What is the social responsibility of the sciences? In recent times, ethical conflicts surrounding race, gender, and the natural sciences have surfaced again. A recent editorial in Nature defending memorials to J. Marion Sims, who experimented on enslaved black women, and Thomas Parran, who oversaw the Tuskegee syphilis study, led to widespread criticism. How should STEM scholars incorporate questions of social justice and ethical responsibility into their research and teaching?

Join us for a pre-dinner conversation on these issues. Cedric Tan, a biologist and college lecturer at Wadham, will present on „Shying or crying: a personal experience on communicating sensitive issues in biology (same-sex behaviour, trophy hunting and illegal logging)” and Juliane Borchert, DPhil candidate in physics will explore the controversy surrounding indigenous rights and the construction of the Thirty Metre Telescope on Mauna Kea.

The Oxford constituency of the Spanish Researchers in the United Kingdom (SRUK) is holding a discussion panel entitled “Women in science and the glass ceiling” where three invited speakers will give a short talk about the topic, followed by a discussion where the attendees can actively participate.

The invited experts will highlight how the world of science needs to become accessible for everyone, women and girls. The discussion will cover the earlier stages of education, where children become interested in science, to the later stages of the scientific career, where excellent science and innovation require the talents of both women and men. We will evaluate why women’s progress in research is slow and why there are too few female scientists occupying top positions in scientific decision-making, limiting the important potential of highly skilled human capital.

The event will take place on the 18th of November at the The Jam Factory (Hollybush Row, Oxford, OX1 1HU) and it will start at 10:30AM.

This is a free event and open to the public, but registration is needed via Eventbrite.

The annual Nabeel Hamdi Lecture, presented by CENDEP and the Oxford Human Rights Festival. Emeritus Professor Nabeel Hamdi is the founder of the MA in Development and Emergency Practice and long term director of CENDEP and one of the most distinguished academics in our field. On his retirement from Oxford Brookes he set up the Nabeel Hamdi Lecture Series. We are honoured to welcome human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell to deliver this year’s lecture.

Peter Tatchell discusses the flaws and limits of international human rights law in relation to the conflict in Syria. He will look at some of the options that could have been used to defuse the war and save lives, but were not actioned by the UN or any countries. This failure points to the need to reform international human rights law and create improved mechanisms for its enforcement.

Our Marriages: When Lesbians Marry Gay Men 奇缘一生 —Documentary Screening and Talk with Director He Xiaopei and Dr Bao Hongwei

The Oxford Chinese Studies Society welcomes all to an exclusive screening and discussion of “Our Marriage: When Lesbians Marry Gay Men” with Director He Xiaopei and Dr Bao Hongwei.

How do gays and lesbians negotiate their social identities in postsocialist China? Are the so-called “fake marriages 形式婚姻” between them a pragmatic choice made out of social pressure or a queering act of subversion against the traditional institution of marriage? How do these phenomena tie into China’s revolutionary past and connect to Asia’s current wave of gay marriage legalisation and rising pink economy? These are the questions provoked by Dr. He Xiaopei’s documentary Our Marriage.

“The film, Our Marriage, is an exploration of the lives of four lesbians who decided to marry gay men in order to secretly pursue their relationships with their girlfriends and at the same time fulfil their families’ deep-seated desire that they get married. The sense of respect and responsibility that the marriage partners feel towards their parents, and the avoidance of social ridicule and tricky questions about their child’s sexuality, also play a large role in their decision to stage elaborate and glamorous sham ceremonies…In China, as one of the women in the documentary explained, nobody is allowed to be single. Whilst a burgeoning lesbian social scene is becoming more visible in large cities, heteronormative attitudes force people, heterosexual and homosexual alike, into marriages which they would rather avoid. Marriage can provide social acceptance, but it also gives you certain economic benefits such as access to social housing. Whilst homosexuality is not illegal in China there are no plans to introduce same sex marriage. Activists like He have argued against campaigns for same sex marriage suggesting that the institution of marriage itself should be challenged as it supports patriarchal norms and is detrimental to all people, whether they are gay, straight or bisexual.” — Kate Hawkins, Sexuality and Development Programme International Advisory Group

This event will be of interest to those of you who work on Chinese society, queer studies, film studies, as well as gender studies. The documentary is 45 minutes long, followed a brief talk on queer filmmaking and LGBT activism in China by Dr Bao Hongwei from the University of Nottingham, and then both of them will engage in audience Q & A and discussions.

