Oxford and Prague have played central roles in developing innovative pedagogical systems in astronomy, biology, chemistry, medicine, and physics. Indeed, they have been heavily involved in fostering international networks of scientific and medical knowledge since the medieval period. Thanks to a Fell-funded TORCH International Partnership ‘Creative Cities’, The Oxford Centre for the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology has a multi-year partnership with Charles University, Prague, drawing on historical, intellectual, and research links. As part of this partnership, on Thursday 26 June Oxford is hosting a workshop showcasing work-in-progress from postgraduate students and early career researchers at the University of Oxford and Charles University (Prague). This workshop will focus on topics in the history of science, medicine, technology, and the environment, and the role of translations, networks, and place in shaping histories and practices of knowledge of the natural world. All are welcome; registration required for lunch. Read more about the Fell-funded TORCH International Partnership: Creative Cities on the TORCH website. Register for the event on Eventbrite.
In 2025, digital infrastructure is already a part of our everyday existence. From generative AI shaping communication to geopolitical cyberconflicts and climate-tech entanglements, our connected systems of the Internet carry unprecedented power and risks. The digital sphere is fragmented by platform politics, algorithmic opacity and widening access gaps, reinforcing existing inequalities in new forms. Within this complexity also lies opportunity – an opportunity to not just critique the systems we inherit, but also to actively rewire them. At Connected Life 2025, we shift the conversation from critique to creation. Under the theme C³ – Connect. Create. Compute., we engage with three core dimensions of this transformation: how we connect across fragmented digital spaces; how we create tools, norms and cultures through design and policy; and how we compute the data and architecture that underpin our digital world. From global governance and grassroots innovation to virtual identities, we foreground interdisciplinary dialogue and practice-based research aimed at reimagining the digital sphere from the ground up. The theme of Connect (1), Create (2) and Compute (3) includes: “Connect” emphasises the importance of building networks and sharing insights across disciplines to enhance understanding of digital phenomena. “Create” refers to the innovative methodologies and tools developed to study complex online environments and the novel ways social interactions manifest online. “Compute” highlights the integral role of computational techniques and data analytics in extracting meaningful patterns and trends from vast amounts of digital data. Through keynote talks, panel discussions, and a poster exhibit, Connected Life offers a multi-dimensional engagement in this one-day conference — connecting people, creating ideas, and computing change. Join us in shaping how we live, design, and act in a deeply connected digital world. Call for Speakers Please apply using the link below by 2nd June 2025. Applications will be reviewed on rolling basis. https://forms.office.com/e/NkgBuURGBh To encourage diverse and uncommon perspectives, the organising committee of Connected Life 2025 welcomes both speaker and poster proposals from researchers, designers, policymakers, students, and faculty across disciplines, including but not limited to digital humanities, law and technology, critical data studies, science and technology studies, surveillance studies, international relations, design, media and communications, politics, sociology, economics, education, computer science, history, and philosophy. Proposals from individual speakers are welcomed alongside those from multiple contributors. Registration We are excited to announce that tickets for Connected Life 2025 are now live! Join us on Thursday, 26th June 2025, in Oxford, UK for a one-day interdisciplinary conference exploring how we connect, create, and compute in an increasingly digital world. Expect keynotes, panels and a poster sessions to cover topics across: Governance and Infrastructure Digital Society and Empowerment Evolving digital Markets Creativity and Humanities Tickets costs £25.00 per person.
From its development in the 1980s, the sanctuary city movement—municipal protection of people with uncertain migration status from national immigration enforcement—has been an influential and controversial aspect of progressive migration policy reform. While some migration activists view sanctuary city policy as the most critical aspect of their work, others see it as actively impairing efforts in the fight for migrant rights. In Making Sanctuary Cities, Rachel Humphris offers a new understanding of how citizenship is negotiated and contested in sanctuary cities, as well as the political potential that this designation both opens and closes. Through long-term fieldwork across the sanctuary cities of San Francisco, Sheffield, and Toronto—three of the first municipalities to adopt this designation in their respective countries—Humphris investigates the complexity of sanctuary city policy. By capturing the wide-ranging meanings and practices of sanctuary in a comparative context, Humphris uncovers how liberal citizenship is undermined by the very thing that makes it worth investing in: the promise of equality. Attending to the tensions inherent in sanctuary policy, this book raises vital questions about how governing systems can undermine political ideals and how communities choose to live and organise to fight for a better world. Register in advance for this meeting: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/QStDRuIqS8GJ1-Un6jhwMQ
We are delighted to announce that The Annual Oxford Transnational and Global History Conference will be held online and in-person at the History Faculty, University of Oxford, on 26-27 June. The theme of the conference this year is *Global Empires: Transitions, Imaginations, and Contestations*. The programme features three online panels on day 1 and four in-person panels (which will also be streamed live on Zoom) on day 2 at the Rees Davies Room. Prof Alan Lester (Sussex) will deliver the keynote lecture titled *_Everywhere and all at Once: The Global Restructuring of the British Empire_*. The conference will end with a recital by John Pfumojena, called _Mbira Music: Beyond the Imperial Meridian_. The full schedule can be found here: https://www.oxfordtghs.com/conference *Register for Day 1 (online only) - Thursday 26 June, 11:00-17:00* here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/GbS81GySSgy9G0J6ZD-6xA#/registration *Register for Day 2 (Hybrid) - Friday 27 June, 09:00-18:45* Online here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/IFNdj3x6SJCYLQP4jiXEYQ#/registration In person here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdEKZo81zvzlyZSThYMC967Eb9k1bJN03eZDk-ddMluafIO6w/viewform
From warzones to parliaments, from supply chains to student movements, feminist perspectives offer powerful tools for understanding how power works in the world today. But what does it really mean to "make feminist sense" of global politics—and why does it matter now more than ever? Join the Oxford University International Relations Society for an in-depth conversation with Professor Cynthia Enloe, a pioneering scholar of feminist international relations, as she explores how paying attention to the margins—especially the experiences of women—can radically change how we understand conflict, diplomacy, security, and resistance. This event is open to all members of the University of Oxford. Speaker Bio: Cynthia Enloe is Research Professor at Clark University and a globally renowned scholar in feminist international relations. Her pathbreaking books—including Bananas, Beaches and Bases, The Curious Feminist, and Nimo’s War, Emma’s War—have reshaped how scholars and activists alike approach questions of gender, militarism, and power. Her work continues to inspire new generations to think critically about the politics of everyday life.
As cities across the Global South confront the urgent challenge of reducing carbon emissions, low-carbon mobility transitions have become central to planning and policy agendas. Yet these transitions are often framed in narrow, technocratic terms—focused primarily on electric vehicle adoption—while overlooking the complex social, economic, and political realities that shape informal transport systems. This webinar explores the political economy of low-carbon transitions in popular transport systems that underpin everyday mobility across much of the Global South. It asks: Who drives the agenda for electric mobility? What forms of knowledge inform—or are excluded from—policy? And how can these transitions become more inclusive, context-sensitive, and just? Bringing together researchers from diverse regions, the session will critically examine how popular transport systems can be transformed in ways that are both environmentally sustainable and socially equitable.
Assays for pathogenic antibodies were first developed in the early 1970s. Little improvement was made in the accuracy of these test systems until the mid 2000s where our understanding of the importance of test substrate slowly shifted. At the same time the CNS was considered an immune privileged location where antibodies did not cause disease, but researchers at the Mayo Clinic led by Dr. Vanda Lennon demonstrated that antibodies to aquaporin-4 were present in people with a Multiple Sclerosis-like disease called Neuromyelitis optica. Antibodies (with complement) cause lesions in the optic nerve, spinal cord and brain. Over the following 15 years researchers at Pennsylvania (Dr. Dalmau), Barcelona (Drs Dalmau and Graus) and Oxford (Drs Vincent, Irani, Pettingill and I) identified 15-20 new antibody targets that are used in over 60 countries to support a clinical diagnosis of different CNS diseases. These tests are not available in developing countries. I will share what I have learnt during this exciting period when autoimmune neurology was established.
Lesson of the week, clinical cases and research. All clinical and academic staff and students welcome. Coffee, Tea and Cake will be served.
A study day on the theme of 'Reproduction', followed by a handling session in the History of Art Photo and Slide Archive.
Could your research be at the heart of an artistic collaboration in the new Schwarzman Humanities building? Have you got an idea for a display or performance that showcases your work in new ways to new audiences? Or would you like some inspiration as to how to connect your research with musicians, artists, writers, and performers from across the world? Come along for a discussion with John Fulljames, director of the Schwarzman Cultural Programme, to find out more about how early career academics in the Humanities can engage with the Cultural Programme and take advantage of the opportunities it offers. All early career and fixed-term academics in the Humanities are welcome. Refreshments will be served. Where: The Ryle Room in the Radcliffe Humanities building (Woodstock Road). The Ryle Room is on the first floor (there is a lift, and step-free access). It will also be possible to join online via Teams. For more information and to register, visit: https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=G96VzPWXk0-0uv5ouFLPkbn5oCZaGQRBv847Wu0DU6hUQkpUVjlWUDlQQTVGV1BGNTNZUVczM1o2Ti4u
In this session, we will explore how to make the most of various social media platforms to promote your work, expand your network, and find resources to support your studies, as well as your personal and professional development. We will also discuss the purpose of each platform and the social norms associated with them, so you can make the most out of them. This is intended to be an interactive session. If you’d like to participate, please bring a mobile device with you. However, you are welcome to simply listen in if you prefer. Puiyin is an experienced digital education professional specialises in Digital Pedagogy and Digital Transformation. She is also a PhD researcher at Lancaster University; her work explores the interplay between pedagogies and technology for learning and professional development. With nearly 20 years experience in HE and a keen interest in bringing people together, she is connected to colleagues in the UK and internationally. Importantly, as a person from the Global Majority, she empathises with her peers from underrepresented groups. Puiyin runs an award winning webinar series - #TELresearchers & #HEresearchers that introduces educational researchers from around the world to the HE community.
Health economic models are crucial for setting healthcare priorities and assessing the financial value of interventions, especially given the limitations of randomised clinical trials (RCTs). Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading global cause of death, but prevention efforts often start too late. Long-term prevention studies are expensive and challenging, making epidemiological modelling, such as Mendelian Randomisation, essential. The health economic model for the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease (HEM-PPCVD) model will appropriately capture all costs and value health outcomes of existing and new health interventions and this approach will identify at-risk individuals early when we take into consideration the cumulative impact of modifiable risk factors, ultimately saving lives and improving access to preventive measures.
Based on multi-sited ethnography conducted primarily in Shenzhen and Hefei between 2017 and 2019, this book introduces the concept of ‘burnout market feminism’ to explore the lives of elite urban businesswomen in the Internet Age. Burnout market feminism is a critical theoretical combination of Chinese feminist Li Xiaojiang’s market feminism and Korean-German cultural theorist Han Byung-Chul’s Burnout Society. While Li’s market feminism recognises the rise of gendered subjectivities and solidarity fostered by the market ‒ paralleling the pursuit of freedom and liberty in post-socialist contexts ‒ Han warns that digital infrastructure has intensified neoliberal capitalism, driving individuals towards voluntary self-exploitation and burnout. To unravel the puzzle of how women in China have thrived in business despite state crackdowns on feminism, it is essential to examine the role of the market in post-socialist China and the evolving interplay between illiberal politics and a neoliberal economy. Empirically, the book delves into the multiplicity and nuance of businesswomen’s lived experiences and their negotiations with patriarchy across different socio-cultural contexts, particularly their confrontations with hetero-patriarchal intimacy norms and male-dominated guanxi business practices. Despite following diverse paths, these women share a common pursuit of achievement and growth ‒ a pursuit that paradoxically narrows their market feminist efforts and leads to burnout, as these negotiations are often reduced to contingent bargains within a neoliberal framework. The book also extends the discussion of burnout beyond the neoliberal framework, incorporating feminist critiques of women’s burnout under patriarchy and post-colonial critiques of burnout within a rhetorically socialist authoritarian state. The term ‘Internet Age’ highlights how individual and business success in a supposedly digital-driven economy becomes subsumed into the nationalistic narrative of the ‘China Dream’. Ling Tang 唐凌 (they/she) is a lecturer in cultural studies at the University of Melbourne. They research and create progressive practices in the market in post-socialist China. As an activist-artist-academic, they promote feminism, queerness, and inclusive Chineseness through research, teaching, art-making, and social engagement. They are committed to public humanities and innovative methodologies. Tang’s recent project is a letter book collaboration with Chinese feminist Li Xiaojiang, titled 华人家园 Homeland for Chinese (2024, Global Century Press), which is Li’s memoir in the form of letters addressed to Tang. Tang’s music is available on various platforms under the name Lyn Dawn or 唐凌.
