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

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.

Christian Fuchs, Professor of Social Media at Westminster University, will lead the discussion of his recently published book Social Media: A Critical Introduction, which navigates the controversies and contradictions of the complex digital media landscape.

Exploring the role of social media in contemporary popular movements including the Occupy Movement and the Arab Spring, and drawing on theorists including Marx, Weber, Habermas, and Durkheim, Professor Fuchs asks:

Is Google good or evil?
Is Facebook a surveillance threat to privacy?
Does Twitter enhance democracy?
What did WikiLeaks reveal about political accountability, the transparency of power, and new forms of cultural censorship?

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.

Will Hutton Political Economist and Principal of Hertford College, Oxford “What Does Studying Economics Teach Us?”

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.

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.

Weekly seminars on the ubiquitous but underexplored phenomenon of procrastination, the ‘thief of time’. Today’s seminar sees Professor Vince Crawford (Economics) on ‘Now or Later?’

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.

Part of the Oxford Internet Institute’s Bellwether Lectures series.

Speaker: Caroline Haythornthwaite
Learning has left the classroom. It is being re-constituted across distance, discipline, workplace, and media as the social and technical interconnectivity of the Internet challenges existing structures for learning and education. The new ‘e-learning’ is more than a learning management system – it is a transformation in how, where, and with whom we learn that supports formal, informal and non-formal learning, life-long learning, just-in-time learning, and in ‘as much time as I have’ learning. But to do so, e-learning depends on the power of crowds and the support of communities engaged in the participatory practices of the Internet. We are networked in our learning, but also in our joint construction of knowledge and its legitimation, and in the social and technical practices that support knowledge co-construction, learning and education. This talk explores the emerging trends and forces that are radically reshaping learning and knowledge practices. The talk further explores the changing landscape of learning and knowledge practices with attention to motivations for contributing and valuing knowledge in crowds and communities, and the implications for future knowledge practices.

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.

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.

Eating Restoration Glue to Stay Alive: A History of Hermitage
With Dr Rosalind P. Blakesley, University of Cambridge

Ashmolean Lecture Theatre

Wed 22 Oct, 11am–12pm

The Hermitage is an institute like no other,
 housing over 3 million objects in buildings as iconic as the Winter Palace, seat of the Romanov dynasty until its spectacular fall from grace in 1917. As the Hermitage celebrates its 250th anniversary, Dr Blakesley charts its history from the lavish patronage of Catherine the Great to the unparalleled acquisitions of Impressionist and Post- Impressionist works.

Professor Virginia Held, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Hunter College, City University of New York, USA speaks on ‘Care and Justice in Society’
More info: http://www.ageing.ox.ac.uk/events/ethics-of-care

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.

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.

Despite our extensive knowledge of the major challenges the world faces during coming decades, impasse exists in global attempts to address economic, climate, trade, security, and other key issues. The Chancellor will examine the implications of this gridlock, drawing on the work of the Oxford Martin Commission for Future Generations – of which he is a member – as well as experiences from his distinguished political and diplomatic career.

This lecture is also being live webcast on youtube, please follow this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB3QmvwvHCk

About the Speaker

Lord Patten joined the Conservative Research Department in 1966. He was seconded to the Cabinet Office in 1970 and was personal assistant and political secretary to Lord Carrington and Lord Whitelaw when they were Chairmen of the Conservative Party from 1972-1974. In 1974 he was appointed the youngest ever Director of the Conservative Research Department, a post which he held until 1979.

Lord Patten was elected as Member of Parliament for Bath in May 1979, a seat he held until April 1992. In 1983 he wrote The Tory Case, a study of Conservatism. Following the General Election of June 1983, Lord Patten was appointed Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Northern Ireland Office and in September 1985 Minister of State at the Department of Education and Science. In September 1986 he became Minister for Overseas Development at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office. He was appointed to the Privy Council in 1989 and was appointed a Companion of Honour in 1998. In July 1989 he became Secretary of State for the Environment. In November 1990 he was appointed Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Chairman of the Conservative Party.

Lord Patten was appointed Governor of Hong Kong in April 1992, a position he held until 1997, overseeing the return of Hong Kong to China. He was Chairman of the Independent Commission on Policing for Northern Ireland set up under the Good Friday Peace Agreement, which reported in 1999. From 1999 to 2004 he was European Commissioner for External Relations, and in January 2005 he took his seat in the House of Lords. In 2006 he was appointed Co-Chair of the UK-India Round Table. He was Chairman of the BBC Trust from 2011-2014.

