Join us for an evening with the novelist Stacey Halls, author of this year’s most spellbinding debut – The Familiars. Stacey Halls will be in conversation at Blackwell’s Bookshop at Westgate Oxford on Thursday 28 February at 7pm.

This book talk is co-organised with the Oxford Martin Programme on Collective Responsibility for Infectious Disease

Vaccination raises ethical issues about the responsibilities of individuals, communities, and states in preventing serious and potentially life-threatening infectious diseases. Such responsibilities are typically taken to be about minimising risks for those who are vaccinated and for those around them. However, there are other ethical considerations that matter when defining the responsibilities of different actors with regard to vaccination. Such ethical considerations are not often given due considerations in the debate on vaccination ethics and policy.

Thus, in this talk Dr Alberto Giubilini aims at offering a defence of compulsory vaccination taking into account not only the importance of preventing the harms of infectious diseases, but also the value of fairness in the distribution of the burdens entailed by the obligation to protect people from infectious diseases. He will offer a philosophical account of the key notions involved in the ethical debate on vaccination, of the types of responsibilities involved, of the possible types of vaccination policies ranked from the least to the most restrictive, and of the reasons why compulsory vaccination is, from an ethical point of view, the best policy available, as it is the most likely to guarantee not only protection from infectious diseases, but also a fair distribution of the burdens and responsibilities involved.

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

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

Published for the first time, this is Sylvia Pankhurst’s text about her two tours of North America in 1911 and 1912. An English militant suffragette, she was expected to appeal for support from progressive elites. Instead, Pankhurst identified with the marginalised and recorded their stories.

The result was a powerful indictment of American capitalism. Repulsed by the stark inequalities, Pankhurst was nevertheless inspired by the struggles for change. She vividly recalls a courageous strike of laundry workers in New York, the appalling conditions in the prison cells of Chicago, and the horrific racism she witnessed in Tennessee.

This exciting work reveals Pankhurst’s efforts to link the women’s movement to wider emancipatory struggles – efforts that would change the course of suffrage history.

Edited and introduced by Katherine Connelly who will be in conversation with Dana Mills, author of a forthcoming biography of Rosa Luxemburg. Chaired by Tracy Walsh, Programme Coordinator of the Oxford International Women’s Festival.

Blackwell’s is delighted to welcome to the bookshop Dina Nayeri who will be discussing her powerful and thought-provoking book ‘The Ungrateful Refugee’.

In ‘The Ungrateful Refugee’ Dina Nayeri weaves together the story of her own refugee journey – as a child forced to flee Iran, eventually finding asylum in America – with the stories of others making their own journeys today. She sets out the stages of the refugee experience, and gives voice to those in today’s refugee camps, or who are trying to settle in a new country, and for many of whom the search for home can be a forever state.

Dina Nayeri was born in Iran during the revolution and arrived in America when she was ten years old. She is the winner of a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, an O. Henry Award and the UNESCO City of Literature Paul Engle Prize. The author of two novels – Refuge and A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea – and contributor to The Displaced, her work has been published in over twenty countries. Her stories and essays have been published in Best American Short Stories and by the New York Times, Guardian, Wall Street Journal, Granta and many other publications.

Doors will open at 6.45pm where there will be a small bar available to purchase drinks until 7pm. For all enquiries please email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk or call our Customer Service Department on 01865 333623.

Join us as Gail Simmons explores her journey in ‘The Country of Larks’ as part of our Travel Series events taking place in July.

‘In the Footsteps of Robert Louis Stevenson and the Footprint of HS2’

In the autumn of 1874 a young, unknown writer called Robert Louis Stevenson walked across the Chiltern Hills, observing the natural world at a time when England was still largely agrarian and when most people still earned their living from working the land.

Almost 150 years later travel writer, journalist and long-time Oxford resident Gail Simmons follows in Stevenson’s footsteps, tracing the changes in the landscape since he walked here, and weaving in her own recollections of growing up in the Chilterns. At heart of the narrative is the imminent arrival of HS2, the high-speed railway from London to Birmingham which will bring other changes as it tears through the Chilterns AONB.

