China is facing severe water challenges. Many parts of the country suffer from chronic water scarcity. Pollution is affecting the health of hundreds of waterways and public concern is increasing. Floods and droughts are a constant threat, especially as climate change increases uncertainty over rainfall patterns. Freshwater biodiversity is declining, with aquatic species such as the Yangtze river dolphin facing extinction.

The Chinese authorities have recognised that tackling these challenges is a matter of national priority and have significantly increased the resources available to water managers, emphasising ‘three red lines’ of improved water quality, increased water efficiency and more sustainable water allocations.

So how can China meet its aspirations for a water secure future which aids its continued economic development while enhancing environmental quality? This seminar will explore the current and potential future water situation in China, the response of China to these challenges drawing on global experiences, and risks to critical water infrastructure.

Current and future water challenges in China
Prof Li Yuanyuan, Vice President, General Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Planning and Design, Ministry of Water resources, PR China

Strategic principles and frameworks for water management in China and beyond – lessons from a global review
Dr David Tickner, Chief Freshwater Advisor, WWF-UK

Infrastructure vulnerability to water-related risks in China
Prof Jim Hall, Environmental Change Institute, Oxford University

Professor of Caribbean Literature and Culture at Goldsmiths University, Joan Anim-Addo brings us her voice on Black Women’s Writing and the place of the Black figure in the Humanities. This event will be hosted in connection with Oxford ACS.

Led by David Aldridge, an academic philosopher, educationalist and experienced role-playing enthusiast, this evening is intended for curious or experienced gamers alike to sample Dungeons and Dragons, celebrating collaborative storytelling and raising serious questions about ethics, metaphysics, and our own potential as human beings (ages 16+).
Part of the Oxford Brookes University festival, Outburst, at Pegasus, 6-10 may 2014. #OutBurst2014

In this lecture series, Naomi Richman explores the evolution of the ideas central to major global belief-systems such as Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism and Marxism, and their status in the modern world from a social-scientific and secular perspective.

6 Lectures run on Mondays starting the 12th May.
6-7pm, Roy Griffiths Room. ARCO Building, Keble College.
Free, open to all, and followed by discussion.

Weeks 1 and 2: Christianity and Secularisation. Week 3: Buddhism. Week 4: Judaism. Week 5: Islam. Week 6: Marxism, Nationalism and Scientific Humanism

For more information, contact Dr Bea Prentiss,

Speaker: Edward Fitzgerald, QC
Renowned human rights lawyer and leading advocate in death row cases worldwide. Part of the Mansfield Lecture Series, convener Baroness Helena Kennedy QC.

event is free

Speaker: Judy Webb

The Lye Valley, formally known as Hogley Bog, is a surprising and little known hot spot of wildlife biodiversity, a habitat for stunning wildflowers and spectacular insects in the centre of the City of Oxford. Beautiful marsh helleborine orchids are thriving here, within just a few metres of housing, and an important, historic, population of Grass-of-Parnassus is recovering to good numbers. Oxford botanists since the 1650s have loved this site and it was a favorite of photographer Henry Taunt, whose description of the Grass of Parnassus is quoted in the title. This is the story of a rare, ancient, wetland fen community, which has been fed by lime-rich spring water for thousands of years. It is one of the most important heritage sites within the city.

All Summer Lectures start at 6.30pm in the Daubeny Lecture Theatre (at
 the front of the Botanic Garden) and are followed by a drinks reception in the Botanic Garden. Ticket cost £8 per talk or £36 for the series of 5.
For more details, visit: http://www.botanic-garden.ox.ac.uk/whatson

You are warmly welcome to attend a film showing and after-talk about a spiritual community in Germany, living life with a focus on meditation, and the true nature of our reality as human beings. You are invited with any questions or sharings to put to residents of this community who are making a UK tour this month.
We would love to see you there.

A short talk followed by questions and discussion. All welcome, whether you want to take part in the discussion or just listen.

OxTET is happy to welcome Riva-Melissa Tez – lecturer at the DAB university in Berlin, founder of the Berlin Singularity, Associate Director of Longevity Intelligence Communications, and co-runner of Kardashev Communications. Riva will be speaking on obstacles that emerging technology businesses face, analysing factors causing shortfalls in funding, social mistrust, and political dysfunction, and offering recommendations for dealing with these obstacles.

Speaker: Tom Price

The archipelago of Japan is defined as one of the World’s 34 biodiversity hotspots. Learn how staff from the Botanic Garden and Harcourt Arboretum are conducting expeditions to Japan to collect and document the native flora to improve the plant collections held by the University, promote biodiversity conservation and communicate research conducted by the Department of Plant Sciences, Oxford to a wider audience.

All Summer Lectures start at 6.30pm in the Daubeny Lecture Theatre (at
 the front of the Botanic Garden) and are followed by a drinks reception in the Botanic Garden. Ticket cost £8 per talk or £36 for the series of 5.
For more details, visit: http://www.botanic-garden.ox.ac.uk/whatson

Al Jazeera host Mehdi Hasan will challenge Bernard Kouchner, co-founder of Medecins sans Frontieres and former French Foreign Minister, on France’s military interventionism. Are the country’s motives altruistic or do they respond to a neo-colonialist agenda? And is there a tipping point when intervening becomes essential? Syria, Mali, Libya, Kosovo and more.

