The Aptness of Anger – Dr Amia Srinivasan
Ancient and contemporary philosophers alike have argued that we ought not get angry, even when facing injustice, because doing so is harmful to ourselves. Christian mystics and theologians seem to agree. But isn’t anger a tool with which to tackle injustice and a source of moral insight? And cannot anger be a justified response to the world even if it has bad effects? Dr Amia Srinivasan will explore anger’s relationship with reason and what happens when we lose our capacity to get angry. Part of a series ‘On Anger’.

The presenter will introduce different crowdfunding platforms which serve different purposes, for instance education-related initiatives, charitable works, new products and start-ups.

Presenter: Shan Huang, D.Phil student at Department of Education, Founder of OxFund

Part of Book at Lunchtime, a fortnightly series of bite size book discussions, with commentators from a range of disciplines. Free, all welcome – no booking required. Join us for a sandwich lunch from 12:45, with discussion from 13:00 to 13:45.

Anna Marmodoro (Fellow in Philosophy, Corpus Christi, University of Oxford) will discuss her book Aristotle on Perceiving Objects with:

Ophelia Deroy (Associate Director, Institute of Philosophy, School of Advanced Study and Senior Researcher, Centre for the Study of the Senses)
Richard Sorabji (Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, King’s College London)
Rowland Stout (Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Oxford)

About the book

How can we explain the structure of perceptual experience? What is it that we perceive? How is it that we perceive objects and not disjoint arrays of properties? By which sense or senses do we perceive objects? Are our five senses sufficient for the perception of objects?

Aristotle investigated these questions by means of the metaphysical modeling of the unity of the perceptual faculty and the unity of experiential content. His account remains fruitful-but also challenging-even for contemporary philosophy.

This book offers a reconstruction of the six metaphysical models Aristotle offered to address these and related questions, focusing on their metaphysical underpinning in his theory of causal powers. By doing so, the book brings out what is especially valuable and even surprising about the topic: the core principles of Aristotle’s metaphysics of perception are fundamentally different from those of his metaphysics of substance. Yet, for precisely this reason, his models of perceptual content are unexplored territory. This book breaks new ground in offering an understanding of Aristotle’s metaphysics of the content of perceptual experience and of the composition of the perceptual faculty.

Have you thought about using crowdfunding to fund your next degree, innovation, entrepreneurial project, charitable work, creative arts or sports club? What support you need from your college, the university and the crowdfunding platform? Speak out and let them know.

OxFund invited Jonathan May – the CEO and Co-founder of Hubbub, the representatives from the Development Offices at Green Templeton College, Keble College, Merton College, Regent’s Park, St Hugh’s College, Somerville College (the only Oxford college has its own branded crowdfunding platform) and University College, and the staff from ISIS Innovation who are working with Hubbub to build a Oxford-branded crowdfunding platform for Oxford staff and students to raise money for their entrepreneurial projects to form a panel to listen your needs.

More college’s development offices may join, as we are still in the process of confirming. Please check the Facebook event for the updates. Even your college’s development office is not in the panel, speak out your needs and we will pass them to the development office of your college.

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

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.

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

Join us on Monday for our second last event for the academic year to hear Jens Zimmerman speak on theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Christian Humanism. Jens is a philosopher and theologian who specializes in hermeneutics and the philosophical and theological roots of humanism. He currently holds the Canada Research Chair in Interpretation, Religion and Culture.

• Mike set up the volunteer organisation Smile Kids Japan (website under reconstruction…) in 2007 to promote sustainable and local volunteering at institutional care facilities (sometimes called orphanages) in Japan. This grew and has helped volunteers set up visits in 25 of the 47 prefectures in Japan, seeing several thousand people volunteer their friendship to kids in care. Following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that struck Tohoku, Smile Kids Japan joined up with another NPO, Living Dreams, and Mike moved to the area to work full time on this project. Mike and the team raised over $900,000 in the months after the disaster, working with large corporate donors and setting up smaller events, including a 5 kilometre fun run that was carried out in 12 countries on the same day and raised over $100,000. The work was featured on the ITV ‘Tonight’ documentary news program, and in national papers. After giving a talk at TEDxTokyo and returning to the UK to study the alternative care system in Japan, Mike was invited by the Japanese Ambassador to meet and talk with the Emperor and Empress of Japan along with other Brits, including Lord Patten, who had been involved in the relief work.

