Evidence from around the world indicates that culture can influence people’s vulnerability to climate variability and natural hazards, because expressions of culture include behaviour that results in exposure and sensitivity to hazards. Most studies have characterised this as a barrier to risk reduction, and few (none) have offered any suggestions for how to move beyond it, because of the ethical dilemma posed by influencing others’ beliefs for the purpose of reducing risk. At the same time, studies have documented people overcoming cultural taboos in the face of climate variability and natural hazards, including abandoning strict social structures, and conforming to parallel and occasionally contradictory belief systems as a way to overcome culturally imposed restrictions on behaviour. This lecture presents examples from around the world, and focuses on the question: What conditions would facilitate a shift in worldview to incorporate a risk reduction? Who’s understanding of risk is ‘correct’? And if perceptions of what reality are culturally-defined, does this mean that there is such a thing as ‘alternative facts’?

Dr Lisa Schipper is a Research Associate at the Overseas Development Institute. Her research specialty is adaptation and socio-cultural vulnerability to climate change and natural hazards. The context for nearly all of her work has been smallholder or subsistence agriculture in poor communities in Southeast and South Asia, Central and South America, and East Africa.

Abstract: This presentation will consider the ethical dimensions of Brexit. Specifically the case will be made that there are profound ethical questions posed by Brexit that have not properly been considered. The focus of the public debate has been largely on the pragmatic, economic and political reasons for and against Brexit. It is important to supplement these with a consideration of the ethical questions raised by it. In a book he edited entitled Political Restructuring in Europe: Ethical Perspectives (1994) Chris Brown made a case for constitutive theory as a way of approaching the ethical issues involved in proposals for restructuring Europe in the wake of the break-up of Yugoslavia. In this talk his analysis will be extended, illustrating how constitutive theory produces surprising, enlightening and important results that have so far been absent from the debate. The insights point to a set of political imperatives that ought not to be ignored.

Mervyn Frost is Professor of International Relations in the Department of War Studies at King’s College, London. Publications include: Towards a Normative Theory of International Relations (CUP, 1986), Ethics in International Relations (CUP, 1996), Constituting Human Rights: Global Civil Society and the Society of Democratic States (Routledge, 2002) and Global Ethics: Anarchy, Freedom and International Relations (Routledge, 2009). He edited a 4 volume reference work entitled International Ethics (Sage 2011). His recent work, with Dr Silviya Lechner, is focused on the “practice turn” in International Relations. Their book Practice Theory and International Relations is to be published by CUP in 2018.

Katharine Hayhoe has been named one of FORTUNE’s ‘World’s Greatest Leaders’, TIME’s ‘100 Most Influential People’ and Huffington Post’s ‘20 Climate Champions’, and has shared the stage with Barack Obama and Leonardo DiCaprio to talk about climate change.

She is a climate scientist and a Christian based in Texas and has pioneered a way of talking about climate change that truly engages people as human beings and reaches even the most resistant of audiences.

Katharine’s approach is patient and compassionate and modeled after conversations she had with her husband, a linguistics professor and pastor who once himself had doubts about climate change. She is a brilliant communicator who spends her time talking with all sorts of people, from oil field engineers to Christian college students. She believes that “each of us, exactly as we are, with the values we already have, has every reason we need to care about climate change.”

She will be coming to Oxford on Wednesday 15th November 2017 as a guest of Climate Outreach, in partnership with The University Church of St Mary. At this not-to-be-missed event, Katharine will be in conversation with Climate Outreach’s founder George Marshall about how we can use community values to get people on board with climate change, why social science is more effective than statistics, graphs and facts in engaging people, and why we all need to get talking, and keep talking, about climate change.

The event will take place at The University Church of St Mary in Oxford on 15 November. Doors will open at 7pm for a 7:30pm start, and the event will be followed by a drinks reception.

Tickets cost £3 but students can attend for free upon showing a valid student ID on the night, but please register your place online to reserve a space.
This event is wheelchair accessible.

Come to this session of the Abe Lazarus Society, where we will be discussing the 1917 October Revolution and what can be learned from it today.

HOW we fund impact as important as what we fund?

What’s new in INNOVATIVE FINANCING using technology to allow investors to match their risk, return and impact preferences with specific investments and portfolios.

