Despite this market activity dropping by c.39% on 2019 Q1 figure this market has adapted and continued to trade. Hear how this has been achieved and the possible changes that could become the norm. Given the fluidity of the public health and economic impacts caused by Covid-19, combined with the variability of regional responses and policies to the pandemic, buyers, sellers, and M&A service providers will have to be flexible and creative in their transaction tactics for the foreseeable future. But any experienced dealmaker will tell you that these traits are not new, they have always been essential for success in the deal world. Colin Mayer, CBE, Peter Moores Professor of Management Studies will discuss and Timothy Galpin, Senior Lecturer in Strategy and Innovation will discuss.
The education offered by universities across the world has undergone sudden and dramatic changes in response to COVID-19. Teaching has been shifted online, forms of assessment have been changed, and students are mainly studying away from their higher education institutions. However, it is not clear what the long-term impacts on university education will be. To what extent will the approaches to university education that have emerged in response to the pandemic lead to lasting changes? What is the likely impact of these changes on the dominant forms of university education that will see in the future? Will these changes support the ability of university education to transform the life chances of all students or will they lead to the reinforcement of existing inequalities? The webinar addresses two critical areas related to university education and the COVID-19 pandemic: (1) COVID-19 and the education offered by universities: How will degree programmes change as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic? What will be the long term impact on university teachers and universities as institutions engaged in making knowledge accessible to students and society? (2) COVID-19 and students’ experiences of studying at university: What will be the long-term impacts on students’ experiences of university education? Will the pandemic lead to greater access to forms of higher education? Or will it lead to greater structuring of access to higher education, with the privileged and the poor being offered access to very different versions of a university education? The webinar brings together a panel of leading international experts on the education provided by universities from the UK, the United States and South Africa.
Do you need help managing your references? Do you need help citing references in your documents? This session will introduce you to Mendeley (www.mendeley.com) - a free 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. Includes importing references from PubMed and Ovid Embase; and how to synchronise your desktop and web libraries. For postgraduate students, researchers and university and OUH staff based on the Old Road Campus or in Medical Sciences Division departments elsewhere in Headington.
This event is sponsored by the IMEMS research project Early Modern Keywords and is part of a series of online events arranged in lieu of the full Durham Early Modern Conference, which will return 6-8 July 2021. Chair: Marc Schachter (French, Durham University) Ita Mac Carthy’s 2020 book, The Grace of the Italian Renaissance, joins Brian Cummings’s 2011 monograph, The Literary Culture of the Reformation: Grammar and Grace, and Patricia Emison’s 1991 Renaissance Studies article, ‘Grazia’, in a growing body of early modern scholarship on grace within and beyond the disciplines of Modern Languages, English, and Art History. Mac Carthy sought in her study to bring such scholarship together. She explores grace as a ‘complex keyword’ that at once conveys and connects the most pressing ethical, social, and aesthetic debates of sixteenth-century Italy. She does so in the knowledge that grace also acts ‘as a crucible for culture and society, spirituality and politics’ – as she puts it in her book – ‘across a range of contexts’ in other times and places. This event will bring together, in a live online conversation, an international group of major scholars working on grace and related notions. The conversation will take place in the light of Mac Carthy’s new study and will be informed by the different preoccupations and perspectives of the participants. Please join the conversation and add to it by posting your questions and comments for the panel online during the event. More information https://www.dur.ac.uk/imems/events/emc/
The Medical Sciences DPhil Research Slam is a student-organised virtual competition, showcasing and celebrating the fantastic, multidisciplinary research carried out by DPhil students across the Medical Sciences Division! In this two-stage competition, students will compete across four exciting heats for a place in the grand final, where cash prizes are up for grabs for participants and audience members! Each heat will focus on either scientific or creative student presentations, while the final will be a combination of the two! At every session, eminent figures from across MSD's 16 departments will also share their own wisdom (creatively or not, as they so choose). Anyone is welcome to attend, but signup is mandatory to receive the zoom link. Please see the booking link below. We look forward to seeing you at our third event on Thursday 9th July, at 15:00 (BST), Zoom, for our second scientific heat. Additional dates in this series include the 16th, and 30th July, 15:00, Zoom. Don't forget, audience participation is key; you will choose the heat winner, and there is a cash prize up for grabs for the best question, awarded at the grand finale! For more details, please visit our website: https://sites.google.com/view/msd-dphil-research-slam-2020/home Prepare to be entertained!
The human and economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has provoked sharp adjustment in the policy priorities of countries in Central and South Eastern Europe. The crisis laid bare underlying strengths and weaknesses, and the response has involved unprecedented government intervention and stimulus measures. There is a sense of emerging new constellations of interests, which may mean that countries cannot go back to the status quo ante. The webinar will discuss the main features of policy adjustments in selected countries of the region, and how and why developments differ across those countries. Looking forward, a fundamental question is whether these changes will lead to a permanent reorientation—for instance, in the allocation of government spending, the size of government, and government’s role in the financial sector. A related issue is what post-COVID policy will mean for economic integration of the region.
Chair: Nicole Reinhardt (Durham University) Linda Gil (Institut de Recherche sur la Renaissance, l'âge Classique et les Lumières -IRCL, Montpellier) « Divisos orbe Britannos ». Posthumous Voltaire in England: circulation of the book and controversial reception. When in 1779 Beaumarchais bought the project of the Complete Works of Voltaire from the bookseller Panckoucke, he first thought of setting up his printing press in England, land chosen both for technical (quality of printing material - typography and paper available locally), political (absence of prior censorship, freedom of printing) and commercial reasons (England, he thinks, represents a market potentially favorable to the dissemination of Voltaire's Works). For strategic and political reasons (war between France and England) and other logistical complications, Beaumarchais' choice ultimately fell on Germany, but he always counted on the possibilities of marketing the edition in Britain. What do we know about the distribution of this edition in England? The first documents that we have been able to find indicate serious commercial difficulties and opposition to the distribution of this edition. On the basis of these first elements, we wish to develop our investigation into the networks of printers and booksellers involved, in an attempt to understand what were the material bases for the circulation of French books in England and to try to assess the scope of this first polemical posthumous reception of Voltaire and of the French Enlightenment. Gregory Brown (University of Nevada, Las Vegas) “Rediscovering the French Enlightenment in the embers of the Occupation : Origins of the critical edition of the Voltaire correspondence and the rediscovery of the French Enlightenment, 1944 - 1954” This paper would provide an historical analysis of the origins of the first critical edition of the Voltaire correspondence, in the wake of World War II. Drawing upon archival sources, it will trace the efforts of Theodore Besterman to launch the project from London even as the war continued to rage on French territory. It will discuss the role of various state and non-governmental international agencies, including the British Foreign Office, the Centre national de la recherche scientifique, UNESCO and the city of Geneva not only to subsidize the project but to reconstruct an Enlightenment ideal of international scholarly collaboration. It will also discuss the importance of new bibliographic standards and of new information technology, notably microfilm, in making this work possible. Finally, it will explain the significance of this effort not only for the establishment of an international network of scholars but also for the distinctly interdisciplinary approach taken in the post-war era that came to define our contemporary understanding of the French Enlightenment. William Nelson (University of Toronto) “Time and the French Enlightenment,” The presentation will focus on ideas and experiences of time in eighteenth-century France in order to show what they can contribute to our understanding of the Enlightenment. It will also reflect on what Enlightenment ideas of time can contribute to the growing body of scholarship focused on the historical study of time. More information https://www.dur.ac.uk/imems/events/emc/
Deep learning is an emerging computational approach inspired by the human brain's neural connectivity that has transformed machine-based image analysis. By using histopathology as a model of an expert-level pattern recognition exercise, we explore the ability for humans to teach machines to learn and mimic image-recognition and decision making. Moreover, these models also allow exploration into the ability for computers to independently learn salient histological patterns and complex ontological relationships that parallel biological and expert knowledge without the need for explicit direction or supervision. Deciphering the overlap between human and unsupervised machine reasoning may aid in eliminating biases and improving automation and accountability for artificial intelligence-assisted vision tasks and decision-making.