• Mike is going to speak about fundraising strategies and will suggest (at least) three concrete ideas for fundraising that can be done before the end of term. These can be used for any charity fundraising, however the focus will be on post disaster, specifically on the situation in Nepal.

• The meeting aims to form a small team who can work on a flash fundraising event before the end of term, though you do not have to participate further if you just want to listen to the talk and learn more about fundraising.

To Book a place, click ‘going’ on our Facebook Event https://www.facebook.com/events/467192280115835/

OxFund — the Crowdfunding Society for Oxford Students
Email: hello.oxfund@gmail.com
Website: http://oxfund.wix.com/oxfund
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/OxFund/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/OxFund
Fund OxFund to run events: https://hubbub.net/p/oxfundsociety/

Twenty minute talk, Q&As, and an hour of discussion. Free entry, no need to book. You’re welcome to come along just to listen, or to take part actively in the discussion.

Evening with Sami Awad of the Holyland Trust http://www.holylandtrust.org
Monday 15th June – Impossible to Possible: what does nonviolence mean in Palestine today?
Palestinian Christian Sami Awad, the Executive Director of the Holy Land Trust will lead discussions about nonviolence and its role in bringing a just and lasting peace to all who live in the Holy Land.
Holy Land Trust exists to lead in creating an environment that fosters understanding, healing, transformation, and empowerment of individuals and communities, locally and globally, to address core challenges that are preventing the achievement of a true and just peace in the Holy Land.
6.30pm for 7.00pm start; Friends Meeting House, 43 St. Giles, Oxford.
“It is encouraging for us to know that people have realised that you can stand up for the human rights of the Palestinians without compromising the rights of Israelis to also live in peace. You do not have to pick a side. I invite you ..to continue praying for peace for both communities that live in what we all call the Holy Land.”
Sami Awad.
“We have to not only understand those people who are oppressing us, but try to walk in their shoes, and ultimately to really engage with what it means to follow Jesus’ call to love our enemies.”
Sami Awad.
Sami will be visiting the UK with the Amos Trust. As well as the event on 15th June, Sami will also give a sermon in St Giles Church on Sunday 14th June. These events contribute to the Oxford Palestine Unlocked festival (4th – 20th June) . More details on the website http://palestineunlocked.com and also http://www.amostrust.org

Brian Hurwitz is D’Oyly Carte Professor of Medicine and the Arts in the Department of English. He is a medical practitioner affiliated to the Division of Health and Social Care Research, King’s College London, directs the Centre for the Humanities and Health and is a member of the Steering Advisory Board of the Centre for Life-Writing Research at King’s.

Collectively clinical case reports constitute a huge repository of medical experience. This talk will scrutinise their shape, salient features, and the nature of the hindsight from which they are composed, filtered for coherence, and turned into second order accountsof encounters, observations and reasoning about a patient or series of patients. It asks what case reports are good for and what kinds of knowledge they embody.

This is a special workshop hosted by the Refugee Studies Centre as part of Oxford Refugee Week.

Programme:

Chair: Professor Dawn Chatty, Professor of Anthropology and Forced Migration and former Director of the RSC

Speakers:
Dr Jeff Crisp, independent consultant, RSC Research Associate, and former Head of Policy Development & Evaluation at UNHCR

Dr Maria Kastrinou, Lecturer, Brunel University

Dr Sara Pantuliano, Director of Humanitarian Policy Group, Overseas Development Institute

Dr Patricia Sellick, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Trust, Peace & Social Relations, Coventry University

Professor Roger Zetter, Professor Emeritus of Refugee Studies, RSC

Since 2011, the on-going conflict in Syria has had an enduring and devastating impact. According to the latest inter-country report of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the humanitarian crisis has reached an unprecedented scale: 7.6 million people are internally displaced in Syria, while more than 3.9 million are seeking protection in neighbouring Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey.

Against the background of this unprecedented humanitarian crisis, what are Syrians’ aspirations for their futures? What kind of futures do they want to build? And what measures have EU Member States taken in response to the crisis?

