Celebrating 140 years of Somerville College
Contents Principal’s Message
3
News and People
4
Commemorating Somervillians
5
Cover Story: An Object Lesson
6
From a beach in Sligo to the Sargasso Sea Alex Rogers
12
Mapped: Our alumni in the UK
15
Letter from Seoul Daniel Tudor
16
Elizabeth Anscombe and Iris Murdoch
20
Profile: Ann Olivarius
24
Profile: Dr Radhika Khosla
28
The Mutual Admiration Society
30
Somerville 140 pictures: Contemporary photographs by Angelo Hornak. Other images from Somerville’s collections unless otherwise credited. Editorial: Jeevan Vasagar Contact: communications@some.ox.ac.uk
Worlds of sound inspired by words Grace-Evangeline Mason
32
Connecting rural India to the modern economy Gideon Laux
35
Cultivating seaweed and enterprise
36
Goodbye to Roman Walczak
38
Future Events
40
Somerville College Woodstock Road OX2 6HD Telephone +44 (0)1865 270600 www.some.ox.ac.uk
Cover and back cover photo: John Cairns
Somerville Magazine 3
Principal’s Message S
ince I started as Principal at Somerville, I have got used to a change of perspective. When people in Oxford say that things are far away, they mean that it takes ten minutes on a bike, and not five. When they say that something is young, they mean that it is only a few centuries old. Well, by Oxford standards, Somerville is certainly youthful. We are celebrating our 140th anniversary this year. There will be a birthday party, book launch and panel event here in College on October 20th, and we hope that alumni will celebrate wherever they are in the world. As Lizzy Emerson writes elsewhere in this magazine, Somerville was set up to offer women the life of the mind, and to enable them to take their rightful place in society. At a time when Oxford was male-dominated, creating this space for women to think, read and debate was a truly radical act. I am proud that this university is following in that tradition with the announcement of two new initiatives – Opportunity Oxford and Foundation Oxford – to widen access to students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Somerville will take part in both.
For me, widening access to education is about staying true to Somerville’s radical roots. We have an ethos of inclusiveness, making the brightest students welcome, whatever their school, community or country. As part of our drive to foster a culture that supports all of our people to achieve excellence, we are determined to do more to support academics at all levels, mindful of their need for quality of life and giving them the support they need to focus on research as well as teaching. As you can see from the pages of this magazine, we have been home to the best and brightest minds since we first opened our doors. This year, we are celebrating the centenaries of two of Britain’s most influential philosophers - Iris Murdoch and Elizabeth Anscombe. We are also turning the spotlight on some of the vital research that goes on here, from the depths of the sea to the threat of climate change.
Photo by John Cairns
As well as supporting the University’s plans, we are pressing ahead with our own work to widen participation. This includes the UNIQ and Universify residentials and the Demystifying Oxford Interviews Day, a day of interview preparation for state school applicants.
I am personally very sorry to be saying farewell to Roman Walczak, who has been a Fellow here since 1993. He has inspired generations of students with his passion for his subject and his brilliant teaching style. Oxford colleges are a space for contemplation and stillness. There is food for the mind, body and spirit. And there is beauty to please the eye; much of that thanks to our wonderful gardeners, led by Robert Washington, who is also leaving us this year. Robert stepped down on June 11, which marked his 35th anniversary at Somerville. He wanted no fuss, but his legacy is plain to see. As they said of Sir Christopher Wren: if you seek his monument, look around you.
4 Somerville Magazine
News and People... Fellows and staff Dr Robert Davies, whose research focuses on the development of statistical methods for more effective disease prediction using genomic information, is joining as our new Fellow in Statistics from July 2019. Dr Radhika Khosla, the Research Director of the Oxford India Centre at Somerville, will lead a new 3 year research project at the Smith School of Enterprise and Environment aiming to shape the future of cooling technology, together with Professor Malcolm McCulloch. See page 28. Professor Beate Dignas will co-lead a new project funded by the OxfordBerlin Research Partnership, bringing together researchers from the Humboldt Universität and the Freie Universität to explore regional identity in the Hellenistic World. Professor Roman Walczak is retiring from his Tutorial Fellowship in Physics after 26 years of service. See page 38. Robert Washington, our Head Gardener, is retiring after 35 years of service to the College.
Student news Two teams of Somervillians reached the final of the Oxford Foundry’s All-Innovate Ideas Competition. The projects aimed to help female seaweed harvesters in India by enabling them to create new value-added products; and use machine learning to more accurately diagnose complex diseases. See page 36. Edward Kandel (2017, History) has been elected as captain of the Men’s Blues tennis team. Daniel Park (2017, PPE), Bethan James (2017, English) and Rosie Sourbut (2017, English) have been named as scholars of the Laidlaw Research and Leadership Programme
for this academic year. The three will carry out research projects this summer covering issues as diverse as basic income trials, the experience of Welsh students in further education, and Universal Credit. Caroline Murphy Racette (2018, Lit. Hum.) was elected captain of the Women’s Blues fencing team.
Alumni news Janet Treloar (1958, Geography) was awarded the Honorary Order of the Silver Cross by the Russian Minister of Culture for Anglo-Russian cultural exchange. Sybella Stanley (1979, History) and Ayla Busch (1989, PPE) were appointed in January as the new Chairs of the Somerville College Development Board. Stanley is Director of Corporate Finance at RELX, and a Non-Executive Director at Tate & Lyle and The Merchants Trust. Busch is Chief Executive of Busch SE and Chair of the Supervisory Board at Pfeiffer Vacuum Technology AG. Sue Arrowsmith (1980, Law) was appointed an honorary Queen’s Counsel in recognition of her scholarship in public procurement law. Farhana Yamin (1983, PPE) made headlines for her work as the political circle coordinator of climate activist movement Extinction Rebellion. Clare Ambrose (1987, Law) was appointed Deputy High Court Judge. Naiza Khan (1987, Fine Art) became the first Pakistan-born artist to show at the Venice Biennale in May. Elizabeth Macneal’s (2007, English) debut novel The Doll Factory made best seller lists and was featured on Radio 2 and on Radio 4 as Book of the Week. Ella Road’s (2010, English) debut play, The Phlebotomist, was nominated for the Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre.
The artist Naiza Khan (1987, Fine Art). C. Carlotta Cardana; pictures provided by generous permission of Flint Culture.
Queen’s Birthday Honours 2019 Professor Dame Elan Closs Stephens (English, 1966) was made a Dame for her services to the Welsh Government and to Broadcasting, including her ongoing role as the Welsh Representative on the board of the BBC. She is also Emeritus Professor of Communications and Creative Industries at Aberystwyth University. She had previously been awarded a CBE in 2001 for her services to broadcasting and to the Welsh Language. Susan Catchpole (PPE, 1977), director, HM Treasury, was awarded a CBE for public service. Professor Caroline Barron (History, 1959) received an OBE for her services to Education, and Professor Sarah Broadie (Lit. Hum., 1960), received an OBE for her services to Classical Philosophy. Emma Stuart (Née Owen, Lit. Hum., 1996) was awarded an LVO for her work as the Senior Curator, Books and Manuscripts, and Acting Librarian of the Royal Library, Windsor Castle.
Somerville Magazine 5
Commemorating Somervillians who have died Somerville’s Commemoration Service this year was held on Saturday 8 June in the College Chapel. This important event in our calendar underlines the enduring relationship between Somerville and its members.
Honorary Fellows
The Service commemorates Somerville’s founders, governors and major benefactors, and especially its alumni who have died during the past year. The address was given this year by Dame Fiona Caldicott. The text will be published on the College website.
Mary Beatrice Midgley
(as of 21 May 2019)
née Scrutton (1938, Lit. Hum) on 10 October 2018
Aged 99
Alumni Constance (‘Connie’) Hayton Anscombe née Bethwaite (1941, Mathematics) on 7 August 2018
Aged 96
Sheila Mary Barber
née Marr (1949, History) on 25 January 2019
Aged 87
Anthea Bell
(1954, English) on 18 October 2018
Aged 82
Jennet Parker Campbell
née Adrian (1945, English) on 3 January 2019
Aged 91
Margaret Chatterjee
née Ganzer (1943, PPE) on 3 January 2019
Aged 93
Jean Lesley Fooks
née Scott (1958, Physics) on 28 November 2018
Aged 79
Dorothy Mary Grodecki*
née Vernon (1943, History) on 19 April
Aged 93
Patricia Jean Hall*
(1943, English) on 25 April 2019
Judith Hockaday*
(1947, Medicine) on 24 May 2019
Aged 89
Jane Mary Howard*
née Waldegrave (1952, Mod Langs) on 6 May 2019
Aged 85
All Somervillians are welcome to attend this annual Service and we particularly invite close families and Somervillian friends of those who have died to join us.
Mary Jackson
née Cheel (1955, Mathematics) on 1 March 2018
Aged 81
Kathleen May Jones
née Hennis (1954, Mod.Langs) on 31 January 2019
Aged 82
Frances Verity Joubert
née Curry (1972, Chemistry) on 30 June 2018
Aged 65
Judith Elizabeth Kazantzis
née Pakenham (1958, History) on 18 September 2018
Aged 78
Jean Brown King*
née Davidson (1954, Lit. Hum) on 7 May 2019
Aged 84
If you know of any Somervillians who have died recently but who are not listed here please contact Liz Cooke (Elizabeth. cooke@some.ox.ac.uk).
Beryl Kitz
née Marchington (1944, Maths) on 24 February 2019
Aged 91
Barbara Wharton Low
(1939, Chemistry) on 10 January 2019
Aged 98
Elizabeth Mary McKay
née Norman (1957, DPhil Music) on 20 May 2018
Aged 86
Alison Mary Morgan
née Raikes (1949, English) on 27 March 2018
Aged 88
Lesley Gordon Parker
née Gray (1939, Mod.Langs.) on 21 February 2018
Aged 96
Betty Joan Parkinson
(1942, History) on 22 November 2018
Aged 95
Rebecca Posner
née Reynolds (1949, French & Linguistics) on 19 July 2018 Aged 88
Sarah (Sally) Margaret Helen Roberts*
née Hyder (Lit. Hum) on 22 April 2019
Diana Mary Rustat Rowley
née Crowfoot (1936, Natural Science/Geography) on 22 September 2018
Jane Salusbury*
née Terry (1953, Zoology) on 14 April 2019
Aged 85
Susan Deborah Sander *
(1970, Physiological Sciences) on 16 May 2019
Aged 67
Felicity Ann Olga Howard Sieghart*
née Baer (1944, History) on 28 May 2019
Aged 91
Maureen Mary Bridget Sleeman*
née Rough (1980, English) on 30 April 2019
Aged 58
Sylvia Mary Smith
(1951, English) on 18 December 2018
Aged 85
Margaret Stewart
née Adams (1949, History) on 7 December 2016
Aged 86
Joyce Marie Sugg
(1944, English) on 9 August 2018
Aged 92
Rosemary Ann Swinfen
née Pettit (1956, English) on 4 August 2018
Aged 80
Barbara Joan Vance
née Ridsdale (1939, English) on 29 November 2019
Aged 97
Myee Miranda Villiers
née McKenna (1954, Lit. Hum) on 30 March 2019
Aged 83
Mary Amity Williamson*
née Mallinson (1942, Mod. Langs) on 16 April 2019
Aged 94
Erica Betty Mary Wood
née Twist (1951, History) on 11 October 2018
Aged 86
* To be commemorated more fully at the 2020 service
Aged about 94
Aged 83 Aged 100
6 Somerville Magazine
AN OBJECT LESSON In October, the College will publish Somerville 140 1879-2019. A Celebration of Somerville College, Oxford in 140 Objects. Lizzy Emerson, who helped compile the text, tells us about the experience of delving into Somerville’s history.