How is knowledge or experience of nature mediated by gesture, bodily or otherwise? In this workshop, three short, informal papers, and an overarching interdisciplinary conversation between speakers and participants, will explore the roles of gesture (understood as encompassing a range of writerly, bodily, and otherwise social forms of communication) in shaping and communicating various forms of knowledge in the early modern period and beyond. Speakers: Viktoria von Hoffmann, (F.R.S.-FNRS) / University of Liège) 'The Expert Touch: Feeling Substances in Holy Anatomies' Yelda Nasifoglu (Oxford) 'Inscribing motion on paper: Robert Hooke's drawing of the conical pendulum' Michael Drolet (Oxford) 'Touching is Compulsory: Labour and Collective Experience in Saint-Simonism' Convenors : Jenny Oliver (Oxford), Marie Thébaud-Sorger (CNRS/MFO). A meeting of the interdisciplinary early modern working group Writing Technology/The Technology of Writing https://writingearly.hypotheses.org/about
This workshop is part of a series of online events arranged in lieu of the full Durham Early Modern Conference, which will return 6-8 July 2021 Session abstract: As historians, we often think within and across temporal frames (medieval, early modern, and modern). The papers in ‘Temporal Continuities and Reflections’ aim to articulate the value of examining continuities and disjunctures across these temporal ‘divides’. Another aspect is considering how reflection on earlier and later times contributes to analyses on a range of subjects. Topics include the history of science and medicine, missionaries, globalisation, and environmental history. More information https://www.dur.ac.uk/imems/events/emc/
Thomas Wallnig (University of Vienna) Aufklärung digital. A survey of digital research on the German Enlightenment The “digital turn” has affected research on the German Enlightenment in a moment of disciplinary fragmentation, and academic marginalization. On the other hand, more advanced digital research on the Enlightenment, especially in Anglo-American academia, has provided useful methodological blueprints for what can be achieved (and what not) by means of computer-based analysis, and has thus offered valid reference models for several initiatives in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. In my presentation I will attempt a structured overview of these initiatives, in that I will distinguish between predominantly prosopographical, bibliometric, correspondence- and text-based projects. This will help me place these projects in their respective academic contexts and traditions, and thus argue for overcoming fragmentation while maintaining methodological commitment. Shaun Blanchard (Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady University, Baton Rouge, LA) Catholic Enlightenment and the Many Reformist “Isms” in the German-speaking and Habsburg World, 1750–1800 Scholars have identified a bewildering number of overlapping reform phenomena in the Catholic German-speaking and Habsburgs lands in the latter half of the eighteenth-century: Febronianism, episcopalism, Josephinism, Muratorian reform, Reformkatholizismus, and “late” Jansenism. Each of these phenomena are linked to the “Catholic Enlightenment”, and it is commonplace to describe the protagonists as “enlightened.” This essay explores the extent to which the Catholic Enlightenment is a helpful or necessary category for understanding religious aspirations and changes in these territories. Is talk of a Catholic Enlightenment in this period indispensable, or are these phenomena better understood as a kind of Jansenist-Erastian reformism that was put to great use by prince-bishops and secular lords in order to reform and improve their territories, and increase their own authority vis-à-vis the pope and Curia? Tobias Heinrich (University of Kent) Geselligkeit als Aufklärung. Friendship and Sociability in German Enlightenment Drawing on the emergent field of Friendship Studies, this paper will examine how an emphatic idea of friendship helped to shape the social and communicative practices of German Enlightenment in contrast to older concepts like the Republic of Letters. It will investigate the paradigm shift from social relationships as a token of utility to friendship as a sign of virtue, prominently championed by the Johann Fürchtegott Gellert in his 'Moralische Vorlesungen'. By the example of Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, it will discuss how letters became a central medium for the exploration of the self in dialogue with the other and finally, the contrast between Gleim and Rahel Levin-Varnhagen will serve to elucidate the role of gender in friendships as well as their evolution on the cusp of the Age of Romanticism. More information https://www.dur.ac.uk/imems/events/emc/
Chair: Stephen Taylor (Durham University) Ashley Walsh (Cardiff University) England and Switzerland in the European Enlightenment Despite the historic positioning of the Church of England throughout the long Reformation as a via media between Geneva and Rome, one of the least studied aspects of the Enlightenment in England was the growing sympathy among lay and clerical English intellectuals for Swiss Protestantism as its varieties of Calvinism, especially in Geneva, facing the challenges of rational religion, Arianism, and Socinianism, became more liberal. Scholars have tended to focus largely on the Swiss connections of Edward Gibbon, who resided frequently in Lausanne. Beyond the European contexts for Gibbon, the ‘Helvetic trio’ of Jean-Alphonse Turretini, Samuel Werenfels, and Jean-Frederick Osterwald partook in the Enlightened Anglophilia that historians now associate with the likes of Voltaire and Montesquieu as they sought to reduce the doctrinal impositions of the Formula consensus ecclesiarum Helveticarum (1675). By way of return, Englishmen like Thomas Hollis and Francis Blackburne played a central role in the English translation and transmission of reformers such as Brian Herport in their campaigns for a more comprehensive and anti-Catholic Church of England. Most notoriously, Jean-Jacques Rousseau engaged with William Warburton’s The alliance between church and state (1736) in his notorious chapter ‘On civil religion’ in The social contract (1762), an engagement that was received by Anglophiles like Nicolas Bonneville during the French Revolution in De l’espirit des religions (1791). This paper explores the relationship between Enlightened Swiss and English intellectuals as they attempted to fashion forms of scientific inquiry and religious settlement congenial to this ‘enlightened age’. It also shows how, by situating the Enlightenment within the various European traditions of Christian reform, England might fully be situated within a European conception of the Enlightenment Marco Barducci (Durham University) Enlightenment and secularisation in England (1650s-1730s): the reception of French and Dutch ideas. In this paper I examine the changes in English religious and intellectual culture occurring between the 17th and the early 18th centuries in light of the reception of early modern Dutch and French books and ideas. In particular, I argue that the diffusion in England of an historical/critical approach to the reading of Scripture “as a work of culture” and the development of a vision of the clergy that prioritized social cohesion and the primacy of ethics over theological speculations, were enabled by the engagement with the works authors such as Grotius, I. Vossius, Spinoza, and Richard Simon. Alasdair Raffe (University of Edinburgh) Heterodoxy and the ‘Scottish Enlightenment’ This paper argues that the agenda of ‘pluralising’ the Enlightenment, when taken to its logical conclusion, requires us to study the development of pluralism itself. This is particularly true in the case of Scotland. It is often suggested that, notwithstanding some cordial internal disagreements, the Scottish Enlightenment was a compact and coherent movement, progressive in its moral and economic thought, but conservative in its politics and religious commitments. This view has discouraged historians from searching for heterodoxy in early eighteenth-century Scotland. Yet the appearance of heterodoxy in various forms, and the increasing willingness of civil and ecclesiastical authorities to tolerate it, shaped the culture in which enlightened Scots worked. This paper reflects on one strand of heterodox discourse in Scotland, hitherto scarcely studied: deism and anti-deism. More information https://www.dur.ac.uk/imems/events/emc/
Are you a medical student who is interested in how humanities subjects can help develop your skills? Are you a humanities student who wants to make connections with other disciplines in humanities and sciences? Are you a sixth-former who wants to broaden your intellectual reach in medicine, humanities and science? Oxford’s top academics will introduce you to the interface between clinical medicine and narrative, philosophy, law, ethics, gender studies, hierarchies, history (including history of the emotions), art history, theatre (body language; spatial dynamics), theology, management, observation (visual and linguistic), compassion, boundaries (to name but a few) … Come and learn how to think in an integrated way.
Autophagy is a highly regulated cellular degradation system that engulfs cytosol, organelles, protein aggregates and invading microorganisms into a double-membrane vesicle termed the autophagosome, then delivers cargo to endolysosomes for degradation. Autophagy dysfunction has been implicated in a broad spectrum of human diseases, including cancers, neurodegeneration, infectious diseases, metabolic diseases and aging. My lab focuses on the biochemical mechanisms of autophagosome biogenesis, substrate recruitments and autophagosome fusion with lysosomes. We have identified and characterized novel protein factors (ATG14, NRBF2, TECPR1, OFD1 etc.,) essential for autophagy initiation, cargo recruitment and autophagosome-lysosome fusion (PNAS 2008,2010, 2012, Nature 2013, 2015, Mol Cell 2012).