Oxford Impact Investments, together with Oxford Futurists & Oxford Women in Consulting are proud to present our speaker who’s come all the way from Cape Town, South Africa:

Ms. Aunnie Patton Power
Founder, Intelligent Impact
Associate Fellow, Oxford University Bertha Centre for Social Innovation

Intelligent Impact was founded to explore how to harness Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning to help solve one of the intractable problems in the social impact / impact finance fields: how to access information that is reliable and actionable. Aunnie has advised on Innovative Finance projects including developing a South African Impact Investing National Advisory Board, a Green Investment Bank, Social Impact Bonds / Development Impact Bonds, a Green Outcomes Funds and others.

Venue @Christ Church College Lecture Room 2

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.

Abstract:
In this talk Tiffany Page will consider what vulnerability is and what it does, and its role within the research process. As part of this she will raise the idea of ‘vulnerable writing’, and consider its possibility within feminist methodological approaches to research. The term vulnerable writing describes the process of explicating and recognising vulnerability in writing. This comes from a core concern in thinking about feminist methodologies and approaches to tensions in research, especially in transnational contexts, in addressing how we might respond to others in ways that allow for the acknowledgement of vulnerability in being faced by events which exceed knowledge, and how we can remain open to alternatives through enabling the space and time to question assumptions and forms of certitude, to return to materials, and to change our minds.

Tiffany Page is a Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge. Tiffany’s research is interdisciplinary and include the areas and intersections of vulnerability, gender inequalities and institutional violence. In particular she examines vulnerability as a political, methodological and ethical concept as a means to consider embodied responses to local and global social issues. In relation to gender inequalities in higher education, Tiffany’s research examines practices, cultures and leadership that produce particular institutional responses to staff sexual misconduct and help to sustain conditions in which forms of gender based and sexual violence occur.

N.B. The time of this event is not yet confirmed.

Abstract:
In this talk Tiffany Page will consider what vulnerability is and what it does, and its role within the research process. As part of this she will raise the idea of ‘vulnerable writing’, and consider its possibility within feminist methodological approaches to research. The term vulnerable writing describes the process of explicating and recognising vulnerability in writing. This comes from a core concern in thinking about feminist methodologies and approaches to tensions in research, especially in transnational contexts, in addressing how we might respond to others in ways that allow for the acknowledgement of vulnerability in being faced by events which exceed knowledge, and how we can remain open to alternatives through enabling the space and time to question assumptions and forms of certitude, to return to materials, and to change our minds.

Tiffany Page is Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge. Her research is interdisciplinary and includes the areas and intersections of vulnerability, gender inequalities and institutional violence. In particular she examines vulnerability as a political, methodological and ethical concept as a means to consider embodied responses to local and global social issues. In relation to gender inequalities in higher education, Tiffany’s research examines practices, cultures and leadership that produce particular institutional responses to staff sexual misconduct and help to sustain conditions in which forms of gender based and sexual violence occur.

Research has established that there are improved outcomes for children in OOHC who have continuing involvement and positive relationships with parents and family. This is the case no matter how long children stay in care. Positive relationships between parents, workers and carers is also linked to positive outcomes such as higher rates of restoration and improved child safety. However, little is known about parents’ experiences of child removal and the broader child protection and out of home care service system.
Parent perspectives are especially important as they are currently a relatively silent group in the policy discourse in Australia. Policy and legislative reform in child protection and out of home care is underway or has occurred in most Australian jurisdictions focused on permanency and stability and on improving the long term outcomes of children and young people. All Australian jurisdictions continue to see increasing numbers of children and young people being removed by child protection authorities. There is an important opportunity to learn from parent perspectives and to improve practice and children’s outcomes.
This presentation outlines qualitative research being undertaken in New South Wales, Australia by a collaboration of researchers from the University of Newcastle and a large NGO and OOHC provider, Life Without Barriers. The research used semi-structured interviews and focus groups to understand parents’ experiences of legal and social services during their child’s removal and placement. The findings of this research will contribute to conceptualising and describing family inclusive practice in OOHC. Practitioners in practice, policy, management and research roles in child protection and OOHC systems can use the findings to reflect on ways to develop meaningful relationships with parents of children in OOHC. This may ultimately assist parents and children to maintain positive relationships within and beyond the OOHC context.

