2014 I 2015
The Annual Review of Girton College
TheYear Girton College Cambridge
Contents A Letter from the Mistress
3
Articles Early Graduate Students at Girton
8
Student Reports JCR
50
MCR
51
Society reports
53
Sports reports
60
Miscellany An Anatomical Whodunnit – Michelangelo Bronzes?
16
Roll of Alumni Calendar of Events
72
Jane Martin Prize for Poetry 2015
18
Local Associations
73
The History of Girton’s Ball
18
The Mistress by Sonny Sanjay Vadgama 23
Births, Marriages and Deaths
People’s Portraits Fifteenth Anniversary Reception
Births
76
Marriages
77
Death notices
78
Obituaries
89
24
Profiles Nik Cunniffe
26
Chris Ford
28
College Reports Alumni and Supporters
32
Admissions and Widening Participation 34 Bursaries and Grants
35
Archive report for The Year 2015
36
Librarian
38
Culture and Heritage at Girton
40
Chapel
42
Choir
44
The Choir tour
45
Research Evenings
46
Music
47
Lists The Fellowship
100
Comings and goings
105
Fellows’ publications
109
Awards and distinctions
113
University and College awards
115
Appointments of Alumni and Fellows
119
Alumni publications
120
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A Letter from the Mistress Dear Friends, It has been a grand year for Girton, during which the energies of our students, Fellows and staff have been divided, as ever, between celebrating the past, embracing the present and planning the future. You will read about this in the pages that follow; but here is a glimpse of the fray from the vantage point of my office. Remembrance Girton is not a College that lives in the past or rests on its laurels. Nevertheless, one of the most moving entries in the calendar is the annual Ceremony for the Commemoration of Benefactors, which acknowledges the vision and generosity of our forebears. We remember them all, many by name; but each year there is a detailed profile of the life and work of one of them, and an opportunity to recognise their lasting legacy to the intellectual wellbeing of the College. Previously, we have celebrated the beneficence of Rosalind, Lady Carlisle, Hertha Ayrton, Katharine Jex-Blake, EugÊnie Strong and Barbara Bodichon, and heard from those currently supported by the Fellowships their philanthropy inspired. In 2014, the centenary of the commencement of World War One, Rosamund Chambers, together with her eponymous research Fellow Dr. Hope Wolf, took centre stage. The occasion featured a poignant glimpse of the Great War, meticulously assembled from the embers of scattered contemporary writings. On the subject of remembrance, Girton hosted a number of other events this year, including a concert in the Stanley Library by the City of Cambridge Brass Band, during which the last post was played for Girton Alumna Mabel Hardie (1887-1916). In the late nineteenth century, against all odds, Mabel, like the many pioneering women she epitomises, qualified as a doctor. Overturning the protocol of the time, she, with her colleagues in the Scottish Women’s Hospitals
movement, offered her services in the field, bravely supporting the injured and dying through the ravages of war. It seemed absolutely right that in Girton, of all places, we should take a quiet moment to reflect on this gift. Remembrance was very much in my mind in March this year when, accompanied by Girton’s Archivist, Hannah Westall, and
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Dr. Hazel Mills who is researching a new College History, I travelled to Hitchin to take part in a special ceremony at Benslow House, the birthplace of this College. Fittingly for an institution so steeped in an ethic of care, the House is now a nursing home, whose residents and staff seemed as thrilled as the College, and the Hitchin Historical Society, when I unveiled a blue plaque with the inscription “Emily Davies (1830 -1921), campaigner for the higher education of women, established here in 1869 The College for Women…”. We shall no doubt hear more of this as Girton prepares to celebrate the 150th anniversary of its Foundation in 2019.
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The Year Turning to the present – or at least to the ‘now’ of 2014 -15 – I can truly say that the year has been an intellectual tour de force. Alongside an Official Fellowship whose research is world class, and a steady stream of academic visitors, our undergraduate subject societies are thriving. As the graduate school grows, so too does the impact of their cutting edge research, and this together with the interdisciplinary energies of an enlarged postdoctoral community has made for a lively twelve months. A highlight was the 56th Founders’ Memorial Lecture on ‘Science as Revolution’, delivered by Sir Paul Nurse. Full to capacity, despite some dreadful weather, it was an inspiring celebration of the wonders of science, engaging fully with the research-infused learning environment that Girton aspires to be. As testimony to this, and rounding off the academic year, we have just awarded 88 scholarships and prizes to students achieving first class marks, issued 78 book tokens to those with high 2.1s, and I have sent my heartfelt congratulations to all who have studied hard and exceeded their potential. Last year was also awash with sporting, musical and artistic achievements, both within the College and beyond. Two Girton rowers, Holly Game (2010) and Catherine Foot (2013), were selected for the Cambridge University Women’s Boat Club’s (CUWBC) ‘Blondie’ crew in the lead up to the first women’s race at the Tideway in April. Shortly afterwards, I had the pleasure of hearing Girton’s accomplished chapel choir bring the house down at The Helena May in Hong Kong, during a successful international tour. Meanwhile, this year’s Artist in Residence, Sonny Sanjay Vadgama, has drawn practically every College constituency into
the multi-faceted world of video sculpture, and also produced two remarkable photographic portraits: one of me; the other of Frances Gandy, who retires after 28 years as College Librarian and Curator. Her own very special contribution to the life of the College is acknowledged later in this issue, and will be marked in many other ways. Girton is blessed with an active socially responsible student body, and I am pleased to congratulate the JCR and MCR for securing joint first place (with Downing College) in the 2014-15 ‘NUS Student Switch-Off’ campaign. I have no space to mention the dazzling entries to the Hammond and Mountford Communications Prizes, or to write about the myriad opportunities our students exploit to improve their transferable and civic skills. I must, however, extend special congratulations to this year’s Thérèse Montefore prize winner, Priscilla Mensah, who, having done so much for student welfare in College, and for the Black and Minority Ethnic women’s campaign, was recently elected CUSU President. She enjoyed a landslide victory with the highest turnout for a decade. A round up of the year would not be complete without grateful acknowledgement of the support and engagement of the 10,000 or so Girton alumni who are scattered across the globe. During 2014-15, I was delighted to have the opportunity to reconnect with OGs in New England, celebrate the formation of the New York Girton Association, and revisit our friends in Washington DC. In April, I was greatly honoured to attend a dinner held by the Cambridge and Oxford Society in Tokyo, in the company of Her Imperial Highness Princess Takamado and other distinguished guests. I also enjoyed the warm welcome extended by friends
and supporters during subsequent visits to Hong Kong and Singapore. It is with immense pride that I have noted a long list of achievements – appointments, honours, awards, prizes, brave ventures and kind acts – among our extended family this year. I cannot list individuals, but I am grateful to all who set their sights high and act as role models to their successors. Future-proof? For the College Council, the past year has, above all, been about looking forwards. With 2019 on the horizon, it is essential to plan strategically to propel Girton towards a new half century of success. As I pointed out in my letter last year, people are the heart and soul of the College, but the estate also needs attention if we are to ensure that Girton is, in every sense, ‘fit for the future’. Indeed, a key strategic priority is to ensure that the quality, configuration, sustainability and utility of the residential environment plays its part in the world class education that is the USP of collegiate Cambridge. When you next visit, therefore, I think you will be impressed with the wing-by-wing maintenance programme at Girton that is gradually restoring the College to its
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Victorian splendour. Each singular room with its balance of original features is being fully modernised and serviced for the twenty-first century. This may take its toll on the budget, but reinvestment is essential: it adds value of all kinds, and will safeguard the future. There are other reasons to take the estate seriously, not least now that Girton is perched next door to the largest single capital project in the history of the University: the development at North-West Cambridge. Suddenly we seem less on the edge and more in the midst of things, and this has prompted the College Council to commission a master planning exercise for the main site. Led by a multidisciplinary
team of external experts, who secured input from every available constituency, an outstanding outline planning application has been developed and submitted. If successful, it will create new opportunities to expand the footprint of the College in the medium to long term. The same exercise provoked some exciting proposals to remodel existing buildings, to meet the changing needs of our undergraduates, and to accommodate the growth of the graduate school. The energy around the table has been electrifying; the result is a vision for the future that I believe our Founders would be proud of, and our benefactors inspired to embrace.
Future-proofing is partly about practical acts; it is equally an exercise in imagination. To that latter end, all eyes are turned to 2019. Like all institutions Girton uses its various anniversary events not just as a reminder of the past and a celebration of the present, but also as a kind of singularity from which new ideas emerge. The Ceremony for the Commemoration of Benefactors is one such event: it is both a look back and a step forward. My speeches at the Matriculation dinner and the Feast aim likewise to contain both a taste of the values on which the College was founded, and also the flavour of a future that has yet to be made. There are, nevertheless, some anniversary moments that offer a special platform from which to envisage the future. The 150th anniversary of Girton’s Foundation is a space of this kind, and with that in mind, I would like to invite you to be part of another rather more informal consultation – one whose goal is to determine how 2019 should be marked. We shall, of course, harness the existing calendar (the Ball, the Founders’ Memorial Lecture, the Parent-Student dinners and so on). There will be merchandising no doubt; and hopefully some new initiatives. There will be projects that reflect the proud origins and rich history of this College, and some that celebrate everything that Girton stands for today. I hope there will also be ideas that create a vision of what this College might still become. Shaping Girton’s future is, after all, what the academic year – a year like the one squeezed into the pages that follow – is all about: it is a prize that we all hold dear, and can surely all buy into. Susan J Smith, The Mistress
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Articles
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Early Graduate Students at Girton They appear to be simple enough questions: when did Girton have its first graduate students, and who were they? The answers turn out to be surprisingly complicated. Everything hinges on rival definitions and competing sources. Today we recognise a graduate student as someone with a first degree now studying for a higher or further qualification to be assessed by examinations, or a submitted thesis, or both. There were no such clear boundaries and understandings in Girton’s early decades, just as there were not across the university. Particularly until 1930, titles change and overlap, sources conflict, categories blur. For early Girtonians the very term ‘graduate’ was not uncomplicated. Barred from receiving the Cambridge BA until 1948 (the ‘BA titular’ was conceded in 1921), students who completed the requirements imposed on men for that degree were awarded the ‘College Degree Certificate’ by Girton, becoming ‘Certificated Students’ – graduates by another name. Until 1930, the term most often used within Girton for a student studying after the College Certificate was not ‘Graduate student’ but ‘Research’ or ‘Advanced’ student. In this, Girton marched in step with the rest of Cambridge. To add complexity when one is looking for Research students living in College, before 1900 some resident Girtonians engaging in ‘higher work’ were not given any title, or were subsumed into other categories of residents, or were largely invisible in official records. Even employing all the titles that are used, it is difficult to produce precise numbers of early Research or Advanced or Graduate students in
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any given year before 1930, and particularly before 1920. Alongside the inconsistencies of early College records, further complexity arises from University sources, and from later accounts, which retrospectively identify some women as ‘Graduate students’ in the early decades of the College, although at the time that title was not used. Easy conclusions prove impossible. 1920-30: University-registered Research students: PhDs, MLitts, MScs By one definition, there might only be ‘Graduate students’ at Girton when there are post-graduate degrees to study towards. In 1919, after much internal debate, the Cambridge PhD was inaugurated, followed by the MLitt and MSc in 1922. (Older higher degrees, including the DD, the LLD and ScD, were generally awarded, as now, in mid or later career, for a body of scholarly work.) To scrutinise and process Research student applications and progress, the University founded the Board of Research Studies (later the Board of Graduate Studies). Just as women could not yet take the BA, so they could not formally be awarded research degrees until 1948. However, in a classic compromise within the system, from 1920 women did register with the University as Research students, and could be ‘Approved for the Title of the Degree’ of the PhD, MLitt or MSc. The archives of the Board of Research Studies reveal that this language often slipped: in examiners’ reports for the 1920s women were regularly ‘recommended for approval for the PhD’ and official forms sometimes omitted the necessary hand-written corrections. If new to Cambridge, some women seeking to be ‘registered’ as Research students wrote first to
Frances Hardcastle resumes residence in College in 1895. Extracts from Executive Committee minutes, 11 November 1894 and 28 September 1895 (archive reference: GCGB 2/1/13)
Girton or Newnham, from where endorsed applications were sent to the Board. Others applied first to the Board, or elsewhere in the University, and were passed to one of the women’s Colleges for support. In early 1923, Anna Rice, a graduate of Syracuse University, wrote from New York to Sir Geoffrey Butler of Corpus Christi College – ‘My dear Sir Butler’ – about her ardent wish to study ‘Church History’ at Cambridge. Her letter
eventually arrived on the desk of the Mistress of Girton: ‘Do you think you can do anything for her at Girton?’ Girton could, and did: Anna spent Easter Term 1923 in College. Most female applicants in the 1920s were better informed, sending in careful letters of enquiry accompanied by glowing academic references. Not all the Research students visible in Girton went through this central process: they have no files in the
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Dorothy Marshall, awarded the title of the Cambridge PhD in 1926 (in History). Taken from the first year photograph, 1918 (archive reference: GCPH 10/6/13)
At least 16 of the 38 would gain the equivalent of the Cambridge PhD (the first in 1926), five the MLitt (the first in 1927). The story of who might be recognised as the first Girtonian to be awarded the title of the Cambridge PhD is telling. Three women submitted theses in 1925 and had vivas: Sybil Cooper, Dorothy Marshall and Muriel Robinson. However, delayed by the convoluted bureaucracy, Dorothy did not finally receive the ‘Diploma’ conferring the title of the PhD until 1926, while Muriel and Sybil (who was very perplexed by the pause) appear to have waited until 1927.
Board’s archive but their Cambridge lives come back to us from College records. From 1920 to 1929 at least 38 Girtonians were called ‘Research students’ by either the University, or the College, or both. Most were resident in Girton, some became ‘Out Students’ (then rare among undergraduates). Before 1930, the largest cohort was the 10 recorded for 1927-28, seven of whom were beginning graduate studies. Across the decade the majority of these young women had previously studied at Girton, while 16 had first degrees from elsewhere in the UK or abroad (principally from the USA). 15 would remain at Girton for one year or less, while 11, the majority of them scientists, appear to have remained for three (or occasionally more) years.
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Many of the stories in this cohort are fascinating; some are unexpected. While the brilliant Manton sisters, Sidnie and Irène, completed PhD theses at a breakneck pace (the first in Crustacean Embryology, the second in Plant Cytology), others faced more difficulty. In 1926, Georgia Kelchner came from New York with degrees from Smith College and Bryn Mawr to pursue research into ‘the influences of Norwegian literature upon modern English literature’. Georgia suffered from physical ailments, her father explained, writing to arrange secure, suitable living quarters for her and her companion. He suggested the need for a well-lit and well-heated study and a double bedroom with private bath and toilet. Georgia, he added, depended on a motor car to get around, so provision for this was required, including if possible a convenient garage. Having taken rooms in a family home opposite Girton, Georgia’s Cambridge career began. Her serious physical problems slowed her work learning Old Norse, Swedish and Danish, however, and in 1930 her father died, bringing ‘a re-appearance of her stammer and every sign of nervous strain’.
Frances Cave-Browne-Cave (on the right) in later life, next to the young Director of Studies in History, Eileen Power. Taken from a photograph of College Staff, 1919 (archive reference: GCPH 6/1/11)
This was followed in 1932 by the sudden death of her supervisor, Bertha Phillpotts. Seeking yet another extension from the University, Georgia vowed to do her best to complete her research. She succeeded in her goal: the title of the PhD was finally awarded in 1934. 1901-20: resident Girton ‘Research students’ Advanced work and independent scholarship had, of course, been central to the life of the University since its origins, and by 1920 the women’s colleges too had a rich history of students pursuing higher study. 1901 offers another significant date: that year Girton had its first, formally titled, resident ‘Research student’ – Frances Cave-Browne-Cave. From then until the advent of the Cambridge PhD, at least 24 women were, by one account or another, resident, officially recognised Research students at Girton, although to begin with their names were not included on formal lists of residents. The maximum number living in Girton in any one year was five (in 1906-07 and 1907-08). Frances Cave-Browne-Cave had gained Firsts in both parts of the Mathematical Tripos in 1898 and 1899, and the great distinction of being ‘equal to the 5th Wrangler’ in 1898. In 1901 she competed against four other applicants to win her Research Studentship, worth £100 a year for two years. Paying £60 a year to Girton for board and lodging, she was allocated a set of rooms previously given to members of the resident staff, signalling her new status. Her award came from a fund collected among former students of the College by Miss Florence Durham, a student of Natural Sciences in 1888-92, now Lecturer in Physiology at Newnham, and a forceful advocate
of funded Research Studentships. Frances undertook research based in London, working under the influential mathematician Karl Pearson on the calculation of atmospheric pressures at different ‘stations’ around the Atlantic. In June 1902 she would read a paper based on her work to the Royal Society. After her studentship she was appointed Assistant College Lecturer and remained a powerful figure at Girton until retirement. Until 1913, all these resident Research students had been ‘undergraduates’ at Girton. In Lent Term 1913 the first new student enters the record: Lucy Cripps had read medicine at Edinburgh and came for five terms to study ‘advanced medical subjects’, gaining the Diploma in Public Health in 1914. The only other external arrival before 1920 was Catherine Moir, born in Queensland, Australia, who arrived at the College in January 1916, with a degree from
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free board and lodging, but allowed time for independent work. Then there is Julia Bell, who would live in Girton rooms after completing her undergraduate studies, with an imprecise status, for five years from 1902 to 1907, while holding ‘an appointment in connexion (sic) with the Cambridge Observatory … the duties of which … consist chiefly in making calculations relating to photographs of the planet Eros’.
Annie Russell, aged 18, later the first Pfeiffer Student (Mrs Maunder). Taken from the first year photograph, 1886 (archive reference: GCPH 10/1/26)
the University of Sydney, to study a medieval French manuscript held in St John’s College. Up to eight other Certificated Students living in Girton in this period might be added to the list of resident Research students, even though contemporary records do not give them that title. For example, Rose Clark, unsuccessful applicant for several Research studentships, including the one awarded to Frances Cave-Browne-Cave, was appointed the resident ‘Assistant in the Girton Chemistry Laboratory’ in 1901-02. Her duties, which included some teaching, were set against
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1880-1900: non-resident Research students; resident ‘graduates’; young lecturers In the three decades between the foundation of Girton and 1900, although no formallyrecognised Research students lived in College, important developments occurred. From 1897 to 1900 Girton granted the formal title, and monetary awards, to its first two ‘Research students’: Mrs Annie Maunder (1897) and Miss Elizabeth Dale (1898). Neither was resident in College, but they were each given the ‘Pfeiffer Studentship’ of £40 a year. The Pfeiffer bequest had initially been directed to undergraduate scholarships, but in 1897 a vigorous campaign by the Association of Certificated Students culminated in the decision to divert funds to the new studentships, available to ‘Certificated Students of Girton College … no longer candidates for Tripos’. Annie, an astronomer who had read Mathematics from 1886 to 1889, now set out to undertake ‘a systematic, photographic survey of the Milky Way’. Elizabeth would work in ‘botanical research’ in Cambridge from 1898, and see her award renewed twice. Even before 1897, however, it is possible to find considerable ‘Advanced study’ being undertaken by Girtonians. Some gifted Certificated Students,
such as the botanist Ethel Sargant, pursued research at home. Others, like the scientist Marion Greenwood, lived elsewhere in Cambridge whilst working in laboratories and libraries. But some Girton residents deserve attention. Although invisible on official lists, in the 1890s a small number of Certificated Students lived in College whilst engaged in higher academic work. Mary Tebb, for example, was resident from 1891 to 1893, whilst holding a Newnham studentship and engaging in scientific research at the Balfour Biological Laboratory, while Frances Hardcastle, who had sat both parts of the Mathematical Tripos in 1891 and 1892, returned to residence in 1895-96 ‘to pursue her mathematical studies in Cambridge’. Like Mary before her, Frances paid £20 a term ‘as fees for rooms and commons’. Although later accounts would describe her as a ‘Graduate student’ at Girton in 1895, no contemporary record gives her that title. Turning back to the 1880s, some young women who had reached the level of the College Certificate applied to return to Girton to sit a further Tripos (often one of the new Part IIs) or even to study outside exams. For many observers, they were engaged in ‘advanced’ or ‘graduate’ study. In 1887 Mary Lowndes, for example, completed the Moral Sciences Tripos, and asked to return, ‘in order that she might continue the study of psychology and metaphysics’. She was joined that year by Agnata Ramsay, offered a ‘College scholarship of 50 guineas’ after the distinction of her top First in Part I of the Classical Tripos. Not expected to sit Part II, Agnata spent her extra year studying the writings of Herodotus. Although offered a
Florence Durham (top right) and Frances Hardcastle (bottom left), future advocates of ‘advanced study’. Taken from the first year photograph, 1888 (archive reference: GCPH 10/1/29)
Resident Lectureship in Classics, Agnata left Girton in 1888 and married the Master of Trinity College. Agnata’s youth and brilliance point to a final possible category of resident ‘graduates’: College Lecturers. Until 1900, all but one of the Resident Lecturers were Certificated Students of Girton. Typically nominated soon after completing Tripos, most tried to combine heavy teaching loads with research and writing. For example, when Emily Constance Jones was offered an appointment in 1884, she replied: ‘I am … anxious not to undertake an amount of work that would leave me
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Charlotte Angas Scott, aged 18. Taken from the first year photograph, 1876 (archive reference: GCPH 7/2/1/1)
of 1880 when she was ‘equal to the 8th Wrangler’. Aged just 22, Charlotte immediately started teaching for Girton, quickly becoming ‘Resident Lecturer in Mathematics’. Alongside up to 33 hours’ teaching a week, she completed a BSc and a PhD from London University by external examination, in 1882 and 1885. In 1884-85 new opportunity arrived: she became Associate Professor and Head of Mathematics in the new Bryn Mawr College, the only woman among the first five such appointments. Elected to Bryn Mawr’s first endowed Chair in 1909, Charlotte remained there until retirement in 1925, playing a leading role in American mathematical life.
no time for study on my own account’. She accepted the post of Lecturer in Moral Sciences, reassured it would take ‘not more than nine hours teaching a week as an equivalent for rooms and commons’. In later life she would write of her return: ‘it was on a definite suggestion that I should study further – in the pursuit of knowledge and of fresh truth ... should be in fact a research student, and combine with this any assistance which I might be able to give to students of Moral Science’. Miss Jones remained at Girton as Lecturer, and then Mistress, until 1916. Another example of a young College Lecturer, who in a different era might first have been a Research student, was Charlotte Angas Scott, whose student career culminated in eye-catching success in the Tripos
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It may risk anachronism to hail Charlotte as Girton’s first resident graduate student – her experience was similar to that of many clever young men and women in Cambridge and other British universities in the late nineteenth century, forging scholarly careers whilst making a living teaching or assisting in laboratories. Rather than engaging in historical re-titling, perhaps it is better to see all of these women – Charlotte Scott, Emily Constance Jones and Agnata Ramsey in the 1880s, Frances Hardcastle and Annie Maunder in the 1890s, Frances Cave-Browne-Cave in the 1900s, not to mention Georgia Kelchner in the 1920s, and many others across the decades – as together illuminating a fascinating and still evolving history. Hazel Mills Eugénie Strong Research Fellow This article draws on histories of the College and of Cambridge, and on records held in the Girton College Archives and the University Archives at Cambridge University Library.
Miscellany
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An Anatomical Whodunnit – Michelangelo Bronzes? The Rothschild Tiger bronzes were on display at the Fitzwilliam Museum in the summer of 2015. Based on art-historical and technical bronze-manufacturing evidence from the Rijksmuseum, experts have argued convincingly that these bronzes, which have exceptionally detailed and accurate anatomy, date from around 1506-08. This early sixteenth-century date is highly significant because of its relationship to the science of human anatomy. The crucial watershed is 1543, the year when the anatomist Andreas Vesalius (1514-64) published his sevenvolume De Humani Corporis Fabrica (On the Fabric of the Human Body). This book was the first detailed, accurate account of the human body, based mainly on hands-on, direct observation of real cadavers during his dissections that had taken place at Padua and Bologna. As the first true, evidence-based scientific atlas and text of human anatomy ever produced, Vesalius’ Fabrica was groundbreaking and extremely influential. It is a seminal work of the scientific revolution, published in the same year as Copernicus’s Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres. In pre-Vesalian Europe there were no accurate, detailed books of human anatomy, and so the only
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way for artists to gain true understanding of the workings of the body was by being present at or performing their own human dissections. It is well known that some of the greatest Renaissance artists did do some dissection, including Pollaiuolo, Rosso Florentino, Raphael, Franciabigio, Bandinelli, Francesco Salviati and Giorgio Vasari himself, who is the main secondary source of information for the others. However, two of the greatest artists of the period left primary evidence of their participation in dissection and both Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci’s work in this field stands head and shoulders above all the others, both in accuracy and expression of the human form. Both of them were planning a treatise on anatomy, but sadly neither succeeded in publishing. The anatomy of Michelangelo’s earliest nudes is quite generalised and lacking in muscular detail, and is based more on his study of classical sculpture, as seen, for example, in his Battle of the Centaurs of c.1490-02 or the Bacchus of c.1496-97. Following his anatomical studies, his anatomy is much more detailed and accurate, as can be seen in his famous giant, David. Indeed,
unlike many of his contemporaries who took liberties with the human body for expressive purposes, Michelangelo almost never invented or altered structures, choosing rather to ‘hyperanatomise’ his subjects to give a realistic and strong representation, particularly of the male nude. That said, Michelangelo’s anatomical forms were still influenced to some extent by his study of ancient sculpture, and to a very great extent by his study of live, very muscular male models – many of whom were manual labourers or stone masons with highly developed muscles and upper bodies. This meant that certain anatomical features invisible in most people were visible as surface contours, so their presence in his sculptures does not necessarily imply a knowledge of actual dissection. These two nude males sitting astride snarling panthers reveal amazing detailed and accurate anatomy such as the neck with a contracted trapezius and, more excitingly, an enlarged external jugular vein overlying and correctly positioned, superficial to the sternomastoid muscle. All the following anatomical details are correct in position, proportion and contour, viz. gluteus medius and maximus, iliotibial tract, fascia lata, deltoid, trapezius, infraspinatus, teres major, scapula rotation in abduction, cubital fossa, cephalic vein, brachioradialis, pectoralis major, flexor carpi radialis, flexor carpi ulnaris, linea semilunaris and linea alba as well as rectus abdominis six and even the rare ‘eight pack’ and the correct male distribution of pubic hair! All of the above features are stunningly sculptured, to the point of being accurate enough to be used as a teaching model for any keen medical student!
As well as these basic structures there are quite a few unusual features that may indeed constitute Morellian traits seen in many of Michelangelo’s other works, such as the long second toe (a Greek ideal) with a large gap between it and the first toe, as seen also on his David and Moses. There is umbilicus in-pouching with skin hood over the top, and the pubic hair distribution (extremely rarely revealed in the sixteenth century) is both luxuriant – looking as if it has been back-combed and blow-dried – and conforms to the medical grading system of sexual development. This feature, rarely seen in Renaissance art, is from the root of the penis ascending towards the umbilicus, as seen also on Michelangelo’s David but almost never displayed thus in antiquity. These bronzes also display a number of anatomical features which are not normally visible on the surface of the human body, such as the groove across the thigh for sartorius, and the triangle of auscultation on the back which could only have been seen and studied from a dissected body. It is therefore highly likely that whoever made them had access to dissected corpses; this is the only way they could have known about these features, as there were no books available with this level of accurate information until after 1543. Based on my knowledge of the anatomy portrayed by artists active in the late Quattrocento and early Cinquecento, in my opinion there are really only two artists capable
of producing the detailed type of anatomy displayed in the Rothschild bronzes: Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. The stylistic similarities of these bronzes with autograph works by Michelangelo make it more than likely, therefore, that it was indeed he who produced these magnificent bronzes. Peter Abrahams, Life Fellow For further information: www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/news/archive/article.html?5006
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Jane Martin Prize for Poetry 2015
The History of Girton’s Ball
Now in its fifth year, this national prize for young poets (for those aged between 18-30 years) is a key part of the College’s support for poetry and is judged by experts drawn from across the literary world and academia.
The hosting of a College ball has been a longstanding tradition at the University of Cambridge, with the first May Ball being held in 1866 by the First and Third Trinity Boat Club. The event was attended by just 38 Trinitarians to celebrate a successful May Bumps. Nowadays the college balls are spectacular events welcoming upwards of 1,000 guests into Colleges’ gardens and grounds. Girton’s biennial Spring Ball, held in March, will be returning once again in 2016. The event is organised by a Committee of twenty students, and always proves a highlight of the College social calendar. Alumni, Fellows, students and their guests can all expect a magical evening.
North Oslo, Norway “And there we all were, as invisible as you could wish to see.” C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader Out on the jetty, with cloud closing in we watched Oslo flicker, then resolve under a skene of night, more visibly: skies’ black cliffs like a cast of mind, gulls vectoring out in hurried sleight above cruise-ships, cold in harbour’s thrall. Traffic’s bright skirl laid distal to the fjord, and time itself an island, at bay. In another city that we loved, snow fell as rain. Windows with their Christmas lights marked the occasion; pedestrians, huddling through doors, birled leaves into tiny storms. There no mountains made the skyline small, and we – who were lucky – grew up with stories from other places, far in the fog-filled north, where willows wept, winds whirled, and life seemed larger for all its kennings. Having come late in the falling dark we sat, children again, arriving at what had always been. © Theophilus Kwek, winner of 2015 first prize
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Jane Martin Prize for poetry 2015 winners Charlotte Buckley and Theo Kwek
A ticket and the poster from the 1969 Centenary Ball. The headline act were Annie Ross & Trio
Whilst Trinity, Clare, and King’s were hosting regular balls by the end of the nineteenth century, the Girton Ball has not always been so opulent. In fact, it evolved from the tradition of an annual dance, the earliest reference to which dates back to 1883, just fourteen years after the foundation of the College. Perhaps the most noteworthy of the dances at Girton was the Armistice Day dance, held just a few days after the conclusion of the First World War in 1918. Girton celebrated the signing of the armistice by the ringing of the Chapel bell and the raising of the flag above the tower, with the dance being held later that week. In an unusual turn of events, it was permitted that men could be invited to attend. Winifred Trenholme, later Gaukroger (1918), noted in her correspondence that ‘this of course caused tremendous excitement as never in the history of the College has there been a mixed dance.’ While this may not have been strictly true, it was undoubtedly the case that many of the earlier dances were a decidedly female affair; it was traditional for undergraduates to take a member of another year group as their dance partner. The Armistice Day dance was certainly a landmark in the years surrounding the First World War; it was remarked in the Girton Review that ‘never was there a dance that ended in such an atmosphere of universal pleasure and satisfaction.’
The exclusive dinner at the 2014 Spring Ball A handwritten engagement card from a dance held in1883. The names of the guest’s dance partners are listed next to the programme
In 1940 it was announced that the dance would continue despite the outbreak of the Second World War, combining an evening’s entertainment with a contribution to the war effort. The dance of 1940 was held in the Michaelmas Term in aid of the Red Cross Society in London. The dance
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was well attended, and as a result the sum of thirteen guineas was raised. Indeed, it remains traditional for the college balls to contribute to charitable causes, and tens of thousands of pounds are raised across Cambridge each year.
