What happens when you excavate the image archives of the Institute of Archaeology and other departments of the University of Oxford? The answer: you find amazing pictures that tell unexpected stories. Most of the pictures are black and white and 70 or more years old. Discover Oxford through a new lens with Janice Kinory to explore the Historic Environment Image Resource Project digital image archive where the images are stored and how you can access them.

Professor Renee Poznanski of Ben Gurion University in the Negev will be giving the Michaelmas term Massada Public Seminar. A great number of Jews participated in the Resistance in France during World War II. What was the aim of their struggle? To fight against the Occupation in France? To restore the Republican Regime? To save the persecuted Jews? To help install a communist regime? While questioning the relevance of the term “Jewish Resistance,” this talk will challenge the accepted notion of a “French” Resistance, and examine what is at stake in this complex issue.The event is part of the Israel and Ione Massada Fellowships Programme.

Marking the 150th anniversary of the periodic table, Kit Chapman reveals the incredible and often surprising stories behind the discovery of the superheavy elements; how they have shaped the world today and where they will take us in the future. Be introduced to the amazing people whose tireless quest to drive the periodic table forwards has led to scientists rewriting the laws of atomic structure.

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.

David Miles, former Chief Archaeologist at English Heritage and former Director of the Oxford Archaeological Unit, will be with us here at Blackwell’s to discuss his latest book, The Land of the White Horse: Visions of England.

Synopsis

The White Horse at Uffington is an icon of the English landscape – a sleek, almost abstract figure 120 yards long which was carved into the green turf of the spectacular chalk scarp of the North Wessex Downs in the early first millennium bc. For centuries antiquarians, travellers and local people speculated about the age of the Horse, who created it and why. Was it a memorial to King Alfred the Great’s victory over the heathen Danes, an emblem of the first Anglo-Saxon settlers or a prehistoric banner, announcing the territory of a British tribe? Or was the Horse an actor in an elaborate prehistoric ritual, drawing the sun across the sky? The rich history of this ancient figure and its surroundings can help us understand how people have created and lived in the Downland landscape, which has inspired artists, poets and writers including Eric Ravilious, John Betjeman and J.R.R. Tolkien.

The White Horse itself is most remarkable because it is still here. People have cared for it and curated it for centuries, even millennia. In that time the meaning of the Horse has changed, yet it has remained a symbol of continuity and is a myth for modern times.

This event will take place in the History Department on the second floor. It is free to attend, but please do register to let us know you are coming. For more information call our Customer Service Department on 01865 333 623 or email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk

A Taste of Pompeii, with Sally Grainger
Evening Talk and Tasting
Tue 29 Oct, 6.30–9.30pm

Join author of The Classical Cookbook Sally Grainger as she shares her knowledge of classical Roman recipes adapted for the contemporary cook, painting a vibrant picture of wining and dining in the ancient world. Having whetted your appetite, enjoy a tasting array of dipping sauces in the ‘Taberna Ashmolean’.

Tickets are £35 each.

Entry is via the Front Door. Doors open 6pm, lecture at 6.30 pm.

Crafting Ale: Beer Production in the North-West Roman Provinces
Wed 30 Oct, 1–2pm

With Lisa Lodwick, from the School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford

At our Roman Discussion Forum research seminars you can join experts in the field of archaeology and conservation on new discoveries and ideas arising from our current exhibition, Last Supper in Pompeii. The events are organised in association with the Roman Discussion Forum at the University of Oxford’s School of Archaeology.

Places for these seminars are FREE, but places are first-come, first-served, so please arrive early to guarantee your place. It is not possible to book or reserve a place.

www.ashmolean.org/event/roman-discussion-forum-week-3

Blackwell’s are delighted to be hosting a special Hallowe’en event exploring black magic, with Thomas Waters and Lucie McKnight Hardy as they discuss their books ‘Cursed Britain: A History of Witchcraft and Black Magic in Modern Times’ and ‘Water Shall Refuse Them’.

‘Cursed Britain’

Historian Thomas Waters here explores the lives of cursed or bewitched people, along with the witches and witch-busters who helped and harmed them. Waters takes us on a fascinating journey from Scottish islands to the folklore-rich West Country, from the immense territories of the British Empire to metropolitan London. We learn why magic caters to deep-seated human needs but see how it can also be abused, and discover how witchcraft survives by evolving and changing. Along the way, we examine an array of remarkable beliefs and rituals, from traditional folk magic to diverse spiritualities originating in Africa and Asia.