This debate will be filmed and aired on Al Jazeera English at a later date. Audience members will be invited to participate in a Q&A section during the second half of the conversation.

Order free tickets here: http://bernardkouchner.eventbrite.co.uk

The use of GM technologies is growing beyond agricultural crops. GM vaccines and GM animals are available and their use may need different regulatory considerations. In this talk, Dr Michael Bonsall from the Dept of Zoology, University of Oxford, will cover some of the scientific, policy and regulatory issues that challenge the use and implementation of GM organisms.

Speaker: Guy Horwood

In 2013, Harcourt Arboretum arborist Guy Horwood was awarded a travel bursary
to join the prestigious International Dendrology Society on their study tour of the Czech Republic. The tour of this diverse and unspoilt country started and ended in Prague and visited botanic gardens and natural forests. In this talk, Guy will take you on a virtual version of the tour and share his experiences with you.

All Summer Lectures start at 6.30pm in the Daubeny Lecture Theatre (at
 the front of the Botanic Garden) and are followed by a drinks reception in the Botanic Garden. Ticket cost £8 per talk or £36 for the series of 5.
For more details, visit: http://www.botanic-garden.ox.ac.uk/whatson

Oxford Transitional Justice Research is pleased to invite you to its 2014 Summer Conference ‘Borders and Boundaries in Transitional Justice’.

This year’s conference, hosted with the support of the Planethood Foundation, Law Faculty, and the Centre for Criminology, will explore the issue of how borders and boundaries affect transitional justice processes across the world. The conference is organised around four panels:

The interplay between local, regional, and foreign transnational processes;
The role of diaspora and stateless communities in transitional justice;
The ways in which international law is dealing with cross-border transitional justice concerns; and
How local, national, and global approaches are affecting the theory and practice of transitional justice.

Registration is now open and we encourage all potential participants to register as soon as possible. Spaces are limited. We particularly welcome graduate students and early career researchers working on issues of transitional justice. A small registration fee includes tea and coffee and a light lunch.

The World Humanist Congress is taking place from Friday 8th August until Sunday 10th August in Oxford. Held every three years in different locations around the world, this years theme of the meeting is ‘Freedom of Thought and Expression’. We are pleased to announce during the conference period, 10 world-class speakers will be visiting the bookshop for a series of free 20 minute talks taking place in the Norrington Room. You do not need tickets to attend any of the talks but seating is limited, so please arrive early to get a ensure your place.

Friday 8th August- A C Grayling will be discussing “How Does Humanism Relate to Ethics?”.

Peter Tatchell will be discussing ‘Organised Religion is the Greatest Global Threat to Human Rights’.

The World Humanist Congress is taking place from Friday 8th August until Sunday 10th August in Oxford. Held every three years in different locations around the world, this years theme of the meeting is ‘Freedom of Thought and Expression’. We are pleased to announce during the conference period, 10 world-class speakers will be visiting the bookshop for a series of free 20 minute talks taking place in the Norrington Room. You do not need tickets to attend any of the talks but seating is limited, so please arrive early to get a ensure your place.

Kenan Malik will be discussing ‘What can the history of morality tell us about the nature of morality’.

The World Humanist Congress is taking place from Friday 8th August until Sunday 10th August in Oxford. Held every three years in different locations around the world, this years theme of the meeting is ‘Freedom of Thought and Expression’. We are pleased to announce during the conference period, 10 world-class speakers will be visiting the bookshop for a series of free 20 minute talks taking place in the Norrington Room. You do not need tickets to attend any of the talks but seating is limited, so please arrive early to get a ensure your place.

Sue Bolton and Fiona Ruck, smoking cessation specialists, look at the effects of passive smoking and their campaign for smoke-free homes and cars across Oxfordshire.

The talk will include myth-busting statistics and facts covering the effects of passive smoking on both adults and children, as well as a detailed look into what is in the cigarette smoke that is causing the adverse effects. Sue and Fiona will also look at local and national responses to this public health issue, including the Smoke Free Homes and Cars Pledge project.

Our speakers have worked as registered nurses and health visitors and worked for years in smoking cessation, including as a smoking and pregnancy specialist and as a smoking and young person’s specialist for Oxford Smoking Advice Service.

Over the past years, China’s role in global climate negotiations has become ever more crucial and controversial. While these years have also seen the ethical debate on global climate policy grow and flourish, the debate has engaged surprisingly little in a global dialogue.

Therefore, it is with great pleasure that we welcome Professor Huan Qingzhi, a leading scholar working at the Centre for Environmental Politics Research (Peking University). He will present his views on China’s role in global climate policy.

Professor Rana Mitter (Oxford China Centre) and Benito Mueller (Oxford Institute for Energy Studies) will provide inputs and there will be plenty of space for discussion with the audience.

