OxTalks will soon be transitioning to Oxford Events (full details are available on the Staff Gateway). A two-week publishing freeze is expected in early Hilary to allow all events to be migrated to the new platform. During this period, you will not be able to submit or edit events on OxTalks. The exact freeze dates will be confirmed as soon as possible.
If you have any questions, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
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.
This workshop will cover the basics of copyright as they apply to lecturers and tutors at the University of Oxford. It will explain the different types of copyright work that are used or generated in teaching and the rights and responsibilities for teaching staff and students. By attending this session you will have the opportunity to: identify copyright works and usages in teaching contexts; compare different types of licence available for teaching – proprietary and open; follow the requirements of the CLA licence; and apply risk management principles to the use of copyright exceptions for teaching. Intended audience: researcher and research student; staff
Can We Talk? with Oxford United’s Will Vaulks will take place on Wednesday 21 January 2026 from 11am–1pm at the IDRM, Old Road Campus and via Teams. The event includes an 11am–12pm presentation and Q&A (in person and via Teams) followed by a 12–1pm informal lunch and coffee session for in-person attendees only. Join us for a conversation about mental health and suicide prevention, where Will Vaulks will share his personal connection to suicide loss and offer insights into coping in high-pressure environments. Baton of Hope, the UK’s largest suicide prevention initiative, will speak about their mission of hope and awareness, and Frances Parkes (Staff Wellbeing Programme Manager) will outline university wellbeing resources, including the Employee Assistance Programme and the support available for staff and students. Open to all University of Oxford staff and students; registration is required. In-person seating is limited and overflow space may be used. All attendees will receive a Teams link.
*Cherry Briggs* (Independent Researcher) *The Multiple Geographies of Sri Lanka’s Climate, 1805-1953* Since the early twentieth century, the division of Sri Lanka into two distinct ecological and climatological regions – the Wet Zone and the Dry Zone – has become firmly entrenched in the way Sri Lanka’s geography has come to be imagined, both on the island and by those looking in from outside. This geographical imaginary has become so thoroughly naturalised that it has yet to be critically examined by historians of empire or historical geographers. This paper will trace the knowledge making practices that produced Sri Lanka’s climate in the context of empire, with a focus on the multiple geographical networks and imaginaries that brought it into being. Using climate as a lens, it will answer the call of historians of Sri Lanka to think through Sri Lanka’s past both beyond the shores of the island and the analytical frameworks of the colony and the nation state. It will show how Sri Lanka’s climate was produced by the collaboration of early nineteenth century meteorologists and climatologists, who imagined Sri Lanka variously as an isolated island, an extension of the Indian mainland, as a node in the Indian Ocean, as an ‘equatorial’ landmass and as part of a global network of data gatherers. It will show how the collection of the longitudinal rainfall data sets that were used to measure these climatic zones was initiated by individuals who traversed and transcended imperial space and how these zones were mapped in line with practices formulated beyond the British Empire in continental Europe. Finally, it will show how early twentieth century demographers’ insertion of the island into a global climatic schema ultimately aided the politicisation of the Wet and the Dry Zones after Independence. *Alison Bennett* (University of Oxford) *Port labour, global commodities, and material skill development: A study of the ivory warehouse in the Port of London and its representation c. 1860–1968* This paper explores how global commodity trade fostered localised skills among Britain’s labouring classes, namely through the creation of new material, geographical, and commercial knowledge. Its lens is the Port of London’s Ivory Floor at St. Katherine’s Dock (built 1860, closed 1968), and its chief focus the warehouse workers and commercial agents who prepared ivory for market, as well as the Port’s publicity department who marketed their work through commissioned photographs and newspaper accounts. As the first substantive examination of ivory warehouses (in London or elsewhere), this case study sheds light on an overlooked part of the global commodification process of ivory while also unravelling the impact of global trade on a local workforce through their development of a specialised epistemological and material skillset. It demonstrates that through their prolonged material and sensory engagement, this group of port labourers became knowledgeable in assessing ivory and its origins without ever seeing an elephant or leaving the British Isles. Scholarship tends to approach the relationship between global commodity trade and local skill development at the level of artisanal and industrial manufacture, yet as this paper shows, material skills, knowledge, and visual marketing were also instrumental to port warehouse storage and trade, adding value to one of the most coveted raw materials of the nineteenth century. The paper develops our understanding of the material and visual cultures behind global trade, port labour history, and ivory commodity chains In turn, it opens space for understanding how other global commodities were mobilised for, and marketed to, manufacturers and consumers around the world via port warehouses.
Abstract Dopamine dysregulation is central to the pathophysiology of psychosis and underpins the mechanisms of antipsychotic treatment. Recent clinical and preclinical findings have refined our understanding of dopaminergic dysfunction. MRI-based techniques such as quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) and neuromelanin imaging are advancing our understanding of iron and dopamine metabolism in psychosis. In parallel, PET imaging, including combined PET–MRI amphetamine challenge studies in healthy controls, provide an integrative understanding of the relationship between striatal dopamine function and cortical activity. Finally, I will consider emerging targets such as trace amine–associated receptor 1 (TAAR1), and the translational value of linking preclinical models with multimodal human imaging. Together, these approaches point toward a more integrated and biologically informed understanding of psychosis and its treatment. Bio Rob McCutcheon (MRCPsych, PhD) is an associate professor and consultant psychiatrist at the University of Oxford. Following a Chemistry BSc, he studied medicine, and subsequently undertook combined clinical academic training at King’s College London and South London and Maudsley. His research investigates both how to use existing treatments more effectively, and how to develop new treatments for people with psychotic disorders like schizophrenia. This involves testing treatments in both humans and animal models of the illness. Techniques employed include positron emission tomography and functional MRI to better understand the mechanisms underlying both symptoms, and effects of treatment. In his clinical work he runs the TUNE-UP clinic, a service that focuses on cognitive, negative, and resistant positive symptoms that may be neglected in routine care. Teams link: https://www.win.ox.ac.uk/events/oxcin-seminar-jan2026
Wednesday 21 January 2026 - Note different timings this week - the session will run from 12:15 - 13:05 This is a bespoke event hosted by Holm 12.15 – 12.30: Mark Coles – 15 min talk including questions 12.30 – 12.45: Simon Davis – 15 min talk including questions - Title: “Receptor agonists: The MiroBio Story” 12.45 – 13.05: Joan Gannon and Sally Sheard – 20 min talk including questions - Title: “Commercialising your research and expertise for maximum” 13.05 – 15.30: OUI team will be available for detailed 1:1 chats
The mechanisms underlying the efficacy and toxicity of anti-programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) and anti-cytotoxic T lymphocyte-associated protein 4 (CTLA-4) therapy are incompletely understood. First, by studying the programming of responding PD-1+CD8+ T (Tresp) cell populations from patients with advanced melanoma, we identified differential programming of Tresp cells in response to combination therapy, from an exhausted toward a more cytotoxic effector program. This effect does not occur with anti-PD-1 monotherapy. Single-cell transcriptome and T cell receptor repertoire analysis was used to identify altered effector programming of expanding PD-1+CD8+ T cell clones with distinct regulon usage, STAT1 and STAT3 utilization and antitumor specificity connected to interleukin (IL)-21 signaling in combination and anti-CTLA-4 monotherapy. Therapeutic efficacy of CTLA-4 blockade was lost in B16F10 melanoma models with either Il21r- deficiency or anti-IL-21 receptor blockade. Together, these results show how IL-21 signaling to TResp is critical for anti-CTLA-4-based checkpoint therapies and highlight major signaling differences to anti-PD-1 monotherapy. Nevertheless, checkpoint therapy induces significant and potential life-threatening immune-mediated side-effects, such as the liver. By spatial single-cell and transcriptomic analysis of the inflamed livers of checkpoint therapy induced-hepatitis (ICI-Hep) and spontaneous autoimmune hepatitis, we identify responding T cells as hallmarks of pathological liver inflammation and identify distinct interaction partners and therapeutically targetable signaling pathways. The presentation highlights differential pathways mediating the reprogramming of exhausted T cells downstream of checkpoint therapy.
We will have a plenary session with a talk by Professor Dominic Wilkinson, Deputy Director, Uehiro Oxford Institute; Director of People, Uehiro Oxford Institute; Professor of Medical Ethics, University of Oxford.
This lecture draws on research from the Skill Scale Group (www.skillscale.org) at the Oxford Internet Institute, which challenges the common dystopian view that artificial intelligence will cause mass technological unemployment. Instead, the project’s findings show that, as with past general-purpose technologies such as electricity or the Internet, the diffusion of AI has created a surge in demand for new skills—and would not be possible without skilled workers. Today, we see rising demand for people skilled in developing, maintaining, and applying AI. Workers with AI skills are offered on average 23% higher salaries, are twice as likely to receive parental leave, and have a fourfold higher chance of being invited to job interviews. Yet this demand has led to a significant skills mismatch, with important implications for the workforce, the economy, and society at large. The Skill Scale project highlights potential policy responses, including integrating learning into working life and accrediting informal skills.
The recent boom in Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to trigger large scale societal changes, across medicine and beyond. As we embark on this journey, it is critical to reflect on how AI can change us as humans. In this session, we discuss how AI is already changing how students learn in a medical context, and what this means for learning and assessment in the future. In addition, we consider how the use of diagnostic AI in medicine is perceived by patients and clinicians.
Across the world, governments are invoking AI sovereignty as they confront rising geopolitical tension, strategic competition, and deepening technological interdependence. Yet sovereignty, in a globalised AI ecosystem dominated by a small number of firms and nations, may not be the most meaningful lens to apply. This talk draws on research conducted with by the Tech Policy Design Centre and Oxford Internet Institute researchers, which suggests that the debate around AI sovereignty can be better understood for policymaking as AI agency—a country’s capacity to steer outcomes, exercise strategic choice, and shape value flows even while embedded in dense networks of dependence. The research introduces an AI Agency Tool that maps national capability across 101 measurable elements and six layers, spanning infrastructure, data, models, skills, diffusion, and governance. Using Australia as the first detailed case study, the framework demonstrates how national strengths, dependencies, and leverage points can be identified, and how these insights may inform more coherent, evidence-based national AI strategies. We have used the Tool to provide a snapshot of Australia’s current capability, but it also serves as a method for exploring policy options. It’s updatable, scalable, and designed to be applied by any nation seeking to build its own AI agency. The framework is particularly salient for middle-power nations navigating an AI landscape shaped by US–China rivalry, emerging regional blocs, concentrated industry power, and competing regimes of norms, standards, and platforms. Rather than treating autonomy as self-sufficiency, the framework aims to help policymakers identify where to build, where to partner, and where to hedge—helping clarify the strategic choices facing countries seeking to maintain influence and protect their interests in an era of accelerating AI-driven power shifts. Project: https://techpolicy.au/ai-agency Rebecca Razavi is a Visiting Policy Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, where her work focuses on technology and geopolitics, distribution of social and economic power in the digital age and the role of the state and international institutions, emerging technologies and implications for policy making, regulation and society. Rebecca is an independent consultant whose background as a senior diplomat and technology regulator for the UK and Australian Governments and as a policy leader for a global tech company positions her at the intersection of technology, government, and industry, where the competing interests of techno geopolitics, commercial freedom, responsible governance, safety and security try to strike a balance. She has served on a range of government, industry and not-for-profit Boards, including as co-Chair of the Digital Platform Regulators Forum, as a seconded expert to the EU Commission, and as a mentor and investor for start-ups and technology policy professionals, with a special interest in responsible technology and human-centred design.
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
*Camille Neufville* (University of Strasbourg) *The Transnational Origins of Soviet Tea: Foreign Expertise and Foreign Presence on the South Caucasian Tea Plantations Before and After the Establishment of Soviet Power (1915-1935)* When the Bolsheviks took over the Georgian Democratic Republic in 1921, they inherited, among the country’s most valuable (and little-known) assets, its tea-growing and tea-making industry. This budding branch of the rural economy had been established in Western Georgia in the 1880’s-1890’s, following the conquest of the formerly Ottoman region of Adjara. Tea culture was promoted as the perfect tool for imperial integration, as it made the landscape more « legible » through agronomy, soil sciences and plant biology, and enabled better control over an unruly and elusive local workforce composed of ottomanized Muslim Georgians (Adjarans), Greek, Armenian and Gurian peasants, and Kurdish nomadic groups. The founding of a South Caucasian tea industry was made possible by the tireless efforts of a few Russian scientists and adventurers who travelled to the main tea-producing regions of Asia, in order to extract knowledge, tools, seedlings, and even men who could help them in their enterprise, like the Cantonese tea master Liu Jenzhou. The South Caucasian tea industry was therefore a transnational enterprise from its very inception, having taken inspiration from both traditional Chinese tea farming, and the colonial tea plantations established by the British in Assam and on Ceylon, and by the Dutch in Java. But how did this transnational character evolve past the critical years of World War I, the 1917 Russian Revolution and the Civil War ? Could the tea industry survive the severing of international ties that followed the Bolshevik takeover of the country ? And was this transnational heritage ideologically compatible with the Soviet ideal of proletarian self-sufficiency ? I will show how local actors of the tea industry (workers, managers, as well as plant scientists) and local, regional and national authorities tried to navigate the hardships of post-war disorganisation, and the conundrum of having to build a highly modern and productive Soviet tea industry from the rubbles of a once cosmopolitan one. *Amrit Deol* (California State University, Fresno *A Bridge Between Empires: Anticolonialism, Labor, and the Geopolitics of Labor and Surveillance in Panama* This paper situates Panama as a critical yet under-examined site in the global and transnational history of the Ghadar movement, foregrounding the intersection of migrant labor, anticolonial politics, and imperial surveillance in the early twentieth century. Centered on South Asian laborers who traversed the Panama Canal Zone and surrounding port cities, the paper argues that Panama functioned not merely as a transit space but as a politically charged site where imperial infrastructures of labor extraction and intelligence gathering converged. The Canal, then, simultaneously generated transnational working-class solidarities and heightened anxieties among colonial and imperial authorities. Drawing on British India Office records, U.S. news/media publications, and scattered references in revolutionary correspondence and intelligence reports, the paper demonstrates how Ghadar ideology circulated through maritime routes, labor camps, and emerging diasporic social networks in Panama. British and U.S. officials closely monitored South Asian workers, viewing them as mobile political threats whose anticolonial consciousness exceeded the territorial boundaries of empire and nation-state alike. This paper reveals how cooperation and tension between British and U.S. surveillance regimes shaped intelligence sharing, deportation practices, and racialized categories of suspicion (particularly as the United States emerged as a hemispheric imperial power after 1904). Methodologically, the paper bridges labor history and the history of surveillance, treating censorship, policing, and intelligence not as reactive measures but as foundational features of imperial governance. By centering Panama, this paper challenges nationalist historiographies of Ghadar that privilege North America or South Asia alone, and instead advances a transoceanic framework attentive to infrastructure, mobility, and state power. In doing so, it repositions Panama as a vital site in the making of global anticolonial radicalism and the early architecture of modern imperial surveillance.
The Older Scots Reading Group is for people interested in literature produced in Scotland between 1375-1550. This is an incredibly rich period, featuring authors experimenting with form and language. The texts themselves are written in Older Scots – a language closely related to Middle English, but with some unique attributes. This reading group will provide a relaxed introduction to this period and language. This term we will focus on reading the Palyce of Honour, a dream vision poetry by Gavin Douglas that often draws parallels with the House of Fame. But is it purely derivative or is there something more subtle at work? Join us to find out! Please bring your own copy of the text if you can – the 2018 TEAMS METS edition by David Parkinson is recommended. No intensive preparation required. Both undergraduates and postgraduates are welcome and there are usually snacks. If you have any questions, contact megan.bushnell@ling-phil.ox.ac.uk.
Neural activity-regulated myelin plasticity is increasingly recognized as a dynamic regulator of neural circuit function shaping cognition and learning. However, its role in pathological circuit remodelling remains largely unexplored. Drugs of abuse, including opioids such as morphine, target the dopaminergic reward system and drive persistent synaptic and circuit-level modifications. Although microglia and astrocytes have been implicated in these adaptations, the contribution of myelin-forming oligodendroglial lineage cells, which are uniquely positioned to modify circuit function, has remained unknown. In this talk, I will discuss our findings demonstrating that myelin plasticity is a key modulator of dopaminergic circuit function and opioid reward. Increased dopaminergic neuron activity, evoked by either optogenetic stimulation or morphine, induces oligodendrogenesis within the reward system in a circuit- and region-specific manner. Disrupting this myelin plasticity through conditional blockade of oligodendrogenesis abrogates morphine-associated reward learning, identifying oligodendroglial cells as critical regulators of reward behaviour. Real-time dopamine recordings reveal that myelin plasticity is necessary for modulating network synchrony and ensuring a timely dopamine release required for reward learning. Our findings establish myelin plasticity as a previously unappreciated feature of dopaminergic reward circuitry that critically contributes to the behavioural reinforcing effects of opioids.
Tractarianism was famous, in its own period, for the intensity of its friendships. Notably, the founding of the theological movement grew out of the friendship of John Keble with several of his students and his determination to help them develop in godliness and good learning. Several of these students, when they themselves became Oxford tutors, attempted to formalise Keble’s method of instruction; notably under Robert Wilberforce and Hurrell Froude at Oriel and under Isaac Williams at Trinity. The controversy attached to John Henry Newman’s involvement in the attempted reforms of tutoring at Oriel have perhaps obscured the Kebleian influence and the collapse of these reforms has often been seen as a catalyst for the Tracts for the Times project. This paper will explore the founding of Pusey House and Keble College as Anglican centres of learning in the Tractarian model, and illustrate the ways in which Edward Bouverie Pusey and Henry Liddon attempted to formalise Tractarian ethos through the creation of memorial institutions dedicated to Christian learning where friendship would facilitate spiritual renewal.
Tractarianism was famous, in its own period, for the intensity of its friendships. Notably, the founding of the theological movement grew out of the friendship of John Keble with several of his students and his determination to help them develop in godliness and good learning. Several of these students, when they themselves became Oxford tutors, attempted to formalise Keble’s method of instruction; notably under Robert Wilberforce and Hurrell Froude at Oriel and under Isaac Williams at Trinity. The controversy attached to John Henry Newman’s involvement in the attempted reforms of tutoring at Oriel have perhaps obscured the Kebleian influence and the collapse of these reforms has often been seen as a catalyst for the Tracts for the Times project. This paper will explore the founding of Pusey House and Keble College as Anglican centres of learning in the Tractarian model, and illustrate the ways in which Edward Bouverie Pusey and Henry Liddon attempted to formalise Tractarian ethos through the creation of memorial institutions dedicated to Christian learning where friendship would facilitate spiritual renewal. *Ryan Blank* is Head of Politics, Harrow School & Affiliated Researcher at the Pusey House Centre for Theology, Law and Culture.
The radical urban transformation of Paris under Napoleon III left a swath of destruction to make way for new boulevards and upscale buildings. Demolitions also uncovered archaeological ruins and other disquieting finds that challenged the city’s views of itself and of its history.
Un-welcome to Denmark: The Paradigm Shift and Refugee Integration examines how Denmark’s increasingly restrictive migration policies have reshaped the lived experience of refugees and the country’s approach to integration. The book traces the political and ideological forces behind the so-called “paradigm shift”, exploring how policy, public discourse, and bureaucratic practice have combined to create a system that often prioritises deterrence over inclusion. Through analysis, testimony, and contextual insight, it highlights the social, psychological, and democratic consequences of a regime that has become markedly harsher in recent years and one that serves as a “model” for others to emulate. In this talk, I will offer a critical reflection on what it means to seek refuge in a country that simultaneously promises protection and cultivates un-welcomeness. About the speaker: Michelle Pace is Professor in Global Studies at the Department of Social Sciences and Business, Roskilde University, Denmark. She is also Associate Fellow, Europe Program at Chatham House, London. A political scientist by training, her interdisciplinary research and teaching focuses on the intersection between European / Middle East / Critical Migration / Democratization and Peace & Conflict Studies. She has been the Danish lead partner on the SIRIUS EU H2020 project (Skills and Integration of Migrants, Refugees and Asylum Applicants in European Labour Markets, 2018-2020), as well as the Principal Investigator on a large FACE (Fund for Academic Cooperation and Exchange between Denmark and the Middle East and North African region, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Denmark) grant project on Syrian refugee minors in Denmark and Lebanon (successfully completed November 2017). In the past, her research has also been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Wellcome Trust and the MENASP network in the UK. Her book Un-welcome to Denmark. The paradigm shift and refugee integration (with Sarah El-Abd) received a Carlsberg Monograph Fellowship in 2021.
Join online via Microsoft Teams by clicking here: https://tinyurl.com/bdff6tpt
Why did France lose to the Nazis, despite its defenders having more tanks, troops, and guns? How did Ukraine repel Russia’s initial onslaught? In his new book, Warhead, Wright journeys through the brain to show us how it shapes human behaviour in conflict and war. Cutting-edge research comes to life through battle stories from history: What was it like for American or Chinese foot soldiers in World War Two? How did leaders like Churchill or Eisenhower make wiser decisions? Courage, leadership, deception, cooperation… The brains with which we live our everyday lives are built for conflict: in the office or on the battlefield. How will human conflict shape our future technologies? In an increasingly dangerous world that threatens our values and success, we must understand why we humans fight, lose and win wars. So that we can build a more peaceful world through self-knowledge. Warhead’s interdisciplinary approach has received kind praise from leading thinkers on war such as Sir Lawrence Freedman, Beatrice Heuser and Sir David Omand, as well as from leading neuroscientists such as Karl Friston and Chris Frith. Dr Nicholas Wright, MRCP, PhD is a neuroscientist and advisor to the Pentagon Joint Staff who researches the brain, technology and security at University College London, Georgetown University, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the National Defense University in Washington DC. He works with governments and the private sector. He was a neurology doctor in London and Oxford, and published two edited books and many academic papers (e.g. Proc. Royal Soc., J. Neuro., Neuron), which have been covered by the BBC, New York Times, and The Economist. He has appeared on CNN and the BBC, and contributes to outlets like Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Atlantic, and Slate.
Sir Ivan Rogers explores how renewed US pressure over Greenland exposes deeper questions about Europe’s strategic maturity, unity, and capacity to defend its own interests. Drawing on his experience at the heart of EU decision-making, he examines how the Union responds when sovereignty, alliance politics, and great-power competition collide. The talk reflects on what this episode reveals about the limits of European influence, the future of transatlantic trust, and whether the EU is ready to act as a true geopolitical actor in an increasingly confrontational world.
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. In a world increasingly affected by the climate emergency it is imperative that we have coherent strategies in place to make our cities climate resilient and adaptive. We also face a public health crisis as both climate change and socio-economic factors impact on people’s health in cities and create further health inequalities. Initiatives such as ‘Marmot Places’, which recognise the links between the social determinants of health and the impact of climate change in specific urban areas, offer one way of tackling these problems, and the emergence of participatory (or people-led) approaches to decision-making through ‘citizen assemblies’ provides a possible way of helping rebuild people’s trust in the urban planning process. This seminar brings together four experts to explore these themes through short provocations: What really determines the outcomes for people’s health in the climate emergency at city level? What is the role of urban planning in developing adaptation strategies that help tackle both climate change and public health issues? What are citizen assemblies, and can they help in planning for healthy and adaptive cities? Do we need new and stronger policies to resolve health-climate planning issues at national and sub-national levels? There will also be time for interactive discussion as part of the audience Q & A. Speakers: Professor Adam Briggs -University of Southampton and Oxfordshire County Council Dr Audrey de Nazelle -Imperial College Lucy Bush - Demos Dr Rosalie Callway - Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA) This event will be chaired by Timothy J. Dixon, Emeritus Professor, School of the Built Environment, University of Reading and Visiting Fellow/Research Associate, Kellogg College/Global Centre on Healthcare and Urbanisation (GCHU), University of Oxford 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
To mark the centenary of Rilke’s death there will be a series of Oxford Centenary Readings held in the Queen’s College in HT 2025. These will be informal papers with plenty of discussion, about one poem or a handful of poems, that offer close readings and new insights. Papers will be in English and English translations will be provided for all poems and quotations (except for the session in week 4 with the visiting poets) making these sessions accessible to anyone with an interest in this remarkable poet and poetry in general.
Join us for a special evening with Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Palestinian-American humanitarian activist, writer, and political analyst originally from Gaza, whose work focuses on advancing pragmatic, peace-centred Palestinian advocacy. Alkhatib is the founder and executive director of Project Unified Assistance and a resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, where he leads Realign For Palestine and writes extensively on Gaza’s humanitarian and political realities. Drawing on both his lived experience, including the loss of 32 family members during the war in Gaza, and his academic background in intelligence and national security, Alkhatib advocates for non-violence, mutual recognition, and a viable two-state solution. * The event is for registered participants only, you will be asked to show a University Bod Card or other form of identification for non-university participants. Register here: https://forms.gle/MiyinUfJcEBUDcLL8
We are an interdisciplinary reading group which focuses on the social science, history, and theology of demons, the Devil, and supernatural evil as they relate to politics, identity formation, and social conflicts. Each week we will examine one academic paper or book chapter on these topics, gaining familiarity with subjects such as: the psychology of dehumanization, the conceptual development of the term “demon,” and contemporary political demonologies like QAnon. Hilary Term 2026, Thursdays from 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM Weeks 1,3,4,5,6,7,8: 21 St Giles (Kendrew Quad) Teaching Room G4 Week 2: 14 St Giles (next door to the Lamb & Flag) Seminar Room H Please contact Scott Maybell for the readings or for any questions: scott.maybell@sjc.ox.ac.uk
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.
This term MERG will continue reading Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. This is an informal reading group, with teas and biscuits: all are welcome! It will be especially useful for those gearing up for Finals. Please email Rebecca Menmuir at <rebecca.menmuir@lincoln.ox.ac.uk> for more details.
The Financial Times' annual review of UK Management Consulting evaluates the performance some 200 firms in 29 different industries and consulting services, only one of which is Strategy Consulting! There is therefore a huge diversity of options within the consulting world alone. However, there is a host of alternatives too, whether other client-facing services in different industries or organisations looking to recruit to future leaders through their management development programmes or internal strategy and consultancy roles. Finding Roles in Consultancy: Am I Too Late will review the consulting landscape and the skills required for and developed through roles in consulting. We will examine the options for students and alumni who are looking for internships and roles as a consultant, including time-lines and and finding options that are open. We will also stand back to consider some of the alternatives. If consultancy is sometimes described as an ‘apprenticeship in business’, how many roles in business can be repurposed as an apprenticeship in consultancy? * Which routes can help to build the relevant skillset and experience? * Are there roles that offer similar patterns of work or personal development? * And are there alternative roles that might be an even stronger start to a career in business, offering more early responsibility and the opportunity to make a bigger impact in the workplace?
This informative and practical online training session will discuss the importance of lay summaries (or Plain English Summaries) in medical research and what’s involved in a lay reviewer role. Link to event - https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/a5b679b4-5c69-4a81-b016-c7948eda329e@25d273c3-a851-4cfb-a239-e9048f989669 Who this is for? It’s aimed at any adult who would like to contribute to the research process. This session will give you the skills and confidence to be a lay reviewer when the opportunity arises. You will get practical advice from a public partner and researchers who work in patient and public involvement and research. You can have a go at reviewing a lay summary as part of a supportive team. You will also get a checklist of what to do if you are asked to be a reviewer. Speakers: Sue Duncombe: Patient and Public Advisory Group member, NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre Cassy Fiford: Public Engagement Officer and infectious disease researcher, University of Oxford Polly Kerr: Patient and Public Involvement Manager, Medical Sciences Division, Department of Primary Health Care Research, University of Oxford Angeli Vaid: Training and Inclusion Manager, Patient and Public Involvement, NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre
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.
Research has indicated that girls’ performance and participation in science classrooms in Lesotho high schools is lower than that of their male counterparts. This later translates into lower participation of women in STEM careers. It is not an issue that is unique to Lesotho. STEM equity scholarship has focused heavily on provision of institutional access to respond to this issue. My research is based on the argument that a focus only on institutional access does not respond critically to the problem as knowledge of school science is significantly impacted by the subjugated and gendered being of the knower. Research also indicates that part of the responsibility for ensuring students’ understanding lies within the teacher. Therefore, in this DPhil research project I interrogate the challenge of low performance and participation of girls in school science in Lesotho not only from an institutional access standpoint but also from a knowledge access perspective. This research is particularly relevant at this moment given the World Bank’s view that there is a ‘learning crisis in Africa’. Inspired by decolonial feminist scholarship, I use an Exploratory Interpretative Qualitative Methodology to determine how women teachers navigate and negotiate school science in Lesotho secondary schools and what pedagogical choices they make as they do so, as well as what influences these choices. I will discuss my research journey from crystalizing my research questions after the Transfer of Status feedback, gaining access into schools, collecting data in schools to grappling with combining interpretive narrative analysis with reflexive thematic analysis on diverse data in a way that responds to the research questions, all while navigating difficult personal circumstances. The inclusion of personal circumstances in this presentation is crucial given my positionality as a researcher using methodology that relies heavily on researcher interpretation and reflexivity. Teams link: https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_ZGRlZDQ5ZTEtZjU3YS00MjM0LWI4MTktYzhmMDk1NmY1MTU5%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22cc95de1b-97f5-4f93-b4ba-fe68b852cf91%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%225f581465-1def-4d51-8d4c-45a3b26b5b58%22%7d
Readings: Equal Care Co-Operative's Playbook on ‘Hats’: https://play.equal.care/equal-cares-model/hats; Laura Davy, ‘Between an ethic of care and an ethic of autonomy: negotiating relational autonomy, disability, and dependency’, Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities (2019) Vol.24 (3), 101-114.
Lesson of the week, clinical cases and research. All clinical and academic staff and students welcome. Coffee and Tea will be served.
*Programme* *Thursday 22 January* 14:00-14:30 Introduction 14:30-15:45 *Biometrics and Anthropometry* _Chair: Erica Charters (University of Oxford)_ *Benoît Pouget* (Sciences Po Aix, Mesopolhis), Anthropometry and Identification: The Origins of Forensic Anthropology *Pascal Adalian* (University of Aix-Marseille, ADES), Identification and Forensic Anthropology: from Technical Issues to Socio-political Challenges *Mareile Kaufmann* (University of Oslo), Biometrics in the Face of Death. The Changing Scopes of Facial Recognition and Dead Body Identification 15:45-17:00 *Identification on the Battlefields* _Chair: Jeong-Ran Kim (University of Oxford)_ *Linda Ratschiller* (University of Geneva), Custodians of Identity: Medical Experts and the Emergence of Identification Procedures in Nineteenth Century Warfare (1850s–1870s) *Victoria Abrahamyan* (University of Geneva), Identifying the Fallen of the Great War: Allied Experience on the Western Front 17:00-17:30 *Break* 17:30-19:00 *Keynote* _Chair: Taline Garibian (University of Geneva)_ *Paco Ferrandiz* (Spanish National Research Council), An uncanny forensic lab: the search for the disappeared in the Valley of Cuelgamuros
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.
Puzzled by PICO? Daunted by databases? Baffled by Boolean? This one-hour introductory class will offer top tips and advice on how to find literature to answer a research question. No prior experience necessary! Together, we will break down a question into the PICO format, put together a structured search, and try it out in PubMed. By the end of this session, you will be able to: explain what structured searching is, and when to use it; break your research question down into searchable concepts; and make use of Boolean operators (ANDs/ORs) in your structured searches. Intended audience: medicine and NHS; taught student; researcher and research student
The second in a duo of courses (attendees should attend the Fundamentals course prior to Logistics) that will cover the logistics of researching, publishing, and locating open scholarship resources and tools at the University of Oxford. Subjects include: what is the Oxford University Research Archive? depositing work into ORA via Symplectic Elements; depositing data into ORA-data; applying for one of Oxford’s APC block grants; registering or connecting your ORCID; how to be included in the rights retention pilot; and locating and checking funder policies. Ideally the Fundamentals of open access course will have been attended. If you’re not in a position to attend this course you can find similar information in our e-learning package (Digital induction to open access (MSD)) to work through prior to attending Logistics. Intended audience: researcher and research student; staff
We often think of “Data Visualization” primarily as a tool for communication. Yet, we create graphs and tables for ourselves and our collaborators *throughout* our analysis process. In this talk, Zan will introduce big picture principles, accompanied by specific, practical techniques, to more intentionally and effectively create data viz for discovery. Beware: applying these techniques might change the course of your research and lead to new discoveries. Bio: As an independent data viz specialist, Zan creates charts and graphs which change how people look at their data (literally) -- leading to data driven questions, deeper understanding, better decision making, and new scientific discoveries. Zan's focus is on making charts more useful, giving people the best chance to notice whatever is most important about their data... even if it's something unexpected. Zan's charts have been used by Scientific American, National Geographic, SF Moma, the Wastewater SCAN project tracking pathogens in sewage, and scientists at Stanford, Yale, Berkeley, Novartis, CalTech, and Google Research.
The coding theorem from algorithmic information theory is one of the most profound and underappreciated results in science. It can be viewed as a computational reformulation of the infinite monkey theorem: monkeys on universal computers instead of on typewriters. The theorem predicts that many natural processes are exponentially biased toward highly compressible outputs, that is, toward outcomes with low Kolmogorov complexity. I will discuss applications of this principle to biological evolution, where it implies a strong preference for symmetry [1], and to machine learning, where it predicts an Occam’s razor–like bias that helps explain why deep neural networks can generalize effectively despite being heavily overparameterized [2]. The central question I would like to ask you is how this generic principle extends to neural learning. [1] Symmetry and simplicity spontaneously emerge from the algorithmic nature of evolution. Iain G Johnston et al, PNAS 119, e2113883119 (2022). [2] Deep neural networks have an inbuilt Occam’s Razor, C. Mingard et al, Nat Comm.16, 220 (2025).
Social democratic parties across Europe have increasingly adopted restrictive immigration rhetoric in response to the electoral successes of radical right parties; however, the consequences of such accommodation remain contested. Stuart J. Turnbull-Dugarte, Associate Professor of Quantitative Political Science, will explore this topic by discussing the design and results of a study examining how attitudes may have changed following UK Labour leader Keir Starmer’s “Island of Strangers” speech, in which he adopted a significantly more rigid stance on immigration. The study compares opinions before and after hearing the speech, and concludes that exposure significantly altered perceptions of Labour, making it appear more anti-immigration and right-leaning. Crucially, these shifts carried a cost: the likelihood of intending to vote for Labour declined following the speech, with no evidence that Labour’s adoption of nativist rhetoric reduced the appeal of the radical-right party Reform UK. The findings highlight the risks of strategic convergence, showing that accommodation of exclusionary rhetoric by social democratic parties does more damage to their own electoral prospects than those of their radical-right competitors. Register to join on Zoom: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/pbFSmnaxQcq9n70pS2PBZA
This presentation examines the historical trajectory and contemporary dismantling of the United States’ “sympathetic state”—a welfare architecture that has long provided disaster relief as a core component of social provision, embedded in a moral economy of deservingness and deeply intertwined with asset-based welfare and property ownership. The presentation builds on histories of the welfare state that have connected disaster relief to welfare state development, and traces this imbrication through the course of the 20th century and the disaster safety net that developed. Today, this system faces unprecedented strain. Climate disasters threaten the stability of housing markets, while recent policy reversals signal an ideological retreat from federal responsibility. These shifts raise critical questions: How will fiscal constraints and political projects reshape the state’s obligation to citizens in distress? Will disaster relief continue to reinforce property-based inequalities, or can alternative models of housing and redistribution emerge? By situating current developments within a long history of welfare and property politics, this talk explores the stakes of dismantling the disaster safety net amid intensifying climate risk and deepening social inequality. ————————————————————————————————————————————— Speaker bio: Rebecca Elliott is Associate Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science, where she is also affiliated with the Grantham Research Institute and the Phelan US Centre. Her research examines the intersections of environmental change and economic life, as they appear across public policy, administrative institutions, and everyday practice. She is author of Underwater: Loss, Flood Insurance, and the Moral Economy of Climate Change in the United States (Columbia University Press, 2021), which was the co-winner for the 2022 Viviana Zelizer Book Award from the Economic Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association and received an Honorable Mention for the 2022 Alice Amsden Book Award from the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics. In addition to publishing in academic journals, she has contributed to The New York Times, The Houston Chronicle, and Harper's Magazine. Rebecca is one of the editors of The British Journal of Sociology. ————————————————————————————————————————————— Booking is required for people outside of the Department of Social Policy and Intervention (DSPI). DSPI Members do not need to register.
Dr James Robson is Director of the Oxford University Centre on Skills, Knowledge and Organisational Performance, Associate Professor of Tertiary Education Systems, and Director of Research at the University of Oxford Department of Education. His research focuses on the political economy of tertiary education systems, bringing together key interests in the nexus of education and employment, the critical study of skills supply and demand, innovation eco-systems, and international policy approaches to the development of integrated tertiary education and skills systems.
This talk shares the revolutionary worlds and revolutionary works of Anna Murray Douglass and Frederick Douglass and their children, Rosetta Douglass Sprague, Lewis Henry Douglass, Frederick Douglass, Jr., Charles Remond Douglass, and Annie Douglass, and their grandchildren and descendants fighting on all “freedom’s battlegrounds” over the centuries. They transformed U.S. history by living and laboring as revolutionary liberators, Underground Railroad freedom-fighters, educators, journalists, newspaper editors, authors, essayists, orators, antislavery agitators, community organizers, family builders, historians, foodways specialists, business owners, political protesters, human rights philosophers, government workers, labor union founders, and civil rights leaders. Struggling, sacrificing, and surviving together, they were “able to suffer and be strong.” They lived their lives as a “united power” and by their rallying call to arms, “Why not we endure hardship that our race may be free?”
Quentin Skinner, ‘John Milton and the Politics of Slavery’, in his _Visions of Politics: Renaissance Virtues_, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 2002), II, 286-307; Gabriel Glickman, ‘Ch. 7: “Popery,” Europe, and the Crisis of English Overseas Expansion, 1675-1688’, from his _Making the Imperial Nation: Colonization, Politics and English Identity 1660-1700_ (New Haven, 2023), 215-44 *To attend online via Microsoft Teams, please email "$":mailto:ian.archer@history.ox.ac.uk*
Professor Ottmar Edenhofer will examine why large-scale carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is essential for meeting climate targets and establishing a third pillar of climate policy alongside abatement and adaptation. The main barriers to technology development and deployment are institutional, economic, and political. Prof Edenhofer will present market and governance solutions, including innovative “clean-up certificates” and a European Carbon Central Bank to manage net-negative emissions within carbon market frameworks. By “cleaning up” the atmosphere, CDR can also help reduce free-riding incentives in international climate co-operation. Prof Edenhofer will identify planetary carbon management as the central challenge of 21st-century climate policy. Climate targets cannot be met without large-scale removal of CO2 from the atmosphere. Even with rapid innovation, projected levels of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) remain far below what is required to stay within internationally agreed temperature limits. The main barriers are no longer technical alone but institutional, economic, and political – reflected in governance gaps that undermine incentives to invest in and deploy CDR at scale. By “cleaning up” the atmosphere, CDR can also help reduce free-riding incentives in international climate cooperation. Recent research therefore identifies CDR as a necessary third pillar of climate policy, alongside emissions reduction and adaptation, and as a critical enabler of net-zero and net-negative pathways. Prof Edenhofer will argue that scaling CDR requires new market structures and durable institutions. He proposes clean-up certificates – rights to emit coupled with binding future removal obligations — offer a pathway to integrate removals into carbon market frameworks like the EU Emissions Trading System and make the transition more flexible and cost-effective. Because this system depends on long-term credibility, he calls for a European Carbon Central Bank to issue and manage these certificates, oversee net emissions quantities, and correctly value different types of removals. Viewing CDR as a planetary carbon management system reframes climate policy around the 21st century’s central task: designing the governance needed to enable net-negative emissions. Register to attend in-person: https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/events/missing-third-pillar Register to watch online: https://www.crowdcast.io/c/missing-third-pillar
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.
Few retail forms are as ubiquitous—and as culturally distinctive—as the Japanese convenience store. With more than 55,000 outlets nationwide, konbini have become a dense infrastructural mesh woven into the rhythms of everyday life. How did these stores become so entrenched in Japanese life, and what are the social and environmental costs of the convenience they provide? Beginning with the spread of refrigeration and the first supermarket boom in the 1960s, the talk shows how small family retailers fought back by lobbying for legislation to block the spread of large retail outlets. And by tracing the mounting pressures of the early 21st century— rising costs, ageing drivers, and a shrinking labour pool—it suggests that the konbini’s much vaunted efficiency masks an underlying fragility.
To join online, please register in advance: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/WWqjr8SgT_WrzTodI65cdg
Neural systems in general - and the human brain in particular - are organised as networks of interconnected components. Across a range of spatial scales from single cells to macroscopic areas, biological neural networks are neither perfectly ordered nor perfectly random. Their heterogeneous organisation supports - and simultaneously constrains - complex patterns of activity. How does the network constraint affect the cost of a specific brain's pattern? In this talk, Dani will use the formalism of network control theory to define a notion of network economy and will demonstrate how the principle of network economy can inform our study of neural system function in health and disease and provide a useful lens on neural computation. Dani Bassett is the J. Peter Skirkanich Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2016, Dani was named one of the ten most brilliant scientists of the year by Popular Science magazine and in 2018 received the Erdős–Rényi Prize for fundamental contributions to our understanding of the network architecture of the human brain. 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 11 February 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.
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.
*Friday 23 January* *Programme* 08:45-09:15 Coffee 09:15-10:30 *The Dead of the Second World War* _Chair: Benoit Pouget (Sciences Po Aix, Mesopolhis)_ *Laura Tradii* (University of Kent), Mobility and Malpractice – Exhuming and Identifying the Wehrmacht dead in the German Democratic Republic (1945-1990) *Taline Garibian* (University of Geneva), Naming as a Process: Administrative and Memorial Practices of Identification in Post-War France 10:30-11:00 Coffee Break 11:00-12:15 *Memorialisation* _Chair: Mark Harrison (University of Oxford)_ *Jeanne Teboul* (University of Strasbourg), “Names behind numbers”. From identification to memorialization of the 86 Jewish victims of a Nazi crime (Alsace, 1943) *Halina Suwalowska* (University of Oxford), Resting in Display: Ethical Dilemmas and Identification of Human Remains in Museums 12:15 *Conclusive Remarks*: *Elisabeth Anstett* (CNRS, ADES) 13:15 Lunch at the MFO
What does anti-fatness have to do with racial prejudice, especially anti-blackness? How have thinness, health, and moral virtue been intertwined in history, and how does their connection inform our understanding of the body today? What do breakfast cereals tell us about this history and its legacy? Join us to discuss these and other questions in relation to excerpts from Sabrina Strings’s award-winning monograph _Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia_ (2019). *Reading:* ‘Introduction: The Original Epidemic’ and Chapter 7, ‘Good Health to Uplift the Race’, in Sabrina Strings, _Fearing the Black Body_ (2019).
In this talk we present different modeling approaches to describe and analyse the dynamics of large pedestrian crowds. We start with the individual microscopic description and derive the respective partial differential equation (PDE) models for the crowd density. Hereby we are particularly interested in identifying the main driving forces, which relate to complex dynamics such as lane formation in bidirectional flows. We then analyse the time-dependent and stationary solutions to these models, and provide interesting insights into their behavior at bottlenecks. We conclude by discussing how the Bayesian framework can be used to estimate unknown parameters in PDE models using individual trajectory data.
In this 60-minute online workshop you will be introduced to the methodologies and principles underpinning the conduct of literature searches for systematic reviews, scoping reviews and other evidence reviews. The session will cover: formulating a focused research question; preparing a protocol; developing a search strategy to address that research question; choosing appropriate databases and search engines; searching for grey literature and ongoing studies; managing your references in Covidence; and documenting and reporting your search. Intended audience: medicine and NHS; researcher and research student
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
From poking the bear to moving the mountain: a workshop on strategic change for researchers, writers, and communicators As researchers, writers, and communicators, we often take on projects because we want our work to matter. We aim to shift conversations, unsettle norms, inform decisions, normalize alternatives, or open up new possibilities. But how does change actually happen? And how can we design our work so it genuinely engages the problems we hope to address? This 90-minute workshop begins with an overview of common theories of how change happens (and fails to happen), and examines the strengths and pitfalls of each. From there, we’ll explore how our own projects interface with the issues we care about, whether those are challenging hetero or homonormativity in popular culture or addressing the climate crisis (or both simultaneously!). By the end, participants will have practical frameworks for clarifying what kind of change they’re aiming for, how to aim, and how their work can more effectively contribute to it. Think of this workshop as a little bit of therapy for your project: there will be more clarifying frustration than a silver bullet of resolution in the first session. But you do get worksheets to take home. Dr Max Liboiron is a Professor of Geography at Memorial University and Director of the Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR), a lab recognized for its inventive blend of feminist, anti-colonial, and community-led science. Their work moves fluidly between grassroots practice and national policy, from creating new tools for plastics monitoring to reshaping how Canada understands plastics and Indigenous research. Liboiron is the award-winning author of Pollution is Colonialism (Duke, 2021) and co-author of Discard Studies: Wasting, Systems, and Power (MIT, 2022).
Earth’s plate tectonic regime is driven by subduction, but how do brand new subduction zones initiate in the first place? To get one plate to sink beneath another, deformation has to localize: rigid oceanic plates must weaken along a narrow plate interface. Localization involves feedbacks between temperature, fluid/mass transfer, metamorphism, and rheology, but these feedbacks are difficult to study directly because in-progress subduction initiation is rare on Earth today. My approach is to use geologic records preserved in large-slab ophiolites (e.g., Oman, Newfoundland, New Caledonia etc.). Ophiolites commonly form in proto-forearc settings and therefore provide the upper plate’s perspective. Where they are well-preserved, ophiolites also contain remnants of the down-going plate: hundreds-of-meters thick ductile shear zones made of metamorphosed oceanic crust (± sediments) accreted beneath the ophiolite mantle—metamorphic soles. Soles are dynamic archives of how heat, fluids, reactions and deformation interacted as the plate interface was born. In this talk, I use the Ordovician Mont Albert Ophiolite (Gaspé Peninsula, Québec, Canada) and it’s remarkably exposed metamorphic sole to test two commonly-cited mechanisms for lithosphere-scale strain localization: (1) serpentinization and (2) partial melting. I will argue that—at least for Mont Albert—neither mechanism explains the observations, and therefore did not substantially localize strain. The payoff, however, is that investigating each of these ideas showcases the power of integrating field structures, geochemistry, and electron microscopy. This approach illuminates yet less-appreciated feedbacks between temperature evolution, mass transfer, and strength that do promote weakening. I’ll close by speculating how lessons from “well-preserved” Phanerozoic soles may shed new light on how subduction may have initiated on a hotter, more primitive Earth.
As researchers, writers, and communicators, we often take on projects because we want our work to matter. We aim to shift conversations, unsettle norms, inform decisions, normalize alternatives, or open up new possibilities. But how does change actually happen? And how can we design our work so it genuinely engages the problems we hope to address? *Dr Max Liboiron* is a Professor of Geography at Memorial University and Director of the Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR), a lab recognized for its inventive blend of feminist, anti-colonial, and community-led science. Their work moves fluidly between grassroots practice and national policy, from creating new tools for plastics monitoring to reshaping how Canada understands plastics and Indigenous research. Liboiron is the award-winning author of _Pollution is Colonialism_ (Duke, 2021) and co-author of _Discard Studies: Wasting, Systems, and Power_ (MIT, 2022).
In weak-state settings, clientelism is an attractive political strategy, yet normatively fraught, thereby constituting a “legal grey area”. This study examines two key features of commonplace clientelism that may govern whether and to what extent citizens deem it punishable by the law. We posit a “particularism penalty” – more exclusive targeting criteria increase citizens’ desired punishment, and an “outgroup actor penalty” - preferred punishment is greater for political opponents. In a survey experiment with Kikuyus and Luos in Kenya, randomizing these features in a range of commonplace clientelist actions, we find support for both hypotheses and an interaction effect. Respondents prefer more punishment for elites’ actions targeting core supporters – co-ethnics or co-partisans – versus unspecified people, with small differences between co-ethnic and co-partisan targeting. However, most of the aggregate results are driven by elected officials’ favoritism in public service delivery or verbal appeals, rather than favoritism in the judicial sector or electoral exchanges. At the same time, respondents systematically prefer more punishment for ethno-partisan opponents, and more so for higher-level officials. This paper highlights that normative views towards clientelist actions are diverse, but characterized by a general disdain for any actors who more exclusively favor their base, even as citizens remain more lenient towards ingroup perpetrators.
This talk will explore representations of Blackness, racial trauma, and enslavement in two plays that have attracted controversy, Dave Harris’s Tambo and Bones (Judith O. Rubin Theater 2022/ Stratford East 2023 and 2025) and Jeremy O. Harris’s Slave Play (New York Theatre Workshop 2018/ Noël Coward Theatre 2024). We will discuss these plays with specific reference to their metatheatricality in addressing the legacy of enslavement, stereotypical representations of Blackness, as well as 19th-century forms of entertainment. While both plays daringly deconstruct ideas about Blackness and capitalise on racialised expectations to provoke a response from their audiences, Slave Play has been particularly successful in bringing Black trauma to the attention of mainstream audiences, thanks especially to its West End run. The talk discusses the implications of this success, as well as the mixed reception of these plays. Dr Tiziana Morosetti is a Lecturer in Theatre and Performance at Goldsmiths, University of London, and a Research Associate with the African Studies Centre, Oxford. She is the editor of Africa on the London Stage (2018) and, with Osita Okagbue, the Palgrave Handbook of Theatre and Race (2021), and is currently co-editing with Lynette Goddard the Cambridge History of Black British Theatre and Performance (forthcoming 2027). She is also the recipient of a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant to work on a project entitled ‘The Making of African Theatre: Academics, Playwrights, and Theatre Practitioners at the University of Ibadan, 1952-1970’.
Teams Link: https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_OGZiZTc0MjYtZjc1ZC00YzhmLTg5NmMtZjI5YTA4ODUyNGZl%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22cc95de1b-97f5-4f93-b4ba-fe68b852cf91%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%22f2ecb98c-9690-44c2-b425-c22592d86041%22%7d Biography Dr. Zafar is a neurointensivist and clinical neurophysiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital. She is the Vice chair for Quality for the Mass General Brigham Department of Neurology and Assistant Chief Medical Officer at Mass General Brigham. She is the Co-Director for the Center for Value Based Healthcare and Sciences and performs comparative effectiveness and outcomes research. Her research focuses on optimizing patient care progression in acute neurology. Synopsis of the talk This talk focuses on airway and respiratory failure management in patients with neuromuscular diseases. We will review best practice approaches for monitoring respiratory mechanics in this population including vital capacity, inspiratory pressures, cough effectiveness, neck flexor and extensor strength. The session will address indications for both invasive and non invasive ventilation in patients with neuromuscular respiratory failure. Additionally, we will review approaches to weaning and extubation in this high-risk population.
During acute hypoxia, increases in cerebral blood flow maintain brain oxygen delivery. In vitro and in vivo experiments conducted in rodent models show that during hypoxia, cortical astrocytes produce the potent vasodilator nitric oxide (NO) via nitrite reduction in mitochondria. Inhibition of mitochondrial respiration mimics, but also occludes, the effect of hypoxia on NO production in astrocytes. Astrocytes display high expression of the molybdenum-cofactor-containing mitochondrial enzyme sulfite oxidase, which can catalyze nitrite reduction in hypoxia. Replacement of molybdenum with tungsten or knockdown of sulfite oxidase expression in astrocytes blocks hypoxia-induced NO production by these glial cells and reduces the cerebrovascular response to hypoxia. These data identify astrocyte mitochondria as brain oxygen sensors that regulate cerebral blood flow during hypoxia via release of nitric oxide. Methods to study cerebral perfusion and hypoxia in rodents will also be discussed, with a particular focus on the physiological interpretation of MRI methods. SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY Isabel undertook a PhD at the Centre for Advanced Biomedical Imaging (CABI) in UCL working with Jack Wells and Mark Lythgoe to use fMRI, arterial spin labelling and optogenetics to study brain blood flow. Next Isabel undertook a post-doctoral research position with Alexander Gourine at the Centre for Cardiovascular and Metabolic Neuroscience (CCMN) also at UCL. In 2021 Isabel relocated to Sheffield soon after the birth of her third child. In 2024 Isabel received a wellcome trust career development award to study the use of hyperpolarised xenon for non-invasive brain oximetry.
Successful states maintain a functional relationship between local politics and national politics. Property rights have depended on recognition by communities and local leaders since before any states existed. To maintain unity in an extensive domain, a state needs a cadre of agents who expect national leaders to reward them for serving the state above any local connections. But investments require locally rooted investors with confidence in the state's protection, so a stable prosperous state must earn the trust of local elites. Successful autocratic states make local politics dependent on national leaders, who promote favored supporters to local leadership by granting them privileged connections in the state. In successful democracies, national leaders are dependent on approval from local groups throughout the nation, and autonomous local leaders who perform well can become competitive candidates for national leadership. International assistance for democratic development can fail when local politics is neglected.
The History Faculty LGBTQ+ Network is hosting a welcome social with refreshments to celebrate the LGBTQ+ History Library Guide. Join us for casual mingling, a presentation by librarian Rachel D’Arcy-Brown, and updates on the latest Network and WGQ events. Guests are also invited to share details about upcoming events they are organizing on the history of gender and sexuality.
Week One (23 January, Old Library) Primary: Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time, Chapters 1-3 Supplementary: Piercy, ‘Woman on the Edge of Time, 40 years on: “Hope is the engine for imagining utopia”’, The Guardian (2016); Carol Hanisch, ‘The Personal Is Political’ in Notes from the Second Year: Women’s Liberation
Seminar followed by Q&A and drinks - attend in person or join online - all welcome Systematics or taxonomy is often seen as an end in itself, but like all science it is a key facilitator of downstream studies and innovations. The results of taxonomy (including systematics and phylogeny) are the foundational cornerstones for our understanding of how the world works, and for how we can best conserve and protect a dynamic set of ecosystems for the future. My taxonomic work has focused on Solanum, one of the largest genera of flowering plants, and has involved making sometimes difficult linkages to diverse communities of scientists across plant biology. The size of Solanum, with some 1,250 currently recognised species means that assembling monophyletic groups of species and tackling these monographically has been thought to be too challenging; big genera have been something for taxonomists to avoid. But the landscape is changing, working with these large groups has significant advantages. Solanum also contains many species of agricultural importance, often complicating primary taxonomy with a superfluity of names from the past. Of course, this work has not been done alone, but with a dynamic and exciting group all of whom have brought their skills and perspectives to the task in hand. In this talk I will take you through the journey we have made, from a set of small taxonomically focused monographs and floras to studies involving genomes and advances in plant breeding. The path the Solanum group has taken is always centred in systematics – understanding species and their relationships. Large, species-rich genera like Solanum are traditionally seen as problems, but with a multidisciplinary approach that is broad-minded and open to new ideas and paths, can reveal much about plant evolution. It can also bring systematics and taxonomy to the table as critical components of solutions to today’s societal and environmental problems. Sandra Knapp is a botanist at the Natural History Museum in London. Her research focuses on the taxonomy and evolution of the paradoxical nightshade family, whose members include some of our favourite foods like potatoes and tomatoes and plants that are the source of potent poisons like nicotine and atropine and has a long history of working in the field, mostly in tropical forests. She is passionate about promoting the role of taxonomy and the importance of science for conservation and sustainable development worldwide and is committed to increasing openness, diversity, and inclusion in science. Her work has been recognised by fellowships in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Academia Nacional de Ciencias of Argentina and Academia Europeana. She was awarded the Engler Medal in Gold at the International Botanical Congress in 2024 for her lifetime achievements in plant systematics. Sandy was elected to as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2022. She is the author of several books about natural history, including Extraordinary orchids and Flora: an artistic voyage through the world of plants.
This talk will cover both the theory and practice of producing good photographs. Corneliu will consider a few theoretical aspects around what images tell us, looking at what one wants to convey, what needs to be included and how to engage the audience effectively. Rory will then move on to a discussion of practical elements in more depth, referring to photographs that he thinks make them worthy of notice and highlighting aspects of photography that can help one to take good photographs.
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.
Palestinian liberation, the future for Palestine! Join us at St Antony's College on January 23, at 5:00 PM for an insightful discussion on the future of Palestine. Let's come together to explore the possibilities and challenges ahead. This event aims to shed light on the ongoing struggles and aspirations of the Palestinian people.
Join us as we remember Bona Malwal and his achievements in Sudan and South Sudan. Organised by Bona Malwal's family and The Sudanese Programme in collaboration with the Middle East Centre of the University of Oxford. Registration and attendance is free but essential in order to know numbers for College catering purposes. Please join us for all or part of the day, it will be wonderful to have you with us however long you can stay for. The programme is available at https://tinyurl.com/TSPJan26prog. Presentations will be given by various speakers either joining us in-person or online including Dr Aldo Ajo, Dr Bashir Abbadi, Dr John Eibner, Dr Lam Akol, Dr Majak D’Agoot, Hashim Muhammed Ahmed, Hasan Taj Al-Sirr, Dr David Bassiouni and Mr Nickson Deng (H.E. The South Sudan Ambassador to the UK). Bona passed away on Sunday 2nd November in Juba, South Sudan (aged 87). He served with dedication Sudan and South Sudan in many administrative capacities including as Presidential Advisor and as a Minister. His career began as a journalist editing The Vigilant newspaper which highlighted South Sudan's political development and affairs. He was a pioneer in advocating self-determination for South Sudan. This was achieved and culminated in the establishment of The Republic of South Sudan in 2011. He was happy with this but he emphasized the important link between North and South Sudan. Bona will be much missed by his family, by his many friends in numerous countries. He will be remembered with affection and admiration. Oxford was a second home to him where with Dr Ahmed Al-Shahi, he co-founded The Sudanese Programme in 2002 with sponsorship from the Middle East Centre and the African Studies Centre at St Antony’s College. Further information is available at https://www.sudaneseprogramme.org/news
This year’s Babcock Lecture will be by the multi-award-winning author, Jeanette Winterson. Touching on works including her breakthrough novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985), her memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? (2011), and her essay collection, Art Objects (1995), Jeanette will discuss the nature and craft of her life-writing with Professor Jane Shaw. This event will appeal to readers, writers, and scholars interested in life writing, literary experimentation, and the relationship between memoir, fiction, and criticism. No prior specialist knowledge is required. Speaker Details: Professor Jeanette Winterson CBE was born in Manchester and raised in Lancashire by adoptive parents. Raised in the Elim Pentecostal Church and initially intending to become a Pentecostal Christian missionary, she began evangelising and writing sermons at the age of six. She left home at sixteen and went on to read English at St Catherine’s College, Oxford. Her first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, was published when she was twenty-four. It won the 1985 Whitbread Award for a First Novel, and Winterson’s 1990 screen adaptation won the BAFTA Award for Best Drama. She won the 1987 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for The Passion. Her subsequent novels explore the boundaries of physicality and imagination, gender polarities, and sexual identities, and have received numerous literary awards; Frankissstein: A Love Story was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2019. Her stage adaptation of The PowerBook opened at the Royal National Theatre, London, in 2002. Winterson writes widely for major publications, has featured on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, and holds both an OBE and a CBE. She is Professor of New Writing at the University of Manchester. Professor Jane Shaw is Professor of the History of Religion at the University of Oxford. She has previously served as Dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco and as Dean for Religious Life and Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford University. Her books include Miracles in Enlightenment England (2006) and Octavia, Daughter of God, (2012), and she most recently co-authored Gen Z, Explained: The Art of Living in a Digital Age (2021). Her current project, Seeking Infinity: Mystics in the Modern World, is under contract with Penguin Allen Lane. Further Details and Contacts: This online event is free and open to all. Registration is required. Registration will close at 14:30 on 24 January 2026; registrants will receive the joining link shortly after. The lecture will be recorded and made available on the OCLW website soon after. Registration is not required to access the recording. Queries regarding this event should be addressed to OCLW Events Manager, Dr Eleri Anona Watson.
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.
This talk is an introduction for staff, researchers and only available to postgraduate students at University of Oxford. It covers how to protect your data using the University’s HFS Backup Services and explains the two backup options available to you along with guidance on choosing the right service, monitoring backups, and managing accounts.
All welcome, and to join us for lunch afterwards.
Arctic shrub expansion is widely interpreted as a bottom-up (abiotic-constrained) response to warming, yet large herbivores can exert strong top-down (consumer-regulated) controls on vegetation structure and Earth-system feedbacks. Through grazing, browsing, and trampling, Arctic herbivores promote graminoid-dominated communities with higher surface albedo, compact winter snow that enhances soil cooling, accelerated nutrient cycling via herbivory/egestion pathways, and rooting architectures that can enhance near-surface soil carbon storage. We synthesise evidence from a recent meta-analysis of herbivore exclusion experiments to assess the climatic relevance of these mechanisms and the viability of Arctic rewilding as a Nature-based Climate Solution. Across studies, vegetation responses to herbivore removal are context-dependent and unevenly sampled across Arctic climates, with limited inference for colder, drier, and permafrost-dominated regions. Overall, herbivore exclusion increases shrub height and biomass and, in some systems, lichen abundance, with effect sizes strongest in warmer and wetter subarctic environments. Effect sizes also increase with exclosure duration and are sensitive to exclosure size, highlighting both time-lagged responses and potential experimental artefacts. More fundamentally, tundra-herbivory interactions may exhibit hysteresis and alternative stable states, such that vegetation responses to herbivore exclusion (the only used experimental setup in studying herbivore/plant dynamics) do not necessarily predict responses to herbivore (re)introduction. Under such dynamics, exclosure experiments may only capture reversible within-state variation, rather than transitions between bottom-up and top-down controlled regimes. Discriminating among these possibilities requires large-scale, long-duration enclosure experiments that minimise fence artefacts and explicitly quantify abiotic feedbacks using remote sensing and in situ measurements, as well as emerging causal-inference frameworks that leverage observational, non-experimental data.
In this project, Dr Sciorati treats Silkroadism itself as a tifa (提法) - a fixed political formulation that organises and stabilises meaning across China’s external narratives. Building on previous scholarship, Dr Sciorati conceptualises tifa as discursive infrastructures: patterned, state-sanctioned formulations that make China’s governance model coherent and exportable. Empirically, she examines how Silkroadist tifa are deployed in China’s responses to political crises in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, showing how instability in neighbouring regimes creates opportunities for Beijing to (re)affirm the appeal of its model through language constructions instead of ideology. Through an interpretive, narrative-focused approach, the project identifies the functional categories through which Silkroadist tifa operate and how they contribute to the transnational commercialisation of authoritarian practices. Giulia Sciorati is an LSE Fellow in International Relations specialising in narrative performance, with an empirical focus on Global China. Her research examines how China constructs and projects identity across domestic and international settings, with work on strategic self-representation, authoritarian governance, and narrative power published in leading journals. She has a co-authored book on variation in state responses to sovereignty violations forthcoming with Amsterdam University Press (2026).
Week 2 Monday 26th January 12.15pm, Andrea Selleri, formerly Bilkent University, Turkey 'Free Will and Necessity in Nineteenth-Century Fiction'
In this presentation, Paul will explore the impact of two major political changes on the enrolment of EU students in UK universities. Following the Browne Review of 2010, English universities were permitted to raise annual undergraduate tuition fees to £9,000+ for UK, and by implication, EU students. Following a referendum in 2016, the UK left the EU in 2020, meaning EU students lost their eligibility for ‘home’ student equivalence. Both changes were expected to have a significant impact on EU enrolments in UK higher education through price sensitivity, and consequently impacts on UK universities themselves. Using administrative data from higher education institutions providing full population coverage, Paul will present three separate studies exploring these outcomes. Firstly, there will be an exploration of whether EU enrolments reduced after the introduction of higher ‘home’ undergraduate fees, and if so how. Secondly, the session will outline the impact of Brexit on undergraduate enrolments, including how this played out across different institutions, disciplines and countries. Thirdly, Paul will specifically explore the Brexit effect on doctoral enrolments. The results reveal a complex set of outcomes, sometimes entirely expected, but sometimes confounding easy prediction.
This seminar will discuss involuntary celibates (incels). Drawing from a survey of over 500 incels, it seeks to understand their psychological experiences, adherence to ideology, and their interpersonal networks. Furthermore, it assesses how these factors interplay to develop harmful attitudes. The talk will discuss appropriate responses to incels, including legislative, criminal justice, and practitioner interventions. Finally, we will examine ways in which researchers (both student and faculty) can research this phenomenon ethically and while staying safe. Biography Joe Whittaker is a senior lecturer in Criminology, Sociology, and Social Policy at Swansea University. He is also a director at the Vox Pol Institute. His research focuses on extremists’ use of the Internet and how to counter it. His published work includes behavioural studies derived from court documents, experiments on social media recommendation algorithms, and the largest survey of incels to date. He also researches responses to extremism online, including by regulation and counter-narratives. 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.
This lecture examines early Soviet translations into Russian of the works of Laurence Sterne (1713–1768), the author of Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey. The lecture approaches Sterne’s prose, so far removed from the dominant aesthetic norms of the Soviet period, as an unusual resource for thinking about the institutional and everyday practices of translation in Soviet society after the Revolution and during the first decade of Stalinism. Why was Sterne read and translated so intensively in the early Soviet period, to an extent unmatched since his works first arrived in the Russian Empire in the late eighteenth century? Four editions of his works appeared in Soviet Russia between 1922 and 1940, several new translations were produced, some of which still remain unpublished. The lecture focuses on the archival papers of two translators working on Sterne’s texts during the years of the Stalinist Great Terror: Gustav Shpet (1879–1937) and Adrian Frankovskii (1888–1942). Both translators were erudite philosophers who turned to literary translation in the years after the Revolution, when philosophical thought outside officially sanctioned, party-minded Marxism was increasingly suppressed, and when the translation of literary classics offered one of the remaining spaces for relative intellectual autonomy. Shpet, Russia’s leading proponent of phenomenology and hermeneutics and a student of Edmund Husserl, read Sterne as a conscious anachronism, a writer who escapes his own time. His partial translation of Tristram Shandy, carried out largely in 1934 and interrupted by Shpet’s arrest and exile to Siberia in 1935, approaches Sterne as a continuation of the early modern comic tradition. In Shpet’s reading, Sterne’s digressiveness is treated not as stylistic eccentricity but as a reflection of a conscious biographical strategy. Frankovskii, who translated Tristram Shandy, A Sentimental Journey, as well as Sterne’s letters and autobiographical writings, sought to create a translation that would synchronise Sterne with modern analytical Russian prose, while remaining acutely attentive to Sterne’s earlier Russian reception. His sustained interest in the art and thought of high modernism (before turning to eighteenth-century English prose he translated Marcel Proust and Henri Bergson; he was also the first translator of Franz Kafka into Russian) intensified his attention to the temporal organization of Sterne’s narrative and, in particular, to Sterne’s engagement with John Locke’s psychological theories. Drawing on draft translations, handwritten notes, and materials prepared for annotations and introductions, the lecture examines the particular difficulties posed by Sterne’s learned literary play, winding sentences, and intrusive narratorial presence, while thinking about translation as a biographical strategy adopted by intellectuals working under conditions of repression. Peter Budrin is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Queen Mary University of London. He received his doctorate in Modern Languages from the University of Oxford and, prior to joining Queen Mary, was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. His work has appeared in The Slavic and East European Journal (SEEJ), The Shandean, as well as in other journals and edited volumes. In 2022, he co-edited a special issue of SEEJ on early Soviet translations of English literature. His research interests include Soviet intellectual history, book history, translation studies, and eighteenth-century literature. His book, Laurence Sterne and His Readers in Early Soviet Russia: The Secret Order of Shandeans, will be published by Oxford University Press in March 2026.
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.
Join Jessica Goodman and Nicholas Cronk in conversation with Jennifer Ruimi from the Université de Montpellier Paul-Valéry, about her recently published book, Voltaire et le théâtre de société, as well as her new project on the therapeutic qualities of drama in the eighteenth century. This event is in English - all welcome.
Successful states maintain a functional relationship between local politics and national politics. Property rights have depended on recognition by communities and local leaders since before any states existed. To maintain unity in an extensive domain, a state needs a cadre of agents who expect national leaders to reward them for serving the state above any local connections. But investments require locally rooted investors with confidence in the state's protection, so a stable prosperous state must earn the trust of local elites. Successful autocratic states make local politics dependent on national leaders, who promote favored supporters to local leadership by granting them privileged connections in the state. In successful democracies, national leaders are dependent on approval from local groups throughout the nation, and autonomous local leaders who perform well can become competitive candidates for national leadership. International assistance for democratic development can fail when local politics is neglected.
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; taught student; researcher and research student
This talk will describe the long-time behaviour of driftless reflected diffusions in unbounded domains of generalised parabolic type. Asymptotically normal reflection leads to the reflected diffusion exhibiting phenomena ranging from transience to polynomial ergodicity. If the reflection is asymptotically oblique, there is a natural dichotomy according to whether it is pointing "away from" (-->) or "towards" (<--) the origin. In the case (-->), we characterise explosion and almost sure superdiffusivity of the process, including a second-order CLT-type result in the superdiffusive case. In the case (<--), we characterise phenomena ranging from sub-exponential to uniform ergodicity. In the uniformly ergodic case, the reflected process can be started from infinity (with an "infinite amount" of local time at time zero). All of the criteria for these stochastic phenomena are in terms of the asymptotic behaviour at infinity of the model parameters. This is joint work with Miha Bresar, Juan Pablo Chavez Ochoa, Mikhail Menshikov, Isao Sauzedde and Andrew Wade.
I am going to debunk three widespread myths about the work of and positions held by Albert Einstein, based on recent work with Einstein’s manuscripts at the Einstein Archive. The first myth is that Einstein’s core insight in his development of the general theory of relativity (GR) was that gravity is not “really” a force but reducible to the curvature of spacetime. I am going to show that Einstein even opposed this interpretation, and outline the interpretation of GR he actually held. The second myth to be debunked is that Einstein somewhat naively opposed quantum mechanics (QM). I am going to show that Einstein was instead very appreciative of QM but that he regarded it, quite similarly to how he saw GR, as a stepping stone towards a more complete theory. The third myth to be debunked is that Einstein was naive in worldly and political manners. Using his travel diaries from his first trips to California on the one hand and to Oxford on the other, I am going to show that he was a shrewd observer and sometimes even a rather smooth political operator. *Professor Dennis Lehmkuhl* is Chair of Natural Philosophy and Philosophy of Science Lichtenberg Professor of History and Philosophy of Physics, University of Bonn. He is a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford for the academic year 2025-26.
