Homertonian - Number 16

Homertonian The Newsletter of Homerton College, Cambridge & The Homerton Roll

IN THIS ISSUE

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‘Miss Read’

Number 16 | June 2012

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Boat Race

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Studying Chimpanzees Homerton college

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Homertonian contents

keeper’s letter

College News

Dear Member

Keeper’s Letter

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Principal’s Letter

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College News

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Student News

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Retired Senior Members

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Obituaries of former colleagues

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Homerton Roll Roll Committee and Branch Details

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Events Diary

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Last year I reported the arrival of the Royal Charter and celebrations at the Reunion and at Branch meetings. The College is no longer governed by the Trustees but

by College Fellows, and there have been changes to the Roll Constitution. Our finances were transferred to College with the College continuing to support Roll initiated events, the Homertonian and the Roll Office. The accumulated reserves totalling £10,700 were transferred to the Charter Campaign.

Charter Campaign and Donor List Bursar’s Report

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Homerton and Student Fees

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Charter Campaign

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Donor list

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Back Page Annual Roll Reunion 2012

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The Homertonian is published once a year to keep members informed with College and alumni news. We also publish a termly e-newsletter. Contact us at the Development & Roll Office, Tel: 01223 747270 / 747280; Email: roll@homerton.cam.ac.uk All our publications are available from the Homerton College website: www.homerton.cam.ac.uk Join us on Facebook. Details of events and College news are posted on our Facebook alumni page, ‘Homerton College Cambridge Alumni’.

Thank you to all of our contributors and to those who supplied images. The views expressed in this newsletter do not necessarily represent the views of Homerton College, Cambridge.

Cover photograph: Stephen Bond Design and print management: H2 Associates, Cambridge.

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There has been a developing pattern of Roll events. The September Reunion continues to be popular, with dinners on both Friday and Saturday evenings, the latter principally for those who are from a distance and cannot be with us on Friday. The talks by Dr Peter Warner and Dr Peter Cunningham are popular as is the music organised by the College Music Society. Members and their guests are invited to one Formal Hall each term, some coming from a greater distance to the May event and all enjoying College on a lovely spring evening. In June 2011 we held the first Family Day attended by 180 adults and children. It was hot, our wet

Issue 16 | June 2012

weather alternatives were not needed, and the ice cream nearly ran out! Thank you to all who organised activities, and yes, we are doing it again on Sunday 24 June (booking form enclosed).

We hope to see more of our younger Roll members at a special Reunion Dinner to be held in the next academic year, on Saturday 13th April 2013, for all who matriculated from 2001 onwards, the year of Homerton’s convergence with the University. It will be similar to Formal Hall. We hope some of our very talented alumni will provide entertainment after the meal. It should be a good evening for friends to meet and catch up on news.

Many will have received the first two termly e-newsletter. They include dates of our events and snippets of news. We have had positive comments, many reminiscing after watching the opening of Queens’s Wing hosted on the Cambridge University YouTube Channel (see page 14).

This Homertonian includes articles about the whole College community and complements the e-newsletter. The Roll section is reduced. More detailed news from the Branches will be in the Roll News published in November. Both the Homertonian and the Roll News can be read online.

Finally, on behalf of all of you, I must thank Alison and Cathy for their work in supporting the Roll, for their good ideas and for seeing them through.

With best wishes Dr Ian H Morrison Keeper of the Roll

principal’s letter

K at e P r e t t Y

On Christmas morning, I started the long annual task of searching for next year’s Junior Research Fellows (JRFs). We like to have nine Fellows in residence at any one time and together they represent about 20% of the Fellowship.

That is quite an investment but it keeps Homerton aware of ‘cuttingedge’ research across a broad range of subjects and I am constantly aware of a youthful ripple within the Fellowship, a sort of effervescence within the scholarly community.

The task takes a long time because we had to reduce about 300 applicants to 30, whose research work was read before reducing further to a short list of seven, three of whom have been offered Fellowships. They began with a one in a hundred chance of a place.

The ratio is fairly constant but this year I felt there was more pressure. There are now so few academic jobs and the JRFs are highly prized, for they offer three years of funding and accommodation in which to concentrate on research. And, as you would expect, JRFs go on to great things, to lectureships or senior research posts in Oxford, Cambridge, London and Nottingham, to jobs in Canada, Spain and Washington and in the Civil Service.

Yet I know that such careers are getting harder to achieve as posts are frozen and the Americans ‘quit hiring’. For this current generation the recession is grim.

The group is always eclectic. In their final year are Axel Bangert, working on German film, Anders Hansen, a mathematician, and Melanie Keene working on Victorian attitudes to popular science in books for children. In their second year are Kat Koops, currently away in Guinea studying chimpanzee behaviour, Darren Sarisky, a theologian looking at patristics and the reading of scripture, and Bogdan Roman, a computer expert. Newly-arrived are James Attwater, looking for the origins of life, Shery Huang who works on nanoscience and biological catalysis, and Alice Wilson, an anthropologist working in North Africa, where she has recently been observing the first election in the refugee camps of the Western Sahara. Kat and Alice are intrepid travellers and I am always relieved to see them safely back, though in reality the others are probably taking just as many risks on the crowded roads of Cambridge.

Of course, all of us undertake research and there are academic hotspots, sometimes accidental – for instance, why are three of us archaeologists? – and sometimes deliberate, like our group of Fellows working on literature and poetry for children, whose magnetic effect has lured others, once working on adult writings, to reconsider the world of children’s literature as a new area of enquiry. At the same time we are growing our group of biomedical scientists working on cancer treatments, on genetics and on pathology – after all we are the nearest college to Addenbrooke’s and its huge clinical and scientific population.

This is very different to Homerton twenty years ago. But at the heart of the College is our strong foundation in education.

At interview, JRFs say they would like to join us because they feel they will gain knowledge of how to share their research.

Education Fellows share pedagogic skills and continue to get involved in transforming education overseas, currently in East Africa and in Kazakhstan. Deborah Longbottom, a chemist, has just won

one of the University’s coveted Pilkington Prizes for teaching, maintaining Homerton’s reputation for teaching excellence. As we grow further into our full College role in a University which prides itself on being one of the top five international research universities in the world, I am conscious of how much the Fellows’ research contributes to our new status and how important it is for us to nurture it.

Some of our 300 JRF applicants were our own postgraduate students reaching the end of a PhD. As you know, we have been increasing our support to them in recent years and will continue to do so, offering Charter Bursaries to assist in funding. As undergraduate debt deepens with a new fee regime, this will become even more necessary, which is why we are already making plans to increase support for graduates and indeed those PGCEs who are training in subjects that do not attract government funding. I am grateful to everyone who has contributed towards the Charter Campaign for these purposes.

We have just learned that Commodore Gale Bryan, our Bursar for the last nineteen years, intends to retire in the summer, and I want to end by paying tribute to him, for he has been the financial architect of the new College. Gale has been a wonderful Bursar and his foresight and acumen have enabled us to build and refurbish, to invest and to trade and to create the best-run College in Cambridge. The Bursar’s lot, day-to-day, is generally thankless for, like the Treasury, Bursars are trained to say no. In fact, Gale has balanced prudence with expenditure and for someone who likes to appear entirely risk-averse he has a great sense of adventure. I can only suppose that’s why he took us on in 1992 when we were broke, financially demoralised and architecturally crumbling. Look at where he has taken us in those nineteen years – we are all indebted to him.

Dr Kate Pretty March 2012

Homerton College

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college news Dora Jessie Saint MBE (1913–2012) – ‘Miss Read’ Dora Shafe came to Homerton from Bromley Girls’ County School in Kent in 1931 for the two-year certificate course.

Her father was an insurance agent who bought a smallholding in Chelsfield with his army gratuity, after Dora and her mother had nearly died from the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918–21; the family sought a healthier life in the country while her father commuted to London.

The village school at Chelsfield became the model for her ‘Miss Read’ stories. Long before she started writing professionally her Homerton teaching practice reports indicate her abilities: ‘Miss Shafe tells a story delightfully. She succeeded in transporting a restless class to another world, and it was interesting to watch the way she did it.’ There was a child-like innocence about her; her final report says: ‘Miss Shafe is very immature still – she is often a happy inspiring child with children: yet there is a deeper and quite creative force beneath.’ How perceptive these old College reports are. ‘Miss Read’ went on to enchant several generations of readers with her magical world of a classroom set in a traditional idyllic Kentish village. Her work as a supply teacher inspired her to write short articles for Punch magazine; these were punctuated with amusing dialogue between frustrated middle-class

teachers with high expectations and non-comprehending rural pupils. Village School appeared in 1955 under the Michael Joseph ‘Penguin’ label – forty books in the same genre followed at more or less yearly intervals. Robert Lusty (later ‘Sir’), then director of Michael Joseph, teamed her up with the illustrator J.S.Goodall whose magical drawings and cover designs became her hallmark. As a team it lasted thirty-two years.

Dora married Douglas Saint, second master at St Batholomew’s Grammar School, Newbury, Berkshire and they had one daughter. Like many Homerton students, teaching was in her blood and some of her characters were closely drawn from life: for instance her aunt Rose who taught Dora when she was four, at Lewisham, Hither Green Primary, was Miss Read.

Three of her most popular novels, Village School, Village Diary and Storm in the Village were combined to become a successful musical called ‘Meet Miss Read’, which is still performed. Her books, which personified rural Englishness, were translated into many different languages and became ‘readers’ for foreign language students.

Ironically, her success as a writer is barely recognised – you will not find her in the Oxford Companion to English Literature, even

Dora Shafe in 1933, dressed in men’s clothes for a College drama production.

She stands in front of the Pavilion built in 1924 to commemorate the twenty-first year of Miss Allan’s Principalship

though she was awarded an MBE in 1998 for services to literature. Her books went into countless editions. Fifty years after its first publication, Village School appeared again in an omnibus edition published by Orion in 2005. The popularity of her work was truly international and she still has a massive following in the USA. She continued to enjoy English village life even after her husband Douglas’s death in 2004. Dora died on April 7 2012 aged 98; her daughter Jill survives her.

Dr Peter Warner Fellow and Senior Tutor

College Representatives with Miss Mary Allan (Principal) and Edith Waterhouse (Vice-Principal) Back row (top left): Dora Shafe (‘Miss Read’), others unknown Middle row: Norah Shanelle, Lillian Booth (Head Rep), Miss Mary Allan, Miss Waterhouse, Eve Park Front (seated on ground): both unknown

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Many of our JYA (Junior Year Abroad) students who enjoyed a year in Cambridge studying at Homerton in the 1980s and 1990s will be aware of our link with Peabody College, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee. Indeed we have the ‘Peabody Professor’, John Murrell MBE, who forged that very link.

Peabody College was founded in 1875 with money from the George Peabody Education Fund and its main purpose was teacher training. For a long time we thought that the only connection between Homerton and Peabody College was their primary function and perhaps their puritan origins.

But it seems there was another connection between the first nonconformist Hackney (London) MP, Sir Charles Reed, and the great man, George Peabody. Charles Reed made his money out of type founding. In an age when every English town had two or more newspapers and the printed word was the only method of disseminating knowledge, he supplied the presses with

Sir Charles Reed MP (1819–1881) Trustee of Homerton College, London, 1852–79

vast quantities of movable type in ever increasing varieties of typeface, including some that we still use today such as Garamond. He was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1874. As a Congregationalist, he was interested in Education and was a member of the Congregational Fund Board that re-founded Homerton as a teacher training college in London in 1852. Later, Reed was appointed chair of the London School Board, charged with building new Board schools for thousands of working class children in East and North London. At the same time George Peabody, founder of the London bank, George Peabody and Co., the bank that eventually became Peabody Morgan & Co., which in turn spawned Morgan Grenfell, and Morgan Stanley, was active as a philanthropist in the East End of London building houses for the poor.

Charles Reed was deeply impressed by his work, and although he had only met him once at a Mansion House event, proposed him as a Freeman of the City of London in

college news

HOMERTON AND GEORGE PEABODY 1862. This sparked such a close friendship that George Peabody appointed Charles Reed as one of his English executors to manage his affairs in London and Brighton. After Peabody’s death in 1869, and his double funeral, first in Westminster Abbey, and then in Danvers (now Peabody) Massachusetts, Reed travelled to the States and met members of the family. Sir Charles Reed went on to serve as Chair of Trustees of Homerton College until his death in 1881. George Peabody is now remembered as the first great American philanthropist, a Bill Gates of his day, passionately interested in education.

Charles Reed was also a philanthropist on a smaller scale, but now remembered as the founder of several hundred London schools. He was also the man who established the first public libraries in London; we remember him as one of the founders of Homerton for teacher training, like Peabody College.

Dr Peter Warner Fellow and Senior Tutor

George Peabody (1795–1869)

Homerton College

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HOMERTON COLLEGE CONFERENCE CENTRE The Conference Centre at Homerton always strives to offer excellent standards of customer service as well as value for money. In recognition of this, last summer Homerton Conference Centre was awarded Silver Level Accreditation by the MIA (Meetings Industry Association).

The MIA is a membership organisation representing all suppliers within the events industry from venues and event organisers to third party agents and audio-visual companies. They launched AIM Higher, their nationally recognised accreditation programme, so that buyers could automatically recognise how well a venue performed, similar to the AA star accreditation in hotels.