We are delighted to announce that The Annual Oxford Transnational and Global History Conference will be held online and in-person at the History Faculty, University of Oxford, on 26-27 June. The theme of the conference this year is *Global Empires: Transitions, Imaginations, and Contestations*. The programme features three online panels on day 1 and four in-person panels (which will also be streamed live on Zoom) on day 2 at the Rees Davies Room. Prof Alan Lester (Sussex) will deliver the keynote lecture titled *_Everywhere and all at Once: The Global Restructuring of the British Empire_*. The conference will end with a recital by John Pfumojena, called _Mbira Music: Beyond the Imperial Meridian_. The full schedule can be found here: https://www.oxfordtghs.com/conference *Register for Day 2 (Hybrid) - Friday 27 June, 09:00-18:45* Online here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/IFNdj3x6SJCYLQP4jiXEYQ#/registration In person here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdEKZo81zvzlyZSThYMC967Eb9k1bJN03eZDk-ddMluafIO6w/viewform
How to Spin Out Your Climate-Tech Research A full-day workshop for Oxford academics exploring climate-tech spinouts 📅 Date: 27 June 2025 🕙 Time: 09:30 AM – 5:00 PM 📍 Location: Linbury Room, Worcester College 🚀 Are you open to founding a spin-out business? Join the Day ZERO Climate Spin-outs Workshop, a one-day immersive course designed specifically for Oxford University academics who are curious about turning their climate-related research into impactful ventures. Whether you’re a DPhil student, Postdoc, or Professor, if you've never explored the spin-out path before, this is your chance to: ✔ Explore what’s possible and decide if spinning out is right for you ✔ Understand the spin-out pathway: from IP and team formation to fundraising ✔ Access expert guidance and support available within Oxford ✔ Build connections and learn from those who’ve done it We’re bringing together the full support ecosystem—including seasoned founders, IP experts, and investors—so you can get the clarity, confidence, and contacts you need to take your next steps. 🗓 Agenda Highlights Morning: Is your idea viable? Market analysis & commercial sense-checking IP, tech transfer, and legal foundations Forming a team, equity splits, and cap table basics Afternoon: Getting buy-in from investors Building your early network Pitching to win 👥 Who should attend? Oxford University academics at all levels who are: Conducting research in climate or sustainability Curious about the commercialisation route Yet to found or co-found a spin-out company No prior experience in business required—just ambition and an open mind. 👇 Register now — free to attend! 🧠 Organised by the ZERO Founders Network, with experts including: Prof Paul Shearing (Director, ZERO Institute) Chris Morton (Royal Society Entrepreneur-in-Residence) Katy Tuncer (Entrepreneur-in-Residence, ZERO) Motoaki Sumi (Co-Founder & CEO, Ascension) Marcel Seger (DPhil Student & Venture Scout)
Lukas Krone Sir Henry Wellcome Fellow 'Bidirectional control of sleep using cortical chemogenetics' Jakub Tomek Sir Henry Wellcome Fellow 'Master (bad) statistics in 15 minutes' Thomas Mulroney BHF Immediate Basic Science Research Fellow 'RNA technology for development of cardiovascular disease therapeutics' Jacinta Kalisch-Smith BHF CRE Intermediate Basic Science Transition Fellow 'Investigating the placental vasculature in mice and humans'
Please join us on June 27th from 3-4PM BST for a webinar on moral distress among frontline staff in health systems. Featuring Dr Stephanie Nzekwu (University of Oxford, UK), Dr Heidi Matisonn (University of Cape Town EthicsLab, South Africa), and Dr Julia Smith (Simon Fraser University), this webinar will explore cross-cutting issues in moral distress across a range of health systems. Presenters will provide inputs on experiences of moral distress/injury in the Kenyan health system (Nzekwu), consider the relevance of the concept of moral distress in highly resource constrained settings (Mattison), and share learning from intersectional analyses of moral distress (Smith). This is the first of a series of webinars on moral distress in health and research settings, linked to the NIHR-supported ROOTS Network (Rethinking Organisational Options to Tackle Moral Distress) and Moh Family Foundation funded work within the Pandemic Sciences Institute on frontline staff wellbeing. It is coordinated by Dr Kate McNeil and chaired by Prof Sassy Molyneux. Please register for Webinar 1 here: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/-5joiqpyROeo10U1tMYByw
Pakistan’s history is a story of crisis - economic, political, cultural and developmental, often scarred as earlier this year by troubled relations with its rising neighbour, India. Times of optimism and change have too often been dashed. Yet Pakistan survives, and grows. Its economy is seen by many as more robust than figures suggest, particularly when including its black economy. With a burgeoning middle class gaining influence, seeking order and stability, and given its geo-political significance in an uncertain global order, maybe there are positive pathways. We plan to explore whither Pakistan ? in this seminar, led by three distinguished speakers on the economy, politics and law. This panel is co-hosted by the Vicky Noon Education Foundation, and the Asian Studies Centre at St Antony's College, Oxford. The moderator will be Dr Paul Flather, chair of the VNEF trust. Over the past 30 years, the VNEF has helped provide c £7m worth of support for more than 230 top young Pakistani students to study as Noon Scholars at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. This event will celebrate three decades of work and forms part of the VNEF’s annual general meeting, when trustees will also select the 2025-26 Noon Scholars. All welcome, to be followed by a reception.
Words and Pictures: how art makes the mind; new perspectives on the intersection of mind, art and psychoanalysis.
We often use the word "emergence" (or "emerge"), but is there a deeper meaning? For instance, in the 20th century physicists noticed that complexity can 'emerge' from simple subsystems. Was this discovery special, and does it reflect how other disciplines use this word? To help dive into the matter, starting in physics, and working out towards the arts, I have recruited some great minds to come and share their research and how that shapes their understanding of the concept of emergence. Please join on this journey and see whether a common understanding ... emerges. Speakers in order of appearence on this event-page. Titles are as follows: * Emergence: storytelling for multi-particle creatures in a complex Universe * Emergence and symmetries * The emergence of intelligence: from bitter lessons to universal minds * Why are we waiting? Queues and other emergent behaviour in economics. * Inventing the wheel: How public transport first became a network * Emergence: becoming photography
Contemporary cities are increasingly shaped by non-permanent spatial interventions—such as pop-up markets, green open spaces, mobile clinics, art installations, and event-based activities that offer flexible responses to evolving urban demands. These temporary spaces are frequently recognized for their adaptability and immediacy. At the same time, urban health and mental well-being have emerged as central concerns in planning, design, health and governance. Yet, the intersections between temporariness and urban health remain under-theorized and insufficiently explored. This seminar, organised by GCHU Visiting Global Research Associate Dr Huiming Liu, invites open, interdisciplinary dialogue on the potential and limitations of temporary use of urban spaces in contributing to health outcomes and shaping users’ perceptual and emotional experiences. Rather than seeking definitive conclusions, the event aims to uncover shared conceptual frameworks, latent contradictions, and methodological opportunities for examining the spatial-temporal dimensions of health. Through cross-field exchange, the seminar seeks to identify both promising intersections and persistent gaps between temporary spatial practices and urban health agenda.
Understanding how immune cells operate within tissues is key to designing better mucosal vaccines and therapies. In this talk, I will discuss how hypoxia-inducible factor 1-alpha (HIF-1α) shapes CD4 T cell fate within lung tertiary lymphoid structures during influenza infection. Using spatial transcriptomics and inducible gene deletion, we uncover a distinct population of HIF-1α+ T cells that orchestrates local immunity—supporting antibody production, innate cell recruitment, and tissue homeostasis.
Lister Prize Talk/Genetics Society Balfour Lecture Speaker - Associate Professor Nicky Whiffin Title - Adventures in the non-coding genome: uncovering diagnoses for rare disease patients Welcome reception - 13.45 Venue - Big Data Institute Followed by a research talk and prize presentations at 14.30. Reception with ‘Professor Sir John Iredale (Chairman) and Sally Burtles (Director) from the Lister Institute, along with Professor Gil McVean, President of the Genetics Society. This event will bring together Nicky’s Oxford colleagues and collaborators, as well as the Oxford network of Lister Fellows and Members to celebrate her recent successes. We very much hope you will be able to join us in celebrating Nicky’s achievements, including her becoming a Lister Fellow. If you wish to attend, please register - https://forms.office.com/e/sNeUTqYaKx?origin=lprLink
Are you preparing a poster presentation for an upcoming conference, meeting or symposium? This interactive session, or ‘poster clinic’, will include a group discussion of different examples of poster presentations, as well as an opportunity to present your own draft of your poster presentation to your fellow attendees. It is expected that the small group of peers in attendance will provide feedback and respectful comments on each other’s work. Intended audience: Students, staff and researchers from MSD and OUH.
Professor Dr Teo is a scientist dedicated to improving cancer outcomes, particularly for Asian patients. She founded Cancer Research Malaysia, the country’s first non-profit cancer research organisation, where her work has focused on translating research into real-world impact. Her contributions include leading the Asian arm of a landmark global study on breast Her contributions include leading the Asian arm of a landmark global study on breast cancer genetics, shaping clinical guidelines in panel testing for inherited predispositions to breast cancer. She also pioneered Malaysia’s patient navigation programme, now recognised by the World Health Organisation as a model for low-resource settings.Her team’s innovations include integrating genetic counselling into hospitals and launching Genetix, a spin-off delivering precision guidance to patients.
Join us for a panel discussion with experts from across healthcare and policy landscapes to explore how ethnicity is currently approached in genomic medicine and how it might be reimagined for the future. Within NHS England’s Genomic Medicine Service, patient identity information is currently documented using ‘ethnicity’ categories, which largely reflect geopolitical classifications. These categories often do not capture the sociocultural, historical, and biological dimensions of one’s identity that may be relevant to medical investigations. The panel will reflect and respond to a set of co-created, forward-looking questions developed during a participatory workshop held earlier in the day with patient support groups and representatives. This is an in-person event, please only sign up if you can attend the event at St Anne’s College. The panel discussion will be followed by a drinks reception until 18:30. If you are interested in taking part in the workshop, as a patient and/or representative of a patient support organisation, please contact cpm@well.ox.ac.uk for more information.
There is a growing interest in ‘alternative proteins’, food products that claim to provide sustainable alternatives to animal-based proteins (e.g., meat, milk, and eggs). These alternative proteins range from more traditional products (e.g., plant-based burgers) to novel products (e.g., cell-cultivated meat, new-fermentation derived proteins). However, the claims surrounding these products are heavily contested. These concerns have led to a polarised climate around alternative proteins and have limited the possibility for a constructive, inclusive dialogue. Advocates for alternative proteins assert that they can facilitate a transition to healthier, more sustainable food systems without requiring a significant shift in dietary habits. Critics of alternative proteins have disputed the evidence for these claims and have raised concerns around power and the implications for human-nature relationships. In partnership with the United Nations Foundation and Food Standards Agency, TABLE is organising a series of three webinars exploring key themes and debates around novel alternative proteins (e.g., cell-cultivated meat, new-fermentation derived proteins). This series seeks to respond to the challenge of polarisation by bringing together a diverse range of stakeholders to discuss alternative proteins across three themes. The aim is to equip policy-makers, industry leaders, researchers and civil-society stakeholders with a clear, balanced understanding of alternative proteins (APs), the debates they provoke, and pathways toward constructive, inclusive dialogue and policy-making. Each webinar will last 1.5 hours, and will feature a panel that includes expert representatives from different sectors. Short speaker presentations will be followed by a moderated discussion and opportunities for audience Q&A. A short pre-event discussion paper is available to download here: https://www.tabledebates.org/sites/default/files/2025-06/TABLE_Briefing_AltProtein%20Webinar%20Series_1.pdf Webinar 2: Health Dimensions of APs The second webinar will explore the health dimensions of APs. Currently there is limited research surrounding the health dimensions of novel APs (e.g., cell-cultivated meat, new-fermentation derived proteins), and further research is required to understand the long-term health effects of consuming APs. Proponents have claimed that APs have the potential to address global nutrient deficiencies, offer health benefits exceeding that of animal-based protein, and reduce the threat of antibiotic resistance and zoonotic diseases. On the other hand, critics have questioned narrow nutrient-centered logic, raised concerns around food safety, and highlighted the need for inclusive and culturally-sensitive solutions to dietary challenges. Through engagement with panelists this session will discuss the questions surrounding the health dimensions of APs and the extent to which they offer a nutritional and healthy alternative to animal-based protein. Furthermore, this session will consider the limitations of a narrow-focus on health risks deflecting attention from the social, political and economic forces that have created and shaped unhealthy food environments. Panelists - Rob Percival, Soil Association - TBC - TBC Moderated by Tara Garnett, Director of TABLE.