‘Nigel’. Part of an extensive bequest from traveller and Egyptologist Amelia Edwards that reached Somerville in the early twentieth century, this male torso in Parian marble earned his twenty-first century nickname from staff in the Library.
Somerville Magazine 7
‘W
hy now? Why not just wait another ten years and make it 150 objects? That’s a nice round number.’ It is a nice round number. But Somerville isn’t a nice round college. I’ve never met a Somervillian who was outand-out rude, but there’s no doubt you can be a spiky lot. It’s one of the many things I’ve come to admire about this extraordinary place. Somerville already has its proper history: Somerville for Women, by Pauline Adams (1962, Modern History; Sub-librarian, then Librarian 1969-2009; Fellow 1977-2009; Emeritus Fellow, 2009), who was generous enough to look at an early draft of this book, and whose stories about the College would make a bestseller in their own right. This was to be different, more like something you’d pick up in a museum shop, to dip into for the pictures and the odd fact. It was Liz Cooke (Greenwood) (1964, Modern History and Joint Secretary of the Somerville Association), who suggested we should follow Neil MacGregor’s lead and write the history of Somerville in objects. Everyone had an opinion on what should go in, though being Somervillians, they didn’t necessarily agree. ‘I’ve always loved that,’ one would say. ‘Really?’ another would ask, horrified. Then came the hard work of going into the archives (and quite a few cupboards too), done by College Librarian and Archivist Anne Manuel and Assistant Archivist Kate O’Donnell, ably assisted by Honorary Senior Associate Jane Robinson (1978, English). Why now? Because the 140th anniversary of Somerville’s foundation falls alongside three other anniversaries: of the decision to grant the first votes to women in the UK in 1918; of the end of the First World War; and of the award of Oxford’s first degrees to women in 1920. All were entwined with Somerville’s ethos and history, and we have included objects that reflect these connections. Somerville was a ‘suffrage college’, and a childhood poem by Margaret Kennedy (1915, Modern History) proclaims the
suffragettes the ‘champions of the nation!’ A wartime photograph shows the College as ‘Somerville Section’ of the 3rd Southern General Hospital. Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon were both patients, and Sassoon wrote of how his ‘little white-walled room, looking through the open window onto a college lawn’ felt ‘very much like Paradise’ after the horrors of battle. The war had its impact on Somervillians, as on the rest of the world: Vera Brittain’s (1914, Modern History) Testament of Youth captured the agony and loss of a generation (‘I shall remember, always,’ she wrote). And the achievement of degrees for women was in no small part due to the work of Somervillian Emily Penrose (1889, Lit. Hum. and Principal 1907-1926). The image of her in her gown and hood on the day the first degrees were awarded still inspires.
‘I’ve always loved that,’ one would say. ‘Really?’ another would ask, horrified. In the beginning, Somerville looked like a country house, ‘the field beyond bright with buttercups’ (as the first Principal, Madeleine Shaw-Lefevre, described it) and aspired to live ‘the life of an English family’. That sounds old-fashioned, but was a deliberate shift away from the ‘life of the Christian family’ espoused by other women’s halls. Somerville was Christian, but non-denominational. When it was later offered the gift of a chapel, there was significant debate before the gift was accepted (no debate for us: the chapel had to be included). Some of the objects remind us of the startling sexism of that early Oxford: a record of a debate to limit numbers of women students, in which one college head says Oxford must remain ‘A Man’s University’; the ‘Chap.’ (chaperone) rules, a Byzantine code of regulations largely about which men you could have tea with, and where.
Before long, Somerville’s family grew much larger and less English too. Cornelia Sorabji (1889, Law), the first Indian woman to study at Oxford and the first woman to read Law at the University, said she learned at Somerville ‘that difference of opinion need not affect friendship or personal appreciation, and that one could be a zealot and yet open-minded’. In the book, we include the beautiful silver anklet that Sorabji gave to a Somervillian friend. In the 1930s, the College led the way in offering a home for women scholars fleeing the Nazi regime. One of the refugees, Lotte Labowsky, stayed at Somerville for the rest of her life, and left the College a painting (also included) by her countrywoman Paula ModersohnBecker, whose work the Nazis declared ‘degenerate’. Somerville was set up to offer women the ‘special advantages which Oxford offers for Higher Education’. The life of the mind, in other words. But showing that in objects isn’t easy. There are books, of course: Brittain’s Testament of Youth, Winifred Holtby’s (1917, Modern History) South Riding, whose profits were a major source of scholarship funding for the College; Iris Murdoch’s (1938, Lit. Hum.) The Red and the Green, dedicated to fellow Somervillian and philosopher Philippa Foot (Bosanquet) (1939, PPE), and works by some of the 17 Somervillians nominated for the Booker Prize. And last but very much not least, there is Dorothy Hodgkin’s (Crowfoot) (1928, Chemistry) Nobel Prize Medal, awarded in 1964, and still the only one to go to a British woman for scientific work. Fortunately, the life of the mind needs lunch, and post, and coffee too. So we included Maitland Hall, and the Lodge, pigeonholes and bicycle racks, and the SCR coffee machine. The library is there, and some of its furniture, like the beautiful table with pull-up easels. When we spoke to the MCR and JCR Presidents, it became clear that the Somerville keep cup must be included. It proudly sports Continued on page 8
8 Somerville Magazine
the College’s crest (also included) and you can take it into the library. What more could you ask? The cup runneth over, except it doesn’t, because of its ingenious spill-proof lid. One of the most moving things was encountering the memorials dotted throughout the College. There are stone plaques, but also trees planted for those Somerville remembers, the memories still growing. The lesson is clear: once a Somervillian, always a Somervillian. And a long-term attachment to Somerville doesn’t always mean studying here. The Wages Book lists the amounts paid to ‘Maidservants’, ‘Manservants’ and simply ‘Women’. One of them, May Drew, felt such a connection to Somerville that she was moved to donate to a 1978 appeal (‘My mite seems almost too small… but I should like to feel I had a tiny share’). She recalled a Gaudy before the First World War with the lovely scent of ‘sweet peas on the little tables’ but also ‘the pain in my poor feet’. In 1921, Principal Emily Penrose had cause to address the students about their academic dereliction: ‘I wish to make it perfectly clear,’ she said, ‘that Somerville was not intended for idlers’. Quite. But Somervillians know how to enjoy themselves. In 1914, just weeks before the outbreak of war, the new Maitland Hall was the venue for a dance, with Herr Moritz Wurm and his Blue Viennese Orchestra and ices on the balcony at 9 p.m. This year, there was a joint ball with Jesus College celebrating the ‘glitz and glamour’ of Hollywood. Somerville has changed a great deal in its first 140 years, going from 12 students in 1879 to over 600 in 2019, and admitting men in the early 1990s (see the protest poster held aloft by those who believed this was not progress). But its mission remains one of including the excluded and promoting the highest standards of intellectual endeavour. Somervillians continue to scoop academic prizes in their studies and to work at the forefront of research, and the College has in recent years instituted ‘Principal’s Prizes’ to recognize those who do outstandingly well in their degree work. The numbers awarded are rising year on year. Inclusion and excellence go hand-in-hand, and this year, Somerville
The pull-up easel in the library, so popular that these days you have to book it in advance. This illustration is taken from the 1922 history of Somerville
has seen the percentage of state school pupils amongst its offers to UK applicants rise to over 72%. In 1879, inclusion was about gender. Now, it may mean those who cannot afford to study at university, or who feel they won’t fit in, even though they have the intelligence and tenacity to be Somervillians. Somerville holds events to celebrate the contribution of refugees to the community. It chairs discussions about what Brexit will mean for relations between the UK and India. It asks itself, all the time, ‘What is to be done?’ and then, with hard work, intelligence
and an admirable streak of common sense, it does it. Somerville is still in the vanguard of working to open up Oxford. There are new scholarships for Indian students and a new programme of scholarships and support named for Margaret Thatcher (Roberts) (1943, Chemistry), who herself received help when the College realised she was struggling financially. To mention Thatcher is to open up another rich seam in Somerville’s history, of politics and public service. ‘If you want to change the world, come to Somerville’ has become an
Somerville Magazine 9
unofficial motto, and it’s easy to see why. The 1894 minute book of the ‘Associated Prigs’, a society for ‘collective talk on social subjects’ shows Eleanor Rathbone as a member. The first of many Somervillians elected to Parliament, Rathbone pioneered child benefit payments and was an early campaigner against female genital mutilation. There is a signed photograph given by Indira Gandhi, of whom one Somervillian said, ‘she overturned my credulous assumptions that the British Empire was a beneficial and beneficent organisation’. There is the 1959 General Election rosette for Shirley Williams (Catlin) (1948, PPE), who has been called ‘the greatest Prime Minister this country never had’. And, of course, there are plenty of objects to choose for Margaret Thatcher. After a good deal of discussion, we selected the Oscar Nemon bust, several times defaced with paint, but now pristine again.
Park; 1940, Modern Languages and Principal, 1980-1989). That moments of scientific genius are built on years of hard slog (Dorothy Hodgkin’s breakthrough in X-ray crystallography). That there’s no time to waste (as Janet Vaughan (1919, Physiology and Principal 1945-1967) said, when asked how she’d got so much done, ‘I never played bridge’). And that achieving equality is about practical measures (Oxford’s first ever paid maternity leave was arranged by a Somervillian, for a
One of the most moving things was encountering the memorials dotted throughout the College.