We started the accreditation process back in summer 2010 when Heads of Departments began producing documentation for their teams to ensure consistent standards across the board. A year later, after much hard work, an assessor from the MIA visited us for a day and interviewed members

were then left on tenterhooks for two weeks while the assessor moderated our paperwork before announcing that not only had we become only the second venue in the city to achieve this level of accreditation but that we scored an impressive 92%!

The Conference Office receive their award

of staff while examining all the relevant paperwork provided, as proof that we met all the 100 criteria required to gain accreditation. These included sections on financial planning, service delivery, customer research, booking/payment procedures and continuous improvement.

There were also extensive checks to ensure we met all current legal requirements. We

This really was a fantastic achievement and one of which Homerton can be very proud.

Gold Level is the next step and the planning process for this will start after Summer 2012. I’ll let you know how we get on!

Alexandra Cox Events and Accommodation Officer

If you would like to book accommodation during the vacation periods, please contact the Conference Office at conferences@homerton.cam.ac.uk.

THE CHARTER CHOIR The Charter Choir, founded in 2009 with the intention of establishing a choral tradition at Homerton, has blossomed during its third year of existence. Having been reduced to a female-voice choir during the 2010–2011 academic year, the group has now welcomed back tenors and basses into the fold. All 16 singers in the Choir are undergraduate members of Homerton, reading a variety of subjects. A first-year undergraduate, Ian Howard, has been appointed Homerton’s first Organ Scholar, funded by Roger Green, former lecturer in the Faculty of Education and Retired Senior Member.

This has set an encouraging precedent, and over the next year, the College will enter the Intercollegiate Organ and Choral Award competition, further raising the profile of Homerton and of the Charter Choir.

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For the first time this year, the Choir now sings on a regular basis. The Church of St John the Evangelist, Hills Road has been generous in allowing the Choir to sing Choral Evensong on three Tuesdays per term, a number which will increase to six next year. Its first service of the year was sung in the presence of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Master of the Queen’s Music and an Honorary Fellow of Homerton. In addition, the Choir sings occasional services at the Church of St Mary & St Michael, Trumpington, and early in May travelled to Oxford to perform a concert jointly with the Chapel Choir of Harris Manchester College as a way of advancing the newlyestablished links between the two Colleges.

The Charter Choir has also played an important part in the life of the College. As well as participating in the Music Society’s

The Charter Choir

Lent Term concert, its performance at the 2012 Charter Dinner was very well received. A number of eminent guests were present at this event, including the Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, another Honorary Fellow. The Choir will also be entertaining guests at General Admission, on Saturday 30th June.

Choir will travel by Eurostar and TGV, and will be billeted by host families in Saverne and Strasbourg. As the tour will largely be paid for by the students themselves, several fundraising concerts have been planned.

Full details about the Choir’s engagements this year can be found on the Homerton College Music Society website: http://hcms.

college news

The highlight of the Charter Choir’s year, however, will be its first annual international tour, which this year will be to Alsace, France. This week-long trip will involve performances in several venues, including a rural chapel in the Vosges mountains, a former Benedictine abbey in the countryside, and three churches in the region’s historic capital city, Strasbourg. The

soc.srcf.net, following the link to ‘Charter Choir’ in the left-hand column. Alumni and their friends and family are always welcome to attend these events. The Choir is also available to sing at weddings and other private ceremonies.

Dr Daniel Trocmé-Latter Director of Music

NEW LOOK LIBRARY Many alumni reading this will recall the Library from their studies, whether it was located in the Mary Allan Building as now, the Black and White buildings, or even the Fellows’ Dining Room. It is time once more for the Library to change and update, refreshing for a new generation of students.

We are not moving location this time, but we are refurbishing our current space to make a Library better suited to the 21st Century, both in terms of student needs and visual design. A lot has changed since the Library was built in 1996, and when we meet our undergraduate freshers in October, we will be welcoming a group who were just toddlers when we moved in.

So what are we going to do? In short, the stunning architecture of the stairs and roof will be lifted by new carpet and furniture, as well as new shelving and a rearrangement of facilities.

On the ground floor there will be an expanded soft furnishing area for students who want to read without needing to be at a desk, and for those wanting a short break from their work. There will also be a new PC area and a redesigned staff work space.

On the first floor the current dining chairs are being replaced with chairs designed for study, allowing students to work in comfort for longer (if they want to). The

Artist’s impression of the ground floor seating area, though lime green isn’t in the final colour scheme!

study tables are also being replaced by tables with integrated power so that laptops and other devices can easily be plugged in. The second floor will retain its study carrels, offering a more secluded study alternative.

Rounding this all off, the Library will also be launching a new system for book security and self-issue. Harnessing radio frequency identification technology (RFID – as used in many shops), each book has a tag inserted into it which holds the identity of the book. By using a handheld scanner, the book can be found quickly anywhere in the Library.

Furthermore, the new security gates will inform me of the identity of any item that leaves the Library through them without being checked out!

The self-issue system will allow students to check books out quickly and without any fuss. They will simply scan their University card and place all the books inside the machine, which will read the RFID tags and automatically add the books to the student’s account and turn off the alarm.

All of the work will take place over this summer’s vacation, from July-September.

It will necessitate the closure of the Library over that period, but we will be ready in time for the next PGCE intake in midSeptember. I’m very much looking forward to seeing this new space come to life, and I invite you all to come and have a look at the next Roll Weekend.

Liz Osman Librarian

Homerton College

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Junior researcH Fellows THE PRINCIPAL’S LETTER INCLUDES DETAILS OF THE RESEARCH CARRIED OUT BY OUR JRFS. KATHELIJNE KOOPS AND ALICE WILSON HAVE WRITTEN ABOUT THEIR WORK IN MORE DETAIL.

among apes: stuDYing cHimpanZees in tHe aFrican rainForest 5.30 am. It is still dark and quiet in the forest. Slowly, the camp is starting to stir. Students and guides come crawling out of their huts and gather around the fire for a cup of much-needed morning coffee. The BBC world service chatters away in the background as we eat a big bowl of rice with sauce while discussing plans for the expedition ahead. Time to get ready for another day of climbing up and down slippery slopes in search of those elusive chimpanzees!

It is almost nine years since I first set foot in the Nimba Mountains in south-eastern Guinea, West Africa. At the time, I was a biology undergraduate student at Utrecht University (in the Netherlands) and my dreams of studying wild chimpanzees were about to come true. In those early days, little to nothing was known about the Nimba chimpanzee population. The research team consisted of three local guides and one student. We lived in a small camp made up of two bamboo huts and a fire place, strategically located next to a river for bathing. We started out by opening up a trail system to get through the dense undergrowth of the rainforest. Back then, our primary worry was figuring out where

Left Kathelijne at her study site in the Nimba Mountains (© K. Koops) Right The research camp in the Nimba Mountains (© K. Koops) Bottom right Kathelijne having a rest in a chimpanzee nest (© K. Koops)

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our study subjects were hiding. Now, eight years later, we have a bustling research camp with a team of international students working on the Nimba chimpanzee research project. The question you might ask is, ‘’why spend day-in and day-out chasing after elusive creatures?’’

My research focuses on the use of ‘elementary technology’ by chimpanzees.

This term refers to the use of tools in foraging, as well as the use of objects in other contexts, such as the construction of nests (or beds) to sleep in. I am especially interested in how the environment influences the use of technology by chimpanzees. Across the African continent,

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Left Adult male chimpanzee (named ‘Poni’) in the Nimba Mountains (© K. Koops) Below Chimpanzee cracking nuts using hammer and anvil stones (© K. Koops)

chimpanzee groups vary greatly in the types of tools they use to obtain and process their food. Some populations use stones as hammers and anvils to crack open edible nuts, whereas others use twigs to fish for termites. Chimpanzees, like humans, have distinct local cultures that have different types of technology.

My research tackles the question of how these cultures evolve. For example, why do some chimpanzee groups crack nuts, while others do not? I am also interested in finding out why chimpanzees build nests.

Chimpanzees make nests in the trees to sleep in almost every day of their lives.

Building a nest takes only a few minutes and involves breaking, bending and weaving branches into a sturdy sleeping platform. Do these nests provide safety from ground predators, or is sleeping up in the trees simply more pleasant due to more comfortable temperatures or fewer biting insects? These are the questions that get me out of MY nest in the morning!

Studying chimpanzee technology is easier said than done. It takes many years of persistence before wild chimpanzees will accept the presence of human observers.

For the first couple of years, I usually caught only glimpses of black shapes moving through the trees. Thankfully, a lot of information can be obtained from the tools and nests chimpanzees leave behind as they move through the forest in search of food. I use ecological methods to study the environmental factors of interest, such as chimpanzee food availability. Combined with an archaeological approach to study the chimpanzee artefacts, a lot can be learned about chimpanzees even when they are essentially invisible to researchers.

I also collect hairs from chimpanzee nests to obtain information on who is making which nest. Back in Cambridge, I use molecular genetics techniques to analyse DNA from hairs, which allows me to identify different individuals. In recent years, we have slowly started to win the trust of some chimpanzees. Today, the bravest individuals

will even approach us to have a good look at those strange clothed apes on the forest floor below.

Chimpanzees are our closest living relatives and studying them can provide invaluable insights into our own species’ evolutionary history. By unravelling the factors that drive the use of technology by chimpanzees we may be able to shed light on how and why Homo sapiens became so dependent on the use of tools. Conservation is also an integral part of chimpanzee research.

Chimpanzees are critically endangered across Africa as a result of habitat loss, hunting for bush meat and the pet trade. Only urgent efforts will ensure that chimpanzees will not disappear before we get the chance to learn more about them.

Dr. Kathelijne Koop Junior Research Fellow and a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology in the Division of Biological Anthropology, University of Cambridge.

Homerton College

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Democratic experiments in the disputed Sahara

Alice Wilson, JRF

Silence descended on the room.

Minutes before, some fifty people had been calling out and exchanging views in the final session of three days of participatory democratic meetings.

These meetings had been held in conjunction with the Parliamentary elections. The head of the polling station prepared to announce the winners, and losers, of the previous day’s elections. In this constituency, only six of the twenty-one candidates would become MPs. Which six?

The feelings of those listening may be familiar to those who have voted in or contested elections across the world. Yet many other aspects of these particular elections are unusual. These elections took place in a polity unmarked on most maps, enjoying only partial international recognition as a state. For these were the elections for the Parliament in exile of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), a (would-be) state authority organised through Polisario Front, the liberation movement of the disputed territory Western Sahara. The elections were taking place in refugee camps in south-west Algeria, where the SADR operates in exile, governing through its own laws and constitution a civilian refugee population estimated to number some 160,000. Despite the competition of some 153 candidates standing for 52 directly elected seats, there were no political parties. In such circumstances, what are elections about? Indeed, are they democratic?

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These are some of the issues that I set out to study in my doctoral research in 2007–2008, and more recently in the February 2012 SADR Parliamentary elections. Western Sahara is a disputed territory situated between Morocco and Mauritania. Both Morocco and Polisario claim sovereignty over the territory, which was partially annexed by Morocco in 1975 when Spain withdrew from its former colony. Polisario demands a referendum to fulfil the internationally recognised right of the Sahrawi people to self-determination. Thousands of Sahrawi fled Morocco’s annexation to form the exiled population in the Algerian desert near Tindouf, whilst other Sahrawi remain

living under Moroccan control in the annexed areas. A Moroccan-built military wall divides Moroccan-controlled from Polisario-controlled Western Sahara, and annexed population from exiled. Unlike other cases of annexation and exile, such as Tibet, Western Sahara is not famous. But it is the unfortunate holder of unenviable records, such as being Africa’s last non selfgoverning territory (colony), and its longestrunning refugee dossier.

Western Sahara is therefore unusual in itself. Its experiments in democracy are also unusual. Might they nevertheless work towards achieving goals that are widely recognised as democratic, such as bringing about peaceful and popularly sanctioned

Left Map of Western Sahara Below Preparing the polling station for voters, Sahrawi refugee camps

changes in governing authorities, the representation of diverse political views in the public sphere, and the holding of governing authorities to account? The history of the refugee camps, which has seen several waves of reforms introduced to further these goals, indicates that the Sahrawi refugees, whilst conceding to Polisario not to fragment into different political parties until a referendum on self-determination is achieved, are not prepared to wait until then to achieve other democratic objectives. Thus we find that in 2012, 69% of Parliamentary seats changed hands. MPs explain that within broad support for self-determination, different political currents for how to achieve that goal are represented amongst

their number. The Parliament has the power to pass votes of no confidence in ministers or a whole government, leading to ministerial change, a right it successfully exercised on the whole government in 1999.

The Sahrawi refugee democratic experiments are also noteworthy with regard to thorny questions in Arab world politics: the dynamics of gender and sectarianism in participation and representation. The refugees have been successful in electing female MPs in higher proportions than many of their African and Arab neighbours – 33% in 2008 and 25% in 2012. Elected officers, in the Parliament and beyond, also come from a range of

tribal backgrounds, including small and historically marginalised groups. The electoral design whereby voters choose multiple candidates from a long list – such as six from twenty-one candidates – helps attenuate the potential impact of “voting by tribe”, as voters must support a range of candidates to complete their ballot paper.

The democratic experiments in the Sahrawi refugee camps are an invitation for us to enrich our definitions of democracy.

A harsh home to these refugees, this desert may nevertheless be fertile ground for a budding democracy.

