The College 2011
A Letter from the Mistress Dear Girtonians, Having peppered my first annual letter with weather forecasts and shipping analogies, I was hoping this year to use words like ‘calm waters’, ‘steady course’, even ‘carry on cruising' to describe the past twelve months. However, none of these descriptors captures the dynamism that drives the College on, nor do they reflect the impacts of ongoing financial and political uncertainty. So, in an attempt to capture the mood of the year, I turned for inspiration to metaphors with more scholarly roots. Dynamic disequilibrium I begin with a theme common to Physics, Finance and Philosophy; ‘dynamic disequilibrium’. This term speaks, to me, of shocks that are hard to predict, that challenge established wisdoms, and that send well-worn trajectories spinning into new directions. Before turning to such matters, however, I should assure readers that disequilibrium is not the whole story of Girton’s passage through 2011. As I pointed out last year, some shifts in College life, like the succession of Mistresses, are anticipated, well planned, and barely tinker with the passage of an institution from its past to the future. The same is true for the other comings and goings that drive us on. This is not to say that we shall not miss those who have left. We owe enormous gratitude for their wide-ranging contributions to: Dr David Kemp, who has moved to a Research Associateship at UCL; Dr Laura McMahon, pioneer of our teaching-linked Research Fellowships, who has been appointed to a lectureship in Film and Visual Culture at the University of Aberdeen, and Sam Hudson, Director of Chapel Music, who is now Master of the Music at Blackburn Cathedral. We also bid farewell to Dr Edward Naylor, Senior Research Fellow; Dr Mike Rodman Jones, who has moved to Nottingham University; Dr Stefan Marchiniak, who has resigned his Bye-Fellowship; and Dr Marta Marzanska, who has demitted her Non-Stipendiary Fellowship. We also note with great sadness the death of the Rt Revd Colin Slee, College Chaplain in the 1970s, and of two of our great 7