An eloquent, evocative and timely contemplation of the changing nature of life and landscape in the English countryside, the book is both a pilgrimage in honour of Robert Louis Stevenson and an homage to the Chilterns, a land that was once so rich and diverse, so bursting with birdsong, that Stevenson named it ‘The Country of Larks’.

This event is free to attend and everyone is welcome, please register in advance. For all enquiries, please email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk or call our Customer Service Department on 01865 333623.

As part of our Travel Series Talks this July, we are delighted to welcome Jonathan Lorie to discuss his new book ‘The Travel Writer’s Way’ and share an insider’s tips on how to write travel.

‘The Travel Writer’s Way’ takes a ground-breaking approach to the craft of travel writing, with a 12-step programme of ‘creative journeys’ specially tailored to develop your writing skills. Whether you want to write for pleasure or for publication, for friends or for the wider world, you’ll find this book as inspiring as it is useful.

It also contains invaluable advice from forty of the world’s top travel-writing experts, who are some of the finest travel writers, editors and bloggers, featuring acclaimed experts such as Paul Theroux, Levison Wood and Sara Wheeler. Furthermore, there is practical information on establishing your blog, writing your book and submitting your articles to travel editors.

Jonathan Lorie has more than 20 years’ experience as travel writer, travel-magazine editor and travel-writing tutor.

This is a free event, but please do register your intent to attend. For more information, please contact our Customer Service Desk on 01865 333 623 or email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk

For this event, 12 artists from all over the country will be presenting work that they have been making as part of the Sound Diaries open call.

The presenting artists are:

Richard Bentley, Hannah Dargavel-Leafe, Aisling Davis, Atilio Doreste, Marlo De Lara, Beth Shearsby, Kathryn Tovey, Jacek Smolicki, James Green, Lucia Hinojosa, Sena Karahan, Fi.Ona

Sound Diaries expands awareness of the roles of sound and listening in daily life. The project explores the cultural and communal significance of sounds and forms a research base for projects executed both locally and Internationally, in Beijing, Brussels, Tallinn, Cumbria and rural Oxfordshire.

As part of our Let’s Discuss series, we’re proud to be welcoming international speaker, change-maker and global Sharing Economy expert, Benita Matofska and photographer with purpose Sophie Sheinwald, to Oxford for the launch of their new book ‘Generation Share: The change-makers building the Sharing Economy’. Benita and Sophie will dispel the myths surrounding the Sharing Economy, going beyond the big corporates to delve into the wider social and environmental impacts of sharing; from human milk banks saving the lives of premature and sick babies, to social enterprises crowdfunding employment for the homeless and food sharing that is taking people out of food poverty. Benita’s research for Generation Share evidences how the Sharing Economy is saving millions of lives. Expect a lively discussion about this 21st century phenomenon that is changing the way we think, live and do business.

This event is free but do please register your interest in advance, For all enquiries, please email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk or call our Customer Service Department on 01865 333623.

Blackwell’s is pleased to be hosting the launch of Lisa Cybaniak’s, Survivor to Warrior.

Synopsis
As a survivor of ten years of child abuse, Lisa gently walks you through effective strategies to help you reframe your experiences and reconnect with your Higher Self to help you rebuild your life on your own terms.

Lisa Cybaniak is a Transformational NLP Coach and Child Abuse Survivor. Survivor to Warrior is her first book and is published by Conscious Dreams Publishing.

This event is free but please do register if you plan on attending. There will be complimentary food and drink available on the evening, as well as the opportunity to network and get your book signed by the author. For more information please contact our Customer Service Department on 01865 333 623 or email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk

Blackwell’s are delighted to be hosting a very special event at the Sheldonian Theatre with Alain de Botton on The School of Life: An Emotional Education.

We spend years in school learning facts and figures but the one thing we’re never taught is how to live a fulfilled life. That’s why we need The School of Life – a real organisation founded ten years ago by writer and philosopher Alain de Botton, an organisation which has one simple aim: to equip people with the tools to survive and thrive in the modern world. And the most important of these tools is emotional intelligence.

The School of Life is nothing short of a crash course in emotional maturity. With all the trademark wit and elegance of Alain de Botton’s other writings, and rooted in practical, achievable advice, it shows us a path to the better lives we all want and deserve.

Blackwell’s are delighted to announce that poet and author Lemn Sissay will be with us, in conversation with Derek Owusu, to discuss his new memoir, My Name is Why.

