Following the 1971 Bangladesh War, the Bangladesh government publicly designated the thousands of women raped by the then West Pakistani (later Pakistani) military and their local East Pakistani (later Bangladeshi) collaborators as birangonas, (“brave women”). Spectral Wound aims to map out the public memories of sexual violence of the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971 (Muktijuddho). Nayanika Mookherjee demonstrates that while this celebration of birangonas as heroes keeps them in the public memories, they exist in the public consciousness as what Mookherjee calls a spectral wound. Dominant representations of birangonas as dehumanized victims with disheveled hair, and rejected by their communities create this wound, the effects of which flatten the diversity of their experiences through which birangonas have lived with this violence of wartime rape. The book ethnographically examines the circulation of images, press and literary representations, testimonies of rape among survivors of sexual violence and their families, the left-liberal civil society and state actors. In critically examining the pervasiveness of the birangona construction, Mookherjee decentres the assumption of silence relating to wartime rape and opens the possibility for a more poitico-economic and ethical inquiry into the sexuality of war.

Age is the only category of discrimination that includes all humans. However, ageing people are stigmatised in popular culture and discourse, and regarded with a disgust closely linked to fear. Dr Nussbaum argues that stigma against the ageing is a social problem, producing unhappiness and injustice such as discrimination in employment and social interactions, not to mention what she calls a ‘huge social evil’ – that of compulsory retirement.

Dr Martha Craven Nussbaum is the 2016 Kyoto Prize Laureate for Arts and Philosophy.

Talk followed by questions and discussion

In this keynote lecture, leading political writer Timothy Garton Ash will present his ten guiding principles for a connected world, and offer a manifesto for global free speech in the digital age.

Drawing on a lifetime of writing about dictatorships and dissidents, Oxford Professor of European Studies Timothy Garton Ash will argue that we are currently experiencing an unprecedented era in human history for freedom of expression.

If we have internet access, any one of us can publish almost anything we like, potentially reaching an audience of millions. Never was there a time when the evils of unlimited speech flowed so easily across frontiers: violent intimidation, gross violations of privacy, tidal waves of abuse. A pastor burns a Koran in Florida and UN officials die in Afghanistan.

In this connected world that he calls cosmopolis, the way to combine freedom and diversity is to have more but also better free speech. Across all cultural divides, we must strive to agree on how we disagree.

Professor Garton Ash will draw on a unique, thirteen-language global conversation and online research project, freespeechdebate.com, alongside his latest book, Free Speech, to present his ten principles for a connected world.

He will illustrate his talk with vivid examples from his personal experience of China’s Orwellian censorship apparatus, to the controversy around Charlie Hebdo, to a very English court case involving food writer Nigella Lawson, and propose a framework for civilized conflict in a world in which we are all becoming neighbours.

Download and listen to Timothy Garton Ash’s free speech podcasts on the BBC

Timothy Garton Ash is Isaiah Berlin Professorial Fellow at St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford; Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University; and a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books and the Guardian. He is the winner of the 2017 Charlemagne Prize and has won the Orwell Prize for Journalism.

This event is in partnership with the Resolution Foundation

The accumulation and distribution of wealth across Britain has been a contentious issue since the dawn of economics. But while wealth inequality is traditionally viewed as being between rich and poor, a new divide is also emerging – the wealth gap between generations.

The failure of younger generations to accumulate wealth – through pensions, property and savings – will reduce their lifetime living standards, particularly once they reach retirement. This would have profound implications for both families and the state, so what can be done?

As part of its Intergenerational Commission, chaired by Lord Willetts, the Resolution Foundation will soon be publishing a series of papers analysing Britain’s wealth across generations. Ahead of this launch, the Oxford Martin School is hosting an event to explore these issues and the role of public policy in tackling Britain’s new wealth divides.

Experts from the Foundation will present some of the emerging findings from its work on intergenerational wealth inequality, while Professors John Muellbauer and Brian Nolan will discuss possible policy responses, before taking part in an audience Q&A.

