2015 News Highlights

Liz Osman

Wonderland Week

In late September, Homerton College played host to the UK’s largest celebration of the 150th Anniversary of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. ‘Wonderland Week’ combined the largest academic conference on Alice yet held with a number of other events held around Cambridge.

The sudden appearance (and equally abrupt disappearance) ofanimatronic smoking caterpillars, human-sized rabbits, and conference delegates from around the world gave the College a curiouser and curiouser feel throughout the week.

The core of Wonderland Week was the Alice through the Ages conference, organised jointly by Dr Zoe Jaques and Professor Maria Nikolajeva (both Fellows at Homerton in children’s literature). The Conference celebrated the enduring legacy of Carroll, Alice, and Wonderland over the past 150 years, and covered topics as diverse as female agency, Alice and neurodevelopment, and Russian translations of Alice.

Plenary Lectures were given by Professor Dame Gillian Beer (University ofCambridge), Professor Jan Susina (University ofIllinois) and Dr Kiera Vaclavik (Queen Mary, University of London). Professor Beer explored how to situate Alice’s conversations in Wonderland within a pedagogical context, whilst Professor Susina spoke on comparisons between Lewis Carroll and Walt Disney. Closing the conference, Dr Vaclavik gave a lecture Alice as a fashion icon through her history, both on and off the page.

Brian Sibley, the President of the Lewis Carroll Society UK, praised “the diversity of opportunity to explore so many aspects of Alice” and thanked the organisers for “the wonderful opportunity to celebrate Messrs Dodgson, and Carroll, and Tenniel, and their Alice”.

Professor Dame Gillian Beer gives the Plenary Lecture.

Conference delegates were also treated to a sumptuous banquet in the Victorian Great Hall, with a menu featuring mock “Mock Turtle Soup” as part of a host of Wonderland-inspired dishes. Artist William Stok kindly displayed his Alicethemed murals along the walls of the Great Hall for the Banquet, depicting a range of Wonderland scenes and characters.

A packed schedule of events had been built around the Conference. Homerton welcomed the UK’s leading cello octet, Cellophony, to perform a specially commissioned musical version of Alice in Wonderland. Cellophony have gained critical and popular acclaim for their mastery of both the standard cello repertoire, and an eclectic collection of exclusive adaptations. This musical Alice was written by Cellophony founder and director Richard Birchall, seeking inspiration from Schubert, Strauss, and Prokofiev, amongst others. The (necessarily abridged!) story was narrated by the Principal.

Venues around Cambridge took part in Wonderland Week, with The Arts Picturehouse cinema showing a double bill of the oldest and newest Alice in Wonderland films. Cecil Hepworth’s

1903 version was the longest film that had been produced in England at the time at 12 minutes long (only eight ofwhich survive). This was followed by Tim Burton’s double Oscar-winning 2010 adaptation, which starred Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter.

The Fitzwilliam Museum hosted an exhibition on the ‘Fantastical Victorians’, which permitted close consultation of materials which inspired the imagination of a culture deeply interested in the magical, the surreal, and the wonderful. Exhibits included sketches by Edward Lear, and an original handwritten letter from Carroll himself.

The Children’s Literature Special Interest Group of the English Association sponsored a “Wonderland in the Classroom” workshop for teachers and trainees, held in the Faculty of Education. This was followed by a round table discussion with children’s authors John Vernon Lord, Catherine Rizzo and Marcia Williams.

Homerton’s own Wonderland Tea Party provided the grand finale to the week. With

the Great Hall packed to the rafters, the guests were treated to a suitably eclectic mix of food, entertainment and company. Tea-cup rides, flamingo croquet and Victorian jazz tunes in the grounds were complemented by afternoon tea and a giant hookah-smoking caterpillar in the Great Hall. Many guests took the opportunity dress up, with several Mad Hatters, White Rabbits, and Alices in attendance, along with a particularly impressive Duchess (with baby pig!).

Professor Geoff Ward commented: “Wonderland Week has been a fabulous way to celebrate Lewis Carroll’s brilliant, weird, wonderful and endlessly influential book. Serious scholarship and research underpinned the whole week, and the organisers worked hard to ensure that there was fun in the scholarly parts, and scholarship in the fun parts.

