ISSUE 28. 2021
ST EDMUND HALL UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
AULARIAN THE
EXPLORING THE OUTER SOLAR SYSTEM WITH ROBOTS p06
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Refurbishing the Old Dining Hall
Interview with Ivan Gazidis
Remembering William R. Miller
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Teddy Hall Blog Visit seh.ox.ac.uk/blog for insights into the latest research by our Fellows and to read about interesting artefacts from our archive and library. Recent posts have included:
Understanding Endometriosis Professor Krina Zondervan (Fellow by Special Election in Obstetrics and Gynaecology)
Descartes goes to Hollywood Professor Paul Skokowski (Fellow by Special Election in Philosophy)
Reconstructing d’Holbach Dr Ruggero Sciuto (Junior Research Fellow)
The Future of Finance Dr Jacob Schumacher (Early Career Development Fellow)
Chief Editors David Priestland, Professor of Modern History Kate Payne, Alumni Relations Manager
Lucy Kissick, Isabelle Lemay, Chris Manby, Luke Maw, Claire Parfitt, Brittany Perera, Joseph Prentice, Principal, Lily Shanagher, Gareth Simpson, Amy Zavatsky
Contributors David Bannerman, Adrian Briggs, Sally Brooks, Nicholas Davidson, Tomas Dwyer, Elaine Evers, Bob Gaffey, Stuart Ferguson, Zachary Guiliano, Ivan Gazidis, Carly Howett,
The Aularian was printed using paper from sustainable sources.
Front cover: The first high-spatial resolution image of Pluto downlinked by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft. This is actually two New Horizons images combined – a high spatial resolution black and white image, with a lower spatial colour image superimposed on top of it. Image Credit: NASA/APL/SwRI
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Contents 04 From the Principal 05 Teddy Hall in lockdown 06 Refurbishing the Old Dining Hall 08 Aularians support accommodation regeneration 09 Greener, brighter, better
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10 Ivan Gazidis: From Queen’s Lane to San Siro Stadium 12 Carly Howett: Exploring the outer solar system with space robots 14 Spirit of the Hall: A podcast for Aularians by Aularians 16 Keeping the Aularian community connected 18 Aularian Connect 19 St Edmund Hall: A College Like No Other
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20 Introducing Revd Dr Zachary Guiliano 21 Joseph Prentice: The magic of colour 22 Remembering William R. Miller 24 Admissions and outreach 26 From the Development and Alumni Relations Office 27 The impact of your gifts
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28 Retiring Fellows: Adrian Briggs and Nicholas Davidson 30 Appointments and awards
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From the Principal
I write this introduction to The Aularian with relief, pride, and optimism. “Relief” is possibly an odd word to start an introduction - but this is what I am currently feeling after an extremely challenging year (18 months) for the Hall community. Like everywhere, there has been a great deal of disruption to the lives of our students, staff, and academics, as there have been for all of you. But we have survived and begin the process of emerging from the pandemic restrictions in good heart, with much to be proud of in the way our community has responded, and much to look forward to. I also feel a sense of pride in this extraordinary place. Unlike many colleges, at Teddy Hall we kept our library open and our kitchens providing meals throughout the period of the pandemic, adjusting arrangements for seating and other matters as the rules changed. These facilities have been a vital factor in allowing our students to continue to live, work and thrive on site, and to enjoy the benefits of social interaction as much as possible. However, what has been lost from the student experience is so much more than just face-to-face teaching as you will read from the brief student
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reflections that follow on from my introduction. But the committed and responsible way our students have met the many challenges thrown at them and the “can do” attitude has been something to behold. It is a trait that I have come to realise that Teddy Hall students have in abundance – and from talking with many of you over the past year, I see this is a hallmark that remains for life! Coming third out of 41 colleges in the recent universitywide student satisfaction survey is also a testament to the incredible commitment of tutors and college staff to make sure we remained focused on the most important thing – the wellbeing of our students during the pandemic. Looking forward, I feel a strong sense of optimism. The complete refurbishment of the Besse building, which has continued apace despite the pandemic, is due to be finished by the end of August, three weeks ahead of schedule. This has provided total refurbishment of 54 rooms, over 70% of them en-suite. As well as improving the student experience, this work will enhance our environmental performance (and reduce our heating bills) and help us compete for the crucial conference and summer-school income which vanished completely during the pandemic. Plans for the new accommodation building in Norham Gardens are at also an exciting stage. This will be a real legacy statement, enabling us to accommodate all undergraduates, but also built to the highest environmental standards, setting a benchmark for how the university sector should respond to the climate change agenda in its own operations. Too many people will tell you that pushing at the boundaries of zero-carbon in both construction and operation is too expensive, or the market is insufficiently mature. Too many planning authorities talk
the talk on climate change then allow large developments with gas boilers, which are damaging for the environment and will almost certainly require expensive retrofitting in a few years as regulations evolve. Not Teddy Hall! I look forward to being able to share plans for this beautiful and innovative building with you soon. So, as we plan for the resumption of face-to-face teaching and our next new cohort of Aularians, I look forward to the new academic year with confidence. I see the next phase as one of hope and renewal – in all aspects of life at the Hall - and I look forward to sharing it with you all. Floreat Aula!
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Teddy Hall in lockdown St Edmund Hall students Brittany Perera (2020, Engineering) and Lily Shanagher (2018, Modern Languages) discuss their experience of the Hall during lockdown. instead we had our own household events: ‘Toga Night’, ‘Pretend it’s Christmas’, ‘Cowboys VS Aliens’ (where Emden put up a good fight in our Stetsons, while, on the same night but different building, Staircase VIII wore their antennas and green masks with pride). And with less time spent on late nights, there was more time to try new things and I found myself falling in love with sports I had never even tried – rowing, football, even kayaking! Brittany Perera (2020, Engineering) Freshers’ week: clubbing, College bar, crew dates and cramming for tomorrow morning’s tutorial. Every other year, that was pretty much the given for a good week at Oxford University. But for the Fresher Class of 2020, most of those things are pretty much foreign to us. We made the most of it, though. No, we couldn’t have bops, but
It’s weird to think that we got to know Oxford as a beautiful, but quiet, city – a place where clubs don’t exist and pubs shut early, where the idea of being inside with over 6 people is unimaginable and there’s no seating plan in the Wolfson. That being said, we’ve now become closer with our households than any year probably ever has been, being served 3-course, sit-down dinners every night, while other colleges received Tupperware to their rooms.
Lily Shanagher (2018, Modern Languages) Despite a gloomy year, I have felt lucky to be part of a college which has done its best to maintain the collegiate, friendly Teddy atmosphere we all know and love. In first term, college remained fairly open, with places like the JCR and bar marquees frequented in substitute of clubs and pubs. JCR pub quizzes, Zoom sports drinks and college competitions helped students get to know each other and find fun activities to take part in from their rooms. Hilary at times
We swam in the river in Port Meadow in February and got familiar with the many takeaways that Oxford has to offer. And no, we don’t actually know what our tutors look like from the shoulders down – thank you, Zoom – but at least we had the Library, with St Edmund himself hanging out in the graveyard on his usual perch for when you take a break from your problem sheet on a Sunday night. I’ll be honest, the pandemic hasn’t made first-year the easiest. An upside? It’ll make it all the sweeter when things really do open up again and we’ll have a newfound gratitude when we’re able to cram 10 people around a pub table and be filled with a weird excitement instead of fear when we can finally see our tutors face-to-face. For me, I have plenty more time to see what the real Oxford has to offer. I am dreaming of balls and bops and all the things that make Oxford different. So here’s to the next three years.
felt lonely and bleak but the welfare team did their best to make sure life went on as normal as possible and provided so much support for people who were struggling. The return of a warm college breakfast was unanimously welcomed. With the arrival of exams, most of my friends have been keeping their noses to the grindstone, and we have been grateful to the librarians for their efforts to keep the Library open 24/7 – something that has proved endlessly helpful for many a stressed finalist with coursework to get done!