Change affects us all, through climate, politics, religion, economics and our communities. In fact, all of life is chance but the pace of today is so fast, it can feel like the world is going crazy… and maybe us too. Three highly experienced speakers discuss some practices that help to alleviate stress and rediscover a sense of perspective and wellbeing. There will be music interludes.

To offer Oxford students the warmest welcome back to Hilary Term, we have invited Director Jenny Lu盧謹明, to show her feature film The Receptionist接線員 (2017) (bilingual subtitles).

This bilingual film is the first UK-Taiwanese film collaboration of its kind, and it tells the story of Tina, a literature graduate living in London, who takes up work as a receptionist in an illegal massage parlour. Through Tina’s eyes, viewers are not exposed to the dark underworld of London’s illegal sex industry, but are also shown a rare glimpse into the lives of those caught up in this world, and the harsh realities they face as Asian migrant women struggling to survive in London.

The film features the famous Taiwanese actress Chen Shiang-Chyi陳湘琪 and was nominated for the Golden Horse Awards. Director Jenny Lu wrote the film script based on a real story she witnessed when she was studying video art in London. After the screening, she will share with us the inspirations behind the story and her experiences as a transnational filmmaker in the UK and Taiwan.

This event will be of interest to those of you who work on contemporary Britain, Asian diaspora, Chinese and Taiwanese culture, film studies, gender studies, translation studies, and race and racism. The film is approximately 100 minutes long, and the director will talk for around 10 minutes with the host, followed by audience Q & A and discussions.

Tickets are 5£ and can be bought in advance
More information can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/events/331762997290657/

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

Creating Economic Space for Social Innovation – final conference

Time: 09:00, 26 Jan 2018 Add to Calendar
Location:
Lecture Theatre VI
Address:
Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, Park End Street, Oxford, OX1 1HP
Speakers/Lecturers:
Speakers will cover a range of social innovation issues, including impact measurement, finance, social policy, theory-building.
Admission: Registration required Book now
For any enquiries:
Email organiser
Sponsor:
European Commission, FP 7
The event will bring together academics, practitioners and policymakers from a wide range of disciplines to focus on how interventions drawing on social innovation can address major economic, social and power imbalances and inequalities.

Speakers will cover a range of social innovation issues, including impact measurement, finance, social policy, theory-building, all with a focus on enhancing the lives of the most marginalised and disempowered citizens through social innovation.

The event will also include a keynote by economic sociologist Jens Beckert (Director of the Max Plank Institute for the Studies of Society – MPIfG), whose work has provided one of the main inspirations of the CrESSI-project -, Frank Moulaert (Professor of Spatial Planning, Head of the Planning and Development Unit ASRO, Faculty of Engineering, KU Leuven, Belgium) and Jürgen Howaldt (Director Sozialforschungsstelle Dortmund Central scientific unit – University of Dortmund).

This lecture examines 21st-century social policies and what they tell us about Chinese politics. At the same time it makes the case for more rigorous qualitative policy research, and it argues that international influences show it is time to reconceptualise Chinese policy processes.

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.

Rediscovered Taiwanese Film Screening with Prof. Chris Berry: Dangerous Youth 危險的青春 (1966)

2018/Feb/07 Wednesday 7-9:30PM Lecture Theatre, Lecture Theatre, China Centre, St Hugh’s College, Oxford

Supported by: Oxford Chinese Studies Society

For our third film screening event in Hilary Term, we have invited renowned Chinese film scholar, Professor Chris Berry from King’s College London, to screen one of Taiwan’s lost commercial films from the Martial Law period and discuss the relevant issues of language politics and cultural censorships with us. This event is part of the project, Taiwan’s Lost Commercial Cinema: Recovered and Restored, directed by Prof. Chris Berry and Dr. Ming-yeh Rawnsley, which includes a symposium (7 Oct 2017) and a film screening tour of old Taiwanese cinema in the UK and Europe throughout October and November 2017.

Synopsis
Shi Ying is a deliveryman for a cosmetics company. He is a womaniser and dreams of making a quick buck. He meets a romantic 20-year-old girl, Qingmei (Zheng Xiaofen), who feels trapped by her mother’s small restaurant and is eager to escape. Kueiyuan earns a commission fee by introducing Qingmei to a cabaret, run by Yuchan (Gao Xingzhi). Qingmei falls in love with Kueiyuan and sleeps with him. However, under pressure from Kueiyuan and Yuchan, Qingmei agrees to become a mistress to an old millionaire. Meanwhile, Yuchan seduces Kueiyuan and controls him with money and sex. When Qingmei discovers that she is pregnant by Kueiyuan, the latter demands an abortion. Qingmei runs away and hides. When Kueiyuan proposes marriage to Yuchan and is rejected by her, he finally realises that he is in love with Qingmei and goes out to look for her.

