Public talk: 'The Weather in British Literature'

The School of English will be hosting a lecture by Dr Alexandra Harris of the University of Liverpool, entitled "The Weather in British Literature".

"Writers and artists across the centuries, looking up at the same skies and walking in the same brisk air, have felt very different things. There have been times when the numbers on a rain gauge count for more than a pantheon of aerial gods; there have been times for meteoric marvels and times for gentle breeze. Shelley wanted to sublimate himself into a cloud while Ruskin, equally but differently obsessed, wanted to store the clouds in bottles. Alexandra Harris will introduce her work on a cultural history of English weather, show how Woolf's Orlando can be read as a guide to the climates of history, and ask whether modernism has distinctive weathers of its own."

Dr Alexandra Harris

'The weather in British Literature' 

Tuesday, 11 November 2014, 5.15pm

Lawson Room, Kennedy Hall,
School of English, The Scores 

Dr Harris' wide-ranging book 'Romantic Moderns' won Guardian First Book Award in 2010. She appears regularly on radio and television, most recently fronting an episode of the BBC series 'The Secret Life of Books'.

The lecture is free and open to the public.

"Open Data and the Future of Science", a lecture by Prof. Geoffrey Bolton

Professor Geoffrey Boulton OBE, FRS, FRSE, General Secretary of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Regius Professor Emeritus and former Vice Principal of the University of Edinburgh, will be giving a public lecture entitled:

"Open Data and the Future of Science"
in the Medical and Biological Sciences Building Lecture Theatre on Wednesday 26th February at 5:15 pm.

Professor Boulton is a member of the Prime Minister’s Council for Science and Technology. His research is in the field of climatic and environmental change and energy. He leads the Global Change Research Group in the University of Edinburgh in the University’s School of Geosciences. He has received international and national prizes for his research, including the Lyell Medal of the Geological Society, the Kirk Bryan Medal of the Geological Society of America, the Seligman Crystal of the International Glaciolo
gical Society and the Science Medal of the Institute of Contemporary Scotland.
Prof. Boulton had been chair of the Royal Society project "Science as an Open Enterprise" which was a major study on the use of scientific information as it affects scientists and society.

All are welcome

RSE Lecture: The Culture of Apes and other Animals

Professor Andrew Whiten, Wardlaw Professor in the School of Psychology and Neuroscience, will deliver this year’s Sir James Black Prize and Medal Lecture at the Royal Society of Edinburgh. 

We humans acquire so much of our behaviour from the culture we are brought up in that one might suppose separates us from the rest of nature. A rapidly growing array of animal studies shows instead that learning from others is widespread and in some species, creates surprisingly rich local cultures. This lecture highlights recent discoveries in primates and other speciies, revealing animal culture as a "second inheritance system" in biology that complements the better known results of genetic inheritance.

The lecture will take place at the Royal Society of Edinburgh in George Street at 6pm on 19th May 2014.  Admission is free but seats – already being snapped up - must be booked in advance via The Cultures of Apes and other Animals.

Inaugural Lecture: Prof. Richard English

Professor Richard English, of the School of International Relations and Director of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, will deliver his Inaugural Lecture, "Does Terrorism Work?” in School III, St Salvator’s Quadrangle on Wednesday, 10 April 2013 at 5.15 p.m. All are welcome.

Terrorism, and responses to terrorism, remain central problems for states and citizens alike in the post-9/11 twenty-first century. Despite the huge literature now generated on the subject, more has been written on definitions of terrorism, and on the causes behind it, than on whether it actually works. In this Lecture, Richard English attempts to assess the question, Does Terrorism Work?, as seen historically, and with an eye to closely-focused, first-hand research on the detailed ways in which terrorism has (and has not) worked in practice.

