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

Oct 24 @ 7:30 pm – 8:30 pm The Sheldonian Theatre
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[...]
Oct 29 @ 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm Blackwell's Bookshop
David Miles, former Chief Archaeologist at English Heritage and former Director of the Oxford Archaeological Unit, will be with us here at Blackwell’s to discuss his latest book, The Land of the White Horse: Visions[...]
Oct 31 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm Blackwell's Bookshop
Blackwell’s are delighted to be hosting a special Hallowe’en event exploring black magic, with Thomas Waters and Lucie McKnight Hardy as they discuss their books ‘Cursed Britain: A History of Witchcraft and Black Magic in[...]
Nov 5 @ 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm Wolfson College - Leonard Wolfson Auditorium
Join prize-winning author Olivia Laing in conversation with Professor Dame Hermione Lee. Olivia Laing is the author of To the River, The Trip to Echo Spring and The Lonely City. Her latest book, Crudo, is[...]
Nov 6 @ 5:30 pm – 6:30 pm Jacqueline du Pre Music Building
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[...]
Nov 14 @ 5:15 pm – 6:45 pm Shulman Auditorium
Join Galician poet Chus Pato and Canadian translator Erín Moure for a reading from Chus Pato’s new book of poems, Un libre favor. The event marks the completion of their residency with The Queen’s College[...]
Nov 19 @ 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm Wolfson College - Leonard Wolfson Auditorium
Biographer and critic Lucasta Miller will give this term’s lecture in memory of Harry M Weinrebe, philanthropist and founder of the Dorset Foundation. A former visiting scholar at the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing and Beaufort[...]
Dec 2 @ 5:30 pm – 6:30 pm Wolfson College
Join us for a reception to celebrate Elleke Boehmer’s new short story collection, with a reading of the story, ‘The Biographer and the Wife’, and a discussion of the biographer as a source of creative[...]
Dec 3 @ 8:00 pm – 9:15 pm St Margaret's Institute
The talk will provide an overview of dragonflies and their life cycles and habitats as well illustrating a number of species that occur in England including those that are currently colonising from the Continent and[...]
Jan 15 @ 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm Blackwell's Boookshop
Blackwell’s is thrilled to be welcoming Jenny Hartley, author of ‘Charles Dickens: A Very Short Introduction’ to explore all elements of one of our most popular authors. Why not make 2020 the year you pick[...]
Jan 23 @ 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm Blackwell's Bookshop
Make 2020 the year when you delve into Crime Fiction with this talk from best-selling author, Sophie Hannah, on her new book, Haven’t They Grown as part of our For Learning, For Life series. Synopsis:[...]
Jan 31 @ 5:45 pm – 7:00 pm Simpkins Lee Theatre, Lady Margaret Hall
Claire Tomalin was born in 1933 in London to an English mother, the composer Muriel Herbert (linnrecords.com), and a French father. After a somewhat disorganised wartime childhood she studied at Cambridge, married the journalist Nicholas[...]
Feb 4 @ 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm Oxford Brookes University, Union Hall John Henry Brookes Building, Headington Campus
Discover how art can inflict both harm and harmony in this special live performance of Iris Murdoch’s Art and Eros. A panel discussion will follow a 45 minute play acted by Oxford Brookes University drama[...]
Feb 4 @ 3:30 pm – 5:30 pm Oxford Brookes University, Student Union Gallery
What’s it like to be haunted? Writer Jay Bernard’s augmented reality installation explores this question – unpicking how we can be haunted by our histories and our everyday lives. Listen to a reading while exploring[...]
Feb 4 @ 8:00 pm – 9:15 pm St Margaret's Institute
Warburg Memorial Lecture – Joint with BBOWT Volunteer-based botanical monitoring has been a mainstay of British and Irish botany for decades, but only recently has a recording scheme for plant communities been established. Dr Pescott[...]
Feb 13 @ 5:30 pm – 6:30 pm Oxford Brookes University
A talk from Homeless Oxfordshire about how they strive to be effective and appropriately challenge perceptions, how they are responsive to need and compassion to fellow human beings, and brave enough not to give up[...]
Feb 25 @ 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm Wolfson College, Leonard Wolfson Auditorium
James Joyce by Richard Ellmann was described by Anthony Burgess as “the greatest literary biography of the twentieth century.” After making a case in support of this claim, I shall tell the story of the[...]
Feb 27 @ 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm Lincoln College, Oakshott Room
Lincoln Leads is a series of seminars tackling a different theme every week. All are warmly invited to attend this year’s Shakespeare Seminar on February 27th which will explore the question ‘Can Editing Influence a[...]
Mar 10 @ 1:15 pm – 3:00 pm Wolfson College, The Buttery
Blake Gopnik’s definitive biography digs deep into the radical genius of Andy Warhol. Based on years of archival research and on interviews with hundreds of Warhol’s surviving friends, lovers and enemies, Warhol traces the artist’s[...]
Mar 16 @ 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm Wolfson College, Leonard Wolfson Auditorium
Please note that this event has been cancelled. Join novelist Sarah Moss and historian Sarah Knott in conversation with critic Merve Emre.
Mar 28 @ 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm The Sheldonian
A conversation about life-writing and the Lives of Houses. With Hermione Lee, Roy Foster, Alexandra Harris, and Robert Douglas-Fairhurst.
Apr 7 @ 9:30 am – 6:00 pm Rewley House
An exploration of the work of prolific writer Jenny Diski, with a keynote lecture from Blake Morrison.
Jun 2 @ 8:00 pm – 9:15 pm St Margaret's Institute
Identification, ecology and conservation of amphibians found in Oxfordshire.
Jul 7 @ 8:00 pm – 9:15 pm St Margaret's Institute
To enhance our natural environment, we need to put the environment back into the heart of the economy. Using natural capital as the guiding principle, we can leave a better environment for future generations, implementing[...]
Oct 13 @ 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm Online
In this talk Natasha Randall explores the task of biographical research into the figure of the literary translator Constance Garnett. Translators notionally produce non-original text but are there aspects of their work, their semantic tendencies[...]
Oct 15 all-day Online
Narrative Futures is an interactive podcast featuring interviews with leading authors and editors in the speculative genre and writing prompts designed to support the imagination of better futures. Narrative Futures is the capstone podcast project[...]
Oct 27 @ 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm Online
Lt. Major Cecilia Diaconeasa was a Cold War secret police informant who in March 1983, several weeks after the birth of her baby daughter, was assigned to extract confessions from a woman suspected of collaborating[...]
Nov 3 @ 5:30 pm – 6:30 pm Online
This is the Weinrebe Lecture in Life-Writing for Michaelmas Term 2020. Hermione Lee, whose biography of Tom Stoppard is published by Faber on 1 October, talks about his life and work, and the challenges for[...]
Nov 10 @ 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm Online
In her mid-20s, Heidi Williamson was part of a Scottish community that suffered an inconceivable tragedy, the Dunblane Primary School shooting. Through poems about landscape and loss, the poems in her third collection, Return by[...]
Nov 17 @ 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm Online
Following her Research Forum talk in Trinity 2020, ‘The Elusive Subject: Biographies of Exiles’ Soledad Fox Maura returns to the OCLW programme for the launch of her first novel, Madrid Again (Simon & Schuster), in[...]