Chancellor Installation Brochure

Our Durham University shield tapestry captures the essence of who we are, encompassing the rich tapestry of education, research, wider student experience, architecture and community.

This cover art has been created to celebrate this unique and special day as we welcome our 13th Chancellor.

Technologies or applied sciences

Sense of place Biological sciences

The arts, human creativity

Geographical exploration

Team Durham - sports

Global networks & connections

Welcome to this beautiful setting of Durham Cathedral to celebrate the installation of the 13th Chancellor of Durham University. It is an honour to welcome so many staff, students and distinguished guests, including those representing our local community, as well as students from schools and colleges.

This is a very special occasion in the life of our University. It is a privilege to hold this ceremony in this remarkable building which is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site shared by Durham University and the Cathedral.

Today we are welcoming Dr Fiona Hill to be installed as our Chancellor.

We are a centre of learning firmly rooted in the North East of England, with a connected community that is thriving all over the world. We applaud Fiona’s pride in her County Durham roots and her respected career as foreign policy advisor to world leaders. Her commitment to knowledge and learning for all members of society reflects so perfectly the ethos of this University.

As our new Chancellor, we will value her service and her counsel. We know that she will share our vision with integrity and pride as our ambassador both here in the UK and overseas.

Our incoming Chancellor is an exemplary public servant, following in the remarkable footsteps of Dame Margot Fonteyn, Sir Peter Ustinov and Dr Bill Bryson. We are hugely grateful to Sir Thomas Allen, who joins us here today.

The ceremony today is a joyful occasion, celebrating the rich cultural heritage of our University and region, whilst looking to a very bright future for us all. This beautiful building affords us the opportunity to enjoy music at its very best; including pieces composed by some of our distinguished alumni, performances from University choirs and a performance from a renowned and award-winning local brass band. Welcome to Fiona and our guests, enjoy the day and savour this momentous occasion.

Professor Karen O’Brien Vice-Chancellor and Warden

A welcome from our Vice-Chancellor and Warden

Dr

The University

Durham University was founded in 1832, England’s third oldest university and one of its most distinctive. We are proud to be part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Durham Cathedral and Castle, which sits at the heart of our collegiate campus and this wonderful city. We are an international community of extraordinary people comprising 26 departments across four faculties, with over 4,000 staff, around 22,000 students and an alumni and supporter community of over 200,000 globally.

We are a collegiate university. Our most established college, University College was founded with the University in 1832 and our most recent, South College, will proudly welcome its first cohort of graduating students this summer. The colleges provide a unique and supportive environment to students to inspire them to become the best they can be, in their studies and beyond. Through our departments and colleges, our students get all the benefits of an enabling, supportive and diverse community. They provide a great source of friendship, wellbeing and pastoral care.

We appoint academics who are leaders in their field to conduct research to empower and inspire and to make an impact across the globe. It is also key to our purpose that the benefits of this global reach are felt locally –here in Durham, our County and region. We offer a broad range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses covering the Arts and Humanities, Sciences, Social Sciences and Business. Our degree programmes are informed by high-impact research undertaken by our staff in partnership with policymakers, industry, the public sector and communities around the world.

We combine academic excellence with a commitment to provide our students with the opportunity to develop as highly motivated, well-rounded and socially engaged leaders of tomorrow. Our strong commitment to excellence in sport, music, drama and volunteering means that we offer a host of wider student experience opportunities.

Dr

Durham student on Palace Green

Chancellor of Durham University

The Chancellor is the ceremonial head of Durham University. It is a high-profile role which includes official, pastoral, scholarly and ambassadorial duties. The Chancellor’s most public role is conferring degrees at Congregation. However, at Durham, the Chancellor traditionally plays an invaluable role in the life of our University by supporting staff, students and alumni, by presiding at events and promoting the University around the world.

The installation of our Chancellor today concludes an inclusive selection process which involved all of our community: staff, students, alumni, retired staff and members of University Council and Senate. In line with University statutes, a Joint Committee of Senate and Council was convened, and a robust, fair and efficient process completed. The appointment of Dr Fiona Hill as Durham University Chancellor was overwhelmingly supported by Council and Senate sitting in joint session and then at a specially convened meeting of Convocation in November 2022.

