Some face-to-face events are returning. Check carefully for any requirements.
Panel:
Professor Charles Godfray, Director, Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food and author of the chapter How can 9-10 Billion People be Fed Sustainably and Equitably by 2050?
Professor Ian Goldin, Director, Oxford Martin School, Editor of Is the Planet Full? and author of the chapter Governance Matters Most
Professor Sarah Harper, Director, Oxford Institute of Population Ageing, Oxford Martin School and author of the chapter Demographic and Environmental Transitions
Professor Yadvinder Malhi, Director, Oxford Centre for Tropical Forests, Oxford Martin School and author of the chapter The Metabolism of a Human-Dominated Planet
Dr Toby Ord, James Martin Fellow, Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology and author of the chapter Overpopulation or Underpopulation?
The panel will discuss whether our planet can continue to support a growing population estimated to reach 10 billion people by the middle of the century.
The panel discussion will be followed by a book signing and drinks reception.
This panel discussion will be live webcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFIqDQP1Vjc
About the Book:
What are the impacts of population growth? Can our planet support the demands of the ten billion people anticipated to be the world’s population by the middle of this century?
While it is common to hear about the problems of overpopulation, might there be unexplored benefits of increasing numbers of people in the world? How can we both consider and harness the potential benefits brought by a healthier, wealthier and larger population? May more people mean more scientists to discover how our world works, more inventors and thinkers to help solve the world’s problems, more skilled people to put these ideas into practice?
In this book, leading academics with a wide range of expertise in demography, philosophy, biology, climate science, economics and environmental sustainability explore the contexts, costs and benefits of a burgeoning population on our economic, social and environmental systems.
Senia Paseta (Associate Professor of Modern History, University of Oxford) will discuss her new book with:
Roy Foster (Carroll Professor of Irish History, University of Oxford)
Desmond King (Andrew Mellon Professor of American Government, University of Oxford)
Tara Stubbs (University Lecturer in English Literature, OUDCE)
There will be plenty of time for audience questions. Free, all welcome and no booking required.
About the book:
A major new history of the experiences and activities of Irish nationalist women in the early twentieth century, from learning and buying Irish to participating in armed revolt. Using memoirs, reminiscences, letters and diaries, Senia Pašeta explores the question of what it meant to be a female nationalist in this volatile period, revealing how Irish women formed nationalist, cultural and feminist groups of their own as well as how they influenced broader political developments. She shows that women’s involvement with Irish nationalism was intimately bound up with the suffrage movement as feminism offered an important framework for women’s political activity. She covers the full range of women’s nationalist activism from constitutional nationalism to republicanism, beginning in 1900 with the foundation of Inghinidhe na hÉireann (Daughters of Ireland) and ending in 1918 with the enfranchisement of women, the collapse of the Irish Party and the ascendancy of Sinn Fein.
Public Seminar: Thinking About the Brain
With speakers: Professor Chris Kennard; Professor Glyn Humphreys; Professor David Lomas; Dr Joshua Hordern; Dr Ayoush Lazikani; Dr Matthew Broome; Dr Chrystalina Antoniades
Thursday 20 November, 5.30-8.30pm
Ashmolean Education Centre
The evening will offer an opportunity to explore current research into the brain and the mind from a wide range of perspectives, from medieval literature to contemporary art and neuroscience.
Thinking About the Brain is a public seminar, forming part of the developing collaboration between the Ashmolean Museum’s University Engagement Programme and Oxford’s Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences. It is being co-organised by Dr Jim Harris, Andrew W Mellon Foundation Teaching Curator at the Ashmolean, and Dr Chrystalina Antoniades, Lecturer in Medicine at Brasenose College and Senior Research Fellow in the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences.
Open to all and free of charge. To ensure a place, please follow this link to e-mail Dr Jim Harris (at jim.harris @ ashmus.ox.ac.uk), or telephone 01865 288 287.
Adobe User Group Monthly Meeting – Free Event
This week’s theme: Low light photography, YouTube broadcast and user experience tips
We have three guest speakers this time: Roger Gilboy, Mariana Mota and David Perry.
