1 00:00:00,240 --> 00:00:05,310 When the Oxford got psychology and vice versa. 2 00:00:05,310 --> 00:00:17,220 Well, the first official time was in 1898 with the appointment of the first world professor Jeff Stout. 3 00:00:17,220 --> 00:00:26,430 Now if you try to read stuff before anything, he wrote before he came to Oxford, 4 00:00:26,430 --> 00:00:36,120 it's clear that this was a move by the philosophers to get psychology in through the back door. 5 00:00:36,120 --> 00:00:42,600 Stout on the Herbert Johanna Sjoberg in Germany is almost unintelligible. 6 00:00:42,600 --> 00:00:54,270 However, when he came to Oxford, he actually wrote a book called Manual of Psychology and in it is full of extreme, 7 00:00:54,270 --> 00:00:58,920 interesting work on after images colour vision. 8 00:00:58,920 --> 00:01:07,170 He obviously was a very devoted scholar and devoted to the subject. 9 00:01:07,170 --> 00:01:14,700 Whether Henry Wilde himself would have approved this is another question. 10 00:01:14,700 --> 00:01:22,590 Henry Wilde was the one who established the readership, and the university accepted it, 11 00:01:22,590 --> 00:01:28,140 notwithstanding the conditions that he done on the road to conditions. 12 00:01:28,140 --> 00:01:35,940 The reader shall, from time to time, would lecture on the illusions and delusions which are instant to the human mind. 13 00:01:35,940 --> 00:01:45,000 He should also lecture as far as may be practicable on the psychology of the lower races of mankind, lower races of mankind, 14 00:01:45,000 --> 00:01:58,350 as illustrated by the various fetish objects in the Anthropological Museum of the University and other universities. 15 00:01:58,350 --> 00:02:00,450 Now, 16 00:02:00,450 --> 00:02:13,680 one of the reasons the world might have been unhappy about stouts appointment and it became successively unhappy about other appointments as well, 17 00:02:13,680 --> 00:02:21,990 was that Cambridge had established an appointment at Lectureship in Psychology. 18 00:02:21,990 --> 00:02:29,760 Wilde had ex had explicitly said no experimental work should go on in psychology. 19 00:02:29,760 --> 00:02:36,900 None. And he was very insistent that that be maintained. 20 00:02:36,900 --> 00:02:53,320 Now. The job at Cambridge, The Lectureship was in experimental psychology and physiology of the senses. 21 00:02:53,320 --> 00:02:59,230 And they appointed W.H.O. our rivers to that post. 22 00:02:59,230 --> 00:03:06,220 Simultaneously, he held an appointment of a new CEO and came in Oxford. 23 00:03:06,220 --> 00:03:19,600 But you can see the world might have actually considered Cambridge experimental psychology as part of the lower races of mankind. 24 00:03:19,600 --> 00:03:24,310 Rivers became eminent as a neurologist. 25 00:03:24,310 --> 00:03:37,360 He was a physician, psychiatrist, psychologist, and then he went off, became an anthropologist and went to tourist trade expedition in New Guinea. 26 00:03:37,360 --> 00:03:48,340 He took McDougall with him. McDougall then became the second wild reader. 27 00:03:48,340 --> 00:03:55,990 Wild was still alive, and McDougall was an inveterate experimenter. 28 00:03:55,990 --> 00:04:08,080 We have some of his equipment, some some of the examples of the starting experiments of McDougall used to study fatigue and attention and so forth. 29 00:04:08,080 --> 00:04:20,200 He did a lot of work. He wrote several textbooks. He was probably of one of the six most influential psychologists in the world at the time. 30 00:04:20,200 --> 00:04:29,630 Nevertheless, Wild tried to get him sacked because he was experimenter. 31 00:04:29,630 --> 00:04:35,390 And you can see the interesting correspondence between the vice chancellor and wild, 32 00:04:35,390 --> 00:04:46,880 which Corinne has put on the display cabinet there of the university didn't sack with two, 33 00:04:46,880 --> 00:04:52,670 but it didn't treat MacDougall all that well in other respects. 34 00:04:52,670 --> 00:04:58,280 He had no room. He had no college connexion. 35 00:04:58,280 --> 00:05:04,730 He borrowed space from physiology, but put his own name, put it up on the door. 36 00:05:04,730 --> 00:05:09,770 Department of Psycho Physics, I think he called it. 37 00:05:09,770 --> 00:05:18,130 Then he went off and did quite important work on selection during the First World War returned to Oxford. 38 00:05:18,130 --> 00:05:26,690 The physiologist wouldn't give him the space back. So are you going to talk to a very disgruntled state? 39 00:05:26,690 --> 00:05:29,270 Oh, it's great loss to Oxford. 40 00:05:29,270 --> 00:05:39,860 But some might say in retrospect he wasn't very happy at Harvard either, which is where we went and only stayed there for a year. 41 00:05:39,860 --> 00:05:51,830 He was unhappy with Harvard's plumbing system. And then he went to what in America is called Duke University, which here is called Duke University. 42 00:05:51,830 --> 00:06:00,260 And then he became interested in schools in parapsychology. 43 00:06:00,260 --> 00:06:14,570 So I say he was stopped was followed by MacDougall, who in turn was followed by William Brown. 44 00:06:14,570 --> 00:06:29,780 1920, by which time Wilde had died the year before now, Brown himself was interested in clinical psychology. 45 00:06:29,780 --> 00:06:36,890 And it turned out to have very great benefit to Oxford and in an indirect way. 46 00:06:36,890 --> 00:06:41,090 But of. 47 00:06:41,090 --> 00:06:55,300 He's he wrote in 1933, I think it was Oxford is the only great university in the world which still has no laboratory and experimental psychology. 48 00:06:55,300 --> 00:07:09,230 That was true. Well, one of his patients was Mrs, who was. 49 00:07:09,230 --> 00:07:19,140 And the year after he wrote that this is what's. Sends a check to the university for ten thousand pounds. 50 00:07:19,140 --> 00:07:23,620 It just came as a check without any return address. 51 00:07:23,620 --> 00:07:31,260 An envelope from a London hotel. No legal ramifications. 52 00:07:31,260 --> 00:07:40,140 Whatever it is, he's so envious that our outlook on keeping up with the threat. 53 00:07:40,140 --> 00:07:54,940 Well, the university was sufficiently embarrassed by this that it set up an institute of experimental psychology on the following year. 54 00:07:54,940 --> 00:08:06,190 Some years later, when the university created the second chair, we thought of right to name the chair after Mrs. Walsh. 55 00:08:06,190 --> 00:08:10,090 The question is how do we actually track her down? 56 00:08:10,090 --> 00:08:21,250 So we put an ad in these in the times to members of the Watts family, and indeed we did find some and they were delighted. 57 00:08:21,250 --> 00:08:28,970 And one of them actually came to the official opening of the new the new building. 58 00:08:28,970 --> 00:08:34,420 Mm-Hmm. Now. 59 00:08:34,420 --> 00:08:58,320 Brown was succeeded by William Stephenson, and there's some Kareena's has a quote from the Stevenson there with his assistant, Oliver Zango. 