This one-day workshop will bring together historians and economic historians who have worked on international trade, on early modern commerce and financial instruments and on family businesses and their networks. Much recent work on the history of capitalism has focussed on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Yet the foundations for many of the institutions and practices of commerce were laid down during the early modern period. Approaching this as a part of the history of capitalism allows a much broader treatment of economic parameters, bringing together economic and social historians who do not frequently connect. It will stimulate new research and projects across family history, business and economic history, and wider European and global history. *Programme* 10:15-10:20 (The Medieval Kitchen, Brasenose College) *Opening Session* – *Maxine Berg* – Welcome and Introduction 10:20-12:00 *Profits, Trade and Textiles* – _Chaired by Jane Humphries (University of Oxford)_ *Professor Mary O’Sullivan* and *Dr Lorenzo Avellino* (University of Geneva) 'Profits in Textiles – Linen and Silk' *Professor John Styles* (University of Hertfordshire) 'New Cotton Textiles: Pricing and Profits' 12:05-13:00 (Amersi Lecture Theatre, Brasenose College) *Professor Giorgio Riello* and *Dr Michael O’Sullivan* (European University Institute) 'Production in Early Modern Asia and the Limits of Trade-centric Histories of Commercial Capitalism' 13:00-14:00 (The Medieval Kitchen, Brasenose College) Lunch 14:00-15:30 (The Amersi Lecture Theatre, Brasenose College) *Families, Businesses and International Networks* – _Chaired by Victoria Gierok (University of Oxford)_ *Professor Martha Howell* (Columbia University) 'German and Netherlandish merchants in European trade 1400-1600' *Professor Susanna Burghartz* (University of Basel) 'Basel family merchants and manufacturers in Atlantic trade' 15:30-15:45 Tea 15:45-17:15 *Merchants, Finance and International Trade* – _Chaired by Patricia Hudson (Cardiff University)_ *Professor Francesca Trivellato* (Institute for Advanced Study Princeton) 'Early Modern Financialization' *Dr Hunter Harris* (Nuffield College, Oxford) 'Financial Instruments and the City of London' 17:15-17:30 *Conclusion and Thanks* 17:30-18:15 Drinks in The Antechapel The Workshop is fully booked; to join a wait list please contact Dan O’Driscoll "$":mailto:daniel.odriscoll@jesus.ox.ac.uk

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*Georgina Close-Smith*, “We are sending letters to make you feel better”: The practice of citizenship among American elementary schoolchildren after 9/11 *Shereece Linton-Ramsay*, An examination of African-American girls’ experiences in a New York Reformatory, 1920-1930 *Kerry Stapleton*, Pupil resistance to the Ready to Learn behaviour system in British secondary schools, 2016-2023 *Daniel Surrey*, Changes to Secondary Education in Poole, 1965-1979 Link to join via Microsoft Teams: https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_OWIxMTYzOTUtYzU3OC00MTdhLThkNWQtMmQwYTY2MDAxY2M5%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22cc95de1b-97f5-4f93-b4ba-fe68b852cf91%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%228a90033c-fe26-41a7-b094-f077e6448461%22%7d

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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: students, staff and researchers from MSD and OUH.

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Most immunotherapy efforts aim to mobilize CD8+ T cells against cancer cells. Many tumors lack many neoantigens, and others are selected for partial or complete loss of MHC I, even before immunotherapy intervention. Checkpoint immunotherapy further exacerbates this problem as it preferentially amplifies CD8 cytotoxic effector cell activity, which targets MHC I presented tumor epitopes, imposing strong selection for loss of MHC I or other antigen presentation functions. Our work focuses on mobilizing NK cells and CD4 T cells to attack tumors. Innate immune system agonists and engineered cytokines synergize in eliciting such responses. I will discuss the impact and mechanisms underlying this approach, as examined in mouse cancer models, and its potential for preventing acquired resistance to checkpoint immunotherapy.

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Expansion of antigen-experienced CD8+ T cells is critical for the success of tumour infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL)-adoptive cell therapy (ACT) in cancer patients. Interleukin-2 (IL-2) is a key regulator of CD8+ cytotoxic T lymphocyte functions by promoting their expansion and cytotoxic capability. Therefore, it is essential to comprehend mechanistic barriers to IL-2 sensing in the tumour microenvironment (TME) to implement strategies to reinvigorate IL-2 responsiveness and T cell antitumour responses. Starting from translational data from a Phase I trial on TIL-ACT in melanoma, we showed that prostaglandin E2 (PGE2), a known negative regulator of immune response in the TME, is present in high concentrations in patient tumour tissue and leads to impaired IL-2 sensing in human CD8+ TILs via the PGE2 receptors EP2/EP4. Mechanistically, PGE2 inhibits IL-2 sensing in TILs by downregulating the IL-2Rγc chain, resulting in defective assembly of IL-2Rβ/γc membrane dimers. This results in impaired IL-2/mTOR adaptation and PGC1α transcriptional repression to cause oxidative stress and ferroptotic cell death in tumour-reactive TILs. Inhibition of PGE2-EP2/EP4 signalling during TIL expansion for ACT resulted in increased IL-2 sensing, leading to enhanced proliferation of tumour-reactive TILs and enhanced tumour control once transferred in vivo. Our study reveals fundamental features underlying the TME-PGE2 mediated impairment of human TILs with therapeutic implications for cancer immunotherapy and cell-therapy, enabling the development of targeted strategies to enhance IL-2 sensing and amplifying IL-2 response in TILs, thereby promoting the expansion of effector T cells with enhanced therapeutic potential.

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Seminar 2 of Trinity Term's Sociology Seminar Series Please join either in person or online. For in-person attendees, the talk will be preceded by a light lunch at 12.15pm. Please email comms@sociology.ox.ac.uk with any questions or to receive the Microsoft Teams link. This paper investigates the aftermath of the Soviet-Afghan war (1979-1989) and two military operations in Chechnya (1994-1996, 1999-2000) and shows that they still have a significant impact on Russian society, influencing it in fundamental ways, from political and social processes down to the socialisation of private citizens. It contributes to answering two key research questions: in what ways do Russian citizens experience the shifts in social norms, conventions and public discourses brought home by former soldiers? And how exactly did the veterans of these wars become one of the powers supporting the regime? The paper shows how the interests of war veterans have been corresponding to, conflicting with, or existing in interplay with, the interests of the state during the last three decades, and how the wars made veterans continue building their self-identity in compliance with the narratives accepted by their comrades-in-arms. The paper is based on interviews with war veterans conducted in 2019-2021 and interpreted in terms of narrative analysis, and large amount of official governmental regulations.

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Join Helen Mitsios in a presentation on her latest anthology in English translation, New Greek Voices: The Best Short Fiction from Greece, a lasting portrait of this generation’s most prominent current fiction writers in Greece. She will be discussing the process of creating and editing these anthologies, her publishing experience in the U.S., and the inherent joys and difficulties of bringing literature into English translation. In addition, she will share her publishing journey which began with a deep interest in Japanese culture and literature that led her to ask Haruki Murakami for his first short story to be published in English translation. Link: https://occt.web.ox.ac.uk/event/discussion-group-contemporary-greek-fiction-in-translation-new-greek-voices-the-best-short-fic

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Recruiting sufficient numbers of high quality teachers is an international problem, with shortages especially acute in STEM-related subjects. The goal of our research programme is to develop scalable and effective research-informed interventions that can raise the interest and confidence of university students to consider teaching as a career. With the support of funding from the ESRC, we are developing and testing a motivation theory-informed ‘serious game’ called TeachQuest designed to engage STEM undergraduates in solving authentic challenges faced by first-year teachers. I will start the talk by highlighting the scale of the teacher recruitment crisis in England and present work from 2021-2023 that developed teacher recruitment interventions now implemented by the DfE. Next, I will outline how we are developing TeachQuest and discuss the challenges of integrating motivation theories with player engagement. Finally, I will present some of our early results from the testing of TeachQuest in the UK. Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85842854046?pwd=dVpCemVmcWZFemdTV2ZhaE4xZXJhZz09

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Claire Keene is a South African clinician with experience managing a large HIV and tuberculosis project for Médecins Sans Frontières in Khayelitsha, where she also managed the project’s initial COVID-19 response in 2020 and co-led the ARTIST trial, which showed that it is safe to recycle the tenofovir backbone in viraemic HIV patients switching to dolutegravir. Claire is completing her PhD at the University of Oxford as part of the Health Systems Collaborative – a group conducting health systems research in resource-limited settings. She is using routine healthcare data to examine patterns of patient engagement behaviour over time, in order to apply the concepts of precision public health to HIV service-delivery in South Africa.

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Poisson Functionals encompass a vide variety of quantities, ranging from edge-functions derived from random geometric graphs to solutions of SDEs with Lévy noise. In this talk, we will examine the use of the Malliavin-Stein method, which allows us to derive central limit theorems by studying what happens if we add a point (or two), to our graph, say. The main result presented here is a Malliavin-Stein-type bound which works under minimal moment assumptions.

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• Dr Jiedi Lei, Clinical Research fellow with TOPIC group, “Autism and Anxiety - Rethinking Assessment and Formulation through Strengths- Based Perspective” • Dr Daniel Schaefer, Postdoc with Prof Shelley McKeown Jones, "Beyond Intractability: Reducing Animosities and Creating a Procedural Framework for Nonviolent Conflict Management" • Dr Sophia Shatek, Postdoc in Attention, Brain & Cognitive Development group with Prof Gaia Scerif, “Attention and maths in the developing brain” • Dr Matan Mazor, All Souls College Junior Research Fellow, “Counterfactual self-simulation in perceiving absence and pretending not to know”

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Join Zoom Meeting http://us06web.zoom.us/j/85285531740?pwd=SEFBa0%C3%975V21SOFo1dk85dm5TWEhSdz09 Meeting ID: 852 8553 1740 Passcode: 911647

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Using administrative data on the universe of UK taxpayers we study the responsiveness of top earners to tax rates. We leverage two large tax reforms affecting top earners – one in the UK and one in France – to determine the scale of both emigration and immigration responses. Our setting allows us to examine heterogeneity in response by income level and by ex ante probability of migration, for both natives and migrants. We develop a model that rationalises these results, and structurally estimate model parameters to infer the long run stock and migration elasticities. (coauthored with Cesar Poux, LSE III and Andy Summers, LSE Law)

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In the context of low fertility and population ageing, many countries will look to immigration to address shortages in labour and reduce the effects of population decline. While the short-term effects of immigration are relatively well understood, the long-term demographic consequences of high and sustained levels of immigration are still to be determined. In Australia, the dismantling of racially discriminatory migration policies in the 1970s and introduction of the subsequent large-scale migration program provides analysts with an opportunity to better understand the impacts of immigration. In this paper, we highlight the major contributions that immigration has made towards population change across eleven geographic areas in Australia from 1981 to 2021. The analyses utilise recently reconciled demographic component data for 18 different immigrant groups and the Australia-born population by age and sex. While net international migration of overseas-born persons contributed approximately 56% of overall population growth over the 40-year period, there were also sizeable contributions made by immigrants to other demographic processes, including 28% of births, 31% of deaths, and 18% of interregional migration. This research provides new insights into both the period-specific and long-term demographic effects of diverse immigration streams across state capital cities and regional areas in Australia.

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The World Health Organization’s Western Pacific Region website invites its visitors to: “Imagine having to deliver health services to a population dispersed across dozens of atolls and island groups, covering a distance of up to 5,000 kilometers, with slow internet, extremely high operational costs as well as infrequent transport links.” One hundred years ago, the British colonial authorities faced the same set of problems in the Pacific. This seminar will discuss the initiatives to promote healthcare in the Pacific Islands in the first half of the twentieth century, with a focus on the British Empire. Colonial administrations in the Pacific Islands connected, cooperated, and competed with one another through an overarching scheme that centralised medical institutions. It was a process that, at various times, involved quarantine, education, disease-control, military medicine, and public health. Together, the centralised medical institutions inaugurated an imperial healthcare system in which constituents of the British Empire engaged in both hierarchical and lateral relationships. The history of the development of healthcare in the Pacific Islands is, therefore, a remarkable example of intercolonial, interimperial, and intraimperial relations.

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SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY Richard Axel is a Nobel laureate, a University Professor, and Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Columbia University Medical Center, and a codirector of Columbia’s Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute. Dr. Axel obtained an AB from Columbia College and an MD from Johns Hopkins Medical School. In earlier studies, Dr. Axel and his colleagues, Michael Wigler and Saul Silverstein, developed gene transfer techniques that permit the introduction of virtually any gene into any cell. These studies not only allowed for a novel approach to isolate genes but also provided a detailed analysis of how they worked. At the same time, these experiments allowed for the production of an increasingly large number of clinically important proteins. These studies also led to the isolation and functional analysis of a gene for the lymphocyte surface protein, CD4, the cellular receptor for the AIDS virus, HIV. Professor Axel interested in the neurobiology of olfaction, or the sense of smell. He wants to understand the representation of olfactory information in the brain and the neural mechanisms that translate these representations into appropriate innate and learned behavioral responses. Working in the mouse and Drosophila, Axel and his team seek to genetically and physiologically dissect the sensory coding of odors. Their studies reveal that the anatomic organization and functional logic of olfactory circuits in Drosophila and mammals are remarkably similar, despite the organisms’ evolutionary distance from one another.

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The European Union designates 26% of its landmass as a protected area, limiting economic development to favor biodiversity. This paper uses the staggered introduction of protected-area policies between 1985 and 2020 to study the selection of land for protection and the causal effect of protection on vegetation cover and nightlights. Our results reveal protection did not affect the outcomes in any meaningful way across four decades, all countries, protection cohorts, and a wide range of land and climate attributes. We conclude that European conservation efforts lack ambition because policymakers select land for protection not threatened by development.

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A celebration to mark the publication of The Sūdgar Nask of Dēnkard Book 9 and Zoroastrian Hermeneutics in Late Antiquity Harrassowitz Verlag, 2023 and 2024 By Yuhan Sohrab-Dinshaw Vevaina (AMES / Wolfson) A panel discussion featuring: Christian Sahner (AMES / New College) Elizabeth Tucker (AMES / Wolfson) Arash Zeini (AMES) Wolfson College Auditorium Monday, April 29th, 2024 (Week 2) | 5 pm Discussion followed by a reception With generous support from the Bahari Fund for Sasanian Studies

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A series of free seminars to commemorate the death of J. R. R. Tolkien, to be held in 2023/2024 in the University of Oxford. The talks present an introduction and further background to Tolkien's life, work, and legacy. They have an academic approach, but they are also aimed at those who have read Tolkien's work but are interested in gaining a bit more insight into his life, career, and writings. WEEK 2 – April 29 Hugo Lacoue-Labarthe (Exeter College, University of Oxford) Tolkien’s Lancelot in The Fall of Arthur: the living memory of a decaying world CHAIR: Mark Atherton (Regent’s Park) https://tolkien50.web.ox.ac.uk/event/tolkien-50th-anniversary-seminar-series

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Friedrich Nietzsche suffered from many pathologies for most of his conscious life. Although the notions of health and illness in his philosophy have long attracted the attention of scholars, the same is not true – apart from a biographical interest – for his letters, in which he painstakingly described his lifelong quest for better health, his complicated relations with many physicians and the therapies they chose, and his attempts at self-healing. Even at a brief analysis, Nietzsche’s narration is full of insightful remarks and prophetic intuitions, often anticipating conceptions of, and breakthroughs in, medical care that would gain recognition only decades later. Browsing through the vast corpus of Nietzsche’s letters, the article will focus on three main elements in his narration and their theoretical-practical implications: his critique of positivistic medicine in favour of an original holistic (and even pre-global) approach to health; his notion of patients’ empowerment, leading to his theory of individual health; and his notion of health as not something per se, but as the overcoming of illness. *'This event is organised by Dr Laura Langone, Visiting Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Oxford's Sub-Faculty of German and funded through Dr Langone's MSCA FUNDS, Grant Agreement nr. 101105454'.

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Please be aware that group attendance may be limited. Please contact Group Lead Christopher Morris or team (christopher.morris@politics.ox.ac.uk) for attendance and inquiries. Seminar details are confirmed a week in advance. The Emerging Threats & Technology Working Group meets regularly each term to examine the national security implications of critical and emerging technologies (CETs), from artificial intelligence and quantum computing to directed energy and space platforms. Meetings are held in hybrid format, at Oxford and online, to include diverse views from academia, industry, and policy, matching the global reach of technological innovation and challenge. For more information on workshops, sessions, and journal, visit www.emergingthreats.co.uk

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Investcorp Lecture Theatre entry is via St Antony's College at 62 Woodstock Road. Contrary to conventional wisdom, there has been a continuing though vacillating gulf between the requirements of international law and the United Nations (UN) on the question of Palestine. This book explores the UN’s management of the longest-running problem on its agenda, critically assessing tensions between the Organization’s position and international law. What forms has the UN’s failure to respect international law taken, and with what implications? The author critically interrogates the received wisdom regarding the UN’s fealty to the international rule of law, in favour of what is described as an international rule by law. This book demonstrates that through the actions of the UN, Palestine and its people have been committed to a state of what the author calls ‘international legal subalternity’, according to which the promise of justice through international law is repeatedly proffered under a cloak of political legitimacy furnished by the international community, but its realization is interminably withheld. Ardi Imseis is Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, Queen’s University. Previously, he was Legal Counsel and Senior Policy Advisor, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA, 2002–2014), Editor-in-Chief of the Palestine Yearbook of International Law (2008–2019), and Human Rights Fellow, Columbia Law School (2001–2002). Imseis has provided testimony before the UN Security Council, Human Rights Council, and Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, among other international fora. His scholarship has appeared widely, including in the American Journal of International Law, European Journal of International Law, Harvard International Law Journal, and Oxford Journal of Legal Studies.

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Developments in whole genome sequencing technologies have catalysed incredible progress in the diagnosis of rare disease and the discovery of novel disease-associated genes. However, large-scale sequencing of population cohorts has revealed that many healthy individuals carry the same disease-causing variants as patients. The extent of this incomplete penetrance in individuals not ascertained on the basis of a family history or clinical diagnosis is neither well understood nor widely appreciated. In this talk, Professor Caroline Wright, Professor of Genomic Medicine at the Department of Clinical and Biomedical Sciences at the University of Exeter, will outline recent research into penetrance of different diseases across different populations, and discuss the broader implications of these findings for genomic screening. The talk will be followed by a drinks reception, all welcome. This is the Dr Stanley Ho Memorial Lecture organised by the Oxford Martin School and the Centre for Personalised Medicine.

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The Oxford Political Review (OPR) is holding an event to celebrate the launch of its 12th print issue. Professor Duncan Bell (Cambridge) will give a keynote lecture entitled: "That Now Devastated Terrain? Utopianism in the Twentieth Century and Beyond"

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Shipibo-Konibo indigenous leader Diana Mori Gonzalez (Ucayali, Peru) will share her knowledge and experiences about the Peruvian Amazon with a focus on the conservation, protection and management of nature and the environment, and gender empowerment.

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High levels of untreated chronic health conditions (e.g. hypertension and diabetes), poverty and limited social protection are the key issues that limit opportunities for a healthy ageing society in Africa. This discussion will address these issues and take an ‘all-of-society’ approach – a strategy involving all sectors of society to address complex challenges and find solutions – with a focus on ensuring people’s well-being at all ages. Join Steve Tollman, Founding Director of the Medical Research Council, and Kathleen Kahn, Personal Professor in the School of Public Health, moderated by Professor Alan Stein, Senior Research Fellow in Global Health and Public Policy, as they discuss ongoing research on cognitive change and dementias, the effects of social grants, and other policy-related aspects on the potential for people to reach mid- and older ages in Africa.

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Gambling disorder affects 0.4-2% of the population but has traditionally been largely overlooked in NHS settings. Times are changing: gambling disorder is now a national priority in the NHS long term plan, and around 15 regional treatment services have opened or are about to open. This session will cover the presentation of gambling disorder (symptoms, comorbidities, consequences), useful screening and assessment tools, and evidence-based treatment approaches. It will also highlight new NHS treatment services (e.g., how to refer), and will touch on the wider political and legislative contexts. https://zoom.us/j/95199401096?pwd=ancrZ0U1b0RNVmlKL0tQdTQ5SzhLUT09 Meeting ID: 951 9940 1096 Passcode: 937384

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For our next talk, in the BDI/CHG (gen)omics Seminar series we will be hearing from Prof Jenny Taylor, Programme Director; Dr Alistair Pagnamenta, Post-doctoral Researcher; Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford and Oxford NIHR Biomedical Research Centre and Jing Yu, Senior Computational Geneticist, Centre of Excellence, Novo Nordisk Research Centre, Oxford. We’re delighted to Prof Taylor, Dr Pagnamenta and Jing Yu in what promises to be a great talk! Date: 30 April 2024 Time: 9:30 -10:30 am Location: Big Data Institute Seminar Room 0 Abstract: Clinical whole genome sequencing has revolutionised the diagnosis of rare genetic disorders. However, the diagnostic yield from large-scale programmes such as the Genomics England (GEL) 100,000 Genomes Project (100kGP) remains modest at approx. 25%, suggesting that more complex variant types, such as structural variants, and those residing outside the coding regions, need to be interrogated. We have used a range of whole genome sequencing data sets to explore such variants and highlight some of our results to date, including inversions, which have had a significant clinical impact for the families involved. Bio: Prof Jenny Taylor - Jenny Taylor is Professor of Translational Genomics at University of Oxford and Co-Theme Leader of the Oxford Biomedical Research Centre's Genomic Medicine Theme, a translational programme funded by the UK’s National Institute of Health Research based at the University of Oxford’s Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics. Jenny’s research focuses on the application of whole genome sequencing (WGS) to the diagnosis of rare genetic diseases and cancer, and investigation of novel disease genes emerging, applying a range of functional approaches. She is also involved in a major new initiative using genomics-led approaches to inform development of nucleic acid therapeutics for rare disease patients. Dr Alistair Pagnamenta: Alistair studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge and went on to do a PhD on mitochondrial disorders at UCL. Since 2010 he has worked for the Oxford Biomedical Research Centre and has been involved with a wide range of projects including an MRC funded study into the genetics of musculoskeletal disorders. He has been involved in several disease-gene discovery projects, primarily using data from the WGS500/DDD studies and more recently from the 100kGP. Current interests include using WGS to detect inversions, translocations and cryptic splice variants. Jing Yu is the Senior Computational Geneticist, Centre of Excellence, Novo Nordisk Research Centre Oxford. Jing was trained in bacterial genetics but later moved on to work on human genetics using whole exome and whole genome sequencing. I led the whole genome sequencing analysis in the UK Inherited Retinal Dystrophy consortium and later embarked on the Genomics England 100k genomes project, to leverage its large scale whole genome sequencing data to find more diagnoses and molecular mechanisms underlying human disorders. And this is when I developed SVRare that helped with hundreds of diagnoses in Genomics England by looking at structural variants. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. The aim of these seminars is to increase interaction between people working in Genomics across the University so we encourage in person attendance wherever possible. Microsoft Teams meeting – Meeting ID: 383 603 468 89 Passcode: q9DBxW ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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!

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As part of the Research Environment and Culture Fund (RECF) that the Oxford University Collective for Pastoralist and Nomadic People was awarded last term, the collective is organising a workshop on Pastoralism on the 30th of April. Come join us at the School of Geography and the Environment for a workshop to reflect on some of the most novel approaches to pastoral and nomadic lifeworlds emerging from both the social sciences and humanities: 1. Nomadic thinking 2. Anarchism and Pastoralism 3. Landscape semiotics. We would like to invite students and staff at SOGE to attend this workshop to be able to hear some of the experts and students speak on this very important topic and to appreciate the pastoral ways of thinking and living.

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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: students, staff and researchers from MSD and OUH.

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Sally Bayley is an acclaimed author whose books explore the relationship between autobiography, biography, memoir, and literary fiction. She's the author of the auto/biographical trilogy which includes the volumes Girl with Dove (2018), No Boys Play Here (2021) and The Green Lady (2023): this tripartite coming-of-age narrative challenges traditional demarcations between literary categories to cast its own, unconventional form. Situated along the shifting relationship between fiction and non-fiction, the first two volumes are based on a story that builds momentum from a child's imaginative relationship between literary characters and artistic forms as she searches for ways of seeing around difficulties. The third volume pushes this experimentation even further, connecting personal and cultural memory, archival sources and ‘imaginary biographies’, in a composite narrative that shifts across epochs and is framed by imaginative and real contexts. The discussion will focus on the third volume of the trilogy, highlighting how, in Bayley’s works, lived experiences become material for her creative processes, producing a hybrid narrative that simultaneously reads as an autobiographical, biographical and/ or fictional work. Furthermore, focusing on the concept of relationality that sees auto/biographical narrative not as a solitary but as a relational story, the discussion will underscore the relationship between the individual life and wider webs of familial, social and historical structures, testified by a shifting narrative voice that alternates between subjective and collective consciousness. Sally Bayley is a prize-winning author. She is a fiction and non-fiction writer who lives on a narrowboat on the River Thames in Oxford. Sally was the first child to go to University from West Sussex County Council care services and she is a Lecturer in English at Hertford College. She also teaches academic writing, literature, film and creative writing for the Sarah Lawrence Visiting Programme at Wadham College. From 2018-2020 she was a Royal Literary Fund Fellow and in 2021 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Eleonora Maio is pursuing her doctoral studies in the Humanities Department at the University of Palermo, Italy. She currently is a Visiting Doctoral Researcher at the Faculty of English Language and Literature, University of Oxford, working on her dissertation about Sally Bayley’s experimental auto/biographical trilogy.

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‘You can dance, sing, mime, show pictures, play sounds etc etc … but you can’t speak or play or display words.’ What happened when the six students on the MSt C-Course "Silences: Henry James to Now" in Hilary Term 2024 were challenged to give their class presentations using any means of communication except words? Magnificently, they rose to the challenge, producing films, soundtracks, a computer game, tarot cards and an unclassifiable ten minutes involving eggshells, litter gathered from Port Meadow and calligraphy ink standing in for DDT. Their work opens up new ways of thinking about texts, new ways of communicating about texts, new ways of engaging in textual criticism and new ways of being in the classroom. This seminar showcases their creations.

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All staff and students from across MSD and MPLS (and beyond!) are invited to join us on April 30th at the new Radcliffe Science Library for an exhibition and networking event. You are invited to meet the Cambridge Black Medical Scientific Network (BMSN - https://www.linkedin.com/company/black-medical-and-scientific-network-bmsn/?originalSubdomain=uk) and view their exhibition, “Portraits of Black Female Scientists”. Representatives from the Oxford University Black Medics, OxFemTech among other local networks will be present to promote the support they offer for improving student wellbeing and inclusion. Additionally, a tour of the Radcliffe Science library with its new inclusive portraiture will be available on request. So please book a slot to enjoy the exhibition (and our new science library…) and to join us in learning more about the work of the BMSN and of groups here in Oxford. And, of course, to make new connections over food and drinks! Tea and coffee on offer all day, as well as lunch between 12 and 2. Open to all members of the University. In person at Radcliffe Science Library Breakout Space and Seminar Room. Date: 30th April Times: 11:00-12:00, 12:00-13:00, 13:00-14:00, 14:00-15:00, 15:00-16:00, 16:00-17:00

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This paper explores the role of modern Irish literature, in both Irish and English language traditions, in navigating a way of rethinking the connection between people, place and planet in a time of climate and environmental crises.

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In this lunchtime talk, Nessa Cronin explores the role of modern Irish literature, in both Irish and English language traditions, in navigating a way of rethinking the connection between people, place and planet in a time of environmental crisis.

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The Education and Training for the Climate (ETC) Hub would like to invite you to a HYBRID (online and in person) seminar on Tuesday, April 30th from 12:00-13:00. For those attending in person, the event will be followed by lunch at 13:00 in the department to continue the conversations. This seminar will present a theoretical framework to address climate change through physics education. The framework combines uncertainty, sustainability, disaster education and future studies and was used to design a course for secondary school students. The course will be presented during the seminar, with a discussion of the results of the first implementation and future steps. Our seminar leader, Lorenzo Miani, is a visiting doctoral student from the University of Bologna.

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Meinou Simmons is a CAMHS consultant with a special interest in education and is currently local Training Programme Director. She will discuss her learning from her recent experience of publishing her handbook on youth mental health to a broader audience of parents, caregivers, and teachers, which led to further public education activities. This is a hyrbid event, held in the Department of Psychiatry’s Seminar Room and online (Zoom). Please email shona.oleary@psych.ox.ac.uk to request the Zoom link.

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Fred Morgan (Merton College, Oxford): 'Both bene fals, they & they peynturys': Implicit and explicit critiques of visual culture in the Cloud-corpus' and Simon Heller (Lincoln College, Oxford): 'Rewriting Heorot in American Fiction' Seminars followed by a sandwich lunch. All welcome!

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Join Zoom Meeting zoom.us/j/97156099278?pwd=bE1DNElhVmRRWkl1Q1lVSEI3UlRLdz09 Meeting ID: 971 5609 9278 Passcode: 324627 While social class has received renewed attention as a driver of political conflict in Western democracies, we know little about when these class differences emerge. We apply a life-course approach to identify how social classes differ in their political preferences at different life stages (as a consequence of family origin, during early adulthood, and on the job). These distinctions allow us to adjudicate the stage(s) at which class conflict becomes more marked and consolidated. Are class differences a direct consequence of economic prospects and daily experiences on the job, or are they the driven by a sorting process responding to earlier formative experiences? Our longitudinal analyses using British and Swiss panel data indicate that differences by (future) class are apparent early in life, but that they consolidate during employment. This research advances current and historical debates about social class as a relevant milieu of political socialization and public opinion formation.

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Reaxys Academic Edition is a vital resource for Chemistry research and education. It provides access to hundreds of millions of substances, reactions, experimental properties, academic articles and citations, bioactivity data, patents, and synthesis procedures.In this session Piotr Golkiewicz from Elsevier will provide an overview and practical demonstrations on how to search Reaxys effectively and build search queries specific to your information needs. In this session you will learn: how to search various types of information including bioactivity data; how to save time building specific queries by using the Query Builder; and how to find published and AI predicted synthesis routes. Intended audience: 3rd and 4th year students, DPhils, researchers and other staff in Chemistry or studying/researching Chemistry related topics.

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Journal club: Management of subclinical atrial fibrillation: 1. Healey JS et al for the ARTESIA Investigators. Apixaban for stroke prevention in subclincal atrial fibrillation. N Engl J Med 2023. 2. McIntyre WF et al. Direct oral anticoagulants for stroke prevention in patients with device-detected atrial fibrillation: a study-level meta-analysis of the NOAH-AFNET 6 and ARTESiA Trials. Circulation Circulation2024;149:981–988.

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Teams registration link: https://teams.microsoft.com/registration/G96VzPWXk0-0uv5ouFLPkQ,hYZdQCmlzkm4vF5r0Gafvg,xSUsO8VQtU2sqG5Uovyv7w,kIfk5Pc7AUmRJdIGsxzh8g,eUgnxHaohUiG5-6BFx7EEA,KZlXEI--IUuE43xrP1qP3A?mode=read&tenantId=cc95de1b-97f5-4f93-b4ba-fe68b852cf91

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In the 1960s, the Soviet Navy was quietly recapitalising and expanding. As détente collapsed in the late 1970s, western analysts panicked as the Soviet Fleet patrolled the world ocean, supported socialist revolutions around the world and established naval bases astride vital maritime chokepoints such as the Bab-al-Mandeb and the Suez Canal. But the signs had been there all along. Under the visionary leadership of Admiral of the Soviet Union Sergei Gorshkov, the USSR had hankered after sea power for a generation. Gorshkov’s conception of fleet composition was dismissed in the West because it did not mirror the blue water battle fleets that had won the Second World War for the Allies. As the Cold War climaxed in the 1980s, the US Navy reacted to this new Soviet Fleet with a massive expansion in ships and an aggressive forward Maritime Strategy. The world ocean of 2024 is still patrolled by the results of that endeavour, ready for the next naval challenger – the People’s Liberation Army Navy. This talk will build on archival research on Admiralty Records throughout the Cold War and follows Andrew’s first paper published in the Journal of Intelligence History in 2022. Andrew Ward is the 2023-24 Royal Navy Hudson Fellow and a Visiting Fellow at CCW. Andrew joined the Royal Navy in 2012, serving at sea in destroyers HMS DRAGON and DUNCAN in the Middle East. Recently he has been working in international policy at the Ministry of Defence and Northwood Headquarters. He read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at University College, was a visiting student at Washington & Lee University and completed an MA in Defence and Security Studies (Maritime) at King’s College London in 2021. His paper on the Royal Navy and the Early Cold War was published in January 2022.

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Join Zoom Meeting http://us06web.zoom.us/j/85285531740?pwd=SEFBa0%C3%975V21SOFo1dk85dm5TWEhSdz09 Meeting ID: 852 8553 1740 Passcode: 911647

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This webinar will kick-off the launching of a new 4 volume international handbook series, entitled The Bloomsbury Handbooks of Crises and Transformative Leadership in Higher Education, to be published in Sprint 2024. The volume titles in the series include: • The Bloomsbury Handbook of Values and Ethical Change in Transformative Leadership in Higher Education • The Bloomsbury Handbook on Context and Transformative Leadership in Higher Education • The Bloomsbury Handbook on Diversity, Crises and Transformative Leadership in Higher Education • The Bloomsbury Handbook of Ethics of Care in Transformative Leadership in Higher Education Global crises, unrelenting change, and disruptions (such as pandemics, financial crises, environmental crises, technological innovations, geopolitical events, and others) have induced both challenges and opportunities for institutions of higher education globally, while threatening the sustainability of many. In its intersections with the rise of protectionism, cultural chauvinism, authoritarianism and demagoguery, the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated–or at least rendered more visible–a global climate in which culture wars infiltrated campuses, as well as the very discourse of higher learning. Proliferating scepticism about the value of science and expertise more broadly appears to signal a weakening of trust in the role of universities as transformative agents of positive social and human development. As a result of the complex contextual situatedness of these institutions, responses to these crises, disruptions, and uncertainties have often taken quite different approaches. It is the lessons and reflections on the why and how to lead HEIs through these multiple, intersecting and ongoing crises and change that informs the development of the chapters within this handbook series. With over 120-chapter authors from six continents, these volumes will deepen the readers understanding of the multiple and intersecting crises and change issues, within diverse local and global geopolitical, social, economic and cultural contexts that leaders in higher education institutions (HEIs) needed to handle. In creating new policies, programs and pedagogical approaches, leaders in higher education have had to work critically, creatively and collaboratively to identify opportunities and overcome obstacles related to values, ethics, learning, engagement, inclusion, diversity, research, technology, accountability, partnership development, and sustainability, amongst others. Through their leadership and transformative change initiatives, many leaders and senior administrative teams have found or created new opportunities and are now looking at the valuable lessons learned from their experiences under extreme conditions, and how these might inform the post-pandemic, post-change or post-crisis directions for their university.

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A towering figure of the Indian subcontinent's independence movement, Abdul Samad Khan Achakzai's political career spanned the colonial and post-colonial eras. His progressive politics were national-democratic, anti-imperialist and anti-feudal. He advocated for democracy, civil rights and the rule of law and envisioned a single Pashtun province, which would incorporate all the contiguous Pashtun-inhabited areas east of the Durand Line with Pashto as the working language and medium of instruction. Altogether, he was sentenced to imprisonment for 40 of his 66 year life, a time he used to gain academic credentials and pen most of this autobiography. He is reverentially remembered as "Khan Shaheed" - the Martyr Khan. Ayaz Khan Achakzai is a public policy expert and development economics practitioner. His work in international development includes stints at the World Bank, United Nations, private consulting and non-profit organizations. He was educated at Colby College, Oxford University and Princeton University. Ayaz is the co-translator and editor of My Life and Times.

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In spite of progress, inequalities persist worldwide due to factors such as ethnic identity, sexual orientation, and appearance. My research focuses on exploring the impact of these inequalities on individuals' well-being and health, as well as understanding the conditions under which people actively support social change towards greater equality. To begin, I will examine the health disparities within specific subpopulations of the LGBTIQ+ community using longitudinal data from the Swiss LGBTIQ+ Panel. Additionally, I will present my work investigating the extent to which intergroup contact influences support for social change among both advantaged and disadvantaged groups in the ethnic and LGBTIQ+ contexts. By analysing cross-sectional data from 23 countries and conducting experiments, I will demonstrate that intergroup contact is not always a panacea, challenging the assumptions made in previous studies. In conclusion, I will discuss the potential avenues for future research that can provide a deeper understanding of when and how intergroup contact may effectively drive social change. ABOUT THE SPEAKER Tabea Hässler, Ph.D., is a senior lecturer at the University of Zurich. Tabea’s research focuses on responses to inequalities among members of diverse advantaged and disadvantaged groups in the LGBTIQ+ and ethnic contexts and their support for collective action toward greater social equality. Tabea’s work is influenced by research stays and visits in several countries and collaborations with scholars around the globe. A central aim of Tabea’s work is to promote social justice within and beyond academia. Therefore, Tabea considers it important to disseminate the findings to a broad audience. TO JOIN THE TALK ON THE DAY https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87533878953?pwd=Ukg1RVZEaU1WL1MrTDh5SFlQc3U4QT09 Meeting ID: 875 3387 8953 Passcode: 079261

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Following the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, interest in large language model (LLM)-powered chatbots has surged with increasing focus on the clinical potential of these tools. Missing from this discussion, however, are the perspectives of physicians. The current study aimed to explore psychiatrists’ experiences and opinions on this new generation of chatbots in mental health care. An online survey including both quantitative and qualitative responses was distributed to a non-probability sample of psychiatrists affiliated with the American Psychiatric Association. Findings revealed 44 % of psychiatrists had used OpenAI's ChatGPT-3.5 and 33 % had used GPT-4.0 “to assist with answering clinical questions.” Administrative tasks were cited as a major benefit of these tools: 70 % somewhat agreed/agreed “documentation will be/is more efficient”. Three in four psychiatrists (75 %) somewhat agreed/agreed “the majority of their patients will consult these tools before first seeing a doctor”. Nine in ten somewhat agreed/agreed that clinicians need more support/training in understanding these tools. Open-ended responses reflected these opinions but respondents also expressed divergent opinions on the value of generative AI in clinical practice, including its impact on the future of the profession.

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Tuesday 30th April Christening Donne Peter McCullough (Fellow in Renaissance English Literature, Lincoln College). This lecture will offer some introductory reflections on this new presentation of Donne’s greatest prose works, and on the sermons’ claims to the attention of both literary scholars and ecclesiastical historians. It will then turn in more detail to Donne’s sermons preached at christenings—a body of work long neglected but containing vital evidence of his sacramental theology, and of his responses to Calvinist and Roman Catholic thought.

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This addresses the application of small-n methodologies, mostly Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and Process Tracing, in policy and programme evaluation. It will provide an overview of possible methodological options and suggest criteria for appropriate choice (e.g. evaluation questions) and combination of options. More specifically, it will address the benefits brought by QCA and Process Tracing, and their variants. as well as their challenges and limitations. Barbara Befani has 20+ years of experience in developing, testing, and teaching evaluation methodologies. In the last 13 years she has focused on innovative methods for qualitative impact evaluation, between academia and the evaluation market, both domestic and international. She has been Secretary General of the European Evaluation Society. Booking is required for people outside of the Department of Social Policy and Intervention (DSPI). The registration form will be available soon. DSPI members do not need to register

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People with disabilities are underemployed across the world. To increase their representation, more than 100 countries have established quota regulations requiring firms to hire people with disabilities. This paper studies the labor market consequences of enforcing modest disability hiring quotas. Using the introduction of a reform in Brazil that enhanced enforcement of a new hiring quota regulation, my market-level analysis finds that people with disabilities in local labor markets more exposed to the reform experienced larger increases in employment and earnings. Leveraging variation in enforcement across firms, I document three key margins along which firms respond to the quota scheme. First, firms hire more workers with disabilities into low-paying jobs. Second, workers with disabilities experience reduced wage growth. Third, the quota also does not come at a cost to workers without disabilities in terms of wages or employment, or to firms in terms of closure. Through the lens of a simple model, I show that the policy generates aggregate welfare gains. My findings support that, in labor markets characterized by discrimination in hiring, mandating modest increases in employment for the disadvantaged can promote redistribution and improve welfare.

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As climate change impacts unfold rapidly worldwide, people-centered and operationally relevant ways to support frontline communities become increasingly important. Saleemul Huq worked tirelessly to this aim, and for those who had the privilege of working with him in Bangladesh, in Least Developed Countries, in academia and with civil society, and with governments, we have benefitted from his legacy. Saleemul and many gathered here today and across the world contributed to progress under the UNFCCC process to establish funding arrangements including a fund to address adverse climate change impacts. As the new fund takes shape and a high level dialogue will make recommendations on funding arrangements, what directions are needed to address needs and provide solutions? This event is held in memory of Saleemul Huq OBE (1952 - 2023), an acclaimed climate change researcher and campaigner who worked tirelessly to centre the needs of frontline communities. Saleemul was the director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development in Bangladesh and a "titan of the climate movement". Speaker bio: Dr Koko Warner is the Director of the International Organization for Migration’s Global Data Institute. Prior to this, Koko worked in the United Nations for over 16 years on climate change and migration, and climate risk management. Koko supervises the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) workstreams on climate impacts, vulnerabilities, and risk policy in the adaptation division.

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If you work on any aspect of Nature Recovery or Biodiversity Conservation in Africa, come along, meet others working in this sector, find out about their research and forge new collaborations.

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Educator, organiser and activist Maria Varela explores her work during the Civil Rights Movement, focussing particularly on her photographic archive. In discussing her images, Maria reflects on narratives of the Civil Rights Movement and how her photographs and experiences challenge that memory. This talk is part of the event programming for the exhibition, Time to Get Ready: Maria Varela and the Civil Rights Movement. In 1963, Maria Varela travelled to Atlanta, Georgia to join the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee as an office worker. However, within three weeks she was assigned to work in dangerous Selma, Alabama as a literacy program worker. For the next four and a half years, Varela would work as an educator, organiser, and writer in the deep South. It was not until 1966 that, dissatisfied with representations of Black people in the Movement, Varela would pick up a camera. Through her lens, she captured images of marches, speeches, and protests. But primarily she captured the hard work that went into sustaining the everyday organizing to build the Movement from the bottom up – including voter drives, vegetable co-operatives, and community activism around jobs, education, housing and segregation of public institutions. From events such as the Meredith March Against Fear, to profiling leaders such as Fannie Lou Hamer, Varela’s photography offers an important perspective on one of the most significant periods of reckoning in American history. Maria Varela’s photography will be exhibited at The Barn Gallery, St John’s College (22 St Giles') from Monday 29 April to Saturday 18 May 2024. There will be an opening wine reception at The Barn Gallery on 29 April. This exhibition is generously supported by: St John’s College, the Rothermere American Institute, Christ Church College, the British Association of American Studies, the Oxford Festival of the Arts, and the National Museum of Mexican Art.

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Amid the Sino-Japanese and civil wars in the 1930s and 1940s, many patriotic young intellectuals joined the Chinese Communist Party out of a fervent desire to 'save the nation'. Attracted by its promises of freedom, democracy and equality, these underground party members braved arrest, torture and prison under the Nationalist government to fight for a communist utopia. After 1949, following an initial period of euphoria, they found themselves painfully struggling between their twin goals of democracy and revolution under the Mao regime. Towards the end of their lives however, a group remained committed to their ideals and openly called for democratic reforms, becoming known as the 'democrats within the party'. This talk explores the intellectual journey of these party intellectuals, who struggled in a dynamic tension throughout their lives between their longing for democracy and their devotion to the Communist revolution, liberal and Marxist-Leninist values, and between humanity and class-conscious party spirit. Having interviewed them and examined their writings, diaries and memoirs, Dr Verna Yu attempts to decipher what attracted these young intellectuals to the Communist revolution in the pre-1949 era, what contributed towards their unquestioning faith in the party in the Mao era and what triggered their intellectual 'awakening' in the post-Mao era. The examination of their mental conflicts and thought transformation, dissent and collaboration in the party has contributed towards our understanding of 20th century Chinese intellectuals and Chinese contemporary history. Dr Verna Yu is Departmental Lecturer in Modern Chinese Studies at the University of Oxford and Research Associate of the China Institute at SOAS, University of London. She researches and teaches the history and politics of modern and contemporary China. She has a PhD degree in history from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her doctoral research was focused on the intellectual history of contemporary China, and in particular, how young Chinese intellectuals were attracted to the idea of a Communist Utopia in the 1930s and 1940s and their pursuit of a democratic China from the pre-1949 era to the post-Mao era. Prior to academia, she was an award-winning journalist whose works on human rights, civil society and Chinese politics have been published widely in the international press, primarily The Guardian and the South China Morning Post, and also in the Diplomat and New York Times among other international publications. Her two-decade China coverage has been recognised through 10 prestigious press awards, including seven Human Rights Press Awards and three Society of Publishers in Asia Editorial Awards (SOPA) awards.

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A new Polish government is trying to restore the rule of law, after eight years in which the EU identified major threats to it under governments of the populist Law and Justice (PiS) party. The rule of law crisis in Poland has posed a challenge for the entire European Union, undermining its fundamental principles and values. Can the EU effectively defend itself against such threats? Which path should be chosen to restore the rule of law: revolution or evolution? These questions will be addressed by Dr Marek Safjan, a former president of Poland’s Constitutional Court and a judge on the European Court of Justice from 2009 until earlier this year.

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Join us for the 7th Adrian Fernando Memorial Lecture on Tuesday, 30 April 2024, featuring Howard Covington as the keynote speaker. AI and Climate Change 17.00 – 18.10 BST: Lecture and Q&A 18.10 – 19.10 BST: Reception AI will accelerate innovation in clean energy systems and environmental monitoring and protection. It will thus make for a faster energy transition and help preserve biodiversity. But AI and climate change are also prompting domestic and international political changes that could slow the energy transition in this critical decade. Moreover, both AI and the climate are evolving very fast. By the time the world has net zero in sight, we will not only have disrupted the climate and nature, but we may have among us an abundance of human-level or super-intelligent data centres. This abundance may usher in an era of economic plenty that makes it easier to deal with climate disruption, or it could generate more disruption by increasing inequality, reducing social cohesion, and possibly limiting human development. Humanity has set itself an epoch-defining challenge to rise to. Howard Covington will try to put into context some of the themes around AI and climate change that will shape our immediate future. Howard Covington is a Cambridge graduate in physics and maths. He has been a director of SG Warburg, European chief executive of Wasserstein Perella, a co-founder and chief executive of New Star Asset Management, a trustee of the Science Museum, chair of the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences, founding chair of The Alan Turing Institute, chair of the Scotia Group, chair of ClientEarth, and an advisory board member of the University of Oxford’s Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment. Howard is a fellow of the Institute of Physics and an honorary fellow of the Isaac Newton Institute and The Alan Turing Institute.

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France was the first country in Europe to grant Jews full citizenship rights in 1790-91. Why emancipation occurred then and there is a question that historians continue to grapple with. Many have looked for an answer in the relative positive views of the Jewish merchants of Iberian descent who lived in the Southwest of France among eighteenth-century Enlightenment thinkers. Starting from a new reading of a famous passage by Montesquieu, the talk will challenge this prevailing interpretation and show that even the most ardent advocates of Jewish emancipation regarded any association between Jews and commerce or finance with great suspicion. In so doing, it will contend with the widespread notion according to which economic utility paved (and, more generally, can pave) the way for political and human rights. *Francesca Trivellato* is the Andrew W Mellon Professor at the School for Historical Studies of the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton. A leading historian of early modern Italy and continental Europe, Trivellato has made significant and ground-breaking contributions to our understanding of the organization and culture of the marketplace in the pre-industrial world. Trivellato’s original and imaginative research has revitalized the study of early economic history, and her influential work on cross-cultural trade intersects the fields of European, Jewish, Mediterranean, and global history, religion, and capitalism. Admission is free but please book your tickets in advance.

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Since 2018, we have seen a growth of Latino Republicans running for and winning in both state and federal United States Elections in places that one would not expect. In this month's Balliol Online Lecture, Professor Jason Casellas (John G Winant Visiting Fellow in American Government 2023-24) will explain who they are, where they are running, who is winning, and their impact once in office. Jason Casellas is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Houston specialising in American politics, with specific research and teaching interests in Latino politics, legislative politics, and state and local politics. He is the author of Latino Representation in State Houses and Congress (New York: Cambridge University Press). He is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including a Princeton Fellowship, an American Political Science Association Fellowship, a Ford Motor Company Fellowship, the Samuel DuBois Cook Postdoctoral Fellowship at Duke University, and a United States Studies Centre Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Sydney (Australia).

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Lecture 1 of the Evans-Pritchard Lecture series Witchcraft, "Witch Camps", and Social Life in Northern Ghana All are welcome to attend in person or via the Teams ID and password below: Meeting ID: 318 331 790 674 Passcode: LEecHc

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This year may go down as the hottest ever recorded as also one with an alarming increase in the frequency and severity of a wide range of climate change induced extreme weather events. This gives us a stark warning of climate change impacts we can expect in the future. Scientists have urged world governments to urgently make use of one last window of opportunity to shift course. However, considering the scale of this challenge, the responsibility extends to all key stakeholders, including the news media. A substantial body of empirical evidence has identified that news media are crucial in shaping policy agendas, fostering public discourse, and motivating individuals to take pro-environmental actions. Therefore, drawing from data from the UK, USA, France, Germany, Japan, Brazil, India, and Pakistan, collected through an online survey in 2023, this study provides an in-depth understanding of climate news consumption habits along with public opinion on the health impacts of climate change, public support for and coverage of direct-action protests, and climate justice.

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https://www.lac.ox.ac.uk/event/business-of-the-state-why-state-ownership-matters-for-resource-governance

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Addressing a range of contemporary and historical conflicts and daily struggles, this series of talks will explore how violence remains integral to the global political economy, with lasting effects on gendered hierarchies which often extend far beyond immediate war zones. 

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Energy is everywhere in refugee camps: in the homes, businesses, and community spaces of refugees. However, this topic is rarely discussed in academic or practitioner contexts. To understand more about this important issue, this seminar will present ethnographic research from the journal article on the ‘Secret Life of Energy in Refugee Camps’, as well as outlining findings from the ‘State of the Humanitarian Energy Sector’ (SOHES) report by the Global Platform for Action on Sustainable Energy in Displacement Settings (GPA), hosted by the UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR).

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Tuesday 30th April Dr Anahita Arian (Cambridge/ONGC) Encounters in the Persianate World: The Safavid Diplomatic Envoy to Siam In 1685 a diplomatic envoy of the Safavid Empire (Iran) embarked upon a journey across the Indian Ocean to Siam (Thailand). A relic of this journey is the travel or diplomatic account the Safīna-i Sulaimānī – the Ship of Sulaimān – written by the scribe of the Persian envoy Muhammad Rabī‘ at the end of the seventeenth century. In this talk Dr Arian explores the Safavid envoy’s politics of knowledge formation about the encounter with the Siamese and discusses the envoy’s knowledge production about the Siamese sovereign, court and kingdom, society, culture and religion, and how this was governed by the Safavid political order.

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This event is an open discussion of Dr Rowe’s recent and authoritative new biography of J L Austin— a fascinating figure, who was both one of the leading philosophers of the 20th Century, and as revealed in Rowe’s book, also a crucial figure in the history of military intelligence, responsible for the intelligence behind the D-Day landings of 1944. This book – the first biography of Austin – throws new light on his personality, relationships, philosophical development, and tragically premature death; and emphasizes his importance as a senior Intelligence officer in World War Two, the inventor of speech-act theory, and the leader of Oxford Ordinary Language Philosophy 1945-60. The event is chaired by Thomas Simpson, Associate Professor of Philosophy & Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government.

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My paper explores a familiar silence in music history: the seeming limit of notated sources of medieval music as records of sound. It takes as case study songs from the early medieval repertory of French chanson (trouvère song) dating c. 1150-1220. As a foil to the sparse information for sound captured in notated songbooks, I explore alternative routes into the soundworlds – or timbres – of the songs. My talk maps an interdisciplinary methodology for re-sounding trouvère songs, embracing diverse materialities, literary environments and soundscapes shaped by and informing the experience of trouvère songs, contexts that ultimately invite more expansive categories of song and sound. In keeping with OSiMTA’s theme, I will reflect on recent deliberation in the field of music theory, analysis and pedagogy, opening discussion on how the approach proposed could inform the study and teaching of medieval songs and poetry within music studies and potentially also in other fields of medieval history and literary studies.

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Tamarin Norwood will discuss the process of writing The Song of the Whole Wide World, her new memoir interpreting the brief life of her baby son, written partly during pregnancy and partly during the silent maternity leave that followed. She will consider the ethical and poetic considerations of expanding fragmentary details into a meaningful life narrative, and explore parallels between the roles of poetry, myth, science and fiction in the creation of meaning. The question of how to address gaps in biographical evidence is critical to life-writing, but especially urgent when the subject of a biography has no voice at all. Her memoir—selected as an Editor's Choice in the Bookseller and as a favourite non-fiction slim volume by Pandora Sykes, with features in the Sunday Times Style and The Guardian—was completed while Tamarin convened the OCLW weekly writing sessions through lockdown, and she will close with some practical remarks on finding a writing community. Dr Tamarin Norwood is a writer and academic with a background in fine art. She has written on drawing, metaphor, memorial and grief, and has an interest in ritual and rural history. Her academic research addresses the ad hoc beliefs that emerge in response to bereavement, with a focus on reproductive loss. Tamarin is a visiting fellow at the University of Bath Centre for Death and Society, a Leverhulme ECR fellow at Loughborough University, and a visiting scholar at the University of Oxford Centre for Life-Writing.

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Dr Abul Kalam Abdul Momen (born 23 August 1947), known as AK Abdul Momen, is a Bangladeshi economist, diplomat, and politician who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bangladesh from January 2019 to January 2024. He served as Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the United Nations from August 2009 until October 2015. He was elected a member of Jatiya Sangsad (Bangladesh Parliament) from the Sylhet-1 constituency at the 2018 general elections. Following his election, he was appointed the minister of foreign affairs by the Honourable Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Now serving as the Chairman on the Standing Committee on Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bangladesh National Parliament.