Go to the event page to view details and the current 2025 Conference Programme: https://reuben.ox.ac.uk/event/diagnostics-low-and-middle-income-countries-conference-0 The Diagnostics for Low and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) Conference at Reuben College is now in its third year. Every year, it brings together graduate students from Oxford and UCL who are passionate about developing diagnostic tools to improve the healthcare of underserved populations to hear from, and interact with, experts who share this passion. This year, the technologies covered will range from novel sensors (with a keynote talk from Professor Dame Molly Stevens) to the use of machine learning to enhance diagnoses. The first Professor of Global Health in Oxford, Professor Alan Bernstein, will also address the Conference. The diagnostic applications to be covered are broad, from neurology to cardiology, in addition to the usual focus on infectious diseases. What we can learn from scientists, engineers and clinicians on the ground is a recurring theme of this meeting and the 2025 Conference will hear from speakers working in Africa, India and Vietnam.
So, you’ve got a great idea for a research study – but what approvals do you need before you can start? Who do you apply to? And how do you go about doing this? Join an online presentation through Microsoft Teams for an overview of: • how research is governed in the UK • which approval bodies are involved • a step-by-step guide on how to apply for approval • handling amendments to your study
The second in a duo of courses (attendees should attend the Fundamentals course prior to Logistics) that will cover the logistics of researching, publishing, and locating open scholarship resources and tools at the University of Oxford. Subjects include: what is the Oxford University Research Archive?; depositing work into ORA via Symplectic Elements; depositing data into ORA-data; applying for one of Oxford’s APC block grants; registering or connecting your ORCID; how to be included in the rights retention pilot; and locating and checking funder policies. Intended audience: Oxford students, researchers and other staff.
Book title: Foster Children, Rights and the Law: Best Interest, Normalcy and the Welfare System This book discusses child wishes, rights and participation in the foster care system. Making decisions in a foster child’s best interest is a widely used, but also widely criticized international legal doctrine. This work discusses the two major legal frameworks, best interest and normalcy, for which foster care decisions are made and how those frameworks might shape how child welfare professionals view and interpret children’s rights and participation. Normalcy, the idea that decisions should promote a “normal” life, is a separate legal doctrine which can be in conflict with best interest determinations. However, the concept of normalcy is also theoretically built into best interest decisions and therefore also plays a role in most child welfare systems. Mixing both empirical legal and child welfare research, the book demonstrates the ways in which risk aversion and fear drive best interest decision-making to the detriment of both practitioners and the children they aim to serve. It argues that a children’s rights framework starting with normalcy is a better tool for promoting child participation and centering the child within the dependency process. The book will be of interest to academics, researchers and policymakers working in the areas of children’s rights law, child welfare and international human rights law.
This talk explores the conceptual and didactical journey from the notion of continuity of the line in Euclidean geometry—embodied in the idea of the continuous line and formalized in axioms—to the formal construction of the real number system as a complete ordered field. Foundational challenges will be presented, including the key issues of the historical development of real numbers and how different constructions (Dedekind cuts, Cauchy sequences) address the notion of completeness. Moreover, the statement "real numbers are points of a line" will be problematized and analysed from a higher standpoint. On the didactical side, the talk will present a summary of the relevant literature on the topic, some open issues and the preliminary results of a study carried out in the context of a master's course addressed to prospective secondary mathematics teachers. The goal of the course was to bridge the gap between intuition and formalism and foster a deeper understanding of the "real number line". Organised by Professor Sibel Erduran, Subject Pedagogy Research Group
Seemingly small differences can sometimes lead to large snowballing changes. Can a shift in the framing of climate mitigation finance from emissions compensation to contributions be one such example? Under what conditions? In this brown bag seminar, Lila Sakata explores the potential of this simple shift in framing to reduce greenwashing risk while continuing to encourage investment into high-integrity climate mitigation. She will present her preliminary insights from corporate discussions at London Climate Action Week, and invite a broader conversation on corporate climate and environmental responsibility.
Join Becky Carlyle, Rui Ponte Costa and Hugo Fernandes to learn more about their experiences of transitioning from Postdoctoral Researcher to Group Leader and the challenges and opportunities that brings.
Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell immunotherapy represents a breakthrough in the treatment of hematological malignancies, but poor specificity has limited its applicability to solid tumors. By contrast, natural T cells harboring T cell receptors (TCRs) can discriminate between neoantigen-expressing cancer cells and self-antigen-expressing healthy tissues but have limited potency against tumors. We used a high-throughput platform to systematically evaluate the impact of co-expressing a TCR and CAR on the same CAR T cell. While strong TCR-antigen interactions enhanced CAR activation, weak TCR-antigen interactions actively antagonized their activation. Mathematical modeling captured this TCR-CAR crosstalk in CAR T cells, allowing us to engineer dual TCR/CAR T cells targeting neoantigens (HHATL8F/p53R175H) and human epithelial growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) ligands, respectively. These T cells exhibited superior anti-cancer activity and minimal toxicity against healthy tissue compared with conventional CAR T cells in a humanized solid tumor mouse model. Harnessing pre-existing inhibitory crosstalk between receptors, therefore, paves the way for the design of more precise cancer immunotherapies. Sooraj Achar is a DPhil candidate in Biomedical Sciences associated with the NIH/Oxford graduate partnership program, conducting research at the intersection of immunology and systems biology under the joint mentorship of Dr. Gregoire Altan-Bonnet (NCI) and Prof. Michael Dustin (Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology). He holds a B.S. in Biochemistry and a Mathematics minor from the University of Virginia. Sooraj’s work on how T cells respond to diverse antigenic signals has led to multiple high-impact publications in journals such as Science, Cell, and Nature Immunology. He is the recipient of several awards, including the 2025 Peter Medawar Prize for Immunology and the 2023 Bill Paul Award for Cytokine Research.
Join us for Oxford's 2025 Chinese Language Teaching Research Forum on Wednesday 2 July 2025, 1-5pm. Conference theme and further details forthcoming. Early pre-booking available. Tea, coffee and refreshments included with in-person ticket bookings. Oxford Education Deanery Scholarships available to join this event. Click here for more information and to apply: https://bit.ly/Apply-Deanery-Scholarship For: teachers at primary and secondary level engaged in, or interested in Chinese language teaching.
Legal AI is poised to transform the work of legal professionals. We report on a randomized field experiment conducted in partnership with Pakistan’s Federal Judicial Academy, in which we integrated AI technology and skills into the workflow of Pakistan judges. We developed an LLM-based AI support tool designed to assist judges in their work, including a RAG system facilitating search, citation, and summarization of Pakistani legal precedents. Almost one-half of Pakistan’s trial court judges signed up for the study and were randomized into three waves, where they received access to this AI tool along with a nine-hour training course in its capacities and limitations. In a fourth placebo wave, judges received training on legal technologies other than AI. We demonstrate high and persistent take-up of the tool among treated judges. We then evaluate the effects of AI tools and training on judge work satisfaction, case disposal rates, and the quality of written judgments. These results provide insights into the potential of generative AI to enhance judicial efficiency and state capacities globally.
08:45 Arrival 09:15 Opening remarks - Rachel Murphy and Genia Kostka 09:30 Roundtable: What is Privacy (in Authoritarian Contexts)? Daniel Miller (UCL) and WANG Xinyuan (UCL): “The depth and breadth of privacy” ZHAO Jun (Oxford): “Data, algorithmic manipulation, and their privacy implications for young children and families” LIU Ruoxi (Oxford): “Privacy – independent cultural workers and youth communities in China” Moderator: Genia Kostka (Berlin) 11:00 Tea / Coffee 11:30 Privacy: The Party-State View ZHOU Hui (Berlin): “Chinese court documents on privacy: an analysis of current legal cases” GUO Danqi and YAN Yang (Berlin): “State narratives of digital surveillance and privacy and their effects on citizens’ support in China” Chair: Vivienne Shue (Oxford) 12:30 Lunch 13:30 Privacy: The Citizens’ View (1) Alexander Trauth-Goik and Christoph Steinhardt (Vienna): “Menacing society and the stalwart state: the privacy debate on Chinese social media” Blake Miller (LSE): “Banning TikTok: US-China dialogue on social media platforms” Chair: Merethe Borge Macleod (GBCC) 14:30 Tea / Coffee 14:45 Privacy: The Citizens’ View (2) Elisa Oreglia (Oxford): “Digital privacy from the margins: a view from rural China (and Southeast Asia)” Rachel Murphy (Oxford): “The privacy of children in digital China” Chair: Christoph Steinhardt (Vienna) 15:45 Tea / Coffee 16:15 Visualising Privacy Margaret Hillenbrand (Oxford): “The relationship between facial recognition technologies and contemporary art” GAO Ang (UCA): “PRIVACY China: a documentary in the making” Chair: XUE Kefan (Oxford) 17:15 Lena Wesemann (Berlin): “Brainstorming: A Travel Gallery as means of visualising PRIVACY China” 17:30 Closing remarks - Genia Kostka and Rachel Murphy
Lesson of the week, clinical cases and research. All clinical and academic staff and students welcome. Coffee, Tea and Cake will be served.
Focussing on productions of Martin Crimp's works, as directed by Luc Bondy (Cruel and Tender, 2004) and Katie Mitchell (The Rest Will Be Familiar to You from Cinema, 2013), as well as Elfriede Jelinek’s Die Schutzbefohlenen (2015), David Greig’s The Suppliant Women (2016), and Ella Hickson’s Oedipus (2025), Prof. Angelaki will probe key adaptations of the Greek classical canon for their environmentalist activism, investigating how they dynamically carry the potential, both in text and in production, of greening the theatre canon.
Ethics in Film project bridges the gap between current ethical debates and the human drive to tell stories, all at an independent Oxford cinema institution - The Ultimate Picture Palace (UPP), and are led and chaired by Angeliki Kerasidou. This year there will be a special screening of the 2004 film ‘The Sea Inside’ (based on a true story), followed by a discussion on the ethics of end-of-life care and how we navigate healthcare policy when disagreements occur, led by an expert panel. Speakers Angeliki Kerasidou (Chair) is an Associate Professor in Bioethics at the Ethox Centre and Official Fellow of Reuben College. Her research focuses on the issues of trust, empathy and the introduction of new technologies in health research and care. Dr Victoria Bradley is Consultant in and the Clinical Lead for Palliative Medicine at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Honorary Senior Lecturer in Palliative Medicine. Her interests are in the transition of patients between paediatric and adult palliative care services and clinical ethics. Eleanor Kerfoot is a historian and a DPhil candidate at Balliol College. Her work focuses more generally on the history of death and its medicalisation.
Join us for an evening of film and conversation in our annual Ethics in Film event, with a special screening of ‘The Sea Inside’. The film will be followed by a discussion on the ethics of death, dying and end-of-life care, and how to navigate moral disagreement in this area. Speakers Angeliki Kerasidou (Chair) is an Associate Professor in Bioethics at the Ethox Centre and Official Fellow of Reuben College. Her research focuses on the issues of trust, empathy and the introduction of new technologies in health research and care. Dr Victoria Bradley is Consultant in and the Clinical Lead for Palliative Medicine at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Honorary Senior Lecturer in Palliative Medicine. Her interests are in the transition of patients between paediatric and adult palliative care services and clinical ethics. Eleanor Kerfoot is a historian and a DPhil candidate at Balliol College. Her work focuses more generally on the history of death and its medicalisation.
