Oxford Events, the new replacement for OxTalks, will launch on 16th March. From now until the launch of Oxford Events, new events cannot be published or edited on OxTalks while all existing records are migrated to the new platform. The existing OxTalks site will remain available to view during this period.
From 16th, Oxford Events will launch on a new website: events.ox.ac.uk, and event submissions will resume. You will need a Halo login to submit events. Full details are available on the Staff Gateway.
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.
IMAD2026 aims to foster connections between academia and industry, working together towards net-zero and decarbonisation goals. Speakers include professionals and researchers from across the United Kingdom. Full agenda for the day coming soon!
This talk is built upon my master's thesis, which explores the Inner Mongolia grassland as a site through which to rethink the relationships between space, scale, and lived experience. Drawing on ethnographic approaches, my research considers how grassland is not only a physical environment, but also a social, political, and affective landscape shaped by mobility, policy, memory, and everyday practice. By tracing how local actors experience and negotiate broader forces, from ecological governance to rural transformation, I reflect on how ethnography allows us to connect intimate, ground-level realities with larger spatial and structural processes. In doing so, I hope to show how global narratives, national interventions, and local livelihoods intersect in complex and often uneven ways.
*Please email "$":mailto:mori.reithmayr@history.ox.ac.uk to join the reading group mailing list.* *Session Theme: TBD*
Ultra-high field (7T+) MRI is emerging from being a topic of interest to MRI physicists into a genuinely clinical imaging modality. 7T offers exquisite sub-millimetre spatial resolution and sensitivity to subtle changes in tissue contrast. Yet conventional single transmit 7T MRI was hampered by signal voids that often obscure significant parts of the brain, which is clearly unacceptable for diagnostic imaging when the locus of disease is unknown. New parallel transmit methods offer high-fidelity whole-brain imaging, which since 2024 is available with UKCA/CE/FDA approvals for diagnostic imaging on Siemens new Terra.X scanners. In this seminar, I describe recent translational clinical studies at Cambridge and the method developments that were needed to facilitate them. These include a study applying parallel transmit 7T MRI for pre-surgical assessment of patients with severe epilepsy whose previous clinical 3T and FDG-PET had been inconclusive. PTx-7T MRI changed clinical management to the benefit of 56% of our first 31 patients. Per lesion detected, it is 10x cheaper than alternative invasive stereotactic EEG investigations, not to mention being safer and more convenient. I am now setting up the world’s first multisite prospective trial of 7T MRI for epilepsy pre-surgical evaluation in collaboration with King’s College London to assess the health economic case for NHS adoption of 7T MRI in epilepsy. Another ongoing study “DefINe” is applying R2* mapping techniques validated in the UK7T Network’s travelling heads study as the primary endpoint for a CTIMP trial evaluating whether the drug deferiprone can be repurposed to treat patients with the rare mitochondrial disease neuroferritinopathy which causes inevitable incurable dementia in the 40s. As well as these 1H-MRI imaging studies, I describe our recent work developing quantitative deuterium metabolic imaging for applicants in cancer and neurodegeneration, and ongoing studies assessing regional cellular energy metabolism by phosphorus MRSI in the heart and brain.
In this seminar, Professor Kathryn Oliver will introduce research drawing on interviews with policymakers and academics to explore how different forms of knowledge gain credibility in policymaking, and what this means for transparency and public health. The seminar is hosted by PSI and will be chaired by Tess Johnson. It will take place on Wednesday, 11 March 2026, from 12.30 to 13.30, followed by lunch and a chance to network with colleagues. About the speaker Professor Kathryn Oliver is a social scientist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She is interested in how we make, mobilise and use evidence in policy and practice. Professor Oliver co-directs the research collaboration 'Transforming Evidence', which brings together funders, decision-makers, practitioners and researchers from a range of disciplines and sectors. This collaboration aims to both do research on evidence production and use, and to ensure that the research scientists do is used by policymakers. Seminar outline Debates about the role of evidence in policymaking have tended to focus primarily on how to increase the influence of academic research evidence on policy. This approach to the role of knowledge in policy sidesteps the question of what types of knowledge are used and valued in policymaking, and how different forms of knowledge may interact with policy. Drawing on 55 interviews with policymakers and academics, Professor Oliver will explore how personal/institutional characteristics and processes confer credibility to knowledge for policy in informal and formal contexts. Using the generation of credibility as a lens to understand the effects of these values on scientific and policy processes allows us to understand the broader strengths and limitations of different forms of knowledge within the policy arena. Professor Oliver will close with some reflections on transparency in policymaking, and the implications of this for public health.
Join Philippa Christoforou, Social Venture Lead at Oxford University Innovation, for an inspiring GROW session on building businesses that create positive social and environmental impact. Discover practical strategies for turning research into ventures that tackle global challenges, and learn how to embed purpose and sustainability into your entrepreneurial journey.
TBC
How do advances in AI technologies change the representation of modern wars, particularly Russia’s war in Ukraine? To what degree are such representations prone to poisoning, bias, or stochasticity, and what methods can we use to study these risks? And what can be the implications of the different forms of AI (mis)representation for how wars are perceived today and will be perceived in the future? To address these questions, we will discuss results from a series of studies in which we explored how text- and image-generative AI applications represent different aspects of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Speaker biographies Mykola Makhortykh is an Alfred Landecker lecturer at the Institute of Communication and Media Science, where he studies politics- and history-centred information behaviour in online environments and how it is affected by the algorithm- and AI-driven systems. His other research interests include trauma and memory studies, armed conflict reporting, disinformation and computational propaganda research, cybersecurity and critical security studies, and bias in information retrieval systems. Maryna Sydorova is a data engineer and scientific programmer specializing in the study of AI systems and the development of large-scale research infrastructures. At the University of Bern and the University of Fribourg, I lead the development of cross-platform AI audit frameworks designed to study how complex systems shape information exposure. My background combines AI, deep learning, and cloud computing, and my current work focuses on developing research techniques for investigating the performance of search engines, generative AI models, and applications. My research interests include the impact of AI on disinformation production and dissemination.
*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.
For our next talk, in the Digital Phenotyping seminar series, we will hear from Professor Mihaela van der Schaar, John Humphrey Plummer Professor of Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and Medicine at the University of Cambridge on Wednesday 11 March, 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm, at the Big Data Institute (BDI). Title: TBC Date: Wednesday 11 March Time: 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm Venue: BDI/OxPop, Seminar Room 0; followed by refreshments in the atrium Abstract: awaited Hybrid Option: awaited Microsoft Teams meeting https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/33185133262319?p=XtTkRrfbxVFFvmOOjs Meeting ID: 331 851 332 623 19 Passcode: yC25fC3x ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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!
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.
In this webinar, we will present emerging empirical findings from qualitative research conducted as part of the Global Health Solidarity Project. Drawing on 75 in-depth interviews with civil society leaders, research institute actors, and global health influencers across multiple regions, speakers will share key insights identified on how solidarity is understood and enacted in global health practice. During this session, we aim to reflect on what these findings mean for global health systems and how solidarity can move from moral commitment to lived practice.
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'.
When China embarked on modernization in 1979, many hoped that the country’s turn toward capitalism would put its totalitarian past to rest and moved it toward a more democratic future. Instead, China has reverted to a neo-totalitarian regime after more than four decades of economic reform and globalization. The fundamental cause is Deng Xiaoping’s strategy of saving one-party rule with capitalism. He steadfastly kept intact the institutional foundations of totalitarianism even as he unleashed private entrepreneurship and courted foreign investment. Only a fragile balance of power among duelling factions prevented the rise of a totalitarian leader after Deng’s death in 1997. But this temporary equilibrium collapsed when Xi Jinping rose to power in late 2012 – and revived many totalitarian practices that are likely to set China back decades politically, economically, and geopolitically. Minxin Pei is the Tom and Margot Pritzker ‘72 Professor of Government and George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College. In 2019 he was the inaugural Library of Congress Chair on US-China Relations. Prior to joining Claremont McKenna College in 2009, he was a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and served as its director of the China Program from 2003 to 2008. He was an opinion columnist for Bloomberg (2023-2024) and the author of From Reform to Revolution: The Demise of Communism in China and the Soviet Union (1994); China’s Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy (2006); China’s Crony Capitalism: The Dynamics of Regime Decay (2016); The Sentinel State: Surveillance and the Survival of Dictatorship in China (2024); and The Broken China Dream: How Reform Revived Totalitarianism (2025). Minxin received his PhD in government at Harvard and taught at Princeton University (1992-1998).
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.
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).
We look forward to welcoming Dr Tom F. Wright to the English Faculty to talk on 'The Politics of Oracy and the Post-Literacy Panic' in this News UK lecture. The event will take place in Seminar Room - 00.063 at the Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities on 11 March at 5pm. All welcome. Tickets are free, but registration is required. Abstract The concept of ‘oracy’ (speaking and listening skills) has become one of the key buzzwords in contemporary British education. Embraced as a priority by the Starmer government, oracy education looks set to shape the lives of millions of young people in the UK. But what is this new enthusiasm for voice and communication really responding to? And what might it mean for the future of humanities education? This talk answers those questions in two steps. First, it places oracy in a longer contentious history of efforts to shape how the British public speaks and listens, showing how it has involved not just top-down control but also grassroots empowerment. Second, it connects this history to today’s “post-literacy” panic and asks what it means for schools and universities when public life shifts towards voice, video, and performance. Speaker biography Tom F. Wright is Chair of the Department of English at the University of Sussex and a historian of political language and rhetoric. His most recent book is Oracy: The Politics of Speech Education (Cambridge University Press) and he leads the UKRI-funded project Speaking Citizens on voice, democracy, and communicative inequality. This event is funded by News UK.
*Leo Shen* (University of Cambridge) The Missed Encounter: Yan Fu and the Glocalization of Logical Knowledge in Late Imperial China *Yuxuan Zhou* (University of Geneva) The Qing Empire’s Gift to the Permanent Court of Arbitration: Transforming Gift- Giving Practices and Engaging the International Order (1907–1911)
The Trump administration’s actions and rhetoric toward Venezuela, Cuba, Greenland, and the proclamation of the so-called 'Donroe Doctrine' in recent months have cast doubt over long- standing assumptions about the geopolitics of the Western Hemisphere. In this event, a panel of experts will examine the past, present, and possible futures of power, alliances, and democratic governance across the region. What has US power in the Western Hemisphere meant historically? What does it mean today? Where might it be heading next? Panellists include: Catherine Royle (in person): Diplomat and Principal of Somerville College. Catherine previously spent seven years in Latin America, as British Ambassador to Venezuela, and Deputy Head of Mission in Buenos Aires. Jay Sexton (virtual): Professor of History at the University of Missouri, and President of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR). Jay is a leading authority on nineteenth-century imperialism and United States foreign policy, and the author of a major study of the Monroe Doctrine. Aileen Teague (virtual): Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University. Aileen is the author of Policing on Drugs: The United States, Mexico, and the Origins of the Modern Drug War, 1969-2000. Laurence Whitehead (in person): Senior Research Fellow in Politics at Nuffield College. Laurence has published extensively on democratisation, democracy promotion, and illiberalism in the Americas. Adam Smith (in person): RAI Director and Osborn Professor of US Politics and Political History. Adam Smith is a frequent commentator on US politics in print and broadcast media, and the host of The Last Best Hope? podcast. He will chair and moderate the event. --- This is a joint event organised in partnership with the Latin American Centre (LAC), and the Department of Politics and International Relations (DPIR).
Join online via Microsoft Teams by clicking here: https://tinyurl.com/bdff6tpt
As the 20th century recedes, how should its history be written? The 1920s and 1930s were a time of paradox, of great conflict and contradiction. If those years were the crucible of a new metropolitan modernity and its possibilities, what were the forward-moving forces and ideas? What were their effects and where did they lead? _The Modernist Wish_ provides a comprehensive, non-hierarchical and integrated history of Europe's early 20th century across the whole of the continent. Uniting social, cultural-intellectual, and political history alongside military-strategic and geopolitical dimensions, Geoff Eley examines the distinctiveness of early-20th century modernity. He draws out the exceptional character of the interwar years and their longer-run social and political fallout, based in the excitements of metropolitan living, the progressive achievements of an industrialized machine world, and the material possibilities for fashioning new forms of selfhood. In presenting a truly European history for our time, this study encompasses both the grand narratives of large-scale transformations, and the everyday realities of individual lived experiences. *Geoff Eley* is Karl Pohrt Distinguished University Professor of Contemporary History Emeritus at the University of Michigan. His specialisms include modern European history; nationalism and fascism; the European Left; historiography; and social and cultural theory. Previous publications include _Reshaping the German Right_ (1980); _Forging Democracy_ (2002); _A Crooked Line_ (2005); _Nazism as Fascism_ (2013); and _History Made Conscious_ (2023). _The Modernist Wish_ is available from CUP from May 2026 and is part one of a two-volume history of the twentieth century Join the talk and discussion on Microsoft Teams here: https://tinyurl.com/4z8zxrdc
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
Computers have long been useful for studying mathematical problems. But recently computer techniques have been used to prove new theorems in geometry, specifically related to the study of gravity through Einstein's theory of General Relativity. This talk will describe these developments and what they might mean for the future. Jason Lotay is Professor of Mathematics in the Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford, and one of the inaugural Fellows of the Academy of Mathematical Sciences. 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 25 March 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.
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.
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
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
Thursday 12th March 2026 VENUE: Richard Doll Lecture Theatre, Richard Doll Building, Old Road Campus, Oxford, OX3 7LF ORGANISERS: Oxford HDRUK and Omics & Brain Health, Oxford Population Health Agenda: 09:30 – 10:00 REGISTRATION* & REFRESHMENTS (ATRIUM) 10:00 – 13:00 MAIN SESSION 10:00 – 10:15 From John Snow’s cholera map to the transmission of Mad Cow disease (BSE) across species and humans (Professor Cornelia van Duijn) 10:15 – 10:30 Common infectious diseases and risk of dementia: evidence from the EPIC Norfolk study (Dr Tom Littlejohns) 10:30 – 10:45 The evidence of a role of viral infections in dementia: a cross-omics analysis in UK Biobank (Associate Professor Najaf Amin) 10:45 – 11:00 The recombinant shingles vaccine is associated with lower risk of dementia (Associate Professor Maxime Taquet) 11:00 – 11:30 COFFEE AND TEA BREAK 11:30 – 13:00 KEYNOTE LECTURES 11:30 – 12:15 Trials and tribulations designing a quasi-experiment on VZV and dementia (Professor Angela Wood) 12:15 – 13:00 The study needed for repurposing VZV vaccination for dementia prevention (Professor Simon de Lusignan) 13:00 – 14:00 NETWORKING LUNCH (ATRIUM) 14:00 – 15:00 PANEL SESSION 14:00 – 14:45 The significance and relevance of quasi experimental studies: What next? (Keynote speakers, Professor Sir Aziz Sheikh, Dr Carol Koro (GSK) and Dr Donal Skelly moderated by Professor Cornelia van Duijn) 14:45 – 15:00 Audience Q&A 15:00 – 15:15 BREAK 15:15 – 15:55 EDUCATIONAL SESSION 15:15 – 15:55 Focused discussion session unpacking key themes and ideas raised throughout the day including ethics, biological mechanisms and potential next steps for dementia‑prevention aimed at Early Career Researchers and Masters/DPhil students (Dr Tom Littlejohns & Associate Prof Najaf Amin) 15:55 – 16:00 CLOSING REMARKS (Dr Tom Littlejohns) *Please note registrations close Monday 9th March 2026 at 12:00
This talk reconceptualizes Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics ('Xi Thought') not as a coherent doctrine but as a rhizomatic ideological formation. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari, it treats Xi Thought as a configuration in which coherence is not presupposed but produced through the continual recombination of fragments across institutional sites. Based on an analysis of official publications, including collected works, excerpt volumes, and study readers, Prof. Mittelstaedt shows how Xi’s speeches are disassembled and reassembled across domains such as law, economy, diplomacy, and culture. These recompositions render ideology modular and resilient, allowing elements to be activated, reweighted, or sidelined without destabilizing the system as a whole. Prof. Mittelstaedt further argues that ideological coherence is generated through distributed and compulsory participation by Party and state actors, who are required to embed fragments of Xi Thought into institutional practice. Conceptualizing Xi Thought as a rhizome shifts analysis from doctrinal meaning to the operational logic through which ideology acquires administrative force within the Chinese Party-state. Jean Christopher Mittelstaedt is Professor of Modern Chinese Studies and Chair of Modern Chinese Studies at the University of Zurich. He previously held positions at SOAS, University of London, and the University of Oxford. His research focuses on the ideological and institutional foundations of Chinese Communist Party rule, with particular attention to Party governance and cultural governance. His work has appeared in The China Quarterly, Modern China, Asian Survey, and China Information, among others.
SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY Dr. Niels Hammer, M.D., Dr. habil., is an internationally recognized anatomist and clinical–translational researcher with a strong focus on musculoskeletal and pelvic biomechanics. He is Chair and Professor of Macroscopic and Clinical Anatomy and Head of the Department of Anatomy at the Medical University of Graz, where he also leads the Anatomy-Biomechanics and Translational Research Laboratories. His academic training includes a medical degree, summa cum laude doctoral thesis, habilitation with venia legendi, and board certification as a specialist anatomist, complemented by international appointments in Germany, New Zealand, and Japan. Scientifically, Dr. Hammer is author of almost 300 peer-reviewed publications and has delivered more than 400 invited and contributed presentations worldwide. His research integrates classical anatomy, advanced imaging, and experimental biomechanics to improve clinical understanding of the sacroiliac joint, pelvic ring, and related surgical interventions. He has supervised a large number of undergraduate, doctoral, and postdoctoral researchers and has received multiple competitive awards and industry-linked research grants. In addition to his academic leadership, Dr. Hammer is Founding Chair of the Austrian Society of Anatomy and has served as president of major international anatomy congresses. He holds key editorial roles in the field and is currently Editor-in-Chief of the Annals of Anatomy, reflecting his standing as a leading authority shaping contemporary anatomical and biomechanical research.“
A warm welcome to our first session of the EDI Forum where our distinguished panel will take a closer look at academic careers and their journey to professorship. We will hear from our panellists on how they forged their path, which obstacles they had to overcome and what role EDI plays in their career. All are welcome to join us for this insightful panel and networking drinks afterwards in the IDRM Cafe. Please register if you want to join us.
Lesson of the week, clinical cases and research. All clinical and academic staff and students welcome. Coffee and Tea will be served.
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
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.
In postwar Britain, the rise of television as a new technology and cultural form transformed the political landscape, redefining the sites and styles of political communication and creating spaces for viewer participation. Grassroots organizations, like the British Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM), leveraged television’s potential to foster new forms of presentation, perception, and civic participation. In this event, Tal Zalmanovich will discuss her monograph, Broadcasting Apartheid: British Television and the Anti-Apartheid Campaign, 1950–1990, with Saul Dubow and Suzanne Franks, and Lucy McCann will describe how the AAM archive came into being.
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.
Policy debates are fundamentally distributive: who bears costs and who receives benefits influences perceived fairness and shapes public acceptability. Although fairness is known to correlate with environmental policy support, evidence comes mainly from wealthy Western democracies. We address this gap by examining how cost and benefit targeting affects fairness judgments and public support for environmental policies targeting urban transportation in Delhi (India) and Jakarta (Indonesia), two cities that recently experienced fairness-driven public resistance in response to government action. We field a pre-registered factorial vignette survey experiment in both cities (n = 3,400) that randomises who pays and who benefits, measuring fairness-to-me and fairness-to-others perceptions and testing heterogeneity through car-ownership interactions. Results show that targeting benefits and costs reduces both fairness perceptions compared to universal allocations, more asymmetrically so in Jakarta. In both cities, fairness-to-me is a stronger correlate of policy support than fairness-to-others. Car ownership shifts only fairness-to-me evaluations, implying that material stakes shape self-oriented fairness without spilling over into broader societal fairness assessments. Benefit targeting under shared costs carries higher backlash risk, while targeted costs can remain viable when benefits are universal, especially where equality norms shape collective fairness independently of material stakes. ————————————————————————————————————————————— Speaker bio: Dr. Liam F. Beiser-McGrath is an Associate Professor in International Social and Public Policy in the Department of Social Policy, Chair of the Sustainable Social Policy and Welfare States Research Hub, Associate of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, and Affiliate of the Data Science Institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Liam is also an Editor for the journal Environmental Politics and the organiser of EPG Online, an online seminar series covering Environmental Politics and Governance. Liam’s research primarily focuses on the political economy of climate change, using experimental research designs and machine learning. This research has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Nature Climate Change, the Journal of Politics, Science Advances, European Journal of Political Research, Comparative Political Studies, Political Analysis, Climatic Change, Political Science Research & Methods, Environmental Politics, Global Environmental Politics, the Journal of European Social Policy, Energy Policy, Regulation and Governance, Electoral Studies, and the Journal of Public Policy. ————————————————————————————————————————————— 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.
