Think Human Festival is proud to host this panel on Writing Working-Class Fiction.
Kerry Hudson, Kit de Waal and Alex Wheatle are celebrated contemporary British novelists who have all written working-class experience into their fiction. At this event, the novelists are hosted by writer and critic Boyd Tonkin.

They will read from their work, and then discuss the problems they have encountered in being working-class writers, the creative responses they have formulated in their writing of working-class experience, and the wider issues of publishing and literary culture in relation to working-class writing and authorship. The Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Oxford Brookes has a rich tradition of research into working-class life and culture, across literature, history and the social sciences.

JOHN KAY, CBE, FBA, Fellow of St John’s College, is a former Financial Times columnist andauthor of several books including ‘Other People’s Money’.

John Kay explains why he fell in love with economics, what big banks and taxi drivers have in common, where modern finance has gone wrong, why economists should admit there are somethings you cannot predict, and previews the new book he is working on with his old colleague Mervyn King.

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS SEMINAR HAS BEEN POSTPONED DUE TO ILLNESS

The Oxford e-Research Centre welcomes Dr. Jeremy Kepner, MIT Lincoln Laboratory Fellow and MIT Lincoln Laboratory Supercomputing Center Founder. He will present a seminar entitled ‘The Convergence of Machine Learning, Big Data, and Supercomputing’.

In this age of so-called ‘Fake News’, a concept promoted in Tweets from the White House, seized on by conspiracy theories, and threatening to undermine the democratic process, the trustworthiness of our journalists has never before been so important.

Alessandra Galloni is Reuters Global News Editor, based in London, appointed in January 2016. She joined Reuters in September 2013 as Editor of the Southern Europe bureau, after spending 13 years at The Wall Street Journal in various positions as correspondent, economics and business writer and editor in New York, London, Paris and Rome. She has won several awards, including an Overseas Press Club Award in the US and a UK Business Journalist of the Year Award for her coverage of the Parmalat corporate scandal. She is co-author of From the End of the Earth to Rome, an e-book on Pope Francis. An Italian national, Ms Galloni is a graduate of Harvard University (1991-1995) and has a Masters degree from the London School of Economics (2002).

UN concern to restore trust in news was expressed through a joint declaration from the Office of the High Commission on Human Rights last year, co-authored by the Freedom of Expression rapporteurs of the OHCHR, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Organisation of American States, and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights. The report is on-line at http://www.ohchr.org/_layouts/15/WopiFrame.aspx?sourcedoc=/Documents/Issues/Expression/JointDeclaration3March2017.doc&action=default&DefaultItemOpen=1

Ms Galloni’s talk is part of the series of lunchtime discussions held every term by the Oxford branch of the United Nations Association UK. This is a free event and members of the public are welcome to attend. Refreshments are available from 12.30pm.

The photo of Ms Galloni was taken by Mikhail Metzel for GettyImages.

Multi-disciplinary seminar series on Reproducibility and Open Research practices. All very welcome!

April 24: Dr Laura Nelson, Northwestern University

“Data Science with Meaning: Reproducibility and Replicability in the Interpretive Social Sciences”

While reproducibility best-practices and tools developed in the natural sciences can be directly applied to many branches of the social sciences, these tools are often ill-suited for the specific type of research done in the interpretive social sciences. The interpretive social sciences acknowledge the importance of interpretation and meaning in behavior and the construction of the social world, but in line with science more generally, the goal is to understand this meaning in a way that is reproducible and intersubjectively valid. In this talk I will discuss how computational methods enable us to move the interpretive social sciences closer to fully transparent, reproducible, and open methods. Specifically, I will discuss a three-step methodological framework I call computational grounded theory. This approach combines the substantive knowledge and hermeneutic skills of trained researchers with the processing power and pattern recognition of computers, to produce a more methodologically rigorous, open, reproducible, but interpretive approach to the social sciences. I will demonstrate this framework via two empirical examples, historical feminist movements and the contemporary environmental movement, using the reproducibility tool Binder.

Liberal Democrat candidates for the St. Margaret’s and North wards on 3 May 2018

Anna Espínola Lynn, MSt in History of Art and Visual Culture (Wadham College, Oxford), will be speaking on the transmission of style in fifteenth-century Catalan manuscript production.

