My European citizenship rights…and why I don’t want to lose them.

We warmly invite you to a public meeting, followed by a reception to launch New Europeans in Oxford.

For details and speakers, please visit the event page on the New Europeans website.

After 1989, capitalism has successfully presented itself as the only realistic political-economic system – a situation that the banking crisis of 2008, far from ending, actually compounded.

So, what do you do about capitalism if you live in a world where it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism?

As the Tories begin a new round of attacks on education and the welfare state, Mark Fisher the author of Capitalist Realism, comes to Ruskin to try and answer this question.

Room 2.09

All welcome, organised by Ruskin College students.

Contact: Peter Dwyer for more information: pdwyer@ruskin.ac.uk

Talk followed by questions and answers.

The extraction of oil and the mining of coal are devastating communities across the world. These operations have forced people from their land, polluted the environment, and led to widespread human rights violations.

According to the Colombia Human Rights Data Analysis Group, an estimated 9,000 people were murdered and 3,000 have disappeared in Casanare over the past two decades. One of those kidnapped was Gilberto Torres, who is bringing a case for compensation against BP and other oil companies in the High Court in London with the help of law firm Deighton Pierce Glynn (DPG) in the UK and Francisco Ramirez Cuellar in Colombia.

The Centre for Global Politics, Economy and Society at Oxford Brookes University, and UCU Oxford Brookes would like to invite you to a special event as part of the campaign tour ‘OIL JUSTICE NOW! Stop Corporate Impunity’ led by the NGO War on Want in partnership with the law firm Deighton Pierce Glynn and the organisation Cos-Pacc (see attached poster for further details).

Speakers are:

– Sue Wilman (Human Rights Lawyer, Deighton Pierce Glynn)
– Gilberto Torres (Former trade unionist with Union Sindical Obrera in Colombia)
– Dr Lara Montesinos Coleman (University of Sussex)
– Francisco Ramirez Cuellar (trade unionist and lawyer with the Colombian Unified Trade Union Federation)

Gilberto Torres is a former trade unionist with Union Sindical Obrera, representing workers in the oil industry. He was abducted and tortured by paramilitaries in 1992 and now lives in exile. Gilberto believes his abduction was ordered and assisted by Ocensa, a joint venture pipeline company part-owned and operated by BP.

Francisco Ramirez Cuellar is a trade unionist and lawyer with the Colombian Unified Trade Union Federation. He has been targeted and threatened because of his legal and campaigning work challenging multinationals who have committed serious environmental and human right abuses in Colombia.

Chaired by Dr Maia Pal (Oxford Brookes University)

Speaker: Professor Alexander Betts (Refugee Studies Centre)

In recent academic and policy arenas in forced migration, the issue of how to understand refugees’ economic lives has emerged as one of the most pressing agendas. This seminar series will therefore gather leading scholars who have been working on related issues in order to consolidate the empirical and theoretical knowledge of refugee economies. Speakers will be convened from diverse and inter-disciplinary backgrounds from anthropology, economics, and political science. In addition to knowledge building, this seminar series is intended to initiate nurturing wider networks of researchers working on economic lives of refugees and to establish a common space for exchanging ideas, discussing findings and challenges.

Renewable energy is a strong component in the race to mitigate climate change, and solar power is a particularly cheap and viable green energy option. Considering current technologies, cost, markets and infrastructure, Professor Henry Snaith, Co-Director of the Programme on Solar Energy: Organic Photovoltaics, and Professor Malcolm McCulloch, Head of the University of Oxford’s Electrical Power Group and Co-Director of The Oxford Martin Programme on Integrating Renewable Energy, will debate whether solar is indeed the answer to the urgent question of irreversible climate change.

Speaker: Professor Amanda Hammar (Centre of African Studies, University of Copenhagen)

RSC Public Seminar Series, Michaelmas Term: Refugee Economies
Conveners: Alexander Betts and Naohiko Omata
In recent academic and policy arenas in forced migration, the issue of how to understand refugees’ economic lives has emerged as one of the most pressing agendas. This seminar series will therefore gather leading scholars who have been working on related issues in order to consolidate the empirical and theoretical knowledge of refugee economies. Speakers will be convened from diverse and inter-disciplinary backgrounds from anthropology, economics, and political science. In addition to knowledge building, this seminar series is intended to initiate nurturing wider networks of researchers working on economic lives of refugees and to establish a common space for exchanging ideas, discussing findings and challenges.