Join us for a session with Associate Professor Ludovica Griffanti, NIHR Oxford Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford University Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging (OxCIN). She will share her experiences of dealing with rejection in academia, and reflect on what she learnt in different phases of her career as well as suggest guidance for dealing with rejection. The Postdoc Power Hour (PoPoH) is a series of monthly one-hour online events designed specifically for postdocs and other research staff who are not students and takes place on the first Friday of every month, 11 am to 12 pm. Join the event on Teams "here":https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_YzFkYWNmNTUtMGI5Yi00ZTgxLTg5ODgtMDc5NDM4ZTBmNTUy%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22cc95de1b-97f5-4f93-b4ba-fe68b852cf91%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%22febbad3b-db95-4b59-a93a-344e16f4dee5%22%7d Each PoPoH session covers: * a brief overview of career and training support available to postdocs and other research staff across the University * a 30-minute lecture by an expert on the session’s theme * a Career Chat where a Careers Adviser for Research Staff will address careers concerns and questions * ideas for simple things you can do now for your career and work/life balance
In times of turbulence and uncertainty, scenarios - narrative descriptions of contrasting, plausible futures - can provide the basis for strategic dialogue, creative thinking, and judicious decision-making, as well as "interesting research" that is both rigorous and actionable. Although usually associated with the social sciences and industry, building scenarios requires skills closely aligned with the humanities, and offers a fresh perspective on many ambiguous or debatable issues via the systemic "manufactured hindsight" of multiple contrasting futures. Scenario work can also usefully encourage epistemic humility - asking, not "which future do we think we want from the limits of our perspective in the present?", but "how will different potential futures perceive our choices and values in hindsight?". This highly participatory session will introduce a current scenario set for the future of global healthcare created at Griffith University using a variant of the Oxford Scenario Planning Approach developed at the Saïd Business School. The approach has well-established uses in medicine and healthcare (United European Gastroenterology, 2014; IMAJINE, 2022; Ramírez et. al, 2023; Finch, 2024; Lang and Carson, 2025). The event offers attendees the opportunity to discuss how medical humanities expertise (such as medical ethics and history) and their wider context may evolve in ways beyond current expectations (Lang and Ramírez (2024)'s so-called "ghost scenario"), as well as learning about Oxford-style scenario planning and exploring how the medical humanities may usefully speak to broader questions of strategy, policy, and foresight across systems of health and care. Lead Facilitator: Dr Matt Finch, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford; Co-Facilitator: Dr Sarah Dry https://www.torch.ox.ac.uk/event/scenario-planning-and-the-medical-humanities-a-workshop-for-uncertain-times
Hagen Tilgner studied computer science in Germany and France, and after a Master’s thesis (for a French engineering school) at the Sanger Institute (UK), did his PhD with Roderic Guigó at the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona. There he focused on RNA and the co-transcriptionality of splicing. His postdoctoral work at Stanford with Michael Snyder focused on technology development, specifically for long-read transcriptomics. He started his lab at Weill Cornell in New York City in 2016 focusing on technologies to decipher the actions of RNA isoforms in the brain. The lab is a multi-disciplinary lab, including wet-lab technology development (for example single-cell isoform RNA sequencing, ScISOr-Seq, ScISOr-ATAC) and dry-lab approaches, as well as combined large-scale efforts centered on the brain where Maths/CS, molecular biology and neuroscience backgrounds interact to further our understanding of isoforms in healthy and diseased brain of humans and model organisms.
Join us for the presentation of the second edition of In Defense of Housing by David Madden and Peter Marcuse. This influential book offers a powerful critique of the housing crisis, tracing its political and economic roots and making the case for radical alternatives. David Madden will reflect on the updated edition and discuss the ongoing relevance of the book’s arguments in light of today’s urban inequalities.
Seminar followed by Q&A and drinks - all welcome. Event co-hosted with WildCRU. Abstract: What if wild animals were not managed, but listened to? What if fires were not a threat to suppress but a presence to learn from? In many Indigenous cultures, environmental stewardship is not about control but fostering connections and relationships. From cultural burning that renews ecosystems to tending plants guided by ancestral protocols to seeing animals as kin, these practices reflect a relational, place-based understanding of the more-than-human world. These perspectives contrast the dominant conservation and ecosystem management approaches rooted in separating humans from nature. While the contribution of Indigenous and local communities is widely acknowledged as necessary for biodiversity conservation, in practice, they often remain marginalized or tokenized. Too often, Indigenous knowledge is superficially referenced or instrumentalized without an adequate understanding of what shapes them. We still lack clear ways to understand and engage with Indigenous peoples and their knowledge respectfully and collaboratively. My research sits at this critical interface and begins with this proposition: What if conservation began with conversations instead of instructions? Through ethnographic and collaborative research with communities in Asia and North America, my research asks – how people understand, engage, and value their local environment, what knowledge systems, histories, and worldviews shape their relationships with it, and how these support communities in responding to contemporary environmental challenges. In the talk, I will discuss my long-term research with the Kattunayakan, a hunter-gatherer community in the Western Ghats of South India, and their ways of living with wildlife. I will explain how their understanding of animals as rational, conversing beings, gods, teachers, and kin with shared origins, practicing dharmam (ethical conduct) shapes their behaviours and practices towards wildlife, promoting coexistence. By citing these, I explain that rethinking human-nature relations through Indigenous epistemologies is a relational endeavour in which learning about people's history, experiences, and stories with animals is just as crucial as understanding animals and theirs. Finally, I will talk about why it is important to combine Indigenous and Western knowledge, the challenges that come with it, and how we can move forward. Biography: Dr. Helina Jolly is an Assistant Professor at the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Vermont (UVM), where she leads research on traditional ecological knowledge. She is an interdisciplinary environmental researcher, National Geographic Explorer, and documentarian whose work lies at the interface of people and nature. Dr. Jolly uses ethnographic approaches, qualitative interviews, participatory mapping, and other mixed-method approaches to understand how Indigenous knowledge systems and lived experiences shape their relationship with ecosystems and help them adapt to contemporary environmental changes. She has worked with diverse communities— hunter-gatherers in the Western Ghats in South India, farmers in Sri Lanka, and berry pickers of Miawpukek First Nation in Canada on topics ranging from wildlife coexistence, cultural burning, traditional livelihoods, and biocultural food systems. Before UVM, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of California San Diego and the University of Guelph. She earned her PhD from the University of British Columbia and an MSc from the London School of Economics and Political Science as a Commonwealth Scholar. She is a podcast host of Biodiversity Speaks. She brings to her research extensive experience working in South Asia as an advisor and policy analyst to government agencies and development banks. The Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery and Biodiversity Network are interested in promoting a wide variety of views and opinions on nature recovery from researchers and practitioners. The views, opinions and positions expressed within this lecture are those of the author alone, they do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery/Biodiversity Network, or its researchers.
On behalf of the Department for Continuing Education the Director, Professor Matthew Weait, is delighted to invite you to Professor Vlad Mykhnenko’s inaugural lecture: "Never let a good crisis go to waste": Finding geographies of hope and opportunity in times of upheaval. This event marks Professor Mykhnenko’s first lecture as a professor, and we are coming together to celebrate this important professional achievement. Following the lecture, we will continue the celebration with a drinks reception in Rewley House's Common Room. To attend in person, please register your interest in the link provided. Seats are limited, and registration will operate on a first-come, first-served basis. We hope you can join us to mark this very special occasion.
Type-2 ryanodine receptor (RyR2) mediated calcium release controls the contraction of cardiac myocytes and the excitability of neurons. Consequently, inappropriate activation of RyR2 leads to disease, such as arrhythmias and Alzheimer's disease. Prof Jones will describe his published and unpublished research examining the pathophysiological regulation of RyR2 in the heart and brain. This spans from single protein super-resolution microscopy, through real time calcium imaging, to in vivo analysis in animal models, and characterisation in human tissue. He will also present data on how targeting RyR2 might offer new treatments for arrhythmias and Alzheimer’s disease. SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY Pete Jones is a Professor in the Department of Physiology at the University of Otago (NZ) and co-director of the University of Otago HeartOtago Research Theme. He obtained his PhD from the University of Leeds (UK) in 2004 and then went on to postdoctoral training in Calgary (Canada). He took up his current position in 2010. His principal research focuses on intracellular calcium in cardiac myocytes and neurons. His research is funded by the Health Research Council of New Zealand, Royal Society Marsden fund, the Heart Foundation of NZ and New Zealand Neurological Foundation.
Reliably assigning TCRs, based on their sequence, to private (non-shared) neoantigen targets is a lighthouse enabling technology for the personalized TCR therapy development. Multiple publications aimed to do this using increasingly sophisticated deep learning models. All such efforts relied on approximately the same and limited set of publicly available labeled training data with experimentally established TCR-peptide-MHC (pMHC) reactivity pairs. In a follow-up benchmarking of such published methods, it has been shown that the apparently good prediction metrics were due to subtle information leaks between training and testing sets exacerbated by severe imbalances in the data distribution. In our work, we estimated the minimum amount of labeled training data required to achieve generalization of predictions for models which are trained directly on TCR and pMHC protein sequences. This estimate exceeds the currently available size of public data by a factor of 1000. We conclude that this prediction problem can be solved through either a major effort on generating more data or using models which have little or no labeled data requirements, such as the pre-trained foundation structure prediction models.
During this forum speakers from Bodleian Open Scholarship Support and across Oxford will discuss current changes in the field of open scholarship. Including subjects like data, open access, open monographs, copyright and more. It is advised that attendees of the forum have previously attended the Fundamentals and Logistics courses to improve understanding. Intended audience: Oxford students, researchers and other staff.
SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY Fyodor Urnov is the Director for Technology and Translation at the Innovative Genomics Institute and a Professor of Molecular Therapeutics in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at UC Berkeley. He co-developed the toolbox of human genome and epigenome editing, co-named genome editing, and was on the team that advanced all of its first-in-human applications to the clinic. He also led the effort that identified the genome editing target for an approved medicine to treat sickle cell disease and beta-thalassemia. A major goal for the field of genome editing and a key focus of Fyodor's work is expanding access to CRISPR therapies for genetic disease. As part of that effort Fyodor directs the Danaher-IGI Beacon for CRISPR Cures - a first-in-class academia-industry partnership developing and advancing to the clinic scalable CRISPR-based approaches to treat diseases of the immune system. Fyodor also leads cross-functional teams in developing and advancing to the clinic CRISPR-based approaches to treat neurodegenerative, neuroinflammatory, and infectious diseases.
For our next talk, in the BDI/CHG (gen)omics Seminar series, we will be hearing from Professor Nathan Palpant, Group Leader at The University of Queensland’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB). We’re delighted to host Nathan in what promises to be a great talk! Date: Tuesday 8 July Time: 9:30 am – 10:30 am Talk title: Unsupervised Approaches to Decode the Functional Impact of Genetic Variation Location: Big Data Institute, Seminar Room 0 Bio: Professor Nathan Palpant is a Group Leader at The University of Queensland’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB). After PhD training at the University of Michigan and a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Washington’s Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine, he established his independent research group at the IMB in 2015. His research program focuses on studying mechanisms of cardiovascular development and disease, drawing on interdisciplinary approaches in stem cell biology, genetics and genomics, and drug discovery. He has particular interest in developing cell type agnostic models of genome regulation to gain insights into molecular regulation of cell identity in health and disease. Dr. Palpant is a Heart Foundation Fellow and has received numerous awards including the International Society for Heart Research Young Investigator Award, the Lorne Genome Millennium Science Award, and the Australian Cardiovascular Alliance Excellence in Cardiovascular Research Translation Award. Drawing on seminal studies in his lab on novel stress pathways in heart disease, Dr Palpant co-founded Infensa Bioscience to develop ASIC1a inhibitors as first-in-class therapeutics for ischemic heart disease and stroke. Abstract: The increasing availability of large-scale data is transforming our ability to study genetic regulation of cell states. However, understanding how genetic variation governs cellular function and complex diseases remains a challenge, requiring new analytical frameworks capable of integrating diverse genomic datasets to infer functional relationships. This seminar will present new unsupervised computational approaches for dissecting genetic regulation of cellular phenotypes. Our analysis of evolutionary and epigenetic conservation across human cell types has identified domains under cellular constraint that encode functional determinants of cell identity. By calculating genome-wide, single base resolution cellular constraint scores, I will demonstrate their utility in fine-mapping causal variants from genome-wide association studies, improving polygenic risk models, and predicting clinical outcomes in machine learning-based cancer survival models. These findings form the basis for development of multi-omic genome-wide unsupervised machine learning frameworks and variant-to-trait models that provide powerful approaches for functional annotation of non-coding variants and partitioning disease-associated genetic variants governing complex trait and disease sub-phenotypes. I will illustrate the versatility of these methods across various experimental applications including the study of multi-lineage differentiation from pluripotent stem cells and ongoing efforts to study population-scale data to parse the genetic basis of complex diseases. These studies illustrate new strategies to bridge the gap between genomic variation and cellular function for guiding scalable and interpretable solutions to advance our understanding of human development, disease, and therapeutic discovery. ———————————————————————————————————————— All members of the University are welcome to join, please let reception at BDI know you’re here for the seminar and sign-in. We hope you can join us! We also now have a mailing list – To be added, ping genomics_bdi_whg-subscribe@maillist.ox.ac.uk (with any message), you should get a bounce-back with three options to confirm your subscription. Follow any of those options, and with a bit of luck you should be signed up! As a reminder, the (gen)omics seminar series runs every other Tuesday morning and is intended to increase interaction between individuals working in genomics across Oxford. We encourage in-person attendance where possible. There is time for discussion over, tea, coffee and pastries after the talks. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Hybrid Option: Please note that these meetings are closed meetings and only open to members of the University of Oxford to encourage sharing of new and unpublished data. Please respect our speakers and do not share the link with anyone outside of the university. Microsoft Teams meeting – Join the meeting now Meeting ID: 346 123 289 586 Passcode: sr3mi9iL ——————————————————————————————————— If you wish to know more or receive information related to trainings and events at BDI, please subscribe by emailing bdi-announce-subscribe@maillist.ox.ac.uk. You’ll then receive an email from SYMPA and once you reply you’ll be on the list!
