Better body secrets! Why nutrition is the corner stone of good health. Combating the effects of stress and everyday lifestyle on the body. Maximise lean mass and reduce body fat. The impact of fruit and veg in your diet. Try some of the products free sample shakes tasters. How to create a successful business at home and secure your financial freedom!

There are currently more than 2.8 million registered refugees from Syria. Ninety-six percent of these refugees are hosted by neighbouring countries – Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt. With the exception of Germany and a few other limited initiatives, the primary aim of the European response has been to contain the crisis in the Syrian region and to reinforce Europe’s borders.

This event marks the launch of a new RSC Policy Briefing, ‘Protection in Europe for refugees from Syria’. Report authors, Cynthia Orchard and Andrew Miller, will provide an overview of the European reaction generally, as well as brief summaries of selected countries’ responses. They argue that containment of the refugee crisis to the Syrian region is unsustainable and advocate for European countries to open their doors to refugees from the region and to expand safe and legal routes of entry.

Also being launched at this event is issue 47 of Forced Migration Review on ‘The Syria crisis, displacement and protection’. Professor Roger Zetter, co-author (with Héloïse Ruaudel) of a major article in the issue entitled ‘Development and protection challenges of the Syrian refugee crisis’, will look at early recovery and social cohesion interventions and the transition from assistance to development-led interventions in Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan. FMR47 is funded by the Regional Development and Protection Programme, a Denmark-led initiative with contributions from the EU, Denmark, Ireland, Netherlands, UK and Czech Republic, for whose inception report Professor Zetter was the lead author.

The event will be followed by a reception at 4pm. If you are unable to attend in person, you can watch live via a video link. For more information, please visit: www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/syrialaunch

Sherpa Adventure Gear presents the BMC Club Autumn Lecture series! The Oxford University Mountaineering Club will be hosting Neil Gresham and Kenton Cool to speak at the Oxford Maths Department (Mathematical Institute, Woodstock Road, Oxford, OX2 6HD) on Wednesday the 5th of November at 7:30pm. Doors open at 7pm, there will be a raffle in the interval, with the final lecture finishing at 9:30pm. Tickets for this exciting event will cost £8, and can be purchased here or on the door.

Neil is one of Britain’s most well known all-round climbers and is one of the few climbers in the world to have climbed E10. He is also the UK’s most experienced climbing coach, and is the training columnist for Climber magazine and Rock & Ice magazine.

Kenton is the holder of the British record for most Mount Everest summits, recently completing the ‘Triple Crown’ of Everest, Nuptse and Lhotse in three days. He is also a Piolet d’Or nominee for a route on Annapurna III and was the first British person to complete a ski descent of an 8,000m peak.

Stephen Venables, will be giving a lecture on the 28th January in aid of Llanberis Mountain Rescue and Ogwen Valley Mountain Rescue, with all proceeds from ticket sales split between the two charities.

Stephen was the first British person to summit Mount Everest without supplementary oxygen, which he did alone via a new route on the gigantic Kangshung Face.

In 2012 the nation stood tall as it hosted arguably the most memorable Games in living history.

Credited with leading London’s successful bid to host the Olympics, Dame Tessa will outline how the country won the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games and planned, from outset to legacy, a wide range of benefits for UK plc.

Brookes staff, students and graduates made a wide-ranging contribution from designing the torch, to winning medals and volunteering.

About the Speaker
Tessa Jowell
RIGHT HONOURABLE DAME TESSA JOWELL, MP

Dame Tessa Jowell is the Labour MP for Dulwich and West Norwood. She first joined the House of Commons in April 1992.

She was Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport 2001- 07, Minister for the Olympics and London 2007-10 and Shadow Minister (Olympics and London) 2010-12.

Professor Danny Dorling

As part of this year’s community outreach program, Oxford Brookes University’s 150th anniversary, and as a way showing our appreciation to all participants, clinicians, researchers, members of the public and organisations that have supported our work, we will be holding an open day on Saturday, 30th of May 2015. Over the past decade, the Movement Science Group, which now falls within the Centre for Rehabilitation at Oxford Brookes University, has conducted extensive research on a variety of topics related to rehabilitation and physical activity. Topics include measuring and understanding movement in those with movement difficulties, exercising benefits in people with neurological conditions, and developing novel rehabilitation strategies.

