In this alternative Valentine’s Day event Dr María del Pilar Blanco (University of Oxford) discusses the art of geriatrics and degeneration in Spanish America at the end of the 1800s, and how it entered the cultural imagination.

Abingdon Area Archaeological & Historical Society members will give FREE talks at Abingdon County Hall Museum every third Saturday of the month starting in February 2019. Each will last 30 minutes and be about a different subject or object in the museum collection.

Talks Schedule:

11am: ‘The Crossley Engine’, by Ruth Weinberg.
This talk will take you back in time to the first half of the twentieth century when Abingdon’s water supply relied on two gas engines and a pump situated in the basement of the County Hall, now Abingdon County Hall Museum. After the refurbishment of the County Hall in 2012, the pump and the water inlet are still in their exact original places and today part of the Museum’s displays.

1pm: The Abingdon Monks’ Map’, by Manfred Brod
The “Monks’ Map” as an example of early English map-making is probably the most important single artefact in the museum. Its origin has long been obscure, but recent work has shown when and why it was made, and by whom.
This talk will discuss the evidence, and consider what the map teaches us about local affairs at the time of its production.

3pm: THE ABINGDON OPHTHALMOSAUR: The Discovery of a Jurassic Sea Beast’ by Jeff Wallis.
Why do archaeologist spend cold and wet winter afternoons trudging around muddy gravel pits? On one particular visit to a quarry near Abingdon just before Christmas 1982 pale grey tell tale signs of weathered rib bones from a 155 million year old marine reptile led to the excavation of a two thirds complete skeleton.
We will describe the process of how this wonderful fossil from the age of Dinosaurs arrived into its current home in Abingdon Museum. We may then proceed to the archaeology showcases downstairs crossing 155 million years ago into the ages of Ice and the first visits by early Humans to what is now Abingdon.
We can look at some of the earliest stone tools to be found in the UK and view a unique flint tool made by some of the last surviving Neanderthal hunters or one of the first modern human groups to range across the Upper Thames Valley.

FREE TALKS
No booking required

Stories for Our Times: Retelling the Norse Myths

The Norse Myths, published by Quercus in 2018, is the latest in a long line of retellings of the myths and legends of medieval Scandinavia; tales that, as the publisher’s blurb rightly points out, ‘have captured the imagination of storytellers and artists for centuries’. Reworking the Norse myths for a commercial press offered an opportunity to reflect on both the longstanding creative appeal of the myths and also the extraordinary resurgence of interest in recent years: what exactly is it about the Vikings and the stories of the Norse gods that resonates with our current cultural climate? This talk will draw out some of the points of connection, and fracture, that a popular retelling rests upon, and suggest some of the ways that a reworking of traditional material can be used to speak to contemporary concerns – including environmental change, gender politics, and the resurgence of the far-right – whilst also seeking to remain faithful to the medieval sources and to the contradictions and plurality of the myths that have come down to us.

About Dr Tom Birkett

Tom Birkett is a graduate of Oxford and St Cross College, where he completed his MA in 2008 and PhD in 2011. He has held a lectureship in Old English at University College Cork since 2012, where he has also introduced Old Norse to the curriculum. He publishes on Old English and medieval Icelandic textual and literary culture, and has recently led two IRC-funded projects in Cork on the translation of medieval poetry, and on the popular perception of the Vikings (the World-Tree Project). His illustrated retelling of the Norse myths was published by Quercus in December.

The beginnings of a celebrity or star culture in the theatre of Shakespeare’s time.
How many women went to Shakespeare’s plays? This talk explores the evidence and significance of female theatre going in the early modern period.

Professor Smith will discuss the beginnings of a celebrity or star culture in the theatre of Shakespeare’s time, discussing notable actors and, in particular, their appeal to women spectators. She’ll look at the evidence, often negative and satirical, about how women at the theatre were perceived, and trace their changing place in audiences as theatre went upmarket in the seventeenth century. Drawing on histories of consumerism and of celebrity, Smith will identify women theatregoers as crucial to the development of the playhouses within the early modern experience economy.