ABSTRACT: The basolateral amygdala (BLA) is at the centre of all biological models that detail how we form fear memories across species. However, we have recently shown that GABAergic neurons in the lateral hypothalamus (LH GABA) become critical for formation of fear memories if subjects have recently had a positive experience. In this talk, I will present data on how the recruitment of LH GABA neurons to encode fear memories impacts the role of the BLA in encoding fear memories. Using both optogenetic and lesion manipulations of BLA activity, we first replicated findings that BLA activity is required for formation of fear memories in experimentally-naïve rats. However, we found that if rats have recently had a distinct, positively-valenced experience, the BLA was no longer necessary for the formation of the fear memory. This shows that recruitment of LH GABA neurons to encode fear memories shifts the encoding of fear memories away from the BLA. As one of the most replicable findings in the behavioural neuroscience literature is that BLA inactivation or damage produces deficits in the formation of fear memories, these data require a reconsideration of biological models of fear memories. More generally, this work shows that brain regions can be recruited to encode information outside their traditional specialization and suggest a more fluid approach to conceptualizing memory formation, which considers diversity of experience. ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Professor Melissa Sharpe is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Sydney whose research investigates how the brain learns, predicts outcomes, and makes decisions. She focuses on the neural circuits underlying motivation and reinforcement learning, using techniques such as optogenetics, chemogenetics, and in vivo calcium imaging in rodent models. She previously held a faculty position at UCLA and completed postdoctoral training at Princeton and the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse. Her work has been recognised with several honours, including the NSF CAREER Award.
We will have a plenary session with a talk by Professor Tim Underwood PhD FRCS, Professor of GI Surgery Innovation for Translation Research Group, Faculty of Medicine, University of Southampton
1. Grangeon L, Roussel M, Gillibert A, et al. Applicability of the Edinburgh CT Criteria for Lobar Intracerebral Hemorrhage Associated with Cerebral Amyloid Angiopathy. Clin Neuroradiol. 2023;33(2):455-465. doi:10.1007/s00062-022-01230-6 2. Huang X, Zeng X, Tang L, Liu X, Huang X, Liu X, Wang Z, Li N, Fan D, Yang Q. Subarachnoid hemorrhage and finger-like projection predict recurrence in patients with lobar intracerebral hemorrhage. J Neurol. 2025 Jan 24;272(2):166. doi: 10.1007/s00415-025-12900-z. PMID: 39849200; PMCID: PMC11757861.
Quantum mechanics describes how matter behaves at the atomic scale and below, and is one of the most successful theories of physics that we have. One of the most surprising discoveries of the late twentieth century was that it could also give us access to a completely new (and very powerful) way of processing information: the idea of the quantum computer was born. In July's Balliol Online Lecture, Professor David Lucas will introduce the basic ideas of quantum computing, its links to code-breaking and code-making, survey the current state of the art, and describe recent work at Oxford on building and using an elementary quantum network. David Lucas is Hooke Professor of Experimental Physics, Emeritus Fellow and Tutor in Physics at Balliol College, his core subject area is atomic physics and quantum computation. His teaching includes classical mechanics, special relativity, electromagnetism, optics, atomic and laser physics and he gives undergraduate and graduate lectures on quantum and atomic physics, and techniques of ion trapping. David’s research interests include experimental quantum information processing; ion and atom trapping; previously he worked on cold atoms in optical lattices, and precision measurements for tests of fundamental physics.
The rapid evolution of Generative AI, and its widespread availability, offers opportunities for experimentation within the collegiate University context. To support this, the Centre for Teaching and Learning, in partnership with the AI and Machine Learning Competency Centre, launched the AI Teaching and Learning Exploratory Fund in summer 2024 to explore how AI could be used within the context of teaching, learning, and academic administration at Oxford. The initiative is supported by Digital Transformation. Join us at this special event, where members of the 12 project teams supported this year will share their insights, experiences, and key findings. Open to all collegiate-University staff. Places are limited. Find out more about the 12 supported projects at https://www.ctl.ox.ac.uk/ai-teaching-and-learning-exploratory-fund. Find out more about the AI and Machine Learning Competency Centre at https://staff.admin.ox.ac.uk/ai-and-machine-learning-competency-centre.
If you are planning to run a ‘non-CTIMP’ research study this introductory course is for you. Not all research is subject to clinical trials regulations, but the same standards of conduct apply. This course in Good Clinical Research Practice covers the legislation that applies to ‘non-CTIMP’ research, along with the detailed principles of good practice in clinical research studies. This three-hour online course consists of trainers’ led presentations, short video-talks from those experienced in the conduct of clinical research and interactive exercises. The course is run by the experienced research support specialists from the University of Oxford and Oxford University Hospital’s Joint Research Office, JRO. Join this online presentation through Microsoft Teams for an overview of: • Purpose of Good Clinical Research Practice including historical background • Difference between Clinical Care and Research Practice • Ethical and Regulatory Considerations in the UK • Research Study Requirements and Documentation • Research Study Conduct and Management
TBC
This is a hybrid seminar, to join via Zoom please register in advance: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/88442040204?pwd=lB3wbtesFIwLa8Swh3FRxzMfYIVCFA.1 Meeting ID: 884 4204 0204 Passcode: 818245
For our next talk, in the Digital Phenotyping seminar series, we will hear from Dr Samah Hayek, Assistant Professor, Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine at the School of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine Tel-Aviv University; Senior Researcher and Epidemiologist at the Clalit Research Institute, Clalit, Wednesday 9 July, 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm, at the Big Data Institute (BDI). Title: "Enhancing Health Behaviors: Leveraging Smartphone Data and Electronic Medical Records for Optimized Health Outcomes" Date: Wednesday 9 July Time: 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm Venue: Big Data Institute, Seminar Room 0; followed by refreshments in the atrium Bio: Samah Hayek, DrPH, serves as an assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine at the School of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv. Additionally, she is a senior researcher and Epidemiologist at the Clalit Research Institute, Clalit, and she is a visiting assistant professor at UCI, CA, USA. Samah embarked on her academic journey with a Bachelor of Arts in Statistics and Sociology-Anthropology, followed by a Master's Degree in Public Health from the University of Haifa. She furthered her education by earning a doctoral degree in Public Health (Epidemiology) at the University of Kentucky, where she was honored as a Fulbright scholar. Her commitment to advancing public health led her to undertake a two-year fellowship at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Subsequently, she pursued a post-doctoral study in the Department of Epidemiology and Cancer Control at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, USA. Deeply committed to pioneering scientific research, Dr. Hayek focuses on enhancing overall health and well-being through the utilization of big data, including Electronic Medical Record (EMR) data and smartphone data. Leveraging advanced epidemiological approaches, such as causal inference, and applying statistical modeling and machine learning techniques, she specializes in the intersection of cancer epidemiology and the long-term effects of cancer therapy. In her research endeavors, Dr. Hayek explores not only cancer epidemiology but also health behavior, investigating the impact of various factors on health outcomes. Motivated by a passion for cutting-edge science and a dedication to improving health outcomes, Dr. Hayek's work stands at the forefront of innovative approaches to public health research. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hybrid Option: Please note that these meetings are closed meetings and only open to members of the University of Oxford. Please respect our speakers and do not share the link with anyone outside of the University. The purpose of these seminars is to foster more communication among employees throughout the University, so we strongly advise in-person attendance whenever feasible. MS Teams - Meeting ID: 311 112 204 199 9 Passcode: Bf39gn29 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you wish to know more or receive information related to trainings and events at BDI, please subscribe by emailing bdi-announce-subscribe@maillist.ox.ac.uk. You'll then receive an email from SYMPA and once you reply you'll be on the list!
Join us for a full-day workshop, on Thursday 10 July 2025, 9am-5:15pm, exploring the evidence around teaching children for whom English is an Additional Language (EAL). This course is designed for EAL leads, classroom teachers and other educators. It will provide an overview of research evidence on key themes in the field of EAL and will offer practical advice on how to interpret that evidence for policy and practice in mainstream classrooms. The course is led by Oxford’s world-leading educators and researchers, Professor Victoria Murphy, Professor Steve Strand OBE, Dr Hamish Chalmers and Dr Faidra Faitaki. They will bring their considerable experience from working across the field of EAL to help you understand how research informs practice and how you can support and promote inclusive learning environments for all. Coffee, tea and lunch is included in the ticket price. Oxford Education Deanery Scholarships available to join this event. Click here for more information and to apply: https://bit.ly/Apply-Deanery-Scholarship
With an expected 400 people attending, the Oxford Women’s Health Forum 2025 (OxWHF 2025) is set to be a landmark event. This in-person, University-wide forum will highlight the critical role of research, evidence, and cross-disciplinary collaboration in tackling the challenges and inequalities that affect women’s health from early years through to later life. Hosted by five academic departments, the event is ideal for staff and students with a clinical, academic, or research interest in women’s health - particularly those keen to connect across disciplines. Invited speakers include: Professor Irene Tracey, Vice-Chancellor, University of Oxford Professor Dame Lesley Regan, Women’s Health Ambassador for England Dr Ranee Thakar, President, Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists Professor Bola Owolabi, Director, NHS Health Inequalities Improvement Programme The day will feature keynote talks, e-posters, lightning presentations, panel discussions, and structured networking designed to foster connections and share knowledge across disciplines.
Witnessing an immense increase in urban transport investments since the 2000s, the early 2000s in India saw several bus rapid transit, walking, and cycling projects. However, many of these projects were systematically subverted and stalled through bad press, judicial interventions, and, eventually, the reduction or withdrawal of funding. In 2015, Indian transport policies gradually entered the new infrastructure regime, promising ‘world-class’ and supposedly sustainable mobility options with smart technology and shiny public infrastructure. Large-scale investments were made in building and expanding road infrastructure, metro rail projects, and promoting electric vehicles. Employing discourse analysis to study policy documents across the years, we argue that there has been a shift in transport planning policy from “affordable” to “aspirational” transport infrastructure, with sustainability used as a buzzword. Whether these are the aspirations of the State or the people, infrastructure building has become an important part of political value signalling. As the aspirational aspects become the new rationality guiding the funding and implementation of infrastructure projects, sustainability remains in the policy rhetoric, and the concerns of feasibility, accessibility and affordability recede into the background. The prevalence and popularity of ‘aspirational infrastructure’ define the ongoing low-carbon mobility transition in the Global South.
Lesson of the week, clinical cases and research. All clinical and academic staff and students welcome. Coffee, Tea and Cake will be served.
For our next talk, in Machine Learning, we will be hearing from Dr Shishir Rao, Senior Research Scientist, Deep Medicine research group, NDWRH, University of Oxford. We’re delighted to host Shishir in what promises to be a great talk! Date: Thursday 10 July Time: 14:00 – 15:00 Talk title: Artificial intelligence for electronic health records Location: Seminar room 1 Abstract: This talk by Dr. Shishir Rao explores how artificial intelligence (AI) on routinely collected electronic health records (EHR) data can transform healthcare research. The talk will focus on development and application of Transformer-based models for handling rich, multitype EHR, leveraging AI for prediction for early intervention, accelerating disease understanding, and conducting well-adjusted causal inference on large-scale EHR. Furthermore, the presentation will address critical challenges in the space of AI and healthcare: determining appropriate AI applications, ensuring trustworthiness, mitigating algorithmic bias, and validating clinical utility. Bio: Dr Shishir Rao is a senior research scientist in the Deep Medicine research group led by Professor Kazem Rahimi focusing on developing and applying AI tools for understanding chronic diseases using multimodal healthcare data. Rao co-leads multiple AI projects in the research group focusing on perinatal risk assessment, musculoskeletal conditions, and heart failure. His research emphasises Transformer-based architectures for electronic health records (EHR) analysis, having pioneered the BEHRT model—the first Transformer for multimodal EHR. He also develops frameworks for causal inference with a focus on bridging advanced computational methods with practical clinical applications. He currently serves as AI methodological advisor for Heart, the BMJ family cardiology journal. ———————————————————————————————————————— All members of the University are welcome to join, please let reception at BDI know you’re here for the seminar and sign-in. We hope you can join us! As a reminder, the Machine Learning seminar is intended to increase interaction between individuals working in ML across Oxford. We encourage in-person attendance where possible. There is time for discussion over, tea, coffee and pastries after the talks. Hybrid Option: Please note that these meetings are closed meetings and only open to members of the University of Oxford to encourage sharing of new and unpublished data. Please respect our speakers and do not share the link with anyone outside of the university. MS Teams: Meeting ID: 366 526 840 766 Passcode: ih6Mt6VK ——————————————————————————————————— If you wish to know more or receive information related to trainings and events at BDI, please subscribe by emailing bdi-announce-subscribe@maillist.ox.ac.uk. You’ll then receive an email from SYMPA and once you reply you’ll be on the list!
