How a Bolivian became a Feminist: A Personal History

Sonia Montaño is a Bolivian sociologist. She is currently active in Bolivia as a feminist researcher and activist and member of PIEB (Programa de Investigation Estrategica Bolivia). Between 1993 and 1995, she was Undersecretary of Gender Affairs at the Ministry of Human Development of Bolivia. Between 2000 and 2015 she was Chief of the Division for Gender Affairs at the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC, United Nations), providing leadership to regional conferences on women of Latin America and the Caribbean.

The history she will share is a particular mix of a biography within the influence of a socio-cultural context. Sonia was born in the fifties when Bolivia was initiating a revolutionary process that gave indigenous people, peasants and women the right to vote and acces to education. Raised in a discriminatory society and by a courageous mother and a liberal family she could very early see women wanting to do “different things”. She lived and participated in a country suffering of continuous authoritarian governments and dictatorships and numerous efforts to establish democracy. Her adolescence was influenced by the emerging of a strong workers movement fighting for their rights, the presence of Che Guevara that stimulated an early political participation that ended in 1972 when the Banzer dictatorship sent her to jail for a couple of months. This was followed by a long exile to the Netherlands and France where Sonia was able to study and meet women from all over the world which started her activism as a feminist.

How does the curriculum shape our society? Who decides what is important? How can it be improved? Our diverse panel of academics, activists and educators will dive into these and other questions related to the decolonisation of our curriculum.

Karma Nabulsi is Fellow in Politics at St Edmund Hall, lecturer and Director of Undergraduate Studies at the Department of Politics and International Relations (DPIR) and UCU’s Equality Officer at the University.
She has won OUSU’s Special Recognition Award and the Guardian’s ‘Inspiring Leader’ award for her active involvement in improvement to education, including the open-access online course learnpalestine.politics.ox.ac.uk and the reform of the university’s PREVENT policy.

Neha Shah chairs the Oxford SU Campaign for Racial Awareness and Equality (CRAE) and Preventing Prevent Oxford. She organised the “Decolonise Oxford Now” rally. Previously, Neha was the BME rep at St Peter’s college. As part of this role, she set up a scholarship for refugees. She also writes for the New Statesman.

Nomfundo Ramalekana is an MPhil student in law, focussing on affirmative action. She is an active member of the Rhodes Must Fall movement.

This seminar aims to address the difficulties met by disabled students and teachers in school and university and to hear more about what we can all do to ensure that those meeting such challenges enjoy the fullest possible access to education. The three speakers have direct personal experience of this issue and will share with the audience some of what has been done – and can still be done in future – to ensure that the education system allows disabled students the chance to thrive.

Speakers will include:

Dr Marie Tidball (Faculty of Criminology and Wadham College)
Luke Barbanneau (Teacher of Physics, Cherwell School)
Noah McNeill (Music Student and JCR Disability Representative, St Anne’s College)
All are welcome to attend.

HOW we fund impact as important as what we fund?

What’s new in INNOVATIVE FINANCING using technology to allow investors to match their risk, return and impact preferences with specific investments and portfolios.

Oxford Impact Investments, together with Oxford Futurists & Oxford Women in Consulting are proud to present our speaker who’s come all the way from Cape Town, South Africa:

Ms. Aunnie Patton Power
Founder, Intelligent Impact
Associate Fellow, Oxford University Bertha Centre for Social Innovation

Intelligent Impact was founded to explore how to harness Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning to help solve one of the intractable problems in the social impact / impact finance fields: how to access information that is reliable and actionable. Aunnie has advised on Innovative Finance projects including developing a South African Impact Investing National Advisory Board, a Green Investment Bank, Social Impact Bonds / Development Impact Bonds, a Green Outcomes Funds and others.

Venue @Christ Church College Lecture Room 2

The Oxford constituency of the Spanish Researchers in the United Kingdom (SRUK) is holding a discussion panel entitled “Women in science and the glass ceiling” where three invited speakers will give a short talk about the topic, followed by a discussion where the attendees can actively participate.

The invited experts will highlight how the world of science needs to become accessible for everyone, women and girls. The discussion will cover the earlier stages of education, where children become interested in science, to the later stages of the scientific career, where excellent science and innovation require the talents of both women and men. We will evaluate why women’s progress in research is slow and why there are too few female scientists occupying top positions in scientific decision-making, limiting the important potential of highly skilled human capital.