How does a government steal a child and then imprison him? How does it keep it a secret? This story is how.

At the age of seventeen, after a childhood in a foster family followed by six years in care homes, Norman Greenwood was given his birth certificate. He learned that his real name was not Norman. It was Lemn Sissay. He was British and Ethiopian. And he learned that his mother had been pleading for his safe return to her since his birth.

This is Lemn’s story: a story of neglect and determination, misfortune and hope, cruelty and triumph.

Sissay reflects on his childhood, self-expression and Britishness, and in doing so explores the institutional care system, race, family and the meaning of home. Written with all the lyricism and power you would expect from one of the nation’s best-loved poets, this moving, frank and timely memoir is the result of a life spent asking questions, and a celebration of the redemptive power of creativity.

Lemn Sissay is a BAFTA-nominated, award-winning international writer and broadcaster. He has authored collections of poetry and plays. His Landmark poems are visible in London, Manchester, Huddersfield and Addis Ababa. He has been made an Honorary Doctor by the universities of Manchester, Kent, Huddersfield and Brunel. Sissay was awarded an MBE for services to literature and in 2019 he was awarded the PEN Pinter Prize. He is Chancellor of the University of Manchester. He is British and Ethiopian.

Derek Owusu is a writer and co-host of the literary podcast, Mostly Lit. He also mentors young people at Urban Synergy, an award winning early intervention mentoring charity that helps over 1,000 young people between 11-18 years of age . Derek edited and contributed to the book Safe: On Black British Men Reclaiming Space (2019).

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

Short Stories Aloud is back for the autumn! Listen to actors read short stories read by our guest authors. This month we are joined by Joanna Kavenna, author of Zed, and Brian Catling, the Vorrh Trilogy and Earwig . After hearing short stories (and eating some cake) there will be questions from Sarah Franklin, author of Shelter, and the audience. Join us for a wonderful evening, not to be missed.

Zed

Self-anointed guru of the Digital Age, Guy Matthias, CEO of Beetle, has become one of the world’s most powerful and influential figures. Untaxed and ungoverned, his trans-Atlantic company essentially operates beyond the control of Governments or the law.

But trouble is never far away, and for Guy a perfect storm is brewing: his wife wants to leave him, fed up with his serial infidelities; malfunctioning Beetle software has led to some unfortunate deaths which are proving hard to cover up; his longed for deal with China is proving troublingly elusive and, among other things, the mystery hacker, Gogol, is on his trail.

With the clock ticking- Guy, his aide Douglas Varley, Britain’s flailing female PM, conflicted national security agent Eloise Jayne, depressed journalist David Strachey, and Gogol, whoever that may be – the question is becoming ever more pressing, how do you live in reality when nobody knows anything, and all knowledge, all certainty, is partly or entirely fake?

Joanna Kavenna grew up in various parts of Britain, and has also lived in the USA, France, Germany, Scandinavia and the Baltic States. Her first book The Ice Museum was about travelling in the North. Her second book, a novel called Inglorious, won the Orange Prize for New Writing. Kavenna’s writing has appeared in the London Review of Books, the Guardian and Observer, the Times Literary Supplement, the International Herald Tribune, the Spectator and the Telegraph, among other publications. She has held writing fellowships at St Antony’s College, Oxford and St John’s College, Cambridge. She currently lives in the Duddon Valley, Cumbria.

Earwig

Not since Edgar Allan Poe and the Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita has there been such a masterly tale of feline evil.

Earwig got his nickname from his grandfather.

At the start of this story he is employed to look after a strange little girl in a flat in Liege. He spies on her, listens to her by holding a glass up to the wall.

But he never touches her except when, as part of his duties, he is required to is to make teeth of ice and insert them in her gums.

Earwig takes a rare day off, which he spends drinking by himself in Au Metro, a seedy bar full of drunks, dancers and eccentrics. It is St Martin’s day and in the evening as crowds parade through the street carrying lanterns through the snow, he is drawn reluctantly into a conversation with a sinister stranger called Tyre. As a result Earwig accidentally maims a waitress with a broken bottle. He understands that on some level Tyre meant this to happen.

