OxTalks will soon move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events.' There will be a need for an OxTalks freeze. This was previously planned for Friday 14th November – a new date will be shared as soon as it is available (full details will be available on the Staff Gateway).
In the meantime, the OxTalks site will remain active and events will continue to be published.
If staff have any questions about the Oxford Events launch, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
We would like to invite you to the book launch: Islamic Law in Saudi Arabia by Dominik Krell (BRILL 2025). The book offers an in-depth exploration of the Saudi judiciary in the twenty-first century. Drawing on Saudi legal literature and court judgments, as well as interviews with leading members of the judiciary, the author addresses two central questions: first, what is the Saudi jurists’ understanding of an Islamic judiciary? And second, how is this understanding reflected in the Saudi legal system, its laws, institutions, and court practices? The event will feature three speakers who will comment on the book: Fernanda Pirie (Centre for Socio-Legal Studies) Martin Lau (SOAS) Muhammad Zubair Abbasi (Royal Holloway)
Dr Amanda Coutts - Senior Lecturer in Molecular Biosciences and Group Leader: Cancer cell survival and stress response. After obtaining a PhD in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry (University of Manitoba), Amanda undertook postdoctoral studies at the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research, University of Glasgow, Dept of Biochemistry, and the University of Oxford, Dept of Oncology, before joining Nottingham Trent University as a Senior Lecturer. At NTU she established her first independent research group (John van Geest Cancer Research Centre (JvGCRC), SHiMR research Centre) where her research focuses on understanding how cancer cell survival pathways link to disease progression and how stress responses influence nuclear structure and function. Mechanisms influencing cell survival such as apoptosis and autophagy are key determinants of cell fate during stress. Importantly, understanding how the cell integrates a variety of signals to affect a cellular outcome is clinically relevant and a poorly understood process. My work involving the p53 co-factor JMY has uncovered novel links between cell motility and the DNA damage response as well as mechanisms involved in autophagy and cell survival, and particularly, the role of actin in these processes. During this seminar I will discuss some recent research that has uncovered novel links with splicing regulators and nuclear actin. While evidence supports an important functional role of nuclear actin in processes fundamental to gene expression and cellular phenotype, the molecular details and key players are underexplored. We have recently identified nuclear filamentous (F)-actin formation in response to specific modulators of pre-mRNA splicing. Moreover, this has uncovered links with nuclear F-actin and the nucleolar stress response – thus suggesting that under certain conditions the formation of nuclear F-actin triggers a unique stress response that impacts cancer cell survival. We hope to better understand how stress responses impact nuclear structure and function, how this influences cancer cell survival, ultimately aiming to leverage this to enable translational impacts.
Please join either in person or online. For in-person attendees, the talk will be preceded by a light lunch at 12.15pm. Please email comms@sociology.ox.ac.uk with any questions.
Ahmad Dānish was a 19th-century Central Asian Persian-speaking intellectual who wrote numerous works – ranging from historical treatises to his research on geography and astronomy. His most famous work is Navādir al-vaqāyi‘ [The Rarest of Events], and the reason for its fame lies in its contents, since it contains two treatises dedicated to Dānish’s diplomatic visits to Saint Petersburg and one treatise with his suggestions on reforming the political and social structure of the Bukharan Emirate. The former two treatises (and partially the third one) formed the basis for his image of a ‘progressive’ and ‘pro-Western’ enlightener that was cultivated by Russian imperial and Soviet scholars and that, to some extent, survives up until now. It is not surprising that two Russian translations of Dānish’s works that appeared during the Soviet period both contained his accounts of life in Saint Petersburg, along with some other extracts from Navādir and from one of Dānish’s other works that supported this image. In this talk I will explore how exactly this process of translating Dānish’s works became political. Before starting her PhD in Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford, Kamila Akhmedjanova completed her BA and MPhil degrees at the University of Oxford, having previously specialized in Italian literature and general linguistics. She also holds an MSt in Oriental Studies from the University of Oxford. Kamila Akhmedjanova’s doctoral dissertation is a study of Ahmad Dānish’s legacy within the context of late 19th-century Persian-speaking intellectual trends. Kamila Akhmedjanova has published several academic articles, covering topics related to the 19th-century Persian-speaking intellectual trends, as well as to the methodology of teaching Tajik dialect of Persian. Her first article was dedicated to the study of double past participle forms in the Sicilian dialects, while her most recent published article is dedicated to the interplay of literature and politics in the works of Sadriddin Ayni, a famous Soviet Tajik writer. In addition, her forthcoming article explores the image of Persia in Russian literature.
For applied researchers, statistical power analysis with mixed-effects modeling (or multilevel modeling) poses a big challenge, because it requires substantive expertise on modeling, use of special software, and a number of input parameters which are usually not available in published work. The current talk proposes an easy and practical method to conduct statistical power analysis for mixed-effects modeling, called summary-statistics-based power analysis. The proposed method bases its logic on conditional equivalence of the summary-statistics approach and mixed-effects modeling, paring back the power analysis for mixed-effects modeling to that for a simpler statistical analysis (e.g., one-sample t test). Accordingly, the proposed method allows us to conduct power analysis for mixed-effects modeling using popular software such as G*Power or the pwr package in R and, with minimum input from relevant prior work (e.g., t value). I also provide a shinny app to make the approach even more accessible to applied researchers (https://koumurayama.shinyapps.io/summary_statistics_based_power/). Kou Murayama is Professor for Educational Psychology at the Hector Research Institute of Education Sciences and Psychology, University of Tübingen, Germany. In 2020, he has been awarded with the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Professorship. He is also Co-Director of the LEAD Graduate School & Research Network Teams-link: https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_ZDYwMTY0ZmQtNjkzYS00NjFlLWEzNzgtNWYzMTkzNzQ1YmM2%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22cc95de1b-97f5-4f93-b4ba-fe68b852cf91%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%22b33f55d8-6202-46f8-a141-737715faff88%22%7d
This group will run on Mondays from 13:00-15:40 (UK time) on Microsoft Teams. The format is as follows: 5min hellos and optional goal-setting* 1h10 timed work session 10min break with optional goals check-in 1h10 timed work session Optional debrief at the end, goodbyes *Verbal participation is at your discretion but I do find it helpful to articulate goals and check in at the end of each timed block. You could also choose to do this in the chat if you prefer not to unmute.
This talk will consider both the existing and developing global frameworks and mechanisms for pandemic relevant research. Alice will present insights from her group’s research on relevant policies and practices relating to research governance, research prioritisation, research funding and translation of research into practice in the pandemic preparedness and response field. This work will be positioned alongside the ongoing developments in the global pandemic preparedness landscape (such as the pandemic fund and pandemic agreement) to consider the future implications for research in this field. Biography Alice is an Associate Professor, leading the PSI Policy and Practice Research Group. Alice's group undertakes applied research on the design and implementation of policy and practice for pandemic preparedness and response. Alice is also Scientific Director for the Global Research Collaboration for Infectious Disease Preparedness (GloPID-R), undertaking research and policy development to support global research funders in their preparedness and response to infectious diseases. Alice is also PI for the Pandemic PACT programme and previous Head of the COVID-19 Research Coordination and Learning Initiative (COVID CIRCLE), tracking research funding and identifying research needs to inform action in collaboration with key stakeholders including global research funders, and Academic & Policy Lead for the Africa Pandemic Sciences Collaborative, working with the Science Foundation of Africa and Mastercard Foundation on Pandemic Sciences. Alice teaches on and is a Course Advisor for the International Health and Tropical Medicine Masters course and is a member of the Oxford Policy Engagement Network Steering Group. Alice is also currently working as an external expert on the World Bank’s evaluation of their last 20 years of investments in pandemic preparedness.
Schistosomiasis is a neglected tropical disease that affects hundreds of millions of people living in some of the most resource-poor communities in the world. Over the last decade, we have established high-throughput, whole-organism phenotypic platforms to facilitate screening of large compound collections against schistosomes. Our goal, using these platforms, is to bring new chemical matter into the schistosome drug discovery pipeline for progression as new PZQ replacements or for use in combination with PZQ. While we have completed >500K individual screens and identified incredibly potent compounds, our progress in translating these promising ex vivo results into in vivo efficacy has been slow. We contend that embedding enabling technologies into our pipeline will not only increase the pace of drug discovery but will also focus (often limited) resources around tractable chemical matter/protein target pairings. Here, using examples derived from ongoing projects, I will present how complementary strategies are being developed and deployed in our laboratory to accelerate the search for novel anti-schistosomals.
Since Smoluchowski introduced his well-known coagulation equation in 1917, there has been an active line of research focused on understanding the properties of the solutions to this equation and related models for coagulation. In particular, in 2000, Norris introduced a generalised version of the model, which he named the cluster coagulation model. This model was intended to extend the framework established by Smoluchowski, allowing particles to have additional properties beyond their mass, such as shape or spatial location. In this talk we focus on some recent progress in the study of the particle system that converges to such limiting (spatial) coagulation equation, often called the Marcus-Lushnikov process. In particular, we will present a recent sufficient criterion for the appearance of a giant particle (the gel in this framework) in the spatial setting. This improves existing criteria for gelation without the spatial interaction as well, proving in particular that homogeneous kernels with degree γ > 1 are indeed gelling (as long as they do not vanish on the diagonal). In addition, we present an approach based on Poisson Point Processes to study large deviations of the trajectory of such a Markov process in the large volume limit and explain how this also provides insight into gelation phenomena. This talk is based on a series of joint works with T. Iyer, W. König, H. Langhammer, E. Magnanini and R.I.A. Patterson.
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: Researcher & research student; Staff
Water resources present a classic tragedy of the commons that is of increasing relevance due to climate change. This paper provides evidence of how property rights institutions, particularly local irrigators' organizations, impact water markets' efficiency. Our analysis is based on a unique dataset that integrates administrative records, hydrological measures, geographic information, and satellite imagery. We develop a novel misallocation test, which suggests that these organizations reduce misallocation caused by the natural capacity of upstream users to over-extract. Using different identification strategies, we show that these efficiency gains are a result of both water redistribution and individual adaptation, as downstream farmers increase substantially their water consumption and agricultural yield, and also extend their growing season. Large farms adopt more efficient irrigation technologies, and overall gather more benefits from the analyzed property rights institution. Meanwhile, although upstream farmers reduce their water consumption, their productive outcomes remain unchanged. We also document increases in river streamflow during the irrigation season, concentrated in basins with higher agricultural activity. Our results provide micro-evidence of the consequences of effective governance for both allocative efficiency and equity.
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. By the end of this classroom-based session you will be able to: evaluate the effectiveness of your poster presentation and others; and summarise the content of your poster concisely in preparation for a conference. Intended audience: Medicine & NHS; Researcher & research student.
In this talk Dr Anwesha Roy will discuss one of the chapters of her forthcoming book, and examine in three important, yet hitherto overlooked textual sources on the Quit India Movement. She will explore pushes and pulls on ideas of responsibility between officials in the Indian government, the British government in England, and M.K. Gandhi. Running the show of empire in the historical conjuncture of a global war, attained different and complex connotations, especially when Roosevelt and Churchill signed the Atlantic Charter in 1941 that renewed America’s interest in the political stalemate in India. The response of the Govt. of India and of Britain, captured in the vignettes presented in her book, reveal for historians of empire, a complex terrain of anxiety and struggles, with political and moral legitimacy. The intellectual and political language of ‘responsibility’ took on new tones, where the use of excessive violence to crush the movement fit within the language of necessity, not only because a full blown rebellion in the midst of a global war would be disastrous for Britain and her allies, but also because responsibility was cloaked in colonial paternalism, infantilising general ‘masses’ as capable only of nationalist (and elite) ‘manipulation’. Gandhi offered a different, moral version of responsibility (as indeed, of politics itself), simultaneously distancing himself, and the larger Congress leadership from the violence of the movement, but also, in doing so, weaving a narrative where the general ‘masses’ could be taught ‘responsible’ non-violence, one that could only come at the heavy expense of violence. Anwesha Roy is a Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on the socio-political histories of the British Empire in India, more specifically, social and emotional histories of World War II, identity formation(s), mass mobilizations and processes of decolonization. She is the Author of Making Peace, Making Riots: Communalism and Communal Violence, Bengal 1940-47 (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and Imagining Quit India: War, Politics and the Making of a Mass Movement, 1940-45 (forthcoming, Cambridge University Press, 2025). She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Asiatic Society.
Like minimal but loads more notes like video-games but with more song like jazz but much more gay like old music but more current like yummy sweet but more stick like paint but more scratch like tapestry but filthily like prayer but more loud like loud groove and more rude like fingers and faces too but somehow more smelly like smelly things cooking with more chew and change like louder prayers that groove with like stinking-hot-pink in poo-slops but even more desperate-like than that like drums and Dream Musics Like biting into a strawberry
In post-war Britain, psychoanalysts and psychiatrists attempted to apply their knowledge of human mental and emotional life to the world of work. In this paper, I discuss psychoanalytic studies of nursing conducted in three British hospitals (two psychiatric and one general) by the Tavistock Institute of Institute of Human Relations between 1956 and 1958. While previous efforts at organisational psychoanalysis and industrial psychology had focussed on the industrial workplace, these studies offered the chance to develop a psychological theory of caring labour. However, I argue that the attempted creation of scientific knowledge was undermined, not only by resistance from hospital staff and administrators but also by epistemological limits within the project of workplace psy-science itself. By cleaving to the overdetermined association between women and capacity for care, the researchers found it impossible to account for the abuse and neglect that was systemic within British psychiatric hospitals of the period. Despite the fact that newly-nationalised hospitals were reliant on migrant labour from Southern Europe, Ireland and the Commonwealth, researchers also refused to account for the role of race and migration status in the social relations of the hospital, centring the white nurse as the only appropriate subject of workplace psychoanalysis. *Grace Whorrall-Campbell* is a historian of modern Britain, specialising in the histories of psy-science, sexuality, disability and labour. Before joining Corpus as the Michael Brock Junior Research Fellow in History, Grace was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for History of Science in Berlin. Recent publications include a history of occupational psychiatry and management at Roffey Park Rehabilitation Centre in _History of the Human Sciences_ and a chapter on psychological job selection in _Adulthood in Britain and the United States from 1350 to Generation Z_ (2025, University of London Press, ed. Maria Cannon and Laura Tisdall).
Jennie Bullen - Leveraging Data Tracking for Studying Neurodiversity Franziska Brändle - Using video games to study intrinsic motivation Caroline Nettekoven - A Mapmaker’s Guide to the Cerebellum PinChun Chen - How Do Hippocampal Ripples Orchestrate Cortical Dynamics During Human Sleep?
Epilepsy affects over 50 million people worldwide, yet women of reproductive age, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, continue to face multiple barriers to care during pregnancy. In Nepal, these challenges highlight the urgent need to integrate epilepsy into maternal and reproductive health systems to ensure safer pregnancies and better long-term outcomes. In her talk, Deepesha Silpakar, Oxford Martin Visiting Fellow with the Programme on Global Epilepsy, will share insights from her work examining how epilepsy is addressed within maternal health frameworks in Nepal. She will discuss mapping access to antiseizure medicines, identifying system-level and policy gaps and developing theory of change and aligned strategies to strengthen maternal-neurological care in resource-limited settings. The session will be followed by a panel discussion with Dr Mahesh Kumar Maskey, Founding Chair and Executive Chief of the Nepal Public Health Foundation; Professor Jane Hirst, Chair of Global Women’s Health at Imperial College London; and Professor Arjune Sen, Professor of Global Epilepsy at the University of Oxford;. Together, they will explore how research, clinical practice, and policy can align to better integrate epilepsy within broader maternal and women’s health agendas, bridging perspectives from Nepal, Oxford, and the global health community. This is a joint event with the Oxford Martin Programme on Global Epilepsy.
The Flagship Pioneering Fellowship is a paid, full-time summer Fellowship (June-August 2026) that provides an unparalleled opportunity for creative, entrepreneurial scientists and technologists to immerse themselves in Flagship’s unique approach to inventing and building disruptive science and technology companies. The Internship programme is a 12 week paid fellowship in Boston MA, for STEM Students and recent alumni. Over 70% of students who took part last year were secured job offers from the US companies! Open to all who want to attend and discover all about it! Join Lena Afeyan (Head of UK Science Strategy and Innovation at Flagship Pioneering and Said Business School alumni) and Reza Rohani (2025 Summer Fellow, Oxford PhD student) to learn more about the Summer Fellowship Program 2026.
Amid ongoing armed conflict and terrorism around the world, it has become increasingly evident that many of those on the frontlines of armed conflict and terrorism are young individuals between the ages of 18 and 35. In recent years, global agendas such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the UN Youth strategy, as well as Women, Peace and Security (WPS) and Youth, Peace and Security (YPS), have highlighted the importance of youth empowerment and the role of youth in peacebuilding. Yet, many “invisible youth,” such as Youth Associated with Non-State Armed Groups (YANSAG), have been significantly overlooked. Moreover, among the conflict actors, individuals under the age of 18 are protected under international norms, such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, and the Paris Principle. However, once they turn 18, even those who were recruited as child soldiers often fall outside the scope of protection and support, and are instead regarded merely as security threats. This situation not only prevents them from realising their unique potential, but also makes it more difficult for them to break free from cycles of violence and hatred, ultimately posing a significant obstacle to achieving sustaining peace. This event will shed light on how these youth can be understood, how they should be supported in their disengagement and reintegration from non-state armed groups, and what kinds of international norms are urgently needed to address this situation.
As debate continues around issues of assisted dying, another set of (often separate) discussions has focused on the possibilities and desirability of radical life extension in various forms - from epigenetic interventions to digital doppelgängers. Join us for a panel-style discussion that will take up these two topics together, with a focus on questions of human identity, suffering, aging, and the meaning of mortality in our lives.
Advances in artificial intelligence are accelerating the capacity to decode, manipulate, and weaponize biological information at unprecedented scale. This panel examines the convergence of AI and biotechnology in enabling precision targeting of genetic traits—reshaping deterrence, attribution, and the ethics of warfare itself. As genomic datasets expand and machine learning enhances predictive bio-design, the boundaries between defense, health security, and population control blur. What happens when code meets code—digital and biological—and selective vulnerability becomes a function of data? Bringing together experts in AI governance, bioethics, and national security, this session explores the emerging landscape of algorithmic biology and the profound implications of an era in which intelligence itself becomes a biological instrument.
Hogs on Film began as a means to collect data on the UK’s native hedgehog population; bridging the gap between those who film and feed hedgehogs from their own gardens, and the research community. Urbanized animals often face a number of novel challenges and by studying their behaviour, we can understand what adaptations are advantageous in this niche. Hogs on Film aims to collect UK wide data on the impact of human provided food sources on the social interactions and species dynamics occurring in privately owned gardens. Hear from us as we introduce our project and share our findings so far!
The emergence of network theory in psychopathology has disrupted traditional latent disease models by reconceptualising psychiatric disorders as systems of dynamic interacting symptoms. This talk will trace the evolution of network psychiatry from its epistemological underpinnings to its contemporary computational implementations, highlighting its capacity to reframe diagnosis, prognosis, and therapeutic decision-making. Particular attention will be given to the translational value of symptom networks in clinical psychiatry, including their application in stratified care models, digital phenotyping, and intervention targeting. Giovanni Briganti is a tenured professor at the University of Mons, Belgium, where he serves as Chair of AI and Digital Medicine and Head of computational medicine and neuropsychiatry. At the University Hospital Centre HELORA, he serves as Head of Psychiatry. Since 2018, his personal research endeavours have been almost exclusively focused on the application of network models in psychiatry. This seminar is hosted in person, to join online, please use the Zoom details below: https://zoom.us/j/94567124781?pwd=sVxXabbSWibdU8A9W2clQlG9neRGbQ.1 Meeting ID: 945 6712 4781 Passcode: 470970
A practical 180-minute workshop where participants will work on searches for their review across multiple databases. Librarians from the Bodleian Health Care Libraries will be on hand to demonstrate online tools for facilitating the process and give practical advice on refining individual search strategies. By the end of this classroom-based session you will be able to: improve a search strategy that you are working on; adapt the search across multiple databases; use tools such as Yale MeSH Analyzer and Polyglot; describe alternative methods for identifying references, including citation chaser; use Covidence for your review; and report your search methods according to PRISMA-Search. Intended audience: Medicine & NHS; Researcher & research student
Aging and death have always been central to our shared human identity and experience, yet recent advances in artificial intelligence and biotechnology seem to challenge the inevitability of both—whether by epigenetic interventions or digitally preserving consciousness. Still, the ethical and existential questions these developments raise are not new. Literature and film have long explored the meaning and significance of our shared mortality, sometimes imagining the usurpation of death itself. This artistic engagement can help inform contemporary debates about life extension through imaginative theorizing and challenging narratives that foreground aging and death. (And so the conference is not only concerned with literature and film that address immortality or the usurpation of death, but more broadly the applicability of stories that engage with the meaning, significance, and desirability of mortality and aging). This conference draws on this rich tradition, inviting scholars of literature, film, and related fields, as well as practitioners, to discuss timely topics relating to life extension, including boredom and alienation, identity and memory, aging and altruism, narrative and selfhood, and the ways cultural memory binds us across generations. Does immortality risk meaninglessness? Can a longer life deepen love—or diminish it? How could our sense of self change when death itself becomes optional? In reflecting on these questions, the conference will assess the desirability of significantly extended lifespans, as well as examine the broader question of the place of literature within contemporary ethical debates. Programme to be announced soon.
Join us for a digital scholarship coffee gathering - tea and coffee will be provided. These will be held in the Visiting Scholars Centre, so to attend you’ll need to bring your Bodleian Card and to leave your bags in the lockers - this event is only open to University staff and students.
We are pleased to invite you to the fourth Oxford Nanopore Users Group Meeting, bringing together researchers and practitioners to share insights and developments in nanopore sequencing. Join us for two exciting presentations followed by drinks and refreshments: PRESENTATIONS Metagenomic Detection of Microbial Infections in Synovial Fluid Hermione Webster DPhil Student, Modernising Medical Microbiology Nuffield Department of Medicine, John Radcliffe Hospital, University of Oxford Metagenomic Sequencing for Prosthetic Joint Infection: Where We’ve Been and Where We’re Hoping to Go Dr Teresa Street Senior Research Scientist, Modernising Medical Microbiology Nuffield Department of Medicine, John Radcliffe Hospital, University of Oxford For more information, please contact Dan.Dancer@nanoporetech.com or Alexandra.noble@ndm.ox.ac.uk
Large-scale disruptions to everyday infrastructure are becoming more frequent due to climate change, population growth, and increased user demand. While the political consequences of gradual changes in public service quality are relatively well understood, we know less about the electoral consequences of public service breakdowns where these services were once reliable and readily accessible. To address this critical question, I use the quasi-random allocation of electric outages in South Africa to examine how the breakdown of public services influences voting behavior. I show that each additional hour of outages in the week before the 2021 elections lowered the incumbent's vote share. Crucially, this effect was primarily driven by decreased turnout among incumbent supporters, particularly in areas lacking credible opposition parties. These findings are further validated using individual-level responses from South African survey respondents. With energy crises expected to intensify over the next several decades, the results have implications for the literatures on public-goods provision, climate resilience, and democratic accountability.
This seminar is part of the Child Development and Learning (CDL) Seminar Series. Join in-person or online: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/3799219398382?p=2e2iFubdvLDs8dvPmG
Ian A. Wilson, D.Phil., D.Sc., FRS, FRSE Prof. Ian A. Wilson obtained a B.Sc. from Edinburgh University (1971), D. Phil. (1976) and D.Sc. (2000) from Oxford University, was a postdoc at Harvard University 1977-82, and joined Scripps Research Institute as a faculty member in 1982. His lab’s current focus is on antigen recognition receptors and how antibodies recognize influenza virus, HIV-1, HCV, SARS-CoV-2, Mpox, astroviruses, alphaviruses, and P. falciparum to aid in design of vaccines and therapeutics. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and International Member of the US National Academy of Sciences.
We show that forward induction provides a rational foundation for contract renegotiation, and in turn for incomplete contracts and the property rights theory of the firm. However, this foundation places conditions on the contracting game, the violation of which allows ex post inefficiencies of the sort that can explain the internal organization of firms.
Claire is currently a Partner in the Life Science team at Oxford Science Enterprises, an investment company that creates transformational businesses via a unique partnership with the University of Oxford, UK, the world’s #1 research university. Her focus is building and investing in novel therapeutics and therapeutic platforms across diverse therapy areas and modalities. She currently supports a number of OSE’s emerging companies incl. T-Cypher Bio, Nucleome, Alveogene and Orfonyx. Claire has spent the majority of her career in the global BioPharmaceutical industry at UCB Group, Sanofi-Genzyme and AstraZeneca where she worked in a variety of roles covering R&D strategy, licensing and corporate VC.
Nellaker Group With the rapid rise of LLM based agentic AI chatbots we have a new powerful tool at our disposal to drive research forward - maybe. Everyone in the university now has access to ChatGPT Edu, so how does this work, and how should we and should we not use this? We will give a quick explanation of how these models work in simple terms, common use cases for these tools in research and an overview of risks and dangers of which to be wary. We can’t give a complete list of do’s and don’ts, but we hope to help you thinking in the right way around these issues as we all navigate how to use LLMs in research with integrity and confidence.
Abstract: There are observable differences in disease prevalence and other traits between human populations but due to confounding factors it is not clear if such differences are due to environmental or genetic factors and/or their interaction. In admixed populations, ancestry differences between and within families can be captured from genome data and we used this design with data from the Mexican City Prospective Study to estimate direct and indirect ancestry effects on risk of diabetes and other traits. Bio: Peter Visscher FRS is Professor of Quantitative Genetics. He has held faculty positions at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Queensland, and honorary or affiliate positions at the University of Melbourne, UMCG Groningen and the Karolinska Institute. He is in the process of moving his lab to the Big Data Institute. Professor Visscher is known for his research investigating the genetic basis of complex human traits, including common diseases. His research focuses on the causes and consequences of human trait variation. He developed and applied statistical analysis methods to quantify and dissect the contribution of DNA polymorphisms to trait variation. He was one of the first to propose, advocate and show that genome and trait data can be used to predict individuals who are genetically at high risk of disease. The use of “polygenic risk scores” in health care is now being trialled worldwide. There will be tea/coffee and cakes available for seminar attendees in Atrium 1, 30 min prior to the seminar.
Wages vary significantly across cities, though not uniformly. While wages are on average higher in larger cities, the real earnings of low-wage workers are lower. Using French administrative data, I document two novel facts on how employers shape spatial wage inequality. First, high-paying jobs are concentrated in large cities, whereas low-paying jobs are present throughout space. Second, the wage gains offered by large cities materialize over time as workers move from low- to high-paying jobs. I propose a spatial framework that ties these facts together through two ingredients: heterogeneous employers and monopsonistic competition along local job ladders. Productive employers agglomerate in large cities to sidestep hiring frictions. Fiercer competition steepens the local ladder. Unemployed workers accept lower real earnings anticipating future wage growth. I estimate the model and show that the spatial concentration of productive firms quantitatively accounts for the two facts. I then use the model to assess the consequences of housing-adjusted unemployment benefits. While the policy increases spatial disparities, it alleviates the spatial misallocation caused by local labor market power, and therefore raises aggregate consumer surplus and TFP.
Angus MacIntyre is a serving military officer in the RAF and has recently returned from a year working in NATO HQ in Brussels as part of the team delivering support to Ukraine. The key aspect of Angus’ work was cohering UK, UKR, US and NATO efforts to ensure unity of thought and direction of travel, during delicate start-up negotiations. In exploring NATO’s current role in deterring Russian aggression and supporting Ukraine there are questions that arise that go to the very core of NATO’s existence. The change of government in the US has placed huge pressure on NATO’s European members to shoulder a greater burden for their own defence or risk limiting the US’ response in a crisis. What happens if the US completely withdraws from NATO ? Does Article 5 really have any utility ? What can be done to lure the US back into a more committed relationship with NATO ? With commentators and governments from around Europe both hinting at the inevitability of escalation and further conflict the key question arises – Is Security in Europe by Luck or By Design ? Angus will look at what NATO is currently doing, versus what he believes it should be doing and examine key aspects of current NATO activity and role, concluding that luck is playing far too big a part for fear of escalation. NATO must commit to doing much more from strategic leadership, innovation, and a willingness to be seen to be leading the multi-national campaign from the front.
In recent years, scholars have shown growing interest in political imagination and utopias in higher education. They highlight their importance at a time when universities are harnessed for national economic growth and training worker-citizens. This attention also responds to broader concerns about an ‘imagination deficit’ that threatens democratic life. Against this backdrop, political imagination matters not only as a democratic capacity but also as a way in which political agency is enacted. It refers to the individual and collective capacity to imagine social reality otherwise, inspire political action, and articulate political critique. Utopias, in turn, serve as a tool for political imagination. This study explores higher education students’ political imagination as a form of political agency. It draws on small group discussions with students (N=86) conducted in workshops for reimagining the future food assistance in Finland. While students’ political agency is often studied through conventional and institutionalised forms of participation, this study adopts a broader understanding of politics – one that moves beyond formal institutions and electoral processes, shaped by social relations, lived experiences, and practiced, for example, through thinking and speaking politically. Our analysis identifies a dynamic of three interrelated elements that shape students’ imaginative practices: constraints, conditions and cracks. The movement between these three elements illuminates how the political emerges unevenly in the process of collective imagination – sometimes hindered, sometimes reinforced, sometimes catalysed. We suggest that political imagination constitutes a fragile yet meaningful mode of agency. It becomes visible in how students critique the status quo, formulate alternative futures, and reposition themselves in relation to the political. We argue for the importance of political imagination and utopian thought as part of nuanced everyday forms of political engagement among higher education students, and as a practice through which higher education’s democratic role can and should be strengthened.
Adnan Naseemullah is Professor of Comparative and South Asian Politics and Fellow of Wolfson College, the University of Oxford. He has previously taught at the London School of Economics, Johns Hopkins University and King’s College London. His research focuses on the political economy of national development, state formation and political violence and the politics of populism. He is the author of three books: Development after Statism (Cambridge, 2017), Patchwork States (Cambridge 2022), and Righteous Demagogues (with Pradeep Chhibber, Oxford 2024).
Liquidity – Francesca Beretta (Oxford) Intoxication – Samuel Agbamu (Reading) Haunting – Tori Lee (Davidson) [online]
Host: Bettina Wittneben, SBS Chair: Leo Johnson, Smith School Panellists: - Karl Hansen, Trust for Sustainable Living - climate leader in education - Rebecca Gardner, Oxford Climate Society – youth leader - Dr Samira Barakat, Vattenfall – leader in wind power installation and operation - Sharon McManus, ESB - Head of Sustainability governing power generation and distribution - Sonalika Parmar, AFRY Management Consulting – change maker through management consulting - Susan Kidd, writer and activist - leader in climate measures in buildings, esp. historic buildings
The grouping of Yiddish speaking Jews, of various origin countries in Central and Eastern Europe, into a single overarching identity of Ashkenazim, was meaningful particularly in multi-ethnic and multi-lingual Jewish contexts. This seminar examines the shaping of the Ashkenazi community in Ottoman Jerusalem, as facilitated by Ottoman legal and political context. Ottoman recognition of Ashkenazim as a corporate identity was crucial to its emergence and continuity. Dr Yair Wallach is a Reader (Associate Professor) in Israeli Studies, and the head of the SOAS Centre for Jewish Studies. He has written on urban and material culture in modern Palestine/Israel, and more recently on race and migration. His book A City in Fragments: Urban Text in Modern Jerusalem (Stanford University Press, 2020) won the Jordan Schnitzer book prize in 2022.
How is scientific evidence turned into policy at the European Commission? What challenges do advisors face and what opportunities exist for researchers to contribute? This panel brings together Professor Dimitra Simeonidou (current Chief Scientific Advisor to the European Commission; University of Bristol), Professor Nicole Grobert (former Chief Scientific Advisor; University of Oxford), Karen Fabbri (Deputy Head of Unit, Science for Policy, Advice & Ethics at the European Commission), and Jonathan Murphy (Policy Officer, Scientific Advice Mechanism). They will reflect on the role and impact of the Scientific Advice Mechanism (SAM) and share personal experiences of advising at the highest level, and discuss lessons learned from real-world case studies. Participants will gain insights into how science advice works in practice and how researchers can engage with European policy processes.
