Somerville Magazine 2021 by Somerville College

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Contents Principal’s Message

News and People

Commemorating Somervillians

Somerville’s New Kitchens

June Raine: A Prepared Mind

Martin Desmond Roe: Say Their Names

SUSTAINABILITY AT SOMERVILLE: Michelle Jackson, Chair of the SWG

Going for Zero: Greening Somerville

Adrien Geiger: Natural Inspiration

Prince Charles Launches Sustainability Agenda

Lawyers for Life

Editorial: Matt Phipps

Susan Cooper: Looking Back

Design: Laura Hart

Steve Johnson on Thirty Years at Somerville

Somerville and Sanctuary

Rosie Thorogood Remembers the Boat Race

Pratishtha Deveshwar: Birth of an Activist

Profile: Professor Stephen Weatherill

Woodstock Road OX2 6HD Telephone +44 (0)1865 270600 www.some.ox.ac.uk Charity Registration number: 1139440

Cover photo: Martin Desmond Roe and Travon Free (l-r), co-directors of the Academy Award-winning Two Distant Strangers. Photo by Kai Byrd.

Contact: communications@some.ox.ac.uk

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Principal’s Message T

he past year has been unprecedented for Oxford and the world – a time of historic innovation as well as unparalleled adversity. To look at the road ahead, meanwhile, is to know that these upheavals are far from over – but let’s not despair just yet. If the last year at Somerville has taught me anything, it is that we always have a choice: we can give in to despair, to the voice that says there is nothing to be done. Or we can defy it by creating new knowledge, new relationships and new spaces in which knowledge and hope can grow. In a sense, this is what Somerville has always done, driven by our core belief that knowledge should always benefit others. But the stakes were so much higher this year, and the impact so much greater, as Somervillians from all across our community stepped forwards to be counted in the essential struggles of the day.

Sometimes knowledge can be painful. And yet the directors of Two Distant Strangers, Travon Free and Martin Desmond Roe (1998, Lit. Hum.), were unequivocal in believing that only by confronting us with the horrifying truth of racially motivated police violence could we change our thinking on the issue. Their bravery earned them an Oscar, but the greatest legacy of the film is surely the change it will bring. Creating a safe space in which knowledge and hope can grow together has always been important to Somerville. But has it ever seemed more important than today, as we watch the unfolding humanitarian crises in Afghanistan, Yemen and beyond? That is why our College’s successful bid to become the UK’s first College of Sanctuary, alongside our sister institution, Mansfield College, is so timely. As a College of Sanctuary, we will galvanise our founders’ determination to include the excluded by making Somerville a place of refuge and opportunity for at-risk students and academics from around the world. You can read more about that important work in our interview with the Yemeni neuropathologist Dr Anwar Masoud (‘Somerville and Sanctuary’).

Photo by John Cairns

Who can fail to marvel, for example, at the story told by Dr June Raine (1979, Physiology) of the vaccine approval process in which she played such a decisive role? Under her guidance, science, strategic partnerships and ethics all came together to create a new global standard for public health.

The transformative power of knowledge faces few greater challenges today than climate change. It is a source of both relief and inspiration, therefore, to see our researchers, lawyers, student-activists and whole-college committees bringing to bear the combined weight of their learning and passion on this subject – all of which you can read about in our special ‘Sustainability at Somerville’ insert. Finally, we have two profiles on current students. Pratishtha is an activist whose advocacy for People with Disability has taken her from the streets of Delhi to the floor of the UN; Rosie is an athlete who trained through the darkest months of lockdown to gain a spot in the Lightweight Boat Race. Two very different women, then, in whose implacable refusal to despair we find ample cause not merely for hope, but the expectation of better days.

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Honouring the Scientific Mind Dr June Raine (1971, Physiology) meets the artist Hilary Puxley (1970, English) to unveil the portrait commissioned on the occasion of being made an Honorary Fellow of the College. Dr Raine’s Fellowship was conferred in recognition of her role in approving and supporting the distribution of the vaccines as CEO of the MHRA (see feature, p8). June and Hilary were in College to attend the 1970/71 reunion on the 22nd-23rd September.

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News and People Dr Renaud Lambiotte was elected to a Professorship in Networks and Nonlinear Systems within the Mathematical Institute. Dr Radhika Khosla, Research Director at the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development, was elected to an Associate Professorship in the School of Geography and the Environment. Prof Dame Julia Higgins

FELLOWS AND STAFF Honorary Fellow, Professor Dame Averil Cameron (1958, Lit.Hum.) was awarded the British Academy’s Kenyon Medal for her contribution to Byzantine studies. Honorary Fellow, Professor Dame Julia Higgins (1961, Physics) received the Sir Frank Whittle Medal of the Royal Academy of Engineering at the Academy and the Sir Sam Edwards prize of the Institute of Physics. Dr June Raine (1971, Physiology) was elected to an Honorary Fellowship in recognition of her contribution to medical science during the pandemic. Professor Richard Stone was recognised with Fellowships at both the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Society of Automotive Engineers. Professor Steve Roberts was named a 2021/22 Turing Fellow in recognition of his contribution to the fields of data science and AI. Associate Professor Noa Zilberman, was named a Google Research Scholar 2021 in recognition of her work developing sustainable computing infrastructure. Professors Almut Suerbaum and Annie Sutherland published Medieval Temporalities, the third book from the Somerville Medievalist Research Group.

Associate Professor and Senior Research Fellow Patricia Kingori released her podcast series ‘Genuine Fake’, featuring conversations on authenticity with the V&A, De Beers and London College of Fashion. Junior Research Fellow Dr Eoghan Mulholland won the Lee Placitio Research Fellowship in Gastrointestinal Cancer.

Kata Escott (1997, Lit Hum) received a CB for Public Service in recognition of her contribution within the Cabinet Office during the early stages of the pandemic and as Strategy Director of the MOD. Daniel York-Smith (1998, Modern History) received a CB for public service in recognition of his contribution as Director of Strategy, Planning and Budget at HM Treasury. Martin Desmond Roe (1997, Lit.Hum.) received an Academy Award for Best Short Film for Two Distant Strangers. Dr. Anne Tropper (1972, Physics) won the 2021 Maiman Laser Award.

ALUMNI Diana Evans (1978, English) received an MBE for services to Heritage in her capacity as the Head of Places of Worship Advice for Historic England. Mary Jones (2005, Jurisprudence) received an OBE for Public Service in her capacity as Deputy Director for Home Affairs and EU Exit within the Cabinet Office. Narmada de Silva (1989, Exp. Psychology) received an OBE for public service in recognition of her work to promote equitable taxation at the HMRC. Professor Farah Bhatti (1984, Physiol. Sci) received an OBE for her contributions to equality, diversity and inclusion within the medical profession. Dr Rachel Glennerster (1985, PPE) received a CMG for Services to International Development in recognition

Professor Renier van der Hoorn received a €2.5m grant from the European Research Council to continue his work on developing crop protection strategies by unlocking extracellular immunity. Dr Elena Seiradake was elected to a Professorship in Molecular Biology within the Department of Biochemistry.

of her contribution as Chief Economist for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

STUDENTS

Dr Young Kim

Pratishta Deveshwar (2020, MPP) was awarded the Diana Prize, the UK’s highest accolade for young people’s social action. Dr Young Kim (2016, Clinical Medicine) was selected as the Nuffield Department of Medicine’s overall prize winner for best DPhil student. Dr Cristian Trovato (2017, Computer Science) won Best Research Paper of 2020 from the Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology. Abi Punt (2019, Medicine) and Eva Zilber (2015, Medicine) were named proxime accessit for their performances in the First and Second BM examinations, respectively. Rebecca Bowen (2016, Medieval and Modern Languages) won the Society for Italian Studies’ 2020 prize best postgraduate thesis in Italian studies.

Dr Rachel Glennerster

Shah Moore (2018, Psychology) won the British Neuropsychological Society’s Undergraduate Project Prize 2021.

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Somerville’s Commemoration 2021 In the Somerville Commemoration, we remember our alumni who have died during the previous year. The occasion underlines the relationship between the College and its members, one founded on the values, ideals and history we share as a community. The Commemoration usually takes the form of a Service in Chapel but due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Service was replaced this year with an online video Commemoration on May 29th, featuring an address from the Principal and music from the Choir. The list of those commemorated appears below. You can watch the service again and read a Commemoration booklet of obituaries on our website by scanning the attached QR code.

Ann Mary Margaret Hales Tooke née Petre (1944, PPE) on 6 November 2020, Aged 94

In 2022 we hope to return to a live Service in the College Chapel on Saturday 11 June and all Somervillians will be welcome to attend. We particularly invite close family members and Somervillian friends of those who are to be commemorated.

