During a speech in 1957, Prime Minister Harold MacMillan declared “our people have never had it so good”. Now, more than half a century later, are we fundamentally any better off? Through discussion of technological advances, social changes, political reforms, and economic shocks and recessions, this panel will seek to question whether the world we currently live in is indeed a better place than it was in the 1950s.

Chaired by Professor Brian Nolan, Professor of Social Policy, the panel will consist of:

*Dr Max Roser, James Martin Fellow at The Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School
*Dr Anders Sandberg, James Martin Fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute
*Professor Robert Walker, Professor of Social Policy

A drinks reception will follow, all welcome.

Javier Cercas, novelist and essayist, is one of Europe’s most distinguished contemporary writers. His works, which have been translated into more than twenty languages, include the acclaimed, Soldados de Salamina (Soldiers of Salamis, 2001), which was made into a film by David Trueba in 2003, La Velocidad de la Luz (The Speed of Light, 2005), Anatomia de un Instante (The Anatomy of a Moment, 2009) and Las Leyes de la Frontera (Outlaws, 2012). He has won numerous literary awards, including the Independent’s Foreign Fiction Prize, and Spain’s National Narrative award. He is currently a Professor of Spanish Literature at the University of Girona, and a columnist for El Pais. His work, which is highly politically engaged, troubles the borders of history and fiction, as it explores the Spanish civil war, or the legacies of fascism. In this sequence of lectures Javier Cercas will reflect on the nature of the novel as a genre, including discussions of The Anatomy of a Moment, as well as works by Vargas Llosa, Cervantes, Melville, James and Kafka. The final lecture will address the question of whether it makes sense to talk about intellectuals nowadays.

‘The Third Truth: Parts 1 and 2’ will cover the nature of the novel as a genre, both from a historical and theoretical point of view, and include a discussion of The Anatomy of a Moment.

This is a joint event between the Oxford Martin School and The Oxford International Relations Society (IRSoC)

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.

Major General (Rtd) Jonathan Shaw CB CBE has 32 years experience in the UK Army during which time he commanded on operations at every rank up to two star. He has gained extensive operational experience in the Falklands, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan and has a profound knowledge of the workings of Whitehall and international strategy. Major Shaw is the former Assistant Chief of Defence Staff and Colonel Commandant of The Parachute Regiment (Director of the Special Forces).

As Assistant Chief of Defence Staff, his responsibilities included international security policy, global issues and he headed the Defence Cyber Security Programme.

Graduating from Oxford having read Politics and Philosophy, he joined the Parachute Regiment in 1981 and retired as its Colonel Commandant in 2012. Since leaving the Ministry of Defence in 2012, Major General Jonathan Shaw holds consulting roles at three security companies, Optima Group UK, Certivox, and Tempest Group.

Speaker:

Dr Marion Fresia (Professeure assistante, Institut d’ethnologie, Université de Neuchâtel)

Ethnographic approaches of policy processes are usually interested in issues of power and control, translation and mediation, contestation and resistance, and the formal and implicit norms at stake in the formulation, implementation and outcomes of policy. They draw on micro-scale observation and widely rely on participant-observation and multi-situated fieldwork as methodological tools to inquire into social actors’ actual practices and agency at different knots of the ‘implementation’ chain. This presentation will discuss some of the potential and challenges of mobilizing such approaches in the study of global refugee policy, at both epistemological and methodological levels. Drawing on a wider research project on the every-day work of ‘asylum-makers’ within UNHCR, it will first examine the added value of ethnography for analysing how policy agendas are set, formulated and made ‘global’ at the level of UNHCR’s Executive Committee in Geneva. It will then discuss the potential of such approaches for studying the actual implementation of global refugee policy, by taking the example of the politics and practice of refugee status determination at the level of two UNHCR country offices in Ankara and Nouakchott.

About the speaker:

Marion Fresia is Assistant Professor in the Institute of Ethnography, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Her research interests focus on the anthropology of development and social change; humanitarian aid and forced migration; and the anthropology of international institutions. Part of her current research examines UNHCR from the ‘inside’, exploring how its boundaries take shape through the daily social practices of an assemblage of experts, diplomats and NGOs constantly producing and reproducing the refugee label worldwide. Her doctorate is from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, France, for which she conducted extensive fieldwork with Mauritanian refugees in Senegal (2001-2005). She subsequently worked with UNHCR as an education expert between 2005 and 2007.

