As part of the Surgical Grand Rounds lecture series, hosted by the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences:

Mr Ravish Jootun will present “Towards 0% 90-day Colorectal mortality: Accepting a low floor in the anastomotic leak rate plus safe rescue using an early warning integrated model”

Mr Will Perry will present “University of Auckland’s Global Surgery Group: the Republic of Vanuatu – a growing collaboration”

Quickly approaching 50, Daphna Baram believes she is having a midlife crisis, though her GP thinks that’s highly optimistic. She looks back with no regrets but some remorse, and cracks up some insightful ideas about mass and time, AKA weight and age, tossed up with some political wisdom.

Is an Israeli comedian/journalist/human rights lawyer, and spent a year in Oxford writing her book Disenchantment: The Guardian and Israel. See: https://www.theguardian.com/global/2007/jun/04/daphna.baram

* * * * * “Masterful” (Bunbury Magazine)
* * * * “Wonderful and Hilarious” (Broadway Baby)
“Poignant and illuminating” (The List)

Doors at 8:30/Show at 9pm

Travis Jay presents his brand new, emotional roller-coaster of a show. It recounts Travis’s hilarious journey from childhood to fatherhood, and the many hiccups in-between.

Nominated for The Leicester Mercury Comedian of the year in 2016, Travis Jay is a stand-up, actor and radio presenter who has been performing on the comedy circuit since 2009.

Travis also writes and performs spoken word, and has featured on BBC Radio 1’s ‘First words’ poetry series alongside George The Poet. A creative, animated, and intelligent performer, Travis has built a reputation as being an entertaining and sometimes controversial story teller.

Doors at 5.30pm/Show at 6pm

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.

We are delighted to be joined by writer and musician, Catrina Davies, who will be in conversation with George Monbiot on her new book, Homesick and the current housing crisis.

Aged thirty-one, Catrina Davies was renting a box-room in a house in Bristol, which she shared with four other adults and a child. Working several jobs and never knowing if she could make the rent, she felt like she was breaking apart.

Homesick for the landscape of her childhood, in the far west of Cornwall, Catrina decides to give up the box-room and face her demons. As a child, she saw her family and their security torn apart; now, she resolves to make a tiny, dilapidated shed a home of her own.

With the freedom to write, surf and make music, Catrina rebuilds the shed and, piece by piece, her own sense of self. On the border of civilisation and wilderness, between the woods and the sea, she discovers the true value of home, while trying to find her place in a fragile natural world.

This is the story of a personal housing crisis and a country-wide one, grappling with class, economics, mental health and nature. It shows how housing can trap us or set us free, and what it means to feel at home.

Catrina Davies is a writer, singer-songwriter and DJ based in Cornwall, where she lives and works in a tin shed. Her first book The Ribbons Are For Fearlessness is a memoir about busking from Norway to Portugal with her cello. Her story has been featured in Vogue, Red, Daily Express, Surfer’s Path, and numerous other publications and her songs have been played on NTS and the BBC.

This event will be chaired by author and activist, George Monbiot. Along with writing books such as How Did We Get into this Mess, and Out of the Wreckage, George is the editor of the recent independent report to the Labour Party, Land for the Many: Changing the way our fundamental asset is used, owned and governed, which aims to put land at the very heart of politcal debate and discussion.

This is a free event, but please do register if you plan on attending. This event will be held in our Philosophy Department which is only accessible by a small flight of stairs. Seating will be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis. For more information please contact out Customer Service Desk on 01865 333 623 or email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk.

Talk followed by questions and discussion. This is the second in a three-part series of separate talks on democracy

Crocodiles once roamed the Arctic, during the Eocene about 50 million years ago. Polar regions were lush and warm. Greenhouse gas concentrations were higher than today, but at most about 4 times higher – not enough, according to current climate models, to have warmed the Arctic sufficiently. Something appears to be missing in current models to account for the warmth of the past.

The likely culprits are clouds, especially the low clouds that cover vast areas of tropical oceans. These clouds cool Earth by reflecting sunlight back to space. It is possible that the cloud cooling may have been absent or strongly diminished in past greenhouse climates, raising questions about our climate future. To predict our climate future more accurately, breakthroughs in the modeling of clouds and in the accuracy of climate predictions are needed. They are now within reach, thanks to advances in computing and Earth observations from space and our ability to fuse models with massive amounts of data.