About the speaker:
Amanda Hammar is Director and MSO Professor in African Studies at the Centre of African Studies (CAS) at the University of Copenhagen. Her core research interests combine political economy and cultural politics approaches, and the use of ethnography among other methods, to understand the dynamics and spaces of social, economic, political and physical exclusion/inclusion in both agrarian and urban settings, at smaller and larger scales. She is particularly concerned with how these processes unfold and generate change – both symbolic and material – in contexts of displacement and crisis. Within this general framing, she has a special interest in the relationship between sustained crisis and different dimensions of state making and citizen making. She is responsible for the Research Platform at CAS on ‘Sovereignties and Citizenship’. Geographically, most of her work has been focused on southern Africa, particularly Zimbabwe and to a lesser extent Mozambique. Her most recently concluded project has been on Political Economies of Displacement, culminating in an edited volume entitled Displacement Economies in Africa: Paradoxes of Crisis and Creativity. In addition to being a strongly empirically grounded collection (with cases from across the continent), its ambitions include a theoretical challenge to more classic conceptualisations of displacement.

Rising inequality is a key focus in today’s policy discussions and media discourse. Building on research from The Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School (INET Oxford), Professor Brian Nolan, Director of the Employment, Equity and Growth Programme at INET Oxford and Professor John Muellbauer, Deputy Director of Economic Modelling at INET Oxford, will consider the causes and consequences of inequality, and what can be done to address it.

Talk, Q&As, and discussion. You’re welcome to come along just to listen, or to take part actively in the discussion. There’s no need to book: just come along on the day.

“This is a good day for businesses…” says Dan Kelly, President, CEO and Chair, Canadian Federation of Independent Business. Maybe so, but CETA, like other trade-deals, is bad news for equality, democracy and the environment.
In early 2016, CETA, the Canada-EU trade deal is due to be debated and voted on in the European parliament. Like TTIP, CETA allows corporations to sue governments in secret courts over decisions they don’t like.
As part of the growing movement against corporate trade deals and to try to stop final agreement of CETA, we’re planning a speaker tour.
The speakers will be:
• Maude Barlow, chair of citizens’ group the Council of Canadians
• Yash Tandon, Ugandan trade expert and author of Trade is War
• Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now

Mass Circulation: Writing about Art in a Daily Newspaper

With Richard Dorment, art critic, and Dr Alexander Sturgis, Director, Ashmolean Museum

A special Ashmolean evening In Conversation event

Wednesday 18 November
6‒7pm
Lecture Theatre

As The Daily Telegraph’s chief art critic from 1986‒2015, Richard Dorment CBE covered exhibition subjects ranging from the Ice Age to the Turner Prize. He talks to Ashmolean Director, Dr Alexander Sturgis, about art history, art criticism, and the popular press.

Tickets £12/£10 concessions. Booking is essential.
https://www.oxfordplayhouse.com/ticketsoxford/#event=20239

Adobe specialists Richard Curtis and Niels Stevens are coming to Film Oxford for a special presentation on the new features of Creative Cloud for photographers, designers and film makers.

Don’t miss this opportunity to see the latest features in the new release of Adobe Creative Cloud 2015, including Photoshop, Lightroom, Premiere, After Effects, Speedgrade and more. Learn about what’s new in this 2015 release that will help you do everything you do more efficiently using the latest innovations and modern standards. Get answers to your questions and get inspired by film makers and photographers who are creating amazing work.

Talk, Q&As, and discussion. You’re welcome to come along just to listen, or to take part actively in the discussion. There’s no need to book: just come along on the day.

Oxford Brookes Centre for Global Politics, Economy and Society seminar series

Between Debt and the Devil challenges the belief that we need credit growth to fuel economic growth, and that rising debt is okay as long as inflation remains low. In fact, most credit is not needed for economic growth—but it drives real estate booms and busts and leads to financial crisis and depression. Turner explains why public policy needs to manage the growth and allocation of credit creation, and why debt needs to be taxed as a form of economic pollution. Banks need far more capital, real estate lending must be restricted, and we need to tackle inequality and mitigate the relentless rise of real estate prices. Turner also debunks the big myth about fiat money—the erroneous notion that printing money will lead to harmful inflation. To escape the mess created by past policy errors, we sometimes need to monetize government debt and finance fiscal deficits with central-bank money.