All welcome! Feel free to bring your lunch. The talk will last about half an hour, to allow time for questions and discussion afterwards, and a closer look at the Balliol manuscript discussed.

Unlocking Archives is an interdisciplinary graduate seminar series of illustrated lunchtime talks about current research in Balliol College’s historic collections: archives, manuscripts and early printed books, and the connections between them.

Talks take place at 1pm in Balliol’s Historic Collections Centre in St Cross Church, Holywell. St Cross is next door to Holywell Manor and across the road from the English & Law faculties on Manor Road; directions http://archives.balliol.ox.ac.uk/Services/visit.asp#f.

Reuters Institute seminars “The business and practice of journalism”
The following seminars will be given at 2pm on Wednesdays, normally in the E.P. Abraham Lecture Theatre, Green Templeton College.
Convenor: Meera Selva

The emergence of Islamic liberalism in Southeast Asia over the last two decades has been characterized by its highly uneven reception across and within national contexts. In Malaysia, liberalism is a thoroughly negative category in political and religious discourse. In part the mobilization of anti-liberal reaction is the product of two important trends in Malaysian politics: the proliferation and growing power of Malaysia’s Islamic bureaucracy and the increased public activism of a broad array of Islamic NGO’s. These two trends reinforce each other in generating the controversies over Islamic practice or religious diversity that have punctuated Malaysia politics over the last ten years. In spite of these recurring controversies, Malaysia maintains an international reputation among North Atlantic governments as a “moderate Muslim” nation. Prime Minister Najib Razak’s efforts to craft a state Islamic ideology of moderation (wasatiyyah) is viewed by the Malaysian state, however, precisely as a bulwark against the further spread of liberalism within domestic politics. This seminar will examine such ideological inversions at work in Malaysian politics located in the concepts of Islamic liberalism and moderation.

Adult stem cells are a rare population of undifferentiated cells found throughout our bodies which are able to divide infinitely and give rise to the different types of cells that maintain the body’s tissues and organs. Salvador Aznar’s laboratory is interested in studying how these adult stem cells maintain tissue homeostasis and why they fail to function properly during ageing and tumorigenesis.

Prof Aznar will present their latest data regarding the impact our diet has on the timing of stem cell function and its profound effects on stem cells ageing. He will also discuss their recent findings on the influence that the fatty acid content of our diet has on metastatic-initiating cells, as well as recent work indicating that our diet exerts striking epigenetic effects on metastatic stem cells which can be therapeutically targeted.

What if I like research but not teaching? What if I do not like any of them? What alternatives to academia do I have?

We would like to introduce the “SIU Career Sessions”, a termly round of talks focusing on alternative careers for PhD students and postdocs, which will definitely help you with these questions. Get ready to hear from experts and explore new career paths! If you are not sure what is next after your PhD or would just like to be aware of your options, these events are for you!

Our first session will focus on a promising field for PhD-level scientists: industry. In this event, attendees will have the opportunity to hear from high profile speakers from two pharmaceutical companies with different focuses: Novo Nordisk and Immunocore. The speakers will bring not only information about the attributes they seek in potential employees, but also the daily life in industry and opportunities for a successful and stable career in big pharmaceutical companies. We will also learn from their first-hand experience how they took the career transition path to industry.

Is industry for you? Come find out with us!
As always, this event is completely free and everyone is welcome.

Talk followed by questions and discussion

As part of Surgical Grand Rounds lecture series, Professor Peter Silburn from Queensland Brain Institute in Australia will present “Deep brain stimulation for human brain disorders: Expanding indications and the brain machine interface”.

This is a joint event between the Oxford Martin School and the Oxford Climate Research Network

Managing the risk to coastal populations, infrastructure, and ecosystems resulting from sea level rise presents unique and daunting challenges. Sea level rise lags behind global warming due to inertia in the ocean-ice system; likewise, the response of sea level to stabilisation of the climate will lag behind the temperature response, making emissions reduction policy relatively ineffective through midcentury in reducing the rate of rise. Consequently, anticipatory adaptive responses are the key to lowering risk in the near term. On a century scale or longer, emissions mitigation can substantially reduce risk but century-scale projections of sea level rise are deeply uncertain due to a lack of knowledge and expert disagreement about the future contribution of the Antarctic ice sheet. On the latter timescale, effective responses would include a mixture of hard protection such as surge barriers and sea walls, flexible measures such as enhancement of natural defences and buildings that can withstand episodic flooding, and permanent, managed withdrawal of populations from many areas.

