Gabriel is an experimental quantum physicist. His research focuses on quantum computation using trapped ions. Currently, he is working on applications of remote entanglement between distant ions.

Neil Brockdorff is a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow in the Department of Biochemistry. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biologists, The Academy of Medical Sciences and Royal Society. He is also a member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO). 

Neil Brockdorff studies the molecular mechanisms that regulate gene expression during development. A central focus of his work is X chromosome inactivation in mammals, a developmentally regulated process in which genes on one of the two X chromosomes present in female cells are stably silenced. More information can be found on his lab website Brockdorff Lab.  In addition to his research work Neil Brockdorff contributes to undergraduate and post-graduate teaching in the Department of Biochemistry.
 

William J. Conner has over 40 years’ experience in development and as a management consultant in philanthropy. His expertise is in institutional development, strategic planning for large fundraising campaigns, leadership giving, volunteer leadership recruitment and good governance practices. From 2008 he was a Fellow and Development Director at Wolfson College before retiring in 2019 and joined Hughes Hall at the University of Cambridge as Director of Institutional Advancement in January 2019. He also maintain a thriving multi-national consulting practice, Conner and Associates, based in London and Boston.

Much of his life has been centred around a strong interest in classical music, with a particular expertise in 17th and 18th century keyboard music. As an editor of The New Grove Dictionary of Music working with Stanley Sadie in the mid-1970s, he worked on bibliographical problems, musical instruments and instrument makers. He was a founder of the Boston Early Music Festival in the late 1970s and is currently a trustee of the Handel Hendrix House (London), Pushkin House (London) and the Voces8 Foundation (London). Earlier in his career, he was active as a church musician.
 

I am a social anthropologist specializing in visual and media anthropology, with a focus on Egyptian media production. My first project consisted in an ethnographic study of the Egyptian film industry, with particular attention to labour dynamics, production practices, and the impact of digital technologies on filmmaking. Based on doctoral fieldwork in Cairo between 2013 and 2015, I examined how everyday labour and technological use can explain the process of cinematic creation as well as how filmmakers conceive and manage their unpredictable future. This research culminated in the publication of a monograph titled Making Film in Egypt: How Labor, Technology and Mediation Shape the Industry (American University in Cairo Press, 2021).

My current project combines historical and ethnographic methods to examine everyday bureaucratic practices at the Ministry of Culture (MOC) in Egypt. Based on archival and ethnographic fieldwork in Cairo between 2018 and 2019, I explore how MOC bureaucrats were instrumental in crafting a coherent state-idea through a range of writings, images, and administrative documents after national independence in 1952. I am also interested in exploring how the concept of “culture” is conceived as an object of government in this institutional setting. 
 

The annual Sarfraz Pakistan Lecture will be delivered in 2021 by Professor Adil Najam, Dean of the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University and Former Vice-Chancellor of Lahore University of Management Studies (LUMS).

The lecture will take place in the Leonard Wolfson Auditorium (LWA). Tickets to attend in person are now sold out, but the lecture will be also livestreamed online, on our YouTube Channel, click here to view.

The College operates a mandatory indoor face coverings and one-metre social distancing policy, and we can therefore offer just over 60 spaces are in the LWA.


Please see lecture title and abstract below.

Age of Adaptation: Climate Change as Viewed from Pakistan

Because the world has been unwilling and unable to respond to the threat of global climate change in time with appropriate measures of mitigation, we are now condemned to live in the “Age of Adaptation.” Adaptation, after all, is essentially the failure of mitigation. This does not mean that the need to mitigate has gone away – the less we mitigate today, the more we will have to adapt to the impacts of climate change tomorrow. This does, however, mean that dealing with the impacts and consequences of climate change is no longer a ‘future’ challenge. It is a pressing and immediate challenge – most so in high vulnerability countries like Pakistan which are economically impoverished and climatically imperiled. Ignoring the impacts of climate change is no longer a luxury that any country can afford; least of all, Pakistan.

The talk will explore (a) how we came upon the Age of Adaptation; (b) what it means to live in the Age of Adaptation; (c) what specific challenges does the Age of Adaptation pose for Pakistan, particularly in relation to water, food, and security; and (d) finally argue that while there is much to be concerned about in the Age of Adaptation, there are also opportunities imbedded in it, particularly, because good adaptation can equal good development.

The annual Syme Lecture will be delivered in 2021 by Professor Richard Saller from the Department of Classics at Stanford University, California.

The lecture will take place in the Leonard Wolfson Auditorium (LWA). The lecture will be also livestreamed in the Buttery overflow and online.

The College operates a mandatory indoor face coverings and one-metre social distancing policy, and we can therefore offer 67 spaces are in the LWA with an additional 30 overflow spaces in the Buttery.

The Lecture will be livestreamed on YouTube here:

Please see lecture title and abstract below:

'The elder Pliny’s Roman economy: the consequences of empire'
The elder Pliny’s Natural History is an astonishing compilation of 20,000 “things worth knowing,” intended to be a useful repository of ancient Mediterranean knowledge and called “the most popular Natural History ever published.” It is our best ancient text to provide insights into Roman ideas about the value of new knowledge and whether innovation contributed to economic growth. Pliny’s monumental work includes many fantastic “facts,” but also some shrewd economic insights that anticipate modern economic thought. Above all, he thought that the Pax Romana promoted trade but the lack of competition with other states suppressed incentives for profitable investigation and innovation. His inventory of more than 100 great inventions in Book 7 includes many that were centuries old--but not a single one from Rome. In some respects the Natural History is a consummately weird collection. There are forty remedies for rabid dogbite. Yet his morals feel more contemporary insofar as his denunciation of the unbridled exploitation of Mother Nature for profit resonates with environmental concerns today. He is, then, curiously both very ancient, and also prescient.

In my academic life I am a crypto-physicist, that is, a cryptologist and a physicist at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford. My main research interest is information processing in quantum mechanical systems. It is a cross-disciplinary field bringing together theoretical and experimental quantum physics, mathematics, logic, computer science and information theory. My work is mostly theoretical but its results bear directly on issues of experimental implementation. Outside academia I am addicted to all kind of water sports, general aviation, and I am partial to South African wine.