Angur Baba Joshi (1957, B.Litt Social Studies) on 20 June 2020, Aged 87

If you know of any Somervillians who have died recently but are not listed here, please contact Liz Cooke (elizabeth.cooke@some.ox.ac.uk).

FELLOWS Fiona Caldicott née Soesan (1960 St Hilda’s; Principal of Somerville 19962010) on 15 February 2021, Aged 80 Mary Jane Hands (Bursar 1960-63; Fellow and Treasurer, 1963-1995; Emeritus Fellow 1995) on 13 December 2020, Aged 92 Jane Kister (1963; Fellow 1971-78), Mathematics, on 1st December 2019, Aged 75 Theresa Joyce Stewart née Raisman (1948; Honorary Fellow), Mathematics, on 11 November 2020, Aged 90 Shirley Vivian Brittain Williams (1948; Honorary Fellow), PPE, on 12 April 2021, Aged 90

ALUMNI Sonia Primrose Anderson (1962, History) on 8 September 2020, Aged 76 Geraldine Jasmine Ashworth (1973, Physiology) on 4 February 2020, Aged 75 Gillian Margaret Batty née Lipsham (1964, Physiology) on 2 January 2021, Aged 75 Julie Gabrielle Beadle née Molloy (1982, Jurisprudence) on 26 August 2020, Aged 56 Rosalind Irene Bearcroft née Chamberlain (1946, Physiology) on 18 January 2020, Aged 93

Ruth Mary Katharine How (1947, Physics) on 29 June 2020, Aged 91 Gabrielle (Gay) Mary Jones née McGrath (1968, Mathematics) on 17 June 2020, Aged 70

Carol Ann Mariotti née Ashton (1958, History) on 23 February 2021, Aged 82 Jane Helen Victoria Mellanby (1956, Phys.Sci) on 8 February, Aged 82 2021 commemoration online

Catherine (Kate) Belsey née Prigg (1959, English) on 14 February 2021, Aged 80 Cecily Mary Eleanor Bennett née Hastings (1942, Mod Langs) on 25 September 2020, Aged 96 Vivienne Blackburn (1949, Mod Langs) on 31 March 2020, Aged 89 Gabrielle (Gaby) Eve Charing (1962, PPE) on 24 May 2020, Aged 76 Valerie Sylvia Diamand née Armstrong (1956, Chemistry) on 2 May 2020, Aged 82 Ann Cunnington Diamond née Geale (1950, Chemistry) on 29 August 2020, Aged 89 Audrey Gladys Donnithorne (1945, PPE) on 9 June 2020, Aged 97 Clare Margaret Cruice Eaglestone née Goodall (1953, History) on 6 August 2020, Aged 85

Margaret Middleton née Rider (1960, Mathematics) on 12 July 2020, Aged 79 Elly Miller née Horovitz (1946, PPE) on 8 August 2020, Aged 92 Katherine Mary Nichols née Lambert (1968, PPE) on 3 September 2020, Aged 70 Olga Olver née Robb (1942, Mod Langs) on 7 December 2019, Aged 95 Sheila May Porter (1951, Lit.Hum.) 1 August 2020, Aged 88 Clare Robertson (JRF, 1982-5, History of Art) on 20 June 2020, Aged 63 Lorna Miranda Shea (1953, English) on 14 February 2021, Aged 85 Gillian Anne Simmill née Evans (1954, English) on 28 September 2019, Aged 84 Lydia Margaret Speller née Agnew (1975, DPhil Theology) on 9 February 2021, Aged 66 Nancy Stratten née Coward (1954, Botany) on 29 June 2020, Aged 84

Josephine Eckhard (1946, History) on 21 January 2021, Aged 93

Alison Jean Sutherland (1951, Chemistry) on 10 March 2020, Aged 87

Judith Gray (1970, History) on 3 June 2020, Aged 68

Dorothy Twiss née Casson (1940, Lit. Hum. ) on 1 July 2019, Aged 97

Daphne May Green née Fenner (1954, Mathematics) on 14 November 2020, Aged 84

Diana Caroline (Carol) Uhlenbroek née Barnsley (1951, Chemistry) on 26 October 2020, Aged 87

Gladys Brett Green née Brett-Harris (1946, Mod Langs) on 6 January 2021, Aged 93

Ann Elizabeth Wardle née Taylor (1969, Dip. Statistics) in about June 2020, Aged 72

Jane Greenall-Scott née Greenall (1987, PPE) on 13 December 2020, Aged 52

Valerie Margaret Warner (1965, History) on 10 October 2020, Aged 74

Rhiannon Berresford Griffiths (1995, Music/English) in May 2020, Aged 42

Michael Jonathan Wyman (History) on 3 January 2021, Aged 40

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Come Dine With Me:

Somerville’s New Kitchens Now Open Photos by Jack Evans and John Cairns

ur Head Chef Paul Fraemohs (pictured) and the entire Dining Services team are excited to welcome guests back to Hall, after a year spent cooking and serving meals from temporary facilities on the Quad. The old kitchens, which were designed for only 150 diners per meal, had reached the end of their working life, with regular gas supply failures a worryingly frequent occurrence. The new kitchens offer energyefficient, gasless induction hobs, a dedicated allergenfree kitchen and massively expanded and upgraded cold storage. The servery has also been redesigned to allow hungry students to get hold of their delicious lunches as quickly as possible, with enough space to provide a full range of vegan and vegetarian options. Best of all, the new kitchens will enable Paul and his team to create delicious food as never before. The only thing missing now is guests – so we hope you’ll join us for dinner soon.

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A Prepared Mind Few people played a more decisive role in the UK’s response to Covid-19 than June Raine. As Interim CEO of the MHRA (she was confirmed in the role in Feb 2021), June steered the vaccines through testing and manufacture to achieve a mass rollout that set the pace for the rest of the world. Here she tells the story of an extraordinary year and the scientific training that prepared her for it.

What first sparked your interest in a position in medicine regulation and how did your career take you there? Well, I qualified back in 1976, at a time when the main pathways available to women doctors were radiology, pathology, anaesthetics or general practice. After an MSc in pharmacology and some reflection, I chose to start in general practice. But I still had a penchant for the research world – one which Oxford kept alive for me thanks to that real sense you have, when living there, of research and academia being all around you.

Everything I do scientifically comes back to those first principles I learned at Somerville.

Serendipity stepped in next when David Graham Smith, the Professor of Clinical Pharmacology, suggested I consider regulation. He told me it was at the cutting edge scientifically and I might find the process of developing new drugs a good way of having a direct impact on public health. As he predicted, I saw the value of the work almost as soon as I started. At that time HIV was just becoming a global threat, and I witnessed first-hand how these new antiretroviral cocktails turned HIV from a death sentence into a disease you could live with and even, in time, cure. Right from the beginning, regulation captured my imagination as a means of translating robust scientific methodologies into tangible health benefits – and I’ve been here ever since!

June Raine

You mention the atmosphere in Oxford as having influenced your decision to pursue regulation. To what extent, if any, did Somerville prepare you for that path? Oh, it was everything! Like many others, I’m sure I couldn’t do what I do now without Somerville’s influence; it really did shape my intellectual and ethical disposition fundamentally. First of all, I think there’s an idea that, if you’re a Somervillian, you have an open mind; you ask questions, never take things at face value and, when the situation arises, you’re there to be counted. The second thing Somerville gave me was scientific rigour. I was fortunate enough to be taught by Jean Bannister – and what a paragon she was! We all respected her work on cardiovascular physiology immensely, but it

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Showing Prime Minister Boris Johnson around the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control (NIBSC) in June 2021

was her emphasis on evidence-based practice that really influenced me. She taught us not only to rely on evidence, but also that evidence isn’t something you just wait for; you generate evidence, you prepare for evidence. Everything I do scientifically comes back to those first principles I learned at Somerville. Miss Bannister’s model was Louis Pasteur’s concept of the prepared mind – you know, ‘In the field of observation, chance favours only the prepared mind.’ I used to recite that to myself quietly in French, and it’s stayed with me ever since. The methodology I learned back then – of hypothesis, testing one’s hypothesis, repeating it, refining it, and then using that evidence to make robust decisions – that’s the absolute heart of what I do today, the heart of good regulation. Vaccines have been the one real success story in a very challenging time – can you tell us about your role in getting them out there? I believe there were three key aspects to our response. The first was starting early. We all knew that something like this was going to happen sooner or later, so our preparations had begun even before the virus emerged. In particular, the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control (which is part of the

MHRA and rejoices in the acronym NIBSC) had done a good deal of work on emerging viruses and understood coronaviruses such as MERS and SARS-CoV-2 pretty well. The next landmark was the call I took from the WHO early in 2020, wanting our Head of Virology to start preparing standards. Even without further confirmation of the virus’ spread, we acted on that immediately, because if you’re going to manufacture a vaccine, you need standards to test against. Once lockdown hit in March 2020, our preparations moved up a pace. Early planning on how to manufacture at scale was absolutely vital, because it doesn’t matter how good your vaccine is – if you’ve got insufficient supply or an inability to deploy, your asset doesn’t have the benefits you think. So we started looking at manufacturing very early on.

