Green Templeton Social Sciences Seminar Series

The Social Sciences Seminar Series is a Student Academic Project founded by Alex Midlen, MSc Nature, Society and Environmental Governance.

This seminar series aims to increase dialogue between the social science disciplines at Green Templeton College and beyond. The social sciences represent a diverse spectrum of disciplines ranging through population and demography, public health, anthropology, human geography, criminology and more.

Events

‘Catch and rescue’: Ignorance, humanitarianism and anti-trafficking public awareness

Thursday 11 March 2021

Speaker: Dr Kiril Sharapov, Associate Professor of Applied Social Sciences, Edinburgh Napier University

This lecture provided an overview of the key issues surrounding our understanding of public perceptions and responses to human trafficking. It discussed how most anti-trafficking awareness-raising campaigns continue to deploy simplistic narratives of ‘victims, villains, and heroes’, while leaving the structural root causes of human trafficking and the systems of domination that underpin them intact. It also reviewed a more specific example of raising public awareness of human trafficking via mobile applications (or ‘apps’).

Scale in public health studies and its implications for public policy

Thursday 7 November 2019

Report: ‘Scale in public health studies and its implications for public policy’

Speakers:

  • Dr Janey Messina, Research Fellow of Green Templeton College and Associate Professor in Quantitative Social Science Methods, School of Geography and Environment.
  • Dr Ben Chrisinger, Research Fellow of Green Templeton College and Associate Professor of Evidence-Based Policy Evaluation, Department of Social Policy and Intervention.

In this seminar geographic scale was discussed as a crucial concern when it comes to public health and health service provision. Issues such as environmental change, demographic composition, and access to health care all differ according to geographic context.

Inequality and the environment

Wednesday 6 February 2019

Report: ‘Inequality and the environment’

Speaker: Danny Dorling, Halford Mackinder Professor in Geography, University of Oxford

In this seminar, Professor Dorling addressed four themes on inequality and the environment through his inimitable mix of distorted maps, challenging charts and plain speaking. His themes were:

1. Economic inequality and the environment
2. Are there too many people? Can the planet cope?
3. Are climate change emissions spiralling out of control?
4. How can the social sciences help?

Environmental resource conflicts: from water wars to Mongolian mines

Friday 7 June 2019

Speakers:

Environmental conflicts are a growing cause of concern, with climate change at the head of the charge. But resources of all kinds are subject to conflicts between different uses and users. In this seminar our speakers focussed on water and mining.

Contact

For more information about this seminar series, please contact thomas.gordon-colebrooke@gtc.ox.ac.uk.