A one-day conference, with Professor Dame Marina Warner and featuring a rehearsed reading of Roberto Cavosi’s Bellissima Maria (after Phaedra/Hipploytus). Registration is £25, or £20 for students, and includes: lunch, refreshments, a drinks reception and confirms a place at the evening’s rehearsed reading (in the Jacqueline du Pré Music Building, St Hilda’s). See the website for the full line-up of speakers and papers.

A rehearsed reading of Roberto Cavosi’s Phaedra/Hippolytus inspired play, Bellissima Maria; performed by Marco Gambino and Sasha Waddell. Please join us in the Jacqueline Du Pré Music Building from 6pm for a Drinks Reception, and a pre-performance talk chaired by Marina Warner, with the playwright Roberto Cavosi, the translator Jane House, and actors Marco Gambino and Sasha Waddell.

*This event concludes the Italy and the Classics conference held during the day at the Ioannou Centre (66 St Giles’). Registration for the conference is £25 (students £20) but you do not need to attend the conference to book for the evening’s rehearsed reading.

There is increasing recognition over the last decade that conservation, while conserving biodiversity of global value, can have local costs. Understanding these costs is essential as a first step to delivering conservation projects that do not make some of the poorest people on the planet poorer. Using examples from Madagascar and Bolivia, we explore the challenges of quantifying the impact of conservation on local wellbeing.
Julia Jones is Professor in conservation science at the School of Environment, Natural Resources and Geography, Bangor University. Julia is interested in how people interact with natural resources and how incentives can be best designed to maintain ecosystem services; for example the growing field of Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) and how schemes such as REDD+ can effectively deliver global environmental benefits while also having a positive impact on local livelihoods. She also has a strong interest in the design of robust conservation monitoring using different types of data, and in analysing the evidence underpinning environmental policies and decisions.

Telegraph writer Helen Yemm brings her column Thorny Problems to life by answering your gardening conundrums and dispensing invaluable advice in the picturesque setting of the Botanic Garden.

William Zappa performs from his ABC-radio-commissioned, one-man version of the Iliad.
Free, all welcome. No booking required.

This performance concludes day-one of the APGRD’s 16th annual joint Postgraduate Symposium (but you do not have to attend the symposium in order to attend the evening performance).

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

Shakespeare lived in one of the most unhealthy times and places in history. Disease was rife and hygiene poor, physicians could only be trained abroad, and there was no such thing as a public medical lecture. Most of Shakespeare’s own insights into science were learnt through friends who would tell (or show!) him their discoveries.

This event will bring together professional actors from Creation Theatre with medical historian Leah Astbury and modern day researcher Martijn van de Bunt to explore some of the medical references in Shakespeare’s plays and how they relate to contemporary science. From epilepsy to astrology, malaria to anaesthesia, compare the science of 400 years ago to the cutting edge research we have today and discover what has changed and what has stayed the same.

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!

Photographer Akio Kushida will share her photographs and experiences of capturing the backstage view of kabuki and other forms of Japanese theatre. Her photographs are currently on display in the Museum’s Long Gallery exhibition ‘Kabuki – Behind the Scenes’.

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.”

Please join us at 7pm on Thursday of 7th Week (November 24th) for a presentation by Daniel Castro Garcia and Thomas Saxby on their recent publication ‘Foreigner: Migration into Europe 2015–2016’.

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“The photographs are a protest against those who so
readily attack refugees and migrants entering Europe
without taking into consideration the dangers faced
during the journey.” (Foreigner: Migration into Europe 2015–16 by John Radcliffe Studio www.johnradcliffestudio.com)

For more information please read the press release below:

‘Foreigner: Migration into Europe 2015–2016’, is a photography book that documents the lives of people at various stages of their migration to Europe. The book is divided into three sections, focusing on migration to Italy from North Africa, migration to Greece and through the Balkans from the middle east, and the migrant camp in Calais known as ‘The Jungle’. Alongside the photography, written texts serve both as a context, and a means to share the stories of the people we met during the project.
The book was created in response to the imagery used in
the media to discuss the issue of migration, which we felt was
sensationalist, alarmist and was not giving people the time and
consideration they deserved. We wanted to approach the subject from a calmer perspective, using medium format portrait photography as a means of meeting the people at the centre of the crisis face to face – and of learning something about their lives.