Authoritarian regimes increasingly engage in transnational information campaigns to expand their political and cultural influence beyond national borders. We argue that such operations can exacerbate ethnic polarization in target countries, specifically between diaspora communities and ethnic majority populations. Drawing on Social Identity Theory, we theorize that transnational propaganda exacerbates affective polarization by reducing intergroup social and political tolerance, while also increasing polarization in foreign policy preferences in racially diverse settings. To test these expectations, we conduct a preregistered survey experiment in Malaysia and examine whether China's transnational propaganda affects intergroup and foreign policy attitudes among ethnic Chinese and Malays. The results show that China's propaganda decreases Malays’ social tolerance toward Chinese Malaysians while strengthening Chinese Malaysians' – but not Malays' – agreement with China's foreign policy positions in the region. These findings highlight how transnational propaganda can undermine social cohesion and create divergent policy preferences within multicultural societies. Dr Jeremy Siow is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Quantitative Political Science at the University of Oxford’s Department of Politics and International Relations. His research focuses on education policy and the politics of identity in Malaysia and Singapore. His work has appeared in the Journal of Politics and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Prior to his PhD, he graduated with an MA in Political Science and International Studies from Yonsei University, and a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the National University of Singapore.
Bought by special interests, detached from real life, obsessed with re-election. Politicians make big promises, deliver little to nothing and keep the game rigged in their favour. But what can we do? Join political theorist Hélène Landemore in conversation with Philippa Webb, Professor of Public International Law, to discuss her new book, Politics Without Politicians. With disarming clarity and a deep sense of urgency, Hélène Landemore argues that electoral politics is broken but democracy isn’t. We have just been doing it wrong. Drawing on ancient Athenian practices and contemporary citizens’ assemblies, Landemore champions an alternative approach that is alive, working and growing around the world: civic lotteries that select everyday people to govern, not as career politicians but as temporary stewards of the common good. When regular citizens come together in this way, they make smarter, fairer, more forward-thinking decisions, often bringing out the best in one another. Witnessing this process firsthand, Landemore has learned that democracy should be like a good party where even the shyest guests feel welcome to speak, listen, and be heard. With sharp analysis and real-world examples, drawing from her experience with deliberative processes in France and elsewhere, Landemore shows us how to move beyond democracy as a spectator sport, embracing it as a shared practice — not just in the voting booth but in shaping the laws and policies that govern our lives. If you have ever felt powerless, Politics Without Politicians will show you how we can take back democracy. Speaker biographies: Hélène Landemore is a political theorist and professor of political science at Yale University. She is the author of Open Democracy, an influential book that has shaped global debates about citizen participation and democratic legitimacy. Landemore has worked with governments, NGOs, and reformers around the world, from France and Finland to Chile and Taiwan. Her research has been featured in the New Yorker, Financial Times, and The Nation as well as on the Ezra Klein Show. 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. 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.
To join online, please register in advance: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/WWqjr8SgT_WrzTodI65cdg
As digital transformation, political pressure, and audience fragmentation reshape contemporary media environments, public service media face growing challenges in maintaining their democratic role. This talk examines how these pressures are reflected in everyday editorial choices by focusing on changes in television news at NHK, one of the world’s largest public broadcasters. Taking NHK’s flagship evening news programme as its starting point, the talk looks at how television news has changed over time at the level of topics, narrative styles, and the portrayal of political and social actors. It asks how developments in routine news content and representation relate to broader shifts in Japan’s political system, media environment, and public expectations of journalism. The talk then considers why such changes take place, situating micro-level developments in news production within a wider set of influences, including institutional constraints, political pressure, journalistic routines, and competition for audiences. By linking changes in everyday news content to macro-level transformations in Japan’s politico-media environment, the talk contributes to broader debates on the evolving democratic role of public service media in the digital age.
*To attend online via Microsoft Teams, please email "$":mailto:ian.archer@history.ox.ac.uk*
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.
The old centre of Johannesburg is the setting for The Chaos Precinct, the title of Tanya Zack’s new book and the theme of our seminar. The orthodoxy is that the inner city of Johannesburg is declining, but we will be asked to think differently about Johannesburg – as an African city, a port city and one that is leading a globalised trade in fast fashion, spreading across the subcontinent and affecting the lives of hundreds of thousands of Africans. Tanya Zack will share her perceptive insights and experiences born of a fifteen-year immersion in the life of the precinct. Speaker: Tanya Zack Tanya Zack is a South African Urban Planner and writer whose work has focused on urban regeneration, contemporary migration, informal work, urban policy and affordable housing. Her previous book Wake Up: This Is Joburg (Duke University Press, 2022) has been lauded for its originality and new insights.. This seminar is designed for anyone interested in urban regeneration. The event will speak to the College’s teaching and research interests in Sustainable Urban Development and Migration Studies. It will also speak to those interested in South Africa, Ethiopian migrants and business.
How do we talk about surveillance—and its role in tracking and preventing outbreaks of disease? Disease surveillance helps us spot outbreaks early, track patterns, and look after public health. But it can also feel uncomfortable. As more everyday data is used to predict and prevent pandemics, questions about trust, transparency, and who gets a say become harder to ignore. We're excited to share our second 'Let's Talk About' event created with the Pandemic Sciences Institute. Join us at the History of Science Museum for conversations exploring questions such as ‘how do you identify emerging pandemic threats?’ and ‘how should we navigate everyday data — from social media to wearable devices — being used in public health?’. You'll hear from four thought-provoking speakers who will guide small breakout discussions centred around unique objects that tell a story about their work. You'll also have an opportunity to contribute to the conversation as we explore how all of us can shape future research on these topics. Will hearing each other’s stories shift how we think? Let’s talk about surveillance.
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!
The event is free to attend but booking is required due to limited spaces. Reserve your spot by sending an email to oxford@ilcorno.co.uk
As Hungary approaches another pivotal national election, the stakes extend far beyond the country itself. Viktor Orbán’s long tenure has reshaped Hungary’s political system, strained relations with the European Union, and positioned the country at the centre of debates about rule of law, sovereignty, and democratic backsliding. Will the upcoming election consolidate the current trajectory, or open the door to political change? This panel brings together Hungarian opposition politician Miklós Hajnal alongside leading scholars of Central European politics to examine the state of Hungarian democracy, the structure of electoral competition, and the prospects for meaningful reform. The discussion will also consider what Hungary’s political future means for the European Union, regional stability, and the broader contest over liberal democracy in Europe.
Join us for a St. Patrick’s Day celebration with purpose. The evening begins at 6:00 PM at Cheng Conference Space, Jesus College with short, inspiring talks from local environmental leaders, including representatives from the Berkshire, Buckinghamshire & Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust (BBOWT), followed by drinks and networking. All proceeds support BBOWT’s Nature Recovery Fund, helping restore and protect local wildlife. The evening will continue at 8:30 PM, at the Varsity Club for a full Paddy’s Day party with DJ and dance floor. Come along to drink, dance, and do some good.
In a few generations, innovations in technology, industry, and the state brought us tremendous prosperity and progress. Now, amid the challenges of AI, autonomous weapons, and globe-spanning tech companies, and more, are humans losing control of their creations? Could the machines suppress our humanity, spirituality, and even replace the higher power? Join the Oxford Political Review to launch 18th issue, entitled 'Ghost in the Machine', with a panel discussion featuring experts on artificial intelligence, governance, media and religion. Copies of the issue will be available free at the event. The speakers are: Prof Robert F. Trager: Robert F. Trager is Co-Director of the Oxford Martin AI Governance Initiative, International Governance Lead at the Centre for the Governance of AI, and Senior Research Fellow at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford. He is a recognized expert in the international governance of emerging technologies, diplomatic practice, institutional design, and technology regulation. He regularly advises government and industry leaders on these topics. Mr Daniel B Singer: Daniel brings together philosophy, law, psychology, and a career in data and analytics to explore how the world is changing. He has advised governments, businesses, and charities on strategy in an age shaped by technology. His writing examines how technology transforms us ethically, emotionally, and socially. His debut novel, Singularity & Loneliness, was published in 2026. Alongside his literary work, Daniel is an experienced business leader who advises corporates, investors, and governments on data strategy and digital transformation. He previously served as Managing Director at Kantar, leading the UK Analytics practice. He built and sold Mavens of London, a fast-growing data strategy boutique, and has worked in consultancy at KPMG and in public policy at Ofcom. Daniel holds a degree in PPE from Somerville College, Oxford, an MPhil in Philosophy of Psychology from King’s College London, and a Postgraduate Diploma in Law from BPP Law School. Dr Mari van Emmerik is a Junior Research Fellow in Religion and the Frontier Challenges programme at Pembroke College, Oxford, and a research associate at the Faculty of Divinity, Cambridge. Her interdisciplinary work explores the nature of mind through her previous empirical research on language and thought, the study of (non)religious cognition, and philosophical and theological inquiry into artificial intelligence. Mari holds an MA in Applied Linguistics as a Fulbright Scholar at Southern Illinois University, as well as an MSt and a DPhil in Science and Religion as a Clarendon Scholar at Oxford, focusing on the cognitive science of nonreligion. She has taught Theology and Science at Cambridge and co-leads the John Templeton Foundation–funded project "Awe-some Spirituality," examining how awe bridges secular and religious spirituality. Her current project at Pembroke College brings Christian incarnational theology into conversation with cognitive science to address digital justice and epistemic diversity in AI. Ms Priscille Biehlmann: Priscille Biehlmann is the Content Editor for Newsroom Leadership Programmes at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford. She works on the design and delivery of leadership programmes for journalists from around the world and reports on innovation in the journalism industry. Prior to joining the Reuters Institute, she worked in academic publishing on media and journalism textbooks, and as a freelance science and culture journalist. Her reporting has appeared in publications including The Guardian and the New Scientist.
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.
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.
The UK Catalysis Hub are seeking input into a new data infrastructure for the UK catalysis community. This resource will enable data sharing and collaboration within and across different catalysis disciplines, in particular for advanced data-driven (digital) approaches to catalysis. It will be suited for both experimental as well as computational data, and seek to establish and promote best practices adhering to FAIR principles. If you have relevant expertise or specific suggestions for shaping and delivering this new service hosted by the Physical Sciences Data Infrastructure (PSDI) you are invited to attend our workshop at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Harwell Campus on the 13th March 2026. Speakers include: Dr. Ulrich Hintermair, Bath Prof. Simon Coles, UKRI STFC Prof. Adrian Mulholland, Bristol Dr. James Gebbie, UKRI STFC Prof. Natalie Fey, Bristol Dr. Abraham Nieva de la Hidalga, Cardiff Dr. Vladislav Mints, Imperial To secure one of the limited places available please send a short application outlining i) your background and expertise as relevant to the project, ii) your current and future research interests, and iii) your motivation for joining the workshop per email to corinne.anyika@chem.ox.ac.uk by the 4th March 2026. For any questions about the workshop, you may contact Dr. Ulrich Hintermair at uh213@bath.ac.uk. If you are interested in using the new resource, please attend the UK Catalysis Summer Conference at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Harwell Campus on the 17th & 18th June 2026 for more information about the first call for exemplar projects later in 2026.
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.
We live in a well oxygenated planet, but it has not always been this way. In this talk I will outline the history of the oxygenation of Earth, outlining some of the tools that we use to understand this history. I will explore how oxygenation has both impacted and been impacted by biological evolution. I will also explore how the history of earth oxygenation may have regulated timing of major biological innovations like the evolution of algae and the evolution of animals.
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.
Dr. Lo grew up in Taiwan and trained in the U.S., completing her PhD with Paul Allen at Washington University in St. Louis and her postdoctoral training with Art Weiss at UCSF. She now leads a lab at the University of Utah investigating how T cell ligand recognition is translated into faithful intracellular signaling, and how tuning T cell receptor signaling shapes self-reactivity, activation thresholds, and T cell fate decisions
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.
Speaker: Farooq Chaudhry OBE, Artistic Director, Fengling Productions.
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
We are thrilled to have Professor Finn Fordham (RHUL) as our inaugural speaker this term. In his talk, ‘“Entrancings.” Ways into Finnegans Wake’, Professor Fordham will explore various ways of navigating the novel and discuss his 'top ten' quotes from the text. This will be followed by a Q&A. Following the overwhelming interest in the Finnegans Wake reading group last term, we are delighted to launch the brand-new Finnegans Wake Seminar Series. This will be a termly event that will host a different guest speaker each term to engage with the text in informal, innovative ways, offering new approaches and collaborative ways of reading Joyce’s famously complex work together. The event will be followed by a drinks reception. All welcome (undergraduates included). We would be grateful if you could register your intention to attend to get a sense of numbers by emailing Elisa Moy (elisa.moy@chch.ox.ac.uk).
As part of the Music at St Edmund Hall series, the Holywell Music Room welcomes Rivka Golani, one of the foremost viola soloists of her generation, together with her friends Michael Hampton – piano, Yohei Nakajima – viola, and Gabor Somfai – viola for an evening in which the richness and lyricism of the viola truly take centre stage. 19:00: Welcome and pre-concert talk with Director of Music, Carlos Rodríguez Otero 19:30-21:15: Recital
What is the nature of Sino-Russian alignment, its main drivers, and its evolution since 1949? Which factors have influenced the relationship most? How does the nature of this alignment affect peace, stability, and the liberal international order? Existing alliance literature does not fully explain why two great powers, China and Russia, with a history of ideological differences, asymmetric capabilities, and shifting threat perceptions have periodically deepened, downgraded, and reoriented their military cooperation since 1949. This research argues that the relationship is best understood as alignment without alliance: a flexible partnership that generates security gains while preserving autonomy and minimizing entrapment. Dr Mastro introduces 'subsidized capacity building' as a distinct mode of alignment in which states leverage partner support to accelerate the development of durable, sovereign military capabilities through technology and knowledge transfer, energy and defence-industrial base support, and operational learning, while avoiding integrated command structures or binding war commitments. This lens clarifies both why the partnership deepens under shared external pressure and why it remains short of alliance institutionalization. Dr Mastro concludes that subsidized capacity building may stabilize the dyad by lowering mutual threat perceptions, yet increase systemic risk by shifting balances of power and complicating deterrence across Europe and the Indo-Pacific. Oriana Skylar Mastro is a Center Fellow and Director of the Indo-Pacific Policy Lab at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Courtesy Assistant Professor of Political Science at Stanford University where her research focuses on Chinese military and security policy, Asia-Pacific security issues, war termination, and coercive diplomacy. She is also a Non-Resident Scholar, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She continues to serve as a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Air Force Reserve for which she currently works at the Pentagon as Deputy Chief of Reserve China Global Strategy. For her contributions to US strategy in Asia, she won the Individual Reservist of the Year Award in 2016 (CGO) and 2022 (FGO). She has published widely, including in International Security, Security Studies, Foreign Affairs, Journal of Strategic Studies, The Washington Quarterly, the Economist and the New York Times. Her most recent book, Upstart: How China Became a Great Power (Oxford University Press, 2024), evaluates China’s approach to competition. Her book, The Costs of Conversation: Obstacles to Peace Talks in Wartime (Cornell University Press, 2019), won the 2020 American Political Science Association International Security Section Best Book by an Untenured Faculty Member. She holds a BA in East Asian Studies from Stanford University and an MA and PhD in Politics from Princeton University.
Chris received his Ph.D. from the CRUK Cambridge Institute (University of Cambridge) followed by a Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellowship at The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to study how oncogenes signal across multiple cell types in cancer. Chris now leads the Cell Communication Laboratory at UCL Cancer Institute and uses custom single-cell technologies and novel organoid co-culture models to study how multiple cell-types collaborate to drive cancer.
A former Oxford Visiting Student (Chemistry) brings case studies from toothbrush and dentifrice development in a global consumer-goods company, highlighting how the various scientific disciplines interact to deliver innovative products. The talk introduces the underlying principles of Oral Health and its maintenance via effective plaque removal by mechanical and chemical means. It bridges science with the consumer world e.g. via clinical efficacy and product safety considerations (Mark, 2021). Mechanical plaque removal, usually by brushing, provides different levels of cleanliness and Oral Health improvement. Plaque reduction and gingival health outcomes are consistently better when oscillating rotating electrical toothbrushes are used (Grender, 2020). Further improvements can be made with additional technical features e.g. pressure sensors (Janusz, 2008) or position tracking (Thurnay, 2022). Chemistry adds significantly to the cleaning efficacy. Specifically stannous fluoride (SnF2) has a higher impact vs. other formulation. It is a well-researched active ingredient in dentifrice formulations. Numerous clinical studies and systematic reviews support its broad efficacy (Biesbrock, 2019). The talk also provides insights into industrial R&D and career opportunities
This is a hybrid meeting. To join via Zoom, please register in advance for this meeting: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/1SNWDdd1TIilk8oU3SWRyg After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
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
Scaling is often described as the most exciting and demanding phase of building a venture. We’re delighted to invite you to an evening that will give you practical insights into the realities of scaling and an opportunity to connect with fellow founders and ecosystem leaders. The evening will feature a candid panel discussion with founders and scaling experts sharing real insights, as well as a mentoring session for founders, offering direct feedback and meaningful connections. You’ll leave with fresh perspective, new connections, and practical ideas to support your next stage of growth. This in-person event has limited seats so please only request to join if you can attend on the day. Once applied, you will be informed if your application to attend has been accepted in due course.
Starting a DPhil can feel both exciting and uncertain. This interactive Bootcamp, led by Dr Emma Williams, offers space to step back, connect with other students, and explore practical ways to work well, stay well and make the most of your time at Oxford. Through discussion, reflection and light-touch activities, participants will; • Build healthy, sustainable work habits that support creativity and wellbeing • Manage yourself and your project for long-term success • Communicate effectively with your supervisor using the DNA of Engagement model • Understand what’s within your control – and how to handle uncertainty when it isn’t • Develop your personal support network and prepare for what comes after the DPhil
For our next talk, in the BDI/CHG (gen)omics Seminar series, we will be hearing Emilie Wigdor, Postdoctoral Research Scientist, The Sanders Group and Dr Narjes Rohani, Postdoctoral Research Associate. The Sanders and Rinaldi labs. We’re delighted to host Emilie and Narges in what promises to be a great talk! Date: Tuesday 17 March 2026 Time: 9:30 – 10:30 am Location: BDI/OxPop Seminar room 0 Talk title: Cellular and Developmental Context of Genetic Risk in Brain Disorders, Dr Narjes Rohani Talk title: Cell-type-specific regulatory dysregulation in autism, Emilie Wigdor Bio: Dr Narjes Rohani is a postdoctoral research associate in the Sanders and Rinaldi labs, where she investigates the genetic and epigenetic mechanisms underlying neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders. Her work integrates multi-omic data, including bulk and single-cell RNA sequencing, single-cell chromatin accessibility, and bulk DNA sequencing, from brain tissues across developmental stages to understand when and how these conditions emerge. Ultimately, she aims to identify regulatory enhancers that may serve as potential therapeutic targets. Abstract: Although thousands of GWAS variants for brain disorders have been identified, it remains unclear when and where in the brain these genetic effects are most active. To address this gap, we integrated GWAS data for a range of brain disorders with cell type– and developmental stage–specific ATAC-seq and RNA-seq data using stratified LD score regression and gene expression enrichment analyses. We identified the developmentally specific neuronal and non-neuronal cell populations in which genetic risk is concentrated. Our results reveal strong enrichment of psychiatric risk in postnatal excitatory neurons and distinct microglial contributions to neurodegenerative diseases. Finally, we identified an enhancer element that may serve as a potential therapeutic target for SOX5 haploinsufficient syndrome, demonstrating how single-cell and developmental stage–specific data can nominate biologically meaningful and clinically relevant regulatory regions. Bio: Dr Emilie Wigdor is a postdoctoral researcher in the Sanders Lab, where she integrates whole-genome sequencing with single-nucleus RNA and ATAC sequencing to investigate the regulatory basis of neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders. Her research focuses on how common and rare genetic variation converge on cell-type-specific molecular pathways in autism. She completed her PhD at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, studying the contribution of common variation to rare neurodevelopmental disorders and the impact of spliceosomal gene variants. Her work has also examined sex differences in autism, including genetic and epidemiological evidence supporting a female protective effect. Dr Wigdor previously held a Junior Research Fellowship at the Centre for Personalised Medicine at St Anne’s College. Abstract: Autism is highly phenotypically and genetically heterogeneous, raising the question of whether diverse aetiologies converge on shared regulatory programs. Using paired single-nucleus RNA and ATAC sequencing from postmortem human cortex, including cases with and without identified pathogenic variants, we mapped transcriptional and chromatin accessibility changes at cell-type resolution. Dysregulation was concentrated in excitatory and inhibitory neurons and was most pronounced among genetically diagnosed cases, yet genome-wide effect sizes were partially concordant with cases without a known genetic diagnosis. Integration of chromatin accessibility data identified recurrent increases in RFX family motif accessibility across neuronal populations. RFX3, an established autism risk gene identified through rare variant studies, showed coordinated changes in motif accessibility and expression, and was associated with altered immediate-early gene programs, implicating activity-dependent regulatory pathways. Together, these findings suggest that diverse genetic aetiologies converge on common neuronal regulatory pathways revealed by integrated single-nucleus profiling. ———————————————————————————————————————— 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 https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/34860831816590?p=6hPeBaocoVaZWTWAlm Meeting ID: 348 608 318 165 90 Passcode: WR2NA22f
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
The Oxford Climate Research Network (OCRN) 'Strategic Horizons in Climate x Health Research' forum convenes researchers, clinicians, policy leaders, funders, and external partners to strengthen Oxford’s position in the rapidly evolving climate and health landscape. The core purpose of the forum is to function as an initial opportunity to build a shared understanding of current and emerging funding opportunities, funding strategies, and collaboration models, while creating space to connect people working across disciplines to identify synergies and develop potential joint initiatives. The Vice Chancellor, Professor Irene Tracey, will give the opening speech. Networking reception begins at 17:00
Abstract: Primary prevention of heart failure (HF) is an increasing clinical priority, driven by the rising burden of non-ischaemic cardiovascular disease and the availability of effective preventive therapies. The Predicting Risk of Cardiovascular Disease Events HF equation (PREVENT-HF) is the first guideline-endorsed tool for HF risk prediction, but it lacks large-scale external validation. We evaluated PREVENT-HF in more than 10 million individuals from two UK cohorts: the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD), a nationally representative primary care population, and UK Biobank (UKB). We additionally developed TRisk-HF, a Transformer-based survival model using longitudinal electronic health records (EHRs), to identify additional prognostic signals for HF risk in routine care data. In CPRD, PREVENT-HF demonstrated strong discrimination (concordance index [C-index] 0.840, 95% CI 0.837–0.843) and good calibration (slope 1.06, 1.05–1.07). TRisk-HF achieved higher discrimination (C-index 0.868, 0.866–0.871). Explainability analyses highlighted atrial fibrillation, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and alcohol use disorders as important contributors to HF risk. Incorporating these variables into PREVENT-HF improved performance (C-index 0.850, 0.847–0.853), substantially narrowing the gap with the Transformer model. Results were directionally consistent in UKB. These findings establish PREVENT-HF as a robust foundation for HF risk prediction and demonstrate a pragmatic, data-driven approach to refining clinical risk equations using information already embedded in longitudinal EHRs. Short Bio: Zhengxian Fan is a DPhil student working at the intersection of artificial intelligence and clinical medicine, using large-scale electronic health record data.
