We know that life emerged from a precursor soup of chemicals. But exactly how did it happen? Why do we find it so difficult to do this in a laboratory? And if the processes which produce life are so opaque, how can we judge whether life is a rare or common phenomenon in the universe? At the intersection of physics and biology two great scientists and communicators debate these questions, with Sir Tim Hitchens in the chair.

Generously supported by the Eutopia Foundation.

The series



This term’s series explores social science’s big concepts. It examines the contested meaning and diverse application of some of the theoretical ideas that unify and challenge social scientists. It brings together the bright minds of Oxford, and high profile external speakers, to consider the range of ways in which we can think about ‘power’, ‘space’, ‘identity’, and ‘belonging’.

Elleke Boehmer is Professor of World Literature in English in the English Faculty, University of Oxford, and Director of the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing (OCLW), based at Wolfson College. She was the Director of TORCH 2015-17, and PI on the Andrew W. Mellon-funded ‘Humanities and Identities’ project at The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities, 2017-18. 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 a novelist and short story writer, most recently of The Shouting in the Dark (2015 and 2019), and To the Volcano (2019).


 

We'll be watching via Zoom, and subsequently discussing the film, 'Whale Rider'; by the director of Mulan about a Maori girl who aspires to be a chef against all odds...

Email us for Zoom details.

Come join us for a discussion led by Clara Barker on the challenges and achievements of LGBTQI+ inclusion in Science, Technology,

Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields.

Clara Barker is a thin-film material scientist who manages the Centre for Applied Superconductivity, in the materials department at Oxford University, her work briefly profiled in Nature in Jan 2021, which can be read here.

Clara Barker the chair of the LGBT+ advisory group to Oxford University and the Dean for Equality and Diversity at Linacre College, as well as a member of the Royal Societies Equality and Diversity Committee.

In 2018 she won the first VC’s diversity role model award from the University. She runs a youth group for LGBTI+ young people, is a Stonewall school role model, and presented a talk at a TEDxWomen London event in 2018. For her volunteer work she won a Points of Light Award from the UK Prime Minister in 2017.