Commentary
‘The stark, dark social realism of this film is rendered through a modernist, even avant garde form, reminding audiences of French New Wave or early Nagisa Oshima (in particular Cruel Story of Youth, 1960): a long take of an angry young man on his motorcycle circling, its engine howling; a variety of pop songs raging on soundtrack; a montage of neon lights at urban night; composition-in-depth in conflict scenes; a daunting shot overlooking a sex act done on the floor; an open ending. Dangerous Youthremains a classic of Taiwanese cinema.’

This event will be of interest to those of you who work on Taiwanese history, Sinophone studies, translation studies, and film studies. The film is 95 minutes long and Prof. Berry will talk for around 10 minutes afterwards and we will leave plenty of time for critical dialogues, Q & A and discussions. There will be information handouts designed by Prof. Berry available on the day for all participants.

Speaker biography:

Prof Chris Berry is Professor of Film Studies at King’s College London, and his academic research is grounded in work on Chinese-language cinemas. Prof. Berry has recently served as a judge for the Golden Horse Awards 金馬獎 2017 in Taiwan. Primary publications include: (with Mary Farquhar) Cinema and the National: China on Screen (Columbia University Press and Hong Kong University Press, 2006); Postsocialist Cinema in Post-Mao China: the Cultural Revolution after the Cultural Revolution (New York: Routledge, 2004); (co-edited with Luke Robinson) Chinese Film Festivals: Sites of Translation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017); (co-edited with Koichi Iwabuchi and Eva Tsai) Routledge Handbook of East Asian Popular Culture (Routledge, 2016); (edited with Nicola Liscutin and Jonathan D. Mackintosh), Cultural Studies and Cultural Industries in Northeast Asia: What a Difference a Region Makes (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009); and (co-edited with Feii Lu) Island on the Edge: Taiwan New Cinema and After (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005).

How can we understand ‘tension’, the experience of rigidity that often underpins systemic structures of domination, epistemic violence as well as physical aggression in South Asia? Following Zygmunt Bauman, I want to suggest that ‘tension’ is the outcome of an overzealous pursuit of moral and categorical clarity which alienates us from the ambiguity of lived experience. At some point, alienation becomes so gross and the aspiration for clarity thus so untenable that it breaks down into ambivalence, and then violence. Deviating from Bauman and others, I however propose a heuristic vocabulary that distinguishes more clearly between ambivalence and ambiguity, building on ethnography of religion, gender and aggression in North India.

The Oxford Israel Forum, Oxford PPE Society and Oxford International Relations Society are delighted to host Dan Meridor, former Deputy Prime Minister of Israel. Mr Meridor will be discussing the current political situation in Israel and the wider Middle East, including the peace process, recent developments in diplomacy and the future of the region.

Dan Meridor has served the Israeli Government in various distinguished positions, including as Minister of Justice, Minister of Finance, Minister of Intelligence and Atomic Energy and as Deputy Prime Minister. In power during the Obama administration and a collapsed peace process attempt under Kerry, Meridor has been at the centre of the Israeli Government through pivotal times. He is now the President of the Israel Council on Foreign Relations.

The talk will be followed by a Q&A and drinks reception. All three are free to attend, simply click ‘going’ on our Facebook event to register: https://www.facebook.com/events/143239079681080/

This event is kindly facilitated by the Pinsker Centre.

Parul Bhandari is currently a Visiting Scholar at St. Edmund’s College and the Centre for South Asian Studies (CSAS), University of Cambridge, UK. She is also a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Centre of Social Sciences and Humanities (CSH), New Delhi, the South Asia research unit for the French National Centre for Research (CNRS). She has held Guest Faculty positions at the Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, and the Indian Institute of Technology, (IIT) Delhi. Dr Bhandari completed her PhD in Sociology from the University of Cambridge in 2014.
Her main research interests are in the field of social class, gender, marriage, and family. Her doctoral thesis explained the makings of middle class identities through the processes of spouse-selection. For her post-doctoral research she has shifted attention to the study of elites, particularly the rich housewives of Delhi, focusing on their relationship with money and exploring the themes of honour and humiliation in their everyday lives.
Dr Bhandari has written widely on gender, family and marriage, including book chapters, journal articles, and in newspapers and magazines. Her forthcoming books include Money, Culture, Class: Elite Women as Modern Subjects, (Routledge, London, 2018) and a co-edited volume, Exploring Indian Modernities: Ideas and Practices (Springer, 2018).