The De Miranda lab is interested in uncovering the mechanisms that drive neurologic disease from environmental exposures. They are currently investigating chlorinated solvents, such as the degreasing compound trichloroethylene (TCE), and their role in dopaminergic neurodegeneration in Parkinson’s disease. They take a system wide approach to address these mechanisms – including understanding how route of exposure can influence neurotoxicity and disease phenotype (e.g., cognitive dysfunction). In addition to solvents, we undertake projects assessing how pesticides, metals, and other neurotoxic contaminants induce oxidative stress, impair mitophagy/autophagy, and influence neuroinflammation. Our overall goal is to mitigate toxicity with therapeutic interventions or environmental remediation efforts.
Sarah McClelland is Professor in Cancer Genomics and Cancer Cell Biology at the Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London and deputy Centre lead for Cancer Genomics and Computational Biology. Sarah studied Biochemistry and obtained her PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Bristol. Her lab aims to understand the mechanisms that underlie numerical and structural chromosome aberrations in cancer at a molecular level, which also involves understanding how normal cells replicate and segregate their genomes.
The Accelerator Fellowship Programme is proud to invite you to an exclusive screening of the critically acclaimed documentary Coded Bias by Dr Joy Buolamwini, fellow of the Accelerator Fellowship Programme. This powerful film, directed by Emmy-nominated filmmaker Shalini Kantayya, ran globally on Netflix until April 2025. It is now available only through curated screenings, making this event a rare opportunity to experience it on the big screen alongside a global community of technologists, researchers, organizers, and justice advocates. This screening is hosted as part of Dr Joy Buolamwini’s work as an Inaugural Fellow of the Accelerator Fellowship Programme of the Institute for Ethics in AI, University of Oxford. It marks a key stop on the 5th Anniversary World Tour of the film and invites participants to reflect on the urgent intersections of AI, ethics, bias, and power. This event is a unique opportunity to engage with global experts on algorithmic accountability and explore how we can collectively build more inclusive and ethical technologies. The film screening will be followed by a Q&A and panel discussion, moderated by Financial Times AI Correspondent Melissa Heikkilä. The Q&A and panel discussion will examine ways of creating more equitable and accountable AI systems. Dr Joy Buolamwini and Dr Caroline Green, Lead of the Accelerator Fellowship Programme and Director of Research at the Institute for Ethics in AI are two of the panellists who will be answering your questions during this event. The evening will end with a book signing of Dr Joy's book Unmasking AI and a reception.
The third webinar centres on the environmental debates surrounding APs. Food is identified as the largest driver of environmental degradation, exceeding safe planetary boundaries in GHG emissions, nitrogen/phosphorus use, and biodiversity loss. APs have been presented as a potential solution, enabling us to move away from land and input-dependent conventional agriculture, thereby mitigating these environmental concerns, and nurturing more sustainable food systems. However, APs are not immune from environmental challenges and in particular concerns have been raised over the energy usage of APs and their reliance on nutrient resources. More fundamentally, concerns have been voiced that purportedly landless forms of production such as these entrench a problematic mindset which sees humans as separate from, rather as part of the natural world. Finally, power related questions also arise: currently, novel APs are predominantly produced at smaller scales. As, or if, they scale, are unequal power structures within the food system still maintained, and who or what suffers as a result? Through engagement with panelists, this session will discuss the questions surrounding the environmental dimensions of APs. It will ask whether novel APs can contribute to environmental sustainability and consider how and where technological innovations can both help progress and undermine the journey towards more sustainable food systems.
Abstract to follow at https://www.ethox.ox.ac.uk/events This will be a hybrid seminar in the Richard Doll Building, Ground Floor Rosemary Rue Rooms, or on Zoom (https://medsci.zoom.us/j/93793340293)
Workshop on Immigration, Health and Wellbeing October 23-24, 2025 University of Oxford Call for Papers Submission deadline: 15 July 2025 Keynote Speakers: Ian Preston (UCL) Hyejin Ku (UCL) Tamara Smith (Gov London) On October 23-24, 2025, the University of Oxford, will host the IX Workshop on Migration, Health, and Well-Being, following the success of the previous editions. The workshop’ focus is broad, covering empirical economic research on the topics of immigration, health economics, economics of migration and wellbeing. Spanning two days, the event will feature a select number of hour-long research presentations, fostering in-depth discussions. The workshop aims to strengthen connections among scholars with shared interests in these fields. Conference Organisers: C. Nicodemo (Brunel University of London and University of Oxford) C. Tealdi (Heriot-Watt University) Submissions and Deadlines: The deadline for submissions is 15 July 2025 at 23h59 (CEST). Please send a draft of your paper to oxfordmig@gmail.com Decisions will be made by 30 July 2025 Participation fees: £255
This session explores the journey of moving from the corporate sector into the field of impact investing and how aligning professional choices with purpose can contribute to meaningful social and environmental change. It reflects on the growing potential of impact investing as a way to direct capital towards solutions that strengthen communities, improve access to housing, education and healthcare, and support a more sustainable future. With insights drawn from experience, the session highlights how finance and investment can support real-world outcomes while remaining commercially viable and scalable. Participants will be introduced to the principles behind impact investing and how environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations are reshaping the role of business and capital across sectors. The session offers practical examples of how thoughtful investment strategies can contribute to long-term wellbeing and resilience, both locally and globally. The discussion also invites reflection on the possibilities that emerge when values guide decision-making, whether in investment, business or career planning. By focusing on purpose and collaboration, individuals and organisations can uncover new ways to contribute to positive change. This is a conversation about what becomes possible when capital is used with intention. The aim is to encourage dialogue around sustainable and inclusive development and to share approaches that support outcomes that matter, using the resources and platforms available to each of us.
Join our introductory online session via Zoom. You’ll learn about: • The Conversation’s mission and collaborative editorial process. • The basics of style, structure, and article types. • Tips on pitching your research effectively. • Direct Q&A with a Conversation editor.
This interdisciplinary workshop will feature community health activities and research that focus on regions in Oxfordshire. It will highlight projects and groups that use humanities and social sciences approaches to understand health and wellbeing, such as Oxford Health Histories and Oxfordshire Health Humanities. At the same time, it will also include various Oxfordshire community health organizations, encouraging researchers and local health groups to share information, resources, and build networks. If you are interested in attending to share details or activities of your research, please contact medhum@torch.ox.ac.uk
RGEA is pleased to announce the launch of a new course ‘Good Clinical Practice (GCP) for laboratory staff’. The course is for University of Oxford staff working in laboratories handling samples derived from clinical trials, and outlines the principles of GCP from the perspective of the laboratory. It will be delivered in-person at Boundary Brook House (Old Road Campus), by members of RGEA who have previous experience of working in laboratories.
A great deal of selection happens prior to birth, whereby many viable embryos do not make it to term. Antenatal selection is responsive to environmental factors and affects maternal and fetal health outcomes. Since male embryos tend to be more frail than their female counterparts, previous studies have used sex ratio at birth to establish that selection on the XY chromosomes exists prior to birth. However, the genetics of antenatal selection beyond the effects of XY chromosomes are not well understood. The challenge lies in the fact that many of the embryos which undergo selection are never observed. In this study we develop a novel approach to understanding the genetics of survival to term using within-family data.
Lesson of the week, clinical cases and research. All clinical and academic staff and students welcome. Coffee, Tea and Cake will be served.
For our next talk, in the Digital Phenotyping seminar series, we are delighted to host Ben Busby, Senior Alliance Manager for Genomics at NVIDIA on 17 July 2025, 1:00 pm, BDI seminar room 1. Title: Ideas for accelerated and integrated compute in imaging, genomics, and devices, in Biobank and other datasets Date: 17 July 2025 Time: 13:00 – 14:00 Venue – BDI/OxPop seminar room 1 Abstract As we enter the age of AI, agents will play a larger role in analysis and knowledge management and contextualization will become critical. The scientific (and practical) implementation interfaces will not be limited to AI and chatbots. Accelerated scientific computing is extremely likely to play an expanding role in traditional analysis, particularly when using biobank scale data. Some vignettes on specific topics in acceleration will be offered: - Sequence alignment and annotation - Synthetic image generation - Knowledge graphs as memory - Single cell analysis - On-device computing - Estimation of cis- and trans- effects on variant penetrance by background haploblocks We’ll end with a discussion of contextualization, validation, and garbage collection of model generated datasets with a focus on improvement of healthcare systems. Bio: Ben Busby is the Senior Alliance Manager for Genomics at NVIDIA, where he focuses on areas such as prototyping, disease subtyping, deep learning, and knowledge graphs. He also holds an adjunct faculty position in the Computational Biology Department at Carnegie Mellon University and serves as an advisor to both Johns Hopkins University and Research to the People at Stanford. Ben earned his PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Maryland, Baltimore, and did a postdoc in evolutionary genomics at NCBI. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hybrid Option: Please note that these meetings are closed meetings and only open to members of the University of Oxford. Please respect our speakers and do not share the link with anyone outside of the University. The purpose of these seminars is to foster more communication among employees throughout the University, so we strongly advise in-person attendance whenever feasible. Microsoft Teams meeting Join the meeting now Meeting ID: 377 252 440 130 6 Passcode: PB3pp2pZ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you wish to know more or receive information related to trainings and events at BDI, please subscribe by emailing bdi-announce-subscribe@maillist.ox.ac.uk. You'll then receive an email from SYMPA and once you reply you'll be on the list!
This course is designed for undergraduates aiming for postgraduate study, graduate students who want to strengthen their skills, and professionals seeking to advance their expertise. Participants will delve into key areas such as economic theory, applied mathematics, and econometrics, equipping themselves with essential quantitative skills and analytical tools. Join us in Oxford for an immersive programme that includes a welcome reception, college formal dinner, and exclusive social activities and tours—the perfect opportunity to network and experience Oxford’s academic life firsthand. Visit the website for more information and registration: https://ouess.web.ox.ac.uk/event/fundamentals-of-graduate-economics
For a deeper dive on writing for The Conversation, join our interactive workshop via Zoom, where you will: • Gain practical insights into writing style, tone, and structure. • Explore real-world examples and different article formats. • Have the opportunity to pitch ideas and receive personalised feedback directly from an editor. Places for the interactive workshop are limited, and attendees will be expected to participate with cameras on for maximum engagement.
In our July event, Professor Mary Anne Franks (Louisiana & Wadham 1999) will discuss her book Fearless Speech: Breaking Free from the First Amendment. Dr. Mary Anne Franks is the Eugene L. and Barbara A. Bernard Professor in Intellectual Property, Technology, and Civil Rights Law at George Washington Law School. Her areas of expertise include First Amendment law, Second Amendment law, law and technology, criminal law, and family law. She is also the President and Legislative & Tech Policy Director of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI), the leading U.S.-based nonprofit organization focused on image-based sexual abuse. Her model legislation on the non-consensual distribution of intimate images (NDII, sometimes referred to as “revenge porn”) has served as the template for multiple state and federal laws. She is the author of two books: Fearless Speech: Breaking Free from the First Amendment (Bold Type Books, 2024) and The Cult of the Constitution: Our Deadly Devotion to Guns and Free Speech (Stanford Press, 2019). Her scholarship has also appeared in publications such as the Harvard Law Review, the California Law Review, and UCLA Law Review, and her popular writing has been featured in the New York Times, Ms Magazine, and Slate, among others. She is an Affiliate Fellow with the Yale Law School Information Society Project and a Fellow with the Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom. She holds a JD from Harvard Law School and a doctorate from Oxford University, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar. She is admitted to practice in the U.S. Supreme Court and the District of Columbia.
Welcome to Oxford Battery Modelling Symposium (OBMS), a unique event for the battery community. OBMS brings together mathematicians, chemists, physicists and engineers from academia and industry to discuss the latest modelling research and applications. Our philosophy is to invite a small number of outstanding speakers spanning a range of topics from atomistic to continuum modelling, controls and beyond, giving broad and inspiring presentations and open discussions. Our first event in 2019 was attended by 170 people with leading experts including John Newman speaking; our subsequent events were held online during lockdown periods but continued to be wildly popular. We are delighted to invite you back to join us for Oxford Battery Modelling Symposium 2025, which will return as an in-person meeting hosted at the Examination Schools in Oxford. Further details on the event can be found on the event website: https://batterymodel.ox.ac.uk. The event will also include a poster session and a wonderful dinner at Rhodes House.