In this talk, I will present recent work examining deep subcortical circuits and their interactions with prefrontal cortex during affective decision-making. I will focus on three complementary strands of research that together inform our understanding of these networks.First, I will describe progress in resolving small subcortical structures that are critical for emotional and motivational processes—such as the amygdala and hypothalamus—at the level of individual subnuclei. Using high-resolution neuroimaging, we show nucleus-specific patterns of brain connectivity that explain variance in mental well-being, including individual differences in negative affect and stress.Second, I will discuss advances in causal approaches that allow us to move beyond correlational descriptions of function and directly manipulate activity non-invasively in deep brain circuits. Using transcranial ultrasound stimulation, we have characterised the causal contribution of the basolateral amygdala to affective approach–avoidance decisions, and ongoing work extends this work to examine causal roles of prefrontal and striatal regions in affective behaviour.Third, across multiple domains, we are beginning to move beyond the timescale of individual trials to study intermediate, more naturalistic timescales. This work aims to characterise how background contextual features shape motivation, social behaviour, reward learning, and emotion processing. Taken together, our work in human cognitive neuroscience has moved from correlational studies with coarser anatomical and functional resolution toward causal investigations of deep subcortical-cortical brain circuits at the functional scale of individual nuclei and using timescales of increasing relevance for flexible human behaviour. We believe this is an important step towards understanding the neural mechanisms underlying affective decision-making across health and disease.
The seminar will be followed by drinks.
The Industrial Revolution gave us a take-off in economic growth, urbanisation, trades unions, political realignment and the 1832 Great Reform Act. What will the AI Revolution give us? How do we cope with the transition, including in the labour market?
Self-regulation enables important kinds of freedom for children: freedom from needing constant direction from others, from maladaptive impulses, and from unproductive distraction. A child adept at self-regulation can resist distractions, sustain their attention, persist with challenging activities, endure temptations, delay gratification, wait their turn, and consider the consequences of their actions. They can initiate (e.g., brushing their teeth) and cease behaviors (e.g., stop playing for lunch) that conflict with their immediate preferences or impulses. Of concern, however, an estimated one-fifth of children do not show expected growth in self-regulation prior to entering school, and a significant proportion of children at age 7 remain at levels of self-regulation expected of 4-year-olds. Indeed, our (and others’) research and comprehensive meta-analyses show at least a doubling of risk of poor academic, health, wellbeing, and economic outcomes conferred by low early childhood self-regulation. Importantly, self-regulation is malleable and any-cause improvements in childhood self-regulation are associated with better outcomes decades later. This has instigated a raft of diverse early intervention and education efforts aiming to stimulate the development of early self-regulation, yet most show small effects and few indicate that improvements transmitted to real-world outcomes. In short, we now understand enough about self-regulation to establish it as a priority target for education and intervention efforts from early childhood, yet not enough to meaningfully and reliably alter current trajectories. This lecture will discuss some of the likely reasons for this situation and overview a broad program of research that aims to better understand the nature, development, and mechanisms of self-regulation, and the diverse contexts and ways in which we can support its continued growth. Bio Professor Steven Howard is a Senior Academic Research Leader in Child Development and Education with the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. He is a leading researcher of children’s self-regulation, executive function, and related abilities. He has published well-cited papers in leading journals regarding self-regulation and executive function meta-analyses and reviews, and on their development, antecedents, outcomes, intervention, and assessment.
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.
National suicide prevention strategies propose sex-specific approaches. Sex moderates pathways underlying suicidal behaviour, with oestrogen decline implicated in suicidal behaviour in women postpartum and during menopause, and testosterone linked to threat responsiveness in men consistent with the rise in suicidal behaviour in mades form adolescence to a middle-age peak. Domestic abuse (DA) is legally defined in England as harm perpetrated by an adult towards another adult who is a partner or relative. Domestic abuse, including domestic homicide, is more commonly experienced by women compared to me, and more commonly perpetrated by men than women. A 2013 review showed association of domestic abuse and suicidal behaviour, but was limited by sample size, and by incomplete exposure measurement and outcome collection, and only studied women. Mental health services are a critical site for positively impacting suicide prevention, so I describe work to: a) systematically measure DA exposure and perpetration and b) assess association of DA exposure and perpetration with suicide and self-harm, in men and women using mental health services in England. Implications of these results are discussed for implementation of suicide prevention by mental health service providers, practice guidelines for DA presponses, and epidemiological surveillance for suicide/self-harm and risk factors. To join online, please use the Zoom details below: https://zoom.us/j/93311812405?pwd=9kbjSbEcO2fa7n7gFLZVqrChvr467B.1 Meeting ID: 933 1181 2405 | Passcode: 169396
1000 Introduction. Nikki Curry and Mike Desborough (20 min) 1020 Progress towards therapy for severe alpha thalassaemia. Doug Higgs (20 min) 1040 Platelet DNA and liquid biopsies. Lauren Murphy (20 min) 1100 The care of Girls and Women with Bleeding Disorders. Nikki Curry (20 min) 1120 BREAK/COFFEE 1140 CAR-T cells in lymphoma. Graham Collins (20min) 1200 IMPACT trial network and trials in bone marrow transplantation and cellular therapy. Ronjon Chakraverty (20min) 1220 New therapies in acute myeloid leukaemia. Connor Sweeney (20min) 1240 Best laboratory abstract: T cell resistance to glucocorticoids in graft-versus-host disease. Lisanne Schoutens (10min) 1250 Best clinical abstract: Validation of Osmotic Gradient Ektacytometry and its Clinical Utility in resolving Red Cell Membranopathy Variants of Uncertain Significance. Naim Rahini (10min) 1300 LUNCH 1350 FLASH TALK. When age meets injury: platelet function and antiplatelet response in injured older adults. Jeries Abu-Hanna (10min) 1400 FLASH TALK. Genetic engineering in myeloproliferative disorders. Roman Doll (10min) 1410 FLASH TALK. Patient and public involvement in research. Kirsty Crozier (10min) 1420 Big data for transfusion research. Suzanne Maynard (20min) 1440 From Visualising DNA in 3D to Precision Genome Editing. James Davies (20min) 1500 CLOSE OF MEETING You can self-certificate 5 CPD points for attending this meeting and a Certificate of Attendance will be available.
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.
Part of the Online Inclusivity Training for Health and Care Researchers series. An informative session on the practical tools needed for ethnicity inclusion in health research. Covering the NIHR INCLUDE Ethnicity Framework, useful resources and researcher(s) case study.
Join the Continuous Improvement Community of Practice (CI CoP) for a session led by Sheezana Hafeez from the Estates team, showcasing how CI methods are driving real change across the University. This webinar will highlight two key initiatives: “Tell Trevor” feedback campaign Learn how a simple feedback tool led to quick wins, revived existing projects and established a board to oversee progress. A standout result: all feedback now receives a response within 10 days, with themes guiding improvements. Wytham Woods permit transformation Discover how the team replaced a manual plastic-card system with a streamlined digital process—reducing waste, simplifying workflows and improving efficiency by using existing systems. The session will share practical examples of how small, user-focused changes can improve processes, enhance experiences and support Continuous Improvement across the University. Professional communities, including the CI CoP, are integral to Professional Services Together, making things easier and better across the University.
Where democratic uprisings have gained momentum, some autocracies respond by disseminating propaganda that taunts and mocks their political opponents. Instead of diverting citizens’ attention away from opposition voices, such propaganda directs its rhetoric and public attention toward the anti-regime movement. What is the logic behind it? Dr Yueng proposes a theory of propaganda as provocation. By using provocative propaganda to radicalize protesters in social movements, autocrats can discredit regime opponents and dissuade others from joining forces with the opposition. Thus, provocative propaganda can help delegitimize the opposition and impede democratic uprisings. Dr Yeung experimentally tests the psychological microfoundations in Hong Kong, showing that regime opponents became more angered, disgusted, and supportive of protest violence upon exposure to provocative propaganda. Dr Yeung offers additional evidence by tracing the 2019 Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill movement, illustrating the strategic dynamics of provocative propaganda and the delegitimizing impact of protest radicalization –consistent with the logic of propaganda as provocation. Eddy S. F. Yeung is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Oxford and an incoming Assistant Professor in the Bush School of Government & Public Service at Texas A&M University. He studies how political communication and elite strategy shape democratic legitimacy under autocracy and the psychology of conflict escalation and de-escalation, with a focus on East Asia, the United States, and their interactions. A committee member of the Global Research Association of Politics in Hong Kong (GRAPH), he has published in journals such as British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, International Organization, Science, and The Journal of Politics.
Summary: Pseudomonas aeruginosa is recognised by the WHO as being a priority pathogen. It has acquired this dubious accolade as a consequence of its ubiquity in the built environment, its remarkable ability to rapidly degrade soft tissue, and the recalcitrance of many infections to be resolved using antibiotics. However, the organism rarely lives in "splendid isolation" and often shares the infection environment with a variety of other interlopers. In this talk - a series of vignettes - we examine how these co-habiting microbes influence the response to antibiotics, and how diversity within the local P. aeruginosa population affects this response. We'll also take a look at how some unusual (but, nonetheless, very common) mutations affect the response of P. aeruginosa to antibiotic challenge, and examine the role of the biofilm matrix from a new angle.
This talk examines how relational poverty perspectives can provide a compelling foundation for pedagogically informed research on family poverty and child welfare and protection services, by highlighting the relational determinants of poverty and the ways in which poverty, in turn, shapes relationships within families, across communities, and between families and child welfare services. We argue that integrating these perspectives with pedagogical frameworks enables a detailed analysis of micro-relational dynamics in contexts of poverty. Such analyses can generate insights that inform the development of relational, critical, and poverty-aware social work models, offering guidance for more responsive and equitable child welfare practice. Our research agenda is exemplified through two ongoing studies that foreground micro-relational analysis: one examining parenting as a form of resistance to poverty, and the other exploring everyday relational dynamics between families experiencing poverty and residential care teams.
Deliberative mini-publics are currently being employed throughout the world, and it has been well documented that women are less likely to exercise their voice in deliberation. Yet the advent of digital platforms that host discussions online could mitigate this gendergap, and make it easier to test theories about the design of deliberative institutions. Increasing descriptive representation — the number of women in a discussion group — could potentially improve women's frequency of participation and quality of experience; however, we know less about how these dynamics play out in deliberative settings that take place entirely online. Here, we leverage unique data from the 2023 Meta Community Forum on AI Chatbots, which brought together 1,541 people in a Deliberative Polling exercise that took place on a digital platform. Thanks to random assignment, the gendercomposition of each discussion room varies. We exploit the group composition to estimate how the number of female members in each group affects participation (as measured by speaking frequency and activity during the session), as well as self-reported measures of efficacy and satisfaction with deliberative processes. We find some descriptive evidence of a gender gap, but little to no effects of room composition on participation or evaluation; this has surprising implications for the design of digital deliberation.
Join the Oxford Climate Research Network and the Oxford Martin School for a debrief panel unpacking the key outcomes and implications of COP30, with insights from members of the Oxford delegation. This discussion will go beyond headline decisions to explore what COP30 delivered in practice across climate action, including nature-based solutions, legal and governance frameworks, youth engagement, and the role of non-state actors. Panel: Erika Berenguer, Senior Research Associate at the Ecosystems Lab (Chair) Aline Soterroni, Research Fellow at Nature-based Solutions Initiative (NbSI) and Oxford Net Zero (ONZ) Selam Kidane Abebe, Senior Research Fellow in Net Zero Law at Oxford Net Zero (ONZ) Isha Yadav, Co-President of the Oxford Climate Society Hansa Mukherjee, Nature Programme Associate, Climate Champions (COP30) Ievgeniia Kopytsia, Associate Professor at Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University Register to attend in-person: https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/events/cop30-debrief Register to watch online: https://www.crowdcast.io/c/cop30-debrief
This study examines how speaking one language variety affects spelling in another. Classical theories predict that spelling develops from sound-based strategies in childhood to visual/memory-based strategies in adulthood, with phonological dependence disappearing as learners mature and are further exposed to literacy. We tested this with Jamaican Patois-English bidialectal speakers who systematically pronounce TH sounds (/θ/, /ð/) as /t/ and /d/. We tested 93 participants (34 adults, 59 fourth-graders) on spelling words with TH sounds versus control words with T/D. Both groups showed substantial accuracy drops for TH words (adults: 76% vs 100% on controls; children: 40% vs 95%), with over 89% of errors being systematic T/D substitutions. Reading ability explained 66% of individual differences, while age added only 4% beyond reading skill. Children who explicitly recognized speaking two varieties performed better. These findings challenge theories predicting that phonological interference disappears with development. Instead, when speakers' home language differs from written standard, it persists throughout life. Though, it can be noted that adults manage interference more successfully than children. These results have implications for spelling theory and literacy instruction. Bio: Tonia Williams is a Rhodes Scholar and DPhil candidate in Experimental Psychology at Oxford. Her research sits at the intersection of literacy development, cognition, and evidence-based education policy, with a current focus on her home nation of Jamaica. Her dissertation examines how Jamaican Patois–English bilingualism shapes cognitive and orthographic processing across the lifespan, challenging classical literacy theories and demonstrating how research with underrepresented linguistic communities advances the science of reading. Tonia has presented at international linguistics and literacy conferences and authored policy analyses on literacy reform in The Jamaica Gleaner. Her prior work includes contributions to education research and equity, through J-PAL education, Harvard’s Laboratory of Developmental Studies, and several other international institutions. Her work bridges the lab and the real world and shows how rigorous developmental science can drive meaningful educational change. Teams link: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/3825967966058?p=oaa4boDA3tu5ZnqMja
We study a decentralized matching market modeled as one round of the immediate acceptance algorithm where each applicant sends q applications to firms. Our game emulates matching markets under time constraints: agents who are unmatched after the round remain unmatched. We analyze how these markets suffer from congestion: some firms do not receive applications (an issue of coverage), and some applicants receive multiple offers (an issue of collisions). We draw connections between market primitives, including the number of agents and levels of utility correlation, and the extent of congestion in the market. More applications do not alleviate congestion and optimal quotas are typically small (in our main environments, q ≤ 3). In contrast to market-clearing analyses, we show that better screening and more correlated preferences can increase congestion and reduce match rates, highlighting the tradeoff between match quality, congestion, and rationalizing strict application limits.
Learners of a second language (L2) commonly rely on their first language (L1) to break into the novel linguistic system. But what happens when the target L2 is a sign language? One would expect that due to the modality differences between spoken (oral-aural) and sign languages (manual-visual), sign L2 learners would lack a system that could alleviate some of the burden to learn the target language. However, hearing non-signers have at their disposal a repertoire of gestures which are expressed in the same modality as signs and share the property of iconicity, i.e., the direct relationship between form and meaning. In many instances signs and gestures may overlap in form and meaning due to their iconic links to the concept they represent. In this talk, I will present behavioural and electrophysiological evidence showing that at the earliest stages of sign L2 learning, hearing adults fall back on their gestural representation to access the meaning of signs never seen before. I will argue that iconic gestures may function as ‘manual cognates’ that assist making form-meaning associations with a novel sign L2 lexicon. Teams link: https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3aM_SoBsI8nakThXNUxEguh57-GSvT6JopDdhFnEBgr3I1%40thread.tacv2/1768324296999?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22cc95de1b-97f5-4f93-b4ba-fe68b852cf91%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%22e0e2c03d-d313-4dab-bd7c-afbd83792648%22%7d
Few of us like the idea of ‘networking’. But we know that forging good relationships helps us understand how things work in new spheres of research or employment, and can open doors. Come along for an hour of myth-busting insights and tips on effective networking through various mechanisms including social media.
Would you like to shape policy in a particular sector? Working in a Think Tank can be exciting, influential and very fulfilling for those seeking to have impact through their work. Through conducting research and generating novel ideas, Think Tanks influence policies, foster innovation, and contribute to global discourse across broad topics from agriculture and technology to social care and economics. This careers advisor-led session will explore the function and diversity of Think Tanks, discuss how to research routes into careers within Think Tanks, and highlight key skills and experience required for pursuing employment.
Large-scale population-based samples of genotyped individuals have transformed our understanding of the genetic and environmental causes of health and disease. A major advantage of molecular genetic data over other observational designs is its use for causal inference by exploiting the random transmission of genetic variants from parents to offspring as a natural experiment—an approach known as Mendelian randomization. Most molecular genetic studies have relied on samples of unrelated individuals, with relatedness viewed primarily as a technical complication and potential source of bias. Mendelian randomization studies in these samples implicitly assume that the random allocation of variants within families also holds at the population level. However, a growing body of evidence from genotyped siblings and parent–offspring trios suggests this assumption is often violated, with population-based estimates susceptible to bias from population structure, assortative mating, and dynastic effects. These problems are compounded when using diverse samples, and larger samples of unrelated individuals will only yield more precise, but equally biased, estimates. In this talk, I will first summarise evidence from family-based studies demonstrating the magnitude and pervasiveness of these biases. I will then argue that expanding the collection and use of family-based molecular genetic data is essential for improving causal inference in genetics. Finally, I will discuss the strengths and limitations of specific family-based designs, and what they can—and cannot—tell us about the causes of health and disease. Join the meeting online https://shorturl.fm/Yb0nG
This is a hybrid seminar. In person: Lecture Theatre, Kennedy Institute, Old Road Campus Via Zoom: Please register in advance for this meeting: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/QlW9LBlvR4ywFI32XHRImw After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
'Honorary labour': Women’s Labour and the Political Economy of Care Bhanupriya Rao (Behanbox) 1 million women form the edifice of India's care and health infrastructure. Yet, they are not employees of the state. They are designated as 'volunteers' and paid an 'honorarium'. Drawing on the investigative journalism and data-driven archives of Behanbox's "ASHA Story", my talk examines the lived realities of India's care providers and how the "honorary" status of frontline health workers (ASHAs and Anganwadis) serves as a legal and economic mechanism for state-sanctioned exploitation and feminised notions of care institutionalised in policy and governance. Bhanupriya Rao is the founder of Behanbox-a feminist digital platform that does deep dive reportage on issues from a lens of gender and marginality in India. She is a passionate advocate for just and democratic governance and policy making. For two decades, she had been involved in grassroots movements like Right to Food, Work and Information and working with civil society groups in strengthening governance and welfare delivery systems. Subsidising Chocolate: Unfree Labour and Everyday Exploitation in West Africa’s Cocoa Economies Michael E. Odijie (Oxford) This talk draws on my forthcoming book project on labour exploitation in West and Central African cocoa economies to rethink “unfree labour” beyond the language of exceptional criminality. I argue that unfreedom is often produced structurally—through low and volatile farm incomes, seasonal labour bottlenecks, frontier expansion, and systems of intermediation that blur responsibility and make exit costly for workers. These conditions generate a spectrum of coercive ties, including indebtedness, wage withholding, dependency on patrons or recruiters, and the normalisation of unpaid family and children’s work as a coping strategy. In conversation with labour struggles in India’s care economy, the talk offers a cross-regional lens on how essential work becomes systematically undervalued—and what a worker-centred approach to reform would require. Dr Michael Ehis Odijie is an Associate Professor of African Studies and African History, holding a joint appointment between the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies and the Faculty of History. He is Nigerian, and his research focuses on a range of historical and contemporary themes in West Africa, including local networks against slavery and labour exploitation, the cocoa value chain, EU-Africa relations, and the politics of development.
This talk examines how relational poverty perspectives can provide a compelling foundation for pedagogically informed research on family poverty and child welfare and protection services, by highlighting the relational determinants of poverty and the ways in which poverty, in turn, shapes relationships within families, across communities, and between families and child welfare services. We argue that integrating these perspectives with pedagogical frameworks enables a detailed analysis of micro-relational dynamics in contexts of poverty. Such analyses can generate insights that inform the development of relational, critical, and poverty-aware social work models, offering guidance for more responsive and equitable child welfare practice. Our research agenda is exemplified through two ongoing studies that foreground micro-relational analysis: one examining parenting as a form of resistance to poverty, and the other exploring everyday relational dynamics between families experiencing poverty and residential care teams.
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.
Over the past three years, we have developed The Learning Collective (TLC), a community of 70+ learners from across the UK and overseas. There are currently six groups that meet physically and one online group (all venues linked via Zoom). Our approach pays close attention to content, but also to what happens at the edges of learning - the often-overlooked moments in community where formation takes root. Join us for a conversation about attentiveness as we explore four key areas: The preparation and reflection that happen before and after each session. The careful curation of both physical and online learning spaces. The building of community and shared formation between sessions. The individual needs and development of each learner throughout the programme. Rev Jane Day is an ordained Baptist Minister, Lecturer at Regent’s Park College in Community Learning. Jane has recently co-led a three-year participatory research project exploring the missional, theological and structural obstacles women in Baptist ministry experience. Jane’s current focus is on overseeing The Learning Collective (TLC) alongside her doctoral studies on the ripple impacts of accompaniment. Dr Alan Kerry worked as an NHS GP, trainer, and training programme director for 25 years. He thought he’d retired in 2018 but COVID briefly spoiled that idyll before he finally hung up his stethoscope and studied for a Masters in Theology at Bristol Baptist College. He now works part-time as an administrator for Regent’s Park College, mainly with the Centre for Baptist Studies. He loves being a grandad.
Remove and then reintroduce wolves to Yellowstone and the ecosystem rewires itself each time; perturb lion numbers in the Serengeti and not a lot happens. Release guppies from predation in the streams of Trinidad and they repeatedly and rapidly evolve in their absence; do the same to Killifish and they do not appear much affected. Release passerines and pigeons from the mainland onto predator-free islands and they adhere to the island rule; other groups, such as reptiles, do follow this widespread biogeographical pattern. When, why and how does predation drive ecology and evolution? Can we generalize?
15:00-15:30 Dr Pedro Durao, "Targeting transcription elongation to modulate the immune surveillance of emergent prostate cancer'", followed by Q&A 15:30-16:00 Dr Felipe Galvez-Cancino, "Treg targeting reprograms the innate and adaptive immune microenvironment in glioblastoma", followed by Q&A 16:00 Networking coffee
Join us at Oxford Edge for a Humanities Beyond Academia Skill Workshop with *Dr Pegram Harrison*. This session will focus on "Skills for Selling", teaching valuable skills on how to sell your ideas and products. All welcome.
Details to be added shortly
Hybrid. Email oxchildpsych@psych.ox.ac.uk to request the link to attend online.
_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. *The Lecture will be followed by a wine reception*.
Alberto Vergara is a political scientist. He is a professor at the department of social sciences at the Universidad del Pacífico (Lima, Peru). Among his recent books: Moder Peru: a new history(edited with Paulo Drinot, Duke University Press, 2025); Peru Global: explicar el Perú con el mundo (edited with Adrián Lerner, Fondo editorial de la Universidad del Pacífico, 2025); Repúblicas defraudadas: Puede América Latina escapar de su atasco? (Crítica, 2023).
Rob will perform a short improvisation using instruments created during a workshop with Ruskin BFA and MFA students, before describing a selection of related sound art projects. Framed through listening, composing, performing, the presentation outlines a creative process in which playful experimentation becomes the work itself. Rob Shuttleworth is an artist whose work engages with the potential of accessible techniques and materials, highlighting the process of making as a language of expression. He performs and composes as Haddow, improvising with home-made instruments and found sounds, co-produces SAOM, a platform live sound art and music with no barrier to entry and works as an illustrator/designer for various music related projects.
This paper examines how electoral losers respond to election outcomes, a cornerstone of democratic theory in which regime legitimacy depends on the consent of the losers. Empirically, we focus on Spain, a highly polarized democracy that experienced protests during the 2023 government formation process. We analyse the factors that erode citizens’ willingness to accept electoral defeat, with particular attention to political polarization and its attitudinal consequences. The paper also explores whether electoral loss contributes to the emergence of illiberal attitudes among voters. Using individual-level panel data collected over more than a year, we show that the parliamentary agreement forged by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to secure his investiture led voters of opposition parties to significantly reduce their willingness to accept being governed by the resulting government. We further find that right-wing voters became more accepting of candidates willing to limit political pluralism, although this shift did not translate into greater support for openly authoritarian leaders. These findings show how polarized contexts can weaken democratic consent and create openings for illiberal attitudes, with important implications for democratic stability in consolidated democracies.
The seminars will take place on Tuesdays during term time, from 5:00 to 6:30 p.m. at Corpus Christi College in Merton Street. Please ask the porters for directions. No registration is required. For more details: https://tolkien50.web.ox.ac.uk/event/tolkien-seminars-ht-2026
Widely hailed as a global pioneer in anti-trafficking, the Philippines offers a revealing lens on the unintended consequences of “protective” governance. This talk unsettles assumptions about anti-trafficking as a straightforward human rights victory and explains how carceral and donor-driven interventions have intensified the precarity of sex workers and undermined their agency. Drawing on findings from a collaborative ethnography with sex workers in the Philippines, it foregrounds vernacular forms of resistance by sex workers and raises complex questions about feminist engagements with the state on questions of labour, gender, rights, and sexual violence.
This seminar highlights the role of business model research for solar powered mobility. While much of the current focus is on two iconic business models, home charging with privately owned solar PV and public charging on the road, the convergence of energy and mobility offers a wealth of additional opportunities for customer-centric business models. The seminar discusses how business model innovation moves beyond the two icons. Two current research projects are presented in more detail: The first looks at efficiency of the EV sales process at car dealerships. The second project investigates how specifics of large e-mobility fleets influence optimisation strategies in electric power and energy reserve trading.
Herin Han (Magdalen) - Title TBC Chloë Olliff (St Cross) - Alternative Futures: Shakespeare’s Princes in Richard III and King John
27 January, 5.30pm (room 00.079, Schwarzman Centre) Lynn Festa (Rutgers University), 'The Novel’s Lost Causes'
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 Alfred Landecker Holocaust Memorial Lecture is hosted by the Blavatnik School of Government each year to mark United Nations Holocaust Remembrance Day. This year’s lecture, delivered by journalist and historian Anne Applebaum, is based on her new book Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World. The book offers an alarming account of how autocracies work together to undermine the democratic world, and how we should organise to defeat them. The lecture is chaired by Ngaire Woods, Dean of the Blavatnik School of Government and Professor of Global Economic Governance at Oxford University. Anne’s lecture is followed by a moderated Q&A session and a drinks reception. Anne Applebaum: Anne Applebaum is a staff writer for The Atlantic and a Pulitzer-prize winning historian. She is also a Senior Fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and the SNF Agora Institute. She was a Washington Post columnist for more than fifteen years and a member of the editorial board. She has also worked as the Foreign and Deputy Editor of the Spectator magazine in London, and as a columnist at Slate as well as the Daily and Sunday Telegraphs. Anne Applebaum is also the author of Iron Curtain, Gulag: A History, and Red Famine, all of which have appeared in more than two dozen translations, including all major European languages. About the lecture: The Alfred Landecker Memorial Lecture, held each year to mark United Nations Holocaust Remembrance Day, is delivered in partnership with the Alfred Landecker Foundation. The lecture is an integral part of the Alfred Landecker Programme at the Blavatnik School of Government, which investigates the rights and interests of minorities and vulnerable groups, exploring, in particular, the values and institutions that underpin democratic society.
This Weeks Focus: Lines in the Sand and Among the Orange Groves. Territorial fragmentation and the politics of land across 1916, 1948, and 1967. This reading group examines the political, geographic, economic, cultural, and linguistic fragmentations that have shaped Palestinian life over the past century, from the West Bank, Gaza, and the ’48 territories to the multiple Palestinian diasporas. By engaging with scholarship across history, political theory, and cultural studies, this reading group interrogates how these divisions have been produced, institutionalised, and normalised, and how they continue to shape Palestinian belongings, identities, and futures. Our aim is to consider both the unity that persists within fragmentation and the fragmentation that structures the very notion of Palestine. Central Question: How are ideas of Palestine and Palestinian collective identity shaped, challenged, and rearticulated under conditions of fragmentation? Structure: The group will convene biweekly throughout Hilary and Trinity Terms 2026, with each session lasting two hours
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.
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 and NHS; taught student; researcher and research student
*Please email "$":mailto:mori.reithmayr@history.ox.ac.uk to join the reading group mailing list.* *Session Theme: Historical fiction* _Latest Intersections: Intertwined Histories of Sexuality, Gender, and Race in the United States_ is a collaborative reading group open to all. Each session is led by a different convenor, structured around a theme. You are welcome to read the suggested text, or any other recent text related to the theme. *Suggested texts:* * Percival Everett's _James_ (2024) * Margaret Atwood's 'In Search of Alias Grace: On Writing Canadian Historical Fiction', _The American Historical Review_ 103/5 (1998)
Parks Group Speaker: Tom Parks Title: Strep A Disease - Lessons From The Host Bull Group Speakers: Katherine Bull and Rui Qi Title: Mapping Glomerular Injury States and Trajectories in IgA Nephropathy
Are you interested in getting involved in teaching but don’t know how? This session will introduce the teaching possibilities at Oxford in the Medical Sciences division and how to make a start through the skills training opportunities to prepare you for teaching.
*Daika Kaba* (Hitotsubashi University) *Between Local Race and Global FascismL the Second Italo-Ethiopian War and Interracial movements in Harlem, New York* The Iranian People’s Fadai Guerrillas (IPFG) and the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) built and maintained extensive transnational networks throughout the Middle East in the lead-up to the 1979 Iranian Revolution, sending activists to Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Libya, Turkey, Oman, and South Yemen. These guerrillas forged relationships with regional governments and liberation movements alike, through which they gained access to military training, created arms-smuggling channels, and established their own radio stations. This paper, thus, explores two questions: firstly, how Iranian guerrillas established these transnational relationships, and, secondly, how these relationships influenced both Iranian guerrilla activism and the evolution of the Iranian revolutionary movement as a whole. These relationships were formed largely through contingent processes, emerging from chance encounters or the personal decisions of rank-and-file activists rather than through organisational design or intent. Accordingly, this paper adopts a micro-level approach that foregrounds activists’ individual trajectories across borders, rather than the top-down, teleological perspectives that have characterised much of the scholarship on the Iranian Revolution. This focus on individual-level processes reveals the impactful nature of these relationships: they both enabled these activists to operationalise previously abstract revolutionary theory and prompted porousness and collaboration across political divides amongst Iranian revolutionaries based abroad. Further, these relationships, though initially pragmatic in origin, evolved into emotionally powerful bonds between Iranian activists and their foreign allies. These affective ties – rooted in a commitment to each other’s liberation – both facilitated the exchange of material support, crucial to sustaining the guerrilla struggle inside of Iran, and, conversely, led Iranians to participate in various regional conflicts alongside their non-Iranian counterparts. Given its focus on individual trajectories, this study relies on a wide range of sources, including memoirs, oral history interviews, and archival sources, such as organisational pamphlets and publications. *Ashkan Hashemipour* (Oxford) *Between Iran and the World: The transnational dimensions of the Iranian guerrilla movement (1963-1979)* The Iranian People’s Fadai Guerrillas (IPFG) and the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) built and maintained extensive transnational networks throughout the Middle East in the lead-up to the 1979 Iranian Revolution, sending activists to Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Libya, Turkey, Oman, and South Yemen. These guerrillas forged relationships with regional governments and liberation movements alike, through which they gained access to military training, created arms-smuggling channels, and established their own radio stations. This paper, thus, explores two questions: firstly, how Iranian guerrillas established these transnational relationships, and, secondly, how these relationships influenced both Iranian guerrilla activism and the evolution of the Iranian revolutionary movement as a whole. These relationships were formed largely through contingent processes, emerging from chance encounters or the personal decisions of rank-and-file activists rather than through organisational design or intent. Accordingly, this paper adopts a micro-level approach that foregrounds activists’ individual trajectories across borders, rather than the top-down, teleological perspectives that have characterised much of the scholarship on the Iranian Revolution. This focus on individual-level processes reveals the impactful nature of these relationships: they both enabled these activists to operationalise previously abstract revolutionary theory and prompted porousness and collaboration across political divides amongst Iranian revolutionaries based abroad. Further, these relationships, though initially pragmatic in origin, evolved into emotionally powerful bonds between Iranian activists and their foreign allies. These affective ties – rooted in a commitment to each other’s liberation – both facilitated the exchange of material support, crucial to sustaining the guerrilla struggle inside of Iran, and, conversely, led Iranians to participate in various regional conflicts alongside their non-Iranian counterparts. Given its focus on individual trajectories, this study relies on a wide range of sources, including memoirs, oral history interviews, and archival sources, such as organisational pamphlets and publications.
Daiki Kaba (Hitotsubashi University), Between Local Race and Global Fascism: The Second Italo-Ethiopian War and Interracial movements in Harlem, New York When Mussolini invaded Ethiopia in 1935, the conflict instantly crossed the Atlantic to Harlem, New York. In this neighborhood, where Italian immigrants and African Americans lived in uneasy proximity, the war was not a distant foreign policy crisis but a visceral domestic upheaval. This paper explores how the war disrupted the traditional "Black versus White" racial binary, revealing instead a complex triangular conflict involving fascist-aligned Italians, anti-fascist Italian workers, and Black activists. While preexisting narratives often portray Italian Americans as unifying around ethnic pride and whiteness, this study highlights deep internal fractures. Fascist sympathizers in US coordinated with the Mussolini regime to assert an imperial identity, effectively claiming "whiteness" through support for colonial violence. In stark contrast, anti-fascist Italian radicals defied these ethnic boundaries. Drawing on multilingual archives, including Italian anarchist newspapers and African American press, I reconstruct how Black radicals and organizers seized this opening, forging pragmatic alliances with Italian anti-fascists. Crucially, this alliance fostered a shared geopolitical analysis: both anti-fascist Italians and Black radicals connected Mussolini’s aggression in Ethiopia with Japan’s invasion of China, viewing them as parallel manifestations of the same imperialist threat. This global perspective endowed the mobilization for Ethiopia with a distinctly transnational nature. By tracing these dynamics, the study demonstrates that the universalist language of imperialism was sharpened in the streets of Harlem, where activists linked their local fight against racial oppression to a worldwide struggle against fascist expansion. By grounding transnational history in the streets of Harlem, this study illustrates how global conflicts are metabolized at the local level, forging new alignments of race and class. Ashkan Hashemipour (University of Oxford), Between Iran and the World: The transnational dimensions of the Iranian guerrilla movement (1963-1979) The Iranian People’s Fadai Guerrillas (IPFG) and the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) built and maintained extensive transnational networks throughout the Middle East in the lead-up to the 1979 Iranian Revolution, sending activists to Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Libya, Turkey, Oman, and South Yemen. These guerrillas forged relationships with regional governments and liberation movements alike, through which they gained access to military training, created arms-smuggling channels, and established their own radio stations. This paper, thus, explores two questions: firstly, how Iranian guerrillas established these transnational relationships, and, secondly, how these relationships influenced both Iranian guerrilla activism and the evolution of the Iranian revolutionary movement as a whole. These relationships were formed largely through contingent processes, emerging from chance encounters or the personal decisions of rank-and-file activists rather than through organisational design or intent. Accordingly, this paper adopts a micro-level approach that foregrounds activists’ individual trajectories across borders, rather than the top-down, teleological perspectives that have characterised much of the scholarship on the Iranian Revolution. This focus on individual-level processes reveals the impactful nature of these relationships: they both enabled these activists to operationalise previously abstract revolutionary theory and prompted porousness and collaboration across political divides amongst Iranian revolutionaries based abroad. Further, these relationships, though initially pragmatic in origin, evolved into emotionally powerful bonds between Iranian activists and their foreign allies. These affective ties – rooted in a commitment to each other’s liberation – both facilitated the exchange of material support, crucial to sustaining the guerrilla struggle inside of Iran, and, conversely, led Iranians to participate in various regional conflicts alongside their non-Iranian counterparts. Given its focus on individual trajectories, this study relies on a wide range of sources, including memoirs, oral history interviews, and archival sources, such as organisational pamphlets and publications.
The Older Scots Reading Group is for people interested in literature produced in Scotland between 1375-1550. This is an incredibly rich period, featuring authors experimenting with form and language. The texts themselves are written in Older Scots – a language closely related to Middle English, but with some unique attributes. This reading group will provide a relaxed introduction to this period and language. This term we will focus on reading the Palyce of Honour, a dream vision poetry by Gavin Douglas that often draws parallels with the House of Fame. But is it purely derivative or is there something more subtle at work? Join us to find out! Please bring your own copy of the text if you can – the 2018 TEAMS METS edition by David Parkinson is recommended. No intensive preparation required. Both undergraduates and postgraduates are welcome and there are usually snacks. If you have any questions, contact megan.bushnell@ling-phil.ox.ac.uk.
Psychosis is a core feature of severe mental illness, yet its biological basis remains poorly understood. This talk presents a cross-species research programme combining behavioural paradigms, computational modelling, circuit neuroscience and immunology to identify mechanistic treatment targets. We developed a paradigm to measure hallucination-like perception in both humans and mice, revealing key roles for dopamine and acetylcholine. We also established a novel mouse model of autoimmune psychosis, showing how brain-reactive antibodies can disrupt circuits and behaviour and how antipsychotic drugs modulate autoimmune processes. Ongoing work in humans and mice investigates how neural and immune mechanisms interact to drive psychosis and shape perception.
Puzzled by PICO? Daunted by databases? Baffled by Boolean? This one-hour introductory class will offer top tips and advice on how to find literature to answer a research question. No prior experience necessary! Together, we will break down a question into the PICO format, put together a structured search, and try it out in PubMed. By the end of this session, you will be able to: explain what structured searching is, and when to use it; break your research question down into searchable concepts; and make use of Boolean operators (ANDs/ORs) in your structured searches. Intended audience: medicine and NHS; taught student; researcher and research student
About this series: This series will feature master classes, seminars, workshops and talks with Laura Rival, research collaborators and colleagues, throughout academic year 2025-2026. Beginning in Michaelmas term 2025, the theme for the term, in answer to the series question, was 'In Latin America, by Greening the State at the Top and from Below'. In Hilary term, the theme is 'By Knowing Nature Differently'. In Trinity term, the theme will be 'By Imagining a New Civilization and Building the Next Political Economic Order'.
About the speakers Dr Socé Fall served as Assistant Director-General for Emergency Response at the World Health Organization where he played a key role in coordinating global responses to major epidemics. He was born in Dakar and holds degrees in medicine, public health, and epidemiology. He has dedicated his career to combating infectious diseases, strengthening health systems, and enhancing pandemic preparedness, with field experience in over 50 countries. He recently came back to Senegal to take over as Director of IPD and will visit the PSI, Oxford, with his colleagues Dr Cheikh Tidiane Diagne, MD DiaTropix, IPD, Senegal, and Dr Joe Fitchett, Conseiller Biotechnologie, IPD, Senegal, to strengthen strategic partnerships. Dr Emily Adams is an Associate Professor at the Pandemic Sciences Institute, University of Oxford, working on the development of diagnostics through to implementation focusing on diseases with pandemic potential. She is also Chief Global Health Officer at GADx, a social enterprise company for diagnostics in the UK where she leads the global health portfolio.
Nineteenth-century scholarship often argued that Christianity succeeded through the Hellenization of its theology, replacing Jewish national and terrestrial eschatology with Platonic spiritual interpretation. Robert Wilken's The Land Called Holy (1992) fundamentally disrupted this narrative for the patristic period, demonstrating that Christian engagement with Jerusalem and sacred geography intensified after the fourth century rather than disappearing. By contrast, New Testament scholarship’s consideration of eschatology long maintained the spiritualization thesis with a surprising consistency, arguing that earliest Christianity systematically reoriented Israel's territorial hopes toward Christological and ecclesial categories. This lecture sets out to interrogate this assumption of a unilateral Christianization or spiritualization in the earliest texts. It will suggest instead that in Jesus and Paul, the Evangelists, and even Revelation, there are signs that concrete earthly and universal heavenly hopes for Jerusalem continue to coexist in Christianity's canonical texts. If true, this would suggest a line of continuity not only with the later patristic reflection but also, conversely, with Jewish thought from Ezekiel via Philo to the rabbis.
Nineteenth-century scholarship often argued that Christianity succeeded through the Hellenization of its theology, replacing Jewish national and terrestrial eschatology with Platonic spiritual interpretation. Robert Wilken's The Land Called Holy (1992) fundamentally disrupted this narrative for the patristic period, demonstrating that Christian engagement with Jerusalem and sacred geography intensified after the fourth century rather than disappearing. By contrast, New Testament scholarship’s consideration of eschatology long maintained the spiritualization thesis with a surprising consistency, arguing that earliest Christianity systematically reoriented Israel's territorial hopes toward Christological and ecclesial categories. This lecture sets out to interrogate this assumption of a unilateral Christianization or spiritualization in the earliest texts. It will suggest instead that in Jesus and Paul, the Evangelists, and even Revelation, there are signs that concrete earthly and universal heavenly hopes for Jerusalem continue to coexist in Christianity's canonical texts. If true, this would suggest a line of continuity not only with the later patristic reflection but also, conversely, with Jewish thought from Ezekiel via Philo to the rabbis.
Join Oxford Saïd Entrepreneurship Centre and ZERO Institute for our pitching night, celebrating the end of the Oxford Climate Ventures programme. Oxford Climate Ventures is a hands-on programme which helps Oxford students and researchers validate, develop and launch a climate-focused business or spinout. Join us for this pitching night as our remarkable teams showcase their businesses. You are invited to attend for the opportunity to network with industry professionals, investors and like-minded individuals and be inspired by the energy and creativity in the room.
This talk will build on findings from recent assessments of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and other platforms to explore the transformations needed, and linkages across sectors and countries, to respond to multiplying disruptions across the globe. David Obura will present some provocations to explore the underlying causes of challenges to sustainability today, and emerging perspectives to build new solutions for the multiple intersecting crises across nature, economy, society and governance. Biodiversity and ecosystem services underpin human economies and societies. Their continuing loss, climatic changes and social and economic disruptions present unprecedented challenges connected from local to global levels. These crises can be seen as one of a set of pathways enabled by the global order maintained for the last 80 years. Are we close to an end-point of this pathway, characterized by intersecting and growing cracks across multiple axes in nature, economy and society, multiple potential tipping points of regional to global significance, and disruption of the global rules-based order itself? If this is an ending, what positive transformations can be seeded? What are plausible resets to the global rules given conditions today? Global science-policy platforms provide increasingly clear and consistent findings, pointing towards new and differentiated responsibilities and actions required of different countries and actors. Acknowledging that biodiversity and ecosystem services are the foundations of human life, one set of pathways identifies avenues for balancing the relationships between nature, economy and society. In it, underlying drivers are addressed, enabling building a stable order that is ‘safe and just’ for all people, and minimizes biodiversity loss and earth system changes. Foundations for this exist in our current multilateral and governance systems, but deep transformations in priorities for conservation, economic/financial sectors and social outcomes will be needed to shift current trajectories towards balance and sustainability. Register to attend in-person: https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/events/biodiversity-ecosystem-sustainability Register to watch online: https://www.crowdcast.io/c/biodiversity-ecosystem-sustainability
Tony Murphy, as President of the European Court of Auditors, occupies a powerful position at the heart of the EU, giving him unparalleled insight into how the Union translates political ambition into action. Through regular engagement with senior figures across the European institutions and member states, he sees up close how priorities are set and how the EU maintains cohesion (or not) when crises compound. In this talk, Murphy explains how the ECA contributes to the Union’s strength by scrutinising EU financial expenditure, following the money across programmes to assess whether resources are being used as intended and whether promises are kept. The talk also focuses on the emerging foreign policy challenges facing the EU, as it confronts simultaneous demands on security and defence, competitiveness and energy security, while operating in a constrained fiscal environment. Murphy offers an inside perspective on what these pressures mean for how the Union governs, how it safeguards legitimacy, and what will determine whether Europe can stay effective and united in turbulent times.
An overview of Shanghai during the 1920s and 30s, when Chinese architects responded forcefully with alternatives to the models of modern architecture promoted by the Western and Japanese occupying powers, a formidable but minuscule minority of the population.
Join online via Microsoft Teams by clicking here: https://tinyurl.com/bdff6tpt
Professor Sarson will deliver a talk about his new book on the Declaration of Independence followed by comments from Patrick Griffin. How reading the Declaration of Independence as a document of history explains its intended meaning. Thomas Jefferson chose his words carefully. Few could have been more deliberate than “When in the Course of human events,” the phrase with which he opened the Declaration of Independence. As Steven Sarson shows, the original Declaration moved through the ages of human history from Creation to American independence, assessing it according to “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” The Declaration’s history and historical consciousness therefore help answer one of American history’s great questions: How did the founders reconcile their lofty views on equality and liberty with the inequities and iniquities that they maintained in their time? The contingencies of history and the complexities of natural law, Sarson demonstrates, meant that the Declaration’s eloquent promises of equality and liberty only applied partially to women and poor men, and not at all to Loyalists, Indigenous Americans, and enslaved people. The Declaration’s assertion that “all men are created equal” has since become a promise of universal equality and liberty. As we reach its 250th anniversary, it is important to understand its original context as well as to continue the mission of making its promises a lived reality for all.
To seek asylum, people often have to cross borders undocumented, embarking on perilous trajectories. Due to the war in Afghanistan, the rule of the Taliban, and severe human rights violations, over the past decades thousands of people have risked their lives to seek safety. By what means do they make these journeys, especially when they lack money and passports? Over the course of three years, Hannah Pool accompanied a group of Afghan friends and families as they attempted "The Game" - Game zadan: the route to Europe to seek asylum. The resulting ethnography follows them across their entire trajectories: through Iran, Turkey, Greece, and along the so-called Balkan route. In each place, Pool details the economic interactions and social relationships essential for acquiring, saving, borrowing, spending, and exchanging money to facilitate their undocumented migration routes. The Game bridges economic sociology and migration studies to illustrate how migrants decide to trust people to facilitate their movement along these routes, focusing particularly on debt, special monies, bribes, donations, and gift-giving. Throughout the migration trajectory, relationships with family, fellow migrants, smugglers, humanitarian actors, and border control officials shape and are shaped by access to financial resources. Ultimately, the book highlights the dangers in undocumented border-crossing and delves into the core of what it means to flee: Who has the means to escape dangerous conditions to seek asylum? About the speaker Hannah Pool is a Senior Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies. She has conducted extensive research on undocumented migration trajectories across Iran, Turkey, Greece, the Balkan route, and Germany. She studied at the University of Tehran and St. Andrews and has been a visiting scholar at both Oxford University and Columbia University, furthering her expertise in migration studies and economic sociology. Her research has been awarded the dissertation award of IMISCOE, the German Sociological Association and the German Political Studies Association.
An opportunity to discuss current research, brainstorm ideas, and plan for the year ahead. Students are welcome to bring questions and issues they’re having to the group to discuss and seek advice.
This event is part of a series of “AI Learning Lectures”, which is organised by Kellogg College and the AI Competency Centre at Oxford. Open to all Oxford University staff and students, these sessions are designed to boost understanding of developments in AI and build confidence in using emerging technologies. How do brains and machines learn to adapt? This talk explores the fascinating connections between biological and artificial intelligence, revealing how insights from neuroscience can inform the design of more adaptable AI systems. Modern AI relies on deep neural networks – systems originally inspired by how the brain processes information. By comparing biological and artificial neural networks, the talk highlights what they share, where they differ, and what this means for the future of intelligent systems. Speaker Kai Sandbrink will draw on his current research into cognitive flexibility – the ability to adjust to new routines, tools, or changing environments – to show how both humans and AI can learn to adapt in dynamic conditions. Just as humans can adjust to a new routine or learn to use a different tool, AI systems can be designed to adapt when the data or conditions around them change. Ideal for students, researchers, and anyone curious about the intersection of neuroscience, psychology, and AI, this seminar offers a compelling look at how understanding the brain can help us build smarter, more flexible technologies. Tea and coffee will be served from 5pm. The event begins at 5.30pm.
To mark the centenary of Rilke’s death there will be a series of Oxford Centenary Readings held in the Queen’s College in HT 2025. These will be informal papers with plenty of discussion, about one poem or a handful of poems, that offer close readings and new insights. Papers will be in English and English translations will be provided for all poems and quotations (except for the session in week 4 with the visiting poets) making these sessions accessible to anyone with an interest in this remarkable poet and poetry in general.
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!
We are an interdisciplinary reading group which focuses on the social science, history, and theology of demons, the Devil, and supernatural evil as they relate to politics, identity formation, and social conflicts. Each week we will examine one academic paper or book chapter on these topics, gaining familiarity with subjects such as: the psychology of dehumanization, the conceptual development of the term “demon,” and contemporary political demonologies like QAnon. Hilary Term 2026, Thursdays from 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM Weeks 1,3,4,5,6,7,8: 21 St Giles (Kendrew Quad) Teaching Room G4 Week 2: 14 St Giles (next door to the Lamb & Flag) Seminar Room H Please contact Scott Maybell for the readings or for any questions: scott.maybell@sjc.ox.ac.uk
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.
The Global Research on Antimicrobial Resistance (GRAM) Project is inviting global AMR stakeholders to attend its 29th January webinar, ‘AMR tools and resources: An introduction for health professionals and researchers’. The 90-minute online session is open to all, with particular relevance for AMR experts, health professionals, ministry of health and policy officials, modellers, and statisticians seeking practical tools to support evidence-based action, or who analyse AMR data at institutional and country levels. Tools and resources presented in the webinar include: MICROBE, an interactive visualisation platform developed by Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME); the World Health Organization's Global Antimicrobial Resistance and Use Surveillance System (WHO GLASS); the AMR Data Repository, a platform co-launched by GRAM and Infectious Diseases Data Observatory (IDDO); and the AMR R package, a comprehensive toolkit for cleaning, analysing, and interpreting AMR data. Two identical sessions are available to enable global participation. Please register for the time that best suits you.
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.
Take part in this hands-on session working on the transcription of early modern letters and join a discussion on the issues of representing historical power imbalances that are preserved in the archival record. In this day-long workshop you will learn the skills to handle some of the Bodleian Libraries' special collections and to read eighteenth-century handwriting. Registration is required. Open to University of Oxford students only. Level – open to complete beginners and students from any subject, undergraduate or graduate. Please see the website event page for further details and registration.
How do slowly growing trees, rapidly growing grasses, grazing animals and fires reshape landscapes? How can plant and landscape form guide us to histories of fire and grazing, of terrace building and drainage, and of shifting rivers and coastlines? Using examples from the Central and Southern Apennine mountains of Italy, I explore the politics of form and disturbance that reshape pastures, hillsides, drainage systems and coastlines. I argue that arguments from form move through our senses and stretch our imaginations across time and space. Andrew Mathews is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He holds a joint Ph.D. in forestry and anthropology from Yale University. He has studied relationships between people, plants, and landscape in Mexico, Italy, and California. His interests range from ethnoecology, STS, political ecology, and environmental history, in publications on Indigenous forest management in Mexico (Instituting Nature, MIT Press, 2011), to environmental humanities, human plant relations, historical ecology, and landscape ethnography, in Italian landscapes (Trees are Shape Shifters Yale, 2022). He has pioneered the use of landscape and tree drawing in environmental anthropology, and is now applying these methods to study the relationship between fire, grazing, and the political geomorphology of landscapes in California and in Italy.
Postnatal neuronal migration contributes to the structural and functional plasticity of the mammalian brain under both physiological and pathological conditions. This talk will focus on the cellular and molecular mechanisms that shape migratory modes of immature neurons within complex tissue environments. I will also discuss how experimental modulation of these mechanisms can be used to dissect migratory principles and to explore ways to enhance neuronal migration toward functional repair in disease contexts.
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.
"In a world where inter-State multi-forum litigation multiplies, so does the risk of courts becoming diplomatic platforms to air State grievances.” Nowadays, the ICJ is called to confront this risk when dealing with the main political issues of the day. Nikolaos Voulgaris’ recent monograph The ICJ and Multi-forum Litigation Strategy draws inferences from legal and political sciences to assess ICJ authority when crises make their way to it as part of a multi-forum litigation strategy. It identifies the essential characteristics of this strategy and delineates ICJ instrumentalization against this background. Multi-forum litigation is the latest strategic trend when attempting to resolve inter-State disputes. The prolific utilisation of judicial institutions that comes with it (of the UN Court in particular), renders their work relevant in addressing contemporary problems but it comes at a cost. It triggers a rethinking of their role and their capacity to influence international politics. Voulgaris will present his recent monograph and he will assess the recent over-reliance of States on international courts to resolve disputes inter se via multi-form litigation strategies. The instrumentalisation of courts that comes with such over-reliance impacts the authority of such institutions, the ICJ in particular. Increasingly instrumentalising courts in this manner may alter State perception around the courts’ role; from legal dispute settlers to crises managers and diplomatic organs. The book suggests that authority does not necessarily go hand-in-hand with reliance on a court, and neither does trust. And, in turn, this may impact upon the authority of international law as such. Speaker biographies Nikolaos Voulgaris is a Professor of International Law at the European Law and Governance School. Also, he is an Adjunct Professor at the Law School of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He is a Fellow at the Centre of International Governance and Dispute Resolution of King’s College London and at the Athens Public International Law Centre. He has read law in Athens (LLB, LLM) and London (LLM, PhD). He is the author of The ICJ and Multi-forum Litigation Strategy (Brill, 2025) and Allocating International Responsibility between International Organizations and Member States (Hart, 2019). Philippa Webb is Professor of Public International Law at the Blavatnik School of Government. She is Co-founder and Director of the Oxford Institute of Technology and Justice. She is a Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. Her research interests span all of Public International Law, with particular expertise in international dispute settlement, human rights, international organizations law, international humanitarian law and international criminal law. Her current research concerns how national and global justice systems can support flourishing societies and uphold fundamental rights.
*Meleisa Ono-George* is writing a public-facing book entitled _My Name is Amelia Newsham: Science, Art and the Making of Race_. To do so, she uses the sparse source material of an enslaved woman’s life to weave an intimate and nuanced history of race in eighteenth-century Britain. *Alice Rio_ is writing a general narrative history of early medieval Europe told via the experiences of a handful of migrant women, or women who were in one way or another bearers of a minority culture within their household. Her main methodological problem is dearth of sources about (and near-absence of sources written by) women for this period, and how not to end up just talking about men instead. She wants to argue this problem also presents unexpected opportunities. *Respondents:* Emily West (Oxford) Simple Rajrah (Oxford) Sofia Sanabria de Felipe (Oxford)
Design as Data invites us to look beyond outcomes and artefacts, and to treat the decisions, negotiations, revisions, and judgements that shape the development of learning technologies as evidence in their own right. In this session, Sara will introduce qualitative methods that allow us to study how knowledge, values, and expertise are made visible through technological design choices. Sara will share her recent work with Ferrero, Gameloft and Microsoft AI to generate more than 40,000 AI-generated digital storybooks that are freely available in 18 languages. The Let’s Story platform launched in September 2024 and has now collected data from 6 millions readers globally. During the session we will explore the epistemic co-creation that occurred as industry, technology and academia worked together to build a digital tool for young learners and their families that has won a series of awards including the Parent’s Pick Gold Award (2025) for Best Educational App and Drum Gold Award (2025) for Best Education & E-learning Content. The Learning in Families through Technology (LiFT) project is a collaborative research initiative based in the Department of Education. LiFT brings together expertise from applied linguistics, child development and learning, and critical digital education to examine how families engage with app-based digital technologies in everyday contexts. The project, led by Professor Victoria Murphy (PI) and Associate Professor Sandra Mathers (Co-I), focuses on understanding language development, creativity, and parent - child interaction, with particular attention to how learning unfolds through joint media engagement rather than individualised screen use. Through a combination of qualitative inquiry, experimental studies, and learning analytics, LiFT aims to generate evidence that can inform the responsible design of digital learning experiences for children and families. Join on Teams: https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_OWY4ZDkyMjctOTYwMi00Y2E3LWI1YTQtMjA1Mzg1NWJjMTQy%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22cc95de1b-97f5-4f93-b4ba-fe68b852cf91%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%225f581465-1def-4d51-8d4c-45a3b26b5b58%22%7d
Dr Elizabeth (Liz) Dudeney is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Maternal and Child Health Research, City St George’s, University of London. Liz’s research explores suicidality during pregnancy and after birth with a specific focus on understanding the most acceptable, appropriate, and clinically relevant approaches for identifying and discussing suicidality with perinatal women in the context of maternity care. Liz’s research is currently informing the development of a perinatal suicidality eLearning training programme for professionals working with perinatal women (including midwives, health visitors, GPs, and social workers), in collaboration with Grassroots Suicide Prevention. Liz is also working on co-producing, revising, and validating a modernised depression measure that reflects contemporary perinatal experiences and language.
The Global Research on Antimicrobial Resistance (GRAM) Project is inviting global AMR stakeholders to attend its 29th January webinar, ‘AMR tools and resources: An introduction for health professionals and researchers’. The 90-minute online session is open to all, with particular relevance for AMR experts, health professionals, ministry of health and policy officials, modellers, and statisticians seeking practical tools to support evidence-based action, or who analyse AMR data at institutional and country levels. Tools and resources presented in the webinar include: MICROBE, an interactive visualisation platform developed by Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME); the World Health Organization's Global Antimicrobial Resistance and Use Surveillance System (WHO GLASS); the AMR Data Repository, a platform co-launched by GRAM and Infectious Diseases Data Observatory (IDDO); and the AMR R package, a comprehensive toolkit for cleaning, analysing, and interpreting AMR data. Two identical sessions are available to enable global participation. Please register for the time that best suits you.
Prof. Friedemann Kiefer performs research at the Cells-in-Motion Cluster of Excellence, investigating how lymphatic vessels are formed and preserved. His research focuses on: - Development, morphogenesis and maintenance of lymphatic vessels - Interplay of hypoxia, the vascular systems and leukocytes in different physiological and pathological settings and its relevance for organ function
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.
In order to mitigate the catastrophic effects of climate change whilst avoiding widespread political backlash, governments around the world are considering enacting a just energy transition that addresses the concerns of various social groups in the working age population. Focusing on the gender dimension of the energy transition, this paper explores the gender-labour dynamics around support for energy jobs, and investigates under what conditions women and men may be differently inclined to take on green industry work. We argue that men and women may be interested in energy jobs for different reasons. Building on existing research on gender and climate politics, we argue that women may be more attracted to green energy jobs, even if at the expense of pay, due to their intrinsic interest in non-legacy sectors and cleaner activities. However, consistent with other economic and social research, we also expect that women give a higher premium to inclusive employment conditions and flexible work ecosystems than men. Consequently, we also expect that women may be less inclined to move out of social roles and trade lifestyle for green jobs. Experimental data from a novel online survey in the UK largely confirms that, while women are more inclined to take on green work than men, this preference is conditional on the socialization conditions of the job. ———————————————————————————————————————————— Speaker bio: Federica Genovese a professor of political science at the University of Oxford, a member of the Department of Politics and International Relations, and a Fellow at St Antony's College. Her work focuses on international and comparative political economy, with attention to climate politics and policy, globalization, redistribution, and the politics of crises. Her research has been supported by grants of the British Academy, the Balzan Foundation, the Climate Social Science Network, and the World Bank, among others. In 2024 she won the Philip Leverhulme Prize for Politics and International Relations. ———————————————————————————————————————————— Booking is required for people outside of the Department of Social Policy and Intervention (DSPI). DSPI Members do not need to register.
ISLAMIC HISTORY AND GLOBAL HISTORY a roundtable discussion to mark the publication of _Worlds of Islam_ by James McDougall (London, Allen Lane/New York, Basic Books, 2026) with FAISAL DEVJI, Beit Professor of Global and Imperial History, Balliol College; RAIHAN ISMAIL, HH Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies, St Antony’s College; FARIDAH ZAMAN, Associate Professor of the History of Britain and the World, Somerville College. There will be a reception following the discussion.
The idea of a more strongly co-ordinated system of tertiary education is gaining traction across the UK in the 2020s. In England, moves to create one funding system for post-18 education and to simplify the regulatory structures for higher level study suggest the possibility of greater standardisation across diverse forms of provision. But this is against a context where universities and colleges are in financial crisis, and face demands to rethink what they do and how they do it. A co-ordinated system of tertiary education may mean rationalisation of provision, that includes consolidations, mergers and acquisitions of institutions, where the strongest and most powerful shape the nature of future developments. This paper looks back at previous attempts to create further-higher integration. Thinking with Bourdieu, the paper considers what can be learned about the potential and pitfalls of an integrated system of tertiary education, particularly from the perspective of the further education sector and the students its serves. Ann-Marie Bathmaker is Professor Emerita of Vocational and Higher Education at the University of Birmingham. Her research is in the fields of vocational and higher education, in particular understanding and addressing in/equalities in educational provision in these contexts. Her work has focused on Higher Education and social class, the Further Education/Higher Education interface, the governance of further education, teaching and learning in vocational and higher education, and professionalism and professional identities in further education. She is Chair of the Singapore SkillsFuture Expert Review Panel for Workforce Development Applied Research; member of the Editorial Management Committee of the Journal of Vocational Education and Training (JVET) and former editor (2017-2021); a trustee of the Edge Foundation (a UK based education charity with a particular focus on technical and professional education). She was previously the specialist advisor to the House of Lords Select Committee on Social Mobility School to Work (2015-2016), and Extraordinary Professor at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa
Japan was transformed between 1870 and 1940 into a country more likely to invade than be invaded with military power founded on a robust industrial base and a state structure comparable to those in contemporary Europe. But how did these changes impact on local communities and what was their contribution to them? This paper looks at political and economic change from early Meiji to early Showa in the small town of Soeda in northern Kyushu.
Set against the backdrop of an extraordinary wave of litigation against Chinese corporations in Ethiopia, Immunity on Trial probes the question of immunity in everyday encounters steeped in power asymmetries. Political and legal immunity are justified by the principle that certain social aims outweigh the value of imposing liability. To be exempt from the rules, however, is a privilege granted to or demanded by the powerful, one that is shaped by global inequalities. Drawing on observations from the courthouse, interviews with litigants and judges, and the analysis of case files, Miriam Driessen demonstrates how immunity is debated and delegitimized, or affirmed, by those who fight, exact, grant, or weigh immunity. From the construction site to the registrar’s office and into the courtroom, Driessen documents tussles over immunity, unravelling the politics of dignity on which they are founded. Miriam Driessen is a Departmental Lecturer at the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford, and the author of Tales of Hope, Tastes of Bitterness: Chinese Road Builders in Ethiopia.
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. *The lecture will be followed by a wine reception*.
T.B. Pugh, ‘Henry VII and the English Nobility’ in G.W. Bernard, ed., _The Tudor Nobility_ (Manchester, 1992), 49-110; G.W. Bernard, ‘The Tudor Nobility in Perspective’, _ibid_., 1-48; J. Ross, ‘The Noble Household as a Political Centre at the end of the Middle Ages’, in C.M. Woolgar, ed., _The Elite Household in England 100-1550_ (Harlaxton Medieval Studies, 28, 2018), 75-92 *To attend online via Microsoft Teams, please email "$":mailto:ian.archer@history.ox.ac.uk*
atin motets of the 14th and early 15th centuries preserve one of the most complex bodies of lyric poetry from the Late Middle Ages. While vernacular art was flourishing, these pluritextual works maintained a dense, erudite, and allusive Latin that has long hindered scholarly interpretation. Because their meaning is often obscure, research has traditionally focused on musical structure rather than on the literary strategies that shape the motet as a poetic object. This paper investigates the modes of textual invention in Latin motets by analysing their intertextual mechanisms, rhetorical organisation, and broader literary framework. It considers the major French sources and examines how composers drew on classical, biblical, and patristic materials, as well as on florilegia and mnemonic practices. Rather than merely identifying quotations, this research seeks to characterise different forms of borrowing (citation, allusion, discursive resonance) and to understand how they evolve across the corpus. Digital methods play a central role: TEI encoding enables fine-grained annotation of stylistic features and standardisation of data, while NLP approaches, including LatinBERT, assist in detecting textual reuse and semantic patterns at scale. These tools complement traditional expertise, revealing previously unknown intertextual links and restoring the literary richness of this challenging repertoire.
To join online, please register in advance: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/WWqjr8SgT_WrzTodI65cdg
Venue: Room 10.424, English ‘hub’, Schwarzman building. Bar week 7, back in the Okinaga Room, Wadham College Date and Time: Weeks 2, 4, 6, 7 5:15pm, and week 3 12:30 Convenors: Elleke Boehmer (Wolfson, Oxford); Ankhi Mukherjee (Wadham, Oxford); Pablo Mukherjee (Wolfson, Oxford) Thursday January 29, Room 10.424 (week 2) William Ghosh (Christ Church, Oxford), ‘Arts of Accommodation: Amit Chaudhuri and the Novel’
Elizabeth Ingleson specialises in the histories of US foreign relations, US-China relations, capitalism, and labor. She is the author of Made in China: When US-China Interests Converged to Transform Global Trade (Harvard University Press). Ingleson has published several articles and chapters on US-China relations and US capitalism and is currently writing a book under contract with Bloomsbury Academic, China and the United States since 1949: An International History. Ingleson is the co-organiser of the LSE-Tufts Seminar in Contemporary International History. She serves on the Management Committee of the LSE’s Phelan US Centre, the Conference Committee of Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) and as Membership Secretary for Historians of Twentieth Century United States (HOTCUS). Prior to her appointment, Ingleson held fellowships at Yale University, Southern Methodist University’s Center for Presidential History, and the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. She earnt her PhD in history from the University of Sydney.
The next Professor of Poetry lecture given by A.E. Stallings will take place in the Theatre at the Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities on 29 January at 5.30pm. The title of the talk is 'People Poems: Portraits in Verse'. All welcome! Tickets are free, but booking is required via Eventbrite: https://people-poems-portraits-in-verse.eventbrite.co.uk
Join Worcester College Provost, David Isaac CBE, as he interviews leading role models about their lives and careers. Jane Hill is a journalist and broadcaster who presents BBC News and BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight. As a gay woman, she believes in the importance of role models and is an advocate for LGBTQ+ rights. Having been diagnosed with lobular breast cancer in 2018, she is also a proud supporter of breast cancer charities, as well as Parkinson’s UK. She is a Fellow of the British American Project and was made an Honorary Fellow of Queen Mary, University of London in 2017. Join us at Worcester College to hear Jane in conversation. All are welcome to join for drinks after the event. Please note that entry to the venue is via the Worcester College Porters’ Lodge on Walton Street.
What does it mean to say ‘I am’? Is the sense of subjectivity a delusion? Are only humans conscious? What about whales, AI, and electrons? How should we use our consciousness? All these questions, and many others, will be examined by expert speakers in conversation with one another and with the audience in this 3-part symposium series. In this first event on 29 Jan, we will examine whether consciousness can be defined, and if so, what that definition should be. Three short talks will provide a range of expert perspectives on these questions, followed by Q&A with the audience. Susan Blackmore (Psychology, University of Plymouth) Why are we deluded about consciousness? Paul Pettitt (Archaeology, Durham University) What was consciousness in the Ice Age? Neanderthals, Cro-Magnons and the emergence of art. Ole Jensen (Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford) An adversarial collaboration to evaluate theories of consciousness.
Join us for the launch of Billionaire Backlash: The Age of Corporate Scandal and How It Could Save Democracy, the new book by Pepper Culpepper and Taeku Lee Join Pepper Culpepper, Vice Dean for Academic Affairs and the Blavatnik Professor of Government and Public Policy, in conversation with Gillian Tett, Provost of King's College Cambridge, moderated by Ngaire Woods, Dean of the Blavatnik School of Government, on the surprising story of how corporate scandals - from Enron to the Facebook privacy scandal - change the way the world works for the better. In Billionaire Backlash, Pepper Culpepper and Taeku Lee draw on a decade of research on policymaking and public opinion to show us how scandals can ignite a public with few political outlets for their discontent. Scandals don't simply dominate news cycles: they can provoke us to demand better policy, spurring governments to adopt rules that protect us from massive corporations run amok. They reveal how the shared anger of citizens hints at a latent view in public opinion – ‘good populism’ – that has the potential to reinvigorate our failing democracies. One scandal at a time.
Shaharzad Akbar will be in conversation with Sir Tim Hitchens about her Human Rights work, bringing together activists within and outside Afghanistan to work towards accountability for the Taliban’s current actions. Working title: Seeking justice, preserving hope: International accountability and women's rights in Afghanistan. This event will also be livestreamed, please see booking URL (booking not required).
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 Urological Surgeon at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust where he performs many of the unit's complex and salvage robotic prostatectomy surgery, having been robotically trained at Cornell University, the Karolinska Institute, and Oxford University Hospitals. He holds visiting professorships in urology at Oxford and the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences where he is also a visiting professor in robotic surgery. PS also clinically led the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE)’s early value assessment of robotic soft-tissue surgery in the UK. 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, the latter run by NDS. He has recently been funded for £3 million by the HTA as the Chief Investigator on a multi-centre full UK-wide RCT of surgery in metastatic prostate cancer, which will also be run by NDS. 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.
Join Zoom Meeting: https://aarhusuniversity.zoom.us/j/69899934764 Meeting ID: 698 9993 4764 Abstract Renal replacement therapy (RRT) is a treatment commonly used for managing critically ill patients with severe acute kidney injury (AKI), particularly those experiencing metabolic or fluid-related complications. RRT may rapidly correct some of the life-threatening issues associated with AKI, such as fluid overload. However, it is a very invasive treatment and may therefore be harmful to some patients. The timing of RRT initiation in critically ill patients with AKI remains a long-standing dilemma for nephrologists. Multiple randomized trials have attempted to address this question, but they compare only a limited number of treatment initiation strategies. In light of this, we use routinely collected observational data from the Ghent University Hospital intensive care units to investigate treatment strategies for starting RRT in critically ill AKI patients. We develop a methodology for identifying the optimal treatment initiation strategy from several pre-specified options in the presence of competing risks. We then apply it to evaluate a total of 81 RRT initiation strategies, expressed in terms of serum potassium, pH, and urine output, allowing us to identify the optimal thresholds for these criteria. Furthermore, we develop a general framework of weighted Neyman-orthogonal learners for estimating heterogeneous treatment effects to support clinical decision-making regarding treatment initiation. Bio: I am an assistant professor of biostatistics in the Department of Public Health at the University of Copenhagen. My research centers on causal and statistical inference, with a particular focus on infinite-dimensional parameters and their applications to the study of common complex diseases.