Exploring the emotional terrain of the citizenship experiences of groups in Goa this paper will argue that through the linguistic choices made by the government of Goa it is not merely caste that is at the centre of citizenship experiences but in fact untouchability itself. Given that languages are not abstract forms but actively embodied practices, and that their linguistic forms and cultural productions are marked as impure and hence untouchable in the caste-Hindu centric Goan polity it is the lower-caste Catholic that is at the bottom of the pile. What obtains in Goa is not different from many other parts in India, allowing the suggestion that India is marked not an egalitarian, but a casteist polity.

Speakers:

Ivor Crewe (Master, University College, Oxford)

Anne Deighton (Emeritus Professor of European International Politics, St Antony’s College, Oxford)

Stephen Fisher (Associate Professor of Political Sociology, Trinity College, Oxford)

Iain McLean (Emeritus Professor of Politics, Nuffield College, Oxford)

Chair

Ben Jackson (Associate Professor of Modern History, University College, Oxford)

All are welcome.

The Spanish Society of Researchers in the United Kigdom´s Oxford Constituency (SRUK/Oxford) brings the third event of Seminar series: visiting Spanish researchers in Oxford. In this occasion, we will be pleased to welcome Dr Rosario Rueda, from the Department of Experimental Psychology of the University of Granada.

In this seminar, Dr Rosario will present a talk about how poverty affects the neuro-cognitive development of babies. The talk, will be followed by a questions and answers session in which the public can engage with the speaker within a friendly and social environment whilst enjoying some drinks at the pub.

The event is open to the public and we encourage anyone interested to take part.
The event will take place at Large Meeting Room, en Turl Street Kitchen (17 Turl Street, Oxford, OX1 3DH).

Numerous free talks, walking tours and workshops over two days.

Abstract:

The current crisis in Ukraine is near the top of the international policy agenda. The armed conflict in eastern Ukraine was followed by the creation of ‘quasi states’, significant declines in living conditions and the large-scale displacement of people. More than two million people had to flee, 1.7 million internally, which, according to the Internally Displaced Monitoring, is the 8th largest internally displaced group in the world. Many experienced a rapid and significant drop in income and face problems in accessing services such as health care and education. More than 1.3 million people became refugees, with over a million fled to Russia, and most of them are unable to return. The research upon which this paper is based was conducted in Ukraine and Russia and included interviews with displaced people, local and national authorities, NGOs and discourse analyses. The intersectional approach is used to identify the structural position of IDPs and refugees and the discourses, practices and narratives that surround them. Understanding belonging as both as a personal and a discursive resource (Antonsich 2010), and the politics of belonging as involving both the maintenance and reproduction of the boundaries and contestation of them (Yuval-Davis 2011), I address the complexity of the current position of IDPs and refugees. The paper argues that there are conflicting politics of belonging in Ukraine and in Russia which influence the policies towards refugees and IDPs from a particular discourse around ethnicities, boarders and geopolitics. The everyday experiences of those who were displaced include coping with imposed statuses along with multiple loss and uncertainty of legal status is also explored.

Dr Irina Kuznetsova is a Birmingham Fellow in the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences. Her research currently focuses on issues around forced displacement as a result of the current conflict in Ukraine, and her general research expertise includes migration, religiosity, health, disabilities studies, social policy and accessible cities. In 2012-2014 she led the EU Centre in Kazan, Russia, funded by the European Commission. She has led and participated in various applied and academic studies founded by the Open Society Institute, MacArthur Foundation, Russian Foundation for Humanities and others.

