Some face-to-face events are returning. Check carefully for any requirements.

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)

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
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.

St Peter’s College welcomes you to a talk about Lord Nuffield, a leading figure in St Peter’s early history.
William Morris, Lord Nuffield, probably did more than any other individual to transform Oxford in the twentieth century, physically, economically and socially. His success as an industrialist allowed him to become one of Britain’s most generous benefactors; he gave away the equivalent of £1.5 billion in today’s money, to causes including health, education and academic research. This talk looks specifically at Lord Nuffield’s vital support to various Oxford colleges, including the saving of St Peter’s from closure, andhttps://interestingtalks.in/Oxford/# the founding of the college which bears his name, Nuffield College. It also explores his complex and sometimes difficult relationship with the university.
St Peter’s College Chapel
Free to attend
All welcome
Blackwell’s are delighted to present our monthly series of talks, Philosophy in the Bookshop. In a very special event, our programme moves across the street to the Sheldonian Theatre for one night only.
Do we need God in order to explain the existence of the universe? Do we need God in order to be good?
Join Richard Dawkins for a special evening at the Sheldonian Theatre where he will be introducing his book ‘Outgrowing God’, addressing some of the most profound questions human beings confront. Professor Dawkins will be interviewed by author Nigel Warburton.
Should we believe in God? In this new book written for a new generation, the brilliant science writer and author of the international bestseller, ‘The God Delusion’, explains why we shouldn’t.
Richard Dawkins was fifteen when he stopped believing in God. Deeply impressed by the beauty and complexity of living things, he’d felt certain they must have had a designer. Learning about evolution changed his mind. Now one of the world’s best and bestselling science communicators, Richard Dawkins has given readers, young and old, the same opportunity to rethink the big questions.
In ‘Outgrowing God’, Richard Dawkins marshals science, philosophy and comparative religion to interrogate the hypocrisies of all the religious systems and explains to readers of all ages how life emerged without a Creator, how evolution works and how our world came into being.
Richard Dawkins is author of ‘The Selfish Gene’, voted The Royal Society’s Most Inspiring Science Book of All Time, and also the bestsellers ‘The Blind Watchmaker’, ‘Climbing Mount Improbable’, ‘The Ancestor’s Tale’, ‘The God Delusion’, and two volumes of autobiography, ‘An Appetite for Wonder’ and ‘Brief Candle in the Dark’. He is a Fellow of New College, Oxford and both the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Literature. In 2013, Dawkins was voted the world’s top thinker in Prospect magazine’s poll of 10,000 readers from over 100 countries.
Nigel Warburton is a public philosopher and author. As well as being the host of the podcast ‘Philosophy Bites’ with David Edmonds, he is also the author of the bestselling ‘A Little History of Philosophy’, ‘Philosophy : The Classics’, ‘Free Speech: A Very Short Introduction’ and many others.
Tickets cost £10. Seating in the Sheldonian is unreserved and allocated on a first come, first served basis. Doors for entry will open at 6:15pm. For all enquiries please email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk or call 01865 333623.
An amusing talk and exploration of AI and the future of technology. Is the future more absurd than comedians can imagine? Will a driver-less BMW still cut you up? What do we do when a human doesn’t pass the Turing test? Computers have beaten chess masters but can they beat comedians?
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.
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.

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
Alongside our conference on 19th October, Greene’s Institute will be hosting our first public event: a special interactive keynote with Professor Henrike Lähnemann (University of Oxford). This event promises to be a fantastic exploration of one of the most important acts of translation in European history. All are welcome.
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 all living longer, but we are ill prepared, both as individuals and as a society, and attitudes towards ageing remain stubbornly negative, in spite of evidence that older people are some of the most satisfied with life. This session will debunk some myths, challenge stereotypes and consider what we can do to age well.
This talk is delivered by Penny Thewlis, Chief Executive of Age UK Oxfordshire.
With a background in public services, Penny joined Age UK Oxfordshire in 2000 to undertake a study of the needs and aspirations of older people in rural communities and stayed to work alongside older people and communities to implement the recommendations. Penny is passionate about asset based approaches, about changing the narrative on ageing and about ensuring older people have a voice.
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.