In this paper, I intend to examine the Miaphysite recension(s) of the “Debate of Abu Qurrah with Muslim scholars at the court of the Caliph al-Maʾmūn,” paying close attention to confessionally-motivated editing, and considering its relevance to wider questions regarding Christian confessional boundaries in the Islamic world and the role of Islam in transforming intercommunal relations among Middle Eastern Christians. The relevance of this topic to different subfields of history, theology, and philology is readily apparent, but what might it portend for political theology? An obvious answer is that the political theology of the Melkite and Miaphysite recensions vis-à-vis Islam may differ substantially. I also propose the following answer, with a narrower focus on the political-theological dynamics of intercommunal textual transmission. The relevance of the christological schisms to political theology is well-known. Christian political leaders aligning themselves with particular christological camps prompted subsequent developments in Christian political theology. A study of the long-term aftereffects of Chalcedon in the Middle East and the transformation of christological tensions following the Islamic conquests can provide us with a chance to see what happened to christology-centric political theology when a new batch of christologically-indifferent rulers took power. I tentatively suggest that the impact of Islam on Christian political theology, specifically in the case of Chalcedon’s aftershocks, was to diminish the political-theological tensions between warring christological factions, and instead enable their intercommunal boundaries to become more porous. The idea that non-Christian conquest might resolve some of the problems of Christian political theology may seem at first counterintuitive. But, it is important to recognize that while there were new political-theological questions raised by the rise of Islam, there were other old questions which were resolved, which in turn shaped the way that different Christian communities interacted.
Daryl Press (Professor of Government, Dartmouth College) will present "Unintended Consequences: Why the Laws of Armed Conflict Should Not Apply to Nuclear Deterrence.” Press argues that the law of armed conflict (LOAC) is intended to reduce suffering during wars by minimising the harm that conflicts inflict upon noncombatants. The application of LOAC principles to the war plans that underpin nuclear deterrence seems logical and necessary. After all, few military activities put civilians at greater risk than nuclear war. Unfortunately, LOAC principles, when applied in the nuclear domain, have serious unintended consequences. Adherence to LOAC by US nuclear planners is catalyzing a new nuclear arms race—which is just beginning now and poised to accelerate. Even worse, the demands of LOAC are driving the United States to adopt policies that make accidental nuclear war more likely. LOAC is a means to an end: a legal tradition intended to reduce human suffering. As such, it needs to be adapted—or applied more narrowly—to achieve LOAC’s primary goals without increasing the dangers of the nuclear age. Commenting on Press’ approach will be Janina Dill (Professor of Global Security and Co-Director of ELAC, University of Oxford), providing insights based on the research findings of a two-year collaborative project on Law, Ethics, and Nuclear Weapons, which is forthcoming as a special issue in Security Studies. The special issue incorporates scholarship by Fiona Cunningham, Scott Sagan and Janina Dill, Giovanni Mantilla, and Steve Fetter and Sébastien Philippe, concerning the role of law and ethics in British, Chinese, and US nuclear doctrine as well as reflection on the strategic and ethical reasons for legalising nuclear deterrence and use. The event will include a Q&A and will be chaired by Lauren Sukin (John G. Winant Associate Professor in U.S. Foreign Policy, University of Oxford.)
In this talk, Dr Ross Brooks (he/him) will give us a sneak preview (and perhaps even a covert cover reveal!) of his forthcoming book, _Darwin and the Queer Origins of Life_, to be published by Yale University Press next August. Perceptions of Darwin’s sexological ideas and legacy have long been clouded by simplistic accounts of his theory of sexual selection: competitive males and coy females perpetuating species. Digging deeper, Ross will outline some of Darwin’s encounters with queer creatures and how they continually modified his thinking about the origins and evolution of sex, leading him to the startling conclusion, ‘Every man & woman is hermaphrodite.’ Intersex fish species, seahorse dads, gynandromorph butterflies, a hen-feathered cockerel named Hector. All queered Darwin’s evolutionary sexology in ways that have hitherto been little appreciated, obscured by his dogmatic devotion to Victorian gender and sexual mores. *Dr Brooks* is an Associate Lecturer in history at Oxford Brookes University and curator of the Queer Oxford project (queeroxford.info). He has been integral in originating queer perspectives on the history of evolutionary biology and his reappraisal of Charles Darwin's sexological science has been especially influential. Ross appears in the pioneering nature documentary Queer Planet which premiered in the UK on Sky Nature in November 2023. He is a Fellow of the Linnean Society. Any questions, please contact "$":mailto:natalie.duffus@biology.ox.ac.uk or "$":mailto:william.paine@biology.ox.ac.uk
In the mid-1960s, the post-independent government of the Republic of Kenya embarked on an ambitious tourism development programme. With state investments in hotels and lodges, liberal investment policies for international investors, an official promotional machinery, and the assistance of international experts, tourism became a key element of Kenya's overall development strategy and efforts in economic modernisation. The origins of this programme can be traced to late-colonial development efforts, as well as the momentum tourism gained during the 1960s as a panacea for world peace and the economic catch-up of developing countries. The initial success of tourism development with annual visitor growth rates of 15% allowed Kenya to transform its colonial economy and established itself as the prime tourist destination in Sub-Saharan Africa, yet a new economic dependency on the international tourist industry dominated by Western corporations, highly competitive and sensitive to a variety of issues, emerged visibly in the global recession of the mid-1970s. Despite mounting challenges and the failure of large development projects, the Kenyan government remained committed to tourism development, as not only the state but Kenya's political patrons under both Kenyatta and Moi had invested in tourism. The presentation, therefore, frames tourism development not only as a category to analyse Kenya's economic history but also its postcolonial political regime in a national as well as global context. Mathias Hack is a doctoral researcher at Leipzig University. His research interests are the history of European colonialism, global tourism after 1945 and postcolonial Eastern Africa.
We examine the migration to the United States of Mafiosi fleeing Fascist repression in the 1920s. Using historical US administrative records containing the Sicilian municipality of birth matched with full censuses and FBI reports from decades later, we provide evidence that expelled mafiosi settled in pre-existing Sicilian immigrant enclaves and triggered the rise of the Italo-American Mafia. Our analysis reveals that 75% of future mafia leaders in the US originated from only 1.7% of neighborhoods that had hosted immigrant communities originating in the 32 Sicilian municipalities targeted by anti-mafia Fascist raids decades earlier. Future mafia activity is also disproportionately concentrated in these same neighborhoods. We then explore the socio-economic impact of organized crime on these communities. In the short term, we observe increased violence in adjacent neighborhoods, heightened incarceration rates, and redlining practices that restricted access to the formal financial sector. However, in the long run, these same neighborhoods exhibited higher levels of education, employment, and social mobility, challenging prevailing narratives about the purely detrimental effects of organized crime. Our findings contribute to debates on the persistence of criminal organizations and their broader economic and social consequences.
Historians habitually recognize the Cold War had roots predating the mid-1940s. I am writing an article testing the hypothesis that the Cold War began after the Russian civil war. I unpack the hypothesis by discussing six possible objections: the socialist-capitalist confrontation did not (fully) structure the interwar years’ inter-state system; the system wasn't bipolar; the Soviet challenge to that system stopped with Stalin’s turn to “socialism in one country;” the US wasn't yet central to that system; fascism created a tripolar reality; and nuclear weapons did not yet exist. The payoff of this exercise is that it qualifies some presumably distinctive features of 1945-1991. Professor Cyrus Schayegh, Geneva Graduate Institute, with response from David Priestland, Professor of Modern History (St Edmund Hall)
Hope Pearl Strickland is an artist-filmmaker working across experimental and documentary-based modes. Strickland’s work has screened internationally at film festivals including the 59th New York Film Festival, BFI London Film Festival (2022), International Film Festival Rotterdam (2024) and Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival (New Cinema Awards, 2024). Presentations in exhibition spaces include Arnolfini, Bristol; Hasselblad Center at Gothenburg Art Museum and Serpentine Galleries, London. Her work has been commissioned by organisations across the UK including FACT, Liverpool, Touchstones Gallery, Rochdale and Film and Video Umbrella. She has presented work at various academic conferences, including the Ruskin School of Art (2021), The University of Birmingham (2024). Strickland was awarded the Aesthetica Emerging Art Prize in 2023. She is nominated for this year’s Jarman Award (2025).
This talk explores the emergence of the video format and the emergence of new, sensationalist cinematic genres, as they interact with the mediated spaces of urban cinema in late 1980s and 1990s China. While cinema in the first half of the 1980s dealt with competition from television, a relatively regulated medium, urban China at the turn of the decade became the proving ground for the more undisciplined medium of the videocassette. Instead of entertaining consumers at home, video was a semi-theatrical medium consumed in urban institutions known as video halls that became ubiquitous in the late 1980s and remained essential fixtures of urban life into the next decade. Video halls were seedy, semi-legal spaces in which mostly men watched mostly pulpy genres. Video content was often pirated: poorly copied, consumed and circulated with little regard for elite literary and cinematic taste. A late 80s explosion of violent and sexually suggestive video titles threatened the economic bottom line of Chinese cinema by tantalizing audiences with material that could not be shown in Chinese theatres. In response to audiovisual competition, the Chinese film industry indulged in remarkably (sexually) violent production. In this analysis of several significant late 80s films, The Last Frenzy (1987), The Price of Frenzy (1988), Samsara (1988), and The Yellow Specter of the Night (1989), Dr Keblinska shows how video and illicit genres were both pathologized and embraced to theorize a new embodied and anxious mode of spectatorship. The shocking exploits of video exploded onto the big screen just as the economic violence of the decade was about to come to a head in political upheaval. In turning to the culturally low and inhabiting the urban media margins, cinema evinced a dark turn in Chinese (media) history, failing to live up to the ideals of economic reform and repeatedly gesturing to social collapse. How do we understand this 'end of cinema' when we read it against the violent materiality of the video encounter? Content note: The talk concerns films that feature sexual assault and strong violence. Images of characters in psychological and physical distress will be used to advance theoretical arguments about the relationship between video and body genres. Dr Julia Keblinska is Assistant Professor of Asian Film and Media in Film & Screen Studies, Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics, University of Cambridge. She received her PhD from the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of California, Berkeley and has previously worked at the Ohio State University.
As climate mitigation measures become deeper and more ambitious, the distributional effects of the green transition become more pronounced. This increases the potential for green backlash, which existing work has documented for specific policies (such as congestion charges, car-free zones, or carbon taxes) and large renewable energy infrastructure (such as onshore or offshore wind installations). Here, we examine the public support for energy infrastructure that has so far been understudied but plays a pivotal role in the clean energy transition: large scale solar parks, hydrogen plants, and battery factories. Drawing on bespoke surveys in France, Germany, Norway, and the UK, we study three distinct aspects of public opinion: first, the public acceptance of these types of green infrastructure as a function of distinct project characteristics, including transfers to local communities; second, the conditions under which electoral backlash arises when citizens' expectations around project development are frustrated; and, third, how this backlash against green infrastructure varies by subgroup. This paper contributes individual-level evidence from four large European economies to a growing literature on green backlash and helps us understand conditions of geographically clustered political opposition to green infrastructure investments needed for addressing the climate emergency.
Panel Discussion led by Prof James Durrant, Dr Daniel Congrave, both from the Department of Chemistry, and Prof Robert Hoye, Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory. This is the last seminar in the Oxford Energy Network Michaelmas term seminar series and is aimed at sharing and celebrating the more general contributions of Chemistry at Oxford to the energy transition before the Goodenough Lecture on 'The first half century of lithium batteries and the challenges facing us in moving forward', which takes place the following day.
This paper provides an analytical review of the emergent roles of artificial intelligence, new technologies of communication in modern (twentieth and twenty-first century) Catholicism through the prisms of people, place, pilgrimage and prayer. This collaborative paper charts a critical cross-disciplinary cartography of the Vatican’s pioneering involvement with new scientific and technological media of the modern age as means for enhancing its ancient and today still unchanged mission of evangelization, conversion, paths to holiness and sanctification. Focused attention is here placed upon the journeying of people (the faithful) to holy sites (physical places) of devotion, a physical manifestation of a spiritual, prayerful quest defined as pilgrimage. Exemplars highlighted here are the Marian pilgrimage sites of Lourdes (1858), Knock (1879) and Fatima (1917). The paper is divided into two parts. The first charts how the modern Catholic Church across seven papacies has explored ethically informed and theologically guided means of using new technologies of communication for advancing an ancient catechetical mission towards conversion of life. The second narrates the origin stories and global impacts of the three selected Marian pilgrimage sites. If in the first the Vatican has embraced modern-day technological innovation, then, it does so we argue with distinctive ethical and theological interpretations of the fundamentals of what is most important for the faithful in terms of communication – of overriding significance here is the message of salvation. In the second, it is decidedly human, embodied, physical and spiritual, pathways to sanctification which define pilgrimage and prayer for the faithful. Conjoined – the message of salvation and pathways to sanctification – in the seemingly simple journeying of people (the faithful) to holy sites (physical places) of pilgrimage and prayer we have here an existential, ontological, metaphysical set of as yet to fully explored ways of thinking about what it means to be human, mind, body, soul, and not a machine.
Dr Micheni uses Boko Haram as a case study to delve into the operations of extremist groups in sub-Saharan Africa, with a particular focus on the unique cultural contexts in which they function. The talk explores how such groups navigate ethnically diverse environments and manage to forge a sense of collective homogeneity, even in the face of internal diversity. Drawing from first-hand interviews with ex-fighters and a thorough examination of the group’s operational dynamics, including recruitment, indoctrination, combat leadership, and unit behaviour, the talk identifies moments when, despite Boko Haram’s aim to transcend ethnic boundaries, ethnicity nonetheless becomes a defining factor within specific combatant units. It develops a theoretical framework to explain these instances, building on and extending existing socialisation theories to understand when and why socialisation processes fail, ultimately causing ethnicity to resurface within these units. By exploring how tribal and ethnic considerations influence the group’s functioning, the talk provides a more nuanced understanding of contemporary insurgent groups and the social forces that shape them. Dr Makena Micheni, the new Levin Junior Research Fellow in Peace Studies at LMH, is a Kenyan-British scholar who completed her PhD at the London School of Economics on the role of ethnicity in extremist groups in Africa. She holds a BA in Politics and International Relations from Lancaster University and Master’s in Terrorism and Political Violence from St Andrews. She taught as an Associate Lecturer in International Relations at the University of St Andrews before coming to Oxford this term. Alongside her academic work, Dr Micheni has worked with the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in Nairobi on its Strengthening Resilience against Violent Extremism in the Horn of Africa (STRIVE) programme. Makena’s research interests include: political violence, radicalisation, extremism, ethnicity, terrorism, insurgency and armed groups, state violence, state terrorism, civilian resistance, decolonial approaches, critical IR, gender and political violence, conflict and security, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, foreign policy, intervention. Her doctoral work has recently become the book ‘Combatant Experiences in Multi-Ethnic Extremist Groups Identity and Allegiance in Boko Haram (Routledge, 2025).
Provost Paul Johnson will be joined by Sir Dieter Helm who, as well as being Professor of Economic Policy at Oxford, is the UK’s foremost authority on the economics of energy, climate change, sustainability and natural capital. Sir Dieter is author of bestselling books on these topics, and has fascinating insights, often at variance with the received wisdom. From 2012 to 2020, he was Independent Chair of the Natural Capital Committee, providing advice to the government on the sustainable use of natural capital. In his latest book, Legacy: How to Build the Sustainable Economy, he addresses the question: what would the sustainable economy look like and what would it take to live within our environmental means? The conversation will cover climate change policy, energy transition, and the natural environment.
Visitors to Auschwitz today cannot help but be struck by the sheer range of objects brought there by the victims of the Holocaust. Ordinary and extraordinary, these things were carefully chosen and illustrate the lives of those subject to Nazi persecution. They tell us about where they were from and also where they imagined they were going. Exploring these possessions helps the historian to uncover the experience of dispossession almost in real time. Reading these objects against other forms of testimony, both visual and verbal, provokes significant methodological difficulties, but also offers the possibility of particularising and personalising an otherwise almost unimaginably enormous cataclysm in European history. *Zoë Waxman* is Professor of Holocaust History at the University of Oxford. She is the author of _Writing the Holocaust: memory, testimony, representation_ (2006), _Anne Frank_ (2015), and _Women in the Holocaust: A Feminist History_ (2017), as well as numerous articles relating to the Holocaust and genocide. Refreshments to follow the lecture. *_Booking is not required for in-person attendance, but is required to attend online_: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/2ULvDE0uTKO7XJoMmsARtA*
This event is a free, one-hour online lecture, hosted by Oxford University's Sustainable Urban Development programme. The event will be live-streamed. MSc in Sustainable Urban Development alumni Emma Ahmed, Paul Hackett, and Natalie Record will share their experiences with the challenges and opportunities of decarbonising affordable housing across both the global South and global North. Dr Patricia Canelas will moderate the session. Don’t miss this opportunity to engage in a timely discussion on how housing policy, planning, and design can drive sustainable change.
This talk outlines my recently finished book ms. Combining conceptual reflections with a historiographic state of the art, the book bears on relations across empires around the modern world, from Africa and Asia to Europe and the Americas. Covering both societal and governmental actors, and arguing that power differences and their negotiations are central to transimperial relations, the work presents a overall framework for doing modern transimperial history, its chapters covering Foundations, Facets, Comparison, Power, Spaces, Times, and Methods.
In this talk we will introduce and discuss a branching-selection process in which we have a fixed number, N, of branching Brownian motions, with deletion of particles at each branching event in order to keep the population sized fixed. The rate of deletion will be dependent on the rank of the particle. In particular we will discuss their hydrodynamic limits of the system as N goes to infinity, and a weak selection principle, including elements of the proof. We will also discuss how these models are connected to the 'inverse first passage problem', which is a problem arising in risk modelling.
In this PSI Seminar, Dr Bassam Hallis from the UK Health Security Agency will introduce the Vaccine Development Evaluation Centre (VDEC). The session will be hosted by PSI and chaired by Rachel Kenneil. The seminar will take place from 12:00 to 13:00, followed by a sandwich lunch and an opportunity to network with attendees. About the speaker Bassam Hallis, PhD, is the Deputy Director and the lead for the Vaccine Development and Evaluation Centre. Bassam has over 35 years’ experience working with public sector, industry and academia in the development and evaluation of vaccines and therapeutics. He provides scientific and operational leadership to large number of Projects primarily associated with immunogenicity and efficacy evaluation of vaccines and therapeutics for high consequences infectious diseases including Influenza and COVID-19. These included projects from early-stage antigen discovery up to post licensure and incorporate in-vitro and in-vivo activities at containment level 2, 3 and 4. Seminar outline The UKHSA VDEC was established to utilise its unique capabilities to support development and licensure of countermeasures. We work with academia, not for profit and pharma to provide access to our regulated facilities including in vitro and in vivo up to BSL4. We also work globally to enhance capabilities in global south. Please join Dr Bassam Hallis, Head of VDEC, to understand more on its capabilities and partnerships.
Myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs) are blood cancers characterised by well-defined driver mutations. Some patients develop bone marrow (BM) fibrosis, which is associated with a poor clinical prognosis. Complex interactions between immune, stromal and haematopoietic stem and progenitor cells in the BM are implicated in the development of fibrosis. However, our understanding of how the BM microenvironment underpins this process is limited by the lack of objective, quantitative descriptions of BM topology. We use spatial transcriptomic (ST) analysis to explore the BM microenvironment in MPN. We have developed a workflow that integrates H&E-based annotation and AI-based image analysis with ST data to provide high-resolution, whole section profiling of the human BM. We identify spatially-restricted patterns of haematopoiesis and cellular neighbourhoods that define both the normal BM, and the perturbation in MPN. Using an AI-based fibrosis detection algorithm, we identify microenvironmental features associated with regions of fibrosis. We then develop novel AI-based approaches to identify spatial signatures that characterise the normal BM, and which capture cohort and sample-level microenvironmental heterogeneity. Our observations open the door to a new era of spatial biomarker discovery.
Oxford Saïd Entrepreneurship Centre in collaboration with the Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences (MPLS) Division. Part of the GROW programme, this session helps you to unlock the true potential of your STEM ideas by focusing on evidence-based approaches to entrepreneurship. Whether you’re refining an ongoing project or pursuing a completely new venture, this workshop will provide actionable insights and tools to help you improve your research, proposals, pitches and strategic direction. Through proven frameworks, interactive examples and a collaborative environment, you’ll learn to identify unmet market needs, strategically refine your concepts, and build innovations that deliver genuine value, not just incremental improvements. This workshop is designed for D.Phil. students, researchers and anyone interested in turning ideas into scalable startups. Shannon Collins is the Co-founder of Lightwork Enterprise and serves as Global Director of Entrepreneurial Learning at GraphIQ, offering extensive expertise in customer discovery, value proposition development, and business model innovation. Shannon leverages her extensive experience to drive global entrepreneurial learning initiatives, fostering innovation and guiding the next generation of business leaders in navigating the challenges of the modern business landscape.
Organised by the Institute for Ethics in AI, this annual competition celebrates outstanding philosophical writing on the ethical and societal implications of artificial intelligence. The event will start with three short presentations, followed by a Q&A session, break for lunch, and conclude with awarding cash prizes to our three finalists. Host: Professor Edward Harcourt Judges: Professor Edward Harcourt, Dr Caroline Green, and Dr Raphaël Millière.
Do you need help managing your references? Do you need help citing references in your documents? This online session will introduce you to EndNote, a subscription software programme which can help you to store, organise and retrieve your references and PDFs, as well as cite references in documents and create bibliographies quickly and easily. On completing the workshop you will be able to: understand the main features and benefits of EndNote; set up an EndNote account; import references from different sources into EndNote; organise your references in EndNote; insert citations into documents; and create a bibliography/reference list. Intended audience: Medicine & NHS; Taught student; Researcher & research student.
Presented as part of GROW programme, this session helps participants unlock the true potential of their STEM ideas by focusing on evidence-based approaches to entrepreneurship. Through proven frameworks, interactive examples, and a collaborative environment, you’ll learn to identify unmet market needs, strategically refine your concepts, and build innovations that deliver genuine value, not just incremental improvements. Whether you’re refining an ongoing project or pursuing a completely new venture, this workshop will provide actionable insights and tools to improve research, proposals, pitches, and strategic direction.
Church Group Speakers: Marcos Garcia & Luciana Gneo Title: LynchVax: From Frameshift Discovery to Patient Vaccination Milosevic Group Speaker 1: Izaak Myatt Title: Exploring the Neurotoxic Consequences of Nanoplastics Speaker 2: Kaixin Zhang Title: Presynaptic dysfunction in intellectual disability: The role of Endophilin-A and Rabconnectin-3a interaction in synaptic vesicle re-formation
All humans and plant-monsters are invited for this reading group of Alan Moore, Steve Bissette, and John Totleben’s influential run of Swamp Thing (1984-1987). Moore’s writing explores sacred conceptions of nature, non-human life, magic, and psychedelic experiences, and a series of secondary readings have been selected to highlight these themes. Brought to life by Totleben and Bissette’s art, Saga of the Swamp Thing is perhaps the definitive tale of ecospirituality in the comics medium. Please note: if you only have the time to read the primary readings or if you feel you lack specialization on questions related to religion, spirituality, and nature, you are more than welcome to attend. The Bodleian has copies of the relevant Swamp Thing volumes, I have included links to each. The easiest way to access Swamp Thing is via a subscription to DC’s comic book app. Session 3 Readings (December 3) Primary: Moore, Alan, Stephen Bissette, and John Totleben. “Book Five (#51-56).” In Saga of the Swamp Thing: Vertigo, 2013. https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/44OXF_INST/35n82s/alma990159587870107026 Moore, Alan, Stephen Bissette, and John Totleben. “Book Six (#57-64).” In Saga of the Swamp Thing: Vertigo, 2014. https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/44OXF_INST/35n82s/alma990165745770107026 Secondary: Krinsky, Hindi. “Mean Green Machine: How the Ecological Politics of Alan Moore’s Reimagination of Swamp Thing Brought Eco-Consciousness to Comics.” In Plants and Literature: Essays in Critical Plant Studies, edited by Randy Laist, 221-41. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Goodenough, Ursula. “Religious Naturalism and Naturalizing Morality.” Zygon 38, no. 1 (2003): 101-09. White, Carol Wayne. “Planetary Thinking, Agency, and Relationality: Religious Naturalism’s Plea.” In Earthly Things, 173–85 Fordham University Press, 2023.
Occupation is a fundamental concept in social and policy research, but classifying job descriptions into occupational categories can be challenging and susceptible to errors. Traditionally, this involved expert manual coding, translating detailed, often ambiguous job descriptions to standardized categories, a process both laborious and costly. However, recent advances in computational techniques offer efficient automated coding alternatives. Existing autocoding tools, including the O*NET-SOC AutoCoder, the NIOCCS AutoCoder, and the SOCcer AutoCoder, rely on supervised machine learning methods and string-matching algorithms. Yet these autocoders are not designed to understand semantic meanings in occupational write-in text. We explore the use of Large Language Models (LLMs) for classifying jobs into Standard Census occupations. We evaluate and compare the prediction performance of LLMs using four different approaches: zero-shot learning, few-shot learning, chain-of-thought, and fine-tuning. The results show a wide range of autocoding accuracy rates, varying from 7.1% to 78%. Drawing from Census expert coding practices, we provide practical recommendations for using LLMs in occupational classification for sociological research. We demonstrate LLM applications for coding resume data, processing survey occupational write-ins, and converting international occupational classifications to U.S. standards.
Occupation is a fundamental concept in social and policy research, but classifying job descriptions into occupational categories can be challenging and susceptible to errors. Traditionally, this involved expert manual coding, translating detailed, often ambiguous job descriptions to standardized categories, a process both laborious and costly. However, recent advances in computational techniques offer efficient automated coding alternatives. Existing autocoding tools, including the O*NET-SOC AutoCoder, the NIOCCS AutoCoder, and the SOCcer AutoCoder, rely on supervised machine learning methods and string-matching algorithms. Yet these autocoders are not designed to understand semantic meanings in occupational write-in text. We explore the use of Large Language Models (LLMs) for classifying jobs into Standard Census occupations. We evaluate and compare the prediction performance of LLMs using four different approaches: zero-shot learning, few-shot learning, chain-of-thought, and fine-tuning. The results show a wide range of autocoding accuracy rates, varying from 7.1% to 78%. Drawing from Census expert coding practices, we provide practical recommendations for using LLMs in occupational classification for sociological research. We demonstrate LLM applications for coding resume data, processing survey occupational write-ins, and converting international occupational classifications to U.S. standards.
Madeline White (University of Oxford), Asian botanical names and images as gateways to early modern British science The Du Bois Herbarium at the University of Oxford has been a mystery for over a century. Deconstructed from its original binding in the 1890s, its early modern organizing scheme was deemed permanently lost. However, review of corresponding archival documents and images have presented a new means of reconstructing the collection, not according to European ordering schemes, but through expertise brought to the herbarium by Asian contributors. This talk explores the process of rediscovering the herbarium through vernacular Tamil names and Chinese paintings. By combining digital scholarship approaches with historical research and scientific expertise, this research both provides a means of restoring the Du Bois Herbarium to its original form and creates new frameworks for interdisciplinary collaboration. Koyna Tomar (University of Pennsylvania), Remaking Surplus and Scarcity: India’s Dairy Industrialization and the Global Surplus Food Regime, 1930 - 1970 This talk situates the history of dairy industrialization in South Asia within what Harriet Friedmann and Philip McMichael have called the ‘surplus food regime.’ Through complex bilateral and multilateral mechanisms, surplus dairy stocks from the United States, New Zealand, Australia, and, later, the European Economic Community were channeled to countries across the "Third World", both as a relief measure and, more crucially, as a strategy of economic development. India’s ambitious program of dairy expansion through cooperative production and marketing became the largest recipient of dairy commodity aid. At a time when food aid, particularly wheat loans from the US, came under stark criticism, international experts and Indian political and scientific figures argued that commodity aid in dairy products was decidedly distinct. Milk’s material properties, they suggested, made it amenable to radically different projects of self-reliance, and instead of cementing relations of dependence, dairy aid could nurture a national, modern dairy industry that was not only economically productive but also fulfilled social imperatives of redistribution. The history of global agrarian development in the post-war period is usually narrated as a 'seed-centric' story. Scholars emphasize the role played by US foreign policy and philanthropic foundations in making high-yielding variety seeds, fertilizers, and technical experts central to postcolonial state-making projects. Approaching the history of global agrarian development through the case of dairy introduces new geographies, actors, and periodization in this narrative. It also demonstrates the importance of situating the history of transnational technical and scientific expertise within changing class relations across the so-called 'first' and the 'third' world.
In this online workshop you will be shown the functionality of Zotero, which is a free-to-use software programme used to manage references and create bibliographies. Zotero will be demonstrated on a Windows PC but users of MacOS or Linux computers will be able to follow the demonstration. The workshop will cover: understanding the main features and benefits of Zotero; setting up a Zotero account; importing references from different sources into Zotero; organising your references in Zotero; inserting citations into documents; and creating a bibliography/reference list. Intended audience: Medicine & NHS; Taught student; Researcher & research student
How does government conduct analysis to meet its twin missions of Clean Power 2030 and Accelerating to Net Zero? What approaches do we use to model the big policy questions? What are the challenges we face when modelling system transitions? Donna Leong will give her perspectives. About the speaker: Donna Leong is Director of Analysis and Chief Economist at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. Prior to taking on this role, she has held a number of senior roles within HM Treasury, BEIS and the ONS.
Recent studies in individuals at increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease suggest that impairments in path integration may represent one of the earliest cognitive deficits, emerging before broader memory decline. The medial entorhinal cortex and hippocampus are central to spatial memory and navigation, with grid cells playing a crucial role in path integration. We therefore hypothesised that dysfunction within medial entorhinal–hippocampal circuits contributes to the early decline in path integration, and that Tau hyperphosphorylation in these areas could be among the earliest molecular events driving these abnormalities. To test this hypothesis, we employed a novel early-stage (pre-tangle) Tauopathy mouse model (S305N KI) to determine whether Tau hyperphosphorylation can recapitulate key path-integration deficits seen in humans and to identify the associated alterations in cellular and network activity underlying these early impairments.
Part of the 2025-2026 series ‘How can we respond to this systemic crisis?’. A series of master classes, seminars, workshops and talks with Professor Laura Rival, research collaborators and colleagues. Michaelmas Term series titled: ‘In Latin America, by greening the state at the top and from below’. Chaired by: Andrès Gonzales Dinamarca (DPhil candidate, ISCA, University of Oxford). With the participation of: Gwen Burnyeat (Edinburgh), Felipe Krause (Oxford), Maxine Molyneux (UCL), Patricia Oliart (Newcastle), and Gregory Thaler (Oxford) Few topics have defined Latin America as a region more than democracy. The roundtable will discuss the ways in which political theorists, social scientists, intellectuals and activists assess Latin America’s democratic vision. What difference do deliberative and participatory processes make to the quality of democracy in the region? Followed by refreshments.
*Teresa Witcombe* looks forward to expanding her work on the movement of captives of war and slaves across the Muslim-Christian frontier in medieval Iberia by considering the theological and legal status of medieval slaves and captives of war, including the codes of conduct that determined their treatment and the extent to which their humanity was recognised by their captors. Registration is required for both in-person and online attendance.
The first half century of lithium batteries and the challenges facing us in moving forward The Nobel Prize Committee said of John Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino’s lithium-ion batteries: “They have laid the foundation of a wireless, fossil fuel-free society, and are of the greatest benefit to humankind.” Now the world needs to take action, addressing the key challenge of building a sustainable supply chain and manufacturing capability that leapfrogs present battery technology, to foster sustainable manufacturing and use. The Vice Chancellor, Prof Irene Tracey, CBE, FRS, FMedSci, will be in attendance.
