Keble College

The Keble Debates are termly conversations bringing together leading figures from the worlds of theatre, fiction and poetry to explore contemporary issues in the arts, and the way the arts engage with contemporary issues in wider society. David Haig MBE is an actor and playwright whose career on stage and screen has spanned almost four decades. Most recently, he appeared in the ‘Downton Abbey’ feature film, and in the highly acclaimed TV series ‘Killing Eve’. He also appeared in ‘Four Weddings and A Funeral’, ‘The Thin Blue Line’ and the National Theatre’s 2017 production of ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead’. Nick Starr CBE was Executive Director of the National Theatre 2002-2014, alongside Nicholas Hytner with whom he has founded the London Theatre Company. They opened the Bridge Theatre in October 2017. He received a special Olivier Award in 2014 and Tony Awards in 2012 and 2015, and was made CBE in 2014. The event is hosted by Honorary Fellow Robin Geffen (1976) and novelist and playwright Barney Norris (2006).

The Different Scales of Modern History. William Whyte (Professor of Social & Architectural History, St John's College) delivers a lecture about the legacy of Ralph Walter.

The Keble Debates are termly conversations bringing together leading figures from the worlds of theatre, fiction and poetry to explore contemporary issues in the arts, and the way the arts engage with contemporary issues in wider society. The second debate focuses on Talent Management and features Peter Bennett-Jones. Hosted by Honorary Fellow Robin Geffen (1976) The panel: Peter Bennett-Jones, Founder, PBJ Management Barney Norris (2006), Playwright in Residence Laura Williams, Agent, The Peters Fraser and Dunlop Group

An interview with Nick Starr (founder of the London Theatre Company and Executive Director of the National Theatre 2002-2014), preceding the first of the Keble Debates. The Keble Debates are a new programme of termly conversations, bringing together leading figures from the worlds of theatre, fiction and poetry to explore contemporary issues in the arts, and the way the arts engage with contemporary issues in wider society. The debates will focus on a different artistic form each term in rotation, beginning with the theatre in Michaelmas 2017.

The first of the Keble Debates bringings together leading figures from the world of theatre to explore contemporary issues in the arts and the way the arts engage with contemporary issues in wider society. The debates will focus on a different artistic form each term in rotation, beginning with the theatre in Michaelmas 2017. Barney Norris (2006), Playwright in Residence Nadia Fall, Artistic Director, Theatre Royal Stratford East Nick Starr, Founder, London Theatre Company Ben Power, Deputy Artistic Director, National Theatre Hosted by Honorary Fellow Robin Geffen (1976)

Professor Terry Hunt, University of Oregon, gives the ASC Annual Lecture on Easter Island. Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, has become widely known as a case study of human-induced environmental catastrophe resulting in cultural collapse. In this lecture, Professor Hunt assembles the evidence for the island’s astonishing prehistoric success, and explores how and why this most isolated and remarkable culture may have avoided collapse. Based on extensive archaeological fieldwork, he also offers a compelling explanation of how the multi-ton statues were transported to every corner of the island. Perhaps Rapa Nui has a lesson for us today, but he provides compelling evidence that it is a different lesson than the one that has become so popular in recent years.

The ASC Trinity Term Lecture delivered by Professor Tom Gilbert, exploring the analysis of bird genomes and evolution. Prof Tom Gilbert (University of Copenhagen) and colleagues have recently solved several major problems regarding bird evolution through analysing the genomes of over 48 bird species. Their work has been published in a significant series of papers in Science and other journals which together are considered the most comprehensive genome study of any major branch of the tree of life. Their results have provided new insights into other research areas including associations between gene activity patterns in the brain during birdsong and human speech and the explosion in bird diversity after the disappearance of the dinosaurs between 67-50 million years ago.

The acclaimed director, Rufus Norris, has just taken over as Artistic Director of the National Theatre – a role that is widely regarded as the biggest job in British theatre. Here he is in discussion with Robin Geffen.

Prof. Andrew Beeby, Durham University and Keble Senior Academic Visitor, discusses his current project on the chemical analysis through Raman spectroscopy of Medieval manuscripts, and how his work can contribute to the historical record.

Professor Angus Hawkins gives a talk about the history of coalitions in British politics as well as the current Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition.