“The myriad events gave this truly memorable week a richness beyond what even the most highprofile conference can readily muster, and all that remains to be said is, roll on Alice 200!”

New boat launched for Homerton College Boat Club

In June, Homerton College Boat Club celebrated the launch of the first new boat for three years with a ceremony by the Cam, during the May Bumps.

Petaluma’s maiden voyage was rowed by the Men’s First Eight, who successfully ‘bumped’ on the final day, having held offa chasing crew laden with University-level rowers the previous day.

The College and the Homerton Union of Students contributed to the cost, and HCBC raised funds from donors through a 24-hour sponsored row on indoor rowing machines, live-streamed on the web. It was initially hoped that enough money would be raised to purchase a second-hand boat to replace the aging (though much loved) Lady Hilary, but in the end, thanks to a tremendous donation from David and Lyan Huntley, in addition to other donations already pledged, it was possible to purchase a brand new Janousek boat.

David Huntley said, “I’m a rower myself, and I was moved by the students’ efforts to raise funds – all-night sponsored ergs included. But I thought: they shouldn’t be doing all this for a secondhand boat. Homerton deserves a new boat”. David and Lyan are parents of Alice, a current Homertonian rower in the Women’s First Eight. Petaluma is named after the Huntleys’ home town in California.

Philip Stephenson, Fellow of the College and Senior Treasurer of HCBC, said “the Club is hugely grateful to David and Lyan for this brilliant gift. Petaluma is a superb boat and a worthy replacement for Lady Hilary – we look forward to many victories in her!” While Petaluma continues to speed her teams to victory on the Cam, Lady Hilary, familiar to Homertonian rowers for many years, now hangs in the Griffin Bar, while blades from some of Homerton’s recent successes adorn the wall outside the HUS Office. Furnished with the right equipment, Homerton’s rowers look set for even more success in their future endeavours.

Philip Stephenson (Senior Treasurer), Chris Goodfellow (Men’s Captain), Lyan and David Huntley with Petaluma.

Above: Members of Homerton College Boat Club at the launch of Petaluma.

Right: Lady Hilary in the Griffin Bar.

Homerton alumna pens West End play

An Evening with Lucian Freud, a play written by alumna Dr Laura-Jane Foley, ran for three weeks in London’s West End in May 2015.

Wonderful Artful Theatre

Playwright Dr Laura-Jane Foley also lectures part-time in Art History.

Wonderful Artful Theatre

Described as “a portrait of Freud built through anecdotes, snippets of art history, biographical facts, fictionalised voices ofhis sitters, and the recollection of an evening spent in his company”, the play ran in May and June at the Leicester Square Theatre.

That evening was spent with Freud whilst Laura-Jane was still a student at Homerton. LauraJane had written to Freud to ask whether he’d be open to be interviewed for Varsity, the student newspaper, of which she was editor at the time.

Although Freud declined the interview, he later suggested that he and Laura-Jane meet anyway. According to Laura-Jane, “that meeting was the beginning of an association which took me through doctoral research focused on him, and is ending now with the play … I am really interested in how Freud used people to make art before casting them aside and I wanted to do the same, I wanted to use Freud to create a piece of art, a piece of theatre”.

Laura-Jane pictured with the show’s star, Cressida Bonas.

Wonderful Artful Theatre

A scene from An Evening with Lucian Freud by Laura-Jane Foley.

An Evening with Lucian Freud featured a starstudded cast. Cressida Bonas played ‘Laura’, with Laura-Jane commenting that she was “supremely talented” and “brought a different energy to the casting room. She was enchanting and absolutely compelling to watch”.

Although a one-woman show, the monologue was broken up through video cameos featuring household names such as Maureen Lipman, Russell Grant, and Alastair Stewart, and even Laura-Jane herself.

Laura-Jane graduated from Homerton after studying History of Art in 2004, and now lives in London, where she works as a writer. She also lectures part-time at the University of Cambridge’s Institute of Continuing Education. When asked about her time at Homerton, Laura-Jane said “I loved my time at Homerton and it really was the most perfect College for me. I was a bit naughty from the second year onwards when I really embraced all the exciting extra-curricular activities Cambridge has on offer; the Union, student politics, Varsity, etc. etc. I was a choral scholar at Homerton, as well as receiving the Westall Prize when I graduated.”

