https://www.facebook.com/events/495653777253176/

The Oxford Guild is very excited to welcome Larry Hirst CBE, former Chairman of IBM EMEA, to speak on Thursday 7th May. This will be an incredibly insightful talk and is not one to be missed, especially for anyone interested in technology, business, or issues of diversity and inclusion in the workplace. The event will include a Q&A session open to the floor, and promises to cover a wide range of topics, as Larry discusses his high-profile and varied career. ALL ARE WELCOME!

DATE: Thursday 7th May 2015 (2nd Week)
TIME: 6:40pm
VENUE: Habakkuk Room, Jesus College
REGISTER YOUR INTEREST HERE: http://tinyurl.com/LarryHirstIBMGuildTalk

Until his retirement from IBM in July 2010, Larry Hirst was chairman of IBM Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). He represented IBM to the European Commission and other authorities such as NATO and the EDA on issues of international public policy and business regulation. During his time as Chairman, IBM EMEA revenues grew to $35bn, with a workforce of 110,000 people. Previous roles in his 33-year career included Chairman of IBM Netherlands (2002-2010), the leadership of IBM’s business in the UK, Ireland, Netherlands and South Africa (2002-2008).
Larry is passionate about the issues of diversity and inclusion and is an Ambassador to the Everywoman company (https://www.everywoman.com/) and Black British Business Awards (http://www.thebbbawards.com/), as well as a supporter of groups including the Asian Business Networks Association, the European Women’s Achievement Award, the Afro Caribbean Group, Stonewall, Whitehall in Industry, Asian Business Women, and Investors in Diversity.
Larry was appointed C.B.E. in 2006, in recognition of Services to the IT industry.

This event will be particularly insightful for anyone considering a career in technology or business, and there will be a Q&A session as part of the event.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Special Turner Event at the Ashmolean Museum

Turner’s High Street, Oxford: a Unique Townscape

With Colin Harrison

Wednesday 8 July, 11am-12pm, Lecture Theatre

Find out more about Turner’s most significant townscape and the greatest painting of the city that has ever been made. Senior Curator of European Art, Colin Harrison, will give a special talk from 11am on Wednesday 8 July.

Tickets £5/£4 concessions. Booking is essential.

To find out more about the Ashmolean’s current campaign to secure Turner’s painting for the nation visit: http://www.ashmolean.org/turner/

Part 3 of a three-part mini-series on notation: Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic.

Part 1 was Reading Slough and London Paddington: the persistent lure of spelling reform (July 16th). Part 2 was Writing little messages in Italian: the social origins of music notation (August 20th).

Free entry, no need to book. You’re welcome to come along just to listen, or to take part actively in the discussion. The meeting room will be indicated on the display screen just inside the Town Hall entrance lobby.

Conceptions of Enlightenment is a one-day conference concluding in a public lecture at 5pm. The lecture will be delivered by Dennis Rasmussen (Tufts University, Boston), author of The Pragmatic Enlightenment (CUP, 2014).

Over the last century, historians and philosophers have used the term ‘Enlightenment’ in diverse ways. Was it primarily a philosophical movement, or did it involve a much wider change of outlook and sensibility in the course of the eighteenth century? Did its origins and centre lie in England, the Netherlands, France, or Scotland? Did it establish the human rights and freedoms we now value, or did it in practice subject humanity to rigidly rational systems of control? Did it give a voice to women and colonial subjects, or did it reinforce male domination and European hegemony over the rest of the world? Did it prepare the way for the French Revolution and the Reign of terror, or is its heritage to be found in the American Declaration of Independence?

To discuss such questions, a number of leading scholars of the Enlightenment will introduce the work of some of the historians and philosophers who have been most influential in shaping this much-debated concept.

Demographic changes across the world pose one of the biggest challenges of the 21st century. Longer lifespans and shifting fertility rates bring with them an array of global health issues. In this lecture, Professor Sarah Harper, Co-Director of the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing, will talk about the causes and effects of population change and the global age structural shift, and Professor Robyn Norton, Co-Director of The George Institute for Global Health, will address the implications of these changes on global health.

The extraction of oil and the mining of coal are devastating communities across the world. These operations have forced people from their land, polluted the environment, and led to widespread human rights violations.

According to the Colombia Human Rights Data Analysis Group, an estimated 9,000 people were murdered and 3,000 have disappeared in Casanare over the past two decades. One of those kidnapped was Gilberto Torres, who is bringing a case for compensation against BP and other oil companies in the High Court in London with the help of law firm Deighton Pierce Glynn (DPG) in the UK and Francisco Ramirez Cuellar in Colombia.

