How has humanities scholarship influenced biomedical research and civil liberties and how can scholars serve the common good? Entrepreneur and scholar Donald Drakeman will discuss his new book exploring the value and impact of the humanities in the 21st century with:

– Stefan Collini (Professor of Intellectual History and English Literature, University of Cambridge and author of What Are Universities For?)
– Richard Ekins (Tutorial Fellow in Law, St John’s College, University of Oxford)
– Jay Sexton (Associate Professor of American History, University of Oxford)

Chaired by Helen Small (Professor of English Literature, University of Oxford and author of The Value of the Humanities)

Free, all welcome. Join us for a sandwich lunch from 12:30, with discussion from 13:00 to 14:00. No booking required, seats will be allocated on a first come, first served basis.

About the book

An entrepreneur and educator highlights the surprising influence of humanities scholarship on biomedical research and civil liberties. This spirited defence urges society to support the humanities to obtain continued guidance for public policy decisions, and challenges scholars to consider how best to fulfil their role in serving the common good.

The event is part of Book at Lunchtime, a fortnightly series of bite size book discussions, with commentators from a range of disciplines.

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.

We’ve all seen it: A renegade detective pores over the scene of a grizzly murder. They find an overlooked clue; a hair, a footprint, a shell casing. Detailed forensic analysis matches the clue to the bad guy, and the bad guy goes to jail. This is how modern day forensics are portrayed in shows such as ‘CSI’ and ‘Silent Witness’; forensic evidence is seen as conclusive when it comes to catching suspects and deciding if someone is guilty in a criminal trial. But, at a time when shows like Serial and Making a Murderer have brough miscarriages of justice to international prominence, Emma McClure will explain how the traces left behind at a crime scene can sometimes lie.

The science in areas such as DNA collection has progressed enormously in recent decades allowing for breakthroughs in many old and cold cases. However, we have also seen many high profile exonerations of those previously convicted of the most serious of crimes on seemingly ‘conclusive’ forensic evidence. This has lead to increasing scrutiny of the way it is analysed, interpreted and presented in the courtroom.

In this talk, prison lawyer Emma McClure examines the issues with forensic techniques, highlighting the amusing, confusing and sometimes tragic consequences of failing to take a skeptical approach to evidence in the field of forensic science.

Join the Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/797735430370840/

7.30PM start at St. Aldates Tavern, and entry is free, although we do suggest a donation of around £3 to cover speaker expenses. We tend to get busy, so arrive early to make sure you get a seat. Come along and say hello! All welcome. http://oxford.skepticsinthepub.org/Event.aspx/7986/The-Phantom-of-Heilbronn-and-other-Forensic-Faux-Pas

Sir Nicholas Stadlen is a former Barrister (Fountain Court Chambers) and High Court Judge and is currently a Visiting Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford.

As a QC he was voted Barrister of the Year in 2006 after his successful defence of the Bank of England in its epic legal battle with the liquidators of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), giving the longest speech in English legal history (119 days).

As a High Court Judge, he sat in the Queen’s Bench Division principally hearing public law judicial review cases from 2007 to 2013.

In 2006/07 he conducted a series of one hour podcast interviews for The Guardian with Gerry Adams, Desmond Tutu, FW DeKlerk, Simon Peres, Hanan Ashrawi, Tony Benn and David Blunkett. They can still be heard on The Guardian website under the series title Brief Encounter.

Amongst other things, Sir Nicholas will be speaking about the Rivonia Trial lawyers, defendants and other anti-apartheid activitists in the 1960s about whom he is currently writing a book. The Rivonia Trial took place following the arrest of 10 ANC leaders, working with Nelson Mandela, who were tried for 221 acts of sabotage.

The event will take the form of a conversation with the Principal of LMH, Alan Rusbridger, and will be followed by a Q&A session and drinks. If you would like to attend, please book online at https://lmh-law-society-sir-nicholas-stadlen.eventbrite.co.uk

A free chance to see the 2015 film directed by Stephen Spielberg and based on a true story. Bridge of Spies stars Tom Hanks, who plays Jim Donovan, an American lawyer recruited by the CIA in 1957 to represent Rudolph Abel at trail, after the European artist, living in the US, was arrested for spying for the Russians.

