CARU | Arts re Search Annual Conference 2017

“What does it mean to research art / to research through art?”

CARU brings together artists and researchers for yet another day of cross-disciplinary exploration into arts research! The event will consist of an exciting mixture of talks and performances from a variety of creative and academic disciplines, including Fine Art, Live Art, Social Practice, Art History, Anthropology, Education, Science and Technology, to question and debate various areas of arts research, such as themes, material/form, documentation and practice methodology.

Keynote talk: ‘Resonances and Discords’
Speaker: Prof. Kerstin Mey
PVC and Dean, Westminster School of Media, Arts and Design, University of Westminster
“The presentation will explore research in art at the interface to other epistemological systems and approaches. Drawing on case studies, it will explore key strategies and tactical manoeuvres of knowledge making in order to explore the hermeneutics of practice led inquiry in the space of art.”

Presentations include:

“The artist in the boardroom: Action research within decision-making spaces”

“Exploring the Art space as fluid cultural site through the immediacy of the performance and its inherent collaborative ethos”

“Chapter 1 (draft): Using text in performance: a range of strategies”

“Memory and identity within Bosnia’s Mass Graves”

“Fermenting conversations”

“Arcade Interface Art Research”

“Making sounds happen is more important than careful listening (with cups)”

“Shadow:Other:myself / photographic research from 2010”

“Un-knowing unknowing in painting as research”

“Developing an artistic epistemology”

Register at: www.ars2017.eventbrite.co.uk

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).

70 years since the adoption of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, has the UN Human Rights Council lost its credibility?

The Oxford Israel Forum and The Oxford Forum are delighted to host Hillel Neuer, renowned international lawyer, diplomat, writer, activist and Executive Director of UN Watch, a human rights NGO based in Geneva. This is a rare opportunity to gain an insight into the inner workings of the UN from a leading expert on the UN Human Rights Council.

Hillel Neuer is an acclaimed speaker who has testified before the United Nations and the U.S. Congress. The Tribune de Genève has described Neuer as a human rights activist who is “feared and dreaded” by the world’s dictatorships. The Journal de Montreal wrote that he “makes the U.N. tremble.” Israel’s Ma’ariv newspaper named him in its list of the “Top 100 Most Influential Jewish People in the World.” On September 14, 2016, the City of Chicago adopted a resolution, signed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, declaring “Hillel Neuer Day,” in recognition of his role “as one of the world’s foremost human rights advocates,” and for his contributions to “promote peace, justice and human rights around the world.”

This talk will be followed by a Q&A and is free to attend, simply click ‘going’ on the Facebook event to register.

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).

Event open to all postgraduate students. Advanced Booking essential.

7.00 pm Drinks reception, 7.40 Private view of the ‘Imagining the Divine’ exhibition, Panel discussion

Each of our speakers will respond to an object in the exhibition from the perspective of their Christian faith and will explore wider questions, including: Does all religious art ‘imagine’ the same divinity? How do Christians respond to art from diverse religions? Are works of art beneficial or prejudicial to Christian faith?

7.00 pm Drinks reception
7.40 pm Private view of the ‘Imagining the Divine’ exhibition
8.15 pm Panel discussion

Cover image used with permission of Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

Discussion event with top academics. Bring your lunch, relax and share your thoughts.

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.

Afua Hirsch is an author and journalist and will be discussing her new book: Brit(ish) about being black and British

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.​​​​

Think Human Festival is proud to host this panel on Writing Working-Class Fiction.
Kerry Hudson, Kit de Waal and Alex Wheatle are celebrated contemporary British novelists who have all written working-class experience into their fiction. At this event, the novelists are hosted by writer and critic Boyd Tonkin.

They will read from their work, and then discuss the problems they have encountered in being working-class writers, the creative responses they have formulated in their writing of working-class experience, and the wider issues of publishing and literary culture in relation to working-class writing and authorship. The Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Oxford Brookes has a rich tradition of research into working-class life and culture, across literature, history and the social sciences.

Sir Muir Gray and Lucy Abel debate: Is value-based health care nothing more than health econimics re-packaged or is health economics nothing more than only one of the six contributors to value-based healthcare?

Health economics is concerned with how to allocate resources in healthcare to optimise outcomes. Health economists have developed a variety of methods to evaluate whether the cost of providing healthcare interventions is worth the benefits. In other words, whether they are good value. These are based on preferences expressed by wider society relating to the value of increasing the length and quality of life. These values can be applied to an intervention by linking them via clinical outcomes.

Value-based healthcare’s concern with technical, personal, and allocative value are defined as, respectively, whether an intervention improves clinical outcomes; whether those clinical outcomes are meaningful for patients; and whether those improved outcomes are worth the costs. In this way it covers the same core principles as health economics, while ignoring over 50 years of research in this field.

Recent attempts to implement value-based healthcare have ignored issues such as interaction between interventions and fully considering opportunity cost. As a result, value-based healthcare adds little to the existing body of research, and diverts investment from proven methods, which risks reducing the value achievable in the NHS.

Sir Muir Gray is now working with both NHS England and Public Health England to bring about a transformation of care with the aim of increasing value for both populations and individuals and published a series of How To Handbooks for example, How to Get Better Value Healthcare, How To Build Healthcare Systems and How To Create the Right Healthcare Culture.

His hobby is ageing and how to cope with it and he has published books for publish a book for people aged seventy called Sod 70! one for the younger decade called Sod 60! This with Dr Claire Parker, and his book for people aged 40-60, titled Midlife, appeared in January 2017. Other books in series on Sod Ageing are Sod it, Eat Well, with Anita Bean and Sod Sitting, Get Moving with Diana Moran, the Green Goddess. For people of all ages Dr Gray’s Walking Cure summarises the evidence on this wonderful means of feeling well, reducing the risk of disease and minimising disability should disease strike.