Evidence isn’t something you just wait for; you generate evidence, you prepare for evidence

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We never create these entities in a vacuum: it’s always people who matter and drive our best work. What was the second key element in the MHRA’s response? Here I must come back to the concept of the prepared mind scientifically – and it is where I myself pay most tribute to Somerville. But I was also tremendously fortunate to have a great many ‘prepared minds’ working alongside me. I knew, for example, that I could consult the doctoral researchers working on emerging viruses at NIBSC, as well as the MHRA’s expertise as a global centre for the eradication of polio. All of this research and the minds that produced it were tools in our toolkit.

And the final stage? The final element in our response was our ability to establish dialogue with developers and partnership with healthcare providers while maintaining strict independence. By emphasising the need for regulatory independence in our interactions with these colleagues, we were able to build an accurate picture of vaccine safety and efficacy very early on – this was around June to October 2020. So, by November 2020, when the major global regulators had set the bar at 50% efficacy for vaccines, we knew we were ahead of the curve. It was at this point that all our preparations began to pay off. We knew the vaccines worked and were safe, we knew the manufacturing and ongoing testing were in hand and we knew the NHS had fleets of vehicles with the requisite minus-75 degree refrigeration. We even knew we had a plan for hard-to-reach constituencies, such as care homes, who could store the AZ vaccine in a domestic fridge. Everything was ready to go. Is there any sense that the UK’s recordbreaking vaccine authorisation has ushered in a new era for the regulation and deployment of medicines? I hope so. Certainly, the last eighteen months have resulted in a range of innovations we can build upon. First and foremost, we proved that the emergency authorisation route works. Given the fundamental maxim that time is

Achieving global vaccine equity remains a major priority

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health, there’s no question that we can and should make use of the same process for other urgently needed vaccines and medications in future.

countries. I very much hope that the international community will shortly join us in a global strategy to tackle this disease and not let the grass grow under our feet.

I also believe that the model of international cooperation we’ve pioneered over the last year is a significant development. On the one hand, the ground-breaking work of Somerville’s former Principal, Fiona Caldicott on safeguarding patient data means the UK can use clinical data to test hypotheses and produce insights that we can share with countries that don’t have a regulatory regime like our own.

The last and perhaps most important point to make is that this pandemic reminded us we never create these entities in a vacuum. It’s always people that matter and who drive our best work. Public support for the vaccines has been phenomenal. Our initial projections anticipated 40% or even 50% vaccine hesitancy, but uptake among the older vaccinated population is now at 9495%. I also pay tribute to all the people who volunteered for the studies. We thought a few thousand would come forward, but when the vaccine register opened, it was half a million who enrolled.

Perhaps even more importantly, the UK has set an example in dealing with the very important issue of global vaccine equity. Oxford’s links with the Serum Institute of India are an enduring example of moral leadership, with the Institute currently committed to manufacturing and delivering 1 billion doses of the AZ vaccine to India and other low and middle-income

I find the continuing evidence of such altruism incredibly moving. It proves yet again what the belief in science can achieve.

This interview benefitted from questions suggested by Professor Marc Feldmann, Professor Patricia Owens and Abi Punt (2019, Medicine). An extended version can be found on the Somerville website.

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‘Say their names’ Fuelled by the horrific killing of George Floyd, the comedian and writer Travon Free completed his script for the Oscar-winning short Two Distant Strangers in just two months. Here the film’s co-director, Martin Desmond Roe (1997, Lit. Hum.), reflects on the complexities of depicting trauma on-screen and encouraging America to engage in its most urgent conversation with itself.

Travon and Martin, centre, with (l-r) Producer Lawrence Bender, Andrew Howard (Merk), Joey Bada$$ (Carter) and Zaria (Perri)

hen my friend, Travon Free, asked if I wanted to make a short film with him at the height of the 2020 Covid lockdown, my first thought was, ‘absolutely bloody not.’ Most American cities at the time were experiencing riots and protests so extreme the national guard was called in. There were literal tanks parked down the road from my house – it did not seem like the time to be telling stories. How wrong I was.

As Travon pitched me the idea, I realised I might never again have the chance to help bring to life a story so vital, relevant and urgent. And so we set off, in the scorching LA sun, to raise money and convince actors and a crew to join us on what was to become the creative experience of my lifetime. If you haven’t seen it, Two Distant Strangers tells the story of a black American graphic designer called Carter James who is repeatedly victimised and murdered by the same police

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Travon and Martin reviewing footage as it comes in

officer as he tries to get home to his dog. Some people have described it as ‘the worst Groundhog Day ever’ – which sums it up pretty well. You might demur at the premise, tell me that such a nightmare loop isn’t very realistic – but, tragically, it is. For millions of Black and Brown Americans today, police violence remains a cycle of horror which they are forced to relive again and again, every time a killing is splashed across the news or sends fresh shockwaves through a community.

I know that myself because I watched every single one of those videos with Travon as part of our research – watched time and again as the encounter mutated from something administrative and banal to the worst horror unimaginable, and, honestly, I wept. Viewed en masse, it is impossible to escape the conclusion that the story you are seeing is one of systematic violence.

How did this nightmare situation come to pass? Two key developments are to blame. First, the Supreme Court’s 1967 decision in Pierson vs. Ray to codify the concept of “Qualified Immunity” enables US police officers to inflict violence and death on citizens with almost total impunity (Derek Chauvin is the exception to the 99% of police killings that never see arrest or trial).

In a break between clips, Travon explained, ‘This is how we live with it. There’s no gap for us between Eric Garner and Philandro Castile, Breonna Taylor and Adam Toledo. It’s one long, connected string. I know for a lot of people that’s not their reality. It’s more like, “It was raining on Monday, now it’s Friday and the rain has stopped, so I don’t have to carry an umbrella or think about the rain.” But we have not forgotten that it rained – and our clothes are still wet. We’ve never had a chance to experience life outside that bubble of fear, of wondering when will this happen to me.’

Second, we now live in an era, thanks to cell phone cameras and social media, where these killings are relayed to us at a scale and scope that the human mind finds hard to comprehend – or as an activist I spoke to put it: ‘It’s not that there’s more violence and racism, it’s just that now it’s being filmed.’

We decided our challenge was to create a work that captured that fear, that sense of being trapped in a nightmare from which you can’t wake up. We already had a plot device to convey our message, thanks to the Groundhog Day time-loop. The next question was, how were we going to make it real? Specifically,

It’s not that there’s more violence and racism. It’s just that now it’s being filmed.

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how were we going to make it real for all the non-Black audiences who can’t imagine what it’s like for every interaction with the police to carry with it the imminent threat of death?

Our whole objective was to remove any distance so you become Carter as you watch the story unfold.

In the end, we came up with three solutions. First, we made our protagonist lovable. Travon wrote Carter as this blameless, lovable dude – a dorky, totally out-of-his-depth kid who loves his dog and just happens to have woken up next to the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen. That way, when Carter first gets stopped, you already like him and know this kid could not be more blameless in that situation. Second, we obsessed over the tone of the film. Fairly early on, we realised that, when you’re dealing with subject matter this graphic and recent, your entire tone has to strive for realism in order to respect the lives that have been lost.

The importance of tone became clear in the editing suite, when we realised that our initial cut of the transition from the romantic comedy feel of the interior scenes to the shock of first seeing Carter stopped and killed was just too extreme. We subsequently recut those early scenes, looking for takes that were less funny and more naturalistic. That might sound counter-intuitive, but we knew we had to bring you into a world where both Carter’s joy and his horror feel real. The other thing we did to respect the gravity of the material was adopt a very minimalist aesthetic. We paired a grounded, simplistic production design with raw, stripped-back sound design and as little music as we could get away with. It’s almost like the naturalism of a 70s movie, and you feel it most in the outdoor scenes. Here we moved away from the classic studio-style photography of the interior scenes, with their elegant Dolly moves and locked-off frames, to go handheld, shooting every scene with the longest single takes we could manage. Our whole objective was to remove any distance so that, whoever you are, you become Carter as you watch the story unfold. That was the great gift that using film to tell this story gave us: instead of being a captive eye forced to watch the horror from fifteen feet away, we could move the camera and immerse the viewer in the subjective experience of that moment, stripping out that half a degree of separation which allows people to look away, to disengage. The third and final thing we did was refuse to allow our policeman to be redeemed in any way. He is our villain, plain and simple. For us this was vital, because we knew that, for every show like The Wire, which explores the reality of how law enforcement interact with the people whom they police, there are a thousand TV procedurals that frame cops as inherently noble and heroic. We wanted to counter that heroic narrative and reflect the reality experienced by the black community – to expose the heart of a man who would put his neck on another man’s throat for nine minutes while that man begged for mercy, and do nothing until that man was dead.

