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!

Robin Dunbar is Prof. of Evolutionary Psychology at Oxford University. ” We are members of the ape family yet something happened in the course of our evolution to radically change how we behave. The result was cities, states, literature, religion, science, music.. Archaeologists gave traditionally focussed on the stones and bones of human evolution but the real story of human evolution lay in our social and cognitive evolution.”
Tea/coffee available prior to the talk from 18.00 in the staff room. Entrance through Robinson Close, off South Parks Road Oxford OX13PP

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.

Enter a lost world of music and poetry as more than 300 years of Mughal rule approached its end at the hands of the British in 1857. William Dalrymple, award-winning historian, in performance with the celebrated North Indian vocalist Vidya Shah, takes us back to the bygone era of matchless splendour, bringing to life a world of emperors, courtesans, politics, bayonets, intrigue and love, through words and music. Doors open at 17.45. Food and drinks in the Pitt Rivers Museum till 9p.m. after the lecture. Signed copies of ‘The Last Mughul’ and ‘Return of the King’ available after the lecture.

Refugee Studies Centre 2015 Annual Elizabeth Colson Lecture

Speaker:

Professor Miriam Ticktin (The New School for Social Research)

With the grounding assumption that innocence plays a central role in the politics of forced migration and asylum, this lecture will delve into the idea of innocence, trying to understand it and render its workings more legible, and arguing that it is a political – not simply a religious or moral – concept. By examining the figure of the child, the trafficked victim, the migrant, asylum seeker, the enemy combatant and the animal, Professor Ticktin will suggest that innocence sets up hierarchies of humanity, all the while feeding an expanding politics of humanitarianism. Ultimately, she will ask if innocence is a concept we want to protect.

About the speaker:

Miriam Ticktin is Associate Professor of Anthropology at The New School for Social Research and co-director of the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility. She received her PhD in Anthropology at Stanford University, in co-tutelle with the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, France, and an MA in English Literature from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. Before coming to the New School, Miriam was an Assistant Professor in Women’s Studies and Anthropology at the University of Michigan, and also held a postdoctoral position in the Society of Fellows at Columbia University.

Professor Ticktin’s research has focused in the broadest sense on what it means to make political claims in the name of a universal humanity. She has been interested in what these claims tell us about universalisms and difference, about who can be a political subject, on what basis people are included and excluded from communities, and how inequalities get instituted or perpetuated in this process. She is the author of Casualties of Care: Immigration and the Politics of Humanitarianism in France (University of California Press, 2011; co-winner of the 2012 William A. Douglass Prize in Europeanist Anthropology) and co-editor (with Ilana Feldman) of In the Name of Humanity: the Government of Threat and Care (Duke University Press, 2010), along with many other articles and book chapters. She is a founding editor of the journal Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism and Development. Next year she will be a fellow at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study.

So many of us are desperately busy doing what’s immediately in front of us rather than the things that make a real difference.

Ben will tell the story of the GB men’s rowing 8+ in the build up to the 2000 Sydney Olympics, where they won the gold medal, and how they challenged everything to make the boat go faster. For Ben it was the culmination of nine years in the national team.

Ben’s story is a call to action, challenging you to examine how you spend your time in a way that ensures you are travelling in the direction that you want to go.

About the Speaker
Ben Hunt-David MBE
BEN HUNT-DAVIS MBE

Former Brookes student, Ben Hunt- Davis is a performance coach, speaker and author. Ben has been involved in five Olympic Games – three as a competitor and two as a member of the headquarters team. He was also Chairman of the Organising Committee for both the 2011 World Rowing Junior Championships and the 2013 Rowing World Cup. He now runs a performance consulting company helping companies to make their ‘boats go faster’. His first book is entitled Will It Make The Boat Go Faster?

Two hour cycle ride with Max as he reveals some surprising facts about the science of cycling. Ride and demonstration.
Please show up 10 minutes before departure at The Story Museum. The ride will finish back at The Story Museum.

Author and cyclist Max Gaskin explores the science of cycling from hydrogen to helmets!
6.30pm – 7.30pm £8/£5 concessions

International table tennis player, broadcaster and writer, Matthew Syed will reflect on the psychology of performance.