Lesson of the week, clinical cases and research. All clinical and academic staff and students welcome. Coffee, Tea and Cake will be served.
Are you baffled by open, confused by embargoes? Does the mention of the colour gold or green catapult you into a realm of perplexed irritation? Come to this session, where we’ll break down open access and all its many jargon terms, confusing publishing structures and hint at the advantages you can reap by publishing open. Intended audience: Oxford students, researchers, other staff.
A precise control of cell morphology is key for cell physiology, and cell shape deregulation is at the heart of many pathological disorders. Furthermore, transitions in cellular fate and state are often associated with changes in cell shape, and strong evidence points to the existence of feedbacks between mechanics, morphology and fate decisions. Cell morphology is intrinsically controlled by mechanical forces acting on the cell surface, to understand shape it is thus essential to investigate the regulation of cellular mechanics. I will discuss how cellular mechanical properties drive cellular shape changes, and the cross-talk between mechanics and state in cellular transitions. SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY Ewa Paluch graduated in Physics from the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Lyon in 2001 and did a PhD in Biophysics at the Curie Institute in Paris between 2001 to 2005. She started her research group in 2006 at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, as a joint appointment with the International Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology in Warsaw. In 2013, she was appointed Professor of Cell Biophysics at the MRC LMCB, University College London. From 2014 to 2018, she also headed the new UCL Institute for the Physics of Living Systems, which promotes collaborations between physicists and biologists at UCL. In 2018 she was elected Chair of Anatomy at the University of Cambridge. Ewa is the 19th Professor of Anatomy at Cambridge, and the first woman to hold this Chair in its 300-year history. She has received a number of awards, including the Hooke Medal from the British Society for Cell Biology in 2017, EMBO membership in 2018, the Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists in the UK in 2019, and the DGZ Carl Zeiss Lecture Award in 2022. In 2024, she was featured as one of “50 Scientists that inspire” for the 50th Anniversary of Cell Press. Ewa leads a cross-disciplinary lab combining molecular and cell biology, biophysics, quantitative imaging and modelling to investigate the fundamental principles underlying cellular morphogenesis. The lab’s research directions span cell surface mechanics regulation, the control of cell shape during cell division and migration, and the cross-talk between cell mechanics, cell shape and cell fate during cellular transitions. Lab website: https://paluchlab.uk
Surveys, screeners, and patient assessments are often shortened to decrease response burden and cost of administration. While there are many methods for shortening screeners, they often aim to reproduce the original score while inducing the smallest amount of measurement error. One consideration that is often overlooked is that these instruments are often used less for precise measurement of some latent construct, but instead for accurate prediction of an even more costly or time consuming diagnosis or expert judgment. As such, we present an alternative method that addresses these concerns through the use of a Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm with simulated annealing (MCMC-SA). To maintain ease of use of the eventual form, we use MCMC-SA to explore the combinatorial search space of short forms using a loss function that optimizes prediction based upon an unweighted sum score. This method is orders of magnitude more efficient than brute force search and has the advantage of optimizing for prediction of the desired outcome directly, instead of optimizing on the measurement of an intermediate outcome that may not be well aligned with the decision criteria of interest. When applied to a screener for alcohol use disorder, we demonstrate that under the unweighted sum score scoring constraint, shortened forms can more accurately predict expert judgments than full forms.
Lesson of the week, clinical cases and research. All clinical and academic staff and students welcome. Coffee, Tea and Cake will be served.
Throughout the social world, predictive algorithms are a means to an end. They provide forecasts of future events with the aim to improve human decisions and drive positive changes in core life outcomes (increase graduation rates, life expectency, etc.). Given that higher welfare — not accuracy — is the ultimate goal of prediction, it’s clear that algorithms are just a small piece of the puzzle. There are many things we can do to improve welfare beyond improving the accuracy of predictive systems. Given this broad design space, when is investing in prediction truly “worth it”? This talk will discuss a new line of research that aims to formalize foundations for this question. Based on joint work with Christoph Kern and Unai Fischer-Abaigar.
In our August event, Daniel R. Porterfield (Maryland & Hertford 1984) will discuss his book Mindset Matters: The Power of College to Activate Lifelong Growth. Dan Porterfield has served as President and CEO of the Aspen Institute since 2018. He has been recognized as a visionary strategist, leader, and advocate for young people and purpose-driven leadership. A lifelong educator, he is the author of the 2024 book, Mindset Matters: The Power of College to Activate Lifelong Growth. Porterfield previously served as the President of Franklin & Marshall College, Senior Vice President for Strategic Development and an award-winning professor of English at Georgetown University, and communications director and chief speechwriter for the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services. He was named a White House Champion of Change in 2016 and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Council on Foreign Relations. He earned B.A. degrees from Georgetown and Oxford—where he was a Rhodes Scholar—and his Ph.D. from The City University of New York Graduate Center.
Abstract TBC.
From the Laboratory to the Clinic is an annual translational research conference established in 1984, held at Trinity College, Oxford. The conference brings together an international mix of basic scientists, clinicians, and industry researchers to explore how the latest discoveries in immunology and molecular medicine can be applied to improve clinical medicine. The major topic this year's conference is vaccines, along with other therapy-related topics of Gene Therapy and Regulatory T-Cells. The meeting will be in-person and streamed live online.
Talk titles TBC
The Social Outcomes Conference is the annual convening of the world's leading researchers, policymakers and practitioners working to improve social outcomes. The conference will feature discussions on the latest thinking and findings from academic research alongside insights from the emerging practice across different geographies, disciplines and policy areas. Hybrid conference: We will host the conference in hybrid mode. We will stream all the conference sessions online (Zoom), as well as offering in-person places for those who wish to attend at the Blavatnik School of Government in Oxford. Photography and Video: All sessions of the Social Outcomes Conference that are streamed online are recorded and recordings will be distributed online after the session. Please be aware that by joining the session online, you consent to these conditions. For in-person attendees, there will be photographers taking pictures and filming during both days of the conference. This year's keynote speaker: Mario Calderini We are delighted to announce that the keynote address at this year’s SOC25 will be delivered by Professor Mario Calderini, a global leader in social innovation, impact finance, and mission-oriented governance. Mario Calderini is Professor at the School of Management of Politecnico di Milano, where he teaches Management for Sustainability and Impact and directs Tiresia, the School’s Research Centre for Impact Finance and Innovation. His work has shaped government policy, advanced the impact investing field, and positioned social innovation as a key strategy for tackling today’s most pressing challenges. With a PhD in Economics from the University of Manchester, he has served as a senior advisor to multiple Italian ministers and was Sherpa for the G7 Italian Presidency. In 2021, he was named one of the World’s Most Influential Academics in Government by Apolitical. His keynote will speak directly to SOC25's theme - Institutionalising outcomes and impact: partnerships for systemic change - exploring how innovation and impact can be embedded into public institutions and cross-sector collaboration. Join us for an inspiring keynote that will help set the stage for a conference focused on turning isolated successes into sustainable, system-wide impact!
More information to follow.
Our September Summer School is tailored for postgraduate students, researchers, and professionals in economics. Your application includes enrolment in two academic courses in Applied Microeconomics, Macroeconomics or Econometrics (from two different disciplines, or focusing on a single field of interest), along with a formal dinner and welcome reception at an Oxford college, daily lunch and refreshments, and a certificate of completion. Visit the website for more information and registration: https://ouess.web.ox.ac.uk/september-summer-school
So, you’ve got a great idea for a research study – but what approvals do you need before you can start? Who do you apply to? And how do you go about doing this? Join an online presentation through Microsoft Teams for an overview of: • how research is governed in the UK • which approval bodies are involved • a step-by-step guide on how to apply for approval • handling amendments to your study
Accountability in higher education is a global phenomenon and important area of scholarly inquiry and policy attention. How did scholarly conversations develop and communities form? How did ideas of accountability evolve and travel? Using longitudinal, mixed-methods social network analysis, we examine co-citation networks of 450 articles on higher education accountability published between 1992 and 2016. We identify 24 knowledge communities that coalesce around different accountability topics, fields, and contexts. Through this approach we are able to capture the transformation of accountability in certain fields as well as its adaptation and integration across the globe.
Our vision is to transform research and healthcare in dementia. Dementia Research Oxford, led by Professors Masud Husain and Cornelia van Duijn, brings together researchers and clinicians across the University, our hospitals, patients, and industry partners to translate our growing insights in the basic molecular origin disease into effective treatment and prevention. We aim to take science further from drug target to treatment, from molecular pathology to early diagnosis and prognosis and from early intervention to prevention.
Working towards universal access to safe, affordable surgical, anaesthesia and obstetric care. This intensive five-day course, in person, in Oxford, is suitable for those in all disciplines interested in global surgery, anaesthesia and obstetrics. The course comprises presentations, discussions and seminars looking at major topics in global surgery such as burden of disease, health workforce capacity, training, partnership, supplies, service management, research needs, advocacy and ethics, and resource allocation. There will also be a half-day session on practical preparation for going to work in new contexts alongside local surgical teams. Traditionally surgery has been taught as a technical and practical specialty; however this short course takes a completely different approach and looks at the provision of surgical services at a global level. The term 'Global Surgery' in this course encompasses all related specialities including obstetrics, gynaecology and anaesthesia/critical care. For more information, please visit the Global Surgery Course website.
Understanding The Hebrew Bible presents interdisciplinary coverage of biblical scholarship from archaeological, gender, historical, linguistic, literary, sociological, theological, and visual cultural perspectives. It connects sacred texts and religions of the Mediterranean world, including reception history, literary theory, and commentaries. Edited by Revd Prof John Barton, FBA, the book features contributions from the following Members of the SOTS (Society of Old Testament Studies): James K. Aitken (†) , John Barton, Richard S. Briggs, George J. Brooke, Caroline Blyth, Kevin J. Cathcart, C. L. Crouch, Eryl W. Davies, Sue Gillingham, John Jarick, Paul M. Joyce, Anja Klein, Ekaterina E. Kozlova, Reinhard G. Kratz, Nathan MacDonald, Tsaurayi K. Mapfeka, Hilary Marlow, Holly Morse, Carol A. Newsom, Hugh S. Pyper, Laura Quick, Deborah Rooke, Mark Scarlata, Joachim Schaper, David J. Shepherd, Katherine E. Southwood, Francesca Stavrakopoulou, Jim West, H. G. M. Williamson. The book provides academics, Bible students, clergy and rabbis, and intelligent general readers with a snapshot of the main approaches and issues in the study of the Hebrew Bible since (approximately) the year 2000.
If you are planning to run a ‘non-CTIMP’ research study this introductory course is for you. Not all research is subject to clinical trials regulations, but the same standards of conduct apply. This course in Good Clinical Research Practice covers the legislation that applies to ‘non-CTIMP’ research, along with the detailed principles of good practice in clinical research studies. This three-hour online course consists of trainers’ led presentations, short video-talks from those experienced in the conduct of clinical research and interactive exercises. The course is run by the experienced research support specialists from the University of Oxford and Oxford University Hospital’s Joint Research Office, JRO. Join this online presentation through Microsoft Teams for an overview of: • Purpose of Good Clinical Research Practice including historical background • Difference between Clinical Care and Research Practice • Ethical and Regulatory Considerations in the UK • Research Study Requirements and Documentation • Research Study Conduct and Management
An introduction to the what, why and how of public involvement
Philosopher Menachem Fisch and visual artist Debra Band present the first illuminated manuscript of the entire biblical text of the Book of Ecclesiastes and the first philosophical analysis of the argument. Professor Fisch uncovers Qohelet’s twin concerns: life is short, and situated as we are, far below the heavens, we can never be assured of comprehending our world, or understanding divine will and intent. Since we can never fully predict or understand our fortunes or the heritage we leave behind us, the best we can do is to live our lives fully, relating to others attentively, always aware of the limits of human life. In her glowing, immersive, and discursive illuminated paintings of the entire text, Debra Band imagines Qohelet’s teachings, employing the grandest of palaces, the Alhambra, as the central metaphor for the beauty and impermanence of human life and accomplishments. She fills its halls and gardens with often surprising imagery, symbolism, and related poetry, creating a visual midrash that reveals the relationship of Qohelet’s thought to other biblical texts and Jewish lore and its reverberations across the centuries and cultures of Western civilisation, from ancient Israel to today’s America. Each illuminated page is complemented by lucid commentary explaining its full meaning. Renowned scholars Ellen F. Davis and Moshe Halbertal crown the work with a penetrating foreword and preface.