Shortly afterwards a black cat is delivered to the flat, unasked for. The girl forms an immediate bond with it, but Earwig identifies it as the enemy.

Travelling across country by train, transporting the girl and her black cat, Earwig is increasingly caught up in a web of unfortunate and increasingly violent coincidences.

Brian Catling is an English sculptor, poet, novelist, film maker and performance artist. He was educated at North East London Polytechnic and the Royal College of Art. He now holds the post of Professor of Fine Art at The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford and is a fellow of Linacre College. He has previously written The Vorrh trilogy and Only the Lowly, a collection of short stories.

Tickets for this event cost £5. Doors will open at 6.45pm and there will be a small bar available to purchase drinks. For more information, please contact our customer service desk on 01865 333 623 or email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk.

Blackwell’s are delighted to be hosting economics commentator Grace Blakeley, in conversation with Aaron Bastani, on her new book Stolen, a readable polemic on the growing dominance of the finance industry over the UK economy, and what the left can do to challenge it.

For decades, it has been easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.

In the decade leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, booming banks, rising house prices and cheap consumer goods propped up living standards in the rich world. Thirty years of rocketing debt and financial wizardry had masked the deep underlying fragility of finance-led growth, and in 2008 we were forced to pay up.

The decade since has witnessed all kinds of morbid symptoms, as all around the rich world, wages and productivity are stagnant, inequality is rising, and ecological systems are collapsing.

Stolen is a history of finance-led growth and a guide as to how we might escape it. We’ve sat back as financial capitalism has stolen our economies, our environment and even the future itself. Now, we have an opportunity to change course. What happens next is up to us.

Grace Blakeley is economics commentator at the New Statesman and research fellow at the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR). She has written on economic issues for, amongst others, the Independent, and Novara Media, and has appeared on BBC News, the Today Programme, ITV Granada Debate, and Newsnight.

Aaron Bastani is a Senior Editor and co-founder of Novara Media. He has a PhD in media and politics and his new book Fully Automated Luxury Communism was published by Verso earlier this year.

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

This year marks the 50th Anniversary of humanity first landing on the moon. To celebrate this Oliver Morton will be here at Blackwell’s, in conversation with Caspar Henderson, to discuss his new book, The Moon: A History for the Future.

Every generation has looked up from the Earth and wondered at the beauty of the Moon. 50 years ago, a few Americans became the first to do the reverse-with the whole world watching through their eyes. In this short but wide-ranging book, Oliver Morton explores the history and future of humankind’s relationship with the Moon. A counterpoint in the sky, it has shaped our understanding of the Earth from Galileo to Apollo. Its gentle light has spoken of love and loneliness; its battered surface of death and the cosmic. For some, it is a future on which humankind has turned its back. For others, an adventure yet to begin. Advanced technologies, new ambitions and old dreams mean that men, women and robots now seem certain to return to the Moon. What will they learn there about the universe, the Earth-and themselves? And, this time, will they stay?

Oliver Morton is Environment Editor of the Economist, having formerly been Chief News Editor of Nature and Editor-in-Chief of Wired. He is the author of Mapping Mars: Science, Imagination, and the Birth of a World and Eating the Sun: How Light Powers the Planet and has written for many publications, including Nature, the Independent, National Geographic, the New Yorker, Newsweek, Prospect, and Wired. Asteroid 10716 Olivermorton is named for him.

Caspar Henderson is a writer and journalist. His work has appeared in the Financial Times, the Guardian, the Independent, New Scientist, the New York Review of Books, and other publications. From 2002 to 2005 he was a senior editor at OpenDemocracy. He received the Roger Deakin Award from the Society of Authors in 2009 and the Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Award in 2010. He is the author of ‘The Book of Barely Imagined Beings’, a bestiary for the 21st Century, which was shortlisted for the 2013 Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books.

This is a free event, but please do register if you plan on attending. The event will take place in our Philosophy Department, which is accessible via a short flight or stairs. Seat are allocated on a first come, first served basis. For more information please contact our Customer Service Desk on 01865 333 623 or email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk

Lady Margaret Hall and Blackwell’s: Celebrating 140 years

Blackwell’s opened its doors on January 1st 1879 on Broad Street, Oxford and have been trading continuously from there ever since. Since then they have grown to become more than just one bookshop, with a chain of 40 bookshops serving not only individual customers but also a host of libraries, universities, businesses and government departments.

