Some face-to-face events are returning. Check carefully for any requirements.
Join Revd Mpho Tutu, daughter of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, as she discusses The Book of Forgiving, written jointly with her father.
In the book, Desmond and Mpho Tutu offer guidance from their own lives and all they have witnessed along the four-fold path of forgiveness. The Book of Forgiving is an inspiring, personal and practical guide to forgiveness and to creating a more united world by learning to let go of resentment and realise that we can forgive and still pursue justice.
Mpho will be in discussion with Broadcaster and University Challenge host Jeremy Paxman.
For tickets email: Sophia@childrensradiofoundation.org
Dress code: Lounge suits or blazer and shirt (no jeans and for ladies no above the knee)
The discovery of the Higgs boson made headlines around the world. Two scientists, Peter Higgs and François Englert, whose theories predicted its existence, shared a Nobel Prize. The discovery was the culmination of the largest experiment ever run, the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. But what really is a Higgs boson and what does it do? How was it found? And what will the LHC do next? Jon Butterworth, a leading member of the ATLAS experiment, will talk about all this and more.
Jon Butterworth is also Head of the Department of Physics & Astronomy at UCL, and writes for the Guardian at http://www.theguardian.com/science/life-and-physics
7.30PM start at St. Aldates Tavern, and entry is free, although we do suggest a donation of around £3 to cover speaker expenses. Come along and say hello! All welcome.
Please join the facebook event and invite your friends: https://www.facebook.com/events/460780254055236/
http://oxford.skepticsinthepub.org/Event.aspx/2107/Smashing-Physics-News-from-the-energy-frontier
speaker:
Vincent Courcelle-Labrousse, Defence Counsel at the ICTR and Special Tribunal for Lebanon
The Art of Witnessing War
With Dr Sue Malvern, Reading University
Thursday 5 June, 2-3pm, Headley Lecture Theatre
Sue Malvern looks at the role of war artists and photographers as witnesses to conflicts and wars. Starting with WWI, the lecture looks at how the work of artists such as Paul Nash, C.R.W. Nevinson and Stanley Spencer came to be seen as authentic visions of the actuality of the war. It will then consider the iconic status of works such as Picasso’s Guernica (1937), the role of war photographers, and the contemporary issues for artists who give visual witness to war and conflict.
Tickets £5/£4
http://www.ashmolean.org/events/Lectures/?id=132
This talk addresses two objections to religious belief from Ned Hall, based on the claim that religious practices fail to show the epistemic virtues of those of natural science. First, individuals engaged in science adopt degrees of belief towards working hypotheses rather than supposing they possess knowledge, in contrast to religious believers. Second, scientific communities are governed by a norm that permits or welcomes heresy, whereas religious communities seek to maintain orthodoxy through organisational power. I accept Hall’s characterisation of the contrast, but argue that this is no objection to religious belief, for it misconstrues its grounds. Revealed religions (such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam) invite belief on the basis of testimony, rather than rational inference. Acceptance of testimony may properly result in knowledge rather than a weighted credence, and an epistemic community that is responsible for sustaining a testimonial chain is properly concerned with accurate transmission of the original report.
Tom Simpson is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford, and a Senior Research Fellow at Wadham College. He was educated at Cambridge (BA, MPhil, PhD), where he was also previously a Research Fellow at Sidney Sussex College. Between degrees he served as an officer with the Royal Marines Commandos. His research is focused on trust, both its theory and practical applications, including implications for religious epistemology. His work in applied ethics has been principally on the ethics of information and computing technologies, and of war.
THIS PUBLIC SEMINAR WILL BE HELD IN THE SUTRO ROOM OF TRINITY COLLEGE, OXFORD, AT 8:30PM ON THURSDAY 5th JUNE 2014, PRECEDED BY DRINKS AT 8:15PM.
experimentsandethics.wordpress.com
experimentsandethics.wordpress.com
Book your tickets here: http://www.scienceoxford.com/live/whats-on-so/the-future-of-the-universe
What is the future of our universe?