The Centre for Global Politics, Economy and Society at Oxford Brookes University, and UCU Oxford Brookes would like to invite you to a special event as part of the campaign tour ‘OIL JUSTICE NOW! Stop Corporate Impunity’ led by the NGO War on Want in partnership with the law firm Deighton Pierce Glynn and the organisation Cos-Pacc (see attached poster for further details).

Speakers are:

– Sue Wilman (Human Rights Lawyer, Deighton Pierce Glynn)
– Gilberto Torres (Former trade unionist with Union Sindical Obrera in Colombia)
– Dr Lara Montesinos Coleman (University of Sussex)
– Francisco Ramirez Cuellar (trade unionist and lawyer with the Colombian Unified Trade Union Federation)

Gilberto Torres is a former trade unionist with Union Sindical Obrera, representing workers in the oil industry. He was abducted and tortured by paramilitaries in 1992 and now lives in exile. Gilberto believes his abduction was ordered and assisted by Ocensa, a joint venture pipeline company part-owned and operated by BP.

Francisco Ramirez Cuellar is a trade unionist and lawyer with the Colombian Unified Trade Union Federation. He has been targeted and threatened because of his legal and campaigning work challenging multinationals who have committed serious environmental and human right abuses in Colombia.

Chaired by Dr Maia Pal (Oxford Brookes University)

Professor Carl Heneghan will deliver an interactive workshop, taking an evidence-based approach to answering your own clinical questions.

With over 20 year’s experience in clinical epidemiology, Professor Heneghan has over 200 peer reviewed publications that all started with a clinical question.

The Symposium, celebrating Ada Lovelace’s 200th birthday on 10 December 2015, is aimed at a broad audience of those interested in the history and culture of mathematics and computer science, presenting current scholarship on Lovelace’s life and work, and linking her ideas to contemporary thinking about mathematics, computing and artificial intelligence.

The Symposium takes place in the Mathematical Institute of the University of Oxford, with a reception at the new Weston Library (Bodleian) and dinner at Balliol College on 9 December.

Other activities will include a workshop for early career researchers, and a ‘Music and Machines’ event. For more information and for the full line up of speakers please visit: http://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/adalovelace/symposium/

*Registration*

Standard Registration, December 9-10: £40
Gala Dinner Ticket, December 9: £50

You can register and pay via the University of Oxford online-shop: http://www.oxforduniversitystores.co.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&modid=2&catid=70&prodid=386

Thanks to the generosity of our sponsors, we have a limited number of student funded places available to cover registration and the conference dinner. These are open to students studying in UK universities in 2015-16. For more information please visit: http://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/adalovelace/symposium/

The use of data capture and visualisation technologies has grown dramatically, embracing the needs of researchers, stakeholder communities, cultural resource managers, tourists and the general public. This paper previews the types of techniques being used by Australian archaeologists and collaborators in a range of study areas. The digital acquisition and visualisation of archaeological sites using photographic techniques (hardware and software), 3D reconstruction, laser scanning and other methods, along with novel methods for presentation provide us with opportunities not available even 5 years ago. The challenge for researchers is to maintain the theoretical impetus in the face of a plethora of new technologies and opportunities. Methods to enhance recording and to facilitate research methodologies are explored and the potentials for cultural resource managers and stakeholder communities to manage their heritage (e.g. with tourists in interpretive displays, websites and other virtual media) are highlighted.

Professor Alistair Paterson is an archaeologist at the University of Western Australia where he has been Head of the School of Social Sciences (2013-15) and Archaeology Discipline Chair (2010-2012). He is currently a visiting researcher at the Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford. His research and teaching covers culture contact, historical archaeology in maritime and terrestrial settings, European colonization, historical rock art, digital scholarship, and archaeological and historical methodology. Much of his work is located in Western Australia and the Indian Ocean exploring the uses of coast and offshore islands in colonial and pre-colonial settings, and early colonial settlements across the state (in collaboration with the Western Australian Museum, iVec@UWA).

Acclaimed mathematician Marcus du Sautoy gives the second of the Weinrebe Lecture Series, on the theme of ‘Variations on Biography’, hosted by the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing.

Ecohydrologist Prof David Gowing will speak on “Plant species diversity: the role of soil moisture”. He will discuss the conundrum of how up to 40 species can all sustain themselves in a single metre square of grassland, referencing research in English meadows from the past 20 years. The temporal variability of our weather may be an important factor in maintaining the species-richness of our grasslands.

David Gowing studied Botany as a first degree and gained a PhD in plant-water relations. He has worked on the link between vegetation composition and soil water for twenty-five years, at Lancaster, Cranfield and now the Open University. He is currently the Professor of Botany at the Open University, where he contributes to the Environmental Science programme, teaching undergraduates how to appreciate and record vegetation in the field a particular motivation.

