Understandings of the Modern World: Conversations at a time of COVID

Complementing the nine-volume series of autobiographies written by Professor Alan Macfarlane, this book discusses the emergence of the modern world, capitalism, society, culture, politics, belief, thought and survival in an unprecedented time. Over thirty hours of filmed interviews and conversations over Zoom during the COVID shutdown period comprise the basis of this book, which delves into topics relevant to anyone attempting to understand the complexity and nuance of the world as we know it today.

Richard Marshall is editor of 3:16ammagazine, an online journal of philosophy, art and culture. He has interviewed nearly five hundred contemporary philosophers over the last ten years and this series remains ongoing. He is the author of two collections of interviews with OUP . He was a contributing editor of 3ammagazine for twenty years, publishing many articles and interviews with underground cultural writes and artists. He is also a painter on canvas and cardboard and has had several individual and joint exhibitions of his work, some of which he uses to illustrate his interviews.

Comparative Dialogue on Education

What makes British education world-class? Why is the Chinese gaokao a source of stress for students? Vice President of the Chinese Society of Education, Zhu Yongxin and Professor Macfarlane of Cambridge University combine almost a century of teaching experience. In this dialogue, they discuss the methods and philosophies behind Chinese and British education.

Over the past twenty years, Professor Zhu Yongxin has undertaken extensive research on education across China. He has published more than 400 papers on education and over thirty books in China abroad. He is also the editor of "The Contemporary Japanese Education Series", "Education in the New Century Library", "New Education" and others. Furthermore, he has undertaken UNESCO commissioned research projects, as well as work funded by the National Natural Science Fund and the National Social Science fund. As a professor and PhD advisor in Suzhou University, Zhu is the initiator of the program, The New Education Experiment. He proposed new ideals in education in 2002 and in that program he draws a blueprint for a quality education system in contemporary China. By 2013, there were  more than 1500 experimental schools that participated in the New Education Experiment in 25 provinces, and over 1,500 000 teachers and students have taken part in the programme.

Wonder and Art: Cambridge Conversations with Tim Yip

After the first time Tim Yip, the Oscar-winning art director and costume designer and Alan Macfarlane sat down to have a conversation, Alan wrote that he felt “a strange affinity with his ideas. A brother spirit.” From those forty-five minutes sprouted a series of interviews over Spring 2023 in which the two transcended borders – both in the literary and figurative senses. Tim tells a story of an ever-doodling schoolboy who always stood out from the crowd, and Alans listens inquisitively, always asking the right questions.

Tim Yip is a Hong Kong art director and designer for fiction films. He is best known for his work on the 2000 martial arts film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Art Direction. Yip also won a BAFTA award for the film's costume design.