Natalie Triebwasser, Head of Production at Oxford based production company Quicksilver Media, makers of “Unreported World” – the UK’s longest running foreign current affairs series on Channel 4, and “Killer Ratings” – a documentary series currently streaming on Netflix, talks to award winning journalists Jenny Kleeman and Ramita Navai about their respective careers and the unique challenges that documentary makers face.

We cannot end poverty without ending energy poverty. Ever since the world’s first power plants whirred to life in 1882, we have seen how electricity is the lynchpin for development in all of its forms.

Manufacturing and industrial productivity, agriculture and food security, nutrition, hygiene, water, public health, education, even community engagement, in other words, daily life in a modern economy, demand access to reliable energy.

And yet despite significant progress over nearly 140 years, more than 800 million people around the world live without access to electricity, and hundreds of millions more struggle with unreliable or unaffordable service. Families are deprived of the means to labour productively and their quality of life and status in extreme poverty goes unchanged.

We need urgently to fast-track sustainable power solutions, investments, and partnerships across the globe to catalyze an energy transformation and accelerate sustainable, reliable and modern electrification for economic development.

Kajal Odedra has always been passionate about helping other people affect change.
She is Executive Director of Change.Org and author of ‘Do Something: Activism for Everyone’. Change.org is the world’s largest petition platform with 15 million UK users and 200 million globally.

Badger expert Tanesha Allen, with some help from local school children, has been studying our badgers to understand more about how smell affects their behaviour. Join Tanesha to learn more about her research and have a go at the ‘smelly shirt test’ to see how you measure up against a badger. She is currently collaborating with the Abingdon Science Partnership and Science Oxford on a badger-based citizen science project being funded by the Royal Society.

The badger is one of the UK’s iconic species and our largest land predator. It is just as common as the fox but much more elusive – we have only ever seen our resident population at Stansfeld Park on camera traps! Badgers live in large family groups and have a highly developed sense of smell. With just a sniff, they can recognise each other as well as knowing the sex, age and social group membership. However, little is known about how they react to the scents of other species – including humans.

Tanesha Allen is a third year PhD student at the University of Oxford. As part of the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit’s (WildCRU) ongoing European badger project, her research focuses on olfactory mate choice via specialised glandular secretions and metabolic by-products. She previously studied Animal Sciences at Washington State University (BSc.) and Zoology at the University of Cambridge (MPhil).

Join us for the next event in our Science on Your Doorstep series, where we shine a spotlight on fascinating people living and working in Headington. The event is free to attend, but you are invited to make a donation towards a special fund we’re setting up to support disadvantaged schools across the region. The fund will help these schools with their travel costs, to enable them to come and enjoy the new Science Oxford Centre.

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.

The world scientific community has spent decades developing and refining magnetic confinement fusion theory and experimental devices for the ultimate goal of safely, effectively, and economically generating power from a nuclear fusion reaction.
Magnet systems are the ultimate enabling technology for these types of fusion devices. Powerful magnetic fields are required for confinement of the plasma, and, depending on the magnetic configuration, dc and/or pulsed magnetic fields are required for plasma initiation, ohmic heating, inductive current drive, plasma shaping, equilibrium, and stability control.

Almost all design concepts for power producing commercial fusion reactors rely on superconducting magnets for efficient and reliable production of these magnetic fields.

Future superconducting magnets for fusion applications require improvements in materials and components to significantly enhance the feasibility and practicality of fusion reactors as an energy source.

This lecture presents the fundamentals of superconductors and magnets that makes them attractive for use in fusion device. Examples are drawn from present operating fusion tokamak, helical, and stellarator machines that use low temperature superconductors.

I will also introduce the use of high temperature superconductors for future magnetic fusion devices, and how it may strongly influence the performance of fusion reactors.

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

Join Oxford Hospitals Charity in celebrating ten years since the Oxford Heart Centre was first opened.

You will hear from our brilliant clinicians about the difference the new Oxford Heart Centre has made, as well as future developments that will benefit heart and lung patients across Oxfordshire, only possible thanks to your generous donations.

Author Mark Haddon also joins us to tell us about his experience as patient in the John Radcliffe.

The event is free to attend and all are welcome.

FLJS Films opens its 2019-20 programme with acclaimed director Mike Leigh’s latest film Peterloo, which, by bringing to light a little-known atrocity in Manchester 200 years ago, makes a timely comment on the repercussions and resonances of public protest.