In October 1879 LMH opened its doors to the first nine women students under the Principalship of Elizabeth Wordsworth. Since that very moment they have been leading change in Oxford, being the first women’s College to make the decision to admit men as both students and Fellows from 1979, and in 2016 welcomed the first students of their pioneering Foundation Year to the College. The University of Oxford have recently announced Foundation Oxford, based on LMH’s model.

To celebrate this anniversary, author and LMH alumna (1964 Modern Languages) Professor Dame Marina Warner will ask “Why words matter: The life of stories in dislocated times”. Marina Warner will talk about literature as border crossing, a site of exchange, and a way of making a community of fate.

Marina Warner is a writer of fiction, criticism and history; her works include novels and short stories as well as studies of art, myths, symbols and fairytales.

Tickets for this event are free to alumni of Lady Margaret Hall. For your free ticket, please contact the LMH Almuni Engagement Officer, Emma Farrant at alumni.officer@lmh.ox.ac.uk. Tickets are available to the public at a cost of £5. The event will be followed by a short drinks reception. For more information please contact our Customer Service Desk on 01865 333 623 or email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk

Photo credit: Carolina Mazzolari

As part of our 140th Anniversary celebrations, Blackwell’s are delighted to be joined by Mark Williams and Danny Penman to discuss Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Finding Peace in a Frantic World, a book which has been a bestseller across the company since its publication in 2011.

THE LIFE-CHANGING BESTSELLER – OVER 1.5 MILLION COPIES SOLD

Authoritative, beautifully written and much-loved by its readers, Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Finding Peace in a Frantic World has become a word-of-mouth bestseller and global phenomenon. It reveals a set of simple yet powerful practices that you can incorporate into daily life to break the cycle of anxiety, stress unhappiness and exhaustion. It promotes the kind of happiness that gets into your bones and allows you to meet the worst that life throws at you with new courage.

Mindfulness is based on mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT). Co-developed by Professor Mark Williams of Oxford University, MBCT is recommended by the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and is as effective as drugs for preventing depression. But, equally, it works for the rest of us who aren’t depressed but who are struggling to keep up with the relentless demands of the modern world.

By investing just a few minutes each day, this classic guide to mindfulness will put you back in control of your life once again.

Professor Mark Williams is Professor of Clinical Psychology and Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. He co-developed MBCT, is Director of the Oxford Mindfulness Centre, and is co-author of the international best-seller The Mindful Way Through Depression. He is one of the premier researchers in the field of mindfulness worldwide, and has been a pioneer in its development and dissemination.

Dr Danny Penman is a qualified meditation teacher and award-winning writer and journalist. He currently writes features for the UK Daily Mail, having previously worked for the BBC, New Scientist and the Independent newspaper. He is co-author of the international bestseller Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Finding Peace in a Frantic World. He has received journalism awards from the RSPCA and the Humane Society of the United States. In 2014, he won the British Medical Association’s Best Book (Popular Medicine) Award for Mindfulness for Health: A Practical Guide to Relieving Pain, Reducing Stress and Restoring Wellbeing (co- written with Vidyamala Burch). His books have been translated into more than 25 languages.

This event will consist of a short presentation on mindfulness followed by the authors in conversation with our Sales Development Manager Zool Verjee before taking questions from the audience. It is free to attend, but please do register. The talk will be taking place in the Philosophy Department which is accessible via a short flight of stairs. For more information, please contact our Customer Service Department on 01865 333 623 or email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk.

Blackwell’s are delighted to welcome to the shop Joanna Cannon who will be in conversation with Lucy Atkins on her new memoir Breaking and Mending: A junior doctor’s stories of compassion and burnout.

The unforgettable memoir from the bestselling author of The Trouble with Goats and Sheep and Three Things About Elsie

‘A few years ago, I found myself in A&E. I had never felt so ill. I was mentally and physically broken. So fractured, I hadn’t eaten properly or slept well, or even changed my expression for months. I sat in a cubicle, behind paper-thin curtains and I shook with the effort of not crying. I was an inch away from defeat… but I knew I had to carry on. Because I wasn’t the patient. I was the doctor.’

