LMH events at a glance
Friday 31 January, 17.45, Simpkins Lee Theatre, LMH
Claire Tomalin In Conversation with Alan Rusbridger
Claire Tomalin, née Delavenay, was born in 1933 in London to an English mother, the composer Muriel Herbert (linnrecords.com), and a French father. After a somewhat disorganised wartime childhood she studied at Cambridge, married the journalist Nicholas Tomalin, worked in publishing and journalism as literary editor of the New Statesman, then the Sunday Times, while bringing up their children. Nick was killed reporting the Yom Kippur war in 1973. In 1974 she published her first book The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft, which won the Whitbread First Book Prize. Since then she has written Shelley and His World 1980; Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life 1987; The Invisible Woman: the story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens 1991 [NCR, Hawthornden, James Tait Black prizes, and a film with Ralph Fiennes, Felicity Jones, Joanna Scanlan, Tom Hollander]; Mrs Jordan's Profession 1994; Jane Austen: A Life 1997; Samuel Pepys: the Unequalled Self 2002 [Whitbread biography and Book of the Year prizes, Pepys Society Prize, Rose Crawshay Prize]. Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man appeared in 2006, after which she made a television film about Hardy with Melvyn Bragg, and published a selection of Hardy’s poems. Her Charles Dickens: A Life was published in 2011. A collection of her reviews, Several Strangers, appeared in 1999, and a memoir, A Life of My Own, in 2017.
Her books are translated into many languages. She has honorary doctorates from Cambridge, UEA, Birmingham, the Open University, Greenwich, Goldsmith, Roehampton, Portsmouth and York universities.
She has served on the Committee of the London Library and as a Trustee of the National Portrait Gallery and the Wordsworth Trust. She is a Vice-President of the Royal Literary Fund, of the Royal Society of Literature and of English PEN. She lives in London and is married to the playwright and novelist Michael Frayn.
Tuesday 18 February
Equality Week event: Fr Andrew Foreshew-Cain In Conversation with Alan Rusbridger
Fr Andrew joined LMH as the permanent Chaplain at the start of this academic year. Previously he was a parish priest in inner-city West London for twenty years, where he was responsible for founding the Sherriff Centre, a social enterprise based in one of his two parish churches. It included the only main branch Post Office in a Church setting and a children soft play. It attracted 2,000 people a week through its doors. Profits supported an independent Debt Advice service also run by the Centre and reached some of the most deprived areas of Camden and Brent. A well-known activist in the Church of England on LGBTQI issues, he was elected to General Synod, the parliament of the CofE, shortly after his marriage to Stephen in 2014. He is a regular speaker on the oppression of LGBTQI people by the Church and helps run the Campaign for Equal Marriage in the Church of England. He is owned by two cats and lives (some of the time) in Derbyshire where he & his husband are restoring an Old Vicarage.
To attend email: communications@lmh.ox.ac.uk
Friday 21 February, 17.45, Simpkins Lee Theatre, LMH.
Equality Week event: Martin Prendergast In Conversation with Alan Rusbridger
Martin Prendergast is Director of Development and Public Affairs at RADA. He previously worked at the National Theatre, where he was first Deputy Director of Development, and then Director of Communications. Before joining the NT in October 2007, Martin was Arts Manager in the Commercial Department at Guardian News and Media for 10 years. Martin read English and Theatre Studies at Warwick, and is a committed (but amateur) pianist and singer, performing regularly in cabaret in London. He lives in Camberwell with his husband Mark.
To attend email: communications@lmh.ox.ac.uk
Friday 28 February, 17.45, Simpkins Lee Theatre, LMH
Elif Shafak In Conversation with Alan Rusbridger
Elif Shafak is an award-winning British-Turkish novelist and the most widely read female author in Turkey. She writes in both Turkish and English, and has published seventeen books, eleven of which are novels, including the bestselling The Bastard of Istanbul, The Forty Rules of Love, and Three Daughters of Eve. Her work has been translated into fifty languages. She is published by Penguin/Random House and represented by Curtis Brown globally. She was awarded the title of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. In 2017 she was chosen by Politico as one of the twelve people who would make the world better.
Elif is also a political scientist and an academic. She holds a degree in International Relations, a masters’ degree in Gender and Women’s Studies and a PhD in Political Science and Political Philosophy. She has taught at various universities in Turkey, the UK and the USA, including St Anne's College, Oxford University, where she is an honorary fellow.
She is a member of Weforum Global Agenda Council on Creative Economy and a founding member of ECFR (European Council on Foreign Relations). An advocate for women's rights, LGBT rights and freedom of speech, Shafak is an inspiring public speaker and twice a TED Global speaker, each time receiving a standing ovation.
Elif has been featured in and contributes to major newspapers and periodicals around the world, including the Financial Times, the Guardian, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Der Spiegel and La Repubblica. She has been longlisted for the Orange Prize, MAN Asian Prize; the Baileys Prize and the IMPAC Dublin Award, and shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and RSL Ondaatje Prize
She judged numerous prestigious literary prizes, including Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (2013); Sunday Times Short Story Award (2014, 2015), Women of the Future Awards (2015); FT/Oppenheimer Funds Emerging Voices Awards (twice in 2015, 2016); Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction (2016); Man Booker International Prize (2017) and The Goldsmiths Prize (2018). This year Shafak is judging the Berggruen Culture and Philosophy Prize, and chairs the Wellcome Book Prize.