The event will take place on the 18th of November at the The Jam Factory (Hollybush Row, Oxford, OX1 1HU) and it will start at 10:30AM.

This is a free event and open to the public, but registration is needed via Eventbrite.

Professor Tim Shreeve will explore why different species of butterflies have alternative responses to environmental change.

Butterflies are important indicators of environmental change and their status in the UK and Europe is changing rapidly. Tim’s research encompasses thermoregulation, behaviour, wing colouration, microhabitat use and phylogenetics. This has led to new ways of understanding butterflies responses to land use and climate changes. Whilst this aids their conservation – the more that is learnt, the more unanswered questions emerge.

Tim will also address intriguing questions about the identity of the species populations we are trying to conserve. He will draw on current work identifying separate ‘evolutionary units’ using DNA barcoding – revealing that the identification and preservation of biodiversity is a complex issue that cannot be dealt with by treating species as single units.

Women in Africa are congregated in poorly paid and precarious work (ILO, 2016) and have very high rates of school dropout, mortality and childhood morbidity. This is crucially linked to their role in childbirth and child-care. Women and girls still perform the bulk of unpaid domestic and care work, severely limiting their access to work with fair working conditions. Empowering women and achieving decent work is a vital element in developing a dynamic economy that includes the full political and social citizenship of African women, while supporting their care-giving roles.

This lecture focuses on young women (aged 15-24), who are at the cusp of reproduction and production. Drawing on the rich data sets collected by Young Lives, Professor Jo Boyden, Director of Young Lives, & Professor Sandra Fredman, Director of the Oxford Human Rights Hub, examine transitions of adolescent girls and boys from education to labour markets and how their opportunities are shaped by other intersecting transitions (family formation, marriage and parenthood). On the basis of this evidence, they will consider the role of legal frameworks in obstructing or facilitating women’s access to decent working conditions, the social support for care-giving roles, and ways of interrupting intergenerational transmission of poverty.

Research has established that there are improved outcomes for children in OOHC who have continuing involvement and positive relationships with parents and family. This is the case no matter how long children stay in care. Positive relationships between parents, workers and carers is also linked to positive outcomes such as higher rates of restoration and improved child safety. However, little is known about parents’ experiences of child removal and the broader child protection and out of home care service system.
Parent perspectives are especially important as they are currently a relatively silent group in the policy discourse in Australia. Policy and legislative reform in child protection and out of home care is underway or has occurred in most Australian jurisdictions focused on permanency and stability and on improving the long term outcomes of children and young people. All Australian jurisdictions continue to see increasing numbers of children and young people being removed by child protection authorities. There is an important opportunity to learn from parent perspectives and to improve practice and children’s outcomes.
This presentation outlines qualitative research being undertaken in New South Wales, Australia by a collaboration of researchers from the University of Newcastle and a large NGO and OOHC provider, Life Without Barriers. The research used semi-structured interviews and focus groups to understand parents’ experiences of legal and social services during their child’s removal and placement. The findings of this research will contribute to conceptualising and describing family inclusive practice in OOHC. Practitioners in practice, policy, management and research roles in child protection and OOHC systems can use the findings to reflect on ways to develop meaningful relationships with parents of children in OOHC. This may ultimately assist parents and children to maintain positive relationships within and beyond the OOHC context.

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

Driverless cars are hitting the road, powered by artificial intelligence; robots can climb stairs, open doors, win Jeopardy, analyse stocks, work in factories, find parking spaces and advise oncologists. In the past, automation was considered a threat to low-skilled labour. Now, many high-skilled functions, including interpreting medical images, doing legal research, and analysing data, are within the skill sets of machines. How can higher education prepare students for their professional lives when professions themselves are disappearing?

Join Northeastern University’s President Joseph Aoun in conversation as he discusses new ways to educate the next generation of university students to invent, to create, and to discover – to fill needs in society that even the most sophisticated artificial intelligence agent cannot.

There will be a drinks reception and book signing following the talk, all welcome

Professor Fabrizio Schifano studied at the University of Padua, qualifying in both psychiatry and clinical pharmacology. He spent several years as a consultant in the Italian health service before moving to the UK to lecture at St George’s University of London. In 2006 he joined the University of Hertfordshire as Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics – a role he combines with part-time work as an addiction psychiatrist for the Hertfordshire NHS Trust.