Set during the Cold War, during a time of intense distrust and fear of nuclear capabilities, the move was to ensure Abel had a fair trail. That small act of fairness played out into a drama of complexities, as Donovan successfully pleads for Abel to get life imprisonment, rather than the death sentence. His argument was that Abel may be a fair future exchange for any US citizens imprisoned by the Russians.

Professor Kwame Anthony Appiah, Professor of Philosophy and Law, New York University, will deliver the annual Wolfson Berlin Lecture.

Speaker
Kwame Anthony Appiah is a philosopher, cultural theorist, and novelist whose interests include political and moral theory, the philosophy of language and mind, and African intellectual history. Kwame Anthony Appiah grew up in Ghana and earned a Ph.D. at Cambridge University.

The World Post listed Professor Appiah on its Global Thought Leaders Index in December 2015, which was led by Pope Francis (#1), Paul Coehlo (#2) and Muhammad Yunus (#3).

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.

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

Join us for a sensational evening of cabaret – an alchemy of acts delivered by Science Oxford’s network of creative science performers. If you love science, stage and stand up, you’ll be in your element with our periodic table-themed cabaret including science presenter and geek songstress Helen Arney and compered by award-winning science communicator Jamie Gallagher. See the everyday elements that make up the world around us in a new light, watch in disbelief as gold is created before your eyes, and learn about their origins and how they behave inside our bodies. Get your tickets now – once they are gone they argon!

The First Amendment has had a mixed pedigree and a difficult birth. In this lecture, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy Dan Robinson will demonstrate that, in offering protection of the basic liberties — freedom of religion, speech, press, petition, and assembly — the clear language of the First Amendment’s final form has been no bar to diverse and conflicting interpretations. This leaves unsettled the question of just what constitutes ‘speech’ and the grounds on which it loses the Amendment’s protection.

Professor Robinson will chart the development of philosophical thought on these freedoms from John Locke to the present day, and address the question of how courts navigate these conflicting interpretations. Operating as they do within the wider cultural climate of the day, he will assess whether the courts do, and should, remain immune to its fluctuating pressures.

This lecture forms part of a series on Free Speech convened by Professor Sir Richard Sorabji.

Professor Dan Robinson is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Georgetown University and a Fellow of the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford.

Our present laws attacking conflict of interest and corruption came into existence during years of blistering financial and political corruption scandals in early Hanoverian England, notably the 1720 South Sea Bubble. But there was also a lot corruption surrounding war finance and the buying of offices and elections. Were the anti-corruption laws made in the 1720s a clean-up effort in the wake of breakdown and crisis? If political-legal change worked like that today, we would by now have a highly regulated financial industry in the United Kingdom and highly honest and ethical politicians and political media. In the early 18th century, and perhaps in all times in British legal history, crisis might be a trigger for legal reform, but the reform process was always played out on a wider canvas of domestic politics, religious conflict, international affairs, and personal rivalries within an elite. In this lecture I tell the story of conflicts in the realm of politics, finance and family life in the early reign of the Hanoverians, looking at a colourful caste of characters including many miscreants from Oxford.

Professor Joshua Getzler is Professor of Law and Legal History at St Hugh’s College. His book A History of Water Rights at Common Law (Oxford, 2004) won the Peter Birks Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship in 2005. He is interested in modern property and commercial law, and the interconnections of legal, financial, political, religious and economic history.

In this book colloquium, a panel of experts will discuss East West Street, the moving personal account of how the international lawyer Philippe Sands unearthed long-buried family secrets whilst researching the fathers of the modern human rights movement in Lviv, home to his maternal grandfather.

