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Latest Humanitas visiting professors announced
Matt Pickles | 30 Apr 13 | 0 comments
Leading figures in the arts world will speak in Oxford as Humanitas Visiting Professors this term.
Over the next two months, lectures, workshops and symposiums will be given by Visiting Professors in Interfaith Studies, Comparative European Literature, Contemporary Art, Museums, Galleries & Libraries, Historiography, Classical Music and Music Education, and Opera Studies.
Poet Don Paterson will give his first lecture as Visiting Professor of Comparative European Literature at St Anne's College at 5.30pm this evening, while Professor Abdou Filali-Ansary will talk about 'Liberal Islam' at Lady Margaret Hall at 5pm today as Visiting Professor of Interfaith Studies.
Other highlights of the term include a lecture and symposium by world-renowned pianist Imogen Cooper on 13 and 14 May, and a discussion of 'experience versus numbers' in museums by artist William Kentridge on 6 May.
Humanitas Visiting Professors are some of the most prominent figures in their respective fields - just last week British film director Michael Winterbottom gave a public lecture and a workshop in his role as Humanitas Visiting Professor of Film and Television - just days after the release of his latest film, The Look of Love.
The full programme can be found here. All events are free and open to all, although registration is required on the website.
Humanitas is a series of Visiting Professorships at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge intended to bring leading practitioners and scholars to both universities to address major themes in the arts, social sciences and humanities.
Created by Lord Weidenfeld, the Programme is managed and funded by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue with the support of a series of generous benefactors and administered by The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities in Oxford.
(Full story)
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Studying the possible causes of human extinction
Matt Pickles | 24 Apr 13 | 0 comments
Anyone skimming the BBC News Online website over breakfast could be forgiven for heading straight back to bed after reading about research into the possible causes of human extinction by Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute.
The Future of Humanity Institute is part of the Philosophy Faculty and the Oxford Martin School, and its work has unsurprisingly met with considerable interest – the story was one of the most read on the BBC website today, while an article in Aeon earlier this year attracted a long debate in the comments section beneath.
The Institute looks into existential risks, which Dr Bostrom defines as 'those that threaten the entire future of humanity'. This refers not to issues like pandemics and natural disasters, which could be calamitous but from which Dr Bostrom believes humanity would be likely to survive.
But it is experiments in areas such as synthetic biology, nanotechnology and machine intelligence which cause Dr Bostrom to worry.
He says the 'fatal indifference' machines with artificial general intelligence might have to human life should be considered by research in the field, and Institute conference held a conference on this issue in December.
'Our species is introducing entirely new kinds of existential risk - threats we have no track record of surviving,' he says. 'Our longevity as a species therefore offers no strong prior grounds for confident optimism.'
The Future of Humanity Institute hopes its warnings about existential risks will reach the ears of decisionmakers across the world and says that the issue is not being taken seriously enough at present.
'While millions of pounds are pumped into researching artificial intelligence (AI) and bringing the possibilities of AI closer to reality than ever before, relatively little thought has gone into the ethical and safety implications of AI,' says Dr Stuart Armstrong of the Faculty of Philosophy.
Dr Bostrom’s 2002 paper on existential risk and his recent paper called ‘Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority’ can be read here.
(Full story)
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Bodleian’s First Folio put online thanks to public
Matt Pickles | 23 Apr 13 | 0 comments
The Bodleian Libraries are marking Shakespeare’s birthday today (23 April) by publishing online the digitized copy of the First Folio, the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays.
The Bodleian’s copy of the First Folio is a rarity because it has not been rebound or restored in almost four centuries since it was first received by the library in 1623.
As it is a library copy rather than a book in a private collection, we can see the tastes of early readers by observing where their hands have worn the pages. Romeo and Juliet has extensive wear and tear, whereas King John is in virtually pristine condition.
The Folio can now be viewed for free online, thanks to hundreds of individual donations from around the world received after a public appeal launched in August 2012. £20,000 was raised to digitize the 1,000-page volume - £20 per page.
Supporters of the campaign included actress Vanessa Redgrave, actors Stephen Fry and Tom Hiddleston, Founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company Sir Peter Hall and current Artistic Director Greg Doran, theatre producer Thelma Holt, TLS editor Sir Peter Stothard, and Shakespeare scholar Professor Jonathan Bate from the University of Oxford.
