City news 18

City: A driving force in the gaming industry

City News Issue 18

NEWS | UNIVERSITY UPDATES | RESEARCH | MEET THE TEAM AND MORE INSIDE

Hello Hello and welcome to the first edition of City News for 2014.

This edition has a range of features and stories on what is happening across City. As our somewhat colourful cover image shows, we cast our editorial eye over the computer games industry. It’s surprising to learn it is now worth more than the music and movie industries combined. We explore this financial and cultural phenomenon on page 12 and learn how City is preparing the next generation of programmers and game designers to take up roles in this rapidly expanding sector.

On page 6 we asked our academics to forecast the future and consider what trends we can expect in the year ahead. From Islamic finance and the rise of the MINT countries (Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey), to how drones and jet packs will change the way we experience air travel, the diversity of insights on offer reflects City’s broad base of academic expertise.

For the last six years, more than 400 staff have, at some point, worked on the University’s preparations for the Research Excellence Framework. The results, due in December this year, will determine City’s level of research income from government funding bodies. Having finally submitted last November, we talk to some of those involved.

The Lord Mayor of London Fiona Woolf was installed as our Chancellor at a graduation ceremony in late January. On page 8 you can read about her efforts to increase philanthropy in the City and tackle issues of inequality in business boardrooms.

Professor Carol Cox, a pioneer of Nursing and Midwifery education, retired in December after 23 years of service. On page 19 she reflects on her time here and seeing some thousand students graduate under her tutelage.

On page 20, we ‘Meet the Team’ in Development and Alumni Relations.

Responsible not only for engaging with former students all over the world, this team cultivates and stewards relationships, develops fundraising campaigns and philanthropic partnerships, all for the benefit of City’s students, facilities and research activities.

Finally, look out for our new electronic news bulletin which will be landing in your inbox soon. This is intended to complement City News, providing regular news and information of interest to staff. This leaves the pages of City News to take a more feature-based approach on what’s happening at City.

Simon Watts Head of Communications and Events

Contents 1

News

4

Forecasting the future

Cass Business School offers first Prince’s Trust MBA scholarship New funding for wind tunnel research The City Law School launches free legal advice service European Social Survey awarded ERIC status CitySport update Green Dragons project makes progress

MINT condition City’s E-store breaks short courses record Future headlines Bond voyage Leaving on a jetpack

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20

8

10

6 8 10 10

REF: A thank you An academic view of the video game industry Meet the academics

16 17 18 20 20

Unearthed: audio of a Cambridge spy A Healthy Career with Carol Cox Meet Development & Alumni Relations

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From the archive

Dr Steven Truxall Dr Elena Novelli Professor Amanda Burls

Development & Alumni relations

Student journalist

An unruly education in Tech City

City gym

It’s your magazine Comments and feedback are always welcome, as are suggestions for future editions such as research outputs or an exciting new project. Please contact the Editor.

Marketing & Communications reserves the right to edit submissions.

About City News City News is published six times a year by Marketing & Communications for all staff.

Back issues: blogs.city.ac.uk/staff-news/city-news Editor: Demetri Petrou Tel: 020 7040 8783 Email: demetri.petrou.1@city.ac.uk Thank you... ...to all of this issue’s contributors: Professor Charles Baden-Fuller, Jo Bradford, Professor George Brock, Professor Amanda Burls, Professor Adrian Cheok, Dr Chris Child, Professor Jason Chuah, Professor Carol Cox, Sophie Cubbin, Professor Paul Curran, Dr Graham Daborn, Louise Gordon, Sadia Hamidu, Professor Andrew Jones, Helen Merrills, Professor Stanton Newman, Dr Elena Novelli, Lucy Palmer, Professor Kate Phylaktis, Professor Andy Pratt, Professor Stewart Purvis, Benjamin Sawtell, Dr Gregory Slabaugh, John Stevenson, David Street, Miranda Thomas, Bill Thompson, Dr Steven Truxal, Lindsey Venden, Alderman Fiona Woolf, Maria Xypaki, Next edition Our next edition will be published in April 2014.

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News

Cass Business School offers first Prince’s Trust MBA scholarship The Prince’s Trust has partnered with Cass Business School for a new scholarship programme. This is the first time the youth charity has partnered with a business school to offer an MBA scholarship. The scholarship offers an individual who has been supported by the youth charity, a full scholarship to study on the highly ranked Executive MBA programme. This represents an investment of £42,000 over the two years of the programme. The scholarship was open to entrepreneurs who have established their own business after completing The Prince’s Trust Enterprise programme.

The first student to receive a scholarship was Bronwyn Lowenthal, who started her Executive MBA at Cass in September. She was awarded a £2,500 low interest loan in 2002 by the Trust to start a fashion business after being made redundant by fashion retailer Ben Sherman. She also received the long-term support of a business mentor. Bronwyn used the loan to open a stall in Portobello Road market. She has now grown her business and has a standalone shop, a retail website: www.ilovelowie.com and a wholesale business stocking stores including Anthropologie.

New funding for wind tunnel research City will receive £700,000 from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the UK Aerodynamics Centre as part of the new National Wind Tunnel Facility (NWTF). City is among seven universities benefiting from equipment funding for the NWTF which seeks to place the UK at the forefront of aerodynamics and fluid mechanics research.

The total funding for the Facility is

£13.3 million, with £10.7 million coming from the EPSRC and £2.6 million from the UK Aerodynamics Centre. The NWTF, which was recently unveiled by the UK Minister for Science and Universities, David Willetts, will include seventeen wind tunnels located at universities across the UK. Any UK institution requiring access to high-quality research facilities will be directed towards these wind tunnels.

The equipment will also support inhouse research conducted by Professors Chris Atkin and Mike Gaster and Dr Simon Prince, using the recently acquired Gaster low turbulence wind tunnel and the existing T5 high-speed wind tunnel. The Gaster wind tunnel is uniquely suited to the study of laminar-turbulent transition. The National Wind Tunnel Facility elevates City’s research profile in the aerospace sector.

The University joins an elite grouping of higher education institutions in the field, including University of Oxford, University of Cambridge and Imperial College London.

The City Law School launches free legal advice service The City Law School is to hold free legal advice sessions on civil law matters for members of the public. Students will work with qualified lawyers to provide guidance on issues including personal injury claims, employment, small claims, landlord and tenant disputes and consumer rights. The aim of the service is to provide free, confidential and independent legal advice to the local community while giving students the chance to gain practical experience of the legal profession.

The service will be based at The City Law School’s premises on Princeton Street, near Chancery Lane. Sessions during the day will be conducted by postgraduate law students and supervised by qualified lawyers.

Students will interview clients, carry out legal research and provide written advice on straightforward civil law matters. Sessions in the evening will be run by qualified lawyers who will either give preliminary verbal advice on the night or will commission a postgraduate law student to carry out the legal research in order to provide a one-off piece of written advice. Further information about how to book an appointment is available on the City University London website.

European Social Survey awarded ERIC status The European Commission announced that the European Social Survey (ESS) will be granted European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) status.

The ESS ERIC, which has its headquarters within the Centre for Comparative Social Surveys at City University London, is the only ERIC hosted in the UK and joins some of the most innovative research infrastructures in Europe, including CERN, the world’s largest particle physics laboratory.

ERIC status will bring much-needed funding stability to the European Social Survey and acknowledges it as a leading European research infrastructure in the social sciences.

Research Infrastructures (RIs) play increasingly important roles in the advancement of knowledge and technology.

They create a formal structure within which international academics and industry experts can work collaboratively in search of solutions to many of the problems society is facing.