Given that, according to statistics, between 15% and 25% of Oxbridge students take or have at some point taken cognitive enhancers, it is becoming increasingly vital to have an informed conversation about their effects, risks and benefits. Professor Fabrizio Schifano, the Chair in Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics at the University of Hertfordshire, is an expert on drug abuse and novel psychoactive substances, having worked closely with the EU to address the issues of legal highs, cognitive enhancers and other grey area compounds often taken recreationally.

£2 on the door for non-members. Membership allows you to enter any of our regular talks for free, and is available on the door for purchase:
£10 a year or £20 for life. Also includes membership of the Cambridge University Scientific Society.

Revd. Kate Seagrave studied linguistics here at Oxford before becoming ordained, leading to her return to work with the postgrads at St Aldates and the Oxford Pastorate. In this research presentation we will get to hear more about an academic hero of hers: Jan Amos Comenius. More than an educational theorist, he was also a noteworthy theologian and hymn writer.

As anyone who has started to look into U.S. universities will know, a successful application requires strong knowledge of a host of different areas, from choosing the right college to picking the right extra-curricular activities. Charlie Cogan, formerly the Associate Director of Admissions at Northwestern University and Assistant Dean of Admissions at Carleton College, will share invaluable insights into what makes a successful application and what you can do to maximise your chances of success.

The universe exhibits a strong tendency to create – the universe itself arose out of nothing; galaxies, stars, and planets formed out of the primordial plasma; life began and evolved; human beings acquired the faculty of language and created complex societies. The universe can also destroy – stars collapse to form black holes; ecosystems collapse when stressed or deprived; companies and ventures fail; organisms die.

This talk presents a common mechanism for creation and destruction in life, the economy, and the universe, based on the concept of information. There is a natural tendency for information to be created and, once created, to evolve into more complex forms. By the same mechanism, however, there is an equally natural tendency for these complex forms to degrade, malfunction, and collapse. Implications for economics, ecology, and cosmology will be discussed by Professor Seth Lloyd, Oxford Martin Visiting Fellow and Nam P. Suh Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Professor of Physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

In conjunction with Oxford International Women’s Festival , Oxford Community-led Housing* research project and Transition by Design is organising a session on “Taking Control of our Housing: Women Leading the Charge”, to celebrate the efforts of a number of women pioneering community-led housing in various forms in Oxfordshire. In line with the festival’s broader theme of “Winning the Vote: Women’s Suffrage 100 Years On”, the session aims to raise awareness around community-led housing and an opportunity to gain fresh interest and broaden the movement.

Join us in the much needed discussion to highlight that affordable, safe and secure housing is a basic human right. The session will champion the idea that women can and are taking action to tackle the housing crisis in Oxford, and to generate discussion that homes and housing shape our identity as women and as human beings. We’re also very keen to find out more about the challenges you’re facing with the housing market. And to top it up, let’s celebrate the efforts of women in community-led housing.

Event format:

Interactive panel discussion

Panel speakers from Kindling Housing Coop, Edge Housing, Dragonfly Housing Coop, Oxford Fairer Housing Network, Oxford Housing Crisis Group and many more!

For more info or queries, please contact katie@transitionbydesign.org

*Oxford Community-Led Housing research project is a new partnership project by Oxford Community Foundation, Community First Oxfordshire and Oxford Community Land Trust. We have been commissioned by Oxford City Council to conduct a research project on how community-led housing could be delivered sustainably in Oxford. Community Led Housing (CLH) is about local people playing a leading and lasting role in solving local housing problems, creating genuinely affordable homes and strong communities in ways that are difficult to achieve through mainstream housing.

In conjunction with the 16th Annual Oxford Human Rights Festival, Oxford Community-led Housing* research project is organising a session on “Identity and [Affordable] Housing”, with a focus on self-build housing. The session will screen the BBC documentary ‘The House that Mum and Dad Built’ (1982), that captures the stories of families involved in the first Walter Segal self-build project, Segal Close. The project, a collaboration between local authority, self-builders and local community, highlights a strong theme that promotes self-empowerment through building one’s own home, and alleviating poverty through the process.

The film screening will be followed by a diverse and interactive panel discussion session with experienced speakers including Professor Nabeel Hamdi, one of the pioneers in participatory planning and author of “Small Change”, Lesley Dewhurst, CEO of Restore Oxford and former Cheif Executive of Oxford Homeless Pathways, and others.

Join us in the much needed discussion to highlight that affordable, self and secure housing is a basic human right. The session will also highlight the role of community-led housing in alleviating poverty, promoting self-empowerment, and hopefully together, we can gain a deeper understanding of how alternative options to Oxford’s unaffordable rents, poor housing conditions and lack of control in one’s living condition can make significant changes.