However, inertia in the policy system arising from perverse incentives, short-term perspectives, and behavioural biases, exacerbated by scientific uncertainty, virtually guarantee a response to this threat which will be far below the optimum. In many countries, including wealthy ones, a large gap between adaptation capacity and implementation is already apparent, putting lives and property continually under threat from temporary flooding and eventually, permanent inundation. Professor Michael Oppenheimer’s, Albert G. Milbank Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs at Princeton University, talk will elucidate the increase in coastal hazard accompanying sea level rise to date, the rapid increase in the threat projected for the future, and means to overcome, at least partially, the dual problem of physical and policy inertia.

This talk will be followed by a drinks reception, all welcome.

Harriet Harman was elected MP for Peckham in 1982. Elected Deputy Leader of the Labour Party from 2007-2015, Shadow Deputy Prime Minister 2010-2015 and has twice served as Interim Labour Leader in 2010 and 2015. She has been in politics a prominent champion for women’s rights and as a minister in the Labour Government introduce the National Childcare Strategy and the Equality Act, changing the law on domestic violence and increasing female representation. She was the first woman Labour politician to answer Prime Minister’s Questions. In 2017 she became the longest serving woman MP.

A public lecture by Peter Wilson (University of Sydney). Free, all welcome, no booking required.

This talk draws on findings from applying novel empirical approaches to understanding climate change and its impacts in the past, present, and future. The talk will highlight the impact major ‘natural’ changes in global climate have had on the five largest mass extinctions over the last 500 million years, and will explain modelling of recent CO2 emissions and concentrations which confirm the impact of human activity, with a focus on UK CO2 emissions over the period 1860 – 2016. The role of major policy interventions which have reduced the UK’s per capita annual emissions below any level since 1860 when the UK was the ‘workshop of the world’ will be investigated.

Professor Sir David Hendry, INET Oxford and Climate Econometrics, will illustrate how to investigate the costs of ‘mis-forecasting’ extreme climate events by studying the economic impacts of inaccuracies in hurricane forecasts and will discuss empirical evidence on local climate impacts of emissions and what influences climate-change scepticism. Future climate is illustrated by projecting the impacts of 1.5°C versus 2°C on temperature and sea-level rise.

This talk will be followed by a drinks reception, all welcome.

Plastics (polymers) and other organic materials are typically thought of as insulating materials that surround conducting metals (e.g. copper) to protect us from shocks. However, through careful design, a class of so-called “pi-conjugated” organic compounds and polymers can be both semiconducting and conducting, and can be processed as flexible and in some cases stretchable thin films. In addition, these materials can be tuned to absorb and emit light across the visible spectrum. These pi-conjugated materials have been incorporated into devices such as organic light emitting diode (OLED) based displays common in cell phones (e.g. Samsung phones and the iPhone X) and now televisions (LG). OLEDs are now a multi-billion dollar market (> $10 billion expected in 2018), that is forecasted to grow rapidly over the next decade. OLEDs are now under active development for a variety of high efficiency light applications, with high-end lumenaires being marketed by a variety of companies. In addition, these materials have found use in organic solar cells, and also as components in a new class of highly efficient “perovskite” solar cells.

In this presentation, Professor Seth Marder, Visitor to Oxford Martin Senior Fellow, Professor Henry Snaith, will provide a brief introduction to how chemists develop these materials, introduce the basic working concepts of OLEDs and photovoltaics, show how organic compounds have been used in these technologies, and touch on both the strengths and weaknesses of organic materials for these various applications.

Carrie Gracie grew up mostly in North-East Scotland and set up a restaurant before taking a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford. She spent a year teaching in two Chinese universities and then built a small film business before joining the BBC in 1987 as a trainee producer.