ESS is one of five Social Science and Humanities (SSH) projects on the ESFRI Roadmap and the only one to be based in the UK.

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CitySport update City’s new sports facility on Goswell Road is scheduled to open in Autumn 2014. The 3,160m2 centre, to be known as CitySport, will provide outstanding space and equipment for students, staff, alumni and the local community, whether their focus is on training for health and wellbeing, rehabilitation, improving sports performance or simply having fun. The centre has been designed with direct input from students on what they are looking for in a sports facility.

CitySport will be 75% larger than its predecessor, Saddlers Sport Centre and will be a flagship university sports centre in London.

Built upon the site of the old centre, the new facility will incorporate 500 bricks from the old building, along with the original

marble tablet commemorating City’s first Director of Exercises, Rudolph Oberholtzer.

There will be over 100 fitness stations, along with 5 multi-sport studios and full disabled access. It is the only university sports centre in the UK to offer 7xi cardio machines, the most recent and most innovative on the market, with 19 inch swipe screens allowing bespoke apps and integration with mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. The flooring in the sports hall is the same kind and specification as that used in the basketball arena for London 2012.

A marketing suite will open in time for the undergraduate open day in June.

This will provide staff and current and prospective students with a sneak preview of the equipment that will be available.

City’s sport development programme will see the benefit of better training facilities

and further involvement within Islington’s extensive coaching and volunteering network.

“CitySport will provide much needed, high-quality facilities and will encourage more people to participate in the sports City offers. I like to keep active and have met many of my friends through sport at City.

CitySport will help promote health through exercise and sport and it will be tremendous to have a home for sport at the University.”

Tommy Steinacher, Automotive Engineering, men’s football 1st team captain and Chair of the City University London Sports Association.

For more images and a virtual tour of CitySport see www.city.ac.uk/sport-andleisure/citysport-our-new-sports-facility

Green Dragons projects make progress Last Year, City launched Green Dragons.

The exciting new project led by the Students’ Union encouraged City students and staff to identify opportunities, large or small, to improve sustainability at the University or in the local community and create solutions to bring new projects to life.

Project support and skills training are provided by a team of experts from across the Students’ Union and the University.

Several project plans have been submitted and are about to receive their delivery funding and make the difference.

These include:

EATRO - Eatro is an online marketplace for homemade food. The aim of the project is to encourage amateur chefs to sell extra food they have made to hungry locals with the aims of reducing food waste and making themselves some money. The pilot will run this year with City students in halls of residence being the first to try the scheme.

Restart Project - The Restart Project is developing a new economy based on repair and skill-sharing. The project aims are to train students, staff and local community members to repair electronic equipment and provide a free fixing service to avoid people having to replace broken items.

Waste No More – The Waste No More project aims to reuse small electrical appliances, clothes, shoes and any other useful items from nearby halls of residence and donate them to charity. A pilot project is currently underway with the Study Abroad students (Liberty Living Students’ Accommodation).

If you are a City student, a member of staff or a community partner and would like to become involved in one of the projects, or submit your own idea, please email greendragons@city.ac.uk.

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Forecasting the future City News spoke to a selection of our academics and asked them for their predictions for the year ahead in their respective fields. Here’s what they thought:

MINT condition

Future headlines

It is the beginning of the year and investors are re-evaluating their views about the various asset classes. With news of lower growth in the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China), which have dominated the Emerging Market asset class since 2001, eyes have now turned to another group, the MINTs (Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey). Both terms were coined by Jim O’Neill, a Goldman Sachs economist and recent recipient of an honorary degree from City. Several questions come to mind.

“Will these economies achieve the double-digit growth rates of the BRIC countries? What are their opportunities and challenges? Are they likely to achieve their potential and become a mighty force in the world economy in 2014?”

The one characteristic shared by the MINT countries is favourable demographics: they are populous with a rise in the number of people eligible to work relative to those not working, which is something of which two of the BRIC countries, China and Russia can be envious.

Furthermore, the economies of Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey are characterised by stable inflation and sound public finances.

However, increasing labour force is not enough to achieve high rates of economic growth. The countries need steady flows of capital, both domestic and foreign, which is especially sensitive to good legal institutions. In fact, countries with good legal institutions suffered less in terms of retrenchment of capital flows following the global financial crisis. The MINT countries, however, have serious issues with corruption and the rule of law. They are characterised by low scores in the Corruption Perceptions Index published annually by Transparency International on how corrupt each country’s public sector is. Out of 177 countries, Nigeria ranks 144th, Indonesia 114th, Mexico 106th and Turkey 53rd. Doing business in those countries, especially in Mexico and Nigeria, is a challenge.

The countries face other barriers: poor levels of education, especially in Indonesia and Nigeria; poor infrastructure – again more so in the case of Nigeria, where energy supply is clearly affecting productivity and growth; and generally resistance to reform, especially in the labour market.

All of them however have good geographical positions, which should be an advantage as patterns of world trade change. For example, Mexico is close to the United States and to the rest of the Latin American countries, Indonesia is in the heart of SouthEast Asia, Turkey is close to Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East, while Nigeria is close to some thriving African countries.

All the MINTs present a threat to Chinese exports, which are becoming less competitive internationally with rising wages, government policy to rebalance the growth model towards domestic consumption and an appreciating Renminbi (RMB).

Bearing in mind all of these challenges, there is no doubt that the MINT economies are fresher than the BRICs, which are at a different stage of their economic development and with different challenges. There is an enthusiasm and dynamism, which I certainly felt when I visited Turkey recently. Although everybody will be talking a lot more about the MINTS in 2014, they are unlikely to achieve the double digit rates of economic growth so soon.

2014 will be the year when many people hear new names in the news business. The familiar titles of our national newspapers and broadcasters are being joined by the less well-known names of new arrivals. The digital disruption which has so damaged the livelihood of printed newspapers has also created opportunities for new players to emerge and to succeed.

A competitive cluster of online news sites with no background in print will start to turn their large, and largely young, audiences into businesses. They will leverage that success to do more ambitious and expensive journalism. Expect to hear more of names like Buzzfeed, Vox, Vice and Upworthy. In London, the company which owns the Evening Standard will start a local television channel for the capital. Individual bloggers with exceptionally large followings may imitate the political blogger Guido Fawkes and create start-up businesses to sustain their source of news, comment or gossip (note to journalism students: these will be the businesses creating jobs rather than cutting them).

This doesn’t mean that established news outlets will disappear, simply that their online competition is growing up. The mainstream print and online media will continue to search for ways out of their financial problems either by colonising new markets or by making people pay for journalism delivered on a digital platform. The Guardian has spun out satellite editorial operations in the USA and Australia in the hope of capturing new readerships; The Times enforces a strict paywall which forces any reader online to subscribe before reading a word. Other news publishers will make similar moves.

A parallel, but slower, development will affect broadcast news.

The internet can carry news television: the faster the connections, the easier home-made news broadcasting becomes to achieve.

That does not mean that rival start-ups are going to knock the BBC off its perch as the British news organisation with the highest trust ratings and widest reach. The BBC remains the largest news organisation on the planet, with some 8,000 employees in that part of the Corporation. But just as the dispersal of the power to publish has affected printed newspapers, in the end the BBC will have to come to terms with a world in which anyone with a smartphone can become a broadcaster.

Professor Kate Phylaktis, Professor of International Finance, Director of Emerging Markets Group, Cass Business School

Professor George Brock, Professor and Head of Journalism and author of Out of Print: Newspapers, Journalism and the Business of News in the Digital Age.