Roger is going to talk about challenges of photography in low light conditions. Mariana will cover the mysterious topic of UX techniques for cross platform design. Maybe some of you remember that last year David talked about YouTube tools such as branding, tagging and analytics functions. In the November’s presentation David will give us an update on the new features offered by the video platform, including live broadcast.
A History of Ancient Greece in Fifty Lives
With David Studdard, historian
Saturday 22 November, 2–3pm
Ashmolean Museum Lecture Theatre
David Studdard creates a vivid picture of life in all arenas of the Ancient Greek world. Delve into the worlds of mathematics, geography, rhetoric, historiography, painting and sculpture; explore the accounts of historians, mystics, poets, dramatists, political commentators and philosophers; and travel through the ancient realms of Sicily, Afghanistan, Macedonia and Alexandria.
Tickets are £5/£4 concessions and booking is recommended as places are limited.
Visit: http://www.ashmolean.org/events/Lectures/?id=132
Join us for a critical review of the extent to which businesses promote HR in practice. Talk of corporate responsibility, pro-bono schemes and language of sustainability and accountability continues to increase but in reality are businesses doing enough to promote and protect Human Rights? There will be the chance to talk more informally with the speakers after the event over drinks and nibbles.
Panel Speakers: Rae Lindsay (Clifford Chance), Peter Frankental (Amnesty International)
Chair: Dr Lawrence Hill-Cawthorne, University of Reading
Dr Robin Darwall-Smith, Magdalen College Archivist, will discuss the impact of the First World War on Magdalen College, and among the themes he will consider are: the College in the summer of 1914; how Magdalen functioned during the war and who was there during this time; what happened to its members on the front; and how the College chose to remember the war afterwards.
Including a chance to see a related exhibition in our Old Library, which was curated by Robin and our Archives Assistant, Ben Taylor.
All welcome.
The Anglo-Scottish Border: a Photographic Tour
With Tim Porter, lecturer
Medieval Scotland Afternoon Tea Lecture Series
Tuesday 25 November, 2–4pm
At the Ashmolean Museum (Lecture Theatre)
With the 2014 referendum for Scottish independence, the historic relationship between Scotland and England has recently been a prevalent topic of political discussion. This year also marks the 700th anniversary of the battle of Bannockburn, a significant Scottish victory in the First War of Scottish Independence. These lectures explore three key aspects of the Anglo-Scottish relationship during the Middle Ages.
Tickets are £9/£8 concessions (includes tea & cake), and booking is recommended as places are limited.
Visit: http://www.ashmolean.org/events/Lectures/?id=132
Magic Textiles (In association with the Oxford Asian Textiles Group)
With Dr Susan Conway, Research Associate, School of Oriental and Asian Studies
Wednesday 26 November, 6–8.30pm
Ashmolean Museum Education Centre
Dr Conway studies the culture, arts and crafts of Asia, specialising in Thailand and the Shan States of Burma. Following the September launch of her new book, ‘Tai Supernaturalism’, at the Royal Geographical Society, she will speak about textiles with supposed mystical and magical properties.
Tickets are £3 on the door, no advance booking is required. OATG members go free. Entry via St Giles Street.
Unlocking Archives is a series of lunchtime talks about current research in Balliol College’s special collections. Today, Naomi Tiley and Fiona Godber of Balliol Library will speak about ‘Buried Treasure? Hidden Early Printed Books at Balliol.’ Friday of 7th week (28 November) at 1pm.
All welcome! Feel free to bring your lunch. The talks will last about half an hour, to allow time for questions and discussion afterwards and a closer look at some of the Balliol MSS discussed. All Unlocking Archives talks take place at Balliol’s Historic Collections Centre, St Cross Church, Manor Road OX1 3UH (next door to Holywell Manor). Map & directions: http://archives.balliol.ox.ac.uk/Services/visit.asp#f
C.R.W. Nevinson in the 21st Century
With Jan Cox, art historian
Friday 28 November, 2–3pm
At the Ashmolean Museum
Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson (1889‒1946) was one of the most famous British war artists working during the First World War. Art historian Jan Cox examines the way that Nevinson, also a renowned etcher and lithographer, has been depicted more recently in television programmes and books.
