There are currently more than 2.8 million registered refugees from Syria. Ninety-six percent of these refugees are hosted by neighbouring countries – Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt. With the exception of Germany and a few other limited initiatives, the primary aim of the European response has been to contain the crisis in the Syrian region and to reinforce Europe’s borders.

This event marks the launch of a new RSC Policy Briefing, ‘Protection in Europe for refugees from Syria’. Report authors, Cynthia Orchard and Andrew Miller, will provide an overview of the European reaction generally, as well as brief summaries of selected countries’ responses. They argue that containment of the refugee crisis to the Syrian region is unsustainable and advocate for European countries to open their doors to refugees from the region and to expand safe and legal routes of entry.

Also being launched at this event is issue 47 of Forced Migration Review on ‘The Syria crisis, displacement and protection’. Professor Roger Zetter, co-author (with Héloïse Ruaudel) of a major article in the issue entitled ‘Development and protection challenges of the Syrian refugee crisis’, will look at early recovery and social cohesion interventions and the transition from assistance to development-led interventions in Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan. FMR47 is funded by the Regional Development and Protection Programme, a Denmark-led initiative with contributions from the EU, Denmark, Ireland, Netherlands, UK and Czech Republic, for whose inception report Professor Zetter was the lead author.

The event will be followed by a reception at 4pm. If you are unable to attend in person, you can watch live via a video link. For more information, please visit: www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/syrialaunch

Why is so much writing so bad, and how can we make it better? Is the English language being corrupted by texting and social media? Do the kids today even care about good writing? Why should any of us care? In ‘The Sense of Style’, the bestselling linguist and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker answers these questions and more. Rethinking the usage guide for the twenty-first century, Pinker doesn’t carp about the decline of language or recycle pet peeves from the rulebooks of a century ago. Instead, he applies insights from the sciences of language and mind to the challenge of crafting clear, coherent, and stylish prose. Join us in the magnificent Sheldonian Theatre to hear from one of the most important public intellectuals.

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

Speakers: Professor Deborah E Anker (Harvard University), Professor Efrat A Arbel (University of British Columbia)

Based on a recent report published by the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic (HIRC), entitled Bordering on Failure: Canada–U.S. Border Policy and the Politics of Refugee Exclusion, this talk will examine the Canada–US Safe Third Country Agreement, a ‘refugee sharing’ agreement implemented by Canada and the United States to exercise more control over their shared border. Drawing on interview data collected along the Canada–US border, it will evaluate how the Agreement has altered the Canada–US border landscape, and the effects it has had on asylum seekers.

The HIRC report concludes that the Safe Third Country Agreement not only closes Canada’s borders to asylum seekers, but also diminishes the legal protections available to them under domestic and international law. It further concludes that the Agreement has failed in its goal of enhancing the integrity of the Canada–US border, and has in fact prompted a rise in human smuggling and unauthorised border crossings, making the border more dangerous and disorderly, and placing the lives and safety of asylum seekers at risk. The talk will highlight these central findings, and, situating the Agreement in its global context, also examine the broader effects of its implementation.

About the speakers:

Deborah E Anker

Deborah Anker is Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Harvard Law School Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program (HIRC). She has taught law students at Harvard for over 25 years. Author of a leading treatise, Law of Asylum in the United States, Anker has co-drafted ground-breaking gender asylum guidelines and amicus curiae briefs. Professor Anker is one of the most widely known asylum scholars and practitioners in the United States; she is cited frequently by international and domestic courts and tribunals, including the United States Supreme Court. Professor Anker is a pioneer in the development of clinical legal education in the immigration field, training students in direct representation of refugees and creating a foundation for clinics at law schools around the country.

Efrat A Arbel

Efrat Arbel is Assistant Professor of Law at the University of British Columbia. She completed her masters and doctoral studies at Harvard Law School, during which time she was actively involved with the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Law Clinic. Dr Arbel researches in the areas of constitutional law, refugee law, Aboriginal law, and prison law, in Canada and the United States. She has published widely in these fields, and is co-author (with Alletta Brenner) of Bordering on Failure: Canada–U.S. Border Policy and the Politics of Refugee Exclusion. Combining her scholarly work with legal practice, Dr Arbel is also engaged in advocacy and litigation involving refugee and prisoner rights, and is an executive member of the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers.

