Migration – Darwin College Lecture Series 2018

The extraordinary synchrony of motion exhibited as a flock of birds arcs overhead, or a school of fish turns, as a ripple of light, is captivating. Like some animate fluid the individual organisms appear to move as one, their minds seemingly connected by an invisible network. Professor Couzin’s lecture will provide a visual guide to collective animal behaviour, particularly focusing on migration, using the latest imaging technologies to reveal how and why animals exhibit collective motion, the huge impact swarms have on human life, and the remarkable collective sensing and decision-making capabilities that have arisen in animal groups.

Progress in science depends on a rapid exchange of ideas and exposure to new approaches and viewpoints. Historically, this progress has been accelerated by the movement of people. Scientists have been among the most mobile of people, going where they perceive the action to be. This talk will explore examples from various periods in history on how mobility resulted in scientific development. It will also describe the reasons behind the moves in my own peripatetic life. Biography Venki Ramakrishnan received his bachelor’s degree in physics from Baroda University in India in 1971 and his Ph.D. in physics from Ohio University in 1976. He then studied biology for two years at the University of California, San Diego before beginning his postdoctoral work with Peter Moore at Yale University. After a long career in the US, he moved to England in 1999 to become a group leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. He is also the current president of the Royal Society. Ramakrishnan has a long-standing interest in ribosome structure and function. In 2000, his laboratory determined the atomic structure of the 30S ribosomal subunit and its complexes with ligands and antibiotics. This work has led to insights into how the ribosome “reads” the genetic code, as well as into various aspects of antibiotic function. Ramakrishnan’s lab subsequently determined high-resolution structures of functional complexes of the entire ribosome at various stages along the translational pathway, which has led to insights into its role in protein synthesis during decoding, peptidyl transfer, translocation and termination. More recently his laboratory has been applying cryoelectron microscopy to study eukaryotic and mitochondrial translation.

The Partition of the Indian subcontinent 70 years ago along religious lines, saw the largest migration in human history, outside war and famine. Millions were on the move in both directions. Muslims fled to Pakistan, Hindus and Sikhs to India, as communal hatred erupted and people feared being a minority in a new country. Many thousands of those who lived through this violent birth of two new nations migrated to post-war Britain. But many are only just talking of their experiences seven decades on. In this lecture Kavita Puri reflects on why silence was kept in Britain among that generation and why people are speaking of this traumatic time now. She discusses how even though many fled homes 70 years ago the loss endures, and so too does a connection to the homeland that was left. It is a complex legacy that lives on in the second and third generations living in Britain today.

This lecture performance will present art by and about the migrant, created in workshops run for detainees awaiting deportation from the UK. Documentary photography, drawings, testimonies, video, and interviews, digitized for the Immigration Detention Archive at Oxford is the basis of this art-research. The presentation will include parts of a play written and directed using material from the forthcoming book, including collages, shadow puppets, and film. In the study of migration art has been relegated to therapy and social work, and in turn art history and criticism typically categorizes it as Outsider Art. Yet in this study of the effects of indeterminate detention on subjectivity, visual art contributes to social and aesthetic demands as well as providing forensic evidence for criminologists of human suffering. It is an artist’s perspective on the perversity of the institutions, the power of its bureaucracy, and a necessary abstraction of censored material.

Dr. Eva Harris: Dengue and Zika are mosquito-borne viral diseases that consitute major public health and medical problems worldwide. Dengue has been a scourge for decades and only continues to increase in magnitude, geographic distribution, and severity, whereas Zika recently took the world by surprise with a dramatic epidemic in the Americas that was linked to severe congenital defects, including microcephaly, when infection occurred during pregnancy. In this lecture, “Migration of dengue and Zika viruses: Across continents, around cities, and within the human host”, we will explore the concept of “migration” as applied to dengue and Zika on multiple levels. First, we will examine the emergence and spread of these viruses seen through both epidemiological and phylogenetic lenses, through studies of human populations and viral sequences. Next, we will focus on spatial studies of dengue and Zika transmission in our cohort study of children in Managua, Nicaragua, where we have observed differences in Zika virus transmission at a hyper local level, allowing identification of hot-spots and environmental risk factors. Finally, we will turn to “migration” of dengue and Zika viruses within the human body, via studies of intrahost diversity of these RNA viral sequences in different bodily compartments as well as visualization of Zika virus invasion of the human placenta. Through this unusual interpretation of the concept of migration, we hope to introduce multiple themes in research and public health of these important human infectious diseases.

How, in a world of modern nation states, shared prosperity, and boundless capabilities can refugees and migrants on the move today find themselves exposed to kidnapping for ransom, imprisonment and torture? What should shape our response to those uprooted and on the move in ‘mixed’ migratory flows? And what is the role of international cooperation and the modern system of international refugee protection? Drawing on more than 30 years of experience in refugee and international affairs, UN Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi will reflect on these questions, and on the intersection between refugee movements and the broader dynamics of human mobility and migration today.

Chandran Kukatha: Restrictions on the movement of people to the countries developed west are often defended on the grounds that it is necessary to protect the liberal democratic values that might otherwise be undermined by uncontrolled immigration. Pre-eminent among these are the values of freedom and equality. More careful examination, however, suggests that the threat to these values comes not so much from immigration as from efforts to control it. Though it might appear that immigration restrictions are controls on would-be immigrants, they are in fact, to a very significant degree, controls on citizens—controls not on outsiders but on insiders. The more vigorously immigration control is pursued, the more surely is the freedom of people within a society compromised. This lecture elaborates of the ways in which this is true, and considers the question of whether immigration control might be warranted nonetheless because of the benefits it brings in spite of these costs that come with it.

David Olusoga: Migration is the most controversial political topic in the Britain of 2018. Issues around migration underpinned and informed much of the BREXIT debate and infuse wider debates about Britishness and identity. Yet migration and the immigrant communities it has created are also the focus of a huge amount of new research, scholarship and awareness. For Britain’s black community expanded knowledge of, and pride in, the longer histories of their communities – histories that stretch back far beyond 1945 – is now at odds with this new mood. History itself is being contested as some nationalist voices seek to dismiss historical fact and counter research with opinion and ‘alternative facts’. Two conflicting and contradictory visions of British history and identity, and the role of migration in forging them, are beginning to develop.