Talk followed by questions and discussion

All welcome

This is the latest in a series of eight weekly talks. The full list is:

Brexit: archaic techniques of ecstasy
Thursday 17 January: 7:30pm–9:00pm
Wesley Memorial Church (New Inn Hall St)

Shamanism: taking back control
Thursday 24 January: 7:30pm–9:00pm
Wesley Memorial Church (New Inn Hall St)

Tithe, timber, and the persistence of the ancien régime
Thursday 31 January: 7:30pm–9:00pm
Oxford Town Hall (St Aldates)

Hegelian dialectics and the prime numbers (part 2)
Thursday 7 February: 7:30pm–9:00pm
Wesley Memorial Church (New Inn Hall St)

Christopher Caudwell (1907–1937) and ‘the sources of poetry’
Thursday 14 February: 7:30pm–9:00pm
Wesley Memorial Church (New Inn Hall St)

Television: remote control
Thursday 21 February: 7:30pm–9:00pm
Wesley Memorial Church (New Inn Hall St)

Fascism and populism: can you spot the difference?
Thursday 28 February: 7:30pm–9:00pm
Wesley Memorial Church (New Inn Hall St)

The epos of everyday life
Thursday 7 March: 7:30pm–9:00pm
Wesley Memorial Church (New Inn Hall St)

Join us at Teddy Hall next week for a fantastic event on the ‘Neuroscience of Dance’ brought to you by the Centre for the Creative Brain!

Science, dance and wine – what more could you want for a Saturday afternoon?

A few (free) tickets are still available, so be quick!

https://www.seh.ox.ac.uk/discover/research/centre-for-the-creative-brain

Deborah Warner: Changing Directions – Journeys in theatre, opera and installation
Date: Wednesday, 27 February 2019
Time: 5.00pm (Attendees must be seated by 4.45pm)
Venue: Bernard Sunley Lecture Theatre, St Catherine’s College, Manor Road, Oxford, OX1 3UJ

Over her career, Deborah Warner has worked extensively in the fields of theatre, opera and classical music. Examples of her work as a Director include the plays Electra, King Lear and Richard II; and the operas The Turn of the Screw for the Royal Opera, which won the Evening Standard and South Bank Awards; Dido and Aeneas and La Traviata for the Vienna Festival. You can read more about Deborah Warner, and about the Cameron Mackintosh Visiting Professorship here.

Places for this event will be allocated by ballot. To register for the ballot, please complete the online form at www.stcatz.ox.ac.uk/deborahwarner by 12.00pm on Friday, 8 February. Please note that entry to the ballot does not automatically entitle applicants to a place at the lecture, but to a place in the draw. Printed confirmation of your ticket to the event will be required in order to attend the lecture.

You will be notified, via email, week commencing Monday, 18 February if you have been successful in securing a place at the lecture. Please contact development.office@stcatz.ox.ac.uk should you have any queries.

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.

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

Content Wars: The Societal Roles and Responsibilities of Media Organisations Today
A Distinguished Speaker Seminar with Biz Stone and Dame Carolyn McCall in conversation with Dean Peter Tufano.
We are bombarded with news, information and entertainment from a growing number of content providers and technology platforms. In this hyper connected age, what are the responsibilities of leading organisations in terms of content and how it is delivered, and what trends do they believe are shaping the near future?

About the speakers

Biz Stone is best known as a technology company founder (Twitter, Medium, Jelly) and angel investor (Square, Slack, Pinterest). A progenitor of social media, Stone has been developing large scale systems that facilitate the open exchange of information for 20 years. Stone is also an author, filmmaker, philanthropist, and Visiting Fellow at Oxford University. Honors include TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in the World, The Economist’s Innovation Award, and Vanity Fair’s 2019 Global Goals List. Biz rejoined Twitter full time in 2017.

Carolyn McCall became ITV’s Chief Executive and a member of the Board of ITV in January 2018. Before joining ITV, Carolyn was the Chief Executive of Easyjet plc from 2010 to 2017 and prior to this she held several roles at the Guardian Media Group plc, including the position of Chief Executive.

Schedule

17:15 – Registration opens
17:45 – Event starts
18:45 – Drinks reception
19:45 – Close

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

Coriander Theatre presents a new play ‘My Mother Runs in Zig-Zags’ at the North Wall Arts Centre, 30th May – 1st June 2019, 7:30pm, Saturday Matinee 2:30pm.

Sometimes, race and trauma are like leaky old pipes: you can’t even have a friend over for dinner without something spilling out everywhere and flooding your life in the most unexpected way.

A conversation between friends becomes a journey to the Lebanese and Nigerian civil wars. Half-remembered worlds of violent oral history invade the kitchen and layer themselves over everyday life, shining light on the laughter that heals intergenerational traumas, and celebrating the overflowings and excesses of a life shaped by migration.

With an original musical score, a chorus of performance poets and contemporary dancers, and stories passed on from a generation of migrants, My mother runs in zig-zags is a bold new tragicomedy, devised by the best of Oxford University’s BAME actors and performers.