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The next seminar in the series will take place at 5.30 pm on Tuesday 30th April 2024 in The Pusey Room at Keble. The topic will be announced soon on this webpage: https://www.keble.ox.ac.uk/teaching-research/poetry-at-keble/poetry-painting/ Free entry, all welcome, no tickets or booking required. Enquiries: please contact Matthew Bevis.

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Disabled people make up 24% of the UK population and 1.85 billion people globally, but all too often disability and accessibility are afterthoughts across institutions, business and society. The Disability Advisory Group and the Equality and Diversity Unit invite you to the 10th Annual Disability Lecture. Speaker Beth Kume-Holland will share a glimpse into her personal journey from Oxford undergraduate and researcher to award-winning CEO and international disability rights advocate. She will delve into some of the key issues around disability and accessibility, why it matters and crucially, how we can each play our part to make institutions and society more accessible, with some practical tips that we can all implement immediately.  About Beth: Beth is an award-winning social entrepreneur and the founder of Patchwork Hub, a disabled-led social enterprise providing an accessible jobs board, bespoke recruitment services and training and consultancy for employers. Named one of the 100 most influential disabled people in the UK by the Shaw Trust, Beth is a passionate advocate for disability inclusion and neurodiversity, striving to make the world of work more accessible for people excluded by conventional employment practices. A graduate of Pembroke College, Oxford, and a Harvard University Kennedy Scholar, Beth has previously been employed as Audience and Market Insights Lead at Scope, the disability charity, as well as working as an analyst and research fellow for both Oxford University and Citibank. Beth is also co-founder of the Disabled Entrepreneurs Network and was recently announced as a Commissioner on the UK's Independent Commission on Healthier Working Lives. 

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St. Thomas Aquinas insists that all of the deeds and sufferings of Christ save. With our tendency to focus on the passion, death, and resurrection (and, justly so!), it's not always easy to see what Christ's life, in its integrity, offers to mankind. In this lecture, Fr. Gregory Pine will exposit how the mysteries of the life of Christ furnish the saving shape of divinized life.

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Directed by Baya Kasmi (2022, 1h37min) Comedy In French with English subtitles With Ramzy Bedia, Noémie Lvovsky Youssef Salem, 45, has been missing out on a career as a writer. But the real trouble starts when his new novel meets with success, as Youssef can't help but draw inspiration from his environment, for better or for worse. He will do everything he can to keep his book out of the hands of his family...

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The Inclusive Gaming Conference is a one-day conference which brings together students, academics, and industry professionals to discuss research initiatives, works in progress, and future directions for explorations of inclusive gaming. The day will consist of a series of roundtable discussions, keynote speakers, diverse presentations, and interactive gaming experiences. This event is jointly run by the Oxford Games & Technologies Group and the Cheng Kar Shun Digital Hub at Jesus College Oxford. The delegate rate includes coffee breaks and lunch.

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Wednesday 1st May–Friday 3rd May. Why Middle-Sized Matters to Science, Theology and Metaphysics In partnership with the Civitas Institute of the University of Texas at Austin. Held at Pusey House and All Souls College. Wednesday 1st May 3.00pm–5.20pm, Why Middle-Sized Matters to Science, Theology and Metaphysics May 1 – 3, 2024 The Civitas Institute at UT Austin and The Centre for Theology, Law, and Culture in Oxford are bringing together theologians, scientists and philosophers in a Colloquium to reflect on: the reality of Middle-Sized Things, such as human beings and animals; why Middle-Sized Things matter for science, philosophy and religion; and what kind of philosophy best upholds the reality, agency and autonomy of Middle-Sized Things. This Colloquium will be taking place at various locations in Oxford. On Day 1 (1st May), there will be Public Lectures at Pusey House, Oxford (from 3pm); on Day 2 (2nd May), a workshop spanning topics in physics and philosophy of mind at All Souls College, Oxford; on Day 3 (May 3rd), a workshop covering issues in Metaphysics and Science & Religion at St Cross College / Pusey House, Oxford. Funding: This Colloquium is being supported by a grant from The Civitas Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, in addition to a grant from the Issachar Fund and the financial support of The Centre for Theology, Law, and Culture at Oxford. Attendance: The Public Lectures at Oxford are open to everybody, but attendance at the Workshops is by invitation only. However, we are investigating the possibility of a live video link to all of the events. If you are interested in joining us online, please get in touch with Jonathan Price (below). Thursday 2nd - Friday 3rd May. Colloquium at All Souls and Pusey House George Ellis (Cape Town), Robert Koons (UT Austin), Timothy O’Connor (Indiana), Javier Sánchez Cañizares (Navarra), Vera Hoffmann-Kolss (Bern), Alyssa Ney (UC Davis), Mark Harris (Harris Manchester), Daniel De Haan (Blackfriars & Campion Hall), William Simpson (Pusey House & UT Austin), John Pemberton (Durham & LSE), Philip Goff (Durham), Aaron Cotnoir (St Andrews), Christopher Oldfield (Cambridge), Robert Verrill (Blackfriars, Cambridge), Jonathan Price (Pusey House & St Cross), and Emily Qureshi-Hurst (Pembroke). Participants of the Colloquium should be familiar with physics and metaphysics. Applications by graduate students and academics welcome at pusey.conference@stx.ox.ac.uk.

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Despite its name, the Open Science Framework (OSF) is an online tool for managing academic projects in any discipline. Rather than trying to reinvent tools and systems that scholars already use, OSF integrates with a growing list of existing services and provides a single place where researchers can see and manage all the components that make up their project - including files, software, data and publications. This course will introduce you to the Open Science Framework at Oxford. It will explain how to get access to OSF using your Oxford SSO, give an overview of what it can and cannot do, and provide some examples of how it can be used with other research services. Intended audience: Oxford students, researchers and other staff.

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In this online workshop you will be shown the functionality of RefWorks. RefWorks is a subscription software programme used to manage references and create bibliographies that University of Oxford members can use for free during their time at the university and as alumni. The workshop will cover: understanding the main features and benefits of RefWorks; setting up a RefWorks account; organising your references in RefWorks; inserting citations into documents; and creating a bibliography/reference list. Intended audience: students, staff and researchers from MSD and OUH.

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This paper documents a decline in scientific output in the medieval Islamic world and empirically links the decline to the political empowerment of religious leaders. A contraction in secular bureaucratic structures strengthened conservative religious elites who altered institutions to discourage the study of topics that undermined their societal control. The decline geographically tracks these institutional changes from east to west, providing additional evidence that rent-seeking religious leaders contributed to the decline of Islamic science.

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China’s economy is at a crossroads, facing its most significant challenges in recent memory. Amidst this economic turmoil, a fierce debate has emerged among leading experts: is the current economic downturn a result of ingrained structural issues, excessive state intervention, or escalating geopolitical tensions? In this book talk, Professor Angela Zhang will offer a fresh perspective, steering the conversation towards the distinct model of China’s regulatory governance. Drawing insights from her newly released book, High Wire: How China Regulates Big Tech and Governs Its Economy, Professor Zhang will introduce the ‘Dynamic Pyramid Model’ to demystify the complexity in Chinese regulation and its enormous impact on the Chinese economy. Through this lens, she will explain the consistent regulatory pattern in some of the biggest policy challenges China has faced in recent years, including tech regulation, the covid-19 pandemic control, the energy crisis in 2021, the ongoing property crack down and China’s demographic crisis. This discussion aims to shed light on the political logic underpinning China’s regulatory policies, while also identifying potential pathways toward economic revival. Angela Zhang is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Hong Kong and Director of the Philip K. H. Wong Center for Chinese Law.

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We examine how the provision of local labour market information shapes search and employment for job seekers in India. We randomly assign a group of job seekers to receive truthful information about the number and attributes of either job postings, applicants, or both for their preferred city and occupation on an online job portal. Treated respondents receiving any local labour market information are 10.2% more likely to be employed than control respondents seven months later. This overall effect varies considerably by baseline employment status and labour market beliefs. Among the initially employed, treated respondents are less likely to search off the portal, but are more likely to be employed because they remain in their (baseline) jobs. In contrast, among the initially unemployed, treated respondents are more likely to search across all methods, but only those with less optimistic labour market beliefs accept offers and are more likely to be employed. Our results are consistent with respondents inferring poor job prospects from the information treatments and show how access to local labour market information can reduce frictional unemployment. Written with A. Nilesh Fernando (University of Notre Dame)

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Abstract: With the launch of ChatGPT 3.5 by Open AI in November 2022 people gained unprecedented direct experience of AI using an exceptionally advanced Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) Model. Public interest in AI as a result surged, with a 900 % increase in searches on AI. Governments have in turn moved to start addressing AI’s perceived risks, both using existing law, and regulation, as well as by creating new AI specific laws and regulations. In February 2024 the UK Government for example announced its proposed strategy to regulating AI that will work through existing law and regulators based on five principles, while in March 2024 the EU passed the EU AI Act that adopts a more centralised, and prescriptive model. Thus only in the past two months, we have already seen both new law and regulation of AI, and greater variation in the nature of such law and regulation between countries. This talk will briefly review the law and economics of AI, and discuss emerging issues in relation to the application of law and regulation to AI, including recent developments and divergences in the EU, UK and US approaches, with particular attention given to the fast developing application of existing competition law in the EU, UK and US through AI inquiries and investigations. Research being undertaken on developments in other areas of law and regulation relating to AI, including copyright, contract, tort and criminal law, will also be briefly discussed. Bio Dr George Barker member of Wolfson College Oxford University, Honorary Associate Professor at the Australian National University. Doctorate in Economics from Oxford University, and a Bachelor of Laws and Master of Economics (Hons). Director of the Centre for Law and Economics at Australian National University (ANU) from 1997-2017. Olin Fellow in Law and Economics at Cornell University in 2000, and Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics (LSE) (2015-2018); the Centre for Law and Economics at University College London (2010-2015); and Oxford University 2008. Founding Member of the Editorial Board of the European Journal of Law and Economics. Authored books, and articles and given expert testimony on the economics of law including: competition law, trade law (the Effects of China joining the WTO Cambridge University Press 2003), corporations and labour law (the economics of trade unions), intellectual property law (especially copyright), taxation law and environmental law; and the economics of industry regulation, including the digital economy, communications, internet, energy, transport, mining, agriculture, insurance, finance, pharmaceutical, software, and media industries; and on the economic role of government, the economics of public policy, public finance, public sector management, social services (education, health, and welfare) and income distribution. Provides expert economic testimony before courts, ministers, Parliaments and regulatory agencies in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific, and in arbitration disputes in the Hague. His work has been cited in the UK House of Lords, by the High Court of England and Wales and by the European Commission. Elected Honorary Fellow of the Law and Economics Association of NZ. Past President of the Australian Law and Economics Association, a Founder and Past President of the Law and Economics Association of New Zealand. Chief Analyst and Economic Advisor at the NZ Treasury 1984-1997. Member of the Governing Board of Wolfson College, Oxford University from 1990 – 1992, Board member of LECG Asia-Pacific Ltd (1997-2005), Celtic Pacific Ltd, and Upstart Investments Ltd (1999-2003), KEA Global and past Chairman of KEA Australia (2001-2010).

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Hugo Alconada Mon is an Argentinian journalist specialised in Investigative Journalism about corruption in politics, money laundering and corporate fraud. He’s been woking for more than 20 years in La Nación, one of Argentina media outlet leaders, and he is part of the newspapers’ main editor team since 2009. Currently, he also writes for the Spanish journal El País. He is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and worked on the Panama Papers.

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The historical philosophy of wildlife conservation suggests that if humans and wildlife are separated, then wildlife will thrive. Yet megadiverse countries, like India, which are highly populated, seem to contradict this idea. While wildlife is imperilled in India, research is beginning to show that a physical and mental (perceived) disconnect from nature, such as through urbanisation, has insidious, deep-rooted and large-scale detrimental impacts on wildlife populations. Relative to this disconnect, the impacts of direct resource extraction by localised resource-dependent communities might be considered as marginal. In this context, Dr Karnad's research examines wildlife conservation in India's marine realm. Specifically she examines how cultivating a closer relationship with nature through food can help achieve wildlife conservation goals. To this end, she focuses on how attention to detail when purchasing and eating seafood ingredients can produce the kinds of actions that we celebrate in wildlife conservation. In this talk, Dr Divya Karnad, will dwell on her experience co-founding a sustainable seafood initiative, InSeason Fish, and how talking to diverse groups of people, about topics other than wildlife, can help bridge the gap between the economy and the conservation of threatened sharks in India.

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Learn how equality impact assessments (EIAs) can enhance your interdisciplinary policy-led research by helping you integrate diversity and inclusion considerations in your research project. This is workshop is open to: Oxford University researchers planning to develop an Agile Sprint; Oxford University researchers working on other UKRI-funded interdisciplinary research projects who need to conduct an EIA; research-related staff within the University supporting researchers with EIAs; previous Agile researchers interested in how an EIA might be relevant to their future research projects. “An equality impact assessment (EIA) is an evidence-based approach designed to help organisations ensure that their policies, practices, events and decision-making processes are fair and do not present barriers to participation or disadvantage any protected groups from participation.” -NERC UKRI EIAs offer an opportunity to integrate diversity and inclusion considerations throughout your research. While EIAs are not a legal requirement, they are increasingly recommended by funders as facilitation and evidence of Public Sector Equality Duty. EIAs were recently introduced in Agile, and this workshop will use a case study to demonstrate how to design and use an EIA in Sprints. By the end of this workshop, you will understand: Agile’s ambitions for diversity and inclusion in Sprint research Why EIAs matter to Sprint research How to conduct an effective EIA for an Agile Sprint and use it through the project to strengthen the research Book your place on the workshop using the links provided. If you need to cancel your place, please do so no later than 48 hours before the workshop. By booking on this workshop, you have agreed to the externally facing use of the recording. Book another session, by viewing the series event page. Participation: Please note you will be expected to actively participate, which includes joining discussion, listening, asking questions, and contributing to activities.

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As the number of forced migrants continues to raise, friction between migrants and locals has become a pressing political issue globally. These discussions increasingly play out on social media, where the digitalization of interactions and engagement-based algorithms are often blamed for spreading misinformation, increasing polarization, and inflaming existing tensions. Yet social media also offers an unparalleled platform for immediate, low-cost, large-scale interventions to reduce intergroup hostility. This experiment aims to test the effects of naturalistic exposure to varied social media content on locals’ attitudes towards refugees in Turkey. As host to the world’s largest refugee population, Turkey has seen anti-refugee attitudes become entrenched across the political spectrum despite intense polarization. The study design takes advantage of this political landscape to test message vs. messenger effects alongside digital intergroup contact, exposing participants to ‘digital contact’ with content from refugee accounts paired with political content from either political ingroup or outgroup ‘messengers’.

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How the nervous system coordinates complex behaviors remains a puzzle. Grooming behavior in the fruit fly Drosophila is a sequence composed of leg movements targeted to clean different body parts. Grooming is initiated by sensory cues and executed by motor circuits. There is an anterior to posterior progression based on a suppression hierarchy. The wealth of genetic tools and anatomical resources make this behavior a powerful experimental model system to explore how innate, rhythmic, but flexible sequences are controlled by neural architecture we may share. I will present new work from my lab at UCSB starting from command-like neurons to uncover principles that organize this behavior as well as the circuits that implement them. I will briefly explain how forays into the connectome motivate my UK sabbatical project to design new genetic reagents to access neurons of interest.

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This reading session will look at Mersenne’s _Questions theologiques, physiques, morales, et mathematiques_ (1634), a text which details a series of questions (both answered and unanswered) on topics mechanical, musical, chemical, aesthetic, natural philosophical, sociological, and moral. Historians have typically read this text as a disjointed series of scientific inquiries. However, this reading session will focus on a number of compelling features which emerge when reading the text as a whole, including Mersenne’s discussions of ‘wonder’ and ‘curiosity’; the means with which he justifies scientific collaboration; the use of ‘questions’ as a genre for philosophizing; and the unique relationship between the ‘questions’ and their corresponding ‘corollaires’, the latter of which Mersenne uses to draw out the spiritual potential of the knowledge generated from each particular question. Places are limited (maximum 10 people). Please contact the NOTCOM projects manager to sign up: "$":mailto:amelie.berger-soraruff@mfo.ac.uk. PDFs will be distributed to all registered participants.

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Over the past decade, financial regulation and supervision have been increasingly seen as potential solutions to climate change and biodiversity loss. Yet, they are at best a necessary but not sufficient condition for action. This paper explores how science and modelling have been used within financial regulation and supervision to date - to motivate and inform action - and analyses the limitations of current approaches and the potential negative repercussions for finance and society. With the launch of the Task-Force on Nature-related disclosures in September 2023, there is increasing pressure that these new financial frameworks incorporate nature and biodiversity. Yet this brings even greater risk assessment challenges. We present results from our recent work with the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) and the UK financial sector that tries to capture some of the lessons from complex systems analysis to inform integrated nature-climate scenario analyses for financial institutions. We draw lessons on the needs from both the scientific and finance communities to generate more decision-relevant evidence and to use this appropriately within decisions. About the speaker Dr Nicola Ranger is Director of the Resilient Planet Finance Lab at the University of Oxford, Executive Director of the Oxford Martin Systemic Resilience Programme and leads the Resilience and Development Group of the Environmental Change Institute. She is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for New Economic Thinking of the Oxford Martin School. She brings 20 years' expertise in risk, analytics, economics, finance and fiscal policy as a practitioner and researcher across industry, government, IFIs and academia. She works with governments, Central Banks, regulators, financial institutions and international organisations to help align policy and finance with resilience and sustainability goals. She is a Visiting Academic at the Bank of England, a member of the European Commission’s High Level Expect Group on Sustainable Finance in Low and Middle Income Economies and a member of the UK’s Green Technical Advisory Group. Nicola is also co-Chair of the Resilient Planet Data Hub, an international public-private partnership with the UN and Insurance Development Forum providing open data and analytics on climate and nature. Nicola joined Oxford from the World Bank’s Finance, Competitiveness and Innovation Global Practice, where she worked with financial institutions, Ministries of Finance, Central Banks and regional institutions to strengthen financial resilience and implement systems and processes to strengthen national and global resilience to shocks and crises. Prior to this, she held senior roles at the UK Department for International Development, the London School of Economics and Political Science, HM Treasury, Risk Management Solutions and Defra. Nicola completed her postdoctoral research in climate economics and policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science and holds a doctorate in Atmospheric Physics from Imperial College London. Nicola has written more than 30 book chapters and peer-reviewed articles and contributed to major reports including the UK National Climate Change Risk Assessment, the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, the World Development Report and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports.

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Wednesday 1st May 3.00pm–5.20pm, Public Lectures at Pusey House: How the Science of the Middle-Sized Restores Purpose George Ellis (Cape Town). Professor George Ellis will discuss how the universe can seem a purposeless and amoral place if one looks at it exclusively on very large or small scales. Indeed, many scientific specialists of the very large or very small have claimed that there is no purpose in the universe. Paradoxically, however, they are ignoring the nature of their own lives on the middle-sized scale at which they exist; more specifically, how their existence within the physical world as ‘open systems’ enables purpose, meaning, and ethics to be effective in causing physical outcomes. The middle-sized scale is particularly important for biology where meaning and function are often denied due to focussing on the molecular scale alone. Is Aristotle’s Philosophy of Nature Scientifically Obsolete? Robert Koons (UT Austin). Aristotle’s philosophy of nature dominated much of the world’s science from late antiquity until the 17th century and beyond. In this Aristotelian world, human beings and the middle-sized objects that we perceive and manipulate were among the first-class citizens of nature, imbued with real causal powers and potentialities. The period of ‘classical’ physics (from Galileo to Rutherford) seemed to eliminate the need for key elements of Aristotle’s scheme, including substantial forms for composite objects, natural powers and potentialities, and teleology. I argue that the Quantum Revolution has altered the epistemic landscape in ways that re-open questions of natural philosophy that have long been taken to be settled, laying the foundation for a neoAristotelian or ‘hylomorphic’ interpretation of quantum theory. This interpretation successfully bridges the gap between the domain of quantum entities and the world of actual experiments and observations, and, as a further bonus, reconciles what Wilfred Sellars called the manifest image of ordinary human life with our best scientific image of nature. Followed by discussion with Jonathan Price and Q&A. Followed by Choral Evensong at 5:30pm

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Note that we're back in the Chester Room this week. This week, Sihao Huang will be speaking about China’s current “State of AI” and advanced technology posture. About the speaker: Sihao Huang is a DPhil student at DPIR studying AI governance and technology policy. He is a Marshall Scholar, a Technology Security Fellow at RAND, and an external advisor at UK DSIT. Prior to Oxford, he researched China's semiconductor industrial policy in Beijing as a Schwarzman Scholar. Sihao also founded a startup in the aerospace industry and holds a B.S. in Physics and Electrical Engineering from MIT.

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In recent years, China has emerged as a pioneer in formulating some of the world’s earliest and most comprehensive rules concerning algorithms, deepfakes, and generative artificial intelligence services. This proactive approach has led many to view China as a global frontrunner in AI regulation, while also raising concerns that Beijing’s approach may hinder innovation. In this talk, Professor Zhang will challenge this widely-held perception, revealing a more intricate and strategic regulatory landscape in China. Drawing upon insights from her newly released book, “High Wire: How China Regulates Big Tech and Governs Its Economy,” Professor Zhang will explore the multifaceted nature of China’s institutional dynamics and their impact on AI regulation. She will also provide an in-depth analysis of the Chinese government’s nuanced strategy, which leverages the expressive power of the law to strategically enable the growth of its AI industry. Additionally, she will discuss the implications of China’s approach to AI enforcement for the domestic industry, the global tech rivalry, and the prospects for international cooperation. Join us for this engaging and informative talk as we delve into the dynamic complexities of China’s AI regulatory landscape and its broader implications for the future of AI governance. Angela Zhang is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Hong Kong and Director of the Philip K. H. Wong Center for Chinese Law. Widely recognized as a leading authority on China’s tech regulation, Angela has written extensively on this topic. She is the author of “Chinese Antitrust Exceptionalism: How the Rise of China Challenges Global Regulation” (Oxford, 2021), which was named one of the Best Political Economy Books of 2021 by ProMarket. Angela’s second book, “High Wire: How China Regulates Big Tech and Governs Its Economy,” was released by Oxford University Press in March 2024. In fall 2024, Angela will join the University of Southern California as a Professor of Law. For more information, please visit her website at AngelaZhang.net, and follow her on Twitter @AngelaZhangHK. High Wire: How China Regulates Big Tech and Governs Its Economy, available here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/high-wire-9780197682258?cc=us&lang=en (use promotion code ALAUTHC4 to get 30% off) The Promise and Perils of China’s Regulation of Artificial Intelligence, available here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4708676 Generative AI and Copyright: A Dynamic Perspective, available here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4716233

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Antibiotic resistance in pathogenic bacteria poses a fundamental threat to human health. It is estimated that antibiotic resistant infections are already directly responsible for at least one million deaths per annum and this number is predicted to rise dramatically by 2050. Our understanding of how antibiotics work is based on experiments where bacterial pathogens are exposed to antibiotics in isolation. This research has allowed us to build a fundamental understanding of the mechanisms by which resistance to antibiotics can evolve, but has important deviations from the more complex biological environment of infection. In this talk I will provide two examples from my research where we try and bridge this gap: (1) through studying resistance evolution within patients, and (2) by setting up experiments in the lab taking the microbiome into account. I will start this talk by providing an introduction to antibiotic resistance, and finish by providing some perspective across the field.

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https://www.lac.ox.ac.uk/event/bsp-jose-henrique-bortoluci-in-conversation-about-what-is-mine-at-oxford

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MODERN JEWISH THOUGHT SEMINAR in association with: The Centre for the Study of the Bible, Oriel College Wednesdays at 5pm Online via Zoom only Conveners: Miri Freud-Kandel and Daniel M. Herskowitz This seminar series is held under the joint auspices of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew & Jewish Studies, the Faculty of Theology & Religion, & the Centre for the Study of the Bible. It is designed to create a forum for considering recent developments in modern Jewish thought. In particular, these seminars are intended to provide a forum for discussing recently published books in the field. Please find further information on the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies website at https://www.ochjs.ac.uk/modern-jewish-thought-seminar/ Week 2, 1 May Prof. Martin Shuster, North Carolina University, will be discussing his book How to Measure a World? A Philosophy of Judaism In order to participate in this seminar, please register at the Zoom link here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAqc-6vrjsrGtWFpK9Yf-BwpRALj3- F4Eyn Week 4, 15 May Prof. Yuval Jobani, Tel Aviv University, will be discussing his book The First Jewish Environmentalist: The Green Philosophy of A. D. Gordon In order to participate in this seminar, please register at the Zoom link here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0rdeyvpjsuHdWP- EH2npPQXl9RmisXkfdF Week 6, 29 May TBD Week 8, 12 June No Seminar. All are welcome

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Join us for a panel discussion with renowned Sri Lankan Italian director Suranga D. Katugampala to explore his latest feature film Still Here (2023). Shot between Colombo and Milan, the film bridges genres of neo-noir, documentary, and video art, and brings together a group of artists into multidisciplinary experimentation practices. In the film, reality and fantasy merge, throwing the spatial coordinates of migration into question. We will show brief excerpts from the film and respond to the themes of migration and transnational communities which emerge from it with expert discussants Dr Shamara Wettimuny and Prof Derek Duncan. The discussion will be moderated by Prof Emma Bond who is also the event co-organiser.

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Thanks to Alexis de Tocqueville, the young United States is forever associated with the birth of democracy in Western thought. In an ambitious journey through literature, history, philosophy, arts and poetry, Elizabeth Duquette explores another, more obscure, component of nineteenth-century American thought, that of tyranny. She delves on the figure of Napoleon, the most famous man of the century and also a notorious tyrant, whose prevalence in nineteenth-century American culture is astonishingly great. Through an elegant reading of major works of American culture as well as neglected texts and images, from abolitionist David Walker to novelist Henry James, going through Ralph Waldo Emerson, Karl Marx, and many others, she reveals the fascination Napoleon exercised on men and women’s minds and his enduring influence on the American political imaginary. She shows that tyranny is as American as democracy. In an uncertain world, with crucial elections looming in 2024 all around the globe, Elizabeth Duquette offers the lessons of the past for all to read. Please note that the event will be followed by a small wine reception.

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‘Trivial Religion?: From Liminal to Lateral’ [Wednesday 1 May, from 5:15 to 6:45 pm, Harris Lecture Theatre, Oriel College, to be followed by reception in the Harris Seminar Room, Oriel College] Two perspectives have dominated social scientific work on religion and ritual. One highlights transcendence, intensity, the spectacular. The other emphasizes immanence, banality, the everyday. I argue that studying pilgrimage suggests the generative possibilities of adopting another point of view: an exploration of initially glancing ritual encounters that may have wider consequences than first appears. Such an approach examines mutually constitutive articulations between backgrounds and foregrounds, ‘looser’ and ‘tighter’ behaviours, adjacencies and immediacies, in tracing how even apparently uncommitted people move through and respond to religious environments. In reflecting on these themes I introduce a key distinction between ‘lateral’ and liminal engagements with ritual practices.

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*Description:* Most lay people dedicate the main part of their active time to work, but traditional Christian spirituality has little or no consideration of the spiritual value of work, which for St Josemaría is the hinge of the lay vocation. *Content:* c. Theological context: a critical review of theologies of work. d. Intrinsic, subjective and relative dimensions: sanctifying work, sanctifying oneself at work, sanctifying others through work. *Reading in advance:* _In Joseph’s workshop_ (https://escriva.org/en/es-cristo-que-pasa/in-josephs-workshop/)

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The connection between place and emotion is both deep and intricate. Our emotions are always situated and shaped by our surroundings. And places have an affective life of their own, an atmosphere that can move us in myriad ways. This interdisciplinary workshop brings together researchers across geography, philosophy and the arts to explore this connection.

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Research articles are submitted to scholarly journals to enable peer evaluation, public endorsement, and wide communication. By authoring peer-reviewed publications, researchers gain recognition for their work, particularly when published in high-impact journals. However, these opportunities are neither inclusive, nor equitable, nor transparent. Science Colab is leveraging the increasing popularity of preprints to provide an alternative model that democratises scientific publishing. Authors first publish their work as a preprint so that it can be openly reviewed by the community and eventually curated as a version of record. Our first community endeavour, Biophysics Colab, provides collaborative and constructive peer review of biophysical preprints without charge, aiming to improve the quality of these studies within a transparent framework. We publicly endorse studies that address a research question with rigour, and will soon begin to curate such studies as journal articles that will be indexed in the usual way. In the future, we will develop a not-for-profit business model that compensates reviewers and curators for their time and expertise. By encouraging others to adopt this model, we envisage a future in which research is fairly evaluated, openly communicated and its significance recognised independently of publication venue.

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Deep and reflective thinkers in our society and history are often those that come from the STEM disciplines. However, modern day education and exam systems are forcing students to be passive thinkers, accepting information, and not allowing time to acknowledge academic, personals and professional achievements. To tackle these issues, a reflective portfolio was designed and embed into the curriculum in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. The session will discuss lessons learned from the process of implementing the portfolio aiming to support student learning. It will present a cross institutional project that is investigating the use of portfolios within UK universities and highlight case-study findings from students who have used the portfolios. The session would like to explore discussion on reflection in STEM teacher education to inform practice across the disciplines. Dr Alison Cullinane is the Portfolio Director at the School of Biological Sciences. In this role she has creative control to design reflective portfolios for undergraduate programmes, which are administered to over 700 students each semester. She is the principal investigator on a project investigating the use of portfolios in Schools of Biological Sciences in universities the UK. The project looks at best approaches for supporting students’ reflective practice. Alison previously held a lecturing position at the Department of Education, University of Oxford, where she maintains supervision of her masters and PhD students through her Honorary Norham Fellowship.

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Part of the Dementia Research Oxford seminar series Our vision is to transform research and healthcare in dementia. Dementia Research Oxford, led by Professors Masud Husain and Cornelia van Duijn, brings together researchers and clinicians across the University, our hospitals, patients, and industry partners to translate our growing insights in the basic molecular origin disease into effective treatment and prevention. We aim to take science further from drug target to treatment, from molecular pathology to early diagnosis and prognosis and from early intervention to prevention

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The endosymbiotic origin of mitochondria means that within our cells we host hundreds of organelles that retain many aspects of their bacterial origin which must be tolerated. Consequently, the release of mitochondrial factors into the cytosol can trigger cell death, innate immunity and inflammation. A range of findings in immunometabolism have revealed how mitochondria are an important source of factors that promote immunity and inflammation. These include mitochondrial nucleic acids that can be sensed by innate sensors such as cGAS and MDA-5, metabolites such as succinate, fumarate and itaconate, that have a range of effects, with itaconate in particular being anti-inflammatory. Recent work from my lab has uncovered a role of fumarate hydratase in driving the release of mitochondrial double-stranded RNA, and a role of reactive oxygen species made by Complex III in the electron transport chain as being key for IL10 induction. Since mitochondrial change appears critical for inflammation, it could be that environmental factors, including obesity, pathogens or toxins, might promote a breakdown in endosymbiosis. This could be part of why the incidence of autoimmune disease has increased substantially over the past 50 years or so.

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Olink Proteomics is a Swedish company with strong global presence, that enables high-plex protein biomarker discovery and development. Olink’s platform currently has the ability to robustly measure ~5,400 analytes. It’s been used in different settings due to its scalability and actionability such as in the elucidation of pathways and mechanisms of drug action, as a screening tools for identifying signatures/biomarkers with a prognostic/predictive significance as well as to safety and toxicity studies, drug target selection and differentiation. Due to the fact that the protein library, which continuously expands, covers all major biological pathways the applications are in numerous disease areas, such as, Cardiology, Diabetes Immuno-oncology and Neurology. In this scientific seminar they will go through a series of case studies elucidating the power of their capabilities: • How Olink technology enables biomarker identification, precision medicine and multiOmics approaches. • Examples of Olink technology applied in specific human disease areas.

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Tabernacles in the Wilderness discusses the work of the United States Christian Commission (USCC), a civilian relief agency established by northern evangelical Protestants to minister to Union troops during the American Civil War. USCC workers saw in the Civil War not only a wrathful judgment from God for the sins of the nation but an unparalleled opportunity to save the souls of US citizens and perfect the nation. Thus, the workers set about proselytizing and distributing material aid to Union soldiers with undaunted and righteous zeal. Whether handing out religious literature, leading prayer meetings, preaching sermons, mending uniforms, drawing up tailored diets for sick men, or bearing witness to deathbed scenes, USCC workers improvised and enacted a holistic lived theology that emphasized the link between the body and soul. Making extensive use of previously neglected archival material—most notably the reports, diaries, and correspondence of the volunteer delegates who performed this ministry on the battlefront—Rachel Williams explores the proselytizing methods employed by the USCC, the problems encountered in their application, and the ideological and theological underpinnings of their work. Tabernacles in the Wilderness offers fascinating new insights into the role of civilians within army camps, the bureaucratization and professionalization of philanthropy during the Civil War and in the United States more broadly, and the emotional landscape and material culture of faith and worship. Rachel Williams is a lecturer in American history at the University of Hull, England, where she teaches courses on the American Civil War, American medicine, and women’s history. She is co-editor of American Philanthropy at Home and Abroad: New Directions in the History of Giving and served as secretary of the British Association for American Studies between 2019 and 2023.

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In 1858, the anarchist Joseph Déjacque began to serially publish his vision of a future anarchic utopia titled _L’Humanisphère_. He sketches a hyper-advanced future society free from want and coercion, where humanity and nature coexist harmoniously in an anarchist ecumenopolis. This obvious ecologism, however, rests on the foundations of a highly idiosyncratic ecological understanding of politics generally and utopia in particular. Drawing on the influences of Charles Fourier and Pierre Leroux, I aim to elaborate Déjacque’s utopianism, which emerged directly out of his understanding of nature and humanity’s position within it. Politics follows nature, not the other way around.

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Using ChatGPT is deceptively effortless. It simply responds to any question it is asked. But the way the question is formulated often matters. Generative AI tools often don’t give their users any feedback on how to better prompt it and sometimes even respond with incorrect tips. This session will cover some of the practical lessons learned in the last year about how to best prompt generative tools. It will cover: - What is prompt engineering - How do we learn about what prompts work - Key principles of prompt construction - Importance of iteration - 5 techniques for prompt construction and their suitability: Giving examples, Adopting a persona, Asking for structure, Asking for self-critique (and its limitations), Chain of Thought (and its limitations).

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There is no doubt that across its more than 400-year history the Bodleian has received gifts and donations which were the fruits of imperial trade and colonial exploitation. As the library of the University of Oxford, the Bodleian also entered in relations with plans for the training of colonial civil servants, through the Indian Institute, and with the financial and intellectual legacy of empire embodied in the will of Cecil Rhodes. Furthermore, the Bodleian Libraries hold some significant archives of empire. This session is designed to highlight the research methods used in the writing of the report “The History of the Bodleian libraries through the lens of the Empire and Colonialism.” The presentation will open themes and questions about the legacies of the British empire in the Bodleian by presenting sample case studies as connections between the library in Oxford and the activities of empire and colonialism. It will also grapple with the idea of 'counter-histories,' arising from activities of the project, ‘We Are Our History,’ the Mellon funded project that commissioned the report. These are offered as examples, never perfect or complete, of placing the ideas of democratising access and encouraging plural voices at the centre of the library’s practice. The session will thus address the relationship between historical research and practice and ask how, if possible, can we bring research and practice together, in the context of the Bodleian? MS Teams link: https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_ZDFhMTNmMTgtNTgzMi00NTNiLTkwMmQtM2VhNDRkMzY4OWZi%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22cc95de1b-97f5-4f93-b4ba-fe68b852cf91%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%225f581465-1def-4d51-8d4c-45a3b26b5b58%22%7d

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Lesson of the week, clinical cases and research. All clinical and academic staff and students welcome. Coffee, Tea and Cake will be served.

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COURSE DETAILS This 3-hour session is tailored to those looking to explore evidence-based strategies for designing activities/events, apply for Public Engagement with Research (PER) funding, or get practical tips for organising an activity. LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of the session, participants will be able to: Develop effective communication strategies for presenting complex research concepts to non-specialist audiences. Explore different learning and engagement theories and how they can inform effective public engagement strategies. Learn to adapt engagement techniques based on different audiences. Learn how to assess the effectiveness of engagement approaches and refine them accordingly.

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Webpage: english.web.ox.ac.uk/reading-group-literature-and-mental-health Reading list: drive.google.com/drive/folders/1u3IaqwXUPyeOKKQ0oznFdeMODLlTw35g?usp=sharing Please copy and paste the links into a different tab in case they do not open here. Thank you.

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*Kenneth Wong*, ‘To Advise, Encourage, and Warn: The Private Secretary to the Sovereign, 1867-1953’ *Natalie Martz*, ‘Ice Men: Irish Polar Explorers of the Royal Navy from 1818-1860’

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How does one establish the authenticity of nature? In this paper, I investigate this puzzle in the decades around 1600. Across early modern Europe, ancient artefacts were treated with growing suspicion. Fake coins and inscriptions flooded the antiquarian market, and forgeries were ubiquitous in reputable collections. Within learned circles of natural history, the fossilized remains of extinct creatures fuelled a similar crisis of authenticity. Some naturalists claimed that extinct species represented “genuine animals” (vera animalia), yet others dismissed these as bad imitations or “jokes” (lusi) that were not to be taken seriously. This paper examines the intertwined discourse of extinction and authenticity through two contemporary case studies: the apothecaries Ferrante and Francesco Imperato; and the botanist Fabio Colonna. It suggests that naturalists adopted methods of authentication from antiquarians, borrowing methods of empirical comparison and textual verification.

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Atherosclerosis is a chronic inflammatory disease of arteries caused by plaques in the inner layer of arteries. As plaques lack nerve fibers, the impact of neuronal control on atherosclerosis has not been considered before. Since the nervous system uses the adventitia, i.e. the outer connective tissue coat of arteries, as their major conduit to reach distant targets, we hypothesized that the nervous system may interact with diseased arteries via adventitial immune cells to sense and affect atherosclerosis. We identified and functionally delineated tripartite interactions between nerves, immune cells and diseased arteries in murine and human atherosclerosis using tissue clearing, multiplex immunostaining, intact aorta imaging, virus tracing, and single cell transcriptomics. We observed that atherosclerotic adventitia segments interact with the nervous system by stimulating axon growth adjacent to atherosclerotic plaques. Peripheral axon terminals directly interact with immune cells and form neuroimmune junctions. These interactions initiate a structural artery-brain circuit that directly wire diseased arteries with the brain to sense and affect atherosclerosis via dorsal root ganglia, sympathetic ganglia and the spinal cord. Multimodal imaging and electrophysiological nerve recordings revealed activation of central and peripheral components of artery-brain circuits in parallel to disease progression. When these interactions are disrupted by systemic or local sympathetic denervation in mice, plaque-associated immune cell aggregates in the adventitia destabilized, plaques shrunk and showed a more stable phenotype. These data provide a new disease paradigm to understand atherogenesis through multisystemic tissue interactions between the nervous system, the immune system and the cardiovascular system. In summary, our data demonstrated that neuroimmune cardiovascular interactions affect atherosclerosis progression. These studies suggest that neuroimmune cardiovascular interfaces represent new targets using pharmaceutical, surgical and bioelectronic modulations before the disease including becomes life-threatening.

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Session Four: Developing and Synthesising Evidence Regarding the Comparative Effectiveness of Public Health and Social Measures (PHSM) Against COVID-19 Presenter: Dr Francisco Pozo-Martin, Robert Koch Institute Discussant: Professor Julia Wang, National Taiwan University Legacies of Authoritarian Government and Civil Society as Norms in Times of Crisis Presenter: Dr Philipp Trein, University of Lausanne Discussant: Professor Stella Ladi, Queen Mary University of London The Oxford Covid-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT) is a project that collected information on policy measures to tackle COVID-19 over the years 2020, 2021, and 2022. Although a substantial body of scientific research on COVID-19 government responses has already been published, many research questions remain unanswered, and the OxCGRT team is continuing research into the impacts and determinants of pandemic policy and working with partners to devise new approaches to data collection that can be deployed quickly in the face of future pandemics or global emergencies. The OxCGRT Seminar Series is an innovative platform for scholars working on COVID-19 responses, offering an opportunity to present and discuss their ongoing research work as well as to connect with the broader research community. The series will run online every Thursday from 11 April to 30 May at 16:00-17:30 BST.

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A series of three public lectures, by Professor Elizabeth Harman (in-person only). Lecture 2 of 3. What does love teach us about abortion? How does love challenge our ideas about abortion? How can love explain the importance of abortion?

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We live in an age of increasing complexity, where accelerating technology and global interconnection hold more promise – and more peril – than any other time in human history. The fossil fuels that have powered global wealth creation now threaten to destroy the world they helped build. Automation and digitisation promise prosperity for some, unemployment for others. Financial crises fuel growing inequality, polarisation and the retreat of democracy. At heart, all these problems are rooted in the economy, yet the guidance provided by economic models has often failed. Using big data and ever more powerful computers, we are now able for the first time to apply complex systems science to economic activity, building realistic models of the global economy. The resulting simulations and the emergent behaviour we observe form the cornerstone of the science of complexity economics, allowing us to test ideas and make significantly better economic predictions – to better address the hard problems facing the world. In this talk Doyne Farmer, author of Making Sense of Chaos: A Better Economics for a Better World presents a manifesto for how to do economics better. He will fuse his profound knowledge and expertise with stories from his life to explain how we can bring a scientific revolution to bear on the economic conundrums facing society. This is a joint event with INET Oxford. This event will be followed by a drinks reception, all welcome. REGISTRATION To register to attend in person in Oxford: https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/events/making-sense-of-chaos/ To register to watch live online on Crowdcast click here: https://www.crowdcast.io/c/making-sense-of-chaos

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Panel Discussion on The Future of Work in the Age of AI Join us at the Nelson Mandela Hall, Saïd Business School (University of Oxford) for a fascinating discussion on the future of work in the era of artificial intelligence (AI), featuring: Daron Acemoglu, Institute Professor, MIT, and Sanjaya Lall Visiting Professor, University of Oxford Sir Chrisopher Pissarides, Regius Professor of Economics, LSE, and Nobel laureate in economics Helen Margetts, Professor of Internet and Society, University of Oxford How can we best use AI technologies to create meaningful and well-paying jobs in the future? This panel event will bring together three of the world's leading thinkers on AI's societal impact to debate the future of work in the age of AI. There are many untapped opportunities for creating pro-worker, pro-human AI, and there are some small-scale examples showing that this is feasible. Yet, the current trend in AI technologies is towards greater inequality and more work elimination. It also appears inevitable that there will be more surveillance both in workplaces and beyond. In contrast, some believe in a different set of priorities and a different architecture for AI models that could be more useful for workers. Are there examples of occupations in which jobs can be made more meaningful and wages can increase if AI is used in the right way? And if so, are there barriers to achieving this type of outcome? The event will be followed by a reception with food and drinks.

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After Rome and Further East Seminar Thursdays, 5 pm, Trinity College Convened by Fanny Bessard (History/ Trinity) and Christian Sahner (AMES/ New College) Supported by the Bahari Fund for Sasanian Studies MS Teams meeting link here (no registration required) Week 1, April 25 Garth Fowden (University of Cambridge) ‘Orienting the Global First Millennium: Iranosphere Perspectives’ Levine Building Auditorium Special lecture supported by the Bahari Fund for Sasanian Studies, the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research, and the Oxford Centre for Late Antiquity Week 2, May 2 Andrew Marsham (University of Cambridge) ‘Re-Framing the Umayyad Empire: Pastoralists, Plague, and Peripheries’ Teaching Room 5 Week 3, May 9 Julia Bray (University of Oxford) ‘Medieval Arabic Literature: What Do You Know, and What Can You Do with It?’ Teaching Room 5 Week 4, May 16 Hannah-Lena Hagemann (University of Hamburg) ‘“Behold! Quraysh is praying behind Bakr!” Kharijite Rebellion and Bakri Tribalism from al-Jazira to Iran 7th-9th c.’ Teaching Room 5 Week 5, May 23 Alebachew Belay (Debre Berhan University) ‘Connected “Pagans” from Medieval Ethiopia: Monumental and Artifactual Evidence’ Teaching Room 5 Week 6, May 30 Louise Rayne (Newcastle University) ‘Detecting Irrigation and Desertification in the Middle East and North Africa Since the Medieval Period’ Teaching Room 5 Week 7, June 6 Dan Reynolds (University of Birmingham) ‘Charlemagne’s Jerusalem: Rhetoric, Exegesis and the Ninth-Century “Holy Land”’ Teaching Room 5 Week 8, June 13 Peter Sarris (University of Cambridge) ‘Justinian Between East and West’ Levine Building Auditorium OCBR Annual Lecture for 2024; supported by the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research

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To join online, please register in advance here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUocuyvrz4vGtTThizdrAaKNZsmRk61NTKm

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Abstract TBC Biography: Thomas Ward Crowther is a professor of ecology at ETH Zürich and co-chair of the advisory board for the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. At ETH Zürich, he started Crowther Lab, an interdisciplinary group of scientists exploring the role of biodiversity in regulating the Earth's climate. Crowther is the founder of Restor, an online platform that provides connectivity, and transparency to thousands of conservation and restoration projects around the world. He also founded SEED, a biodiversity monitoring tool to help measure the health of nature across the globe. He was selected in the final cohort for Prince William’s Earthshot Prize, and was selected by World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader for his work to promote nature The Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery and Biodiversity Network are interested in promoting a wide variety of views and opinions on nature recovery from researchers and practitioners. The views, opinions and positions expressed within this lecture are those of the author alone, they do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery/Biodiversity Network, or its researchers.

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Religion in Britain and Ireland, 1400-1700 Seminar series on Thursdays at 5pm, Trinity Term 2024 in the Lecture Room at Campion Hall Convened by Diarmaid MacCulloch, Judith Maltby, Sarah Mortimer and Grant Tapsell Week 2 Alison Shell, UCL 2 May Shakespeare and the Jesuits: Spiritual Direction in King Lear Offered by the Faculties of History and Theology and Religion. Drinks will be served after the seminar on 25 April and 13 June. For more information, or for the Teams link to join remotely, please contact sarah.apetrei@campion.ox.ac.uk

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In the 1960s and 1970s, around 17 million Chinese youths were mobilized or forced by the state to migrate to rural villages and China's frontiers. In his book, Chairman Mao’s Children: Generation and the Politics of Memory in China (Cambridge 2021), Bin Xu tells the story of how this 'sent-down' generation has come to terms with their difficult past. Exploring representations of memory, including personal life stories, literature, museum exhibits and acts of commemoration, he argues that these representations are defined by a struggle to reconcile worthiness with the political upheavals of the Mao years. These memories, however, are used by the state to construct an official narrative that weaves this generation's experiences into an upbeat story of the 'China dream'. This marginalizes those still suffering and obscures voices of self-reflection on their moral-political responsibility for their actions. Xu provides a careful analysis of this generation of 'Chairman Mao's children', caught between the political and the personal, past and present, nostalgia and regret, and pride and trauma. Bin Xu is an associate professor of sociology at Emory University and a fellow at Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin) in 2023‒2024. His research interests are the intersection between politics and culture, including civil society, collective memory, symbolic politics, and disaster. He is the author of The Culture of Democracy: A Sociological Approach to Civil Society (Polity 2022), Chairman Mao’s Children: Generation and the Politics of Memory in China (Cambridge 2021), and The Politics of Compassion: the Sichuan Earthquake and Civic Engagement in China (Stanford 2017). His articles have appeared in leading journals in sociology and China studies. He is currently working on two book projects: one is about the commemoration and memorialization of COVID deaths, and the other is about disaster politics in China.

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As environmental challenges escalate, and the responses required become ever more urgent, tensions are emerging between the globally adopted goals and local actions needed to achieve them. How capable are global decision-making institutions for addressing these challenges? How can we best upscale local knowledge and capabilities into global research and decision making? How do we equitably and effectively disaggregate global targets into local actions? Join us as we explore these questions and more with our panel of experts, and continue the discussions afterwards at our drinks reception. All welcome! Since we are hosting a drinks reception after the event, we ask that you quickly register using the form link provided so we can track numbers of attendees. Note that you are still welcome to join the event on the day if you have not registered. *Date:* 2nd May 2024 *Event time:* 5pm - 6.30pm *Drinks reception time:* 6.30pm - 7pm *Venue:* Jesus College Auditorium, Turl Street, Oxford. Directions to the venue will be sent via email after you register. *Register here:* "https://forms.gle/rJHS5NrYigfraZTL9":https://forms.gle/rJHS5NrYigfraZTL9 *Expert Panel:* - *Prof Michael Obersteiner*, Director - _Environmental Change Institute_ - *Dr Bronwyn Wake*, Editor in Chief - _Nature Climate Change_ - *Dr Stephanie Brittain*, Research Fellow - _Interdisciplinary Centre for Conservation Science_ - *Dr Rhian Rees-Owen*, International Climate Science Lead, IPCC and UNFCCC - _UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero_

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To join via Microsoft Teams please use this link https://rb.gy/qzyv2b. Registration is not required.

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A lecture series organised by the Voltaire Foundation, in collaboration with DiSc and Linacre College. Join us for a talk from Glenn Roe (Sorbonne University & Oxford University) - The Poetics of Text Reuse: Digital Intertextuality in the Eighteenth-century Archive.

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In our introductory lecture, we explore the philosophical theme that change is the only constant, emphasizing the importance of viewing human-nature relations as a dynamic whole to circumvent the pitfalls of short-term thinking. We introduce the complexities of water management, drawing on inspirations from both Eastern and Western philosophical traditions. Through examples such as the irrigation efficiency paradox and the levee effect for floodplain management, we illustrate how overlooking human behavioral patterns can lead to unintended consequences in technology-driven interventions. This sets the stage for a series that delves into the evolution of water governance, technological advancements, climate adaptation, and the pursuit of sustainable and just solutions in an ever-changing world. The series will prolifically draw from examples and case studies of river basins that host Muslim societies. Moreover, the presentation style will draw heavily (but present in an accessible way for a broad audience) that uses the tools of systems analysis, earth systems modelling, and data science from published literature and original research by the presenter.

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The aim of the seminar is to foster a dynamic and interdisciplinary postcolonial research culture supportive of individual scholarship. Finalists, M.St. and D.Phil. students, lecturers, fellows, scholars from across the university community – all are welcome. If you’d like to appear on the seminar mailing list, please email martha.swift@ell.ox.ac.uk OR hannah.fagan@mansfield.ox.ac.uk

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Lincoln College alumna Naomi Kellman is an award-winning Diversity & Inclusion expert, with a passion for informing and inspiring audiences, helping to prompt organisational change, and supporting people of all backgrounds to achieve their potential. She is the founder of the Target Oxbridge programme, which helps young people from under-represented groups in their educational and professional journeys, and produces a related podcast. Naomi Kellman is currently Head of Research at Rare Recruitment, has been a contributor and commentator for national newspapers, TV, and radio, and has worked at both the Department for Education and the Treasury. Dr Maryanne Saunders is Lincoln College’s Access and Career Development Fellow, having previously held similar roles at The Brilliant Club, Regent’s Park College and St John’s College. Dr Saunders holds a doctorate in Religious Art from King’s College London with a thesis on ‘Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Religious Art’, and is engaged in interdisciplinary research encompassing Art History, Art Criticism, Religious Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Former Lincoln College MCR President Grady Owens is a DPhil candidate in History, interested in the presence of a Collegiate Martiality on the campuses of American colleges and universities during the First World War. He completed an MSt in the History of War at Oxford and a dual major in History and Asian Studies with a minor in Anthropology at Cornell University. This panel will be chaired by Maria Branco, former Lincoln College MCR Academic Officer and a DPhil candidate in Medieval & Modern Languages, researching the works of Portuguese writers Natália Correia and Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen. The panel will be followed by a free drinks reception.

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*Professor Lyndal Roper* launches the inaugural lecture in our ‘Uncovering Women’s History’ series. The ‘Uncovering Women’s History’ lecture series aims to explore women’s empowerment and the contribution of women and other marginalised minorities across history.

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Kellogg College's Bynum Tudor Fellow Ban Ki-moon will deliver the inaugural lecture in a new annual series on human rights. This year’s lecture is titled ‘Human Rights in a Fractured World‘. Ban Ki-moon‘s ten years as Secretary General to the United Nations were marked by many successes. Throughout, he strove to enhance human rights globally. Indeed, Ban Ki-moon‘s other successes – such as the Sustainable Development Goals, establishing UN Women, and the Paris Agreement to limit the rise in global temperature to 1.5 degrees celsius – can all be seen as enhancing human rights broadly defined. The Sustainable Development Goals promote the whole range of economic and social rights. UN Women “is the UN organization delivering programmes, policies and standards that uphold women’s human rights”. And the climate crisis threatens the rights of millions, most immediately those who will be displaced, and those facing famine and disease as a result of climate change. In this lecture, Ban Ki-moon will reflect on the urgent need to defend and promote human rights and will place this in the broader context of the need to promote women’s rights, pursue the Sustainable Development Goals, and tackle the climate crisis. Refreshments will be served from 5 pm; the lecture will begin at 5.30 pm. Post-event drinks will be served in the Hub from 6.30 pm. This event will be photographed and filmed. If you do not wish to appear in the photographs/footage, please let the photographer/videographer know. Should you have any further queries, or be unable to attend after booking, please contact events@kellogg.ox.ac.uk

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Since the ‘war on drugs' was declared in 2007, disappearances related to drug cartel violence has been one of the most critical issues in Mexico. There are currently 114,000 individuals reported missing and the impact on their families is enormous. Lucía de los Angeles Díaz comes from one of these families. She has founded a mothers' collective - Solecito de Veracruz - to search for their loved ones. So far, they have been able to return the remains of over 300 disappeared to their families. In collaboration with universities and a local government in Mexico, researchers from the Global Security Programme at the Blavatnik School of Government saw an opportunity to help these families through the FOUND project. This project uses technology to locate and analyse search areas using satellite imagery, drones, sensors and multispectral cameras. Lucía de los Angeles Díaz will be joined by Miguel Moctezuma, Global Security Programme and Víctor Ávila, Jalisco Search Commissioner, as they discuss the work of the mothers’ collective and the collaboration with the FOUND project, and offer an update on the status of the search protocol.