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Bond Voyage Last year, David Cameron pledged to make London one of the world’s ‘great capitals of Islamic finance’ and unveiled plans to create a £200M Islamic bond. The Prime Minister is right to stress that Sharia-compliant financing will become an increasing powerhouse in the City during 2014. Conservative estimates place the value of Sharia-compliant assets held by investors globally in 2012/13 at more than USD 1.5 trillion. The vast sums and continued rise and influence of Islam in many countries make this mode of finance increasingly attractive.

Central to Islamic finance is the principle that money itself has no intrinsic value; it is simply a medium of exchange. You are not allowed to make a profit by exchanging cash with another person – earning interest is not allowed. Among the fastest growing products in Islamic finance are so-called Islamic bonds, or Sukuk. Although not always received as entirely Sharia-compliant, this asset-based form of securitisation will continue to dominate the Islamic finance scene in 2014. Other forms of Islamic finance including Islamic insurance will also feature in the new economic landscape following the loss of faith in conventional finance methods during 2008/09.

However, there are significant legal issues to consider. First, Islamic financial institutions and instruments are subject to rules which may not sit comfortably within conventional corporate governance mechanisms. If these structures and systems do not meet international finance requirements, regulators in western markets, such as in the City of London, may face challenges when trying to expand Islamic finance activity. Connected to this is how supervisory boards within Islamic banks operate: there is a view that some lack transparency and accountability.

The second legal issue is that providers will require many of these transactions and contracts to be governed by Islamic law: however the applicability of Islamic law in the west remains a vexed issue. For instance, if an Islamic financing contract is disputed before the English court, the issue of how to resolve it in a manner consistent with Sharia is likely to cause tensions.

Finally, the legal structuring of transactions needs to be sensitive to the cultural, commercial and religious norms of the relevant country. However, the Islamic commercial world is very diverse.

How the law should accommodate these considerations is not entirely clear given the lack of standardisation or convention. That is particularly acute in respect of the Sukuk, or Islamic bonds, to which the Prime Minister is currently giving such attention.

Professor Jason Chuah, Professor of Commercial and Maritime Law at The City Law School

Leaving on a jet-pack The Wright Brothers made air travel a reality a little over a century ago.

However, the beauty of flight has so far eluded the average person: air travel is largely offered as a consumer service.

People are flown from one destination to another. The ability to fly remains specialist, highly technical and exclusive.

The enormous speed with which personal computing has developed will bring the ability to fly to the average human. Drones, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), will offer the opportunity for anyone to fly their own vehicle remotely. UAV technology has matured in the last two decades owing its development in the main, to American military research. In 2014 it will become a consumer technology, as the US Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) is about to issue a regulatory framework for small consumer aircraft.

Certainly, this opens up possibilities for global adoption of the technology.

One excellent example is Amazon Prime Air which will deliver your orders within half an hour via UAVs. The project has already started test flights.

Another example is Jet-Pack travel which will become a reality in 2014. James Bond did it 50 years ago and it was a feature of the 1984 Los Angles Olympic Games opening ceremony. Now Martin Aircraft Co. of Christchurch, New Zealand, will begin selling a variant of the jet pack.

Professor Adrian Cheok, Professor of Pervasive Computing, School of Informatics

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Cass Business School’s Centre for Charity Effectiveness is working with The Lord Mayor of London Fiona Woolf CBE and her consort Nicholas Woolf on a programme aimed at nonprofit leaders.

The Lord Mayor’s Charity Leadership Programme includes lectures and debates and provides networking opportunities for charity Chairs, CEOs, funders and leading charity supporters from the City of London.

Events started in November 2013 and close in October 2014 with a conference for current and potential charity Chairs at the Mansion House.

William Shawcross, Chair of the Charity Commission, was the keynote speaker at the first City’s Giving lecture in November.

He told 300 attendees, representing a mix from charities, livery companies and

corporates, that the regulator intends to send clearer deterrence messages to those abusing charitable status and to take more decisive action when things go wrong.

Introducing the programme Nicholas Woolf wrote: “When it became clear that the Lord Mayor in 2013/14 would be my wife, Alderman Fiona Woolf CBE, I determined that I would support her year as the Lord Mayor’s Consort by providing a leadership programme within the City to increase the number and effectiveness of charity Chairs and Chairmen.” The theme of Fiona’s mayoralty is ‘The Energy to Transform Lives’ and the charitable aspects embodied within this focus are all within the framework of The Lord Mayor’s Appeal.

“The idea for a Lord Mayor’s Charity Leadership Programme reflects my

personal experience as Chairman or ViceChairman of four healthcare charities.

There are few programmes designed specifically for actual or potential charity Chairs and I wanted to fill this gap.”

All trustees have significant responsibility, but the Chair has a special role in leading the organisation and ensuring its well-being and development as well as having the primary relationship with the Chief Executive.

The programme is designed to draw out the complexities, the issues, challenges and pleasures of being a charity Chair.

The programme is supported by Mazars, the Macquarie Group Foundation and Coutts.

For more information see: www.cass.city.ac.uk/lmclp

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Last November Alderman Fiona Woolf began her tenure as the 686th Lord Mayor of London. She was formally installed as Chancellor of City University London during January’s graduation ceremonies at the Guildhall, and continued a tradition which dates back to 1966. City News spoke to Fiona about her priorities for the year ahead.

How are you finding the role?

It is everything I thought it would be, in that you are well prepared for it, but I’m quite overwhelmed by the measure of support and good will towards both the office of the Lord Mayor and to me. I think it’s partly because I’m the second woman in the role but more importantly, people think the Mayoralty has some value to add.

I think that until you are the Lord Mayor you don’t quite realise the good it can do.

You’ve got amazing convening powers to bring people together for all sorts of good causes and that has taken me by surprise.

Are you frustrated that so much has been made of you being only the second woman to hold the post?

I have to recognise that the progress on women in leadership roles has been slow – the fact I’m only the second female Lord Mayor since 1189 is just an expression of that. The City is perceived as being quite conservative on that front. I’ve started a programme called ‘The Power of Diversity’ and we’ve got 34 organisations on board to make a collaborative effort to achieve change.

It seemed to me to be an opportunity to push the agenda and shine a spotlight on the lack of diverse talent in top leadership positions – I’m not just talking about women, but issues of inequality across the spectrum. I recall Madeline Albright saying: ‘There is a special place in Hell for women who don’t help other women.’ I think it would have been wrong for me to turn down the opportunity of capturing the benefits of diversity – it’s now a business imperative. Diverse teams will challenge traditional thinking and we need new ideas.

But I don’t want to be remembered simply for being the second female Lord Mayor.

What are your other priorities for your time in office?

Something which falls to Lord Mayors and which I am particularly keen on, is to promote giving and philanthropy in all its forms and support the Corporate Social Responsibility movement.

I’ve been fortunate to be working with Cass Business School on a programme my husband has helped to establish on Charity Leadership [see article on facing page]. My husband is a serial chairman of charities and he has frequently made the point that there is nothing out there to help chairmen when they are plucked out of their careers to lead a board of charity trustees. Cass has a wonderful Centre for Charity Effectiveness and together they have created something new for a charity context, which draws on Cass’ immense experience of management and leadership.

This will help charity chairmen lead more effective boards, but also encourage the City to deliver its talent to the charity sector. Charities are being asked to increase the standards of their leadership, governance, operations etc. so it seemed an obvious and good thing to do. We also know that we need to give more.

Charities can’t expect local authorities or the public sector to keep funding them. If we’re asking charities to increase their effectiveness we need to do more to support them.

What have you learnt about City University London since becoming Chancellor?