She went back to China as the BBC’s Beijing reporter in the early 1990s and served as China correspondent and Beijing bureau chief until 1999 when she returned to the UK to focus on presenting. For several years she anchored the morning slot on the BBC News Channel and hosted the weekly BBC World Service programme, The Interview. In April 2014, she took up a newly created post as BBC China Editor and has since covered many news stories in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. She has also made documentaries about China for TV and radio, winning prizes including a Peabody and an Emmy.

In January 2018, she left her post as BBC China editor in protest at unequal pay. She published an open letter to BBC audiences on the subject and appeared before a parliamentary select committee. She has since returned to BBC HQ as a news presenter and continues to campaign for an equal, fair and transparent pay structure.

Professor Li Ruru: The Cultural Revolution and Me
Tuesday, May 1, 5-7PM Lecture Theatre, China Centre, St Hugh’s College, Oxford

Open and free of charge for all

Supported by: Oxford Chinese Studies Society

2016 witnessed the 50th anniversary of the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution. BBC Chinese invited Professor Li Ruru to write about her own life during that time. Having considered the invitation for a long time, Li finally wrote, from a point of view why she decided to teach a module at Leeds: ‘The Post-Cultural Revolution Literature.’ Based on the BBC article, the talk tells stories about her own experience and people’s lives around her. It also attempts to tease out what the Cultural Revolution meant to the young people at that time and what impact it has had on her generation, a large group of teenagers.

The English translation of the article is available at:
Why I teach ‘Post-Cultural Revolution Chinese Literature’ at a British university by Li Ruru, Translated by Thomas Markham

This event will be of interest to those of you who work on Chinese history, Chinese literature, politics, and education. Professor Li’s talk will last around 40 minutes and we will leave plenty of time for critical dialogues, Q & A and discussions.

About the speaker
Li Ruru is Professor of Chinese Theatre Studies in the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies, University of Leeds, UK. She has written extensively on Shakespeare performance in China (including a monograph Shashibiya: Staging Shakespeare in China (2003)) and on Chinese theatre (modern/traditional). Her recent work includes Staging China: New Theatres in the Twenty-First Century (ed. 2016), The Soul of Beijing Opera: Theatrical Creativity and Continuity in the Changing World (2010), Translucent Jade: Li Yuru on Stage and in Life ([in Chinese] 2nd edition 2015), and a photographic exhibition Cao Yu (1910-1996): Pioneer of Modern Chinese Drama (2011-16). Li runs traditional song-dance theatre workshops for both students and theatre professionals because she regards regular contact with the theatre as essential to her academic work.

https://www.facebook.com/events/367687450399248/?ti=icl

Reuters Institute seminars “The business and practice of journalism”
The following seminars will be given at 2pm on Wednesdays, normally in the E.P. Abraham Lecture Theatre, Green Templeton College.
Convenor: Meera Selva

The talk is part of seminar series, ‘India on the World Stage: International Relations of India Seminar Series’, organised by the Indian National Student Association (INSA), with support from the South Asian Studies Programme at the School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies, and from the Asian Studies Centre of St Antony’s College.

There is mounting evidence that the planet’s capacity to sustain a growing human population, expected to be over 8 billion by 2030, is declining. The degradation of the planet’s air, water and land, combined with significant loss in biodiversity, is also resulting in substantial health impacts, including the reduction of food security and nutrition, and the spread of disease. Will our planetary boundaries be surpassed if current trends continue?

In this talk, Professor Yadvinder Malhi, Co-Director, Oxford Martin TNC Climate Partnership, will discuss the metabolism of a human – dominated planet, while Kate Raworth, author of Doughnut Economics, will ask if it is possible – as she puts it – “to live well without trashing the planet”.

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

Kumar Iyer, visiting academic at Hertford College and partner with consultants Oliver Wyman, will present findings from a study examining the potential impacts of Brexit on business. The talks will be followed by a brief discussion. All are welcome: please pre-register using the Eventbrite link.
Please note that unfortunately there is no disabled access to the Baring Room.

Book launch followed by reception and performance by Worcester College Choir – all welcome!