In this extraordinary and resonant book, Sands paints a portrait of the two very private men who forged his own field of humanitarian law — Rafael Lemkin and Hersch Lauterpacht — each of whom dedicated their lives to having their legal concepts of “genocide” and “crimes against humanity” form a centerpiece for the prosecution of Nazi war criminals.

In doing so, the author uncovers, clue by clue, the deliberately obscured story of his grandfather’s mysterious life and of his mother’s journey as a child surviving Nazi occupation. It is a book that changes the way we look at the world, at our understanding of history, and how civilization has tried to cope with mass murder.

Philippe Sands is an international lawyer and a professor of law at University College London. He is the author of Lawless World and Torture Team and is a frequent commentator on CNN and the BBC World Service. Sands lectures around the world and has taught at New York University and been a visiting professor at the University of Toronto, the University of Melbourne, and the Université de Paris I (Sorbonne). In 2003 he was appointed a Queen’s Counsel.

Praise for East West Street
A monumental achievement … a profoundly personal account of the origins of crimes against humanity and genocide, told with love, anger and precision.
—John le Carré

Exceptional … has the intrigue, verve and material density of a first-rate thriller.

—The Guardian

The Confession details the first-hand experiences of Moazzam Begg, British Muslim and former detainee at Guantanamo Bay, as he chronicles the rise of modern jihad, its descent into terror and the reaction of the West.

This one off screening will be followed by a Q&A with Moazzam himself, director Ashish Ghadiali and chaired by Dr Tina Managhan, Senior Lecturer of International Relations, Oxford Brookes.

Prof Lisa Monchalin will discuss her new book, “The Colonial Problem: An Indigenous Perspective on Crime and Injustice in Canada”. All are very welcome. Indigenous peoples are vastly overrepresented in the Canadian criminal justice system. This development is not new. It has been well documented for decades. The Canadian government has framed this disproportionate victimization and criminalization as being an “Indian problem.” It is argued that crimes and injustices affecting Indigenous peoples must be understood within the context of Canada’s shameful history, and the unchanged colonial goals of original forefathers—those which attempt to silence voices, histories, and cultures of Indigenous peoples—and continue and uphold racism, and patriarchy. These ideas and misrepresentations have permeated institutions, infused today’s value systems, and have become embedded in western media and culture. The consequences of assimilation policies, dishonoured treaty agreements, manipulative legislation, the sexualization of Indigenous women, and systematic racism are analyzed, arguing that the overrepresentation of Indigenous peoples in the Canadian criminal justice system is not an Indian problem but a colonial one.

Carolyn Henwood, CNZM, prominent New Zealand judge and member of the New Zealand parole board; Chair of the Henwood Trust and founding member of Circa Theatre and Theatre Artists charitable Trust.

Baroness Helena Kennedy, QC is Principal of Mansfield College, a prominent barrister and a Labour member of the House of Lords. Author of “Eve was Framed: Women and British Justice” (1992).
Anthony Barnett is a former Director of Charter 88 and was co-founder of openDemocracy and is currently writing “What Next?: Britain after Brexit”
Alison Young is Professor of Public Law at Oxford and a Fellow of Hertford College. She is the author of “Parliamentary Sovereignty and the Human Rights Act” (2009) and “Citizen Engaged?”

‘In 2012, the International Labour Organisation estimates that there were 5.5 million children in slavery’. From the cotton industry in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan to shrimp fishing in SE Asia, Aidan McQuade, Director of the charity Anti-Slavery International will be looking at the persistence of slavery among children and adults worldwide, the conditions which currently allow it, and what we can do to to bring it to an end.

During his tenure as Director of Anti-Slavery International, Dr. Aidan McQuade’s achievements have included holding the state of Niger to account in an international court for failing to protect its citizens from slavery, ensuring the inclusion of a target to end modern slavery in the Sustainable Development Goals, obtaining a new statute in British law proscribing forced labour and mounting a series of investigations identifying where forced labour is used in the developing world for the production of goods for western markets as well as exposing human trafficking activity in the UK.
In 2010, Aidan was awarded a doctorate for his thesis entitled, “Doing the right thing: human agency and ethical choice-making in professional practice.”