60 00:08:58,320 --> 00:09:05,580 Well, that's it still remains the case. 61 00:09:05,580 --> 00:09:18,630 As Brown had written, that Oxford had no experimental psychology of it, didn't have a school of psychology either, 62 00:09:18,630 --> 00:09:30,920 but there were a series of very contentious debates and confrontation which eventually led to the establishment of people. 63 00:09:30,920 --> 00:09:35,300 That's psychology with one of the other two pillars. 64 00:09:35,300 --> 00:09:43,010 Heaven forbid, if both things could get in one or the other. 65 00:09:43,010 --> 00:09:48,480 Still, it was something of. 66 00:09:48,480 --> 00:10:06,210 Now, it's often, said the Gilbert Royal, who wrote a book which was influential at the time concept of mind was as a very ardent opposer of people. 67 00:10:06,210 --> 00:10:17,730 All I can say is that I got to know him reasonably well when I joined, when I came to Oxford and he was an enthusiastic supporter of psychology. 68 00:10:17,730 --> 00:10:39,100 And he used to come to the institute as it was to attend seminars and practical courses and so forth. 69 00:10:39,100 --> 00:10:45,610 Now, because of a fluke, I cannot put it any other way. 70 00:10:45,610 --> 00:10:54,310 I ended up in Oxford as a student in 1949. I hadn't intended to come as a student. 71 00:10:54,310 --> 00:11:03,610 I had had a fellowship from my home university that took me to anywhere in the world that I wanted for one year that if they approved it and I said, 72 00:11:03,610 --> 00:11:09,280 I think I'd like to go to Oxford, amongst other places. 73 00:11:09,280 --> 00:11:24,850 And so I wrote to the then professor, the first professor, George Humphrey, and said, Can I have some research space in the institute? 74 00:11:24,850 --> 00:11:28,960 And he met me. He said, Well, I have to find out more about you. 75 00:11:28,960 --> 00:11:35,920 Of course, he came back with a broad grin on his face a few weeks later when he called me to meet him. 76 00:11:35,920 --> 00:11:49,180 He said I sent a cable to Wolfgang Kurwa, who was one of my teachers at Swarthmore College, has replied, Watch crunches, OK. 77 00:11:49,180 --> 00:12:06,030 So. It still remains the case even after P.P.P, and now I'm quoting Browne again in any university of the world, 78 00:12:06,030 --> 00:12:16,830 except Oxford psychology may be taken as a separate subject and examinations are set in that subject. 79 00:12:16,830 --> 00:12:23,130 Well, I came to Oxford in 1967. I had asked for any background on this subject. 80 00:12:23,130 --> 00:12:31,560 The registrar sent me a mountain of material. This has been debated for some years in the sub faculty. 81 00:12:31,560 --> 00:12:36,810 So we pursued it and it was a tough job. 82 00:12:36,810 --> 00:12:42,810 We had 13 committees, one for each paper and a coordinating committee. 83 00:12:42,810 --> 00:12:55,710 It took a few years. Several people were very active in establishing what we hope to become the single schools of local tradesmen. 84 00:12:55,710 --> 00:13:06,660 Geoffrey Grey was especially important. Michael Orcollo and tradesmen several people. 85 00:13:06,660 --> 00:13:10,890 And then came the crunch time the general board said. 86 00:13:10,890 --> 00:13:15,540 If the philosophers approve it, we can go ahead. 87 00:13:15,540 --> 00:13:24,270 So we then had to meet the philosophers and David McFarland and I agreed to go talk to the 88 00:13:24,270 --> 00:13:33,840 philosophies of faculty to persuade them that this was not a threat to the PPP would still continue. 89 00:13:33,840 --> 00:13:43,530 Fortunately, I was late to the meeting and so was Michael Dommett, 90 00:13:43,530 --> 00:13:50,490 and we met each other outside the faculty book and we had a good chat before we went in. 91 00:13:50,490 --> 00:14:01,410 He said, I'm with you. And Michael Dummett was a very influential philosopher of the time, who was perhaps a happy coincidence. 92 00:14:01,410 --> 00:14:17,330 So finally, in 1969, a single school was established and it was inaugurated in 1970. 93 00:14:17,330 --> 00:14:27,350 Now, the old institute was that there had been an old school building on Bhambri Road. 94 00:14:27,350 --> 00:14:37,100 The first professor, George Humphrey, had the salubrious accommodation of an outside lavatory for his office. 95 00:14:37,100 --> 00:14:49,430 There was a height of the park, which had six small rooms, of which I was given one by George Humphrey over Zango had another. 96 00:14:49,430 --> 00:14:54,680 So forth and so on. Bernard Babington Smith had another. 97 00:14:54,680 --> 00:15:03,650 The workshop had one, and we were given very, very severe instructions. 98 00:15:03,650 --> 00:15:15,740 The workshop must close down and all noise must cease on Thursday afternoons because that's when Bernard Babington Smith does his tutorials, 99 00:15:15,740 --> 00:15:24,380 and that was rigidly enforced and rigorously enforced. 100 00:15:24,380 --> 00:15:35,030 There was a single room for teaching practical classes and other single room, which was the office, 101 00:15:35,030 --> 00:15:45,810 and it had the bust of McDougall, which we still have in the new building of. 102 00:15:45,810 --> 00:15:55,350 And the then wild professor, wild breeder Brian Farrell also had a room, 103 00:15:55,350 --> 00:16:09,130 and the wild breeder has always been connected with psychology, it's always been as it were a gift from Wu-Tang to two of them. 104 00:16:09,130 --> 00:16:20,910 Anyway, in the mid 1960s, there was a move to another building one South Parkes Road with nice large Victorian building, 105 00:16:20,910 --> 00:16:31,940 with some hops out of the back and so forth and so on. This was this was before the age of. 106 00:16:31,940 --> 00:16:36,650 Shall we say, enthusiastic health and safety, 107 00:16:36,650 --> 00:16:46,040 because I was stationed on the top for the only way you could reach my office was through a narrow staircase, 108 00:16:46,040 --> 00:16:56,410 and I started to wonder what would happen if there were a fire next door to me was due to the singer who. 109 00:16:56,410 --> 00:17:08,290 The secretary, she always came in with three dogs. So I got in touch with the surveyor, is there some way in which we can have a of fire escape? 110 00:17:08,290 --> 00:17:10,840 And to my delight, they came. 111 00:17:10,840 --> 00:17:33,700 They attach a rope from my window, which I climbed down and I wondered about Judith and her three dogs escaping the fire when I came in. 112 00:17:33,700 --> 00:17:45,100 Nineteen sixty seven. As professor the I went, of course, to that building, as I've just said. 113 00:17:45,100 --> 00:17:49,040 But the plans for the new building were already well established. 114 00:17:49,040 --> 00:17:55,830 The foundations have been dug and so forth and so on. 115 00:17:55,830 --> 00:18:11,730 And we finally moved into the new building in 1971. But what I remember richly about that whole period, even before I became a professor, 116 00:18:11,730 --> 00:18:22,470 the number of really outstanding visitors we had to the department with Chomsky's Skinner with this toy was used to spend lots of time here. 117 00:18:22,470 --> 00:18:32,250 George M. Carr, Preben, King Solomon Asch, social psychologist, came very often. 