While Sudan wrestles with a simmering conflict that has continued for its 3rd year in a row, South Sudan, its erstwhile neighbour encounters insurmountable challenges that tie arguably to its very foundation as a state. The tragedies of the Sudans have received little to no attention from the international community, both in moral, socioeconomic, and political terms. However, what is even more worrying is that epistemic understandings of such complexities have since occupied the backseat. As is often the case during armed conflicts, priorities tend to focus on short-terms diagnoses—i.e., humanitarian approaches, such as the provision of necessities and the pursuit of peace and diplomacy. While these are critical (though currently in short supply in both), the Sudans’ internal contradictions extend beyond these moral callings. A more in-depth understanding of the region, rooted in both local epistemologies as juxtaposed with international/regional perspectives, is ripe. This event convenes a diverse range of highly respected individual researchers and academics who are well-versed in the Sudans to spotlight epistemic perspectives that may have historical and intellectual bearings on contemporary tragic moments in the Sudans. The speakers are drawn from a wide range of scholarly fields with a priority on lived perspectives and critical epistemologies to highlight the undercurrents that may be presently misunderstood. About the speakers: a) Mr. Albino Gaw Dar: Sociologist & Head of the Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Faculty of Economics & Social Studies, University of Upper Nile, Juba — South Sudan b) Dr. Matthew Sterling Benson-Strohmayer: A Social & Economic Historian in the Conflict & Civicness Research Group (CCRG) at the London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE). c) Dr Naomi Pendle: Lecturer in the Department of Social and Policy Sciences, the Centre for Development Studies, at the University of Bath. She is a prolific researcher and writer on South Sudan, researching issues of in times of conflict and famine. d) Dr. Douglas Johnson: A revered historian of the Sudans better known for his historical/intellectual role in the Sudanese peace processes and the Abyei Question between 2003-2011. e) Mr. Matai Muon: Doctoral Researcher whose research focuses on the political economy of oil in South Sudan with a keen attention on Unity State, an oil-producing region.
Like in many other parts of the world, the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) technology has profoundly impacted all aspects of higher education in Macao, including university-level teacher education for both pre-service and in-service teachers. In this webinar, the speaker intends to examine and discuss the issues and opportunities that AI—especially generative AI—brings to teaching and learning for teachers at the classroom and school levels, as well as the challenges it poses for university-level teacher education, with a focus on Macao’s educational context. The speaker will also share his experiences and reflections on how university education can address the challenges through innovative, multi-facet measures, which include, among others, offering faculty professional development programmes at the university level, integrating AI into existing university courses to transform teaching and learning practices, and providing a systematic and diverse range of new pre-service and in-service training programmes for school teachers and practitioners.
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.
In her presentation of “Making Labor Markets Work for Workers and Businesses”, Roulet will discuss how thoughtfully designed labor market policies can safeguard workers while fostering business growth. She will also explore the broader implications of AI adoption on employment prospects for younger and future generations. The talk is followed by an open Q&A session. Registration is required.
Final Round of the 12th National Uehiro Oxford Essay Prize in Practical Ethics. On Tuesday 17th March 2026 at the HB Allen Centre, 25 Banbury Rd, Oxford OX2 6NN. The Final starts at 5:30 pm, followed by a drinks reception and nibbles until 7:45 pm. Presentations: Undergraduate Finalists Zineb Zbirou: Should the law punish failure to save a life? Ethan Beri: Is prostitution just a job? Graduate Finalists Adam Hudson: What (if anything) is wrong with consumer boycotting? Clodagh Commane: “It’s Not Your Fault, Doctor.” How should we think about the Ethics of NHS Failure? The presentations include the talk and the Q&A.
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.
How does the US research–policy landscape operate? What can be learned from the experience of those who have engaged directly with it? Drawing on insights from MIT, this session explores these questions by outlining the main institutions and mechanisms that support engagement between academic research and policy in the United States.
Carter Group Speaker(s): TBC Title(s): TBC Band Group Speaker: Lydia Jennings Title(s): Does malaria parasite genetic variation affect vaccine efficacy?
An introduction to the what, why and how of public involvement
A showcase of recent innovations in surgical practice and policy. For surgically inclined students, trainees and consultants. The international Oxford Surgical Innovation Conference (OxSI) is returning for its 8th consecutive year in 2026 with both in-person and virtual attendance options available. This year, the conference will feature an exciting programme of keynote talks, hands-on workshops, and interactive career-focused seminars, encompassing a broad range of surgical specialties and emerging perspectives. Talks from keynote speakers: Mr Ed Sideso - 'Innovations in thoracic aortic disease Dr Harald Veen – ‘Surgery in conflict zones’ Ms Sumrit Bola – ‘Advances in tumour markers in head and neck cancer’ Professor Peter Friend – ‘Taking an idea from concept to market: The OrganOx story’ Workshops: Suturing and knot tying Laparoscopic skills Rib fixation Ultrasound for vascular access Plus hybrid interactive surgical careers-focused workshops. Ticket fees are as follows: Students: £25 (in-person) / £10 (virtual), Trainees: £50 (in-person) / £25 (virtual), Consultants: £75 (in-person) / £30 (virtual). In-person registration includes lunch, refreshments throughout the day, and dedicated opportunities for networking with leaders across surgical disciplines. Tickets can be purchased through Eventbrite: https://oxsi2026.eventbrite.co.uk We are now inviting abstract submissions for posters and oral presentations, with prizes available in each category. Submissions may be made via the following link: https://forms.office.com/e/GdjWDAnve5
Join us for Mind the Motherhood Gap, a dynamic, solutions-focused conference confronting the motherhood penalty and its wide-ranging impacts. Drawing on lessons from higher education and beyond, we'll examine what the penalty reveals about how we design work, value contribution, and shape leadership - and explore practical, evidence-based approaches to change. Through expert panels, lightning talks, interactive discussions, and live audience engagement, we’ll address three pressing questions: - Why does the motherhood penalty persist even in institutions committed to gender equality — and what does that tell us about what needs to change? - What lessons can higher education learn from other sectors in addressing the motherhood penalty? - What would it take for higher education to deliver a world-leading approach to eliminating the motherhood penalty? Proudly hosted in partnership between Saïd Business School, the University of Oxford Social Sciences Division and Faculty of Law, and Oxford Brookes University. This event is for anyone interested in gender equity, workplace inclusion, and transforming the culture of academia.
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.
Irene is a GSK D.Phil student in Adam Al-Diwani's Team. Adam Al-Diwani is a Senior Clinical Researcher at the Department of Psychiatry working at the interface of neuropsychiatry and neuroimmunology to understand bi-directional neuro-immune mechanisms.
Lesson of the week, clinical cases and research. All clinical and academic staff and students welcome. Coffee and Tea will be served.
Despite substantial growth in implementation research, the field has become increasingly dominated by frameworks and studies that catalogue barriers and enablers to implementation success. While these approaches have been instrumental in identifying contextual determinants of uptake, they often stop short of explaining how implementation strategies produce change. As a result, implementation studies frequently emphasize what strategies were used to support putting an innovation into practice, and whether those strategies achieved intended outcomes, while paying far less attention to the cognitive, relational, organizational, and team-level processes through which change unfolds. This imbalance has left a noted critical gap in our understanding of the underlying mechanisms that are activated by strategies to generate desired implementation outcomes. In this lecture, Dr. Carolyn Steele Gray draws on insights from cognitive psychology (e.g., habit formation and mental models), sociology (e.g., professional identity, power, and social networks), organizational and team science (e.g., leadership, sense-making, and team processes), and theories of innovation and adoption (e.g., diffusion of innovations) that can help reveal the mechanisms that can underlie strategy success. Using empirical examples from studies of digital health and integrated care implementation, the lecture illustrates how a developed understanding mechanisms can help better tailor strategies to unique environments, helping to shape adaptation, spread, and sustainability of innovations in complex health systems. The session also explores the methodological challenges associated with studying mechanisms, including issues surrounding definitional clarity, complexity, temporality, and multi-disciplinary dynamics that may not be adequately captured by dominant evaluation approaches. By foregrounding mechanisms as a critical but understudied force in implementation, this lecture argues for a more theory-driven and mechanism-informed approach to strategy development which can help to enable scale, transferability, and long-term sustainability of innovation. This talk is part of the Health Organisations and Policy course, which forms part of the Translational Health Sciences programme. This event is free and open to all. Carolyn Steele Gray, MA, PhD holds a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Implementing Digital Health Innovation. She is a Senior Investigator at the Science of Care Institute and in the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute at Sinai Health, and an Associate Professor in the Institute for Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto in Canada. Dr. Steele Gray is an Implementation Scientist whose program of work focuses on the role of digital health in supporting integrated, person-centred and primary care delivery for patients with complex care needs, applying implementation science theory and approaches, along with evaluation methods to uncover to how best to embed technology into novel delivery models. Key to her transformational work is her international leadership in the areas of digital health and integrated care, notably through her work as a Senior Associate with the International Foundation for Integrated Care (IFIC), and a member of the Executive committee with IFIC Canada, where she co-leads a Special Interest Group in Digital Services and Data Enabling Integrated Care, providing strategic guidance and expertise through IFIC programs like their international Integrated Care Academy. Her national and international leadership in the fields of digital health implementation and integrated primary care was recognized by Digital Health Canada who awarded her Digital Health Leader of the Year in 2025 as well as by the North American Primary Care Research Group who awarded her the Mid-Career Scientist Award in 2025.
The challenges and opportunities of considering nature and biodiversity in making decisions in the private sector are becoming ever more urgent. At this panel discussion, co-organised by the Oxford Martin School and the Saïd Business School, Professor Mette Morsing (Interim Dean of Saïd Business School) will moderate a discussion amongst Oxford researchers and senior executives from the private sector to explore these issues. This is the third of a series of events marking the International Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services plenary meeting in Manchester in February at which a major report on biodiversity and business was launched.
Join writer and historian Thant Myint-U in conversation with Ngaire Woods, Dean of the Blavatnik School of Government, to discuss his new book Peacemaker: U Thant, the United Nations, and the Untold History of the 1960s. Thant Myint-U will talk about his latest book Peacemaker: U Thant, the United Nations, and the Untold History of the 1960s as well as what this never-before-told story reveals about global politics and the prospects for future peace. Based in part on recently declassified papers, the book tells the story of a schoolteacher in a remote Burmese town who, within a little more than a decade, finds himself at the very centre of global politics, as the UN’s Secretary-General, mediating the Cuban Missile Crisis between Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro, before going on to confront one war after another, through the turbulent 1960s, from Vietnam to the Congo, to South Asia and the Middle East. The story is a missing piece in the puzzle of how our world came to be, shining a fresh light on our options for a peaceful future. Thant Myint-U is an award-winning writer, historian, conservationist, and a former international public servant. The has served on three United Nations peacekeeping operations as many years at the UN Secretariat in New York. For over a decade, he helped lead reform efforts in Burma (Myanmar), including as a peace mediator and the founding chair of the Yangon Heritage Trust. The book talk is followed by a drinks reception.
Is current law and practice fit for purpose and how can we work together to make it better? Professor Turner-Stokes is a consultant in Rehabilitation Medicine and Director of the Regional Hyper-acute Rehabilitation Unit at Northwick Park Hospital; and Chair of the Royal College of Physicians Guideline Development Groups for Prolonged Disorders of Consciousness. All welcome. The lecture will be followed by a short drinks reception. This lecture is convened by Professor Jenny Kitzinger (University of Cardiff) as part of a project supported by the Sheila Kitzinger Programme.
The event is free to attend but booking is required due to limited spaces. Reserve your spot by sending an email to oxford@ilcorno.co.uk
The third Oxford Advanced Materials Network (OxAMN) meeting brings together researchers from across Oxford to explore Materials Innovation for and in support of Secure Supply Chains. This event aims to spark transdisciplinary collaboration across departments and colleges by highlighting the breadth of Oxford’s expertise, from fundamental materials science to advanced manufacturing, modelling, and applications in healthcare, sustainability, and national security. Arriving at a moment shaped by the UK Government’s 10‑year Strategy for Advanced Materials and Manufacturing, the meeting provides a platform to connect Oxford’s research strengths with emerging national priorities. The programme features sessions on manufacturing and bio‑inspired materials, advanced modelling and characterisation, and applications ranging from bioelectronics to laser machining and interface chemistry. Contributions from the Government Office for Science and the Department of Business and Trade underscore the importance of materials innovation to secure and resilient supply chains. The day includes the introduction of MPLS’s first OPEN Fellow and the launch of the OxAMN Mini Talk Series: Advanced Materials in UK Policy, as well as opportunities for discussion and networking through poster presentations, lunch, and coffee breaks. We look forward to an engaging day of ideas, connections, and collaboration across Oxford’s advanced materials community.
Please join us for the Oxford Pain Network Seminar, taking place on the third Friday of every month in the Newsom-Davis Room, OxCIN Annexe and online (email the organiser or join the mailing list for the link). Each meeting will have a different speaker, either internal or external to the University, followed by a short Q&A. Open to all researchers/students/clinical staff in Oxford interested in pain research. For more details about future events, please join the mailing list: oxin-paingroup-subscribe@maillist.ox.ac.uk March's speaker: Dr Andrew Marshall is a Senior Clinical Lecturer in Pain Neuroscience at the University of Liverpool and an Honorary Consultant Clinical Neurophysiologist at The Walton Centre. His broad research focus involves investigating the physiology and functional anatomy of nociceptive (pain related) and touch pathways in both health and disease (e.g. in small fibre neuropathy, fibromyalgia and central post-stroke pain). Talk Abstract: TBC
Romain Bertrand (Sciences Po/CERi) Now almost forgotten, Jean and Raoul Parmentier's 1529 expedition from Normandy to Sumatra's Westcoast was posited in the XIXth century as a successful, even glorious French contribution to the (alas mostly Iberian) achievements of the "Age of Discovery". Whereas it actually was a pitiful endeavor, either by economic or by political standards, it was raised to the status of an almost fabled event so as to boost French wavering colonial credentials. Even if it has shed a more realistic light on this enterprise, contemporary intellectual history may have helped restore its mystifying aura by turning it into a piece of evidence of the way "Renaissance high culture" travelled on board commercial ships by the early XVIth century. Using a social history perspective and building on unpublished archival material from Dieppe, Rouen and Le Havre, this presentation will attempt to show that officers and mariners on board "La Pensée" and "Le Sacre" were not would-be literati, but the bearers of highly localized, "situated" knowledges that had more to do with subaltern analogist understandings of the world than with any naturalist ontology-in-the-making. This, in turn, will lead us to reappraise the epistemic conditions of possibility of the (failed) "first encounters" between Europe and Southeast Asia.
Join us for the next session in our online series, Venture Bites, as Iynna Halilou (GP at the MBA Fund) demystifies the mechanics of raising venture capital. Drawing on lessons from multiple market cycles, Iynna will break down what founders need to know going into a raise: The 'hidden rules' of venture capital. The must-haves that move deals forward. Common mistakes founders make when approaching VCs. Timing and momentum: how to engineer urgency in a round. Whether raising a first institutional capital or planning for future rounds, this webinar for founders will equip you with practical tools, a sharper sense of timing, and the confidence to drive your process effectively.
The Oxford Computational Political Science Group (OCPSG) is pleased to announce its speaker event w/ Prof Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey, FBA and Amara Otero-Salgado. They will be presenting their paper 'Measuring Empirically the Legal Conflicts over U.S. Public Lands from 1960 to 2024'. It seeks to better understand how conflicting views over public lands have evolved over time, namely by examining empirically a newly developed dataset to assess competing narratives that have driven legal battles in the U.S. in the modern era of environmental policy. The paper uses a Large Language Model to build a dataset of 5500 cases of litigation on U.S. public lands from 1960 to 2024. From these data, they analyse trends in the evolution of arguments that have won and lost, how these arguments are used by nongovernmental and governmental actors to further (or block) advances in environmental protections, and finally, whether the longer-term trends in these conflicts reveal a movement more towards unifying or towards polarizing Americans around the issue of protection for public lands. Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey is Professor in Political Science and Fellow of the British Academy, and served as Head of the LSE Government Department from 2019-2022. Her research interests are in political economy, legislatures, deliberation and accountability. She is author and editor of several books on trade policy and monetary policy, including Deliberative Accountability in Parliamentary Committees (OUP, 2022), Deliberating American Monetary Policy: A Textual Analysis (MIT Press, 2013), and From the Corn Laws to Free Trade (MIT Press, 2006). She has published many articles on nineteenth century trade policy, as well as on more contemporary topics, like the use of nonverbal communication in UK parliamentary committee hearings, political rhetoric on US national security by George Bush and John Kerry, civil religion in presidential rhetoric, and US Senate debates on partial-birth abortion. She is currently working on a new book project, which explores conflicts over public lands in the US and other industrialized countries. Amara Jane Otero Salgado is an MSc student in Data Science at LSE, having completed her undergraduate degree in Politics and Data Science also at LSE. Her research interests lie in bridging quantitative methods with the social sciences. In particular, she seeks to employ statistical techniques in areas of social science research which have typically been qualitative or have employed only minimal application of quantitative methods. She also has a strong interest in studying areas of algorithmic fairness and online censorship. The hybrid event takes place in the Skills Lab at the Manor Road Building on Friday, 20 March, at 14:30. It is open to both Oxford and non-Oxford students and researchers, who also have the option to join the event online. OCPSG is a non-partisan research initiative supported by Oxford’s Department of Politics and International Relations. We advance the use of computational methods—including machine learning and AI—in political science and policy through an interdisciplinary, collaborative environment. Founded in December 2024, OCPSG has grown into an international research network applying rigorous, evidence-based computational approaches to tackle complex global challenges and high-impact research questions.
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).
A one-day international summit, bringing together academics, healthcare professionals, engineers and donors. A full day event including the gala dinner at the University Examination Schools on Saturday evening. Arrive on Saturday morning or stay in college and enjoy an informal dinner on Friday before the summit starts. College accommodation is also available on Saturday night.
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.