Dr Sarah Thomas, Bodley's Librarian said: 'We are grateful for the numerous gifts which were sent from around the world in support of our efforts to digitise the Bodleian copy of the First Folio. These are a testimony that Shakespeare’s plays transcend cultures and are loved by everyone.
'We hope that by publishing this special volume online , we will be able to continue Bodleian’s mission of making its treasures accessible to scholars and general public alike.'
This online resource is available worldwide and accessible free of charge for anyone – from schoolchildren and scholars, to actors and directors – to enjoy exploring its pages.
Accompanied by articles and blogs from academics, specialists, theatre professionals and members of the public alike, the website will become a dynamic forum to celebrate Shakespeare and prepare for Oxford’s celebrations of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death in 2016.
The volume left the library in the 1660s and was returned after the exceptional response to a public fundraising campaign to buy it at the turn of the 20th century, showing the strong national affection felt both for Shakespeare and for the Bodleian’s role in protecting and championing our national cultural heritage. The copy can be viewed online free of charge here.
(Full story)
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Voltaire? Shakespeare? There's an app for them
Matt Pickles | 03 Apr 13 | 0 comments
In November last year the number of applications available to Apple users passed the one million mark. Two of those apps are exciting new ideas pioneered by humanities academics: Shakespeare's Sonnets and Candide.
Shakespeare's Sonnets is an app containing texts of Shakespeare's sonnets, commentary and annotations by experts, and audio and video performances of the sonnets.
The text of the sonnets is taken from Oxford University’s Katherine Duncan-Jones' edition of 'Shakespeare's Sonnets'. She and another Oxford English academic, Professor Henry Woudhuysen, contribute to a series of video commentaries on the texts.
'The app complements old technology and gives you something rather different,' says Professor Woudhuysen, who is Rector of Lincoln College. 'It allows the user to read the Sonnets, consult explanatory notes on them, see and hear them performed, and listen to experts talking about them.'
But Professor Woudhuysen insists the process is not all that different from that of editing a book. 'As with a book, the app depends on the quality of what you put in,' he explains.
The same textual decisions have to be taken about what you include in the electronic text of an app, so it is crucial that experts in the field are involved in app development. For example, the quarto and Folio versions of Lear are different, but if you were to include both, as well as multiple other versions which might exist, the app would become confusing and lose its appeal.'
The Voltaire Foundation has also played a part in setting up an app, joining forces with Orange and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France to produce a digitally enhanced version of Voltaire's Candide.
The app allows the user to read a new critical version of the text alongside the original, handwritten manuscript.
'The values of Voltaire are today’s values, and the comedy of this text is timeless,' says Professor Nicholas Cronk, director of the Voltaire Foundation. 'Our new app is an accessible and joyful invitation to read a masterpiece of world literature.'
Professor Cronk hopes the app will be used as an educational tools for schools. He says: 'We have developed a feature called 'the garden' which allows teachers to create their own notebook and invite students to contribute. The books appear in the garden as knowledge trees, which grow as the reader enriches them.'
(Full story)
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Oxford buildings up for RIBA award
Matt Pickles | 29 Mar 13 | 0 comments
Four Oxford University buildings have been shortlisted for a 2013 RIBA award.
Radcliffe Humanities, the Oxford Molecular Pathology Institute, the West Wing of the Said Business School and the Quincentenary Project at Brasenose College have been shortlisted for a RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) South Award, which will be announced on 12 June 2013.
The Radcliffe Humanities building, which has also been shortlisted for a Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) award, opened on the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter last November after a £10 million renovation of the former Radcliffe Infirmary. It now houses the Humanities divisional offices, faculty of philosophy, and theology and philosophy library.
'The Radcliffe Humanities building provides a beautiful workspace for humanities staff, students and scholars,' says Professor Shearer West, head of the Humanities Division.
'In its former incarnation as the Radcliffe Infirmary, the building was a central part of the community in Oxford so it is fitting that it is also now home to The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH), which aims to engage the public in the latest research and discussions in the arts and humanities.'
Arts at Oxford will report back on the results of the RIBA panel's decision in June.
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Schoolboy finds 300 million year old fossil
Matt Pickles | 25 Mar 13 | 0 comments
An Oxford schoolboy has discovered what appears to be an extremely rare fossil of footprints from more than 300 million years ago.