Join us for a conversation between Professor Chris Dye and Professor David Heymann, two experts on viruses and pandemics, as they discuss what measures can be taken to prevent future pandemics, lessons learnt from COVID-19 and how a post COVID-19 world might look. To register and watch live: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/Preventing_and_controlling_pandemics
Do you need help managing your references? Do you need help citing references in your documents? This session will introduce you to Mendeley (www.mendeley.com) - a free 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. Includes importing references from PubMed and Ovid Embase; and how to synchronise your desktop and web libraries. For postgraduate students, researchers and university and OUH staff based on the Old Road Campus or in Medical Sciences Division departments elsewhere in Headington.
Link to be added.
Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the 2020 CGHE conference did not go ahead as planned on 1 April at Senate House, University of London. Instead we are bringing to a larger worldwide audience the pick of this year’s conference discussion as a webinar series. The fifth webinar in the conference paper series focuses on the public good of higher education. Rajani Naidoo from the University of Bath and Talita Calitz of University of Pretoria will focus on the global South, analysing the case study of higher education in South Africa as a potent force for social transformation. Futao Huang from Hiroshima University will then discuss common goods in Japan, utilising insights from interviews with 16 key stakeholders at two different national Japanese universities. Higher Education and the Public Good: Insights from the South Rajani Naidoo, University of Bath Talita Calitz, University of Pretoria Funding, power relations and policy regimes entrench the belief that innovation in higher education travels in a one-way direction from rich western nations to the global South. However, this static picture of western dominance has been disrupted by patterns of inequality occurring within and across national systems of higher education worldwide. Drawing from a cross-country CGHE project on higher education in South Africa, we deploy South Africa as an illustrative case of how other national contexts can gain inspiration from the South. The scale of inequality in South Africa and the high visibility of the challenges creates fertile ground for innovative policy interventions, particularly on access and success. In addition, the role of the university as a force for social transformation and as a key contributor to the public good is kept alive by key policy actors. While major challenges remain, the policy interventions presented here highlight the shortcomings of neoliberal reform, and open up space to imagine alternative policy responses in other contexts. Public and Common Goods in Japan’s Higher Education Futao Huang, Hiroshima University This paper discusses CGHE project research into the role of Japan’s higher education as a producer of public and common goods, drawing on findings from semi-structured interviews with 16 policy makers, presidents of national professional associations, institutional leaders, deans and professors from contrasting disciplines, and administrators from two different national universities in Japan. The paper also discusses the role of the government and relations between the government and higher education institutions. It identifies the main challenges Japan faces in relation to the contributions of higher education in terms of public and common goods, and how these outcomes of higher education can be optimised.
This workshop is designed to help researchers improve their skill at pitching their research. It covers unique issues of communicating via video conferencing, with a particular focus on three key problem areas when compared with conventional conversation: loss of personality, loss of clarity, and increased distractions. Solutions will then be offered across three areas: how to frame one's picture, how to use one's body, and how to use one's voice. There will be an opportunity to practice these skills in the workshop. The workshop will provide a framework of awareness and tools through which attendees can prepare for their pitch practice appointments. Workshop attendees will have an opportunity to book a 15 minute 1 to 1 appointment on Friday 17th July (2 - 5:30) where they can practice their thesis pitch and receive feedback. Places will be limited. Booking will be available after the workshop and will be on a first come first served basis. This workshop is open to current Oxford DPhil students and researchers only.
Andrew Pollard, Professor of Paediatric Infection and Immunity at the Department of Paediatrics and Oxford BRC Co-Theme Lead for Vaccines, will speak about the development of a vaccine candidate for COVID-19 and the progress of its clinical trials. To submit a question please use the YouTube live chat or email OBRCenquiries@ouh.nhs.uk to send a question in advance.
In this webinar, Sivapriya Mothilal Bhagavathy (Priya) and Esther Dudek will talk about electric vehicles (EVs), charging them, and the effect of this on the electricity network. Helen Gavin will host the webinar. Priya will be speaking on a project called Park & Charge that focuses on Oxfordshire. Oxford suffers from poor air quality and the council is keen for residents to use electric vehicles to help reduce air pollution. Further a Zero Emission Zone is planned for implementation in 2020. However, what options exist for people who would like to own an electric car but do not have a suitable space on their property to charge it, like a driveway? Oxfordshire has a high percentage of residents with limited access to parking. Without a dedicated space to park and charge, prospective EV owners face potential problems which can be a large barrier to uptake. Park & Charge project is a demonstration project that aims to develop a readily scalable and commercially feasible business model to provide accessible chargers for potential EV users with no access to home charging with minimal disruption to the public. As a part of this project, around 300 chargers would be installed across Oxfordshire. However, for those EV owners with off road space to park and charge, what effect might that have on local electricity networks? The number of electric vehicles are increasing. Charging these EVs could have an impact on the network if not done smartly. Esther will focus on domestic charging for people with off-street parking, and outline the aims and key learnings from the original Electric Nation project. Electric Nation was a two-year field trial of smart charging involving approximately 700 drivers who charged at home, across the Midlands, South West England and South Wales. The project looked to see how smart charging could help to move demand for electric vehicle charging away from peak times thus mitigating any possible excessive demand. Six versions of smart charging systems were evaluated for both technical feasibility and customer acceptability. In her presentation Esther will summarise the findings of the project on charging behaviour, acceptability of smart charging, and the impact of time-of-use rewards to change charging behaviour.
A briefing on open access publishing and Oxford's position including guidance on how to comply with the Open Access requirements for the REF and mandates from key funding bodies whilst respecting your publisher's rights and policies.
ABSTRACT Genetic and genomic tests are increasingly used in every day medical practice to clarify or predict clinical diagnoses. Where results indicate possible familial inheritances it can be difficult for practitioners to know how they balance their duty of confidentiality to one person with a duty to alerting others –who do not yet know about a familial risk- of preventative actions they might take. The recent ABC versus St Georges and others (EWHC 455 (QB)2020) case considered such a scenario: Were the clinicians looking after a man with the genetic condition Huntington’s disease negligent for not alerting his daughter to this fact, when the man himself did not give consent for this? In this talk I will consider how the ruling in the case might affect future clinical practice, and consider ways in which family medicine already facilitates appropriate communication without a breach of confidence. I will also reflect on potential tensions between confidentiality and harm to others in other areas of medicine, using contact tracing in the current pandemic as an example.
If you wish to join the seminars, please send emilie.curryova@sant.ox.ac.uk your e-mail address so we can register you in our Teams platform.
In response to the devastation caused by COVID-19, governments & businesses around the world need to adopt new policies which prioritise people and our planet. Join Professor Joseph Stiglitz, the renowned Nobel Prize economist, in conversation with Professor Ian Goldin, to discuss the rethinking that is needed nationally and internationally to address inequality, economic growth, climate change, technology and the future of work, development challenges and the future of globalisation and international cooperation. To register and watch live: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/prof-joseph-stiglitz
The Oxford Renaissance Online Seminar (OROS) is a temporary online seminar series designed to allow scholars of early modern literature to share and hear new research with a global audience. The series will run from mid-May to mid-September, a period in which conferences and seminars have evaporated from view due to the coronavirus pandemic. Talks in the series will range across the authors, forms and genres of the early modern period, will be given both by established and emerging scholars in the field, from a panoply of academic institutions, and will vary from formal academic papers to more general and informal discussions of a speaker’s current research. The OROS is run from St Anne’s College, Oxford, where it is convened by Dr Robert Stagg (please direct any enquiries to robert.stagg@ell.ox.ac.uk). Talks will be screened through the St Anne’s College, Oxford Facebook page. The OROS will take place every Wednesday at 8pm UK time. How to tune in: At or around the time a seminar is due to begin, go to the St Anne’s College, Oxford Facebook page where talks will be screened through our Facebook Live facility. You do not need a Facebook account to watch these talks. If you want to ask questions of our speakers using the ‘real-time’ comments function, you will need to have or temporarily sign up for a Facebook account. https://www.facebook.com/StAnnesCollege/
CANCELLED: We regret to inform you the UK EQUATOR Centre's July Publication School has now been cancelled. At present, we do still plan to run our November Publication School. To be notified about this and other training from the UK EQUATOR Centre, please join our mailing list by sending a blank email to equator-oxford-subscribe@maillist.ox.ac.uk. Original description: The UK EQUATOR Centre’s Publication School is designed for early-career researchers and students working in health-related research. It aims to give you a smooth writing process that results in a published article that is fit for purpose. You will experience two intense days of learning led by methodology and writing experts from the UK EQUATOR Centre and the Centre for Statistics in Medicine and other invited experts. Through group work, discussion, and practical exercises, we cover everything you need to know to plan, write, and publish your health-related research study. Content: Planning your message and audience Negotiating authorship Choosing a journal and avoiding predators Good writing style and habits What to write where: recipes for a successful introduction, methods, results, and discussion Using reporting guidelines Revising your work for simplicity, clarity and completeness Summarising your article in an effective title and abstract Submission and dealing with peer review Disseminating your article after publication Email us (equator@csm.ox.ac.uk) or visit our web page for more information: www.ndorms.ox.ac.uk/graduate-courses/courses/equator-publication-school
Predictions abound about the effect of Covid-19 on the number of local students who will enrol in higher education in 2020/21. Rarely discussed is the socio-economic backgrounds of these students. Will some of the changes universities have introduced in response to Covid-19 such as ‘test-blind’ admissions exacerbate or ameliorate existing inequalities in access to higher education? This webinar will explore how such policies and others might help or hinder widening higher education participation from a UK, US, and European perspective.
