Workshop 1 took place as planned on June 13,14, and the organisers are gratified by the enthusiastic response from those who participated and grateful to all the speakers for their interesting and thought-prpvoking contributions. Workshop 2 will take place as scheduled on 15-17 August, and we look forward to welcoming, or welcomimg back, to Oxford, those who have indicated that they will attend. Registrations to date match quite closely our target number of participants, but there is some flexibility and it is not too late for new registrations to be accepted. The list of talks is currently being finalised and will be announced as soon as it is complete.
Proceedings will begin on Tuesday 14 August, with welcoming drinks and registration from 1700 to 1900 for those who arrive in time. Later arrivals will will be able to register between 0830 and 0930 on the following morning (or later, as necessary). The schedule of talks will commence at 0930 on Wednesday 15 August. Most talks will be of 50 minutes duration, to include time for questions; a small number of shorter contributions will also be scheduled and some time left free for informal discussions. There will be a social event to conclude the workshop on the evening of 17 August; details will be announced later.
Some suggestions concerning options for accommodation were posted in advance of W1. Some further possibilities have now been added: please see below.
The topics for W1 and W2 are different but related. Loosely, the content of W1 will have a somewhat more topological flavour than that of W2, with stronger links to computer science. By contrast, W2 will concentrate more on logic and algebra. We hope for some overlap of participation between the two events, facilitating cross-fertilisation. However it seems likely that most people will come to one rather than to both. We anticipate also that that, because of constraints on their availability, some people with expertise closer to W2 than to W1 may attend W1, and vice versa. We regard this as beneficial and are excited by the prospect of bringing together eminent researchers with overlapping expertise and interests.
W1 will be dedicated principally to extensions of duality theory beyond zero-dimensional structures and to its application in novel settings. Topics that are likely to feature include duality for bilattice-based structures and associated semantics; extensions to compact Hausdorff spaces, bitopological duality, and duality for continuous data; applications to coalgebraic logic. We shall be seeking two-way interaction between those focused on a particular application and those who are seeking to extend the theory. Keynote speakers will be Mike Mislove and Drew Moshier. Samson Abramsky will be away from Oxford from June 12, but we are grateful for his offer to give a talk on June 11. We are also pleased to announce that, through the good offices of Georg Gottlob (Oxford Department of Computer Science), we are able to include within W1 a tutorial lecture on the applications of bilattice semantics to computer science; this will be given by Ofer Arieli.
W2 will be devoted to the applications of dualities to logic and algebra, focusing on general techniques. Thus it will seek to complement the specialised coverage in meetings devoted to, for example, modal logic, residuated structures and many-valued logics, or coalgebras. The featured topics for W2 will be drawn from completions of ordered structures, and applications; admissible rules, unification theory, interpolation and amalgamation; aspects of many-valued and substructural logics and ordered algebraic structures. Keynote speakers will be Leo Cabrer and Mai Gehrke.
Workshop 1 [W1] will take place on Wednesday June 13 and Thursday June 14 and Workshop 2 [W2] from Wednesday August 15 to Friday August 17. Arrival date would normally be June 12 and August 14, respectively.
W1 follows the MFPS28 meeting (Mathematical Foundations of Programming Semantics) at the University of Bath, UK, from June 6-9 and we hope to attract to W1 some of those attending MFPS28. We would be pleased to welcome MFPS participants coming on to Oxford ahead of W1, and hope to mount some informal talks on June 11 and/or June 12.
We should like to keep the workshops informal and numbers not too large. We are tentatively expecting 20-30 people to attend W1 and about 35 to attend W2. We see merit in having talks of 45-50 minutes duration, rather than a large number of 20 minute talks, and do not want to run sessions in parallel since to do so would go against the spirit of the meetings.
We shall therefore be limited in the number of talks we can schedule during the workshops. However we shall set aside some time during each workshop, with seminar rooms available, for people to get together in small groups for brainstorming on topics of mutual interest. In addition, it may be possible to schedule a few additional informal talks on days before or after the main workshop days.
To some extent we shall allow the programme to reflect the current research interests of those attending. However in selecting talks to fill the limited number of slots available we shall be guided by how good a fit there is between the topics of the proffered talks and the scope of the workshops. We are aware that some people may only be able to get financial assistance from their home institutions if they give talks. We hope to address this by offering some funding to colleagues in this position (see below) rather than by including talks in the main programme on topics which are peripheral to the primary themes of the workshops.
We shall be asking participants to make their own arrangements for accommodation in Oxford. We draw attention in particular to the website Oxford Rooms which provides a clearing house and online booking system for B&B accommodation in the colleges of Oxford University, in a few cases in college annexes. All are within walking distance of the Mathematical Institute, where the workshops will take place. Prices vary, depending on the standard of the accommodation offered but are generally lower than those in bed and breakfast hotels, of which details can be found on the web. For W2, some budget accommodation (£38 per night, including breakfast; shared facilities) may be available at St Edmund Hall; please direct enquiries to the college's conference manager (email: susan.mccarthy@seh.ox.ac.uk). Some additional possibilities are given below (only the first of these can be recommended from first-hand information).
Budget (hostel-type) acoommodation:
W1 takes place during University term. Accommodation through oxfordrooms is therefore limited, and we would recommend booking while this is still possible. There is at present a wider range of accommodation available for the period of W2, though we would again recommend booking early since it is impossible to judge how far the Olympic Games will distort the pattern of Oxford tourism in the week thereafter.
Oxford is very easy to access for those coming by air. There is a frequent bus service from London Heathrow, but flying into Birmingham International, from which there is a good train service to Oxford, may be preferable. There is a very good bus service from London; the train service is quicker but considerably more expensive.
The principal financial support we have available can be used to pay for accommodation for participants, but not normally travel expenses, and is sufficient to provide grants to only a proportion of those attending. We are also able through our grant from BLC to provide support to a small number of those working in logic (widely interpreted) and who are based in the UK.
Our intention would be to treat as priorities for financial help early career stage researchers and perhaps some people for whom we cannot allocate a talk slot and who are thereby denied funding from their home institutions.
There will be no registration fee.
In order to have an up to date picture of probable attendance, and so to enable the organisers to keep track of the number of places available, it would be very helpful if you could complete the registration form even if your attendance is uncertain and you arwe not yet sure whether you would wish to give a talk.