The film depicts the nascent labour movement of the nineteenth century, as the hunger and poverty brought about by the Corn Laws (which barred imports of cheap grain from the continent) drove 60,000 peaceful protesters to Manchester’s St Peter’s Field to demand the reform of parliamentary representation.

When the demonstration was brutally put down by the cavalry, leaving 18 people dead and hundreds injured, the government moved to suppress reporting by a nascent free press, and the event has since been largely forgotten.

On the bicentenary year of the massacre, and with the current resurgence of popular demonstrations and civil disobedience over Brexit and the climate crisis, Peterloo offers an invaluable reminder of the power of political resistance.

Historian of protest Dr Katrina Navickas will give a short introductory talk on her involvement in the historical research for Peterloo and the film’s political and contemporary resonances.

Praise for Peterloo
“A full-bore assault on the amnesia of British establishment history”
Sight and Sound

“Shattering in its cumulative effect, and its relevance to these turbulent times”
Wall Street Journal

Michael Obersteiner will present new insights from co-producing a set of new sustainability scenarios.

Major sectoral transitions will be presented to achieve development targets in line with improved ecosystem and human health. He will conclude with an outlook on new ways to socialise findings from such global assessments.

This talk is part of the Oxford Martin School Lecture Series ‘Food futures: how can we safeguard the planet’s health, and our own?’

We are honoured to announce that Elif Shafak will give this year’s Annual Blackwell’s Lecture on Thursday 24th October 2019 at 7.30pm in the Sheldonian Theatre.

Elif Shafak will deliver this year’s Annual Blackwell’s Lecture on the subject of literature, social change and politics.

Elif Shafak is an award-winning British-Turkish novelist and the most widely read female author in Turkey. She writes in both Turkish and English, and has published seventeen books, eleven of which are novels, including the bestselling ‘The Bastard of Istanbul’, ”The Forty Rules of Love’, and ‘Three Daughters of Eve’. Her latest book is ’10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World.’

Her work has been translated into fifty languages, published by Penguin/Random House and represented by Curtis Brown globally. She was awarded the title of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. In 2017 Elif was chosen by Politico as one of the twelve people who would make the world better.

Elif Shafak is also a political scientist and an academic. She holds a degree in International Relations, a masters’ degree in Gender and Women’s Studies and a PhD in Political Science and Political Philosophy. She has taught at various universities in Turkey, the UK and the USA, including St Anne’s College, Oxford University, where she is an honorary fellow.

Elif Shafak is a member of Weforum Global Agenda Council on Creative Economy and a founding member of ECFR (European Council on Foreign Relations). An advocate for women’s rights, LGBT rights and freedom of speech, Shafak is an inspiring public speaker and twice a TED Global speaker, each time receiving a standing ovation.

Her writing has been longlisted for the Orange Prize, MAN Asian Prize; the Baileys Prize and the IMPAC Dublin Award, and shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and RSL Ondaatje Prize. She judged numerous prestigious literary prizes.

Tickets cost just £5 are available from the Blackwell’s Eventbrite website or from Blackwell’s Bookshop, 50 Broad Street, Oxford.

Blackwell’s are delighted to announce that we will be joined by comedian, director and writer, Richard Ayoade, who will be signing his new book, Ayoade on Top.

Synopsis

At last, the definitive book about perhaps the best cabin crew dramedy ever filmed: View From the Top starring Gwyneth Paltrow.

In Ayoade on Top, Richard Ayoade, perhaps one of the most ‘insubstantial’ people of our age, takes us on a journey from Peckham to Paris by way of Nevada and other places we don’t care about. It’s a journey deep within, in a way that’s respectful and non-invasive; a journey for which we will all pay a heavy price, even if you’ve waited for the smaller paperback edition.

Ayoade argues for the canonisation of this brutal masterpiece, a film that celebrates capitalism in all its victimless glory; one we might imagine Donald Trump himself half-watching on his private jet’s gold-plated flat screen while his other puffy eye scans the cabin for fresh, young prey.”

Richard Ayoade is a writer and director. In addition to directing and co-writing Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, he has adapted and directed Joe Dunthorne’s novel Submarine for the screen, and is the co-writer (with Avi Korine) and director of the film, The Double. As an actor he is best known for his roles as Dean Learner in Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace and Maurice Moss in the Emmy Award-winning The IT Crowd, for which we was awarded a BAFTA as Best Performance in a Comedy.