Egyptomania: The Allure of Ancient Egypt
With Henrietta McCall, Department of the Middle East, British Museum

2pm Saturday, 11 October 2014 at Ashmolean Museum | Venue Information

Henrietta McCall talks about the enduring appeal of ancient Egypt in western culture. She assesses how it began with Napoleon in the early 19th century; how symbols and imagery from antiquity inspired architecture, gardens, furniture and fashion; and how in the 1920s that appeal reached its climax with the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun.

We invite you to join us at 3pm each day from Monday 13th October to Friday 17th October when five leading academics will be lighting up Blackwell’s Bookshop and talking about their passion for their subject.

Professor Sir Adam Roberts Senior Research Fellow, Balliol College, Oxford “Tackling Violence in Politics and International Relations”

These talks are free to attend, places are limited so please arrive early to ensure a seat. For more information please visit our Customer Service Department at Blackwell’s Bookshop, Broad Street, Oxford.

Speakers: Dr Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh (University College London) and Professor Gil Loescher (Refugee Studies Centre)

Refugee and Forced Migration Studies has grown from being a concern of a relatively small number of scholars and policy researchers in the 1980s to a global field of interest with thousands of students worldwide studying displacement either from traditional disciplinary perspectives or as a core component of newer programmes across the Humanities and Social and Political Sciences. Today the field encompasses both rigorous academic research which may or may not ultimately inform policy and practice, as well as action-research focused on advocating in favour of refugees’ needs and rights. This authoritative Handbook critically evaluates the birth and development of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, and analyses the key contemporary and future challenges faced by academics and practitioners working with and for forcibly displaced populations around the world.

In this talk, Dr Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Professor Gil Loescher, two of the Handbook’s editors, will discuss how the book provides a comprehensive and cutting-edge overview of the key intellectual, political, social and institutional challenges arising from mass displacement in the world today. Laying out the thinking behind the Handbook, they will examine how it addresses these challenges and attempts to unify a diverse, evolving and crucial field.

Professor Loescher and Dr Fiddian-Qasmiyeh will be joined by a number of the Handbook’s authors, who will reflect on their own contributions to the volume and highlight some of cutting-edge approaches and challenges emerging in their respective areas of expertise.

Order your copy of the Handbook online from Oxford University Press by 30 December 2014 and receive a 30% discount. Click here for details.

Light refreshments will be provided after the event.

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.

Speaker: Lina Molokotos-Liederman (Uppsala University)
The first part of the seminar will look at the Orthodox Christian approach of addressing social issues of poverty, injustice and inequality, and the concept of Orthodox diakonia. The second part will focus on Greece as a case study, discussing the response of the Church to the social costs of the economic crisis (its charitable social welfare activities), but also the impact of this crisis on the Church itself.

As the dust settles after the Scottish referendum and the UK gears up for the next general election, the Oxford Martin School and the Department of Politics and International Relations bring constitutional experts together to debate what next for the United Kingdom?

Panel:

Professor Iain McLean, Professor of Politics, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford and specialist in devolution
Dr Scot Peterson, Bingham Research Fellow in Constitutional Studies and Junior Research Fellow in the Social Sciences, University of Oxford
Chair: Mure Dickie, Financial Times Scotland Correspondent

There will be a drinks reception after the debate, all welcome

About the speakers

Professor Iain McLean was born in Edinburgh and went to school there. He came to England for the first time as a student at Oxford where he obtained his MA, M.Phil and D.Phil. He was a college tutor in an undergraduate college for 13 years, during which the college scaled the heights of PPE. He has worked at the Universities of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Warwick, and Oxford, and has held visiting professorships at Washington & Lee, Stanford, Yale, and the Australian National University.

He has been an elected councillor on Tyne & Wear County Council (committee chair) and Oxford City Council (group leader). In recent years he has principally worked on UK public policy, and started the Department of Politics and International Relations Public Policy Unit in 2005.

His research areas and insterests are:

Public policy, especially UK. Specialisms in devolution; spatial issues in taxation and public expenditure; electoral systems; constitutional reform; church and state.
The Union (of the United Kingdom) since 1707. Rational-choice approaches to political history
Dr Scot Peterson primarily in Colorado, in the United States, where he did his undergraduate work in Political Science and Philosophy at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He earned a Master of Arts degree from the University of Chicago in Political Science, and attended law school at the University of California (Boalt Hall) in Berkeley. After practicing law for fifteen years in Colorado he came to Oxford, where he earned his doctoral degree.