Speaker biography:
Dr He Xiaopei completed a PhD at the University of Westminster in 2006, titled ‘I am AIDS: Living with the Epidemic in China’. She co-founded an NGO called the Pink Space Sexuality Research Centre in Beijing to promote sexual rights and sexual pleasure among people who are oppressed.

Dr Hongwei Bao is Assistant Professor in Media Studies at the University of Nottingham, UK. He holds a PhD in Gender Studies and Cultural Studies from the University of Sydney, Australia. His research primarily focuses on gay identity and queer politics in contemporary China. He is author of Queer Comrades: Gay Identity and Tongzhi Activism in Postsocialist China (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, forthcoming in 2018).

A free lecture by Robert O. Ritchie of Lawrence Berkeley (USA). Free pre-lecture drinks and nibbles and free post-lecture buffet and drinks (please email lorraine.laird@materials.ox.ac.uk to reserve a place). Abstract:
The ability of a material to undergo limited deformation is a critical aspect of conferring toughness as this feature enables the local dissipation of high stresses which would otherwise cause fracture. The mechanisms of such deformation can be widely diverse. Although plasticity from dislocation motion in crystalline materials is most documented, inelastic deformation can also occur via in situ phase transformations in certain metals and ceramics, sliding of mineralized collagen fibrils in tooth dentin and bone, rotation of such fibrils in skin, frictional motion between mineral “platelets” in seashells, and even by mechanisms that also lead to fracture such as shear banding in glasses and microcracking in geological materials and bone. Resistance to fracture (toughness) is thus a compromise – a combination of two, often mutually exclusive, properties of strength and deformability. It can also be considered as a mutual competition between intrinsic damage processes that operate ahead of the tip of a crack to promote its advance and extrinsic crack-tip shielding mechanisms that act mostly behind the crack tip to locally diminish crack-tip stresses and strains. Here we examine the interplay between strength and ductility and between intrinsic and extrinsic mechanisms in developing toughness in a range of biological and natural materials, including bone, skin and fish scales, and in certain advanced metallic alloys, including bulk-metallic glasses and high-entropy alloys.

It seems like everywhere we look computers are running more and more of the world around us. In healthcare, we have seen an astounding level of hype surrounding the use of artificial intelligence in image recognition, personalised treatment, form filling in and diagnostic technologies. What are the potential applications for AI in health and life sciences, but also the barriers to its adoption and practical implementation?

Further information and registration: https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/event/2521

Dr. Michael Foale CBE is a British/American astronaut, veteran of six space missions, and the only NASA astronaut to have flown extended missions aboard both the Russian Mir and International Space Stations. He was the first Briton to perform a space walk, and until 17 April 2008, he held the record for most time spent in space by a US citizen: 374 days, 11 hours, 19 minutes. He still holds the cumulative-time-in-space record for a UK citizen. In 1997 Mike was on board Mir with two other cosmonauts when it was hit by a supply craft – the worst collision in the history of spaceflight. It sent the space station tumbling out of control and left the team without power and contact with Earth. Come and hear the story of how events unfolded at this unique event and how Mike used his unique skills to save Mir from disaster.

We hope you had a good start of the week. We would like to introduce next week’s event: “Life Lessons of a Christian Scholar: Things I Have Learned from Working 45 Years in Cancer and Palliative Care”

In this reflective talk, retired nurse and clinical specialist Ginny Dunn will speak to us about her experiences of caring for cancer patients and their families, from diagnosis through death and the grieving process. Throughout her career, in four different countries (USA, Canada, UK, and Ireland) and across more than 45 years, she has helped both cancer patients and their medical staff to confront issues around pain and dying. She has also co-written a book on the topic, Alongside the Person in Pain: Holistic Care and Nursing Practice. Finally, Ginny studied theology while on sabbatical at Regent College in Vancouver, where she met her husband, Nigel Biggar, a professor of moral theology at Christ Church, Oxford.

As a committed Christian, having practised and researched in this field, Ginny has found her work important and challenging and hopes to share some of the insights she has gained with us on Monday night.

The World Health Organization identifies antibiotic resistance as a global challenge so serious that it threatens the fundamental achievement of modern medicine. Looking at human use and the use of antibiotics in meat production – what can we do to stimulate research into new antibiotics and to regulate the current use of antibiotics? How does collective responsibility and its ethical implications play its part?

