Principal’s Message

Iam delighted to share this issue of the Somerville magazine with you – and not merely because of its wonderful contents. We have all learned the importance of keeping in touch this year, and staying connected has assumed an ever greater significance for all of us.

For Somerville, it was very much a year of two halves. We started in celebratory mode, commemorating our 140th birthday with a fantastic birthday dinner featuring words from Shirley Williams, Esther Rantzen and others.

We also found time for a trip to India to sign a fiveyear partnership between the Oxford India Centre and multinational agribusiness UPL. The new Sustainability Fund will finance research on climate change, clean energy and food and water security, dovetailing with the efforts of our new Sustainability Working Group.

But, of course, in January everything changed – everywhere, for everyone – and like everyone else we began the hard work of adapting to the much-vaunted ‘new normal’.

So, the magazine you now hold in your hands is a reflection of those two worlds, before and after COVID-19.

You must read on for stories about our fantastic medical Fellows and the work they have been doing in the fight against COVID-19. Also, look out for the pieces contributed by our Fellows in History and English, who deduce powerful lessons for today’s problems from the past.

But read on, too, for stories of hope and happiness – of holding onto one’s hat with indomitable Vogue editor Audrey Withers or singing through lockdown with the members of the Somerville Music Society.

Of course, if you put these stories side by side, you realise they are not so different, after all. Underpinning them all is the same marriage of intellect with the determination to remake the world as a better, fairer place – just as it has done for the past 140 years of Somerville’s life.

Speaking of continuity, what better way to illustrate it than through the brilliant work of our newly arrived Head Gardener, Sophie Walwin, who joined us this year from the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew?

Following Voltaire, Sophie advises us to ‘cultivate our gardens’ like her hero, Candide. It is advice that works on a number of levels as we consider the role that not only biodiversity and sustainability will play in rebuilding the world after COVID-19, but also the new, more deeply rooted mode of living that lockdown has taught us.

Finally, if the gardens of the college are a place of sanctuary, the events of the past few months have reminded us all that the walls of a college like ours do not exist to keep the world out, but to offer shelter and protection – and to extend thereby the promise of a better world.

To that end, I am so proud of the work being done by our students to support the BLM movement, of our new BAME scholarships and of the refugee events that are helping to deliver on our unswerving promise to include the excluded, even as the world changes all around us.

So, whether you are one of our oldest friends or a 2020 leaver, I hope you recognise your college in the following pages. And I hope you take a little of that Somerville spirit with you in the coming year, wherever you may go.