The Annual Zola Skweyiya Lecture

In March of 1933, a disused factory surrounded by barbed wire held 223 prisoners in the town of Dachau. By the end of 1945, the SS concentration camp system had become an overwhelming landscape of terror. Twenty-two large camps and over one thousand satellite camps throughout Germany and Europe were at the heart of the Nazi campaign of repression and intimidation. Dr Nikolaus Wachsmann is the first historian to write a complete history of the camps. It will remain an essential read for years to come.

Javier Cercas, novelist and essayist, is one of Europe’s most distinguished contemporary writers. His works, which have been translated into more than twenty languages, include the acclaimed, Soldados de Salamina (Soldiers of Salamis, 2001), which was made into a film by David Trueba in 2003, La Velocidad de la Luz (The Speed of Light, 2005), Anatomia de un Instante (The Anatomy of a Moment, 2009) and Las Leyes de la Frontera (Outlaws, 2012). He has won numerous literary awards, including the Independent’s Foreign Fiction Prize, and Spain’s National Narrative award. He is currently a Professor of Spanish Literature at the University of Girona, and a columnist for El Pais. His work, which is highly politically engaged, troubles the borders of history and fiction, as it explores the Spanish civil war, or the legacies of fascism. In this sequence of lectures Javier Cercas will reflect on the nature of the novel as a genre, including discussions of The Anatomy of a Moment, as well as works by Vargas Llosa, Cervantes, Melville, James and Kafka. The final lecture will address the question of whether it makes sense to talk about intellectuals nowadays.

‘The Third Truth: Parts 1 and 2’ will cover the nature of the novel as a genre, both from a historical and theoretical point of view, and include a discussion of The Anatomy of a Moment.

Catherine Gallagher from Berkeley will give a talk on A Tale of Two Cities and the History of Modern Revenge as part of the Victorian Research Seminar series at the Faculty of English Language & Literature

From Italian Pre-Renaissance paintings to English Literature and contemporary poetry, discover how the medieval world inspired the young artists of the Pre- Raphaelite Brotherhood

Marcus’ books include Croatia, a Nation Born in War and The Last of the Celts (Yale University Press). The most recent is on Victorian Balkan explorer Edith Durham. In the 1990s he was Balkan correspondent for The Independent and later its assistant foreign editor. He now edits the web portal Balkan Insight and is a part-time leader-writer for The Independent. He will talk about his book on Matthias Corvinus’ life and passion for books.

Javier Cercas, novelist and essayist, is one of Europe’s most distinguished contemporary writers. His works, which have been translated into more than twenty languages, include the acclaimed, Soldados de Salamina (Soldiers of Salamis, 2001), which was made into a film by David Trueba in 2003, La Velocidad de la Luz (The Speed of Light, 2005), Anatomia de un Instante (The Anatomy of a Moment, 2009) and Las Leyes de la Frontera (Outlaws, 2012). He has won numerous literary awards, including the Independent’s Foreign Fiction Prize, and Spain’s National Narrative award. He is currently a Professor of Spanish Literature at the University of Girona, and a columnist for El Pais. His work, which is highly politically engaged, troubles the borders of history and fiction, as it explores the Spanish civil war, or the legacies of fascism. In this sequence of lectures Javier Cercas will reflect on the nature of the novel as a genre, including discussions of The Anatomy of a Moment, as well as works by Vargas Llosa, Cervantes, Melville, James and Kafka. The final lecture will address the question of whether it makes sense to talk about intellectuals nowadays

‘Vargas Llosa’s Question’ will discuss reflections on Vargas Llosa’s masterpiece, The Time of the Hero, and the core of his literary, moral and political thinking.

Speaker: Professor Guy Goodwin-Gill (Emeritus Fellow, All Souls College, University of Oxford)

In 1977, as national refugee status determination procedures were gaining new life, States members of UNHCR’s Executive Committee asked the Office to provide guidance on the interpretation and application of the 1951 Convention/1967 Protocol. The outcome was the 1979 UNHCR Handbook, still widely cited in courts around the world, but substantially unchanged notwithstanding successive ‘re-issues’. Following adoption of its Agenda for Protection in 2000, UNHCR sought to keep up with jurisprudential developments and emergent issues by publishing supplementary guidelines, for example, on exclusion, gender, social group, and children; these were mostly drafted in-house, like the original Handbook, and without any formal input from States or other stakeholders. Following criticism of its 2013 guidelines on military service, however, UNHCR began to consider how external input could be usefully and effectively managed, for example, through the circulation of drafts for comment. Authoritative and influential guidelines will need a solid methodology when it comes to synthesizing best practice and pointing the way ahead, and UNHCR cannot just rely on its statutory and treaty role in ‘supervising the application’ of the 1951 Convention. In some respects, its task is analogous to that of the International Law Commission, incorporating both codification (identifying where States now see the law) and progressive development (showing how the law should develop consistently, if protection is to keep in step with need). So, what are the issues on which further guidance is needed today? What, if any, are the limits to interpretation, and when are new texts required? In drafting guidelines, who should be consulted? And how should others’ views and analysis be taken into account?