Dr Alice Wilson Junior Research Fellow (Social Anthropology)

HOMERTON COLLEGE ARCHIVE FILM ON YouTube Our first e-newsletter to alumni in January 2012 included a link to a film from the College Archives hosted on the Cambridge University YouTube Channel. The short film of the opening of Queen’s Wing by her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother in May 1957 was viewed by many of you. The

film can be found at www.youtube.com watch?v=MgEpRuJUJts. Rosemary Boaz, College Archivist, would love to hear from any Homertonians who recognise people in the film. She can be contacted at rmb55@cam.ac.uk.

Rosemary is also seeking any group photos of Homerton students from the years 1951–1970 and 1972–1987.

You can find out about some of the research, discoveries and innovations that are taking place at Cambridge on the Cambridge University YouTube Channel, www.youtube.com/user/ CambridgeUniversity.

Arrival of the Queen Mother accompanied by the Principal Miss Skillicorn and Senior Student Miss Hazel Wilson.

Homerton College

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TEACHING AND EDUCATION In her letter the Principal refers to the research carried out by all Fellows, with the College still having a strong foundation in Education. Two of our Fellows have written exemplifying this strength in the College.

‘I do not come to school because education will benefit anyone else; the education I receive is for me’: researching Kenyan girls against the odds This article focuses on findings from interviews with 12–15-year-old Kenyan girls, undertaken as part of a project on girls’ education through the Centre for Commonwealth Education and in partnership with universities, NGOs and education ministries in Kenya and Uganda. The research has involved 85 girls in 16 primary schools in disadvantaged areas, ranging from the Nairobi slums to remote pastoralist areas.

What keeps girls out of school?

Statistics show that many Kenyan girls attend school only irregularly, with significant numbers dropping out altogether as they progress through the system. There are many reasons for this, and whilst space does not permit elaboration of all the reasons or spatial variations, we have identified the following four important factors inhibiting girls’ full participation in schooling.

The major problem in the areas we are working is undoubtedly poverty. Children miss school because they are too hungry to walk long distances: in one rural area, for example, it is common to walk two, sometimes three, or occasionally four hours each way to school. Walking to school having drunk only black tea and eaten nothing, then having no lunch, makes concentration difficult, if not impossible. Girls also experience shame and embarrassment through having torn or shabby uniforms and no shoes. They lack basic necessities such as sanitary towels, so frequently miss one week of school in every four. Lack of light means no homework: no homes have electricity, kerosene for lamps is often too expensive, or lamps are reserved for boys.

Girls also carry a large domestic load, having to undertake tasks such as sweeping, cooking, childcare, caring for

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sick relatives and, in rural areas, often walking long distances for water and fuel wood. Again, this leaves little time or energy for study. Worse off are the many who are HIV/AIDS orphans, fostered by relatives who frequently treat them effectively as slave labour.

Another major problem is violence. This happens in the home, again occurring most among fostered children, and within communities, sometimes fuelled by alcohol or drugs. Corporal punishment is evident in most schools, sometimes impacting negatively upon children’s experience of, and willingness to attend, school. Gender-based violence is rampant, with some girls directly

experiencing rape, others being attacked on the journey to school, and some encountering sexual harassment and abuse within school. Teenage pregnancy is common, and that, together with the practice of female genital mutilation of girls followed by early marriage in one area, invariably brings an end to formal education.

The other common challenge is negative attitudes towards education among families and communities. In some areas girls’ education is thought to be pointless, but in all case studies parents are under-educated and place little value on education generally, resulting in a lack of support for both schools and pupils.

college news

So why do girls stay in school?

Poverty, violence, the burden of domestic work and lack of support from home all militate against girls staying in school and completing even primary education.

Yet our research shows that despite their many challenges, some girls, even from the most disadvantaged backgrounds, do remain in school.

There are three key reasons for this.

Firstly is the girls’ belief in the power of education to change their lives.

Their persistence and determination to succeed in order to make a better life for themselves, and assist others in their families and communities, is almost universal across the girls we are studying.

Secondly, the school clearly has an important role, not just in teaching, but in providing children with a relatively safe and relatively attractive place where they

have opportunities to develop their talents, to be with friends, to play, to be a child.

as role models, showing what it is possible to achieve against all the odds.

The third important factor in encouraging girls’ retention is the role played by key people such as teachers, individual family or community members, in advising, encouraging, supporting and offering understanding, or sometimes acting as catalysts for change. Local adult women who have achieved material goods, or who are in positions of authority, are also important

This project has been one of despair and one of hope, with those of us involved in the research moved at times to tears, yet taking enormous inspiration from ways in which teachers and children seek to overcome the many challenges that are part of the fabric of their daily lives.

Dr Molly Warrington College Fellow

cHilDren’s literature at Homerton anD tHe FacultY oF eDucation Children’s literature is very much alive and kicking at Homerton. We continue to attract good numbers and, indeed, good students for all our courses – from our undergraduate tripos paper to doctoral study. In recent years, we have hugely expanded in terms of masters numbers and this has led to a thriving doctoral programme.

Our PhD students come from all over the world and tackle a wide range of topics which include developing an aesthetics of children’s poetry to a philosophy of children’s fiction; the history of Christianity in children’s books; the role of Manga in visual literacy; attitudes to reading in the Lebanon; and dystopian young adult literature – to name but a few.

We have been collaborating for ten years with Professor Martin Salisbury who runs the MA in Children’s Book Illustration at Anglia Ruskin University. We share a passion for picturebooks which is the focus of one of the modules on our M.Phil/Ed course. As well as running a joint seminar series annually, Words about Pictures: Pictures about Words, we also visit each other’s institutions, something both sets of students find hugely rewarding. In addition, Martin and I have written a book together – Children’s Picturebooks: the Art of Visual Storytelling – which was recently launched at Heffers Bookshop, apparently breaking records for the sale of copies at a single event!

We have instituted an annual Open Day for our Homerton Cambridge Children’s

Literature Centre which is proving popular and where prospective candidates can meet staff and students, listen to a talk by a children’s author (Michael Rosen and Adele Geras so far), look at displays of student work, mingle over tea and enjoy our now legendary children’s literature cakes

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2012. This is primarily for graduate students but their profile is so high that they have attracted well-known academics as keynote speakers and attendees and their overall recruitment has been highly successful.

Our students have had a good training for this as Maria Nikolajeva has accompanied them to attend international conferences where several of our students have given excellent papers.

Morag Styles and David Whitley (centre) with Sandra Robinson and Karen Thomas who are part of the Caribbean Poetry Project team in Barbados, March 2012

(courtesy of Zoe Jaques who works with us part-time)! The Centre also attracts visiting scholars from many different parts of the world; at the moment we have guests from Brazil and Spain.

We have an enthusiastic team of Homerton Fellows who teach children’s literature. We all write as well as teach and have many book, chapter and article publications to our names, no one more so than the prolific Professor Maria Nikolajeva who is director of our Centre.

Louise Joy has some distinguished writing projects in progress, as well as working closely with the English Faculty. David Whitley’s well received book on Disney and nature has already been expanded for a second edition.

Louise, David and I edited and contributed chapters to Poetry and Childhood (2010).

Victor Watson, ex Head of English at Homerton and a close colleague for many years, contributed a chapter and provided an index. He is now also a successful author of children’s books himself.

David Whitley, Georgie Horrell and I have been busy running a Caribbean Poetry

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Project for the last couple of years which necessitated visits to Jamaica, Trinidad and Barbados. We have jointly devised a Teaching Caribbean Poetry Course with members of the University of West Indies which will be taught all over the Caribbean as well as in Cambridge. The book of this course will be published next year. In September 2012 (20th–22nd) we are holding an international conference at Homerton – The Power of the Caribbean Poetry: Word and Sound – which features some distinguished poets, including Linton Kwesi Johnson, Kei Miller, Mervyn Morris, Dorothea Smartt, John Agard, Grace Nichols and Olive Senior.

Homerton was the venue for Maria Nikolajeva’s successful conference, The Emergent Adult in 2009, while September 2011 saw Abigail Rokison’s exciting Shakespeare Conference – Sources and Adaptations – which had a lively strand of sessions devoted to versions of Shakespeare for children. But it’s not only staff who put on exciting conferences. A group of our PhD students has organised The Child and The Book conference at Homerton in April

One of our students won the competitive United Kingdom Literacy Association Award for the best thesis in 2011 and another has been short-listed for the same award this year. We are lucky that the popular children’s author, Dame Jacqueline Wilson, funds our internal annual award for the best student critical work on children’s literature. We are particularly delighted that as well as reading the student’s work and commenting on it, she presents the award in a pleasant ceremony held in the Combination Room.

Another commitment to children’s literature is the annual lecture held at Homerton in memory of one of the greatest children’s writers of them all – Philippa Pearce.

Last year, Philip Pullman was our guest speaker and he filled the Auditorium within a couple of weeks of tickets being available. This year Malorie Blackman does the honours and in 2013 our speaker will be Kevin Crossley Holland. Homerton offers financial support for many of our endeavours with children’s literature, including this initiative, for which we are most grateful.

On a personal note I was surprised and thrilled to be awarded a personal chair this year. Mainly because of my long-term love affair with poetry, I have chosen to call myself Professor of Children’s Poetry. As soon as time allows, I will be preparing an inaugural lecture.

Morag Styles Professor of Children’s Poetry

student news MARIA CANELLAS, NAMED ENGINEERING AND DESIGN UNDERGRADUATE OF THE YEAR 2011 The Undergraduate of the Year is a UK annual competition organised

by Target Jobs, and includes 12 awards for different subjects such as Law or Mathematics. Each award is sponsored by a leading company in graduate recruitment, such as EDF Energy or KPMG. In 2011 almost 4000 students applied for the awards, and 120 were shortlisted and invited to attend the awards ceremony at Canary Wharf in London.

I was announced as the winner of the 2011 Construction Engineering and Design Undergraduate of the Year Award, sponsored by Laing O’Rourke. The selection process started with a series of online tests and the submission of a brief discussion of a current topic in the industry. Twenty aspirants were then selected to attend an assessment centre at the Olympics construction site, after which ten finalists were invited to attend the Awards ceremony in April 2011.

As the winner of the award I was given the invaluable opportunity to complete an eight week summer placement in Hong Kong with Laing O’Rourke. Laing O’Rourke is a leading construction company based in Dartford UK,

Working with Laing O’Rourke in Hong Kong

which operates worldwide. The enterprise is driven by innovation and investment in talented individuals and new technologies, which aim to elevate the industry to a higher level. The company has been involved in the construction of high profile projects such as London Heathrow Airport Terminal T5 and the prestigious residential complex One Hyde Park in London.

In Hong Kong, Laing O’Rourke is involved in major infrastructure projects for the

Mass Transit Railway Corporation (MTRC), which aims to increase the efficiency and extension of the railway transport networks. The projects that Laing O’Rourke is undertaking are of high value and high technical complexity. In the centre of the densely urbanized city of Hong Kong, Laing O’Rourke is building the new Admiralty Integrated Underground Station, which will accommodate the expanding underground network. Laing O’Rourke is also involved in the construction of the arrival station for the high-speed rail link, which will connect Hong Kong to Mainland China and will reduce journey times by around 50 minutes. This aims to boost the economic and trade relations between Hong Kong and Mainland China and hence the project is of high profile for the country.

As a fortunate winner, I encourage all our pre-finalist students to apply for the awards. The experience will provide them with valuable skills and knowledge, which will allow them to grow as professionals and as individuals.

Accepting the award with Michael Portillo (right) and Nick Featherstone representing Laing O’Rourke (left)

Maria Canellas MEng student 2008–2012

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BOAT RACE 2012 On 7th April this year I fulfilled an ambition I had held for over a decade. I won the Boat Race. The 2012 Boat Race will be remembered as one of the most eventful Races in history, for a series of events that none of us predicted.

In a notoriously bizarre race over a bendy and turbulent course and an unorthodox distance, between athletes who dedicate their whole year to just this one fixture, three things happened which nobody predicted. We were aware there were scenarios in which the race would have to be stopped, but we never thought it would be because someone felt so passionately about the evils of me and eight of my friends racing nine other students that he was willing to dive into the Thames to stop us. After this unprecedented incident nobody was expecting a second freak incident, in which the collision course of the Oxford boat left their six seat rowing without a blade (incidentally, the one blade with a slice of dark blue paint across it is my own), and force one of our Oxford counterparts to drive himself out of consciousness. It was not the way I thought I’d win the Boat Race.

When I think about the Race though, I see two stories. The first is that which is visible to the outside world, and which Trenton Oldfield exaggerates. The Boat Race is a rowing race which enjoys unrivalled

Mike Thorp, third in from the right

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popularity. As a result, part of rowing in the Boat Race and the reason for doing it is certainly the chance to compete with 250,000 people having lined the Thames to watch you, with millions more watching on the television, and to be part of a tradition dating back to 1829. But on the afternoon of the race I thought very little about all of those people and that history, I was thinking about what the eight of us were about to do, and what we had already done.

This is the other side of this year’s Boat Race, the bit which is most special to me. What I’ll really remember about what we did this year is not what we did on April 7th, but how we got there. We turned up as massive underdogs, a younger and supposedly less experienced crew to which the bookies at least didn’t give a chance. It was this though which forced us together. Over the last few months we held one common goal, not to get on the TV or spray a load of Bollinger around, but to prove ourselves. For me personally I felt that the result last year and my own position as the weak bow man in

the crew had taken much of the satisfaction of winning a Blue away from me. Everyone in my crew knew I felt like this, and I know the individual reasons why they were all putting themselves through this. This year I came back and I took the five seat, a powerhouse seat in the middle of the boat. Nobody who was here in my first two years at Cambridge ever thought I could row, and I needed to make sure nobody could accuse me of not being physiologically up to the challenge.