Are we alone or could other universes exist?
When and how might it end, or will it go on forever?
These and other questions have been in our thoughts since humanity first began to think beyond the next meal. New insights into the nature or our universe and how it was formed are forcing us to rethink our answers to these fundamental questions.
Science Oxford invites you to join a stellar panel of speakers including Professor Jim Gates, science advisor to the US Presidency from the University of Maryland, Oxford University’s Professor Frank Close and cosmologist Jo Dunkley. All under the chairmanship of Quentin Cooper, science broadcaster extraordinaire, in a mind-expanding and not to be missed evening of discussion and exploration at the Mathematical Institute, one of Oxford’s newest and exciting public venues.
You are cordially invited to the Magdalen College Trinity Term Libraries & Archives Talk:
Liam Dolan, Sherardian Professor of Botany, will speak on early botany.
A talk in Magdalen Summer Common Room (Cloisters III) followed by a chance to see our Early Botanical Books exhibition in the Old Library.
Dr Stephen Backhouse is Lecturer in Social and Political Theology at St. Mellitus college. Stephen studied at the University of Oxford, then McGill, then Oxford again, where he completed his doctorate on Kierkegaard and religious nationalism. Besides teaching at those universities, Stephen has also written on matters of politics, national identity and Christianity. As well as magazine and think tank articles, other publications include ‘The Compact Guide to Christian History’ (Lion, 2011) and ‘Kierkegaard’s Critique of Christian Nationalism’ (OUP, 2011).
Upstairs, in the function room, at the Mitre. 7:30pm with drinks and nibbles served from 7pm.
Tour: Joseph Beuys & Jörg Immendorff
With Colin Harrison, Senior Curator of European Art
3–3.45pm on Wednesday 14 May and Wednesday 11 June
Tours are free, no booking is required. Please meet in Gallery 2.
http://www.ashmolean.org/exhibitions/details/?exh=92
Personalised medicine utilises advances in DNA sequencing technology to classify a tumours according to genetic make-up instead of where they are in the body – allowing cancer treatment to be tailored to the individual patient.
People may have the ‘same’ cancer, such as lung or breast cancer, but can have different genetic forms of the disease so responses to treatment can vary. Likewise, cancers growing in different parts of the body may share the same genetic blueprint and so respond to similar treatments.
Leading clinician researchers Professor Mark Middleton and Dr Anna Schuh discuss advances in personalised medicine being pioneered at Oxford University Hospitals.
Wednesday 11 June 2014
Time: 18.30 -19.30
Location: Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre – Lecture Theatre Level 1
Free, open to all
‘Syria Speaks’ Series
Evening Finale: Art & Culture from the Frontline
With Malu Halasa and Zaher Omareen, curators and editors
Friday 13 June, 6.30-9.30pm, Headley Lecture Theatre
The Syrian uprising has seen an outpouring of creative expression from all levels of society. Syria Speaks: Art and Culture from the Frontline is a new anthology of Syrian fiction, poetry, memoir and critical essays, alongside art, cartoons, and photography. Editors from the book will be joined by prominent Syrian authors for a discussion on the role of the writer during conflict, along with visual presentations and short films from Syria.
Organized by: Reel arts
Supported by: The Prince Claus Fund, CKU, and English Pen
Tickets £5/£4
On Friday 13th June, the Oxford Left Review will be launching OLR Issue 13. Come along to get your copy and chat with the writers and editors. This issue was partially themed on ‘Science, Technology and the Left’, and contains articles, interviews, reviews and fiction on topics including fracking, devolution, Wikileaks, the pharmaceuticals industry and Pakistan, as well as many more. Drinks will be provided.