Formatting your in text citations, footnotes and bibliography correctly for your thesis or publication is crucial. Reference management tools make this easier and save you time. This classroom-based session comprises a 30-minute presentation, which gives an overview of reference management tools. The rest of the session is dedicated to practical exercises at the computers, giving you the opportunity to try out four tools (RefWorks, EndNote, Zotero and Mendeley), so that you can work out which one is best for you. Library staff will be there to help and guide you, and answer any questions you might have. You can leave at any point once you have tried out the tools you want, and do not have to stay until the end. At the end of the session you will be able to: understand how reference management works; understand the advantages and disadvantages of a range of reference management tools; add, edit and organise references using a number of different tools; add references to documents and create bibliographies using a number of different tools; and make an informed decision about which reference management tool works best for you. Intended audience: taught student; researcher and research student
In the study of contemporary Chinese history, the excavation and organization of rural grassroots archives not only broaden the scope and content of historical inquiry but also contribute to the refinement of theoretical frameworks. Over the past decade, the Research Center for Chinese Social History at Shanxi University has devoted sustained effort to the collection, preservation, and digitization of a vast body of rural grassroots archives from the era of collectivization. Rich in content, these materials document the profound transformations of a distinctive historical period and illuminate changes in production, governance, social relations, and everyday life at the grassroots level. Centered on the theme of rural society during the collectivization era, faculty and students have pursued a series of empirically grounded studies that deepen our understanding of regional society in Shanxi and contribute to broader debates on social change in collectivization-era China. By integrating long-term fieldwork, archival reconstruction, and micro-level social analysis, this lecture reflects on how rural grassroots archives can be mobilized to reconstruct the lived experience of collectivization and to rethink key issues in modern Chinese social history. Ma Weiqiang is Professor of Modern Chinese History at the Research Center for Chinese Social History, Shanxi University, and currently a Visiting Scholar at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on rural China from the revolutionary period through the era of collectivization, with particular attention to grassroots archives, village-level governance, and everyday social life. He has led long-term fieldwork projects across Shanxi Province, collecting and organizing millions of pages of rural archival materials, and has published extensively on land reform, collectivization, and rural society in modern China Pre-Lecture Readings To facilitate discussion, participants are encouraged to read the following works in advance: 1、马维强：《双口村：集体化时代的身份、地位与乡村日常生活》 （Ma Weiqiang, Shuangkou Village: Identity, Status, and Everyday Life in the Era of Collectivization） — A village-level microhistory that reconstructs social hierarchy, political identity, and everyday practices under collectivization, based on extensive grassroots archival materials. 2、Xing Long and Ma Weiqiang,“Rural Grassroots Files from the Collectivization Era: Archives of the Chinese Social History Research Center of Shanxi University,” Modern China, Vol. 34, No. 3 (2008). — An introduction to the formation, structure, and scholarly significance of rural grassroots archives from Shanxi, and their methodological implications for the study of collectivization-era rural China.
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
It is widely (albeit not universally) accepted that long-term magma storage in the continental crust occurs in low melt fraction (high crystallinity) ‘mush reservoirs’ rather than the high melt fraction (low crystallinity) ‘magma chambers’ that have dominated conceptual models of magma storage and differentiation for over a century. Recognition of the importance of mush reservoir processes has generated new questions around what those processes are, how they operate and what evidence they leave in the rock record. Fractional crystallization is widely invoked to explain differentiation, assuming efficient crystal-melt separation in high melt fraction magma chambers driven by processes such as crystal settling. Yet differentiation in magma chambers is inconsistent with the evidence for low melt fraction magma storage. At low melt fraction, melt-crystal separation is typically assumed to occur by porous flow and compaction, yet microstructural evidence for compaction is scarce, at least in relatively shallow magmatic systems. Magma reservoir processes are investigated here using numerical models that capture (i) buoyancy-driven separation of melt and crystals by crystal settling at high melt fraction and porous flow at low melt fraction; (ii) compaction and accompanying melt loss; (iii) transfer of heat by conduction and advection, and (iv) mass and component exchange between crystals and melt. A key aim is to identify the role of ‘reactive flow’ in driving melt fraction and compositional changes. Reactive flow occurs when melt-crystal separation causes changes in local bulk composition that require mass and/or component exchange to return melt fraction, and melt and crystal compositions, to their local equilibrium values. Results show that compaction is not required to drive down melt fraction to small values to produce refractory crystalline residues, consistent with the relatively scarce microstructural evidence for compaction. Melt loss may instead leave evidence of mineral dissolution caused by reactive flow, which facilitates ongoing melt expulsion by preserving melt connectivity through the mush pore space. Where melt accumulates, interstitial mineral phases display textures that mimic those of interstitial melt. Recent application of the model to layered intrusions suggests the combined effects of compaction and reactive flow can explain several observed features. They offer a mechanism to form igneous layering, including monomineralic layers such as anorthosite, which are not readily explained by fractional crystallization. Equilibrium and fractional crystallization do not represent ‘end-member’ behaviours, because they fail to capture the range of local bulk compositions created during melt-crystal separation. We argue that reactive flow is a fundamentally important process in all magmatic systems in which there is relative flow of melt and crystals that can react with each other, yet its contribution is neglected in most conceptual models.
Once in office, women politicians are less likely to seek re-election. Yet, the causes and potential remedies for this gender gap in political retention are still poorly understood. We argue that women politicians are more likely to feel isolated and to lack the necessary support networks to navigate the challenges of holding public office. In a field experiment with a civil society organization, we test whether inviting women councillors in the UK to join a real cross-partisan support network of women councillors reduces the gender gap in political retention. We find that women councillors invited to join the peer support network are 10 percentage points more likely to express interest in running for re-election. Semi-structured interviews suggest that this effect is driven in part by shaping perceptions of isolation in office and peer support. The effects do not spillover to progressive political ambition. The study reveals that efforts to promote women's representation would benefit from focusing not only on selection but also on retention of women in politics.
I provide an axiomatic characterization of the class of location parameters derived from well-defined convex minimization problems. The resulting class includes a broad set of estimators, such as the mean and --- in the limit --- the median, but excludes the mode. I also address the problem of comparing location parameters within this set by reframing the optimization problem as the one of a decision maker selecting a point forecast to minimize an expected loss. I formalize the decision maker's preferences over two key attributes of the resulting estimator: robustness (sensitivity to outliers) and directionality (asymmetry in weighting positive vs. negative deviations), and I discuss how they depend on the shape of the loss function. While a direct comparison of estimators can be difficult because of the underlying trade-off between robustness and directionality, I show that, under mild conditions, differences between estimators can be fully reinterpreted as differences in directionality only.
A balanced intake of different classes of nutrients is a key determinant of health, wellbeing, and aging. To ensure nutrient homeostasis animals adapt their foraging strategies according to their current and future needs. We want to understand how animals decide what to eat, how these decisions are shaped by brain-body interactions, and how these decisions affect the fitness of the animal. To achieve a mechanistic, integrated, whole-animal understanding of nutritional decision-making we work at the interface of behavior, metabolism, microbiome, and physiology in the adult Drosophila melanogaster. I will discuss how the powerful combination of activity imaging approaches, neurogenetics, connectomics, automated, quantitative behavioral analyses, and nutritional and microbial manipulations is allowing us to achieve a mechanistic understanding of how internal states shape neuronal circuits to optimize complex foraging decisions.
As flags are raised on British streets and nationalism reasserts itself as common sense, the question of where to look for hope becomes newly urgent. This paper turns first to the past: to the Black Power movement who resisted street racism in the 1970s, and to the Black and Asian youth of British towns who, in the 1980s and 2000s, faced down racist mobs and indifference alike. The legacy of Britain’s Black Power Movement—organised, insistent, internationalist—runs through these histories of defiance. Yet the argument is not confined to retrospection. It looks toward the present, to the fragile coalitions of urban multicultures, experiments in electoral reform, and a revived politics of grassroots dissent. Taken together, these offer not nostalgia but the possibility of remaking what class struggle, conviviality and anti-fascism mean in contemporary Britain.
Curious about using AI to find research papers? Not sure how to properly reference GenAI and avoid plagiarism? This beginner-friendly workshop introduces three GenAI tools (ChatGPT, Elicit, and Research Rabbit), showing how they can support information discovery and analysis. Designed for those new to AI, this practical session will allow you to independently experiment with these tools and participate in group discussions to explore their strengths, limitations, and suitability for different tasks. By the end of this session, you will be able to: explain what AI means and some key terms; differentiate between several categories of AI tools; describe how some GenAI tools can be used to discover information, including their strengths, limitations, and best practices; critique GenAI tools and their outputs at an introductory level using evaluative criteria; and state the University’s policies on AI, and avoid plagiarism by creating citations for AI-generated content. Intended audience: Taught student; Researcher and research student
We develop a quantitative task-based model of automation in which machines feature task-level fixed costs, e.g., application-specific training or fine-tuning costs in the case of AI models. Machine’s comparative advantage over workers across tasks reflects both the conventional marginal-productivity differences as well as a novel scale advantage (whether task scale justifies the fixed cost). We characterize the resulting production function given the firm’s task composition, deriving expressions for the degree of machine-labor elasticity of substitution, nonhomotheticity, and returns to scale. We illustrate the quantitative potential of the model in an application to computer vision AI automation. Using scaling laws that map computing requirements to task characteristics, estimated from a fine-tuning experiment and LLM-based task descriptions, we recover the patterns of AI comparative advantage for 1,920 vision tasks across the U.S. economy. Calibrated to 2023 firm-level adoption rates, the model projects the future path of automation under current trends in computing prices. Aggregate output rises by about 18% by 2075; substitutability is high early on but falls as automation deepens, real wages increase throughout, and the labor share follows a U-shape, declining initially before recovering as AI and labor gradually become complements.
When the Ney was not sad: Music Transmission and the Modern Encounter in the Late-Ottoman era The second half of the 19th century witnessed a series of cultural transformations in the Ottoman region and beyond, shaped by colonial encounters, political and legal transformations, and the rise of new elites and dominant classes in various domains of social life. The stories that music as a trace of forms of knowledge tells has points of similarities and differences from the usual narratives that came down to us through the literary works of what has been dubbed as the Nahda period in the Arab world. During this period different parts of the world, notwithstanding Ottoman Egypt and the Levant, ushered in a process of standardizing and classicizing “traditions of doing” in musical practices, involving establishing repertoires, performing, grappling with new technologies such as recording, developing and innovating that became a hallmark of the modernization process, and inviting a rethinking of the boundaries and fluidity of identity (Arabic, Islamic, Traditional, Modern, Turkish, Ottoman, etc). The three interventions (see program below) will explore how various aspects of music and sound as a field tell new stories about those broader social and cultural transformations. This will be followed by a musical performance with members of the Oxford Maqam Ensemble who, through years of training and performing around the world, will demonstrate late 19th century music as inspired by a multitude of early Egyptian recordings. Panel of Talks (2.30-5pm), Investcorp Auditorium (ILT) - Free Attendance: Coffee reception at 2.30pm, Panel starts at 3pm Arabs, Turks, or Orientals? Late Ottoman Views of Arab Music and Musicians Jacob Olley (Career Development Fellow, Durham University) The 1932 Mevlevi Ayin Recording: Notes and Queries Martin Stokes (Professor of Music, Kings College London) When the Ney was not sad: Tradition and idiosyncrasy in Amin Buzari’s virtuoso (1855-1928) in Ottoman Egypt Bashir Saade (Lecturer in Religion and Politics, University of Stirling) Discussant Sophie Frankford (Postdoctoral Research Associate, Department of Music, King’s College London)
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.
Week Two (30 January), Old Library) Primary: Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time, Chapters 4-6 Supplementary: Kathie Sarahchild, ‘Consciousness Raising: A Radical Weapon’ (1968); Sarachild ‘A Program for Feminist “Consciousness Raising”’ in Notes from the Second Year: Women’s Liberation (1970)
Seminar followed by Q&A and drinks - attend in person or join online - all welcome Abstract: Despite a growing recognition of the triple crisis of biodiversity loss, climate change and pollution, we continue to fall short of delivering the change required. The awareness that increasing efforts in Multilateral Agreements, national conservation action and sustainable finance have not translated into commensurate outcomes, highlighting the need to rethink not the quantity but the quality of efforts addressing them. The global assessment by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) defines a deliberate transformative change as a system-wide shift in views, structures and practices that are capable of addressing the underlying causes of biodiversity loss and nature’s decline. The report identifies five interdependent strategies and 22 associated actions, which are (1) conserving and regenerating places of value; (2) driving change in the sectors most responsible; (3) transforming economic systems; (4) transforming governance; and (5) shifting societal views and values. In this seminar, Dr Yves Zinngrebe will introduce the IPBES process, provide an overview of the assessment’s conceptual framing and provide examples from his own research to illustrate what these strategies imply for implementation and what is required to operationalise them. Biography: Dr. Yves Zinngrebe is a senior researcher and research group lead at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ). His academic work focuses on the analysis of public policies and institutional frameworks that foster a more sustainable relationship between society and nature. He has conducted fieldwork in Peru, Germany, Honduras, Uganda, Rwanda, and Indonesia, exploring issues such as agroforestry, biodiversity, and land use. He was a Coordinating Lead Author of the global IPBES Transformative Change Assessment, has followed the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and its implementation for almost two decades, has served as the lead scientific advisor for the revision of Germany’s National Biodiversity Strategy, and currently coordinates the EU project RESPIN, which aims to strengthen science-policy interfaces in the areas of climate change and biodiversity. The seminar will explore real-world strategies and actions to enable transformative change in biodiversity, with a focus on case studies from Germany and Peru. Drawing on his experience, Dr. Zinngrebe will share key insights into how to move toward more just, sustainable, and resilient systems and draw connections to the implementation of the CBD’s Global Biodiversity Framework.
Oxford Medieval Manuscripts Group's first event of term will be our reading group, held on 30 January. The theme for the reading group this term will be 'dissemination', where we will discuss the following texts: Leah R. Clark, ‘Dispersal, Exchange and the Culture of Things in Fifteenth-Century Italy’, in The Agency of Things in Medieval and Early Modern Art, ed. by Ika Matyjaszkiewicz, Zuzanna Sarnecka, and Grażyna Jurkowlaniec (New York; Abingdon: Routledge, 2018), 91–102 Richard Sharpe, ‘Dissolution and Dispersion in Sixteenth-Century England: Understanding the Remains’, in How the Secularization of Religious Houses Transformed the Libraries of Europe, 16th–19th Centuries, ed. by Cristina Dondi, Dorit Raines and Richard Sharpe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), 39–66 Optional: Mariah Proctor-Tiffany, ‘The Queen’s Manuscripts and Identity’, in Medieval Art in Motion: The Inventory and Gift Giving of Queen Clémence de Hongrie (University Park, Pennsylvania: Penn State University Press, 2019), 80–103 If you would like to participate, please email us (oxfordmedievalmss@gmail.com) and we will send you the reading material a week in advance.
Musical Performance (8-9.30pm), Nissan Theatre - book your spot (£10-7 concessions): A musical performance with Oxford Maqam, with an instrumental part inspired by the early recording performances of prominent musicians of the late Ottoman period based in Egypt, such as Amin Buzari (Ney), Mohammad al-Aqqad (Qanun), Sami Shawwa (Violin), Mansur Awad (Oud), and others. The second part will explore a Wasla in the late 19th century Egypt genre (which includes instrumentals such as Bashraf and Semai, and singing through Muwashshahat, Adwar, and Qasidas). Tarik Beshir – Oud, Lead Vocals Sophie Frankford – Violin Malachy O’Neill – Double Bass Bashir Saade – Ney, Vocals Yara Salahideen – Lead Vocals Eric Samothrakis – percussions Martin Stokes – Qanun, Vocals Walid Zeido – Riq
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.
In this 60-minute online workshop you will be introduced to the methodologies and principles underpinning the conduct of literature searches for systematic reviews, scoping reviews and other evidence reviews. The session will cover: formulating a focused research question; preparing a protocol; developing a search strategy to address that research question; choosing appropriate databases and search engines; searching for grey literature and ongoing studies; managing your references in Covidence; and documenting and reporting your search. Intended audience: medicine and NHS; researcher and research student
In this talk, I will present our lab’s latest research on generative AI models designed to simulate cellular and tissue-level perturbations with unprecedented resolution. These models enable us to ask fundamental questions such as: Which interventions can revert a disease phenotype back to a healthy tissue state? and What perturbations can reprogram cells from state A to state B? By learning causal structure from high-dimensional multi-omics and spatial data, our frameworks can propose actionable interventions, predict patient-specific responses to treatment, and identify the most promising therapeutic targets. I will highlight how these models support target discovery, guide experimental design, and accelerate the development of personalized and precision medicine. Overall, this work demonstrates how generative AI can transform our ability to understand, predict, and engineer complex biological systems.
Is it ethical to believe? Does believing necessarily entail ethically suspect metaphysical commitments? And if so, can one suspend all one’s beliefs? This talk explores these and related questions by reconstructing what is a hitherto largely unstudied yet highly original philosophical conception of how belief relates to ethical action. Substantively, it focuses on the foundationally important Sanlun 三論 or Three Treatises school of Chinese Buddhist philosophy. Sanlun is the Chinese development of Indian Madhyamaka ‒ the hugely influential school of Buddhist philosophy founded around the turn of the third century by Nāgārjuna (c. 150-250) ‒ and is most closely associated with two figures, Sengzhao 僧肇 (374-414) and Jizang 吉藏 (549-623). On the basis that Sanlun thinkers take belief formation, maintenance, and relinquishment as ethically consequential actions, Dr Stepien argues that the ethics of belief provides a generative means of perceiving ‒ and untangling ‒ the various interwoven strands of their thought. More broadly, this talk introduces ongoing research into Sanlun Buddhist philosophy. While research on Madhyamaka philosophy has recently been intense, work in this field has largely sought to elucidate the metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical positions of Nāgārjuna and his Mādhyamika heirs in India and Tibet, leaving the philosophical study of related Chinese Buddhist texts and ideas still relatively untouched. This talk outlines the ‘ChinBuddhPhil’ project, designed as this is to contribute to the historical and systematic study of Chinese Buddhist philosophy through specialist research on the Sanlun school in conversation with its Indian antecedents, later elaborations in Chinese Buddhism, and analogues in contemporary Western philosophy. Rafal K. Stepien is Distinguished Researcher at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Buddhist Philosophy. He holds degrees from Oxford, Cambridge, Columbia, and the University of Western Australia, and has completed further studies at Harvard, Bologna, Damascus, Tehran, Esfehan, Peking, and Fo Guang Universities, among others. Rafal was the inaugural Cihui Foundation Faculty Fellow in Chinese Buddhism at Columbia, the inaugural Berggruen Research Fellow in Indian Philosophy at Oxford, a Humboldt Research Fellow in Buddhist Studies at Heidelberg, and the Soudavar Memorial Research Scholar in Persian Studies at Cambridge. His books include Buddhist Literature as Philosophy, Buddhist Philosophy as Literature (SUNY, 2020) and Buddhism Between Religion and Philosophy: Nāgārjuna and the Ethics of Emptiness (Oxford, 2024), winner of the American Academy of Religion’s 2025 Book Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion.
Researchers frequently want to have careers that impact school and classroom environments. There are many ways to impact those environments. One way is for researchers to use measurement tools that create information practitioners find trustworthy and useful. Another path toward impact is to use tools that produce high quality information about classroom practices in empirically rigorous research aimed at other researchers. These paths are not mutually exclusive, yet they do have tradeoffs. This talk will articulate some of the tradeoffs researchers face when selecting common tools for measuring teaching quality in K-12 classrooms. The talk draws on data from four studies of teaching quality that involve more than 8,000 teachers across continents. Dr. Bell will show how teaching quality’s definition, operationalization, and use by practitioners present significant tradeoffs. Researchers must be aware of and manage these tradeoffs if they are to make valid research claims and support the improvement of teaching. Speaker Bio: Prof Courtney Bell is a Professor of Learning Sciences in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. She recently served for more than five years as the Director of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER). She was the center’s first female director in its 60-year history. During that time, she founded the SimLab at the WCER [simlab.wisc.edu] and fostered the successful launch of the Multilingual Learning Research Center. A former high school science teacher, Courtney earned her doctorate in Curriculum, Teaching and Educational Policy from Michigan State University and a B.A. in Chemistry from Dartmouth College. Courtney led the international development of two teacher observation systems and served as a principal investigator on the Global Teaching InSights study, the first of its kind to comprehensively measure teaching quality using observations, artifacts, questionnaires, and student outcomes in eight economies. She is currently engaged in both national and international studies of teaching, the measurement of teaching, teacher education, and teacher learning.
This presentation will provide an overview of the current situation of ISIS-affiliated families in Iraq. Based on extensive field visits and primary source interviews, it will discuss ongoing challenges for families returning from al-Hol camp in northeast Syria, as well as those in IDP camps in Iraq, and the similarities and distinctions between these two groups. It will consider the long-term implications of not addressing their needs, alongside the needs of victims of ISIS in the country, and highlight the importance of attention and support for both groups for long-term durable solutions in Iraq. Biography: Joana Cook is an Assistant Professor of Terrorism and Political Violence at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA), Leiden University (Netherlands), and an Adjunct Lecturer at Johns Hopkins University (US). She was previously the Editor-in-Chief, and Senior Project Manager at the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT, Netherlands). Her research focuses primarily on terrorism and counterterrorism, with a specialisation in jihadism, children, women, non-state actor governance, and an increasing focus on AI. 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.
During this talk I will focus on the epidemiology, ecology, and evolution of the diarrhoeal disease, shigellosis, in the United Kingdom. Using a large national genomic surveillance dataset of Shigella sonnei (n=3,475) sampled over nearly two decades I will illustrate how we connect pathogen evolution to public health outcomes by drawing on two major unpublished studies from the group. Firstly, a phylodynamic study showing the differential epidemiology (including geospatial spread) of shigellosis in and outside of sexual transmission networks, including how the acquisition and fitness benefits provided by antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is influenced by bystander resistance in different demographic groups. And secondly, how we have leveraged our deep understanding of this genomic epidemiological framework of multimodal transmission for novel fundamental biological discovery; using bacterial Genome Wide Association Study to identify novel precursors of AMR in this WHO priority pathogen. 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.
Need a burst of focused time to get words flowing on the page? Join OCCT for our new series of Shut Up and Write (or Translate) sessions this term. These dedicated afternoons are a chance to step away from distractions, sit alongside fellow writers and translators, and make real progress on whatever project matters most to you. We’ll gather from 2–5pm on Mondays of Week 1, 3, 5, and 7 this term in a supportive, low-pressure environment designed to boost productivity and creativity alike. Bring along your laptop, notebooks, or translation drafts - anything you’d like to work on. After a quick check-in, we’ll dive into quiet writing or translating sprints, with breaks for coffee (which will be supplied) and conversation in between. Whether you’re polishing a chapter, drafting an article, working on a translation, or simply hoping to carve out space for your own work, these sessions are for you. Come for one, two, or all three afternoons, and leave with words on the page and renewed momentum for your projects.
Correlates of protection (CoP) are an important tool in vaccine development, approval, and deployment. Although many studies identify biomarkers predictive of protection, demonstrating the validity and generalisability of a CoP present a major challenge. In this talk Professor Davenport will discuss his team’s work establishing a mechanistic correlate of protection for COVID-19, and more recent application to mpox and HPV
Git & GitHub Fundamentals: Version Control for Beginners Monday, 2 February | 15:00 – 16:00 BDI/OxPop seminar room 1 Learn the essential skills to track your code, manage project history, and back up your work like a professional software developer. This beginner-friendly course introduces Git, the industry-standard version control system used by millions of developers worldwide. Starting from scratch, you'll learn how to initialise repositories, track changes, and create meaningful snapshots of your work through commits. We'll cover the fundamental Git workflow – staging, committing, and reviewing your project history – giving you the confidence to manage your code effectively. In the second half, we'll connect your local projects to GitHub, the world's leading platform for hosting and sharing code. You'll learn to push your work to the cloud, pull updates, and clone existing repositories, ensuring your projects are safely backed up and accessible from anywhere. By the end of this course, you'll have hands-on experience with: 1. Creating and managing Git repositories 2. Tracking changes and viewing project history 3. Writing clear commit messages 4. Connecting local projects to GitHub 5. Pushing and pulling code to the cloud 6. Cloning repositories Led by – Dr Mcebisi Ntleki, DPhil, Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford This session will cover: 1. Introduction to Git & Initial Setup 2. Creating Your First Repository 3. The Core Git Workflow 4. Viewing and Managing Changes 5. Connecting to GitHub 6. Pushing, Pulling, and Cloning Learning Objectives: 1. Initialise Git repositories and track changes to project files 2. Stage and commit changes with clear, descriptive commit messages 3. View project history and inspect differences between file versions 4. Connect local repositories to remote GitHub repositories securely 5. Push local commits to GitHub and pull updates from remote repositories 6. Clone existing repositories from GitHub to their local machine Intended Audience: Undergraduates, graduates and early researchers; No prior experience required – just bring your laptops, curiosity and willingness to learn! To register here - https://forms.office.com/e/F0YGjvRWJR?origin=lprLink 40 minutes: A judicious mix of presentation and practical 15 minutes: Practical exercise 05 minutes: Questions & Answers Pre-Course Preparation - To make the most of this session, please complete the following tasks before attending: Install Git Download and install Git on your computer from git-scm.com.
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 a recent paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Buyalskaya, Gallo and Camerer (2021) make the bold claim that we are living though a ‘golden age in social science’ research. They argue that this golden age is a product of the availability of new digital data, the development of new analytic tools, and the proliferation of interdisciplinary research teams tackling big social problems. In this talk I will explore the role that social psychology (as a social science) can play in this new golden age. I will show how the availability of digital data streams – including digital visual data, naturally occurring text data, and mobile and wearable sensor data – have transformed our ability to record and analyse human activity. At the same time, it presents us with a series of moral, ethical and practical challenges to address. I will argue that while digital traces have allowed the study of behaviour to return centre stage in social psychology, we have been insufficiently curious about how these very technologies structure our social relations. More specifically, I will suggest that social psychology needs to embrace the study of digital technologies, not for what the technologies can do, but for who they do things to, and for who they do them for. A truly golden age for social psychology depends on our willingness to engage with the power relations of digital technologies in the same way we think about prejudice, discrimination, resistance and social change.
For a long time, cities were conceived by authorities, urban planners, architects and scientists through the organicist metaphor of a living body. Inherited from nineteenth-century natural sciences, this framework deeply shaped urban policies by representing cities as metabolisms whose infrastructures functioned as vital organs. Today, this conceptualisation has been partly renewed through contemporary policies centred on the living and on urban nature. Yet the organic vision is not the only more-than-human approach to the city. It has long coexisted with other imaginaries, notably that of the mineral city or the city of stone (Richard Sennett). In this paper, I examine the stakes of metropolitan mineralisation as a counterpoint to dominant reflections on migration, mobility and floating populations, drawing on research in topography, mineralogy, geology and urban palaeontology. Architectural, engineering and geological reflections on the city’s foundations seek to stabilise the urban core by promoting an image of solidity and permanence, even though urban space remains fundamentally fluid and unfinished. This tension is expressed through metaphors of insularity—such as Manhattan imagined as a “granite island.” At the same time, the depth of the subsoil functions both as a marker of antiquity and as a vertical response to urban densification. Throughout the analysis, particular attention is given to New York and to the assertion of lithic power (Tim Edensor, Matthew Gandy), which frames urban expansion as the conquest and mastery of land. *Professor Stéphane van Damme* is author of a dozen monographs, his research contributes to the renewal of the history of science and knowledge and focuses on modern science and European culture from the 16th to the 19th century, examining the founding fathers (Bacon, Descartes, Linnaeus), scientific disciplines (philosophy, botany, chemistry, archaeology), and scientific institutions and capitals. His latest book, published in 2023 and entitled _Les Voyageurs du doute (Travellers of Doubt)_, focused on the critical epistemology of distant knowledge among libertine scholars in the 17th and 18th centuries.
The difficulties in making change happen are often attributed to different ‘blobs’. How can you build an eco-system for delivery in the modern era?
The seminar will be followed by drinks.
Dr Ramirez will be talking about how she has made a career out of her passion for the past, searching for the overlooked, ignored or misrepresented voices from history.
For our next talk, in the BDI/CHG (gen)omics Seminar series, we will be hearing from Evan Irving-Pease, Group Leader, in Quantitative and Population Genetics, BDI and CHG, University of Oxford. We’re delighted to host Evan in what promises to be a great talk! Date: Tuesday 3 February Time: 9:30 am – 10:30 am Talk title: TBC Location: Big Data Institute, Seminar Room 1 Abstract Rapid increases in the size of large genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have provided new prospects for understanding the genetic evolution of complex traits and disease susceptibility in humans. In turn, genomes from ancient human archaeological remains are now easier than ever to obtain and provide a direct window into changes in frequencies of trait-associated alleles in the past. This has generated a new wave of studies aiming to analyse the genetic component of traits in historic and prehistoric times using ancient DNA, and to determine whether any such traits were subject to natural selection. In this talk I will review recent advances in the field, with specific reference to how ancient DNA is informing our understanding of the evolution of disease susceptibility and the genetic legacy of ancient populations to present-day disease risk. Short biography Evan is a Research Fellow and Group Leader at the Big Data Institute and the Centre for Human Genetics. Evan leads the Evolutionary Medicine group, funded by the Royal Society and the ERC, which uses computational and statistical approaches to understand how natural selection has shaped the genetic risk for common and infectious diseases. Evan’s undergraduate degrees were in Archaeology and Computer Science, before he undertook an MSc and DPhil in Palaeogenomics at the University of Oxford. During his postdoctoral work at the University of Copenhagen, he developed tools and methods to improve the modelling of complex trait evolution using ancient DNA. ———————————————————————————————————————— All members of the University are welcome to join, please let reception at BDI know you’re here for the seminar and sign-in. We hope you can join us! We also now have a mailing list – To be added, ping genomics_bdi_whg-subscribe@maillist.ox.ac.uk (with any message), you should get a bounce-back with three options to confirm your subscription. Follow any of those options, and with a bit of luck you should be signed up! As a reminder, the (gen)omics seminar series runs every other Tuesday morning and is intended to increase interaction between individuals working in genomics across Oxford. We encourage in-person attendance where possible. There is time for discussion over, tea, coffee and pastries after the talks. Hybrid Option: Please note that these meetings are closed meetings and only open to members of the University of Oxford to encourage sharing of new and unpublished data. Please respect our speakers and do not share the link with anyone outside of the university. Microsoft Teams meeting – Meeting ID: 336 160 339 598 86 Passcode: iJ3LM7sk ——————————————————————————————————— 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!
Lifestyle interventions are increasingly central to treatment strategies for psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders. This seminar will focus on ketogenic diet-based programs and GLP-1-supported lifestyle interventions, examining their metabolic and neurological rationale. I will discuss how AI-enabled digital platforms can support personalisation, adherence, and monitoring, while generating actionable data to inform both clinical care and research. The talk will highlight key evidence gaps and translational challenges, and will explore which lifestyle components, such as nutrition, physical activity, sleep, cognitive-behavioural strategies, and stress regulation, appear most critical for sustaining cognitive and psychiatric benefits. Opportunities and challenges for integrating AI-enables lifestyle platforms into clinical and research settings will be discussed. This seminar is hosted in person at the Department of Psychiatry Seminar Room. To join online, please use the below Zoom details: https://zoom.us/j/93311812405?pwd=9kbjSbEcO2fa7n7gFLZVqrChvr467B.1 Meeting ID: 933 1181 2405 Passcode: 169396
For our next talk, in the BDI/CHG (gen)omics Seminar series, we will be hearing from Evan Irving-Pease, Group Leader, in Quantitative and Population Genetics, BDI and CHG, University of Oxford. We’re delighted to host Evan in what promises to be a great talk! Date: Tuesday 3 February Time: 9:30 am – 10:30 am Talk title: What can ancient DNA tell us about the evolution of disease susceptibility? Location: Big Data Institute, Seminar Room 1 Abstract Rapid increases in the size of large genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have provided new prospects for understanding the genetic evolution of complex traits and disease susceptibility in humans. In turn, genomes from ancient human archaeological remains are now easier than ever to obtain and provide a direct window into changes in frequencies of trait-associated alleles in the past. This has generated a new wave of studies aiming to analyse the genetic component of traits in historic and prehistoric times using ancient DNA, and to determine whether any such traits were subject to natural selection. In this talk I will review recent advances in the field, with specific reference to how ancient DNA is informing our understanding of the evolution of disease susceptibility and the genetic legacy of ancient populations to present-day disease risk. Short biography Evan is a Research Fellow and Group Leader at the Big Data Institute and the Centre for Human Genetics. Evan leads the Evolutionary Medicine group, funded by the Royal Society and the ERC, which uses computational and statistical approaches to understand how natural selection has shaped the genetic risk for common and infectious diseases. Evan’s undergraduate degrees were in Archaeology and Computer Science, before he undertook an MSc and DPhil in Palaeogenomics at the University of Oxford. During his postdoctoral work at the University of Copenhagen, he developed tools and methods to improve the modelling of complex trait evolution using ancient DNA. ———————————————————————————————————————— All members of the University are welcome to join, please let reception at BDI know you’re here for the seminar and sign-in. We hope you can join us! We also now have a mailing list – To be added, ping genomics_bdi_whg-subscribe@maillist.ox.ac.uk (with any message), you should get a bounce-back with three options to confirm your subscription. Follow any of those options, and with a bit of luck you should be signed up! As a reminder, the (gen)omics seminar series runs every other Tuesday morning and is intended to increase interaction between individuals working in genomics across Oxford. We encourage in-person attendance where possible. There is time for discussion over, tea, coffee and pastries after the talks. Hybrid Option: Please note that these meetings are closed meetings and only open to members of the University of Oxford to encourage sharing of new and unpublished data. Please respect our speakers and do not share the link with anyone outside of the university. Microsoft Teams meeting – Meeting ID: 336 160 339 598 86 Passcode: iJ3LM7sk ——————————————————————————————————— 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!
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
Email oxchildpsych@psych.ox.ac.uk to request the Zoom link to attend online.
(co-authored with Mats Ahrenshop, Anthony Calacino and Hayley Pring) Abstract: The Global South faces existential impacts from anthopogenic climate change, yet most emerging economies are increasingly embedding themselves in climate-forcing fossil fuel production. How do communities exposed to both types of vulnerabilities relate to climate change? We argue that, in absence of strong fossil fuel stakeholders, exposure to extreme weather events can generate disruptions which, by consequence, raise the salience of climate change and the demand for climate response. However, this mobilisation is less likely when fossil fuel industries are strong, as economic dependencies here pacify local populations in the instance of climate shocks, consequently dampening climate politicization. We test our conjectures in two ways. First, we present cross-national fine-grained analyses of the Climate Vulnerability Database (2010-2023), which traces climate-relevant risks and concurrent public behavior at the municipality-monthly level in six emerging economies across three continents. Furthermore, we present text analyses of original focus group data from Brazil and Indonesia. Our empirical results reveal that climate shocks change public behavior and that, in the absence of fossil fuel production, this behavior reflects the politicization of the climate. However, these effects are systematically divergent in the presence of fossil fuels, which mute general mobilization and, consequently, the politicization of the climate. These findings highlight why the effects of climate change on political life in general, and public-driven mobilization on climate in particular, are inherently contingent on the political economy of the exposed communities.
Join us for a bilingual (Mandarin Chinese, English) reading of Yen Ai-Lin's 顏艾琳 poetry collection Bone Skin Flesh 骨皮肉, newly published in a bilingual edition, followed by discussion between the poet, Dr Aoife Cantrill, Dr Bingbing Shi and Samir Ng Sum Leung. (Source: Balestier Press) First published in Chinese in 1997, Bone Skin Flesh now appears in a bilingual edition with its first English translation by Jenn Marie Nunes. A landmark in contemporary Taiwanese poetry, these poems revel in the feminine – its desires, violences, and contradictions – through language that is visceral, imagistic and unrelenting. Here the body is never just metaphor: truth is spit, the sky a leaking breast, the moon a tongue pressed to skyscrapers. Women recur – mother, lover, crone – mythic and ordinary, tender and grotesque. Infused with pink spirit and kin to the Gurlesque, Yen's work claims the feminine as a site of rebellion, pleasure, and creation. Urgent and intimate, Bone Skin Flesh is poetry that demands not only to be read, but lived with. Yen Ai-Lin 顏艾琳 is a Taiwanese poet whose work moves between modern poetry, lyrical prose, and cultural criticism. She was the first female poet in Taiwan to publish a sustained series of erotic poems—works that ignited wide discussions on gender and desire. Her writing, shaped by diverse influences, has been honored with the National Outstanding Young Poet Award, the Ministry of Culture’s Outstanding Award for New Poem Creation, the Genesis Poetry Magazine 35th Anniversary Poet Award, the inaugural Taipei Literature Award, the Wu Zhuoliu New Poetry Award, and more.
Dr. Sana Tibi’s colloquium presentation explores the unique linguistic and cognitive dimensions of Arabic literacy development in the early grades. Over the past few decades, scientific research on reading has grown substantially. However, this body of work has been criticized for its “anglocentric” focus (Share, 2021), limiting its applicability to non-English languages and orthographies. Also, while several universal predictors of word reading such as letter knowledge, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and rapid automatized naming have been identified, their relative contributions vary across languages due to differences in orthographic depth, grain size of phonological-orthographic units, and morphological complexity. Furthermore, despite the widespread use of Arabic orthography among Arabic speaking populations and across populations who speak other languages such as Persian, Pashto, and Urdu, Arabic remains underrepresented in cross-linguistic literacy research. Notably, large-scale comparative studies have yet to include Arabic. Arabic offers a compelling case for investigation due to its unique orthographic features (e.g., allographs, ligaturing, syllabic structure, consonantal script, and diacritics), rich morphological structure (linear and nonlinear), and diglossic nature (spoken dialects vs. formal standard). Drawing on multiple empirical studies, Dr. Tibi examines how cognitive and linguistic predictors contribute to Arabic reading outcomes (accuracy, fluency, and comprehension) in early elementary grades. She also addresses challenges in assessing Arabic literacy due to the lack of standardized tools and highlights some key findings from studies that focused on validation of some assessment tools (root awareness and letter knowledge). The presentation also explores differences between poor and proficient decoders in Arabic. Furthermore, the existing research on Arabic is largely cross-sectional, with few longitudinal studies. To address this gap, the presentation will report findings from a two-year longitudinal study following 142 Palestinian children from kindergarten through grade 2. The study examined the predictive roles of letter knowledge, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, morphological awareness, and working memory in second-grade Arabic word reading, controlling for biological sex and parental education. Structural equation modeling revealed the critical role of Arabic letter knowledge in reading development as well as the indirect role of working memory in Arabic word reading. These findings offer important implications for reading acquisition, instruction, and assessment in Arabic, and underscore the need for more inclusive and linguistically diverse literacy research. Studying underrepresented languages expands our understanding of the universal aspects of reading allowing nuanced insights into the world's linguistic landscapes. Teams link: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/3825967966058?p=oaa4boDA3tu5ZnqMja
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.
Part of the Online Inclusivity Training for Health and Care Researchers series. 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.
A conversation on Paula Cristina Roque’s book, Insurgent Nations: Rebel Rule in Angola and South Sudan, facilitated by Alpa Shah Over two separate twelve-year periods, two opposing ‘states’ governed in parallel in Angola (1979–1991) and Sudan (1990–2002), each with competing conceptions of society, history and national identity. Deeply dividing communities with their counter-nationalist programmes, rebel parties UNITA in Angola and the SPLM/A in Sudan, which had fought Africa’s longest and bloodiest civil wars, built political and military enterprises in opposition to the established governments. Insurgent Nations unpacks the complexities of these movements, exploring the charisma of their leaders, the ruthlessness of their military operations, their political manoeuvrings, and their multiple transformations in war and peace. Using first-hand, unpublished accounts from their leaders and cadres, Paula Cristina Roque provides unique insight into UNITA and the SPLM/A’s governing strategies. She details the ‘nations’, ‘states’ and ‘societies’ that were forged by the parties’ ideologies, sub-nationalist concerns and interactions with the population. While UNITA’s political project in the Free Lands of Angola was centrally controlled and totalitarian, the SPLM/A’s New Sudan was decentralised and minimalist, built from the bottom up. This is the first volume to compare the policies and perspectives of UNITA and the SPLM/A, offering a new understanding of territory-governing insurgencies. Ultimately, both rebel states were exercises in survival, resilience and adaptation. Paula Cristina Roque is an author, researcher, and security sector analyst with extensive expertise in human rights, security, and surveillance in Africa. She is the Executive Director of Intelwatch since 2024, an organisation that promotes democratic oversight of intelligence and surveillance, monitor and report on surveillance activities, raise awareness and provide education about the dangers of undemocratic intelligence and surveillance activities, and advocate for effective oversight of surveillance laws, policies, and practices. She has served as an advisor for the Crisis Management Initiative as well as a Senior Analyst for Southern Africa with the International Crisis Group. Previously, she worked with the South Sudan-Centre for Strategic and Policy Studies, the Institute for Security Studies, the South African Institute for International Affairs, and as a journalist in West Africa and the UK. Paula holds a Dphil in Development Studies from the University of Oxford, a MSc in Human Rights from the London School of Economics, and a BA in Social Anthropology from the Instituto Superior de Ciencias do Trabalho e da Empresa.
Join us for this hybrid event with online speakers Ben Folit-Weinberg and Harriet Fertik (Ohio State University) to discuss The 'Metaphors of Reception, Reception as a Metaphor Project': An Overview. Harriet Fertik's is Assistant Professor at The Ohio State University. Her research focuses on literature and political thought in the early Roman empire and on classical reception. Ben Folit-Weinberg is Assistant Professor at The Ohio State University. His work on ancient Greek thought delves into poetry and drama, philosophy, and intellectual history. This event is free and open to all. Please go to the APGRD website for more details and to access the Zoom link to join us online.
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.
https://www.cmcsoxford.org.uk/our-events
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
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
Large language models (LLMs) have taken the world by storm, enabling new applications, intensifying GPU shortages, and raising concerns about the accuracy of their outputs. In this talk, I will present several projects I have worked on to address these challenges. Specifically, I will focus on Ray, a distributed framework for scaling AI workloads, vLLM and SGLang, two high-throughput inference engines for LLMs, and LMArena, a platform for accurate LLM benchmarking. I will conclude with key lessons learned and outline directions for future research. Professor Ion Stoica is a Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the University of California, Berkeley, and holds the Xu Bao Chancellor Chair. He is the Director of the Sky Computing Lab, and the Executive Chairman and Co-founder of Databricks, and Anyscale. Professor Stoica's current research focuses on AI systems and cloud computing. His work includes open-source projects vLLM, SGLang, Chatbot Arena, SkyPilot, Ray and Apache Spark. He is a Member of the National Academy of Engineering, an Honorary Member of the Romanian Academy, and an ACM Fellow.
We estimate a model of intra-household allocation of time-intensive parental investments. To address the identification challenge of separating preferences, expectations, and bargaining power, we leverage a unique data combination. First, we derive the quantity and quality of maternal and paternal speech from day-long audio recording using a state-of-the-art neural network classifier. Second, we elicit expectations from each parent about the returns to speech. Third, we exploit hyper-local variation in female bargaining power arising from inheritance practices. Our model and estimation reveal how female bargaining power influences paternal investments: fathers provide more and higher-quality speech investments when women have greater bargaining power, but only when mothers expect investments to improve child language development. These results align with a collective model in which powerful women elicit paternal investment when they believe it is productive. Our results highlight the role of economic power as opposed to other forms of social status in driving these investments.
President Franklin Roosevelt once said ‘no major war has ever been won or lost through lack of money.’ He was wrong. This paper explains why. It argues that as states struggled to finance the immense war efforts required by the two world wars, and to undermine their enemies, money became a crucial weapon. The UK and USA led the way in discovering new methods of using money to do both. In the process they invented forms of economic statecraft that remain relevant today, redefined the relationship between citizen and state as well as the meaning of money itself, and blurred the boundaries between war and peace. Using money as a lens through which to study the two world wars allows us to see them in a fresh light, as a case study of the blockade of Germany between 1914 and 1918 demonstrates. Jonathan Boff is Professor of Military History at the University of Birmingham, where he teaches courses covering topics from Homer to Helmand. His prize-winning books include Winning and Losing on the Western Front (Cambridge University Press, 2012) and Haig's Enemy (Oxford University Press, 2018). Oxford University Press will publish his history of economic statecraft and warfare, The Age of Mammon and Mars: Money and War in the Modern World, in 2026.
My doctoral research examines transnational bonds of solidarity between the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), the African National Congress (ANC), and the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the 1969-1991 period of the Global Cold War. These case studies were chosen for the clear synergies between these three self-determination struggles, their convergent evolution from armed resistance to diplomatic engagement along remarkably parallel timelines, and the enduring salience of their solidarity in modern political discourse–South Africa’s December 2023 complaint against Israel at the ICJ and Ireland’s May 2024 recognition of the state of Palestine are two amongst many recent examples. The project builds on my MPhil research, which found that the ANC-PLO bond involved exchanges of paramilitary training and financial support, mutual diplomatic advocacy at international forums such as the United Nations, collaboration between civil society organisations in the post-Mandela period, and other modes of cooperation. My doctoral research incorporates the IRA's role in this transnational network, exploring whether these three movements constituted a trilateral alliance within the broader Third World, nonaligned, and anti-colonial revolutionary community. I am also interested in uncovering the role of state actors—particularly Muammar Qaddafi's Libyan Jamahiriya and Fidel Castro's Cuban regime—in fostering this revolutionary network.
Oxford Networks for the Environment (ONE) annual lecture followed by panel discussion and drinks reception - all welcome Speaker: Professor Gideon Henderson, Professor of Earth Sciences, and former Defra Chief Scientific Advisor Biography: Gideon is an environmental scientist and advisor with particular expertise as a geochemist researching surface-earth processes related to climate, the carbon cycle and the oceans. From 2019 to 2025 he was working 80% as the Chief Scientific Advisor and Director General for Science and Analysis at the UK Government Department, Defra (Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs). In addition to his work at Oxford, Gideon is Chair of the Met Office Science Advisory Committee, the Senior Independent Member of NERC Council, and a Member of the Advisory Board for the UN Decade of Ocean Science. Programme Welcome by Prof Heidi Johansen-Berg, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Strategic Initiatives Keynote by Prof Gideon Henderson Panel discussion: Dr Steve Smith, Arnell Associate Professor of Greenhouse Gas Removal Dr Jessica Omukuti, Research Fellow on the Politics of Net Zero in the Global South Chaired by Prof Rosalind Rickaby, Chair of Geology, Department of Earth Sciences Update on the Oxford Networks for the Environment by Prof Jim Hall, Professor of Climate and Environmental Risks, and Chair of ONE Network, Environmental Change Institute
Even with stringent and rapid reductions in emission of greenhouse gases it is clear, and has been since the Paris agreement in 2015, that we will need to remove hundreds of billions of tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere to keep warming below 2oC. More than 200 companies are now pursuing this CO2 removal (CDR -Carbon Dioxide Removal), using a wide range of approaches. More than $10bn has been invested in a voluntary CDR market which, by some projections, will grow to $100bn per year. Most approaches to CDR are novel, untested, and still at small scale. Whether they actually deliver the quantity of CDR claimed, and whether that removal is permanent and in addition to natural carbon uptake remain open questions. Accurate and robust measurement and verification of CDR also remains a significant challenge. And the consequences of CDR approaches to the wider environment are under-investigated. CDR presents both a challenge and a dilemma to environmental scientists and regulators. We urgently need to develop approaches to CDR at large scale if we want to prevent dangerous climate change, but the precautionary principle guides us to pursue such major interventions with care. This challenge becomes more acute as countries build CDR into their future emission commitments and as compliance markets develop, requiring regulation that both promotes CDR innovation and protects the environment. This lecture will ask: what do we need to do, as the demand for CDR credits grows, to ensure that credits have real climate value and are not causing unintended environmental harm? The lecture will be followed by a panel discussion with Dr Steve Smith and Dr Jessica Omukuti, chaired by Professor Rosalind Rickaby, and will conclude with a drinks reception.
Heart failure affects millions of people around the world. Yet, many patients still have few effective treatment options, especially those whose hearts become stiff and struggle to relax between beats. In February's Balliol Online Lecture, Professor Zaccolo will describe her research group’s discovery of a small but powerful molecular ‘brake’ inside cells affected by heart disease, and the potential for it to be released with nanometer-level precision. Achieved through study of the signalling mechanisms associated with the heart’s response to stress - often called the ‘fight or flight’ response - in turn this could allow the heart to relax properly again, offering protection from the development of heart failure. If this discovery can be transformed successfully into a therapeutic treatment, it could represent a completely new way of helping patients beyond managing their symptoms, as current treatments do, by targeting a core mechanism of the heart that becomes altered in disease. Professor Manuela Zaccolo, graduated in medicine at the University of Torino, Italy, and subsequently went on to pursue a career in science by spending four years as a post-doctoral researcher at the LMB, MRC, Cambridge, UK, working on protein engineering and in vitro molecular evolution. She then moved back to Italy, at the University of Padova, to work on the generation of fluorescent sensors for real time imaging of intracellular second messengers in living cells. In Padova she established her independent research group in 2001 at the Venetian Institute of Molecular Medicine with a focus on intracellular signalling. In 2007 she moved to the University of Glasgow, where she initially held a position as a Reader and subsequently as Professor of Cell Biology. In 2012 she joined the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics at Oxford University. She is also a Fellow in Pre-Clinical Medicine at Balliol College. Her research investigates intracellular signalling, particularly cyclic nucleotide pathways, signal compartmentalisation, and their roles in health and disease.
The question of space has been a crucial one in the development and maintenance of empires, particularly those that claimed and exercised sovereignty over overseas territories. A similar question shaped the experiences of women’s groups and organizations at the end of the empire, in an even more urgent way, as they sought to rebuild the ties between France and its colonies after World War II and the Vichy period. This seminar examines how women’s groups framed their activism across a plurality of spaces – national, imperial, and transnational – between 1945 and the late 1950s. By focusing on both pro-imperial and anticolonial groups, it explores political and social organization across space, as well as the nature of the different networks involved in developing contacts and cooperation between France and its West African territories. As women’s groups drew on existing networks (diplomatic, administrative, party-related, and organizational) while also creating new ones, they encountered both opportunities and constraints. The seminar will thus reflect on how the nature and form of these specific networks, as well as on their vertical, horizontal, and transversal interactions over time, influenced the expansion of French women’s groups in French overseas territories.
The seminars will take place on Tuesdays during term time, from 5:00 to 6:30 p.m. at Corpus Christi College in Merton Street. Please ask the porters for directions. No registration is required. For more details: https://tolkien50.web.ox.ac.uk/event/tolkien-seminars-ht-2026
'Twelve Years Away from Constantinople' was an instant classic in its time. For well over a century, it has endured as a uniquely candid and entertaining account of Armenian émigré life during the reign of the authoritarian Ottoman sultan, Abdülhamid II. Best known for his trenchant satires, its extraordinarily cosmopolitan author, Yervant Odian, was and remains one of the most recognizable and active figures of his generation. His multifaceted international career as journalist and civil society leader embedded him deeply in Ottoman-Armenian intellectual and revolutionary circles both in Constantinople and well beyond. This remarkably unabashed memoir relates his observations as a well-loved and committed member of those inner circles. His twelve-year journey begins with the 1896 massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman capital, when Odian, like many of his contemporaries fled as a political refugee to safer shores. His migrations led him to Greece, Egypt, France, Austria, and England, where he witnessed and withstood the numerous hardships plaguing the Armenians of the ‘senior diaspora.’
_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.
Culture has always been targeted in the genocide of the Palestinian people. This talk approaches filmmaking as life-writing in conditions of genocide, where family photographs, film archives, and cultural institutions become sites of struggle over memory, survival, and the right to narrative. Drawing on histories of cultural loss and erasure in Palestine—from the theft of family photo archives in 1948, to the looting of the Palestinian film archive in 1982, to the targeting of cultural centres in 2024, such as Rashad Shawa in Gaza and the Jenin Freedom Theatre—filmmaker Saeed Taji Farouky asks: What does it mean to make creative work when the very materials of cultural memory are under threat? Key questions addressed in this lecture include: How can life-writing practices—including filmmaking—contribute to the resistance against occupation and to Palestinian liberation? How should we understand the value, limits, and responsibilities of such work in a state of emergency, such as the one currently ongoing in Gaza? How can we navigate the UK cultural landscape in which solidarity with Palestinians is suppressed or criminalised? Touching on life-writing, filmmaking, and cultural memory, this talk will be of interest to readers, writers, filmmakers, students, and scholars working across literature, film and media, visual culture, politics, and human rights. It will also appeal to those interested in archives and testimony, as well as the ethics of making and sharing creative work in times of genocide, occupation, and state violence. No prior specialist knowledge or preparation is required. Speaker Details: Saeed Taji Farouky is a Palestinian/Egyptian filmmaker who has been making films around themes of conflict, human rights, and colonialism since 2005. His latest feature documentary, A Thousand Fires, premiered as the opening film in Directors’ Fortnight at the Locarno Film Festival 2021, where it won the Marco Zucchi Award for most innovative documentary. His previous documentary, Tell Spring Not to Come This Year, premiered at the Berlinale 2015, where it won the Audience Choice Panorama Award and the Amnesty Human Rights Award, and was sold to Netflix. Farouky is also a radical film educator, regularly teaching, leading workshops, and lecturing about alternative forms of cinematic storytelling. He is the designer and lead tutor of the Radical Film School, a free film course based in London dedicated to political filmmakers from marginalised backgrounds. About OCLW’s Global Majority & Underrepresented Writers’ Programme: This event is part of OCLW’s flagship Global Majority and Underrepresented Writers’ Programme (GMUWP). The GMUWP supports talented yet historically excluded writers in developing their work, building confidence, and navigating the publishing industry by providing free lectures, workshops, and mentorship. The Programme aims to create a more inclusive writing community, ensuring that life-writing reflects the diverse range of voices that surround us. Find out more about the Programme here. Further Details and Contacts: After the event, please join us for a complimentary wine reception. This hybrid event is free and open to all. Delivering our lectures costs the Centre around £20 per attendee. If you are able, please consider making a voluntary donation of £5, £10, or £20 to help us cover these costs and keep our events accessible to all. No one will be turned away for lack of funds. Registration is strongly recommended for in-person attendance and required for hybrid attendance. Registration will close at 14:30 on 03/02/2026. The event will be recorded and made available on the OCLW website soon after. Registration is not required to access the recording. Queries regarding this event should be addressed to OCLW Events Manager, Dr Eleri Anona Watson.
You are warmly invited to the showing of a new documentary film, ‘The Hardest Bridge’, on a real example of post-conflict reconciliation in Britain and Northern Ireland, with discussion led by the film’s subjects Jo Berry and Pat Magee: 'The Hardest Bridge' Tuesday 3 February [Third Week] 7.30pm – 10.00 pm, in the Auditorium, St John’s College. As a Volunteer with the Irish Republican Army, Pat Magee planted a bomb in the Grand Hotel, Brighton, during the Conservative Party Annual Conference in 1984, aiming to kill PM Margaret Thatcher. The explosion killed five people including Sir Anthony Berry MP, father of Jo Berry. Magee was arrested in 1985 and imprisoned in 1986 but released under the Good Friday Agreement in 1999. Jo went to meet him. Ever since they have been on a transformative journey which has taken them to situations of tension and conflict in many countries. Can the wounds of war heal? Can enemies reconcile? ‘The Hardest Bridge’ (45 mins) focuses those questions through the insights of Pat Magee and Jo Berry. They will be present in person to speak and answer questions after the film. Also present will be the film’s director, Dr Imad Karam, an award-winning British-Palestinian film maker, and executive producer Howard Grace. Followed by a drinks reception. This event, jointly sponsored by OxPeace and the DPIR, is free and open to all. Registration is not required. Followed by a drinks reception.
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
Sensitivity to patterns is fundamental to sensory processing and lies at the heart of predictive coding and Bayesian theories of brain function, which conceptualise perception as inference based on internal models of the environment. The brain is hypothesised to maintain a hierarchy of predictive models that track the statistical structure of ongoing sensory input. A central challenge is to understand how such models are formed, stored in memory, and dynamically engaged, or interrupted, by changing sensory contexts. Owing to its inherently dynamic nature, audition provides a tractable and powerful test bed for addressing these questions. Over the past decade, my laboratory has investigated the neural mechanisms underlying auditory sequence processing. We use carefully designed rapid tone-pip sequences to model different types of environmental regularities, combining behavioural experiments, computational modelling, M/EEG, fMRI, and pupillometry to characterise how the brain automatically extracts, represents, and exploits regularities in sound. This work elucidates the underlying neural mechanisms and the statistical heuristics the brain employs, for example, how it arbitrates whether to maintain or interrupt existing models in the face of new evidence.
Digital and artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies are increasingly mediating our political and legal interactions. This is manifest, for example, in the ways in which judges and civil servants increasingly rely on algorithmic tools in their decision making, or in how political communications increasingly take place on, and are structured by, digital platforms. These technological developments have been the focal point of legal scholarship engaging with deep-seated puzzles about what is it that we gain and lose from the penetration of digital and AI technologies into political and legal spheres. In this discussion, I will share my insights on the implications of these transformations for the notion of the ‘public’ as a fundamental category and unit of analysis. The project examines the role that the notion of the ‘public’ plays in democratic politics and jurisprudence, and how this role is obstructed when humans and human functions are replaced by machines. It illuminates the evolving triadic interplay between the ‘public’, democracy, and technology, and considers the ways in which these understandings set novel priorities for law in the regulation of digital and AI technologies.
To observers across the political spectrum, American politics appears increasingly divided. Long-standing divisions of race, ethnicity, gender, class, and rural-urban remain powerful, but a more fundamental split may now be emerging between those who support the existing democratic order and those who do not. In this event, Robert Lieberman will analyse what today’s political cleavages mean for the future of American democracy, and place current conditions in a broader historical and comparative perspective. Robert C. Lieberman is Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author and editor of numerous books and articles on American political development, race and politics, and American democracy, including most recently Four Threats: The Recurring Crises of American Democracy and Democratic Resilience: Can the United States Withstand Rising Polarization?
Female Genital Cutting (FGC) is a harmful traditional practice with severe consequences for women’s health, human capital accumulation, and psychological well-being. This paper evaluates two interventions designed to reduce the incidence of FGC among adolescent girls in Sierra Leone, where the practice is integral to an initiation ceremony - called “Bondo” - symbolizing a girl’s transition to womanhood. We randomly assigned 150 villages to one of three arms: (i) a control group; (ii) a Visual Information arm, which facilitated community discussions emphasizing the harmful consequences of female genital cutting; and (iii) a Norm-Replacement arm, aimed at substituting the traditional ritual with an alternative that does not involve cutting (“Bondo without Cutting”). Girls’ FGC was measured using maternal reports, as well as clinical examinations by healthcare professionals. Three years after the intervention, both treatments reduced the incidence of female genital cutting among girls aged 10-18 by 21%-27%. Mechanisms’ analysis reveals that the Visual Information arm improved awareness of health risks, while the Norm-Replacement arm enhanced support for alternative rituals. Both interventions modestly reduced perceived social pressure, as captured by second-order beliefs. These findings underscore the potential of culturally grounded, community-based strategies to shift deeply entrenched social norms. Written with Eliana La Ferrara
Join Neil Jefferies for an overview of how to analyse, annotate and collate images from different websites using the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) technology. Discover how IIIF can be used in research processes and explore examples from the Digital Bodleian collection. This free, in-person event, is open to University of Oxford staff and students only. Registration is required.
*Programme* 14:00-14:05 Welcome 14:05-14:45 *Michael Jaworzy* (CNRS-MFO, Oxford), Tschirnhaus and the Cartesians 14:45-15:30 *Mogens Lærke* (CNRS-IHRIM/MFO, Lyon/Oxford), Traveling with Tschirnhaus: Some Remarks on the First European Reception of Spinoza 15:30-16:00 Break 16:00-16:45 *Pablo Montosa Molinero* (Barcelona), Relational Post-Cartesian Physics: A Preliminary Study 16:45-17:00 Concluding remarks Contact: "$":mailto:mogens.laerke@cnrs.fr and/or "$":mailto:michael.jaworzyn@cnrs.fr
AI is inescapable, from its mundane uses online to its increasingly consequential decision-making in courtrooms, job interviews, and wars. The ubiquity of AI is so great that it might produce public resignation—a sense that the technology is our shared fate. As economist Maximilian Kasy shows in The Means of Prediction, artificial intelligence, far from being an unstoppable force, is irrevocably shaped by human decisions—choices made to date by the ownership class that steers its development and deployment. Kasy shows that the technology of AI is ultimately not that complex. It is insidious, however, in its capacity to steer results to its owners’ wants and ends. Kasy clearly and accessibly explains the fundamental principles on which AI works, and, in doing so, reveals that the real conflict isn’t between humans and machines, but between those who control the machines and the rest of us. The Means of Prediction offers a powerful vision of the future of AI: a future not shaped by technology, but by the technology’s owners. Amid a deluge of debates about technical details, new possibilities, and social problems, Kasy cuts to the core issue: Who controls AI’s objectives, and how is this control maintained? The answer lies in what he calls “the means of prediction,” or the essential resources required for building AI systems: data, computing power, expertise, and energy. As Kasy shows, in a world already defined by inequality, one of humanity’s most consequential technologies has been and will be steered by those already in power. About the speaker: Maximilian Kasy is Professor of Economics at the University of Oxford. He received his PhD at UC Berkeley and joined Oxford after appointments at UCLA and Harvard University. His research interests focus on social foundations for statistics and machine learning, going beyond traditional single-agent decision theory. He also works on economic inequality, job guarantee programs, and basic income. He teaches a course on foundations of machine learning at the economics department at Oxford. In fall 2025, his book "The Means of Prediction: How AI Really Works (and Who Benefits)" was published by University of Chicago Press.
About the series: This series will feature master classes, seminars, workshops and talks with Laura Rival, research collaborators and colleagues, throughout academic year 2025-2026. Beginning in Michaelmas term 2025, the theme for the term, in answer to the series question, was 'In Latin America, by Greening the State at the Top and from Below'. In Hilary term, the theme is 'By Knowing Nature Differently'. In Trinity term, the theme will be 'By Imagining a New Civilization and Building the Next Political Economic Order'.
The Icelandic sagas have been used as a comparative literature for the narratives in the Old Testament ever since they became accessible in editions and translations towards the end of the nineteenth century. Scholars such as Hermann Gunkel, Gerhard von Rad, George Coats, Meir Sternberg and John Barton have all used the sagas to reflect on stories in the Hebrew Bible, ranging from single episodes like Jacob wrestling with an angel, to the entire span of the ‘saga’ of King David. Yet the sagas of Icelanders belong in a very different context: they were written down in the thirteenth century about Icelanders living in the tenth century and often survive in late medieval, or even early modern, manuscripts. If the characters in the sagas are sometimes pagans, the sagas themselves were written down by Christians, who may well have been familiar with the Old Testament, either in Latin or a vernacular translation. This lecture will consider the value of the Icelandic sagas for reading and understanding the Old Testament. It will look how the sagas have been used by scholars of the Hebrew Bible in the past and compare this with how the Old Testament has been used by scholars of the sagas. It will suggest not only that there is a genuine kinship between these storytelling traditions, but also that the saga authors themselves were aware of this.
Join online via Microsoft Teams by clicking here: https://tinyurl.com/bdff6tpt
Ever since the 2015 “migration crisis”, the EU has pursued a wide range of aggressive migration policies which can collectively be described as the continued construction of “Fortress Europe”. Much of the analysis and critique in law and philosophy to date has, understandably, focused on the immediate consequences this has for migrants and asylum seekers, often with deadly outcomes. More recently, there is an emergent debate that analyses how these policies undermine the EU’s constitutional values, such as the rule of law, democracy, and fundamental rights. In this talk, I want to push the conversation beyond the black letter of EU constitutional law and analyse the connection between these migration policies and the deeper level of the constitutional imaginary, the philosophical ideas and beliefs which underpin the project of European constitutionalisation. My hypothesis is that by shifting attention from the content of these migration policies and instead focusing on their place and method, by paying heed to the where and the how of Fortress Europe, two preliminary connections between migration policies and the EU’s liberal constitutional imaginary can be drawn. The first is that the informalisation of migration policies undermines the idea of European integration as a project of “integration through law”. Second, the territorial fragmentation that results from these migration policies undermines one of the deepest aspirations of European integration, namely, to unify Europe and overcome the ‘walls’ and ‘curtains’ that divided the continent in the 20th century. Thus, the talk traces the impact of Fortress Europe migration policies on the broader project of European integration. About the speaker Aristel is a legal and political theorist currently working as a postdoctoral researcher at Ghent University's Faculty of Law on postcolonial political theory and international migration law as part of the ERC-funded MIGJUST project. From January 2026, Aristel will be a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Cambridge’s Faculty of Law and a Senior Postdoctoral Researcher at Trinity College, Cambridge. There he will develop a theory on the impact of the EU’s migration policies on the constitutional imaginary of European integration. Aristel works at the intersection of constitutional theory, EU law, migration law, critical theory, and postcolonial theory. In 2024, he obtained a PhD in philosophy (summa cum laude) from the University of Leuven’s Institute of Philosophy where he held an individual fellowship from the Flemish Research Council (FWO). In his doctoral project, Aristel worked on a novel approach to EU law at the intersection of constitutional theory and a critique of legal reasoning. The project resulted in five publications, principal among which is “Ideology in the Adjudication of the ECJ”, published in Law and Philosophy in 2023. Aristel also holds an LLM in European and International Public Law (magna cum laude) form the University of Leuven’s Faculty of Law. Beyond academia, he is trained as a classical musician (Royal College of Music, London) and has so far called five countries home.
A look at the architecture of Algiers in the 1950s when the French tried to counter the calls for independence by erecting housing projects, often by excellent architects. The Algerians reacted to these top-down initiatives, often using buildings against the grain.
Join us for an evening of exploring one of the most exciting frontiers in innovation! Synthetic biology applies engineering principles to biology, aiming to design and build new biological parts, devices, and systems, or redesign existing living systems for useful purposes. Delivered in collaboration with the Oxford Synthetic Biology Society and the Oxford ZERO Institute, this event will demystify synthetic biology and reveal how it can drive transformative solutions on the path to Net Zero. From turning CO2 into insulin to decarbonising the aviation industry come and learn how biology can be engineered to work for the planet. This event will bring together four expert voices from academia, industry and policy to give you a holistic understanding of how synthetic biology aims to make an impact in climate tech in the next 10 years. Each speaker will deliver a concise 10–15 minute presentation, followed by an interactive 40-minute panel discussion. The evening will conclude with drinks and nibbles, an ideal opportunity to continue the conversation, network with innovators, and explore how synthetic biology can help build a sustainable future. Speakers: Dr Ting An Lee – Postdoctoral Research Associate and Founder Dr Stuart Reid – CTO of Cyanocapture Daniel Bloch – Director of Strategic Partnerships at Lanzajet
To mark the centenary of Rilke’s death there will be a series of Oxford Centenary Readings held in the Queen’s College in HT 2025. These will be informal papers with plenty of discussion, about one poem or a handful of poems, that offer close readings and new insights. Papers will be in English and English translations will be provided for all poems and quotations (except for the session in week 4 with the visiting poets) making these sessions accessible to anyone with an interest in this remarkable poet and poetry in general.
Sharing a Mystery: The Science of Stories Chris Barkley’s debut novel, The Man on the Endless Stair was released in summer 2025 and was described in The Times as ‘An eerie, deeply atmospheric tale of hidden treasure and trauma.’ He was appointed Writer in Residence by the Edinburgh Book Festival in 2022 and has won the Oxford University Kellogg Writing Competition as well as the Bedford International Writing Prize. He achieved a distinction on the MSt in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford and has taught creative writing at Yale. Edinburgh is where he stays. The Creative Writing Seminar Series is convened by Dr Clare Morgan, Director of the Centre for Creative Writing at Kellogg College. The event begins with refreshments at 5pm, with the seminar taking place from 5.30-6.30pm. All are welcome, no bookings are necessary.
Join the Vice-Chancellor at the Sheldonian Theatre for a panel discussion on activism. The Sheldonian Series continues this term on Wednesday 4 February 2026 with a panel discussion on 'The Power of Activism'. From climate change to democracy to peace, has activism failed? Or has our world been shaped by activism in more ways than we recognise? What role should activism play in contemporary society? Contributors on the evening: Professor Federica Genovese - Professor of Political Science and International Relations, University of Oxford Dr Munira Mirza - Chief Executive, Civic Future Dominique Palmer - Climate Justice Activist, Youth Climate Justice Fund Shermar Pryce - President (Communities and Common Rooms), Student Union, University of Oxford With pre-recorded contributions from: Baroness Shami Chakrabarti CBE - Labour peer, House of Lords, and former director of human rights advocacy group Liberty The conversation will be moderated by Dr Julius Grower, Associate Professor of Law and Ann Smart Fellow in Law and Tutor at St Hugh’s College. This event is open to all and aims to promote freedom of speech and inclusive inquiry within the collegiate University, as part of the wider Sheldonian Series.
We are an interdisciplinary reading group which focuses on the social science, history, and theology of demons, the Devil, and supernatural evil as they relate to politics, identity formation, and social conflicts. Each week we will examine one academic paper or book chapter on these topics, gaining familiarity with subjects such as: the psychology of dehumanization, the conceptual development of the term “demon,” and contemporary political demonologies like QAnon. Hilary Term 2026, Thursdays from 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM Weeks 1,3,4,5,6,7,8: 21 St Giles (Kendrew Quad) Teaching Room G4 Week 2: 14 St Giles (next door to the Lamb & Flag) Seminar Room H Please contact Scott Maybell for the readings or for any questions: scott.maybell@sjc.ox.ac.uk
Join Chris Morrison (Copyright & Licensing Specialist) and Ami Pendergrass (Copyright Literacy Lead) to play Copyright the Card Game. This interactive, games-based session introduces you to the key concepts of copyright law and allows you to apply them in practice. No prior knowledge is required, and the session caters for all whatever their level of experience with copyright. At the end of the session participants will be able to: explore how copyright really works in practice; interpret the legislation and apply the relevant legal concepts to their own work; practice using the exceptions and licences in sector-specific examples; and discuss the role of risk management in making decisions about the ethical creation and use of copyright material. Intended audience: researcher and research student; staff
Puzzled by PICO? Daunted by databases? Baffled by Boolean? This one-hour introductory class will offer top tips and advice on how to find literature to answer a research question. No prior experience necessary! Together, we will break down a question into the PICO format, put together a structured search, and try it out in PubMed. By the end of this session, you will be able to: explain what structured searching is, and when to use it; break your research question down into searchable concepts; and make use of Boolean operators (ANDs/ORs) in your structured searches. Intended audience: medicine and NHS; taught student; researcher and research student
At first glance, it seems uncontroversial that the primacy of patient welfare must not be restricted by physicians’ profit motive. Yet, the many economic considerations the allocation and distribution of limited resources introduce into health care systems challenge this presumption and call for a more nuanced discussion. To exemplify: Certain cancer drugs can be administered on different routes: intravenous and subcutaneous. Administration route does not affect effects or increase side effects of the drug. However, intravenous administration takes longer than subcutaneous administration, meaning that patients’ welfare is restricted as they spend more time in the healthcare setting when receiving intravenous treatment. In German outpatient healthcare, physicians generate more profit if those drugs are administered intravenously. The German outpatient healthcare depends on registered private practices, therefore, it is important to generate profit. “Private” not referring to the patients’ insurance status, but to the practice being privately run and owned by one physician or more. Those physicians finance their registered outpatient practice and make their living with what they earn by treating patients while being the cornerstone of outpatient care. In this context, is it acceptable to restrict patient welfare for physicians’ profit? In my research, I analyse the notion of profit and distinguish between different kinds of profit motives. Based on that, I critically examine whether patient welfare may, under certain conditions, legitimately be restricted by profit motives within healthcare systems. This is a hybrid seminar. If you would like to register to join online, please complete the form below: https://forms.office.com/e/zxvjji4fgk
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
*Session Theme: Subjectivity* This workshop brings together historians of marginalised communities using magazines in their research to share our approaches to this particular source base, grappling with magazines’ unique methodological challenges as well as their tantalising opportunities. Each session is broadly organised around a different theme, and participants are invited to bring examples from their own research. Pastries and snacks will be provided. Please email "$":mailto:katie.burke@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk for more information.