This workshop will draw on ethnographic accounts from work directly with Syrian communities in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. The workshop will bring together experts and academics that have had direct fieldwork experience and can speak about the concerns, needs and aspirations of Syrians who have fled Syria.

This event is open to all. No registration is required.

A wine reception will follow afterward.

SOFEA are holding an educational event involving working and understanding the behaviors of young people. It is happening on Thursday 25th June 2015 and all details are attached. You will need to RSVP

Talk – Perspectives: Cheating

A short series of talks on cheating, fakes and frauds to accompany the exhibition by Lynn Hershman Leeson.

Speakers include:

Nigel Warburton: The Ethics of Cheating
Warburton discusses how and why we decide to cheat and if it’s ever ok to cheat.

Nigel Warburton is a freelance philosopher, podcaster and writer, described by Julian Baggini as ‘one of the most-read popular philosophers of our time’. His books include A Little History of Philosophy, Philosophy: The Basics, Philosophy: The Classics, Thinking from A to Z, The Art Question, and Free Speech: A Very Short Introduction. He is the interviewer for the popular Philosophy Bites podcast which he makes with David Edmonds and which has been downloaded nearly 19 million times, and has formed the basis of two books, Philosophy Bites and Philosophy Bites Back.

Robert Hutton: Lying
Hutton will talk about how we lie to ourselves and to each other, the sorts of lies we tell and how you can spot a lie.

Robert Hutton is a British political reporter for Bloomberg News and author of the Journalese collection Romps, Tots and Boffins and the Uncommunication guide Would They Lie To You?

Megan Aldrich: Authenticity and the Gothic Revival
Aldrich will discuss William Beckford at Fonthill Abbey, who on occasion lied about the provenance of his decorative and antiquarian objects because he was so caught up in the ‘narrative’ of what he wanted them to be. Aldrich will talk about the fashion for creating false and imagined architectural histories in England in the 19th Century.

Megan Aldrich began her career in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. She curated the exhibition on the Crace firm of decorators at the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery in Sussex in 1990 and edited the accompanying publication. She is currently Senior Fellow in Object Based Studies at Sotheby’s Institute of Art.

Free, booking essential via https://www.modernartoxford.org.uk/event/perspectives-cheating/

*How clicktivists, slacktivists and hacktivists are helping us beat cancer sooner*
Michael Docherty, Digital & Strategic Marketing Planning Director, Cancer Research UK

Cancer Research UK is the world’s leading cancer charity dedicated to saving lives through research. Our vision is to bring forward the day when all cancers are cured. Our work into preventing, diagnosing and treating cancer has helped double UK survival rates in the last forty years. Our ambition is to accelerate that progress so we see at least 3 in 4 patients survive cancer by 2034; the digital revolution playing an important role in helping us get us there.

We will explore the work we’re doing to increase our fundraising impact through digital, how we’re opening up our research for the digital world to engage with, and what might come next!

Free and all welcome, there will be a drinks reception after the talk.

Michael Docherty is Cancer Research UK’s Digital & Strategic Marketing Planning director. He’s been with the charity since late 2007, joining as Head of Online Marketing and later becoming Head of Digital before moving into the director role. In the last year Michael has continued to build digital capability into CRUK and drive the transformation of CRUK’s websites to make them robust, responsive, and above all, user-centric. Prior to CRUK Michael was a Group Marketing Manager at Telstra, Australia’s leading communications company, and has held various product and brand marketing roles at Yahoo!, Hutchison Telecoms & Fairfax Digital.

Image: Cancer Research UK / Wikimedia Commons

A one-day free exhibit featuring powerful children’s drawings from Burma and Sudan.

The event is co-sponsored by Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust (HART) and Waging Peace. The drawings from Burma were collected on visits by HART to their partners. HART works with these partners and others in conflict or post-conflict areas, often facing persecution and oppression and trapped behind closed borders. The areas in which HART’s partners work are often not reached by larger organisations and Government support.

The pictures from Sudan were collected by Waging Peace, from Darfuri children living in refugee camps in Chad. Waging Peace is a non-governmental organisation that campaigns against genocide and systematic human rights abuses and seeks the full implementation of international human rights treaties.