John Radcliffe Studio is the creative partnership of Thomas Saxby and Daniel Castro Garcia. We specialise in photography, film and graphic design and have spent the last year documenting the refugee and migrant crisis in Europe.

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The Moser Theatre is fully accessible, with access to gender netural toilets, and the event will be **FREE** to attend. Oxford for Dunkirk will be collecting donations before and after the event in aid of La Liniere Refugee Camp, Dunkirk, France: please see our page for more details! (www.facebook.com/oxfordfordunkirk)

Ruth Webb (Charles-de-Gaulle Lille III): “Bodies and texts: Attitudes towards tragedy from the Second Sophistic to Late Antiquity”. Free, all welcome, no booking required.

Jenny Josephs & Why eating insects might soon become the new normal

By 2050 the global population will reach 9 billion and this will put ever increasing pressure on food and environmental resources. It will be a challenge to ensure global food security without further damaging the environment with intensified farming practices.

One UN backed solution is to focus on alternative sources of protein, such as insects for food and animal feed. About 2 billion of us already include insects in our diets, though it is still a growing trend in the west.

Insects are described as having a variety of different flavours, from mushroomy to pistachio or pork crackling. They are comparable to beef in protein and contain beneficial nutrients like iron and calcium. Their environmental impact is also minimal, requiring far less water and feed than cattle, and releasing fewer emissions.

During this talk, Jenny will explain how insects might replace some of the meat in our diets and also give some tips on how to cook them. You will be invited to sample some tasty bug snacks after the talk!

Bio: After completing a PhD in Visual Cognition at the University of Southampton, Jenny changed course and started The Bug Shack – a business promoting and selling edible insects. Jenny is a regular speaker at Skeptics events and science festivals and she recently returned from a trip to research attitudes towards eating and farming insects in Thailand and Laos.

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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/8101/Why-eating-insects-might-soon-become-the-new-normal

Join the Facebook event and invite your friends: https://www.facebook.com/events/1317127301666085/

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

Sean O’Brien, Weidenfeld Visiting Professor in Comparative European Literature, on ‘For dreams are licensed as they never were’. What becomes of the history poem?

Other lectures in this series:

Tuesday 14 February – Displacement: Irish poetry and poets of Irish descent in Britain.

Tuesday 21 February – ‘I only am escaped alone to tell thee’ or ‘The Faster We Go the Rounder We Get’

Tuesday 28 February – In Conversation with Patrick McGuinness

The lectures take place at 5.30pm in the Mary Ogilvie Lecture Theatre at St Anne’s College. The first lecture will be followed by a drinks reception. All welcome, no need to book.

Sean O’Brien is a poet, novelist, playwright, critic, broadcaster, anthologist and editor. He is Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University in the UK and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His first six poetry collections gained awards, most recently The Drowned Book (2007), which won both the Forward and T S Eliot Prizes and was republished in 2015 as a Picador Classic.

His version of Dante’s Inferno was published in 2006, and the bilingual poetry anthology, The Third Shore, published simultaneously in the UK and China in 2013, includes translations he produced during ground breaking poet-to-poet workshops in China that year. In 2015, his versions of the poems of Cape Verde Portuguese poet Corsino Fortes were published in the USA.

O’Brien’s own Collected Poems was published in 2012. His eighth and most recent poetry collection, The Beautiful Librarians (2015), shared the Roehampton Poetry Prize and was shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize.

In 2016 his publications have included his second novel, Once Again Assembled Here, a chapbook of poetry and photographs, Hammersmith, and a graphic novel collaboration, The Railwayman. A second collection of short stories, Quartier Perdu, will be published in 2017.

He is currently working on a new collection of poetry and a book-length poem.

Director and adaptor, Wayne Jordan will be in conversation with Fiona Macintosh, discussing his acclaimed version of Sophocles’ ‘Oedipus’ at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in 2015. At 2.15pm on Monday 27 Feb. 2017.

Followed by Q&A and refreshments.
Free, all welcome, no booking required.

An APGRD Public Lecture, in the Ioannou Centre at 66 St Giles’, Oxford, OX1 3LU.

Lord Browne of Madingley is presently Chairman of L1 Energy, the Chairman of Trustees of both the Tate and the QEII Prize for Engineering, and Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University.