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.

Yan Geling and Lawrence Walker: A Journey Together, in Literature
嚴歌苓和勞倫斯：他們的芳華

This event is in English.

As Yan Geling often says, her literary career can be divided into three stages. Drawing on a range of classical Chinese and Western literatures discovered in her grandfather and father’s collections, she started writing stories while she was still part of the Art Troupe in the Chinese military. As a young teenager, the experiences performing in the Sichuan-Tibet region and reporting during the Vietnam War provided her with rich materials for her creative writing. Already an award-winning writer in her 20s, she took the opportunity to study for an MFA in Chicago in the late 1980s. That was the period when she started exploring the lived experiences of the Chinese diaspora in her fiction, and her dramatic encounters with the FBI as a result of dating Lawrence, then a US diplomat, were later adapted into her novel Café with No Exit 無出路咖啡館 (2001). Geling’s literary career entered another highly productive phase when she moved to Nigeria with Lawrence in the early 2000s, where she completed the highly popular novel The Ninth Widow 第九個寡婦 (2006) and most of the essays published in her collection African Notes 非洲札記 (2013). Now living in Berlin, Geling keeps a comparative view on language and literature, and still works hard to bring out vivid portrayals of Chinese life from her memory and imagination. Throughout her career, she has had close connections with the film and TV industries in China and the wider Sinophone world, and adapted many of her stories into visual forms, never failing to impress audiences at home and abroad.

In this public event, Geling and Lawrence will be in conversation with Flair Donglai SHI (DPhil in English) to talk about their journey in literature. We will not only bring more spotlight on Geling’s less discussed works, but also focus on how the couple’s transnational and bilingual experiences have shaped their views and practices on fiction writing and translation. We will also continue the topic on media adaptations of literature and the concerns over contemporary Chinese literature’s international visibility and influence.

This event will be of interest to those of you who work on contemporary China, Chinese literature, Chinese diaspora, film studies, gender studies, translation studies, and intercultural communication in general. The conversation will be approximately 30 minutes long, and plenty of time will be given to audience Q & A and discussions. After the event, Geling will stay for a while longer to chat with enthusiastic readers and sign book copies (please bring your own).

Speaker biographies:
Yan Geling
Yan Geling is one the most prominent and widely read authors in mainland China and overseas Chinese communities today. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Fiction Writing from Columbia College Chicago. Her short stories and novels, including “Siao Yu 少女小漁”, “Celestial Bath (Xiuxiu the Sent-down Girl) 天浴”, The Flowers of War金陵十三釵, A Woman’s Epic一個女人的史詩, and Criminal Lu Yanshi陸犯焉識, have won numerous awards in mainland China and Taiwan. She also works as a screenplay writer and has collaborated with many prominent Chinese directors such as Ang Lee 李安, Sylvia Chang 張艾嘉, Joan Chen 陳沖Chen Kaige 陳凱歌, Zhang Yimou 張藝謀, and Feng Xiaogang 馮小剛to adapt her writings into films and TV dramas. The 2017 film, Youth 芳華, directed by Feng Xiaogang and based the eponymous novel by Ms. Yan, was one of the highest grossing and most discussed films in China of the year.

Lawrence A. Walker
Lawrence Walker worked as a US diplomat from 1980-1991 and again from 2004-2013, serving in Mexico City, Germany (Bonn and Berlin), Taipei (for Chinese language training), Shenyang, the State Department’s Office of Korean Affairs, on loan to Bank of America in San Francisco, in Nigeria (Abuja), Taipei, Berlin and at the U.S. Africa Command in Stuttgart. Between 1991 to 2004 he worked as managing director of the German-American Chamber of Commerce in San Francisco, and in business development for a dot-com and a venture capital company. In 1999, he translated into English and published a collection of Yan Geling’s works entitled White Snake and Other Stories. More recently, he published a translation of her story ‘The Landlady’女房東 in Granta (https://granta.com/the-landlady/). He currently manages his wife Geling’s business affairs and is translating her novel The Criminal Lu Yanshi 陸犯焉識. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Languages and Linguistics from Georgetown University, an M.B.A. from the University of Illinois and a maîtrise en administration et en gestion from the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium, which he attended as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar.