Professor Smith has been a Fellow of Hertford College and Lecturer in the Faculty of English since 1997. She teaches part of the first year paper ‘Introduction to Literary Studies’, the Renaissance paper to second years and Shakespeare. She lectures in the English Faculty on these topics with some of these lectures available as free podcasts from iTunesU. She also teaches on the English Faculty MSt course 1550-1700 and supervises research students on early modern topics.

Schedule:
12:15 – On-site registration & buffet lunch
12:30 – Talk commences
13:30 – Event close

The seminar is open for anyone to attend, registration is essential so please use the register button to confirm your attendance.

Talk followed by questions and discussion

ScreenTalk Oxfordshire proudly presents an evening with British Producer Jeremy Thomas. Jeremy has worked with renowned directors including Bertolucci, Nicolas Roeg, Jonathan Glazer and Ben Wheatley producing such great films as ‘The Last Emperor’, ‘Crash’, ‘Sexy Beast’ and ‘High-Rise’.

On Tuesday 5th March at the Lounge Bar, Curzon, Westgate Centre in Oxford, local producer Carl Schoenfeld will be talking to Jeremy Thomas about Directors, Actors, Crews as well as films he has produced and what he has learnt throughout his career.

Join us from 18:15 for a drink and chat in the bar, then at 19:00 with Carl Schoenfeld (ScreenTalk Co-Founder and Steering Group Member) in conversation with Jeremy Thomas (Recorded Picture Company).

There will be a Card/Cash Bar so join us after the talk to catch up and network.

ScreenTalk events are an opportunity to forge and strengthen contacts in Film, TV and Associated Media. For further information and to sign up to our mailing list please email screentalkoxfordshire@gmail.com

We expect this event to be popular and can only take pre-booked (free) tickets for entry.
Tickets: http://bit.ly/2GnlZhi

DANSOX presents a one-day conference on the life and work of the great 20th-century choreographer, Sir Kenneth MacMillan (1929-1992). MacMillan stands among the great innovators of his time in theatre, film, art, and music. The conference will discuss his work, the challenges of preserving the record, explore little known early work, his literary and musical choices, design, and choreographic method.

Guest speakers include: the artist and widow of Sir Kenneth, Lady MacMillan; the former Principal and Director of the Royal Ballet, Dame Monica Mason; the music expert, Natalie Wheen; and choreologist, Anna Trevien. Dancers, artists, and filmmakers who worked with Kenneth will join the conversation. A performance/lecture of the reconstruction of ‘Playground’ with Yorke Dance will be held in the JdP at the end of the conference.

St Hilda’s Writers’ Day 2019 marks its 10th year as the only College to hold its own day of lectures at the Oxford Literary Festival. All authors are College members or alumnae.

CLAIRE HARMAN – Murder By The Book: A Sensational Chapter In Victorian Crime. chaired by Claire Armitstead (The Guardian and the Observer)
When the accused murderer of Lord William Russell blamed the crime on his reading, he fueled an ongoing debate about the appalling damage ‘low’ books could do. This fascinating study details the controversy around William Harrison Ainsworth’s Jack Sheppard, the murder of Russell and the way it affected many of the leading writers of the day, including Dickens and Thackeray. Harman unpacks the evidence, reveals the gossip and the surprisingly literary background to this gory crime.

Chair: Claire Armitstead (The Guardian and the Observer)

What role does the imagination play in science? Do our notions of scientific genius rest on ideas about the creative imagination? How do we know when the imagination has overreached itself and entered the realm of fanciful speculation — of science fiction?
Professor Rob Iliffe explores these questions, and how ideas about imagination have shaped science and scientists.

Rob will be available to sign copies of his book ‘Newton: a very short introduction’ after the talk. The Museum’s shop will stock copies of the book.

Emily Wilson will be at Blackwell’s to discuss her best selling translation of Homer’s The Odyssey.