Part of the Hilary Term Lecture Series Health:fresh perspectives”

For further information and registration: https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/event/2524

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

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

Event format:

Interactive panel discussion

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

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

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

Mental health, like other areas of medicine, is set to benefit from dramatic advances in the biological and medical sciences – yet values (what matters or is important to those concerned) are key to the differentiation between pathological delusions and positive spiritual experiences. The discussion will explore, from both philosophical and medical perspectives, how values and science come together in mental health indicating, in particular, the role of cultural values in how delusions are experienced and hence how they impact on the lives of those concerned.

Workshop on the theory and practice of compassion by Emma Slade, a Buddhist nun living in Bhutan.

A lecture on compassion by Alexander Norman, the author of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama biographies and the President of Help Tibet.

In conjunction with the 16th Annual Oxford Human Rights Festival, Oxford Community-led Housing* research project is organising a session on “Identity and [Affordable] Housing”, with a focus on self-build housing. The session will screen the BBC documentary ‘The House that Mum and Dad Built’ (1982), that captures the stories of families involved in the first Walter Segal self-build project, Segal Close. The project, a collaboration between local authority, self-builders and local community, highlights a strong theme that promotes self-empowerment through building one’s own home, and alleviating poverty through the process.

The film screening will be followed by a diverse and interactive panel discussion session with experienced speakers including Professor Nabeel Hamdi, one of the pioneers in participatory planning and author of “Small Change”, Lesley Dewhurst, CEO of Restore Oxford and former Cheif Executive of Oxford Homeless Pathways, and others.

Join us in the much needed discussion to highlight that affordable, self and secure housing is a basic human right. The session will also highlight the role of community-led housing in alleviating poverty, promoting self-empowerment, and hopefully together, we can gain a deeper understanding of how alternative options to Oxford’s unaffordable rents, poor housing conditions and lack of control in one’s living condition can make significant changes.

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

To celebrate the European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018, Master of St Cross Carole Souter and Alfredo Pérez de Armiñán, President of Patrimonio Nacional, will be talking about the challenges faced by the preservation of heritage, both in Spain and in England.

Patrimonio Nacional is the Spanish entity that manages 19 palaces – among them the Royal Palace of Madrid – and royal foundation monasteries, as well as 135,000 works of art and 21,000 hectares of parks, mountains and gardens. One of the greatest challenges entrusted to its president has been the new Museum of Royal Collections, considered the most important State museum project in recent decades in Spain.

Alfredo Pérez de Armiñán has been president of the Patrimonio Nacional Board since 2015. Before that, he was Deputy General Director of Culture of UNESCO and has held different public positions in the field of Spanish cultural heritage.

Carole Souter is the current Master of St Cross College, and has also held important positions in the field of cultural heritage, as Chief Executive of the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Heritage Lottery Fund, and is currently a Trustee of Historic Royal Palaces and Chair of the Board of Visitors of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

After a short introduction to the session’s four sub-topics; custom-splitting, Oxford Community-Led Housing’s research project, co-housing and Homemaker Oxford; an interactive discussion will involve participants in the discussion of how we can work with housing providers to enable delivery of alternative housing models like community-led housing in and around Oxford.

The session is designed to engage with those who are housing providers (both small and large scale), or have the potential to provide housing, in and around the city of Oxford. What barriers, if any, do these groups and individuals experience when thinking about or actively engaging in community-led housing projects? Further, what can Oxford Community-Led Housing and similar groups do to break down these barriers and engage with housing deliverers to provide alternative housing models like community-led housing as a viable, sustainable and affordable housing model in Oxford?

Kailash: A Participant Media and Concordia Studio Screening

As a young man Kailash Satyarthi promised himself that he would end child slavery in his lifetime. In the decades since, he has rescued more than eighty thousand children and built a global movement. From producers Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth, He Named Me Malala), Sarah Anthony and rising director Derek Doneen comes Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winner Kailash, a suspenseful yet intimate look at one man’s groundbreaking crusade to liberate every child possible. This kinetic journey through secret raids and quests for missing kids shows how refusing to accept an unacceptable status quo can create sweeping change. Gripping as it is, the film is also the story of spirited children who, released from a nightmare, latch onto a second chance. It is the kids Kailash rescues who prove the absolute necessity of what he does: giving hope to the world one child at a time.

Q&A to follow featuring:

Kailash Satyarthi, 2014 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and Child Rights Activist

Nina Smith, Chief Executive Officer, GoodWeave International

Holly Gordon, Chief Impact Officer, Participant Media (moderator)

Seating is first-come, first-served. The film screening is free of charge and open to the public. No ticket is required.

In this age of so-called ‘Fake News’, a concept promoted in Tweets from the White House, seized on by conspiracy theories, and threatening to undermine the democratic process, the trustworthiness of our journalists has never before been so important.