Uncover strategies to identify supportive employers, cultivate resilience, and strike a balance between professional and personal life. During this session we shall cover the following: * Defining resilience and why it’s important in your job search * Building confidence in your decision to transition * Recognising Your Transferable Skills & Aligning with Your Values * Addressing and Overcoming Psychological Barriers * Building Your Personal Resilience Toolkit The 2026 conference booklet will be available closer to the event. This event is part of: *Careers Beyond Academia: Options and Pathways for Researchers* _The careers conference for Oxford University research staff and DPhil students_ Monday 23 March - Thursday 26 March 2026 online and in-person in Oxford. The careers fair will take place at the Careers Service, 56 Banbury Road, OX2 6PA. Register for the fair "here":https://oxford.targetconnect.net/leap/event.html?id=23516&service=Careers+Service
Thinking about taking your research skills beyond academia and into the world of policy? In this session, we will look at how to explore career paths in these sectors, where to start your search, highlight key skills and experience required for pursuing employment, and what different policy-focused roles actually look like day to day. This event is part of: *Careers Beyond Academia: Options and Pathways for Researchers* _The careers conference for Oxford University research staff and DPhil students_ Monday 23 March - Thursday 26 March 2026 online and in-person in Oxford. The careers fair will take place at the Careers Service, 56 Banbury Road, OX2 6PA. Register for the fair "here":https://oxford.targetconnect.net/leap/event.html?id=23516&service=Careers+Service
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
Charities and not for profit organisations offer intellectually challenging, values driven careers that draw on many of the skills developed through doctoral and research work. This panel brings together professionals working across the charity and not for profit sector who have previously worked in academic research. Panelists will discuss how they moved from academia into the sector, the types of roles available, and what the transition looked like in practice. There will be time for questions and open discussion in which we can explore how research skills translate into charity and not for profit work, what employers in the sector look for, and how to approach career exploration and applications. This event is aimed at PhD students and research staff who are interested in careers beyond academia and want to better understand opportunities within charities and not for profit organisations. The 2026 conference booklet will be available closer to the event. This event is part of *Careers Beyond Academia: Options and Pathways for Researchers* _The careers conference for Oxford University research staff and DPhil students_ Monday 23 March - Thursday 26 March 2026 online and in-person in Oxford. The careers fair will take place at the Careers Service, 56 Banbury Road, OX2 6PA. Register for the fair "here":https://oxford.targetconnect.net/leap/event.html?id=23516&service=Careers+Service
Professional phagocytes internalise and degrade large amounts of noxious materials. Consequently, their endocytic systems are remarkably active; macrophages take up > 20% of their volume hourly. A central question in our work is how these long-lived cells maintain function while processing diverse cargo. We focus on the endo-lysosomal system and have identified SLC12A9 as a lysosomal ion co-transporter regulating lysosomal volume and fusion–fission balance, with effects on degradative capacity, luminal pH and susceptibility to damage. Ongoing work aims to define the mechanisms that regulate this transport system and its roles in phagocyte function and lysosomal physiology.
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
Oxford Energy Lunches gathers the vibrant, multidisciplinary community of Oxford academics, researchers, students and professionals who work in energy. The ZERO Institute (Paul Shearing) and the Oxford Energy Network will present our initiatives, and there will be an informal open mic for your questions and announcements. We look forward to meeting you there!
Many researchers want to remain in the university environment but are unsure what roles exist beyond academic research and teaching. This panel brings together Oxford University staff who began their careers in academic research and have since moved into a wide range of careers across the University. Panelists will share their career journeys and how they navigated the move beyond research while staying within Oxford. The session will explore the variety of career paths available, the skills and experience that transfer well, and practical insights for those considering a similar transition. There will be time for questions and discussion. This event is aimed at PhD students and research staff who are curious about non academic career options within Oxford University and want to make informed, realistic career choices. *Panelists* *Dr Zoë Lee*, Research Funding Manager, Research Funding & Contracts Team, Research Services University of Oxford *Dr Monica Palmero Fernandez*, Research Practice Coordinator, Research Services, University of Oxford *Dr Afra Pukol I Campeny*, Educational Policy Officer, University of Oxford *Dr Kristina Pikovskaia*, Research Manager, Department of Economics, University of Oxford The 2026 conference booklet will be available closer to the event. This event is part of: *Careers Beyond Academia: Options and Pathways for Researchers* _The careers conference for Oxford University research staff and DPhil students_ Monday 23 March - Thursday 26 March 2026 online and in-person in Oxford. The careers fair will take place at the Careers Service, 56 Banbury Road, OX2 6PA. Register for the fair "here":https://oxford.targetconnect.net/leap/event.html?id=23516&service=Careers+Service
This panel talk will give you the opportunity to hear from a patent attorney and an intellectual property lawyer about their work, how they use their science background in their jobs, and the differences between these two professions. Plenty of opportunities to ask questions. The 2026 conference booklet will be available closer to the event. This event is part of: *Careers Beyond Academia: Options and Pathways for Researchers* _The careers conference for Oxford University research staff and DPhil students_ Monday 23 March - Thursday 26 March 2026 online and in-person in Oxford. The careers fair will take place at the Careers Service, 56 Banbury Road, OX2 6PA. Register for the fair "here":https://oxford.targetconnect.net/leap/event.html?id=23516&service=Careers+Service
What do 50 tiny plastic ducks have to do with careers...? Find out at this keynote session. Navigating careers beyond academia can feel overwhelming, especially when you’re managing the demands of a busy PhD or postdoc. This session is designed to help you get clearer on what you actually want from your next steps, focusing on the parts of yourself you can take with you from academia and apply elsewhere, rather than dwelling solely on what you might be leaving behind. This isn’t about having a perfectly formed career plan (because, let’s face it, who does…?). Instead, it’s about making sure you don’t waddle blindly into your next role, and that you have your ducks in enough of a row to spot better-fit opportunities, make more intentional decisions, and gradually build clarity and confidence. *Holly Prescott* is a career guidance practitioner specialising in supporting doctoral and postdoctoral researchers, with 10 years’ experience helping researchers to feel more confident about their next steps and to make career transitions into a variety of sectors. She is also the founder of Post-PhD careers blog ‘PostGradual’ which, since its launch in 2021, has attracted over 75,000 unique readers in over 150 different countries. Holly’s book, ‘Navigating Careers Beyond Academia: A Practical Handbook for Doctoral and Postdoctoral Researchers,’ is due for publication by Routledge in 2026. Holly holds a PhD from the University of Birmingham, PGDip (QCG) in Career Guidance from Coventry University and the Career Development Institute, and is a Fellow of Advance HE (FHEA). The 2026 conference booklet will be available closer to the event. This event is part of: *Careers Beyond Academia: Options and Pathways for Researchers* _The careers conference for Oxford University research staff and DPhil students_ Monday 23 March - Thursday 26 March 2026 online and in-person in Oxford. The careers fair will take place at the Careers Service, 56 Banbury Road, OX2 6PA. Register for the fair "here":https://oxford.targetconnect.net/leap/event.html?id=23516&service=Careers+Service
Is it ok to love teaching students more than research? Is it possible to carve out an academic career that focusses primarily on teaching rather than research? We see many DPhil students and research staff who get more of a buzz from working with students than their research. Perhaps, for you, teaching appeals because you enjoy working with people, or sparking a light-bulb moment for your student, or perhaps you love sharing ideas about your subject and creating a tangible impact. Understanding the appeal of this side of your academic work can unlock a host of potential career paths, both within higher education and beyond it, in the classroom and in other education-related roles. In this session we'll explore a multitude of career paths relating to a love of education. We'll answer the question: Is it possible to carve out an academic career that focusses primarily on teaching? And we'll look at the potential to transition to a myriad of other teaching roles. Then we'll broaden the discussion into alternative career areas that have education values at their heart and build on the research skills that you already have such as education policy, advisory and development roles and more. Join Dr Abby Evans, one-time academic, ex-high school teacher and current careers professional, for this information-filled session on alternatives to academia in the education sector. The 2026 conference booklet will be available closer to the event. This event is part of: *Careers Beyond Academia: Options and Pathways for Researchers* _The careers conference for Oxford University research staff and DPhil students_ Monday 23 March - Thursday 26 March 2026 online and in-person in Oxford. The careers fair will take place at the Careers Service, 56 Banbury Road, OX2 6PA. Register for the fair "here":https://oxford.targetconnect.net/leap/event.html?id=23516&service=Careers+Service
Communication skills are fundamental to a researcher’s day-to-day work. This panel session features speakers who have built on these skills to go into healthcare and medical communications, careers that aim to raise awareness of therapies and medical devices that could transform lives. This event is part of: *Careers Beyond Academia: Options and Pathways for Researchers* _The careers conference for Oxford University research staff and DPhil students_ Monday 23 March - Thursday 26 March 2026 online and in-person in Oxford. The careers fair will take place at the Careers Service, 56 Banbury Road, OX2 6PA. Register for the fair "here":https://oxford.targetconnect.net/leap/event.html?id=23516&service=Careers+Service
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.
Have you decided that an academic career is not for you? It is easy to get stuck after coming to this realisation and wonder what to do next. During the session we will look at tools and strategies for identifying attractive roles and understanding what a job really entails, whilst also considering the importance of knowing your own skill set and preferred parameters and using that knowledge to shape your job search. Workshop objectives: Identify appropriate tools to clarify your personal work preferences and skills Discover resources and strategies for investigating career options in a structured way Observe tools for gathering evidence of careers paths for transitions from academia The 2026 conference booklet will be available closer to the event. This event is part of: *Careers Beyond Academia: Options and Pathways for Researchers* _The careers conference for Oxford University research staff and DPhil students_ Monday 23 March - Thursday 26 March 2026 online and in-person in Oxford. The careers fair will take place at the Careers Service, 56 Banbury Road, OX2 6PA. Register for the fair "here":https://oxford.targetconnect.net/leap/event.html?id=23516&service=Careers+Service
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.
Researchers with strong analytical and quantitative skills are in demand across the finance sector. Roles in quantitative research, software development, and strategic analysis often draw directly on the methods, coding, problem-solving, and rigour developed through academic research. In this panel, professionals from quantitative finance will share insights into the day-to-day realities of their work and what they look for in candidates with research backgrounds. You’ll explore how academic skills translate into finance, how to position your experience for these roles, and what to expect from recruitment processes, including technical interviews and assessments. This event is part of: *Careers Beyond Academia: Options and Pathways for Researchers* _The careers conference for Oxford University research staff and DPhil students_ Monday 23 March - Thursday 26 March 2026 online and in-person in Oxford. The careers fair will take place at the Careers Service, 56 Banbury Road, OX2 6PA. Register for the fair "here":https://oxford.targetconnect.net/leap/event.html?id=23516&service=Careers+Service
Richard Sever is Chief Science and Strategy Officer at openRxiv, the non-profit organization that runs the preprint servers bioRxiv and medRxiv, which he co-founded. Richard obtained his undergraduate degree at the University of Oxford, graduating with 1st Class honours in Biochemistry. He switched to Cambridge for his PhD, researching gene regulation at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. Richard then trained as an editor, working first at Current Opinion in Cell Biology and then Trends in Biochemical Science. He later became Executive Editor of Journal of Cell Science at The Company of Biologists, where he played an important role developing their publication program. Richard joined Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 2008 and was appointed Assistant Director of its press in 2012. He launched the journals Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology and Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Medicine, serving as Executive Editor, alongside Cold Spring Harbor Protocols. He also edited several books, including the textbook Signal Transduction and the handbook Career Alternatives for Biomedical Scientists. Richard co-founded bioRxiv in 2013 and medRxiv in 2019 to allow scientists to share research much more rapidly. The servers became essential resources for researchers and played critical roles during the pandemic. Richard is widely acknowledged as a leading thinker in scientific communication. In 2022, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Cold Spring Harbor School of Biological Sciences in recognition of his work, and in 2025 he was recognized by Time magazine in their Time100 list of the most influential people in health. Richard was awarded The Royal Society Research Culture Award in 2025 for outstanding work in the improvement of the research system.
European cities face a critical challenge: how to implement rights-based, effective policies to support precarious migrants and refugees, given that national and EU frameworks are often restrictive or contradictory. To best support these communities, cities must consider not only which specific policies to implement but also the characteristics and practices that enable them to develop and implement pro-migrant policies. This webinar will present findings from a recent study on the local dynamics of 28 cities across Europe. Drawing on data collected by the Berlin-based advocacy organisation Moving Cities, this research identifies three overarching themes: the empowerment of municipal actors, collaborative approaches, and integrated frameworks. These findings validate research on migrant solidarity policies conducted in cities across the continent and offer a more comprehensive framework for how cities can integrate migrant support across all levels of government and society. The presentation will be followed by a discussion on how these factors apply across contexts. Register in advance for this meeting: https://zoom.us/my/globalexchange?pwd=Leg0c2vc0qBp797m1urqaie8cQ9Zhq.1&omn=92471320458
This study investigates whether cultural soft power generated through educational exchange produces measurable institutional outcomes, using alumni of the Taiwan ICDF scholarship programme as an empirical case. While prior research demonstrates that international scholarships foster cultural affinity and intercultural competence, less is known about whether these attitudinal shifts translate into behavioral and organizational change. Addressing this gap, the study proposes and tests a three-stage framework — Affinity → Integration → Influence — linking individual experience to institutional diffusion. Drawing on survey data from over 500 alumni across countries, sectors, and cohorts, the analysis examines whether Taiwan-related knowledge application and sustained transnational networks predict behavioral integration, defined as the adoption of Taiwan-influenced practices in alumni’s home contexts. It further assesses whether integration is associated with organizational influence, particularly among alumni in leadership roles. Results highlight that affinity alone is insufficient; practice transfer and positional authority are critical conditions for converting soft power into institutional impact. The findings contribute to education diplomacy literature by clarifying the mechanisms through which cultural attraction becomes organizational diffusion. The framework also has contemporary relevance, as AI-enabled transnational networks and digital alumni platforms may further accelerate practice transfer and influence pathways in global knowledge diplomacy.
The ability to utilise research skills - critical thinking, project management, communication - mean that consulting careers are rewarding and engaging for many researchers moving beyond academia. In addition, consultants are sought from a broad range of disciplines and backgrounds. Whether it's social enterprises or finance, technology or research, having impact in an area that interests you is possible through a career in consulting. This panel session will feature PhD holders who are now working in consultancy across a range of sectors. This event is part of: *Careers Beyond Academia: Options and Pathways for Researchers* _The careers conference for Oxford University research staff and DPhil students_ Monday 23 March - Thursday 26 March 2026 online and in-person in Oxford. The careers fair will take place at the Careers Service, 56 Banbury Road, OX2 6PA. Register for the fair "here":https://oxford.targetconnect.net/leap/event.html?id=23516&service=Careers+Service
Dr Mike Moss FRSC FRSA will provide an overview of $2.75 Trillion of research and development globally. Innovation is putting together what is needed with what is possible. In general, scientists and engineers will be able to define what is possible based on available or foreseeable technology. What is needed by the business or market, by customers or consumers can be defined by anyone with any degree subject with an interest in the human condition and societal trends. He will outline an industrial view of disruptive and sustaining innovation strategy, innovation funnels, project management, programme and portfolio management, intellectual property considerations and organisational structures. Out in the real world, organisations will have their own structures, systems, nomenclatures, metrics and job titles but this general introduction will help you to navigate this complexity in the organisations and career paths that you are considering. There will be much more research for you to do, but this introduction is a great start to your personal career journey whether you end up in industry or academia. Dr Mike Moss, Careers Adviser, Oxford Careers Service "As a careers adviser at Oxford Careers Service, my role is to provide more than 700 careers appointments for students, researchers and alumni and more than 40 specialist training workshops each year. I did a BSc and PhD in Chemistry at the University of Birmingham, and then a 2 year postdoc in the California Institute of Technology. At 27 I joined Procter & Gamble Research & Development on their graduate scheme. During my 22 years at Procter & Gamble, I lived in the UK, Rome and Brussels, conducted in-depth consumer and market research in thirteen countries including Japan, Malaysia, United States, Morocco, Algeria, Turkey, Russia and most European countries, I published 54 patents, managed a significant acquisition and was site leader of an R&D Technical Centre." The 2026 conference booklet will be available closer to the event. This event is part of: *Careers Beyond Academia: Options and Pathways for Researchers* _The careers conference for Oxford University research staff and DPhil students_ Monday 23 March - Thursday 26 March 2026 online and in-person in Oxford. The careers fair will take place at the Careers Service, 56 Banbury Road, OX2 6PA. Register for the fair "here":https://oxford.targetconnect.net/leap/event.html?id=23516&service=Careers+Service
IT skills ranging from software development to machine learning and predictive algorithm development are becoming increasingly important across a vast range of sectors, with the technology sector at the forefront of innovation and application. Whether you are wanting a role directly conducting research or see a future in management and consulting within industry and start-ups, this panel session will share the experience of researchers transitioning into both technical and non-technical roles. This event is part of: *Careers Beyond Academia: Options and Pathways for Researchers* _The careers conference for Oxford University research staff and DPhil students_ Monday 23 March - Thursday 26 March 2026 online and in-person in Oxford. The careers fair will take place at the Careers Service, 56 Banbury Road, OX2 6PA. Register for the fair "here":https://oxford.targetconnect.net/leap/event.html?id=23516&service=Careers+Service
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
In this session, with the help of our panel of publishing professionals, we will explore the options for researchers in publishing – the roles, the skills, the areas of publishing where a doctorate is essential and the areas where it is a ‘nice to have’; how a doctorate degree is viewed and how best you can promote the skills you have developed on your DPhil. The panel includes: *Manuel Breuer*, chief editor at Nature Communications for Springer Nature Following studies in Germany and the US, Manuel received his PhD in cell and developmental biology from the Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris. After post-doctoral work in Edinburgh, he moved to academic publishing as an editor for Journal of Cell Science and The FEBS Journal. In 2021, he joined Springer Nature, first at Communications Biology and now as chief editor for cell & developmental biology at Nature Communications. Over the past decade, Manuel gained extensive experience working with editorial teams across the globe and overseeing editorial boards. *Caroline Kuhtz*, production editor at Berghahn Books Caroline Kuhtz (they/them) has studied English, Literature and Cultural Studies at the Universities of Bielefeld and Hildesheim, Germany, and graduated with a PhD thesis on queer identities in 2013. Since 2016 they are employed as a production editor at Berghahn Books in Oxford and launched their own indie imprint, Wollschweber Publishing, in 2024. The 2026 conference booklet will be available closer to the event. This event is part of: *Careers Beyond Academia: Options and Pathways for Researchers* _The careers conference for Oxford University research staff and DPhil students_ Monday 23 March - Thursday 26 March 2026 online and in-person in Oxford. The careers fair will take place at the Careers Service, 56 Banbury Road, OX2 6PA. Register for the fair "here":https://oxford.targetconnect.net/leap/event.html?id=23516&service=Careers+Service
This panel event will feature speakers sharing their insights in transitioning from academic research to a career in the Creative Industries. This event is part of: *Careers Beyond Academia: Options and Pathways for Researchers* _The careers conference for Oxford University research staff and DPhil students_ Monday 23 March - Thursday 26 March 2026 online and in-person in Oxford. The careers fair will take place at the Careers Service, 56 Banbury Road, OX2 6PA. Register for the fair "here":https://oxford.targetconnect.net/leap/event.html?id=23516&service=Careers+Service
This talk will present an overview of the landscape of frontier AI tools and their impact on research practice. We will explore how this applies to typical research activities from grant writing, to data analysis, data maintenance, visualisation and more. It will give an overview of the landscape of: • frontier Large Language Models and their capabilities • research-focused tools • emerging practices in AI-assisted research • practical tips for getting started with what is available • outline of the learning required to take advantage of these tools
Are your research skills and experience valuable beyond academia? The answer is ‘yes’! It’s just a matter of packaging them in a format that employers beyond academia will understand. In this session, we will provide tools for identifying your professional skills and converting your research experience into strong applications. This event is part of: *Careers Beyond Academia: Options and Pathways for Researchers* _The careers conference for Oxford University research staff and DPhil students_ Monday 23 March - Thursday 26 March 2026 online and in-person in Oxford. The careers fair will take place at the Careers Service, 56 Banbury Road, OX2 6PA. Register for the fair "here":https://oxford.targetconnect.net/leap/event.html?id=23516&service=Careers+Service
A research career isn’t limited to academia. Meet PhD graduates from across the STEM subjects and working in diverse industry sectors, and join the discussion on how they have applied their research expertise in roles beyond the university setting. This event is part of: *Careers Beyond Academia: Options and Pathways for Researchers* _The careers conference for Oxford University research staff and DPhil students_ Monday 23 March - Thursday 26 March 2026 online and in-person in Oxford. The careers fair will take place at the Careers Service, 56 Banbury Road, OX2 6PA. Register for the fair "here":https://oxford.targetconnect.net/leap/event.html?id=23516&service=Careers+Service
Sleep is a dynamic state characterized by reduced behavioral activity, decreased responsiveness to external stimuli, and active brain processes. It is a fundamental biological necessity for all vertebrates and is thought to play crucial roles in memory consolidation, metabolite clearance, anabolism, and neural plasticity. Notably, disturbances in sleep and disruptions in sleep–wake regulation are increasingly recognized as early indicators of neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders, yet the underlying mechanisms of sleep regulation remain largely unclear. In this talk, I will present our work investigating how neuronal–glial interactions, particularly astrocyte activity, contribute to the regulation and plasticity of sleep-wake dynamics. We address key questions regarding the contribution of non-neuronal cells to sleep-regulating circuits and the plasticity of neuronal–glial substrates supporting cognition in both healthy and pathological conditions. Using in vivo calcium imaging of astrocytes and neurons, multi-site electrophysiology, optogenetics, pharmacogenetics, and closed-loop acoustic stimulation in freely moving mice, we aim to define sleep-related neural signatures across organizational levels—from single cells to distributed networks. Understanding these mechanisms is essential, as sleep disturbances such as insomnia are prevalent features of neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders.
