Some face-to-face events are returning. Check carefully for any requirements.
The Technology and Management Centre for Development at the Department of International Development will be hosting two research seminars in the coming weeks – The afternoons of May 19 and June 1st.
We invite researchers currently researching topics relating to our centre’s work to present and stir discussion. These research seminars are intended to connect active researchers and students on the topics of innovation, technology and management for development. This is a chance to exchange ideas, learn and connect not just with TMCD staff, researchers and fellows but also the innovation research community at large at Oxford. These afternoons are a great opportunity to seek feedback from our peers and gain new perspective on our own work.
Light food and beverages will be provided given the lunch time start.
Presentations for June 1st
Guillermo Casasnovas “How is ambiguity resolved in the early stages of market formation? Insights from the UK social investment market.”
Kaihua Chen “How can we measure innovation systems? From sciento-metrics to inno-metrics.”
Yawen Li “When do firms undertake international open innovation?”
Hao Xu “Social network and knowledge transfer in MNEs.”
Three high-profile SPC alumni return to their college to discuss the impending EU Referendum in a forum chaired by the Master, Mark Damazer CBE.
Join the Editor of the Sunday Times, Martin Ivens (BA Modern History – 1977), the Deputy Editor of the New Statesman, Helen Lewis (BA English – 2001), and the BBC’s Political Correspondent Ben Wright (BA Modern History – 1996) for a panel discussion in which they will cut through the rhetoric surrounding this most controversial of issues in contemporary British politics, and who will then face your questions.
Is there anything wrong with putting a price on health, education, citizenship, and the environment? Where do markets serve the public good, and where do they not belong?
Join us for a lively discussion with Professor Michael J. Sandel about money, markets, and the good things in life.
Registration required
Drawing upon sociology of culture and digital rhetoric literature, this talk will illuminate the persuasive function of hashtags in the context of the UK EU membership referendum. What makes a hashtag more influential, or more successful?
The hashtag is not just a category or community marker—it has also become a vehicle through which rhetorical strategies are being used to influence thoughts and feelings. Many scholars have explored hashtag success by examining popularity and longevity. This talk presents an expanded definition of success that takes hashtag hijacking into account. The data that will be presented are being gathered live from the Twitter Streaming API; over two hundred hashtags and usernames relating to the EU referendum are being tracked. The talk will also highlight the challenges and opportunities afforded by big ‘linguistic’ data on social media.
Yin Yin Lu is a DPhil Candidate at the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) and Balliol College, as well as a Clarendon Scholar. She is fascinated by the intersection between language and technology, and her research focuses on the hashtag, one of the most notable sociotechnical phenomena of the 21st century. Prior to joining the OII, Yin obtained a Masters in English Language from the University of Oxford (Lincoln College) and a Bachelor of Arts from Columbia University. Between these degrees, she worked at Pearson Education and 10 Speed Labs, a digital media agency in Manhattan. She is the founder and co-convenor of the #SocialHumanities network at TORCH, and her ultimate objective is to reinvent the novel—along with the very acts of reading and writing—through new media technologies.
It is difficult to resolve the global warming free-rider externality problem by negotiating many different quantity targets. By contrast, negotiating a single internationally-binding minimum carbon price (the proceeds from which are domestically retained) counters pure self-interest. A uniform price embodies “countervailing force” against free riding by automatically incentivizing parties to internalize the externality via a simple understandable formula that embodies a common climate commitment based on principles of reciprocity, quid-pro-quo and I-will-if-you-will. Professor Martin Weitzman will give a somewhat technical talk centered on a mathematical model. Some implications are discussed.
A collaboration between Japanese artist Isao Miura and poet Chris Beckett, presented to the Glass Tank by the Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre.
In spring 1689, Matsuo Bashō sold his house in Edo (now Tokyo) and set off with his friend, Sora, on a long risky journey to the north of Japan, mostly on foot. He travelled light, just a paper coat, light cotton gown, his writing brush and ink. His aim was to see the great northern sights like Matsushima and Kisagata Bay which had inspired poets before him, a process the Japanese call ‘uta makura’, literally ‘poem pillow’, but more accurately translated as ‘the poem road’. This exhibition explores the rich legacy of Bashō’s work, both visually and poetically, and it documents some of Isao’s artistic and physical journey from the deep north of Japan where he grew up, ‘translating’ Bashō’s text not only into English words but into sketch, to plaster, and bronze. The exhibition will be accompanied by a discussion event on Bashō and the artistic journey, and a workshop on the haiku style of prose, called haibun, which is rapidly gaining popularity in the UK, Europe and the USA.
Isao and Chris will be available in the Glass Tank every Tuesday from 12noon to 2:00pm to introduce and discuss the exhibition with anyone who is interested.
One of Britain’s most significant and controversial artists Maggi Hambling discusses her career and recent work with Xa Sturgis, Director of the Ashmolean Museum.
