Podcasts about tutorial fellow

Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lectures 2025: Diversity and Self-Determination in International Law: Continuing Conversations with Karen KnopWe will come together to celebrate the life and scholarship of our colleague and friend, Professor Karen Knop (1960-2022). Karen, until her untimely passing, was the Cecil A Wright Chair at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Law. A long-time friend of the Lauterpacht Centre, Karen was to have delivered the Centre's 2025 Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lectures.Session III Private and Foreign Relations LawProfessor Anne Peters in conversation with Dr Roxana BanuChair: Professor Campbell McLachlanProfessor Peters's talk, 'Populism, Foreign Relations Law, and global order and justice', will discuss populist foreign relations law, which was Karen Knop's last project, at the university of Helsinki and as a Max Planck fellow. This talk will make the point that ongoing transformations of the concept of law itself, of legal procedures, and of legal substance cut across the ‘levels' of governance. And neither identitarian rhetoric, nor trade wars, nor border-fences will bring back an inter-state, Westphalian (or ‘Eastfalian') order. We are living in conditions of global law (and transnational) law. Populist heads of state both deploy and defy this law (concluding populist treaties or deals such as the German-Turkish refugee agreements; denouncing treaties such as ICSID or the Paris Agreement; using their war powers to escape domestic critique; raising tariffs to please their voter-base, and so on). At the same time, domestic, local and transnational actors (ranging from cities to courts to Indigenous peoples, or philanthro-capitalists) activate all kinds of law to resist populism. Such global lawfare destabilises world order but also has a transformative potential. New legal forms (especially informal agreements), new legal processes (such as public interest litigation before the ICJ) and new legal principles (such as One Health; Rectification/reparation; and the exposure of double standards) are responding to the big challenges for global order and justice: the cultural, the social, and the ecological challenge. Dr Banu's talk, 'Foreign Affairs, Self-Determination and Private International Law', begins with the point that foreign affairs questions are often thought to lie at the very edge of private international law, perhaps in the leftover corners of the historical alignment between private and public international law. Similarly, in part on the assumption that private international law settles conflicts of laws between already established states, there wouldn't appear to be any intuitive connection between nationalist or self-determination movements and the field of private international law.This talk will show that these assumptions are mistaken. By engaging with the historical development of the field from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, the talk will show that private international law has been deeply enmeshed in major geopolitical events generally, and in nationalist and self-determination movements, in particular. This enmeshment is neither accidental, nor exclusively modern. It is the inevitable result of some of private international law's main analytical and conceptual building blocks. Anne Peters is Director at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law Heidelberg (Germany), and Professor at the universities of Heidelberg, Freie Universität Berlin and Basel (Switzerland). Roxana Banu is Associate Professor and Tutorial Fellow at the Faculty of Law and Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford.

Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lectures 2025: Diversity and Self-Determination in International Law: Continuing Conversations with Karen KnopWe will come together to celebrate the life and scholarship of our colleague and friend, Professor Karen Knop (1960-2022). Karen, until her untimely passing, was the Cecil A Wright Chair at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Law. A long-time friend of the Lauterpacht Centre, Karen was to have delivered the Centre's 2025 Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lectures.Session III Private and Foreign Relations LawProfessor Anne Peters in conversation with Dr Roxana BanuChair: Professor Campbell McLachlanProfessor Peters's talk, 'Populism, Foreign Relations Law, and global order and justice', will discuss populist foreign relations law, which was Karen Knop's last project, at the university of Helsinki and as a Max Planck fellow. This talk will make the point that ongoing transformations of the concept of law itself, of legal procedures, and of legal substance cut across the ‘levels' of governance. And neither identitarian rhetoric, nor trade wars, nor border-fences will bring back an inter-state, Westphalian (or ‘Eastfalian') order. We are living in conditions of global law (and transnational) law. Populist heads of state both deploy and defy this law (concluding populist treaties or deals such as the German-Turkish refugee agreements; denouncing treaties such as ICSID or the Paris Agreement; using their war powers to escape domestic critique; raising tariffs to please their voter-base, and so on). At the same time, domestic, local and transnational actors (ranging from cities to courts to Indigenous peoples, or philanthro-capitalists) activate all kinds of law to resist populism. Such global lawfare destabilises world order but also has a transformative potential. New legal forms (especially informal agreements), new legal processes (such as public interest litigation before the ICJ) and new legal principles (such as One Health; Rectification/reparation; and the exposure of double standards) are responding to the big challenges for global order and justice: the cultural, the social, and the ecological challenge. Dr Banu's talk, 'Foreign Affairs, Self-Determination and Private International Law', begins with the point that foreign affairs questions are often thought to lie at the very edge of private international law, perhaps in the leftover corners of the historical alignment between private and public international law. Similarly, in part on the assumption that private international law settles conflicts of laws between already established states, there wouldn't appear to be any intuitive connection between nationalist or self-determination movements and the field of private international law.This talk will show that these assumptions are mistaken. By engaging with the historical development of the field from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, the talk will show that private international law has been deeply enmeshed in major geopolitical events generally, and in nationalist and self-determination movements, in particular. This enmeshment is neither accidental, nor exclusively modern. It is the inevitable result of some of private international law's main analytical and conceptual building blocks. Anne Peters is Director at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law Heidelberg (Germany), and Professor at the universities of Heidelberg, Freie Universität Berlin and Basel (Switzerland). Roxana Banu is Associate Professor and Tutorial Fellow at the Faculty of Law and Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford.

Simon Park is Associate Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Portuguese at the University of Oxford and Tutorial Fellow at St Anne's College, Oxford. He is an expert in the literature and material culture of the early modern world, particularly from Portugal and its vast global empire. On this episode of Little Atoms he talks to Neil Denny about his new book Wreckers: Disaster in the Age of Discovery. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Some of us have heard the names of 17th-century poets like George Herbert, John Donne, and John Milton. But did you know that John Bunyan also wrote poems? And that there were many female poets too? Join Trinity, Mina, and Sean as they discuss these poets and their exciting lives with Dr. David Parry, Tutorial Fellow in English at Regent's Park College in Oxford, England.   Show Notes If you'd like to find out more about the poets Dr. Parry mentioned in this episode, here are their names: John Milton, John Bunyan, George Herbert, John Donne, Lucy Hutchinson, Mary Sydney. "Upon a Snail" by John Bunyan https://www.poetrybyheart.org.uk/poems/upon-the-snail Some articles by Simonetta Carr about some of the authors mentioned: Lucy Hutchison https://www.placefortruth.org/blog/lucy-hutchinson-%E2%80%93-puritan-woman-changing-times John Donne https://www.placefortruth.org/blog/john-donne-poet-of-grace-and-comfort George Herbert https://www.placefortruth.org/blog/george-herbert-pastor-and-poet

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the great unanswered questions in science: how and where did life on Earth begin, what did it need to thrive and could it be found elsewhere? Charles Darwin speculated that we might look for the cradle of life here in 'some warm little pond'; more recently the focus moved to ocean depths, while new observations in outer space and in laboratories raise fresh questions about the potential for lifeforms to develop and thrive, or 'habitability' as it is termed. What was the chemistry needed for life to begin and is it different from the chemistry we have now? With that in mind, what signs of life should we be looking for in the universe to learn if we are alone?With Jayne Birkby Associate Professor of Exoplanetary Sciences at the University of Oxford and Tutorial Fellow in Physics at Brasenose CollegeSaidul Islam Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Kings College, LondonAnd Oliver Shorttle Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Clare CollegeProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list: David Grinspoon, Venus Revealed: A New Look Below the Clouds of Our Mysterious Twin Planet (Basic Books, 1998)Lisa Kaltenegger, Alien Earths: Planet Hunting in the Cosmos (Allen Lane, 2024)Andrew H. Knoll, Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth (‎Princeton University Press, 2004)Charles H. Langmuir and Wallace Broecker, How to Build a Habitable Planet: The Story of Earth from the Big Bang to Humankind (Princeton University Press, 2012)Joshua Winn, The Little Book of Exoplanets (Princeton University Press, 2023)In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

In this episode, I sit down with Bonhoeffer scholar, Matthew D. Kirkpatrick to discuss his new book, "Bonhoeffer for the Church: An Introduction." Kirkpatrick offers a fresh and accessible look at the life, theology, and enduring legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the most influential Christian voices of the 20th century. In our conversation we explore how Bonhoeffer's insights on discipleship, community, and faithfulness in times of crisis remain profoundly relevant for the church today.  Matthew D. Kirkpatrick is Tutorial Fellow in Christian ethics and doctrine at Wycliffe Hall, the University of Oxford. He has published widely on Bonhoeffer's thought, including Attacks on Christendom in a World Come of Age (2011), Bonhoeffer's Ethics (2011) and, as editor, Engaging Bonhoeffer (2016). https://www.ryleyheppner.com https://www.instagram.com/ryleyheppner/ For all collaboration requests (speaking, advertising, etc.) go to: https://www.ryleyheppner.com/collaboration

