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.

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.

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.”

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’.

—————————————————–

“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.

—————————————————–

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)

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.

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.

—

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/

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/