*Oxford Community-Led Housing research project is a new partnership project by Oxford Community Foundation, Community First Oxfordshire and Oxford Community Land Trust. We have been commissioned by Oxford City Council to conduct a research project on how community-led housing could be delivered sustainably in Oxford. Community Led Housing (CLH) is about local people playing a leading and lasting role in solving local housing problems, creating genuinely affordable homes and strong communities in ways that are difficult to achieve through mainstream housing.​​​​

Professor Susan Brooks will take you on a personal journey beginning in breast cancer research and leading to a passionate commitment to supporting and developing the next generation of researchers.
Susan discovered that a chemical from the edible snail was able to distinguish between cancers that are able to spread from their original site to other parts of the body, and those that cannot. It recognises altered sugar chains on cancer cells that are involved in them being able to crawl through tissues and enter the blood stream and allows them to stick to the lining of blood vessels at distant sites.

Alan Morrison and Rupert Younger will lead a discussion with Carlo Messina on the future of the financial services industry and the role of major financial institutions in society today.

The discussion will draw out areas where financial innovation is strongest, and the opportunities for young entrepreneurs to create new products and business models that will serve the needs of commercial and private customers alike.

Products and services aimed at the growing third sector will also be discussed, as will a more wide ranging approach to the responsibilities and obligations of businesses in society today.

Carlo Messina is the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Intesa Sanpaolo since 29 September 2013.

He is currently a member of the Executive Committee of ABI (Italian Banking Association) and has been a member of the Bocconi University Board since November 2014. On 1 June 2017, Carlo Messina was knighted for Services to Industry “Cavaliere del Lavoro” by the President of the Italian Republic, Sergio Mattarella.

In this presentation, Professor Howard provides an overview of a 4-year global ethnography of the lessons students are taught through global citizenship education about their place in the world, their relationships with others, and who they are at secondary schools in six countries: Australia, Chile, Denmark, Ghana, Jordan, and Taiwan. Specifically, this talk focuses on the learning process of the student researchers and the 4 R’s (relationship, relevance, reflection, and responsibility) of the framework that shaped and guided that process. At the conclusion, Pat Dickert, Professor Howard’s research assistant, identifies some of his learning from this process and from traveling to three of six schools involved in this study.

Adam Howard is Professor of Education and Director of the Education Program at Colby College (USA). His research and writing focus on social class issues in education with a particular focus on privilege and elite education. He is author of Learning Privilege: Lessons of Power and Identity in Affluent Schooling and Negotiating Privilege and Identity in Educational Contexts, and his co-edited collections include Educating Elites: Class Privilege and Educational Advantage (with Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández).

Possibilities and Limitations of Global Citizenship
Adam Howard, Director and Professor of Education, Colby College

*** All Are Welcome ***

Please RSVP here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/presentation-possibilities-and-limitations-of-global-citizenship-tickets-44381238479?aff=es2

Adam Howard is Professor of Education and Director of the Education Program at Colby College (USA). His research and writing focus on social class issues in education with a particular focus on privilege and elite education. He is author of Learning Privilege: Lessons of Power and Identity in Affluent Schooling and Negotiating Privilege and Identity in Educational Contexts, and his co-edited collections include Educating Elites: Class Privilege and Educational Advantage(with Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández).

In this presentation, Professor Howard provides an overview of a 4-year global ethnography of the lessons students are taught through global citizenship education about their place in the world, their relationships with others, and who they are at secondary schools in six countries: Australia, Chile, Denmark, Ghana, Jordan, and Taiwan. Specifically, this talk focuses on the learning process of the student researchers and the 4 R’s (relationship, relevance, reflection, and responsibility) of the framework that shaped and guided that process. At the conclusion, Pat Dickert, Professor Howard’s research assistant, identifies some of his learning from this process and from traveling to three of six schools involved in this study.

Alex Farrow: Philosophy, Schools and British Values

Alex Farrow is a philosophy teacher and stand-up comedian who will be exploring what he learnt from teaching philosophy in a 6th form college to Muslim and Christian teenagers in East London

What place do philosophy and scepticism have in the school classroom?

What is the “British values agenda” and are British values under attack?

What is the role of the teacher in creating, challenging and shaping the ethical and social opinions of young people?