No sleep, skeleton support, a head full of anatomy lectures and idealism: this is life for our junior doctors in their first few years on the wards. Here, Joanna Cannon tells her own story in visceral, heart-rending snapshots. We walk with her, facing extraordinary and daunting moments and meeting her patients: from attending her first post-mortem, learning the overwhelming power of a well or badly chosen word, sitting with a young woman in her final hours, to small sustaining acts of kindness and connection.

These moments teach her that emotional care can be just as critical as restoring a heartbeat – and eventually lead her to her true home in psychiatry. Deeply moving, warm, compassionate and beautifully written, Breaking & Mending shows us why we need to better care for mental health – and for those who care for us.

Joanna Cannon worked as a psychiatrist and wrote her bestselling debut novel, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep, in NHS hospital carparks during her lunchbreaks. In 2017, she delivered the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ President’s Lecture. Though she returns to the wards as a volunteer with the NHS Arts for Health programme, Joanna is now a full-time writer and in 2018 her second novel, Three Things about Elsie, also became a bestseller and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction.

Lucy Atkins is the award winning author of The Night Visitor, The Missing One and The Other Child. She has also written widely on health issues, including The Cancer Survivor’s Companion and How to Feel Better. Lucy is a critic and journalist and is based in Oxford.

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

In this book talk the Author, Carl Benedikt Frey, will discuss how the Industrial Revolution was a defining moment in history, but how few grasped its enormous consequences at the time. Now that we are in the midst of another technological revolution how can the lessons of the past can help us to more effectively face the present?

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

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

Blackwell’s are delighted to be hosting a celebration in honour of the launch of Matthew Rice’s beautiful new book, Oxford.

Oxford is one of the jewels of European architecture, much loved and much visited. The city offers an unparallelled collection of the best of English building through the centuries. Matthew Rice’s Oxford is a feast of delightful watercolour illustrations and an informed and witty text, explaining how the city came into being and what to look out for today.

While the focus is on architectural detail, Rice also describes how the city has been shaped by its history, most of all by generations of patrons who had the education and the resources to commission work from the greatest architects and builders of their day, an astonishing range of which still stands.

More than anywhere else in England, it is possible in Oxford to take in the history of English architecture simply by walking today’s streets, lanes, parks and meadows.

This is a free event, but please register if you would like to attend. The evening will include a short speech from Matthew Rice, followed by a chance to buy the book, get it signed and then enjoy the evening with the refreshments provided. For more information, please call our Customer Service Desk on 01865 333 623 or email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk.

The AfOx insaka is a gathering for sharing ideas and knowledge about Africa-focused research with speakers from diverse and varied academic disciplines. There are two events each term.

Speakers for the first AfOx insaka in the new academic year are Dr Robtel Neajai Pailey, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, Oxford Department of International Development and Dr Jacob McKnight, Senior Researcher, Centre for Tropical Medicine and Global Health.

At this AfOx talk, Robtel Neajai Pailey uses her anti-corruption children’s books to argue that equipping children with verbal tools to question the confusing ethical codes of adults can revolutionise how we talk and theorise about corruption.

Jake McKnight is a Health Systems Researcher at the Oxford Health Systems Collaboration (OHSCAR). He was originally a logistician for MSF in Angola and Somalia, before conducting his PhD research in Ethiopia. He then read for the MSc. in African Studies at Oxford, before completing his PhD at Said Business School, where he concentrated on healthcare reform in Ethiopia. Jake will talk about the failures and successes of projects he’s studied or been involved in, reflecting on the idea that ‘Africa Works’, and as researchers and implementors, it’s up to us to fit local cultures rather to try to ‘fix’ them.

‘Philosophy in the Bookshop’ is our free monthly event that takes place on the first Saturday of the month and features Nigel Warburton interviewing a different author around their specialist subject. This month, Nigel will be in conversation with Teresa Bejan on ‘Mere Civility’.

Mere Civility sheds light on our predicament and the impasse between “civilitarians” and their opponents by examining early modern debates about religious toleration. As concerns about uncivil disagreement achieved new prominence after the Reformation, seventeenth-century figures as different as Roger Williams, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke could agree that some restraint on the war of words would be necessary. But they recognized that the prosecution of incivility was often difficult to distinguish from persecution. In their efforts to reconcile diversity with disagreement, they developed competing conceptions of civility as the social bond of tolerant societies that still resonate.

