Wolfson College Podcasts

Wolfson College marks Black History Month 2020 with an engaging discussion with Britain's foremost experts on the history of black lives and communities in Britain. In this panel discussion we look at the deep and fascinating history of black individuals and communities in the UK, and how this history connects with and informs the concerns and goals of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. Olivette Otele PhD, FRHistS is a Professor of History of Slavery and Memory of enslavement at the University of Bristol. She is a Fellow and a Vice President of the Royal Historical Society. Hakim Adi is a Professor of the History of Africa and the African Diaspora at the University of Chichester. He was a founder member in 1991 of the Black and Asian Studies Association (BASA), which he chaired for several years.

In this year's Haldane lecture, Professor Kathy Willis examines the newly emerging 'green health' scientific evidence-base. The lecture is introduced by the College President, Sir Tim Hitchens. It has long been recognized that nature, especially in cities, is more than just street furniture. It is relatively well-known that trees, shrubs and flowers can provide shade in the summer, removal of particulate matter from polluted air, and habitats for birds, insects and other city-dwelling biodiversity. Less well-known is the fact that nature can also directly influence our health. The amount of green space, the number of healthy trees and overall color of green of a neighborhood all appear to be important for physical and mental well-being. Intriguing correlations have been emerging from a number of large studies recently to suggest that these features can be associated with reduced incidences of obesity, cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases and depression. But what is it about nature that leads to these improved health outcomes? Whilst many studies have demonstrated correlations between nature and health, the vast majority do not provide the underlying scientific evidence base to determine causality and this is a recognized knowledge gap. To address this, a new scientific discipline is emerging. This is one which aims to determine the physiological and psychological responses to different kinds of nature that lead to improved health outcomes. This “green health” agenda is being driven forward not by biodiversity scientists, but primarily by the medical profession and public health professionals. They recognize the huge potential of green prescriptions. This talk examines this newly emerging ‘green health’ scientific evidence-base. In particular it discusses studies that have examined physiological and psychological responses to diversity, color, shape (fractal dimension), and smells of nature. What emerges is compelling evidence for quantifiable and significant health benefits associated with certain types of biodiversity. Professor Willis, Principal at St Edmund Hall, holds a position in the departmen of Zoology as Professor of Biodiversity and Head of the Oxford Long-term Ecology group. Her research focuses on the use of fossils and modern datasets, models and innovative technologies to determine the diversity, distribution and ambudance of plants and animals across global landscapes.

This Wolfson College Lecture Series aims to explore the socio-legal dimensions of our experience in courts, and with other forms of legal proceedings. In this lecture entitled "A Tale of Two Europes", The Rt Hon Lord Reed focuses on Law and Europe.

Oscar-winning journalist, filmmaker and activist Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy delivers the Sarfraz Pakistan Lecture. The lecture is introduced by Sir Tim Hitchens, College President. Pakistan, a deeply patriarchal society is rapidly changing and women are at the forefront. This lecture explores the ways in which women across the country are working on the grassroots level to create spheres of influence pushing back on archaic laws, age old practice and using the Internet to arm themselves to have a greater voice in society. This push against a power structure in a country where men make all the rules has led to a backlash against women with more voices calling for women to conform to traditional roles but this generation has dug its heels to fight back. As a filmmaker, Sharmeen, has documented this changing role over two decades. This lecture will use film and personal testimonies of the activists she has documented to demonstrate the rapidly shifting landscape.

A speech given by Sir Richard Sorabji at the launch party for the Jon Stallworthy Poetry Prize Campaign.

The 2019 Ronald Syme lecture was presented by Professor Alan Bowman and introduced by Sir Tim Hitchens. Alexandria was for many centuries, the largest and most important city in the eastern Mediterranean. This lecture explores how Rome tried to ensure its political stability which was crucial for its military control and economic interests in the east. This involved direct and indirect management by the imperial house of its role as the conduit through which the wealth of Egypt and the eastern luxury goods reached the Mediterranean and Italy. At the same time, the complex social and cultural character of its population changed and developed a profile distinct from the earlier period under the Ptolemies, turning it into a 'world-capital' which attracted the presence and influence of elites from Rome and the wider empire.