He is interested in the constitutional history of the United Kingdom and of the United States, focusing particularly on matters arising from the relationship between church and state. His D.Phil. thesis was about the religious establishments, or the lack of them, in the three nations that make up Great Britain (England, Wales and Scotland) in the early twentieth century. He is concerned with questions of why those relationships have been maintained in recent history, despite the supposed ‘secularization’ inherent in modern Western democracies. He analyzes them as political and historical phenomena, engaging in archive research and applying rational choice methodology.

In this talk by Tom Steinberg, we will explore how previous epochal technologies (e.g steam, nuclear) affected politics and government but didn’t require leaders to develop any brand new, specialist skills in order to govern effectively. You didn’t have to be a master of atomic physics to understand what the Bomb would do, and reading classic texts like Machiavelli could still help you negotiate, even with the Soviets. But the digital revolution is different. It brings policy options to the table that simply didn’t exist before, and makes the standard forms of public sector delivery implode (think Healthcare.gov or the NHS IT disaster). In this seminar, Tom will discuss the nature of this gap, and float some possible solutions.

Please note that this seminar will be conducted ‘off-the-record’ under Chatham House rules and will be followed by a drinks reception.

Why is intergenerational equity not better reflected in our policies? Why are calls on policymakers to extend their concern beyond short-term election cycles so ineffective? On 21 October, a year on from the release of the Oxford Martin Commission for Future Generations’ Report ‘Now for the Long Term’, the conference will examine these questions and survey options for better embedding a long-term perspective in our institutions.

Two sessions will evaluate innovative mechanisms and tools for re-orienting our practices towards the future. The effectiveness and legitimacy of various measures such as ombudspersons for future generations or improved reporting methods will be assessed by leading practitioners and theorists.

Speakers:

Professor Ian Goldin, Director, Oxford Martin School
Peter Davies, Wales’ Commissioner For Sustainable Future
Oras Tynkkynen, Vice-Chair, Finnish Committee for the Future
Catherine Pearce, Director Future Justice, World Future Council
Simon Caney, Oxford Martin Programme on Human Rights for Future Generations, University of Oxford
Juliana Bidadanure, Political and Social Sciences Department, European University Institute, Florence
Jörg Tremmel, Institute for Political Science, University of Tübingen
Peter Lawrence, Faculty of Law, University of Tasmania

The conference is free and open to all and will be followed by a drinks reception.

PsyNAppS holds our first meeting with Professor Nancy Puccinelli speaking about her considerable experience in the field of neuromarketing.

Professor Nancy Puccinelli is a leading expert in the role of affect in consumer behaviour. At our inaugural event, she will be discussing the application of Psychology and Neuroscience to marketing and analysis of consumer behaviour. She is currently a Fellow in Consumer Marketing at the Saïd Business School.

PsyNAppS members pay £5 for free entry to ALL talks for the entire academic year! Alternatively, pay £3 for free entry to all talks for one academic term, or £2 for entry to a single meeting.

Speaker: Dr Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh (University College London)

Refugee camps are typically perceived as militarised and patriarchal spaces, and yet the Sahrawi refugee camps and their inhabitants have consistently been represented as ideal in nature: uniquely secular and democratic spaces, and characterised by gender equality. Drawing on extensive research with and about Sahrawi refugees in Algeria, Cuba, Spain, South Africa and Syria, Dr Fiddian-Qasmiyeh explores how, why and to what effect such idealised depictions have been projected onto the international arena. In this talk, she will argue that secularism and the empowerment of Sahrawi refugee women have been strategically invoked to secure the humanitarian and political support of Western state and non-state actors who ensure the continued survival of the camps and their inhabitants. She will challenge listeners to reflect critically on who benefits from assertions of good, bad and ideal refugees, and whose interests are advanced by interwoven discourses about the empowerment of women and secularism in contexts of war and peace.

Light refreshments will be provided after the event.

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

I for one welcome our new robot overlords
Thursday 23 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.

A mini-conference to look at the traditions of organising against fascism and their relevance to preventing the rise of fascist organisations across Europe.

Opening session:
 The Holocaust a warning from history
● Tom Kaye Unite Against Fascism plus TU speaker

Workshops
 From Battling The Blackshirts at Carfax to Keeping the BNP Out
● Ciaran Walsh radical historian
 The Rise of the Far Right In Europe
● Cathy Pound Hope Not Hate

Final session
 How do we fight fascism today?