Age Guidance: 12+

My mother runs in zig zags

It is now well-accepted that digital media platforms are not merely information intermediaries, but also central control points of the Internet. They have become the so-called ‘deciders’ and ‘custodians’ of online speech, leading to the privatization of Internet governance.

In China, domestic platforms such as WeChat, Weibo, and Toutiao have become the mediators, gatekeepers, and governors of online news and information. In order to perform this role, platforms have to work closely with the Chinese state in guiding and controlling public opinion.

The aim in this workshop is to advance analysis and understanding of the role platforms play in the governance of online news and information, and their relations with the state. After opening with a close study of the situation in China, the workshop will consider the experience of western nations, which also have to rely on private platforms to tackle issues like online hate speech, disinformation, and political or terrorism propaganda.

The workshop will gather together a number of academics working in related areas to discuss this highly topical and immensely important issue.

Presentations:
Governance regarding public opinion in a platform era: a study of China
Jufang WANG, Center for Cultural and Media Policy Studies, Warwick University

China’s control of digital infrastructure in comparative perspective
Ralph SCHROEDER, Oxford Internet Institute, Oxford University

The new governance and freedom of expression
Damian TAMBINI, Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics

Algorithmic public sphere: controlling access to knowledge in the digital age
Roxana RADU, PCMLP/CSLS, Oxford University

Participants:
Wang Jufang, PhD candidate in Media and Communication, Warwick University, and former vice-director of news of CRI Online

Denis Galligan, Emeritus Professor of Socio-Legal Studies and Director of Programmes, Foundation for Law, Justice and Society, Oxford

Roxana Radu, Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Oxford’s Programme in Comparative Media Law and Policy

Ralph Schroeder, Professor in Social Science of the Internet, Oxford Internet Institute, and director of its MSc programme in Social Science of the Internet

Damian Tambini, Associate Professor, Department of Media and Communications, LSE

Commentators:
Jacob Rowbottam, Associate Professor, University College, Oxford University

Pu Yan, Doctoral Student, Oxford Internet Institute, Oxford University

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

Big data and AI are starting to feature in cancer research today, and will will play an even greater role in the future. Join researchers from Cancer Research UK to discover the technologies and methods they use to help find, prevent and treat cancer, and what big ideas they have for the future.

IF Oxford is operating a Pay What You Decide (PWYD) ticketing system. This works by enabling you to pre-book events without paying for a ticket beforehand. Afterwards, you have the opportunity to pay what you decide you want to, or can afford. If you prefer, you can make a donation to IF Oxford when you book. All funds raised go towards next year’s Festival.

Geographers have long been interested in the spaces brought into being by the internet. In the early days of the Web, digital technologies were seen as tools that could bring a heterotopic cyberspace into being: a place beyond space de-tethered from the material world.

More recent framings instead see digital geographies as always-augmented, hybrid, and ontogenetic: integrally embedded into everyday life.

Against that backdrop, Professor Mark Graham will present findings from three large research projects about digital platforms. First, a large-scale digital mapping project that looks at how digital inequalities can become infused into our urban landscapes. Second, a study about the livelihoods of platform workers in Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Finally, early results from a new action research project (the Fairwork Foundation) designed to improve the quality of platform jobs.

In each case, the talk explores why understanding the ways that platforms command digital geographies is a crucial prerequisite for envisioning more equitable digital futures.

Please register via the link provided. This talk will be followed by a drinks reception, all welcome.

Charles Babbage has been called the ‘great-uncle’ of modern computing, a claim that rests simultaneously on his demonstrable understanding of most of the architectural principles underlying the modern computer,band the almost universal ignorance of Babbage’s work before 1970. There has since been an explosion of interest both in Babbage’s devices and the impact they might have had in some parallel history, and in Babbage himself as a man of great originality who had essentially no influence at all on subsequent technological development.

In all this, one fundamental question has been largely ignored: how is it that one individual working alone could have synthesised a workable computer design over a short period, designing an object whose complexity of behaviour so far exceeded that of contemporary machines that it would not be matched for over one hundred years?

Our Leverhulme funded project Notions and notations: Charles Babbage’s language of thought investigated the design methods that Babbage used, and their impact on subsequent design practice. As part of that work we constructed a steam-driven difference engine to Babbage’s outline design.

In this general interest talk, we shall describe some aspects of Babbage’s designs and design methods, and demonstrate the difference engine.

This talk will describe a class of machine learning methods for reasoning about complex physical systems. The key insight is that many systems can be represented as graphs with nodes connected by edges. I’ll present a series of studies which use graph neural networks–deep neural networks that approximate functions on graphs via learned message-passing-like operations– to predict the movement of bodies in particle systems, infer hidden physical properties, control simulated robotic systems, and build physical structures. These methods are not specific to physics, however, and I’ll show how we and others have applied them to broader problem domains with rich underlying structure.

What can dance tell us about human rights? What can hip hop say about equality and human dignity? Join an evening of dance and discussion to find out.

We’ll watch live dance that explores the theme of human rights, with performances from Blakely White-McGuire, Eliot Smith and Body Politic Dance. We’ll celebrate art’s power to challenge the social and political turmoil we face around the world today.