So many of us are desperately busy doing what’s immediately in front of us rather than the things that make a real difference.

Ben will tell the story of the GB men’s rowing 8+ in the build up to the 2000 Sydney Olympics, where they won the gold medal, and how they challenged everything to make the boat go faster. For Ben it was the culmination of nine years in the national team.

Ben’s story is a call to action, challenging you to examine how you spend your time in a way that ensures you are travelling in the direction that you want to go.

About the Speaker
Ben Hunt-David MBE
BEN HUNT-DAVIS MBE

Former Brookes student, Ben Hunt- Davis is a performance coach, speaker and author. Ben has been involved in five Olympic Games – three as a competitor and two as a member of the headquarters team. He was also Chairman of the Organising Committee for both the 2011 World Rowing Junior Championships and the 2013 Rowing World Cup. He now runs a performance consulting company helping companies to make their ‘boats go faster’. His first book is entitled Will It Make The Boat Go Faster?

This is a panel discussion organised in collaboration with ‘Oxford Refugee Week’ by the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford. Chairing will be Dr Jeff Crisp, with speakers Prof. Alexander Betts, Prof. Cathryn Costello, Dr Mariagiulia Guiffre and Dr Nando Sigona. Open to all. Registration recommended but not compulsory. To be followed by a drinks reception.

Two hour cycle ride with Max as he reveals some surprising facts about the science of cycling. Ride and demonstration.
Please show up 10 minutes before departure at The Story Museum. The ride will finish back at The Story Museum.

Author and cyclist Max Gaskin explores the science of cycling from hydrogen to helmets!
6.30pm – 7.30pm £8/£5 concessions

International table tennis player, broadcaster and writer, Matthew Syed will reflect on the psychology of performance.

My European citizenship rights…and why I don’t want to lose them.

We warmly invite you to a public meeting, followed by a reception to launch New Europeans in Oxford.

For details and speakers, please visit the event page on the New Europeans website.

“This is a good day for businesses…” says Dan Kelly, President, CEO and Chair, Canadian Federation of Independent Business. Maybe so, but CETA, like other trade-deals, is bad news for equality, democracy and the environment.
In early 2016, CETA, the Canada-EU trade deal is due to be debated and voted on in the European parliament. Like TTIP, CETA allows corporations to sue governments in secret courts over decisions they don’t like.
As part of the growing movement against corporate trade deals and to try to stop final agreement of CETA, we’re planning a speaker tour.
The speakers will be:
• Maude Barlow, chair of citizens’ group the Council of Canadians
• Yash Tandon, Ugandan trade expert and author of Trade is War
• Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now

It’s been a terrible time for the glorious game: corruption, escalating prices and shrinking grass roots involvement. Could a more scientific approach to everything from the offside rule to deciding who hosts World Cups make it fairer and more watchable? Join hardcore Arsenal fan Marcus du Sautoy, Leeds supporter Jim Al-Khalili and statistician David Spiegelhalter as they’re refereed by follower of Grimsby Town and Manchester City Quentin Cooper to see if science really can save football…

Science Oxford staff will be on hand at half-time with oranges and a little hands-on fun.

Three high-profile SPC alumni return to their college to discuss the impending EU Referendum in a forum chaired by the Master, Mark Damazer CBE.

Join the Editor of the Sunday Times, Martin Ivens (BA Modern History – 1977), the Deputy Editor of the New Statesman, Helen Lewis (BA English – 2001), and the BBC’s Political Correspondent Ben Wright (BA Modern History – 1996) for a panel discussion in which they will cut through the rhetoric surrounding this most controversial of issues in contemporary British politics, and who will then face your questions.

Drawing upon sociology of culture and digital rhetoric literature, this talk will illuminate the persuasive function of hashtags in the context of the UK EU membership referendum. What makes a hashtag more influential, or more successful?

