Some face-to-face events are returning. Check carefully for any requirements.
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
Blackwell’s is thrilled to be welcoming Erling Kagge to discuss his new book ‘Philosophy for Polar Explorers’.
Synopsis
Erling Kagge was the first man in history to reach all of the Earth’s poles by foot – the North, the South, and the summit of Everest. In ‘Philosophy for Polar Explorers’ he brings together the wisdom and expertise he has gained from the expeditions that have taken him to the limits of the earth, and of human endurance.
This is the essential guide to the art of exploration. In sixteen meditative but practical lessons – from cultivating an optimistic outlook, to getting up at the right time, to learning to find focus and comfort in solitude – Erling Kagge reveals what survival in the most extreme conditions can teach us about how to lead a meaningful life. Wherever we may be headed.
Erling Kagge is a Norwegian explorer who was the first in history to reach the ‘three poles’ – North, South and the summit of Everest. He now lives in Oslo where he runs a publishing house. He is the author of multiple books, including ‘Silence’, which is published in 38 languages, and ‘Walking’.
Tickets for this event are £5. Doors will open at 6.45pm when there will be a small bar available to purchase drinks. For more information, please contact our Customer Service Desk on 01865 333 623 or email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk
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.
‘A terrific book, prescient, serious and urgent’ – Amy Liptrot, author of ‘The Outrun’.
About this Event
Blackwell’s is delighted to welcome Julian Hoffman for a lunch time talk, where he will be introducing his book ‘Irreplaceable: The Fight to Save Our Wild Places’, an urgent and lyrical account of endangered places around the globe and the people fighting to save them.All across the world, irreplaceable habitats are under threat. Unique ecosystems of plants and animals are being destroyed by human intervention. From the tiny to the vast, from marshland to meadow, and from Kent to Glasgow to India to America, they are disappearing.
‘Irreplaceable’ is not only a love letter to the haunting beauty of these landscapes and the wild species that call them home, including nightingales, lynxes, hornbills, redwoods and elephant seals, it is also a timely reminder of the vital connections between humans and nature, and all that we stand to lose in terms of wonder and wellbeing. This is a book about the power of resistance in an age of loss; a testament to the transformative possibilities that emerge when people come together to defend our most special places and wildlife from extinction.Exploring treasured coral reefs and remote mountains, tropical jungle and ancient woodland, urban allotments and tallgrass prairie, Julian Hoffman traces the stories of threatened places around the globe through the voices of local communities and grassroots campaigners as well as professional ecologists and academics. And in the process, he asks what a deep emotional relationship with place offers us – culturally, socially and psychologically. In this rigorous, intimate and impassioned account, he presents a powerful call to arms in the face of unconscionable natural destruction.
Join us to learn about the progress being made in biomaterials, the next generation of innovative solutions that aim to tackle current health challenges, and what it takes to start your own venture. The event will feature talks from two prominent individuals, Dr Nick Skaer (CEO of Orthox) and Dr Nick Edwards (Co-Founder of MedInnovate and Chairman of Satie8). Dr Skaer has over 25 years’ experience in life science and materials research, and 14 years as a medtech CEO, raising over £18m. Dr Edwards has over 30 years’ experience in supporting pharmaceutical companies as ex- Global Lead of Accenture’s Pharmaceutical R&D business and current Chairman of Prescient Healthcare Group. He is a Founder of MedInnovate and an investor and supporter of life-science start-ups as well as current Chairman of Satie8.
There will be a networking & drinks reception after the event.
The event is free as always. Spots are limited, so get registered today on:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-next-generation-of-medical-devices-tickets-76955848013
Join us for a weekend of free day time talks as part of the Oxford Think Festival.
About this Event
Saturday 9th – Thursday 21st November
Oxford University Press is delighted to once again partner with Blackwell’s Oxford to host a weekend of talks and discussions and present the Oxford Think Festival.
Celebrating the quest for knowledge and seeking to stimulate discussion of some of the big issues and ideas of our time, the festival brings together some of our most inspiring and exciting minds. Join us for a full weekend of debates and discussion, a preview event with Jon Davis & John Rentoul on the legacy of the Blair government, and a special World Philosophy Day event with Richard Swinburne.
All events are free to attend, but registration is strongly recommended.