If you are new to the University of Oxford and want to find out more about the University’s network of libraries or have been at the University a while and would like a refresher, join us for this online introduction to understanding and accessing the libraries, their services and resources. By the end of the session, you will: be familiar with the network of Oxford libraries and the differences between them; know the logins needed to access Bodleian Libraries services; be able to conduct a search in SOLO (the University’s resource discovery tool), filter results and access online and print resources; and know how to manage your library account including loans and requests. Intended audience: taught student; researcher and research student
The ‘environment’ emerged as a global crisis concept after WWII. Environmental history as a field has its roots in political movements of the late 1960s and 70s. Thus, both the term and the field have had, from their impetus, a strong political and global flavour. Environmental history is still driven by approaches that are akin to the field of political ecology, i.e. based on critical social theory. Early modern environmental history often finds its raison d'être in either attempting to take on a global perspective, or in pointing out power imbalances and the centralisation of state control over natural resources. Similar binary narratives of power used to define the historical study of state-building; however, already since the late 90s, the focus here has shifted onto ‘state-building from below’, which has not only questioned previous meta-narratives but also ascribed more agency to local actors lower down the social scale. Many of the sources used by these scholars (especially supplications/petitions) can also help us take on more locally embedded perspectives in understanding that environmental interests of governments and the governed were not always binary, and that ‘commoners’ had more power in shaping the land, or ‘environing’ (Sörlin and Wormbs) from below, than has been acknowledged.
Thursday February 5 (week 3) Rana Dasgupta (independent), After Nations: a discussion
*Readings:* Shannon Vallor, ‘Carebots and Caregivers: Sustaining the Ethical Idea of Care in the Twenty-First Century’ in Wendell Wallash and Peter Asaro (eds.), _Machine Ethics and Robot Ethics_ (Routledge, 2017)
Lesson of the week, clinical cases and research. All clinical and academic staff and students welcome. Coffee and Tea will be served.
We have recently observed that during inflammation there is hypoxic reprogramming of circulating, and tissue myeloid cells which is long-lasting and originates in the bone marrow. This work challenges the dogma that in chronic neutrophilic inflammation the lesion occurs at the inflamed site. I aim to present new data dissecting the mechanisms that regulate neutrophil reprogramming and the consequence for innate host defence responses.
'You’re the snake charmer, baby. And you’re also the snake.' So sings Laurie Anderson in “Closed Circuits” (1984). Music is often considered incorporeal – described in terms like “transcendent” and “ethereal” – yet it is produced by bodies and received by them. In this session, we will discuss the gendered associations of composition and performance, the performing bodies of artists such as Laurie Anderson and Yoko Ono, and the (im)possibilities of being both snake charmer and snake. *Readings:* Susan McClary’s sixth chapter 'This Is Not a Story My People Tell: Musical Time and Space According to Laurie Anderson' from _Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality_ (2002) Vera Mackie’s chapter 'Instructing, Constructing, Deconstructing: The Embodied and Disembodied Performances of Yoko Ono' from _Rethinking Japanese Modernism_ (2012).
Those who are ‘ideologically colour-blind’ do not express explicitly negative views of racial minorities but instead reject the argument that racial discrimination is a significant social problem (Bonilla-Silva 2003). In the UK, it has been shown that this ideology is as widespread among white voters as it is in the US, with previous research indicating that few racial minorities will subscribe to colour blindness. In this seminar, Maria Sobolewska, Professor of Political Science, will present the design and findings of a study demonstrating that both white voters and voters of ethnic minority backgrounds can hold colour-blind views, and that these views shape their political attitudes in similar ways. Maria will also examine how colour-blind attitudes correlate with political views and racial attitudes, and whether they predict discriminatory behaviour towards policies aimed at addressing racial inequality and political choice. Register to join on Zoom: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/pbFSmnaxQcq9n70pS2PBZA
Who bears the costs of decarbonization—and who is blamed for such costs—has become a central cleavage in contemporary party competition. Building on research on “green backlash” and the populist radical right (PRR), Zach argues that sharp and uneven household energy price shocks create fertile ground for PRR entrepreneurs to frame the transition to renewable sources of energy as unfairly costly. He examines the United Kingdom’s 2021–2023 energy price surge and shows two linked patterns. First, using a new text measure applied to party communications in press releases and in YouTube videos, Zach documents explicit blame attribution of higher energy bills to Net Zero and climate-related policies. Second, using pre-shock geographic energy price vulnerability measured using administrative data on over 27 million household energy efficiency inspections, he leverages difference-in-differences and triple-differences designs to find that individuals more vulnerable to higher energy prices become more likely to support PRR parties. Further evidence using survey panel data suggests that voters indeed blamed the government's environmental policies instead of the economy, implying that political support for a green transition hinges on insulating the most vulnerable households. ———————————————————————————————————————————— Speaker bio: Zach Dickson is a Fellow in Quantitative Methods in the Department of Methodology at the London School of Economics, where he is also affiliated with the Data Science Institute, the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, and the Public Opinion Analytics Lab. His research lies at the intersection of political behaviour and political communication, with a particular focus on right-wing populism and climate politics. Using quantitative and causal inference methods, his current projects examine the distributive consequences of climate policies and the political effects of public service decline. His work has been published in leading journals including Political Communication, Comparative Political Studies, and the American Political Science Review. His research has also been featured in outlets such as The Economist, The New Statesman, The Guardian, and Forbes, as well as in a range of research blogs. ———————————————————————————————————————————— Booking is required for people outside of the Department of Social Policy and Intervention (DSPI). DSPI Members do not need to register.
This seminar considers the extent to which English post-secondary education offered by further education and higher education institutions constitutes a tertiary education system. It examines higher education being offered by English further education colleges (HE in FE) and further education offered by higher education institutions (FE in HE). It observes that while much of this cross-sector provision seems to reflect specific opportunities or institutional strategies, some reflects an explicit regional or industrial strategy. These findings are located within an analysis of possible types of arrangements between vocational and higher education sectors, and an analysis of possible levels of association of vocational and higher education. The study found promising developments in the integration of vocational and higher education in England despite the fragmentation of tertiary education policy and programs, but considerable variations in arrangements because of the lack of an integrated tertiary education policy. Gavin is a SKOPE honorary research fellow. His first book From vocational to higher education: An international perspective (Open University Press, 2008) examined the relations between vocational and higher education in Scotland, Australia, and 3 USA states.
In this talk I will discuss a historically situated set of transatlantic relationships, chiefly but not exclusively centred on antislavery communities in Yorkshire, Newcastle and Pennsylvania. Focusing on quotidian and everyday antislavery and abolitionist work, as well as its more familiar public face, I bring together the Black abolitionists, Quakers and others who were part of what I call the dissenting Atlantic. Building on what my book calls the unquiet libraries that contain potential for locating overlooked voices and stories, I also argue for the transformational potential of the speakerly archive. Rather than figure archival absences as absence, loss or silence, a speakerly archival practice focuses on speculative figurations, further developing models of remediation pioneered by Saidiya Hartman and others. The Dissenting Atlantic has just been awarded the Shelley Fisher Fishkin prize by the American Studies Association.
This seminar analyzes the idea of association as developed among anarchists in imperial Japan during the early twentieth century. In doing so, it proposes anarchist association as both subject and analytical lens to develop a critical approach in global history. It emphasizes viewing the modern world from peripheral positions as well as acknowledging the concept of association as both a socio-political practice and a methodological tool, thus using anarchist traditions to uncover and integrate overlooked actors, archives, and epistemologies. Ultimately, it argues that anarchist association offers a horizon of possibilities for a non-hierarchical, anti-authoritarian, and decentred history of the modern world.
Erica Fudge, 'Farmyard Choreographies in Early Modern England' in _Renaissance Posthumanism_, Joseph Campana and Scott Maisano (eds) (New York, 2016), 145-66; Louise Hill Curth, 'The care of the brute beast: animals and the seventeenth-century medical marketplace', _Social History of Medicine_ 15/3 (2002), 375-92 *To attend online via Microsoft Teams, please email "$":mailto:ian.archer@history.ox.ac.uk*
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.
Today, 1945 is widely recognized as a moment of global re-ordering. Through redrawn borders and population displacement, the immediate postwar declares itself as a watershed even while in practice political precedents and perceptions persisted. This talk looks at the relationship between language, power and identity in Taiwan during this period, exploring the syncretic bleed between pre- and post-1945 approaches to linguistic governance by the Japanese imperialist government and their Chinese Nationalist Party successors. In particular, it focuses on the control of the movement between languages – including Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese and to some extent English – as essential to defining imperialization and post-imperialization in Taiwan’s public sphere. Rather than characterizing regime change as divergence, the imitation of linguistic policy, republication of texts and comparative commentary on both governments instead points to patterns of repetition and borrowing that stretched across the end of empire. Dr Aoife Cantrill is Laming Junior Research Fellow in Living Foreign Languages at The Queen’s College, University of Oxford. Previously, she has worked as a research fellow at National Taiwan Central Library, and as Lee Kai Hung postdoctoral research associate and lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Manchester. Her research looks at textual culture in Chinese-speaking territories of the Japanese Empire, with a particular focus on gender, material culture and translation.
To join online, please register in advance: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/WWqjr8SgT_WrzTodI65cdg
Cristy will discuss her recently published book, Legal Geographies of Water, which begins with the recognition of a looming global water crisis in the 1970s and traces the next five decades of community and policy responses to this crisis, including the introduction of neoliberal logic through the liberalization, financializaton and privatization of water services; the legal recognition of a human right to water (and related water justice campaigns); and relational approaches to water governance. To illustrate the development and implementation of these water governance trends, the book uses a case study approach, drawing from twenty years of qualitative fieldwork in Chile, England, the Philippines (Manila), South Africa (Johannesburg), the United States (Detroit and Flint), Aotearoa, New Zealand (Whanganui), and Australia (Yarra-Birrarung, Melbourne and the Martuwarra-Fitzroy River, WA). A central concern of the book is that, despite the last five decades of global action and periods during which key reported measures of access to safe drinking water have improved, humanity appears to be facing its worst water crisis yet, fuelled by a toxic combination of climate change, growing inequality, geopolitical instability, and the ongoing impacts of extractivism. This raises the question of what our current predicament means for the legal regulation of water. In responding to this question, this book employs the insights of legal geography to explore how the law shapes human relationships with water and how these relationships, in turn, shape the law. This analysis also emphasizes the role of water itself in this co-constitutive process – through both its materiality and agency. In this talk, Cristy will particularly focus on the lessons that emerge from the book’s analysis, the stories of hope that it highlights, and the recommendations that it makes for the future of water governance. Speaker Dr Cristy Clark is an Associate Professor at the Canberra Law School, where she teaches Human Rights Law and Constitutional Law. Her research focuses on legal geography and the intersection of human rights and the environment (including relational rights and climate justice). Cristy is the co-director of the climate equality working group at the Berkeley Center on Comparative Equality and Anti-Discrimination Law. Her co-authored book (with John Page), The Lawful Forest: A Critical History of Property, Protest and Spatial Justice, was published by Edinburgh University Press in 2022 and won the 2023 Penny Pether Prize. Her most recent book, Legal Geographies of Water: the spaces, places and narratives of human-water relations was published by Routledge in June 2025. Other Information This event is part of the Oxford Water Network Hilary Term 2026 Seminar Series. Refreshments will be provided after the talk. Please email owncoordinator@water.ox.ac.uk if you have any specific requirements to be able to access this event. The Atmosphere Room is on the first floor of the School of Geography and the Environment in the Dyson Perrins Building - there is a ramp to enter the building and a lift to access the first floor.
All welcome, the event is free, and no registration is required. Convenors: Angeliki Kerasidou, Associate Professor in Bioethics, Reuben College Official Fellow; Andrew Moeller, Project Leader, Biotechnology and the Humanities, TORCH Join us for a wide-ranging discussion on the surprising resurgence of interest in Christianity within Silicon Valley and amongst developers of artificial intelligence. Our panel of experts will explore questions such as: What are the various factors driving the renewed curiosity? How might the ascribing of attributes to artificial intelligence that have typically been ascribed to a higher power (such as "omnipotence" and "omnipresence") both inform and distort our understandings of the potentials of AI? What role might religion play in challenging and guiding the development of artificial intelligence? What is both possible and desirable as it relates to aspirations for transcendence through technology, particularly in relation to the "merging" of the human brain with artificial intelligence? This is a Reuben College Values&Society theme event, also supported by the Oxford Medical Humanities Research Hub. Panellists: Andrew Davison, theologian (University of Oxford) Andrew began his academic journey at Oxford, reading Chemistry as an undergraduate, before completing a DPhil in Biochemistry. He subsequently studied theology at Cambridge. Following a curacy in Southeast London, he returned to Oxford to begin a career in theological teaching and research, first as Tutor in Christian Doctrine at St Stephen’s House and later in a similar role at Westcott House, Cambridge. During this period, he completed a Cambridge PhD on conceptions of finitude in Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus. He went on to become the Starbridge Lecturer, later Professor, in Theology and Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge (2014–24) and served as a visiting fellow at the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton, New Jersey (2022–24). In September 2024, he was appointed Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford, a post based at Christ Church, where he is also a residentiary canon of the cathedral. Louisa Clarence-Smith, journalist (The Times) Louisa is US business editor at The Times, covering companies across America and chasing after the characters who lead them. Previously, she served as chief business correspondent and in 2021 she was jointly named Young Journalist of the Year at the Wincott Awards for business, economic and financial journalism. She lives in New York. Bartek Papiez, artificial intelligence researcher (University of Oxford) Bartek leads multidisciplinary research at the intersection of artificial intelligence, biomedical imaging, and health data science. At Oxford’s Big Data Institute, he directs the Machine Learning & Biomedical Data Research Lab, where his team develops new algorithms for image analysis, data integration, and robust machine learning. A key focus of his work is combining medical images with other sources of information—such as genetic data, electronic health records, and natural language—to address pressing challenges in medicine and population health. His projects span disease monitoring, the discovery of new treatment targets, and advances in cancer imaging. By uniting cutting-edge AI with real-world biomedical data, Bartek’s research aims to deepen disease understanding, enable earlier diagnosis, and support more precise treatments.
Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School, Sir Paul Collier is a leading British economist known for his research on development, poverty, and the political economy of low-income countries. Paul’s work focuses on why some nations remain trapped in conflict and poverty, and how policies, governance, and international action can support sustainable development. He is known for influential books such as The Bottom Billion and The Future of Capitalism, which combine economic analysis with practical policy insights, and his most recent book Left Behind: A New Economics for Neglected Places. He has advised governments and international organisations on development strategy, migration, and post-conflict recovery. This event brings together friends, colleagues and former students to reflect upon Paul’s body of work, and to explore the issues he has spent his career addressing.
Drawing on his experience as a youth justice practitioner and as Britain’s first and longest-serving Minister for Young People, Lord Boateng will reflect on contemporary challenges facing youth services and juvenile justice. His ministerial career included senior roles in the Department of Health, the Home Office, HM Treasury and Cabinet, including his time as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, overseeing the development of Every Child Matters. Refreshments will be served from 16:30 at the Gulbenkian foyer.
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.
Title and speaker to be announced 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 if you would like to attend online.
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
Zotero is a reference management tool that helps you build libraries of references and add citations and bibliographies to word processed documents using your chosen citation style. This classroom-based session covers the main features of Zotero and comprises a 45-minute presentation followed by practical exercises at the computers. You can leave at any point once you have tried out the software, and do not have to stay until the end. The learning outcomes for this classroom-based session are to: create a Zotero library and add references to it; edit and organise references in your Zotero library; add in-text citations and/or footnotes to your word-processed document; create bibliographies; understand how to sync your Zotero library across multiple computers; and understand how to share your Zotero library of references. Intended audience: taught student; researcher and research student
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
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. What is involved? Presentations from researchers on their work, roundtable discussions on key questions in LGBTQ+ research and opportunities to network over free pizza at lunchtime.
Scientific biography was once an excessively deferential genre that presented the scientist as a heroic individual. Today biographers take an approach that embraces broader cultural influences and impacts, notes flaws as well as achievements and highlights the social and collaborative practice of modern science. Obituary writing is a short form with its own conventions, and choices to be made about what to include or exclude. As a writer who has worked in both genres, *I will reflect on the particular challenges of writing obituaries of scientists who may not be household names but have materially changed our understanding of ourselves and the natural world.* *Georgina Ferry* is a science writer, author and broadcaster. She began as a staff editor and feature writer on New Scientist, and has presented science programmes on BBC Radio. Her biography of Britain's only female Nobel-prizewinning scientist, _Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin: Patterns, Proteins and Peace_, was reissued by Bloomsbury in 2019. She has published several further books on 20th and 21st-century science. She edits obituaries for _Nature_ and is a regular contributor of reviews, obituaries and features to _The Guardian_, _Nature_ and _The Lancet_. Registration is required and will close one week before the event (17:30 on 30 January). Confirmations of successful registration will be sent out one week before the event. Please note that this event is *exclusively open to current members of the University of Oxford*. Workshop places will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis, with priority given to members of the English Faculty.
Modern researchers need to have an up-to-date understanding of working with research data. This relates equally to the material they create themselves and that obtained from other sources. Academic institutions, funding bodies and even publishers are now expecting competence in these issues. This workshop will provide a grounding in the different ways quantitative and qualitative data is being made available to benefit researchers. By the end of the session you will also have some insight into how your own future work could add to the process and become part of the research discourse. The course aims to provide an overview of macro and micro data sources available at the University of Oxford, including national data archives, subscription services, business data, and offers some pointers for further searching. Topics to be covered include: overview of the landscape of data sources for health researchers, social scientists and most other researchers; how to obtain macro and micro data via specific sources; qualitative and quantitative data resources; additional data services such as the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), Eurostat, Researchfish and the Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative's online interactive databank and global Multidimensional Poverty Index; plus specialist sources for business and economic data subscribed to by Oxford University; the value of resources for informing research design and methodological innovation; and the importance of data management and cybersecurity. Intended audience: taught student; researcher and research student; staff
Certain models of collective dynamics exhibit deceptively simple patterns that are surprisingly difficult to explain. These patterns often arise from phase transitions within the underlying dynamics. However, these phase transitions can be explained only when one derives continuum equations from the corresponding individual-based models. In this talk, I will explore this subtle yet rich phenomenon and discuss advances and open problems.
The Earth's mantle has elevated Fe3+ contents relative to those of other telluric bodies, a property thought to reflect the disproportionation of ferrous iron into its metallic and ferric counterparts during core formation. However, how the oxidation and electronic state of iron change as a function of pressure in compositions relevant to that of Earth's mantle are not fully understood. In this study, we present in-situ energy domain synchrotron Mössbauer spectra of 57Fe-enriched peridotitic- and basaltic glasses at 298 K compressed from 1 bar to 174 GPa in a diamond anvil cell. Glasses were synthesised with different Fe3+/[Fe3+ + Fe2+] ratios, 0.02 ± 0.02 and 1.00 ± 0.02, respectively, as determined by colorimetry. At 1 bar, the spectrum of the Fe3+-basaltic glass is well fit by a single doublet. In contrast, the spectra of both Fe2+-rich peridotitic and basaltic glass are fit by two doublets, D1 (~92 %) and D2 (~8 %) at 1 bar. As pressure increases, the integral area of the D2 doublet increases at the expense of D1 to reach a D2/(D1 + D2) ratio of 0.65 by 172 GPa. Because this transition is reversible with pressure and no metallic iron is detected, the D2 feature is ascribed to Fe2+ in its low spin (LS) state, whereas D1 is consistent with Fe2+ high spin (HS). This assignment resolves a long-standing controversy on the interpretation of the Mössbauer spectra of basaltic glasses. As a consequence of the stabilisation of Fe2+ with pressure, terrestrial planets more massive than Earth likely do not host increasingly oxidising mantles.
Central nervous system (CNS) neurons govern every aspect of physiology, demanding an exceptionally tightly controlled environment. To preserve tissue homeostasis, the CNS has develop a unique rlationship with the immune system restrictsing conventional immune surveillance to CNS border compartments. How this CNS immune privilege is established, maintained, and dynamically regulated remains a fundamental question in neuroimmunology. We have proposed that the brain barriers divide the CNS into different compartments with different access for immune mediators and immune cells. To test this hypothesis we have developed novel reporter mouse models that enable direct visualization of the different brain barriers and borders in vivo. Leveraging these border reporter mice together with state-of-the-art intravital imaging, we found that different brain barriers precisely control immune mediator distributaion and immune cell migration in the CNS during immune surveillance and neuroinflammation. These findings shape our understanding of how brain barriers orchestrate CNS immune privilege and how failure of brain barrier function will contribute to neurological disorders. This knowledge will provide a foundation for targeted therapeutic strategies in neurological and neuroinflammatory diseases. SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY Since 2003 Britta Engelhardt is Professor for Immunobiology and Director of the Theodor Kocher Institute at the University of Bern in Switzerland. After studying Human Biology at the Philipps-University, Marburg in Germany she pursued her PhD thesis with Prof. Hartmut Wekerle at the Max-Planck Research Group for Multiple Sclerosis in Würzburg, Germany and the Max-Planck Institute für Psychiatry in Munich, Germany and obtained a PhD (Dr. rer. physiol.) in January 1991. After a post-doctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Eugene C. Butcher at Stanford University, California, she set up her own research group at the Max-Planck Institute for Physiological and Clinical Research, Bad Nauheim, Germany in the department of Werner Risau in 1993. In 1998 she obtained the Venia Legendi for Immunology and Cell Biology from the Medical Faculty of the Philipps University Marburg, Germany. From 1999 to 2003 she headed her independent research group at the same institute and the Max-Planck Institute for Vascular Cell Biology in Münster, Germany. Britta Engelhardt is a renowned expert in brain barriers research. Her work is dedicated to understanding the role of the brain barriers in maintaining central nervous system (CNS) immune privilege. Using advanced in vitro and in vivo live cell imaging approaches her laboratory has significantly contributed to the current understanding of the anatomical routes and molecular mechanisms used by immune cells to enter the CNS during immune surveillance and neuroinflammation. She has published over 300 manuscripts that are highly cited. She is an opinion leader in her field as shown by her regular presentations as invited and keynote speaker at international meetings. Britta Engelhardt has served the scientific community by coordinating several national (Sinergia UnmetMS, ProDoc Cell Migration) and international collaborative networks (JUSTBRAIN, BtRAIN) dedicated to brain barriers research and neuroinflammation. Together with Peter Vajkoczy she has received the Herman-Rein-Prize for their pioneering in vivo imaging of T cell migration across cervical spinal cord microvessels. She was elected Vice-Chair and Chair of the Gordon Research Conference Barriers of the CNS in 2016 and 2018, respectively. In 2023 she has obtained the Malpighi Award of the European Society for Microcirculation (ESM). In 2024 she was honored by the Keynote Lecture Award from the Journal of Comparative Pathology Education Trust ESVP/ECVP and the Camillo Golgi Lecture from the European Academy of Neurology and the nomination as member of AcademiaNet – The Portal to Excellent Women Academics. In 2025 besides receiving the Research Prize of the Swiss MS Society she has been awarded an prestigious ERC Advanced Grant by the European Research Council (ERC). She presently serves as president of the International Brain Barriers Society.
Charlie Hutchison (1918-1993) is the only known Black Briton to have fought in the Spanish Civil War. Having lied about his age to fight in Spain, Charlie survived a massacre that wiped out two-thirds of his company. Being one of the earliest British volunteers, and among the youngest and longest serving foreign volunteers, Charlie survived frostbite, shrapnel wounds, and was the victim of a smear campaign by the Daily Mail newspaper. During WW2 he served the British Army between 1940-1946 in Britain, India, the Middle East, and mainland Europe, and was once imprisoned for stealing clothes and giving them to refugees. Near the end of the war, Charlie served in a military unit that provided aid to the survivors of Nazi concentration camps. His existence was rediscovered in 2018 through the efforts of a curious historian and a class of London college students. Recently the Museum of Oxford has funded the research for a biography of Charlie Hutchison, the findings of which will be publicly shared in this lecture. Dan Poole is a history student who has recently authored a biography of Charlie Hutchison. His first book, Head Hunters in the Malayan Emergency (2023). His primary interests centre on the British Empire and anti-colonial movements in the 20th century.
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.
Integrated autoregressive conditional duration (ACD) models serve as natural counterparts to the well-known integrated GARCH models used for financial returns. However, despite their resemblance, asymptotic theory for ACD is challenging and also not complete, in particular for integrated ACD. Central challenges arise from the facts that (i) integrated ACD processes imply durations with infinite expectation, and (ii) even in the non-integrated case, conventional asymptotic approaches break down due to the randomness in the number of durations within a fixed observation period. Addressing these challenges, we provide here unified asymptotic theory for the (quasi-) maximum likelihood estimator for ACD models; a unified theory which includes integrated ACD models. Based on the new results, we also provide a novel framework for hypothesis testing in duration models, enabling inference on a key empirical question: whether durations possess a finite or infinite expectation. We apply our results to high-frequency cryptocurrency ETF trading data. Motivated by parameter estimates near the integrated ACD boundary, we assess whether durations between trades in these markets have finite expectation, an assumption often made implicitly in the literature on point process models. Our empirical findings indicate infinite-mean durations for all the five cryptocurrencies examined, with the integrated ACD hypothesis rejected -- against alternatives with tail index less than one -- for four out of the five cryptocurrencies considered.
Week Three (6 February, Old Library) Primary: Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time, Chapters 7-9 Supplementary: Mirta Vidal, ‘Chicanas Speak Out, Women: New Voice of La Raza’ (1971)
Seminar followed by Q&A and drinks - attend in person or join online - all welcome Abstract: Landscapes are not static but changing. However, these changes may be on time-scales greater than that of the average research grant, of a researcher's life span, even of an institution's existence. We often need to put observations we make now into their longer-term perspective, if we are to understand their causes and hence, make projections into the future. Wytham Woods is famous for some of its long-term studies both of the animals and the plants. Keith will use examples from these studies to show why conclusions from what we see now may need to be re-thought when viewed over a longer period. Biography: Raised in rural Essex, I decided to be a forester; not really knowing what one was. My degree was in Agricultural and Forest Sciences (Oxford); becoming more interested in ecology than economics, a D.Phil studying brambles in Wytham Woods followed. My first permanent job in 1979 was as 'apprentice' to George Peterken,, the woodland conservation guru, in the Nature Conservancy Council (government conservation agency). With NCC, through to Natural England in 2012, I was involved with the development of the Ancient Woodland Inventory and1985 Broadleaves Policy, the woodland section of the Habitats Directive and Biodiversity Action Plans, various government reviews of forest policy, and the emergence of ‘rewilding’. plus a lot of individual site management advice. For the last 12 yrs I have returned to research on long-term vegetation change In Wytham Wood. I had 'inherited' the permanent plot records from my supervisor Colyear Dawkins in the 1980s and have tried to re-record them every 5-10 years. Throughout my career I have tried to break down perceptions of binary splits between foresters and environment, production vs conservation. We cannot afford them.
Professor Fania Oz-Salzberger is a historian of ideas and political thought, and Professor Emerita of History at the University of Haifa. She was educated at Tel Aviv University and at Oxford, where she completed her doctorate in 1991, and her work has long focused on the European Enlightenment, the translation and migration of political ideas. Her books include Translating the Enlightenment: Scottish Civic Discourse in Eighteenth-Century Germany (Oxford, 1995), a pioneering study of how Enlightenment ideas cross linguistic and political borders, as well as Israelis in Berlin (2001) and Jews and Words (2012), co-authored with her late father, the writer Amos Oz. Alongside her home institution, she has held visiting professorships and fellowships at the Jerusalem Institute of Advanced Studis, the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin, Monah University, Princeton University and the LMU in Munich. Professor Oz-Salzberger has been awarded an honorary doctorate from Uppsala University, an Order of Merit from the German government, and the Grimm Prize for her contribution to European intellectual life and cultural dialogue. In recent years, alongside her historical scholarship, she has become an increasingly prominent public intellectual and civic voice, writing and speaking widely on democracy, nationalism, antisemitism, and the prospects of Israeli-Palestinian peace.
All welcome, and to join us for lunch afterwards.
During his stay at Barnard Castle in the county Durham on 28 October 1799, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was obsessed with the image of what he called an ‘Eddy rose’. In his notebook, he records: ‘—River Greta near its fall into the Tees—Shootings of water thread down the slope of the huge green stone—The white Eddy-rose that blossom’d up against the stream in the scollop, by fits & starts, obstinate in resurrection—It is the life that we live’ (CN I, 495). I argue that Coleridge’s vivid description of the ‘Eddy-rose’ resonates profoundly with the Daoist yin-yang symbol. This talk forms part of my PhD thesis, which offers the first systematic study of the intersections between British Romanticism and Daoism, examining both their conceptual affinities and historical encounters between the 1790s––1820s. From a philosophical perspective, this study argues that British Romanticism and Daoism can be read as mutually illuminating intellectual frameworks, particularly when central Daoist concepts are brought into dialogue with the philosophical thought of Romantic writers such as S. T. Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and John Keats. In this talk, I begin by investigating hallucination as a creative mode in both traditions, focusing on its epistemological and aesthetic implications. I then turn to their shared contemplations of ‘the spherical’ as a fundamental form of nature, before concluding with an articulation of ‘Ideal Realism’ as a common philosophical pathway for decoding myth in both British Romanticism and Daoist cosmology. Serena Qihui Pei has recently completed her PhD at University College London. Her research explores the intersections between British Romanticism and Sinology, with a particular emphasis on Daoism. She is the recipient of the British Association for Romantic Studies Stephen Copley Research Award and the UK Turing Scheme Grant. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics, The Coleridge Bulletin, and the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society.
The Colombian Civil War was marked by high levels of civilian victimisation, particularly inflicted by government-aligned paramilitaries against perceived guerrilla sympathisers in the name of counterinsurgency. It is in this landscape that the violent victimisation of LGBT populations produces a puzzle. LGBT populations were not affiliated with a specific ideology, nor were they inherently tied to any specific cleavage of the conflict. Yet many, if not all, paramilitary groups specifically targeted them in a brutal manner. The ubiquity of their targeting proved to be unique in the broader landscape of civilian victimisation by paramilitaries. Thus, while the form of this violence varied, its occurrence did not. In such a contested landscape, why would paramilitaries expend time, energy, and resources to target a social minority with no clear ties to the conflict? Why did this violence vary in its characteristics? And why did it utilise so much brutality? This paper presents a theory of wartime anti-LGBT violence through an exploration of Colombia paramilitary violence. To develop this theory, I conduct a comparative analysis of two paramilitary groups. In doing so, I explore the logics underlying wartime anti-LGBT violence and how they shape the repertoires through which this violence is enacted. Ultimately, I argue that variation in anti-LGBT violence resulted from divergent paramilitary social transformation efforts in the communities in which they embedded. In developing a theory of anti-LGBT violence during war, I contribute to existing efforts to document wartime social processes that exceed clear political objectives, reinforcing the importance of diverse perspectives in studies of contentious politics. Biography: Samuel Ritholtz is post-doctoral research fellow in politics at All Souls College. They are an associate researcher with the Department of Politics and International Relations as well as the Latin American Centre at the University of Oxford. They are co-author of The Way Out: Justice in the Queer Search for Refugee (University of California Press, 2026) and co-editor of Queer Conflict Research (Bristol University Press, 2024). Together with Jeffrey Checkel and Lisa Wedeen, they edit Qualitative and Multi-Method Research. 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.
In the UK, voting patterns in elections are increasingly characterised by division along education lines rather than by other demographic or economic variables (bar age). But does this reflect a causal relationship between education and party support? In this paper we estimate the causal effect of education on political preferences exploiting a large expansion in the supply of higher education in the UK as a result of the Further and Higher Education Act (1992). We use this exogenous policy change to instrument years of schooling and find that an additional year of (higher) education decreases the likelihood of voting for the right-of-centre Conservative party by 8.4 percentage points, and decreased the probability of voting ‘Leave' in the 2016 Brexit referendum by 4.9pp. Teams link https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_OWM3ODkyZGMtOTUzYS00OTQwLTkxY2YtNWI2NzdjNWZiMjA0%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22cc95de1b-97f5-4f93-b4ba-fe68b852cf91%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%224003529c-f252-47aa-8e83-ce1eff28df4a%22%7d
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.
We study the communication strategies on Twitter-X of 367 political leaders in 21 countries, focusing on electoral competition between populists and non-populists. We measure polarization by the ease with which the leader can be classified as populist or not, conditional on his tweet. We find that political rhetoric becomes more polarized before and around elections dates. This happens because, in pre-electoral quarters, opposite leaders are more likely to: i) talk about different topics, and ii) frame differently the same issues. Our results are consistent with competing politicians targeting different voters, rather than appealing to the same swing voters.
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 and NHS; researcher and research student
Need a burst of focused time to get words flowing on the page? Join OCCT for our new series of Shut Up and Write (or Translate) sessions this term. These dedicated afternoons are a chance to step away from distractions, sit alongside fellow writers and translators, and make real progress on whatever project matters most to you. We’ll gather from 2–5pm on Mondays of Week 1, 3, 5, and 7 this term in a supportive, low-pressure environment designed to boost productivity and creativity alike. Bring along your laptop, notebooks, or translation drafts - anything you’d like to work on. After a quick check-in, we’ll dive into quiet writing or translating sprints, with breaks for coffee (which will be supplied) and conversation in between. Whether you’re polishing a chapter, drafting an article, working on a translation, or simply hoping to carve out space for your own work, these sessions are for you. Come for one, two, or all three afternoons, and leave with words on the page and renewed momentum for your projects.
The session will give you practical tools, frameworks, and real-world case studies to help you feel more confident acting as a first point of contact for media-related questions. The session is designed to be interactive, with group exercises, scenarios, and helpful take-away resources.
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.
In the 1850s, the British government began closing urban churchyards on the premise that rotting bodies were dangerous to the public health. It did so mainly on the advice of a small but influential group of sanitary reformers, who considered miasma from overcrowded burial spaces to be a primary cause of contemporary epidemics. Their ‘burial reform’ legislation prescribed the permanent closure of large numbers of historic British churchyards, and burials were moved instead to purpose-built, closely-regulated cemeteries outside inhabited areas. The end result, according to historians, was that the British public were awakened to the health threat posed by the dead, and medical experts were, for the first time, invited to the fore of discussions about how death and burial should be managed in a modern society. This talk explores burial sanitation in Britain over the century preceding ‘burial reform’. It demonstrates that disease concerns had long been fundamental to corpse disposal practice, and explores how the dead were managed by urban localities as a population health problem. Overall, the talk reassesses the history of ‘burial reform’ and, with it, conventional accounts of ‘medicalisation’ in British death practice. *Eleanor Kerfoot* is a historian of death and medicine with a particular focus on early modern Britain. Her current research project focuses on medical understandings of post-mortem change in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The seminar will be followed by drinks.
Viewed from one perspective, research funders run a “service factory”, a process that seeks to turns grant applications into research grants and rejection letters, with efficiency and fairness as prime goals. Viewed from another perspective, research funders are investors, seeking to identify the highest potential intangible investments, where the returns of different potential projects are highly heterogenous. Different proposals for reform of the research funding are predicated on different – usually unstated – assumptions about what research funders are actually doing. This talk offers a framework for how to think of what research funders do, together with observations on what this means for different reform proposals, informed by emerging findings from the UK Metascience Unit, the R&D Missions Accelerator Programme, and the wider field of metascience. About the speaker: Stian Westlake has a decade’s experience of leading research funding organisations. He is currently Executive Chair of the Economic and Social Research Council, part of UK Research & Innovation. Previously, he was Executive Director of Research and Policy at Nesta, the UK’s national foundation for innovation, and as adviser to three UK science and universities ministers. He is co-author of “Capitalism Without Capital” and “Restarting the Future”, two books about the economics and politics of intangible investment. Chair: Professor Rachel Brooks
Government projects for transformation that have been a success can seem rarer than hens’ teeth. There’s a growing sense that Government itself cannot achieve change but is that true or have there been examples that offer lessons that are overlooked and what does that tell us about how to deliver?
How many shuffles does it take to mix a deck of 52 playing cards? Behind this simple question lies a surprisingly deep mathematical theory. In this lecture, we explore what it means for a deck of cards to be ‘well mixed’, examine several classical shuffling methods, and see why certain methods require far more iterations to produce a random deck than others. We will view card shuffling through the lens of random walks, a mathematical framework used to model phenomena across physics, evolutionary biology and beyond. The presentation will be followed by discussion and drinks. The event is free. Registration required via the form below. 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
Sergey Radchenko is the Wilson E. Schmidt Distinguished Professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He has written extensively on the Cold War, nuclear history, and on Russian and Chinese foreign and security policies. He has served as a Global Fellow and a Public Policy Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Centre and as the Zi Jiang Distinguished Professor at East China Normal University (Shanghai). Professor Radchenko’s books include To Run the World: the Kremlin’s Cold War Bid for Global Power (Cambridge UP, 2024), Two Suns in the Heavens: the Sino-Soviet Struggle for Supremacy (Wilson Center Press & Stanford UP, 2009), and Unwanted Visionaries: the Soviet Failure in Asia (Oxford UP, 2014). Professor Radchenko is a native of Sakhalin Island, Russia, was educated in the US, Hong Kong, and the UK, where he received his PhD in 2005 (LSE). Before he joined SAIS, Professor Radchenko worked and lived in Mongolia, China, and Wales.
This event is part of a series, “Kellogg and AI Learning Lectures”, which is organised by Kellogg College and the AI Competency Centre at Oxford. Open to all Oxford University staff and students, these sessions are designed to boost understanding of developments in AI and build confidence in using emerging technologies. This seminar will explore a range of generative AI tools, and demonstrate how they may be used to simplify and streamline a range of administrative and personal tasks. When people are first introduced to artificial intelligence, it’s often described as an easy-to-use, all-purpose tool – something that can write code, draft emails, design workflows, and act as a thought partner for almost any task. Then you open the interface, stare at the input bar, and wonder where to begin. Drawing on her experience in administration and communications, Ella Wicks explores the space between knowing what AI can do and learning how to use it well, wisely, and with confidence. This session focuses on developing a practical working relationship with AI – one that integrates seamlessly into daily routines without adding time pressure or reducing the satisfaction of meaningful work. Participants will learn how to use AI practically and analytically to simplify tasks, strengthen decision-making, and build confidence in applying these tools to their fullest potential. The session also builds critical awareness of what AI is, how it works, and how to use it effectively and appropriately. By the end, participants will have a clearer sense of how to use AI not just as a tool, but as a capable collaborator—one that supports clarity, creativity, and confidence in professional life. Tea and coffee will be served from 5pm. The event begins at 5.30pm. Speaker: Ella WicksElla Wicks is currently seconded to the role of Content Officer at the AI Competency Centre, where her work focuses on promoting the University’s approach to responsible AI adoption and helping colleagues build AI literacy. Previously, she worked as Office Manager at the Centre for Teaching and Learning, supporting their aim to enhance teaching and learning across the University. An early adopter of generative AI at Oxford, Ella is an AI Ambassador and been a part of University pilots of ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot. Her background includes puppet and specialist costume making in film, as well as work in ceramics. She is particularly interested in how AI can support personal productivity and empower individuals to make AI work for them.
COVID-19 is associated with increased neurological, mental and medical sequelae after severe illness. However, we have demonstrated that risk increases are comparable to those following other infections of similar severity. Mild infection shows no clinically meaningful long-term sequelae, and pandemic lockdowns were not associated with a substantial worsening of population-level mental health, aside form a modest increase in psychotropic medication use. This seminar is hosted in person, to join online, please use the Zoom details below: https://zoom.us/j/93311812405?pwd=9kbjSbEcO2fa7n7gFLZVqrChvr467B.1 Meeting ID: 933 1181 2405 Passcode: 169396"
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
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; taught student; researcher and research student
Join us online on Tuesday 10 February at 10am for the opportunity to hear a brief introduction to the Sustainable Digital Scholarship (SDS) service. This session will provide the opportunity for Academic Researchers, IT and Research Support teams, and any other interested parties, to see first-hand how the SDS service uses the SDS Platform to provide a safe and secure home for digital research outputs. This online event is open to University of Oxford staff and students only. Registration is required.
In this 60-minute online workshop you will be introduced to the methodologies and principles underpinning the conduct of literature searches for systematic reviews, scoping reviews and other evidence reviews. The session will cover: formulating a focused research question; preparing a protocol; developing a search strategy to address that research question; choosing appropriate databases and search engines; searching for grey literature and ongoing studies; managing your references in Covidence; and documenting and reporting your search. Intended audience: medicine and NHS; researcher and research student
On January 17, 1893, American businessmen Sanford Dole and Lorrin Thurston led a coup against the Hawaiian monarchy with the aid of the U.S. military and active involvement from members of President William Harrison’s cabinet. In light of federal backing, the group expected rapid passage of an annexation treaty. However, the treaty failed due to opposition from Southern Democrats, and further hurting the annexation cause, President Grover Cleveland, a staunch anti-imperialist, soon took office. For nearly six years, the newly established Hawaiian Republican remained in a state of limbo. Queen Liliʻuokalani lobbied for support in Hawaiʻi and abroad, while American oligarchs attempted to retain control and bolster Hawaiʻi's position for annexation. Despite sustained Native Hawaiian opposition, the U.S. government finalized annexation in 1898 and passed the Organic Act in 1900, formalizing Hawaiʻi as a U.S. territory and extending citizenship to its residents, including Native Hawaiians, though Native Americans on the continent remained excluded from citizenship at that time. This work uncovers the politics leading to the 1900 Organic Act and the crucial and distinctive role of citizenship in Hawaiʻi’s transition from republic to territory and then to state.
This paper charts the frontier between strategy-proofness and collusion-proofness in efficient mechanism design, with applications to markets where pivotal firms act as hubs for collusive behavior. We model collusion via conference structures, which are collections of admissible collusive sets. A mechanism is conference-proof if no listed coalition can profitably misreport. We frame the design problem as a tension between two extremes: Groves' schemes, which satisfy dominant strategy incentive compatibility but are proof only to singleton deviations; and Safronov (2018), which achieves full collusion-proofness but only serial Bayesian IC. Interpreting ex post budget balance as resistance to the grand coalition, we show that the AGV mechanism is weakly dominated by Cremer and Riordan (1985), and we present two novel mechanisms that strictly dominate both. Furthermore, we bridge the gap to Safronov (2018) by relaxing individual IC constraints while expanding the conference structure. Finally, we introduce a projection method to trace this incentive boundary, demonstrating that the Safronov and AGV mechanisms emerge as geometric projections of Groves' schemes.
Labor reallocation across sectors has become a central mechanism of adjustment in response to asymmetric shocks such as the pandemic, trade and energy disruptions, climate events, and the rise of artificial intelligence. How does reallocation interact with sectoral heterogeneity in unemployment risk, consumption insurance, and production-network linkages, and to what extent is it shaped by countercyclical fiscal policy? In this paper, we first document the magnitude and cyclical behavior of reallocation and the systematic differences across sectors in risk and insurance. We then address these questions through a structural multi-sector New Keynesian model that integrates heterogeneous agents (HANK), search and matching frictions (SAM), and input–output linkages (IO), while allowing workers to endogenously choose the sector in which to search. Calibrated to US data, the model quantifies how labor reallocation amplifies or mitigates the transmission of sectoral shocks and how untargeted fiscal policies, such as unemployment insurance extensions, interact with heterogeneity to shape aggregate demand and unemployment dynamics.
Dramatic attacks on universities took many by surprise at the beginning of Donald Trump’s second US presidency. Weaponized accusations of anti-Semitism became a pivotal focus in the context of protests over Gaza. But the lines of attack had been articulated in agendas from MAGA-linked think tanks, like the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. The first part of this presentation will summarize key intellectual, as well as political roots of current rightwing challenges to academia. Focusing mostly on the US, it will also at least note the wider prominence of related challenges. As striking as the attacks themselves was weak response from academic leaders. Beyond individual failings or poor judgments of the political situation, these reflected fundamental tensions and even contradictions within universities. The second part of the presentation will focus on long-term institutional changes and how they undermined cohesion of universities and capacity to respond well to new challenges. Governments paid a declining part of academic costs; relying on student fees pushed expansion in numbers out of balance with educational quality. Exclusivity rather than intellectual or moral value-added became the basis for academic distinction. Making employability the metric for student success brought a regime of debt and displaced other educational values. Values themselves changed with secularization, emphasis on research performance, and dominance of liberal individualism, epistemic pluralism, and multiculturalism. Intense status competition drove up costs. Pursuit of gifts from the wealthy helped create governance structures in which outside donors exercised disproportionate and sometimes divisive influence. Concentrating growth in professional schools and job-oriented studies was at odds with liberal arts and disciplinary agendas. Semi-autonomous large-scale research and development enterprises added to the extent to which universities resembled conglomerate corporations and made them more dependent on grant income. Unequal grant dependence made it easier for attacks to drive wedges between branches of faculty.
Join us for a screening of Seeing Daylight: The Photography of Dorothy Bohm (2018), followed by a Q&A with Dorothy Bohm’s daughter, Monica Bohm-Duchen. This event will be introduced and moderated by Dr Aviva Dautch. Touching on life-writing, visual storytelling, and cultural history, this screening and Q&A will appeal to students and scholars of literature, film, and art history, as well as anyone interested in photography, documentary, and the relationship between images, memory, and lived experience. It will also be of interest to those curious about Jewish women’s histories, refugee and migration narratives, and the cultural legacies of displacement in twentieth-century Britain and Europe. No prior specialist knowledge or preparation is required. Seeing Daylight: The Photography of Dorothy Bohm Born Dorothea Israelit in 1924 into a Jewish family in Königsberg (then East Prussia), Bohm was sent to England in 1939 to escape Nazi persecution—leaving with little more than a suitcase and her father’s Leica camera. ‘[Bohm] knows her camera not only sees, it feels’—Roland Penrose Bohm trained in photography in wartime Manchester, began her career as a studio portraitist, and went on to establish herself as one of Britain’s finest humanist street photographers, earning recognition as a ‘doyenne of British photography’. Her work is known for its attentive, compassionate eye: candid street scenes and portraits that linger on fleeting gestures, everyday encounters, and the textures of ordinary life. Bohm declared of her art: ‘I’ve seen a lot. But I don’t show the ugliness of life; I try to show the good’. Bohm played a key role in London’s photographic culture: in 1971, she became Associate Director of The Photographers’ Gallery, London’s first gallery devoted solely to photography. There she nurtured emerging photographers, including Martin Parr and worked alongside pioneers in her field, such as Henri Cartier-Bresson. ‘Bohm has somehow been cheated of greater prominence [...]. In the documentary, she quotes from one of her own, early interviews: ‘How glad I am to have seen daylight.’ It’s about time Dorothy Bohm’s photographs see more daylight, too’—Shelley Klein, Frieze Seeing Daylight explores Bohm’s life through photographs, places, and personal testimony, with contributions from close family and friends. Directed by Richard Shaw, it is ‘as much a film about life as it is about art’. Throughout, Bohm’s own words frame photography as a way of holding on to what might otherwise vanish: ‘[photography] fulfils my deep need to stop things from disappearing. It makes transience less painful and retains some of the special magic, which I have looked for and found’ Speaker Details: Monica Bohm-Duchen is an independent art historian, writer, lecturer and curator, based in London. The institutions she has worked for include the Courtauld Institute of Art, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, Tate, the National Gallery, the Royal Academy of Arts and the University of London. She is the founding Director of Insiders/Outsiders, an ongoing celebration of the contribution of refugees from Nazi Europe to British culture and contributing editor of the companion volume, Insiders/Outsiders, Refugees from Nazi Europe and their Contribution to British Visual Culture. She is the contributing editor of the 2024 monograph Dorothy Bohm at 100: A Life in Photography. Monica has been the curator of her late mother Dorothy Bohm’s photographic archive since the late 1990s and, since the former’s death in March 2023, of the Dorothy Bohm Estate. Dr Aviva Dautch is the Executive Director of Jewish Renaissance, the UK's Jewish arts and culture quarterly. She lectures on modern Jewish literature at the London School of Jewish Studies and JW3 and contributes to programmes on BBC Radio 4. She is an award-winning poet whose residencies and commissions have included The British Museum, The National Gallery and Bradford and Hay Literature Festivals. Aviva is the Jewish Women’s Voices OCLW Visiting Scholar for 2025-6. About the Programme: Jewish Women's Voices is a collaborative initiative by Dr Kate Kennedy, Director of the ‘Oxford Centre for Life-Writing’, and Dr Vera Fine-Grodzinski, a scholar of Jewish social and cultural history. The Programme is the first of its kind at any UK academic institution. Launched in October 2023, the Programme celebrates the life-writing of Jewish women, who are often underrepresented in mainstream historical accounts. The Programme is a three-term seminar series dedicated to exploring the diverse experiences of Jewish women across centuries, countries, and cultures. Further information about the Programme can be found here. Further Details and Contacts: This hybrid event is free and open to all. Registration is recommended for in-person attendance and required for hybrid attendance. Registration will close at 10:30 on 10/02/2026. The seminar will be recorded and made available on the OCLW website soon after. Registration is not required to access the recording. Queries regarding this event should be addressed to OCLW Events Manager, Dr Eleri Anona Watson.
This joint presentation examines how sovereignty is being reconfigured through encounters with Global China across Africa and South Asia. Moving beyond narratives of sovereign erosion or capture, we approach sovereignty as a set of practices that are actively produced, negotiated, and contested through legal, infrastructural, and institutional forms. Drawing on ethnographic research on Chinese litigation in Ethiopian courts and on the governance of the Belt and Road Initiative funded Colombo Port City project in Sri Lanka, we explore how sovereign authority is increasingly exercised through exception rather than rule. In Ethiopia, courts have become critical arenas where immunity is debated among those who fight, exact, grant, or weigh it, and where sovereignty is enacted through everyday legal practice . In Sri Lanka, sovereign exception is deliberately engineered through infrastructure-led development, as elite commissions design special zones that reconfigure territorial authority, legality, and economic governance. Taken together, these cases describe how postcolonial states strategically invite and manage sovereign compromise in pursuit of development and how authority is fragmented across state institutions. Most importantly it reveals how Global China serves less as an exceptional actor than as a catalyst that reveals and accelerates existing transformations. By placing law and infrastructure in dialogue, the talk highlights the multiple sites through which sovereignty is performed today and raises broader questions about accountability and governance under conditions of exception. Thiruni Kelegama (Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, University of Oxford, UK) examines how development projects reshape power, space, and identity in Sri Lanka. Her forthcoming book, Central Margins: Sri Lanka's Violent Frontier (Cambridge University Press 2026), analyses how postcolonial states pair narratives of benevolent development with territorial control. Miriam Driessen is an anthropologist and departmental lecturer in the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford. She is the author of Tales of Hope, Tastes of Bitterness: Chinese Road Builders in Ethiopia and the forthcoming book Immunity on Trial: Ethiopian Courts, Chinese Corporations, and Contestations over Sovereignty.
https://www.cmcsoxford.org.uk/our-events
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
*2-day Conference: The Past and Future of Anglo-Catholic Socialism* *Tuesday 10 and Wednesday 11 February 2026* An impressive number of socialist priests and intellectuals were formed by the Anglo-Catholic tradition in the first half of the twentieth century, including Percy Dearmer, F.D. Maurice, R.H. Tawney, J. N. Figgis, Henry Scott Holland, Frank Weston, Conrad Noel, Albert Mansbridge, Charles Gore, Ken Leech, and John Hughes. The Centre for Theology, Law, and Culture at Pusey House will organise a colloquium to discuss what can be learnt from Anglo-Catholic socialism as a tradition that still bears relevance for our time. Please visit our website for full details and the conference programme: https://www.puseyhouse.org.uk/conferences/anglo-catholic-socialism The conference will be preceded by a public lecture by Dr Jon Cruddas, former MP for Dagenham and Rainham, and author of _The Dignity of Labour_ (Polity, 2021), at 16:00 on Tuesday 10 February. Title of his lecture: "Catholicism and the Labour Party".
The lecture will seek to address a major omission in the history of the Labour Party: the lack of substantial work on the Roman Catholic contribution to it. Within the study of the origins of the Labour Party, this omission is often accounted for by factors such as the politics of Irish nationalism and home rule, prior to 1922 and the achievement of Irish self-government, the instruction of the clergy and traditional clerical suspicion of socialism, opposition to Labour Party policy over issues such as Catholic schooling prior to the 1918 Education Act, and the product of a restricted franchise and limited Roman Catholic participation at elections. Consequently, the Catholic contribution is a neglected area of study, often replaced either by a deterministic secularised Labour history, or one that emphasises the role of dissenting Protestant traditions in helping shape this history. This neglect also extends to the pre-history of Labour, the period the historian Stephen Yeo has described as the era of the ‘religion of socialism’ – the 1880s and 1890s. Yet this is when Catholic Social Teaching truly developed, particularly with the 1891 Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum. There were also numerous Roman Catholic leaders within the late-nineteenth-century labour movement such as Pete Curran, Tom McCarthy and James Sexton. The lecture is part of a wider project to reinsert the Roman Catholic contribution within Labour’s history. It will examine debates over Catholic marginalisation, alongside theological developments within Catholic Social Teaching and its links to questions of ideological renewal throughout labour history, from the era of the ‘religion of socialism’ to the present day significance of the so-called ‘Blue Labour’ movement. It will acknowledge key Catholic figures within Labour history, such as its forgotten leader J.L Clynes; the great Red Clydeside leader and founder of the Catholic Socialist Society, John Wheatley; TUC General Secretary, George Woodcock; the former Education Secretary, Shirley Williams; and Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair. It will also address the role of Catholics and wider questions of public policy and social reform integral to the history of the British welfare state.
Dr Edward Howell is the Strategic Net Assessment Research Fellow with SST:CCW. His research concerns the politics, international relations, and security of the Korean Peninsula and East Asia, with particular interests in inter-Korean and DPRK-US relations, and the UK's relations with the Northeast Asia. His latest monograph, North Korea and the Global Nuclear Order: When Bad Behaviour Pays, was published by Oxford University Press in 2023, and his forthcoming monograph, A New Axis of Upheaval: North Korea, Russia, and China—and Why We Should Care is expected for publication in 2026. He is also the Korea Foundation Fellow at The Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), London. Dr Rob Johnson is the Director of the Oxford Strategy, Statecraft, and Technology (Changing Character of War) Centre, Senior Research Fellow of Pembroke College, University of Oxford. He is an Adjunct Professor at the Norwegian Defence University Staff College and Adjunct Professor of Strategic Studies at Rennes School of Business in France. He is a historian, strategic studies and International Relations scholar combining academic analyses with ‘knowledge exchange’ policy impact. Dr Johnson was the first Director of the UK Office of Net Assessment and Challenge, working closely with the Secretary of State for Defence, Ministers, and Cabinet Office. He continues to advise and delivers direct support to government and armed forces in defence and security matters.
Join us at Oxford Edge for a Humanities Beyond Academia Skill Workshop with *Dr Pegram Harrison*. This session will focus on "Skills for Competing", teaching you how to gain an edge over competitors. All welcome.
Drawing on a collection of previously unexamined case files from St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, In the Shadow of Diagnosis explores the encounter between psychiatry and queer and gender-variant people in the mid-to late-twentieth-century United States. *Respondents:* Susanne Schmidt (University of Basle / WGQ) Grace Whorrall-Campbell (Oxford) Ella Castanier (Oxford)
Few countries have had as vexed a political history as Syria. Carved out of the Ottoman empire at the end of the First World War, Syria was then brutally ruled by France. This French ‘mandate’ carved out new borders with equally provisional neighbours in a process that pulled apart families, trade networks and political assumptions that had already been ravaged by the war. Syria's subsequent history has been a series of attempts to make sense of its borders, including a failed attempt in the late 1950s to unite with Egypt and several humiliations at the hands of Israel's armed forces. The civil war that broke out in 2011 plunged Syria into a nightmarish series of disasters, including the terrible years of Islamic State, ultimately resulting in the reimposition of Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship, which came to an end in 2024. Daniel Neep’s remarkable book creates a gripping, intelligent narrative of how Syrians have lived through these events, never losing sight either of the fates of ordinary people or of Syria’s rich, complex and diverse society, unwillingly or willingly brought together in such a highly contested space.
_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_.
The seminars will take place on Tuesdays during term time, from 5:00 to 6:30 p.m. at Corpus Christi College in Merton Street. Please ask the porters for directions. No registration is required. For more details: https://tolkien50.web.ox.ac.uk/event/tolkien-seminars-ht-2026
This talk introduces the emerging research field of Futures-Oriented Science Education (FOSE), focussing on its potential to revalue physics teaching as a source of rich and important competences for navigating societies where acceleration and uncertainty are intensified by multiple, intersecting crises. Drawing on the history of Futures Studies, I will discuss how FOSE prompts us to reconsider the epistemic and axiological foundations of physics, and to draw on interdisciplinary approaches that bridge the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities to foster futures literacy. Examples from empirical studies and classroom implementations developed in the European project FEDORA will be used to illustrate two key findings. The first concerns the persistence—and the strong influence—of Modernity’s dominant conception of the future within contemporary schooling. The second shows that core ideas from complex systems science can strengthen secondary students’ futures literacy by opening them to alternative forms of temporality and by supporting more positive and imaginative engagements with possible futures.
A just energy transition is crucial in building the public backing needed to achieve climate goals. If citizens see that regulations cutting carbon emissions can reduce rather than increase inequalities they are more likely to support them. The EU’s two key regulatory policies for appliance energy efficiency—minimum energy performance standards and mandatory energy labels have achieved major energy and costs savings. This seminar will consider whether they cut carbon emissions in a way that also reduces inequality, looking at: · Whether decision-making processes enable broad participation (procedural justice) · Whether the allocation of costs and benefits reduces inequalities (distributional justice). and offering recommendations for improvement.
It is well-established that phonological skills are critical for learning to read and that individuals with ‘dyslexia’ have phonological processing difficulties. However, as recognized by a recent Delphi study of dyslexia there is also growing evidence that poor reading is the outcome of multiple genes of small effect acting through the environment to produce individual differences in the manifestation of dyslexia/poor reading. I will draw on findings from a longitudinal study of children at high-risk of dyslexia, either because they have a parent with dyslexia or preschool language difficulties, to consider a range of risk factors that are associated with poor reading. The paper will begin by reviewing findings from longitudinal studies assessing the role of speech and language skills in reading development. There will follow a series of analyses examining dyslexia outcomes which are either specific or associated with comorbid developmental language disorder. We will touch on the role of ‘protective’ factors including the home literacy environment and implications for screening and intervention. Teams link: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/3825967966058?p=oaa4boDA3tu5ZnqMja
As global politics shifts toward great-power competition and zero-sum thinking, the European Union faces a stark test of survival. Once built around multilateralism, rules, and win-win integration, the EU now confronts war on its borders, economic pressure from China, and an increasingly unreliable United States. This panel explores whether Europe can adapt to a more hostile world and defend its vital interests without abandoning its core identity and fundamental values.
10 Feb (Week 4) Rohit Ghosh (Pembroke) - Cobwebbed Thinking: Margaret Cavendish and the Poetics of the Spiderweb
What possibilities and pleasures might fantasy, the weird, the uncanny, and the queer offer life-writers and readers? For many, life-writing aims to authentically narrate the ‘real’, factual experiences of a life. Yet, as Professor Nicholas Royle (University of Sussex) contends, expressions of ‘the weird’ and ‘the uncanny’—often associated with fantasy and supernatural literature—increasingly seep into contemporary life-writing. After all, lived experience is not always straightforward or easily narrated: memory can blur and distort, coincidence can feel charged with meaning, and the everyday can suddenly seem strange or out of place. Royle calls this contemporary drift of strangeness into the ‘real’ the ‘New Fantastic’: a way of writing that narrates ordinary life while registering its weirdness—its slips, shocks, and uncanny moments. In turn, this lecture asks: What can these engagements with the weird and the uncanny tell us about life-writing today? ‘The uncanny’ names an unnerving moment when the familiar suddenly feels strange, while ‘the weird’ points to that which exceeds the usual rules of reality. They make the world feel odd, askew, out of joint—or, indeed, ‘queer’. Drawing upon the French philosopher Jacques Derrida’s provocation that ‘to be is to be queer’, Royle asks, What happens when life-writing refuses neat, ‘straight’ stories of the self, and instead stays with what feels unstable, difficult, or hard to explain? What's queer about contemporary life-writing? This talk will draw on classic supernatural fiction by the American writer H.P. Lovecraft and the English writer Algernon Blackwood, alongside experimental, reflective writing by the French writer and theorist Hélène Cixous and the British writer Lara Pawson. In so doing, Royle considers how the ‘New Fantastic’ can open up new challenges and pleasures for life-writers and their readers. Touching on life-writing, creative and critical writing, and literary theory, this lecture will appeal to writers, students, and scholars of literature, as well as anyone interested in memoir and contemporary experimental writing. It will also be of interest to those curious about queer approaches to culture, psychoanalysis, and the weird and uncanny in fiction and everyday life. No prior specialist knowledge or preparation is required. However, attendees may find it helpful to read Algernon Blackwood’s ‘The Man Whom the Trees Loved’ (1912). Speaker Details: Nicholas Royle is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Sussex. He is the author of many critical works, including Telepathy and Literature (1991), E.M. Forster (1999), The Uncanny (2003), Jacques Derrida (2003), Veering: A Theory of Literature (2011), Hélène Cixous: Dreamer, Realist, Analyst, Writing (2020), as well as (with Andrew Bennett) Elizabeth Bowen and the Dissolution of the Novel (1995) and the Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory (sixth edition, 2023). He has also published the novels Quilt (2010) and An English Guide to Birdwatching (2017), along with Mother: A Memoir (2020) and David Bowie, Enid Blyton and the Sun Machine (2023). He is currently working on two projects: a book about Virginia Woolf and Palestine, and a study of The Weird, the Uncanny and the New Fantastic. Further Details and Contacts: After the event, please join us for a complimentary wine reception. This hybrid event is free and open to all. Delivering our lectures costs the Centre around £20 per attendee. If you are able, please consider making a voluntary donation of £5, £10, £20, or £50 to help us cover these costs and keep our events accessible to all. No one will be turned away for lack of funds. Registration is strongly recommended for in-person attendance and required for hybrid attendance. Registration will close at 14:30 on 10/02/2026. The event will be recorded and made available on the OCLW website soon after. Registration is not required to access the recording. Queries regarding this event should be addressed to OCLW Events Manager, Dr Eleri Anona Watson.
With the rapid development of AI and biotechnologies (including those relating to germline gene editing, brain-computer Interfaces, life extension, etc.) come vast powers to reshape ourselves and the natural world. As technological advances grant us new powers, so do they blur some boundaries between humans, animals, and machines, prodding us to ask the question: what does it mean to be human? Drawing upon readings in the humanities (including philosophy, theology, literature, etc.) and the sciences, this group will attempt to bridge the existential and empirical study of human identity - and within that context, ask if and how such reflections might help chart a path forward in relation to the right uses of new and potent technologies. We will focus in particular on questions of human purpose, place, and flourishing within the natural order. The reading group is open to students at all levels of study (including medical students), as well as faculty. We will meet for about 1 hour, twice per term. Under the umbrella of the medical humanities, this will be a casual reading and discussion group. The readings for each session will be introduced by a different participant - and the readings for each session will take a total of roughly 1 hour to complete.
This Weeks Focus: Defining Palestine, Defining Palestinians. Legal status, citizenship, and political (dis)belonging across international and local regimes. This reading group examines the political, geographic, economic, cultural, and linguistic fragmentations that have shaped Palestinian life over the past century, from the West Bank, Gaza, and the ’48 territories to the multiple Palestinian diasporas. By engaging with scholarship across history, political theory, and cultural studies, this reading group interrogates how these divisions have been produced, institutionalised, and normalised, and how they continue to shape Palestinian belongings, identities, and futures. Our aim is to consider both the unity that persists within fragmentation and the fragmentation that structures the very notion of Palestine. Central Question: How are ideas of Palestine and Palestinian collective identity shaped, challenged, and rearticulated under conditions of fragmentation? Structure: The group will convene biweekly throughout Hilary and Trinity Terms 2026, with each session lasting two hours Time: Tuesdays, 6:30–8:30 pm Location: To be announced Sign-Up Form: Reading Group: Palestine: Rethinking Politics of Fragmentations – Fill in form
*2-day Conference: The Past and Future of Anglo-Catholic Socialism* *Tuesday 10 and Wednesday 11 February 2026* An impressive number of socialist priests and intellectuals were formed by the Anglo-Catholic tradition in the first half of the twentieth century, including Percy Dearmer, F.D. Maurice, R.H. Tawney, J. N. Figgis, Henry Scott Holland, Frank Weston, Conrad Noel, Albert Mansbridge, Charles Gore, Ken Leech, and John Hughes. The Centre for Theology, Law, and Culture at Pusey House will organise a colloquium to discuss what can be learnt from Anglo-Catholic socialism as a tradition that still bears relevance for our time. Please visit our website for full details and the conference programme: https://www.puseyhouse.org.uk/conferences/anglo-catholic-socialism
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
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.
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 and NHS; researcher and research student
*Please email "$":mailto:mori.reithmayr@history.ox.ac.uk to join the reading group mailing list.* *Session Theme: TBD*
Written with Bruno Crepon and Jules Gazeaud Prevailing methods for measuring sensitive outcomes confront researchers with an inherent bias-variance trade-off: direct questioning is prone to a sensitivity bias, while indirect methods such as list experiments are substantially less precise. We introduce the ballot-bag, a novel technique that relaxes this trade-off by mitigating bias in direct questioning while improving precision over indirect methods. In a field experiment in Egypt, where direct questions on irregular migration are biased, ballot-bag estimates closely align with those from a list experiment but exhibit significantly lower variance. Consequently, treatment effects are highly significant via the ballot-bag and not via the list experiment.
Mentzer Group Speaker(s): TBC Title(s): TBC Fowler Group Speaker(s): Luigi Celauro, Jack Williams & Sybille Marchese Title: Subcellular, spatial 'omics of tauopathies: which tau species to target and where?
The green digital transition is underway. But what does this transition look like when dictated by the energy and resource demands of monopoly tech? How has this situation come to be? And where is it being resisted? From the Bog to the Cloud uncovers the hidden intersections of land, resource extraction and climate policy in the transition to “greener” and “smarter” economies. Challenging eco-modern and techno-solutionist approaches, the book links narratives of sustainability with colonial histories and uneven development, arguing that tech-driven transitions replicate exploitative patterns of imperial capitalism. Using Ireland as a focal point, we show how the history and depth of the country’s postcolonial dependency on multinational investment, especially US technology companies, comes into friction with disparate land-based struggles. This talk will articulate these histories within their present expression in Ireland’s twin transition and AI industrial policy, offering a critique of dependent models of development and proposing an anti-imperialist approach to environmental politics. Patrick Brodie is an Assistant Professor and Ad Astra Fellow in the School of Information and Communication Studies at University College Dublin. His research focuses on the political ecology of digital media infrastructure. He is the co-author with Patrick Bresnihan of From the Bog to the Cloud: Dependency and Eco-Modernity in Ireland (with Patrick Bresnihan, Bristol UP, 2025), the co-editor of Media Rurality (with Darin Barney, Duke UP, 2026), and the author of Wild Tides: Media Infrastructure and Financial Crisis in Ireland (Duke UP, 2026).
To be added
Cherry Briggs (Independent Researcher), The Multiple Geographies of Sri Lanka’s Climate, 1805-1953 Since the early twentieth century, the division of Sri Lanka into two distinct ecological and climatological regions – the Wet Zone and the Dry Zone – has become firmly entrenched in the way Sri Lanka’s geography has come to be imagined, both on the island and by those looking in from outside. This geographical imaginary has become so thoroughly naturalised that it has yet to be critically examined by historians of empire or historical geographers. This paper will trace the knowledge making practices that produced Sri Lanka’s climate in the context of empire, with a focus on the multiple geographical networks and imaginaries that brought it into being. Using climate as a lens, it will answer the call of historians of Sri Lanka to think through Sri Lanka’s past both beyond the shores of the island and the analytical frameworks of the colony and the nation state. It will show how Sri Lanka’s climate was produced by the collaboration of early nineteenth century meteorologists and climatologists, who imagined Sri Lanka variously as an isolated island, an extension of the Indian mainland, as a node in the Indian Ocean, as an ‘equatorial’ landmass and as part of a global network of data gatherers. It will show how the collection of the longitudinal rainfall data sets that were used to measure these climatic zones was initiated by individuals who traversed and transcended imperial space and how these zones were mapped in line with practices formulated beyond the British Empire in continental Europe. Finally, it will show how early twentieth century demographers’ insertion of the island into a global climatic schema ultimately aided the politicisation of the Wet and the Dry Zones after Independence. Alison Bennett (University of Oxford), Port labour, global commodities, and material skill development: A study of the ivory warehouse in the Port of London and its representation c. 1860–1968 This paper explores how global commodity trade fostered localised skills among Britain’s labouring classes, namely through the creation of new material, geographical, and commercial knowledge. Its lens is the Port of London’s Ivory Floor at St. Katherine’s Dock (built 1860, closed 1968), and its chief focus the warehouse workers and commercial agents who prepared ivory for market, as well as the Port’s publicity department who marketed their work through commissioned photographs and newspaper accounts. As the first substantive examination of ivory warehouses (in London or elsewhere), this case study sheds light on an overlooked part of the global commodification process of ivory while also unravelling the impact of global trade on a local workforce through their development of a specialised epistemological and material skillset. It demonstrates that through their prolonged material and sensory engagement, this group of port labourers became knowledgeable in assessing ivory and its origins without ever seeing an elephant or leaving the British Isles. Scholarship tends to approach the relationship between global commodity trade and local skill development at the level of artisanal and industrial manufacture, yet as this paper shows, material skills, knowledge, and visual marketing were also instrumental to port warehouse storage and trade, adding value to one of the most coveted raw materials of the nineteenth century. The paper develops our understanding of the material and visual cultures behind global trade, port labour history, and ivory commodity chains In turn, it opens space for understanding how other global commodities were mobilised for, and marketed to, manufacturers and consumers around the world via port warehouses.