The hashtag is not just a category or community marker—it has also become a vehicle through which rhetorical strategies are being used to influence thoughts and feelings. Many scholars have explored hashtag success by examining popularity and longevity. This talk presents an expanded definition of success that takes hashtag hijacking into account. The data that will be presented are being gathered live from the Twitter Streaming API; over two hundred hashtags and usernames relating to the EU referendum are being tracked. The talk will also highlight the challenges and opportunities afforded by big ‘linguistic’ data on social media.

Yin Yin Lu is a DPhil Candidate at the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) and Balliol College, as well as a Clarendon Scholar. She is fascinated by the intersection between language and technology, and her research focuses on the hashtag, one of the most notable sociotechnical phenomena of the 21st century. Prior to joining the OII, Yin obtained a Masters in English Language from the University of Oxford (Lincoln College) and a Bachelor of Arts from Columbia University. Between these degrees, she worked at Pearson Education and 10 Speed Labs, a digital media agency in Manhattan. She is the founder and co-convenor of the #SocialHumanities network at TORCH, and her ultimate objective is to reinvent the novel—along with the very acts of reading and writing—through new media technologies.

Writer Robert Penn discusses his love affair with cycling and how the journey to build his dream bike ended in a freewheeling pilgrimage.

Legendary British athlete Roger Black MBE discusses lessons learned throughout his career as well as his thoughts on Team GB’s prospects at Rio 2016.

Leopold Eyharts flew on the Atlantis Shuttle to the International Space Station in 2008. Part of his mission included the installation of the Colombus Space Laboratory, the main contribution of Europe to the International Space Station. In 1998, Leopold flew
on a Soyouz Space Shuttle to the Russian MIR station. Engage in a conversation about his adventures and the future of manned exploration of space. Chaired by Valerie Jamieson, Editorial Content Director, New Scientist.

Speakers:
-Jonathan Scheele (Senior Member, St Antony’s College and Head of Representation at the European Commission Representation in the UK, 2010-12)

-Michael Weatherburn (Imperial College and Foundation for European Progressive Studies)

-Lise Butler (Pembroke College and Vice-Chair, Oxford Fabian Society)

Jonathon Porritt and Shaun Chamberlin celebrate the launch of the late Trinity alumnus David Fleming’s extraordinary book, ‘Surviving the Future: Culture, Carnival and Capital in the Aftermath of the Market Economy’.

This intimate event will be held in the Sutro Room at Trinity College, Oxford University, and will be recorded for a short film. Various themes in Fleming’s wonderfully diverse work – from carnival to climate change, religion to resilience, manners to markets – may be explored in response to the interests of those present.

Interview with Shaun Chamberlin on David Fleming, Brexit and the book: http://www.darkoptimism.org/2016/08/21/interview-on-david-fleming-music-and-hippos/

More information on David Fleming’s books:
http://www.chelseagreen.com/surviving-the-future
http://www.chelseagreen.com/lean-logic

Copies of both books will be on sale on the day.

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“David Fleming was an elder of the UK green movement and a key figure in the early Green Party. Drawing on the heritage of Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful, Fleming’s beautifully written and nourishing vision of a post-growth economics grounded in human-scale culture and community—rather than big finance—is both inspiring and ever more topical.”
~ Caroline Lucas MP, co-leader, Green Party of England and Wales; former Member of the European Parliament

“I would unreservedly go so far as to say that David Fleming was one of the most original, brilliant, urgently-needed, underrated, and ahead-of-his-time thinkers of the last 50 years. History will come to place him alongside Schumacher, Berry, Seymour, Cobbett, and those other brilliant souls who could not just imagine a more resilient world but who could paint a picture of it in such vivid colours. Step into the world of David Fleming; you’ll be so glad you did.”
~ Rob Hopkins, cofounder of the Transition Network

“Why do some of the truly great books only emerge and exact their influence upon us after the death of their authors? Perhaps it takes a lifetime to accrue and refine the necessary wisdom. Or perhaps it simply takes the rest of us too long to catch up. Like Thoreau, Fleming’s masterpiece brims not only with fresh insight into every nook and cranny of our culture and what it means to be human, but with such wit and humour that its challenging ideas and radical perspectives become a refreshing delight. If we’re to have a future worth surviving, this book demands to be read, re-read, and—ultimately—acted upon.”
~ Mark Boyle, author of The Moneyless Manifesto and Drinking Molotov Cocktails with Gandhi

Pen Hadow is one of the world’s leading polar explorers; in 2003 he made history and became the first, and so far only, person to trek solo without resupply from Canada to the North Pole. It was an astonishing achievement that included traversing huge boulder fields of broken ice and swimming open water in the arctic ocean, completely alone, whilst hauling a sledge weighing up to 125kg.