This is a tale of cynical quacks and sincere magical healers, depressed people and furious vigilantes, innocent victims and rogues who claimed to possess evil abilities. Their spellbinding stories raise important questions about the state’s role in regulating radical spiritualities, the fragility of secularism and the true nature of magic.

Thomas Waters is lecturer in history at Imperial College London and a specialist in the modern history of witchcraft and magic.

‘Water Shall Refuse Them’

The heatwave of 1976. Following the accidental drowning of her sister, sixteen-year-old Nif and her family move to a small village on the Welsh borders to escape their grief. But rural seclusion doesn’t bring any relief. As her family unravels, Nif begins to put together her own form of witchcraft – collecting talismans from the sun-starved land. That is, until she meets Mally, a teen boy who takes a keen interest in her, and has his own secret rites to divulge.

Lucie McKnight Hardy is the debut author of ‘Water Shall Refuse Them’, an atmospheric coming-of-age novel, full of magical suspense.

Tickets cost £5. There will be a bar serving an array of magical potions from 6:45pm – 7pm. Fancy dress is welcomed. For all enquiries please email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk or call our Customer Service Department on 01865 333623.

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.

Pompeii Rediscovered
A talk with Massimo Osanna, Director General, Parco Archeologico di Pompei
Mon 11 Nov, 6.30–7.30pm

This event will be followed by drinks in the museum and a private view of the Last Supper in Pompeii exhibition.

In 2018, two-hundred and seventy years after excavations at Pompeii began, Director General of Pompeii, Professor Massimo Osanna, launched new excavations for conservation and research. Find out more about the amazing discoveries made in this project – from mysterious mosaics to shrines to the gods and even taverns– and learn what they reveal about daily life in Pompeii.

This event was originally scheduled for 31 October but has been moved to this new date.

Booking is essential. Tickets are £25/£22/£20 Full/Concession/Members

Is a parliamentary route to socialism viable? If so why hasn’t it happened already?

Join us for a conversation with Leo Panitch (Professor of Political Science, York University) and Stephen Marks (Policy Officer, Oxford & District Labour Party) about the Labour Party’s electoral successes and challenges in getting socialists elected. What lessons can we draw from recent history? What should the left be doing to get socialists and a socialist government elected?

Chaired by Rabyah Khan (Chair, Oxford & District Labour Party and Labour Council candidate, Carfax & Jericho ward)

FREE ENTRY – Confirm a space so we have an idea of numbers on the night

Suggested donation on the night £2/£5

This workshop explores the themes raised in Professor Iain McLean’s lecture of 12 November: Adam Smith as Jurist.

Workshop Programme

09:25 Welcome and introduction

Denis GALLIGAN, Professor of Socio-Legal Studies Emeritus, University of Oxford and Director of Programmes, Foundation for Law, Justice and Society

09:30–11:00 Session 1

Adam Smith and the Formation of the Scottish Legal Profession

John CAIRNS, Professor of Civil Law, Edinburgh University

Adam Smith, Religious Freedom, and Law

Scot PETERSEN, Bingham Research Fellow in Constitutional Studies, Oxford University

11:00–11:15 Tea and Coffee

11:15–12:45 Session 2

Adam Smith, David Hume, and Edmund Burke: A Common Legal Heritage?

John ADAMS, Chairman, Foundation for Law, Justice and Society and Adjunct Professor in Political Science at Rutgers University

Adam Smith on the Social Foundations of Constitutions

Denis GALLIGAN

12:45–14:00 Lunch

14:00–16:15 Session 3

Justice as Sentiment

Hossein DABBAGH, Philosophy Tutor, Oxford University

Adam Smith: Between Anti-paternalism and Solidarity

Daniel SMILOV, Associate Professor, Political Science, Sofia University

“Pieces upon a Chessboard”: The Man of System in Liberal Constitutionalism

Bogdan IANCU, Associate Professor, Bucharest University

16:15 Concluding Discussion

Grains of Truth? Imagining Londinium
Wed 13 Nov, 1–2pm

With Louise Fowler, from the Museum of London Archaeology

At our Roman Discussion Forum research seminars you can join experts in the field of archaeology and conservation on new discoveries and ideas arising from our current exhibition, Last Supper in Pompeii. The events are organised in association with the Roman Discussion Forum at the University of Oxford’s School of Archaeology.