About the speaker:

Professor Guy S. Goodwin-Gill is Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College, University of Oxford. He is Professor of International Refugee Law at Oxford and was formerly Professor of Asylum Law at the University of Amsterdam. He served as a Legal Adviser in the Office of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) from 1976-1988. He practises as a Barrister from Blackstone Chambers, London, and he has written extensively on refugees, migration, international organisations, elections, democratisation and child soldiers. Recent publications include: The Refugee in International Law (OUP, 2007), 3rd ed. with Dr Jane McAdam; Free and Fair Elections (Inter-Parliamentary Union, 2nd ed., 2006); and Basic Documents on Human Rights (OUP, 2006), 5th ed., with Ian Brownlie, eds.

New College Chapel presents Paradise Lost: a staged reading of Milton’s epic poem in 3 parts, directed by Professor Elisabeth Dutton (Fribourg), featuring new settings of Milton’s hymns by the Organist, Robert Quinney, and anthems by Byrd, Weelkes and Purcell. There will be a pre-performance talk by Dr Will Poole on Friday 22nd May, 7.15, in the Conduit Room.

Wed 20 May: Books 1-4, The Parliament in Hell
Thurs 21 May: Books 5-8, The War in Heaven
Fri 22 May: Books 9-12, The Fall
Each part can be viewed individually.

Tickets on the door: £10/£5 students; £25/10 for all 3 nights. All proceeds will go to Sight Savers, who work to treat and prevent blindness in the developing world.

Javier Cercas, novelist and essayist, is one of Europe’s most distinguished contemporary writers. His works, which have been translated into more than twenty languages, include the acclaimed, Soldados de Salamina (Soldiers of Salamis, 2001), which was made into a film by David Trueba in 2003, La Velocidad de la Luz (The Speed of Light, 2005), Anatomia de un Instante (The Anatomy of a Moment, 2009) and Las Leyes de la Frontera (Outlaws, 2012). He has won numerous literary awards, including the Independent’s Foreign Fiction Prize, and Spain’s National Narrative award. He is currently a Professor of Spanish Literature at the University of Girona, and a columnist for El Pais. His work, which is highly politically engaged, troubles the borders of history and fiction, as it explores the Spanish civil war, or the legacies of fascism. In this sequence of lectures Javier Cercas will reflect on the nature of the novel as a genre, including discussions of The Anatomy of a Moment, as well as works by Vargas Llosa, Cervantes, Melville, James and Kafka. The final lecture will address the question of whether it makes sense to talk about intellectuals nowadays

‘The Blind Spot’ will be a discussion of novels and short stories that put irony and ambiguity in their centre and constitute a tradition of the novel, ranging from Don Quixote to Moby Dick, The Trial and The Leopard.

St Ebbe’s- A Forgotten History
Talk by Malcolm Graham
Archaeology and the Westgate Lecture Series

New College Chapel presents Paradise Lost: a staged reading of Milton’s epic poem in 3 parts, directed by Professor Elisabeth Dutton (Fribourg), featuring new settings of Milton’s hymns by the Organist, Robert Quinney, and anthems by Byrd, Weelkes and Purcell. There will be a pre-performance talk by Dr Will Poole on Friday 22nd May, 7.15, in the Conduit Room.

Wed 20 May: Books 1-4, The Parliament in Hell
Thurs 21 May: Books 5-8, The War in Heaven
Fri 22 May: Books 9-12, The Fall
Each part can be viewed individually.

Tickets on the door: £10/£5 students; £25/10 for all 3 nights. All proceeds will go to Sight Savers, who work to treat and prevent blindness in the developing world.

New College Chapel presents Paradise Lost: a staged reading of Milton’s epic poem in 3 parts, directed by Professor Elisabeth Dutton (Fribourg), featuring new settings of Milton’s hymns by the Organist, Robert Quinney, and anthems by Byrd, Weelkes and Purcell. There will be a pre-performance talk by Dr Will Poole on Friday 22nd May, 7.15, in the Conduit Room.

Wed 20 May: Books 1-4, The Parliament in Hell
Thurs 21 May: Books 5-8, The War in Heaven
Fri 22 May: Books 9-12, The Fall
Each part can be viewed individually.

Tickets on the door: £10/£5 students; £25/10 for all 3 nights. All proceeds will go to Sight Savers, who work to treat and prevent blindness in the developing world.