Poster for Two Distant Strangers

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Perhaps by immersing viewers in Carter’s viewpoint, we can bring them with us. Up close and personal: cinematic framing immerses viewers in Carter’s experience

To some extent, you can only really understand the way we characterised our cop if you’ve lived with that fear. So I’m going to let Travon’s words speak for themselves here… ‘We wanted to confront the fact that, in movies but also a lot of times in society more generally, white humanity is assumed, but Black humanity needs to be proven. As a kid, I saw it myself in the community outreach programmes the police ran, where officers would come and play basketball or throw water balloons with local kids. To me, that whole idea that, if the police just got to know Black kids better, they wouldn’t kill us, was always insane. First of all, it’s been proven that these programmes don’t stop cops killing people in the same neighbourhoods. Second, the underlying idea that Black people are so alien the police need to go and see us in our “natural habitat” just so as not to kill us is hateful. You don’t see the police going into a white neighbourhood to learn how not to kill white kids.’ So we let our cop be the worst of the worst – because those people exist – and we let our young Black man be the best of the best, because they do, too. Then we put those two characters on-screen at the same time, because that felt like the most radical way of telling the truth. And the truth is that the US police currently kill three times more Black people than white people because there are still people out there who assume those men, women and children somehow deserved it.

Can our film change that? Not on its own, certainly. I’m with Travon in thinking that real change can only happen, ‘once everyone agrees that this situation is not acceptable; that we deserve to live in a society where we’re protected from the worst of ourselves without needing an organisation that kills people just for rolling through a stop sign or being a 13 year old boy with his hands in the air.’ Perhaps that is the job a film like ours can perform; perhaps by immersing viewers in Carter’s viewpoint, we can bring them into this space with us and make them think differently about the issue. To put it another way, if we can make you care about Carter getting home, perhaps we can start the conversation that makes sure every Carter gets home.

This article is based on contributions to the Somerville event, ‘A conversation about race and film’, featuring Travon and Martin in conversation with playwright Ella Road (2010, English) and Gabriella Cook Francis (2019, MPhil Comparative Government). Two Distant Strangers is available on Netflix.

Somerville’s Meeting Minds 2021 panel discussion, ‘A conversation about race and film’

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SUSTAINABILITY AT SOMERVILLE

The Story So Far As the college’s Climate Change Champion and Chair of our Sustainability Working Group, Fellow and Tutor in Biology, Associate Professor Michelle Jackson, is at the forefront of Somerville’s move towards net-zero carbon emissions by 2040. Here, she discusses the college’s response to the climate crisis and her research into the impacts of human activity on freshwater environments.

was lucky enough to grow up in the Sussex countryside, surrounded by nature. I fell in love with biology at a young age, and still have my childhood handwritten observations of the number of times a day the local blue tit parents fed their chicks. Despite my passion for the subject, it didn’t occur to me until the final year of my undergraduate degree at Queen Mary that I could actually have a career as a researcher – my twin sister and I were the first in our family to go to university, so an academic career wasn’t on our radar.

“I hope that by highlighting the way we are changing the environment, it will drive change.” My passion for sustainability stems from my work, which focuses on how humans affect freshwater aquatic ecosystems such as streams, rivers, lakes, and ponds. These habitats are often overlooked by conservationists, despite their enormous value for biodiversity and carbon sequestration. Just consider, freshwaters cover less than 1% of the Earth’s surface area, but have 10% of all described species and more than 50% of all described fish species.

They are also amazingly diverse. I’ve done fieldwork in locations ranging from the close to home – London’s canals and the Hampstead Heath swimming ponds – to the lakes of Kenya and South Africa and even the freezing reaches of Woodfjorden in Northern Svalbard and Deception Island in Antarctica. All of these habitats are incredibly precious – and fragile. Even small increases in water temperature can have drastic effects on the timing and success of breeding in aquatic plants and animals. While my work is principally aimed at understanding the impact of humans on the environment rather than proposing solutions, I have also written policy papers and given evidence to Parliament’s Environmental Audit Committee on river pollution. I hope that by highlighting the way we are changing the environment, it will drive change – but I also think we should each be taking

any opportunities we can today to create change in our individual lives, institutions, and workplaces. That is why I was delighted when Jan asked me to succeed Professor Renier van der Hoorn as Chair of Somerville’s Sustainability Working Group (SWG). The group, which consists of a broad crosssection of the college from students to admin staff to senior management, has been active since Michaelmas 2019. The quality of discussion and focus on action and policy has been excellent. We believe that the colleges, staff, and students need to work together towards our ambitious aim of ensuring the university, and more widely, Oxford, becomes truly environmentally sustainable. Somerville is already transforming to meet this challenge and, as the next few pages will attest, there is plenty more to come.

SOMERVILLE MAGAZINE 17 SUSTAINABILITY AT SOMERVILLE

Establish the baseline Conduct a carbon emissions and biodiversity audit of the college.

Decarbonise

21, arch 20 As of M s a h le il Somerv d este fully div res in a h s f rom el. fossil fu

Biodiversity Create a range of new sustainable habitats for flora and fauna at our central site

ed ge-fund All colle l must e air trav carbon e b now old sing a G offset u li p ant rd-com Standa . scheme

Recruit a Sustainability Officer to oversee the process and assist our Climate Change Champion and the Sustainability Working Group

Reduce Somerville’s carbon emissions to the lowest possible point by modernising buildings, reducing waste and promoting a climate-conscious lifestyle in college

Red me at is no w only se rved on ce a week outside of formal dinners .

03 04

Offset to zero After reducing emissions as far as possible, use carbon offsetting to close the remaining distance and reach the net-zero finish line

SUSTAINABILITY AT SOMERVILLE

Natural Inspiration Picture Provence and you probably see rows of lavender and baked earth, a dazzle of sunlight on water and people at one with the landscape. So how does L’Occitane en Provence, a business steeped in the poetry of the natural world, deal with the grim realities of climate change? We met with Adrien Geiger (2004, Engineering Science), L’Occitane’s first ever Group Sustainability Officer, to find out.

n paper, Adrien Geiger does not strike one as a natural environmentalist. By profession he is an engineer and, since joining L’Occitane in 2014, his career has been defined by high-profile corporate roles, including Chief Customer Experience Officer, Chief Growth Officer and Group Brand Manager. And yet, despite the engineering and business acumen, Geiger is a lifelong advocate for sustainability. His first job

was developing solar plants with French renewables firm Energies Nouvelle, and throughout his time at L’Occitane he has driven environmental initiatives from behind the scenes. Most recently, he was instrumental in L’Occitane’s 2019 partnership with Plastic Odyssey, which sent a vessel powered by plastic waste collected from the ocean on a three-year journey along the most polluted coasts of Latin America, Africa and Asia.

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Epic Challenge: L’Occitane’s Plastic Odyssey vessel at the start of its journey in June 2021

So how does Geiger reconcile his position at the heart of a global beauty business with his ideals and, indeed, his new job as L’Occitane’s first Group Sustainability Officer? Speaking via Zoom, Geiger explains that, in part, it is a natural progression. ‘L’Occitane has always been a brand very committed to the environment, and I was born in a way with that commitment. But even more than that I think this is something that people my age care about deeply. We are, I think, the first generation in universal agreement that climate change is an imminent threat to our species. So we feel an urgent responsibility to do something about it, however we can.’ The question of how to be environmentally sustainable while remaining a globally successful business is one that seems, on the face of it, insoluble. But, with a certain poetic symmetry, Geiger and L’Occitane are looking for the answer in the same place that humans created the problem – the natural world.

You can probably hear the engineer talking here. Indeed, speaking to Geiger, it soon becomes clear that the analytical skills he acquired at Somerville are fundamental to his appreciation of the natural world. ‘The most important thing I got from my engineering studies is the ability to simplify any problem and make it solvable. But this approach has also enabled me to see that nature often has the most elegant solutions.’ One example of a nature-based solution that Geiger advocates is the use of agroforestry to mitigate the damage caused by agriculture. This means that, instead of planting a single species of tree a million times to compensate for carbon emissions, you look at the local ecosystem to understand what you should plant in order to regenerate the soil, maintain biodiversity, reduce the risk of disease and capture carbon.

If you go into a forest, everything is recycled, nothing is wasted and you can last forever.

‘When we talk as a group about tackling the environmental crisis, we always look to nature as a source of inspiration, because nature has accumulated within itself literally millions of years of R&D. For example, if humans try to create a material equivalent to wood, we use 100 times more energy than a tree to make it, and 1,000 times more energy to recycle it. But if you go into a forest, everything is recycled, nothing is wasted and you can last forever.’ Agroforestry in practice at L’Occitane

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Doing something constructive to protect us from future crises gives us hope – and we all need that.