A Taste of Pompeii, with Sally Grainger
Evening Talk and Tasting
Tue 29 Oct, 6.30–9.30pm
Join author of The Classical Cookbook Sally Grainger as she shares her knowledge of classical Roman recipes adapted for the contemporary cook, painting a vibrant picture of wining and dining in the ancient world. Having whetted your appetite, enjoy a tasting array of dipping sauces in the ‘Taberna Ashmolean’.
Tickets are £35 each.
Entry is via the Front Door. Doors open 6pm, lecture at 6.30 pm.
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
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.

he Technical & Moral Singularity- a Conversation about Artificial Intelligence and Ethics
This event is a conversation between Prof Nigel Crook (Head of Computing and Communication Technologies (CCT) and Interim Head of Mechanical Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, Oxford Brookes) and Dr Steven Croft (Bishop of Oxford and member of House of Lords Select Committee on AI). You can read about Bishop Stevens encounter with Artie (in the picture above) here.
This event is free however as seating is limited please book a place. in Eventbrite There are pay and display spaces available on the campus from 16.30.

In this lecture, in honour of Edward Greene, Donald Meek will describe the fascinating process of Gaelic Bible translation in Scotland and Ireland. Beginning with the standard Gaelic Bible, translated between 1767 and 1804, Donald will explain its creation, and its debts to the work of earlier translators and revisers, including the Rev. Robert Kirk of Aberfoyle (who produced ‘Kirk’s Bible in 1690), but pre-eminently to the foundational labours of the translators of the Bible into Classical Gaelic in Ireland in the earlier seventeenth century. Both the principal translators of that period – Bishop William Ó Dómhnaill and Bishop William Bedell – studied at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where they were trained in biblical languages by the first Master of Emmanuel, Lawrence Chadderton. By way of comparison and contrast, brief reference will be made to the somewhat different histories of Bible translation into Manx and Welsh. The lecture will conclude with some discussion of the profound influence of the Gaelic Bible on the development of modern Scottish Gaelic literature, and its enduring legacy

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
In this book talk, Professor Sonia Contera will talk about how Nanotechnology is transforming medicine and the future of biology.
Please register via the link provided. This book talk will be followed by a drinks reception, book sale and book signing, all welcome.
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.

Bomberg and Kitaj – Two Types of Jewish Agony in Paint
With Sir Simon Schama, Art Historian, Author and BBC Presenter
Sat 14 Dec, 12–1pm
Mathematical Institute, Woodstock Road (Venue changed)
Tickets are FREE. Booking is essential:
ashmolean.org/event/beauforest-lecture-2019
Although separated by a generation, artists David Bomberg (b. 1890) and R. B. Kitaj (b.1932) shared a passionate intensity in their work that was marked by their response to the deeply troubled century in which they lived, and in particular, the rise of antisemitism. Learn how both painters expressed the power of art to mirror the darkness of the contemporary world.
This event is the 2019 Beauforest Lecture.
www.ashmolean.org/event/beauforest-lecture-2019
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.
Lord Sumption will discuss the impact on our constitution and political system of the referendum of 2016 and its aftermath.
Part of the Oxford Martin Lecture Series: ‘Shaping the future’
St Benet’s Hall marks a special exhibition of The Rule of St Benedict MS. Hatton 48, fols. 14v-15r at the Weston Library, with a series of lectures on aspects of the mediaeval Benedictine contribution to scholarship, libraries and spirituality.
The lecture programme takes place at the Weston Library, Broad Street, Oxford, OX1 3BG
14:30-15.30
Living the Rule of Saint Benedict in England, from the Middle Ages to the Reformation
Professor James Clark, Professor of History, University of Exeter
15.30-16.20
Benedictine Libraries in Medieval England: a Changing Perspective
Professor Richard Sharpe FBA, Hon. MRIA, Professor of Diplomatic, Wadham College, University of Oxford
16.30-17.20
The Rule as a Living Document
The Very Rev. Oswald McBride, OSB, Prior, St Benet’s Hall, University of Oxford
A drinks reception follows the final lecture, from 17:30 to 18:10.
Booking is essential, for each lecture.
Those attending the lectures are welcome to join Vespers at St Benet’s Hall, 38 St Giles, OX1 3LN at 6.30pm.
What can dance tell us about human rights? What can hip hop say about equality and human dignity? Join an evening of dance and discussion to find out.
We’ll watch live dance that explores the theme of human rights, with performances from Blakely White-McGuire, Eliot Smith and Body Politic Dance. We’ll celebrate art’s power to challenge the social and political turmoil we face around the world today.
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/