Sheldonian Series: Life
Sheldonian Series: Life
Tuesday 11 February 2025
6-7.15pm
Following its launch in Michaelmas, the Sheldonian Series continues this term on Tuesday 11 February on the topic of ‘Life’. Join the Vice-Chancellor to hear from presenters exploring the planetary, technological and ethical dimensions of ‘Life’.
Speakers
Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt FRS FREng, Principal of Jesus College and Professorial Research Fellow in Computing Science
Nigel Shadbolt
Nigel is a leading researcher in Artificial Intelligence and one of the originators of the interdisciplinary field of Web Science. He is Principal of Jesus College Oxford and Professor of Computing Science at Oxford University. He is chairman of the Open Data Institute which he co-founded with Sir Tim Berners-Lee. He was knighted in 2013 for ‘services to science and engineering’.
With over 500 publications, he has researched and published on topics from cognitive psychology to computational neuroscience, Artificial Intelligence to the Semantic Web.
He is a Fellow of The Royal Society, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the British Computer Society.
Profile pages from the Department of Computer Science and Jesus College.
Professor Jayne Birkby, Associate Professor of Exoplanetary Science
Jayne Birkby
Professor Jayne Birkby received her PhD in Astrophysics from the University of Cambridge and has previously held a postdoctoral scholarship at Leiden University, a NASA Sagan Fellowship at Harvard University and an Assistant Professorship at University of Amsterdam. She is an ERC Starting Grant Laureate, was awarded the 2021 Philip Leverhulme Prize in Physics and was a Finalist in the 2024 Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in the UK. Prof Birkby uses the world’s largest telescopes and highest resolution instruments to study the atmospheres of other worlds outside our Solar System. She has a keen interest in connecting these exoplanet studies with chemistry, geology, and biology in the pursuit of the answer to: Are we alone?
Follow her on Bluesky: @jaynebirkby.bsky.social or X: @jaynebirkby. Profile pages from the Physics Department and Brasenose College.
Rev Canon Prof Luke Bretherton, Regius Professor of Moral & Pastoral Theology
Luke Bretherton
Luke Bretherton is the Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Oxford and director of the McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Life. Prior to that he was the Robert E. Cushman Distinguished Professor of Moral and Political Theology at Duke University. Before joining Duke in 2012, he taught at King's College London. His most recent book is A Primer in Christian Ethics: Christ and the Struggle to Live Well (2023). His other books include Christ and the Common Life: Political Theology and the Case for Democracy (2019); Resurrecting Democracy (2015), based on a four year ethnographic study; and Christianity & Contemporary Politics (2010), winner of the 2013 Michael Ramsey Prize for Theological Writing. Alongside his scholarly work, he writes in the media on topics related to religion and politics and is actively involved in forms of grassroots democratic politics, both in the UK and the US.
Follow him on X: @WestLondonMan