Were there surprises along the way? Absolutely. The sheer weight of a Roman marble torso – nicknamed ‘Nigel’ – for one thing. The awed reverence for Pogo the cat, for another (but then I saw his picture, and read a little about him, and yes, now I understand). I’ve learned a lot. To look more carefully at portraits of genteel-looking women. There may be a spy lurking there (Daphne
Somervillian). Naturally, Somervillians put it best. We were hugely fortunate that Shirley Williams and Alison Wolf (Potter) (1967, PPE and President of the Somerville Association) agreed to write the Foreword and Afterword. Both record how lucky they feel to be heirs (literally, in Williams’ case) to Somerville’s extraordinary history. For Williams, a Somerville education brings ‘a tenacity and persistence that gets things done’,
Keep cup: Now you never need to leave your desk…
Wages book: ‘Maidservants/ Manservants/Women’
while Wolf identifies the values behind Somerville’s foundation: ‘Somerville was and is an Enlightenment Endeavour’. For me, as a relative newcomer to Somerville’s story, what impresses most is the way that the College still feels and uses the power of its history. Its founding ethos remains at the heart of its work today. The 140th object, not yet complete as we go to press, is the new Catherine Hughes Building, named for Somerville’s Principal between 1989 and 1996. It will allow the College to offer rooms to all its undergraduates, on site, for the whole of their course, as Somerville did at its foundation. The ‘special advantages which Oxford offers for Higher Education’, and Somerville’s past and present, will be theirs to enjoy. The news pages of Somerville’s website are filled with entrepreneurship, creativity, generosity and brilliance: it’s clear that the founding spirit of Somerville remains a powerful force for good. Today’s Somervillians are already beginning to make the next 140 years of history. We won’t be around to see it, of course, unless someone manages to invent a medical miracle. I’d put money on that someone being a Somervillian.
Dance card: Take your partners for the Waltz, the Two Step and the Lancers. Ices will be served on the balcony
10 Somerville Magazine
will be available from
October 2019 Further details can be found at
www.some.ox.ac.uk/somerville-140 In the meantime, you can see a selection of objects here and throughout the pages of this magazine.
Which one says ‘Somerville’ to you?
Photo by John Cairns
Somerville Magazine 11
Then and now: Somerville’s students in 1881, pictured with Principal Madeleine Shaw-Lefevre, who is seated in the centre, are shown above. Below is a group of Somerville students pictured in 2019 with Principal Jan Royall.
12 Somerville Magazine
FROM A BEACH IN SLIGO TO THE SARGASSO SEA Our Senior Research Fellow, Alex Rogers, is one of the world’s leading marine biologists and was a consultant to the BBC’s Blue Planet II. In this extract from his book, The Deep, published in April, he recalls how his love affair with the sea began with lobster fishing as a child.
My journey into the deep sea began with my experiences as a child. I cannot overstate the importance of exposure to the natural world, whether this be a local meadow, the edge of the sea, or even through media such as books and television. As a child I was surrounded by people who were willing to listen, and to share my enthusiasm for fish, sea slugs, ants, butterflies or dinosaurs from prehistory. My natural curiosity was ignited. This was further stimulated by walks in the local woods, trips to the zoo or later, even abroad. But it was also as simple as sitting around the television sharing a magical piece of film about sharks, coral reefs or a strange creature in a tropical rainforest. I began to appreciate the natural world as something to be valued and on which I could communicate on equal terms with adults and share with them my fascination. My journey towards a career as a marine biologist, however, began during summer holidays in Ireland in the 1970s, more than forty years before the submersible dives in the Sargasso Sea off Bermuda. My Grandfather’s boat was an open wooden vessel, coated in flaking white paint and about 12ft long.
Photo: Author’s collection
Somerville Magazine 13
It was tied up at the dock at Cloonagh, just along the southern shore from my grandparent’s cottage on the coast of County Sligo in Ireland. Dock was a bit of misnomer for what was a very crude stone pier welded against the elements over the years with additions of concrete applied after the winter storms had taken their toll. It was about four to five feet high and extended just a little way out to sea meaning that the boat was often stranded by the receding tide on the surrounding limestone flags. I watched as the men – my Grandfather, Father and Uncle John – hauled the heavy boat in fits and starts down the rocks and into the water. It was a fine sunny day in the bay and the ocean was a deep royal blue with gentle swells sometimes capped by lazy low breakers. I was always excited by the prospects of our voyage, as we pushed away from the land. What animals would I see? Would we get the chance to do some fishing? Looking out from my seat near the bows of the boat the ocean stretched to the horizon. To the northwest lay Inishmurray Island, a low-lying limestone outcrop, framed by the distant cliffs of Donegal. We had visited the island previously as it had once been home to a small community, including some of my ancestors. It also claimed a wellpreserved ancient dry-stone walled monastery dating back to the sixth century and the early days of Christianity in Ireland.
A young Alex Rogers on a beach in Sligo, Ireland
There was a light breeze jostling my hair as the boat growled through the sea keeping away the stink of the bucket of bait, oil, and the filthy brine below the boards that made up the deck. I have never been seasick, so the smells and the movement weren’t an issue for me, even as a young boy. Fulmars, white and grey seabirds with short beaks, swept past, nearly dipping the tips of their long narrow wings into the water. Their acrobatics, wheeling constantly over the waves, were mesmerising to me as a young boy, and even to this day I count them amongst my favourite seabirds. We passed along a coast formed of limestone strata tilted at varying angles into the sea waving to the odd man fishing from the rocks as my Grandfather or Uncle would comment on who he was, where he lived and what he might be fishing for. There was also the odd other fishing boat, similar to my Grandfather’s, but some bigger, with a cab for the Captain. A wave and occasional greetings were exchanged but there was also an undercurrent of guarded suspicion and competition between all those earning their wage from the ocean. Eventually we reached the first of the tows of lobster pots marked by a soft plastic buoy bobbing at the surface. The lobster pots or creels were made of a wooden base weighted by concrete, with hoops of wood or plastic over which was
Continued on page 14
14 Somerville Magazine
stretched coarse blue or orange netting, with an entry tunnel for lobsters or crabs. A hole in the top of the creel was tied with string so bait could be placed inside between two cords and held with a slip knot. The bait was usually a partially decomposed piece of salted fish, mackerel, gurnard or sometimes an unfortunate crab, smashed on the gunnels of the boat and suspended in the pot still feebly curling its legs. The creels were tied in lines of a dozen or so to form a tow, strung out along the seabed. The buoy was retrieved with a boat hook and my father threw it onto the deck of the boat along with a bundle of rope covered in slimy brown algae, splashing water everywhere. I tried to avoid getting wet as the water was cold even in the middle of summer. Then the hard work began as my Father pulled the rope over the gunnel, hand over hand, with the weight of twelve pots and the rope dragging along the seabed. For me the anticipation of what might come up was almost unbearable. I leant over the side of the boat to see the first pot materialise from the inky blue-black depths and whether it contained lobsters or any other creatures. The first pot was empty, as was the second and third, causing some frowns and growl-like mutterings. My Uncle untied each one, threw any remaining rotten bait over the side and slipped in a fresh filleted gurnard before tying the creel up expertly and then stacking it in the middle of the boat. As the next pot materialised and was drawn to the surface I could see something in it. Buzzing with excitement, I started shouting “There’s something there, I can see it moving!”. The pot was heaved on deck and to my delight it contained two snapping lobsters, tails flapping, spraying water and jerking around the bottom of the creel. The lobsters were the European variety, magnificent crustaceans heavily armoured with a royal blue shell paling to yellow and whitish spots on the underside. As soon as the water had drained from the creel the lobsters backed into opposite corners wedging themselves between the mesh work.
Their front end was protected by an armoured shield covering the head, with a pair of blue-black eyes on stalks and long, red antennae which curved out from the front of the animal. Under this were long, jointed legs ending in small pincers covered in short orange hairs. The back end was formed of a long segmented tail with a fan of plates at the end. They were armed with one large crushing claw with lumps and
“Like looking into the face of a fully-armoured medieval knight” nodules on it and a lighter scissor claw with finely serrated edges. They held these up to catch an unwary finger as my Uncle retrieved them from the pot. He lifted them from just behind the head where they could not reach to deliver a nip. On a previous trip I had seen my Father do this and be caught by one of the claws causing him to fling his arm back, not realising the lobster was still attached, launching the creature spinning through the air and into the sea with a splash to its freedom. Luckily there had already been a debate as to whether that particular lobster was too small to keep. My Uncle held each lobster in turn on his lap between the legs of his yellow oilskins while he bound their claws with rubber bands to prevent them from fighting and damaging each other. One of the problems with culturing lobsters or reseeding lobster habitat with young animals is that they are terrifically aggressive and highly territorial and will kill and eat each other to occupy the best holes and crevices on the seabed. The lobsters were then thrown into a red plastic fish box lined with old sacking soaked in seawater to keep them damp until they could be stored in a tethered slimy old wooden box which was floating just off the shore from the pier. My Uncle had shown me how to hold the
animal and I very carefully picked one of them up to examine it while the next creel was being hauled. As a child, staring into the face of a lobster, I was always struck by just how alien these creatures are. Lobsters cannot form expressions so it is somewhat like looking into the face of a fully-armoured medieval knight with no clue as to what is underneath. The eyes are of the compound type, like those of an insect, but the facets formed by the individual light-guiding crystalline structures which make up these eyes are not so obvious. As I was to learn many years later the lobster has a superposition compound eye, superbly adapted to perceive movement in dim light but unable to form sharp images. Instead, lobsters rely mostly on their senses of touch and smell to locate prey, their enemies and other lobsters. Projecting from below a thick barbed spine that juts from between the eyes was the pair of long antennae, deep red in colour and articulated at the base, used by the lobster to feel around its environment. Smaller pairs of antennae tucked between the larger are used to “smell” chemicals in seawater. However, the lobster is covered in tiny hairs also used to taste the water, particularly located on the front legs and on the pincers that form their tips. They can literally smell with their feet.
The Deep is published by Headline. Reproduced by permission of the author and Headline Books.
Somerville Magazine 15
Our alumni in the UK
postcode maps by www.gbmaps.com
From Edinburgh to Exeter, Belfast to Brighton, there are Somervillians across the UK. Our graphic shows where alumni are currently based.
country. The Principal and alumni relations team had a wonderful time in Edinburgh and Manchester this year and we will be visiting more cities across Britain in 2020.
It is no surprise that we see so many of you at our London events, but we are happy to have so many friends across the whole
The data is correct as of May 2019 and the visualisation was produced by Melissa Gemmer-Johnson of our development team.
16 Somerville Magazine
Letter from Seoul Why a snake’s head is better than a dragon’s tail
Photo by Sean Pavone / Alamy
Daniel Tudor (PPE, 2000), reflects on the power of corporations and the pressure to conform in Korea, switching from journalism to entrepreneurship and being a ‘party animal’ at Somerville.