Solving the SEND crisis: a public seminar about the Education Select Committee report
In a previous volume, Comparative Area Studies: Methodological Rationales and Cross-Regional Applications (Oxford University Press, 2018), Ariel Ahram, Patrick Köllner and I laid out the distinctive features and value-added of “comparative area studies” (CAS) against the backdrop of ongoing methodological debates in the social sciences. CAS seeks to retain and utilize the in-depth, immersive knowledge associated with extensive area-based training and expertise while encouraging contextualized comparisons involving engagement with research and debates on highly relevant cases brought in from other, less familiar areas. The goal is not to infer full-blown causal generalizations but rather to generate novel interpretations and partially portable middle-range propositions that may elude researchers who rely on aggregate data or limit their cases to a single area they are familiar with. In short, the promise of the CAS framework lies in a concerted effort to reinvigorate area studies, to encourage members of multiple area studies communities to engage more with each other around specific issues, and to leverage contextualized comparisons across regions so as to stimulate fresh interpretations and conceptual frameworks that speak to disciplinary debates in the social sciences. Since the publication of the 2018 volume, a new cohort of (mostly qualitative) researchers has sought to connect a growing range of scholarly endeavors to the CAS framework while asking important questions about its epistemological flexibility and about the institutional pressures that the CAS approach must contend with. These questions have inspired a new volume, Advancing Comparative Area Studies: Analytical Heterogeneity and Organizational Challenges (Oxford University Press, 2025), which brings in more varied approaches and topics along with some new voices, including those of fifteen scholars who had no connection to the first volume. The latter book showcases how CAS can accommodate a wider range of area-based scholarship predicated on more varied methodological and epistemological principles. This includes not only contextualized comparisons of countries from different regions but also interpretive work, sub-national comparisons focused on sites and sectors, as well as inter-regional comparisons that speak to global issues such as human rights and the rise of regional powers (topics that go beyond comparative politics, which was the focus of the first volume). Moreover, the volume offers practical, realistic discussions of how our current institutional architecture can be adapted to: (i) bridge debates going on in different area studies communities to each other and to disciplinary debates; and (ii) spur discussions of how a more efficient and streamlined infrastructure can support both area studies programs and cross-regional comparative research in an uncertain institutional environment marked by growing fiscal pressures that threaten to eliminate some area studies programs. Rudra Sil is Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania where he is also SAS Director of the dual-degree Huntsman Program in International Studies and Business. He received his Ph.D. from Berkeley before joining the Penn faculty in 1996. His scholarly interests encompass Russian/post-communist studies, Asian studies, comparative labor politics, international development, qualitative methodology, and the philosophy of social science. Sil is currently working on a monograph titled The Fate of a Former Superpower: Russia’s Troubled Search for Relevance and Recognition in a Post-Cold War World. He has previously authored, coauthored, or coedited eight books. These include two monographs – Managing ‘Modernity’: Work, Community, and Authority in Late-Industrializing Japan and Russia (2002) and Beyond Paradigms: Analytic Eclecticism in the Study of World Politics (2010), coauthored with Peter Katzenstein and honored as a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title – as well as six co-edited books, including The Politics of Labor in a Global Age (2001), World Order After Leninism (2006) and, most recently, Advancing Comparative Area Studies: Analytical Heterogeneity and Organizational Challenges (2025). His articles have appeared in a variety of scholarly journals, including Perspectives on Politics, Comparative Political Studies, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Economy and Society, Post-Soviet Affairs and Studies in Comparative International Development. The paper in Comparative Political Studies was awarded the Dorothy Day Award for Outstanding Labor Scholarship. Sil is also recipient of multiple teaching awards, including the 2022 Ira H. Abrams Memorial Prize for Distinguished Teaching in the School of Arts and Sciences.
'Pith paper watercolors' refer to the small pictures created mainly by local painters in Canton (present-day Guangzhou) in the nineteenth century, which were intended for sale to Western traders and sailors at that time. Pith paper is directly sliced from the white inner spongy tissue of a particular type of tree. Its cellular structure therefore can absorb waterborne dyes, facilitating the drawing of very fine details. Owing to their small size and modest appearance, pith paper watercolours have long been overlooked by scholars studying Chinese export arts. Thanks to the dedicated efforts and generous donations of Mr Ifan Williams, an amateur researcher of pith paper watercolours from the UK, Guangzhou’s public institutions acquired their first collection of pith paintings in 2001. Chinese researchers and collectors subsequently started to take greater notice of this particular genre. Revisiting the historical pith paintings, contemporary local artists in Guangzhou are trying to revitalize the genres and impart the drawing techniques to the younger generation. The pith watercolours at present is an echo and re-creation of their past. Professor CHING May Bo is currently the Head of the Department of Chinese and History and Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at the City University of Hong Kong. She has published extensively on a variety of subjects relating to social and cultural history of modern China, with a focus on the transformation of regional identity and material cultures in Canton. In recent years, she has been examining how the regional culture of South China took shape in a trans-regional context in terms of sound, colour and tastes from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. With the support of Guangzhou Cultural Bureau, she coordinated the translation and publication projects of Mr Ifan Williams’ research on pith paper watercolours, resulting in two illustrated catalogues published in 2001 and 2014.
A “Glocal” Intellectual History of Pan-Farmerism in Transwar Rural Japan, 1905–1928 Toma-Jin Morikawa-Fouquet, University of Oxford Islandness and National Belonging: Press, Discourse, and the Making of Identity in Karafuto (1905–1945)) DONG Zi’ang, Hokkaido University
Ed Hillyer – also known as ILYA – has more than thirty years' experience as a comic book writer, artist and editor, published internationally by Marvel, DC and Dark Horse in the USA, Kodansha in Japan, and numerous independent companies worldwide. Ed's titles include award-winning graphic novel series The End of the Century Club, Manga Shakespeare’s King Lear and Room for Love . He has also edited Mammoth Books of Best New Manga, and Colour Me Bad. He will be talking, showing and telling about the earliest days of comic strip narrative, and how those distant techniques relate to his current practice.
Decolonization, narrowly defined as the end of European empires, is rarely understood as a “dispossession machine.” Instead, it is celebrated as moments of empowerment— of new states, elites, and institutions— that create new forms of legal belonging, such as citizenship. While refugeedom and statelessness are treated as aberrations in this triumphalist narrative of decolonization, an important element is left unexamined, namely, how resettling and eviction of refugees and stateless people in South Asia have made them ecological agents in which they are even further dispossessed, if they survive at all their new surroundings. Based on primary and secondary sources on the resettlement of 1971 refugees from fertile lands of Bangladesh to arid Indigneous lands of Dandakaranya in central India, the 1978 forced eviction of refugees from the protected island of Marichjhapi to protect tigers of Sunderbans, and the most recent resettlement of the Rohingyas on the transient silt island of Bhashan Char, this research foregrounds environmental histories in histories of territoriality of South Asia. It sheds light on how decolonization, in its last phase, became a dispossession machine, uprooting and re-rooting refugees and stateless people making them ecological agents in stories of their own loss. About the speaker Jayita Sarkar is Professor of Global History of Inequalities at the University of Glasgow's School of Social and Political Sciences. Her research and teaching areas are global and transnational histories of capitalism, infrastructures, and territoriality. She is the author of the award-winning book, Ploughshares and Swords. India’s Nuclear Program in the Global Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2022). Before joining Glasgow as senior lecturer (tenured associate professor) in 2022, she was a tenure-track assistant professor at Boston University. She has held research fellowships at Harvard, MIT, Yale, Dartmouth, Edinburgh, and Sciences Po, amongst others. The seminar will be followed by drinks in the Hall. Registration not required. All enquiries should be directed to rsc-outreach@qeh.ox.ac.uk
Join online via Microsoft Teams by clicking here: https://tinyurl.com/2s3hfr23
This year's Dorothy Whitelock Lecture will be given by Professor Jane Roberts (University of London) on ‘Guthlac: what the early medieval records tell us’. The lecture will take place on 3 December at 5.15pm at St Peter's College chapel, New Inn Hall Street, Oxford, OX1 2DL. Followed by a drinks reception. All welcome! Join the event in person or online. Tickets required for both attendance options. Book now via Eventbrite.
Russian identity has long been confined by autocracy and imperial ambition, a condition that continues under Putin, whose twenty-five-year rule and the war in Ukraine reflect this legacy. The essay emphasises that official Russian discourse, past and present, frames the role of the ruler, militarism, and imperial power as central to national identity. Even after the fall of the tsars, autocratic governance persisted, and the empire repeatedly reemerged in new forms. The author contends that a truly pluralistic and open Russia can only arise once Russians reject both despotism and imperial domination. The book includes an anthology of European texts from the 16th to the 21st century, examining Russia’s imperial despotism, whose insights remain strikingly relevant today.
The Global Centre on Healthcare and Urbanisation Public Seminar series brings together members of the public, researchers and practitioners interested and engaged in urban health issues. The principal aim of the series is to provoke debate and constructive action, linking current best practice in urban development with emerging areas of health research. How does the design of our neighbourhoods affect how connected, healthy, and supported we feel? This public seminar explores how streets, transport, public spaces, and local meeting places can either bring people together or leave us feeling isolated. According to Age UK, in England, more than two million people over 75 live alone, and 1.4 million older adults experience chronic loneliness. While many studies focus on older people, younger and middle-aged individuals are also affected - the latest Community Life Survey from 2023/2024 shows that approximately 7% of adults often feel lonely. As loneliness is now recognised as major public health challenge, this seminar asks how better urban design and planning could help to ensure that we remain socially connected in our neighbourhoods as we age. By listening to lived realities and embedding them into planning and policy, can we create fairer, more inclusive, and better-connected communities for everyone? The event will be chaired by GCHU Research Fellow Dr Hannah Grove. Paul Cann OBE, CEO for Global Initiative on Loneliness and Connection Dr Georgina Everett, Research and Impact Lead, Re-engage Professor Flora Samuel, Head and Professor of Architecture (1970), University of Cambridge Martyn Craddock, Chief Executive, United St Saviour's Charity This in-person event is free and open to all. Refreshments will be served from 17:00. The seminar will begin at 17:30, followed by a drinks reception at 18:30. Please note that we will be recording this event and a link to view it will be available on the GCHU website at a later date. There will also be a photographer taking photos at the event. If you unable to attend after booking, please email events@kellogg.ox.ac.uk
How do diseases spread and how can the analysis of data help us stop them? Quantitative modelling and statistical analysis are essential tools for understanding transmission dynamics and informing evidence-based policies for both human and animal health. In this lecture, Christl will draw lessons from past epidemics and endemic diseases, across livestock, wildlife, and human populations, to show how mathematical frameworks and statistical inference help unravel complex transmission systems. We’ll look at recent advances that integrate novel data sources, contact network analysis, and rigorous approaches to uncertainty, and discuss current challenges for quantitative epidemiology. Finally, we’ll highlight opportunities for statisticians and mathematicians to collaborate with other scientists (including clinicians, immunologists, veterinarians) to strengthen strategies for disease control and prevention. Christl Donnelly CBE is Professor of Applied Statistics, University of Oxford and Professor of Statistical Epidemiology, Imperial College London. Please email external-relations@maths.ox.ac.uk to register to attend in person. The lecture will be broadcast on the Oxford Mathematics YouTube Channel on Wednesday 17 December at 5-6 pm and any time after (no need to register for the online version). The Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are generously supported by XTX Markets.
Join us for an insightful evening of conversation in the field of AI in medical research and pharmaceutical research and development, featuring a fireside chat with Dr Mishal Patel (Senior Vice President, AI & Digital Innovation, R&D at Novo Nordisk) in conversation with Professor Blanca Rodriguez (Department of Computer Science) and networking drinks. The Speakers: Dr Mishal Patel, Senior Vice President of AI & Digital Innovation at Novo Nordisk, and UK R&D Site Head Dr Patel leads pioneering work in applying AI and machine learning to accelerate drug discovery and development. With a background in medicinal chemistry and experience across institutions like the Institute of Cancer Research and AstraZeneca, he is committed to reshaping biopharmaceutical research to deliver life-saving therapies faster. Known for fostering a culture of integrity and innovation, Patel balances professional ambition with personal passions—family, football, and redefining success beyond metrics. Professor Blanca Rodriguez, Professor of Computational Medicine and Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow in Basic Biomedical Sciences Professor Rodriguez specialises in computational modelling and simulation to investigate how the heart responds to disease and therapies. Her research integrates experimental and clinical insights from electrophysiology and pharmacology, aiming to improve diagnosis and treatment of cardiac conditions. She focuses on understanding variability in cardiac responses—whether due to disease, drugs, or genetic mutations—and the complex, multiscale mechanisms behind cardiac electromechanical activity. Professor Rodriguez serves on the Board of the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research and is a member of the e-cardiology Nucleus Group of the European Society of Cardiology.
COURSE DETAILS The session will cover preparing for interviews, creating a question line, finding your authentic voice and active listening. Participants will be paired up and asked to conduct short interviews with a fellow participant which will be recorded over Zoom. As a group we'll listen back to them and workshop the interviews for constructive feedback. This course is aimed at anyone looking at working on interviewing skills as a presenter but is also useful to those asked to be a guest on a podcast. LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of this session you will have: Increased your awareness of strategies for effectively planning an interview. Explored principles of good practice for interview hosts. Explored the components of a good interview question.
Persistent Identifiers (PIDs) provide a consistent way of digitally referencing items that aims to be more reliable than a simple web address. This is important for scholarly communications because citation and attribution are essential elements of scholarly apparatus. This workshop will introduce you to the concept of Persistent Identifiers, the problems that they address, and how they can be used in the academic environment to simplify some tasks. It will examine several different types of identifier, some of which are currently widely used (DOIs for publications/data and ORCIDs for researchers) and others which are emerging in importance. Intended audience: Researcher and research student; Staff
This 90-minute session will cover some more advanced techniques for finding medical literature to answer a research question. We will recap some basics, then demonstrate searching in several medical databases, including using subject headings (MeSH) and the differences between platforms. By the end of this session, you will be able to: explain what subject headings are, and how to use them; search for words that appear near to other words; take a search from one database into another; and save a search and document it. Intended audience: Medicine & NHS; Researcher & research student
We explore the structural mechanisms of brain function, with a focus on neuronal migration during cerebral cortex development and the role of the cytoskeleton. It highlights periventricular nodular heterotopia—a genetic disorder caused by mutations in filamin A—and introduces FILIP (filamin A interacting protein, FILIP1 for human), a molecule that degrades filamin A. Mutations in FILIP1 are linked to a spectrum of congenital disorders collectively termed FILIP1 disease. The study also presents new methods for visualizing neural circuits at the single-cell level, revealing early axonal targeting patterns that may inform future strategies for repairing disrupted neural networks. Unpublished findings and ongoing investigations into cytoskeletal regulation and neuropsychiatric implications are included.
Introduction: Diffuse midline glioma (DMG)/diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG) are deadly childhood gliomas with median survival of less than 12 months and a 2 year survival of 10%. D24, a genetically engineered adenovirus specific for glioma, has anti-tumoral effect in a phase 1 study when given by direct intratumoral injection. Our preliminary work has shown endovascular super-selective intra-arterial delivery of D24 packaged in mesenchymal stem cells (MSC-D24) is feasible and safe in patients. Objective: We hypothesize that endovascular intra-arterial delivery of MSC-D24 will be safe and effective for treatment of DMG/DIPG. Methods: In vitro killing assays were used to assess the tumoricidal effects of MSC-D24 against DIPG using TP54, DIPG 36, and SF8628 cell lines (from 102 to 105 cells). Transwell migration assays were performed to test homing of MSC (105 cells) to the same cell lines. To assess safety of infusion in the vertebrobasilar circulation, a rabbit survival model (7 days) was used and 0.4 mL of 107 MSC-D24 cells were infused into the basilar artery. Clinical examination, histology, angiography, and MRI were used to assess stroke and other complications after infusion. The efficacy of MSC-D24 against will be tested in-vivo using a mice xenograft model of DIPG. Results: Transwell killing assays showed a dose dependent tumoricidal effects of MSC-D24 against all 3 DIPG cell lines. MSCs successfully homed to TP54 in the migration assay. Rabbits (n=3) did not exhibit neurologic deficits after the MSC-D24 intra-arterial infusion and MRI, histology, and angiography post-infusion did not show any strokes or other evidence of tissue injury. Bioluminescent imaging of DIPG bearing mice showed tumor reduction and improved survival. Conclusion: Endovascular vertebrobasilar intra-arterial infusion of MSC-D24 is safe and the oncolytic virus appears effective against DIPG in both in vitro and in vivo models. The results support a phase 1 trial of MSC-D24 for patients with DMG/DIPG.
When Valerie Solanas died in 1988 in a welfare hotel in San Francisco, she left a sharply polarised legacy: reviled by many as a demented groupie for her near-fatal 1968 shooting of Andy Warhol and revered by a few as a feminist visionary for her incendiary 1967 diatribe the _SCUM_ Manifesto. This paper explores Solanas's collisions with the art world and the women's liberation movement and asks how her ideas, actions, and experience of mental illness illuminate the shadows of feminist history.
Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) is a neuromuscular disease due to the lack of Survival Motor Neuron (SMN) protein, characterized by lower motor neuron (MN) degeneration and muscle atrophy. However, evidence shows that SMA patients display brain abnormalities correlating with disease severity, suggesting altered maturation and maladaptive plasticity potentially contributing to cortical alterations. Our previous work in SMA mice revealed upper MN vulnerability, indicating SMA pathogenesis is far more complex than classically conceived. We have shown that SMN deficiency influences cortical layering and cytoarchitecture during corticogenesis. This developmental misplacement may represent an early event that predisposes projection neurons to subsequent degeneration. Not all cortical neurons are equally affected: corticospinal and then callosal projection neurons emerge as particularly vulnerable populations, displaying both structural and survival deficits in response to SMN reduction. More recently, by employing a combination of imaging, molecular techniques, and electrophysiological characterization of cortical inhibitory neurotransmission, we dissected GABAergic signaling, metabolism, and interneuron function in the sensorimotor cortex.
Dr Andrew Seaton will be discussing a chapter from his book project, The Ends of Coal, which is a wide-ranging environmental history of the resource's impacts and legacies in Britain and the world since 1800. This talk considers the National Coal Board's expansive 'land reclamation' initiatives after 1945. These projects facilitated surprising connections between one of Europe’s largest fossil fuel industries and environmentalists, particularly by creating ‘productive’ land that might alleviate potential scarcity caused by ‘overpopulation’. The talk considers the practical dimensions of the Coal Board's land reclamation, recovers its framing and reception, and explains how initial justifications fell away in the 1980s. The chapter will be discussed by Professor Danny Dorling (Geography, Oxford). Dr Andrew Seaton is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at University College London. He is a historian of modern Britain with interests in politics, social history, medicine and the environment. Andrew's first book Our NHS: A History of Britain's Best-Loved Institution (Yale University Press, 2023) won the American Historical Association's Morris D. Forkosch Prize and was shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize.
Wave energy has the theoretical potential to meet global electricity demand, but it remains less mature and less cost-competitive than wind or solar power. A key barrier is the absence of engineering convergence on an optimal wave energy converter (WEC) design. In this work, I demonstrate how geometry optimisation can deliver step-change improvements in WEC performance. I present methodology and results from optimisations of two types of WECs: an axisymmetric point-absorber WEC and a top-hinged WEC. I show how the two types need different optimisation frameworks due to the differing physics of how they make waves. For axisymmetric WECs, optimisation achieves a 69% reduction in surface area (a cost proxy) while preserving power capture and motion constraints. For top-hinged WECs, optimisation reduces the reaction moment (another cost proxy) by 35% with only a 12% decrease in power. These result show that geometry optimisation can substantially improve performance and reduce costs of WECs.
*Dr Andrew Seaton* will be discussing a chapter from his book project, _The Ends of Coal_, which is a wide-ranging environmental history of the resource's impacts and legacies in Britain and the world since 1800. This talk considers the National Coal Board's expansive 'land reclamation' initiatives after 1945. These projects facilitated surprising connections between one of Europe’s largest fossil fuel industries and environmentalists, particularly by creating ‘productive’ land that might alleviate potential scarcity caused by ‘overpopulation’. The talk considers the practical dimensions of the Coal Board's land reclamation, recovers its framing and reception, and explains how initial justifications fell away in the 1980s. The chapter will be discussed by *Professor Danny Dorling* (Geography, Oxford). *Dr Andrew Seaton* is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at University College London. He is a historian of modern Britain with interests in politics, social history, medicine and the environment. Andrew's first book _Our NHS: A History of Britain's Best-Loved Institution_ (Yale University Press, 2023) won the American Historical Association's Morris D Forkosch Prize and was shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize.
When and how should research include the voices of vulnerable participants, and how can researchers build trust? Should extremists and terrorists be given a platform in research? What risks arise when studying security-sensitive issues? Drawing on over four years of research on the children of right-wing extremists, ISIS members who travelled to Syria and Iraq, and other parents affiliated with violent extremism, Dr Schneider will explore questions of ethics and trustworthiness in qualitative research. Her talk will address the opportunities and challenges encountered across the research cycle: gaining access to hard-to-reach participants, preparing for interviews with vulnerable individuals, reflecting on researcher bias, and ethically representing complex and sensitive findings. Teams link: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/3745619732385?p=DhXEjfnZCGzQrafCT1
Lesson of the week, clinical cases and research. All clinical and academic staff and students welcome. Coffee, Tea and Cake will be served.
In this talk, I will explore how spatial data science can help us understand , and ultimately transform , the relationships between green infrastructure, mental health, and wellbeing. Drawing on ongoing work across multiple scales and contexts in the UK, I will present a synthesis of studies examining how the quantity, quality, and accessibility of green and blue spaces influence mental health, and how these effects vary across different population groups. The research addresses key gaps in understanding the specific amount, type, and quality of green space needed to deliver mental health benefits. Also looking at how environmental policies make the change on green infrastructure change the pattern of social and special inequalities. The findings aim to inform urban planning and environmental policy, advocating for inclusive, evidence-based strategies that ensure residents can benefit from nature-based wellbeing interventions.
Climate hazards and multidimensional poverty are overlapping hazards - but how do they interact? The global MPI 2025 was the first report to overlay data on these two core issues, combining the latest multidimensional poverty results with data on four hazards - high heat, drought, floods, and air pollution - for 1657 subnational regions in 108 developing countries. The results suggest a strong overlap between multidimensional poverty and climate hazard exposure: nearly 80% of multidimensionally poor people, representing 887 million people, live in regions exposed to climate hazards. Join us on Thursday 4 December to hear from OPHI and UNDP researchers about the analysis behind this report, and the insights which can be gathered from the results.
Have you got questions about how to use the Covidence Data Extraction 1 tool for your project or review? Then please join us for our upcoming training session for University of Oxford users on Thursday 4th December 2025 at 2 pm (the webinar usually takes around 60 minutes). This training is a deep dive into Covidence’s Extraction 1 tool. It is aimed at researchers who are familiar with the platform and are working on intervention reviews, i.e. reviews that study the effect of drugs, therapies, vaccines, medical devices, procedures, or public health policies. We will walk you through the steps of: -Creating, modifying, and publishing data extraction templates in Extraction 1 -Managing reviewers -Extracting data from studies -Producing consensus data so that the final data are ready for export -Exporting data from Covidence Covidence is a web-based software platform that streamlines the production of systematic reviews Covidence is free for staff, researchers and students at the University of Oxford.
https://music.web.ox.ac.uk/event/25-12-04-public-seminar
Representing more than 20,000 species globally, wild bees exhibit striking variation in morphology, physiology, and behaviour, that enabled them to thrive in diverse climates across all major terrestrial ecosystems. Despite this diversity, our understanding of bee climate responses is drawn overwhelmingly from studies on a handful of managed species. My research explores the functional traits that underlie variation in wild bee responses to climate stressors. These studies offer insights into the ways bee communities will be filtered and reshaped by future climates. A central theme in my research is leveraging images—from citizen science photos to museum specimen images and 3D models—to investigate bee functional ecology under different environmental conditions. I develop computer vision tools to standardise and automate image analysis for ecological research and biodiversity monitoring. Together, these studies highlight signatures of climate resilience and climate vulnerability in this functionally rich and ecologically important pollinator group.
In this seminar we will examine the relationship between working time and wellbeing from both a macro and micro level perspective. We will begin by exploring the relationship between working hours and life expectancy, paying particular attention to how inequality moderates the results of this relationship. Then we will delve into the results of our recent study which examines the health implications of working time reduction among 3000 employees who participated in the 4 Day Week Global Trials. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Speaker bio: Dr Kelly's research focuses on the social drivers and responses to climate change, and she is particularly interested in understanding pathways to sustainable human well-being and eco-social policies. She is part of the international academic research team investigating the economic, social, and environmental impacts of reduced worktime trials, led by the 4-day Week Global campaign, and she is a founding member of the Worktime Reduction Research Network (WTR-RN). Her research has been published in academic journals such as Nature Human Behaviour, Social Forces, and Sustainability Science. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Booking is required for people outside of the Department of Social Policy and Intervention (DSPI). DSPI Members do not need to register.
A truly welcoming and inclusive city is not just an aspiration—it is essential to the future of our increasingly diverse urban societies. Yet too often, policy and practice lack the theoretical and research foundations needed for meaningful and effective implementation. Welcoming Cities is a book which bridges this gap, offering an interdisciplinary framework grounded in empirical research and case studies from 12 UK cities and international partners. Engaging with key governance challenges, it explores how cities define and implement welcoming policies across multiple sectors. Moving beyond critique, this book offers a constructive and action-oriented approach to integration and social cohesion. Sitting at the crossroads of academic research and policy and practice, this panel also aims to bridge this gap, drawing together insights from across the seminar series and engaging the key questions raised by Welcoming Cities. This seminar is hybrid. Join us in person at The Hub, Kellogg College, or participate online via Zoom by registering here: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/evx9TAwlTFajxRVSGF_H-w
We invite students of all levels (undergraduate, masters, and PhD) across the humanities, life sciences, and digital scholarship to provide feedback on a new website designed to connect scientific archives with historical context. *BLOOM* brings together the worlds of science, history, and digital research to explore and expand the use of biological collections across disciplines. Our new website reconstructs the Du Bois Herbarium - a collection of 14,000 plant specimens held in the University - allowing users to explore its contents and connections across time, people, and geography. Your insights will directly shape the next phase of BLOOM’s design and help us build a tool that truly supports interdisciplinary research. Participants will get an early look at the site and share their thoughts on what works (and what doesn’t!) *_Cake and coffee will be served!_*
Mechanotransduction was perhaps the last major sensory modality not understood at the molecular level. Proteins/ion channels that sense mechanical force are postulated to play critical roles in sensing touch/pain (somatosensation), sound (hearing), shear stress (cardiovascular function), etc.; however, the identity of ion channels involved in sensing mechanical force had remained elusive. The Patapoutian lab identified PIEZO1 and PIEZO2, mechanically-activated cation channels that are expressed in many mechanosensitive cell types. Genetic studies established that PIEZO2 is the principal mechanical transducer for touch, proprioception, baroreception and bladder & lung stretch, and that PIEZO1 mediates blood-flow sensing, which impacts vascular development and iron homeostasis. Clinical investigations have confirmed the importance of these channels in human physiology. SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY Ardem Patapoutian is an American scientist of Armenian origin. He is molecular biologist specializing in sensory transduction. His research has led to the identification of receptors activated by temperature and pressure. His laboratory has shown that these ion channels play crucial roles in sensing temperature, touch, proprioception, pain, and blood presssure. Patapoutian was born in Lebanon in 1967 and attended the American University of Beirut for one year before he immigrated to The United States in 1986 and became a US citizen. He graduated from UCLA in 1990 and received his Ph.D. at Caltech in 1996. After postdoctoral work with Dr. Lou Reichardt at UCSF, he joined the faculty of Scripps Research in 2000, where he currently holds the Presidential Endowed Chair and is a Professor in the Department of Neuroscience. Patapoutian was awarded the Young Investigator Award from the Society for Neuroscience in 2006 and was named an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in 2014. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2016), a member of the National Academy of Sciences (2017) and a member of American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2020). He is a co-recipient of the 2017 Alden Spencer Award from Columbia, the 2019 Rosenstiel Award for Distinguished Work in Basic Medical, the 2020 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience, and the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Climate crisis, pandemic, war at our borders, democratic backsliding, rising socio-economic inequalities: Young people in Europe stand at the centre of the so-called polycrisis. Fear, distrust, and a sense of uncertainty are putting a strain on what lies at the core of European integration: an ever-growing sense of togetherness among an increasingly larger citizenry. In these challenging times, can we find a path to advance a hopeful European project grounded in fairness, sustainability, and democratic renewal? What role can you play as an active young European citizen and student? Valentin doesn’t hold a clear answer to these questions. But he has worked in the fields of European education, active citizenship, youth civil society, and political communication both as a professional and an activist for over 15 years. These questions have been the thread that has run through his professional path and activism, and he is eager to discuss them with you.
Though little studied, letter sutras help us recover the stories of love, loss, and mourners turning to the things left behind in the wake of death to make something meaningful. This talk explores Japanese medieval makers who reused and recycled the epistles of their dead for the copying of sacred Buddhist text to create potent palimpsests known as letter sutras – objects that have lurked beneath the surface of Japanese material culture and punctuated the personal histories of famous figures since the ninth century. These manuscripts reveal the efficacy and intimacy of Buddhist ritual and how paper resonated with embodied presence and yet devastating grief. This talk analyses the creative methods deployed by mourners in coping with death and loss, the ephemerality and afterlives of letters, and the haptic engagement with layered manuscripts.
Trachoma is the leading infectious cause of blindness worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. Despite this prevalence, it does not feature prominently in narratives of global health history. It is typically categorized as one of many ‘neglected tropical diseases’, historically not deemed worthy of research, funding, or policymaking by relevant authorities. The project from which this talk is drawn seeks to recover meanings of neglect in the history of global health, including but not limited to neglected diseases. Trachoma became associated with China following its widely publicized prevalence among the Chinese Labour Corps in the First World War; although trachoma was recognized widely as the cause of a public health crisis there, it was not easy for the Republican government, beset by war and poverty, to proactively control a disease that was notoriously difficult to diagnose or cure. After 1949, however, research in Beijing proved transformative. Chinese researchers’ successful isolation of the trachoma pathogen in 1957 served as a catalyst to intensify research on the disease globally, especially at UK Medical Research Council sites in London and the Gambia. Correspondence from the Wellcome Trust archives demonstrates the permeability of the so-called Iron Curtain, South-South connections in medical research, and Cold War competition alongside cooperation in communications relating to trachoma research between Beijing, London, and Fajara in the Gambia. Tracing the story of trachoma’s neglect as a research priority for global health stakeholders thus reveals that it was not actually neglected everywhere around the world. Mary Augusta Brazelton is Professor of Global Studies of Science, Technology, and Medicine in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge, where she is also a Fellow of Jesus College and Research Fellow of the Needham Research Institute. At the Needham Institute, she is principal investigator of the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation funded project ‘Lu Gwei-Djen as Biochemist and Historian of Chinese Science: Recovering a Major Archive’. In 2019, she published Mass Vaccination: Citizens' Bodies and State Power in Modern China with Cornell University Press; in 2023, she published China in Global Health: Past and Present with Cambridge University Press in its Global China Elements series.
In this talk, I will present my upcoming book project on the role of literary practices in recreating spaces of sociability and solidarity in post-revolutionary Cairo. Over the past two decades, Egypt’s literary worlds have been reconfigured by two major phenomena. First, the digital disruption of publishing since the mid-2000s has expanded access to literary authorship, allowing many new writers to enter the market. Second, the Egyptian revolution and its aftermath encouraged more people to write in search of individualized fictional worlds, as the collective one promised by January 25 had failed. As a result, many new writers entered Cairo’s associative literary scene, bringing not only their literary talents and aspirations but also the divisions inherited from the revolutionary past. Based on a long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Cairo’s literary clubs, I will show how the code of karam – or hospitality – enabled people to mend their revolutionary divides and create spaces of exchange and support through literature, its rituals and objects. Ritualized and deliberately kept free of politics, these literary bubbles are sustained by an economy of reciprocal favors and financed by writers themselves to keep them as spaces of possibilities in their lives. This presentation invites us to think of literature not merely as the production of texts, but as a set of practices that can be harnessed to recreate spaces of community and exchange after major disruptions. Literary spaces, then, are not solely about literature; they are about creating environments which, by being designated as “cultural”, are expected to provide “safe” and “respectable” setting for the circulation of other kinds of resources.
The last year has been marked by a dramatic turn away from multilateral cooperation towards the assertion of national interest. Many attribute this directly to the re-election of President Trump, and while he is the most prominent spokesman and catalyst for this change, the talk will trace how the US move away from multilateral cooperation began much earlier. This shift is also not limited to the US, as other countries also focus on the promotion of national interest over international solidarity. A phrase that has been used to describe the new condition of international politics is: "multipolarity with Trump characteristics." This deliberately borrows from an earlier apparent conversion of the multilateral system to one where China played a much more important part. That competition between the US and China is now playing out across a range of international political and trade issues, including leadership in institutions such as the United Nations and BWIs. And as these rivals tussle for influence, a range of new emerging powers such as Brazil, India, South Africa and others demand a greater role. They, together with many smaller countries, fear the collapse of the multilateral value system associated with rule-of-law. The talk will describe this three way tug of war for influence and its likely outcomes.
