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

About David:

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

Tickets are £5 which covers a working lunch.

A storytelling lecture about how we cope with climate change from the ‘attractively impish’ (The Guardian) Dr Matt Winning. Presented by Oxford Comedy Festival.

As seen as the Environmental Correspondent on ‘Unspun with Matt Forde’ on Dave, BBC Three and BBC Radio2.

‘everything a Fringe show should be: hilarious, personal, inventive, and something that will stay with you for some time to come’ ★★★★★ (EdFestMag)

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.

A conference exploring how we can get people who used to cycle, or have never cycled, onto bikes, and the role of virtual reality cycling.

Come and join us for a day full of informative talks, interactive workshops, cycle tours, an expert panel and demos and rides on ebikes and adapted bikes!

Ticket price includes lunch and refreshments.Who is this event for?

Council officers, elected councillors, transport and environmental campaign groups (local and national), Cyclox members, community organisations interested in transport, active travel and health, local businesses and educational institutions, academic, other professional experts, and interested members of the public (whether you cycle or don’t cycle).

By the end of the conference you will know how to:

> Create an age friendly locality, as a low traffic neighbourhood
> Share best practice case studies of effective interventions for active travel linking soft and hard measures
> Communicate the benefits of eBikes and how they can get people back cycling
> Convey the opportunities virtual reality can play in increasing activity for people who are housebound
> Contribute to the post-conference guide to promoting uptake of cycling

The conference is organised by Cyclox, the cycle campaign for Oxford, and Oxford Brookes University; it follows on from the University’s cycle BOOM research and current Co-CAFE project (www.cycleboom.org , www.co-cafe.org).

Architectural historian Professor James Stevens Curl is best known as the Editor of the Oxford Dictionary of Architecture. He also has uncompromising views on modern architecture which he sets out in his latest book, Making dystopia. Tonight’s talk for Oxford Civic Society marks his return to Oxford where he was the Society’s first Chairman in 1969. His talk is part of the Society’s 50th anniversary celebrations.

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.

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 persistence of poverty – in rich and poor countries alike – is one of the most serious problems facing humanity. But what is poverty and how much of it is there around the globe?

John Micklewright will present Professor Sir Tony Atkinson’s new book, Measuring Poverty around the World, which he and Andrea Brandolini edited after Sir Tony’s death.

The book talk will be followed by a discussion

Professor Sabina Alkire, Director, Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI)
Andrea Brandolini, Head, Statistical Analysis Directorate, DG Economics, Statistics and Research, Bank of Italy
Professor John Micklewright, Professor Emeritus, UCL
Professor Brian Nolan, Lead Researcher, Oxford Martin Programme on Inequality and Prosperity
There will be a drinks reception and book sale after the talk, all welcome

In a talk for Oxford Civic Society, Liz Woolley, and a representative of the company, talk about the history of one of the city’s great family firms. Kingerlee has constructed many of the best known buildings in and around Oxford such as the Jam Factory.

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.

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

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

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.

Sarah Weir OBE, Chief Executive, Design Council, will lecture on ‘Designing the Future: Who is doing it?’ She will consider the question of what design is – a mindset and skillset; critical thinking and creativity combined; much more than aesthetics.

The Lady English Lecture Series marks the College’s continuing commitment to the education and advancement of women and promotes the contributions made by women to the University and to public life more generally.

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.

Adam Smith is world-famous as a founding father of economics, and well-known to political theorists and philosophers for his Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS). His work as a jurist is much less well known. As a notorious perfectionist, he worked for decades on a book that would have spanned the ground between the moral philosophy of TMS and the empirical sociology and economics of Wealth of Nations (WN). He never completed it, and on his deathbed he asked his executors to destroy his manuscripts. Which, sadly for us, they did.

But thanks to two near-miraculous survivals we know a great deal about what Adam Smith’s book on jurisprudence would have said. Two of his Glasgow students kept detailed notes of his lectures there between 1762 and 1764. One set was rediscovered in 1895, the other in 1958. They were taken in successive academic years, and they show that Smith shifted the order in which he presented his topics, but not the essentials of his course. The two independent sources validate each other.