Saturday, 16th November, 1pm – Quassim Cassam in conversation with Grant Bartley on ‘Vices of the Mind: From the Intellectual to the Political’
What are ‘vices of the mind’? Why are they important? Quassim Cassam introduces the idea of epistemic vices, character traits that get in the way of knowledge, such as closed-mindedness, intellectual arrogance, wishful thinking, and prejudice. Using examples from politics to illustrate the vices at work, he considers whether we are responsible for such failings, and what we can do about them. Key events such as the 2003 Iraq War and the 2016 Brexit vote, and notable figures including Donald Trump are analysed in detail to illustrate what epistemic vice looks like in the modern world.
Saturday 9th – Thursday 21st November
Oxford University Press is delighted to once again partner with Blackwell’s Oxford to host a weekend of talks and discussions and present the Oxford Think Festival.
Celebrating the quest for knowledge and seeking to stimulate discussion of some of the big issues and ideas of our time, the festival brings together some of our most inspiring and exciting minds. Join us for a full weekend of debates and discussion, a preview event with Jon Davis & John Rentoul on the legacy of the Blair government, and a special World Philosophy Day event with Richard Swinburne.
All events are free to attend, but registration is strongly recommended.
Sunday, 17th November, 1pm – A Biography of Loneliness with Fay Bound Alberti
Despite 21st-century fears of an ‘epidemic’ of loneliness, its history has been sorely neglected. Using letters and diaries, philosophical tracts, political discussions, and medical literature from the eighteenth century to the present, along with informative case studies such as Sylvia Plath, Queen Victoria, and Virginia Woolf, Fay Bound Alberti offers a radically new interpretation of loneliness as an emotional language and experience, and charts its emergence as uniquely modern emotional state.
This is an exclusive event brought to you by the SIU in partnership with the Oxford Pharmacology Society. The application of big data and genomics in healthcare is vast, with tremendous opportunities to revolutionise current methods of diagnosing and treating diseases. Although, patient specific data is a powerful tool that can accelerate the development and translation of novel drugs and therapeutics, there are limitations to overcome. This event will take a closer look at the role of industries, academics, clinicians and healthcare policy makers in encouraging the translation of ideas into real-world solutions and the challenges within each sector. To discuss this, we will be hosting Dr Jeffrey Barrett (CSO and Director of Genomics Plc), Dr Michelle van Velthoven (Sir David Cooksey Fellow in Healthcare Translation at the University of Oxford) and Dr Amitava Banerjee (Associate Professor in Clinical Data Science at University College London).
The event will be on the 20th November at 17h30pm – 19h00, in the Department of Pharmacology. There will be a free networking & drinks reception after the event.
The event is free as always. Spots are limited, so get registered today on https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/pharma-and-big-data-the-healthcare-revolution-tickets-80628276345
World Philosophy Day event – Richard Swinburne in conversation with Richard Marshall on ‘Are We Bodies or Souls?’
About this Event
Saturday 9th – Thursday 21st November
Oxford University Press is delighted to once again partner with Blackwell’s Oxford to host a weekend of talks and discussions and present the Oxford Think Festival.
Celebrating the quest for knowledge and seeking to stimulate discussion of some of the big issues and ideas of our time, the festival brings together some of our most inspiring and exciting minds. Join us for a full weekend of debates and discussion, a preview event with Jon Davis & John Rentoul on the legacy of the Blair government, and a special World Philosophy Day event with Richard Swinburne.
All events are free to attend, but registration is strongly recommended.
Thursday, 21st November, 1pm – Richard Swinburne in conversation with Richard Marshall on ‘Are We Bodies or Souls?’
What are humans? What makes us who we are? Many think that we are just complicated machines, or animals that are different from machines only by being conscious. On World Philosophy Day, join Richard Swinburne, one of the world’s leading philosophers, as he explores what it is to be human. Swinburne comes to the defence of the soul and presents new philosophical arguments that are supported by modern neuroscience. He shows how belief in the human soul is compatible with modern science.
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.
Short Stories Aloud – The most fun you can have in a bookshop on a Tuesday night.
About this Event
Listen to actors read short stories read by our guest authors. This month we are joined by David Constantine, author of ‘The Dressing-Up Box’, and Anna Hope, ‘Expectation’ . After hearing short stories (and eating some cake) there will be questions from Sarah Franklin, author of ‘Shelter’, and the audience. Join us for a wonderful evening, not to be missed.