Join us for a discussion about the important authoritarian changes underway across various global governance domains. Following the end of the Cold War, the world experienced a remarkable wave of democratization as numerous authoritarian regimes transitioned to democracies and it seemed that authoritarianism as a political model was fading. But recent events show the world is changing. Liberal ideas are globally on the defensive, while emerging powers—including China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia—are actively trying to reshape international rules, values, and relationships to promote their regimes and geopolitical agendas, and the United States is now rapidly disengaging from international rule-making and global governance, further empowering this authoritarian shift. Alexander Cooley is the Claire Tow Professor of Political Science at Barnard College, Columbia University. From 2015-2021 he served as the fifteenth director of Columbia University's Harriman Institute and from 2022-2025 served as the Vice Provost for Research at Barnard College. Professor Cooley's research examines how international actors have influenced the governance, sovereignty, and security of the post-Communist states. In addition to his academic publications, Professor Cooley's commentaries have appeared in Foreign Affairs, New York Times, and Washington Post, and he has testified for the US Congress, UK Parliament, and the Parliament of Canada. Alexander Dukalskis is associate professor in the School of Politics & International Relations at University College Dublin. His research and teaching interests include authoritarian politics, human rights, and Asian politics. He is also a frequent expert commentator in national and international media on these themes. From 2022-2024 he directed UCD's Centre for Asia-Pacific Research. He is the author of two previous books, Making the World Safe for Dictatorship (Oxford University Press, 2021) and The Authoritarian Public Sphere (Routledge, 2017), and academic articles in several leading journals.
‘What part syngest thou? Qua voce cantas?’ John Stanbridge (1463-1510), master of Magdalen College School in Oxford and author of several innovative pedagogical books, taught his young pupils to ask that question. It is still a relevant question today. Tudor voice-parts and voice-types (both before and during the Reformation) have attracted some controversy in recent generations. This study addresses the issue from a less conventional angle. Rather than starting with questions of sounding pitch, transposition, or vocal production, it draws on a wide range of documents to revisit the five standard English voice-parts (bass, tenor, contratenor, mean/medius, treble/triplex) in what might be called ‘anthropological’ or ‘ethnographic’ terms, as specialised functions and roles exercised by participants in a complex musical culture. This approach, I would argue, also equips us to think more freely about practical matters of pitch and transposition as Tudor singers experienced them in their working lives.
To join online, please register in advance: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/KbVXDl5TQWCP1I0nKS1TiQ
Clare Jackson, _The Mirror of Great Britain: a life of James VI & I_ (2025)
Join the Rent Cultures Network for a screening of _Estate, a Reverie_ (Andrea Luka Zimmerman, 2015), a lyrical documentary portrait of the Haggerston Estate in East London during its final years before demolition. Filmed over seven years, the work reflects on the lives of residents and the social worlds sustained within public housing, exploring care, community, and the politics of visibility. We are delighted that *Andrea Luka Zimmerman* will join us for an informal discussion following the screening. This screening forms part of the Rent Cultures Network Film Series tracing how cinema captures the struggles, solidarities, and imaginations that emerge around housing.
Sandrine Robert (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris - Aubervilliers, France), with consortium Project Time Machine, CNRS, IR* HumaNum and The Water Factory) Water circulation is a determining factor in the organisation and resilience of the landscape in the long term. We will examine this through recent work carried out by the Time Machine project consortium, IR* CNRS and The Water Factory, such as an ancient meander of the Seine, whose shape is still visible in the urban fabric of Paris, or the landscapes of Pyrenean summer pastures structured by irrigation.
The aim of the seminar is to foster a dynamic and interdisciplinary research culture supportive of individual scholarship. Finalists, M.St. and D.Phil. students, lecturers, fellows, scholars from across the university community – all are welcome. If you’d like to appear on the seminar mailing list, please email martha.swift@ell.ox.ac.uk OR hannah.fagan@mansfield.ox.ac.uk
Beyond being a public health crisis, a disease outbreak often mirrors the deeper sociopolitical and economic struggles within a society. Nigeria recorded the highest COVID-19 morbidity and mortality figures in West Africa, yet stark subnational variations were evident across the country. This raises a critical question: What does the geography of the pandemic reveal about the strengths and fault lines of Nigerian society? Adopting an eclectic methodological approach—combining disease mapping, contextual reflection, interviews, archival/library research, and online ethnography—this study analysed diverse data sources including newspapers, morbidity reports, and disease maps. The findings demonstrate that COVID-19 in Nigeria was not merely a public health emergency but a crisis of multiple forms that exposed the nation’s institutional weaknesses, governance failures, and social inequities. Commentator: Utsa Bose (History, University of Oxford)
The Celtic Seminar is held jointly by Oxford and the Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies (CAWCS), Aberystwyth. All Oxford seminars will be at 5.15 pm on Thursdays either hybrid (online and in person) or online-only via Microsoft Teams. When in person, they are in Room 30.022 of the Schwarzman Centre, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road. Please contact david.willis@ling-phil.ox.ac.uk if you need a link to join online. All CAWCS seminars will be held online at 5.00 pm on Thursdays via Zoom, and, for hybrid seminars, in person at the National Library of Wales or at CAWCS. Please contact a.elias@wales.ac.uk for the link.
Beyond being a public health crisis, a disease outbreak often mirrors the deeper sociopolitical and economic struggles within a society. Nigeria recorded the highest COVID-19 morbidity and mortality figures in West Africa, yet stark subnational variations were evident across the country. This raises a critical question: _What does the geography of the pandemic reveal about the strengths and fault lines of Nigerian society?_ Adopting an eclectic methodological approach—combining disease mapping, contextual reflection, interviews, archival/library research, and online ethnography—this study analysed diverse data sources including newspapers, morbidity reports, and disease maps. The findings demonstrate that COVID-19 in Nigeria was not merely a public health emergency but a crisis of multiple forms that exposed the nation’s institutional weaknesses, governance failures, and social inequities. *Tolulope Osayomi* (Medical Geography, Ibadan University; TORCH International Fellow, University of Oxford)
The English Graduates at Oxford (EGO) are delighted to announce an informal, spontaneous, and social Finnegans Wake reading group that will meet once a term to read Joyce's final book, encouraging students of all strands, disciplines, and stages in their study to engage with the text together. Our first meeting will be a Christmas special! No prior knowledge of the text is required, as we will be working through small, fractal sections of the text together. The aim is to reflect together on a short section (circulated previously) of the text, and in keeping with the passage, there will be chrissormiss (Christmas) cake, mulled wine, other treats, and refreshments! If you have copies of Finnegans Wake, please do bring them with you. However, there will also be photocopies of the passage disseminated during the evening. The reading group will value impromptu ideas. All welcome (undergraduates included), but please register your intention to attend with Elisa Moy (elisa.moy@chch.ox.ac.uk). THE EVENT IS NOW FULLY BOOKED. If you find that you are no longer able to attend, please let us know (by emailing elisa.moy@chch.ox.ac.uk) so that we can offer your spot to someone on the waiting list.
In order to participate in this lecture via Zoom, please register at this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/ma–NYzkQp–UVgfOonzBg
Dr Julia Gravendyck is a lecturer in systematic botany at the University of Bonn. The history of plants is preserved not only in leaves and wood, but also in microscopic fossils such as pollen and spores. Abundant across geological time, these microfossils provide a powerful lens for reconstructing vegetation change and evolutionary transitions. Julia's lecture explores how they refine our understanding of plant evolution, from the earliest land plants to the rise of flowers. Recent discoveries of Early Cretaceous pollen shed new light on Darwin’s “abominable mystery” of angiosperm origins, while palynology also reveals how plant communities responded to mass extinctions. Together, these insights show how tiny fossils illuminate some of the biggest questions in botany: how plant communities coped with global crises, and where flowering plants first transformed Earth's ecosystems.
Akira Wiberg is a Consultant Peripheral Nerve Surgeon with the South West Brachial Plexus Team in Bristol, specialising in reconstructive nerve surgery for peripheral nerve injuries and the surgical management neuropathic pain, including nerve decompression surgery for nerve compression syndromes and headache disorders. He studied medicine at Oxford, undertook a DPhil during his plastic surgery training, and completed an NIHR Clinical Lectureship. He is a surgeon-scientist funded by an Arthritis UK Career Development Fellowship, and leads the Peripheral Nerve Research Lab at NDORMS, University of Oxford. His team's translational research spans genomics, cell biology, experimental medicine, and clinical trials to advance treatments for nerve injury, compression, and neuropathic pain. The Chief Medical Officer has confirmed that attendance at the Surgical Grand Rounds can count toward internal CPD, with 1 point awarded per hour. Please note that in-person attendance is required, and you will need to sign the attendance register. All members of the University and NHS clinical staff are welcome. Please email Tarryn Ching (tarryn.ching@nds.ox.ac.uk) if you would like to attend online.
Inhaled bacille Calmette–Guérin (BCG) provides a controlled human model to interrogate anti-mycobacterial immunity at defined time points, something not feasible in natural Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection. It also represents a promising mucosal vaccination route that outperforms intradermal (ID) BCG in animal models. We will present updated findings from two clinical trials in healthy adults: BCG-naïve and historically BCG-vaccinated participants received aerosolised BCG, with control groups of BCG-naïve participants given inhaled saline and previously vaccinated participants given ID BCG. Lung mucosal and peripheral blood responses were characterised longitudinally using single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) and bulk T-cell receptor (TCR) sequencing.
This event will explore the wave of recent major political protests across several Asian countries. We hope to cover the themes of authoritarianism, populism, corruption, dynastic politics and crisis of political authority and legitimacy as well as intergenerational inequality, discontent surrounding labour, employment and education, and the role of social media and new political idioms. The discussion will include: Bangladesh, Indonesia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, South Korea, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. Programme 9.15 am - 12.30 pm Chris Chaplin (London School of Economics) Political Dynasties and Protest in the Digital Age: Platformed Youth, Legitimacy, and Indonesia’s 2025 Protests. David Jackman (Oxford Department of International Development) The Politics Behind Bangladesh's Gen-Z Revolution: Corruption, Youth Crisis and the Military Adnan Nassemullah (Oxford School of Global and Area Studies) Redeeming the Establishment? Naya vs Purana Pakistan Nyi Nyi Kyaw (University of Bristol) Hybridity, Progressiveness, Radicalism: Rethinking Resistance in Myanmar’s Spring Revolution Oliver Walton and Waradas Thiyagaraja, (University of Bath) From the Street to the System: The Aragalaya, Political Change and Marginalised Groups in Post-2022 Sri Lanka 1.30 pm - 4.15 pm Fraser Sugden (University of Birmingham) Youth protest in Nepal, migration and the agrarian question Tat Yan Kong (School of Oriental and African Studies, London) The failure of labour inclusion in South Korea and its implications Duncan McCargo (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) ‘Let it End in Our Generation’: Beyond Thailand’s 2020 Youth Protests Richard Javad Heydarian (Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford) Political Economy of Corruption”: Authoritarian vs Liberal Populism in the Philippines General Discussion
At this meeting, Ben will give a basic overview of the problem of measuring pain: recapping the basic anatomy of the pain system, current ways of measuring pain in clinical contexts, and thinking about the future. Oxford Pain Network Meetings are fortnightly meetings run by the Clinical Neurosciences Pain Network (NDCN). Meetings are typically seminars or open discussion and take place in a hybrid format over Teams and at the FMRIB Annexe (Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, John Radcliffe Hospital). Open to all researchers/students/clinical staff in Oxford interested in pain research. For more details about future events, please join the mailing list: oxin-paingroup-subscribe@maillist.ox.ac.uk or email Danielle Hewitt danielle.hewitt@ndcn.ox.ac.uk for further details.
Blood vessels are among the most vital structures in the human body, forming intricate networks that connect and support various organ systems. Remarkably, during early embryonic development—before any blood vessels are visible—their precursor cells are arranged in stereotypical patterns throughout the embryo. We hypothesize that these patterns guide the directional growth and fusion of precursor cells into hollow tubes formed from initially solid clusters. Further analysis of cells within these clusters reveals unique organization that may influence their differentiation into endothelial and blood cells. In this work, I revisit the problem of pattern formation through the lens of active matter physics, using both developing embryonic systems and in vitro cell culture models where similar patterns are observed during tissue budding. These different systems exhibit similar patterning behavior, driven by changes in cellular activity, adhesion and motility.
What does ‘datafication’ mean for our bodies? In this reading group we will discuss self-tracking, self-surveillance, and the transformation of the body into data using technologies as diverse as the BMI scale and the Smart Watch. While the reading is focussed on contemporary technology, we will also consider the historical precedents for self-tracking such as religious practices and healthcare. Reading: Lupton, D. (2016). 'An Optimal Human Being' in _The Quantified Self_ and Crawford, K., Lingel, J., & Karppi, T. (2015). 'Our metrics, ourselves: A hundred years of self-tracking from the weight scale to the wrist wearable device’.
h5. For general information, please see the series listing. This week’s readings: * Charles Taylor, ‘Epistemic Retreat and the New Centrality of Time,’ chap. 9 in _Cosmic Connections: Poetry in the Age of Disenchantment_ (Harvard University Press, 2024), https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674297074-010. * Charles Taylor, ‘Brandom’s Hegel,’ in _Reading Brandom: On ‘A Spirit of Trust,’_ edited by Gilles Bouché, 198–207 (Routledge, 2020), https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003001942-14. For the full programme visit users.ox.ac.uk/~scro3052/phenomenology/programme.pdf.
This talk places new constraints on ocean temperature change across the Neoproterozoic to Phanerozoic transition, when the fossil record documents some of the most dramatic changes in the history of complex life. Traditional δ18O data blur temperature with changes in seawater composition; clumped isotopes break that ambiguity. Using stratigraphically anchored, fabric-targeted sampling, we reconstruct nearshore seawater temperatures and, where possible, infer ice volume from seawater δ18O. Results reveal large, directional climate shifts with ecological consequences. In the Tonian and Cryogenian, clumped-isotope data from Oman and elsewhere indicate near-modern tropical temperatures before and after Snowball Earth glaciations, suggesting dynamic hydrologic and climatic transitions. During the Ediacaran, post-glacial warming followed by ≥20 °C cooling likely expanded oxygenated habitats and set the stage for early animal diversification. In the Ordovician, ~15 °C of long-term tropical cooling over ~40 Myr culminated in brief but extensive glaciation, providing the climate context for the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event. By pairing clumped-isotope temperatures with age control and complementary proxies, we build a quantitative framework linking climate and habitability, showing how temperature change guided life’s evolutionary trajectory through deep time.
Anton Barbashin is a visiting researcher for ECFR’s European Security Programme and a co-founder and editorial director at Riddle Russia. Prior to his work on Riddle Russia, Anton was a co-founder and managing editor of Warsaw-based Russia-focused analytical outlet Intersection Project and between 2014 and 2018 he was an analyst with the Center for Polish-Russian Dialogue and Understanding. Since 2023, Barbashin has been a senior member of University Consortium. He was a non-resident research fellow at the Atlantic Council from 2019 to 2021 and was a visiting expert at the Kennan Institute, Wilson Center in 2017. He is currently a post-graduate researcher at the University of Glasgow.
Join us for a special event with Daisy J. Hung as she launches her insightful new book, I Am Not a Tourist: Conversations on Being British Chinese. From politics to popular culture, British Chinese experiences have had little visibility, remaining largely unseen and rarely discussed. I Am Not a Tourist is a fierce and moving exploration of what it means to be British Chinese today, and a rallying cry against longstanding East and Southeast Asian racism that increased exponentially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on personal stories, extensive interviews and research, the book excavates the intricacies of identity, reveals forgotten histories, and explores the nuances of representation in a society that doesn’t always ‘see’ you. Daisy J. Hung is a diversity practitioner, author and artist, advocating for social justice across personal and professional spheres. She is the Head of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in the Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division at the University of Oxford. Daisy has a unique, international perspective on race, identity, and belonging, informed by a career of over two decades across legal, non-profit and education sectors working to support marginalised communities. As a person of Chinese descent, born in Canada with family from Hong Kong, raised in the US, and now settled in the UK, her sense of identity has shifted among many different contexts. Daisy was longlisted for the Penguin Random House WriteNow 2020 competition, and was selected for the inaugural HarperCollins Author Academy programme in 2021 and The Greene Door Project’s mentoring scheme in November 2021.
Contemporary protectionist policies in the U.S. are often initiated by the executive branch but enforced unevenly across firms. We argue that such uneven enforcement arises because legislators—with both institutional capacity and local motivation—shield connected firms from executive protectionist measures. We test this claim using the Trump administration’s Buy American Act (BAA), which penalized firms reliant on foreign, especially Chinese, suppliers. Combining firm-level data on federal contracts, supply chains, and campaign contributions, we analyze 1,958 firms (2015–2019). A difference-in-differences design shows that the BAA significantly reduced contracts for firms with Chinese suppliers, but only among politically inactive firms in districts represented by less powerful House members or by members lacking strong local ties. We also find that only less-connected firms adjusted their suppliers after the BAA. These findings highlight the importance of distinguishing between the adoption and implementation of protectionist policies, and how legislators shape implementation amidst presidential dominance in trade policy.
The Library at All Souls College will hold an Open Day for Oxford students. Students just need to show their University cards; there are no charges or any other requirements. (Please note that only blue and pink Bodleian card holders will be able to gain admittance). The Library is open to members of the University and outside researchers by application: https://www.asc.ox.ac.uk/applications, but we’re aware that some students may be unsure about registering as Readers. We hope this will be an opportunity to make students feel welcome, and also give those students who just want to look around a chance to do so. No booking needed!
Dr Andy Peters Learning-related sensory responses in the cortex and basal ganglia One foundation of learned behavior is the ability to associate arbitrary combinations of stimuli and actions. After learning these sensorimotor associations, the brain transforms previously meaningless stimulus information into a specific motor command, but it is unclear where this transformation occurs and how it develops across learning. We are investigating how the cortex-basal ganglia circuit is involved in this type of learning by recording widespread activity in mice during task learning and performance. Our findings are building towards a cascade of events during learning, where sensory responses are increased in the basal ganglia, converge according to behavioral relevance, and routed to motor regions of the cortex. SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY 2010-2016: PhD - University of California, San Diego with Takaki Komiyama, studied learning in the motor cortex 2016-2022: Postdoc - UCL with Matteo Carandini and Kenneth Harris, studied interactions between the cortex and striatum 2022: Sir Henry Dale Fellowship - Oxford Dr Mehran Ahmadlou Neural mechanisms of behavioural flexibility across threat and reward Behavioural flexibility, the capacity to adjust actions to changing environmental demands and internal physiological states, is essential for survival. Across contexts of threat and reward, animals rely on distributed brain circuits that dynamically reconfigure behavioural strategies to maintain adaptive control. Using cell-type-specific circuit approaches in freely moving mice, our work reveals how subtle variations in contextual and internal variables reshape strategy selection—from defensive to exploratory modes of behaviour. These studies uncover distinct yet conceptually aligned mechanisms that enable adaptive switching between behavioural states, illustrating how the brain integrates environmental information and physiological needs to guide flexible, goal-directed action. Understanding these principles offers insight into neuropsychiatric conditions in which behavioural flexibility is disrupted, whether through excessive rigidity, as in obsessive-compulsive and anxiety disorders, or excessive instability, as in attention deficit and mood disorders. SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY After his studies in electric engineering, Mehran did his PhD in neurobiology of visual system in Alexander Heimel's lab at Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience (NIN), where he found orientation columns and optic flow map in superior colliculus, and thalamocortical ocular dominance plasticity in mice. During his postdoc at NIN, he found a cell-type-specific neural mechanism for curiosity and information seeking. He continued his work on behavioural flexibility in Sonja Hofer's lab at SWC/UCL, where he found a cell-type-specific neural mechanism that controls switch and stay behavioural strategies. He started his lab (NeuroBehaviour Lab) at DPAG in September 2025 to study neural mechanisms of adaptive behaviour.
The return of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement to power has been accompanied by an attack on cities, starting with Washington DC. Drawing upon the literature that seeks to understand Trump and MAGA, this talk examines whether fascist passions, as some have argued, are the motivation for this assault on Washington DC. Identifying a series of moments during Trump's first term, and with particular focus on the Black Lives Matters clashes of June 2020, this talk seeks to document the emotional reasoning and animating passions driving Trump and the MAGA movement.
Prof. Ian A. Wilson obtained a B.Sc. from Edinburgh University (1971), D. Phil. (1976) and D.Sc. (2000) from Oxford University, was a postdoc at Harvard University 1977-82, and joined Scripps Research Institute as a faculty member in 1982. His contributions include structural characterization of many key antigen recognition receptors in innate and adaptive immunity, including over 550 antibodies and antibody complexes, T cell receptors, MHC class I and II, CD1, TLRs, VLRs, NODs, etc. His lab’s current focus is on how antibodies recognize influenza virus, HIV-1, HCV, SARS-CoV-2, Mpox, astroviruses, alphaviruses, and P. falciparum to aid in design of vaccines and therapeutics. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, International Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, International Member of the US National Academy of Sciences, and Honorary Fellow, Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
A principal uses payments conditioned on stochastic outcomes of a team project to elicit costly effort from the team members. We develop a multi-agent generalization of a classic first-order approach to contract optimization by leveraging methods from network games. The main results characterize the optimal allocation of incentive pay across agents and outcomes. Incentive optimality requires equalizing, across agents, a product of (i) individual productivity (ii) organizational centrality and (iii) responsiveness to monetary incentives.
Akram Khan is an internationally celebrated choreographer and dancer. As Artistic Director of Akram Khan Company, he has created groundbreaking works that push the boundaries of form and technique to tell urgent stories about a world in flux. His acclaimed productions—such as Thikra, Jungle Book reimagined, Outwitting the Devil, XENOS, Until the Lions, Kaash, iTMOi (in the mind of igor), DESH, Vertical Road, Gnosis, and zero degrees—articulate an artistic vision that both respects and challenges the Indian classical dance tradition while engaging deeply with contemporary dance. Beyond his own company, Khan has made a significant mark on the wider dance ecosystem through his celebrated collaborations with English National Ballet, creating works such as Dust and Giselle, which redefined narrative ballet for the 21st century. Across all his projects, Khan brings ancient myth and centuries of tradition into dialogue with some of the most pressing political and ethical questions of our time. Join us for a conversation at the Jaqueline du Pre Music Building, St Hilda's College Oxford on Friday, 5 December 2025 from 14:30– 16.00. Followed by an informal reception. This event is free to attend and open to all.
This paper revisits the intersections of anthropology and autobiography to argue for the significance of boundaries, reflexivity, and heterogeneity as analytic prisms in ethnography. Judith Okely’s work showed how gendered practices materialise social distinctions and how anthropological knowledge is inseparable from autobiography, which she argued for as a methodological resource. This presentation extends these insights through ethnographic research with Roma communities, where everyday engagements with kinship, healthcare, and education emerge as sites of creativity and agency in which people reshape obligations, reconfigure identities, and imagine alternative possibilities for social reproduction.
This talk explores John le Carré’s relationship to world literature. Le Carré’s novels address some of the key developments in global politics in the twentieth century, and beyond. We will look closely at the two major phases into which his writing falls: how he established himself as a leading commentator on the psychological and political impacts of a world divided by confrontational ideologies; and how he fearlessly explored the crises of a still-polarised late-century world order. In both phases, le Carré’s fiction, characters and plots register some of the definitive preoccupations of our time and the shrinking possibilities of hope. Elleke Boehmer, FRSL, frhists, is Professor of World Literature in English at Oxford University and Fellow at Wolfson College, specializing in world literature and postcolonial studies. She has written extensively on the literature of empire, nationalism and the figure of the writer in the twentieth century. Steven Matthews is a professor at the University of Reading, specializing in modern and contemporary poetry, literature and literary theory. His work often focuses on the relationship between poetry and place, including environmental and ecological themes, as well as on Samuel Beckett, 1930s writing and postcolonial poetry.
Memory shapes everyday behaviour by engaging complex patterns of neuronal activity distributed across brain networks, including the hippocampus. But what features of neural activity underlie memory-guided behaviour? In this talk, I will explore how spatio-temporally organized spike trains of neuronal ensembles and rhythmic fluctuations in local field potentials contribute to the internal processing of mnemonic information. Drawing on cross-species findings, I will highlight network-level dynamics that support memory across both rodent and human brains. Importantly, I will show how organizational principles and analytical frameworks developed in rodent models are now being leveraged to uncover the oscillatory circuitry underlying human memory. These insights reveal how fine-grained neural dynamics, distributed across the hippocampus and its partner circuits, orchestrate memory-guided behaviour in the mammalian brain.
Primary: Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed (1974), Chapters 13 & 14 Supplementary: Cindy Milstein, ‘Gesturing toward Utopia’ in Anarchism and Its Aspirations (2010); Le Guin, ‘The Operating Instructions’ (2002)
Seminar followed by Q&A and drinks - all welcome - join in person or online Abstract: Environmental decision-making often grapples with the tension between generalized sustainability goals and the culturally specific ways communities relate to nature. Relational values have been promoted as a way of navigating this tension. In this seminar, I argue that the primary contribution of a relational values perspective is the way it has swapped a rather tired debate about the intrinsic-instrumental value of nature, with a more lively debate about nature’s substitutability. Using the example of development pressure in the UK, I explore where a relational focus takes us politically, and how it might help broker new approaches to decision making of relevance to questions of nature recovery. Biography: Rob is Professor of Environmental Sustainability at Imperial College. He is a social scientist and human geographer by training, with research interests in the social and cultural dimensions of natural resource management. He has a particular specialism in agricultural and rural systems. Rob’s work is distinguished by its participatory and collaborative nature, as well as by direct intervention in the policy process. In recent years, he has played a prominent role in the elaboration of interdisciplinary approaches to the valuation of nature within environmental policy and decision making. He is a founding lead editor of the BES Journal People and Nature. His recent graphic textbook, Valuing Nature: the Roots of Transformation won the Taylor & Francis Outstanding STEM Book (2021).
Abstract: Environmental decision-making often grapples with the tension between generalized sustainability goals and the culturally specific ways communities relate to nature. Relational values have been promoted as a way of navigating this tension. In this seminar, I argue that the primary contribution of a relational values perspective is the way it has swapped a rather tired debate about the intrinsic-instrumental value of nature, with a more lively debate about nature’s substitutability. Using the example of development pressure in the UK, I explore where a relational focus takes us politically, and how it might help broker new approaches to decision making of relevance to questions of nature recovery. Biography: Rob is Professor of Environmental Sustainability at Imperial College. He is a social scientist and human geographer by training, with research interests in the social and cultural dimensions of natural resource management. He has a particular specialism in agricultural and rural systems. Rob’s work is distinguished by its participatory and collaborative nature, as well as by direct intervention in the policy process. In recent years, he has played a prominent role in the elaboration of interdisciplinary approaches to the valuation of nature within environmental policy and decision making. He is a founding lead editor of the BES Journal People and Nature. His recent graphic textbook, Valuing Nature: the Roots of Transformation won the Taylor & Francis Outstanding STEM Book (2021). 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.
Dame Caroline Wilson DCMG is a senior British diplomat who served for 5 years as the British Ambassador to China from 2020 to 2025. Her time in Beijing spanned covid, China’s wolf warrior diplomacy, ructions over Hong Kong, economic security and trade, two Chinese Foreign Ministers, 4 British Foreign Secretaries, 5 UK Prime Ministers. And One Chinese President. Dame Caroline travelled the country widely and became known throughout China for her lively Mandarin language v-logs on Weibo which focused on UK-China ties including people to people, and values including diversity and openness. She will share her reflections on the practice of diplomacy in China for half a decade, whether communicating, cooperating or contesting. A fluent Mandarin speaker, Dame Caroline studied at Beijing Normal University, served in Beijing 1996-2000 and Hong Kong in 2012-16 as HM Consul General. She has worked extensively on Europe - as Antici at the UK's Permanent Representation to the EU in the early 2000s, in the Cabinet Office European Secretariat, subsequently as Europe Director in the Foreign Office. In addition to French and German Caroline speaks Russian, and was Minister Counsellor at the British Embassy in Moscow from 2008-12. She also served as Private Secretary to the Foreign Secretary. She is a qualified Barrister (Middle Temple) having graduated in Law from the University of Cambridge (Downing College) and has a Masters in European law from the Université Libre de Bruxelles. Caroline is currently preparing for her next diplomatic appointment.
What is the history of nutrition, and how can it reshape our understanding of science, governance, and daily life in the modern Middle East? *Dr Sara Farhan* will explore these questions through the political economy of nourishment in Iraq from the late Ottoman to the early Ba‘thist periods, using Iraq as a microcosm to illuminate broader trends in the modern Middle East. She demonstrates that the study and management of nutrition were not neutral biological curiosities but a historical field in which knowledge, power, and survival were conjoined. Viewed through this lens, the calculation of calories and the classification of micro- and macronutrients reveal the underbelly of the histories of empire, famine, agricultural reform, and political economy. Nutrition transitioned from a holistic understanding of sustenance to a laboratorial enterprise which produced a techno-political tethering that bound the plate to statecraft. She will reconstruct a dispersed archive of nourishment, comprising administrative reports, medical treatises, famine accounts, common recipes, and scientific studies, and use it as a fragmentary trace to spotlight the granular politics of everyday life. In doing so, Farhan aims to reconstruct nutrition as a critical lens for historical inquiry, one that integrates the bio, the necro, and the political within a kaleidoscopic view of the caloric arithmetic behind statecraft.
Love, loss, grief, separation and the bliss of union – all are powerfully represented in ATMA (The Soul), first released as an album in 2023 and now performed live. A musical journey that portrays all aspects of life, it is a rich musical meeting between the worlds of Indian classical and jazz, in which sitar and tabla beautifully weave and interchange with double bass, guitar and electronics.
On Monday 8th December 2025, join us for the OxCODE symposium 2025 to hear about the latest research in early cancer detection and prevention from Oxford and elsewhere. We are delighted to have Ros Eeles (The Institute of cancer Research, London) and Phil Jones (Wellcome Sanger Institute, Cambridge) as our keynote speakers and there will be sessions themed on: Early detection, featuring Ros Eeles, Parinaz Mehdipour and Brian Nicholson Stratifying cancer risk, featuring Pradeep Virdee, Karl Smith Byrne, Anneke Lucassen Biology-informed prevention, featuring Phil Jones, Karin Hellner , Zinaida Dedeic and Maria Aggelakopoulou The Symposium will also feature: Panel discussion: Are industry/academia partnerships essential for advancing early detection and prevention research for patient benefit? Lightning talks (abstract submission deadline, 7th November; see guidance below). Poster session (abstract submission deadline, 7th November; see guidance below). At the end of the day, there will be a drinks and canapés reception to give you an opportunity to network and build connections. Register by 21st November, Please contact cancer@medsci.ox.ac.uk with any questions. Lightning talk abstract submission If you would like to submit an abstract for consideration for a 4-minute lightning talk, you will need to follow the guidelines below: • The abstract must be no longer than 200 words, submitted in Word format. • Please include a title, author list and your primary departmental affiliation. • All abstracts must be submitted to cancer@medsci.ox.ac.uk by Friday 7th November. Late abstracts will not be accepted. • All people submitting abstracts must also register via Eventbrite • Lightning talks will be selected by the OxCODE operational group • Applicants will be notified of acceptance from Monday 17th November Poster guidance If you would like to submit an abstract for consideration for the poster session you will need to follow the guidelines below: • The abstract must be no longer than 200 words, submitted in Word format. • Please include a title, author list and your primary departmental affiliation. • All abstracts must be submitted to cancer@medsci.ox.ac.uk by Friday 7th November. Late abstracts will not be accepted. • All people submitting abstracts must also register via Eventbrite • In the event of oversubscription, poster places will be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis (40 places available). • Posters should be printed in portrait orientation and be no larger than A0 to fit the poster display boards.
Six NIHR Biomedical Research Centres; Oxford, Oxford Health, Cambridge, Barts, Birmingham and Moorfields are collaborating to bring you a series of engaging online training sessions with experts and researchers to help embed inclusion in your research. There are 3 webinar events for Research Inclusivity Training rolling out over November and December this year and they will be repeated in 2026. Socio-economic Disadvantage Inclusion training, with Dr. Heidi R Green Providing strategies to reduce barriers in health inequalities and understand challenges faced by disadvantaged communities. The session includes a case study and the NIHR INCLUDE Socio-economic Disadvantage Framework.