Ambassador Nicholas Burns, former US Political Director and NATO Ambassador, delivered the final lecture in the Wolfson Lecture Series: Diplomacy in the 21st Century. He is introduced by Sir Tim Hitchens, College President.

Sir Peter Gluckman, Former New Zealand Chief Scientific Advisor, presented the fourth Wolfson College Lecture in this series on modern diplomacy. The lecture was introduced by Sir Tim Hitchens. Science diplomacy has become much more than international science collaboration; it is primarily the intentional application of science (both natural and social) or scientific expertise in furtherance of diplomatic objectives. Structures for effective science diplomacies are often lacking; emerging issues drive a new emphasis on the global commons and thus the need for science diplomacy. The paradox, however, is that while globalization is being impaired, the need to address issues of the global commons is rising. Science can assist with most policy challenges, and in this lecture Sir Peter Gluckman explains that this is true also for much of diplomacy.

In the third 'Diplomacy for the 21st Century' Lecture, Sir Tim Hitchens concentrates on 21st-century diplomacy, and how it differs from 20th-century diplomacy Diplomacy for the 21st Century' is a Wolfson College Lecture Series that gives insight into how diplomacy is done in a modern age and the vital work that the diplomatic service does in strengthening relationships across borders. After 35 years working in diplomacy, Sir Tim considers how 21st-century diplomacy will be different from 20th-century diplomacy. He considers the evolution of diplomatic tradecraft, and the different cultures of diplomacy around the world. Sir Tim argues that the biggest challenge this century, will be between rules-based international relations and power-based. However, he goes on to explain that for rules-based diplomacy to survive, the rules themselves need to evolve to reflect changing realities, and that arguing for the status quo is a dead end.

The second Wolfson College Lecture in Diplomacy for the 21st Century was presented by Yamina Karitanyi, the current High Commissioner for the Republic of Rwanda to the United Kingdom . The lecture was introduced by College President, Sir Tim Hitchens. In the second lecture of the Diplomacy for the 21st Century Series, Karitanyi takes the ending of Rwanda's Presidency of the African Union as the starting point for a consideration of how Africa's perspectives will change global diplomacy in the twenty-first century. She will offer thoughts on the way in which regional and continental integration across Africa may change the way in which the continent is seen globally, and the role it can play. Sir Tim commented, "in our focus on China and India, we sometimes forget that Africa is also one of this century’s emerging giants. Rwanda shows how dramatic transformation is possible - but how do you balance development and democracy? This lecture will help answer those questions.". Yamina Karitanyi is currently the High Commissioner for the Republic of Rwanda to the United Kingdom, and non-resident Ambassador to Ireland since September 2015. Having held various senior positions over ten years at GoodWorks International, a strategic consulting and advisory firm that services multinational corporations and governments, in the USA and East Africa, Karitanyi has a proven track record in international business, operations management, business negotiations, and Diplomacy.

The 2019 Haldane Lecture was delivered by Sir Venki Ramakrishnan, President of the Royal Society, on February 7th at Wolfson College, Oxford. The lecture was introduced by College President Sir Tim Hitchens. The thousands of genes in our DNA are translated by ribosomes - ancient, enormous molecular machines that read the genetic code to make the thousands of proteins that carry out the functions of life. Although the ribosome was discovered in the 1950s, unravelling its million atom structure took over four decades. Venki Ramakrishnan will frame this in term of his career and show how science does not proceed in a series of logical steps but in fits and starts, with many characters and their egos, rivalries, competition and collaboration, blunders and dead ends. Sir Venki is a structural biologist who in 2009 received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and was knighted in 2012. In 2015, he was elected as President of the Royal Society.