This need to prove ourselves was what drove our squad and pushed us to become more than many people thought we could.

I’m very proud of what we did this year, but not just because we won a race on the television. I am incredibly proud of the way we kept our heads and remained as one unit throughout the various trials of the race.

I’m proud of the way I and my eight friends responded to adversity across a period of seven months by digging deep, coming back stronger and proving to ourselves and anyone watching that we were not there to be walked over. This is what the Boat Race represents to me. In my eyes the Race remains the self-aware celebration of elitism Trenton Oldfield labels it, but it is one in which you have to earn anything you get through your own hard work. I for one make no apologies for that system.

Mike Thorp History Tripos 2009–2012

HCBC ended on a high last Mays with all four crews moving up in the bumps charts. M1 just missed out on blades, climbing an impressive three places to finish 4th in the M2 division. This leaves them in a position to get a potential taste of first division rowing. After a disappointing first day, W1 turned around their prospects by bumping twice to leave them up one place overall. M2 won their blades, closing down on their rivals very quickly, bumping before Grassy Corner every day. W2 put on a great performance, going up three places and ending up 4th in their division also. The kind donation by alumni of a digital camera and tripod has aided all crews’ training on the water, an invaluable asset.

Michaelmas term started with three novice crews, competing in Queens’ Ergs and putting on a great show at Novice Fairbairns. The returning men competed in the gruelling Senior Fairbairns, whilst the women entered Cambridge Winter Head in a IV. Despite icy conditions and numerous red and yellow flags, HCBC had a successful Lents 2012 campaign. M1 finished up two places, avenging their bumping by Pembroke II last year, catching them on the second attempt. W1 were narrowly denied blades, but finished up three, which was the most successful in their division. M2 brought Christ’s III to within a canvas, before carnage unfolded ahead of them which allowed Christ’s a narrow escape. Special thanks needs to go to new coach Mike Edey, who has brought great experience to the women’s crew, and Sergej Using for his continuous work with the men.

This year’s Boat Race was an interesting affair culminating in a victory for Cambridge by some margin. The celebrations of the crew and Homertonian Mike Thorp were subdued by the collapse

STUDENT NEWS

HCBC

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of a member of the Oxford crew, showing that sportsmanship comes above the distractions of protesters and blades.

The HCBC alumni weekend has been another success with the golden thread linking past and present oarsmen being made stronger each time we come together.

HCBC are very much looking forward to Mays 2012, hoping to build on the many successes of Lents. M1 are looking promising with many returning oarsmen from last year’s campaign whilst W1 retain the same crew who finished up three.

Sophie Bell & Jon Rackham HCBC Captains 2011–2012

Women’s Eight

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HaTs Over the past year, Homerton Amateur Theatrical Society (HATS) has been fortunate to consolidate its successes and continue to push on and help develop drama within the College, University and wider community.

We have been proud to re-launch haTS as a college society, celebrating with a special gala night at the end of the Lent term. Our new status reflects the importance of drama within the college, and our links with the Faculty of education’s inclusion of Drama as a subject within the education Tripos.

This move ensured we kept our name and history, and allows us to seek new avenues of funding for the development and provision of drama within cambridge and beyond.

running. They were, as ever, proud to feature the best acts from homerton staff and students alike and ranged from musical numbers, to comedy and poetry readings, continuing the respected tradition of celebrating and showcasing the range of talents within the body of homerton’s members.

We held two very successful haTStands Variety shows at the end of the Michaelmas and Lent terms respectively, which sold out for the umpteenth year

This year has seen our fledgling haTS Poetry Group established, with the group reading at our last haTStands show. The group has been created to write and

you can view many of our performances from haTStands from the past few years on youTube at the following uRL: http:// www.youtube.com/user/haTSDrama.

develop performance poetry, whilst enjoying and exploring what is currently available.

Furthermore, our education group ‘LittlehaTS’ has continued to expand our provision of drama workshops to schools within the local area and has been very well received. We hope to continue to build on this in coming years to further our community outreach projects and instil a love of drama in the next generation.

This summer, haTS will be proud to present a new piece of theatre entitled Cide written by homerton alumnus Dave Stevenson, who brought us the harry Porter prizenominated Dawn of Man. This promises to be an excellent spectacle and we would love to entertain you should you wish to return to support such an endeavour.

We would like to take this opportunity to extend our most profuse thanks to all the committee members who have worked to further drama within homerton, and continue to expand and develop our society. Thank you to everyone who has attended or supported a haTS show over the past few years, and should you wish to support haTS in any other way, we would be delighted to hear from you.

Chris Hussey and Laurie-Lee McDowell HATS Co-Presidents

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“The Empress has a good quiz too”, someone said. We’d been sitting in the college bar after one of the HUS’s pub quizzes. After being selected for the University Challenge team about three months earlier, mid way through Michaelmas, and finding out a few weeks later that we’d be appearing on television, we were all initially elated. But now, arriving back in Cambridge at the start of Lent, the four of us were unsure of how exactly to prepare. There was a rumour that the John’s team had been attending a boot camp over the Christmas vacation, with reading lists out of Encyclopaedia Britannica. Our first thought was to find an edition of Trivial Pursuits and to get in one or two games a week. We started attending pub quizzes regularly. And of course, hours every day were spent reading Wikipedia.

As we headed up to Manchester to begin filming, we reminisced about the interview with the BBC so many months ago. The Sidney Sussex team were asked why they should appear on TV; they answered by listing the many illustrious alumni that their college could boast over the last four centuries or so. We retorted, explaining that we were in the exact opposite position – our team was ardent to prove that despite not being from a particularly old, or particularly wealthy college, we were as good as any other team.

We must have made an impression, and so on that cold afternoon we made our way through Manchester to the studio.

Without exception, for me at least, all the matches we filmed merged into the same stressful blur. The absolute nail-biting game against Balliol College, Oxford, losing 200 to 205, and winning by such a large margin against Durham, are still the most memorable moments of the series. We were eventually

STUDENT NEWS

UNIVERSITY CHALLENGE knocked out in a second match against Balliol. We’d got to know the Balliol team well during filming, and so this didn’t seem too devastating. Friends in the studio audience weren’t as forgiving, berating us for losing to Oxford!

Before we all knew it, we were back in Cambridge, and sat in the college bar watching the matches on TV. I took part in the Telephone Campaign later in the year, and had a chance to chat to several alumni about what it was like being on TV and of course meeting Paxo. Everyone was really supportive, and nobody mentioned losing to Oxford... much. I’m told that there’s a Homerton team appearing on University Challenge next year as well, however, so maybe there’s still a chance....

Jack Euesden Natural Science Tripos Neuroscience 2009–2012

The University Challenge Team with Jeremy Paxman

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THE GRIFFINS SOCIETY Sport at Homerton continues to go from strength to strength, with this academic year being one of the best in recent times.

The football club has had yet again another successful season. The 1st XI, captained by Steve Wildman, had arguably its strongest squad of players in recent memory, although they missed out on silverware. Finishing a close second in the top division, they narrowly lost the title decider to Downing. Notable performances include a 4–0 victory over Caius having played the whole second half with 10 men, and a 5–0 thrashing of Selwyn. Anthony Childs played for the Blues this year at right back, along with Joe Huxley in midfield and Kye Davies. Kye, alongside Steve Wildman, Paul Williams and James Cutler, featured in the annual ‘Kestrels’ match which unfortunately was lost on penalties.

However, the 2nd and 3rd XIs, captained

by Gav Palmer and George Deeks respectively, achieved success and are currently still in their cups’ semi-finals.

On top of this, promotions for both now mean that Homerton have teams in each of the top three divisions, a feat never previously achieved in the College’s history. Part of this success has relied on better recruitment of PGCE students, who appear to be involved more in the Griffins Society than ever before. Another string to the football club’s bow has been their unparalleled success in the recently-established 5-a-side league.

Such has been their dominance at the top that after winning the inaugural league and cup competitions, they now field two ‘1st’ teams that both compete for all the honours. The women’s football team continue to play very well, despite losing their first game in over two years to King’s in what was again a very tightlyfought match.

Men’s rugby has arguably been the most consistent team this season, promoted

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Leyton Orient Supporters’ Club vs. Homerton 1st Team, score 3–0 to Leyton Orient, May 2012

this year as champions of Division 2, completing a back-to-back double promotion to now compete in the top division of Cambridge college rugby. At the time of writing, they are currently still in Cuppers. This year, they have had three individuals playing for the University U21 side – Jon Rackham, Andy Murdoch and Roo Abraham. In addition to this, Tom Blaksley has played for the U21A team, and additionally our captain Chris Morgan, Ini Weston and Andy Heap have played for a Colleges’ XV. The women’s rugby team also has a Blues representative in it as well, namely captain and prop Catherine Osborne. Their season has been excellent, winning three out of four matches in a round robin Seven’s tournament in a team mixed with Hughes Hall players.

There are also two Blues players in the Pool team, one of whom is also the captain of the team, Drew Miley, who is also the outstanding player of the current season, having as an individual won the most number of overall frames in the league. So far this season, the team have won two out of their three matches, and are still in Cuppers, of which they are the reigning champions.

In regards to badminton, the women have unfortunately been relegated from their division and got knocked out in the first round of Cuppers, decided by

an intense final game ending 25–23 to Clinical med school. And attendance has been very high this year for practice, an encouraging sign.

There is still much enthusiasm in playing sports like hockey and ultimate frisbee in college. Most noticeable, however, has been the increased interest in netball; under the captaincy of Flo Carr and Emily Paines, the team not only gained promotion, but such has been the strength of interest and competition there, that a second team had to be set up, distinguished infamously by a rather vibrant amber-coloured bib for their matches, and captained by Emma Bowell.

And as I write this, the cricket team are gearing up for another enjoyable season, this year captained by Graham Andrews and vice-captained by George Deeks. For the past two seasons the team has, in face of strong competition, proceeded past the group stages of the Cuppers tournament only to suffer heavy defeat at the hands of Caius. The aim for this season is to unlock the door and progress beyond the first knockout round. Highlights last year include beating Queens’ by 1 run, even if both teams added up the scores wrongly.

Last year’s captain Ravinder Athwal top scored for the college with 29, and our best bowling figures of last year were Moti’s destructive 3–15, both achieved

when playing against Jesus. One exciting possibility for the upcoming season is playing a fixture against Homerton Cricket Club, London, in a similar fashion to the tradition where the 1st XI football team annually plays the Leyton Orient supporters’ club, although currently we wait for confirmation of both ties.

In the summer we will also look forward to the usual light-hearted enthusiasm with which Homerton plays its croquet, this year captained by Jon Rackham. The term will also see lawn tennis courts erected on campus, giving some muchneeded stress relief to those with exams!

Indeed, such has been the popularity of tennis this year that a men’s tennis team has been set up, captained by Sam Massey, and at the time of writing they are still in Cuppers. The other new sport to emerge this term, outside of a newly formed intra-college squash ladder, has been volleyball, taking advantage of its international popularity, where a mixed Cuppers competition is played every term. With next term’s competition being played outdoors rather than inside, we will therefore be looking forward to having a practice volleyball court permanently set out on our grounds alongside the tennis courts next term!

Finally, I implore you to check out our new website at www.husjcr.co.uk/college-life/ sport-soc/ for up-to-date happenings in college sport. Alternatively, you can get in touch with me at hus-griffins@homerton. cam.ac.uk; a word of note though – next year the JCR has voted for the role to be changed. The Griffins President will evolve into the Sports & Societies Officer and look after all the various clubs and societies within the college. As our time here at Cambridge comes to teach us, it should not always be about sport!

George Deeks Griffins President HUS JCR 2011–2012

I started fencing when I was eight after being blown away by just how fantastic I thought Antonio Banderas was in the 1998 film The Mask Of Zorro. I started off by joining a small local club for school children and at first was quite disheartened to find out that the sport of fencing wasn’t quite as swashbuckling as the sword fighting you see in the movies.

Nevertheless I stuck at it and once I started competing at the age of twelve, I was hooked. I became Sussex Champion, South East Champion and then was faced with the decision of how seriously I would like to take the sport. Soon after this my coach passed away very unexpectedly and I think it was this which made me think I would give the sport a proper go. My coach had always been so supportive of me and I will never forget how happy he was to see me come 7th in my first ever British Youth Championships.

The decision was made that I would start training more seriously and see how far I could get. At the age of fifteen

STUDENT NEWS

FENCING BLUE I was selected to represent GB in an U17 international event and shortly after I was selected for an U20 international too.

By the age of sixteen I had made it to British no 1 in the U17 rankings and was 14th in the senior British rankings. I was selected as one of three squad members to represent GB in the U17 European and World Championships and had some truly unforgettable experiences travelling all over the world with the British team.

Unfortunately due to injury I was then forced to take a year out from all sports and it wasn’t until I came to university that I was properly able to compete again. In my second year at Homerton I captained the University fencing team to one of their most successful seasons in a number of years. We were awarded our Full Blues for our victory over Oxford in the Varsity Match and for coming 2nd in the British University and College Sports league. I’ve loved being part of the university team and will sorely miss it after I graduate this summer.