Adaptive immune responses unfold within complex tissue microenvironments that shape clonal selection, effector fate, and long-term immune resilience. I will discuss new spatial transcriptomic technologies we’ve developed which capture the state, receptor sequence, and location of lymphocytes directly in situ. These approaches reveal how T and B cell diversity is organized across germinal centers, inflamed tissues, and aging thymus. By integrating clonal and spatial information, we can map how immune interactions and tissue cues drive adaptation, regeneration, and decline, offering a framework for decoding adaptive immunity across health, aging, and disease.
Successfully implementing a wearable monitoring system into clinical practice relies on careful engagement with users from the start. In the Virtual HDU project, we developed our system in multiple phases to ensure accuracy, reliability and - crucially - usability of the final system. This talk will focus on the development of the Virtual HDU system and how we have evaluated this in practice.
In this talk, Professor Niall Winters will present convivial technology (CT) as an alternative to current rhetorics on the role of generative artificial intelligence in education. This will involve three foundations: 1. A Freirean approach that conceptualises education as a process; 2. A decolonial frame for understanding technology design and implementation; 3. An introduction to CT principles. Building on these, Professor Niall will then discuss the ways in which approaches to convivial technology can be understood as a socially just, participatory and environmentally aware. The seminar will end with a discussion on whether this is enough to counter the dominate AI narrative in education today. Speaker bio: Professor Niall Winters is an Honorary Norham Fellow at the Department of Education, University of Oxford and a Visiting Fellow at Kellogg College. His main research interest is advancing knowledge of the complex development processes involved in designing socially-just technology innovations. This research agenda has been supported by over €7m in funding. Niall was previously Professor of Education and Technology at the Department of Education, co-convenor of the Critical Digital Education Research Group, and Director of the MSc Education (Digital and Social Change.
Healthcare continues to undergo rapid transformation, driven by advances in technology, scientific discovery, and evolving system pressures. In this context, early-stage ideas and the environments that enable them to develop are increasingly important. This panel discussion will explore how initial concepts gain traction, the role of early-stage funding, and the support structures that help researchers and founders progress towards innovations with genuine clinical impact. The panel will share perspectives from across science, investment, and entrepreneurship, offering practical insights into the earliest stages of the innovation pathway. Speakers • Dr Danuta Jeziorska, Biotech executive, co-founder of Nucleome Therapeutics, and founder of Innovation Forum Oxford. • Dr Emilie Syed, Senior Investment Manager, Life Sciences and MedTech at Zinc VC. • Esther Richardot Reynal de Saint-Michel, founder of Thena Capital. Moderator: Dr Christiaan de Koning – Associate Fellow at Green Templeton College and Chair of the Founders & Funders Foundation, a network supporting researchers & entrepreneurs at Oxford through mentorship, events, and venture collaboration. About the Oxford Health Innovation Forum The Oxford Health Innovation Forum is a university-wide initiative piloted at Green Templeton in 2025. It builds on the college’s strong legacy in medicine, medical sciences, business, and management. The forum exists to bring together students, alumni, researchers, clinicians, start-up representatives, investors, and industry professionals to explore the future of medical and life sciences innovation. It aims to serve as a platform through which the college fosters entrepreneurship and drives dialogue on innovation in medical research, healthcare delivery and global health. More information Tea, coffee and sandwiches will be served from 17:00 in the Stables Bar. The speaker event begins at 17:30. Drinks and nibbles will be served in the Stables Bar at 18:30. Places are limited, so early registration is highly recommended. As this Forum places particular emphasis on networking and informal discussion, the event will be held in person only.
For our next talk, in the BDI/CHG (gen)omics Seminar series, we will be hearing from Dr Joanna Howson, Senior Vice President, Novo Nordisk Research Centre Oxford. We’re delighted to host Joanna in what promises to be a great talk! Date: Tuesday 9 December Time: 9:30 – 10:30 Talk title: Putting the human at the centre of drug discovery Location: BDI/OxPop seminar room 0 ———————————————————————————————————————— 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. Join the meeting now Meeting ID: 322 259 590 911 11 Passcode: CF3GZ2wv ——————————————————————————————————— 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 webinar builds on insights from the South Asia Regional Global Health Solidarity Workshop held in New Delhi, where experts, youth leaders, grassroots activists, researchers, funders, and civil society representatives from India, Nepal, and beyond called on global institutions to place solidarity at the heart of health systems. The webinar will continue this conversation, providing a platform to: - Share grounded perspectives on understandings and practices of solidarity from South Asia - Surface practical challenges and lived experiences from frontline, policy, and community contexts - Discuss actionable steps for programmes, partnerships, and funders to strengthen solidaristic practices
Do you want to make sure that your work complies with the open access policy for REF 2029? In this focused online briefing, we will: step you through the changes and new requirements; provide links to further REF information and guidance; let you know where to find help at Oxford; and answer as many questions as we can. Intended audience: Researcher & research student; Staff
In this session we will explore how families can navigate young children’s digital lives with confidence, calm, and connection. Parents today face a flood of mixed messages about “screen time”, from warnings by health bodies, to advice from educators and the media. Conflicting recommendations leave many parents feeling uncertain, judged, and even stressed about their children’s digital technology use. Join Professor Karen Murcia as she draws from research conducted in the Australian Research Council funded Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child and reframes the conversation, rather than focusing on how much time children spend on screens, we consider how children use digital technologies and who they use it with. Realistic modelling of intentional, not ‘perfect’ use of digital technologies will be considered in the real world of digital parenting. We will leave this session with research-informed strategies and shared ideas for guiding children’s digital experiences, focusing on connection, creativity, and digital citizenship. Karen Murcia is a Professor of Education at Curtin University and Program Co-Lead of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child (www.digitalchild.org.au). As a Chief Investigator, she leads education research exploring how digital technologies shape the lives and learning of children growing up in the digital age. Her internationally recognised expertise spans children’s creativity, computational thinking, and digital citizenship. A respected thought leader, she drives STEM education innovation through collaborative partnerships with industry and community organisations, both in Australia and around the world.
Are you looking to learn about the ways in which to transmit scientific ideas and make your research accessible to a non-specialist audience through a variety of mediums? This session will serve as an introduction to science communication and how it can be successfully incorporated into our roles. By the end of this session you will be able to: define science communication and provide a list of examples; explain why science communication is important for both our CPD and the public; and list ways in which we can all get involved in science communication. Intended audience: Medicine & NHS; Taught student; Researcher & research student.
An introduction to the what, why and how of public involvement
Patents and standards are a valuable source of technical information relevant to the fields of engineering, materials sciences, and more. Together, they provide approved rules and guidelines whilst helping to protect inventions and innovative ideas. They can, however, be tricky to find. Join this session to find out more about what patents and standards are, why they might be useful for your research and how to find them in specific databases. By the end of this session, you will: know what a patent is and where to find it; know what a standard is and where to find it; and be able to reference patents and standards. Intended audience: Taught student; Researcher & research student
Abstract: This presentation will consider the political economy of higher education in early America, from the mid-eighteenth through the early-nineteenth century. It notes the various ways in which higher education was commodified and commercialized in that period and the strategies that institutions used to bolster their “market position.” It concludes with thoughts on the relationship between liberalization and polarization in the “modern” political economy of American higher education.
We are excited to host the 2025 Bennett Institute Medicines Symposium, two days of talks and workshops on medicines, NHS data, and open research. Day 1 will feature keynotes, lightning talks, and panel discussions. Day 2 will be dedicated to hands-on workshops. Whether you’re working in healthcare research, policy, or practice, this is a chance to connect and learn from those generating and using medicines data in the UK. Registration and abstract submissions are now open Note: symposium registration and abstract submissions are handled separately (see links below). If you wish to propose a talk or workshop, don’t forget to also register! Register for the symposium using the Eventbrite link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/2025-bennett-institute-medicines-symposium-tickets-1570683509659 Propose a talk or workshop using the abstract submission form: https://airtable.com/appYkEJ7pQey5ic4F/pagolpfwNJg1oRSrS/form What you’ll learn This year’s symposium is focused on medicines, NHS data, and open research methods. You’ll learn about: Ongoing work and recent findings from the Bennett Institute and our collaborators Tools like OpenSAFELY, OpenCodelists, and OpenPrescribing, and how others are using them Approaches to high-quality, reproducible analytics in the NHS Real-life examples of how data is being used to improve care, safety, and access Hands-on workshops to explore methods, tools, and workflows Who you’ll meet We’re bringing together people who often use the same data but don’t always get to work together. You’ll meet: Clinicians, pharmacists and other healthcare professionals who generate and use medicines data in everyday care Medicines optimisation teams Researchers, epidemiologists, and data scientists Policy makers and experts Data infrastructure experts and platform developers
Convened by Victoria Musvik, Stephen Whitefield (Pembroke College, Oxford) & Florence Faucher (SciencesPo, Paris) In collaboration with OxPo With Kathy Rousselet, Directrice de Recherche/Senior Research Fellow, Sciences Po Alexandra Koroleva, PhD candidate, Centre d’histoire de Sciences Po/Centre for History (CHSP), Sciences Po Anna Sidorevich, Research Associate, Centre for History (CHSP), Sciences Po Carole Sigman, Tenured Senior Researcher (political sociology), CNRS Although very popular with Western scholars in the late 1980s-1990s, in the subsequent years perestroika has dropped out of the research mainstream and become poorly conceptualised. Recently, however, new generations of researchers have started to suggest new approaches and more complex perspectives. Methodologically, in the past few years, the field of ‘perestroika studies’ has been getting increasingly diverse, in several disciplines, and academic traditions. Besides, ‘newer’ research methodologies, such as visual studies, history of emotions, affect theory, trauma and memory studies, and decolonial, critical regionalist and imperial research, among others, have developed around or since 1985. Scholars mostly agree that the mainstream narrative about perestroika as a gift ‘from the centre’ and ‘from above’ should be subverted. This means concentrating on various regional roots and contributions, giving more space to non-metropolitan and local voices, and encouraging looking from previously marginalised perspectives. To celebrate perestroika’s 40th anniversary, the conference will bring together researchers from diverse disciplinary fields and countries.
Coaching skills are the key to fostering positive and effective working relationships with your colleagues and team members. This workshop is your gateway to the powerful world of coaching. It will introduce you to essential coaching concepts, approaches, and skills that will transform your leadership style.
Immune responses unfold within tissues whose architecture and composition fundamentally shape inflammation and its resolution. Understanding these processes requires integrating spatial tissue structure with cellular dynamics and function. In this seminar, we will explore advanced imaging and computational approaches that connect single-cell behavior with tissue-level organization. By combining multiplex 3D microscopy, quantitative analysis, and in vivo functional imaging, we examine how tissue macrophages interact with stromal networks to sustain homeostasis or promote dysfunction. Through this framework, we will discuss how spatial tissue organization may set local inflammation thresholds and govern the shift from physiological repair to pathological disease.
Tim Witney is a Professor of Molecular Imaging and Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow at King’s College London’s School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences. His group develops next-generation diagnostics to monitor treatment response and identify therapy resistance in cancer. They use pioneering radionuclide therapies to target the very features that cause refractive disease. He is the Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer at Nuclide Therapeutics, President-elect for the European Society for Molecular Imaging, and Editor-in-Chief of npj Imaging. Tim obtained his PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Cambridge in 2010, where he worked in the laboratory of Prof. Kevin Brindle FRS on dynamic nuclear polarisation as a novel method for detecting tumour response to therapy. In 2010, Tim joined Prof. Eric Aboagye’s group at Imperial as a postdoc, developing novel positron emission tomography radiotracers for cancer imaging, before moving to Stanford University in 2013 to work under Prof. Sanjiv Sam Gambhir for further postdoctoral training. In 2015, he established his group at University College London’s Centre for Advanced Biomedical Imaging, supported by a UCL Excellence Fellowship and a Wellcome Trust and Royal Society Sir Henry Dale Fellowship. He moved to King’s College London in 2018 to take up his current post.
Book talk for _Crucibles of Power: Smolensk under Stalinist and Nazi Rule_, by *Michael David-Fox*, with roundtable commentary from Dan Healey, Stephen Smith, and Zbigniew Wojnowski. This event will be followed by a drinks reception. *_Please see the All Souls event page for the registration link, which will be posted closer to the event_*.
Overton is the world’s largest database of policy documents, indexing over 7 million policy documents from around the world and making them full-text searchable. During this workshop, participants will become familiar with Overton’s data and the three main search modes available in the platform. We will cover how to use Overton to see where research is cited in policy, where people are mentioned in policy and how to use Overton as a grey literature search tool. Intended audience: Researcher & research student; Staff
For our first AI workshop we will be joined by Dr Lei Clifton, Programme Director of the MSc in Applied Digital Health, Primary Care Department; Dr Bradley Segal, Rhodes Scholar, practising physician and DPhil candidate in Biomedical Engineering, and Gavin Hubbard, Senior Communications Manager with extensive AI experience, Primary Care Department. Title: AI Tools for Research: A Hands-On Workshop When: 11 December 2025 Time: 11:00 – 12:00 Venue: BDI/Oxpop Seminar room 1 Overview: Live demonstrations of AI tools that can cut admin time, speed up literature reviews, improve writing, and support research workflows – from hypothesis generation to peer review simulation. The content will be tailored on the experience levels and specific interests captured in the registration form. Who it's for: Any researcher curious about AI applications. No coding required, all experience levels welcome. Format: Interactive, hands-on session with concrete examples relevant to primary care research. Attendees can bring laptops to try techniques during live demos. The session will cover practical applications many researchers are curious about but haven't known where to start. Bio: Dr Lei Clifton: Programme Director of the MSc in Applied Digital Health, Primary Care Department Lei has 20+ years of experience at the intersection of medical statistics and AI. As Programme Director of the MSc in Applied Digital Health, she specialises in foundation models and large language models for healthcare, bringing expertise from engineering, machine learning, and medical statistics. Dr Bradley Segal: DPhil candidate, Computational Health Informatics (CHI) Lab Bradley is a Rhodes Scholar, practicing physician, and DPhil candidate from the CHI Lab in the Engineering Department. He specialises in AI applications in healthcare, from deep learning in medical imaging to large-scale patient analytics platforms. His clinical experience and healthcare technology ventures provide practical insights into implementing AI tools in real-world medical settings. Gavin Hubbard: Senior Communications Manager with extensive AI experience Gavin brings a unique perspective combining medical biochemistry background, 8+ years in drug development, and extensive science writing experience. He supports researchers in communicating their work to diverse audiences and has been exploring AI tools for research communication for several years, training NIHR communications professionals in LLM use since early 2023. Registration: https://forms.office.com/e/RcbjScFzyW?origin=lprLink – spaces are limited for the interactive format.
Join us to hear the results of two surveys run in Trinity Term 2025: Oxford's research practice survey, and the open research survey (run locally as part of a wider survey by the UK Reproducibility Network). Both surveys asked a representative sample of Oxford staff and students involved in research about their use, awareness and attitudes on various research practices, including open research practices and more. We will share findings and suggested actions off the back of these results.
The Oxford Energy Lunches gather the vibrant, multidisciplinary community of Oxford academics, researchers, students and professionals who work in energy. We will present ZERO and Energy Network initiatives, and there will be an informal open mike for your questions and announcements. We look forward to meeting you there!
As part of the ANR SocioMA Project Please note that presentations will be given in French and in English The first study day of the ANR SocioMA project seeks to explore the foundations of categorical thought as applied to medieval society: what mechanisms or intellectual processes did social actors employ to define, delimit, and name social categories? Considering either the whole of Latin Christendom or a part of it, the contributions will examine the cultural structures and intellectual processes at work in categorical thinking through the following questions: what scholarly and/or practical taxonomies existed in Latin Europe? Who were the agents of these classifications, for what purpose did they produce them, and according to which specific criteria? What intellectual tools were used to produce these nomenclatures, and what vocabulary was employed to describe them? What influence did these nomenclatures exert on groups other than those that produced them, how did they contribute to a “social work of representation,” and how did they articulate a social imagination? What permeability existed between these categories, or, conversely, what conflicts arose between them? Convened by: Antoine Destemberg (MFO / CREHS – Université d’Artois) Aude-Marie Certin (CRESAT – Université de Haute-Alsace) Joël Chandelier (Université de Lausanne) Arnaud Fossier (LIR3s – Université de Bourgogne) Carole Mabboux (MéMo – Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis) Sandrine Victor (Framespa – INU Champollion)
All cells must continuously manage reactivity – the chemistry that sustains life but also threatens it. Endogenous aldehydes such as formaldehyde are unavoidable byproducts of essential metabolism that challenge genome integrity, while uncontrolled lipid peroxidation can lead to ferroptotic cell death when antioxidant capacity becomes compromised. Both stresses are mainly handled by the same nucleophilic molecule: glutathione, creating a fundamental trade-off that must be resolved. In this lecture, I will discuss how cancer cells rewire their nucleophilic metabolism to navigate this conflict, prioritizing aldehyde detoxification or ferroptosis resistance according to their oncogenic landscape.
Lesson of the week, clinical cases and research. All clinical and academic staff and students welcome. Coffee, Tea and Cake will be served.
Look but Fail to See (LBFTS) errors are those errors where we miss something that is ‘right in front of our eyes’, even though it is clearly visible and recognizable. Such errors can be amusing, as when we miss a gorilla in an inattentional blindness demo; vexing, as when we miss a typo; and serious, as when a tumor is missed in a CT scan or a weapon is missed at the airport. I will discuss how the capacity limits and operating rules of selective visual attention can give rise to LBFTS errors. LBFTS errors can also inform discussions about the awareness and/or consciousness. They falsify naïve theories that would claim that we are fully aware of everything we are seeing at the current moment, but we knew that wasn’t true. They also falsify or, at least, complexify more interesting theories that equate attention with awareness. Sadly, I will not have a neatly packaged theory of consciousness to offer. Perhaps that will emerge during the question-and-answer period.
Valeria R. Mas, MSc, PhD, Joseph and Corinne Schwartz, Professor of Surgical Sciences Research in Transplantation, Professor of Microbiology and Immunology, Chief, Surgical Sciences Division, Department of Surgery at University of Maryland. Dr Valeria Mas is a cellular and molecular transplant immunologist with expertise in high throughput molecular applications and big data analyses aimed to evaluate the molecular and cellular pathways and regulatory networks that are associated with kidney allograft response to injury and long-term outcomes. She plays critical roles in multiple national and international committees (e.g., Co-Chair Kidney Week 2027, American Society of Nephrology (2026-2027), President, International Liver Transplant Society, American Society of Transplantation (AST) Membership Committee, AST Community of Basic Scientists Executive Committee (2016-present), Chair AST Research Network Translational Scientific Review Committee and is an editorial board member of the American Journal of Transplantation. Open to all. Please register your intention to attend by email to Sue Patchett (susan.patchett@nds.ox.ac.uk).
Prof Kumar will be discussing his work with the RECLAIM Network Plus,* the GREENIN Network Plus** and GP4Streets***, as well as his wider Global Centre for Clean Air Research work. *RECLAIM Network Plus is a 'one-stop-shop’ for towns and cities to find the information and support you need to install green and blue infrastructure in your communities and to put you in touch with others with similar interests and experiences. **People have been using plants such as ferns and succulents to brighten up their homes for millennia, but how much of an impact do they have on our environment and wellbeing? A new project led by the University of Surrey’s Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCARE) will explore the role of plants and green infrastructure in improving indoor environmental quality (IEQ) and promoting health in the face of climate change. ***At GP4Streets, we recognise that streets are the heart of our neighbourhoods, yet they are often the most deprived areas in terms of green-blue-grey infrastructure (GBGI). Our vision is to transform these urban spaces into resilient, sustainable environments through innovative, do-it-yourself (DIY) GBGI solutions.
Stroke is currently the third leading cause of disability-adjusted life-years and mortality worldwide. As the risk of stroke increases sharply with age, incidence, and prevalence are expected to rise even further because of an aging population. This disease affects about 3.5 million people in the EU, with 700 000 new cases yearly. More than half of the patients suffer significant residual impairments, causing huge economic and societal burdens. Acute clinical intervention, typically involving surgical removal or dissolution of the clot through the administration of tissue plasminogen activator (tPA), aims to restore blood flow to the affected brain areas and is only possible within a very short time window after stroke onset. Stem cell therapy using human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell-derived neural precursors is a promising future therapy for stroke patients. Two main mechanisms have been proposed to give rise to improved functional recovery in animal models of stroke after the transplantation of these cells. First, the ”bystander” effect, which could modulate the inflammatory environment by releasing different factors from grafted cells, resulting in moderate improvements in the outcome of the insult. Second, the neuronal replacement and functional integration of grafted cells into the impaired brain circuitry. This will ultimately result in optimum long-term structural and functional repair. Our data show that human skin-derived cortical progenitors can be reprogrammed to differentiate into cortical projection neurons and functionally integrate (forming afferent and efferent synaptic connections) not only into stroke-damaged rat cortical networks but also into organotypic cultures of the adult human cortex. The grafted cortical neurons respond to sensory stimulation in live animals and, importantly, also affect spontaneous behavior when inhibited by optogenetic stimulation. Stroke results in the loss of oligodendrocytes and axonal demyelination, contributing to functional impairment. Additionally, for grafted neurons to become functional, their axons must be myelinated. Our data show that human iPS cell-derived cells can also be reprogrammed to differentiate into functional, bona fide oligodendrocytes. The generated cells exhibit the structural, molecular, and functional characteristics of mature human oligodendrocytes. They can wrap both grafted human cell- and host-derived axons from cortical neurons in different set-ups, after xenotransplantation into rat stroke-injured somatosensory cortex and the human adult cortical organotypic system. Our findings raise the possibility that injured neural circuitry might be restored by stem cell transplantation also in humans with stroke, which would have major clinical implications.
The Behind-the-Scenes Seminar Series is designed to learn about the production process of research papers, offering an opportunity for students and researchers in all fields and at all career stages to engage with the challenges encountered during project development and how they were overcome. The paper: "The dynamics of abusive relationships", The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 139 (2024), p. 2135-2180. (with Kristiina Huttunen, Emily Nix and Ning Zhang)
Convened by Marcandria Peraut & Christine Chivallon This international conference is part of a partnership between the University of Oxford, the Maison Française d'Oxford, the PHEEAC laboratory at the University of the Antilles, and the UMR LISA at the University of Corsica. It will be held on December 15 and 16 at the Maison Française d'Oxford. This academic meeting aims to explore, from a historical and anthropological perspective, the arts of resistance to central power in the Caribbean and Mediterranean islands from the 18th to the 21st century, as well as the various forms of repression (censorship, imprisonment, deportation) that resulted from it. https://mfo.web.ox.ac.uk/event/international-conference-island-and-empire-revolts-repressions-memories-mediterranean
This international conference is part of a partnership between the University of Oxford, the Maison Française d'Oxford, the PHEEAC laboratory at the University of the Antilles, and the UMR LISA at the University of Corsica. It will be held on December 15 and 16 at the Maison Française d'Oxford. This academic meeting aims to explore, from a historical and anthropological perspective, the arts of resistance to central power in the Caribbean and Mediterranean islands from the 18th to the 21st century, as well as the various forms of repression (censorship, imprisonment, deportation) that resulted from it.
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. This seminar is hosted in-person at the Department of Psychiatry, Seminar Room. To join online, please use the details below: https://zoom.us/j/94567124781?pwd=sVxXabbSWibdU8A9W2clQlG9neRGbQ.1 Meeting ID: 945 6712 4781 Passcode: 470970
Join leaders from across the research community to steer the future of sustainable research practice. Share lessons from implementing the Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework (LEAF) and help shape the next phase by connecting with the funders, industry partners and researchers driving this change. For the closing session, we will be joined by the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Irene Tracey, CBE, FRS, FMedSci, to recognise and celebrate the outstanding contributions of teams and individuals who have championed sustainability across Oxford’s laboratories and departments.
Do you need help managing your references? Do you need help citing references in your documents? This online session will introduce you to EndNote, a subscription software programme which can help you to store, organise and retrieve your references and PDFs, as well as cite references in documents and create bibliographies quickly and easily. On completing the workshop you will be able to: understand the main features and benefits of EndNote; set up an EndNote account; import references from different sources into EndNote; organise your references in EndNote; insert citations into documents; and create a bibliography/reference list. Intended audience: Medicine & NHS; Taught student; Researcher & research student.
Higher education development is increasingly influenced by the complex context of growing impact of geopolitics, the intensified pressure for addressing economic purposes and the call for AI and STEM in education and skill formation. This webinar critically examines the role of liberal arts education in nurturing caring professionals with a strong emphasis on transdisciplinary studies orientation and whole-person development. This webinar invites dialogue from participants to critically discuss the importance of repurposing university education to address the complex changes facing the humanities. This webinar is part of our Ideas and Universities Dialogue Series.
This online version of this event will be chaired by Head of Department Professor Martin Maiden who will introduce Dr Beth Mortimer for an exciting talk on the fascinating world of animals with the ability to detect surface vibrations – a remarkable sense we call seismic sensing. From spiders that shake their webs and sing love songs, to elephants that rumble the ground when there’s danger, many species use vibrations to communicate. Discover how detecting vibrations generated by elephants in the African savannah can aid in their conservation, and how the unique sensitivity of spiders could inspire new robotic systems that use vibrations as an information source.
This in person event will be chaired by Head of Department Professor Martin Maiden who will introduce Dr Beth Mortimer for an exciting talk on the fascinating world of animals with the ability to detect surface vibrations - a remarkable sense we call seismic sensing. From spiders that shake their webs and sing love songs, to elephants that rumble the ground when there's danger, many species use vibrations to communicate. Discover how detecting vibrations generated by elephants in the African savannah can aid in their conservation, and how the unique sensitivity of spiders could inspire new robotic systems that use vibrations as an information source.
Songs of Solidarity is a bold interdisciplinary performance project that reimagines ancient epics through the voices of migrant communities today. Following on from the APGRD's highly successful Cultural Programme-funded workshop in December 2024, Fiona Macintosh (Emeritus Professor of Classical Reception and Senior Research Fellow, St Hilda’s) and Tom Nelson (Career Development Fellow in Ancient Greek, St Hilda’s) have received further funding from the University’s Cultural Programme to continue their collaboration and to support the development of a new epic narrative through devised performance, drawing on Gilgamesh, Iliad, Kalevala, and Ramayana. Led by Dash Arts and PROJEKT EUROPA, in partnership with APGRD, this phase will involve a Writers’ Room with a number of emergent and seasoned writers, together with academics from Classics, Ancient and Near Eastern Studies, and the University’s Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS). Hosted at St Hilda’s from Monday 15 to Wednesday 17 December, the Writers’ Room will lay the foundation for a full-scale production in 2027. On Wednesday 17 December at 5pm, there will be a public discussion about the project. For further information, email fiona.macintosh@classics.ox.ac.uk"
Previous scholarship on the Jesuit mission in late imperial China has paid little attention to the lived experience of the Chinese learned men who embraced Christianity. Scholars have rarely investigated the language of emotions, feelings, and sentiments employed by these Chinese 'converts' to detail their spiritual journeys. Studies on Wang Zheng (1571–1644) are exceptions. But these studies often proceed with the assumption of a Confucian–Christian divide. Using this 'clash of civilizations' framework, they present Wang’s dilemmas and struggles in relation to his frantic attempt to navigate and resolve the conflicts arising from two very different cultural expectations. Professor Ong contends that the conventional approach conceals more than it reveals. Instead, this talk examines Wang’s narrative of spirituality and emotion and brings to light the important roles kinship and examination played in how he recounted his life journey that led him to the discovery of Christianity. Chang Woei ONG is Raffles Professor of the Humanities at the National University of Singapore and Head of the Department of Chinese Studies. Trained as an intellectual historian, he is the author of Men of Letters within the Passes: Guanzhong Literati in Chinese History, 907-1911 (2008) and Li Mengyang, the North-South Divide and Literati Learning in Ming China (2016), both published by Harvard University Asia Center. He is currently working on a project that examines the life and writings of Wang Zheng (1571-1644), a late Ming Christian Scholar-official.
Since the 1980s, the transnational mobility of university students has expanded dramatically, fueled by the twin engines of neoliberalism and liberal internationalism. From the 1990s onward, China emerged as the dominant source of international students for major Western destinations, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Yet, in the current era of geopolitical realignment and intensifying U.S.-China competition, the overseas mobility of Chinese students faces unprecedented disruption. This presentation tackles the critical questions arising from this new reality: How will the UK adapt its international student policies in response? How are Chinese students recalibrating their decisions in light of these shifts? And what new patterns will characterize the flow of Chinese students to the UK? Drawing on a rich dataset of nearly 400 interviews conducted since 2020, this research reveals how geopolitical tensions are reshaping study abroad opportunities and driving strategic destination shifts—including a notable pivot from the United States to the United Kingdom.
Join us for a unique evening at Wolfson College as we delve into the fascinating world of neuroethics. This lecture brings together experts in neuroscience and ethics to explore the ethical implications of advances in brain research. Don't miss this opportunity to expand your understanding of the intersection between the mind and morality. Reserve your spot now! Neuroethics is a dynamic and interdisciplinary field that addresses some of the most profound questions at the intersection of neuroscience, psychology, and ethics. It explores two key areas: Firstly, the neuroscience and psychology of morality — What are the neural and psychological mechanisms underlying moral development and decision-making? Secondly, the ethics of neuroscience, mental health, and psychiatry — What are the ethical implications of interventions like neuromodulation and mental health treatments? Talk abstract: Recent advances in neurotechnology and artificial intelligence (AI) have made it increasingly possible to infer mental states, emotions, and even intentions directly from neural activity, a prospect often referred to as “mind reading.” This lecture explores the scientific foundations and ethical frontiers of this emerging field. It will examine what current brain decoding technologies can and cannot reveal about the human mind, and the moral and regulatory boundaries that should govern their use. Special attention will be given to distinguishing the science and pseudoscience of mind reading, and assessing their implications for privacy, autonomy, cognitive liberty, as well as the social consequences of normalizing access to mental information. The talk aims to move beyond dystopian or utopian framings and toward a realistic ethical framework for responsible, human-centred and rights-oriented innovation in neuro-AI.
The SMARTbiomed Statistical Genetics Symposium is designed to bring together researchers from Denmark and Oxford who are working in the field of statistical/quantitative genetics. Focusing on methodological advances, the event will provide an opportunity to share cutting-edge research being developed across the participating universities, while strengthening the network and collaboration among the various SMARTbiomed centres. The symposium is open to all researchers from Oxford and Denmark. We encourage researchers to present their work and take part in this exciting moment of knowledge exchange. The call for abstracts is open for both oral and poster presentations. Please submit abstracts via the registration form by Friday 28th November.
The SMARTbiomed Statistical Genetics Symposium is designed to bring together researchers from Denmark and Oxford who are working in the field of statistical/quantitative genetics. Focusing on methodological advances, the event will provide an opportunity to share cutting-edge research being developed across the participating universities, while strengthening the network and collaboration among the various SMARTbiomed centres. The symposium is open to all researchers from Oxford and Denmark. We encourage researchers to present their work and take part in this exciting moment of knowledge exchange. The call for abstracts is open for both oral and poster presentations. Please submit abstracts via the registration form by Friday 28th November. https://www.psych.ox.ac.uk/events/smartbiomed-statistical-genetics-symposium
A joint online conference with the Centre for Baptist Studies, Acadia Centre for Baptist and Anabaptist Studies, and Georgetown College. Held on two consecutive Fridays, 9th and 16th January 2026, between 2 and 4pm UTC (9-11am EST, 10am-noon AST) 9th January – Slow Wisdom in the Local Church 16th January – Slow Wisdom in the Wider Church Register for free via TicketSource
Time: 2pm to 4pm (including 30 minutes for tea and coffee and networking at the end). The aim of the event is to explore with the speakers/audience what research organisations are doing to create infrastructures and incentives for environmentally sustainable research in dry labs, what opportunities and challenges they face, how funders are influencing this, what tools and approaches are out there and how all this is understood and experienced by researchers. This will ensure that our research community is both aware of the wider context from the institutional perspective, and also that it has a voice in leadership team decisions on environmentally sustainable research. Confirmed panel members include Joseph Arroway-Myatt, Sustainable Laboratories Co-ordinator at Oxford, Martin Farley, Associate Director of Sustainability at UKRI and Federica Lucivero, Associate Professor in the Ethics of Technology at Oxford.
Spines are ubiquitous morpho-functional elements of excitatory synaptic transmission and plasticity in the neocortex. Whether functional spines are also present in the thalamus is currently unclear. Here I demonstrate that layer 5 cortico-thalamic terminals arising from several frontal cortical regions preferentially target functional spines in the thalamus via variable and complex synapses. These axo-spinous L5-thalamic connections are surprisingly powerful, able to selectively recruit a subset of thalamic neuron and are involved in motor learning.