Past Times, Blackwell’s series of free history talks, continues with Mark Honigsbaum discussing his new book The Pandemic Century: One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria and Hubris.

Ever since the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic, scientists have dreamed of preventing catastrophic outbreaks of infectious disease. Yet, despite a century of medical progress, viral and bacterial disasters continue to take us by surprise, inciting panic and dominating news cycles. From pneumonic plague in LA and ‘parrot fever’ in Argentina to the more recent AIDS, SARS and Ebola epidemics, the last 100 years have been marked by a succession of unanticipated outbreaks and scares. Like man-eating sharks, predatory pathogens are always present in nature, waiting to strike; when one is seemingly vanquished, others appear in its place. The Pandemic Century exposes the limits of science against nature, and how these crises are shaped by humans as much as microbes.

A presentation by Professor Irad Malkin of Tel-Aviv University: What does it mean to be “fair” in circumstances of taking possession of land, often by conquest, and settling it? And how did Archaic city-states (ca 750-500 BCE) apply the lot as the means of implementing what they understood to be equality and fairness? There will be discussion and drinks after the presentation.

Saïd Business School is pleased to welcome Freya Stewart, Fine Art Group’s in house lawyer to talk on Art and Law.

About the talk

Art-secured financing is not new, but leverage in the art market is a ‘hot’ topic and here to stay. A niche-credit service increasingly used by high net worth collectors to unlock valuable capital from their art assets for other investment or personal finance purposes.

Schedule

17:15 – Registration opens
17:45 – Event starts
18:45 – Drinks reception
19:45 – Close
The talk is open for anyone to attend, registration is essential so please use the register button to confirm your attendance.

About the Speaker:

Freya Stewart is CEO of The Fine Art Group’s art-secured lending business. The Fine Art Group is a market-leading international art advisory, investment and finance firm, who provide competitive art finance solutions to borrowers on a global basis. Freya also supports The Fine Art Group as General Counsel.

Prior to joining The Fine Art Group Freya was senior Legal Counsel at Christie’s Auction House, where she advised on all aspects of art lending, auction and private sales. Previously Freya spent 10 years at Linklaters LLP and Barclays Capital as a structured finance, derivatives and prime brokerage lawyer in London, New York, Hong Kong and São Paulo.

Freya obtained a First Class BA in History from Manchester University and completed her legal qualifications at Oxford Institute of Legal Practice.

Every third Saturday of the month come and listen to local experts talk about interesting topics around the museum galleries. Each talk will last 30 minutes and will be about different subjects about Abingdon’s history or chosen objects in the museum collection.

Talks schedule:

11:30 am – ‘The Spinney Dig: Uncovering a Lost Cottage in Sunningwell’ by Robert Evans.

A few years ago we rediscovered the remains of a substantial old cottage in the grounds of Sunningwell School. Since then we have been excavating the site, trying to find out what the place looked like, and how the people who occupied it would have lived. So far that work has yielded lots of evidence for the past 150 years or so; more and older items may still be hidden below the ground. It’s not rare stuff – no precious coins, or ship-burials, or oriental glassware; just bric-a-brac that tells us about the world of ordinary villagers.
I’ll bring along some of our finds to show, and present an illustrated report on the project.

1 pm – ‘Abingdon in the Second World War’ by Bob Frampton.

During the war years 1939 to 1945, the small town of Abingdon, like so many of England’s rural settlements, experienced the conflict in a way quite different from the major cities. While the town escaped the attention of concentrated heavy bombing raids, it still made a major contribution to the war, making tanks, aircraft engines and wing-parts. It sent 1,000 of its people to the war. The local RAF station trained bomber crews.
This short talk will highlight some of the events of those difficult years, the struggles and the sacrifices and some of the personal stories of the town in this harrowing episode in its recent history.

FREE talks, no booking required.
All donations welcome.

Is competition in the digital economy desirable? Does it currently exist? Is it possible? Is there anything policy can do?

This talk addresses all of these questions and presents the recommendations of the Digital Competition Expert Panel which was chaired by Jason Furman and recently presented its recommendations to the government.