We meet artist Jesse Darling. His multi-disciplinary practice, of sculptures, drawings and objects, considers how bodily subjects are initially formed and continuously reformed through sociopolitical influences.Darling (b. Oxford, UK) draws on his own experience as well as the narratives of history and counter-history. He explores the inherent vulnerability of being a body, and how the inevitable mortality of living things translates to civilizations and structures. Featuring an array of free-floating consumer goods, support devices, liturgical objects, construction materials, fictional characters and mythical symbols, JD's work recontextualizes manmade objects to reveal their precarity. Simultaneously wounded and liberated shapes outwardly bare their frailty and need for care and healing.Jesse Darling is an artist who writes, lives, and works. His research is concerned with the attempt to make visible the unconscious of European petro-colonial modernity through the history of technology and the production of ideology, or the objects and ideas with which we make up the world. In sculpture and installation he has taken up this enquiry using something like a materialist poetics to explore and reimagine the worldmaking values of that modernity. He is also interested in the role of spirituality as a structuring matrix for secular social life, and his practice takes seriously the idea that intuition, dreams, pathologies and folklore all have something important to tell us about the world. If there is a formal theme that runs through his work it is the acknowledgement of fallibility and fungibility as fundamental qualities in living beings, societies and technologies, which extends to the “mortal” quality of empires and ideas as a form of precarious optimism - nothing and no-one is too big to fail. Taking vulnerability and entanglement as a fact of life lends itself to a politics and a practice of community and coalition: Darling has been part of countless community-led projects and organizations and continues to research ways of being-with as praxis. Correspondence and dialogue form an important part of his research process.He has published many texts online and in print, including two chapbooks: VIRGINS, published by Monitor Books (2021), and SHOWGIRLS (Arcadia_Missa publishing, 2023, on the occasion of a Tate film commission for Site Visit). Selected solo exhibitions include Enclosures at Camden Arts Center (2022), No Medals No Ribbons at Modern Art Oxford (2022), Gravity Road at Kunstverein Freiburg (2022), Crevé at Triangle France Astérides (2019), and The Ballad of Saint Jerome at Tate Britain (2018—2019). Darling also participated in the 58th Venice Biennale, and was awarded the Turner Prize in 2023. In 2024, Jesse Darling became Associate Professor at the Ruskin and full-time Tutorial Fellow at St Anne's College.Follow https://bravenewwhat.org/@ArcadiaMissa and @GalerieSultanaViist:https://arcadiamissa.com/jesse-darling/https://galeriesultana.com/artists/jesse-darling Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the doctrine of Karma as developed initially among Hindus, Jains and Buddhists in India from the first millennium BCE. Common to each is an idea, broadly, that you reap what you sow: how you act in this world has consequences either for your later life or your future lives, depending on your view of rebirth and transmigration. From this flow different ideas including those about free will, engagement with the world or disengagement, the nature of ethics and whether intention matters, and these ideas continue to develop today.With Monima Chadha Professor of Indian Philosophy and Tutorial Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall, University of OxfordJessica Frazier Lecturer in the Study of Religion at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Hindu StudiesAndKaren O'Brien-Kop Lecturer in Asian Religions at Kings College LondonProducer: Simon TillotsonIn Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio ProductionReading list:J. Bronkhorst, Karma (University of Hawaii Press, 2011)J. H. Davis (ed.), A Mirror is for Reflection: Understanding Buddhist Ethics (Oxford University Press, 2017), especially ‘Buddhism Without Reincarnation? Examining the Prospects of a “Naturalized” Buddhism' by J. WesterhoffJ. Ganeri (ed.), Ethics and Epics: Philosophy, Culture, and Religion (Oxford University Press, 2002), especially ‘Karma and the Moral Order' by B. K. MatilalY. Krishan, The Doctrine of Karma: Its Origin and Development in Brāhmaṇical, Buddhist and Jaina Traditions (Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Private Limited, 1997)N.K.G. Mendis (ed.), The Questions of King Milinda: An Abridgement of Milindapañha (Buddhist Publication Society, 1993)M. Siderits, How Things Are: An Introduction to Buddhist Metaphysics (Oxford University Press, 2022)M. Vargas and J. Dorris (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Moral Psychology (Oxford Univesrity Press, 2022), especially ‘Karma, Moral Responsibility and Buddhist Ethics' by B. FinniganJ. Zu, 'Collective Karma Cluster Concepts in Chinese Canonical Sources: A Note' (Journal of Global Buddhism, Vol.24: 2, 2023)

On this weeks episode, Leah talks to Dr Lynn Robson, Dean of Regents Park College, Safeguarding Lead, Director of the Visiting Student Programme and Tutorial Fellow in English Literature. Lynns longest day encompassed the COVID pandemic, from its announcement to its conclusion by the end of which she was exhausted and unable to carry on. All her roles during that time were relentless as there was no time off from bearing responsibilities. Although Lynn learned that she had more strength than she thought she had, she realised that there were limits to her strength and that she needed to recognise her own vulnerability. Her salvation came when she was able to say to somebody else, Im finding this hard, and I dont know what to do. Saying this is not a form of weakness but is vital for a leader to take the lead in expressing. As Lynn adds, if we discuss it and we support one another, its likely that we will find a solution. It's been a life-long lesson to value herself and see what others value in her. So, it comes as no surprise that Lynn wants her students as future leaders to learn how to value themselves, see who they are with all their talents and importance without waiting for somebody else to tell them their worth.

On this week's episode, Leah talks to Dr Lynn Robson, Dean of Regent's Park College, Safeguarding Lead, Director of the Visiting Student Programme and Tutorial Fellow in English Literature. Lynn's longest day encompassed the COVID pandemic, from its announcement to its conclusion by the end of which she was exhausted and unable to carry on. All her roles during that time were relentless as there was no time off from bearing responsibilities. Although Lynn learned that she had more strength than she thought she had, she realised that there were limits to her strength and that she needed to recognise her own vulnerability. Her salvation came when she was able to say to somebody else, “I'm finding this hard, and I don't know what to do.” Saying this is not a form of weakness but is vital for a leader to take the lead in expressing. As Lynn adds, “if we discuss it and we support one another, it's likely that we will find a solution.” It's been a life-long lesson to value herself and see what others value in her. So, it comes as no surprise that Lynn wants her students as future leaders to learn how to value themselves, see who they are with all their talents and importance without waiting for somebody else to tell them their worth.

Dr. Tim Middleton is Tutorial Fellow in Theology & Director of the Centre for Baptist Studies at Regent's Park College at Oxford University. In this episode, we talk about ecological trauma—the trauma experienced by the earth and as a result of climate change and other ecological conditions. Dr. Middleton explains how his work intersects with trauma theologies and brings Christology into the conversation.Team members on the episode from The Two Cities include: Dr. John Anthony Dunne and Dr. Madison Pierce.Series Disclaimer: This series explores the concept of “trauma,” its sources, and its expressions from a range of perspectives. Some of our guests are licensed mental health professionals; some are those with formative experiences of trauma; and others are those who explore trauma through various theoretical frameworks. We hope that this series provides useful information to all that enables them to begin to be trauma-informed and to love others and themselves better. Our series is by no means meant to replace the important work of one-on-one time with a trauma-informed professional. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Religion is a close to the heart of many Africans – closely linked as it is to identity, culture and values. So no-one will have been surprised at the ferocious response to the BBC Africa Eye documentary series called ‘Disciples: The Cult of TB Joshua' – in which a number of former followers recounted experiences including sexual abuse, rape and manipulation by the self-proclaimed prophet.But do allegations of abuse of power – levelled at a number of religious leaders over the years – suggest regulation is needed? And how can the followers of different religious groups be best protected?Today on Africa Daily, Alan Kasujja brings together two Christian theologians who've wrestled with this question: Bishop Zac Niringiye, who was assistant Bishop of Kampala with the Church of Uganda, and Rev Dr Kenneth Ofula, a priest in his Anglican Church of Kenya and currently Tutorial Fellow at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University.

EPISODE 1814: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to John Parrington, author of CONSCIOUSNESS, about how human brains, unlike those of all other species, can turn matter into meaningJohn Parrington is an Associate Professor in Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology and a Tutorial Fellow in Medicine at the University of Oxford. He is the author of three previous books and over 110 peer reviewed articles. His research focuses on how chemical signals regulate important processes in the body.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Владислав Вязовский окончил Харьковский национальный университет, Украина, в 1997 году, а в 2004 году получил степень доктора философии в Цюрихском университете. После постдокторской и преподавательской работы в Университете Висконсин-Мэдисон и Университете Суррея он присоединился к кафедре физиологии, анатомии и генетики Оксфордского университета в 2013 году в качестве старшего научного сотрудника, а затем стал адъюнкт-профессором неврологии в 2015 году и профессором нейробиологии. Физиология сна в 2021 году. С 2020 года он является научным сотрудником по медицине в Хертфордском колледже и является членом Института сна и циркадной неврологии сэра Жюля Торна (SCNi). Он вице-президент Европейского общества исследования сна, спикер TEDx и автор книги «Сон под микроскопом». Vladyslav Vyazovskiy graduated from Kharkiv National University, Ukraine, in 1997, and in 2004 he received his PhD degree at the University of Zurich. Following postdoctoral and lectureship positions at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Surrey University, he joined the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics at the University of Oxford in 2013 as a Senior Research Fellow, before becoming Associate Professor of Neuroscience in 2015 and Professor of Sleep Physiology in 2021. Since 2020, he is a Tutorial Fellow in Medicine at Hertford College, and is a member of Sir Jules Thorn Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute (SCNi). He is vice president of the European Sleep research Society, TEDx speaker and author of the book "Sleep under the microscope". FIND VLADISLAV ON SOCIAL MEDIA Facebook | Twitter | YouTube ================================SUPPORT & CONNECT:Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/denofrichTwitter: https://twitter.com/denofrichFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/mark.develman/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/denofrichInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/den_of_rich/Hashtag: #denofrich© Copyright 2023 Den of Rich. All rights reserved.

The microbiome refers to the community of microorganisms living inside a host. But why are they there? What benefits can these microbes provide to their hosts? And could they enable their hosts to colonise new niches? Alex Rodway, biology master's student at Jesus College, will be discussing these questions with Dr Sarah Knowles, Associate Professor of Ecosystem Biology and Tutorial Fellow of Keble College, whose research focusses on the mammalian microbiome.

WATCH: https://youtu.be/z431zDCh4TE Helen Steward is Professor of Philosophy of Mind and Action at the University of Leeds. Her interests include the metaphysics and ontology of mind and agency; the free will problem; the relation between humans and animals; and the philosophy of causation and explanation. She joined the University of Leeds in 2007, having previously been a Tutorial Fellow at Balliol College, Oxford for 14 years. She obtained a D.Phil. from Oxford University in 1992, a B.Phil. in 1988 and a BA in philosophy, politics and economics in 1986. In February 2015 she was awarded a Research Leadership Fellowship by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Helen argues that determinism is incompatible with agency itself - not only the special human variety of agency, but also powers which can be accorded to animal agents. She offers a distinctive, non-dualistic version of libertarianism, rooted in a conception of what biological forms of organisation might make possible in the way of freedom. CONNECT: - Website: https://tevinnaidu.com - Instagram: https://instagram.com/drtevinnaidu - Facebook: https://facebook.com/drtevinnaidu - Twitter: https://twitter.com/drtevinnaidu - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/drtevinnaidu TIMESTAMPS: (0:00) - Introduction (1:22) - Choices, actions & agency (6:30) - Evolutionary advantage of biological agency (9:33) - Problem with Determinism (14:48) - Compatibilism (Daniel Dennett) (18:05) - Hard Incompatibilism & Luck (Derk Pereboom, Gregg Caruso) (22:44) - Secular libertarianism vs non-secular (Robert Kane) (28:19) - Consciousness (Thomas Nagel, Daniel Dennett) (37:16) - Role of language in free will (39:38) - Libertarianism arguments & counter-arguments (49:40) - Implications of neuroscience (Uri Maoz, Benjamin Libet etc.) (52:03) - Helen's philosopher/scientist recommendations (55:55) - Conclusion Website · YouTube · YouTube

