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

An introductory talk of about twenty minutes, followed by Q&As and an hour or so’s discussion among the audience. You’re welcome to come along just to listen, or to take an active part in the discussion.

Phil Barry is the founder of Blokur and will be talking about how blockchain might be used to transform the music industry, including a demonstration of Ujo.

Phil’s work with Imogen Heap attracted major media attention
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/sep/06/imogen-heap-saviour-of-music-industry
This promises to be a fascinating talk and a great example of how the potential of Ethereum is already being realised.

Talks on the poetry of John Milton (Dr Margaret Kean, St Hilda’s College, Oxford); music by George Frideric Handel (Dr Jonathan Williams, St Hilda’s College and Faculty of Music, University of Oxford); and Morris’s dance (Guest Lecturer Professor Stephanie Jordan, University of Roehampton)

When the Elizabethan gentleman John Sadler sat down to copy his music partbooks little did he know that he had chosen an overly acidic ink. He filled his manuscripts with Latin sacred music from throughout the Tudor period (including composers such as Fayrfax, Taverner, Tallis, and Byrd and Morley) and adorned them with elaborate initials, colourful inscriptions and charming pictures of birds, animal and plants. Yet over the centuries this ink has burned through the paper leaving his once beautiful partbooks stained, difficult to read and too fragile to be handled.

With funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Tudor Partbooks team are digitally reconstructing Sadler’s manuscripts to return them to their former glory and a more legible state. Using photo editing techniques we are digitally reconstructing the partbooks so that the pages can be read and performed from once more. As well as introducing the methods applied, I’ll also explore the aesthetic decisions that we have made, and the challenges we’ve faced in making the task achievable within the time available. In particular, the unpredicted scale of reconstruction required has led us develop novel ways of engaging public volunteers, training people across the UK and USA with a range of musical and/or technical interests to become co-participants with the academic team. We are always looking for more volunteers and there will be an opportunity to have a go at digital restoration at the end.

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.

In 1848 the Pre Raphaelites created a strong artisitc ethos which was to last the 19th Century, exlpore their musical counterparts in the works of Sullivan Debussy and Vaughan Williams

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.

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)

We are delighted to be welcoming back to the bookshop the incredibly talented The Bookshop Band. The Bookshop Band write songs inspired by books and play them in bookshops and at book festivals all around the country. Their beautiful lyrics and music are not to be missed, so book your tickets now to join us for this very special evening.
For more information about The Bookshop Band please check out their website.
Tickets cost £6 and can be purchased from our customer service department or by calling 01865 333623. For enquiries about this event, please email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk

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.

__

“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

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.

This presentation will examine the upsurge in the popularity of Hildegard of Bingen. The presentation will use of methodology of crystallisation (Richardson 2000) to examine the subject from a variety of dimensions including the performative in the form of story-telling, the lecture including images of her visions and the meditation using words and music (some from Hildegard and some from the author).

Dr June Boyce-Tillman MBE, FRSA,FHEA is Professor of Applied Music at the University of Winchester. She read music at St Hugh’s College, Oxford in 1962 and has published widely in the area of education, most recently on spirituality/ liminality.

This event is part of the series A Festival of Anniversaries.

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.

Imogen Cooper CBE is an internationally renowned pianist. She will be performing a programme of music by Leos Janacek, Manuel de Falla, Claude Debussy and Isaac Albeniz and will then be in conversation with the Principal about her extraordinary life and career. The evening will finish with a drinks reception. Tickets cost £25.00 per person.