Javier Cercas, novelist and essayist, is one of Europe’s most distinguished contemporary writers. His works, which have been translated into more than twenty languages, include the acclaimed, Soldados de Salamina (Soldiers of Salamis, 2001), which was made into a film by David Trueba in 2003, La Velocidad de la Luz (The Speed of Light, 2005), Anatomia de un Instante (The Anatomy of a Moment, 2009) and Las Leyes de la Frontera (Outlaws, 2012). He has won numerous literary awards, including the Independent’s Foreign Fiction Prize, and Spain’s National Narrative award. He is currently a Professor of Spanish Literature at the University of Girona, and a columnist for El Pais. His work, which is highly politically engaged, troubles the borders of history and fiction, as it explores the Spanish civil war, or the legacies of fascism. In this sequence of lectures Javier Cercas will reflect on the nature of the novel as a genre, including discussions of The Anatomy of a Moment, as well as works by Vargas Llosa, Cervantes, Melville, James and Kafka. The final lecture will address the question of whether it makes sense to talk about intellectuals nowadays

‘The Man Who Says No’ will discuss reflections on the public role of the intellectual nowadays.

Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s founding father and first Prime Minister, passed away on 23 March 2015 at the age of 91. A Cambridge-educated lawyer, Lee dominated the political stage in Singapore for more than 5 decades, and is often credited for turning Singapore from a Third World to a First World nation with a GDP per capita that is among the highest in the world.

Upon his passing, many lauded him on his achievement, hailing him as ‘the man who saw it all’ (TIME magazine), ‘a true giant of history who will be remembered for generations to come” (US President Barack Obama), ‘one of the modern world’s foremost statesmen’ (British PM David Cameron), and ‘a statesman [who was] widely respected by the international community’ (Chinese President Xi Jinping).

Lee’s critics, however, paint a different picture. To them, Lee was an authoritarian patriarch who built a Nanny State that has little tolerance for dissent. He was also a controversial figure who remained unapologetic for the numerous restrictions that were placed on individual civic liberties and other democratic norms which many modern Western societies deem sacrosanct. While recognising his legacy of unrivalled economic progress and development, Amnesty International asserts that there is ‘a dark side to what he leaves behind’, as ‘basic freedoms and human rights were [often] sacrificed’ in the pursuit of economic progress.

How do we reconcile these vastly contrasting opinions? And what implications, if any, will Lee’s passing bring for Singapore’s future? Join us for a panel discussion on the future of a post-Lee Kuan Yew Singapore. We have invited four panelists, each of whom will deliver some remarks for about 10 minutes, before we open up for a Q&A session. Entry is free for both members and non-members alike.

About the panelists: Dr Mark Frost is a historian at the University of Essex who has previously worked in the Singapore National Museum. Dr P J Thum is a historian and the coordinator of Project Southeast Asia at the University of Oxford. Professor John Quah is a Fellow of Economics at St Hugh’s College, University of Oxford. Jun Zubillaga-Pow is a co-editor of the book ‘Queer Singapore: Illiberal Citizenship and Mediated Cultures.’

This event is the brainchild of John Cheo, a graduate student at Exeter College who will also be moderating this panel.

This book talk is a joint event between the Oxford Martin School and the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict

This book talk will see author Chris Woods discuss his new book Sudden Justice: America’s Secret Drone Wars, an exposé of the little-understood yet extremely significant world of drone warfare. His work is based on insights from many of those intimately involved – the pilots and analysts, US and UK intelligence officials, Special Forces and Pentagon commanders.

Chris Woods is an award-wining investigative journalist who specialises in conflict and national security issues. During almost a decade at the BBC, he was a senior producer for both Panorama and Newsnight.

The event will be introduced by Dr Alex Leveringhaus, a James Martin Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict and lead author of the recent Oxford Martin Policy Paper Robo-Wars: The Regulation of Robotic Weapons.

The book talk will be followed by a book signing, all welcome

This book talk will be live webcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdE9AJrZ_Fk

Speaker:

Dr Phil Orchard (Senior Lecturer, Peace and Conflict Studies and International Relations, University of Queensland)

In the past two decades, global policy on internal displacement has become a discernible area of activity for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and a range of other international and non-government organizations. It is an area of policy which operates in parallel with global refugee policy, alongside but separate as it is neither as strongly legally or institutional anchored. Its development has been far more ad hoc, incremental, and divided than refugee policy. And yet global policy on internal displacement as both process and product is clearly identifiable. This is reflected in legal developments including the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and the African Union’s Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa (the Kampala Convention). But it is also reflected in practice within the United Nations, including the development of the cluster approach to provide protection and assistance to the internally displaced, and in the basic working processes not only of UNHCR, but also of the Security Council and the General Assembly. This suggests that incremental processes can have long term effects on global policy generally.

