UK and Ireland in June 2019. He was permanent secretary at the Department for International Trade from 2016 to 2017, and before that he spent six years as permanent secretary at the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills.

Feb
19
Wed
“Better doctors, better patients, better decisions: Risk literacy in health” with Prof Gerd Gigerenzer @ Oxford Martin School
Feb 19 @ 5:00 pm – 6:15 pm

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

Feb
28
Fri
“Income insecurity in the 21st Century” with special guest speaker Andy Haldane @ Oxford Martin School
Feb 28 @ 11:15 am – 1:00 pm

‘Job insecurity at the end of the 20th century has given way to income insecurity at the start of the 21st.’ – Andy Haldane, July 2019

Join us for a stimulating morning of talks exploring the current challenges of income insecurity, with keynote speaker Andy Haldane, Chief Economist at the Bank of England. We will discuss labour market precarity, pay volatility and income insecurity issues in the UK and more widely, and their implications for the labour market and the structure of the social security system.

Programme:

Welcome and introduction by Charles Godfray, Director, Oxford Martin School
Keynote address: Andy Haldane, Chief Economist at the Bank of England
‘Pay volatility and income insecurity: what role for social security?’ by Jane Millar, Professor of Social Policy, University of Bath
‘Measuring economic insecurity: Why and How?’ by Matteo Richiardi, Professor of Economics and Director of EUROMOD, University of Essex, INET Associate
Panel discussion and Q&A: chaired by Brian Nolan, Professor of Social Policy at Oxford, with speakers and Fran Bennett, Senior Research and Teaching Fellow, Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford
This event is free, but registration is essential to ensure your place.

You are welcome to bring lunch with you.

This series of talks is organised by the Oxford Martin School, Department of Social Policy and Intervention & Institute for New Economic Thinking, University of Oxford

Apr
28
Tue
“Data work: the hidden talent and secret logic fuelling artificial intelligence” with Prof Gina Neff @ Oxford Martin School
Apr 28 @ 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm

What happens when new artificial intelligence (AI) tools are integrated into organisations around the world?

For example, digital medicine promises to combine emerging and novel sources of data and new analysis techniques like AI and machine learning to improve diagnosis, care delivery and condition management. But healthcare workers find themselves at the frontlines of figuring out new ways to care for patients through, with – and sometimes despite – their data. Paradoxically, new data-intensive tasks required to make AI work are often seen as of secondary importance. Gina calls these tasks data work, and her team studied how data work is changing in Danish & US hospitals (Moller, Bossen, Pine, Nielsen and Neff, forthcoming ACM Interactions).

Based on critical data studies and organisational ethnography, this talk will argue that while advances in AI have sparked scholarly and public attention to the challenges of the ethical design of technologies, less attention has been focused on the requirements for their ethical use. Unfortunately, this means that the hidden talents and secret logics that fuel successful AI projects are undervalued and successful AI projects continue to be seen as technological, not social, accomplishments.

In this talk we will examine publicly known “failures” of AI systems to show how this gap between design and use creates dangerous oversights and to develop a framework to predict where and how these oversights emerge. The resulting framework can help scholars and practitioners to query AI tools to show who and whose goals are being achieved or promised through, what structured performance using what division of labour, under whose control and at whose expense. In this way, data work becomes an analytical lens on the power of social institutions for shaping technologies-in-practice.

Nov
19
Thu
Intersectionality and Inclusion Series: Pathways to visibility @ Saïd Business School - Online
Nov 19 @ 4:30 pm – 5:30 pm
Intersectionality and Inclusion Series: Pathways to visibility @ Saïd Business School - Online

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.

Nov
23
Mon
Online event: “Data work: the hidden talent and secret logic fuelling artificial intelligence” with Prof Gina Neff @ Online
Nov 23 @ 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm

In this talk Professor Gina Neff, Oxford Internet Institute and Professor Ian Goldin, Oxford Martin School, will examine publicly known “failures” of AI systems to show how this gap between design and use creates dangerous oversights and to develop a framework to predict where and how these oversights emerge. The resulting framework can help scholars and practitioners to query AI tools to show who and whose goals are being achieved or promised through, what structured performance using what division of labour, under whose control and at whose expense. In this way, data work becomes an analytical lens on the power of social institutions for shaping technologies-in-practice.

Nov
26
Thu
Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Sir Nigel Shadbolt in conversation: “The Web, internet and data during the pandemic: lessons learnt and new directions” @ Online
Nov 26 @ 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm

In 2020, Governments around the world made the decision to lock down their country to help stop the spread of Covid-19. This led to teaching, meetings, conferences, contacting family and more being conducted from home via the internet.

How did this affect data being used across the world? Did the systems already in place stand-up to the pressure? Was our privacy compromised. As companies and families grapple with how much data they need, we find ourselves in the midst of these important moral deliberations. The pandemic is revealing just how complex the data inter-dependencies are when we need to respond effectively.

Join Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, and Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt, leading researcher in Artificial Intelligence (AI), as they discuss what we have learnt and in what new directions we need to head in the world of data architecture.

Dec
10
Thu
Prof Yvonne Jones & Prof Charles Godfray in conversation: “Protein structure & AI: the excitement about the recent advance made by Google DeepMind’s AlphaFold Programme” @ Online
Dec 10 @ 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm

On the 30th November it was announced that the Artificial Intelligence computer programme AlphaFold had made a decisive breakthrough in the determination of the 3-D structures of proteins.

The announcement was immediately hailed as one of the major scientific advances of the decade.

Why is it important to understand the 3-D structures of protein, why are they difficult to construct, and what is the nature of AlphaFold’s advance? Why is this so exciting and what further advances in medicine and the other biosciences may result? To find out, join a conversation between Yvonne Jones, Director, Cancer Research UK Receptor Structure Research Group and Charles Godfray, Director, Oxford Martin School, who will explore these fascinating issues.

Jun
9
Wed
Restorative Just Culture: the story of Mersey Care NHS Trust @ Online
Jun 9 @ 12:15 pm – 1:30 pm
Restorative Just Culture: the story of Mersey Care NHS Trust @ Online

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