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Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883–1966) was an intellectual, ideologue, and anticolonial nationalist leader in India’s struggle for independence from British colonial rule, one whose anti-Muslim writings exploited India’s tensions in pursuit of Hindu majority rule. _Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva_ is the first comprehensive intellectual history of one of the most contentious political thinkers of the twentieth century. *Janaki Bakhle* is professor of Indian history at the University of California, Berkeley. Her previous book was _Two Men and Music: Nationalism in the making of an Indian Classical Tradition_ (published by Oxford), and her most recent book is on the chief ideologue of right wing Hindu nationalism, V D Savarkar. She is also working on a book called _Mavericks for the Nation: Hindu Nationalism without Hindutva_, on Rajaram Shastri Bhagwat and T S Shejwalkar. She has also written on secularism, feminism, surveillance and the colonial police.

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Modern prosperity is based on ready access to cheap abundant energy – energy that produces goods and services and moves those goods and services to where they are needed. Today the energy on which our society is based is extracted almost exclusively from a store of carbon-based fossil materials. That extraction results in the production of greenhouse gases, with profound impacts for our planet. The conversion from a fossil economy to an economy based on non-emitting sources of energy is the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced. It will require tremendous innovation and deployment of that innovation at nearly inconceivable scales, to every corner of the planet. In this talk we consider some of the innovations now on the horizon, areas in need of additional innovation and the challenges imposed by the scale at which this innovation must be deployed. Dr. Eric Toone leads science, technology, and engineering across the entire Breakthrough Energy platform. As Managing Partner at Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Eric serves on the Investment Committee and is responsible for the overall technical direction of the organization, with responsibilities ranging from thesis development to technical diligence. Dr. Toone is responsible for the Fellows Program at Breakthrough Energy and directs technology diligence at Catalyst and other BE components. Prior to BEV Eric was a member of the faculty of Chemistry at Duke University and is the former Director of DOE’s Advanced Research Program Agency – Energy (ARPA-E). Originally trained as a bioorganic/physical organic chemist, Eric has long worked in both exploratory science and the translation of that science to practical implementation. At Duke University he authored nearly 300 original papers and abstracts. From 2012 – 2016 he served as Vice Provost and Director of Duke’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Initiative. He is also listed as an inventor on over 30 patents and is the founder of three venture backed pharmaceutical companies.

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Modern prosperity is based on ready access to cheap abundant energy – energy that produces goods and services and moves those goods and services to where they are needed. Today the energy on which our society is based is extracted almost exclusively from a store of carbon-based fossil materials. That extraction results in the production of greenhouse gases, with profound impacts for our planet. The conversion from a fossil economy to an economy based on non-emitting sources of energy is the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced. It will require tremendous innovation and deployment of that innovation at nearly inconceivable scales, to every corner of the planet. In this talk we consider some of the innovations now on the horizon, areas in need of additional innovation and the challenges imposed by the scale at which this innovation must be deployed. Dr. Eric Toone leads science, technology, and engineering across the entire Breakthrough Energy platform. As Managing Partner at Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Eric serves on the Investment Committee and is responsible for the overall technical direction of the organization, with responsibilities ranging from thesis development to technical diligence. Dr. Toone is responsible for the Fellows Program at Breakthrough Energy and directs technology diligence at Catalyst and other BE components. Prior to BEV Eric was a member of the faculty of Chemistry at Duke University and is the former Director of DOE’s Advanced Research Program Agency – Energy (ARPA-E). Originally trained as a bioorganic/physical organic chemist, Eric has long worked in both exploratory science and the translation of that science to practical implementation. At Duke University he authored nearly 300 original papers and abstracts. From 2012 – 2016 he served as Vice Provost and Director of Duke’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Initiative. He is also listed as an inventor on over 30 patents and is the founder of three venture backed pharmaceutical companies.

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Oscar Traynor is the Director of International Surgical Training Programmes at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. For more than 25 years, he was the Dean of Postgraduate Surgical Education and Training with responsibility for all surgical training in Ireland. He has been responsible for introducing several innovations to surgical training, including the world’s first e-learning programme for surgical trainees, a comprehensive curriculum-based surgical simulation programme for teaching technical skills and an integrated Human Factors training programme. He has published widely on various aspects of surgical training and has also lectured extensively on the subject of Human Factors in Surgery in Europe, Australia and North America. In October 2021, he was given an Honorary Fellowship of the American College of Surgeons in recognition of his contributions to surgical education and training. In September 2022, he became the first Irish surgeon to be inducted into the Academy of Master Surgeon Educators in the United States. Until recently, he was also the Director of Clinical Governance at Blackrock Health Hermitage Medical Clinic in Dublin, a post he held since 2014. In this role, he was responsible for patient safety and quality of care at the hospital and he promoted various patient safety initiatives. Through the Clinical Governance Committee, he achieved wide stakeholder involvement in promoting the “culture of patient safety” at Hermitage. He retired from clinical practice as a consultant surgeon at St Vincent’s University Hospital, Dublin in 2014. For more than 25 years, he headed a very busy Hepato-Biliary and Pancreatic Surgery unit and played a leading role in developing the National Liver Transplant Programme in Ireland in the early 1990s. The HPB unit at St. Vincent’s University Hospital in Dublin is the sole national tertiary referral centre for Liver Transplantation and for Pancreas Cancer surgery in Ireland. Coffee, tea and pastries will be served in the Lecture Theatre. Please email Louise King (louise.king@nds.ox.ac.uk) if you would like to attend online.

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I recount the story of the greatest Georgian national treasure-Shota Rustaveli's fresco, preserved in the Monastery of Cross (Jerusalem), which was rescued from disappearing into the abyss of history, with a little help from the Lailashi Codex. The rescuer and the rescued-Shota Rustaveli and the Lailashi Codex-will meet, for the first time, over the Bodleian Library manuscripts, including a very rare editions of Rustaveli's epic poem The Knight in the Panther's Skin. The presentation is based on Chapter Four of my book 'Lailashi Codex: The Crown of Georgian Jewry.

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Dr Oliver Rughani-Hindmarch and Vlada Yarosh from the Translational Research Office (MSD) will present key tips on how to navigate the translational research pathway for postdocs and other research staff who are not students. The session will include a short Q&A. To join the event, please "click here":https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_MGQ5NThjNjQtNzM4ZS00ZmE0LWFmMTctMzY4MDZmZGEzYzVj%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22cc95de1b-97f5-4f93-b4ba-fe68b852cf91%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%22f6215955-7b24-48ec-a76a-2933147ca7b5%22%7d. Each PoPoH session covers: * a brief overview of career and training support available to postdocs and other research staff across the University * a 30-minute lecture by an expert on the session’s theme * a new project management tip each month * a Career Chat where a Careers Adviser for Research Staff will address careers concerns and questions * ideas for simple things you can do now for your career and work/life balance

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Autophagy eliminates cytoplasmic material by engulfment in membranous vesicles targeted for lysosome degradation. Non-selective autophagy coordinates the sequestration of bulk cargo with the growth of the isolation membrane (IM) through tight regulation of the rim aperture by PI(3)P. In yeast, an obligate complex of Atg24/Snx4 with Atg20 or Snx41 assembles at the IM rim in a spatially extended manner that depends on autophagic PI(3)P. This assembly stabilizes the open rim to promote autophagic sequestration of large cargo in correlation with vesicle inflation. Constriction of the rim by the PI(3)P-dependent Atg2-Atg18 complex and clearance of PI(3)P by Ymr1 antagonizes rim opening and promotes autophagic maturation and the consumption of small cargo. A second part of the talk will describe new findings on Hereditary Sensory and Autonomic Neuropathy 9 (HSAN9), a neurodegenerative disorder linked to mutations in tectonin β-propeller repeat-containing protein 2 (TECPR2) and characterized by an accumulation of mitochondrial ROS, reduced mitochondrial membrane potential, and elevated mitochondrial content that may arise from impaired autophagic clearance of aberrant mitochondria. Indeed, loss of TECPR2 led to inhibition of Pink 1- and Parkin-dependent mitophagy. The accumulation of mitochondria and the immature mitochondrial content of autophagic vesicles in the brainstem of TECPR2 knockout mice matches these cellular observations.

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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: Oxford students, researchers and other staff.

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The History of Gender Seminar meets on Fridays at 11am-12:15pm, in-person in the Colin Matthew Room at the History Faculty, or online via Teams. All welcome at this relaxed interdisciplinary seminar! Please email emilia.flack@magd.ox.ac.uk if you would like to be added to our mailing list. Teams link: https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_YTBkYjY3ZmQtNDJkYS00NTBiLWI0M2MtZmZjZDQxOGEwOTZk%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22cc95de1b-97f5-4f93-b4ba-fe68b852cf91%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%228e6e425a-cedf-419b-a96d-972dbc28b270%22%7d

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Warming of the Arctic is altering the physical environment, reducing sea ice cover and melting glaciers at unprecedented rates. The response of primary productivity by phytoplankton to enhanced light availability or increased glacial inflow will hinge on the availability of nutrient resources, especially nitrogen. Here, I will summarise our findings from the Changing Arctic Ocean programme on nutrient dynamics, cleaned from analysis of historical data sets and stable nitrogen isotopes. I will introduce new observations on the occurrence of marine nitrogen fixation in the cold Arctic Ocean and discuss implications for the future Arctic ecosystem.

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Technology increases consumption but can create or mitigate existential risk to human civilization. Though accelerating technological development may increase the hazard rate (the probability of existential catastrophe per period) in the short run, two considerations suggest that acceleration decreases the probability that an existential catastrophe ever occurs. First, acceleration decreases the time spent at each technology level. Second, given an endogenous policy choice to sacrifice consumption for safety, acceleration motivates greater sacrifices by decreasing the marginal utility of consumption and by increasing the value of the future. Under broad conditions, optimal regulation thus produces an "existential risk Kuznets curve", in which the hazard rate rises and then falls with the technology level and acceleration pulls forward a future in which risk is low. These effects are offset only when acceleration makes a direct contribution to cumulative risk, in that "experiments" are more hazardous performed in parallel than sequentially, that is sufficiently extreme.

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Join us for our first panel discussion of the new year, which is an exciting student ‘work-in-progress’ panel, with Joe Ward (Oxford) and Holly Cooper (Oxford). Each presenter will deliver a 15 minute paper on some of their current and upcoming work, welcoming feedback, questions, and advice from the Race & Resistance community. After both papers, Dr. Chantelle Lewis will host a Q&A session before closing the session. Joe Ward (he/him): The Case of Black Radical Disciplinarity Bio: Joseph Ward is a DPhil student in Political Theory at Corpus Christi College. Before his DPhil, he completed an MPhil in Political Theory at Somerville College, Oxford and a BA in Politics between the University of Exeter and the University of Munich. He has previously worked in the archive of the Eastern Daily Press and is currently a section editor for the Oxford Political Review. Holly Cooper (they/them): The Significance of Coventry in 20th Century Black Britain Bio: Holly Cooper is a DPhil History student based at the University of Oxford, supervised by Dr. Meleisa Ono-George and Dr. Chantelle Lewis, and funded by the Black Academic Futures scholarship. They are an experienced researcher, currently working on the UCL/Oxford, ‘A portrait of Empire, Migration, and Belonging in England’s secondary schools’ (2022 – 2025), as well as facilitating the Race & Resistance seminar series for the 2023/24 academic year. Holly is an alum of the MA in Black British History at Goldsmiths, University of London. Jean Beesley (she/her): From Windrush to Windrush: The exploration and documentation of the history of Oxford’s Windrush Generation (1939 - 1985) Bio: Jean Beesley (she/her) is a first year doctoral, English Local History student at Oxford, whose parents were Windrush Generation. Jean gained her MA in English at Oxford Brookes, taught Humanities in Oxford’s secondary schools and appreciates the significance of members of Oxford’s Windrush Generation’s history being recorded in their own words. This includes the contribution made to Oxford’s history by Oxford’s Windrush Generation, especially the lessons to be learned from the intersectionality between the Windrush Generation and Oxford’s wider community. --------- Twitter: race_resistance Subscribe to our mailing list by sending a blank email to: race-and-resistance-subscribe@maillist.ox.ac.uk. Email raceandresistance@torch.ox.ac.uk with any questions.

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Background: Small vessel disease (SVD) is a prevalent disorder of the brain’s microvessels and a common cause of dementia and stroke. Recent evidence suggests a key role involving features of normal ageing in disease development and progression, including endothelial activation, pericyte dysfunction, blood-brain barrier (BBB) failure, and a chemotactic microglia response. Here, we aim to examine this relationship through a series of translational investigations. Methods: Using spinning-disk confocal and multispectral microscopy, we first quantified pericyte coverage and endothelial activation (VCAM-1 expression) in young and aged C57Bl/6J mice, and in young controls, mild and severe SVD cases, respectively. Secondly, pericyte and endothelial fluid biomarkers were analysed in a mild and non-disabling stroke cohort, correlating them with SVD MRI markers and cognition. Thirdly, we employed a novel adeno-associated virus (AAV) exclusively targeting brain endothelial cells to overexpress (OE) Vcam1, Icam1, Selp and Sele in mice, shedding light on endothelial activation's role in pericyte dysfunction and BBB breakdown, but also the reciprocal influences with the microglial response. Finally, we used an innovative mouse model allowing the genetic manipulation of brain pericytes specifically (Atp13a5-CreER), offering insights into their biological impact on neighbouring cells and BBB functions. Results: Both aged mice and SVD cases exhibited a significant reduction in pericyte coverage and increase in VCAM-1 expression in microvessels ( 10 m in diameter). Biomarker analyses revealed associations between PDGFRB, PDGF-BB, ICAM-1, VCAM-1, and E-selectin concentrations with specific SVD manifestations. Preclinical AAV experiments highlighted correlations between endothelial activation, pericyte dysfunction, reduced brain perfusion, and BBB breakdown, with distinct immune responses observed in AAV-Vcam1OE and AAV-Icam1OE groups. The brain pericyte-specific mouse model unveiled diverse pericyte subtypes along the vascular tree, emphasizing their importance in microvascular dynamics. Capillary endothelial cells rapidly acquired a pro-inflammatory signature upon genetic ablation of brain pericytes. Conclusion: Our multifaceted approach highlights the crucial role of endothelial-pericyte crosstalk in vascular dementia progression. The integration of post-mortem brain tissues, fluid biomarkers, viral manipulations, and innovative mouse models enriches our understanding of the tripartite crosstalk, paving the way for potential therapeutic interventions in vascular dementia. SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY Dr Axel Montagne joined the UK Dementia Research Institute at Edinburgh in 2020. He completed his PhD degree at the University of Caen Normandy (France), followed by postdoctoral training at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles. Axel rapidly became Assistant then Associate Professor at USC in 2016 and 2020, respectively. His career has focused on how cerebrovascular dysfunctions contribute to neurodegeneration and dementia in both animal models and humans. In his UK DRI program, he combines molecular approaches with rodent non-invasive imaging, particularly MRI and microscopy techniques, to study the causes and effects of blood-brain barrier (BBB) dysfunction, with a particular focus on the Endothelium-Pericyte-Immune tripartite interactions, in the context of neurodegenerative disease. Dr Montagne’s work is supported by the UK DRI, principally funded by the UK Medical Research Council (MRC), and additional funding partners (Alzheimer’s Research UK, Alzheimer’s Society UK, and British Heart Foundation). In addition, Dr Montagne was awarded the 2021 SCOR Young European Researcher Prize for his research into Alzheimer’s disease and a MRC Career Development Award in 2022.

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We introduce a new method for measuring subjective perceptions at scale using innovations in both crowd-sourced image data and transformer-based computer vision technology. We aim to uncover the relationships between perceived neighbourhood conditions and political outcomes, potentially offering new insights into how urban environments shape politics. Our approach relies on a novel dataset of 360-degree street-level images from Mapillary, a non-proprietary crowd-sourced alternative to Google Street View. We move beyond conventional image-as-data methods like object detection, using OpenAI’s GPT to label images for subjective concepts like disorder, safety, and perceived wealth from unlabelled images of neighbourhoods. We compare GPT’s labels to a sample of crowd-sourced labels, as well as objective data at the image-level (using object detection models) and geographic data on crime reports, 911 calls and socioeconomic characteristics. We plan to examine the association between these subjective assessments of neighbourhood characteristics and political outcomes including voter turnout and voting behaviour on a relevant ballot initiative intended to reduce blight. In doing so, we home to demonstrate 1) the value of incorporating measurements of subjective perceptions over and above that of objective physical, social, and economic features and 2) how using GPT-derived assessments can be used to proxy subjective perceptions, on average and within subgroups, making their measurement more feasible. In an initial pilot presented here, we compare GPT-derived measures against human perceptions derived from crowd-sourced labels, for a small subset of images. Correlations with objective attributes such as image features, 911 calls, and racial composition are explored as well. We plan to then generate systematic measures for the entire city of Detroit at scale, and ultimately expand to other cities.

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Many problems in epidemiology are impacted by behavioural dynamics, whilst in response to health emergencies prompt analysis and communication of findings is required to be of use to decision makers. Both instances are likely to benefit from interdisciplinary approaches. This talk will feature two examples, one with a public health focus and one with a veterinary health focus. In the first part, I will summarise work originally conducted in late 2020 that was contributed to Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling, Operational sub-group (SPI-M-O) of SAGE (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies) on Christmas household bubbles in England. This was carried out in response to a policy involving a planned easing of restrictions in England between 23–27 December 2020, with Christmas bubbles allowing people from up to three households to meet throughout the holiday period. Using a household model and computational simulation, we estimated the epidemiological impact of both this and alternative bubble strategies that allowed extending contacts beyond the immediate household. (Associated paper: Modelling the epidemiological implications for SARS-CoV-2 of Christmas household bubbles in England in December 2020. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtbi.2022.111331) In the second part, I will present a methodological pipeline developed to generate novel quantitative data on farmer beliefs with respect to disease management, process the data into a form amenable for use in mathematical models of livestock disease transmission and then refine said mathematical models according to the findings of the data. Such an approach is motivated by livestock disease models traditionally omitting variation in farmer disease management behaviours. I will discuss our application of this methodology for a fast, spatially spreading disease outbreak scenario amongst cattle herds in Great Britain, for which we elicited when farmers would use an available vaccine and then used the attained behavioural groups within a livestock disease model to make epidemiological and health economic assessments. (Associated paper: Incorporating heterogeneity in farmer disease control behaviour into a livestock disease transmission model. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.prevetmed.2023.106019)

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How did we get to our current state of human rights? How can we understand human rights law over the course of history? What place does human rights law take in today’s democratic societies?

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*Greco-Roman and Classical Chinese Translation: Theory and Practice* This seminar series is intended to look more broadly at Latin translations of Chinese texts, Chinese translations of Greco-Roman texts, and translation as theory and practice within and between both traditions.

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PROGRAMME OF THE CENTRE FOR HEBREW AND JEWISH STUDIES of the UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD SEMINAR ON JEWISH HISTORY AND LITERATURE IN THE GRAECO-ROMAN PERIOD Weeks 2-8, Tuesdays from 2 to 3.30 pm Catherine Lewis Lecture Theatre Clarendon Institute, Walton Street Oxford, OX1 2HG All lectures will be presented in a hybrid format which will be accessible both online (see below) and in person in the Catherine Lewis Lecture Theatre (followed by coffee, tea and biscuits in the Common Room, situated in the basement of the Clarendon Institute). Convenor: Meron Piotrkowski Week 1, Tuesday 23th April No Seminar Week 2, Tuesday 30th April No Seminar Week 3, Tuesday 7th May Prof. Martin Goodman (Wolfson/OCHJS) “Herod and his many Wives” In order to participate in this lecture via Zoom, please register at this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYudu6qrjoqE9RGu5-bfpXUhM5E1gu-qnMW Week 4, Tuesday 14th May Dr. David Friedman (Cambridge/Darwin College) “Asinaeus and Anilaeus in Josephus’ Jewish Antiquities” In order to participate in this lecture via Zoom, please register at this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYrd-msrDMqE9GXmtd79e8PkTE_qzy6EIUY Week 5, Tuesday 21th May Dr. Thomas Nelson (Wolfson) “(Re)constructing Tradition in the Hellenistic Jewish Epics by Philo and Theodotus” In order to participate in this lecture via Zoom, please register at this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcrcu2urzosHtOkjrJdP2kpIp14xsSW1sHj Week 6, Tuesday 28th May [Joint Seminar with the Comparative Philology Graduate Seminar] Sebastian Kenny (Corpus Christi) “Language Contact in Ezekiel’s Exagoge: The Case for Pattern Replication” In order to participate in this lecture via Zoom, please register at this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUtdOitqT8qGtJaVA6fs7IQjD9ZJL45pwyS Week 7, Tuesday 4th June Dr. Rebekah van Zant-Clark (Oriel) “’New Exodus’ Typology and Supersessionism in 20th Century Isaiah Scholarship” In order to participate in this lecture via Zoom, please register at this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEpc-6orzgsGNzf4_bqmTmffWYD9p97Vfbk Week 8, Tuesday 11th June Prof. Paul Michael Kurtz (Universiteit Gent) “Another View on Ancient Judaism: Catholic Scholarship in the German South, 1820–1880” In order to participate in this lecture via Zoom, please register at this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0tdO2hpjoiEtS3R400aFrChCQxPL-kDOsP

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Part 1: Student Work in Progress Anne Fenoy: "Debates on the concept of disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)" Part 2: Methods in Applied Ethics Dr Thomas Mitchell on the philosophy of trust Suggested Reading: Hawley, K., (2014) Trust, Distrust and Commitment, Noûs, Vol. 48, No. 1 pp. 1-20 https://www.jstor.org/stable/43828859 Jones, K., (2012), Trustworthiness, Ethics, 123:1, 61-85, https://doi.org/10.1086/667838 In Person: Oxford Uehiro Centre Seminar Room, Suite 1, first floor, Littlegate House, 16-17 St Ebbes St. OX1 1PT Via Zoom: email rocci.wilkinson@philosophy.ox.ac.uk for Zoom links

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Conventional methods of cluster-robust inference are inconsistent in the presence of unignorably large clusters. We formalize this claim by establishing a necessary and sufficient condition for the consistency of the conventional methods. We find that this condition for the consistency is rejected for a majority of empirical research papers. In this light, we propose a novel score subsampling method that achieves uniform size control over a broad class of data generating processes, covering that fails the conventional method. Simulation studies support these claims. With real data used by an empirical paper, we showcase that the conventional methods conclude significance while our proposed method concludes insignificance.

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Engineering has transformed biomedicine over the past decades. Current engineering research is pushing the boundaries of the possible, from designing and controlling biological systems from the ground up, to creating new biomaterials and devices. Future developments will transform the way we create new drugs, provide personalised medicine and produce biocompatible materials and devices. This year’s Lubbock lectures cover some of the most impactful applications of engineering, focusing on synthetic biology, biomaterials and medical devices. Our 2024 Lubbock Memorial lecturer is James T. Collins, Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering & Science and Professor of Biological Engineering Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Jim's talk is titled Synthetic Biology: Biology by Design. The Lubbock supporting lectures cover the breadth of Oxford Engineering Science in this field. Professor Harrison Steel, will talk about Robotics and Control meet Synthetic Biology. Professor Malavika Nair will discuss Biomaterials for SMART Medical Devices and Professor Antonis Papachristodoulou will talk about Feedback in Engineering Biology: Designing Biocontrollers.

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Lots has changed in Russia since Soviet times, but private rights are still non-absolute. Building on my recently published book, Gleaning for Communism, I argue that this baseline property relation presupposes and entails a particular moral economy, in which ethical obligations to social collectives are valued above a blind obedience to regulations and rules. People rely on their personal ties to make social ventures viable, often in irregular ways: these informal relations help keep a poorly legislated society functional, and they ground the state's ideological image in socially-situated relationships, giving concrete personification to such patriotic slogans as “we do not abandon our own.”

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Hugh in semi-retirement has 3 jobs: Biodiversity Council's Co-chief Councillor, Chief Scientist of Accounting for Nature and The University of Queensland. He was the founding Director of The Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, the National Environmental Science Program Threatened Species hub and an Australian Research Council Professorial, Laureate and Federation Fellow. Hugh also has a variety of broader public roles advising policy makers and managers, and sits on c30 boards and advisory committees – from the Friends of Oxley Creek Common to Conservation International. Alongside Dr Barry Traill, Hugh wrote “The Brigalow Declaration”. This open letter was used by the Queensland Premier Peter Beattie to stop land clearing in the state, thereby stopping c10% of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions per annum and saving an area the size of Portugal from conversion into farmland. The Possingham lab developed Marxan, the most widely used conservation planning software in the world. Marxan was used to underpin the rezoning of the Great Barrier Reef and is currently employed by more than 7000 users in over 180 countries to build most of the world’s marine and terrestrial protected area systems from the Amazon and British Columbia to the Sunda Sea and South Africa. Hugh has co-authored over 740 peer-reviewed papers, including 35 in Science and Nature, and has been the privileged mentor of over 200 PhD candidates, honours students and postdoctoral researchers. His google scholar h-index is 164. Hugh has honorary doctorates from the University of British Columbia and Adelaide University. He has one known psychological disorder - a compulsive desire to watch birds. The Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery and Biodiversity Network are interested in promoting a wide variety of views and opinions on nature recovery from researchers and practitioners. The views, opinions and positions expressed within this lecture are those of the author alone, they do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery/Biodiversity Network, or its researchers.

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The Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies presents: Dinar struck in Damascus in 77/697 AH Coin Legends and Protocol Texts in the 70s/690s: Emblematic Identity and Monetization of Exchange in the Umayyad State Luke Treadwell (AMES/ St Cross) AMES Faculty Building, 1 Pusey Lane Lecture Room 1 Friday, May 3, 2024 (Week 2) | 4:30 pm ʿAbd al-Malik’s reforms have become a hot topic of debate over the last two decades. The papyrologists’ insistence on granular history has punctured the grand narrative of abrupt state-wide transformation, while historians have pointed out that Muʿawiya’s contribution to state formation was more substantial than current views of ʿAbd al-Malik’s post-fitna changes allow. Agency is the missing link in the ongoing conversation. We often talk of ‘Abd al-Malik’s coinage reforms as if the caliph was personally responsible for planning and implementation on a grand scale. A focus on the role of the Marwanid chancery allows us to glimpse overlooked connections between chancery formularies (in the form of protocol texts) and the legends on the new aniconic coinage. This leads us to the view that it was the scribal class who took control of the institutions of state after the fitna. They crafted a set of texts across media that served as the new emblem of the Umayyad state and opened the way towards rapid monetization of exchange which enabled the caliphal administration to monitor, raise and distribute funds effectively.

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Over the past two decades, area studies have been rejuvenated by new forms of engagement with disciplinary knowledge and especially by the push towards de-centering concepts and references in the social sciences. It is generally accepted that area-based knowledge provides important contributions to the ongoing endeavours to developing frameworks of analysis based on a pluralistic understanding of universalism. Areal knowledge is a necessary condition to analyzing a world of multi-crises, often rooted in identity claims, and where the legitimacy of global governance is questioned on the grounds of its presumed Eurocentrism. In many contexts, however, the increasing restrictions on academic freedom, combined with the politicization of knowledge production and technological transformations, raise new challenges for the conduct and legitimacy of area studies. Taking stock of this critical context, the lecture will emphasize its continuities with a long record of challenges faced – and overcome – by area studies since their emergence. It will argue that the current crises, rather than fragilizing area studies, underscore their critical role in generating knowledge on regional and global affairs – provided they address the epistemological, methodological and ethical transformations prompted by this context, and find a proper balance of academic independence and policy relevance.

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Josep Borrell Fontelles will give a thought-provoking lecture you won't want to miss! Join us at St Antony's College, Investcorp Auditorium as we delve into the challenges Europe is currently facing. The European Union, which has traditionally identified itself as a 'peace project’, finds itself faced with two wars, in Ukraine and in Gaza. How has it responded to them? How should it respond? What lessons should be drawn for the future of European foreign policy? And what place in those plans for European countries outside the EU, such as Britain? As the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, but also as a former Spanish Foreign Minister, Josep Borrell is uniquely placed to address these and other questions in this year’s Dahrendorf Lecture.

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Deep in the Fukuyama mountains, “the grave of the graves” houses acres of unwanted headstones. In the past, the Japanese dead became venerated ancestors through sustained ritual offerings at graves and butsudan. But in social atomised twenty-first Japan, this intergenerational system of care, along with the household and nation that once sustained it, is collapsing. This talk describes the practical and affective burdens imposed by the ruins of vanishing death rites and explores how new life (which is to say new death) may emerge. Dr Hannah Gould (Postdoctoral Fellow in Anthropology, The University of Melbourne) is a cultural anthropologist researching death, Buddhism, and material culture in Australia and North-East Asia. Her research spans new rituals and technologies of death, the lifecycle of religious materials, and modern minimalist movements. In sum: the stuff of death and death of stuff. She is currently President of the Australian Death Studies Society and Project Manager for the Modern and Contemporary Collaborative at Japan Past & Present.

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The paradox of humanitarian neutrality is that when humanitarians adhere to neutrality, they can be perceived as less neutral by conflicting parties. By providing aid to all, including perceived enemies, and navigating blurred lines with various military actors, humanitarians face challenges in either maintaining or signalling neutrality. In my book manuscript, I challenge the prevailing assumption that non-state armed groups are the primary obstacle to humanitarian access. Instead, I demonstrate that autocratic governments and foreign military interventions often pose greater threats to the neutrality of humanitarian actors. Through empirical case studies, the study shows the repercussions for humanitarian actors and examines their varied approaches in managing these complexities in the field.

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Building the African AI We want-Prof Vukosi Marivate Africa's rich linguistic diversity is a unique strength that can be leveraged to advance Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology. However, limited access to high-quality annotated data, computational infrastructure and skills presents a significant challenge to developing AI models for African languages. This talk will discuss how the Data Science for Social Impact Lab at the University of Pretoria is working to improve resources, tools, and methods for African languages through collaborations with local communities and organizations across the continent. Our approach involves creating inclusive environments where researchers, developers, educators, policymakers, activists and other key stakeholders can come together to co-create innovative solutions to complex problems facing society. Our goal is to empower individuals and organizations to harness the power of AI to address critical issues such as education, healthcare and financial inclusion while preserving cultural heritage. Settler-Colonial Violence, Displacement, and Inter-Inter-generational Trauma-Professor Veronica Fynn Bruey Documenting Indigenous Peoples' experiences with colonialism, land loss, displacement, racism, and exclusion is crucial for understanding the formation of modern states. Historical agreements like the Peace of Westphalia (1648) and the Montevideo Convention (1933) ignored the plight of Indigenous Peoples, as did the 1951 Refugee Convention. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP, 2007), while not defining "Indigenous," recognizes their rights, challenging the Eurocentric, nation-state ideology that overlooks colonial violence and systemic racism. This analysis, informed by my journey as an Indigenous Liberian migrant through Ghana, Canada, England, Switzerland, Australia, and the USA, explores the intergenerational trauma and resilience of Indigenous Peoples forced into migration by slavery, imperialism, and neoliberal capitalism. It aims to understand their survival, resistance, and agency in seeking social change.

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In 1971, in Americam rocked by an unpopular war, political scandal, and civil unrest, the political theorist, Hannah Arendt, wrote: ‘We are free to change the world and put something new in it.’ What did she mean, and what in her life and thought had led her to this startling statement? Drawing on her new book Lyndsey Stonebridge will discuss how Hannah Arendt’s life as a woman, a Jew, and a refugee shaped her extraordinary thinking, looking at the world from outside conventional academic and political categories. What can we learn from her anti-totalitarian thinking today?

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Seminar 3 of Trinity Term's Sociology Seminar Series Please join either in person or online. For in-person attendees, the talk will be preceded by a light lunch at 12.15pm. Please email comms@sociology.ox.ac.uk with any questions or to receive the Microsoft Teams link. Two studies, a quarter of a century apart, explore societal changes and security concerns in the British town of Macclesfield. Researchers delve into daily troubles and responses of residents following the technological, socio-economic, and political shifts of the past 25 years. The paper reflects on theoretical and methodological questions raised by revisiting research sites, examining the impact of change on perceptions of harm, security, and place. We have conducted two studies of the same research site – the town of Macclesfield in north-west England - a quarter of a century apart. Macclesfield is a town of some 53,000, about 20 miles south of the nearest large urban centre, Manchester. Our previous study of crime-talk in the town, conducted between 1994 and 1996, resulted in a book-length account of how worries about crime featured in local social relations in the mid-1990s (Girling et al. 2000, Crime and Social Change in Middle England). We returned in 2019, following a quarter of a century of technological, socio-economic, cultural and political change that included the digital revolution, austerity, migration, Brexit, greater climate consciousness, and – shortly after we commenced our research - the Covid-19 pandemic. We returned with a view to using the town, a place of relative affluence and relative safety, but with its share of social problems, arguably a kind of English ‘Middletown’, as a site for exploring what it means to be and feel secure in Britain today. We were interested in finding out what troubles afflict the daily lives of differently situated people across the town and what actions they take, or demand from responsible authorities, to deal with the things that threaten them. How might we think about the relation between these two enquiries, and what are the dilemmas of returning? How does change – in the place, relevant socio-political contexts, the intellectual environment, the trajectories and outlooks of the research team – impinge on how we make sense of the relation between harm (rather than just crime), everyday security and place? In this paper, we consider some of the theoretical, methodological and substantive questions raised by our experience of these two studies and, in so doing, reflect on the value and limits of revisiting as a sociological practice.

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Convened by Aliénor Ballangé (ESC/MFO) This workshop addresses the contemporary challenges facing deliberative citizens' assemblies. As these mechanisms face evolving social, political and global dynamics, it is imperative for academics, public officials and global civil society actors to critically assess and adapt. Our workshop highlights the need for a comprehensive examination of these challenges and underlines the importance of formulating innovative perspectives to respond effectively. By offering an interdisciplinary perspective, using both theoretical and empirical evidence, and drawing on diverse expertise, this exploration seeks to contribute to the ongoing discourse on the enhancement and sustainability of deliberative citizens' assemblies in the contemporary landscape. To this end, the first panel will critically examine the foundational elements of deliberative democracy, particularly its procedural and epistemic dimensions. The second panel will consider the potential of transnational/global citizens' assemblies. Programme: 1/ The value of deliberative democracy: Procedural and/or epistemic? Annabelle Lever (ScPo Paris) Charles Girard (Lyon University) 2/ Boundless deliberative democracy: Towards transnational/global citizens' assemblies? André Bächtiger (Stuttgart Uni) White & Ghassim (DPIR, Oxford) Günter Tolkiehn (Veteran citizen of the COFOE, Hamburg)

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This workshop addresses the contemporary challenges facing deliberative citizens' assemblies. As these mechanisms face evolving social, political, and global dynamics, it is imperative for academics, public officials, and global civil society actors to critically assess and adapt. This workshop highlights the need for a comprehensive examination of these challenges and underlines the importance of formulating innovative perspectives to respond effectively. By offering an interdisciplinary perspective, using both theoretical and empirical evidence, and drawing on diverse expertise, this exploration seeks to contribute to the ongoing discourse on the enhancement and sustainability of deliberative citizens' assemblies in the contemporary landscape. Programme INTRODUCTION Aliénor Ballangé (Deakijn Fellow, St Antony's College, Oxford; MFO) What can we reasonably expect from citizens' assemblies? PANEL 1: THEORETICAL EXPLORATIONS Charles Girard (Lyon University) Democratic principles and mini-publics. How to assess the value of citizen assemblies? Annabelle Lever (ScPo Paris) Democratic elections and a new case for citizens’ assemblies PANEL 2 EMPIRICAL PERSPECTIVES Günter Tolkiehn (Veteran citizen of the COFOE 2021-2022, Hamburg) A user’s view on citizen participation and deliberative democracy Stuart White and Farsan Ghassim (DPIR, Oxford) What can Citizens' Assemblies add to democratic government? Chair: Aliénor Ballangé (Deakin Visiting Fellow, St Antony’s College, Oxford)

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Please be aware that group attendance may be limited. Please contact Group Lead Christopher Morris or team (christopher.morris@politics.ox.ac.uk) for attendance and inquiries. Seminar details are confirmed a week in advance. The Emerging Threats & Technology Working Group meets regularly each term to examine the national security implications of critical and emerging technologies (CETs), from artificial intelligence and quantum computing to directed energy and space platforms. Meetings are held in hybrid format, at Oxford and online, to include diverse views from academia, industry, and policy, matching the global reach of technological innovation and challenge. For more information on workshops, sessions, and journal, visit www.emergingthreats.co.uk

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Monday, May 6th 2024: 5 pm Prof. Maria Cecilia D’Ercole (EHESS, Director of the Centre AnHiMA) Islands of Heroes. The cults of Diomedes and Achilles from the Adriatic to the Pontus (Archaic and Classical Periods) A wine and cheese reception will follow Prof. D’Ercole’s lecture Tuesday, May 7th, 9 am: 9 am Louise Detrez (Curator of Antiquities at the National Library of France/EHESS-AnHiMA) The social and professional network of Edme Antoine Durand (1768-1835) 9:45 am Karl Berg (Oxford) Behind the Mask of Imperial Cult: the changing face of African Municipal Flaminates, 2nd-5th centuries AD 10:30 coffee break 11 am Joshua Werrett (Oxford) Punishment and Purification: Infernal Motifs in Late Antique Alchemical Literature 11:45 am Hector Gonzalez Palacios (EHESS/AnHiMA) New perspectives on transgender asceticism in Early Christianity

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A series of free seminars to commemorate the death of J. R. R. Tolkien, to be held in 2023/2024 in the University of Oxford. The talks present an introduction and further background to Tolkien's life, work, and legacy. They have an academic approach, but they are also aimed at those who have read Tolkien's work but are interested in gaining a bit more insight into his life, career, and writings. WEEK 3 – May 6 Edmund Weiner (Oxford English Dictionary) ‘I always felt that something ought to be done about the word…’: Tolkien's latchwords CHAIR: Simon Horobin (Magdalen) https://tolkien50.web.ox.ac.uk/event/tolkien-50th-anniversary-seminar-series

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Aparecida Vilaça (Professor of Social Anthropology at the Museu Nacional, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro) is among the most eminent living anthropologists, well known for her ethnographic and theoretical work including books such as Strange Enemies: Indigenous Agency and Scenes of Encounter in Amazonia. Her more recent work has experimented with the forms and modes of writing that might encapsulate and be shaped by indigenous forms of life, and with the thresholds between ethnography, memoir, and fiction. Participants in this seminar will have the opportunity to read and to discuss with Prof. Vilaça the opening chapters from her ethnographic memoir Paletó e eu: Memórias do meu pai indígena (published in English as Paletó and Me: Memories of my Indigenous Father) and as-yet unpublished English translations of two of her ethnographic short stories (co-authored with Francisco Vilaça Gaspar and published as Ficções amazônicas). The seminar will be of interest to students and scholars of anthropology, literature, global cultures, indigenous studies, history, and postcolonial and decolonial practice. To receive copies of the readings please email iris.pearson@new.ox.ac.uk.

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Lincoln College alumnus Robert Seatter is a poet, actor, historian and broadcaster. Following spells in teaching and journalism, he joined the BBC in 1989 and stayed with the Corporation for 30 years becoming its Head of History, and publishing its centenary history in 2022. In parallel, he is also an award-winning poet, with six collections to his name, and a passionate interest in taking poetry out into the wider world, engaging with people and spaces in new and vibrant ways. A unique residency with the Sir John Soane’s Museum resulted in the acclaimed collection, The House of Everything. A skilled arts professional, Robert is also Chair of The Poetry Trust and The Poetry Archive. Dr Roel Konijnendijk is the Lincoln College Darby Fellow in Ancient History. After a year in Taiwan and a year of public-facing work at the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities, he obtained a PhD in Greek warfare at UCL, and is now an expert in Classical Greek military thought and practice. Dr Konijnendijk has written about Greek tactics, Athenian democracy, Spartan traditions, Persian kingship, Herodotus, and the way modern scholarship has shaped our understanding of Greek warfare. He has been a panellist for r/AskHistorians, written for a number of history magazines, and appeared in several public-facing videos (including a very popular series for Insider). Joana Neves Teixeira is a graduate student at Lincoln College, reading for an MSt in Early Modern History (1500-1700), with a focus on gender, environment, and Indigenous histories of the Americas. Her thesis is on women’s labour and gender fluidity among Tupi-speaking Indigenous people in the sixteenth- and seventeenth centuries. In 2022, she completed a BA in History and Politics at Merton College, with a prizewinning dissertation on politics and environment in the Mexica (Aztec) Empire, between 1428-1521 CE. Joana will be talking about the historical visions of contemporary Indigenous film makers in Brazil. This panel will be chaired by Lincoln College alumna Emma Manco, who researches European integration and migration from Italy in the post-war period. She holds an MSt in Modern European History from Lincoln and a BA in History from the University of Birmingham. The panel will be followed by a free drinks reception.

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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.

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Join us for a digital scholarship coffee gathering – tea and coffee will be provided. There will be a lightning talk from a researcher in digital scholarship on their work, whether it’s a new project, a tool or something they want to showcase. These are a new type of event for us, so if you’d like to attend, be involved in a future session, or find out more please email digitalscholarship@humanities.ox.ac.uk These will be held in the Visiting Scholars Centre, so to attend you’ll need to bring your Bodleian Card and to leave your bags in the lockers – this event is only open to University staff and students.

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Come along to our next BRC South Parks Road seminar where Prof Elliott and Prof Owen will tell you more about the latest research developments in our cancer theme. Our main objective is to achieve early cancer detection by identifying those people at highest risk through biomarkers. We are also exploring the potential of immunotherapies for early-stage cancers, which could be a game changer in stopping the disease from progressing. Our focus is on three conditions that increase cancer risk: Barrett’s oesophagus, primary sclerosing cholangitis, and precursors to blood cancers such as MGUS and MBL. Refreshments provided

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Audrey Southgate (Lincoln College, Oxford): 'Playing the Ten-Stringed Lyre': Psalter and Decalogue in the English Primers and Hannah Schühle-Lewis (University of Kent): ‘All suche clytter clatter’?: Medieval devotional compilations after the Reformation’ Seminars followed by a sandwich lunch. All welcome!

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The MENISCUS Trial is evaluating the impact of a multi-component menstrual health intervention in Ugandan secondary schools on girls’ education, health, and wellbeing. Many girls lack the knowledge, confidence, facilities and materials needed to manage periods safely and with dignity. Improving menstrual health not only has immediate benefits to their wellbeing, but can lead to long-term improvements to women’s education, health and development. Further background can be found here: https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/research/centres-projects-groups/meniscus#about-meniscus This is a hyrbid event, held in the Department of Psychiatry’s Seminar Room and online (Zoom). Please email shona.oleary@psych.ox.ac.uk to request the Zoom link.

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Join Zoom Meeting zoom.us/j/97156099278?pwd=bE1DNElhVmRRWkl1Q1lVSEI3UlRLdz09 Meeting ID: 971 5609 9278 Passcode: 324627 Abstract: Political leaders increasingly use social media to speak directly to voters, but the extent to which elite cues shape offline behavior remains unclear. In this article, we study the effects of elite cues on non-compliant behavior, focusing on a series of controversial tweets sent by US President Donald Trump calling for the “liberation” of Minnesota, Virginia and Michigan from state and local government COVID-19 restrictions. Leveraging the fact that Trump’s messages exclusively referred to three specific US states, we adopt a generalized difference-in-differences design relying on spatial variation to identify the causal effects of the targeted cues. Our analysis shows that the President’s messages led to an increase in movement, a decrease in adherence to stay-at-home restrictions, and an increase in arrests of white Americans for crimes related to civil disobedience and rebellion. These findings demonstrate the consequences of elite cues in polarized environments.

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The Family and Medical Law Research Group and Medical Humanities are organising a monthly lunch for academics, researchers, and graduate students who are working in the broad area of medical ethics, law, and humanities. Whichever discipline you're researching in, you are very welcome to join us for an informal lunchtime gathering at Radcliffe Humanities, TORCH on the first Tuesday of each month. A simple sandwich lunch will be provided, and it will be a casual space for everyone to share ideas, collaborate, or just catch up. We look forward to seeing many of you there! Any questions, please get in touch with Urania Chiu at urania.chiu@law.ox.ac.uk.

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Title - PFO audit data - post-acute stroke management

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We generalize the open-economy neoclassical growth model to allow for trade and capital market frictions and imperfect substitutability of goods and capital across countries. The multi-country model is tractable, amenable to quantitative analysis, and matches key empirical patterns such as gravity equations in trade and capital holdings. The degree of integration in trade and capital markets and their interaction shape adjustments to shocks and the speed of convergence to steady state. The model is well-suited to study counterfactual changes in both trade and capital market frictions, such as a decoupling between the United States and China.

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Abstract will be posted shortly Kumar Ramakrishna is a tenured Associate Professor, Provost’s Chair in National Security Studies, Associate Dean in charge of Policy Studies, as well as Head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR), in the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), in Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He was previously the Head of the Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS) at RSIS from 2006-2015, and Head of the National Security Studies Programme (NSSP) from 2016-2020. He remains as Research Adviser to NSSP. Ramakrishna has been a frequent speaker on counter-terrorism before local and international audiences, a regular media commentator on counter-terrorism, and an established author in numerous internationally refereed journals. His first book, Emergency Propaganda: The Winning of Malayan Hearts and Minds 1948-1958 (2002) was described by the International History Review as “required reading for historians of Malaya, and for those whose task is to counter insurgents, guerrillas, and terrorists”. His second major book, Radical Pathways: Understanding Muslim Radicalisation in Indonesia (2009) was featured as one of the top 150 books on terrorism and counterterrorism in the respected journal Perspectives on Terrorism, which identified Ramakrishna as “one of Southeast Asia’s leading counterterrorism experts”.

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In a society that experiences secessionist conflict, many things are not what they seem. The book presented in this talk (which is available open access via the CUP website) adopts a performative perspective to understand the peculiar institutional landscape the ensued around the Tamil separatist conflict in Sri Lanka, both during and after the civil war. It draws on two decades of fieldwork across towns and villages in northern and eastern Sri Lanka, ethnography within Sri Lanka’s civil service, and privileged access to Norwegian-facilitated peace process. This yields a compelling analytical narrative that shows how political institutions are enacted and witnessed, rather than cataloguing them in the strictures of the law. This provides a fertile vantage point to address the to-be-or-not-to-be dilemmas that we face when seeking to interpret the legitimacy, legality, and validity of the institutions that separatist movements create in aspiration of sovereign status. And as such, this book provides food for thought for broader conceptual debates concerning armed conflict and insurgency. Bart Klem writes about everyday life and politics amidst armed conflict and has conducted fieldwork across Sri Lanka’s northeast since 2000. He co-authored Checkpoint, Temple, Church and Mosque (Pluto 2015) and co-edited journal issues on insurgent politics (Modern Asian Studies 2018) and on legal identity under insurgencies (Citizenship Studies 2024).

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The African continent is rapidly urbanizing. While this transformation has been well-documented, the focus of scholarship and policymakers has been predominantly on movements of refugees and migrants with (ir)regular status into major urban areas and capital cities. In contrast, intermediary cities have been largely absent in policy and academic debates between rural and metropolitan areas. Addressing this gap becomes all the more critical as African intermediary cities are increasingly impacted by mixed migration movements and (inter)national policies without necessarily having adequate legal mandates nor financial and human resources to accommodate and protect vulnerable refugees and migrants with irregular status. Some local authorities have begun to address such challenges by engaging in multi-stakeholder partnerships, bringing together local, national, and international actors. Based on research collaborations of the Equal Partnerships project with intermediary cities in Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia and Uganda, this session explores central stakeholders, risks, and opportunities of such partnerships and presents policy recommendations for discussion. Zoom link: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIudOmuqDwiHdSIQR1jrk2tRuqloG123EoW

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Join Zoom Meeting http://us06web.zoom.us/j/85285531740?pwd=SEFBa0%C3%975V21SOFo1dk85dm5TWEhSdz09 Meeting ID: 852 8553 1740 Passcode: 911647

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Professor Tom Freeman, Senior Director, Translational Systems Immunology, Johnson and Johnson Innovative Medicine will give a talk on the application of systems biology approaches to translational medicine. All are welcome to attend.

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This is the first webinar of a new era for CGHE, as David Mills takes over from Simon Marginson as Director. The webinar will begin with a brief discussion of this next stage in CGHE’s development. The main focus of today’s webinar introduces and discusses “Higher Education for Good: Teaching and Learning Futures” . This is an open access book offering ways of thinking, conceptualising and creating possibilities for making and remaking higher education in a time of intersecting global crises. The book, containing work by over 70 authors and artists in 18 countries, has 27 chapters in 5 sections and four pre/post word pieces. The book will be described in terms of content and genres, as will the manifesto towards HE For Good. The second part of the talk will focus on the process of conceptualising and making the book, the selection and peer review process, the commitment to and challenges of a genuinely international book covering Global North and South, building a community of authors, as well as the diamond open access decision and process.

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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: students, staff and researchers from MSD and OUH.

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Part of the Vera Fine-Grodzinski Programme for Writing Jewish Women's Lives Berta Rosenbaum Golahny (1925-2005) was a Boston-area painter and printmaker who blended abstraction and realism, often in a single work. Golahny's parents, immigrants from Eastern Europe who settled in Detroit, promoted Jewish diasporic culture together with social justice, and Golahny's art shares her parents' humanistic, utopian impulse. Much of Golahny’s work is united by a concern with creation. Fascinated by the biblical account of the creation of the world (the Genesis series), the scientific account (the series Being and Becoming and the series Cosmos), the human and animal life-cycle, and the human imagination, Golahny depicted many originary moments. She also explored creation’s opposite, destruction, as in work on the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Landscape of Man in Nuclear Age), the Holocaust, and the Korean War. At the same time, much of her work portrays daily and domestic forms of creation, such as Detroit ironworks and a mother nursing. Golahny explored creative and destructive forces in a life marked by quietly steady creation. This talk, by Golahny's granddaughter, Emily Kopley, is part of a book project that blends biography, memoir, and art criticism. Emily Kopley (BA Yale, PhD Stanford), is the author of Virginia Woolf and Poetry (OUP, 2021), a critical biography. Her essays on Woolf appear in the TLS, Review of English Studies, English Literature in Transition, Teaching Modernist Women's Writing in English (MLA, 2021), Unpacking the Personal Library (Wilfred Laurier UP, 2022), and elsewhere. She is on the board of Woolf Studies Annual and has received grants from the Mellon Foundation, the Robert B. Silvers Foundation, and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. She teaches at McGill University, in the Department of Jewish Studies.

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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 main journal metrics; using Journal Citation Reports and CiteScore Journal Metrics to find journal impact factors; using Essential Science Indicators to find top research by articles, authors, institutions, countries and journals; and the issues and recommendations for using citation analysis to measure impact. Intended audience: Oxford students, researchers and other staff.

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Professor Amina Mama, 'Transnational Feminism in an Age of Genocide' The televised genocide in Gaza has made us all witnesses to the carnage occurring in occupied Palestine. How are we responding to our responsibilities as witnesses? How are women’s movements in formerly colonized African nations responding? What does feminist transnational analysis make visible? What forms of solidarity and activism are emerging in the face of massive and unrelenting state violence against a trapped population of civilian women, children, and men? What legacies of struggle can usefully inform such action? This lecture argues that the many violences perpetrated against women have been the major driver of feminist organizing in the South, and that this continues to be the case in relation to the transnational outrage over the carnage of the Israeli military campaign. Old and new anti-colonial feminist solidarities are being mobilized at multiple levels to join the global resistance demanding an end to the US-backed genocide.

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Emotions provide critical cues into our health and wellbeing. This is of particular importance in the context of mental health, where changes in emotion may signify changes in symptom severity. However, information about emotion and how it varies over time is often accessible only using survey methodology (e.g., ecological momentary assessment, EMA), which can become burdensome to participants over time. Automated speech emotion recognition systems could provide an alternative, providing quantitative measures of emotion using acoustic data captured passively from a consented individual’s environment. However, speech emotion recognition systems often falter when presented with data collected from unconstrained natural environments due to issues with robustness, generalizability, and invalid assumptions. In this talk, I will discuss our journey in speech-centric mental health modeling, explaining whether, how, and when emotion recognition can be applied to natural unconstrained speech data to measure changes in mental health symptom severity.

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Bayesian computation remains onerous at scale for inference under many discrete-valued stochastic process-based models, while these models remain ubiquitous across biology and public health. In this talk, we will explore how one can construct computationally efficient approximations to the gradient of the data likelihood under continuous-time Markov chain (CTMC) models with respect to their high-dimensional parameters. CTMCs underpin the most popular models for learning about how rapidly evolving pathogens change over time and space to give rise to human infection, and the dimensionality of these problems are daunting. With these approximations in hand, a new variant of Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) becomes tractable to explore the parameter posterior, and we bound the approximation error using several small tricks from matrix analysis. This new sampling approach enables the introduction of a novel random-effects CTMC model that captures biological realism previously missing. Applied to the analysis of early SARS-CoV-2 genomes, the random-effects remove bias in inference of the location and timing of the pathogen's split-over into humans, while the approximate-gradient-based machinery is over an order of magnitude more time efficient than conventional sampling approaches.

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This paper proposes novel natural language methods to measure worker rights from collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) for use in empirical economic analysis. Applying unsupervised text-as-data algorithms to a new collection of 30,000 CBAs from Canada in the period 1986-2015, we parse legal obligations (e.g. “the employer shall provide…”) and legal rights (e.g. “workers shall receive…”) from the contract text. We validate that contract clauses provide worker rights, which include both amenities and control over the work environment. Companies that provide more worker rights score highly on a survey indicating pro-worker management practices. Using time-varying province-level variation in labor income tax rates, we find that higher taxes increase the share of worker-rights clauses while reducing pre-tax wages in unionized firms, consistent with a substitution effect away from taxed compensation (wages) toward untaxed amenities (worker rights). Further, an exogenous increase in the value of outside options (from a Bartik instrument for labor demand) increases the share of worker rights clauses in CBAs. Combining the regression estimates, we infer that a one-standard-deviation increase in worker rights is valued at about 5.4% of wages.