This is a public event and all are warmly invited.

This lecture is hosted by the Oxford Martin Programme on Human Rights for Future Generations, The Oxford China Centre, The Universities’ China Committee in London and the University of Reading’s Reading Ethics and Political Philosophy

A public meeting with a short introductory talk followed by questions and discussion.

The end of violence
Thursday 25 September, 7:30pm to 9:00pm
Oxford Town Hall, St Aldates
All welcome

Organised by Oxford Communist Corresponding Society.
This is the last in a three-part series of public meetings on violence and war. The three meetings of the series are:

Thursday 17 July
The war to end all wars

Thursday 21 August
The anti-war movement

Thursday 25 September
The end of violence

All are from 7:30pm to 9:00pm in the Town Hall

Join Professor Nick Bostrom for a talk on his new book, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, and a journey that takes us to the frontiers of thinking about the human condition and the future of intelligent life.

The book talk will be followed by a book signing and drinks reception.

This book talk will be live webcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jupxhH9mE-g

About the book:
The human brain has some capabilities that the brains of other animals lack. It is to these distinctive capabilities that our species owes its dominant position. Other animals have stronger muscles or sharper claws, but we have cleverer brains.

If machine brains one day come to surpass human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence could become very powerful. As the fate of the gorillas now depends more on us humans than on the gorillas themselves, so the fate of our species then would come to depend on the actions of the machine superintelligence.

But we have one advantage: we get to make the first move. Will it be possible to construct a seed AI or otherwise to engineer initial conditions so as to make an intelligence explosion survivable? How could one achieve a controlled detonation?

‘Tutankhamun and Co. Ltd’: Arthur Weigall and the Discovery of Tutankhamun’s Tomb

With Julie Hankey, author of ‘A Passion for Egypt: Arthur Weigall, Tutankhamun and the Curse of the Pharaohs’

Ashmolean Lecture Theatre

Tue 14 Oct, 2.30‒3.30pm

From 1905 to 1912, Arthur Weigall was Howard Carter’s successor as Chief Inspector of Antiquities for Upper Egypt. He used his position to conduct a campaign against government practice of allowing amateur collectors to excavate for private profit. With Tutankhamun’s discovery, Weigall came into open conflict with Carter’s patron, Lord Carnarvon, over his exclusive contract with The Times, and ‒ at a time of political unrest in Egypt ‒ over his assumption of rights to the contents of the tomb.

In this lecture, Rory O. Millson, Partner at Cravath, Swaine and Moore LLP, will explore the legality and ethics of the increasingly common use of military drones to kill ‘enemy combatants’ in the ongoing fight against terrorist groups in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

Dr Abril Saldaña Tejeda, University of Guanajuato(Mexico) & Collen Visiting Fellow at OIPA
This presentation looks into the lived experiences of young mothers in higher education in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico. It draws on qualitative interviews and an analysis of medical discourses on the young maternal body through a revision of pregnancy prevention programs designed and implemented by governmental and non-governmental organizations. It is argued that social anxieties over young motherhood could be linked to the way youth is understood as a transition; an undefinable state that works as a margin between childhood and adulthood. It argues that discourses around young motherhood in Mexico often obstruct women’s access to public health, work against effective policies to address unwanted pregnancies and the country’s increasing rate of higher education dropouts.

Michaelmas Term 2014 Seminar Series
‘FERTILITY, REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH AND WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT’
Thursdays – 12:30 – 14:00
Seminar Room, Oxford Institute of Population Ageing,
66 Banbury Road, Oxford, OX2 6PR.
Convener: Dr Melanie Frost

A public meeting with a short introductory talk followed by questions and discussion.

The difficulty of imagining a free society
Thursday 16 October, 7:30pm to 9:00pm
The Mitre, corner of High St and Turl St (upstairs function room)
All welcome

Organised by Oxford Communist Corresponding Society.

What is it like to be a brain surgeon? How does it feel to hold someone’s life in your hands, to cut into the stuff that creates thought, feeling and reason? How do you live with the consequences of performing a potentially life-saving operation when it all goes wrong? In neurosurgery, more than in any other branch of medicine, the doctor’s oath to ‘do no harm’ holds a bitter irony. Operations on the brain carry grave risks…

Henry Marsh will be discussing his book, ‘Do No Harm’.

Directed by the Oscar Award winning documentary maker Alex Gibney, We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks tells the story of Julian Assange’s rise and fall as the founder of Wikileaks and self-proclaimed defender of truth and freedom. The film draws on the testimony of over twenty witnesses and charts the role of Bradley Manning and other key players in the birth of a new age of digitial whistle-blowing and citizen journalism.

This free screening is being held as part of the new FLJS programme examining the socio-legal implications of the rise of social media in the digital age, and raises questions in relation to freedom of speech, censorship, and the respective roles of the citizen and the state in the twenty-first century.

Dr Jonathan Bright, Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, will give a short talk before the film highlighting some of the main issues raised.