This signing is free, but please do register if you plan on attending. Please note, Richard Ayoade will be only be signing his books. For more information, please call our Customer Service Department on 01865 333 623 or email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk.

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.

Dr David Nabarro, former Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Food Security and Nutrition, will give a talk on what implications there will be for the planet and us in linking nature, food and the climate.

Please register via the link provided. Followed by a drinks reception, all welcome

As part of the Surgical Grand Round lecture series, hosted by the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences, Mr Vincent Gnanapragasam from the University of Cambridge will discuss ‘Using research to change paradigms in diagnosing and managing early prostate cancer’.

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.

As part of the Surgical Grand Round lecture series, hosted by the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences, Professor Chris Lavy from the Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences will present ‘Public-private partnerships in elective surgery’.

Is a parliamentary route to socialism viable? If so why hasn’t it happened already?

Join us for a conversation with Leo Panitch (Professor of Political Science, York University) and Stephen Marks (Policy Officer, Oxford & District Labour Party) about the Labour Party’s electoral successes and challenges in getting socialists elected. What lessons can we draw from recent history? What should the left be doing to get socialists and a socialist government elected?

Chaired by Rabyah Khan (Chair, Oxford & District Labour Party and Labour Council candidate, Carfax & Jericho ward)

FREE ENTRY – Confirm a space so we have an idea of numbers on the night

Suggested donation on the night £2/£5

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 growing middle class in the developing world, as well as increasing concerns about the healthfulness, environmental footprint and inhumaneness of conventional livestock production have given rise to neo-Malthusian concerns about how to address what seems insatiable demand for protein.

While some have doubled down on calls for reducing meat consumption, so far the most visible response has been a huge wave of innovation in a variety of what are now being called “alternative proteins.” Designed to capture the “flexitarian” market, these include insect-based foods, protein-rich “superfoods,” simulated plant-based meat and dairy substitutes, and cellular/bioengineered meat.

Their rapid development begs two crucial questions, however. How did protein become the macronutrient of concern to begin? Will protein’s new substantiations be any more nutritious and ecological than that which it substitutes? In this talk, Guthman will elaborate on what is being done in the name of protein and provide provisional answers to these questions.

Please register via the link provided.

The Classical Art Research Centre (CARC) welcome Oxford University’s own Dr Llewelyn Morgan to give the 2019 Gandhara Connections Lecture on ‘Heracles’ Track to the Indus: Ancients and Moderns in the Swat Valley’. Dr Morgan is Associate Professor of Classical Languages and Literature and author of The Buddhas of Bamiyan (2012), which reflects his longstanding interest in Graeco-Roman connections with Central Asia and India.

All are welcome to attend and places are free, but please book by emailing us: carc@classics.ox.ac.uk

Hella Pick is one of the trailblazers for the modern female foreign correspondent. She worked across three continents and covered the death of Yugoslavia’s leader, President Tito. Yugoslavia was always the saving grace of covering the Soviet bloc,” she remembers. “While in East Germany you were followed and listened to all the time, but Tito’s regime was a symbol of independent communism. Even the American ambassador was predicting the country would survive beyond Tito. Of course, we were all wrong.” Pick will talk about her incredible career, the stories she has covered and the current challenges facing journalism.
Neal Ascherson went to King’s College, Cambridge, where he read history. The historian Eric Hobsbawm was his tutor and described him as “perhaps the most brilliant student I ever had. I didn’t really teach him much, I just let him get on with it.” After graduating he he chose a career in journalism, first at The Manchester Guardian and then at The Scotsman, The Observer and The Independent on Sunday.He contributed scripts for the documentary series The World at War (1973–74) and the Cold War (1998). He has also been a regular contributor to the London Review of Books. Ascherson has lectured and written extensively about Polish and Eastern Europe affairs.

Poor diet is the leading risk factor for ill health in the UK, carrying more risk than smoking or hypertension.

But in an era where we seem to be constantly bombarded with often conflicting messages about our diets, is all this information actually making us any healthier? How can we cut through media hysteria and use the science to make wise choices about the food we eat and how can the Government make sensible policy decisions to help with the impact our consumption habits have on our health.

Please register via the link provided.