118 00:18:32,250 --> 00:18:40,800 He used to spend his summers in Oxford for the two Gibsons, Jemmy and Eleanor, both for her. 119 00:18:40,800 --> 00:18:45,780 It seemed to be a favourite place for people to retire into Jay-Z, Young wrote to have said. 120 00:18:45,780 --> 00:18:54,000 Could he retire into our department? We were delighted. 10 Bergen also asked if he could come. 121 00:18:54,000 --> 00:19:01,960 David Whitford asked if he could come, and we accepted all of these and many others. 122 00:19:01,960 --> 00:19:17,490 Plus Donald Broadbent, Margaret Broadbent, Bert Rosner, Reuben Konrad Donald had been director of the pew in Cambridge. 123 00:19:17,490 --> 00:19:24,030 He not only came with Margaret. He also brought Konrad, who was his deputy. 124 00:19:24,030 --> 00:19:37,560 Susanna Miller was here for many years. Still is Cathy Park's Jane Melinda, however, Petrovich and Parker and so forth and so on. 125 00:19:37,560 --> 00:19:46,560 First watch Professor Jerry Bruner came and he opened up the department to Developmental Child Interests, 126 00:19:46,560 --> 00:19:57,170 and Gordon College, who was appointed as a lecturer, provided a bridge to clinical studies. 127 00:19:57,170 --> 00:20:12,020 I just want to say one other thing about how things have changed out of all recognition in the general background, 128 00:20:12,020 --> 00:20:27,920 when I and my colleagues were here from sixty seven for the next 20, 30 years, the NRC was extremely proactive. 129 00:20:27,920 --> 00:20:36,070 You wouldn't believe just how proactive they were from current. 130 00:20:36,070 --> 00:20:44,410 Behaviour they when we apply for a research grant, they said, oh, well, there's several people working in her department. 131 00:20:44,410 --> 00:20:48,460 Let's have a research group. So we did. 132 00:20:48,460 --> 00:20:53,560 They had a site visit as they head for site visits. 133 00:20:53,560 --> 00:20:58,120 They wrote to the university, said we'd like to take over was friends for two years. 134 00:20:58,120 --> 00:21:03,380 They hadn't told me about this. University refused in the first instance. 135 00:21:03,380 --> 00:21:08,200 They said, we never will professor. But in fact, they did eventually agree. 136 00:21:08,200 --> 00:21:14,140 And people took it in turns much more important. 137 00:21:14,140 --> 00:21:21,390 The MRC established interdisciplinary research groups. 138 00:21:21,390 --> 00:21:32,990 Not only for psychology, but for anatomy, physiology, different people working together in what you might call neuroscience. 139 00:21:32,990 --> 00:21:40,380 Interesting, paused and we got one. 140 00:21:40,380 --> 00:21:45,960 We had to discuss it with heads of physiology, pharmacology, anatomy, neurology. 141 00:21:45,960 --> 00:21:52,860 So we're with Kaufman in nineteen fifty two point one million pounds for over seven years. 142 00:21:52,860 --> 00:22:02,250 And Alan Curry, chair of the. And then later the McDonald Foundation, became interested in for a similar thing. 143 00:22:02,250 --> 00:22:08,400 Now, the MRC today, just you could not imagine them doing anything like that. 144 00:22:08,400 --> 00:22:16,380 And it was very important for the history of psychology that they had a particular I know I 145 00:22:16,380 --> 00:22:29,370 just want to finish on of what I think might be the morality tale of when I was interested, 146 00:22:29,370 --> 00:22:44,250 when I had considered coming to Oxford, I wasn't sure whether I wanted to come as Professor Baldwin offered hospitality to me to want to come over. 147 00:22:44,250 --> 00:22:48,360 Will you use the restroom? We will show you. 148 00:22:48,360 --> 00:22:52,210 You can have a look around and get some sense of what it is. 149 00:22:52,210 --> 00:22:58,050 As you can see what college it is, you'll be attached to it. 150 00:22:58,050 --> 00:23:02,370 So I accepted the vice president showed me around. 151 00:23:02,370 --> 00:23:08,780 It was Brian Lloyd, in fact a physiologist and. 152 00:23:08,780 --> 00:23:14,960 He then pointed out to me as he showed me the various sites and modelling. 153 00:23:14,960 --> 00:23:21,020 This is where breakfast takes place within the senior common room. 154 00:23:21,020 --> 00:23:26,900 So I do remember that and I had the night in the guest room and I came the following 155 00:23:26,900 --> 00:23:37,640 morning to breakfast and I saw around the circular table in the centre of the room. 156 00:23:37,640 --> 00:23:48,660 Still, there are simply a wall of newspapers. 157 00:23:48,660 --> 00:23:53,430 Well, I sat down, I didn't see anybody. 158 00:23:53,430 --> 00:24:05,190 I took my plate, put cereal in it, and I was about to put what I thought was sugar in the most cereal and behind a newspaper, a voice said. 159 00:24:05,190 --> 00:24:18,030 That's so true now. Now that's a morality tale because salt is spicy, especially if as an open wound. 160 00:24:18,030 --> 00:24:30,780 It's nutritious, but not sweet. But it also. 161 00:24:30,780 --> 00:24:37,320 Describes those of your colleagues who are salt of the Earth for a minute, 162 00:24:37,320 --> 00:24:44,880 and I think and it also means that you're being observed more or less continuously. 163 00:24:44,880 --> 00:24:49,720 I think that's the story of Oxford from 1918 98. 164 00:24:49,720 --> 00:25:00,180 I think that's the sort that's been there from the beginning, right? 165 00:25:00,180 --> 00:25:05,730 Thank you, Larry. There was a lot of a lot of things I didn't know and nothing. 166 00:25:05,730 --> 00:25:12,240 And speaking of the salt of the Earth and a maudlin, I don't know whether maudlin bargains for it, 167 00:25:12,240 --> 00:25:18,120 but pretty soon I think there will be for holders of the chair of psychology, kick around maudlin college. 168 00:25:18,120 --> 00:25:24,750 And I hope they don't see that as three too many. 169 00:25:24,750 --> 00:25:31,080 I could see some three phases of the history of the department or the history of psychology at Oxford, I should say. 170 00:25:31,080 --> 00:25:37,620 The first is this long struggle for legitimacy, which Rich Lowry has told you quite a lot about. 171 00:25:37,620 --> 00:25:45,990 And you can see the letter there from Wild Rice, a grumpily from Alderley Edge because it give it out to address wild outrage, 172 00:25:45,990 --> 00:25:56,520 saying how MacDougall was not a proper holder of the charity endowed because psychology was only a lower branch of mental philosophy. 173 00:25:56,520 --> 00:26:03,690 That struggle went on a long time of like the last decade is probably still going on when Larry arrived. 174 00:26:03,690 --> 00:26:10,320 But the second that was the second phase, which was the development of the department, the astonishing development of the parliament. 175 00:26:10,320 --> 00:26:18,120 I think from the from the outside lavatory on the Banbury Road to the to the building on the corner and not just obviously the building, 176 00:26:18,120 --> 00:26:26,460 but the range of activities that have gone on in it. The collection of outstanding scientists who work there. 