Somerville Magazine 17
Korea is an extraordinary success story - the land of Hyundai, Samsung and K-Pop - but how happy are ordinary people? Sadly I would have to say most people are not very happy. Korea has gone through ‘compressed development’ and made the transition from traditional society to modern in what is probably a world-record time. Old people grew up in a world where the extended family lived together or close by, and you were part of such a unit rather than a mere ‘individual’; these days millions of Koreans in their 60s, 70s and 80s live alone, and in poverty. This makes for desperate loneliness and a sense of abandonment by family and society. Meanwhile there is huge pressure on young people (from both family and society) to be successful, and sadly, the definition of success is rather narrow, meaning that inevitably most will eventually feel like they have failed in some way. And even for those who are successful - becoming, say, ‘Samsung Men’, lawyers, doctors or civil servants - many will have wanted to do something else when they were young. That said, more and more young people are starting to say ‘no’ to the success track.
It’s a country that has made extraordinary material progress very rapidly. Are Koreans now delving into older spiritual traditions in an effort to find something that’s missing in their lives? A lot of people are looking for something, and this drives all kinds of trends such as ‘healing’ (anything that relaxes you, such as a trip to the countryside), self-help books, meditation retreats, yoga, and so on. I’m not sure there’s an upswing in traditional spirituality (Shamanism, Buddhism and so on), though there have always been people who believed in those.
What do you think we in the West can learn from the Korean experience - from their education system to their approach to capitalism, or their social structure and the trade-offs between individual liberty and the collective good? I would say Korea is more collective than the UK, for instance, and that’s something I do appreciate myself (though I suppose it depends on your personal taste). Interestingly though we’re seeing a generational divide in Korea right now, where young people are much more individualistic and (like young Westerners) both socially and economically liberal, and people of my age and above tend to be more collectively minded. There’s still however more of a sense of duty and responsibility in Korea, motivated by the shame that would come of not living up to it. Korean capitalism is quite specific and nothing like what you can read about in textbooks. It’s very statist and oligopolistic. The big business conglomerates overcharge Koreans for the same products they sell to foreigners for a lower price. It’s very difficult for an independent entrepreneur to really get somewhere in Korea. However, the tight relationship between business and government does have some benefits. If the
government wants firms to hire more people, or invest heavily in a certain new technology, etc., they can lean on the chaebols to make it happen. I tend to think that British and Korean capitalism are reflective of the culture and history of each country, so I wouldn’t want to say either should try to be like the other. The Korean educational system focuses heavily on rote learning and having a ‘right answer’ to everything. It’s also extremely intense and exam-oriented. Had I grown up under such a system I doubt I would have done well; more likely I would have had a nervous breakdown. Having said that, I think the emphasis on getting basic things right is a good one, and the number of people you can meet in Korea who are very literate, have particular skills, proper awareness of social and political issues, etc., is far ahead of our country. I also find that I can be more direct in Korea, compared to our own irony-steeped culture which in my opinion undervalues emotion whilst seeing logic as superior and its natural opposite.
How useful was your Somerville education in preparing you for life as a foreign correspondent? Very useful. Growing up I don’t think I had much access to real discussion and knowledge of world affairs, politics, etc., and suddenly coming to Oxford, I was surrounded by it. That was the main benefit of Somerville and Oxford in general to me - showing me a new world, a new world I wanted to see and understand. Also doing an essay subject like PPE, it became second nature to be able to structure my thoughts, back them up with evidence, and express them in a clear way on the page. If you can do that, you’ll have a good chance of becoming a journalist. As a schoolboy I hated writing anything, and used to wonder what sort of masochist would ever, for instance, write a book. Thanks to my university years though, I’ve been able to write three of my own, and even enjoy doing it. To be honest, I was a party animal at Somerville. A few years ago I discovered a stack of my old essays, read a few, and thought, ‘you clearly weren’t putting much effort in, you waster’. And I did deservedly end up with a 2:2. However, for this painfully shy kid to grow up to be able to have a drink and a chat with anyone - and that’s half the battle in being a decent foreign correspondent - I do have my friends at Somerville to thank.
Why did you decide to switch from journalism to entrepreneurship? Despite what most people these days seem to think, journalism can be a noble, authentic thing to do with your time, but financially, it’s tough and getting worse. I looked at my
Photos by Daily Travel Photos / Derek Teo/ Alamy
18 Somerville Magazine
Bugaksan mountain behind Gyeongbokgung Palace
future and thought, I’m destined to be broke unless I do something else. At the same time though, I don’t want to work for some big company; I have one life and would rather be the head of a snake than the tail of a dragon, as an old saying in Korea goes. So when I was 30 I decided to try starting my own business. I’ve still carried on writing though, in my spare time. Whether it’s writing or entrepreneurship, or something else, the main thing that motivates me is the possibility of making something exist. If someone says, ‘I’m so glad you made that tasty beer/wrote that book etc’ then I’m very happy. My new business is the same. It’s an app for meditation. My hope is that hundreds of thousands of people will use it regularly, and make meditation a habit. If that happens, of course I’ll make lots of money, but in a much more joyous way than if I’d sold some pension fund a bunch of toxic derivatives. Obviously the probability of success for each attempt is much lower, but if I start ten companies and write ten books, I’ll get there in the end, right?
Hongdae nightlife
Finally - what are three things that a firsttime visitor to Seoul should do? Walk over Bugaksan mountain in the north of Seoul; you’ll get great views, you’ll see a little recent history (bullet holes from a shootout between Southern soldiers and North Korean commandos attempting to raid the nearby presidential mansion), and on the way down you can stop into some lovely old-school cafes or bars serving rice wine. Have a sunset walk from Cheonggyecheon (a stream) near City Hall down to Dongdaemun, stop off at different points along the way and you’ll see skyscrapers, ramshackle old industrial zones that’ll be torn down soon, cool places around the Euljiro area for eating/drinking, and nighttime shopping in Dongdaemun. Korea is very big on drinking. So if you’re young and like nightlife, Hongdae is the place. At 36 I’m kind of past it though. When I go there I feel like ‘foreigner uncle’. If you have the same problem as me, you could go to Itaewon, or for a more civilised drink and conversation, Seochon, Sangsu, or Euljiro would do well.
Daniel Tudor is a former Korea Correspondent for The Economist and author of Korea: The Impossible Country. He also co-founded The Booth, a craft beer business based in Seoul and California.
Somerville Magazine 19
SOMERVILLE
140
Cornelia Sorabji’s anklet
This was owned by Cornelia Sorabji, the first Indian woman admitted to Oxford and the first woman to study Law here. She gave her silver anklet to a fellow Somervillian as a gift, and it was then passed to the College after Sorabji’s death.
We have recently launched a new website for anyone thinking of applying to Somerville. You can meet our tutors, find out about our courses, and hear about life at Somerville from current students. There’s also a chance to see the kind of accommodation on offer throughout your degree, and discover how we’re leading the way in supporting you before, during and after your studies. So if you’d like to see what’s changed, head over to http://apply.some.ox.ac.uk.
20 Somerville Magazine
“The women are up to something� Celebrating the Centenary Achievements of Elizabeth Anscombe and Iris Murdoch There are times and places, where through a stroke of luck or fate or some other such cause, great minds meet and become friends. Somerville College was such a place for a number of female philosophers that are among the most influential philosophers of the 20th century.
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By Ana Laura Edelhoff, Mary Somerville Junior Research Fellow
T
his summer, Somerville College hosts two conferences that celebrate the centenary achievements and birthdays of two of the most famous female philosophers and members of college, Elizabeth Anscombe and Iris Murdoch. Anscombe and Murdoch, both born in 1919, came to Somerville at different stages of their careers. Whilst Iris Murdoch started at Somerville in 1938 as an undergraduate reading Greats and finishing with an outstanding first class honours degree, Anscombe’s connection with Somerville started in 1946 as a Mary Somerville Junior Research Fellow, followed by a position as a lecturer and, finally, as a tutorial fellow from 1964-9. Both knew each other and shared many philosopher friends, such as Philippa Foot and Mary Midgley (both Somervillians). Anscombe became one of the leading philosophers of action. Her most influential book, Intention, studies intentional agency and remains a classic. But Anscombe is also known for her work in moral philosophy, criticizing the ethical theories prevalent in Oxford at the time (the title of one of her essays is rather telling: “Does Oxford Moral Philosophy Corrupt Youth?”) . She never gave in and is known for her uncompromising advocacy of her views. She is famous for having organized a protest against awarding an honorary degree to former president of the United States Harry S. Truman, since she argued that in the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, for which Truman gave the order, innocents were killed as a means to end – an act of murder in her view. Her protest was unsuccessful, though, since, according to her own account, the Dons of St John College were told “The women are up to something in Convocation; we have to go and vote them down.” Iris Murdoch is widely known as one of the most important writers of the 20th century and her novels continue to be read. Her philosophical writings, though less known than her best-selling novels (The Bell; A Severed Head; The
Sea, The Sea etc.), are still inspiring. Murdoch shared with Anscombe a dislike for the ethical views that were prominent at the time and an eagerness to provide an alternative account of morality. Whilst her inspiring career as a novelist has eclipsed her philosophical ideas, they were no less substantial and revolutionary at the time and can also be seen to pervade much of her literary work. Murdoch was a novelist and philosopher, whose philosophical insights and literary projects reciprocally influenced each other in a constructive and valuable way. In order to celebrate Anscombe’s outstanding philosophical contributions, Somerville is hosting a research conference on Wednesday 11th September, where former students as well as friends (Lesley Brown and Pauline Adams) and leading Anscombe researchers (Lucy Campbell, Roger Teichmann and Rachael Wiseman) discuss Anscombe’s work and ongoing legacy. On Sunday, 6th October Somerville hosts a reading party for undergraduate and graduate students on the work of Iris Murdoch. The aim of the workshop is to analyse and discuss the interconnections between Iris Murdoch’s literary masterpiece The Sea, The Sea, for which she was awarded the Booker prize, and her keen philosophical insights in The Sovereignty of Goodness, a short collection of three essays in which Murdoch argues for a form of Platonism in the ethical domain. Both events are open to the public. The conferences are organized by Karen Margrethe Nielsen and Ana Laura Edelhoff. For further information about the events please contact: analaura. edelhoff@some.ox.ac.uk Somerville is also hosting an exhibition of photographs, letters, drawings and other items held in Iris Murdoch archives around the UK, over the weekend of July 1315, in the New Council Room. Continued on page 22
WWI Somerville as part of the 3rd Southern General Hospital in the First World War.