Poster from the 1979 Ball
An engagement card from the 1932 Dance. The programme of dances is listed inside
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It appears that Girton made its true ball debut in 1947. It was reported in the Girton Review of the following term that the ball was trialled on a weekday in December, and that tickets were made available for 240 couples. Entertainment was provided in the Old Hall by Tommy Kinsman and his band, who had received rave reviews from revellers at the recent May Week Balls. In the report, it was observed that ‘Girton Balls tend to become bigger and more popular every year.’ Indeed, this statement has set a challenge that we have endeavoured to meet year upon year ever since.
An engagement card from the 1936 Dance. The theme was ‘Victoria’ and the names of the Committee members are listed on the reverse
By far the most ambitious venture to date was a ball held in the Lent Term of 1969 to celebrate the College’s Centenary. Among the year’s notable celebrations, the Centenary year featured a visit from Her Majesty the Queen Mother, who was Girton’s Visitor at the time. One Girtonian who attended the Centenary Ball that year remembers: ‘The Girton Centenary was something terribly special and exciting for many of us. We were not blasé about it, we dressed up and we felt privileged to be part of it, but nevertheless I have to say it was not in the same league as the May Balls at the time. I went to the St John’s May Ball
Poster from the 1980 Ball
and it was backed by the John’s wine cellars, we ate swan, we danced and had a champagne breakfast. Girton was very austere by comparison, but the majority of us were rather thrilled to be part of it, because it was a different world.’ The 1969 Centenary Ball was extremely ambitious for Girton, and for the time. There has certainly been a tradition of marking landmark anniversaries with a ball, and looking ahead to the 150th anniversary in 2019, one cannot help wondering what the future might bring.
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College Ball is one of their fondest memories of the University. Girton is certainly very proud to be part of that tradition and we very much hope that it continues for many years to come. Sadly, not many records relating to the Girton Ball pre-1998 have survived in the College Archives. The Archivist would be delighted to hear from alumni who have any programmes, posters, tickets, dance cards or other materials of interest that they would be willing to donate to the Archive.
A poster from the most recent 2014 Spring Ball. The theme was ‘Les Années Folles’, being inspired by the opulence and extravagance of the 1920s
The Girton Spring Ball is currently held in the March of even years, and is decidedly a more extravagant event than its predecessors. Whereas in the past just a few rooms might have been in use, the current ball takes over both Woodlands and Cloister Courts, and the majority of the public rooms. Huge marquees are erected, and the rooms are filled with food, drink and music. Nowadays, the Girton Ball can without doubt be compared to the likes of the May Week Balls, having been recently described as a hidden gem of the Cambridge Ball scene. The most recent Spring Ball (2014) was a resounding success, being described in a review of the event as a ‘superb party, filled with considered decadence and touching subtlety.’ The tradition of holding a College Ball is perhaps one of Cambridge’s most celebrated traditions, and for many, attending a
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The next Girton Spring Ball will be held on Friday 11 March 2016, although tickets are now sold out. For regular updates and information about the 2016 Girton Spring Ball, make sure you like the official Facebook page: www.facebook.com/GirtonSpringBall2016. We sincerely look forward to welcoming you to the 2016 Girton Spring Ball. Jonathan Murphy President of the 2016 Girton Spring Ball Committee
The Mistress, Professor Susan Smith Sonny Sanjay Vadgama, Girton’s Artist in Residence 2014-2015, has produced a striking photographic portrait of the Mistress. The ideas that informed my approach towards making the portrait of the Mistress grew from several distinct sources of inspiration. Firstly, cinema and the work of directors like Tarkovsky have long influenced the way I like to frame shots. When setting up the camera I felt the desire to evoke the cinematic and thus subsequently shot in ‘landscape’, keeping the image quite central. The way the image is lit can be traced back to my time living in Madrid. I spent many hours in the Prado Museum and felt particularly drawn to painters that used a method know as Tenebrism. It is a style of painting in which light is used to focus attention in a composition, with the rest of the painting being engulfed in shadow and darkness. The term Tenebrism is derived from the Latin word tenebrae meaning ‘darkness’ or ‘shadows’. Caravaggio famously used this technique, though a greater amount of my inspiration was drawn from José de Ribera. There is a painting he made depicting Prometheus chained to a rock suffering eternal punishment that I found beautiful and haunting; so much so that I even had dreams about it for months later. I must also mention Goya’s Black Paintings. The ferocity and power of this series struck me to the core and I wanted to transmit something similar when trying to orchestrate the way light worked throughout the photo.
A part of my research during this residency focused on ‘the void’ and I turned to philosophical texts as a means of understanding it in greater depth. I spoke with Classicists at the University and started seeing the void as something far greater than an ‘emptiness’ or ‘nothingness’ but also a source of creation (were we to use Hesiod’s account), a place that the known evolves from. This new juxtaposition in my understanding challenged a lot of the work I was creating and it also found its way into my creation of the portrait. I did not want the darkness to engulf the Mistress, but instead wanted it to act as an unknown full of potential and creation.
This picture currently hangs in Tower corridor between the Tower Arch and the SCR
Sonny Sanjay Vadgama
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People’s Portraits Fifteenth Anniversary Reception 160 guests celebrated the fifteenth anniversary of the People’s Portraits collection at the Mall Galleries in London on 23 April 2015. This special reception was hosted jointly by Girton College and the Royal Society of Portrait Painters (RP). Six paintings from the exhibition at Girton were given designated space in the Gallery as part of the RP’s annual exhibition, and this allowed visitors to see them in the context of all the paintings chosen for exhibition by the RP in 2015. The speakers were the Mistress of Girton Professor Susan Smith, the President of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters Robin-Lee Hall, and Professor Mary Beard. Professor Beard spoke about the connections between portraits, ordinary people and the ancient world using a story from Pliny’s Natural World. The daughter of Butades, a potter from Sikyon at Corinth, was in love with a young man, and when he was going away she drew in outline on the wall the shadow of his face as thrown by the lamp. Later her father pressed clay on the outline and made a relief portrait. Professor Beard commented on how the daughter is already drawing, not the reality of her lover, but his shadow, and that this story writes into the origins of portraiture ideas of loss and longing and love. She said ‘even though we think of ancient portraiture as very much a celebrity genre, the story of its origin is amongst ordinary people, an ordinary potter, his ordinary daughter and her ordinary boyfriend, who gets immortalised just because he happens to be going away; a people's portrait in other words.’ Frances Gandy, Curator
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This year’s new portrait: ‘Brooksy’ by Jason Walker, RP President of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters Robin-Lee Hall introduces ‘Brooksy’
Profiles
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Nik Cunniffe Nik is an Official Fellow in Plant Sciences. I was born in Luton, and lived there until I was eighteen. My mum and I lived with my grandparents, although my grandad died when I was two. I was an only child and my mum worked, so until I was old enough to go out to play on the street, I spent a lot of time with my grandma. I enjoyed that. She had thirteen brothers and sisters, and those that survived childhood and the Second World War all stayed in Luton. When I was very young, weekends were more often than not spent visiting my great aunties and uncles, and assorted cousins. When I was old enough to be left at home unaccompanied, weekends were spent working out what illness I could feign to get out of these visits. I think I probably enjoyed infant and primary school, although I don’t remember that much about either. My first memory is of the entire class being taught how to tie up shoelaces. By saying I could already do this, I was allowed to go and play with the toy cars. However, I remember then getting in trouble for lying. Most of my memories are happier, though. As I recall, and perhaps unsurprisingly, I particularly enjoyed sums. By the time I entered secondary school, I found the social side of school more interesting than the intellectual. However, my mum lost her job when I was about thirteen years old, and seeing her struggle for money, I decided I didn’t much fancy doing the same, so began to focus more. I went to St. Catharine’s College to study Natural Sciences, having originally applied to do Physics. I was put off Physics by the ‘welcome to Cambridge; now’s where it gets difficult’ talk on the second day, and so abruptly changed focus, instead choosing
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mainly Biology options. Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to focus too hard, as my results in the end of first year examinations revealed. However, I did quite well in the Maths component, and still quite enjoyed sums, so I swapped to read Maths. I joined that course in the second year, since the College had started to tire of my indecisiveness and would not countenance my starting again from scratch. Towards the end of my degree a job via any of the milk round employers didn’t appeal, so I decided to stay on at university. I did a one-year MPhil course in Computer Speech and Language processing, run jointly by the Engineering and Computer Science Departments. The idea was to train us for research in building speech recognisers, and we were taught by world experts, including a current Fellow of Girton. This was interesting enough, but the main technique – the hidden Markov model – seemed effectively to have been unchanged in the decades since it was first invented. I didn’t fancy spending three years on a PhD to improve the recognition accuracy by a fraction of a percent, but also realised I was incredibly unlikely to come up with a better way of doing it, so decided to get a proper job.
Computer programming was the obvious choice, so I did that. I worked at a financial software company in Royston for about a year, then went to what was then a small start-up at St John’s Innovation Centre, writing internet search engines. That company was quite successful, and floated on the stock market. Towards the end of my time there, most of the original staff spent a good fraction of their day watching the fluctuations of the share price on the internet – it is difficult to become too motivated to work when your – entirely fictional – net worth fluctuates by hundreds of thousands of pounds in a single day. Although there were a more or less equal number of downs for every up, most of the original staff – including me – left when at least some of our share options had turned into real money. Given that the owner – and seemingly most of those who stayed on – have just been involved in a very high-profile fraud case concerning the valuation of the company before selling it to the large American company that bought it outright, this was probably for the best. For the first time in my life I had a little money behind me, and a vague idea that I wanted to do something more interesting, but little idea what. Given I had quite enjoyed myself at university I decided to go back.
I first went to Bath, to study for an MSc in applied maths, mainly since they were top in one of the league tables at the time, and – more to the point – they gave me funding. This turned out to be a wise decision: Bath are very strong in my current area of Mathematical Biology. At the time I enjoyed the relevant courses, and decided that I would like to stay on for a PhD in something related. Since I still owned a house in Cambridge, I tried emailing two academics in the broad area. One of them ignored my email, but the other responded: I therefore started a PhD on modelling fungal growth through soil and biological control of plant disease just over ten years ago. During my PhD I enjoyed teaching, and threw myself into it, giving lots of supervisions and demonstrating practical classes. I think I was quite popular with the students: this was evidently noticed, and when my PhD ended I was offered a temporary lectureship in the Plant Sciences Department. I accepted this, and have stayed in Plant Science since then. My current research mainly focuses on modelling how plant diseases are likely to spread, thereby understanding how they can best be controlled. Recently a fair amount of work has been for DEFRA, including modelling the spread – and more controversially the most likely route of entry – of chalara ash dieback. However, the main attraction of my field is that there is lots to be done and relatively few working in the area, which means I can focus on more or less whatever I want. I currently have projects that range from designing schedules for spraying chemicals to reduce the build-up of fungicide resistance in cereal pathogens, to understanding how to control
citrus disease, to working out whether attempted eradication of insect forest pests is worthwhile or instead will almost certainly lead to costly failure, to modelling the spread of Ebola virus disease. I still enjoy teaching, but now I mainly do this in lectures and practical classes. My current load includes teaching mathematical biology, modelling, epidemiology, ecology, statistics and computing, always to Natural Science students. This year I was delighted to be awarded the Pilkington Prize for Teaching. I do still give supervisions, but currently more often to research students rather than undergraduates. My partner Naomi and I have two young daughters, Anna (four) and Clara (one). These family commitments mean I do not make it to Girton as often as I might. However, when we do come, we enjoy it, particularly Anna. Her favourite activity is riding her scooter around the grounds, although this would be closely followed by visiting the chocolate machine near the bar. Clara does not yet speak, so she is more enigmatic. However, whenever we come she also seems happy enough.
Professor Graham Virgo (left) presents the Pilkington Prize for teaching
Anna attempts to escape yet another lecture on tree disease
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Chris Ford Chris is a Professor of Quantum Electronics. I grew up in Eastbourne, the son of an architect and a former midwife. At the age of ten I visited King’s College Chapel with my parents, and I distinctly remember assuring them I would never come to Cambridge to study! I was very bored at primary school, but on arriving at the local grammar school I suddenly enjoyed being stretched to learn three foreign languages, three sciences and maths. Aged 13, I realised (somewhat naively) that with a few facts about physics one could explain intuitively much of the world around us, so physics would be my career, and that’s how it turned out. If only my own son were so sure about what he wants to do next… I enjoyed languages as well as physics and did German ‘A’ level like my sister (we liked talking without our parents understanding). I was encouraged to apply to Cambridge, choosing Pembroke with very little information to go on (and not realising that it was still all male at that time!). Despite telling one interviewer, a materials scientist, that there were no interesting topics in Nat. Sci. apart from physics and chemistry, and the other, a chemist, that I had not done chemistry ‘A’ level, I was somehow awarded an Exhibition to read Maths with Physics, my back-door route into Physics here. I enjoyed my undergraduate time in Cambridge, finding that the hard work I had learned to put in at school (to do an extra double maths ‘A’ level without space in the timetable) was good practice for a Cambridge degree. In my spare time, I joined astronomy and science societies, but also indulged my love of singing, joining the Pembroke Chapel Choir (in which I sang for 10 years). In my third year
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I plucked up courage to join the CUMS Chorus, in which I still sing – eventually I was asked to become Treasurer of CUMS (the largest musical society in Cambridge with three orchestras and two choruses at the time). I couldn’t refuse, having benefited for 25 years from other people giving their time to it. However, after two years working once a week from midnight to 3 am on the accounts, I was very pleased to pass them over to someone who was retired, though I still run the CUMS Fund. I had also been persuaded to learn the double bass by my music teacher at school, and despite the fact that I didn’t like practising, I found as an undergraduate that I was in demand in scratch orchestras and jazz bands at various colleges each term. This was when I first visited Girton, getting a taxi to take my bass and me to a practice and back from the concert, but finding I had to walk each way from Girton to Pembroke in between… It was as an undergraduate that I found I had a love of computer programming, and I’ve written software to control experiments or analyse data ever since, always getting pleasure from it being useful to others, so that most of the experiments in our research group, and some in various countries
A photo from around the time I started to be interested in physics
around the world, are controlled by my programs. I had no doubt that I wanted to continue in academia, and chose a PhD in semiconductor physics with Mike Pepper in the Physics Department and Haroon Ahmed who had recently moved his group from Engineering to Physics via the Science Park. This involved persuading an electron-beam lithography machine to draw lines 1000 times narrower than a human hair. The only problem was that the machine, as we eventually discovered, had not been built with the right tolerances ten years earlier, and so another PhD student and I spent two years getting it working,
learning a lot about trouble-shooting, vacuum pumps and electronics in the process. Hence I christened it EUCLID (which to me meant Extremely Useless Clapped-out Leaking Inaccurate Device!). By the end of my PhD I had made rings of semiconductor wires in which electrons travelled as waves, each interfering with itself, so that the resistance of the rings oscillated as the magnetic field was swept (the Aharonov-Bohm effect). I was only pipped at the post by Bell Labs in the US. My plan was to do a postdoc with Mike Pepper, but at a conference in Paris someone from IBM Yorktown Heights in the USA suggested I go there, so six months later I found myself in the US, just north of New York. Mike had also suddenly suggested applying for a college Junior Research Fellowship, but by then only two colleges’ deadlines had not passed for the year. So that’s how I ended up being offered a three-year JRF at Girton at the same time as the job in the US. Girton allowed me to go abroad, but kept the clock ticking to make me want to come back, which I duly did in 1989, and I’ve been here ever since. I’ve always found Wolfson Court a very pleasant and convenient place to have lunch with other members of College, from a range of different subjects, and I still enjoy lunching there regularly (as often as I think won’t stretch my waistline too much). What I like about Girton is that everyone is much more down to earth than in other colleges, whilst still being excellent at their subjects, and I’ve been happy to interview and supervise Girton students, choose new JRFs in the Yarrow Board, discuss plans for the future in the Financial Planning and Sustainability Committees, and to serve on Council.
Tanya, Peter and myself
Shortly after my JRF came to an end I was awarded a five-year Advanced Fellowship by a Research Council (EPSRC), but at the same time as an assistant lectureship in Cambridge. I took the latter as it was likely to turn into a permanent job, but I have always thought how nice it could have been to have concentrated on research for another five years! Later I became a Reader and was recently awarded a personal professorship. In my research I was in at the early days of nanoelectronics (electronics with device dimensions smaller than 100 nanometres), showing that electrons could move as waves without scattering through sub-micron devices, and how to control
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the number of electrons in a ‘quantum dot’ using the electrical equivalent of a sink plunger! Since then I have gradually made more complicated devices, all in the highest quality GaAs material and requiring the lowest temperatures (within 1 or 0.1°C of absolute zero), looking for electrons acting as waves or as single electrons, and at the physics that occurs when many electrons interact with each other. The latter is too complicated for theorists to calculate exactly, so experimentalists like me have to check that they have made sensible approximations, or, hopefully, to discover new unexpected effects and make theorists have to work out which approximations are adequate to explain the results. One fun thing we’ve done was to play ‘pingpong’ with a single electron, repeatedly knocking it back and forth between resting places 4 millionths of a metre apart using a sound wave travelling along the surface of the material containing the electrons. We like to think this could one day be useful in a quantum computer, where individual electrons would act as the bits of information being processed, but with the weirdness of quantum mechanics thrown in. In the early 1990s I met my future wife, Tanya, at a conference, while she was working as a postdoc in Sheffield; she and her daughter Toni eventually moved to Cambridge rather than returning to Moscow. I taught myself Russian in order to understand what they were plotting. Our 16-year old son Peter has made sure he doesn’t follow us towards physics, and would really like to do a degree in free-running (parkour) instead… Toni now lives in London with her husband and our little granddaughter. Fairly recently Tanya and I have each celebrated our 50th birthdays in Girton’s beautiful Fellows’ Rooms and the adjacent courtyard, enjoying a delicious buffet spread from the College’s chefs. Fortunately we booked a jazz trio that met with the Mistress’s approval in her flat upstairs!
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The Headmaster presenting a prize from the exams syndicate for the best maths A and S levels
College Reports
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Alumni and Supporters report The Development Office continues to be a hub of activity, with events and meetings taking place throughout the year. The College is in touch with almost 9,400 alumni, of whom around two thirds are women, 22% have an address outside the United Kingdom, and close to 450 have a Girtonian partner. This year saw a celebration of the College’s collaboration with the Royal Society of Portrait Painters (RP) to mark the 15th anniversary of the People’s Portrait collection being housed at Girton. Over 150 Girtonians, artists and friends gathered at the Mall Galleries in London in May to hear Professor Mary Beard OBE talk about ancient portraiture, and to view six of the most recent paintings from the People’s Portraits collection hung alongside the traditional RP summer exhibition. Both the Mistress and the President of the RP also thanked those who had played such an important role in establishing and nurturing the collection at Girton, in particular Librarian and Curator Frances Gandy and Life Fellow, Dr Gillian Jondorf (Moore, 1956). Indeed, the celebration of the arts was evident across the calendar, with our first Music and Choir alumni reunion in Lent Term, which featured an alumni choir concert, and dinner in Hall. In May, the Cambridge Judge Business School and the façade of the Fitzwilliam Museum played host to an exhibition of the work of this year’s Artist in Residence, Sonny Vadgama. Prize evenings took place across the year, with a well-contested Mountford prize evening in January on the theme of ‘The Body’, and the Jane Martin Poetry prize in May, which continues to attract entries of the highest quality.
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This year’s Jane Martin Poetry prize was won by Theophilus Kwek, a student at the University of Oxford, and the runner-up was Charlotte Buckley, a graduate of the University of Manchester. Both read from a selection of their poetry in front of a large audience in the Stanley Library, including Professor Sir Laurence Martin (who himself spoke movingly of the enabling power of giving). Judges this year were Hisham Matar, novelist and former Visiting Fellow, and Helen Mort, poet. The sciences were also celebrated with the hosting of the inaugural Natural Sciences Reunion Dinner which brought Fellows, students and alumni together for an evening of fine dining and convivial conversation. The following week students participated in the Hammond Science Communication Prize where they were asked to present their take on the theme ‘Recognition’. Away from Girton, our thanks go to Dawn Airey (1981) and Rob Durkin (2004) for hosting, and generously supporting, our first young alumni event, held at Yahoo’s Covent Garden offices in January. Around 110 alumni under 30 years old, together with members of the MCR, talked technology and listened to host Dawn Airey reflect on her life and times in technology and the media. Once again, Girton is extremely grateful to Dr Guy O’Keefe (1990) and the team at Slaughter and May for hosting an ever-expanding Law and Finance reception, in their Partners’ Dining Room. In March, around 200 people heard Jochen Runde, Girton Fellow and Professor of Economics and Organisation at the Cambridge Judge Business School, talk about ‘Listening Well’. We are also, once again, grateful to Elizabeth
Werry (1955) for continuing to host her regular buffet lunches, for Girtonians from far and wide and speakers from the College, at her Dulwich home. Girton is extremely grateful to members of the Roll of Alumni Committee, such as Miss Werry, Campaign Board members and other key volunteers for their support and wise counsel. In this respect, we should like to thank Barbara Bodichon Foundation Fellow Sarah Holt (1972) and Jeremy Young (1984), who have stood down from the Campaign Board, for all their hard work, support and generosity over recent years. Shortly after Easter we made our regular trip to the Far East, meeting alumni in Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore. Particular thanks must go to HIH Princess Takamado (Tottori 1972) for her warm welcome and for being an honoured guest at the dinner hosted by the Cambridge and Oxford Society for the Mistress at the Tokyo Club. Our grateful thanks as well to all of the alumni that we met and also to Professor Timothy Minton (St John’s, 1977) for his exceptional support in the run up to our visit. In Hong Kong and Singapore, we were delighted to meet so many of you, and thank Kevin Chan (1986) in particular for once again hosting our Hong Kong dinner, and Mark Hanson (1985) for hosting a drinks reception for us at Raffles in Singapore. Our scheme to encourage the wider Fellowship to meet alumni, when they are attending conferences or events abroad, continues. Dr Kamiar Mohaddes, one of our Economics Fellows, met alumni in Boston last autumn and Dr Jacob Paskins, Eugenie Strong Research Fellow in Architecture, met alumni on a visit to Chicago in June.
A Great Campaign, our fundraising campaign, continues to make steady progress, as we work toward our 150th anniversary in 2019. The Campaign seeks to secure a sustainable financial future for the College through a mix of legacy pledges and donations. We have now raised over £12 million since the launch of the Campaign, including the generous bequest of the late Brenda Stacey (1946) of around £2 million, and have been notified of legacy pledges in excess of £13.5 million. Our telethon campaign this year was, we understand, the most successful across the higher education sector in terms of its participation rate, with 75% of alumni called making a gift, and 78% of alumni under 30 years of age doing so. Our thanks to all of those who gave so generously, and to our student callers who worked with such commitment over their Easter break.
The Alumni Choir in rehearsal
I shall be standing down as Development Director in the coming months, and would like to extend my thanks to the very many alumni and supporters who have made my time in the role such a fascinating and rewarding one. Girton is a remarkable institution that has changed the world, but its alumni are perhaps more remarkable for their generosity, shown in so many ways! Elizabeth Wade, Development Director
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Admissions and Widening Participation As always this has been a busy year for the Admissions Team, with the admissions process running alongside increasing activity on the recruitment, access and widening participation front. In October 2014 we welcomed 142 new students to Girton, 49% of whom are studying a Science subject and 48% are female; of the Home students, 69% are from maintained schools. We were also joined by two Erasmus exchange students (MML) and one National University of Singapore student studying Engineering. In this admissions round 94 (56%) of our offers were made through the Winter Pool and eight from the Summer Pool. This year we ran five Open Days which were attended by around 200 prospective applicants.
As well as visiting schools and attending HE fairs we hosted a number of school visits – interestingly we have had contact with increasing numbers of pre-A Level groups as schools are keen to motivate their younger students to think about applying to top universities. A number of students and several teachers have also visited the College individually. Our HE+ Scheme work with seven schools in the Stourbridge/Dudley area continues to go from strength to strength. This year’s launch was attended by 250 Year 12 students. We split the cohort across four days for their Masterclass visits to Girton; these were attended by 184 students and covered 13 different subject areas. The success of our pilot HE+ Scheme in Camden in 2013-14 has been recognised through its inclusion this year in the University’s HE+ Scheme programme. Girton is one of only two colleges operating two concurrent HE+ Schemes and the first to run one in London. The Camden consortium involves 11 schools and this year’s launch was attended by 100 students. We have run Masterclass visits on two days, with 64 students and covering ten subjects. We thank Angela Stratford, the Head of Tutorial and Admissions, and her team in the office for everything they have done to make the admissions process and our widening participation work run so smoothly. We are very sorry to be saying farewell to Laura Parkin, our Schools Liaison Assistant, who is leaving us at the end of August to embark upon a Master’s course. She has been a wonderful colleague – managing the many facets of her job calmly and efficiently – and we have all enjoyed working with her.
Stuart Davis
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Julia Riley, Stuart Davis, Admissions Tutors
Bursaries and Grants Bursaries Fifteen holders of Emily Davies Bursaries (worth up to £3,500 per year) were in residence in 2014/15. The subjects being read by the bursary holders included Biological Sciences, Engineering, English, Modern and Medieval Languages, Philosophy, Physical Sciences, Theology and Veterinary Medicine. There were five holders of Ellen McArthur Bursaries (worth £1,000 in the first year and £1,500 in subsequent years) in residence in 2014/15, two of whom were reading Economics, one reading History, one reading Human, Social and Political Sciences and the fifth reading Psychological and Behavioural Sciences. Two Jean Lindsay Memorial Bursaries for History (worth £800 per year), and three Margaret Barton Bursaries for Medical Science (worth up to £3,500 per year) were held by students in residence in 2014/15. Ninety Cambridge Bursaries (worth up to £3,500 per year) were received by Girton undergraduates in 2014/15. All these bursaries form part of one of the most generous bursary schemes of any University in the UK. They help students from the least welloff households to take up their place here, and are fundamental to our widening participation goals. Twelve undergraduates received Cambridge European Bursaries (worth up to £3,500 per year) in 2014/15. The College Overseas
Bursaries of three overseas students have been renewed for the next academic year, and new bursaries were awarded to four overseas students due to come into residence in October 2015. Grants Twenty undergraduate students were given hardship grants from the Buss Fund totalling £2,990, and one undergraduate student was given a hardship grant of £1,000 from the College Overseas Bursaries Fund. Seventeen graduate students received grants amounting to £7,620 from the Pillman Hardship Fund. For academic expenses, grants totalling £7,750 were made to fortyone undergraduates from the Student Academic Resources Fund. Twenty-seven graduate students received grants amounting to £5,350 from the Pillman Academic Fund. The following grants were also made: seven grants totalling £950 from the Beatrice Mary Thomas Fund for Physical Sciences and five grants totalling £1,000 from the Harry Barkley Fund to clinical medical students undertaking elective periods of training. Angela Stratford, Head of Tutorial and Admissions Office
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Archive report for The Year 2015 This year the Archive has loaned two items to Cambridge University Library’s exhibition ‘A damned serious business: Waterloo 1815, the battle, and its books’. The canister shot and charcoal were collected by Jane Catherine Gamble when she visited Waterloo in 1825, aged 15. She described her tour of the site in her autobiography. Although she had no obvious connection with the College she became its first major benefactor on her death in 1885. Her bequest enabled the building of Tower Wing and the purchase of further land. Her papers and artefacts are held in the Archive. Major additions to existing collections this year include the library of Veronica Forrest-Thomson, comprising volumes heavily annotated in her hand, and letters and memoirs written by Mary Cartwright (Mistress 1949). On the death of P D James (HF 2000) in November 2014, further manuscripts of her crime novels were bequeathed to the Archive. New accessions include personal papers of Ena Mary Burton (1937) and Margaret Church (1943), and ephemera such as posters of late 1970s College events, all augmenting our record of the Girton experience. Quirkier accessions include Eleanor Margaret Allen’s (1895) suitcase, which had been used to store College silver, and a song dedicated to Hermione Grammatike by Major Rat Run, a local band from Girton village. Joan Bullock-Anderson’s work on the retrospective cataloguing programme has continued with the papers of Roma Brookes (1935), Alice Zimmern (1881), Laura Seddon
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(1928), and Alice Teichova (HF 1989). Professor Teichova died before the catalogue was complete, but her papers bear lasting witness to her and to her research. Each catalogue includes a brief biography and will be available on the Janus website – http://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/. Catalogues for some of the photographic collection are also now available on Janus. This large ongoing project should make our outstanding photographic collection more accessible to researchers.
Further photographic catalogues will follow soon. The Archive continues to deal with enquiries and research visits on a wide range of topics and individuals including local history, the design of the building and its fixtures and fittings, artists featured in the College collections, genealogy and familiar Girton names such as Emily Davies, Barbara Bodichon and Eileen Power (Fellow 1913). Jessica Swale’s play, Blue Stockings, was popular again this year: one production took place in Greece, and a group from the University of Brunswick, Germany visited to enhance their pre-production preparation. I would like to end by expressing my gratitude to Anne Cobby (1971), Hilary Goy (Corke 1968) and Cherry Hopkins (Busbridge 1959), who continue to give invaluable help in the Archive.
Like many tourists, Jane Catherine Gamble was able to salvage relics from the field. The wrapper of this fragment of charcoal indicates that it came from Hougoumont (archive reference: GCPP Gamble 3/17). Image courtesy of the Digital Content Unit, Cambridge University Library.
(The donations listed refer to the period 1 July 2014 to 30 June 2015) Alison Adcock (Dewar 1937); Nick Basden; Susanna Cerasuolo; Phyllis Champion; Dianne Edwards (1961, Morgan RF 1967); Carmel Egan (1977); Julian Evans; Mike Glazer; Diana Greenway (1956);
David Gregory; David Griffith; Philomena Guillebaud (1944); David Hall; P D James (HF 2000); Peter Johnson; Edmund King; Vickee Kouee; Sheila Mann; Isabel Raphael; Jose Reis (2011); Jane Robson (Macdonald 1954); David Seddon; Alison Sherrington; Margaret Sudbury (Walker 1949); James Tattersall; Carol Underwood; Kate Varney; Anne Watkinson (Sneesby 1958); John Whitehorn; Anne Wilson (1945); Geoff Wilson; Nuri Wyeth (Marckwald 1964). Records were also transferred from various College departments and Fellows throughout the year. Hannah Westall, Archivist
Jane Catherine Gamble recorded that this was most likely a piece of canister shot fired from a cannon and was brought from La Belle Alliance (archive reference: GCPP Gamble 3/17). Image courtesy of the Digital Content Unit, Cambridge University Library.
Page from Jane Catherine Gamble’s autobiography Fragments of a life where she describes her visit to Waterloo in 1825 (archive reference: GCPP Gamble 1/35). Image courtesy of the Digital Content Unit, Cambridge University Library.