Millions of people worldwide are affected by natural hazards ranging from devastating but localised events such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and tsunamis to the more subtle but global effects of climate change. It is therefore in our interests to be able to accurately predict these hazards, assess their risks and communicate this information quickly and effectively to those affected so that major loss of life can be avoided. Exactly how this should be done, and the extent to which certain natural hazards can even be predicted are key questions that need to be addressed. Less obvious but of equal importance are the roles that governments and charities should play in communication and prevention, and how different communities perceive the risks associated with natural hazards in the first place. These questions will be debated by a diverse panel of speakers from a variety of different backgrounds to be announced shortly. There will be a free drinks reception afterwards. So come on down, you might just learn something*!

*Or you can just come for the free wine

This is a free event, please register at the link below

Dr Rachel Aldred is a Senior Lecturer in Transport at the University of Westminster, and specialises in cycling research. One of her current research projects is the Near Miss Project, funded by Creative Exchange and Blaze. This has explored cyclists’ experiences of near misses in the UK with one academic paper and one policy report published so far. Notable findings have included the high frequency of near miss incidents (by comparison to slight injury collisions) and analysis of factors affecting their frequency and impact. Dr Aldred will speak about the findings, ongoing analysis of the data, and policy implications.

As a cornerstone initiative of the Oxford Programme for the Future of Cities, we are proposing a new format for presenting and elaborating thinking on what urban governance does, when it succeed and fails, and how it can be re-organized to meet the challenges of the 21st century. We put academics on the cutting edge of global urban scholarship face-to-face with established innovative practitioners—architects, activists, policy makers, and artists.

Through a series of rigorous yet accessible public dialogues they will grapple with the intellectual and everyday implications of their theories and practices on cities to produce visionary but grounded research and intervention strategies for the future of city life.
Each debate will be preceded by a small panel of academics and practitioners presenting papers that speak to the same key issues. Building on the long-standing Oxford tradition of public debate, we hope to encourage productive engagement between intellectuals and practitioners that is too often missing from discussions of the city.

As a cornerstone initiative of the Oxford Programme for the Future of Cities, we are proposing a new format for presenting and elaborating thinking on what urban governance does, when it succeed and fails, and how it can be re-organized to meet the challenges of the 21st century. We put academics on the cutting edge of global urban scholarship face-to-face with established innovative practitioners—architects, activists, policy makers, and artists.

Through a series of rigorous yet accessible public dialogues they will grapple with the intellectual and everyday implications of their theories and practices on cities to produce visionary but grounded research and intervention strategies for the future of city life.
Each debate will be preceded by a small panel of academics and practitioners presenting papers that speak to the same key issues. Building on the long-standing Oxford tradition of public debate, we hope to encourage productive engagement between intellectuals and practitioners that is too often missing from discussions of the city.

The fourth annual Ockenden International Prize (www.ockendenprizes.org/) for excellence in self-reliance projects among refugees and displaced people will be presented by John Simpson CBE, BBC World Affairs Editor. Projects in Uganda, Lebanon and Chad will compete for the $100,000 prize and the two runners-up will each receive $25,000. Details of the projects can be found on the Ockenden International website. At 6.15pm, following the Prize Ceremony chaired by broadcaster Michael Buerk, there will be a drinks reception in the Monson Room. The event will finish by 7.00pm. To book, email events@lmh.ox.ac.uk

This conference is intended to challenge the commonly held view of the prolonged gap in the progress of Western civilisation’s understanding of the natural world between the theories of the Ancient Greeks, led in particular by Aristotle and Plato, and the formation of the modern world view leading to the heliocentric theory of the Solar System and the theories of mechanics and gravity. These modern theories were in fact the result of centuries of empirical and theoretical work, which was conducted mainly in the universities of Europe and in particular at Oxford and which replaced in turn the Aristotelian world view of antiquity and then the literally biblical view of the Church. The conference will review the contributions of these medieval scholars working in Oxford and is intended to demonstrate the evolution of this activity from its theoretical, theological origins into the activity using mathematics and experimental observations which forms the basis of modern physics.

Registration to attend this conference is free, but must be confirmed using the Conference booking form by Monday 22nd February.

Brookes Centre for Global Politics, Economics and Society Seminar Series

In his talk, Kerry will explore the pressing practical problem of how hurricane activity will respond to global warming, and how hurricanes could in turn be influencing the atmosphere and ocean.

The 2016 annual Heron-Allen lecture will be given by Dominic Johnson, Alastair Buchan Chair of International Relations, Director of Research, at the Department of Politics and International Relations (DPIR), Oxford.