Alex has been invited to perform stand-up comedy about philosophy everywhere from Mervyn Stutter’s pick of the Edinburgh Fringe, the National Museum of Scotland, music festivals, comedy clubs around the UK and the Oxford University Teaching Awards. He was also Farmington Fellow at Harris Manchester College, Oxford in 2015 researching Philosophy in Schools

He is the host of Jericho Comedy Oxford. Jericho Comedy raised £8,700 for the mental health charity Oxfordshire Mind last year for more information about them visit www.tighfive.org/jerichocomedy/

“witty, positive and talented” – DailyInfo Oxford “An engaging and entertaining pairing of learning and good humour!” – **** The Latest, Brighton

Join the Facebook event and invite your friends: https://www.facebook.com/events/441710752915635/

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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. If you have difficulty standing, send us a message and we’ll make sure we reserve a chair for you.

Come along and say hello! All welcome.
http://oxford.skepticsinthepub.org/Event.aspx/16578/Philosophy-Schools-and-British-Values

In celebration of the Oxford Festival of Nature, Blackwell’s Broad Street will be hosting a day of free Nature talks and activities.

At 1pm we will be joined by Jeremy Mynott who will be discussing his book ‘Birds in the Ancient World’. Then at 3pm Leif Bersweden will be exploring his search for 52 species of Orchid in ‘The Orchid Hunter’.

In the Children’s Department there will be nature themed storytime and craft activities.

Jeremy Mynott – ‘Birds in the Ancient World’

‘Birds in the Ancient World’ offers a fresh account of Ancient Greek and Roman civilisation illustrated through the relationship between humankind and birds.
It explores the numerous and varied roles birds played in daily life: as portents of weather, markers of time, their use in medicine, hunting, and farming, and also as messengers of the gods.

We learn how birds were perceived – through quotations from well over a hundred classical Greek and Roman authors, all of them translated freshly into English, through nearly 100 illustrations from ancient wall-paintings, pottery and mosaics, and through selections from early scientific writings, and many anecdotes and descriptions from works of history, geography and travel.

Jeremy will be discussing this rich and fascinating material, using birds as a prism through which to explore both the similarities and the often surprising differences between ancient conceptions of the natural world and our own. His book is an original contribution to the flourishing interest in the cultural history of birds and to our understanding of the ancient cultures in which birds played such a prominent part.

Jeremy Mynott is the author of ‘Birdscapes: Birds in Our Imagination and Experience’ (2009), a book exploring the variety of human responses to birds, described by reviewers as ‘the finest book ever written about why we watch birds’ (Guardian) and ‘a wonderful rumination on birds and birders through space and time for anyone interested in our relationship with nature’ (THES). He has also published an edition and translation of Thucydides in the series, ‘Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought’ and, more recently, ‘Knowing your Place’, an account of the wildlife in a tiny Suffolk hamlet. He has broadcast on radio and television, is a regular reviewer for the TLS and wildlife magazines, a founder member of ‘New Networks for Nature’, and is the former Chief Executive of Cambridge University Press and an Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge.

This talk is free to attend, please register your interest in advance. For all enquiries please email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk or call 01865 333623.

As part of Think Human Festival, this one-off pop-up event is a unique opportunity for visitors of all ages to interact with leading academics from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Oxford Brookes University. The academics will act as ‘human books’ from a range of perspectives; historic, literary, political, legal and educational for 15 minutes per ‘book loan’ against the back drop of revolution. ‘RESIST! REMAIN!’ will provide the chance to engage with and access humanities and social science disciplines in a fun, original and inspiring way, and aims to create a lasting impression of how these subjects can help to understand what it is to be human.

Please note that this event is free, open to all ages and there is no need to book ahead. Please come to Bonn Square and start a interesting conversation around revolution!

The mental health and wellbeing of children and young people is increasingly recognised as a national priority, as issues related to behavioural and emotional disorders within society have escalated over recent years. Particular focus has been on how the education system, schools and colleges could better support mental health and wellbeing, including the suggestion that every school and college should have a designated lead in mental health by 2025*.

This raises important questions: How can educational settings best support the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people? How can professionals be trained to do this? How can they work effectively with other professionals? How can they work with families and communities and what are the challenges? How can they foster emotional resilience for all children and young people in their settings?

As part of Think Human Festival a panel of distinguished experts from the education and allied professional sectors will consider and debate the opportunities for, and the challenges to, effective practice to strengthen emotional resilience and support positive mental health and wellbeing amongst our children and young people.