Martin Barker (Professor Emeritus of Film Studies at Aberystwyth University, Director of the Global Hobbit Project) will be visiting Oxford to discuss the results of the landmark Global Hobbit Project, a research initiative examining the popular reception of Peter Jackson’s Hobbit Film trilogy.

Synopsis:
“Tolkien aficionados may have disagreed somewhat among themselves about the value and achievements of the Lord of the Rings film trilogy. But any frustrations – or celebrations – over the 2001-3 films were nothing compared to the overwhelming sense of let-down occasioned by the Hobbit trilogy. But your disappointments are, I am afraid, grist to the mill of an audience researcher like me. In 2014 I led a consortium of researchers in 46 countries across the world, to gather responses to Peter Jackson’s second trilogy. We managed to attract just over 36,000 completions of our questionnaire. Of course, when we conceived and planned the project, we couldn’t know what the films would be like, or what range of responses and debates they might elicit. In this presentation I will (briefly) explain why and how we carried out the research, and offer some of its major findings. These can act, I hope, as a kind of mirror to the depths, and also the significance, of the sense of disappointment experienced by even the most hopeful and forgiving viewers. And they open an important agenda about the changing role of ‘fantasy’ in our contemporary culture.”

Mark Stephens is a solicitor specialising in media law, intellectual property rights and human rights. In the 1990s he was a legal correspondent for Sky TV and now features regularly in print and on television. He is also Chair of Design & Artists Copyright Society, Chair of the Governors of the University of East London and a past President of the Commonwealth Lawyers Association

Following his recent appearance on BBC’s Newsnight, former Attorney General and current Chair of Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee, the Rt Hon Dominic Grieve QC MP, explores the legal and constitutional challenges arising from Brexit, the recent judgment in the High Court and the Government’s continuing commitment to scrap the Human Rights Act. The talk forms part of the Wadham Human Rights Forum, and will be chaired by its Warden, Lord Macdonald QC.

What is distinctive about human rights advocacy? Does framing an issue in human rights terms produce specific challenges? Does advocating for an ethical framework require us to think about our language, behavior and mode of campaigning? Can a scholar successfully combine advocacy and scholarship without fatally compromising both? Why has human rights advocacy within the UK faced persistent challenges and a recognized backlash? Is there grounds for any optimism in this scenario?

These are some of the questions that Professor Francesca Klug (LSE) will address based on 30 years of human rights researching, writing and campaigning within the UK

A twenty minute talk to introduce the topic, followed by Q&As and about an hour’s discussion. All welcome.

The people are angry and want change. Across Europe, the United States, and elsewhere, the people, or more accurately, segments of the People, are demonstrating their discontent and disenchantment with some of the ideas and institutions at the foundations of contemporary Western societies.

Whether it be a growing intolerance of difference and the revival of nationalist sentiments, disaffection with the institutions of government and demands for more direct forms of democracy, or fears over national security and the emergence of populist, charismatic leaders, such illiberal trends have gained significant traction in recent years.

In this workshop, a roundtable of experts from around Europe and the US will debate the issues, and assess the implications of these rising currents for national constitutions and that of the European Union.

Professor Denis Galligan will give an address to open the workshop, entitled The Post-Liberal Constitution.

Following the High Court ruling that the government, under a centuries-old Royal Prerogative, does not have the power to trigger Article 50 to leave the EU, MPs have claimed that we are entering a full-blown constitutional crisis.

In this lecture, Professor Denis Galligan will set out the principles of Britain’s unwritten or uncodified constitution, and assess the implications for the ongoing dispute over the role of parliament in deciding the terms of the UK’s post-Referendum future.

This talk will introduce the need for patent protection of ideas and give some of the very basic background and issues that inventors need to be aware of. Examples will be drawn mainly from the areas of ink-jet and 3D printing. There will also be comments and discussion about the way that new technologies develop.