I’m overwhelmed by how successful the University is and in particular how attractive it is with students from all over the world.

There are many Centres of Excellence, which I’ve known about through my role at The Law Society and the development of the estate and facilities – I attended the recent opening of 200 Aldersgate, which is a real jewel in the crown. At a time when people think of universities being under greater financial pressure, City’s pulling power is very impressive.

How can we strengthen links between the University and the City?

There’s an appetite in the City to engage with the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) community in particular, because they value the evidence on which they’ll base decisions. Whether that be for business expansion or developing new services. Engaging with academia to provide information-based decision making is something which the Government is pushing as well and it recognises the importance of bringing science and business together.

You need to start by communicating not just what the University has on offer, but the value it can bring to mainstream City businesses. You have to get their

attention first and then you can look at how you collaborate more closely.

What advice did you have for the City graduates who were present when you were installed as Chancellor at graduation?

Firstly, the City is not just a place where bankers work: there are all sorts of different businesses. So before you think of jumping on a ‘plane and selling your talent – which as a graduate of City is highly saleable – just look on your doorstep. You’ll find an enormous range of businesses looking for the best talent they can find and now is a great moment for the City. We have to respond to the needs of society, particularly around the uncertainties of climate change, changing demographics and increasing urbanisation, which will mean there are many new services to deliver. It’s a moment of great opportunity and great innovation.

The businesses in the City are working in markets which are large and liquid and they are working all over the world. I’ve worked in 40 countries so far during my career.

Secondly, I’d say ‘get lucky and say yes’. That means you need to create your own luck – always be thinking ahead to what you need to do for your career development – but say yes to any opportunity presented, knowing you’ve got the City University London education as a platform, which means you can learn anything.

REF: 8

A thank you In June 2007 the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) issued a circular letter to every higher education institution announcing that a new framework for assessing research quality in UK universities would replace the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE).

The new system would be known as the Research Excellence Framework (REF).

The new methods were designed to produce national indicators of research excellence for all disciplines which can be used to benchmark quality against international standards and drive the Council’s funding for research. The assessment would also provide a basis for the distribution of funding primarily by reference to research excellence and would enable HEFCE to fund excellent research in all its forms wherever it is found.

Since then, the research efforts of academic staff have been focused on addressing REF requirements in order to achieve the strongest submissions by the deadline in November last year.

The University’s REF submission included the work of 439 academics at City, representing in full-time equivalent terms just over half our academic staff.

The submission included 146 pages of text on the University’s research environment and approach to achieving impact from research, as well as 49 impact case studies.

A total of 1,592 research outputs, mainly articles published in high-quality journals, were submitted for individual assessment The REF was split into 36 units of assessment covering the range of research subjects from clinical medicine to music and drama. Each of these has an expert subpanel which will assess the submissions in that subject area . City submitted research to 12 units of assessment. The sub-panels will apply a set of generic assessment criteria and level definitions, taking account also of subject particularities, to produce an overall quality profile for each submission. The sub-panels will determine what percentage of activity submitted is considered to be at each of the defined quality star ratings for outputs, environment and impact.

These will be combined into the overall quality profile, contributing 65%, 15% and 20% respectively to the final result (see red box to right).

The goliath task was overseen by the Director of the University Research Office, Jo Bradford and her team. “It’s definitely been a busy past few years,” she says with a sense of relief. “The REF outcome is critical to the University Strategic Plan so producing the best submission we can has been vital.

The Schools have been additionally busy recruiting all the new academic staff in time for the deadline. The introduction of the impact case studies, which were not part of previous RAEs and are really an unknown quantity in terms of how they will be assessed, also made the process very challenging. Everyone involved, both academic and professional staff, has worked very hard to get everything done.”

One person who is well aware of the amount of hard work put in by City staff is Vice-Chancellor Professor Paul Curran.

“I’d like to congratulate all involved in this massive endeavour and especially Jo Bradford and her team.

We now wait with anticipation for the outcome and hope that all the hard work and dedication will pay off.”

What next?

The submission will be reviewed with results due in December 2014. However, involvement in the REF continues for some staff at City. Dean of the School of Arts & Social Sciences, Professor Andrew Jones, is one of several City academics who will participate in the assessment process. “Over the course of the year, I will be attending a series of meetings with my colleagues on the assessment panel to review the submissions from other academic institutions in my discpline. I think of it as a great privilege to be considered to review my peers,” he says. “I look forward to reading about some of the hopefully excellent work my colleagues are doing at other academic institutions,” he adds.

Jo and her team also have to respond to audit of the City submission and meet other Funding Council requirements during 2014.

The next REF is likely to be in 2020. Academic staff are already producing research outputs and winning research funding which will form part of a REF 2020 submission. The University will be considering other steps which might need to be taken to ensure that when the time comes everything is in the best shape for an excellent submission.

Quality that is world-leading in terms of originality, significance and rigour.

Quality that is internationally excellent in terms of originality, significance and rigour but which falls short of the highest standards of excellence.

Quality that is recognised internationally in terms of originality, significance and rigour.

Quality that is recognised nationally in terms of originality, significance and rigour.

Unclassified Quality: that falls below the standard of nationally recognised work. Or work which does not meet the published definition of research for the purposes of this assessment.

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One of the 49 impact case studies submitted as part of the REF was produced by Professor Julienne Meyer, Professor of Nursing, Care for Older Adults. In partnership with Age UK and Dementia UK, My Home Life (MHL) is a collaborative movement of people involved with care homes for older people. It was established to improve the quality of life of everyone connected with care homes and has become the recognised voice for the sector.

There are around 18,000 care homes in the UK providing three times as many beds as the NHS. Care home residents often have complicated health and social care needs, resulting from multiple long-term conditions, with significant levels of frailty (around two-thirds have dementia). However, residents are being cared for by a predominantly social care (rather than health care) workforce that is poorly paid with low level or no educational qualifications.

Given this situation, it is widely acknowledged by the Government and the health care sector that care homes need support to improve standards of care. This is the main focus of the MHL Initiative.

The research has been carried out in three phases.

Phase 1: Vision (2005 to 2007) The original research underpinning MHL was funded by Help the Aged (ÂŁ25,000) and synthesised the evidence for best practice in care homes. This Vision challenged the narrow focus of policy for older people and highlighted the importance of positive relationships to deliver person-centred care.

Phase 2: Dissemination (2007 to 2009) was funded by Bupa Giving (ÂŁ279,500) and involved sharing the best practice findings with around 18,00 care homes, using a range of creative resources including briefings, posters and DVDs. A website was developed which enabled care homes to access best practice for the first time.

Phase 3: Implementation (2009 to 2013) was funded (over ÂŁ2 million in total) by several sources (Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Department of Health, Local Authorities and City Bridge Trust) to support care home managers progress quality improvement. This work resulted in the establishment of a Leadership Support and Community Development (LSCD) programme that is being successfully implemented in 25 local authorities in England and 9 regions in Scotland, while other MHL initiatives have been developed in Wales and Northern Ireland.

MHL has provided a step change to practice improvement in care homes through its research. It has done this by highlighting issues affecting the marginalised sector through its evidence-based and relationship-centred directives, its piloting and testing of new ways of working, its leadership training initiatives and its spread and depth of influence.

MHL now serves as a quality charter mark for best practice in care homes. It is endorsed by the Relatives and Residents Association and all the provider organisations that represent care homes across the UK. Over 5,000 care homes have joined the MHL Network to share best practice. Internationally, MHL has also attracted substantial interest. In Australia, funds were awarded from the Department of Health and Ageing for a MHL-linked initiative in Hepburn Health Service in Victoria. In addition, Professor Meyer has spoken about MHL by invitation in Australia, Canada, China, Japan, Malta, Spain and the USA. MHL has had a significant and wide-reaching impact on both policy and practice to help support quality improvement in care homes.