Join us for an after-hours exclusive guided tour of the Museum, where you will be taken around by one of our expert guides and then browse the galleries at your leisure away from the busy daily crowds.
Explore remarkable collections of hand-made objects from every continent and throughout human history.

Heather Richardson, Head of Conservation at the Pitt Rivers Museum, will talk about a temporary exhibition on the Museum’s lower gallery, showcasing original repairs found on objects in the Pitt Rivers collections. Part of a conservator’s role is to determine at what stage a repair to an object has been made and it is something they strive to preserve. Finding examples of repairs from originating communities can give the object a deeper resonance while also raising various questions. Why was this object repaired by its original owners rather than replaced? Is it a fine example of craftsmanship or is it a sacred object?

What the World is Losing, a talk with Dr Paul Collins, Dr Robert Bewley & Dr Emma Cunliffe

A special talk with Dr Paul Collins, Curator of the Ancient Near East Collections at the Ashmolean Museum, as well as Dr Robert Bewley and Dr Emma Cunliffe from the University of Oxford School of Archaeology

Saturday 25 July, 10.30am‒12pm
Ashmolean Museum Lecture Theatre

FREE entry. No booking required.

*** Spaces limited. Please arrive early to secure your seat. ***

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Middle Eastern cultural heritage is under threat as never before. These talks highlight what the world is losing in Iraq and Syria, as well as talking about Oxford University’s ‘Endangered Archaeology of the Middle East and North Africa’ project.

Dr Paul Collins spoke in April this year about the recent destruction of museums, libraries, archaeological sites, mosques, churches and shrines across northern Iraq to highlight the unique heritage that is being lost.

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This is a free Festival of Archaeology Talk. See the full programme of events at: http://www.ashmolean.org/events/Festival/

Katherine Pogson is a London-based designer-maker and Visiting Maker in Leatherwork at Pitt Rivers Museum. Katherine will present the process and outcomes of her residency, during which she has focussed on leather vessels in the Museum’s collection. These include African powder horns and water bottles from Sudan, India and Europe, documented as being ‘of peculiar construction’. Katherine has been studying the decorative and structural join devices, layering, texture and general form of these objects to influence her practice and develop new work.

The Oxford Architecture Society lecture series

Lisa Finlay is coming to speak to us from Heatherwick Studio.
Established by Thomas Heatherwick in 1994, Heatherwick Studio is recognised for its work in architecture, urban infrastructure, sculpture, design and strategic thinking. At the heart of the studio’s work is a profound commitment to finding innovative design solutions, with a dedication to artistic thinking and the latent potential of materials and craftsmanship. In the twenty years of its existence, Heatherwick Studio has worked in many countries, with a wide range of commissioners and in a variety of regulatory environments.

The first OxArch workshop of the series ‘Behind Architecture: The Essentials’ is set to bring us back to the analogue process of representation. ‘Architecture in Watercolours’ presents an opportunity to begin the year with a little experimentation.

Anisha Meggi (currently studying her PhD) works with watercolour to capture the essence of a project with the physical and theoretical layering of watercolour paint and model making.

Come join us on the 4th floor of Abercrombie on Thursday at 4pm, if you’re interested in learning a new skill or pushing further what you already know about watercolour.

We will be providing some watercolour trays, watercolour paper and brushes. However, if you have you’re own watercolour sets, please feel free to bring them in.

Prices:
£7 for members
£9 for non members

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.

3D character animation online with Mixamo/Adobe
On June 1st of this year Adobe announced its purchase of the company Mixamo.
This evening John Twycross – Senior Lecturer in Digital Media Production, Faculty of Technology, Design and Environment, Oxford Brookes University – will demonstrate some of the features of the current Mixamo website, look at how this currently integrates into game engines and discuss the implications of this for designers.

The Mixamo online service provides a motion capture library, character generation and automated rigging. It is exciting because it makes character animation accessible to all. It also clearly signals Adobe’s commitment to gain a foothold in the 3D character animation field and expanding Photoshop’s 3D features.

Jonathan Bard will talk about the Pitt Rivers Museum’s case 106A Writing and Communication. Jonathan will start by looking at the problems around writing down a spoken language and how these have been solved in English. He will then go on to look at how other societies have come up with their own solutions, and illustrate these solutions with objects on display in the Pitt Rivers.