Do you need help managing your references? Do you need help citing references in your documents? This session will introduce you to Mendeley (www.mendeley.com) - a free 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. Includes importing references from PubMed and Ovid Embase; and how to synchronise your desktop and web libraries. For postgraduate students, researchers and university and OUH staff based on the Old Road Campus or in Medical Sciences Division departments elsewhere in Headington.
The Medical Sciences DPhil Research Slam is a student-organised virtual competition, showcasing and celebrating the fantastic, multidisciplinary research carried out by DPhil students across the Medical Sciences Division! In this two-stage competition, students will compete across four exciting heats for a place in the grand final, where cash prizes are up for grabs for participants and audience members! Each heat will focus on either scientific or creative student presentations, while the final will be a combination of the two! At every session, eminent figures from across MSD's 16 departments will also share their own wisdom (creatively or not, as they so choose). Anyone is welcome to attend, but signup is mandatory to receive the zoom link. Please see the booking link below. We look forward to seeing you at our fourth event on Thursday 16th July, at 15:00 (BST), Zoom. Additional dates in this series include the Grand Finale, 30th July, 15:00, Zoom. Don't forget, audience participation is key; you will choose the heat winner, and there is a cash prize up for grabs for the best question, awarded at the grand finale! For more details, please visit our website: https://sites.google.com/view/msd-dphil-research-slam-2020/home Prepare to be entertained!
Join Professor Beata Javorcik, Chief Economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, for a discussion on the recent developments in international trade and the link between trade finance and resilience of trade flows ready for a post-COVID world. The dicsussion will also touch upon the future of global value chains, protectionist pressures and potential for increasing trade in services. This talk is in partnership with The Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford and the Oxford Review of Economic Policy. To register and watch this talk live: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/globalisation-in-the-post-covid-world
"NATURAL THEOLOGY IN THE 21st CENTURY" With generous support from the Issachar Fund Further information on the conference themes Natural theology investigates what we can know or not know about the existence and essence of God and divine revelation on the basis of what we can know about nature. Developments and discoveries in our explorations of nature (e.g., Aristotelianism, Copernican revolution, Newtonian physics, Kant’s Critique, Darwinian Evolution, quantum mechanics, and Big Bang cosmology) have enriched and challenged the investigations of natural theology throughout its history. Likewise, discoveries and revolutions in our understanding of nature in the 21stcentury (e.g., AI, Extended Evolutionary Synthesis, fundamental physics, etc.) will have the potential to undermine or enrich future investigations in natural theology. What questions will natural theology need to confront in the 21st century? How can these insights enrich the engagement of religious communities, such as Christian churches, with the wider culture? Looking backward, what lessons do the future enquiries of natural theology need to learn from its past enquiries? What are the enduring achievements, catastrophic failures, and tangential distractions from the history of natural theology? What place will cosmological, ontological, design, moral, and other arguments for God’s existence have in its future investigations? What were the major contributions of the past hundred years of honorary lectures confronting questions in natural theology (e.g., Gifford, Hulsean, Bampton lectures)? Looking forward, what challenges from philosophy and the sciences must natural theology confront, from numerous forms of naturalism, to metaphysics of dispositions and grounding, second-person perspective, machine learning, CRISPR, …? Are “nature” and the “natural” still viable concepts for 21st century enquiries, including those of natural theology? What is or should be the scope of natural theology? Is it strictly concerned with evidence and arguments based in nature known apart from appeals to revelation or numinous experiences? Or, should it be construed broadly to include investigations concerning historical events, including those detailed in sacred and religious texts? What is the relationship between natural theology and the investigations of supernatural theology, philosophy of religion, analytic theology, theology of nature, and apologetics? Is natural theology “natural”? Is the very project of natural theology guilty of the charge of ontotheology? What place should metaphor and analogy have in natural theology? What role do narrative arguments, just-so stories, genealogies, and meta-narratives play in theists’, atheists’, and agnostics’ contributions to natural theology? Can anyone—theist, agnostic, or atheist—engage the enquiries of natural theology or atheology from a neutral point of view? How might these questions be engaged by religious communities seeking to engage a wider culture and cultivate the reasoned faith of their members?
What are the impacts of the Covid-19 crisis on individuals and businesses? How will the crisis affect the labour market, startups, growth and inequalities? In this brand new 6-part series, The Oxford University Business Economics Programme presents the latest research by world-class academics on topics of immediate relevance to business leaders, to inform their decisions during and after the crisis. Join us for a virtual breakfast-lecture with Q&A. Bring your own coffee!
Do you need help managing your references? Do you need help citing references in your documents? This session will introduce you to Mendeley (www.mendeley.com) - a free 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. Includes importing references from PubMed and Ovid Embase; and how to synchronise your desktop and web libraries. For postgraduate students, researchers and university and OUH staff based on the Old Road Campus or in Medical Sciences Division departments elsewhere in Headington.
In the third discussion of our series What really matters, we focus on a new initiative that aims to promote and celebrate the social sciences, humanities and arts. SHAPE (Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts for People and the Economy) aims to emulate the influence and reputation held by STEM subjects – science, technology, engineering and maths – in secondary education and academic research. The initiative, set up by the London School of Economics, the British Academy, Academy of Social Sciences and Arts Council England at the end of June 2020, seeks to reverse the declining value given to social sciences, humanities and arts subjects and level the playing field with STEM subjects by promoting the value of those subjects, including encouraging schoolchildren to choose SHAPE subjects at GCSE and A-level. There is a strong argument that the study of SHAPE subjects helps children to develop verbal reasoning and critical thinking skills and that these skills are currently undervalued. There is also a drive to incentivise undergraduates to pursue SHAPE subjects at university, and for decision makers to recognise the value of research in SHAPE subjects in allocations of grant funding. In this discussion we will explore the following questions: - What is SHAPE? What are the opportunities and challenges it poses? - How does it relate to STEM? Competition or complement? - How can we evaluate the worth of research in different disciplines? Is there a feasible ‘scorecard’ and, if so, what might it involve? - How can SHAPE transform education and society in Britain? - What are the wider global implications of SHAPE? Panellists Julia Black, CBE FBA, Strategic Director of Innovation and Professor of Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Alongside the President of the British Academy Prof David Cannadine, Julia has been the key mover in the campaign to set up and promote SHAPE. Dane Comerford, PhD, Director of the IF Oxford: Science + Ideas Festival and former Head of Public Engagement at the University of Cambridge. Paulina Kewes, FRHistS, Professor of English Literature and Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. Katrin Kohl, Professor of German Literature, Jesus College Fellow and Tutor in German and Principal Investigator of the AHRC-funded research project Creative Multilingualism. Diarmaid MacCulloch, DD, FBA, FRHistS, FSA, Emeritus Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford and Vice-President for Communications and Engagement, British Academy. Johanna Waters, Reader in Geography at UCL and Jesus College alumna. This discussion has been organised by Patricia Daley, Vice-Principal and Professor of Geography, and Paulina Kewes, Professor of English, with the assistance of Dr Brittany Wellner James, Development Director, and Dr Matthew Williams, Access Fellow. Join in To watch and participate in the discussion, join us on Zoom by following the link below: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81371343026?pwd=OUxMeXhWWWNoQ1U3T1NNUUlUeUM0UT09 Meeting ID: 813 7134 3026 Password: 601345 If you’re unable to watch on the day, a video of the event will be available to view afterwards. Follow us on Twitter @JesusOxford for the link.