Ten-year-old Bruno Debattista, who attends Windmill Primary School in Oxford, brought a piece of shale rock containing what he thought might be a fossilised imprint to the after-school club at Oxford University’s Museum of Natural History.
Oxford University Natural History Museum experts were astonished to find that it appeared to contain the trackways left by a horseshoe crab crawling up the muddy slopes of an ancient shore around 320 million years ago.
Chris Jarvis, education officer at the Museum and organiser of the Natural History After-School Club, said: 'Footprints of this age are incredibly rare and extremely hard to spot, so we were amazed when Bruno produced them at our After-School Club.
'Still more impressive is the fact that Bruno had a hunch they might be some kind of footprints, even though the specimen had some of our world expert geologists arguing about it over their microscopes!'
Bruno’s fossil has been confirmed by the Museum as likely showing footprints of a pair of mating horseshoe crabs laid down during the Carboniferous period, some 308-327 million years ago. At this time, the sea was slowly being sealed off as the Earth’s landmasses crunched together to form Pangaea. Bruno and his family have decided to donate the fossil specimen to the Museum’s collection.
The Natural History After-School Club is run by the Museum’s education department and encourages Year 6 children to develop their interest in the natural world, in the hope that some might become the next generation of geologists and zoologists.
The club's weekly sessions look at rocks, fossils, insects and other animal life, and members are encouraged to make observations and collect specimens to be shared each week.
Bruno was specially selected for the Club by his teachers, after showing a particular interest in nature. He collected the fossil while on holiday in Cornwall last summer.
'Unfortunately, the excitement and motivation that many children instinctively feel for studying nature is often lost during their teenage years as it is seen as “uncool” or a bit “weird”, and science can become text-book oriented and exam-driven during secondary school,' Chris Jarvis said.
'The club is our attempt to encourage children to value and extend their skills and knowledge and to follow their interests. I hope it is helping to create a group of kids that will continue to share their interests into their teenage years and beyond.'
(Full story)
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Descartes' canine experiment
Matt Pickles | 22 Mar 13 | 0 comments
Pavlov's experiment with a dog to demonstrate classical conditioning is well known, but a letter uncovered by Oxford University’s Electronic Enlightenment project suggests that Descartes devised a thought experiment using the same animal 300 years earlier.
In a letter to his friend Marin Mersenne on 18 March 1630, the French philosopher wrote: 'I reckon that if you whipped a dog five or six times to the sound of a violin, it would begin to howl and run away again.'
The letter explained: 'What makes some people want to dance many make others want to cry. This is because it evokes ideas in our memory: for instance those who have in the past enjoyed dancing to a certain tune feel a fresh wish to dance the moment they hear a similar one; on the other hand, if someone had never heard a galliard without some affliction befalling him, he would certainly grow sad when he heard it again.'
Dr Robert McNamee, director of Electronic Enlightenment, says: ‘It is striking just how similar Descartes' theory on 'reflex' is to Pavlov’s theory of ‘conditioning. Just as in Pavlov’s conditioning experiment, performed 271 years after Descartes' letter, the two stimuli necessary for conditioning, the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli, are paired causing the planned conditional response.
'In Descartes’ letter, the planned conditional response is fear. In Pavlov’s experiments, the planned conditional response is the saliva elicited by hunger. For all animal lovers it is fortunate that Descartes' experiment remained a theory, discussed in letters to friends, while Pavlov carried out the conditioning experiment in practice.
He adds: 'Moreover in both examples, the conditioned stimulus linked to sound – a violin and a bell cause the planned conditional response.'
It is well known in the history of psychology that Descartes was an early thinker of classical conditioning, which he referred to as 'reflex', so this letter does not change what we know about Descartes. But taken as a whole Dr McNamee says the corpus of letters to and from Descartes which are held in the Electronic Enlightenment database provides nuance and depth of structure to our narrative of the history of psychology and of Descartes’ philosophy.
Dr McNamee came across the letter by searching the database of the Electronic Enlightenment website, which holds more than 60,000 letters between more than 7,400 correspondents in the early modern period. More information is available on the website.
(Full story)
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Artistic short films to be shown
Matt Pickles | 28 Feb 13 | 0 comments
Short films made by tutors, students and alumni from Oxford University’s Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art will be displayed at a special event this evening (28 February).
Ruskin Shorts is organised in conjunction with Modern Art Oxford and the 75-minute programme of films has been selected by a panel including Turner Prize-winner and Oxford University lecturer Dr Elizabeth Price.