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Transforming Teddy Hall Refurbishing the Old Dining Hall The Old Dining Hall has always been one of the most loved and most used rooms in the College. Following an extensive renovation this year, future generations of Aularians will be able to enjoy it to its fullest for years to come. For those matriculating before 1969, the Old Dining Hall was the setting for evening dinner, for others the scene of poetry recitals, plays, concerts, seminars, formal dinners and weddings. Over recent years, it was clear the Old Dining Hall was in need of an update – not only to the décor, fixtures and fittings, but also to update the electrics and small kitchen and to provide better access for the disabled with a ramp. Thanks to gifts from many generous Aularians, the first phase of the refurbishment began in March 2020 just before lockdown, but the contractors and Hall maintenance team worked hard over the summer and completed the refurbishment in October. The lighting and acoustics have been improved, the historic woodwork has been restored and the walls have been repainted in a light green. The hall has been beautifully furnished with dining tables and chairs in keeping with this historic space. Sixty Aularians have supported the project and are recognised with a plaque on the back of the wooden dining chairs. We look forward to inviting donors and alumni to dine in the hall again once social distancing measures are lifted. We are delighted this project was completed in time for the start of Michaelmas term and look forward to many more years of dining, learning and entertainment in this special room at the hall.
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Aularians support accommodation regeneration Teddy Hall is improving the Besse Building and the Forum Garden to create a modernised student accommodation including six self-contained apartments, offices and teaching rooms as well as a new green space for all Hall members to enjoy. The Besse Building (49-56 High Street) renovation commenced in the spring of 2020 and its six new student apartments and 2 flats comprising 54 rooms - 70% of which are en-suite - will be ready to take on their first residents by October 2021. Part of the Hall’s strategic plan is to improve the quality of all College student accommodation over the coming eight years; therefore, the refurbishment also includes rewiring the building, installing ensuite bathrooms and fixing the roof. Thanks to the generous support of Aularians, the College has so far raised £300,000 to cover the additional costs of urgent roof repairs, ensuring it is fit for purpose for the next 50 years. Lastly, this grade II listed building will become more sustainable by adding upgraded insulation, double glazing and heat extraction from waste water.
View of the Besse Bulding from the High Street. Image Credit: Beard Construction
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Greener, brighter, better After a year’s delay due to the pandemic, the restoration of the Forum Garden has begun. Situated at the heart of the College, the Forum Garden bounds the well-trodden north-south path between Staircase VIII on the High Street and the path from the Front Quad to the Wolfson Hall running east-west. This major new restoration project will revive and enhance the Garden with new plants, new trees, and additional seating and lighting. An important part of the work has been to remove and replace over 20 tonnes of soil in the beds, all by hand with spade and wheelbarrow - a two-week-long job needing to be done, we hope, only every 40 years or so. Beforehand, a number of the existing plants and bulbs were removed from the beds and transferred to pots for use elsewhere in the College. New supports for climbing plants have been installed on the walls of the Wolfson Hall. We hope that Aularians will come to see this renewed outdoor space on their next visit to the College. “Refurbishing a garden during a pandemic has been a real challenge, complicated even more so by the limited availability of plants this year and the significantly increased demand across the country. After a significant effort, most of the plants in the original design were found and are now in place and starting to grow. We are pleased with the results so far and hope to have everything in place by the time everyone is back for Michaelmas term.” Professor Amy Zavatksy (Garden Fellow)
Forum Garden lighting simulation
Forum Garden lighting simulation Images credit: Francesco Miniati, Original Field of Architecture
Biodiversity Survey: Assessing our sustainability baselines As part of the Oxford Environmental Sustainability Strategy, Teddy Hall took part in a two week survey in Trinity term to assess the current status of nature at the Hall. Students and staff measured the abundance of earthworms, trees, birds and insects and we are now waiting for the results to come in. This survey will form a benchmark against which we can assess the College’s biodiversity outcomes in years to come as we plant more trees, preserve natural habitats and move forward on a path towards sustainability.
Teddy Hall aims “to become the greenest and most environmentally sustainable college in Oxford, with a stock of high-quality student accommodation and an estate that fully meets the needs of the College community.” Page 22, St Edmund Hall Strategy 2019-2029
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From Queen’s Lane to San Siro Stadium Current student, Tomas Dwyer (2020, Modern Languages) sat down earlier this year with alumnus Ivan Gazidis (1983, Jurisprudence), current CEO of AC Milan, to chat about his career in sport since leaving the Hall.
“Definitely very rowdy”, is how Ivan Gazidis, ex CEO of Arsenal and current CEO of AC Milan, recalled the atmosphere at his Cuppers final appearance playing up front for the Hall in 1983. “The thing that sticks with you most are the moments. There are certain moments at Teddy Hall whose importance you won’t appreciate until much later in life.” One of those moments came when Professor Adrian Briggs allowed him to switch courses. “He believed and put his trust in me to make the switch from Physics to Jurisprudence and I’ll always be grateful to him for that.” Ivan also looks back fondly upon the relationships nurtured at the Hall: “Relationships made at the
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Hall have a depth to them which you can’t recreate later in life, it’s really special.” He also emphasises that it is a time in which mistakes will be made: “There is an expectation now that you guys should have everything figured out and be perfect. When I look back to when I was at Teddy Hall… I had no idea who I was, what I was doing, or who I wanted to become.” Upon graduating Ivan began practising law in London, before asking for an overseas placement. He was given one in Los Angeles working for Latham and Watkins. It was here over a round of golf that his career path swung towards the world of sports management. “A friend told me he had an idea to start a football
league in America, and I said, ‘I want to help you with that’. Two weeks later I’d permanently moved from London to LA.” Despite facing “a huge amount of scepticism”, including the LA Times dubbing it “Mythical League Soccer”, Major League Soccer (MLS) has seen astounding growth in a hyper-competitive American sports market. It cemented Ivan’s view that “the one guarantee is that life will not turn out as you expect it. I had a stroke of incredible luck with that meeting and wasn’t stupid enough to turn down the opportunity.” After spending the best part of 15 years working on the MLS he returned to London in 2008 to become CEO at Arsenal; a role that comes with the unique corporate
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challenge of balancing both the on-field and financial performance of the club. “It’s an emotional challenge not an intellectual one. I might feel terrible after a loss, but you can’t allow yourself to go down that pothole.” At AC Milan he has succeeded in re-energising the club across all areas, taking over at a time when it was underperforming on the pitch and found itself in a financially precarious situation. “The club needed to drastically reduce spending and improve its performance. It’s difficult to improve performance even when increasing spending.” To do this Ivan had to buck the Serie A trend of buying expensive, established players with high salaries. “I knew we wouldn’t succeed by following the same approach as other teams in Italy. We instead sought out young players at a reasonable cost who we believed had high potential.” The approach has paid off; Milan now boasts the third youngest team in Europe, finished the season in second place and qualified for the Champions League for the first time in seven years. The sports world has numerous complex issues to manage but adapting to the rapidly evolving sport consumption habits of younger generations is the most consequential task Ivan believes the industry must confront. “The biggest issue is understanding how the next generation of fans is going to connect with the game. When I was a kid, you couldn’t even watch live football on TV. You had to either go to the game or watch it on Match of the Day. Now you can watch every game live, there’s analysis, transfer talk, fans even talk about people like me! I had no clue who ran clubs when I was younger. Not only that but fans now want to see the training session, the joke between player and manager, who’s his girlfriend, where have they gone on holiday; and it must be authentic. Football needs to adapt to take advantage of the opportunities this presents to
connect with the next generation of fans in an even deeper way.” Ivan’s belief that football must stay relevant and engaging in the modern age is in part due to his view that it is a fantastic force for social change; an aspect of the game he is deeply committed to. This mentality stems from his early childhood experiences in apartheid South Africa. “My father was jailed for three years for his antiapartheid activities. He was in jail when I was born actually. Football reflects the issues we have in society, but it is an overwhelming force for good in showing an example of people of all races and nationalities, colours and religions, sexual orientations and even body types, working together for a common goal. It humanises people who are different to ourselves and this opens our hearts and our minds.” Ivan has vigorously promoted equity, diversity and inclusion initiatives at his clubs and also at the European level. He has also been a big promoter of the women’s game, with Arsenal having one of the most successful women’s teams in England, and AC Milan itself having established a new professional women’s team that this year qualified for the women’s Champions League for the first time in its short history. “Girls and young women are increasingly finding their sense of self worth and place from team sports - as men have long done - away from all of the pressures that are put on them during those formative and sensitive years. Images of strong women achieving things together through football are a tremendously powerful force for good.”