Join the meeting now Meeting ID: 317 734 607 329 42 Passcode: F8QC77c4
Join us for a one-day, in-person conference hosted by the Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences (MPLS) Division, bringing together researchers, technicians, and research enablers to explore how artificial intelligence is shaping scientific inquiry—and the ethical questions that arise. This event is a showcase for cutting-edge research across the MPLS Division, with opportunities for interdisciplinary exchange, networking, and collaboration.
Dr James Gilchrist University of Oxford https://www.ovg.ox.ac.uk/team/james-gilchrist
This seminar will discus recent research from our group exploring spatial navigation in cities and in the pacific ocean. Discoveries from project Sea Hero Quest will be presented where we tested over 4 million participants on their navigation ability in an virtual navigation task in a mobile app. Insights from route planning in London taxi drivers and navigation test with over 100 people in a crowded fabricated 1:1 art gallery space will be discussed. Finally the preliminary insights from the Voyage to Aur project will be presented where we sailed over 3 days in pacific ocean collecting continuous spatial estimates from indigenous sailors from the Marshall Islands aboard the yacht Stravaig.
The U.S. health care system in a period of turmoil and innovation due to system inflation, political and social change, workforce disruptions, and the ascendance of technology driven patient care. This update will cover the main changes occurring now in the U.S. health care system, analyzing these changes in the context of larger trends that may remain present for some time into the future.
Are you planning to present a poster at an upcoming conference, meeting or symposium? This introductory session will provide you with some top tips on how to create a poster presentation which will help you to communicate your research project and data effectively. There will be guidance on formatting, layout, content, use of text, references and images, as well as advice on printing and presenting your poster. This session will also provide help with locating resources such as templates, free-to-use images and poster guidelines. By the end of this online session you will be able to: evaluate the effectiveness of templates, formatting, text and images; and plan, prepare and present your poster. Intended audience: Medicine and NHS; Researcher and research student
Derek Presentation
Do you want to make sure that your work complies with the open access policy for REF 2029? In this focused online briefing, we will: step you through the changes and new requirements; provide links to further REF information and guidance; let you know where to find help at Oxford; and answer as many questions as we can. Intended audience: Researcher and research student; Staff
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As a college freshman, Shabana Basij-Rasikh co-founded SOLA, which would become the only boarding school for girls in Afghanistan. In 2021, days after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, she led the dramatic evacuation of the school from Afghanistan to Rwanda, where it operates as the only boarding school for Afghan girls in the world, a place of hope and promise. Shabana describes this haven where Afghan girls will always be free to learn.
COURSE DETAILS The course will include: Critique of readability in relevant papers. Use of tenses in academic papers. Writing with impact. Concise writing. Grammar and proof reading. Scientific table and chart technique. LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of the session participants will be able to: Develop understanding of the characteristics of scientific writing; write in simple, clear and concise scientific English. Develop knowledge of how to write grammatically correct English. Improve proof reading skills; organise the sections of a scientific paper effectively. Develop a scientific argument with appropriate language that conveys the message effectively. Make effective use of charts and tables.
A general online introduction to the vast range of electronic resources which are available for all historical periods of British and Western European history. Learning outcomes are to: gain an overview of some of the key online resources for medieval, early modern and modern British and Western European history; know how to access subscription resources.; and gain awareness of key examples of useful resources: bibliographic databases; reference sources; primary sources; maps; audio-visual resources; and data sources. Intended audience: Taught student; Researcher and research student
COURSE DETAILS The session will cover preparing for interviews, creating a question line, finding your authentic voice and active listening. Participants will be paired up and asked to conduct short interviews with a fellow participant which will be recorded over Zoom. As a group we'll listen back to them and workshop the interviews for constructive feedback. This course is aimed at anyone looking at working on interviewing skills as a presenter but is also useful to those asked to be a guest on a podcast. LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of this session you will have: Increased your awareness of strategies for effectively planning an interview. Explored principles of good practice for interview hosts. Explored the components of a good interview question.
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.
Our research group (www.SHOALgroup.org) takes a curiosity-driven approach to understanding animal behaviour across species and contexts. In this seminar, I will begin by showcasing examples of our fundamental blue skies research, highlighting insights gained from studying a range of animal species. I will then demonstrate how this foundational work informs, and advances applied themes, including animal management strategies and the development of bio-inspired engineering solutions. To end, I will outline some of our latest comparative research that I am really excited about, which aims to investigate the origins and evolution of collective movement in vertebrates. Bio Sketch: Andrew King is a Professor of Animal Behaviour at Swansea University. He has previously worked at The Zoological Society of London, University College London, The Royal Veterinary College, and the University of Cambridge, and has held visiting positions in Germany and South Africa. His research group (www.SHOALgroup.org) study animal behaviour and ecology in a range of animal systems. His research has strong applied themes, and he works across disciplines and sectors to apply behavioural studies to topics ranging from wildlife management to swarm robotics.
This lecture lays three kinds of foundations: it defines the project of exploring the ‘language of social science in everyday life’; it suggests how this project can revise or challenge classic accounts in social theory of the power/knowledge complex from Foucault to Koselleck, Raymond Williams and Giddens; and it gives an indication of the new vocabulary generated by the emergence of social science from the late 18th century.
We are pleased to announce the upcoming Winter Lecture Series which will take place between January and March 2026. Across five thought-provoking lectures, special guests will discuss a range of subjects, with topics to be announced soon. Each lecture will be hosted at the University of Oxford Museum of Natural History. Join us on Thursday 22nd January when renowned garden designer and presenter Adam Frost will deliver his lecture.
In this online workshop you will be shown the functionality of Zotero, which is a free-to-use software programme used to manage references and create bibliographies. Zotero will be demonstrated on a Windows PC but users of MacOS or Linux computers will be able to follow the demonstration. The workshop will cover: understanding the main features and benefits of Zotero; setting up a Zotero account; importing references from different sources into Zotero; organising your references in Zotero; inserting citations into documents; and creating a bibliography/reference list. Intended audience: Medicine and NHS; Taught student; Researcher and research student
Modern research, even that not involving humans or animals directly, can potentially be used in a wide variety of both positive and negative ways. It is the researcher’s responsibility to think about, and plan for the potential impact of their work, and how their work can be carried out in an appropriately ethical and responsible manner. In this course we will discuss a variety of case studies to understand responsible research and innovation principles and practice, and plan our research according to ethical and professional standards, avoiding and mitigating the risks of negative impacts.
Summary This lecture will describe the origin of the production of recombinant bioconjugate vaccines and recent developments in the technology (for recent review see https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40733680/) I will describe the development of bioconjugation for the low-cost production of glycoconjugate vaccines in three areas; (i) against pathogens where no current vaccine exists (eg Group A Streptococcus), (ii) improving existing glycoconjugate vaccines (eg pneumococcal vaccine), and (iii) affordable glycoconjugate vaccines for the veterinary market (eg poultry). I will speculate on the production of low-cost bioconjugate vaccines in Low- and Middle-income countries including Campylobacter, S. pneumoniae and Group A Streptococcus Bio Brendan Wren moved to the LSHTM from St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London in 1999. He is currently Co-Director of the LSHTM Vaccine Centre and Co-Director of GlycoCell, a consortium for the efficient expression of glycan products in bacterial cells for improved vaccines. He has authored over 450 scientific peer-reviewed publications. Current research focuses on glycosylation in bacterial pathogens and developing a “glycotoolbox” for glycoengineering. The major application of this technology is the construction and production of affordable recombinant glycoconjugate vaccines.
COURSE DETAILS You will learn how to read a group, deal with difficult situations, use humour, match your presentation to the audience, and make an impact. You will learn how to get your message across so it is remembered. You will learn about timing and when you should deliver key messages. You will develop your self-awareness and understand its role in presenting. LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of this session you will understand more about: How to structure your presentation for impact. How your psychological state affects your presentation skills and how you can manage it. How to read a group and how to deal with difficult situations. How to deliver your presentation with more confidence.
BIO Neil Davies is a Professor of Medical Statistics at the Division of Psychiatry, UCL. He holds a joint appointment with the Department of Statistical Sciences. Neil gained a BSc in Economics and Econometrics at the University of Bristol (2005) and completed an M.Sc. in Economics (Bristol) in 2006. Under the supervision of Richard Martin, Frank Windmeijer and George Davey Smith, he completed his Ph.D. in Epidemiology (Bristol, 2012). He has held an ESRC Future Research Leaders Fellowship 2014-2018. From 2018-2022 he leads a stream of research at the MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit which used family-based designs to improve causal inference in genetic epidemiology. Neil Davies joined UCL in 2022 as a Professor of Medical Statistics.
Academic mobility has been long regarded as the epitome of excellence. Yet not only the rise of far-right governments threatening migrant population and academic freedom, but also the idealisation of mobility rooted in the human capital approach, and narrow definitions of migration based solely on border crossing or nationality, underscore the urgent need for novel conceptualisations of mobility – beyond and within the nation state. In this webinar, I discuss two aspects. First, at a conceptual level, I present the ‘Critical Mobilities Heuristic’ and discuss its four lenses, focusing on: (1) broader definitional and normative aspects; (2) the construction of the academic subject and the enactments of (im)mobility; (3) the temporal and processual nature of (im)mobility; and (4) the importance of a methodological stance that is sensitive to participants perspectives and context. Second, I explain the application of the heuristic and how I constructed the figure of the (im)mobile academic in a research project exploring the dissimilar experiences of academics in enacting local and international research collaboration at Centres of Excellence in the Social Sciences and Humanities (see 10.1111/hequ.70027). I conclude the presentation by reflecting on the broader implications of rethinking migration, beyond the exclusionary categories of ‘us’ and ‘them’, in the pursuit of a more inclusive society and the protection of democracy.
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_Taxis_ and _kosmos_, both translated as “order,” signify differently in Plato’s dialogs. Taxis orders souls and cities through the giving of orders, which, taking their bearing from what is divine and immutable, prescribe, command, and compel obedience. By contrast, and like the crafts of weaving and architecture analogized to statecraft in _Statesman_, kosmos gives order by taking its bearing from what is being ordered and the interdependent and dynamic relationships across craftspeople, their materials, and their ends. This lecture develops an account of _democratic order_ by exploring the political and theoretical implications of these differences in _Statesman_ and other dialogs.
Digital platforms now shape everything from childhood social interaction to democracy – with fears growing that not enough is being done to protect vulnerable users from harmful online content. The UK government’s Online Safety Act promises to tackle illegal and harmful content, including child sexual exploitation and abuse, terrorism, and suicide and self harm. But critics warn of sweeping state powers, vague definitions and unintended consequences for privacy, free speech and innovation – especially as AI supercharges both risks and regulation. Dame Melanie Dawes is the Chief Executive of the media regulator Ofcom, and will explore the growing role of the public sector in keeping users safe online, the legal and ethical challenges this presents, and what’s at stake as we redraw the boundaries of digital freedom.
The 3 Minute Thesis competition challenges doctoral candidates to present a compelling spoken presentation on their research topic and its significance in just three minutes to a non-specialist audience. This course helps you prepare for the competition and ensure that you have the best chance possible to represent Oxford nationally.
Parks Group Speaker: Tom Parks Title: Strep A Disease - Lessons From The Host Bull Group Speaker(s): TBC Title(s): TBC
Please join us to celebrate the launch of the NDS Bioresource and hear more about our team and the amazing research we support. This event is free to attend and open to everyone. We will hear talks from academic and industrial researchers who have used the tissue and services available in the Bioresource over the years, as well as a 'Meet the Bioresource' fireside chat, and a plenary talk from Dr Joakim Lundeberg (SciLifeLabs). While the content will feature high quality, world-class research, all talks will be delivered in accessible language, making this a celebration of the Bioresource that is truly open to all, whether or not they are trained researchers. The talks will be followed by lunch and networking in the atrium. Spaces are limited, so please register to let us know you would like to come along!
COURSE DETAILS From time to time we all face difficult situations, or behaviour in others that we find difficult. This session will cover the factors that underlie these situations, and provide a set of skills for managing the difficult conversation that needs to be had. The most important part of the session will be an opportunity to practice the skills in a safe space. As this is so important, it is crucial that you come ready to take part. We will provide some example situations you can use for practice, or if you are comfortable doing so you may practice on one of your own situations. However if you choose to do this please make sure the situation you bring does not have significant emotional investment for you, or is not currently live or unresolved.
COURSE DETAILS The session will introduce approaches to podcasting, present inspiration from a range of different podcast styles, and take you step-by-step through the basic technical skills of recording, editing and publishing audio files. You’ll have the chance to develop an idea and have a go recording it with support and feedback during the day. LEARNING OUTCOMES Upon completion of this course students will have an: Understanding of what podcasting is and its benefits in relation to communicating science to wider society. Ability to identify, develop and create narratives for the purposes of podcasting. Understanding of the skills required to record and edit audio, including making use of music and sound effects. Increased awareness of platforms for publishing podcast material.
Retrotransposition — the reverse flow of genetic information from RNA to DNA is the major route by which new genetic material enters our genome, with retroelements comprising over 40% of human DNA. This process drives innovation but threatens genome integrity, demanding precise regulation. Our discovery of the Human Silencing Hub (HUSH) revealed a genome-wide transcriptional immunosurveillance system that detects and epigenetically silences invading DNA. How HUSH distinguishes self from invading DNA was unclear. We found that HUSH discriminates ‘self’ from ‘non-self’ based on introns: The majority of cellular genes are intron-containing, while RNA-derived retroelements are intronless, marking their cDNA as foreign. This intron-based recognition mechanism uncovers an unexpected innate immune surveillance system that protects the genome from the reverse flow of genetic information.
Information technology is in the midst of a revolution in which omnipresent data collection and machine learning are impacting the human world as never before. The word "intelligence" is being used as a North Star for the development of this technology, with human cognition viewed as a baseline. This view neglects the fact that humans are social animals, and that much of our intelligence is social and cultural in origin. Thus, a broader framing is to consider the system level, where the agents in the system, be they computers or humans, are active, they are cooperative, and they wish to obtain value from their participation in learning-based systems. Agents may supply data and other resources to the system only if it is in their interest to do so, and they may be honest and cooperative only if it is in their interest to do so. Critically, intelligence inheres as much in the overall system as it does in individual agents. This is a perspective that is familiar in economics, although without the focus on learning algorithms. A key challenge is thus to bring (micro)economic concepts into contact with foundational issues in the computing and statistical sciences. I'll discuss some concrete examples of problems and solutions at this tripartite interface.
How do people learn the language of social science? This lecture surveys some key entry points – mass print, mass broadcast media and mass education – and illustrates some simple digital humanities tools that can be used to analyze a huge volume of material and assess its propagation and uses.
Professor Prasanna Sooriakumaran will discuss 'The PRESIDENT trial- an HTA-funded multi-centre UK full randomised controlled trial of surgery plus current best care versus current best care alone in men diagnosed with low volume metastatic hormone sensitive prostate cancer using novel molecular imaging with PSMA PET/CT.' Prasanna Sooriakumaran, known as PS, is a Consultant Urologist at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust where he performs the unit's largest volume of complex and salvage robotic prostatectomy surgery. He holds visiting professorships in urology at Oxford and the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences and is also the Clinical Lead for Robotic Soft-Tissue Surgery at the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). He has been interested in the topic of surgery for metastatic prostate cancer for over a decade and has conducted many observational studies as well as the world’s first feasibility randomised controlled trial (RCT) in the field. He has recently been funded by the HTA as the Chief Investigator on a multi-centre full UK-wide RCT of surgery in metastatic prostate cancer. The Chief Medical Officer has confirmed that attendance at the Surgical Grand Rounds can count toward internal CPD, with 1 point awarded per hour. Please note that in-person attendance is required, and you will need to sign the attendance register. All members of the University and NHS clinical staff are welcome. Please email Tarryn Ching (tarryn.ching@nds.ox.ac.uk) if you would like to attend online.
Overview: Clinical trials are essential for evaluating new treatments, and there is growing interest in harnessing health systems data (HSD) to enhance their efficiency and effectiveness. HSD can offer researchers and trialists valuable opportunities to streamline key processes such as identifying eligible participants, monitoring trial progress in real time, enabling remote follow-up and capturing outcomes. Yet, its use also presents challenges, as researchers must navigate complex regulatory and legal frameworks that can hinder broader adoption. Aim: In this masterclass series, we aim to explore how HSD can advance clinical research, with a particular focus on decentralized and large simple trials. By examining the challenges and sharing lessons learned, the talks will highlight practical strategies, methodological considerations and opportunities to strengthen the integration of HSD into trial design and execution. A further hands-on session relevant to all clinical trial roles particularly DPhils and ECRs will explore some useful resources and skills for researchers to develop and optimise their trial design. Agenda: 12:00 - 12:45: Networking & Light Lunch 12:45 - 13:00: Welcome & Introduction 13:00 - 13:20: Challenges in undertaking decentralized clinical trials using health systems data in primary care settings Speaker: Professor Ly-Mee Yu 13:20 - 13:40: Supporting large simple trials with healthcare systems data: lessons learned Speaker: Associate Professor Marion Mafham 13:40 - 13:50: Q&A 13:50 – 14:10: Panel Session: Unlocking Health Systems Data for Clinical Trials: Challenges and Opportunities Moderator: Professor David Preiss (Professor of Metabolic Medicine and Clinical Trials, Oxford Population Health) Panel: Professor Ly-Mee Yu (Professor of Clinical Trials and Biostatistics, Primary Care Clinical Trials Unit) Associate Professor Marion Mafham (Associate Professor, Oxford Population Health) Dr Charlie Harper (Trial Data Scientist, Oxford Population Health) Ms Lucy Cureton (Senior Trial Manager, Primary Care Clinical Trials Unit) 14:10 - 14:20: Audience Q&A and close main session 14:20 - 14:40: Break 14:40 - 16:00: Hands-on Session: Incorporating health systems data when planning a trial (Relevant to all clinical trials roles particularly DPhils and early-stage researchers) Facilitators: Professor Ly-Mee Yu, Associate Professor Marion Mafham, Dr Charlie Harper, Dr Michelle Goonasekera and Ms Lucy Cureton In this session participants will discuss and find real-time solutions for challenges in using HSD to streamline clinical trials based on real clinical trial scenarios. 16:00 - 16:30: Networking and close
This talk delves into the time Michela Wrong spent with le Carré in the lakeside town of Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo, which served as a lesson in the art of observation – at which David excelled – while also showing a young writer the difference between the fiction and the non-fiction writing approach. But the book which resulted - The Mission Song - betrayed a certain unease on the writer’s part when it came to matters African, Wrong argues, an unease that characterises all his African novels. Michela Wrong is a former correspondent for Reuters, the BBC and The Financial Times. Of British and Italian heritage, she has written five books on Africa, including a novel. She lives in north London.
A LEGO-based game where each player is given a series of tasks related to the patient’s journey through the hospital – from admittance to diagnosis and treatment through to discharge. Through several rounds of the game, using reflection and facilitated improvement processes, the players are given a unique insight into interdisciplinary team-work and optimization of patient flow using game-based learning.
Professor Kate Baker University of Cambridge https://www.infectiousdisease.cam.ac.uk/staff/kate-baker
Bacterial genomes vary in sequence due to mutations but also vary in their gene content and order due to horizontal gene transfer. Whether the variation in gene content and order, known as the accessory genome, is typically neutral, nearly neutral or adaptive is still the subject of debate – different theoretical arguments support all three scenarios. The availability of large sample collections across many thousands of bacterial species offers the opportunity to bring data to bear on this question. I will first present methods being developed in my group to make it possible to analyse collections of millions of genomes. Using these approaches, I will then show how a mechanistic model of gene gain and loss can be fitted to different pathogen species to determine whether their accessory genome shows signals of adaptation. Finally, I will show how transformer-based AI architectures can learn gene content and ordering across even more species, giving another way to look at this problem.
Are you planning to present a poster at an upcoming conference, meeting or symposium? This introductory session will provide you with some top tips on how to create a poster presentation which will help you to communicate your research project and data effectively. There will be guidance on formatting, layout, content, use of text, references and images, as well as advice on printing and presenting your poster. This session will also provide help with locating resources such as templates, free-to-use images and poster guidelines. By the end of this classroom-based session you will be able to: evaluate the effectiveness of templates, formatting, text and images; and plan, prepare and present your poster. Intended audience: Medicine and NHS; Researcher and research student
In this online interactive workshop, you will learn how to create an effective search query and have the opportunity to try out a range of tools that you can use to search for scholarly materials to support your research. You will: learn how to find books and other scholarly items in Oxford libraries using SOLO; search for journal articles using subject databases and scholarly search engines; and be signposted towards learning materials you can use if you are interested in searching for conference proceedings, theses and dissertations. Intended audience: Taught student; Researcher and research student
Bio Patrick (Paddy) Mark is Professor of Nephrology and Honorary Consultant Nephrologist at the Glasgow Renal and Transplant Unit based at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital Glasgow. He was appointed as Clinical Senior Lecturer in 2011 following clinical training in Medicine and Nephrology combined with a Clinical Lecturer post between 2006-2011. He was promoted to Reader in 2015 and to Professor in 2018. He leads the United Kingdom Cardio-Renal Clinical Study Group, as part of the United Kingdom Kidney Research Consortium. He is the Chief Scientist Office Scotland Clinical Lead for Renal Research. His PhD, awarded the Bellahouston Medal for outstanding thesis by medical graduate, was funded by a British Heart Foundation Junior Clinical Fellowship. He graduated in Medicine in 1999 as Brunton Medallist awarded to the highest achieving student that year.
In an era characterized by complex mobility patterns, health crises, shifting geopolitical landscapes and personal and family’s views toward international education, it is imperative to recognize the concurrent (im)mobility challenges at a global scale. Despite a growing body of literature on international students, little attention has been given to prospective international students who defer their overseas education and remain in their home countries for various reasons. This cohort—having initiated pre-departure educational mobility but not commenced their studies—has been largely overlooked in international education research. This study addresses this critical gap by examining the “in-between” state of prospective Chinese international students, who exist in a liminal space between domestic and international identities. The study foregrounds the centrality of Third Space and liminality as analytical lenses to understand how students and their families negotiate uncertainty, construct hybrid identities, and reimagine educational pathways within fractured global contexts. The ‘in-betweenness’ in the study expands mobility frameworks to encompass temporal discontinuities, fragmentations, and non-linear trajectories of educational mobility that stir up challenges in this cohort’s wellbeing and family and social relationships. By advocating for the ongoing, processual nature of international education experiences, we call for universities and policymakers in both home and host countries to develop supportive infrastructures for these ‘in-betweeners’, ensuring they are not marginalized within international education systems.
In this online workshop you will be shown the functionality of Zotero, which is a free-to-use software programme used to manage references and create bibliographies. Zotero will be demonstrated on a Windows PC but users of MacOS or Linux computers will be able to follow the demonstration. The workshop will cover: understanding the main features and benefits of Zotero; setting up a Zotero account; importing references from different sources into Zotero; organising your references in Zotero; inserting citations into documents; and creating a bibliography/reference list. Intended audience: Medicine and NHS; Taught student; Researcher and research student
In this session we will cover how to locate and interpret journal level metrics such as the Journal Impact Factor (JIF). We will examine the tools you can use to locate journal level metrics, such as Journal Citation Reports and Scopus Sources. We will also consider the uses, limitations and pitfalls inherent in these metrics and how they can be used responsibly. By the end of the session, you will be familiar with: the major journal metrics and how these are calculated; accessing journal citation data using Journal Citation Reports and Scopus Sources; using JIF, CiteScore and SJR journal metrics to rank journals; and the limitations of different metrics, including how journal metrics may be skewed or distorted. Intended audience: Taught student; Researcher & research student
_Homonoia_, usually translated as a “same-mindedness,” “unanimity,” or “consensus” in Plato, is said to underwrite political unity through an agreement across souls secured by the cultivation or implantation of true opinion in the many by those with epistemically superior knowledge. Exploring the repeated implication of homonoia with _harmonia_, harmony, in _Republic_ and other dialogs, this lecture retheorizes homonoia as a speaking together, _homolegein_, within and across souls, that secures agreement and unity, if it does at all, as a coming to terms that, like harmony, depends not on sameness but on plurality and difference.
COURSE DETAILS The key factors in developing successful proposals will be identified as will the requirements of specific research councils. LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of this session you will understand more about: The significance of winning research grants for your academic career The technical aspects of how to submit a research funding application. The key issues when writing a research proposal, and the pitfalls to avoid. What to look for when reviewing a research proposal.
Hospital Episode Statistics Admitted Patient Care (HESAPC) data are a comprehensive national dataset collected by NHS England that captures detailed information on all inpatient and day-case hospital activity across England. With around 16 million episodes of care recorded each year, HESAPC provides valuable insights into patient demographics, clinical diagnoses, and medical procedures, serving as a crucial resource for planning and research. Led by – Charlie Harper, Trial Data Scientist, Clinical Trial Service Unit & Epidemiological Studies Unit (CTSU), Oxford Population Health Raph Goldacre, Senior Health Data Scientist and Epidemiologist, Oxford Population Health This session will cover: 1. How HESAPC data are collected and the purpose behind this national effort 2. What information is included in the HESAPC data 3. How researchers can effectively use HESAPC data in their projects 4. The challenges and limitations of working with large-scale administrative data Intended Audience: Research staff and DPhil students interested in using healthcare systems data for research. Learning Objectives: By the end of the session, participants will: 1. Understand how and why HESAPC data are collected 2. Have a basic understanding of what information is recorded 3. Be able to interpret HESAPC data for their own projects and critically appraise its use in others’ research 4. Recognise the limitations and challenges of using HESAPC data in different research settings Register - https://forms.office.com/e/aMpZSNmLbA?origin=lprLink
The Data Engineers meeting seeks to connect data wranglers and professionals in related data engineering roles across the University. This group aims to provide a platform for individuals to share their expertise and interests, fostering a sense of community and encouraging knowledge exchange across research teams. While primarily designed for those working at the intersection of data generation and analysis – covering areas such as data collection, wrangling, modeling, visualization, and communication – the group is inclusive and open to all members of the University. Please join us for the next Data Engineers meeting: Date – Thursday 5 February 2025 Time: 11:00 – 12:00 Venue: BDI/OxPop Seminar room 0 Agenda: 11:00 - Introduction 11:05 – 'Comparing various generative AI for extracting key information from long free texts and flag where conditions are met' Dr Yurika Sakai, IDDO Data Manager, Centre for Tropical Medicine and Global Health, University of Oxford 11:25 - Q&A 11:30 - 'Phenotypic and Genetic Data Analysis in Our Future Health' Vincent Straub, Doctoral researcher at the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science in Oxford Population Health, University of Oxford 11:50 - Q&A 12:00 - Refreshments and networking in the atrium Dr Yurika Sakai, Data Manager at the Infectious Diseases Data Observatory (IDDO), NDM As a Data Manager, Yurika’s main focus is on the management and transformation of clinical, epidemiological, molecular and pharmacology data sets to ensure completeness and accuracy of data in the IDDO data repository. She also experiments with various generative AI to evaluate its accuracy and time efficiency on data extraction from long free texts. Vincent Straub, Research Scholar for Our Future Health, DPhil Student in LCDS, NDPH Vincent is a Research Scholar for Our Future Health and MSCA DPhil student in the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, working with director Professor Melinda Mills and Professor Augustine Kong. His research spans population health and technology governance, with a focus on health risk behaviours and the use of AI in public settings. To attend, please register: https://forms.office.com/e/SXub1krkBM?origin=lprLink
Recent advances in ophthalmology have shown that retinal images can detect much more than just ocular disorders. Retinal imaging can identify early signs of systemic diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, diabetes, and cardiovascular (heart) conditions, often years before traditional symptoms appear. This emerging field, known as Oculomics, shows the eye’s potential as a window into overall health.
In the first half of the 20th century, the ‘New Psychology’ – in which Freudian psychoanalysis played only a minor role – offered people a new vocabulary for understanding the self in modern conditions, in what has been called a transition ‘from character to personality’. Ideas about the unconscious, personality types, the developmental self, sex and intelligence reached unprecedentedly large audiences.
We are pleased to announce the upcoming Winter Lecture Series which will take place between January and March 2026. Across five thought-provoking lectures, special guests will discuss a range of subjects, with topics to be announced soon. Each lecture will be hosted at the University of Oxford Museum of Natural History. Join us on Thursday 5th February when TV producer and urban gardener Martha Swales will deliver her lecture.
The annual LGBT+ History Month Spotlight is running for the second year! Academic, professional staff and postgraduate students are invited to attend a day of talks and panels related to LGBTQIA+ research at the Education Department. More information about how to attend and/or present will be shared shortly. In the meantime, please save the date!
This ½ day course is run by Professor Helen Higham (Director of OxSTaR & a Consultant Anaesthetist at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford) and is suitable for clinical and non-clinical staff and aims to provide an introduction to the fundamentals of human factors in healthcare. The course introduces participants to basic human factors frameworks, including the Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety (SEIPS), and focuses on practical applications in the workplace to improve understanding of systems in healthcare. This course will align with the new National Patient Safety Syllabus Learning Objectives Improve understanding of human factors principles Introduce and explore a human factors framework (SEIPS) Provide opportunities to practise applying SEIPS to real world examples Course content Definition and background of human factors Human factors applied to healthcare Importance of work place culture (including Just Culture tool) Explanation of SEIPS framework Exercises using SEIPS Plenty of opportunity for discussion and questions
Enhance your critical thinking and research skills in this practical workshop designed for undergraduate students. Learn to question assumptions, analyse sources critically, and develop information discovery and search strategies that will set you apart in your academic studies. By the end of this session, you will be able to: describe what critical thinking is; understand a critical thinking method; apply the method to your academic work; and explain the fundamentals of conducting research, including how to evaluate information sources in SOLO. Intended audience: Taught student
We investigate stochasticity in choice behavior across diverse decisions. Each decision is modeled as a menu of actions with associated outcomes, and a stochastic choice rule assigns probabilities to actions based on the outcome profile. We characterize rules whose predictions are not affected by whether or not additional, irrelevant decisions are included in the model. Our main result is that such rules form the parametric family of mixed-logit rules.
Abstract: Human leucocyte antigens (HLAs) bind peptide fragments for recognition by T-cell receptors. An individual's HLA genotype determines which specific pathogen peptides their T cell responses are able to target. It is widely accepted that HLAs and various human pathogens must co-evolve, and that this accounts for the extraordinarily high HLA polymorphism seen across human populations. I use mathematical models and individual-based computational simulations to understand HLA/pathogen co-evolution. I will present general predictions about the population genetic signatures of pathogen selection we might expect to find among HLA loci, as well as discussing a model motivated specifically by Plasmodium falciparum malaria. Bio: Bridget Penman studies the genetics of infection. She uses mathematical and computational models to simulate interactions between pathogens and genetically diverse host species. Bridget is especially interested in malaria parasites and in how humans and other primates have adapted to malaria. Bridget studied her undergraduate degree and DPhil at Oxford and was also a postdoctoral fellow in the Zoology department and at Merton College. She then moved to the University of Warwick, where she worked in the School of Life Sciences and the Zeeman Institute. Bridget is now an Associate Professor Tutorial Fellow in the Biology Department and St Peter's College here in Oxford.
This paper quantifies the effect of water pollution due to oil spillage on local economic development outcomes in Nigeria. We assemble a geo-referenced panel of more than 13,000 oil spills occurrences recorded in the country between 2006 and 2019, and develop a hydrological model that traces contaminant transport over water networks, allowing spill exposure to extend beyond the point of discharge. We use arguably as good as random exposure within close range of spill sites to distinguish between directly treated locations, upstream locations, and downstream locations along watersheds and exploit this setup in a staggered difference-in-differences framework to estimate impacts on local socio-economic outcomes, including a novel proxy for extreme poverty obtained by combining high-resolution residential buildings data and nighttime lights. Relative to comparable cells, spill-exposed cells exhibit marked declines in nighttime lights, remotely-sensed extreme poverty, and the number of residents without electricity. Candidate mechanisms include environmental degradation, with annual declines in forest cover and vegetation health, and increased out-migration from affected locations. Dynamic event-study estimates show that these effects intensify from four to twelve years post-spill. We relate our remotely-sensed proxies to high-resolution survey data in order to estimate money-metric magnitudes of economic damages. Finally, we investigate the relationship between global oil price shocks and oil spillage intensity, in order to trace the complete causal chain from global commodity markets to local development outcomes.