22 Somerville Magazine
IRIS and THE RIVER By Daisy Johnson
M
y partner and I live about an hour’s walk from the house where Iris Murdoch lived with her husband for much of her life in Oxford. It is possible, taking a little more time, to walk from our house to Iris’s almost entirely along the rivers and canals and one day we decide to do just this. It is one of those crazy, unseasonable days in February when the sky is very blue and the sun is hot, everyone out on their boats or sat outside pubs, drinking cider. We walk slowly, enjoying the day. As we go I tell him a little about how Iris Murdoch first came to mean something to me, why we are walking to the house that we hope (there is no blue plaque yet) is hers. When I was writing the novel that would later become Everything Under and be shortlisted for the prize that Murdoch would win with The Sea, The Sea I came to realise that one of the characters would have Alzheimer’s throughout some of the book. I had spoken to friends about the illness but had thankfully not experienced it in my family and knew that it would involve more research than I had previously done for a book. Fiction on the subject was good but it was eventually the book John Bayley wrote about his wife Iris in the later years of their living together that really made me understand the disease. The sickness seemed to come in like a river or the tides of the sea and, each time it retreated, take more and more with it. Iris is in Everything Under and I come to her fiction now with excitement. Her writing is dry and humorous and often strange and entirely wonderful. We come to the house which I have deduced to belong to them and peer at it through the thick foliage. I had expected to feel nothing, perhaps even be disappointed, to retrace our steps to the nearest pub; but I felt shaken by being there. I have always felt that the places we live are inside us and that perhaps we are inside them too. We leave fragments of ourselves, scattered. My partner crosses the road and snaps a photo of me in front of the house. I long to go inside, move around the rooms which – in John’s descriptions of it – are warrens, piled with loved and unloved objects, unkempt in a way that seemed to distress others but which Iris and John loved. I wonder if is possible, standing outside that house, to let some of that tangled genius sink in to me. It is a selfish thought.
“the places we live are inside us and perhaps we are inside them too.” I came to Iris through her ending and I regret this. I wish that I had opened a different door onto her life first. The city changes when I know that she was there for so long. She went to the same college at the university that I did. Her house was a wonderful mess and mine is something of the same. She was shortlisted for the Booker Prize six times before winning. I try to find links between us. I wonder if my writing will get better if I can tie myself to her. In The Sea, The Sea the character of the title is changeable, sometimes docile and loved and at other times raging, stealing lives, riven with the bodies of sea monsters. We walk back towards the river. The day is folding. The houses on the banks have long gardens stretched down towards the water. MSt alumna Daisy Johnson has written the introduction to the Vintage reissue of The Sea, The Sea, out this year. She is the youngest writer ever to be shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, for her novel Everything Under, published in 2018. Her debut short story collection, Fen, was published in 2016. She is the winner of the Harper’s Bazaar Short Story Prize, the A.M. Heath Prize and the Edge Hill Short Story Prize. She currently lives in Oxford by the river.
Somerville Magazine 23
Elizabeth ANSCOMBE
By Lesley Brown
2019 is the centenary of the birth of Elizabeth Anscombe. She was one of the leading philosophers of the twentieth century and had a long association with Somerville. The College is proud to have been the academic home to Anscombe from the nineteen forties until she moved to take up a chair in philosophy at Cambridge in 1970. She died there in 2001 at the age of eighty-one.
Unusually for a woman in the fifties and sixties, she dressed in trousers, sported a monocle and smoked cheroots. A devout Roman Catholic, Anscombe had deeply held conservative views on moral issues, and clashed famously with other professional philosophers. But her undergraduate students never had to bear the brunt of her fierce criticisms on such matters.
After her B.A. in Lit. Hum. at St Hugh’s in 1941, Anscombe studied in Cambridge and became a close friend of the brilliant Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose work she would later edit and translate into English. Her association with Somerville began in 1946, when she was awarded the Mary Somerville Research Fellowship. Later she was appointed a College lecturer, and held a Tutorial Fellowship from 1964-9. During her years at Somerville she published her seminal book Intention (1957) and her Introduction to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (1959), as well as collaborating with her husband Peter Geach on Three Philosophers: Aristotle, Aquinas and Frege. The couple had seven children, and three of their daughters — Mary, Jenny and Tamsin — would go on to study at Somerville.
In the same post-war decades Somerville was also home to distinguished philosopher Philippa Foot, and the two women were often to be found in the Senior Common Room having long philosophical discussions. Foot used to remark how much she had learned from her many conversations with Anscombe; she also paid tribute to the way Somerville had fostered the talents of the brilliant if eccentric Miss Anscombe, whose work is as influential today as it was sixty years ago. The monograph Intention is still the focus of much philosophical interest, and Anscombe’s trenchant writings on moral philosophy are indispensable reading for serious students of ethics. She coined the term ‘consequentialism’ for the view — of which utilitarianism is one exemplar — that the moral rightness of an act depends only on its consequences. Though Anscombe regarded such views as fundamentally mistaken, many contemporary moral philosophers strive to clarify and defend their favoured versions of consequentialist theory, while others share Anscombe’s antipathy. What is beyond question is that her term ‘consequentialism’, coined in a celebrated article of 1958, has become a staple of the philosophical lexicon.
Undergraduates lucky enough to have tutorials with Anscombe found the experience by turns novel, scary and stimulating. Anscombe taught only matters that engaged her at the time, so that her students would be exposed to cutting-edge thinking and writing. In tutorials you might sit uncomfortably through long periods of silence, or be rewarded with warm encouragement for your fumbling ideas. It was not uncommon for toddlers to stumble into the sitting room in St John Street where Anscombe held her tutorials.
Lesley Brown (Lit Hum 1963) is Emeritus Fellow in Philosophy.
Entrance to ‘The West’ You will have walked past the entrance of West (now Park) a good number of times, but you may not have noticed this beautiful glass in the doorway. Built in 1885 as Somerville began to outgrow Walton House, West was modelled on an Elizabethan house.
24 Somerville Magazine
Profile: Ann Olivarius By Rosie Sourbut (English, 2017)
“The motivator is not the money, it’s the righteousness of the case”
Photo by Alastair Hilton
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A
ctivist, lawyer and philanthropist Dr Ann Olivarius (1978, DPhil Social Studies) is an alumna of Somerville and Yale. After gaining a prize-winning doctorate from Somerville as a Rhodes Scholar and graduating with highest honours from Yale Law School and Yale School of Management, Ann worked as a lawyer and financier, making an international reputation for excellence in each, before setting up her own legal practice. Her achievements so far include getting universities to institute grievance procedures for sexual harassment in the ground-breaking Alexander vs. Yale case while still an undergraduate. More recently, her firm won a landmark civil claim in the UK in a case of revenge porn. Ann is the lawyer to go to if you have been discriminated against on any ground, if your civil rights have been violated, if you have been sexually assaulted or abused, if you are being cyberbullied, trolled, if you have lost your job unfairly, if you want a fair divorce, parental rights, or if you want to establish business opportunities around the world. Ann has served as Nelson Mandela’s lawyer and caused him to describe her as one of the finest lawyers he has seen in action, one who has improved life opportunities for “hundreds of millions” of people who are oppressed. Mandela saw her as a visionary; a person who takes people’s dreams and makes them happen. During our conversation, in which Ann described the reach of sexual harassment, violence and discrimination from within our own university to the very heights of power, I felt despair at the all-pervading scale of the issue which Ann has made central to her work. But I also felt inspired. I realised how much I and other Somerville students and alumnae beginning our adult lives have to learn from her, and so I am sharing certain messages I took from our interview.
Don’t let anyone else own you Ann came to Yale from an underprivileged financial background, and for her it represented the idea
that if she worked hard, she could get ahead. While there, Ann co-founded the Yale Undergraduate Women’s Caucus, and was subsequently asked to lead a report into the status of women at the university. During her investigation, she discovered dozens of reports of rape and sexual harassment that Yale students had alleged had been perpetrated against them by members of Yale faculty. Ann worked together with Catherine McKinnon, Ronni Alexander and others to bring a case against Yale over alleged sexual harassment by male faculty members. Although the women lost their case, the court upheld the view that academic advancement “conditioned upon submission to sexual demands” constitutes sexual harassment. Ann makes it clear that she
“She has been recognising problems that need to be challenged, fighting powerful institutions and winning her cases.” was not supported by Yale. “Decades later, I’m considered a legal heroine. Now Yale claims me as one of their own. But at the time, they didn’t want to own me at all. They wanted me to shut up and go away. They wanted the women I was representing to shut up and go away.”
Speak up and challenge injustice wherever you see it After Yale, Ann came to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship to pursue a doctorate in quantitative Economics. During her interview for the scholarship, she was asked, “Ann, you’re suing Yale for sex discrimination. You may have good grounds for doing so. But how do
we know that if you go to Oxford you won’t sue the Rhodes Trust for the same thing?” She replied, “You’re telling me that I shouldn’t use the law as a tool, that if there are illegalities and injustices at Oxford I should just look the other way? What kind of person would I be if I did that?” On the morning when I meet her in her Maidenhead office, she has been up since 4am working on a case of sexual abuse against two powerful US doctors. From her undergraduate days to now, she has been recognising problems that need to be challenged, fighting powerful institutions and winning her cases. Ann has been responsible for changing the conversation around assault and for gaining political support for advancements in women’s rights which, in turn, advances the conversation around men’s rights and opportunities.
You can make good money by doing good After Oxford, Ann returned to Yale before working in litigation, finance and corporate advisory work for a decade. “I’ve made a fabulous amount of money,” she tells me. “If you can make money by doing good, that is the best of all worlds, and I think that my life in business proves this. I run a business that promotes women. We pay really well and most people love working here. We take clients who we’re really passionate about. We want to change Britain and the world for the better. And in the process, we make good money.” McAllister Olivarius will only work on cases that they believe in. “You can’t just come in and hire us - we’re not for sale - because I know that if I get hired I’m going to do my damnedest to win my case; so I need to want to work for you. I win nearly all my cases, or settle them strategically – which is another form of winning. The motivator is not the money; it’s the opportunity to do good, it is the importance of the case.” Continued on page 26
26 Somerville Magazine
Pass it forward Ann feels a duty to use both the skills she’s developed and the money she’s earned in the corporate world to improve the lot of less fortunate women. When I ask Ann how she chose sexual harassment and violence as one of the issues she wanted to focus on, she says simply, “I’m in a position to do this. I have a quality education, excellent credentials, and have earned a lot of money so I am someone to be reckoned with. I am resourced. I should be fighting the hardest battles, I shouldn’t depend on others, less resourced, to do this work.” Ann asks me if I know how much of global giving goes to women’s issues - 6%, and half of that to breast cancer charities. “Only 3% of the world’s philanthropy goes to women and girls?” she asks incredulously. To rectify this, Ann is an advocate of “genderlens investing”, and part of a community called Women Moving Millions, a network of those who have donated over a million pounds to charities improving the lives of women and girls around the world.