Between Debt and the Devil shows why we need to reject the assumptions that private credit is essential to growth and fiat money is inevitably dangerous. Each has its advantages, and each creates risks that public policy must consciously balance.

Adair Turner is chairman of the Institute for New Economic Thinking and the author of Economics after the Crisis. He lives in London.

Talk, Q&As, and discussion. You’re welcome to come along just to listen, or to take part actively in the discussion. There’s no need to book: just come along on the day.

We are pleased to announce that Ann Pettifor, the Director of Policy Research in Macroeconomics (PRIME) and member of Jeremy Corbyn’s new economic advisory committee, will be speaking at St Hilda’s College, University of Oxford. The talk is jointly hosted by Women in the Humanities (http://www.torch.ox.ac.uk/womenandhumanities) and St Hilda’s Mind the Gap Equalities Research Group.

In the second meetup of New Europeans Oxford, we will discuss the proposed franchise for the EU referendum, and what we can do to challenge it.

As the EU Referendum edges closer, the New Europeans have taken on the issue of who will and who will not be able to vote on the UK’s membership in the European Union.

The problem doesn’t just affect EU citizens living in the UK, but also UK citizens who have lived abroad for more than 15 years. Votes for 16- and 17-year olds have just been backed by the House of Lords.

Ruvi Ziegler will discuss the basis for the franchise and the options for pursuing legal challenges. Roger Casale will present the results of a recent survey on EU citizens’ voting rights and report on the recent debates in the Commons and Lords.

To wrap up the evening, you are invited to a few drinks in a nearby location, kindly provided by GrowCreate, the digital agency that sponsors this event.

There will be a short introductory talk of about twenty minutes, followed by Q&As, and about an hour’s discussion among the audience. The meeting finishes at 9pm. All welcome; no need to book.

Hosted by Oxford School of Geography and the Environment and moderated by Danny Dorling.

Universal basic income (UBI) is an alternative form of social security, which posits that all people should receive an unconditional sum of money to pay for their survival needs. Despite its controversy, UBI has recently attracted considerable attention throughout the political spectrum and has even been enshrined in the programmes of leading European parties. Proponents argue that UBI would simplify welfare, reduce bureaucracy, incentivize creative work, improve the social distribution of wealth, and eliminate the conflict between labor and the need for automation in many areas of the economy.

To date the ReCivitas project remains one of only a handful of instances where UBI has been trialled in a real community. Cofounded by Marcus Brancaglione, this Brazilian NGO has successfully run a donation-funded basic income trial in a rural slum close to Sao Paulo since 2008. From its outset the project was guided by a libertarian ideal: to show that the satisfaction of basic survival needs is a human right that can be guaranteed without making people dependent on state patronage. However, ReCivitas also sees UBI as a developmental alternative to the preferred neoliberal tool of microfinance that so often fails in its mission to increase entrepreneurial investment in poor communities and to deliver people from poverty.

In this talk Brancaglione will present the lessons of the ReCivitas project, the effect UBI has had on its recipients and, in turn, on his own personal development. He will challenge prejudices against UBI and discuss the potential of UBI as a policy alternative in different countries, communities and economic contexts.

Marcus Brancaglione is the co-founder of ReCivitas, a Brazilian NGO that runs a groundbreaking basic income project in a rural slum close to São Paulo. Relying solely on donations, ReCivitas gives every villager an unconditional monthly payment of 30 Brazilian Reais. Brancaglione is also the creator of Governe-se, a platform for the promotion of direct democracy, and the alternative intellectual property licence, Robin Right. His publications include works on basic income, revolution in Brazil, and the possibility of a left-libertarian theology.

Join us for post-talk drinks at the Kings Arms from 7pm onwards.

Gross Domestic Product: three words that can decide elections, influence political decisions, and determine whether a country can keep borrowing or will be thrown into recession. Economist Diane Coyle will argue why GDP is increasingly inappropriate for the twenty-first-century economy.

This talk will be followed by a book signing and a drinks reception, all welcome

This talk will be live webcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ck12yaw5Tzc

Oxford Fabian Society presents ‘The Future of Work’

What is work? How will digital technology transform the economy and the workforce? And how should progressive politics respond to technological change?