Laura-Jane also studied for a Masters at Trinity College, Oxford, and completed her PhD at Kingston University.

The play opened to sell-out crowds and glowing reviews; according to one, “Foley’s story is fascinating and one that everyone can only dream of, and Bonas is completely loveable with just the right amounts of naivety and passion”. There was also praise for the “incredibly sensitive and engaging drama” and “perfect balance between insight to Freud’s life without revealing too much, or just becoming an hour’s worth of gossip”.

The play text is available at http://playdeadpress.bigcartel.com/product/ an-evening-with-lucian-freud

Homerton hosts 47 students for residential Summer Schools

Homerton College hosted 47 students from 23 different schools across the country for its 3-day summer school in July 2015.

Most of the Year 12 students came from Homerton’s link areas of Doncaster, Rotherham, and the London Boroughs of Kingston, Richmond, and Hounslow. The summer school featured three strands: the Physical Sciences, Biological Sciences, and the Arts and Humanities. The residential kicked off with an introduction to the courses on offer in Cambridge given by Admissions Tutors Steve Watts and Paul Elliott.

Steve commented: “The summer school students had a chance to experience student life. They stayed in College for two nights, ate in the Hall and completed a taxing academic programme. They were all high achieving school students who were thinking about applying to top universities and we wanted to help them see how they would enjoy studying at the top one.”

Students on the Physical Sciences strand were able to attend sessions on Physics, Earth Sciences, Maths, Engineering and Chemistry, covering topics as diverse as chirality, bio-informatics, and how there might be more than one ‘infinity’. Isobel Wilson, of Coombe Girls’ School, said she particularly enjoyed the maths sessions because “the lecturers were really passionate and it was very engaging!”

The Biological Science strand involved interactive sessions on Evolutionary Biology, Genetics, Pathology and, for the first time, Hospital Medicine, ahead ofHomerton’s first intake of Medicine students in October 2016. The students also undertook the “Quest for the Curator’s Code”, a science-based mystery devised with the University’s Whipple Museum of the History of Science. This involved students opening a series of locked safes in the Museum by finding hidden messages, listening to portraits talk, and solving puzzles involving probability and data analysis.

Paul Elliott, Science Admissions Tutor, said: “These events are a vital part of Cambridge’s

Year 12 students outside the Great Hall.

Year 12 students in the Whipple Museum for the History of Science.

commitment to attracting the best and brightest students from all over the country and from every background. We give students a taste of the multitude of subjects that they can study at university, but we also talk to them about life at Cambridge, future job prospects and pastoral support. Most of the students leave with enhanced aspirations, and now realise that Cambridge is not the scary place that they had first thought!”

Amongst more standard school subjects like English, History and Music, the participants on the Arts and Humanities strand could learn about subjects which they may not have come across so far. For example, the alleged illegal treatment of prisoners at the Bagram Internment Facility in Afghanistan was discussed in the Law session, and Dr Juliana Cavalcanti talked about the ten major principles of Economics. The students also had the chance to get hands-on with bones and other artefacts in the Archaeology session.

Year 12 students get to grips with artefacts.

The residential drew to a close with another talk from our Admissions Tutors, this time discussing how to make a good application to highly competitive universities like Cambridge, and laying misconceptions about the application process to rest. Eleanor Duce, of Gumley House Convent School in Hounslow, commented that the summer school was “a really good experience that has definitely helped to demystify the Oxbridge application process.”

Homerton graduate is first to cycle across Cuba

On June 27, 2015, Ben Jones became the first person to officially cycle the length of Cuba, at 1,250km long the largest island in the Caribbean.

Ben, who graduated from Homerton in 2014 after studying Politics and International Relations, undertook the journey in order to raise awareness of dyspraxia. His 36-day journey took him past Cuban military bases at Guantánamo, into a Cuban hospital after tearing the skin on his leg, and into the homes and lives of ordinary people across the nation. Although the most direct route measures in at 1,394km, Ben’s route took him over 1,600km.

Although Ben didn’t own a bike at the start of the journey, his fellowship with the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust enabled him to make the crucial purchase. The Trust provides funding for British citizens to travel overseas to ‘bring back fresh ideas and new solutions to today’s issues’. Winston Churchill himself worked in Cuba as a war correspondent, during the Cuban War of Independence.