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The Librarian’s report The academic year has followed its usual twists and turns in the Library, but behind the scenes a number of projects have come to fruition. Among them, the University and Life Experience website, the result of a four-year research project, coordinated by this department and building on the data collected in the late 1990s, is to be completed in the autumn of 2015. This will be an invaluable scholarly resource to researchers in social history and its on-going operation will be managed from the Archive. Another notable project is the creation of a new phase in the University’s journals coordination scheme, which also involves all the Cambridge college libraries. The University’s Schools, the University Library and the college libraries work together to coordinate journals provision across the University. In these days the ‘bundles’ which can be brokered from publishers provide desktop access for everyone across a vast range of journal content. The colleges’ participation in the coordination scheme is crucial to its survival and, in the new agreement thrashed out this year, every Cambridge college has now come on board. This outcome marked a very satisfying end to my time as Chair of the colleges’ coordination committee. This is my last report for The Year as Librarian, after 28 years in post, and I am also retiring as Curator. I have been very privileged to have had the opportunity to work for this unique institution, and in such rich and interesting roles. The last thirty years have seen great changes in library provision, especially for Higher Education, and I like to think that Girton’s Library has stayed ahead of that particular curve. A highlight of my time as Librarian has been the chance to assist in the establishment
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of the Duke building, which I think we all regard as a wonderful asset to the College and an emblem of our commitment to scholarship. In my curatorial role, the establishment of the People’s Portraits exhibition and our on-going partnership with the Royal Society of Portrait Painters has been a particular pleasure and has, I feel, brought a new dimension to College life. I am continuing as Graduate Tutor for one more year, looking after my existing panel, and I shall hope to continue to play a part in the future of the College for many years to come, albeit from the sidelines. Gifts and Bequests to the Library (Please note that all the donations listed here refer to the period 1 July 2014 to 30 June 2015) We are most grateful to the many donors whose gifts of money allow us to purchase books and other essential items. We are indebted to Dr Sara Delamont (1965) who has presented the Library with her entire and substantial collection of books on girls’ and women’s education, which she has built over many years. This will be an extremely useful complement to our existing special collections, especially Blackburn. Dr Delamont has also, and most thoughtfully, provided £4,000 in funding to pay for the cataloguing of this collection. We owe a debt of gratitude to the late Phyllis James, who bequeathed to us her much-treasured set of Notable British Trials. She also bequeathed manuscript drafts of her novels, to add to those she had already presented to the Archive in her lifetime.
The family of the late Susan Moore (1952) have generously donated a substantial number of Classics books from her library. Georgiana Klinke, daughter of the late Mary Roe (Dooley 1956), has kindly presented the Library with books from Mary’s language and literature collection. We continue to benefit from the generosity of Cambridge University Press, whose special arrangement allows us to acquire £3000 worth of CUP books free of charge. Erratum from 2014: Jennifer Petrie (1967) appeared in our list of donors last year as Jennifer Petrie (Adcock 1945). We apologise for this error and are grateful to have had it brought to our attention. Copies of their own work have been presented by: Rt Hon Lady Justice Arden (1965), Alison Craze (McCrone 1968), Dr Amaleena Damlé, Dr Gurpal Singh Gosall (1989), Dr Malcolm Guite, Dr Phil Hammond (1981), Lim Hwee Hua (Tan Hwee Hua 1978), Dr Rita Joshi (1981), Professor Jill Mann, Susan Palmer (Hull 1975), Dr Anastasia Piliviasky, Dr Lucy Pollard (Robertson 1962), Magdalena Stoof, Professor Dame Marilyn Strathern (Evans 1960), Hazel Strouts (1962), Dr Helen Van Noorden, Baroness Warnock of Weeke, Anne Wilson (1945), Dr Hope Wolf. The following individuals have also presented copies of books and other media: Rt Hon Lady Justice Arden (1965), Dr Susan Bain (Stanley 1961), Dr Veronica Bennett, Dr Sara
Portrait of Frances Gandy by Sonny Sanjay Vadgama
Delamont (1965), Gwynneth Drabble (1973), Dr Ben Griffin, Holly Higgins (2014), Baroness James of Holland Park, Dr Patrick James, Natasha Jocelyn (2005), Edward Kwok (2011), Jessica Lai (2011), Dr Johnny Lawson, Joseph Morrison (2012), Dr Jacob Paskins, Lee Suet Fern (Lim Suet Fern 1977), Mary Roe (Dooley 1956), Professor Dame Marilyn Strathern (Evans 1960), Dr Ruth Williams. We are very grateful to the following donors, who maintain regular subscriptions to journals on our behalf, or who present us with regular current copies: Dr Harriet Allen (1977), Frances Gandy, Dr John Marks, Professor Dame Marilyn Strathern (Evans 1960). Publications have also been presented by the following organisations: Allies and Morrison, Cambridge University Press, C.U. Careers Service, Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Girton College Development Office, Ons Erfdeel vzw. Frances Gandy, Librarian and Curator
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Culture and Heritage at Girton Girton’s collections continue to offer a rich cultural backdrop to College life and a core component of its academic activity. They are also one of the means by which the College doors are opened to the wider public, offering regular access to People’s Portraits and to the Lawrence Room antiquities. In September 2014 we held our normal annual events over the Alumni weekend, all of which focus on three core activities in the Culture and Heritage sector: the Library, the Lawrence Room and People’s Portraits. For the latter, Andrew Nairne, Director of Kettle’s Yard, spoke on ‘The Portrait Today’, and we unveiled a new portrait, Brooksy, by Jason Walker RP. For the Lawrence Room, Professor David McMullen gave a fascinating talk about ‘Women in the Tang Dynasty’ using as a starting point the exuberant but enigmatic figure seated on a galloping horse, which we hold in our collections. Tantalisingly we are still not clear on where this figure fits into the wider Tang picture; it would appear to be most unusual. For the Library event the principal researchers from the University and Life Experience Website Project (which is coordinated by the Library Department) presented a demonstration of the research
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capacity of this remarkable resource and discussed the particular challenges that the project has involved. The Alumni weekend of September 2015 welcomed speaker Daphne Todd OBE, PPRP at our People’s Portraits reception. This is particularly fitting in our fifteenth anniversary year, since it was Daphne, together with Marilyn Strathern, who initiated the establishment at Girton of the exhibition in 2002, after its successful show in London for the Millennium. A separate article in this volume describes the fifteenthanniversary reception at the Mall Galleries in April. A new painting will be added to the collection, this time by Andrew Festing PPRP. The Lawrence Room event will welcome art historian Professor Jean-Michel Massing to talk about antiquarian headrests from Ancient Egypt to East Africa, including the one in our collection. We are fortunate to be able to welcome Professor Dianne Edwards CBE, FRS to give the talk for the Library event. She is Distinguished Research Professor in the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences at Cardiff University and President of the Linnaean Society. Her subject will be ’Cambridge women in botany: the late beginnings of enlightenment’, which
will doubtless include many Girtonians, such as the redoubtable Ethel Sargant. The Lawrence Room Committee was delighted to receive the gift of a collection of Roman coins from Margaret Pinsent (Bowen 1944), and these are now catalogued and on display. Graham Hambling, the College’s Catering Manager, is making a very generous donation to the Lawrence Room to commemorate his 36 years at Girton. We plan to use this gift to produce a publication about our antiquities collections and their stories for the 150th anniversary of the College in 2019. As ever, we work behind the scenes to ensure the conservation of the collections which we have been so fortunate to inherit. In the Lawrence Room, the Coptic textiles returned from their conservation and remounting, their colours brightened and more vivid. The programme of marking objects to correlate with the new catalogue entries moves on apace. For the College’s works of art, we commissioned conservation work on a number of paintings by Barbara Bodichon, which required reframing and cleaning, and also some conservation and reframing work on three of the People’s Portraits. Frances Gandy, Curator
The Lawrence Room Tang Figurine
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Chapel report It has been another rich and varied year for life in Chapel. We began with a big change, as I was on Sabbatical for the Michaelmas Term, pursuing my researches into Coleridge and working on some new poetry, but happily a highly qualified Old Girtonian was ready to step into my place and cover for my absence. I was able to recommend the Revd Dr Margaret Guite (neé Hutchison), unreservedly to the chapel community, as the very first time I met her (in 1982!) she was preaching an excellent sermon in Cambridge, and I have been benefiting from her wisdom ever since! The theme for Michaelmas was the teaching of Jesus, and once Maggie
had started us off with the traditional guided evensong, we heard from a variety of excellent preachers: Tricia Troughton, a Baptist minister and spiritual director gave us insights into our identity in Christ; the distinguished New Testament Scholar Richard Bauckham reflected on the most important commandment; and Bishop John Taylor reflected, appropriately, on Christ’s teaching on leadership. Our commemoration service for All Souls, led by Maggie, and our traditional Advent Carol Service, led by Mandy Maxwell, the Vicar of St Andrew's, Girton, were both well attended and moving services. So when I returned from my peregrinations at the beginning of
the Lent Term, I found things in good order and people in good heart. And perhaps it was those peregrinations which suggested our Lenten theme, which was ‘To be a Pilgrim’. As I had been away I decided I would preach through this term, and it began by introducing pilgrimage as a Lenten theme, rooted in the idea of Christian life as a journey from the Red Sea of baptism through the wilderness, till at last we cross Jordan and reach the promised land; a journey specifically remembered in the forty days of Lent. Then over the course of the term I looked at a series of great moments in literature in which writers from Dante and Chaucer through to Herbert, Bunyan, and C S Lewis have guided and encouraged us on our pilgrim journey. These sermons and those I preached in the Easter Term have all been recorded and can be heard and downloaded via the Chapel web page: http://www.girton.cam.ac.uk/ girton-today/places/chapel For the Easter Term we returned to the teaching of Jesus, but this time I concentrated on the searching, sometimes searing, character of his parables and his constant, mindexpanding use of paradox. Our Easter series was called Parable and Paradox, and I ended each sermon with a sonnet in which I tried to
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focus and concentrate on the paradoxical elements we had been exploring. All these sermons and services were, as always, accompanied by our excellent choir, which this year has been flourishing under the inspiring leadership of Andrew Kennedy, our Acting Director of Chapel Music. We shall be sorry to see him go, but look forward to the appointment of Gareth Wilson, our new Director of Chapel Music in time for Michaelmas. We are also sorry to be saying farewell to Karen Lee in her role as Chair of the Chapel Committee. Under her leadership we have made all sorts of practical improvements to the running and maintenance of the chapel, including the installation of a new sound system. She will of course still be around, but concentrating more on her role as ViceMistress, and I am delighted that Fiona Cooke has agreed to become the new Chair of the Committee. I have undertaken some new initiatives myself this year including a new weekly communion service in Wolfson Court. This brief informal communion at lunchtime on Thursdays will, I hope, become a real resource for students at Wolfson Court, and a little oasis in a busy week. All these things only happen with help from many people, and I would like to record my particular thanks to the Chapel Wardens who have assisted me so well this year. Malcolm Guite, Chaplain
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Choir report I have had the privilege of directing the choir in this interim year between Nicholas Mulroy’s departure and the exciting appointment of Gareth Wilson as our new Director of Chapel Music. Having replenished the vocal ranks following the graduation of a large and particularly talented year group, it amused me to observe the shock (or was it horror?) on the faces of the various interviewees auditioning in front of the choir, when they were told that the longer row of seven men were in fact the tenors and not the basses, as many had assumed, and all of them Girtonians! However, I must confess that one of these tenors was in fact our Senior Organ Scholar, Rory Heaton, who is not just a talented organist, but sings in and directs the Close Harmony Group and also composes rather marvellously too. His beautiful choral anthem, ‘When David Heard’,
was a moving addition to the recent May Week Concert. It seems a fitting opportunity to thank Rory, and indeed William Fuest the Junior Organ Scholar, for all their help and hard work. Alongside the usual busy choral schedule of Evensongs, Complines, Eucharists (many punctuated by literary and colourful sermons from the wonderful Malcolm Guite) and the formal dinners and feasts, two concerts and a tour to Hong Kong kept the choir thoroughly entertained and occupied. The first saw them joining forces with CUMS orchestra and chorus and the choir of Jesus College in Ely Cathedral for a Remembrance Day performance of Britten’s War Requiem conducted by Stephen Cleobury. It was a very moving occasion and very well received. Purcell and Carissimi formed the backbone of the February chapel concert where we joined forces with the talented string players Maggie Faultless, Kate Kennedy and Max Liefkes (not forgetting Konrad Bucher who nimbly moonlighted between the tenor section and his violin). All the soloists were taken from the choir including the rather huge and onerous soprano lead in Carissimi’s oratorio Jephte, and I am grateful to all involved, and in particular Olivia Crawford who had the lion’s share of notes to learn! I look forward to following the choir’s progress next year under Gareth’s leadership and I would like to thank Dr Martin Ennis in particular for his great wisdom and help and, above all, for allowing me the opportunity to direct one of Cambridge’s most vibrant and individual choirs. Andrew Kennedy Acting Director of Chapel Music
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The Choir tour Girton College Chapel Choir had the pleasure of touring to Hong Kong in April. The nine days we spent there were full of diverse singing engagements in the heart of the city, in Stanley (situated on a peninsula on the other side of Hong Kong Island) and in Kowloon, across the harbour from which Hong Kong takes its name. We sang in schools alongside student groups at St Paul’s CoEducational College and at St Stephen’s College, Stanley, and performed at the newly constructed University of Macau at Moon Chun Memorial College. We participated in religious services at St John’s Cathedral in Hong Kong where we sang alongside the Cathedral Choir and at All Saints’ Cathedral in Kowloon. The Choir even recorded for a forthcoming radio programme at RTHK (Radio Television Hong Kong).
The Choir would like to thank all those who made the tour possible, including St Paul’s CoEducational College who provided us not only with beautiful accommodation in Hong Kong, but also with the warmest of welcomes. The Choir owes its greatest thanks to Dr Martin Ennis. Without his indefatigable diligence in the planning process, and his direction and musicianship during the tour itself, none of this would have been possible, and without his sense of humour it would certainly not have been such a joy. Stephen Wilkinson, Choral Scholar
Perhaps the highlight of the tour from a musical as well as a Girtonian perspective was the concert at the Helena May. Some 99 years after its establishment with the aim of promoting the welfare of women and girls in Hong Kong, the Choir performed a varied array of repertoire at this club for ladies. We were glad to be joined at the club by the Mistress, and the union of Girton College and the Helena May was a poignant reminder of the College’s pioneering work for women, on which its worldwide reputation remains.
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Research Evenings report This year, we have once again proved that however busy the timetables of academics, there is always time to be found to learn about others’ research. In January, Official Fellow in History Sam Williams talked to us about some of her work on the poor law, looking in meticulous detail at the statistics surrounding the punishment of unmarried parents in London between 1695 and 1834. The parents of illegitimate children were liable to punishment by the church and secular courts. Sam examined house of correction calendars and bastardy books in order to examine the frequency with which parents were punished in London, the reasons for incarceration, and any other punishments while inside, with surprising and enlightening results. In Michaelmas 2014, Visiting Fellow Prof. Laurence Murphy gave a talk on the affordability of housing in New Zealand, giving us a fascinating insight from the other side of the world into a topic so familiar in this country. An extra Research Evening talk was given in May by Dutch sociologist and essayist Abram de Swaan in the Stanley Library on ’Genocidal Regimes and their Perpetrators’, in which he talked about some of the research for his new book, The Killing Compartments: The Mentality of Mass Murder
An image from the ULE website: The Year group 1900
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(Yale, 2015). The following month, Research Fellow Anastasia Piliavsky gave a talk on ‘India’s Human Democracy’. She told us that India is not only the world’s largest democracy and one of its most animated, but one of the most corrupt. Her talk, based on several years’ field research among politicians and voters in north India, unpacked this apparent paradox both to make India’s remarkable and often bewildering democracy more legible and to lay bare some of our own confusions about what democracy is. Our Artist in Residence Sonny Sanjay Vadgama treated us to a fascinating and very personal insight into the inspiration behind his work, and described the process that informed his many different experiments with light, sound, photography and film. As the University and Life Experience website, hosted by Girton, was launched this summer, there was great excitement about Eugenie Strong Research Fellow Hazel Mills and Kate Perry’s presentation on the work that they had been undertaking on developing the project. The project presents quantitative and qualitative data on over 7,000 Girton alumnae (1900-1990). Their paper gave a brief history of the ULE and its data collection, and then examined the legal and ethical challenges that have arisen in preparing the material for on-line publication. Hazel and Kate explained how the obligations imposed by data protection, third-party privacy and copyright throw up new challenges for social scientists engaged in contemporary record collection and analysis, and the discussion sparked a lively debate. Kate Kennedy, Research Evenings Convenor
Music report This year’s programme of events began back in September 2014 with the annual Concert for the Roll. It has become something of a tradition to highlight the talents of alumni on this occasion, and this year we were delighted to welcome back Margaret Richards (1969). Along with her colleagues in the Ridgeway Ensemble, she presented An Evening with Queen Victoria, a cleverly crafted sequence of songs and chamber works by Mendelssohn, Elgar, Sullivan and Prince Albert. The May Week Concert on 16 June provided the year’s second book-end. The climax of this summer’s programme was a selection of movements from Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, in which the Chapel Choir, a percussion ensemble, and pianists Nadanai Laohakunakorn and Ben Comeau were directed by Ben Glassberg. Ben Glassberg leaves Girton after a stellar undergraduate career, which included serving as first-ever Student President of CUMS, to take up a conducting place at the Royal Academy of Music. The rest of the programme shone a spotlight on other graduands. Camilla Seale and Stephen Wilkinson performed two moving Dowland songs for voice and harp, while Alexander Haupt demonstrated his pianistic flair in works by Rachmaninov and Scriabin. Two new vocal compositions started the second half. Rhiannon Randle’s Like a singing bird, which had been broadcast on Radio 3 as part of International Women’s Day with Sarah Connolly as soloist, followed Rory Heaton’s highly expressive When David heard, which was premiered here. Rhiannon, who also presented her second opera, Dido is dead, during May Week in Girton and Trinity Chapels, moves on to the Guildhall in London for
a fully funded PhD in Composition. Rory comes to the end of a very distinguished tenure as Organ Scholar, and it is good to note that his enormous contribution to College and Chapel music was recognised in the award of the Tom Mansfield Prize. The first half of the programme showcased Girton’s Close Harmony Group, an ensemble whose stylish performances played an important role during the Chapel Choir’s tour to Hong Kong at Easter. The choir as a whole also sang several of George Shearing’s jazz-inflected Songs and Sonnets. This was one of the last performances directed by Andrew Kennedy, who held the post of Acting Director of Chapel Music throughout the year. We could not have asked for a more enthusiastic and inspiring interim director than Andrew; he will be greatly missed. Undoubtedly, the largest event of the year was The Lion and the Lance, a concert presented in Hall on 7 February (and also the previous evening in St John’s College Chapel). The programme featured the combined forces of the Music Faculty’s Collegium Musicum, the Historic Brass of the Combined Conservatoires, and the Cambridge University Chamber Choir in a musical journey from St Mark’s in Venice, where many of the posthumously published masterpieces of Giovanni Gabrieli were first performed, via the Salzburg of Heinrich Biber, to Leipzig, where Johann Hermann Schein and Johann Sebastian Bach both served as Cantor of the Thomaskirche. The repertoire was chosen to celebrate the 400th anniversaries of publications by Gabrieli and Schein; it concluded with two of Bach’s masterpieces – the Magnificat and Komm, Jesu komm. As in previous years, I was
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delighted to work alongside Maggie Faultless and Jeremy West in the preparation of what turned out to be one of the most challenging concerts ever staged at Girton. Other highlights of the year included the by-nowannual study of a single composer curated by Maggie Faultless (this year devoted to Handel), and a concert for the supporters of the Choir on 22 February. Directed by Andrew Kennedy, the latter featured Carissimi’s Jephte alongside shorter works by Purcell. Andrew also prepared Girton’s Choir for the magnificent performance of Britten’s War Requiem given by massed forces in Ely Cathedral on 22 November, Britten’s birthday. This year’s concert programme included an unusually large number of visiting musicians. A particular highlight was the organ recital given on 1 February by Andrew Reid, Director of the Royal School of Church Music. Rarely has our wonderful St Martin organ been heard to such good effect as in this spectacular programme that ranged from the French Baroque (de Grigny) to the present day (MacMillan) via masterpieces by Bach, Alain and Messiaen. Two visits from South Africa also helped frame the year. On 7 December Peter Martens, a prize-winning cellist, teamed up with Jâms Coleman (2011) to perform sonatas by Beethoven, Brahms and Klatzow; and on 13 June the Odeion String Quartet, which is based in Bloemfontein, played Beethoven’s second ‘Razumovsky’ Quartet and Iinyembesi, a recent work by Peter Louis van Dijk based on Dowland’s Flow my tears. I should like to conclude by thanking all those who attended the Music reunion on 8 February.
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This event, which involved a celebratory evensong and a splendid meal, was a wonderful way of keeping in touch with generations of Girton musicians. Many asked for a re-match, and I hope it will not be too long before we come together again. Martin Ennis Austin and Hope Pilkington Fellow in Music, and Director of Music
Student reports
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JCR report The past year has been a busy one for all members of the JCR, with undergraduates continuing to contribute to the already great community spirit at Girton. This can be epitomised by the JCR’s continual but ultimately fruitless quest to be ranked number one in the Cambridge-wide student switch off competition and the securing of the ever-elusive 100 free tubs of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream. Following an enormously successful Freshers’ Week 2013, incoming students for the 2014 -15 academic year were welcomed to Girton with an equally fantastic assortment of events. These included ghost walks, going to a children’s ball-pit play area, and a scenic cycle ride into Girton village. Michaelmas Term saw the launch of a new www.girtonjcr.com website and the establishment of several novel precedents that continued throughout the year such as hot chocolate, cakes and marshmallow parties, weekly karaoke, film nights and pub quizzes, and what proved to be extremely popular ‘free pizza at JCR Committee Hustings’. The highlight of the term was the JCR Speaker Event for a discussion about the importance of the representation of BME women in the media with Pakistani-born British novelist Roopa Farooki and in-house
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commercial lawyer for ITV, Julia Stephenson. Students particularly enjoyed discussing the ramifications of the lack of diversity on our screens and in our books, and I would like to thank both guests for their insightful talk and for offering their personal experiences of working in the industry.
opening hours. Finally, continuing the strong JCR and MCR relationship, this year saw a hotly contested University Challenge selection event run simultaneously in main College and at Wolfson Court. Unfortunately the eventual Girton team did not make it through to the final TV rounds.
2015 saw the second-ever charity Harry Potter Formal Hall event put on at Girton, complete with Honeydukes sweets, themed music, and house decorations. Lent Term was also notable for the complete regrading of rooms, and after many years of student suggestion, the JCR Committee managed to successfully agree with College to partially fund a library trial for extended Saturday
Overall it has been a great year for Girton undergraduates with many memorable moments. On behalf of the JCR I would like to thank both the College staff and the College Council for working with the students and allowing us to have real input into College life. I hope next year will be just as eventful. Vincent Poon, JCR President
MCR report If you were to walk into Wolfson Court during the summer months you would find the usual mix of quiet studying, late submission stress and a nostalgic feeling that anticipated the painful goodbyes that would inevitably follow the end of a year of hard work and great friendships.
The MCR enjoying Grantchester during Freshers’ week
As essays were submitted, MPhil students started to pop out of their rooms and libraries to join the more carefree PhDs for the casual afterlunch coffee in the sun and the spontaneous sing-along evenings on the grass. The warm weather provided the perfect setting for a Southern European-themed international party, followed by our traditional MCR garden party and barbecue. The World Cup further brought out the international character of Wolfson Court, with daily evening gatherings around the Bar and MCR screens, and an array of flags hanging from the windows.
night in the refurbished Wolfie bar, punting, picnics and several tours of Cambridge – sightseeing during the day and visits to the town’s most infamous pubs and college bars in the evenings.
This enthusiasm was extended to another hectic Freshers’ Fortnight. Making sure graduate students feel at home in Cambridge is the main goal of the MCR. With the invaluable help of Committee members and other enthusiastic students, we welcomed our colleagues with open arms and a memorable programme. For two weeks there were theatre and movie nights, a pub quiz and an open mic
Once everyone was settled in and ready to get started with their courses, the now extended MCR Committee focused on organising year-round activities. We kept the Formal Hall swaps tradition, giving our members the opportunity to meet people and to dine in some of Cambridge’s best College Halls, while showing graduates from other Colleges that Girton’s wonderful Hall
and food are well worth the commute. Our more informal MCR Dinners in Wolfie, the Welfare Christmas and tea parties, the occasional film night in the MCR, and the open mic and quiz evenings in the bar were the perfect excuse to take a break from work and for us to enjoy each other’s company. The PechaKucha research seminars remained the ideal appetiser for the Graduate Formal Halls, allowing Graduate students and Fellows to present their research in exactly 6.67 minutes. In Lent, we saw the PechaKucha seminar take place in
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Wolfson Court for the first time. Preceded by an informal Buffet Supper, this new format was welcomed by students and Fellows alike. Following recent practice, the Lent Term MCR Dinner was moved to Girton, where we hosted friends from three other Colleges for dinner and a bop. We held the party in the Great Hall, which proved to be a fantastic dance floor. I’m delighted to have attended the first ever Supervisors’ Supper, in which PhD and Masters students invited their supervisors to join Girton Graduates and Fellows for a special Formal Hall. This has been a particularly active year for MCR and Alumni interaction. The MCR-Young Alumni Networking Event, which took place in January at the Yahoo! headquarters in London, hosted by Girton Alumna Dawn Airey, was a relaxed and enjoyable way of fostering the bonds between graduate students and members of Girton’s Alumni community. In April we had a wine tasting in the Stanley Library with Girton Alumna and Port wine producer Sophia Bergqvist. I would like to thank Elizabeth Wade and the Development Office staff for their invaluable help in organising these events. I would also like to thank our Graduate Tutors, Frances Gandy and
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James Bond themed party
Christmas Formal Hall
Liliana Janik, as well as Maureen Hackett and Jenny Griffiths for their advice and support throughout the year. And most of all, none of this would have been possible without our energetic students and the hard work and
dedication of the MCR Committee. I’m sure our Graduate community in Wolfson Court will remain a boisterous family in the years to come. José Reis, MCR President
GADS With the curtain closed on another Cambridge year, it is clear that it has been an absolutely fantastic one for GADS. With a terrific troupe of Freshers joining the society, we were buzzing with ideas for bigger and better productions. The first show of the year, as tradition dictates, was the hilarious Girton: The Musical. Put together in just five days, the cast was outstanding at learning lines, songs and choreography. The show was a resounding success: a third-year audience member uttering the heart-warming comment of ‘That was the best version of the Musical I’ve ever seen!’ The Freshers were given creative licence for a project of their own, and they did not disappoint! The GADS Comedy Mash-Up was brought to life through original writings and adaptations. The show went down a storm and established this GADS year as a big one for comic theatre. To round up Michaelmas Term there was the traditional Girton-themed pantomime, written
and directed by Katharine Wiggell. Based on Jack and the Beanstalk, the show was a real Christmas treat, featuring a gigantic beanstalk growing before the audience’s very eyes! After a great first term, it was time to be more ambitious with our projects in Lent, and we put on two plays in College and funded The Strip, an ADC main-show. The first production of Lent Term was The Lark, directed by Emma Ansell from Fitzwilliam. Set in the round, an intimate setting was created for the emotional performance. Elizabeth Crowdy was marvellous in the lead role of Joan of Arc; and the cast were flawless in their multi-rolling. It is wonderful to have students from other Colleges involved in GADS – a rogue Trinity mathmo even made his way up the hill to feature as Father/ Guard! After their playwriting debuts in Michaelmas Term, Joshua Peters and Adam Woolf joined forces to create the wonderfully witty UKIP:
The cast of UKIP: The Musical. Photo by Joshua Peters
Left: Dancer Asia Piotrowska performs with Ben James as Nigel Farage in UKIP: The Musical. Photo by Charlie Bruce
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The Musical. The show parodied events in the run-up to the General Election, making a mockery of popular (and not so popular!) politicians. Political satire is always popular with Cambridge audiences, and the cast were delighted to have a full house on both nights. It is great to have so many keen new members in the society, with so much creative energy. To see GADS improving in leaps and bounds is marvellous – we even splashed out on a shiny new lighting rig, much to the delight of the techies. I am sure that GADS will continue to flourish. But for now, I must say a huge bravo to all – take a well-earned bow after an amazing year! Katharine Wiggell, President
Elizabeth Crowdy as Joan in The Lark. Photo by Emma Ansell
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Adam Sixsmith as Jack and Lucinda Jones as Matilda in the Girton-themed pantomime version of Jack and the Beanstalk. Photo by Ella Dinsdale
The cast of The Lark. Photo by Ben James
Girton Geographical Society Girton Geographical Society continues to be as active as ever. Throughout the year we have organised a wide variety of events for our members. Through this, we have been able not only to maintain, but build upon, the strong sense of community the society has fostered. In Michaelmas term we organised an event, the focal point of which was a talk by one of Girton’s visiting fellows, Professor Larry Murphy, about his research interests – ‘The politics governing how people can afford housing in New Zealand’. The group was then able to dine together in Hall followed by a drinks reception, which made for a wonderful evening. The annual Cambridge University Geographical Society Christmas Dinner was well attended by many Girton geographers. Beginning the evening with mince pies and mulled wine in College, we then enjoyed a fun-filled time together dining at Murray Edwards, with an afterdinner speech by our very own Dr Mia Gray. In Lent Term we hosted a slightly different type of event. Dr Harriet Allen, Dr Mia Gray and Dr Roland Randall were invited to present to the society on their research interests. This was then followed by
the Annual Girton Geographical Society Photography Competition. The theme of ‘Geography’ was widely interpreted by entrants. Judged by the surprise guest Professor Susan Smith, Graduate student Tim May was announced as winner. We hope to conclude the year with a trip to the farm of Dr Roland Randall, a Life Fellow in Geography at Girton. This will be a wonderful opportunity for us to say goodbye to the geographers leaving us this year, while having a tour of Dr Randall’s farm and sampling some of his award-winning goats’ milk ice cream. Looking to the future, the Society looks forward to welcoming next year’s Freshers, and continuing the wonderful community we share together as Girton geographers.
“Purple cocoon”: A Tzotzil Mayan girl posing in the empty market of Zinacantan, Chiapas, Mexico. She is wearing the distinctive colourful floral dress of her community
Alice Braybrook and Joe Jukes Presidents of Girton Geographical Society
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The Law Society The Law Society held a variety of events throughout the year. The Annual Garden Party in May Week was a notable highlight, and was a lovely afternoon in the Fellows’ Drawing Room with Pimm’s and refreshments. On return in Michaelmas, we welcomed the new First Years with a meal at Giraffe, which provided the opportunity for members to get to know each other, and for returning members to catch up after the summer. We also organised dinners, workshops, and events in London, kindly hosted by city law firms. These events enable members to learn more about possible careers in Law, and to get to know different firms to help focus applications. Lady Justice Arden, an Honorary Fellow and former student at Girton, was our guest speaker at the Society’s Annual Dinner at the end of Lent Term. She offered many interesting insights from
her positions as a Judge of the Court of Appeal and as Head of International Judicial Relations for England and Wales. We were also fortunate to be joined by Lord Mance, a Justice of the Supreme Court; Cherry Hopkins, former Director of Studies at Girton; John Hopkins, former Director of Studies at Downing, and trainees from our sponsors’ firms. The broad range of legal perspectives present made for an enjoyable and memorable evening. The Annual Dinner marked the end of the Committee’s year and my thanks go to the Committee members, the Society’s Senior Treasurer, Dr Stelios Tofaris, and all the firms that generously sponsored our events for making this a very successful year for the Law Society. Jasmin O’Reilly, President
Law Society’s Annual Dinner. From left: Kah Wei Goh, Joseph Morrison, Grace Darling, Jasmin O’Reilly, Louis Biggs and Vincent Ko
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LGBT+ The past twelve months have seen the LGBT+ community at Girton grow and become even more active. Easter Term last year saw around 40 postcards, signed by members of Girton College, get sent to Amnesty International and forwarded to LGBT+ youth in Russia as a symbol of support given the current political attitudes in the region. This academic year, Girton has welcomed several Freshers into our LGBT+ family, and, I like to think, has provided an inclusive, open-minded and safe home for all. Activities were organised in Michaelmas with the other Equalities Officers such as tiedyeing T-shirts, and a festive punch night, which brought us together beyond the regular nightlife activities. February ushered in LGBT+ History Month and there was a strong Girton representation at many university-wide events. Towards the end of the month, there was a screening of PRIDE in the JCR which was enjoyed by many. Lent Term has also seen discussion groups such as an intersectional discussion on ‘Language, Use and Power’ with the Women’s and BME officers too. The term went out with a bang as Girton played host to an LGBT+ formal dinner with guests from Queens’, Homerton, Sidney Sussex and Trinity
making the trek up Castle Hill to dine, and grab a drink in the bar afterwards.