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PLAYING WITH BILLION$ 2013 saw the video games industry shake off any notion that the medium was still the preserve of ‘geeks and fanboys’, rooted in alternative culture. The release of Grand Theft Auto 5 monopolised many column inches in the mainstream media and more importantly, it highlighted that video games are now outselling blockbuster films and albums by the world’s biggest musicians.

The fifth edition of the Grand Theft Auto franchise has sold 30M copies worldwide and achieved £500M worth of sales in the first 24 hours of release. City News spoke to City academics about how the sector has become the most valuable entertainment industry and where the future lies.

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GAMES

FILM

MUSIC

$10bn

$21bn

Islington how to code giving them the chance to write computer programmes and create their own games.

One of the academics in support of the programme is Dr Chris Child, who is the co-director of the BSc (Hons) Computer Science with Games Technology and MSc in Computer Games Technology at City. Chris, who has been at the University since 2001, has several years of experience in the gaming industry having worked for Empire Interactive as well as his own company, Childish Things, where he continues to develop his own gaming series, International Cricket Captain, which has sold over 1 million copies.

“Year on year, hardware continues to develop, making the things we once thought impossible possible in gaming.

To keep pushing the boundaries of entertainment, we need to give developers and designers the foundations they need to continue the development of the industry.

Introducing coding skills at a young age will only help us do so” Chris says.

“There are so many skills and aspects that people don’t appreciate contributing to the development of a game. Physics, graphics, audio, artificial intelligence, storyline creation - the list is endless. Here at the School of Informatics, we are trying to give students the skills at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, as well as the experience of working alongside some of the biggest game developers in the world to prepare them for a career in the industry.”

One of many examples of graduate success is Orkun Bektas who graduated from City’s MSc in Computer Games Technology course in 2013. His thesis considered the advance of real-time computer graphics through GPU programming, which was of great interest to Rockstar Games, one of the biggest game developers in the world. He was then hired to work on Grand Theft Auto 5 – one of the best selling games of all time.

“We have only started to scratch the surface of what the games industry can achieve” says Chris’s co-director of the BSc and MSc programmes, Dr Gregory Slabaugh. Greg’s research involves both computer games technology and healthcare applications.

Last year, Chris, Greg and their students had a prominent role in Cancer Research UK’s (CRUK) Gamejam project. “The amount of raw data that CRUK has is so vast, it would take teams of people years to go through it. The idea was that if you turn the data sorting into several games, they can get members of the public to play, helping them further their research. It’s a great project that I was proud to be part of” he said. City students received awards for the games they produced for the Gamejam.

While the industry has grown rapidly in recent years, the big question is can it maintain its growth, or has it hit its peak? Many articles have been written about the decline of the industry following its move into the mainstream and the increased involvement of big business looking to increase profits.

Professor Baden-Fuller, who wrote the book Rejuvenating the Mature Business doesn’t agree. “In the world of business, maturity is a state of mind” he says. “The people and the level of talent are the things that matter. As long as institutions such as City keep delivering a creative and talented workforce of graduates, the industry will grow and be an important place to start a business or seek employment.”

$41bn

In 1972, Allan Alcorn designed the game Pong, which became the first arcade video game to break into mainstream popularity. By the time Alexey Pajitnov created Tetris in 1984, the industry had established itself as a staple for both children and adults all over the world with characters like Mario, Sonic and Pacman going on to become household names.

Today’s industry would be unrecognisable to those early pioneers.

In 2012 the video games industry was worth £41 billion worldwide with the UK accounting for £3.2 billion. In comparison, worldwide consumers spent £10.1 billion on music and £21.2 billion on movies.

The pace of growth shows no sign of slowing with the industry’s value projected to grow to over £50 billion by 2017.

Professor Charles Baden-Fuller, Professor of Strategy at Cass Business School whose current research focuses on how young high-technology firms can grow successfully explains: “There is a great deal other industries can learn from the video games industry, particularly in the area of change management and new business models. The video game industry has mastered change and generally has made money and created superior consumer value from advances in digital technology. Specifically, gaming companies have not just innovated new products, but they have adopted novel delivery systems for their products and perhaps most importantly, innovative charging systems that have changed the model of the industry.”

While it’s difficult to deny the industry’s place in the world of business, video games can polarise the opinions of cultural commentators. Some see them responsible for causing aggression and health problems. At the same time, they have been credited with improving social skills, coordination and boosting intelligence.

“Much like other art forms, video games reflect our society and shouldn’t be ‘in the dock’ as it were” notes Professor Andy Pratt, Professor of Cultural Economy in the Department of Culture & Creative Industries at City.

“The relationship between computer games and behaviour indicates a rather more complex process than the usual headlines” he continues.

Andy’s research has considered the social and economic organisation of the industry and its cultural impact. “You can see what the obvious attraction is when people play games.

Gamers enter an increasingly immersive environment that allows them immediate gratification. They allow someone to be good at something that they are not necessarily skilled at in real life. They also offer an outlet for people who want to be social as well as for those who don’t” he adds. “Gaming could in fact be a way of making us more social and not the perceived opposite.”

As well as gaming’s effect on our behaviour, Andy also recognises that for the industry to continue to grow we need to develop what children are being taught in schools. “The more recent success in the games industry as a mainstream medium has highlighted the distinct lack of coding being taught as part of the school curriculum. Coding is becoming an increasingly vital tool in the working environment, so it is important we prepare the next generation accordingly,” Andy says.

City students are involved in the Code Club, which teaches 8 to 14-year-olds in

40% OF GAMERS ARE FEMALE

70% OF PARENTS THINK GAMES ARE GOOD FOR THEIR CHILDREN

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Meet the academics

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Dr Steven Truxal “When I sit down to do my research I put my airline hat on,” says Dr Steven Truxal, Lecturer at The City Law School.

“People often tell me I have an interesting approach to the law as I came at it from the industry perspective,” he adds.

Steven is an academic lawyer specialising in aviation law, in particular issues surrounding competition and environmental regulation of air transport – research which helps lawyers working in the sector and industry professionals.

Steven grew up in Pittsburgh, USA and Neumünster, Germany.

As a child he was fascinated with planes and remembers being far more interested in flying to holiday destinations than the holidays themselves. He was intrigued by all the processes from the loading of the cargo to how the food was packed and it was this natural curiosity about minutiae which led him to study law.

He went on to study international affairs and economics at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University in Washington, DC, but in 2002 he returned to Germany to complete an apprenticeship at Lufthansa Cargo to get his first taste of the airline business. Steven was stationed at Frankfurt and Los Angeles airports and worked in every area of the organisation: cargo handling, sales, the reservations call centre, the check-in desk and in head office.

He went on to study International Commercial Law after which he pursued a PhD in Aviation Law at the University of Westminster in 2008.

Aviation law is a niche research area but after his PhD Steven predicted that his specialism would rise in the public awareness.

“In 2008 there was a lot of talk generally in the papers about carbon budgets and emissions but there was little about how this would affect the airline sector and I had a feeling that the EU trading system was likely to face an international legal challenge.”

In 2012 his predictions came true when China threatened a trade war over the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme which sought to include under its regulations, carbon emissions from flights into and out of the EU. Although this scheme is now on hold, there are plans for international aviation emissions to be regulated under an international scheme by 2020. Steven has been on the sidelines of recent talks to come to a global consensus.