Speak out, name, shame and penalise rapists Using the law to advocate for women’s rights has been a staple of Ann’s career. I ask Ann how we can stop rape and sexual assault - a difficult question for a crime so widespread that one in three female students experiences it during her time at university. “Have people named, shamed and penalised. For these bad acts, kick them out of the university; name them publicly. Have accolades, tenure removed from them. Women and men who have been assaulted have to speak up. They must tell their stories and the police and authorities must respond. We have to encourage women and men to report their assaults, and to use the legal tools and services available to them.”
Change requires institutional reform and regulation Ann thinks educational institutions have a critical part to play in holding rapists to account. “If Somerville were to say, any Somervillian who has been sexually assaulted, we will stand beside you and we will pay what reasonable funds you need to bring a legal case against the person who has assaulted you, and if Somerville were to advance any therapist fees that are necessary and which the NHS doesn’t pay, that would provide a model for all universities. We would see a real change in climate; behaviour would improve; shame for being assaulted and assaults themselves - would diminish.” Researchers and criminologists have found, repeatedly, in both the US and UK that the average rapist at universities rapes six times. Ann recommends the adoption of Callisto, a software used on many American campuses to connect survivors of sexual assault with others who have been attacked by the same person. Survivors can record the name of the person
“I should be fighting the hardest battles, I shouldn’t depend on others, less resourced, to do this work.”
who assaulted them on the system, and then if someone else is assaulted by the same person, both survivors will receive a notification asking whether they want to be connected. They can then be connected to a Legal Options Counselor to discuss ways to protect their community. Ann has criticism for Oxford too. “There should be clear regulations that a professor cannot have sexual relationships with an undergraduate or a graduate in their field,” Ann says. Since Alexander vs. Yale, relationships between staff and students are widely prohibited in the US. In Oxford, while it is required that staff disclose relationships with students to their superiors, they are still permitted.
Write the script of your own life “There came a time when I realised that either I was going to write the script of my own life, or not much was going to happen in that life. I could keep applying for jobs but by my mid-30s I was looking for very good jobs with very good money; the days of apprenticing were over. I applied for a number of jobs for which I was qualified and was rejected. Prospective employers told me they were afraid I would come in and take over the place. Men were getting positions and promotions; no-one tried to stop them from taking over the place.” And so Ann set up her own law practice, years later inviting her husband to join her as her partner. McAllister Olivarius is now a leading international law firm supporting those who face discrimination in the workplace, who – through bias, bigotry, gender, race, economics, education, are made less than what they are. McAllister Olivarius works to make people what they can be. My conversation with Ann was an invaluable opportunity to speak with someone who has had an exceptional career, and still plans to accomplish much more. Ann made me believe that I can have a positive impact; that we can all leave Somerville and change the world for the better. Rosie Sourbut (English, 2017) is a Laidlaw Scholar and CoChair of Oxford SU Women’s Campaign. More of her writing can be found in The Day, LookLeft, The Oxford Student and Anthroposphere.
Somerville Magazine 27
Paul Nash, Sketch of Audrey Withers Nash is best known for his war art and his landscapes. Here, we see his drawing of Audrey Withers, the Somervillian (and daughter of a Somervillian) who went on to be Editor of British Vogue from 1940 to 1960.
28 Somerville Magazine
Profile: Dr Radhika Khosla “Our ambition is to solve the most pressing problems of our time”
Your research is on urban environments and climate change - what drew you to this? A physicist by training, I have always been interested in the interaction between the science discussed in the classroom and its meaning in the everyday world. This is what drew me to an undergraduate Physics degree at Oxford and my doctorate in the Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago, where I examined how the natural environment interacts with the urban built environment. My work evolved in the following years which I spent working on environmental policy in the US and in India, with a focus on the fundamental question of how cities in transition – where most of the world’s population are projected to live – manage the tensions between growing energy needs for development, and protecting the local and global environment. Climate change sits at the heart of these issues, as it works as a stress-multiplier across all aspects of our economy and society. The complexity of the problem also means that it cannot be viewed through only one discipline alone but rather requires an integrated and interdisciplinary response, with active engagement between academia and the public and private sectors.
Why is an organisation like Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development (OICSD), with its focus on interdisciplinarity and on India, important for the research you do? India is in the midst of multiple transitions, in its urbanization patterns, workforce, built environment, among others. These transitions present an opportunity for development and a better quality of life for millions, which will be delivered with an associated increase in energy use. On the other hand, India, like all other countries, recognizes the urgent need to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. The country has a particular duality of being one of the largest current carbon dioxide emitters, but with one of the lowest rates of per capita emissions. How India takes on the question of this rapid development and growth while also addressing the mitigation and adaptation of climate change becomes particularly significant. The OICSD is a unique place in which to examine these debates. It brings together people who work on the most complicated questions on the environment and development and provides an opportunity for the intersection of different intellectual
Photo by John Cairns
Dr. Radhika Khosla discusses her work for the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development and the broader aims of the centre, a unique and dynamic partnership between Oxford and India.
approaches. This is true of the Centre’s research across issues – for instance, on food and water security, our scholars work to understand efficient methods of irrigation in agriculture that align with the social and cultural concerns of Indian farmers. Another example is our researchers’ work on developing smartphone technology to assist in the detection of Parkinson’s to help manage the increasing burden on health infrastructure.
What is the relationship between research and practice at the OICSD? The OICSD brings together the larger ambition of supporting new research on sustainable development and its effective translation to solving the most pressing problems of our time. The goal is to consider different dimensions of sustainable development through their particular disciplinary lens, and equally, their interactions amongst each other – for example, the feedbacks between clean energy and water, climate change, health, effective governance, among others. The centre rests on three pillars excellent research, supporting a cohort of scholars who further this research to become leaders in their
Photo by Keith Barnes
Somerville Magazine 29
Dr Khosla with India Centre scholars
fields, and to create a broader community within the public, private and civil society spheres who engage with us on the implications of our research in the wider world.
What is the next big step, research-wise? I am leading a new programme on the Future of Cooling based at the Oxford Martin School which has a team of expert researchers from across the university, including the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment (where I am also based), Engineering and the Medical Sciences. The goal of the new programme is to examine and help shape the unprecedented increase in cooling energy demand growth. We are at the threshold beyond which energy needed for cooling from air conditioners (ACs) is projected to triple by 2050 globally, with 10 new ACs to be sold every second for the next 30 years. The project will examine cooling as an integrated system of key social and technical components, and identify the ways in which its current trajectory can deliver sustainable
development. The position will focus on examining how and why households in fast-growing countries are making large increases in their cooling energy needs, and the ways in which to moderate this shift. The experts leading the project will also look the effects of extreme heat on healthcare systems in the developed world, which are unprepared for frequent heat waves from climate change. In addition, we will work on the sustainability of the global production network of cooling, including on the uptake of more sustainable coolant gases. The aim of the project is to make important new academic contributions that have impact outside academia. It is strategically poised to capitalize on the available window of opportunity, before cooling demand gains full momentum and gets locked-in over the coming decade. This is very much in keeping with the OICSD’s goal towards undertaking new research, with impact, towards sustainable development. Dr. Radhika Khosla was appointed the Research Director for the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development in 2018.
30 Somerville Magazine
The Mutual Dorothy L. Sayers, Muriel St. Clare Byrne, and an Extraordinary Group of Somerville Alumnae
South Riding Winifred Holtby’s South Riding, signed by Vera Brittain. The profits from Holtby’s bestseller were one of the main sources of scholarship funding for the College.
By Mo Moulton
T
ucked in among manuscripts and diaries in the Muriel St. Clare Byrne Collection held by the Somerville College Archives is an official-looking, if unassuming, document. Headed “Somerville College, Oxford,” it certifies that Byrne “has kept residence as a Registered Woman Student in Oxford” for the necessary number of terms, and has passed the examinations, which are prescribed for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts. Byrne, in other words, had met all the requirements for an Oxford degree – except for being a man. Although she left Oxford in 1917, she would not receive her degree until October 1920, when membership of the University was formally opened to women for the first time. Behind this deliberately-worded document are many stories: of the battle to win equality for women students, and the debate over whether, and how, to make higher education accessible to a wider range of people. Then there are all the personal stories: the examinations sat, the lectures skipped, the cocoa parties and the afternoons by the river, the crushes, the disappointments, the friendships, the triumphs. This cohort of Somerville students made Oxford their own, even if they were still officially second-class citizens of the University. Muriel St. Clare Byrne, who grew up near Liverpool in a family of naval architects and attended the Belvedere School, was part of a group that began life as a literary criticism society for first-year Somerville students in 1912. Its most famous member, the future detective novelist and popular theologian Dorothy L. Sayers, named it “The Mutual Admiration Society” – before anyone else could call them that first. The group brought together some of the most talented Somerville students of the era, including the pioneering science fiction writer Muriel Jaeger, the prominent birth control advocate and child advice author Charis (Barnett) Frankenburg, and amateur theatre producer Dorothy Rowe. Byrne herself would go on to be a well-known historian and expert on theatre, as well as the editor of the enduring collection of Tudor correspondence published as The Lisle Letters in 1981.
Somerville Magazine 31
Admiration Society At Somerville, they were bold, theatrical, and alternately serious and absurd. Take their remake of Hamlet, put on in the West Common Room in February 1913. Described as “Hamlet Restored by the Shakespierrots,” it translates Shakespeare into a slangy modern English. They were particularly proud of the joke that rendered Hamlet into the “Pragger-Dagger”. (The Prince of Wales was currently at Oxford, and he was nicknamed the “Pragger Wagger.” Thus Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, became “Pragger-Dagger.”)