Tutankhamun and Revolution
With Dr Paul Collins, Jaleh Hearn Curator for Ancient Near East and co-curator of ‘Discovering Tutankhamun’

Ashmolean Lecture Theatre

Sat 25 Oct, 2‒3pm

This talk considers three historical periods when the image and idea of Tutankhamun became a focus for revolution both in Egypt and beyond. Starting in the ancient world, the revolutions of the Amarna age, into which Tutankhamun was born, witnessed a transformation in the concept of kingship. In the early 20th century, as Egypt claimed independence from British control, Tutankhamun became a symbol of opposition to imperial rule. Finally, in recent years, Egypt has faced political upheaval and revolutionaries
have again employed the image of Tutankhamun.

Lord Butler of Brockwell KG, former Cabinet Secretary, former Master of University College, Oxford, and current member of the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee will discuss the subject of spying.

There is no charge to attend this event. It is open to current and Old Members of Exeter College and members of the University of Oxford. If you plan to attend please contact Erica Sheppard (erica.sheppard@exeter.ox.ac.uk). Please report to the Porter’s Lodge on arrival.

Author of Chavs and The Establishment, Owen Jones discusses the current problems that Britain faces with Harry Leslie Smith. Harry is the author of this year’s bestselling Harry’s Last Stand and a 91 year old survivor of the Great Depression, a second world war RAF veteran and an activist for the poor and for the preservation of social democracy. Owen Jones is a left-wing English columnist, author and commentator. He is a regular columnist for The Guardian.

The event will be chaired by Melissa Benn, writer, journalist and campaigner. Melissa is the author of ‘What Should We Tell Our Daughters? The Pleasures and Pressures of Growing Up Female’ and ‘School Wars: The Battle for Britain’s Education’.

Speaker: Dr Kirsten McConnachie (Refugee Studies Centre)

Refugee camps are imbued in the public imagination with assumptions of anarchy, danger and refugee passivity. Governing Refugees: Justice, Order and Legal Pluralism marshals empirical data and ethnographic detail to challenge such assumptions, arguing that refugee camps should be recognised as spaces where social capital can not only survive, but thrive. In this talk, Dr McConnachie will examine themes of community governance, order maintenance and legal pluralism in the context of refugee camps on the Thailand-Burma border. The nature of a refugee situation is such that multiple actors take a role in camp management, creating a complex governance environment which has a significant impact on the lives of refugees. This situation also speaks to deeply important questions of legal and political scholarship, including the production of order beyond the state, justice as a contested site, and the influence of transnational human rights discourses on local justice practice. Dr McConnachie’s book presents valuable new research into the subject of refugee camps as well as an original critical analysis.

The seminar is part of “Religion, Society & Politics” series, hosted by Oxford Orthodox Christian Student Society. The seminar is aimed at understanding developing global-local interactions between the religious and the secular and examining the social and political consequences of religion and politics, with a focus on both conflict and cooperation and their association with religion in different contexts.

Professor Haynes is internationally recognised authority in religion, politics and democratisation. His most recent books include “Religious Transnational Actors and Soft Power” (2012) and “Routledge Handbook of Democratisation” (2011).

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

Understanding other people: a science of belief systems
Speaker: Dr Edmund Griffiths, author of “Towards a Science of Belief Systems” (Palgrave Macmillan 2014)
Thursday 30 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.

About “Towards a Science of Belief Systems”

People believe in a great many things: the New Age and the new atheism, astrology and the Juche Idea, the marginal utility theory and a God in three persons. Yet most of us know almost nothing about why other people believe the things they do – or indeed about how it feels to believe them. This book presents an objective method for understanding and comparing belief systems, irrespective of their subject matter and of whether or not the investigator happens to agree with them. The method, descriptive logic, is illustrated through analyses of various phenomena, including Zoroastrianism, Dawkinsism, Fabianism, 9/11 Truth, ‘alternative’ Egyptology, Gnosticism, flying saucer sightings, and the hymns of Charles Wesley. Special attention is given to beliefs that are not supposed to be wholly believed, and to how descriptive logic relates to the materialist conception of history. The book also outlines a new theory of superstition.

