This term's President's Seminar is based around the theme "What You See and What You Get". A Governing Body Fellow talks about visual anthropology; a Junior Research Fellow about perception and multi-sensory integration; a graduate student talks about algorithmic collusion in the financial markets. Talks and questions from 6.00pm, with wine; and join us for dinner in the Hall from 7.00pm

The climate emergency will affect us all but the extent to which it controls us or we control it is up to us.

In this speech, Environment Agency CEO Sir James Bevan sets out the two possible futures that Oxford’s future citizens and graduates could have: one with the disaster of runaway climate change, the other a future that is full of action and hope, and an outline as to how the world can be even better than today.

James will look at the particular effects of climate change on the Oxford area and how the Environment Agency is working to prevent floods, water shortages and other problems; and identify what each of us can do in our own lives to Take Back Control of the climate emergency.
This event will be both in person in the Leonard Wolfson Auditorium and livestreamed on YouTube.

To attend in person please register here.

To view the talk live on YouTube watch here.

This new weekly creative writing workshop open to all is hosted by our Creative Arts Fellow Tom Brennan. Join in to explore new ways of thinking, no matter what your academic discipline.

Whether you have ambitions to work in creative fields, or are just interested in writing for fun, the creative writing group is a good place to find support and structure. You'll meet once a week and begin your work together with guided writing tasks. As a theatre practitioner, Tom's facilitation might include the language of drama, but writers who are interested in any form of creative writing are entirely welcome. It will be an easy-going space to stretch creative muscles and to develop together.

Each session is drop-in.

About Tom:

Tom is an award-winning theatre director, playwright, and occasional actor. His company, The Wardrobe Ensemble is an associate company of Complicite and Shoreditch Town Hall. Tom’s work with the company has been performed at The National Theatre, Almeida Theatre, Soho Theatre, and Bristol Old Vic among many other venues across The UK and USA. He was also a resident director at the Almeida Theatre on the productions of Mike Bartlett’s ‘Albion’ and Anne Washburn’s ‘Twilight Zone’.

Tom is also an associate artist of the North Wall Arts Centre here in Summertown, Oxford.

To obtain the link to the Zoom meeting, please email Tom Brennan directly on thomas.brennan@wolfson.ox.ac.uk

Welcome to the first screening of the Wolfson College Film Society of 2022! We will be watching Breathless (1960), a classic of the French New Wave by Jean-Luc Godard. 

Synposis: A small-time thief steals a car and impulsively murders a motorcycle policeman. Wanted by the authorities, he reunites with a hip American journalism student and attempts to persuade her to run away with him to Italy.

Roger Garside served as a British diplomat for over twenty years, but his career also included the World Bank, the London Stock Exchange and running his own company advising countries making the transition to a market economy on how to develop stock exchanges, etc. He had two diplomatic postings in Beijing and has published two books on China.

At Wolfson College he will present his new book China Coup: The Great Leap to Freedom, which is part factual analysis and part semi-fiction. The factual three-quarters of the book show why China’s dictatorship will soon end; the semi-fictional one-quarter shows how this may happen, as Xi Jinping is overthrown in a coup d’état carried out by real-life rivals, who then launch a transition to democracy.
 

Professor Charters will talk about using archives for her research into disease, and her use of historical evidence, particularly in the case of epidemics.



Wolfson College Fellow Erica Charters is Professor of the Global History of Medicine, Director of both the Oxford Centre for the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology, and of the Oxford Centre for Global History.



Prof Charters’ Disease, War, and the Imperial State: The Welfare of British Armed Forces during the Seven Years War (Chicago, 2014) was awarded the AAHM 2016 George Rosen Prize and the SAHR 2014 Best First Book. She coordinates the Oxford and Empire project, is Senior Vice President of the Navy Records Society and Executive Committee Member of the Society for the History of War.

She is now coordinating a multidisciplinary project on How Epidemics End.



This talk will be via Zoom.

For the link, please contact archives@wolfson.ox.ac.uk by 12 noon on Tues. 1 February.

Download Zoom here: https://zoom.us/download

Enquiries: College Archivist Liz Baird archives@wolfson.ox.ac.uk



Image: Colyton parish burial record Nov. 1646. Devon Record Office, UK, ref DHC 3483A/PR/1).

Left margin note reads: ‘here ye sickness ended.’ By kind permission of the Rector and PCC of Colyton.


 

Oxford Lieder continue their popular Wolfson concert series, welcoming Caspar Singh (tenor) and Sholto Kynoch (piano) to perform Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin.

British-Indian tenor Caspar Singh is currently a member of the Ensemble at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich. In 2018, aged 21, he gained a place in the two year Opernstudio at the Bayerische Staatsoper. He recently received a first class degree from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where he studied under Adrian Thompson and Susan Waters.

Practical Information
This performance will be given to a reduced audience capacity to allow for social distancing, and masks are required unless you are exempt.

For more information please see the Oxford Lieder website, www.oxfordlieder.co.uk

Oxford Lieder continue their popular 'Song at Wolfson' concert series, welcoming renowned mezzo-soprano Joanna Harries for a programme of Scandinavian and German song. She and Sholto Kynoch include Grieg's stunning, folk-infused cycle Haugtussa.

Joanna Harries is a 2021/22 Young Artist at the National Opera Studio in London. She was a choral scholar at the University of Cambridge and went on to train at the Royal Northern College of Music and the Alexander Gibson Opera Studio at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. She is also co-founder of SongPath and led one of the wonderful SongPaths at the Botanic Garden at the 2021 Lieder Festival.

Practical Information
This concert is being performed to 50% auditorium capacity to allow for social distancing. Doors open at 17:30 and tickets are available on the door.

Tickets
We recommend booking your tickets in advance via the Oxford Lieder website above.