Continuing Themes
Alongside its programme of work on the central theme of ‘Water,’ the IAS continued to support work borne from previous annual themes. As a result there were a number of activities endorsed or sponsored by the IAS in 2009-10, closely linked to its 2008-09 theme, ‘Being Human.’
A conference on The Creation of Homes in the Earliest Farming Period in Eurasia built on the symposium on ‘Dwelling in Temporal Perspective’ that had been sponsored by the IAS in 2008. Situated within Archaeology, the conference considered whether the identification of the ‘house’ as a ‘home’ was a key feature of Holocene societies at the transition from foraging to farming in Eurasia.
The ‘Being Human’ year had a significant impact on areas of public health and wellbeing. This was sustained at an international conference on Death, Dying and Disposal. Organised by Durham’s Centre for Life and Death Studies, this brought together two hundred participants from a variety of disciplines. It featured the launch of a new Association for the Study of Death in Society, which will ensure that insights from the Arts and Humanities complement our medical response to death in developed societies.
Making similar connections between medical and personal approaches to human wellbeing, Marilyn Strathern, a 2009-10 Distinguished Fellow, found her work well-placed under the demands of her new appointment to the chair of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics Working Party. Her Fellowship enabled her to undertake preparatory study in this area, whilst she also concluded a research project on International Science and Bioethics Collaborations which was conducted jointly between Durham, Cambridge and Sussex. New biological sciences and medical treatments bring with them complex philosophical questions which can be answered most adequately in interdisciplinary ways.
Similar themes of rights and values can be extended beyond water into other areas of real-life policy. As a life peer, Baroness Helena Kennedy sits in the House of Lords and participates on issues concerned with human rights, civil liberties, social justice and culture. She delivered the second Annual King Hussein Memorial Lecture in Cultural Dialogue, which offers a reflection on intercultural dialogue and learning, on ‘Democracy, Liberty, Human Rights: Universal Panaceas or Western Constructs?’
Baroness Helena Kennedy’s lecture on human rights can be viewed at:
www.durham.ac.uk/ias/events/culturaldialoguelecture/2009
Reflections
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