Rheumatoid arthritis is a complex autoimmune disease affecting up to 1% of the population, causing a disabling inflammatory arthritis. The disease has two clinical similar subsets: autoantibody positive or seropositive disease, and autoantibody or seronegative disease. Recent advances in high-throughout SNP genotyping has resulted in the identification of >100 risk loci, in addition to well-known associations at the MHC. However, understanding the link between genetic loci and disease mechanism, is contingent on investigators identifying causal alleles and elucidating how they function to modify disease susceptibility. Furthermore, the mechanistic relationship between the seropositive and seronegative rheumatoid arthritis clinical subsets is still unclear. We are now just starting to make progress in this direction. Here we present recent work on (1) efforts to localize MHC effects to functional amino acid sites within HLA genes, (2) methodological advances to connect non-MHC loci to functional alleles that influence gene regulation in a cell-specific manner, and (3) how genetics is giving us a clear picture on the heterogeneity of the genetic bases of the two clinically similar conditions of seronegative and seropositive rheumatoid arthritis.
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
RANDY RETTBERG, President of iGEM
Randy Rettberg is the man behind iGEM, the global competition for undergraduates and high school students in designing brand new biological parts, or “genetically engineered machines”. An engineer by trade he is the President of the iGEM Foundation, which operates the Registry of Standard Biological Parts, a continuously growing library of genetic parts that can be mixed and matched to enable easier construction of synthetic biology devices.
Dr. RICHARD KELWICK, Researcher at CSynBI, Centre for Synthetic Biology and Innovation (Imperial College)
Richard has been scientific advisor and project manager of three successful iGEM teams, 2011-2013. Most recently, he was the lead advisor for the iGEM team Plasticity, at Imperial College London, which came third out of over 200 teams at the world final, held at MIT.
Dr. JAREK BRYK, National Centre for Biotechnology Education University of Reading
Jarek works at the National Centre for Biotechnology Education on a project to facilitate teaching of synthetic biology on an undergraduate level. He develops experimental kits that will be incorporated in synthetic biology curricula.He currently mentors the iGEM Reading team.
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.
‘Can you Count the Clouds?’ asks the voice of God from the whirlwind in the stunningly beautiful catalogue of nature questions from the Old Testament Book of Job. Tom McLeish takes a scientist’s reading of this ancient text as a centrepiece to make the case for science as a deeply human and ancient activity, embedded in some of the oldest stories told about human desire to understand the natural world. Drawing on stories from the modern science of chaos and uncertainty alongside medieval, patristic, classical and Biblical sources, Faith and Wisdom in Science challenges much of the current ‘science and religion’ debate as operating with the wrong assumptions and in the wrong space. Its narrative approach develops a natural critique of the cultural separation of sciences and humanities, suggesting an approach to science, or in its more ancient form, natural philosophy— the ‘love of wisdom of natural things’—that can draw on theological and cultural roots. Surprisingly, science becomes a deeply religious activity. There are urgent lessons for education, the political process of decision making on science and technology, our relationship with the global environment, and the way that both religious and secular communities alike celebrate and govern science.
Tom McLeish is Professor of Physics and Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research at Durham University. His research interests include: complex fluids and biological physics, academic-industrial collaboration, science and society, and the history (especially medieval) and theology of science. He studied for his first degree and PhD in polymer physics at the University of Cambridge and in 1987 became a lecturer in physics at the University of Sheffield. In 1993 he took the chair in polymer physics at the University of Leeds. He took up his current position in Durham in 2008. He has won several awards for his work on molecular rheology of polymers, including the Weissenberg Award of the European Society of Rheology (2007), the Gold Medal of the British Society of Rheology (2009) and the Bingham Award of the Society of Rheology (2010). He is also involved in science-communication with the public via regular radio, TV and schools lectures, discussing issues from the Physics of Slime to the interaction of Faith and Science. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, the Royal Society of Chemistry, the American Physical Society and the Royal Society.
THIS SEMINAR WILL BE HELD AT THE SUTRO ROOM, TRINITY COLLEGE AT 8:30PM, PRECEDED BY DRINKS AT 8:15PM.