LGBT+ Postcard featuring Jenni Howe and Sarah Rogerson
Altogether, this year has been eventful and full of life for the LGBT+ community, with more events to come next term such as ‘How To Be A Good Ally’. I have very much enjoyed my time as LGBT+ rep and look forward to what queer delights the next year will bring! Joe Jukes, LGBT+ Officer
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Girton Medical & Veterinary Society (GMVS) Girton Medical & Veterinary Society has experienced an eventful year, welcoming numerous speakers from a range of backgrounds to enlighten us as to life after university. The society continues to endeavour to encourage integration between the subjects and years.
Second and third year pre-clinical medical students enjoying refreshments after a talk. From left: Ibrahim Abbass, George Zeng, Timothy Prossor, Anna Kuligowska and Timothy Nye
First and second year GMVS students at a themed social event
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Professor Josh Slater revealed some of the mysteries of the equine world, including the revelation that after humans, horses are the most-travelled mammals. Using links established during summer placements, the GMVS medical contingent was able to entertain the prospects of a career in paediatric surgery, courtesy of an excellent interactive talk by Mr David Drake. The clinical students similarly could not resist the opportunity to indulge us with enthralling stories of their electives, to far-flung places such as Swaziland. We hope that if we go there we’ll remember not to lock our car keys in the boot! Inter-year relations are not limited to our time spent in Girton: strong ties maintained with clinical students both in Cambridge and London enable us to benefit from their experiences. Several alumni returned to reminisce and share their exciting experiences of post-Girton life. Dr Susan Stewart, the recently retired Medical Director for NHS England East Anglia, showed us how a degree in medicine might lead to a broad and varied path outside of hospital care. Dr Shanika Crusz demonstrated to students and Fellows alike how the medical and
veterinary professions can unite to solve health care puzzles. We concluded this academic year with a fantastic Medical & Veterinary Alumni Dinner at which Professor Richard Himsworth provided ample food for thought with his post-dinner speech. Alongside studious days hard at work in the library, our members have also contributed to the sporting representation of the university: notably, Timothy Prossor playing for CULTC for the third year running, and Jacqueline Bramley for CULNC. Our President, Eleanor Drabble, represented the University at this year’s Association of Veterinary Students’ Sports Weekend and was recently elected to the AVS Committee. We would like to thank Dr Kate Hughes for her advice and support, our guest speakers, fellows, and those who have contributed to the Medical Fund. Without all their encouragement, in addition to the hard work of the committee, GMVS would not be able to provide the academic and welfare support our students currently enjoy. Anna Kuligowska Treasurer
Natural Sciences Society The Girton Natural Sciences Society provides a social and professional hub for Girton undergraduate scientists. After last year’s re-branding of the society to include both Biological and Physical Natural Scientists, the newly expanded Society has quickly become a popular platform for Girton undergraduate scientists to interact across year groups and subjects.
Students celebrating in the Fellows’ Rooms after the Natural Sciences Dinner
This year represents a new milestone for the Girton scientific community. The Committee has successfully organised an inaugural Natural Sciences Dinner. The dinner was created with the aim of providing an opportunity for social and professional networking between current students and Girton natural sciences alumni. The evening was attended by over 80 guests, of which around 40 were alumni. With stellar feedback, the Natural Sciences Dinner is quickly promising to become a new tradition of the College and a new opportunity for studentalumni interactions on a biannual basis. The Society has continued with the organisation of a varied social calendar, starting with the Freshers’ Greeting Party, a formal swap with NatScis from Robinson College, the traditional Christmas Party and the Garden Party in June. In addition, we’ve maintained our core professional events – the Internship and Part IB/II Subjects talks. The Committee was formed of myself as President, Jakob Farnung (2012) as Vice President, Treasurer Toby Livesey (2013) and Social secretaries Isabel Fuell (2012), Adam Malyali (2013) and Kate Sheffer (2013).
Girton Natural Science Society Committee 2014 -15. From left: Miha Pipan, Isabel Fuell, Jakob Farnung, Kate Sheffer, Adam Malyali and Toby Livesey
Next year the Society will be taken over by both Adam and Kate, standing as Co-Presidents in Physical and Biological sciences, respectively. We are aiming to continue involving alumni with the Society by hosting the second Canapés and Careers Networking event in the second half of the 2015/2016 academic year. Miha Pipan, President
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Girton Badminton Club Girton Badminton Club is one of the most successful sports clubs our College produces. Girton I plays in the first of the nine divisions in the University league (which hosts more than 60 teams), and enters the annual Cuppers tournament. Cuppers is the University’s most prestigious knock-out competition and permits blues players to enter, so many of the colleges bring out their best teams. In the last four years, Girton has won three league titles, two Open Cuppers titles, and one Mixed Cuppers title. This season the Badminton Club has had mixed success. A perennial presence in Division 1, Girton I secured their position in Cambridge’s premier division both in Michaelmas Term finishing fourth, and in Lent Term finishing third. In addition, the first team performed strongly in Open Cuppers and made it through to the quarter-finals. Finishing runners-up in both 2013 and 2014, this year the team hopes to go one better and
reclaim its crown as Cambridge’s best badminton team. Girton II suffered several player injuries, but the introduction of first year talent saw a solid performance in the highly competitive Division 5 in both terms. The team played against up-andcoming first teams from mature and undergraduate colleges alike. With some fresh faces, next season the seconds will be working hard to claim promotion. Last year in 2014 saw a first for the Badminton Club, an outstanding win in the Mixed Cuppers competition. This season Girton has been joined by the girls at Murray Edwards College producing two quality Mixed Cuppers teams, both of which have performed well. We hope that both will progress, retaining the trophy and making the final an all Girton affair! Vincent Poon, Men’s First Team Captain Cyril Cutinha, Men’s Second Team Captain
Girton I Men’s Team. From left: Edward Kwok, Cyril Cutinha, Tom Newman, Vincent Poon, George Zeng and Huey Yuen
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Marquee on Ditton Corner, as well as to the following Boat Club Dinner. Michaelmas 2014 started off with a large recruitment drive for novices, to add some much-needed depth to the senior squads in preparation for the following year. Both the men’s and women’s novices competed in Emmanuel Sprints Regatta and Novice Fairbairns, where they put in valiant efforts despite challenging competition and very wet weather conditions. The senior men’s side began the new academic year in October. Having lost many of their experienced rowers to graduation, the M1 crew was very inexperienced, with only one member who had rowed in the first boat before. Valuable coaching from Lizzy Johnstone meant the crew made large technical improvements but finished slightly down on last year’s Fairbairn Cup performance at the end of term. After having such a strong conclusion to the previous academic year, the senior women’s side came back together with some ambitious goals, despite losing many of their first Mays boat. One senior women’s eight was entered into Fairbairn’s, finishing in 8th position overall with an eventual time of 17:37.3, the fastest Girton women’s time for the past eight years.
Andy Marsh
May Bumps 2014 saw a slightly lower turnout of Girton boats competing, with two men’s and two women’s boats. The women’s first boat had already had a strong year, in which they triumphantly returned to the first division in Lent Bumps. With four University rowers and the spare cox returning from CUWBC to row for Girton in Easter Term, they were in a very good position going into Mays. Following a term of hard work under the coaching guidance of Alastair Springgay (GCBC President 2012-13), W1 bumped up on Trinity Hall, St Catharine’s, Peterhouse and Pembroke, achieving their blades and moving up to 11th on the river. M1 had a less successful performance in May Bumps but some fantastic steering from their cox, Tim Nye, and a great attitude meant they managed to hold off Peterhouse M1 for a heroic row over on day one. This was followed, however, by being bumped down the next three days by the gutsy Peterhouse crew and strong crews from Churchill and Magdalene, leaving them 17th in the first division. Our second boats also didn’t fare well despite a strong term of training, with M2 unfortunately moving down four places and W2 losing three places. GCBC took great pleasure in welcoming back many alumni to support us on the Saturday of Bumps at the Mays
Jon Tong
The Boat Club
Michaelmas also saw GCBC diversify its activities away from rowing. In November, members of the club helped Jimmy’s, an emergency accommodation provider in the centre of Cambridge, sort through their Harvest Festival donations in order for them to be distributed to soup kitchens and other homeless shelters across the city. The volunteers were astounded by the amount of food that had been donated and were inspired to start a collection system within the college itself especially for items not commonly donated, such as toiletries and hygiene products.
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We are hoping to further this relationship with Jimmy’s with more volunteering sessions.
Once again Girton had a strong representation within the university boats. Raffaele Russo (GCBC Men’s Captain 2013-14) competed for CULRC at the Henley Boat Races on Giorgio Divitini
The beginning of Lent 2015 saw a large proportion of the club return to Cambridge early for our training camp, to prepare for Lent Bumps and develop our new senior rowers. Bumps saw some very exciting action for both the first boats. M1 were bumped by fast crews on the first two days then had a strong row over in front of Clare on day three before emphatically bumping up on St Catharine’s M1 on day four, finishing down one place at 12th in the first division. The women’s first boat built on their
successes in Fairbairns, and under coach Stuart Cain bumped King’s and Lady Margaret to move up to 15th in the first division. W2 regrettably didn’t place in Lent Bumps, but put in a strong performance in a highly competitive Getting On Race. M2 did not compete in the Getting On Race but made some good improvements over term and will be keen to continue their progress in preparation for May Bumps.
30 March. The CULRC crew was victorious by a margin of only four feet over OULRC, with a dramatic blade clash just before the finish. Holly Game and Catherine Foot competed in the CUWBC reserve boat, Blondie, racing the day before the main boat races over the Championship Course on the Tideway. Unfortunately Blondie lost to an extremely strong Osiris crew, but it has been a momentous year for university rowing and increasing the stature of women’s sport. We look forward to the return of our university rowers to GCBC, to increase the strength of our squads this Easter Term. As a club we have high hopes for the May Bumps, building on the successes of Lent. We would like to thank all those who have supported the club over the past year, and look to 2015-16 to be as much of a success. To keep up to date with GCBC, like our Facebook page, follow us on Twitter @GirtonCollegeBC or visit gcbc.girton.cam.ac.uk. Beverley Wilson President Simon Schoenbuchner Men’s Captain Tim Nye Women’s Captain
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Cross Country The Chris Brasher Cross Country College League was begun in Michaelmas Term with two races in two weekends. At the Freshers’ Fun Run Charlotte Zealley ran solidly to come in 31st out of 45. Newcomers Antoine Magré and Des Moore stormed home at 9th and 10th respectively, while captain Edmund Gazeley loped in at 26th of 61 runners. One week later was the first proper cross country race of the season, the wet and muddy Fen Ditton Dash. Moore impressed again, coming 3rd, and Gazeley stumped home in 17th place of 27. Meanwhile captain Jade Harding finished strongly at 7th, and Zealley bore the Lanterne Rouge with spirit, at 14th. Cuppers, held at Wandlebury in November, doubled up as the Varsity selection race. Ruby Woolfe ran well and came in at 8th of 25. Harding meanwhile battled through her race to finish th. These two excellent efforts placed Girton Ladies at 3rd in the Cuppers competition. The heat of the competition was unfortunately too much for Henry Kinnersley and Adam Sixsmith, which left Gazeley placing at 23rd of 39, and Will Lyon Tupman, who sprinted in at 36th. At II-IV Varsity, Woolfe was chosen for the women’s II team, the
Cheetahs; and Harding, Johanna Blendow, and Zealley ran for the III team, the Gazelles. Moore and Magré were selected for the men’s III team, the Barbarians, while Sixsmith, Kinnersley, Cheli and Lyon Tupman all ran for the IV team, the Trojans, which was captained by Gazeley. With such strong representation, it was no surprise that Cambridge won every race of the day. At Coldham’s Common in January, also the selection race for BUCS, Zealley showed admirable positivity, despite the wooden spoon, while Gazeley and Magré battled it out to come 14th and 16th respectively, and Lyon Tupman showed impressive spirit to sprint into 22nd place of 23. At BUCS itself, Harding came an impressive 149th of 497, and Gazeley came 75th, just ahead of Magré in 76th of 444 runners. At the Selwyn Relays, the last race of the season, Gazeley and Lyon Tupman, though both recovering from injury, raced with purpose in new kit, coming 8th and 10th respectively. Consequently, at the end of the season, the ladies’ team stand at 8th in the league, and the men an impressive 2nd. This will provide a solid foundation for improvement!
For information, contact Edmund Gazeley (eg432), or Jade Harding (jh918), and find “Girton College Cross Country and Athletics” on Facebook. Edmund Gazeley, Men’s Captain
Edmund Gazeley
Jade Harding
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Football – Men’s First Team Big things were expected of the Girton College 1st XI in the 2014/15 season, given the spectacular successes of the title-winning season presided over by Joe Pennell the previous year. Once again, the Fresher intake was impressive, and the traditional first fixture of the season, a ‘friendly derby’ with Fitzwilliam, ended in defeat, but by a much smaller margin than last year. A large core of the team remained from the previous season, although Division Two promised to be much more of a challenge than Division Three, and this was immediately evident in the first match of the season, a hard-fought draw away at Churchill. Girton’s fairly small squad
meant that injuries and absences hit hard in the latter stages of the season, but Michaelmas Term went brilliantly. Home wins against Christ’s, Trinity, and Long Road, and a feisty affair at Emmanuel, which ended 1-1, despite Girton missing a penalty, meant Girton was in a great position at Christmas. Things went even better in the cup, as Girton defeated a strong St Catharine’s side 4-3 in the first round, a match which was one of the highlights of the season, especially marked by two spectacular volleyed goals from right-back Ivan Savitsky. Unfortunately Girton came up against a strong St John’s side in
The Old Boys match in November was a classic as usual, the match ending 3-3, and the former players, showing calmness from the spot, triumphed in the penalty shootout, meaning the Old Boys retain the trophy for another year
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the quarter-finals, and suffered an 8-0 reverse. Girton’s terrible luck in the draw continued – for three years in a row the champions have knocked Girton out. A cup run will certainly be a priority for next season. The second half of the season saw disappointing home draws against Homerton and Queens’, both matches which Girton felt they should have won, a win against Clare which gave Girton a chance of securing an unlikely doublepromotion, but then a crucial home defeat against Darwin on the last day of the season, which ended those hopes. This was the only league match Girton lost all season, which surely can only bode well for next season under the captaincy of Nik Trifunovic, with support from Harry Hicks. Special mentions must go to our Player of the Season, playmaker Stefan Ritter, who performed magnificently all year, and also to Vice-Captain Yusuf Mushtaq, who has progressed to the Blues squad with his performances, and to social secretary Ed Almond, who has left an impressive legacy for Louis D’Costa to follow next season. Tom Day, Men’s Football 1st XI Captain
Football – Girton IIs and IIIs Girton’s promotion dreams quickly became fantasy after a disputed match abandonment against Magdalene. Attention was shifted to the Cuppers competitions in search of success as new Girtonians Luke Harvey, Jake Leighton, Matt Hattam, Matt Jervis and Josh Peters signed up to the Girton football legacy. The IIs were unlucky to crash out of the first round of Shield Cuppers against Caius. Ryan Monks scored twice to help turn 1-4 into 4-4 in the last 20 minutes, but Girton were unlucky to lose out on penalties as Ed Almond was unable to keep a clear head from the spot. Meanwhile the IIIs passed their first round with a welldeserved 1-0 win.
semi-final, a daunting task, but the drive and determination could be felt during the tactical meeting the night before. The tension of the build-up carried across all corners of Girton College as Jesus rolled up to Girton Sports Ground with a false sense of security. Tom Wilson netted two early goals and after a rejected penalty appeal, Jesus’ game began to fall apart. Oliver Moat ran circles around defenders until Adam Sixsmith ultimately made it seven scoring the goal of the season with a volley from 45 yards.
In the quarter final Girton met outside favourites Fitzwilliam. David Watson and Julius Böttcher’s brutally robust defence together with Henry Kinnersley’s raw pace and eye for goal allowed Girton to make it 3-3 at 90 minutes. In extra time Kinnersley scored a wonder goal to put Girton ahead, but Fitz quickly equalised after a criminal defensive error. However Kinnersley went on to head in his fourth of the game after 117 minutes, sending underdogs Girton through to the semi-final by five goals to four after extra time.
The final against Queens’, surely the highlight of every player’s sporting career, drew a crowd of over 50 Girton supporters. Henry Kinnersley outwitted the Queens’ keeper early on before curling in a second from the corner spot before half time. The game was extremely physical and Queens’ were held away from goal by an imperious Girtonian back line and a titanic goalkeeping display by Alex Clark. Owen Male headed Queens’ every offensive play back out of the Girton box while Andy Baker proved his composure yet again at right back. A late scrappy goal from Queens’ was not enough to deny the Girton team Cuppers success.
Spirits were high despite drawing competition favourites Jesus in the
Julius Böttcher, Girton IIs / IIIs Football Captain
Celebrating Ryan Monk’s last minute goal against Caius in the first round of Cuppers
Girton IIIs celebrating winning the Vase
Girton IIIs team. Back row: Matt Hattam, Jake Leighton, Andy Baker, Adam Sixsmith, Tom Grew, David Watson, Tom Wilson, James Cory-Wright. Front row: Luke Harvey, Julius Böttcher (c), Henry Kinnersley, Freddie Kalfayan and Josh Peters
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Women’s Hockey Resilient and light-hearted: these are the words that best describe the Girton Women’s hockey team this year. Teaming up with our far-distant friends from Homerton has made playing in this year’s team fun, sociable and effective. We’ve amalgamated ourselves into a team thenceforth called ‘Horton’, or ‘Gomerton’, unsure yet which is the lesser of two evils. After dropping into second division for Lent term, this team fought back tirelessly and have since managed to stay on top of the table. Highlights of the league include a 6-0 win against
has kept the number of goals conceded at an all-time low. Alex Dawson, the only representative fresher, has been a huge asset to the team since the very first match. The whole group is looking forward to carrying this Horton winning spree on into next academic year. Finnoula Taylor & Amanda Brown, Women’s Captains Emmanuel, with some epic goals from Lottie Murphy and our top goalscorer, Louise Whiteley. A solid defence with Amanda Brown, Cecilia Carlisle and Emma Elston
Men’s Hockey The Girton Men’s Hockey Team had a strong influx of first year students which allowed us to survive relegation in Michaelmas Term from Division 1, although a miraculous last-gasp Tom Grew equaliser in a 5-5 with Fitz /Trinity Hall certainly helped. However, restructuring of the leagues placed us in a far more competitive Division 2 for Lent Term, where we were able to play far more expansive,
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attacking hockey. Every match with a full complement of players was won, including against some notoriously strong opponents. Sebastian Cheli was key amongst these victories, being responsible for some fantastic individual moments. The defensive solidarity of ever-present Matthew Jervis literally added another dimension to our play, whilst the contributions of Tom Wilson, Alex
Barker, Iestyn Watkin and Tomas Guilliatt-Griggs also deserve mention considering their other sporting commitments. Next year, with a full team each week and some new faces, there is no reason why we cannot challenge for promotion back into Division 1 where we belong. Alex Clark, Men’s Captain
Mixed Lacrosse
Netball
The Girton Cloud Leopards had an excellent Lent Term, winning four out of five games, scoring eight goals and conceding only two. The first years have been the lungs of this most gracile creature, with notable goals from Tom Wilson and Matt Scrace, strong defence from Matt Coley and unending midfield pressure from Sophie Marie. This year involved another great day out for the Mixed Lacrosse Cuppers. Once again, the Cloud Leopards graced the fields of Coldham’s Common in their funkiest outfits, only to find their costumes outdone by Clare College; who would have thought? Failing to make it into the knock-out games, the Cloud Leopards still showed tenacity and spark in each game, with excellent celebrations when celebration was due. Strong team play between second years Ed Almond and Tom Day meant that goals were scored, even against Jesus College. A 4-0 win against St John’s was a highlight of the year. This was a controversial match since John’s needed to be heavily persuaded before they would make the apparently arduous journey to Girton; in the end even the Mistress came to cheer the Cloud Leopards on. Alis Song, the piecede-resistance of the Cloud Leopard team and Co-Captain, suffered a black eye in the name of a 6-0 win against Selwyn. The whole team is looking forward to starting a new season next academic year, with new kit and led by new captains Sophie Marie and Rory Scrace.
At the start of the year the Girton Ladies’ Netball Team was in League 4; now we are in League 2. The enthusiasm and dedication of my team this year is something of which I am immensely proud. Our team spirit hinges on the fact that we are all such good friends, despite not necessarily coming from the same year groups. Our courts leave something to be desired yet this did not dissuade us from training sessions, relocating to the squash court when they were too slippery. Highlights of the term include the Cuppers tournament where we played 4 tense matches in the freezing cold February winds. Our match against Caius in Lent Term was a breakthrough moment for the team; we utilised everything we had practised in training sessions throughout the term. The match we most enjoyed was against Hughes Hall, our last match of Michaelmas. Despite losing marginally by 5 goals to 4, we played phenomenally and look forward to playing them again next season. I had six different nominations for Player of the Season, showing how much we are a team rather than relying on individual players. Eventually, Fiona Brown was voted the Player of the Season; a welldeserved award, as she was unstoppable on the netball court, even demanding to play when suffering from a kidney infection! The improvement of the team over the course of the season has been particularly rewarding, especially Daisy Crowfoot who really shone through in the Caius match. For women to have an impact on sport in Girton again is fantastic, and we are really looking forward to being in League 1 next year!
Finnoula Taylor, Co-Captain
Maya Kolade, Netball Team Captain
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Men’s Rugby ‘A meteoric rise from the depths of Division Three’ What started off as a humble recruitment slogan, but became a glorious reality; there are no better words for me to summarise Girton’s table-topping performance this season. I must confess there were severe worries from the off about the progression of Girton rugby, as such a large percentage of the team departed to bigger and better things last year; certainly another year in the inglorious middle realm of division 3 looked highly likely. However, we were blessed with a bumper crop of freshers who were brimming with talent and enthusiasm. Prospects for the season looked promising indeed as our first game finished in a 22-22 draw with Fitzwilliam College, arguably our biggest rivals in the league. Stirred further by the memory of the Cuppers plate final of 2014,
where they snatched victory from us by a single score. Proper revenge, however, will have to wait. Thumping victories came in over Queens’, Trinity Hall, Magdalene and Sidney Sussex, establishing a very strong position in the golden promotion zone and a healthy points difference to boot. Good use of the NHS was also made as ambulances became a regular addition to the touchline, dealing with various dislocated appendages including an unfortunate elbow for Edward Bilclough and cutting short a very promising season from him. Despite this, just enough was done to cling onto the top of the table and seal promotion to Division Two. Our cuppers campaign was less glorious, a swift exit to eventual finalists Emmanuel in the first round was followed by a frustrating clash with lower-placed Division Three Christ’s, that, sadly, did not go the
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way of the men in green. However, no better end to the season could have been had than when a battalion of old boys returned to Huntingdon Road to spar with their successors in the spring sunshine. A real crunch featuring forty years of Girtonians, it seemed there was nothing to separate these teams. Indeed there wasn’t, to the whoops of ‘it’s a draw!’ from the sidelines, our season ended how it began, fought ferociously to the very end. Juggling a Cambridge degree and committing to College sport is a hard task for anyone, and all of the fresher additions to the team should be congratulated for their commitment, particular mentions to Tom Wilson, Zack Donohoe and Chris Cooper for unfaltering and strong performances throughout. Tom Day, a proselyte from the domains of football and cricket, proved himself more than capable of command over any size or shape of field or ball, and grandfather Jack Bews buffaloed his way up and down pitches far and wide, with finally a promotion to reward his four years of effort. All in all a great year of rugby – victories, silverware and Division One are all within our sights for the year to come. Anthony Rubinstein Baylis, Captain
Women’s Rugby Girton have had another successful and enjoyable year playing rugby, which hopefully will continue once the weather turns cold next Michaelmas. Women’s rugby is growing in popularity but is still a relatively minor sport, so we joined forces with other hill colleges and, inexplicably, Sidney Sussex, to create the mighty ‘Sid Hill Women’s Rugby Football Club’ and to get enough players for our matches! Training is held at the Fitzwilliam college pitches every Sunday, and involves technical practice of scrummaging and rucking alongside ‘moon ball’, ‘panther tackles’ and acrobatics (more commonly known as line-outs). This was put to particularly good use when beating Emmanuel 40 -10 in a league game. In a sevens tournament at the end of Lent Term a much depleted SHWRFC managed to come second, despite only having four players and having to borrow people from other colleges: in the final against a strong Jesus team, their numbers and therefore fitness was the only major difference. Grace Darling scored a large proportion of our tries and as a speedy back put the other team members to shame with her impressive runs. Girton representation at University level has also been excellent – Ayala
Women’s rugby team: From left: Rachel Gregory (St John’s – borrowed player for tournament!), Emily Taylor (Murray Edwards), Grace Darling (Girton), Catherine Bevin (Girton), Ayala Donegan (Girton), Sarah Troughton (Caius – borrowed), Tom Sayer (Coach, Fitzwilliam)
Donegan gained her full blue by playing in the winning varsity team, and Catherine Bevin also helped Cambridge secure the BUCS league win. Considering that Ayala had never picked up a rugby ball before last year, I really hope that Girtonians continue to consider
trying women’s rugby out – gaining a blue is a realistic proposition! It is great fun and a good way to meet some people from other colleges as well as do some sport during otherwise stressful and cold terms. Catherine Bevin, Captain
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Girton College Volleyball Club
Michaelmas Term At the start of Michaelmas Term, Georgi Rusinov and Alex Sorgo set out to build a team for the new academic year 2014-5 and introduce many beginners to this fun, active and enjoyable sport. With help from the groundsman Steve Whiting, the kit was located and ready for use and the team conducted several training sessions for beginners and seniors alike after a strong sign up at the traditional Freshers’ Fair. We have been fortunate to welcome some very good talent from across the years at Girton as well as attracting a number of good players from other colleges which do not have their own teams. With this team, we defeated both the
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University Beginners’ Team 2-0 and St John’s 2-0 in our first round of Cuppers and were promoted a division higher, ending Michaelmas term on a high. Lent Term During the second set of Cuppers, Girton only had two matches, one of which was cancelled, leaving us to play our final match against Corpus Christi. With both teams low on players we played a fair and intense game of four on both sides. The team had some amazing moments including the longest rally we have ever achieved. Unfortunately, we lost this last
match of the second round but despite this, spirits were still high. Our hope is that more experience and training will help us to improve our consistency during matches, meaning that we will be ready to take on summer Cuppers. Thank you to Momchil Peychev for his awesome spikes and for always saving the team, and to Alex Sorgo for being such a great Captain – we hope to do you proud in the years to come. Alex Sorgo, Captain (2013-14) Rosie Hoggmascall and Lucinda Jones, Captains (2014-15) Alex Sorgo
2014 saw the re-founding of the Girton College Volleyball Club after several years of inaction. GCVC have since developed a strong squad, greatly boosted by an intake of experienced first years. The team have delivered strong Cuppers performances against fierce opposition. Though not every match has been a victory, the GCVC team, with help from a diverse range of colleges, have gone up a division in the Cuppers rankings and are looking to build on these successes for the final summer Cuppers in 2015.
Victors: The volleyball team after Michaelmas Term Cuppers. From left: Rosie Hoggmascall (Captain 2014-5), Alex Sorgo (Captain 2013-4), Georgi Rusinov, Momchil Peychev, Rory Scrace, Sylvia Agathou
Roll of Alumni
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2016 – Calendar of Events (all events take place in the College, unless otherwise stated) January
June
29th:
11th:
May Bumps Marquee and Boat Club Dinner
14th:
May Week Concert
18th:
Benefactors’ Garden Party
Mountford Humanities and Arts Communications Prize
February 6th:
Geographical Society Dinner
8th:
Hammond Science and Communications Prize
September
18th:
Alumni Formal Hall
17th: 2006 Alumni Reunion Dinner
TBC
Annual Choir Concert and Tea
17th: 1990, 1991 and 1992 Alumni Reunion Dinner Alumni Weekend:
March
24th:
Annual Library Talk (all welcome)
9th:
Law and Finance Event, London
24th:
Annual Lawrence Room Talk (all welcome)
5th:
Alumni Sports Day
24th:
People's Portraits Talk (all welcome)
11th:
Spring Ball
24th:
Annual Concert in the Stanley Library (all welcome)
24th:
Roll of Alumni Dinner (all welcome including 1956, 1966, 1976 reunion years)
25th:
Annual Gardens Talk
April 1st:
MA Congregation Dinner
2nd:
MA Congregation
29th:
Spring Gardens Walk
May 5th:
Jane Martin Poetry Prize
19th:
Alumni Formal Hall
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October 18th:
College Gardens Walk
27th:
Alumni Formal Hall
Bookings for the Roll of Alumni Weekend and Dinner can be made on the enclosed form (see page 122). For details about other events in the calendar please contact the College on alumni@girton.cam.ac.uk or 01223 338901.
Local Associations It’s been another busy year for the Girton Associations – here’s a snapshot of their activities: London Girton Association • Day in Dulwich with a visit to a large and beautiful garden and to Dulwich Picture Gallery, and a recital by former organ scholar Marilyn Harper (1974). • Private tour of the Wallace Collection by Dr Lucy Davis, Curator of the Old Masters. • Discussion supper on the theme of Quiet Gardens with Girtonian Kristina Fitzsimmons, who designed the Dulwich garden. • Recital with our two LGA Music Award winners: Ben Comeau and Jâms Coleman. In November 2014 Ann Carey, a founder member of the LGA and our previous Chair, stepped down from the committee, although not from active membership of the LGA. We have to thank Ann for many things, but particularly for her tireless work in thinking up and organising visits which have enabled us to see aspects of our city which we might never have discovered.
Cambridge Local Girton Association • Visit to the Pepys Library at Magdalene College in September with lunch afterwards at the Côte Brasserie. • Talk by OG Philomena Guillebaud about the WWI military hospital built on a cricket field which later became the site of the University Library. • The Founders’ Memorial Lecture was given by Sir Paul Nurse on ‘Science as Revolution’, with dinner at the Old Crown. • Girtonian and Ancient Historian Dr Dorothy Thompson gave a talk on ‘Cleopatra’. • A visit to Ely Museum, guided by the Curator, Girtonian Ellie Hughes. Email: clga@girton.cam.ac.uk Website: www.sites.google.com/site/cambridgelga
New York Girton Association • Informal drinks hosted by Sarah Follen in Manhattan in January 2015. • In December Ruth Whaley will give us a presentation.