Dr Jennifer Lawlor Title: Tracking changes in complex auditory scenes along the cortical pathway Complex acoustic environments, such as a busy street, are characterised by their everchanging dynamics. Despite their complexity, listeners can readily tease apart relevant changes from irrelevant variations. This requires continuously tracking the appropriate sensory evidence while discarding noisy acoustic variations. Despite the apparent simplicity of this perceptual phenomenon, the neural basis of the extraction of relevant information in complex continuous streams for goal-directed behavior is currently not well understood. As a minimalistic model for change detection in complex auditory environments, we designed broad-range tone clouds whose first-order statistics change at a random time. Subjects (humans or ferrets) were trained to detect these changes.They were faced with the dual-task of estimating the baseline statistics and detecting a potential change in those statistics at any moment. To characterize the extraction and encoding of relevant sensory information along the cortical hierarchy, we first recorded the brain electrical activity of human subjects engaged in this task using electroencephalography. Human performance and reaction times improved with longer pre-change exposure, consistent with improved estimation of baseline statistics. Change-locked and decision-related EEG responses were found in a centro-parietal scalp location, whose slope depended on change size, consistent with sensory evidence accumulation. To further this investigation, we performed a series of electrophysiological recordings in the primary auditory cortex (A1), secondary auditory cortex (PEG) and frontal cortex (FC) of the fully trained behaving ferret. A1 neurons exhibited strong onset responses and change-related discharges specific to neuronal tuning. PEG population showed reduced onset-related responses, but more categorical change-related modulations. Finally, a subset of FC neurons (dlPFC/premotor) presented a generalized response to all change-related events only during behavior. We show using a Generalized Linear Model (GLM) that the same subpopulation in FC encodes sensory and decision signals, suggesting that FC neurons could operate conversion of sensory evidence to perceptual decision. All together, these area-specific responses suggest a behavior-dependent mechanism of sensory extraction and generalization of task-relevant event. ___________________ Aleksandar Ivanov Title: How does the auditory system adapt to different environments: A song of echoes and adaptation Abstract: Almost every natural sound is accompanied by many delayed and distorted copies of itself, known as echoes or reverberation, caused by reflections from nearby surfaces. Unless the environment is very echoic (imagine a big cave), our brains cope effortlessly with reverberation. In contrast, reverberation can cause severe difficulties for speech recognition algorithms and hearing-impaired people. How might the healthy auditory system cope so well with reverberation? To answer this question, we used a rich data set of anechoic natural sounds, including speech, textures and other environmental sounds, and made versions of them with different amount of reverberation. We then ask the question: What would be the optimal algorithm that will recover the clean anechoic sounds from their reverberant counterparts? To do so, we train a generalised linear model (GLM) and build our model in a way such that the model “neurons” can be directly compared to the properties of real auditory cortical neurons. We find that the model retrieves some known properties of neurons such as frequency tuning and temporally asymmetric auditory filters (STRF) with excitation followed by inhibition. The model also makes two novel predictions: (1) The inhibitory part of the neuronal filter scales with the amount of reverberation so as to cancel the excess echoes; (2) This inhibitory scaling is frequency dependent and tracks the profile of the acoustic space. We verify these predictions by recording neuronal responses in ferret auditory cortex using Neuropixels electrodes. We also explore putative mechanisms allowing for the implementation of this adaptation relying on local inhibitory interneurons. Thus, our data show that auditory cortical neurons seem to adapt to reverberation by adjusting their filtering properties in order to minimize its negative impact.
These workshops provide an introduction to key business concepts such as reviewing your potential customer landscape, starting to develop a sound business model and learning how to communicate your offering effectively. This can help you develop a better narrative and plan for future funding applications, or for pitching to investors.
These workshops provide an introduction to key business concepts such as reviewing your potential customer landscape, starting to develop a sound business model and learning how to communicate your offering effectively. This can help you develop a better narrative and plan for future funding applications, or for pitching to investors.
Do you need help managing your references? Do you need help citing references in your documents? This session will introduce you to Mendeley (www.mendeley.com) - a free 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. Includes importing references from PubMed and Ovid Embase; and how to synchronise your desktop and web libraries. For postgraduate students, researchers and university and OUH staff based on the Old Road Campus or in Medical Sciences Division departments elsewhere in Headington.
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86252193112?pwd=WXMxVEwvaGdMRWJqYiswQ3VYc05Jdz09 Password: 539510
After China’s 1980s decision, in cooperation with the United States, to open to the world in order to drive its own modernisation, followed by the end of the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union in 1991, a broad consensus developed about the value of global cooperation. Market logics coincided with geopolitical logics and most of the time, with the mood of domestic politics. Over most of the next three decades the long wave of internationalisation sustained tremendous growth in trading activity, travel and tourism, cultural convergence, and international student mobility. Above all, perhaps, it brought into being a new phenomenon in history, the global science system, based on global publishing and grass roots collaboration between international author teams. Global science has grown by leaps and bounds, for the most part supported by governments and universities but above all driven by the agency of scientists themselves. Within global science by the far the largest collaboration at nation-to-nation level, 55,382 joint papers in Scopus in 2018, is that between scientists in the United States and China. Of the 500 joint papers published in 2014-2018 with the highest citation rate, 49 per cent had first authors from China, 28 per cent had first authors from the US and 23 per cent of first authors were jointly affiliated. Part of this collaboration is sustained by the large-scale presence of Chinese doctoral students and postdoctoral scholars in US universities, and there is much movement back and forth. But global market logics have now diverged from the logics of global geo-politics and domestic politics. The world remains globally connected, as the responses in many countries to the murder of George Floyd have shown, but the new nativism and changes such as Brexit signal the end of accelerated internationalisation. One fallout is that the vast, fertile and historically unprecedented scientific collaboration between the US and China is in crisis. Amid the rapid escalation of tensions between the two countries, driven in the first instance by the bi-partisan drive in the US to reassert global primacy in science and technology, researchers from China who yesterday were welcome collaborators and contributors to American research effort are now under suspicion, typecast by the Trump administration as political agents of China’s party-state and potential raiders of American intellectual property. Visas terms are being shortened. Visa applications are being refused. Professors with joint US/China appointments are being investigated. A large group of scientists with Chinese names working in the US have been prosecuted by granting authorities on the grounds that information on their grant applications was shared with colleagues in China. The US government has foreshadowed a ban on any dealings between American universities and those Chinese universities with research links to the Chinese military, though most leading universities, in both countries, have military research links: grants from the Pentagon play a major role in the US, mostly as open public science. The US government is also putting pressure on allies such as the UK and Australia, and European countries, to adopt a more hostile attitude to China. Meanwhile China is tightening up its surveillance of researchers at home, in universities for whom the state is never far away. All of this is happening amid a global pandemic in which cooperation in relation to Covid-19 research between scientists in US, China and the rest of the world has taken on life and death importance. What does the new geopolitics of science and the enhanced politicisation of research mean for science as a common global good? How will it affect American universities in China as well as Chinese students in the US? What does it mean for scientists from other countries, positioned at the edges of the two scientific superpowers, that share the creation of scientific knowledge? Is the global science system sufficiently robust to maintain its networks and the free flow of open science? How we effectively advance academic freedom in the US, China and the world?
This talk is in partnership with The Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford and the Oxford Review of Economic Policy, and is also part of the series 'The economics of the COVID-19 pandemic'. The UK government faces a massive post-COVID problem in restructuring failing companies and rebuilding its already-depressed regions. A missing part of the solution is to link government as well as private sector funding to the financing of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in the regions. The institutional structure that is required has precedents in the UK, which can be used as the basis for reforming the funding of its SMEs. To register and watch this talk live: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/reforming-the-uk-financial-system
These workshops provide an introduction to key business concepts such as reviewing your potential customer landscape, starting to develop a sound business model and learning how to communicate your offering effectively. This can help you develop a better narrative and plan for future funding applications, or for pitching to investors.
Universities that host international students face grim COVID-related challenges, given the uncertainty about what they will be able to provide in future and the concurrent uncertainty about international students’ plans to study abroad. In the immediate future northern hemisphere universities need to understand the decision-making processes of students holding offers of places, given the cultural issues and significant financial implications. This research from international education researchers at the University of Manchester focuses specifically on Chinese international students as the largest group of international students. In China, education agents hold significant influence over prospective international students’ choice of degree programmes. Education agents are organisations or individuals who provide a range of services for potential international students or overseas universities in exchange for a fee. Agents in China often service large numbers of families. In this webinar the researchers will discuss qualitative research conducted with 19 agents based in nine Chinese cities in May 2020, focused on education agents’ practices and their handling of queries from international applicants and offer holders. Our findings demonstrate how education agents are guiding Chinese international students during the COVID-19 crisis and what factors will affect agents’ advice and students’ decisions in the coming academic year. During the webinar we offer eight concrete suggestions for universities, especially universities in the UK, that want to recruit and maintain international students from China.