“The young women of pre-World War I Somerville did not come to Oxford meekly to receive culture and learning. They were there to reinvent it” But the reworking went far beyond cute wordplay. In this version of Hamlet, the prince is delusional because of personal money problems; luckily, his family devise a plot to lead him gently out of his confusion by means of a farcical plot involving ghost costumes and a false dagger. So instead of a tragic massacre, this play ends, like all good comedies, with a wedding between Hamlet and Ophelia. The “Shakespierrots” gave the King the final word: “When William Shakespeare wrote his play, / He worked it out a different way, / But whether it’s better or whether it’s wuss / It really doesn’t matter a cuss.” The play is obviously an undergraduate lark. But it is also something more. It shows that the young women of pre-World War I Somerville did not come to Oxford meekly to receive culture and learning. They were there to reinvent it and to use it for their own aims and needs. The most sacred exemplar of British high culture – William Shakespeare himself – could be translated into the language and concerns of young women, who had no interest in following the original Ophelia to a passive, watery grave. “Hamlet Restored” features a conventional marriage plot. The members of the Mutual Admiration Society pursued a more diverse array of options. Their diaries and letters home from Somerville are rife with crushes – ‘pashes’ in the slang of the day. Sayers, famously, adored Sir Hugh Percy Allen, the director of the Bach Choir. Same-sex pashes were frequent, too, and were often seen more as a rite of passage than a sign of homosexuality (to use language that was only just beginning to come into use at the time). Opposite-sex relationships were hedged around with rules and strict customs. Even seating arrangements in lectures were defined by gender, to prevent any unseemly mixing. From a distance, anxious relatives worried
about whether all that education would render their daughters unmarriageable after all – and it is true that women who had attended university married at statistically lower rates. For Byrne, as for others, same-sex relationships were not a practice run for heterosexual marriage; they were the real thing. Her poetry from university alludes to the trials and tribulations of romantic relationships with women – assignations in student rooms, stormy break-ups, almost inexpressible longing. She would go on to build a rich, enduring partnership with a fellow Somerville student, Marjorie Barber, and to embark on an intense relationship with an earlier Somerville alumna, Mary Aeldrin Cullis. These relationships, too, are to be found documented in the boxes held at the College library. But their Mutual Admiration Society friendships remained at the bedrock of their lives. At the cusp of her professional career, Byrne published a volume of poetry, Aldebaran, with Basil Blackwell’s “Adventurers All” series for new poets. She dedicated one poem to Sayers, Rowe, and another Mutual Admiration Society member, Catherine Godfrey. It celebrated their intellectual and literary friendships: “You who would chant your rhymes to us, / Of vivid life all amorous,” and you “whose tonic laugh and timely jest / Came ever with as brave a zest.” These friends had now “strode ahead afire to meet / An unknown future!” In 1917, these memories left Byrne deeply nostalgic:
This night I’m very fain to be Back in the town where I was free Of a right joyous company.
The members of the Mutual Admiration Society found a way to be free in each other’s company, and to make the most of the liberating education they were able to access through Somerville College. The friendships they forged proved to be productive and, in many cases, lifelong. They led to collaborations that bore fruit in the form of books, essays, and plays. Byrne and Sayers, for example, co-wrote Busman’s Honeymoon, the play that brought Sayers’s famous sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey to the stage (and the altar). Perhaps most importantly, they continued to be a ‘right joyous company’ together. Dr Mo Moulton is Lecturer in History at the University of Birmingham. The Mutual Admiration Society: How Dorothy L. Sayers and Her Oxford Circle Remade the World for Women is forthcoming from Corsair in November.
32 Somerville Magazine
Worlds of sound inspired by words
Photo by John Cairns
Composer Grace-Evangeline Mason talks about her work, her background and the future of her profession.
By Jack Evans
Somerville Magazine 33
I
t’s a fine summer’s day in London 300 years to the day since George Frederick Handel’s Water Music was first performed. Despite a very different looking River Thames and a considerable reduction in demand for river-based courtly music, a barge is once again bearing an orchestra down through the city. But rather than the dance-like strains of a baroque masterwork, the music is bold; new music played on old instruments like a stained glass mosaic in sound. The microphones are a new development as well: it’s being broadcast live to the nation through BBC Radio 4. A performance that simultaneously celebrates and innovates; something played on the stage of history but with an altogether different script. “I got the email out of the blue”, says Somerville MSt in Music (Composition) student Grace-Evangeline Mason about the 2017 commission. “I really enjoyed the theatre of it. The challenge for me was learning to write for period instruments, which have some interesting characteristics for a composer. The brass instruments have a very restricted range of notes compared to their modern equivalents for instance. “It takes some getting your head around – but the reward of doing that is the different sound-world that opens up to you.” Her frank engagement with the past reflects Mason’s journey towards composing. She grew up in Wolverhampton with two non-musician parents and attended the local state comprehensive. She started her musical education through the County Music Service as a trombonist and clarinettist. Mason didn’t begin composing until she was 14, when she was given a piano and discovered that she could create music through improvisation. “I still start all of my pieces by improvising at the piano”, she notes. “That’s one of the reasons that I love to write from a text of some kind. I get inside the words or the image, and then sit down at the piano to create the ideas
and atmosphere of the piece. When I have everything in mind, I start to write.” That atmosphere and text is at the heart of her technique is immediately apparent to her listeners. The BBC have described her compositions as having a ‘keen ear for musical texture - from dreamy hazes of electronic sound to sumptuous choral writing’. In the notes on her website, she describes her music as ‘ethereal soundworlds often inspired by art, poetry and literature to take a listener on a narrative journey’. Taking the listener is the operative phrase; Mason’s music is generous to its audience.
“I get inside the words and then sit down at the piano to create”
Her latest headline work is an apt demonstration. Commissioned by the Ralph Vaughan Williams Trust together with the Park Lane Group, Into the Abyss, I throw Roses was Mason’s first foray into writing for a string trio based on words from Nietzsche’s Posthumous Fragments. The work was premiered by the Eblana String Trio at the Southbank Centre in January, receiving a four-star Guardian review praising the piece as ‘beautiful and muscular’. Mason also painted the artwork on the front of the score. Despite her rapidly growing profile now, it was almost by accident that Mason stumbled across the world of music colleges and the idea of composing as a career. “I remember seeing someone wearing a hoodie at a composing day when I was 17 that said ‘JRNCM’. I was intrigued. I had no idea what the letters stood for (the Junior Royal Northern College of Music as I’d discover). I’d not even really heard of a music college until then! I thought there was no way they would let me in, but I took a chance anyway and got in – and that was it.”
Now aged 24, Mason has earned no shortage of accolades. Her music has been broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 and 4 by ensembles including the London Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Northern Sinfonia and the BBC Philharmonic. She’s been commissioned by traditional stalwarts of the classical music scene such as the BBC Proms and Radio 4’s ‘Front Row’, and written works for avantgarde trombone soloist John Kenny and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic’s flagship contemporary music group Ensemble 10/10. Her rapidly accelerating career makes it all the more curious how Mason came to be a Somervillian. Why not continue her education at the Royal Northern College of Music – or just become a full time composer? Just as a chance encounter set Mason on course for music college, serendipity brought her to Oxford after she was invited down for a concert by the College’s then-Senior Music Associate, Hilary Davan Wetton. “As soon as I came here, I realised for the first time that Oxford was somewhere I had a real chance of being. It just hadn’t occurred to me before, but I liked Somerville and soon made a direct application. “I still love the Royal Northern of course – I spent 6 years there as an undergrad and in the Junior department. But I thought ‘why not have a go at somewhere else for a year?“ Mason has quickly made her mark on the College’s musical life as the conductor of the College orchestra. The choir have also performed multiple works by the composer across the year. She was swiftly commissioned by the College to compose a new grace, a work necessitated by Somerville’s nonreligious affiliation ruling out virtually all established sung graces. The ‘Somerville Grace’ was premiered by the College Choir at the 2019 Foundation Dinner, marking the start of the College’s 140th year. From one Somerville Grace to another; future performances of the piece in the hall will give Mason a musical legacy at the College that lasts well after her graduation. Continued on page 34
34 Somerville Magazine
Life as a composer is nevertheless far from a simple prospect for Mason and her peers. While there are signs of a recovery in interest in classical music, this has mostly come in the form of more appreciation for famous historical composers or crossover concerts, rather than a demand for live performances of new and challenging works. The professional opportunities that exist for musicians are fiercely contested as a result. The medium also remains open to familiar attacks: that it lacks ethnic diversity, concentrates privilege, and is broadly irrelevant to modern life and culture. The gloomy trend of decreasing investment by schools and parents into music education and the declining take-up of GCSE or A Level Music further contributes to the cloudy forecast.
“I’m optimistic about where we are headed actually,” she says.
It might be easy to think then that there’s little to be optimistic about for a professional composer right now. Mason disagrees.
“Trust in your creativity. Try out ideas without judging yourself and see where it leads you!”
Ukrainian certificate Katherine Woolley (Menke) earned this certificate for her work in Poland supporting interned army members from the Ukrainian People’s Republic. She went on to become a renowned archaeologist (and also the model for the victim in Agatha Christie’s 1936 novel, Murder in Mesopotamia).
“Orchestras and choirs today are so much more engaged in the outside world than in the past. They’re doing education work, community work, outreach with children. The funding is there for it and it’s bringing a new vitality to the genre.” “I’ve been lucky enough to have some commissions with a community element and I’ve loved it every time – it’s a long way from business as usual. I think classical music is back on an upward trajectory.” So what would she say to someone wanting to become a composer today?
STARTUP NEWS
Somerville Magazine 35
Connecting rural India to the modern economy In 2017, Gideon Laux (2017, MSc Economics for Development) co-founded a social enterprise aiming to provide affordable renewable energy to remote villages. With support from a Thatcher Development Award, Gideon journeyed to India last summer to pilot test their solution, with amazing results.
I
That is how, only days after completing my final exams in June, I found myself in one of the many remote villages inhabited by Odisha’s large tribal population where we would set up the first of our retail locations in collaboration with a local shopkeeper, giving villagers access to appliances such as solar-powered lamps on an affordable and flexible pay-as-you-go basis. Lacking alternatives, many families in the region still light their homes with soot-emitting kerosene lamps which contribute to the more than four million annual deaths from indoor air pollution worldwide. The grid, where available, is highly unreliable with frequent outages, and appliances such as solar lamps normally come with insurmountable upfront costs and lack adequate localised support and maintenance. Through its holistic last-mile distribution model, Empower Energy removes all upfront costs for the final consumer, and the shopkeeper becomes a trusted local representative of the Empower brand who ensures high service quality. These innovative features of our model meant that we were able to reach up to 60 percent of a village’s households in only two weeks after setting up there – compare that with the 1-2 products distributed through other models during the same timeframe. Initial results from our first villages indicated that our customers reduced their kerosene usage by about 70% on average, and some even told us they had got rid of their kerosene lamps entirely. Students reported studying longer after dark, and women who earn extra income by making sustainable single-
Photo: Empower Energy
n November 2017, I teamed up with fellow Oxford students to start Empower Energy, a social enterprise aiming to make electric appliances, starting with lighting and mobile charging, available and affordable to people living in underserved communities in rural India. Throughout the winter and spring, we developed our idea alongside our studies and raised the funds – including from Somerville’s Thatcher Development Award – that would allow us to pilot-test our solution in the east-Indian state of Odisha during the summer of 2018.