Tickets are £5/£4 concessions and booking is recommended as places are limited.
Visit: http://www.ashmolean.org/events/Lectures/?id=132
Alison Light will discuss her new book Common People: The History of An English Family, which has been shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, with:
Laura Marcus (Goldsmiths’ Professor of English Literature, University of Oxford)
Selina Todd (Lecturer in Modern British History, University of Oxford)
Lyndal Roper (Regius Professor of History, University of Oxford).
There will be time for general discussion and audience questions. Please join us for a sandwich lunch from 12:45, with discussion from 13:00 to 13:45.
About the book:
Family history is a massive phenomenon of our times, but what are we after when we go in search of our ancestors? Beginning with her grandparents, Alison Light moves between the present and the past, in an extraordinary series of journeys over two centuries, across Britain and beyond. Epic in scope and deep in feeling, Common People is a family history but also a new kind of public history, following the lives of the migrants who travelled the country looking for work. Original and eloquent, it is a timely rethinking of who the English were – but ultimately it reflects on history itself, and on our constant need to know who went before us and what we owe them.
Why Poetry Matters
Part of the Why Philosophy Matters Series
With Professor Max de Gaynesford, University of Reading
Wednesday 3 December, 6‒7.30pm, Education Centre
Join esteemed scholars to talk about the hot topics in contemporary culture and philosophical thought. In partnership with Oxford Brookes University and sponsored by the Royal Institute of Philosophy.
Free, no booking required, seats allocated on a first-come first-served basis. Entry via St Giles’ Street, drinks from 5.45pm.
To celebrate the 350th anniversary of the commencement of the building of the Sheldonian Theatre, we’ll be hosting Dr Matthew Walker and Dr Anthony Geraghty for a tour of the Sheldonian Theatre, a thrilling opportunity to hear two experts speak about one of Oxford’s most significant architectural landmarks.
Dr Geraghty is a world-renowned art historian, specialising in architectural history, and the architecture of Christoper Wren in particular. He literally wrote the book on the Sheldonian Theatre, and will be joined by Oxford’s own Dr Matthew Walker, to lead us on a tour through the interior and around the exterior of this remarkable building.
£2 fee for non-members, or you can buy membership for an end-of-term discounted price of £10, and get in free (with a free plus one!)
Medieval Scottish Gothic: Glory and Excess
With Tim Porter, lecturer
(ticket includes tea & cake!)
Friday 5 December, 2–4pm
Ashmolean Museum Lecture Theatre
With the 2014 referendum for Scottish independence, the historic relationship between Scotland and England has recently been a prevalent topic of political discussion. This year also marks the 700th anniversary of the battle of Bannockburn, a significant Scottish victory in the First War of Scottish Independence. These lectures explore three key aspects of the Anglo-Scottish relationship during the Middle Ages.
Tickets are £9/£8 concessions (includes tea & cake), and booking is recommended as places are limited.
Part of a Medieval Scotland Afternoon Tea Lecture Series.
http://www.ashmolean.org/events/Lectures/?id=132
William Blake: Apprentice & Master
With Professor Michael Phillips, exhibition curator
Saturday 6 December, 11am‒12pm, Ashmolean Lecture Theatre
Exhibition curator Professor Michael Phillips explains how some of Blake’s best-known works were created and individually produced. This lecture also looks at how Blake developed personally and artistically from an apprentice engraver to a master printmaker.
Tickets are £5/£4 concessions and booking is recommended as places are limited.
This is a William Blake exhibition event. To find out more about our William Blake exhibition, and see a full list of exhibition events, see http://www.ashmolean.org/williamblake/
Special Printing Demonstrations
On a 19th century printing press
With Professor Michael Phillips, exhibition curator
Tuesday 9, Wednesday 10 and Thursday 11 December
11am–12pm & 2–4pm
Join Professor Michael Phillips, guest curator of the exhibition, as he prints on a 19th-century printing press, demonstrating the different stages of the print process. Originally trained as a printmaker, Professor Phillips has a unique insight into William Blake’s printing techniques and has been researching and recreating Blake’s method of relief etched copper plates.