After a year as Dean of Studies and Visiting Professor of English Law at the Centre for British Studies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in Germany, Steven returned to London to join City.

This academic year he was given the opportunity to develop and teach a new module called Aviation Law and Regulation on the City law course. “This is the only bachelor degree I’m aware of that will offer aviation law which is not only very exciting for me but extremely beneficial to City law graduates competing in an ever-challenging employment market.”

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Dr Elena Novelli

“The choices made by individual companies can generate an effect not only for the company itself but also for other companies in the industry” “Technology is moving at a fast pace and companies are having to work doubly hard to keep up with both the competition and customer demand,” says Dr Elena Novelli, Lecturer in Management at Cass Business School.

Elena’s research examines how the choices that firms make concerning their technology and innovation affect the company’s performance. “Not only do firms need to come up with new technologies and keep innovating their products, but they also need to keep innovating the way in which they do business,” she says.

Elena explains that investigating this issue is important not only for companies looking to improve their performance but also for policy makers, because technology-based innovation is one of the sources of competitive advantage for many countries.

Over the last few years her research has focused on high tech industries in the US and Europe, in particular the photonics industry which produces fibre optics, lasers and other products which generate or harness light.

“Although my research is applicable to all high tech companies, the photonics

industry is a good case study as it is an area where there is a good rate of innovation, where significant research and development are important, there is investment in manufacturing facilities and where additional money is being invested into transforming technology into products.”

Elena explains.

Elena had her first taste of the world of business at an early age as her parents ran a family business in the fashion industry in Italy. From a very young age she was exposed to every aspect of how a company works from how a product is designed, the material chosen and the manufacturing process, right through to how customer feedback is used to improve the product.

Keen to pursue her interest she moved to Milan at the age of 19 to study at Bocconi University – the leading school for business administration in Italy. There she built on her passion for technology and gadgets by considering how technological innovation affects a company’s performance.

Following a two year lectureship in Strategy and International Management at the University of Bath Elena joined City in

February 2013 drawn to the work on technological innovation already being conducted at Cass.

At the start of 2013 Elena received a three-year Future Research Leaders grant from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) of almost £170,000 to investigate the interdependencies between choices made by technology-based companies concerning the technology they develop and the products they launch and how such interdependencies affect a firm’s performance.

“The choices made by individual companies can generate an effect not only for the company itself but also for other companies in the industry, for instance their suppliers, customers, or competitors,” she explains.

Elena is keen that her research is meaningful for companies as well as being of academic interest. “When I conduct interviews with managers I always try to find out the problems they are keen to solve.

For me it is a vital reality check and ensures that my research is relevant and useful for them”.

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Professor Amanda Burls “We need people to manage their conditions as much as they can – it will prevent an unnecessary burden on the health system” Professor Amanda Burls specialises in evidence-based healthcare (EBHC) which concerns ensuring health decisions are informed with the most up-to-date and high-quality information.

“In today’s society, patients are really active about finding the information they need to cure their medical problems but it’s important that they are getting the best information,” she explains.

ThinkWell is one of Amanda’s key projects and it aims to create this evidence base by undertaking research into e-Health and public and patient involvement in health and health research. The goal of the project is to examine the medical questions being researched and the questions the public want answered. It will also establish online research trials to answer the public’s key priorities and help them to distinguish trustworthy treatments from quack ‘cures.’

Amanda’s motivation for her research is her frustration at the current medical research agenda which she feels is not patient-focussed.

“There needs to be more of a relation between the agendas of the research

community and the research consumer,” she says.

As a medical doctor by training, Amanda says that the majority of illnesses people visit a doctor can be avoided at home and there are many things people can do for themselves.

“For example meditation, drinking more water, switching to a gluten free diet and using homeopathy are all known to be beneficial for your health but there is little evidence to say what actually works. The aim is to establish a system to test which of these holistic remedies are working and get through all the noise,” Amanda explains.

The ThinkWell team has been scouring health forums and websites to research the health issues in which people are most interested and they have created an anonymous survey to get people to engage with the project.

The model Amanda is proposing is a much cheaper way of conducting research. “We need people to manage their conditions as much as they can – it will prevent an unnecessary burden on the health system,” she says.

Amanda’s political take on her research links back to her first degree in Politics, Philosophy

and Economics from the University of Oxford before she went on to study Medicine at University College London. Amanda achieved a Masters in Public Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and was a senior fellow at the Centre for EvidenceBased Medicine in 1996.

In 1997 Amanda started as a Senior Clinical Lecturer at the University of Birmingham where she founded and directed the West Midlands Health Technology Assessment Collaboration which produced systematic reviews and economic evaluations to inform local, regional and national health policy decisions. After five years as Director of Postgraduate Programmes in Evidence-Based Health Care at the University of Oxford, Amanda joined City in August 2013.

“I wanted to join the University as there are a lot of people here who seem to have an outward-looking approach and aren’t afraid of innovation. I put forward all my maddest ideas for the job interview and there was no sense that they felt I was too avant-garde – the institution feels very modern and young,” she says.

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Unearthed:

the only existing audio of Cambridge spy Guy Burgess

in New York the day before he got on the boat back to Britain and then on to Russia.

We thought that if a transcript existed it was obvious that at some point a tape existed and might still exist. So Jeff put in a Freedom of Information (FOI) request on our behalf to both the British and American authorities.

The British came back saying they didn’t know where any such tape was but nine months after our request the FBI told us they had put ‘a release’ in the transatlantic mail.

Letter from America

Guy Burgess was, at various times and often simultaneously, a radio producer for the BBC, an informer for MI5, a propagandist for MI6, a diplomat for the FBI and a spy for the KGB. In the book which I wrote with City University London colleague Jeff Hulbert last year, When Reporters Cross the Line, we said that Guy Burgess set something of a gold standard for conflicts of interest.

During the research for our Burgess chapter we found all sorts of facts about the man and his extraordinary life. We knew what he looked like from stills and one piece of silent newsreel. We knew how tall he was, what he weighed, the various ailments he collected because of his prodigious drinking and who he slept with. We even found out that he smelt like a combination of the previous night’s alcohol and that morning’s chewed garlic cloves.

But nowhere could we find exactly what he sounded like. The BBC sound archive produced no trace of a recording of their former employee. We had a hunch that somewhere in the many radio programmes Burgess had produced he probably had appeared on the air at some point, but maybe nobody wrote it down.

All we could find was a reference in, of all places the FBI files in Washington, to Burgess having made a sound recording in 1951, just before he defected to Russia, in which he told his favourite anecdote. He had talked about the day back in September 1938 when he met Winston Churchill and they shared their mutual despair at the Munich agreement which Chamberlain had just signed with Hitler. The files had a transcript of what Burgess had said about this meeting into a friend’s tape-recorder

It came in the Christmas post and on our first day back after the holiday break we found an FBI envelope sitting in my post box at City. I was so excited I took Jeff and the envelope into a studio at the University to record in sound and video the moment of us opening the envelope. Michael Crick of Channel 4 News, to whom we gave the tapes, was to say later that only an old newsman would think of recording the moment.

We feared the ‘release’ might be just more paperwork but in fact the FBI had run off a CD for us of Burgess’s tape which they had discovered in New York during their enquiries after his defection to Russia. The only known recording of the voice of one of Britain’s biggest traitors was in excellent quality and alongside it was an FBI letter declaring that the tape was now declassified and released without any deletions.

When we listened to the CD we realised it contained what was the third attempt

by Burgess and his friend on that slightly drunken night to put his anecdote onto tape.