Goal-directed movements rely on both egocentric (target relative to the observer) and allocentric (target relative to landmarks) spatial representations. So far, it is widely unknown which factors determine the use of allocentric information when we localize objects in space. To probe allocentric coding, we established an object shift paradigm and asked participants to encode the location of multiple objects presented in naturalistic 2D scenes or 3D virtual environments. After a brief delay, a test scene reappeared with one of the objects missing (= target) and the other objects (= landmarks) systematically shifted in one direction. After the test scene vanished, participants had to indicate the remembered location of the target. By quantifying the positional error of the target relative to the physical shift of the landmarks we determined the contribution of allocentric target representations. In my talk, I will present a series of behavioral experiments in which we identified key factors influencing the use of allocentric spatial coding, such as spatial proximity, task relevance, scene coherence, and scene semantics. Overall, our results show that low-level as well as high-level factors influence how humans represent objects in naturalistic environments.
Chair: Professor Rachel Brooks
Get ready to understand the stages of your literature review search process by using your own research questions to build a successful search and apply it to a range of library resources. By the end of the session you will be able to: build a successful search strategy; use a range of bibliographic databases and search tools in the social sciences; source highly cited papers relevant to your research; and set up alerts for newly-published papers on your topic. Intended audience: Taught student; Researcher and research student
Bio: Parminder K Judge is a Senior Clinical Research Fellow based in the Renal Studies Group at the Clinical Trial Service Unit & Epidemiological Studies Unit (CTSU). There, she aims to develop her knowledge and experience of clinical trials, testing new treatments aimed at managing and reducing the progression of chronic kidney disease. Parminder studied medicine at the University of Birmingham. After completing her core medical training in Leicester, she undertook specialty training in nephrology in the Oxford rotation. In 2013, she took time ‘out-of-programme for research’ to work on clinical trials. She worked primarily on the UK HARP-III trial which compared the effects of sacubitril/valsartan (a novel angiotensin-receptor neprilysin inhibitor) with irbesartan (an angiotensin receptor blocker) on in 400 people with chronic kidney disease. The trial formed the basis of her PhD thesis. She also undertook the adjudication of clinical outcomes for the 3C trial and provided clinical support for the REVEAL and ASCEND trials. She participated in epidemiological analyses of the SHARP trial assessing the effects of blood pressure on cardiovascular outcomes. Parminder used HES data to establish and quantify previously undocumented hepatorenal complications in polycystic kidney disease and, to determine the risk of many established complications of the disease. After completing her nephrology specialty training in 2020, Parminder returned to CTSU to work on clinical trials in nephrology and cardiovascular disease, including the EMPA-KIDNEY trial. She continues to practice nephrology within the Oxford Kidney Unit and has an active interest in teaching clinical trainees, undergraduate and postgraduate students.
In this session we will examine article level metrics. We will discuss how citation counting can help identify influential papers in particular fields and how altmetrics provide a different perspective on research output. Using tools such as Web of Science, Google Scholar and Scopus you will learn how to locate different article metrics. The session will also allow you to appreciate the limitations of different metrics and the importance of their cautious interpretation. By the end of the session, you will be familiar with: using Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar to track and count citations to papers and individual researchers; measuring impact using altmetrics; understanding how to contextualise metrics against other, similar papers in a field; and the limitations of different metrics. Intended audience: Taught student; Researcher & research student
_Kratos_ and _dunamis_ appear as “power” in Plato’s dialogs but they signify differently. Kratos is a practice of mastery, according to which “might makes right.” Dunamis is the individual and collective capacity to do or not to do, a capacity that makes exercises of power of any kind possible. This lecture explores in _Gorgias_ and other dialogs the ethical and political implications of the dialogs’ representations of kratos in terms of dunamis, including for democracy as _demokratia_.
COURSE DETAILS This session looks at the way in which we can have useful conversations in career development reviews. It examines the blockages to such conversations and how we can overcome them using active listening and coaching techniques. There will be an opportunity to discuss the policy and process surrounding CDRS. LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of this session you will have an understanding of: The Career context and support for CDRs. How coaching and active listening can enable positive CDR conversations. An opportunity to practice relevant skills.
Create content for your teaching or research with greater confidence by attending our session on Creative Commons (CC) licences. Learn how they work, how they interact with copyright and how to use them to best effect. The session will make special reference to images but is applicable to all media, including written works. The workshop is classroom-based. In this playful, interactive face-to-face session we will cover: what Creative Commons Licences are; where to find Creative Commons material; how to apply Creative Commons to your own work; and how to reuse Creative Commons materials. We’ll finish the session with a Creative Commons card game. Intended audience: Researcher and research student; Staff
TBC
COURSE DETAILS Join us for an insightful session that aims to equip researchers with the tools needed to engage confidently and effectively with the public on controversial and sensitive topics. In this interactive online session, Science Communicator Hana Ayoob will take us through the importance of engaging with these topics, aiming to equip researchers with the skills and knowledge to engage confidently in an empathetic and effective way. This session is relevant to scientists across the sciences, and will explore topics ranging from the use of animals in research, to nuclear power, and topics arising from your research area. Upon completion of the course, participants will be well-prepared to engage with sensitivity and confidence on controversial topics, contributing to a more inclusive and informed public discourse within their respective fields. LEARNING OUTCOMES Attending this session will give you the opportunity to: Recognise why certain research topics are sensitive or controversial for diverse audience groups. Develop skills to communicate controversial topics empathetically and respectfully. Acquire knowledge and techniques for engaging the public on sensitive subjects. Understand and apply ethical considerations when addressing controversial issues with the public. Build confidence in communicating complex ideas related to sensitive topics. Explore specific controversial themes relevant to your research areas for practical application
Camille Serchuk (Southern Connecticut State University) is in conversation with Elizabeth Baigent (School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford).
Historians are familiar with the idea of the nation as an ‘imagined community’ that bound people across time and space from the late 18th century, predicated on modern communications. This lecture extends this idea into the 20th century and to a wider range of ‘invisible structures’ that were made more palpable via languages of social science, political and especially economic structures.
A principal seeks to contract with an agent but must do so through an informed delegate. Although the principal cannot directly mediate the interaction, she can constrain the menus of contracts the delegate may offer. We show that the principal can implement any outcome that is implementable through a direct mechanism satisfying dominant strategy incentive compatibility and ex-post participation for the agent. We apply this result to several settings. First, we show that a government that delegates procurement to a budget-indulgent agency should delegate an interval of screening contracts. Second, we show that a seller can delegate sales to an intermediary without revenue loss, provided she can commit to a return policy. Third, in contrast to centralized mechanism design, we demonstrate that no partnership can be efficiently dissolved in the absence of a mediator. Finally, we discuss when delegated contracting obstructs efficiency, and when choosing the right delegate may help restore it.
Identification in Structural Vector Autoregressions (SVARs) often relies on external proxy variables that are assumed to be valid instruments—highly correlated with a single structural shock and uncorrelated with all others. In practice, however, researchers often face a ``proxy zoo'' of imperfect candidates, where these exclusion restrictions are unlikely to hold. This paper develops a novel framework for set identification in SVARs that relaxes the need for valid instruments. We introduce a generalized ranking assumption, requiring only that a proxy is more strongly correlated with the target shock than with any other. This much weaker condition allows us to work with contaminated proxies that would be invalid under a standard instrumental variable approach. We combine this with traditional sign restrictions to construct sharp identified sets for monetary policy impulse responses. We characterize the geometric structure of the feasible set of structural parameters, which is formed by the intersections of spherical caps determined by the proxy information. Our method provides a robust tool for researchers to compute valid bounds on dynamic causal effects when only imperfect proxies are available.
Why should clinicians care about economic value? How does the economics of the health system affect day-to-day working practices and experiences? How can clinicians influence resourcing decisions that improve value? During the seminar, Jacque will explore the economic paradigm of the NHS, and how economics can help grow value through cycles of improvement. The workshop is organised in two parts: Part A: The economics of the system Who pays for what and how does the money flow? What are the opportunities for increasing value as we move forward? Part B: Using the economic lens to drive value over time How can clinicians use economic principles to influence investment and resource allocation.
We study the distributional impacts of carbon pricing policies using a multi-sector general equilibrium (GE) model with input-output linkages, heterogeneous agents and segmented labor markets. Households differ in their consumption patterns, labor types, and ownership of equity and capital. Pricing the carbon content of products affects households real income through an expenditure channel, according to the emissions intensity of their consumption baskets, and an earnings channel, as GE responses shift the relative demand for labor types, and returns on profits and rents. Calibrating the model with matched microdata for the Brazilian economy, we find regressive effects stemming from both channels. Ignoring the production networks and the gross complementarity between fuels, inputs and factors leads to a substantial underestimation of both aggregate and distributional effects. The incidence of the policy depends on how the revenue is recycled: expanding targeted social transfers fully offsets the regressive impact, whereas using the revenue to reduce preexisting consumption taxes improves efficiency but does not eliminate regressivity.
As a leading administrative-cultural center, the Roman metropolis constituted a major tourist attraction for visitors from both the center and the periphery of the empire, among them Jews from the land of Israel. Using ancient Jewish culture as a test case, this lecture addresses the extent and type of influence of such visits on local cultures. It focuses on how the encounter with the city’s spatial aspects, its buildings and traditions, left their impress on Jewish culture, law, collective memory, and art in the first centuries CE. The examples taken from the literary realm – rabbinic law and legend – and the numismatic sphere, all relate to space identity and shed light on how the encounter with the city of Rome influenced a minority culture. The presentation will be followed by discussion and drinks. The event is free. This event will take place in accordance with the framework developed by a number of Oxford colleges, including Worcester College, to promote free speech at Oxford. Details of this framework and 'tips' for productive discussion of difficult topics are to be found at: www.worc.ox.ac.uk/fos. By attending this event, attendees agree to adhere to these guidelines and the terms and conditions of the event which uphold Worcester College's commitment to freedom of speech: www.worc.ox.ac.uk/fos/massada
While existing literature often connects the persistent gender gap in South Asian student migration to parents’ patriarchal biases and fears about female safety overseas, we argue that parents’ views in the South Asian diaspora are far more nuanced. Drawing on a survey of 110 South Asian parents in the UAE and 32 in-depth interviews, we found no statistically significant difference in the proportion of daughters versus sons sent overseas to Western universities. This decision was largely motivated by parents’ beliefs in gender egalitarianism. However, our research also revealed that parents’ gendered safety concerns continued to play a role in a series of “sub-migration decisions” where parents steered their daughters’ country, university, and accommodation choices even as they supported their international migration overall. These risk mitigation strategies were a byproduct of parents’ view of the UAE as exceptionally safe, while almost all other countries, but especially the United States and India, were seen as more dangerous in geographically specific ways. Simultaneously, parents rationalized their daughters’ international studies using a narrative previously reserved for male migrants—that independent migration helps these young women learn to live with risk and develop independence. In other words, gender continues to shape the international student migration process even amongst South Asian families holding egalitarian gender views, but in more nuanced ways than previously acknowledged.
In this session we will examine metrics for individual researchers. Using tools such as Web of Science, Google Scholar and Scopus you will learn about the researcher h-index and its limitations. You will be introduced to additional metrics tools such as author beamplots which help to contextualise a researcher’s output over time. By the end of the session, you will be familiar with: accessing citation data for specific researchers on Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar; understanding how the h-index is calculated and its inherent limitations; creating an ORCID number to help track all your own research outputs; and the importance of research outputs beyond journal and conference papers when assessing a researcher’s impact. Intended audience: Taught student; Researcher & research student
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. By the end of this classroom-based session you will be able to: evaluate the effectiveness of your poster presentation and others; and summarise the content of your poster concisely in preparation for a conference. Intended audience: Medicine and NHS; Researcher and research student
TBC
_Isos_ and _homoios_, both often translated as equality in Plato’s dialogs, signify differently. In _Phaedo_, for example, isos appears as “the Equal itself,” knowable by intellect, while homoios appears as “what is equal,” and refers to things that are perceived by the senses as the same in some respects and not in others. This lecture develops an account of _democratic equality_ by exploring the political and theoretical implications of these differences, including by attending to the distinction between arithmetic equality and geometric or proportional equality in _Statesman_.
COURSE DETAILS The ability to influence others is a significant skill in any walk of life. This workshop will explore the impact of our communication preferences on others when seeking to influence. By also understanding the thinking process that underlies people’s decision making, we can use learnable skills to help people say ‘yes’ to us. The aim is always to influence others to the right decision, not just the decision we may want. LEARNING OUTCOMES After attending this workshop you will: Understand the impact of your own communication preferences when seeking to influence. Review how people think things through when making decisions and develop skills to positively impact the thinking process. Plan for the right outcomes and work out a healthy motive for the influence conversation. Help people say ‘yes’ to you. Understand the role of emotions when seeking to influence. Spot and adapt to the communication style of others to better land your message. Develop assertive communication skills. Plan for, and practice, an influence conversation.
Newspapers are a valuable resource for researching not only news but also many other aspects of political, economic, social and cultural life. In this session we will introduce key online sources of news and how to make best use of them. The focus will be on historical and contemporary newspapers from the 17th century across most countries of the world. After the session participants will understand: the value of newspapers in research; the difficulties of using newspapers in research and effective search techniques, and be able to use a range of sources for searching and reading: 1. historical newspapers 2. contemporary newspapers 3.audio-visual news sources. Intended audience: Taught student; Researcher and research student
COURSE DETAILS This short practical session will help you understand more about the career context for research staff at Oxford and beyond. It will enable you to identify the skills and abilities that you need to develop and give you guidance on how to enhance them so you are prepared for a useful conversation in your next CDR. LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of this session you will have: An understanding of the career challenges and opportunities facing research staff at Oxford. An understanding of the skills you need to acquire. Started to apply a process of developing these skills.
COURSE DETAILS During the course you will have the opportunity to manage a project. You will be able to apply the techniques you learn to a project that you bring along. Topics covered: project initiation, managing stakeholders and risk, time estimation, planning. LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of this session you will understand more about: The importance of planning. The tools to make project management succeed. How to estimate the time a project will take realistically. The skills you need to be a good project manager.
In this online workshop you will be shown the functionality of Zotero, which is a free-to-use software programme used to manage references and create bibliographies. Zotero will be demonstrated on a Windows PC but users of MacOS or Linux computers will be able to follow the demonstration. The workshop will cover: understanding the main features and benefits of Zotero; setting up a Zotero account; importing references from different sources into Zotero; organising your references in Zotero; inserting citations into documents; and creating a bibliography/reference list. Intended audience: Medicine and NHS; Taught student; Researcher and research student
The decades between the late 1940s and the late 1970s are widely seen as the heyday of social science (and of social democracy), though usually from the point of view of educated or cultivated elites. This lecture seeks evidence of the ‘sociological imagination’ in everyday life, in conditions of ‘affluence’, ‘permissiveness’ and a therapeutic society.
We are pleased to announce the upcoming Winter Lecture Series which will take place between January and March 2026. Across five thought-provoking lectures, special guests will discuss a range of subjects, with topics to be announced soon. Each lecture will be hosted at the University of Oxford Museum of Natural History. Join us on Thursday 19th February when natural history writer and photographer Jon Dunn will deliver his lecture.
Join writer Adam Sisman in conversation with Bodley’s Librarian, Richard Ovenden, as they explore the secrets of John le Carré’s archive. As le Carré’s biographer, Sisman spent four years researching the author, navigating his unsorted archive and engaging in revealing discussions, often surprising Le Carré with his discoveries. The archive spans le Carré’s childhood, National Service, Oxford years—where he spied for MI5—and his early intelligence and writing careers. It also includes drafts of his novels, showcasing his meticulous writing process. Richard Ovenden, who worked with the author and his family over the bequest, discusses its significance and its journey to the Bodleian. Richard Ovenden OBE, Hon FBA is the 25th Bodley's Librarian and the Helen Hamlyn Director of the University Libraries, and Head of Gardens, Libraries and Museums at the University of Oxford. He is also the author of Burning the Books: A History of Knowledge Under Attack. Adam Sisman FRSL is a writer specialising in biography, who has written the lives of AJP Taylor, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Asa Briggs and John le Carré. His second book, Boswell’s Presumptuous Task, won a National Books Critics Circle award. In 2019 he published The Professor and the Parson: A Story of Desire, Deceit and Defrocking. He is an Honorary Professor at the University of St Andrews.
Python is one of the most popular programming languages for data science, both in academia and industry. It is also a good entry programming language for anyone trying their hand at coding for the first time. This gentle introduction to Python is aimed at all students or staff around campus with little to no prior experience with Python or programming wanting to take that first step. The course will cover all the basics needed to get future coders started on their journey. By the end of the session, you will have written your first bits of code and be ready to explore what Python can do for your own data or personal projects. The training will be delivered by Matthieu Miossec, Head of Computational Genomics Group, Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford. The course is divided into two sessions: Session 1, 23 February, 9:00 am – 11:00 am Session 2, 26 February, 9:00 am – 11:00 am This will be an interactive session where participants will be expected to follow along with the demonstration, coding throughout the session. Topics to be covered: -Why use Python? -Data types and data structures in Python. -Conditional statements and loops. -Writing flexible functions. -Reading and writing to files. -Putting it altogether in a simple bit of code. Intended Audience: Staff and students with little to no prior experience with Python or programming in general. Objectives: -Become more comfortable with Python and programming in general. -Have a basic understanding of the main data types and structures in Python. -Have a basic understanding of error messages and how to resolve them. -Write some code to automate the resolution of a small problem. -Be able to write a short bit of code to extract or write information from a file. -Learn how to break a bigger problem into smaller problems through divide and conquer approach. -Know where to find additional information on Python. Requirements: Participants are expected to bring their own laptops so they can follow along with the interactive session. Pre-course work: None. There will be a small challenge in between the two sessions for participants to attempt. Software required: Python with Python IDLE or similar Register - https://forms.office.com/e/hsUZ3FHdMw?origin=lprLink
Professor Guy Thwaites University of Oxford https://www.ndm.ox.ac.uk/team/guy-thwaites
Are you planning to present a poster at an upcoming conference, meeting or symposium? This introductory session will provide you with some top tips on how to create a poster presentation which will help you to communicate your research project and data effectively. There will be guidance on formatting, layout, content, use of text, references and images, as well as advice on printing and presenting your poster. This session will also provide help with locating resources such as templates, free-to-use images and poster guidelines. By the end of this classroom-based session you will be able to: evaluate the effectiveness of templates, formatting, text and images; and plan, prepare and present your poster. Intended audience: Medicine and NHS; Researcher and research student
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence is responsible for assessing most medicines launched in England, diagnostics, devices and digital products and creating clinical guidelines that identify the most clinically and cost-effective care. We’ll discuss how NICE assesses clinically and cost-effective care, including an interactive session where we work through different scenarios, such as a very expensive medicine for a few people and a very cheap medicine for many people. Finally, we’ll end with what kinds of innovations NICE are seeing now and anticipate in the near future, what they may mean for the health and care service, the practice of medicine and NICE assessment.
Narrative CVs are being adopted by many funders, nationally and internationally, to give researchers the opportunity to showcase a wider range of skills and experience than is possible in a traditional academic CV; an example is the UKRI Résumé for Research and Innovation (R4RI). Writing a narrative CV requires a different way of thinking about and describing your skills, experience and contributions to research and innovation compared to a traditional CV. Writing your first narrative CV will take some time and effort; you might not be sure about what activities to include, and how to describe their quality, relevance, and your involvement in them. This presentation will try to demystify and simplify narrative CVs by providing advice, prompts and suggestions for how to write one. Speakers Mary Muers Research Culture Facilitator, MSD Kanza Basit Senior Research Facilitator, SSD Gavin Bird Head of Research Facilitation and Support, SOGE, SSD Susan Black, Careers Adviser, Oxford Careers Service Everyone welcome, please register to receive the TEAMS link for this event If you are a student or researcher with a CareerConnect account, please register "here":https://oxford.targetconnect.net/leap/event.html?id=22970&service=Careers%20Service All other staff register "here":https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=G96VzPWXk0-0uv5ouFLPke7xLB0LNIFKuA055EWF9ZtUOUhSTjVFMExHUzlVSkU1WFZER1JKTU9VTy4u, the joining link will be in the registration confirmation email
Beyond the dramatic and consequential attacks by the Trump administration, American higher education is under pressure to demonstrate its effectiveness in enhancing student success and employability. There has been criticism that students don’t learn enough, are disengaged, and are not getting value for money. This presentation presents the results of a recent study The Multi-Engagement Model: Understanding Diverse Pathways to Student Success at Research Universities that provides a unique data driven and holistic perspective on understanding the undergraduate experience at large U.S. public research-intensive universities. Leveraging 11 years of survey and institutional data collected by the Student Experience in the Research University (SERU) Consortium, our research shows the significance and interconnectedness of various college experiences — academic engagement in and outside of classroom settings, research activities, extracurricular, civic, and career development — and that this results in distinct and diverse pathways to success. This research contradicts the narrative of students being academically adrift popular in the media, and offers a path for institutions to better understand the experience of students from diverse backgrounds, and to better articulate to stakeholders the robust nature of their educational enterprises. This study also found that student engagement across the areas we measured declined during the pandemic and had yet to fully recover in 2023. My co-authors and I also found inequities in experiences and opportunities for students from lower-income families and underrepresented groups.
TBC
Usually translated as the “admirable,” “noble,” or “fine,” to _kalon_ in Plato is generally parsed as “Beauty in itself” and counterposed to what is _poikilon_, the “ornamentation,” “embroidery,” “variety,” or “diversity” perceived by the senses. In _Hippias Major_ and other dialogs, by contrast, including in the context of the democratic souls and constitution under scrutiny in _Republic_, kalon appears to be embedded with poikilia. This lecture argues for a phenomenological understanding of beauty in Plato and explores the implications of this understanding for the dialogs’ political philosophy.
You’re invited to explore the History of Science Museum after dark through guided creative writing. Everyone’s welcome, from history, science, or writing buffs to complete newbies in any or all of those. In this workshop you will: - Discover the astrolabes up close with a museum curator - Take part in a writing workshop with a published poet and experienced teacher to create something that delights you - Collaborate in a friendly supportive atmosphere to create a poem about the museum’s astrolabes – no experience necessary All in the magical space of the museum’s vaulted Basement Gallery and sweeping Upper Gallery, after dark.
COURSE DETAILS Topics will include presenting your CV, how to approach employers, writing covering letters and interview skills. LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of this session you will understand: How to improve your CV. How to approach employers. How to write a covering letter. How to plan for an interview. How to interview well.
COURSE DETAILS The supervisory relationship is key to the success of your DPhil and we know that positive and effective relationships contribute to the timely completion of the doctorate. As with many things, the more you put into the relationship with your supervisor, the more you will benefit from it. There is much you can do to be proactive and play and active role in the relationship. LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of the session participants will be able to: Find information about University, divisional and departmental regulations and the supervisory relationship. Be aware of the student's areas of responsibility in the relationship. Take appropriate responsibility within the relationship. Develop a range of skills and strategies to manage relationships effectively. Find and make appropriate use of additional sources of help and support.
TBC
This session will help you to understand what IP is, who "owns" it, and the things to think about when you think you have created IP. Whether you're an undergraduate, masters or DPhil student, or Staff at the University of Oxford, it is important to understand your rights and responsibilities when it comes to intellectual property (IP). This session will help you to understand what IP actually is, who "owns" it, and the things to think about when you think you have created IP. Case studies will also be presented to help explain the University's policy. Come prepared to ask any IP related questions in the second half of the session, where our expert presenters will give you the official University answers to any of your queries. In collaboration with Research Services, Oxford University Innovation, and The Careers Service. The talk will be from 12:30-1:30pm. If you have specific questions, the presenters will be available to answer questions until 2pm. Note: The sign up is through Inkpath, you will need to create an Inkpath account to sign up if you’ve not already got one.
The 3 Minute Thesis competition challenges doctoral candidates to present a compelling spoken presentation on their research topic and its significance in just three minutes to a non-specialist audience. This course helps you prepare for the competition and ensure that you have the best chance possible to represent Oxford nationally.
For our first Machine Learning workshop we will be joined by Dr Lei Clifton, Programme Director of the MSc in Applied Digital Health, Primary Care Department, Dr Joshua Fieggen, DPhil candidate, CHI Lab, Department of Engineering Science and Greg Simond, DPhil student, NDPH. Title: ML Workshop: Combining Machine Learning (ML) with Medical Statistics - A Worked Example When: Thursday 26 February Time: 11:00 – 12:00 Venue: OxPop Seminar room 0 In person only Overview: As larger biomedical datasets emerge, it becomes increasingly challenging to identify potentially relevant features using only conventional approaches. In this workshop we will demonstrate how one can combine machine learning (ML) with classical statistical models for disease predictions, using worked examples on the UK Biobank. Who it’s for: Any researcher curious about combining AI and statistics. No coding required for this session. Depending on the demand, we can deliver a hands-on coding session in the future, showing how we have implemented this approach in our published papers. Bios: Lei Clifton: Programme Director of the MSc in Applied Digital Health, Primary Care Department. Lei has 20+ years of experience at the intersection of medical statistics and AI. As Programme Director of the MSc in Applied Digital Health, she specialises in foundation models and large language models for healthcare, bringing expertise from engineering, machine learning, and medical statistics. Joshua Fieggen: DPhil candidate, Computational Health Informatics (CHI) Lab. Josh is a medical doctor, and DPhil candidate from the CHI Lab in the Engineering Department. He has an MPH in Epidemiology and Biostatistics and his DPhil has focused on applications of ML and generative deep learning to the plasma proteomics data in UK Biobank. Gregory Simond: MD-DPhil candidate in Cancer Science, conducting his doctoral research in the UK Biobank group at the Big Data Institute. His research focuses on developing multi-modal machine learning approaches to improve early cancer detection and risk prediction in the general population. Registration- https://forms.office.com/e/ddQhg7pG2N?origin=lprLink
Revealing the cellular impact of immune-mediated disease-associated (IMD) variants requires measuring their effects within the dynamic gene expression and phenotypic programmes that shape immune cell function. In this seminar, I will present our recent work, which resolves context-specific eQTLs across T cell activation states and reveals how polygenic IMD risk converges on discrete, activation-dependent gene programmes. These analyses uncover regulatory axes that link genetic architecture to effector function and disentangle proliferation, differentiation, and metabolic rewiring to pinpoint key contexts in which disease variants exert their impact. I will then introduce TGlow, our high-content imaging platform that profiles T cell morphology at scale, enabling us to capture phenotypes beyond transcript abundance. By quantifying morphodynamic trajectories during activation and exhaustion, TGlow provides an orthogonal layer for studying variant-relevant biology, allowing us to map how genetic- and drug-induced perturbations, reshape T cell states. Together, these approaches outline our strategy for decoding IMD variant effects through large-scale multimodal profiling of gene regulation, cellular programs, and functional phenotypes.
Critics of neoliberalism claim that in the final decades of the 20th century ‘homo politicus’ was replaced by ‘homo economicus’. This lecture challenges the primacy of either of these imaginings of the human condition and draws attention to other burgeoning identities – the very word ‘identity’ being one of them – supported by the language of social science.
In this paper we study a class of weighted estimands, which we define as parameters that can be expressed as weighted averages of the underlying heterogeneous treatment effects. The popular ordinary least squares (OLS), two-stage least squares (2SLS), and two-way fixed effects (TWFE) estimands are all special cases within our framework. Our focus is on answering two questions concerning weighted estimands. First, under what conditions can they be interpreted as the average treatment effect for some (possibly latent) subpopulation? Second, when these conditions are satisfied, what is the upper bound on the size of that subpopulation, either in absolute terms or relative to a target population of interest? We argue that this upper bound provides a valuable diagnostic for empirical research. When a given weighted estimand corresponds to the average treatment effect for a small subset of the population of interest, we say its internal validity is low. Our paper develops practical tools to quantify the internal validity of weighted estimands.
Professor Brian Angus University of Oxford https://www.ndm.ox.ac.uk/team/brian-angus
This talk outlines how mathematical modelling can inform sustainable public health policy when integrated with other disciplines, illustrated through work on Cystic Echinococcosis, a parasitic zoonosis. I present practical examples that bring together transmission models, field epidemiology, veterinary practice, social science and economic assessment to co produce interventions that are feasible, acceptable and maintainable over time. Emphasising a One Health perspective, the session shows how integrated approaches improve surveillance, target control measures, and clarify trade offs and uncertainties for decision makers. Attendees will see how collaborative, people centred modelling generates operational recommendations that are more likely to be adopted and sustained in real world settings.
We develop and quantify a novel growth theory in which economic activity endogenously shifts from material production to quality improvements. Consumers derive utility from goods with differing environmental footprints: necessities are material-intensive and polluting, while luxuries are more service-based and emit less. Innovation can be directed toward either material productivity or product quality. Because demand for luxuries is more sensitive to quality, the economy gradually becomes “weightless”: growth is driven by quality improvements, services become the dominant employment sector, and material production stabilizes at a finite level. This structural transformation enables rising living standards with declining environmental intensity, providing an endogenous path to degrowth in material output without compromising economic progress. Policy can accelerate the transition, but its burden is uneven, falling more heavily on the poor than on the rich.
Are you looking to learn about the ways in which to transmit scientific ideas and make your research accessible to a non-specialist audience through a variety of mediums? This session will serve as an introduction to science communication and how it can be successfully incorporated into our roles. By the end of this session you will be able to: define science communication and provide a list of examples; explain why science communication is important for both our CPD and the public; and list ways in which we can all get involved in science communication. Intended audience: Medicine and NHS; Researcher and research student
The Autism Long-term Outcomes Study (ALTOS) examined adolescents and young adults who were diagnosed with autism early in development according to gold standard expert clinical evaluation, who currently have no symptoms. In prior work, we described the unique brain networks that were involved in language processing in such a population, in comparison with individuals with a current autism diagnosis and those without a history of autism. This talk will describe results of our current behavioral and fMRI studies of language outcomes and their association with other cognitive and communication abilities as well as mental health and quality of life.
COURSE DETAILS The course will include: Critique of readability in relevant papers. Use of tenses in academic papers. Writing with impact. Concise writing. Grammar and proof reading. Scientific table and chart technique. LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of the session participants will be able to: Develop understanding of the characteristics of scientific writing; write in simple, clear and concise scientific English. Develop knowledge of how to write grammatically correct English. Improve proof reading skills; organise the sections of a scientific paper effectively. Develop a scientific argument with appropriate language that conveys the message effectively. Make effective use of charts and tables.
Which firms drive aggregate productivity growth? A strong form of Gibrat's Law says that firm growth rates are iid, so that their expected contribution is proportional to their sales share. In contrast, we document that firms with high price-earnings ratios tend to see increases in their subsequent earnings relative to sales, which we interpret as rents from ideas. We construct an endogenous growth model with shocks to firm innovation step-sizes and R&D efficiency and calibrate it to match patterns in the data. The model implies that growth would be much lower, even with the same innovative effort, if firms had the same step sizes. The model can be used to infer expected growth contributions of individual firms (such as members of the Magnificent Seven) and individual sectors (such as AI firms). We find that the share of growth coming from the smallest listed firms substantially exceeds their 10\% sales share, whereas the largest firms account for less than their 10% sales share.
Since the summer 2020 racial reckoning in the U.S., which reverberated across the world, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts have come under political scrutiny from conservative policy actors. Prior to the 2025 Trump administration’s federal anti-DEI policy stance, anti-DEI action was created and crafted at the state level. From 2021 to 2024, hundreds of legislative and administrative actions were introduced and/or passed that limited speech, curriculum, and programming designed to create inclusive and equitable college environments for students, faculty, and staff. This presentation is based on a national qualitative study of 30 diversity officers responding to pre-Trump administration anti-DEI actions. Results will focus on organizational responses to various anti-DEI actions, and a second set of findings will highlight the personal consequences of such actions for diversity officers. While this is a specific U.S.-based study, anti-DEI actions have transcontinental foundations and reach. Implications for future research and action for higher education leaders and scholars will be discussed.
This paper investigates whether severe economic hardship undermines preferences for honesty. We use controlled, incentivized measures of cheating for private benefit in a large, diverse sample of 5,676 Kenyans, exploiting three complementary sources of variation: experimentally manipulated monetary incentives, randomized increase in salience of own financial situation, and the Covid‑19 income shock, exploiting randomized survey timing as a natural experiment with respondents surveyed before and during the crisis. We find that severe economic hardship—marked by a 40% drop in monthly earnings— leads to a sharp increase in the prevalence of cheating, from 43% to 72%. Cheating behaviour is highly responsive to financial incentives and increases gradually with prolonged hardship. The effects are largest among the most economically impacted and are amplified when salience of own financial situation is experimentally increased. Predictable seasonal income fluctuations, in contrast, do not affect honesty. The results demonstrate that while most individuals exhibit a strong preference against cheating under normal conditions, severe economic hardship substantially erodes honesty.
