Principal’s Welcome

BARONESS ROYALL of BLAISDON

Somerville has received some intriguing gifts over the years, from curtain poles to works of art. And yet the one I find myself thinking of this morning is the bequest made in 1971 by the anthropologist Barbara Aitken.

According to her wishes, Barbara’s gift was used to establish the Marya Antonina Czaplicka Fund. The fund was created in memory of Barbara’s friend and fellow Somervillian, the intrepid anthropologist Marya Czaplicka, who had died fifty years previously, in order to support any anthropologist or student of the Ancient World wishing to study overseas. In that gift, we see the same impulse which drives so much of the giving at Somerville. It is the story of someone remembering our College as a place where learning, friendship and community came together to enable a lifealtering change to occur, and seeking to pass that experience on to others. A gift received in the past is made to the future. We are tremendously fortunate that our College continues to inspire such loyalty and trust among our donors and alumni. Indeed, as Covid-19 continues to wreak its toll on the university sector and our students continue to feel its aftershocks, the steadfast support of our community has been more transformative than ever.

For that reason, I would like to start by expressing my thanks to our entire giving community for the speed and generosity with which you have rallied around our continued efforts to mitigate the effects of Covid-19. It’s impossible to say thank you here for every gift we received – but please know your support is essential to us, and never forgotten. I would also like to say a word about our Development Board and alumni groups. The record levels of support we received this year simply would not have been possible without the campaigns and initiatives that you helped mastermind and deliver. From Wigmore Hall to the Somerville Auction, you have proven yourself Somerville’s greatest champions, and we are so fortunate to have you. Covid-19 may have changed our lives, but Somerville’s focus on maintaining academic standards remains undiminished. That is why I am so grateful to Sue Scollan (née Green, 1978, Chemistry) and her husband Kevin for fully endowing our Chemistry Fellowship, as well as to Dr Ailsa Goulding for the generous donation made in memory of her sister Dr Elizabeth Goulding (Modern Languages, 1960) to support French studies at Somerville.

Securing the future of teaching and scholarship at Somerville must remain a focus of our fundraising going forward. In particular, we face a challenge in ensuring that our humanities and social sciences fellowships achieve full endowment, as the science fellowships have. There are already exciting developments in this regard, with a new Somerville Campaign to meet these and other challenges in its final planning stage. Bringing together the disparate strands of academic excellence, sustainability and inclusivity in one place, this campaign will acknowledge both Somerville’s past and future, and I hope you will join us on that journey when it begins. Scholarship at Somerville often dovetails with a commitment to the issues about which our community feels most strongly. Thus climate change was firmly on the

Photo by John Cairns. A gift received in the past is made to the future.

agenda when our OICSD scholars welcomed Prince Charles to college in May 2021 and later that summer at the inaugural OpenAg Symposium hosted in partnership with the OICSD’s new partner, Indian agribusiness UPL. At the latter, OICSD scholars met with policymakers, academics, tech investors and NGO innovators to consider how we reshape the role of food systems in the face of global heating – more of which on p14. Meanwhile, our MTST scholars continue to work at the cutting edge of research and humanitarianism – Martin Fellermeyer is one such scholar, and he tells us about his research into cancerfighting drugs on p12. Alongside academic excellence, we remain determined to maintain our focus on widening participation. I am pleased to note that, in the latest intake of students, 79% of our UK undergraduates were state school educated. Though we welcome and cherish all our students wherever they were educated, this shift towards a balance that more closely reflects society is an important marker of progress. It also vindicates the work of our Access and Outreach team, who were delighted to resume in-person visits in September 2021. There is one further cause for support which has captured our community’s imagination this year. Created in 2021 to support our newly acquired status as a College of Sanctuary, the Somerville Sanctuary Scholarships offer a pathway to Oxford for bright students displaced or endangered by conflict, persecution or the violation of their human rights. Thanks to the generosity of Virginia Ross (1966, International Studies), Shahnaz Batmanghelidj (PPE, 1975) and several other alumni and friends, we have already brought two fully-funded Sanctuary Scholars to Somerville, the newly graduated Marwa Biala (profiled in last year’s Donor Report) and Asif, whose extraordinary journey to Oxford you can read about on p10. More incredibly still, we have just learned that we have support for two further scholarships, with further enquiries coming all the time. Why does sanctuary resonate so much for Somerville? Perhaps because it speaks to our earliest promise of combining excellence with inclusivity. Certainly it is a source of inspiration that, when the world beyond Somerville looks so desperate, our community remains committed to improving the prospects of bright students both inside and outside these beloved walls.

Thank you for remaining so steadfast this year, and for supporting Somerville.