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Lecture 2 of the Evans-Pritchard Lecture series Witchcraft, Shrines, and Tindaanship All are welcome to attend in person or via the Teams ID and password below: Meeting ID: 318 331 790 674 Passcode: LEecHc

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Future climate and sustainability leadership within higher education and at MIT seeks to transcend traditional academic silos and drive toward new ways of learning, innovation, collaboration and an unwavering commitment to address the urgent global challenges created by climate change.  Dr. Newman will present the model she launched at MIT built on a scales of impact foundation that recognizes that we cannot solve for sustainability within the walls of our campus alone, as we are completely integrated and reliant upon local, state, national, regional and global systems [from supply chain to policy to natural resources].  She will share how this involves a shift in organisational culture, values, and practices to align with the urgent need for climate action and environmental stewardship.

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Exact venue location: Kirdar Building of the Middle East Centre (MEC), entrance at 68 Woodstock Road, Oxford, OX2 6JF – access to this building is at the north side, next to the bike rack The Boardroom is on the ground floor next to the main staircase of the hallway.

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It is almost a truism to say that schooling systems are structurally unjust. There are stark differences in educational offer and opportunity across the UK. This lecture explores the possibility of reparative frameworks to address the structural injustices of education systems – particularly relating to racial and classed dispossession. The idea of reparation requires us to understand the interconnections between past, present and future in both the formation of injustice and its repair. Arguably, until injustices are actively addressed, they can endure in social institutions – such as education – which also shape lives-to-come. But what does reparation in education look like? A new five-year participatory research project – Repair-Ed – seeks to explore this very question, focusing on the city of Bristol and its histories and geographies of inequality. Professor Arathi Sriprakash argues that injustice is not an inevitability in reparative futures of education: these are new, if challenging, horizons for the politics and practice of education. Arathi Sriprakash is Professor of Sociology and Education at the University of Oxford. She is author of Learning Whiteness: Education and the Settler Colonial State. Her current research examines reparations and reparative justice in education. Learn more at: www.repair-ed.uk

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Addressing a range of contemporary and historical conflicts and daily struggles, this series of talks will explore how violence remains integral to the global political economy, with lasting effects on gendered hierarchies which often extend far beyond immediate war zones.

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Comics industry buyer and trend-spotter James Parker opens up the world of comics as a business. James has been in comics retail for over twenty years and is one of the most respected figures in his field - and he's also a great speaker.

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Tuesday 7th May Dr Aydogdy Kurbanov (Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography at the Academy of Sciences of Turkmenistan/ONGC) Dehistan (South-West Turkmenistan) in the first half of the 1st Millennium CE The territory of south-western Turkmenistan (Balkan welayat, or province, of Turkmenistan) encompassed a cultural and occasional administrative entity known in the historical periods as Vehrkana (Hyrcania in the Greco-Roman West). The Gorgan plain constituted its southern part, and the plain of Misrian, or Dehistan, its northern. In Parthian times, the Arsacids did not fully control Hyrcania, which was, in addition, seriously threatened by nomadic populations. These nomads proved to be so serious a menace that the Parthians were forced to split Hyrcania in two parts: Gorgan remained attached to the Arsacid Empire, while Dehistan was isolated. This situation probably continued into the Sasanian period as well. Several Sasanian rulers made use of the Gorgan plain as a staging post for launching military expeditions against the Chionites, Hephthalites and Kidarites. They also constructed walls there to protect their northeastern domains from these nomads. During this time, sites appeared in the north-west of Dehistan and were mostly established along irrigation canals. In most cases there were heavily fortified fortresses and farms with an obvious military aspect.

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Over the past 50 years, the Cyril Foster Lecture series has delivered engaging lectures from some of the world's most influential policymakers and academics. This year's lecture will be given by Professor Erica Chenoweth, a leading expert on mass movements, nonviolent resistance, terrorism, political violence, revolutions, and state repression. The lecture will be introduced by Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Dr Sir Michael Jacobs, and chaired by Cyril Foster Lecture Chair, Professor Neta Crawford. Professor Erica Chenoweth will explore the puzzling decline in the success of civil resistance movements in the past decade, even as unarmed movements have become more popular worldwide. The findings have implications for the future of nonviolent alternatives to armed struggle, as well as to the ability of pro-democratic movements to defeat authoritarian challenges. Erica Chenoweth is the Academic Dean for Faculty Engagement and the Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at Harvard Kennedy School, Faculty Dean at Pforzheimer House at Harvard College, and a Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute. They study political violence and its alternatives. At Harvard, Chenoweth directs the Nonviolent Action Lab, an innovation hub that provides empirical evidence in support of movement-led political transformation. Event Schedule 4:30pm - 4:55pm: Registration 5pm prompt: The Cyril Foster Lecture 2024 will start; Opening remarks from Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Dr Sir Michael Jacobs Introduction to Professor Erica Chenoweth by Professor Neta Crawford Cyril Foster Lecture 2024: 'On the Declining Success of Civil Resistance' by Professor Erica Chenoweth Q&A, chaired by Professor Neta Crawford Closing remarks by Head of Department of Politics and International Relations, Professor Petra Schleiter 6:30pm - 7:30pm: Drinks Reception About the Cyril Foster Lecture Series This lecture series is the legacy of Cyril A Foster. We know very little about him. Mr Foster owned several small sweet shops in and around London and lived alone in Essex. On his death, he left a bequest to the University, asking us to create an annual lecture series on the ‘elimination of war and the better understanding of the nations of the world’. This wish is particularly unusual, as he had no previous connection to the University. His kind and generous gift continues to promote international cooperation. Previous speakers include prominent figures from the world of politics and policy, from prime ministers and foreign ministers, to secretary-generals of the United Nations and heads of major international organisations, as well as prominent academics. See the full list of past lectures at https://www.politics.ox.ac.uk/cyril-foster-lecture-series

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The impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on our lives prompts profound questions beyond the technical realm. While shaping the future of humanity, AI also challenges diverse worldviews, reducing rich human experiences to data analysis. This pragmatic lens can overshadow aspects of our reality, marginalizing or, at worst, destroying what isn't understood. Understanding is paramount because, in human-machine interactions, misunderstandings may harm only the vulnerable human side. With Islam being integral to many lives, its worldviews, imaginations, and values should be considered in AI development beyond simplistic pattern-recognition and statistical approaches. Therefore, it is important to consider the integration of Islamic epistemological perspectives into AI as a crucial aspect of future research.

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James Skinner’s illustrated 1825 Persian-language Inventory of the Communities of Delhi, the Tashrīh al-Aqwām, includes a painting taken from life of Miyan Himmat Khan kalāwant (d.c.1840), the chief hereditary instrumental musician to the last Mughal emperors Akbar Shah (r.1806–37) and Bahadur Shah Zafar (r.1837–58). But the portrait was simultaneously intended as an ethnographic archetype: Skinner commissioned it to illustrate his entry on "the kalāwant community”, one of 104 distinct people groups he described. Skinner wrote in Persian, and drew on long-standing Indian traditions of writing on ethnographic “types”. But his work also played into the emergent British colonial knowledge project of categorising the communities they now ruled under the term “caste". At the same time, Skinner’s entry is wholly unreconcilable with Himmat Khan’s own musical biography and intellectual output—a co-written music treatise, the Asl al-Usūl (Foundations of Rhythm), which presents a revolutionary modern conceptualisation of the Hindustani tāl (metrical) system. In order to untangle this socio-musical knot, I will juxtapose late Mughal and Conmpany-style ethnographic paintings and written descriptions in Persian, Urdu, Hindi, and English against a new wave of Persian, Urdu and Hindi music-technical works composed c. 1780–1850. The latter reveal the emergence of a paracolonial indigenous modernity in the most authoritative centres of North Indian art-music production, Delhi and Lucknow, running alongside and beyond colonial knowledge projects at the end of the East India Company’s tenure in India.

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*A public lecture hosted by the Laudato Si' Research Institute* This lecture will be relevant to anyone interested in indigenous cosmologies and cosmovisions, and their potential application to global society at this time of planetary crisis. A limited number of places are available for in-person attendance at Campion Hall, University of Oxford. We are also glad to offer a professionally-produced livestream of the lecture. Indigenous languages and cultures often fall victim to oversimplified judgments: sometimes, they are excessively romanticized; at other times, they are dismissed as primitive and superstitious. However, a deeper inquiry reveals that indigenous peoples maintain a highly complex and nuanced understanding of the human-nature relationship. Indeed, this has the potential to inform our own (western) situation at this time of planetary crisis. The lecture will explore indigenous peoples’ understanding of the natural world. On the one hand, Nature is acknowledged as a parent: life-giving, nurturing, caring and protecting. On the other hand, Nature is seen as a fearsome, unpredictable and capricious force. Through mythologies, rituals and social practices, Nature is both revered, but also feared, shunned and even “hated”. These two sides are often personified and projected onto spiritual beings and cosmologies. Such conceptualisations shape how indigenous peoples relate to each other in familial, social and cultural units, and how they function with respect to their environmental situation. By analysing these understandings, the lecture will show how indigenous worldviews are based on relational values of love, care, fear and awe. These values can inform western epistemologies, worldviews and policy approaches, especially in light of the challenges of the global socio-ecological crisis. *Dr Vijay D’Souza*, Integral Ecology Visiting Fellow at the Laudato Si' Research Institute, will approach this topic with reference to critical analysis of indigenous languages, cultures and worldviews in Northeast India, where he has worked for nearly two decades.

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Join the Oxford IR Society and the Oxford Diplomatic Society to discuss the ethics of economic sanctions with Professor Cécile Fabre. When: 7 May 5:30pm Where: MBI AI Jaber Auditorium, Corpus Christi College The Oxford International Relations Society and the Oxford Diplomatic Society are jointly hosting Professor Cécile Fabre for a lecture on the ethics of economic sanctions. Sanctions can be installed with ethical purposes, but they also inflict damage on the target society and its people. When, if at all, are these nowadays ubiquitous tools of foreign policy ethically justified? And what does this tell us about the sanction regimes that are in place today? The lecture will be followed by a Q&A from the audience. Professor Cécile Fabre is an expert on the ethics of international affairs and foreign policy. She is currently Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. She is a Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Oxford, and affiliated with the Faculty of Philosophy, the Department of Politics and International Relations, and Nuffield College, Oxford. Her research interests include just war theory, the ethics of economic statecraft, the ethics of espionage, theories of distributive justice, and the philosophy of democracy. She is author of the book ‘‘Economic Statecraft: Human Rights, Sanctions, and Conditionality’’. Please register to receive updates on the event! Hope to see you there. ~ Oxford International Relations Society, Oxford Diplomatic Society

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Livestream link: https://www.youtube.com/@stantonyscollegeuniversity2705/streams Local governments are at the core of two of the UK’s biggest climate challenges: transportation and buildings and infrastructure. How can the UK both improve and green transport so that we can all get around more easily while meeting our climate targets? At the same time, we know that addressing climate change requires rapid infrastructure development. But many studies show that building in the UK is slower and more expensive than in other countries. How do we build what we need without losing what is important? What can local leaders do to deliver on these imperatives, and what support do they need for national government to be successful? Biographies: Thomas Hale is Professor at the Blavatnik School of Government and St Antony’s College, Oxford. His research explores how we can manage transnational problems effectively and fairly. He co-leads the Net Zero Tracker and the Net Zero Regulation and Policy Hub. His latest book is Long Problems: Climate Change and the Challenge of Governing across Time (Princeton, 2024). Chris Skidmore served as MP for Kingswood from 2010-2024. In 2022-2023 he led the Government’s net zero review. He was Minister of State jointly at the Department for Education and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy 2019-2020. He was previously Minister of State at the Department of Health and Social Care between, at the Department for Education, and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. Chris also served as Parliamentary Secretary at the Cabinet Office. Chris was educated at Bristol Grammar School before studying history at Oxford, where he continued with postgraduate research. He is a Visiting Parliamentary Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford, for the 2023-2024 academic year. Alex Sobel was elected MP for Leeds North West in 2017. A graduate of the University of Leeds, his background is in the social enterprise sector. In 2019 Alex helped form the Net Zero All-Party Parliamentary Group. In 2020 he was appointed as the shadow minister for Tourism and Heritage, and in 2021 we was appointed as shadow minister for Nature Recovery and the Domestic Environment in the Opposition DEFRA Team. He is a Visiting Parliamentary Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford, for the 2023-2024 academic year. Christopher Hammond is the Chief Executive of UK100. Formerly the director of UK100’s award-nominated Membership & Insights team, Christopher has doubled the size of the network and launched the Climate Leadership Academy and Local Power in Action programme since joining in June 2021. Previously, Christopher served as the elected Leader of Southampton City Council. In 2020, he was shortlisted for ‘Leader of the Year’ in the LGIU Councillor Awards. Christopher holds a degree from Bournemouth University, which named him its 2019 Alumni of the Year.

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The panel discussion as part of the Kyoto Prize at Oxford 2024 will see the Laureates Dr Elliott H Lieb and Nalini Malani engage in a conversation with Professor Ngaire Woods, Dean of the Blavatnik School, discussing insights from their careers, future challenges and which skill each Laureates wished they had outside of their professional field. In 2023, the Kyoto Prize was awarded to Dr Elliott H Lieb, 2023 Kyoto Prize Laureate for Basic Science, a pioneer of mathematical research in physics, chemistry, and quantum information science based on many-body physics, and to Nalini Malani, 2023 Laureate for Arts and Philosophy, an artist from the non-Western world who has faced the predicaments of the oppressed, pioneered artistic expression representing the voice of the voiceless, and contributed to the ‘decentralisation’ of art. Dr Ryuzo Yanagimachi, the 2023 Kyoto Prize Laureate in Advanced Technology, sadly passed away last year. He is recognised for his ground-breaking work in the development of essential assisted reproductive technologies in modern society through both basic research and technological development. Colleagues of his from the University of Hawai’I will offer their thoughts and memories about the Professor and his work.

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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.

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Modern researchers need to have an up-to-date understanding of working with research data. This relates equally to the material they create themselves and that obtained from other sources. Academic institutions, funding bodies and even publishers are now expecting competence in these issues. This workshop will provide a grounding in the different ways quantitative and qualitative data is being made available to benefit researchers. By the end of the session you will also have some insight into how your own future work could add to the process and become part of the research discourse. The course aims to provide an overview of macro and micro data sources available at the University of Oxford, including national data archives, subscription services, business data, and offers some pointers for further searching. Topics to be covered will include: overview of the landscape of data sources for health researchers, social scientists and most other researchers; how to obtain macro and micro data via specific sources; qualitative and quantitative data resources; additional data services such as the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), Eurostat, Researchfish and the Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative's online interactive databank and global Multidimensional Poverty Index; plus specialist sources for business and economic data subscribed to by Oxford University; the value of resources for informing research design and methodological innovation; and the importance of data management and cybersecurity. Intended audience: Oxford students, researchers and other staff.

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Science, Theology, and Humane Philosophy 8 May 10:30 to 9 May 14:00 St Cross College, Oxford Ian Ramsey Centre and the Humane Philosophy Project Participants are invited for a thought-provoking discussion of the intersection of science, theology, and humane philosophy, at an event that also marks the culmination in Oxford of a five-year project devoted to new horizons in Central and Eastern Europe. The event will include a valedictory lecture by Andrew Pinsent, on the subject "Does Humane Philosophy Need Grace?" at 11:15 on 9 May, marking the conclusion of Dr Pinsent's enormously successful decade as Research Director of the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion, University of Oxford. Other participants will include: , Tatiana Barkowskiy, John Cottingham, Arlyn Culwick, Daniel de Hann, Mark Harris, Samuel Hughes, Alister McGrath, Andrew Pinsent, William Simpson, Mikolaj Slawkowski-Rode, Nick Waghorn, and Ralph Weir. The event will take place at St Cross College, Oxford. Light refreshments will be provided. Places are free but limited and registration is required.

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There is growing interest in the concept of an ‘adolescent sensitive period,’ but this phrase can mean many things. This concept can be explored in laboratory mice by manipulating experience during development and testing behavioral or brain function in adulthood. Another approach is to compare adolescent versus adult learning and brain function to look for adolescent gain of function. In my talk, I will share what we have learned using both approaches. I then hope to engage the audience in discussion of the idea that an adolescent sensitive period may exist in rodents for learning and decision making (and fronto-basal ganglia circuit function) to support adaptive foraging behavior (Lin et al., 2020;2022).

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I present snapshots of my seventy-year journey through the world of science, first as a would-be engineer, then as a physicist and later as a mathematician and a mathematical physicist. In many encounters with colleagues in different areas of research I learned that mathematics and a mathematical perspective can be pivotal in developing our thinking about physics. This fundamental connection between mathematics and physics was not always accepted at the beginning of my career, and it was even vigorously denied by some mathematicians and physicists. I mention some of my work to illustrate the value of mathematical physics for theoretical physics and to pure mathematics, the first being the Polaron bound found with K. Yamazaki in Kyoto in 1957. Another is the "ice problem", where I calculated the number of ways to colour a chess board with only three colours so that neighbouring squares never have the same colour. Professor Elliott H Lieb is introduced by Professor Shivaji Sondhi, Wykeham Professor of Physics, University of Oxford. The lecture is followed by a Q&A.

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Professor Plun-Favreau’s primary field of interest is mitochondrial dysfunction in disease. Following a PhD in France in signal transduction, she undertook postdoctoral training at Cancer Research UK, London Research Institute. The discoveries and work she undertook in the mitochondria and cancer area led her towards neurodegeneration and she successfully applied for an MRC Career Development Fellowship to work at the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology. In 2013, she accepted a Senior Lecturer position at the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology and was appointed as Professor in 2019. Her laboratory has carried out significant work on the molecular pathways associated with mitophagy and other mitochondrial dysfunctions in neurodegenerative conditions. The approaches they undertake require live cell microscopy and complex molecular and cellular biology, and provide a more complete picture of the pathways that play a role in the pathogenesis of neurodegeneration. Working with academics, clinicians and industry at the interface of basic and applied research, her ultimate aim is to help guide the development of clinically relevant therapeutic strategies for neurodegeneration.

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Since 2008, the European Union has been engulfed in several crises. While distinct, these crises are feeding into each other and are testing the capacity and resilience of EU and member states, bringing forward common policy questions and new forms of cooperation. The permanent character of this state of crisis has made analysts talk about our times as the age of permacrisis. As a result, a trend towards a new mode of ‘coordinative Europeanization’ in EU decision-making has been observed since the Covid-19 crisis. In this paper we first define the new mode of coordinative Europeanization and outline its key features. We argue that the recent crises have altered the EU-member states’ relationship in pursuit of fast policy responses. We analyse the reasons behind this changing relationship as well as the possible avenues it may take. We then discuss the challenges caused by coordinative Europeanization and how it relates to pre-existing de-Europeanization tendencies. We close the paper with an analysis of the significance of our findings and we propose new avenues for research.

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Slack -- the underutilization of factors of production -- varies systematically with development. Using novel and detailed measures of the utilization of labour, capital, and input factors overall from a large representative sample of firms in rural and urban Kenya, we show that utilization is increasing in firm size, market access, and local GDP per capita. We argue that indivisibilities of inputs are a key driver of capacity underutilization in poor economies. We present a model of capacity choice where firms face indivisibilities in at least one input. Embedded in spatial general equilibrium, the model rationalizes the endogenous emergence of slack in steady state, and generates important predictions for macroeconomic dynamics in low- and middle-income economies. We validate the model using reduced-form estimates of the general equilibrium effects of cash transfers from a large-scale RCT in Western Kenya. We provide transparency and innovate methodologically by pre-registering parts of our structural estimation routine. Consistent with the model, the data show that (1) supply curves are highly elastic, (2) output responses to demand shocks are substantially larger for low-utilization sectors and firms, (3) aggregate inflation in response to the cash transfer shock is low but there exists some inflation in higher-demand regions. The findings suggest that input indivisibilities are a key friction in developing settings, rationalizing the existence of large transfer multipliers in poor economies. Written with Tilman Graff, Edward Miguel, Felix Samy Soliman, Nachiket Shah, Michael Walker

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Taylor Group 12:30-13:00 Speaker(s): Dr Dimitris Vavoulis and Prof Anna Schuh Title(s): "Nanopore Whole Genome Sequencing of Liquid Biopsies for Cancer Detection" Lu Group 13:00-13:30 Speaker(s): Adam Norton-Steele Title(s): "Identifying phenotype-genotype-function coupling in live-cell imaging using SPOT"

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Learn about effective strategies for continuous co-design of your research with key stakeholders for policy-oriented impact. This workshop is open to: Oxford University researchers planning to develop an Agile Sprint; Oxford University researchers working on other applied research projects who wish to learn about effective ongoing co-creation with key stakeholders and engagement with new stakeholders to shape research for policy impact; previous Agile Sprint researchers wishing to review their experience of co-creation and planning for impact for use in the future. Agile Sprints are designed to provide environmental research answers to time-critical policy problems in a way that enables rapid uptake of findings by decision-makers. You will benefit from learning from previous Agile Sprints on how to manage the co-creation process all the way through the research project to get the best input and engagement from a range of stakeholders to help shape your research and outputs for rounded policy impact. By the end of this workshop, you will understand: The relationship between the pre-Sprint co-creation process and ongoing co-creation during the Sprint to remain policy focused, facilitate knowledge exchange between researchers and stakeholders, and shape outputs based on decision-maker needs How to identify gaps in your stakeholder networks to draw in further expertise and round out the policy relevance at regional and local scale where applicable, including communities impacted by the policy considerations How to determine within your team who has the experience, knowledge, and relationships to engage effectively with government, and how to support colleagues with strengthening engagement and relationship-building How to weave the co-creation process into your Sprint research and milestones, and plan for a primary policy-focused output supported by a primary academic output. “Policy cycles typically run to much shorter and unpredictable timescales than academic research, and policymakers seeking evidence often want the best available answer at the time. Strategic engagement and co-creation are key to ensuring that your research has timely impact – the Agile Sprints are designed to run on this principle without compromising on the quality of academic output.” -Dr Anupama Sen Book your place on the workshop using the links provided. If you need to cancel your place, please do so no later than 48 hours before the workshop. By booking on this workshop, you have agreed to the externally facing use of the recording. Book another session, by viewing the series event page. Participation: Please note you will be expected to actively participate, which includes joining discussion, listening, asking questions, and contributing to activities.

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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 including bibliographic databases, reference sources, primary sources, maps, audio-visual resources, and data sources. Intended audience: Oxford students, researchers and other staff.

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For our next talk, in Digital Phenotyping, we will hear from Dr Stefan van Duijvenboden, Researcher in Health Data Science, Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford. We are delighted to host Stefan in what promises to be a great talk! Title: Prognostic significance & genetic basis of premature ventricular contractions during exercise Date: 8th May 2024 Time: 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm Venue: Big Data Institute, Seminar Room 0; followed by refreshments in the atrium Speaker(s): Dr Stefan van Duijvenboden, Researcher in Health Data Science, Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford Abstract: The clinical consequences and underlying biology of exercise-induced premature ventricular contractions (PVCs) in asymptomatic individuals remain unclear. In the first part of this work, we trained a neural network to count PVCs from electrocardiogram recordings taken during exercise and recovery in 48 315 participants from UK Biobank without known cardiovascular disease. We show that different PVC burden during and after exercise are associated with increased risk for major adverse cardiovascular events independently of established clinical risk factors. To further investigate the underlying mechanisms, we conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) and identified 4 loci for PVC burden during exercise, and 1 locus for PVC burden during recovery. Candidate genes included CRIM1, FLNC, and BAG3 for which mutations have been linked in the pathogenesis of (arrhythmogenic) cardiomyopathy. Bio: I was trained as a technical physician (University of Twente) and performed my PhD studies in biomedical engineering (UCL) where I studied the neural mechanisms of cardiac stability. I then joined the Electrogenomics Group (QMUL/UCL) where I studied the genetic architecture of exercise ECG traits under supervision of Profs Munroe, Tinker, and Lambiase. Currently, I am working as a researcher in health data science within the Wearables group (prof. Doherty) at the Big Data Institute and Nuffield Department of Population Health. I develop methods to analyse complex time-series datasets to investigate if wearable ECG sensors can improve the prediction of, and discovery of novel mechanisms for, cardiovascular disease. Hybrid Option: Please note that these meetings are closed meetings and only open to members of the University of Oxford. Please respect our speakers and do not share the link with anyone outside of the University. The purpose of these seminars is to foster more communication among employees throughout the University, so we strongly advise in-person attendance whenever feasible. Microsoft Teams meeting Meeting ID: 372 228 697 690 Passcode: LD3WgU ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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!

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An introduction to carrying out searches for literature. Librarians from the Bodleian Health Care Libraries will demonstrate how to construct a search strategy from a research question and apply it to range of library resources. By the end of this session you will be able to: describe the literature searching process and aims; build a successful search strategy; use several bibliographic databases relevant to medicine and health care; and source highly cited papers relevant to your research. Intended audience: students, staff and researchers from MSD and OUH.

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The framework of Economic Complexity (EC) describes economic systems as bipartite networks where economic actors are connected to the economic activities (e.g. countries, regions) in which they are competitive (e.g. exported products, patented technologies). The topological features of these networks can be leveraged to build centrality measures, that are shown to be predictive of future economic growth, and to predict future actor-activities links. The latter prediction leverages what is called the principle of relatedness: patterns of co-location of economic activities reveal similarity among them, and economic actors are more likely to engage in new activities that are similar to those to which they are already connected. These bipartite networks are shown to exhibit various degrees of nestedness, and this topological feature plays an important role not only in shaping the mathematical form of the economic complexity metrics, but also in providing a conceptual connection with different fields, such as ecology. When using the EC framework we implicitly define economic actors as entities at a fixed geographical or organizational scale (e.g. countries, regions, cities), but the question of how these scales interact is largely unaddressed: does nestedness break down at some scale? How is it recovered under aggregation? How do economic complexity metrics change by partition and aggregation of territories? Are there effects that emerge only at higher scales? When does the principle of relatedness break down? Does it have an optimal scale? Here we try to address some of these questions by leveraging fine-grained data on Italian firms, with the long-term goal of making the framework able to provide better predictions, more actionable insights, and to improve our theoretical understanding of the role of geography in shaping the observed patterns of diversification and nestedness. About the speaker: Andrea Tacchella is lead researcher at the Enrico Fermi Research Center (CREF) in Rome, where he studies economic complexity and innovation dynamics. Previously he has worked at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission and has been a consultant for several national and international policy making institutions, such as the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

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Join us for a captivating 60-minute seminar as we delve into the world of personality diversity in academia. From unlocking the power of confident communication for introverts to effectively managing diverse teams, this talk will equip you with practical strategies for success. Learn how to navigate challenging academic environments, attract diverse talent, and create relationships that stand the test of time. Discover the secrets to thriving under pressure, developing well-being rituals, and ensuring that every voice is heard in academic spaces. Don't miss this opportunity to gain valuable insights into the nuanced dynamics of personality diversity and how it shapes success in academia.

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For the majority of humankind the quotidian experience of reality in the past and in the present are different from those who dominate and manipulate world views in an oppressive manner, but the paradigm for a future could be Different. As an artist I believe my path of life in all humility, is to contribute to the advancement of society and humankind. Our future in the 21st century urgently needs not only a greater balance between technology and human spirit, as Kazuo Inamori envisioned, but also a much-needed re-balance within the human spirit. For the last the cognisance of the feminine side, can manifest a new philosophical paradigm of thought that is urgently needed. I use the metaphor of the mythical figure of Cassandra who could foresee true prophecies but was never believed. This female side of the human psyche can open our eyes, and if therein the prognosis of the future is not suppressed, one can make sense of this life and steer it into a different, more humane direction, with the formulation of new civilisational values. Nalini Malani is introduced by Professor Mallica Kumbera Landrusi, Keeper of Eastern Art and Curator of Indian, Himalayan and Southeast Asian Art, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford. The lecture is followed by a Q&A.

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This week, Yi-Ting Chang will be speaking about Engineering the state: Taiwan's satellite production amid geopolitical tensions Satellite technology has proven crucial for states that find themselves at the forefront of inter-state conflict and war. However, it is as yet little understood what role such technology has played for those polities that lack recognition. Focusing on FORMOSAT-5, Taiwan's first locally manufactured high-resolution Earth observation satellite launched in 2017, this article examines global satellite equipment regulations and domestic engineers' efforts. Contrary to existing state-building literature which emphasizes the de facto state’s dependency on a patron state, ethnographic research at TASA reveals that engineers are actively developing technological autonomy to strategically navigate the power dynamics between Taiwan and the Western countries. This article emphasizes the often-overlooked role of engineers in shaping the geo- and astropolitics by highlighting their role in nation-building and outer space geopolitics. About the speaker Yi-Ting Chang is a PhD candidate at Oxford’s School of Geography and the Environment. Her broad research interests lie in critical geopolitics and science and technology studies. She has been working on vertical geo-politics, focusing especially on power, body, materiality, and infrastructure in the three-dimensional world. She is a founding member of the Taiwan Space Generation (TSG) and a pivotal figure within the TSG Reporter Team. In September 2023, she co-convened “Off-Earth Geopolitics,” a workshop at the University of Oxford. Her DPhil thesis aims to investigate Taiwan's outer space history and politics against the backdrop of the ongoing cross-strait tension. Her PhD is fully funded by Clarendon Fund Scholarship with joint partnerships with St. John's College and the Taiwan-Oxford Scholarship. She obtained her BA from National Taiwan Normal University (graduate with honour) and MSc from National Taiwan University (with an awarded thesis).

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2 x 25 minutes seminars followed by networking drinks Benoit Van Den Eynde: Improving therapeutic cancer vaccines through combination with other therapies César López-Camacho: Advancing mRNA Vaccine Technologies at University of Oxford

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The Family of Ali as Political Thinkers Nebil Husayn (University of Miami) Just Governance in the teachings and Practice of Imam Ali Tahera Qutbuddin (Oxford)

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Week 3 (5 – 11 May) Wednesday 8th May Recollection Lecture: Modernity, Disenchantment, and the Mediaeval Discovery of Nature. Hans Boersma (Professor in Ascetical Theology, Nashotah House). Wednesday 8th May The Peter Toon Memorial Lecture: Modernity, Disenchantment, and the Mediaeval Discovery of Nature Hans Boersma (Professor in Ascetical Theology, Nashotah House). Marie-Dominique Chenu famously located the “discovery of nature”— and the source of modern disenchantment—in the twelfth century. This lecture picks up Chenu’s argument by tracing the separation of nature and the supernatural beyond the late Middle Ages to the theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas. In light of the theological changes introduced by Aquinas, we should sympathetically reappraise the traditionalist Bishop Stephen’s condemnations issued in 1277. In short, the secularism of modernity requires that we read creation not primarily as substance but as relationship: the harmonious chant of the love that is God.

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The week after the May 2024 local elections will be an ideal time to take stock of British politics. The results of the locals will provide key clues as to the outcome of the general election due by January 2025. If that general election has already happened, then there will be even more to analyse, and a key moment to ask: what comes next for Britain? Join our expert panel chaired by Trinity’s Fellow and Tutor in Politics, Professor Stephen Fisher, who is also a long-standing BBC Election Night analyst.

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Over the past few decades historians have investigated paleoclimate data seeking answers to long-standing questions in the premodern world that may be linked to climate variability. At the same time, scientists have sought to find in historical knowledge keys to better understand the impact of climate on societies. Have these collaborations enhanced our understanding of climate’s role in shaping the human past? In this talk, Professor Di Cosmo, Luce Foundation Professor in East Asian Studies in Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, will examine the results yielded by interdisciplinary research on climate and history, and the issues they raise in terms of methodology, theoretical assumptions, and the general goals of a climatic “turn" in historical research. This is a joint event with the Oxford Martin Programme on Changing Global Orders, the Oxford Centre for European History and the Oxford Centre for Global History. Please note this event is online-only.

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Over the past few decades historians have investigated paleoclimate data seeking answers to long-standing questions the premodern world that may be linked to climate variability. At the same time, scientists have sought to find in historical knowledge keys to better understand the impact of climate on societies. Have these collaborations enhanced our understanding of climate’s role in shaping the human past? This talk will examine the results yielded by interdisciplinary research on climate and history, and the issues they raise in terms of methodology, theoretical assumptions, and the general goals of a climatic “turn" in historical research. *Nicola Di Cosmo* is the Luce Foundation Professor in East Asian Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, USA) since 2003. He received his PhD from the Department of Uralic and Altaic Studies (now Central Eurasian Studies) at Indiana University in 1991, and held research and teaching positions at the University of Cambridge, Harvard University, and the University of Canterbury (New Zealand). His main field of research is the history of the relations between China and Inner Asia from prehistory to the modern period. Within that broad area he has published widely on the history (political, military, and economic) of China’s relations with steppe nomads, and on Mongol and Manchu history. His most recent works explore the use of proxy data from climatology and other palaeosciences in the study of China and Central Asia, with special reference to early Eurasian nomads, the Mongol empire, and the Qing dynasty. Most recently, he has collaborated with climatologists and archaeologists in the research project "Volcanoes-Climate-History" at ZiF (Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Forschung, Bielefeld University, Germany) from 2021 to 2024. _This talk is organised in conjunction with the Oxford Centre for European History and the Centre for Global History._

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The article aims to theorize about critical data studies with Latin America beyond the framework of data colonialism, arguing that the long history of social thought in the region can contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the datafication. It discusses views around dependence, oppressions, and liberation, debating how Latin American authors can be useful for current critical data studies, in a more nuanced and complex vision. It presents the theoretical contributions of Lelia Gonzalez, dependency theorists and Enrique Dussel. Dependency theorists criticize evolutionary frameworks of development and can contribute to discussions around data sovereignty and overexploitation of labor. Gonzalez contributes to a complex vision of Amefrica Ladina, articulating multiple forms of oppression. Enrique Dussel presents a theory of technology considering totality and proposes an ethics of liberation that can be related to alternatives toward data justice and data commons. All theoretical frameworks contribute to thinking about datafication with Latin America not as an isolated phenomenon, but in relation to other countries in the world, and as an analytical key for the construction of alternatives. All perspectives are related to current debates on critical data studies and can make an important contribution to the construction of critical theories about data that consider Latin America also as a site of knowledge production.

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For details see https://www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/events/humanitarian-extractivism-the-digital-transformation-past-present-future

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Barbara Savage presents a powerful and inspiring biography of Merze Tate (1905–1996), a trailblazing Black woman scholar and world traveller. Born in rural Michigan during the Jim Crow era, the bold and irrepressible Merze Tate (1905–1996) refused to limit her intellectual ambitions, despite living in what she called a “sex and race discriminating world”. Against all odds, through her brilliance and hard work Tate earned degrees in international relations from Oxford (1935) and a doctorate in government from Harvard (1941). She then joined the faculty of Howard University, where she taught for three decades of a long life spanning the tumultuous twentieth century. Tate was one of the few black women academics of her generation and a prolific scholar with a wide range of interests. This book revives and critiques Tate's prolific and prescient body of scholarship, with topics ranging from nuclear arms limitations to race and imperialism in Asia, the Pacific, and Africa. Her quest for adventure took her on extensive trips throughout Europe, as well as around the world twice, traveling solo with her cameras in hand. Tate credited her success to other women, Black and white, who help her realize her dream of becoming a scholar. Barbara Savage’s lucid and skilled rendering of Tate’s story is built on more than a decade of research. Tate’s life and work challenge provincial approaches to African American and American history, women's history, the history of education, diplomatic history, and international thought.

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This term’s Fiction and Other Minds seminar will be hosting Prof John Sutton to discuss the topic of Place and Memory: The Aesthetics of Constructing the Past. Traces of many past events are sometimes layered or superposed, in brain, body, and world alike. This is one reason that relations between place and memory are complex and often hard to manage, as we access many past events and coexisting emotions. Cognitive philosophy, memory studies, and the arts alike are increasingly concerned with the difficulties of engaging appropriately with places with multiple or difficult pasts. In this paper, Sutton sketches a provisional aesthetics of superposition and urban palimpsests: case studies include Norman Klein's multimedia fiction Bleeding Through: Layers of Los Angeles, Janet Cardiff's site-specific urban audio walks, and William Kentridge's short films. John Sutton is Leverhulme International Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Stirling, and in 2022–2023 was a fellow at the Paris Institute for Advanced Study. His work addresses memory, skill, and collaboration, and integrates conceptual, experimental, and ethnographic methods. With Kath Bicknell, he coedited Collaborative Embodied Performance: Ecologies of Skill (Bloomsbury, 2022). Topics of his recent papers include joint expertise, creativity in film-making, and cognitive change in the Neolithic period. The seminar is convened by Professor Ben Morgan (ben.morgan@worc.ox.ac.uk) and Dr Naomi Rokotnitz (naomi.rokotnitz@worc.ox.ac.uk). As always, the talk will be followed by drinks for all attendees. https://occt.web.ox.ac.uk/event/fiction-and-other-minds-place-and-memory-the-aesthetics-of-constructing-the-past

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This term’s Fiction and Other Minds seminar will be hosting Prof John Sutton to discuss the topic of Place and Memory: The Aesthetics of Constructing the Past. Traces of many past events are sometimes layered or superposed, in brain, body, and world alike. This is one reason that relations between place and memory are complex and often hard to manage, as we access many past events and coexisting emotions. Cognitive philosophy, memory studies, and the arts alike are increasingly concerned with the difficulties of engaging appropriately with places with multiple or difficult pasts. In this paper, Sutton sketches a provisional aesthetics of superposition and urban palimpsests: case studies include Norman Klein's multimedia fiction Bleeding Through: Layers of Los Angeles, Janet Cardiff's site-specific urban audio walks, and William Kentridge's short films. John Sutton is Leverhulme International Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Stirling, and in 2022–2023 was a fellow at the Paris Institute for Advanced Study. His work addresses memory, skill, and collaboration, and integrates conceptual, experimental, and ethnographic methods. With Kath Bicknell, he coedited Collaborative Embodied Performance: Ecologies of Skill (Bloomsbury, 2022). Topics of his recent papers include joint expertise, creativity in film-making, and cognitive change in the Neolithic period. About the Seminar Series: The Fiction and Other Minds seminar series showcases current research in the Cognitive Humanities by hosting scholars working at the interface between literary studies, visual and performance art, phenomenology, philosophy, and the cognitive sciences. The seminars explore how features investigated by the cognitive sciences can be tested and expanded across different cultural contexts, media, and artistic genres. In particular, we explore how literary texts often challenge and differentiate theoretical insights—especially through their attention to the culturally situated aspects of cognition—and how cognitively informed approaches to literature can deepen our understanding of the embodied and affective processes that underpin meaning-making, including literary reading.

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*Description:* St Josemaría promoted a lay spirituality that regarded professional, social and family relations as the principal setting for our encounter with Christ, leading the believer to ‘love the world passionately’. This session will explore to what extent this love for the world also entails love for the natural world, leading to a new spiritual consideration of all creatures. *Content:* e. Theological context of ecotheology. f. The extension of St Josemaria’s theology of work to the care of Creation. *Reading in advance:* Pope Francis, _Laudato si’_ (nn. 202-246) (https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html)

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Lecture Two ‘Spirit and Blood: Between Communitas and Kinship’ [Wednesday 8 May, from 5:15 to 6:45 pm, Harris Lecture Theatre, Oriel College] The Turnerian concept of existential communitas famously presents the pilgrim as temporary stranger to the world, disciplined within liminal or liminoid spaces to render the self open to universal and anonymized others. Blood yields to spirit, friendship to fellowship, presaging later anthropological concerns—especially in studies of both Christianity and modernity—over inherent conflicts between mediation and transcendence. In this lecture, I reverse these analytical polarities, emphasizing the significance of intimate intersections and calibrations between pilgrimage and kinship, the spiritual and the social, optation and obligation. Exploring blood as central metaphor of connectedness and flow as well as sacrifice, I present a vision of pilgrimage as ritualized, embodied refraction of relations among kin, whether living or dead.

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Economic statecraft is often talked about, but relatively poorly understood; the topic finds itself somewhere in the somewhat awkward space between economics and international relations, and often also somewhere in between ‘war’ and ‘peace’. It is often too simplistically labelled as being a weak and ineffective substitute for ‘real’ action. In this seminar Maria will approach the topic from the perspective of complexity and influence, shedding light on how to analyse the strategic utility of economic statecraft in its appropriate context. Maria de Goeij is a senior associate at the Changing Character of War Centre at Oxford University. Before joining the CCW centre Maria led a team of intelligence analysts at TRSSI, a subsidiary of Thomson Reuters. She has been working as a consultant and advisor in both the public and private sector. Her latest publication on the topic of complex adaptive systems and the analysis and influence of strategic behaviour be found here:  https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol53/iss4/14/ . She is currently working on a book chapter about economic statecraft from the perspective of systemic influence. Maria has a BA degree in European Studies from The Hague University and an MSc degree in Crisis and Security Management from Leiden University. 

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Camille Ralphs is a poet, critic and editor. Her first book, After You Were, I Am, was published by Faber and Faber in March 2024. Her poems and translations have appeared in magazines including the New York Review of Books, The Poetry Review, The Spectator and The London Magazine, and she has released three pamphlets: Malkin (2015), which was shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award; uplifts & chains (2020); and Daydream College for Bards (2023). She writes critical articles for outlets and publications including The Poetry Foundation, The Telegraph, The Poetry Review and the Los Angeles Review of Books, produces a regular column for Poetry London and conducts an interview series for Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal. Camille is the Poetry Editor at the Times Literary Supplement.

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Please join John Bowers KC and the Oxford International Relations Society for a Principal's Conversation entitled 'Ukraine and Gaza: the challenges for Western Democracy', with Brasenose College alumnus, Con Coughlin. Con Coughlin is Defence and Foreign Affairs Editor at the Daily Telegraph and a world-renowned expert on the Middle East and global security issues. He is the author of several critically-acclaimed books, including Saddam: The Secret Life and Winston Churchill's First War: Young Winston at War with the Afghans. He also writes for The Wall Street Journal and The Atlantic Monthly.

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Please log on here to attend https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83752251729

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Abstract: The British Empire was an elaborate project of systematic violence and the juridical ideal of the ‘rule of law’ was one weapon in the coloniser’s arsenal. Or at least this is a theme developed within the growing literature on Empire (e.g., Caroline Elkins, Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire (London: Penguin, 2022)). In many ways, this theme contextualises a general point advanced by certain legal philosophers—the idea that, to borrow from Professor Joseph Raz, the rule of law sharpens the knife of law but does not tell us whether its use is just or unjust. This view has not gone unchallenged. E.P. Thompson insisted that even in the face of an unjust legal system the rule of law remains an unqualified human good (a surprising conclusion for a Marxist social historian). In my presentation, I offer some reflections on competing approaches to the rule of law by drawing examples from the history of relations between the British Empire and Indigenous nations in North America. Was an intersocietal rule of law possible between such radically different societies? I consider some examples of how treaty relations may be understood as an attempt, even if flawed, at building a kind of cross-cultural rule of law. I conclude by offering some observations on how historic Crown-Indigenous treaties are relevant for the project of ‘reconciliation’ in the law of Canada today.

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LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of this session you will understand more about:  What experience and characteristics you need to have to gain a fellowship.  The application process.  How to work with University’s systems and procedures to optimise your application and its chance of success.  You will have an opportunity to practice interviewing/being interviewed for fellowship applications.

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What does artificial intelligence mean for photography? Not merely for the creation and manipulation of photographs, but for the cultures to which they belong: for reportage, for documentation, and for the creative arts. With AI remaining a dominant thread in public discourse and our attention repeatedly drawn to hotly debated examples of digital intervention in photographs, we stand at a point of cultural shift - a shift in access to creation and manipulation, and a shift in trust and perception. At this threshold, Maison Française d’Oxford and Digital Scholarship at Oxford are pleased to bring together speakers from different fields of photographic discourse to discuss the nature of photography in times of artificial intelligence. PROGRAMME From the decisive moment to the eternal flux of prompts: AI and the history of photography – 10am-12pm Michael Pritchard (Independent Scholar, Consultant, and former Director, the Royal Photographic Society, UK) Alexandre Portron (Professor in Private Law, Université de Poitiers, France) Alan Capel (Chief Commercial Officer, SmartFrame Technologies, UK) Type, Publish, Curate: Opportunities and challenges of image-generating AI – 2-4pm Michael Christopher Brown (Artist & Photojournalist, USA – Online) Nicolas Jimenez (Director of Photography, Le Monde, France) Katy Barron (Director, Photo Oxford, UK)

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Persistent Identifiers (PID’s) provide a consistent way of digitally referencing items that aims to be more reliable than a simple web address. This is important for scholarly communications because citation and attribution are essential elements of scholarly apparatus. This course will introduce you to the concept of Persistent Identifiers, the problems that they address, and how they can be used in the academic environment to simplify some tasks. It will examine several different types of identifier, some of which are currently widely used (DOI’s for publications/data and ORCID’s for researchers) and others which are emerging in importance. Intended audience: Oxford students, researchers and other staff.

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Baptists care about the Bible, believing it is of utmost importance that the Bible is read and interpreted—as a source of faith and guidance for the church. Baptists have produced a number of notable biblical scholars, especially in the twentieth century, whose work has been widely read and influential in the academy. Some were appointed professors in their field in Manchester, King’s College London, and in the US. This one-day conference will focus on how Baptists have contributed to biblical scholarship and how this has been, and is still today, received by the academy and the church. Free lunch and hot drinks included.

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Extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA) has been recognized as one of the most frequent causes of oncogene amplification in cancer. Its association with worse patient outcomes suggests that it may directly contribute to malignant cell phenotypes. This has been linked to increased oncogene dosage because both oncogenes and associated enhancers can occupy ecDNA. New data challenge the view that only oncogene dosage is affected by ecDNA, and raises the possibility that ecDNA could disrupt genome-wide gene expression. Recent investigations suggest that ecDNA localizes to specialized nuclear bodies (hubs) in which they can act in trans as ectopic enhancers for genes on other ecDNA or chromosomes. Moreover, ecDNA can reintegrate into the genome, possibly further disrupting the gene regulatory landscape in tumor cells. I will discuss the emerging properties of ecDNA and highlight promising avenues to exploit this new knowledge for the development of ecDNA-directed therapies for cancer.

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There are more and more tools being released. This session will cover the current AI tool landscape with respect to reading and writing as well as principles for evaluating and choosing tools. It will cover: - The big 4 chatbots: how to decide between ChatGPT and one of its competitors - Chatbot or a dedicated tool: how to choose the right tool for the job - Components of AI tools: what questions to ask when choosing a tool - Differences between chatbots and image generations tools - Examples of different tools in action.

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We will have a plenary session with a talk by Professor Amanda Adler, Professor of Diabetic Medicine and Health Policy, Director of Diabetes Trials Unit, University of Oxford

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This study interrogated why there are sustained white majorities leading schools across Bristol, a city with 22% of its population from global majority backgrounds. Given that only 8% of Bristol school leaders are racially minoritised, this study generated data to explore how majority white cultures sustained and centralised whiteness. Using Critical Race Theory and Critical Whiteness Studies, the study examined how leaders positioned themselves and assimilated when in white majority school leadership settings. Using 31 interviews with senior leaders, archival material about anti-racist resistance in Bristol and counter stories, the methodological design interrupted and explored patterns of whiteness with mostly white people (N-24). The study specifically utilised the concepts of colour evasion, white innocence and historical deficit frames which continue to influence how racism is understood in schools. MS Teams link: https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_ZTVmZGU1NWMtOTdhOS00N2FlLWI0MzctODI1YTcyZGVhZmI5%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22cc95de1b-97f5-4f93-b4ba-fe68b852cf91%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%225f581465-1def-4d51-8d4c-45a3b26b5b58%22%7d

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Join Dr Radhika Khosla for a fireside chat with Dr Julie Newman and Harriet Waters as they discuss the role of sustainable campus strategies in fostering knowledge, leadership and innovation amidst global environmental challenges. What strategies guide the University of Oxford and MIT in their sustainability efforts on campus? How can universities leverage research and teaching to advance environmental goals both on and off campus? Is addressing our direct environmental impacts essential for leading in sustainable research, teaching and innovation? Explore these questions and more. About the Speakers: 1. *Dr Radhika Khosla* is an Associate Professor at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, Research Director of the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development and Programme Leader at Oxford’s ZERO Institute focusing on Zero Carbon Energy Use. 2. *Dr Julie Newman* is the Director of Sustainability and a lecturer at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). 3. *Harriet Waters* is the Head of Environmental Sustainability at the University of Oxford. A light lunch will be offered.

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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

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Lesson of the week, clinical cases and research. All clinical and academic staff and students welcome. Coffee, Tea and Cake will be served.

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This unique ‘in conversation’ CGHE webinar is being held to mark the end of Simon Marginson’s directorship of the Centre. Incoming CGHE Director David Mills will be talking to Simon about his research journey, from Melbourne to Monash and back again, and on the lessons learnt from a decade based in the UK, first at UCL and then at Oxford. Simon will reflect on the rapid growth of global Higher Education, and on the challenges that lie ahead. As ever, all are welcome to join the conversation and ask Simon difficult questions!

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*Gabrielle Davies*, ‘Building the New Wales?: National Identities and the Politics of Post-war Reconstruction in Second World War Wales’ *Thomas Wang*, ‘Vitalizing the Heritage: Tradition and Conservatism in Cold War Britain, 1944-1990’ *Carys Howell*, ‘The 1956 Hungarian Refugee Crisis: Local, National and International Responses, 1956-1960’

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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: Oxford students, academics and other staff.

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Intended as a conversation, this event will feature participants from across academia, civil society, and government. Representatives from civil society and government will join from the African Foundation for Development, African Climate Mobility Initiative, Center for Global Development, Earth Refuge, International Institute for Environment and Development, ODI, Refugees International, and FCDO. From academia, participants will join from the University of Bristol, University of London’s Refugee Law Initiative, United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security, James Cook University, and University of Vienna; and from across Oxford, including the Blavatnik School of Government, ODID, COMPAS, the RSC, and School of Geography and the Environment. This event is co-organised by Jocelyn Perry, Migration Oxford, Blavatnik School of Government and Refugees International, and the Center for Global Development.

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Decades of rigorous prevention research have shown that strengthening parenting improves not only children’s wellbeing and resilience, but also improves parents’ mental health. Findings from randomized controlled trials/RCTs have demonstrated how behavior changes occur and cascade across family members and over time shedding light on mechanisms of effect. But much less is known about what programs, in what formats, work best for what kinds of families. This presentation showcases a program of research on a program developed for US military families in which a parent deployed and returned from war, Adaptive Parenting Tools/ADAPT. ADAPT was tested in four RCTs to examine not only the program’s effectiveness, but the effects of different formats and sequences on parenting and children’s adjustment. Innovative prevention designs including those testing online formats will be discussed. Dr. Abigail Gewirtz is a child psychologist, mother of four, leading expert on helping families cope with trauma and the author of When the World Feels Like a Scary Place: Essential Conversations for Anxious Parents and Worried Children (Workman, 2020). She is Foundation Professor in the Psychology Department at Arizona State University. Dr. Gewirtz has worked as a clinician, researcher, program developer, and trainer of providers, and is the author of more than 100 publications. A fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and the American Psychological Association, Dr. Gewirtz has conducted research in the United States, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, and has been invited to speak widely, in the U.S. and across the world, on parenting in times of stress. Booking is required for people outside of the Department of Social Policy and Intervention (DSPI). The registration form will be available soon. DSPI members do not need to register

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Red Squirrels in the Yukon harvest pinecones and stash them in large middens that they consume over several years. When one squirrels dies, another can inherit their stash. The same might be said of scientists and their archives of behavioral data built on decades of research, whether on squirrels such as these or various other species around the world. Even projects led by a single charismatic individual are sustained through intricate collaborative networks of students, postdocs, and collaborators. Negotiating these networks required establishing norms of data sharing between experts trained in different fields and at different stages of their careers. This talk explores social shifts within this community to computerized records in the 1980s and then the disparate reactions among scientists over calls for open-data sharing in the 1990s and 2000s.

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SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY Professor Andrew Hattersley is the Professor of Molecular Medicine at the University of Exeter, UK and a practicing consultant diabetologist at the Royal Devon and Exeter hospital. He trained in Medicine at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford. His postgraduate education was in London, Oxford and Birmingham. Working with Professor Sian Ellard he has taken Exeter from being a centre with no genetics laboratory in 1995 to now being the top international laboratory for monogenic diabetes with over 25,000 referrals from 108 countries. They have discovered 27 genes which when mutated cause monogenic diabetes.Importantly he has gone on from gene discovery to find the best treatment for monogenic diabetes. He has shown that the commonest forms of both familial genetic diabetes and neonatal diabetes can be treated with tablets instead of insulin resulting in better blood sugar control. Recent work has focused on “Precision Diabetes” identifying subgroups in Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes with different treatment responses. He has published over 600 papers with over 110,000 citations, given over 350 national and international lecturers and received many international and national awards for his work including being appointed as a fellow of The Royal Society and being awarded a CBE.

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Session Five: How Did the COVID Pandemic Response Harm Society? A Global Evaluation and State of Knowledge Review (2020-21) Presenter: Dr Kevin Bardosh, Collateral Global, University of Edinburgh and University of Washington Discussant: Dr Yuxi Zhang, University College London Investigating the Typologies and Timeliness of COVID-19 Social Policy Responses Across Countries Presenter: Steven Kuan-Ju Chen, Cadmus International UK Ltd/ National Taiwan University Discussant: Dr Philipp Trein, University of Lausanne The Oxford Covid-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT) is a project that collected information on policy measures to tackle COVID-19 over the years 2020, 2021, and 2022. Although a substantial body of scientific research on COVID-19 government responses has already been published, many research questions remain unanswered, and the OxCGRT team is continuing research into the impacts and determinants of pandemic policy and working with partners to devise new approaches to data collection that can be deployed quickly in the face of future pandemics or global emergencies. The OxCGRT Seminar Series is an innovative platform for scholars working on COVID-19 responses, offering an opportunity to present and discuss their ongoing research work as well as to connect with the broader research community. The series will run online every Thursday from 11 April to 30 May at 16:00-17:30 BST.

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A series of three public lectures, by Professor Elizabeth Harman (in-person only). Lecture 3 of 3. What does love teach us about abortion? How does love challenge our ideas about abortion? How can love explain the importance of abortion?