Places for these seminars are FREE, but places are first-come, first-served, so please arrive early to guarantee your place. It is not possible to book or reserve a place.

www.ashmolean.org/event/roman-discussion-forum-week-5

The Classical Art Research Centre (CARC) welcome Oxford University’s own Dr Llewelyn Morgan to give the 2019 Gandhara Connections Lecture on ‘Heracles’ Track to the Indus: Ancients and Moderns in the Swat Valley’. Dr Morgan is Associate Professor of Classical Languages and Literature and author of The Buddhas of Bamiyan (2012), which reflects his longstanding interest in Graeco-Roman connections with Central Asia and India.

All are welcome to attend and places are free, but please book by emailing us: carc@classics.ox.ac.uk

In this lecture, in honour of Edward Greene, Donald Meek will describe the fascinating process of Gaelic Bible translation in Scotland and Ireland. Beginning with the standard Gaelic Bible, translated between 1767 and 1804, Donald will explain its creation, and its debts to the work of earlier translators and revisers, including the Rev. Robert Kirk of Aberfoyle (who produced ‘Kirk’s Bible in 1690), but pre-eminently to the foundational labours of the translators of the Bible into Classical Gaelic in Ireland in the earlier seventeenth century. Both the principal translators of that period – Bishop William Ó Dómhnaill and Bishop William Bedell – studied at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where they were trained in biblical languages by the first Master of Emmanuel, Lawrence Chadderton. By way of comparison and contrast, brief reference will be made to the somewhat different histories of Bible translation into Manx and Welsh. The lecture will conclude with some discussion of the profound influence of the Gaelic Bible on the development of modern Scottish Gaelic literature, and its enduring legacy

Economic and social historian Professor Sir Roderick Floud talks about gardening as an economic activity – the labour and time it consumes, the trades that provide for it, the output of flowers and vegetables, as well as the origins of the money that financed many great gardens. £5 (members) £8 (guests and non-members) – includes a glass of wine or juice.

Plants & Food Culture in Roman Britain
Wed 20 Nov, 1–2pm

Institute of Archaeology, 36 Beaumont Street, Oxford
With Alexandra Livarda, ICAC, Tarragona

At our Roman Discussion Forum research seminars you can join experts in the field of archaeology and conservation on new discoveries and ideas arising from our current exhibition, Last Supper in Pompeii. The events are organised in association with the Roman Discussion Forum at the University of Oxford’s School of Archaeology.

Places for these seminars are FREE, but places are first-come, first-served, so please arrive early to guarantee your place. It is not possible to book or reserve a place.

www.ashmolean.org/event/roman-discussion-forum-week-6

Pompeii: City of Venus & Bacchus
With Bettany Hughes, broadcaster and historian, and Paul Roberts, Last Supper in Pompeii curator
Tue 26 Nov, 6.30–7.30pm

This event includes a private view of our current exhibition, Last Supper in Pompeii, and will be followed by a drinks reception.

Pompeii was officially dedicated to Venus, Goddess of Love, while Bacchus, God of Wine and Ecstasy, was also hugely popular. Join award-winning historian and broadcaster Bettany Hughes and Exhibition Curator Paul Roberts as they discuss the rich and heady lives of Pompeii’s inhabitants and the deities they adored. This talk coincides with the release of Bettany Hughes’s new book, Venus & Aphrodite – History of a Goddess.

TICKETS: £25/£22/£20 Full, Concession, Members. Booking essential.

Food Remains from Pompeii:
The Difficulties of Reconstructing Diet
Wed 27 Nov, 1–2pm

With Mark Robinson, University of Oxford

At our Roman Discussion Forum research seminars you can join experts in the field of archaeology and conservation on new discoveries and ideas arising from our current exhibition, Last Supper in Pompeii. The events are organised in association with the Roman Discussion Forum at the University of Oxford’s School of Archaeology.

Places for these seminars are FREE, but places are first-come, first-served, so please arrive early to guarantee your place. It is not possible to book or reserve a place.

www.ashmolean.org/event/roman-discussion-forum-week-7

Roman Wine
Wed 4 Dec, 1–2pm

With Andrew Wilson, University of Oxford

At our Roman Discussion Forum research seminars you can join experts in the field of archaeology and conservation on new discoveries and ideas arising from our current exhibition, Last Supper in Pompeii. The events are organised in association with the Roman Discussion Forum at the University of Oxford’s School of Archaeology.