The Dressing-Up Box by David Constantine
Against the backdrop of war, a group of children barricade themselves in an abandoned townhouse, cherishing what’s left of their innocence with the help of a dressing-up box…
A deep-sea diver takes to being suspended for hours at a time on the end of a line not long enough to reach the seabed…
An aging widower moves into the shed at the end of his garden to plan out his ‘endgame’ surrounded by a lifetime’s worth of hoarded curiosities…
The characters in David Constantine’s fifth collection are all in pursuit of sanctuary; the violence and mendacity of the outside world presses in from all sides – be it the ritualised brutality suffered by children at a Catholic orphanage, or the harrowing videos shared among refugees of an atrocity ‘back home’. In each case, the characters withdraw into themselves, sometimes abandoning language altogether, until something breaks and they can retreat no further. In Constantine’s luminous prose, these stories capture such moments in all their clarity; moments when an entire life seems to hang in the balance, the past’s betrayals exposed, its ghosts dragged out into the daylight; moments in which the possibility of defiance and redemption is everything.
We have an exciting event lined up for you on the 27th of November, 17h30 -20h30 in the Main Seminar Room of the New Biochemistry building in the department of Biochemistry.
This will be an information session about work placements offered by Oxford Nanopore Technology (ONT). ONT aims to disrupt the paradigm of biological analysis by making high performance, novel DNA/RNA sequencing technology that is both accessible and easy to use, supported by the fact that their sequencing devices are now used in 100 countries. And now you have an opportunity to see how the magic happens, with a work placement at ONT!
Work placements are available from 3 months to a year, and are across a range of departments, so if you have a background in science (physics, biology, biochemistry, molecular biology, biophysics, and related fields), engineering, production, informatics and data science, bioinformatics, sales, marketing, and finance, you’re more than welcome to apply.
To apply, please send your CV along with a cover letter to recruitment@nanoporetech.com, detailing your area of interest, the duration of the placement you are seeking and, if you are successful, when will you be available to start.
We are fortunate to be hosting Simon Cowan (commercial operations manager at ONT), John McKendry (Research Scientist at ONT) and Ruth Moysey (Director of Biologics in Advanced Research at ONT) at this event, where they will be able to answer any and all questions you have about the work placement.
There will also be refreshments provided at the event, so go on and sign up for a free ticket now https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/come-work-for-oxford-nanopore-and-take-your-ideas-to-the-moon-and-back-tickets-83184205197?aff=efbeventtix&fbclid=IwAR3LUlZwartH3ZPtzUUOn1hgqJS23rh62ZySNkLDcNMgewWEM6tsQEvBulI
Maya Goodfellow and Alex Niven will be introducing their new books ‘Hostile Environment’ and ‘New Model Island’.
About this Event
Blackwell’s is delighted to welcome Maya Goodfellow and Alex Niven, who will be in conversation together exploring their books ‘Hostile Environment’ and ‘New Model Island’. Focusing on Britain now as we know it, Maya and Alex will be discussing immigration policy, English identity and the need for change.
Synopsis
Hostile Environment – How Immigrants Became Scapegoats
How migrants became the scapegoats of contemporary mainstream politics
The UK government proudly calls the aim of its immigration policy to be the creation of a “hostile environment, ” while refugees drown in the Mediterranean and Britain votes to leave the EU against claims that “swarms”of migrants are entering Britain. Meanwhile, study after study confirms that immigration is not damaging the UK’s economy, nor putting a strain on public services, but immigration is blamed for all of Britain’s ills. Yet concerns about immigration are deemed “legitimate” across the political spectrum, with few exceptions. How did we get here?
Maya Goodfellow offers a compelling answer. Through interviews with leading policy-makers, asylum seekers, and immigration lawyers, Goodfellow illuminates the dark underbelly of contemporary immigration policies. A nuanced analysis of the UK’s immigration policy from the 1960s onwards, Hostile Environment links immigration policy and the rhetoric of both Labour and Tory governments to the UK’s colonial past and its imperialist present. Goodfellow shows that distinct forms of racism and dehumanisation directly resulted from immigration policy, and reminds us of the human cost of concessions to anti-immigration politics.
Join us for a very special evening, as we are joined by Alison Light to discuss her memoir ‘A Radical Romance’.