On Wednesday 22 May, ScreenTalk Oxfordshire proudly presents Harnessing the Power of Video in Business Communications.
An evening with Tim May, MD of Strange Films and Music, talking with Toby Low – MD of MerchantCantos an international agency specialising in bringing creativity to critical business communications; Scott Shillum – CEO of Vismedia, Winner of the 2018 Digital Impact Awards and a pioneer in creating interactive, immersive content fused with cutting edge technology; Clare Holt – Founder of Nice Tree Films in Oxford and a member of ScreenTalk provides videos for businesses, public sector organisations, charities and education; Nicky Woodhouse – Founder of Woodhouse Video Production, award-winning female director of branded content and TVCs for online and broadcast.

Join us on Wednesday 22 May from 18:15 for a drink in the downstairs Lounge Bar, Curzon, Westgate Centre in Oxford, and why not try the Curzon’s excellent Pizza – great quality! At 19:00 Tim May will be talking to Toby Low, Scott Shillum, Clare Holt and Nicky Woodhouse. Afterwards there will be Shout Outs from ScreenTalk members and facilitated networking. At ScreenTalk events we run a Card/Cash Bar so please join us and take advantage of the opportunity to catch up and network.

We expect this event to be popular and can only take pre-booked (free) tickets for entry.

Join the conversation! ScreenTalk events are an opportunity to forge and strengthen contacts in Film, TV and Associated Media.
For further information and to sign up to our mailing list please email screentalkoxfordshire@gmail.com

The 5th Annual Oxford Business and Poverty Conference will feature a diverse range of speakers addressing the Paradoxes of Prosperity. Sign up here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/5th-annual-oxford-business-poverty-conference-tickets-57733957822
Hosted at the Sheldonian Theatre, the conference will feature keynotes by:
Lant Pritchett: RISE Research Director at the Blavatnik School of Government, former Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development
Efosa Ojomo: Global Prosperity Lead and Senior Researcher at the Clayton Christensen Institute
John Hoffmire: Director of Center on Business and Poverty and Research Associate at Kellogg Colleges at Center For Mutual and Employee-owned Business at Oxford University
Ananth Pai: Executive Director, Bharath Beedi Works Pvt. Ltd. and Director, Bharath Auto Cars Pvt
Laurel Stanfield: Assistant Professor of Marketing at Bentley College in Massachusetts
Grace Cheng: Greater China’s Country Manager for Russell Reynolds Associates
Madhusudan Jagadish: 2016 Graduate MBA, Said Business School, University of Oxford
Tentative Schedule:
2:15-2:20 Welcome
2:20-2:50 Efosa Ojomo, co-author of The Prosperity Paradox, sets the stage for the need for innovation in development
2:50-3:20 John Hoffmire, Ananth Pai and Mudhusudan Jagadish explain how the Prosperity Paradox can be used in India as a model to create good jobs for poor women
3:20-3:40 Break
3:40-4:10 Laurel Steinfeld speaks to issues of gender, development and business – addressing paradoxes related to prosperity
4:10-4:40 Grace Cheng, speaks about the history of China’s use of disruptive innovations to develop its economy
4:40-5:15 Break
5:15-6 Lant Pritchett talks on Pushing Past Poverty: Paths to Prosperity
6:30-8 Dinner at the Rhodes House – Purchase tickets after signing up for the conference
Sponsors include: Russell Reynolds, Employee Ownership Foundation, Ananth Pai Foundation and others

The question of how far a state should authorise the peacetime collection and use of intelligence gathered by secret agents and by interception of communications has long been a thorny issue of public policy. Today, new ethical and legal questions arise from the ability to access in bulk personal information from social media and from Internet use and to apply artificial intelligence trained algorithms to mine data for intelligence and law enforcement purposes. In his talk Sir David Omand, a former director of GCHQ, will lay out an ethical framework for thinking about these powerful developments in modern digital intelligence.