The LGA is honoured and delighted that College has authorised us to use a virtual version of the Friend of a Great Campaign in recognition of the substantial level of the donations the LGA has given to College over the years. The badge features proudly on our Facebook page. Email: lga@girton.cam.ac.uk Website: www.girton.cam.ac.uk/london-girton-association Facebook: www.facebook.com/LondonGirtonAssociation
All our events are posted on the Cambridge in America e-calendar and are open to all Girtonians visiting New York. Email: newyorkga@girton.cam.ac.uk
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Manchester Association of Cambridge University Women • AGM was held in October at Withington School, Manchester, with a talk by member Dr Lynee Daly on her travels in Chile and Argentina. • The 69th annual dinner hosted two speakers. Clare McGregor (1991) is the pioneering Managing Director of CIAO (Coaching Inside and Out), a large group of volunteers who work with women and now men in prisons and out in the community. Our Cambridge speaker was Professor Dame Athene Donald, a Girtonian and the new Master of Churchill College. • Tour of the John Rylands Library in Manchester, with a focus on books by women authors. We have a presence on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Membership numbers remain around the mid-50s, with a mixture of leavers and joiners this year, and 11 colleges represented. We have had a flurry of new younger members including a couple of Girtonians. Email: Dr Helen Wright (Newnham,1962): h.e.wright@btinternet.com
Oxford Region Girtonians • Last November saw the AGM and a talk by Sir David Madden, KCMG, about his life as a diplomat. • The pre-Christmas lunch was held at The Plough in Wolvercote. • At the Spring Meeting Dr Ursula Howard talked about a local charity, The Mulberry Bush Organisation, which cares for traumatised children.
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• This summer we shall be visiting Hidcote Gardens, with lunch at The Ebrington Arms beforehand. We have a six-monthly newsletter sharing news of ORG activities and events at Girton. See: www.oxfordregiongirtonians.org.uk. Contact: Meg Day (1967). Email: org@girton.cam.ac.uk. Tel: 01865 375916.
Wales and the West Girtonians • We have had two meetings for lunch in members’ homes. At the first our speaker was Tim Corner, manager of the Bristol Environmental Records Centre; at the second Judie Hodson, a Trustee of the Bletchley Park Trust, spoke on ‘Saving Bletchley Park’. • Our outings have been to Berkeley Castle, with a tour of the Castle and a private exhibition, and to Iford Manor, near Bradford-on-Avon, where members of the Cartwright-Hignett family showed us round their home and its Peto Garden. • Forthcoming events for 2015: a tour of the Wiltshire Museum in Devizes; a talk and demonstration by a master of classical Indian dance; and a talk by one of our members, Sue Best (Pulford), and her husband, on their work in the theatre, entitled ‘Sharing Shakespeare’. Email: wwga@girton.cam.ac.uk Website: www.girton.cam.ac.uk/wwga
Births, Deaths and Marriages
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Births Ambrose. On 8 April 2015, to Anna (Blinkhorn 2000) and Fran (Francis), a son, Samuel Arthur.
Morris. On 30 August 2014, to Rachel (Bowes 1999) and Alastair, a son, Zachariah William.
Board. On 30 September 2014, to Lisa (Dean 1996) and Robin, a daughter, Evalyn Rose.
Rawlings. On 28 January 2015, to Graham (Staff) and Laura, a daughter, Emily Grace.
Every. On 28 October 2013, to Alan (1995) and Laura Parsonage, a son, Jack Alexander.
Redman. On 1 February 2015, to Graham (1998) and Sarah Coleman, a daughter, Leith Anna.
Gamble. On 17 April 2015, to Amanda (Bell 1988) and Ben, a son, Thomas Michael John, a brother for Madeleine Isabella.
Sankar. On 3 November 2014, to Guru (2000) and Lihua, a daughter, Anandini Yiyi Zhang.
Jenkins. On 17 July 2014, to Kevin (1987) and Tran Thi Thu Trang, a son, Henry Peter.
Trask. On 11 January 2015, to Nicole (2000) and Tony Aneiros, a daughter, Noemi Beth Aneiros.
Karia. On 24 January 2015, to Liz (Groom 2001) and Rakesh (2000), a son, Devan Michael.
Wielechowski. On 21 April 2014, to Richard (2002) and Francisca MalarĂŠe (Past-Fellow), a son, Charles Baltazar.
Lynn. On 23 January 2015, to Caroline (Gill 1997) and Gwilym, a daughter, Bethan Iona, a sister for Aled Harris born 15 May 2013.
Samuel Arthur Ambrose
Evalyn Rose Board
Jack Alexander Every
Henry Peter Jenkins
Devan Michael Karia
Zachariah William Morris
Emily Grace Rawlings
Anandini Yiyi Zhang Sankar
Noemi Beth Aneiros Trask
Charles Baltazar Wielechowski
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Bethan Iona Lynn
Marriages /Civil Partnerships Brown-Kerr – Baxter. On 2 August 2014, Alana Grace Brown-Kerr (2006) to Mark Baxter (Selwyn, 2006). Dean – Board. On 16 September 2012, Lisa Jayne Nielsen Dean (1996) to Robin Board. Ng – Slim. On 8 April 2015, Gilbert Sai Ho Ng (2011) to Wilma Slim. Rowett – Greaves. On 21 July 2012, Edward Charles Rowett (2008) to Hannah Greaves. Mark Baxter and Alana Grace Brown-Kerr
Wilma Slim and Gilbert Sai Ho Ng
Sabesan Sithamparanathan and Thurkka
Emily Parker and Matthew David White
Sabesan Sithamparanathan – On 6 April 2015, Sabesan (Fellow, 2011) to Thurkka. Warwick – Themans-Hales. On 1 December 2012 Christopher Hugh Warwick (1992) to Simon ThemansHales. White – Parker. On 9 August 2014, Matthew David White (2003) to Emily Parker.
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Deaths
Olugblahan Abisogun-Alo
Shayan Afzal Khan
June Baker
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ABISOGUN-ALO. On 13 June 2015, Olugbolahan Modupefolu Olubunmi (Abisogun) MA (1958 History). Olu was a distinguished figure in the development of secondary education in Nigeria. In 2005 she was awarded an honorary doctorate by Lagos University for services in Educational Administration, which recognised the achievements of her multi-faceted career. She was a big-hearted, passionate Girtonian, a deeply spiritual Christian, devoted mother and grandmother, and a woman possessed of indomitable courage. Motivated by high values and strong principles, Olu spent her life in service to her compatriots. AFZAL KHAN. On 21 February 2015, Shayan Mishal MA (1982 History). Shayan, known as Poppy, was an author and social activist. She was deeply interested in the cause of education in Pakistan and in the social and intellectual development of its youth. In 2010 she set up Kuch Khaas in Islamabad – a vibrant, not-for-profit community space for discourse, learning and entertainment – which has been described as having transformed the city. From here Poppy led many civic campaigns, working with all layers of society to forge a progressive, pluralistic and tolerant attitude within Pakistan. ALDOUS. On 30 September 2013, Inez Rosemary BA, MB, BChir (1947 Natural Sciences). Inez, known as Rosemary, completed her clinical course at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London. She was appointed House Surgeon at Gloucester Hospital in 1955, and continued her studies specialising in Child Health and Public Health.
Rosemary held further appointments at various hospitals in the south of England before becoming the Chief Medical Officer in Buckinghamshire, then Luton, Northampton, and finally West Suffolk. BAKER. On 7 November 2014, June Dorothy (Leader) MA (1945 English). June worked at Girton as Assistant Librarian for a short time while she studied for her MA. She made a career in teaching, and in 1966 became the fourth Headmistress at St Helen’s School, Norwood. She held the post for twenty years and is remembered as the driving force behind the building and remodelling of many areas of the school. BLACK. On 19 February 2015, Agnes Mary Black (Rayner) BA (1929 Natural Sciences). Agnes was born at Teddington and educated at Wimbledon High School and Bedales before coming to Girton. After graduation she undertook a Housing Estate Management training course, followed by an appointment with the Ecclesiastical Commissioners’ Estate, Walworth, in 1936. She married Maurice Black in August 1939. Agnes was 104 years old when she died. BRAMWELL. In 2013, Daphne Harold (Bradford) MA (1933 Natural Sciences). Daphne followed in the footsteps of both her mother, Rachel Anna (Wright 1901) and her older sister, Diana (Bradford 1931), when she came to Girton to study Natural Sciences. She then completed a course in dietetics, and worked in catering until her marriage to Dr John Byrom Bramwell. They had two daughters.
BROOKE. On 17 November 2014, Rosalind Beckford (Clark) MA FSA, FRHistS, PhD, LittD (1943 History). Obituary p. 89 BROOKS. On 9 February 2013, Sheelagh Mary (Foster-Smith) MA (1940 English). Sheelagh interrupted her studies to join the ATS, and was seconded to Intelligence. She trained in signals at Bletchley Park before seeing service in Cairo, Jerusalem and Italy. After demobilisation, Sheelagh returned to Girton to complete her degree. Some years after the births of Marian and Ralph, Sheelagh became a teacher. BROWNLESS. On 27 December 2014, Isla Hamilton (Forbes) MA (1945 English). Obituary p. 90 CARPENTER. In 2015, Marion Ethel MA (1942 English; 1944 Theology). Marion was a first-class student in both English and Theology. After a year at the London University Institute of Education, she taught English in grammar schools, ending her professional career at Gypsy Hill Training College on Kingston Hill. Having enjoyed teaching, for many years she ran a University of the Third Age literature group in Wimbledon and attended U3A groups in Richmond where she lived. CHURCH. On 9 December 2014, Margaret Ransom MA (1943 Mathematics). Margaret Church was born in Halifax in 1924, and was educated at the Princess Mary High School, Halifax. She trained as a teacher at the Cambridge Training College for Women, 1946-47, and taught at Queenswood School, Hatfield, Hertfordshire.
CLARK. On 5 May 2014, Alison (Lathbury) MA (1952 Geography). Alison continued her studies at the University of Wisconsin, gaining an MA in Meteorology and Oceanography, and when back in the UK obtained a Diploma in Social Science from Hull University. Alison married David Clark, Vicar of St John’s Walthamstow, and they had two children, Hilary and Jonathan. Sadly, Jonathan was born with spina bifida, which involved many visits to see him in Carshalton Hospital. This did not prevent Alison from supporting David in many different ways throughout his ministry. CLIFFE. On 9 November 2014, Rosemary Janet (Morton) MA (1952 Mathematics). After graduating Rosemary remained in Cambridge, gaining the Postgraduate Diploma in mathematical statistics in 1956. Her first employment was as a statistician with the Medical Research Council Unit for Research on Climate and Working Efficiency in the Department of Anatomy, Oxford University. In Oxford she met Eric Cliffe (Jesus College, Cambridge 1953) with whom she had two daughters and enjoyed 54 years of married life. They moved to Nottingham where Rosemary taught mathematics at Nottingham Girls’ High School. COPE. In 2014, Doreen Davies (Seddon) MA (1947 History). Doreen was born at Leigh in Lancashire. She was educated at John Bright County School in Llandudno. After graduation she became a student nurse at Beaumont House, St Ebba’s Hospital, Surrey.
Sheelagh Brooks
Marion Carpenter
Alison Clark
Rosemary Cliffe
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Patricia Crossman
Norah Curry
COX. On 23 October 2014, Margaret Lissant BA MB BCHIR (1938 Natural Sciences). Margaret pursued a career in medicine, completing her training at Liverpool University Medical School. Further posts in Liverpool followed, as House Surgeon at both the Liverpool Stanley Hospital and the Maternity Hospital. In 1950 she became a General Practitioner in Leek, North Staffordshire and remained so until her retirement in 1986. CROOK. In 2014, Lois Margaret (Bower) MA (1944 Modern and Medieval Languages). After graduating, Margaret, as she was known, trained at Marlborough Gate Secretarial College in London and worked as a secretary. She returned to Cambridge in 1950 to take a Certificate in Education at Homerton College and embarked on a teaching career. In 1961 she married Philip Crook, a farmer, and they had a son, Timothy. As a voluntary political worker, she was a former vice-president of the North Dorset Conservative Association and also Chairman of the Women’s Advisory Committee. CROSSMAN. On 29 August 2013, Patricia Marie Carter (Amy) MA (1950 English; 1952 Moral Sciences). After graduation, Patricia took a Social Sciences Certificate course at the London School of Economics. She then held various appointments as a Social Care worker. Pat met Edward, a Chief Psychology Lecturer at Oxford, and they were married in 1958. They had two sons, Robert and Martin, and the family moved to California in 1964 when Edward was offered a teaching position at University College, Berkeley. Pat became a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in 1969,
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and took up a post at Cowell Hospital in California, pioneering the practice of group therapy. She went into private practice and continued there until 1985. CURRY. On 3 June 2014, Norah MA (1935 History). By the time Norah had completed her education, she had decided to become a Factory Inspector. Her entry into the profession was delayed, first by her age and then by the war, but she took an engineering course at Loughborough College and worked in industry before joining HMFI in 1941 as one of the first female Temporary Inspectors. Thereafter she worked in Bradford, Leeds and Bethnal Green, London, where, ‘formidable in her large hat’, Norah could quell any opposition with a frosty glare and a few firm words. Finally, for the last six years of her career, Norah was Deputy Superintending Inspector in Glasgow and retired in 1977. EVANS. On 31 October 2014, Margaret Blacklock BA (1942 Geography). Margaret lived and taught mainly in the Black Country and Birmingham until December 1965, when she moved to Ilford as Headmistress of Beal Grammar School for Girls. She was reappointed in September 1974 to lead the creation of Seven Kings High School by joining Beal Girls to Downshall (co-educational) Secondary School. Comprehensive schools were still in their infancy, and there was much to learn to cater for an increasingly multicultural population and to promote social cohesion. Margaret retired in August 1985 and was appointed OBE for services to education in the New Year’s Honours list 1986.
FOX. On 29 September 2014, Amanda Jane MA (1968 Natural Sciences). Amanda was a teacher at King Edward VI School, Bury St Edmunds, as well as a school governor and chairman, and founded the Bury Practice for Counselling and Psychotherapy which became her passion and main career. She led the first founding committee for Bury in Bloom in 1986 (Bury St Edmunds) and was known for her amazing gardening skills, incredible lust for life and love of nature and wildlife. GILBERT-CARTER. On 4 July 2014, Daphne Elizabeth (Pickering-Jones) MA (1930 Classics; 1932 Moral Sciences). Daphne lived most of her life in the United States with her husband John (Trinity College, Cambridge 1929) and four children. She attended the University of Maryland and was awarded a Master’s in Library Science in 1969. After working as a reference librarian she became an outside researcher and assistant for the Oxford English Dictionary, retiring in 1993 at the age of 81. She is survived by three children, four grandchildren and seven great grandchildren, who have all been inspired by her curious mind and unbounded energy to learn. GOODWIN. On 20 September 2014, Inge Dorothea Rosi (Simon) BA (1942 Natural Sciences). Inge displayed astonishing energy in many spheres. As well as bringing up two children and managing two homes and gardens, she was a constant hostess to visitors from all over the world, a school governor, a Labour activist, a busy translator from German and a friend and
helper to many. She had an extraordinary memory, an informed love of both arts and science, and great curiosity about the world. HARBEN. On 11 August 2014, Philippa Mary Burford (Shorter) BA (1953 History). Formerly a BBC World Service announcer, her voice was familiar to millions of listeners around the world. Later in the 1960s she became an announcer when Bush House first allowed women to read the news. In 1982, on an epic trip to China, she discovered a village with its pond, water buffalo, solid wooden-wheeled carts – a real live model of the medieval village she’d studied at Cambridge!
Amanda Fox
HEARD. On 20 January 2015, Dorothy Helen (Robertson) PhD (1954 Medical Sciences). Obituary p. 92 HENDERSON. On 6 April 2014, Janet Mason MA (1947 Classics). Initially Janet taught Classics at Sutton High School, Surrey, before embarking on an administrative career. In 1966 she joined Christian Aid; was later seconded to the Community and Race Relations Unit and promoted from Secretary to Deputy Director. She was intimately concerned with the formation and development of the Unit and had a number of duties including close involvement with working parties on legislation (in particular the Immigration Act 1971 and its administration). This brought her into contact with a wide range of individuals and organisations in the community and race-relations field, as well as churches of all denominations both centrally and locally.
Inge Goodwin
Philippa Harben
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Barbara Holl
HOLL. On 26 June 2014, Barbara Isabel (Burne) BA (1947 Modern and Medieval Languages). After graduation Barbara continued her studies and was awarded a Diploma in Education in 1951 (London). She married Peter Holl and took up her first teaching post at Sittingbourne Grammar School in the same year. Barbara was at home for a few years during the 1950s, bringing up their family of five daughters. She returned to teaching French in 1965, and retired as Head of Modern Languages in 1980. In retirement, Barbara and Peter lived in Wiltshire where they enjoyed walking or cycling over the Downs.
Eleanor Hollington
HOLLINGS. On 29 April 2014, Olwen (Stone) MA PhD (1948 Natural Sciences). Olwen was a Principal Scientific Officer for 30 years at Glasshouse Crops Research Institute at Littlehampton, known as the Agricultural Research Council. She published numerous papers on plant virology in various scientific journals, many jointly with her husband Dr Michael Hollings, whom she had married in 1971.
Sheelagh Jefferies
HOLLINGTON. On 12 June 2014, Eleanor Gwen (Paxton) MA (1938 Modern and Medieval Languages). After receiving her degree in French and German, Eleanor was immediately recruited by the Foreign Office to work as a linguist at the code-breaking facility at Bletchley Park, where she vividly remembered Churchill’s visit in September 1941. At the end of the war she went into civilian life, taking jobs as a literary assistant at a firm of publishers and then as private secretary to the Chairman of the Fire Officers’ Committee.
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In 1947 she married Barrie Hollington, and they had four sons and one daughter. Sadly, she was widowed in 1964 and took up a career in teaching in order to support her five children. HOLLOWAY. Doris Mary (Copple) MA (1950 Classics). Doris, known as Mary, described coming up to Cambridge as ‘the intoxicating feeling of being treated as an adult’, and was delighted by the experience of being thrown together with so many like-minded people of all classes. After graduating she studied for the National Retail Distribution Certificate and became a Buyer for Bentalls of Kingston. She left Bentalls to run her parents’ grocery and post office. Mary married Peter Webster Holloway in 1957, and they had two daughters, Tracey and Bryony. JAMES. On 27 November 2014, Phyllis Dorothy (2000 Honorary Fellow). Obituary p. 93 JEFFERIES. On 22 May 2014, Sheelagh MA (1944 History) Sheelagh worked at Chatham House as an Archivist for the Royal Institute of International Affairs. In 1951 she went to Smith College, Northampton, Mass, USA on a year’s Trust Fellowship. On her return from the States her career was one of steady promotion, including posts at the Central Office of Information, Press Officer in the Prime Minister’s Office, in the Privy Council Office, the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, Head of Parliamentary Liaison Unit in the Department of Environment, in the Department of Prices and Consumer Protection, and Director, Overseas Press and Radio and Controller (Home). In 1983 Sheelagh
became Deputy Director of the COI, and for her work there was appointed CBE in 1988. KARARAH. On 1 March 2015, Azza Mohamed Abdel Halim MA PhD (1950 English). As an affiliated student, Azza spent happy times lodging at Madingley Hall, made a lifetime group of Girton friends and met her future husband, the ancient historian Mostafa El Abbadi. They married in 1957 and their children were born in 1958 and 1961. She lived in Alexandria for most of her life and gained her first post in the English Department of the University there. Wherever she taught, Professor Azza encouraged her students to aim high. In her published work, Azza was concerned to make English writers better known in Arabic. LAMB. On 3 June 2015, Margaret MA (1952 Geography). Margaret was brought up in a mining community in Northumberland where her father was a clerk for the colliery. It was unusual for anyone from the mining villages to go to university, and Margaret’s success in gaining a place at Girton was celebrated at the miners’ big day – the Miners’ Picnic. Margaret always kept in touch with and supported Girton College and the Duchess’s School at Alnwick, and attended reunion events in recent years. LIGHTBURNE. On 29 April 2015, Sylvia Joan MA (1946 Classics). Sylvia’s teaching life began at Benenden and later she taught at Watford Grammar School. In 1964 she was appointed Headmistress of Northampton High School for Girls, where she
was described as ‘an extraordinary person and an exceptional Head Teacher.’ She retired in 1988, but continued to take a keen interest in the School until her death. Sylvia also helped to found a branch of the Samaritans in Northampton, was involved in Diocesan work, and was a ‘pillar’ of wisdom and prayer at her local Church of St Benedict. Azza Kararah
LYON. On 25 December 2014, Mary Frances (1943 Natural Sciences) MA PhD SCD (Honorary Fellow). Obituary p. 94 McKEARNEY. On 29 August 2014, Jean Pamela (Walker) MA (1943 Archaeology and Anthropology). Although Pam enjoyed her studies, it was her ‘Blue’ as a member of the Cambridge Women’s boat in 1945 that was her proudest achievement. She taught at St Albans and Shrewsbury GPDST schools, and while reading for a Dip Ed at Oxford met and later married Philip, who was then in the Army. When he joined the Diplomatic Service, Pam and their two sons, Roger and Andrew, accompanied him to consular and diplomatic posts in Syria, Qatar, Iraq, New England, Yugoslavia and Romania. Roger became a teacher, while Andrew is in Holy Orders. MORGAN. On 20 April 2015, Margaret (Bryant) MA (1948 Mathematics; 1950 Economics). Margaret came to Girton to read Mathematics in her first year and Economics for the next two, as had always been her intention. Michael Clement Morgan came up to Cambridge at the same time, to read Mathematics at St John’s College. They met early in the first term, and married in
Margaret Lamb
Sylvia Lightburne
Jean McKearney
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August 1952. Her first appointment was in the Personnel Office of John Crossley & Sons, Halifax, before she began teaching at Grey Coat Hospital School, London. Margaret and Michael had two sons, Christopher and Richard, and Margaret returned to teaching in the mid-1960s with posts at Alice Ottley School, Worcester and Francis Bacon School, St Albans.
Brenda Nesbitt
MORRELL. On 2 July 2014, Joyce Blanche (Scatchard) MA (1935 English; History 1937). After coming up to Girton to read English, Joyce soon realised that History was her real interest and changed Tripos. She enjoyed her time at Girton, especially for the companionship and the opportunity to make her own decisions. After completing a Cambridge University Certificate in Education in 1939, she held various teaching posts in Leeds. She married Norman Morrell, an Industrial Chemist for the Coal Board, in 1956 and they had a daughter, Rachel. Joyce held various teaching posts in Leeds and Castleford, eventually becoming Deputy Head at Castleford High School until her retirement.
Winifred Pomeroy
NANSON. On 27 July 2014, Eileen Margaret (Wood) MA MB BCHIR (1956 Natural Sciences). After completing her medical training at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, in 1962, Margaret married David Nanson, a Chartered Surveyor. They settled in Wimbledon and had two sons. She returned to medicine in 1970 and developed a career in a number of different hospitals and disciplines. In retirement she became involved in the voluntary sector and local charities. Her whole life was spent in the care of others.
Eileen Nanson
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NESBITT. On 1 November 2014, Brenda Frances (Hill) MA PhD (1948 Natural Sciences). Brenda studied for her PhD in organic chemistry with fellow student Philip Nesbitt (St John’s 1947). They married in 1954 and were married for 22 years before Philip died in a car accident. Brenda was held in high esteem by her colleagues, and published numerous articles and research reports on insect biochemistry. Soon after retirement her health deteriorated until she was wheelchair and housebound. She bore her illness and bereavement with great fortitude and courage. NEWGAS. On 31 January 2015, Eveline (Blumka) MA (1942 Natural Sciences). Eveline was born in Vienna and was delighted to have been accepted by Girton having arrived in England in 1938, aged 14, not able to speak the language. She married Clive Newgas in 1947 and they had two sons, John and Charles. After bringing up her sons, she worked for various charities and eventually set up a small business with her Girtonian friends. Eveline also gained a Diploma in the History of Art (London), and had an interest in continental porcelain and glass. PLATT. On 1 February 2015, Beryl Catherine (Myatt) MA (1941 Mechanical Sciences). (Honorary Fellow) Obituary p. 97 POMEROY. On 22 October 2014, Winifred Anne (Colegate) BA (1946 Modern and Medieval Languages). Anne worked at Vogue, London, and then Horrockses Fashions as a translator, until her marriage in 1953. She married Major the Hon. Robert Pomeroy of the Welsh Guards, and they
immediately moved to Naples where he was attached to NATO. Anne continued translation work including family papers of Riccardo Winspeare whose Italian ancestor had made a visit to London after he had fought at Waterloo. POOLEY. On 19 December 2014, Eva Mary (Williams) MA (1942 Modern and Medieval Languages). Eva met her husband Bill at Cambridge, and they married after interrupting their degrees for War service. She taught Spanish, and they raised their six children in Norwich. She is remembered by her children as a brave, gracious woman of considerable charm, wit and culture, ahead of her times in many ways, and they agree ‘she would certainly not have been the same without Girton!’. QUINLAN. On 19 July 2014, Heather Margaret Gray (Baxter; Mrs Walter) BA (1953 English). Born in China, Heather was taken prisoner by invading Japanese forces in WWII. After the war she met Richard in Cambridge and, following graduation, they married. They were expecting their first baby soon after, followed in quick succession by five others. Whilst still busy raising their children, she trained to become a primary school teacher. After remarrying in 1986 she moved with Bernard to Chelsworth, Suffolk, taking up a post at Hillside School specialising in adapting the advances in information technology to help students with special needs. In turn, this led to her taking a leading role in fundraising to establish a L’Arche community in Ipswich, part of an International Federation of support networks for people who have learning difficulties.
RIZK. On 4 September 2014, Vivien (Moyle) MA (1942 Natural Sciences). As a devoted mother to three children, Vivien only developed a career once they were at secondary school. This career was in the voluntary sector, and for her many years of service she was named Rugbeian of the Year in 1985, and also received a long service award from Rugby NHS Trust in 1993. Sadly her daughter, Imogen, died at the age of 28, but Vivien went on to have five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. ROBINSON. On 31 January 2015, Janet Frances Cheslyn (Callow) MA MB BCHIR (1943 Natural Sciences). Jane, as she was always known, went on from Girton to read medicine at the Royal Free Hospital in London, qualifying in 1949. She had various house jobs in paediatrics and general medicine, ultimately becoming a medical Registrar. She married Kenneth Robinson (Jesus College) in 1950 and went into general practice, where she worked part-time. They had three children, all of whom went into medicine. She was a member, and latterly Chairman, of the Board of Visitors for 25 years at Sudbury Prison. Unfortunately, Jane suffered a lot of ill health in the last few years of her life. ROE. On 5 February 2014, Mary Luola (Dooley) MA (1956 Modern and Medieval Languages). When Mary left Girton she took the Civil Service exam and entered the Foreign Office, where, among other responsibilities, she helped to organise an outstanding collection of Benin ivories. It was in the Foreign Office that she met her dashing husband Toby Roe. It was a tragedy that his sudden death when Mary was pregnant
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with Georgiana meant that he never saw his child. Mary took up the challenge of raising Georgina on her own and worked long hours. After Mary retired from the Civil Service she was invited to sit on a panel to assess the statements of asylum seekers and continued with this work until well into her seventies. Sheila Seddon
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SEDDON. On 12 January, 2015, Sheila Rosemary (Proudlock-Dunbar) MusB (1941 Music). Sheila won a Blue for diving, and fire-watched during the war from the University Library before graduating in music, the cello being her principal instrument. After three years at the Royal Academy of Music she was appointed to the Scottish National Orchestra where she remained until 1954. She played at the opening of the Festival Hall in London and the first Edinburgh Festival in 1952. She married Brian Thomas Seddon in 1954 and they had four children, David, John, Claire and Richard. For many years she played for Chelsea Opera Group and was also an examiner for the Associated Board of Music. SMART. On 20 February 2015, Phyllis Elizabeth Alice May MA (1942 English; 1946 Theology). Phyllis gained a wartime degree, and was moved to the London School of Economics, under government war legislation, where she obtained a Certificate in Social Science. Phyllis worked at the Family Welfare Association and then returned to complete her degree in 1947. After working in administration, she gained her teaching qualification and secured a place lecturing rather than teaching in Weymouth. In retirement, Phyllis volunteered at Pilsdon, a community for people who did not fit into
mainstream life in general. She also volunteered at the Citizen’s Advice Bureau. She immersed herself in Cambridge life, undertook research at Girton, and gave very generously of both time and money to good causes and those in need. STACEY. On 8 October 2014, Brenda Margaret (Smith) MA (1949 Geography). Girton College had a very big influence on Brenda, not only while studying for her degree, but also on what she subsequently achieved in her career in marketing. She worked for travel companies in the 1960s, and then in banking in the 80s, rising to the top echelons within Williams and Glyn’s. She moved from central London to enjoy a retirement full of travel, music and art, before returning to her birthplace of Brighton for the last year of her life. A strong believer in women’s education, she has left a major legacy in her will to Girton, in recognition of how much the College meant to her and the opportunities it gave her in life. STEDALL. On 27 September 2014, Jacqueline Anne (Barton) MA (1969 Mathematics). Jacqueline, born in Romford, Essex, studied maths at Girton in 1972, and obtained her PhD from the Open University in 2000, and became a Senior Research Fellow at Queen’s College, Oxford. She was a historian of mathematics whose academic career, although it lasted for less than fourteen years, encompassed nine books and more than twenty articles. In books such as The Oxford Handbook of Mathematics (2009) and her History of Mathematics: A Very Short Introduction (2009) she challenged views such as the assumption that mathematics progresses only through ‘great and significant
works’, and that the period 1545-1770 was one in which there had been no significant progress in algebra. Her work developed a view of her subject not as a male-centric, European concern, but presented a more inclusive, sophisticated world view of the development of mathematics. She was a lover of nature, and was particularly fond of the Outer Hebrides. She is survived by her husband, documentary maker Johnathan Stedall, and her children Tom and Ellie.
gained an MA, which resulted in her promotion to Head of History. Further Head of Department posts followed as well as Head of Schools. Her long list of appointments after 1974, noted in Who’s Who, illustrate Phyllis’s dedication to her profession and the respect in which she was held. She made an active contribution to many advisory and sub-committees on a national level and was a member of the University Grants Commission. At a local level, she was chair of the Dunmow Liberal Party, a parish councillor and school governor.
STOCKLAND. On 24 June 2014, Ruth Carole (Berger) BA (1958 Archaeology and Anthropology). After Girton, Ruth spent 18 months living in Tanzania researching into the oral history of a remote tribe. Her whole life and career thereafter were marked by her love of Africa and of ethnic art. She was a hugely talented artist, and her family and friends benefited over the years from her wildly imaginative and often very funny cards, paintings and doodles. She drew artefacts for the records of the Pitt Rivers Museum, and she also worked until the late nineties for the Access scheme in Oxford, helping students from disadvantaged backgrounds into university.
TEICHOVA. On 12 March 2015, Alice (1969 Bye-Fellow; 1989 Honorary Fellow). Obituary p. 97
TAYLOR. On 21 October 2014, Phyllis Mary Constance (Tedder) MA (1945 History). It was at Girton that Phyllis met Dorothy Sykes, who was to remain her lifelong friend. Dorothy and her future husband Neil brought about the meeting of Phyllis and Peter Royston Taylor, also an undergraduate in Cambridge, and they married in 1949 and had a son, Julian. Phyllis began teaching at Loughton High School and
TILLEY. On 22 August 2014, Ann Burman (Christophers) MA (1950 English). After graduating, Ann trained to be a librarian, returning to Girton in that capacity for a short time. She also studied on the Southwark Ordination Course, training to be a lay pastoral assistant, alongside acting as librarian at USPG. In 1981 she moved to join the Little Gidding Community and married Michael, who was already a resident there, the following year. After Michael’s death she returned to Warwickshire, where she was born in 1929, to be near her brother and his family. WARREN. On 10 March 2014, Lynette Oskarl, MSt (2002 Management Studies). Lynette was an environmental and social enterprise specialist and was co-founder of Sustainable Opportunities Ltd, a company producing environmental services. She was a Director of Earthworks St Albans, an environmental community enterprise, and a
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Director of the Bedfordshire Rural Community Charities. She had been a passionate champion of the charity from its early days in 1997, and devoted her free time and energy to it for over 17 years. She was particularly dedicated to promoting sustainable choices in horticulture and technology, issues at the forefront of the Earthworks ethos.