Alessandra Galloni is Reuters Global News Editor, based in London, appointed in January 2016. She joined Reuters in September 2013 as Editor of the Southern Europe bureau, after spending 13 years at The Wall Street Journal in various positions as correspondent, economics and business writer and editor in New York, London, Paris and Rome. She has won several awards, including an Overseas Press Club Award in the US and a UK Business Journalist of the Year Award for her coverage of the Parmalat corporate scandal. She is co-author of From the End of the Earth to Rome, an e-book on Pope Francis. An Italian national, Ms Galloni is a graduate of Harvard University (1991-1995) and has a Masters degree from the London School of Economics (2002).

UN concern to restore trust in news was expressed through a joint declaration from the Office of the High Commission on Human Rights last year, co-authored by the Freedom of Expression rapporteurs of the OHCHR, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Organisation of American States, and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights. The report is on-line at http://www.ohchr.org/_layouts/15/WopiFrame.aspx?sourcedoc=/Documents/Issues/Expression/JointDeclaration3March2017.doc&action=default&DefaultItemOpen=1

Ms Galloni’s talk is part of the series of lunchtime discussions held every term by the Oxford branch of the United Nations Association UK. This is a free event and members of the public are welcome to attend. Refreshments are available from 12.30pm.

The photo of Ms Galloni was taken by Mikhail Metzel for GettyImages.

Geoengineering, the practice of artificially altering the climate, has long been a contentious topic. Its attractiveness to scientists and policy makers who aim to engineer alternative solutions to mitigate the dangers of climate change is often met with economic, social and even ethical concerns.

This seminar looks to explore arguments for and against the implementation of geoengineering. What are the economic, social and environmental implications of proposed schemes? Can we afford not to employ them? Is geoengineering ethical? Does it work and if so, is it possible to reach the targets set out in the Paris agreement without it? These are just some of the topics we hope to investigate.

The talk will he chaired by Professor Rosalind Rickaby. The panel consists of Mr Tim Kruger, James Martin Fellow and Dr Phil Renforth, Lecturer in Engineering Geology at Cardiff University. A further two panellists will be released shortly.
https://www.facebook.com/events/1987490278167428/

Speaker: Carlo van de Weijer

Digitisation has entered the mobility arena. The car has evolved from a mechanical device into a “data producing embedded software platform”, and the internet is quickly linking the supply and demand to effectively fulfil our transport needs. And just like every industry that is confronted with digitisation, the changes come faster than most traditional players can prepare for. Yet, with all unpredictability that comes along with disruption there are some fixed rules that one can prepare for. This makes mobility a real example of an industry in the midst of disruption. Carlo van de Weijer will highlight the most important future trends within mobility, from uberization to self driving vehicles, electrification and the impact on cities and society.

As part of Think Human Festival, this one-off pop-up event is a unique opportunity for visitors of all ages to interact with leading academics from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Oxford Brookes University. The academics will act as ‘human books’ from a range of perspectives; historic, literary, political, legal and educational for 15 minutes per ‘book loan’ against the back drop of revolution. ‘RESIST! REMAIN!’ will provide the chance to engage with and access humanities and social science disciplines in a fun, original and inspiring way, and aims to create a lasting impression of how these subjects can help to understand what it is to be human.

Please note that this event is free, open to all ages and there is no need to book ahead. Please come to Bonn Square and start a interesting conversation around revolution!

You are a German citizen living under the Nazi regime led by Adolf Hitler—do you resist or comply? Featuring dramatic monologues and explanatory interludes this event introduces the audience to two real-life historical characters: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Christian theologian, and Adolf Eichmann, a member of the Nazi bureaucracy.

Bonhoeffer was executed in 1945, having served time in prison for his staunch opposition to Nazism. Eichmann was executed in 1962 in Israel for helping to organise the deportation of Jews to killing centres and sites during the Holocaust. We meet both men during their time in captivity and watch as they ponder their actions and seek to make sense of the horrors unleashed by the Nazis.

Bonhoeffer is clearly a good man. But what was it that inspired his heroic resistance to the Nazis—why, when so many other Christians chose not to act, did he put his life on the line? Eichmann is clearly a villain. And yet, as he himself protested, he was only doing his job. He followed rather than made orders and he was not directly responsible for the death of anyone. Is he, as the philosopher Hannah Arendt once argued, a terrifying instance of “the banality of evil?”