So, you’ve got a great idea for a research study – but what approvals do you need before you can start? Who do you apply to? And how do you go about doing this? Join an online presentation through Microsoft Teams for an overview of: • how research is governed in the UK • which approval bodies are involved • a step-by-step guide on how to apply for approval • handling amendments to your study
During the last 50 years, dramatic improvements in safety have been made in industries, including energy production, rail, air transport and construction. However, the rate of accidental harm to patients from their treatment has not changed much in healthcare, despite 30 years of research. In this lecture, Professor Peter McCulloch will explain particular problems of the healthcare environment and the challenges to developing ultra-safe care.
War and human flourishing exhibits strong spatial bias across geographical scales. Geography matters in conflict and cooperation but no mathematical framework thus far ties them together at the global scale. Here, we show that simple network models can explain the spatial patterns of conflict and cooperation with accuracy and robustness, reinforced and explained by simple agent-based-modeling. We go on in our second piece of work to add tipping dynamics to understand how cascades can happen or be prevented. This was then linked to several branching projects: (i) how will future climate change and migration affect the model (MET Office), and (ii) how can we model causal latent spaces in climate change and conflict. More generally, I am interested in how to better understand networked tipping dynamics and how it contributes to our understanding of global tipping dynamics in climate-society-technology ecosystems in the Tipping Points Report.
RGEA is pleased to announce the launch of a new course ‘Good Clinical Practice (GCP) for laboratory staff’. The course is for University of Oxford staff working in laboratories handling samples derived from clinical trials, and outlines the principles of GCP from the perspective of the laboratory. It will be delivered in-person at Boundary Brook House (Old Road Campus), by members of RGEA who have previous experience of working in laboratories.
Medical Statistics Drop In Session with Dr Lei Clifton,Lead Statistician, Applied Digital Health (ADH) Group, Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford. Day: Thursday Date: 16 October 2025 Time: 11:00 -12:00 Venue: BDI conference room (lower ground, near the cafe) Registration: https://forms.office.com/e/b8UEEgrBrY?origin=lprLink Do you have a burning medical statistics-related question that you would like to discuss with the wider Oxford Biomedical community? Submit your question in advance and join the drop-in session, where Lei Clifton will address your query. If you’re interested in being part of the conversation but don’t have a specific question, feel free to attend the session in person and follow along. This is an excellent opportunity to engage in knowledge exchange with your peers. The session will be informal and conversational, encouraging participants to share their perspectives on medical statistics. There will be no set agenda or specific topics of focus; instead, discussions will be spontaneous, shaped by the questions and interests brought forward on the day. Attendees will have the freedom to drop in and ask questions without restrictions, allowing for an open and dynamic exchange of ideas. While the session will not include presentations or detailed statistical analysis, general advice on study design and statistical methods will be provided. The emphasis will be on applying statistical thinking to real-world questions rather than conducting in-depth explorations of predefined topics. This is an in-person event only.
Religion-related violence is the fastest spreading type of violence worldwide. Attacks on religious minorities follow a clear pattern and are preceded with early warning signs. Until now, such violence had no name, let alone a set of policies designed to identify and prevent it. A unique attempt to create a new moral and legal category alongside other forms of persecution and mass murder, Religicide explores the roots of atrocities such as the Armenian Genocide, the Holocaust, the Bosnian war, and other human rights catastrophes. The authors tap into their decades of activism, interreligious engagement, and people-to-people diplomacy to delve into a gripping examination of contemporary religicides: the Yazidis in Iraq, the Rohingya in Myanmar, Uyghur Muslims and Tibetan Buddhists in China, and the centuries-long efforts to wipe out Indigenous Americans. Yet, even in the face of these horrific atrocities, the authors resist despair. They amplify the voices of survivors and offer a blueprint for action, calling on government, business, civil society, and religious leaders to join in a global campaign to protect religious minorities.
On October 23-24, 2025, the University of Oxford, will host the IX Workshop on Migration, Health, and Well-Being, following the success of the previous editions. The workshop’ focus is broad, covering empirical economic research on the topics of immigration, health economics, economics of migration and wellbeing. Spanning two days, the event will feature a select number of hour-long research presentations, fostering in-depth discussions. The workshop aims to strengthen connections among scholars with shared interests in these fields.
Our vision is to transform research and healthcare in dementia. Dementia Research Oxford, led by Professors Masud Husain and Cornelia van Duijn, brings together researchers and clinicians across the University, our hospitals, patients, and industry partners to translate our growing insights in the basic molecular origin disease into effective treatment and prevention. We aim to take science further from drug target to treatment, from molecular pathology to early diagnosis and prognosis and from early intervention to prevention.
Biography Professor Carbone (MD, PhD) is an Associate Professor of Hepatology at the University of Milano-Bicocca and Honorary Consultant Hepatologist at the Niguarda Liver Transplant Centre, Milan. He qualified in Medicine in Rome, Italy and trained in hepatology in Italy and in the UK. His research interest mainly relates to study disease mechanisms in autoimmune and cholestatic liver diseases. He runs a research programme in autoimmune and cholestatic liver diseases that encompasses joint modelling of molecular, histological and radiological data, and their conversion into meaningful outputs that can inform mechanistic understanding, health care decisions, and the design of innovative clinical trials. He is member of the International Clinical Research Network of PSC Partners, steering committee member of the Global PBC study group, and Vice-Chair of the PBC Foundation Medical Advisory Board. He founded and co-chairs the Italian Registry of PBC and PSC. He serves on the panel of the national guidelines for PBC and PSC. He is the recipient of the Rising Star in Gastroenterology award by the United European Gastroenterology (UEG) and the Europena Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) Sheila Sherlock Fellowship. He is Associate Editor of Digestive and Liver Disease, serves on the editorial board of Hepatology, and co-authored more than 144 articles in peer-reviewed journals (h-index 35).
The Symposium will highlight areas of stem cell research with trajectories towards treatments of diseases including metabolic disorders, neurodegeneration, vascular diseases, heart failure, cancer and new bioengineering strategies.
So, you’ve got a great idea for a research study – but what approvals do you need before you can start? Who do you apply to? And how do you go about doing this? Join an online presentation through Microsoft Teams for an overview of: • how research is governed in the UK • which approval bodies are involved • a step-by-step guide on how to apply for approval • handling amendments to your study
Many prominent social scientists have advocated for random-draw lotteries as a solution to the “problem” of college admissions. They argue that lotteries will be fair and equitable, eliminate corruption, reduce student anxiety, restore democratic ideals, and end debates over race-conscious admissions. In response, we simulate potential lottery effects on U.S. student enrollment by race, gender, and income, using robust simulation methods. If we went to a lottery system, what would happen to student diversity? And how could this change the built relationship between students and selective colleges?
Obesity is the fifth leading cause of death globally and one of the leading causes of disability. While the general medical impacts of obesity, including cerebrovascular complications, are relatively well-recognized, the less obvious effects on brain health are often overlooked. Obesity is frequently linked with brain cortical thinning, subcortical atrophy, accelerated brain aging, cognitive impairments, and an increased risk of dementia, even in absence of additional cardiovascular risk factors. This is particularly concerning in people with severe mental illness (SMI), where the rates of obesity are high and the brain effects of obesity and psychiatric disorders may interact. Indeed, we and others have demonstrated that obesity adds to brain gray and white matter alterations in SMIs. Variations in extent of obesity contribute to variations in extent of brain alterations in people with bipolar disorders or schizophrenia. Importantly, obesity related brain changes explain part of the cognitive impairment already in people with first episode of psychosis. Moreover, baseline weight or weight gain predict future acceleration of brain aging and hippocampal atrophy across SMIs. These brain effects could explain why obesity in SMI is associated with worse psychiatric outcomes, including greater psychiatric morbidity, chronicity, disability, functional decline, and worse responses to psychiatric medications. Monitoring weight and body composition thus becomes relevant for managing psychiatric, cognitive and brain health. Future research should investigate if prevention or treatment of obesity, i.e. with GLP1 agonists, could prevent or improve neurostructural changes and related psychiatric outcomes, including cognitive impairment.
This lecture explores how digital academic education is being reshaped by the fusion of emotional governance and technological design. Drawing on 20 in-depth interviews with learning designers working in Israeli EdTech companies, I examine how these professionals—positioned between private platforms and public universities—construct educational environments that are simultaneously affective and algorithmic. At the center of this analysis is the concept of “supervised autonomy”, which captures a core paradox: students are imagined as autonomous, self-regulating learners, yet also as emotionally vulnerable subjects in need of constant technological oversight. Surveillance technologies such as learning analytics dashboards are reframed by designers as tools of emotional care and personalized support. This dual logic extends to the role of professors, who are reimagined as both emotional caregivers and performative presenters—expected to maintain engagement, deliver emotional connection, and respond to behavioral data. In this new emotional-technological architecture, autonomy becomes not a withdrawal from control, but a condition shaped and sustained through ongoing algorithmic monitoring and therapeutic discourse. The lecture argues that the digitalization of academic life cannot be understood solely through the lens of market rationality. Rather, it reflects a deeper cultural reordering—where emotional expectations are embedded into digital infrastructures, and educational roles are redefined through a convergence of care, performance, and control.
If you are planning to run a ‘non-CTIMP’ research study this introductory course is for you. Not all research is subject to clinical trials regulations, but the same standards of conduct apply. This course in Good Clinical Research Practice covers the legislation that applies to ‘non-CTIMP’ research, along with the detailed principles of good practice in clinical research studies. This three-hour online course consists of trainers’ led presentations, short video-talks from those experienced in the conduct of clinical research and interactive exercises. The course is run by the experienced research support specialists from the University of Oxford and Oxford University Hospital’s Joint Research Office, JRO. Join this online presentation through Microsoft Teams for an overview of: • Purpose of Good Clinical Research Practice including historical background • Difference between Clinical Care and Research Practice • Ethical and Regulatory Considerations in the UK • Research Study Requirements and Documentation • Research Study Conduct and Management
For several years now, critical perspectives on the development and current orientation of internationalisation have emerged, expressing concern about the risk of reproducing already uneven global hierarchies through mainstream internationalisation activities, particularly in institutions of the Global North and Western/ised higher education. Scholars and practitioners caution that as institutions grow more interconnected, without a redistribution of power or a reimagining of dominant relationships, longstanding inequalities may be further entrenched. There is increasing concern that prevailing approaches to internationalisation risk reinforcing colonialist, capitalist global relations and sustaining Eurocentric knowledge regimes. Drawing on eleven months of ethnographic fieldwork across the UK, Denmark, and Germany, I examine how international student mobility is embedded in wider struggles over knowledge, legitimacy, and global inequality. The research traces how dominant hierarchies are reproduced or unsettled through everyday practices within universities, as well as in broader policy, institutional, and social spaces. Attending to both structural conditions and lived experiences, the study explores how spatial associations of knowledge and global power relations are articulated through everyday interactions, educational practices, and ways of knowing. It ultimately argues for a more ethically engaged and politically reflexive approach to internationalisation - one that takes seriously the call for cognitive justice in global higher education.
The extant literature on the link between international education and socio-political development emphasises the role political socialisation in democratic host societies plays in instilling democratic values in foreign students and prompting them to advocate for democratic change in the home country. In this webinar, I will discuss such assumptions drawing on some findings of my doctoral research project which explored the impact of international educational mobility on Russian young people’s socio-political views and engagement. More specifically, I will consider the influence of studying abroad on Russian mobile students’ understandings of democracy and aspirations to engage socio-politically in Russia. The analysis draws on data from 55 in-depth interviews with Russian students and alumni of British and American universities. The findings reveal that international mobility contributes to heightened socio-political awareness and sometimes helps shape notions of democracy. However, such individual-level democratising impact is somewhat weakened by the conflicting evidence demonstrating that study abroad may contribute to scepticism about democracy as a political system and that newly acquired socio-political knowledge is sometimes impressionistic and fragmented. Furthermore, the evidence points to the paramount importance of the sending country’s political context in examining the linkage between student migrants’ democratic socialisation abroad, aspirations to enact political agency and potential to impact on the level of democratic development in the homeland.
An introduction to the what, why and how of public involvement
In a fast-changing world, psychiatry needs to adapt to remain relevant. This presentation will summarize the changes in psychiatry that are considered to have been the most impactful for the practice and research in psychiatry since 1945. Based on this historical context, the current status of psychiatry and its future as one of the main medical specialties will be discussed.
Part of the Dementia Research Oxford seminar series Our vision is to transform research and healthcare in dementia. Dementia Research Oxford, led by Professors Masud Husain and Cornelia van Duijn, brings together researchers and clinicians across the University, our hospitals, patients, and industry partners to translate our growing insights in the basic molecular origin disease into effective treatment and prevention. We aim to take science further from drug target to treatment, from molecular pathology to early diagnosis and prognosis and from early intervention to prevention.
An introduction to the what, why and how of public involvement
An introduction to the what, why and how of public involvement