177 00:26:26,460 --> 00:26:33,380 And Larry's been rather modest in his description of that phase, which clearly must be very much his his doing. 178 00:26:33,380 --> 00:26:37,520 It's I agree it must have been nice that to do that in a phase when the expansion of 179 00:26:37,520 --> 00:26:43,700 the universities was a sort of public public cliche and Robin's report was going on, 180 00:26:43,700 --> 00:26:51,470 everyone thought there should be more students, better, better, better, better resourced and so on and so on. 181 00:26:51,470 --> 00:27:01,470 I. I regret that if now Judge Gibson job skills schedule turned up and said, can I spend a few months in department? 182 00:27:01,470 --> 00:27:07,650 My administration would say, Well, we pay x pounds per square metre for the university, you know? 183 00:27:07,650 --> 00:27:11,040 So there were there were there were words of respect. 184 00:27:11,040 --> 00:27:19,560 Happier times. Nonetheless, Larry's must have had considerable will and energy efficiency in essentially creating the department as it now is. 185 00:27:19,560 --> 00:27:25,770 And so the third phase is, I guess, consolidating those gains, taking new opportunities as they come. 186 00:27:25,770 --> 00:27:32,190 But within the framework, which I think was very much laid down in the in the seventies, eighties and nineties. 187 00:27:32,190 --> 00:27:40,410 So what was laid down was first, that psychology at Oxford was I was a broad department. 188 00:27:40,410 --> 00:27:47,100 It had pre-eminent strengths in brain and behaviour and in cognitive psychology clearly, but was always part of the mission. 189 00:27:47,100 --> 00:27:52,290 It wasn't sometimes, but unfortunately cold, hard side psychology. 190 00:27:52,290 --> 00:27:59,700 In that respect, it has and work of international policy and developments ever since the appointment. 191 00:27:59,700 --> 00:28:04,710 It brings us to the Watts chair and in social psychology for a long time. 192 00:28:04,710 --> 00:28:08,310 And also in in the area of abnormal psychology, psychological disorders. 193 00:28:08,310 --> 00:28:12,600 Now that's a field which I think has waxed and waned or gone through twists and turns 194 00:28:12,600 --> 00:28:18,240 because of the complexities of relationship involved with with other agencies, other departments. 195 00:28:18,240 --> 00:28:29,910 And so that's been rather an uneven trajectory. But that's well, I hope we'll hear shortly that that aspect is definitely going to be airborne. 196 00:28:29,910 --> 00:28:37,590 So part of part of that phase was the establishment of the final on a school in experimental psychology that Larry's alluded to. 197 00:28:37,590 --> 00:28:49,920 Supplementing CBT in psychology was a subject you could take on its own as a as a full core discipline. 198 00:28:49,920 --> 00:28:53,370 John Hall sent me an email in which he discovered, 199 00:28:53,370 --> 00:28:59,190 rather than probably in the in the waiting room of a restaurant and where on a copy of the handbook to the 200 00:28:59,190 --> 00:29:09,210 University of Oxford in 1951 that had a simple explanation of what the psychology of what PGP was about. 201 00:29:09,210 --> 00:29:15,780 And it said the Honours P School was a rigorous. Some have said, rather severe training in psychology. 202 00:29:15,780 --> 00:29:20,850 Well, I hope we're still rigorous. I'm not sure whether it's to our credit if we're severe. 203 00:29:20,850 --> 00:29:27,960 It also said good psychologist must be, in the broadest sense, a humanist and at the same time, he significant price down. 204 00:29:27,960 --> 00:29:33,690 He must have a first hand knowledge of the experimental and statistical methods which wealth and psychology is built, 205 00:29:33,690 --> 00:29:39,030 and also said that Oxford was comparatively late in giving full recognition to the study of psychology. 206 00:29:39,030 --> 00:29:46,140 Partly, perhaps because of the feeling that students might be attracted to it for the wrong reasons. 207 00:29:46,140 --> 00:29:48,420 Well, we're attracting excellent students. 208 00:29:48,420 --> 00:29:55,740 I'm not sure what reasons they're coming from, but I hope they go out with the right reasons, whatever they came in with. 209 00:29:55,740 --> 00:30:01,710 And I think from the current perspective, rather than saying I'm not sure what it means to be in the broad sense of humanness, 210 00:30:01,710 --> 00:30:05,820 but I'd like to think of psychology as a predominantly a liberal science education. 211 00:30:05,820 --> 00:30:09,270 That is, it takes people. It gives them a scientific perspective. 212 00:30:09,270 --> 00:30:18,300 It gives us a scientific perspective on human beings and thereby the educated have it at a critical, 213 00:30:18,300 --> 00:30:26,220 systematic and a quantitative approach to human problems, as well as the psychology, the practise of psychology in a more specific sense. 214 00:30:26,220 --> 00:30:32,000 So I hope that what we're doing is generating. Practising psychologists, researchers and professionals of high order, 215 00:30:32,000 --> 00:30:40,490 but also training a lot of people to go out there and apply across a very wide range of activities. 216 00:30:40,490 --> 00:30:46,010 What they've learnt about how human beings can be understood systematically, 217 00:30:46,010 --> 00:30:53,450 how they can be investigated, how behaviour is a proper subject for empirical critical analysis. 218 00:30:53,450 --> 00:30:58,010 I also hope that what we bring to the students now and I think have throughout the 219 00:30:58,010 --> 00:31:01,970 history of psychology at Oxford is the idea that this is an outward looking discipline. 220 00:31:01,970 --> 00:31:08,090 There are some places where people are very concerned that psychology should be done by psychologists and that, for instance, 221 00:31:08,090 --> 00:31:11,720 somebody who hasn't done a first degree in psychology might not be a proper person to teach 222 00:31:11,720 --> 00:31:18,100 in a department or might not be a proper person to take on as a graduate student or whatever. 223 00:31:18,100 --> 00:31:20,650 I I feel very strongly opposed to that view. 224 00:31:20,650 --> 00:31:30,460 I think psychology has flourished because of its concepts, its community, its outward looking with a whole range of related disciplines, 225 00:31:30,460 --> 00:31:37,160 both in the biological neuroscience and in social sciences, in formal understanding of computation and so on. 226 00:31:37,160 --> 00:31:40,990 And I think it would be a sad day if we didn't recognise those links. 227 00:31:40,990 --> 00:31:46,290 And I think in Oxford right now, we're profiting from them very well. 228 00:31:46,290 --> 00:31:53,940 So we're attempting to sustain the vision of the subject division of the Department of Education, 229 00:31:53,940 --> 00:32:00,480 which which Larry started by laying down in the in the late 60s and early 70s. 230 00:32:00,480 --> 00:32:07,200 But obviously things change. We don't sit comfortably freight, freight freezers, what we do and in the past era. 231 00:32:07,200 --> 00:32:13,380 And so I want to say a few words about what's happened as it were on my watch in the last 10 years. 