WATCH: https://youtu.be/z431zDCh4TE Helen Steward is Professor of Philosophy of Mind and Action at the University of Leeds. Her interests include the metaphysics and ontology of mind and agency; the free will problem; the relation between humans and animals; and the philosophy of causation and explanation. She joined the University of Leeds in 2007, having previously been a Tutorial Fellow at Balliol College, Oxford for 14 years. She obtained a D.Phil. from Oxford University in 1992, a B.Phil. in 1988 and a BA in philosophy, politics and economics in 1986. In February 2015 she was awarded a Research Leadership Fellowship by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Helen argues that determinism is incompatible with agency itself - not only the special human variety of agency, but also powers which can be accorded to animal agents. She offers a distinctive, non-dualistic version of libertarianism, rooted in a conception of what biological forms of organisation might make possible in the way of freedom. CONNECT: - Website: https://tevinnaidu.com - Instagram: https://instagram.com/drtevinnaidu - Facebook: https://facebook.com/drtevinnaidu - Twitter: https://twitter.com/drtevinnaidu - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/drtevinnaidu TIMESTAMPS: (0:00) - Introduction (1:22) - Choices, actions & agency (6:30) - Evolutionary advantage of biological agency (9:33) - Problem with Determinism (14:48) - Compatibilism (Daniel Dennett) (18:05) - Hard Incompatibilism & Luck (Derk Pereboom, Gregg Caruso) (22:44) - Secular libertarianism vs non-secular (Robert Kane) (28:19) - Consciousness (Thomas Nagel, Daniel Dennett) (37:16) - Role of language in free will (39:38) - Libertarianism arguments & counter-arguments (49:40) - Implications of neuroscience (Uri Maoz, Benjamin Libet etc.) (52:03) - Helen's philosopher/scientist recommendations (55:55) - Conclusion Website · YouTube

This episode features two interviews. The first looks at the struggles of those in the sex and sextech industries to get access to capital and to create products and services that respect users and creators, and the second considers the state of privacy and its relationship to power. OnlyFans, a UK-based site that built a billion dollar business enabling creators to post and get paid for sexually explicit material, announced this month that as of October 1st it would no longer permit anything much more salacious than nudity. This came as a surprise to its legion of creators and its many paying fans. But the reason is straightforward: financial firms will simply not support businesses that deal in sex and pornography. The company has since reversed its decision after outcry from its community. When I read about OnlyFans' predicament, I immediately thought about another venture that encountered many of the same issues when it got up and running a decade ago- MakeLoveNotPorn. Founded by Cindy Gallop, MakeLoveNotPorn bills itself as “the world's first user-generated, human-curated social sex video-sharing platform.” I caught up with Cindy to hear more about her experience with these issues, get perspective on the OnlyFans announcement, and talk about what it says about a fundamental predicament for the adult content and services industry. Along the way she also offered commentary on the broader tech culture and the way it approaches content moderation and regard for the safety of users that points to a vision of a different kind of internet that is lost in Big Tech's current obsession with scale. And, we talked about whether (or when) cryptocurrencies might be the answer. Next up, we turn to a discussion about a recently published book, Privacy is Power: Why And How you Should Take Back Control of Your Data, by Carissa Veliz, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and the Institute for Ethics in AI, and a Tutorial Fellow at Hertford College, at the University of Oxford.  Carissa works on digital ethics (with an emphasis on privacy and AI ethics), practical ethics more generally, political philosophy, and public policy and is interested in philosophy of mind. I caught up with Carissa about the book, and how it relates to some current issues in the world, from the pandemic to climate change.

In this episode, Alice and Nicolas interview Prof. Kate McLoughlin. A Professor of English at Oxford University and Tutorial Fellow at Harris Manchester College, Kate works on the representation of war in literature in many different genres, from the ancient world to the present day. Among other books, she is the author of Martha Gellhorn: The War Writer in the Field and in the Text, which explores Gellhorn's fictional writing alongside her journalism. She also wrote Authoring War: The Literary Representation of War from the Iliad to Iraq; and, most recently, Veteran Poetics: British Literature in the Age of Mass Warfare, 1790-2015. She is currently working on a literary history of silence, partly inspired by her research into veteran experiences and their representation. In Authoring War, Kate argues that ‘war, as a subject, is the greatest test of a writer's skills of evocation' - so in the podcast we talk about some of the challenges involved in representing war in writing: for example, how authors convey a structured sense of time as events unfold, how they conjure the physical dimensions of a war zone and spatial awareness, and how they describe the indescribable. Kate explains the term 'combat gnosticism' - the idea that authors must know what they are talking about, either through going to war themselves or seeing it close up - and how that has traditionally marginalised women writers on war. She also talks about the expectations which readers have of war stories (that they will be vivid, full of action and emotion, etc) and what happens when authors or narrators do not meet those expectations - for example, the veteran who prefers not to speak of his/her experiences. As the conversation goes on, we discuss the ways in which war stories from the past not only influence later representations of war but also how people actually experience conflict in real time - which then feeds back into a network of established war stories, making it difficult to distinguish representation from reality. Among other questions, we asked Kate: What does the study of war writing bring to wider studies of war and conflict? How do age-old war stories continue to influence war writing and the experience of war today? What challenges do war writers face when trying to convey the complexities of war?  What do readers/audiences tend to expect of war writing, and why? Have some genres of war writing been more dominated by male or female voices, and has that changed over time? What groups of people or conflict experiences have often been marginalised by traditions of war writing? How has the literary representation of veterans changed over time? What can the study of silence bring to our understanding and appreciation of war stories?  We hope you enjoy the episode! For a version of our podcast with close captions, please use this link. You can find out more about Kate's research here. For more information about individuals and their projects, access to resources and more, please have a look on the University of St Andrews Visualising War website.  Music composed by Jonathan Young Sound mixing by Zofia Guertin 

Debbie Reynolds "The Data Diva" talks to Carissa Véliz, Associate Professor, Faculty of Philosophy, Institute for Ethics in AI and Tutorial Fellow, Hertford College, University of Oxford, and author of "Privacy Is Power.” We discuss her concept of data havens, the success of her book “Privacy Is Power,” how Brexit affected her views on privacy, data access creating new caste systems, individual steps to protect one’s privacy, the need for agency over one’s data, the danger of inferences in data use, Cambridge Analytica’s impact on privacy discussions, the effects of Covid on data privacy, the differences between US and EU, ethics and AI, bias in AI, facial recognition and biometrics and her idea for data privacy in the future.

In Episode 105, Quinn & Brian ask: How safe is your data (and can your wine fridge take down democracy)? Our guest is: Dr. Carissa Véliz, an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and the Institute for Ethics in AI, and a Tutorial Fellow in Philosophy at Hertford College at Oxford University.  If she sounds kind of awesome, that’s because she is. So, what role does your phone, computer, wine fridge, smart toothbrush, and fun color-changing ceiling lights have to play in taking down — or saving — democracy, and maybe the planet too? Well, Dr. Véliz recently published https://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/article/privacy-power-new-book-carissa-veliz#:~:text=%27%27PRIVACY%20IS%20POWER%27%27%20-%20A%20new%20book%20from,Ethics%20in%20AI%20at%20the%20University%20of%20Oxford. (“Privacy is Power,”) in which she argues that the data economy is too dangerous to sustain. And although we may not be paying money for some of the incredible services that are built on top of our data, like Google Maps or Facebook, we are going to pay in the long run if we keep opting into the surveillance state. Have feedback or questions?http://www.twitter.com/importantnotimp ( Tweet us), or send a message to questions@importantnotimportant.com Important, Not Important Book Club: https://bookshop.org/shop/importantnotimportant ("Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America") by Christopher Wylie https://bookshop.org/shop/importantnotimportant (“Permanent Record”) by Edward Snowden Links: https://www.carissaveliz.com/ (Carissaveliz.com) Twitter: https://twitter.com/CarissaVeliz (@CarissaVeliz) https://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/article/privacy-power-new-book-carissa-veliz#:~:text=%27%27PRIVACY%20IS%20POWER%27%27%20-%20A%20new%20book%20from,Ethics%20in%20AI%20at%20the%20University%20of%20Oxford. (“Privacy is Power”) https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/03/11/1020600/facebook-responsible-ai-misinformation/ (“How Facebook got addicted to spreading misinformation”) https://duckduckgo.com/ (Duck Duck Go) https://protonmail.com/ (ProtonMail) Connect with us: Subscribe to our newsletter at http://importantnotimportant.com/ (ImportantNotImportant.com)! Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ImportantNotImp (twitter.com/ImportantNotImp) Follow Quinn: http://twitter.com/quinnemmett (twitter.com/quinnemmett) Follow Brian: http://twitter.com/briancolbertken (twitter.com/briancolbertken) Like and share us on Facebook: http://facebook.com/ImportantNotImportant (facebook.com/ImportantNotImportant) Intro/outro by Tim Blane: http://timblane.com/ (timblane.com) Important, Not Important is produced by http://crate.media/ (Crate Media) Support this podcast

We talk with Carissa Véliz about her book "Privacy is Power" which was just published in England by Penguin and will be coming out in the US in April. We talk about privacy as a collective act, the problem with personalized ads, and some of the other thinkers who have inspired her work including Shoshana Zuboff (Surveillance Capitalism), Helen Nissenbaum (Obfuscation) and Thomas Nagel (Concealement and Exposure). Carissa Véliz is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and the Institute for Ethics in AI, as well as a Tutorial Fellow at Hertford College, at the University of Oxford. Véliz has published articles in the Guardian, The New York Times, New Statesman, and the Independent. Her academic work has been published in The Harvard Business Review, Nature Electronics, Nature Energy, and The American Journal of Bioethics, among other journals. She is the editor of the Oxford Handbook of Digital Ethics.