About this Event
Blackwell’s is delighted to be welcoming Alison Light, who will be discussing her luminous memoir ‘A Radical Romance: A Memoir of Love, Grief and Consolation’ in conversation with Elizabeth Lowry.
Synopsis
Alison Light met the radical social historian, Raphael Samuel, in London in 1986. Twenty years her senior, Raphael was a charismatic figure on the British Left, utterly driven by his work and by a commitment to collective politics. Within a year they were married. Within ten, Raphael would be dead.
Theirs was an attraction of opposites – he from a Jewish Communist family with its roots in Russia and Eastern Europe, she from the English working class. In this chronicle of a passionate marriage, Alison Light peels back the layers of their time together, its intimacies and its estrangements.
She tells of moving into Raphael’s cluttered 18th-century house in Spitalfields and into his equally full, unconventional life; of the whirlwind of change outside their door which brutally transformed London’s old East End districts; of being widowed at 41, and finding inspiration in her friendship with Raphael’s mother. Finally she reflects on the power of mourning and how it shapes a life.
Through its frank and touching account of a marriage between two very different people, it celebrates the capacity we all have to share our lives and to change our selves.
About this Event
Join us for a fascinating lunch-time discussion with author Jane Setter, as we explore her new book ‘Your Voice Speaks Volumes: It’s Not What You Say but How You Say It’.
Why do we speak the way we do, and what do our voices tell others about us? What is the truth behind the myths that surround how we speak? Jane Setter explores these and other fascinating questions in this engaging introduction to the power and the science of the voice.
She will take us on a tour of the sounds in our language and how we produce them, as well as how and why those sounds vary in different varieties of English. The origins of our vast range of accents are explained, along with the prejudices associated with them: why do we feel such loyalty to our own accent, and what’s behind our attitudes to others? We learn that much of what we believe about how we speak may not be true: is it really the case, for instance, that only young people use ‘uptalk’, or that only women use vocal fry? Throughout the talk, Jane Setter draws on examples from the media and from her own professional and personal experience, from her work on the provenance of the terrorist ‘Jihadi John’ to why the Rolling Stones sounded American.
Jane Setter is Professor of Phonetics at the University of Reading and a National Teaching Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy. Professor Setter is a regular commentator in the British media on issues relating to English pronunciation, speech features, and attitudes to accents and appeared as an expert on programmes such as The Alan Titchmarsh Show and Duck Quacks Don’t Echo.
This event is free to attend, please register your attendance in advance. Please note, this talk will be taking place in our Philosophy Department which is accessible via a small set of stairs. For all enquiries please email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk or call our Customer Service Department on 01865 333623.
Description
Blackwell’s is pleased to present it’s monthly series of events, Philosophy in the Bookshop.
As part of this year’s Yule Fest annual celebration at Blackwell’s, Philosopher Stephen Law will give a solo talk on his new best-selling book, ‘What Am I Doing with my Life?’
Millions of people ask Google all sorts of questions, everything from the big and small.
Responding to the biggest, existential questions asked online and using the wisdom of Plato, Kant, Kierkegaard and other philosophical greats philosopher, academic, and all-round polymath, Stephen Law, undertakes the challenge and explores our modern-day concerns with tongue-in-cheek sagacity.
No matter what you’ve googled in a midnight moment of existential despair, this book will answer all your burning questions.
This talk is free to attend and will take place in the Philosophy department. (Please note: There is limited access to this area of the shop. Please call 01865 333623 with an enquiries)
Blackwell’s Oxford Broad Street’s annual festive celebration weekend, full of free author event talks.
About this Event
To launch the start of the festive season, Blackwell’s is delighted to announce our annual Yule Fest event, featuring a line-up of superb authors who will be joining us across the weekend on Saturday 7th and Sunday 8th December. Our guest speakers will be introducing their books throughout the day in free 45 minute talks, followed by a signing after offering the opportunity to purchase a special signed book. Booksellers will be spreading the festive cheer with complimentary mince pies alongside offering support to help you find the perfect Christmas present.
Register
Event Information
Blackwell’s Oxford Broad Street’s annual festive celebration weekend, full of free author event talks.
