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

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

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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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

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.

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.

Join us for a special lecture with St Cross alumna Lisa Downing, who will discuss the research behind her new book: Selfish Women. This event will be followed by a drinks reception.
Lisa Downing is Professor of French Discourses of Sexuality at the University of Birmingham, UK. She is a specialist in interdisciplinary sexuality and gender studies, critical theory, and the history of cultural concepts, focusing especially on questions of exceptionality, difficulty, and (ab)normality. Recent books include: The Subject of Murder: Gender, Exceptionality, and the Modern Killer (2013); Fuckology: Critical Essays on John Money’s Diagnostic Concepts (co-authored with Iain Morland and Nikki Sullivan, 2015); and After Foucault (as editor, 2018), as well as Selfish Women. Her next book project will be a short manifesto entitled Against Affect.
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.

Inaugural event in our new events series focusing on responsible leadership: Driving Diversity and Inclusion Seminar Series.
Progress on diversity in the UK civil service and why it matters. How the dial only really shifted on gender, and why the focus is now on inclusion and addressing bullying and harassment. What the good leaders are doing?
Dame Sue Owen will give a talk followed by a Q&A with the audience moderated by Sue Dopson, Rhodes Trust Professor of Organisational Behaviour, Fellow of Green Templeton College, Deputy Dean of Saïd Business School.
Event Schedule:
17:15 – Registration opens
17:45 – Event starts
18:45 – Drinks reception
19:45 – Close
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.
Blackwell’s is delighted to be welcoming Alex J. Bellamy to explore his new book ‘World Peace (And How We Can Achieve It) as part of our ‘For Learning, For Life’ series.
Synopsis
For as long as there has been war, there have been demands for its elimination. The quest for world peace has excited and eluded political leaders, philosophers, religious elders, activists, and artists for millennia. With war on the rise once again, we rarely reflect on what world peace might look like; much less on how it might be achieved.
World Peace aims to change all that and show that world peace is possible. Because the motives, rationales, and impulses that give rise to war – the quest for survival, enrichment, solidarity, and glory – are now better satisfied through peaceful means, war is an increasingly anachronistic practice, more likely to impoverish and harm us humans than satisfy and protect us. This book shows that we already have many of the institutions and practices needed to make peace possible and sets out an agenda for building world peace. In the immediate term, it shows how steps to strengthen compliance with international law, improve collective action such as international peacekeeping and peacebuilding, better regulate the flow of arms, and hold individuals legally accountable for acts of aggression or atrocity crimes can make our world more peaceful. It also shows how in the long term, building strong and legitimate states that protect the rights and secure the livelihoods of their people, gender equal societies, and protecting the right of individuals to opt-out of wars has the potential to establish and sustain world peace. But it will only happen, if individuals organize to make it happen.
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’
Hear a whole phD in just three minutes!
Can you understand a whole phD in just three minutes? Perhaps you are an Undergraduate or Masters student who is aiming for a future PhD?
Join Humanities and Social Sciences PhD students as we challenge them to boil down their whole PhD to just three minutes and one slide – in a way that makes sense to everyone!
One estimate suggests that $2.3trillion was invested in infrastructure worldwide last year.
That vast investment has provided roads, power plants, mobile phone networks, dams and recycling plants. Whether those investments have been sustainable is questionable.
As well as providing essential services that people need, infrastructure too often locks in carbon emissions, fragments habitats and opens them up for exploitation, appropriates land and exacerbates inequalities. In many respects, choices about infrastructure investment are a remarkable point of leverage, when the future course of development is set, literally, in concrete.Too often these decisions are subject to political patronage, rent seeking and worse.
This lecture will examine the many impacts that infrastructure can have on sustainable development, for better or for worse. Professor Hall will share experiences of establishing long-term plans for sustainable infrastructure in many countries around the world.
Part of the Oxford Martin School Lecture Series: ‘Shaping the future’
Globally, renewable energy has a foot in the door. But significant challenges remain.
Will we be able to execute on the rapid deployment of zero carbon energy required to meet a 1.5C future? This presentation highlights the major challenges and provides some early insights on how we might tackle these significant societal issues.
Part of the Oxford Martin School Lecture Series: ‘Shaping the future’