Professor Svante Paabo, Director of the Department of Genetics at Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany delivers the ASC Annual Lecture. In 2010, the first draft version of the Neandertal genome revealed that Neandertal have contributed genetic material to present-day humans living outside Africa. Recently, we have completed a genome sequence of high quality of a Neandertal individual and also of a Denisovan individual, representing a hitherto unknown Asian group related to Neandertals. These genomes reveal that up to about 2.0% of the genomes of people in Eurasia derive from Neandertals while about 4.8% of the genomes of people living in Oceania derive from Denisovans. I will discuss what is currently known about the functional consequences of the Neandertal inheritance in present-day humans. I will also describe how the Neandertal genome allows novel genomic features that appeared in present-day humans since their divergence from the Neandertal lineage to be identified and discuss how they may be functionally analyzed in the future.

How and how far did orality play a part in the circulation of literature in early modern Italy? A lecture by Professor Brian Richardson. The literary culture of the period can be seen, in the terms of Walter Ong, as ‘residually oral’, since many kinds of compositions were diffused through the voice, in speech or song, as well as, or rather than, in writing. This paper will consider which kinds of texts might be performed, the occasions on which they were performed in public or in private, the professionals or amateurs who performed them, how and in which varieties of languages they were performed, using evidence from contemporary accounts and from the texts themselves. It will also suggest possible answers to the more difficult question of what the perceived benefits of performance might have been for the performer and the audience.

Dr. Misra, Lecturer in Modern History at Oxford University and a Fellow of Keble College, gives a talk on The Raj in Modern Indian Memory.

Professor Stephen Faulkner, Tutorial Fellow at Keble College, delivers the Richardson Lecture, entitled "Boxing Clever, or Just Boxed In? Developing Metal Complexes for Biological Imaging“.

Professor José Francisco Rodrigues, Lisbon/CMAF, delivers the ASC Complexity Cluster Lecture entitled 'Some Mathematical Aspects of Planet Earth' at Keble College. The Planet Earth System is composed of several sub-systems including the atmosphere, the liquid oceans and the icecaps, the internal structure and the biosphere. In all of them Mathematics, enhanced by the supercomputers, has currently a key role through the "universal method" for their study, which consists of mathematical modeling, analysis, simulation and control, as it was re-stated by Jacques-Louis Lions at the end of 20th century. Much before the advent of computers, the representation of the Earth, navigation and cartography have contributed in a decisive form to the mathematical sciences. Nowadays new global challenges contribute to stimulate several mathematical research topics. In this lecture, we present a brief historical introduction to some of the essential mathematics for understanding the Planet Earth, stressing the importance of Mathematical Geography and its role in the Scientific Revolution(s), the modeling efforts of Winds, Heating, Earthquakes, Climate and their influence on basic aspects of the theory of Partial Differential Equations. As a special topic to illustrate the wide scope of these (Geo)physical problems we describe briefly some examples from History and from current research and advances in Free Boundary Problems arising in the Planet Earth. Finally we conclude by referring the potential impact of the international initiative Mathematics of Planet Earth (http://www.mpe2013.org) in Raising Public Awareness of Mathematics, in Research and in the Communication of the Mathematical Sciences to the new generations.

Professor Colin Renfrew, University of Cambridge, gives a talk that explores human creativity and the engagement between the individual and the material world.

The ASC Networks cluster visiting researcher Prof. Richard Wilson (Department of Computer Science, University of York) gives a public lecture on his work on networks at Keble College. A characterisation of a network is a number which describes some structural property of the network; a good example is the number of edges. In this talk I will discuss a wide range of characterisations of networks which we have developed at York over the past decade. The inspiration for these comes from diverse areas of mathematics and physics, and I will explore ideas from graph spectra, random walks (classical and quantum), heat diffusion and the connection between prime numbers and networks. These all lead to characterisations which reveal different properties of the networks.

Cities are epicentres of creativity and innovation but are also easily locked into patterns of infrastructure and behaviour that may not serve them best. The Co-Director of the Oxford Programme for the Future of Cities looks at these phenomena and considers ways to enhance the ability of cities to adjust to changes in their natural, political and financial environments.

Professor Paul Collier, Professor of Economics and Director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford discusses the opportunities and challenges facing Africa.

Professor Eric F. Clarke gives a talk for the Keble College Creativity series on creativity in musical performances.