Rhodes Trust Events

All members of the global community including current Scholars in residence, alumni, and partners are welcome to attend events at Rhodes House.

Unless otherwise specified, BOOKING IS ESSENTIAL. If you are interested in learning more about a specific event at Rhodes House, please contact conferences@rhodeshouse.ox.ac.uk

20 July 2018

Mandela Day Garden Party

Mandela Day Garden Party This year we are delighted to welcome all Scholars in Oxford and members of Rhodes Scholars in Britain to attend the garden party celebrating Nelson Mandela International Day. As well as honouring the legacy of South Africa's former President this is also an opportunity for the Oxford community to meet again at Rhodes House over summer drinks and homemade cakes. Please contact rsvp@rhodeshouse.ox.ac.uk to register your partner. Dress: Smart-casual

12 July 2018

Weakly Supervised Machine Learning in Medical Sensing: Integrating Expert Knowledge and Programming with Data

One of the most significant roadblocks to using modern machine learning models is collecting hand-labelled training data at the massive scale they require. In real-world settings such as clinical medicine, where domain expertise is needed, and modelling goals change rapidly, hand-labelling training sets are prohibitively slow, expensive, and static. For these reasons, practitioners are increasingly turning to weak supervision techniques wherein noisier, often programmatically-generated labels are used instead. In this talk, we will discuss recent developments in applying various types of weak supervision to problems in medical imaging and diagnostics, and assess future areas wherein the confluence of inadequate control and massive, unlabeled datasets could lead to new discoveries and reductions to an application. More details.

26 June 2018

An evening with Steve Blank, father of the Lean Startup Method

Entrepreneur-turned-educator Steve Blank is the Father of Modern Entrepreneurship. Credited with launching the Lean Start-up movement, he’s changed how start-ups are built; how entrepreneurship is taught; how science is commercialised, and how companies and the government innovate.

16 June 2018 - 17 June 2018

2nd Annual Rhodes Ventures Forum

This year’s convening serves as a platform to envisage the current and future role of business in changing the world for the better. We will consider how the evolving entrepreneurial mindset can be leveraged to tackle the greatest challenges of the 21st century - across sectors and around the world.

12 June 2018

An intimate discussion on Taming the Sun

Join Professor Varun Sivaram for an intimate lunchtime discussion on his new book Taming the sun: innovations to harness solar energy and power the planet

06 June 2018

Biological Time And How It Is Regulated by Light

We all have an internal biological clock that regulates much of our physiology and behaviour, allowing us to fine-tune our biology to the varied but predictable changes in the environment. Russell’s research interests span the neurosciences, but with a focus on the regulation and generation of sleep and circadian rhythms, and what happens when these systems go wrong across multiple areas of health.

30 May 2018

A conversation with James J. Barnes author of "Unforeseen: The First Blind Rhodes Scholar"

Jim Barnes has never let the absence of sight define him. Born with limited vision, from a young age he was singled out for his love of hard work both in the classroom and on the sports field. As an undergraduate he was named First Citizen of Amherst College and was then awarded a Rhodes Scholarship, only to lose his sight entirely during his first year in Oxford.

03 May 2018

Visualising Diversity: Why Images (and Art Historians) Matter

In this presentation, which will focus primarily (though not exclusively) on the representation of women, we will discuss historical approaches to gender in the visual arts—images of, by and for women in pre-Modern contexts—as well as contemporary opportunities and challenges involved in diversifying our present-day visual environment.

02 May 2018

Dialogue around Mental Health

Rhodes for Wellbeing is delighted to welcome Mr Gregor Henderson to lead a dialogue around mental health. In this session, Mr Henderson will explore current perceptions around mental health, why tackling mental illness can be a WICKED problem, and the importance of system-wide approaches to prioritising mental wellbeing and health service reform. Come along to engage in this interacting and thought-provoking dialogue around the future of mental health strategy in the UK.

27 April 2018

Journalism Under Fire

Independent media faces threats as never before, from the destruction of familiar business models, to demagogic attacks from populist politicians, to killings, imprisonment, and ever-more-sophisticated forms of censorship. Yet paradoxically, there's never been a better time to be a journalist. Join the political journalist and author Jacob Weisberg, Chairman of the Slate Group and host of the "Trumpcast" podcast, to discuss hazards and opportunities in the news business today.

26 April 2018

Arab Origins of Cryptology

Dr Mohammed Al-Suwaiyel, professor at King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology, KACST and former Minister of Telecommunications, is in Oxford on Thursday 26 April 2018 and is happy to give a short talk and answer questions on the Arab Origins of Cryptology. Cryptology, the art and science of making and breaking codes, has a history that is older than 4000 years.