Places for these seminars are FREE, but places are first-come, first-served, so please arrive early to guarantee your place. It is not possible to book or reserve a place.

www.ashmolean.org/event/roman-discussion-forum-week-8

Bomberg and Kitaj – Two Types of Jewish Agony in Paint
With Sir Simon Schama, Art Historian, Author and BBC Presenter

Sat 14 Dec, 12–1pm
Mathematical Institute, Woodstock Road (Venue changed)

Tickets are FREE. Booking is essential:
ashmolean.org/event/beauforest-lecture-2019

Although separated by a generation, artists David Bomberg (b. 1890) and R. B. Kitaj (b.1932) shared a passionate intensity in their work that was marked by their response to the deeply troubled century in which they lived, and in particular, the rise of antisemitism. Learn how both painters expressed the power of art to mirror the darkness of the contemporary world.

This event is the 2019 Beauforest Lecture.
www.ashmolean.org/event/beauforest-lecture-2019

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

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

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

Hear a whole phD in just three minutes!
Can you understand a whole phD in just three minutes? Perhaps you are an Undergraduate or Masters student who is aiming for a future PhD?
Join Humanities and Social Sciences PhD students as we challenge them to boil down their whole PhD to just three minutes and one slide – in a way that makes sense to everyone!

As part of the Think Human Festival held by Oxford Brookes University, a film showing of ‘Life is Wonderful: Mandela’s Unsung Heroes’ is being held. Following the showing there will be a Q&A with a panel that includes the director of the film, Sir Nick Stadlen.

Blackwell’s are honoured to be joined by author and literary critic Sinclair McKay who will be talking about his new book Dresden: The Fire and the Darkness, which commemorates the 75th Anniversary of the bombing of Dresden on February 13th 1945.

Synopsis:

In February 1945 the Allies obliterated Dresden, the ‘Florence of the Elbe’. Bombs weighing over 1,000 lbs fell every seven and a half seconds and an estimated 25,000 people were killed. Was Dresden a legitimate military target or was the bombing a last act of atavistic mass murder in a war already won?From the history of the city to the attack itself, conveyed in a minute-by-minute account from the first of the flares to the flames reaching almost a mile high – the wind so searingly hot that the lungs of those in its path were instantly scorched – through the eerie period of reconstruction, bestselling author Sinclair McKay creates a vast canvas and brings it alive with touching human detail.

Along the way we encounter, among many others across the city, an elderly air-raid warden and his wife vainly striving to keep order amid devouring flames, a doctor who carried on operating while his home was in ruins, novelist Kurt Vonnegut who never thought that his own side might want to unleash the roaring fire, and fifteen-year-old Winfried Bielss, who, having spent the evening ushering refugees, wanted to get home to his stamp collection.

Impeccably researched and deeply moving, McKay uses never-before-seen sources to relate the untold stories of civilians and vividly conveys the texture of contemporary life. Dresden is invoked as a byword for the illimitable cruelties of war, but with the distance of time, it is now possible to approach this subject with a much clearer gaze, and with a keener interest in the sorts of lives that ordinary people lived and lost, or tried to rebuild.

Writing with warmth and colour about morality in war, the instinct for survival, the gravity of mass destruction and the importance of memory, this is a master historian at work.

Sinclair McKay is the bestselling author of The Secret Life of Bletchley Park, The Secret Listeners, Bletchley Park Brainteasers and Secret Service Brainteasers. He is a literary critic for the Telegraph and the Spectator and lives in London.

This event is free, but please do register if you plan on attending. Seats are unallocated. Please be aware that this event will be taking place in the Philosophy Department, which is accessible by a short flight of stairs. For more information, please call our Customer Service Department on 01865 333 623 or email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk

In this book talk, Claas will review central findings of his research on the past 80 years of antibiotic use, resistance, and regulation in food production with introduction by Prof Mark Harrison, Director of Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities.

Mass-introduced after 1945, antibiotics helped revolutionise food production. Farmers and veterinarians used antibiotics to prevent and treat disease, protect plants, preserve food, and promote animals’ growth. Many soon became dependent on routine antibiotic use to sustain and increase production. The resulting growth of antibiotic infrastructures came at a price. Critics blamed antibiotics for leaving dangerous residues in food, enabling bad animal welfare, and selecting for antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in bacteria, which could no longer be treated with antibiotics.

Pyrrhic Progress analyses over 80 years of evolving non-human antibiotic use on both sides of the Atlantic and introduces readers to the historical and current complexities of antibiotic stewardship in a time of rising AMR.