Ben said: “I would not have been able to accomplish this feat without the support of Homerton. Winning support from Homerton’s Pilkington Trust enabled me to discover the amazing possibilities for self-development that can be gained by travelling to areas most people do not think to visit, and it also enabled me to visit places including the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. The skills and experience I picked up at Homerton were crucial in making possible the successful planning and execution of my journey across Cuba.”

The Pilkington Trust helps to fund Homerton students planning ambitious or out of the ordinary journeys during the summer vacation. The grant was awarded to six students in 2015, who ventured to destinations as far flung as Brazil, Kenya, and Thailand.

Ben was diagnosed with dyspraxia whilst at Homerton. The motor coordination condition can present in a range ofdifficulties with everyday skills, and can have negative impacts on aspects as far-reaching as social and emotional functioning, time management, and memory. Dyspraxia affects between 2 and 6% of the population.

Ben visited the Casa de la Trova in order to gain an insight into Cuban culture, and an important tradition in Cuban music.

Homerton Students Recognised for Engineering Excellence

Homerton students have this year enjoyed academic success in a full range of disciplines. Engineering has seen particular success, with several Homertonians awarded prizes for their endeavours.

First-year Bill Jia won a prize for a project in which students were tasked with designing, building, and programming a LEGO robot. Bill, along with two students from Downing, came up with a fully-functioning coin sorting machine. Their robot detects coins placed in the hopper using a light sensor, and rotates an array of containers into position according to the size of the coin detected. The coin then drops into the appropriate container. The robot was also programmed to keep count of the number of coins and track their total value.

Thomas Kirk Kristiansen, Deputy Chairman of the LEGO Foundation, stopped by to give Bill’s robot a trial run. The LEGO Foundation recently donated some £4million to the Faculty of Education to fund the Research Centre on Play in Education, Development and Learning.

Alice Huntley and Evald Monastyrski won prizes for their Integrated Design Project, which involved designing the mechanics, electronics

Thomas Kirk Kristiansen, far right, tests out Bill Jia’s (far left) coin-sorting machine. Alice Huntley (far left) and Evald Monastyrski (far right) won an Integrated Design Project prize for their robot, Gwinny.

and software for a robot that could identify the composition of metal rods. Alice and Evald’s robot, christened Gwinny, successfully collected rods and identified whether they were made of brass or steel, before delivering them to the corresponding slots.

Jonathan Ledger won a Computing Prize for his coursework, which included a project to calculate how many combinations of coins make up a given amount of money. Jonathan said: “I did a little extension to the set task to make the computer programme run fast enough using dynamic programming to calculate large amounts of money”.

Finally, Ed Broadhead and Maria FernandesMartos Balson were both awarded Language Prizes. Maria undertook a project, written in French, about avoiding bone resorption around hip prostheses. In this, she explored ways to produce hip implants which have the same stiffness as bone, in order to avoid loss of bone mass and integrity around the implant. Ed, currently studying abroad in Paris for a year, received a prize for his performance in a Spanish language paper, taken as an option in his second year.

Homerton academic solves intergalactic whodunnit

As murder mysteries go, it’s a big one: how do galaxies die and what kills them? A new study, published in the journal Nature, has found that the primary cause of galactic death is strangulation, which occurs after galaxies are cut off from the raw materials needed to make new stars.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the Royal Observatory Edinburgh, led by Homerton Research Associate Dr Yingjie Peng, found that levels of metals contained in dead galaxies provide key‘fingerprints’, making it possible to determine the cause of death.

There are two types of galaxies in the Universe: roughly half are ‘alive’ galaxies which produce stars, and the other half are ‘dead’ ones which don’t. ‘Alive’ galaxies, such as our own Milky Way, are rich in the cold gas – mostly hydrogen – that is needed to produce new stars, while dead galaxies have very low supplies. What had previously been unknown is what was responsible for killing the dead galaxies.

Astronomers had advanced two main

hypotheses for galactic death: either the cold gas needed to produce new stars is suddenly ‘sucked’ out of the galaxies by internal or external forces, or the supply of incoming cold gas is somehow stopped, slowly strangling the galaxy to death over a prolonged period of time.