Susan Whitaker
Helen Wright
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WHITAKER. In January 2014, Susan Mary (Babington) BA (1952 English). Sue married David soon after leaving Cambridge, and as he was an army chaplain, she found herself in Malaya for three years during the emergency. Their happy marriage included five children and seven grandchildren. She was passionate and practical in pursuit of her interests – often the environment or justice. Sue was a strong believer in Anglican Christianity but quite prepared for active theological debate. Sadly for the family, David died only six months after Susan. WRIGHT. In September 2014, Helen Muryell (Buxton) BA (1946 Geography). During the war Helen had been a FANY and worked in the coding department. She had early knowledge of the work of the French resistance, the concentration camps and, later, while in Ceylon, was aware that the atomic bombs were to be dropped. After leaving Cambridge she and Donald, whom she had married in 1948, had five children. They moved several times because of Donald’s various teaching jobs, ending up in Shrewsbury where he was a headmaster. In retirement they converted an old barn into a home and developed the surrounding pasture into a wonderful garden.
We have also been informed of the following deaths, and notices will appear in The Year 2016: FREETH. On 20 May 2015, Irene Zahra (Dickson) (1943 Modern and Medieval Languages). ISAAC. On 13 July 2015, Anne Barbara (Miller) MA (1955 English). JACKSON. In May 2015, Marion Teresa (Strudwick) (1978 Classics). LLOYD-THOMAS. Ruth Margery (Bower) (1943 Natural/Medical Sciences). NORRIS. In 2014, Joan Ruth MA (1939 Natural Sciences). PHILLIPS. On 27 March 2015, Naomi (Calvert) MA (1944 Mathematics). SANDLE. On 26 December 2014, Elisabeth Marjorie BA (1946 Modern and Medieval Languages; 1947 Economics). SEAL. On 10 January 2015, Cynthia Ida Austin (Leach) MA (1949 Natural Sciences).
Obituaries ROSALIND BROOKE (NEÉ CLARK) (1925-2014) Rosalind was a distinguished Franciscan scholar, who taught at Liverpool, London and Cambridge universities. All her published books were about St Francis. She developed her PhD into a book entitled Early Franciscan Government, describing the early years of the development of the Franciscan order. Her next book, the Scripta Leonis (1970) was the text and translations of writings of the companions of St Francis – Leo, Rufino and Angelo. There is no consensus about whether these works were genuine compositions of St Francis’s companions rather than later texts. My mother argued strongly that they were written by the companions. The Coming of the Friars in 1975 and Popular Religion in the Middle Ages jointly with my father in 1984 told the story of the development of the Franciscan and Dominican orders and set them in a wider context. In later years, she became more interested in art history. Her magnum opus The Image of St Francis – Responses to Sainthood in the Thirteenth Century was published in 2006. It outlined the way in which St Francis’s image was recorded in literature, documents, architecture and art during the thirteenth century. She proudly told her children that she wrote the preface to this book – before finally hanging up her pen – on her 80th birthday. Henry Mayr-Harting, Emeritus Regius Professor at Oxford and a close friend of the family, wrote in a
letter to my father just after her passing: …it is not given to everyone to write two masterpieces of scholarship in their time, but it was given to Rosalind. The book on Early Franciscan Government (about so much more than government in the usual medievalist’s sense) is one. That seems to me to explain more about the whole early Franciscan movement than anything else that I have ever read; and her interpretation of Elias is … inspired. The Image of St Francis, moving and illuminating on Francis himself, also does the whole thing again from a different and highly rewarding angle, and with much new evidence and thought. Rosalind was born in Chipstead in Surrey in 1925. In 1943 she went to Girton College to study history under Helen Cam and Gladws Jones. In her third year she studied St Francis as a special subject with Father David Knowles. She went on to do a PhD on Brother Elias, a follower of St Francis and the third Minister General of the Franciscan Order. In 1948 Christopher Brooke, was in his third year and it was his turn to study St Francis with Father David. This mutual interest led to their meeting and a very happy marriage that lasted for 63 years. Rosalind and Christopher were a partnership, in
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work as well as with the family, right from the start.
ISLA BROWNLESS (NEÉ FORBES) (1926-2015)
The ‘50s and ‘60s were not a good time for a young married woman to pursue a professional academic career. Nevertheless, Rosalind did teach at university – albeit part-time – conducting tutorials, seminars and lectures first in Cambridge, then in Liverpool, London and Cambridge again. She also taught briefly at two schools. One of her former pupils wrote: I still remember so clearly the first lesson she ever taught me at Birkenhead High school. The syllabus was the Renaissance. She brought in art books and showed us the hook-nosed faces of princes, the proud eyes of Doges, the ambitious popes. She talked of Michaelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and Machiavelli. It was the most exciting lesson I ever had. She was that special teacher who could open doors into new spaces in our minds and fill them with furniture that would stay there for ever. Rosalind was a very loving wife, mother, grandmother and sister, with a wide circle of devoted and supportive friends. An incurable optimist, she had her share of sorrow – the loss of her eldest son Francis to bone marrow disease in 1996 was a bitter blow. She was a scholar who loved children, dogs, her friends, her God, poetry, history, St Francis, her garden, the human race in general and in particular, her family and all other animals. She leaves a husband, brother, two surviving sons, and seven grandchildren. Edited from the words of her son, Phil Brooke.
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College Senior Student in her final year (1947-48), Isla was a polymath: author, editor, classicist, musician, sportswoman and, above all, a naturally patient teacher of young and old (and of horses and dogs). However, all who knew her would surely agree with her grandchildren that, quite simply, ‘When Isla was around life was fun’. She would make any situation or event, whether formal or impromptu, come alive and be memorable for all who took part. Isla was the eldest daughter of a rather racy Scottish couple, Flora and Archie Forbes, who, from 1938 ran one of the best-regarded and longestestablished UK boys’ preparatory schools, Lambrook, where Archie had himself been a pupil.
Isla was born at Lambrook, and the school was to become central to her life as a child and, later, as headmaster’s wife. She came up to Girton from Wycombe Abbey to read English at the very end of the war. She was gregarious, and steeped in every academic and social activity College and University had to offer, but the trajectory of her life changed when she spent her final long vacation as a medical volunteer at a London East End fruitpicking camp in East Anglia. There she met a young ordinand, Philip Brownless, who had recently been demobilised, and within a month of her graduation they were married in Lambrook chapel – an occasion on which her father presciently remarked, ‘There goes a young man who will never be bored.’ Philip was appointed to a large but poor parish in Southend-on-Sea where Isla had their first two children whilst weathering post-war shortages by tending chickens, pigs and a vegetable garden. Within five years the couple had returned to Lambrook, following a turbulent period in the school’s management when Archie, who had stepped down, had reluctantly taken up the reins again. His unexpected death precipitated Philip into the headmastership and under his leadership there followed sixteen years of increasing success for the school – a success which owed more than has ever been acknowledged to Isla’s extraordinary ability to have her finger on the pulse – to foresee what needed to be done and to take it on; this despite the birth of their second daughter and the death during birth of their second son. Isla stood in for teachers in almost any subject, ran the sickrooms during epidemics, read to and played games with ailing boys (who adored her) and reassured their anxious parents. She dealt equally
efficiently with rat infestations and with kitchen mutinies. She took every aspect of the life of the school in her stride, turning every event into a learning experience, an adventure or an entertainment. At the same time, as a natural organiser, she devised a structural reorganisation of the school, establishing it as a charitable trust and keeping it abreast of the increasing pressures of government regulation. Unsurprisingly she treasured one boy’s query: ‘Mrs Brownless, what do you actually do all day?’ In 1972, Philip retired from Lambrook to take on the livings of two, later three, Hampshire parishes. In all three Isla threw herself back into the role of the most active of vicar’s wives, recognising that a Christian faith is best demonstrated through loving others – and she genuinely did love them. She was instinctive in knowing when someone needed active, and when simply passive, support and she effortlessly related to generations much older and younger than herself. When Philip and Isla officially retired they bought their first and last house in Birdham – convenient for the regular sailing adventures that she recorded in her book Looking Astern – Philip a dashing helm and Isla the multitasking first mate: up the mast freeing a halyard or under water clearing the prop. Away from the boat there was to be no retirement in any meaningful sense for Isla. She researched and published The Lambrook Legacy, wrote a private memoir of her autistic eldest son, continued her editing and was a regular contributor to Girton’s Annual Review. Beyond her published work she was always prolifically creative in music-making on piano or guitar and in her writing and drawing which often, despite her deep faith, poked fun at the more pompous aspects of the Church of England. Isla’s own words best sum up her approach to life: ’Well – why not try it?’ Peter Sparks (Lambrook 1948, Girton 1979)
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DOROTHY HEARD (1916-2015) Mrs Heard, now Dr, was our Director of Studies for Medicine in the 1960s. She selected students for Girton when it was a women’s college, encouraged us to stay the course and achieve our best in a university with a 10:1 ratio of men to women in Medicine, studying, in that era, for the Natural Sciences Tripos. This was just a brief time in a long life of service to others, whose course was punctuated by adversity which Dorothy overcame, turning every reverse into a positive experience. Dorothy was perfectly groomed and immaculately dressed, and had the gift of giving each her undivided and unhurried attention despite being the busiest person we had yet met. To our dismay, she then chose a career change to Psychiatry, continuing at Girton for a year whilst she held the post of resident junior doctor at Fulbourn; and subsequently departing to the Tavistock Clinic in London. Her deep interest in the personal welfare of her students, alongside an impressive intellect and her scientific training, rendered her ideally placed for success in her new speciality. Her grateful Girton students helped her paint her new house in Earl’s Court, enjoying her homely, downto-earth hospitality. She came from Northern Ireland, and her father considered education for girls and boys of equal importance. Three of her aunts had become doctors in the 1890s, so she followed these role models into Medicine, training from 1934 to 1941 at the Royal Free Hospital, London, obtaining MB, BS in 1942 and MRCP two years later. She met her future husband early in her studies, but her
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father discouraged her from marriage until fully qualified. Her fiancé, Richard Heard, was Dean of Peterhouse, and became a wartime Padre. In May 1940, he was captured and sent to Colditz from where, after six months, he was able to write to his fiancée. Married in 1945, they had three daughters, and Dorothy trained as a Pathologist and started a PhD, before Richard’s untimely death from cancer in 1952. Two jobs made her family life possible, one at Girton, the other in Haematology research in Cambridge University. Whilst recovering from gastric ulcer surgery, aged 45, she decided on a career change to Psychiatry. Advised by John Bowlby at the Tavistock Clinic, she undertook junior doctor posts at Fulbourn and the Tavistock Clinic, where she was appointed consultant in 1966-79, specialising in child psychiatry and family psychotherapy. In 1968 she chose to commute from a home in Cambridge, and helped set up the psychotherapy service at Addenbrooke’s Hospital as part-time consultant. In 1979 she married a fellow psychiatrist, Brian Lake, and moved to Leeds where she was Lecturer and Consultant Psychiatrist. In Yorkshire their address of Mudd House, Crackpot appealed to her lively sense of humour. In Psychiatry Dorothy made her most important scientific contributions, publishing, jointly with Brian Lake and Una McCluskey, Attachment Therapy for Adults and Adolescents: theory and practice post Bowlby (2009). She published significant papers on Haematology in the 1950s and 60s and on Psychiatry in later years. For her Girton women students, an important role was to show that it was entirely possible to qualify in medicine, reach academic heights,
conduct a busy family life and remain a thoroughly grounded person. She was founder of the 1954 Book Club, still a popular feature of the Girton Fellowship, with its varied reading menu, annual dinner and wholly idiosyncratic rules. Ruth Warren (Copping 1960), Life Fellow, DoS 1998-2007 Jean Knell (Brown 1958) Alison McDonald (Lamming 1960)
P D JAMES (1920-2014)
‘I love the idea of bringing order out of disorder, which is what the mystery is about. I like the way in which it affirms the sanity of human life and exorcises irrational guilts.’ (Interview in Salon, 1998)
Phyllis James was no stranger to life’s disorder and the worst of human nature, but she was also a profound believer in the human capacity for good. Girton College was lucky enough to enjoy her wisdom, collegiality and friendship for 14 years after she was elected to an Honorary Fellowship in 2000. Born in Oxford in 1920, the daughter of a tax inspector, she moved with the family to Cambridge, where Phyllis attended the High School. But her father did not approve of higher education for girls and so she left school at 16. She married a doctor, Connor White, who returned from war service with a serious psychiatric disorder. Realising that she would need to become the breadwinner for their family of two daughters, she joined the Civil Service, first in the NHS and then from 1968 in the Home Office working with the police department in forensic science and then in criminal policy. Her husband died in 1964. She did not begin writing until she was 40, and she composed as she commuted to work, her first novel being Cover Her Face, introducing the character of Adam Dalgliesh. She produced 14 Dalgliesh novels, all elegantly written and beautifully plotted, and always with the strong moral imperative that derived from her devout Anglicanism. She also published two books about her female detective, Cordelia Gray, a dystopian novel, Children of Men, made into an Oscarnominated film, a Jane Austen pastiche Death Comes to Pemberley and a memoir, Time to be in Earnest. She was the recipient of seven honorary doctorates, and was an Honorary Fellow of three
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other Oxbridge colleges apart from Girton. She was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the Royal Society of Arts, a governor of the BBC, on the board of the British Council and Chair of the literary advisory panel of the Arts Council. She was awarded the OBE in 1983 and made a life peer in 1991 – Baroness James of Holland Park – moving from the crossbenches to the Conservative side in 1997. Phyllis was still writing and making public appearances well into her nineties. A most memorable example was her guest editing of the Today programme in December 2009 in which she interviewed the Director General of the BBC, Mark Thompson, and reduced him to pulp over the issue of excessive paypackets in the BBC. Phyllis died on 27 November 2014. A service of thanksgiving was held at the Temple Church in London on 29 April, 2015. It was characteristic of her (and strangely comforting to this participant) that much of that beautiful service – the choice of readings and the music – had been planned by Phyllis herself. She had in her lifetime given Girton the manuscripts of most of her novels, and she bequeathed the remainder to the College, along with her cherished set of Notable British Trials in 94 volumes. Frances Gandy
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MARY LYON (1925-2014)
Dr Mary F Lyon FRS has presented College with a portrait of herself. The portrait was presented to her in 2011 at an EMBO conference in Oxford to celebrate 50 years of X-chromosome inactivation (also known as Lyonization), which Mary Lyon discovered, and about which she first published the results in Nature in 1961. The portrait was painted from a photograph taken at an earlier meeting, and shows her on a pleasure boat on the River Ob at Novosiversk in Russia. The artist is Mikey Merkenschlager. The portrait now hangs in Wolfson Court.
Mary Lyon, an Honorary Fellow of the College, was a geneticist whose work led to a fundamental shift in the study of inherited diseases such as haemophilia. In the late 1950s Mary Lyon was studying the effects of radiation on mice at the Medical Radiobiological Research Unit at Harwell, Oxfordshire, when she noticed a puzzling feature in mice with a spontaneous mutant gene specific to the X chromosome. Females who carried the gene were variegated: some of the affected males
died in embryo, while others were born with white coats. There was one male in the group, born, like his female counterparts, with a mottled coat. By breeding from the mottled male mouse and studying his mottled and white-coated daughters, Mary Lyon worked out that the father must be carrying two different types of cells, some with the mutant X chromosome and some not. She concluded that his daughters were similarly affected, but that one of the two X chromosomes was switched off at random early on in the development of the female embryo. She dubbed this phenomenon ‘X-chromosome inactivation’. Later, it also became known as ‘lyonization’ in her honour. The implications went far beyond mice. Lyonization explained how tortoiseshell cats got their peculiar colouring: they were a ‘mosaic’ (denoting the presence of two or more genetically distinct types of cells), with some cells determining black fur and others determining orange fur. It also transformed the understanding of how genetic conditions were passed on and their symptoms expressed across the generations. When lyonization occurred in women who were carriers of the recessive gene for haemophilia, for example, they could exhibit mild symptoms of the disease such as bruising and excessive bleeding. In 1997 Mary Lyon received the Wolf Prize in Medicine for her hypothesis: the first and only British woman to do so. Mary Francis Lyon was born in Norwich on 15 May, 1925. Both her parents were from working-
class families; her father Clifford, a civil servant, was the son of a cooper, while her maternal grandfather had been a shoemaker. Owing to the itinerant nature of her father’s job the family moved home frequently during her childhood, and Mary attended schools in Yorkshire and Surrey before starting secondary education at the King Edward VI High School in Birmingham. It was there that she first became interested in science, after winning a set of books on natural history for an essay she had written. In 1943 she came up to Girton to read Zoology, Physiology and Biochemistry. As women would not receive full membership of the university until 1948, she graduated, aged 23, with a ‘titular’ degree, one of just 500 women out of more than 5,000 students. She went on to do a PhD with RA Fisher, Cambridge’s Professor of Genetics at that time, and completed her studies with Douglas Falconer at the University of Edinburgh. Her thesis was on the genetics behind a balance defect that she had noticed in the pallid mutant mouse. In 1950 she moved to Edinburgh’s Institute of Animal Genetics and began to study the health effects of atomic radiation on mice gathered in the aftermath of the Japan bombings. Some suffered from ataxia (loss of movement); others had inner ear problems and ran in endless circles. She also conducted extensive work on a genetic peculiarity found on chromosome 17 in wild-type mice. After five years she and her team, led by Toby Carter, moved to the Medical Research Council Radiobiological Research Unit. Upon Carter’s retirement in 1962, she became head of the
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genetics division, a position she held for the next 24 years. She was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1973, and received the Society’s Royal Medal in 1984. She was elected an Honorary fellow of Girton in 1985. Last year the Genetics Society created the Mary Lyon Medal, awarded for outstanding research in the field.
BARONESS PLATT OF WRITTLE (NEÉ MYATT) (1923-2015)
Adapted from the Telegraph obituary, 18 July 2015.
Nicknamed by her children ‘The Battle of the Republic’ for her direct, energetic and combative nature, Baroness Beryl Platt of Writtle was born Beryl Catherine Myatt in Leigh-on-Sea on 18 April, 1923 and attended Westcliff High School. She was a determinedly academic child, who persuaded her reluctant parents to allow her to study at Girton. She initially intended to read maths, but became one of the first women to study aeronautical engineering when the Government announced a state bursary for engineering undergraduates. After her graduation in 1943 Beryl worked for Hawker Aircraft Company, appointed as an aeronautical engineer to work on flight reports for their Hurricane, Typhoon and Tempest fighter bombers. She often took control when her boss
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was away – ‘People would ring up and say “I want to know the cylinder-head temperature of the Centaurus engine”. I’d rattle them off. There would be a deathly hush at the other end of the line and then they’d say, “How do you know?” They assumed that if you were a woman you couldn’t be an engineer.’ Despite being offered a permanent role after the war, she left to work in aviation safety for British European Airways. She married her late husband Stewart in 1949, and her first child, Roland, was born two years later. The family made Writtle their home in early 1953, and Vicky was born later that year. The advent of her family meant that Beryl was obliged to give up her engineering career for a time, although she always made a point of carrying a screwdriver in her handbag, and she pursued an alternative unsalaried career in local government. With her characteristic hard work and dedication she moved from setting up a young mothers’ group to becoming chairman of Essex County Council's education committee between 1971 and 1980, and then vice-chairman of the authority between 1980 and 1983. She was made a life peer by Margaret Thatcher in 1981 and in May 1983 she was appointed chairman of the Equal Opportunities Commission. She remained in that post until 1988, where she was passionate in her campaigning for women to be able to remain in employment after marriage and motherhood. Beryl was a prominent campaigner for careers in science and technology for women. She was passionate about equal opportunities, and committed to her faith, and to a punishing work ethic. Throughout her long and distinguished career, she used her characteristic feistiness and energy to help other women achieve.
ALICE ELIZABETH TEICHOVA (NÉE SCHWARZ) (1920-2015)
Alice Elizabeth Teichova (née Schwarz) receiving the Medal of Honour from the City of Vienna for services rendered to the Land of Vienna at Vienna’s Rathaus (October 2011)
This distinguished Honorary Fellow of Girton was born in Vienna into a secular Jewish family. When family circumstances brought an end to her secondary education after just three years, she left school in 1934 with a distinction in her Leaving Certificate. Whilst working, she followed evening courses in Vienna until the Anschluss in 1938. Fortunately, through family in London, Alice was able to travel (alone) to Britain, securing a position as housemaid, first in Kingston-on-Thames and later in Exeter, where the family regathered. When aliens were required to move a distance from the coast in 1940, she found a job in Nottingham, where she also attended the People’s College. In 1942 she won a funded place at the University of Leeds, graduating with a degree in Economics in 1945.
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Alice had already shown her remarkable ability to survive in tough times, to adjust and make the most of opportunities. Her marriage in January 1944 to a fellow-refugee from Czechoslovakia, the historian of science Mikuláš Teich, was a further source of strength and inspiration that was to last throughout her life. Their two children, Peter (1945) and Eva (1948), were born in the UK. After graduation Alice taught at Aspley School in Nottingham before the family left for Prague. Here she became fluent in Czech and studied for her PhD in History (1952), at the same time holding a lectureship in History at the Charles University (1950-1964), where she proved a popular and stimulating teacher. A CSc in Historical Sciences (1960) was followed by her Habilitation in Economic History (1964); she was promptly appointed Reader.
appointments in Europe and the US and multiple international honours followed – honorary doctorates at Uppsala (1985), Vienna (1995); Anton Gindeley-Preis (2000); Kreisky Preis as Member of the Commission of Historians appointed by the Austrian Government to inquire into Expropriations of Property under National Socialism and Restitutions after 1945 (2004); Medal of Merit, Charles University Prague (2010); Medal of Honour, City of Vienna (2011).
1968 marked the start of a second exile, when her home country again suffered invasion. The Teichs had a one-year leave arranged in the US, from which they returned to Britain. Her Girton connection dates from the same year and from 1970 to 1972 she held a Bye-Fellowship at Girton. She was elected to an Honorary Fellowship in 1990.
Dorothy J Thompson (Life Fellow; Walbank 1958)
Following her appointment in 1971 as Lecturer in Economic History at the University of East Anglia she flourished as a productive and innovative scholar, building up an international network of economic historians. In 1973 she became Reader, in 1975 Professor. In addition she was a Senior Associate Member of St Antony’s College, Oxford (1970-76) and later Senior Research Associate at the LSE. Visiting
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She wrote numerous books and articles on European economic (especially business) history; her personal archive is deposited in College. She will be remembered for her personal charm and humanity, which reached out to all who knew her. She was buried with civic honours in her home city of Vienna.
