Conveners: Prof Alexander Betts (University of Oxford), Dr Susan James Relly (University of Oxford)
Speaker: Prof. Saskia Sassen (Columbia University)
Event series for postgraduate students led by the Social Sciences Division
Providing social science graduate students with an inspiring, interactive, and inter-disciplinary educational experience
Oxford is built on people, and the way they engage with pressing global issues within and across disciplines. People matter more than ever. This new series will convene the great minds of Oxford and beyond to discuss the issues that matter to our graduate students. It aims to provide all our graduates with an educational experience that transcends disciplinary boundaries. Serving as a graduate enrichment programme during extraordinary times, Oxford Minds is based upon three eight-week pillars: themes, theory and methods. The series will unfold on a fortnightly cycle. Four times per terms, a globally recognised speaker will give a public lecture on a specific topic. Our overarching goal is to create an interdisciplinary space in which we can collectively rethink social science for a changing world.
Each fortnightly issue will pose questions that matter both globally and here in Oxford. The four 'themes' for Michaelmas Term were 'race', 'sustainability', 'justice', and 'protection'.
In Hilary Term, the focus will be ‘Theory’. The four themes are ‘power’, ‘space’, ‘belonging’ and ‘identity’ - beginning on the 26th January 2021.
In the Trinity Term we will look at ‘Methods’, with the themes of ‘ethnography’, ‘interviews’, ‘statistics’ and ‘archives’.
Hilary Term, week 2 (Tuesday 26 January)
Saskia Sassen is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology and Member, The Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University (www.saskiasassen.com). Recent books are with Mary Kaldor Cities at War (Columbia University Press 2020), the 5th fully updated edition of Cities in a World Economy (Sage 2018), and Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy (Harvard University Press 2014, now out in 18 languages.) She is the recipient of diverse awards, including multiple doctor honoris causa, the Principe de Asturias 2013 Prize in the Social Sciences, she was made a Foreign Member of the Royal Academy of the Sciences of Netherland, and most recently was awarded the Geneva Picciotto Price. Her new research project is “An Ethics of the City.”