Prof. Peter Dobson OBE was the Founder and Director of Oxford Begbroke Science Park which accommodates new laboratories for Univeristy research groups as well as 24 start-up companies.His research interests cover most aspects of nanotechnology, and embrace biotechnology, environmental technology, energy, and materials science, especially in application to medicine. He was the Strategic Advisor on Nanotechnology to the Research Councils and sits on several EPSRC panels and committees. Currently he is a Principal Fellow at the Warwick Manufacturing Group.

His research led to the creation of three spin-out companies:
Oxonica plc, which specialises in making nanoparticles for a wide range of applications ranging from sunscreens to fuel additive catalysts and bio-labels;
Oxford Biosensors, which make hand-held device based on enzyme-functionalized microelectrode arrays;
Oxford NanoSystems that develops nanocoatings to refine longstanding heat transfer techniques for industrial, transport and electronics platforms.
There will be a networking session after the talk. Light refreshements are served.

RSVP: https://www.facebook.com/events/732600076903276/

Saïd Business School is thrilled to announce Lawrence H. Summers, American economist and former Director of the National Economic Council for President Obama, will be in conversation with Dean Peter Tufano at the School on Thursday 16 March. Registration is essential to confirm your attendance.

Lawrence H. Summers is the Charles W. Eliot University Professor and President Emeritus of Harvard University. During the past two decades, he has served in a series of senior policy positions in Washington, D.C., including the 71st Secretary of the Treasury for President Clinton, Director of the National Economic Council for President Obama and Vice President of Development Economics and Chief Economist of the World Bank.

He received a Bachelor of Science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1975 and was awarded a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1982. In 1983, he became one of the youngest individuals in recent history to be named as a tenured member of the Harvard University faculty. In 1987, Mr. Summers became the first social scientist ever to receive the annual Alan T. Waterman Award of the National Science Foundation (NSF), and in 1993 he was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal, given every two years to the outstanding American economist under the age of 40.

He is currently the Charles W. Eliot University Professor at Harvard University and the Weil Director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business & Government at Harvard’s Kennedy School. He and his wife Elisa New, a professor of English at Harvard, reside in Brookline with their six children.

Saïd Business School is proud to welcome Kailash Satyarthi to speak at the School on Tuesday 25 April.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Kailash Satyarthi will speak about the fight against modern slavery, sharing his experiences rescuing over 84,000 child slaves and labourers, the Global March that secured the first ever ILO definition on child labour and education campaigning in over 100 countries to ensure all children in the world get to go to school.

Mr Satyarthi will also introduce the new 100 million for 100 million campaign that was launched with 5,000 students and the President of India in December. It aims to be the biggest mobilisation in history and help globalise compassion at this increasing time of nationalism. Mr Satyarthi will also explain how individuals can make a difference and ensure all children are safe, free and educated.

Mr Satyarthi has been a tireless advocate of children’s rights for over three decades and is the founding president of the Global Campaign for Education, an exemplar civil society movement working to end the global education crisis.

The seminar will take place at Saïd Business School and is open for anyone to attend. Please remember that registration is required.

Saïd Business School is pleased to welcome Lubomira Rochet, Global Chief Digital Officer of the L’Oréal Group, to speak at the School on Wednesday 26 April.

Leading digital transformation at L’Oréal

L’Oréal is the world’s number one beauty company with leading brands such as Maybelline New York, L’Oréal Paris, Garnier, Lancome, Kiehl’s, and Kerastase. The group was also named by Adweek as 2017’s hottest digital marketer. How did one of the world’s oldest consumer goods companies get to this position? Lubomira Rochet, the Chief Digital Officer for L’Oréal globally and member of the group’s executive committee, will talk about the digital transformation of L’Oréal’s businesses that she and her team have enacted since she joined the company in 2014.

The seminar is open for anyone to attend and will take place at Saïd Business School on Wednesday 26 April followed by a short networking drinks reception until around 7.30pm. Please remember that registration is required to attend this event.