Dr Joseph Moshenska, Associate Professor and Tutorial Fellow at University College, discusses his new book, Iconoclasm as Child's Play. Drawing on a range of sixteenth-century artifacts, artworks, and texts, as well as on ancient and modern theories of iconoclasm and of play, Iconoclasm As Child's Play argues that the desire to shape and interpret the playing of children is an important cultural force. Formerly holy objects may have been handed over with an intent to debase them, but play has a tendency to create new meanings and stories that take on a life of their own. Joe Moshenska shows that this form of iconoclasm is not only a fascinating phenomenon in its own right; it has the potential to alter our understandings of the threshold between the religious and the secular, the forms and functions of play, and the nature of historical transformation and continuity. Panel includes: Dr Joseph Moshenska is Associate Professor and Tutorial Fellow at University College. Joe grew up in Brighton, and as an undergraduate he read English at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. After graduating he went to Princeton, initially for a year as the Eliza Jane Procter Visiting Fellow, and stayed there to complete his PhD. From 2010 to 2018 he was a Fellow and Director of Studies in English at Trinity College, Cambridge. Joe joined the Oxford Faculty in 2018. In 2019 he was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize. Professor Lorna Hutson is the Merton Professor of English Literature and Director of the Centre for Early Modern Studies. She was educated in San Francisco, Edinburgh and Oxford and has repeated that pattern in her career, having taught at Berkeley, St Andrews and now Oxford. Professor Hutson is a Fellow of the British Academy and works on English Renaissance literature. She has written on usury and literature, on women’s writing and the representation of women, on poetics and forensic rhetoric and, most recently, on the geopolitics of England’s ‘insular imagining’ in the sixteenth century.” Professor Alexandra Walsham is Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge. She currently serves as Chair of the Faculty of History. She was an undergraduate and Masters student at the University of Melbourne before coming to Trinity College, Cambridge, for her PhD. After a Research Fellowship at Emmanuel College, she taught at the University of Exeter for fourteen years before returning to Cambridge in 2010. She was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2009 and of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2013. She was appointed a CBE for services to History in the Queen's Birthday Honours 2017. Professor Kenneth Gross is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Rochester. His critical writing ranges from Renaissance literature, especially Shakespeare, to modern poetry, theater, and the visual arts. His books include The Dream of the Moving Statue, Shakespeare’s Noise, Shylock is Shakespeare, and most recently Puppet: An Essay on Uncanny Life, winner of the 2012 George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. He’s also the editor of John Hollander’s 1999 Clark Lectures at Cambridge, The Substance of Shadow: A Darkening Trope in Poetic History. Gross has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Bellagio Study Center, the Princeton Humanities Center, and the American Academy in Berlin. Gross has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Bellagio Study Center, the Princeton Humanities Center, and the American Academy in Berlin. Professor Matthew Bevis is Professor of English Literature and Tutorial Fellow at Keble College. He is the author of The Art of Eloquence, Comedy: A Very Short Introduction, and, most recently, Wordsworth’s Fun (Chicago University Press, 2019). His recent essays have appeared in the London Review of Books, Harper's, Poetry, and The New York Review of Books. He’s currently working on Knowing Edward Lear for Oxford University Press, and a book On Wonder for Harvard University Press.

Dr Joseph Moshenska, Associate Professor and Tutorial Fellow at University College, discusses his new book, Iconoclasm as Child's Play. Drawing on a range of sixteenth-century artifacts, artworks, and texts, as well as on ancient and modern theories of iconoclasm and of play, Iconoclasm As Child's Play argues that the desire to shape and interpret the playing of children is an important cultural force. Formerly holy objects may have been handed over with an intent to debase them, but play has a tendency to create new meanings and stories that take on a life of their own. Joe Moshenska shows that this form of iconoclasm is not only a fascinating phenomenon in its own right; it has the potential to alter our understandings of the threshold between the religious and the secular, the forms and functions of play, and the nature of historical transformation and continuity. Panel includes: Dr Joseph Moshenska is Associate Professor and Tutorial Fellow at University College. Joe grew up in Brighton, and as an undergraduate he read English at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. After graduating he went to Princeton, initially for a year as the Eliza Jane Procter Visiting Fellow, and stayed there to complete his PhD. From 2010 to 2018 he was a Fellow and Director of Studies in English at Trinity College, Cambridge. Joe joined the Oxford Faculty in 2018. In 2019 he was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize. Professor Lorna Hutson is the Merton Professor of English Literature and Director of the Centre for Early Modern Studies. She was educated in San Francisco, Edinburgh and Oxford and has repeated that pattern in her career, having taught at Berkeley, St Andrews and now Oxford. Professor Hutson is a Fellow of the British Academy and works on English Renaissance literature. She has written on usury and literature, on women’s writing and the representation of women, on poetics and forensic rhetoric and, most recently, on the geopolitics of England’s ‘insular imagining’ in the sixteenth century.” Professor Alexandra Walsham is Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge. She currently serves as Chair of the Faculty of History. She was an undergraduate and Masters student at the University of Melbourne before coming to Trinity College, Cambridge, for her PhD. After a Research Fellowship at Emmanuel College, she taught at the University of Exeter for fourteen years before returning to Cambridge in 2010. She was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2009 and of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2013. She was appointed a CBE for services to History in the Queen's Birthday Honours 2017. Professor Kenneth Gross is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Rochester. His critical writing ranges from Renaissance literature, especially Shakespeare, to modern poetry, theater, and the visual arts. His books include The Dream of the Moving Statue, Shakespeare’s Noise, Shylock is Shakespeare, and most recently Puppet: An Essay on Uncanny Life, winner of the 2012 George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. He’s also the editor of John Hollander’s 1999 Clark Lectures at Cambridge, The Substance of Shadow: A Darkening Trope in Poetic History. Gross has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Bellagio Study Center, the Princeton Humanities Center, and the American Academy in Berlin. Gross has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Bellagio Study Center, the Princeton Humanities Center, and the American Academy in Berlin. Professor Matthew Bevis is Professor of English Literature and Tutorial Fellow at Keble College. He is the author of The Art of Eloquence, Comedy: A Very Short Introduction, and, most recently, Wordsworth’s Fun (Chicago University Press, 2019). His recent essays have appeared in the London Review of Books, Harper's, Poetry, and The New York Review of Books. He’s currently working on Knowing Edward Lear for Oxford University Press, and a book On Wonder for Harvard University Press.

This event is also part of the Humanities Cultural Programme, one of the founding stones for the future Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities. This seminar on Ethics in AI Education will tackle three questions that arise when we aim to teach computer science students about the ethical and social responsibility dimensions of AI engineering: (1) What are our learning objectives? (2) What are suitable means to meeting those objectives? (3) What are the obstacles? Dr Milo Phillips-Brown, Dr Helena Webb, and Prof. Max Van Kleek will frame these questions and share what they've found from their own work in this area. They are also keen to learn from the experience of others, and this seminar provides an opportunity for the panellists and audience to brainstorm together about these issues. Chair: Peter Millican, Gilbert Ryle Fellow and Professor of Philosophy at Hertford College, Oxford University Speakers: Milo Phillips-Brown, Associate Professor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Philosophy and Department of Computer Science, Tutorial Fellow at Jesus College (from 2021) and Senior Research Fellow in Digital Ethics and Governance, Jain Family Institute Max Van Kleek, Associate Professor of Human-Computer Interaction with the Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford Helena Webb, Senior Researcher in the Department of Computer Science

Part of the Colloquium on AI Ethics series presented by the Institute of Ethics in AI. This event is also part of the Humanities Cultural Programme, one of the founding stones for the future Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities. In conversation with author, Dr Carissa Veliz (Associate Professor Faculty of Philosophy, Institute for Ethics in AI, Tutorial Fellow at Hertford College University of Oxford). The author will be accompanied by Sir Michael Tugendhat and Dr Stephanie Hare in a conversation about privacy, power, and democracy, and the event will be chaired by Professor John Tasioulas (inaugural Director for the Institute for Ethics and AI, and Professor of Ethics and Legal Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford). Summary Privacy Is Power argues that people should protect their privacy because privacy is a kind of power. If we give too much of our data to corporations, the wealthy will rule. If we give too much personal data to governments, we risk sliding into authoritarianism. For democracy to be strong, the bulk of power needs to be with the citizenry, and whoever has the data will have the power. Privacy is not a personal preference; it is a political concern. Personal data is a toxic asset, and should be regulated as if it were a toxic substance, similar to asbestos. The trade in personal data has to end. As surveillance creeps into every corner of our lives, Carissa Véliz exposes how our personal data is giving too much power to big tech and governments, why that matters, and what we can do about it. Have you ever been denied insurance, a loan, or a job? Have you had your credit card number stolen? Do you have to wait too long when you call customer service? Have you paid more for a product than one of your friends? Have you been harassed online? Have you noticed politics becoming more divisive in your country? You might have the data economy to thank for all that and more. The moment you check your phone in the morning you are giving away your data. Before you've even switched off your alarm, a whole host of organisations have been alerted to when you woke up, where you slept, and with whom. Our phones, our TVs, even our washing machines are spies in our own homes. Without your permission, or even your awareness, tech companies are harvesting your location, your likes, your habits, your relationships, your fears, your medical issues, and sharing it amongst themselves, as well as with governments and a multitude of data vultures. They're not just selling your data. They're selling the power to influence you and decide for you. Even when you've explicitly asked them not to. And it's not just you. It's all your contacts too, all your fellow citizens. Privacy is as collective as it is personal. Digital technology is stealing our personal data and with it our power to make free choices. To reclaim that power, and our democracy, we must take back control of our personal data. Surveillance is undermining equality. We are being treated differently on the basis of our data. What can we do? The stakes are high. We need to understand the power of data better. We need to start protecting our privacy. And we need regulation. We need to pressure our representatives. It is time to pull the plug on the surveillance economy. To purchase a copy of ‘Privacy is Power', please click https://www.amazon.co.uk/Privacy-Power-Should-Take-Control/dp/1787634043 Biographies: Dr Carissa Véliz is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and the Institute for Ethics in AI, and a Tutorial Fellow in Philosophy at Hertford College. Carissa completed her DPhil in Philosophy at the University of Oxford. She was then a Research Fellow at the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics and the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities at the University of Oxford. To find out more about Carissa's work, visit her website: www.carissaveliz.com Sir Michael Tugendhat was a Judge of the High Court of England and Wales from 2003 to 2014 after being a barrister from 1970. From 2010 to 2014 he was the Judge in charge of the Queen's Bench Division media and civil lists. He was Honorary Professor of Law at the University of Leicester (2013-16) and is a trustee of JUSTICE. His publications include Liberty Intact: Human Rights in English Law: Human Rights in English Law (Oxford University Press 2017) and Fighting for Freedom? (Bright Blue 2017), The Law of Privacy and Media (Oxford University Press 1st edn 2002). Dr Stephanie Hare is an independent researcher and broadcaster focused on technology, politics and history. Previously she worked as a Principal Director at Accenture Research, a strategist at Palantir, a Senior Analyst at Oxford Analytica, the Alistair Horne Visiting Fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford, and a consultant at Accenture. She holds a PhD and MSc from the London School of Economics and a BA in Liberal Arts and Sciences (French) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her work can be found at harebrain.co Professor John Tasioulas is the inaugural Director for the Institute for Ethics and AI, and Professor of Ethics and Legal Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford. Professor Tasioulas was at The Dickson Poon School of Law, Kings College London, from 2014, as the inaugural Chair of Politics, Philosophy & Law and Director of the Yeoh Tiong Lay Centre for Politics, Philosophy & Law. He has degrees in Law and Philosophy from the University of Melbourne, and a D.Phil in Philosophy from the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. He was previously a Lecturer in Jurisprudence at the University of Glasgow, and Reader in Moral and Legal Philosophy at the University of Oxford, where he taught from 1998-2010. He has also acted as a consultant on human rights for the World Bank.