Richard Sever is Chief Science and Strategy Officer at openRxiv, the non-profit organization that runs the preprint servers bioRxiv and medRxiv, which he co-founded. Richard obtained his undergraduate degree at the University of Oxford, graduating with 1st Class honours in Biochemistry. He switched to Cambridge for his PhD, researching gene regulation at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. Richard then trained as an editor, working first at Current Opinion in Cell Biology and then Trends in Biochemical Science. He later became Executive Editor of Journal of Cell Science at The Company of Biologists, where he played an important role developing their publication program. Richard joined Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 2008 and was appointed Assistant Director of its press in 2012. He launched the journals Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology and Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Medicine, serving as Executive Editor, alongside Cold Spring Harbor Protocols. He also edited several books, including the textbook Signal Transduction and the handbook Career Alternatives for Biomedical Scientists. Richard co-founded bioRxiv in 2013 and medRxiv in 2019 to allow scientists to share research much more rapidly. The servers became essential resources for researchers and played critical roles during the pandemic. Richard is widely acknowledged as a leading thinker in scientific communication. In 2022, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Cold Spring Harbor School of Biological Sciences in recognition of his work, and in 2025 he was recognized by Time magazine in their Time100 list of the most influential people in health. Richard was awarded The Royal Society Research Culture Award in 2025 for outstanding work in the improvement of the research system.
Research funding organisations play a central role in shaping research agendas, supporting innovation, and influencing how research delivers impact. Many roles within this space draw directly on academic and research experience. This panel brings together professionals working in major research funding organisations, including individuals who previously worked in academic research. Panelists will share how they moved into research funding roles, what their work involves day to day, and how they apply their research background in a funding context. The session will showcase some of the career paths available within research funders, the skills and experience that are valued, and what to consider when preparing for a career in this space. There will be time for questions and discussion. This event is aimed at PhD students and research staff who are interested in careers beyond academic research and want to understand opportunities within research funding organisations. Panellists *Dr. Janina Pescinski*, Training and Development Manager for The British Academy Early Career Researcher Network, The British Academy *Dr Nikolay Ogryzko*, Research and Innovation Careers Policy, UKRI *Dr Sarah Ball*, Head of Strategic Research Development, RDM, University of Oxford Having completed my PhD at the University of Edinburgh, I pursued an academic career doing my postdoctoral research at the University of Queensland and then moving to the University of Texas as an Assistant Professor to start my own research group. After a period of reflection, I decided to make the transition from academic research to a career in research funding and strategy. Whilst initially this was a daunting move, it is one that I have always been glad that I made. I have had the opportunity to work in a range of roles first in BBSRC and later UKRI, where I gained experience of managing peer review processes for responsive mode funding opportunities, the development and implementation of strategic funding programmes, scientific strategy and policy development. I even had the opportunity to work on the service design for a large digital project. Nearly three years ago, I left UKRI and joined the University of Oxford as Head of Strategic Research Development in the Radcliffe Department of Medicine (RDM). In my current role, I lead RDM’s Research Strategy and Funding Team and together we support researchers in RDM to apply for internal and external funding opportunities. I also work closely with the Head of Department to deliver a range of strategic activities to achieve RDM’s research strategy. This event is part of: *Careers Beyond Academia: Options and Pathways for Researchers* _The careers conference for Oxford University research staff and DPhil students_ Monday 23 March - Thursday 26 March 2026 online and in-person in Oxford. The careers fair will take place at the Careers Service, 56 Banbury Road, OX2 6PA. Register for the fair "here":https://oxford.targetconnect.net/leap/event.html?id=23516&service=Careers+Service
In this two-part careers-adviser led session, we will first provide an overview of careers in International Development, discussing how the sector is structured, different types of roles and how to find jobs and work experience opportunities. In the second part, we will provide an overview of the varied and rewarding careers in diplomacy, and share methods you can use for identifying the relevant routes into diplomatic roles and how to find out more about your chosen career path. This event is part of: *Careers Beyond Academia: Options and Pathways for Researchers* _The careers conference for Oxford University research staff and DPhil students_ Monday 23 March - Thursday 26 March 2026 online and in-person in Oxford. The careers fair will take place at the Careers Service, 56 Banbury Road, OX2 6PA. Register for the fair "here":https://oxford.targetconnect.net/leap/event.html?id=23516&service=Careers+Service
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
Are you wanting to apply for job roles beyond academic research? Creating a strong CV and Cover letter is vital to unlocking the next stage of the job application process. However, there can be many differences in the format and content of application materials focused towards a role beyond academia compared to one for university research positions. This presentation will share the building blocks of creating effective CVs and Cover Letters, including how to best translate our research and wider experience into language employers want to see. The 2026 conference booklet will be available closer to the event. This event is part of: *Careers Beyond Academia: Options and Pathways for Researchers* _The careers conference for Oxford University research staff and DPhil students_ Monday 23 March - Thursday 26 March 2026 online and in-person in Oxford. The careers fair will take place at the Careers Service, 56 Banbury Road, OX2 6PA. Register for the fair "here":https://oxford.targetconnect.net/leap/event.html?id=23516&service=Careers+Service
Chaired by Jonathan Black, Direct of Oxford University Careers Service, this in-person panel session provides a unique opportunity to ask questions to senior managers and recruiters about what they look for when hiring researchers applying for roles beyond academia. Gain valuable insights into the process behind reviewing applications, hear tips on making CV and cover letters stand out, and gain advice on interviews and networking pre-application. This event will be followed by light refreshments and the chance to speak with our panellists in the Careers Service building ahead of the Careers Fair for Researchers. The Fair will begin at 14:00 where you will have the chance to meet a range of recruiters and alumni working for organisations specifically seeking to hire PhD students and research staff. This event is part of: *Careers Beyond Academia: Options and Pathways for Researchers* _The careers conference for Oxford University research staff and DPhil students_ Monday 23 March - Thursday 26 March 2026 online and in-person in Oxford. The careers fair will take place at the Careers Service, 56 Banbury Road, OX2 6PA. Register for the fair "here":https://oxford.targetconnect.net/leap/event.html?id=23516&service=Careers+Service
Lesson of the week, clinical cases and research. All clinical and academic staff and students welcome. Coffee and Tea will be served.
This is a unique opportunity to meet representatives from a variety of organisations that are looking to hire researchers. Join the fair for details about the jobs and programmes they have available and discuss the careers paths you could follow in their sector. Conference booklet The 2026 conference booklet will be available closer to the event. This event is part of: *Careers Beyond Academia: Options and Pathways for Researchers* _The careers conference for Oxford University research staff and DPhil students_ Monday 23 March - Thursday 26 March 2026 online and in-person in Oxford. The careers fair will take place at the Careers Service, 56 Banbury Road, OX2 6PA. Register for the fair "here":https://oxford.targetconnect.net/leap/event.html?id=23516&service=Careers+Service
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
Traditional reductionist paradigms in cognitive science often miss the richness of real-world behavior. While naturalistic paradigms have recently expanded in vision, audition, language, and social cognition, publicly available closed-loop neuroimaging datasets—where participants actively act on and reshape their sensory input—remain scarce. In parallel, state-of-the-art artificial agents can now learn to navigate a wide range of situations with high proficiency, but fall short at generalizing to unseen contexts, which humans excel at. To bridge these gaps, we built the Courtois Neuromod Mario dataset as part of the CNeuromod project: an open deep-phenotyping resource spanning multiple cognitive domains, including 84 hours of Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo, 1985) gameplay collected from five naïve participants. In this talk, I will introduce the dataset, motivate the design choices behind its acquisition and annotation, and show how reliable brain responses can be recovered from naturally occurring game events. I will then present a comprehensive framework for operationalizing the platformer by segmenting continuous gameplay into short, well-contained, unitary challenges that facilitate the parsing and analysis of behavior. Finally, I will discuss ongoing and future research avenues, including the development of benchmarking baselines for continual reinforcement learning, investigations of the neural basis of motor sequence learning, and the use of intracranial EEG to identify neural correlates of flow states. Together, these ingredients position Super Mario Bros. as a total laboratory, where multiple distinct experiments targeting different facets of cognition can be conducted within a single, unified environment.
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.
This webinar for founders and aspiring founders will teach you how to validate demand, design simple outreach systems, avoid common early-stage mistakes, and build traction before product-market fit. Getting your first 100 customers is one of the hardest, and most defining milestones for any startup. In this practical session, Kashif Saleem shares the real frameworks he used to acquire early customers while building a Y Combinator-backed Software as a Service company from scratch. This is a tactical, no-fluff session focused on what actually works in the early days. Kashif Saleem is the Founder & CEO of SubscriptionFlow, platform helping businesses manage recurring revenue at scale. A member of the Forbes Technology Council, he mentors founders and students through various academic programs and hackathons. He focuses on helping early-stage builders turn ideas into scalable systems and sustainable growth.
https://www.genzentrum.uni-muenchen.de/research-groups/hopfner/group-members/karl-peter-hopfner/index.html
Hosted by the University of Oxford in celebration of the 60th anniversary of the "Fondation Wiener-Anspach (FWA)":https://fwa.ulb.be/?lang=en , this collaborative event convenes academic partners from the University of Oxford and the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) to reflect on how knowledge can circulate responsibly and effectively across multiple communication channels in service of the public good. Bringing together perspectives from research, policy, and public engagement, the programme will explore how academic work can reach broader audiences while retaining integrity, accessibility, and impact.
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.
In this talk, I will present a broad overview of progress to date in biological research in psychiatry, highlighting important advances but also noting the absence of more meaningful breakthroughs. Given the enormity of the topic, my perspective will necessarily be selective but representative. I will end with some observations about potential opportunities to advance the field in the coming years. This seminar is hosted in person at the Department of Psychiatry, in the Seminar Room. To join online, please use the Zoom details below. https://zoom.us/j/93311812405?pwd=9kbjSbEcO2fa7n7gFLZVqrChvr467B.1 Meeting ID: 933 1181 2405 Passcode: 169396
Nowadays, driven by AI, such as recommendation algorithms, content ranking, and automatic summaries, social media increasingly shapes how academics discover, share, and engage with knowledge. This has transformed the environment for knowledge exchange, creating new expectations for academics to be accessible, efficient, and responsible communicators. Drawing on nineteen semi-structured interviews with Chinese academics and platform representatives, this study examines the institutional logics underlying the current Chinese academic environment for knowledge exchange via social media and the strategies academics adopt in response. The study’s insights aim to prompt reflection on how AI-mediated social media platforms are reshaping academic knowledge exchange and offer practical guidance for academics to enhance public engagement in China and beyond.
Can you build a Foundation Doctor-Level AI? This hybrid event is back, and proudly sponsored by Oxford University AI Competency Centre, in collaboration with OpenAI. Participants will move from "code-zero" to "AI hero", using the power of OpenAI’s Custom GPTs and Low-Code Workflows. Join a cohort of attendees from clinicians and data scientists to create, test and iterate a portfolio-ready clinical AI. Day 1: Virtual/ F2F- Foundations of Clinical AI. Day 2: F2F Build day! Work with Python coaches to fine tune and customise and AI App. Day 3: Demo Day! Go head to head in pitch and compete in one of 5 challenges. Whether you are a clinician with zero coding experience, or a data scientist with zero clinician experience, this hackathon provides the tools and partnerships to build, test, and iterate a portfolio-ready clinical AI agent in just 3 days.
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
How are the many distinct cell types that characterize a mature nervous system genetically specified? For a terminally differentiating neuron this question boils down to a gene regulatory question: how is the expression of the distinct batteries of genes that define the terminal, functional properties of a distinct neuron type induced and maintained? Using genetic loss-of-function approaches in the nematode C.elegans, my laboratory has begun to uncover what appear to be simple, phylogenetically conserved principles underlying the generation of diverse neuronal identities.
MitOX is our annual meeting packed with short talks and posters on cancer metabolism, neuroscience, diabetes, mitochondrial disorders and general mitochondrial biology. You can find more infomation and the booking link on our website: https://www.wrh.ox.ac.uk/news/mitox-2026 Dr Michele Frison: Mitochondrial Biology Unit, Cambridge Title: Ubiquitin-mediated mitophagy regulates the inheritance of mitochondrial DNA mutations Prof Ian Ganley: University of Dundee Title: Balancing mitophagy: a role for AMPK Dr Raffaele Sarnataro: Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour, University of Oxford Title: Mitochondrial origins of the pressure to sleep Dr Tom Nicol: DPAG, University of Oxford Title: Regulating complex I assembly in development and disease – Controlling the MCIA complex Dr Joerg Burgstaller: University of Vienna Title: Segregation of an mtDNA OriL microsatellite in heteroplasmic mice Prof Benoit Kornmann: Biochemistry, University of Oxford Title: Miro GTPases and their conserved role in mitochondrial quality control Dr Konstantinos Lekkos: IDRM, University of Oxford Title: Opposing roles of Mdh1ab and Slc25a51b in regulating long-term heart regeneration through OXPHOS-dependent cardiomyocyte redifferentiation
In 1969 Michel Serres was elected professor in the history of science at University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne where he served until 1989. However, this mathematician turned philosopher considered this election as a mistake or even a mischief and he never endorsed the role of historian. He taught the history of science in spite of himself although he was an expert in this domain, unlike Sganarelle, the Doctor in spite of himself staged by Molière. For him, teaching the history of science was a way to reconcile his two passions for science and literature. In this paper I will outline three aspects of Serres’s unorthodox view of the history of science: i) there is no rigid boundary between science, fable and myths; ii) science generates a time of its own that is neither amenable to the arrow of progress nor to a timeline; iii) his history science raises a philosophical question: who are the subjects of knowledge?
Convened by Frank A.J.L. James (UCL) This meeting is being held to commemorate the life, work and legacy of William Hodgson Brock (1936-2025), who spent his entire career at the University of Leicester. Sometime chair of SHAC and editor of its journal Ambix, Brock was one of the leading historians of chemistry in his time, writing the Fontana/Norton History of Chemistry, as well as biographies of William Crookes, Justus von Liebig and Henry Edward Armstrong. (An extended obituary can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00026980.2025.2489298). The papers to be presented at this meeting take their starting point from Brock’s work and historical interests. There is no charge for this meeting, but please let Frank James, frank.james@ucl.ac.uk, know if you wish to attend. Programme 9.30am Welcome: Stéphane Van Damme, MFO, and Frank James, SHAC 10.00am First Brock Award Lecture: Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, Université Paris 1-Panthéon-Sorbonne 'The history of chemistry through the lens of materials. A very short introduction' 10.45am Session 1: Alan Rocke, Case Western Reserve University: The Best of Frenemies: Liebig and Dumas (A Tribute to William H. Brock) 11.15 Coffee Session 2: Eira H. Betthell (Booth), University of Essex: 'From Laboratory to Library: Bill Brock’s Prolific Writing as Chemical Practice' Matthew Daniel Eddy, Durham University: 'A Context for Colonial Chemistry: Thinking with Bill Brock about the Biomedical Relevance of Dr J. A. B. Horton's Experiments on the Soil of Sierra Leone' Georgiana D. Hedesan, University of Oxford: 'The Foundation of the Society for the Study of Alchemy and Early Chemistry in 1935: Between Historical Research and the Transmutational Paradigm' Michael Jewess, Independent Scholar: 'Working with Bill: Robert Fergus Hunter (1904-1963)' 13.15 Lunch 14.30 Tribute from the Brock family: Susannah Ahluwalia, Gareth Brock and Benjamin Brock 14.50 Session 3: Julia Carr-Trebelhorn, University of Cincinnati: 'Burning Diamonds: Lavoisier, Guettard, and the 1771 Development of Reduction Firing and Hard-Paste Porcelain in Paris' John R.R. Christie, University of Oxford 'Commerce, Manufacture and Practical Chemistry in 18th-Century Britain' Robert Bud, Science Museum/UCL: 'Poison gas and Art Deco: analysing early 20th century ambivalence about chemistry' 16.00 Coffee 16.20 Session 4: Robin Mackie (Open University and Gerrylynn K Roberts, Independent Scholar) 'Counting the British Chemical Community, 1881-1971: Opening the ‘Black Box'' Annette Lykknes, Norwegian University of Science and Technology: 'Crookes’ Vis Generatrix in teaching and learning' 17.15 Closing remarks
Please join us for the BRC Pain Cafe meeting, taking place on the first Friday of every month in the FMRIB Common Room. The theme of April's meeting is TBC. Each meeting will have a different theme, with a short presentation followed by an open discussion. There will be complimentary hot drinks and cookies. Meetings are held primarily in person, though a Teams link is available for those who cannot attend in person. Join the mailing list for details on how to join the meeting: oxin-paingroup-subscribe@maillist.ox.ac.uk
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.
Learning outcomes 1. To better understand the roles of cellular organelles in health and disease 2. To understand the current state of the art in identifying and studying organellar drug targets 3. To appreciate the challenges of drug targeting to intracellular sites 4. To translate our new understanding to the development of novel therapeutics
Course directors and tutors from part-time/blended/distance PGT/MSc courses and learning technologists will share how they approach online student discussions, both synchronous/live and asynchronous.
Wednesday 15 April 2026 Provine Group Speaker 1: Sam Murray Title: TBC Todd Group Speaker: Marcin Pekalski Title: TBC
A treatment policy strategy if often used to handle intercurrent events such as treatment withdrawal in clinical trials. Such an approach seeks to estimate the effect of a treatment, regardless of whether patients withdraw from the treatment schedule early. This requires the collection of outcome data following treatment withdrawal, however data is often missing after treatment withdrawal complicating the analysis. In this setting, retrieved dropout multiple imputation has been proposed as a useful method for estimation. This approach imputes off-treatment data based only on observed off-treatment data. But this may be impractical with limited observed data post-treatment withdrawal. Alternatively, reference-based multiple imputation can be used which assumes treatment withdrawals behave like those observed in a specified reference group. But this makes strong assumptions and disregards observed off-treatment outcomes. This presentation will review these two different methods of imputation followed by an introduction to a novel approach, referred to as retrieved dropout reference-base centred multiple imputation, that draws its influences from the two aforementioned methods. The expected bias and root mean square error (RMSE) for this new method will be analytically explored, followed by application to an anti-depression trial.
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.
09:00-09:30 Registration and Welcome – Peter H. Wilson (Oxford) 09:30-10:30 *Panel 1* (_Chair: Peter Wilson_) *Andy Hopper* (Oxford) ‘Ideas of Citizenship in Military Petitions from the British Civil Wars’ *Matthew McCormack* (Northampton) ‘Militias and volunteers in Britain and Ireland: A long view’ 10:30-11:00 Coffee Break (Wharton Room, All Souls) 11:00-12:30 *Panel 2* (_Chair: Mark Condos_) *Richard Reid* (Oxford) ‘War Bonds: affective cultures of violent belonging in the Horn of Africa’ *Justin Jackson* (Amherst), ‘War, Work, and Americans’ Liberal-Imperial Conscience: Citizenship in the United States’ Colonies of 1898’ *Jean Smith* (KCL), 'Transnational marriage, nationality and citizenship across the British Empire during the Second World War' 12:30-13:30 Lunch (Wharton Room, All Souls) 13:30-14:30 *Panel 3* (_Chair: Bill Philpott, KCL_) *Claire Morelon* (Manchester), ‘Empire, Nation and Citizenship in Austria-Hungary during the First World War’ *Jim Bjork* (KCL), ‘Inconvenient Veterans: “Foreign” Military Service and Local Memories in Twentieth-Century Poland’ 14:30-15:00 Coffee break (Wharton Room, All Souls) 15:00-16:30 *Panel 4* (_Chair: Juliette Pattinson, KCL_) *Natalia Sobrevilla Perea* (Lima) army and society Peru 1800-1860 *Jonathan Fennell* (KCL), ‘Navigating the Prosaic and the Transcendent: The Core Issues of Politics and the Causes, Conduct and Consequences of the Second World War’ *Jake Gasson* (KCL), ‘Uncovering the Citizen Soldier: Service Records and the Social Profile of the British and Dominion Armies at War, 1939-1945’ 16:30-17:00 *Roundtable* (_Chair: Sofya Anisimova, UCD_) *Christina Goulter* (KCL) + [tbc] *Peter H. Wilson* (Oxford) *Registration* Thanks to the generous support of All Souls College, there is no conference fee, but please complete the registration form to assist with our catering arrangements.
The EHR is hosting a one-day symposium in St John's College, Oxford, to celebrate the recent publication of the journal's 600th issue. In marking this milestone, and in line with the journal's generalist ambitions, the symposium addresses a problem which matters to all historians: what to do when there are no sources. Five leading scholars, working across diverse chronological and geographical areas, will grapple with the methodological problem of paucity of source material, discuss how such absences affect their area of research, and demonstrate how they have chosen to solve the problem. All interested parties, from senior scholars to graduate students, are invited to register to attend. You can register and also see the full programme here: https://tinyurl.com/bd8d8sny
We are delighted to invite colleagues to the Second Oxford Academic Kidney Network Symposium, building on the strong foundations established at last year’s inaugural meeting. Aims: The OAK Network brings together clinicians and researchers from departments and disciplines across Oxford to strengthen renal research collaborations towards patient benefit. We draw on the breadth of local expertise and resources to promote opportunities for collaboration. Areas of Focus: The symposium will be of interest academics, clinical staff, and students working in fields related to kidney health and disease. Sessions will include a focus on early career researchers, advances in data management, and engaging wider patient groups with research. We very much hope you will be able to join us as we continue to develop this important network. Abstracts of up to 250 words for oral or poster presentations, in any research topic relevant to the kidney, are warmly welcomed. Register here (Free to attend): https://forms.office.com/e/2gv2gvPjvb Abstract submission form by the 13th of March: https://forms.office.com/e/bfuTNK9ki4 Learn more about the OAK Network https://www.medsci.ox.ac.uk/oxford-academic-kidney-network Sponsored by CSL Vifor and Stada UK.