The Alan Turing Institute Sustainable Finance Theme would like to invite you to the third AI for Sustainable Finance Seminar. The series is an opportunity for researchers and practitioners in this emerging interdisciplinary field to come together and explore new methods, datasets, and research questions. It is also an opportunity to share updates with colleagues and network with your peers. The second seminar will take place on the 22nd July at 3pm UK time, it will be followed by wider network updates and discussion chaired by Dr Ben Caldecott. The seminar will be given by Dr Philip Curtis, co-founder of the start-up Juniata Analytics that is developing a system to help food businesses measure and report the environmental and social impacts of their supply chains. Juniata Analytics provides consulting services and is currently finishing a project with ReFED, a think tank dedicated to reducing food waste, to deliver a first of its kind food waste tracking model and solutions prioritization tool. Previously, Philip served as a researcher for The Sustainability Consortium where he worked closely with retailers and brand manufacturers to model their agricultural and forestry commodity supply chains to better understand and address supply chain risks. Philip completed a Masters of Environmental Science and Management from the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara and a bachelors in Geography and Geology from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. Using AI to classify drivers of the global forest loss Tropical deforestation, contributing to the GHG emissions, has been featuring prominently on the global environmental finance agenda, specifically in the context of the high-risk commodities. To end deforestation, companies must eliminate 5 million hectares of conversion from supply chains each year; However, despite regional differences and efforts by governments, conservationists, and corporations to stem the losses, the overall rate of commodity-driven deforestation has not declined. Forest loss is being driven by various factors, including commodity production, forestry, agriculture, wildfire, and urbanization. Just over a quarter of global forest loss is due to deforestation through permanent land use change for the production of commodities, including beef, soy, palm oil, and wood fiber. Global maps of forest loss depict the scale and magnitude of forest disturbance, yet companies, governments, and nongovernmental organizations need to distinguish permanent conversion (i.e., deforestation) from temporary loss from forestry or wildfire. Using satellite imagery, a forest loss classification model has been developed to determine a spatial attribution of forest disturbance to the dominant drivers of land cover and land use change over the period 2001 to 2015. Results indicate that 27% of global forest loss can be attributed to deforestation through permanent land use change for commodity production. The remaining areas maintained the same land use over 15 years; in those areas, loss was attributed to forestry (26%), shifting agriculture (24%), and wildfire (23%).
The Oxford Renaissance Online Seminar (OROS) is a temporary online seminar series designed to allow scholars of early modern literature to share and hear new research with a global audience. The series will run from mid-May to mid-September, a period in which conferences and seminars have evaporated from view due to the coronavirus pandemic. Talks in the series will range across the authors, forms and genres of the early modern period, will be given both by established and emerging scholars in the field, from a panoply of academic institutions, and will vary from formal academic papers to more general and informal discussions of a speaker’s current research. The OROS is run from St Anne’s College, Oxford, where it is convened by Dr Robert Stagg (please direct any enquiries to robert.stagg@ell.ox.ac.uk). Talks will be screened through the St Anne’s College, Oxford Facebook page. The OROS will take place every Wednesday at 8pm UK time. How to tune in: At or around the time a seminar is due to begin, go to the St Anne’s College, Oxford Facebook page where talks will be screened through our Facebook Live facility. You do not need a Facebook account to watch these talks. If you want to ask questions of our speakers using the ‘real-time’ comments function, you will need to have or temporarily sign up for a Facebook account. https://www.facebook.com/StAnnesCollege/
There are few issues more important in higher education than the politics of tuition. Is higher education primarily a private good or a public good? Should students pay during or after their degree because it generates lifelong benefits for them as individuals? Or is higher education better provided on the basis of no cost and universal access, like elementary education in many countries and health services in some? What about the tuition loan system where graduates repay the cost of their education when their income reaches a threshold level? What are the effects of tuition fees on access? Does market competition between institutions raise or lower the quality of higher education overall? These are ongoing issues in many countries. Over many years students in Germany and Mexico have successfully resisted a tuition fee system. In Finland and Denmark tuition is free for local students but international students must pay. Higher education in China charges fees but also applies public subsidies, with students in elite institutions receiving more government support than others. Australia and the UK moved from free higher education to income contingent tuition loans repaid from later earnings. In the United States a market model applies, with sharply varying levels of tuition according to status of institution, but there are also subsidies for some students in high cost institutions. Now the Covid-19 pandemic is shaking up the politics of educational participation and student tuition everywhere. When unemployment is high the opportunity cost of enrolment in education is reduced, suggesting this is the best time to do a degree, but many do not see it that way. Because students have less opportunities to work they have less capacity to support themselves while studying. In fee paying countries where the only option is online education there is pressure to discount tuition charges, though institutional costs may not have fallen much. In high tuition countries enrolment could fall dramatically and students from lower income families will be worst affected. In free education countries, given the state of public finances, graduate unemployment and the need to fund social and economic recovery, there will be renewed pressure from economic ministries to levy fees on local as well as foreign students. Will the pandemic lead to a reassertion of the role of higher education as a resource for social development and economic renewal? Or will higher education become politically marginalised and pushed towards higher tuition and social polarisation between those who can afford to invest and those who are excluded?
Do you need help managing your references? Do you need help citing references in your documents? This session will introduce you to Mendeley (www.mendeley.com) - a free 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. Includes importing references from PubMed and Ovid Embase; and how to synchronise your desktop and web libraries. For postgraduate students, researchers and university and OUH staff based on the Old Road Campus or in Medical Sciences Division departments elsewhere in Headington.
Please email Louise King (louise.king@nds.ox.ac.uk) if you would like to attend.
Do you need help managing your references? Do you need help citing references in your documents? This session will introduce you to Mendeley (www.mendeley.com) - a free 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. Includes importing references from PubMed and Ovid Embase; and how to synchronise your desktop and web libraries. For postgraduate students, researchers and university and OUH staff based on the Old Road Campus or in Medical Sciences Division departments elsewhere in Headington.
Do you need help managing your references? Do you need help citing references in your documents? This session will introduce you to Mendeley (www.mendeley.com) - a free 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. Includes importing references from PubMed and Ovid Embase; and how to synchronise your desktop and web libraries. For postgraduate students, researchers and university and OUH staff based on the Old Road Campus or in Medical Sciences Division departments elsewhere in Headington.
The Covid crisis has caused the greatest collapse in economic activity since 1720. Some advanced countries have mounted a massive fiscal response, both to pay for disease-fighting action and to preserve the incomes of firms and workers until the economic recovery is underway. But there are many emerging market economies which have been be prevented from doing what is needed by their high existing levels of public debt and - especially - by the external financial constraints which they face. Professor David Vines, Professor of Economics at INET Oxford, will discuss that there is a need for international cooperation to allow such countries to undertake the kind of massive fiscal response that all countries now need, and that many advanced countries have been able to carry out. So far such cooperation has been notably lacking; the contrast with what happened in the wake of the global financial crisis in 2008 is very striking. The necessary cooperation needs to be led by the Group of Twenty, or G20, just as happened in 2008-9 since the G20 brings together the leaders of the world’s most important economies. This cooperation must also involve a promise of international financial support from the International Monetary Fund since otherwise international financial markets might take fright at the large budget deficits and current account deficits which will emerge, creating fiscal crises and currency crises and so causing such expansionary policies which need to be brought to an end. This talk is in partnership with The Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford and the Oxford Review of Economic Policy. To register and watch this talk live: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/global-macroeconomic-cooperation/
A two hour tutorial on using Genomics England for research purposes aimed at inexperienced users, including those who have not yet applied for access. 1000 -1015 Genomics England Research Embassy overview 1015 -1025 GEL recruitment and reporting 1025 -1115 Working with Labkey 1115 -1155 Bioinformatics-directed approaches 1155 -1200 Closing remarks Experienced users are welcome to drop in for the 'bioinformatics-directed approaches' sections.
