2024 Sidney Ball Memorial Lecture

Violence reduction features prominently in the 2015-2030 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). By 2030, they ask the world community to eliminate all violence against women and girls (SDG 5.2), to end all forms of violence against children (SDG 16.2), and to significantly reduce all other forms of violence worldwide (SDG 16.1).

Is the world on track to achieve these goals? In what world regions and for what types of violence can we see significant reductions? And to what extent has international programming based on scientific evidence contributed to reductions in violence?

In this lecture Professor Eisner will critically review the relevant evidence,and outline a global research and policy framework for effective violence reduction beyond the 2015-2030 SDG period.

Manuel Eisner is the Wolfson Professor of Criminology and the Director of the Institute of Criminology. He is a historian and sociologist by training and joined the Institute of Criminology in 2000. His research revolves around the role of violence and its control in the development of human societies, and in the development of humans over the life course. He has conducted research on the history of homicide since the Middle Ages, and how violence is shaped by structures of power, state control, and the ways in which the self is defined by cultural forces. He is also one of the principal investigators of the Zurich Project on Social Development from Childhood to Adulthood, a 20-year longitudinal study from ages 7 to 26.

The event will be held in-person at St John's College, Oxford.

The annual Sidney Ball Memorial lecture was instituted by Barnett House and named in 1920 after the first chairman of the Barnett House Committee, Sidney Ball. The event brings a distinguished speaker to Oxford every autumn to discuss key themes in social policy and intervention and it continues to be a highlight of the department’s calendar.

The lecture will take place in the Garden Quad Auditorium from 5-6pm, with an opportunity for connecting afterwards at a drinks reception from 6-7pm.

Please allow 10+ mins to reach the auditorium from the Porter's Lodge prior to the start of the lecture.

F ind out more about Oxford's Department of Social Policy and Intervention on our webpages: https://www.spi.ox.ac.uk/

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Garden Quadrangle Auditorium, St John ‘s College, St John's College, Oxford, United Kingdom