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For further details, please contact: "$":mailto:nick.millea@bodleian.ox.ac.uk or 01865 287119 https://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/maps/tosca

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This paper draws out those structures of solidarity and global visions of Black freedom articulated around the event of the 1974 Sixth Pan African Congress in Dar es Salaam and the identification of industrial agriculture as a central pillar of Black liberation. As Quito Swan notes in his analysis of the call for 6PAC, organizers positioned technological innovation in relation to cultivation practices as a central path towards economic self-reliance. But the question of land use drew the attention of writers who lived and travelled in and around East Africa at this historical juncture. This paper draws on the work of Keorapetse Kgositsile, who was involved in the early planning of 6PAC and Gwendolyn Brooks, who travelled to Tanzania three years prior to the Congress and collaborated with artists and poets who subsequently made contributions to 6PAC as a way to consider how poetry confronts the contradictions inherent to political investments in economic planning. Through a focus on those circuits of exchange this paper seeks to develop a theory of global solidarity structured around competing claims about the potential of land and plot to facilitate economic, political, and creative freedom on a global scale.

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Religion in Britain and Ireland, 1400-1700 Seminar series on Thursdays at 5pm, Trinity Term 2024 in the Lecture Room at Campion Hall Convened by Diarmaid MacCulloch, Judith Maltby, Sarah Mortimer and Grant Tapsell Week 3 Lizzie Swarbrick, University of Edinburgh 9 May “A fag end of the international medieval tradition”? – The Quality and Worth of Scottish Pre-Reformation Churches Offered by the Faculties of History and Theology and Religion. For more information, or for the Teams link to join remotely, please contact sarah.apetrei@campion.ox.ac.uk.

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Xuelei Huang will introduce her new book, which presents a vivid and highly original reading of recent Chinese history through an eclectic array of smells that permeated Chinese life from the High Qing through to the Mao period. Utilising interdisciplinary methodology and critically engaging with scholarship in the expanding fields of sensory and smell studies, she shows how this period of tumultuous change in China was experienced through the body and the senses. Drawing on unexplored archival materials, readers are introduced to the 'smellscapes' of China from the eighteenth to mid-twentieth century via perfumes, food, body odours, public health projects, consumerism and cosmetics, travel literature, fiction and political language. This pioneering and evocative study takes the reader on a sensory journey through modern Chinese history, examining the ways in which the experience of scent and modernity have intertwined. Dr Xuelei Huang is Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Edinburgh. Her research focuses on sensory history, film history and media culture in modern China. Her publications include Scents of China: A Modern History of Smell (Cambridge, 2023), Shanghai Filmmaking: Crossing Borders, Connecting to the Globe, 1922–1938 (Brill, 2014), Sensing China: Modern Transformations of Sensory Culture (co-edited with Shengqing Wu, Routledge, 2022), and journal articles in Modern Asian Studies, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, Twentieth-Century China, and Journal of Chinese Cinemas, among others. She is the recipient of the Ruprecht Karls Prize for Best Dissertation in Heidelberg, an Alexander von Humboldt fellowship, and grants from the Gerda Henkel Foundation, the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

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After Rome and Further East Seminar Thursdays, 5 pm, Trinity College Convened by Fanny Bessard (History/ Trinity) and Christian Sahner (AMES/ New College) Supported by the Bahari Fund for Sasanian Studies MS Teams meeting link here (no registration required) Week 1, April 25 Garth Fowden (University of Cambridge) ‘Orienting the Global First Millennium: Iranosphere Perspectives’ Levine Building Auditorium Special lecture supported by the Bahari Fund for Sasanian Studies, the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research, and the Oxford Centre for Late Antiquity Week 2, May 2 Andrew Marsham (University of Cambridge) ‘Re-Framing the Umayyad Empire: Pastoralists, Plague, and Peripheries’ Teaching Room 5 Week 3, May 9 Julia Bray (University of Oxford) ‘Medieval Arabic Literature: What Do You Know, and What Can You Do with It?’ Teaching Room 5 Week 4, May 16 Hannah-Lena Hagemann (University of Hamburg) ‘“Behold! Quraysh is praying behind Bakr!” Kharijite Rebellion and Bakri Tribalism from al-Jazira to Iran 7th-9th c.’ Teaching Room 5 Week 5, May 23 Alebachew Belay (Debre Berhan University) ‘Connected “Pagans” from Medieval Ethiopia: Monumental and Artifactual Evidence’ Teaching Room 5 Week 6, May 30 Louise Rayne (Newcastle University) ‘Detecting Irrigation and Desertification in the Middle East and North Africa Since the Medieval Period’ Teaching Room 5 Week 7, June 6 Dan Reynolds (University of Birmingham) ‘Charlemagne’s Jerusalem: Rhetoric, Exegesis and the Ninth-Century “Holy Land”’ Teaching Room 5 Week 8, June 13 Peter Sarris (University of Cambridge) ‘Justinian Between East and West’ Levine Building Auditorium OCBR Annual Lecture for 2024; supported by the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research

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To join online, please register in advance here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUocuyvrz4vGtTThizdrAaKNZsmRk61NTKm

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To join via Microsoft Teams please use this link https://rb.gy/qzyv2b. Registration is not required.

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Each year the Richard Hillary Memorial Lecture is given by notable creative writers and remembers Richard Hillary, the author of The Last Enemy, who was a student at Trinity. Helen Oyeyemi is an award-winning novelist and a former judge of the International Booker Prize for Literature. Described by The Guardian as “a rare talent”, Helen is best known for Mr Fox, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours and Gingerbread.

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: In the lecture, we delve into the evolution of irrigation systems as a pivotal lesson in the development of institutions through various epochs. Drawing on the seminal works of Karl Wittfogel and Karl Marx, we initially explore the historical emergence of despotism and autocracy within hydraulic civilizations. Progressing beyond these foundational theories, the lecture navigates through the complexities of modern water and irrigation institutions, guided by Elinor Ostrom's eight principles for managing the commons and other insights from New Institutional Economics, to unravel the political economy underpinning irrigation management. A significant portion of our discussion is dedicated to the Indus Basin, illustrating its role as a conduit for colonization and social engineering. Furthermore, this lecture addresses the pressing challenges of transboundary river management. Using the Indus and the Nile as case studies, we highlight the geopolitical tensions and cooperation mechanisms that have emerged in these contexts. By integrating these discussions, we aim to pave the way for envisioning participatory, resilient institutions capable of navigating the complexities of climate-stressed environments in the future.

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Coffee, Tea and pastries will be served in the Lecture Theatre. Please email Louise King (louise.king@nds.ox.ac.uk) if you would like to attend online.

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*Programme - Friday 10 May* *Morning* 09:30-10:00 Registration and Coffee 10:00-10:15 Opening Remarks 10:15-12:00 *Texts I: False Texts* *Georgijs Dunajevs* (Würzburg – National Library of Latvia) ‘Faux Completeness over Textual Authenticity: A Case Study of the Taiping guangji’ *Avni Chag* (VU Amsterdam) ‘Writing in the Name of God: Implications of Pseudepigrapha in the Śikṣāpatrī’ *Andrea Brondino* (Warwick) ‘From Fiction to Fake, and Back Again: Reframing the Protocols of Zion in The Prague Cemetery of Umberto Eco’ *Enrico Emanuele Prodi* (Cagliari) ‘The Artemidorus Papyrus between the Ivory Tower and the Public Arena’ *Afternoon* 13:30-15:15 *Editions I: Fake Imprints* *Paolo Sachet* (IHR, Geneva) ‘“Ad Catacumbas”: Rome and its Historical Sites as Fake Imprints in Protestant Publications’ *Hadrien Dami* (IHR, Geneva) ‘From Pierre Aubert to Pierre Marteau: Geneva as Fake Imprint and Hub for Fake Imprints in the Seventeenth Century’ *Jacqueline Hylkema* (Leiden) ‘The Politics of Printing Forgery in the Dutch Republic, from the States Bible to Spinoza’ *Pierre Delseardt* (Antwerp) ‘Paratext and Persuasion: Fake Imprints as Political Statements in the Habsburg Low Countries (1781–1793)’ 15:15 Coffee Break 15:45-17:30 *Copies I: Forgers and Forgeries* *Geri Della Rocca de Candal* (Oxford) ‘Untangling a Case of Double Forgery: A Unique Copy of the 1499 Hypnerotomachia Poliphili’ *Katharina Mähler* (Herzog August Bibliothek) ‘On Closer Inspection: Suspicious Details of Historic Bookbindings’ *Paul Needham* (Princeton) ‘The Rome Editions of the Columbus Letter 1493: Collecting, Thieving, and Forging’ *Nick Wilding* (Georgia State University) ‘Forging Print and Provenance: Deception and Detection in the Case of Galileo’ *For _general admission_ (£45 for either or both days) please register here: https://ticketlab.co.uk/event/id/23812#/* *For _student admission_ (£25 for either or both days) please register here: https://ticketlab.co.uk/event/id/23814#/*

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Talk 1: DNA reactions for successful plasmid conjugation Dr Yoshiharu Yamaichi, CNRS Group Leader, I2BC Institute of Université Paris-Saclay Bacterial conjugation is a major horizontal gene transfer mechanism through which DNA is transferred from a donor to a recipient bacterium by direct cell-to-cell contact, being a major driving force of bacterial genome evolution and the dissemination of metabolic properties, such as resistance to antibiotics. Even though conjugation is known since 1940s, and has been extensively studied using a variety of approaches, our recent results highlighted we still have some important knowledge gaps in the events occurring within the recipient cell between DNA entry and the establishment of exconjugant cell. Briefly, pESBL, a multidrug resistant conjugative plasmid isolated from E. coli O104 outbreak strain, encodes a very atypical DNA methyltransferase, M.EcoGIX. It methylates adenine residues without specific recognition sequence but only one strand of the double-stranded (ds) DNA. We first showed that M.EcoGIX counteracts host restriction mechanism, involving successful establishment of the plasmid in a new host cell. Follow-up study on the mode of function of M.EcoGIX suggested that DNA methylation likely happens inside the recipient cell, instead of transferring single-stranded (ss)DNA already methylated in the donor cell. In this scenario, gene expression and function (DNA methylation) precede the recognition of the target dsDNA by restriction enzyme in the recipient cell, suggesting a surprising temporal cascade of DNA reactions. Furthermore, our genome-wide approach unveiled that host-encoded UvrD helicase plays important role for successful conjugative transfer. Study on UvrD function during conjugation proposed a model that in the recipient cell, host single strand binding proteins and RecA bind to the ssDNA upon its entry. RecA filament formation on ssDNA can disturb hairpin formation, which is shown to be important for transcription and dsDNA synthesis. UvrD removes RecA from ssDNA, allowing to reconstitute hairpin and dsDNA synthesis and so on. Talk 2: TBC Nicolas Shiaelis, Kapanidis Group, Biophysics & Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Discovery (Oxford)

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Convened by Sandra Laugier (Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne) Organised with the support ofUniversité Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, Institut des sciences juridique et philosophique de la Sorbonne (UMR 8103 CNRS Paris 1) Institut Universitaire de France, and The New School for Social Research, New York Programme 9:45 Welcome 10:00 Alice Crary 'Ordinary Language Philosophy's Liberating Motif' 11:15 Jocelyn Benoist 'Speech Acts and Description 12:30 Lunch break 13:30 Stephen Mulhall 'Austin's Version of Pastoral (After William Empson)' 14:45 Sandra Laugier '"Not exactly doing things". Cavell' and OLP' 16:00 Break 16:15 Andrew Klevan 'Ordinary Language Film Studies' 17:30 Conclusion

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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’.

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Join us for a discussion on publishing in the history of science. We have the pleasure of welcoming two leading historians of science, who will share their experiences and expert advice on navigating this at-times tricky terrain. Whether you're a graduate student wondering how to pitch your first article, or an early career researcher seeking to build up your publication profile, this session will be an opportunity to put your questions to two experienced journal editors. *Professor Erika Lorraine Milam* (Princeton) is a historian of the modern life sciences. Until recently, she served as Chair of the Editorial Board at Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences. *Dr Joseph D Martin* (Durham) works on the history of the physical sciences. He is book review editor at The British Journal for the History of Science, and Professor Milam's successor as Chair of HSNS's Editorial Board.

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Join us for the first Laura Marcus Life-Writing Workshop of Trinity Term 2024, led by Professor Marina Mackay (St. Peter’s College). Britain in the 1950s saw a widespread popular interest in the possibility of psychic communication across distance: from the 20-million-strong audiences for radio telepaths 'The Piddingtons' at the start of the decade to the widely publicised and puzzlingly inconclusive trial at the decade’s end of George de la Warr’s pseudo-scientific radionic box. Instructively, one of the best archives of this now-forgotten cultural phenomenon is the avowedly autobiographical fiction of an and about the period. In major 1950s novels by (for example) Rebecca West, Antonia White, Muriel Spark, and Evelyn Waugh, these half-believed-in, half-disbelieved psychic technologies of remote communication are used not merely as (sometimes comic, sometimes emphatically not) features of their plots, but also as means to reflect on the problem of transmitting one’s own experience across historical distances—distances that, for us as readers now, are only accentuated by the obvious ephemerality of such cultural-historical phenomena. Please note that this event is ONLY open to current members of the University of Oxford. Workshop places will be allocated on a first come, first served basis with priority given to members of the English Faculty. Places will be confirmed one week before the event. Tea/coffee and cake will be served during the workshop. This event will take place in the St Cross building on Manor Road. Attendees are advised to wear face coverings while indoors and to use an LFT prior to the event.

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In summer 2020, memorials to prominent eugenicists Francis Galton, Karl Pearson, and Ronald Fisher were removed from campuses in London and Cambridge, as campaigners pressured universities to address their historical entanglements with the eugenics movement. Eugenics is the project of improving the genetic ‘quality’ of human populations by controlling who is and is not able to reproduce. Today, it is widely derided as dangerous ‘pseudoscience’. But this was not always so. In Britain, the birthplace of the movement, eugenics once boasted the status and infrastructure of a bona fide science, with lavishly funded university departments and laboratories, dedicated learned societies, and specialist scholarly journals. This workshop will reckon with these histories. Through case-studies ranging from UCL's Galton Laboratory for National Eugenics, to Oxford's short-lived (and little-studied) Anthropometric Laboratory, contributions will ask how elite institutions of teaching and research have historically helped to establish and sustain eugenics. We will also be concerned with the afterlives of eugenics in the academy. How were eugenic academic networks and infrastructure dismantled or otherwise transformed following the Second World War, when the movement’s popularity and visibility waned? Some institutions have already begun the urgent work of confronting their historical entanglements with eugenics – eg, through curricular reform, commissioned research, exhibitions and outreach activities, as well as through processes of renaming and denaming. This workshop will provide an opportunity to reflect critically upon these initiatives, and to consider how institutions might do better going forward.

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The interplay among environmental chemistry, organismal evolution and microbial stress responses contributed to the preservation of a nearly 3.5 billion-year long record of microbial life by silica, carbonate and clay minerals. In this talk, I will use the genomic and fossil records of Cyanobacteria, the organismal lineage with the oldest fossil record, to ask when this photosynthetic lineage evolved the critical ability to produce oxygen. I will then present results of experimental work that shows the ability of cyanobacteria to promote their own fossilization by precipitating silica and carbonate minerals. These results help constrain the concentrations of silica in marine environments more than two billion years ago, explain the preservation of exquisite cyanobacterial fossils in chert lenses associated with Proterozoic carbonate deposits and can inform the search for signs of past life on Mars.

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Dr. Timothy Yap is a Medical Oncologist and Physician-Scientist based at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Centre. He is a Professor in the Department for Investigational Cancer Therapeutics (Phase I Program), and the Department of Thoracic/Head and Neck Medical Oncology. Dr. Yap is Vice President and Head of Clinical Development in the Therapeutics Discovery Division, a drug discovery biopharmaceutical division where drug discovery and clinical translation are seamlessly integrated. He is also the Associate Director of Translational Research in the Khalifa Institute for Personalized Cancer Therapy, which is an integrated research and clinical trials program aimed at implementing personalized cancer therapy and improving patient outcomes. Dr. Yap’s main research focuses on the first-in-human and combinatorial development of molecularly targeted agents and immunotherapies, and their acceleration through clinical studies using novel predictive and pharmacodynamic biomarkers. His main interests include the targeting of the DNA damage response (DDR) with novel therapeutics, such as ATR, PARP1, WEE1, POLQ, USP1, PKMYT1, PARG, CHK1, ATM and DNA-PK inhibitors, next generation CDK2, CDK4 and CDK7-selective inhibitors, YAP/TEAD inhibitors, Werner helicase inhibitors, SMARCA2 degraders, as well as the development of novel immunotherapeutics.

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Cardiac conduction system (CCS) disease is common, as are arrhythmias arising from the diseased CCS. Current therapy is limited to palliation by surgical implantation of a pacemaker or an intracardiac device, and in order to provide refined therapeutic strategies and better risk prediction for arrhythmic events, there is a need for an improved working understanding of how electrical excitability is regulated. In this seminar I will demonstrate how our laboratory has taken an active lead in the identification of new cellular pathways in the control of CCS electrophysiology, focusing on recent advances we have made in understanding dysfunctional pacemaking in endurance athletes, in aged and failing hearts, and in elucidating the circadian control of arrhythmogenesis. I will illustrate how epigenetic and transcriptional control mechanisms modulate pacemaker electrophysiology in these scenarios and delve into work we are currently undertaking towards translation of new fundamental insight on ion channel modulation into therapies for CCS disease and related arrhythmias. SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY Alicia D’Souza is a Reader in Cardiac Electrophysiology at the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College London. Alicia’s research focuses on understanding the mechanisms by which ion channels in the hearts electrical wiring system are controlled. Trained as a cardiac physiologist during her PhD (2012), Alicia completed postdoctoral studies in the laboratory of Professor Mark Boyett at the University of Manchester investigating pacemaking in endurance athletes. Subsequently she was awarded a BHF Intermediate Fellowship in 2019 during which she established an independent research group that has advanced understanding of the cellular mechanisms that underlie conduction system function in health and in disease. Alicia’s work has been popularised in the media and led to numerous awards including the International Society for Heart Research/SERVIER Fellowship Prize, the (inaugural) Cairn Research ‘New and Notable’ Prize Lecture and The Physiological Society’s (inaugural) R Jean Banister Prize Lecture. Alicia’s group is also part of a Fondation Leducq Transatlantic Network of Excellence focused on novel pharmacotherapies for sinus node dysfunction.

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Sarah is a Wellcome Senior Research Fellow and Professor of Microbial interactions based in the School of Life Sciences at the University of Dundee. She is a molecular bacteriologist with long-standing interests in protein secretion systems and inter-bacterial interactions, both co-operative and competitive. Following PhD and postdoctoral work in the labs of George Salmond in Cambridge and Frank Sargent in Dundee, Sarah established her own group in 2009. Work in her lab is mainly focused on the Type VI secretion system, a protein ‘nanoweapon’ used by many bacteria to deliver toxic effector proteins into neighbouring cells. Her group aim to understand how the Type VI secretion system effectively delivers effectors into bacterial and fungal competitors, to determine the mode of action of the effectors, and to understand the impact of the system and its secreted effectors on targeted cells, populations and communities. Sarah’s contributions have been recognised by the Microbiology Society Fleming Prize, the SfAM W.H. Pierce Prize, and the Royal Society of Edinburgh Patrick Neill Medal.

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Race & Resistance is pleased to welcome Professor Jason Arday alongside our resident scholar, Dr. Chantelle Lewis, to talk about their forthcoming book We See Things They'll Never See: Love, Hope and Neurodiversity (Princeton University Press, 2025). Both will speak about their journeys in the field of Sociology, the inspiration for the book, as well as their hopes for the future of the field. The session will end with a Q&A, so come prepared with your questions. Biography: Professor Jason Arday (he/him) is the 2022 Professorial Chair in the Sociology of Education at the University of Cambridge, Faculty of Education. Previously, Jason was Professor of Sociology of Education at the University of Glasgow in the School of Education, College of Social Sciences. Professor Arday has also held the position of Associate Professor in Sociology at Durham University in the Department of Sociology and Deputy Executive Dean for People and Culture in the Faculty of Social Science and Health. He is a Visiting Professor at The Ohio State University in the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, University of Glasgow in the School of Education and an Honorary Professor at Durham University in the Department of Sociology. He is a Trustee of the Runnymede Trust, the UK’s leading Race Equality Thinktank and the British Sociological Association (BSA). Jason sits on the Centre for Labour and Social Studies (CLASS) National Advisory Panel, the NHS Race and Health Observatory Academic Reference Group and the ITV Cultural Advisory Council. Professor Arday’s research focuses on the areas of race and higher education, intersectionality and education, mental health and education, neurodiversity and cultural studies. Biography: Dr. Chantelle Lewis (she/her) is the Andrew Pitt Junior Research Fellow in Black British Studies at Pembroke College, University of Oxford. She is a public sociologist, and Black feminist intellectual whose research is situated at the intersections of race and class; gender studies, social theory, queer theory, politics and family studies. In the broadest sense, Dr. Lewis' intellectual project is interdisciplinary, but primarily focused on collaborative scholarship and dialogical knowledge production; as well as the democratisation of generative modes of understanding and navigating education. As a neurodivergent scholar, Dr. Lewis is passionate about inclusive education and creative scholarship produced beyond the written word. She is co-founder, co-host and executive producer of the Radio Academy award nominated podcast Surviving Society Productions, leading the curation and production of more than 300 episodes; featuring leading academics, activists and community organisers from across the world. With a listenership concentrated across Europe, Africa and North America primarily, Surviving Society has become a staple of social sciences and humanities reading lists both in UKHE and internationally. —-------------------- Twitter: race_resistance Subscribe to our mailing list by sending a blank email to: race-and-resistance-subscribe@maillist.ox.ac.uk. Email raceandresistance@torch.ox.ac.uk with any questions.

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This paper analyses the design and negotiations of the National Recovery and Resilience Plans (NRRPs) which the EU member states were required to formulate so as to access the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF). By focusing on three Eurozone members (Austria, Greece, and Slovakia) which represent distinct voices and experiences within the EU integration project, we argue that a new form of conditionality, coordinative conditionality, can be identified. While this conditionality has many features of previous EU conditionality forms, it is also unique and is the result of early coordination between the EU and the member states; informal channels of communication alongside formal negotiations; and a heightened salience of ownership by national governments. What has been described as coordinative Europeanization. We argue that although evidence of coordinative Europeanization can be found during the design and negotiation of the NRRPs in all three countries, the intensity of conditionality’s different aspects is mediated by the credibility of a given member state’s government.

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The role of tissue stiffness in controlling cell behaviours ranging from proliferation to signalling and activation is by now well accepted. A key focus of experimental studies into mechanotransduction are focal adhesions, localised patches of strong adhesion, where cell signalling has been established to occur. However, these adhesion sites themselves alter the mechanical equilibrium of the system determining the force balance and work done. To explore this I have developed an active matter continuum description of cellular contractility and will discuss recent results on the specific role of spatial positioning of adhesions in mechanotransduction. I show using energy arguments why the experimentally observed arrangements of focal adhesions develop and the implications this has for stiffness sensing and cellular contractility control. I will also show how adhesions play distinct roles in single cells and tissue layers respectively drawing on recent experimental work with Dr JR Davis (Manchester University) and Dr Nic Tapon (Crick Institute) with applications to epithelial layers and organoids.

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*Greco-Roman and Classical Chinese Translation: Theory and Practice* This seminar series is intended to look more broadly at Latin translations of Chinese texts, Chinese translations of Greco-Roman texts, and translation as theory and practice within and between both traditions.

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10 May Deification in Greek Philosophy and the New Testament (Philosophy and New Testament Christology 1/3) James Bernard Murphy, Dartmouth College, NH

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This paper looks at the ways in which artists from east Ukraine have resisted (re-)colonial epistemic violence, through engaging industrial archives, confronting and dismantling their infrastructures of epistemic occupation. De-occupying archives through critical reworkings of archival photography and video, Oleksandr Kuchynskyi, Anna Pylypyuk & Volodymyr Shypotilnikov, Kateryna Syrik, Elias Parvulesko and Sashko Protyah, among others, raise questions about archival knowledge, epistemic violence and the liberatory potential of contemporary art practice. Considering my own work with the Center of Urban History on the ‘City in a Suitcase’ project, I ask how archives of the occupied and destroyed territories, including heavily industrialised spaces such as Mariupol, Sieverodonetsk, and Soledar, can be reconstituted through community-led practice, resisting the recreation of ‘resourcifying’ archival politics and, instead setting free ‘alternative world perceptions’ (Tlostanova, 2019).

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Biography Susanne Yuk Ping Choi is Professor at the Department of Sociology, and Co-Director of the Gender Research Centre at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include migration, gender, family, and sexuality in Chinese societies. She received her DPhil in Sociology from Nuffield College, University of Oxford. Her lead-authored book monograph Masculine Compromise: Migration, Family and Gender in China was published by the University of California Press. The book received the Best Book Award of the International Sociological Association’s Sociology of Migration Section (RC31). She received the Chinese University’s Young Researcher’s Award (2012), Exemplary Teaching Award (2016), Vice-Chancellor’s Exemplary Teaching Award (2016), Research Excellence Award (2017), and Research Mentorship Award (2018). She served as an appointed member of Hong Kong’s Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) between 2015 and 2021, during which she was elected convener of EOC’s Policy, Research and Training Division, and convener of its Anti-Sexual Harassment Working Group.

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In this provocative talk Justin will argue that while the increased awareness and understanding of the decline of biodiversity is to be welcomed. Our current approaches and responses at both the global and local levels are woefully inadequate. We are stuck in a cycle of incremental gains that are failing to address the roots causes of the ‘nature crisis’. Moving forward we will need to be much bolder in reimagining the future we want to help build. Justin will draw on his diverse experience to highlight the inadequacies of incremental approaches and the urgent need for transformative change. From addressing commodity-driven deforestation, to the ongoing challenges and controversies of the carbon market, to his experience of implementing Biodiversity Net Gain locally, Justin will share insights gained from more than 15 years working on nature recovery. He will take a step back to explore what we can learn from all these examples and then offer some perspectives on how we might collectively reimagine our approaches to nature recovery. This interactive discussion will provide a platform for attendees to challenge assumptions and engage in dialogue on the future of nature recovery. Come prepared to explore bold solutions and contribute to the conversation. About the Speaker: Justin is a seasoned expert in nature and food systems. He has held senior roles in both the private sector and civil society and was a Senior Advisor to the UK Government to deliver COP26 for which he was awarded an OBE by the late Queen in 2022. Most recently he led the strategy development of Generation Investment Management’s new multi hundred-million-dollar nature and food investment fund. He stepped down from this role in August 2023 to create space for a much deeper exploration of how to unlock transformational change at both the individual and system levels. His latest endeavour, the Ostara Collective, launches in June and aims to create intentional dialogue and space for restoring our relationship with ourselves, our communities, and the Earth. He also serves on the Advisory Board for the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, is a Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Martin School and is Chair of the Trust for Oxfordshire’s Environment focused on local nature recovery. The Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery and Biodiversity Network are interested in promoting a wide variety of views and opinions on nature recovery from researchers and practitioners. The views, opinions and positions expressed within this lecture are those of the author alone, they do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery/Biodiversity Network, or its researchers.

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THE DACRE LECTURE 2024 DMITRI LEVITIN THE ORIGINS OF MODERN EUROCENTRISM ERUDITION, THEOLOGY, PHILOSOPHY, AND RACE, 1700–1800 FRIDAYFRIDAY 10 MAY 2024, 5PM AL JABER AUDITORIUM CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, OXFORD ABSTRACT In 1800, German writers started offering genealogies of modernity running from classical Athens (especially its philosophers), through early Christianity (considered a Greek rather than a Jewish phenomenon, at least in spirit), to modern 'enlightened' Protestantism. A century earlier, this genealogy would have been unthinkable. For in 1700, every European intellectual would have agreed that Greek philosophy was not qualitatively different from its ‘oriental’ counterpart, and that Christianity had emerged directly from Judaism. Combining intellectual and social history, this lecture will provide a new account of how this peculiar Eurocentrism emerged, and why it proved so successful, coming to be deployed in political debates about Jewish emancipation and the abolition of Atlantic slavery. Moreover, it will identify the origins of some long-lasting concepts and ideas: (1) the distinction between ‘Pauline’ and ‘Jewish’ Christianity; (2) the distinction between ‘pre-’ and ‘post- Socratic’ philosophy; (3) a ‘Greek miracle’ in intellectual history; (4) the earliest full conspiracy theory about a Jewish politico-economic plot to take over the world; (5) the first fears of a ‘Great Replacement’ of native Europeans by immigrants. It will suggest that the parallel appearance of these concepts was not unconnected.

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This lecture examines the medical discourse of the ‘feebleminded’, which emerged in 1950s Japan in the process of implementing involuntary sterilization under the Eugenic Protection Law (1948-96). It shows how the medical discourse was gendered and caricatured their sexuality as a threat to social order. It then argues that the making of the medical knowledge about the ‘feebleminded’, though appearing as scientific, was a social act, by describing how the patient’s families were involved in the making of the knowledge. Aya is Reader in Japanese Studies at the University of Manchester. She has long worked on the history of reproduction and population in modern Japan and most recently published Science for Governing Japan’s Population from Cambridge University Press (2023). Currently, Aya is writing a book manuscript tentatively entitled Negotiating for Asia’s Population: Japan in the Transnational Network of Family Planning, Development Aids and Global Health.

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All materials are provided. £5 fee (the price is subsidised by the OMS grant). Places are limited. To register, email "$":mailto:elena.lichmanova@merton.ox.ac.uk *by 1 May.*

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In 1800, German writers started offering genealogies of modernity running from classical Athens (especially its philosophers), through early Christianity (considered a Greek rather than a Jewish phenomenon, at least in spirit), to modern 'enlightened' Protestantism. A century earlier, this genealogy would have been unthinkable. For in 1700, every European intellectual would have agreed that Greek philosophy was not qualitatively different from its ‘oriental’ counterpart, and that Christianity had emerged directly from Judaism. Combining intellectual and social history, this lecture will provide a new account of how this peculiar Eurocentrism emerged, and why it proved so successful, coming to be deployed in political debates about Jewish emancipation and the abolition of Atlantic slavery. Moreover, it will identify the origins of some long-lasting concepts and ideas: (1) the distinction between ‘Pauline’ and ‘Jewish’ Christianity; (2) the distinction between ‘pre-’ and ‘post-Socratic’ philosophy; (3) a ‘Greek miracle’ in intellectual history; (4) the earliest full conspiracy theory about a Jewish politico-economic plot to take over the world; (5) the first fears of a ‘Great Replacement’ of native Europeans by immigrants. It will suggest that the parallel appearance of these concepts was not unconnected.

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Join us for a screening of documentary 'For Tomorrow' followed by a post-film discussion in conversation with Gina Lucarelli - Team Leader Accelerator Lab Network, UNDP and the documentary's Director, An Tran! 'For Tomorrow' follows the journey of grassroots innovators dedicated to fighting some of today's most pressing sustainability issues. Through actions, big and small, everyday change-makers are tackling local problems and inspiring their communities with ingenuity, resilience and vision. From the streets of Baku to a farming community in the Andes and the mountains of Northern India, the documentary follows five innovators on their quest for real, actionable change. Their journey to innovation is never simple-how do you keep going when even your husband doesn't believe in your idea? -but the power of their vision keeps them going. Is the world ready to finally listen to them and change the way it handles and solves global problems?

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Lynne Segal, Professor Emerita at Birkbeck, University of London discusses her latest book, and argues that to combat pessimism we must place expanded notions of care, entwined interdependence and mutual vulnerability at the heart of our politics and democratic survival.

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*Programme - Sunday 11 May* *Morning* 09:30-10:15 Coffee 10:15-12:00 *Texts II: False Authorship* *Phillip Haberken* (Boston University) ‘The Challenge of Verisimilitude and the “True Likeness” of Jan Hus in the German Reformation’ *Marco Spreafico* (Warburg Institute) ‘Un autre est moi: Faking and Forging Self-Translations in Early Modern Italy and France’ *Giovanni Spalloni* (CNR) ‘Lettere agli eretici: A Textual Forgery in the Turmoil of 1977’ *Anthony Grafton* (Princeton) ‘Joseph Scaliger and the Case of the Doctor's Diploma’ *Afternoon* 13:30-15:15 *Editions II: Pirating and Workarounds* *Ester Camilla Peric* (Scuola Superiore Meridionale) ‘Aldine Counterfeits: Reassessing the Lyon and Italian Imitations’ *John Bidwell* (Morgan Library & Museum) ‘Authorized Editions: Some Manuscript and Printed Authentication Statements’ *François Dupuigrenet Desroussilles* (Independent) ‘Counterfeiting Jansenist Bibles during the Reign of Louis XIV: The Brussels-Paris Connection’ *Pritha Mukherjee* (Reading) ‘Re-Evaluating Book Piracy and its Market in India’ 15:15-15:45 Coffee Break 15:45-17:30 *Copies II: Forgers and Forgeries* *Martyna Osuch*(University of Warsaw Library) ‘Falsifying a Book’s Past: Alteration of Ownership Marks in Early Modern Warsaw Collections’ *Nicolas Barker* (independent) ‘The Oath of a Freeman Revisited’ *Francesca Galligan* (Bodleian Library) ‘A ‘perfected’ Mirour, with Anne Clifford’s annotations’ *H.R. Woudhuysen* (Oxford) ‘“England’s Foremost Book-Collector and Supreme Bibliographical Pontiff”: Some Notes on T.J. Wise’s bibliographies’ *For _general admission_ (£45 for either or both days) please register here: https://ticketlab.co.uk/event/id/23812#/* *For _student admission_ (£25 for either or both days) please register here: https://ticketlab.co.uk/event/id/23814#/*

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The colloquium will be discussing the new book by Rahel Jaeggi: "Fortschritt und Regression" (Suhrkamp 2023). 9.30am registration 10.00-10.05: Welcome 10.05-11.00am: Rahel Jaeggi (HU, Berlin), “The Key Arguments of the Book” Chair: Rachel Fraser, Oxford 11.00-11.30am coffee 11.30am-12.45pm: Position Papers Isette Schuhmacher (HU, Berlin), Jan-Philipp Kruse (TU, Dresden), Rebecca Clark (Oxford), Jasper Friedrich (Oxford) — Chair: Benjamin Morgan, Oxford 12.45-2.00pm lunch 2.00-3.00pm: Responses I Alexander Prescott-Couch (Oxford) and Benjamin Morgan (Oxford) Chair: Alice Crary (New School for Social Research, New York) 3.00pm coffee 3.30pm-4.30pm: Responses II Lois McNay (Oxford) and Rachel Fraser (Oxford) Chair: Alice Crary (New School for Social Research, New York) 4.30-5.00pm coffee 5.00-6.00pm: 'Response to my critics' and roundtable discussion. Rahel Jaeggi (HU, Berlin)—Chair: Benjamin Morgan (Oxford).

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‘Have salt in yourselves’! A first Garden Party, Saturday 11 May 3 - 6 pm Talks 4-5 pm on ‘Salt, its origins and meanings’ Prof. Henry Mayr-Harting & Revd Dr Liz Carmichael Catering: the House will supply the essentials, including strawberries and cream! If you would like to contribute to the feast, please leave a message on 01865 310341(please repeat any numbers for calling back) or email Claire: Claire.macleod@theology.ox.ac.uk Indoors if wet! Welcome to this first St Theosevia’s Garden Party, an experiment which we hope you will enjoy! Arrive any time from 3 pm. At 4 pm we move into the House, to the usual Study Day venue, for an hour in which to enjoy two talks, with discussion, on salt down the ages and in Scripture. Henry Mayr-Harting FBA, was Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History 1997 – 2003. Liz Carmichael MBE was Fellow and Tutor in Theology at St John’s College 1996 – 2011. The talks will range across the many uses and meanings of salt, its metaphorical significance, and how it is mined and produced. The party continues after the talks, until 6 pm. Come and enjoy a unique afternoon!

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Visit the website for more details: https://www.ludvigsinander.net/mini-courses.html

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A workshop to explore how digital resources at Oxford can be effectively applied to facilitate and enhance student learning. During the workshop we will: - describe the selection of tools within Canvas, both native tools and integrated tools - explore the features of our Digitally Supported Inclusive Teaching Toolkit, and discuss how you might apply them in your teaching engage in discussions prompted by case studies - show you how to utilise helpful templates to quickly develop content and activities in Canvas - help you formulate an action plan for implementation. We will emphasize innovative practices and how to foster seamless integration of in-person teaching with the powerful digital tools supported by the University. Participants will work on preparing and designing their teaching approach for weeks 0 to 8 in any particular term.

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Link to join via Microsoft Teams: https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_ZjhiMWEzOWYtNzQ1Yi00NTUwLTkwOTQtYWZhYjUzNjQyZjI2%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22cc95de1b-97f5-4f93-b4ba-fe68b852cf91%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%228a90033c-fe26-41a7-b094-f077e6448461%22%7d

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EBV is a B cell tropic, oncogenic gamma-herpes virus that infects more than 90% of the adult population worldwide. In immunosuppressed individuals, EBV may cause a wide spectrum of pathologies, ranging from lymphoproliferation to frank lymphoma. EBV-driven B cell expansion is a metabolically demanding process. Targeting metabolic vulnerabilities of B cells en route to virus-driven transformation may thus offer therapeutic opportunities. In my seminar, I will present emerging data on EBV-driven metabolic changes required for latent infection of B cells. Molecular metabolic aspects, preclinical models and clinical data will be discussed.

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This is a workshop aimed at graduate students and early career researchers in philosophy and cognate fields who would like to do public philosophy. Public philosophy is an increasingly valued pursuit, but it requires skills and knowledge not imparted by most graduate training. In this workshop you will: * Learn what makes for successful public philosophy, * Learn the common mistakes that philosophers make when doing public writing, and how to avoid them, * Learn how to craft a pitch for an editor, * Learn how to approach an editor with an idea, * Have the option of getting feedback from Anastasia on a pitch. Anastasia Berg (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) is a senior editor at The Point magazine—an American literary magazine which has published philosophers like Martha Nussbaum, Agnes Callard, Robert Pippin, and Raymond Geuss. Anastasia’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Times Literary Supplement, and the LA Review of Books. Her first book, What Are Children For? On Ambivalence and Choice, is forthcoming with St Martin’s Press in the US and Oneworld Publications in the UK.

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Rater reliability has been one of the core considerations in human-mediated language assessment. It is also important for training machine learning algorithms in automated language assessment, since human ratings are the key label used to be predicted by automatically extracted linguistic features. Reliable human ratings are a prerequisite for ML models’ prediction accuracy. This study attempts to meta-analyse inter-rater reliability coefficients in human-mediated assessment, using second language English prosody (i.e., stress, intonation, and rhythm) as an example. Prosodic features have been found to be significantly correlated with comprehensibility and communicative success in second language English speech. However, the existing prosody assessment showed great variations in terms of construct operationalisation, rater background, and rating scales used to assess prosody. This meta-analysis aims to understand how these variations might influence rater reliability. A Bayesian meta-analysis was adopted in this study because it can incorporate prior knowledge, ascertain the true null effect, directly model uncertainty, and intuitively compare model fit. A total of 441 reliability estimates were extracted from the screened articles (n = 107), and this paper focuses on the inter-rater reliability as assessed by Cronbach’s alpha (k = 127). The overall inter-rater reliability was 0.92, with 95% credible interval ranging from 0.87 to 0.96. The between-study heterogeneity (τ = 0.65) suggests great variations among studies. Inter-rater reliability was higher when prosody was assessed at the global level as compared with at the specific level. It was also higher when the rating scales were accompanied with specific descriptors than with labels at either endpoint. This meta-analysis calls for further improvement in prosody assessment by clarifying the construct and refining rating scales and has implications for automated prosody assessment. Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86206272874?pwd=QzZSZCtCWnNIeUh0cHAvZzNXWWYwZz09

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In this Discussion Group session, Panayiotis Xenophontos spotlights the rich literary history of the Greeks of Mariupol, Ukraine from the late 18th century to the present, and asks the following questions: are the texts presented part of Greek literature, since the majority are written in Modern Greek or Greek dialects? Should we see them geographically and place them in the space they were written, i.e. see them as part of Ukrainian literary history? Perhaps we should look at them within imperial frames as literature of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union? The case study he presents shows how the local can underline blind spots in grand narratives and periodisations of national literatures. Tragically, Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has led to an immense loss of life in, and the destruction of, Mariupol, a city which is currently illegally occupied. In his concluding remarks, Xenophontos discuss how, and if, academic research on Ukraine’s Greek communities can help preserve their cultural heritage. Link: https://occt.web.ox.ac.uk/event/discussion-group-what-is-this-literature-the-case-of-greek-writing-from-ukraine

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Seminar 4 of Trinity Term's Sociology Seminar Series Please join either in person or online. For in-person attendees, the talk will be preceded by a light lunch at 12.15pm. Please email comms@sociology.ox.ac.uk with any questions or to receive the Microsoft Teams link. This paper examines ethnic earnings inequality in European football, a field largely unexplored in sociological studies despite the sport's global significance. Utilising five years of data from top leagues, it investigates whether meritocratic stratification exists amid intense competition, immigration, and ethnic diversity, using detailed player metrics. This paper examines ethnic earnings inequality in the top of European football. While sociological studies have previously focused on racial-ethnic gaps in compensation among professional athletes (i.e. US-based sports such as basketball and baseball), none have asked this question within the context of the largest and most lucrative sport globally. The professional football market is characterised by extreme levels of national and international competition, strong selection on (unique) skills, immigration, and ethnic diversity. It begs the question of whether these circumstances foster meritocratic stratification, as opposed to other segments of the European labour market. The study makes use of five years of player and club data from the top male football leagues of England, Spain, Italy, and Germany, totaling 11,000 player-year observations (2018-2023). Crucially, detailed variables on skillsets, performance, fitness, context-specific experience, firm tenure, and ‘job tasks’ (i.e., positions or roles), which have been computationally derived from agencies and associations, allow for precise measurement of players’ human capital. The precise measurement of the primary stratifier of earnings helps in isolating taste-based discrimination (i.e., prejudice) from statistical discrimination. Additional analyses explore whether earnings gaps associated with ethnicity are correlated with various organisational structures, such as firm, club, institutional and league characteristics.

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Vertebrate host defense against infection is mediated by the combined functions of the innate and adaptive arms of the immune system. Vaccination typically targets the adaptive immune response promoting long-lived antibody and T cell responses specific to the pathogen in question. However, an alternative strategy would be to boost the non-specific effector functions of the innate immune system thereby promoting host resistance against multiple infectious agents. BCG (Bacille Calmette Guerin) is a century old vaccine that utilizes an attenuated strain of Mycobacterium bovis to prevent tuberculosis (TB). While now recognized to provide inconsistent protection against adult pulmonary TB, BCG is still employed to protect infants and children against disseminated, extra-pulmonary forms of the disease. Interestingly, BCG vaccination has been known for over 60 years to have non-specific beneficial effects reducing all-cause mortality in infants as well as promoting tumor regression and is a widely used therapy for bladder cancer. The basis of these off- target effects of BCG is poorly understood but lately has received a lot of investigation as a possible manifestation of a phenomenon called “trained immunity”. Exciting new research in the TB field has indicated that when administered to non-human primates intravenously (iv) instead of by the conventional intradermal/subcutaneous (sc) route, BCG can induce sterilizing immunity against aerosol Mycobacterium tuberculosis challenge. Our group has studied the possible contribution of innate immune mechanisms to this unusual protection and in the process discovered that when given iv (but not sc ) BCG also induces striking resistance against intranasally administered SARS-CoV-2 in mouse models. My talk will focus on the immunological mechanisms underlying this non-specific protection and more generally on how innate immune stimulation could be used to promote host resistance against respiratory pathogens.

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The seminar will advocate that sensitization of visceral afferents triggers malfunctional plasticity in downstream neural circuits causing autonomic dysfunction compounding cardiovascular and respiratory disease. The afferent system considered is the peripheral arterial chemoreceptor. The fundamental mechanisms determining its set-point sensitivity will be demonstrated via a novel “accelerator-brake” hypothesis involving glutamate-NMDA receptor signaling. Proof of concept studies in animals and humans that identified the carotid bodies as a novel target for the treatment of cardiovascular-respiratory diseases will be reviewed. Understanding the molecular mechanisms of carotid body dysfunction led to the identification of a potent therapeutic – Gefapixant (Lyfnua), a selective purinergic P2X3 receptor antagonist that has been approved by the European Medicines Agency for the treatment of chronic cough allowing opportunities for repurposing for cardiorespiratory diseases. Interestingly, this antagonist: (i) arrests the pathological hyperexcitability but preserves the physiological signaling of the carotid body; (ii) targets only the chemoreflex-sympathetic reflex pathway, which led to a new hypothesis that carotid body afferents driving different reflex motor outputs are phenotypically distinct based on neurochemical content. The multi-modal property of the carotid body is exemplified by its detection of oxygen, carbon dioxide, low pH but we have extended this to the discovery of sensitivity to metabolic agents such as glucose and glucagon-like-1 peptide. This has led to the notion that the carotid body offers a potential nodal point for intervention in cardiovascular-respiratory diseases where diabetes is a co-morbidity. Translational studies will be presented to demonstrate our recent studies supporting ways by which modulation of carotid body can offer novel therapeutic advances for hypertension, heart failure and licit and illicit opioid induced respiratory depression. References Lataro R, Moraes, DM, Salgado H, Paton JFR (2023). P2X3 receptor antagonism attenuates the progression of heart failure. Nature Communications, 14, 1725. Pauza AG, Thakkar P, Tasic T, Felippe I, Bishop P, Greenwood MP, Ast J, Broichhagen J, Hodson DJ, Salgado HC, Pauza DH, Japundzic-Zigon N, Murphy D & Paton JFR. (2022). GLP1R attenuates sympathetic response to glucose via carotid body inhibition. Circulation Research 130, 694-707. Pijacka, W., Moraes, D.J.A., Ratcliffe, L.E.K., Nightingale, A.K., Hart, E.C., da Silva, M.P., Machado, B.H., McBryde, F.D., Abdala, A.P., Ford, A.P. & Paton, J.F.R. (2016). Purinergic receptors in the carotid body as a novel target for controlling hypertension. Nature Medicine 22, 1151-1159. SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY Julian is an integrative physiologist translating novel findings from animal models to humans. He was educated at the University of Birmingham (BSc (Hons) 1984) and University of London (PhD, 1987). Subsequently, between 1989-1994, he was a fellow at EI DuPont, Wilmington and University Washington, Seattle, US, and an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow (University of Göttingen, Germany). In 1994, he was awarded a British Heart Foundation Fellowship at the University of Bristol, UK. In 2017, he transferred to the University of Auckland, New Zealand, where he is Director of Manaaki Manawa (established 2019) – the Centre of Heart Research, and Co-Director of Pūtahi Manawa – Healthy Hearts of Aotearoa New Zealand (established 2021), which is the first national Centre of Research Excellence addressing equity in heart health through community-led research. His research focuses on the neural coupling between the cardiovascular and respiratory systems. His novel fundamental discoveries have resulted in first-in-human trials for treating neurogenic hypertension, sleep apnoea and heart failure. He is founder member and Chief Scientific Officer for Ceryx Medical Ltd. designing a novel bionic pacemaker for heart failure. He has 440 publications, ~24,500 citations and an h-index of 84. He was made Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 2021.

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We develop a theory of labor markets with four features: search frictions, worker productivity shocks, wage rigidity, and two-sided lack of commitment. Inefficient job separations occur in the form of endogenous quits and layoffs that are unilaterally initiated whenever a worker’s wage-to-productivity ratio moves outside an inaction region. We derive sufficient statistics for the labor market response to aggregate shocks based on the distribution of workers’ wage-to-productivity ratios. These statistics crucially depend on the incidence of inefficient job separations, which we show how to identify using readily available microdata on wage changes and worker flows between jobs.

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Like other academic or cultural institutions, universities, however ancient and prestigious they may be, can have to face up to their past. During World War II, the French University of Strasbourg was relocated to Clermont-Ferrand. Alsace being annexed to the Third Reich, the Reichsuniversität Straßburg (RUS) took up residence within its walls until 1944. The University of Strasbourg had to come to terms with the legacy of the RUS, particularly its Faculty of Medicine where criminal human experimentations took place in association with Natzweiler and Auschwitz concentration camps. In 2016, the University commissioned an international and independent Historical Commission to shed light on the history of the RUS between 1941 and 1944. The results of its investigation were made public on 3 May 2022. This workshop aims to look at how the University of Strasbourg has dealt with this 'past that will not go away' by setting up the Commission to review all collections of human specimens in the medical faculty¸ assessing the impact of Germanisation policies and reconstructing links of the medical faculty, civic hospital and the concentration/detention camps of Schirmeck and Natzweiler, helping the Commission's work and applying the measures it suggested. Its approach could serve as an example for other institutions confronted with their more or less distant past. The workshop will also be an opportunity to take a look at the scientific research which has been carried out in parallel with this “travail de mémoire”. Schedule 2pm-3pm Presentation of « Rapport de la Commission historique pour l’histoire de la Reichsuniversität Straßburg (RUS) » by Christian Bonah (Professor for History of Science, Strasbourg University) Comments : Robert Gildea (Professor of Modern History, Worcester College, University of Oxford) https://www.unistra.fr/universite/notre-histoire/rapport-de-la-commission-historique-pour-lhistoire-de-la-reichsuniversitaet-strassburg-rus 3pm-4.30pm Aisling Shalvey (Leopoldina) book’s presentation, Paediatrics in the Reichsuniversität Straßburg. Children's Medicine at a Bastion of Nazi Ideology, Exeter, Exeter University Press, 2023. Comments : Ruth Harris (Professor of Modern European History, All Souls College, University of Oxford) (https://www.exeterpress.co.uk/products/paediatrics-in-the-reichsuniversitat-strassburg) Lea Münch (Institut für Geschichte der Medizin und Ethik in der Medizin, Charité Berlin, and University of Magdeburg) thesis and book presentation on patient life histories between Strasbourg and the killing institution of Hadamar: « Patient: Innenbiografien und Alltagsgeschichte der NS-Psychiatrie im annektierten Elsass (1941-1944) » (Université de Strasbourg/Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) Comments : Paul Weindling (Oxford Brookes and the Max Planck Society Commission on Brain Specimens from the Nazi Era 4.30pm : Wine and cheese

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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: students, staff and researchers from MSD and OUH.

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Business owner-managers form an important part of the workforce in many countries, including the US and UK. We develop an empirical dynamic model to study the taxation of this group, who commonly benefit from preferential tax rates aimed at boosting entrepreneurship and investment. We study all UK owner-managed businesses, explicitly accounting for heterogeneity in their activities and traits, and allow for a wide range of responses to tax, including avoidance margins. We model a rich set of policy instruments, including tax rates, bases and loans, accounting for how their interaction affects inter- and intra-temporal incentives. Increasing capital gains tax (CGT) rates on business owners raises revenue in a progressive manner and leads to a small drop in aggregate owner-managed business investment. There are large declines in investment for some high income incorporated businesses, because higher rates increase the cost of capital associated with new equity investments. Reforms to the tax base that remove the disincentive to inject equity are better targeted at investment than lower rates. In the UK setting, tax base reform combined with removing preferential CGT rates leads to higher tax revenue and investment. (Kate Smith and Helen Miller)

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Whether or not to have children? It’s hard to ask a more loaded question. Money, health, career, love, embodiment, family, and climate change are all potentially at stake. Parenthood is also increasingly politicised — caught up in the fight over women’s reproductive rights, as well as debates over climate and AI doomerism. In What Are Children For? Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman critically probe the sources of our ambivalence, andambivalence and ask whether it is still possible to affirm the value of human life in a time of uncertainty and conflict. In this symposium, Anastasia will discuss some of the arguments of her new book, and respond to questions and critiques from three different commentators.

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In 1957, American physician, eugenicist and heir to Proctor and Gamble, Clarence Gamble teamed up with medics and women activists in Uganda to found the Family Planning Association of Uganda. In this article, I examine how a global idea; that modern contraception could prevent what was perceived to be one of the greatest threats to humanity – global overpopulation – was re-imagined and contested in the former British colony of Uganda, which only few decades earlier had suffered a devastating population decline. I show how various actors – medical workers, women’s rights activists, politicians, and self-styled representatives of the ‘common man’ responded to and confronted global narratives about overpopulation. *Dr Kembabazi* is assistant professor of African History at the University of Warwick, UK. She holds a PhD from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA. A native of East Africa, Dr Kembabazi has an extensive teaching career that began in 2006 in East Africa and continued to be nurtured in the USA and Europe where she has taught African and European history. Her research addresses the themes of political culture, nationalism, state violence, ethnicity, civil society, slavery, gender and sexuality, medicine and public health, urbanization, and cosmopolitanism.

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A series of free seminars to commemorate the death of J. R. R. Tolkien, to be held in 2023/2024 in the University of Oxford. The talks present an introduction and further background to Tolkien's life, work, and legacy. They have an academic approach, but they are also aimed at those who have read Tolkien's work but are interested in gaining a bit more insight into his life, career, and writings. WEEK 4 – May 13 Dr. Eleanor Parker (Brasenose College, University of Oxford) Tolkien and the Anglo-Saxon Calendar CHAIR: Grace Khuri (Oriel) https://tolkien50.web.ox.ac.uk/event/tolkien-50th-anniversary-seminar-series

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Generative AI systems such as ChatGPT are disrupting education. They can write essays, summarise scientific texts, produce lesson plans, and tutor students. In this seminar I will discuss challenges that generative AI can pose for higher education. These include detecting student assignments that have been generated by AI; developing policy decisions and guidelines on appropriate use of AI for teaching and assessment; and establishing a program of AI literacy for staff and students. I will also explore opportunities for the use of AI in education, including roles for AI in teaching, learning and assessment such as Possibility Engine, Socratic Opponent, Co-Designer and Dynamic Assessor. Future developments in social generative AI could support team learning and communities of practice. Rather than seeing AI solely as a challenge to traditional education, we should prepare students for a future where AI is an integral tool for analysis, design and creativity, to be operated with great care and awareness of its limitations. In-person booking link: https://forms.office.com/e/vy67aGrtm8 Teams booking link: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/0a3e4bdb-c911-4c5f-a03d-4f8a3be400d9@cc95de1b-97f5-4f93-b4ba-fe68b852cf91

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Please be aware that group attendance may be limited. Please contact Group Lead Christopher Morris or team (christopher.morris@politics.ox.ac.uk) for attendance and inquiries. Seminar details are confirmed a week in advance. The Emerging Threats & Technology Working Group meets regularly each term to examine the national security implications of critical and emerging technologies (CETs), from artificial intelligence and quantum computing to directed energy and space platforms. Meetings are held in hybrid format, at Oxford and online, to include diverse views from academia, industry, and policy, matching the global reach of technological innovation and challenge. For more information on workshops, sessions, and journal, visit www.emergingthreats.co.uk

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Award-winning broadcaster, journalist, and filmmaker, Zeinab Badawi returns to Oxford to talk to Dean Ngaire Woods about her book An African History of Africa: From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence published in April this year. The book guides us through Africa’s spectacular history – from the very origins of our species, through ancient civilisations and medieval empires with remarkable queens and kings, to the miseries of conquest and the elation of independence. Visiting more than thirty African countries to interview countless historians, anthropologists, archaeologists and local storytellers, Zeinab Badawi unearths buried histories from across the continent and gives Africa its rightful place in our global story. The result is a gripping new account of Africa: an epic, sweeping history of the oldest inhabited continent on the planet, told through the voices of Africans themselves. Copies of Ms Badawi’s book will be available for purchase. Zeinab Badawi is President of SOAS University of London and an honorary fellow of her alma mater St Hilda’s College, Oxford. Born in Sudan, she has worked in the British media for several decades. Zeinab is a recipient of the President’s Medal of the British Academy, a Patron of the United Nations Association UK, and is on the boards of the Arts, Humanities and Research Council, MINDS (the Mandela Institute for Development Studies), the International Crisis Group and Afrobarometer. She was previously Chair of the Royal African Society. An African History of Africa is her first book.