232 00:32:13,380 --> 00:32:16,860 What's at how psychology changed? 233 00:32:16,860 --> 00:32:24,790 How was it taken forward its mission? Well, two things, actually, when I arrived in 2001, 234 00:32:24,790 --> 00:32:30,610 two things were already happening that I had had no input into, but hadn't yet actually fully taken place. 235 00:32:30,610 --> 00:32:38,830 One was that it was a quite radical restructuring of the final on a scale involving a division into a part one. 236 00:32:38,830 --> 00:32:48,010 Second year examining the to first year exam, which allowed to ensure that it was a core coverage of all the main areas of psychology. 237 00:32:48,010 --> 00:32:53,530 But then an opportunity, I think almost uniquely good opportunity for students to really pursue particular interests and 238 00:32:53,530 --> 00:33:00,550 get them in-depth into particular areas in the system of research projects and advanced options. 239 00:33:00,550 --> 00:33:09,130 In fact, where we're right now achieving what I hope is a victory in discussions with the Graduate Studies Committee 240 00:33:09,130 --> 00:33:16,780 because we have a we've had a few years and MSI in psychological research and the students on that. 241 00:33:16,780 --> 00:33:24,310 M.S. complained that many of the courses are being taught weren't actually as advanced as the ones referring to our undergraduates. 242 00:33:24,310 --> 00:33:30,280 And we're now in the process of changing the change in the structure of the family so that an 243 00:33:30,280 --> 00:33:37,110 enhanced version of those advanced undergraduate options can serve as part of the NSC curriculum. 244 00:33:37,110 --> 00:33:49,060 Anyway, that restructuring was due, in large part the work of Brian Rogers, who's sitting over there now as a proctor who devised a. 245 00:33:49,060 --> 00:33:54,860 An elegant structure, sometimes a rather sometimes the structure, I think, which nobody else understood for him, 246 00:33:54,860 --> 00:33:58,820 but the elegant structure which allowed various combinations of taking three, 247 00:33:58,820 --> 00:34:09,110 four or five papers in psychology if Europe during P.P.P and meeting the requirements of the British Psychological Society and so on. 248 00:34:09,110 --> 00:34:15,470 The other important thing that happened in 2001 is that this university went divisional. 249 00:34:15,470 --> 00:34:21,650 Frankly, I've no idea how it worked before or how it could have worked out the way it's supposed of that before, 250 00:34:21,650 --> 00:34:25,850 but maybe people will tell me that worked very well. Anyway, it went divisional. 251 00:34:25,850 --> 00:34:33,860 Somebody somewhere must have decided to discuss what what division the psychology would go into. 252 00:34:33,860 --> 00:34:40,190 But that decision had been made, and it was. But I arrived. It was made that psychology should be part of the medical science division, 253 00:34:40,190 --> 00:34:46,310 and I think all experience since suggests that it was absolutely the right thing to do. 254 00:34:46,310 --> 00:34:59,660 Not least because the Alpha Division might have joined or simply dissolved. So within that division, where to some extent an outlier. 255 00:34:59,660 --> 00:35:05,330 We don't have lots of great labs for a chromatography and protein sequencing machines. 256 00:35:05,330 --> 00:35:13,100 Unlike most other departments. We don't have a. A major role in teaching medical students, though, thanks to Jan, 257 00:35:13,100 --> 00:35:19,820 we have we do contribute to their education and we're relatively relatively small compared with 258 00:35:19,820 --> 00:35:24,680 the mass of some of the mammoth clinical research operations that take place up the hill. 259 00:35:24,680 --> 00:35:31,760 Nonetheless, despite being in some respects, a bit of an outlier, we've been very much a home in the division. 260 00:35:31,760 --> 00:35:42,080 The officials and other members of the division have been very supportive of our activities and both practically and an intellectually. 261 00:35:42,080 --> 00:35:49,190 And we've built up a wide network of Connexions with other departments in the division. 262 00:35:49,190 --> 00:36:00,170 The physiology of Deepak's that now is pharmacology, psychiatry, neurology, as well as sustaining all our links with with social sciences, 263 00:36:00,170 --> 00:36:09,920 with linguistics and with the other philosophy on other subjects in the humanities and social sciences that are relevant to psychology. 264 00:36:09,920 --> 00:36:18,570 So division has been quite forward-looking in pulling together a strategic approach to neuroscience, 265 00:36:18,570 --> 00:36:23,380 but went beyond the departmental divisions in which we've played an important role. 266 00:36:23,380 --> 00:36:31,140 And two particular elements of that I'd like to highlight. One is that the Oxford is the home of. 267 00:36:31,140 --> 00:36:39,070 Certainly one of the two leading centres for functional brain imaging in the UK, and that was a. 268 00:36:39,070 --> 00:36:42,340 This is film rape, which is housed off at clinical neurology. 269 00:36:42,340 --> 00:36:49,870 But Alan Carey in the psychology department was one of the people who was instrumental in getting that going to get funded and getting it set up. 270 00:36:49,870 --> 00:36:54,730 And there are many members of psychology, have very active research programmes using that facility. 271 00:36:54,730 --> 00:36:59,950 We're very closely integrated with it. Matthew Rushworth in particular, 272 00:36:59,950 --> 00:37:04,600 and Heidi Ernst Berg together have used not only functional but structural 273 00:37:04,600 --> 00:37:09,850 methods of MRI to great effect in understanding the organisation of the brain. 274 00:37:09,850 --> 00:37:20,650 Kate Watkins, a more recent recruits, also has a major push in insisting that institutions spends a lot of time using again both factual, 275 00:37:20,650 --> 00:37:28,480 functional and structural methods to understand some of the developmental issues around around language. 276 00:37:28,480 --> 00:37:33,160 More recently, isn't that another facility has been set up. 277 00:37:33,160 --> 00:37:42,620 And that's the Meg Magneto encephalopathy system, which is housed up at psychiatry and that has some, some slightly checkered origins. 278 00:37:42,620 --> 00:37:52,160 It's probably not too tactful to discuss in a public meeting, but in the last year. 279 00:37:52,160 --> 00:38:02,600 The head of psychiatry look for somebody who could who could take it on and transform that facility into one that could provide state of the art, 280 00:38:02,600 --> 00:38:07,280 rigorous research and Meg open to the subjects of the division as a whole. 281 00:38:07,280 --> 00:38:13,970 Ken O'Brien. Our department has taken on that job, and for everything I hear, it's it's going very, very successfully. 282 00:38:13,970 --> 00:38:20,990 And it's both integrated with the brain imaging at film, but also using some of the same approach, analytical approaches and so on. 283 00:38:20,990 --> 00:38:31,400 So these are costed these across divisional neuroscience facilities in which psychology is deeply embedded in to the benefit of all concerned. 