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There seems to be a growing consensus that previous assumptions about the long term consequences of China’s rise have turned out to be misplaced. Rather than China becoming ‘socialised’ into the liberal global order (and democratising at home), a China challenge to that order is instead being identified. This is seen not just as a challenge to the distribution of power within the current system, but to some of the fundamental norms and principles that underpin it, as well as to the theories and concepts that are used to try to understand it and predict future behaviour. Of course, some always expected it to be this way; however, others now see a Chinese ability and willingness to promote alternatives that they didn’t envisage even a decade ago.
This presentation explores how what were originally designed as defensive norms and theories for China itself have transformed into putative platforms that might have salience and utility for others outside China. The paper suggests that the Chinese position may better be understood as a critique of universalism rather than the basis of an alternative world order. It also asks whether there is more than just an aspirational dimension to new Chinese thinking on international relations built on a form of “Occidentalism”, or if we can identify a real and distinct Chinese approach to both its own international relations and the nature of the world order itself.
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Shaun Breslin is Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick and a leading British academic expert on Chinese politics and economy, globalization, regionalism, global governance, and International Political Economy. Professor Breslin is also an Associate Fellow of the Asia Research Centre based at Murdoch University and an Honorary Professorial Fellow at the Centre for European Studies, Renmin University. In 2010, he became an Associate Fellow in the Asia Programme of Chatham House. Professor Breslin is Co-Editor of The Pacific Review and sits on the Editorial Committee of the Review of International Studies, China and World Economy, and the Fudan Review of International Relations.
– GPES Seminar Series – Oxford Brookes
Abstract:
Current commentary in legal and political philosophy conceptualises political parties either as private organisations, immune from legal regulation in their internal affairs, or as quasi-public institutions, where the state may justifiably mandate certain internal regulations. I argue that, in jurisdictions with anti-defection laws, neither conception accounts for the normative status of the political party. Instead, the party ought to be conceptualised as a legislative actor. This paper then examines how conceptualising the party in this way can affect the way in which we understand the relationship between the law and a party. I explore three possible avenues of legal regulation of parties: the process of candidate selection, the selection of party leaders, and interaction between a party and its parliamentary wing. I argue that conceptualising the party as a legislative entity has the most salient implications for the third of these: the interaction between the extra-parliamentary organisation and the parliamentary party.
About the Speaker:
Udit Bhatia is a Junior Research Fellow in Politics at Jesus College and Lecturer in Political Theory at Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford. His research interests lie at the intersections of democratic theory, social epistemology and constitutional law. He is currently working on the ethics of partisanship and the regulation of political parties.
From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, UN agencies, NGOs and the Red Cross / Crescent work to save lives and protect rights in the wake of natural disasters and armed conflict. How effective is the $27Billion sector? And what challenges does it face? The Oxford launch event of the State of the Humanitarian System report, with expert panel and Q and A

Two-thousand and nineteen marks the centenary of the Addison Act, the housing legislation which realised Lloyd-George’s ‘Homes fit for Heroes’ and the start of a nationwide system of state-owned housing that has lasted most of the 20th Century. Half a million homes were promised and a system of open-ended Treasury grants were made available to local councils to build.
One hundred years have now passed since local authorities in the UK where given the responsibility and the resource to provide decent housing for the working person. Whilst the responsibility remains, the conditions under which housing is to be provided have undergone a seismic shift.
Join us from 19.30 – 21.00 on Thursday 21st February as we explore how the cities of London and Oxford are working to meet this responsibility and provide decent housing for working class people.
We’ll be joined by Sian Berry, Co-Leader of the Green Party, Local Councillor for Camden and Chair of the London Assembly’s Housing Committee and Stephen Clarke, Head of Housing and Property Services for Oxford City Council.
Tickets are free but you must register to attend.
We strive to make all events at Open House as accessible as possible. You can read more about the venue on our website. If there is anything we can do to make your visit more comfortable then please do not hesitate to get in touch.

