St Edmund Hall Research Expo 2017: Teddy Talks Oxford University

The UK national debt is currently the highest it's ever been, and a lot larger than many other countries. This talk takes a look behind the figures, and asks why it is important, whether we should be worried, and looks at the reasons for its growth.

Linda Yueh (Fellow by Special Election in Economics) talks about ending poverty. The UN has a Sustainable Development Goal to eradicate extreme poverty, currently measured as people living on less than $1.25 a day, by 2030. Since 1990, 1 billion people have been lifted out of poverty. Linda argues that economic growth alone is insufficient to end poverty and discusses how economic theory may be able to help us solve the problem, particularly in Africa, to achieve the UN’s target.

Did medieval writers think they were writing history? This talk takes a closer look at the various forms of ‘history’ during this period. Emily A. Winkler is (John Cowdrey Junior Research Fellow in History).

When you examine the brain, you can learn a lot and see chemical interactions, but you cannot find anything about the first-person nature of things we experience as humans, such as colours and pain. This talk takes an introductory look at different philosophical theories relating to this – including dualism, epiphenomenalism, identity theory and externalism
Paul Skokowski is Visiting Fellow from Stanford University.

Why has the recent detection of gravitational waves been one of the most important discoveries in modern times for astrophysics? And what are the implications of the new Advanced LIGO gravitational-wave detector for future discoveries about black holes? Philipp Podsiadlowski (Professor of Physics and Tutor in Physics)

Batteries are one of the most efficient ways to store energy, and there has been a massive increase recently in the use of lithium-ion batteries, particularly in electric cars. Do we have enough lithium, however, to support the wide-scale proliferation of electric vehicles? And are there alternative technologies we could adopt if not? Mauro Pasta is Associate Professor and Tutor in Materials Science