Open Minds series

As part of the University's 600th anniversary celebrations, the Open Minds series will be starting its third season on 1st April. The initiative cosists of over 70 free lectures across the Faculties of Arts, Science, Medicine and Divinity, which will be open to the of the public through 1st-5th April. This year's programme has been extended to include nearly three times as many lectures and events as ever before – to encourage the widest possible participation. In addition to the diverse topics covered, this year’s Open Minds series also includes social events such as a digital treasure hunt in St Salvator’s Quadrangle, a tour of the University Museum, and a performance by the University’s saxophone quartet. [press release]

Up-coming Arctic-related events at St Andrews

Two Arctic-related events are scheduled for the coming weeks:

• Artic Talks, hosted by Greenpeace St Andrews, will take place in Wednesday 27th February at 6:30pm in School 1. It will include talks from University lecturers, experts in the field and a Greenpeace guest speaker. 

• A screening of the film Chasing Ice, which is taking place on Monday 4th March at 7pm in School 3 as part of the “Take One Action” film festival. The film follows National Geographic photographer James Balog as he brings to life the Extreme Ice Survey (EIS), a photography project which placed cameras across three continents to gather visual evidence of the Earth’s melting ice. The film will be followed by a panel discussion with experts engaged in the climate change debate today, including Mike Robinson, chair of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society. 

Both events are open to the public.

Inaugural Lecture: Prof. Don Paterson

Professor Don Paterson, of the School of English, will deliver his Inaugural Lecture, “I know what I have given you;  I do not know what you have received”:  Poetry, Paranoia and Errors in Transmission, in the Buchanan Lecture Theatre on Wednesday, 9 May 2012 at 5.15 p.m. All are welcome.

Don has published five collections of poetry, two books of aphorism, a number of edited anthologies, and a commentary on Shakespeare’s Sonnets. He is currently working on a new collection of poetry, a lengthy technical manual on ars poetica, and a prose book about music.

World Series Seminar: An update on the Global Warming Debate

Wednesday 25^th April, 2-5pm, Irvine Lecture Theatre, Irvine Building,
School of Geography and Geosciences

Hosted by the Environmental Change Research Group (ECRG)

2012: An update on the Global Warming Debate
Professor Tom Crowley, Palaeoclimatologist – University of Edinburgh (retired)

The global warming debate after Climategate
Andrew Montford, Blogger (Bishop Hill) and Author (The Hockey Stick Illusion)

The presentations will be followed by a questions/answers session (15:00 to 16:00), open to the floor.

All are welcome!

Yale University Visiting Scholar Lectures in the School of Classics

Professor Shadi Bartsch-Zimmer of the University of Chicago will be visiting the University of St Andrews in the last week of semester 2, as the latest visitor in the annual Distinguished Visiting Scholar scheme in the School of Classics.

Professor Bartsch-Zimmer is one of the world's leading interpreters of Latin literature. Her books include Actors in the Audience:Theatricality and Doublespeak from Nero to Hadrian (Cambridge MA, 1994), Ideologyin Cold Blood: A Reading of Lucan's Civil War (Cambridge MA, 1998) and, most recently, The Mirror of the Self: Sexuality, Self-Knowledge, and the Gaze inthe Early Roman Empire (Chicago, 2006).

She will give two papers, the first entitled "Socrates and Sexuality in Persius' Fourth Satire" on Wednesday 2 May (4 p.m., Swallowgate 11--all welcome), and the second entitled "The Pleasure of the Trope:  Pagan and Christian Authors on the Ethics of Metaphor" on Friday 4 May, as part of a one-day workshop on "Metaphor in Greek and Roman Literature and Culture".

All are welcome! Full programme and registration details
Please email classcon@st-andrews.ac.uk by 23 April to register so that we have an idea of numbers.

T.M. Knox Memorial Lecture

The Centre for Ethics, Philosophy and Public Affairs of the School of Philosophical, Anthropological and Film Studies presents the 2012 Knox Lecture by Professor Quentin Skinner of Cambridge University entitled, "The Utilitarian 'discovery' about Libery: What was it and Who made it?".

Monday, 16 April 2012

School III, St Salvator's Quadrangle

The lecture is open to the public - all are welcome! Reception to follow in the Lower College Hall.