Just months later he became the first Briton to make unsupported journeys to both the North and South poles. Pen’s experiences in the polar regions haven’t just been limited to adventurous journeys; he developed a keen focus on scientific return and was the driving force behind the vision for the 2009-11 Catlin Arctic Surveys. Pen’s efforts surveying sea ice thickness, alongside Ann Daniels and Martin Hartley, led to them being named TIME magazine “Heroes of the Environment”.

Join us to hear Pen’s extraordinary journey as a polar explorer first hand. From his record breaking expeditions to stories of fending off a polar bear with a saucepan – it promises to be a fantastic evening.

Image Credit: Martin Hartley

Brookes Centre for Global Politics, Economics and Society seminar series

Centre for Global Politics, Economics and Society seminar series

This July, a team of four from Oxford travelled high into the Arctic Circle to ski from East to West across the island of Spitsbergen.

For the first time in ninety-three years they retraced the route of a groundbreaking 1923 expedition that pioneered the exploration of this remote polar land.

Over the course of thirty-two entirely unsupported days they tracked down and repeated the photos from 1923, conducted scientific surveys and pursued mountaineering objectives old and new whilst capturing it all in film for an upcoming feature documentary.

Hosted by the Oxford University Exploration Club, join the Spitsbergen Retraced team to learn more about a journey into one of the last truly wild corners of our increasingly crowded planet.

svalbard2016.com

Free entry to members of the OUEC and, for this week only, OUMC members too. OUEC membership can be bought on the night.

8 countries, 50 days, 2300km, countless encounters – Between March and May of this year Christian cycled from Munich along the Western Balkan refugee route to Athens. Attempting to understand what European and national politics meant for people fleeing their homes, he engaged with NGOs, border guards and refugees along the route. He described and portrayed his fascinating encounters and experiences bilingually under https://chrisbikes.wordpress.com/ and on Facebook (www.facebook.com/chrisbikestoathens/).

On Thursday, 17 November, Chris will talk about his insightful tour, his touching impressions and the lessons to be drawn from his journey in the context of European and national migration and border policies.

Internationally acclaimed mountaineer Stephen Venables is one of the best-known climbers of his generation. In 1988 he became the first Briton to summit Everest without supplementary oxygen, pioneering a new route up the huge Kangshung Face in Tibet. Stephen summited alone and was then forced to bivouac in the open at around 8,600m during the descent, before finally returning to the South Col the following day.

However, Stephen’s exploits over a 40-year career go well beyond Everest – from pioneering climbs across the Himalaya to first ascents in Patagonia. He is a past president of both the Alpine Club and the South Georgia Association and has authored multiple books which have gone on to win a number of awards, including the prestigious Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature.

Stephen is a well-regarded public speaker with a fantastic ability to entertain and his lectures always feature a stunning collection of photography. His talk takes the name from his autobiography “Higher Than The Eagle Soars” and will focus on the early days of his mountaineering career, through first ascents in Himalaya before culminating in his Everest expedition.

Image Credit: Ed Webster

An award-winning travel writer, Elsa Hammond has sailed from Samoa to Fiji, unicycled across England, carried out conservation work in the jungles of Borneo, and spent 51 days rowing alone on the Pacific Ocean. Whilst rowing on the Pacific in 2014 she worked as a citizen scientist in partnership with Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation, taking samples of seawater for research into microplastics. She swims outdoors all year round, and is exploring different ways of writing about these experiences. In 2015 she co-authored the award-winning Wild Guide to Southern and Eastern England, and is currently writing poetry about her time on the Pacific.

Come and hear Elsa speak about spending almost two months ‘alone on a wide, wide sea’ in a small rowing boat. Expect stories of strange marine visitors, terrible weather, boat disasters, and (of course) albatrosses.