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Visitor: Mistress:
The Rt Hon Baroness Hale of Richmond, PC, DBE, MA, Hon FBA, Hon LLD, Hon FRCPsych Professor Susan J Smith, BA, MA, DPhil (Oxon), PhD, AcSS, FBA, FRSE
Fellows and Officers of the College, October 2015 Honorary Fellows Professor M Burbidge, BSc, PhD (London), FRS Professor Anita Desai, CBE, BA (Delhi), FRSL The Rt Hon the Lord Mackay of Clashfern, KT, PC, Hon LLD, FRSE HM Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, Hon LLD Miss E Llewellyn-Smith, CB, MA Professor Dame Margaret Turner-Warwick, DBE, DM (Oxon), PhD, FRCP, Hon DSc (New York, Exeter, London, Sussex, Oxford, Cambridge, Leicester) Dame Bridget Ogilvie, DBE, AC, PhD, ScD, FIBiol, FRCPath, FMedSCi, FRS, Hon DSc (Nottingham, Glasgow, Bristol, Dublin, Durham, Kent, ICL, Leicester, Manchester, St Andrews) Professor Dame Gillian Beer, DBE, MA, LittD, BLitt (Oxon), Hon DLitt (Liverpool, Leicester, London, Sorbonne, Queen’s Belfast, Oxford, Harvard, St Andrews), FBA, FRSL The Rt Revd David Conner, KVCO, MA Professor Douglass North, BA, PhD (Berkeley) The Rt Hon Lady Justice Arden, PC, DBE, MA, LLM, Hon LLD (Liverpool, Warwick, Royal Holloway, Nottingham, UCL) Baroness Perry of Southwark, MA, Hon LLD (Bath, Aberdeen), HonDLitt (Sussex, South Bank, City), Hon DEd (Wolverhampton), Hon DUniv (Surrey), Hon DLitt Hum (Mercy College NY), FRSA Dame Rosalyn Higgins, DBE, QC, LLB, MA, Hon LLD, Hon DCL (Oxon), Hon LLD (LSE), FBA Dame Ann Bowtell, DCB, MA PhD (London) Professor Dusa McDuff, BSc (Edinburgh) PhD FRS Hon DSc (Edinburgh, York, Strasbourg) The Rt Hon Baroness Hollis of Heigham, PC, DL, MA, DPhil (Oxon) FRHistS Viscountess Runciman of Doxford, DBE, BA The Rt Hon Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean, PC, MA Lady English, MA, MB, BChir, MRCP, FRCPsych
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Ms J Rachel Lomax, MA, MSc (London) Dr Margaret H Bent, CBE, MA, MusB, PhD, Hon DMus (Glasgow), Hon DFA (Notre Dame), Dr hc (Montreal), FBA, FSA, FRHistS Dame Elizabeth L A Forgan, DBE, BA (Oxon), Hon FBA Professor Dame Frances M Ashcroft, DBE, MA, PhD, ScD, FRS Professor Dame Athene Donald, DBE, MA, PhD, FRS The Rt Hon Lady Justice Gloster, PC, DBE, MA Professor Madeleine J Atkins CBE MA PGCE PhD Professor Sarah M Springman CBE MA MPhil PhD FREng FICE Barbara Bodichon Foundation Fellows Mrs Barbara Wrigley, MA Mrs Sally Alderson, MA Mrs Margaret Llewellyn, OBE, MA Mrs Veronica Wootten, MBE, MA Miss C Anne Wilson, MA, ALA Dr Margaret A Branthwaite, BA, MD, FFARCS, FRCP Dr Ruth Whaley BA, MA, PhD (Harvard) Sir Laurence W Martin, DL, MA, PhD, DCL (Hon) Miss Sarah C Holt, MA Mr Colin S Grassie, MA Mr Leif O Høegh, MA, MBA Ms Gladys Li, MA Fellows Janet E Harker, MA, ScD, Life Fellow Christine H McKie, MA, PhD, Life Fellow Enid A C MacRobbie, MA, PhD (Edinburgh), ScD, FRS, Life Fellow Poppy Jolowicz, MA, LLB, Life Fellow Dorothy J Thompson, MA, PhD, Hon DLitt (Liverpool), FBA, Life Fellow Melveena C McKendrick, MA, PhD, LittD, FBA, Life Fellow
Nancy J Lane Perham, OBE, MA, PhD, ScD, MSc (Dalhousie), DPhil (Oxon), Hon LLD (Dalhousie), Hon ScD (Salford), Hon ScD (Sheffield Hallam), Hon ScD (Oxford Brookes), Hon ScD (Surrey), Life Fellow Joan Oates, PhD, FBA, Life Fellow Gillian Jondorf, MA, PhD, Life Fellow Betty C Wood, MA, PhD (Pennsylvania), Life Fellow Jill Mann, MA, PhD, FBA, Life Fellow Ruth M Williams, MA, PhD (London), ScD, Life Fellow Julia M Riley, MA, PhD, Life Fellow, Tutor for Admissions (Undergraduate) 2 and Director of Studies in Physical Sciences A Marilyn Strathern, DBE, MA, PhD, Hon DLitt (Oxon), Hon ScD (Edinburgh), Hon ScD (Copenhagen), Hon ScD (Helsinki), Hon Doctorate (Panteion), Hon ScD (Durham), Hon DPhil (Papua New Guinea), Hon DSocSci (Queen’s, Belfast), Hon DSocSci (Yale), Hon DLitt (St Andrews), FBA, Life Fellow John Marks, MA, MD (London), FRCP, FRCPath, FRCPsych, Life Fellow S Frank Wilkinson, MA, PhD, Life Fellow Roland E Randall, MA, PhD, MSc (McGill), Life Fellow Martin D Brand, MA, BSc (Manchester), PhD (Bristol), Life Fellow John E Davies, MA, BSc, PhD (Monash), Life Fellow David N Dumville, MA, PhD (Edinburgh), Life Fellow 1 Abigail L Fowden, MA, PhD, ScD, Professorial Fellow (Biological Sciences) Juliet A S Dusinberre, MA, PhD (Warwick), Life Fellow Thomas Sherwood, MA, MB, BS (London), FRCR, FRCP, Life Fellow Richard J Evans, MA, PhD, MRCVS, Life Fellow Alastair J Reid, MA, PhD, Life Fellow Sarah Kay, MA, DPhil (Oxon), LittD, FBA, Life Fellow Mary Warnock (Baroness), DBE, MA (Oxon), Hon FBA, Life Fellow Howard P Hodson, MA, PhD, FREng, Life Fellow Peter C J Sparks, MA, DipArch, RIBA, Life Fellow 3 Stephanie Palmer, LLB (Adelaide), SJD (Harvard), LLM (Harvard), Official Fellow and Director of Studies in Law Frances Gandy, MA, MCLIP, Life Fellow and Tutor for Graduates 1 Christopher J B Ford, MA, PhD, Professorial Fellow (Physics)
Charity A Hopkins, OBE, MA, LLB, Life Fellow W James Simpson, BA (Melbourne), MPhil (Oxon), PhD, Life Fellow 4 Anne Fernihough, MA, PhD, Non-Stipendiary Fellow (English) 1 Angela C Roberts, PhD, Professorial Fellow (Behavioural Neurosciences) 3 Hugh R Shercliff, MA, PhD, Official Fellow and Director of Studies in Engineering 3 Martin W Ennis, MA, PhD, FRCO, KRP (Köln), Austin and Hope Pilkington Fellow, Director of Studies in Music and Director of College Music (on leave MT 2015 & LT 2016) John L Hendry, MA, PhD, Life Fellow 1 Jochen H Runde, MPhil, PhD, Professorial Fellow (Economics) and Director of Studies in Management Studies Dennis Barden, MA, PhD, Life Fellow Andrew R Jefferies, MA, VetMB, FRCPath, MRCVS, Life Fellow Juliet J d’A Campbell, CMG, MA, Life Fellow Peter H Abrahams, MBBS, FRCS (Edinburgh), FRCR, DO (Hon), Life Fellow *Deborah Lowther, MA, ACA, Official Fellow and Bursar Clive Lawson, MA, PhD, Official Fellow and Director of Studies in Economics Richard L Himsworth, MA, MD, Life Fellow Josh D Slater, PhD, BVMS (Edinburgh), Supernumerary Fellow, Dean for Student Discipline, Praelector and Director of Studies in Veterinary Medicine *A Mark Savill, MA, PhD, FRAeS, Non-Stipendiary Fellow (Engineering) 1 Per-Olof H Wikström, BA, PhD (Stockholm), FBA, Professorial Fellow (Criminology) *1 S-P Gopal Madabhushi, PhD, Professorial Fellow and Director of Studies in Engineering 3 P Mia Gray, BA (San Diego), MRCP (Berkeley), PhD (Rutgers), Supernumerary Fellow (Geography) 7 Neil Wright, MA, PhD, Official Fellow (Classics) Ruth M L Warren, MA, MD, FRCP, FRCR, Life Fellow
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*Alexandra M Fulton, BSc, PhD (Edinburgh), Official Fellow, Senior Tutor and Director of Studies in Biological Sciences *Maureen J Hackett, BA, MA (Southampton), Official Fellow, Tutor, Warden of Wolfson Court and Graduate Accommodation, and Junior Bursar 1 Crispin H W Barnes, BSc, PhD (London), Professorial Fellow (Physics) Judith A Drinkwater, MA, Official Fellow, Director of Studies in Linguistics and Modern and Medieval Languages (Year Abroad) and Tutor 2 Colm Durkan, BA, PhD (Trinity College Dublin), FRIET, Official Fellow, Director of Studies in Engineering and Tutor 1 Edward J Briscoe, BA (Lancaster), MPhil, PhD, Professorial Fellow (Computer Science) K M Veronica Bennett, MA, BSc (Leicester), PhD (CNAA), Official Fellow, Secretary to Council and Director of Studies in Biological Sciences 3 Harriet D Allen, MSc (Calgary), MA, PhD, Official Fellow, Director of Studies in Geography Shaun D Fitzgerald, MA, PhD, FREng, Official Fellow (Engineering) and Tutor Stephen Robertson, MA, MSc (City), PhD (London), Life Fellow *Stuart Davis, BA, PhD (Birmingham), Official Fellow, Director of Studies in Modern & Medieval Languages and Tutor for Admissions (Undergraduate) 1 (on leave ET 2016) 4 Benjamin J Griffin, MA, PhD, Official Fellow and Director of Studies in History Fiona J Cooke, MA, BM BCh (Oxon), PhD (London), MRCP, Official Fellow and Director of Studies in Medicine Ross Lawther, MA, PhD, Olga Taussky Fellow and Director of Studies in Mathematics *Karen L Lee, MA, Vice-Mistress, Official Fellow (Law) and Tutor SinĂŠad M Garrigan Mattar, BA, DPhil (Oxon), Jane Elizabeth Martin Official Fellow and Director of Studies in English C Patricia Ward, MA, PhD Official Fellow (Physics)
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*3 Stuart A Scott, MA, PhD, Official Fellow and Director of Studies in Chemical Engineering 4 Stelios Tofaris, MA, PhD, Official Fellow and Director of Studies in Law *8 Liliana Janik, MPhil (Torun), PhD, Official Fellow, Director of Studies in Archaeology and Human Social & Political Sciences and Tutor for Graduates 3 Samantha K Williams, BA (Lancaster), MSc, PhD, Official Fellow, Director of Studies in History (on leave LT 2016) Kamiar Mohaddes BSc (Warwick), MPhil, PhD, Official Fellow and Director of Studies in Economics (on leave 2015-16) 4 Nik Cunniffe, MA, MPhil, MSc (Bath), PhD, Official Fellow (Biological Sciences) 4 Katherine Hughes, BSc, BVSc (Liverpool), MRCVS, PhD, Official Fellow and Director of Studies in Veterinary Medicine Helen A Van Noorden, BA, MPhil, PhD, Wrigley Fellow and Director of Studies in Classics *3 Carlo L Acerini, MA, BSc (Dundee), DCH (Glasgow), MD (Dundee), Official Fellow and Director of Studies in Medicine Katherine M Kennedy, BA, MA (KCL), PgDip (Royal College of Music), PhD, Non-Stipendiary Fellow in English (until 31 October) Morag A Hunter, MA, PhD, Official Fellow, Director of Studies in Physical Sciences and Tutor 3 Heidi Radke, DVM (Ludvig Maximilian University), DrVetMed (Zurich), Director of Studies in Veterinary Medicine and Tutor Emma J L Weisblatt, BA, MB, BCh, MRCP, MRCPsych, PhD, Director of Studies in Psychology and Psychological and Behavioural Sciences and Tutor Mary V Wrenn, BA (Appalachian State), BSc (Appalachian State), MA (Colorado State), PhD (Colorado State), Joan Robinson Research Fellow in Heterodox Economics Sabesan Sithamparanathan, BEng (Sheffield), MPhil, PhD, Tucker-Price Research Fellow in Electrical Engineering (nonstipendiary) Sophia M I Shellard-von Weikersthal, BSc, PhD (Freiburg), Official Fellow (Pharmacology) and Tutor for Graduates
Henrik Latter, BA, BSc, MSc (Sydney), PhD, Official Fellow (Mathematics) Nadja Tschentscher, BSc, MSc (M端nster), PhD, Hertha Ayrton Research Fellow in Cognitive Neurosciences *1 Matthew J Allen, MA, VetMB, PhD, Professorial Fellow (Veterinary Medicine) Anastasia Piliavsky, BA (Boston), MSc, DPhil (Oxon), Research Fellow and Director of Studies in Social Anthropology and Human, Social and Political Sciences Hannah Scott, MA, MA (KCL), PhD (Bristol), Official Fellow and Director of Studies in Modern & Medieval Languages Hazel Mills, BA (Reading), DPhil (Oxon), Eugenie Strong Research Fellow in College History Matthew Grayson, MA, Msci, PhD, Tucker-Price Research Fellow in Organic Chemistry 4 Arnold C Hunt, MA, PhD, Official Fellow (History) James Wade, BA (Boise State), MA (York), PhD, Official Fellow and Director of Studies in English R James E Riley, BA (Lancaster), MA (Lancaster), PhD Graduate Tutor, Official Fellow and Director of Studies in English Simone Maghenzani, BA(Turin) MA(Turin) PhD(Turin), Official Fellow and Director of Studies in History Samuel D Grimshaw, MEng PhD, Mitsubishi Senior Research Fellow Trenholme Junghans, BA (Northampton,Mass.), MPhil (New York), PhD (St Andrews) CRASSH Research Fellow Gabriele Badano, BA (Genoa) MA (Genoa), PhD (UCL) CRASSH Research Fellow 4
Visiting Fellows Michael J Berry, BEc (Sydney), MEc (New England), BA (New England), PhD (Melbourne), DSocSc (RMIT) (MT 2015 & ET 2016) Christina Toren, BSc ( UCL), PhD (LSE) Helen Cam Visiting Fellow (MT 2015) K Paul Tod, MA, MSc (Oxon), DPhil (Oxon) Brenda Ryman Visiting Fellow (LT & ET 2016)
James G Moher, BCL (Cork), PhD (London) Mary Amelia Cummins Harvey Visiting Fellow Commoner (MT 2015 & ET 2016) Bye-Fellows Louise E Braddock, MA, MB, BChir, MD, MA (Reading), PhD (Reading), Praelector 4 Caroline J A Brett, MA, PhD, (History), Director of Studies in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic Claudia Domenici BA (Pisa) MA (Lancaster), Director of Studies in Modern & Medieval Languages Amy R Donovan, BA, MPhil, MSc (UCL), PhD Margaret Faultless, MA, Hon. FBC, FTCL, ARCM, Director of Studies in Music (MT 2015 & LT 2016) Sarah L Fawcett, BA, BM, BCh (Oxon), MRCS, FRCR, PhD, (Medical and Veterinary Sciences) 5 Kariann Goldschmitt, BA (UCLA), MA (UCSD), PhD (UCLA) (Music) (until 31 December) The Revd A Malcolm Guite, MA, PhD (Durham), Chaplain 6 Christopher K Hadley, MA, MSc, Director of Studies in Computer Science Irit Katz BArch (Bezalel), MA (BIU, Israel), Director of Studies in Architecture Arik Kershenbaum, MA, PhD (Haifa) (Biological Sciences) John Lawson, BA, PhD, Director of Studies in Human, Social and Political Sciences, and Psychological and Behavioural Sciences Frisbee C C Sheffield, BA (Bristol), MPhil, DPhil (Oxon) (Classics and Philosophy) Leslie Turano-Taylor, BA (New York), BA (Oxon), MPhil, PhD (London) (Law) Gareth F Wilson, BMus, MA, PGCert, DippGPerfRAM, DipRAM Director of Chapel Music and Assistant Director of Music Helen Yannakoudakis, BSc (Athens), MPhil, PhD, Newton Trust Teaching Fellow in Computer Science
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Postdoctoral Teaching Associates David Bosworth, MSci, PhD, Director of Studies in Materials Science Timothy Hearn, BSc (Birmingham) (Biological Sciences) Archivist Emerita Kate Perry Cert Ed (Froebel) External Teaching Officers 1 John S McCombie, MA, PhD, Director of Studies in Land Economy, Fellow of Downing College Richard Jennings, PhD, Director of Studies in Philosophy and History & Philosophy of Science Ben Outhwaite, BA, MPhil, PhD, Director of Studies in Asian & MiddleEastern Studies, Head of the Genizah Research Unit in the University Hilary Marlow, BA (Manchester), BA (KCL), PhD, Director of Studies in Theology and Religious Studies, Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of Divinity Praelectors Louise E Braddock, MA, MB, BChir, MD, MA (Reading), PhD (Reading) Josh D Slater, PhD, BVMS (Edinburgh) Lectrice Mlle Solène Lapierre, Licence de LLCE (École Normale Supérieure de Lyon)
Notes * Member of Council 1 Professor in the University 2 Reader in the University 3 Senior Lecturer in the University 4 University Lecturer 5 University Visiting Lecturer 6 University Computer Officer 7 University Technical Officer 8 University Assistant Director of Research
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Comings and goings Every year we say goodbye to a selection of academic colleagues whose tenure at Girton is, by design, short-lived, but who we are sure will remain in touch in a variety of ways. The following early career Fellows are among these, and we wish them well in the next stage of their academic journeys: Dr Lucy Cheke, psychologist, comes to the end of her spell as the Sarah Woodhead Research Fellow at Girton, but continues her high profile work on the neuroscience of memory. We wish her well in that, and also on her recent marriage to Owen Kivlin. We congratulate Dr Amy Donovan, Ottilie Hancock Research Fellow who, after completing her Leverhulme Research Fellowship, has secured a lectureship in the Geography Department at King’s College London to continue her work on volcanoes and risk. Dr Kate Kennedy, formerly the Katharine Jex-Blake Research Fellow, and currently also enjoying a Leverhulme award, has secured a Fellowship at Wolfson College Oxford, where she will continue to work between Music and English, directing the Centre for Life Writing. Dr Jacob Paskins, Eugenie Strong Research Fellow, having completed his book on construction sites in Paris, embarked on an aural journey through the London underground, and commenced a new architectural history of Hoverports. He has moved to a lectureship at UCL, but we hope to see him again, somewhere, sometime soon. Dr Lucy Thorne leaves the Rosalind, Lady Carlisle Research Fellowship, which she dedicated to profiling the Norovirus genome, to take up a prestigious Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellowship at UCL, where she will be working on the immune response to HIV. Dr Hope Wolf, Rosamund Chambers Research Fellow in English, and valued member of the
College Council, is likewise leaving prematurely, having secured a permanent position at Sussex University in one of the UK’s top English Departments. Two Bye-Fellows are moving on this year: Dr Kariann Goldschmitt, specialist in Brazilian music, has secured a continuing position at Wellesley College (one of the ‘Seven Sisters’, founded in 1870, and still among the top institutions for the higher education of women in the USA); and Andrew Kennedy who inspired the Choir during his several remarkable terms as acting Director of Chapel Music, leaves in order to develop his own remarkable singing career to its full potential. Finally, amongst our temporary appointees, we say farewell to Sonny Sanjay Vadgama, the second incumbent of Girton’s newly-funded (and now biennial) artist-in-residence scheme. If you missed his work ‘The Recess’ when it was projected onto the façade of the Fitzwilliam museum earlier this year, you can view it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSNR2UgFcD. His photographic portraits of the Mistress and the Librarian can be seen in College. Two members of the Official Fellowship are also leaving Girton this year. Dr. Edward Holberton joined Girton as a College Teaching Officer in English in 2009 and has worked tirelessly as Director of Studies, supervisor, steward of the Jane Martin poetry prize and much more. He leaves to take up a permanent lectureship in the English department in Bristol: a fine career move and a welcome recognition of his achievements and potential. Elizabeth Wade has been Development Director and Official Fellow since 2012, a post she secured after
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helping the College in a variety of other ways on a voluntary basis. Having rolled out the first successful phase of A Great Campaign to secure Girton’s financial future, Liz is leaving to take up the position of CEO in a conservation charity. It is always hard to say goodbye to people who have done so much to shape the life and times of the College. The blow is softened slightly when it comes to the retirement of long-serving colleagues. This year we elect three such members – who between them have given precisely 100 years of active service as Official Fellows to the College – to Life Fellowships, where they join a remarkable body of scholars whose activity, enthusiasm and continued engagement add immeasurably to Girton’s vitality. Frances Gandy retires as Librarian and Curator after 28 years of service to the College. Bringing both academic credentials and professional skills to the role, she has created a unique resource for the College and the wider world. We thank her on behalf of all members of the College – past, present and future – for the tireless effort and ceaseless innovation that underpins this. Additionally, as an Official Fellow of the College, she has been undergraduate and graduate tutor, pioneered the important role of harassment officer, and in true Girtonian spirit done much to ensure that the College maintains high standards in the areas of equality and diversity, as well as excellence. Ms Gandy has, as a Head of Department, been a champion for her staff; as a scholar she has supported both disciplinary and interdisciplinary projects; and wearing multiple hats, she has played an important role in the success and profile of: the ULE project, the
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Lawrence Room, the People’s Portraits, the Archive project, the Duke Building, the Ridding Reading Prize, the artworks and treasures scattered about the College, and much, much more. Generously she too has agreed to stay on as graduate tutor and as a Life Fellow. We are enormously grateful because as a professional colleague, scholar, Fellow and friend, she is truly and absolutely irreplaceable. Alastair Reid has been a Fellow in History since 1983. He has enjoyed a fascinating career, during which his seminal interpretation of the emergence of the British Labour Party has become the standard for historians. He has also made an important contribution to public life, as one of the founders of the History and Policy project – an initiative which offers a measure of impact that funding councils can only dream of. Dr Reid has also been an engaged member of the College, bringing strong principles, high standards, and warm collegiality to our many and varied activities. We are delighted that he will join the Life Fellowship and continue in that vein. Julia Riley is also retiring, after 40 years of Fellowship, during which she has steered many generations of very lucky students through the intricacies of natural sciences at Cambridge. She is well-known in the area of radio astronomy, sometime winner of the Pilkington Prize for her world-class teaching achievements, and a willing member of a wide variety of committees, roles and offices. She left a lasting impression on the College during her steadying, gracious and energising three terms of office as Vice-Mistress; and she continues to run one of the most popular, enduring and engaging of the Fellows’ activities – the book club. As well as joining the Life
Fellowship, Dr Riley will continue as admissions tutor: a generous decision, which is universally welcomed. As well as bidding farewell to a cross-section of the Fellowship, 2015 marks the departure of some other long-serving members of Girton’s administrative and support services teams. Fay Faunch, who has worked for the College for 21 years, fourteen of them as Secretary to the Mistress, retired at Christmas. Her leaving party attracted an enormous crowd of well-wishers, and included moving speeches from both the current Mistress and her predecessor – all in all, a fine tribute to the high esteem in which Fay is held throughout the College. While agreeing to stay on part-time to enable a smooth handover to her successor, and to support the Secretary to Council, we are only too aware that this is a temporary arrangement, and take this opportunity to thank her again, on all your behalves. Ciarian O’Loughlin, Head Porter for 15 years, retires this year too. Under his leadership, the Porters’ Lodge has become known for the warm welcome that students, parents and visitors to the College receive, for a ‘fair but firm’ approach to discipline and decorum, for sensitive and sensible ‘frontline’ service in areas of health, safety and welfare, and, of course, for proudly escorting Girton’s graduands to the Senate House to collect their well-earned degrees. It seems fitting that Ciarian and his wife were guests of honour at the first of our new ‘finalists’ formals’ in June, and that he received a standing ovation from a packed dining hall. All our departing staff, whether mentioned here or not, leave with our best wishes and deep gratitude; however this list would be incomplete
without a tribute to the work of two of our longest-serving heads of Domestic Departments. Graham Hambling began working for the College in 1979 and has given first-rate services as Girton’s Catering Manager for the last 15 years. Anyone who has enjoyed an alumni dinner, wedding, party or other special event on his watch will appreciate the challenge he leaves his successor. Michael Pocock has been with the College for over 35 years, initially as a trainee chef, then as a member of the maintenance team, and eventually, from March 1998 as Clerk of Works. We have him to thank for the continuing quality and good repair of the built environment here, despite its age and notwithstanding a lean budget. We also pass on our best wishes and thanks to Terry Dawson, our House Services Operative who will be retiring in Jun after 14 years of service, and Noel Dean, our Afternoon Security Porter who will be retiring in August, after 16 years of service. Last but not least we extend thanks and appreciation to two members of the house services team, who have been an integral part of domestic life at Girton for the last 35 years: Christine Wallace and Denise Collings. This is a year of considerable change, so it is encouraging to report that, even as we say farewell to some old friends, there has been the opportunity to welcome and congratulate a wide range of new colleagues. We are delighted to host three professorial academic visitorships this year. Two Helen Cam Visiting Fellows in the arts, humanities and social sciences: Professor Mike Berry, a leading scholar of urban studies and public policy at RMIT University
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in Australia, and Professor Christina Toren, Founding Director of the Centre for Pacific Studies and member of the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews. Professor Paul Tod joins us – from St John’s College, Oxford where he is Professor of Mathematical Physics – as the Brenda Ryman Visiting Fellow in the Sciences in Lent and Easter terms. Additionally, we welcome Dr James Moher, former trade union officer and expert in union history, as the Mary Amelia Cummins Harvey Visiting Fellow Commoner; he will be working on biographical material about Walter (Lord) Citrine, General Secretary of the TUC 1925-46. It is a pleasure to introduce several new members of the Official Fellowship: Dr James Wade, Fellow in English and Dr James Riley, Graduate Tutor and Lecturer in English; Dr Arnold Hunt and Dr Simone Maghenzani, Fellows in History; and our new Development Director when appointed. Our Research Fellows, always a source of intellectual stimulation, have a broad range of interests this year. Dr Sam Grimshaw is the Mitsubhushi Heavy Industries Senior Research Fellow in Turbomachinery; Trenholme Junghans, anthropologist, and Gabriele Badano, social theorist, hold Research Fellowships supported by the Independent Social Research Foundation at Girton and at the Centre for Research in Arts, Social Sciences and Humanties (CRASSH). We also welcome the election of five ByeFellows: Mr Gareth Wilson takes up the position of Director of Chapel Music and Assistant
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Director of Music; Dr Frisbee Sheffield, former Katharine Jex-Blake Research Fellow in Classics is elected to a Bye-Fellowship in Classics and Philosophy; Dr Amy Donovan retains a link with the College as Bye-Fellow and Director of Studies in Geography; Irit Katz joins us as Director of Studies in Architecture; and Dr Arik Kershenbaum, formerly a Post-doctoral Teaching Associate, has been elected to a Bye-Fellowship in Biological Sciences. Mlle Solène Lapierre joins us as the French Lectrice for the 2015-16 academic year. In the administrative and domestic departments that are so essential for all the College stands for and achieves, we have welcomed in recent months: Mr Steven Andrews as Maintenance and Contracts Manager; Ms Pauline Diggins as Personnel Officer; and Mrs Michelle Stanley as PA to the Mistress.
Fellows’ publications Publications by the Fellows and Officers of the College during 2014-15 include: P ABRAHAMS. (Joint) A Michelangelo Discovery – the Rothschild Bronzes and the Case for their Attribution, (Fitzwilliam Museum, 2015). C L ACERINI. (All joint) ‘Cerebral edema in children with diabetic ketoacidosis: vasogenic rather than cellular?’, Pediatr. Diabetes 15(4) (2014); ‘Psychological care of children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes’, Pediatr. Diabetes 15 (Suppl. 20) (2014), doi: 10.1111/pedi.12191; ‘Management of cystic fibrosis-related diabetes in children and adolescents’, ibid., doi: 10.1111/pedi.12178; ‘Postnatal penile growth concurrent with minipuberty predicts later sex-typed play behavior: evidence for neurobehavioral effects of the postnatal androgen surge in typically developing boys’, Horm. Behav. 69C (2015), doi: 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2015.01.002. H D ALLEN. (Joint) ‘Cork oak (Quercus suber) forests of western Mediterranean mountains: a plant community comparison’, ecologia mediterranea 40 (2014); (joint) ‘Applications of airborne lidar for the assessment of animal species diversity’, Methods in Ecology and Evolution 5 (2014), doi:10,1111/2041-210X.12219; ‘Overstorey and topographic effects on understories: evidence for linkage from cork oak (Quercus suber) forests in southern Spain’, Forest Ecology and Management 328 (2014), doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2014.05.009. M J ALLEN. (All joint) ‘Correlation between histopathologic, arthroscopic and magnetic resonance imaging findings in dogs with medial
coronoid disease’, Veterinary Surgery 44(4) (2015); ‘Establishing a critical-size mandibular defect model in growing pigs: characterization of spontaneous healing’, J. of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery 72(9) (2014); ‘Effect of an intervertebral disk spacer on stiffness after monocortical screw/polymethylmethacrylate fixation in simulated and cadaveric canine cervical vertebral columns’, Veterinary Surgery 43(8) (2014); ‘Issues related to Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees and clinical trials using privately owned animals’, ILAR Journal 55(1) (2014). M H ARDEN (Hon. Fellow 1995). Human Rights and European Law: Building New Legal Orders (OUP, 2015). F COOKE. ‘Infections in people with diabetes’, Medicine 43(1) (2015). A R DONOVAN. (All joint) ‘At the mercy of the mountain? Field stations and the culture of volcanology’, Environment and Planning A 47(1) (2015); ‘Modelling risk and risking models: the diffusive boundary between science and policy in volcanic risk assessment’, Geoforum 58 (2015); ‘Scientists’ views about lay perceptions of volcanic risk’, J. of Applied Volcanology 3(1) (2014); ‘Reactive halogens (BrO and OClO) detected in the plume of Soufrière Hills Volcano, Montserrat, during an eruptive hiatus’, Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems 15(8) (2014). J A S DUSINBERRE. ‘Arthur Ransome: beginning at the end’, Cambridge Literary Review 8/9 (2015). M GRAY. ‘Altering the landscape: Reassessing labour’s role in Las Vegas’ Hospitality Industry’ in
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A Hospitable World: Tourism and the Organisation of Work in Hotel Workplaces, ed. A Underthun and D Jordhaus-Lier (Routledge, 2014); (joint) ‘Universities in Crisis’, Cambridge J. of Regions, Economy and Society 7(2) (2014), doi:10.1093/cjres/rsu006. M N GRAYSON. (All joint) ‘Mechanistic insights into a BINOL-derived phosphoric acid-catalyzed asymmetric Pictet-Spengler reaction’, J. of Organic Chemistry 80 (2015), http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jo5028134; ‘Asymmetric boronate addition to o-quinone methides: ligand exchange, solvent effects and Lewis acid catalysis’, ibid., http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jo502616a; ‘Base mediated cascade rearrangements of aryl substituted diallyl ethers’, J. of Organic Chemistry, ibid., http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jo502403n. M GUITE. The Word in the Wilderness: A Poem a Day for Lent and Easter (Canterbury Press, 2014); 8 poems in The Bright Field: Readings, Reflections and Prayers for Ascension, Pentecost, Trinity and Ordinary Time, ed. M Percy (Canterbury Press, 2014); 10 reflections in Reflections on the Psalms, ed. I Adams et al. (Church House Publishing, 2015); Reflections for Daily Prayer Advent 2015 to the Eve of Advent 2016 (Church House Publishing, 2015). K HUGHES. (Both joint) ‘Estrogen receptor and signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 expression in equine mammary tumors’, Vet. Pathology 52(4) (2015); ‘Actin polymerization as a key innate immune effector mechanism to
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control Salmonella infection’, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 111(49) (2014). N J LANE. (Joint) The Status of Women in the Life Sciences (eLS. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2015), http://www.els.net, doi: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0003457.pub2. R LAWTHER. ‘Sublattices generated by root differences’, J. of Algebra 412 (2014); (joint) ‘Outer unipotent classes in automorphism groups of simple algebraic groups’, Proc. London Mathematical Society 109 (2014). J MARKS. ‘Welcome to the women’ in The BNY Mellon Boat Races Programme, April 11th 2015 (BRCL, 2015). K MOHADDES. (Both joint) ‘The differential effects of oil demand and supply shocks on the global economy’, Energy Economics 44 (2014); Debt, Inflation and Growth: Robust Estimation of Long-Run Effects in Dynamic Panel Data Models (Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Globalization and Monetary Policy Institute Working Paper No. 162). S PALMER. ‘Regulating unhealthy life styles in the UK and South Africa: constitutional issues’ in Regulating Tobacco, Alcohol and Unhealthy Foods: The Legal Issues, ed. T Voon et al. (Routledge, 2014); ‘Abortion and human rights’, European Human Rights Law Review (2014); ‘Max Mosley and the right to respect for private life’, Greek Public Law J. (2013). A PILIAVSKY. (Editor) Patronage as Politics in South Asia (CUP, 2014); ‘The “criminal tribe” in
India before the British’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 57(2) (2015); ‘India’s demotic democracy and its “depravities” in the ethnographic longue durée’ in Patronage as Politics in South Asia, ed. A Piliavsky (CUP, 2014); ‘Patronage and community in a society of thieves’, Contributions to Indian Sociology 49(2) (2015). J RUNDE. (All joint) ‘Uncovering unknown unknowns: towards a Baconian approach to management decision-making’, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 124(2) (2014); ‘Models of causal inference: imperfect but applicable is better than perfect but inapplicable’, Strategic Management Review 35(1) (2014); ‘De Finetti on uncertainty’, Cambridge J. of Economics 38(1) (2014). S J SMITH. ‘Owner occupation: at home in a spatial, financial paradox’, International J. of Housing Policy 15 (2015); (joint) ‘Geography and geographical practice’ in The SAGE Handbook of Human Geography, Part II, ed. R Lee et al. (Sage, video discussion, 2014). A M STRATHERN. O efeito etnográfico e outros ensaios [The Ethnographic Effect and Other Essays] (translation by I Dulley et al. of 16 articles and book chapters into Portuguese) (Cosac Naify, 2014); ‘Kinship as a relation’, L’Homme, 210 (2014); ‘Anthropological reasoning: some threads of thoughts’, HAU Journal of Ethnographic Theory 4(2) (2014); Introduction to Wives and Wanderers in a New Guinea Highlands Society: Women’s Lives in the Waghi valley by M Reay, ed. F Merlan (ANU Press, 2014).
D J THOMPSON. (Joint) ‘Prostima-fines and cropcontrol under Ptolemy VIII. BGU VI 1420 reconsidered in light of the new Schubartcolumn to P.Haun.inv. 407’, ZPE 190 (2014). L THORNE. (All joint) ‘Subgenomic promoter recognition by the norovirus RNA-dependent RNA polymerases’, Nucleic Acids Res. 43(1) (2015); ‘The nucleoside analogue Favipiravir drives norovirus lethal mutagenesis in vivo’, eLife (21 October 2014), 3:e03679; ‘The murine norovirus core subgenomic RNA promoter consists of a stable stemloop that can direct accurate initiation of RNA synthesis’, J. Virol. 89(2) (2015). H VAN NOORDEN. Playing Hesiod: The Myth of the Races in Classical Antiquity (CUP, 2014). M WARNOCK. Critical Reflections on Ownership, Critical Reflections on Human Rights and the Environment. (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2015). R WARREN. (All joint) ‘A case-control study to assess the impact of mammographic density on breast cancer risk in women aged 40-49 at intermediate familial risk’, Int J. Cancer 136(10) (2015); ‘Obesity and the outcome of young breast cancer patients in the UK: the POSH study’, Ann. Oncol. 26(1) (2015); ‘Mammographic density phenotypes and risk of breast cancer: a meta-analysis’, J. Natl. Cancer Inst. 106(5) (2014), pii: dju078; ‘Mammographic breast density refines Tyrer-Cuzick estimates of breast cancer risk in high-risk women: findings from the placebo arm of the international breast cancer intervention study – I’, Breast Cancer Res. 16(5) (2014).
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S WILLIAMS, ‘“They lived together as man and wife”: plebeian cohabitation, illegitimacy, and broken relationships in London, 1700-1840’ in Cohabitation and non-marital births in England and Wales, 1600-2012, ed. R Probert (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); ‘Support for the elderly during the “crisis” of the English old poor law’ in Population, Welfare and Economic Change in Britain, 1290-1834, ed. C Briggs et al. (Boydell Press, 2014). M V WRENN. ‘The social ontology of fear and neoliberalism’, Review of Social Economy 72(3) (2014); ‘Identity, identity politics, and neoliberalism’, Panoeconomicus 4 (2014); ‘Unveiling and deconstructing the enabling myths of neoliberalism through immanent critique’, J. of Economic Issues 48(2) (2014).
Music releases J WEST (Musician in residence). Musica Ferdinandea – ein Fest für Kaiser Ferdinand 1, Capella de la Torre /Katharina Bäuml (Tiroler Landesmuseum, Innsbruck); Claudio Monteverdi Vespers 1610, The Sixteen/Harry Christophers (Coro recordings).
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Post-doctoral Teaching Associates C COWIE. ‘Why companions-in-guilt arguments won’t work’, Philosophical Quarterly, 64 (2014); ‘In defence of instrumentalism about epistemic normativity’, Synthese, 191 (2014); ‘An explanatory challenge to normative nonnaturalists’, Res Philosophica (special issue) 91 (2014); ‘Good news for companions-in-guilt theorists: a master argument against companions-in-guilt strategies’, Australasian J. of Philosophy 93 (2015). A KERSHENBAUM. (First item sole author, others joint) ‘Entropy rate as a measure of animal vocal complexity’, Bioacoustics 23 (2014); ‘Animal vocal sequences: not the Markov chains we thought they were’, Proc. of the Royal Society B 281 (2014); ‘Acoustic sequences in non-human animals: a tutorial review and prospectus’, Biological Reviews (2014); ‘Genetic indications of landscape dispersal behaviour: a theoretical model and empirical test using the fire salamander’, Oecologia 175 (2014); ‘Male hyraxes increase song duration and syntax complexity in the presence of an audience’, Behavioral Ecology (2014).
Awards and distinctions ASHCROFT, F M (1971) appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List, for services to Medical Science and the Public Understanding of Science, June 2015.
CUNNIFFE, N J (Fellow 2009) has been awarded a Cambridge University Pilkington Teaching Award in recognition of his outstanding contribution to explaining mathematical biology to undergraduates, May 2015.
EDWARDS, D (1961) Received the Lapworth Medal from the Palaeontological Association, 2013. Elected to an Honorary Doctorate in the Faculty of Science and Technology at Uppsala University, 2014.
BOWDEN, S (1980) appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen’s Birthday Honours Diplomatic Service and Overseas List, for services to UK national security, June 2014.
DAVIES, M B (1973) appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire for services to Medical Research, June 2015.
FITZGERALD, S D (1986) elected Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (UK), September 2014.