This lecture draws together the findings of the first five lectures to paint a different picture from the rationalist, transcendentalist, idealist, and universalist depiction of “Plato’s Theory of Forms” that dominates the history of political thought. Analyzing the co-implications of _eidos_, usually translated as “Form,” with _eidos_ as a “look” or “shape” grasped by the senses, the lecture develops an account of _democratic form_ that inhabits the spaces of opinion, appearance, and practice explored in the preceding lectures.
Please mark 4-5 March 2026 in your diary for the next IDEU Symposium. We will showcase the work of the IDEU researchers, especially our early and mid-career researchers, and will also have speakers from across Oxford who will discuss their recent work. It will be two days of excellent science and plenty of opportunities for networking, so please do join us! More details to follow in due course.
In this online workshop you will be shown the functionality of Zotero, which is a free-to-use software programme used to manage references and create bibliographies. Zotero will be demonstrated on a Windows PC but users of MacOS or Linux computers will be able to follow the demonstration. The workshop will cover: understanding the main features and benefits of Zotero; setting up a Zotero account; importing references from different sources into Zotero; organising your references in Zotero; inserting citations into documents; and creating a bibliography/reference list. Intended audience: Medicine and NHS; Taught student; Researcher and research student
Olink’s mission is to accelerate proteomics together with the scientific community, to understand real-time biology and gain actionable insights into human health and disease. Their innovative solutions deliver highly sensitive and accurate protein quantification, giving scientists the power to investigate complex biological processes with precision.
Engagement describes the ways in which we can share our research and its value by interacting with wider public audiences, generating mutual benefit. In this introductory session tailored to those new to engagement, we look at what public engagement is and some of the reasons why you might want to do it. We’ll highlight the multitude of different approaches you can take, and provide tips on getting started and where to get support.
We are pleased to announce the upcoming Winter Lecture Series which will take place between January and March 2026. Across five thought-provoking lectures, special guests will discuss a range of subjects, with topics to be announced soon. Each lecture will be hosted at the University of Oxford Museum of Natural History. Join us on Thursday 5th March when writer and organic food grower Claire Ratinon will deliver her lecture.
The Chief Medical Officer has confirmed that attendance at the Surgical Grand Rounds can count toward internal CPD, with 1 point awarded per hour. Please note that in-person attendance is required, and you will need to sign the attendance register. All members of the University and NHS clinical staff are welcome. Please email Tarryn Ching (tarryn.ching@nds.ox.ac.uk) if you would like to attend online.
Disputes between colleagues can have a significant impact on performance and wellbeing as well as affecting patient experience and safety. This course is designed to help healthcare professionals understand how and why conflicts arise within and between teams, as well as what they can do to try and resolve issues. This course aims to help participants: understand the causes and impact of colleague-to-colleague conflict in a healthcare context appreciate different types of conflict personalities identify how conflict develops learn de-escalation strategies
The way we work and interact with our peers and wider networks, has a huge influence on research outputs and outcomes. This workshop explores a set of core skills and mindsets to help you thrive in research and positively influence your working environment and teams. You will also be able to share your lived experience with peers and participate in focused discussions. COURSE DETAILS A powerful workshop for senior postdocs, aspiring PIs, new PIs, and research group leaders wanting to increase their impact and agility at a strategic time. Join this highly participative, in-person workshop, facilitated by Natacha Wilson, to explore three core skills and mindsets to thrive in research and positively influence your ecosystem: Developing and nurturing effective interdisciplinary and multi-sectorial collaborations for impact. Embracing openness and visibility in research across specific stakeholder groups to increase reach (including open science practices). Boosting creativity and innovation in your research project and team to overcome challenges. LEARNING OUTCOMES At the end of the workshop you will be able to: Prioritise areas supporting your own personal development. Identify relevant frameworks and guidelines. Share your experience with peers and reflect on best practice.
Are you planning to present a poster at an upcoming conference, meeting or symposium? This introductory session will provide you with some top tips on how to create a poster presentation which will help you to communicate your research project and data effectively. There will be guidance on formatting, layout, content, use of text, references and images, as well as advice on printing and presenting your poster. This session will also provide help with locating resources such as templates, free-to-use images and poster guidelines. By the end of this online session you will be able to: evaluate the effectiveness of templates, formatting, text and images; and plan, prepare and present your poster. Intended audience: Medicine and NHS; Researcher and research student
Higher Education in the UK and worldwide faces multiple challenges and calls for reform. Some people argue for a higher level of participation, some for less, and some for more focus on employer needs, some for more attention to the wider self-formation of students. At the same time, there are deepening concerns about the sustainability of an economy based on over-consumption and trust in knowledge amid epistemic fracture. In this talk, Tim Blackman sets out why the dominant qualification in the sector – the full-time, often residential, honours degree – is a cause of many of the issues higher education and society face on these fronts. Past policy failures point to a need for a radical rethink, including limiting higher education providers’ freedom to design their own courses and a complete overhaul of how they are accountable for their contribution to a sustainable economy and rebuilding trust in knowledge.
TBC
LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of this session you will understand more about: What experience and characteristics you need to have to gain a fellowship. The application process. How to work with University’s systems and procedures to optimise your application and its chance of success. You will have an opportunity to practice interviewing/being interviewed for fellowship applications.
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This popular day seminar provides an ideal opportunity for practitioners to update their current immunisation knowledge and learn the latest news on the topic of vaccination. Our target audience consists of (but is not limited to) practice nurses, health visitors, school nurses, community nurses and general practitioners. Click here to for the full programme: https://www.ovg.ox.ac.uk/events/2026-imms-seminar Programme highlights: • Determinants of future health with Dr James Gilchrist, Honorary Consultant in Paediatric Infectious Diseases & Immunology • Communicating the importance of maternal vaccination programmes with Professor Chrissie Jones, Professor of Paediatric Infection and Immunity, University of Southampton • Chickenpox and Shingles vaccination with Dr Gayatri Amirthalingam, Immunisation and Vaccine Preventable Diseases, UKHSA • Advantages and disadvantages of higher valent pneumococcal vaccines with Professor Stefan Flasche Einstein-BUA Strategic Professor of Infectious Disease Dynamics and Global Health, CharitéCenter for Global Health, Berlin Click here to register – https://www.oxforduniversitystores.co.uk/product-catalogue/paediatrics/events/ovg-immunisation-seminar-2026-hcps
Designed for research staff who are considering their next career move—whether within Oxford, within academia more broadly, or in other sectors. This interactive workshop supports researchers in navigating their career development with greater confidence and clarity. It offers participants the space to reflect on their ambitions, explore alternative futures, and engage in structured peer discussions to share insights and challenges. Participants will use design-thinking approaches to consider different career scenarios. The session then moves into goal setting and peer advice-sharing, helping researchers to build practical short-term plans and identify supportive resources and networks. Participants are introduced to key tools and services available through Oxford to support their development as they prepare for their next step, whatever that may be. By the end of this session, participants will be able to: * Articulate multiple possible career directions, including both preferred and alternative pathways. * Identify actionable short-term goals that support career progress. * Reflect on and assess their professional development to date, including skills, motivations, and values. Everyone welcome, please register to receive the TEAMS link for this event If you are a student or researcher with a CareerConnect account, please register "here":https://oxford.targetconnect.net/leap/event.html?id=23006&service=Careers%20Service All other staff register "here":https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=G96VzPWXk0-0uv5ouFLPke7xLB0LNIFKuA055EWF9ZtUNFk4NDEwVkVLWklPNDc5WjZKWFU2VEMwWC4u, the joining link will be in the registration confirmation email
We are pleased to announce the upcoming Winter Lecture Series which will take place between January and March 2026. Across five thought-provoking lectures, special guests will discuss a range of subjects, with topics to be announced soon. Each lecture will be hosted at the University of Oxford Museum of Natural History. Join us on Thursday 12th March when Plantsman and horticultural educationalist Fergus Garrett will deliver his lecture.
This paper presents a novel application of graph neural networks for modeling and estimating network heterogeneity. Network heterogeneity is a concept characterizing the dependence of an individual’s outcome or decision on their diverse local network scenarios. Graph neural networks are powerful tools for studying this dependence. We delineate the convergence rate of the graph neural networks estimator, as well as its applicability in semiparametric causal inference with heterogeneous treatment effects. The finite-sample performance of our estimator is evaluated through Monte Carlo simulations. In an empirical setting related to microfinance program participation, we apply the new estimator to examine the average treatment effects and outcomes of counterfactual policies, and to propose a Pareto frontier of strategies for selecting the initial recipients of program information in social networks.
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. By the end of this classroom-based session you will be able to: evaluate the effectiveness of your poster presentation and others; and summarise the content of your poster concisely in preparation for a conference. Intended audience: Medicine and NHS; Researcher and research student
COURSE DETAILS By participating in exercises and discussions the attendees will learn how to review manuscripts quickly and effectively. Learning Outcomes By the end of this session participants will have: Developed an understanding of how the peer review system works. Developed an understanding of reveiwers' responsibilities. Awareness of what editors expect in a review; critically evaluate a manuscript. Developed an understanding of what to include in written comments to editors and authors. Developed practical methods for reviewing a manuscript quickly and effectively.
COURSE DETAILS Issues covered will include work-life balance, planning, prioritising, the need to differentiate between importance and urgency, and using a range of strategies and time-saving ideas. LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of this session you will understand more about: A range of time saving techniques. Time wasting activities and learn how to deal with them. The difference between important and urgent. The importance of planning and setting time aside.
An introduction to the what, why and how of public involvement
This session provides doctoral students in the third year and above with information about the viva, guidance on planning a proactive approach to it, and opportunities to practise. COURSE DETAILS The course will look at the rules and expectations of the viva exam and identify and practise practical ways to prepare. LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of the session participants will be able to: Develop their awareness and understanding of the rules and expectations of the viva exam. Use tools and strategies to prepare for the exam. Develop an awareness of the examiner's perspective. Know what to expect of the exam.
Discover what elements of storytelling and narrative can be used to enhance a profession in the sciences. Craft compelling and moving stories from your experiences as a scientist using these key story elements: character, conflict, structure, metaphor and description. Apply these storytelling and narrative skills to working in the sciences: communicating research to a range of audiences (including publics, media and funding bodies); enhancing presentation skills; telling scientific stories across a range of media.
John le Carré’s books famously explored the constantly shifting ethical borders “between us and them” in the murky world of espionage. This talk explores how the concept of spying differs in reality between authoritarian regimes—marked by internal security obsessions and paranoia—and democracies, and how it manifests itself in Putin’s Russia today. Andrei Soldatov is a Russian investigative journalist in exile, a visiting fellow at King’s College London and the co-author of Our Dear Friends in Moscow: The Inside Story of a Broken Generation (2025). Irina Borogan is a Russian investigative journalist in exile, a visiting fellow at King’s Centre for the Study of Intelligence, and the co-author of Our Dear Friends in Moscow: The Inside Story of a Broken Generation (2025).
The speaker will argue that as the most diverse employer in the country, the NHS faces the formidable task of not only becoming an inclusive and fair workplace for its employees but also promoting the fair treatment of patients in relation to healthcare access, experiences and outcomes. This workshop will begin by looking at five schisms or tensions being witnessed in relation to EDI, and how that might challenge work as healthcare professionals. It will then utilise the following three-step framework to develop a sense of self-awareness and presence that can promote cultures that build greater inclusion: Looking inward: Self-reflection Looking outward: Considering others Looking around: Mindful presence
Do you want to make sure that your work complies with the open access policy for REF 2029? In this focused online briefing, we will: step you through the changes and new requirements; provide links to further REF information and guidance; let you know where to find help at Oxford; and answer as many questions as we can. Intended audience: Researcher & research student; Staff
We are thrilled to invite you to attend the European Phagocyte Workshop taking place on March 23-25, 2026 at Keble College, in the historic and iconic city of Oxford, United Kingdom. This popular workshop series highlights the latest advances in phagocyte biology. We will bring together 250 researchers from across the globe, providing plenty of networking opportunities to encourage new connections and collaborations. Our keynote speakers will be Ana-Maria Lennon-Duménil (Institut Curie) and Steffen Massberg (Ludwig-Maximilians University) and expert speakers from varied career stages will discuss key topics including Phagocytosis & Efferocytosis; Paediatric Innate Immunity; Phagocyte Mechanosensing; Phagocyte Flavours; Evolution & Development of Phagocytes; Phagocytes in Infection; Phagocyte-stromal interactions in Disease. The programme offers opportunities for junior researchers to deliver oral presentations, flash talks and posters. Registration is now open, please register early to avoid disappointment. Visit the conference website for more details: https://www.phagocytes2026.com/ Key dates Early registration deadline: 1 December 2025 Abstract submission deadline: 9 January 2026 Standard registration deadline: 1 February 2026 Late registration deadline: 1 March 2026 Please direct any questions about the workshop and registration to Charlotte: phagocytes2026@kennedy.ox.ac.uk
Coaching skills can help you build positive and effective working relationships with all those you work with. Coaching is a highly impactful approach to people development and can support individuals to identify goals, gain insights into challenges, consider options and plan actions. They are a valuable asset to leaders and managers and can be useful in a range of workplace conversations, such as feedback, delegation and career development reviews.
COURSE DETAILS The session will cover: What makes a good DPhil Planning to write up your DPhil – structure, content and what makes good writing What the viva will explore What the examiners are asked to consider FAQs and Q&A LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of the session participants will be able to: Engage productively with the final stages of the DPhil. Apply a range of time management techniques. Identify and apply the characteristics of effective writing. Apply effective structure to the thesis. Understand what is required in the viva. Take opportunities to raise and discuss concerns.
The present study focuses on persistence in research productivity over the course of an individual’s entire scientific career. We track “late-career” scientists—scientists with at least 25 years of publishing experience (N = 320,564)—in 16 STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine) and social science disciplines from 38 OECD countries for up to 5 decades. Our OECD sample includes 79.42% of late-career scientists globally. We examine the details of their mobility patterns as early-career, midcareer, and late-career scientists between decile-based productivity classes, from the bottom 10% to the top 10% of the productivity distribution. Methodologically, we turn a large-scale bibliometric data set (Scopus raw data) into a comprehensive, longitudinal data source for research on careers in science. The global science system is highly immobile: Half of global top performers continue their careers as top performers and one-third of global bottom performers as bottom performers. Jumpers-Up and Droppers-Down are extremely rare in science. The chances of moving radically up or down in productivity classes are marginal (1% or less). Our regression analyses show that productivity classes are highly path-dependent: There is a single most important predictor of being a top performer, which is being a top performer at an earlier career stage.
From militarised border regimes to racialised technologies of policing, from extractive geopolitics to nationalist media and electoral campaigns, the grammar and practice of fascism is global. This interdisciplinary conference examines how fascism and global Africa are entangled politically, economically, and imaginatively across time and space. By foregrounding geographies of anti-Blackness and imperial capitalism as core dimensions of fascist rule, we set out to look at how racial capitalism, colonial legacies, and authoritarian formations intersect in the making of global fascist orders. The concept of global Africa builds upon contemporary Pan-African thought and practice as generative and contested geographies of thought, solidarity, resistance. We are witnessing a revival of Pan-African solidarities in activist, intellectual, and cultural spaces, including transnational campaigns against state violence, police brutality, constitutional amendments, arbitrary detainment, mobilisations for liberation, and more in Burkina Faso, Sudan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Congo, Senegal, South Africa (and so many more!), signalling renewed possibilities for anti-imperial, anti-fascist, and (potentially) anti-capitalist futures. Across the Americas, from Brazil and Colombia to the United States and the Caribbean, Black and Afro-Indigenous movements continue to confront police killings, environmental dispossession, and authoritarian repression while forging alliances that link struggles on the African continent. We are particularly interested in bringing geographers into conversation with scholars of politics, history, anthropology, and media studies. Geographers, with our attention to spatiality, mobility, territory, and networks, possess a valuable toolkit for examining how fascism travels and operates transnationally—through shared ideas, international activist and organisational networks, capital (including surveillance capital, far-right tech investors and platform owners, and artificial intelligence systems), militarised technology, and the legal, activist, intellectual, and political struggles that resist it.
This interactive workshop will take participants through the full journey of health service improvement, beginning with the importance of defining and understanding the problem before leaping to solutions. Participants will consider how to approach problems thoughtfully, experiment with designing interventions, and reflect on the challenges of making change in complex health systems. Through practical activities and group discussion, the session will encourage participants to think critically about what makes interventions succeed or fail.
Professor Judith Breuer University College London https://profiles.ucl.ac.uk/9641
TBC
Course description This ½ day course is run by Professor Helen Higham (Director of OxSTaR & a Consultant Anaesthetist at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford) and is suitable for clinical and non-clinical staff and aims to provide an introduction to the fundamentals of human factors in healthcare. The course introduces participants to basic human factors frameworks, including the Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety (SEIPS), and focuses on practical applications in the workplace to improve understanding of systems in healthcare. This course will align with the new National Patient Safety Syllabus Learning Objectives Improve understanding of human factors principles Introduce and explore a human factors framework (SEIPS) Provide opportunities to practise applying SEIPS to real world examples Course content Definition and background of human factors Human factors applied to healthcare Importance of work place culture (including Just Culture tool) Explanation of SEIPS framework Exercises using SEIPS Plenty of opportunity for discussion and questions
We examine the rapid growth of Brazil's private online higher education sector and its impact on market structure and college enrolment. Exploiting regional and field-specific variation in online education penetration, we find that online programs increase enrolment for older students but divert younger students from higher-quality in-person programs. Increased competition lowers the prices of in-person programs but leads to a decline in their provision. Using an equilibrium model of college education, we quantify that in the absence of online education, the average student would experience 3.4% higher value added. While young students benefit from fewer online options, older students are disadvantaged. Targeted policies limiting online education to older cohorts have the potential to improve value added across all groups.
Complimentary refreshments from 3:30pm in the Hume-Rothery Meeting Room. Composites with intricate microstructures are ubiquitous in the natural world where they fulfil the specific functional demands imposed by the environment. For instance, nacre presents a fracture toughness 40 times higher than its main constituent, a crystalline form of calcium carbonate. This relative increase in toughness value is obtained as a crack propagating within this natural brick-and-mortar structure must interact with multiple reinforcing mechanisms, leading to a millimetre-sized process zone. The boost in performance obtained has pushed scientists for a few decades to use nacre as a blueprint to increase the toughness of synthetic ceramics and composites. Our ability to reproduce accurately the structure of nacre from the nanometre to the millimetre scale has improved with the introduction of Magnetically-Assisted Slip Casting (M.A.S.C.), a technique that combines an aqueous-based slip casting process with magnetically-directed anisotropic particle assembly. Using this technique, we can now fine-tune the structural properties of nacre-inspired alumina-based composites to reach strengths up to 670 MPa, KIC up to 7 MPa.m1/2 with subsequent stable crack propagation and this even at temperature up to 1200°C. While these materials already present interesting properties for engineering applications, we fail to see the large process zones that are acting in natural nacre. This led us to work on a new composite system, using this time monodisperse silica rods that can self-assemble into bulk colloidal crystals to finally test the effect of order in the microstructure on the toughness. The presence of this regularity in the microstructure proved crucial in enabling a large process zone. We obtained a 40-fold increase in toughness compared with the polymer use as a matrix in a composite made of 80% in volume of ceramic, all of which is processed at room temperature. From these two studies, we can extract the role of the interface and grain morphology in tough bioinspired composites and what will be the next steps for these materials. Brief biography Florian Bouville is a senior lecturer in the Centre for Advanced Structural Ceramics in the Department of Materials of the Imperial College London. His group is researching both colloidal processing and fracture mechanics, to design more robust and durable materials based on their microstructure and not composition, with applications ranging from high temperature structural components for aerospace to energy storage devices. These studies are supported by various funding sources, including an ERC Starting Grant and the European Space Agency. He obtained his Master's degree in Material Sciences at the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées de Lyon (INSA de Lyon, France) in 2010. He then moved to the South of France for his PhD between three partners: the company Saint-Gobain, the Laboratory of Synthesis and Functionalization of Ceramics and the MATEIS laboratory (INSA de Lyon). From 2014 to 2018, he was a postdoctoral researcher and then scientist in the Complex Materials group at the Department of Materials at the ETH Zürich.
Professor Merryn Voysey University of Oxford https://www.ovg.ox.ac.uk/team/merryn-voysey
In this session we will cover how to locate and interpret journal level metrics such as the Journal Impact Factor (JIF). We will examine the tools you can use to locate journal level metrics, such as Journal Citation Reports and Scopus Sources. We will also consider the uses, limitations and pitfalls inherent in these metrics and how they can be used responsibly. By the end of the session, you will be familiar with: the major journal metrics and how these are calculated; accessing journal citation data using Journal Citation Reports and Scopus Sources; using JIF, CiteScore and SJR journal metrics to rank journals; and the limitations of different metrics, including how journal metrics may be skewed or distorted. Intended audience: Taught student; Researcher & research student
This paper proposes a new class of time varying models for which a vector of unknown parameters may vary stochastically or deterministically over time or be a mixture of both types. There are novel features to this class and its econometric treatment differs from the existing literature which typically separates stochastic and deterministic time variation in the parameters. Estimation methods for the former are often based on Bayesian resampling algorithms whereas nonparametric estimation methods are usually employed for fitting unknown deterministic functional forms. This paper develops instead a unified approach based on orthonormal series decompositions to estimating time variation irrespective of whether that variation is stochastic or deterministic. The proposed procedure has wide applicability, covering linear and nonlinear time series models as well as stochastic trends. Consistent estimators of the time varying structures are developed and the limit theory for each of the settings is established. A notable outcome is that unit root time-varying parameters can be estimated with asymptotic validity and fast rates of convergence when the unit root structure is captured by an orthonormal series representation. Other advantages include the flexibility and convenience of the approach in practical implementation. Simulations are conducted to examine finite sample performance and the procedures are illustrated in several real data examples.
Capital in modern economies increasingly takes the form of intangible capital, whose formation heavily depends on the contributions of specialized workers—such as inventors, managers, and entrepreneurs. To examine the macroeconomic implications of this fact, we develop and calibrate a general neoclassical model where capital formation requires both investment goods (tangible investments) and specialized labor (intangible investments). We show that rising intangibles renders the supply of capital more inelastic owing to the limited supply of specialized labor. Rising intangibles also change the incidence of capital taxation: whereas in traditional neoclassical models the tax burden falls entirely on production workers, in intangible economies, it is borne primarily by specialized workers and capital owners.
TBC
This interactive session exploring the personal need to address Authority, Presence and Impact, for healthcare leadership.
In this session we will examine article level metrics. We will discuss how citation counting can help identify influential papers in particular fields and how altmetrics provide a different perspective on research output. Using tools such as Web of Science, Google Scholar and Scopus you will learn how to locate different article metrics. The session will also allow you to appreciate the limitations of different metrics and the importance of their cautious interpretation. By the end of the session, you will be familiar with: using Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar to track and count citations to papers and individual researchers; measuring impact using altmetrics; understanding how to contextualise metrics against other, similar papers in a field; and the limitations of different metrics. Intended audience: Taught student; Researcher & research student
This session will help you to understand what IP is, who "owns" it, and the things to think about when you think you have created IP. Whether you're an undergraduate, masters or DPhil student, or Staff at the University of Oxford, it is important to understand your rights and responsibilities when it comes to intellectual property (IP). This session will help you to understand what IP actually is, who "owns" it, and the things to think about when you think you have created IP. Case studies will also be presented to help explain the University's policy. Come prepared to ask any IP related questions in the second half of the session, where our expert presenters will give you the official University answers to any of your queries. In collaboration with Research Services, Oxford University Innovation, and The Careers Service. The talk will be from 12:30-1:30pm. If you have specific questions, the presenters will be available to answer questions until 2pm. Note: The sign up is through Inkpath, you will need to create an Inkpath account to sign up if you’ve not already got one.
In this session we will examine metrics for individual researchers. Using tools such as Web of Science, Google Scholar and Scopus you will learn about the researcher h-index and its limitations. You will be introduced to additional metrics tools such as author beamplots which help to contextualise a researcher’s output over time. By the end of the session, you will be familiar with: accessing citation data for specific researchers on Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar; understanding how the h-index is calculated and its inherent limitations; creating an ORCID number to help track all your own research outputs; and the importance of research outputs beyond journal and conference papers when assessing a researcher’s impact. Intended audience: Taught student; Researcher & research student
COURSE DETAILS During the course you will have the opportunity to manage a project. You will be able to apply the techniques you learn to a project that you bring along. Topics covered: project initiation, managing stakeholders and risk, time estimation, planning. LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of this session you will understand more about: The importance of planning. The tools to make project management succeed. How to estimate the time a project will take realistically. The skills you need to be a good project manager.
https://profiles.ucl.ac.uk/7097-david-goldblatt
This session will provide an introduction to the production, implementation and implications of the 10 Year Health Plan (10YHP) for England. It will provide an opportunity for participants to reflect on how it might affect them and the opportunities and risks that it creates. Nick is currently seconded into the Department of Health’s System Strategy Unit that supported the development of the 10YHP and chairs a working group of the National Neighbourhood Health Implementation Programme Taskforce.
COURSE DETAILS Topics will include presenting your CV, how to approach employers, writing covering letters and interview skills. LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of this session you will understand: How to improve your CV. How to approach employers. How to write a covering letter. How to plan for an interview. How to interview well.
Uhlig Group Speakers: Nima Gharahdaghi & Pai-Jui Yeh Title: “Anti-IL10 as a cause of intestinal Immunopathology” Lang Group Speaker(s): TBC Title(s): TBC
COURSE DETAILS This short practical session will help you understand more about the career context for research staff at Oxford and beyond. It will enable you to identify the skills and abilities that you need to develop and give you guidance on how to enhance them so you are prepared for a useful conversation in your next CDR. LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of this session you will have: An understanding of the career challenges and opportunities facing research staff at Oxford. An understanding of the skills you need to acquire. Started to apply a process of developing these skills.
Narrative CVs are being adopted by many funders, nationally and internationally, to give researchers the opportunity to showcase a wider range of skills and experience than is possible in a traditional academic CV; an example is the UKRI Résumé for Research and Innovation (R4RI). Writing a narrative CV requires a different way of thinking about and describing your skills, experience and contributions to research and innovation compared to a traditional CV. Writing your first narrative CV will take some time and effort; you might not be sure about what activities to include, and how to describe their quality, relevance, and your involvement in them. This presentation will try to demystify and simplify narrative CVs by providing advice, prompts and suggestions for how to write one. Speakers Mary Muers Research Culture Facilitator, MSD Kanza Basit Senior Research Facilitator, SSD Gavin Bird Head of Research Facilitation and Support, SOGE, SSD Susan Black, Careers Adviser, Oxford Careers Service Everyone welcome, please register to receive the TEAMS link for this event If you are a student or researcher with a CareerConnect account, please register "here":https://oxford.targetconnect.net/leap/event.html?id=22972&service=Careers%20Service All other staff register "here":https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=G96VzPWXk0-0uv5ouFLPke7xLB0LNIFKuA055EWF9ZtUMDI4VEEwVVk3RkNGRE5MTjRWWDNLRFRRTy4u, the joining link will be in the registration confirmation email
Dr Charlene Rodrigues LSHTM and St Marys Hospital London https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/aboutus/people/rodrigues.charlene
Designed for medical students, doctors in training and other healthcare professionals, this experiential and practical workshop will focus on personal qualities, developing self-awareness, managing yourself, building and maintaining relationships, working with teams and developing networks.
Professor Kirsty Mehring-Le Doare World Health Organisation & St. George's https://www.sgul.ac.uk/profiles/kirsty-le-doare
Designed for research staff who are considering their next career move—whether within Oxford, within academia more broadly, or in other sectors. This interactive workshop supports researchers in navigating their career development with greater confidence and clarity. It offers participants the space to reflect on their ambitions, explore alternative futures, and engage in structured peer discussions to share insights and challenges. Participants will use design-thinking approaches to consider different career scenarios. The session then moves into goal setting and peer advice-sharing, helping researchers to build practical short-term plans and identify supportive resources and networks. Participants are introduced to key tools and services available through Oxford to support their development as they prepare for their next step, whatever that may be. By the end of this session, participants will be able to: * Articulate multiple possible career directions, including both preferred and alternative pathways. * Identify actionable short-term goals that support career progress. * Reflect on and assess their professional development to date, including skills, motivations, and values. Everyone welcome, please register to receive the TEAMS link for this event If you are a student or researcher with a CareerConnect account, please register "here":https://oxford.targetconnect.net/leap/event.html?id=23008&service=Careers%20Service All other staff register "here":https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=G96VzPWXk0-0uv5ouFLPke7xLB0LNIFKuA055EWF9ZtUNDZHUzhVQ1RSTjRJNjA4QkJTWDROVkwwNS4u the joining link will be in the registration confirmation email.
An introduction to the what, why and how of public involvement
COURSE DETAILS You will learn how to read a group, deal with difficult situations, use humour, match your presentation to the audience, and make an impact. You will learn how to get your message across so it is remembered. You will learn about timing and when you should deliver key messages. You will develop your self-awareness and understand its role in presenting. LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of this session you will understand more about: How to structure your presentation for impact. How your psychological state affects your presentation skills and how you can manage it. How to read a group and how to deal with difficult situations. How to deliver your presentation with more confidence.
More information and how to apply for a bursary: https://www.ovg.ox.ac.uk/iic Hot Topics in Infection and Immunity in Children (IIC) – The ESPID-Oxford Course is a residential training course which aims to provide basic information and updates in key areas of paediatric infection. The course is targeted at paediatric infectious disease PID trainees and trainers, including SAS, LED & Consultant doctors and all those who manage children with infections, covering topics in Paediatric infection. Delegates come from all over the world there is usually a 50/50 mix of trainees/consultants. All sessions are plenary and include a mix of lectures, case rounds, The Debate and the Annual IIC Quiz. Click here to view the programme - https://www.ovg.ox.ac.uk/iic/programme Programme Highlights: • The McCracken lecture: Meningitis, a history with Professor Xavier Sáez-Llorens Chief of Infectious Diseases and Director of Clinical Research, Dr José Renán Esquivel Children’s Hospital, Panama • Climate Change and Health with Dr Kate O’Brien Director, Department of Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals, World Health Organization (WHO) • Determinants of Future Health with Dr James Gilchrist Wellcome Career Development Fellow, Oxford Vaccine Group & Honorary Consultant in Paediatric Infectious Diseases & Immunology • Sustainable antibiotic prescribing by Dr Emma Lim Paediatric Consultant and Paediatric Sepsis Lead, Great North Children’s Hospital • AI and microbiology with Professor Adrian Egli Director, Institute for Medical Microbiology, University of Zurich Early bird Registration Fees • Earlybird Trainee - ESPID/BPAIIG/PID Member £700.00 • Earlybird Trainee £790.00 • Earlybird Consultant - ESPID/BPAIIG/PID Member £825.00 • Earlybird Consultant £925.00 • Ensuite Accommodation with Breakfast £115 per night
Coaching skills can help you build positive and effective working relationships with all those you work with. Coaching is a highly impactful approach to people development and can support individuals to identify goals, gain insights into challenges, consider options and plan actions. They are a valuable asset to leaders and managers and can be useful in a range of workplace conversations, such as feedback, delegation and career development reviews.
TBC
Delivering effective health care requires a significant amount of teamwork among different groups of workers. Team structures are acknowledged increasingly as vital to delivering value, efficiency, and quality for patient care, particularly in the general practice space. But why are teams necessarily better than more traditional hierarchical work structures? When are teams best deployed for maximum success in patient care? How does one best work within a team? What are the key leadership approaches to making health care teams fulfil their potential? This workshop will address these questions in depth, through an interactive session that allows participants to gain exposure to the best practices associated with health care teams and their implementation.
Course description This ½ day course is run by Professor Helen Higham (Director of OxSTaR & a Consultant Anaesthetist at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford) and is suitable for clinical and non-clinical staff and aims to provide an introduction to the fundamentals of human factors in healthcare. The course introduces participants to basic human factors frameworks, including the Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety (SEIPS), and focuses on practical applications in the workplace to improve understanding of systems in healthcare. This course will align with the new National Patient Safety Syllabus Learning Objectives Improve understanding of human factors principles Introduce and explore a human factors framework (SEIPS) Provide opportunities to practise applying SEIPS to real world examples Course content Definition and background of human factors Human factors applied to healthcare Importance of work place culture (including Just Culture tool) Explanation of SEIPS framework Exercises using SEIPS Plenty of opportunity for discussion and questions