Professor Iain McLean will lay out the principles of Smith’s jurisprudence; show how it forms the bridge between TMS and WN; and try to show Smith’s half-submerged influence on the new republic of the United States, in whose revolution he took a great deal of interest.

The lecture opens a one-day workshop on Tuesday 13 November on the jurisprudence behind the writings and philosophy of Adam Smith.

Iain McLean was born and brought up in Edinburgh. He is Senior Research Fellow in Politics at Nuffield College, Oxford. One of his research interests is the interaction of the Scottish, American, and French Enlightenments of the 18th century. His Adam Smith: Radical and Egalitarian (2006) was written at the instigation of Smith’s fellow Fifer Gordon Brown.

Are we witnessing a new, more toxic kind of politics around the world? If so, what is the alternative? Should we lament a supposedly lost civility, or is the emergence of more forthright and angry disagreements in fact a good thing? What is the line between passionate disagreement and toxic bile? Who gets to decide what are acceptable and unacceptable forms of discourse? Ultimately, how do we live together when we disagree profoundly on major issues?
Topic: Politics
Format: Debate and Q&A session

When the UK joined the EU in 1973 all previous trade barriers with the EU were abolished, which led to a strong intensification of trade with the European continent.

This situation will soon be a thing of the past, however, as new trade barriers will be erected with the withdrawal. Since the food self-sufficiency rate in the UK is particular low newly invoked trade barriers will significantly affect how food is produced and consumed in the UK.

Please register via the link provided.

New technologies have always provoked panic about workers being replaced by machines.

In the past, such fears have been misplaced, and many economists maintain that they remain so today. Yet in A World Without Work, Daniel Susskind shows why this time really is different. Advances in artificial intelligence mean that all kinds of jobs are increasingly at risk.

Susskind will argue that machines no longer need to reason like us in order to outperform us. Increasingly, tasks that used to be beyond the capability of computers – from diagnosing illnesses to drafting legal contracts – are now within their reach. The threat of technological unemployment is real.

So how can we all thrive in a world with less work? Susskind will remind us that technological progress could bring about unprecedented prosperity, solving one of mankind’s oldest problems: making sure that everyone has enough to live on. The challenge will be to distribute this prosperity fairly, constrain the burgeoning power of Big Tech, and provide meaning in a world where work is no longer the centre of our lives.

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

Organised by Oxford Civic Society @oxcivicsoc. The Society’s Louise Thomas and Ian Green discuss the history of the city centre, emerging trends and their implications and present a vision which seizes opportunities and mitigates threats.. https://www.oxcivicsoc.org.uk/programme/

Come and take a role in a simulation of our world between now and 2030. It’s a challenging time and other people will have different objectives to yours.
How can business and society create the world we all want?
Can the UN Sustainable Development Goals help?

A panel exploring how universities can best support new students as they transition to University

6 speakers from 6 countries debate the proposition – chaired by Sir Trevor McDonald. All welcome.

This book colloquium will discuss Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, her influential account of the challenges to humanity posed by the digital future, specifically, how the commodification of personal information threatens our core values of freedom, democracy, and privacy.

In this masterwork of original thinking and research, Shoshana Zuboff provides startling insights into the phenomenon that she has named surveillance capitalism. The stakes could not be higher: a global architecture of behaviour modification threatens human nature in the twenty-first century just as industrial capitalism disfigured the natural world in the twentieth.

Zuboff vividly brings to life the consequences as surveillance capitalism advances from Silicon Valley into every economic sector. Vast wealth and power are accumulated in ominous new “behavioural futures markets”, where predictions about our behaviour are bought and sold, and the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new “means of behavioural modification”.