284 00:38:31,400 --> 00:38:37,070 We've also got many continuing collaborations with the psychiatry department. 285 00:38:37,070 --> 00:38:39,590 Quite a lot of people have gone to and fro in the course of the time. 286 00:38:39,590 --> 00:38:45,170 I'm here, Catherine Harman, who came to lectureship in our department, went up to a further post there. 287 00:38:45,170 --> 00:38:52,100 Mark Williams holds a Wellcome Trust Senior Principal Research Fellowship jointly between the two institutions. 288 00:38:52,100 --> 00:39:01,760 I think that's a a flourishing and healthy relationship. We've also got a lot of involvement with work and genetics. 289 00:39:01,760 --> 00:39:12,530 So another jointly appointed welcome principal fellows is Jonathan Flint, who whose other half is in the hidden welcome institute for him. 290 00:39:12,530 --> 00:39:17,210 Welcome Centre for Human Genetics, but genetic approach is calling on. 291 00:39:17,210 --> 00:39:22,430 That expertise are also quite important enough in several programmes in the department, 292 00:39:22,430 --> 00:39:28,850 for instance, Dorothy Bishop's work and the guy who shows work on developmental disorders. 293 00:39:28,850 --> 00:39:32,090 And I have to say that this, I think, 294 00:39:32,090 --> 00:39:41,810 happy and fruitful relationship with the medical science division has been very much promoted by by the fact that Nick Rawlins, 295 00:39:41,810 --> 00:39:48,260 who was a lecturer when I arrived and became the Watts professor soon after, 296 00:39:48,260 --> 00:39:55,340 has always had a big role in the in the division and has acted as a very effective two interpreter 297 00:39:55,340 --> 00:40:00,980 so he could tell the people at the centre of the division just what psychology was all about, 298 00:40:00,980 --> 00:40:06,440 and he could tell psychology what the medical profession was all about. He's no longer play that role, 299 00:40:06,440 --> 00:40:19,100 but I hope he can communicate equally effectively as a to how fundraising can help us and possibly how we can help fundraising. 300 00:40:19,100 --> 00:40:29,480 I think for the 10 years I've been here, I think the most satisfying aspect of of my role has been the the the good fortunes, 301 00:40:29,480 --> 00:40:38,750 the demographics of which are quite a lot of members of the academic staff came up to period period of retirement. 302 00:40:38,750 --> 00:40:46,540 And I've actually had a hand in the appointment and no less than 11 lecturers in 10 years. 303 00:40:46,540 --> 00:40:50,650 And they're mostly young ish people. 304 00:40:50,650 --> 00:40:55,180 It's quite an early stage in their career, but identifies extremely promising, 305 00:40:55,180 --> 00:41:03,160 and I think they're all fulfilling that promise, and activists are so lively and committed to engagement with teaching. 306 00:41:03,160 --> 00:41:08,450 I think from that point of view, the department is extremely healthy and given life expectancy, 307 00:41:08,450 --> 00:41:17,830 assuming these people don't get seduced to flashy chairs elsewhere, they can maintain its health for a good 20 years to come. 308 00:41:17,830 --> 00:41:24,460 The downside of that is that the demographics are now not a set of people 309 00:41:24,460 --> 00:41:28,240 approaching retirement for the set of people in the in their thirties and forties. 310 00:41:28,240 --> 00:41:35,800 And so unless some miraculous also expansion can be found, which seems kind of unlikely at the moment, 311 00:41:35,800 --> 00:41:41,020 then I suspect that my successor is not going to have the same opportunity to, 312 00:41:41,020 --> 00:41:46,150 ah, to develop the careers of young scientists and psychology that I've had. 313 00:41:46,150 --> 00:41:55,150 And that's better. The other thing I should say is that all of these new lectures we appointed more than half are women. 314 00:41:55,150 --> 00:42:02,930 That's something I'm very pleased with, and it wasn't the consequence of any. Very explicit. 315 00:42:02,930 --> 00:42:09,260 Equal opportunities policy is simply that of the able young academic psychologists out there, 316 00:42:09,260 --> 00:42:13,790 a large proportion of women, and we're very pleased to have them on board. 317 00:42:13,790 --> 00:42:18,980 Some would point out that since 75 percent, 75 or 80 percent of our undergraduates are women, 318 00:42:18,980 --> 00:42:29,720 but it's not really very egalitarian, about 50 percent of the teachers to be female, but that's that's an issue for the future. 319 00:42:29,720 --> 00:42:41,650 The other thing I'd like to. Comment on is that we shouldn't restrict thinking of the department as the appointed university teaching staff. 320 00:42:41,650 --> 00:42:48,080 They're very important. But there are a lot of other people and always have been ever since. 321 00:42:48,080 --> 00:42:53,870 Ever since Larry got a donor province to run the department and people like that, 322 00:42:53,870 --> 00:43:00,440 they've always been a lot of people in the department who are supported on external research fellowships but contribute to our activity, 323 00:43:00,440 --> 00:43:07,520 contribute to our prestige, contribute to the intellectual life of the department. So for instance, we're talking about people at all levels here. 324 00:43:07,520 --> 00:43:10,800 Some of them are a junior research fellows from the colleges. 325 00:43:10,800 --> 00:43:18,380 Summer Postdoctoral Fellows on on other people's programme grants some health and career development fellowships. 326 00:43:18,380 --> 00:43:23,050 Some are of high professorial levels like welcome principal fellows. 327 00:43:23,050 --> 00:43:32,840 And I think the importance of those people is indicated by the fact that in the last research assessment exercise in 2008, 328 00:43:32,840 --> 00:43:42,020 in which we had a very successful outcome, we submitted actually the work of thirty nine scientists, only 20. 329 00:43:42,020 --> 00:43:48,470 Only 19 of those were actually people who held official university teaching or professorial posts. 330 00:43:48,470 --> 00:43:56,120 So more than half in that sense, more than half of the research activity is being driven by by these external people, 331 00:43:56,120 --> 00:43:58,730 and that was actually interesting contrast with Cambridge. 332 00:43:58,730 --> 00:44:07,640 I don't know why, but in terms of the league table that came out of that RDC, what was called the grade point average, 333 00:44:07,640 --> 00:44:11,060 which makes it sounds like we're coming out of the University of Minnesota or something. 334 00:44:11,060 --> 00:44:17,600 Anyway, I that that point, that point score we were we came second amongst UK psychology departments. 335 00:44:17,600 --> 00:44:30,290 Cambridge beat us by a couple of couple of points in the second decimal place, but Cambridge, this submission seemed to consist of. 336 00:44:30,290 --> 00:44:33,800 It was only about half the size of us. It was instead of just over 20 people. 