Lucy Abel is a health economist working within the field of primary care and is part of the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford. She collaborates with research groups to bring the tools of economic evaluation to primary care health science research.

This talk is being held as part of the Practice of Evidence-Based Health Care course which is part of the Evidence-Based Health Care Programme. This is a free event and members of the public are welcome to attend.

Distinguished modern historian and former Warden of St Antony’s College, Professor MacMillan recently became an Honorary Fellow of LMH. She is a Companion of the Order of Canada, and will be this summer’s BBC Reith Lecturer. Her area of particular interest is the tangled history of war and society, our feelings towards conflict, and those who engage in it.

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!

Join us for live music in the Forum of the John Henry Brookes Building from 17:00 before the panel discussion in the John Henry Brookes Lecture Theatre at 18:00.

Most political movements are accompanied by protest songs. This Think Human Festival event aims to explore their rich tradition and assess their meaning and impact over time. Peggy Seeger, Andrew Scheps, Dr Angela McShane and Professor John Street will shed light on the historical context of protest songs, their production and sound, their political meaning and power, and their personal performance.

Our panel will examine the historical roots of protest songs, explore their impact on social and political movements, and explain what makes a song effective as protest. They’ll also discuss whether protest music is a dead or thriving art, and ask how far gender plays a role in their creation and performance.

Peggy Seeger is a celebrated singer of traditional Anglo-American songs and activist songmaker whose experience spans 60 years of performing, travel and songwriting. Dr Angela McShane leads the Research Development Team for the Wellcome Collection, an expert on early modern protest songs. Andrew Scheps is a Grammy award winning mix engineer, recording engineer, producer, and record label owner. John Street is Professor of Politics at the University of East Anglia and specialises in the politics of popular music.

Join us for live music in the John Henry Brookes Building – Forum before the panel discussion at 18:00 in the Lecture Theatre.
Most political movements are accompanied by protest songs. This Think Human Festival event aims to explore their rich tradition and assess their meaning and impact over time. Peggy Seeger, Andrew Scheps, Dr Angela McShane and Professor John Street will shed light on the historical context of protest songs, their production and sound, their political meaning and power, and their personal performance.

Our panel will examine the historical roots of protest songs, explore their impact on social and political movements, and explain what makes a song effective as protest. They’ll also discuss whether protest music is a dead or thriving art, and ask how far gender plays a role in their creation and performance.

Peggy Seeger is a celebrated singer of traditional Anglo-American songs and activist songmaker whose experience spans 60 years of performing, travel and songwriting. Dr Angela McShane leads the Research Development Team for the Wellcome Collection, an expert on early modern protest songs. Andrew Scheps is a Grammy award winning mix engineer, recording engineer, producer, and record label owner. John Street is Professor of Politics at the University of East Anglia and specialises in the politics of popular music.

Kerry Hudson, Kit de Waal and Alex Wheatle are celebrated contemporary British novelists who have all written working-class experience into their fiction. At this event, the novelists are hosted by writer and critic Boyd Tonkin.

They will read from their work, and then discuss the problems they have encountered in being working-class writers, the creative responses they have formulated in their writing of working-class experience, and the wider issues of publishing and literary culture in relation to working-class writing and authorship. The Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Oxford Brookes has a rich tradition of research into working-class life and culture, across literature, history and the social sciences.

The year is 1964 and ten defendants are on trial for their lives in South Africa in what is widely perceived as a politically motivated proceeding. The defendants include many prominent campaigners against apartheid, notably Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Govan Mbeki. Across the world there is widespread condemnation, and criticism of the apartheid regime is frequently aired by states in the United Nations. Multiple resolutions are passed by the General Assembly and Security Council calling for South Africa to end the trial and to release all political prisoners.

On Friday 25 May 2018, members of the Oxford Brookes Model United Nations Society will be staging a re-enactment of a Security Council debate about the Rivonia trial in South Africa.  The Security Council delegates have agreed to meet with interested bystanders, over tea, coffee and cake, between 12 noon and 1pm in Headington Hill Hall and will be available to discuss about what their countries hope to achieve in a resolution about the Rivonia trial.

Please join us for what will be a fun event set in a fascinating time in history with the Cold War, anti-colonial movements and the rise of ideas of racial equality and human rights all playing a role in how apartheid was discussed within the United Nations.

Please register for this event on the Think Human Festival website.

The international Psychiatry film festival, Medfest, is back again for another year. This time, through three bespoke short films, we hope to challenge your ideas and perceptions on the concept of ‘silence’. After each showing, the film will be discussed by a panel of distinguished experts, before the floor is opened to the audience.

All are welcome to join us for this FREE event.
The showing will be followed by a complimentary wine and nibbles reception.

Our confirmed panellists include:
Professor Matthew Broome: Chair in Psychiatry and Youth Mental Health, Director of the Institute for Mental Healthin Birmingham. He has also previously been the Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Warwick and Senior Clinical Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. His interests include the philosophy and ethics of mental health and neuroscience, early psychosis, delusions and cognitive instability.
Dr Maria Grazia Turri: A psychiatrist and theatre scholar. As a lecturer of MSc Creative Arts and Mental Health she teaches on psychoanalysis, theatre history and theories, and the intersection between psychiatry and the arts. She also works part-time as a Consultant Psychiatrist in Medical Psychotherapy in the NHS.
Dr Gerti Stegen: Director of Medical Education for the Oxford School of Psychiatry. She is also a consultant Psychiatrist in Psychotherapy.

For more information on our panellists and the films being shown visit our facebook event page https://www.facebook.com/events/2061930723857857/