TORCH Goes Digital! presents a series of weekly live events Big Tent - Live Events!. Part of the Humanities Cultural Programme, one of the founding stones for the future Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities. Join us to discuss Imagined Journeys: Pilgrimage, Diplomacy, and Colonialism in Medieval Europe - Professor Marion Turner (Faculty of English) in Conversation with writer Matthew Kneale. In this event, Marion and Matthew discuss their recent books – Matthew’s novel, Pilgrims, and Marion’s biography, Chaucer: A European Life – both of which focus on medieval journeys across Europe. They will discuss different aspects of medieval travel – ranging from colonialism in Wales to the expulsion of the Jews from England, from diplomacy and cultural exchange to pilgrimage, both real and imagined. One of the issues underpinning their work, and this conversation, is the question of what it means to be English and what it means to be European – both then and now. Biographies: Professor Marion Turner, Tutorial Fellow of Jesus College and Associate Professor of English, University of Oxford Marion Turner works on late medieval literature and culture, focusing especially on Geoffrey Chaucer. Her most recent book, Chaucer: A European Life (Princeton, 2019) argues for the importance of placing Chaucer in multilingual and international contexts, tracing his journeys across Europe and his immersion in global trade routes and exchanges. It was named as a book of the year 2019 by the Times, the Sunday Times, and the TLS, and was shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize 2020. ‘An absolute triumph’ A.N. Wilson, Times Literary Supplement ‘A quite exceptional biography,’ Wolfson History Prize judges Matthew Kneale Matthew Kneale was born in London in 1960, the son of two writers and the grandson of two others. His father, Nigel Kneale, was a screenwriter for film and television, best known for the ‘Quatermass’ series. Matthew’s mother, Judith Kerr, was the author and illustrator of children’s books including ‘The tiger who came to tea’ and ‘Mog the forgetful cat’ while she has also written three autobiographical novels, beginning with ‘When Hitler stole pink rabbit’. From his earliest years Matthew was fascinated by different worlds, both contemporary and from the past. After studying at Latymer Upper School, London, he read Modern History at Magdalen College, Oxford. During his university years he began travelling, seeing diverse cultures at first hand, in Asia, Europe and Latin America. Matthew's books include: Whore Banquets, Inside Rose’s Kingdom, Sweet Thames, English Passengers, Small Crimes in an Age of Abundance, When we were Romans and An Atheist’s History of Belief. Matthew's current novel, Pilgrims, explores medieval life, shaped by religious laws as well as personal battles and follows a fascinating cast of characters on a journey from England to Rome. When not writing Kneale enjoys to travel and has visited some eighty countries and seven continents. He is also fascinated with languages, trying his hand at learning a number, from Italian, Spanish, German and French to Romanian and Amharic Ethiopian. Matthew currently lives in Rome with his wife, Shannon, and their two children, Alexander and Tatiana.

Professor Amy M. Mooney, Terra Foundation Visiting Professor in American Art Hosted by TORCH. Moderator; Alastair Wright: Alastair Wright is Head of the History of Art Department and Tutorial Fellow in Art History at St John's College, Oxford. Regarding the Portrait: The Primers In this four-part lecture series, Professor Amy Mooney examines the central role portraiture played in fostering social change in the United States from the 1890s through the 1950s. Drawing from her forthcoming book, Portraits of Noteworthy Character, Professor Mooney considers the strategic visual campaigns generated by individuals and social institutions that used the portrait to advance their progressive political ideologies. From the etiquette texts used at historically black colleges to the post cards produced by Hull House to the Harmon Foundation's exhibition of “Portraits of Outstanding Americans of Negro Origin,” this series explores the ways in which the portrait was employed to build social relationships and negotiate modern subjectivity. This lecture examines the factors that influenced the development of pedagogical strategies for reading and realizing the portrait as conceived for students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities during the post-bellum era. Through engravings illustrating etiquette books and early photography, Professor Mooney traces the precedents for the ideological situating of black subjectivity within the politics of respectability that later inform the rhetorical trope of the New Negro.

Are you being watched, tracked and traced every minute of the day? Probably. The digital world thrives on surveillance. What should we do about this? My guest today is Carissa Véliz. Carissa is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and the Institute of Ethics in AI at Oxford University. She is also a Tutorial Fellow at Hertford College Oxford. She works on privacy, technology, moral and political philosophy and public policy. She has also been a guest on this podcast on two previous occasions. Today, we’ll be talking about her recently published book Privacy is Power. You can download the episode here or listen below. You can also subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify and other podcasting services (the RSS feed is here).  Show Notes Topics discussed in this show include: The most surprising examples of digital surveillanceThe nature of privacyIs privacy dead?Privacy as an intrinsic and instrumental valueThe relationship between privacy and autonomyDoes surveillance help with security and health?The problem with mass surveillanceThe phenomenon of toxic dataHow surveillance undermines democracy and freedomAre we willing to trade privacy for convenient services?And much more Relevant Links Carissa's WebpagePrivacy is Power by CarissaSummary of Privacy is Power in AeonReview of Privacy is Power in The Guardian Carissa's Twitter feed (a treasure trove of links about privacy and surveillance)Views on Privacy: A Survey by Sian Brooke and Carissa VélizData, Privacy and the Individual by Carissa Véliz #mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; } /* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block. We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */ Subscribe to the newsletter

Philosopher Dr Kate Kirkpatrick discusses her recent biography, Becoming Beauvoir: A Life. Kate examines with great precision, insight, and balance, the life of French writer, feminist, and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir. Beauvoir’s life and work has often been distorted and overshadowed by her working and romantic relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre. Kate debunks some of the major misconceptions about Beauvoir’s life, and shares just how influential and original Beauvoir’s intellectual contribution to philosophy was and is. Dr Kate Kirkpatrick is a Tutorial Fellow in Philosophy at Regent’s Park College, University of Oxford, UK.

Philosopher Dr Kate Kirkpatrick discusses her recent biography, Becoming Beauvoir: A Life. Kate examines with great precision, insight, and balance, the life of French writer, feminist, and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir. Beauvoir’s life and work has often been distorted and overshadowed by her working and romantic relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre. Kate debunks some of the major misconceptions about Beauvoir’s life, and shares just how influential and original Beauvoir’s intellectual contribution to philosophy was and is. Dr Kate Kirkpatrick is a Tutorial Fellow in Philosophy at Regent’s Park College, University of Oxford, UK. David Brophy, historian and lecturer in modern Chinese history from the University of Sydney, joins the show to discuss Australia’s deteriorating relationship with China, how this affects the lives of Chinese Australians, and why we must be careful to avoid paranoia and panic about “Chinese influence.” Plus Ben Eltham on the latest in federal politics.

Philosopher Dr Kate Kirkpatrick discusses her recent biography, 'Becoming Beauvoir: A Life.' Kate examines with great precision, insight, and balance, the life of French writer, feminist, and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir. Beauvoir’s life and work has often been distorted and overshadowed by her working and romantic relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre. Kate debunks some of the major misconceptions about Beauvoir’s life, and shares just how influential and original Beauvoir’s intellectual contribution to philosophy was and is. Dr Kate Kirkpatrick is a Tutorial Fellow in Philosophy at Regent’s Park College, University of Oxford, UK. Broadcast on 15 September 2020.

How do people manage when their lives are utterly transformed by circumstances beyond their control? Fiona Stafford discusses a diary kept by a woman in 1941, whose new normal involved rationing, restrictions, isolation and air raids. Speaker: Professor Fiona Stafford FBA, Professor of English Language and Literature; Tutorial Fellow, Somerville College, Oxford

In a programme first broadcast in 2017, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss why some birds migrate and others do not, how they select their destinations and how they navigate the great distances, often over oceans. For millennia, humans set their calendars to birds' annual arrivals, and speculated about what happened when they departed, perhaps moving deep under water, or turning into fish or shellfish, or hibernating while clinging to trees upside down. Ideas about migration developed in C19th when, in Germany, a stork was noticed with an African spear in its neck, indicating where it had been over the winter and how far it had flown. Today there are many ideas about how birds use their senses of sight and smell, and magnetic fields, to find their way, and about why and how birds choose their destinations and many questions. Why do some scatter and some flock together, how much is instinctive and how much is learned, and how far do the benefits the migrating birds gain outweigh the risks they face? With Barbara Helm Reader at the Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine at the University of Glasgow Tim Guilford Professor of Animal Behaviour and Tutorial Fellow of Zoology at Merton College, Oxford and Richard Holland Senior Lecturer in Animal Cognition at Bangor University Producer: Simon Tillotson

TORCH Book at Lunchtime event on Chaucer: A European Life by Professor Marion Turner. Book at Lunchtime is a series of bite-sized book discussions held fortnightly during term-time, with commentators from a range of disciplines. More than any other canonical English writer, Geoffrey Chaucer lived and worked at the centre of political life-yet his poems are anything but conventional. Edgy, complicated, and often dark, they reflect a conflicted world, and their astonishing diversity and innovative language earned Chaucer renown as the father of English literature. Marion Turner, however, reveals him as a great European writer and thinker. To understand his accomplishment, she reconstructs in unprecedented detail the cosmopolitan world of Chaucer’s adventurous life, focusing on the places and spaces that fired his imagination. Uncovering important new information about Chaucer’s travels, private life, and the early circulation of his writings, this innovative biography documents a series of vivid episodes, moving from the commercial wharves of London to the frescoed chapels of Florence and the kingdom of Navarre, where Christians, Muslims, and Jews lived side by side. The narrative recounts Chaucer’s experiences as a prisoner of war in France, as a father visiting his daughter’s nunnery, as a member of a chaotic Parliament, and as a diplomat in Milan, where he encountered the writings of Dante and Boccaccio. At the same time, the book offers a comprehensive exploration of Chaucer’s writings, taking the reader to the Troy of Troilus and Criseyde, the gardens of the dream visions, and the peripheries and thresholds of The Canterbury Tales. By exploring the places Chaucer visited, the buildings he inhabited, the books he read, and the art and objects he saw, this landmark biography tells the extraordinary story of how a wine merchant’s son became the poet of The Canterbury Tales. Bart van Es is Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford, focusing primarily on Spenser and Shakespeare. Bart is interested in connections between history writing and poetry in early modern England. In recent years his research has focused primarily on Renaissance drama and the material realities of London’s theatre world. The Cut Out Girl, his work of creative non-fiction on World War II in the Netherlands, won the 2018 Costa Book of the Year award. Marion Turner is Associate Professor and Tutorial Fellow in English at Jesus College, University of Oxford. Marion’s research interests lie in late medieval secular literature and history, and she has published very widely on Chaucer, including two books and many articles. Chaucer: A European Life, was her first foray into biography, and she now teaches life-writing as well as medieval literature. Her next book is going to be a global history – or biography – of the Wife of Bath across time. Helen Swift is Associate Professor of Medieval French at the University of Oxford. Having focused for several years on fifteenth-century literary defences of women, she now explores more broadly questions of narrative voice and identity in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century French literature. Her second book, Representing the Dead: Epitaph Fictions in Late-Medieval France examines voices and bodies speaking from beyond the grave and was runner-up for the Society for French Studies R. Gapper Book Prize in 2017. John Watts is Professor of Later Medieval History at the University of Oxford and Chair of the History Faculty Board. John is interested in politics, political culture and political structures in later medieval England and Europe, between the 13th and the early 16th centuries. Most of his published work deals with later medieval English politics and political culture, but he has also written about politics in later medieval Europe. Elleke Boehmer is Professor of World Literature in English at the University of Oxford, Director of the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing and was the Director of TORCH from 2015 to 17. She is a founding figure in the field of colonial and postcolonial studies, and internationally known for her research in anglophone literatures of empire and anti-empire. She is also a novelist and short story writer, most recently of The Shouting in the Dark.