Sophie Ann St Clair Jones Education Tripos 2009–2012

Sophie (left) in action

Sports Hall. Sophie is fourth from the left, next to the Vice-Chancellor Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz. Image by Phil Mynott.

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PILKINGTON TRAVEL GRANTS Last year, 10 students were awarded Pilkington Travel Grants. The students worked in Nepal, India, Zambia and South Africa often with deprived or orphaned children. Here are reports from two of the students.

Working with Village Ways, Rajasthan Last summer I spent seven weeks in India, an experience I will never forget and one that has changed the lives of many for the better. I was working for Village Ways (www.villageways. com/index.php?pageid=52), a socially responsible tourism company which provides holidays in rural parts of India, where guests can become part of the community. Once the tourist arrives in India, they are looked after wholly by the local people, who take turns to cook and clean, thereby sharing the benefits equally between them. Furthermore, each guest is assigned one or two guides who explain the local lifestyle and act as interpreters.

Between 10th of August and 28th of September 2011, myself and another student from Homerton taught five guides in Hacra, Rajasthan (nearest town on the map is Osiyan) and five guides in Cherthala, Kerala. We taught daily lessons (with one day a week off ) for three weeks in both Rajasthan and Kerala. In both cases, our students made significant progress: in Rajasthan, where initial levels of English were poor, the guides became able to explain the caste system, their way of life and local legends to the guests. My students became my friends throughout

my time in India and, from personal correspondence, I know they are currently working as guides for Village Ways. This employment means they and their families have a more sustainable income, no longer have to rely solely on seasonal agricultural work and are more likely to remain in the area as opposed to migrating to the cities in search of work.

On top of daily lessons, we explored both areas in order to advise Village Ways as to which places and activities would be most inviting for tourists. A guided trip to Osiyan and a walk round the various small shrines in the area were suggested for Hacra. A cooking class run by the women in Cherthala was also suggested, so that guests could benefit from the wonderful

local cuisine and bring an income directly to the women of the village.

If I were to choose what struck me the most during my trip, I would say the extent to which I was invited into the local Hacra community. I spent many hours in the afternoon playing with and teaching the local children, could hitch rides on the back of tractors and cooked with the lady of the household, Mewa. Despite language and cultural barriers, I was able to communicate with members of this community. This has taught me that effective communication needs a willingness to be understood, enthusiasm and mutual respect, not necessarily a mutual language.

I thank the Pilkington travel award for providing me with the funds to travel to India and become part of this community.

Fiorenza Brady Geographical Tripos 2009–2012

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Street kids: Durban, South Africa In August 2011, I travelled with three friends to Durban, South Africa, to work with street kids, through a charity called Umthombo. This trip was made possible by the Pilkington Award.

The Umthombo team work to help kids leave the streets by empowering them to return home or to find employment and residence of their own. The charity runs a day care centre, caring for up to 60 children and providing them with three meals a day. They also work with social workers on therapeutic programmes and organise arts and sports programmes for the kids.

The surfing initiative has been a big success, keeping many kids from going back to the streets and spending their time begging or sniffing glue. For some of the older boys it has led to training as life guards and surf instructors, opening a possible career path and providing a route off the streets which they desperately need.

We were very involved in the arts programme, working with the children every day to create works of art inspired by their perception of Durban. It was amazing to see how, with just a little prompting and support, they came up with some of the incredible pieces you can see here.

The other main area we worked on was reading. Before travelling, we’d been told that Umthombo were hoping to start up a literacy programme for the kids so we took with us a selection of books, from the most basic Top Samkelo and Innocence with me showing some of our surfboard art Middle Kids doing t-shirt designs in one of the art sessions Left Shezzy and Grace reading with some of the boys

learning-to-read books, to the complete chronicles of Narnia. To all of our surprise (and that of some of the staff ) lots of the kids were really keen to read with us, and also very capable. Many of the kids had been at school at some point and, speaking to them, pretty much everyone expressed a desire to go back to school as soon as possible.

One of Umthombo’s long-term aims is to develop an education programme, but at present they can’t afford to pay existing staff every month – let alone start new programmes. I hope that in future it might be possible to set up a Cambridge link with Umthombo, an organisation largely led by people who were once living on the streets themselves. It would be great if we could send volunteers from Cambridge on a regular basis to support this inspiring organisation, to meet the amazing children they work with and see how the lives of young people are being changed for good.

Find out more about their work at www.umthombo.org Wesley Wroe Engineering Tripos 2010–2014

Homerton College

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HOMERTON UNION OF STUDENTS jcr I sit at my paper-strewn desk, each scrap containing a nugget of interest or achievement from the last two terms, during which I’ve had the pleasure of being JCR President. Atop these lies the last issue of the Homertonian, flipped open to page eighteen, and I read last year’s equivalent article, written by my predecessor, Pippa Dinnage. I can’t quite understand how she managed to squash the year into a measly five-hundred words. That’s not even half an essay.

And I’ve already spent a hundred words waffling. Better get started.

It began with PGCE Freshers’ Week. After two marathon rounds of registration, the JCR and MCR began welcoming our 350 one-year members. Although plans for a barbecue didn’t quite weather the drizzle, the week was a success, even if our teachers-in-training barely had time to enjoy it. Laughs were had at the pub quiz, movie night saw us camped around the MCR’s flashy flat screen watching Music & Lyrics (not Hugh Grant’s finest hour), and both Matriculation Dinners were a delight.

It’s a shame that we don’t see much of the PGCEs throughout the year, but the week was a great introduction.

Training week followed, during which new HUS Executives were shown the ropes, met college officials, and played some very silly games. Before we even had time for a second round of Mafia or another jug of Pimm’s, Freshers’ Week was upon us. My hat goes off to the team, who did a fantastic job during our busiest, most sleepless week of the year. By the time of the bop on Saturday evening, you could tell the freshers already felt at home, verified by our (entirely scientific) Silly Costumes Index, which hit a 9.0 that evening. Prizes went to two ladies sporting Georgian personas to match their dresses. And the guy dressed (or rather, not dressed) as the Incredible Hulk.

Since then, the HUS has gone about its usual work, helping students in all manner

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of sticky situations, attending college meetings, and generally complaining about things. Our students have been busy too.

For the second year we held a Harry Potter Formal, put on for two nights rather than one, but still managing to sell out in thirty minutes in the dead of night. Special thanks to Esther Harding, to whom the organising baton was passed, and who did a wonderful job making the evening (and particularly the South Corridor) magical. That night we welcomed students from our Oxonian sister college, Harris Manchester, and ecstatic emails indicated their enjoyment.

Sporting success has continued on field and water; particular highlights came from men’s football and women’s rowing.

Further afield, congratulations must go to Mike Thorp for a brilliant performance in this year’s Boat Race, even in the face of controversy. Drama boasted another great year of Hatstands, and some terrific productions put on in college. Visit the ADC, and you’ll also find a raft of Homertonians populating each and every show. I don’t think I’ve managed a theatre trip this year without seeing a few college members treading the boards.

So there we have it: the year in a nutshell.

I haven’t managed to clear even half the scraps from my desk, and with another term to go, you can bet it has yet to see its messiest day.

Ben Wheawell HUS President 2010–2011

Mcr Just as any project in development, the MCR spreads its wings further and wider every year. Within its third year of existence, we have learned so much more about how to make the experience at Cambridge and Homerton College one to never forget.

The start of the academic year brought new graduate students from all over the world not only seeking the knowledge a degree here can provide but also eager to discover why being a student at Cambridge is so unique.

To start the year on a high note, an incredible Freshers’ Week was organized by the MCR committee so as to help the new students feel welcome at college. Among tours of Cambridge (including the popular ghost walk tour), pub crawl, the typical punting outing, film night, bowling, potlucks and visits to some beautiful nearby locations such as Grantchester and Ely, the graduate freshers were extremely busy. Freshers’ week also brought the work of our committee to the attention of many freshers who were keen to be even more involved in College and they now make up roughly two thirds of our committee.

Throughout the year we strive to maintain the quality and quantity of events to give our students the possibility to always have a friendly support system within college.

We have had potlucks and get-togethers to celebrate holidays from all over the world and thus help with the homesickness some might feel, especially those away from their home countries for the first time. College formal dinner exchanges have reached an all-time high this year, helping foment and strengthen relationships with other colleges.

This year the MCR has also taken over the film club (originally initiated by a fellow), a club dedicated to showing award-winning films.

Homerton MCR is also highly involved with the rest of the university, including the Graduate Union. Together with other college MCRs, we have endeavored to bring to

STUDENT NEWS

Post-graduate students at the Matriculation Dinner

Punting on the CAM

light all the topics that concern graduate students, from the smallest matters of every-day life as a student in Cambridge, to more complicated issues such as the protests that have been a subject of great discussion this year.

The interests of the Homerton graduate students go beyond the more political

side of student life. We have cheered for our fellow students at many sports events, whether college or university-wide ones.

We have cried or laughed with them at the many plays they have been involved with whether as cast or directors. We have sung along with them at musicals. And we have all been there to congratulate them when the academic work they do helps

advance their fields of research. Whatever our students do, they have shown themselves to be amazingly passionate, intelligent and talented and it has been a great privilege to have met and cultivated friendship with them.

Maria Mascarenhas MCR President 2011–2012

HOMERTON COLLEGE MUSIC SOCIETY 2011–12 has been another busy year for Homerton College Music society. End of term concerts in Michaelmas and Lent saw the majority of college ensembles contributing in fantastically varied ways.

In Michaelmas, the concert took the form of a Christmas programme, despite happening in November (those cursed short terms…!), and a packed Great Hall enjoyed an evening of mince pies, mulled wine, and fantastic music.

I can only express my sincerest apologies to those who were there to witness my dreadful festive puns and jokes!

The Lent term concert was the perfect opportunity for our new Director of Music, Daniel Trocmé-Latter, to make his first appearance in a society concert, conducting the college’s flagship choir, the Charter Choir. In his first year in the position, Daniel has been a fantastic person to work with and a great support in representing the Society’s interests throughout the college.

Aside from the larger concerts, and Charter choir services, we have also been treated

Chamber and Concert orchestras.

Homerton College Music Society attempts to promote music-making at all levels within the college, but it is always particularly satisfying to see Homertonians going on to raise the bar in terms of performance standard in the wider world.

to a fantastic recital series, thanks to the society’s recitals manager Will Roberts – last year’s President. Performers have been drawn from the cream of Homerton’s musicians, as well as many other talented players from across the University.

Furthermore, the year is not over, and an exciting programme of recitals is currently being firmed up for Easter term, to bring welcome relief to any students suffering from exam-related stress!

Musicians from Homerton have also played prominent roles in ensembles across the University, such as in the University Jazz orchestra and the CUMS Symphony,

Aside from the realm of actual ‘music making’, the structural reform of the society continues to build a platform for the future. We should very soon see the addition of senior members to the society’s committee, drawn from the fellowship of the college, in order to maintain continuity from year to year as well as to provide guidance to student committee members.

The remainder of the committee and I look forward to welcoming them to the society and to working together in order to ensure its future health. http://hcms.soc.srcf.net.

Tom Jack HCMS President 2011–12

Homerton College

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RETIRED SENIOR MEMBERS ASSOCIATION Sadly, in most annual reports of the RSMA I have to record the demise of one of our members. This year has seen the passing of Alan Bamford. Along with Kate Pretty, I attended his funeral, held in the evangelical Christian tradition, which formed the basis of his life. Doing so gave me some insight not only into the problems he must have faced trying to lead Homerton through some of the most challenging years of the College’s history, but also to the way in which he found strength to endure them. A fuller appreciation of his life can be found elsewhere.

The award of our Charter Bursary, created to maintain the link with Teacher Education, was made to Rosanna Hartropp, B.A. Rosanna gave an excellent presentation to our AGM and her report on her teaching experience in Zambia can be found in the RSMA section of the college website. The RSMA is in a healthy financial state and this year we are able

to offer two Bursaries. We have also funded the planting of bluebells (English, naturally) in the grounds of the College, as a fitting tribute to the late Sylvia Williams, created a one-off award to celebrate the centenary of one of our members, Dr. Eileen Alexander, and continued the practice of generous donations to the College from individual RSMs. We continue to play a role in the general life of the college, exemplified by the Homerton Charity Quiz for which we fielded two teams. Modesty and the Corinthian spirit forbids me recording for posterity which team did better than the other, or in what rank they ended overall.

The only important thing was the money raised for the NSPCC and the enjoyable evening had by all.

Pauline Curtis, our Events and Visits Coordinator, has introduced a monthly Book Club and linked the monthly coffee mornings on two occasions each term

with a seminar and lunch at High Table.

The most recent of these combined a very positive discussion, led by the Principal, on the role of the RSMA in the new Homerton with what I like to consider our achievement of the year, the official opening of the new Alison Shrubsole Room.

The original Shrubsole Room was a small room on Pauper’s Walk. I felt very strongly that this inadequately acknowledged the contribution made by a lady, who, along with Professor Paul Hirst, established Homerton on the first rung of membership of the University. Our committee and other RSMs agreed and so did the Principal.

Alison will now be remembered in a much larger room, close to that named after her predecessor, Dame Beryl Paston Browne.

It will also have a splendid new portrait of Alison, commissioned by the College from Philip Rundall.