A half-day online immunisation update training course, delivered via Microsoft Teams. This training is primarily targeted at healthcare professionals and healthcare support workers who already administer, promote and/or advise about vaccines. 3 CPD hours of participatory learning. The content is aligned with UKHSA (Health Security Agency) National Minimum Standards and Core Curriculum for Vaccination Training - GOV.UK. Content Areas: Any recommended changes to practice, policies and guidelines in relation to: 1. Vaccine schedules 2. Vaccine-preventable diseases 3. Current issues 4. Communication 5. Legal issues 6. Storage and handling of vaccines
The Science Media Centre (SMC) is an independent press office and not-for-profit organisation that aims to improve the quality of science coverage in the media by ensuring journalists have rapid access to reliable, evidence-based scientific expertise. The Science Media Centre’s main function is to bridge the gap between science and journalism. It does this through three core roles: Supporting journalists: The SMC provides expert reactions, background briefings, and access to qualified scientists so journalists can report scientific stories accurately and quickly. Supporting scientists and institutions: It trains scientists to engage effectively with the media and helps research institutions handle science stories responsibly, encouraging open communication even on controversial issues. Policy and Public Engagement: The SMC contributes to government and parliamentary discussions on science communication and studies how the public receives science through media. This talk will cover how the SMC works with researchers and journalists on the contentious and politicised topics in science and health. It will be of most relevance to those working on these trickier media issues which include but are not restricted to obesity drugs, antidepressants, gender incongruence, cancer screening, vaping, vaccines, diet and nutrition, social media and young people, psychedelics, microplastics, and forever chemicals. If you work in a field which is frequently reported on in the media, often in a highly charged or sensational way, this talk will explain why the media is still a key avenue for engagement and effective communication, and the different ways the SMC can support you to get your expertise and research out to the public.
OMPF is an interest group to facilitate discussions on membrane protein structure and function. We are holding a half-day meeting on with short talks and posters to showcase the latest research, this is followed by drinks and pizza/snacks. Please register by 21 March 2026 if you would like to attend as a presenter or audience. A more detailed programme will be distributed via email closer to date. Please contact the organisers georgia.isom@path.ox.ac.uk or anna.li@ndcn.ox.ac.uk if you have any questions! Key words: ion channels, transporters, enzymes, GPCRs, vesicles, membrane receptors, electrophysiology, cryo-EM, cryo-ET, neuroscience, biochemistry, structural biology, X-ray crystallography, biophysics
This meeting is part of the NetDRIVE project, which focuses on delivering authoritative advice to UK Research and Innovation on sustainable digital research infrastructure. It will promote discussion on the shape, constraints, and opportunities of the emerging UK power supply, alongside broader questions of community leadership, scientific credibility, and digital transformation in support of net zero. Keynote speakers will include (additional speakers to be confirmed): Professor David Wallom, Professor in Informatics, Associate Director - Innovation of the Oxford e-Research Centre Professor Myles Allen, Principal Investigator, Oxford Net Zero Meeting objectives 1. Practical approaches to community leadership and scientific credibility in defining and implementing net zero 2. Understanding the shape, constraints, and opportunities of the emerging UK power supply 3. Engaging across generations to help guide the digital transformation Expected outputs 1. Recommendations on a framework for defining and implementing net zero, including approaches to balancing unavoidable emissions. The aim is not to re-review technical options, but to summarise available and emerging approaches and how these may inform infrastructure procurement policy. 2. Draft recommendations on the use of flexible approaches to siting and operating infrastructure to reduce carbon footprint and costs. 3. Recommendations for enhancing opportunities for postdoctoral researchers to engage in the development of sustainable digital research infrastructure. Poster sessions will form part of the programme (details to follow).
A half-day online immunisation update training course, delivered via Microsoft Teams. This training is primarily targeted at healthcare professionals and healthcare support workers who already administer, promote and/or advise about vaccines. 3 CPD hours of participatory learning. The content is aligned with UKHSA (Health Security Agency) National Minimum Standards and Core Curriculum for Vaccination Training - GOV.UK. Content Areas: Any recommended changes to practice, policies and guidelines in relation to: 1. Vaccine schedules 2. Vaccine-preventable diseases 3. Current issues 4. Communication 5. Legal issues 6. Storage and handling of vaccines
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 (2026) intensive two-day training workshop, Thurs 23 - Fri 24 April 2026 (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.
This is the centre’s eleventh annual conference, hosted by Oxford’s Department of Education. Building on the success of 2025, this will be fully hybrid, with 30 parallel panels and roundtables across six different streams: ‘Why it’s hard to make the finances add up’, ‘Equity, quality and affordability’, ‘Mobilities and inequalities’, ‘Freedoms and geopolitics’, ‘Governance and leadership and democracy’ and ‘Sustainability and reparative futures’. The opening plenary of CGHE 2026, to be held in Wolfson College, will celebrate the life and contributions of Professor Claire Callender, whose academic and policy interests helped prepare the ground for CGHE. Her groundbreaking work on student attitudes towards debt and its long-term consequences, along with her policy advocacy, are being taken forward by colleagues across CGHE’s international community. A key focus for the conference is equity and sustainability. Across the world, governments are wrestling with how to fund the escalating costs of higher education. The global shift to knowledge-based economies, a focus on life-long learning, and the aspiration for universal tertiary education all put traditional models under strain. These new financial models have to balance a range of societal expectations: affordability, equitable access, high quality provision, flexibility and long-term sustainability. Some countries, such as England, Canada and Australia, have chosen a high-tuition/high-aid funding model, often predicated on income-contingent student loans. Others, including much of Europe, have opted for low-tuition models to prioritise affordability, though there is also a growing private sector. Emerging economies in Africa, Latin America and Asia see rapid higher education expansion and differentiation, with fierce competition for the free or low-fee elite public universities, alongside growing tuition-charging private HE provision. Chile, South Africa, and the Philippines have recently implemented income-targeted free-tuition policies, highlighting the failings of previous systems. There is much to learn from these different models and the shared challenge of protecting the public good dimensions of higher education amidst constrained state finances.
Do you want to make sure that your work complies with the open access policy for REF 2029? In this focused online briefing, we will: step you through the changes and new requirements; provide links to further REF information and guidance; let you know where to find help at Oxford; and answer as many questions as we can. Intended audience: researcher and research student; staff
How does the structure of a neural network shape its function? In this talk I will introduce partially recurrent neural networks (pRNNs): a model in which a set of connection pathways can be combined combinatorially to generate a complete taxonomy of architectures between feedforward and fully recurrent. I will present two functional explorations across these structures. First, using closed-form solutions, I will demonstrate that linear pRNNs exhibit surprisingly diverse temporal dynamics, including transient amplifications and oscillations, which are approximately invariant to network size. Second, using nonlinear pRNNs trained with deep reinforcement learning, I will show that distinct architectures differ in their learning speed, peak performance, and robustness to various perturbations. I will conclude by mapping these functional differences to specific network traits, illustrating how pRNNs can illuminate structure-function principles relevant to both neuroscience and machine learning.
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.
The Director of the Ashmolean Museum, Dr Alexander Sturgis, and the Keeper of the Heberden Coin Room, Professor Frédérique Duyrat, invite you to the 2026 CNG Lecture.
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.
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.
Understanding snail biology creates new opportunities for helminth disease control, while improved diagnostics help identify risk factors. In this seminar, I will present research spanning both areas. We reveal new insights into snail hosts of schistosomiasis, showing that helminth infection alters the snail microbiome and that microbial communities may, in turn, influence parasite success. Through a multi-omic approach we uncovered previously unknown host–microbiome–parasite interactions. I will also discuss our use of environmental DNA (eDNA) to detect snail hosts in endemic regions, including Northern Ireland and internationally. Focusing on diseases such as fascioliasis, we assessed multiple environmental matrices to detect snails and parasites, developing a ddPCR workflow for soil, herbage, and water samples. This work now extends to human foodborne diseases in Southeast Asia, targeting detection of snail and fish intermediate hosts. Our broader goal is to integrate a “One Biology” framework linking environment, host, microbe, and parasite to improve disease control. Geoffrey Gobert is a Professor of Molecular Parasitology within the School of Biological Sciences, Queen’s University Belfast. Before coming to the UK, he was a Senior Research Associate in QIMR Berghofer in Brisbane Australia. He works to improving our understanding of host-parasite interactions with helminths of clinical and/or agricultural importance. His research includes interactions and impacts within the environmental. Topics of importance include those locally within Northern Ireland supporting agriculture, as well as internationally in Southeast Asia, North America and Africa. Organisms of particular interest include schistosomes, Fasciola, and Opisthorchis. Internationally projects are of clinical importance and embrace a "one health" approach. More recently he has adopted the theme of “one biology” in charactering diseases, organisms or micro-environments. He is the Special Issues Editor for the journal Molecular and Biochemical Parasitology. He has been funded by the Royal Academy of Engineering and currently holds research grants from the BBSRC-UK, including as Director for the soon-to-be launched HELMINTH ECO-HEALTH HUB UK. https://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/SchoolofBiologicalSciences/Connect/AcademicStaff/ProfGeoffreyGobert/
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.
The human brain stores an extraordinary amount of knowledge about the world, supporting object recognition, language, reasoning, and abstract thought. What is the neural nature of this knowledge? Is semantic knowledge—such as “roses are red”—simply a trace of sensory experience, encoded in perceptual brain systems? How does the brain represent knowledge acquired through language alone, without direct perceptual grounding? I will present a series of studies from my laboratory that address these questions by examining semantic representations under radically different sensory and linguistic conditions. Using knowledge domains such as object color, we study congenitally blind individuals, color-blind individuals, typically developed macaques, and individuals who experienced early language deprivation. Across these populations, we ask what aspects of semantic knowledge depend on perception, what can arise independently of it, and how language reshapes neural representations. Together, the findings suggest that semantic knowledge in the human brain is supported by two distinct yet interacting coding systems, revealing how perceptual experience and language jointly contribute to the architecture of human knowledge.
For further details, please contact: "$":mailto:nick.millea@bodleian.ox.ac.uk, or 01865 287119
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.
This study examines how students at the London School of Economics (LSE) perceive the value of their university degree. The research employs mixed methods, combining a survey of second- and third- year undergraduates with follow-up in-depth interviews. The survey captured students’ perceived educational gains, priorities during university, as well as beliefs about factors influencing success at university and in the labour market. Students with different profiles — defined by their understandings of success—were selected for in-depth interviews to explore how they negotiated between competing priorities. Findings show how under perceived conditions of social congestion (Brown, 2013), students navigate elite higher education as a site for cultivating multiple forms of graduate capital (Tomlinson, 2017) so as to gain positional advantages over other graduates.
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
Booking is required for both in-person and online attendance.
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.
Convenors: Ariel Dempsey, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Faculty of Theology & Religion; Andrew Moeller, Project Leader, Biotechnology and the Humanities Please contact Andrew Moeller with any questions: andrew.moeller@history.ox.ac.uk. Amid the rapid expansion of medical technology, what place do religion and spirituality hold in contemporary medicine? How are spirituality, physical health, and mental health interconnected, and how do these relationships shape experiences of illness and healing? As medicine becomes increasingly driven by technology, data, and efficiency, questions of meaning, belief, and human experience remain central to care. Religion and spirituality continue to influence how patients and clinicians understand illness, make medical decisions, cope with suffering, and pursue well-being. This panel brings together clinicians, scholars, and practitioners to explore the roles of religion and spirituality in contemporary medicine, with particular attention to physical health, mental health, and patient-centered care. Panelists will examine how spirituality intersects with clinical practice, ethical decision-making, and holistic approaches to healing, as well as the challenges and opportunities of integrating spirituality into modern healthcare settings. Our panel of speakers will explore questions such as: What role can spirituality play in physical and mental health, and how should clinicians engage with it responsibly in patient care? In the face of widespread clinician burnout, how might spirituality support resilience, meaning, and professional well-being? As medicine becomes increasingly technological, how can healthcare systems integrate spiritual care while respecting diversity, ethics, and professional boundaries? What insights does spirituality offer medicine about healing, suffering, and meaning—and how can medical practice, in turn, inform spiritual understanding? How can dialogue between medicine, philosophy, theology, and the arts deepen our understanding of the spiritual dimensions of human experience and reshape approaches to care? As societies invest billions in biotechnologies aimed at enhancing and extending human life, we are also facing a growing crisis of mental health and rising rates of despair. What do spiritual traditions offer that might help us rethink what we mean by “progress” and human flourishing? These questions matter not only to healthcare professionals, but to all of us because serious illness touches every life, whether our own or those of people we love. Whether you are a clinician, patient, scholar, student, religious, spiritual, secular, skeptic, or simply someone interested in exploring questions of meaning and purpose, join us for a timely conversation at the intersection of medicine, spirituality, and human well-being.
TBC
Dr Nicole Votruba is a senior research fellow at the University of Oxford, Nuffield Department of Women's & Reproductive Health, group lead of the Global Mental health & Equity Group, and primary investigator of the SMARThealth Perinatal Mental Health project (PRAMH). Her background as psychologist and political scientist, with research focuses on global mental health and equity, women's health, stigma, implementation science, and science-policy inter-relationships. She is a research fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford, and honorary research fellow with the George Institute for Global Health UK, Imperial College London.
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
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 nine days in May 1926, nearly three million trade unionists struck in sympathy with nearly a million miners whose employers had locked them out because they would not accept steep pay cuts and a longer working day. This general strike practically shuttered the country. There never had been anything like it before; there never would be anything like it again. This lecture will explore what was at stake over those nine days – it was more than “bread and cheese”; and why it lasted little more than a week; and what were its consequences; and what are its enduring lessons even for today. *Jonathan Schneer* is Professor Emeritus at the Georgia Institute of Technology. _Nine Days in May_ is his ninth book. His _The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of Arab-Israeli Conflict_ (Random House 2010) won a National Jewish Book Award; his _The Lockhart Plot_ (Oxford, 2020) was shortlisted for the Pushkin House Literary Prize. Currently, he is working with a co-author, Jim Cronin, on a book about critics of Thatcherism in Britain, and Reaganism in the United States. He mainly splits his time between Decatur Georgia and Williamstown Massachusetts. There will be a drinks reception after the lecture. All welcome.
For nine days in May 1926, nearly three million trade unionists struck in sympathy with nearly a million miners whose employers had locked them out because they would not accept steep pay cuts and a longer working day. This general strike practically shuttered the country. There never had been anything like it before; there never would be anything like it again. This lecture will explore what was at stake over those nine days – it was more than “bread and cheese”; and why it lasted little more than a week; and what were its consequences; and what are its enduring lessons even for today.
Booking is required for both in-person and online attendance.
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 (tarryn.ching@nds.ox.ac.uk) if you would like to attend online.
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
Please join us for the BRC Pain Cafe meeting, taking place on the first Friday of every month in the FMRIB Common Room. The theme of May's meeting is: Measuring Pain in Animal Models. Each meeting will have a different theme, with a short presentation followed by an open discussion. There will be complimentary hot drinks and cookies. Meetings are held primarily in person, though a Teams link is available for those who cannot attend in person. Join the mailing list for details on how to join the meeting: oxin-paingroup-subscribe@maillist.ox.ac.uk
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.
For more than a millennium, Islam has been a Chinese religion, and native-born Chinese Muslims have played important roles in their homeland, from royal astronomers to butchers, merchants to diplomats, and scholar-officials to farmers. Yet the Muslims of China are often depicted as inherently foreign, their religion as incompatible with Chinese culture. Islamic China offers a re-appraisal of this history, endeavoring to recapture the ordinariness of Chinese Muslim communities as they created a bewildering diversity of Islamic cultures, in constant conversation with Muslims abroad and non-Muslims at home. In doing so, it explores how these communities, whose categorization has so often been seen as problematic, can teach us something about the ways social categories are made.
Join the Centre for Personalised Medicine (CPM), University of Oxford for a day-long symposium exploring the evolving landscape of direct-to-consumer (DTC) medical testing. Bringing together academic experts, clinicians, industry innovators, and regulatory professionals, this event will delve into the opportunities and challenges of DTC testing across hormone health and fertility, gut and nutrition, and genetics, and its broader impact on patients and the NHS. The day will feature presentations and panel discussions, examining how these technologies are influencing, and may continue to shape, patient pathways, clinical practices, and patient-clinician relationships within healthcare. The programme will also engage with the ethical, philosophical, and regulatory implications of DTC medical testing, asking critical questions about evidence, oversight, and responsibility in a rapidly changing health consumer market and its impacts on the NHS. With contributions from thought leaders across medicine, ethics, philosophy, regulation, and industry, this event provides a timely platform for interdisciplinary dialogue on a topical issue in modern healthcare. This event will be structured around three key themes: 1. Developments in direct-to-consumer medical testing 2. Implications of direct-to-consumer medical testing for clinical practice and patient pathways 3. Ethical, philosophical, and regulatory considerations of direct-to-consumer medical testing The provisional agenda is available to view here: https://tinyurl.com/czeny2bm Attendance for this event is in-person only. Recordings of all presentations will be available on the CPM website and YouTube channel following the event. As capacity for this event is limited, we kindly ask that you inform us if you are unable to attend after registering, so that your place may be offered to another participant.
COURSE DETAILS This course covers methods of managing and controlling the process of thesis and report writing, as well as meeting deadlines. It also discusses the principles and practice of high-quality scholarly writing. It includes: The production of reports, papers and theses from a time and project management point of view. The writing task itself: this includes logical argument construction, the importance of structure in a document, appropriate style to be used in academic writing, and how to make the actual writing process as pain-free and effective as possible. An opportunity for you to critique a short paper with your group.
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
Puzzled by PICO? Daunted by databases? Baffled by Boolean? This one-hour online 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.
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.
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
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.
Booking is required for both in-person and online attendance.
Out of the deer park and into the frying pan – regulating global finance! Distinguished Magdalen alumni Michael Barr (1989) and Sam Woods (1992) join President Dinah Rose in conversation about their paths to government service in the UK and US. They will also share insights gained from their experiences regulating transnational financial institutions.
Wednesday 6 May 2026 Wong Group Speaker 1: Yan Wong Title: Ancestral recombination graphs allow population-free analysis of large genomic datasets
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
My team based at the Dunn School of Pathology in Oxford is interested in understanding how cells assemble large biological motor proteins called dynein's These nano-scale machines move and power the rhythmic beating motion of eukaryotic cilia and flagella which play vital roles in human health and disease
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.
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
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.
Booking is required for both in-person and online attendance.
The event is free to attend but booking is required due to limited spaces. Reserve your spot by sending an email to oxford@ilcorno.co.uk
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 (tarryn.ching@nds.ox.ac.uk) if you would like to attend online.
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.
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; know how to manage your library account including loans and requests. Intended audience: taught student; researcher and research student
*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).
This, the eighteenth annual OxPeace Day- Conference, takes place in the 80th year since the inaugural meeting of the UN General Assembly. That meeting, held in the Methodist Centrall Hall in post-war London in January-February 1946, designed how the UN would operate to carry out its Charter, to establish peace and prevent further wars. We look back on considerable success as well as shortcomings, and we ask: where are we and the world, in this present moment marked by challenge and crisis? What should we aim for, and what resources can we call upon?
Join us for a day of presentations exploring the works of Tayeb Salih. The day is divided into 3 sessions: (1) The World of Tayeb Salih; (2) Tayeb Salih in the World; and (3) Reading Tayeb Salih's Non-fiction. Programme timings are available at https://www.sudaneseprogramme.org/ Please join us for all or part of the day, all are welcome. Registration is essential: In-person attendance: Please email Dr Ahmed Al-Shahi: namlas159@gmail.com Online attendance: Please register your details at https://tinyurl.com/TSP26May Tea and coffee will be available on arrival and during the programme breaks. Lunch is not included however will be available for attendees to purchase from St Antony's College self-service dining hall. Please note the dining hall is cashless so lunch payment is by card only.
Unlock the secrets to conquering self-doubt and embrace your achievements with our transformative workshop led by Dr. Tracy Bussoli. Course Highlights: • Understand Impostor Phenomenon (IP): Delve into the roots of IP and discover why high achievers often grapple with this phenomenon. • Explore Your Unique Experience: Create a safe and confidential space to reflect on your personal journey with IP. Share and connect with like-minded individuals. • Impact on Life & Career: Uncover the ways in which IP can affect your life and career. Gain insights into its subtle manifestations and tackle its consequences head-on. • Strategies for Empowerment: Identify powerful strategies to manage self-doubt effectively. Dr. Tracy Bussoli will equip you with practical tools to navigate and overcome Impostor Phenomenon.
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
Public support is central to the implementation of climate policy, yet evidence on how climate-related information affects policy preferences remains mixed. This paper studies how scientifically grounded climate information, framed as either good or bad news, shapes support for climate policies and examines through which emotional channels these effects operate. We conduct a large-scale survey experiment with approximately 8,000 respondents in Germany, exposing participants to short texts summarizing recent scientific findings on climate sensitivity, policy effectiveness, and progress toward climate targets. When significant, bad news tends to increase support for climate policies, while corresponding good news does not symmetrically reduce it. However, good news about successful policy performance---the effectiveness of carbon pricing to reduce emissions---increases support for the specific policy discussed, with limited spillover to other policy domains. Emotional responses can help explain a substantial share of these effects, with worry and guilt increasing policy support and calm reducing it. By contrast, purely factual information yields smaller and less robust effects. Overall, the findings point to emotional responses as an important channel through which climate information and scientific news affect policy support.