This event will bring together Joanna Biggs, author of All Day Long: A Portrait of Britain at Work and Nick Srnicek, co-author of Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and World Without Work to look at the present and future of work, technology, and politics.

All very welcome. A drinks reception will follow the event.

Chair
Lise Butler, Stipendiary Lecturer in History, Pembroke College and Vice-Chair, Oxford Fabian Society

Speakers
Joanna Biggs, London Review of Books and author of All Day Long (Serpent’s Tail, 2015) and Nick Srnicek, co-author of Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work (Verso, 2015)

Respondent
Michael Weatherburn, Imperial College and Secretary, Oxford Fabian Society

Technological advancements are fundamental to our existence, and a major driver of economic growth. While technology is all around us, in many ways we understand the evolution of dinosaurs better than we understand the evolution of technology. Nonetheless, there are several intriguing laws for technological progress whose origins are not well understood. Professor Doyne Farmer, Director of the Complexity Economics Programme at The Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School will show how these make it possible to predict the cost of future technologies and assess how accurate such predictions are. He will also consider ways of viewing the relationship between technologies in ecological terms, and show the insight this brings to economic growth.

An introductory talk of about twenty minutes, followed by Q&As, and an hour or so’s discussion. All welcome. No need to book.

Prof. Daniel Wakelin and Anna Sander in conversation with Oxford MSt students about creating, using and sharing images of medieval manuscripts, during a lunchtime break in a hands-on MS handling and photography workshop day. What can’t digital images tell us? What metadata do we need? What can only be learned from the original manuscript? What information is only available from digital images? Do professional and amateur manuscript images have different uses? What practical considerations govern photography of ancient, irreplaceable books under reading room conditions? Lunchtime discussion is open to all.

Adobe’s Richard Curtis will join us in Oxford to provide a guided tour of Photoshop’s 3d tools. He will demonstrate how to work with virtual models to enhance photos, explain 3d printing functions, look at the character posing for stills and more. This “Deep DIve” session is an opportunity to explore in detail this powerful, under used aspect of this classic software package.

To stabilise the climate, net global carbon dioxide emissions must be reduced to zero. Yet fossil carbon has never been cheaper: the market capitalisation of Peabody Energy values its coal reserves (30 years’ production at current rates) at less than 3 cents per tonne of buried carbon. Either the market is assuming the vast bulk of those reserves will never be used at all, or (more likely) the market isn’t thinking about the next 30 years. The fossil fuel industry is likely to emerge from its current crisis largely under new ownership. Will the new owners be even more opaque and defensive on environmental issues than the old, or does this represent an opportunity for environmentally conscious investors to ensure the industry in future plays a constructive role in the transition to a net zero carbon economy?

This lecture will present some of the work of the Oxford Martin Net Zero Carbon Investment Initiative, which is exploring the role investors can play in enabling the transition to a stable climate while minimising the risks associated with asset stranding or locking in emissions that exceed a safe cumulative total. Professor Myles Allen will argue that stabilising global temperatures depends on the development of “backstop” technologies to allow fossil carbon to be used without net dumping of CO2 into the atmosphere, and that until the fossil fuel industry itself takes on this challenge, we cannot hope to solve the problem.

Registration required.

The world’s oceans are a global commons that provide a wealth of services vital to human and societal wellbeing. As global demands on these services increase, and pressure grows from multiple threats such as climate change, pollution, and resource extraction, we examine some of the tools and approaches that may prove useful in designing a sustainable future for our oceans.

The lecture will introduce the work of the Oxford Martin Programme on Sustainable Oceans and the novel approach it is taking to management of the oceans.

An introductory talk of about twenty minutes, followed by Q&As and an hour or so’s discussion among the audience. You’re welcome to come along just to listen, or to take an active part in the discussion.

Professor Ian Goldin, Director of the Oxford Martin School, looks at what we mean by development and what citizens, governments and the international community can do to encourage it.

Goldin explains how the notion of development has expanded from the original focus on incomes and economic growth to a much broader interpretation. He considers the contributions made by education, health, gender and equity, and argues that it is also necessary take into account the rule of law, the role of institutions, and sustainability and environmental concerns.

There will be a book signing and drinks reception after the talk, all welcome.

Registration required.