Wolfson College was honoured to have Koji Tsuruoka, Ambassador of Japan, to present this year's Wolfson Lecture Series in Diplomacy for the 21st Century. The lecture was introduced by College President Sir Tim Hitchens. Tectonic plates are shifting in the world, nowhere more so than in earthquake prone East Asia. If the critical global relationship now is the US with China, then Asian Diplomacy will be a key determinant in global affairs this decade and beyond. This is not something happening on the edge of the globe; it’s not the 'Far East'. Japan, China and the US are now arguably the centre of world affairs. In the course of his lecture, Ambassador Tsuruoka examines the way that Asia continues to gain in importance in the international community with its vast population and growing economies, and how the region also faces numerous challenges. Diplomacy for the 21st Century is a Wolfson College Lecture Series that will give insight into how diplomacy is done in a modern age and the vital work that the diplomatic service does in strengthening relationships across borders.

The 4th Aris Lecture in Tibetan and Himalayan Studies was delivered by Dr Sam van Schaik (British Library) on 15th November 2018 at Wolfson College, Oxford. The lecture was introduced by Professor Ulrike Roesler. Books of spells are a constant but little studied aspect of Tibetan Buddhism. Used by lay people as well as monks and nuns, they contain a variety of rituals covering divination, healing and protection, making rain and stopping hail, and summoning and exorcising spirits and demons. Some books of spells contain other kinds of spells as well, such as to make someone fall in love, or to gain powers of clairvoyance, invisibility, and finding hidden treasure. Some, but not all books of spells contain aggressive spells -- what we commonly call 'black magic'. This talk looks at the role of books of spells in Tibetan Buddhism, and how the use of magic fits within the Buddhist ethical framework.

The 2018 Sarfraz Pakistan Lecture was delivered by nuclear physicist Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy on October 18th at Wolfson College, Oxford. The lecture was introduced by College President Sir Tim Hitchens. Pakistan in 2018 elected as its new leader a crusading populist heading a young, inexperienced political movement. Widespread hopes for social change will soon clash with profound crises which are existential in nature. I will look at three issues where failure to find a path forward may imperil the future stability of the country and the lives of its people. First, there is a monumental and worsening crisis of governance, state legitimacy and national identity which accommodates and even fosters Islamist radicals but marginalizes progressive forces and stands in the way of structural reform. Second, climate change and the growing demands from an exploding population cast a growing shadow over the natural environment. And third, the growing reliance on nuclear weapons to shield Pakistan as its army seeks to settle scores with India creates risks of catastrophe. I shall discuss how Pakistan may possibly work itself away from these difficulties.

The 2018 Ronald Syme Lecture was delivered by Professor Kathleen Coleman, James Loeb Professor of the Classics at Harvard University, on 1st November. The lecture was introduced by Wolfson College President Sir Tim Hitchens. After much jockeying between Rome and Parthia for control of Armenia, the Romans agreed to the reinstatement of the Parthian prince, Tiridates, on the Armenian throne, on condition that he be crowned at Rome by Nero. A surviving fragment of the Roman History of Cassius Dio recounts the remarkable nine-month journey undertaken by Tiridates, his wife, and their retinue of thousands overland from Armenia to Italy, and their ensuing detour to the Bay of Naples, where they were treated to a spectacular display in the arena at Puteoli. This episode tends to be overlooked in favor of the subsequent coronation in Rome. But the more one thinks about it, the more intriguing the detour becomes. This paper suggests reasons, diplomatic and otherwise, for the apparently illogical choice of route and the reception that was laid on for Tiridates at the end of it.