BRADY, J P (1948) awarded the Hillman-Olness Award for Lifetime Service and Lasting Contribution to Global Child Health by the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2014. CHAN, H (1985) received the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Society’s 2015 Computer Science and Engineering Undergraduate Teaching Award, and was commended ‘for outstanding contributions to computing education through teaching, mentoring students, and service to the education community’. COLEMAN, J G (2011) presented with the Brenda Webb Award for Accompanists and Rex Stephens Award for Accompanists by the Royal Academy of Music, February 2015.
DUCKERING, L F (Murray 2005) became a Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA), 2013. DUCKWORTH, S D’O (1986) appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire, for services to policing in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List, June 2014. DURKAN, C (Fellow 2001) elected to the Fellowship of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), 2014. ECCLESHARE, J J (1970) appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire, for services to Children’s literature in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List June 2014. Also, elected to an honorary DLitt by the University of Worcester on 19 November 2014.
FORGAN, E A L (2009 Honorary Fellow) elected Honorary Fellow of the British Academy, July 2014. FRIEND, M (1969) appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for services to Music Education (London), June 2014. GAI, P L (1970) elected Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (UK), September 2014. GLANVILLE, P J (Fox-Robinson 1962) appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to the Decorative Arts and Arts Heritage, June 2015. GREENSTREET, H C (2011) Joseph Hodges Choate Memorial Fellowship for a year’s graduate study at Harvard University (2014-15).
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GRENVILLE, J C (1977) appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for services to Higher Education (York, North Yorkshire), June 2014. HARRIS, A B (Sturley 1956) appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire for services to the British Horse Society and to Equestrian Sport in Yorkshire. HOBHOUSE, P (Chichester-Clark 1948) appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for services to British Gardening, June 2014. KHARAS, Z (1970) appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for services to Business and Charity (London), June 2015. MILLER, E J ( Wilson 1941) has had her papers placed in the University Library at Illinois State University USA, 2014. PLANT, M J (Dirkin 1971) appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for services to General Practice (London), June 2014.
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PREECE, J C (1995) appointed Officer of the the Order of the British Empire in the New Year’s Honours List for Services to Children, January 2015. PUGH, K E (Burton 1980) appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire for services to Mental Health of Children and Young People, June 2015. THEMANS-WARWICK, C H (Warwick 1992) elected Fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners (FRCGP) in 2014. SCHELLHORN, M T (1995) elected Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Musicians, January 2015. WARREN, R M L (Copping 1960; Fellow 1999) awarded the CRUK Transitional Cancer Research Prize 2014 IBIS team. WHELAN, J M (1982) appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for services to public finance, June 2014.
Further Academic and Professional Qualifications CARTMEL, J W (1980) PhD from University of Wales, November 2014. Thesis title: The application of the EFQM Excellence Model within the UK Further Education Sector. GRAY, M (Amelia Cummings Harvey Visiting Fellow, 2005) awarded DLitt by University of York for his body of published works. GUSTAR, A J (1983) PhD from the Open University, 2014. Thesis title: Statistics in Historical Musicology. THEMANS-WARWICK, C H (Warwick 1992) gained an MA Education in Clinical Setting, University of Birmingham, 2013.
University and College awards Cambridge University Further Degrees and Awards
MBA: X Yue
College Awards
MFin: Z Ding, H El-Gomati, B Su
College Competition Prizes
MMath: E Jakobsons
Hammond Science Communication Prize: Sophie Moss (Judges’ Prize); Sebastian Mizera (Second Prize and Audience Prize); Rishabh Bhargava (Abstract Prize), Stefano Vianello (Pathology Prize) donated by Suzy Lishman (1986 Medical Sciences).
University Further Awards PhD: H Al-Taie, E J Banham-Hall, M A Blake, T-J Chen, P Constantinou, B Cooke, A S Deonarine, A Erbes, A Guzman, E J S Inns, R Moita Santos, M E Morgan, G Ng, M O Oseni, T S Otterson, C H H Schulte, S W Stark, T H Uth
MASt: R W Irvine, T Islam, L Kubon, G Pope, Y P Tsoi MMus: J S Stein-Supanich University Prizes for Academic Excellence
MRes: J Gardner MPhil: S Abujudeh, L Almenar Fernandez, S Ams, E Aslan-Levy, K Bennett, L Birdsall Strong, N Bte Abu Talib, C Buckle, A Burke, C Capaskis, C H Chong, K Chouksey, M O D Costa, A Day, A R V R Doobay, S Fairbanks, W Fang, N C Fernando, M A Garcia Villamil, A J Hawken, C Hicks, F Hong, C Jing, A Kohli, F J A Lane, V S Leromin, L LeroyWarnier, L E McCracken, A J Main, T Matanda, R Merchant, Z Moktar, B W A Nemeh, V Okin, I Olan, L R Oppenheimer, K I Ortmann, K Osborn, A S Park, D T Phan, A Pytka, K G Reddy, J Sheahan, S Smirnova, A Strek, S Tinhu, V Van Hassel, K E Veenstra, S Weston, S C Whittam, C Wilk, A G Williamson, S Yan, W Zhang, Z Zhou, E Zuniga MB: J S Aris Chandran
The H A Turner Prize: S Shah The Kurt Hahn Prize: J M Ginn The Institution of Civil Engineers Baker Prize: C Ellery The Brewer Hall Poetry Prize – The Emmanuel College competition for all undergraduates of the University: B Jones
Humanities Writing Competition Prize: the First Prize in this national competition has been awarded to Joe Court (Latymer Upper School) and Honor Cargill-Martin (St Paul’s Girls’ School). The runners-up were Amy Martin (Wellington College) and Holly Smith (Coombe Sixth Form College). Six other impressive entries won commendations from the judging panel; these were Olivia Frances Collier (Oundle School), James Lamming (St Paul’s School), Eleanor Meats (Dr Challoners High School), Clare Tierney (The Catholic High School, Chester), Tife Kusoro (Cooper’s Company and Coborn School) and Jennifer Lazarus (South Hampstead High School). Jane Martin Poetry Prize: Theophilus Kwek has won the first place in the National 2015 Jane Martin Poetry Prize and Charlotte Buckley has been selected for the second prize.
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Mountford Humanities and Arts Communication Prize: Sarah Weston (Best abstract and Audience Prize), Olivia Crawford (Lawrence Room Prize), Morgan Seag (Audience Prize), Charlotte Wilk (Originality Prize), Adam Patel (Judges’ Prize).
John Bowyer Buckley: K E Humphris, J Lowe, E Nelmes, C Thorpe M T Meyer: G Pope Edith Lydia Johns: R H G Howard, B Simpson
Ridding Reading Prize: Ben Redwood. Morwenna Hawkins was specially commended for her reading of a poem by John Donne.
Postgraduate Prizes
Rima Alamuddin Prize: T McNair
Medicine Edith Neal: K E Humphris
Tom Mansfield Memorial Prize: Rory Heaton Wrigley Prize: I G Harris Graduate Awards Graduate Research Scholarships (including Irene Hallinan): Bryce-Jebb, Joyce Biddle, Doris Russell and Diane Worzala: A Bowles M M Dunlop and Joyce Biddle: R A Knighton J E Cairnes and Doris Woodall: A H Park CHESS: A Scoica The Sidney and Marguerite Cody Studentship: T E May Stribling Award: T V Ball, H K Jameson
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Mathematics Gertrude Mather Jackson: G Pope
Veterinary Medicine Ming Yang Lee: R H G Howard, B Simpson Thomas and Elizabeth Walton: J Lowe, E Nelmes, C Thorpe Undergraduate Scholarships Lilias Sophia Ashworth Hallett: K Yoo, C Seale Sir Arthur Arnold: M Harry, A D Rossiter, R N Russo Barbara Bodichon: A Desai, L G Dunsmore, H K Jameson, O Kwasnicka, R G S Lane, C E Murphy, G Murray, S Shah John Bowyer Buckley: D S Chandrabose, S E Chen, I P Savitsky, S D Vianello, I Abbass Rosalind, Lady Carlisle: O Gaunt, K Hall, P Sobanda
Jane Chessar: A Mirosevic-Sorgo Emily Davies: V Bajpai, A De Ville, E Dinsdale-Cooley, C Ellery, J Farnung, A R Halstead, W P Lohrmann, R Shah, R J Williams Angela Dunn-Gardiner: L Rice, H J Lee Sir Francis Goldsmid: P Mensah Mary Graham: S Bhuckory, M E Nelson Amelia Gurney: C J E Bevin Mary Gurney: J Stanyard Russell Gurney: K Bickley, E L Hayward, J Pennell Florence Ethel Gwyn: B Lundy, R L McNally, J Peters, C Yates Mary Higgins: S R J Dolton, H Elder-Vass, A Gilbey, M Kingston Jane Hunter: K Pavlyuk, S Ambadkar Alice Violet Jenkinson: G E A Darling, A M Ulianova Edith Lydia Johns: J A Cory-Wright, T Newman, D Romeu, S A Taylor, H Pitts Mary Ann Leighton: J K Tong William Menzies: D Thomas M T Meyer: T V Ball, R A I Deo, M Lehmkuehler, O McEnteggart, S A Mizera, L C Schmieding Mary Sparke: K R Stephens Todd Memorial: J M Ginn, M P Hattam, G McKelvey Henry Tomkinson: T Gemunden, J J K Koh, J S Raven, Z Stavrinou, E J West, A C Chong Kwan Sophia Turle: M T Schonle, C W Lim
Undergraduate Prizes Mary Arden Prize for Law: G E A Darling The Appleton Cup: D S Chandrabose Laurie Hart Memorial Prize: H K Jameson Ellen McArthur Prizes: H Elder-Vass, M Harry, O Kwasnicka, R L McNally, J Pennell, J Peters, S Shah, R J Williams Thérèse Montefiore Memorial Prize: P Mensah Archeology and Anthropology: H J Lee Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic Isabella Crawshaw: A Gilbey Asian Middle Eastern Studies Isabella Crawshaw: A M Ulianova Classics Mary Bennett: C J E Bevin Ethel Gavin: D Thomas Hilda Richardson: A Mirosevic-Sorgo Alice Zimmern: J Stanyard Economics Lilian Knowles: A Desai, S Shah J V Robinson: R Shah, R J Williams Thomas and Elizabeth Walton: S R J Dolton, H Elder-Vass
Engineering Christina Barnard: H K Jameson, R N Russo, E J West Isabella Crawshaw: A C Chong Kwan Jane Catherine Gamble: C E Murphy Satyanarayana Madabhushi: A D Rossiter Raemakers: V Bajpai, C Ellery, J S Raven English Eileen Alexander: G Murray Charity Reeves: G Murray, C Seale, P Sobanda Geography Margaret Anderson: A R Halstead Janet Chamberlain: A R Halstead, J Howe History Margaret Hastings: R L McNally, J Peters Lilian Knowles: J Pennell, K Bickley Eileen Power: C Yates, B Lundy, E L Hayward
Mathematics Gertrude Mather Jackson: T V Ball, R A I Deo, O McEnteggart, S A Mizera May Smithells: M Lehmkuehler, L C Schmieding Medical Sciences Appleton Cup: D S Chandrabose Ming Yang Lee: D Romeu, J Cory Wright Edith Neal: D S Chandrabose, S E Chen, S A Taylor Thomas and Elizabeth Walton: I Abbass, T Newman Modern and Medieval Languages Joseph Brandebourg: M P Hattam, G McKelvey Elizabeth Hill: K Pavlyuk Fanny Metcalfe: S Ambadkar Johanna Stevenson: J M Ginn Music Christina Barnard: C W Lim Phyllis Tillyard: M T Schönle
Human, Social and Political Sciences Christina Barnard: O Gaunt Raemakers: L Rice
Natural Sciences (Biological) Marion Bidder: I Savitsky Ellen Delf-Smith: S Vianello
Law Margaret Hastings: S Bhuckory Lilian Knowles: G E A Darling, J J K Koh
Natural Sciences (Physical) Layla Adib: R G S Lane, W P Lohrmann, Z Stavrinou Gwendolen Crewson: M Kingston, M E Nelson, K R Stephens, J K Tong Ida Freund: L G Dunsmore, J Farnung, T Gemunden, K Hall
Linguistics Isabella Crawshaw: K Yoo
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Politics, Psychology and Sociology Jane Catherine Gamble: M Harry, P Mensah Social Anthropology Isabella Crawshaw: E Dinsdale Cooley Phyllis Tillyard: O Kwasnicka Veterinary Medicine Ming Yang Lee: H Pitts Music Awards College Music Scholarship: M T Schönle Daphne Bird Instrumental Awards: J R Bourne, K F Bucher, D H C Poos Jill Vlasto Choral Awards: R Copeland London Girton Association Music Award: A M Haupt Siem Prize: Cheng Wei Lim Travel Awards College Travel Scholarship: J S D Jukes, H J Lee Adela Marion Adam: M W Ibrahimi K J Baker: M Lees, T Livesey J K Brightwell: K M Arnold, J A Cory-Wright, I Coulson, R E Hazzard, A S Kuligowska, S Maclean, M Pipan, P Savjani, K Spielmeyer-Payne Rosemary Delbridge: A E Emery Judith Eccleshare: A R Halstead, S A Taylor
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E M and F A Kirkpatrick: D Slinn Edith Helen Major: A Braybrook, C E Murphy Mary Morrison: A Mirosevic-Sorgo, S A Mizera, W Moss, M E Nelson, H Schober, A Woolgar E M Pooley: A English Charlotte Rycroft: L H Chaplain, B J Redwood, J Stanyard Marina Shakich Travel: A J Clark, I Diver, T M Nye Dorothy Tempest Travel Award: R S Bhopal, A De Ville, E L Hayward, J O’Reilly Monica Wilson: L Rice Sports Awards American Football: E W Bransden Badminton, Rowing and Rugby: W Moss Cricket: T D Day Cross Country and Marathon Running: E Gazeley, R Woolfe Dancesport: R S Hartley Young Football: R L Graves Golf: T P Grew Gymnastics: R Konda Hockey: C Webster, L Whiteley Lacrosse: H V Ronald Mixed Martial Arts and Modern Pentathlon: J K Tong Netball: J E Bramley Road Running and Duathlon: D A Moore Rowing: H E Game, R N Russo Rugby Union: A Donegan Squash: M Lees
Swimming: J W Fountain Women’s Football: E S Vriend
Appointments of Alumni and Fellows 1962
STROUTS, H became a Trustee for Action around Bethlehem Children with Disability.
1968
GROVER, M K (Morgan) appointed Chair of Reading Sheffield.
1969
OAKESHOTT, P (Poulton) elected to a personal chair: Professor of General Practice at St George’s, University of London.
1975
SPRINGMAN, S M elected to the position of Rector at ETH Zürich from January 2015.
1980
CARTMEL, J W appointed Principal, PSA Academy, London, with effect from 21 July 2014.
1981
BUBBEAR, T B (Allen) appointed Chargé d’Affaires (Acting Ambassador) at the British Embassy in Budapest, April 2015.
1981
KEARNEY, K L appointed Treasurer of Stanford University, 1 October 2014.
1984
CLARKE, S C appointed President of the British Cardiovascular Society, with effect from June 2015.
1985
CAWOOD, I J appointed Reader in Modern History at Newman University, Birmingham.
1986
DUCKWORTH, S D’O appointed Honorary Colonel of the Royal Military Police by Her Majesty the Queen, December 2012.
1986
FREEMAN, G W appointed first Minister for Life Sciences, a joint Ministerial role in the Department of Business and Innovation and the Department of Health, by the Conservative Government (July 2014).
1989
ALLEN, L V C (Murray) appointed Senior Teaching Associate in the Department of Veterinary Medicine, University of Cambridge, from October 2014.
1992
THEMANS-WARWICK, C H (Warwick) appointed Deputy Head of GP School, Health Education Kent, Surrey and Susses (HEKSS).
1995
SCHELLHORN, M T appointed Director of Studies in Music at St Edmund’s College, Cambridge with effect from 1 October 2014.
2000
LOH, N-L N co-founded PPP Laser Global, Asia’s first aesthetic retail chain of Laser clinics.
2008
ROWETT, E C appointed Ministry Training Associate at Christ Church Bromley.
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Alumni publications BENNETT, A (1981) Bamboo Heart (Monsoon Books, 2014).
Social World (OUP, 2013 (paperback version 2015)).
BERRY, B M (Hughes-Owens, 1964). Nights of the Road (Midi Berry, 2015, www.nightsoftheroad.com).
HARVEY, S P J (Fellow, 1966-71). Domesday: Book of Judgement (OUP, 2014).
BOND, W M (1958). ‘Mporokoso, Chinsali, Bancroft, Mongu, Lusaka, Kitwe’ in From the Cam to the Zambezi: Colonial Service and the Path to the New Zambia, ed. T Schur (IB Tauris 2015).
GOSALL, G S (1989). The Doctor’s Guide to Critical Appraisal (4th ed., PasTest, 2015).
CAWOOD, I J (1985). Joseph Chamberlain: International Statesman, National Leader and Local Icon (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). CHALONER, P A (1970). Organic Chemistry: A Mechanistic Approach (Taylor Francis, 2014). DIBOSA, D (1986). (Joint) Post-Critical Museology: Theory and Practice in the Art Museum (Routledge, 2013). FAIRWEATHER, J A (Fellow, 1973-76). Bishop Osmund: A Missionary to Sweden in the Late Viking Age (Skara Stiftshistoriska Sällskap [Skara Historical Society] 2014). FURNISS, C G (1993). The Year of The Rat (Simon and Schuster, 2014). GILBERT, M P (1961). Joint Commitment: How We Make the
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HEWLETT, S A (1964). Executive Presence: The Missing Link Between Merit and Success (Harper Collins, 2014).
POLLARD, L P Robertson, (1962). The Quest for Classical Greece: Early Modern Travel to the Greek World (IB Tauris, 2015). RICHES, M N (Stanton, 1990). The Girl Who Wouldn’t Die (Maze – Harper Collins, 2015). STROUTS, H (1962). (Joint) Wings over the Western Front: The First World War Diaries of Collingwood Ingram (Day Books, 2014).
LEE, S F (Lim, 1977). Foreword to Devotion & Desire: Cross-Cultural Art in Asia (Asian Civilisations Museum, 2013).
THEMANS-WARWICK, C H (Warwick 1992). ‘How international medical graduates view their learning needs for UK GP training’, Education for Primary Care 25(2) (2014).
LIM, H H (Tan, 1978). Government in Business: Friend or Foe? (Straits Times Press, 2014).
TRUSTED, M H (1974). Baroque and Later Ivories (Victoria and Albert Museum, 2013).
LIM, Y T K (1986). Disciplinary Intuitions and the Design of Learning Environments (Springer Science+Business Media, 2014).
VYLETA, D M (1994). Crooked Maid (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014).
NANSON, A (1983). Deep Time (Hawthorn Press, 2015).
ZHANG, Z (2012). (Joint) The UK Alternative Finance Industry Report 2014 (Univ. of Cambridge and Nesta).
PALMER, S K C (Hull, 1975). At Home with the Soanes: Upstairs, Downstairs in 19th Century London (Pimpernel Press, 2015).
For more information on Alumni publications please visit our website: http://www.girton.cam.ac.uk/public ations/alumni-publications
Update your details
Awards, Degrees and Honours, with dates
Please complete both sides of this form and return to: Freepost RTJS-ZSHH-ZHBS, The Alumni Officer, The Development Office, Girton College, Cambridge CB3 0JG (please affix stamp if posting from outside the UK). Alternatively, you can update your details online at: www.girton.cam.ac.uk/alumni/update-your-details
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Career News If you have changed your job or started training in the past year, please provide details here. New position/training, with date of commencement
Personal details Book title................................................................................................................................ Former Name (if applicable) ...................................................................................... Year of Matriculation ..................................................................................................... Have we used your correct, full postal address to send this copy of The Year? If not, please notify us of any changes to your contact details: Address ................................................................................................................................... ...................................................................................................................................................... ...................................................................................................................................................... .......................................................................... Postcode ...................................................
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Name of new employer/institution ......................................................................................................................................................
New appointments to commitees, directorships etc. in industry, public or voluntary sectors, with date of commencement ...................................................................................................................................................... ......................................................................................................................................................
New or Unreported Publications Books Title ........................................................................................................................... Publisher ..................................................... Date of publication
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Chapter in book Chapter title ..............................................................................
Telephone number(s)......................................................................................................
Book title................................................................................................................................
Email .........................................................................................................................................
Publisher ..................................................... Date of publication
News and Life events (2016/17, or unreported earlier) These will be recorded in next year’s edition of The Year. We would welcome a photograph of these events – please send to alumni@girton.cam.ac.uk.
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Article Title .......................................................................................................................... Journal ..................................................................................................................................... Number ............................... Year ........................ Page numbers
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Other personal information not already recorded
Marriages/Civil Partnerships
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Marriage/partnership date
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Partner name.......................................................................................................................
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If your partner is a Girtonian, please give us their year of matriculation ........................................................ Children born within the year Name of Child .................................................................................................................... DOB
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M/F
Name of Child .................................................................................................................... DOB
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We are interested to hear about any of your personal and career news that has not already been reported elsewhere on this form. Even if we cannot publish it in The Year for lack of space, it will be recorded and retained. Please let us have your new information as changes occur, and before the end of June 2016 for inclusion in the next edition of The Year. Please feel free to email the details to alumni@girton.cam.ac.uk or use the online form at www.girton.cam.ac.uk/alumni/update-your-details if you prefer.
M/F
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Events
Roll of Alumni Dinner and Weekend Booking Form I wish to purchase:
Roll of Alumni Dinner and Weekend
Dinner ticket(s) @ £47.50 per person
£ ...........................................
The Roll of Alumni Dinner is open to all Girtonians and their guests.
Rooms @ £60 per person per night for the night(s) of: Friday / Saturday / Sunday (circle)
£ ...........................................
If you would like to help to organise a reunion for your year or for any special group such as a particular subject or society, please get in touch with Dr Emma Cornwall, the Alumni Officer, for assistance.
Total:
£ ...........................................
Draft programme of events 24 September 2016 Library Talk There will be a talk for Girtonians and their guests at 11.00 (details TBC later in the year) Lawrence Room Talk There will be a talk for Girtonians and their guests at 14.00 (details TBC later in the year) People’s Portraits Reception The People’s Portraits will be holding a Reception in the Fellows’ Rooms at 16.00 to receive a new portrait for the People’s Portraits at Girton Exhibition.
I wish to reserve: Lunch in the Cafeteria (cash till)
Quantity: ...........................................
Library Talk (free)
Quantity: ...........................................
Lawrence Room Talk (free)
Quantity: ...........................................
People’s Portraits Talk (free)
Quantity: ...........................................
Concert (Retiring collection)
Quantity: ...........................................
Gardens Talk (free) (Sunday)
Quantity: ...........................................
Title ................................ Preferred first name .................................................................. Surname ................................................................................................................................... Previous name (if applicable) ........................................................................................... Address ..................................................................................................................................... ...................................................................................................................................................... ..........................................................................
Postcode ......................................................
Telephone number(s) ........................................................................................................... Afternoon Tea From 15.30 (details TBC on the day)
Email........................................................................................................................................... Name of Guest (if applicable)
A Musical Event A Musical performance will follow afternoon tea (details TBC later in the year) Dinner in the Hall 19.00 for 19.30 We are particularly pleased to be hosting reunion tables for those who matriculated in 1956, 1966 and 1976
Title ................................ Preferred first name .................................................................. Surname ................................................................................................................................... Special dietary requirements (e.g. vegetarian, food allergy etc.) Your Name ............................................................................................................................... Dietary requirement ............................................................................................................. I /we would like to be seated near (if this is possible)
25 September 2016 Garden Talk There will be a talk for Girtonians and their guests at 10.30 (details TBC later in the year) Please return by 10 September 2016 to: Emma Cornwall, Alumni Officer, Freepost RTJS-ZSHH-ZHBS, The Development Office, Girton College, Cambridge CB3 0JG
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I enclose my cheque for £ .............................. made payable to Girton College
Payment by credit/debit card: Card type (Visa, MasterCard etc) ................................................................................... Card number (16 digit number on card) ..................................................................... Expiry date
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Valid from date
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Issue no. (Maestro/Switch) ................................................................................................ Security number (last three digits on reverse of card) ........................................... Signed ................................................................................................. Date ........ /........ /........
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Supporting Girton: A Great Campaign In 2012, the College launched its 150th anniversary campaign, A Great Campaign, which hopes to secure a sustainable financial future for Girton by raising £50 million through a mixture of donations and legacy pledges. Our main aim is to build the Unrestricted Permanent Endowment Capital Fund, which with our investment assets, currently amounts to around one third of the Cambridge average. These gifts will allow us to direct the monies where they are most needed, fund both undergraduate and graduate bursaries, support our aim to widen participation and underpin our students’ time at the College. To stay at the leading edge of a world class educational institution it is vital that we secure and sustain a skilled, caring and diverse Fellowship to ensure that the education we provide remains of the highest quality. The funds raised for the Scholarly Excellence component of A Great Campaign helps to achieve this by making sure our teaching offer is flexible and generous. Girton’s historic setting, with our extensive gardens and grounds, our many and varied collections, and our on-site sports facilities, have provided the space and stimulation for generations of students to thrive and grow. A gift to the Living and Learning Environment helps support this element of College life. Recognising your generosity To acknowledge your support, for the lifetime of A Great Campaign, we have established various ways of recognising and honouring our donors. All donors will be listed in the Development Newsletter and online each year (unless anonymity is requested). • Individuals who donate £500 become Members of A Great Campaign. Members will receive an enamelled pin badge and will be invited to occasional special events including a biennial summer garden party. Donors who give £500 or more will also be recorded on a donor board in Ash Court. • Those who pledge £5,000 will become members of our Benslow Circle, named to recall Girton’s first home, Benslow House in Hitchin, where the first five ‘Girton Pioneers’ studied. They will receive an enamelled pin badge, and will be invited to the annual ceremony of the Commemoration of Benefactors and Foundation Dinner.
• Alumni and Supporters who pledge £10,000 will become Friends of A Great Campaign. Friends will receive a bronze lapel pin, and will be invited to the annual ceremony of the Commemoration of Benefactors and Foundation Dinner. Their names will be recorded on a donor board in the main College. • Individuals who pledge £50,000 will become members of the Jubilee Circle. Members will receive a silver and green enamelled pin badge, an invitation to the annual Commemoration of Benefactors and Foundation Dinner, and will also receive invitations to occasional special events hosted by the Mistress. • Donors who pledge £100,000 will become Patrons of A Great Campaign. Patrons will receive a silver lapel pin, will be invited to the annual ceremony of the Commemoration of Benefactors and Foundation Dinner, and will also receive invitations to occasional special events hosted by the Mistress. • Donors who give £500,000 or more to Girton become eligible for election by the College Council to a Barbara Bodichon Foundation Fellowship. These Fellows are invited to a number of special events each year, are listed in the University Reporter, and will receive a gold lapel pin. More details can be found on our website at www.girton.cam.ac.uk/supporters. If you wish to offer your support, please see the donation form on the next page or alternatively you can go online and donate directly via our pages on www.girton.cam.ac.uk/giving. While gifts to the Unrestricted General Endowment are encouraged as they give the College the most flexibility, donations to other aspects of College life are also most welcome. Where an element of College life is not specifically mentioned on the donation form please tick ‘Other’ and specify where you would wish you donation to be directed (for example, Lawrence Room, Sports Awards). If you have any queries, or require more information, you can contact us by email on development@girton.cam.ac.uk or you can telephone us on +44 (0)1223 766672.
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Giving to Girton
Card number (16 digit number on card) .....................................................................
I wish my donation to support A Great Campaign Financial Sustainability Unrestricted Permanent Endowment Capital Undergraduate Bursaries Graduate Research Scholarships Girton Access Fund Personal Development Scholarly Excellence Teaching Support Fund (General) Teaching Support (for a specific subject, please specify) ............................... The Living and Learning Environment The Living Environment (Buildings) Other (Please specify) ...................................................................................................
Expiry date
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Valid from date
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Issue no. (Maestro/Switch) ................................................................................................ Security number (last three digits on reverse of card) ........................................... Signed ................................................................................................. Date ........ /........ /........ Donors to A Great Campaign will be listed in a College publication. If you do not wish your name to appear, please tick this box. IMPORTANT: Please also sign the Gift Aid form if you are a UK taxpayer. Gift Aid Declaration I am a UK taxpayer paying tax at the basic rate or above. Please treat all donations I have made in this tax year to Girton College (Registered Charity Number 1137541), and in the previous four tax years, and all donations I make from the date of this declaration, as Gift Aid donations, until I notify you otherwise.
Leave a Legacy I would like to receive more information about leaving a legacy to Girton College I would like to have a confidential discussion with a member of the Development Office about leaving a legacy to Girton College I have already included a legacy to Girton College in my Will. The approximate value of my bequest is £..................................... (optional)
I confirm I have paid or will pay an amount of Income Tax and/or Capital Gains Tax for each tax year (6 April to 5 April) that is at least equal to the amount of tax that all the charities or Community Amateur Sports Clubs (CASCs) that I donate to will reclaim on my gifts for that tax year.
Regular Gift By Standing Order (PLEASE DO NOT RETURN THIS FORM TO YOUR BANK)
I understand that other taxes such as VAT and Council Tax do not qualify and that the charity will reclaim 25p of tax on every £1 that I have given.
To the Manager, (insert name of bank) .............................................................Bank
Name .............................................................. Year of Matriculation
Bank Address ..........................................................................................................................
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Address .....................................................................................................................................
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Account number ................................................................. Sort Code ............................ Please pay the
Monthly
Quarterly
Annual sum of £ .........................
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Postcode ......................................................
commencing on ............................................... ending on ...............................................
Telephone .................................................................................................................................
To Girton College, Cambridge, Account number 40207322 at Barclays Bank PLC, St Andrew’s Street, Cambridge CB2 3AA (sort code 20-17-19)
Email...........................................................................................................................................
Signed ................................................................................................. Date ........ /........ /........
Signature .......................................................................................... Date
Regular Gift – Direct Debit You can set up a direct debit online by visiting www.girton.cam.ac.uk/giving
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Final Benefit Tax Cost to to Reclaim Donor Girton
Gift Amount
Gift Aid
Cash Gift
£100
–
–
£100
£100
£100
£25
–
£100
£125
Account Number: 40207322 Sort Code: 20-17-19 Barclays Bank PLC, St Andrew’s Street, Cambridge CB2 3AA SWIFTBIC:BARCGB22 / IBAN: GB53 BARC 2017 1940 207322
Cash Gift with Gift Aid, Basic Rate Taxpayer Cash Gift with Gift Aid, Higher Rate Taxpayer
£100
£25
£25
£75
£125
Please notify the College when you have made your donation.
Cash Gift with Gift Aid, Additional Rate Taxpayer
£100
£25
One-off or Regular Gift – Bank Transfer To donate via bank transfer, please add your last name and first name (space permitting) to the payment reference and transfer to the following:
One-off Gift I enclose a cheque for ....................................... made payable to Girton College, Cambridge Or, I wish to make a donation by credit/debit card: Please debit the sum of .......................................... from my account. Card type (Visa, MasterCard etc) ...................................................................................
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£31.25 £68.75
£125
Please return the completed donation form and Gift Aid declaration (if appropriate) to Freepost RTJS-ZSHH-ZHBS, The Development Office, Girton College, Cambridge CB3 0JG. (Please affix stamp if posting from outside the UK.) Alternatively you can email the form to development@girton.cam.ac.uk.
Girton College Huntingdon Road Cambridge CB3 0JG 01223 338999 www.girton.cam.ac.uk