337 00:44:33,800 --> 00:44:37,910 So the actual academic size stuff the two departments is much the same size. 338 00:44:37,910 --> 00:44:48,890 So we're clearly attracting and using those externally supported research shows more effectively, and they're very valuable to us. 339 00:44:48,890 --> 00:44:57,740 I think it does that structure does raise a question of, first of all, what are the longer term prospects for these people? 340 00:44:57,740 --> 00:45:03,260 They aren't all going to be able to develop into universal ActionScript or professorships because the jobs aren't going to be there. 341 00:45:03,260 --> 00:45:07,940 Some of them will continue to get support from the Wellcome Trust and so on, but others won't. 342 00:45:07,940 --> 00:45:13,010 So there are question marks over the future. And I think it's also a question mark for Oxford. 343 00:45:13,010 --> 00:45:16,310 These people, not only in this department or any other department in many departments, 344 00:45:16,310 --> 00:45:20,970 are a key part of the key part of what goes on the University of Oxford. 345 00:45:20,970 --> 00:45:26,780 And they don't necessarily have a well recognised place the way they can fit into collegiate life and so on. 346 00:45:26,780 --> 00:45:36,560 And I think Oxford, as an institution, has got to think harder about that. OK, well, that's really about about structures and and people. 347 00:45:36,560 --> 00:45:43,140 Maybe I should say a little bit about what kind of research is currently going on in the department. 348 00:45:43,140 --> 00:45:49,380 First of all, the area that was laid down in the in the 70s by Larry and Alan and carry on others 349 00:45:49,380 --> 00:45:54,580 are behavioural and cognitive neuroscience is clearly a primary area of strength, 350 00:45:54,580 --> 00:45:57,900 although there's maybe some some shift of emphasis. 351 00:45:57,900 --> 00:46:10,680 So perhaps that the work that's going on on brain function is less concerned with early sensory processing that was 20 or 30 years ago. 352 00:46:10,680 --> 00:46:20,880 I mean, I got very active programmes looking at control processes, decision processes, the focussing in the switching and control of attention. 353 00:46:20,880 --> 00:46:26,580 The basis of memory and the molecular and cellular mechanisms that underpin that. 354 00:46:26,580 --> 00:46:33,270 I think another feature of that area is to say that something which I think we're particularly. 355 00:46:33,270 --> 00:46:42,090 Well, set up for an exploit, well, is the unification of human research on normal, 356 00:46:42,090 --> 00:46:51,690 typically the typical human beings of neuropsychology of in relation to people with brain disorders, primate models and rodent models. 357 00:46:51,690 --> 00:46:57,230 It's fairly unusual, I think, to have people working in more than one of those areas and some, 358 00:46:57,230 --> 00:47:03,360 some some some of the people that parliament actually got a fortune. It's not just two, but three or three or four of them. 359 00:47:03,360 --> 00:47:14,720 And I think that really maintains the focus on what can these different approaches tell us about the way the human mind and the human brain work? 360 00:47:14,720 --> 00:47:19,110 Something was off the new than that is to. 361 00:47:19,110 --> 00:47:27,810 It's a take this approach of unify, our understanding of the brain, understanding of of mental processing and and behaviour. 362 00:47:27,810 --> 00:47:35,220 But to do it in the context of human development, developmental cognitive neuroscience has become a a buzzword, 363 00:47:35,220 --> 00:47:39,300 and it is something which we develop strongly over the last 10 years. 364 00:47:39,300 --> 00:47:42,960 I think so. We've now got I went down and I came here. 365 00:47:42,960 --> 00:47:48,120 We brought it in the context of a developmental vision research. 366 00:47:48,120 --> 00:47:53,130 Dorothy Bishop was already here working on this in the context of language disorders. 367 00:47:53,130 --> 00:48:04,170 Gaia Sharif has come is also interested in developmental disorders, but from her with a strongly brain based perspective. 368 00:48:04,170 --> 00:48:11,430 And we've also got a strong intersection of the understanding of development with the processing of language. 369 00:48:11,430 --> 00:48:15,420 So can Plunkett's has been working for quite a long time, 370 00:48:15,420 --> 00:48:22,770 both on from the theoretical modelling and experimental study of babies understanding of spoken language. 371 00:48:22,770 --> 00:48:29,610 Dorothy Bishop I've mentioned as having a major programme on on disorders of language development. 372 00:48:29,610 --> 00:48:37,230 Kate Watkins, I suppose you mentioned and we've got some great nation also working at work, working on development of reading. 373 00:48:37,230 --> 00:48:42,120 So there's a real, there's a real, there's a real nucleus here, unifying the understanding of development, 374 00:48:42,120 --> 00:48:48,190 the understanding of the brain, the understanding of language. And. 375 00:48:48,190 --> 00:48:58,000 Throughout the throughout the recent history of the department, empirical social psychology has been an important ingredient. 376 00:48:58,000 --> 00:49:08,380 I think it's very good that area sits close to individual cognition and development and in psychological disorders. 377 00:49:08,380 --> 00:49:16,100 Many potential cross cross cross cross-cutting themes there that don't work if social psychology, 378 00:49:16,100 --> 00:49:22,750 as it were seen, as something very much sitting on its own. And of course, you've got two staff members working there, 379 00:49:22,750 --> 00:49:29,020 including Miles Houston's major programme on how what, how people behave as members of groups, 380 00:49:29,020 --> 00:49:31,060 how they affiliated groups, how they regard other groups, 381 00:49:31,060 --> 00:49:37,670 which is applied in areas like Northern Ireland and many other trouble spots around the world. 382 00:49:37,670 --> 00:49:44,600 So those are the emphasis that's what's going on at the moment. What's going to happen in the next few years? 383 00:49:44,600 --> 00:49:49,940 Well, one or two things I'd like to highlight. One is that. 384 00:49:49,940 --> 00:50:01,330 We're going to have some significant changes in the way our teaching programmes organised because PPP is actually no more. 385 00:50:01,330 --> 00:50:11,150 Now, by the way, quite a lot of what I'm saying was in the article by the Oxford Magazine kindly published to accompany this this event. 386 00:50:11,150 --> 00:50:16,370 And Tim Horton, who's the editor, wrote to me and says, Oh, maybe you can tell us why PPP has been abolished. 387 00:50:16,370 --> 00:50:23,970 Make it sound like it was some very retrograde move? Well, several answers that, first of all. 388 00:50:23,970 --> 00:50:29,040 PPP is dead long live PPP, which is psychology and philosophy, that linkage will continue, 389 00:50:29,040 --> 00:50:31,980 and in fact, it's going to be developed in a way I'll mention in a moment. 