Talk followed by questions and discussion

As part of the Surgical Grand Rounds lecture series, ENT Surgeon Dr Gerald Fain will discuss “Prospective assessment of an innovative and multidisciplinary treatment protocol for chronic tinnitus”.

Reuters Institute / Nuffield College Media & Politics seminars
The following seminars will be given at 5pm on Fridays, normally in the Butler Room, Nuffield College.
Convenors: Meera Selva, David Levy, Andrew Dilnot

Book Launch with Author & Translator: Yan Ge (顏歌)’s The Chilli Bean Paste Clan, translated by Nicky Harman

https://www.facebook.com/events/605485149803274/

2018/May/07 Monday 5-7PM Ho Tim Seminar Room, China Centre, St Hugh’s College, Oxford

Open and free of charge for all

Supported by: Oxford Chinese Studies Society

To welcome everyone back to Oxford in this Trinity Term, we have invited one of the most important writers of China’s post-1980 generation, Yan Ge, to share with us her experiences as a young writer in China and abroad. She will bring her seminal work, The Chilli Bean Paste Clan (《我們家》in Chinese, published in 2013), and discuss issues of family, language, morality, capitalism and more, with the novel’s English translator Nicky Harman. The Chilli Bean Paste Clan the English translation will be published by Balestier Press and available on the market from the 1st of May, 2018, adding a fresh voice in the growing field of literature in translation.

Synopsis of The Chilli Bean Paste Clan:

Set in a fictional town in West China, this is the story of the Duan-Xue family, owners of the lucrative chilli bean paste factory, and their formidable matriarch. As Gran’s eightieth birthday approaches, her middle-aged children get together to make preparations. Family secrets are revealed and long-time sibling rivalries flare up with renewed vigour. As Shengqiang struggles unsuccessfully to juggle the demands of his mistress and his wife, the biggest surprises of all come from Gran herself……

Professor David Der-wei Wang 王德威 of Harvard University has commented on Yan Ge and her work and hinted that she might signal a generational shift in the Chinese literary scene:
“She writes about her hometown. The stories in a small Sichuanese town are greatly done. She has her own worldviews, and frankly speaking, she is of a very fortunate generation. What she may have encountered as she grew up is not as tumultuous or adventurous as the writers that came before her, and therefore the factor of imagination has gradually come to matter more than experiences in reality.
她写她的故乡，四川一个小城的故事，写得很好。她有她的世界观，但坦白地讲，他们都是有幸的一代，在她成长的过程里面，她所遭遇的不如过去那辈作家有那么多的坎坷或者冒险性，所以，想象的成分已经逐渐地凌驾了现实经验的体会。”

This event will be of interest to those of you who work on contemporary China, Chinese literature, translation studies, and publishing. The conversation between Yan Ge and Nicky Harman will last around 30 minutes and we will leave plenty of time for critical dialogues, Q & A and discussions.

Books available for purchase at a discounted rate.

Speaker biography:

Yan Ge was born in Sichuan Province, China in 1984. She is a writer as well as a Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Literature. Publishing since 1994, she is the author of eleven books in Chinese. Her works have been translated into English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Hungarian. She was a visiting scholar at Duke University from 2011 to 2012 and a residency writer at the Cross Border Festival in Netherlands in November 2012. Named by People’s Literature magazine as one of twenty future literature masters in China, she is now the chairperson of China Young Writers’ Association and a contract writer of Sichuan Writers’ Association. She recently started writing in English. Her English stories could be seen on Irish Times and Stand Magazine. She lives in Dublin with her husband and son.

Nicky Harman is a British translator of Chinese literature, and one of the most influential figures in the field. She is co-Chair of the Translators Association (Society of Authors) and co-founded Paper Republic 纸托邦, one of the most important online forums for Chinese literatures in translation. She taught on the MSc in Translation at Imperial College until 2011 and now translates full-time from Chinese. The authors she has translated include Jia Pingwa贾平凹，Yan Geling 严歌苓，Chan Koon-chung 陈冠中，Annibaobei 安妮宝贝，Chen Xiwo陈希我，Yan Ge颜歌，and Han Dong韩东, to name just a few. She has won several awards with her translations.