Based on the writings of Bonhoeffer and the records of the police and court interrogations of Eichmann, this event offers a unique portrait of good and evil during one of the darkest moments of the twentieth century.

Join Transition by Design & guests for an interactive session on green building and sustainable architecture. A short panel discussion with experts on planning, building, managing and living in low-impact housing will be followed by an interactive Q&A for anyone who is interested in or currently building, renovating, converting or extending their home.

The panel will include experts on Passivhaus, low-carbon materials and energy efficiency as well as co-housing, cooperatives and other alternative models of housing.

We’ll discuss how your house interacts with the environment around it, what questions to ask if you’re planning a build, the latest materials and technologies for low-impact design and what the current opportunities are in Oxford for community housing, self build, cooperatives and other alternative models of housing that put people and the planet before profit.

Do you want to learn about artificial intelligence? Have you been put off by technical jargon or fears of terminator robots?

Come along to this evening course for beginners run by the AI consultancy Oxford Insights.

No previous experience or knowledge of AI is required.

The course will cover important definitions, developments and debates in AI today, to help you answer three questions:

what is AI?

who is doing what?

why should we care?

Our teachers are AI experts and great communicators who will bring technical discussions to life.

This will be a small group to leave space for lots of discussion. We are charging the very low introductory price of £15 for this evening only!

Do you want to learn about artificial intelligence? Have you been put off by technical jargon or fears of terminator robots?

Come along to this evening course for beginners run by the AI consultancy Oxford Insights.

No previous experience or knowledge of AI is required.

The course will cover important definitions, developments and debates in AI today, to help you answer three questions:

what is AI?

who is doing what?

why should we care?

Our teachers are AI experts and great communicators who will bring technical discussions to life.

This will be a small group to leave space for lots of discussion. We are charging the very low introductory price of £15 for this evening only!

Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) offer the opportunity to control devices directly with the brain. Brain-controlled devices can return communication to those without speech, memory function to those with hippocampus damage, while prosthetic limbs controlled via the brain continue to develop at a pace. In the future, these technologies may also open doors to enhancements of the scope of human abilities beyond that which we generally expect.
This panel explores the state of the art in BCIs: What ethical issues arise with these technologies? How ought they to be understood, in terms of personal identity, or moral responsibility? Extending into the future, how might BCIs feature in human enhancement? Based in what we know already, we will set out to speculate about ‘beyond the horizon’, emerging BCI technologies and how to prepare for them.

Professor Julian Savulescu, Professor Dominic Wilkinson

What should happen when doctors and parents disagree about what would be best for a child? When should courts become involved? Should life support be stopped against parents’ wishes? The case of Charlie Gard reached global attention in 2017. It led to widespread debate about the ethics of disagreements between doctors and parents, about the place of the law in such disputes, and about the variation in approach between different parts of the world.

Profs Dominic Wilkinson and Julian Savulescu will present the key themes of their new book which critically examines the core ethical questions at the heart of disputes about medical treatment for children. They will review prominent cases of disagreement from the UK and internationally and analyse some of the distinctive and challenging features around treatment disputes in the 21st century, and outline a radical new framework for future cases of disagreement around the care of gravely ill people.

There will be an opportunity for group discussion of the general themes.

Dr Marwa Al-Sabouni considers the impact of conflict on urban environments, and the opportunity to rethink the colonist-imposed town planning of her home city of Homs, which cut off neighbourhoods and replaced courtyard houses with concrete towers.
Marwa believes this breakdown in social cohesion created conditions for armed conflict. Her hope is that architecture and rebuilding can play an essential role in strengthening communities – and in healing the Syrian people.
Marwa won a UN-Habitat competition for her proposal for the rebuilding of Baba Amr, and is the author of The Battle of Home: The Memoir of a Syrian Architect.
This is the 2018 Nabeel Hamdi lecture. Nabeel founded the MA in Development and Emergency Practice at Oxford Brookes.

Dr Marwa Al-Sabouni considers the impact of conflict on urban environments, and the opportunity to rethink the colonist-imposed town planning of her home city of Homs, which cut off neighbourhoods and replaced courtyard houses with concrete towers.

Marwa believes this breakdown in social cohesion created conditions for armed conflict. Her hope is that architecture and rebuilding can play an essential role in strengthening communities – and in healing the Syrian people.

Marwa won a UN-Habitat competition for her proposal for the rebuilding of Baba Amr, and is the author of The Battle of Home: The Memoir of a Syrian Architect.

This is the 2018 Nabeel Hamdi lecture. Nabeel founded the MA in Development and Emergency Practice at Oxford Brookes.