The very first words on the recording – which weren’t on the transcript – are Burgess declaring, presumably in response to his friend giving him some kind of advice off mic: “I won’t take any notice of you … I’m not in the least shy. I am extremely tired.”

He then explains: “I am now recording for the third time because I think the story is of some interest, my interview with Mr Winston Churchill in September 1938.”

Burgess was known as a good mimic and he imitates Churchill’s side of the conversation.

Posh accent In some ways this is a short radio play about the meeting between Burgess and Churchill in which Burgess plays both parts. He delivers his lines with a slight slur, which may be due to the amount of drink that he had been consuming just before finally sorting out the tape recorder.

Burgess has been played on screen half a dozen times by actors including Alan Bates, Benedict Cumberbatch and Derek Jacobi.

Mostly they played the Old Etonian with

what we would regard as a ‘posh’ accent.

But being the first people anywhere to hear the voice of the real Guy Burgess for the first time since he died in Moscow in 1963, what struck us was that none of the actors had been anywhere near posh enough in their versions. The real Burgess was much closer to Harry Enfield’s character Mr Cholmondley-Warner than to a contemporary old Etonian like David Cameron.

We have gathered together everything from our research – video, audio, documents, articles and stills – and put them on a microsite (www.city.ac.uk/cambridge-spies-theguy-burgess-tape) so that anybody inside or outside the University can use these resources.

As a hack at heart I get a cheap thrill of getting the exclusive, but Jeff Hulbert thinks rather more deeply about the historical significance of what we have found. He believes we can now hear for ourselves exactly how ‘establishment’ Burgess was and that it helps to explain why he found it so easy to mix with the ruling elite: he spoke and sounded just like they did.

But Jeff thinks the tape also reveals Burgess’s underlying sense of humour, which for many was his underlying charm, as well as a quick wit. Jeff’s overall verdict is that we get a real glimpse of Burgess the man who, in spite of all his treachery, still commanded the respect and friendship of a loyal band of followers. Jeff says: “What is striking is that his voice betrays no hint of tension. This is remarkable because less than four weeks later he would defect to the Soviet Union with Donald Maclean."

Thanks go to Kristian Brunt-Seymour, a student on City’s MA in Broadcast Journalism, who has edited the video and audio and voiced the news package. Ben Sawtell created the microsite with colleagues in Marketing & Communications at City. Dave Goodfellow and the technical team in the Journalism department made it all work.

Written by Professor Stewart Purvis, Professor of Television Journalism at City for The Conversation

A healthy career

After 23 years of service, Professor Carol Cox (above left) retired in December from her post as Associate Dean for Research in the School of Health Sciences. City News asked for her reflections on her time at City.

“It feels only yesterday that I left my life as the Director of Nursing at Prince George's Hospital Center in Maryland, USA, to start a new challenge in London” Carol says. “I was brought over to establish the first MSc in Nursing at the School of Nursing and Midwifery.”

At that point, the School was an affiliate institution of City’s. “Despite that, you always had the feeling of joint working and effective collaboration” she says.

“I’m reminded of a particular anecdote about the nursing students working together with the engineering students from City to park a double-decker bus inside the Barbican building for a particular project” she continued.

Building on the MSc programme in Nursing, Carol went on to establish the MSc in Midwifery in 1991 and then PhD programmes in Nursing in 1993 and Midwifery in 1994. After the School of Nursing and Midwifery was fully integrated into the University in 1995, Carol continued her groundbreaking work at City, establishing the UK’s first Advanced Nurse Practitioner programme in 1997. Pioneering at the time, Advanced Nurse Practitioners are now commonplace in hospitals across the UK. “Throughout my career here, I’ve felt the entrepreneurial spirit at City. The staff at all levels have always pulled

together to improve the institution. We have been encouraged to implement new programmes for the benefit of our students and to undergo research that has positive outcomes in the wider world” Carol said.

When asked what she will miss the most about her time at City, Carol finds it difficult to give just one answer.

“There’s so much to miss! It’s difficult to keep it to just a couple of things. I think the thing I’ll look back on most fondly are my colleagues – I’ve met some truly inspirational and amazing people over the years; and the students. What I call the ‘aha’ moment, when a student has clicked and understood the subject matter, is an absolutely priceless feeling.”

Over nearly a quarter of a century, thousands of students have graduated from the School of Health Sciences under Carol’s tutelage. Many have gone on to do their own research in the field of healthcare.

“I keep in contact with several of my former students and it’s very fulfilling to see what they are achieving. I recently caught up with some of them doing cutting-edge research in the field of glaucoma at Moorfields Eye Hospital.”

She leaves the University on what she believes is a high note. “Much has been said about the changes taking place at City and in my time here, I’ve been through three big changes, but each time the University improved substantially as a result. I have the utmost confidence that the only way is up for City and I’ll

17

be sure to keep an eye on the league tables to see our rise up the rankings.”

Carol leaves City to further her studies with an MA in Theology. Eventually, she plans to go back to her family home in Florida to take up sailing with her husband.

Dean at the School of Health Sciences, Professor Stanton Newman leads the long line of well-wishers. “Carol has made an outstanding contribution to the School and the University during her time here.

An excellent example of the impact she has had on City and the wider healthcare community is the success of Advanced Nursing Practitioner (ANP) programmes.

While initially contentious, it’s now clear that ANP programmes such as ours have had an extremely positive effect on healthcare in Britain, something that wouldn’t have been possible without the dedication of individuals like Carol.

“More recently, the School benefitted greatly from Carol’s diligence, organisation and eye for detail, during the lengthy and complex preparation of our REF submission, for which we are extremely grateful.

Carol will be missed by all of us who have had the privilege of working with her and I wish her all the very best in the next phase of her life, which far from winding down, includes turning her inquisitive mind and boundless energy to an MA in Theology; yet another discipline to benefit from her distinctive mark.”

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Carly Norton

Rachael Gill

Carl Tams

Daniel Barnes

Yaman Mustafa

Naeem Gamrai

Angelina Mehendra

Kelly Rush

Stilyana Stoyanova

Jessica Bishop

Cristina Feliz

David Street

Meet Development & Alumni Relations Each year 4,000 students graduate from City. The Development & Alumni Relations Office (DARO) is the main route to keeps them in touch with their alma mater.

Director of DARO David Street and his team keeps over 94,000 alumni including more than 30,000 students from 180 countries around the world, up-to-date with the latest news about the University. DARO also cultivates the income the University receives from its alumni network and other stakeholders. This income supports strategically important programmes

which improve the student experience and research credentials of the University, thereby underpinning the University’s Strategic Plan.

DARO is comprised of 5 distinct parts: Corporate partnerships - Led by Deputy Director Mallory Robinson, the team engages with other income-generating units around the University including the Enterprise Office, the Cass MBA team, Cass Executive Education and the Research Office and pairs them with related corporate partners. The nature of each affiliation is individual, but partnerships can result in corporations having access to a pool

of student recruits, academics, research or learning as well as the opportunity for brand enhancement and networking.

Individual Giving – A team of fundraisers led

by Kelly Kent manages relationships with high net worth individuals who may have the capacity to support the University financially.

This team also manages the Annual Fund operation whereby current students telephone former students to request low level donations. The Annual Fund helps cultivate prospects who may in time become major donors. The Individual Giving team also

19

Kelly Kent

Anita Jethwa

Paul Mburu

Ruth Velenski

Ruth Thomson

Mark Blackledge

Gordon Au

Sue Rees

Mallory Robinson

Nikki Kolyvani

Sadia Hamidu

Donovan Izilein

works closely with colleagues in Careers to help identify donors who may wish to offer their help in other ways through the Professional Mentoring Programmes and Student Volunteering.