This talk is free to attend and takes place in the Philosophy Department within the Norrington Room. Please note that there is limited access to the space where the talk takes place. Please call 01865 333623 if you need any assistance.

Join us for a special ‘Let’s Discuss’ event where we will be warmly welcoming Lynn Enright, to explore Women’s Health and her book ‘Vagina: A Re-Education’. After the talk there will be an opportunity to ask questions and contribute your thoughts with an extended group discussion.

Synopsis
From earliest childhood, girls are misled about their bodies, encouraged to describe their genitalia with cute and silly names rather than anatomically correct terms. In our schools and in our culture, we are coy about women while putting straight men’s sexuality front and centre. Girls grow up feeling ashamed about their periods, about the appearance of their vulvas, about their own desires. They grow up without a full and honest sex education, and this lack of knowledge has serious consequences: the number of women attending cervical screening appointments in the UK is at a 20-year low while labiaplasty is the fastest growing type of plastic surgery in the world.

‘Vagina’ provides girls and women with information they need about their own bodies – about the vagina, the hymen, the clitoris, the orgasm; about conditions like endometriosis and vulvodynia. It confronts taboos, such as abortion, miscarriage, infertility and masturbation. It tackles vital social issues like period poverty, female genital mutilation and the rights of transgender women. It is honest and moving as Lynn Enright shares her personal stories but this is about more than one woman – this is a book that will provoke thousands of conversations. We urgently need to talk about women’s sexual and reproductive health, about our experiences of sex and pregnancy and pain and pleasure. ‘Vagina: A Re-Education’ will help us do just that.

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Event Information
‘Heroes or Villains? The Blair Government Reconsidered’ with Jon Davis & John Rentoul, as part of the Oxford Think Festival.
About this Event
Saturday 9th – Thursday 21st November
Oxford University Press is delighted to once again partner with Blackwell’s Oxford to host a weekend of talks and discussions and present the Oxford Think Festival.
Celebrating the quest for knowledge and seeking to stimulate discussion of some of the big issues and ideas of our time, the festival brings together some of our most inspiring and exciting minds. Join us for a full weekend of debates and discussion, a preview event with Jon Davis & John Rentoul on the legacy of the Blair government, and a special World Philosophy Day event with Richard Swinburne.

All events are free to attend, but registration is strongly recommended.

Saturday, 9th November, 1pm – ‘Heroes or Villains? The Blair Government Reconsidered’ with Jon Davis & John Rentoul

How will history assess Tony Blair’s 10 years as prime minister? Will he be remembered for bringing peace to Northern Ireland, reviving public services and promoting equality; or for Iraq, and paving the way for Jeremy Corbyn and Brexit? Will he be praised for modernising the machinery of government, or condemned for degrading politics with spin?

Blackwell’s is thrilled to be welcoming Erling Kagge to discuss his new book ‘Philosophy for Polar Explorers’.

Synopsis
Erling Kagge was the first man in history to reach all of the Earth’s poles by foot – the North, the South, and the summit of Everest. In ‘Philosophy for Polar Explorers’ he brings together the wisdom and expertise he has gained from the expeditions that have taken him to the limits of the earth, and of human endurance.

This is the essential guide to the art of exploration. In sixteen meditative but practical lessons – from cultivating an optimistic outlook, to getting up at the right time, to learning to find focus and comfort in solitude – Erling Kagge reveals what survival in the most extreme conditions can teach us about how to lead a meaningful life. Wherever we may be headed.

Erling Kagge is a Norwegian explorer who was the first in history to reach the ‘three poles’ – North, South and the summit of Everest. He now lives in Oslo where he runs a publishing house. He is the author of multiple books, including ‘Silence’, which is published in 38 languages, and ‘Walking’.

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

Migration is present at the dawn of human history – the phenomena of hunting and gathering, seeking seasonal pasture and nomadism being as old as human social organisation itself.

The flight from natural disasters, adverse climatic changes, famine, and territorial aggression by other communities or other species were also common occurrences.