When the Covid-19 pandemic emerged, most of sub‑Saharan Africa went into lockdown. What happens next for the pandemic across Africa remains uncertain, but the combination of domestic lockdowns and the spill-over from the global recession means immediate and severe economic hardship. In this talk, Professor Chris Adam, Professor of Development Economics & Oxford Martin Fellow on the Oxford Martin Programme on African Governance, looks beyond the public health aspects of the pandemic to examine the medium-term macroeconomic adjustment challenge confronting domestic policy-makers and international donors. He will discuss epidemiological and macroeconomic models to calibrate the scale of the combined shock to a representative low-income African economy and to show how alternative policy options for slowing transmission of Covid-19 impact on public revenue, and on GDP in the short run, and hence shape the path to recovery. Noting that the first lockdown, however costly, does not by itself eliminate the likelihood of a re-emergence of the epidemic, he will then lay out the agenda for key macroeconomic and public finance policies to sustain recovery, growth, and poverty reduction in sub-Saharan Africa. This talk is in partnership with The Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford and the Oxford Review of Economic Policy. To register and watch this talk live: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/after-the-lockdown-sub-saharan-africa
The Oxford Renaissance Online Seminar (OROS) is a temporary online seminar series designed to allow scholars of early modern literature to share and hear new research with a global audience. The series will run from mid-May to mid-September, a period in which conferences and seminars have evaporated from view due to the coronavirus pandemic. Talks in the series will range across the authors, forms and genres of the early modern period, will be given both by established and emerging scholars in the field, from a panoply of academic institutions, and will vary from formal academic papers to more general and informal discussions of a speaker’s current research. The OROS is run from St Anne’s College, Oxford, where it is convened by Dr Robert Stagg (please direct any enquiries to robert.stagg@ell.ox.ac.uk). Talks will be screened through the St Anne’s College, Oxford Facebook page. The OROS will take place every Wednesday at 8pm UK time. How to tune in: At or around the time a seminar is due to begin, go to the St Anne’s College, Oxford Facebook page where talks will be screened through our Facebook Live facility. You do not need a Facebook account to watch these talks. If you want to ask questions of our speakers using the ‘real-time’ comments function, you will need to have or temporarily sign up for a Facebook account. https://www.facebook.com/StAnnesCollege/
Graduate employability dominated the international higher education policy landscape over the last two decades. Governments see higher education as a means of ensuring a skilled, work ready labour force; students increasingly demand job-related financial returns from their ‘investments’ in higher education; and graduate labour market outcomes are now a key metric for regulation and ranking in many countries. However, COVID-19 has a major impact on the graduate labour market. A global recession is predicted, countries’ GDPs are plunging, unemployment levels are rising. In the UK alone, the number of vacancies dropped by nearly 50 per cent in the first quarter of the year, and plans from major graduate recruiters and particularly small and medium sized enterprises are in turmoil. The reality is that many graduates leaving higher education in 2020 and 2021 will struggle to find graduate level employment, or any job at all. History shows that graduates who attempt to enter the labour market at times like this not only face significant early challenges, there can be a significant scarring of long-term career trajectories and life-time earnings. Such impacts are rarely evenly distributed and can deepen existing social and regional inequalities. Recessions and mass youth unemployment often lead to increased student numbers as individuals shelter from the labour market storm while advancing their position. However, with question marks over teaching delivery during the pandemic and potential difficulties in paying fees in those countries where students finance tuition, student numbers may drop sharply and survey evidence implies this will happen. This may deepen inequalities further with those who can afford it staying on in higher education and those who can’t struggling in the increasingly congested labour market. At the same time work is changing quickly, with automation, digitisation and gigification, processes likely to be accelerated as companies move during the pandemic to maintain production while reducing labour costs. Inexorably these changes mean that the mix of skills required by graduate employers are changing also. What can individual students and graduates do and how should higher education institutions and systems respond? And in the middle of this crisis of employability how can higher education broaden expectations about its contribution to individual graduate agency and the broader public good? This webinar brings together a panel of three leading experts to discuss these questions, and invites our participation.
Do you need help managing your references? Do you need help citing references in your documents? This session will introduce you to Mendeley (www.mendeley.com) - a free 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. Includes importing references from PubMed and Ovid Embase; and how to synchronise your desktop and web libraries. For postgraduate students, researchers and university and OUH staff based on the Old Road Campus or in Medical Sciences Division departments elsewhere in Headington.
The Medical Sciences DPhil Research Slam is a student-organised virtual competition, showcasing and celebrating the fantastic, multidisciplinary research carried out by DPhil students across the Medical Sciences Division! Join us for the GRAND FINALE! Student finalists have been shortlisted across four exciting heats. It's now time to crown your winners! As with the heats, eminent figures from across MSD's 16 departments will also share their own wisdom (creatively or not, as they so choose). Anyone is welcome to attend, but signup is mandatory to receive the zoom link. Please see the booking link below. We look forward to seeing you at our final event on Thursday 30th July at 15:00 (BST), Zoom. Who will win? YOU decide! Don't forget, a cash prize for the best audience question is also up for grabs! For more details, please visit our website: https://sites.google.com/view/msd-dphil-research-slam-2020/home Prepare to be entertained!
Do you need help managing your references? Do you need help citing references in your documents? This session will introduce you to Mendeley (www.mendeley.com) - a free 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. Includes importing references from PubMed and Ovid Embase; and how to synchronise your desktop and web libraries. For postgraduate students, researchers and university and OUH staff based on the Old Road Campus or in Medical Sciences Division departments elsewhere in Headington.
What are the impacts of the Covid-19 crisis on individuals and businesses? How will the crisis affect the labour market, startups, growth and inequalities? In this brand new 6-part series, The Oxford University Business Economics Programme presents the latest research by world-class academics on topics of immediate relevance to business leaders, to inform their decisions during and after the crisis. Join us for a virtual breakfast-lecture with Q&A. Bring your own coffee!
A Nobel Laureate panel will discuss their choices for "The Greatest Physics Discovery of the 20th Century". Programme PROGRAMME: Session Chair: Professor Brian Greene (Columbia University) 17:00 WELCOME AND INTRODUCTIONS 17:05 Professor Steven Weinberg ForMemRS 17:25 Professor Sir Anthony Leggett FRS 17:45 Professor John Mather 18:05 Professor William Phillips 18:25 PANEL DISCUSSION 18:45 Q & A 19:00 CLOSE FREE to attend by Zoom but registration required. Zoom details for the event will be sent to registered attendees after the registration deadline has closed. Please contact happ-centre@stx.ox.ac.uk with any queries.
This webinar will highlight three of the most important issues in the power sector, which present particular challenges for developing economies. These are: • questions of finance at an affordable cost of capital, • paying attention to issues of sustainability and access, and • a reliability agenda that sits at the heart of many of the utility management challenges. John Rhys will introduce the subject, drawing on his experience of different power systems and setting out the financial aspects. The next two speakers will comment on and talk about some of these themes from the specific perspective of the Sierra Leone power sector, where these all represent very live current issues. Few people have access to electricity in Sierra Leone, and those that do suffer from an unstable supply. Fossil fuels and firewood are often used, with adverse health and environmental implications, and there is much potential for renewable energy. Hindolo George-Williams will talk on the sometimes conflicting aims of broadening access to electricity and the need to increase the resilience of the electricity grid and thus the reliability of supplied power. Which should come first? This is a trade-off that isn’t often discussed. Kelcise Vidal Sesay will talk on the operational aspects of delivering power, drawing on his experience as Head of the Electricity Regulation, and the approach taken to provide reliable and affordable electricity in Sierra Leone, as set out the country’s Electricity Sector Reform Roadmap. Helen Gavin will host the webinar.
This webinar will give an insight into the current practices and policies in China with regard to the integration of renewable energy in the electricity system. Jose Maria will introduce the current position of China within the international transformation of electricity systems. He will zoom into the institutional context and focus on the different players active in promoting regulatory innovation for renewable energy. Hao Zhang will speak on the legal and regulation context of China, and issues arising from these. He will speak on the very recent developments in Chinese law and policy with regard to renewable energy incentives and measures to tackle curtailment, as well as the trend of increasing investment in offshore wind. Helen Gavin will host the webinar.
Please see web site to keep up to date – http://www.tinyurl.com/OUBDIISS
In this webinar, Malcolm McCullough and Eric Brown will talk about Net Zero and how we can achieve it, from a power perspective. Helen Gavin will host the webinar. More information to follow soon.