‘This type of planting is essential, because we cannot afford to kill the soil. That is important for us not only as a business which depends on natural ingredients to survive, but because it’s manifestly the right thing to do. Many businesses today have forgotten that every time you kill the soil, you’re taking out a loan that someone, somewhere is going to have to repay, because otherwise no one is going to be able to get food out of that land anymore.’ It’s not just environmental sustainability to which L’Occitane is committed. Geiger tells me that he is also pushing the business to embrace the concept of the ‘triple bottom line’. For the uninitiated, the triple bottom line is an economic model devised by British author and sustainable entrepreneur John Wilkington, which proposes that the value of any enterprise should be measured against three criteria: economic value, social value and environmental value. One of the best analogies Geiger has for explaining the triple bottom line is bees – which seems almost too on-brand for L’Occitane. But it’s more sensible than it sounds. ‘Wherever bees settle,’ Geiger explains, ‘they create value for the world around them. They help the flowers reproduce and they support the ecosystem by producing honey and all those other by-products which enable other species to develop. So for us at L’Occitane, the big question is how can we become bees to the environment, surviving on the land, but also giving the same value back to the entire ecosystem?’

Adrien evaluating the almond crop with Jean-Pierre Jaubert, sustainable almond producer, and Jean-Charles Lhommet, L’Occitane’s Biodiversity & Sustainable Ingredients Director

We have already heard about L’Occitane’s ideas on environmental sustainability (agroforestry, eliminating plastic, etc.). But how, I wonder, does a business create social value, and what defines its ecosystem? ‘It is tough,’ Geiger agrees, ‘not least because our ecosystem consists of 10,000 employees dispersed through multiple regions across the globe, each with its own brand identity, strategic objectives and plurality of individual politics and personalities. ‘But I think it’s worth it to try and create that social value. I mean, imagine the impact we will have if we persuade 10,000 people across the world to do one little thing each day to help the environment or their community, like a little hack or small action which doesn’t even need to cost anything necessarily. Then imagine if each of those 10,000 people were to persuade one or two others also to do that little thing each day; very quickly, you will have hundreds of thousands of people making a major difference.’ Perhaps the most bittersweet ally in Geiger’s efforts to gain support for social initiatives, he adds, has been Covid-19. ‘This pandemic has given humanity a brush with its own mortality. In response, people have a strong desire to know that what they’re doing has meaning. So, all of a sudden, we have got people from all across our business open to hearing about a type of value that goes beyond the bottom line. It’s a tough way to gain support, but we mustn’t waste this opportunity, because doing something constructive to protect us from future crises gives us hope – and we all need that.’ This seems a good note on which to end – in the possibility of hope and meaningful change right at the heart of a multinational business. After all, if change can happen there, it can happen anywhere.

L’Occitane employees cleaning up local beaches

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A Royal Welcome Climate change, women’s rights and Oxford’s partnership with India were all on the agenda when His Royal Highness Prince Charles visited Somerville on 8th June. In glorious sunshine, Prince Charles discussed biodiversity in the gardens with Professor Fiona Stafford and Head Gardener Sophie Walwin; discovered Somerville’s history of campaigning for the rights of women at Oxford; learned about the work of the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development from its research scholars; and planted a tree to signify the launch of the College’s new sustainability plan. Photos by John Cairns

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SUSTAINABILITY AT SOMERVILLE

Lawyers for Life A legal view on the climate crisis On Saturday 12th June, some of Somerville’s finest sustainability experts and academic minds came together for our Climate Change Symposium. During the event’s second panel, lawyers Farhana Yamin (1982, PPE) and Clare Hatcher (1974, History) shared their views on the trials and tribulations of addressing the climate crisis through the law, informed by their decades of experience. Here we share two abridged excerpts.

‘Lawyers can be a force for good’ Clare Hatcher, Consultant at Clyde and Co. and Vice President of the CLLS Energy Committee David Miller has described lawyers as like rhinoceroses: “thick-skinned, short-sighted, and always ready to charge.” I hope I can persuade you otherwise; that lawyers can be a force for good by helping to achieve net-zero carbon emissions.

One of the most significant developments has been in establishing legal liability when pursuing damages claims against private companies.

Since the 1970s, there has been a tsunami of growth in the number of climate litigation legal cases worldwide targeting both governments and corporates. For example, activists successfully challenged the German government’s climate policies on human rights grounds earlier this year. The court’s groundbreaking ruling held that, by enacting policies and targets that effectively placed the burden of radical emissions cuts on future generations, and that, given both climate change and the measures required to cut emissions have an impact on virtually every type of freedom, the rights of future generations had been compromised. One of the most significant developments has been in establishing legal liability when pursuing damages claims against private companies. The claimant must prove a causal connection

between the actions of a corporate entity and an event which results in loss. Proving this link has remained elusive, but, thanks to modern climate models and methodologies, it is now possible to connect the probability of a weather-related event to human activity and quantify the contribution made by greenhouse gas emissions. For instance, one case currently on appeal against German energy multinational RWE concerns a Peruvian farmer whose village was flooded by a melting glacier. As the damages were caused by carbon emissions, and RWE caused a portion of the emissions, the plaintiffs seek to establish that RWE must pay a percentage of the damages. As well as litigation, lawyers can help in their function of creating contracts and legislation. One initiative is The Chancery Lane Project, a collaborative effort between lawyers around the globe to develop an open source data bank of new, climate-conscious legal clauses which anyone can draw on. The provisions range from requiring suppliers to provide sustainable products to facility agreements conditional on emissions reductions. My firm is a participating member and we will be working on a full study of clauses for the energy sector in advance of COP26. Mahatma Gandhi once said that ‘the future depends on what we do today.’ There is a huge amount that lawyers can do right now to help build a better, more climate secure future.

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‘We need every person to step up’

I have been a climate lawyer for 30 years. Shortly after leaving Somerville, I qualified as a solicitor and then went into supporting the small island states during the negotiation of the Climate Change Convention, which had just begun in 1991, by providing advice and assistance. Sometimes that assistanace was in legal terms; but sometimes it was simply getting ministers to the right place in the labyrinth of UN buildings, holding their briefcase, printing the papers we had written for them, or getting them to their media interviews. I did whatever was needed to support their advocacy of their right to survival. It would seem that there could be nothing more global than the planet’s atmosphere, but not all contributions to the crisis are equal. In fact, the countries that are producing the fewest emissions are often the most vulnerable to their effects, and face issues such as water scarcity, rising sea levels and food scarcity caused by desertification and declining fish stocks in warming oceans. Meanwhile, the richest 10% of the world’s population contribute 50% of our total consumption emissions. Food, fashion, flights, transport, heating: all of these have a huge impact which is getting worse by the day.

Photo: Onassis Foundation

Farhana Yamin, Climate Lawyer, Paris Convention Negotiator for the Marshall Islands, Extinction Rebellion Activist

What can we do? Everyone has to add the word ‘activist’ to their CV. It’s no longer enough for any of us, in any profession, to leave it to the lawyers or the economists, because we haven’t been able to do it by ourselves. I’ve been at this for three decades. I’ve negotiated three different international treaties which launched an enormous amount of action, but there has been frustratingly little progress. Politicians are excellent at delaying action, fossil fuel companies continue to collect subsidies – the UK is even considering opening new oilfields in the North Sea. We can’t get this done solely through the courts, or through parliament, or through the UN or even through COP26. We need a whole society approach. Every academic discipline, every profession, and every person needs to step up to the situation we are in. We have the means to thrive and we can make the shift, but it must happen now. There is a lot of ground to make up, and precious little time.

It’s no longer enough to leave it to the lawyers or the economists because we haven’t been able to do it by ourselves.

You can watch a recording of both parts of the Climate Change Symposium, featuring Somerville’s climate change scientists, activists and policy-makers, by scanning the QR codes below.

PART 1

PART 2

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Looking Back

SUSAN COOPER

Susan Cooper (1956, English Literature) is the author of The Dark Is Rising series, not to mention many other works of fiction and non-fiction, TV screenplays, and the Broadway play Foxfire.

erhaps you have to reach old age before you find yourself wondering if, and how, Oxford managed to shape your life. Up to that point there’s no time; you’re too busy doing the living. But now that it’s 65 years since I went down from Somerville, I find myself starting to wonder. I’m a writer, a Jack-of-all-trades – fiction, non-fiction, TV screenplays, a Broadway play, and in particular, books published for children. As a word-besotted young person, naturally at Oxford I read English – and worked on Cherwell and joined the Press Club, since I assumed the only way to earn a living as a writer was to become a journalist. The Press Club turned out to have been the most practical choice, since it gave me contacts in Fleet Street that helped me to become a reporter on The Sunday Times.

As a friend of mine put it: “They simply taught us to believe in dragons.”