Professor John Murrell MBE Emeritus Fellow, Sometime George Peabody Professor

CARERS Retirement, I always thought, would afford time to slow down, reflect and enjoy the simpler things in life. If only.

Instead, I’m journeying hither and thither, trying to spread the word about what makes for enlightened dementia support and care from diagnosis to death. Old Homerton lecturing skills put to new purposes?

Last year, I spoke at 50 conferences or study days, reaching a wide range of health and social care professionals (nurses, doctors, social workers, commissioners, care home and domiciliary care staff, day care providers, hospices and bereavement counsellors) as well as undergraduates and family carers. It’s also interesting how community-based groups (librarians, churchgoers, clubs) are also wanting to know how best to support people with

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Homertonian

Barbara (centre right) with Michael Parkinson at a Dignity in Care conference

dementia and their family in their own locality. And individual carers ask for tailored advice.

On the political front, I’m a member of the Standing Commission on Carers, which advises government on carers’ issues.

We seek to ensure that carers are treated with respect as ‘expert partners in care’ by all professionals and in all care settings, including hospitals and care homes, where

they are often marginalised . We are also pressing the new GP commissioners for carers’ regular breaks and health checks, better access to personalised advice and emotional support.

I serve on two Ministerial Advisory Boards for dementia – one for educating the whole health and social care workforce and the other for stimulating more research into causes, treatment and hopefully cures for

Pandemonium.......below and above stairs! dementias (there are over a hundred types).

Trying not to show my political leanings by wearing different coloured jackets, I spoke at all three Party Conferences about the importance of creating seamless integrated care with one named point of contact for all patients with long-term conditions, and arrived on the front page of a Guardian supplement! Dementia has become a priority for Parliament, supported by all three parties, but clearly the tough economic climate is making things difficult.

Requests for articles in professional journals or chapters in books often flow from speaking engagements. I’ve just completed one for the Australian Association of Continence Advisers (!) and am currently working on one about end of life care for a European journal which will be translated into several languages.

There’s one fascinating book about dementia which everyone should read: Graham Stokes’ And Still the Music Plays (Hawker publications 2008).

And the future? To reduce travelling, I’m thinking of leaping into the 21st century and creating an interactive website – perhaps it would at least allow me to spend more time in the garden? But then I’d probably miss sharing a platform with people such as Michael Parkinson!

Steel pans were introduced into the music department of Homerton in the late 1980s. Malcolm Pointon was teaching world musics, Jane Edden was running a local children’s steel band, and Stephen John’s wife had a band in Derby. Barbara Pointon decided the time had come for steel pans to come to Homerton. They were made by a Trinidadian pan maker and player extraordinaire, Mike Contant, who became a friend of the band, and tuned the pans until his death.

It was decided to store the pans in the cellars of Trumpington House, and that is where Pandemonium was born. A small committed group of students met regularly to rehearse, and repertoire was gradually worked on, until students and pans were ready to launch themselves into the world upstairs!

This world became one in which students were very soon in demand to play at outside engagements, ranging from church fêtes to May Balls to college functions. As trainee teachers, going into school to present workshops enabled students not only to gain some teaching experience, but to witness how well children responded to the medium of pan. As a result, several students now

have their own successful bands in school.

Over the years Pandemonium has had many incarnations, and it is now in its third home. Numerous students have been able to enjoy the experience of playing pan, and each new generation brings along something new, whether it is ideas for repertoire or a costume change.

Do you recognise this photo? if you don’t know the students, you will recognise the pans! Were you once in Pandemonium? If so, can we have your name on record? We are building a profile of past players and an archive of some of your best Pandemonium moments. Can you share them with us?

Anyone remember these occasions?

• The painting of the pans by Rachel one weekend in the cellar.

• The cricket theme.

• Playing in the quad at the Trinity May Ball.

• A party in the garden and hilarious committee meetings at Mawson Road.

These were some of my favourites, do send us yours!

Contact us at roll@homerton.cam.ac.uk.

Jane Edden Retired Senior Member

Barbara Pointon MBE Music Dept 1963–1993

Homerton College Pandemonium in 1993

Homerton College

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OBITUARIES Jessie Ball Former Head of English until 1981 Died 2011 When Jessie Ball arrived as Head of the English Department, she brought more than a touch of the satirical to academic life at Homerton. Her down-to-earth personal integrity, toughened by her solid anti-hierarchical convictions and a robust sense of humour, was outraged by some of the practices and assumptions both of Homerton and of the English Faculty.

She did not suffer fools gladly and always spoke her mind. She was abrasive, sharpwitted, and occasionally bawdy. Students adored her.

When she arrived, she found the English Department fraught with tensions, dislikes and mutual distrust.

She did not succeed in resolving these difficulties, but she contained them with a characteristic mixture of humour and sheer force of personality.

She enjoyed – and taught her colleagues to enjoy – various kinds of collaborative teaching. Her sessions were vigorous and alive, and always unpredictable. I recall with affection that she and I often teamtaught the poetry of William Blake, and this invariably led to strong and articulate

Alan George Bamford CBE 1930–2011 Principal 1985–1991

knew they could count on her support.

But she was not a push-over. Students quickly learned that where professional and academic standards were concerned there would be no compromising.

End of term, Jessie Ball and Victor Watson

disagreements (with students joining in) because I saw Blake as a Romantic poet while she insisted that he thought like an Augustan. It was in her time that teaching staff were encouraged to establish and develop various kinds of in-service projects in schools: accordingly, the English Department ran a number of literature conferences and courses for teachers, sixth formers and intending sixth formers. She gave her enthusiastic support to these occasions, and again her bluntness and openness worked to win over the students – especially, I remember, in one hilarious session on sexuality in Blake’s ‘The Sick Rose’.

She had a realistic knowledge of life outside college, and this enabled her to understand and sympathise with students (particularly mature students) who had emotional or domestic difficulties in their lives. They

Alan’s teaching career started in Lancashire Primary Schools rising from Teacher to Deputy Headmaster over the decade of 1952 to 1962. He then made the move into Higher Education, initially as a Lecturer in Primary Education at Liverpool University.

A year later he took up the post of Senior Lecturer in Education at Chester College.

In 1966 Alan became the Principal Lecturer and Head of Education Department at St Katherine’s College Liverpool.

In 1971 Alan took up the role of Principal of Westhill College. Over his 14 year tenure, there were huge changes in the world of Education and in the growth of Westhill

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When each term was finished, she and I took off in either her car or mine and drove out into the country. A pub lunch would follow, and then we’d drive some more before returning. During these trips I learned a good deal about her private life – her children and grandchildren, the death of her husband, and her decision to make a complete break. Coming to Cambridge so soon after that bereavement had been a challenge, socially, academically, personally, and even politically. We became firm friends and I began to understand the personal factors behind her approach to life at Homerton and in Cambridge. When she retired in 1981 she took a teaching job in an International School in Athens, where she was a welcoming host and tour guide to friends who stayed with her. She was an active member of the Labour Party and was later elected as a member of the Cambridge City Council.

One more thing – she gave fantastic parties.

Victor Watson Former Head of English

College. He was particularly proud of the College’s achievements in the quality of their Special Educational Needs and Youth Work degrees. In 1985 he started the post that he believed to be the pinnacle of his career, Principal of Homerton College Cambridge. Despite the considerable challenges of what was undoubtedly a period of enormous upheaval in the field of teacher education, he relished the role until he was forced to retire early due to ill health in 1991.

Alan was involved in a plethora of committees, charities, special interest groups and membership organisations.

He served as Vice-President of the Colleges of Education Christian Union from 1965 for a staggering 21 years, with two years as President between 1966–67 and 1972–73. Throughout his 14 years at Westhill College, Alan fulfilled the role of Chair of the Birmingham Association of Youth Clubs, a role he had a real passion for and was hugely committed to. Also in 1972 he joined the Advanced Committee on Religious Broadcasts, BBC Radio Birmingham, up until 1980. From 1974–80 he was a member of the Council of National Youth Bureau, serving on the Executive Committee from 1978–80. In 1977 he was appointed Justice of the Peace, sitting regularly in Birmingham’s Magistrates Court until his move to Cambridge in 1985.

Dr Julia Swindells 1951–2011 Former Director of Studies in English

Julia taught English at Homerton College over a period of eighteen years, 1989– 2006, making a distinctive contribution as a scholar, a teacher and as a Trustee. I was for some years her colleague in the English department there, and along with Janet Bottoms, Steve Watts, and David Whitley, we were a happy and noisy team for some years before she moved to Anglia Ruskin University.

I could offer many examples of Julia’s impact, but will focus on just two for brevity’s sake. Firstly, Julia set up a post-

In 1981 Alan served a year as Chair of the Colleges Committee for NATFHE. Also in 1981 he served on the Central Register and Clearing House Committee followed by a decade as a Member of the Council of Management. Additionally, in 1981 he began an eight year stint as Governor of the London Bible College. In 1972–74 he was President of the Birmingham Council of Christian Education and then VicePresident beyond his leaving Birmingham until his retirement in 1991. After moving to Cambridge in 1985 up until his retirement, Alan became a Member of the Standing Conference on Studies in Education and was on the Standing Committee on Education and Training of Teachers, serving as Vice-Chair in 1988 and Chair in 1989.

In 1986 he joined the Committee for the Standing Conference of Principals and

Directors of Colleges and Institutes of Higher Education until 1991. In 1987 he served for a year on the Voluntary Sector Consultative Council, and three years on Cambridge Health Authority, being a Trustee from 1988–90.

colonial literature course she called International Literature, which she invited me to teach on when I joined her at Homerton. In contrast to believing the canon of English Literature to be exclusive and limited, this course opened up new possibilities of study. It is a course which continues to run in the Faculty of Education to this day, so, this term, heading up seminars on Caribbean poetry, Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea or the novels and polemic of Chinua Achebe, I could almost hear Julia’s voice in my inner ear saying “Sure let’s have Shakespeare/Milton/Keats/ Shelley but let’s not leave out Walcott/ Brathwaite/Miss Lou/Berry”. This course is a living legacy and is typical of Julia’s penchant for opening doors for writing other than – as Salman Rushdie famously put it – “the great sacred thing itself”, traditional English Literature.

some star names, who were invited to the conference as guest speakers, but when Julia turned, as editor, to organising the book, she solicited offerings from an eclectic range of contributors, including people who had not published before.

There are, for example, two essays by contemporary Homerton undergraduates.

Julia always acted as a door-opener for people who wanted to enter the world of academe.

Secondly, in the summer of 1994 Julia organised a conference called ‘The Uses of Autobiography’ at Homerton. It was a conference designed to address how autobiography articulates the relationship between individual consciousnesses and the social world. Certainly, there were

During his time in Birmingham Alan was awarded a Hon. MA from Birmingham University in 1981. In further recognition of his work, Cambridge University also bestowed a Hon. MA upon Alan during his time at Homerton College. The greatest recognition for his services to Education and Young People, for his tireless work and commitment, came in the form of the order of CBE, bestowed upon him by the Queen in the 1985 New Year Honours.

From the Bamford Family

I am going to backtrack for a moment to speak briefly about Julia’s first book, Victorian Writing and Working Women, published in 1985, which established what we now might recognise as a Julia-inflected pattern and practice. The first half of the book deals with the representation of women and labour in the work of leading nineteenth-century novelists, but the second half brings to light and life workingclass women’s autobiographies. This interdisciplinary approach – once again, the sense that English Literature as a subject discipline as taught in the academy was too narrow (that there was at the very least a need to call on History and Sociology, too), underpinned the thinking that went into

Homerton College

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Homerton roll oBitUAries continued

this book. Like Raymond Williams, Julia knew that Many other kinds of knowledge and analysis have to be drawn on if the work [of literary criticism] is to be properly done, and that instead of relatively isolated forays from some presumed and then increasingly specialized centre, there has to be a more open and equalstanding convergence of independent disciplines, seeking to make their evidence and their questions come together in a common enquiry.

In 1995, The Uses of Autobiography, the book that emerged from that 1994 conference mentioned earlier, was published in Taylor and Francis’s Gender, Change and Society Series, an entirely apt positioning for Julia’s academic and political concerns. She dedicated The Uses of Autobiography “to those who use language to comprehend rather than compete – and for fun rather than funding“. This was typical; Julia was always concerned that a mechanist top-down push for scholars to turf out endless articles for the insistent Research Assessment Framework made it hard for teacher/scholars to find time to do any hard thinking. It was/is a system that might well lead to more stuff being published, but risks a lessening of creative commitment.

We, who have known her, will miss her sharp intelligence, her laughter, and her championing of such less-than-glorious causes. Teacher, scholar, writer, she: her loss draws me ineluctably to some lines that W. B. Yeats wrote on the death of his friend: Some burn damp faggots, others may consume The entire combustible world in one small room As though dried straw, and if we turn about The bare chimney is gone black out Because the work had finished in that flare…

Dr Pam Hirsch Senior Member

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HomertoniAn

HomerTon ColleGe WeBsiTe The new Homerton College website goes live in June, www.homerton.cam. ac.uk. Do visit for details of our events, our regional branches, Roll member entitlements, to read our publications online, to update your details and to see if you recognise any names on our ‘lost’ list.

You can also find details of the Charter Campaign and even make a donation.