The day will consist of a range of events, hosted by speakers from different areas of STEM and industry. Expect to hear from keynote speakers, engage with panel discussions, and get hands on experience in smaller workshops focusing on entrepreneurship, outreach, disabilities and more.
Don’t miss out on hearing from a range of speakers, including: Dr. Chonnettia Jones, Director of Insight and Analysis at the Wellcome Trust; Prof. Daniela Bortoletto, Professor of Physics at Brasenose; plus Oxford’s own Vice Chancellor, Louise Richardson.
Everyone is welcome, regardless of gender, year and subject.
For more information visit OxFEST’s facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/events/294126621288050/
In the context of migration between Uttar Pradesh, other areas of India, and the Gulf, this paper explores the role of the imagination in shaping subjective experiences of male Muslim migrants from a woodworking industry in the North Indian city of Saharanpur. Through attending to the dreams, aspirations, and hopes of labour migrants, the paper argues that bridging the material and the imagined is critical to understanding not just patterns of migration, but also the subjective experiences of migrants themselves. Through a descriptive ethnographic account, involving journeys with woodworkers over one and a half years, the paper explores the ways in which migration, its effects, and connections are shaped by the imagination, yet are also simultaneously active in shaping the imagination—a process that is self-perpetuating. Emerging from this, the paper gives attention to continuity at the material, personal, and more emotive levels. This runs counter to research that situates migration as rupturing or change-driving within both the social and the subjective. These continuities play out in complex ways, providing comfort and familiarity, but also enabling the imaginations of migrants to be subverted, co-opted, influenced, and structured to meet the demands of labour markets both domestically and abroad.

Brands across the UK are missing an opportunity to add up to $1bn to their brand value by failing to meaningfully reflect, represent and champion women in their marketing and advertising efforts.
In this session, we will present the findings from a research study carried out by Kantar as part of the of the What Women Want? initiative. Kantar set out to explore the concept of empowerment – what it means to women in the UK today and how brands and advertising can better connect with women. We will take a future-focused view of marketing to women discussing the Hold Her Gaze project conducted by Kantar Consulting. This work builds on the cultural conversations of today to inspire the marketing landscape of tomorrow.
You will hear from Kantar’s partners from What Women Want Steering Committee – Philippa Snare, EMEA CMO, Facebook and Justine Roberts, Founder and CEO, Mumsnet and Gransnet. In this interactive panel session, Snare and Roberts will reflect on what it takes to drive change and how it effects their brands performance, and there will be a chance for the audience to ask questions. Guided tours of the exhibition will be available both before and after the presentation.
Schedule:
18:15 – Registration opens
18:45 – Event starts
20:00 – Drinks reception (closes at 9pm)
21:00 – Close

Duncan Dollimore, Head of Campaigns, Cycling UK wants to hear our views on local cycle campaigning
Cycling UK has spent the last few months considering how to work with local campaign groups. Duncan is coming to Oxford because he was impressed by the energy at our conference 15 months ago. This is our chance to influence how Cycling UK relates with local groups like Cyclox.

Dung beetles in the British Isles are a vital part of their associated ecosystems but have been historically rather overlooked probably due to their chosen habitat. Now our native dung beetles are finally beginning to get some of the invertebrate limelight due to an emphasis on ecosystem services and a much more environmentally friendly farming future. However we are lacking on a great deal of base data about these vitally important species and surveying is the one of the best ways to get information. This means getting into dung and discovering these unsung heroes

Organised by Oxford Civic Society @oxcivicsoc. Should we prioritise the Green Belt or new homes for Oxford? In this, the first of a series of public debates to mark the 50th anniversary of Oxford Civic Society, Bob Price, former leader of the City Council, will argue that the release of Green Belt land to meet housing need can benefit the common good without undermining the enduring purposes of the Green Belt. His view will be keenly contested by Mike Tyce, Trustee of the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) Oxfordshire. The audience will have a chance to have their say before the two opposing speakers wind up the debate.
Doors open 7.00pm; debate starts 7.30pm. Tickets required – no entry on the door.
Tickets for this event are £7 via Eventbrite – see https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-battle-for-the-green-belt-tickets-54594574843
Jennifer Eberhardt, associate professor at Stanford University, joins us for the next in our Let’s Discuss series. She will be discussing unconscious racial bias in the context of her new book Biased. The talk will be followed by an extended time for audience Q&A so that you can really become part of the debate.
From one of the world’s leading experts on unconscious racial bias comes a landmark examination of one of the most culturally powerful issues of our time.
We might think that we treat all people equally, but we don’t. Every day, unconscious biases affect our visual perception, attention, memory and behaviour in ways that are subtle and very difficult to recognise without in-depth scientific studies.
Unconscious biases can be small and insignificant, but they affect every sector of society, leading to enormous disparities, from the classroom to the courtroom to the boardroom.
But unconscious bias is not a sin to be cured, but a universal human condition, and one that can be overcome.
In Biased, pioneering social psychologist Professor Jennifer Eberhardt explains how.
Carlos Lopes will deliver an overview of the critical development issues facing the African continent today. He will talk about a blueprint of policies to address issues, and an intense, heartfelt meditation on the meaning of economic development in the age of democratic doubts, identity crises, global fears and threatening issues of sustainability.
This talk will be followed by a book signing and drinks reception, all welcome.