This talk includes a drinks reception and nibbles, all welcome

Professor Michael McCormick will be delivering the 2020 Katritzky Lecture on Monday 17 February at 5:15pm in the Bernard Sunley Lecture Theatre of St Catherine’s College. All are welcome to attend and registration is not required. Tea will be served for attendees at 4:45pm in the Bernard Sunley Lecture Theatre Foyer.

Professor McCormick, who is Francis Goelet Professor of Medieval History at Harvard University, will be speaking on “Climate, History and Change: Reflections on a 21st-century challenge“.

Professor McCormick received his Ph.D. from the Université catholique de Louvain in 1979. He served on the faculty of the Department of History of the Johns Hopkins University from 1979 to 1991, and was Research Associate at Dumbartons Oaks from 1979 to 1987. He came to Harvard in 1991, where he is presently the Francis Goelet Professor of Medieval History and chairs the new University-wide Initiative for the Science of the Human Past at Harvard (SoHP), an interdisciplinary research networks that brings together geneticists, archaeological scientists, climatologists, environmental, computer and information scientists, humanists and social scientists in order to explore great questions of human history from our origins in Africa to our migrations across the globe.

His most recent book is Charlemagne’s Survey of the Holy Land: Wealth, Personnel and Buildings of a Mediterranean Church between Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Dumbarton Oaks-Harvard University Press, 2011).

He is a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America, the American Philosophical Society, the Society of Antiquaries, London, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Corresponding Member of Académies des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres de l’Institut de France, and of the Monumenta Germaniae historica.

He is general editor of the Digital Atlas of Roman and Medieval Civilizations and its innovative free data distribution site. His current research interests focus on developing new archaeological, scientific and textual approaches to the fall of the Roman Empire.

Blackwell’s are delighted to be joined by Petina Gappah to discuss her latest novel, Out of Darkness, Shining Light.

Synopsis

Petina Gappah’s epic journey through nineteenth-century Africa – following the funeral caravan who bore Bwana Daudi’s body – is ‘engrossing, beautiful and deeply imaginative.’ (Yaa Gyasi)

This is the story of the body of Bwana Daudi, the Doctor, the explorer David Livingstone – and the sixty-nine men and women who carried his remains for 1,500 miles so that he could be borne across the sea and buried in his own country.

The wise men of his age say Livingstone blazed into the darkness of their native land leaving a track of light behind where white men who followed him could tread in perfect safety. But in Petina Gappah’s radical novel, it is those in the shadows of history – those who saved a white man’s bones; his dark companions; his faithful retinue on an epic funeral march – whose voices are resurrected with searing intensity.

This final, fateful journey across the African interior is lead by Halima, Livingstone’s sharp-tongued cook, and three of his most devoted servants: Jacob, Chuma and Susi. Their tale of how his corpse was borne out of nineteenth-century Africa – carrying the maps that sowed the seeds of the continent’s brutal colonisation – has the power of myth. It is not only symbolic of slavery’s hypocrisy, but a portrait of a world trembling on the cusp of total change – and a celebration of human bravery, loyalty and love.

Petina Gappah is a Zimbabwean writer with law degrees from Cambridge, Graz University and the University of Zimbabwe. Her short fiction and essays have been published in eight countries. Her debut story collection, An Elegy for Easterly, won the Guardian First Book Award in 2009, and her first novel, The Book of Memory, was longlisted for the 2015 Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction.

This event is free, but please do register if you plan on attending. Please note, this event may take place in the Philosophy Department which is accessible via a short flight of stairs. Seats are unallocated. For more information, please contact our Customer Service Department on 01865 333 623 or email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk

Lecture by Jinny Blom who has created over 250 gardens and landscapes, Laurent-Perrier garden which gained a Gold at Chelsea. Artist in Residence for Chelsea & Westminster Hospital, she is author of The Thoughtful Gardener: An intelligent approach to garden design (2017). Pay at the door; registration not required.

A disciple of Bonnard and Cézanne, Józef Czapski was a Polish painter, author, and critic notable for his singular pursuit of the world around him. He was witness to much of the upheaval of the 20th century. Gain an insight into his approach and his struggles to be true to himself.

The Life and Works of Jozef Czapski (1896–1993)
A Weekday Talk with Eric Karpeles, Author

Tue 25 Feb, 1–2pm
Ashmolean Museum Lecture Theatre

Tickets are: £8 (Full Price) / £7 (Concession) / £6 (Members)
https://www.ashmolean.org/event/the-life-and-works-of-jozef-czapski

A talk on underground in the Roman town of Herculaneum