HomerTon roll CommiTTee Chair: Dr Kate Pretty (Principal); Keeper of the Roll: Dr Ian Morrison; Teaching Staff Member: Dr Peter Warner (Senior Tutor and college archivist); College Finance Officer: Dhiru Karia; RSM: Mrs carole bennett; Editor of the Roll News: Mr James Thomson (1987–1994); President of HUS: Mr ben Wheawell; Vice President (External) of HUS: Mr Greg hill; Alumni members: Mr Tobias bown (2006–2010); Mrs Jean carnall (née barrie; 1966–1969); Mrs Dorothy elven (née Kemp; 1950–1952); Mrs Isobelle hasleham (1975–1976); Mr Dominic Norrish (1994–1998) and Mrs alison White (née hogg; 1983–1987).

BranCH ConTaCTs

BranCH ConTaCTs

During the year, there are groups of homertonians meeting together around the country. So if you are unable to make it to the cambridge Reunion, you may find that there is an active group near you. each group has a local secretary/organiser.

Many homertonians also attend cambridge university local branches in the uK and throughout the World. If you do not have a branch of homertonians in your area consult the university of cambridge alumni Worldwide Directory at www.alumni.cam.ac.uk/networks.

UNITED KINGDOM BRANCHES Cambridge Anthea Wicks 01223 234706 wicks.hmc.eeur@lineone.net

Newcastle Elise Wylie 01914 885106 elise.wylie@gmail.com

London Erica Hirsch 0208 941 1084 ericahirsch@hotmail.com

Oxford Lucy Barnett 01865 343248 glebecottage@gmail.com

Jean Carnall 0208 788 0118 jean.carnall@tiscali.co.uk

Wessex Coral Harrow 01258 820517 coralharrow@waitrose.com

Manchester Margaret Blott 01745 570913 mblott_8@yahoo.co.uk

INTERNATIONAL BRANCH Southern California Branch Angela Das ad301@cantab.net

THe HomerTon roll neWs The Roll News is a newsletter for members of the Homerton Roll. It includes news about the Branches and reports of the Reunion as well as death notices and obituaries, but the emphasis is on your news. We are interested in anything that you have to share, from simple updates of what you are up to now to more detailed accounts of your work, travel, achievements, publications and awards. The Editor, James Thomson (HUS President 1989–90), welcomes any news that you have to share, whether you’ve been happily tending to the garden or have recently become an astronaut. We are especially interested in articles under the general heading of ‘After Homerton’, and any memories of your time at Homerton that you think might

be interesting, including photographs if you have them. Any news or memories from more recent alumni are particularly welcome given the changes in college life over the last decade.

By publishing in November, we are able to include so many more of your updates, and also accounts of the Reunion. The closing date is 30 September which means that you just have time to include Reunion reminiscences and photographs. Do keep us busy; it is YOUR news.

The Roll News is available to purchase and we will send it out to you in November. It is also available on-line at www.homerton.cam.ac.uk.

daTes for YoUr diarY 24 June 2012

Family Day in college

21 September 2012

annual Reunion Dinner in college

22 September 2012

annual Reunion in college

30 September 2012

copy deadline for the 2012 homerton Roll News

Michaelmas Term 2012

alumni Formal hall in college

13 October 2012

Manchester branch – Lunch and aGM – Manchester cathedral Visitor centre

October 2012

Newcastle upon Tyne branch meeting

3 November 2012

London Rollers – Dinner at the Oxford & cambridge club

15 February 2013

2012 Leavers’ Dinner in college

Lent Term 2013

alumni Formal hall in college

1 March 2013

copy deadline for the 2013 homertonian

March 2013

Newcastle upon Tyne branch meeting

13 april 2013

Reunion Dinner for all who matriculated from 2001 onwards

easter Term 2013

alumni Formal hall in college

23 June 2013

Family Day in college

27 September 2013

annual Reunion Dinner in college

28 September 2013

annual Reunion in college

Please see the homertonian pages of the website for further details of all our events at http://www.homerton.cam.ac.uk.

Remember to keep an eye on your email inbox for the termly e-newsletter where forthcoming events, booking information and diary reminders are given.

Homerton College

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charter c ampaign and donor list THE BURSAR’S REPORT Acquiring a Royal Charter in 2010 meant that Homerton had to start its new life in sound financial health.

The Charter’s objects of advancing education, religion, learning and research and providing a College for Cambridge students are timeless.

However, for practical financial purposes Homerton adopts an horizon of twenty years.

Some quite simple principles are used to decide what monies the College must earn and what it can spend. For a long term endowment the definition of income provided by Sir John Hicks, Nobel prizewinner, is a helpful start point: “Income is what a person can spend and be as well off at the end as the beginning.” The challenge is to identify the percentage of the College’s assets which can be consumed today at the expense of tomorrow while maintaining equity between generations.

Drawing on long term averages for inflation and the return on assets and allowing for depreciation on College buildings (in real

Homerton is fortunate in its scale and staff.

Parallel with its academic, residential and catering operations (which are amongst the largest of the colleges) it leases buildings to the University and it runs a substantial conference business. The results are synergies which reduce overhead rates with the direct benefit of lower education overheads and lower student charges.

terms), we can make a pretty good fist of this.

As well as a gradual increase in education spending there is much to do keeping the buildings in good shape and maintaining the special environment for research and academic study which Homerton offers.

In our calculations on sustainability our most serious worries for the future are inflation, under-performance of the College investments or of its conference business.

The College uses the spending pattern which emerges from these calculations to fund its research, education, fellowships, development administration and grant activities, including a contribution to the University Colleges’ Fund.

Having established the finances and estate for its core operation soundly, Homerton focuses its development effort on increasing student and research support. Working with University resources, the College dispensed well over a million pounds in student support last year. Looking ahead, resources are set to shrink at the same time as the special contribution of Cambridge is set to increase. No one underestimates the pressures on our future students and academic work. In this context our Charter Campaign aims to ensure that Homerton delivers more, not less, in the future.

Commodore Gale Bryan Bursar and Fellow

HOMERTON AND STUDENT FEES You’ve probably all seen the figures. UK university applications down by 8.7%, with by far the biggest drop being in England (9.9%) where the new fees make it the most expensive country in the world to get a degree from a public university. I don’t suppose many of you are too surprised by this. It always seemed likely that being faced by fees of up to £9000 a year would have an impact on numbers; after all it was nearly a tripling of the cost.

Like many colleagues I was incensed at the rise, particularly as so much of the language justifying it spoke of a ‘return’, of ‘investment’, of the individual student making a calculation about what a degree was worth solely in terms of future earnings. Although rightly a

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factor in assessing the value of higher education, such calculations seemed to me and many of my colleagues to miss the public good a university education provided; a value far beyond the narrowly financial.

A university has to live with decisions we don’t always like. Given the swingeing cuts in what government was prepared to pay to universities there was little option but to set a fee at the top end of the range, and so Cambridge went for the full £9000 – as, it rapidly became clear, did most universities, and pretty much all of the top research-led ones. Those wishing to charge more than the new minimum of £6000 had then to submit a plan to the Office for Fair Access (OFFA) outlining what they were proposing

to do to help those less well off, and those who might need encouragement to apply.

Cambridge offered a generous Bursary scheme and agreed to targets on students coming from the maintained secondary education sector, as well as other more specific access targets. These targets are based on our own research into the number of students in the nation who are getting

the right kind of grades at A-level, who are achieving A*AA with a combination of subjects that will help them thrive on challenging courses here. The research suggested, we proposed, and OFFA agreed to a target of 61–63% for those admitted from UK schools being from the statemaintained sector. In Homerton we have traditionally been a bit ahead of this target, and our current offers are running more towards 67% from the maintained sector.

Cambridge hasn’t had the dip in numbers others have experienced, so there is clearly a sense that what we are offering is still value for money. Our bursary scheme, we hope, makes ‘access’ a reality for many who would find the practical business of living

away from home, and studying intensely, otherwise unachievable.

Statistics tell, as always, only part of the story. In Homerton we have always been in the forefront of colleges actively going out to encourage wider participation. We were among the first colleges to employ a Schools Liaison Officer, and to work with areas with a previously poor record in sending students to higher education, particularly to Cambridge. This work is made more urgent by the increased cost of study and we need to make sure potential applicants know that no-one will have to pay the new fees upfront, and that the paying back of the fee loan is so organised

that what you repay is only a proportion of what you earn rather than the debt itself (unlike a mortgage), and won’t even begin until earnings hit £21,000 p.a.

While they are with us the college is determined that students receive all the help they need to keep their financial heads above water; that the new circumstances don’t stop our reaching out and offering a first rate education to those who are academically able, whatever their needs.

It’s only fair.

Steve Watts Fellow, Admissions Tutor

CHARTER CAMPAIGN It was against the backdrop of changes in Government funding to higher education that we launched the Charter Campaign in 2011 to ensure a sound financial footing enabling us to continue to provide a world-class educational environment for our students and researchers. Philanthropic funding and academic freedom go hand in hand.

We know there is a general concern amongst our members about student hardship and accumulated debt for students at all levels. The College has been heartened by the involvement and generosity of our members.

Homertonians donated £110,000 in the first year of the campaign, and the number of donors more than tripled.

This generosity has enabled the College to increase its financial assistance to students through scholarships and bursaries. 186 undergraduates and 141 PGCE students received assistance in the last academic year (2010–2011). We can now also offer six Charter Bursaries each year to students wanting to take up higher degree work after graduation. In addition we are able to encourage creativity, sporting excellence

Left to right, back row: Alex Norris, Jack Euesden, Iain Cameron, Tomas Rocha, Oceane Liledantec, Michaella Mitchell (Call Room Supervisor); middle row: Emma Bowell, Sophie Robertson, Zakira Mohamed, Agnes Kamara, Eilish Donnelly, Catherine Osborne; front row: Emma Wright, Jess Labhart, Alice Fiennes and Iimaan Ismail

and travel opportunities. The College made awards to Blues sportsmen and women, to our musicians and actors, to students who took up voluntary positions abroad, and to prizewinners for academic excellence.

academic post. Recent Junior Fellows have gone on to jobs in Chicago, Oxford and the IMF. We support nine junior researchers in the Fellowship and they are a major addition to our academic and social life.

For our young researchers we provide additional research support to travel to conferences, a crucial element in getting an

At home we are investing in additional pastoral support for our students and now have our own counsellor and a new

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investment in a sports injuries practitioner – both ensure that every one of our 1,100 students can continue their academic work, fully supported by the College welfare team.

The College ran its second Telephone Campaign during the Easter vacation 2012.

Fifteen of our current students telephoned Roll members over a two week period. This year, in addition to calling our UK members, we also made calls to those overseas and in particular our members in the USA who now total several hundred. The calling team included two of our postgraduate students for the first time, one of whom, Jessica Labhart, called as an undergraduate last year and returned to the team for a second time.

Jessica writes below about the benefits of receiving financial support from the College.

The range of subjects studied by the callers continues to reflect the diversity of subjects now on offer at Homerton College and their extra-curricular pursuits included a member of the University Challenge Team, Jack Euesden; Cambridge University Women’s Rugby team member, Catherine Osborne; University Dancesports team member, Sophie Robertson; and former VicePresident of the Cambridge Islamic Society, Iimaan Ismail.

The College would like to extend its gratitude to all of you who made a donation; the Telethon ended with pledges totalling a further £86,000 towards the Charter Campaign. We would also like to thank all of you who participated and hope that, even if you were not able to support

the Campaign this year, you enjoyed exchanging news and experiences with our current Homerton students.

If you would like to know more about the Homerton College Charter Campaign please contact Alison Holroyd, Senior Development Officer at campaign@ homerton.cam.ac.uk or 01223 747270.

Further details are also available on the College website at http://www.homerton. cam.ac.uk. All gifts, no matter their size, make a real difference. Added together they create an important resource to ensure Homerton’s continued success and excellence into the future.

Alison Holroyd Senior Development Officer

FROM A STUDENT’S PERSPECTIVE One of the things you don’t do at Cambridge is talk about money. There are people who have it, a lot of people who don’t, and a significant number of your friends in second year who land the promise of a big job with a big salary somewhere in London that remind themselves it’ll be all right in a year as they eat cold baked-beans and toast the last slice of slightly mouldy bread. Student life: there’s nothing quite like it. Cambridge in particular has its own peculiar brand of studentlife; high intensity, hit-the-groundrunning, keep-your-head-above-water kind of life that nothing really prepares you for, and nothing compares to when you leave. So deciding to come back to Cambridge to do an MPhil was a no-brainer. Financing it, however, (at least for me), was not.

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Cambridge may be many things, but what is definitely not talked about, what is definitely kept under wraps is the extent that it helps its students survive. Homerton has always been there for me; full Newton-bursarydependent as an undergrad, I was lucky enough to recently receive both a Research Grant and Hardship Fund for my M.Phil. I was also a student caller in the Telephone Campaign both in third year and recently after my second term of post-graduate work. In light of recent accusations of elitism (thanking you, Trenton Oldfield), it is now more important than ever to remind ourselves that Cambridge is not what outsiders necessarily think it is, that it’s all right to be struggling and ask for help, because that’s what Homerton is really about – support. It was the reason I decided to accept my undergrad offer in the first place, the reason I came back and the reason I hope to be able to continue on to PhD. The college maketh the man: Homerton looks after you. Or at least, it does its best to, making you feel like a priority even when you feel

you’re fighting a losing battle. Homerton’s got your back.