Ivan’s belief that football must stay relevant and engaging in the modern age is in part due to his view that it is a fantastic force for social change.
What does the future hold? “Right now, the goal is to have Milan at the top of Italian football, playing in the most beautiful stadium in the world (a new billion-pound, state-of-theart home for Milan is currently in the works). After that, who knows? If there is one thing for certain in this industry, it’s that you never know what’s next.”
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Exploring the outer solar system with space robots Exploring the outer solar system requires patience. It took Voyager 2 two years to reach Jupiter, another two to reach Saturn – then another five and a half years to reach Uranus, finally reaching Neptune twelve years after it launched. Pluto was explored by the New Horizons spacecraft, which took nine years to reach it. Basically, if you launch something to beyond Jupiter you’ve a while to wait, and while the space robot is adventuring, life on Earth continues.
Professor Carly Howett joined the Hall in October 2020 as a Fellow and Tutor in Physics. Carly is a planetary physicist and an expert on the surfaces of icy worlds with a long track record in space instrumentation.
For example, I’m working on a mission that will hopefully go to Neptune’s moon, Triton. This mission was conceived right around the time my second daughter was. I worked on the proposal while pregnant, and I found out we were selected for further study while nursing her. If it is selected it will launch when she starts primary school, flyby Jupiter when she starts high school, and reach Neptune when she’s old enough to vote. This mission will literally last her childhood, and I hope the results will be analysed for a long time after that too. I’m not naturally a patient person, but for Triton I’m willing to wait. It’s a fascinating world, like nothing else we know of. We think it formed even further from the Sun than Neptune, in the Kuiper Belt, which is the same region of space inhabited by Pluto. Something happened (gravitational instability, or maybe an impact) which resulted in earlyTriton getting kicked out of the Kuiper Belt towards the Sun, where it was captured by Neptune’s gravity. Triton orbits Neptune in the reverse direction to other satellites (which is how we know it can’t have formed there), and at a very high angle. The
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capture event, plus its weird orbit, provides Triton with a lot of energy. So much so that several billion years after capture, Triton still has enough energy to power plumes that tower eight kilometres (five miles) above its surface and extend several hundreds of kilometres downwind. Maybe there’s even enough energy to make Triton habitable. To know, we have to go there. There’s an old adage in science that every discovery is made because we “stand on the shoulders of giants”. In planetary science younger generations don’t just stand on the shoulders of giants, we operate their instruments, analyse the data they never got to see, and then (hopefully) make sure there’s more for the generation that follows us. My personal ‘giants’ were those people that built, launched and operated NASA’s Cassini and New Horizons missions. Cassini’s thorough exploration of the Saturn-system provided data that changed my career. The observations that it took of Saturn’s moons revitalised my passion for science. I went from planning to leave research (and academia) to loving every second of it. Specifically, I became enthralled by the activity on Saturn’s moon, Enceladus. This moon is small, even by moon standards (it’s about the same width as the UK), but despite this plumes of water ice continuously erupt into space from its south pole. Some of this ice spreads away from Enceladus, coating its neighbouring satellites and brightening them too. The rest of the ice forms another ring around Saturn, known as the E-ring. Understanding these eruptions is what I’ve been working on for a
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Global colour mosaic of Neptune’s moon, Triton, taken in 1989 by Voyager 2. The dark streaks at the bottom of the image are deposits from geyser-like plumes, which were observed to be active by Voyager 2. Image credit: NASA/JPL/USGS
decade. New Horizons was a flyby mission of the Pluto-system, which means unlike Cassini and Enceladus, it had just one opportunity to take the data and images it needed – there was no second orbit! To up the ante further New Horizons is also going incredibly quickly: 16 kilometres (10 miles) every second. So let’s try and put this in perspective. Imagine trying to take a photograph of a building you’ve never seen before from a moving car. You know where the building is, but you don’t know what it will look like, and you’ve only one chance of taking the picture. Finally, imagine this photograph is very important – so important that a lot of money has been invested into taking it and the world is waiting to
see it. Oh, and you are going about 500 times faster than a normal car ride. This is what the New Horizons team was facing. We knew where Pluto was going to be, but we still didn’t have an accurate estimate of its radius or its brightness (from a distance the two are interchangeable, a bright small thing can reflect the same amount of light as a darker larger thing). The investment was well spent though, the instruments and spacecraft were designed for this challenge, and we got the data. Late at night on the 13 July 2015 I got to stand on the shoulders of my giants as I was one of the first five in the world to see the first high-spatial resolution image of Pluto. New Horizons gave me a moment of true exploration.
Now I’m working to pay-forward the favour by putting the next generation of instruments out into the deep solar system. To explore once again and to help my daughter’s generation have their own moment of true exploration of the outer solar system too. Wish us luck!
“I’m not naturally a patient person, but for Triton I’m willing to wait.”
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Spirit of the Hall: A podcast for Aularians by Aularians
The St Edmund Hall Association is delighted to launch Spirit of the Hall, a podcast series brought to you by the alumni of St Edmund Hall. Spirit of the Hall features engaging conversations with some of St Edmund Hall’s most fascinating alumni, Fellows and staff. Hosted by Olly Belcher (1999, Geography), President of the St Edmund Hall Association for alumni, this podcast provides a special opportunity for current and past members of Teddy Hall to share how that unique spirit has shaped their insights and experiences in politics, academia, business, entertainment, technology and more. Join us as we lead the way and shine a light on some of those who make Teddy Hall – and other Oxford colleges – the great institutions that they are. Listen and subscribe online: anchor.fm/spiritofthehall
Bidisha (1996, English) Bidisha started her journalist career at 14. Bidisha came up to the Hall in 1996 to read English Language and Literature and during her first year, she published her first book, Seahorse. Since then she has journeyed through the worlds of journalism, radio, writing and film. Bidisha started filming her Aurora series when the Covid pandemic began and so has had to embrace the world of remote filming over the past year. She has dedicated much of herself to working with London-based asylum seekers and refugees although this too has been affected by the Covid pandemic.