About this Event
To launch the start of the festive season, Blackwell’s is delighted to announce our annual Yule Fest event, featuring a line-up of superb authors who will be joining us across the weekend on Saturday 7th and Sunday 8th December. Our guest speakers will be introducing their books throughout the day in free 45 minute talks, followed by a signing after offering the opportunity to purchase a special signed book. Booksellers will be spreading the festive cheer with complimentary mince pies alongside offering support to help you find the perfect Christmas present.
5:30 pm – Philip Gooden ‘Bad Words’
Once upon a time, the worst words you could utter were short, simple and tended to be four letters in length. Now things are more complicated. To be insulted as a ‘snowflake’ or an ‘expert’ is arguably worse than being called a **** or a **** or even a ****.
So what are today’s ‘bad words’ and how are they different from yesterday’s taboo expressions? This entertaining guide to the shifting sands of bad language is indispensable in an increasingly divided world in which abuse becomes ever more widespread and vituperative.
Philip Gooden shows how and why taboo words and contentious expressions, including those four-letter ones, were first used in English. He discusses the ways such words have changed over the years and explores how a single syllable or two may possess an almost magical power to offend, distress or infuriate.
Bad Words investigates the most controversial and provocative words in the English language in a way that is both anecdotal and analytical. Combining intrigue and scandal, the book delves into expressions connected to religion, ethnicity, nationality, politics, swearing and oaths, and includes contemporary issues like political correctness and elitism.
Blackwell’s Oxford Broad Street’s annual festive celebration weekend, full of free author event talks.
About this Event
To launch the start of the festive season, Blackwell’s is delighted to announce our annual Yule Fest event, featuring a line-up of superb authors who will be joining us across the weekend on Saturday 7th and Sunday 8th December. Our guest speakers will be introducing their books throughout the day in free 45 minute talks, followed by a signing after offering the opportunity to purchase a special signed book. Booksellers will be spreading the festive cheer with complimentary mince pies alongside offering support to help you find the perfect Christmas present.
12pm – Bookseller Recommendations
Join our booksellers as we explore our favourite books that have been released this Christmas and make our top tip suggestions on the perfect books to give as a present.
Blackwell’s Oxford Broad Street’s annual festive celebration weekend, full of free author event talks.
About this Event
To launch the start of the festive season, Blackwell’s is delighted to announce our annual Yule Fest event, featuring a line-up of superb authors who will be joining us across the weekend on Saturday 7th and Sunday 8th December. Our guest speakers will be introducing their books throughout the day in free 45 minute talks, followed by a signing after offering the opportunity to purchase a special signed book. Booksellers will be spreading the festive cheer with complimentary mince pies alongside offering support to help you find the perfect Christmas present.
1:30 pm – Gavin Prector-Pinney ‘A Cloud A Day’
The stresses of the digital world mean that it’s more important than ever to engage with the natural world. And no matter where you are, looking up at the clouds is good for the soul. The sky is the most dramatic and evocative aspect of nature. Ever-changing and ephemeral, clouds reflect the shifting moods of the atmosphere in limitless compositions and combinations.
Gavin Pretor-Pinney started the Cloud Appreciation Society in 2005. Since then, he’s been encouraging people to ‘look up, marvel at the ephemeral beauty, and always remember to live life with your head in the clouds.’ Membership to the Society now includes over 47,000 cloudspotters. Together, they capture and share the most remarkable skies, from sublime thunderstorms and perfect sunsets to hilarious clouds that look like things.
2 pm – Christina Hardyment ‘Novel Houses’
Novel Houses visits unforgettable dwellings in twenty legendary works of English and American fiction. Each chapter stars a famous novel in which a dwelling is pivotal to the plot, and reveals how personally significant that place was to the writer who created it.
We discover Uncle Tom’s Cabin’s powerful influence on the American Civil War, how essential 221B Baker Street was to Sherlock Holmes and the importance of Bag End to the adventuring hobbits who called it home. It looks at why Bleak House is used as the name of a happy home and what was on Jane Austen’s mind when she worked out the plot of Mansfield Park. Little-known background on the dwellings at the heart of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast and Stella Gibbon’s Cold Comfort Farm emerges, and the real life settings of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and E.M. Forster’s Howards End, so fundamental to their stories, are shown to relate closely to their authors’ passions and preoccupations.
A winning combination of literary criticism, geography and biography, this is an entertaining and insightful celebration of beloved novels and the extraordinary role that houses grand and small, imagined and real, or unique and ordinary, play in their continuing popularity.