But if migration is as old as the hills, why is it now so politically sensitive? Why do migrants leave? Where do they go, in what numbers and for what reasons? Do migrants represent a threat to the social and political order? Are they none-the-less necessary to provide labour, develop their home countries, increase consumer demand and generate wealth? Can migration be stopped? One of Britain’s leading migration scholars, Robin Cohen, will probe these issues in this talk

Please register via the link provided.

This talk will be followed by a book sale, signing and drinks reception, all welcome. Copies available at half price — £10 — to cash buyers only.

‘A terrific book, prescient, serious and urgent’ – Amy Liptrot, author of ‘The Outrun’.
About this Event
Blackwell’s is delighted to welcome Julian Hoffman for a lunch time talk, where he will be introducing his book ‘Irreplaceable: The Fight to Save Our Wild Places’, an urgent and lyrical account of endangered places around the globe and the people fighting to save them.All across the world, irreplaceable habitats are under threat. Unique ecosystems of plants and animals are being destroyed by human intervention. From the tiny to the vast, from marshland to meadow, and from Kent to Glasgow to India to America, they are disappearing.

‘Irreplaceable’ is not only a love letter to the haunting beauty of these landscapes and the wild species that call them home, including nightingales, lynxes, hornbills, redwoods and elephant seals, it is also a timely reminder of the vital connections between humans and nature, and all that we stand to lose in terms of wonder and wellbeing. This is a book about the power of resistance in an age of loss; a testament to the transformative possibilities that emerge when people come together to defend our most special places and wildlife from extinction.Exploring treasured coral reefs and remote mountains, tropical jungle and ancient woodland, urban allotments and tallgrass prairie, Julian Hoffman traces the stories of threatened places around the globe through the voices of local communities and grassroots campaigners as well as professional ecologists and academics. And in the process, he asks what a deep emotional relationship with place offers us – culturally, socially and psychologically. In this rigorous, intimate and impassioned account, he presents a powerful call to arms in the face of unconscionable natural destruction.

Join us for a weekend of free day time talks as part of the Oxford Think Festival.
About this Event
Saturday 9th – Thursday 21st November
Oxford University Press is delighted to once again partner with Blackwell’s Oxford to host a weekend of talks and discussions and present the Oxford Think Festival.
Celebrating the quest for knowledge and seeking to stimulate discussion of some of the big issues and ideas of our time, the festival brings together some of our most inspiring and exciting minds. Join us for a full weekend of debates and discussion, a preview event with Jon Davis & John Rentoul on the legacy of the Blair government, and a special World Philosophy Day event with Richard Swinburne.

All events are free to attend, but registration is strongly recommended.

Saturday, 16th November, 1pm – Quassim Cassam in conversation with Grant Bartley on ‘Vices of the Mind: From the Intellectual to the Political’

What are ‘vices of the mind’? Why are they important? Quassim Cassam introduces the idea of epistemic vices, character traits that get in the way of knowledge, such as closed-mindedness, intellectual arrogance, wishful thinking, and prejudice. Using examples from politics to illustrate the vices at work, he considers whether we are responsible for such failings, and what we can do about them. Key events such as the 2003 Iraq War and the 2016 Brexit vote, and notable figures including Donald Trump are analysed in detail to illustrate what epistemic vice looks like in the modern world.

Saturday 9th – Thursday 21st November
Oxford University Press is delighted to once again partner with Blackwell’s Oxford to host a weekend of talks and discussions and present the Oxford Think Festival.
Celebrating the quest for knowledge and seeking to stimulate discussion of some of the big issues and ideas of our time, the festival brings together some of our most inspiring and exciting minds. Join us for a full weekend of debates and discussion, a preview event with Jon Davis & John Rentoul on the legacy of the Blair government, and a special World Philosophy Day event with Richard Swinburne.

All events are free to attend, but registration is strongly recommended.

Sunday, 17th November, 1pm – A Biography of Loneliness with Fay Bound Alberti

Despite 21st-century fears of an ‘epidemic’ of loneliness, its history has been sorely neglected. Using letters and diaries, philosophical tracts, political discussions, and medical literature from the eighteenth century to the present, along with informative case studies such as Sylvia Plath, Queen Victoria, and Virginia Woolf, Fay Bound Alberti offers a radically new interpretation of loneliness as an emotional language and experience, and charts its emergence as uniquely modern emotional state.