A quirky theatrical evening of drama, discussion and disease.
Killer germs, superbugs, pestilent plagues and global pandemics have fascinated writers, musicians and thinkers for centuries. As diseases spread through a population, likewise myths and ideas travel virally through film, literature, theatre and social media.
Join a cast of actors, scientists and literary researchers for an inventive illustration of
infectious extracts from plays and music, past and present.

Sally Shuttleworth is Professor of English Literature looking at the inter-relations between
literature and science, including the project Diseases of Modern Life: Nineteenth-Century
Perspectives.
Kirsten Shepherd-Barr is Professor of English and Theatre Studies, interested in the relationship between modernism, science and theatrical performance.
John Terry is Artistic Director of Chipping Norton Theatre known for ambitious and adventurous theatre work, usually script based but with a strong visual and physical tilt.

Isabelle Torrance (Associate Professor at Aarhus University) delivers an APGRD Public Lecture on Tom Paulin’s adaptation of Aeschylus’s Prometheus. Free, all welcome. No booking required.

This lecture is at the conclusion of day one of the annual APGRD/RHUL postgraduate symposium on the theory and performance of ancient drama. Attendance at the symposium is not necessary – but you are quite welcome to join us: http://www.apgrd.ox.ac.uk/events/2017/02/postgraduate-symposium-2017

Join us for the first in Blackwell’s free summer series of lunchtime events, where we will be joined by Greg Garrett author of ‘Living with the Living Dead’.
The zombie apocalypse is one of the most prominent narratives of the post 9/11 West, represented by popular movies, TV shows, games, apps, activities, and material culture. Greg explores why stories about the living dead serve a variety of functions for consumers and explains how representations of Death and the walking dead have appeared in other times of great stress and danger, including the Middle Ages and World War One.
Greg Garrett blogs on books, culture, religion, politics, travel, and food for The Huffington Post. He is the author or co-author of twenty books and one of America’s leading authorities on religion and culture.

We are delighted to be welcoming Sir Tom Stoppard to St Catz to deliver his inaugural lecture as the 26th holder of the Cameron Mackintosh Visiting Professorship in Contemporary Theatre.

A lecture-performance by APGRD Artists in Residence, Paul O’Mahony and Out of Chaos theatre company, on the development of their new version of the ‘Aeneid’, entitled ‘Crossing the Sea’. Free, all welcome, no booking required.

What does it mean to be a feminist? Who can be a feminist? And is there a right and wrong way of doing it?

Join us on a unique journey through feminist history, adding your voice as we discuss key moments in literature, art, politics, music, sport, and science to develop our understanding of feminism.

You’ll discover knowledge you didn’t realise you had as we join together the pieces of feminist history and women’s achievements in this fun, interactive workshop.

We will identify different stages and criticisms of feminism and consider intersections with race, LGBTIQ, age, and disability politics. We look for silences and unacknowledged voices, and consider the privileges and biases in our own perspectives.

A juggling demonstration with hilarious explanations of the mathematical details of the practice.

Juggling has fascinated people for centuries. Seemingly oblivious to gravity, the skilled practitioner will keep several objects in the air at one time, and weave complex patterns that seem to defy analysis.

In this talk the speaker demonstrates a selection of the patterns and skills of juggling while at the same time developing a simple method of describing and annotating a class of juggling patterns. By using elementary mathematics these patterns can be classified, leading to a simple way to describe those patterns that are known already, and a technique for discovering new ones.

Those with some mathematical background will find plenty to keep them occupied, and those less experienced can enjoy the juggling as well as the exploration and exposition of this ancient skill.

Free for OUSS members; £2 for non-members.
Membership can be bought on the door: £10 for a year or £20 for life. Includes membership of Cambridge University Scientific Society.
Refreshments will be served afterwards.
Contact oxforduniscisoc [at] gmail [dot] com with queries.
See you there!

A lost play, remixed…

A sharing of ‘Fragments’, a new play-in-development inspired by fragments of Euripides ‘lost’ play Cresphontes, followed by a post-show panel discussion to discuss tragic fragments, ideas of fragmentation in perception and memory, and the making of the show. With co-writers Laura Swift and Russell Bender, and members of the creative team.

This play is currently in development and we warmly welcome audience feedback.

*This event complements an earlier event at 5pm that evening hosted by Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama with poet and translator Josephine Balmer. For details of that event please visit: http://www.apgrd.ox.ac.uk/events/2017/08/josephine-balmer-a-reading

Andy will take you on a journey from the creation of ghetto’s to the rise of Hip-Hop as a critique against social and racial injustice. He will discuss the empowerment that has emerged through this form of art the consequences of its commercialisation. His talk will also question ‘what makes something a piece of art?’ and ‘how can creative wealth arise from financial poverty?’