3 pm – Mark Dredge ‘A Brief History of Lager’
Join us as we welcome Mark Dredge who will be exploring the history of Lager, whilst handing out complimentary larger to sample!
In this fascinating book, beer expert Mark Dredge dives into the history of lager, from how it was first brewed to what role was played by German monks and kings in the creation of the drink we know so well today. From the importance of 500-year-old purity laws to a scrupulously researched exploration of modern beer gardens (it’s a hard life), Mark has delved deep into the story of the world’s favourite beer.
From 16th Century Bavaria to the recent popularity of specialist craft lagers, ‘A Brief History of Lager’ is an engaging and informative exploration of a classic drink.
Mark Dredge is a beer, food and travel writer and a beer expert. He is the author of He has written numerous articles on the topic, and has appeared on Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch to share his knowledge. He has won many awards for his work, including the British Guild of Beer Writers’ Beer and Food Writer of the Year Award in 2016, 2014, 2013 and 2011.
4pm – Mo Moulton ‘Mutual Admiration Society: How Dorothy L. Sayers and Her Oxford Circle Remade the World for Women’
In 1912, Dorothy L. Sayers and five friends founded a writing group at Somerville College, Oxford; they dubbed themselves the ‘Mutual Admiration Society.’ Brilliant, bold, serious, and funny, these women were also sheltered and chaperoned, barred from receiving degrees despite taking classes and passing exams. But things for women were changing – they gained the right to vote and more access to the job market. And in October 1920, members of the Mutual Admiration Society returned to Oxford to receive full degrees, among the first women to be awarded such honours.
Sayers and her classmates remained lifelong friends and collaborators as they battled for a truly democratic culture that acknowledged their equal humanity. They pushed boundaries in reproductive rights, sexual identity, queer family making, and representations of women in the arts – despite the casual cruelty of sexism that still limited women’s choices. Historian Mo Moulton brings these six indomitable women to vivid life, as they navigate the complexities of adulthood, work, intimacy, and sex in Interwar England.
A celebration of feminism and female friendship, ‘Mutual Admiration Society’ reveals how Sayers and the members of MAS reshaped the social order – and how, together, they fought their way into a new world for women.
Description
‘Philosophy in the Bookshop’ is our free monthly event that takes place on the first Saturday of every month. Public Philosopher, Author and host, Nigel Warburton interviews a different speaker about their chosen topic in our Philosophy Department. This month, Nigel is in conversation with Jonathan Reé about his book, ‘Witcraft’
‘We English men have wits,’ wrote the clergyman Ralph Lever in 1573, and, ‘we have also framed unto ourselves a language.’
Witcraft is a fresh and brilliant history of how philosophy became established in English. It presents a new form of philosophical storytelling and challenges what Jonathan Rée calls the ‘condescending smugness’ of traditional histories of philosophy. Rée tells the story of philosophy as it was lived and practised, embedded in its time and place, by men and women from many walks of life, engaged with the debates and culture of their age. And, by focusing on the rich history of works in English, including translations, he shows them to be quite as colourful, diverse, inventive and cosmopolitan as their continental counterparts.
Witcraft overturns the established orthodoxies of the history of philosophy, and celebrates the diversity, vitality and inventiveness of philosophical thought.
Organised by Oxford Civic Society @oxcivicsoc. Dr Matt Perkins, CEO of Oxford University Innovation, describes how Oxford University’s technology and research commercialisation company has helped launch over 150 spinout companies.. https://www.oxcivicsoc.org.uk/programme/
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.
Unleash your inner witch or wizard as you venture into H-ox-warts – a magical place filled with fantastic beasts, ingenious puzzles and creative workshops. Create lumos wands with some simple circuitry and elec-trickery, magic up some musical code, and dissect owl pellets. Alohomora – or unlock – the Exploration Zone, where our house elves are on-hand to help as you complete the challenges – listen to music through your teeth, turn temperature into colour, and play Guess What with dragon poo. If you dare, venture into the forbidden woodlands in search of the Quidditch pitch and elusive golden snitch… and don’t forget to accio – or summon – a free colour-changing cocktail at the bar!
A great science-themed evening for grown-up muggles and mudbloods everywhere. Wizarding outfits are encouraged. Held in celebration of Harry Potter Book Night on (7th February).