An Empower member helps a local shopkeer to set up a solar panel on his roof in order to power a solar ATM
use plates out of tree leaves told us they were able to double the number of plates they produced each evening thanks to the brighter light of the lamps from Empower Energy. Building on these early successes, we were selected to join the Oxford Foundry’s L.E.V8 accelerator programme, and raised funds for the next phase of our development from investors and awards, including One Young World’s Lead2030 challenge for SDG 7 (energy) and the D-Prize for last-mile distribution ventures. One of the competitions in which we took part – the Hult Prize – even saw us present our solution at the United Nations headquarters in New York to a panel of judges that included the CEOs of Unilever and Verizon, as well as several high-level UN representatives. One year on from the start of the initial pilot phase, I am now working full-time on building out our operations in Odisha together with the Empower team. We are grateful to Somerville College, the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development, and our other partners and advisors for the support we have received and continue to receive as we work towards our mission of “connecting rural India to the modern economy”.
36 Somerville Magazine
STARTUP NEWS
Cultivating seaweed The entrepreneurial flag has been flying high at Somerville this year. With enterprise competitions proliferating around the city, our students have tried their hand at taking scientific ideas from the bench to the boardroom. Two Somerville teams pitched in the final of the ‘All-Innovate’ ideas competition and another reached the final of the ‘Imagine IF!’ competition for science entrepreneurs.
A
ll-Innovate was launched by the university’s enterprise hub, the Oxford Foundry, to give students the opportunity to compete for £10,000 of prize money to bring their ideas to life, along with mentoring from industry experts. Judges included Brent Hoberman, co-founder of lastminute.com and Claire Davenport, CEO of HelloFresh.
“There is a growing demand for edible seaweeds,” Gabriella explains. “The global market for seaweed is worth £8 billion, with the market for seasonings worth £9 billion. Seastrong has selected seaweed species that have an optimal combination of taste, nutrition and availability to develop a premium Indian seaweed seasoning that maximises its superfood potential and boosts nutrition.” The inspiration and motivation for this venture originated during her fieldwork, when she travelled to a small coastal village in Tamil Nadu, southern India. There, she met members of the seaweed harvesting community as part of her research into coral reef conservation.
Photo by Umeed Mistry
One of the two Somerville finalists was SeaStrong, a social enterprise which aims to enable communities of female seaweed harvesters to improve their livelihoods by creating value-added products from the seaweed they harvest in the form of nutrient enriched seasoning. The company would also enable harvesters to work in a more environmentally sustainable manner, enriching their communities. The project was the brainchild of Gabriella D’Cruz (2017, MSc Biodiversity & Conservation). Self kelp: seaweed harvesters in Tamil Nadu
“The women are highly-skilled workers but use very basic equipment for harvesting seaweed and are completely reliant on seaweed for their income,” said Gabriella. “They are paid only 13 pence (12 rupees) per kilogram of seaweed. Everything they harvest is sold in bulk at low-cost to the food and drug industries. The seaweed is processed, which removes the nutritional goodness, for its use as a thickening agent in various foods. SeaStrong will pay them a more respectable income and empower the community to work in harmony with their environment, as well as preserving the nutritional value of the seaweed.”
THE GLOBAL SEAWEED MARKET Gabriella has worked with the WWF in Goa, the New Heaven Reef Conservation Program in Thailand, and in seaweed production with Mara Seaweed in Scotland. Her experience has taught her the value of working hand-in-hand with local people to empower them to improve their lives, and conserve their marine ecosystems.
Somerville Magazine 37
and enterprise Fostering teamwork
Startup News in brief
The SeaStrong team was assembled through Somerville’s Development Programme, which helps students acquire new personal and professional skills. Each member of the team brought specialised knowledge to the project. MBA student Isadora Oliveira (2018, MBA) worked on the business and marketing plan. Dr Malak Alshaikhali (2018, MSc Immunology), a Thatcher Scholar, provided medical and nutritional input; while DPhil student Julius Bright Ross (2017, DPhil Zoology) brought conservation expertise to the table (quite literally in practice, as much of the brainstorming for the project happened during long evenings over a kitchen table). “Working around a kitchen table and practicing for the event in the Somerville gardens really brought us together,” says Isadora, who delivered the group’s pitch to an audience including CEOs, lecturers and fellow student entrepreneurs on the night. “It was a great chance to develop team-working under pressure - we went from first meeting to creating our full pitch in less than a week. “The experience was incredibly valuable to me. I had the opportunity not only to apply the business skills I learned in class, but also to meet, interact with and learn from other amazing students outside my own department.”
Pioneering seaweed aquaculture: SeaStrong’s next destination Gabriella is currently in India conducting research to understand the best ways of creating a seaweed product for the Indian market. She is experimenting with a variety of local species to identify the most commercially-viable seaweed species for use as a value-added seasoning. “The target market in India is the organic and health food industry, which is growing
By Dr Claire Cockcroft
Gabriella D’Cruz
25% annually, catering for India’s massive vegetarian population,” Gabriella explains. “By turning Indian seaweed into seasoning that is both nutritional and delicious due to its great ‘umami’ flavour, we can create a new nutritionally high-value product from low cost seaweed. The seasoning will give the TamilNadu seaweed harvesters better livelihoods; improve community health; and encourage better stewardship of the seaweed growing along the Indian coastline.” For SeaStrong’s next step, Gabriella is hoping to secure funding to conduct an ecological survey of the health and growth rates of the seaweed beds of Tamil Nadu and pilot local species of seaweed for the seasoning. She will educate local communities in conservation practices as part of her work. She has also formed a collaboration with Mara Seaweed. The company developed award winning seaweed seasonings in Scotland, and Gabriella will work with them to determine the best economic model for setting up viable community-based production in Tamil Nadu. The student Development Programme at Somerville supports students by providing a wide range of academic, personal and professional skills. Our aim is to foster a culture of entrepreneurship. If you would like to support us or help our students to develop their skills and business plans, get in touch with Claire Cockcroft at Claire. cockcroft@some.ox.ac.uk
Tianrong Yeo and Abi Yates, both DPhil Students in Pharmacology, also made it to the final of All Innovate, with postdoctoral researcher Fay Probert and medical tutors Helen Ashdown and Daniel Anthony making up the team. The group is developing PCAid, an intelligent visual analytic tool that uses machine learning based on detailed clinical information to help diagnose complex medical diseases such as multiple sclerosis.
Joel Kosmin, a DPhil student in interdisciplinary bioscience, has his entrepreneurial eye focused on tackling obesity. His company, Inulox, is developing an enzymebased product that is capable of converting ingested sugar into a prebiotic fibre. Spurred by a three-fold increase in sugar consumption across the population over the past fifty-years, Inulox hopes the product will dramatically reduce obesity and associated diseases.
38 Somerville Magazine
Goodbye to Roman Walczak
Photo by Keith Barnes
By Richard Brearton and Kenneth Hughes
This year we bid farewell to Somerville’s longest standing Tutor in Physics, Roman Walczak.
R
oman came to Oxford in 1993 as a Tutorial Fellow. The move was not a smooth transition at first; in Roman’s own words, “it was a long way from a state school in Poland to Oxford”. After studying for an MSc in physics from the University of Warsaw in 1977, he began his work on particle physics and accelerator science at DESY and CERN, obtaining a PhD from Heidelberg University in 1981. Roman continued his work in these fields as a postdoctoral researcher, taking leading roles in the design of detectors and the coordination of large-scale research groups. Having won renown as a particle physicist, Roman’s interests shifted to the design and development of laser plasma accelerators, work which promises to open the door to the next generation of particle accelerators and X-ray generators. Roman now leads the Lasers for Accelerators group at the John Adams Institute, and is also a senior member of the Plasma Accelerators and Ultrafast X-rays Group at Oxford. Roman plans to continue this important research following his retirement from teaching, while also devoting more time to his small family farm in Poland and to his passion for swimming. Many will remember Roman’s unique teaching style. Generations of Somerville’s physics undergraduates have had their physical intuition put to the test, had their work ethics shaped - and no doubt been reminded on more than one occasion to practice their algebra! He stresses the importance of deep symmetries, and of thinking before solving when faced
with a problem. For example, when truly understood, one can simply “boost into the right frame and solve trivially”. He is equally known for his minimalist comments on students’ scripts, preferring to discuss the problems in person during the tutorials. This epitomizes the way that Roman focuses his teaching on trying to ensure the students understand the underlying physics of the problem, rather than merely being able to answer exam-style questions. The care that Roman takes over his students’ education is one of the many reasons he has been such a valuable tutor, successfully introducing us to such demanding courses as special relativity, quantum mechanics and particle physics. Countless students have been inspired to pursue a career in research and academia, thanks in no small part to the many interesting and insightful conversations shared with Roman over the years, ourselves included. Few teachers can ignite such real passion in their students, with Roman motivating his pupils year after year. While we hope that he will enjoy some well-deserved free time in the absence of teaching duties, we suspect that Roman will come to miss them too - for Somerville are certain to miss him. We all wish him the very best for the future, and can only try to express our most sincere thanks for his years of hard work at the College.
SOMERVILLE
140
The Catherine Hughes building
The last of our 140 objects, and the beginning of the next chapter in Somerville’s story. Somerville 140 is dedicated to Catherine Hughes (Pestell), and the new building named for her will open 140 years after the first students came up to Somerville.
Artist’s impression, reproduced by kind permission of Níall McLaughlin Architects/Forbes Massie.
Panel discussion at Somerville - Does a woman have to behave like a man to succeed in this world?
Future Events July 4
2019 will mark 140 years since Somerville opened its doors. To celebrate, the College is publishing Somerville 140, which will be available from October.
London Group: Alex Rogers
September 14 Family Day 18 London Group: Dr Armand d’Angour on Socrates at the Oxford & Cambridge Club 18-19 1960 50th Reunion 21 Alumni Weekend Lunch 29 Roman Walczak: Celebration and Farewell
October 15 20 23 24
Panel on stalking with Laura Richards, Sirin Kale, Zing Tsjeng and Zoe Dronfield Somerville Birthday Celebration: A History of Somerville in 140 Objects City Group: Young alumni and recent graduates networking event at Diageo, London 1959 60th anniversary reunion lunch
November 1 5 13
Dr Xand Van Tulleken, on humanitarian medicine, public health and life as a TV doctor Lawyers Group meeting at the Oxford and Cambridge Club (tbc) Monica Fooks Memorial lecture with Poppy Jaman CBE
You are warmly invited to our birthday tea party and a panel discussion here at Somerville on October 20, from 2pm. Please go to the following link to book this and other events: https://www.some.ox.ac.uk/ alumni/events/ Or by email: alumnievents@some.ox.ac.uk
December 05
A catalogue of the rare, the everyday and the just plain curious, this beautifully illustrated book includes everything from sculpture to teapots and books to bicycle racks and tells the stories of some of the extraordinary individuals who have been part of Somerville.
Alumni carol service
There will be reunion events for 1989, 1999 and 2009 during the next academic year.
Somerville College Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6HD E: communications@some.ac.uk T: +44 (0) 1865 270600 www.some.ox.ac.uk/alumni
Somerville is a registered charity. Charity Registration number: 1139440