2010 Seminars

Michaelmas Term

Festivals, 4th December

Lorenzo Cuppi (Theology) - Christmas songs from around the World, live performance (guitar)
Melanie Tao Xue (Durham Business School) - The origins and rituals of Chinese festivals
Vera Smirnova (International Relations) - Vodka-drinking traditions in Russia
Vipul Parmar (Biology) - Tyohar: The Festivals of India
Guy Bennett-Hunter - A Tale of Two Christmas Mythologies

Multidisciplinary Seminar, 20th November

Henry Skudra (School of Law) - Landing on our feet-the history of land law and how it helped shape Britain
Sam Cane (Department of Philosophy) - The Significance of Death and Regard across the Disciplines
James Russell (Department of Modern Languages and Cultures) - Scribbling in their Sleep: Annotating a Renaissance Dream Narrative
Simon Cork (Department of Biological and Biomedical Sciences) - Hypertension - Is it all in the Head?

Ustinov Seminar on Futures/Utopia, 6th November

Adam Stock (English Studies) - 'Modernity and its Dys-contents: History and the Development of Utopia'
Ian Kidd (Philosophy) - 'Science, Futures and Utopia'
Matt Hann (SGIA) - 'Two (Socialist?) Utopias: Matthew Arnold, Anthony Crosland, and the Centrality of Culture'
IAS Visiting Fellows talk about their work and the IAS theme "Futures":
Professor Russell Jacoby (History, UCLA); Professor Andrew Pickering (Sociology, University of Exeter)

Ustinov Seminar on Histories, 23 October

Let's speak about Europe!, 19th June 2010

Mirko Canevaro (Classics) - Ancient Athens and Political Accountability: a useful model
Daniel Knight (Anthropology) - Things to Forget, Things to Remember: Narratives of crisis in Trikala, central Greece
Steve Emery (Anthropology) - Farming landscapes, the CAP and the search for a European Identity
Emilio Berrocal (Anthropology) - Remaking Europe: Racism and Immigration in Italy and in the UK
David Henig (Anthropology) - Sacred landscapes in Bosnia-Herzegovina
Paola Ceccarelli (Classics) - "For what has the unhappy mother of Prometheus in common with the nurse of Sarpedon?" Personifications of Europe and Asia from Herodotus to Lycophron

Multidisciplinary Seminar, 12 June

Peter Okeno (Music) - Alternative Life Styles through Music: Marabi
Angela Perri (Archaeology) - Holocene Climate Change, Hunting Adaptations and Dog Burials
Amalina Ahmad Tajudin (Law) - Open Price Contract: Flexibility in Law?
Dian Masyita (SGIA) - Why does nobody see the financial system as a whole? : Lessons learnt from Great Depression to 2008 Global Finance Crisis

Aspects of Political Islam: Some Directions of Contemporary Research, 15 May

Daniele Atzori (SGIA) - The Counter Hegemonic Strategies of the Muslim Brotherhood: A Gramscian Analysis
Stela Arar (Geography) - Know thy Enemy: Hizb'Allah Reconstruction of Beirut
Afshin Shahi (SGIA) - Perspectives on Political Islam in Iran

Multidisciplinary Seminar, Saturday 1 May

Donnchadh O'Conaill (Philosophy) - Cognition and the Meaning of Life
James Allen (Physics) - From cheese to string theory: a whirlwind tour of particle physics
Ian Kidd (Philosophy) - Science, Religion, and Human Life

Saturday 13 March, The Multidisciplinary Ustinov Seminar

Vera Smirnova (Independent researcher) - Foreign policy decision-making: Psychological approaches
Ling Liu (PhD student, School of Engineering and Computer Sciences) - Finding information on the internet more effectively: An introduction to Online Reputation Systems
Simon Robinson (PhD student, English Studies) - 'The geology of the imagination': Samuel Beckett and aesthetic stratigraphy
Serghei Golunov (Marie Curie Research Fellow, International Boundaries Research Unit, Department of Geography) - Border security policies worldwide: Comparison and conceptualization

Saturday 6 March, The Ustinov Seminar with the Institute of Advanced Study: Water

Liz McKinnell (PhD, Philosophy) - Environmental ethics and environmental political philosophy
Matthew Griffiths (MA, English Studies) - The Abstraction of Water: Environmental crisis and the hydrology of TS Eliot's The Waste Land
Dr Robert Baxter (Senior Lecturer, School of Biological and Biomedical Sciences) - Water in the Arctic terrestrial environment: What state is it in?
Three IAS Visiting Fellows will talk about their work on the IAS theme "Water"
Professor Ian Wright (Open University)
Professor Monica Grady (Open University)
Dr. Muhammad Saidam (Director, Environment Monitoring and Research Unit, Royal Scientific Society, Jordan)

Saturday 6 February, Ustinov Seminar on China

Qinxi Li (Business School) - Chinese Festivals
Luojia Zhang (Law School) - The impact of Chou on China
Edward McDougall (Department of Philosophy) - Chinese Daoism
Zhimin Xiao (School of Education) - Educating Tibetans in China: Achievements and Challenges

Saturday 30 January, Seminar on Law

Fateme Modabber - 'Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): Whose interest should companies serve?'
Bo Gong - 'The Role of Institutional Shareholders in Corporate Governance'
Annegret Engel - 'Depillarisation after Lisbon: The end of competence overlaps?'
Benedict Douglas - 'Nobody Tosses a Dwarf: The Interpretation of Human Rights'