Free with the price of exhibition admission and no additional booking is necessary.
http://www.ashmolean.org/exhibitions/williamblake/events/
Special Printing Demonstrations
On a 19th century printing press
With Professor Michael Phillips, exhibition curator
Tuesday 9, Wednesday 10 and Thursday 11 December
11am–12pm & 2–4pm
Join Professor Michael Phillips, guest curator of the exhibition, as he prints on a 19th-century printing press, demonstrating the different stages of the print process. Originally trained as a printmaker, Professor Phillips has a unique insight into William Blake’s printing techniques and has been researching and recreating Blake’s method of relief etched copper plates.
Free with the price of exhibition admission and no additional booking is necessary.
http://www.ashmolean.org/exhibitions/williamblake/events/
Special Printing Demonstrations
On a 19th century printing press
With Professor Michael Phillips, exhibition curator
Tuesday 9, Wednesday 10 and Thursday 11 December
11am–12pm & 2–4pm
Join Professor Michael Phillips, guest curator of the exhibition, as he prints on a 19th-century printing press, demonstrating the different stages of the print process. Originally trained as a printmaker, Professor Phillips has a unique insight into William Blake’s printing techniques and has been researching and recreating Blake’s method of relief etched copper plates.
Free with the price of exhibition admission and no additional booking is necessary.
http://www.ashmolean.org/exhibitions/williamblake/events/
Anglo Saxon Christmas
With Professor M. J. Toswell, University of Western Ontario
Thursday 11 December, 2–3pm, Ashmolean Lecture Theatre
Aelfric was the most prolific writer of sermons in late Anglo-Saxon England; amongst his many sermons, three were about the birth of Christ. This lecture takes these sermons as a starting point to explore the Anglo-Saxon Christmas and considers the earlier traditions of midwinter festivals and how they merged with Christian nativity stories. Professor Toswell will discuss food, holiday, liturgy and how the days of Christmas would have been spent in a local eorl’s household.
Tickets are £5/£4 concessions and booking is recommended as places are limited.
The Sir David Piper Lecture 2015
Time at the Museum
With Dr Alexander Sturgis, Director of the Ashmolean
Saturday 10 January, 11am–12pm, Taylor Institute
(next door to the Ashmolean Museum)
The Ashmolean’s collections span millennia from about 500,000 years ago to the present day. In this talk, the new Director of the Ashmolean, Dr Alexander Sturgis, considers the role of museums in making the past relevant and looks at the way in which the immediacy of museum objects can both help and hinder historical understanding.
Free, but booking is essential. Visit: http://www.oxfordplayhouse.com/ticketsoxford/#event=19455
This is a monthly free meeting. This week we have two main talks, one on creating 360degree tours of buildings using Google business, (basically using street view you can walk in and tour round certain buildings) and another creating a title sequence with After Effects & Photoshop. Guest speakers: Guy Henstock and Sathya Vijayendran
Towards a New Era in Printmaking: Innovation in the 18th Century
With Dr Ad Stijnman FRHistS, private researcher
Friday 16 January, 2‒3pm, Ashmolean Lecture Theatre
Printmaking changed dramatically after 1700 with the introduction of new plate-making and plate-printing processes, coloured inks and state of the art print presses. Dr Stijnman looks at this era in which artists, printers, engravers and publishers produced work that astonished audiences. This is a William Blake exhibition event.
Tickets £5/£4 concessions. Booking is essential.
Brought to you by Blackwell’s Bookshop and the Ashmolean Museum, ‘Inspired by Blake’ is a two-week William Blake Festival celebrating the magnificent and visionary painter, poet, thinker and icon.
This panel discussion opens the festival and examines the many different aspects of William Blake, his influence on thought and culture, and his relevance today. The panel features Philip Pullman (who is President of the Blake Society), Iain Sinclair (author and pschogeographer, whose book ‘Blake’s London’ examines Blake’s relationship with our capital) and Caspar Henderson, whose new book will be ‘A New Map of Wonders’, a book about wonder and things that make the world astonishing.