But the English School had a quiet, long-lasting influence of its own. Wildly different from its counterpart at Cambridge, its syllabus - created by J.R.R. Tolkien with the support of C.S. Lewis - had us studying hardly anything written after 1832. The stress was all on early and medieval literature. As a friend of mine put it: “They simply taught us to believe in dragons.” I loved it all, having been a child reared largely on fairytale and myth; Britain had been busy with World War Two until I was ten years old, and few children’s books were published. And life in wartime is like a sort of active myth; it’s easy to develop a Manichaean sense of good and evil when you spend your nights in the air-raid

Hard at work with Cherwell co-editor Patrick Nobes

shelter because enemies are dropping bombs to kill you. So off I went from Oxford, from the world of Anglo-Saxon and medieval literature, into the London world of a newspaper reporter, working for the news pages and for a column written by one Ian Fleming, the tall, elegant chain-smoker who had just begun publishing his Bond books. It was a fascinating and exceedingly fact-based life. I interviewed Duke Ellington while he was eating a steak, the Archbishop of Canterbury while he was mowing his lawn; I interviewed Newcastle dock-workers whose English my Southern ear could hardly understand, and farmers in the Outer Hebrides whose Gaelic I couldn’t understand at all. Over the years I graduated from reporter to feature-writer, which gave me two pages of space but involved vast amounts of research. Once I spent months writing a scathing three-part feature series about the appalling state of most

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British hospitals, only to have all its accusations blithely brushed away by the Minister of Health, a right-wing racist named Enoch Powell, because he hadn’t seen them. “I never read the Sunday newspapers,” he said silkily, smiling at me. “Not a word.” A lot of people do read the Sunday newspapers, of course, but like many journalists I hankered to write something longer-lasting, so in the evenings I wrote a futuristic novel called Mandrake, about a sinister leader who destroys civilization by exploiting love of place. I also came across a competition launched by a publisher of children’s books offering £1,000 for a “family adventure story,” and dived in with enthusiasm because £1,000 was more than I earned in a year. Before I’d written a chapter of this story my imagination gave me a major character with distinct overtones of Merlin, so the book Over Sea, Under Stone had to go to a different publisher, but I didn’t start thinking of myself as a fantasy writer, not even when Mandrake went into paperback labelled ”Penguin Science Fiction.” I was too much involved with real life. The Sunday Times had sent me to the United States for three months, I had met an American and he had convinced me to marry him. My editor looked at me in dismay when I announced this fact. “You can’t do this,” he said. “I was about to make you Features Editor.” Life as a features editor certainly wouldn’t have encouraged any more books of fantasy. But nor did life in America, particularly since I now had three teenage stepchildren and, within three

years, two babies. My writing stayed firmly factual. I wrote a book about the United States (the only time I’ve ever had my picture in Time magazine, which hated it), I wrote a biography of J.B.Priestley and edited his collected essays; for years I wrote a weekly column about American life for The Western Mail, the Welsh daily which in those days was connected to The Sunday Times. Politically and culturally, there was no shortage of things to write about in the late 1960s. But I was homesick. I had pulled up my roots, and they refused to replant themselves; instead they ached, and plaintively called to me. I was a classic example of the complex emotion that the Welsh call hiraeth: a deep, sorrowful yearning for a home that is out of reach. And one day in America, in the New England winter, cross-country ski-ing with my husband in a nearby wood, I saw fallen branches shaped like antlers jutting from the snow, and they reminded me for a moment of Herne the Hunter. I found myself thinking: I want to write a story about a boy who wakes up one day into deep snow like this, but in Britain, and finds that he can work magic. Who knows where that came from? Children endlessly ask children’s authors “Where do you get your ideas?” and there is no answer to this question. I tried to write my story and failed, but the idea niggled. It sent me in the end to the shelves in my study that held all the most precious of the books I had brought with me

I had pulled up my roots, and they refused to replant themselves; instead they ached, and plaintively called to me.

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I picked out Over Sea, Under Stone and began to read, and suddenly I knew that this new story about the boy and the snow would be its sequel.

when I moved from Britain (“Jeeze!” my 14-yearold stepson had said, hauling boxes, “Why do you need all these books?”) Along with my own first books, there stood Beowulf (in Anglo-Saxon), Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (in Middle English), the Mabinogion and the Tain, James Fraser’s The Golden Bough, Robert Graves’ The White Goddess, half a shelf of books about Arthur, Eliot’s Four Quartets and all my other closest printed friends from my three years at Oxford. I picked out Over Sea, Under Stone and began to read, and suddenly I knew that this new story about the boy and the snow would be its sequel in a sequence of five books, all linked, all set in my parts of England and Wales, all dealing with the overall substance of myth, the matter of good and evil, the Light and the Dark. I took a piece of paper and wrote down the five titles, the names of their main characters, the ancient times of year – like Beltane, and Hallowe’en – at which they would be set, and the overall title, The Dark Is Rising. And for the next six years I wrote those books, all the while drawing subconsciously on everything that had haunted me before and during my days in Oxford’s School of English.

So did Oxford shape my life as a writer? Not exactly, perhaps, but it certainly helped. In the Dark Is Rising books and everything I’ve written since, there’s a preoccupation with the conflict in the human soul between good and evil, the Light and the Dark, that I learned from ancient tales and modern war. “The evil that is inside men is at the last a matter for men to control,” says my Merlinesque protagonist in his last speech, to the children around him. “The responsibility and the hope and the promise are in your hands – your hands and the children of all men on this earth….The hope is always here, always alive, but only your fierce caring can turn it into a fire to warm the world.” In a time when the conflict once more alarmingly thrives, through fear and distrust and polarization, if not overt war, let’s hope he’s right – and that today’s children would say, as one of them does in the book, “We’ll try. We’ll try our best.”

Left: Susan Cooper’s plan for The Dark Is Rising sequence. Right: The unforgettable cover to the 1976 Puffin edition of The Dark Is Rising

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Steve Johnson Our Estates Manager Steve Johnson this year celebrates an amazing thirty years at Somerville. Here he tells us the story of how he came to be one of the indispensable cogs that keeps the college not only ticking over, but feeling like home.

When I joined Somerville, I was pretty much looking for any style of work, so the General Assistant job suited me fine. What made it different, right from the word go, was the atmosphere in College. There is a very strong sense you get at Somerville that everyone is working towards a common goal, and that was something which pretty much held me in the early days. I suppose in some ways it reminded me of my time in the army – but with more warmth and a bit less discipline! The other attraction was that the work was always so interesting. I started out in Housekeeping, but the electrical training I had from the army plus my NVQ in plumbing (which Somerville helped me obtain) meant I was doing skilled work pretty quickly. From Housekeeping I moved into Maintenance, where I became Assistant Maintenance Manager in 2004 then Maintenance Manager in 2014. I held that role until 2019, when I was promoted to Estates Manager. My current role includes responsibility for all maintenance requirements, assisting with project works, the grounds & gardens, waste management of the site and a list of other duties it would take too long to mention here!

Photo by Jack Evans

here’s no question that Somerville changed my life, giving it a structure and purpose it might never have had. Like a lot of people, I lost myself a bit in my early twenties. I spent four years in the army after school as a cable layer setting up HQ telecommunications, then almost joined the navy simply because I didn’t know what to do next.

It is a lot of work, but I never mind that, because I love Somerville. Anyone who has worked here for long enough knows what I mean: we give up all this time and make the extra effort willingly because Somerville’s a part of us.

We give up all this time because Somerville’s a part of us. Being here so long, and learning to love the place, you come to feel a tremendous sense of responsibility to the College, to protect it and preserve it for the future. In my time, I have seen Somerville come through lots of changes, from becoming a mixed college right up to the new building projects which have changed the appearance of the College so much.

It’s great fun when everything’s busy, but some of my favourite moments at Somerville are those times when the college is almost empty. There’s a lovely moment in late Summer, when the conferences are over and term hasn’t started yet, and you feel the college preparing itself for the next phase, like it’s taking a deep breath. Or there’s Christmas, when I am often the only person around apart from the few students who stay over the holidays. I’ve stood in the centre of College quad on Christmas Eve, with the buildings dark and silent all around me and church bells ringing in the distance. At times like that, you really do feel like you’re looking after the whole place, waiting on everyone’s return. At the end of the day, it’s a privilege being here. So I would like to finish by thanking all the amazing people who have supported and continue to support me at Somerville – as well as those very important people at home, who sometimes have to listen to far too many Somerville stories…

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A Place of

Greater Safety

In February 2021, Somerville and Mansfield Colleges were recognised jointly as the first University Colleges of Sanctuary in the UK.

ecoming a College of Sanctuary sees Somerville reiterate its founding promise to include the excluded, updating it for a world in which forced migration and displacement threaten the lives of millions. In particular, we are eager to redress the drastic imbalance whereby only 1% of those from sanctuary-seeking backgrounds enter higher education. Our new, fully-funded Sanctuary Scholarships will support this endeavour, and you can read more about our second Sanctuary Scholar, Asif, below. Being a College of Sanctuary also means embedding the principles of welcome and safety throughout Somerville, so that we are known as a place of sanctuary and support. It is thanks to this recognition that people such as Dr Anwar Masoud were able to find us, and receive the help Somerville is only too willing to provide.