He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh, and Honorary Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. He served as Chancellor of Newcastle University from 1999 to 2009, and was elected Chancellor of the University of Oxford in 2003. His publications include What Next? Surviving the 21st Century (2008); Not Quite the Diplomat: Home Truths About World Affairs (2005) and East and West (1998), about Asia and its relations with the rest of the world.

Sir David, formerly the Director of GCHQ, the Permanent Secretary of the Home Office and the first UK Security and Intelligence Co-ordinator, will
examine the complex and rapidly evolving challenges of intelligence in a digital age and the implications for human rights of digital surveillance.

Drawing on experience and expertise in government service and his recent writing, Sir David will offer comparisons between the American, British and European experience, and explain how recent revelations about global surveillance affect the UK.

This lecture is part of the activities of the International History and Grand Strategy Research Group in the University’s Department of History, Philosophy and Religion.

About the speaker
PROFESSOR SIR DAVID OMAND

As the first UK Security and Intelligence Co-ordinator, Professor Sir David Omand was responsible to the Prime Minister for the professional health of the intelligence community, national counter-terrorism strategy and homeland security.

He was Permanent Secretary of the Home Office from 1997 to 2000. As well as Director of GCHQ, he has served as the Deputy Undersecretary of State for Policy at the Ministry of Defence. He is a member of the Bildt Commission on Global Internet Governance and of the RUSI Inquiry into surveillance set up by the Deputy Prime Minister.

This lecture is a joint event by the Oxford Martin School and The Oxford International Relations Society (IRSoc)

Speaker: Kate Allen, Director, Amnesty International UK

The lecture is free and open to all and will be followed by a drinks reception for members of IRSoc, membership is available on the night.

About the speaker:
Kate Allen is the Director of Amnesty International UK. She fronts Amnesty’s campaigns which demand respect for women’s rights, stronger restrictions on the arms trade, the release of all prisoners of conscience, and an end to torture and the death penalty.

About IRSoc:
Oxford International Relations Society is one of the most active and dynamic societies at Oxford. Its remit is to educate students about the opportunities and challenges in global affairs, including international law. Our events are widely anticipated as highlights of Oxford’s calendar and we are building an exceptional reputation among our members and throughout the wider student body. (http://irsoc.org/)

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.

Yama to Oni: Ghosts and Demons in Asian Art
With Jasleen Khandari, art historian

Ashmolean Lecture Theatre

Fri 31 Oct, 2–3pm


Ghosts, demons and the afterlife have an important place in Asian culture. In this lecture, Jasleen Khandari explores representations of ghosts and demons in the art of India, Tibet and Japan.

Dress up to party like it’s 1922 and discover the decade’s fascination with Ancient Egypt at an evening of Jazz Age performances, workshops and talks.

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FREE ENTRY
7 – 10.30pm
Halloween night: Friday 31 October 2014

The Rooftop Bar and Vaulted Café will be serving drinks until 10.30pm.

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For programme news see:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1445682889032169/
or
http://www.ashmolean.org/livefriday

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

Sherpa Adventure Gear presents the BMC Club Autumn Lecture series! The Oxford University Mountaineering Club will be hosting Neil Gresham and Kenton Cool to speak at the Oxford Maths Department (Mathematical Institute, Woodstock Road, Oxford, OX2 6HD) on Wednesday the 5th of November at 7:30pm. Doors open at 7pm, there will be a raffle in the interval, with the final lecture finishing at 9:30pm. Tickets for this exciting event will cost £8, and can be purchased here or on the door.

Neil is one of Britain’s most well known all-round climbers and is one of the few climbers in the world to have climbed E10. He is also the UK’s most experienced climbing coach, and is the training columnist for Climber magazine and Rock & Ice magazine.

Kenton is the holder of the British record for most Mount Everest summits, recently completing the ‘Triple Crown’ of Everest, Nuptse and Lhotse in three days. He is also a Piolet d’Or nominee for a route on Annapurna III and was the first British person to complete a ski descent of an 8,000m peak.