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Congressman Jim Himes (1988, Latin American Studies)
General Sir Michael Rose CBE, QGM, KCB (1960, PPE)
Congressman Himes spent his early childhood in Lima and in Bogota, Colombia. Upon graduating from Harvard, Himes came to Teddy Hall as a Rhodes Scholar. After a short career in banking, Himes moved into the nonprofit sector. He first took office as Congressman for Connecticut’s 4th District in 2009. Hear Congressman Himes talk about the transition from the Trump presidency to Biden and what it was like to find himself trapped in the Capitol building.
Sir Michael was born in 1940 in Quetta, former British India. After graduating from the Hall, Michael was commissioned into the Coldstream Guards. He subsequently served with the Special Air Service Regiment in the Middle and Far East. He commanded the Regiment during the Falkland Islands conflict and the 39 Infantry Brigade in Northern Ireland. Hear how Michael’s degree helped him to make some of the hardest decisions of his career.
Stuart Ford (1988, Jurisprudence) and Richard Kilgarriff (1988, English)
Amanda Davies (1998, Geography)
This episode features Aularian friends Richard Kilgarriff and Stuart Ford. Richard is a former executive for Time Warner and founder of Bookomi. Stuart is a Los Angeles based film producer and Chairman of AGC Studios. Hear how, upon arriving at the Hall in 1988, Stuart fell in love with the beauty of the place, the eclectic mix of people he met there and how he believes the Spirit of Teddy Hall helped shape the person he is today.
Amanda came up to the Hall in 1998. After graduating, she joined Sky Sports, then the BBC and then CNN nine years ago where she has covered, amongst many amazing events, the 2012 London Olympics. Hear how she missed being at the 1999 Champions League finals, where her beloved team Manchester United played their greatest ever football game, to represent Teddy Hall in the Summer eights where they were bumped in the first fifteen seconds!
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Keeping the Aularian community connected Throughout the pandemic the Hall has worked hard to keep Aularians connected with the College and with each other. We have offered networking opportunities and careers advice to alumni and students through the launch of Aularian Connect. With over 1,200 members signing up since its launch in August 2020, the networking site has facilitated interactions between 130 Aularians. We have engaged with alumni through The Aularian, The Magazine, and the E-Aularian, as well as many other emails! Teddy Hall’s alumni e-newsletter not only provided updates about how the Hall has coped through the pandemic but also shared our successes. Our top read stories included student musicians performing in isolation, refurbishment of the Old Dining Hall and a report on the Hall’s first successful virtual Open Day. As well as moving Teddy Talks online, we have launched a series of virtual events, including our Aularian Author series and Fellowship Lunchtime Lectures. Highlights have included talks from Al Murray (1987, Modern History) and the inaugural Pontigny Lecture with Lord Mark Sedwill (1987, Economics). The St Edmund Hall Association AGM was held online via Zoom for the first time in its history and over 150 alumni joined to hear from the Principal and the Association. These online events have proved very popular and have given us the chance to connect with Aularians who would not normally have the opportunity
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Over 2,000 members of the Aularian Community have joined one of the Hall’s live talks since lockdown began.
In the past year there have been 6,149 click-throughs from the alumni e-newsletter to the Hall’s website (www.seh.ox.ac.uk).
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to frequent in-person events. We hope to be able to welcome you all back to the Hall soon, but what we have learnt during the pandemic is just how important digital communications and events are. We look forward to a larger mix of online and in-person events and initiatives in the future.
Al Murray during his Zoom conversation with Richard Kilgarriff
Over 150 alumni joined the St Edmund Hall Association’s first online AGM to hear updates from the Principal, the Association and the JCR and MCR Presidents.
12 Fellows have given lectures on their research between Michaelmas term 2020 and Trinity term 2021.
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1,813 Aularians have listened to the St Edmund Hall’s Association recently launched podcast Spirit of the Hall. Read more about this on page 14.
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Fellowship Lunchtime Lectures From Michaelmas term 2020 to Trinity 2021, St Edmund Hall ran a new online lunchtime lecture series which aimed to highlight the incredible depth and breadth of research across the Teddy Hall Fellowship. These talks have been very popular as students, Fellows, lecturers, staff and alumni have tuned in each week. All these talks are available to watch on the Hall’s YouTube channel: youtube.com/stedmundhall.
Aularian Authors During lockdown we launched a new online alumni event series, Aularian Authors, and heard from Linda Davies, Nicholas Evans, Catriona Ward and Jessica-Hatcher Moore. Below is a review of Catriona Ward’s new book The Last House on Needless Street. If you’d like to hear more from Catriona or any of our other speakers, their talks are available on the Hall’s Youtube Channel: www.youtube.com/stedmundhall. Last House On Needless Street may be familiar, the end result is anything but.
Catriona Ward (1999, English) The Last House on Needless Street A missing girl, a suspicious loner and a woman in search of some answers. So far so usual in the world of the psychological thriller but while the ingredients of Catriona Ward’s The
The book is set at the edge of the ‘wild Washington woods’. Since her little sister Lulu disappeared on a family day out, Dee has spent years looking for the person who tore her family apart. Now her search has brought her back to Needless Street and the eponymous ‘last house’ where reclusive Ted Bannerman lives with his cat, Olivia, and daughter, Lauren. The house is neglected, the windows boarded up, and Ted is exactly the sort of misfit to attract suspicion. Though the police ruled him out as a suspect at the time of Lulu’s disappearance, Dee is sure she has her man. The story unfolds from four perspectives: Ted’s, Lauren’s, Dee’s and the cat’s. Yes, the cat has a voice here and it’s a compelling one. As Ward explains, “Initially, this book sprang from my fascination with the relationship between serial
killers and their pets. Dennis Nilsen had a dog called Bleep – the only being he had any kind of functional relationship with. Bleep was the only thing he worried about after being arrested.” It’s hard to describe The Last House On Needless Street without giving it all away. Suffice to say Stephen King describes it as “a true nerveshredder that keeps its mindblowing secrets to the very end.” But it isn’t just a page-turner in the King tradition. It’s also an affecting account of the creation of a monster, with echoes of To Kill A Mockingbird’s Boo Radley. The compassion with which Ward approaches the real subject of her story, which will have to remain a surprise, is evident in every line. The book’s conclusion will leave you heartbroken but perhaps a tiny bit hopeful too. Review by Chris Manby (1990, Experimental Psychology)
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Aularian Connect Last August we launched Aularian Connect, the official networking platform for Aularians. The Hall worked with the St Edmund Hall Association and alumni volunteers to meet the demand from Aularians for a platform to connect all alumni and students. The platform enables you to re-connect with old friends, offer careers advice and become a mentor, share photographs and news, find and advertise jobs and sign up to events and societies. We now have over 1,214 registered users on the platform and 71% of users have offered to help their peers with careers advice and mentoring opportunities. Join today at www.aularianconnect.com to connect with contemporaries, friends and fellow Aularians.
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1,214 Aularians have registered for the platform since its launch in August.
71% of users are willing to offer careers advice, become a mentor or provide an internship.
Aularians from 44 different countries are registered with Aularian Connect.
Aularians from over 130 different industries are ready to help you with your career.
