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BUDLEIGHFESTIVAL 2012

SCIENCE FORUM Population

3 February 2012 Public Hall 9.15am - 4.30pm Tickets £11 for the day to include tea/coffee There will be a sausage/fish'n'chips lunch to buy on the day.

SCIENCE FORUM in the Public Hall on Friday  3rd February 2012

Following two previous successful Science Forums, The Budleigh Festival is holding another on Friday 3rd February 2012 in the Public Hall, Budleigh Salterton.

In 2011, the world's population passed the 7 billion mark, and the UK held a census, so it has been decided to make the theme ‘Population'.

Why has the world's population risen so quickly in the last 200 years? Is there a limit to the planet's capacity to support human beings? How has the structure of the population changed during this expansion – is this a problem? Is migration inevitable, advantageous or a problem? Why do we need such a detailed census and how are the population statistics used?

To answer these and many other questions will be Dr Ray Hall (Senior Research Fellow, Queen Mary University of London); Mr Roger Martin (Chairman of the charity ‘Population Matters'); and Dr Andrew Hinde (Head of the Division of Social Statistics & Demography, Southampton University). A session of open discussion and questions will follow, finishing the day about 4.30.

Doors open 9.15 for a 10.00am start. Coffee and tea will be provided; a fish/sausage and chips lunch will be available to purchase on the day. Day Ticket : £11 from the TIC in Budleigh. Box office opens 15 December 2011 though. due to restricted opening hours over Christmas, tickets are also available from the Festival Office from 10 November 2011:
The TIC is open until 23 December and reopens on 9 January.

Tickets are also available at any time from:

BSFT, Summerlands, Cricket Field Lane, Budleigh Salterton, EX9 6PB.

Kindly enclose either an SAE or 50p to cover postage.

Please address your cheque to Budleigh Salterton Festival Trust

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Dr Ray Hall

Dr Ray Hall is a Senior Research fellow at Queen Mary, University of London. Her main research interests are European population change, particularly household change. Her most recent project was on ‘Population Change in European Cities' resulting in a co-edited book ‘Residential Change and Demographic Challenge: the inner city of east central Europe' with German colleagues. She has also recently written ‘Changing Populations: The New Europe'. Dr Hall's previous research papers include papers on inner city population change in both London and other European cities and on the growth in the numbers of one person households as well as work on world population growth.

Dr Hall will give the first talk at the Forum and will cover the general patterns and causes of world population growth.

Roger Martin is the Chairman of the charity ‘Population Matters'. He was a career diplomat for 22 years, but turned to writing, broadcasting and became Director of the Somerset Wildlife Trust. He is also currently on a variety of environmental NGOs, committees and quangos.

Population Matters is the leading population charity in the UK. They campaign to change the way people think about population. Their vision is the achievement of an optimum human population for the Earth and the UK i.e. a size of population that affords people a good quality of life, maintains the habitat for other species and is environmentally sustainable.

Roger perceives a perfect storm of overpopulation, peak oil and climate change and asks: ‘Can you name an environmental problem that would not be easier to solve with fewer people, or harder (and ultimately impossible) with more?' He gives our second talk.

Dr Andrew Hinde is a Senior Lecturer in Demography at the Social Science Department, Southampton University. He has also taught at Oxford University, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Birkbeck College. His research interests fall into two areas: the demography of developing countries – especially fertility changes; and the historical demography of England. He has written two books – ‘England's population: a history since the Domesday survey' and ‘Demographic methods'.

He will be our third speaker and will cover the use of population statistics – hopefully with some of the initial findings of the 2011 census.

 

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