Speaker: Professor Sir David Omand GCB is a visiting professor in the War Studies Department, King’s College London and at PSIA, Sciences Po, Paris. He was previously UK Security and Intelligence Coordinator, Permanent Secretary of the Home Office and Director, GCHQ. He is the author of Securing the State (Hurst, 2020) and, with Professor Mark Phythian, Principled Spying: the Ethics of Secret Intelligence, (Oxford University Press, 2018).

For centuries, England’s elite have covered up how they got their hands on millions of acres of our land, by constructing walls, burying surveys and more recently, sheltering behind offshore shell companies. But with the dawn of digital mapping and the Freedom of Information Act, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for them to hide.

In June’s House Matters, Open House welcomes Guy Shrubsole, the author of the new book ‘Who Owns England?’. Cat Hobbs, the founder of ‘We Own It’, will be chairing the discussion and we’ll also have the Who Owns Oxford group demoing their new website which intends to visualise contemporary and historic land ownership in the County and tell stories of how it affects us all.

Trespassing through tightly-guarded country estates, ecologically ravaged grouse moors and empty Mayfair mansions, writer and activist Guy Shrubsole has used these 21st century tools to uncover a wealth of never-before-seen information about the people who own our land, to create the most comprehensive map of land ownership in England that has ever been made public.

From secret military islands to tunnels deep beneath London, Shrubsole unearths truths concealed since the Domesday Book about who is really in charge of this country – at a time when Brexit is meant to be returning sovereignty to the people. Melding history, politics and polemic, he vividly demonstrates how taking control of land ownership is key to tackling everything from the housing crisis to climate change – and even halting the erosion of our very democracy.

It’s time to expose the truth about who owns England – and finally take back our green and pleasant land

How did people in Oxford access healthcare before the NHS?
Join local historian dr Annie Skinner and find out! This guided walk will take you on a tour of the 19th century landscape of poverty and health care, helping you discover what happened to people who needed medical care in Victorian Oxford.

Please note, this tour will begin outside the Radcliffe Infirmary on Woodstock Road. If you require any further information, please email museum@oxford.gov.uk

This is a joint book talk with The Rockefeller Foundation Economic Council on Planetary Health at the Oxford Martin School

Now that Trump has turned the United States into a global climate outcast, will China take the lead in saving our planet from environmental catastrophe? Many signs point to yes. China, the world’s largest carbon emitter, is leading a global clean energy revolution, phasing out coal consumption and leading the development of a global system of green finance.

But as leading China environmental expert and author of Will China Save the Planet? Barbara Finamore will explain in this talk, it is anything but easy. The fundamental economic and political challenges that China faces in addressing its domestic environmental crisis threaten to derail its low-carbon energy transition. Yet there is reason for hope. China’s leaders understand that transforming the world’s second largest economy from one dependent on highly polluting heavy industry to one focused on clean energy, services and innovation is essential, not only to the future of the planet, but to China’s own prosperity.

We will also hear from respondent Radhika Khosla, Research Director at the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development, Somerville College.

This talk will be followed by a drinks reception, book sale and signing, all welcome

This one-day workshop with St Cross College Professional in Residence David Scrymgeour covers the steps towards building a successful organisation, from designing, starting, and growing, to managing, changing, fixing, and evolving. The workshop will be highly practical, and will help you to develop a model for thinking about an organisation and how to apply it in clear practical steps. During the course of the day, you will look at the ‘Three Pillars’ model of organisations: Sales, finance, and operations, and there will be case studies, question and answer sessions, and plenty of time for networking over a working lunch.

About David:

David Scrymgeour has worked as an entrepreneur, consultant, trouble-shooter and community advisor. He is currently Adjunct Professor and Executive-in-Residence at the Rotman School of Management.

Tickets are £5 which covers a working lunch.

St Peter’s College welcomes you to a talk about Lord Nuffield, a leading figure in St Peter’s early history.