Join today at www.aularianconnect.com. If you would prefer to download the Aularian Connect app please visit the website for instructions: seh.ac/aularianconnect “I am delighted we have launched Aularian Connect this year. With such a diverse and fascinating 10,000 strong group of alumni at our fingertips, the platform is a golden opportunity for current students and alumni to reach out to others for mentoring, career and other networking opportunities. As we all know, the currency of real networking is generosity, not greed!” Olly Belcher (1999, Geography), President of the St Edmund Hall Association
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THE AULARIAN
St Edmund Hall: A College Like No Other A College Like No Other is a beautifully illustrated book which stands as a portrait of St Edmund Hall and a lively celebration of its past and present.
The book produces a rich overview of Hall life – the intriguing history of a medieval hall and its transformation into a distinguished college within the University of Oxford. It records the stories of place, people, communities and events. The book is edited by former Principal Professor Keith Gull and is a shared project where the writings of many Hall personalities come together to illustrate the diverse aspects of college life through all periods of the Hall’s existence. The books themes are the origins and evolution, twentieth-cenutry transitions, buildings, garden and art, Hall life, academic life and Aularian recollections. This is the first such celebration of life at the Hall and a treasure for Aularians and friends. We are rightly proud of the Hall’s claim to a special, distinctive and distinguished place in Oxford. If you would like to purchase a copy of the book please visit the website: seh.ac/book 19
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Revd Dr Zachary Guiliano Revd Dr Zachary Guiliano is a Early Career Research Fellow and the College Chaplain. Zack completed his BA in Biblical Studies at Evangel University, his MDiv in Theology at Harvard Divinity School, and his PhD in History at the University of Cambridge, where he was a Gates Cambridge Scholar.
Coming to Teddy Hall in the middle of a pandemic has been like entering a whirlwind. I arrived in Oxford at the same time as the students, and knew where I needed to be each day, but only just. Among my first goals was settling down to some proper research after five years mostly in journalism and church work. My first degree was in biblical studies, and my study and writing since then has borne the imprint of those early years. A turn to medieval history was unexpected but not unrelated. While preparing for my first trip to Oxford in 2008 to take part in a summer course, I read the Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People. I was fascinated by its biblical ‘flavour’, evident at every level, from phrasing to larger narrative structures. I asked myself a question then: ‘Why would you narrate personal or national history in a biblical mode?’ I feel like I’ve been coming back around to that question ever since: first, by studying the history of biblical interpretation at Harvard, and then, by writing about medieval commentaries and sermon collections during my PhD at Cambridge and in various articles on ‘biblical reception’ afterwards. 20
My first book was published by Brepols in late June 2021, after many pandemic-related delays: The Homiliary of Paul the Deacon: Religious and Cultural Reform in Carolingian Europe. It concerns the history of a collection of sermons compiled partly at Charlemagne’s court in the late eighth century. A monk and scholar, Paul the Deacon, was meant to collect ‘the best’ and ‘most useful’ texts written by ancient interpreters of Scripture. As a source of readings for daily prayer and as a model sermon collection, it exerted an enormous influence in the Middle Ages.
Published in 2021. Available to order here: bit.ly/3AisxqT
My current project comes back to Bede, particularly his understanding of wealth and poverty and his widely read commentary on the Gospel of Luke. Luke’s gospel is known for attention to the poor and disadvantaged, as well as for recording most of Jesus’ statements about riches. I have wanted to know
how such texts were understood in an era when the Church was, collectively speaking, one of the largest landholders in Western Europe. How did such a community receive the teaching of Jesus in Luke 14.33: ‘Anyone of you who does not give up every possession cannot be my disciple’? The research has come together fairly well, even as library access has been a challenge and archival travel impossible. I contributed a chapter on Bede to an edited collection, The Intellectual World of Christian Late Antiquity (Cambridge University Press), and in a different vein I have a chapter on the theology of sustainability coming out soon in a collection on the church and environmentalism. A couple other articles may find their way to publication soon, after some conference papers and a lecture on the moral legacy of church property and on Bede’s work as a textual critic. As Chaplain, I had other hopes for this year. I was keen to maintain contact with students, staff, fellows, alumni, and other friends of the College. Choral Evensong was a Sunday staple, broadcast on Zoom even in lockdown(s), with our wonderful choir and Director of Music adapting to an ever-shifting set of Covid rules for choirs. And there was much else: confirmation prep, reading groups, midweek services, weekly walks, and special events like Ghost Stories, Carols in the Quad, or a St Peter’s Day celebration with the University Church. It has been an incredible and challenging year. As a researcher and Chaplain, I feel my work has just begun.
THE AULARIAN
The magic of colour Dr Joseph Prentice is a Cooksey Early Career Teaching and Research Fellow at the Hall. Joseph’s research is in the realm of materials modelling – using theoretical tools to model and predict the properties of materials. In particular, Joseph is interested in optical, thermal, and vibrational properties of systems. in sensors, or even tunable lasers. There are many molecules that could potentially exhibit colour-changing properties, so this will be a tough search. Synthesising candidate molecules in real life is the ultimate goal, but doing this is likely to be a complicated and expensive process. It would be a huge help if we were able to narrow down the field ahead of time by predicting the colour of molecular materials accurately and relatively quickly. To the casual observer, colour is one of the most obvious properties of a material. What is perhaps not so well-known is that there are some materials, particularly molecules, that almost magically change colour in response to their environment. pH indicators are one familiar example, but there are many others. Some molecules exhibit ‘solvatochromism’, where dissolving the molecule in different solvents gives different colours. In extreme examples, one molecule can produce almost the entire rainbow! There are also molecular crystals that exhibit ‘colour polymorphism’, where the same molecule, packed together in different ways, produces completely different colours. A wellknown example is commonly called ‘ROY’ – a molecule, not a person! – which gets its nickname from the fact it can be Red, Orange or Yellow, depending on how it is crystallised. Knowing that such materials exist, the question is then: can we find more? This is not a purely academic question, as a material which changes colour controllably could have many applications, for example
As you might expect, this is quite a tricky problem. It requires solving the most important equation of quantum mechanics – the Schrödinger equation – for all the electrons in the material simultaneously. This would be completely impossible to do by hand! However, if we make some carefully chosen approximations, and enlist the help of (super-)computers to crunch the numbers, we can reduce the problem to a manageable size. What approximations we make will determine how accurate our answer is, and also how long it will take a computer to run the calculation. Typically, if you want your calculation to be more accurate, it will take longer – sometimes much longer. So, can we now predict the colour of a material accurately? There’s one further complication – it’s not enough to include one or two molecules in our calculations, as interactions between distant molecules will have an important effect on our answer. Including more molecules means including more electrons, making the calculation much longer and more expensive. If we want a calculation that is not unfeasibly long, we can
either include these interactions, or use a highly accurate method – not both. My collaborators and I have been working on a method that can solve this quandary. The essential idea is to use a cheap method to do a calculation including many molecules, and then use both the cheap method and an expensive method to do a calculation including only one or two molecules. If we compare the two sets of results for the smaller calculation, we can make a good guess at how wrong the cheaper method is, at least for the quantities we are interested in. We can then use this knowledge to correct the results from the larger calculation. This allows us to include both the long-range interactions and the higher accuracy of the expensive method, without requiring extremely expensive calculations. Our results have shown that this method works very well in a variety of materials, including ROY. With this method, we hope that predicting the colour of materials accurately will become much easier than it was before, allowing many more magical colourchange materials to be discovered.
Image credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BYR_color_wheel.svg
This article also features in Accurate and Efficient Computation of Optical Absorption Spectra of Molecular Crystals: The Case of the Polymorphs of ROY”, J.C.A. Prentice & A.A. Mostofi, J. Chem. Theory Comput. 17, 5214 (2021).