For information about the festival, including a full events listing, please visit the Inspired by Blake website. #inspiredbyblake
An introductory talk on the Antikythera Mechanism, the first known computer – an astronomical device created by the ancient Greeks
Brought to you by Blackwell’s Bookshop and the Ashmolean Museum, ‘Inspired by Blake’ is a two-week William Blake Festival celebrating the magnificent and visionary painter, poet, thinker and icon.
Take an incredible journey through the mind of this great visionary genius as Ruth Rosen performs extracts from every one of Blake’s works from his poetry to his prose to his letters (no ifs, buts, howevers and no interlinking narrative). This event is sure to be hugely inspiring and deeply moving.
For information about the festival, including a full events listing, please visit the Inspired by Blake website. #inspiredbyblake
Open lectures by Antony Griffiths, former Keeper of the Department of Prints and Drawings, British Museum on the print before photography. Wednesdays at 5 pm:
21 Jan The technology and its implications
28 Jan The world of the print: engravers and designers
4 Feb The publisher: finance, distribution and marketing
11 Feb The role of the state: copyright, censorship and patronage
18 Feb Buyers, collectors and connoisseurs
25 Feb The cheap print
4 Mar The print and the art historian
11 Mar Misunderstanding prints
SPEAKER
Professor Peter Heather (Kings College London)
p to the mid-fourth century AD, the language of refuge regularly appears in Roman sources in the context of frontier management. It is employed both of high status individuals, but also – more strikingly – of very much larger groups: certainly several tens of thousands of individuals, and sometimes apparently a hundred thousand plus-strong. The basic political economy of the Empire – powered by unmechanised agricultural production in a world of low overall population densities – meant that there was always a demand for labour, and, in the right circumstances, refugees could expect reasonable treatment. Provided that their arrival posed no military or political threat to imperial integrity, refugees would receive not only lands to cultivate on reasonable terms, but might also be settled in concentrations large enough to preserve structures of broader familial and even cultural identity. In other circumstances, however, imperial control was enforced by direct military action and survivors were sold into slavery and might themselves redistributed as individuals in adverse socio-economic conditions over very wide geographical areas.
In the late fourth and early fifth centuries, a distinct change becomes apparent in imperial policy. Some very large refugee groups – particularly those that were Gothic – were granted lands within the Empire on terms which broke with long-established Roman norms. These groups were so large and retained so much autonomy that they posed a distinct threat to the continued integrity of imperial rule over the particular regions in which they were settled. Over time, some of the settlements eventually became the basis of independent successor kingdoms as the power of the west Roman centre unravelled. This transition poses an obvious question. Why did traditional Roman policy towards refugees change so markedly in the late imperial period?
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Professor Heather joined the History Department at Kings College London in January 2008 as the Chair of Medieval History. He was educated at Maidstone Grammar School, before moving to New College Oxford to complete his undergraduate degree and doctoral work. Prior to joining King’s, Peter Heather worked at University College London, Yale University and Worcester College, Oxford.
His research interests lie in the later Roman Empire and its successor states. He is widely published in these matters, with a focus on the Goth and Visigoth kingdoms of the Medieval period and publications including The Goths (Oxford, 1996) and (with D. Moncur), Politics, Philosophy, and Empire in the Fourth Century (Liverpool, 2001). In recent years, his research has looked at propaganda in the late Roman elite, and issues of migration and ethnicity among the groups who dismantled the western half of the Roman Empire. Future work is likely to centre on developing legal systems of the Roman Empire and its successor states, and the evolution of particularly Christian authority structures in the same contexts.
Brought to you by Blackwell’s Bookshop and the Ashmolean Museum, ‘Inspired by Blake’ is a two-week William Blake Festival celebrating the magnificent and visionary painter, poet, thinker and icon.
William Blake and five of his contemporaries, including William Wordsworth, Mary Wollstonecraft and Humphry Davy are in a balloon that is plummeting perilously towards Earth. Excess weight will have to be jettisoned. Which figure can justify that they merit their place in the balloon? An evening that is both educational and highly entertaining is guaranteed!
For information about the festival, including a full events listing, please visit the Inspired by Blake website. #inspiredbyblake
Public meeting. Twenty minute talk, one hour discussion. You’re welcome to come along just to listen, or participate actively in the discussion. Free entry, no need to book.