Oxford Centre for Life-Writing
Nicoletta Demetriou will discuss her attempt to record the stories of Cyprus’s last surviving traditional fiddlers. She will talk about what musicians’ life stories can tell us about the music and society we are looking at, and about the importance of letting biographical subjects tell their own story, in their own words.

This event is free of charge and open to all. Sandwiches will be provided.

Catherine Rubin Kermorgant will discuss her book ‘Servants of the Goddess: the Modern-Day Devadasis’. Married to the gods as young girls, devadasis are trained to sing and dance for the gods. Their sacred duties include providing sexual services to men. While they play an important spiritual role in their villages, they are also reviled as impure.
All welcome. Tea served from 18.00. Talk starts at 18.30.

Come listen to a curator with the Smithsonian Institute, Dr. Ellen Feingold, talk about the ongoing fascinating ‘Money in Arica’ project at the British Museum, which aims to piece together African monetary history and its cultural and political impact. Dr. Feingold will also speak on her own focus of counterfeit currencies in colonial East and West Africa. The lecture will be held at the Ioannou (Classics) Centre on St. Giles.

This event should interest you if:

• you wish to know more about various numismatics research projects;
• you wish to know more about a unique and rare field of numismatics (African numismatics);
• you wish to know more about using numismatics as a source for research.

Speaker profile: http://americanhistory.si.edu/profile/1159
Abstract:

During the interwar period, international counterfeiting schemes originating in West Africa presented a new threat to British colonial and national currencies. The institutions responsible for the West African monetary system – the Colonial Office and West African Currency Board – believed these plots had the potential to generate high quality forged currency and thus considered them to present a greater risk than local counterfeiting practices. This paper argues that colonial officials were also alert to this illicit activity because the schemes presented a new challenge to British law enforcement in the colonies, set off disputes between national and imperial institutions in London, and required the British to collaborate with other nations to thwart. The emergence of these international counterfeiting schemes demonstrates that while the creation of a colonial monetary system for West Africa facilitated British imperial economic aims, it also created new and unanticipated challenges to British rule.

Please contact qaleeda.talib@some.ox.ac.uk for more information.

Free for members; a £2 fee applies for non-members. Please contact the Secretary at kim.zhang@wadh.ox.ac.uk if you wish to be a member and sign up to the mailing-list. Membership is free.

Oxford Fashion Society is delighted to bring you our first speaker of the year, FELICITY HAYWARD! Join us on the 12th November for a very special event with the international model, ASOS stylist and artist. There will be top style tips, insights into her amazing world of fashion, and a chance for any questions, as well as a (FREE!) drinks reception following the event!

Felicity has had an amazing and varied career, from being ASOS’s go-to gal for all things CURVE, to gracing the cover of I-D and Noctis magazines (and countless others), to her nearly 40k followers on Instagram, and she’ll be joining us to tell us all about it! For anyone interested in modelling, styling, fashion, or just a great evening out, this event is an absoloute must!

Tickets are £3 on the door and include FREE DRINKS afterwards!
Join the Facebook event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/990444424351368/

See you all there!

OFS love X

Talk by Kirsty Norman, UCL, Institute of Archaeology on the view from the ground of the invasion and the effects on the Kuwait’s National Museum.

Adobe specialists Richard Curtis and Niels Stevens are coming to Film Oxford for a special presentation on the new features of Creative Cloud for photographers, designers and film makers.

Don’t miss this opportunity to see the latest features in the new release of Adobe Creative Cloud 2015, including Photoshop, Lightroom, Premiere, After Effects, Speedgrade and more. Learn about what’s new in this 2015 release that will help you do everything you do more efficiently using the latest innovations and modern standards. Get answers to your questions and get inspired by film makers and photographers who are creating amazing work.

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/

There will be a short introductory talk of about twenty minutes, followed by Q&As, and about an hour’s discussion among the audience. The meeting finishes at 9pm. All welcome; no need to book.

Jeremy Uden, Deputy Head of Conservation at the Pitt Rivers Museum, will talk about the new Cook-voyage display on the museum’s lower gallery. As well as an introduction to the case, he will talk about the many challenges involved in mounting this complex display of objects collected on Cook’s first and second voyages.