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Remembering William R. Miller The Hall was very sad to receive the news that William (Bill) Miller, CBE, KStJ, MA (Oxon), DCs (h.c), DMA (b.c) passed away in September 2020 in New York. Bill was a great friend of the Hall, having come up in 1949 to read PPE. become Vice-Chairman of BristolMyers Squibb, based in the USA, but with worldwide responsibilities, not least for research. He was recognised as one of the leaders of the pharmaceutical industry, taking senior positions in its professional organisations.
As a student Bill was tutored by the former Principal, John Kelly, and was an active member of the Oxford Union, the University Bach Choir and the University Music Society. After graduating, Bill joined the pharmaceutical industry and rose to
Despite his busy and highly successful international career, Bill remained strongly committed to the Hall. He was an incredibly generous donor to the Hall and endowed Tutorial Fellowships in Biochemistry, Neuroscience and Experimental Psychology and Economics, and Junior Research Fellowships in Molecular Aspects of Biology, and Management. He funded graduate awards and supported the Centre for the Creative Brain. He also made a major contribution to student accommodation, enabling the
building of the W.R. Miller Building on Dawson Street, which was opened in 2004. As well as being an Honorary Fellow of St Edmund Hall, Bill was on the Board of Americans for Oxford and a former Vice Chairman, a member of the Chancellor’s Court of Benefactors, and a named Distinguished Friend of Oxford. Bill was very active and interested in the Hall until the end of his life. He was a true gentleman and will be greatly missed by all. Below are some of the grateful recipients of Bill’s support and friendship.
“Bill was the consummate Aularian, who believed that establishing a Teddy Hall community in the United States was important and, being Bill, actually did something about it. He hosted the first New York Dinner, a gathering of a handful of Aularians at his club, in 1982, and under his consistent persuasion it grew in 38 successive years to an annual gathering of as many as 80 Aularians celebrating each other and the Hall. One of our number remarked, on hearing the very sad news that Bill had passed away, Bill was ‘a Teddy Hall giant.’ Another described him as ‘a towering figure among Aularians everywhere, especially here in the States.’ Anyone who ever met Bill would know he would have quickly rejected any notion that he was a ‘giant’ or a ‘towering figure’ in the Teddy Hall community. But, in fact, that’s exactly what he was. More importantly, Bill was a decent, kind, gracious and dignified gentleman. And, as even better proof that he was a through and through Aularian, Bill was also absolutely wonderful company at the dinner table, an excellent friend to all of us, and could deliver a near perfect imitation of Kelly.” Bob Gaffey (1975, Jurisprudence)
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THE AULARIAN
Isabelle and Lucy were recipients of the William R. Miller Postgraduate Award, which comes in the form of a rent-free College room for one year.
Isabelle Lemay (2020, International Development)
Lucy Kissick (2016, Environmental Research - Earth Sciences)
“Thanks to this award, I could focus on my studies more peacefully knowing that my rent was covered. The Hall provided me with a large room at Brockhues Lodge, surrounded by trees and flowers, and it made my year so much more enjoyable. Having accommodation secured was particularly welcome due to the pandemic. As an international student who had never been to Oxford before, it brought me peace of mind to know that the accommodation aspect of my new life in Oxford was taken care of during my first year of study, and that I had a place to stay as soon as I arrived.”
“Having a beautiful and quiet space to live and work absolutely made my year, and I was overjoyed with my accommodation. I had my own bird table outside of the window, which sparked a whole new hobby in birdwatching for me. I was fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of a nuthatch: a shy but common robin-sized bird, with a black band like a bandit’s across its eyes.
Professor Stuart Ferguson (Emeritus Fellow and former William R. Miller Fellow in Biochemistry)
Professor David Bannerman (William R. Miller Fellow in Neuroscience and Experimental Psychology)
“I still clearly remember Justin Gosling asking me if Biochemistry was the closest subject, taught by tutorial fellows, to the business of the pharmaceutical industry where Bill was a leading figure. I said ‘yes’ and since that time, I have been aware of what Bill did for the College, not only by endowing the Biochemistry Fellowship but also in supporting so many other things.
“Unfortunately, I only had the privilege of meeting Bill Miller on one occasion which is something I deeply regret.
I remember sitting next to Bill at a fundraising dinner when he bid up the prices for memorabilia in a postprandial auction, to an extent that he ended up buying many of the lots himself. I suspect that what he liked best about Biochemistry was that two students achieved blues for cricket (his passion) and first class degrees, the probability of which was very close to zero, which complemented his pride that his nephew, Andrew, had also gained blues for cricket at the Hall whilst studying Biochemistry.”
I genuinely believe my time in that little flat changed my whole time in Oxford by removing the worry and expense of one year’s accommodation.”
Nevertheless, from this one occasion it was obvious that Bill was a real academic and a real scholar. We chatted for an hour (there were four of us sitting in the dining room of the Old Bank Hotel) and the conversation jumped energetically from schizophrenia to cancer chemotherapy to depression, with many other interesting destinations in between. Bill led the way. His energy and enthusiasm were boundless, and his depth of knowledge in each of these subject areas was truly incredible. At times it almost felt like a fellowship interview, but certainly the friendliest and most enjoyable of fellowship interviews!”
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Admissions and outreach Luke Maw works in the Admissions Office and leads the College’s outreach, access and student recruitment programmes. He is responsible for the evolution of the College’s outreach programmes, and provides support shaping the College’s strategy with regards to access, equality and diversity.
As the Student Recruitment and Progression Manager, I am responsible for developing the College’s support for both prospective and on-course students. On the prospective student front, I work with the Tutor for Admissions and the Access and Outreach Coordinator to ensure we attract the strongest field of deserving applicants, to ensure that the College makes informed admissions decisions taking into consideration the context of a student’s application. For on-course students, I use students’ examination performance data to monitor their progression through their course, allowing attention to be focused on areas of greatest need. I also lead the College’s Careers Development Programme, aimed at signposting the University’s vast wealth of careers support, facilitating mentoring and networking through our alumni body, and helping students find, select and apply to internships and jobs. Whilst it has been a unique and challenging year, with lockdowns and school closures serving as significant barriers for outreach, we have remained agile and have moved to developing a varied and 24
engaging set of online resources for the schools and colleges that we work with. Our ‘Applying to Oxford’ video series covered each aspect of the Oxford application process in an engaging and informative way, making use of a green screen to add in graphics, diagrams and other helpful information. The series has garnered several thousand views on YouTube and will continue to serve as a useful resource for subsequent applicants to the University. Alongside this, we have continued to engage with schools where possible, with our Access and Outreach Coordinator, Lizzie, delivering several live talks and workshops over the past year. Our Early Career Teaching and Outreach Fellow, Tom Crawford has also run a number of online talks, as well as the second year of the Teddy Rocks Maths Essay competition, open to all with a passion and flair for writing about mathematical topics for a non-expert audience. This year’s competition attracted over 130 applications, with three winners and nine commended entries chosen. The winning entries can be read at seh.ac/teddyrocksmaths. Tom has also begun work on a series
of interviews with undergraduates discussing their dissertations or research projects. So far, we have heard about the drivers of the western Australian climate, how to efficiently process terabytes of data from a radio telescope, and how the cultural identities of Slavic and former Soviet countries are manifested with varying degrees of subtlety in their Eurovision Song Contest entries. These will be shared on YouTube in the coming months. In 2020 the Undergraduate Admissions Exercise took place entirely remotely, although it seems that the pandemic did little to slow the ever-increasing number of applications that are made to the University each year, with the College receiving more direct applications than ever before. Working with the admitting tutors, and thanks to the wealth of contextual data that is included in applications from UK students, we were able to ensure that offers were made to the most deserving candidates, regardless of background. As a result, the offers made for 2021 entry meet or exceed almost every University target on
The ‘Applying to Oxford’ video series is available to watch on the Hall’s YouTube channel at seh.ac/applyplaylist
THE AULARIAN
Recording the ‘Applying to Oxford’ video series which is available to watch on the Hall’s YouTube channel at seh.ac/applyplaylist
school type, gender and disability, and our offer rate for BAME students has remained above the university average for the last five years. A further break down of admissions statistics are included in the righthand column. Looking inwards, towards our cohort of on-course students, I have been developing the College’s Careers Programme which will provide our students with a wealth of opportunities including bespoke sessions run by the University’s Careers Service, networking and mentoring opportunities with alumni and academics, as well as support with securing a future job through mock interviews and CV workshops. We have already run a number of profession-specific talks and mock interview series, as well as a hugely insightful ‘Careers in Academia’ talk with a panel of tutors from the Hall. We are looking to expand this into a suite of talks, workshops and mentoring opportunities across multiple streams for students in their first, middle and final years of study. We believe we are the only college demonstrating such a holistic commitment to our student body,
and are continually looking for ways to develop our provision further. As the academic year draws to a close, we say goodbye to our Access and Outreach Coordinator, Lizzie Fry, who in September will be starting teacher training on the Graduate Teacher Development Programme at a school in Sussex. I am immensely grateful for the work she has done for the College over the last two years. Her work in the first six months of the 2019/20 year saw us engage with more students and schools than ever before, and her commitment to projects spanning outreach, equality and diversity have contributed a great deal to the College’s development in these areas. We wish her the best of luck in her new career and hope she can return in the future to show students from her new school around the College, without the pressure of having to host the visit herself!