Inaugural Lecture: Prof. Anne Fuchs

Professor Anne Fuchs of the School of Modern Languages, will deliver her Inaugural Lecture 'The Dreadful Wreckage of History: Cultural Memory and the Bombing of Dresden’ in School III, St Salvator’s Quadrangle on Wednesday, 11 April 2012 at 5.15 p.m. All are welcome.

Professor Fuchs’ fields of research span various aspects of the literatures and cultures of the German speaking countries from the late 18^th century to the present day. Nationally and internationally, she is renowned for her work on German cultural memory since 1945. For a number of years, her research has been particularly concerned with 'German memory contests', i.e. a series of intensely fought public debates about German cultural identity in the aftermath of the Holocaust and World War II. Her latest monograph investigates these issues from an interdisciplinary perspective with reference to the local, national and global memory of the bombing of Dresden. She is author of five monographs, amongst them After the Dresden Bombing: Pathways of Memory, 1945 to the Present (2012), the award-winning Phantoms of War in Contemporary German Literature, Films and Discourse (2008, 2nd ed. 2010), Die Schmerzensspuren der Geschichte: Zur Poetik der Erinnerung in W. G. Sebalds Prosa (2004), and has co-edited nine volumes. Her latest research project concerns cultural responses to the experience of acceleration in the age of the World Wide Web. At St Andrews, she intends to build up a cross-disciplinary research network with colleagues from cognate disciplines to explore 'modes of temporality in the age of acceleration', the topic of her next book.

Inaugural Lecture: Prof. Lars Olsen

Professor Lars Olsen, of the School of Mathematics and Statistics, will deliver his Inaugural Lecture on Fractals, Multifractals and Dimensions in School III, St Salvator’s Quadrangle on Wednesday, 14 March 2012 at 5.15 p.m. All are welcome.

Professor Olsens’ research centres around fractal and multifractal geometry and its applications within number theory, ergodic theory and dynamical systems.

Fractals are geometric figures that have a very irregular and intricate structure and contain many copies of themselves at different scales. Similarly, multifractals are highly irregular distributions also containing many copies of themselves at different scales

Fractals/multifractals are not easily described using classical Euclidean geometry and so a new theory of fractal/multifractal geometry has been developed. Such sets and distributions have attracted increasing attention in recent years, partly due to the development of striking computer graphics and partly due to a realisation that many natural phenomena such as cloud boundaries or the distribution of rainfall are best approximated by fractals and multifractals.

Beacon Lecture Thurs 23rd February

The new series of lectures, the Beacon lectures are free and open to all, and take place on Thursday evenings from 6-7pm in Physics Lecture Theatre C in the Physics building at the North Haugh. The lectures highlight post-doctoral researchers from various departments showcasing the cutting edge research being undertaken at the University. [Complete lecture series list]

23rd February 2012
A Jolly Good Show: Exhibitions, Photography and Victorian Scotland
Antonia Laurence-Allen, PhD Candidate: School of Art History
In 1853 an unprecedented exhibition of photography toured Britain. It came to Scotland and was celebrated as the product of a “union” with London. In the press, photography itself was positioned as an art historical descendent of alchemy, a perfect blend of art and science, mysticism and religion. Readers were asked to compare this new medium to other technological inventions magically transforming the world like the train and the telegraph, which enabled them to “travel by fire and speak by lightening.” As a consequence, the general public were impelled to view photography as a grand idea; something new and patriotic, as well as something that could link local communities in a national cause.
After discussing the potency of an exhibition as a site for distributing state enforced ideology in the nineteenth century, this lecture illustrates how the 1853 photographic exhibition stimulated the practice of photography at a local level. More specifically, it reveals how the organisers, all based in London and affiliated with the Royal Society of Arts, established a picturesque aesthetic for photography that was resolutely English. The message the exhibition sent to regions across Britain was that the gnarled oak, quiet village scene and babbling brook were the subjects of the best photographs in the Kingdom; and these were the sites locals should seek out in order to establish their professionalism. In doing this the travelling exhibition softly propagated a colonial vision of England’s role as educator and civiliser of clans and nations. It also reflected a commonly held belief that Britain was stronger as a united inclusive force, not one driven by the insular nationalism that had led other European nations into revolutions during the late 1840s.