Durham University Council

The announcement of Dr Hill’s appointment was made by Joe Docherty, Chair of University Council, who presided over the selection process. University Council is the governing body of the University and its Trustee Board. It comprises University staff, students and alumni, as well as lay members. Council has ultimate responsibility for the affairs of the University.

The Chair of Council endorsed the appointment;

“Fiona is a living embodiment of the transformative powers of education and research and will help inspire our University community and especially our students to achieve extraordinary things at Durham and beyond.”

Joe Docherty

Joe Docherty, Chair of Council

Postgraduate student at Congregation

Fiona is the daughter of a coal miner who attended Bishop Barrington Comprehensive School in Bishop Auckland, County Durham. From an early age she was a high achiever academically with a thirst for learning, telling BBC Radio Four’s Desert Island Discs how she would sit on the stairs at home reading encyclopaedias. She pursued degree studies at St Andrew’s University, Scotland, graduating with a Master’s in Russian and Modern History. She holds a Master’s in Soviet studies and a Doctorate in History from Harvard University, USA, where she was a Frank Knox Fellow. She became a US citizen in 2002 and is married with one daughter.

Fiona served on the US National Intelligence Council from 2006 to 2009 and was a member of the US National Security Council under President Trump.

Fiona is passionate about her County Durham roots. Several generations of her family were miners locally. Fiona has shared the story of her great grandfather who was spokesperson for the Durham Miners’ Association in the 1890s. She tells of how the local mining community was inspired by their proximity to the University and that the miners would often enjoy lectures from University academics.

Having, in her words, moved “literally from the coalhouse to the White House,” she is passionate about social mobility. She visited her former school in June 2022 to give a talk to pupils, inspiring them to grasp “every educational opportunity” they are given and spoke of her desire to “give back” to the area where she grew up.

“It is an immense privilege, surprise, and honour to be selected as the next Chancellor of Durham University in the county where generations of my family have deep roots and where I spent my formative years.”

Dr Fiona Hill

Dr Fiona Hill

Dr Fiona Hill, Chancellor of Durham University

Dr Fiona Hill; The Brookings Institution

A Poem

Foreword by Dr Margaret Masson, Principal

of

St Chad’s College

Anne Stevenson was a distinguished American British poet who lived almost half her life in Durham. She was an honorary fellow of St Chad’s College.

This poem was written in response to her honorary Doctor of Letters, conferred by Bill Bryson in 2005. It begins at the Angel of the North, takes us back to imagine the builders of Durham Cathedral, and then further back still to its pillars of marble studded with snowflake fossils formed millennia before humans emerged. What is this human impulse to shape our world, to leave our mark?

An Even Shorter History of Nearly Everything (for Bill Bryson)

by Anne Stevenson (Honorary Doctor of Letters, Durham University, 2005)

Should you find yourself today on the road to Newcastle, You couldn’t miss, nailed to the horizon, The armed wings of the north’s super-angel Smelted from the embers of its past. Part phoenix, part satellite, part Lucifer, Faceless and sexless, it embodies vast Crowds of miniature working people Welded into an elevated whole, As if to cancel evolutionary nature And replace it with a single global soul.

The Angel electronically stores the dead, Communicates by radar, commands Through a computer in its head. You’ll notice that it has dispensed with hands, So never could have built this stone cathedral Whose shoulders, a short nine hundred years ago, Shoved aside the coals seams and still stands, A Rock of Ages in the evening glow, Shrugging off raids by pylon, and power cableour world the hands that raised it couldn’t know

Any more than they could know the local stones They shaped with mathematical exactness

For luminous Cuthbert and Bede’s stolen bones Were seas squeezed solid long before man’s genesis, Were relics, world upon world, beneath a crust They reckoned sixty centuries in the makingThin as a tissue dropped on Everest, But packed like New York with nearly everything That translates time into language for us. We need to name the images we trust.

How is it that, alone among breeding creatures, We feel compelled to create for ourselves, Again and again in the image of ourselves, A sacred exoskeleton, claiming for ourselves Powers to preserve our uniqueness? Not as we are, But as shells leave signs in the sand: Relics of Christian worship, Christian war, Reminders that ‘on our beginning is our end’, Heaps of DNA in cryptic rooms, The Nevilles hacked to pieces on their tombs,

News that this palace, theatre, fortress, prison Was achieved by some genius of the pointed arch Who read his Bible but couldn’t read the rocks Dragged from the Carboniferous to frill a church With storms of fossils, individual as snowflakes Three hundred million years adrift with the continents, Locked in the ooze of an equatorial ocean. What faith, what story, what fact is more remarkable Than this resurrection of the dead that represents The life in us, the strangeness of it all?