The Older Scots Reading Group is for people interested in literature produced in Scotland between 1375-1550. This is an incredibly rich period, featuring authors experimenting with form and language. The texts themselves are written in Older Scots – a language closely related to Middle English, but with some unique attributes. This reading group will provide a relaxed introduction to this period and language. This term we will focus on reading the Palyce of Honour, a dream vision poetry by Gavin Douglas that often draws parallels with the House of Fame. But is it purely derivative or is there something more subtle at work? Join us to find out! Please bring your own copy of the text if you can – the 2018 TEAMS METS edition by David Parkinson is recommended. No intensive preparation required. Both undergraduates and postgraduates are welcome and there are usually snacks. If you have any questions, contact megan.bushnell@ling-phil.ox.ac.uk.
Clinician wellbeing and patient safety are often discussed separately. In practice, they are deeply interconnected and shaped not only by individual resilience, but by the design of the systems and environments in which clinicians work. This Oxford Open Grand Round will explore how workplace design influences engagement, wellbeing, and patient safety, drawing on insights from surgery, anaesthesia, human factors, and improvement science. The event will feature a 45-minute virtual panel discussion, followed by live audience Q&A, focused on: ▪️ What clinicians are really experiencing in today’s healthcare environments ▪️ The explicit and implicit impacts of design on wellbeing and safety ▪️ Practical, system-level opportunities for change. Oxford Open Grand Rounds are part of the MSc in Surgical Science and Practice and the PGCert in Patient Safety & Quality Improvement, and are open to clinicians globally who are interested in making a meaningful difference in and around their workplace.
Global supply chains have become increasingly complex, interconnected, and exposed to disruption. Although vast amounts of data are now available, this information remains fragmented, siloed, and dispersed across organisations, systems, and formats. In its raw form, information offers limited value. It becomes useful only when it is structured into knowledge that reveals how supply-chain networks are organised and how dependencies propagate across tiers. From this knowledge, intelligence can be derived to support timely and informed decisions. This talk explores whether recent advances in Large Language Models and agentic AI systems can support this transformation in supply-chain environments. Focusing on visibility and disruption management, it examines how unstructured external information can be converted into structured network knowledge, and how agentic systems can use that knowledge to detect disruptions, analyse their propagation, and support more effective responses, autonomously. About the speaker: Sara AlMahri is a final-year PhD candidate at the Supply Chain AI Lab (SCAIL), University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on using Large Language Models and agentic AI systems to map complex, multi-tier supply chain networks, detect disruptions, and support network-level decision-making for more resilient and sustainable operations. Before starting her PhD, Sara worked as a Senior Researcher at the Technology Innovation Institute (TII) in Abu Dhabi and completed international training programmes with Boeing (USA) and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (Japan). Her entrepreneurial and research work has been recognised with multiple awards, including the Parmee Prize and the Cape Acorn Postgraduate Research Award from the University of Cambridge, as well as the e& Prize for Entrepreneurship in Dubai.
Are you baffled by open, confused by embargoes? Does the mention of the colour gold or green catapult you into a realm of perplexed irritation? Come to this session, where we’ll break down open access and all its many jargon terms, confusing publishing structures and hint at the advantages you can reap by publishing open. In this session you’ll learn: what is open access? Key terms – Gold, Green, Article Processing Charges; where to get more information and help; where to look for open access material; and useful tools to assist you in publishing open access. Intended audience: researcher and research student; staff
About the series: This series will feature master classes, seminars, workshops and talks with Laura Rival, research collaborators and colleagues, throughout academic year 2025-2026. Beginning in Michaelmas term 2025, the theme for the term, in answer to the series question, was 'In Latin America, by Greening the State at the Top and from Below'. In Hilary term, the theme is 'By Knowing Nature Differently'. In Trinity term, the theme will be 'By Imagining a New Civilization and Building the Next Political Economic Order'.
After the election of Kwame Nkrumah as president of the Republic of Ghana in 1960, Ghanaian architects explored new building models that were both modern and culturally sensitive, alongside foreign architects attracted to the vibrant cosmopolitan environment.
Join online via Microsoft Teams by clicking here: https://tinyurl.com/bdff6tpt
The Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences is delighted to invite you to attend the Inaugural Lecture of Professor Bruce Biccard as The Nuffield Chair of Anaesthetic Sciences 'Safer surgery and anaesthesia: a global health imperative' Dress code: National dress, business attire or black gown and hood Catering at the drinks reception will consist of light canapés including vegetarian, vegan and gluten free options The Inaugural Lecture will be a fully accessible event, within the limitations of the building. https://www.accessguide.ox.ac.uk/examination-schools There will be filming and photography of this event
Graduates working across Faculties are invited to discuss the methodologies through which they conduct their research. Additional information about this session will be circulated in due course.
The art of conversation begins with a leap of faith. It is increasingly recognised as an invaluable skill in professional and personal development. Good conversational skills helps in forming relationships, sharing ideas, and building communities, whilst raising awareness of ourselves and others. As we rely more and more on technology, are these skills being lost? In this session, our Artist in Residence, Joy Richardson, will explore ways you can develop your communication skills, and increase your confidence when speaking with others. Joy will also be reading extracts from her diary ‘Conversations with Strangers’ in which she shares her extraordinary and unexpected encounters with total strangers that helped her through her life. About Joy Joy RichardsonJoy Richardson is an actor, artist and writer. Her work as an actor includes productions at the National Theatre, Shakespeare’s Globe, the Royal Shakespeare Company, Television and film. Joy is currently Artist in Residence at Kellogg College, delivering art sessions throughout each term, as part of her Art / Nature Project. Joy is currently writing a book on her conversations with strangers, using diary extracts over decades of unexpected and surprising conversations with strangers.
Jan Wagner and Norbert Hummelt will introduce Tanzt die Orange! 100 Antworten auf Rilke (Hanser 2025). This is a compendium of poems written after Rilke by some of the leading voices in German poetry. This event will be in German and take place in the Memorial Room
We are an interdisciplinary reading group which focuses on the social science, history, and theology of demons, the Devil, and supernatural evil as they relate to politics, identity formation, and social conflicts. Each week we will examine one academic paper or book chapter on these topics, gaining familiarity with subjects such as: the psychology of dehumanization, the conceptual development of the term “demon,” and contemporary political demonologies like QAnon. Hilary Term 2026, Thursdays from 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM Weeks 1,3,4,5,6,7,8: 21 St Giles (Kendrew Quad) Teaching Room G4 Week 2: 14 St Giles (next door to the Lamb & Flag) Seminar Room H Please contact Scott Maybell for the readings or for any questions: scott.maybell@sjc.ox.ac.uk
In a world of clickbait headlines and algorithm-driven feeds, thinking critically about the information we consume is more vital than ever. This interactive workshop aimed at undergraduates will help you to evaluate the credibility and bias in today’s news and social media. Through hands-on activities and real-world examples, you'll learn how to assess sources, identify misinformation, and trace claims and quotes to their original context. By the end of this session, you will be able to: describe what critical thinking means in the context of news articles and social media sources; identify different forms of bias in news and social media; recognise misinformation and 'fake news'; and understand and apply the SIFT Method to evaluate claims in news and social media sources. Intended audience: Taught student
How should postgraduate and early career researchers in the environmental humanities go about publishing within and beyond academia? What does it mean to envisage one’s work in this relatively novel interdisciplinary context? What opportunities does it offer, and what considerations might it provoke? This panel brings together experienced publishers and academics for a wide-ranging discussion of ways to disseminate your work in this broad field. Anna Henderson (ARC Humanities Press) and Rebecca Brennan (Princeton University Press) will discuss how to develop doctoral and early career research into book proposals and monographs, Jamie Lorimer (Geography) will talk about publishing in Environmental Humanities and similar journals, and Amanda Power (History) will explore options for wider engagement, especially through writing for The Conversation. Come along with your ideas and questions!
Lesson of the week, clinical cases and research. All clinical and academic staff and students welcome. Coffee and Tea will be served.
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
An online introduction to using alerts to keep up to date with new research and save you time. A combination of presenter-led instruction and the opportunity for participants to set up email alerts to receive notifications for publications in their field of research. We invite you to send any questions you have in advance to usered@bodleian.ox.ac.uk for the instructors to cover in the session. There will also be opportunities to ask questions in the class. The workshop will cover: how email alerts can help you; setting up alerts on your favourite databases and other platforms for new content in your field; and managing your alerts. Intended audience: taught student; researcher and research student
Long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LC-PUFA) are fundamental components of animal biology, playing essential roles in membrane organisation, cell signalling, neural function and developmental processes. In vertebrates, the biosynthesis of LC-PUFA depends on a relatively conserved and often limited set of desaturase and elongase enzymes, rendering many species partially dependent on dietary sources. In contrast, numerous invertebrate lineages retain the capacity to synthesise polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) de novo, supported by a more diverse and flexible enzymatic repertoire. This seminar explores the molecular and evolutionary basis of LC-PUFA biosynthesis in invertebrates, using the marine annelid Platynereis dumerilii as a tractable model system. By combining functional characterisation of fatty acyl desaturases and elongases with phylogenetic analyses, the work reveals how invertebrate pathways differ from vertebrate counterparts in both organisation and metabolic potential. These differences include the presence of alternative desaturation steps, expanded enzyme families and lineage-specific innovations that enable efficient LC-PUFA production from C18 fatty acid precursors. Beyond pathway architecture, the seminar integrates lipidomic analyses to illustrate how LC-PUFA biosynthesis is regulated in vivo and how membrane lipid composition responds to environmental variables such as temperature. Together, these findings highlight the biochemical versatility of invertebrate lipid metabolism and underscore the value of invertebrate models for understanding the evolution, regulation and physiological significance of LC-PUFA biosynthesis across animals.
Recent think pieces, panel discussions and pedagogical initiatives concerning public musicology have proven invaluable in fostering a sense of shared commitment, clarifying what is at stake and providing practical advice for addressing ‘non-academic’ audiences. In our eagerness to overcome the presumed chasm between the university and society, however, we have arguably brushed over some fundamental, if potentially awkward, questions: Which public (or publics) are we talking about? What do we want to achieve by engaging with them? What might they have to teach us? Recently, scholars of Western art music have used their public-facing work to contribute to wider efforts to diversify the concert repertoire and to question established historical narratives. Yet even those important achievements have often been realised through familiar, monological modes of presentation, such as the programme note and the pre-concert talk. Written from the perspective of a music historian, this talk explores an alternative approach, combining elements of what Naomi André (2018) terms ‘engaged musicology’ with the practices of music education and community music. Between 2023 and 2025, I worked with a network of partners from higher education, the cultural sector and beyond to develop ‘Let’s Build a Town!’, a creative arts project in Oxford. Taking inspiration from recent research on Paul Hindemith’s music for children – and seeking to reimagine his aspiration to promote young people’s agency and creativity through play – we organised a series of workshops and rehearsals at a primary school and a secondary school in east Oxford. The project culminated in a performance in which scenes from Hindemith’s Wir bauen eine Stadt (1930), an experimental work of music theatre, were interspersed with new, co-created music, movement and performance games. Drawing on interviews with a multidisciplinary team of artists and workshop leaders, I ask what added value (if any) a music historian might bring to a community arts project of this kind, and reflect on the advantages and limits of a more modest, localised and genuinely collaborative model of semi-public musicology.
This paper examines social mixing at a mixed-tenure neighbourhood in London – a former social housing estate which is undergoing a lengthy radical regeneration process. This process involves rehousing of tenants into newly-built social housing properties, alongside extensive building of large numbers of upmarket flats for sale. The latter has brought about a radically changed neighbourhood demographic involving a far more affluent population, alongside visible signs of gentrification. The research methods include participant observation, a resident survey and semi-structured interviews with residents and officials. The paper explores social mixing between the established social tenants and the newer residents living in the private housing blocks, and it highlights several reasons why such social mixing is overall extremely limited. First is the way that the social housing blocks are physically separated from the private housing blocks. Second is how the spatial focus of the private residents is often the block itself, a process which is reinforced by social media usage, as well as by use of exclusive gyms and swimming pools. Third are the large class and demographic differences between the social tenants and private residents. Fourth is the different usage of local amenities and public space. Fifth are the very different housing governance regimes in operation. Sixth are inter-personal tensions which exist between the two groups. Rather than social mixing, the dominant socio-spatial configuration at the neighbourhood is one of segregation and parallel lives. ———————————————————————————————————————————— Speaker bio: Paul Watt is Visiting Professor in the Department of Sociology, London School of Economics and Political Science, and Emeritus Professor in Urban Studies at Birkbeck, University of London. He has published widely on social housing, urban regeneration, communities and neighbourhoods, homelessness, housing activism, gentrification, suburbanisation, and the 2012 London Olympic Games. He is co-editor with Peer Smets of ‘Social Housing and Urban Renewal: A Cross-National Perspective’ (Emerald, 2017), and co-editor with Phil Cohen of ‘London 2012 and the Post-Olympics City: A Hollow Legacy?’ (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). His latest book is ‘Estate Regeneration and Its Discontents: Public Housing, Place and Inequality in London’ (Policy Press, 2021) (https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/estate-regeneration-and-its-discontents) ———————————————————————————————————————————— Booking is required for people outside of the Department of Social Policy and Intervention (DSPI). DSPI Members do not need to register.
Responsibility for post-16 education in the UK was centralised by successive UK governments between 1944 and 1997 and divided into a patchwork of six separate systems for adult education, apprenticeships, further education, higher education, schools and work-based training. Devolution of these responsibilities to Wales began tentatively in 1997 and was then strengthened in 2006, 2011 and 2017. Throughout this period of devolution there were attempts by the Welsh Government to create a panoramic view of an integrated tertiary system of post-16 education covering funding, applications, qualifications and quality enhancement. These attempts contended with established education structures, patterns of funding, administrative systems and working/learning cultures. This seminar will explore the history of these developments and explore the tensions that have been exposed on the way. Professor Huw Morris is on a full-time secondment from the Welsh Government to the Institute of Education to work on research development work and policy engagement. Before taking up this role Professor Morris was Director of Skills, Higher Education and Lifelong Learning for nine years overseeing the work of universities, further education colleges, apprenticeship providers in Wales. Before taking on this role in the civil service he worked in the higher education sector for 27 years holding positions from research assistant to dean, pro vice chancellor and deputy vice chancellor in universities across the UK. Professor Morris was a member of the education sub-panel of the Research Excellence Framework in 2021 and has been a member of the ESRC Grants Approval Panel since 2021. Professor Morris is a member of the editorial board of Policy Reviews in Higher Education and a trustee of UK Research Integrity Organisation (UKRIO).
Camille Serchuk (Southern Connecticut State University) is in conversation with Elizabeth Baigent (School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford).
To join online, please register in advance: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/WWqjr8SgT_WrzTodI65cdg
The global refugee regime has shifted under our feet. Over the last forty years, international asylum practices have expanded to include the queer and trans displaced. At least thirty-seven countries now recognize LGBTIQ refugees on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, with some states providing specialized support. Yet amid this expansion, backlash has intensified against refugee protection as well as the hard-earned rights of LGBTIQ people. In this disquieting context, the protection of LGBTIQ refugees remains partial and exclusionary. The Way Out examines the complexities of queer and trans displacement around the world. Centring personal narratives of LGBTIQ refugees, the book exposes the shortcomings of an international protection regime that is unable to address the harms that drive displacement. Rebecca Buxton and Samuel Ritholtz's analysis of the stakes of queer and trans inclusion in accounts of displacement justice offers a vibrant example of theory brought to life. About the speakers: Rebecca Buxton is Lecturer in Social and Political Philosophy at the University of Bristol. Samuel Ritholtz is Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Politics at All Souls College, University of Oxford.
This talk explores how and why Saudi Arabia burst onto the landscape of world football in 2023 and examines what the speed and scale of Saudi engagement, as investor, owner, sponsor, host, and participant, means for the Kingdom and for football more broadly. Analysis will place Saudi Arabia’s startling emergence as one of the hubs in world football in the 2020s in historical and comparative perspective, set against previous periods of Saudi investment in football, in the 1970s, and attempts elsewhere to rapidly kickstart the domestic game, in the United States, Japan, and China. Going beyond labels such as ‘sportswashing,’ which have gained media currency in recent years, Kingdom of Football examines what drives Saudi policymaking and connects the move into football with domestic economic and social developments and external and foreign policy considerations. The talk also examines how the Saudi foray into football builds upon but differs from the approaches taken by other Gulf States, such as the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, and assesses the factors that will determine the sustainability and durability of the Kingdom’s engagement with football in the decade-long runup to the 2034 World Cup.
Extreme right populism is on the rise worldwide, enforcing the exclusion of immigrants and foreigners. Why does the trend towards immigrant exclusion occur? To approach this quiz, I will focus on the case of Japan, where the Sansei party became the first right-wing populist party to enter mainstream politics in the 20 July 2025 Upper House election. Through the Japanese case, I will pursue mechanisms of the emergence of right-wing populism and the exclusion of immigrants and foreigners.
Keith Wrightson, _Ralph Tailor’s Summer: A Scrivener, His City, and the Plague_ (New Haven & London, 2011); Claire Gilbert, ‘An Age of Translation: Towards a Social History of Linguistic Agents in the Early Modern World’, _Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies_ 21:4 (2021), 1-23; A. D. M. van de Haar, ‘The Linguistic Coping Strategies of Three Netherlanders in England: Jan van der Noot, Lucas d’Heere, and Johannes Radermacher’, _Early Modern Low Countries_ 5 (2021), 192–215 *To attend online via Microsoft Teams, please email "$":mailto:ian.archer@history.ox.ac.uk*
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.
Thursday February 12, Room 10.424 (week 4) Hannah Fagan (Mansfield, Oxford), ‘New Granddaughters of Africa: the genealogical sagas of Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, Namwali Serpell and Yaa Gyasi’
Zeppelins played a significant role in shaping the British home front experience during World War I, which Trudi Tate characterised as “a fantasmatic, infantile, and pleasurable relationship to the war and its objects.” In September and October 1916, three German airships were shot down over Essex, events that drew tens of thousands of spectators, including journalists, who collected souvenirs or photographed the wreckage. Despite widespread disillusionment with the war, the presence of zeppelins elicited a paradoxical mix of intoxication, exhilaration, and horror (Freedman, 2004), a response reflected in the broader public imagination. Photographs and illustrations of burning airships and bombed houses, reproduced in the illustrated press, formed part of the burgeoning visual culture surrounding these spectacular events. This lecture examines the public emotional response, the extensive visual culture, including media narratives, and the mass consumption of wreckage souvenirs and postcards that emerged from these spectacles, thereby constituting what became known as the “Zeppelin Sublime.”
What does it mean to say ‘I am’? Is the sense of subjectivity a delusion? Are only humans conscious? What about whales, AI, and electrons? How should we use our consciousness? All these questions, and many others, will be examined by expert speakers in conversation with one another and with the audience in this 3-part symposium series. In this second event on 12 Feb, we will examine who has consciousness. Do non-human animals experience a sense of consciouness similar to our own? Is a sophisticated AI capable of consciousness? In fact, does even a table have some degree of consciousness, or is it only held by animate objects? Three short talks will provide a range of expert perspectives on these questions, followed by Q&A with the audience. Philip Goff (Philosophy, Durham University) Consciousness is everywhere Heather Browning (Philosophy, University of Southampton) Evidence for consciousness in non-human animals Patrick Butlin (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford) The case for AI consciousness
Refreshments provided from 5.40 This talk is jointly organised by the NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre and the NIHR Oxford Health Biomedical Research Centre Speakers: Dr Alex Green is a consultant neurosurgeon, and Ben Seymour is professor of clinical neuroscience, both based at the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences. They have been exploring the neurocircuitry underlying pain responses in people undergoing DBS treatment. The new Oxford-based EPIONE (Effective Pain Interventions with Neural Engineering) programme aims to transform how chronic pain is managed by combining world-leading engineering with neuroscience.
Title and speaker to be announced 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 if you would like to attend online.
Good research data management is a vital component of academic practice. Part of this is the principle that the data used to develop the arguments and outcomes of your research should be effectively stored and managed during a project, preserved for the future and - where possible - shared with other academics. This session introduces the University’s research data policy and outlines the practical impact this will have on your work. The services available at Oxford to assist you will be outlined. This session is not only essential during your current studies but will be invaluable if you plan to continue in research as a career. Topics to be covered include: common dangers and pitfalls of digital data; key principles of RDM and organising your data effectively; producing a data management plan; institutional, funder and publisher requirements; issues around preserving data and cybersecurity; ORA-Data, GitHub and other preservation services; sharing thoughts and insights about the potential of data management in your own field; and accessing Oxford based tools for research data management. Intended audience: taught student; researcher and research student; staff
Specialist species thrive under specific environmental conditions in narrow geographic ranges and are widely recognized as heavily threatened by climate deregulation. Many might rely on both their potential to adapt and to disperse towards a refugium to avoid extinction. It is thus crucial to understand the influence of environmental conditions on the unfolding process of adaptation. I will present a PDE model of the eco-evolutionary dynamics of a specialist species in a two-patch environment with moving optima. The transmission of the adaptive trait across generations is modelled by a non-linear, non-local operator of sexual reproduction. In an asymptotic regime of small variance, I justify that the local trait distributions are well approximatted by Gaussian distributions with fixed variances, which allows to report the analysis on the closed system of moments. Thanks to a separation of time scales between ecology and evolution, I next derive a limit system of moments and analyse its stationary states. In particular, I identify the critical environmental speed for persistence, which reflects how both the existence of a refugium and the cost of dispersal impact extinction patterns. Additionally, the analysis provides key insights regarding the path towards this refugium. I show that there exists a critical environmental speed above which the species crosses a tipping point, resulting into an abrupt habitat switch from its native patch to the refugium. When selection for local adaptation is strong, this habitat switch passes through an evolutionary ‘‘death valley’’ that can promote extinction for lower environmental speeds than the critical one.
This paper studies how the intergenerational transmission of political preferences shapes citizens’ political involvement. I develop a two-period model in which parents choose a costly level of transmission effort, and children decide their level of political involvement. Higher transmission effort increases children’s incentives to choose a high level of involvement. Each child is then randomly paired with another child and incurs a cost when their political preferences differ, with this cost being larger when both are highly involved. The model shows how parental influence links the evolution of political preferences with political involvement.
Aquaporins facilitate the passive, bidirectional flow of water in all cells and tissues. In the brain and spinal cord, aquaporin-4 is highly expressed and enriched at astrocyte endfeet, synapses and the glia limitans. It facilitates the exchange of water across the blood-spinal cord and blood-brain barriers, controlling cell volume, extracellular space volume and astrocyte migration. The perivascular enrichment of aquaporin-4 is consistent with its central role in CNS fluid flow and brain clearance, although the mechanism by which that role is exerted remains unknown. We have demonstrated that aquaporin-4 localization is dynamically regulated at the subcellular level, affecting membrane water permeability. In animal models of ageing, stroke, traumatic injury and sleep disruption, impairment of CNS fluid flow is associated with changes in perivascular aquaporin-4 localization. Each of these conditions represent established and emerging risk factors in developing neurodegeneration. Brain and spinal cord oedema are caused by the influx of water through aquaporin-4 in response to osmotic imbalances that occur following insults such as traumatic injury, stroke or tumour development. We have demonstrated that reducing dynamic subcellular relocalization of aquaporin-4 to the blood-spinal cord or blood-brain barriers reduces oedema and accelerates functional recovery in rodent injury models. Given the difficulties in developing pore-blocking aquaporin-4 inhibitors or activators and controversies in the field over the status of many proposed molecules, targeting dynamic aquaporin-4 subcellular relocalization provides a new approach to modulating aquaporin-4 function. This approach also opens up new treatment avenues for CNS oedema, neurovascular and neurodegenerative diseases, and provides a framework to address fundamental unanswered questions about water homeostasis in health and disease. SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY Roslyn Bill is Aston University’s 50th Anniversary Professor of Biotechnology and Director of Aston Institute for Membrane Excellence, which is funded by a £10M grant from Research England. Roslyn obtained her Batchelor, Master and Doctoral degrees from Oxford University and spent postdoctoral periods in Cambridge, the University of Michigan (as a Fulbright Scholar) and Gothenburg University before moving to Aston in 2002. She was awarded an ERC Advanced Grant in 2023 for her work on the regulation of aquaporin water channels in the human brain. She is a founding member of the aquaporin sub-committee of the IUPHAR/Guide to Pharmacology and Chief Scientific Officer of Estuar Pharmaceuticals. She served two terms as Chair of BBSRC Research Committee E and recently completed her tenure as Executive Editor of BBA Biomembranes. Roslyn is currently a Visiting Fellow hosted by Corpus Christi College and DPAG and a ‘Big if True Science’ Fellow supported by Renaissance Philanthropy and ARIA.
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.
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.
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 and NHS; taught student; researcher and research student
Week Four (13 February, Lecture Room VII) Primary: Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time, Chapters 10-12 Supplementary: Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex (1970), Chapter 1
On 13 February 2026, the University of Oxford will mark the centenary of the death of Francis Ysidro Edgeworth, one of the most original and influential figures in the history of Economics. Edgeworth held the Drummond Professorship of Political Economy at Oxford and was a Fellow of All Souls College. He is celebrated for pioneering the use of mathematical methods in Economics, developing utility theory, and introducing concepts - such as indifference curves and the Edgeworth box - that remain at the core of microeconomics today. To honour Edgeworth’s legacy, we invite you to a special two-hour event designed for a broad economics audience, from interested undergraduates and graduate students to faculty and friends of the subject. The event will also recognise Edgeworth’s central role in the profession: as founding editor of the Economic Journal, the journal of the Royal Economic Society, he shaped economic discourse for 35 years and helped to establish standards that still influence the field. The programme will feature four short talks highlighting different dimensions of Edgeworth’s life and work. Prof Sir John Vickers will reflect on Edgeworth as an Oxford figure and theorist of monopoly. Prof John Sutton will explore Edgeworth’s contributions to oligopoly theory. Prof Mary Morgan will discuss Edgeworth in the context of her work on models in economics, and Prof Kevin O’Rourke will examine Edgeworth’s insights on trade and international economics. Together, these perspectives will offer an accessible yet intellectually rich introduction to Edgeworth’s ideas and their lasting impact. The event is organised by Michael McMahon and John Vickers. It will take place in Oxford from 4pm to 6pm and will be streamed live for those unable to attend in person. All those with an interest in economics - students at all levels, faculty, and members of the wider economics community - are warmly encouraged to join
Seminar followed by Q&A and drinks - attend in person or join online - all welcome Abstract: The mainstreaming of Green Infrastructure has grounded multi-functionality, connectivity, access to nature, and the alignment of people, nature and place in praxis in both the UK and internationally. This is supported by a growing set of policy and evaluative approaches that provide a framework for planners and the environment profession to deliver more resilient places. As “greening” efforts continue it remains critical to reflect on best practice to identify what types of investment are developed. Moreover, by reflecting on how and why Green Infrastructure in geographically diverse places we are better able to assess the influence of scale, time and disciplinary differences in what is delivered. The talk will draw on research from the UK and Asia to discuss how the politics of place shapes the form, function and quality of investment in urban Green Infrastructure. Biography: Ian Mell is Professor in Environmental & Landscape Planning at the University of Manchester. He has over twenty years of experience in academia and practice examining the ways in which Green Infrastructure is designed, planned for, and evaluated in both the UK and internationally. His work supported the development of the National Green Infrastructure Standards Framework (Defra/Natural England, 2023) and he is the author of growing Green Infrastructure Green Infrastructure in Contemporary Asian Cities (Routledge, 2025) and co-author of Rural Planning Futures (Scott et al., 2025, Routledge).
What does it mean for distant peoples to need each other without knowing each other, for “us” to need “them,” and vice versa? Since Adam Smith, interdependence between strangers has been the source of opportunism, utopianism, and unspeakable atrocity. This lecture, looking especially at controversies since the 1970s, puts the fevered debates about globalisation of our times into historical perspective — and asks what we can learn from disputes past to create better arguments for the future. *Jeremy Adelman* is the Henry Charles Lea Professor Emeritus of History at Princeton University and the Director of the Global History Lab at the University of Cambridge, which is based at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and the Humanities (CRASSH). His works cover Latin American and global history, including _Worlds Together, Worlds Apart: A History of Humankind from Origins to the Present_ (W W Norton, 8th edition 2026) and the forthcoming _The Capitalist Age: Making and Unmaking of the Global Mind_ (Princeton University Press, late spring 2026). Dress code: Business dress
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.
Week 5 Monday 16th February 12.15pm, Room 10.424, Schwarzman Centre, Adelene Buckland, King’s College London ‘The Artificial Mother: Inventing Attachment in the Gilded Age'
If you’re interested in presenting a 10-20 minute paper on your research, please email us by the end of Week 3 latest.
The achievement goal complex integrates the specific goal an individual pursues with the underlying reasons for that pursuit. Using a person-centered approach, this study identified subgroups of undergraduates differing in their reasons for endorsing a performance-approach goal and examined associations with background factors (gender, prior achievement, faculty) and psychoeducational outcomes (e.g., interest, satisfaction, grades). Participants were 659 Thai undergraduates (27.5% female; M = 19.09, SD = 0.73) from Humanities, Social Sciences, and Management faculties. Latent Profile Analysis revealed four subgroups: Highly Motivated, Moderately Motivated, Minimally Motivated, and Autonomously Motivated. Background characteristics predicted membership, and the Highly and Autonomously Motivated profiles showed higher self-efficacy and lower hopelessness than the other groups. Findings are interpreted through a sociocultural lens, contributing to understanding how different motivational configurations underlie performance-approach striving.
This presentation outlines a constrained use of large language models (LLMs) in sociology and demography, grounded in an information-theoretic account of language. LLMs are treated as lossy statistical compression systems operating over non-injective mappings from social meaning to text. On this basis, their appropriate uses are limited to supporting existing analytical work: improving clarity of expression, surfacing textual regularities, and stress-testing arguments and assumptions. They are not sources of evidence, explanation, or social inference. Used within these limits, LLMs can reduce linguistic friction without being mistaken for epistemic agents. Biography: Daniel is a Senior Data Scientist and Postdoctoral Researcher in Computational Social Science at the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science. His research in the Centre is focused on the development of robust estimation methods for social science and in the development of software libraries in Python and R to perform multiverse-type estimations. Additionally, he researches the application of machine learning / deep learning models (e.g., BERT, RoBERTa, GPT-2) on social science problems like misinformation detection and characterisation on social media text, and the characterisation of social movement emotions over time based on associated tweets. Prior to joining Oxford, Daniel completed his PhD in Computational Social Science at the University of Leeds, and before that worked for several years as a quantitative analyst at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. His general interests are related to the use of machine learning methods to understand human behaviour and the application of novel methods for robust parameter estimation, either using multiverse-type approaches or Bayesian / probabilistic approaches. Please join either in person or online. For in-person attendees, the talk will be preceded by a light lunch at 12.15pm.
In this paper, we provide systematic evidence in support of the long-standing hypothesis that taxation was an important driver of the French Revolution. We first document that areas with heavier taxes experienced more riots between 1750 and 1789 and voiced more complaints against taxation in the {cahiers de dol\'eances} of 1789. After showing that these effects are driven by indirect taxes, we exploit sharp changes in the salt tax and the {traites}—the two principal indirect levies—to implement a regression discontinuity design (RDD). We find that unrest was higher on the high-tax side of the border. These effects intensified over time, peaking in the 1780s, and were stronger where fiscal disparities were larger and Enlightenment ideas more widespread. Combining the RDD with weather shocks during the 1780s, we further show that unusually hot summers amplified unrest in high-tax municipalities. We then document that taxation fuelled the spread of unrest during the {Grande Peur}—the wave of revolts that swept France in July 1789 and culminated in the abolition of feudal privileges. Finally, we link taxation to revolutionary politics in Paris, documenting that deputies from heavily taxed constituencies were more likely to frame the tax system as oppressive and unequal, support the Revolution, demand the abolition of the monarchy, and vote for the king’s execution.
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.
Puzzled by PICO? Daunted by databases? Baffled by Boolean? This one-hour introductory class will offer top tips and advice on how to find literature to answer a research question. No prior experience necessary! Together, we will break down a question into the PICO format, put together a structured search, and try it out in PubMed. By the end of this session, you will be able to: explain what structured searching is, and when to use it; break your research question down into searchable concepts; and make use of Boolean operators (ANDs/ORs) in your structured searches. Intended audience: medicine and NHS; taught student; researcher and research student
This talk is located in a post-colonial setting of urbanization and industrial modernization between the 1940-70s in India, when experts and publics began to remake knowledge regarding the bodies of workers and vulnerable citizens. This talk offers a framing to better understand post-colonial governmentality and health in Asia, specifically its symbolism, promise and limits for urban citizens. It argues that thinking about these modern, urban and industrial pathologies and diseases was narrowly focused on precarious metabolisms and unstable behaviors; and on questions of mental fitness, bodily stress and adaptability. At the same time this new metabolic thinking and studies led by Indian medical and social experts left out surrounding social risks and stressors. How did understandings of infection, immunity and risk get interpreted socially and epidemiologically, based on the needs of national productivity and morale, and what does it tell us about how knowledge of infectious and chronic diseases has emerged together rather than apart in India's health history and lifecourse. *Dr Kavita Sivaramakrishnan* is Ronald H Lauterstein Associate Professor at Columbia University. She is Co-Director of the Center for the History of Public Health at the Mailman School of Public Health. Her research focuses on history of medicine and health in modern South Asia, global health history and the relationships between disease outbreaks, the politics of medical expertise and care in late colonial and post-colonial South Asia. She is the author of, _As the World Ages: Rethinking a Demographic Crisis_ (Harvard University Press, 2018), and _Old Potions, New Bottles: Recasting Indigenous medicine in colonial Punjab_ (Orient Longman, 2006); and has two forthcoming books. A recently completed book manuscript on the politics of cardiology as a new and self-reliant technology of Indian modernity (co-authored with David Jones, Harvard University); and on the inescapable and pervasive remaking of new and chronic metabolisms in post-colonial India (supported by a grant the National Science Foundation). She is also working on a project on how resilience and coping amongst older populations has been understood and challenged as a lifecourse; and on a comparative, international history of consultants and expertise.
Does the democratisation of news and information sources help or hinder actual democracy? How to tackle disinformation (hostile states, fraudsters or other bad actors) and how to balance resisting misinformation with protecting free speech.
The seminar will be followed by drinks.
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
Join Dr Susan Black and July Kim from Bentham Publishers for a roundtable discussion on the challenges of academic publishing from a researcher perspective. July is keen to hear directly from researchers at Oxford about their publishing experiences and to explore how publishers could better support researchers across the publication process
This is coauthored work with Ryan Jablonski (London School of Economics) and Brigitte Seim (University of Minnesota). Fiscal theories of state development emphasise a complementarity between government revenue, taxation, and citizen demands for public services. We assess the relevance of this logic for understanding the political and redistributive consequences of massive cuts to foreign aid budgets following the closure of USAID in 2025. We conduct over 4,500 in-person surveys, survey experiments and interviews with citizens and bureaucrats before and after the cancellation of USAID contracts in Malawi, one of the world’s most impoverished and aid-dependent countries. Focusing especially on public health, we document three emerging trends. First, the effects of cuts on health provision and morbidity are large and unequal, with impacts felt most among those in extreme poverty. Second, politicians and local service providers are often blamed for declining relations with donors and corresponding cuts to services. However, this varies significantly by partisan affiliation, and we document little evidence of changing sentiment towards the USA. Third, we document high, but heterogeneous, demand for the government to replace cancelled health services through taxation, particularly when respondents are experimentally assigned more information about aid cuts or presented with tangible policy trade-offs. Consistent with theory, we conclude that the aid shock is changing expectations of the state by increasing inequality and shifting demand for progressive and redistributive social policy, especially among the poorest.
Oral language competence is fundamental to children’s academic achievement and emotional well-being, yet many children enter school with delayed language development. Early Years Practitioners can play a pivotal role in supporting language growth through high-quality interactions integrating linguistic, interactive and conceptual elements. In-service professional development can support practitioners to enhance provision, especially when its design is informed by an understanding of existing provision and the contextual factors that shape it. This talk will present findings from a study which employed fine-grained analysis to examine the quality of language support in small-group practitioner–child interactions in English nurseries. Interactive and conceptual features of practitioner input - including prompt use, extensions and expansions of child language, conversational exchanges and the use of decontextualized language - were examined across three content-rich activity contexts: text-and-picture book sharing, wordless book sharing, and toy play. Comparisons across these contexts highlight their relative affordances for language learning and identify priorities for professional development and practice. The presentation will also discuss the methodological challenges of capturing language support through a bespoke coding approach and consider pathways for future refinements. Teams link: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/3825967966058?p=oaa4boDA3tu5ZnqMja
Hybrid Sovereignties and Generational Rupture: Reconfiguring Governance in Post-Crisis Madagascar Velomahanina Tahinjanahary Razakamaharavo Madagascar’s 2025 conflict and political crises represent the apex of a long-entrenched hybrid political order in which formal institutions, military actors, oligarchic networks, religious intermediaries, and digitally mobilized youth compete for authority and legitimacy. The Gen Z-led uprising exposed deep generational cleavages and the fragmentation of sovereignty, while the military’s renewed political role features the persistence of praetorian dynamics. Rebuilding civilian authority will require embracing managed hybridity through inclusive political compacts and targeted structural reforms aimed at curbing state capture, strengthening civil-military relations, and addressing the vulnerabilities introduced by digital mobilization. Dr Velomahanina Tahinjanahary Razakamaharavo is a Research Fellow at the University of Reading. Her work focuses on peacebuilding, conflict recurrence, governance of emerging technologies, and resilience to climate-related risks. She holds a PhD in International Conflict Analysis from the University of Kent and has held research, policy and teaching positions across Europe, including at the Technical University of Munich, the European University Institute, Geneva Graduate Institute, Uppsala University, Umeå University and UCLouvain. She led the ESRC-funded HYBRICON project on conflict and hybrid governance and is the Author of the Monograph "Peacebuilding in Madagascar. A Multi-levelled Peace". Nepal’s Gen-Z ‘Revolution’: Was it a Revolution and What is Likely to Happen in the Elections in March? David Gellner and Krishna Adhikari Both participants and observers are even now puzzling over what happened in Nepal on September 8 and 9th 2025. Plenty of conspiracy theories, simplistic explanations, and instant analyses are on offer: Was it a monarchist plot? Could it have been organized by a distant or neighbouring foreign power? Was it just a nihilistic expression of fury from a social-media-saturated youth angry at the banning of Facebook and WhatsApp and furious at the images they had seen of Nepokids (the children of politicians and the business elite) cavorting in ski resorts while they battled with unemployment? What was the role of the Army, of India, and of the monarchists? How was it possible for life to go back to ‘normal’ so quickly? Much of the arson and violence on the second day was planned, though whether anyone will ever be held to account is very much an open question. Whether the new political forces claiming to represent the aspirations of Gen-Z will be able to defeat the established parties in the elections is very much an open question. If they do so, whether and how they will be able to renew the country is also an open question. Whether the programme of the new forces will involve undoing the achievements of the 2015 Constitution (secularism, republicanism, federalism, quota systems for minorities) also remains to be seen and, either way, their position is likely to be highly contentious. By comparing Nepal to Madagascar, it is hoped that some larger issues of youth, development, migration, and networked globalization can be addressed. David Gellner FBA is Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology and Emeritus Fellow of All Souls, University of Oxford. He has been doing research on Nepal since 1980. His most recent publications with Krishna Adhikari are the co-edited Nepal’s Dalits in Transition (Vajra, 2024) and an analysis of the September ‘revolution’ published six weeks after the events: https://www.theindiaforum.in/politics/gen-z-and-nepals-ongoing-struggle-change. Krishna Adhikari is an Affiliate of the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford. He was in Nepal during the events of September. He has a Master’s in Social Work from Goteborg, Sweden, and a PhD on the dynamics of social capital in CBOs in Nepal from the University of Reading (2007).
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.
https://www.cmcsoxford.org.uk/our-events
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
Belarus was once Europe’s forgotten country, although that is no longer the case. President Lukashenko has been in power now for 31 years, the last dictatorship in Europe, remaining Russia’s closest ally. The country has suffered an extremely turbulent period, with mass protests in 2020, a brutal ongoing human rights clampdown taking place ever since, the forced diversion of Ryanair Flight 4978 to arrest a civil society activist and the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine which was launched from Belarusian territory. Jack served on the ground during this extraordinary period and will share his views and observations on these events, looking past the headlines to offer a fresh perspective on the country. Jack will discuss what life was like for a British diplomat living inside Belarus and why the country matters more than ever, also looking ahead to what next. Jack Hands served as Britain’s Deputy Ambassador and His Majesty’s Consul to Belarus from 2021 to 2024. Jack is currently Head of the UK Central European Foreign Policy Network, based in Vienna. Prior to this, he was Press Officer to the Minister for Exports and held roles in the UK and European Parliaments, with a stint in South Korea reporting on Korean peninsula issues.
In early 1977, international authorities began noticing a new and mysterious cargo airliner flying the skies. A Douglas DC-8 in green and red livery and emblazoned with the name ‘CargOman’ in both Arabic and English. The plane’s roundel, featuring an Omani-style khanjar knife, only further added to the impression that this was an Omani plane. In fact, ‘CargOman’ was a front organisation, a joint Omani-Rhodesian covert operation and the most visible sign of a secret relationship stretching across Africa and the Indian Ocean. DPhil candidate Naif Alrogi (Nuffield College) will present a chapter from his doctoral thesis shedding light on this little known Cold War story, of how and why a newly independent Gulf Arab country served as a crucial lifeline for sanctioned and isolated Rhodesia.
When Korea’s first modern hospital opened in 1885, it was called the "House for Relieving the People" (Chejungwŏn 廣惠院). This was more than a translation; it hints a historical narrative linking politics and medicine. This study traces how the Confucian imperative to "relieve the people" (Chejungwŏn) was introduced from China to Chosŏn Korea and subsequently shaped royal responses to the devastating epidemics that swept Korea in seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Moving beyond a narrative of crisis management, it examines how epidemics, in addition to other natural disasters, became a political theatre for demonstrating benevolent governance (injǒng仁政). By analysing policies, institutions, medical texts, and rituals, this study explores a pre-modern Korean framework in which epidemics were interwoven with cosmic disorder and royal virtue, drawing comparisons with the modern discourse of public health.
Bio Valeria Cetorelli has been with UNRWA since 2018, serving six years as Head of Refugee Registration and Eligibility and currently as Deputy Director of Relief and Social Services. She holds a PhD in demography from the LSE and has extensive experience leveraging data to guide humanitarian assistance and development policies and advance human rights and international justice for conflict-affected and displaced populations. She has led large multidisciplinary teams, managed complex multimillion-dollar programmes, and published high-impact research. Prior to joining UNRWA, she worked as Demographic Statistician at UNESCWA and as Research Officer at the LSE Middle East Centre and at the Johns Hopkins Center for Refugee and Disaster Response. Abstract In 1950-51, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) conducted a census to register those who had lost their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 war in Palestine –known in Arabic as al-Nakba, the catastrophe. The registration records from this census constituted the backbone of UNRWA’s operations at that time and the foundation on which registration records of subsequent generations of refugees have been built. However, they have so far never been thoroughly analysed. For 75 years, the original census cards remained archived in UNRWA field offices in Gaza City, East Jerusalem, Amman, Damascus and Beirut. Their scanning was completed only at the end of 2025, following the rescue of the Gaza City archive after the outbreak of hostilities in October 2023 and the transfer of the East Jerusalem archive to Amman due to the Israeli Parliament’s bills banning UNRWA in October 2024. The digitisation of the registration records contained in these cards is now underway through a semi-automated workflow with human-in-the-loop oversight. Once finalised, this project will make it possible to identify all refugees who were registered by the census and attest their place of origin in pre-1948 Palestine. It will also provide an evidentiary basis for reconstructing family lineages and substantiating the historical claims of the current Palestine refugee population.
_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_.
Henry will be sharing insights into how SNRG’s fully funded MicroGrid solutions can support residential, Industrial & Commercial and e-mobility developers to reduce cost and carbon.
(https://www.mfo.ac.uk/) Hosted jointly with the Medieval French Seminar
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.
Open access publication of monographs and other longform works is an emerging movement, offering many opportunities to scholars looking to publish their research. With several major funding agencies now requiring longform open access publication, the impact of this is only set to grow. However, for those looking to publish their monograph open access, the novelty of this can present a challenge. What do funders require? What are the different publishing models? This webinar will cover the basics of this emerging field, including benefits, funder requirements, publication models and tools and resources. At the end of the session participants will be able to: explore the benefits of open access publication for longform works; consider the more challenging aspects of open monograph publication that that may not arise in traditional monograph publishing; follow the open access requirements of major funders for longform works; and understand the range of open access publication models offered by publishers. Intended audience: researcher and research student; staff
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
TBC
The Older Scots Reading Group is for people interested in literature produced in Scotland between 1375-1550. This is an incredibly rich period, featuring authors experimenting with form and language. The texts themselves are written in Older Scots – a language closely related to Middle English, but with some unique attributes. This reading group will provide a relaxed introduction to this period and language. This term we will focus on reading the Palyce of Honour, a dream vision poetry by Gavin Douglas that often draws parallels with the House of Fame. But is it purely derivative or is there something more subtle at work? Join us to find out! Please bring your own copy of the text if you can – the 2018 TEAMS METS edition by David Parkinson is recommended. No intensive preparation required. Both undergraduates and postgraduates are welcome and there are usually snacks. If you have any questions, contact megan.bushnell@ling-phil.ox.ac.uk.
About the series: This series will feature master classes, seminars, workshops and talks with Laura Rival, research collaborators and colleagues, throughout academic year 2025-2026. Beginning in Michaelmas term 2025, the theme for the term, in answer to the series question, was 'In Latin America, by Greening the State at the Top and from Below'. In Hilary term, the theme is 'By Knowing Nature Differently'. In Trinity term, the theme will be 'By Imagining a New Civilization and Building the Next Political Economic Order'.
With the reform of adult social care once again being considered – this time by the Casey Commission – this session builds on lessons from the work of IMPACT, the UK centre for implementing evidence in adult social care. It looks at what we mean by evidence, why lived experience is an important form of evidence in its own right, and how to get evidence of what works implemented in practice. In the process, it draws out key lessons from IMPACT’s work across the four nations of the UK that could form the building blocks of a future National Care Service. Jon Glasby trained as a social worker, and is now Professor of Health and Social Care at the University of Birmingham and Director of IMPACT. In his spare time, he is a Non-Executive Director of an NHS Trust and of a local authority children’s services. In 2022, he was an advisor to the House of Lords Adult Social Care Committee. This hybrid event is run by Green Templeton’s long-running Care Initiative, led by Professor Mary Daly. After the talk there will be a short drinks reception in the Stables Bar.
Join online via Microsoft Teams by clicking here: https://tinyurl.com/bdff6tpt
Join Oxford Saïd Entrepreneurship Centre at the Nest for our networking event over drinks and pizza. This event is designed for aspiring entrepreneurs, start-ups and start-up support organisations to connect, share insights and build meaningful relationships within the entrepreneurial community across Oxford. Whether you're a researcher with an idea, a founder searching for a partner or an entrepreneur curious about building lasting startup teams, join us for food, drinks and the chance to make new connections.
This talk recovers the histories and legacies of ‘coolie’ migrants as foundational to Indian diplomacy. Drawing on multi-archival research spanning the vast geographies of indenture and labour migration from India to Ceylon, the Caribbean, and Britain, I argue that Indian notions of the international realm were shaped by the prolific if ‘undesirable’ mobility of labourers and remained a space of anxiety defined by a caste-coded paranoia over the figure of the coolie. Through such a paradigm, my book addresses the longstanding neglect of caste and labour migration in Indian diplomatic history. It thereby provides a bottom-up approach to diplomatic studies and international relations that centres the experiences of migrants who have for too long been simply regarded as recipients and ‘problems’ of diplomacy. About the speaker: Dr Kalathmika Natarajan is Lecturer in Modern South Asian History at the University of Exeter and co-director of the Exeter South Asia Centre. Her interdisciplinary research combines critical approaches to diplomatic history and South Asian migration. She has worked at the University of Edinburgh, and received her doctoral degree from the University of Copenhagen.
Alex Patelis discusses insights from his book “Η Μεγάλη Έπιστροφή” (The Great Return), offering an inside account of the policy choices, economic reforms, and credibility signals that opened the road for Greece to return to investment grade, attract foreign capital, and rebuild trust with markets, institutions, and partners after a decade of crisis. Alex Patelis served as Chief Economic Adviser to the Prime Minister of Greece, from 2019 to 2024. He has over three decades of experience as an economist, analyst, and strategist in New York, London, and Athens, including senior roles at Goldman Sachs, Citigroup Asset Management, Merrill Lynch, and leadership of his own research firm, Patelis Macro. Alex holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University where he studied under Ben Bernanke and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Mathematics from Sussex University.
Inaugurated in 1960, the new capital of Brazil was designed by architects Oscar Niemeyer and Lúcio Costa. While the elegance of Niemeyer’s concrete shells elicited admiration, the workers who built Brasília were exiled in shantytowns far from the city.
To mark the centenary of Rilke’s death there will be a series of Oxford Centenary Readings held in the Queen’s College in HT 2025. These will be informal papers with plenty of discussion, about one poem or a handful of poems, that offer close readings and new insights. Papers will be in English and English translations will be provided for all poems and quotations (except for the session in week 4 with the visiting poets) making these sessions accessible to anyone with an interest in this remarkable poet and poetry in general. Frey Kalus – ‘Rilke’s Petromodernism: Oil and its Absence in the Sonnets to Orpheus’. (Sonette an Orpheus, II. X).
The event will feature Wycliffe's own John Screnock, presenting his new publication. Expect an exciting new look at well-known biblical texts and meet the ancient Scribes through what we can see of their work. Though current scholarship has extensive knowledge of these ancient texts, there is much we can learn from the scribes of the Second Temple period. When we focus our attention on the places in the text where the scribes were at work — when we explore some of the paths that scribes have made in the text — we can consider psalms and other ancient Hebrew texts in new ways.
The event will feature Yuval Shany, former Chair of the UN Human Rights Committee and Inaugural Accelerator Fellow at the Institute, who will make the case for a new bill to address critical gaps in existing international human rights law. The White Paper outlines seven foundational rights for the age of AI, including: the right to access AI, privacy protections, anti-bias and fairness, algorithmic transparency, freedom from manipulation, meaningful human decision-making and interaction, and accountability for the use of AI. These ideas will be examined and discussed by a distinguished panel of experts: Robert Spano, former President of the European Court of Human Rights Kate Jones, CEO of the Digital Regulation Cooperation Forum Caroline Green, Director of Research at the Institute for Ethics in AI and a leading voice on the ethics of care This timely discussion brings together law, policy, ethics, and technology to explore how human rights can be protected—and reimagined—in an AI-driven world. Essential for policymakers, legal professionals, technologists, researchers, and anyone interested in the responsible governance of AI. The session will conclude with dedicated time for audience Q&A and discussion.
Andrew Lambert is Laughton Professor of Naval History in the Department of War Studies at King's College. After completing research in the Department he taught at Bristol Polytechnic,(now the University of West of England), the Royal Naval Staff College, Greenwich, and the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and also Director of the Laughton Naval Unit housed in the Department. In 2020 he was made a Fellow of Kings College London (FKC). His work focuses on the naval and strategic history of the British Empire between the Napoleonic Wars and the First World War, and the early development of naval historical writing. His work has addressed a range of issues, including technology, policy-making, regional security, deterrence, historiography, crisis-management and conflict. He received the 2014 Anderson Medal for The Challenge: Britain against America in the Naval War of 1812. Professor Lambert has lectured on aspects of my work around the world, from Australia and Canada to Finland, Denmark and Russia.
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.
We are an interdisciplinary reading group which focuses on the social science, history, and theology of demons, the Devil, and supernatural evil as they relate to politics, identity formation, and social conflicts. Each week we will examine one academic paper or book chapter on these topics, gaining familiarity with subjects such as: the psychology of dehumanization, the conceptual development of the term “demon,” and contemporary political demonologies like QAnon. Hilary Term 2026, Thursdays from 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM Weeks 1,3,4,5,6,7,8: 21 St Giles (Kendrew Quad) Teaching Room G4 Week 2: 14 St Giles (next door to the Lamb & Flag) Seminar Room H Please contact Scott Maybell for the readings or for any questions: scott.maybell@sjc.ox.ac.uk
*2-Day Workshop - 19-20 February 2026* *Christian Arabic Manuscripts: Research Skills for a New Generation* Students and researchers are invited to join us for a two-day intensive research workshop at the Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities related to Christian Arabic manuscripts. The workshop will include introductory sessions on the foundations and research horizons of the field, as well as sessions introducing the latest digital tools and technologies advancing research. Attendees will have a chance to practice using these tools and technologies with a range of Christian Arabic texts located in the Bodleian Library. Lunch and refreshments will be provided free of charge on both days. *Requirements:* * A solid foundation in Arabic (at least 1 year of Classical or Modern Standard) * A studentship or research a:iliation with Oxford University or another academic institution; OU participants will receive priority, followed by qualified academics and students from other institutions * Demonstrable interest in Christian Arabic Manuscripts, including those for whom Christian Arabic may be tangential to their overall study or research interests, e.g. those working in Byzantine Studies, Islamic Studies, Patristics, and Syriac Studies *How to apply:* https://tinyurl.com/2jzj3me7 *Deadline to apply:* 9 February 2026 *Questions:* Dr Steven Firmin "$":mailto:steven.firmin@theology.ox.ac.uk
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.
Serotonergic inputs innervate nearly the entire brain and broadly influence behavior, but how serotonin shapes neural circuit function at the synaptic and cellular levels remain poorly understood. The Swanger lab has discovered cell-type-specific mechanisms by which serotonin regulates communication between the hippocampus and anterior nucleus of the thalamus. This seminar will discuss how serotonin influences excitation and inhibition within this circuitry as well as the lab's ongoing work investigating how targeting serotonin signaling counteracts circuit hyperexcitability in an epilepsy mouse model.
This workshop brings together historians of marginalised communities using magazines in their research to share our approaches to this particular source base, grappling with magazines’ unique methodological challenges as well as their tantalising opportunities. Each session is broadly organised around a different theme, and participants are invited to bring examples from their own research. Pastries and snacks will be provided. Please email "$":mailto:katie.burke@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk for more information.
Recent advances in ophthalmology have shown that retinal images can detect much more than 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. Charity-owned Foresight Research Ltd. aims to collect community-level, pre-disease data from hundreds-of-thousands participants, through a UK-wide network of optical practices. Through collaborations with national health research initiatives, they plan to build comprehensive datasets from early-stage and healthy participants – and make these accessible for industry and academic researchers working on healthcare innovation (biomedical, AI, health economics, etc.). These datasets will be fundamental for enabling prevention and early interception of various ocular and systemic diseases.
The leet court served as a means for medieval English communities to police themselves. It did not deal with private suits or have jurisdiction over felonies. It was concerned with misbehaviour which disturbed the public. Local officials were appointed to keep note of issues and at the annual court session, offenders would be presented and fined. Amongst the business of the leet were several environmental offences such as incorrect dung disposal, poor gutter maintenance, and illegal latrine placement. The records of these courts provide valuable insight into communal responses to the problems affecting the medieval urban environment. However, because leet court sessions were usually held annually, they can present a static image of what was a dynamic and pressing issue. When gutters are blocked, flooding can occur just as how a poorly placed latrine can pollute drinking water. These events required an immediate response and could not be left unresolved until the next court session. The court rolls record final judgements and fines but give very little detail as to what might have happened at the time of the offence. This paper examines waste management as a temporal issue in two fenland towns: Peterborough and Ramsey, between c.1300-c.1500. It seeks to shed further light on what might have happened at the moment of these crimes occurring and explore how medieval communities managed the urban environment. Utilising the records of the leet court, this paper demonstrates the use of environmental management as a means to understand the lived reality of crime and policing in medieval England.
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
*Readings:* Marga Vicedo, “Clara Park: A Mother’s Intimate Knowledge and Child Science,’ in Amelia Bonea and Irina Nastasa-Matei (eds.), _Negotiating In/Visibility_ (Manchester University Press, 2025)
Lesson of the week, clinical cases and research. All clinical and academic staff and students welcome. Coffee and Tea will be served.
Each spring, billions of Bogong moths escape hot conditions across a vast swathe of southeast Australia by migrating over 1000 km to a limited number of cool caves in the Australian Alps, historically used for aestivating over the summer – a place they have never previously been. At the beginning of autumn, the same individuals make a return migration to their breeding grounds to reproduce and die. To make these incredible journeys, we have discovered that Bogong moths rely on the stars and the Earth’s magnetic field as compasses to fly in their inherited migratory direction, and an innately recognised odour wafting from the cave that identifies the destination and provides a navigational beacon at the very end of their long journey. In my talk I will describe the experiments that led to these findings and explain the nature of the visual, magnetic and olfactory sensory mechanisms that underly the Bogong moth’s remarkable navigational abilities.
Discussants (Oxford): Benjamin Copeland Ben Jackson Grace Whorrall-Campbell Freya Willis Attendees may also like to attend Peter Mandler’s Ford Lectures on Thursdays at 17:00 in weeks 1-6, at the Examination Schools: https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/james-ford-lectures-british-history
Oxford DPhil students are required to deposit a copy of their thesis in the Oxford University Research Archive (ORA). This online session will focus on what ORA is and how to deposit one's thesis in ORA, and how to access help with this process. It will also cover the relevant rights and permissions required and other issues that DPhil students need to take into account when preparing their thesis for upload to ORA. Topics include: what ORA is and what you need to deposit; how to deposit your thesis in ORA; observing relevant rights and permissions; and accessing help with depositing your thesis in ORA. Intended audience: researcher and research student; staff
Are you looking for a streamlined approach to gathering, managing and citing your references? Join us for this interactive online session in which we introduce RefWorks, a subscription reference management tool that University of Oxford members can use for free during their time at the university and as alumni. RefWorks is web-based and helps you to collect and manage references and insert them into your word-processed document as in-text citations or footnotes, and you can generate bibliographies. Being web-based, RefWorks can be used with any operating system and, to cite your references in a document, provides a plugin for Microsoft Word on Windows or Mac computers. By the end of the session, you will understand: how RefWorks can help you; how to add references to RefWorks from a range of sources; how to manage your references; how to add in-text citations and/or footnotes to your documents; how to create bibliographies; and where to get help with RefWorks. Intended audience: taught student; researcher and research student
How can liberal democratic actors counter the normalisation of the radical right? While much research documents how radical right ideology and anti-immigration positions have moved into the political mainstream across many Western democracies, far less is known about the counter-strategies that can be used to combat the normalisation of exclusionary policy agendas. In this seminar, Katharina Lawall, Quantitative Social Scientist, will present the design and findings of a study that tests the effectiveness of different forms of counterspeech against a prominent radical-right normalisation strategy: femonationalism, which presents an anti-immigration position through the more acceptable frame of gender equality. Katharina will delve into the experiment, in which nearly 4,000 German adults were exposed to anti-immigration rhetoric with a gender-equality justification in a short, news-style video, followed by alternative rebuttals, with the findings highlighting fact-based counterspeech as most effective for reducing support for femonationalist and anti-immigrant views. Register to join on Zoom: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/pbFSmnaxQcq9n70pS2PBZA
Why has the world performed so poorly in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and limiting climate change? Humanity has performed far better in addressing other environmental challenges, such as protecting the ozone layer, mitigating acid rain, improving air quality, and reducing people's exposure to dioxins and lead. In this talk Professor Fairbrother will consider different environmental outcomes in comparative perspective, and conditions leading to better versus worse outcomes. He will argue, contrary to other perspectives, that there have been two key differences between climate change and more successfully mitigated problems. First, polluting industries have resisted regulation more strongly in the case of climate change, with exceptional political efforts to deny and delay in turn due to the uniquely unconvertible character of key industry assets. Second, in the success cases, ordinary people were asked to make little or no material sacrifice, whereas in the case of climate change there is more of a price to be paid--and most people appear unwilling to pay a price, even though it is modest, because of distrust. Professor Fairbrother will conclude by elaborating implications for how we should seek to resolve the climate crisis.———————————————————————————————————————————— Speaker bio: Malcolm Fairbrother is a professor of sociology at Uppsala University and the Institute for Futures Studies, Sweden. His research focuses on climate and environmental policy and politics, social and political trust, globalization, and social science research methods. His current projects investigate the decoupling of greenhouse gas emissions from economic growth, and public attitudes towards policies for environmental protection. Originally from Vancouver, Canada, he received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley; worked for ten years in the School of Geographical Sciences at the University of Bristol; and has been a visiting researcher at institutions in Mexico, the U.S., Canada, Italy, and Catalonia. ———————————————————————————————————————————— Booking is required for people outside of the Department of Social Policy and Intervention (DSPI). DSPI Members do not need to register.
Possibilities & challenges confronting dual-sector institutions - Professor Leesa Wheelahan England’s post-16 white paper aims for closer integration between further education colleges and universities. This is expected to: improve student opportunities by improving pathways through vocational, technical and higher education; respond more coherently to regional skills plans and encourage new qualifications reflecting the changing nature of work; reduce course duplication and develop institutional economies of scale, thereby securing a sustainable pattern of tertiary education in local areas throughout the country. By reducing polarisation between the two sectors of post-compulsory education, the government aims address the nation’s broader cultural, social and economic divisions, which often correlate with education and geography. That will, though, require a re-configuration of the relationships that have developed between further education colleges and universities. This presentation will explore the current landscape for dual-sector working, the factors that have shaped this during the 21st century to date, and what needs to change to deliver the vision identified within the 2025 white paper. A new model for England? The potential for dual-sector integration to support pathways & reduce polarisation in tertiary education - Professor Chris Millward England’s post-16 white paper aims for closer integration between further education colleges and universities. This is expected to: improve student opportunities by improving pathways through vocational, technical and higher education; respond more coherently to regional skills plans and encourage new qualifications reflecting the changing nature of work; reduce course duplication and develop institutional economies of scale, thereby securing a sustainable pattern of tertiary education in local areas throughout the country. By reducing polarisation between the two sectors of post-compulsory education, the government aims address the nation’s broader cultural, social and economic divisions, which often correlate with education and geography. That will, though, require a re-configuration of the relationships that have developed between further education colleges and universities. This presentation will explore the current landscape for dual-sector working, the factors that have shaped this during the 21st century to date, and what needs to change to deliver the vision identified within the 2025 white paper. Professor Leesa Wheelahan is Professor Emerita, William G. Davis Chair in Community College Leadership, University of Toronto and Honorary Research Fellow at the Department of Education, University of Oxford. Her research interests focus on the role of theoretical knowledge in qualifications; equity and social justice in tertiary education; pathways between the sectors of tertiary education and between tertiary education and the labour market; relations between colleges and universities; and tertiary education policy. In recent years, her research has focused on baccalaureate degrees in colleges; marketisation and privatisation in vocational education and in the college sector; and the role that colleges play in society and in their communities. Professor Chris Millward is Professor of Practice in Education Policy at the University of Birmingham and interim Director for Fair Access and Participation at the Office for Students. Chris joined the University of Birmingham in January 2022 as Professor of Practice in Education Policy, having previously served as Director for Fair Access and Participation and as Director of Policy for England’s regulatory and funding agencies. His work is focused on generating and deploying robust evidence for tertiary education policy and practice. He is particularly interested in issues of equity and inclusion across the life-course, how different educational systems influence local and national prosperity, and how they could be improved.
Is the state still relevant as a tool for critical analysis? Until recently, the state has largely been understood as a foil, as if the whole of nineteenth-century US fiction were caught up in a project against state-building. The book in progress from which this paper is drawn questions this hitherto dominant paradigm and explores nineteenth-century US literature in light of recent revisionist studies in sociology, political science, law and history that have challenged the Marxian and Weberian conceptions of the state and proposed a less ideal conception of democracy and a more pragmatic conception of the state that depart from the logic of a zero-sum game – more state, less democracy; more democracy, less state. While literature has remained largely outside this investigation, the project builds on these novel epistemological frames to ask: how can nineteenth-century US literature be reread in the light of this new State-Democracy articulation? In particular, the project explores how the need for democratic regulations were not just the prerogative of a (largely male) judiciary but also widely relayed in women’s fiction. My case study in this talk is Sarah Orne Jewett’s regionalist fiction. Granted, the transformation of the State, social legislation, public utility are not usual keywords associated with Jewett’s regionalism, which usually evokes resistance to “the beginnings of a new American police state” and a “more generalized policing of the social norms.” While this is true, the problem with most scholarship, I suggest, is its tendency to throw the social provision and social welfare part of Progressive reforms with the bathwater of the police state. This talk proposes to read Jewett’s understudied industrial story “The Gray Mills of Farley” (1898) as a fictional engagement with the problem of democratic action in a capitalist society in transition, away from the myth of the “well-regulated” society.
Alexandra Walsham, ‘The Social History of the Archive: Record-Keeping in Early Modern Europe’, _Past and Present_, 230:11 (2016), 9-48; Anna Woodham, Laura King, Liz Gloyn, Vicky Crewe and Fiona Blair, ‘We Are What We Keep: The “Family Archive”, Identity, and Public/Private Heritage’, _Heritage and Society_, 10:3 (2017), 203-20; Elizabeth Yale, ‘The History of Archives: The State of the Discipline’, _Book History_, 18 (2015), 332-59 *To attend online via Microsoft Teams, please email "$":mailto:ian.archer@history.ox.ac.uk*
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.
In 1961, Thomas C. Smith published a short essay entitled “Japan’s Aristocratic Revolution.” In his characteristically clear and economical prose, he begins, “There was no democratic revolution in Japan because none was necessary: the aristocracy itself was revolutionary.” The essay goes on to make an argument now so familiar as to feel self-evident: low-ranking samurai carried out the revolution we call the Meiji Restoration without much help from either the peasant masses or the bourgeoisie. In this talk I will substitute Smith’s “aristocracy” with a less clearly defined class of actors who inhabited a spongy middle stratum of Tokugawa society: status-straddlers, some on the lowest fringe of the samurai class and others well-connected commoners. In addition to complicating our understanding of Tokugawa society, I will propose a way to frame the collapse of the early modern order as social history.
To join online, please register in advance: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/WWqjr8SgT_WrzTodI65cdg
Attorney General Tim Griffin, Dr Nicholas Cole, and Dr Jason Battles will discuss a new transatlantic partnership to preserve, present, and research the constitutional history of the state of Arkansas, explaining the value of the project's outputs to the legal profession and how it is setting a standard for similar digital research endeavours.
This event explores how motherhood shapes women’s lives through both economic and clinical lenses. It will examine how having children influences mothers’ career paths, income, and labor market opportunities, while also addressing the psychological and physical health effects that often accompany these changes. By integrating economic analysis with clinical research, the session aims to provide a holistic understanding of the costs, benefits, and broader implications of motherhood for women’s well-being and society as a whole.
For foreign observers, China is often perceived as a closed political system, marked by opacity in decision-making and one-party rule, which creates clearly demarcated boundaries between those included and excluded from power. Upon closer inspection, however, there are designated spaces for the political engagement of Chinese elites outside the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), such as the so-called 'democratic parties and groups' (DPGs). Closely supervised by the CCP’s United Front Work Department, they operate in what Dr Rudolph calls the peripheries of power, bridging the divide between the party-state and non-party elites. This talk examines the symbolic and practical functions of these peripheral organizations in China’s political system and presents a brief history of China’s DPGs, from their institutionalization in the 1940s to their current reevaluation under Xi Jinping. Drawing on theories of the spatial and relational dimensions of power, the talk sheds light on understudied political structures and their role in stabilizing the political regime. It thus contributes to the existing research on space in authoritarian contexts, which often neglects coopting mechanisms and focuses either on the spatiality of anti-hegemonic contentious politics or on the state’s repressive ordering of space. Understanding China’s DPGs as networked structures grounded in spatial realities and imaginaries contributes to a clearer understanding of their current reconfiguration within new Chinese policies of 'whole-process people’s democracy'. Henrike Rudolph is a lecturer at the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Göttingen. Trained in Sinology and Political Science, she completed her PhD at Hamburg University and Fudan University, Shanghai, in 2017. Rudolph worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Chair of Contemporary Chinese Studies at Friedrich-Alexander University in Erlangen-Nuremberg. Before coming to Göttingen, she held an interim professorship at the University of Heidelberg. Rudolph’s research interests include the transcultural exchange of knowledge and skills, educational thought, and network approaches to social and political history, with a focus on twentieth-century China. Her current book project examines the history and current political function of the Jiusan Society, one of China’s so-called 'democratic parties and groups'.
This lecture will explore the intrigue, politics, and personalities behind one of the eighteenth century’s most consequential papal conclaves, revealing how power, diplomacy, and secrecy shaped its outcome. *Professor Jane Stevenson* is a Senior Research Fellow at Campion Hall, Oxford, and a member of the English Faculty. She studied Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic at the University of Cambridge, and has previously held academic posts at the universities of Cambridge, Sheffield, Warwick, and Aberdeen, where she was Regius Professor of Humanity. She is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.
Campion Hall has the pleasure of welcoming Professor Jane Stevenson to deliver the Hilary Term Campion Lecture entitled “1758 – The Secret History of a Papal Election”. This lecture will explore the intrigue, politics, and personalities behind one of the eighteenth century’s most consequential papal conclaves, revealing how power, diplomacy, and secrecy shaped its outcome.
Join Worcester College Provost, David Isaac CBE, as he interviews leading role models about their lives and careers. Peter Tatchell has been campaigning for human rights, democracy, LGBT+ freedom and global justice since 1967. Among his many involvements, he was a leading activist in the Gay Liberation Front 1971-74 and in the queer human rights group OutRage! 1990-2011. Through the Peter Tatchell Foundation, he currently campaigns for human rights in Britain and internationally. A summary of his motives, morality and methods is available on his website. Peter’s key political inspirations are Mahatma Gandhi, Sylvia Pankhurst, Martin Luther King and, to some extent, Malcolm X and Rosa Luxemburg. He has adapted many of their methods to his contemporary non-violent struggle for human rights – and invented a few of his own. Join us at Worcester College to hear Peter in conversation. All are welcome to join for drinks after the event. Please note that entry to the venue is via the Worcester College Porters’ Lodge on Walton Street.
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.