William Morris, Lord Nuffield, probably did more than any other individual to transform Oxford in the twentieth century, physically, economically and socially. His success as an industrialist allowed him to become one of Britain’s most generous benefactors; he gave away the equivalent of £1.5 billion in today’s money, to causes including health, education and academic research. This talk looks specifically at Lord Nuffield’s vital support to various Oxford colleges, including the saving of St Peter’s from closure, andhttps://interestingtalks.in/Oxford/# the founding of the college which bears his name, Nuffield College. It also explores his complex and sometimes difficult relationship with the university.

St Peter’s College Chapel
Free to attend
All welcome

This two-day conference will explore the evolving relationship between conflict and identity, with a specific interest in the role of history education in pre-conflict, at-conflict, and post-conflict societies. It will focus on how teachers and lecturers present history; how such choices shape identity; and how history education can be used for the purposes of promoting or undermining peaceful societies.

Data-driven micro-targeted campaigns have become a main stable of political strategy. As personal and societal data becomes more accessible, we need to understand how it can be used and mis-used in political campaigns and whether it is relevant to regulate political candidates’ access to data.

This book talk will be followed by a drinks reception and book sale, all welcome

Alongside our conference on 19th October, Greene’s Institute will be hosting our first public event: a special interactive keynote with Professor Henrike Lähnemann (University of Oxford). This event promises to be a fantastic exploration of one of the most important acts of translation in European history. All are welcome.

Blackwell’s, in association with the Oxford University History Society, are delighted to be joined by writer and historian, Dan Jones, who will be talking about his latest book, Crusaders.

Dan Jones, best-selling chronicler of the Middle Ages, turns his attention to the history of the Crusades – the sequence of religious wars fought between the late eleventh century and late medieval periods, in which armies from European Christian states attempted to wrest the Holy Land from Islamic rule, and which have left an enduring imprint on relations between the Muslim world and the West.From the preaching of the First Crusade by Pope Urban II in 1095 to the loss of the last crusader outpost in the Levant in 1302-03, and from the taking of Jerusalem from the Fatimids in 1099 to the fall of Acre to the Mamluks in 1291, Crusaders tells a tale soaked in Islamic, Christian and Jewish blood, peopled by extraordinary characters, and characterised by both low ambition and high principle.

Dan Jones is a master of popular narrative history, with the priceless ability to write page-turning narrative history underpinned by authoritative scholarship. Never before has the era of the Crusades been depicted in such bright and striking colours, or their story told with such gusto.

Dan Jones is a bestselling historian, TV presenter and award-winning journalist. His books, which have sold more than a million copies worldwide, include The Plantagenets, The Templars, and The Hollow Crown. He has also written books about the Peasants’ Revolt and Magna Carta, and co-authored the Sunday Times bestseller The Colour of Time, with Marina Amaral.

Find out more about the Oxford University History Society by visiting https://www.ouhs.org/

Tickets for this event cost £5. Doors open at 6.45pm when there will be a small bar available. For more information please contact our Customer Service Department on 01865 333 623 or email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk

What happens when you excavate the image archives of the Institute of Archaeology and other departments of the University of Oxford? The answer: you find amazing pictures that tell unexpected stories. Most of the pictures are black and white and 70 or more years old. Discover Oxford through a new lens with Janice Kinory to explore the Historic Environment Image Resource Project digital image archive where the images are stored and how you can access them.

Professor Renee Poznanski of Ben Gurion University in the Negev will be giving the Michaelmas term Massada Public Seminar. A great number of Jews participated in the Resistance in France during World War II. What was the aim of their struggle? To fight against the Occupation in France? To restore the Republican Regime? To save the persecuted Jews? To help install a communist regime? While questioning the relevance of the term “Jewish Resistance,” this talk will challenge the accepted notion of a “French” Resistance, and examine what is at stake in this complex issue.The event is part of the Israel and Ione Massada Fellowships Programme.

Joris Luyendijk was born in Amsterdam and studied in Kansas, Amsterdam, and Cairo. He is a writer, journalist and anthropologist. He has written about the Middle East, the banking crisis and Brexit.