Robert Rapoport, a DPhil student at the Ruskin and co-director of the event, says: 'For four years running, Ruskin Shorts has represented the breadth and depth of enquiry that characterises moving image work at the Ruskin.'
The event will be held at Modern Art Oxford at 7pm this evening (28 February) and tickets cost £3 – all profits will go towards staging a Degree Show of pieces by final-year Ruskin students later this year.
(Full story)
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Will abdication be Benedict XVI's most important legacy?
Matt Pickles | 16 Feb 13 | 0 comments
This week's announcement that Pope Benedict XVI will step down at the end of the month because of declining health has shocked the religious world.
Historian Dr Natalia Nowakowska points out that it is not the first abdication by a pontiff.
'There are precedents and a clear 13th Century legal basis for Benedict’s actions,' she says. 'John XVIII was recorded as having died in 1009 as a simple 'monk', possibly implying an abdication.
'Later that century, Benedict IX allegedly sold his papal title in 1045, to Gregory VI who was forced to give it up in the ensuing fall-out. Most famously, the hermit-pope Celestine V abdicated in 1294, issuing a decree which for the first time made papal resignation legal and a recognised possibility in canon law.
'More recently in 1415, Gregory XII was leaned upon by Europe’s princes to resign gracefully (like the anti-popes opposing him), and thereby end the 37-year long Great Schism.'
Nonetheless, Dr Nowakowska is clear Benedict XVI’s act is a startling one because his reason for resignation is unprecedented.
'All the medieval pontificates mentioned above were in acute crisis, whereas Benedict XVI is seen within the Catholic church as the legitimate, uncontested pope, with the support to continue for much longer,' she says.
'The reasons for earlier papal resignations have been incompetence (Celestine V) or corruption, but yesterday a pope gave up the office for the very first time on grounds of physical frailty.'
She says that if Benedict XVI’s example is followed by popes in future, his decision might mark a landmark change in how the role of pope is understood.
'The pope is, according to the Catholic church, the Vicar of Christ, directly selected by God (through the agency of the cardinals) in conclave, in the general expectation that he will serve until the end of his life; a bit like a marriage,' says Dr Nowakowska.
'This was the view taken by John Paul II, who suffered from a long illness, seeing this very public suffering as a necessary, Christ-like part of the office of pope. This contributed to the air of saintliness around the late Polish pontiff.
‘Benedict XVI, however, yesterday clearly rejected his predecessor’s model – stressing that the papacy was an office with actual functions which needed to be performed (e.g. travel).
‘The papacy, in other words, is something you do, not something you simply are. This interpretation of the office – which future popes may or may not embrace – looks modernising, pragmatic, and de-mystifies the papacy.'
She adds: 'It is a radical step, and will arguably be the Bavarian pope’s most important legacy.'
Only time will tell if retirement on grounds of ill health will become a papal tradition. Dr Nowakowska's blog, Somerville Historian, can be read in full here.
(Full story)
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Museum receives (more than) 30 pieces of silver
Matt Pickles | 07 Feb 13 | 0 comments
A collection of Renaissance silver bequeathed to the Ashmolean Museum by antique dealer Michael Wellby will go on display at this month.
The treasure trove of nearly 500 items, one of the most important gifts to a British museum for over a century, is worth many millions of pounds and includes a rare lapis lazuli bowl made by Dutch goldsmith Paulus van Vianen (pictured below).
Another highlight is a silver gilt pitcher made in Portugal around 1510-15, enamelled with the Royal Arms of Portugal. A collection of silver gilt objects is pictured above.
Professor Tim Wilson, keeper of the department of western art, says: 'This is the most important acession of objects of this sort to any UK museum since the bequest of objects from Waddesdon Manor by Ferdinand Rothschild to the British Museum in 1898.'
Mr Wellby, who died last year, was an art dealer specialising in German silver of the 16th and 17th centuries.
His gift is a huge boost to the Ashmolean's collections and the visitors will also reap the benefits, as a selection of the objects will go on temporary display in the museum's West Meets East gallery on 19 February, before the entire collection is showcased in a permanent gallery.
(Full story)
About this blog
The latest news and views in the arts, humanities and culture at Oxford University. Blog is updated by Matt Pickles, Press Officer at Oxford University.
Contact: Matt Pickles
01865 270046
