Oxford Science and Ideas Festival will be held later this month, organised by Oxfordshire Science Festival and trustees.
From Friday 18th to Monday 28th October, the festival will feature more than 100 different events across the city.
Dane Comerford, who has worked in public engagement with research for the past decade, is this year’s festival director.
Previously the Head of Public Engagement at the University of Cambridge, Mr Comerford is interested in “developing the conversation about what research is, what universities are for, and how innovation locates within society.”
Known as IF Oxford, dozens of venues across the city are taking part.
The website said: “We want the complexity, wonder and opportunities of scientific research to be explored, challenged and enjoyed across society.”
“The festival team coordinates an accessible, thought-provoking and interactive science and ideas festival creating an opportunity for over ten thousand face-to-face interactions between Festival visitors, researchers and innovators.”
One of the events, named Only Expansion, will run at the Oxford Playhouse from Saturday 19th October. Other venues include the Weston Library and the Oxfordshire County Library.
According to organisers, those taking part in Only Expansion will be able to choose their own route and experience an audio walk through the city. Headphones with customised electronics capture and manipulate the sounds around them.
At Christ Church Meadow, there will be the Uncomfortable Oxford tour: literary edition, within which the tensions of imaginary maps of Oxford found in literature will be brought to modern realities.
Chelsea Haith, the mind behind the literary edition of Uncomfortable Oxford, is a DPhil Candidate in Contemporary Literature.
She said: “I am interested in how people think about their lives, and how their physical environments shape their sense of self and their sense of their world.”
“Now I live in Oxford, a place of great enquiry, I see alternative sides to the city’s history that are less often heard or shared.”
“My research examines architecture, inclusion and exclusion, and city spaces in science fiction… Our Futures Thinking events at the Festival are an example of how Science and the Humanities work hand-in-hand and I look forward to learning what you think about how we can bring these two fields into closer conversation.”
Oxford has hosted a science festival every year since 1992, with 500,000 members of the public visiting over the past 25 years, including 13,500 visitors in 2018.