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.
We all have emotions, but where do they come from? In this talk, I will present evidence that some emotional states are associated with discrete, innate expressions. I will draw on investigations of vocal expressions of emotions in non-human primates and congenitally deaf individuals, as well as across different cultures. These findings support the notion that emotional vocalisations are specialised adaptations that have evolved to help us deal with recurring challenges and opportunities, and are modulated by learning. I will argue that our understanding of what emotions are should include a functional perspective centred around emotion preparedness.
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.
Booking is required for both in-person and online attendance.
Have you been attending the Management in Medicine sessions and wish you had more opportunities to get to know your fellow participants? Have you had a really passionate, engaging or interesting discussion with someone at an event and would like to re-connect with them? Would you like an opportunity to share resources, collaborate and support each other? If so, come along to this community session, get to know each other through reflecting on what we’ve learnt and sharing real-life examples of MiM at work. There will be an opportunity to get to know each other in breakout rooms, as a whole group and share resources in the chat. We absolutely love the passion, drive and vision of our programme participants and want to create more opportunities to share this with each other! We believe many good things come of being in community, especially one as engaged as this one.
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.
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
As part of ‘French Sciences in Oxford: Cross-Channel Conversations’ Christophe Prieur (CNRS) Chaired by Dong (Lilly) Liu (University of Oxford) Abstract: This lecture aims to provide a comprehensive overview of current research in control theory and its applications. Rooted in physics, engineering, and mathematics, this field integrates the modeling of dynamical systems, stability analysis of control models, and the design of efficient (or even optimal) control strategies. The lecture will highlight the key milestones that have shaped modern research in control theory and systems, with a particular focus on my contributions, as CNRS researcher, obtained with co-authors. We will explore how control plays a central role in addressing critical societal, informatics, and engineering challenges. Additionally, we will introduce ongoing research projects, including those related to high-dimensional systems, the control of uncertain systems, and the « deluge » of AI-based approaches transforming the field.
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.
This workshop will cover the basics of copyright as they apply to researchers at the University of Oxford. It will explain the different types of copyright work that are used or generated in research and the rights and responsibilities for researchers and academic authors in an age of increasingly open scholarship. We will discuss the practical implications of copyright law on the publication process, as well as the production and sharing of research data. This will include the licensing of research outputs and data and the use of open licences such as Creative Commons. We will also cover ownership of copyright, author agreements with publishers and the benefits of signing up to the University of Oxford rights retention pilot. Finally, the session will cover the use of copyright content owned by others as part of the research process. This will involve looking at the role of rights clearance, copyright exceptions, due diligence and risk management in common research scenarios. Intended audience: Researcher and research student; Staff
TBC
The American Revolution is now widely accepted to have been the last civil war within the British Empire of the Atlantic world. However, British, imperial, and Atlantic contexts do not exhaust the historical frames essential to understand the Revolution or, more specifically, 1776. For contemporaries on both sides of the Atlantic, Europe—particularly the European balance of power—was the most important setting for the fears raised by the American War. The greatest assault on that balance of power had occurred only four years before 1776 in 1772 with the first Partition of Poland by Austria, Prussia and Russia. This lecture shows how fears of partition, "Poland like", drove the decision for American independence and how the Polish response to partition shaped the British counterblast to the Declaration of Independence. *David Armitage* is the Lloyd C. Blankfein Professor of History and former Chair of the Department of History at Harvard University, where he teaches intellectual history and international history. He is also an Affiliated Professor in the Harvard Department of Government, an Affiliated Faculty Member at Harvard Law School, and an Honorary Professor of History at the University of Sydney. Before coming to Harvard in 2004, he taught for eleven years at Columbia University. He is the author or editor of fifteen books, among them _The Ideological Origins of the British Empire_ (2000), _The Declaration of Independence: A Global History_ (2007), _Foundations of Modern International Thought_ (2013), _The History Manifesto_ (co-auth., 2014), and _Civil Wars: A History in Ideas_ (2017). Among his edited works are _Shakespeare and Early Modern Political Thought_ (co-ed., 2009), _The Age of Revolutions in Global Context, c. 1760-1840) (co-ed., 2010), and _Pacific Histories: Ocean, Land, People_ (co-ed., 2014). The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception.
This screening programme explores a collection of Sinophone films whose genres sit in between an ethnographic film, documentary, essay film, and fiction. Through this screening journey, we will engage with various languages, narratives, perspectives, styles and textures of films that come across and reflect on the ever-changing realities of contemporary Chinese society – rich with nuances, obscurities, complexities, and uncertainties. The series will cover four themes, including COVID-19, Gender, Art and Society, and Rural-Urban, and will run from Feb to May 2026. Session 4 (Boundaries of Art): China's Van Goghs 中国梵高 Directors: Yu Haibo, Yu Tianqi Kiki Region: Mainland China Run Time: 82 min Screening Talk and Q&A: with Dr Yu Tianqi Kiki (in-person) Synopsis: An intimate portrait of a peasant-turned oil painter transitioning from making copies of iconic Western paintings to creating his own authentic works of art. China’s Van Goghs tells the story of the world’s largest oil painting reproduction village - Dafen Oil Painting Village (大芬油画村) in Shenzhen - and how its peasant painters, after years of copying Western masterpieces, confront reality, face themselves, and navigate the complex choices between morality, livelihood, and artistic pursuit. The film documents the difficulties, struggles, despair, and hope that these painters experience on their journey of transformation, as well as the clash and compromise between personal ideals and everyday reality. At the same time, the transformation of the Dafen painters mirrors the complexities and contradictions in China’s broader shift in the 21st century from Made in China to Created in China. It also critiques the exclusivity of the mainstream contemporary art world and the absurdity of how society assigns value to art.
I am a DPhil candidate and Teaching Fellow in Quantitative Research Methods at the Department of Social Policy and Intervention. Prior to starting my DPhil, I worked as a Public Health Specialist at the Georgia Department of Public Health, contributing to the state's COVID-19 pandemic response in the United States. Through my clinical practice in Russia, where I completed my medical training, and Angola, I was involved in community-based health education programs. These experiences sparked a deep interest in digital health interventions, particularly for their potential to scale low-cost interventions that advance population health. My professional background centres on applying data-driven approaches to inform public health strategies and policies, with a focus on behaviour change interventions in areas such as nutrition, physical activity, smoking cessation, and parenting.
Medical Statistics & Artificial Intelligence Drop In Session with Dr Lei Clifton, Programme Director of the MSc in Applied Digital Health, Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences and Dr Anshul Thakur, Departmental Lecturer, Computational Health Informatics (CHI) Lab, Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford. Day: Thursday Date: 14 May 2026 Time: 11:00 -12:00 Venue: BDI conference room (lower ground, near the cafe) Registration: https://forms.office.com/e/Cy4hFL9pXc?origin=lprLink Do you have a burning medical statistics/AI related question that you would like to discuss with the wider Oxford Biomedical community? Submit your question in advance and join the drop-in session, where Lei Clifton and Anshul Thakur will address your query. If you’re interested in being part of the conversation but don’t have a specific question, feel free to attend the session in person and follow along. This is an excellent opportunity to engage in knowledge exchange with your peers. The session will be informal and conversational, encouraging participants to share their perspectives on medical statistics and AI. There will be no set agenda or predefined topics of focus; instead, the discussion will evolve organically based on the questions and interests brought forward on the day. Attendees are free to drop in, ask questions, and contribute to an open exchange of ideas. While the session will not include presentations or detailed statistical analysis, general advice on study design and statistical methods will be provided. The emphasis will be on applying statistical and AI thinking to real-world questions rather than conducting in-depth explorations of predefined topics. 👉 Please note: this is an in-person event only.
This workshop will introduce participants to the key catalogues and finding aids for post-1800 archives and manuscripts at the Bodleian Libraries. In particular the session will focus on Bodleian Archives & Manuscripts, the online catalogue for post-1800 archives and manuscripts. The session will also briefly introduce some of the major UK online gateways for discovering archives. The topics covered include: how to use the Bodleian Archives & Manuscripts online catalogue; other printed archive catalogues in the Bodleian Libraries; and major subject areas covered in Bodleian archives and modern manuscripts. Intended audience: Taught student; Researcher and research student
Grant deadlines have a habit of sneaking up. Taking a few hours now to get clear on your engagement strategy will save you stress later, and make your proposal stronger, more competitive, and more impactful. This interactive, three-hour workshop will: Demystify what public engagement is (and isn’t), and why it matters to funders. Show you what good looks like through real examples of strong PER plans. Give you time and space to start drafting your own plan, with feedback from peers and facilitators. Introduce tools and support available to you. LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of the session, you’ll: Understand how PER strengthens proposals and can be resourced within your grant. Have identified relevant publics and possible activities for your research engagement. Leave with the building blocks of an impactful PER plan that can slot directly into your next proposal.
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.
An online introduction to primary sources for the study of American history, from the colonial period to the 20th century. The session will provide an overview of the different kinds of information sources (early printed books, newspapers, databases and official records), and guidance on locating material for research. Collections highlighted include physical materials available in Oxford, Bodleian databases and other online resources. Intended audience: taught student; researcher and research student.
Puzzled by PICO? Daunted by databases? Baffled by Boolean? This one-hour online 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 12th Lorna Casselton Memorial Lecture will be given by Professor Victor Ambros (University of Massachusetts Medical School), Nobel Laureate and Professor Gary Ruvkun (Harvard Medical School), Nobel Laureate, and is entitled "How Experimental Worm Genetics and Genomics Revealed an Ancient World of Tiny RNAs".
The event is free to attend but booking is required due to limited spaces. Reserve your spot by sending an email to oxford@ilcorno.co.uk
"The Beating Heart is a cultural detective trail to try to understand how and why we have come to see the heart as we do." Professor Robin Choudhury Join cardiologist and author Professor Robin Choudhury in conversation with Dr Silke Ackermann, Director of the History of Science Museum to explore the cultural clues in Robin’s recent book, The Beating Heart: The Art & Science of Our Most Vital Organ. Robin and Silke will uncover the saints, artists, lovers, scholars, and scientists, who unwittingly influenced each other in building an understanding of the beating heart. They will discuss some of the beautiful heart images revealed in The Beating Heart that illuminate the age-old dance between art, religion, philosophy and ‘scientific’ thinking. Join us in our atmospheric Basement Gallery for a stimulating fireside chat.
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 (tarryn.ching@nds.ox.ac.uk) if you would like to attend online.
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.
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.
Please join us for the Oxford Pain Network Seminar, taking place on the third Friday of every month in the Newsom-Davis Room, OxCIN Annexe and online (email the organiser or join the mailing list for the link). Each meeting will have a different speaker, either internal or external to the University, followed by a short Q&A. Open to all researchers/students/clinical staff in Oxford interested in pain research. For more details about future events, please join the mailing list: oxin-paingroup-subscribe@maillist.ox.ac.uk May's speaker: Dr Charlotte Krahé is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Liverpool John Moores University. Her research seeks to explain the psychological and neurobiological pathways by which humans integrate social context with its all its complexity into their experience of emotions, from relatively fleeting sensations in our bodies to longer-term experiences of pain, anxiety and depression. How are these pathways influenced by how we view others and ourselves in social interactions, and how are they shaped by our early interpersonal experiences? Talk Abstract: TBC
This interactive session exploring the personal need to address Authority, Presence and Impact, for healthcare leadership.
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.
Unlock the potential of AI to enhance your academic writing with this new course offered by the University of Oxford's Language Centre. Designed specifically for Oxford MPLS students and staff, the Academic Writing with AI course provides a structured approach to effectively integrate AI tools at each stage of the writing process.
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
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.
Government regulations of coastal flood zones have long sought to minimize risk by building coastal seawalls to protect urban centers. The housing market responds to these safety expenditures by building even more behind these new walls, raising expected flood damage. Economists have been skeptical of these government safety efforts because this endogenous response appears to undercut the safety objective of seawalls. In this paper, we argue that society should take a broader welfare perspective of such safety regulations. The optimal regulation should maximize the net value of economic activities that involve risks and take account of the endogenous market response. Perhaps surprisingly, the optimal solution leads to more investment in safety (higher seawalls) but also much higher net welfare. Note that these results apply to other safety regulations as well, for example, increasing the speed of transport versus making cars safer. We demonstrate this welfare principal using a model of coastal defense, CRESS, applied to six cities in the eastern United States. We start by minimizing the sum of wall costs and residual flood damage assuming no endogenous response. We then predict what endogenous response these walls might encourage. Finally, we optimize the amount of housing in the flood plain given the resulting flood damage. We find the optimal plan increases the height of the seawalls and encourages more building in the flood plain. Expected flood damage increases slightly but welfare (net present value) increases a great deal.
In this online workshop you will be shown the functionality of Zotero, which is a free-to-use software programme used to manage references and create bibliographies. Zotero will be demonstrated on a Windows PC but users of MacOS or Linux computers will be able to follow the demonstration. The workshop will cover: understanding the main features and benefits of Zotero; setting up a Zotero account; importing references from different sources into Zotero; organising your references in Zotero; inserting citations into documents; and creating a bibliography/reference list. Intended audience: Medicine and NHS; taught student; researcher and research student.
In this session we will 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
We study optimal rating design under moral hazard and strategic manipulation. An intermediary observes a noisy indicator of effort and commits to a rating policy that shapes market beliefs and pay. We characterize optimal ratings via concavification of a gain function. Optimal ratings depends on interaction of effort and risk: for activities that raise tail risk, optimal ratings exhibit lower censorship, pooling poor outcomes to insure and encourage risk-taking; for activities that reduce tail risk, upper censorship increases penalties for negligence. In multi-task environments with window dressing, less informative ratings deter manipulation. In redistributive test design, optimal tests exhibit mid censorship.
An introduction to key archival, printed and electronic resources, such as finding aids, bibliographic resources and primary sources for post-1800 global history. The focus will be on non-European history but will draw predominantly on English and European language resources. After the session you will have an understanding of: the different types of material relevant to researching modern global history; how to search databases, bibliographies and other online resources; how to search the Bodleian Libraries resource discovery tool for manuscripts and archives; and how to locate relevant archive material elsewhere. Intended audience: 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
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
Presenting one’s work to a variety of audiences is a crucial part of successful research. This masterclass will cover different aspects of conveying your message and how to communicate your research effectively. It will include sessions on how to hone your content for different audiences – from specialists to the general public. The workshop will help you to improve your presentation style, including sessions on body language and voice. The day will include practical exercises (some of which will be filmed) to allow for self-reflection and feedback.
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
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 screening programme explores a collection of Sinophone films whose genres sit in between an ethnographic film, documentary, essay film, and fiction. Through this screening journey, we will engage with various languages, narratives, perspectives, styles and textures of films that come across and reflect on the ever-changing realities of contemporary Chinese society – rich with nuances, obscurities, complexities, and uncertainties. The series will cover four themes, including COVID-19, Gender, Art and Society, and Rural-Urban, and will run from Feb to May 2026. The fifth session (Rural and Urban) includes two films: The Mountain Sing 欢墟 Director: Badlands Film Group Release year: 2021 Run time: 40min Synopsis: 'Hawfwen', a traditional gathering that used to be popular, where the Zhuang people would sing folk songs. It often takes place around clan temples or under old trees. Singers are divided into male and female groups. They improvise their lyrics to sing in correspondence with one another. Travelling along the songs in antiphonal style, the camera has found different singers and gatherings, lingering in rural areas and cities, trying to find the broken echoes of 'hawfwen'. Before the Flood 淹没 Director: LI Yifan, YAN Yu Release year: 2005 Run time: 150 min Screening Talk and Q&A: with LI Yifan (online) Synopsis: To build the world’s largest hydroelectric power station on China’s Yangtze River - the Three Gorges (sanxia三峡) Hydropower Station, the world’s largest reservoir will also be created in the Three Gorges region. The reservoir began storing water in 2003, and by 2009, it was completed. Many towns, villages, cultural relics, and natural landscapes along the river would be submerged. Among them was Fengjie County, made famous by the poems of Li Bai, one of China’s greatest ancient poets. This film documents the entire process in 2002 of relocating and demolishing the old county town of Fengjie in the first stage of water storage for the Three Gorges Reservoir. It records the helplessness of an elderly Korean War volunteer and innkeeper facing the loss of his livelihood; the loss of faith of a Christian church in pursuit of relocation compensation; and the unavoidable conflicts, entanglements, and painful inner struggles experienced by resettlement officials and urban poor during the relocation and demolition of the old city. Before the Flood is the debut work of the two directors. It won the Wolfgang Staudte Award at the 2005 Berlin International Film Festival’s Forum for Young Cinema and was selected for the 2005 Cinéma du Réel Festival in France.
I'm a researcher at the Podium Institute of Sports Medicine and Technology, where I use advanced neuroimaging and scalable technologies to study concussion in sport. Concussions remain poorly understood, and current assessments are highly subjective. My work aims to make early concussion assessment more objective and to better identify who may be at risk of long-term consequences.
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.
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.
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
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
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
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.
We develop a class of invariant tests for the null hypothesis that a time series is a martingale dierence sequence against the alternative that it belongs to the class of perturbed fractionally integrated (long memory) processes. The class of tests we develop are indexed by a user-chosen long memory parameter, d > 0, and are locally most powerful (under Gaussianity) where the true long memory parameter coincides with this value. We show that this class of tests contains a number of widely used tests as special cases. A complete taxonomy of limiting null distribution theory for the class of statistics (indexed by d) is provided. These distributions depend on d, but can be straightforwardly simulated in practice. We also compare the asymptotic local power properties of the tests under appropriate Pitman drift sequences.
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.
The competence of elected officials affects state performance and economic growth, yet it is often difficult to find high human capital, representative citizens willing to put themselves forward as political candidates. We analyze an intervention designed to address this challenge that combines structured community nominations, private screening of technocratic skills, and information provision to political parties in advance of local elections in Sierra Leone. Estimates show that this approach successfully identifies individuals who are substantially higher quality and enjoy broader local support than incumbents and status quo candidates. While new to elected politics, these individuals are still elite, mostly drawn from traditional chiefly families. One quarter of top nominees formally enter politics by filing candidate applications, positively self-selected on quality and boosted by an encouragement nudge. Their entry marginally improves the maximum quality observed in the potential candidate pool and among those selected onto the parties’ lists. These results provide proof of concept that there are better people out there willing to run. We find null results on the quality of those who win seats, largely driven by party leaders favoring rerunning incumbents, gatekeeping that prevents new entrants from getting elected.
LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of the session, participants will have: Developed an awareness of what makes a presentation effective. Understood why planning and practice are crucial to the success of a presentation. The confidence to choose and use a variety of techniques to engage the audience. Practiced delivering a short presentation and gained constructive feedback. INTENDED FOR PGR and Research Staff with limited experience of giving presentations.
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.
A foundational question in perceptual science is the extent to which we can describe the relations between stimuli within the framework of a metric geometry. In the case of color, careful experiments have rejected the possibility that a Euclidean geometry can accurately describe suprathreshold judgments. Open, however, is whether a more general Riemannian geometry can play this role. A key factor that has limited firm conclusions is that to fully test Riemannian ideas, one requires a full characterization of color discrimination thresholds around every point in color space and for perturbations in every color direction. Recent advances in machine learning make measurement of this discrimination field tractable, and we have now made comprehensive measurements of color discrimination thresholds. The measurements enable computation of Riemannian geodesic distance between any two points in color space. I will describe our procedures, threshold and suprathreshold color difference measurements, and evaluation of geometric models of color comparison.
This year's guest lecturer is Fania Oz Salzberger, Professor of History (University of Haifa), widely respected public intellectual and peace activist. All attendees are invited to join a drinks reception following the talk.
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.
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.
Joint with CSAE
COURSE DETAILS 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. LEARNING OUTCOMES The aim of the course is: To increase understanding of the essential elements of a compelling narrative. To increase understanding of how to draw an audience into a story and keep them involved. To increase understanding of how to use narrative skills to make an effective ‘pitch’.
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 (including historical newspapers, contemporary newspapers and audio-visual news sources). Intended audience: Taught student; Researcher and research student
The capability to image single molecules has revolutionised biology. I will explain how these methods work and how we are currently applying them to study the molecular basis of neurodegenerative disease. Lastly I will describe how our early single molecule work on DNA polymerase led to the development of next generation DNA sequencing, now widely used, and the lessons that can be learnt from this experience. Professor Sir David Klenerman is a distinguished physical chemist at the University of Cambridge, renowned for co-inventing Illumina next-generation DNA sequencing. After earning his PhD at Cambridge and becoming a Fulbright scholar at Stanford, he worked at BP Research before joining Cambridge in 1994. Prof Klenerman transformed genomics by enabling fast, low-cost DNA sequencing, for which he was knighted in 2019. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and Academy of Medical sciences. His current work focus on immune recognition and on neurodegenerative diseases, through the UK DRI at Cambridge. Prof Klenerman has been awarded the Royal Medal of the Royal Society, Millennium Technology Prize (2020), the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences (2022), and the Canada Gairdner International Award and Novo Nordisk Prize (2024).