Abigail Green (Faculty of History), Nino Strachey (National Trust), and Silvia Davoli, (Strawberry Hill House) give a presentation on their Knowledge Exchange research project on Jewish Country Houses Professor Abigail Green is Tutorial Fellow in History at Brasenose College. She works at the interface between modern European history and international Jewish history, and is the author of Fatherlands: State-building and Nationhood in Nineteenth-Century Germany (2001), which was shortlisted in the Historisches Buch awards, and of Moses Montefiore: Jewish Hero, Imperial Liberator (2010), which won the Sami Rohr Choice Award, and was nominated a TLS Book of the Year and a New Republic Best Book of 2010. She is working on a book tentatively entitled Children of 1848: Liberalism and the Jews from the Revolutions to Human Rights, to be published by Princeton University Press, and has just been awarded a 4 year AHRC Research Grant to lead a major collaborative project ‘Jewish Country Houses – Objects, Networks People’. Nino Strachey, National Trust Nino Strachey is Head of Research and Specialist Advice for the National Trust. Since starting her career with the Landmark Trust, she has worked for English Heritage and the National Trust, curating the homes of scientists (Darwin), politicians (Churchill) and writers (Shaw). Her research focuses on the expression of personality through place, interpreting the biography of buildings and collections. Her recent book 'Rooms of their own: Eddy Sackville-West, Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West' looks at the homes of three writers linked to the Bloomsbury Group, and explores changing attitudes to sexuality and gender in the 1920s and 30s. She is a Trustee of the Strawberry Hill Collections Trust, a member of the Mercers Heritage and Arts Advisory Group, and has been a Guardian of the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings Silvia Davoli, Strawberry Hill House Dr Silvia Davoli is the Research Curator at Strawberry Hill House and is a specialist in the history of collecting. Since 2013 she has been researching the whereabouts of the Horace Walpole Collection. She recently curated the exhibition Strawberry Hill Lost Treasures. Masterpieces from the Horace Walpole Collection (Oct. 2018- Feb.2019). In the past years she has conducted provenance research for a number of museums such as the Wallace Collection, National Gallery of London, Waddesdon Manor and the Museum of Asian Art in Berlin. She is one of the core members of the Jewish Country House Project. Her contribution in particular focus on Jewish Collectors and art dealers.

Book at Lunchtime: Compassion's Edge, Winner of the 2018 Society for Renaissance Studies Book Prize. Compassion's Edge examines the language of fellow-feeling—pity, compassion, and charitable care—that flourished in France in the period from the Edict of Nantes in 1598, which established some degree of religious toleration, to the official breakdown of that toleration with the Revocation of the Edict in 1685. This is not, however, a story about compassion overcoming difference but one of compassion reinforcing division: the seventeenth-century texts of fellow-feeling led not to communal concerns but to paralysis, misreading, and isolation. Early modern fellow-feeling drew distinctions, policed its borders, and far from reaching out to others, kept the other at arm's length. It became a central feature in the debates about the place of religious minorities after the Wars of Religion, and according to Katherine Ibbett, continues to shape the way we think about difference today. Compassion's Edge ranges widely over genres, contexts, and geographies. Ibbett reads epic poetry, novels, moral treatises, dramatic theory, and theological disputes. She takes up major figures such as D'Aubigné, Montaigne, Lafayette, Corneille, and Racine, as well as less familiar Jesuit theologians, Huguenot ministers, and nuns from a Montreal hospital. Although firmly rooted in early modern studies, she reflects on the ways in which the language of compassion figures in contemporary conversations about national and religious communities. Investigating the affective undertow of religious toleration, Compassion's Edge provides a robust corrective to today's hope that fellow-feeling draws us inexorably and usefully together. About the panel Katherine Ibbett is Professor of French in the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages and Caroline de Jager Fellow and Tutor in French at Trinity College. Katherine’s research focuses on early modern literature, culture and political thought. Previous publications have included a book on tragedy (especially Pierre Corneille) and theories of political action; and a coedited volume thinking through Walter Benjamin’s concept of the Trauerspiel and its relevance to a French corpus. Katherine is currently working on a book on the writing of water in early modern France and its territories, from the lyric poets of the sixteenth century to the Mississippi settlements of the 1700s. Lorna Hutson is Merton Professor of English Literature and a Fellow of Merton College. Her research centres on the literature of the early modern period in England and the complex interrelations of literary form and other forms of cultural practice. Lorna’s books include The Usurer’s Daughter (1994); Rhetoric and Law in Early Modern Europe (2000); The Invention of Suspicion (2007) and Circumstantial Shakespeare (2015). Recently, she edited The Oxford Handbook of English Law and Literature (2017), which won the Roland Bainton Award for the best early modern reference book. Lorna is also a Fellow of the British Academy and the Director of the Centre for Early Modern Studies at Oxford. Teresa Bejan is Associate Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Politics and International Relations and Tutorial Fellow in Politics at Oriel College. Teresa’s research brings perspectives from early modern English and American political thought to bear on questions in contemporary political theory and practice. Her book, Mere Civility: Disagreement and the Limits of Toleration, examines contemporary calls for civility in light of seventeenth-century debates about religious toleration. Teresa is currently working on her second book, Acknowledging Equality. Emma Claussen is Career Development Fellow at New College. Emma works on literature and thought in the early modern period, with a particular interest in politics and moral philosophy. She is currently writing a book on sixteenth-century uses of the word politique and attendant conceptions of politics, political behaviour, and correct political action. Her next project will explore the intersection between moral and biological conceptions of life c. 1550-1650.

Book at Lunchtime: Compassion's Edge, Winner of the 2018 Society for Renaissance Studies Book Prize. Compassion's Edge examines the language of fellow-feeling—pity, compassion, and charitable care—that flourished in France in the period from the Edict of Nantes in 1598, which established some degree of religious toleration, to the official breakdown of that toleration with the Revocation of the Edict in 1685. This is not, however, a story about compassion overcoming difference but one of compassion reinforcing division: the seventeenth-century texts of fellow-feeling led not to communal concerns but to paralysis, misreading, and isolation. Early modern fellow-feeling drew distinctions, policed its borders, and far from reaching out to others, kept the other at arm's length. It became a central feature in the debates about the place of religious minorities after the Wars of Religion, and according to Katherine Ibbett, continues to shape the way we think about difference today. Compassion's Edge ranges widely over genres, contexts, and geographies. Ibbett reads epic poetry, novels, moral treatises, dramatic theory, and theological disputes. She takes up major figures such as D'Aubigné, Montaigne, Lafayette, Corneille, and Racine, as well as less familiar Jesuit theologians, Huguenot ministers, and nuns from a Montreal hospital. Although firmly rooted in early modern studies, she reflects on the ways in which the language of compassion figures in contemporary conversations about national and religious communities. Investigating the affective undertow of religious toleration, Compassion's Edge provides a robust corrective to today's hope that fellow-feeling draws us inexorably and usefully together. About the panel Katherine Ibbett is Professor of French in the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages and Caroline de Jager Fellow and Tutor in French at Trinity College. Katherine’s research focuses on early modern literature, culture and political thought. Previous publications have included a book on tragedy (especially Pierre Corneille) and theories of political action; and a coedited volume thinking through Walter Benjamin’s concept of the Trauerspiel and its relevance to a French corpus. Katherine is currently working on a book on the writing of water in early modern France and its territories, from the lyric poets of the sixteenth century to the Mississippi settlements of the 1700s. Lorna Hutson is Merton Professor of English Literature and a Fellow of Merton College. Her research centres on the literature of the early modern period in England and the complex interrelations of literary form and other forms of cultural practice. Lorna’s books include The Usurer’s Daughter (1994); Rhetoric and Law in Early Modern Europe (2000); The Invention of Suspicion (2007) and Circumstantial Shakespeare (2015). Recently, she edited The Oxford Handbook of English Law and Literature (2017), which won the Roland Bainton Award for the best early modern reference book. Lorna is also a Fellow of the British Academy and the Director of the Centre for Early Modern Studies at Oxford. Teresa Bejan is Associate Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Politics and International Relations and Tutorial Fellow in Politics at Oriel College. Teresa’s research brings perspectives from early modern English and American political thought to bear on questions in contemporary political theory and practice. Her book, Mere Civility: Disagreement and the Limits of Toleration, examines contemporary calls for civility in light of seventeenth-century debates about religious toleration. Teresa is currently working on her second book, Acknowledging Equality. Emma Claussen is Career Development Fellow at New College. Emma works on literature and thought in the early modern period, with a particular interest in politics and moral philosophy. She is currently writing a book on sixteenth-century uses of the word politique and attendant conceptions of politics, political behaviour, and correct political action. Her next project will explore the intersection between moral and biological conceptions of life c. 1550-1650.

This lecture is on Tolkien and middle english. Professor Carolyne Larrington, Tutorial Fellow in English Literature, St John's College, Oxford gives the first talk in the Tolkien: The Maker of Middle Earth lecture series. This lecture is on Tolkien and middle english. This series, convened by Dr Stuart Lee, presents five Oxford academics who examine the medieval languages that J.R.R. Tolkien studied and taught. Each lecture will present a short introduction to a language and its literature. The lectures will show how Tolkien's linguistic and philological scholarship inspired him to create names for characters and places in his literary works, and to invent the languages of Middle-earth.

What does it mean to think about politics philosophically? How did Renaissance and early modern thinkers address that question? And in what ways is a historical lens helpful to think about the theory of politics today? These are some of the questions we discussed with Dr Sophie Smith, who is an Associate Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford and a Tutorial Fellow at University College.

