Wednesday December 11, Session 1 – Afrocentric Philosophy of Disability @BlavatnikSchool

Uploaded August 2025 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago

“Disability in Africa, Corporeal Hermeneutics and Disruptive Agency”
Elvis Imafidon (SOAS)

“African Philosophy of Disability and Disabled People’s Liberation”
Julie E Maybee (Lehman College/CUNY Graduate Center)

Chair: Jonathan Wolff (Oxford University)

Philosophy, Disability and Social Change 5
11-13 December 2024

Blavatnik School of Government,
University of Oxford
bsg.ox.ac.uk

Wednesday December 11, Session 1 – Afrocentric Philosophy of Disability

$Kyoto Prize at Oxford 2025: Sir John Pendry In the last few years, a new area of research has emerged as a result of our ability to produce materials with entirely novel electromagnetic properties. Known as metamaterials because they take us beyond the properties of conventional materials, they display remarkable effects not found in nature, such as negative refraction. Spurred on by these new opportunities, theorists have produced exotic concepts that exploit the new materials: we can now specify how to make a lens whose resolution is limited not by the laws of nature but only by our ability to build to the stated specifications; we can guide radiation along a trajectory, avoiding objects and causing them to appear invisible; we can design and manufacture materials that are active magnetically in the optical range. Sir John Pendry concludes his lecture discussing the latest developments which aim to structure materials in time as well as space - space/time crystals. These materials violate time reversal symmetry and offer possibilities for new devices. Theorists find them intriguing as they offer possibilities for creating Hawking radiation in the laboratory. There has been a truly amazing amount of innovation but more is yet to come. The field of metamaterials is developing into a highly disruptive technology for a plethora of applications where control over light (or more generally electromagnetic radiation) is crucial, amongst them 5G/6G technology, satellite communications, solar energy harvesting, stealth, biological imaging and sensing, and enhanced MRI scanners. Sir John Pendrys lecture will be followed by a moderated Q&A session. BOOK NOW – https://www.kyotoprize.ox.ac.uk/event... Kyoto Prize at Oxford events – https://kyotoprize.ox.ac.uk/events Kyoto Prize at Oxford – https://kyotoprize.ox.ac.uk Hosted by the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford – http://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/$

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Wednesday December 11, Session 1 – Afrocentric Philosophy of Disability