2020 admission statistics
67%
67% of UK offers were to stateeducated students.
53%
53% of offers were to applicants who identify as female.
36%
Offer rate for students from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds (Acorn flagged) increased to 36% (the university average is 29%).
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From the Development and Alumni Relations Office the very highest environmental standards are reached. Of course, this important project will only be possible with Aularian support and we look forward to updating you on our ambitious plans.
Whilst this year has been disrupted, it certainly has not dented Hall Spirit both amongst current students and Old Members. 1,454 Aularians have continued to make generous gifts, donating a total of £3.4m and pledging a further £2.6m. This represents another record breaking year of Aularian philanthropy both in the number of donors and in the overall sums committed. Thank you. Your gifts have enabled us to provide hardship funding to those most impacted by the effects of Covid, to endow two Tutorial Fellowships to secure teaching at the Hall in perpetuity, to keep the library open throughout the entire pandemic, to carry out essential work to upgrade the Besse building and to provide additional pastoral care to support students living in bubbles or in isolation. The Hall is now developing its transformative additional student accommodation at Norham Gardens. This will allow us to offer bedrooms to all undergraduate year groups for the first time in our 750-year history and, in keeping with our strategic aims, the new campus will be certified Passivhaus to ensure
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Our events programme moved online with a diverse range of topics ranging from comedian Al Murray (1987, Modern History) discussing his new book through to broadcaster Wilf Frost (2005, PPE) interviewing his former tutor, and now Shadow Home Secretary, Nick Thomas-Symonds (1998, PPE) about life in front-line politics. We were also delighted to partner with the SEHA to launch Aularian Connect where you can pick-up the latest Teddy Hall news and connect with other Aularians. This year we bid farewell to Sally Brooks (née Smith) after 10-years of outstanding service. I know Sally will be missed by many Aularians and we wish her well as she takes on the next challenge in her career. Thank you once again for your support. When Aularian gifts combine together they create significant impact. If all those who matriculated in the 1990s gave just £20 a month this could fully fund the tutorial system each year. This is why every gift, of every size, matters and I hope this edition of The Aularian, and our infographics opposite, provide a sense of the impact your funds have on the Hall and its students. Floreat Aula! Gareth Simpson Fellow & Director of Development
Thank you for your support £6m Of Aularian gifts were committed in 2020/21. £3.4m was received and a further £2.6m pledged for future years.
1,454 Of Aularians made a gift, that’s 15% of contactable alumni.
609
Aularians made a gift after speaking to a student during one of our telephone campaigns. 150 of these made a gift for the first time.
371 Aularians from 19 countries donated £123,000 during September’s Giving Day.
Aularian relations 34 The number of countries from which Aularians joined one of our online events.
18m
Books have been sold by speakers in our Aularian Author series.
1,214 Aularians are using Aularian Connect to network and offer (or find) mentoring advice (for more information please see page 18).
THE AULARIAN
The impact of your gifts Aularian gifts are used to provide direct support to students, develop our historic estate and to fund our education and research. In addition, during this difficult year, your funds enabled us to put a number of special initiatives in place to maintain Hall Spirit.
Education and research 0
Missed weeks of teaching throughout the pandemic.
12
Newly appointed Early Career Fellows provided additional teaching and student support throughout the year.
2
Tutorial Fellowships were fully endowed thanks to major gifts. Countless hours delivering teaching via Zoom and teams.
Library 1
Days the Library was closed this past year.
88
Socially distanced seats available in the Library 24/7 (second highest across all colleges).
180
Books sent to students at home during the winter lockdown.
859
Books purchased as a direct request from students.
20
Minutes fastest time between new book request and providing the book to the student.
Student awards 71
Undergraduates (17%) received a means-tested bursary to support their studies at the Hall.
£2,760
The average value of each undergraduate bursary award.
20
Graduates received a Hall scholarship.
282
The total number of bursaries, scholarships, awards and prizes provided by the Hall.
Maintaining Hall Spirit 4
Marquees erected to provide students with additional space in which to safely socialise.
80
Meals delivered to the bedrooms of isolating students in a single night.
365
Days in which student meals were served in Hall including Christmas Day.
5
Socially distanced Christmas dinners.
1
Click and collect Buttery Bar.
Queen’s Lane enhancement 54
Refurbished bedrooms in Besse.
4,266
New tiles on Besse roof.
70%
Of Besse rooms that are now en-suite.
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Retiring Fellows reflect on their time at the Hall Professor Adrian Briggs, Fellow and Tutor in Law
Adrian joined the Hall in 1980 and is the current Sir Richard Gozney Fellow and Tutor in Law and Professor of Private International Law. Although I am taking early retirement, 97% of my working life, and almost two-thirds of my actual life, has been spent as Fellow and Law Tutor at the Hall. I joined a Governing Body some of whose members had served in the Second World War with honour and distinction, and whose lingering ration book mentality meant that we allowed ourselves to live a sufficient rather than a sumptuous life. Tutorial Fellows of the Hall were paid significantly less than their counterparts elsewhere in Oxford, but we knew that we belonged to the most beautiful college, and most spirited community, in Oxford. We can certainly still make that last claim, but everything else has changed. All those who close the office door for the last time probably look around and think that the job
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they are leaving is not the one which they took. There is certainly some truth in that as far as I am concerned. Administrative coercion, increasingly supplemented by demands that one undertake courses to correct latent shortcomings, has taken root in university life like Japanese knotweed. A general sense of external mistrust – that one can no longer trust a Tutorial Fellow to do what he or she was appointed to do or a Governing Body to see that it all runs as it should – seems to hang in the air. It is right to be sad for those whose recent appointment may mean that they see all this nonsense as normal. It really isn’t. And yet the life of a Law tutor in St Edmund Hall is intensely rewarding: it was, it is, and I have no doubt that it will forever be. To tell the honest truth, life as the junior Law tutor is greatly to be preferred to being the one with whom the buck occasionally had to stop, and I had this privilege of juniority for almost thirty years. I discovered in the best possible way that no two students learn alike. I marvel how no two students tread the same path when they leave us to find all manner of wonderful (okay, mostly wonderful) things to do. And I affirm, as I trust that they all know, that whenever they make contact – even when this is the thin disguise of a request for a reference – or come back to visit, they are never unwelcome, even if a without-notice knock at the door can require a little impromptu juggling. The responsibility, the honour, and the joy of looking after the law and lawyers of St Edmund Hall now
falls to others. I trust that they will, decades from now, be able to look back and see something every bit as beautiful as the picture I have in my mind’s eye as I retire. Floreat Aula.