*2-Day Workshop - 19-20 February 2026* *Christian Arabic Manuscripts: Research Skills for a New Generation* Students and researchers are invited to join us for a two-day intensive research workshop at the Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities related to Christian Arabic manuscripts. The workshop will include introductory sessions on the foundations and research horizons of the field, as well as sessions introducing the latest digital tools and technologies advancing research. Attendees will have a chance to practice using these tools and technologies with a range of Christian Arabic texts located in the Bodleian Library. Lunch and refreshments will be provided free of charge on both days. *Requirements:* * A solid foundation in Arabic (at least 1 year of Classical or Modern Standard) * A studentship or research a:iliation with Oxford University or another academic institution; OU participants will receive priority, followed by qualified academics and students from other institutions * Demonstrable interest in Christian Arabic Manuscripts, including those for whom Christian Arabic may be tangential to their overall study or research interests, e.g. those working in Byzantine Studies, Islamic Studies, Patristics, and Syriac Studies *How to apply:* https://tinyurl.com/2jzj3me7 *Deadline to apply:* 9 February 2026 *Questions:* Dr Steven Firmin "$":mailto:steven.firmin@theology.ox.ac.uk
EndNote is a desktop-based reference management tool for Windows and Mac users. It helps you to build libraries of references and insert them into Word documents as in-text citations or footnotes, and to automatically generate bibliographies. This classroom-based introduction to EndNote is open to all University of Oxford students, researchers and staff and teaches you how to use the software so that you can effectively manage your references. Please note we also run an online EndNote workshop. Please check the iSkills course listing for availability. The workshop will cover: what EndNote can do for you; adding references to EndNote from a range of sources; managing your references in an EndNote library; adding in-text citations and/or footnotes to your essays and papers; and creating bibliographies. Intended audience: taught student; researcher and research student
'Guilt as a response to personal wrongdoing is healthy. But false guilt is not. ... Today we are again succumbing to a fresh and more general bout of false guilt about our colonial past, which is misshaping the policies of our governments and cultural institutions and weakening our international standing.' — Lord Biggar, Reparations: The Tyranny of Imaginary Guilt. Lord Biggar will speak about his latest book, why he chose to write it, what its argument is, how it builds on his previous book, Colonial: A Moral Reckoning, and what impact he hopes it will have.
Normal heart function relies of the fine-tuned synchronization of cellular components. In healthy hearts, calcium oscillations and physical contractions are coupled across a synchronised network of 3 billion heart cells. When the process of functional isolation of rogue cells isn’t successful, the network becomes maladapted, resulting in cardiovascular diseases, including heart failure and arrythmia. To advance knowledge on this normal-to-disease transition we must first address the lack of a mechanistic understanding of the plastic readaptation of these networks. In this talk I will explore coupling and loss of synchronisation using a mathematical model of calcium oscillations informed by experimental data. I will show some preliminary results pointing at the heterogeneity hidden behind seemingly uniform cell populations, as a causative mechanism behind disrupted dynamics in maladapted networks.
Where loyalty drives political survival, why do women praise autocrats more than men? Extensive research demonstrates the centrality of loyalty for women's political advancement, yet how women rhetorically signal this loyalty remains underexplored. I argue that sycophantic appeals offer a gendered pathway to power in conservative authoritarian contexts. Excessive praise enables women to exhibit loyalty while conforming to feminine ideals of social warmth and deference, mitigating backlash where their political presence challenges prevailing gender expectations. Using natural language processing on speeches from Turkey's Grand National Assembly from 2015 to 2023, I find that women in the ruling party are more likely than men to profess loyalty to autocrats and employ gender-congruent praise emphasizing their compassion. This strategy yields tangible rewards, with women who adopt such praise securing better list positions and reelection. These findings reveal how gender shapes expressions of loyalty and their political returns, illuminating gendered pathways to power under authoritarian rule.
This paper interrogates the historical and contemporary nexus between the logics of racialized policing and global security regimes, tracing their origins to the design and defense of slave societies and the system of chattel slavery. Drawing on postcolonial theories of international relations and Black Studies scholarship, the paper examines how 17th century slave codes and post-slavery colonial policing structures were designed to secure the social, economic and political relations undergirding chattel slavery by positioning Black bodies as criminally deviant and expendable. The paper highlights how racialized policing not only secured the system of chattel slavery, but also informed the development of global securitization norms long after abolition. Through historical focus on the Anglophone Caribbean from abolition through to contemporary US-driven policing interventions in the region, the paper reveals how transnational and domestic policing and security initiatives perpetuate slavery’s legacy by criminalizing racialized populations to uphold capitalist and imperial interests. By situating policing as a fundamental component of slavery’s afterlife, the paper underscores its historic role as a critical instrument of world ordering and regional hegemony, with enduring implications for sovereignty, justice, and the global valuation of Black life. - Morgan DaCosta is a Junior Research Fellow at New College examining the implications of post-slavery domestic and transnational policing for the perpetuation of slave society logics of racialized deviance and expendability. Through archival study of policing in Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago (1838-2015), she conceptualizes post-slavery police power as reiterative violence which reproduces forms of racialized subjugation in service of international hierarchy, regional hegemony, and state power. Previously, she was a fellow in the Department of Black Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara and senior research and advocacy associate at Human Rights Watch. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a DPhil from the University of Oxford Department of Politics and International Relations.
We demonstrate that a ubiquitous feature of network games, bilateral strategic interactions, is equivalent to having player utilities that are additively separable across opponents. We distinguish two formal notions of bilateral strategic interactions. Opponent independence means that player i's preferences over opponent j's action do not depend on what other opponents do. Strategic independence means that how opponent j's choice influences i's preference between any two actions does not depend on what other opponents do. If i's preferences jointly satisfy both conditions, then we can represent her preferences over strategy profiles using an additively separable utility. If i's preferences satisfy only strategic independence, then we can still represent her preferences over just her own actions using an additively separable utility. Common utilities based on a linear aggregate of opponent actions satisfy strategic independence and are therefore strategically equivalent to additively separable utilities---in fact, we can assume a utility that is linear in opponent actions.
We present four novel tests of equal predictive accuracy and encompassing à la Pitarakis (2023, 2025) for factor-augmented regressions, where factors are estimated using cross-section averages (CAs) of grouped series. Our inferential theory is asymptotically normal and robust to an overspecification of the number of factors. Our tests are empirically relevant as they accommodate for different degrees of predictor persistence and remain invariant to the location of structural breaks in the loadings. Monte Carlo simulations indicate that our tests exhibit excellent local power properties. Finally, we apply our tests to the novel EA-MD-QD dataset by Barigozzi et. al. (2024) - which covers the Euro Area as a whole and its primary member countries - and show that factors estimated by CAs offer substantial predictive power.
Laure Miolo, Associate Professor in Medieval Latin Manuscript Studies at the University of Oxford, will be giving a workshop, demonstrating how medieval people observed and measured the heavens. As part of the workshop, we will visit the History of Science Museum and Weston Library. Please note that space is limited, so please email oxfordmedievalmss@gmail.com to reserve your place.
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.
Week Five (20 February, Old Library) Primary: Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time, Chapters 13-14 Supplementary: Mark Fisher, ‘Good For Nothing’ (2014); Johanna Hedva, ‘Sick Woman Theory’ (2022)
Week Five (20 February, Old Library) Primary: Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time, Chapters 13-14 Supplementary: Mark Fisher, ‘Good For Nothing’ (2014); Johanna Hedva, ‘Sick Woman Theory’ (2022)
Seminar followed by Q&A and drinks - attend in person or join online - all welcome Abstract: Lee will describe his journey from growing up as a young boy in Uganda, whose brother was an orphan chimpanzee, to becoming the Minister of Water, Forests, Sea and Environment in Gabon and the importance of science on that journey. From meeting wild chimps in Budongo Forest aged 5, taking his first steps into science and conservation in the Gola Forest in Sierra Leone aged 14, to arriving in Gabon ten years later, where his scientific journey began in earnest. He will describe learning to know and read the forest, piecing together the natural history of the wildlife, understanding forest history and appreciating the global significance of the Congo Basin. Biography: Lee White CBE is a scientist, conservationist and politician with over 40 years experience in natural resource conservation and management in Equatorial Africa. He was director of the WCS Gabon programme (1992-2008); head of Gabon’s National Parks Agency (2009-2019); and served as Gabon’s Water, Forests, Sea and Environment Minister (2019-2023). He helped create over 50 protected areas, including Gabon’s network of 13 national parks. As head of national parks in Gabon he led the fight against ivory poaching, protecting the biggest population of forest elephants in Africa and dismantled an illegal forestry network stealing $400 million per year from the Gabonese economy. He raised over 500 million US$ of donor funding; registered 187 million tons of REDD+ results with the UNFCCC; put in place a Blue Bond for $500 million; and spoke on behalf of Africa at UNFCCC COP26 in Glasgow. He founded Pangea Nature Partners in 2024 to design and implement a new financial mechanism to make forests more valuable alive than dead. He also acts as the Special Envoy of the Science Panel for the Congo Basin and is an honorary professor in the University of Stirling’s School of Natural Sciences.
The 2026 Neill Law Lecturer, Lord Burnett of Maldon will be giving a talk on Sentence inflation, its causes and consequences for prisons, rehabilitation and public finances on Friday 20 January in the All Souls College Library at 5pm.
Join Dr Morwenna Blewett, former Worcester Research Fellow, for the launch of her new book, Art Restoration Under the Nazi Regime: Revelation and Concealment. Culture today is being used to misrepresent. Political and military regimes have manipulated visual culture in their attempts to re-shape reality – from looting and destroying objects and archives, to making new visual representations, and appropriating visual symbols. As authoritarian populisms and ethno-nationalisms remerge, scholars are now turning from writing the history of representation to that of misrepresentation. Through meticulous research, Morwenna Blewett offers a courageous and detailed study of the abuse of a field of art and culture that has largely been overlooked in histories of the manipulation of culture: the conservation of art. This is the first in-depth study of art conservation and restoration under the Nazis. The author not only exposes patterns of complicity behind the participation of the conservation and restoration profession in this complex and opaque network of profit, crime, persecution and ideological broadcast but asks us to reflect on the enduring danger that knowledge and skill are vulnerable to being co-opted by power and its misrepresentation of reality. Art Restoration under the Nazi Regime makes a groundbreaking contribution to tackling the uncomfortable truths of ‘culture wars’ – past, present and future.
OMMG welcomes Emma J. Nelson (Chetham's Library, Manchester) and Elliot Cobb (Independent Scholar) who will present their latest research at our Graduate Research Forum. 'No take-backsies? Gerald of Wales and the boundaries of book donation' | Emma J. Nelson The second half of the twelfth century witnessed a major shift in the history of medieval libraries, as individual donation came to replace communal acquisition as the dominant mode of library growth. This development can be characterised as a shift from a monastic to a secular-clerical model of library growth, and book donation represented just one aspect of a multi-faceted pattern of patronage by the twelfth-century secular clergy. Such donations were underpinned by contemporary thought on gift-giving, which emphasised that gifts ought to be given freely and open-handedly, but in practice, donation could be more complicated. This paper explores the donations made by the author Gerald of Wales to various religious institutions and individuals with the aim of furthering his goals. Gerald’s discussions of his donations reveal how he conformed to, co-opted and transgressed twelfth-century models of donation, and provide the starting point for an examination of these models’ boundaries. Such an examination connects approaches to patronage and publication, textual dissemination and reception, and the suitability of certain genres as subjects of clerical writing and their appropriateness for inclusion in secular-clerical libraries. 'Miraculous and Marginal Women in the Metz Psalter-Hours' | Elliot Cobb Throughout the margins and historiated initials of a late thirteenth-century personal prayerbook, a remarkable variety of women are depicted. The richly illuminated Metz Psalter-Hours contains images of women praying with devotional aids including rosaries and books; women sporting floral garlands and golden crowns; and female saints miraculously victorious over evildoers. This paper interrogates how word and image functioned concurrently in late medieval prayerbooks to construct a gendered devotional experience specific to the recipient – in this case, a wealthy lay woman living in northeastern France. I question how the use of different zones of the mise-en-page mediates the meanings of the varying images, and how gendered themes come to a head in the Hours of the Virgin through a fascinating depiction of the book owner kneeling before the Virgin and Child. Unusually, she is offered a golden crown by the Christ-Child. Furthermore, I draw attention to the exceptionally high number of lay women portrayed using books, situating this as yet understudied manuscript within ongoing topical discussions surrounding the role of medieval owner portraits in prayerbooks. The Graduate Research Forum is open to the public.
Ines Koeltzsch is a visiting professor at the Jewish Studies Program at CEU Vienna. This lecture offers a new perspective on the early afterlife of Kafka and examines both the significance of the media (text, voice, image) and of intellectual networks and communities of remembrance across nation-state borders in creating the author’s legend. This hybrid event is organised by the AHRC-funded project Kafka’s Transformative Communities and all are welcome.
Heritage physics involves the application of scientific techniques and technologies to answer questions about our cultural heritage and to enable our understanding and conservation of this. As scientific techniques have evolved across the past century from the earliest methods for age determination to modern day composition analysis, these have increased our ability to deepen our knowledge about ancient and historical artefacts as well as to preserve and restore them. This conference will survey the history of how the illumination of the past has developed as new fields of physics have progressed.
Heritage physics involves the application of scientific techniques and technologies to answer questions about our cultural heritage and to enable our understanding and conservation of this. As scientific techniques have evolved across the past century from the earliest methods for age determination to modern day composition analysis, these have increased our ability to deepen our knowledge about ancient and historical artefacts as well as to preserve and restore them. This conference will survey the history of how the illumination of the past has developed as new fields of physics have progressed. There will be a conference dinner at St Cross College at 18:30, for which booking is required. For programme, and to book for the dinner, please see website: https://www.stx.ox.ac.uk/event/happ-one-day-conference-heritage-physics-illuminating-the-past Registration is required for both in-person and livestream.
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
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 and NHS; taught student; researcher and research student
All welcome, and to join us for lunch afterwards.
This talk presents a Bayesian framework for estimating international migration flows using imperfect and partially observed data. Migration statistics are often fragmented across sources and time, with substantial undercounting and measurement error, limiting their usefulness for understanding migration systems. Focusing on migration corridors between the EU-27 and the UK from 2011 to 2022, I show how traditional demographic data can be integrated with digital trace data to improve the estimation of migrant stocks and, subsequently, migration flows. The approach proceeds in two stages. First, Bayesian hierarchical models are used to estimate observed and unobserved migrant stocks by combining census-based sources with social media data. Second, these stock estimates are used as inputs to derive consistent estimates of migration flows across corridors and over time. The talk introduces key concepts such as migration systems, corridors, and the stock–flow relationship, and illustrates how Bayesian modelling enables uncertainty quantification and comparability across data sources. I conclude by discussing implications for migration research and official statistics. Please join either in person or online. For in-person attendees, the talk will be preceded by a light lunch at 12.15pm.
I will present two studies examining preservice teachers’ dialogic teaching practices within an immersive virtual reality (VR) classroom simulation powered by a large language model (LLM). Study 1 investigated 23 preservice teachers’ perceptions of authenticity, situational interest, and self-efficacy during VR-based classroom debates, and analyzed their talk-move patterns using a hidden Markov model. Study 2 explored whether repeated simulation experiences combined with peer feedback influenced 22 preservice teachers’ beliefs about classroom ownership of ideas and activities. Together, the findings suggest that AI-driven VR simulations offer authentic and scalable environments for capturing dialogic teaching practices and fostering more student-centered instructional beliefs among preservice teachers.
My doctoral project in Comparative Literature examines the earliest detective fiction of Japan and Argentina. The novel comparative axis between Asia and South America aspires not to transpacific studies but rather to a decentralised re-evaluation of literary networks between the West and the wider world. Emerging from the pages of Vidocq, Poe, Gaboriau and Conan Doyle, detective fiction spread rapidly in a self-referential chain that reached around the world. On close inspection, the earliest practitioners in Japan and Argentina display remarkable parallels despite limited direct contact. My research looks behind the canonical figures of these literatures (Jorge Luis Borges, Edogawa Ranpo) to focuses on the pioneers whose similarities have been hitherto unnoticed. Little examined in national scholarship, writers such as Kuroiwa Ruikō and Hamao Shirō (from Japan) have never before been read in conjunction with Luis Varela and Felix Alberto de Zabalía (from Argentina). Yet they reveal echoes in the narrative, translation and publishing practices of the genre that complicate a hegemonic literary history. These are acts of adaptation and resistance which demonstrate a complex relationship between crime narratives, modernity, and law enforcement. Oliver Eccles is in the last year of his PhD in Comparative Literature at University College London. He completed a MA (also in Comparative Literature) at King’s College London, and a BA in French and Spanish at New College, Oxford. The broad scope of his doctoral research has seen his academic interests range over narratology, memory studies, queer studies and translation studies. His research has been supported by the London Arts and Humanities Partnership, the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation, the British Association for Japan Studies and the Literary Encyclopedia.
Professor Guy Thwaites University of Oxford https://www.ndm.ox.ac.uk/team/guy-thwaites
In this event we will introduce the Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology industries, providing information on the types of roles available, the skills needed and ideas on how you can build experience There will be opportunities to ask questions.
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 and research student; staff
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
This paper looks at the history of Britain’s first community-based mental health charities, focusing on the Mental After-Care Association (MACA), founded in 1879. It looks at how these charities approached recovery from mental illness, and consequently sheds light on the birth of British psychotherapy. It shows how psychotherapy emerged from a collection of interpersonal practices developed by philanthropists and medical professionals to engender and sustain mental health. It reveals how women working in administrative and professional psychiatric capacities were influential in this process. Appreciating early psycho-medical charities’ involvement in the germination of British psychotherapeutics uncovers how philanthropists’ ideals regarding the good and healthy self, the moral virtues of certain kinds of friendship, and Chrisian social duties, were actively woven into practices adopted and claimed by psychiatric professionals, and which have since become presented as value-free medical interventions. *Dr Hannah Blythe* is a historian and health humanities researcher with a background in policy and public affairs. Her research focuses on mental health, psychiatry, psychology, charity, and the National Health Service. At Leeds, she works on the Constructing Moral Babies project, using interdisciplinary methods to explore the history and policy of the infant mind. Before joining Leeds, Hannah was a Research Fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where she researched the role of charity in the British National Health Service. Before that, she completed her PhD at the University of Cambridge, with an affiliation at the Birkbeck Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Mental Health. Her PhD examines the history of Britain's first community mental health charities, 1879-1939, with a focus on their approaches to recovery from mental illness and their roles in the birth of British psychotherapy. She has also worked in policy and public affairs in the charity sector, local government and UK Parliament.
What are the implications of AI for state and non-state threats, conventional and hybrid warfare, and our international relationships?
The seminar will be followed by drinks.
Week 6 Monday 23rd February 5.15pm 10.019 Christy Wensley, University of Oxford ‘So strange a dreaminess did there reign’: Herman Melville’s Economies of the Drift
The Revd Dr Rosalind Lane was a Prison Chaplain from 1996-2012. She was awarded her Doctorate in 2016 for a thesis entitled 'Imprisoned Grief: A theological, Spiritual and Practical Response'. In her research, she highlights the role of the Prison Chaplain as one who 'shepherds away from home' and argues that Chaplains are uniquely placed to support those who are disenfranchised in their grief whilst in prison. Her epistemological standpoint is one of a practitioner/researcher as a practical theologian, and arises from theological reflection on the experiences of those in her care. Her research highlights that those in prison as well as being disenfranchised whilst grieving can become imprisoned in their grief in many different ways. She investigates the distinctive work of the chaplain, what is spiritual, religious, symbolic, and/or theological about it, and in so doing what areas of prisoner lives could be enfranchised and liberated in addressing these painful parts of their lives. She offers a unique insight to how faith operates in this hidden part of public life. A response to her talk will be given by The Revd Paul Cowley, MBE, drawing on his own experience of both serving time in prison and of working through various organisations to help ex-offenders reintegrate into society. As a young man, Paul Cowley spent time in HMP Risley; he then served for seventeen years in the British Army. On leaving, he had a career in business, before changing his vocation to become a priest in the Church of England, serving at Holy Trinity Brompton. In 2005 he founded the charity Caring for Exoffenders, which has helped over 2,000 men and women re-integrate and re-join the workforce, and for which he was awarded an MBE in 2016.
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.
The ASCEND Network is hosting a leadership workshop on ‘Research Ideation – Finding the White Space’ and ‘Funding Pathways Beyond the Obvious’. This workshop will aim to give participants one or two new ideas or directions for their research and a new list of funding options, with one of those options having been explored in more depth. Please note, you must be a member of the network to attend the workshop. You can join the network here: https://www.medsci.ox.ac.uk/about-us/who-we-are/departments-networks-clinical-trial-units/networks/ascend-1/membership-and-joining
TBA
Are you looking for a streamlined approach to gathering, managing and citing your references? Join us for this interactive online session in which we introduce Zotero, a reference management tool that helps you to collect and manage references and insert them into your word-processor document as in-text citations or footnotes, as well as generating bibliographies. The demonstration will be on Windows although Zotero is also available for Mac and Linux. By the end of the session, you will understand: how Zotero can help you; how to add references to Zotero from a range of sources; how to manage your references; how to add in-text citations and/or footnotes to your documents; how to create bibliographies; and where to get help with Zotero. Please note that, whilst this session is mostly aimed at beginners, there will be a chance at the end to ask more specific questions about how to use Zotero. Intended audience: taught student; researcher and research student
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
This session explores how interviews can be used effectively as a Voice of the Customer tool in CI work, helping teams capture what customers say, need and experience. While they offer rich, honest insight into customer needs and behaviours, interviews are often underused; this session shares practical techniques, inclusive approaches and real world lessons from CI practitioners.
In the era of accelerating global climate change, freshwater is increasingly becoming a strategic and contested resource. Few regions illustrate this more clearly than Tibet: the source of some of the world’s most important rivers that sustain nearly half of the global population. This lecture will explore the emotional dimensions of water politics in China–India relations, focusing on the narratives of pride, anger, fear, and national identity regarding the Himalayan region and shared river systems. Moreover, the lecture will shed light on how the 75-year territorial dispute between the world’s two most populous countries is intrinsically intertwined with the emerging conflict over water security. Finally, the presenter will assess the role of emotions in possible future trajectories in China–India relations and beyond. Dr Antonina Luszczykiewicz-Mendis is an educator, author, and commentator on China–India relations and Indo-Pacific affairs. She is currently a visiting scholar at the University of Oxford China Centre. Antonina previously served as a Fulbright senior scholar at Indiana University in the United States. A former Taiwan fellow of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of China (ROC), she was also a Confucius Institute scholar at Xi’an Jiaotong University in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and a Kosciuszko fellow in the United States. She is an assistant professor at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, a research fellow at the Central European Institute of Asian Studies in Slovakia, and an associate fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science. She received her graduate education and research training at the Jagiellonian University and the University of Cambridge.
Join us for a special discussion to hear two very different stories about the Women of Bletchley Park – a personal account and a researcher’s perspective. Sir Dermot Turing is the award-winning author of X, Y and Z – the real story of how Enigma was broken and Enigma Traitors, which reveals the failings of Allied cipher security during World War II. He will share insights from his latest book, Misread signals, which highlights the crucial, often overlooked roles of women at Bletchley Park. We are also honoured to welcome Mary Stewart, who will tell us about her experiences serving as a bombe operator in the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS) during the Second World War. The Wrens, as they were known then, were the female branch of the British Royal Navy, formed initially in 1917 (WWI) and reformed in 1939 (WWII) to release men for sea service by filling crucial land-based roles like clerks, drivers, wireless operators, and codebreakers, serving globally and integrating into the Navy until officially disbanding in 1993 as women joined the Navy directly. Tea, coffee and biscuits are provided immediately before the talk, from 11.30am. Dermot Turing Sir Dermot Turing Sir Dermot Turing is a Visiting Fellow of Kellogg College, and the acclaimed author of Prof, a biography of his famous uncle, The Story of Computing, and most recently Misread Signals. Mary Stewart was a Bombe operator during the War. Bombe machines were designed by Alan Turing and Gordon Welchman to break German Enigma codes. Operators were mostly women from the Women’s Royal Naval Service (Wrens), who worked shifts in a tedious but vital role that involved setting up the machines, identifying “stops,” and passing potential settings to codebreakers, Mary Stewart Mary Stewart Bletchley Park Week: This event is part of our annual Bletchley Park Week (22-27 February) programme of events celebrating a partnership between Kellogg College and Bletchley Park. This year’s theme is: “The Age of AI”.
24 February, 12.30pm (room 00.056, Schwarzman Centre) Thomas Leonard-Roy (Università degli Studi di Sassari), 'Writerly Hate'
Across Western Europe and North America, immigration is a high-profile issue at the center of election campaigns. Yet, we do not know whether people are committed to their immigration preferences, and how that varies across people who support or oppose immigration. We address these questions with four original surveys from Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States. One key finding is that people with pro-immigration preferences are more civically engaged to support immigration. However, we also find that people with anti-immigration preferences are more likely to support politicians on the basis of their immigration proposals. In addition, people with anti-immigration preferences are more likely to support politicians who agree with them on immigration but violate democratic norms. These differences in electoral prioritization are largely explained by ideological extremity. Our findings have numerous implications for understanding immigration divides and political engagement more generally.
We study the bounds of mediated communication in sender-receiver games in which the sender’s payoff is state-independent. We show that the feasible distributions of beliefs under mediation are those that induce zero correlation, but not necessarily independence, between the sender’s payoff and the receiver’s belief. Mediation attains the upper bound on the sender’s value, i.e., the Bayesian persuasion value, if and only if this value collapses to the lower bound, i.e., the cheap talk value. Mediation is strictly above this lower bound when the sender has countervailing incentives in the space of the receiver’s belief, as captured by a failure of a weak single-crossing condition. We apply our results to asymmetric-information settings such as bilateral trade and lobbying and explicitly construct mediation policies such that the informed and uninformed parties are better off than under unmediated communication.
Media and public discourse on digital technology use in early childhood often highlight narratives of concern about children’s screen time, online safety, digital choices, and emotional and behavioural challenges surrounding their digital activity (e.g., ‘techno-tantrums’ when requests for digital devices are denied or when required to transition away from a digital device). Our recent meta-analysis suggests that children’s self-regulation is associated with these digital behaviours and reactivity from childhood through to adolescence, although its role is nuanced. Unfortunately, most research has focused on associations of self-regulation with screen time and problematic patterns and risky forms of digital engagement, providing low clarity regarding when, for what, and under what conditions self-regulation is involved in different types and contexts of young children’s digital engagement. This seminar will unpack those meta-analytic findings on the role of self-regulation in young children’s digital activity, and add emerging research and essential future research directions that further consider interactions of individual, educational, digital design, and contextual factors – which may point to better solutions to prepare children for the digital demands of their present and future. Teams link: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/3825967966058?p=oaa4boDA3tu5ZnqMja
TBC Teams link: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/33810063282855?p=drc3Y5xteIW6y0P8sG
Bio: Stephan Sanders is Professor of Paediatric Neurogenetics in the Department of Paediatrics at the University of Oxford, a member of faculty at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and an affiliate of the New York Genome Center (NYGC). He trained as a paediatrician before undertaking a PhD and Postdoctoral studies in Genetics and Bioinformatics at Yale University. In 2014, he started his lab at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) before moving to Oxford in 2022. His group specialises in the genetics of autism spectrum disorder and other neurodevelopmental disorders, including genomics, functional genomics, and therapeutics. Dr. Sanders is the Director of the MRC Centre of Research Excellence in Therapeutic Genomics, co-leads the Genetics Medicine Frontier Hub of the Aligning Research to Impact Autism (ARIA) project and is a leader of the Autism Sequencing Consortium and a SFARI Sex Differences Collaboration project. Join the meeting online: https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_YTlmOWQyODgtYzJhMS00NDQyLWExYmQtOTkzNmFiZWRmMWEy%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22cc95de1b-97f5-4f93-b4ba-fe68b852cf91%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%22902ce32a-9317-4399-9f23-a83c7907d4bd%22%7d
Unlock the full potential of your literature review with Scopus, a vital database for social sciences, medical sciences, and physical and life sciences. This interactive session will cover basic and advanced searching, highlighting features unique to Scopus and recent updates to the database. Ideal for new researchers and a great refresher for experienced researchers, with plenty of hands on searching and time for questions. By the end of the session you will be able to: construct simple and complex searches; navigate filters; understand effective search query techniques; save and export results; and extract further information from your results. Intended audience: taught student; researcher and research student
Digitization in ‘New India’: A Material and Moral Technology Dr Nafis Aziz Hasan (University of Amsterdam) As a material, ideological, aesthetic and moral force, digitization of public administration in India, has, over the past four decades, intervened in the social, political and technological life of the state, broadly conceived. In this talk, drawing on an ethnography of public bureaucracy as it encounters the multiple infrastructures of mobile apps, dashboards and databases as the interfaces through which forms of algorithmic software and now AI meet prior writing and documentary technologies, I describe some key effects of the charisma of new technology on a diverse constituency of actors and institutions – local bureaucrats and their offices, senior bureaucrats and new forms of expertise and national pride and the everyday hopes and despairs of people interacting with a digitizing state. Undergirding these descriptions are anthropological concerns about the shaping and re-shaping of collective and individual identities in ‘New India’. Dr. Nafis Aziz Hasan is an assistant professor in the department of Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) specializing in the human and organizational effects of digitization in the Global South. Prior to joining the UvA, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for the Advanced Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania. His articles have appeared in American Ethnologist, Science Technology and Human Values and South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, among other venues. Along with Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Nishant Shah, he is also the author of the open access book Overload, Creep, Excess: An Internet from India. Dwelling in Ambiguity: Tanzanian-led AI Innovation and the Technological Otherwise Tom Neumark (University of Oslo) This talk draws on my ethnographic research among Tanzanian computer and data scientists working on healthcare and medical technologies. I begin by posing a simple question: should Tanzanian-led digital technological innovation fill us with despair or inspire us? Debates that hinge on the idea of a technological otherwise often polarise. Critics see sameness in a derivative Silicon Valley solutionism, techno-fixing, and neoliberal capture. In contrast, others emphasise difference, pointing to local, situated knowledge, forms of care, or technological self-determination. I argue that both perspectives are as problematic as they are illuminating, and we must focus more consistently on ambiguity. My argument is not simply descriptive – that ambiguity exists in practice – but normative and methodological: we should retain and centre it in our explanations and political response. I show how centring ambiguity potentially offers new opportunities for learning with not only our interlocutors but also other disciplines. Tom Neumark is a social anthropologist whose research focuses on interventions to alleviate poverty and ill health in East Africa. He is the author of Caring Cash: Free Money and the Ethics of Solidarity in Kenya, published by Pluto Press, and holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge.
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.
After having worked for two years at the Ministry of Health’s Blair Research Institute (now the National Institute for Health), on malaria research in the Zambezi Valley, Tim Freeman established Malair (Pvt) Ltd, a private consultancy company that operated from 1993 to 2000. Under sponsorship from EMNET (Pvt) Ltd, Freeman implemented the Gokwe Malaria Project, taking exclusive control of mosquito-net distribution in the district. In his project report, Freeman framed rural communities as largely ignorant of malaria, positioning himself as a necessary intermediary. Yet his motives were far beyond humanitarianism as he explicitly sought to turn Gokwe into a profitable market space for mosquito nets, treating them as commodities to be sold the same way pharmaceuticals sell drugs. In this talk, I will be drawing on this to speak about the blurred and often contested boundary between public health interventions and market profit. I argue that Freeman’s project exemplifies how malaria control has repeatedly been shaped by the entanglement of humanitarian rhetoric with market‑driven imperatives.
The event will be followed by a drinks reception.
Join us at Oxford Edge for a Humanities Beyond Academia Skill Workshop with *Dr Pegram Harrison*. This session will focus on "Skills for Teams", teaching valuable skills on how to build teams and foster teamwork. All welcome.
Facing a fiscal threat from mass suburbanization, Sun Belt cities expanded their municipal boundaries nearly six-fold between 1945 and 2000, while Northern cities, constrained by state annexation laws, saw little expansion. Using newly digitized data on city boundaries, we estimate that the average expansion increased municipal population by over 35%, adding whiter and higher-income neighborhoods than the pre-existing core. Through a stacked difference-in-differences design comparing annexing cities to similar non-annexing cities, we evaluate how boundary expansions impacted municipal finance and public good provision. While total revenues and expenditures increased after annexation, per capita levels declined by roughly 25%, with the largest declines in current expenditures and labor-intensive services like fire and policing. However, proxies for public good provision show no decline post-annexation, suggesting cities maintained service quality by leveraging economies of scale in high fixed-cost sectors. Despite contemporary claims that annexation would spur broader economic growth, we find no evidence of increased county-level employment.
Alarmism persists over a growing Chinese Navy, yet Chinese naval strategy suggests defence rather than offence. The root of the problem is inferring too much from Beijing’s naval building programme. Simple capability analysis is too scientific – there is no room for analysis of Chinese maritime intent amidst counting new hulls and long-range missiles. If the West overreacts to a growing Chinese Navy, the risk of a damaging arms race in the Western Pacific increases. Ever more capable warships operating in the confined waters of the East and South China Sea risk a war begun by miscalculation. In this talk, Lt Cdr Ward will reprise his theme of the ‘the mirroring fallacy’, first described at a CCW lunchtime lecture in Trinity Term 2024. Now informed by operational experience from 2025, Andrew will show that inferring Chinese naval intent as a mirror of Western naval intent is fallacious. Andrew Ward was the 2023-24 Royal Navy Hudson Fellow and a Visiting Fellow at CCW. Andrew joined the Royal Navy in 2012, serving at sea in destroyers HMS DRAGON and DUNCAN in the Middle East. Recently he has been working in international policy at the Ministry of Defence and Northwood Headquarters. He read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at University College, was a visiting student at Washington & Lee University and completed an MA in Defence and Security Studies (Maritime) at King’s College London in 2021. His paper on the Royal Navy and the Early Cold War was published in January 2022. In 2025 Andrew sailed with the aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales on deployment to the Asia-Pacific region.
Former Irish Minister for Housing Eoghan Murphy offers a rare, deeply personal look into the realities of modern political life in a candid fireside chat based on his bestselling book Running From Office: Confessions of Ambition and Failure in Politics. The event will feature a a moderated conversation with Michael McMahon, Professor of Economics, and David Doyle, Professor of Politics, and an audience Q&A.
Lena Rethel is Professor of International Political Economy at the University of Warwick. She is the principal investigator of the ERC-selected/UKRI-funded FINDEM project, which explores the impact of middle-class expectations on financial policy and politics in Indonesia and Malaysia.
Professor Geraghty's lecture will revisit one of the great moments in British architectural history – the emergence of the English baroque style in the years around 1700. It will look afresh at the principal architects involved – Christopher Wren, Nicholas Hawksmoor, and John Vanbrugh – and it will offer new interpretations of their haunting, compelling designs. More specifically, the lecture will show how each of these architects grounded their work in a distinctive set of philosophical first principles, and how it was the coming together of these discrete artistic personalities that brought the English baroque into being. The lecture will thereby revisit two of the main research areas associated with Sir Howard Colvin: the centrality of the Office of Works in the history of British architecture, and the place of biographical analysis within the discipline of architectural history. *Anthony Geraghty* is Professor of the History of Art at the University of York. He is best known for his work on Sir Christopher Wren and the architecture of the English baroque, including a catalogue of the Wren drawings at All Souls College, Oxford (2007) and a history of Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford (2013). His most recent book is a study of the Empress Eugénie in England (2022).
This talk argues that divine and mythical beasts were not decorative motifs but core translational operators in the French Jesuit Figurists’ early Qing re-making of the Yijing and related classics into a Christian-readable archive. Building on previously underexamined manuscript corpora—Yi yao 易鑰, Yi yin 易引, and Yi gao 易稿—the talk shows how Joachim Bouvet, Jean-François Foucquet, and Joseph Henri-Marie de Prémare deployed animal figures to construct a shared “antiquity–salvation” time-space, through which Christian notions of God, evil, and salvation could be negotiated within the Yijing and adjacent classical traditions. Focusing on Bouvet’s and Prémare’s writings on hexagrams and mythic geography, I show how their figural hermeneutics treated beasts as evidence-bearing signs embedded in Chinese cosmology. Mystic figures such as 亢龍 (Kang Long, the Rebel Dragon), 陸吾 (Lu Wu, the Nine-Tailed Tiger), 滕蛇 (Teng She, the Soaring Snake), and 鬼斗 (Gui Dou, the Nine-Headed Bird) are reread as anticipatory signs of Satan and the drama of angelic rebellion, temptation, and the fall of humanity. At the same time, dragon imagery associated with the Qian 乾 hexagram is mobilized to craft a counter-figure: a divine, sage-like dragon that foreshadows Christ as the flying dragon, mediator, and savior. By tracing these paired constructions of “good” and “evil” beasts, the paper argues that the Figurists did not merely borrow Chinese zoomorphic motifs; they reshaped the mythological bestiary into a moral and theological cartography. Mythical creatures become moving points within a shared symbolic field where biblical and Chinese cosmologies intersect. Bringing together translation studies, the history of religions, and myth criticism, the talk contends that Jesuit reimaginings of Chinese divine beasts are not ornamental curiosities but a crucial site where early modern global Christianity and Chinese classicism co-produced a new, hybrid grammar of the sacred and the demonic.
This talk examines the intersection of China’s 'Industrial Party' (gongye dang 工业党) ideology and time-travel fiction in contemporary Chinese popular culture. The 'Industrial Party' refers to a distinctive composition of Chinese netizens who champion technocratic governance and rapid industrialization as pathways to national strength. Sharing similar conservative views as the US and European alt-right, they also position themselves as critics of the identity politics of what they term the 'Emotional Party' (qinghuai dang 情怀党). One of their most prominent cultural expressions is speculative time-travel fiction, in which protagonists leverage future knowledge to accelerate China’s development. My analysis focuses specifically on Qi Cheng’s 齐橙bestseller novel Daguo zhonggong 大国重工 (Great Power Heavy Industry, 2021), which, although formally a work of speculative fiction, combines a technomodernist pretense to scientific objectivity and rationality with the mythologization of (infrastructure) metrics as indicators of economic and political success. Reading Qi’s novel within the metric-driven logics of online literature platforms and the broader fantasy fiction boom, this talk argues that speculative fiction has become a key meta-political site for negotiating history and national identity, and considers the implications for how we conceptualize popular literary culture in China today. Jessica Imbach is Assistant Professor of Sinology/contemporary China at the University of Freiburg, Germany. Her research focuses on modern and contemporary Chinese literature, narrative theory, new media, and the aesthetics and politics of genre fiction, particularly fantasy and science fiction. Her recent publications include Digital China: Creativity and Community in the Sinocybersphere (Amsterdam University Press, 2024) and Rethinking Literary China: Essays in Honor of Andrea Riemenschnitter (DeGruyter, 2025). She is the PI of the ERC-funded research project SINOFANTASY, which investigates the contemporary Chinese fantasy fiction boom.
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.
This seminar will explore the feasibility of making the UK energy system fully renewable across electricity, transport, heat and industry. Much is achievable where there are political or regulatory barriers. However other segments present much more of a challenge. This seminar will explore both.
Both a love story and a coming-of-age tale that spans countries and continents, 'Fire in Every Direction' balances humour and loss, nostalgia and hope, as it takes us from the Middle East to London, and from 1948 to the present. Tareq Baconi crafts a deeply intimate, unforgettable portrait of how a political consciousness – desire and resistance – is passed down through generations. In 1948, Tareq’s grandmother would flee Haifa as Zionist militias seized the city. In the late 1970s, she would flee Beirut with her daughter, as the country was in the throes of a civil war. In Amman, the family would eventually obtain the comfort of middle-class life – still, a young Tareq would feel trapped: by cultures of silence, by a sense of not belonging, by his own growing awareness that he is in love with his childhood best friend, Ramzi. After relocating to London, Tareq hopes to put aside his past. Yet as the Iraq War radicalizes young people around the world towards anti-war protest, history comes back to him. Living between the region and London, Tareq fits in neither and feels alienated from both. Queerness is policed back in Amman, just as his Palestinian-ness is abroad. These gradual estrangements escalate, forcing him to grapple with what it means to live in liminal spaces, and rethink the meaning of home.
The seminars will take place on Tuesdays during term time, from 5:00 to 6:30 p.m. at Corpus Christi College in Merton Street. Please ask the porters for directions. No registration is required. For more details: https://tolkien50.web.ox.ac.uk/event/tolkien-seminars-ht-2026
Emma Sibbald (Trinity) - 'She makes each place where she comes a Library': Women Users of Oxbridge University Libraries, 1600-1850
Join us for an inspiring Publishing and Entrepreneurship event with *Alice Curry*, founder and CEO of Lantana Publishing, an award-winning independent press championing diversity and inclusion in children’s literature. Named after lantana camara, ‘a flowering plant in the Verbena family with many-coloured petals on a single stem’, used as an allegory for children of all colours reading happily on one earth, Lantana’s mission is to promote diversity and inclusion in children’s literature. The award-winning publishing house gives authors and illustrators of colour a platform to publish, and gives children of diverse backgrounds ‘a chance to see themselves in the books they read’. Since launching in 2014, Lantana has published 28 titles, many of which have earned their own awards. In 2017, Curry was awarded the Kim Scott Walwyn Prize for women of promise in publishing, and in 2018, Lantana was selected for the Oxford Foundry’s L.E.V8 accelerator for high-potential ventures. Curry earned a BA in English Language and Literature from St. Hilda’s College, Oxford, in 2005, and went on to earn an MA and PhD in Children’s Literature from Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, where she also worked as a lecturer.
Join Kellogg President Professor Jonathan Michie for a conversation with Jacqueline de Rojas, Chair of Bletchley Park Trust, and Bletchley Park Fellow at Kellogg College. Jacqueline de Rojas is a leading figure in the technology sector, with a distinguished career spanning software, digital innovation and tech leadership. She is a prominent advocate for diversity and inclusion, and has advised both industry and government on digital transformation and navigating technological change. Their conversation will draw on her extensive experience to give insights into “The Age of AI” – how we got here and what it means for our future. All event attendees are invited to arrive from 5pm, when tea and coffee will be served, and to stay for a drinks reception, which will immediately follow the event. Bletchley Park Week: This event is part of our annual Bletchley Park Week (22-27 February) programme of events celebrating a partnership between Oxford and Bletchley Park. This year’s theme is: “The Age of AI”.
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.
This Week's Focus: From Congresses to Authorities. Representation, leadership, and Palestinian politics beyond the nation-state. Reading Group: Palestine(s): Rethinking Politics of Fragmentations This reading group examines the political, geographic, economic, cultural, and linguistic fragmentations that have shaped Palestinian life over the past century, from the West Bank, Gaza, and the ’48 territories to the multiple Palestinian diasporas. By engaging with scholarship across history, political theory, and cultural studies, this reading group interrogates how these divisions have been produced, institutionalised, and normalised, and how they continue to shape Palestinian belongings, identities, and futures. Our aim is to consider both the unity that persists within fragmentation and the fragmentation that structures the very notion of Palestine. Central Question: How are ideas of Palestine and Palestinian collective identity shaped, challenged, and rearticulated under conditions of fragmentation? Structure: The group will convene biweekly throughout Hilary and Trinity Terms 2026, with each session lasting two hours
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.
*Please email "$":mailto:mori.reithmayr@history.ox.ac.uk to join the reading group mailing list.* *Session Theme: TBD*
Join us for a conversation with Dr Hazem Zohny, to explore some of the ethical questions for academics as AI makes instant text generation a new normal in the expression of ideas. Tea, coffee and biscuits are provided immediately before the talk, from 11.30am. Dr Hazem Zohny is a Senior Research Fellow in Practical Ethics, Neuroscience, and Society at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics.
This seminar lecture examines challenges of transport, mobility, and traffic in and around Homs, a central Syrian city in the post-war and reconstruction era. At the intra-city scale, the presentation focuses on Homs' historic core; the Old City in addition to the Homs University Campus, exploring issues of accessibility, congestion, and the coexistence of pedestrians, public transport, and private vehicles. At the inter-city scale, the lecture reflects on the Homs–Hama corridor, with particular attention to the damage to a strategic bridge shelled during the war and its wider implications for regional connectivity and flow. The presentation concludes with an interactive discussion aimed at engaging participants to identify potential solutions, policy directions, and context-sensitive interventions to improve mobility and resilience in post-war contexts.
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.
Classical liberals argue that the expansion of market access promoted prosociality, hard work, and thrift, while according to more critical schools of thought, markets ushered in a more self-interested, secular, and unsatisfied homo economicus. We examine these ideas in a field experiment involving 4,200 individuals across 300 Congolese villages that provided free motorcycle transportation to the largest urban market in the province one day per week for six months. Market access increased household income by 15% nine months after the intervention by facilitating enduring connections to urban traders and stimulating trade in cash crops. However, it eroded subjective wellbeing on average and made participants feel further away from their desired income, likely by generating within-village inequality and altering the reference points of market ``losers.'' Market access also has a secularizing effect: participants view religious faith as a less important moral value and a weaker determinant of success in life. Instead, they believe more in their own agency and in the value of hard work, productivity, education, income, and saving. An urban placebo treatment arm helps attribute these effects to market access, separate from exposure to the city and urban social networks more generally. Written with Ngoma M, Sievert C, Jaravel X, Nunn N, Weigel
Camille Neufville (University of Strasbourg), The Transnational Origins of Soviet Tea: Foreign Expertise and Foreign Presence on the South Caucasian Tea Plantations Before and After the Establishment of Soviet Power (1915-1935) When the Bolsheviks took over the Georgian Democratic Republic in 1921, they inherited, among the country’s most valuable (and little-known) assets, its tea-growing and tea-making industry. This budding branch of the rural economy had been established in Western Georgia in the 1880’s-1890’s, following the conquest of the formerly Ottoman region of Adjara. Tea culture was promoted as the perfect tool for imperial integration, as it made the landscape more « legible » through agronomy, soil sciences and plant biology, and enabled better control over an unruly and elusive local workforce composed of ottomanized Muslim Georgians (Adjarans), Greek, Armenian and Gurian peasants, and Kurdish nomadic groups. The founding of a South Caucasian tea industry was made possible by the tireless efforts of a few Russian scientists and adventurers who travelled to the main tea-producing regions of Asia, in order to extract knowledge, tools, seedlings, and even men who could help them in their enterprise, like the Cantonese tea master Liu Jenzhou. The South Caucasian tea industry was therefore a transnational enterprise from its very inception, having taken inspiration from both traditional Chinese tea farming, and the colonial tea plantations established by the British in Assam and on Ceylon, and by the Dutch in Java. But how did this transnational character evolve past the critical years of World War I, the 1917 Russian Revolution and the Civil War ? Could the tea industry survive the severing of international ties that followed the Bolshevik takeover of the country ? And was this transnational heritage ideologically compatible with the Soviet ideal of proletarian self-sufficiency ? I will show how local actors of the tea industry (workers, managers, as well as plant scientists) and local, regional and national authorities tried to navigate the hardships of post-war disorganisation, and the conundrum of having to build a highly modern and productive Soviet tea industry from the rubbles of a once cosmopolitan one. Amrit Deol (California State University, Fresno), A Bridge Between Empires: Anticolonialism, Labor, and the Geopolitics of Labor and Surveillance in Panama This paper situates Panama as a critical yet under-examined site in the global and transnational history of the Ghadar movement, foregrounding the intersection of migrant labor, anticolonial politics, and imperial surveillance in the early twentieth century. Centered on South Asian laborers who traversed the Panama Canal Zone and surrounding port cities, the paper argues that Panama functioned not merely as a transit space but as a politically charged site where imperial infrastructures of labor extraction and intelligence gathering converged. The Canal, then, simultaneously generated transnational working-class solidarities and heightened anxieties among colonial and imperial authorities. Drawing on British India Office records, U.S. news/media publications, and scattered references in revolutionary correspondence and intelligence reports, the paper demonstrates how Ghadar ideology circulated through maritime routes, labor camps, and emerging diasporic social networks in Panama. British and U.S. officials closely monitored South Asian workers, viewing them as mobile political threats whose anticolonial consciousness exceeded the territorial boundaries of empire and nation-state alike. This paper reveals how cooperation and tension between British and U.S. surveillance regimes shaped intelligence sharing, deportation practices, and racialized categories of suspicion (particularly as the United States emerged as a hemispheric imperial power after 1904). Methodologically, the paper bridges labor history and the history of surveillance, treating censorship, policing, and intelligence not as reactive measures but as foundational features of imperial governance. By centering Panama, this paper challenges nationalist historiographies of Ghadar that privilege North America or South Asia alone, and instead advances a transoceanic framework attentive to infrastructure, mobility, and state power. In doing so, it repositions Panama as a vital site in the making of global anticolonial radicalism and the early architecture of modern imperial surveillance.
The Older Scots Reading Group is for people interested in literature produced in Scotland between 1375-1550. This is an incredibly rich period, featuring authors experimenting with form and language. The texts themselves are written in Older Scots – a language closely related to Middle English, but with some unique attributes. This reading group will provide a relaxed introduction to this period and language. This term we will focus on reading the Palyce of Honour, a dream vision poetry by Gavin Douglas that often draws parallels with the House of Fame. But is it purely derivative or is there something more subtle at work? Join us to find out! Please bring your own copy of the text if you can – the 2018 TEAMS METS edition by David Parkinson is recommended. No intensive preparation required. Both undergraduates and postgraduates are welcome and there are usually snacks. If you have any questions, contact megan.bushnell@ling-phil.ox.ac.uk.
Confession is perhaps the most misunderstood of all the sacraments. It is a new beginning, a means of renewing one’s hope for eternal glory, and of encountering again the forgiveness of the Father. Concerns about the Church’s care for the vulnerable, safe-guarding, means that the absolution confidentiality of what is said in private confession, the ’seal’ of confession, is both misunderstood and attacked by many today, both within and outside the Church. In what is sometimes called a ’therapeutic’ society, which self-care is understood and the hope of repentance is not, how what is the connection between what secular and ecclesial counselling and forgiveness? Finally, in an age which there are calls for the Church, organisations, and governments to apologise for things which took place in previous generations or centuries, how do we understand corporate responsibility, guilt, and forgiveness? Although the practice and theology of confession have varied among the different traditions of the universal church, and yet there is enough in common for Anglicans, Roman Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox Christians to be united in cherishing the same gift. Our conference will gather an ecumenical array of speakers from these different traditions to consider some of the pastoral challenges and contemporary issues that are being faced by clergy today in the ministry of hearing confessions, and by the Church and Christians more generally. This will include, among other concerns, how confession relates to the commitment to safeguarding and the protection of the vulnerable, to the inviolability of the seal, and to the wider significance of confession in a culture that preaches tolerance without practicing forgiveness. We hope that this colloquium will be not only interesting, but also a source of encouragement for ordinands, seminarians, and clergy across different ecclesial traditions. This conference can also serve as a form of formation or education for those preparing to hear confessions, seeking renewal in this ministry, or looking to the hope which the Church offers the world through the gift of renewal and reconciliation. Further details: https://www.puseyhouse.org.uk/conferences/confession
About the series: This series will feature master classes, seminars, workshops and talks with Laura Rival, research collaborators and colleagues, throughout academic year 2025-2026. Beginning in Michaelmas term 2025, the theme for the term, in answer to the series question, was 'In Latin America, by Greening the State at the Top and from Below'. In Hilary term, the theme is 'By Knowing Nature Differently'. In Trinity term, the theme will be 'By Imagining a New Civilization and Building the Next Political Economic Order'.
In this 60-minute online workshop you will be introduced to the methodologies and principles underpinning the conduct of literature searches for systematic reviews, scoping reviews and other evidence reviews. The session will cover: formulating a focused research question; preparing a protocol; developing a search strategy to address that research question; choosing appropriate databases and search engines; searching for grey literature and ongoing studies; managing your references in Covidence; and documenting and reporting your search. Intended audience: medicine and NHS; researcher and research student
Fr Ben's Public Lecture will be the opening event of the conference on 'Confession: The Church's Gift to the World?' which will continue on the following day. Tickets will be required to attend the following day's presentations but Fr Ben's Public Lecture is free to attend. Abstract: Dr Pusey heard more confessions in the 19th century than any other single priest in the Church of England. As is well known, his personal exercise of this ministry, together with his public defence of its lawfulness and usefulness in the Church of England, single-handedly made auricular confession a core element of the catholic revival. Less well known is the significant difference between Pusey's own theology of absolution and that of his successors. As auricular confession became popular (and popularly written about), the theology of auricular absolution which Dr Pusey had presented came to be elided with the standard Roman Catholic teaching. By the 1920s, Anglo-Catholic clergy taught no different than their Roman counterparts, namely, that Absolution not only restores the soul to a state of grace, but cleanses the soul as thoroughly as the waters of Baptism had once done. This was a teaching that Pusey explicitly repudiates, as being of human origin and bringing a false-comfort to the Christian. Dr Pusey’s understanding of absolution, the effects it has on the soul, the role it plays in the sanctification of man, and its relationship to Christ’s own judgment at the Last Judgment all differ markedly from the views that would become regnant among later Anglo-Catholic theologians. An exploration of Dr. Pusey’s own views reveals a coherent theology that comports more harmoniously with the patristic (and monastic) emphasis on the Christian life consisting of continual and ever deeper repentance. This exploration suggests a fresh re-framing of how this important ministry is taught about and exercised in the life of the Church today
This presentation explores the impulses which led so many to volunteer their time and energy to welcome and make Syrians feel ‘at home’ upon arrival in the United Kingdom and Sweden. Rather than focus on the suffering of Syrians seeking safety (Chatty, 2018: Rabo et al, 2021: Beck, 2021; Cantat, 2021), it turns to interrogate the motivations which drove so many citizens and residents, alike, to step forward and be generous to those in need (Chatty, 2017). These two study sites offered an opportunity to study volunteering to come to the aid of Syrians and other asylum seekers in both a relatively hostile policy and media environment and a sympathetic one. Framing the study from primarily an anthropological perspective, rather than from within the disciplines of psychology, religious studies, or economics provides an opportunity to explore notions of social duty, of doing the right thing, and of humanity. About the speaker Dawn Chatty, is Emeritus Professor in Anthropology and Forced Migration and former Director of the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford, United Kingdom. She is also Fellow of the British Academy. Her research interests include coping strategies and resilience of refugee youth; tribes and tribalism; nomadic pastoralism and conservation; gender and development; health, illness, and culture. She has worked with nomadic pastoral groups in Lebanon and Syria since the mid-1970s and extended her research to Oman in 1979. She has continued to be engaged with these communities and advocate for their rights to resist forced settlement. Since 1998 she has worked with refugee youth in situations of prolonged armed conflict in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza, Algeria ( with Sahrawi refugees) and Iran ( Afghan Hazaras). She has edited numerous books including: Deterritorialized Youth: Sahrawi and Afghan Refugees at the Margins of the Middle East, Berghahn Books, 2010; Nomadic Societies in the Middle East and North Africa: Facing the 21st Century, Leiden, Brill, 2006; Children of Palestine: Experiencing Forced Migration in the Middle East, Berghahn Books, 2005; and Conservation and Mobile Peoples: Displacement, Forced Settlement and Sustainable Development Berghahn Press, 2002. She is the author of Displacement and Dispossession in the Modern Middle East Cambridge University Press, 2010, From Camel to Truck, White Horse Press, 2013, and Syria: The Making and Unmaking of a Refuge State, Hurst Publishers, 2018.
Join online via Microsoft Teams by clicking here: https://tinyurl.com/bdff6tpt
Many camps are now the size of cities, with populations in the hundreds of thousands. Around the globe, architects and NGOs operating on a shoestring budget, struggle to design shelters and schools responsive to the needs of refugees traumatized by persecution and genocide.
Speakers TBC
To mark the centenary of Rilke’s death there will be a series of Oxford Centenary Readings held in the Queen’s College in HT 2025. These will be informal papers with plenty of discussion, about one poem or a handful of poems, that offer close readings and new insights. Papers will be in English and English translations will be provided for all poems and quotations (except for the session in week 4 with the visiting poets) making these sessions accessible to anyone with an interest in this remarkable poet and poetry in general.
Join us for a conversation with Sir Nigel Shadbolt, as he explores the many dimensions of response to the question: “What would happen if AI were human?” Sir Nigel Shadbolt is Principal of Jesus College, Oxford, and Professorial Research Fellow in Computer Science, where he leads the Human Centred Computing Group. This event is chaired by President of Kellogg College, Professor Jonathan Michie. All event attendees are invited to arrive from 5pm, when tea and coffee will be served, and to stay for a drinks reception, which will immediately follow the event. Bletchley Park Week: This event is part of our annual Bletchley Park Week (22-27 February) programme of events celebrating a partnership between Kellogg College and Bletchley Park. This year’s theme is: “The Age of AI”.
We are an interdisciplinary reading group which focuses on the social science, history, and theology of demons, the Devil, and supernatural evil as they relate to politics, identity formation, and social conflicts. Each week we will examine one academic paper or book chapter on these topics, gaining familiarity with subjects such as: the psychology of dehumanization, the conceptual development of the term “demon,” and contemporary political demonologies like QAnon. Hilary Term 2026, Thursdays from 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM Weeks 1,3,4,5,6,7,8: 21 St Giles (Kendrew Quad) Teaching Room G4 Week 2: 14 St Giles (next door to the Lamb & Flag) Seminar Room H Please contact Scott Maybell for the readings or for any questions: scott.maybell@sjc.ox.ac.uk
The Bodleian Libraries are delighted to announce the second Sunderland Collection Symposium: *_MAPS Digital | Analogue_*. This day-long event will take place in-person at the Weston Library and online. Discover the fascinating art and science of digitising historical maps and atlases, the analysis of colour on antique maps, and cutting-edge conservation techniques. Speakers for the event include: * the Bodleian Libraries' own Map Librarian *Nick Millea* introducing the remarkable late-sixteenth century Sheldon Tapestry Maps. * *Donna Sherman* and *Jamie Robinson* showing two treasures from The Rylands Institute: the Borgia/Velletri map and Pierre Desceliers' world map. * Architect and graphic designer *Eric de Broche des Combes* introducing the world of native digital maps and maps in online game design. * Leading globe authority *Sylvia Sumira* will unveil her work as an expert and conservator of historic printed globes. * Professors *Dr Diana Lange* and *Dr Oliver Hahn* will discuss their pioneering research into colours on old maps with *Dr Sara Öberg Strådal*, Managing Director of Jörn Günther Rare Books. Please see our website for full programme: https://oculi-mundi.com/maps-digital-analogue You can attend the event either in person or online, but registration is required for both.
Confession is perhaps the most misunderstood of all the sacraments. It is a new beginning, a means of renewing one’s hope for eternal glory, and of encountering again the forgiveness of the Father. Concerns about the Church’s care for the vulnerable, safe-guarding, means that the absolution confidentiality of what is said in private confession, the ’seal’ of confession, is both misunderstood and attacked by many today, both within and outside the Church. In what is sometimes called a ’therapeutic’ society, which self-care is understood and the hope of repentance is not, how what is the connection between what secular and ecclesial counselling and forgiveness? Finally, in an age which there are calls for the Church, organisations, and governments to apologise for things which took place in previous generations or centuries, how do we understand corporate responsibility, guilt, and forgiveness? Although the practice and theology of confession have varied among the different traditions of the universal church, and yet there is enough in common for Anglicans, Roman Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox Christians to be united in cherishing the same gift. Our conference will gather an ecumenical array of speakers from these different traditions to consider some of the pastoral challenges and contemporary issues that are being faced by clergy today in the ministry of hearing confessions, and by the Church and Christians more generally. This will include, among other concerns, how confession relates to the commitment to safeguarding and the protection of the vulnerable, to the inviolability of the seal, and to the wider significance of confession in a culture that preaches tolerance without practicing forgiveness. We hope that this colloquium will be not only interesting, but also a source of encouragement for ordinands, seminarians, and clergy across different ecclesial traditions. This conference can also serve as a form of formation or education for those preparing to hear confessions, seeking renewal in this ministry, or looking to the hope which the Church offers the world through the gift of renewal and reconciliation. More information here: https://www.puseyhouse.org.uk/conferences/confession
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 next AI/ML 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: Combining Machine Learning (ML) with Medical Statistics - A Worked Example When: Thursday 26 February Time: 11:00 – 12:30 Venue: OxPop Seminar room 0 11:00 – 12:00 – Presentation and Q&A 12:00 – 12:30 – Optional coding session to show pipeline work (Python) 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 the presentation. An optional coding session after presentation to show 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
Historian of Victorian childhood *Catherine Sloan* investigates what she does with boredom: how as the reader of a mass of Victorian magazines she has sat with the problem of repetitive sources, and developed new techniques of interpretation. *Anthea Butler* is a historian of twentieth-century race, power and religion. She asks what we can learn from when there is a glut of archival material about women’s activities around reproduction, but historians focus unduly on white women and the right to the exclusion of work on the left. How do we weigh where to place our attention? *Respondents:* Meryem Kalayci (Oxford) Tehila Sasson (Oxford) Emily Cousens (Northeastern University, London)
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.
Lesson of the week, clinical cases and research. All clinical and academic staff and students welcome. Coffee and Tea will be served.
What secrets about sanctions evasion are hidden in trade data? Who fears secondary sanctions - and who shrugs them off? And why has Russia’s pivot toward the Chinese renminbi accelerated so dramatically under Western restrictions? This talk explores these questions in the context of the unprecedented sanctions imposed on Russia after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Abstract tbc ———————————————————————————————————————————— Speaker bio: Christof is Assistant Professor of Social Innovation at the Emlyon Business School. ———————————————————————————————————————————— Booking is required for people outside of the Department of Social Policy and Intervention (DSPI). DSPI Members do not need to register.
Recent policy developments to create an integrated tertiary education system in England must tackle the challenges of bringing together sectors and institutions that have long operated in fragmented and isolated ways. The sector also faces ongoing contestations of ideas and values that shape perspectives and practices. In particular, the purposes of tertiary education can be contested. This presentation examines stakeholders’ perspectives on the purposes a coordinated tertiary system should serve. Drawing on 26 interviews with key stakeholders across the tertiary education sector in England and five workshops with learners, the presentation shows that many participants agree that current policy debates tend to frame the purposes of the tertiary education system in narrow economic and instrumental terms. In contrast, participants articulated a range of broader purposes extending beyond economic growth, including social justice, equality and public good, as well as students’ development and agency. The presentation highlights the importance of articulating shared principles to support collaboration and coordination within a new system, and cautions against depoliticised policy narratives that reduce political concerns to issues of technical efficiency and purely economic agendas. Xin Xu is Departmental Lecturer in Higher/Tertiary Education at the Department of Education, University of Oxford, and Deputy Director of the Oxford University Centre on Skills, Knowledge and Organisational Performance. Her research focuses on the cultural political economy of higher and tertiary education. Gonzalo Hidalgo-Bazán is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. His research interests include the political dimensions of education policy across macro, meso, and micro levels, with a particular focus on the lived effects of ‘quality’ discourses on education actors.
Join us for a screening of Victim (1961), followed by a post-film discussion. Starring Dirk Bogarde as a closeted barrister determined to bring a sexual blackmailer to justice, Victim was groundbreaking as the first British film to explicitly name homosexuality and to portray it with sympathy and seriousness.
The assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafic Hariri in a massive car bomb in Beirut on Valentine’s Day 2005 sends shockwaves through the Middle East. With a rolodex of international contacts, the murder of this billionaire-turned-statesman known as ‘Mr Lebanon’ triggers a massive investigation. But the terrorists behind his murder have done everything to hide their tracks. With all the twists of a dark conspiracy thriller, this feature documentary follows the complex investigation to track down his killers.
Although few could define it, “civilian morale” became one of the twentieth century’s most lethal concepts. In its name, millions of civilians were bombed and starved, as belligerents sought to break enemy morale through air raids and food blockades. How did it become normal to wage war by attacking cities and civilian morale? From the First World War through the Second, ideas and practices surrounding morale and the “home fronts” circulated rapidly in a transnational process. During 1914–18, states claimed to have discovered “civilian morale”: British and German blockaders explicitly targeted it, while governments in Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, and France compiled national “moral reports.” Interwar strategists such as Giulio Douhet and Hugh Trenchard argued that aerial bombardment would decisively shatter civilian morale. These ideas culminated in the area bombing of German and Italian cities during the Second World War and also shaped the Asia-Pacific theatre. Japanese air forces bombed Chinese cities in 1937–39 with morale as a central target, while U.S. strategists later endorsed firebombing and food blockades—including “Operation STARVATION” in 1945—as means of forcing surrender. The narrative ends in 1945 with the rise of American social psychologists who theorised morale destruction at the dawn of the Cold War.
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.
To join online, please register in advance: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/WWqjr8SgT_WrzTodI65cdg
Holly Brewer, 'Creating a Common Law of Slavery for England and its New World Empire', _Law and History Review_ 39:4 (2021), 765-834; Jacob Selwood, 'Jewish Immigration, AntiSemitism and the Diversity of Early Modern London', _Jewish Culture and History_, 10:1 (2008), 1–22 *To attend online via Microsoft Teams, please email "$":mailto:ian.archer@history.ox.ac.uk*
The Alamire codices have traditionally been seen as diplomatic gifts, or at the very least commissions from magnates and super-rich aficionados. This article argues that for most of the later, paper codices at least, the sequence happened in reverse: in other words they comprised workshop material that was first produced and then sold once buyers could be found. The same conclusion prompts also a review of the construction of some of the more elegant, parchment sources, and the proposal that the ‘bespoke’ aspects of such codices may have extended no further than their opening—and hence most immediately visible—pages.
From microelectronics in the 1980s to AI in the 2020s, technological innovation has played a major role in reshaping economies and employment. As have financialization and its ideological partner neoliberalism. Reflecting on 40 years of research focused especially on Japan, this presentation will also consider possible futures. With commentaries from Simon Deakin (Cambridge), Mari Sako (Oxford) and Tim Sturgeon (MIT).
Thursday February 26, Room 10.424 (week 6) Caitlin Stobie, ‘Collaborative creative practice in South African fiction’
Join us for a conversation with Dr Ping Lu about how history’s greatest codebreakers inspire today’s AI breakthroughs in healthcare. Moderated by Xavier Laurent, Research Member of Common Room and Lead Training Coordinator at the AI Competency Centre. Dr Ping Lu is Assistant Professor in Computer Science at the University of Leeds. She holds a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Bern, Switzerland, and completed her postdoctoral research in medical imaging and biomedical signal analysis at the University of Oxford. Her research sits at the intersection of imaging and non-imaging machine learning in healthcare and computer science. All event attendees are invited to arrive from 5pm, when tea and coffee will be served, and to stay for a drinks reception, which will immediately follow the event. Bletchley Park Week: This event is part of our annual Bletchley Park Week (22-27 February) programme of events celebrating a partnership between Kellogg College and Bletchley Park. This year’s theme is: “The Age of AI”.
What does it mean to say ‘I am’? Is the sense of subjectivity a delusion? Are only humans conscious? What about whales, AI, and electrons? How should we use our consciousness? All these questions, and many others, will be examined by expert speakers in conversation with one another and with the audience in this 3-part symposium series. In this third and final event on 26 Feb, we will examine what we do and what we should do with our consciousness as human beings. Does it help us act rationally, optimally or morally? How is the conscious mind represented in literature? And what role does it play in our mental health? Iain McGilchrist (Psychiatry, All Souls College, Oxford) What on earth are we doing here? Chris Fletcher (English, University of Oxford) ‘I am!’: Literature and consciousness Catherine Harmer (Psychiatry, University of Oxford) The mind’s filter: Shaping experience and mental health
This presentation examines disaster preparedness in the Baltic capitals of Riga, Tallinn, and Vilnius by analyzing both household readiness and institutional responses. Based on a survey of 3,016 residents and interviews with crisis-preparedness experts in 2025, it applies a Complex Adaptive Systems framework to show how urban resilience emerges from interactions among diverse actors within dynamic security environments. Dr. Didzis Kļaviņš is a Senior Researcher at the University of Latvia, Faculty of Social Sciences, and the Advanced Social and Political Research Institute.
Supported by the APGRD, Archilochus' Fragments is a new musical work by composer Costas Kafouros blending ancient Greek poetry with modern sound; a contemporary reimagining of the poetry of Archilochus of Paros (c. 680 B.C.), one of the boldest and most original voices of antiquity. Performed by world-class musicians Katerina Mina (vocals), Rami Sarieddine (piano), Marios Nicolaou (bassoon) and Mariana Parás (percussion), the piece explores timeless themes and the enduring dialogue between past and present, voice and instruments.
Associate Professor Tim Theologis will discuss 'Research in paediatric orthopaedics'. Dr Eileen Morrow will discuss 'Developing a set of core outcomes for lower limb surgery in paediatric orthopaedics'. 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 if you would like to attend online.
This 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. After the main 90-minute workshop, one of the Bodleian Health Care Libraries Outreach Librarians will be available for another 30 minutes to answer questions about your own searches, so feel free to bring along what you are working on. 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 and NHS; researcher and research student
This talk will reflect on the experience of researching the Oxford lives of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. It will look in particular at the kinds of materials available in the Bodleian Library, University Archives and College libraries and archives to reconstruct the academic worlds of these two important Oxford figures. As well as showing the potential such resources offer for deepening our understanding of the biographies of Lewis and Tolkien, I will consider their potential for life writing more generally. *Simon Horobin* is Professor of English Language and Literature and Fellow and Tutor in English at Magdalen College. He has published widely on medieval literature and the English language. He has lectured to a variety of audiences on C.S. Lewis, has published articles on Lewis’s scholarly writings and is the author of _C.S. Lewis’s Oxford_ (Bodleian Publishing 2024). Please note that this event is exclusively open to current members of the University of Oxford. Workshop places will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis, with priority given to members of the English Faculty.
We survey the life of a Turing pattern, from initial diffusive instability through the emergence of dominant spatial modes and to an eventual spatially heterogeneous pattern. While many mathematically ideal Turing patterns are regular, repeating in structure and remaining of a fixed length scale throughout space, in the real world there is often a degree of irregularity to patterns. Viewing the life of a Turing pattern through the lens of spatial modes generated by the geometry of the bounded space domain housing the Turing system, we discuss how irregularity in a Turing pattern may arise over time due to specific features of this space domain or specific spatial dependencies of the reaction-diffusion system generating the pattern.
Abstract The idea that worlds around other stars could develop and maintain environments hospitable to life, in a way like our planet, has captivated scientists for centuries. Yet, to investigate this question, we must recognize and characterize the key conditions that make a planet habitable. Earth ― the only planet on which life is known to have originated ― is unique in many ways, including the presence of abundant surface water, a large moon, a long-lived magnetic field, and plate tectonics. Yet, which of these and other characteristics are essential for its long-term habitability? A major challenge is that habitability factors vary because they are time-dependent due to changes in the Sun’s energy and our planet’s chemical, thermal and (thereby) physical and tectonic evolution. Plate tectonics regulates interior temperatures, atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations and surface temperatures. Subduction enables recycling of volatile elements between the surface and the mantle and is probably essential for sustaining planetary habitability. Because the questions of when, why and how plate tectonics started are debated, an improved understanding of Earth’s evolution is critically needed. It is not necessarily obvious that key habitability factors such as plate tectonics will persist once started, a dynamo-driven magnetic field can stop and perhaps re-emerge later through inner-core nucleation, and the Earth’s axial tilt may also become unstable as the Moon is moving away. Ultimately, all planets lose their habitability, and in about two billion years when the Sun’s energy has increased by 15%, Earth will enter a moist greenhouse, followed by runaway evaporation of the oceans. An in-depth knowledge of Earth-like habitability, and how our planet sustained conditions for life’s evolution over geological timescales, is critical for identifying habitable planets orbiting other stars that potentially are, or have been, habitable around other stars.