The 92nd Joint Session of the Aristotelian Society and the Mind Association was held at the University of Oxford from 6 to 8 July 2018. The Joint Session is a three-day conference in philosophy that is held annually during the summer by the Aristotelian Society and the Mind Association. It has taken place at nearly every major university across the United Kingdom and in Ireland. Since 1910, the Joint Session has grown to become the largest gathering of philosophers in the country, attracting prestigious UK and international speakers working in a broad range of philosophical areas. Inaugurated by the incoming President of the Mind Association, the Joint Session includes symposia, open and postgraduate sessions, and a range of satellite conferences. This podcast is a recording of the fourth symposium at the Joint Session - "What Brains-in-Vats Can Know" - which featured Ofra Magidor (Oxford) and Aidan McGlynn (Edinburgh). Ofra Magidor is Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at the University of Oxford. She completed a BSc in Mathematics, Philosophy, and Computer Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a BPhil and DPhil in Philosophy at the University of Oxford. Prior to her current appointment she was Associate Professor and Tutorial Fellow at Balliol College and the University of Oxford, and a Junior Research Fellow at Queen’s College, Oxford. Her research focuses on Metaphysics, Epistemology, Philosophy of Language, and Philosophical Logic. Aidan McGlynn is a lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, having previously worked at the Northern Institute of Philosophy at the University of Aberdeen, and having studied at the University of St Andrews and the University of Texas at Austin. He recently completed a series of papers and a monograph on knowledge first approaches to epistemology and the philosophies of language and mind. Since then, he has been working on evidence, first-person thought and self-knowledge, epistemic entitlement, pornography, epistemic injustice, silencing, and objectification.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great Norwegian playwright and poet, best known for his middle class tragedies such as The Wild Duck, Hedda Gabler, A Doll's House and An Enemy of the People. These are set in a world where the middle class is dominant and explore the qualities of that life, its weaknesses and boundaries and the ways in which it takes away freedoms. It is the women who fare the worst in this society, something Ibsen explored in A Doll's House among others, a play that created a sensation with audiences shocked to watch a woman break free of her bourgeois family life to find her destiny. He explored dark secrets such as incest and, in Ghosts, hereditary syphilis, which attracted the censors. He gave actresses parts they had rarely had before, and audiences plays that, after Shakespeare, became the most performed in the world. With Tore Rem Professor of English Literature at the University of Oslo Kirsten Shepherd-Barr Professor of English and Theatre Studies and Tutorial Fellow, St Catherine's College at the University of Oxford And Dinah Birch Professor of English Literature and Pro-Vice Chancellor for Cultural Engagement at the University of Liverpool Producer: Simon Tillotson.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great Norwegian playwright and poet, best known for his middle class tragedies such as The Wild Duck, Hedda Gabler, A Doll's House and An Enemy of the People. These are set in a world where the middle class is dominant and explore the qualities of that life, its weaknesses and boundaries and the ways in which it takes away freedoms. It is the women who fare the worst in this society, something Ibsen explored in A Doll's House among others, a play that created a sensation with audiences shocked to watch a woman break free of her bourgeois family life to find her destiny. He explored dark secrets such as incest and, in Ghosts, hereditary syphilis, which attracted the censors. He gave actresses parts they had rarely had before, and audiences plays that, after Shakespeare, became the most performed in the world. With Tore Rem Professor of English Literature at the University of Oslo Kirsten Shepherd-Barr Professor of English and Theatre Studies and Tutorial Fellow, St Catherine's College at the University of Oxford And Dinah Birch Professor of English Literature and Pro-Vice Chancellor for Cultural Engagement at the University of Liverpool Producer: Simon Tillotson.

Alison Hills is Tutorial Fellow in Philosophy at St John’s College, University of Oxford. Her research is in Moral Philosophy. Her PhD was on Kant’s moral theory, in particular, on whether Kant shows that we have reason to be moral. She also has interests in metaethics (especially moral knowledge) and normative ethics (especially Kant’s moral theory). She has also written on applied ethics, about whether our intentions have any moral significance, and about the moral status of animals. Her most recent book, The Beloved Self (OUP), addressed the conflict between egoism and morality, and whether we can justify claims that we have reasons to be moral. This podcast is an audio recording of Professor Hills' talk - 'Moral and Aesthetic Virtue' - at the Aristotelian Society on 23 April 2018. The recording was produced by the Backdoor Broadcasting Company.

Steve Sheard chats with Steve, talking technology for 5 minutes about tutorial, lecture, project and laboratory teaching. "We use a concept design for a gearbox of a small buggy, 3D printed. They can produce this only once they have modelled it".

The dead don't always stay peacefully in their graves. British folklore and chronicle relates from very early times instances of vampire-like and undead behaviour, spelling disaster for communities. Radical social upheaval – such as the Norman Conquest – spawns narratives about the undead; later chroniclers remark that there are so many tales of the undead it would be tedious to list them all. Recent archaeological finds seem to confirm the survival of these beliefs right up to the end of the medieval period; time-honoured ways of preventing the dead from walking again offer the best explanation for the unusual post-mortem treatment of some bodies. Nor is it just the British Isles that suffer from the plague of the walking dead; Icelandic sagas have many such tales, and some useful tips about how to settle such revenants once and for all. Carolyne Larrington is a Tutorial Fellow in English Literature at St John's Oxford and the author of The Land of the Green Man, Winter is Coming: the Medieval World of Game of Thrones and An Introduction to Norse Myths.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss why some birds migrate and others do not, how they select their destinations and how they navigate the great distances, often over oceans. For millennia, humans set their calendars to birds' annual arrivals, and speculated about what happened when they departed, perhaps moving deep under water, or turning into fish or shellfish, or hibernating while clinging to trees upside down. Ideas about migration developed in C19th when, in Germany, a stork was noticed with an African spear in its neck, indicating where it had been over the winter and how far it had flown. Today there are many ideas about how birds use their senses of sight and smell, and magnetic fields, to find their way, and about why and how birds choose their destinations and many questions. Why do some scatter and some flock together, how much is instinctive and how much is learned, and how far do the benefits the migrating birds gain outweigh the risks they face? With Barbara Helm Reader at the Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine at the University of Glasgow Tim Guilford Professor of Animal Behaviour and Tutorial Fellow of Zoology at Merton College, Oxford and Richard Holland Senior Lecturer in Animal Cognition at Bangor University Producer: Simon Tillotson.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss why some birds migrate and others do not, how they select their destinations and how they navigate the great distances, often over oceans. For millennia, humans set their calendars to birds' annual arrivals, and speculated about what happened when they departed, perhaps moving deep under water, or turning into fish or shellfish, or hibernating while clinging to trees upside down. Ideas about migration developed in C19th when, in Germany, a stork was noticed with an African spear in its neck, indicating where it had been over the winter and how far it had flown. Today there are many ideas about how birds use their senses of sight and smell, and magnetic fields, to find their way, and about why and how birds choose their destinations and many questions. Why do some scatter and some flock together, how much is instinctive and how much is learned, and how far do the benefits the migrating birds gain outweigh the risks they face? With Barbara Helm Reader at the Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine at the University of Glasgow Tim Guilford Professor of Animal Behaviour and Tutorial Fellow of Zoology at Merton College, Oxford and Richard Holland Senior Lecturer in Animal Cognition at Bangor University Producer: Simon Tillotson.

Arnie Graf of the Industrial Areas Foundation, gives the 2015 Clement Atlee Memorial Lecture. He was introduced by Marc Stears, Tutorial Fellow in Politics; Professor of Political Theory at University College.

As the first talk for the 2014/15 Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, this year’s Presidential Address marks the official inauguration of Professor Adrian Moore, University of Oxford, as the 107th President of the Aristotelian Society. The Society’s President is elected on the basis of lifelong, exemplary work in philosophy. The 107th Presidential Address was chaired by David Papineau (KCL) – 106th President of the Aristotelian Society. Adrian Moore is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford, where he is also a Tutorial Fellow at St Hugh’s College. He was an undergraduate at Cambridge and a graduate at Oxford, where he wrote his doctorate under the supervision of Michael Dummett. He is one of Bernard Williams’ literary executors. His publications include The Infinite; Points of View; Noble in Reason, Infinite in Faculty: Themes and Variations in Kant’s Moral and Religious Philosophy; and, most recently, The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics: Making Sense of Things. This podcast is an audio recording of Professor Moore's address - 'Being, Univocity and Logical Syntax' - at the Aristotelian Society on 6 October 2014. The recording was produced by Backdoor Broadcasting Company.

The 88th Joint Session of the Aristotelian Society and the Mind Association was held at the University of Cambridge from 11 to 13 July 2014. The Joint Session is a three-day conference in philosophy that is held annually during the summer by the Aristotelian Society and the Mind Association. It has taken place at nearly every major university across the United Kingdom and in Ireland. Since 1910, the Joint Session has grown to become the largest gathering of philosophers in the country, attracting prestigious UK and international speakers working in a broad range of philosophical areas. Inaugurated by the incoming President of the Mind Association, the Joint Session includes symposia, open and postgraduate sessions, and a range of satellite conferences. This podcast is a recording of the first symposium at the Joint Session - "Truth and Meaning" - which featured Ian Rumfitt (Birmingham) and Alan Weir (who was filling in for Gary Kemp). Ian Rumfitt studied philosophy at Balliol College, Oxford, and at Princeton University, and has taught it at Keele University, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and back at Oxford, where he was for seven years a Tutorial Fellow of University College. He has held a position at Birkbeck University of London since 2005. He works mainly in philosophy of language and logic, and in the history of analytic philosophy (Frege) with forays into metaphysics and the philosophy of mathematics. Gary Kemp is a senior lecturer at the University of Glasgow. He’s written books and papers on the Philosophy of Language and Philosophical Logic (recently: Quine versus Davidson: Truth, Reference and Meaning, and What is this thing called Philosophy of Language?), and a few papers in Aesthetics. He earned his Ph.D. in 1993 from the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Speakers from this day event join in discussion with Mark Philp himself about some of the issues raised throughout the day. This discussion is taken from 'A celebration and critical evaluation of the work of Mark Philp'. Mark Philp was our founding Head of Department (2000-2005) and Tutorial Fellow at Oriel College (1983-2013). He is now, since 2013, Professor of History at the University of Warwick. His work in the fields of political thought and political theory are notable for their interdisciplinarity as well as the excellence of their scholarship and depth of philosophical analysis. The event took place at the Department of Politics and International Relations on 22 April 2014.