The threat has shifted from a totalitarian Big Brother state to a ubiquitous digital architecture: a “Big Other” operating in the interests of surveillance capital. Here is the crucible of an unprecedented form of power marked by extreme concentrations of knowledge and free from democratic oversight. Zuboff’s comprehensive and moving analysis lays bare the threats to twenty-first century society: a controlled “hive” of total connection that seduces with promises of total certainty for maximum profit – at the expense of democracy, freedom, and our human future.

With little resistance from law or society, surveillance capitalism is on the verge of dominating the social order and shaping the digital future – if we let it.

Participants include:
Dr Christopher Decker, Economist and Research Fellow, Faculty of Law, Oxford

Denis Galligan, Professor of Socio-Legal Studies, Oxford

Ivan Manokha, Lecturer in Political Economy, Oxford

Praise for The Age of Surveillance Capitalism:
“Easily the most important book to be published this century … this generation’s Das Kapital.”
— Zadie Smith

‘Job insecurity at the end of the 20th century has given way to income insecurity at the start of the 21st.’ – Andy Haldane, July 2019

Join us for a stimulating morning of talks exploring the current challenges of income insecurity, with keynote speaker Andy Haldane, Chief Economist at the Bank of England. We will discuss labour market precarity, pay volatility and income insecurity issues in the UK and more widely, and their implications for the labour market and the structure of the social security system.

Programme:

Welcome and introduction by Charles Godfray, Director, Oxford Martin School
Keynote address: Andy Haldane, Chief Economist at the Bank of England
‘Pay volatility and income insecurity: what role for social security?’ by Jane Millar, Professor of Social Policy, University of Bath
‘Measuring economic insecurity: Why and How?’ by Matteo Richiardi, Professor of Economics and Director of EUROMOD, University of Essex, INET Associate
Panel discussion and Q&A: chaired by Brian Nolan, Professor of Social Policy at Oxford, with speakers and Fran Bennett, Senior Research and Teaching Fellow, Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford
This event is free, but registration is essential to ensure your place.

You are welcome to bring lunch with you.

This series of talks is organised by the Oxford Martin School, Department of Social Policy and Intervention & Institute for New Economic Thinking, University of Oxford

Organised by Oxford Civic Society @oxcivicsoc. The contest between modern architecture and its alternatives may never be resolved, but Alan Powers, academic and writer, makes the case for greater tolerance and renewed understanding of the ways in which buildings contribute to our enjoyment of places.. https://www.oxcivicsoc.org.uk/programme/

The city of Hereford stands a couple of hours from Oxford along one of the most scenic train rides in England. Follow the Medieval Pilgrim trail, discovering a landscape alive with holy wells, sacred shrines, ancient mysteries and miraculous saints.

Become a Medieval Tourist: Herefordshire Pilgrimages
With Tim Porter, Historian

Wed 15 Apr, 2–4pm
Ashmolean Museum Lecture Theatre

Tickets are: £12 (Full Price) / £11 (Concession) / £10 (Members)
Includes a break for tea and biscuits
https://www.ashmolean.org/event/become-a-medieval-tourist-herefordshire-pilgrimages

Lecture 2: The case for collective defined contribution (CDC)
On any sensible approach to the valuation of a DB scheme, ineliminable risk will remain that returns on a portfolio weighted towards return-seeking equities and property will fall significantly short of fully funding the DB pension promise. On the actuarial approach, this risk is deemed sufficiently low that it is reasonable and prudent to take in the case of an open scheme that will be cashflow positive for many decades. But if they deem the risk so low, shouldn’t scheme members who advocate such an approach be willing to put their money where their mouth is, by agreeing to bear at least some of this downside risk through a reduction in their pensions if returns are not good enough to achieve full funding? Some such conditionality would simply involve a return to the practices of DB pension schemes during their heyday three and more decades ago. The subsequent hardening of the pension promise has hastened the demise of DB. The target pensions of collective defined contribution (CDC) might provide a means of preserving the benefits of collective pensions, in a manner that is more cost effective for all than any form of defined benefit promise. In one form of CDC, the risks are collectively pooled across generations. In another form, they are collectively pooled only among the members of each age cohorts.