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This event represents an excellent opportunity for WIMM students to practice presentation skills and communicate their research to their peers and other academic staff of the WIMM.

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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.

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Visit the website for more details: https://www.ludvigsinander.net/mini-courses.html

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Abstract TBA https://zoom.us/j/95199401096?pwd=ancrZ0U1b0RNVmlKL0tQdTQ5SzhLUT09 Meeting ID: 951 9940 1096 Passcode: 937384

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For our next talk, in the BDI/CHG (gen)omics Seminar series, we will be hearing from Prof Melinda Mills, Professor of Demography & Population Health, Director Demographic Science Unit, NDPH, University of Oxford. We’re delighted to host Prof Mills in what promises to be a great talk! Date: Tuesday 14 May Time: 9:30 am – 10:30 am Talk title: The genetics of reproductive behaviour and relationship amongst 36 reproductive traits Location: Big Data Institute Seminar Room 1 Abstract: Substantial shifts in reproduction and reproductive behaviour have taken place in the last decades in many industrialized countries including earlier age at menarche, advanced age at childbearing, rising childlessness and a lower number of children. As reproduction shifts to later ages, genetic factors may become increasingly important. This talk describes the main findings of recent GWASs of reproductive behaviour (age at first birth, number of children), and their relationship to health and externalising traits. It then links these to a review of 36 reproductive traits of both men and women, examining reproductive behavior, reproductive lifespan and aging, infertility and hormonal concentration. Using the GWAS Catalog as a basis, from 116 relevant studies 2009-2023, we isolate 29 genes that harbour association signals for four or more reproductive traits. Melinda Mills, MBE, Directs the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science and Demographic Science Unit at NDPH, University of Oxford and Nuffield College. She currently also holds a related ERC Advanced Grant, UKRI grant on intergenerational transmission and EU horizon grant linking geospatial indicators to individual level data. ———————————————————————————————————————— All members of the University are welcome to join, please let reception at BDI know you’re here for the seminar and sign-in. We hope you can join us! We also now have a mailing list – To be added, ping genomics_bdi_whg-subscribe@maillist.ox.ac.uk (with any message), you should get a bounce-back with three options to confirm your subscription. Follow any of those options, and with a bit of luck you should be signed up! As a reminder, the (gen)omics seminar series runs every other Tuesday morning and is intended to increase interaction between individuals working in genomics across Oxford. We encourage in-person attendance where possible. There is time for discussion over, tea, coffee and pastries after the talks. Hybrid Option: Please note that these meetings are closed meetings and only open to members of the University of Oxford to encourage sharing of new and unpublished data. Please respect our speakers and do not share the link with anyone outside of the university. Microsoft Teams meeting – Meeting ID: Passcode: ——————————————————————————————————— 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!

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The language of ‘Early Modernity’ has become de rigueur across the humanities. But how far has it simply become a convenient way of referring to the period circa 1450-1750 CE, with the teleological meaning of the words quietly set aside? If many historians of the West are likely to be uncomfortable with the implied grand narrative, the irony is that the past two decades or so have seen global historians and specialists of Asian history take the label and run with it. Reclaiming a sense of forward progression for societies from the Ottomans to the Mughals and Japan, they have sought to give analytical content to the language of early modernity. However, this brings in its train some fraught questions, not least how we define modernity itself. This informal workshop seeks to establish where different areas of the historical profession sit in relation to the question of large-scale periodisation and to start exploring some of its theoretical implications. Is it inherently Eurocentric to use this language or rather to deny its relevance for the world outside Europe? Does the notion of multiple modernities clarify or muddy the waters? Can we periodise through a ‘connective history’ evocation of early globalization or should we identify specific comparative features of nascent modernity? Do historians of the modern period believe in modernity? One significant theme will be the sphere of religion and its relationship to the state across Eurasia. Many of the participants will give short talks, but the point is to generate an exploratory conversation rather than act as an occasion for the delivery of research outcomes. All welcome. Please email the organizer, Alan Strathern "$":mailto:alan.strathern@history.ox.ac.uk, if you intend to come so that we can gain a sense of numbers.

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The 5-module core course designed and delivered by a team from Henley Business School provides a blend of online materials, presentations and small group discussion sessions, and aims to develop enhanced skills and confidence in innovation leadership, managing stakeholders and teams, influencing skills and more. Module 1: Leadership and innovation Module 2: The Entrepreneurial Mindset Module 3: Visualising Success: setting goals and identifying success factors Module 4: Managing stakeholders and teams; Coaching and mentoring for success Module 5: Communicating and influencing externally

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Transporting small molecules across cell membranes is an essential process in cell physiology. The uptake of glucose and the maintenance of intracellular pH are two fundamental processes carried out by most cells. Here, I will present our multidisciplinary approach that has revealed important insights into the mechanism of glucose (GLUT) uptake and Na+/H+ exchange, which are important transport systems for our cells to utilize glucose as an energy source and for the regulation cytoplasmic and organellar pH. I will also present our recent structural insights into a sperm-specific Na+/H+ exchanger regulated by voltage – transforming the transporter into a signaling cascade that is essential in animals (metazoa) for sperm motility and fertilization. Nature (2024) 626: 963-974; Nature (2023) 623:193–201; Nature (2020) 578 (7794):321-325; Nature (2015) 526(7573):397-401; Nature (2013) 501(7468):573-7.venue.

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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. We’ll cover: 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: Oxford students, researchers and other staff.

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Welcome to the Brunel First Annual Health Economics and Policy Forum! The healthcare sector invests significant resources in addressing the consequences of dominant high-risk behaviors such as smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, lack of exercise, poor dietary habits, and digital addiction, all of which impact individual physical and mental well-being. However, envisioning a scenario where individuals adopt healthier lifestyles could lead to a transformative change that enhances individual well-being while reducing healthcare costs. Join us for the First Brunel Annual Health Economic and Policy Forum, where leading experts and policymakers will convene to explore innovative strategies for optimizing resource allocation and addressing critical health needs in the transition to reduced-risk products. This forum will provide a unique opportunity to engage in thought-provoking discussions, gain insights from esteemed speakers, editors and collaborate with peers to drive positive change in healthcare policy. Key Topics Include: • Evaluating the Economic Impact of Reduced-Risk Products • Policy Frameworks for Promoting Public Health and Harm Reduction • Healthcare System Resilience and Adaptation in the Face of Change • Addressing Health Inequalities and Disparities Through Innovative Solutions Here is the registration link for the Annual Health Economic and Policy Forum: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/brunel-first-annual-health-economics-and-policy-forum-tickets872542797997 There is a special issue at Journal of Discover Social Science and Health associated to this workshop. Here is the link to call for this Special Issue Optimizing Resource Relief and Addressing Critical Health Needs through the Transition to Reduced-risk Products | SpringerLink Deadline for full paper submissions is 31st May 2024.

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Dr Nick Hindley (Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, Oxon Link and Horizon Teams, Oxford Health Lead Named Doctor for Children’s Safeguarding) will be joined by colleagues to present strategic and practical considerations of the Thames Valley LINK Programme. The Programme has been established to provide extra support to children and young people who are often described as having ‘complex needs’. https://www.oxfordhealth.nhs.uk/camhs/bob/tvlp/ This is a hyrbid event, held in the Department of Psychiatry’s Seminar Room and online (Zoom). Please email shona.oleary@psych.ox.ac.uk to request the Zoom link.

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Seminars followed by a sandwich lunch. All welcome!

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Join Zoom Meeting zoom.us/j/97156099278?pwd=bE1DNElhVmRRWkl1Q1lVSEI3UlRLdz09 Meeting ID: 971 5609 9278 Passcode: 324627

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Online Publication School: 14-17 May 2024, 12:30-17:00 BST The UK EQUATOR Centre’s Publication School is designed for early-career researchers and students. It aims to give you a smooth writing process that results in a published article that is fit for purpose. You will experience four afternoons of learning led by methodological and writing experts from the UK EQUATOR Centre and Centre for Statistics in Medicine. Through group work, discussion, and practical exercises, we cover everything you need to plan, write, and publish your health-related research study. WHAT WE COVER IN PUBLICATION SCHOOL 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 Writing effective cover letters Submission and dealing with peer review Disseminating your article after publication The course will be held live over Zoom. Participants will need to have Zoom downloaded, rather than using the browser version, as we will be using registrations. We will teach using shared slides, webcam, and audio. We’re excited to maintain the highly interactive nature of Publication School in this online format, with all-group discussion and small-group exercises and discussion. Participants will be welcome to use text chat, mic, and/or webcam in the main room, but will need at least a mic for small-group work in breakout rooms Sessions will run 12:30-17:00 BST, with regular comfort breaks. We will not record the sessions, but participants will receive the electronic course workbook with all notes and exercises. We regret that we are unable to offer live captions.

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Teams registration link: https://teams.microsoft.com/registration/G96VzPWXk0-0uv5ouFLPkQ,hYZdQCmlzkm4vF5r0Gafvg,xSUsO8VQtU2sqG5Uovyv7w,PchcWwEht0-CAOu3vI2htg,7NatZqXPDU66_Xidt948Xg,WwW0fEW18UuO4qTMYXpNtg?mode=read&tenantId=cc95de1b-97f5-4f93-b4ba-fe68b852cf91

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In this online workshop you will be shown the functionality of RefWorks. RefWorks is a subscription software programme used to manage references and create bibliographies that University of Oxford members can use for free during their time at the university and as alumni. The workshop will cover: understanding the main features and benefits of RefWorks; setting up a RefWorks account; organising your references in RefWorks; inserting citations into documents; and creating a bibliography/reference list. Intended audience: students, staff and researchers from MSD and OUH.

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Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) is everywhere right now.   From the blue tick ‘journalists’ on the remnants of Twitter to boardrooms and the world’s battlefields.  Yet if the observer grabs any two OSINT examples or indeed any two OSINT practitioners, it is likely that they will get completely different answers to all of the questions in this seminar’s title.  Moreover, if that same observer felt inclined to dive into academic definitions from either Intelligence Studies or Journalism, they would find themselves confused about how what they’ve seen relates to what they’re reading in any way. This session seeks to explain that dissonance by exploring where the various streams of OSINT came from, what common goods/challenges exist, and what that means for OSINT’s evolving role(s).  Matt Lawrence is a career intelligence professional.  He spent ten years using OSINT techniques in traditional settings in the British Army, he spent a further three years building corporate capabilities around them, and he now works at the Centre for Information Resilience where he attempts to combine his studied professional and academic view of intelligence with the power of the OSINT community for the purpose of human rights accountability. Matt stays connected to the technology driven side of private sector intelligence through consultancy work for both multi-national and start-up tech companies, building tradecraft and translating intelligence use cases. As an occasional academic, Matt holds a BSc and an MA in Intelligence and International Relations and is currently working toward a PhD on the subject of OSINT’s evolving role in the world.

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While there are regular calls for African universities to improve their teaching, finding ways to do this within the resources available in already stretched institutions, and at the scale required, have proven elusive. In this session we discuss the work of an international partnership, Transforming Employability for Social Change in East Africa (TESCEA), that aimed to reshape habits of teaching and learning in four institutions of higher education. Prof. Flora Fabian, Dr Albert Luswata, and Jon Harle will discuss how they and colleagues sought to enable teaching for critical thinking and problem-solving, ensure degree programmes were relevant to social and economic needs by engaging employers and local communities, and that learning environments enabled both young women and men to learn effectively. Building on a collaboratively authored contribution to the recent Higher Education for Good collection, the speakers will offer reflections on the change observed, the ways in which this was achieved, and the challenges they encountered.

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Jon Wilson is a historian of South Asian and, more recently, global politics based at King’s College London, where he is currently Head of History. He has published The Domination of Strangers. Modern Governance in Eastern India, 1780-1835 (2007) and India Conquered. Britain’s Raj and the Chaos of Empire (2017), and is currently writing a global history of the emergence of the nation state in the twentieth century.

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Week 4, Tuesday 14th May Dr. David Friedman (Cambridge/Darwin College) “Asinaeus and Anilaeus in Josephus’ Jewish Antiquities” In order to participate in this lecture via Zoom, please register at this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYrd-msrDMqE9GXmtd79e8PkTE_qzy6EIUY

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Join Zoom Meeting http://us06web.zoom.us/j/85285531740?pwd=SEFBa0%C3%975V21SOFo1dk85dm5TWEhSdz09 Meeting ID: 852 8553 1740 Passcode: 911647

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In this session we will examine article and researcher 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 calculate a researcher h-index. 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; calculating your own h-index; creating a researcher profile and using ORCID IDs to identify your work; and issues and recommendations for using citation analysis to measure impact for articles and authors. Intended audience: Oxford students, researchers and other staff.

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Extremely preterm infants born before 28 weeks gestation are at high risk for neurodevelopmental impairments. Amplitude-integrated EEG (aEEG) accompanied by raw EEG traces (aEEG-EEG) during the first days after birth could help predict outcomes in these infants. This study aimed to determine if specific qualitative and quantitative aEEG-EEG features predict cognitive, motor, and behavioral outcomes at ages 2-3 and 5-7 years in extremely preterm infants. This retrospective cohort study analyzed aEEG-EEG recordings from the first 3 days after birth for extremely preterm infants born before 28 weeks gestation at Wilhelmina Children’s Hospital, Netherlands between 2008-2018. Infants with genetic/metabolic diseases or major malformations were excluded. Qualitative features were extracted, including background pattern, sleep-wake cycling, and seizures. Quantitative metrics were also extracted, grouped into spectral content, amplitude, connectivity, and discontinuity. Machine learning models evaluated if these early aEEG-EEG features predicted outcomes at follow-up, controlling for potential confounders like illness severity and medications. Key findings showed background pattern was the strongest predictor. Infants with discontinuous background patterns were more likely to have cognitive, motor, and behavioral problems at follow-up. Quantitative features also had predictive value - increased discontinuity and decreased lower-frequency activity predicted worse outcomes. Sleep-wake cycling and seizures occurred too infrequently to assess predictive utility. This study found early aEEG-EEG background patterns and quantitative metrics in extremely preterm infants provided valuable prognostic information about neurodevelopmental impairments at ages 2-7 years. Discontinuous background and increased discontinuity specifically were associated with cognitive, motor, and behavioral problems. These findings highlight the potential for automated, interpretable analysis of early aEEG-EEG features to aid risk stratification, decision-making, and intervention planning for this high-risk population. Future research should explore integrating these predictive EEG biomarkers into an automated prognostic tool to enable individualized predictions and support precision care for extremely preterm infants.

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Women continue to be underrepresented in corporate leadership positions. This paper studies the role of social connections in women's career advancement. We investigate whether access to a larger share of female peers in business school affects the gender gap in senior managerial positions. Merging administrative data from a top-10 US business school with public LinkedIn profiles, we first document that female MBAs are 24 percent less likely than male MBAs to enter senior management within 15 years of graduation. Next, we use the exogenous assignment of students into sections to show that a larger proportion of female MBA section peers increases the likelihood of entering senior management for women but not for men. This effect is driven by female-friendly firms, such as those with more generous maternity leave policies and greater work schedule flexibility. A larger proportion of female MBA peers induces women to transition to these firms where they attain senior management roles. We find suggestive evidence that some of the mechanisms behind these results include job referrals and gender-specific information transmission. These findings highlight the role of social connections in reducing the gender gap in senior management positions.

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Introduction by David G.K. Taylor (Associate Professor in Aramaic and Syriac, Wolfson College, Oxford) Dr Sebastian Brock FBA, University of Oxford 'The Ecumenical Journey of the Writings of St Isaac the Syrian’ Sebastian Brock is a leading authority in the field of Syriac studies which he taught for many years in the University of Oxford, where he remains Emeritus (https://www.ames.ox.ac.uk/people/sebastian-p-brock), and Fellow of the British Academy. He is widely recognised for his important work translating Syriac texts, especially those of 4th to 7th centuries, and making better known the mediating role of textual translation in late Antiquity, especially the cultural interface between Syriac and Greek. Among his many publications are The Luminous Eye: The Spiritual World Vision of St Ephrem (1985), The Wisdom of Isaac of Nineveh [Syriac-English] (Piscataway NJ, 2006), A Brief Outline of Syriac Literature (2nd edition 2011); The Bible in the Syriac Tradition (3rd edition 2023); An Inventory of Syriac Texts Published from Manuscripts in the British Library (2020). This lecture will explore the way in which the texts of the 7th century Isaac the Syrian form part of a multi-dimensional Christian heritage. The lecture will be followed by a cheese and wine reception. All welcome. The Zernov Lecture is an annual event hosted jointly by the House of St Gregory and St Macrina Oxford, the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius and the St Theosevia Centre for Christian Spirituality, charities working in the field of Eastern Christian studies. It honours the memory of the Orthodox theologian and worker for Christian unity, Nicolas Zernov (1898-1980), whose vision lay behind the founding of these charities. The charities are pleased to be collaborating for this lecture with the Maison française d’Oxford (https://www.mfo.ac.uk/), especially given the connections between the Paris School of Theology and Oxford which Zernov represented.

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Lecture 3 of the Evans-Pritchard Lecture series “Witches” and the Humanitarian World: NGOs, Churches, and the State. All are welcome to attend in person or via the Teams ID and password below: Meeting ID: 318 331 790 674 Passcode: LEecHc

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Since 1869, reliance on maritime global trade, spanning from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean via the Suez Canal, Bab el Mandeb, and the Strait of Hormuz, has faced persistent challenges due to geopolitical tensions. The blockade of the Suez Canal from March 23 to 29, 2021, resulted in staggering losses of up to $400 million per hour or $9.6 billion per day, starkly emphasizing the critical need for alternative maritime routes. Waterways Engineers Ltd. proposes two transformative projects to address these issues: the Mesopotamian Canal, providing a direct link from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf, reducing the route by 3000 km, and alternative channels in the Musandam Peninsula and the UAE, aiming to bypass the Strait of Hormuz, shortening maritime routes by up to 200 km and ensuring safe navigation. These initiatives signify a paradigm shift in global maritime trade, offering solutions to longstanding challenges and reshaping trade dynamics. Waterways Engineers Ltd. is dedicated to spearheading these transformative efforts, ushering in a new era of maritime connectivity and economic prosperity.

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ANNUAL ZERNOV LECTURE: TUESDAY 14 MAY, 5 pm, at Maison Francaisé. You are warmly invited to the annual Zernov Lecture, in memory of Dr Nicholas Zernov. Dr Sebastian Brock speaks on ‘The Ecumenical Journey of St Isaac the Syrian’s Writings’, at 5 pm at the Maison Francaise, Norham Rd, on Tuesday 14 May. Followed by drinks. The Lecture will trace the translation history of St Isaac’s writings, from Syriac to Greek and Latin, to Slavonic, Portuguese, Russian, and the many translations of the Philokalia.

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This talk discusses how traditional ink brush landscape paintings were repackaged in 1950s China as a new national artform to embody the glory of the new sovereign power. These paintings, many of them now crowned as ‘Red Classics’, reveal the mutual appropriation between the socialist nation-building and traditional Confucian and Daoist aesthetics. With the new regime defining the political and aesthetic agenda, these works were invested with heavy political, aesthetic and economic values. Painters were subjected to intense political scrutiny, but some also took the opportunity to keep painting. This talk also analyzes the assumption behind territorial sovereignty, and how traditional Chinese paintings were tasked to aestheticize the natural scenery as an abstract possession of the new sovereign power. PANG Laikwan is Choh-Ming Li Professor of Cultural and Religious Studies at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is the author of a few books, including One and All: The Logic of Chinese Sovereignty (Stanford UP, 2024), The Appearing Demos: Hong Kong During and After the Umbrella Movement (U of Michigan P, 2020), The Art of Cloning: Creative Production During China’s Cultural Revolution (Verso, 2017) and Creativity and Its Discontents: China’s Creative Industries and Intellectual Property Rights Offenses (Duke UP, 2012).

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Addressing a range of contemporary and historical conflicts and daily struggles, this series of talks will explore how violence remains integral to the global political economy, with lasting effects on gendered hierarchies which often extend far beyond immediate war zones.

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Tuesday 14th May Dr Selbi Durdiyeva (Philipps University, Marburg/ONGC) Hauntology, Inheritance, and Women’s Writing: Entangled Pasts in Turkmen Family Archives Women’s emancipation discourse was instrumentalised by the Soviet regime, particularly for agitation of the so-called ‘Red East.’ This paper draws on these narratives from the position of how they were perceived and remembered by women after the fall of the USSR. The paper links what Sabrin Hasbun (2022) calls a mixture of ‘performative and embodied knowledge, memoir, fiction, and historical investigation,’ of sources that are ‘endangered,’ belonging to the genre of ‘life writing,’ or auto-biography studies. I apply a micro-narrative approach and engage with under-represented ephemeral sources of women’s writing as found and preserved in family archives in Turkmenistan that reflect on the Soviet inheritance and memory. These sources demonstrate an attempt of ‘talking back’ to macro-narratives and resisting through writing and recollecting those experiences in the domain of the private, weaving family memory with political events, leaving a complex picture of entangled pasts.

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https://www.lac.ox.ac.uk/event/lac-main-seminar-series-unmooring-with-roots-party-system-decay-amidst-polarization-in-argenti

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(Organised jointly with the Early Modern English Literature seminar)

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All welcome Refreshments

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*Dr Ian Williams* is Associate Professor, (UCL Faculty of Laws); Fellow-elect, St John's College, Oxford.

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Wednesday 15th May Colloquium: Liberty & Natural Law. In collaboration with Revue de Philosophie de Droit. Speakers include: Clemente Recabarren (St John’s), Sébastien Neuville (Toulouse), Henri Torrione (Fribourg), Jonathan Price (Pusey House & St Cross), Nathan Helms (Oriel), Dominic Burbidge (Regent’s Park), Arnaud de Solminihac (Paris II Panthéon-Assas), Conor Casey (Surrey). This one-day Colloquium for graduate students and researchers in Law, Philosophy and Theology, considers liberty in light of natural law. Email: pusey.conference@stx.ox.ac.uk. Wednesday 15th May. Liberty & Natural Law In collaboration with Revue de Philosophie de Droit. Clemente Recabarren (St John’s), Sébastien Neuville (Toulouse), Henri Torrione (Fribourg), Jonathan Price (Pusey House & St Cross)Nathan Helms (Oriel), Dominic Burbidge (Regent’s Park), Arnaud de Solminihac (Paris II Panthéon-Assas), Conor Casey (Surrey). This one-day Colloquium especially for students and researchers in Law, Philosophy, and Theology, considers liberty in lig, ht of natural law. Email: pusey.conference@stx.ox.ac.uk.

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Visit the website for more details: https://www.ludvigsinander.net/mini-courses.html

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Workshop: Solitude and Community in Contemporary Chinese Culture The relationship between solitude and community resonates across the making of culture: creativity is often seeded in the tranquility of solitude; but it also blooms in spaces of community. In the aftermath of China’s strict Zero-COVID, policy, when millions of people were confined to their homes for months in states of isolation, questions about this intersection between being alone and being together are more pertinent than ever. This workshop focusses in particular on the insights their relationship offers into the ways in which seemingly disparate makers of culture navigate uncertainty in China and Hong Kong today. Placing the loneliness of the prison cell alongside solitary spectatorship of censored documentaries; linking online communities of transnational authors to the network of world-cities in which they live; and exploring the overlapping tensions between being singular and plural in contemporary poetry, this workshop shows how community and solitude, as multi-media and multi-scalar concepts, illuminate the bonds of sociality in uncertain times. Federico Picerni (University of Bologna) ‘Solitude and Community, Singular and Plural, Poet and Class: Overlaps in Workers’ Poetry’ Margaret Hillenbrand (University of Oxford) ‘Digital Documentaries, Solitary Spectatorship’ Pang Laikwan (Chinese University of Hong Kong) ‘Writing Behind Bars: The Fandom That Queers Our Political Subjectivity’ Carwyn Morris (Leiden University) ‘In the Shadow of the World City: City Identity and Community in China’ Huang Qian (University of Groningen) ‘Chinese Female Transnational-Romance Content Creators’ Cautious Labor in Daily Production and Community Management’

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Good research data management is a vital component of academic practice. Part of this is the principle that the data used to develop the arguments and outcomes of your research should be effectively stored and managed during a project, preserved for the future and - where possible - shared with other academics. This session introduces the University’s research data policy and outlines the practical impact this will have on your work. The services available at Oxford to assist you will be outlined. This session is not only essential during your current studies but will be invaluable if you plan to continue in research as a career. Intended audience: Oxford students, researchers and other staff.

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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. Intended audience: Oxford students, researchers and other staff.

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How and why did China ‒ the world’s largest communist nation ‒ converge with global capitalism? And when did this occur? In this new book, LSE historian Elizabeth Ingleson tells the surprising story of how the United States and China went from Cold War foes to finding common cause by transforming China’s economy into a source of cheap labour, creating the economic interdependence that characterizes our world today. Far from inevitable, Ingleson shows that this convergence hinged upon a reconfiguration of the very meaning of trade. For centuries, the vastness of the Chinese market tempted foreign companies in search of customers. But in the 1970s, when the United States and China ended two decades of Cold War isolation, China’s trade relations veered in a very different direction. Ingleson argues that the interests of US business and the Chinese state aligned to reframe the China market: the old dream of plentiful customers gave way to a new vision of low-cost workers by the hundreds of millions. Elizabeth O’Brien Ingleson is Assistant Professor of International History at the London School of Economics. She earned her doctorate at the University of Sydney, and held fellowships at Yale University, the University of Virginia, and Southern Methodist University. She currently serves on the editorial board of the journal Cold War History.

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Ageing is a major risk factor for many diseases, including neurodegenerative disorders and cancers. My research focuses on understanding how intestinal stem cells function in rodents with varying lifespans. Using comparative analyses between short-lived mice and long-lived naked mole rats, we have recently shown that adult stem cell activity varies significantly between these species. Mimicking the biology of naked mole rats has the potential to reverse age-related decline in tissue function in humans.

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Growing cities in low- and middle-income countries offer increased market access, yet this requires that residents explore their surroundings. This is not always the case. In a sample of 800 casual workers in Nairobi, the median person commutes 7.8 km but has never been to 1 in 5 of neighbourhoods within that distance. We offer short-term employment to these workers and experimentally induce familiarity by training participants in either familiar or unfamiliar locations. We measure willingness to work in different locations across the city. Participants need to be paid more to work in a neighbourhood that is unfamiliar at baseline. The premium is equivalent to 3.5 km of distance or to 113 Ksh (23% of the median daily wage), and this is fully offset after one visit. Participant beliefs about labour market opportunities and safety in unfamiliar neighbourhoods are initially worse on average, but converge after one visit. We consider two additional potential barriers to exploration: forecasting errors and the attentional salience of familiar neighbourhoods. Written with Joshua T. Dean, Gabriel Kreindler, Oluchi Mbonu

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Discover how interdisciplinarity is conceptualised in the Agile Initiative and how to manage it effectively in an Agile Sprint. This is workshop is open to: Oxford University researchers planning to develop an Agile Sprint; Oxford University researchers working on other interdisciplinary research projects who wish to gain insights on rapid applied interdisciplinary research; previous Agile researchers wishing to review their experience of interdisciplinary research during their work on an Agile Sprint, to best describe it for future career opportunities. You will gain insight on how to address the challenge of planning for and managing a rapid model of interdisciplinary research. By the end of this workshop, you will have gained knowledge of: What drives interdisciplinary research in Agile Sprints How to integrate diversity in terms of discipline, research design and research team membership relative to the Sprint’s research question, policy focus and communities affected by the policy issue How to ensure integration of disciplines from the outset by creating a shared understanding of the problem definition, a common language, and interdisciplinary culture within a Sprint team How to manage interdisciplinarity as an ongoing practice to avoid siloed work packages and overreliance on one discipline for integrated final outputs. “Interdisciplinary research can be rewarding, exciting and challenging in equal (and sometimes unequal!) measure. This session aims to facilitate a discussion about what makes interdisciplinary research plain sailing and how to avoid capsize when things get difficult.” -Dr Mark Hirons Book your place on the workshop using the links provided. If you need to cancel your place, please do so no later than 48 hours before the workshop. By booking on this workshop, you have agreed to the externally facing use of the recording. Book another session, by viewing the series event page. Participation: Please note you will be expected to actively participate, which includes joining discussion, listening, asking questions, and contributing to activities.

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Speaker bio: https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/infection-veterinary-and-ecological-sciences/staff/lance-turtle/ This is a hybrid seminar. To join via Zoom, please register in advance: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMvd-6prDwtHt24jNykK82_RHIZlDjwPBYO After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

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Adriaan Basson is editor-in-chief of News24 and the author of four books on corruption and current affairs. He is the recipient of multiple awards for investigative journalism, including the CNN African Journalist of the Year for news and the Taco Kuiper award. Basson worked as an investigative journalist on the Mail & Guardian, where he was a founding member of amaBhungane, before moving to City Press as assistant editor. In 2013, he became editor of Beeld and in 2016 was appointed editor-in-chief of News24.

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Chaired by Prof Matt Jarvis, panellists will discuss how mental health is facilitated in their research groups before inviting audience participation about what works and what doesn’t work, suggesting approaches and inviting questions from audience members. LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of this session you will: • Understand more about the link between good mental health and creating a thriving research group. • Have learnt about different approaches to managing and leading research groups. • Understand more about research groups and how they work from different perspectives.

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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: students, staff and researchers from MSD and OUH.

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A large economy should not fluctuate too much: large economies contain a large number of firms, so the shocks they endure should average out for macroeconomic variables – at least that is how the standard argument goes. However, the United States, for example, has had an average real GDP growth of 3.1% per year since 1947, but with a standard deviation of the same order of magnitude: 2.1%. This illustrates the “excess volatility puzzle”: it is a major fundamental unsolved problem in economics. Another facet of the excess volatility puzzle is that relatively small events cause unexpectedly large bubbles and crashes in prices and supply. A classic example of such an event is the singular tanker incident in the Suez Canal in March 2021, whose macroeconomic effects have been felt for over two years. A significant amount of effort in economics and in the physics of complex systems has been devoted to understanding the excess volatility puzzle, leading to the creation of agent-based models where firms – constituting the backbone of economic production – buy inputs from each other to create their own output, which they then sell to other firms that need them in turn. However, the timeliness aspect of production systems remains underappreciated, even though timeliness has been ubiquitously and integrally adopted as a quality standard for production systems. The basic idea is simple: for a firm to be able to produce something, it not only needs to be able to order inputs from its supplier, but it also needs to receive these inputs in time. Large delays in supply chains can cause a loss of coordination in production systems that provide the backbone for economic performance, exemplified by the ongoing backlog in the automotive supply chain as a consequence of the collapse of the Baltimore Key Bridge in March 2024. We have recently developed a novel stylised model that has brought timeliness and operational delays in the provision of goods and services into the picture. Reinforced by competitive pressures, operators often myopically optimize for cost- and time-efficiencies, running the risk of inadvertently pushing production systems towards the proverbial “edge of a cliff” in the sense of timeliness. We have shown that this cliff edge is a true critical point – identified as timeliness criticality – implying that system efficiency and robustness to perturbation are in tension with each other [1]. Specifically for production systems, we suggest that the proximity to timeliness criticality is a measure for their fragility, resulting in large swings in being available on time can indeed cascade through supply chain, and is therefore a possible mechanistic route for unravelling the excess volatility puzzle [2]. [1] J. Moran, M. Romeijnders, P. Le Doussal, F. P. Pijpers, U. Weitzel, D. Panja, J.-P. Bouchaud. https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.15070 (to appear in Nature Physics). [2] J. Moran, F. P. Pijpers, U. Weitzel, J.-P. Bouchaud, D. Panja. https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.03546. About the speaker Deb Panja is associate professor of Complex Systems, and the vice-director of Centre for Complex Systems Studies at Utrecht University, Netherlands. He specialises in networks, stochastic dynamical systems, and their applications in ecology, epidemiology, materials, transport, neuroscience and complexity economics.

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How do policymakers respond to research studies? At what point in the research process should researchers engage with policymakers in order to maximize evidence utilisation? To offer insights into these questions, this session delves into the groundbreaking and emerging quantitative literature on the relationship between research and policymaking, specifically through the lens of impact evaluation studies in middle- and low-income countries. The first part of the session focuses on how policymakers respond to impact evaluations and how this information might, in turn, influence their programmatic decisions. The second part investigates the effect of involving policymakers at the design stage of research projects on evidence utilisation and examines the electoral cycle's role in creating opportunities for these research partnerships to emerge.

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This week, Dr. Ana Valdivia from the Oxford Internet Institute will be speaking on the political and environmental impact of AI and its supply chains. About the speaker Ana Valdivia is a Departmental Research Lecturer in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Government & Policy at the Oxford Internet Institute (OII). Ana investigates how datafication and algorithmic systems are transforming political, social and ecological worlds. Building on her experience as a mathematician and computer scientist, her interest lies in investigating how AI is impacting on local communities, borders and territories. In her current research, Ana aims to examine the political and environmental impact of AI by understanding its life cycle from mineral extractivism, data centres and electronic waste dumps. She is also interested in analysing algorithmic resistance and oppression from feminist lens. Her previous research has analysed the impact of datafication technologies from a critical perspective in different contexts such as migration or criminal justice. She has analysed the colonial and racial legacy of biometrics, which has been featured in relevant conferences like ACM Fairness, Accountability and Fairness in Machine Learning. As a postdoctoral researcher at King’s College London, she developed digital methodologies to unveil which algorithmic systems are used in the field of border security, such as biometric databases or maritime surveillance algorithms. Moreover, Ana led a collaboration with magistrates in Spain to understand the impact of gender-based violence risk assessment tools implemented in courts, which was featured by the Montreal AI Ethics Institute. Her transdisciplinary research agenda stems from the ability to combine quantitative and qualitative methodologies bridging the gap between computer and social science; and collaborate with scholars from a range of different disciplines, including political science, philosophy and law. Ana also serves as a co-editor of Big Data & Society journal. In 2023, her academic contribution to AI was awarded by the British Academy. In 2022, Ana was awarded with the Post-Doctoral Enrichment Award by The Alan Turing Institute. She is a former fellow of Data Science for Social Good program at University of Chicago (USA). Ana has recently been invited as a keynote speaker by Tecnológico de Monterrey (México). She is actively collaborating with international grassroot organisations such as AlgoRace or Tierra Común to raise awareness on how algorithmic harms impacts on racialised subjects. Ana also collaborates with Post Apocalipsis Nau podcast where she brings her critical perspective towards digital technologies to the general public. She also writes in the Jevon’s Paradox blog, where she examines power unbalances between science, technology and knowledge. Her work has been widely featured in international media outlets (Público, El País, El Salto, elDiario.es).

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Research Spotlight event Showcasing research being undertaken across the Social Sciences Division on disability. Speakers: Hamish Low, James Meade Professor of Economics and the Head of the Department of Economics 'Disability Insurance: Error Rates and Gender Differences' Heloise Robinson, Singer Fellow in Law at Exeter College 'Disability as a Starting Point, and the Law's Philosophical Foundations' Jill Porter, Honorary Research Fellow, Department of Education and formerly Professor of Education, University of Reading 'Understanding and Responding to the Experience of Disability' Iyiola Solanke, Jacques Delors Professor of European Union Law at the University of Oxford 'Legal protection against weight discrimination?'

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This roundtable discussion will explore how the politics of immigration has affected the politics of the Americas and Europe, with experts from these regions providing their expert insight into the similarities and differences between nations dealing with unprecedented migration. Among the topics discussed will be the 2024 elections in many countries around the world, including the United Kingdom and the United States, how immigration politics has changed over time, and possible ways to forge consensus on this polarising issue. This event is open to the public.

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Abstract: Electrocardiogram (ECG) is widely considered the primary test for evaluating cardiovascular diseases. However, the use of AI models to advance these medical practices and learn new clinical insights from ECGs remains largely unexplored. Utilising a data set of 2.3 million ECGs collected from patients with 7 years follow-up, we developed a DNN model with state-of-the-art granularity for the interpretable diagnosis of cardiac abnormalities, gender identification, and hypertension screening solely from ECGs, which are then used to stratify the risk of mortality. Our model demonstrated cardiologist-level accuracy in interpretable cardiac diagnosis, and the potential to facilitate clinical knowledge discovery for gender and hypertension detection which are not readily available. In addition, we explored the design of optimal DNN models through of a novel Neural Architecture Search (NAS) approach, which was able to find networks outperformed the state-of-the-art models with fewer than 5% parameters. Bio: Dr. Lei Lu is a Lecturer in Health Data Science and AI at King’s College London, and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering, University of Oxford. Lei obtained his PhD from the Harbin Institute of Technology in China, complemented by two-year visiting research at the University of British Columbia in Canada. Upon completing his PhD study, Lei had his postdoctoral research at the University of Melbourne in Australia. Subsequently, he joined the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at University of Oxford as a Senior Research Associate. Lei’s work focuses on clinical machine learning to advance healthcare outcomes. Lei is actively engaged in a range of academic roles, including invited speaker at the IET Annual Healthcare Lecture and the IEEE-EMBS Symposium on MDBS. He also served as conference session chair, workshop committee, and guest editor for IJCAI, CIKM, ICRA, and IEEE JBHI. He received the IET J.A. Lodge Award in 2021, which is presented annually to one early-career researcher with distinction.

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For details see https://www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/events/film-screening-and-discussion-missing-in-brooks-county

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Week 4, 15 May Prof. Yuval Jobani, Tel Aviv University, will be discussing his book The First Jewish Environmentalist: The Green Philosophy of A. D. Gordon In order to participate in this seminar, please register at the Zoom link here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0rdeyvpjsuHdWP- EH2npPQXl9RmisXkfdF

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Lecture Three ‘Religious Real Estate: Properties of the Sacred’ [Wednesday 15 May, from 5:15 to 6:45 pm, Harris Lecture Theatre, Oriel College] A persistent image of pilgrimage sites is that they act as ‘spiritual magnets,’ drawing others to them as a result of extraordinary events or miraculous properties of healing or revelation. This view occludes the significance of the multiple material infrastructures that facilitate access to and through a holy place, providing the bodily presences necessary to reinforce its image as locus of exceptional sacrality. In this lecture, I examine the affordances of resources that range from roads to real estate, and I highlight a category of person often ignored in studies of pilgrimage sites: those people—including but not just clergy—who regard sacred destination as ‘home’. I show how domesticity and the divine may become conjoined through miraculous narratives of acquiring and developing property. My focus on the materialities of both cathedrals and Walsingham as sacred places incorporates kitchens and cartographies, personal biographies as well as a wider biopolitics of religious encompassment. Drawing on anthropological work on hospitality and migration, I develop a model of the pilgrimage site as both generator and receiver of ‘vital signs’ of religious presence.

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The concept of “lectio divina” is well-known, especially in Christian contemplative circles: the ‘divine reading’ of scripture and other texts that involves levels of engagement deeper than the merely intellectual and analytical. It often involves letting texts speak to us, or letting ourselves be spoken by a text, beyond reading for content and ideas. This talk explores how the writing of religious poetry can involve similar drives and energies. Does contemplative poetry write itself? What do we make of the words between the words, the silences and rests under the textual content? It will draw on both global examples of religious poetry, from multiple faith traditions, as well as the speaker’s own writing as an award-winning poet, interfaith dialogue facilitator and enthusiast of contemplative practice—in addition to his day job as Director of Digital Transformation Education at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford.

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Please join us for this year’s postgraduate-led conference on Literature and Language Difference, exploring the existing and emerging approaches to language difference, with the wider, long-term intention of disrupting borders. This conference features a keynote presentation from Professor Matthew Reynolds (University of Oxford) and a series of nine papers on translation, transcreation, translanguaging and transformation. Registration required: https://occt.web.ox.ac.uk/event/literature-and-language-difference-conference

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The World Health Organisation has declared Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) as one of the ‘top global and public health development threats.’ This one-day workshop will approach the problem from a Humanities perspective. It will focus on the power of narrative and communication in discussions around antimicrobial resistance. Topics will include: * Narratives of antibiotic resistance in both primary and secondary healthcare, with a focus on clinician-patient encounters. * The communication of antimicrobial resistance through journalism and social media. * The role of scientific publishing in highlighting the challenges of antimicrobial resistance. * The power of art and design in communicating information about antibiotics. The workshop will draw together a wide range of perspectives with participants from the fields of patient activism, journalism, philosophy, microbiology, history, medicine, nursing, policy, and art and design. All welcome, no registration required. Funding: This work is generally sponsored by the John Fell Fund (via the Medical Humanities Programme) and the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, University of Oxford. Convenors: Sally Frampton, Alberto Giubilini, Tess Johnson, Will Matlock.

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Visit the website for more details: https://www.ludvigsinander.net/mini-courses.html

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Digital Health Horizons: The Future of Health - delves into the dynamic interplay of digital health and medical artificial intelligence, exploring both the promising opportunities, and significant challenges that lie ahead. The conference is designed to foster an environment of knowledge-sharing and inspiration, kicking-off with a morning session of keynote presentations and a panel discussion between experts from academia, policy-making, and industry. The event comprises a morning of keynote presentations, and a panel discussion from leading academic, policy, and industry experts, andh technical poster presentations and lightning talks across two tracks in the afternoon. The inaugural Digital Health Horizons Conference is hosted in partnership with the Cheng Kar Shun Digital Hub at Jesus College, Oxford.

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The conference invites research on the history of radio, television, film and recorded sound in a colonial context. Scholarship on colonial newspapers is now a well-established field but historians have given less attention to broadcast media due, not least, to the methodological challenges of using audio and visual archives. Colonial officials were fascinated by the power of broadcasting as a tool of political control and its potential to project a high-tech vision of colonial rule as modern and permanent. Paradoxically, this often went hand-in-hand with an ethnographic impetus to record, curate and promote ‘traditional’ music and stories. But broadcast media proved unreliable servants of colonial rule thanks to the efforts of subversive voices from within the colonial media machine and, from without, the cross-border flow of contraband records, banned film reels and ‘guerrilla radio’ stations (Lekgoathi et al, 2020). In some localities broadcast media served as much to undermine as to prolong empire. The scope of the conference is global and invites research on any part of the colonial world defined in the broadest sense, including the European empires, China, Japan and Russia, and settler-colonial societies such as USA. Papers may consider the colonial period itself, the question of legacy in the post-independence era or coverage of the colonial past in contemporary media. Participants are welcome to interpret the subject of the conference as they wish but the following sub-themes may serve as useful starting points: * Archives and methodologies * Modernity, technology and the ‘colonial sublime’ (Larkin, 2015) * The state, political control and ‘soft power’ * Subversive voices, race, gender and liberation * Creators and mediators: broadcasters, producers, directors, actors * Audiences: local, national and trans-national * Music, ethnography and identity * Cultural production, drama and language * Corporate ownership and ‘control patterns’ (Nyamnjoh, 2005) Participants are invited to present papers of 20 minutes, which will be grouped into panels of 3-4 papers and followed by a discussion. The keynote lecture will be held at 17:00 on 16 May. The conference will include a film presentation and discussion session on 17 May. _*Please visit the website to respond to the call for papers: https://www.africanstudies.ox.ac.uk/article/call-for-papers-broadcasting-colonialism-conference, which closes on 2 April 2024.*_

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‘Broadcasting Colonialism’ presents new research on the global history of radio, television, film and other broadcast media. Colonial officials were fascinated by the power of broadcasting as a tool of political control and its potential to project a high-tech vision of colonial rule as modern and permanent. Paradoxically, this often went hand-in-hand with an ethnographic impetus to salvage, promote and curate ‘traditional’ culture, music and stories. But broadcast media proved unreliable servants of colonial rule thanks to the efforts of subversive voices from within the colonial media machine and, from without, the cross-border flow of illicit media such as contraband film reels and ‘guerrilla radio’ stations (Lekgoathi et al, 2020). In some localities broadcast media served as much to undermine as to prolong empire. At independence broadcasting became the primary medium of nation-building yet it did as much to divide as unite postcolonial societies. The conference showcases the ways in which the global history of broadcasting, which has only recently begun to attract significant scholarly attention, compliments and problematises the more established history of the press. The conference interrogates the media landscape not only of the colonial period but also its legacies in the post-independence era and in contemporary broadcast media. Its geographical scope comprises papers on Africa, South Asia, East Asia, Australasia, USA, Northern Ireland and the Netherlands. The keynote lecture will be given by Prof Chandrika Kaul on radio in colonial India, and the conference will finish with a screening and discussion of short films about decolonisation in Francophone Africa. --- Join online via Teams - https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_NzhiN2JiMmMtYWM2Mi00ZjE2LTkzM2YtN2FiN2JmODQ5ODhi%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22cc95de1b-97f5-4f93-b4ba-fe68b852cf91%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%2255e84603-af9d-45d2-9604-052642f43cfc%22%7d

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Understanding how 3D genome structure varies between cell types, in development and disease, promises to enhance the interpretation of genome sequence and to accelerate the discovery of disease target genes. To explore 3D genome structure in different stages of development, we applied Genome Architecture Mapping in early mammalian development and in highly specialised cells of the brain). We found extensive cell-type specialisation of 3D chromatin contacts, and discovered large scale decondensation events, or ‘melting’, of long genes when most highly expressed. Through integration of 3D genome structure with single-cell expression and chromatin accessibility, we find cell-type specific hubs of contacts containing genes associated with specialised cellular functions, such as addiction and synaptic plasticity. Our recent work explores differences in 3D genome structure between the two copies of parental chromosomes, and the effects of environmental insults, such as addictive drugs or sleep deprivation on the complex 3D genome structures of brain cells, and their long-term impact in gene deregulation.

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All university students need to become skilled in identifying, evaluating and referencing academic sources. These are often essential steps in completing course and tutorial assignments successfully. Unfamiliar sources like peer-reviewed scientific journals and understanding how and why to reference correctly can challenge new undergraduates. In this session we explore the different types of academic sources you may encounter, tools to evaluate a source for academic quality and how to demystify referencing. Intended audience: Oxford undergraduate students from MPLS and MSD.

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The review _Minotaure_ published its first issue in 1933, nine years after the poet and critic André Breton officially inaugurated the Surrealist movement with the publication of the _Manifesto of Surrealism_ (1924). As Surrealism entered the 1930s, many members of the movement became increasingly critical of the promises of what Breton called “pure psychic automatism” (or creativity in the absence of consciousness) as the best method for generating creative impulses. One interest that emerged in response to the perceived shortcomings of “pure psychic automatism” was an increased consideration of plants, animals, and insects as creative agents. Many of the most important texts articulating these new notions of _thought-in-nature_ were published in _Minotaure_. Such texts include Roger Caillois’ exploration of biomimicry in insects, Max Ernst’s probing of the mysteries of forests, and André Breton’s analysis of coral’s uneasy status between plant and mineral. These essays were all accompanied by photographic illustrations. This dissertation considers how ecological actors were assigned agency in _Minotaure_ and how the accompanying photographs were marshaled as evidence of non-human creativity.

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Lesson of the week, clinical cases and research. All clinical and academic staff and students welcome. Coffee, Tea and Cake will be served.

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Are you considering roles in academia? The range of research and teaching roles in higher education is large, and you'll come across a variety of terminology. In this session we will try to de-mystify the options, let you know more about the most commonly found early career academic roles. We'll also look at how to put together a tailored and compelling CV and cover letter or supporting statement for such opportunities and touch on other application materials that you might need. There will be plenty of opportunity to ask questions.

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A practical session where participants will develop the 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: build a search strategy on Medline, using Yale MeSH Analyzer to optimise the use of subject headings; adapt the search across multiple databases with the help of Polyglot; describe alternative methods for identifying references, including citation tracking; de-duplicate results from multiple database searches; start screening results for inclusion in your review; and report your search methods according to PRISMA-S. Intended audience: students, staff and researchers from MSD and OUH.

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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: students, staff and researchers from MSD and OUH.

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*Eleri Hedley Carter*, ‘Meanings of the home, family, and the welfare state to women in late-modern Britain’ *Freya Willis*, ‘Who Cares? Social Care Workers’ Experiences of Work, Gender, and Class in England and Wales 1979-2010’

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This is a lecture about the Exhibition of Research photos and copies of Roman mosaics (Western and Eastern/Byzantine) which I curated in Wolfson College during Hilary term 2024. It shows material from Venice and Ravenna as well as from Roman villas in the UK

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Webpage: english.web.ox.ac.uk/reading-group-literature-and-mental-health Reading list: drive.google.com/drive/folders/1u3IaqwXUPyeOKKQ0oznFdeMODLlTw35g?usp=sharing Please copy and paste the links into a different tab in case they do not open here. Thank you.

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The British Foreign Office was the government department responsible for the conduct of British relations with nearly all foreign states. Confidential Print and Foreign Office files were intended for circulation internally within the Foreign Office and to the monarch, the Prime Minister, the Cabinet, other government departments and diplomatic missions abroad. These files are now housed in The National Archives, UK, and have been digitised by Adam Matthew Digital on the Archives Direct cross-searchable platform. The Archives Direct platform includes British government papers from the 19th and 20th centuries relating to Africa, Middle East, Central Asia, South Asia, South East Asia, East Asia, Latin America and North America. It’s a crucial resource for the study of politics, international relations, peace and conflict studies, economics and trade, British history and global history. This session will introduce you to The National Archives and their Foreign Office and Confidential Print files, and show you how to search across them to discover sources for your studies and research. Intended audience: Oxford students, researchers and other staff.

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Animals learn to adapt to levels of uncertainty in the environment by monitoring errors and engaging control processes. Recently, deep networks have been proposed as theories of animal perception, cognition and learning, but there is theory that allows us to incorporate error monitoring or control into neural networks. Here, we asked whether it was possible to meta-train deep RL agents to adapt to the level of controllability of the environment. We found that this was only possible if we encouraged them to compute action prediction errors - error signals similar to those generated in mammalian medial PFC. APE-trained networks meta-learned policies in an "observe vs. bet" bandit task that closely resembled those of humans. We also show that biases in this error computation lead the network to display pathologies of control characteristic of psychological disorders, such as compulsivity and learned helplessness.

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The Global Priorities Institute and the Oxford Department of Economics is pleased to announce the Atkinson Memorial Lecture 2024, delivered by Daron Acemoglu (MIT Economics). 3:30PM - 5PM, THURSDAY 16TH MAY 2024. This event will be followed by a drinks reception for in-person attendees

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Integrating metal halide perovskite top cells with bottom cells formed by crystalline silicon or low band gap perovskites into monolithic tandem devices has recently attracted increased attention due to the high efficiency potential and application relevance of these cell architectures. Here we present our recent results on monolithic tandem combinations of perovskite top-cells with crystalline silicon, and Sn-Pb perovskites as well as tandem relevant aspects of perovskite single junction solar cells. In 2020, we have shown that self-assembled monolayers (SAM) could be implemented as appropriate hole selective contacts. The implementation of new generation SAM molecules enabled further reduction of non-radiative recombination losses with high open circuit voltages and fill factor. By fine-tuning the SAM molecular structure even further, the photostability of perovskite composition with tandem-ideal band gaps of 1.68 eV could be enhanced by reduction of defect density and fast hole extraction. That enabled a certified efficiency for perovskite/silicon tandems at 29.15%. By optical optimisations, we could further improve this value to 29.80% in 2021. Periodic nanotextures were used that show a reduction in reflection losses in comparison to planar tandems, with the new devices being less sensitive to deviations from optimum layer thicknesses. The nanotextures also enable a greatly increased fabrication yield from 50% to 95%. Moreover, the open-circuit voltage is improved by 15 mV due to the enhanced optoelectronic properties of the perovskite top cell on top of the nanotexture. In the end of 2022, we enabled a new world record for perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells at 32.5% efficiency. We demonstrated that an additional surface treatment strongly reduces interface recombination and improves the band alignment with the C60 electron transporting material. With these modifications, single junction solar cells show high open circuit voltages of up to 1.28 V in a p-i-n configuration, and we achieve 2.00 V in monolithic tandem solar cells. A comparable surface treatment was also applied to 1.80 eV band gap perovskites to enable Voc values of 1.35 V and these were integrated into monolithic all-perovskite tandem solar cells enabling a certified efficiency of 27.5%. In addition to the experimental material and device development, main scientific and technological challenges and empirical efficiency limits, as well as advanced analysis methods, will be discussed for perovskite based tandem solar cells. In addition, results on upscaling and stability of these industrial relevant tandem solar cells by thermal evaporation will be shown. Short biography of the speaker: Steve Albrecht is Professor at Technical University (TU) Berlin, Faculty IV, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Head of the Department for Perovskite Tandem Solar Cells at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB). He received his PhD in physics from the University of Potsdam for his work on understanding the conversion of photon to collected charges organic solar cells. For his PhD he was awarded the Carl-Ramsauer-Prize of the Physikalische Gesellschaft zu Berlin and the Young Researcher Prize of the Leibniz-Kolleg Potsdam. After his PhD he started as Postdoc at HZB, and in 2016 he established a young investigator research group and in 2017 the HySPRINT Innovation Lab. In 2018, he was granted with the Apple of Inspiration award by the Slovenian President followed by the Karl-Scheel-Preis of the Physikalische Gesellschaft zu Berlin and the Berliner Wissenschaftspreis in the category young scientists for his work on perovskite-based tandem solar cells. Since June 2022, he has been heading the department for perovskite tandem solar cells at HZB. In August 2022 he was promoted from Junior- to Full Professor at TU Berlin. Professor Dr Albrecht and his team have developed various high efficiency hybrid tandem solar cells such as organic/amorphous Silicon and Perovskite/ crystalline Silicon tandem solar cells. His group has enabled various certified efficiency records for Perovskite-based tandem solar cells such as 29.15%, 29.8%, and 32.5% for Perovskite/Silicon (in 2020, 2021, and 2022 respectively), and 24.16% for Perovskite/CIGS in 2020.