ASIF, Somerville’s Sanctuary Scholar 2021

Somerville is delighted to welcome Asif (2021, History and Economics) as its second Sanctuary Scholar. Asif came to the UK as a refugee aged 14 having previously never attended school. Now, thanks to his extraordinary tenacity and a chance encounter with a virtual Somerville event featuring Lord Alf Dubs, Asif will shortly begin a degree in History and Economics at Somerville.

Read our full profile of Asif in the forthcoming Report for Donors. Main image: Dr Anwar Masoud

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Anwar’s Story In 2019, through the intervention of the Council for At-Risk Academics (CARA) and the Scholar Rescue Fund, the Yemeni neuropathologist Dr Anwar Masoud was offered a place in the research group led by Somerville’s Tutorial Fellow in Medicine, Professor Daniel Anthony. Two years later, Anwar and his family finally managed to escape Yemen and come to Oxford. It was like a dream, opening that letter. In my hands I held an offer to go and work at Oxford University. I knew straight away I had to forget everything, drop everything, to try and get there. At the time, we were living in northern Yemen. I was working two jobs, one at the government university and another at a private university – a job I was lucky to find after they stopped paying government salaries in 2016. Without that extra income, it was all too easy to get swept away by stress or not having enough money to buy food or medicine. Of course, once I received the invitation from CARA, the next big challenge was getting here. In the end it took two years. The greatest obstacle was that my family did not have current passports, and travelling to Aden or Cairo to renew them was not safe. Time passed and things got worse. Every night the air strikes fell around our home. Every night I told my children the same story to help them sleep: ‘Don’t worry, it’s only a wedding. People are just celebrating by setting off fireworks.’ But my children were getting older and I knew that, any day, they might figure out the truth. For years, my wife and I tried to shield them from the reality of the situation. We never let them to watch anything but the kids’ channels on TV, in case they saw the news. Instead we would watch Tom and Jerry or a favourite adaptation of Les Misérables. On Saturdays, we used to watch Liverpool games if they were showing. But, inside, I was getting desperate. I was afraid CARA would withdraw their offer because I had asked them to wait too many times. I was afraid I would get in trouble for speaking to people outside the country, even though I always used VPN for my calls. Eventually, I reached out to a former government minister, Rafat Al-Akhali, who now works at the Blavatnik School of Government here in Oxford.

Dr Anwar Masoud and his family

Despite hardly knowing me, he made a great effort to help me obtain new passports for my family – a kindness for which I will always be grateful. With new hope, we crossed the border and spent five weeks in Cairo waiting for our papers. One day, we were told everything was ready and a flight was booked to the UK. How can I ever convey to you the feeling when we landed safely or the gratitude I feel today? All I can say is that my family now has a future, where before there was none. I can focus on my research with Daniel. My wife can learn English. I can walk my children to school each morning and, thanks to the kindness of Somerville in finding us a home, they have a place to sleep through the night. As for me, I still find it hard to sleep, thinking of my friends and colleagues back in Yemen. That is why I am so grateful to Oxford and Somerville for supporting the idea of sanctuary – it is a comfort to know that, soon, others might benefit as I have while we wait and hope for the violence to end.

“Now I can walk my children to school and they have a place to sleep through the night.”

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Hey Ho And Up She Rises First year Chemist Rosie Thorogood joins us to share the nail-biting story of competing in this year’s Lightweight Boat Race – as well as the extraordinary year of lockdown training that brought her there.

We’d dug deep and clawed our way back, and now we were edging ahead in the competition’s home water.

he morning of May 18th 2021 dawned clear in Ely, and not too cold. Despite an early night, we’d all found it tough to sleep as the nerves kicked in. But we had each received messages the day before from the last OUWLRC rowers in our seat, and that helped. It reminded us that we weren’t alone in this – we were also racing for all the athletes who came before us. By the afternoon, our only focus was the race. From the bank, I looked round at our crew – all these women who had inspired me to believe it was possible to balance the pressures of study with long hours of training. Several of them were scientists like me, who spent their days in labs; others were finalists, their focus already on the world beyond Oxford.

was not to get cut from the squad! Once we went into lockdown, I used the training to maintain a fighting mental attitude and pushed hard through the ergs – but the Blue Boat still felt ridiculously far away.

Getting selected to join this crew had been enough of a shock. I began training with the Development Squad in the summer before I came to Oxford, then stepped up to full training in Michaelmas. At that point, my only ambition

Now here I was, getting ready to race Cambridge on their home water. It seemed unbelievable, but it also confirmed something I’ve always believed, which is that rowing is all about dedication. A lot of the athletes in

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our squad had never set foot in a boat before Oxford – yet here we all were, united by the dedication we’d shown, ready to represent our squad’s hard work. On the water, I felt nervous but excited. I’ve sat on hundreds of start lines for school, but this was different: this was The Boat Race. I tried to stay focused, visualising the course ahead, getting mentally ready. A moment’s hush, and we were off. It was a relief to feel the bite of our blades in the water – and a shock to see that we had taken the lead. Cambridge are notoriously quick off the mark, so getting the edge on them was a real upset – now all we had to do was hold that lead. I row bow, which means it’s my job to pick up the rhythm of each stroke and complete the connection from stern to bow. It’s like being the last piece in a puzzle, locking on to the pace the others set and putting down the power with the whole crew in front of you. After a kilometre, despite some amazing rowing, Cambridge had pulled level with us and even begun to carve out a lead. But we weren’t giving up. Rowing is as much about mental strength as physical. That’s what the training is for: you put yourself in the bin for those race kilometres, so you can stay focused even while your muscles are screaming. Now we called on all that determination, willing ourselves centimetre by centimetre closer to our rivals. Around the 2km mark, I stole a glimpse to the left and saw we were once again head to head with the Cambridge boat. The halfway marker was just up ahead: a slight bend on our side of the river. It felt like an advantage, and we pressed for it. Suddenly we were in the lead, properly in the lead, and it felt amazing. We’d dug deep and clawed our way back, and now we were edging ahead in the competition’s home water. This was a real race now. The only question was, could we hold on? Off to the left came cries from the bank as the small home

crowd cheered Cambridge on. Beside us the Cambridge boat hung in there, refusing to quit. They really were a superb team. By 3.5 km, they had eaten away at our lead, and by 4km they were pulling ahead. Soon, we were fighting just to make sure we still had an overlap between the two boats. The last 500 metres were upon us. It was here, with clear water between us and the boat in front, that we could have just limped home. But we weren’t about to do that. Each of us had gone through 25 weeks of lockdown training to get here, doing countless ergs in between the desks where we studied and the beds where we slept. There was no way we were going to end badly now. So we kept pulling, even as Cambridge unleashed the final lift that crowned them the winners. Seconds later, we crossed the line, too, the cheers of the crowd blurring in our ears with the rush of our own pulses. We hadn’t won, but it was still the race of a lifetime: a gutsy performance in which we almost toppled the champions. Now I’m ready to trial again – and hopefully bring home a victory in 2022!

2021-22 is the centenary of the Somerville Women’s Boat Club, of which Rosie is a member. To discuss supporting the SWBC, please contact our Development Director, Sara Kalim (sara.kalim@some.ox.ac.uk).

Each of us had endured 25 weeks of lockdown training to get here. There was no way we were going to end badly now.

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Birth of an Activist

In 2021, Pratishtha Deveshwar (2020, MPP Public Policy) received The Diana Award, the UK’s highest honour recognising the next generation of humanitarian changemakers. Here she tells the story of how she became an activist and found her way to Oxford.

tudents aren’t famous for their love of washing-up. But I bet I disliked it more than most when I first came to Oxford. You see, I hadn’t done the dishes on my own – or changed a bed, or done the laundry – since a car accident left me unable to walk aged thirteen. Living alone for the first time, I found all these routines incredibly hard – and that’s without even mentioning the challenge of reading for a Master’s in Public Policy! Then again, I’m no stranger to overcoming obstacles. Let me tell you my story. After the car accident, I spent four months in hospital – followed by three years confined to my bed. At first, I wasn’t allowed to sit up more than fifteen minutes a day. Going to school was impossible, because it wasn’t wheelchair accessible. People kept telling my parents to face facts and buy me a shop, so I might at least have a livelihood. Never mind what I wanted: a career, marriage, travel; all these things were unthinkable according to conventional wisdom. But I had always loved school – and I knew instinctively that the only way out of my situation was through the power of education. My parents were amazing – my first, truest allies on the path to becoming an activist! They supported me as I worked with teachers and friends to find a way of continuing my studies. Once we found a system that worked, I worked all day, every day, only taking breaks for meals or phone calls with friends. When I couldn’t read any more, my mother read to me. It was tough, but eventually I graduated top of my class. My next challenge was getting to university. Here, again, I had to overcome prejudice. What was the point, people said, in sending a young woman like me to university? Those people just saw the wheelchair; they never looked beyond it to the contents of my mind or my heart.

