Issue 19, 2013 - Balliol College - University of Oxford

college news
The Balliol Interdisciplinary Institute
Since its founding under the Mastership of Andrew Graham in
September 2010, the Balliol Interdisciplinary Institute (BII) has
supported 13 innovative research projects initiated and led by Balliol
members. Some of the early projects have now been completed, and
we are very pleased with the significant contributions which these
projects have made to Balliol’s research agenda.
Eight exciting projects are on-going as
this issue of Floreat Domus goes off
to the printers, ranging from the
dynamic network analysis to
the science of international
treaty design.
In issue no. 17 of Floreat
Domus, we reported about
three exciting new projects
funded by the BII. One
research strand began
life as a seminar run by
Professor Denis Noble
and Dr Eric Werner,
and, led by them and
two other founder
members, Professor
Tom Melham and
Professor Jonathan Bard,
has sought to sharpen the
‘Conceptual Foundations
of Systems Biology’,
connecting molecular
biology with computer
science, physics, and indeed
philosophy. The group’s seminars
were motivated by the observation
that, for all the recent advances on the
technical problems of systems biology,
the basic conceptual foundations of the field
were far from clear. Their findings have been
summarised in a focused issue of Progress in
Biophysics and Molecular Biology, due to be
published later this year.
The ‘Duty of Care in Finance’ strand
investigated the possibilities of reforming the
financial system by increasing self-regulation
rather than tightening the external
regulatory structure. A series of seminars
on this topic, spanning two terms, brought
together philosophers, lawyers, historians,
and economists to consider behavioural
aspects of the problems in the financial
services industry that led to the Global
Financial Crisis. The key question addressed
– whether unhealthy attitudes and incentives
could be resolved by recently proposed
regulatory and structural changes – attracted
large audiences from the College and
beyond. The project leader, Professor David
Vines, is currently preparing the manuscript
coming out of the seminars for publication.
The third project, convened by Dr Sophie
Marnette, has explored the complementary
roles of formal quantitative models,
qualitative metaphors, and rational myths in
understanding the socio-political-economic
determinants of the ‘Evolution of Business
Ecosystems’. Such an interdisciplinary
approach is immensely useful – to name but
one topical example – in explaining how
some firms have come to adopt a stakeholder
approach, whilst others seek to maximise
stockholder wealth.
Other projects have focused
on providing new platforms for
intellectual activity at Balliol.
One seminar series, led by Dr
Maria Donapetry, a Lecturer
at Balliol, has explored the role
of ethics and particularly the
concept of complicity in cinema.
The seminar group has been
meeting every fortnight and has
greatly contributed to the range of
interdisciplinary discussion going
on at Balliol.
The BII’s funds have also
allowed one of Balliol’s graduate
students, Will Clegg (2010), to
convene a seminar series on
a variety of themes in global
and transnational history. This group’s
seminars have been extremely well attended
and proved very stimulating for attending
The BII’s funding
of innovative
and potentially
high-impact
research projects
has begun to fill
the void left by
discipline-specific
funding bodies
at the university
level.
historians, economists, and geographers
from across the University. The seminar
series will culminate in a one-day
conference in May 2013, which will host
more than 40 graduate students from
universities in the UK and beyond.
Two new projects have been initiated
in Hilary Term 2013. One of these projects
will organise a series of interdisciplinary
discussions about the privacy of
genomic information and ways of
preventing the inappropriate
dissemination of such
information, which could
have significant adverse
impacts on personal
lives. These discussions
will bring together
specialists in genetics
and medicine as
well as in law
and ethics.
The second
new project aims
to implement a
‘mobile health’
system in a local
community in
Guatemala to
improve the efficacy
of oral rehydration
therapies to prevent
the deaths of children
from diarrhoea. The
researchers will seek to
identify cultural, educational,
and technological factors which
influence the under-utilisation
of oral rehydration therapy. The
project will provide a novel intersection
between social behavioural studies, clinical
healthcare, mobile telecommunications,
and information engineering to address this
medical challenge.
The BII has made considerable
progress in providing the College
community with important avenues into
interdisciplinary research. The
BII’s funding of innovative
and potentially high-impact
research projects has begun to
fill the void left by disciplinespecific
funding bodies at the
university level. Our support of
Balliol’s researchers and their
collaborators would not be
possible without the funding
that has been made available
by very generous donations
from Old Members.
For more information on the
BII’s activities, please explore
our pages on the Balliol website
at www.balliol.ox.ac.uk/BII. If
you would like to follow any of
the current projects in more detail, please
contact the relevant lead investigator or
email bii@balliol.ox.ac.uk.
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