How do organisms survive when food becomes scarce? My lab investigates the extraordinary metabolic strategies evolved by animals that thrive under extreme nutrient limitation. A central model in our work is the Mexican cavefish Astyanax mexicanus, a species that has repeatedly colonized lightless, nutrient-poor caves and evolved remarkable adaptations to starvation. These fish exhibit metabolic phenotypes that resemble human disease states—such as insulin resistance, extreme hyperglycemia, and fat accumulation—yet remain healthy and long-lived. Using tools ranging from transgenic lines, gene editing, and organoid models to multi-omics and cell-based assays, we explore how cavefish rewire classical metabolic pathways. Our work reveals how evolutionary processes can turn pathological states into adaptive solutions, shedding light on fundamental questions in energy balance, resilience, and longevity. In this talk, I will present recent findings from our group, including cellular and systemic adaptations to starvation, evolved shifts in autophagy and sugar metabolism, and emerging parallels to mammalian fasting biology. By combining evolutionary biology with molecular physiology, we aim to uncover new principles of metabolic resilience with relevance far beyond the cave.
Curious about using AI to find research papers? Not sure how to properly reference GenAI and avoid plagiarism? This beginner-friendly workshop introduces three GenAI tools (ChatGPT, Elicit, and Research Rabbit), showing how they can support information discovery and analysis. Designed for those new to AI, this practical session will allow you to independently experiment with these tools and participate in group discussions to explore their strengths, limitations, and suitability for different tasks. By the end of this session, you will be able to: explain what AI means and some key terms; differentiate between several categories of AI tools; describe how some GenAI tools can be used to discover information, including their strengths, limitations, and best practices; critique GenAI tools and their outputs at an introductory level using evaluative criteria; and state the University’s policies on AI, and avoid plagiarism by creating citations for AI-generated content. Intended audience: Taught student; Researcher and research student
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.
We study the information content of bids in auctions about the distribution of values. Which auction formats provide better information about the value distribution? Our main result shows that among a large class of standard auctions (e.g., kth-price, all-pay), the first-price auction is (Lehmann) most informative.
Human neurons generated through transcription factor (TF) overexpression have transformed the way we study neurodevelopment and model neurological diseases, opening new avenues for therapeutic discovery. Despite this progress, the full range of neuronal subtypes that can be programmed in vitro remains largely uncharted. In this seminar, I will talk about our work in expanding the diversity of neurons derived from human pluripotent stem cells by combining TF-driven reprogramming with systematic modulation of developmental signaling pathways. We performed a large-scale screen of 480 signaling conditions in parallel with NGN2 or ASCL1/DLX2 induction, using multiplexed single-cell transcriptomics to capture cellular outcomes across 700,000 cells. Our analysis revealed a broad spectrum of excitatory and inhibitory neurons that align with the developmental patterning axes of the neural tube. Electrophysiological profiling showed that these patterned neurons possess distinct functional and morphological properties shaped by their respective signaling environments. We perturbed TFs at the hub of gene regulatory networks (GRNs) and demonstrated their necessity and sufficiency to drive the specification of distinct neuronal subtypes. We further found that patterning neural progenitors before TF induction unlocks a greater range of neuronal diversity by activating regulons that mirror those of primary human neurons. Comparisons with primary tissue uncovered closely matched neuronal subtypes sharing transcriptional signatures in TF expression, neurotransmitter usage, and ion channel composition, while highlighting persistent differences in metabolic pathways. Together, we put together an in vitro atlas of human neuronal diversity of over 200 neuronal subtypes, as well as providing a framework for programming a wide array of human neurons and for understanding how transcriptional and signaling cues cooperate to shape neuronal fate.
Please join the Oxford Medieval Manuscripts group for a tour of the All Souls College library with Peregrine Horden, Fellow Librarian, All Souls College, where we will learn about the library's history as well as view some of their manuscript collection. Please note that places are limited, write to oxfordmedievalmss@gmail.com to reserve your place.
Week Six (27 February, Lecture Room VII) Primary: Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time, Chapters 15-16 Supplementary: Valerie Solanas, ‘SCUM Manifesto’ (1967)
Seminar followed by Q&A and drinks - attend in person or join online - all welcome Abstract: Nature recovery depends on turning ecological data into clear, timely, and actionable insights. This talk explores how sensing technologies, automated acoustics, and AI can strengthen that data-to-decision journey by improving how we monitor ecosystems and interpret change. Through examples from her research, Kate will outline the opportunities and limitations of applying AI to real-world ecological data, and show how better tools can support more effective decisions for nature recovery. Biography: Kate Jones is an ecologist whose interdisciplinary research investigates the interface of ecological and human health. Her research understands the impact of global land use and climate change on ecological and human systems, with a particular focus on emerging infectious diseases from animals. Kate’s work also focuses on generating better tools for monitoring the status of wildlife populations, developing some of the first applied artificial intelligence tools for monitoring ecosystems, and further understanding how citizen science data can be used to understand biodiversity trends. Kate is the Director of The People and Nature Lab at UCL’s new cross-disciplinary campus in London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park (UCL East). Kate has held appointments at the Zoological Society of London, University of Cambridge, Columbia University, University of Virginia, and Imperial College London. She has written over 150 articles and book chapters in prestigious journals, is a UK government scientific advisor, chaired The Bat Conservation Trust for 5 years, and served as an expert advisor to the UK’s Climate Change Committee. Kate won the Leverhulme Prize for outstanding contributions to Zoology in 2008, and in 2022 won both ZSL’s Marsh Award for Conservation Biology and British Ecology Society’s Marsh Award for Ecology.
Join award-winning Polish reportage writer and journalist Mariusz Szczygieł in conversation with his translator Antonia Lloyd-Jones and publisher Linden Editions about his work, Not There. Not There is a collection of literary reportage about loss, absence and memories from one of Poland’s most celebrated writers. Szczygieł follows a Czech poet, a Ukrainian soldier, a Polish accountant, an Albanian poet and an Israeli writer as they account for their losses and gains; tracing lost conversations, cheese forks, poems, houses and lives. It is beautiful, profound and quietly uplifting. His work may be an inventory of losses, but ‘its pages are alive with the traces of what is not there: it is a meditation on absence that hums with the quiet pulse of what remains’ (Frank Wynne, Irish Times). Mariusz Szczygieł is one of Europe’s most celebrated journalists. A reporter for Gazeta Wyborcza, he is the author of a number of books of reportage about the Czech Republic and Poland. His books have been published in twenty-one countries and have been awarded the Europe Book Prize and the Prix Amphi, among other honours. From 1995–2001, he hosted a popular talk show on Polish television. Szczygieł runs the Institute of Reportage in Warsaw, a creative writing reportage school, and Dowody na Isnienie, an independent publishing house. Not There won the Nike Award and Nike Readers' Award in Poland on publication in 2019. Antonia Lloyd-Jones translates fiction, non-fiction, poetry and children’s books from Polish. Her translation of Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by 2018 Nobel Prize laureate Olga Tokarczuk was shortlisted for the 2019 Man Booker International prize. For ten years she was a mentor for the Emerging Translators’ Mentorship Programme, and is a former co-chair of the UK Translators Association. Linden Editions is an independent publisher specialising in works of literary fiction, narrative non-fiction and essays from Europe, the Francophonie, and the Mediterranean region. It was established by Tasja Dorkofikis, Nermin Mollaoğlu, and Geraldine D’Amico in 2023. Linden Edition’s books have been awarded the Prix Femina, Prix Goncourt des Lyceens and Prix Millepages, and long-listed for the Dublin Literary Award, among others.
Join us for a conversation with Stephen Taylor, as he shows how Large Language Models (LLMs) can be used to explore and analyse biological datasets. Understanding how diseases work and finding new treatments often involves working with massive, complex biological datasets. Traditionally, this required deep expertise in both biology and programming. Stephen and his team at the Centre for Human Genetics have developed a Multi-Dimensional Viewer (MDV) to simplify this process, and now, with advances in AI, their new tool, ChatMDV, allows anyone to explore and analyse these datasets using everyday language. This opens the door for wider participation in discoveries, improves transparency, and accelerates progress toward new therapies. Stephen Taylor is Head of Integrative Computational Biology at the Centre for Human Genetics in the Nuffield Department of Medicine. The aim of his group is to develop state-of-the-art computational methods to break down barriers to aid the integration, visualisation, and analytics of biological datasets. Moderated by Xavier Laurent, Research Member of Common Room and Lead Training Coordinator at the AI Competency Centre. All event attendees are invited to arrive from 5pm, when tea and coffee will be served, and to stay for a drinks reception, which will immediately follow the event. Bletchley Park Week: This event is part of our annual Bletchley Park Week (22-27 February) programme of events celebrating a partnership between Kellogg College and Bletchley Park. This year’s theme is: “The Age of AI”.
Join the Health Economics and Policy Evaluation ONLINE Course 2026, delivered by the University of Oxford. This intensive 2-day online course (plus one day for Stata) offers a comprehensive overview of health economics and policy assessment. Key topics: Health economics and policy evaluation, Advanced evaluation techniques (interrupted time series, panel data, instrumental variables, DIFF-DIFF), Agency problems and incentive structures in healthcare, Hospital competition and payment scheme impacts, Economic evaluation methods 📅 2nd March 2026 – 4th March 2026 ONLINE ✅ Learn from leading experts ✅ Flexible, online format ✅ Global networking opportunities Who Should Attend? Students, healthcare professionals, policymakers, researchers, and analysts.
VS Code for Python Development: A Complete Beginner's Guide Monday 2 March, 11:00 – 12:00 OxPop/BDI Seminar room 0 Led by – Dr Mcebisi Ntleki, DPhil, Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford Master Visual Studio Code, the world's most popular code editor, through hands-on Python development. This practical tutorial takes you from installation to building a BMI calculator and health data analyser while learning professional development workflows. You'll set up Python environments, manage dependencies, and master version control with Git and GitHub – all within VS Code's intuitive interface. No prior experience with VS Code, Git, or virtual environments needed. By the end, you'll confidently navigate VS Code, structure Python projects professionally, and collaborate using industry-standard practices. Perfect for medical science students ready to level up their research coding toolkit and work with reproducible, shareable code. This session will cover: 1. VS Code fundamentals: Interface navigation, essential keyboard shortcuts, integrated terminal, and customisation options 2. Python environment setup: Installing extensions, creating and activating virtual environments, selecting interpreters 3. Package management: Working with requirements.txt, installing dependencies with pip, managing environment variables securely 4. Building a health data analyser: Creating a BMI calculator and patient data processor with CSV file handling and statistical analysis 5. Version control with Git: Initialising repositories, staging changes, committing, branching, and viewing history through VS Code's interface 6. GitHub collaboration: Creating repositories, pushing code, working with branches, and creating pull requests without leaving VS Code. Pre requisites: 1. Basic Python syntax knowledge (variables, functions, loops, conditionals) 2. Familiarity with basic file and folder operations on their computer 3. Ability to navigate their operating system and install software No prior experience with code editors, IDEs, version control, or command-line tools is required Intended audience: Undergraduates, graduates, early researchers Participants will need: A laptop (Windows, macOS, or Linux), Administrator access to install software. This is a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) friendly session. Pre-Course Preparation: 1. Install Python: Download and install Python 3.8 or later from python.org 2. Install VS Code: Download and install from code.visualstudio.com 3. Create a GitHub account: Sign up at github.com (free account is sufficient) 4. Install Git: Download from git-scm.com and complete basic configuration Duration: 50 minutes for presentation and practical, 5 minutes practical exercises post session, 5 minutes – Q&A. Registration: https://forms.office.com/e/mgHjvw8UBU?origin=lprLink
In September 2014, foreign languages (FL) became a compulsory part of the primary school curriculum in England, with the clear expectation that learners should make “substantial progress in one language” (DfE, 2013) throughout the four years of language learning at primary school (age 7-11). However, schools face considerable difficulties (e.g., limited time, low teacher subject knowledge and confidence), exacerbated by a lack of clarity regarding core content and learning outcomes for language learning at this level. Further, the limited research exploring children's experiences with FL learning (of languages other than English) makes it difficult to assess the feasibility of the National Curriculum guidance. In this talk, Rowena will present the Progression in Primary Languages project; a longitudinal study tracking young learners’ linguistic development in French, German and Spanish over the four years of learning at primary school in England and the individual, instructional and contextual factors affecting learning. 2,231 students aged 7-11 from 17 primary schools participated in the study completing a range of linguistic measures (e.g. vocabulary, phonics, grammar) each year. The design of the language tests developed for the project will be discussed, alongside preliminary results in relation to children's linguistic progression. In light of the initial findings, the implications for young learners’ language learning in the classroom-context will be explored.
AI is reshaping sociology both as an object of inquiry and as a methodological resource. This talk examines this dual transformation through two complementary perspectives. First, drawing on a comparative analysis of elite sociology departments, faculty profiles, and national sociology conferences in China and the United States, it traces how AI has been incorporated into sociological knowledge production across different institutional and societal contexts in recent years. The analysis reveals both divergent and convergent trajectories, highlighting how scholars in the Global North and Global South engage with AI in distinct yet increasingly interconnected ways. Second, the talk demonstrates the research potential of AI for sociology through an original case study modelling future societal instability across four countries. By integrating demographic and fiscal data with large language models, we develop and evaluate predictions concerning the structural constraints facing welfare states through the mid-twenty-first century. Together, these analyses illustrate how AI is transforming what sociologists study, how they study it, and what futures we might anticipate. Please join either in person or online. For in-person attendees, the talk will be preceded by a light lunch at 12.15pm.
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 and research student
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. I am Co‑Director of the Surrey Institute for People‑Centred Artificial Intelligence and Senior Lecturer in Epidemiology at the University of Surrey. My background is in industrial engineering and working as a mathematical modeller I develop and integrate practical, multidisciplinary approaches that combine mathematics, statistics, computing, biology and social science to inform surveillance, control and elimination of infectious diseases in humans and animals. I focus on producing transparent, usable evidence — including models, forecasts and decision tools — that supports frontline health practitioners, veterinary services and policymakers. My work emphasises responsible AI and One Health approaches, co‑producing analyses with stakeholders to ensure relevance, equity and clear communication of uncertainty. I teach and supervise students in applied epidemiology and modelling, and I actively translate research into policy and operational guidance to improve real‑world disease prevention and response. https://www.surrey.ac.uk/people/joaquin-m-prada
Need a burst of focused time to get words flowing on the page? Join OCCT for our new series of Shut Up and Write (or Translate) sessions this term. These dedicated afternoons are a chance to step away from distractions, sit alongside fellow writers and translators, and make real progress on whatever project matters most to you. We’ll gather from 2–5pm on Mondays of Week 1, 3, 5, and 7 this term in a supportive, low-pressure environment designed to boost productivity and creativity alike. Bring along your laptop, notebooks, or translation drafts - anything you’d like to work on. After a quick check-in, we’ll dive into quiet writing or translating sprints, with breaks for coffee (which will be supplied) and conversation in between. Whether you’re polishing a chapter, drafting an article, working on a translation, or simply hoping to carve out space for your own work, these sessions are for you. Come for one, two, or all three afternoons, and leave with words on the page and renewed momentum for your projects.
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
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.
The late nineteenth century and early twentieth century saw the establishment of a distinct form of science writing, “popular” science writing. Ostensibly directed towards the “laity” or the “man in the street,” it also enabled communication between scientists in distinct sub-disciplines, and may have been directed towards those who controlled university funding. Its status in relation to technical science writing has been extensively debated, in books by Shinn and Whitley (1985), and articles by Hilgartner (1990), Cooter and Pumfrey (1994), Myers (2003), Secord (2004), O’Connor (2009), Schmalzer (2012) among others. Scholars in the field of literature and science have also studied it, and the present paper, as well as discussing what we are to do with the contested term “popular,” will ask what literary studies can bring to the study of popular science writing. It will focus on examples primary from the physical sciences in the early twentieth century, including work by A S Eddington and Oliver Lodge. *Professor Michael H Whitworth* is the author of _Einstein’s Wake: Relativity, Metaphor, and Modernist Literature_ (2001) and many other articles and chapters on literature and science. He was the co-founder, with Alice Jenkins, of the British Society for Literature and Science. He is a Tutorial Fellow in English at Merton College and Professor of Modern Literature and Culture in the English Faculty.
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.
The seminar will be followed by drinks.
Governments are spending a lot of money, including on debt interest, but most reforms cost money and society needs to pay for them. How and what consequences does this have for government planning?
For generations, many Christians have imagined the Bible’s story as one in which we leave earth behind and “go to heaven” when we die. But, as Tom Wright has spent decades patiently explaining, from Surprised by Hope to his latest major work God’s Homecoming, that is simply not the scriptural narrative. The Bible does not give us a tale of souls escaping upward; it gives us the astonishing announcement that God intends to come and dwell with us. In this special Oxford evening, Tom Wright will guide us through the central biblical theme that has been hidden in plain sight: God’s longing to make creation his home. Drawing on careful historical scholarship, robust biblical exegesis, and the earthy, hope-filled tone familiar from his recent conversations on the Ask NT Wright Anything podcast, Tom will show how the whole sweep of Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation moves towards one destination: the renewal of all things through God’s personal presence. Following the taped interview, there will be a time for audience questions, followed by a reception, book sale and signing. All are welcome!
Over recent decades, the theory that there is an imbalance between excitation and inhibition in cortical circuits in people with psychosis has become increasingly popular. The exact nature of this imbalance is still unclear, however. One issue is that it is conceptually ill-defined. Another reason is that it is hard to measure in vivo. We have found, using rodent recordings of simultaneous LFP and cell spiking data, that most 'traditional' measures of E/I imbalance (e.g.m, gamma power, 1/f power spectrum slope, etc) are not reliable. WE have sued computational modelling of Me/EEG and (fMRI) data to show that there is hypo function of excitatory neurone in both established schizophrenia and in the prodromal period (NAPLS2 dataset), although this pathology may not be present in all subgroups of psychosis (analysing 'biotypes' from the BSNIP consortium dataset). Symptoms such as hallucinations, however, seem to relate to disinhibition (the opposite effect). I discuss why this might be, and what this might mean for treatments. This seminar is hosted in person, to join online, please use the Zoom details below: https://zoom.us/j/93311812405?pwd=9kbjSbEcO2fa7n7gFLZVqrChvr467B.1 Meeting ID: 933 1181 2405 Passcode: 169396
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.
Are you baffled by open, confused by embargoes? Does the mention of the colour gold or green catapult you into a realm of perplexed irritation? Come to this session, where we’ll break down open access and all its many jargon terms, confusing publishing structures and hint at the advantages you can reap by publishing open. In this session you’ll learn: what is open access? Key terms – Gold, Green, Article Processing Charges; where to get more information and help; where to look for open access material; and useful tools to assist you in publishing open access. Intended audience: researcher and research student; staff
Teams link: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/3825967966058?p=oaa4boDA3tu5ZnqMja
The internationalisation of higher education has contributed to the rapid expansion of English Medium Instruction (EMI) in Japan. The talk draws on empirical research on content learning outcomes in EMI programmes. It also includes a policy analysis of the final evaluation of the Top Global University Project. The findings highlight how the choice of medium influences academic outcomes. The talk also raises broader questions about fairness, inclusivity and the future direction of internationalisation in Japan. Bio: Ikuya Aisawa is an Assistant Professor in Applied Linguistics at Nottingham university’s School of English. He lectures and supervises on the BA English Language and Literature and the MA Applied Linguistics and English Language Teaching. Before to moving to Nottingham in 2022, he completed his DPhil in Education in 2022 at the University of Oxford, having served as a tutor on the MSc ALSLA and a research assistant in the English Medium Instruction (EMI) Research Group. He also worked on the BA Japanese Studies at the School of English and Modern Languages at Oxford Brookes University. Teams link: https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3aM_SoBsI8nakThXNUxEguh57-GSvT6JopDdhFnEBgr3I1%40thread.tacv2/1759499701700?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22cc95de1b-97f5-4f93-b4ba-fe68b852cf91%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%22e0e2c03d-d313-4dab-bd7c-afbd83792648%22%7d
Bio: Melinda Mills is a Professor of Demography and Population Health, Director of the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science and Demographic Science Unit at NDPH and Nuffield College. Her work focuses on demographic change, combining multiple types of high-dimensional data and advanced statistical methods. In addition to others, she has held both an ERC Consolidator and ERC Advanced Grant, examining the intersection of social and genetic factors. She has served on No 10's Data Science Advisory Group, as an advisor on SAGE (SPI-B), and as one of three special Advisors to the European Commissioner of the Economy. She is also a Trustee of the UK Biobank and on the Scientific Advisory Boards of Our Future Health, LifeLines, Health & Retirement Survey. She received an MBE in 2018 for her research contributions and an Honorary Doctorate in 2025 from the EUI for her work in sociogenomics. She also holds a part-time position at the Department of Economic, Econometrics & Finance, University of Groningen and Department of Genetics, University Medical Centre Groningen, Netherlands. Abstract: Recent changes in the postponement of the timing and number of children across many countries has resulted in renewed interest in the underlying reasons, consequences and effectiveness of policy interventions related to fertility. Many are having their first child in their early 30s, with percentage of the population who remain childless now around 20% (born ~1965) in many Western European countries, with high levels of lifetime childlessness in East Asia (e.g., 28% (Japan); (35% Hong Kong), women born 1975). Recently, the UK has also reported the lowest total fertility rate for the last 80 years. But reproduction is a complex behavioural and biological trait influenced by socio-environmental and genetic factors. This talk brings together research in demography and genetics to explore contemporary fertility patterns. It first examines broader changes in the timing and number of children, the most recent 'low fertility panic', social determinants and effectiveness of various policy interventions. Linking whole population administrative register data with hospital records, the talk then demonstrates how lifetime fertility and health trajectories are strongly associated with mental-behavioural, substance use and metabolic disorders. Large-scale genetic association studies of reproductive traits are then explored in addition to their relationship with health and longevity. Join the meeting online: https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_YTlmOWQyODgtYzJhMS00NDQyLWExYmQtOTkzNmFiZWRmMWEy%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22cc95de1b-97f5-4f93-b4ba-fe68b852cf91%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%22902ce32a-9317-4399-9f23-a83c7907d4bd%22%7d
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.
Contested Sovereignty: Chinese-led urban development, city-making, and urban futures in Nairobi, Kenya Elisa Tamburo (Harvard University & Oxford) The paper examines city-making and its stakeholders to show how sovereignty is negotiated beyond the polity of the nation-state. Since the early 2000s, the rise of Chinese private construction firms in Nairobi, Kenya, has transformed how the city is planned, built, and inhabited. Chinese-led urban development not only fragments the Kenyan urban middle class but also reveals divergent and sometimes conflicting interests among Chinese actors themselves. Drawing on eight months of ethnographic fieldwork in Nairobi, I analyse the effects of private Chinese financial engagement in Kenya and probe which contested visions of the city may emerge, tracing how these are entangled with notions of citizenship, governance, and sovereignty in Nairobi. I argue for the need to distinguish carefully among different stakeholders – builders, residents, and municipal authorities – and propose that we venture beyond a nation-centered analysis of sovereignty. Focusing on the scale of the city offers new vistas on the forces that shape visions of the future, which often diverge from those that urban dwellers imagine and aspire to. Elisa Tamburo is a social anthropologist and Skłodowska Curie Global Postdoctoral Fellow jointly in the Department of Anthropology at Harvard and the School of Geography and the Environment at Oxford. Her second main research project Negotiating the City, focuses on urban planning and dwelling amidst China-built urban infrastructure in Nairobi, Kenya. Her work appeared in international peer-reviewed journals such as the JRAI, Focaal, and the Journal of Current Chinese Affairs. Elisa is currently revising her first book manuscript, Exiled in the City, for Cornell University Press. Business as (un)usual: Migration and Urban Life in Afro-Asian Delhi Bani Gill (University of Tubingen) Contemporary Africa–India circulations have brought a growing number of African migrants to India for trade, education, asylum, medical travel. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research with West African migrants in Delhi who describe “doing business” as central to their mobility regardless of visa category, this talk explores how “doing business,” exceeds economic exchange; it is not only a livelihood strategy, but also a set of spatial practices, a social identity, and a negotiation of risk. The talk shows how “doing business” gives rise to “new” urban constellations, such as African hair salons and grocery stores, that are located largely in mixed-demographic, unplanned settlements, and argues that such sites are analytically significant for understanding contemporary processes of urbanism in Delhi. For migrants with precarious legal status, “doing business” involves navigating India’s legal regime, where discretionary state authority and bureaucratic logics foreclose and open opportunities for entrepreneurial aspiration. Migrants cultivate shared vocabularies and practices of licitness—socially permissible yet legally ambivalent forms of work—through which they negotiate regulatory grey zones. Yet the fluidity of licitness generates both possibility and anxiety, offering opportunity yet also exposing migrants to uncertainty. By tracing how opportunity and friction converge in this daily labor, the talk traces how “doing business” becomes a relational and affective site through which contemporary Afro-Asian encounters are produced, contested, and transformed. Dr Bani Gill is a Junior Professor at the Institute for Sociology, University of Tübingen and a Marie Curie Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle. She is a qualitative sociologist grounded in ethnographic sensibilities and a regional focus on South Asia and contemporary Africa- India encounters. Her research interests include urbanisms, migration, race and racialization, gender, and the sociology of law, bureaucracy, and the state. Her current project explores practices of deportation and policing in urban India.
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.
https://www.cmcsoxford.org.uk/our-events
Hybrid. Email oxchildpsych@psych.ox.ac.uk to request the link to attend online.
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.
Two recent undergraduates will discuss the experience and findings of their thesis.
The seminars will take place on Tuesdays during term time, from 5:00 to 6:30 p.m. at Corpus Christi College in Merton Street. Please ask the porters for directions. No registration is required. For more details: https://tolkien50.web.ox.ac.uk/event/tolkien-seminars-ht-2026
'Contemporary Islamist Opposition in Morocco: Resisting Inclusion and Moderation' offers an in-depth and yet-unexplored analysis of the evolution and actions of Moroccan Islamist association Justice and Spirituality (al-Adl wa-l-Ihsane). By examining its mobilisation structure, the book enhances the understanding of Islamism as an oppositional force in non-democratic regimes, with a particular focus on Morocco. Contrary to the common premises of inclusion–moderation theory, al-Adl wa-l-Ihsane has undergone a politicisation process but rejects political inclusion; it promotes street mobilisation but refuses to resort to violence. Despite its illegal status and disregard for the regime’s red lines, al-Adl wa-l-Ihsane remains highly relevant as an anti-establishment actor. Addressing these apparent contradictions broadens our understanding of inclusion–moderation approaches by introducing novel explanatory factors into the relationship between authoritarian regimes and Islamist opposition actors, including responses to shifts in opportunity structures and the effects of internal dynamics and learning mechanisms. It also deepens our knowledge of al-Adl wa-l-Ihsane, Morocco’s largest opposition actor, which nevertheless remains largely understudied.
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.
The talk explores what mistakes were made with regard to the semi-periphery by focusing on two pivotal countries that were mostly left out of the liberal international order (LIO) in the 1990s even though they sought to belong: Russia and Turkey. The LIO never settled on a consistent policy regarding their incorporation. Halfway recognition—or alternating between inclusion and exclusion—is even worse than aloofness or full alienation because it first creates expectations and then creates resentment when those expectations are not met. This lesson has present day implications for Ukraine as well.
This seminar presents findings from a four-phase clean energy programme delivered in Kenya between 2022 and 2025. Beginning with solar providers, Phase 1 strengthened how sales agents communicated the real-life benefits of solar technologies through an SDG lens. Phase 2 piloted training with women’s chamas, showing strong knowledge gains and increased confidence to adopt clean energy. Phase 3 expanded this model to more than 200 women across 13 counties, cultivating leadership and uptake. Phase 4 supported 17 community-led clean energy projects, improving health, savings, safety, and education access. The model has now been recognised by the UNFCCC as a global grassroots reference project.
In fiction, it’s often assumed that everything the writer produced is fully imagined—or, in the case of autofiction, that nothing is made up, each character representative of an established, real-life parallel. The truth is normally far less interesting. Fiction writers peel from life to create their fictional worlds, sometimes borrowing heavily, sometimes very little at all. This masterclass with acclaimed author Isle McElroy will explore strategies for bringing real life into fiction. Participants will consider questions including: Why might a writer borrow from real life to write fiction? How might real-life details undermine the narrative? When is it necessary to fictionalise? Speaker Details: Isle McElroy Credit: Jih-E Peng Isle McElroy is the author of The Atmospherians, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and People Collide, named a best book of 2023 by Vulture, NPR, Vogue, and the New York Times Critics. Other writing appears in The Cut, The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, and elsewhere. They are currently a Shearing Fellow at the Black Mountain Institute at UNLV. Their third novel, The Channel, will be published in 2027 by Viking in the U.S. and Bloomsbury in the U.K. About OCLW’s Global Majority & Underrepresented Writers’ Programme: This event is part of OCLW’s flagship Global Majority and Underrepresented Writers’ Programme (GMUWP). The GMUWP supports talented yet historically excluded writers in developing their work, building confidence, and navigating the publishing industry by providing free lectures, workshops, and mentorship. The Programme aims to create a more inclusive writing community, ensuring that life-writing reflects the diverse range of voices that surround us. Find out more about the Programme here. Further Details and Contacts: This event is free and open to: Those identifying as members of the global majority or groups underrepresented in life-writing (see definitions) Friends of OCLW (join here) Members of OCLW’s Life-Writing Research Network (join here) Scholars of OCLW’s Global Majority and Underrepresented Writers’ Programme OCLW Visiting Scholars CWAR Fellows Delivering masterclasses costs the Centre around £20 per attendee. If you are able, please consider making a voluntary donation of £5, £10, or £20 to help us cover these costs and keep our events accessible to all. No one will be turned away for lack of funds. Places for this masterclass are limited. Registration is required. Registration will close at 17:00 on 24/02/2026. All registrants will be informed of the outcome of their registration after the closing date. The event will be recorded and made available on the OCLW website soon after. Registration is not required to access the recording. Queries regarding this event should be addressed to OCLW Events Manager, Dr Eleri Anona Watson.
A special event hosted in collaboration with Fitzcarraldo Editions celebrating the upcoming release of An Army of Lovers Cannot Fail, a “slantwise account of queer life in the twentieth century and a testament to the liberatory power of friendship.” Author Hélène Giannecchini will discuss the book and its historical exploration of queer kinship in conversation with LGBTQ+ History Network committee members Katie Burke and Eszter D Kovács, followed by an audience Q&A and drinks reception.
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.
Cornall Group Speaker 1: Mukta Deobagkar Title: TBC Handunnetthi Group Speaker: TBC Title: TBC
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In both the United States and France, each side of the legal battle over same-sex marriage and parenthood relied heavily on experts. Despite the similarity of issues, however, lawmakers in each country turned to different sets of authorities: from economists and psychoanalysts to priests and ordinary people. They even prized different types of expertise—empirical research in the United States versus abstract theory in France. Exploring the legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States and France, this book sheds new light on the power of experts to influence high-stakes democratic debates. Drawing on extensive interviews and ethnographic observation, Michael Stambolis-Ruhstorfer traces the divergences between the two countries, showing why some experts are ubiquitous in one but absent in the other. He argues that lawmakers, judges, lawyers, journalists, and activists covet something only experts can provide: the credibility and aura of authority, or “expert capital,” which they deploy to advance their agendas. Expert capital is not derived from scientific or technical merit alone but is produced through cultural norms, material resources, and social relationships, which vary greatly across national contexts. Through the story of the fight over gay rights, By the Power Vested in Me reveals how and why certain experts—but not others—obtain the authority to shape public opinion and policy. At a time of soaring public distrust in experts, this book offers new ways to understand the contested political role of expertise and its consequences. About the Author Michael Stambolis-Ruhstorfer is a sociologist and associate professor of American studies at the University of Toulouse–Jean Jaurès and junior member of the Institut Universitaire de France.
Join us for a thrilling live experiment pitting human creativity against machine automation. In this talk, a veteran 3D artist with over 20 years of experience will go head-to-head with AI to see who can create the most compelling character concept in real time. We’ll explore how an artist approaches 3D character modelling—considering anatomy, reference, style, shape, form, pose, and topology—while the AI simultaneously generates its own 2D concept and transforms it into a 3D design using web-based tools. The session will focus primarily on ZBrush, with insights also applicable to Blender and Mayausers. It’s part technical deep-dive, part creative showdown—will decades of human artistry triumph, or will AI steal the spotlight? About the Speaker: Adam Dewhirst is a seasoned British 3D artist and modelling specialist with over 20 years of experience in high-end VFX for film, television, commercials, and games. He has held senior leadership roles across major studios, including serving as Head of Assets at The Mill and Head of Creatures and Characters at UNIT Studios. Throughout his career, Adam has contributed to blockbuster productions such as The Golden Compass, The Dark Knight, World War Z, and Guardians of the Galaxy, where his team helped bring Rocket Raccoon to life. With a background spanning studios like Framestore, MPC, DNEG, and Cinesite, he combines deep technical expertise with creative artistry and now also shares his knowledge through education and mentorship in 3D modelling and creature creation. Adam is currently working as a freelance Asset Supervisor, working on such shows as The Witcher, Andor and Alien Earth to name a few.
'Liberalism is in crisis. Or so it seems. In the aftermath of Brexit and Trump’s election, a plethora of books and articles reporting the end of liberalism emerged from both ends of the political spectrum. While the majority of voices from the American left and mainstream right mourned this perceived decline, a new faction within the right saw it as an opening for envisioning a fresh political paradigm beyond the constraints of liberalism. Many of these right-wing thinkers and activists, with whom U.S. Vice-President J. D. Vance publicly identifies, call themselves postliberals. Yet the early uses of the term “postliberal” were strikingly different, denoting communitarian attempts to transcend liberal individualism rather than the illiberal rejection of liberal-democratic norms.' -- Jacob Williams & João Pinheiro da Silva, 'Postliberalism: A Genealogy'. Timetable: 2 - 2.45pm, João Pinheiro da Silva (University of St. Andrews) and Jacob Williams (Oxford) will introduce their essay, 'Postliberalism: A Genealogy' (Telos, no. 212, 2025), why they wrote it, and what its thesis is. 2.45 - 3.30pm First response will be given by Professor John Milbank (Emeritus, Nottingham). 3.30 - 4pm Break for tea and coffee. 4 - 4.30pm Second response will be given by Professor Paul Kelly (London School of Economics), author of Against Postliberalism: Why 'Family, Faith and Flag' is a Dead End for the Left (Polity, 2025). 4.30 - 5.20pm panel discussion with all of the speakers, moderated by a chair, and Q&A with the audience.
About the series: This series will feature master classes, seminars, workshops and talks with Laura Rival, research collaborators and colleagues, throughout academic year 2025-2026. Beginning in Michaelmas term 2025, the theme for the term, in answer to the series question, was 'In Latin America, by Greening the State at the Top and from Below'. In Hilary term, the theme is 'By Knowing Nature Differently'. In Trinity term, the theme will be 'By Imagining a New Civilization and Building the Next Political Economic Order'.
The aim is to look at the development of regional identities within state structures since the late nineteenth century and how they linked to regional government bodies or other regional organisations designed to promote the interests of the region, for example economic development, tourism, agriculture and preserving regional cultures. *Dr Terry Cudbird* will talk about his new book _The Origins of Economic Regions in France_. He gained his DPhil in 2021 and is an Associate Member of the History Faculty. *Peter George* will talk about his forthcoming DPhil thesis - Discourses of identity and dialect writing in the press, c.1890-1940 in France, Britain and Jersey. Discussants: *Dr Talitha Ilacqua*, Durham University, who published the following book in 2024: _Inventing the Modern Region: Basque Identity and the French Nation-State_, Manchester University Press. *Dr Timo Aava*, Estonia-Oxford Postdoctoral Visiting Fellow at St. Anthony’s College. Followed by drinks from 18:00.
Existing accounts of life under the Colonels’ dictatorship (1967-1974) contend that cultural activity in Greece was all but eradicated due to repression and censorship. However, our research uncovers exactly the opposite, nothing less than a cultural Big Bang. I outline the evidence and address two questions: First, what made this development possible--and, more generally, which conditions facilitate the development of cultural life under authoritarianism? And second, why was this cultural boom erased from collective memory?
AI and human agency Narratives in AI safety mostly focus on the growing capability of AI models. For example, there are concerns that highly intelligent AI models could be used for criminal or disruptive purposes, may transform labour markets, or even seek to attain their own misaligned goals. In my lecture, I will argue that the most pressing question in AI safety is not artificial intelligence but artificial influence - the many ways that AI can be used to influence people. The widespread embedding of AI in digital platforms, applications and websites opens the door for a highly automated ‘influence economy’ in which conversational AI systems compete to directly influence our commercial and political choices. I will discuss with reference to empirical work showing that current AI systems can be highly persuasive, socially perceptive, and effective in parasocial relationship-building. I argue that we urgently need to consider how to build AI that enhances rather than degrades human agency.
With extensive and volatile disagreement on the existence and extent of the obligations of states in the Global North towards refugees, this talk will seek to develop an understanding of the grounds of specific obligations that states owe to refugees. These obligations will then constitute the components of an ethical response. The talk aims to highlight the limitations of the dominant philosophical approach to understanding obligations to refugees – the duty of rescue approach – to reach a new understanding. It will first analyse certain state practices used in response to refugees including border violence, detention, encampment and containment, which the duty of rescue approach fails to sufficiently engage with, in order to ground states’ negative duties towards refugees. It will then analyse specific harms and injustices refugees face as a result of their displacement, which the duty of rescue approach fails to sufficiently engage with, in order to ground states’ positive duties towards refugees. Taken together these negative and positive duties constitute the foundational elements of an ethical response. The talk will then briefly explore what this ethical response might look like and how it may be possible in practice. About the speaker Bradley Hillier-Smith researches, teaches, and writes political, moral, and legal philosophy at the University of St Andrews. His research specialises in applied political ethics, global justice, and human rights, with a specific focus on migration ethics and obligations to refugees. He is the author of The Ethics of State Responses to Refugees (Routledge 2024), and numerous journal articles on topics including understanding injustice against refugees, the grounds and implications of human rights, and the limitations of a right to control borders. Bradley is also a charity worker, former long-term Calais camp volunteer, and political campaigner advocating for the rights and settlement of refugees in the UK.
Join online via Microsoft Teams by clicking here: https://tinyurl.com/bdff6tpt
We all decide our own paths in space and time, and we all have intuitive expectations as to how space and time behave. Before relativity space and time were just a blank canvas; an empty stage where events can occur. Our intuitions about space and time are still grounded in this notion, but relativity tells us that this is just a glimpse of a far grander picture. In this talk, we’ll discover how space and time are woven together to form the dynamic fabric of space-time, and explore how relativity explains some of the last great questions of classical physics. We’ll discuss how relativity not only had a seismic effect on the history of the 20th century, but also provides a unique perspective on our own path in space-time. As we study phenomena in the wider Universe beyond the distance-, speed- and time-scales of human experience, we encounter a wide range of relativistic phenomena in ‘extreme’ environments and in the fabric of the Universe itself. We will explore some of these situations that present a compelling validation of Einstein’s theory.
To mark the centenary of Rilke’s death there will be a series of Oxford Centenary Readings held in the Queen’s College in HT 2025. These will be informal papers with plenty of discussion, about one poem or a handful of poems, that offer close readings and new insights. Papers will be in English and English translations will be provided for all poems and quotations (except for the session in week 4 with the visiting poets) making these sessions accessible to anyone with an interest in this remarkable poet and poetry in general.
In celebration of International Women’s Day (8 March 2026) and its theme “Give to Gain,” Kellogg College and the Skoll Centre invite you to an inspiring conversation exploring how social impact organisations are advancing gender equity while generating broader positive social change. Give to Gain posterThis timely discussion brings together voices from entrepreneurship research, impact investing and purpose-driven enterprise to examine how giving – of time, capital, expertise and leadership – can drive transformative social outcomes. Our panel will explore how organisations can prioritise gender equity alongside wider sustainability goals, and why such inclusive strategies generate stronger economic outcomes, greater resilience and lasting value. The conversation will address critical questions facing social impact organisations today: How can we support equity in increasingly challenging times? What does it truly mean to invest in women as founders and leaders? And why are inclusive approaches to entrepreneurship not only fairer, but demonstrably more effective? Drawing on research, practice and lived experience, speakers will illuminate how generosity of vision, collaboration and commitment unlock innovation, amplify impact and drive meaningful change. Together, we’ll explore how the social entrepreneur’s mindset of “Give to Gain” can widen opportunity, strengthen innovation and contribute to more robust and equitable economies. Join us for an engaging exchange that connects values to action, and discover how giving creates the foundation for sustainable impact. Speakers: Professor Pinar Ozcan, Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Saïd Business School; Academic Director of the Oxford Entrepreneurship Centre and the Oxford Future of Finance and Technology Initiative Tara Sabre Collier, Senior Director of Impact Investing at Chemonics Europe; Visiting Fellow at Kellogg College; Visiting Fellow and Advisory Board Member at Skoll Centre Lucy Turner, Chief Purpose Officer at The Game Changer Collective Moderated by: Dr Ana Nacvalovaite, Sovereign Wealth Funds Research Fellow at Kellogg College Light refreshments will be available at the event from 5.00pm. All audience members are also invited to join a drinks reception immediately following the panel discussion to continue the conversation informally.
We are an interdisciplinary reading group which focuses on the social science, history, and theology of demons, the Devil, and supernatural evil as they relate to politics, identity formation, and social conflicts. Each week we will examine one academic paper or book chapter on these topics, gaining familiarity with subjects such as: the psychology of dehumanization, the conceptual development of the term “demon,” and contemporary political demonologies like QAnon. Hilary Term 2026, Thursdays from 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM Weeks 1,3,4,5,6,7,8: 21 St Giles (Kendrew Quad) Teaching Room G4 Week 2: 14 St Giles (next door to the Lamb & Flag) Seminar Room H Please contact Scott Maybell for the readings or for any questions: scott.maybell@sjc.ox.ac.uk
Emerging evidence suggests climate change may contribute to human violence, but it is unclear why associations exist. In this seminar, Dr Sokol will present a case study of Wayne County, Michigan. This case study employed distributed lag models (DLMs) to evaluate associations of different types of extreme weather with firearm violence and child maltreatment in Wayne County, Michigan between 2014-2022. To understand contextual influences, models used data from before (2018–2019), during (March 2020–March 2021), and after (2022–2023) the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall findings suggest that, for firearm violence, extreme weather immediately reduced risk, with effects waning as people likely resumed regular activities. Yet for child maltreatment, extreme weather created accumulating risk over several days when it disrupted an already stressed environment. Dr Sokol will discuss how this study informs the Hazard-Violence Model–a novel conceptual model of extreme weather’s association with interpersonal violence, including community and home-based violence. The seminar will conclude with discussing implications for theory development, future research, and policy. ———————————————————————————————————————————— Speaker bio: Rebeccah Sokol is an associate professor at the University of Michigan School of Social Work and a faculty member of the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention. Her research programme evaluates strategies to promote child and adolescent safety, with a focus on recognising and addressing fundamental causes of violence. Dr Sokol collaborates with interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral teams to understand the effects of programmes and policies that address material hardships on youth safety. Dr Sokol holds an Astor Visitor Lectureship. ———————————————————————————————————————————— Booking is required for people outside of the Department of Social Policy and Intervention (DSPI). DSPI Members do not need to register.
EndNote is a desktop-based reference management tool for Windows and Mac users. It helps you to build libraries of references and insert them into Word documents as in-text citations or footnotes, and to automatically generate bibliographies. This online introduction to EndNote is open to all University of Oxford students, researchers and staff and teaches you how to use the software so that you can effectively manage your references. Please note that we also run a face-to-face EndNote workshop. Please check the iSkills course listing for availability. The workshop will cover: what EndNote can do for you; adding references to EndNote from a range of sources; managing your references in an EndNote library; adding in-text citations and/or footnotes to your essays and papers; and creating bibliographies. Intended audience: taught student; researcher and research student
This conference brings together leading experts on economic security and economic statecraft to share views on how debates and policies on these issues are evolving in different regions of the world. Over the past decade, economic relations have become highly politicized—and in some cases, securitized—due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the rise of economic coercion, and the return of trade war. Governments have become acutely aware of the vulnerabilities associated with interdependence and attempted to bolster their economic resilience through both domestic measures and international cooperation. At the same time, many governments have also attempted to wield economic statecraft, both as “sticks” to punish other countries through sanctions, tariffs, and export controls, as well as “carrots” to entice cooperation through promises of aid, trade, and investment. However, despite increasing academic debate and policymaking related to economic security and economic statecraft, there is no agreement about the definitions of these terms and little consideration of how they relate to one another. Therefore, the time is ripe for deeper discussion of these issues and consideration of what insights might be drawn from the Japanese, European, and American experiences, as well as how these countries might more effectively work together. Confirmed speakers include: Aya Adachi (German Council on Foreign Relations), Michael Beeman (UC San Diego), Creon Butler (Chatham House), Victor Cha (Georgetown University), Douglas Fuller (Copenhagen Business School), Kristi Govella (University of Oxford), Akira Igata (University of Tokyo), Keisuke Iida (University of Tokyo), Robyn Klingler-Vidra (King’s College London), Abraham Newman (Georgetown University), William Norris (Texas A&M University), Minako Morita-Jaeger (University of Sussex Business School), Martijn Rasser (Special Competitive Studies Project), Mariko Togashi (Institute of Geoeconomics), Anna Vlasiuk Nibe (University of Southern Denmark), Shino Watanabe (Sophia University), Hugh Whittaker (University of Oxford), and Jiakun Jack Zhang (University of Kansas).
Part of the Online Inclusivity Training for Health and Care Researchers Series This online workshop uses behavioural science to explain how people decide whether to participate in research. You’ll explore fast (System 1) and slow (System 2) thinking, map key recruitment decision points, and identify what drives awareness, interest, and confident consent, supporting an effective, ethical, and participant centred recruitment pathway.
*Session Theme: Community* This workshop brings together historians of marginalised communities using magazines in their research to share our approaches to this particular source base, grappling with magazines’ unique methodological challenges as well as their tantalising opportunities. Each session is broadly organised around a different theme, and participants are invited to bring examples from their own research. Pastries and snacks will be provided. Please email "$":mailto:katie.burke@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk for more information.
Dr Sebastian Lund will be presenting a book chapter from his upcoming monograph on Climate Control and the Fiction of the Fin de Siècle. The book argues that a range of canonical fin de siècle-authors such as Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, and Mark Twain gave aesthetic form to the idea that humanity could affect global climate change. Paradoxically, they did this not through the scientific paradigm of global warming, but its perverse inverse: climate control. The book provides thus a literary history of anthropogenic climate. The chapter will be discussed by DPhil candidate Claire Qu (English, Oxford). Dr Sebastian Egholm Lund is a Junior Research Fellow at Linacre College Oxford. His work focuses on nineteenth-century ecology, literature and science. His current project, Empire of the Sun: Imagining Solar Energy in Colonial India, 1878-1915, examines how British engineers, literary authors, and the greater English-language newspapers from colonial India imagined solar energy as an imperial infrastructure. Proposing the term “solar imperialism” to describe this understudied geopolitical doctrine, the project aims to provide an imperial history of the current energy transition.
This session is open for anyone to join. This career panel aims to: Showcase the breadth and diversity of operations career paths across the University and beyond. Highlight that operations roles are very varied, even when “operations” isn’t in the job title. Inspire colleagues by sharing real career stories – including the twists, turns, and moments of decision that shaped our panelist's journey. Provide practical insights into career progression, resilience, and development in the professional service staff space. Our panelists are: Sally Vine, Head of Administration and Finance, DPAG Anne Wolfes, Senior Project Manager, Department of Psychiatry Lindsay Rudge, Registrar and Chief Operating Officer, GLAM Chris Manning, Bursar, Harris Manchester College
In 1892, U.S. President Benjamin Harrison designated a forest reserve in the San Gabriel Mountains to protect the watersheds supplying an expanding Los Angeles. Local developers and politicians supported the reserve, believing it would curtail fires set by sheepherders and campers that threatened agricultural and residential development in the foothills of the San Gabriels. Over the course of the early twentieth century, the U.S. Forest Service and the Los Angeles city and county fire departments advanced an aggressive policy of fire suppression in Los Angeles’s mountains and canyons. Growing scientific expertise and substantial firefighting infrastructure failed to contain the year-by-year increase in human-caused fires as developers, undeterred by increasing risk, expanded into foothill and coastal areas. Drawing upon regional newspapers, the papers of local conservationists, and city, county, state, and federal records, this presentation examines how fire management practices in Los Angeles came to prioritize total fire suppression over land use restrictions and prescribed burning in fire and flood-prone communities.
*Reading:* Sophie Lewis' _Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation_ (Verso, 2022)
Lesson of the week, clinical cases and research. All clinical and academic staff and students welcome. Coffee and Tea will be served.
For this lunchtime seminar, we invite you to read James (2024) by Percival Everett and come along for a book club-style discussion about the novel. Participants may wish but are not at all required to read or revisit Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) by Mark Twain before or after reading James.
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.
In recent years, “depression” has become an undeniable focal point in Anglo-American popular music in several key ways, including: as a term loosely invoked by pop artists and fans to disclose, destigmatize, and normalize everyday experiences of sadness, loneliness, and despair; as an organizational theme on music streaming platforms in connection with mood and activity-based listening; and as a diverse musical and visual style forming around key musical personae and genres. I ultimately call this phenomenon the musical vernacular of depression, a dynamic expressive category that speaks to the prevalence of clinical depression in young people, widespread destigmatization of mental health among Gen Z, and intense cultural debate over what “depression” is. This talk treats pop singer Billie Eilish and rapper Princess Nokia’s creative output, reception, and fandom as emblematic of the musical vernacular of depression. Nokia and Eilish are alike in confronting the feminization of depression and moral panic around its “trendification” through striking visual appeals to feminine abjection and horror. Yet, their differing musical approaches to mental health reflect on certain racial inequalities: while Eilish tends towards hushed, intimate vocals, atmospheric soundscapes, and abstract lyrics, Nokia’s music rather offers a sobering and deeply personal account of sexual assault, depression, and PTSD, while bemoaning the disavowal of black women’s pain in her signature deadpan voice. I reveal that fans instrumentalize Eilish’s and Nokia’s music to emotionally self-regulate and even self-diagnose independent of clinical diagnosis and medical supervision. Eilish and Nokia thus offer insight into how the musical vernacular of depression is transforming the ways young people conceive of, communicate about, and tend to their mental health for better or worse amid a worldwide disparity of mental health care and increasing distrust in public health.
Ethnic, racial and religious minorities experience discriminatory behaviour and prejudicial attitudes across multiple areas of their lives, with these experiences accumulating over the life course. In this seminar, Valentina Di Stasio, Professor of Sociology, and Stefanie Sprong, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, will present the EqualStrength project. This Horizon Europe-funded project aims to investigate cumulative and structural forms of discrimination through cross-national field experiments conducted in nine European countries. The speakers will discuss the breadth of their research, ranging from analyses of setting-specific discrimination, such as hiring discrimination, to examinations of cumulative and structural discrimination that unfold simultaneously across multiple life domains, including childcare, employment, and housing, and that carry over across generations. They will also share how the findings provide valuable insights into a potential pathway through which the effects of discrimination are passed on from one generation to the next. Dan Muir, Senior Economist, and Katy Neep, Head of Employer Engagement and Partnerships, will close the seminar by providing insight into future research and the impact of discrimination research on policy. Register to join on Zoom: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/pbFSmnaxQcq9n70pS2PBZA
Abstract tbc ————————————————————————————————————————————— Speaker bio: Milena is Professor of Sustainable Welfare at the University of Leeds. ————————————————————————————————————————————— Booking is required for people outside of the Department of Social Policy and Intervention (DSPI). DSPI Members do not need to register
This seminar will present an analysis on the coherences and fragmentations within Scotland’s tertiary education system. It will expand on the role of distinct institutional settings such as universities, Further Education Colleges, and other training providers within the wider post-school education and training sector. The presentation will provide the latest insights on the Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill, published in February 2025. In doing so, it will synthesise and contrast the current operations of agencies such as the Scottish Funding Council and Skills Development Scotland. The seminar will underline the country’s ambition for further streamlining of and integration between relevant stakeholders, and relate this to the core policy objective ‘to be more responsive to the needs of learners and the economy’. Ellen Boeren is Professor of Education at the University of Glasgow’s School of Education. She is an active member of the School’s Centre for Research on Adult Development and Lifelong Learning (CR&DALL). She holds a PhD in Educational Sciences from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium, has worked at the University of Edinburgh, and joined the University of Glasgow in 2019. Between 2023 and 2025, she led the £605k FEC ESRC Standard Grant project on the state-of-art and use of adult learning and education statistics across the countries of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. She is currently leading an ESRC Secondary Data Analysis grant on longitudinal patterns in lifelong learning participation, utilising data from the UK’s Understanding Society. She recently co-authored the OECD’s report on ‘Rethinking Informal Learning’, published in November 2025. Her other publications include the monograph 'Lifelong Learning Participation in a Changing Policy Context: an Interdisciplinary Theory' for which she won the 2017 Cyril O. Houle Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Adult Education Literature.
In 1928, Sheng Cheng, a work-study student who had studied and worked in France for eight years, published a book in French, titled Ma mère, to which Paul Valéry wrote a sixteen-page preface. Contrary to Valéry’s interpretation, this Francophone work was scarcely intended to illuminate the essence of Chinese life or stimulate East-West civilizational exchange. While cultural intermediaries active in the Sino-Western contact zone frequently concerned themselves with issues of East-West communication, world civilization, and the commonality of the human spirit, Chinese Francophone intellectuals of the early twentieth century also increasingly devoted themselves to the question of the self. Their use of the French language, rather than solely addressing an external audience, whether French or Chinese, or communicating a value-imbued, coherent message, also served to constitute an internal dialogue. This talk demonstrates that Ma mère, by delving into the most personal experiences and intimate relationships that shaped selfhood while negotiating the deepest pain, fear, and hope embedded in life and death, mostly functioned as Sheng Cheng’s Francophone journal intime (private diary). Writing in French shielded him from the May Fourth discourses and the sense of intellectual responsibility that had dominated his views, relationships, and communication, transporting him into a new linguistic, literary, and cultural milieu. This milieu, and its linguistic agency in particular, has been neglected in previous research on the work-study movement specifically and on Sino-Western cultural and educational exchanges more broadly. Dr Vivienne Xiangwei Guo is a senior lecturer in modern Chinese history in the History Department of King’s College London. Her research focuses on the intellectual, political, and cultural history of modern China, particularly the history of China’s intellectual elites in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her first monograph, Women and Politics in Wartime China (Routledge, 2018), examines the political networks of Chinese elite women during the Second World War and their roles in promoting ‘national resistance and reconstruction’ from the 1930s to the 1950s. Her second monograph, Negotiating a Chinese Federation (Brill, 2022), studies how Chinese warlords and intellectuals engaged with one another in the making of a Chinese federation between 1919 and 1923. Her recent research explores the history of the learning and use of French among Chinese intellectuals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Integrating the concepts, methods and approaches intrinsic to sociolinguistics and cultural linguistics into historical studies, she aims to shed new light on the relationship between foreign languages, ideas, and identity within a transnational context.
The term “un-American” has been wielded as a powerful tool throughout US history, from Jefferson’s vision of the early Republic to the Trump era, yet no objective definition has ever been universally agreed upon. For the first time, George Lewis’s Un-Americanism offers a long history of this term, tracing what it has meant to whom through close looks at the most prominent contests for control of its definition and deployment. Lewis examines case studies that show politicians using the idea of the un-American to advance their agendas, organizations using it in racial nationalist campaigns, and federal committees using it in investigations such as those of the anticommunist “Red Scare” of the Cold War—along with activists and coalitions who have countered rhetoric of the “un-American” by claiming their own use of the term. In these chapters, Lewis delves into the role of institutions and organizations such as the American Legion, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Lewis paints a compelling picture of how the term has both shaped and been shaped by the country’s social and political landscape. Un-Americanism offers a profound analysis of how this term has drawn and redrawn lines between what is considered “good” or “bad” politically. By exploring its complex evolution, the book highlights how the term has impacted each generation’s understanding of national values and American identity. Lewis challenges readers to reflect on its ongoing influence in defining who truly belongs in the American story.
*To attend online via Microsoft Teams, please email "$":mailto:ian.archer@history.ox.ac.uk*
To join online, please register in advance: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/WWqjr8SgT_WrzTodI65cdg
Thursday March 5 (week 7) Julia Hori (Cambridge) ‘Planter's Pageantry and the Pedagogy of Gardening’
This lecture examines the entanglement of photography with the past and its potential future within a post-archival context. Specifically, it examines photographs taken by the East German Stasi from the 1960s to 1989, highlighting the extensive material and photographic residue that serve as tangible traces of surveillance activities. Through key case studies, the lecture considers photography’s multiple registers as a tool for covert surveillance and as an evidential record, which nonetheless become haunting traces of unseen surveillance forces and a testament to photography’s unsettling potential.
Lecture title and abstract TBC
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.
A workshop outlining some of the key principles to bear in mind when working with sensitive or restricted research; whether collected yourself or obtained from a third-party source such as a data archive. Issues of confidentiality, informed consent, cybersecurity and data management will be covered. Examples of scenarios or concerns drawn from the research of participants are particularly welcome. The role of support services at Oxford will also be outlined and in particular the role of the Bodleian Data Librarian who will lead the session. Follow up consultations with the Data librarian or other subject consultants are also offered. Topics to be covered include: key best practice principles when working with sensitive or restricted research data; issues around creating original data; informed consent agreements; maximising the usage potential of data during and after a project; strengths and weaknesses of anonymisation, data blurring and similar techniques; key strategies for protecting data including encryption, embargoes, future vetting and access restrictions; and obligation put on researchers by legislation and research partners. Intended audience: taught student; researcher and research student; staff
In this 60-minute online workshop you will be introduced to the methodologies and principles underpinning the conduct of literature searches for systematic reviews, scoping reviews and other evidence reviews. The session will cover: formulating a focused research question; preparing a protocol; developing a search strategy to address that research question; choosing appropriate databases and search engines; searching for grey literature and ongoing studies; managing your references in Covidence; and documenting and reporting your search. Intended audience: medicine and NHS; researcher and research student
Effective application of mathematical models to interpret biological data and make accurate predictions often requires that model parameters are identifiable. Requisite to identifiability from a finite amount of noisy data is that model parameters are first structurally identifiable: a mathematical question that establishes whether multiple parameter values may give rise to indistinguishable model outputs. Approaches to assess structural identifiability of deterministic ordinary differential equation models are well-established, however tools for the assessment of the increasingly relevant stochastic and spatial models remain in their infancy. I provide in this talk an introduction to structural identifiability, before presenting new frameworks for the assessment of stochastic and partial differential equations. Importantly, I discuss the relevance of our methodology to model selection, and more the practical and aptly named practical identifiability of parameters in the context of experimental data. Finally, I conclude with a brief discussion of future research directions and remaining open questions.
Throughout its life the ocean crust is a key boundary between Earth’s interior and the oceans/atmosphere. Hydrothermal circulation of seawater-derived fluids through the cooling and aging crust results in chemical exchange between Earth’s interior and oceans and atmosphere, playing an important role in long-term biogeochemical cycles. Altered ocean crust provides a time-integrated record of its geochemical exchange with seawater. Furthermore, hydrothermal minerals formed from ridge flank fluids record the evolving chemistry of the overlying oceans – itself an integrator of a range of Earth processes. I will present an overview of how scientific ocean drilling experiments across ridge flanks contribute to our understanding of the processes that control ridge flank hydrothermal exchanges, the role these exchanges play in global geochemical cycles, and the extent to which they record and respond to wider changes in the Earth system. In particular, the South Atlantic Transect (IODP Expeditions 390/393), designed to recover the upper crust and overlying sediments across the western flank of the slow-spreading Mid-Atlantic Ridge to investigate hydrothermal aging and microbiological evolution of the ocean crust, and the paleoceanographic evolution of the overlying South Atlantic.
The significance of Hubert Henry Harrison (1883-1927) – as a journalist, activist, and educator – lies in his innovation of radical solutions to grave injustices, especially the staggering luxury for the few alongside the crushing poverty for the many in the first few decades of the twentieth century. White mob violence continually haunted African American communities, while imperial conquest and world wars wrought wanton destruction upon entire nations of people. These conditions sparked a global political awakening to which Harrison gave voice as a leading figure in cutting-edge struggles for socialism, in the free love movement, and in the Harlem Renaissance. He also played a pivotal role in the rise of Marcus Garvey and the establishment of the largest international organization of Black people in modern history. Because of his fierce and fearless radicalism, however, he has been erased from popular memory. Hubert Harrison presents a historical restoration of Harrison's numerous intellectual and political breakthroughs. Offering a fresh interpretation of his contributions to social movements for economic, racial, and sexual liberation, Brian Kwoba's richly textured narrative highlights the startling and continued relevance of Harrison's visionary thinking across generations. - Dr. Brian Kwoba grew up in Boulder, Colorado. After earning his undergraduate degree in philosophy at Cornell University, he spent six years teaching high school and middle school history and getting a Master’s in teaching at Tufts University in Boston before heading to the University of Oxford for his doctoral degree in history. Dr. Kwoba is currently an associate professor of history and also the director of African and African American Studies at the University of Memphis. Over the past two decades, Dr. Kwoba has been an activist on issues including anti-imperialism, immigrant workers rights, climate justice, Falastin, decolonizing education, pan-Africanism, and the movement for Black lives. In his spare time, he is a big time music lover (especially live jazz), an Afrobeats DJ, and a frequent traveler to Kenya where he visits his dad's side of the family.
Megakaryocytes are one of the rarest, yet largest, cells in the human body and have huge synthetic capabilities - with a handful of megakaryocytes releasing billions of platelets into our bloodstream every day. To achieve this, they undergo a unique form of the cell cycle that results is successive rounds of whole genome doubling (WGD) and an average ploidy of 16N. They then give rise to platelets - with no nucleus at all. This talk will cover two projects: The first - focusing on these fascinating and unusual aspects of their cell biology. Firstly, we performed a detailed interrogation of the megakaryocyte genome to unpick how megakaryocytes bypass cell cycle checkpoints and tolerate whole genome duplication while retaining p53 responses to other triggers, and examined the consequences for the genome integrity. Unexpectedly, we uncovered a conserved tolerance mechanism shared between megakaryocytes and WGD+, p53-intact solid tumours. In the second part of the talk, I will outline our recent discovery that despite lacking a cell nucleus, platelets contain a repertoire of DNA fragments acquired by sequestration of cell free DNA during peripheral circulation, including free fetal and cancer cell-derived DNA. SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY Beth is a Professor of Haematology and Group Leader at the MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, University of Oxford. Her group has two research areas - identifying targetable disease mechanisms in myeloid blood cancers, and studying the cell biology of megakaryocytes and platelets, and their roles in cancer. Beth spends 20% of her time in the clinic, including running clinical trials with a particular interest in emerging mutation-selective targeted therapies for patients with myeloproliferative neoplasms, and has a national role in the delivery of clinical research as Chair of the Blood Cancer UK Research Network MPN Subgroup. Outside of work, she enjoys adventures with her family and running around beautiful Oxford with her overly-enthusiastic but surprisingly obedient cockapoo.
*Professor Cora Gilroy Ware* is Associate Professor in the History of Art at Oxford. In her publications, exhibitions and teaching, she seeks to challenge the assumed universality of Western hegemonic perspectives. She is particularly interested in the fabrication of ideal beauty from the 17th century to the present day, and the role of classicising sculpture and pictorial art in the reification of "racial” difference. She is the author of The _Classical Body in Romantic Britain_ (2020).
The International Commission on the History of Mathematics are holding a meeting to celebrate honours recently awarded to historians of mathematics. A book of abstracts can be found here: https://www.bshm.ac.uk/sites/default/files/international_commission_on_the_history_of_mathematicsmeetin_0.pdf, and you can register for the meeting here: https://www.bshm.ac.uk/registration-ichm-meeting-celebrate-recent-honours. This event is followed by the annual Research in Progress meeting of the BSHM on 7 March, also in Oxford: find out more here: https://www.bshm.ac.uk/events/ichm-celebration-honours-recently-awarded-historians-mathematics *Programme* 14:00-14:45 Ursula Martin (University of Oxford) – DBE 2025 _Hidden figures: the women who made Oxford computing_ 14:45-15:30 Henning Heller (University of Bonn) – ICHM Montucla Prize 2025 _Mellen Woodman Haskell (1863–1948): An American mathematics student of the Wanderlust generation_ 15:30-16:00 Break 16:00-16:45 David E. Rowe (University of Mainz) _What Riemann learned from Gauss: When and How_ 16:45-17:30 Jan Hogendijk (University of Utrecht) _Applied mathematics in Ottoman Palestine: The treatise by Taqi al-Din on sundials_ 17:30-18:30 Drinks reception
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 and NHS; researcher and research student
Week Seven (6 March, Lecture Room VII) Primary: Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time, Chapters 17-18 Supplementary: Frances M. Beal, ‘Double Jeopardy: To be Black and Female’ in Black Women’s Manifesto (1969)
Seminar followed by Q&A and drinks - attend in person or join online - all welcome Abstract: Nature is in crisis in England; a country where half the land is owned by less than 1% of the population. Landowners often like to style themselves as stewards of the earth, but how can we ensure this isn't just greenwash? Can we design better policies to hold the biggest landowners to account for how they treat habitats and wildlife? This talk, drawing on Guy Shrubsole's latest book The Lie of the Land, will look at several proposals for making landownership more accountable and transparent: from the forthcoming Land Use Strategy and the government's new National Estate for Nature group, to Community Right to Buy and other initiatives to democratise decision-making over land use. Biography: Guy Shrubsole is an environmental campaigner and author of The Lie of the Land (William Collins, 2024), The Lost Rainforests of Britain (2022), and Who Owns England? (2019). He has twice won the Wainwright Prize for writing on conservation; worked for Friends of the Earth, Rewilding Britain, and DEFRA; and co-founded the Right to Roam campaign.
Our annual meeting which provides an opportunity for research students in any area of the history of mathematics to present their work to a friendly and supportive audience. Alongside the student speakers there will be a selection of posters on display throughout the day. The meeting will be held in person only, and will be held in English. Booking is required. Please note that bookings will close a week before the event, so do book in good time. If you would prefer to pay the registration fee by cash or cheque on the day of the meeting, please contact the meetings co-ordinator at "$":mailto:brigitte.stenhouse@bshm.ac.uk. The programme can be found on the website: https://bshm.ac.uk/event/research-in-progress/, or on the booking link: https://tinyurl.com/upcu4ms
*Kiera Vaclavik* (Department of comparative Literature & Culture, QMUL) and *Sophie Ratcliffe* (Faculty of English, Oxford) will talk about how their work crosses the boundaries of childhood histories and literary studies, opening up a wider discussion about interdisciplinarity in childhood studies. All welcome, and to join us for lunch afterwards.
What diversity of perspectives on the climate crisis become available to young readers not only through literature, but through literature in translation? In the Netherlands, the Dutch literary market has long shunned thematizations of the climate crisis in home-grown literature. Only recently has posthumanist Dutch author Eva Meijer earned accolades for her novel Zee Nu (2022), set in a distant dystopian future: the sea level has risen, and the Netherlands is lost to the water. Water management defines Dutch identity: the below-sea-level nation has only been made habitable by dikes, dams, windmills, and polders. But water has also defined the nation’s darker history: it was the sea that facilitated extractivist colonial commerce, and the long Dutch slave trade. Dutch authors, however, do not draw this link between environmental precarity and colonial history. Meanwhile, Indonesian flood narratives from the below-sea-level (and sinking) former capital of the Dutch East Indies stand in stark contrast to Dutch flood narratives. They are not speculative or futurist but respond to ongoing and existing crises. Through a close reading of Khairani Barokka’s poetry on “flood women”, I first tease out the Indonesian subjectivities of flood in contrast to Dutch subjectivities of flood as characterized in Zee Nu. I then turn to the short story “Buyan” by utiuts, in which self-driving electric cars fail to navigate a flooded Jakarta. This story moves beyond flood alone, linking major industries of the Capitalocene – the mining of nickel for batteries, the farming of rubber and palm oil, and the overdevelopment of urban areas – to Dutch colonization, ongoing green colonialism, and the epistemicide of indigenous language and knowledge. Whereas Dutch and Anglophone literary markets quickly categorize novels as “CliFi” or “Ecofiction”, Indonesian texts that deal with climate as one among many other pressing issues are now branded as such in translation, packaged and anthologized for Global North readers. How does this impact the characterization of Indonesian literature on the world stage, and the indigenous perspectives on climate precarity therewithin? Lucelle Pardoe is a doctoral researcher at University College London, where her interdisciplinary research is supported by scholarships in Translation Studies and Education Studies. With one foot in each field, she develops pedagogical methods based on translation and translanguaging theories to support creative self-narrative in multilingual classrooms. Drawing on her linguistic repertoire of Dutch, English, and Indonesian, her doctoral thesis explores the decolonizing potential of Indonesian literature in the Dutch curriculum. Her other research interests include children’s literary culture, translation for the cultural heritage sector, sustainability in literature, gender in translation, and digital literature. She is a translator from Dutch into English of scholarly articles, children’s books, and museum catalogues.