390 00:50:31,980 --> 00:50:41,310 But actually, what was PPP is also being reborn as part of a new on the school in biomedical sciences, 391 00:50:41,310 --> 00:50:47,550 which I think is a significant revival of the old structure of physiological sciences, 392 00:50:47,550 --> 00:50:54,120 which was having a number of a number of for a number of reasons wasn't, I think, 393 00:50:54,120 --> 00:51:03,210 giving it an education that was in line with the strength of biological sciences in south parts, right? 394 00:51:03,210 --> 00:51:13,470 So this new course, which is going to take its first students in the in the autumn, will have a psychology as a major partner in it. 395 00:51:13,470 --> 00:51:17,730 First, that all the students taking it just whatever their. 396 00:51:17,730 --> 00:51:24,360 Ultimate emphasis in the cellular systems of brain sciences are going to have some psychology, 397 00:51:24,360 --> 00:51:29,280 some behaviour in their first year course, so it's going to be a theme of behaviour, a theme of the brain. 398 00:51:29,280 --> 00:51:33,660 The theme of the theme, the cells theme of the body. 399 00:51:33,660 --> 00:51:37,770 I can't run off of all the names, all the five themes, I think. 400 00:51:37,770 --> 00:51:45,480 But anyway, psychology is in there, which means that prospective and prospective cellular scientists, 401 00:51:45,480 --> 00:51:56,720 prospective molecular biologists will come out of their first year knowing that actually things happen that have a level above that in the in that. 402 00:51:56,720 --> 00:52:03,960 Certainly the in the second and third years, though, the option of of taking particular streams and in fact, 403 00:52:03,960 --> 00:52:08,030 the of the stream of that was most explicitly authorised as a neuroscience stream, 404 00:52:08,030 --> 00:52:12,560 which is very close to a reconstruction of the psychology physiology. 405 00:52:12,560 --> 00:52:21,890 Population psychology will have a close to a 50 50 partnership and in training this group of biological scientists. 406 00:52:21,890 --> 00:52:25,310 So I think PGP is not dead. 407 00:52:25,310 --> 00:52:32,970 PGP is is alive and well in two slightly different guises, one of which I think is going to be a very exciting development, 408 00:52:32,970 --> 00:52:38,360 which I hope the psychology department will sustain that sense of ownership towards. 409 00:52:38,360 --> 00:52:46,560 I should mention, I'm not sure I should be mentioning this, but something something I heard at the meeting actually yesterday is that there is. 410 00:52:46,560 --> 00:52:51,660 A risk and terrorist is a possibility that the government will substantially 411 00:52:51,660 --> 00:52:56,520 cut the number of places for medical students in this and other universities, 412 00:52:56,520 --> 00:53:06,420 and an Oxford tentative plan, if that happens, is not to cut student numbers but to replace medical students with biomedical sciences students. 413 00:53:06,420 --> 00:53:13,230 So the relatively modest operation that's occurring at the moment, 414 00:53:13,230 --> 00:53:20,510 which roughly reproduces the numbers really taking physiologic physiological sciences, or P.P.P, may be substantially enhanced. 415 00:53:20,510 --> 00:53:25,680 You may find work of an awful lot of smart, young, biologically oriented people. 416 00:53:25,680 --> 00:53:32,610 Learning psychologists is part of the picture. They should be. They should be adopting. 417 00:53:32,610 --> 00:53:42,030 The other the other thing I would just like to mention with respect to PGP is that plans are well underway for a new combination people, 418 00:53:42,030 --> 00:53:51,300 which is psychology, philosophy and linguistics. There's already a very active research relationship between people interested in 419 00:53:51,300 --> 00:53:55,290 language in our department and and the Department of Phonetics and Linguistics. 420 00:53:55,290 --> 00:54:02,340 And this will actually create an explicit educational pairing of just rather close to what in the past has been called cognitive science. 421 00:54:02,340 --> 00:54:03,660 And we're looking forward that we didn't. 422 00:54:03,660 --> 00:54:08,170 We don't imagine it will attract huge numbers of students, but we do imagine the ones who want to come to do it. 423 00:54:08,170 --> 00:54:14,990 We want to. I really are into two and can benefit from looking at cognitive processing, 424 00:54:14,990 --> 00:54:23,510 both from a formal roots and linguistics and from experimental everything in psychology. 425 00:54:23,510 --> 00:54:34,970 The other thing I should mention in him coming in the immediate future is that I'm about to be replaced in two respects. 426 00:54:34,970 --> 00:54:40,760 I've been the holder of the chair of psychology and I've been the head of Department of Experimental Psychology. 427 00:54:40,760 --> 00:54:46,030 Now, my successor in the chair of psychology is already known safer. 428 00:54:46,030 --> 00:54:51,770 Clarke is sitting here in the room and very pleased to welcome him here and to some. 429 00:54:51,770 --> 00:54:58,350 Is partner in life and science anchor who a welcome principal fellow and be bringing that to Oxford and so together, 430 00:54:58,350 --> 00:55:06,720 we can have a major new research enterprise on that which will bring psychological disorders much more centre stage within the 431 00:55:06,720 --> 00:55:15,120 department and an area where their work on cognitive behaviour therapy has had a really significant practical national impact. 432 00:55:15,120 --> 00:55:19,050 So that's that's very welcome to us. It will change the flavour to some degree. 433 00:55:19,050 --> 00:55:24,060 I hope and believe it will change the flavour in an exciting direction. 434 00:55:24,060 --> 00:55:29,970 And there are things that we don't yet know about in terms of future relationships with the 435 00:55:29,970 --> 00:55:33,990 professional training of professional psychologists in and with the psychiatry department. 436 00:55:33,990 --> 00:55:41,680 But I'm sure that will be a barrier we'll hear a lot about in the next few years. 437 00:55:41,680 --> 00:55:46,780 David had quite enough to do without taking on the headship of the department. 438 00:55:46,780 --> 00:55:54,040 And so the the the future headship of the department is going to be associated with the with the new. 439 00:55:54,040 --> 00:56:07,030 Professor Nick Rawlins, having had to leave that position to be elevated into the clouds of glory and cherubs all around to the into the square. 440 00:56:07,030 --> 00:56:14,380 I can't. It's a great convention. 441 00:56:14,380 --> 00:56:19,960 I can't I can't yet tell you who do, what's professor, who's going to be, 442 00:56:19,960 --> 00:56:24,370 so I hope that I hope and believe that person's been identified and they will 443 00:56:24,370 --> 00:56:29,290 be able to take over the headship of the department and in a few months time. 444 00:56:29,290 --> 00:56:37,210 So that may again introduce new directions, new work, new plus new excitement into into the department. 445 00:56:37,210 --> 00:56:41,500 And I think we can look forward to a future that's both. 446 00:56:41,500 --> 00:56:53,565 And that's interesting, but not necessarily in the bad sense. Thank you.