Li Ang：50 Years of Writing Taiwan
作家李昂：台灣文學五十年

05 March 2018 Monday 5-6:30 p.m. Lecture Theatre, China Centre, St Hugh’s College, Oxford

Supported by: Oxford Chinese Studies Society, Oxford China Forum, International Gender Studies Centre at Lady Margaret Hall Oxford, Oxford University Taiwanese Student Society

Free for all, please register at Eventbrite

Anyone who knows anything about Taiwanese literary history would know the name Li Ang. Starting her career in the late 1960s when Taiwan was still under Martial Law, she constantly experimented with radical ways of thinking gender and sexuality and has since become the most translated author from Taiwan.

It is no understatement to say that she is one of the most prominent feminist writers in the Sinophone world, as her works, often critical of patriarchal conventions and ideologies in Chinese societies, have won numerous literary awards in Taiwan. Many of her fiction, including The Butcher’s Wife 殺夫, Dark Night 暗夜, Lost Garden 迷園, and Visible Ghosts 看得見的鬼, have been translated into many languages and adapted into films, TV dramas and musicals in Taiwan, Austria, France and Germany. In 2004, Li Ang was awarded the “Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres” by the French Minister of Culture and Communication in recognition of her outstanding contribution to world literature. In 2017, Li Ang’s new book The Beautiful Man Asleep 睡美男 was published, and its focus on an older woman’s sexual psychology in her encounters with young people has again challenged conventional social attitudes towards less normative human relationships.

In this public event, Li Ang will share with us her experiences in the Taiwanese literary world in the last 50 years as well as her reflections on the development of Taiwanese and Sinophone literatures today. This event will be of interest to those of you who work on Chinese literature, Taiwan, Sinophone Studies, gender and sexuality, and media and film studies. Li Ang will first give a 15 minutes speech, followed by a conversation with Flair Donglai SHI (DPhil in English) to further contextualise her thoughts, and plenty of time will be given to audience Q & A and discussions.

Register for free here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/li-ang50-years-of-writing-taiwan-tickets-43064258356

Renowned journalist, author and commentator, Polly Toynbee (St Anne’s, 1966), will join St Peter’s alumna, Helen Lewis (2001), current Deputy Editor of The New Statesman, for an evening of discussion on the topic of “Brexit, the left and feminism”.

The talk, which will be hosted by Prof Abigail Williams, Lord White Tutorial Fellow in English at St Peter’s and Professor of 18th-century Literature, will be followed by a Q&A.

Sejuti Das Gupta’s current research project is a monograph on Indian agrarian political economy, based on her doctoral dissertation, to be published with Cambridge University Press in 2018. Her areas of interest are agrarian political economy, public policy, class-caste and state-society interactions. She has conducted research in Chhattisgarh, Gujarat and Karnataka. Her core interest is to contribute towards combining theory and practice for a better understanding in social science. Now an Assistant Professor at James Madison College, Das Gupta was previously attached to the Tata Institute of Social Sciences as an Assistant Professor, and where she served as the Academic Coordinator for Masters in Development Practice, under the Prime Minister’s Rural Development Fellows’ Scheme.

The second of the Oxford Human Rights Festival lunchtime seminars showcasing work done here at Brookes around the theme of IDENTITY.

Dr Supriya Akerkar is a senior lecturer in Disaster Risk Reduction with CENDEP, Oxford Brookes University. Her current research engages with social inclusion in development and humanitarian practices.

Dr Akerkar will share her main findings from her current research on age and disability capacity project (ADCAP), highlighting how significations of persons with disabilities act as significant barriers to their inclusion in humanitarian responses. Responding organisations often make discursive assumptions about people with disabilities and their operational environments, normalizing them rather than critically questioning them. The ADCAP programme has partnered with international organisations who have questioned these discourses in their organisational work. Learnings from this ADCAP experience will be captured in her talk.

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.​​​​