Philanthropic Partnerships - Ruth Thomson

and her team manage relationships with Trusts, Foundations and Livery Companies and have responsibility for high quality research to support DARO. They also manage the Legacy Programme establishing relationships with individuals who wish to leave the University a gift in their Will.

Alumni Relations and Alumni Services - An

alumni function comprising a team supporting Cass alumni, headed by Nikki Kolyvani. It offers specific support to

graduates of the Business School. There is also a team managed by Sue Rees providing support to all other alumni and the management of a database upon which much of DARO’s activity depends. Both parts of the alumni function work closely with colleagues in International Recruitment and in coursespecific roles where alumni engagement can help to make a difference.

Campaigns Management - The fundraising

undertaken by DARO is headed by Ruth Velenski. Ruth has the responsibility of building fundraising campaign activity to support strategically important initiatives such as the Olive Tree Programme and the Changing Behaviours; Changing Lives programme. Specific fundraising campaigns are expected to deliver significant sums to the

University. In addition, secondary campaigns will be established to support individual School initiatives in the same way that the Grammenos Shipping Campaign has been so successful for Cass.

The department also manages a large number of alumni events throughout the University year both in the UK and abroad.

There are also cultivation activities to support fundraising campaigns, the Chancellor’s Dinner (with the professional support of the Events team within Marketing & Communications) and other School-specific support activities. The team works closely with colleagues within Schools to provide help with any alumni queries they may have.

20

An Unruly education in Tech City By student journalist Lucy Palmer

By XXXXXXXXXXX

I’m in a converted warehouse in Shoreditch. The walls are quintessential exposed brick. The signs are uber-trendy neon and I’m lounging back in a beanbag sipping a bottle of Peroni. Sounds like a trendy bar, but I’m not in a bar, I’m at Unruly HQ, the venue for City’s innovative pop-up university, City Unrulyversity.

City Unrulyversity pops up every Wednesday evening during term time to offer sessions on a range of topics in which a Tech City entrepreneur might be interested: from accessing finance, to building awesome apps, to finding the perfect business model.

Open to all, the project is the brainchild of Sarah Wood, co-founder of Unruly (a social video marketing company) and Caroline Wiertz, Reader in Marketing at City’s Cass Business School.

Caroline says, “I have known Sarah for a long time, we have done research together, [Sarah is a visiting lecturer at the University of Cambridge], so I have seen Unruly grow from a tiny start-up into a flourishing tech firm all before Tech City became this big buzz phrase.”

This ability to set trends is evidently working and comes across in Unrulyversity’s alternative take on education. What is striking is the love of innovative thinking.

Anyone expecting to meet money-focused business types here can think again.

Unrulyversity teams City’s academics with business practitioners for the benefit of Tech City entrepreneurs. It is a not-forprofit enterprise, sessions are free, because as Caroline says, “City Unrulyversity is not there to make money. It’s really there

to help the community and it’s open to everyone. If you are trying to start up a business you can come, if you are 16 and not even at university but thinking of starting up a business you can come.

Absolutely anybody can come.”

So how does an Unrulyversity lecture differ from a City lecture? Aside from the beer and beanbags Caroline explains, “the best things happen when academia, business and doing combine. What we teach is obviously based on theories and at Unrulyversity lots of practitioners will tell you about their really valuable experiences.

But that’s exactly what it is - a valuable experience. It’s not a ‘model’ or a ‘process’ that you can apply systematically, doing is a vital part of Unrulyversity so many of our session are very ‘hands-on.’”

Caroline fiercely advocates the practical advice that can be offered to new entrepreneurs alongside academic research.

“It’s not true that academics are locked in ivory towers writing about theoretical things nobody cares about. That is just a wrong perception that is often pushed in Tech City”. Unrulyversity tackles this misconception head on by opening its doors to everyone. “We are experts at educating so while all these practitioners are great with their experience, we know how to convey knowledge so that people can take something away.”

Caroline’s enthusiasm for the project is palpable: “It’s just great to see people returning over and over again and seeing how they progress their

businesses. We feel that we are providing something of value” she says.

It is encouraging for young entrepreneurs and City students alike to know there is still support after graduation. Professor John Fothergill, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research & Enterprise) at City has seen the initiative grow over the last year and described its success: “One of the problems when trying to engage with Tech City is that it is quite amorphous. A very structured approach probably wouldn’t work, so this fits quite well. I think people can pick and choose and go along with what they like.”

Unrulyversity lectures usually take place in the Unruly office on Princelet Street, just off Brick Lane, but sessions sometimes take place at City’s co-working space for entrepreneurs, The Hangout, on City Road.

Both The Hangout and Unruly HQ are just a stone’s throw from Silicon Roundabout and right in the heart of Tech City.

Deana Murfitt, Chief People Officer for Unruly Media, explained why Unruly loves the location and why employees value their surrounding community. “The world of business has moved on so much we thought we would try and do something inspiring and empowering for the next generation of entrepreneurs. Brick Lane and Tech City are thriving areas. There’s a sense of hard work and an overwhelming desire to generate results in both traditional industries and new tech driven firms.”

If you are interested in attending future Unrulyversity events, you can register for free at www.eventbrite.co.uk.

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With progress being made with CitySport, these students would find the new facilities unrecognisable in comparison to what they used to use for exercise.

Gymnastics transcended the boundary between the educational and social sides of the Northampton Institute. This was largely reinforced by the appointment of the first Director of Exercise Dr Rudolph Oberholtzer, a world famous gymnast, in 1896. His position was funded by a ÂŁ500 (around ÂŁ50,000 in current value) donation from the Saddlers Livery Company. By the time he left in 1928, he had firmly impressed his mark on gymnastics at the Institute.

Pick of upcoming City events To find details and to register for events at City, you can visit our website: www.city.ac.uk/events

Wednesday 26th February 2014 6.30pm, OTLT Who’s Running America? The Obama Reign Thomas R. Dye, Emeritus Professor of Political Science at Florida State University and formerly McKenzie Professor of Government, will give a lecture based on his book of the same name, looking at Obama’s early years in office to the effects of his presidency on the board rooms of the nation’s largest corporations and banks and the owners of the nation’s leading media outlets.

Friday 28th February to Sunday 2nd March Drupal Camp 2014 Following last year’s highly successful event, City is again hosting London’s Drupal Camp 2014, bringing together Drupal developers, themers, users and those interested in learning more about Drupal.

Tuesday 18th March 6.30pm Mais Lecture delivered by Mark Carney (Governor of the Bank of England), Bunhill Row, Auditorium The annual Mais lecture is regarded as the City of London’s foremost event for the banking and finance community, and is attended by senior practitioners and academics. Since its inception in 1978, the Mais has maintained a tradition of prestigious speakers such as Tony Blair; Gordon Brown; Mervyn King and George Osborne.

Wednesday 19th March 6.30pm Edwards Lecture 2014 delivered by Professor Zhores Alferov, St Petersburg State Polytechnic University, OTLT Professor Alferov is the inventor of the hetero transistor and the winner of 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics. He is also a Russian politician and has been a member of the Russian State Parliament since 1995. His talk will focus on his work with semiconductor heterostructures.

Concerts at City Concerts are generally held on Tuesday evenings in the Performance Space, College Building.

This term’s concerts include Lila Cita: An evening of Balinese music and dance, City Opera Ensemble, City Experimental Ensemble and performances

by Richard Craig (flute) and Stephane Ginsburg (piano).

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