“The life of a law tutor in St Edmund Hall is intensely rewarding.”
THE AULARIAN
Professor Nicholas Davidson, Fellow and Tutor in Modern History
Nick joined the Hall in 1998 and is an Associate Professor and Tutor in Modern History and Archive Fellow. I first visited Oxford when I was an undergraduate, with a friend who shared my interest in architectural history. We had stopped in the city while travelling between the Fens and my family home in South Wales. We viewed the obvious sights; and also Queen’s (we agreed that we preferred the architecture of its near namesake in Cambridge). We then looked in on the neighbouring college through its modest entrance on the Lane. We agreed that the Hall’s Front Quad was the most attractive college space we had seen in the city, a judgement reinforced by our view of St Peter-in-the-East as we walked across the churchyard. I had no idea then that I would later be elected a Fellow of the Hall, and would be able for a time to occupy what used to be known as the VicePrincipal’s Study on St. IV, with its privileged view of the College Library from its long windows. One of the more unusual features of Oxford is that academics often have two employers: their Faculty or
Department as well as their college. In recent years, I have spent more time in the College, especially when I was Dean. But I probably spent more time in the Faculty during my first few years in Oxford, when I held a number of formal roles, including a period as Vice-Chair of the Faculty Board (in effect, deputy head of the Faculty). I was very involved then with Faculty business, and especially with teaching, library provision, and appointments. As a result, I played a part in the pioneering globalisation of our syllabus during the early 2000s, which resulted in a transformation of the nature and content of my own tutorial teaching. While I never abandoned my research on Italian history, I helped to design and establish new papers on Eurasian empires and world religions, which have attracted large numbers of highly committed students. At college level, that change in our syllabus coincided with significant changes in the student body. An increasing proportion of the Hall’s undergraduates now come from ethnic minority backgrounds, attended state schools, or live in areas of socio-economic disadvantage. Their overall numbers are also increasing: in 1998-9, there were fewer than 520 students in the College; now there are more than 750. These higher numbers have prompted a series of major building projects: most notably the William R. Miller Building, the Jarvis Doctorow Hall, and the Mingos Suite, while more recently we have embarked on a major re-development of the Besse Building (my base for most of my time in Oxford) and an ambitious plan for further development at Norham Gardens.
life. Quite rightly, our provision for student welfare has been expanded and enhanced in recent years, not least with the appointment of our College Counsellor. That process encouraged closer relations with others in the University who support our students, and with the presidents and the welfare representatives in our JCR and MCR, who have played such an outstanding role during the recent pandemic. The dedication in fact of everyone in the College during the past two years has been especially impressive: evidence that this College, with its unique history and its remarkable resilience, has maintained its commitment to scholarship, to education, and to the well-being of all its members even during the most testing times. So the Hall remains for me the most attractive college in Oxford, and not just visually.
“We agreed that the Hall’s Front Quad was the most attractive college space we had seen in the city.”
My years as Dean however gave me an additional perspective on college
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Appointments and Awards Meet our new Honorary Fellows The College’s Governing Body swore in two new Honorary Fellows of St Edmund Hall in May. Each Fellow is distinguished in their respective fields, which include law and politics.
Lord Sedwill (1987, Economics) in recognition of his distinguished career in politics. Mark was Cabinet Secretary from April 2018 to September 2020 and National Security Advisor from April 2017 to Sept 2020. Prior to this, Mark was the Permanent Secretary at the Home Office (2013-17), FCO Political Director (201213), NATO Senior Civilian Representative in Afghanistan (2010-11), HM Ambassador to Afghanistan (2009-10) and Director of UKvisas (2006-8). He joined the Foreign & Commonwealth Office in 1989, serving in Egypt, Iraq, Cyprus and Pakistan. Robert Venables QC, in recognition of his distinguished career and his period of office as a Tutorial Fellow. Robert studied Literae Humaniores at Merton College in 1966, followed by Jurisprudence from 1970 to 1972, was the Hall’s Tutor in Jurisprudence from 1975 to 1980 when he left the position in order to take up full-time practice at
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the Revenue Bar in London. He took silk ten years later. He was elected Chairman of the Revenue Bar Association in 2001 and is a Master of the Bench of the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple. Robert’s clients range from entrepreneurs to celebrities, from nobility to politicians, and from FTSE 100 companies to charities. On those occasions when he is in court, Robert has found the Oxford tutorial system to be the best possible preparation for thinking on one’s feet – or rather, pretending to, because nothing succeeds better in advocacy than preparation, preparation, and preparation. The Hall’s Honorary Fellows represent a wide variety of achievements and experiences.
THE AULARIAN
Aularians honoured by the Queen The Hall community is delighted to announce that the following Aularians were recognised in the 2020 Queen’s Birthday Honours and 2021 New Year Honours lists. Margaret (Maggie) Adela Miriam Carver CBE (1982, Biochemistry) Maggie was awarded a CBE for services to media and sport. Maggie is currently Interim Chairman of Ofcom and Chairman of the Racecourse Association and also sits on the Board of the British Horseracing Authority and The Licoricia of Winchester Statue Appeal (Chairman). Maggie writes, “I am absolutely delighted to be awarded the honour of a CBE for services to media and sport. It has been both a joy and a privilege to serve both sectors and I look forward to continuing to do so.”
Professor Amelia Fletcher CBE (1985, PPE and Honorary Fellow) Amelia was awarded a CBE for services to the economy. Amelia read PPE at the Hall and then gained an MPhil and DPhil in Economics at Nuffield College, Oxford. She is a Non-Executive Director at the Competition and Markets Authority and a member of the Enforcement Decision Panel at Ofgem. She is also a member of the Council of the Royal Economic Society, of the Advisory Board for the Berlin Centre for Consumer Policies, and of the Oxera Economics Council. She has written and presented widely on competition and consumer policy. Her recent research work has focussed on digital markets and behavioural economics.
Professor Eleanor Stride OBE (Professorial Fellow, Biomaterials) Eleanor was awarded an OBE for services to engineering. Eleanor specialises in the fabrication of nano and microscale devices for targeted drug delivery. She holds a joint position between the Department of Engineering Science and the Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences. Eleanor writes, “It was the most incredible and wonderful surprise. I still feel quite overwhelmed but also even more motivated to drive forward our research and to continue to work closely with the Royal Academy to support and promote Engineering.”
If you are interested in reading more about alumni, student and Fellows acheivements and other news please visit www.seh.ox.ac.uk/news.
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Connect with us online There are many ways to keep-in-touch with Teddy Hall and find out the latest news about the College, alumni and its students.
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Music society Trinity term concert Listen online: seh.ac/musicconcert2021
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Pontigny Lecture
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Geddes Lecture
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