In the fourth seminar organised by Rector Trainor, Sir David Butler CBE FBA, Emeritus Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford, will speak on the subject of ‘Seventy Years of British Politics’.

Sir David is a social scientist and psephologist and is well known for his prominent role analysing election results on the BBC, ITV and Sky News.

There is no charge to attend this event. It is open to current and Old Members of Exeter College and to members of the University of Oxford. If you are planning to attend, please contact Erica Sheppard (erica.sheppard@exeter.ox.ac.uk). Please report to the Porter’s Lodge on arrival.

A discussion with two representatives of an Israeli peace village called Neve Shalom (Hebrew) / Wahat al-Salam (Arabic). In this unique village, Arab and Jewish Israelis have chosen to live together in peace, celebrating both cultures, languages and religions equally together.

Bob Fenton and Rami Mannaa, from the village, explain how the current political situation impacts upon their lives and work towards peace.

Chaired by The Very Rev John Drury, Chaplain of All Souls and Former Dean of Christ Church, Oxford.

Free Admission – Retiring collection for community peace projects bringing together Arab and Jewish teenagers from outside the village.

Please note: registration is required for this event.

Annual Harrell-Bond Lecture:

The communities comprising the modern Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan have a long history as refugee hosts. HRH Princess Basma bint Talal will examine the ways in which earlier refugee communities’ experience of displacement itself contributed to their integration within the developing Jordanian state. Princess Basma will discuss the ways in which Jordan’s Circassian, Chechen, and Armenian communities have negotiated different aspects of their specific identities and integrated in Jordan, considering the role of forced migration itself in creating identities.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

For nearly thirty years, Princess Basma has worked to promote a range of global issues, most notably in the areas of human development, gender equity and women’s empowerment, and the well-being and development of children. She is particularly involved with supporting the implementation of sustainable development programmes that address the social and economic needs of marginalised groups, including refugees.

Princess Basma is Honorary Human Development Ambassador for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women). She is also a Global Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

Please book your place using the link provided. For all other enquiries, please contact:

Anneli Chambliss
Centre Administrator
+44 01865 281720
anneli.chambliss@qeh.ox.ac.uk

The Innovation Forum, a student led, UK-wide network, invites all medics, entrepreneurs, scientists and coders to connect at our Oxford Launch event and to find out about “Digital Health: Opportunities and challenges in Oxford”. Our experienced panel of 4 speakers will cover a range of topics but we envisage touching upon core themes such as:

• What is digital healthcare?
• What opportunities exist in Oxford for talented coders/entrepreneurs etc. to connect with the medical community?
• What issues exist with access and use of data? How can students/interested people navigate this

Sian Williams, BBC Journalist, will discuss the challenges of the job, reflect on her work and also reveal the latest research from her MSc Psychology degree.

Professor Sarah Whatmore, head of School of Geography and the Environment, will speak about ‘Living with flooding: the science and politics of flood risk management’.

Sarah Whatmore is Professor of Environment and Public Policy at the University of Oxford and one of the world’s leading scholars on the relationship between environmental science and the democratic governance of environmental risks and hazards. She has worked extensively on the conditions that give rise to the public contestation of environmental expertise; the dynamics and consequences of environmental knowledge controversies for public policy-making; and the design of methods for conducting environmental research that enable the knowledge of affected communities to inform the ways in which environmental problems are framed and addressed.

Professor Whatmore is currently Head of the School of Geography and the Environment and Associate Head (Research) of the Social Sciences Division at the University of Oxford. She is an elected Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the Academy of Learned Societies in the Social Sciences (AcSS) and the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) (RGS) and has served on its Council. She is also a member of the Social Science Expert Panel advising the UK Government’s Departments of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and Energy and Climate Change (DECC).
A free lunch is provided. To book a place please email ahdg@st-annes-mcr.org.uk

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

Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) and ‘pleasure hardening into boredom’
Thursday 6 November, 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.

Sir David Warren KCMG, Old Member at Honorary Fellow of Exeter College, Chairman of the Japan Society and former Ambassador to Japan, will speak on the subject of ‘China and Japan in 2014: Are there really parallels with 1914?’

There is no charge to attend this event. It is open to current and Old Members of Exeter College and members of the University of Oxford. If you wish to attend please contact Erica Sheppard (erica.sheppard@exeter.ox.ac.uk). Please report to the Porter’s Lodge on arrival.