In order to get to the bottom of this mystery, the team used data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to analyse metal levels in more than 26,000 average-sized galaxies located in our corner of the universe.

“Metals are a powerful tracer of the history of star formation: the more stars that are formed by

The Milky Way, viewed from Earth.

a galaxy, the more metal content you’ll see,” said Dr Peng “So looking at levels of metals in dead galaxies should be able to tell us how they died.”

Ifgalaxies are killed by outflows suddenly pulling the cold gas out of the galaxies, then the metal content of a dead galaxy should be the same as just before it died, as star formation would abruptly stop. In the case of death by strangulation however, the metal content of the galaxy would keep rising and eventually stop, as star formation could continue until the existing cold gas gets completely used up.

While it is not possible to analyse individual galaxies due to the massive timescales involved, by statistically investigating the difference of metal content of alive and dead galaxies, the researchers were able to determine the cause of death for most galaxies of average size. “We found that for a given stellar mass, the metal content of a dead galaxy is significantly higher than a star-forming galaxy of similar mass,” said Professor Roberto Maiolino, co-author of the new study. “This isn’t what we’d expect to see in the case of sudden gas removal, but it is consistent with the strangulation scenario.”

The researchers were then able to independently test their results by looking at the stellar age difference between star-forming and dead galaxies, independent of metal levels, and found an average age difference of four billion years – this is in agreement with the time it would take for a star-forming galaxy to be strangled to death, as inferred from the metallicity analysis. “This is the first conclusive evidence that galaxies are being strangled to death,” said Peng. “What’s next though, is figuring out what’s causing it. In essence, we know the cause of death, but we don’t yet know who the murderer is, although there are a few suspects.”

This article was originally written by Sarah Collins at the University’s Office of External Affairs and Communications for the University website, and is gratefully re-published here.

School pupils celebrate Brilliant success at Homerton

In the third week of September 2015, 37 pupils from three schools travelled to Homerton to celebrate their success on a university-style tutorial programme organised by The Brilliant Club.

The Brilliant Club is an educational charity that recruits and trains PhD and postdoctoral researchers to help students from non-selective state schools develop the knowledge, skills, and ambition they need to secure places at highly selective universities. Pupils from years 5, 6, 10, and 11 worked in school with a PhD Tutor over the course of six weeks, experiencing small group tutorials on the researchers’ areas of expertise. At the end ofthe course, pupils tackled final assignments of up to 2,500 words long on topics ranging from neuroscience to poetry.

The students, from St Bartholomew’s School in West Berkshire, Rivers Academy in Hounslow, and Eastbury Primary in Essex, were hosted by Homerton College for a special graduation event. They received certificates, handshakes, and a big round of applause to congratulate them on completing the programme.

Each student experienced an inspiring tour of the College led by current undergraduates. Admissions Tutor Steve Watts offered a talk to students about why they might want to apply to University, particularly top Russell Group universities such as Cambridge. Steve said “Homerton is always pleased to see keen, committed students and to help deliver advice and encouragement to them. Working with The Brilliant Club is a great way to achieve this.”

At the end of the day, Dr Rajbir Hazelwood, Programme Officer with the Brilliant Club, gave a keynote speech celebrating the pupils’ hard work and encouraging them on the next stage of their educational journey.

Dr Mary Henes, The Brilliant Club’s Regional Director for London, says: “We are delighted to

School pupils outside the Great Hall.

see so many pupils at the University of Cambridge today to congratulate them on their success on our Scholars Programme. They have done tremendously well, studying with a researcher, in small groups, over the course of six weeks and addressing challenging questions in their extended final assignments. As part ofthe programme, they have also been able to visit two highly selective universities, where they met undergraduates, toured the campus, heard from university representatives, and thought about their choices for the future. I hope that they are proud of the work that they have produced, and that the experience of the Scholars Programme inspires them to consider applying for a highly selective university.”

The University of Cambridge and its Colleges run hundreds of events each year to widen access to the University, and to higher education in general. Cambridge’s outreach work extends across the UK thanks to its Area Links scheme, which gives schools and colleges a direct contact with the University.

This article was written by Homerton’s Schools Liaison Officer, Emma Smith (access@homerton.cam.ac.uk).