Tuesday 10 March, 17.45, Simpkins Lee Theatre, LMH
Sam Gyimah In Conversation with Alan Rusbridger
Sam Gyimah served as the Member of Parliament for East Surrey from 2010 to 2019. First elected as a Conservative, Sam rebelled against the government to block a no-deal Brexit and had the Conservative whip removed in September 2019. He subsequently joined the Liberal Democrats and stood unsuccessfully for them in Kensington at the 2019 general election. Between 2014 and 2018, after serving as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Prime Minister, David Cameron, and as a government whip, Sam was promoted to Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State. He served as the Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation from January 2018 until he resigned on 30 November 2018 in protest at Theresa May's Brexit withdrawal agreement.
Friday 13 March, 17.45, Simpkins Lee Theatre, LMH.
Heron Allen Lecture: Professor Phyllis Lee, Director of Science; Amboseli Trust for Elephants; Chair in Psychology at the University of Sterling.
Models of Social Evolution
Our guest speaker, Professor Phyllis C. Lee, current Professor at the University of Stirling and Director of Science for Amboseli Trust for Elephants, will talk about how sociality evolved in animals and birds, and its consequences for social structure, reproductive strategies, and life histories remains of major interest to zoologists. Using examples from a variety of mammalian species, she will present a simple model for describing sociality along three dimensions. The model outcomes are then related to benefits for reproduction, with an emphasis on primates and elephants as especially long-lived and socially diverse.
Trinity Term
Tuesday 12 May, 17.45, Simpkins Lee Theatre, LMH
Professor Joseph Stiglitz In Conversation with Alan Rusbridger
Professor Stiglitz is an American economist who, with A. Michael Spence and George A. Akerlof, won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001 for laying the foundations for the theory of markets with asymmetric information.
After studying at Amherst College in Massachusetts and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he taught at several universities, including Yale, Harvard, and Stanford. He was an active member of President Bill Clinton’s economic policy team; a member of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers (1993–97), of which he became chairman in June 1995; and senior vice president and chief economist of the World Bank (1997–2000). In 2000 he was appointed a university professor at Columbia University. Stiglitz later served as president of the International Economic Association (2011–14).
In addition to the Nobel Prize, Stiglitz was the recipient of many honours and awards, including the John Bates Clark Medal (for outstanding contributions to economic thought by a U.S.-based economist under the age of 40) in 1979 and the Gerald Loeb Award for distinguished business journalism in 2010. Among his many books were The Roaring Nineties: A New History of the World’s Most Prosperous Decade (2003), The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict (2008; cowritten with Linda J. Bilmes), The Price of Inequality (2012), Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Shared Prosperity (2016), and The Euro: How a Common Currency Threatens the Future of Europe (2016).
Friday 15 May, 17.45, Simpkins Lee Theatre, LMH
Sir Jeremy Farrar – Director of the Wellcome Trust - In Conversation with Alan Rusbridger
Before joining the Wellcome Trust in October 2013, Jeremy Farrar was Director of the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Vietnam for 18 years. His research interests were infectious diseases, tropical health and emerging infections. He has published over 500 peer-reviewed scientific papers, mentored many dozens of students and fellows, and served as Chair on several advisory boards for governments and global organisations, including the World Health Organization. He was named 12th in Fortune's list of the World's 50 Greatest Leaders in 2015.
Jeremy was appointed OBE in 2005 for services to tropical medicine, was awarded the Memorial Medal and the Ho Chi Minh City Medal by the Government of Vietnam, and has been honoured by the Royal College of Physicians in the UK and the American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. He is a Fellow of both the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Royal Society.
Tuesday 19 May, 17.45, Simpkins Lee Theatre, LMH
Jess Cartner-Morley In Conversation with Alan Rusbridger
Jess Cartner-Morley is Associate Editor (Fashion) at the Guardian. She will talk about the rise of ‘Ethical Fashion’ and how consumers can help make choices about their purchases. Ethical Fashion is an umbrella term to describe ethical fashion design, production, retail, and purchasing. It covers a range of issues such as working conditions, exploitation, fair trade, sustainable production, the environment, and animal welfare.
The high street clothing industry accounts for a massive share of Western retail. Globalisation means that materials and labour can be purchased in different parts of the world where costs are very low. Also, industrialised methods of growing cotton mean that fabrics can be produced quickly and cheaply, and in very large quantities. These savings are passed on to the customer, meaning that high street fashion is available at increasingly low prices, and much of it is regarded as disposable. However, many argue that all this has a cost that we are not able to see on the price tag.
Tuesday 16 June, 17.45, Simpkins Lee Theatre, LMH.
Lady Hale In Conversation with Alan Rusbridger
We are delighted Lady Hale, an LMH Visiting Fellow, will be joining the Principle for an In Conversation. In January 2004, she became the UK's first woman Lord of Appeal in Ordinary after a varied career as an academic lawyer, law reformer, and judge. She taught law at Manchester University and qualified as a barrister. In 1984 she was the first woman to be appointed to the Law Commission. Important legislation resulting from the work of her team at the Commission includes the Children Act 1989, the Family Law Act 1996, and the Mental Capacity Act 2005. In 1994 she became a High Court judge and in 1999 she was the second woman to be promoted to the Court of Appeal, before becoming the first woman Law Lord. She transferred with the other Law Lords to the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom when it was created in 2009 and became its Deputy President in 2013 and its President in 2017.
There is expected to be high demand for tickets to attend this In Conversation. The event will only be open to the LMH community and a certain number of tickets will be allocated to each common room - limited to one booking per person.
Queries? Email us at events.assistant@lmh.ox.ac.uk