Photo by John Cairns

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Each time, I felt an immense weight of responsibility. I didn’t sleep on the plane, because I was too busy rewriting my speech – when so few people have a platform like this, you have to get it right.

It was around this time that I first thought of advocacy not just for myself, but all people with disabilities – of which there are 28 million in India. Finally, I made it to Lady Shri Ram College at Delhi University. It was there, in that all-female space, surrounded by a supportive community of students, professors and Principal, that I realised what women can do for each other. They were like an army behind me, urging me not to be afraid of sharing my story. Not long afterwards, I made my first tentative steps as an activist. At first, it could not have been more grassroots. I literally just went outside the gates of my college and started talking to people. Always fiercely independent, I became a bit of a local figure, wheeling myself around the streets with shopping bags hanging off each arm of my chair. Of course, I encountered prejudice and misogyny. But I also met people who wanted to listen or share their own stories. One encounter that stayed with me was a shopkeeper who invited me to visit his shop and make it wheelchair accessible. All the alterations I suggested were completed within 5 days of my visit. This, I learned, is how activism works: by meeting people, listening to their stories and telling your own, until you find common ground. Soon I was asked to share my story in other colleges of Delhi University, and it just snowballed from there. That’s how I came to speak at the UN – because UN representatives attended a conference for young people where I spoke. Amazingly, they wanted me to join them at the Asia Pacific Regional Office in Bangkok. A second meeting followed, this time in Nairobi.

Those experiences led to the Diana Award – but perhaps more importantly they led to Oxford. I came here looking for a way to take my advocacy to the next level. I found that but also, in Somerville, I found a home. Living in a building with fully adapted facilities was a revelation – but Somerville also welcomed me into its heart. College allowed my father to stay and help me settle in when I first arrived, and Jan even sent a message on his birthday. As for my Master’s, I’m still coming to terms with everything I learned. Perhaps the most unexpected discovery was that my studies actually reinforced ideas about activism I’d built up over the years. I had expected Public Policy to teach me how to use the system to leverage change. In fact, it asked us to look beyond the numbers and create the right solution by empathising with the people affected. Exploring that idea revolutionised the way I think about the interconnectedness of our struggles, leaving me with an interest in intersectionality which I hope to explore in my next Oxford degree. First, however, I need to spend some time in India, consolidating everything I’ve learned and figuring out how to share it forward – because, while I may be the first wheelchairusing Indian to attend Oxford, I don’t intend to be the last.

Living in a building with fully adapted facilities was a revelation – but Somerville also welcomed me into its heart.

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Professor Stephen Weatherill: 23 years of EU Law in Oxford Photo by Jack Evans

Somerville’s Professorial Fellow Stephen Weatherill has retired after 23 years at the college. In this Q&A, Stephen shares his memories of the college, how Brexit has affected his field, and what comes next.

What year did you come to Oxford? What was the academic community in Somerville like at the time? I joined Somerville in January 1998 as Oxford’s Chair in European Law following stints at Brunel, Reading, Manchester, and Nottingham. The college community then was just as dedicated to excellence and providing an inclusive and supportive environment as it is now. Some things have

changed though - I arrived only a short time after the college began to admit men to the Fellowship, and there are more of us now (especially among the sciences). Twenty years ago, there was also still a sense (although not a universal one) that a Fellowship was for life, whereas now academics come and go more readily, bringing with them fresh ideas and perspectives. What has not changed over the years is

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how Somerville is a kind place to work, a place where people’s views are respected in their diversity. I feel lucky to be part of it. As an expert in EU law and particularly consumer law and the single market, what impact has Brexit had on your work? As an academic, I feel enraged but stuck on the side-lines, unable to gain any purchase in a debate which pitted Remain’s dismally plodding focus on uninspiring economics against Leave’s exuberant carnival of untruthfulness. Although every case is different at the level of fine detail, there are broadly two types of relationship which the EU has with third countries. The first is the Norway Model: a high level of access to the EU’s market, with relatively few frictions disturbing trade, achieved by agreeing a high level of alignment with the EU’s rules. The second is the more remote Canada model: it involves little or no alignment with the EU’s rules, resulting in a much lower level of access to the EU’s market and relatively burdensome obstacles to trade. The economic gains of a close relationship with the EU carry the price tag of diminished regulatory autonomy. The joys of regulatory autonomy carry the price tag of costly barriers to trade. It’s a choice – yet Vote Leave won the referendum by refusing to accept any such choice need be made. They claimed that the UK was strong enough and the allure of its markets appealing enough that the country could chart its own course and yet still continue to enjoy privileged access to the EU-27’s market. It was a brilliant way to win a referendum, but an utterly irresponsible basis for governing. Vote Leave’s pain-free Brexit could never be delivered, and we have been living with that sin ever since. It did and does make me question what the use of academic lawyers really is, and it is sadly one of the factors propelling me into retirement. What have been some of the most memorable parts of your time here? While there is a certain pride in publishing research which you hope will make a difference - and the occasions on which

my work has been influential in shaping the development of EU law (mainly EU internal market law, especially consumer law and EU law’s application to sport) are gratifying teaching is the best part of the job. I find it a more shared experience, and it generates more immediate feedback. For over twenty years in Oxford, I have taught a weekly two-hour seminar on EU internal market law, and it has been an unfailing joy to work through the knottiest problems with the brightest students and to feel that the future of European law is in safe hands. Several of those students and others to whom I have acted as DPhil supervisor have gone on to prestigious Chairs in leading Law Schools across Europe and beyond and/or to secure important positions in the EU’s institutions, including the Court of Justice. Their success gives me great pleasure. What does the future hold for EU law at Oxford? EU law is still important in Oxford, as in the UK more generally. It remains the basis of much of the country’s trade, albeit that the UK no longer has any voice in setting its terms (‘Take back control’? - ‘surrender control’, more like). I think the subject should remain compulsory at undergraduate level, but it won’t be me that decides. Will students from outside the UK be as eager to come to Oxford to study EU law now that the UK is no longer a Member State of the EU? I doubt it. Since Brexit, the quantity, though not the quality, of postgraduate students from continental Europe applying to us has already dipped - and that is before vast increases in fees are applied to EU-27 students who were previously treated in the same way as UK students. I find it very dispiriting. What comes next for you after Oxford? More Oxford: I live here, and I am not leaving. Nor am I abandoning my interest in EU law. I intend to remain active in the areas that particularly interest me, such as holding Brexit decision makers accountable for the consequences of their actions. But I will have more time for other things, too: hillwalking, reading, watching football, cricket and racing. I’m not angry all the time.

What has not changed over the years is how Somerville is a kind place to work, a place where people’s views are respected in their diversity.

Photo by John Cairns

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Attendees of the 1970/71 Reunion

We are delighted to be able to welcome you back to Somerville again this academic year. All the events listed below will be held in-person at the College, unless otherwise indicated. We look forward to seeing you again soon!

2022

2021 20 October

Somerville City Group Entrepreneurs Event

15 January Memorial Service for Dame Fiona Caldicott

03 November

Monica Fooks Memorial Lecture with Professor John Geddes

05 February Supporters’ Lunch

17 November

Public Policy Group Event: “Can Compassion Transform Politics?”

12 March Parents’ Lunch

26 November

Memorial Service for Baroness Shirley Williams

12 March Somerville Association AGM and Spring Meeting

28 November

Local Alumni Carol Concert (In-person in Somerville Chapel)

07 May Will Power Society Luncheon

19 December

Alumni and Friends Carol Concert (Online)

March (Date TBC) Medics’ Day

11 June Commemoration Service 25-26 June Gaudy for Matriculation Years 1980-1991 (TBC) The latest schedule of college events appears on the college website at www.some.ox.ac.uk/news-events/events

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

Somerville Magazine 2021

Articles inside

Pratishtha Deveshwar: Birth of an Activist

Somerville and Sanctuary

Steve Johnson on Thirty Years at Somerville

Rosie Thorogood Remembers the Boat Race

Susan Cooper: Looking Back

Lawyers for Life

Prince Charles Launches Sustainability Agenda

Somerville’s New Kitchens

News and People

Martin Desmond Roe: Say Their Names

Michelle Jackson, Chair of the SWG

June Raine: A Prepared Mind

Adrien Geiger: Natural Inspiration

Principal’s Message

Commemorating Somervillians