Oxford Association for Women in Science & Engineering
The Oxford Association for Women in Science and Engineering (AWiSE) is a support network for women in science and technology as well as reaching out into the wider community to show that women can do science successfully and with great enjoyment.
Activities
Next Event
Dorothy Hodgkin Memorial Lecture 2025
Dorothy Hodgkin received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, acknowledging her work on the structures of Vitamin B12, penicillin and insulin, using xray crystallography.
She remains the only British woman to have been awarded a Nobel Prize in science.
date: Tueday 4th March 2025
time: 5.30pm
venue: Flora Anderson Hall, Somerville College, Woodstock Road, Oxford, OX2 6HD
speaker: Dr Areej Abuhammad, University of Jordon. Winner of the 2024 Suffrage Science Award.
Building Bridges in Science: A Journey Inspired by Dorothy Hodgkin’s Legacy. This lecture commemorates 80 years since Dorothy Hodgkin’s groundbreaking determination of Penicillin’s structure.
Please Register to Attend: https://www.some.ox.ac.uk/news-events/event/dorothy-hodgkin-memorial-lecture-2025-professor-areej-abuhammad/
Part of the Oxford International Women's Festival.
WOMEN SPEAKING OUT
Friday 28th February — Monday 10th March 2025
Dorothy Hodgkin Memorial Lectures
These lectures celebrate the achievements of Dorothy Hodgkin (1910 - 1994), UK's only woman Nobel Laureate (1964) in Chemistry. They are held annually, usually in March.
The Lecture was originally set up by Anne Mobbs in 1998 as part of the The Oxford International Women's Festival.
The event is supported by Oxford AWiSE (who are responsible for organising and publicising the lecture), Somerville College (where Dorothy Hodgkin was a student and tutor) and in the past, Oxford University Museum of Natural History (where she pursued much of her research).
List of all Dorothy Hodgkin Memorial Lectures
Click to see reports of the lectures.
Professor Louise Johnson, "Dorothy Hodgkin and penicillin" , 4/3/99.
Professor Judith Howard, "The Interface of Chemistry and Biology Increasingly in Focus" , 13/3/00.
Professor Jenny Glusker, "Vitamin B12 and Dorothy: Their impact on structural science", 15/05/01.
Professor Pauline Harrison CBE, ''From Crystallography to Metals, Metabolism and Medicine'', 05/03/02.
Dr Claire Naylor, "Pathogenic Proteins : how bacterial agents cause disease'', 04/03/03.
Dr Margaret Adams, "A Piece in the Jigsaw: G6PD – The protein behind an hereditary disease", 09/03/04.
Dr. Margaret Rayman, "Selenium in cancer prevention", 10/03/05.
Dr Elena Conti, "Making sense of nonsense: structural studies of RNA degradation and disease", 09/03/06.
Professor Jenny Martin, "The name's Bond - Disulphide Bond", 06/03/07.
Professor E. Yvonne Jones, "Postcards from the surface: The Structural Biology of Cell-Cell Communication", 04/03/08.
Professor Pamela J. Bjorkman, "Your mother's antibodies: How you get them and how we might improve them to combat HIV", 11/03/09.
Professor Elspeth Garman, "Crystallography one century A.D. (after Dorothy)", 9/03/10.
Professor Eleanor Dodson, "Mathematics in the Service of Crystallography", 10/03/11.
Professor Susan Lea, "Bacterial secretion systems - using structure to build towards new therapeutic opportunities", 05/03/13.
Professor Carol Robinson, "Finding the Right Balance", 11/03/14.
Professor Petra Fromme, "A New Era in Structural Biology", 12/03/15.
Professor Kay Davies, "Therapy for Duchenne muscular dystrophy: time for optimism", 4/03/16.
Professor Dame Janet Thornton, "From Molecules to Medicine ", 10/03/17.
Professor Veronique Gouverneur, "Fabulous Fluorine", 06/03/18.
Professor Katherine Blundell, "Black Holes and spinoffs", 06/03/19.
Professor Dame Julia Higgins "Seeing is Believing", 04/03/21.
Dr Pippa Wells "What has particle physics ever done for me?", 01/03/22.
Professor Julia Yeomans " Nature's Engines: Powering Life ", 09/03/23.
Professor Irene Tracey "Seeing Pain: A Window on the Human Brain through Neuroimaging" , 08/03/24.
Oxford Science Lecture Series / Other activities
We also run a general lecture series featuring prominent women researchers from all areas of science and technology. A list of all the lectures held so far is given below. Other activities include occasional social events and discussion meetings.
Previous lectures
Professor Susan Greenfield, "How does the brain generate consciousness?", 4/12/96.
Professor Jocelyn Bell Burnell, "Pulsar Puzzles" , 13/3/97.
Anne Leeming, "Preparing for IT's next surprise" , 15/5/97.
Professor Kay Davies, "Challenges of Muscular Dystrophy" , 24/11/97.
Professor Wendy Savage, "Are there limits to reproductive choice?" , 5/3/98.
Dr Jackie Akhavan, "The Chemistry of Fireworks" (sponsored jointly with the Oxford Trust), 24/6/98.
Professor Ann Dowling, "Singing Flames that Break... Power Stations and Jet Engines", 15/10/98.
Dr Valerie Noyes, "The Secret Life of the Humble Proton", 19/11/98.
Dr Helen Mason, "The Dynamic Sun" (sponsored jointly with the Oxford Trust), 30/6/99.
Ruth MacDonald, "Climate Studies from 1860 - 2100: Is our climate really changing?" (sponsored jointly with the Oxford University Museum of Natural History ), 28/10/99.
Dr Jenny Cory, "Environmentally acceptable insecticides: are GMOs an option?", (sponsored jointly with the Oxford University Museum of Natural History ), 2/12/99.
Professor Sue Roaf and Dr Anne Wheldon, "What will life be like in 2050?", (sponsored jointly with the Oxford Trust), 21/6/00.
Dr Marion Wooldridge, "From fear of flying to risky shift - approaches to risk in an uncertain world", 19/10/00.
Louise Allen, "The Pulling Power of Plants", 7/12/00.
Professor Julia King, "Powering a better world: clean, versatile gas-turbine power for the 21st century", 2/3/01.
Dr Jill Urban, "Cartilage and your joints - from cradle to grave", 4/12/01.
Dr Angela McLean ''Where did BSE come from, and where is scrapie going?'', sponsored by GlaxoSmithKline, 22/01/02.
Dr Angela Gallop, ''Forensic Science: Principles and Practice'', (sponsored jointly with the Oxford Trust), 27/06/02.
Dr Sarah Gurr, "GM Plants: A Golden Harvest?", 31/10/02.
Dr Catherine Hobbs, "Unlocking the Mystery of Secret Codes", 05/12/02.
Janet Thorn, "Cafe Science (or you are what you eat)", (sponsored jointly with the Oxford Trust), 26/06/03.
Email List
Oxford AWiSE has an e-mail list you can subscribe to in order to receive information about local and national activities, job advertisements and other relevant information.
To subscribe to awise@maillist.ox.ac.uk
email to:
awise-subscribe@maillist.ox.ac.uk
saying: subscribe awise
Committee
Dr. Pushpalata Chaure ptchaure@gmail.com
Prof. Carolyn Carr carolyn.carr@dpag.ox.ac.uk
Dr. Yasmin Robson yrobson1@yahoo.com
Prof. Catherine Hobbs catherine.hobbs@coventry.ac.uk