Presenter Oscar Cox Jensen (KCL) and discussant Jon Mee (York) look at Mark Philp's work focusing on the 1790s and after This talk, introduced by current Head of Department Elizabeth Frazer, is taken from 'A celebration and critical evaluation of the work of Mark Philp'. Mark Philp was our founding Head of Department (2000-2005) and Tutorial Fellow at Oriel College (1983-2013). He is now, since 2013, Professor of History at the University of Warwick. His work in the fields of political thought and political theory are notable for their interdisciplinarity as well as the excellence of their scholarship and depth of philosophical analysis. The event took place at the Department of Politics and International Relations on 22 April 2014.

Presenter Tom Cutterham (Oxford) and discussant Joanna Innes (Oxford) look at Mark Philp's work focusing on comparative paths in democratisation. This talk, introduced by current Head of Department Elizabeth Frazer, is taken from 'A celebration and critical evaluation of the work of Mark Philp'. Mark Philp was our founding Head of Department (2000-2005) and Tutorial Fellow at Oriel College (1983-2013). He is now, since 2013, Professor of History at the University of Warwick. His work in the fields of political thought and political theory are notable for their interdisciplinarity as well as the excellence of their scholarship and depth of philosophical analysis. The event took place at the Department of Politics and International Relations on 22 April 2014.

John Dunn (Cambridge) gives a broad overview of the work and legacy of Mark Philp. This talk, introduced by current Head of Department Elizabeth Frazer, is taken from 'A celebration and critical evaluation of the work of Mark Philp'. Mark Philp was our founding Head of Department (2000-2005) and Tutorial Fellow at Oriel College (1983-2013). He is now, since 2013, Professor of History at the University of Warwick. His work in the fields of political thought and political theory are notable for their interdisciplinarity as well as the excellence of their scholarship and depth of philosophical analysis. The event took place at the Department of Politics and International Relations on 22 April 2014.

Presenter Ed Hall (LSE) and discussant David Hine (Oxford) look at Mark Philp's work focusing on political conduct and political corruption. This talk, introduced by current Head of Department Elizabeth Frazer, is taken from 'A celebration and critical evaluation of the work of Mark Philp'. Mark Philp was our founding Head of Department (2000-2005) and Tutorial Fellow at Oriel College (1983-2013). He is now, since 2013, Professor of History at the University of Warwick. His work in the fields of political thought and political theory are notable for their interdisciplinarity as well as the excellence of their scholarship and depth of philosophical analysis. The event took place at the Department of Politics and International Relations on 22 April 2014.

Professor Stephen Faulkner, Tutorial Fellow at Keble College, delivers the Richardson Lecture, entitled "Boxing Clever, or Just Boxed In? Developing Metal Complexes for Biological Imaging“.

Professor Stephen Faulkner, Tutorial Fellow at Keble College, delivers the Richardson Lecture, entitled "Boxing Clever, or Just Boxed In? Developing Metal Complexes for Biological Imaging“.

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Thomas Malory's "Le Morte Darthur", the epic tale of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table. Sir Thomas Malory was a knight from Warwickshire, a respectable country gentleman and MP in the 1440s who later turned to a life of crime and spent various spells in prison. It was during Malory's final incarceration that he wrote "Le Morte Darthur", an epic work which was based primarily on French, but also some English, sources. Malory died shortly after his release in 1470 and it was to be another fifteen years before "Le Morte Darthur" was published by William Caxton, to immediate popular acclaim. Although the book fell from favour in the seventeenth century, it was revived again in Victorian times and became an inspiration for the Pre-Raphaelite movement who were entranced by the chivalric and romantic world that Malory portrayed. The Arthurian legend is one of the most enduring and popular in western literature and its characters - Sir Lancelot, Guinevere, Merlin and King Arthur himself, are as well-known today as they were then; and the book's themes - chivalry, betrayal, love and honour - remain as compelling.With: Helen Cooper Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at the University of CambridgeHelen Fulton Professor of Medieval Literature and Head of Department of English and Related Literature at the University of YorkLaura Ashe CUF Lecturer and Tutorial Fellow at Worcester College at the University of OxfordProducer: Natalia Fernandez.

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Thomas Malory's "Le Morte Darthur", the epic tale of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table. Sir Thomas Malory was a knight from Warwickshire, a respectable country gentleman and MP in the 1440s who later turned to a life of crime and spent various spells in prison. It was during Malory's final incarceration that he wrote "Le Morte Darthur", an epic work which was based primarily on French, but also some English, sources. Malory died shortly after his release in 1470 and it was to be another fifteen years before "Le Morte Darthur" was published by William Caxton, to immediate popular acclaim. Although the book fell from favour in the seventeenth century, it was revived again in Victorian times and became an inspiration for the Pre-Raphaelite movement who were entranced by the chivalric and romantic world that Malory portrayed. The Arthurian legend is one of the most enduring and popular in western literature and its characters - Sir Lancelot, Guinevere, Merlin and King Arthur himself, are as well-known today as they were then; and the book's themes - chivalry, betrayal, love and honour - remain as compelling. With: Helen Cooper Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at the University of Cambridge Helen Fulton Professor of Medieval Literature and Head of Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York Laura Ashe CUF Lecturer and Tutorial Fellow at Worcester College at the University of Oxford Producer: Natalia Fernandez.

Nicholas Christakis (Harvard University) delivers a lecture at the third Calleva Research Symposium on Evolution and Human Science on 27 October 2012. The aims of the Calleva Research Centre at Magdalen College are to investigate key questions about the origins, development, causes and functions of human behaviour by bridging the humanities, and the social, cognitive, and biological sciences in an evolutionary framework. This symposium was chaired by the Director of the Centre Dr Jennifer Lau, Tutorial Fellow in Psychology. Nicholas Christakis directs the Human Nature Lab at Harvard University, and is a Professor at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Nick is world renowned for his work showing how social networks can transmit not only obesity but also other health-related behaviors, including smoking, drinking and happiness. Nick's book "Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives", has been translated into nearly twenty foreign languages. In 2009 and again in 2010, Nick was named by Foreign Policy magazine as one of its' top global thinkers and listed in Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world in 2010.

Elizabeth Eva Leach, Tutorial Fellow in Music at Oxford, disseminates her research through her blog as well as using Twitter to encourage succinct scholarly exchange. In this talk Elizabeth brings to light the benefits of Twitter and blogging for academic impact.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss King Lear. Around the turn of 1606, a group of London theatre-goers braved the plague to take in a new play by the well-known impresario, Mr William Shakespeare. Packed into the Globe Theatre, they were treated to a tale of violence, hatred and betrayal so upsetting that it thereafter languished among Shakespeare's less popular plays.The story of Lear – of a man who divides up his property and loses the love of a daughter - is an ancient and ultimately happy one. But in the hands of William Shakespeare it became a shocking and violent vision of a broken family in a godless universe. So shocking that after the playwright's death it was shunned and rewritten with a happy ending. Only in the 19th and 20th centuries did Shakespeare's bleak, experimental and disorientating drama attain the status it has now. But why did Shakespeare take a story from the deep history of Britain and make it so shockingly his own and when, from the Civil War to the Second World War, did this powerful and confusing tragedy emerge as Shakespeare's greatest? With Jonathan Bate, Professor of English Literature at the University of Warwick; Katherine Duncan-Jones, Tutorial Fellow in English at Somerville College, Oxford; Catherine Belsey, Research Professor in English at the University of Wales, Swansea

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss King Lear. Around the turn of 1606, a group of London theatre-goers braved the plague to take in a new play by the well-known impresario, Mr William Shakespeare. Packed into the Globe Theatre, they were treated to a tale of violence, hatred and betrayal so upsetting that it thereafter languished among Shakespeare’s less popular plays.The story of Lear – of a man who divides up his property and loses the love of a daughter - is an ancient and ultimately happy one. But in the hands of William Shakespeare it became a shocking and violent vision of a broken family in a godless universe. So shocking that after the playwright’s death it was shunned and rewritten with a happy ending. Only in the 19th and 20th centuries did Shakespeare’s bleak, experimental and disorientating drama attain the status it has now. But why did Shakespeare take a story from the deep history of Britain and make it so shockingly his own and when, from the Civil War to the Second World War, did this powerful and confusing tragedy emerge as Shakespeare’s greatest? With Jonathan Bate, Professor of English Literature at the University of Warwick; Katherine Duncan-Jones, Tutorial Fellow in English at Somerville College, Oxford; Catherine Belsey, Research Professor in English at the University of Wales, Swansea

Melvyn Bragg examines the philosophy of Confucius. In the 5th century BC a wise man called Kung Fu Tzu said, 'study the past if you would divine the future'. This powerful maxim helped form the body of ideas, which more than Buddhism, more than Daoism, more even than Communism has defined what it is to be Chinese. It is a philosophy that we call Confucianism, and as well as asserting the importance of learning from the past it embodies a respect for heirachy, ritual and parents.But who was Confucius, what were his ideas and how did they succeed in becoming the bedrock for a civilisation? With Frances Wood, Curator of the Chinese section of the British Library, Tim Barrett Professor of East Asian History at SOAS, the School of African and Oriental Studies at London University, and Dr Tao Tao Liu, Tutorial Fellow in Oriental Studies at Wadham College, Oxford University.

Melvyn Bragg examines the philosophy of Confucius. In the 5th century BC a wise man called Kung Fu Tzu said, 'study the past if you would divine the future'. This powerful maxim helped form the body of ideas, which more than Buddhism, more than Daoism, more even than Communism has defined what it is to be Chinese. It is a philosophy that we call Confucianism, and as well as asserting the importance of learning from the past it embodies a respect for heirachy, ritual and parents.But who was Confucius, what were his ideas and how did they succeed in becoming the bedrock for a civilisation? With Frances Wood, Curator of the Chinese section of the British Library, Tim Barrett Professor of East Asian History at SOAS, the School of African and Oriental Studies at London University, and Dr Tao Tao Liu, Tutorial Fellow in Oriental Studies at Wadham College, Oxford University.

Melvyn Bragg examines the philosophy of Confucius. In the 5th century BC a wise man called Kung Fu Tzu said, 'study the past if you would divine the future'. This powerful maxim helped form the body of ideas, which more than Buddhism, more than Daoism, more even than Communism has defined what it is to be Chinese. It is a philosophy that we call Confucianism, and as well as asserting the importance of learning from the past it embodies a respect for heirachy, ritual and parents.But who was Confucius, what were his ideas and how did they succeed in becoming the bedrock for a civilisation? With Frances Wood, Curator of the Chinese section of the British Library, Tim Barrett Professor of East Asian History at SOAS, the School of African and Oriental Studies at London University, and Dr Tao Tao Liu, Tutorial Fellow in Oriental Studies at Wadham College, Oxford University.