Next lecture:
1st March 2012
Making computers solve problems without telling them how
Dr Chris Jefferson: School of Computer Science

Inaugural Lecture: Prof. Frances Andrews

Professor Frances Andrews, of the School of History, will deliver her Inaugural Lecture ‘Building Trust in the Italian Middle Ages’ in School III, St Salvator’s Quadrangle on Wednesday, 15 February 2012 at 5.15 p.m. All are welcome.

Professor Andrews’ research centres on the history of Italy and on religious, social and urban history in the middle ages more widely. She is currently working on relations between men of the church and the booming cities of the later middle ages. Driven in part by a search for modernity, historians long viewed these interactions as fundamentally hostile, but much recent work has tended instead to emphasise harmony, portraying the Italian cities as single, living, religious entities. The lecture will test some of the implications of this shift, focusing on ideas and practices of trust. 

Beacon Lecture Thurs 9th February

The new series of lectures, the Beacon lectures are free and open to all, and take place on Thursday evenings from 6-7pm in Physics Lecture Theatre C in the Physics building at the North Haugh. The lectures highlight post-doctoral researchers from various departments showcasing the cutting edge research being undertaken at the University. [Complete lecture series list]

9th February 2012
Facilitating meaningful communication between people with advanced dementia and their caregivers
Dr Maggie Ellis: School of Psychology
Many people in nursing homes have advanced dementia. Their decline often progresses to the point where they can no longer walk or talk and their social world is typically limited to interactions that take place during the provision of routine care. This presentation will describe my work developing Adaptive Interaction (AI), a non-verbal technique for interacting with those with advanced dementia using behaviours like sounds and gestures that are familiar to them. I will illustrate AI by showing video clips of it in action and will also discuss the challenges of training care home staff members to use the technique.

Next lecture:
16th February 2012
Molecular machines at atomic resolution: protein x-ray crystallography reveals how bacteria construct their cell wall
Dr Gregor Hagelüken: School of Chemistry

Inaugural Lecture: Prof. Simon Dobson

Professor Simon Dobson, School of Computer Science, will deliver his Inaugural Lecture 'The Computer is the New Microscope' in the Lecture Theatre, Medical and Biological Sciences Building on Wednesday, 7 December 2011 at 5.15 p.m. All are welcome.

Professor Dobson's research centres around building software for adaptive sensor-driven systems. These are found in applications as diverse as environmental monitoring to study climate change and assisted living for supporting the elderly or infirm in their homes. Simon's work aims to span both theory and practice, improving foundational understanding while being demonstrated in practical applications.

Beacon Lecture Thurs 1st Dec

The new series of lectures, the Beacon lectures are free and open to all, and take place on Thursday evenings from 6-7pm in Physics Lecture Theatre C in the Physics building at the North Haugh. The lectures highlight post-doctoral researchers from various departments showcasing the cutting edge research being undertaken at the University. [Complete lecture series list]

1st December 2011
Vortices in the atmosphere
Dr Yu (Sue) Liu, School of Mathematics and Statistics
Vortices in atmosphere are air masses that spin as they move around. Some of them are well-known: we frequently hear about tornados and hurricanes, as well as the trail of destruction they often leave behind. But vortices come in all shapes and sizes, and in our group we study their evolutions and interactions, using a combination of mathematical analysis and numerical simulations. In this talk, I'll describe some recent research progress, particularly on the special case of the polar vortex (as the name suggests, it sits over the poles). The polar vortex has complex and important effects on chemistry (e.g. in antarctic ozone depletion) and understanding their evolution is therefore of great relevance to understanding the Earth's climate system.

8th December 2011
Thinking about the impossible
Dr Colin Caret, School of Philosophy