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Presentation of the past, present, and future developments of the Social Policy Indicators Database (SPIN). We also briefly discuss the dependent variable problem in comparative social policy research, and showcase the SPIN database with new and updated data on a great variety of cash benefit programs in the United Kingdom and other affluent countries. Booking is required for people outside of the Department of Social Policy and Intervention (DSPI). The registration form will be available soon. DSPI members do not need to register

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This paper investigates the idea of ‘system’ in international thought.  It focuses specifically on early modern mechanical notions of a system as a complex whole composed of interacting parts.  The paper makes two key claims: (1) this understanding of system discloses particular ontological and epistemological commitments that are rooted in a theo-scientific account of reality; and (2) the idea of system, so conceived, is properly conceived as a particular legitimation of modernity, which paradoxically, conceals its intellectual origins.  This understanding of system, initially employed to explain physical phenomena in nature, was eventually adapted to addressing questions of human relations.  It was then possible to imagine a system as a theoretical construction that explains what takes place in human affairs but cannot be directly observed or measured.  Human affairs can be explained in the same way as processes in nature: by tracing chains of cause and effect.  This investigation illuminates the way in which this taken-for-granted commitment to explaining politics, ethics, and law reflects a particular configuration of science and theology.  

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Session Six: Varieties of Crisis Response: COVID-19 Fiscal Policy in the Three Worlds of Welfare Presenter: Angie Jo, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Discussant: Dr Kerim Can Kavakli, Bocconi University A Matter of Policy Type: Comparing Populist Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic Presenter: Dr Marina Schenkel, Trinity College Dublin Discussant: Marjolaine Lamontagne, McGill University The Oxford Covid-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT) is a project that collected information on policy measures to tackle COVID-19 over the years 2020, 2021, and 2022. Although a substantial body of scientific research on COVID-19 government responses has already been published, many research questions remain unanswered, and the OxCGRT team is continuing research into the impacts and determinants of pandemic policy and working with partners to devise new approaches to data collection that can be deployed quickly in the face of future pandemics or global emergencies. The OxCGRT Seminar Series is an innovative platform for scholars working on COVID-19 responses, offering an opportunity to present and discuss their ongoing research work as well as to connect with the broader research community. The series will run online every Thursday from 11 April to 30 May at 16:00-17:30 BST.

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Curiosity is sometimes conceptualized as a psychological state that includes recognition of a knowledge gap, anticipation that it may be possible to close the gap, and an intrinsically motivated desire to do so. Conceptualized in this way, curiosity can be theoretically linked to mathematical problem solving and problem posing. In this talk, I attempt to explore this link in didactic situations that combine problem posing and problem solving as one multi-stage activity. I will argue for three possible roles for curiosity: curiosity as a manifestation of learning autonomy that can be captured as a basis for problem posing and problem solving, curiosity as an emotional state that can be triggered during problem posing and then mediate it, and curiosity as a human trait that can be developed by means of repeated experience of problem posing and problem solving. I will illustrate these roles of curiosity by means of the data collected in a M.Sc. course for in-service mathematics teachers that I led in 2022.

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To join via Microsoft Teams please use this link https://rb.gy/qzyv2b. Registration is not required.

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2024 Lorna Casselton Memorial Lecture

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To join online, please register in advance here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUocuyvrz4vGtTThizdrAaKNZsmRk61NTKm

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In the COVID-19 pandemic’s wake, increasing numbers of students from China are eschewing Western destinations for Asian countries including Singapore. For these student migrants, Singapore occupies a unique geoeducational position as a cultural junction (jiaohuichu) or hub between China and the West. A portmanteau of geopolitics and education, the term geoeducational refers to the reciprocal effects of both, with geopolitics conceived broadly to include politics, geography and economics. Using ethnographic interviews and observations, this talk argues that the junctional role of Singapore, a Chinese-majority Southeast Asian city-state, helps Chinese student migrants navigate their geoeducational dilemmas. These dilemmas are conditioned by rising US‒China superpower competition amid economic stagnation in China and growing xenophobia in the West. Young people in China face massive unemployment and what they term involution (neijuan), or hypercompetition for diminishing gains, while Chinese student migrants in the West confront marginalization and racism. Meanwhile, Cold War-style paranoia is ratcheting up, with migrants falling under espionage suspicions on both sides of the Pacific. Under these conditions, many see Singapore as a safe liminal place from which they can pursue their diverse goals of security, flexibility, freedom, cultural belonging and filial reciprocity ‒ either by springboarding to the West, returning to China or remaining in Singapore. Drawing from feminist geopolitics, this talk theorizes the geoeducational to illuminate tectonic shifts in global student migration patterns. It investigates the implications of these shifts for university rankings and financing, brain drain and brain gain, demographic change and state legitimacy in a time of eroding meritocracy. Zachary Howlett is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Yale-NUS College at the National University of Singapore. Dr Howlett researches meritocracy and mobility in China and Chinese diasporas. He is the author of Meritocracy and Its Discontents: Anxiety and the National College Entrance Exam in China (Cornell University Press, 2021).

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After Rome and Further East Seminar Thursdays, 5 pm, Trinity College Convened by Fanny Bessard (History/ Trinity) and Christian Sahner (AMES/ New College) Supported by the Bahari Fund for Sasanian Studies MS Teams meeting link here (no registration required) Week 1, April 25 Garth Fowden (University of Cambridge) ‘Orienting the Global First Millennium: Iranosphere Perspectives’ Levine Building Auditorium Special lecture supported by the Bahari Fund for Sasanian Studies, the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research, and the Oxford Centre for Late Antiquity Week 2, May 2 Andrew Marsham (University of Cambridge) ‘Re-Framing the Umayyad Empire: Pastoralists, Plague, and Peripheries’ Teaching Room 5 Week 3, May 9 Julia Bray (University of Oxford) ‘Medieval Arabic Literature: What Do You Know, and What Can You Do with It?’ Teaching Room 5 Week 4, May 16 Hannah-Lena Hagemann (University of Hamburg) ‘“Behold! Quraysh is praying behind Bakr!” Kharijite Rebellion and Bakri Tribalism from al-Jazira to Iran 7th-9th c.’ Teaching Room 5 Week 5, May 23 Alebachew Belay (Debre Berhan University) ‘Connected “Pagans” from Medieval Ethiopia: Monumental and Artifactual Evidence’ Teaching Room 5 Week 6, May 30 Louise Rayne (Newcastle University) ‘Detecting Irrigation and Desertification in the Middle East and North Africa Since the Medieval Period’ Teaching Room 5 Week 7, June 6 Dan Reynolds (University of Birmingham) ‘Charlemagne’s Jerusalem: Rhetoric, Exegesis and the Ninth-Century “Holy Land”’ Teaching Room 5 Week 8, June 13 Peter Sarris (University of Cambridge) ‘Justinian Between East and West’ Levine Building Auditorium OCBR Annual Lecture for 2024; supported by the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research

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Religion in Britain and Ireland, 1400-1700 Seminar series on Thursdays at 5pm, Trinity Term 2024 in the Lecture Room at Campion Hall Convened by Diarmaid MacCulloch, Judith Maltby, Sarah Mortimer and Grant Tapsell Peter Davidson in collaboration with Jane Stevenson, University of Oxford The Aberdeen Reformations: Glimpses of an Alternative History Offered by the Faculties of History and Theology and Religion. For more information, or for the Teams link to join remotely, please contact sarah.apetrei@campion.ox.ac.uk.

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Our third and final event, _*Making a Difference: Community History and Policy-Making*_ features historians and policy-makers in conversation about how community-engaged research can be harnessed as a force for good, helping to tackle inequalities and socio-political issues in local communities. We invite anyone interested in historical studies and social/political change to join us for a rich, engaging discussion. We also welcome you to get involved with our Hub’s growing network of History researchers and students by subscribing to our mailing list here: https://history.us6.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=a9a000a334eed73ebb30a07ed&id=e45169abd9 If you have any questions about the event, booking or access requirements, please email the Community History team at "$":mailto:community@history.ox.ac.uk, and we will be happy to assist you.

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The aim of the seminar is to foster a dynamic and interdisciplinary postcolonial research culture supportive of individual scholarship. Finalists, M.St. and D.Phil. students, lecturers, fellows, scholars from across the university community – all are welcome. If you’d like to appear on the seminar mailing list, please email martha.swift@ell.ox.ac.uk OR hannah.fagan@mansfield.ox.ac.uk

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In Hardly War (2016), Don Mee Cho chants, 'I refuse to translate.' She declares this over and over and over and over and over, '무궁화꽃이피었습니다.'" Opening with a short reading from THIS PART IS SILENT (WW Norton, 2024), the workshop will consider the power of working in refusal, exploring the practice of unwillingness and withholding. Participants are invited to bring an object they are uncertain about whether to keep or get rid of, something that can safely and easily be handled by others. Jodie Kim was born in Korea and raised in the American South. She has a PhD in the New Southern Gothic and her research focuses on the intersection of racial, gendered, and political violence and contemporary literature. Jodie writes as SJ Kim. She is the author of This Part is Silent, an essay collection forthcoming with W.W. Norton in April 2024. Her writing has appeared in Oxford American, Wasafiri, and The Hanok Review among other publications, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her poetry and translation study received the 2021 Specimen Prize. For further information, please visit https://creatingcriticism.web.ox.ac.uk/jodie-kim or contact iris.pearson@new.ox.ac.uk. You can also sign up to our mailing list, at https://creatingcriticism.web.ox.ac.uk/workshops-experimental-criticism, to receive updates about future creative critical events.

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In this lecture, Prof. Hall will reflect on the long, entangled and unequal relation between Britain and Jamaica: the wrongs of slavery and colonialism that are not only not requited but continue to damage the lives of Jamaican people. Her focus will then turn to the events of 1865-6, the rebellion at Morant Bay and Mill’s unsuccessful attempts to assert the need for impartial justice in the Empire. Neither liberalism nor neo-liberalism can meet the challenge of structural inequalities and systemic racisms.

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Paul Gilroy, Professor of Humanities at UCL and founding director of the Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the study of racism and racialisation, will deliver the annual Rex Nettleford Lecture on Thursday 16 May 2024. On the subject of “The Evolving Political Significance of Studying Africa’s diaspora”. The lecture, named in honour of former Honorary Fellow and Orielensis Professor Rex Nettleford, former Vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies, is intended to contribute to the advancement of academic research into the legacies of colonialism in all its forms. Following the lecture there will be a presentation for the winners of the Rex Nettleford Essay Competition, in which Year 12 students were invited to submit an essay addressing specific aspects of colonialism.

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Enjoy the second lecture in the ‘Uncovering Women’s History series’ entitled ‘Writing Medieval Economic History during the Interwar Years’ and delivered by *Professor Maxine Berg*. The ‘Uncovering Women’s History’ lecture series aims to explore women’s empowerment and the contribution of women and other marginalised minorities across history.

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Please join the Brasenose College Frankland Visitor, Joanna Kavenna, for a panel discussion with her guest speakers, Eliane Glaser, Benjamin Markovits and Phil Tinline. We live in a world of fake news, misinformation, facts that abruptly become fictions (and vice versa). How can we fathom what is real and unreal? Who can we trust? What place do the creative arts have in a reality that is (far) stranger than fiction? A panel discussion with Eliane Glaser (BBC producer and author), Kirsty Gunn (author and RLF fellow), Joanna Kavenna and Benjamin Markovits (author and Professor at Royal Holloway). Joanna Kavenna is a prize-winning author whose novels include ZED, The Ice Museum, Inglorious, The Birth of Love and A Field Guide to Reality. Her short stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, the London Review of Books, Zoetrope and the Paris Review among other publications. Kavenna's writing has garnered the Orange Prize for New Writing, the Alistair Horne and Harper-Wood Fellowships and she was named as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. Eliane Glaser writes widely on political propaganda, manipulation, and has decades of experience as a BBC producer including on Front Row, Start the Week and Free Thinking. Eliane's books include Get Real: How to See Through the Hype, Spin and Lies of Modern Life, about how ideology works in contemporary politics, culture and media. She writes comment pieces and reviews for a number of publications, including The Guardian, The Independent, The New Statesman and The London Review of Books. Benjamin Markovits is the author of seven novels including Either Side of Winter and You Don't Have to Live Like This. He has published essays, stories, poetry and reviews on subjects ranging from the Romantics to American sports in the Guardian, Granta, The Paris Review and The New York Times. In 2013 Granta selected him as one of their Best of Young British Novelists and in 2015 he won the Eccles British Library Writer in Residence Award and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Phil Tinline is a leading producer of historical narrative documentaries. His extensive work for BBC Radio 4 explored such themes as the struggles of working-class Tories, the ‘revolutions’ of 1968, the birth of the EU, Orwell’s road to Nineteen Eighty Four, a 1981 NATO nuclear wargame and brainwashing, and has involved conducting a large number of interviews with politicians past and present. He has written for the Independent on Sunday, the Observer, the Guardian, BBC History Magazine and the New Statesman. His first book, The Death of Consensus, is published by Hurst and was named by The Times as their Politics Book of the Year in 2022.

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Coffee, tea and pastries will be served in the Lecture Theatre. Please email Louise King (louise.king@nds.ox.ac.uk) if you would like to attend online.

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Organised by the Institut Georges Pompidou As part of the fiftieth anniversary of the death of President Georges Pompidou (1911 1974), the one of Prime Minister Edward Heath's departure from 10 Downing Street (1974) and the hundred and twentieth anniversary of the Entente Cordiale (1904), the Institut Georges Pompidou, founded in 1989 by former French Prime Ministers Édouard Balladur and Pierre Messmer, offers a historiographical and methodological review of the contemporary history of Franco-British relations in the light of European issues, from the United Kingdom's membership into the European Economic Community (1973) to Brexit: power, economic, industrial and monetary policy, diplomacy, defence and culture. The Edward Heath Archives (Weston Library), the transfer of the private archives of the Pompidou family to the Archives Nationales (2019), the Presidential Archives (Archives Nationales), and the oral archives of the Institut Georges Pompidou provide new opportunities for transnational and comparative research. We hope the discussions between French and British researchers and archivists will promote new research fields and inspire collaborations and partnerships between French and British institutions PROGRAMME: 9h00: Welcome and introduction (Pascal Marty, Olivier Sibre) 1st session : Les grands enjeux / the big challenges Présidence / chair : Dominic Grieve 9h15: Anne Deighton (Oxford University) Into the European Community at Last: Reinventing Britain as a European Power? 9h35: Agnès Tachin (Université de Cergy-Pontoise) Turning the Tables: General de Gaulle's vetoes of Britain's applications to join the EEC. 9h55: Marie-Claude Esposito (Université Paris III Sorbonne-Nouvelle) « Compétition and Credit Control » : une réforme radicale de la réglementation bancaire durant la mandature d’Edward Heath. 10h10: Discussion 10h40: Pause/break 10h55: Stéphane Porion (Université de Tours) The « Powell effect » on the Conservative Party's stance on the European question (from Heath to Thatcher: 1970-1988). 11h15: Piers Ludlow (LSE) French and British politics and influence in Brussels, from Ortoli/Jenkins European Commission presidencies to the Thatcher-Delors conflict. 11h35: Béatrice Heuser (Glasgow University) Franco-British Strategic Relations: rivalry or vital cooperation? 11h55: Discussion 12h30/12h45 : Déjeuner/lunch 2nd session. Archives et recherche: nouvelles perspectives / Archives and research : new perspectives. Présidence/chair : Anne Deighton 13h45: Olivier Sibre (Institut Georges Pompidou) Conserver la mémoire et écrire l’histoire des Présidents de la Ve République : l’exemple de l’Institut Georges Pompidou. 14h00: Bénédicte Fichet (Archives nationales) Conservation des archives des présidents de la République en France : l'exemple de Georges Pompidou. 14h20: Susan Thomas et Jeremy McIlwaine (Bodleian Libraries) Sir Edward Heath’s archive in context: political archives in the UK 14h40-14h50: Pause/break 14h55: Daniel Furby (EPLO, Athens) Edward Heath, Georges Pompidou and Britain's entry to the European Community: historiography and sources 15h15: Cesare Vagge (Oxford University) Waging the « Economic War »: Georges Pompidou, Ted Heath and Industrial Policy at the end of the Glorious Thirty (1969-74) 15h35: Boris Hamzeian (Centre national d’art contemporain Georges Pompidou) The constellation of sources for a new history of the Centre Pompidou of Paris. Defragmenting private and public collections between French, British and Italian institutions. 15h55 – 16h30/45: Discussion and conclusion

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Under the High Patronage of Mr Emmanuel MACRON President of the French Republic The fiftieth anniversary of the death of the French President Georges Pompidou 1974-2024 As part of the fiftieth anniversary of the death of President Georges Pompidou (1911 1974), the one of Prime Minister Edward Heath's departure from 10 Downing Street (1974) and the hundred and twentieth anniversary of the Entente Cordiale (1904), the Institut Georges Pompidou, founded in 1989 by former French Prime Ministers Édouard Balladur and Pierre Messmer, offers a historiographical and methodological review of the contemporary history of Franco-British relations in the light of European issues, from the United Kingdom's membership into the European Economic Community (1973) to Brexit: power, economic, industrial and monetary policy, diplomacy, defence and culture. The Edward Heath Archives (Weston Library), the transfer of the private archives of the Pompidou family to the Archives Nationales (2019), the Presidential Archives (Archives Nationales), and the oral archives of the Institut Georges Pompidou provide new opportunities for transnational and comparative research. We hope the discussions between French and British researchers and archivists will promote new research fields and inspire collaborations and partnerships between French and British institutions. Programme 9h00: Welcome and introduction (Pascal Marty, Olivier Sibre) 1st session : Les grands enjeux / the big challenges Présidence / chair : Dominic Grieve 9h15: Anne Deighton (Oxford University)Into the European Community at Last: Reinventing Britain as a European Power? 9h35: Agnès Tachin (Université de Cergy-Pontoise)Turning the Tables: General de Gaulle's vetoes of Britain's applications to join the EEC. 9h55: Marie-Claude Esposito (Université Paris III Sorbonne-Nouvelle)« Compétition and Credit Control » : une réforme radicale de la réglementation bancaire durant la mandature d’Edward Heath. 10h10: Discussion 10h40: Pause/break 10h55: Stéphane Porion (Université de Tours)The « Powell effect » on the Conservative Party's stance on the European question (from Heath to Thatcher: 1970-1988). 11h15: Piers Ludlow (LSE)French and British politics and influence in Brussels, from Ortoli/Jenkins European Commission presidencies to the Thatcher-Delors conflict. 11h35: Béatrice Heuser (Glasgow University)Franco-British Strategic Relations: rivalry or vital cooperation? 11h55: Discussion 12h30/12h45 : Déjeuner/lunch 2nd session. Archives et recherche: nouvelles perspectives / Archives and research : new perspectives. Présidence/chair : Anne Deighton 13h45: Olivier Sibre (Institut Georges Pompidou)Conserver la mémoire et écrire l’histoire des Présidents de la Ve République : l’exemple de l’Institut Georges Pompidou. 14h00: Bénédicte Fichet (Archives nationales)Conservation des archives des présidents de la République en France : l'exemple de Georges Pompidou. 14h20: Susan Thomas et Jeremy McIlwaine (Bodleian Libraries)Sir Edward Heath’s archive in context: political archives in the UK 14h40-14h50: Pause/break 14h55: Daniel Furby (EPLO, Athens)Edward Heath, Georges Pompidou and Britain's entry to the European Community: historiography and sources 15h15: Cesare Vagge (Oxford University)Waging the « Economic War »: Georges Pompidou, Ted Heath and Industrial Policy at the end of the Glorious Thirty (1969-74) 15h35: Boris Hamzeian (Centre national d’art contemporain Georges Pompidou)The constellation of sources for a new history of the Centre Pompidou of Paris. Defragmenting private and public collections between French, British and Italian institutions. 15h55 – 16h30/45: Discussion and conclusion Organised by the Institut Georges Pompidou Contact: administration@georges-pompidou.org

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Visit the website for more details: https://www.ludvigsinander.net/mini-courses.html

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Over the last four decades, Professor Jeremy Johns has been a leading researcher on the history of the Islamic Mediterranean, particularly Sicily, and a pillar of the advanced study of Islamic art and archaeology at Oxford. This conference, organised to mark his retirement, brings together speakers from among his former students and closest colleagues to celebrate his career. The topics, ranging from Europe to Southeast Asia and from early Islam to the modern era, reflect the breadth of his interests and his impact on the field. We hope the event will be a fitting testament to a scholar - to quote Malaterra’s words about Roger I of Sicily - “most eloquent in speech and cool in counsel".

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The Institute for Ethics in AI and the Oxford Martin School are pleased to announce an exclusive afternoon event featuring in-depth panel sessions and a keynote address by distinguished economist Professor Daron Acemoğlu, who will be the Sanjaya Lall Visiting Professor during his stay in Oxford. Keynote Title: Redesigning AI Abstract: This talk will argue that the current path of AI is inimical to human flourishing. Nevertheless, different institutional arrangements, ethical underpinnings, and technological vision can lead to better AI. This better AI path will need to overcome the industry's excessive focus on automation, the centralised control of information, challenges in the context of human-AI misalignment, and the disappearing diversity of information among human actors.

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The History of Gender Seminar meets on Fridays at 11am-12:15pm, in-person in the Colin Matthew Room at the History Faculty, or online via Teams. All welcome at this relaxed interdisciplinary seminar! Please email emilia.flack@magd.ox.ac.uk if you would like to be added to our mailing list. Teams link: https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_YTBkYjY3ZmQtNDJkYS00NTBiLWI0M2MtZmZjZDQxOGEwOTZk%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22cc95de1b-97f5-4f93-b4ba-fe68b852cf91%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%228e6e425a-cedf-419b-a96d-972dbc28b270%22%7d

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The Institute for Ethics in AI and the Oxford Martin School are pleased to announce an exclusive event featuring a keynote address by distinguished economist Professor Daron Acemoğlu, followed by commentary from expert panellists. Professor Acemoğlu's talk will argue that the current path of AI is inimical to human flourishing. Nevertheless, different institutional arrangements, ethical underpinnings, and technological vision can lead to better AI. This better AI path will need to overcome the industry's excessive focus on automation, the centralised control of information, challenges in the context of human-AI misalignment, and the disappearing diversity of information among human actors. Agenda 10.45 – 11.00 - Registration 11.00 – 12.00 - Keynote: Professor Daron Acemoğlu, Institute Professor, MIT Title: Redesigning AI Abstract: This talk will argue that the current path of AI is inimical to human flourishing. Nevertheless, different institutional arrangements, ethical underpinnings, and technological vision can lead to better AI. This better AI path will need to overcome the industry's excessive focus on automation, the centralized control of information, challenges in the context of human-AI misalignment, and the disappearing diversity of information among human actors. 12.00 – 13.00 - Panel Discussion and Q&A Isabelle Ferreras, FNRS Professor in Sociology, University of Louvain & Visiting Fellow, Institute for Ethics in AI Jeremias Adams-Prassl, Professor of Law, Magdalen College, University of Oxford & Associate Dean (Research), Faculty of Law Daniel Susskind, Research Professor in Economics, King's College London & Senior Research Associate, Institute for Ethics in AI

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It is now well recognised that immune/inflammatory mechanisms contribute to stroke across the whole patient pathway, as a contributor to risk, acute injury and longer-term complications. In this seminar I will present our recent research in this area, covering both preclinical and clinical studies. This will include how infection impacts on the brain to worsen outcomes in stroke, the development of novel treatments that target thromboinflammation, how changes to immune cell function make patients susceptible to post-stroke infection and how systemic immune changes correlate with post-stroke cognitive decline. SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY Professor Stuart Allan’s research expertise is in understanding the contribution of inflammation to neurological disease, with a primary focus on stroke and vascular dementia. He and colleagues in Manchester first identified the pro-inflammatory cytokine interleukin-1 (IL-1) as a key mediator of neuronal injury following stroke and therefore a promising therapeutic target. His on-going translational research combines preclinical and clinical studies, with the overall aim of discovering new treatments that can improve patient’s lives. Current projects are focussed on inflammatory processes in the acute phase of ischaemic stroke, developing therapies for both ischaemic stroke and intracerebral haemorrhage, and understanding how immune/inflammatory changes contribute to post-stroke cognitive decline. He is academic lead for the Manchester Academic Health Science Centre Neuroscience Domain and Co-Director of the Geoffrey Jefferson Brain Research Centre (https://gjbrainresearch.org). Stuart is a passionate advocate of public engagement and has led many innovative projects in this area over the years.

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Join us for our discussion group, Radical Reasoning. This week, we will be reviewing and analysing works surrounding neurodiversity, race, and the intersectionality of both, within UKHE as a neoliberal sector. This will lead to group discussions around accessibility, pedagogy, and inclusivity. We ask attendees to consider the main readings. Anyone who wishes to expand upon their understanding is welcome to consider the further readings provided. Regardless of the extent to which you engage with these chosen readings, we welcome anyone who is interested to attend the discussion group. Main Readings 1. Chantelle Jessica Lewis and Jason Arday, ‘We’ll see things they’ll never see: Sociological reflections on race, neurodiversity, and higher education’, The Sociological Review 71:6 (November 2023), pp. 1299 - 1321. 2. Lorna G. Hamilton & Stephanie Petty, ‘Compassionate pedagogy for neurodiversity in higher education: a conceptual analysis’, Frontiers in Psychology 14:1093290 (February 2023), pp. 1 - 9. 3. Katherine Runswick-Cole, “Us’ and ‘them’: the limits and possibilities of a ‘politics of ‘neurodiversity’ in neoliberal times’, Disability & Society 29:7 (2014), pp. 1117 - 1129. Further Readings 1. Surviving Society, ‘E121: The Surviving Alternative to Woman’s House: Vivienne Isebor’, April 2021, 52 min 14 sec, podcast. (Spotify. Apple Podcasts. Soundcloud.) 2. A. Mobeen, E. Mugaju, J. Arday, ‘At 18, I could not read, now I’m a Cambridge professor’ March 2023, BBC radio broadcast. (BBC Outlook) —-------------------- Twitter: race_resistance Subscribe to our mailing list by sending a blank email to: race-and-resistance-subscribe@maillist.ox.ac.uk. Email raceandresistance@torch.ox.ac.uk with any questions.

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In this talk I will discuss how phenotypic heterogeneity affects emergent pattern formation in living active matter with chemical communication between cells. In doing so, I will explore how the emergent dynamics of multicellular communities are qualitatively different in comparison to the dynamics of isolated or non-interacting cells. I will focus on two specific projects. First, I will show how genetic regulation of chemical communication affects motility-induced phase separation in cell populations. Second, I will demonstrate how chemotaxis along self-generated signal gradients affects cell populations undergoing 3D morphogenesis.

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*Greco-Roman and Classical Chinese Translation: Theory and Practice* This seminar series is intended to look more broadly at Latin translations of Chinese texts, Chinese translations of Greco-Roman texts, and translation as theory and practice within and between both traditions.

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In this paper we analyze a continuous-time Coase setting with finite horizon, interdependent values, and different discount rates for the buyer and seller. We fully characterize the equilibrium behavior, which permits us to study how the agents’ discount rates (i.e., patience levels) shape the bargaining outcome. We find that the seller’s commitment problem persists even when she is fully patient, and that higher seller impatience may lead to higher equilibrium prices. Higher buyer impatience, on the other hand, incentivizes the buyer to trade earlier, which accelerates price decline since the seller’s commitment problem is more severe at earlier times. Under appropriate conditions, we conclude that the buyer is better off when he is more impatient, independently of his private valuation; hence, higher bargaining costs may give negotiators with private information greater bargaining power.

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Part 1: Student Presenting: Garrett Norwood: Living Meaningful Lives in VR. Part 2: Methods in Applied Ethics Dr Rebecca Brown on preparing an academic CV Suggested Reading: There’s no suggested reading as such for my session, though I would point people towards this website: The Professorisin, which has some useful advice for graduate students / early career academics. In Person: Oxford Uehiro Centre Seminar Room, Suite 1, first floor, Littlegate House, 16-17 St Ebbes St. OX1 1PT Via Zoom: email rocci.wilkinson@philosophy.ox.ac.uk for Zoom links if needed

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17 May Wages from God in Matthew and Paul Zachary Wagner, Keble College * To be held in the PUSEY ROOM at Keble College

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Broadly understood as practices of collecting, scavenging and gleaning, foraging is a global phenomenon of our times. In Tibet and Nepal, scores of pickers rush to the mountains each spring to find yartsagunbu – a rare caterpillar mushroom more valuable than gold; between Colorado and Arizona, amidst retirees and RV nomads, people make a living by foraging and thrifting. In the mountains of Albania, these vast and messy commons left behind by communism, most families collect herbs and sell them into the supply chains of the global pharmaceutical industry. And on the edge of cities in Europe and elsewhere, foragers collect fine edibles – a statement against consumerism and against the shallow taste of industrial agriculture. In an era when the dream of a middle-class life based on a stable, salaried job seems no longer viable – or no longer desirable, or both – foraging becomes an essential economic strategy and a form of building relations with ones immediate surroundings. It raises questions on the nature of commons and the fuzzy fringes of the global system of capitalism.

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Conversation with Catherine Yvard, National Art Library Special Collections Curator. Places are limited - to join the trip please email "$":mailto:elena.lichmanova@merton.ox.ac.uk *by 10 May*.

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The Insights for Action seminar series explores how researchers and practitioners within and beyond Oxford are using research insights to drive social change. Co-hosted by the Skoll Centre and the Saïd Business School Sustainability Community of Interest, this seminar will explore how finance can be better used to encourage resilience building and climate adaptation. Drawing on experiences from researchers and practitioners across impact investing, philanthropy and multilateral agencies, we will explore what we mean by resilience building, key actors, and why action is needed; the trade-offs inherent in resilience building; and the kinds of financing we need to build resilience and support climate adaptation globally.

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Climate change poses considerable threats to socioeconomic development and ecological systems across Africa. This is particularly critical for smallholder farming communities in dryland agroecosystems where climate change interact with non-climatic stressors and shocks to exacerbate the vulnerability of rural livelihoods. Ghana is already suffering from significant climate change impacts and is projected to experience increased temperatures and erratic rainfall patterns in the coming years and decades. This threatens the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals, especially those relating to poverty reduction (SDG 1), food security (SDG 2) and climate action (SDG 13). This talk focuses on providing an understanding of the adverse impacts of climate change and variability on rural livelihoods in northern Ghana and how these perpetuate existing vulnerability among rural households and communities. Drawing on personal research from across rural Ghana, this talk spotlights the various practices employed by rural communities to moderate the adverse impacts of climate risks. The talk also highlights the key barriers confronting rural communities in their attempt to address the impacts of climate change. The talk concludes by proposing a number of recommendations such as increased use of climate services, climate-smart agriculture interventions and changing cropping choices, aimed at making rural livelihoods in northern Ghana more resilient in the face of climate change and variability. Biography Prof. Philip Antwi-Agyei is the Director of the Office of Grants and Research at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana. Philip is a former Commonwealth Scholar, who obtained his PhD from the University of Leeds, United Kingdom in 2013. Philip is an interdisciplinary climate change scientist whose research involves developing innovative multi-scale methodologies for assessing vulnerability and adaptations to climate change across the local, regional and national scales. Specifically, his research uses spatial databases, ecological studies and field-based participatory approaches aimed at broadening understanding of how climate change and variability affect food security and livelihoods. Prof. Antwi-Agyei was a Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 oC, and a Contributing Author on the Sixth Assessment Report of the IPCC. He has consulted for leading international organisations including the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP, Accra), the International Institute for Sustainable Development, Canada, and Ghana’s Environmental Protection Agency, to mention but a few. Philip developed the National Adaptation Plan (NAP) Framework for Ghana and the National Adaptation Strategy and Action Plan for the Infrastructure Sector (Water, Energy, and Transport Sectors). Prof. Antwi-Agyei was the Consultant for the adaptation component of Ghana’s Updated Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Climate Agreement. Prof. Antwi-Agyei is a recipient of several prestigious international grants including the International Foundation for Science (2010–2013), Climate Impacts Research Capacity and Leadership Enhancement Fellowship (2015–2016) funded by the UK's Department for International Development, Innovation Grant from the London School of Economics and University of Leeds, United Kingdom (2016–2018), and Science for Weather Information and Forecasting Techniques (2016–2021) funded by the Global Challenge Research Fund. He has also won grants under the Climate Research for Development (2019–2021), an initiative of the African Climate Policy Centre in partnership with the United Kingdom's Department for International Development. Philip was a Fellow under the Future Leaders–Africa Independent Research (FLAIR) (2020–2022) and Collaboration Grants (2021–2022) funded by the Royal Society, London. He has published extensively in reputable international peer reviewed journals on climate change issues and presented his research outputs in several international conferences and workshops. Philip serves as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Climate and Development (published by Taylor and Francis). He also serves on the Editorial Board of Journal of Environmental Policy and Governance and is a regular reviewer for several leading high impact factor journals on climate change related matters. The Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery and Biodiversity Network are interested in promoting a wide variety of views and opinions on nature recovery from researchers and practitioners. The views, opinions and positions expressed within this lecture are those of the author alone, they do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery/Biodiversity Network, or its researchers.

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The coronavirus pandemic suddenly closed Japan’s doors to inbound tourism and migration in early 2020s. But those doors were never going to be closed indefinitely. The pandemic, originating in Wuhan, revealed the centrality of China in particular to Japan’s immigration dilemma. China’s transformation in the twenty-first century into an economic superpower has been an understudied possible motivation for Japan’s government to liberalise the country’s immigration regime as a tool for retaining influence in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond. Anand Rao is an assistant professor of political science and international relations at the State University of New York at Geneseo. His work has been published by Asian Politics & Policy, the Japan Studies Association Journal, and Lexington Books. He is a member of Cohort 5 of the U.S.-Japan Network for the Future. Dr Rao was an Academic Visitor at St Antony’s College during the Michaelmas Term in 2023.

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This lecture reflects upon the broader implications of the speaker’s recent research on developing region-centric approaches to investigate and understand the evolution of international relations and order in East Asia. Such approaches take seriously complex regional contexts, privilege regional perceptions and concerns, and favour research questions that arise from regional empirical patterns and experiences. Building upon the analysis in her 2020 book Rethinking Sino-Japanese Alienation (co-authored with Barry Buzan), Goh advances three propositions – about when the ‘post-war’ period actually started in East Asia; why bargains offer a better framework to explain key regional relationships and social structures; and on which great power dyad East Asia’s future relies if not the United States and China. She explains why and how each proposition significantly alters our understanding of East Asia, and advances IR theorising in general. Evelyn Goh FBA FASSA is the Shedden Professor of Strategic Policy Studies at The Australian National University, where she is also Director of the Southeast Asia Institute. A scholar of International Relations and international security, she is also a regional specialist whose areas of research span China, the United States, Northeast Asia, and Southeast Asia.

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Sarah Dillon, a Cambridge Professor of Literature and Claire Craig, the Provost of Queen’s College Oxford and former director of the Government Office for Science discuss the need to take stories seriously, and how using narrative evidence can create profound new public understanding in contentious areas like climate change and AI. The challenges of using scientific evidence, of distinguishing news from fake news, and of acting well in anticipation of highly uncertain futures, are more visible now than ever before. Across all these areas of public reasoning, stories create profound new knowledge and so deserve to be taken seriously. The two authors of Storylistening: Narrative Evidence and Public Reasoning, Claire Craig and Sarah Dillon talk about their theory and practice of listening to narratives in policy areas in which decisions are strongly influenced by contentious knowledge and powerful imaginings, such as climate change and AI. They also present findings from two new storylistening projects – on future uses of space and on nuclear policy – showing how narrative evidence can be gathered and be of practical policy-relevant use.

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Twice a year, the Museum of Natural History and Pitt Rivers open after dark, hosting stalls and evening activities. Come face-to-face with specimens and enjoy activities hosted by researchers and collections specialists. Discover the wonders of fresh water and the communities of organisms that rely on it. Enjoy flash talks, adult crafts, story-telling, soundscapes, and stalls all inspired by Fair Water?, OUMNH's latest exhibition. You'll also have the chance to browse the museum galleries at night and visit our pop-up bar.

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OxPeace Annual Day-Conference, exploring new issues and actors (including A!) in peacemaking and peacebuilding worldwide. Featuring Roger Mac Ginty, professor in Defence, Development and Diplomacy in the School of Government and International Affairs, Durham University, who works on peace and conflict, particularly on the intersection between top-down and bottom-up approaches to peacemaking. He is interested in everyday peace and the different ways in which this might be captured. He co-directs the Everyday Peace Indicators project (with Pamina Firchow) and edits the Taylor and Francis journal Peacebuilding (with Oliver Richmond). He also edits the "Rethinking Political Violence" book series. Also featuring Nasreen Elsaim, young Sudanese activist and expert in energy and climate policy, recently chair of UN Secretary-General Youth Advisory Group on Climate Change, Oxford's Sam Daws on AI in relation to peacemaking and peacebuilding; and a range of further speakers, and time for interaction and discussion. Undergraduates, Postgrads, academic staff, practitioners, policy makers and all are welcome.

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Dates: 20-24 May (online) and 31 May (in person at Kellogg) Discover the potential of Grounded Theory, a leading research method in today’s academic and professional fields, at the Mastering the Essentials of Grounded Theory Workshop. This intensive session demystifies the process for newcomers, guiding them through its complex stages with a practical, hands-on approach. Led by an expert in Grounded Theory, participants will learn to craft theories addressing social issues, and master techniques they can use in their PhD or other research projects. Join us for a learning experience that promises to enhance your analytical skills and theoretical understanding. At the end of the workshop participants will be able to: Understand the philosophies, purposes and practices of Grounded Theory methodology Analyse data using open, focused, and theoretical coding Present and defend their findings Assess the quality of Grounded Theory research projects Registration Limited enrolment – early registration recommended Deadline for registration 10 May 2024 Certificate of completion provided at the end To register your interest please email gregory.hadley@kellogg.ox.ac.uk

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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.

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Please join us for the 2023-24 Kellogg Graduate Research Symposium. Kellogg students will present their research in a series of discussions and Q&A’s. More details about speakers and timing will be made available shortly.

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Newspapers are a valuable resource for researching not only news but also many other aspects of political, economic, social and cultural life. In this online 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. Intended audience: Oxford students, researchers and other staff.

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Dennis Egger will present the Economics of Refugees and Migration

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I will discuss our efforts to develop next generation laterally configured CARs which aim to bridge the gap to the attainment of effective anti-tumour activity in patients with common adult onset solid tumours. I will also discuss our off-the-shelf CAR-T programme using gamma delta T-cells armoured with granzyme B-cleavable IL-18.

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Seminar 5 of Trinity Term's Sociology Seminar Series Please join either in person or online. For in-person attendees, the talk will be preceded by a light lunch at 12.15pm. Please email comms@sociology.ox.ac.uk with any questions or to receive the Microsoft Teams link.

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In this presentation, we will outline a new approach to the comparative analysis of student finance systems based on social rights, an approach widely applied in other areas of social policy. It focuses on rights codified in national legislation and financed by central governments, and the collection of indicators measuring formal eligibility and entitlements using model family analyses techniques. We illustrate the usefulness of the approach by exploring the relationship between the generosity and the degree of low-income targeting of student support in 21 OECD countries. The results show that student support is less generous in countries that concentrate benefits on students from low-income families. Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81975404371?pwd=NzR1WEo5MXRVL0w4SzQ5TzRmUE5Jdz09

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Azim Ansari is a statistical geneticist based at the Nuffield Department of Medicine at Oxford University. His group studies the variations in infection outcomes by jointly analysing host and pathogen genomic data. They use paired host-pathogen genomic data from the same individuals to identify the molecular interplay between host and pathogen and their combined impact on disease outcomes. He currently holds a Wellcome Trust Sir Henry Dale Fellowship and was awarded a Medical Research Foundation Emerging Leaders Prize in November 2023.

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In the central decades of the twentieth century, the aid to academic refugees who escaped from dictatorial regimes that prosecuted them for their race, religion or political ideology became a relevant scientific, political, and diplomatic question. As a new “Republic of Letters”, numerous individuals and organizations provided shelter, help and grants, initially for those escaping from Nazi Germany, and later for those suffering the tragic consequences of the war and post-war. From Hitler's rise to power in 1934 to the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, more than twenty years of dramatic upheavals and human suffering brought many brilliant minds to exile in desperate need of help. From a postcolonial perspective, this paper presents a new research project that aims to critically analyse the circulation of refugee scholars in the central decades of the 20th century as a source of coproduction of new knowledge in different fields. It also discusses the potential interest of the Archive of the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning (SPSL) (Bodleian Library, Oxford). The SPSL was founded in the UK, in 1933 - as the Academic Assistance Council (ACC) -, by a small group of academics (Leo Szilard, Lord Rutherford, Charles Singer among others) to provide short-term grants and help refugees in finding new employment.

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Please be aware that group attendance may be limited. Please contact Group Lead Christopher Morris or team (christopher.morris@politics.ox.ac.uk) for attendance and inquiries. Seminar details are confirmed a week in advance. The Emerging Threats & Technology Working Group meets regularly each term to examine the national security implications of critical and emerging technologies (CETs), from artificial intelligence and quantum computing to directed energy and space platforms. Meetings are held in hybrid format, at Oxford and online, to include diverse views from academia, industry, and policy, matching the global reach of technological innovation and challenge. For more information on workshops, sessions, and journal, visit www.emergingthreats.co.uk

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Today Thai migrant workers have largely replaced Palestinians as the mainstay of Israel's agricultural workforce. Their importation has coincided with a shift in Israeli agriculture from extensive cultivation aimed at the local market to extractive, monocultural production for export. This economic and ecological shift results partly from the replacement of agriculture by suburbanisation as the main spatial mode of Zionist colonisation in Palestine. However, the supply side of the labour flow from Thailand to Israel also results to a great extent from the political-ecological dynamic of colonisation, as practised by the Thai state in its restive border zones. Thailand was chosen as Israel's source of agricultural guest-workers due to the Thai regime’s interest in "frontier settlement" training for its civilian and military cadres. This interest, in turn, was anchored in worries about the ethnically marked population of Thailand's northeast region (Isaan) turning to Communist insurrection. Isaan's population, forced to abandon its own agricultural production due to internal and global pressures, also eventually became the main source of labour migrants to Israel. The linkage between state control, capitalist agriculture, and labour migration allows me to explore how the primitive accumulation of agrarian resources in two zones of the world-system has contributed to both the consolidation of political and economic power in the hands of a transnational ruling class and the emergence of a world-ecological regime characterised by environmentally destructive monoculture as well as cheap and disenfranchised labour.

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Addressing climate change requires individual behaviour change and voter support for proclimate policies, yet surprisingly little is known about how to achieve these outcomes. In this paper, we estimate causal effects of additional education on pro-climate outcomes using new compulsory schooling law data across 20 European countries. We analyze effects on proclimate beliefs and behaviours, as well as novel data on policy preferences and voting for green parties. Results show that a year of education substantially increases pro-climate beliefs, behaviours, and policy preferences.

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A series of free seminars to commemorate the death of J. R. R. Tolkien, to be held in 2023/2024 in the University of Oxford. The talks present an introduction and further background to Tolkien's life, work, and legacy. They have an academic approach, but they are also aimed at those who have read Tolkien's work but are interested in gaining a bit more insight into his life, career, and writings. WEEK 5 – May 20 [MERTON COLLEGE] Will Sherwood (University of Glasgow) "I am a link in the chain": Victorian Transformations of British Romanticism and their Influence on Tolkien CHAIR: Grace Khuri (Oriel) https://tolkien50.web.ox.ac.uk/event/tolkien-50th-anniversary-seminar-series

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What is becoming of subnational governments’ engagement with China during an era of rising international tensions? States and cities across the United States dramatically expanded their contact and cooperation with Chinese counterparts during the early 21st century. However, many of these subnational governments have scaled back engagement and introduced anti-PRC measures in recent years amid worsening tensions. In collaborative research with Dr Sara A. Newland (Smith College), Jaros has drawn on an original dataset of state-level policy actions toward China to assess variation over time and across space in subnational US-China relations. Jaros and Newland's analysis suggests that US states’ interaction with China in recent years has featured distinct dimensions of cooperation and confrontation, and they use quantitative analysis and in-depth case studies to explore the drivers of each. Kyle A. Jaros is associate professor of global affairs in the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. Jaros’s research explores the politics of urban and regional development, intergovernmental relations, and subnational foreign engagement with a focus on China. He is the author of China’s Urban Champions: The Politics of Spatial Development (Princeton University Press, 2019) and has published in leading China studies and interdisciplinary social science journals. He is currently at work on a second book project and related articles (with Sara A. Newland) examining subnational US-China relations during a period of rising tensions. Jaros is currently a Visiting Senior Fellow for US-China Subnational Relations with the Truman Center for National Policy; he is also a fellow of the National Committee on US-China Relations’ Public Intellectuals Program and a former Wilson China Fellow (2022–23). Jaros holds a PhD in Political Science from Harvard University and an AB in Public and International Affairs from Princeton University.

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New approaches that bridge knowledge across genes and proteins to cells to whole-brain networks and to behaviour are beginning to transform our understanding of how the brain works in health and disease. Translation of neuroimaging results depend on this mechanistic understanding and is critical for discovery of new druggable targets. This talk will provide an overview of recent work using in our lab combining multimodal brain imaging methods to ask questions about the interactions between neurochemistry, neurophysiology, and neuroanatomy in psychosis vulnerability, with a focus on brain excitation-inhibition balance. I will discuss our recent research using preclinical models and bioinformatic approaches to delineate with increased precision of the biological mechanisms involved in the human neuroimaging observations. We also apply experimental medicine approaches to probe how to intervene on those mechanisms early to prevent or delay the development of psychosis. Finally, and in parallel, we work to integrate this mechanistic understanding with large-scale approaches to neuroimaging data (ENIGMA Schizotypy) and real-world clinical outcomes using electronic health records. https://zoom.us/j/95199401096?pwd=ancrZ0U1b0RNVmlKL0tQdTQ5SzhLUT09 Meeting ID: 951 9940 1096 Passcode: 937384

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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.

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Professor Sophie Yacoub, OUCRU: Climate and health: dengue research in Vietnam Professor Sonia Lewycka, OUCRU: Antimicrobial resistance research in Vietnam

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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.

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Join us for a digital scholarship coffee gathering – tea and coffee will be provided. There will be a lightning talk from a researcher in digital scholarship on their work, whether it’s a new project, a tool or something they want to showcase. These are a new type of event for us, so if you’d like to attend, be involved in a future session, or find out more please email digitalscholarship@humanities.ox.ac.uk These will be held in the Visiting Scholars Centre, so to attend you’ll need to bring your Bodleian Card and to leave your bags in the lockers – this event is only open to University staff and students.

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Abstract To follow This will be a hybrid seminar in the Big Data Institute, Lower Ground Seminar Room 0, and on Zoom. Zoom registration https://medsci.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAld-uupzIuGNPBaOMjndQsXDPLlYh4SKyE

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Abstract to be confirmed. This is a hyrbid event, held in the Department of Psychiatry’s Seminar Room and online (Zoom). Please email shona.oleary@psych.ox.ac.uk to request the Zoom link.

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Alicia Smith (Corpus Christi College, Cambridge): 'Negotiating shame through the ‘harlot saint’ Thais' and Nancy Jiang (University of Warwick): 'Medieval Penitential Piety and the Virtues of Debt Suretyship' Seminars followed by a sandwich lunch. All welcome!

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Join Zoom Meeting zoom.us/j/97156099278?pwd=bE1DNElhVmRRWkl1Q1lVSEI3UlRLdz09 Meeting ID: 971 5609 9278 Passcode: 324627 [Joint work with Sofía Breitenstein, Enrique Hernández] Citizens are expected to punish corrupt politicians at the polls. Lab and survey experiments consistently show that citizens are unlikely to vote for candidates that engage in corruption. However, observational studies and field experiments frequently conclude that corrupt politicians are only mildly punished by voters. This contradiction might be caused by some of these designs not accounting for information self-selection. An experimental design that randomly informs participants about corruption and disregards the fact that in the real-world citizens are prone to self-select information might overestimate the electoral consequences of corruption. To overcome this limitation this paper implements a Preference-Incorporating Choice and Assignment (PICA) experimental design that allows us to analyze the impact of corruption on voting behavior accounting for information preferences and self-selection. This design increases ecological validity by explicitly modelling how citizens navigate information about malfeasance, while retaining the internal validity of fully randomized experiments. The results indicate that the electoral punishment of corruption is dependent on individuals’ information preferences and that, at the same time, not all citizens expose themselves to information about corruption scandals involving their preferred party. The potential effects of being exposed to this information are particularly large among individuals who prefer to avoid political information altogether and consume entertainment instead. This suggests that, especially in the case of inconspicuous corruption scandals, the exposure of inattentive citizens to information about those scandals would increase the electoral punishment of corruption.

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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: students, staff and researchers from MSD and OUH.

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We study the spatial expansion of banks in response to banking deregulation in the 1980s and 90s. During this period, large banks expanded rapidly, mostly by adding new branches in new locations, while many small banks exited. We document that large banks sorted into the densest markets, but that sorting weakened over time as large banks expanded to more marginal markets in search of locations with a relative abundance of retail deposits. This allowed large banks to reduce their dependence on expensive wholesale funding and grow further. To rationalize these patterns we propose a theory of multi-branch banks that sort into heterogeneous locations. Our theory yields two forms of sorting. First, span-of-control sorting incentivizes top firms to select the largest markets and smaller banks the more marginal ones. Second, mismatch sorting incentivizes banks to locate in more marginal locations, where deposits are abundant relative to loan demand, to better align their deposits and loans and minimize wholesale funding. Together, these two forms of sorting account well for the sorting patterns we document in the data.

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Abstract will be posted shortly Professor David Gioe is Visiting Professor of Intelligence and International Security in the KCL Department of War Studies. He joins the department as a British Academy Global Professor. He is Associate Professor of History at the US Military Academy at West Point, where he also serves as History Fellow for the Army Cyber Institute. David is also Director of Studies for the Cambridge Security Initiative and co-convener of its International Security and Intelligence program. Professor Gioe is an internationally recognised academic scholar of intelligence and a veteran professional practitioner of the craft. He is experienced in civilian, military, corporate and law enforcement intelligence with expertise in intelligence analysis and overseas operations. After over a decade of public service as an intelligence officer, he became a leading intellectual with several conference presentations, media engagements and publications on intelligence and national security issues. He holds advanced degrees from Georgetown University and the University of Cambridge. His scholarship and analysis has appeared in numerous outlets. Dr Thomas Maguire is an Assistant Professor of Intelligence and Security in the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, Leiden University, and Visiting Fellow with the King’s Centre for the Study of Intelligence in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London (KCL). Tom's research streams are two-fold. Firstly, he is interested in interactions between intelligence and propaganda in international politics, especially examining covert influence and intelligence disclosures as policy tools. This forms the basis for a forthcoming book with Oxford University Press, The intelligence-propaganda nexus: British and American covert action in Cold War Southeast Asia. It is also the thematic focus for a Dutch Government-funded research project, ‘Sharing Secrets’, for which Tom is the Principal Investigator. This examines state decision-making behind disclosing intelligence to influence external audiences. Secondly, Tom is interested in the politics and impacts of international security cooperation, in particular exploring post-colonial security relationships between states in Africa and Asia and the United Kingdom during the Cold War and so-called Global War on Terror.

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Week 5, Tuesday 21th May Dr. Thomas Nelson (Wolfson) “(Re)constructing Tradition in the Hellenistic Jewish Epics by Philo and Theodotus” In order to participate in this lecture via Zoom, please register at this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcrcu2urzosHtOkjrJdP2kpIp14xsSW1sHj

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International student mobility (ISM) is an aspect of international higher education that has become increasingly characterized by inequalities, stratification, and arguably unethical and exploitative practices. This paper raises the provocative notion of “democratizing” ISM, and seeks to assess its prospects, challenges and opportunities. The paper first situates “democracy/democratization” in the context of ISM by proposing two perspectives: the “accessibility” perspective and the “relational-conduct” perspective. Under the accessibility perspective, “democratization” refers to greater accessibility and equitable distribution of ISM opportunities and experiences; whereas under the “relational-conduct” perspective, “democratization” is taken to signify less power asymmetry between key ISM actors, more transparency and accountability on the part of the more powerful actors, and greater autonomy and involvement on the part of the mobile students. By drawing on literature as well as the author’s participant observation in this field, the paper argues that from both perspectives, making ISM more “democratic” entails very challenging, if not pessimistic, prospects. To make meaningful progress would require radical changes to current practices that may go against the vested interests of the more powerful actors in the ISM field. One opportunity resides with international students themselves, who can aim to go beyond their “comfort zones” by acting with more criticality, independence, and autonomy.

