William H. Dutton » Voices from Oxford

Richard Dawkins and the Origins of Life: a ‘Voices from Oxford’ Debate

Bill — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 12:56:45 +0000

You might enjoy seeing the ‘trailer’ for a debate that was held at Balliol College and recorded and produced by Voices from Oxford. The short trailer gives you a sense of the speakers and the range of issues over two days. An edited Webcast of the debate will be available soon.

Voices from Oxford Covered in The Korea Times

Bill — Sun, 03 May 2009 18:54:37 +0000

The OII’s Voices from Oxford (VfO) initiative has received excellent coverage in The Korea Times in an article by Kang Shin-who, based on an interview with Dr Kim Sung-hee, Director of VfO and Professor Denis Noble, our VfO anchor and editor, who was in Korea to attend a conference in his role as President of the International Union of Physiological Sciences (IUPS). In the article, a Yonsei University Professor, Lee Jung-hoon, gave a gratifying assessment of the initiative, saying: “In one sweeping stroke, VfO has managed to wipe out those boundaries [between a university and the wider world] with a little help from online technology. Covering research and debates over a wide spectrum of interdisciplinary issues, it now helps to stage Oxford as the center of lively discussions. Denis Noble, anchor for the program, is superb with probing questions and clear-cut explanations. As an Oxford alum myself, I’m very excited about the prospect of Oxford becoming, at last, the global venue of cutting-edge educational discourse.”

This is exactly the role the VfO project seeks to facilitate. I’d encourage you to read the entire article at: http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/special/2009/04/181_44054.html

Voices from Oxford: Research?

Bill — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 13:44:16 +0000

The Back Office at Voices from Oxford

Voices from Oxford is a program of webcasts, originating from the University of Oxford but aimed at the four corners of the world. These webcasts are designed to bring the ideas, research and activities of the people of Oxford to the wider world. You can review the Voices from Oxford Website, or see some samples of Webcasts available on YouTube by searching for voicesfromoxford on YouTube. For example, there is an introduction to the series, and one of our most interesting treatments, called a ‘New Man Comes to Oxford’.

The VfO team, of which I am a member, view this work as research – an effort to communicate research to a broader audience in a way than enables the audience to comment and contribute to the subject matter. In doing so, Voices from Oxford is confronting a tradition in the sciences and humanities that sees the job of the researcher to stop when the refereed journal article is written, and leave it to the press, media and word of mouth to enable findings to trickle-down to potential users. Our view is that it is right for researchers to take a more active role in communicating research directly to a broader public. If you have a view on this matter, we would welcome your comments on this blog.

An Old Reference

Dutton, W. (1994), ‘Trickle-Down Social Science: A Personal Perspective,’ Social Sciences, 22, 2.

Voices from Oxford