About the speaker:

Dr Phil Orchard is Senior Lecturer in Peace and Conflict Studies and International Relations at the University of Queensland. His research interests focus primarily on international efforts to provide institutional and legal forms of protection to civilians and forced migrants. His first book, A Right to Flee: Refugees, States, and the Construction of International Cooperation (Cambridge University Press, 2014), examines the origins and evolution of refugee protection from 1648 to the present. His co-edited book, with Alexander Betts and entitled Implementation in World Politics: How Norms Change Practice (Oxford University Press, 2014), examines the difficulties in implementing even strongly institutionalised human-centred norms. His current work focuses on institutional and legal protections for internally displaced persons. He has published in a variety of outlets within the fields of international relations and forced migration studies, including Global Governance, International Affairs, the Review of International Studies and Refugee Survey Quarterly.

Prior to joining UQ, Dr Orchard served as a Canadian Department of National Defence Security and Defence Forum Post-Doctoral Fellow. He holds a PhD from the University of British Columbia, and previously worked as the Assistant to the Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Internally Displaced Persons. He is also the Research Director of the Asia-Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect.

As part of this year’s community outreach program, Oxford Brookes University’s 150th anniversary, and as a way showing our appreciation to all participants, clinicians, researchers, members of the public and organisations that have supported our work, we will be holding an open day on Saturday, 30th of May 2015. Over the past decade, the Movement Science Group, which now falls within the Centre for Rehabilitation at Oxford Brookes University, has conducted extensive research on a variety of topics related to rehabilitation and physical activity. Topics include measuring and understanding movement in those with movement difficulties, exercising benefits in people with neurological conditions, and developing novel rehabilitation strategies.

Cleopatra was a shrewd politician and brilliant linguist, yet she was described by Florence Nightingale as ‘disgustung’ and film director Cecil B DeMille as ‘the wickedest woman in history’. This talk attempts to uncover the truth behind the legend.

Amy Hollywood (Harvard) delivers a series of lectures on “The real, the true, and the mystical” in Oxford. At 7pm will be a play on Derrida in Oxford by John Schad and Fred Dalmasso.

Tickets 8£/ 5£ reduced for students and Lecture attendants.

Amy Hollywood (Harvard) delivers a series of lectures on “The real, the true, and the mystical” in Oxford.

In his talk, Gootenberg will survey the long-term shifts of cocaine’s western hemisphere cocaine over the twentieth century, informed by the “blowback” effects of the escalating U.S. “war on drugs”: this history informs today’s crises of drug violence in Mexico and Central America as well as suggestive shifts in cocaine politics.

Pete Larson is one of the world’s most successful and sometimes controversial dinosaur hunters. Join Pete and palaeontologist Phil Manning to explore how dinosaurs are discovered, classified and sold in the global race to find the newest, biggest and best fossils.

Pete and his team were responsible for discovering ‘Sue’ -the most complete skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus Rex to have been found (so far.) With new species being found every year, what is the future for dinosaur hunting? Is it science, business or both? Are we getting closer to the time when cloning a dinosaur is possible or is Jurassic Park just a fantasy?

This event is suitable for age 8+

Amy Hollywood : The Unspeakability of Trauma, the Unspeakability of Joy: The Pursuit of the Real at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century

Javier Cercas will be at St Anne’s College as Weidenfeld Visiting Professor in Comparative European Literature, and is one of Europe’s most distinguished contemporary writers. His works, which have been translated into more than twenty languages, include the acclaimed, Soldados de Salamina (Soldiers of Salamis, 2001), which was made into a film by David Trueba in 2003, La Velocidad de la Luz (The Speed of Light, 2005), Anatomia de un Instante (The Anatomy of a Moment, 2009) and Las Leyes de la Frontera (Outlaws, 2012). He has won numerous literary awards, including the Independent’s Foreign Fiction Prize, and Spain’s National Narrative award. He is currently a Professor of Spanish Literature at the University of Girona, and a columnist for El Pais. His work, which is highly politically engaged, troubles the borders of history and fiction, as it explores the Spanish civil war, or the legacies of fascism. Mr Tim Gardam, Principal of St Anne’s College, will chair a discussion between Javier Cercas, Professor Timothy Garton Ash and Professor Patrick McGuinness on European Literature, Politics and Historical Memory. A drinks reception will follow this discussion.