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Join Zoom Meeting http://us06web.zoom.us/j/85285531740?pwd=SEFBa0%C3%975V21SOFo1dk85dm5TWEhSdz09 Meeting ID: 852 8553 1740 Passcode: 911647

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This presentation discusses the presence of migrants in Athens, Greece, particularly those with irregular status. It provides an overview of the interrelationships between the city and migration, focusing on how space and society interact to determine the trajectories and settlement paths of irregular migrants. Several specific aspects are discussed, in particular how migration policies have led to the 'irregularisation' of a significant number of migrants who have been living on Greek territory for decades; how recent asylum policies and the accommodation system reinforce such tendencies and leave people unprotected; the everyday lives of undocumented migrants on the margins of the city - even when they live in its very centre; urban practices and policies implemented in the Athens metropolitan area and how they have affected the relations between migration and urban space from a critical point of view. The presentation draws on several international research projects on migration, displacement, and returns recently conducted in the case of Athens, Greece. Zoom link: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwvceGopjopGNbyNmm5O7ZfAfl3D1DokMIr

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An introduction to carrying out searches for literature. Librarians from the Bodleian Health Care Libraries will demonstrate how to construct a search strategy from a research question and apply it to range of library resources. By the end of this session you will be able to: describe the literature searching process and aims; build a successful search strategy; use several bibliographic databases relevant to medicine and health care; and source highly cited papers relevant to your research. Intended audience: students, staff and researchers from MSD and OUH.

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Part of the Vera Fine-Grodzinski Programme for Writing Jewish Women’s Lives In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf created an imaginary sister for Shakespeare to ask what life would have been like for an equally talented woman. When considering the Yiddish literary landscape, there's no need to invent a fictional female - Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer's sister Esther Kreitman was also a novelist and short story writer; the probable role model for his depiction of Yentl, a woman desperate to learn. A recently discovered cache of letters from Esther to Bashevis has been translated by David Stromberg, the editor of the IBS estate, and published by Jewish Renaissance as a world exclusive, revealing how her gender, mental health and family relationships impacted her publication opportunities. Dr Aviva Dautch is the Executive Director of Jewish Renaissance, the UK's Jewish arts and culture quarterly. She lectures on modern Jewish literature at the London School of Jewish Studies and JW3 and contributes to programmes on BBC Radio 4. She is also an award-winning poet whose residencies and commissions have included The British Museum, The National Gallery and Bradford and Hay Literature Festivals.

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Wealth in India is concentrated amongst a few privileged social groups in urban areas. What is the relationship between wealth, caste, and elite action? Agarwals, a business caste in Delhi that belongs to the vernacular category baniya, is selected as the case study for analysis. By drawing on in-depth interviews and ethnographic observations made over four years, I argue that elites use caste to produce a moral and empowering self-narrative to produce caste cohesion. In the second most wealth-unequal country in the world, an empowering and shared self-definition helps address intra-group inequalities, makes indirect claims on political power that wealth alone cannot support, and addresses anxieties about wealth accumulation. Four strategies of social cohesion are unpacked: standardisation and publicization of origin myth; claiming symbolic power by naming roads, building statues, and temple complexes after one’s ancestor; institutionalising one’s resource-rich networks through registered societies in the name of the ancestor to undertake philanthropy; and claiming political power by becoming ideologically one with the nation-state and asserting that to be a baniya, is to be religious, patriotic, and self-sacrificial. This paper broadens the sociological understanding of wealth and elite power by showing how upper-caste identitarianism is undertaken by forging cohesion. Ujithra Ponniah is a Senior Researcher at the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS). She works with the ‘Wealth Inequality and Elites’ research stream at SCIS. Her research interests include economic elites, caste, race, and gender in India and South Africa. Her research in India unpacks how a business caste called Agarwals reproduces in Delhi with a focus on the gender question. In South Africa, she has researched property elites (landowners and property developers) involved in the making of a gated city called Waterfall. Currently, she is a Co-PI on an ESRC project titled ‘Transnational Elite Communities and the Reproduction of Inequalities’ in Mumbai, Johannesburg, and London.

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Intricate mechanisms of gene regulation are critical for eukaryotes, particularly in multicellular organisms where diverse cell types arise from differential gene expression of a single genome. However, the evolution of gene regulatory pathways has been complex, involving recurrent simplifications or expansions tied to major evolutionary transitions. In our laboratory, we delve into the origins of DNA methylation in eukaryotes, its interplay with genome evolution and Giant Viruses, and the emergence of pluripotency factors in unicellular protists closely related to animals. We employ comparative and functional genomics in non-conventional model systems to address these questions, emphasizing the significance of broad taxonomic sampling for a comprehensive understanding of eukaryotic gene regulation. Microsoft Teams meeting Meeting ID: 385 590 455 526 Passcode: Xos6sJ

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With rapid developments in the field of artificial intelligence and large language models in healthcare, the need for thoughtful, ethical, impactful applications is imperative. This webinar will explore the potential – and perils – of large language models to unlock new insights from the electronic health records to provide more personalized care while reducing clinician work burden. Dr. Bitterman will discuss her research in large language models for extracting information from clinical documentation, including social determinants of health. She will discuss ethical considerations of large language models for healthcare, including future directions for more robust reporting and evaluation standards.

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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: all doctoral research students.

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*Gathering of Gatherings: Where the Local and the Catholic Meet.* Dr. Derek Hatch is Professor of Religion and Endowed Chair of Baptist Studies at Georgetown College in Kentucky. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Behavioral Science from East Texas Baptist University, a Master of Divinity degree from George W. Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University, and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in theology from the University of Dayton. He has written numerous articles and authored or co-edited three books, including Thinking with the Church: Toward a Renewal of Baptist Theology (2017). He currently serves as a member of the Baptist World Alliance’s Commission on Baptist Doctrine and Christian Unity and was a delegate to the most recent international ecumenical dialogue commission between the Baptist World Alliance and the Roman Catholic Church.

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This paper investigates the role played by self-confidence in college applications. Using incentivized experiments, we measure the self-confidence of more than 2,000 students applying to colleges in France. The best female students and students from low socioeconomic status (low-SES) significantly underestimate their rank in the grade distribution compared to male and high-SES students. By matching our survey data with administrative data on real college applications and admissions, we show that miscalibrated confidence affects college choice controlling for grades. We then estimate the impact of a randomized intervention that corrects students’ under- and overconfidence by informing them of their real rank in the grade distribution. The intervention fully offsets the impact of under- and overconfidence for college applications. Providing feedback also makes the best students, who were initially underconfident, apply to more ambitious programs with stronger effects for female and low-SES students. Among top students, our intervention closes 72% of the gender gap in admissions to elite programs, and 95% of the social gap. We conclude that confidence is an important behavioral consideration for the design of college admission markets.

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The industrial economy is not circular. It is entropic, with an enormous "entropy hole" or "circularity gap" at its centre. This is the main cause of the conflicts at the frontiers of commodity extraction and waste disposal. We elicit the different social values displayed at such conflicts.

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The industrial economy is not circular. It is entropic, with an enormous "entropy hole" or "circularity gap" at its centre. This is the main cause of the conflicts at the frontiers of commodity extraction and waste disposal. We elicit the different social values displayed at such conflicts.

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Gangs are inherently revealing social institutions, by virtue of the fact that they are simultaneously autonomous social phenomena, with complex internal logics and dynamics, and epiphenomena, fundamentally reflecting – and shaped by – broader social structures and processes. At the same time, however, most studies of gangs are focused on a single gang or location, moreover mostly in the Global North, and as a result, despite over 100 years of gang research, we arguably still lack a proper sense of what kinds of gang dynamics might be general, and which ones are specific to particular epochs and places, and why. Drawing both long-term, longitudinal and collaborative ethnographic research, this presentation offers a "disjunctive comparison" of gang dynamics in Managua, Nicaragua, and Cape Town, in South Africa, in order to highlight how gang research needs to be both empirically and conceptually "decentered" in order to maximize the inherently revelatory potential of the phenomena.

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https://www.lac.ox.ac.uk/event/lac-main-seminar-series-countering-convergent-threats-colombian-south-south-security-cooperati

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Addressing a range of contemporary and historical conflicts and daily struggles, this series of talks will explore how violence remains integral to the global political economy, with lasting effects on gendered hierarchies which often extend far beyond immediate war zones.

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Lecture 4 of the Evans-Pritchard Lecture series Living in “Witch Camps”: Experiences of Accused Witches and the Moral Economy of Songsim. All are welcome to attend in person or via the Teams ID and password below: Meeting ID: 318 331 790 674 Passcode: LEecHc

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In 1952, a week -long smog in London killed around 12,000 people. More than 70 years later we are yet to achieve air that does not harm our health. Over 60 thousand papers have been published on air pollution and health. Over half of these have been published in the last ten years. Globally we are exposed to more air pollution than ever before. We now know that air pollution harms our health at all stages of life from pre-birth, through childhood and during our time as adults, but policies and actions remain rooted in the science of the 20th century and not the new knowledge from the last decades. Our inability to solve this problem does not stem from a lack of evidence but from a lack of implementation, despite evidence that reducing air pollution improves health and is massively cost beneficial. The problem is not intractable but recent public controversy makes it ever harder for evidence-based actions.

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Why are Small Modular Reactors the future for nuclear? For one, their reduced scale and off-site manufacturability: a key factor that reduces the expenses and extended timelines linked to large-scale reactors. This also brings a reduction of financial risk – a result of simplified commercial deployment – which creates a more attractive prospect for significant private sector funding. Together, these advantages can allow SMRs, particularly those using advanced (Generation IV) technology, to play a game-changing role in the energy mix for Europe and the UK, supporting the fight against climate change and energy insecurity alongside renewables while offsetting their storage and reliability costs. With the inclusion of nuclear in the EU Taxonomy and the European Commission’s creation of a European SMR Alliance, which aims to facilitate and accelerate the development, demonstration, and deployment of SMRs in Europe, SMRs and AMRs are here to stay, and this seminar highlights why they’re gaining traction.

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Sir Cecil Clementi (金文泰) (1875-1947) arguably was the most scholarly and gifted of all Hong Kong’s 28 colonial governors. As a young official he quickly mastered Chinese and in 1904 published a scholarly translation of Zhang Ziyong’s （招子庸）(1786-1847）Cantonese Love Songs (粵謳), the laments of south China’s ‘flowerboat’ girls. He was also a tireless traveller and spy, undertaking an epic journey across China from Kashgar to Kowloon. In his official capacity, he played an important role in land settlement in the New Territories, the creation of Hong Kong University and the smooth operation of the Kowloon-Canton Railway. In this talk Graham Hutchings will share some of the findings from his work on the biography of Sir Cecil Clementi he is writing for Hong Kong University Press. Among them is Clementi’s response as Governor of Hong Kong (1925-1930) to China’s national revolution, which he sought to counter by making the colony ‘more Chinese’ and protect it from the intellectual currents sweeping through China. Graham Hutchings is an Associate at the University of Oxford China Centre and an Honorary Professor in the School of Politics and International Relations at Nottingham University. He was a foreign correspondent in the 1980s and 1990s, based first in Beijing and then Hong Kong, and was then Director of Analysis at Oxford Analytica. His most recent book is China 1949: Year of Revolution (Bloomsbury 2021).

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On the occasion of the publication of Like Love, a collection of essays written over the past 20 years, Maggie Nelson will address her genre-spanning career, which has included criticism, autobiography, lyric prose, poetry, scholarship, and art writing. Nelson will discuss the differences and overlaps between these genres, as well as between her abiding preoccupations, which include aesthetics, ethics, feminism, queer issues, art, and the unpredictable, myriad ways in which content finds form. Maggie Nelson is the author of several acclaimed books of poetry and prose, including Like Love: Essays and Conversations (2024), the national bestseller On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint (2021), the National Book Critics Circle Award winner The Argonauts (2015), The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning (2011), Bluets (2009; named by Bookforum as one of the top 10 best books of the past 20 years), The Red Parts (2007), Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions (2007), and Jane: A Murder (2005). A 2016 MacArthur fellow, she teaches at University of Southern California and lives in Los Angeles, CA.

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Tuesday 21st May Dr Thomas Welsford (All Souls) An Armenian Liberal in Revolutionary Samarkand In 1917, as Armenian socialists and Dashnaks in Samarkand joined other political activists in celebrating the collapse of tsarist authority, the political commentator A.H. Muradian struck a discordant note, observing that this revolutionary dawn posed a direct threat to the long-term welfare of an Armenian community that had been living and flourishing in Central Asia for the last 35 years. Not for the first time in his career, Muradian’s dissident opinion was vindicated by subsequent events. In this paper I draw upon Russian-language archival documents and Armenian-language newspaper reports to trace the course of Muradian’s career from nationalist agitator to liberal sceptic, and consider how attention to this little-known figure usefully complicates conventional narratives about the Armenians in Central Asia, and more generally about the nature of Russia’s multi-ethnic empire.

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Pregnant women and their neonates are perhaps the last true therapeutic orphans. The majority of pregnant women take at least one medication to treat a maternal condition but very few pharmacokinetic, pharmacodynamic or clinical trials are currently conducted during pregnancy. As a consequence, evidence to guide effective drug treatment of pregnant women is largely lacking. Off-label use of drugs in neonates is a worldwide issue and of paramount concern. Neonatologists are primarily dependent on clinical experience and data extrapolation from adults, children, and infants to guide optimal drug choice, and to select the most safe and effective dosing regimen. Unfortunately, this has resulted in considerable differences in prescribing practices both between and within countries, for many frequently used drugs in neonates. There is a moral obligation to adopt pregnant women and their neonates into the mainstream of health care research and practice.

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The omens aren’t good. The Arts and Humanities Research Council and Arts Council England budgets have been cut. University departments are facing closure. Long-term underfunding has left secondary music education in a parlous state. Despite the rhetoric, government policies are threatening to make music and related arts the preserve of the few. At this conjuncture, I sketch out another future for a university throughout which sound—in thought and practice—would resonate broadly, cutting across disciplinarity and permeating the ways in which the university addresses itself internally and to the wider world. Relying on a felicitous homonym in English, I exploit the adjectival sense of sound to enquire after the health and integrity of the university in the years ahead. Further, I ask what role “the university of sound” has to play in sounding out planetary wellbeing in the face of multiple crises of climate catastrophe, runaway inequality, democratic disaffection, revanchist ethnonationalisms, and proliferating forms of extractivism. As a provocation, I set out an intellectual and political project, driven by transdisciplinary theories of sound, for the Du Boisian abolition and reconstruction of the university as a democratic institution. In this vision, “the sound university” of the future would assume the mantle of auscultating the world and of returning echoes that imagine and remake it otherwise.

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Delivering net zero requires restoring the UK’s natural environment, as does meeting critical biodiversity targets. But the UK’s limited territory also faces acute demand for food production, housing, and energy. How do we balance these objectives? Biographies: Thomas Hale is Professor at the Blavatnik School of Government and St Antony’s College, Oxford. His research explores how we can manage transnational problems effectively and fairly. He co-leads the Net Zero Tracker and the Net Zero Regulation and Policy Hub. His latest book is Long Problems: Climate Change and the Challenge of Governing across Time (Princeton, 2024). Chris Skidmore served as MP for Kingswood from 2010-2024. In 2022-2023 he led the Government’s net zero review. He was Minister of State jointly at the Department for Education and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy 2019-2020. He was previously Minister of State at the Department of Health and Social Care between, at the Department for Education, and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. Chris also served as Parliamentary Secretary at the Cabinet Office. Chris was educated at Bristol Grammar School before studying history at Oxford, where he continued with postgraduate research. He is a Visiting Parliamentary Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford, for the 2023-2024 academic year. Alex Sobel was elected MP for Leeds North West in 2017. A graduate of the University of Leeds, his background is in the social enterprise sector. In 2019 Alex helped form the Net Zero All-Party Parliamentary Group. In 2020 he was appointed as the shadow minister for Tourism and Heritage, and in 2021 we was appointed as shadow minister for Nature Recovery and the Domestic Environment in the Opposition DEFRA Team. He is a Visiting Parliamentary Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford, for the 2023-2024 academic year. Mark Owen-Lloyd is the Director of the Botley West Solar Farm project currently proposed for development in West Oxfordshire. He has worked on this project and others with Photovolt Development Partners since 2019. Prior to this, he served as the head of UK power trading at E.On UK, before moving to Dusseldorf as the head of power and carbon trading. Before entering the energy market, he spent the early part of his career as a Eurobond trader at Nomura. He holds an MA in Modern History from Christ Church college, Oxford.

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Dr Kevin Grecksch introduces us to water security and what it means to people across the world. Discover how the good, or bad, management of water can impact people's lives and livelihoods, and the environment.

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A workshop outlining some of the key principles to bear in mind when working with sensitive or restricted research; whether collected yourself or obtained from a third-party source such as a data archive. Issues of confidentiality, informed consent, cybersecurity and data management will be covered. Examples of scenarios or concerns drawn from the research of participants are particularly welcome. The role of support services at Oxford will also be outlined and in particular the role of the Bodleian Data Librarian who will lead the session. Follow up consultations with the Data librarian or other subject consultants are also offered. Intended audience: Oxford students, researchers and other staff.

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talks by: Dr Elena Violaris, 'The Gamification of the Ghetto: Reading Between the Levels in Percival Everett's Erasure' and Dr Lucinda Newns, Bishop Grosseteste University (title tbc)

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Social movements are catalysts for crucial institutional changes. To succeed, they must coordinate members’ views (consensus building) and actions (mobilization). We study union leaders within Myanmar’s burgeoning labour movement. Union leaders are positively selected on both personality traits that enable them to influence others and ability but earn lower wages. In group discussions about workers’ views on an upcoming national minimum wage negotiation, randomly embedded leaders build consensus around the union’s preferred policy. In an experiment that mimics individual decision-making in a collective action set-up, leaders increase mobilization through coordination. Leaders empower social movements by building consensus that encourages mobilization. Written with Laura Boudreau (Columbia University, CEPR, and IGC), Rocco Macchiavello (LSE Department of Management, STICERD, and IGC) and Mari Tanaka (Hitotsubashi University Institute of Economic Research) https://sites.google.com/view/virginiaminni/research

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There is no cure for the fatal and devastating childhood onset, X-linked disorder, Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD). Many groups, including my own, are evaluating novel and sometimes sophisticated treatments, either with a view to replace the absent protein, dystrophin, or to mitigate against the deleterious effects of its loss. Mice fail to recapitulate many relevant phenotypic features of the disease, in particular the functional deficits that define the disorder. Larger animal models (including dogs) can help bridge the divide between early evaluations conducted in mice and clinical trials in humans. In this talk I will discuss the founding of the DE50-MD canine model of DMD, maintained at the Royal Veterinary College, studies conducted that make this arguably the best characterised large animal model of this disorder and our use of the model in clinical veterinary trials, including in gene editing and gene therapies. I will end by a discussion of the lengths we go to for optimal welfare and the approach we take to ensure robust and ethical animal use. SPEAKER Professor Richard Piercy qualified as a veterinary surgeon from Cambridge University and after a stint in private veterinary practice, he moved to the USA to undertake specialist clinical veterinary training, becoming a Diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine. Whilst in the USA, he also conducted a Master of Science degree on muscle exercise physiology of Alaskan Sled dogs competing in the annual Iditarod race and was a research scholar working on the kinetics of single skinned muscle fibres with Prof. Jack Rall at Ohio State University. Richard moved back to the UK, working as a Wellcome Trust Research Training Fellow for his doctoral training at the Dubowitz Neuromuscular Centre, Imperial College, working on the molecular biology of Emery Dreifuss Muscular Dystrophy, supervised by Prof Francesco Muntoni and Dr Susan Brown. Since 2005, Richard has worked at the Royal Veterinary College where he is now Professor of Comparative Neuromuscular Disease. He runs the largest neuromuscular biopsy service for veterinary species in Europe and the Comparative Neuromuscular Disease Laboratory which researches naturally occurring veterinary neuromuscular diseases and their treatments. Teams link: https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_YmI0OTkyYTktMDllMC00ZmFhLWI3MzEtM2FjMjYwZWFjZDBi%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22cc95de1b-97f5-4f93-b4ba-fe68b852cf91%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%224a389e77-4427-4560-b7b4-55b452335c06%22%7d

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Peter Pomerantsev is a Soviet-born British journalist, author and TV producer. He is a senior fellow at Johns Hopkins University and co-director of the Arena Initiative. Born in Kyiv, Ukraine, Peter grew up in the U.K. He is the author of several books about Russian and other authoritarian propaganda; the third of these, How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler, was published in 2024

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Gain best practice insights on leading and managing a rapid, policy-relevant interdisciplinary Sprint while supporting researcher career development. This workshop is open to: Oxford University researchers planning to lead and manage an Agile Sprint team; Oxford University researchers leading other short-term policy-relevant interdisciplinary research project teams; early- and mid-career researchers who might be interested in the autumn Agile Sprint call. This workshop will cover what is involved in leading and managing an Agile Sprint team based on best practice learning from Sprints to date, including integrating career development opportunities for Sprint researchers within team and individual work plans. Much of this is also applicable to those embarking on their first PI role on a short-term research project. By the end of this workshop, you will understand how to effectively lead and manage an Agile Sprint team through: Identifying who else you need to recruit or engage in the Sprint based on perspectives and experiences missing from the team Starting well, including developing a positive research culture for different identities within the team and a shared sense of purpose and supportive collaboration that allows everyone a voice and opportunities to develop Planning realistic workloads that plot the interrelationships between work packages that allow for the Researcher Concordat 10 days’ development time, and continuous integration to ensure ongoing team engagement Managing a Sprint budget and working with the Agile programme support team. “While meeting the ‘Sprint’ pace is challenging, it helps the team focus and streamline research and stakeholder engagement activities in a way not commonly seen in conventional projects. This short period of intense involvement can expedite early-career researchers’ development but also means the Sprint PI needs to dedicate time to support their researchers’ career planning throughout the Sprint.” -Professor Aidong Yang Book your place on the workshop using the links provided. If you need to cancel your place, please do so no later than 48 hours before the workshop. By booking on this workshop, you have agreed to the externally facing use of the recording. Book another session, by viewing the series event page. Participation: Please note you will be expected to actively participate, which includes joining discussion, listening, asking questions, and contributing to activities.

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Planning: Effective data management techniques - Trinity Term 2024 Maintaining well-organised data is essential for researchers to keep accurate records of fieldwork data and make informed decisions. The techniques and strategies for securely managing data may differ depending on the field sites, types and amount of data, and the system or database used for data collection and analysis. Some may find online data storage to be the best option, while it may not be ideal for those working in remote areas. In this workshop, post-fieldworkers will be sharing their experience and knowledge on managing data in the field. The discussion will cover various topics, such as effective methods and strategic planning for storing, organising, and updating data on both online and offline platforms, as well as some potential challenges and drawbacks that may arise. We will also delve into practical tools and techniques for backing up data and enhancing security measures to safeguard the confidentiality of the data during and after data collection in the field. Chair Keiko Kanno Panellists for TT 24 Dr José Ignacio Carrasco (Postdoctoral Researcher, Centre on Migration, Policy and Society) Peyton Cherry (DPhil, Anthropology) Professor Nancy Puccinelli (Professor of Marketing and Psychology)

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In recent decades, the broad field of education research has shown robust growth in the number of journals and articles published, coupled with the use of metrics associated with journals to assess the "impact" of scholars. And yet, despite the growth and crucial functions of journals in the field, it is rare to find satisfied editors, authors, reviewers, and readers. Most journals are under great stress to effectively work with authors and reviewers and struggle with multiple demands, such as finding reliable metrics of impact, increasing the diversity of authors, editorial boards, and readership, maintaining viable funding, and adapting to the evolving uses of AI and the growing cases of scientific misconduct. Recognizing the intricate interplay between conceptual orientations, accountability systems, funding models, and reputation in academic publishing, I will focus on reward and assessment structures in the political economy of education journals. In this scenario, the reward structures used in the field often and perversely discourage journals from considering interdisciplinary collaborations or acknowledging different epistemological standpoints and wastefully ignoring scholarship from multiple regions. I advocate for a transformative shift towards frameworks that de-emphasize using journals as proxies for assessing scholars. Instead, I encourage collaborative interdisciplinary approaches, multilingual teamwork, open data sharing, non-commercialized funding, and stakeholder engagement. By fostering these strategies, the whole field of education research could improve scholarly rigor, trustworthiness, usability, and relevance.

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This week, Dr. Vili Lehdonvirta and Boxi Wu will be presenting on their paper (written in conjunction with Zoe Hawkins): “Cloud empires’ physical footprint: How trade and security politics shape the global expansion of U.S. and Chinese data centre infrastructures” Paper Abstract U.S.-China technological rivalry presents dilemmas for third countries. Cloud computing infrastructure has become an acute front in this rivalry because of the infrastructural power that it affords over increasingly cloud-based economies, and because it is a control point in AI governance. We ask what factors explain a third country’s “cloud infrastructure alignment”—the degree to which the country’s local cloud computing infrastructure belongs to U.S. versus Chinese providers. Based on literature, we sketch three different answers: international trade, digital imperialism, and third-country strategic choice. In the first quantitative study on the topic, we test propositions derived from these views using original data on global hyperscale cloud infrastructure combined with trade statistics and security variables. We find that cloud infrastructure alignment is positively associated with other imports from the U.S. or China, negatively associated with interstate disputes, and only weakly associated with security cooperation ties. The findings suggest that commercial interests and third-country strategic choice may be more influential in shaping cloud infrastructure than any imperialist expansion or containment by the superpowers. We conclude that researchers should direct more attention to the role of third-country agency in technology geopolitics, and to the role of tech firms as autonomous geopolitical actors. About the speakers Prof. Vili Lehdonvirta Vili Lehdonvirta is Professor of Economic Sociology and Digital Social Research at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford. He leads a research group examining the politics and socio-economic implications of digital technologies. He is one of the world’s most cited authors on gig work and the platform economy. His current research examines the geopolitics of digital infrastructures. His books Cloud Empires: How digital platforms are overtaking the state and how we can regain control and Virtual Economies: Design and analysis are published by MIT Press. He is a frequent keynote speaker and has advised the European Commission, the World Bank, and other public, private, and third-sector organizations on digital policy and governance. Lehdonvirta’s latest book Cloud Empires was shortlisted for the Association of American Publishers’ 2023 PROSE Award. “It is a highly accessible and refreshingly original book, and a must-read for anyone interested in our digital past, present, or future” (Regulation & Governance). The book questions the current paradigm of platform competition regulation and puts forward a historically grounded argument towards the democratization and constitutionalization of transnational digital institutions. “The hypothesis underlying the book is bold: the organization of virtual space by digital platforms follows a trajectory similar to the social organization of Western societies in the past centuries” (Information, Communication & Society). Cloud Empires has been adopted as a textbook in undergraduate and graduate courses in economic sociology, organization studies, and political theory. An Italian translation is published by Einaudi, with translations to Chinese and Japanese forthcoming. From 2018 to 2021 Lehdonvirta served on the European Commission’s Expert Group on the Online Platform Economy, advising policy makers on platform regulation and governance. From 2015 to 2021 Lehdonvirta led the iLabour research project, a major investigation funded by the European Research Council on the implications of digital platforms to labour markets, global development, and collective action. One of the project’s outputs was the Online Labour Index, an automated statistics production system adopted by researchers, journalists, and international organizations. At the project’s conclusion the system was transferred to the International Labour Organization to be maintained as a public research resource. The project also produced over a dozen highly cited articles in journals such a Socio-Economic Review, Sociology, and Journal of Management. According to a 2021 bibliometric analysis, Lehdonvirta co-authored the top two most cited studies in gig economy research. From 2018 to 2019 Lehdonvirta served on the European Commission’s High-Level Expert Group on Digital Transformation and EU Labour Markets, advising policy makers on issues such as access to platform data. Lehdonvirta’s current research focuses on the international political economy and geopolitics of digital infrastructures. His Political Geography of AI Infrastructure research project seeks to map the world’s GPU compute, one of the key bottlenecks in AI system development and operation. Lehdonvirta’s group uses both conventional social science research methods as well as novel data science approaches to map infrastructures and model policy impacts. His research has been supported by major grants from the European Research Council, the UK Economic and Social Research Council, and other science funding agencies. Lehdonvirta is a Senior Research Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, an associate member of the Department of Sociology, Oxford, and a former Turing Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute, London. He co-organizes the Digital Economy Network of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics and sits on the editorial boards of the journals Information Society and Journal of International Business Policy. From 2013 to 2018 he was editor of the journal Policy & Internet. In 2022-2023 he served on the European Research Council’s Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Grants panel. Lehdonvirta holds a PhD in Economic Sociology from the University of Turku (2009) and a MSc from the Helsinki University of Technology (2005). He has previously worked at the London School of Economics, the University of Tokyo, and the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology. In 2020 he was a visiting professor at the Institute of Innovation Research, Hitotsubashi University. Before his academic career Lehdonvirta worked as a software developer. Boxi Wu Boxi Wu works in Google DeepMind’s Responsible AI team, focusing on the ethical and societal implications of frontier AI models across both LLMs and multimodal models. They advise teams on ethical risks and mitigations, and lead internal ethics & safety governance fora, alongside their part-time studies in the MSc in Social Science at the OII. Their research interests focus on the social and political impacts of AI, focusing on the materiality of AI infrastructure and implications for AI ethics and governance, working with Professor Vili Lehdonvirta to map global AI infrastructure. Other research interests include the politics of AI compute as a geostrategic resource for nation-states. They are also an organiser and programmer with ESEA Green Lions, where they have worked with local museums and galleries on events that bring the public into conversation with questions on AI, the environment and diaspora. They have previously worked as a policy researcher, lecturer and strategy consultant.

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*John Christie* (University of Oxford) ‘A salt sui generis: Chemical Analyses of Scarborough Waters, 1734’ *Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent* (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne) ‘Why a Biography of Carbon?’

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Week 5 (Sun 19th - Sat 25th) Wednesday 22nd May Recollection Lecture: Is a Universal History Possible? Prof David Engels (Brussels & Poznań). Must a systematic comparison of civilisations automatically lead to a historical relativism where truth becomes a mere matter of style? Or is it possible to identify, behind the uncompromising workings of history, a subliminal metaphysical sense that is neither a Eurocentric variation of the history of salvation, nor a vulgar theory of accumulation and process?

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The Challenge of Islamic Feminism Ziba Mir-Hosseini (SOAS) Reproduction as Politics: A Feminist History of Modern Arab Thought Susanna Ferguson (Smith College)

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The next seminar will focus on Peter Gizzi and will take place on Wednesday 22nd May at 4.30 pm, Pusey Room. No tickets, free entry, all welcome. Reading material will be made available via pdf: https://www.keble.ox.ac.uk/teaching-research/poetry-at-keble/the-poets-essay/ Enquiries: please contact Matthew Bevis.

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Since 2001, Marc Isaacs has made more than sixteen creative documentaries for the BBC and Channel 4. His films have won Grierson, Royal Television Society and BAFTA awards as well as numerous international film festival prizes. In 2006, Marc had a retrospective at the prestigious Lussas Documentary film festival in France and his work has been included in numerous documentary books and academic studies. In 2008, Marc received an honorary doctorate from the University of East London for his documentary work. Marc has been a guest tutor at numerous universities and film schools in the UK and overseas including the London Film School and the National Film and Television School. A complete box set of his films was released by Second Run DVD in 2018. Event details: https://www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/events/forced-migration-on-film-a-conversation-with-marc-isaacs-annual-elizabeth-colson-lecture-2024

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I was puzzled why Japanese sociologists who study social mobility or social inequality don't use the concept of "class" or kaikyu（階級）in Japanese, while using the term when writing in English. In Japanese, instead, they use kaisho (階層), whose literal translation in English is “strata.” In this seminar, as a sociologist of knowledge to study Japanese society, I will explore how and why the concept of class (kaikyu) disappeared in academic writings among sociologists, and what societal consequences this disappearance has produced, especially its influence on the interpretation of inequality in Japanese society, which is often called "kakusa shakai" (格差社会) or a gap society. This event will serve as Professor Kariya's valedictory lecture, marking the culmination of his distinguished academic career. We warmly invite everyone to join us for this special occasion. Register here: https://forms.office.com/e/KCihPKimYH Professor Takehiko Kariya joined the University of Oxford in 2008. After completing his BA and MA degrees at the University of Tokyo, he studied at Northwestern University in the US, where he got his PhD in Sociology in 1988. After going back to Japan, he worked at the National Institute of Multimedia Education from 1988 to 1991, and then moved to the Graduate School of Education, University of Tokyo, where he taught sociology of education for almost two decades until he came to Oxford. His teaching at Oxford includes the Sociology of Japanese Society and Research Methods for Japanese Studies. His research interests cover sociology of education; social stratification and social mobility; social changes of Postwar Japan; social and educational policies. He was recently awarded a Japanese Medal of Honour with Purple Ribbon (紫綬褒章), the Medal awarded to individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to academic and artistic developments, improvements, and accomplishments.

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We all recognise current global plastics production is unsustainable. Yet these materials can often improve sustainability through insulation, light-weighting of vehicles and future clean technologies. So how can chemistry and materials science improve the sustainability of plastics? In this talk Trinity Fellow, Professor of Inorganic Chemistry Charlotte Williams OBE will explore all the available options including renewables, efficient recycling, and building in sustainability at the earliest stages of technological development.

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We are pleased to announce a double book launch event, to celebrate the publication of two books by distinguished and long-serving historians of science and chemistry. _Thomas Garnett: Science, Medicine, Mobility in Eighteenth-Century Britain_ (Bloomsbury) by *Robert Fox* (Emeritus Professor of History of Science, Oxford) was published in February 2024. _Carbon: A Biography (Polity)_, the English translation of _Carbone. Ses vies, ses oeuvres_ (2018, Ed. Seuil) by *Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent* (Emeritus Professor Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne) and *Sacha Loeve* (Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3) will be published in June 2024. This event immediately follows the first meeting of the Oxford Seminar in the History of Alchemy and Chemistry (15:00-17:00 Maison Française d'Oxford), where Bernadette will be delivering a paper entitled 'Why a Biography of Carbon?'.

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he Oxford Seminar in the History of Alchemy and Chemistry will hold a Book Launch celebration for the Publication of Robert Fox's book, Thomas Garnett: Science, Medicine, Mobility in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Bloomsbury Academic Press), and for Carbon: A Biography by Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Sacha Loeve (Polity). The Launch will immediately follow the Oxford Seminar in the History of Alchemy and Chemistry (session 3-5 pm).

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The past fifty years have been characterised by a massive wave of globalisation, which provided lowered prices, access to a wide variety of goods and services, and reduced global poverty. However, this historic growth has recently come to a standstill, and both natural events and geopolitical tensions have shown that globalisation can exacerbate vulnerabilities and dependency on third parties. In this talk, Professor Glenn Magerman, Oxford Martin Visiting Fellow, INET Oxford, will discuss the role of (global) value chains in driving growth, welfare and inequality, the impact of supply chain policies on socio-economic outcomes, and how we can make our societies more resilient to future natural and geopolitical shocks. This is a joint event with INET Oxford. This event will be followed by a drinks reception, all welcome. REGISTRATION To register to attend in person in Oxford: https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/events/global-value-chains/ To register to watch live online on Crowdcast: https://www.crowdcast.io/c/global-value-chains

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Speakers: Maximilien Durand, Director of the Department of Byzantine and Eastern Christian Art at the Louvre Museum Jannic Durand, Emeritus Director of the Department of Works of Art at the Louvre Museum Discussant: Frédérique Duyrat, Director of Collections at the Ashmolean Museum

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Abstract will be posted shortly. Andrew Payne is a Lecturer in Foreign Policy and Security at City, University of London, and a Research Associate at the University of Oxford, where he was previously the Hedley Bull Research Fellow in International Relations. His research examines the influence of domestic politics on US foreign policy, military strategy and civil-military relations. His first book, War on the Ballot: How the Election Cycle Shapes Presidential Decision-Making in War, was published by Columbia University Press in July 2023. His work has been published in several peer-reviewed journals, including International Security, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Politics, and Contemporary Politics. His writing has also appeared in The Washington Post, The Sunday Times, The Conversation, and International Affairs. In addition to his academic work, Andrew serves on the board of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House).

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Lecture Four ‘A New Pilgrimage Ethic: On the Secular and the Serious’ [Wednesday 22 May, from 5:15 to 6:45 pm, Harris Lecture Theatre, Oriel College] Victor and Edith Turner consciously adapted Weberian imagery when they argued that a Pilgrimage Ethic, with its emphasis on the benefits of holy travel, helped to create the communications networks that would enable the development of mercantile and industrial capitalism. Themes of both materiality and secularity continue to haunt Euro-American images of religion in general, and pilgrimage in particular, often resulting in a seemingly endless and restless search for authenticity. In this final lecture, I present an alternative view of pilgrimage as moral action and affective stance, which considers its articulations with theories of mobility and political economy alongside the now extensive anthropology of ethics. I ask whether pilgrimage—manifested at contexts like Walsingham and the Camino, but also away from conventional experiences of travel—might be viewed as a refractive, transposable form of ‘seriousness’ as well as political action that goes beyond oppositions between the earnest and the playful, the authentic and the inauthentic, the religious and the secular. ……………………………………………………………………………………………..

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The Department of Antiquities at the Ashmolean Museum has the pleasure to invite you to this annual lecture. *_Whilst admission is free and a ticket is not required, seat reservation is recommended._* RSVP to Ilaria Perzia at "$":mailto:antiquities@ashmus.ox.ac.uk

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Jesus College alumnus James Goldston (1986, PPE) was tasked with producing the January 6 hearings conducted by the Select Committee to investigate the January 6th attack on the US Capitol. The ten historic hearings played a key role in the legal processes that are now underway against former President Donald Trump. Goldston, a former President of ABC News, joins us to discuss how the hearings came to happen, and why they remain so central to the future of American politics.

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Two day conference - full details to follow

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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.

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All staff at Oxford are invited to the next meeting of the Digital Education Technologies User Group on Thursday 23 May, 10.30am-12noon on Teams. What is the meeting agenda? - Brief updates on Canvas, Teams, Panopto, ORLO and Inspera - A demonstration of Leganto - the new platform for Oxford Reading Lists Online (ORLO) - A showcase of how staff from the soon-to-finish Inclusive Teaching Enhancements 2 (ITE2) project have collaborated with colleagues across Oxford to enhance the learning experience for students. Find out more about DETUG at https://ctl.ox.ac.uk/digital-education-technologies-user-group.

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Centrosomes are small cytoplasmic organelles that generate and organize microtubule networks, and thus contribute to a multitude of cellular processes including cell division, polarity and trafficking. For instance, centrosomes drive mitotic spindle assembly whilst cytolytic immune cells depend on centrosomal microtubule arrays for the targeted release of secretory lysosomes. Emerging evidence suggests that centrosomes also act as signalling hubs; due to their membraneless nature, these organelles are able to concentrate (and possibly scaffold) components of signalling pathways from the cytosol. Furthermore, in many cell types, centrosomes template assembly of the primary cilium, an antenna-like cell surface organelle with prominent roles in Hedgehog, Wnt and Notch signalling. To fulfil these complex roles, cells must accurately control centrosome number, composition, structure and function. My group combines cell biology, super-resolution and live microscopy, mouse genetics and proteomics to determine physiological roles and regulation of centrosomes, and to probe the impact of centrosome aberrancies on human pathologies.

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It’s been two years since I ‘finished’ collecting data for my case study, and I still can’t think about leaving the field without worrying about my exit. Whilst carefully curated documents outlining ethical boundaries framed my entry into the field, and ongoing reflective conversations around ethical dilemmas ran through each phase during, contextual circumstances meant that I was not prepared for the exit from fieldwork that later occurred. Whilst preparing to enter the field and how research is conducted from within it is explored to great depths through both the literature and researcher training courses alike, as Delamont and Smith (2023) point out, reflections and guidance for exits from fieldwork are few and far between. In conjunction with reviewing existing literature on ethical dilemmas around leaving the field, this paper offers a partly auto ethnographical reflection on my own experiences of ethical dilemmas when leaving the field: ethical considerations addressed, and those too left unanswered. This paper reflects on qualitative data collected towards the end of the fieldwork in question; primarily ethnographic observational data alongside my own fieldwork reflections. Data presented is discussed alongside existing literature in response to the question of how ethics of exits from fieldwork could be constructed and reflected on in ways that better support both the participants and researcher alike when things don’t go to plan. The paper offers a conceptualisation of a trauma-informed approach to ethics around the exists from fieldwork and highlights the necessity for further research and training around the ethics of exits from fieldwork in general. MS Teams link: https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_OTBlMzVkMjgtMTY0Yy00YzhiLWJkNWYtNWVkNTg3YzhlMDQ3%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22cc95de1b-97f5-4f93-b4ba-fe68b852cf91%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%225f581465-1def-4d51-8d4c-45a3b26b5b58%22%7d

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Lesson of the week, clinical cases and research. All clinical and academic staff and students welcome. Coffee, Tea and Cake will be served.

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COURSE DETAILS Uncover the art of facilitating interactive science demonstrations that captivate and educate. Learn the pivotal elements of event design and planning specifically tailored for public engagement activities. By the end of this course, you'll not only have a repertoire of engaging activities at your disposal, but you'll also possess the skills to thoughtfully design, execute, and adapt events that leave lasting impressions. LEARNING OUTCOMES Attending this session will give you the opportunity to:  Use desktop activities to communicate their research.  Explore interactive formats and approaches to engage audiences.  Understand how to tailor an activity to different age groups and settings.  Learn how to facilitate interactive science demonstrations.  Learn the key elements of event design and planning for public engagement activities.

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The aim of the seminar is to foster a dynamic and interdisciplinary postcolonial research culture supportive of individual scholarship. Finalists, M.St. and D.Phil. students, lecturers, fellows, scholars from across the university community – all are welcome. If you’d like to appear on the seminar mailing list, please email martha.swift@ell.ox.ac.uk OR hannah.fagan@mansfield.ox.ac.uk

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Eclaircissements (Conversations on Science, Culture and Time) is the original title of the volume of five dialogues between Michel Serres and Bruno Latour published in 1992. Widely translated, this book reflects a time of intense and joyous dialogue and sharing ideas. This conference aims to shed new light on their philosophical dialogue and explore how their views compare, clash, dovetail and are mutually enriching. How do, for instance, The Natural Contract and Politics of Nature, Biogea and Gaia, echo each other. This conference seeks to examine the legacy of Michel Serres in the light of his relation to Bruno Latour and identify continuities and fault lines between the two oeuvres. Beyond the question of legacy, the conference hopes to bring to the fore how both challenged modern categories to reconnect philosophy with the urgent questions concerning the Earth. The conference will also explore how their respective philosophical practices, as they break away from the traditional codes of academic writing, fashioned an idiosyncratic style of their own that allowed them to engage a larger readership and audience. ----------------------- THURSDAY, MAY 23 13h30 Welcome and start 14h-16h: Successions and Secessions Steven Connor (King's College, London): Sect and Secession: Serres, Bachelard and Philosophies of No Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne): So Near and so Far: Two Object-centred Philosophies Massimiliano Simons (Maastricht University): Nothing but Experience: The Empiricisms of Serres and Latour Moderator: Christina Howells (Wadham College, Oxford) 16h-16h30: Coffee Break 16h30-18h30: Translations Lilian Kroth (University of Fribourg): Serres and Latour: what does it mean to translate? Elie During (Université Paris-Nanterre): Scallops and Structures: Serres’ Paradoxical Contribution to the 'Sociology of Translation' Martin Crowley (University of Cambridge): 'A line in the sand' Moderator: Macs Smith (University College, London) FRIDAY, MAY 24 9h30-11h30: The Natural Contract and Politics of Nature Victor Simmonet (Université Paris 8 Vincennes - Saint-Denis): References and their potentials. Michel Serres and Bruno Latour's politics through the prism of nature, modernity and style. Catherine Larrère (Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne): Serres and Latour : From The Natural Contract to 'The Parliament of things' David Webb (University of Staffordshire): Reason, Judgement and the Problem of Decision Making in Latour and Serres. Moderator: Timothy Howles (University of Oxford) 11h30-13h: Lunch 13h-15h: Styles of writing and performing Henriette Korthals Altes (Maison Française d’Oxford): 'What language do the things of the world speak?' Frédérique Aït-Touati (EHESS, Paris): FIC and fables: Uses of Literature in Michel Serres and Bruno Latour’s Works Simon Schaffer (Darwin College, Cambridge) The Balance and the Network Moderator: Arto Charpentier (ENS Paris)

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Join OPEN Fellow Dr. Federica Lucivero in this OPEN Conversation to learn about her work on anticipating techno-social trends and embedding ethics into policymaking. She'll discuss her journey engaging with the policy world through her OPEN Fellowship with the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. Dr. Lucivero will be joined by Ruth Marshall, Head of Futures Capability at the Government Office for Science, and Jay Stone, Associate Director of External Relations and Foresight at the Nuffield Council. An expert in techno-moral forecasting and technology assessment, Dr. Lucivero is co-designing horizon scanning tools tailored for departmental policymakers to consider ethical implications when promoting innovation.

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Cardiovascular disease (CVD) represents the leading cause of death and disability worldwide. A consistent feature of CVD is fibrosis, which leads to excessive deposition of disorganised extracellular matrix (ECM) due to unrestrained or inappropriate activation of cardiac reparative pathways. In humans, heart failure is the devastating end-stage of fibrotic progression. The notion that pathological fibrosis represents dysregulated tissue repair presents a duality that has implications for how we think about, study, and treat cardiac fibrosis, and the notable failure of anti-fibrotic drug discovery efforts to date reinforces the need to reconsider current models. Single cell genomics has revealed unexpected heterogeneity of cardiac cell populations, and one key hope from this new data is that pro-regenerative and pathological fibrosis become distinguishable at cellular and molecular levels such that they could be targeted selectively. An intermediary goal is to develop high dimensionality single cell atlases and virtual 3D tissues that will drive forward new biology and drug discovery. This requires the generation of integrated reference maps of single cell and spatial transcriptomics data drawn from different studies which harmonise disparate experimental designs, analytical pipelines, and taxonomies. Towards this end, we have generated a comprehensive single cell, time-resolved transcriptome integration map of cardiac fibrosis after myocardial infarction and used it to interrogate the fibrotic process in diverse CVD states. Key findings include the high similarity between fibroblast identities and dynamics in ischaemic and hypertensive models of cardiomyopathy, timelines for engagement of activated fibroblasts for proliferation and myofibrogenesis, the co-existence of pro- and anti-fibrotic states within myofibroblasts and their descendants, and illustration of the self-limiting nature of fibrosis. We have developed new genetic tools for defining, isolating, and manipulating select fibroblast subsets, and show how integrated data can be used to gain insights into models of run-away fibrosis and augmented cardiac repair. These data invoke a degree of fibroblast plasticity governed by cell state stability thresholds. Preliminary spatial transcriptomics data support key roles for distinct fibroblast spatial microenvironments. Overall, these studies will hopefully contribute to a refined conceptual framework for cardiac fibrosis, allowing better interpretation of CVD progression and new points for intervention through knowledge-based therapeutics.

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This is a hybrid event Yankelovich Endowed Chair Professor in Sociology Booking is required for people outside of the Department of Social Policy and Intervention (DSPI). The registration form will be available soon. DSPI members do not need to register

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Session Seven: Government Ideology, Lockdowns and Vaccines: Evidence from a Global Sample of Countries Between 2020-2023 Presenter: Dr Kerim Can Kavakli, Bocconi University Discussant: Dr Ruth D Carlitz, University of Amsterdam Policy Analysis of the Adoption and Implementation of NPIs to Slow the Spread of COVID-19 in Ghana Presenter: Dr Hanna-Tina Fischer, Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin Discussant: Dr Marina Kaneti, National University of Singapore The Oxford Covid-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT) is a project that collected information on policy measures to tackle COVID-19 over the years 2020, 2021, and 2022. Although a substantial body of scientific research on COVID-19 government responses has already been published, many research questions remain unanswered, and the OxCGRT team is continuing research into the impacts and determinants of pandemic policy and working with partners to devise new approaches to data collection that can be deployed quickly in the face of future pandemics or global emergencies. The OxCGRT Seminar Series is an innovative platform for scholars working on COVID-19 responses, offering an opportunity to present and discuss their ongoing research work as well as to connect with the broader research community. The series will run online every Thursday from 11 April to 30 May at 16:00-17:30 BST.

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The era of liberal interventionism is over. And the prevailing international discourse is once again about defending state borders and putting up walls. This broad re-assertion of sovereignty and non-intervention---often considered the normative foundation of the BRICS countries, of the Non-Aligned Movement, of Bandung, of the “Westphalian” South---raises a series of difficult questions, not least about the management of challenges shared by all. How are we to make sense of re-organisations of intervention and non-intervention in global order? Intervention before Interventionism is about the ways in which statespeople have re-ordered intervention and non-intervention since the middle of the twentieth century; it is concerned primarily with non-Western contestations of Western-dominated order; it illustrates institutional change in and through decolonization; and it provides a conceptual roadmap for understanding dilemmas of intervention and non-intervention today, particularly in relation to contestation as it has re-emerged in the twenty-first century. While building upon and conversing with existing literature, the book stands out from previous approaches insofar as it is a mapping of international struggles for the re- constitution of intervention in the globalization of the society of states. This book panel will be hosted by Neta Crawford and feature commentaries by Evelyn Goh and Meera Sabaratnam in addition to a presentation by the author. Patrick Quinton-Brown is Assistant Professor of International Relations at Singapore Management University and was previously Departmental Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Oxford. Neta Crawford is Montague Burton Chair in International Relations and also holds a Professorial Fellowship at Balliol College. Evelyn Goh is the Shedden Professor of Strategic Policy Studies at the Australian National University, where she is also Research Director at the Strategic & Defence Studies Centre. Meera Sabaratnam is Associate Professor of International Relations and Tutorial Fellow in Politics at New College.

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This paper is from Ferguson’s book-in-progress entitled The Bookshop of Black Queer Diaspora. An experimental and conceptual text, the book is comprised of a series of fictional visits to a make-a-believe black queer bookshop and art gallery, made up of actual artifacts that invoke the histories of black queer art and activism, their responses to the ongoing legacies of colonialism and slavery, and the entanglements those legacies and neoliberalism. On this particular visit, the bookshop has acquired the lesbian letters of playwright Lorraine Hansberry and places the letters in conversation with her anti-colonialism.

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Religion in Britain and Ireland, 1400-1700 Seminar series on Thursdays at 5pm, Trinity Term 2024 in the Lecture Room at Campion Hall Convened by Diarmaid MacCulloch, Judith Maltby, Sarah Mortimer and Grant Tapsell Offered by the Faculties of History and Theology and Religion. For more information, or for the Teams link to join remotely, please contact sarah.apetrei@campion.ox.ac.uk.

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Panel discussion To join online, please register in advance here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUocuyvrz4vGtTThizdrAaKNZsmRk61NTKm

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A lecture series organised by the Voltaire Foundation, in collaboration with DiSc and Linacre College. Join us for a talk from Maciej Eder (Polish Academy of Sciences) - title TBC

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There is a rich academic literature on the cultural history of modern/spoken drama (huaju) and its links to May 4th nationalism in Republican China. Spoken drama also forms a key part broader discussions around Chinese cultural resistance to the Japanese occupation (1937–45). And as scholars such as Brian DeMare have shown, 'red drama' played a major role in early post-1949 efforts to 'dramatise' the communist revolution in rural regions of China. However, this same form has been largely overlooked in the recent cultural histories of Japanese-occupied China, with emphasis instead being directed towards visual cultures, literature and cinema. In this talk, Professor Taylor will examine the importance of spoken drama to the Reorganised National Government (RNG) of Wang Jingwei by exploring the fate of one particular early-war resistance play – Liukou duizhang (Captain of the Roving Bandits) – which was appropriated by this regime to support the Rural Pacification campaign that it had introduced in 1941. While it is impossible to gauge the 'success' of this play in occupied China, it is clear that the RNG’s propaganda apparatus saw Captain of the Roving Bandits as a vehicle for disseminating its own vision of rural China. The story around the play’s adaptation and production also tells us much about the uses, and limits, of the spoken drama form under the RNG, beyond the theatres of Shanghai. In examining the spoken drama form, Professor Taylor aims to contribute to wider efforts at putting 'culture' back into our understanding of Rural Pacification (a campaign which generated significant amounts of cultural production, yet which continues to be viewed by many scholars as little more than a cynical and violent attempt at counterinsurgency). As Professor Taylor has argued elsewhere, cultural programmes introduced under Rural Pacification drew on aspects of pre-war May 4th and Republican practices. Such programmes also demanded a creative re-working of the contents and messages that such distinctly Chinese cultural products adopted as they steered a path between Japanese censorship and the RNG’s own claims to wartime Chinese patriotism. Jeremy E. Taylor is professor of modern history and head of the History Department at the University of Nottingham. He is the author of over 30 journal articles and/or book chapters on the cultural history of East and Southeast Asia, as well as two monographs, including, most recently, Iconographies of Occupation: Visual Cultures in Wang Jingwei’s China, 1939–1945 (2021). He has also edited four volumes, including, most recently, Chineseness and the Cold War (with Lanjun Xu) (2022). The research he is presenting at this seminar is supported by a generous research grant from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation ('Documenting Wartime Collaboration', RG001-U-22).

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To join via Microsoft Teams please use this link https://rb.gy/qzyv2b. Registration is not required.

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Online. In a global context marked by violent conflicts and an erosion of multilateralism, European countries have pledged to invest significant resources in the extension and modernisation of their military defence capabilities. A spreading logic of war is fuelling a rearmament dynamic in Europe and worldwide, posing not only serious security challenges but also ethical questions. With Pope Francis we may thus ask: “[Europe], where are you sailing, if you are not showing the world paths of peace?”

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In this lecture, we delve into the intricate relationship between science, technology, and the governance of water resources, illustrating how advancements in these areas have historically been leveraged to exert and project power. Through the lens of the Indus Basin's transformation and Dutch colonial interventions in Indonesia's traditional rice systems, we explore the profound impacts of Enlightenment-era scientific breakthroughs on imperial dominance. This session also considers the potential societal upheavals prompted by modern innovations in agricultural water management, including precision agriculture, AI, and satellite remote sensing. Concluding with a discussion on nature-based solutions and the politics surrounding sustainable agricultural adaptation, this lecture aims to unravel the complex interplay between technological advancement, power dynamics, and environmental stewardship in the context of global river basins.

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Join Professor Thomas Hale, Professor in Public Policy, Blavatnik School of Government, for the launch of his new book Long Problems: Climate Change and the Challenge of Governing across Time, in which he outlines political strategies for tackling climate change and other “long problems” that span generations. Further speakers to be confirmed. Climate change and its consequences unfold over many generations. Past emissions affect our climate today, just as our actions shape the climate of tomorrow, while the effects of global warming will last thousands of years. Yet the priorities of the present dominate our climate policy and the politics surrounding it. Even the social science that attempts to frame the problem does not theorise time effectively. In this pathbreaking book