With Professor Andreas Wimmer, Columbia University
Department of Sociology (42-43 Park End Street) or Online

Please register to attend in person here (https://forms.office.com/e/CS4fe8q8pG) or join online via MS Teams. Please email comms@sociology.ox.ac.uk with any questions.


How do we explain the spread of transformative new ideas? We examine a particularly consequential case: the rise of cultural nationalism during Europe’s long 19th century, which prepared the intellectual ground for subsequent waves of nationalist political revolutions.

Announcing The Third Oxford-Georgia Forum organised by the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies (OSGA).

For weeks, Georgia has been rocked again by popular protests over the ruling party Georgian Dream’s reintroduction of the unsuccessful ‘foreign agent’ bill, previously revoked in March 2023 after large-scale protests. The bill forces any non-governmental or media organisation with more than 20% foreign funding to register as an agent of foreign influence.

Please join the Brasenose College Frankland Visitor, Joanna Kavenna, for a panel discussion with her guest speakers, Eliane Glaser, Benjamin Markovits and Phil Tinline.

We live in a world of fake news, misinformation, facts that abruptly become fictions (and vice versa). How can we fathom what is real and unreal? Who can we trust? What place do the creative arts have in a reality that is (far) stranger than fiction?

This presentation concerns a theory on how gestures (accompanying speaking and silent thinking) are generated and how gestures facilitate the gesturer's own cognitive processes. I will present evidence that gestures are generated from a general-purpose Action Generator, which also generates “practical” actions such as grasping a cup to drink, and that the Action Generator generates gestural representation in close coordination with the speech production process (Kita & Ozyurek, 2003, Journal of Memory and Language).

Livestream link: https://www.youtube.com/@stantonyscollegeuniversity2705/streams

Delivering net zero requires restoring the UK’s natural environment, as does meeting critical biodiversity targets. But the UK’s limited territory also faces acute demand for food production, housing, and energy. How do we balance these objectives?

The panel is still being put together; please find details of confirmed speakers below.

Biographies:

John Bowers will be discussing his new book, Downward Spiral, with the Brasenose PPE Society, followed by a Q&A.