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

Globalisation has brought us vast benefits including growth in incomes, education, innovation and connectivity. Professor Ian Goldin, Director of the Oxford Martin School, argues that it also has the potential to destabilise our societies. In The Butterfly Defect: How globalisation creates systemic risks, and what to do about it, he and co-author Mike Mariathasan, Assistant Professor of Finance at the University of Vienna, argue that the recent financial crisis is an example of the risks that the world will face in the coming decades.

The risks spread across supply chains, pandemics, infrastructure, ecology, climate change, economics and politics. Unless these risks are addressed, says Goldin, they could lead to greater protectionism, xenophobia, nationalism and to deglobalisation, rising conflict and slower growth.

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=UuW2rgtZuIM

About the Book
Global hyperconnectivity and increased system integration have led to vast benefits, including worldwide growth in incomes, education, innovation, and technology. But rapid globalization has also created concerns because the repercussions of local events now cascade over national borders and the fallout of financial meltdowns and environmental disasters affects everyone. The Butterfly Defect addresses the widening gap between systemic risks and their effective management. It shows how the new dynamics of turbo-charged globalization has the potential and power to destabilize our societies. Drawing on the latest insights from a wide variety of disciplines, Ian Goldin and Mike Mariathasan provide practical guidance for how governments, businesses, and individuals can better manage risk in our contemporary world.

Goldin and Mariathasan assert that the current complexities of globalization will not be sustainable as surprises become more frequent and have widespread impacts. The recent financial crisis exemplifies the new form of systemic risk that will characterize the coming decades, and the authors provide the first framework for understanding how such risk will function in the twenty-first century. Goldin and Mariathasan demonstrate that systemic risk issues are now endemic everywhere in supply chains, pandemics, infrastructure, ecology and climate change, economics, and politics. Unless we are better able to address these concerns, they will lead to greater protectionism, xenophobia, nationalism, and, inevitably, deglobalization, rising conflict, and slower growth.

The Butterfly Defect shows that mitigating uncertainty and systemic risk in an interconnected world is an essential task for our future.

Prison Phoenix Trust Annual Lecture:
Have you ever considered how someone convicted of murder perceives himself? What sense of identity the robber and the drink-driver convicted of manslaughter have as they serve their sentences? And how prison might influence their sense of self?
This lecture explores how spiritual practice can enable a person to frame a new sense of themselves and their potential. With a new perspective on their thoughts, there is the possibility of making clear choices. In a prison setting, the capacity to freely choose is a vital part of the journey away from crime. Sustaining this change is helped enormously by like minded people who offer support in prison. Such a community can help a person deal with setbacks, thereby helping to build personal resilience.
The talk will be given by The Reverend Canon Mike Kavanagh, Head of Chaplaincy and Faith Services for the National Offender Management Service, and will be followed by refreshments.

Speaker: Professor Jonny Steinberg (African Studies Centre and the Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford)

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Jonny Steinberg is Associate Professor in African Criminology, African Studies Centre and Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford. He joined the African Studies Centre in October 2011. His time is divided between African Studies and the Centre for Criminology. For the African Studies MSc he convenes the second term of the Core Course on Themes in African History and Social Sciences, and offers an option called ‘Violence and Civilisation’, available both to African Studies and Criminology MSc students.

Much of his work explores South African people and institutions in the wake of the transition to democracy. The institutions he has written about are the police, the prison, the farm and the clinic. The common thread between these projects has been an investigation into how political transition has changed the filigrees of unwritten rules through which individuals understand their lives and relate to others. He has also, of late, worked beyond South Africa, on Liberia’s recent civil war, and some of the questions it has raised about migration, exile and transitional justice.

His latest book, A Man of Good Hope, to be published in January 2015, records the life history of a Somali man who fled Mogadishu as a child in 1991, grew up itinerant and unsettled in various east African countries, and finally made his way down Africa’s eastern seaboard to South Africa when he was in his early 20s. His story is a frame for exploring a range of African questions, from state collapse in Somalia, to the relationship between formal state institutions and undocumented people, to xenophobia in South Africa.

Light refreshments will be provided after the event.

What impact are government anti-terrorism actions having on our society? Our Panel Debate on the impact of anti-terrorism legislation in the UK is an event not to be missed for anyone interested in in this area of policy. With speakers including David Anderson QC, and Jonathan Russell (Political Liaison Officer at the Quilliam Foundation), this is should be an exciting and enlightening discussion on an incredibly divisive topic.