So whilst it may be important to not speak about money, to keep striving towards that job, focusing on that illusive 2.1, equally it’s important to know that you don’t have to suffer alone, that if you really are in need, Homerton is there for you whatever happens, ready to alleviate the financial burden when you have others to bear. That’s why the College is so important, and why Homerton is so unique, because like it or not, we may not be the richest, but our heart’s definitely in the right place. It has transformed my life, and I hope it continues to do so for others, because that’s what Cambridge is about, even if we have to eat a few tins of beans to get there. It’s not where you’re from, it’s where you’re going, and thanks to Homerton I know wherever I go, wherever I end up, I’ll be all right.

Jessica Labhart BA Education with English and Drama 2008–2011 MPhil Screen Media and Culture 2011–2012

LIST OF DONORS – 1 March 2011– 29 February 2012 The Principal and Fellows of Homerton College wish to thank all those, alumni and friends, who have generously made donations during the first year of the Charter Campaign. Every effort has been made to ensure the list is accurate; do please contact us if you believe

Evroulla Agathangelou Rebecca Agsakal (Williamson) Dr Eileen Alexander OBE Dr Roger Ali Alison Allen (Gamble) Della Allen (Garrick) Sarah Anderton (Lloyd) Christine Andrews (Harbottle) Mandy Archer (Tucker) Jane Arney (Aldwinkle) Lesley Arnold (Hammans) E Jane Ashworth Elizabeth Atkinson Dr John Axon Lady Gillian Baker (Bullen) Christine Barclay (Tilsley) Dr James & Jacqueline Bardsley (Lockhart) Gillian Barford (Reah) Bernice Barton (Banton) Gayatri Basu (De Sakkar) Claire-Audrey Bayan Naomi Baynes (Horn) Stephanie Beardsworth Emily Beck M Anne Benson Melanie Benson Sheila Berry Diane Bilson (English) Margaret Blott (Davies) Edward Boydell Victoria Brahm Schild (Brahm) Emma Braybrooke (Thompson) Muriel Bridge (Claxton) A Juliet Brooks (Prior) Dorothy Broughton (Fairhurst) Dr Brenda Buchanan (Wade) Matthew Buck The Revd Dr Robert Burn Jill Burton (Grant) Jackie Butler (Taylor) C Margaret Butler (Woolley) Joyce Callaway (Connell) Emma Cannell (Wright) Wendy Cannon (Norrington) Dr Michael Carr Sheila Cathers (Greenhalgh) Pauline Cavell-Northam (Howard) Tracey Chaffel (West) Kim Chaplin (Tarry) Anna Chapple Jane Charman (Paterson) Raymond Cilia F Marilyn Clare (Wilson) W Mary Clark (Tyler) Jean Clarke (Bonellie) Jennifer Cole (Metcalfe) Sally Collins (Dixon)

we have made an omission. We will be including the list of donors from this year’s Telephone Campaign in the next edition of the Homertonian.

The College would in addition like to thank those who have made gifts of art works and

E Patricia Coombes (Murphy) Karen Coombs (Vincent) Christine Cooper Dr Constance Counts Freda Crispin Erica Crouch (White) Godfrey & Pauline Curtis (Haigh)

books. We are also very grateful for those members who give up their valuable time in support of the Roll Office, in particular our Homerton Roll Committee Members and our Homertonian Branch Secretaries.

Key (d)* deceased (maiden name)

Kerry Merriam (Proffitt) Carrie Milton Helen Mitchell (Coles) Matthew Mitchell Robyn Mitchell (McMillan) Deborah Moss (Daniel) Dilys Murch (Inch) Ann Muston (McDonald)

Kevin D’Albert Clare Danielian (Collard) Lindsey Davey (Kergon) Julia Davis (Harradine) Eliza de Uphaugh Anthony Delany Mary Dowse (Buxton) Lesley Dunleavy (Best) Marion Durnin (Canavan) Juliet Dyer (Cheadle)

Brenda Hatton (O’Connor) Kathleen Hayward (Grabbitas) Gillian Hewin (Bulpin) Catherine Hicks (Barnard) Ruth Hill (Sandler) Susan Hill (Morgan) Dr Susan Hilliam Doreen Hobbs (Quinlan) Gregoire Hodder Deborah Hofman (Brass) Susan Holland (Riddy) Joan Hollinghurst (Aizlewood) Sharon Holloway (Beales) Homerton College Roll Rosemary Howells (Barlow) Felicity Howl (Hollingworth) Angela Hulme (Woods) Leonie Hyde (Kilburn)

Amanda Edwards (Simmons) Pamela Edwards (McCauley) Dr F Dorothy Evans MBE

Dorothy Iliffe (Bannister) Susan Irving (Dean) J Vivien Ivell (lees)

Jane Farley (Peyton) Carol Fido (Babbs) David & Mandy Fletcher – Elizabeth Fletcher Poetry Prize Marion Foley (Arliss) Margaret Follett (Lott) Rosemary Forth E Olive Foster Sarah Fox Alastair & Fiona Fraser (BodieSmith)

Ann Jackman (Walton) Sally Jaspars (Wilshaw) Marion Jenkins (Jasper) Valerie Johnson (Smith) Tracey Jones (Smith) Jenny Jones Jean Jopson (Copping) Pamela Judge (Gregory)

Sarah Palmer (Davis) Evelyn Parker (Stovold) Lucy Partridge Elizabeth Paton (Anderton) Sarah Pearson (Fox) Patricia Pells (McArdle) Simon Phipps Christina Pike (Whyte) Rohan Platts Ming-Ting Poh Mary Powles (Underwood) Dr Kate Pretty Susan Prideaux (Aldred) Krista Pullan

Margaret Georgiadis (Roche) Claire Gibb (Hallworth) Joan Gibson (Cooper) Helen Gissane Sara Good Sarah Gordon Suzanne Gouldstone (Moss) Professor John Gray Joan Gray (Lilley) Roger Green – Roger Green Organ Scholarship The Revd Anthea Griggs (BayneJardine) Rosemary Gwinnett (Vallance) Christina Hackshaw (Hall) Karen Handley (Smith) Dorothy Hanley Clare Hardy (Embleton-Smith) Julia Harker (Tennant) Eleanor Harper (Kirkby) Brenda Harrison (Binns) Coral Harrow (Hemsley) Dorothy Hartley (Hill) Victoria Harvey (Lethbridge) Shirley Haslam (Jefferies)

Ann Kershaw Caroline Kinchin Smith (Harris) Catherine King Joy Kohn (Read) Bill Lawrance Teresa Lea (Baker) Lynn Lemar (Tompkins) M Dawn Lewcock (de Fraine) (d)* Pamela Lewis (Walker) Sarah Lewis (Grant) Dr Alison Littlefair (Ratcliffe) Rajeet Loibl (Saini) Cynthia Loudon (King) Sarah Mackenzie (Hopkins) Joanna Manisier Judy Manson (Maddocks) Audrey Martin Dr Maria-Esther Martinez-Cantu (Selzer) Jane Matthews (Goldsmith) Julie McCleery Gemma McDowell (Simpson) Victoria McLafferty (Cook) E Jane McLean (Davson) Victoria McNeile (Cooper) Brenda Meek Pamela Meeks (Steward)

Dr Julius Ngu Anabel Nnochiri (BarringtonBrown) Carole Nolan (Hunt) Jean Norton Kate Nottage (Alexander) Barbara Nye (Race) Wendy Oakley (Watford)

Dr Peter Raby Barbara Raine (Emsley) Elisabeth Rainsbury Thelma Ramsbottom (Cooper) Sarah Rawlins (Jeffries) Karen Ready E Anne Redfearn Rosemary Rees (Dawson) Alison Reevey Marilyn Reid (Ware) Dr Jacqueline Reiter (Faulkner) Jean Ringrose (Bates) Margaret Rishbeth Margaret Robbie (Upcott Gill) Andrew Robertson Verity Rudd Jacqueline Rupp Phillipa Rushby (Sweeney) Adrienne Saldana Claire Saunders (Escott) Elizabeth Scott (Sawers) Jonathan & Nicole Scott Dr Rosslyn Sendorek (Cromarty) Simultaneous Shakespeare Julia Shaw (Skennerton) Vera Sklaar (Dorner)

Pamela Smart (Barton) Sheila Smith Rebecca Smith (Jones) Hannah Smith Emma Smith (Craven) Wendy Smith Susan Smith (Heenan) David Smyth M Brenda Spencer (Dodgson) Linda Staff (Pearson) Terry Stanners (Winship) Carrie Staples (Moore) Patricia Stockdale (Shipley) Deborah Stone (Horan) Annette Stow (Hill) Margaret Stranks (Hyams) B Judy Studd (Thomas) Jennifer Svreck Linda Tavener (Peters) Samantha Taylor E Lesley Thomas (Owen) Zena Tinsley (Lambert) Jacqui Tizzard (Taylor) Claire Topliss Sheila Topping (Sampson) Victoria True (Bhattacharyya) Marilyn Tullys (Steen) Elizabeth Tunnicliffe (Read) Gwen Turner Frances Turner (Weddell) Jennifer Varley (Dixon) Peter Ventrella Rosemary Viner (Billington) Tessa Vivian (Walker) Margaret Vogel (Barrett) Emma Vyvyan (Wilkinson) Sheila Walmsley (Pearce) Joan Watcham (Kolb) D Jill Waterhouse Aleta Watson Delfin Weis Maralyn Westwood (Steele) Dr David Whitebread Penelope Wicken (Melvin) Madeleine Willmer Ruth Wills Tricia Wilson (MacKay) Dame Jacqueline E Wilson DBE Susan Winter (Crosby) Katherine Wood Sally Woodcock (Ronaldson) Andrea Woodward (Hirst) Harriet Young (Sutcliffe) Hillary Young (Collcott) Alison Zsak (Barnes) Plus 76 donors who wish to remain anonymous.

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Homerton roll AnnuAl reunion fridAY 21 And SATurdAY 22 SePTemBer 2012

ProgrAmme Friday 21st September 19.30 for 20.00 Dinner in the Great Hall Saturday 22nd September Members of the Homerton Roll and their families are invited to visit the College for the day. Special Anniversary groups – meetings independently arranged.

9.30

Registration – Coffee available

11.15

Principal’s Address in the Auditorium

12.15 Pre-Lunch Drinks Reception in MAB (approx) 12.45

Lunch in the Great Hall

14.00

Tours of the College and Gardens; Dr Peter Cunningham and Dr Peter Warner will give a talk ‘Breaking the Rules’

SPeCiAl AnniVerSArieS orgAniSed for THiS reunion Please contact the people named below for more information on your Special Reunion this year. If your year is not mentioned and you would like to help organise a Special Reunion, please contact us on on 01223 747280 or by email at roll@homerton.cam.ac.uk.

Special Request 65 YEARS IN 1947–1949

Contact: Mavis Smith (Roberts) Tel: 01603 453337

Diamond Girls Going 1950–1952

Contact: Dorothy Elven (Kemp) Tel: 01223 324215 Email: d.elven843@btinternet.com

Diamond Girls In 1952–1954

Contact: Roll & Alumni Assistant Tel: 01223 747270 Email: roll@homerton.cam.ac.uk

Golden Girls In 1962–1965

Contact: Lynn Dyson (Dothie) Tel: 01223 835773 Email: lynndowson@gmail.com

Special Request 1968–1971/72

Contacts: Anne Martin (Sparrowe) Email: be_anne_martin@hotmail.com & Alison Syner (Barkham) Tel : 01625 612720 Email: jasyner@ntlworld.com

40 Years On 1969–1972/73

Contact: Rachel Benwell (Thompson) Email: rachel.benwell@btconnect.com

40 Years In 1972–1975/76

Contact: Roll & Alumni Assistant Tel: 01223 747270 Email: roll@homerton.cam.ac.uk

30 Years On 1978–1982

Contact: Kate Witney Tel: Home 01673 849084 Mobile 07781 170575 kate@katewitney.co.uk

30 Years In 1982–1986

Contacts: Carrie Whyte (Evett) Mobile 07887 994992 Email: carrie.whyte@btinternet.com & Ali Bishop Mobile 07788 720408 Email: a.bishop948@btinternet.com

25 Years In 1987–1991

Contacts: Kerry Merriam (Proffitt) Tel: Home 01904 410701 Mobile 07910 518272 Email: kerry@merriam.me.uk & Chris Jackson (Pocock) Email: chrispiej@msn.com

21 Years In 1991–1995

Contact: Julie Hogg Tel: Home 01223 813404 Mobile 07710 257691 Email: j.a.hogg.93@cantab.net

RSM Annual General Meeting 15.15

Tours of the College and Gardens; Music

16.30

Tea – open to all attending

19.30 for Saturday dinner in the Fellows’ Dining Room 20.00 The library will be open from 14.00 to 16.00. There will be an opportunity to appreciate the new interior following the recent refurbishment (including a display of photos from during the work).

Rare books from the collection will also be on display.

This year the bookings will be open from Monday 2nd July 2012 until Friday 7th September 2012. Please ensure we receive your booking and payment within this nine week period. Unfortunately, we cannot accept any bookings received after Friday 7th September.

The University’s Alumni weekend will be held from 21st – 23rd September 2012. A full programme of the University’s events can be obtained from: Cambridge Alumni Relations Office (CARO) 1 Quayside Bridge Street Cambridge CB5 8AB Tel: +44 (0)1223 332288 Email: contact@alumni.cam.ac.uk www.alumni.cam.ac.uk

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