Anne Stevenson, Collected Poems Published by Bloodaxe Books, 2023

www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/collected-poems-1312

St Chad’s College

The Music The Ceremony

The choir comprises members from the University College Chapel Choir, St John’s Chapel Choir and the University Choral Society.

Accompanied on the organ by Daniel Cook, Cathedral Organist and Master of Choristers.

‘Antiphon’ from Five Mystical Songs, ‘Let All the World in Every Corner Sing’, composed by Vaughan Williams.

Text by George Herbert.

Conducted by John Forsythe MBE, Music Director of University Choral Society.

‘A New Song’ by alumnus Sir James Macmillan (Music, Graduate Society, 1981-87 and Honorary Doctor of Music 2007). Text from Psalm 96.

Conducted by Louise Reed, Conductor of St John’s Chapel Choir.

‘Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen (How Lovely are Thy Dwellings)’ by Johannes Brahms from ‘A German Requiem’. Text from Psalm 84

Conducted by Louise Reed, Conductor of St John’s Chapel Choir.

‘Gloria’ composed by Kenneth Downie.

Performed by The Reg Vardy Band, County Durham.

Conducted by Lewis Wilkinson (Music, Collingwood College, 2013-16), Manager of Performing Arts (interim).

This ceremony celebrates the installation of Dr Fiona Hill as the 13th Chancellor of Durham University.

Staff Procession enters, accompanied on the organ by Daniel Cook, Cathedral Organist and Master of Choristers.

Please stand for the entrance of the procession which comprises members of Senate and Council.

Ceremony opening; Professor Karen O’Brien, Vice-Chancellor and Warden.

Please sit

Welcome to the Cathedral; The Reverend Canon Michael Hampel, Acting Dean of Durham Cathedral.

Appointing the Chancellor; Joe Docherty, Chair of University Council.

Musical Interlude

• ‘Antiphon’ composed by Vaughan Williams

Oration of Dr Fiona Hill; Professor Karen O’Brien, Vice-Chancellor and Warden.

Installation; Dr Fiona Hill will be invited to take up her robes of office to affirm her oath as Chancellor.

Assisted by Sir Thomas Allen, former Chancellor, and Joe McGarry, President of Durham Students’ Union.

Musical interlude

• ‘A New Song’ by Sir James Macmillan

• ‘Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen (How Lovely are Thy Dwellings)’ by Johannes Brahms

Dr Fiona Hill is welcomed to the University by some of our students.

Address; Dr Fiona Hill, Chancellor

Musical interlude

• ‘Gloria’ composed by Kenneth Downie

Closing the Ceremony; Dr Fiona Hill, Chancellor Staff Procession exits, accompanied on the organ by Daniel Cook, Cathedral Organist and Master of Choristers.

Please stand

Rose Window, Durham Cathedral

Fundamenta eius

super montibus sanctis

Her foundations are set upon the holy hills

Our University motto - taken from Psalm 86 in the Latin Psalter. In the New English Bible the line comes in Psalm 87.

Durham University Chancellors

2022 - current Dr Fiona Hill

2012-2022

Sir Thomas Boaz Allen

2005-2011 Dr Bill Bryson OBE

1992-2004 Sir Peter Ustinov

1981-1991

Dame Margot Fonteyn de Arias

1971-1980

The Rt. Hon. Malcolm John MacDonald

1958-1969

The Rt. Hon. The Earl of Scarbrough

1950-1957

George Macaulay Trevelyan

1931-1949

Most Hon. Charles Stewart Henry Vane-Tempest-Stewart, Marquess of Londonderry

1929-1930

His Grace Alan Ian Percy, Duke of Northumberland

1919-1928

The Rt. Hon. John George Lambton, Earl of Durham

1913-1918

His Grace Henry George Percy, Duke of Northumberland

1909-1912

The Very Rev. George William Kitchin, Dean of Durham

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