Teacher emotion regulation is widely recognized as a crucial factor influencing classroom climate and student engagement. However, much existing research relies on prespecified models that assume linear, static, and often unidirectional—or occasionally reciprocal—relationships, oversimplifying the complex interplay between teacher emotion regulation and student engagement. These studies typically treat emotion regulation and student engagement as separate constructs linked by pre-specified causal pathways, overlooking the dynamic and systemic nature of classroom emotional processes. This oversimplification has led to theoretical tensions, including inconsistent findings regarding directionality—for example, teacher emotion regulation influencing student engagement (Burić, 2025), student engagement influencing teacher emotion regulation (Wang et al., 2021), or reciprocal relationships between the two (Frenzel et al., 2018)—and an underappreciation of the multifaceted, evolving interactions between teachers and students. Dynamic network approach is a novel framework that conceptualizes teacher emotion regulation and student engagement as interconnected components within a multidirectional system. Unlike traditional models, this approach does not require prespecifying causal pathways, allowing it to reveal the complex teacher-student interactions occurring in classrooms. By modeling constructs as mutually influencing nodes in a dynamic network, the approach captures the simultaneous, reciprocal, and multidirectional relationships that shape classroom emotional exchanges. This perspective addresses key theoretical challenges by revealing how teachers’ emotion regulation strategies and student engagement co-evolve through complex feedback loops. Incorporating network approach into research on teacher emotion regulation offers a nuanced and systemic understanding of emotional dynamics in the classroom. This advancement not only deepens theoretical insight but also informs the development of more adaptive interventions to better support both teachers and students. Teams link https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_NzY5NWMwM2EtYjVkNy00NDA4LWE4ZmEtNDFlYzM3Y2Y1ZTgw%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22cc95de1b-97f5-4f93-b4ba-fe68b852cf91%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%224003529c-f252-47aa-8e83-ce1eff28df4a%22%7d
While public concern about climate change is growing, individuals often face information frictions and psychological barriers to pro-environmental behaviour. In this study, we design and test an edutainment intervention that aims at promoting more sustainable food consumption through a serious video game. Different game versions either link player actions to visual impacts on the in-game environment or to social feedback through interactions with non-player characters, or both. To evaluate the effects on real-life attitudes, knowledge, and behaviour, we conduct an online survey experiment (n = 4,034 UK adults) that embeds an incentivised grocery shopping task. Compared to subjects who played a control version without educational content, treated subjects purchase food products that are around 20% more environmentally sustainable immediately after playing the game. In a follow-up survey several weeks later, effects are still strongly significant at around 8-10%. These behavioural changes are driven both by improved knowledge about environmental impacts of food as well as an increase in pro-environmental attitudes. Effects are particularly persistent among individuals with lower baseline environmental attitudes.
Dr Lidwell-Durnin will be discussing his forthcoming book, _Explaining Famine in the British Empire_. The book retraces efforts to observe and measure the famines and food shortages that struck India and Britain at the close of the eighteenth century, and it explores how these crises and episodes of scarcity gave rise to scientific efforts to explain and quantify 'famine.' Focusing on the time period between the Bengal famine of 1770 and the food shortages in Britain in 1800, it explores the development of the concepts of 'artificial scarcity' (and 'artificial famine'), and how statistical science and philosophy played a role in the naturalization of famine. The talk will focus in particular on the formation of Britain's Board of Agriculture and its efforts to expand its own influence within Bengal and Madras. *Dr John Lidwell-Durnin* is a lecturer in the History of Science specializing in the intersection of agricultural science and environmental history. His research delves into how scientific practices have shaped societies' responses to challenges like food security and ecological change. With a diverse array of publications spanning leading historical journals (_The Historical Journal, British Journal for the History of Science) and scientific outlets (_Global Food Security_), his work bridges disciplinary divides. He is currently working to develop the History of Entomology, and his most recent publications have been working to strengthen our understanding of how entomological science has both contributed and responded to the environmental costs of agriculture and meeting the subsistence needs of the planet.
Dr Zilu Liang - Distinct roles of hippocampus and neocortex in compositional generalization Dr Alex Lau-Zhu - Disrupting “flashbacks" and “flashforwards": Translating experimental psychopathology for youth mental health’
The seminar will be followed by drinks.
This event showcases the work of Professor Maia Chankseliani and Prof Velda Elliott, following the award of their professorships in 2025 by The University of Oxford. The schedule for the event will be: 5pm: Welcome Address 5.10pm: Lecture by Professor Maia Chankseliani and Q&A 5.55pm: Lecture by Professor Velda Elliott and Q&A 6.40pm: Drinks reception --- Professor Chankseliani will deliver her lecture titled “Seeing Otherwise: International Higher Education and the Possibility of Change”. This inaugural lecture examines international higher education as a formative process that reshapes how individuals learn to judge, act, and remain engaged in public and institutional life. Drawing on a large global body of qualitative research with returnees, it asks how experiences of international study are later carried into contexts marked by constraint. The lecture argues that international higher education works less through transfer or measurable impact than through formation, cultivating comparative judgement and sustained engagement. It introduces the concept of presence to explain how learning abroad becomes consequential after return, even when systemic change is slow or resisted. --- Professor Elliott will deliver her paper titled “Considering context through Shelley’s ‘England 1819’, or, How to Murder a Poem and Get Away With It.” In this paper I use the example Shelley’s (fairly obscure) ‘England in 1819’ to explore how we think about context when analysing and interpreting poems. The current assessment objectives for GCSE English Literature include AO3: ‘Show understanding of the relationships between texts and the contexts in which they were written’ (DfE, 2013, p.6). As well as playing whack-a-mole the historical allusion, I will consider the types of context that illuminate or obscure the poem and its meaning, and think about how and when we should be introducing context in the English classroom, drawing on Barbara Bleiman’s metaphor of ‘door-opening knowledge’ (2020). It is all too easy to murder a poem with context: the question is whether we really can get away with it.
Deliberative politics versus the Internet: is technology creating a democratic deficit? Constitutions like the US’s were deliberately designed to slow down decision-making and put ‘grit in the system’ (and England’s did so organically). Tech can speed things up dramatically with real-time polling and electronic voting, and facilitates a huge increase in immediate voter-to-legislator contact. Is that a boon for good decision-making or a challenge? Are there implications for parties and parliaments?
Week 8 Monday 9th March 5.15pm 10.019 Chris Pittard, University of Portsmouth ‘Arthur Conan Doyle and Cornwall’
The subject of our 2026 Manchester Lecture will be the Worthingtons, the Manchester-based family firm of architects that was responsible for designing and building the main college quad between 1889 and 1893, as well as many other buildings in Oxford and the North of England – and whose founder, Thomas Worthington, was a committed social reformer. William Whyte, Professor of Social and Architectural History at the University of Oxford and a Fellow at St John's College, will deliver the lecture.
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
R Code Clinic: Variant Annotation Using Bioconductor Tuesday 10 March, 9:00 – 10:00 am OxPop/BDI Seminar room 1 Facilitator – Dr. Ana-Marija Krizanac This hands-on training session will introduce participants to variant annotation workflows using the Bioconductor project in R. The session will begin with an overview of key concepts in variant annotation, including genomic ranges, variant file formats, and commonly used annotation resources. Participants will afterwards work through practical examples using real-world data. By the end of this course, you'll have hands-on experience with: Through guided coding exercises, participants will learn how to import and manipulate variant data, map variants to genes and genomic features, and enrich variant calls with biological and functional annotations using Bioconductor packages such as VariantAnnotation, GenomicRanges, and annotation databases. Emphasis will be placed on understanding Bioconductor data structures and applying reproducible workflows. Pre requisite: Participants should ideally have basic familiarity with the R programming language; please bring your own device. Pre-Course Preparation – software required – Rstudio, BiocManager should be installed prior to the session. Registration - https://forms.office.com/e/KQuAZ57srR?origin=lprLink
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; save a search and document it. Intended audience: medicine and NHS; researcher and research student
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
TBC Teams link: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/3825967966058?p=oaa4boDA3tu5ZnqMja
Bio: Tom Bearpark is a PhD candidate in Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy, advised by Professor Michael Oppenheimer. Tom is an interdisciplinary environmental economist who develops and applies statistical methods to quantify the socio-economic impacts of climate change. His dissertation research includes an econometric study of the mortality consequences of urban flooding in Mumbai, an interdisciplinary comparison of approaches to modelling climate-driven migration, and a methodological paper proposing new criteria for selecting time controls in climate impact studies. Before coming to Princeton, Tom was a pre-doctoral fellow at the Climate Impact Lab at the University of Chicago, and worked for two years as an economist at the UK government’s energy regulator. He holds an undergraduate degree in Economics and Philosophy from the London School of Economics, and an MPhil in Economic Research from the University of Cambridge. Abstract: Rainfall and flooding frequently disrupt the lives of urban residents worldwide, posing significant public health risks. Rapid urbanisation is exposing larger and more vulnerable populations to flooding, while climate change intensifies rainfall patterns and rising sea levels impair drainage systems. Despite the growing recognition and urgency of these hazards, the health impacts of rainfall remain poorly understood, and those of sea level rise are entirely unquantified. Here, we estimate the mortality consequences of rainfall in one of the world’s largest cities – Mumbai, India. We integrate high-resolution data on rainfall, tides, and mortality, to analyse how unmanaged rainfall and its interaction with tidal dynamics contribute to urban health risks. We find that rainfall causes more than 8% of Mumbai’s deaths during the monsoon season, and that more than 80% of this burden is borne by slum-residents. Children face the biggest increase in mortality risk from rainfall, and women face a greater risk than men. Additionally, we demonstrate that mortality risk from rainfall increases sharply during high tides and use this relationship to evaluate how rising sea levels could amplify rainfall-induced mortality in the absence of adaptation. Our findings reveal that the mortality impacts of rainfall are an order of magnitude larger than is documented by official statistics, highlighting the urgent need for investment in improved drainage, sanitation, and waste management infrastructure. Join the meeting online: https://shorturl.fm/HRHIm
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.
The Production of Value: Metrology, Land Revenue, and the State in Colonial India, 1820-1900 Shankar Nair (Oxford) The mapping of India has long been viewed as an instrument of colonial governmentality and control. In this view, scientific survey and map-making legitimised British territorial possession and extraction, presenting an image of imperial rule at once enlightened and powerful. More recently, historians of science have called for a greater focus on local contributions to colonial cartography, emphasising the labour and knowledge of the ‘go-between’ in the circulation of scientific knowledge and the often-imperfect manifestation of science-making on the ground. The focus in all these studies has been on grand surveys, notably The Great Trigonometrical Survey of the nineteenth century, and on particular scientific innovations. This paper, part of the AHRC-funded ‘Colonial Standards’ project at History of Science Museum (HSM) Oxford, looks instead at the ideas and practices of land surveying in the nineteenth century that underpinned a vital function of the British colonial state: the land revenue system. The largest single source of colonial revenue, the land tax has long been a contentious issue in Indian economic and social history. Yet, little is known of the social, material, and political-economic considerations of this system, the techniques used to determine value, and the interaction of this cadastral knowledge with local forms of power and ordering such as caste. Using the scientific instrument collections at HSM Oxford and archival materials, the paper argues that an engagement with the material and social practice of land surveying provides fresh insight into the making of the colonial state and the lasting entanglement of land and power in India. My research focuses on the social and economic history of science and technology and its relation to the history of empire in South Asia in the 19th and 20th century. I am particularly interested in agricultural and rural industrial production, and the history of scientific and commercial standardisation in a transnational and comparative perspective. I am currently a Linda Hall Library Fellow in the History of Science and Technology (2025-26). I previously worked as a Lecturer in the History of Science and Technology at King’s College London (2024-25) and co-convened the Centre for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine (CHoSTM) during this period. The Big Sequence: chronology and the pan-Africanisms of the twentieth century Rachel King (UCL) During the mid-twentieth century archaeology on the African continent was fixated on producing chronological sequences of artefacts and dirt: elements that held the key to a comprehensive picture of the continent's deep past. This recognition catalysed an unprecedented project to collate a continent's worth of distinct sequences, excavated under varying paradigms by different research teams in various languages, with an ambition of presenting the first scientific pan-African archaeology: an Atlas and accompanying Lexicon of African Prehistory. While this archaeological project did not explicitly align itself with other contemporary pan-African politics, it had to contend with these amidst the rapidly changing landscape of the independence period. In particular, the ultimate pariah status of the apartheid government - representing the country with one of the best-documented human fossil chronologies on the continent - forced conversations about the limits of scientific cooperation, with fractures ultimately forming between African and Euro-American archaeologists. This seminar explores how aspirations of organising time without borders in Africa's deep past confronted other forms of solidarity and resistance, and led to a reckoning in archaeology's purpose on the continent. Rachel King is an inter-disciplinary scholar specialising in the study of the recent past in southern Africa. Her most recent publications include her 2025 book The Neoliberalisation of Heritage in Africa (Cambridge University Press), her 2024 co-edited textbook Methods and Methodologies in Heritage Studies (UCL Press), and several forthcoming articles on the impacts of South Africa's framework for protecting the past after 30 years of democracy.
This paper offers a comparative analysis of the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus in the Gospel of Luke alongside analogous eschatological motifs in the Qur’an, situating both within the broader landscape of religious exchange in Late Antiquity. Focusing on the Qur’anic articulation of impassable barriers between the blessed and the damned, as well as between the living and the dead, the study examines three key passages (i.e., Qur’an 7:41–53, Qur’an 23:99–115, and Qur’an 57:10–24) to explore how Christian narrative themes are received, reworked, and reinterpreted within the Qur’anic discourse. Central to the analysis is the Qur’an’s use of distinct yet interrelated concepts of barriers (aʿrāf, sūr, and barzakh), which resonate with the Lukan depiction of an unbridgeable chasm between the righteous and the condemned. Building on earlier observations by Geoffrey Parrinder and Emran El-Badawi regarding stylistic and thematic correspondences between the Qur’an and Christian texts, as well as the work of Tommaso Tesei and George Archer on the Qur’an’s engagement with extra-biblical traditions, this study argues that such parallels reflect a complex intertextual environment rather than simple borrowing or replication. Although the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus is not explicitly referenced in the Qur’an, the recurrence of comparable motifs points to a nuanced engagement with pre-Islamic traditions familiar to the Qur’an’s audience. In particular, the analysis of Qur’an 7 reveals an awareness of Gospel imagery, including motifs such as the camel passing through the eye of a needle. The diversity of Qur’anic terminology for barriers further suggests interaction with multiple streams of tradition or layered interpretive processes operative in Late Antiquity rather than direct textual dependence. The paper concludes that the motifs associated with the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus likely belonged either to a broader pre-Gospel tradition that continued to circulate into the Qur’anic milieu, or to a constellation of derivative traditions that evolved from the parable itself. By tracing these intertextual dynamics, the study illuminates how the Qur’an participates in a wider dialogue of religious narratives, offering valuable insight into the reception and transformation of Gospel themes among early Islamic and Arabian communities.
Is nuclear conflict manageable, or does any use of nuclear weapons inexorably push states toward escalation? And how do these dynamics differ between nuclear- and conventional-armed attacks? Many theorists have considered these questions, but empirically answering them is difficult given the absence of historical data. We address this challenge by fielding a pre-registered experimental survey of American adults designed around a series of hypothetical vignettes featuring attacks on the United States. The vignettes vary in the targets struck (conventional military installations, nuclear facilities, or civilian facilities) and the means of attack (conventional munitions or nuclear weapons). We then measure preferences over concession versus retaliation, the form and intensity of retaliation (including nuclear options), and respondents’ stated reasons for and against nuclear use. To probe mechanisms, we capture emotional reactions and broader situational assessments using both closed-ended measures and free-response prompts. By assessing the public’s response to various attacks across a range of targets, our study identifies what actions are more (less) likely to generate public pressure for (de)escalation. And by probing the emotional reactions and logic evinced by respondents, our study offers potential insights into the affective microfoundations underlying nuclear conflict dynamics. Dr Lauren Sukin is the John G. Winant Associate Professor in US Foreign Policy in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford, as well as a Professorial Fellow in Nuffield College at the University of Oxford. Dr Sukin's research examines historical and contemporary challenges in international security, focusing particularly on the role of technology—including nuclear weapons—in alliances. Dr Sukin is an Affiliate at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), a Nonresident Scholar in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and a Fellow at Charles University's Peace Research Centre Prague. She holds a PhD and MA from the Department of Political Science at Stanford University and ABs in political science and literary arts from Brown University. Dr Sam Seitz is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Oxford's Department of Politics and International Relations and a Deterrence Futures Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. He was previously a Stanton Nuclear Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT, where he was affiliated with the Security Studies Program. De Seitz’ work primarily concerns the causes and consequences of states' military procurement choices and the effect of these choices on alliance politics. He is especially interested in the way that procurement choices relate to issues of nuclear strategy and the role that status and prestige concerns play in shaping military force postures.
I will be presenting part of my research on anti-colonial dissent in 1884–1915 German Southwest Africa, present-day Namibia. Drawing on and critically engaging with the archives of the German colonial administration in Windhoek and Berlin, the project explores how labour was a key site of both collective and everyday resistance to German colonial rule. One strand of the project sheds light on the exploitation of Namibian labour in railway construction and mining. Here, I discuss unstudied archival material on numerous workers’ strikes and their violent suppression, emphasising the sustained challenge of Namibians to colonial accumulation. A second strand turns to the exploitation of domestic labour, an arena crucial to the reproduction of empire, yet usually marginalised in accounts of colonial expropriation. My research traces the varied ways in which Namibian women, forced to perform domestic labour in the German home, resisted their oppressors through fugitivity, work refusal, and troublemaking. Methodologically, this project is grounded in an approach of reading against the archival grain, challenging the epistemic violence of colonial archives and stretching their interpretive boundaries to trace otherwise obscured voices and practices of resistance.
Personal correspondence and early modern diplomacy: information flow and career strategies in the correspondence of Jacob and Peter von Stählin (1770s-1780s) and a presentation of the new volume Vladislav Rjéoutski et al. (eds.), _Translation in Early Modern Diplomacy_ (London, 2026)
In this talk, Arthur Rose (Exeter University) will revisit earlier work on the reception of Franz Kafka’s part ownership of an asbestos factory to think about the sights, sounds and textures that Kafka’s biography and works conjure up. This hybrid event is organised by the AHRC-funded project Kafka’s Transformative Communities and all are welcome.
To follow
TBC
Does public sector employment make graduates less likely to join anti-regime protests? Recent scholarship argues yes, with consequences for bottom-up democratization in late-developing economies with expansive public and higher education sectors. This paper examines whether this thesis travels to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). We find that well-educated public sector employees were actually more likely to join anti-regime protests in Algeria and Egypt, while we estimate null effects for state dependency in Lebanon, Iraq, Sudan, and Tunisia. Supplementary analyses show that educated public sector employees who protested in Algeria – a critical case for the state-dependency argument – prioritized political rights and grievances over economic considerations. Importantly, these preferences were not visible in surveys from the pre-protest period. The findings put bounds on the external validity of the state middle class thesis, caution against inferring future protest participation from attitudinal data, and identify political conditions when the state middle class may suddenly become more protest prone.
All College members and colleagues are invited to the JRF Research Showcase, a fantastic opportunity to gain insights into the research activities of early career researchers at Kellogg. Junior Research Fellows (JRFs) are an important part of Kellogg College’s academic community. Together, they represent an impressive breadth of disciplinary expertise and research interests, from the sciences and social sciences to the humanities and beyond. Presenters will share not only what they do, but why it matters. They’ll be telling us about the intellectual journey behind their research: the questions that drive them, the methods they use, and the insights their work offers. The aim is to inspire curiosity, invite constructive feedback, and build bridges across disciplines. Join us to be part of a rich and fascinating journey of multidisciplinary discovery with our JRFs. Each presentation will be no more than 10 minutes, with opportunities for questions with the researchers. The event will be followed by a drinks reception for networking and further conversations. Presenters to be announced shortly
The seminars will take place on Tuesdays during term time, from 5:00 to 6:30 p.m. at Corpus Christi College in Merton Street. Please ask the porters for directions. No registration is required. For more details: https://tolkien50.web.ox.ac.uk/event/tolkien-seminars-ht-2026
10 March (Week 8) Speakers TBC
10 March, 5.30pm (room 00.079, Schwarzman Centre) '"The Universal Vibration of Life": William Bartram's Swarm Ecology'
This Week's focus: Religion as a Site of Fragmentation, Unity, and Re-Articulation. Religious institutions, identities, and sacred space as sites of division and re-articulation. This reading group examines the political, geographic, economic, cultural, and linguistic fragmentations that have shaped Palestinian life over the past century, from the West Bank, Gaza, and the ’48 territories to the multiple Palestinian diasporas. By engaging with scholarship across history, political theory, and cultural studies, this reading group interrogates how these divisions have been produced, institutionalised, and normalised, and how they continue to shape Palestinian belongings, identities, and futures. Our aim is to consider both the unity that persists within fragmentation and the fragmentation that structures the very notion of Palestine. Central Question: How are ideas of Palestine and Palestinian collective identity shaped, challenged, and rearticulated under conditions of fragmentation? Structure: The group will convene biweekly throughout Hilary and Trinity Terms 2026, with each session lasting two hours
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.
*Please email "$":mailto:mori.reithmayr@history.ox.ac.uk to join the reading group mailing list.* *Session Theme: TBD*
TBC
Sudarshana Banerjee (University of St Andrews), Incorporation and Marginalization: Medical Knowledge-Making, Power, and the Politics of Knowledge Circulation during the Company Era This paper examines the contested nature of scientific and medical knowledge-making in colonial spaces and the complex politics of knowledge transmission beyond the colonial borders in the early nineteenth-century by focusing on the activities of George Playfair (1782–1846), an East India Company official and member of the Indian Medical Service. Playfair’s medical career in India, spanning from 1805 to 1842, was marked by active engagement with indigenous remedies and medical texts and efforts to incorporate them into Western medical practices. Recent scholarship on the transnational circulation of knowledge has emphasized the need to recognize the barriers to knowledge transmission. While earlier studies have focused on the movement of knowledge, they have often overlooked the role of the State and institutional structures in shaping what knowledge was allowed to circulate. Playfair’s career offers a lens through which to explore these frictions in medical knowledge circulation during the Company era. This paper analyzes two key moments: Playfair's attempt to introduce Mudar (powdered form of a plant abundantly found in various regions of India and utilized by native healers) into Western medicine as a remedy for various disruptive diseases like leprosy, and his English translation of the Taleef Shereef, an eighteenth-century Unani medical text (Playfair’s translation was published by the Calcutta Medical and Physical Society in 1833). I will contrast and interrogate the enthusiasm with which knowledge of Mudar was circulated and received in the British medical press with the relative silence surrounding the Taleef. I will demonstrate that while early nineteenth-century knowledge-making by Company officials within the Indian subcontinent was characterized simultaneously by processes of collaboration (albeit marked by asymmetrical relations of power) and erasure, the circulation and reception of this knowledge within the metropole and broader Empire were further shaped by concerns of imperial utility, commercial profitability and racial prejudice. Operating both at the level of the Company-State and metropolitan medical press these concerns ensured selective, calculated incorporation and systemic marginalization of indigenous medical knowledge. Rishabh Bajoria (National University of Singapore), High Developmentalism and Stubborn Ecologies: A Pre-History of the Indus Waters Treaty, 1948-54 This paper focuses on attempts by diplomatic elites to decontextualise the Indus rivers from the territory over which they flow—the disputed region of Kashmir. The most pronounced of such attempts was by David Lilienthal in 1951. Lilienthal was the former Chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority—an ambitious dam-building project designed to be the centrepiece of US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal in the US South—and his intervention reflected the same ‘high developmentalist’ ideal. I show how Lilienthal changed the future of Kashmir and the Indus waters by arguing that harnessing the waters for India and Pakistan’s postcolonial development required setting aside Kashmiri demands for self-determination. Lilienthal’s 1951 piece for Collier’s magazine set the agenda for World Bank-led negotiations between India and Pakistan during 1951-54. The paper draws on diplomatic archives from the US, UK, and India to trace how Lilienthal’s proposal to set up a Tennessee Valley Authority [‘TVA’] for the Indus could not be realised because even while the territory of Kashmir could be abstracted from the Indus waters in legal and political discourse, the ecology of Kashmir could not be disappeared from riparian politics altogether. Thus, it explores how the inability of regional and global elites to align recalcitrant ecologies with their developmental agendas opened up political possibilities for subalterns to assert self-determination over Kashmiri territory and waters. Six decades on, dams constructed under the Treaty continue to cause flooding in Kashmir, placing the environmental costs of New Delhi and Karachi’s development onto Kashmiris.
*Sudarshana Banerjee* (University of St Andrews) *Incorporation and Marginalization: Medical Knowledge-Making, Power, and the Politics of Knowledge Circulation during the Company Era* This paper examines the contested nature of scientific and medical knowledge-making in colonial spaces and the complex politics of knowledge transmission beyond the colonial borders in the early nineteenth-century by focusing on the activities of George Playfair (1782–1846), an East India Company official and member of the Indian Medical Service. Playfair’s medical career in India, spanning from 1805 to 1842, was marked by active engagement with indigenous remedies and medical texts and efforts to incorporate them into Western medical practices. Recent scholarship on the transnational circulation of knowledge has emphasized the need to recognize the barriers to knowledge transmission. While earlier studies have focused on the movement of knowledge, they have often overlooked the role of the State and institutional structures in shaping what knowledge was allowed to circulate. Playfair’s career offers a lens through which to explore these frictions in medical knowledge circulation during the Company era. This paper analyzes two key moments: Playfair's attempt to introduce Mudar (powdered form of a plant abundantly found in various regions of India and utilized by native healers) into Western medicine as a remedy for various disruptive diseases like leprosy, and his English translation of the Taleef Shereef, an eighteenth-century Unani medical text (Playfair’s translation was published by the Calcutta Medical and Physical Society in 1833). I will contrast and interrogate the enthusiasm with which knowledge of Mudar was circulated and received in the British medical press with the relative silence surrounding the Taleef. I will demonstrate that while early nineteenth-century knowledge-making by Company officials within the Indian subcontinent was characterized simultaneously by processes of collaboration (albeit marked by asymmetrical relations of power) and erasure, the circulation and reception of this knowledge within the metropole and broader Empire were further shaped by concerns of imperial utility, commercial profitability and racial prejudice. Operating both at the level of the Company-State and metropolitan medical press these concerns ensured selective, calculated incorporation and systemic marginalization of indigenous medical knowledge. *Rishabh Bajoria* (National University of Singapore) *High Developmentalism and Stubborn Ecologies: A Pre-History of the Indus Waters Treaty, 1948-54* This paper focuses on attempts by diplomatic elites to decontextualise the Indus rivers from the territory over which they flow—the disputed region of Kashmir. The most pronounced of such attempts was by David Lilienthal in 1951. Lilienthal was the former Chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority—an ambitious dam-building project designed to be the centrepiece of US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal in the US South—and his intervention reflected the same ‘high developmentalist’ ideal. I show how Lilienthal changed the future of Kashmir and the Indus waters by arguing that harnessing the waters for India and Pakistan’s postcolonial development required setting aside Kashmiri demands for self-determination. Lilienthal’s 1951 piece for Collier’s magazine set the agenda for World Bank-led negotiations between India and Pakistan during 1951-54. The paper draws on diplomatic archives from the US, UK, and India to trace how Lilienthal’s proposal to set up a Tennessee Valley Authority [‘TVA’] for the Indus could not be realised because even while the territory of Kashmir could be abstracted from the Indus waters in legal and political discourse, the ecology of Kashmir could not be disappeared from riparian politics altogether. Thus, it explores how the inability of regional and global elites to align recalcitrant ecologies with their developmental agendas opened up political possibilities for subalterns to assert self-determination over Kashmiri territory and waters. Six decades on, dams constructed under the Treaty continue to cause flooding in Kashmir, placing the environmental costs of New Delhi and Karachi’s development onto Kashmiris.
We all understand that knowledge shapes the fate of business and the growth of nations, but few of us are aware of the principles that govern its motion. The Infinite Alphabet unravels the laws describing the growth and diffusion of knowledge by taking you from a failed attempt to build a city of knowledge in Ecuador to the growth of China’s innovation economy. Through dozens of stories, you will learn why aircraft manufacturers in Italy began manufacturing scooters after the Second World War and how migrants like Samuel Slater shaped the industrial fabric of the United States. Knowledge is the secret to the wealth of nations. But to understand it, we must accept that it is not a single thing, but an ever-growing tapestry of unique ideas, experiences and received wisdom. An Infinite Alphabet that we are only beginning to fathom. César A. Hidalgo, will walk you through the “three laws” and the many principles that govern how knowledge grows, moves, and decays. By the end of this journey, you will understand why knowledge grows exponentially in the electronics industry and what mechanisms govern its diffusion across geographic borders, social networks, and professional boundaries. Together these principles will teach you how knowledge shapes the world. About the speaker: César A. Hidalgo is a Chilean-Spanish-American scholar, Professor at the Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), and head of the Center for Collective Learning (CCL), a multidisciplinary research laboratory with offices at TSE and at Corvinus University of Budapest. Hidalgo is known for developing methods to estimate economic complexity and relatedness, building several national economic data observatories (oec.world, datamexico.org, datasaudi.sa, etc.), and proposing the idea of augmented democracy. These contributions have been recognized with numerous awards including the 2018 Lagrange Prize and three Webby Awards. Hidalgo holds a PhD in Physics from the University of Notre Dame and is the author of four books, The Atlas of Economic Complexity, Why Information Grows, How Humans Judge Machines, and The Infinite Alphabet that explores the principles governing the growth, diffusion, and valuation of knowledge.
The Older Scots Reading Group is for people interested in literature produced in Scotland between 1375-1550. This is an incredibly rich period, featuring authors experimenting with form and language. The texts themselves are written in Older Scots – a language closely related to Middle English, but with some unique attributes. This reading group will provide a relaxed introduction to this period and language. This term we will focus on reading the Palyce of Honour, a dream vision poetry by Gavin Douglas that often draws parallels with the House of Fame. But is it purely derivative or is there something more subtle at work? Join us to find out! Please bring your own copy of the text if you can – the 2018 TEAMS METS edition by David Parkinson is recommended. No intensive preparation required. Both undergraduates and postgraduates are welcome and there are usually snacks. If you have any questions, contact megan.bushnell@ling-phil.ox.ac.uk.
About the series: This series will feature master classes, seminars, workshops and talks with Laura Rival, research collaborators and colleagues, throughout academic year 2025-2026. Beginning in Michaelmas term 2025, the theme for the term, in answer to the series question, was 'In Latin America, by Greening the State at the Top and from Below'. In Hilary term, the theme is 'By Knowing Nature Differently'. In Trinity term, the theme will be 'By Imagining a New Civilization and Building the Next Political Economic Order'.
Godfrey Stafford’s career as a physicist began with research in cosmic rays in the 1940s and he lived to see the discovery in 2012 of the Higgs boson at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. He made major contributions to the construction and exploitation of accelerators at the Rutherford Laboratory in the UK and was its Director from 1969 to 1981. During this period he oversaw the diversification of the Laboratory into the multi-disciplinary centre it is today. He was Master of St Cross College, Oxford from 1979 to 1987 and led the College as it settled into its new home on the Pusey House site. His tenure as Master was seen as transformational in several respects, and he maintained strong links with the College and its Fellowship throughout his subsequent retirement. His association with St Cross as Visiting Fellow, Master and then Honorary Fellow, spanned more than 40 years.
Godfrey Stafford’s career as a physicist began with research in cosmic rays in the 1940s and he lived to see the discovery in 2012 of the Higgs boson at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. He made major contributions to the construction and exploitation of accelerators at the Rutherford Laboratory in the UK and was its Director from 1969 to 1981. During this period he oversaw the diversification of the Laboratory into the multi-disciplinary centre it is today. He was Master of St Cross College, Oxford from 1979 to 1987 and led the College as it settled into its new home on the Pusey House site. His tenure as Master was seen as transformational in several respects, and he maintained strong links with the College and its Fellowship throughout his subsequent retirement. His association with St Cross as Visiting Fellow, Master and then Honorary Fellow, spanned more than 40 years. All the details and the weblinks to register for the lecture to attend in person or online are given on the webpage below: https://www.stx.ox.ac.uk/event/happ-lecture-godfrey-stafford-physicist-director-master
Join online via Microsoft Teams by clicking here: https://tinyurl.com/bdff6tpt
Achieving a more fair and equitable sharing of refugee protection responsibilities between states has been a perennial challenge of the global refugee regime. The Refugee Convention did not codify a legal obligation of responsibility sharing and as a result any assistance to refugee host states remains voluntary. This responsibility sharing gap has in turn negatively impacted on the quality of refugee protection and on interstate relations by exacerbating existing inequalities undermining the fairness of the international refugee law regime. This book offers a pragmatic yet principled solution to the responsibility sharing gap. It puts down a detailed proposal for the long-resisted UN Protocol on Responsibility Sharing which would codify a light package of responsibility sharing obligations by requiring states to contribute to refugee protection and solutions under a framework of common but differentiated responsibilities based on capabilities. Building on the Global Compact on Refugees and drawing inspiration from international climate change law, the book makes a compelling case for further multilateral law making. About the speaker Elizabeth Mavropoulou, Ph.D. (2021), is a Lecturer in International Law at the University of Westminster. Elizabeth researches and publishes in the fields of international refugee and human rights law. Her research has focused on international cooperation on refugees, externalisation of asylum and the protection of human rights at sea. She had held visiting lecturer positions at University of Westminster and at the School of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London. Before joining academia full time, she worked eights years for a human rights NGO, leading its research and advocacy work and overseeing its programmes. She currently sits on the advisory board of the NGO Human Rights at Sea, as Non-Executive Director (NED).
To mark the centenary of Rilke’s death there will be a series of Oxford Centenary Readings held in the Queen’s College in HT 2025. These will be informal papers with plenty of discussion, about one poem or a handful of poems, that offer close readings and new insights. Papers will be in English and English translations will be provided for all poems and quotations (except for the session in week 4 with the visiting poets) making these sessions accessible to anyone with an interest in this remarkable poet and poetry in general.
Join Ngaire Woods, Dean of the Blavatnik School, in conversation with Devi Sridhar, author of How Not to Die (Too Soon) - The Lies We’ve Been Sold and the Policies That Can Save Us. In her latest book, Devi Sridhar asks if you have ever questioned why, despite the avalanche of self-help books and optimisation hacks, we remain embroiled in multiple global health crises. Populations worldwide are gaining life-shortening excess weight (even in poorer countries), and water contamination is rampant (even in richer countries). In such dire circumstances, a gratitude journal won’t help. She writes that the stark reality is that we’ve been sold a monumental lie. The obsession with individual health optimisation is a distraction from the real game-changer: holding governments accountable for policies that can significantly extend lifespans. How Not to Die (Too Soon) is a vital, transformative guide that shifts the focus from individual responsibility to societal accountability. It’s time to demand the changes that will save lives. Devi Sridhar is a writer, broadcaster and world-leading expert in public health and wellbeing. She is Professor and Chair of Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh and has advised the WHO, UNICEF, UNESCO and the Scottish, UK and German governments. Devi appears regularly on ITV and Channel 4 News, has a weekly column in the Guardian, tweets to over 300,000 followers, and recently became a certified Level 3 Personal Trainer. Her first book, Preventable, was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week and a Sunday Times bestseller.
We are an interdisciplinary reading group which focuses on the social science, history, and theology of demons, the Devil, and supernatural evil as they relate to politics, identity formation, and social conflicts. Each week we will examine one academic paper or book chapter on these topics, gaining familiarity with subjects such as: the psychology of dehumanization, the conceptual development of the term “demon,” and contemporary political demonologies like QAnon. Hilary Term 2026, Thursdays from 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM Weeks 1,3,4,5,6,7,8: 21 St Giles (Kendrew Quad) Teaching Room G4 Week 2: 14 St Giles (next door to the Lamb & Flag) Seminar Room H Please contact Scott Maybell for the readings or for any questions: scott.maybell@sjc.ox.ac.uk
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
Lesson of the week, clinical cases and research. All clinical and academic staff and students welcome. Coffee and Tea will be served.
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 and NHS; researcher and research student
The field of movement ecology has benefited hugely from tags that allow animals to be tracked as they use the landscape, and such information has been vital to many conservation efforts. However, tags for tracking bees are either too heavy for the study of most species, too expensive, or are unable to function in complex environments, precluding study of bees in many natural habitats. We have developed and deployed a prototype landscape-scale bee tracking method using rotating Bluetooth transmitters placed across a landscape and <40mg tags attached to foraging bees. Power constraints cause uncertain and noisy data, so a Gaussian Process prior is placed on the flight path, incorporating our assumptions around possible flight paths made by insect foragers. Doubly stochastic variational inference is used, which results in ‘probabilistic triangulation’ of the probable flight path the bee took. The system has successfully tracked and inferred the movement path of foraging Bombus terrestris workers through a complex outdoor landscape. Preliminary work has begun on integrating sensors including photodiodes and accelerometers with the tags to infer behaviour alongside position, enabling biologging of flying insects for use in fields such as energetics. Bio-sketch: Mike Smith is a senior lecturer in Machine Learning in the School of Computer Science, at the University of Sheffield. He currently works on developing new methods for tracking small animals at a variety of scales, from lab to landscape. His focus is how Bayesian machine learning can be employed to extract as much information as possible from situations where there are substantial limitations on energy- and compute-. He is also leading a Leverhulme grant that includes the development of novel hardware, including microbatteries and on-board active learning.
This week brings together members of WGQ (perhaps the MSt cohort in particular) and participants in the Archival Fragments, Experimental Modes Collective, reflecting on what we have learned methodologically, conceptually and theoretically across the series. *Contributors/Respondents:* Archival Fragments, Experimental Modes Sara Johnson (UC San Diego, and AFEM) will be here in person.
Abstract tbc ————————————————————————————————————————————— Speaker bio: Dr Liam Beiser-McGrath is an Associate Professor in International Social and Public Policy in the Department of Social Policy at the London School of Economics. ————————————————————————————————————————————— Booking is required for people outside of the Department of Social Policy and Intervention (DSPI). DSPI Members do not need to register
Professor Ellen Hazelkorn is Professor Emeritus, Technological University Dublin; Joint Managing Partner, BH Associates; and Joint Editor, Policy Reviews in Higher Education (http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rprh20/current). She has authored/co-authored over 200 peer-reviewed articles, policy briefs, books and book chapters, and delivered over 200 keynotes speeches. Ellen is internationally recognised for her writings and analysis of rankings and other forms of quality and transparency instruments, and on higher education and policy. Ellen was named one of the ‘top 2%’ of all scientists in 2020, when self-citations are excluded, on the list released by Elsevier/Scopus and Stanford University. She was placed 956th out of 70,063 scientists whose primary field was Education, ranking her in the top 1.3% in Education worldwide.
Japan and Germany have been the “Reluctant Warriors” among postwar democracies, limited in part by their “peace constitutions” and a significant subculture of antimilitarist sentiment. The first part of this talk will describe Japan’s earlier postwar development as a reluctant warrior under its “peace constitution” but also as a strategic player in the U.S.-Japan alliance. Former Prime Minister Abe's policies and the invasion of Ukraine by Russia brought about major recent changes under Prime Minister Kishida and now Prime Minister Takaichi. Following this, I will compare the similarities and differences between Japan and Germany, how far each has come despite the limitations of their peace constitutions, but in what ways their trajectories in the postwar have been somewhat similar but also in many ways quite different, and why?
To join online, please register in advance: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/WWqjr8SgT_WrzTodI65cdg
The DORMEME project investigates how early modern owners, readers, and users engaged with printed polyphonic music books, focusing on 1500–1545, when music printing introduced new modes of circulation alongside manuscript and oral transmission. This technological shift expanded and reshaped how individuals interacted with music books—as tools for performance and teaching, as collectable objects, and as sites of confessional negotiation. Our project undertakes a copy-based survey of surviving printed polyphonic books across European and North American collections, documenting marks of use and developing case studies that reveal how these books were used, altered, and understood. This paper presents the project’s first synthetic results. We outline a taxonomy of interventions—textual, musical, material, and paratextual—and consider them in relation to user motivations such as correction, performance facilitation, confessional adaptation, education, personalisation, and proof-reading. Drawing on detailed examples, we examine textual changes in religious motets, musical annotations including crosses, numbers, custodes, and barline-like dashes, and patterns of personalisation that illuminate different types of owners and users. We also address the distinctive role of the proof-reader as the “first reader,” whose interventions bridge production and use. Together, these findings show how annotations can reshape our understanding of early modern musical practice and book culture.
*To attend online via Microsoft Teams, please email "$":mailto:ian.archer@history.ox.ac.uk*
We are joined by Alister McGrath, speaking on a cross-section of some of his most well known areas, Science and Religion, and C.S Lewis. Interviewed by Ruth Jackson co-host of Premier Unbelievable's The CS Lewis Podcast , Alister will be speaking to us about his newest publication, followed by a time of audience questions, refreshments, and selling initial release copies of the book. About the event Alister McGrath’s Science and Religion in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis offers the first comprehensive exploration of Lewis’s perspectives on the interplay between science and religion. Written by a globally recognized expert on both Lewis and the science-religion dialogue, this work offers an original and penetrating analysis of Lewis’s views on the roles that science and religion play in humanity’s quest for meaning and significance. This study emphasizes the vital, constructive role of imagination—not just the analytical function of reason—in shaping an authentic “model of the universe.” It breaks new ground by investigating Lewis’s apologetic use of scientific concepts and methods, particularly the idea of identifying the “best explanation” or “best model” of our universe. This book serves as an essential introduction to a crucial yet often overlooked dimension of Lewis’s thought and its relevance to the life of faith today. The evening continues with a drinks reception, book sale and signing. All are welcome, and booking will be essential!
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.
Title and speaker to be announced 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 if you would like to attend online.
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 and NHS; taught student; researcher and research student
Everything you have been taught about Turing patterns is wrong! (Well, not everything, but qualifying statements tend to weaken a punchy first sentence). Turing patterns are universally used to generate and understand patterns across a wide range of biological phenomena. They are wonderful to work with from a theoretical, simulation and application point of view. However, they have a paradoxical problem of being too easy to produce generally, whilst simultaneously being heavily dependent on the details. In this talk I demonstrate how to fix known problems such as small parameter regions and sensitivity, but then highlight a new set of issues that arise from usually overlooked issues, such as boundary conditions, initial conditions, and domain shape. Although we’ve been exploring Turing’s theory for longer than I’ve been alive, there’s still life in the old (spotty) dog yet.
This seminar lecture addresses some profound challenges facing post-war reconstruction in Syria after more than a decade of destructive conflict. Entire neighbourhoods, towns, and in some cases, cities were reduced to rubble. Millions of people were forcibly displaced both internally and externally. Approximately 2.2 million people resided in camps, of whom around 1.2 million remain today. In parallel, an estimated 2.5 million residential units were damaged or destroyed to varying degrees. A current governmental priority is to ensure that no one continues to live in camps, placing the return of displaced populations as a central mission. However, restoring housing and livelihoods requires unprecedented reconstruction at multiple scales, ranging from repairing individual homes and basic infrastructure to rebuilding entire towns and cities. While the presentation itself focuses primarily on housing and reconstruction dynamics, the discussion session will engage participants in reflecting on how these processes impact traffic, transport, and mobility systems—already under strain from both long-standing and post-war conditions—and in exploring policy directions and interventions that could steer reconstruction toward a more sustainable future.
As neuroscientists, we are accustomed to using biological reagents to manipulate neural activity and to discover brain functions. These reagents can be drugs, genetic tools, light-activated molecules, and so on. Their use has given us great insights in all areas of neuroscience. Visual neuroscientists have a additional advantage – another set of reagents: visual stimuli. By designing and implementing images and movies with particular properties based on the long and rich traditions of visual psychophysics, we have been able to identify and characterize brain circuits that process visual information about pattern, form, color, and motion. By using well chosen stimuli, we can draw strong conclusions about the brain mechanisms of visual information processing. Moreover, the widespread influence of visual neuroscience on systems neuroscience more broadly has shown that similar mechanisms play important roles in other brain systems. SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY Tony Movshon studies vision and visual perception, using a multidisciplinary approach that combines biology, behavior and theory. His work explores the way that the neural networks in the brain compute and represent the form and motion of objects and scenes, the way that these networks contribute to perceptual judgments and to the control of visually guided action, and the way that normal and abnormal visual experience influence their development in early life. Movshon was born and raised in New York, received his BA and PhD from Cambridge University, and then joined the Department of Psychology at New York University in 1975. In 1987 he became founding Director of NYU’s Center for Neural Science. Among his honors are the Young Investigator Award from the Society for Neuroscience, the Rank Prize in Optoelectronics, the António Champalimaud Vision Award, and the Karl Spencer Lashley Award from the American Philosophical Society. He is a Member of the US National Academy of Sciences, a Foreign Member of the Royal Society, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and of the Association for Psychological Science.
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.
Week Eight (13 March, Old Library) Primary: Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time, Chapters 19-20 Supplementary: Sara Ahmed, ‘A Killjoy Manifesto’ (2017)
Seminar followed by Q&A and drinks - attend in person or join online - all welcome Abstract: The relationship between forests and rainfall has intrigued humankind for millennia and has been a focus of scientific inquiry for more than a century. Forests strongly influence land–atmosphere exchanges of energy, water, and trace gases, giving rise to complex climate interactions that are still not fully understood. In this talk, I will present recent advances in our understanding of the mechanisms through which forests shape climate across local to regional scales. Rapid deforestation across the tropics is transforming land surfaces, altering regional temperature and rainfall patterns, and affecting the livelihoods of millions of people. By combining observational datasets with climate and Earth system models, we quantify how tropical deforestation modifies local and regional climate. We then use this improved process-level understanding to assess the impacts of deforestation on human health, agriculture, and fire activity. Our results demonstrate that tropical deforestation has profound consequences for local climate and public health. Beyond its role in driving global climate change, tropical deforestation emerges as a major and immediate public health hazard. A clearer understanding of this hazard may help broaden societal consensus around the value of tropical forest conservation. Biography: Dominick Spracklen is Professor of Biosphere-Atmosphere Interactions at the University of Leeds. His research focuses on understanding how land-use change, particularly tropical deforestation, influences climate, air quality, and human health. Using a combination of observations and Earth system modelling, his work has helped quantify the impacts of forests on rainfall, temperature, fire, and public health across the tropics. He works in partnership with organisations worldwide to support evidence-based and community-led approaches to nature recovery. He serves on the Conservation Advisory Panel of the World Land Trust. In the UK, he leads the Upper Duddon Landscape Recovery and Restoring Hardknott Forest projects, sits on the steering group of Wild Ingleborough, and is a Trustee of the John Muir Trust.
Please join the Oxford Medieval Manuscripts Group (OMMG) for a lecture by Julian Harrison, Curator of pre-1600 Historical Manuscripts at the British Library. Dr Harrison will be presenting on Sir Robert Cotton and Oxford. This event is free and open to the public.
TRAVELS THROUGH PREHISTORIC SPAIN Professor Gary Lock (Emeritus Fellow) Spain is a large country with many different landscapes presenting a wide range of prehistoric monuments. This talk will be a chronological review of the main monument types covering most of Spain together with some background information. Included will be the cave paintings of Cantabria (could Neanderthals have started them?) and the castros of Asturias (were Iron Age people fond of saunas?). Some sites are truly remarkable like the scenes within Levantine art and the settlement of Los Millares. Other categories of site are interesting for their variation, like the thousands of dolmen which occur all over Spain both in large cemeteries and as isolated individuals. So, if you only know Spain through beaches and the Costas, now is your chance to dig deeper. Tea, coffee, and biscuits provided from 5.00pm. No booking required
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
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; taught student; 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
Carter Group Speaker(s): TBC Title(s): TBC Band Group Speaker: Lydia Jennings Title(s): Does malaria parasite genetic variation affect vaccine efficacy?
A showcase of recent innovations in surgical practice and policy. For surgically inclined students, trainees and consultants. Save the date. Tickets available in December 2025. Call for abstracts for posters and presentations will open in December 2025.
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.
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.
Lesson of the week, clinical cases and research. All clinical and academic staff and students welcome. Coffee and Tea will be served.
The Graupera lab takes advantage of the PI3K pathway as a paradigm to understand how intracellular signalling pathways regulate vessel morphogenesis, and how this knowledge can be translated into therapeutic opportunities for diseases characterized by aberrant vessel growth. Our research has identified key and selective roles of several members of the PI3K pathway, including PI3Ka, PI3Kb, PTEN, and PI3K-C2b (J Exp Med, Nat Commun, Clin Cancer Res, Sci Transl Med, Circulation, Nature Metabolism, EMBO Mol Med, Sci Sig). Over the last decade, PI3Kα/PIK3CA has been recognised as a master regulator of EC biology. M Graupera has dedicated more than 20 years to studying this isoform in ECs. These discoveries span from: (1) the selective and cell-autonomous requirement of PI3Ka in developmental angiogenesis (Graupera et al. Nature 2008); (2) the contribution of PI3Ka in tumour angiogenesis (Soler et al. JEM 2013); (3) the understanding of the primary cell biological function of PI3Ka in angiogenic ECs (Angulo-Urarte et al. Nat Commun 2018); (4) the discovery that PIK3CA is mutated in the embryonic ECs, leading to venous malformations (Castillo et al. Sci Trasl Med 2016); (5) the PIK3CA-dependency to growth factor for pathogenesis (Kobialka et al. Embo Mol Med 2022). We have published a very comprehensive review on PIK3CA mutations in congenital disorders (Angulo-Urarte et al. NCVR 2022). Together, these observations have represented a breakthrough in the field, capitalizing on the repurposing of PI3K for these diseases. The Graupera lab works in close collaboration with paediatric clinicians at Hospital Sant Joan de Déu, Barcelona, to apply her discoveries in clinical practice to treat these patients. About Mariona Graupera: I am a vascular biologist with expertise in signalling. I have been trained in several institutions, including the University of Barcelona, the Hospital Clinic de Barcelona, the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, and the Bart’s Cancer Institute in London. In 2009 I established my lab as an independent investigator at d’Investigació Biomèdica de Bellvitge (IDIBELL) funded by the Ramon y Cajal program. In February 2021, I joined the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute as Group leader. In June 2022, I was elected President of the European Vascular Biology Organization (EVBO), and I served as a resident until June 2025. In January 2023, I was appointed ICREA Research Professor.
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
Applications are now open for Oxford Spring School in Advanced Research Methods 2026! Apply now: https://cvent.me/0EaK99 This renowned social science methods course will take place from Monday 23 March to Friday 27 March 2026, in both in-person and online formats. Our week-long programme offers graduate students and researchers a unique opportunity to learn cutting-edge methods in social science. Oxford Spring School 2026 consists of eight courses, which will be taught over five days. Four of the courses will run concurrently in the mornings (09:30-12:30) and four courses will run concurrently in the afternoons (14:00-17:00). The full list of course options for 2026 are: Morning Courses: Qualitative Methods: Interviews & Fieldwork Machine Learning Causal Inference 1: Social Science Experiments Text Analysis Afternoon Courses: Data Analysis for the Social Sciences Large Language Models Advanced Qualitative Methods Causal Inference 2: Design Based Approaches Applicants can select any morning course and any afternoon course together, and those selecting two courses will receive a 20% discount on the second course fee. In-person attendees will have the opportunity to experience a formal dinner at Lady Margaret Hall. There is also the option to book accommodation at Lady Margaret Hall, with breakfast included (please see the Spring School website for room options and prices). Find and more and apply: https://www.politics.ox.ac.uk/spring-school
We are pleased to invite colleagues from outside the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences (NDS) to join us for the first half of the inaugural NDS Research Symposium on Monday 23 March 2026 at the Richard Doll Lecture Theatre, Old Road Campus. The morning session will feature a series of 15-minute research presentations from NDS early and mid-career researchers, showcasing the breadth and diversity of scientific work taking place within the department. This will be an excellent opportunity to hear about emerging research, spark new conversations, and explore potential collaborative links ahead of the interactive afternoon workshop reserved for NDS participants. Representatives from our sponsors 10x Genomics and ThermoFisher will be in attendance and available to discuss research needs with participants during the networking breaks. Please register to attend the NDS Research Symposium by Friday 13 February 2026.
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
Join Kieran Nevin from Student Welfare and Support Services as he shares his CI story, showing how making a complex process visible revealed risk, waste and opportunity. The session explores how data and customer insight were used to shape clear options, build a strong funding case and move confidently from analysis to action.
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.
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 and NHS; taught student; researcher and research student
How do you ensure that your research is credible, to yourself and others? Preregistration means specifying in advance your hypotheses, methods, and/or analyses for a study, in a time-stamped file that others can access. Many fields, including behavioural and medical sciences, are increasingly using preregistration or Registered Reports (where a journal accepts your study at preregistration phase, and guarantees to publish the results if you follow the registered plan). If you've never preregistered a study before (or even if you have!) it can be complicated and hard to do well. In this workshop, we will go over the 'what,' 'why,' and 'how' of preregistration, and after some practice exercises, you will start drafting your own preregistration. We will also discuss some of the common challenges of preregistration, and its limitations. After the course, you will be able to: describe what preregistration and Registered Reports are (and how they differ); explain the benefits (and drawbacks) of preregistration and Registered Reports; identify what types of research are most suited for preregistration and Registered Reports; recognise the common pitfalls in writing a preregistration; identify the logistics of preregistering: which format and platform to use; and demonstrate the ability to write an effective preregistration, with an appropriate balance of specificity and concision. Intended audience: researcher and research student; staff
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 second in a duo of courses (attendees should attend the Fundamentals course prior to Logistics) that will cover the logistics of researching, publishing, and locating open scholarship resources and tools at the University of Oxford. Subjects include: what is the Oxford University Research Archive? depositing work into ORA via Symplectic Elements; depositing data into ORA-data; applying for one of Oxford’s APC block grants; registering or connecting your ORCID; how to be included in the rights retention pilot; and locating and checking funder policies. Ideally the Fundamentals of open access course will have been attended. If you’re not in a position to attend this course you can find similar information in our e-learning package (Digital induction to open access (MSD)) to work through prior to attending Logistics. Intended audience: researcher and research student; staff
Lesson of the week, clinical cases and research. All clinical and academic staff and students welcome. Coffee and Tea will be served.
Puzzled by PICO? Daunted by databases? Baffled by Boolean? This one-hour introductory class will offer top tips and advice on how to find literature to answer a research question. No prior experience necessary! Together, we will break down a question into the PICO format, put together a structured search, and try it out in PubMed. By the end of this session, you will be able to: explain what structured searching is, and when to use it; break your research question down into searchable concepts; and make use of Boolean operators (ANDs/ORs) in your structured searches. Intended audience: medicine and NHS; taught student; researcher and research student
The Centre’s Annual Symposium is a celebration of the passion and commitment to cancer research that is shared across our community. Registration to attend the symposium will be open until Tuesday 3rd March 2026. With approximately 300 people attending each year, it provides an opportunity for our members to network and build new collaborations.
Are you baffled by open, confused by embargoes? Does the mention of the colour gold or green catapult you into a realm of perplexed irritation? Come to this session, where we’ll break down open access and all its many jargon terms, confusing publishing structures and hint at the advantages you can reap by publishing open. In this session you’ll learn: what is open access? Key terms – Gold, Green, Article Processing Charges; where to get more information and help; where to look for open access material; and useful tools to assist you in publishing open access. Intended audience: researcher and research student; staff
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.
To elucidate the virological characteristics of newly emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants in real-time, I launched a consortium, “The Genotype to Phenotype Japan (G2P-Japan)”. With the G2P-Japan consortium colleagues, we have revealed the virological characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 variants. In this talk, I briefly introduce the scientific activity of G2P-Japan consortium and our current study focusing on the dynamics of coronavirus infection and spread in Asian countries in the wild. I would like to discuss the possibility for international collaboration to prepare for the outbreaks and pandemic that will happen in the future. Bio Sketch: Dr. Kei Sato is a professor in the Institute of Medical Science, the University of Tokyo, Japan. In March 2010, he got a Ph.D. (Medicine) in Institute for Virus Research, Kyoto University, Japan. In April 2018, he started his own laboratory as a principal investigator in the Institute of Medical Science, the University of Tokyo, Japan. His laboratory is named "Systems Virology", and the aim of his laboratory is to expand and deepen the knowledge and method in virology. To investigate the dynamics of virus infections such as HIV and emerging viruses including SARS-CoV-2, he uses a variety of multiscale analytic techniques, such as experimental virology, bioinformatics and molecular phylogenetic. Such interdisciplinary investigations through experimental virology and other sciences will pioneer a new scientific field of infectious diseases. In January 2021, he launched a consortium, "The Genotype to Phenotype Japan (G2P-Japan)". https://www.ims.u-tokyo.ac.jp/SystemsVirology/eng-index.html
In this 60-minute online workshop you will be introduced to the methodologies and principles underpinning the conduct of literature searches for systematic reviews, scoping reviews and other evidence reviews. The session will cover: formulating a focused research question; preparing a protocol; developing a search strategy to address that research question; choosing appropriate databases and search engines; searching for grey literature and ongoing studies; managing your references in Covidence; and documenting and reporting your search. Intended audience: medicine and NHS; researcher and research student
We are thrilled to announce that registration is open for OGOS 2026, taking place on 16 April 2026. Building on the success of the last three years, another exceptional programme has been curated - this time delving into covering the breath of UGI benign and malignant disease! The 2026 faculty line up once again brings together world-class experts who will share cutting-edge insights and foster dynamic, thought-provoking discussions, promising unparalleled opportunities to learn, engage and get inspired. There are places for consultants, trainees, Allied Health Professionals, medical students and patient advocates and we encourage you all to register as soon as possible to secure your place before registration closes at midday on 27 March.
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; save a search and document it. Intended audience: medicine and NHS; researcher and research student
OxPeace invites applications for this year’s intensive two-day training workshop, Thurs 23 - Fri 24 April (0th Week, Trinity Term) in international and local negotiation, mediation, and diplomacy, covering core concepts, lessons learned from the field and hands-on exercises. The course will in particular focus on how to mediate conflict and negotiate with difficult actors, who resist agreements for mutual gain and disregard established international norms and principles. Participants gain an overview of the practice — and theory — of peace and conflict negotiation and mediation. They will develop an understanding of the core concepts of distributive and integrative negotiations and will explore the particularities of international political negotiations, including intercultural aspects and value conflicts. Lessons learned from real-life peace mediation cases will be presented. Several role-plays help participants fine-tune key techniques for reaching agreements that work in the real world. Participants will explore evidence-based conflict mediation and negotiation tools and apply them in a wide range of practical exercises. They will learn about best practices from real life international negotiation and peace mediation cases and will discuss the benefits and challenges of using these concepts when dealing with difficult actors. On Day 2, participants build on their learnings, applying the concepts to engaging with difficult actors. Interactive discussions and exercises support participants to anchor and apply these concepts further. Who can apply: Applications are invited from students, practitioners, and academics from the areas of government and diplomacy, civil society including business and faith-based organisations, NGOs, the media, and all with a particular interest in international and local negotiations, conflict mediation, peacemaking and peacebuilding. Trainers: Martin Albani and Valentin Ade. Martin Albani is the former Head of the Peace Mediation and Dialogue Sector in the Foreign Service of the European Union (European External Action Service). A career EU diplomat (currently on sabbatical) he has more than 15 years’ experience in foreign affairs, conflict resolution and peacebuilding. Martin regularly lectures and holds workshops on peacebuilding and international negotiations at different universities and for international organisations. Dr Valentin Ade teaches negotiation at the University of St. Gallen, for the UN, and for a wide range of businesses, government organisations, and civil society actors. He is the founder of The Negotiation Studio (www.negotiationstudio.com). Participation fee and practical details A subsidy from the Oxford Peace Research Trust allows the fee to be just £50 for students, £100 for academic staff, and £350 for practitioners, with the voluntary option to help subsidise the student fee by paying an additional £50 or £100.The fee includes teas, coffees, sandwich lunches, and informal dinner on Thursday, but please note that accommodation is not included. The course organisers are not able to help participants to find accommodation, which can be expensive in Oxford and needs to be booked well in advance. Application Please submit a short statement (up to 200 words) stating why you would like to participate in this workshop, together with your brief CV (including your present course of study if you are a student), any dietary requirements, and your full contact details (email, phone, and full postal address) to Assistant Organiser Thomas Chapman Thomas.chapman@balliol.ox.ac.uk, Please apply as soon as possible, and at latest by 1 April 2025. Early applications are encouraged. We will reply as quickly as possible to let you know if you have a place. We will send bank details for payment, and your place will be confirmed on reception of the fee. NB: Visas: Any applicant who needs a visa should request an invitation letter (email all necessary personal details to Thomas Chapman) and start applying, immediately on acceptance to the workshop.
Neil Henderson is an academic hepatologist and Chair of Tissue Repair and Regeneration at the University of Edinburgh. Neil’s group leverages cutting-edge approaches including the rapidly evolving field of single cell and spatial genomics to develop precision therapies for patients with fibrosis.
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
There is a growing literature on climate-policy mixes, much of which relies on ad hoc criteria and framings. A widespread, often implicit, assumption in this literature is that policy performance improves as more instruments are used. This lecture synthesizes existing approaches by systematically assessing their underlying criteria and rationales. It identifies policy-mix arguments distinguished by their focus on market failures, instrument synergies, multiple objectives, distinct policy levels, sector-specific challenges, intertemporal considerations, systemic coverage and effects, and policy processes. A comparative assessment is undertaken of the implications of these approaches for the policy mix, highlighting consistency, complementarity and incoherence. For balance, arguments in favour of keeping policy mixes simple are also considered, with particular emphasis on transparency, adaptive flexibility and international harmonisation. Finally, the links between policy-mix features and political feasibility are explored. The findings inform the formulation of an integrated framework and a set of guiding principles for designing climate-policy mixes.
Incumbency advantage in U.S. congressional elections has been a well-established feature of American politics. Since the late 2000s, this advantage has significantly declined, falling from a longstanding average of 10 percentage points to just 3, as we document using a regression discontinuity design. We show that this decrease was driven primarily by the expansion of mobile broadband. Both Democrats and Republicans were affected, though the decline was initially greater for the party holding the presidency at the time. Mobile broadband disadvantaged incumbents and benefited challengers. It improved voter knowledge of both, increased disapproval of incumbents, and enhanced challengers’ fundraising capacity.
We live in a world rich in data. This talk seeks to revive the philosophical tradition of cosmopolitanism to rethink some of the challenges associated with data governance. Although data cosmopolitanism can be applied to a wide variety of data types, this talk will focus on health data. Previously, I defined data cosmopolitanism as “a normative ideal aimed at addressing global data injustices, promoting data solidarity across the world, and fostering international cooperation on data initiatives to improve global health” (Rueda et al., 2025). This talk aims to broaden our understanding of the nature, benefits, and trade-offs of data cosmopolitanism. In doing so, it brings cosmopolitan philosophy into dialogue with global health ethics to examine the duties surrounding the collection, management, and sharing of data while considering the interests of the global community. In addition, I will critically contrast data cosmopolitanism with two competing positions: data nationalism and data regionalism. Unlike both approaches, data cosmopolitanism maintains that justice, solidarity, and cooperation are not confined to a specific country or region but should extend globally. Finally, the talk will conclude by addressing potential objections and acknowledging the limitations of data cosmopolitanism in a world marked by heated geopolitical tensions, a competitive global data economy, and the absence of robust global governance structures. This is a hybrid seminar. If you would like to register to join online, please complete the form below: https://forms.office.com/e/vUeSPgGnq8
We are delighted that the 2026 CPM Annual Lecture will be given by Professor Trish Greenhalgh; Personalised Medicine: A Primary Care Perspective. This will take place at the Maths Institute on Tuesday 28th April at 5:30pm. Trish Greenhalgh is Professor of Primary Care Health Sciences and Fellow of Green Templeton College at the University of Oxford. She studied Medical, Social and Political Sciences at Cambridge and Clinical Medicine at Oxford before training first as a diabetologist and later as an academic general practitioner. She has a doctorate in diabetes care and an MBA in Higher Education Management. She leads a programme of research at the interface between the social sciences and medicine, working across primary and secondary care. Her work seeks to celebrate and retain the traditional and the humanistic aspects of medicine and healthcare while also embracing the exceptional opportunities of contemporary science and technology to improve health outcomes and relieve suffering. Three particular interests are the health needs and illness narratives of minority and disadvantaged groups; the introduction of technology-based innovations in healthcare; and the complex links (philosophical and empirical) between research, policy and practice. She has brought this interdisciplinary perspective to bear on the research response to the Covid-19 pandemic, looking at diverse themes including clinical assessment of the deteriorating patient by phone and video, the science and anthropology of face coverings, and policy decision-making in conditions of uncertainty. She is a member of Independent SAGE, an interdisciplinary academic team established to provide independent advice on the pandemic direct to the lay public. Trish is the author of over 500 peer-reviewed publications and 16 textbooks. She was awarded the OBE for Services to Medicine by Her Majesty the Queen in 2001 and made a Fellow of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences in 2014. She has also been elected to Fellowship of the UK Royal College of Physicians, Royal College of General Practitioners, Faculty of Clinical Informatics and Faculty of Public Health. In 2021 she was elected to the Fellowship of United States National Academy of Medicine for "major contributions to the study of innovation and knowledge translation and work to raise the profile of qualitative social sciences". She became a Fellow of the Faculty of Leadership and Management in Medicine in 2024.
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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
Title and speaker to be announced 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 if you would like to attend online.
We study how immigrant legalization affects political representation and public service delivery, focusing on the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), which granted legal status to nearly three million undocumented Hispanic migrants. Using geographic variation in IRCA exposure and newly digitized data on 12,000 Hispanic officials, we find legalization increased Hispanic representation in local government and facilitated upward mobility from school boards into municipal and county offices. These changes altered institutional behavior, shifting education spending toward capital investment and diversifying the racial composition of the teaching workforce. Immigration policy thus reshapes who governs and how public goods are allocated.
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.
Title and speaker to be announced 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 if you would like to attend online.
Professor Merryn Voysey University of Oxford https://www.ovg.ox.ac.uk/team/merryn-voysey
Neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s are devastating conditions with poorly understood mechanisms and no known cure. Yet a striking feature of these conditions is the characteristic pattern of invasion throughout the brain, leading to well-codified disease stages visible to neuropathology and associated with various cognitive deficits and pathologies. This evolution is associated with the aggregation of key toxic proteins. In this talk, I will show how we use multiscale modelling to gain insight into this process In particular, by looking at protein dynamics on the connectome, we can unravel some of the universal features associated with dementia that are driven by both network topology and protein kinetics leading to changes in brain activity. Alain Goriely is a mathematician with broad interests in mathematical methods, sciences, and engineering. He is well known for his contributions to fundamental and applied solid mechanics, and, in particular, for the development of a mathematical theory of biological growth, He joined the University of Oxford in 2010 as the inaugural Statutory Professor of Mathematical Modelling and fellow of St. Catherine's College. He is currently the Director of the Oxford Centre for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. In addition, Alain enjoys scientific outreach based on problems connected to his research including tendril perversion in plants, twining plants, umbilical cord knotting, whip cracking, the shape of seashells, visual illusions, and brain modelling,. For his contribution to mathematics and sciences, he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 2022, received the Society of Engineering Science Engineering Medal in 2024 and the David Crighton Medal in 2025. https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/people/alain.goriely
What makes teaching a profession—and how does initial teacher education (ITE) contribute to that status? One influential idea, introduced by Lee Shulman, is that professions are often defined by a signature pedagogy: a distinctive way of teaching that reflects the profession’s core values, alongside agreed knowledges and practices. If teacher education had such a pedagogy, could it strengthen claims to legitimacy, authority, and agency? And if so, what would it look like—and would it even be desirable? This seminar explores these questions through findings from three research projects that examine teacher education at different scales: within a single institution across subjects and phases; across multiple institutions during a period of policy reform; and across diverse international contexts. Together, these studies shed light on whether a signature pedagogy for teacher education is desirable, if it exists, what form it might take, and how this could reshape our understanding of ITE—not only for educators, but also for policymakers seeking to influence it. Speaker Bio: Clare Brooks is a Professor of Education at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on how policy influences access to teacher education for isolated communities, and the implications for high-quality initial teacher education at scale. She takes up the role of Head of the Faculty of Education in October 2026.
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.
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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.
This informative and practical online training session will discuss the importance of lay summaries (or Plain English Summaries) in medical research and what’s involved in a lay reviewer role. Link to event – https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/5d178171-7adc-45f8-90e8-f808a9cdd83f@25d273c3-a851-4cfb-a239-e9048f989669 Who this is for? It’s aimed at any adult who would like to contribute to the research process. This session will give you the skills and confidence to be a lay reviewer when the opportunity arises. You will get practical advice from a public partner and researchers who work in patient and public involvement and research. You can have a go at reviewing a lay summary as part of a supportive team. You will also get a checklist of what to do if you are asked to be a reviewer. Speakers: Sue Duncombe: Patient and Public Advisory Group member, NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre Cassy Fiford: Public Engagement Officer and infectious disease researcher, University of Oxford Polly Kerr: Patient and Public Involvement Manager, Medical Sciences Division, Department of Primary Health Care Research, University of Oxford Angeli Vaid: Training and Inclusion Manager, Patient and Public Involvement, NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre
The talk will explore how artificial intelligence can achieve some of the core goals of a liberal society, by overcoming human error that produces discrimination and unfairness, but also how AI cannot overcome problems of randomness and contingency, which are core concerns of liberal thinking with respect to justice.
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
Land use and the geographic distribution of economic activity are key determinants of a territory’s emissions of greenhouse gases. Emissions depend on whether land is built-up in cities, used for agriculture, or covered with forests. In cities, emissions depend on the extent of sprawl. We develop a quantitative spatial theory of land use where different sectors compete for land. Technological and demographic evolutions trigger structural change and shape land use, commuting and residential choices. Emissions change as a result. We estimate the quantitative model using French spatial data since 1950 across sectors. The estimation delivers novel insights on the determinants of land use and emissions across space and time and allows to evaluate the effect of technological change and agricultural policies on welfare, productivity and the environment.
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.
Joint with CSAE
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
Title and speaker to be announced 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 if you would like to attend online.
Dr Charlene Rodrigues LSHTM and St Marys Hospital London https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/aboutus/people/rodrigues.charlene
Further details to follow
Title and speaker to be announced 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 if you would like to attend online.
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
An important driver of climate change inaction is the belief that individuals cannot have any tangible impact on climate change through their own actions. Currently available statistics are not suited to systematically assess or challenge this belief. In this paper, I derive the marginal impact of emission reductions – the effect of reducing emissions by 1 tonne of CO₂ (tCO₂) – on physical climate change outcomes, document important misperceptions, show how they affect behavior, and derive policy implications. Using climate models, I find that the impact of reducing emissions by 1 tCO₂ is thousands of liters less glacier ice melting, several additional hours of aggregate life expectancy, and multiple m² less vegetation undergoing ecosystem change. Subjects underestimate these figures by orders of magnitude. Moreover, their mental model is inconsistent with climate models. First, they misperceive climate change as a threshold public goods game. Second, they incorrectly assume that the marginal impact increases when others also reduce their emissions (strategic complementarity). Providing subjects with the climate scientific findings causally increases perceived self-efficacy, intentions to reduce own emissions, and real donations to reduce global emissions. The misperceptions and treatment effect are consistent with a mental model of threshold thinking, which predicts positive overall emission reductions of information provision in equilibrium. Providing information about the marginal impact is a cost-effective demand-side mitigation strategy. The information can also serve as a catalyst for other climate policies by reframing their benefits and challenging arguments against unilateral action that are based on threshold thinking.
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
Title and speaker to be announced 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 if you would like to attend online.
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
A five-day intensive course exploring the critical challenges facing those working towards universal access to safe and affordable surgical, anaesthesia and obstetrics care. The course is suitable for those in all disciplines interested in global surgery, anaesthesia and obstetrics.