These drawings are commanding and moving, providing an insight into the lives and minds of children living in these contexts.

A lecture in aid of the British red Cross services in Oxfordshire and beyond kindly given by award winning journalist Peter Taylor and entitled ‘Terrorism from IRA to Al Quaeda and ISIL.’ In his lecture Peter will describe his 40 year journey from reporting the IRA to investigating Al Qaeda and, latterly, assessing the Islamic State. He will discuss how successful – or otherwise – governments and states have been in countering the threats and addressing their root causes.

In conjunction with The Angus Library and Archive’s exhibition, ‘Navigating the Congo’, Bandi Mbubi, will be joining us to speak about conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo and his work in demanding the development of fairtrade technology which uses conflict-free minerals.

Bandi Mbubi is a founder and director of Congo Calling, an organisation who are working to bring the world’s attention to the atrocities being committed in the Congo and for a peaceful resolution to the ongoing war. Bandi writes and speaks nationally and internationally to create a mass movement of consumers who demand the development of fair trade technology which uses ethically-sourced, conflict-free minerals from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

The exhibition will be open to visitors before the talk from 1pm-5.30pm on 22nd September.

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.

A wine reception will follow the talk

Philosopher Nigel Warburton will be discussing some of the thinkers and ideas that feature in his bestselling introductory book, A Little History of Philosophy.

Blackwell’s have recently sold our 1000th copy of the book in this shop alone, making it one of our biggest selling philosophy titles. The book has been translated into many different languages and has sold over 50,000 copies worldwide since its publication in 2012. Exploring the thinkers and ideas of the past and present in chronological order, Warburton not only makes philosophy extremely accessible but also offers inspiration to think, question and argue in the tradition of Socrates.

The Oxford Forum for Medical Humanities presents a talk on effective altruism and the true impact of a doctor, by (medical doctor) Dr Gregory Lewis.

Doctors have a pretty solid reputation as do-gooders, and many students go into medicine for altruistic reasons. But how much good do doctors do? If you are deciding whether to become a doctor in the UK, how many lives can you expect to save over the course of your career?

Dr Gregory Lewis, a full-time doctor and ex-Cambridge medical student, will present some of his research into these very questions. This talk should be of interest to medics and non-medics alike who are serious about the impact of their career.

Date: Saturday 24 October (Week 2)
Time: 4:30pm-5:30pm
Venue: Blue Boar Lecture Theatre, Christ Church

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WHY DOCTORS DON’T DO MUCH GOOD

If you want to save lives, should you study medicine? Probably not.

The conclusion of our research is that most people skilled enough to make it in a field as challenging as medicine could have a bigger social impact through an alternative career.

The best research suggests that doctors do much less to improve the health of their patients than you might naturally expect. Health is more determined by lifestyle factors, and most of the treatments that work particularly well could be delivered with a smaller number of doctors than already work in the UK or USA.

However, medicine is high earning and highly fulfilling, and we expect there are more promising opportunities to help others through biomedical research, public health, health policy and (e.g. hospital) management.

Overall, we think going to medical school would be the best way to have a social impact only if someone felt they were a significantly better fit for medicine than the other options we recommend.

Source: 80,000 Hours https://80000hours.org/2012/08/how-many-lives-does-a-doctor-save/

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BIOGRAPHY

Dr Gregory Lewis, a full-time public health doctor training in the east of England. He studied Medicine at Cambridge, where he volunteered for Giving What We Can and 80,000 Hours, and he did his FY1 at the John Radcliffe Hospital.

He will present some of his research into these very questions. This talk should be of interest to medics and non-medics alike who are serious about the impact of their career

This interdisciplinary workshop examines the impact of music on the brain from the point of view of different disciplines (medicine/physiology, psychology, philosophy).

Following a series of short talks by St Hilda’s Fellows and expert guest speakers, there will time for questions. Tea and coffee will be available.

Professor Nick Bostrom, Director of the Future of Humanity Institute, will explore the huge technological, scientific and environmental shifts that have led to humanity’s current state, and consider the choices that will determine our long-term future.

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

Professor Joseph Shear (Christ Church) will give a paper entitled ‘Heidegger on Understanding’.
Following the talk there will be drinks and a discussion. All are welcome.