For millions of years, humans and other animals have had to find ways to coexist in sharing finite resources in the environment. Often this has led to competition and conflict, but it has also led to the evolution of remarkable adaptations and systems of social organisation that promote cooperation and sharing. Dominic suggests that we have often focused too much on the former and not enough on the latter, more optimistic aspects of ecology and evolution. Today, with the rapid rise in human population and consumption, the Earth’s finite resources are dwindling beyond repair, and we desperately need fresh approaches to maximise our chances of damage limitation. Dominic and the interdisciplinary “Natural Governance” project team at Oxford suggest that major new insights may come from studying and learning how other species, as well as indigenous human societies, have successfully managed common resources in the past, and the social and behavioural mechanisms which enable this sharing and conflict resolution to succeed. The team believe that, even if by small steps, this approach opens a new avenue for the successful governance of natural resources. From long term studies of badgers in Wytham Woods, to hunter-gatherers in Africa, to contemporary conflicts over resources, the talk will give examples of new ways to think about our predicament and ask whether nature itself may hold solutions to help us preserve it.

The lecture starts promptly at 5.15pm in the Simpkins Lee Theatre and finishes with a drinks reception in the Monson Room. The event is free to attend and guests are welcome. To book your place(s), please email events@lmh.ox.ac.uk.

Oxford Brookes Centre for Global Politics, Economics and Society seminar series

This is the monthly meeting of the Oxford AI Meetup group.
The talks include an analysis of Deep Mind’s AlphaGo software that has just beaten the world champion in their first match.

Our monthly meetup includes
Alpha Go : How did Deep Mind beat the world champion and just how big an achievement is it?
Fun with Recurrent Neural Networks
The Latest AI news

IN[SCI]TE is a new interdisciplinary science, technology, and engineering conference, which will take place on Monday and Tuesday of 0th Week Trinity Term 2016. IN[SCI]TE is run by undergrads, and the talks will be both delivered by and aimed at undergrads.

The aims for IN[SCI]TE are to broaden the knowledge and awareness of science undergrads outside their field of study, to provide a setting for undergrads to give a talk at a scientific conference during their degree, and to inspire future scientists to enter areas of work that cross the boundaries in science.

We are now accepting applications for speakers! Submit an application at inscite.co/speakers/, or send the facebook page a message if you have any questions.

To keep up to date with the conference, like us on facebook.com/insciteco, and follow us @insciteco.

Brookes Centre for Global Politics, Economics and Society Seminar Series

Abstract: Using recent fieldwork with several international eco-communities this talk critically explores what the physical building of anti-capitalist alternatives entails. With a focus on building alternative homes and infrastructures it particularly interrogates the materiality of anti-capitalism. By examining what environmentalism in the everyday and anti-capitalism in practice means we can better understand the potential for living and building differently.

Prof Jenny Pickerill is Professor in Environmental Geography at the University of Sheffield. She specialises in environmentalism. Her latest book Eco-Homes: People, Place and Politics has just been published by Zed Books.

A Talk by Konstantin Kudryavtsev, Head of Technical Relations at Ethcore
This will be about the Ethereum ecosystem and the blockchain

Mitigating climate requires a transition to low carbon energy systems and renewable energy looks increasingly likely to play a key role, but the most important resources are intermittent.

This lecture will describe the research of the Oxford Martin Programme on Integrating Renewable Energy, on how intermittency and related challenges can be addressed, technically and in markets and policy.

Registration required

TUE, 24 MAY AT 14:00, OXFORD
Strachey Lecture – Quantum Supremacy – Dr Scott Aaronson (MIT, UT Austin)

Quantum Supremacy
In the near future, it will likely become possible to perform special-purpose quantum computations that, while not immediately useful for anything, are plausibly hard to simulate using a classical computer. These “quantum supremacy experiments” would be a scientific milestone—decisively answering quantum computing skeptics, while casting doubt on one of the foundational tenets of computer science, the Extended Church-Turing Thesis. At the same time, these experiments also raise fascinating questions for computational complexity theorists: for example, on what grounds should we believe that a given quantum system really is hard to simulate classically?
Does classical simulation become easier as a quantum system becomes noisier? and how do we verify the results of such an experiment? In this lecture, I’ll discuss recent results and open problems about these questions, using three proposed “quantum supremacy experiments”
as examples: BosonSampling, IQP / commuting Hamiltonians, and random quantum circuits.
Based partly on joint work with Alex Arkhipov and with Lijie Chen.

Hosted by the University of Oxford’s Department of Computer Science. The Strachey Lectures are generously supported by OxFORD Asset Management.
The lecture will followed by refreshments. Doors open at 1.30 pm.

Photos and tales on the highs and lows of life in the field. Intrepid Explorers was co-founded at King’s College London by Briony Turner to provide an informal opportunity to share fieldwork experiences. The program has subsequently been nominated for an ESRC impact champion prize and the hope is to expand it to the School of Geography and the Environment at Oxford University. The highs and lows of research in the field will be shared by members of SoGE, including fascinating photographs from around the globe.