In modern high-tech health care, patients appear to be the stumbling block.

Uninformed, anxious, noncompliant individuals with unhealthy lifestyles who demand treatments advertised by celebrities and insist on unnecessary but expensive diagnostics may eventually turn into plaintiffs. But what about their physicians? About ten years ago, Muir Gray and Gerd Gigerenzer published a book with the subtitle “Envisioning health care 2020”. They listed “seven sins” of health care systems then, one of which was health professionals’ stunning lack of risk literacy. Many were not exactly sure what a false-positive rate was, or what overdiagnosis and survival rates mean, and they were unable to evaluate articles in their own field. As a consequence, the ideals of informed consent and shared decision-making remain a pipedream – both doctors and patients are habitually misled by biased information in health brochures and advertisements. At the same time, the risk literacy problem is one of the few in health care that actually have a known solution. A quick cure is to teach efficient risk communication that fosters transparency as opposed to confusion, both in medical school and in CME. It can be done with 4th graders, so it should work with doctors, too.

Now, in 2020, can every doctor understand health statistics? In this talk, Gerd Gigerenzer will describe the efforts towards this goal, a few successes, but also the steadfast forces that undermine doctors’ ability to understand and act on evidence. Moreover, the last decade has seen two new forces that distract from solving the problem. The first is the promise of digital technology, from diagnostic AI systems to big data analytics, which consumes much of the attention. Digital technology is of little help if doctors do not understand it. Second, our efforts to make patients competent and to encourage them to articulate their values are now in conflict with the new paternalistic view that patients just need to be nudged into better behaviour.

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

Joint event with: The Oxford–Berlin Research Partnership

India is a land full of music and dance. It is woven into the very fabric of the subcontinent, with music and dance unique to each region and community, ranging from folk and classical arts to popular forms. While there are a number of dance and dance-theatre styles that can be classed as classical, there are eight that have been officially recognised as classical Indian dance styles by the Sangeet Natak Akademi and the Ministry of Culture. Shyam Patel will be talking about these different forms and how, like the languages, cuisines and cultures of different Indian regions, these dance styles are unique and varied in their own right.

What happens when new artificial intelligence (AI) tools are integrated into organisations around the world?

For example, digital medicine promises to combine emerging and novel sources of data and new analysis techniques like AI and machine learning to improve diagnosis, care delivery and condition management. But healthcare workers find themselves at the frontlines of figuring out new ways to care for patients through, with – and sometimes despite – their data. Paradoxically, new data-intensive tasks required to make AI work are often seen as of secondary importance. Gina calls these tasks data work, and her team studied how data work is changing in Danish & US hospitals (Moller, Bossen, Pine, Nielsen and Neff, forthcoming ACM Interactions).

Based on critical data studies and organisational ethnography, this talk will argue that while advances in AI have sparked scholarly and public attention to the challenges of the ethical design of technologies, less attention has been focused on the requirements for their ethical use. Unfortunately, this means that the hidden talents and secret logics that fuel successful AI projects are undervalued and successful AI projects continue to be seen as technological, not social, accomplishments.

In this talk we will examine publicly known “failures” of AI systems to show how this gap between design and use creates dangerous oversights and to develop a framework to predict where and how these oversights emerge. The resulting framework can help scholars and practitioners to query AI tools to show who and whose goals are being achieved or promised through, what structured performance using what division of labour, under whose control and at whose expense. In this way, data work becomes an analytical lens on the power of social institutions for shaping technologies-in-practice.

In this talk Professor Gina Neff, Oxford Internet Institute and Professor Ian Goldin, Oxford Martin School, will examine publicly known “failures” of AI systems to show how this gap between design and use creates dangerous oversights and to develop a framework to predict where and how these oversights emerge. The resulting framework can help scholars and practitioners to query AI tools to show who and whose goals are being achieved or promised through, what structured performance using what division of labour, under whose control and at whose expense. In this way, data work becomes an analytical lens on the power of social institutions for shaping technologies-in-practice.

In 2020, Governments around the world made the decision to lock down their country to help stop the spread of Covid-19. This led to teaching, meetings, conferences, contacting family and more being conducted from home via the internet.

How did this affect data being used across the world? Did the systems already in place stand-up to the pressure? Was our privacy compromised. As companies and families grapple with how much data they need, we find ourselves in the midst of these important moral deliberations. The pandemic is revealing just how complex the data inter-dependencies are when we need to respond effectively.

Join Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, and Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt, leading researcher in Artificial Intelligence (AI), as they discuss what we have learnt and in what new directions we need to head in the world of data architecture.

On the 30th November it was announced that the Artificial Intelligence computer programme AlphaFold had made a decisive breakthrough in the determination of the 3-D structures of proteins.

The announcement was immediately hailed as one of the major scientific advances of the decade.

Why is it important to understand the 3-D structures of protein, why are they difficult to construct, and what is the nature of AlphaFold’s advance? Why is this so exciting and what further advances in medicine and the other biosciences may result? To find out, join a conversation between Yvonne Jones, Director, Cancer Research UK Receptor Structure Research Group and Charles Godfray, Director, Oxford Martin School, who will explore these fascinating issues.