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.
The event is free to attend but booking is required due to limited spaces. Reserve your spot by sending an email to oxford@ilcorno.co.uk
https://profiles.ucl.ac.uk/7097-david-goldblatt
Our minds do more than simply react to the world; they adapt by flexibly controlling what we focus on and which memories we bring forward in the moment. Drawing on recent empirical work from our group, I will demonstrate how adaptive control is supported by both the internal selection of memory representations and the strategic trade-off between memory-based and sensory-guided behaviour. I will show that internal attention shapes successful retrieval across short- and long-term visuo-spatial memory and we will see that these same internal attentional mechanisms extend to language, where the dynamic attentional selection of memory representations supports sentence comprehension. Moving beyond traditional laboratory tasks, I will then show that in immersive, naturalistic settings, people differ in how and when they rely on memory, revealing stable, adaptive strategies that are largely independent of memory capacity. Finally, we will see that across the lifespan, older adults often underuse working memory in everyday contexts, yet retain a strong ability to flexibly increase memory use when task demands rise. Together, these examples offer insight into how internal attention and flexible memory use support an adaptive behavioural repertoire in a complex world.
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 You will learn how to choose the best journal for your work, negotiate the peer review process and deal with reviewer comments. The course will cover: Why publish and how that affects how you publish. The structure of a paper. What to include in the title and abstract. Open access. Impact metrics and citations. Ways to get published more quickly. Publicising your paper once it is published. LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of the session participants will be able to: Develop and understanding of the peer review process. Construct an effective title and abstract. Be equipped to choose journals for future papers. Be equipped to publicise future papers. PREVIOUS PARTICIPANTS HAVE SAID "Nice to have a professional with an in-depth industry knowledge offer training and advice.'" "The course was excellent and very well delivered. there was a real sense of professionalism.'" "Now it doesn't feel so scary to try to publish a paper.'" INTENDED FOR DPhil students and research staff. The course is suitable for DPhil students and postdocs who want to understand the publishing process better, whether or not they have already submitted a paper.
Puzzled by PICO? Daunted by databases? Baffled by Boolean? This one-hour online 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.
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.
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.
In 2002, Sweden reformed its parental leave system by adding a second “daddy month,” i.e., a second month of pay-related parental leave reserved exclusively for each parent. In addition to giving fathers an economic incentive to take more leave, this change had an effect on cultural norms. We develop and estimate a model of the household in which preferences towards leave depend on the behavior of one's peers and use it to quantify the magnitudes of the economic-incentive effects as well as the evolving norms. We find that endogenously evolving cultural norms play a major role. We use our model to evaluate the effects of several potential policy changes including decreasing the cost of child care and giving each parent a substantially larger non-transferable endowment of parental leave and conclude that only the latter would have a significant effect on the share of parental leave taken by men.
An internal Oxford event with presentations and networking opportunities to foster the pancreatic cancer research community. Topics/talks will include: Patient’s perspective Patient and Public involvement toolkit Pancreatic Cancer UK - funding opportunities Pancreatic Cancer National Biobank - sample access Preclinical models Cutting edge microenvironment FLASH talks from submitted abstracts. Lunch and refreshments will be provided.
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
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.
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
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
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.
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
Demographic changes in China are characterised by the dual challenges of fertility decline and population ageing. Bringing together these two trends, this talk examines the old-age security motive for fertility in contemporary China. The long-standing norm of yang’er fang lao (养儿防老) has traditionally encouraged individuals to have children, particularly sons, to secure their old age. With China’s socialist reform and post-socialist transitions, however, do people’s concerns about old-age security still motivate them to have children and fuel a preference for sons today? How does this motive relate to China’s latest three-child policy and its efforts at establishing an old-age welfare system? Drawing on large-scale analysis of nationally representative data spanning 2010–2023, Prof. Hu demonstrates how the future of fertility in China hangs in a delicate balance between the resilience of traditional family values, the individualisation of old-age care, and the country’s welfare reform. Yang Hu is Associate Professor in Sociology at UCL Social Research Institute, University College London, where he also directs the MSc/MA programmes in Sociology. Yang is a member of the 2029 Research Excellence Framework (REF) Sub-Panel for Sociology. He is Co-director of the Work and Family Researchers Network (WFRN) Early Career Fellowship Programme. Yang’s research examines family and work changes and inequalities in a global context. His recent work has been published in journals such as Nature Human Behaviour, Gender & Society, European Sociological Review, Journal of Marriage and Family, and Human Relations.
The event is free to attend but booking is required due to limited spaces. Reserve your spot by sending an email to oxford@ilcorno.co.uk
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 (tarryn.ching@nds.ox.ac.uk) if you would like to attend online.
Speaker Bio: Albert is Professor of Neuroscience and Epigenetics at the University of Exeter where his research group studies the function of chromatin modifying factors in brain development and function, primarily using the mouse a model system. He graduated with a BSc, BSc(Hons) and MSc in Biochemistry from the University of Pretoria and obtained his PhD in Immunology from the University of Cambridge. After post-doctoral research in Molecular Immunology at the National Institute for Medical Research in London, he trained in developmental biology and genetics at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, King’s College London and University of California, San Francisco as a recipient of a Wellcome Trust International Prize Travelling Fellowship. He started his own research group at King’s College London in 2006 where he was Professor of Developmental Neurobiology before moving to Exeter in 2023.
Dr Charlene Rodrigues LSHTM and St Marys Hospital London https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/aboutus/people/rodrigues.charlene
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 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.
This talk draws on oral history interviews with 60 Syrian young people who grew up in exile across nine countries to examine how the global framing of the ‘refugee crisis' has reshaped their lived realities and the meaning of education. It argues that education has become a central site through which hope is promised, managed, and deferred under restrictive migration regimes. While education is positioned as a universal right and pathway to future belonging, young people’s experiences reveal how policies of containment, segregation, legal precarity, and unequal mobility shape life within and beyond classroom walls, as well as how young people themselves challenge and navigate uncertainty. The talk draws on Hiba Salem’s forthcoming book, The Politics of Education and Hope in Forced Migration: Journeys of Syrian Young People Across the World. Please note this session will not be recorded.
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.
Gaining a research fellowship is a major step on the academic career ladder. COURSE DETAILS This session will help you to understand the dos and don’ts of application. It will guide you through the process and explain the support that is available. A holder of a research fellowship will discuss their application experience. 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.
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.
Wednesday 10 June 2026 Speaker: Vanessa Sancho Shimizu, Imperial College Title: TBC
Public and community engagement is vital in making bigger differences — strengthening research, building trust and delivering meaningful benefits for society. This one-day conference will explore how responsible and purposeful engagement can make bigger differences in society locally, nationally and globally. Bringing together University academic and professional staff, researchers and members of the local community, the conference will provide a space to explore Oxford’s engagement landscape, share knowledge and build meaningful connections. Attendees can hope to learn from inspiring examples of practice, gain insight into opportunities and support for engagement at Oxford, connect with others and leave with greater confidence, understanding and readiness to engage in ways that make a bigger difference locally and beyond. We'll explore engagement through the lens of making bigger differences, with a focus on three interconnected themes: Building Responsible, Trust-Centred Engagement and Knowledge Exchange Strengthening Connections, Collaboration and Infrastructure for Impact Engaging for Shared Learning, Inclusion and Local Impact We’re looking for contributors to deliver exciting and engaging sessions on all things public and community engagement with research. Further details can been found here: https://www.ox.ac.uk/research/using-research-engage/public-engagement/get-involved/PCER-Conference Deadline for contributions: 13 March 2026
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.
COURSE DETAILS 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. LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of the session, participants will have: The ability to reflect on individual strengths and areas for growth in public engagement. An increased and reinforced understanding of what public engagement with research is. An increased awareness of what makes effective engagement. An increased awareness of the range of opportunities available locally & nationally, and who to contact. INTENDED FOR DPhil, Research Staff, MSD & MPLS
From Diogenes the Cynic onwards, talk of shared humanity and articulations of humanism challenge the boundaries of citizenship and unsettle established patterns of meaning and identity. But from the early modern period, humanism as a term became associated with secular and anti-religious philosophies. And recent critical treatments of modern western humanism identify how it was aligned with and contributed to colonial and racist projects of domination. However, there are moves to recover and repair humanism as a moral and political framework, moves that also point to its varied religious forms and how humanism was never just western, but is articulated in different ways in multiple traditions around the world. Historians also identify how different humanisms developed as part of and overlapped within varied projects of liberation and social healing ranging from the abolition movement, the origins of humanitarianism, and the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. This conference contributes to these debates by examining religious traditions of humanism and how they form a point of connection between divergent and often conflicting religious and philosophical frameworks. In particular, it focuses on how Christian humanism intersects with other religious humanisms, most notably those within Judaism and Islam, tracing their entangled histories, overlapping conceptions of the human, and interwoven expression in contemporary democratic movements and humanitarian initiatives. At its core, the conference explores whether theologically grounded humanisms can serve as analytical, critical, and constructive frameworks for addressing pressing ethical and political questions, especially those concerning the ordering of our common life nationally and internationally and the peaceable negotiation of pluralism. A background and implicit question is whether historical and contemporary articulations of religious humanism can ground an ethic and politics of responsibility and solidarity that offer alternative pathways to forms of anthropocentric humanism, secular and other anti-humanisms, ethnoreligious nationalism, and civilizational chauvinism that are emerging around the world. Alongside academic papers, the program will feature a panel of practitioners whose work speaks to the concerns of the conference through initiatives to build bridges between different faith communities as part of democratic organizing, civic trust-building, community development, or conflict transformation. Contributions from the 2026 conference will be published in a special issue of the Journal of Religious Ethics dedicated to religious humanisms as moral and political frameworks. This event builds on last year’s conference, Christian Humanism and the Black Atlantic, which examined theological articulations of what Paul Gilroy has termed “reparative humanism.” Dates of conference: 11 - 13 June Location: Michael Dummett Lecture Theatre, Christ Church, St Aldgate's For any other queries, please email mcdonald.centre@theology.ox.ac.uk
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 (tarryn.ching@nds.ox.ac.uk) 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
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 online 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.
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.
A 2-day training course aimed at healthcare professionals and healthcare support workers new to the role of administering, promoting, and advising on vaccination. Content 1. The aims of vaccination, national vaccine policy and schedules 2. The immune response to vaccines and how vaccines work 3. Vaccine-preventable diseases 4. The different types of vaccines, their composition and their indications and contraindications 5. Current issues in vaccination 6. Communicating with patients, parents and carers about vaccines 7. Legal issues as applied to vaccination: consent and legal mechanisms to supply and administer vaccines 8. Storage and handling of vaccines 9. Correct administration of vaccines 10. Adverse reactions 11. Documentation 12. Strategies for optimising vaccination uptake
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. 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.
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.
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.
COURSE DETAILS Being at Oxford provides you with an amazing opportunity to meet a wide range of extraordinary people who could help you and who you could help. This session will enable you to develop this important skill, which will: help you make contacts; discover opportunities; open doors; and speak to the right people. It will also enable you to devise a strategic approach to networking which can have lifetime benefits for you. LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of this session you will: Understand more about the benefits of networking. Feel more comfortable networking. Have learnt some new techniques to help you network more effectively. Have started to develop a strategy for networking.
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.
An introduction to the what, why and how of public involvement
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.
Do you want to make sure that your work complies with the open access policy for REF 2029? In this focused online briefing, we will: step you through the changes and new requirements; provide links to further REF information and guidance; let you know where to find help at Oxford; and answer as many questions as we can. Intended audience: researcher and research student; staff
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 (tarryn.ching@nds.ox.ac.uk) if you would like to attend online.
Lymphocyte antigen receptor signalling is a vibrant field that has made significant contributions to immunotherapy and is moved forward by new investigators and new technology that will be highlighted across the meeting. For example, cryo-electron microscopy has provided amazingly detailed snapshots of antigen receptors, but conformational dynamics and the structure of the cytoplasmic domains remain a hot topic as highlighted by speakers around the globe. The next generation biophysical approaches are pushing boundaries highlighted by early career speakers from Sweden and Austria. Successful implementation in small research labs of robotic systems (e.g., Immunotron) that generate high dimensional data analysed by neural networks will be introduced. Intersections of metabolism and signalling are key to health as will be highlighted by leaders in the field from Germany and Spain. The pandemic highlighted the value and limitations of antibodies - two sessions will cover the latest in this remarkable Darwinian process. Synthetic immunology continues to feed into immunotherapies in exciting ways. We also make time to discuss communication with the public, innovation in publishing and promoting a positive scientific culture by bringing colleagues together at events like this.
Professor Judith Breuer University College London https://profiles.ucl.ac.uk/9641
Are you preparing a poster presentation for an upcoming conference, meeting or symposium? This interactive session, or ‘poster clinic’, will include a group discussion of different examples of poster presentations, as well as an opportunity to present your own draft of your poster presentation to your fellow attendees. It is expected that the small group of peers in attendance will provide feedback and respectful comments on each other’s work. By the end of this classroom-based session you will be able to: evaluate the effectiveness of your poster presentation and others; and summarise the content of your poster concisely in preparation for a conference. Intended audience: Medicine and NHS; researcher and research student.
COURSE DETAILS 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
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.
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
The DPhil experience is marked by moments of discovery and fulfilment, alongside periods of uncertainty. This Bootcamp offers participants the chance to pause, connect with peers, and gain clarity on their priorities, progress, and next steps. Through facilitated discussion, guest input, and hands-on exercises, students are supported to work more effectively, support their wellbeing, and plan confidently for the future. Throughout the day, participants will: • Recognise and strengthen their personal and professional support networks • Learn practical strategies to support wellbeing and build resilience • Develop a clear publication strategy and realistic timelines for thesis writing • Use project and time management tools to reduce overwhelm and increase focus • Explore career options beyond the DPhil and engage with available Careers Service support • Translate reflection into clear, actionable plans for the months ahead
Predicting the impact of cis-regulatory sequence on gene expression is a foundational challenge for biology. In this talk, I will present our work on building models that predict molecular phenotypes (e.g. transcription, translation, stability) from gene sequence. Computational models are often trained on massively parallel measurements of synthetic reporter gene activity or on genomic datasets such as genome-wide DNA accessibility. Crucially, such sequence-function models can generalize from training data to unseen sequences by learning the regulatory rules underlying the observed molecular phenotype. When combined with sequence design algorithms, models can be used to generate functional cis-regulatory sequences. We apply this approach to design enhancers that result in cell type specific gene expression, and mRNA UTR sequences that result in high levels of translation or stability and that can find applications in mRNA and gene therapy. Short bio: Georg Seelig is a the Chris and Heidi Stolte Professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering and the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle. He is also a group leader at the Botnar Institute of Immune Engineering in Basel. The Seelig group is interested in understanding how biological organisms process information using complex biochemical networks and how such networks can be engineered to program cellular behavior. Seelig holds a PhD in physics from the University of Geneva in Switzerland and did postdoctoral work in synthetic biology and DNA nanotechnology at Caltech. He received a Burroughs Wellcome Foundation Career Award at the Scientific Interface, an NSF Career Award, a Sloan Research Fellowship, a DARPA Young Faculty Award, an ONR Young Investigator Award and a Rozenberg Tulip Award in DNA computing among others.
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.
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.
Wednesday 1 July 2026 Speaker: Stephanie Dakin, NDORMS Title: TBC
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.
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
Collaborations can be rewarding or draining, depending on how well people connect. In this course we look at what neuroscience has taught us about how to collaborate. You will make sense of why some of your collaborations have felt great to be part of, while others have been a drag. You will diagnose problems with collaborations you are part of and find practical solutions for improving them. Leave with a clear model for improving all collaborations you are involved in. LEARNING OUTCOMES Understand the social drivers that affect the way people behave in collaborations. Identify what has contributed to your own experience of effective collaboration. Identify clear actions that a leader can take to improve collaborations.
Wednesday 8 July 2026 Speaker: TBC Title: TBC
Course description This ½ day course is run by Professor Helen Higham (Director of OxSTaR & a Consultant Anaesthetist at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford) and is suitable for clinical and non-clinical staff and aims to provide an introduction to the fundamentals of human factors in healthcare. The course introduces participants to basic human factors frameworks, including the Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety (SEIPS), and focuses on practical applications in the workplace to improve understanding of systems in healthcare. This course will align with the new National Patient Safety Syllabus Learning Objectives Improve understanding of human factors principles Introduce and explore a human factors framework (SEIPS) Provide opportunities to practise applying SEIPS to real world examples Course content Definition and background of human factors Human factors applied to healthcare Importance of work place culture (including Just Culture tool) Explanation of SEIPS framework Exercises using SEIPS Plenty of opportunity for discussion and questions
Wednesday 15 July 2026 Speaker: Anneke Lucassen Title: TBC
Geopolitical Risk is an executive education programme designed to equip senior leaders with the knowledge and strategic insight needed to navigate an increasingly volatile global environment. In today’s interconnected world, political, economic, and societal forces shape organisational risk, resilience, and opportunity across all sectors. Delivered by the University of Oxford’s Department of Politics and International Relations, the programme brings together world-leading academics and experienced industry practitioners to explore the geopolitical dynamics influencing decision-making at the highest levels. Through expert-led sessions and interactive discussion, participants will develop a deeper understanding of global risk trends and strengthen their ability to anticipate, interpret, and respond to geopolitical challenges with confidence and clarity. See webpage for further details - https://www.politics.ox.ac.uk/executive-education
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
In 2026, the focus of the main scientific meeting covers the mechanisms involved in the pathogenesis of IBD as well as state-of-the-art clinical management. The programme specifically highlights immunopathogenesis and immunomodulatory therapy and personalising of care and pathways for prevention. The meeting is aimed to appeal to clinicians, scientists, academics, pharmaceutical industry professionals and all health care professionals involved or interested in this field. As always, the meeting will be delivered by a distinguished faculty of expert speakers, both national and international. They will present and lead discussions to blend cutting edge-science with state-of-the-art clinical practice. We have a wide range of topics to discuss and there will be plenty of opportunities to ask questions and interact with the speakers and your contemporaries. We are delighted to confirm that the Truelove lecture will be given by Professor Siew Ng, Director, Microbiota I-Center (MagIC), Croucher Professor in Medical Sciences, Associate Dean (Research), Faculty of Medicine, Associate Director, Center for Gut Microbiota Research, Professor, Department of Medicine and Therapeutics, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Other confirmed speakers include Professors Tine Jess (Denmark), Raja Atreya (Germany), Jonas Halfvarson (Sweden), Marietta Iacucci (Ireland), and plus our colleagues from the UK Professors James Lindsay (London), Chris Lamb (Newcastle) and the Oxford faculty. The organising committee involves research-active academic clinicians within the Translational Gastroenterology Liver Unit in Oxford – Professor Jack Satsangi, Professor Paul Klenerman, Professor Holm Uhlig, Professor Simon Leedham, Dr Alissa Walsh, Dr Oliver Brain, Sarah Cripps and Lydia White. In addition to the main Oxford Master Class we are delighted to announce that we will be running a forum for specialist IBD Nurses & other interested clinicians who may wish to attend: IBD Immunology & Microbiome 101 – Introduction for Clinicians. This session will be delivered by clinicians with a strong scientific background and excellent communication skills. It is designed to help delegates, who are full-time clinicians, to enjoy and understand the science presented throughout the Masterclass. The programme will be running in the morning on Monday 14th September. Nurses and other Clinicians attending this forum are welcome to join the Oxford IBD MasterClass Meeting running from 09:50 am on Monday. Please see registration options. Both meetings & the OMC 2026 Course Dinner will be held at Rhodes House, which captures the essence of Oxford.
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.
The UK Clinical Vaccine Network is a professional community uniting researchers, clinicians, and industry experts to drive innovation in vaccination across the life course. Their annual conference serves as the flagship event, bringing together key experts to discuss latest developments and provide a unique opportunity for networking. All sessions are plenary and include a mix of lectures, panel discussions, fireside chats, Abstract/poster talks & Sponsor Symposia. Programme Highlights: • Key Note talk: Cancer Immuno-prevention with Professor Sarah Blagden Professor of Experimental Oncology, University of Oxford • Keynote Talk: Mapping Human Immune Landscapes to Decode Vaccine-Induced Immunity with Professor Helder Nakaya Associate Professor, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of São Paulo • Typhoid Conjugate Vaccine (TCV) role out – a fireside chat with Professor Sir Andrew Pollard & Professor Melita Gordon Ashall Professor of Infection and Immunity & Director, Oxford Vaccine Group; AXA Chair of Vaccinology and Global Health, University of Edinburgh • Global Vaccine Policy and implementation by Dr Thomas Waite Deputy Chief Medical Officer for England • Advanced analytics for epidemic preparedness with Dr Arminder Deol Head of Data Science and Advanced Analysis, CEPI (Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations) To register to attend in-person/virtually - https://ukcvn.ac.uk/conference#tab-5617391 Registration fees Commercial Registration £300 Standard Registration £120 Trainee/Student Registration £80 Nurses £80 Conference dinner - New College £65 Online registration £130 Online registration - LMIC* Free *LMIC are defined from this list of Low- and Middle-Income Countries.