In this webinar, Nick Eyre, Paul Massara, and Andrew Wright will talk about the UK energy efficiency programmes of the past, and what we can learn from these to implement a best practice energy efficiency scheme for residential and small commercial premises in the post-lockdown world. The webinar will briefly describe previous schemes, and summarise lessons learned from their successes and failures. Nick, Paul and Andrew will consider objectives for a new scheme, aligned with a “Marshall Plan” style ambition. They will identify desirable features that should be designed into the scheme, so that it achieves multiple benefits and help us become Net Zero by 2050. Helen Gavin will host the webinar.
We will be in conversation with Oxford University Global Surgery Group faculty and guest speakers, reflecting on the changing nature of global surgery, anaesthesia and obstetrics amidst the changing global health situation.
For more than thirty years, the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature has promoted scholarship in medieval studies outside the Anglophone world. Now, for the first time in its history, SELIM will hold its annual conference outside of Spain, at the University of Oxford. In celebration of this international partnership and of the diversity of global medieval studies, the theme of the conference will be European Connections. The society invites papers from scholars and students anywhere in the world dealing with ANY ASPECT of medieval English language or literature. Papers that address the conference theme are particularly welcomed, but all submissions will be considered. At a time when political changes have increasingly challenged collaboration within Europe, SELIM offers a unique opportunity to strengthen links between Spanish academics and the UK and rest of the world. The organisers aim to foreground a diversity of interests and approaches to medieval English, offering a rich programme of research. The conference will demonstrate the breadth of Spanish scholarship in the field of medieval English language and literature, and will encourage scholars of different backgrounds to forge new connections. A key priority of the conference is the advancement of students and early-career scholars, who will have the opportunity to meet and present alongside established scholars, and to submit their research to the society’s journal. A number of financial bursaries will be available for graduate students, and the organisers will hold two events aimed at junior delegates: a pre-conference workshop run by the Oxford-based, European Research Council-funded CLASP project, and a ‘knowledge exchange’ to facilitate idea-sharing between students of diverse nationalities. For further information about SELIM, its journal, and how to become a member, please visit http://www.selimsociety.com
In this webinar, Daniel Hardy and guest will talk about how to address the uneven playing field of energy, where fossil fuels attract large subsidies compared to clean and renewable technologies. More information to follow soon.
Registration is now open for the CRUK Oxford Centre’s 9th Annual Symposium. It will take place virtually on Wednesday 21st October 2020. This year’s event will be different – we unfortunately cannot host our event as planned due to COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, we are not able to showcase a poster competition and abstracts will not be submitted. However, we will be hosting a 1 day online event, which will include: Themed talks ranging from Non-Genetic Heterogeneity to Early Detection A New to Oxford session, featuring new Oxford cancer researchers and insights into where Oxford research may be going A special talk by our Keynote Prof. zur Hausen Programme: Details of the full programme are currently being confirmed – please keep an eye on our Eventbrite page or our dedicated symposium page for further updates. Registration: Registration is free.
Larry E. Tise, late Wilbur & Orville Wright Distinguished Professor of History, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, USA Scholars of science and technology frequently lament that Thomas Harriot did not publish a great book during this lifetime. This judgment sadly overlooks the fact that Harriot wrote and published the most important illustrated exploration narrative of European expansion into the Americas. His Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, issued in pamphlet form in 1588, was published in 1590 with 24 elegant copperplate engravings. The vivid illustrations were carefully captioned by Harriot himself and these images indelibly fixed our mental image of native Americans from the sixteenth century to the present. This book not only established the model for exploration books, it also became the first popularly hand-colored exploration narrative of the Renaissance era. These are among Dr Tise’s findings as he researched hand-colored copies of Harriot’s book around the world and worked with the great art house Taschen to publish in 2019 Theodore de Bry—America: The Complete Plates, 1590-1602 (published simultaneously in English, French, and German). Read more here: https://www.oriel.ox.ac.uk/about-college/news-events/events/thomas-harriot-lecture-thomas-harriot-and-creation-americas-first
The UK EQUATOR Centre’s Publication School is designed for early-career researchers and students working in health-related research. It aims to give you a smooth writing process that results in a published article that is fit for purpose. You will experience two intense days of learning led by methodology and writing experts from the UK EQUATOR Centre and the Centre for Statistics in Medicine and other invited experts. Through group work, discussion, and practical exercises, we cover everything you need to know to plan, write, and publish your health-related research study. Content: Planning your message and audience Negotiating authorship Choosing a journal and avoiding predators Good writing style and habits What to write where: recipes for a successful introduction, methods, results, and discussion Using reporting guidelines Revising your work for simplicity, clarity and completeness Summarising your article in an effective title and abstract Submission and dealing with peer review Disseminating your article after publication Email us (equator@csm.ox.ac.uk) or visit our web page for more information: www.ndorms.ox.ac.uk/graduate-courses/courses/equator-publication-school
The Integrate Hub Gatherings bring together researchers and practitioners in renewable energy and associated topics such as energy efficiency, demand, batteries, EVs, community energy etc. We meet in person and via video link to hear about new developments, discuss relevant items and discover areas in which to collaborate. Please forward this invitation to anyone who you think would be interested! The meeting is held fortnightly on Wednesdays, from 10:45 to 12:30. People can participate via video conference or in person (social distancing permitting). From 11:30 we will have a presentation from an invited speaker. Dr Jens Madrian will speak on “Building a stable, cost effective and 100% renewable based grid – the NEOM journey?” The Saudi government and its Public Investment Fund are rolling out projects to implement its Vision 2030 – the kingdom’s long-term blueprint for economic diversification, social development and job creation. One of the flagship gigaprojects, is the construction of a $500bn futuristic city called NEOM in north-west Saudi Arabia. Dr Jens Madrian joined NEOM as Executive Director NEOM Energy in 2019. he will be talking about his responsibility for designing and building the NEOM energy market/system of 50+GW from scratch that will be based on 100% renewable generation. Please get in touch with Helen Gavin if you are interested in joining the meeting!
13-15 January 2021 Cyprus in the Long Late Antiquity: History and Archaeology between the 6th and the 8th centuries Cyprus in Late Antiquity was a thriving and densely populated province. During the sixth and seventh centuries, the growing affluence of the island is conspicuous in comparison to other regions of the Eastern Roman Empire. In the traditional historical view, the late antique period on Cyprus ended abruptly as a result of the Arab raids of the mid-seventh century. The original focus of urban archaeology on monumental structures and Christian basilicas tended to stress the impact of these raids further; layers of destruction were often uncritically associated with the Arabs, overshadowing archaeological evidence that hinted at continuities beyond the mid-seventh century. In recent decades, archaeological research on late antique Cyprus has shifted its focus away from urban centres and single monuments in favour of a more contextual perspective. Building on well-established traditions of field prospection, diachronic survey projects and small-scale excavations are revealing a complex web of settlement patterns. They have shown that economic, political and cultural contacts between the island and the wider eastern Mediterranean were continued. Moreover, they also suggest that the end or transformation of occupation on individual sites cannot always be explained by catastrophic events, but should be interpreted in terms of local adaptation to changing needs and contacts. This symposium brings together archaeologists and historians engaged in the study of Cyprus between the sixth and eighth centuries. They will collate the results of recent and past research to arrive at a comprehensive, interdisciplinary reconstruction of life on the island in the Long Late Antiquity. You can access the conference programme here: https://torch.web.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/torch/documents/media/cyprus_in_the_long_late_antiquity_programme.pdf For further information and to register please email: Panayiotis.Panayides@classics.ox.ac.uk Ine.Jacobs@classics.ox.ac.uk
Followed by a drinks reception at 6pm
Our accredited five-day course covers major topics in global surgery, anaesthesia and obstetric care, such as burden of disease, manpower issues, training, partnership, supplies, service management, research needs, advocacy and ethics, and resource allocation. The course is suitable for those in all disciplines interested in global surgery, anaesthesia and obstetrics: - medical personnel with an interest in global surgery - qualified surgeons, anaesthetists and obstetricians/gynaecologists - those in training, including senior medical students - allied health care professions linked to global surgery The course is run by our multi-disciplinary faculty from Oxford University Global Surgery Group, with invited UK and international guest speakers. Course information and applications: https://www.conted.ox.ac.uk/courses/global-surgery Bursaries application deadline: TBC