Organised by Oxford Civic Society @oxcivicsoc. Council proposals to allow only electric taxis, cars, light commercial vehicles and buses to enter parts of central Oxford from 2020 proved controversial. In this second debate to mark the 50th anniversary of Oxford Civic Society, the speakers will debate when central Oxford should become a Zero Emission Zone, and what should be done about pollution in the rest of the City. How could the various ways of reducing pollution be combined and what will be the impact on people’s lives? Councillor Paul Harris, who drew attention to the problems of introducing a ZEZ very quickly, and Chris Church of Friends of the Earth, will offer their alternative proposals on 16 May. The audience will have a chance to have their say before the two opposing speakers wind up the debate.. https://www.oxcivicsoc.org.uk/programme/
This lecture is being given by social responsibility expert, Professor Andy Westwood – the former President of the OECD’s Forum for Social Innovation and an adviser at the IMF. Andy is Professor of Government Practice and Vice Dean of Humanities at the University of Manchester and a Visiting Professor of Further and Higher Education at the University of Wolverhampton.

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

Organised by Oxford Civic Society @oxcivicsoc. Government proposals for significant growth in Oxfordshire in coming decades include an Expressway and several new communities. Are these needed or can growth be directed elsewhere? Can growth be ‘intelligent’, leading to prosperity without compromising the quality of life? In the third and final debate to mark the 50th anniversary of Oxford Civic Society, Councillor Ian Hudspeth, Leader of Oxfordshire County Council, and Danny Dorling, Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography in the University of Oxford will contest the issues.. https://www.oxcivicsoc.org.uk/programme/
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

The ability to accurately identify and interpret Track and Sign rests on a body of traditional knowledge that previous generations of naturalists would have regarded as fundamental. Sadly, now it is largely unknown and untaught, but with the upsurge of Citizen Science, it is perhaps more relevant than ever.

Slime moulds thrive in damp woodlands and normally spread over rotting logs eating bacteria and fungi. They are also unusual in being single giant cells that show remarkably sophisticated behaviour considering their humble form. This talk presents a little vignette of the science behind these curious beasts and how it has led to better understanding of other networked systems, and even the origins of civilisation.
This paper explores the connectivities between violence, memory, personhood, place and human substances after the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. It explores the practice of ‘care-taking’ at genocide memorials – the preservation and care of human remains –to reveal how survivors of the genocide re-make their worlds through working with the remnants of their dead loved ones. I argue that ‘care-taking’ is a way to rebuild selves and to retain lost relations to the dead that still interfere in the everyday lives of the living. Survivors project their emotions, sentiments and confusion about an uncertain future onto the remains. Care-taking re-verses time because it gives back dignity to those who died ‘bad deaths’ during the genocide. I further argue that the memorials are a vehicle for what I coin ‘place-bound proximity’ that enables a material space of communication between care-takers and their dead loved ones, provides a last resting place and a ‘home’ for both the living and the dead. Importantly these findings questions mainstream transitional justice approaches to social recovery demonstrating that memory cannot be deployed or harnessed and that reconciliation is better understood as rebuilding a (normal) relationship with the dead rather than as one with perpetrators. Following a ‘victims-approach’ this paper draws on extensive fieldwork conducted in Rwanda between 2011 and 2014.

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.

How do our minds and bodies alter as we age? Can attitudes change from one generation to the next? How have the built and natural environments around us changed in the last 200 years? What are our hopes and fears for the future and how different will it be? Join researchers at the Bodleian’s Weston Library to look into the past, present and future. This event includes hands-on activities all day and a Living Library of researchers and talks in the evening.
The shop and cafe will be open until 9pm.