Mary Wollstonecraft was a philosopher and the author of "Vindication of the Rights of Women" (1792), a groundbreaking early contribution to feminism. A statue of her, created by Maggi Hambling, was recently unveiled in London and stirred significant backlash and debate. During this event, we will discuss Hambling's statue, the question of nudity and women's representation in art more broadly, and will also consider the Mark Quinn statue of BLM protester Jen Reid which briefly stood in the place of the statue of Edward Colston torn down during protests in Bristol last year.

Zoom meeting information:

Zoom link

Meeting ID: 835 6946 6647

Passcode: 629437

Suggested pre-watching and pre-reading:
 

1. John Berger, "Ways of Seeing [Episode 2]," 1972 (30 minutes).
   
   This short documentary is both a time capsule of early 70s British TV and also a discussion of nudity in art that at times feels startlingly relevant. Click here to watch the short documentary.
    
2. Two short articles on Maggi Hambling's 2020 Mary Wollstonecraft statue:
   
   Rhiannon Lucy Cosslet, "Why I hate the Mary Wollstonecraft statue"
   
   Claudine van Hensbergen, "Mary Wollstonecraft statue: a provocative tribute for a radical woman"
    
3. Two short pieces on Marc Quinn's 2020 statue of Jen Reid:
   Marc Quinn and Jen Reid, "A joint statement"
   
   Thomas J. Price, "The problem with Marc Quinn's Black Lives Matter sculpture"

Please email wolf.fem.soc@gmail.com with any questions!

Hi fellow Wolfies!

Welcome to Hilary term 2021 at Wolfson! This has been a challenging year and Hilary term is beginning with renewed lockdowns and restrictions which makes college life potentially more isolating. Fret not, we at the Welfare team are on the same boat and also looking for some more structure and interaction with our fellow Wolfie colleagues. This is why we are setting up a weekly virtual group-study time slot that will be held every Wednesday from 11 am till 1 pm during term time where we can have a quick chat and connect and then get down to our respected work while in each other's virtual company. We hope to regain a sense of a college community through these time slots so we can all reconnect with that shared feeling of working together as members of Wolfson

You are free to turn your camera on or off but we prefer that the audio is off except when we are talking. You are also free to drop in and leave when ever you feel like during the two hour time slot. We are also very keen to discuss anything one-on-one with anyone during this time slot and can take a side-bar to text or call for that.

Looking forward to meeting you all and working together this term!

Lots of good wishes,

Welfies
 

On Thursday March 6th at 6pm we are lucky enough to have with us Samanth Subramanian, author of the award winning 2020 biography of the geneticist and occasional communist JBS Haldane, “The Radical Politics and Restless Science of JBS Haldane.” Haldane, and his father before him, lived in the house “Cherwell” which occupied the ground we now know as Wolfson College. Our annual Haldane lecture, and the Haldane Room, are both named after the two famous scientists.

Click here to join on YouTube

We will have the honour to host Wolfson alumnus and Rhodes Scholar Wes Moore for an interview followed by an open Q&A session on Thursday Jan 28th at 7 pm. Wes, a New York Times bestselling author, has done remarkable work for the Black community and is currently CEO for the Robin Hood Foundation in New York City, one of the largest antipoverty non-profits in the nation. The event will focus on Wes’ new book Five days, his work and career. The conversation will be opened by President Sir Tim Hitchens. We will meet on zoom (link below) and a live stream will be available via the YouTube channel Wolfson College, Oxford.

Join Zoom Meeting

Meeting ID: 834 7680 8005

Passcode: 523721

Click here to watch on YouTube

David is a Clinical Lecturer and Specialty Registrar in Emergency Medicine within the Thames Valley School of Emergency Medicine. He was formerly a Fulbright Scholar at Harvard's Center for Surgery and Public Health and an Oxford-UCB Prize Fellow at the University of Oxford. His doctoral work was awarded the AOUK&I Trauma Research Prize and the Syme Medal of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. He was elected as an Hunterian Professor by the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 2020.

After graduating with a Bachelor of Pharmacy with Honours (BPharm(Hons)) from the University of Mosul, I studied for Masters and Doctoral degrees at Sheffield Hallam University, investigating the mechanisms of brain water transport where I discovered a novel pharmacological framework for developing drugs to treat traumatic brain injuries and stroke.

I held my postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital where I spent 3 years. During this time, I developed 3D in vitro models to investigate mechanisms involved in improving the effectiveness of therapeutic antibodies for Alzheimer’s disease in collaboration with Biogen.

I moved to Oxford and joined DPAG in late 2020, working on CRISPR/Cas9 genome engineering of human iPSC-derived neurons from Parkinson’s patients to investigate molecular disease mechanisms in collaboration with GSK. In 2021, I was awarded the Leverhulme Research Fellowship that enabled me to start my independent work and I became a Departmental Research Lecturer.

In 2023, I launched my research group at DPAG and Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Discovery, which is funded through my MRC Career Development Fellowship.

Our group aims to investigate mechanisms of blood-brain barrier (dys)function in neurodegenerative diseases and brain injuries using patient-derived stem cells. We design and build innovative dynamic 3D multicellular in vitro model to accurately recapitulate the brain and BBB function under neuroinflammation and other neurodegenerative-relevant conditions.