Abstract: Exploring both debates about misrecognition and explorations of encounters, this article focuses on the experiences of ethnic and religious minority young people who are mistaken for being Muslim in Scotland. We explore experiences of encountering misrecognition, including young people’s understandings of, and responses to, such encounters. Recognizing how racism and religious discrimination operate to marginalize people—and how people manage and respond to this—is crucial in the struggle for social justice. Our focus is on young people from a diversity of ethnic and religious minority groups who are growing up in urban, suburban, and rural Scotland, 382 of whom participated in forty-five focus groups and 224 interviews. We found that young Sikhs, Hindus, and other south Asian young people as well as black and Caribbean young people were regularly mistaken for being Muslim. These encounters tended to take place at school, in taxis, at the airport, and in public spaces. Our analysis points to a dynamic set of interconnected issues shaping young people’s experiences of misrecognition across a range of mediatised, geopoliticised, and educational spaces. Geopolitical events and their representation in the media, the homogenization of the south “Asian” community, and the lack of visibility offered to non-Muslim ethnic and religious minority groups all worked to construct our participants as “Muslims.” Young people demonstrated agency and creativity in handling and responding to these encounters, including using humour, clarifying their religious affiliation, social withdrawal, and ignoring the situation. Redressing misrecognition requires institutional change to ensure parity of participation in society.

Peter Hopkins is Professor of Social Geography at Newcastle University. His main research interests focus upon: young people, place and identity; geographies of race, ethnicity and religion; and the intersections between masculinities and ethnicities.

Environmental and sustainability policy is facing new challenges concerning wicked problems in the accelerating interlinkages of the eco-socio-economic world, in the growing complexity of policy-and-beyond governance to deal with those problems and in the increasingly contested areas of knowledge and ignorance on which concepts of problems, goals and policies are based upon. Dr. Mayer-Ries will outline ideas and experiences of German environmental and sustainability policy dealing with those challenges from the perspective of strategic administrative and policy practice. The implementation of the UN-Agenda 2030 in Germany since 2015 and new German initiatives to strengthen the involvement of science into a sustainable transformation will serve as reference points.

Dr. Joerg Mayer-Ries has been working as Lecturer for political Economy at University Oldenburg, as Director of Studies at a Lutheran Academy and as Senior Consultant in the private sector. Since 2007 he is Head of Division in the Department for Fundamental Aspects of Environmental Policy at the Federal Ministry for Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUB) in Berlin. Dr. Mayer-Ries is responsible for the environmental dimension and monitoring of the German Sustainability Strategy and European and global aspects of German sustainability policy. He coordinated the National Environmental Programme 2030 of the Ministry, the first Integrated Nitrogene Report 2017 and several research projects on strategic and fundamental concepts for future environmental policy. Until end of this year Dr. Mayer-Ries is appointed as Senior Fellow to the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies IASS at Potsdam.

The UK has an increasingly hostile immigration policy environment, but is also the scene of substantial pro-migrant civic mobilization. There has been little systematic research on this phenomenon, particularly on what motivates people with relatively secure status to engage with migration as an issue. This paper uses conceptual apparatus from civil society literature to analyse civic mobilization around immigration detention. Drawing on twenty qualitative interviews and an online survey, it shows how immigration detention is comes to be a cause for action: how it was articulated as a cause for concern by research participants in terms of injustice and suffering. It outlines the opportunities for action that exist, to support individuals and campaign to change the system, and reflects on people’s diverse experiences of these engagements. Mobilization is mediated by personal factors: practical constraints limit availability and a range of socio-political positionalities shape people’s engagements with immigration detention. The relevance of the findings to the ‘detention movement’ and to wider migration and civil society debates is explored.

Abstract:
The United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) was created in the aftermath of September 11, 2001 (“9/11”). Its aim was to increase dialogue and reduce enmity between “civilizations,” notably between Christians and Muslims. In other words, the UNAOC was created to enhance life for the millions of people around the world imperiled by inter-civilizational and inter-religious tensions and conflicts. To what extent, if at all, has the UNAOC achieved its objective of enhancing life for such people? To what extent, if at all, is the world now committed to enhanced dialogue and understanding of different civilizations, cultures, and religions as a result of the activities of the UNAOC?

Jeffrey Haynes is Emeritus Professor of Politics at London Metropolitan University. He is currently writing two books on the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations. He has research interests in several areas, including: religion and international relations; religion and politics; democracy and democratisation; and the politics of development. Haynes has more than 230 publications, including over 40 books. He is the book series editor of ‘Routledge Studies in Religion & Politics’, co-editor of the journal Democratization, and co-editor of Democratization’s book series, ‘Special Issues and Virtual Special Issues’.

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

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).

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.

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.