All cancers are caused by somatic mutations. However, the processes underlying the genesis of somatic mutations in human cancer are remarkably poorly understood. Recent large-scale cancer genome sequencing initiatives have provided us with new insights into these mutational processes through the mutational signatures they leave on the cancer genome. In this talk I will review the mutational signatures found across cancer and consider the underlying mutational processes that have been operative.
A new report by the Humanitarian Innovation Project, Refugee Economies: Rethinking Popular Assumptions, will be launched to coincide with World Refugee Day, on Friday 20 June 2014. It is one of the very first studies on the economic life of refugees and fundamentally challenges existing models of refugee assistance.
The report is based on participatory, mixed methods research including about 1,600 surveys in Uganda, one of the few refugee-hosting countries in Africa that allows refugees the right to work and freedom of movement. However, it has wider implications for the emerging refugee crises around the world.
Far from being uniformly dependent, refugees are part of complex and vibrant economic systems. They are often entrepreneurial and, if given the opportunity, can help themselves and their communities, as well as contributing to the host economy. The data in the new report challenges five popular myths about refugees’ economic lives:
that refugees are economically isolated;
that they are a burden on host states;
that they are economically homogenous;
that they are technologically illiterate;
that they are dependent on humanitarian assistance.
Read more about the report: http://www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/refugeeeconomies
The Self-Portrait: a Cultural History
With James Hall, author
Saturday 21 June , 2-3pm, Headley Lecture Theatre
Recounting the history of the self-portrait, this lecture offers insights into artists’ psychological and creative worlds. James Hall talks about the medieval ‘mirror craze’, the confessional self-portraits of Titian and Michelangelo, and the multiple selves of contemporary artists such as Claude Cahun and Cindy Sherman.
Tickets £5/£4
http://www.ashmolean.org/events/Lectures/?id=132
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.
A TORCH day conference including keynotes from Terry Eagleton and George Pattison and parallel session papers on theodicy, evil in literature, film and TV, German philosophy (Hegel and Fichte), death and technology, Aristotle, the Akedah, and more.
In 2014 Barnett House is celebrating its centenary. The celebrations culminate with the Reunion Weekend on 12-13 July 2014.
This includes:
– Keynote talk from Magdalena Sepulveda, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.
– The 100th birthday tea party (the V-C Andrew Hamilton will cut the birthday cake!)
– A talk on the history of Barnett House and the launch of the book on the history.
– Open house at the department with displays of historic material and current research.
– Drinks and dinner with an after dinner talk from Prof Jonathan Bradshaw.
– Showing of the film Rich Man, Poor Man based on research carried out by Robert Walker and Elaine Chase with a discussion with the director of the film.
BRC Researcher Dr Alex Pitcher describes the current research hoping to improve diagnosis and pinpoint more effective treatments for Marfan syndrome and related disorders.
What are the indicators of the condition? Can research explain how issues with connective tissue can damage the eyes, the skeleton and the blood vessels?
Free Talk, open to all
The World Humanist Congress, held every three years, is a unique event bringing together humanists from over forty countries under the auspices of the International Humanist and Ethical Union. The 19th Congress is being organised by the British Humanist Association and will feature three days of plenary sessions in the Sheldonian Theatre, and workshops, talks, and panel discussions in the University of Oxford Examination Schools about Freedom of Thought and Expression: Forging a 21st Century Enlightenment. Confirmed speakers include: Jim Al-Khalili, Joan Bakewell, Richard Dawkins, A C Grayling, PZ Myers, Taslima Nasrin, Phillip Pullman, Wole Soyinka and Peter Tatchell.
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- Richard Dawkins will be discussing “The Greatest Show on Earth”.
Friday 8th August- Jim Al-Khalili will be discussing “A Rationalist’s View of the Great Paradoxes in Science”
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.