*gov.uk 2017: Transforming children and young people’s mental health provision: a green paper

Saturday drop In session for everyone.
Think art is just about looking? Think again! Join this session to find out how hearing, taste, smell and touch are activated in our encounters with painting and sculpture.

Professor Mary Wild will bring a welcome dose of evidence-based argument to the debate on the future of education.

Education develops the potential and talent of individuals to thrive and succeed in future economic and societal contexts that are often fast-changing and uncertain. Yet in many respects education policy and popular opinion suggest that the answer to tomorrow’s opportunities and challenges should be rooted in past structures and practices. Of course history can be a good guide to the future – but only where the perception of that history is well-informed.

So, was there ever a “golden age” of education – and even if there was, should it be the blueprint for the future? Mary will explore the evidence and lay out her conclusions.

In celebration of the Oxford Festival of Nature, Blackwell’s Broad Street will be hosting a day of free Nature talks and activities.

At 1pm we will be joined by Jeremy Mynott who will be discussing his book ‘Birds in the Ancient World’. Then at 3pm Leif Bersweden will be exploring his search for 52 species of Orchid in ‘The Orchid Hunter’.

In the Children’s Department there will be nature themed storytime and craft activities.

Leif Bersweden – ‘The Orchid Hunter’

In the summer after leaving school, a young botanist sets out to fulfil a childhood dream –­ to find every species of orchid native to the British Isles.

Battling the vagaries of the British climate in his clapped-out car, Leif Bersweden had just a few months to do what no one has ever done before: to complete this quest within one growing season.

‘The Orchid Hunter’ is a study of the 52 native species, it is a fantastic gateway into the compendious world of orchids, and one that will open your eyes to the rare hidden delights to be found on the doorstep. Join as as Leif discusses his fascinating journey.

Leif Bersweden graduated with a degree in Biology from Oxford and is currently a PhD student at Kew Gardens. He has loved orchids longer than he can remember. He is also the author of Winter Trees: A Photographic Guide to Common Trees and Shrubs, published by the Field Studies Council in 2013.

This talk is free to attend, please register your interest in attending. For all enquiries please email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk or call 01865 333623.

A newly awarded programme grant by Kinder (Ferrero International) will facilitate research around the educational content of Kinder’s Magic Kinder App – a fun and kid-friendly space that brings families together with a wide variety of entertainment and educational content.

The symposium programme sets a forward-looking agenda for children’s education and entertainment, underpinned by research evidence on vocabulary development and parental engagement with children’s digital, educational entertainment.

Professor Arthur Graessor (Professor of Psychology and Intelligent systems, University of Memphis) will deliver a keynote address on ‘Conversational agents will guide learning for all ages’; an introduction to the Kinder-Oxford research programme will be given by Professor Victoria Murphy (Deputy Director, Department of Education). The planned research into parental engagement and children’s vocabulary development, using the Magic Kinder App, will be presented by departmental researchers, Fiona Jelley and Sophie Turnbull.

The event will conclude with networking over wine and nibbles.

The Re-Imagining Cole symposium will examine the background, context and depictions of previously unseen caricatures of Christian Frederick Cole, Oxford University’s first Black African Scholar 1873, and the first Black African to practise Law in the English High Court, 1884. The symposium will explore why Cole and his historic achievements were only portrayed in the form of parodies.

It will also explore Victorian portraits c. 1873 – 1890, examining the broader issues of race and representation in portrait art. Who were the ‘notable’ figures of the day that had portraits commissioned and painted? Did any comparable Black ‘notable’ figures have their portraits painted? Did Cole have a picture commissioned and painted?

Finally, the symposium will pose the following questions: should Cole’s image be re-imagined, if so, why? What should a re-imagined image tell an audience, who decides?
If an image of Cole was to be reimagined, what medium would be the most appropriate
and fitting to communicate Cole’s significant achievements?

With a panel of art historians, artists and academics including:
Dr Temi Odumosu, Malmo University, Africans in English Caricature, 1769-1819: Black Jokes, White Humour.
Dr Robin Darwall-Smith, University College, University of Oxford A History of University College, Oxford.
Robert Taylor, Photographer, Portraits of Achievement
Colin Harris, The Shrimpton Collection, Bodleian Libraries
Pamela Roberts, The Untold Stories of Oxford University’s Black Scholars

As part of the Surgical Grand Rounds lecture series hosted by the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences, Professor Giles Toogood (Professor of Hepatobiliary Surgery at Leeds University) will talk about combining sport and surgery, and the advances in hepatobiliary surgery.