Art critic, journalist and broadcaster Alastair Sooke talks about the final decade of one of the most beloved artists of the twentieth century, Henri Matisse.
Discover the life and work of William Morris’ younger duaghter May, who managed the embroidery workshop at Morris & Co 1885-1896. This lecture includes material from her collection of needlework designs and photographs of English medieval emboidery donated to the Ashmolean.
Leopold Eyharts flew on the Atlantis Shuttle to the International Space Station in 2008. Part of his mission included the installation of the Colombus Space Laboratory, the main contribution of Europe to the International Space Station. In 1998, Leopold flew
on a Soyouz Space Shuttle to the Russian MIR station. Engage in a conversation about his adventures and the future of manned exploration of space. Chaired by Valerie Jamieson, Editorial Content Director, New Scientist.
BBC Arts Editor Will Gompertz returns to the Festival to talk about his latest book ‘Think Like An Artist’. Discover how we can all harness our own creativity and achieve extraordinary things.
Britain’s most famous mathematician explores the limits of human knowledge, to probe whether there is anything we truly cannot know. Are there limits to what we can discover about our physical Universe? Is time before the Big Bang a no go arena? Are there ideas so complex that they are beyond the conception of our finite human brains? Are there true statements that can never be proved true? Prepare to be taken to the edge of knowledge to find out what we cannot know.
Ludo, snakes & ladders and draughts are all popular pastimes, but in the past couple of decades a new generation of board games from designers with backgrounds in maths and science has begun to break the Monopoly monopoly. Perhaps the most successful of these is multi award winning Reiner Knizia, who joins mathematician Katie Steckles and board game lover Quentin Cooper to discuss how you develop a game which is easy to learn, hard to master and fun to play time after time. With a chance to have a go at some of Reiner’s latest creations and other top games afterwards.
Book here: http://www.oxfordshiresciencefestival.com/tuesday.html
Director of Modern Art Oxford Paul Hobson talks about what art has become today, explains why it’s easy to understand, and demystifies contemporary art.
The Las Casas Institute presents a day-long conference on money as a prism through which we often view the world and its challenges. Join theologians, economists, and other experts in discussing what money reveals and conceals about our world.
Reception to follow at Blackfriars Hall at 5:00pm. Registration fee includes lunch and reception.
Speakers:
Professor Philip Goodchild
Sr Margaret Atkins OSA
Sr Helen Alford OP
Panelists:
Barbara Ridpath
Charles Wookey
Peter Róna
The Institute is celebrating the Dominicans’ jubilee with a series of events on the challenges of truth telling in contemporary society.
To coincide with the current exhibition by Isao Miura and Chris Beckett, ‘Sketches from the Poem Road (after Matsuo Bashō’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North)’, which runs from 20 June to 15 July, the Poetry Centre presents a stimulating evening of talks and discussion on the subject of artistic and literary translation. It will feature John Nicoll (Chelsea Foundry), Nathalie Aubert (Professor of French Literature, Oxford Brookes), David Constantine (poet and translator), Sasha Dugdale (poet and editor of Modern Poetry in Translation) and Thomas McAuley (Lecturer in Japanese at the University of Sheffield and translator of many Japanese poems), chaired by Niall Munro, director of Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre.
Speakers:
-Jonathan Scheele (Senior Member, St Antony’s College and Head of Representation at the European Commission Representation in the UK, 2010-12)
-Michael Weatherburn (Imperial College and Foundation for European Progressive Studies)
-Lise Butler (Pembroke College and Vice-Chair, Oxford Fabian Society)
Jonathon Porritt and Shaun Chamberlin celebrate the launch of the late Trinity alumnus David Fleming’s extraordinary book, ‘Surviving the Future: Culture, Carnival and Capital in the Aftermath of the Market Economy’.
This intimate event will be held in the Sutro Room at Trinity College, Oxford University, and will be recorded for a short film. Various themes in Fleming’s wonderfully diverse work – from carnival to climate change, religion to resilience, manners to markets – may be explored in response to the interests of those present.
Interview with Shaun Chamberlin on David Fleming, Brexit and the book: http://www.darkoptimism.org/2016/08/21/interview-on-david-fleming-music-and-hippos/
More information on David Fleming’s books:
http://www.chelseagreen.com/surviving-the-future
http://www.chelseagreen.com/lean-logic
Copies of both books will be on sale on the day.
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“David Fleming was an elder of the UK green movement and a key figure in the early Green Party. Drawing on the heritage of Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful, Fleming’s beautifully written and nourishing vision of a post-growth economics grounded in human-scale culture and community—rather than big finance—is both inspiring and ever more topical.”