Andy Ninvalle is a versatile artist, entrepreneur and renowned educator. In addition to leading the Dutch dance company Massive Movement. He has recently collaborated with Curtis Richardson, songwriter for Jeniffer Lopez and Rihanna and wrote and produced for the latest album of Polish Jazz Legend Michał Urbaniak. As a rapper and beatboxer, he breaks down barriers between different art forms through his collaborations with Earth Wind and Fire, the Polish National Philharmonic Orchestra and Jazz musician Candy Dulfer.

Growing up on the streets of Guyana, hip hop was Andy’s first language for self-expression. He is passionate about sharing his love for art, as well as advancing the education of black history and culture. He is a frequent speaker at high-schools throughout the Netherlands. He has given guest lectures and workshops at Penn State University and University of Troyes.

www.andyninvalle.com

The contemporary market for the consumption of real lives has led to an increasing demand for performers to play or impersonate real people. In this presentation, Professor Mary Luckhurst will explore the ethical issues inherent in the staging of real lives. Mary Luckhurst is Professor of Artistic Research and Creative Practice at the University of Melbourne. She is a theatre director, writer, theatre historian and a pioneer of practice as research. She is a world expert on dramaturgy and on analysing and articulating the applied processes writing, acting and directing in theatre-making. She is a specialist in modern drama and her many books include Dramaturgy: A Revolution in Theatre; On Acting; On Directing; Theatre and Celebrity, and Playing for Real, as well as two Blackwells Companions on British and Irish Theatre.

Ever felt like there was something you really wanted to say but you just weren’t sure how? We’re exploring the why and how of women’s speech and writing with the help of some amazing women writers and gender experts.

This is our fabulous launch for a feminist writing course to run in Oxford in early 2018.

The event will include presentations from rising-star feminist writers sharing their work and discussing what it means to express their gender in their writing.

There will be a chance to share your ideas about what feminist poetry means to you, how gender is expressed through poetry and language, what it means to write as your gender, and some of the challenges of writing women’s experiences, platforming a variety of voices in conversation.

We also invite presentations from YOU of your own work and/or that of your feminist heroes.

Kids and people of all genders welcome.

East Oxford Community Centre
Doors open 7.30pm (the bar will be open)

CARU | Arts re Search Annual Conference 2017

“What does it mean to research art / to research through art?”

CARU brings together artists and researchers for yet another day of cross-disciplinary exploration into arts research! The event will consist of an exciting mixture of talks and performances from a variety of creative and academic disciplines, including Fine Art, Live Art, Social Practice, Art History, Anthropology, Education, Science and Technology, to question and debate various areas of arts research, such as themes, material/form, documentation and practice methodology.

Keynote talk: ‘Resonances and Discords’
Speaker: Prof. Kerstin Mey
PVC and Dean, Westminster School of Media, Arts and Design, University of Westminster
“The presentation will explore research in art at the interface to other epistemological systems and approaches. Drawing on case studies, it will explore key strategies and tactical manoeuvres of knowledge making in order to explore the hermeneutics of practice led inquiry in the space of art.”

Presentations include:

“The artist in the boardroom: Action research within decision-making spaces”

“Exploring the Art space as fluid cultural site through the immediacy of the performance and its inherent collaborative ethos”

“Chapter 1 (draft): Using text in performance: a range of strategies”

“Memory and identity within Bosnia’s Mass Graves”

“Fermenting conversations”

“Arcade Interface Art Research”

“Making sounds happen is more important than careful listening (with cups)”

“Shadow:Other:myself / photographic research from 2010”

“Un-knowing unknowing in painting as research”

“Developing an artistic epistemology”

Register at: www.ars2017.eventbrite.co.uk

A Panel Discussion with Professor Ruth Harris, Shrimati Kajal Sheth and Professor Sir Richard Sorabji

This event marks the UK-India Year of Culture, which will be celebrated in the Oxford Town Hall on 24 January with the award-winning Indian play, Yugpurush: Mahatma’s Mahatma, on the relationship between Mahatma Gandhi and his mentor, Shrimad Rajchandra.

Sponsored by The Asian Studies Centre, St Antony’s College, The Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, and The Oxford India Society.