The 2018 Wolfson Haldane Lecture was delivered by Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell and introduced by Professor Philomen Probert. Stroke is the third greatest killer and causes massive disability, yet there are few effective treatments. It is caused by a disruption of blood flow to part of the brain resulting in a catastrophic cascade and death of vital brain cells (neurones). We showed that inflammation, not commonly associated with brain disease, is a major factor in brain damage caused by a stroke and may also contribute to the devastating consequences of brain injury, haemorrhage and dementias. We have identified a key mediator of the inflammatory processes in stroke, a protein called interleukin-1 (IL-1). We have identified cell sources of IL-1, know it acts in the brain and in the rest of the body and have completed an early clinical trial of an IL-1 blocker in stroke and brain haemorrhage patients. These findings, plans and hopes for the future will be discussed.

Professor Greg Woolf, Director of the Institute of Classical Studies at the University of London, gave this year's Ronald Syme Lecture at Wolfson College, Oxford. The lecture was introduced by Professor Philomen Probert. Romans told many myths of their civic inclusiveness, myths repeated from Machiavelli to modern times. The growth of their capital to a city of nearly a million has been understood as dependent on migrations of different kinds. Imperial Rome is often portrayed as a cosmopolitan society in which hundreds of languages, cults and styles rubbed shoulders in cheerful chaos, microcosm of empire, orbis in urbe. Greg Woolf, in his Syme lecture, asks how much of this we can believe given what we know about the scale and nature of human mobility in the classical Mediterranean, and the structure of Roman society. Modern analogies have taken us so far, he will argue, but compared to the capitals of modern empires ancient Rome was an Alien Metropolis.

Human rights lawyer and social activist Asma Jahangir gives the fourth annual Sarfraz Pakistan lecture. The lecture is introduced by Matthew McCartney. Pakistan has yet to fully comprehend that democracy cannot survive unless there are strong judicial machinisms that promote rule of law. Ironically, Pakistan's transition to democracy has invariably been disturbed by judicial intervention on the pretext of upholding rule of Law. This vicious cycle has undermined both the parliament and the courts. The erosion of a genuine democratic process has given space to the more organized civil and military bureaucracy to put on display a sham system of electoral politics while holding actual power themselves. However, each time that there is clash of interest between political forces challenging the hold of the military on civilian authority, it has pushed back military supremacy but only marginally.

Writer and historian William Dalrymple gives the third annual Sarfraz Pakistan lecture. The lecture is introduced by Matthew McCartney.

Raymond Pierrehumbert, holder of the Halley Professorship of Physics at Oxford, gives the 2017 annual Wolfson Haldane Lecture. The lecture is introduced by Hermione Lee, College President. The Proterozoic is the period of Earth history extending from approximately 2.5 billion years ago to 550 million years ago, and makes up something over half of all Earth history to date. It begins with a dramatic rise in oxygen in the atmosphere, global “snowball” glaciations, and major disturbances of the carbon cycle, and ends with another period of carbon cycle fluctuations accompanied by the two Snowball glaciations; shortly after the exit from the second of these, the first multicellular life appears in the fossil record, and not long thereafter comes the Cambrian explosion. However, between the two eras of great climate disruption extends a period of about a billion years in which nothing much is happening, either from the standpoint of evolutionary innovation (insofar as visible for single-celled life in the fossil record) or from the standpoint of glaciation or biogeochemical cycling. This is the “boring billion” — the geological waiting room for the modern era of the Phanerozoic leading to the appearance of intelligent life on Earth. But what was the pacemaker determining the exit from the Boring Billion? Were we unlucky in the duration of the wait? Were we just lucky, and could it have been the Boring Two Billion? That would have in fact precluded the emergence of complex life on Earth, or any other planet orbiting a star like the Sun, since the gradual brightening of a Sunlike star over time throws an Earthlike planet into a runaway greenhouse state after about 4.5 billion years (roughly a half billion years from now), whereafter the planet loses its oceans and turns into an uninhabitable Venus-like world. Thus, the nature of the Boring Billion, and the factors that terminated it, have a very great bearing on whether we are alone in the universe. Dim red dwarf stars, which age more slowly than Sunlike stars, are known to have planets and perhaps offer more chances for complex life to emerge, but have their own challenges, which will also be discussed in this lecture.