~ Caroline Lucas MP, co-leader, Green Party of England and Wales; former Member of the European Parliament
“I would unreservedly go so far as to say that David Fleming was one of the most original, brilliant, urgently-needed, underrated, and ahead-of-his-time thinkers of the last 50 years. History will come to place him alongside Schumacher, Berry, Seymour, Cobbett, and those other brilliant souls who could not just imagine a more resilient world but who could paint a picture of it in such vivid colours. Step into the world of David Fleming; you’ll be so glad you did.”
~ Rob Hopkins, cofounder of the Transition Network
“Why do some of the truly great books only emerge and exact their influence upon us after the death of their authors? Perhaps it takes a lifetime to accrue and refine the necessary wisdom. Or perhaps it simply takes the rest of us too long to catch up. Like Thoreau, Fleming’s masterpiece brims not only with fresh insight into every nook and cranny of our culture and what it means to be human, but with such wit and humour that its challenging ideas and radical perspectives become a refreshing delight. If we’re to have a future worth surviving, this book demands to be read, re-read, and—ultimately—acted upon.”
~ Mark Boyle, author of The Moneyless Manifesto and Drinking Molotov Cocktails with Gandhi
A two-day international conference in which leading scholars from the UK, Europe and the United States will discuss the meaning of public statues in cultures throughout history ranging from Roman Palmyra to Georgian England, from the Renaissance to modern day Turkey.
Between 1995 and 2011, remittances to developing world economies, that is, money sent by emigrants to family and friends in their country of origin, grew from US$55 billion to over US$372 billion, to exceed all overseas development assistance to the developing world, and all private debt and portfolio equity flows.
Latin America is a major recipient of remittances. Over 5.2 per cent of the region’s population are migrants and in 2011 alone, US$62 billion was remitted to Latin American households. Despite the scale of these transfers however, we still do not know how remittances might affect political preferences and political behaviour among recipients, what this might mean for policy outcomes, and how these dynamics might shape the political system in countries heavily dependent on this capital.
In this talk, Professor Doyle will outline how the regular receipt of remittances is changing the political preferences of recipients, which will have long-lasting effects on politics and policy in Latin American countries dependent upon remittances, relative to countries that are not.
Professor Doyle is the Tutorial Fellow in the Politics of Latin America and Associate Professor of Comparative Politics Department of Politics and International Relations. He is a member of the Latin American Centre.
Inequality is centre-stage in political debate both globally and in individual countries, being blamed for everything from Brexit to stagnating wages and growth. Professor Brian Nolan, Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Inequality and Prosperity, will seek to tease out why this is so and identify central unanswered questions about the drivers of inequality, and what policy responses to it should be.
Get your game face on – it’s poker night at Science Oxford.
Brush off your pack of cards and outplay Lady Luck with an evening of poker probability and psychology. Learn more about the head games that define what happens at the poker table with mathematician and author of The Perfect Bet Adam Kucharski and psychologist Danielle Shore, who’ll show how your poker face can affect your opponents’ decision-making. Their talks will be followed by a friendly poker tournament – the perfect opportunity to put into practice the science of poker.
Chips included as part of ticket price.
Brookes Centre for Global Politics, Economics and Society seminar series
Delivering reliable drinking water to millions of rural people in Africa and Asia is an elusive and enduring global goal. A systematic information deficit on the performance of and demand for infrastructure investments limits policy design and development outcomes.
Since 2010, the ‘Smart Handpump’ project has been exploring new technologies, methods and models to understand and respond to this challenge. A mobile-enabled data transmitter provides foundational data on hourly water usage and failure events which has enabled the establishment of performance-based maintenance companies in Kenya that are improving handpump reliability by an order of magnitude.
The research is a collaboration between the School of Geography and the Environment and the Department of Engineering Science with a range of partners including government, international bodies such as UNICEF and the private sector. New research involves modelling the accelerometry data from the handpumps to predict aquifer depth. We invite you to test the Smart Handpump in the car park and debate how the ‘accidental infrastructure’ of rural handpumps can spark bolder initiatives to deliver water security for millions of poor people in Africa and Asia.
Prime numbers are fundamentally important in mathematics. What can bracelets reveal about the distribution of the primes? Join us to hear Dr Vicky Neale discuss this topic, discover some of the beautiful properties of prime numbers, and learn about some of the unsolved problems that mathematicians are working on today!
This is a free event with no pre-booking required.
British Science Association Oxford Branch
http://www.oxfordscibar.com/
twitter @oxfordscibar
facebook ‘British Science Association Oxford Branch’
Cornelia Parker OBE, RA is one of the UK’s most original artists and is currently a visiting fellow at LMH. Places are free of charge.
A free afternoon of artist talks.
3-5pm at OVADA Warehouse, Osney Lane.
Our guest speakers will be independent publishing house Hurst Street Press and fine artist Tommy Watkins.
This event is part of the exhibition ‘Blue Fades into the Invisible’ by Klick Oxford-Leiden.
Centre for Global Politics, Economics and Society seminar series