News in brief

In 2020 we were delighted to announce our seven new Honorary Fellows from the fields of science, culture, law, defence and finance.

Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock is a space scientist and BAFTA-nominated broadcaster, presenting the BBC’s The Sky at Night among other programmes. She was a lead scientist at Astrium, a subsidiary of the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company, where she led the optical instrumentation group. She is currently working on and managing the observation instruments for the Aeolus satellite, which will measure wind speeds to help the investigation of climate change.

Maggie is a pioneering figure in communicating science to the public, specifically school children. She founded and is the Managing Director of Science Innovation Ltd, a company that engages children and adults all over the world with the wonders of space science. She was awarded an MBE in 2009 for services to science and science education.

In 2019 Maggie won Vodafone’s Woman of the Year Innovation Award, and she also sits on the advisory committee for the Young Audience Content Fund at the British Film Institute.

Sir Ian Blatchford has been Deputy Director of the Victoria & Albert Museum, Deputy Finance Director at the Arts Council, and Director of Finance at the Royal Academy of Arts. He was later Director and Chief Executive at the Science Museum Group and combined this with the role of Director of the Science Museum.

Ian was awarded the Pushkin Medal by the Russian Government in 2015, and received a Knighthood in the 2019 New Year’s Honours for services to Cultural Education. He is currently Chairman of the National Museum Directors’ Council and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.

After Oxford, General Sir Chris Deverell joined the 2nd Royal Tank Regiment, stationed on the inner German border during the Cold War. He spent the first half of his army service on regimental duty in Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Belize, and Germany, interspersed with staff appointments at the head office of the Ministry of Defence and education at staff college and the Royal Military College of Science. This period included service as a Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Defence, and as the Commanding Officer of the Joint Nuclear Biological and Chemical Regiment.

Promoted to General in 2016, Chris became one of the UK Chiefs of Staff, as Commander Joint Forces Command, with responsibility for Special Forces, Intelligence, Cyber, UK Defence use of Space, Information Systems and Services, Operational Command and Control, Education, Medical Services, and the UK’s military operating bases overseas. He was awarded an MBE in 1990 and appointed Knight Commander of the Order of Bath in 2015. He also has a Diploma from the International Olympic Committee for services to winter sports (bobsleigh and skeleton).

Since retiring from the Army in 2019, Chris has founded Deverell Innovation Ventures to help complex organisations to innovate. He is a Venture Partner in a San Francisco Cybersecurity Platform; a mentor in a seed-stage programme for science-based start-ups at the Saïd Business School; and an External Member of the Council of Oxford University.

The Rt Hon Lord Justice Dingemans is a serving judge. He was appointed a High Court judge in 2013 and assigned to the Queen’s Bench Division, receiving a knighthood in the 2014 Special Honours. In October 2019, he was appointed to the Court of Appeal as a Lord Justice of Appeal.

James has a longstanding interest in encouraging a strong and diverse entry to the legal profession and was in charge of pupillage in Chambers at 3 Hare Court from 1993 to 2002. He was chairman of the Outreach and Recruitment Committee for Inner Temple from 2009 to 2014.

James has also been Chairman of the International Committee of the Bar Council of England and Wales (2008-10) and Chairman of the Commonwealth in England Bar Association (CEBA) (2009-11). He was a member of the Executive Committee of the Commonwealth Lawyers’ Association and is now a member of Council of the Commonwealth Magistrates and Judges Association. He was made a Bencher of the Inner Temple in 2006.

Lady Hale has just retired as the United Kingdom’s most senior judge. She became the first, and the only, woman ‘Lord of Appeal in Ordinary’ in 2004, after a varied career as an academic lawyer, law reformer and judge. She was called to the Bar by Gray’s Inn in 1969. She taught Law at Manchester University for 18 years, specialising in family and social welfare law, and also practised at the Manchester Bar.

In 1984 Brenda became the first woman to serve on the Law Commission. There she led the work of the family law team, resulting (among others) in the Children Act 1989 and the Mental Capacity Act 2005. She was also a founder member of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and chair of its Code of Practice Committee from 1990 to 1994, when she was appointed a Judge of the Family Division of the High Court. She was promoted to the Court of Appeal of England and Wales in 1999 and in 2004 to the House of Lords. She became Deputy President of the Court in 2013 and its President in 2017.

Brenda was a Trustee of the Nuffield Foundation from 1987 to 2002 and Chancellor of the University of Bristol from 2004 to 2016. She also helped to establish the United Kingdom Association of Women Judges in 2004 and from 2010 to 2012 served as President of the International Association of Women Judges, a worldwide body of both men and women judges committed to equality and human rights for all.

Sarah Harkness is an experienced finance professional who has worked at the highest level in a range of roles and organisations. She began her executive career in banking and in 1992 was appointed Corporate Finance Director of NatWest Markets. Six years later she moved to Arthur Andersen, where she remained until 2002. Sarah then launched the corporate division of Directorbank Executive Search Ltd, which specialised in non-executive recruitment.

While there, Sarah took on several non-executive roles in the private sector: as Director on the board of Homestyle Group PLC, a retailer with an annual turnover of £400m; as Trustee of Sheffield Theatres Trust; and as Chair of McInnes Corporate Finance.

She has been Non-Executive Director and Chair of Audit at JRI Orthopaedics Ltd and was appointed Pro-Chancellor of the University of Sheffield. She served as a lay member of the Audit Committee of the University of Birmingham and is now a Non-Executive Director of Card Geotechnics Ltd, and a Trustee of Orthopaedic Research UK and of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges.

Sarah has also served as a non-executive director on various boards within the NHS, including NHS North of England Strategic Health Authority, the Trust Development Authority and NHS Improvement. She now chairs the Audit Committee of Oriel College, Oxford.

Admiral Sir Philip Jones saw active service in the South Atlantic in 1982 in the Amphibious Assault Ship HMS Fearless, and also served in HM Yacht Brittania. He has commanded the frigates HMS Beaver (as a Commander) and HMS Coventry (as a Captain), the Amphibious Task Group (as a Commodore), UK Maritime Forces (as a Rear Admiral) and the Fleet (as a Vice Admiral). He was Assistant Chief of Naval Staff, in the Ministry of Defence, for the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review.

On promotion to Vice Admiral in 2011, Philip served as Deputy Fleet Commander and Chief of Staff Navy Command Headquarters, and then in 2012 he became the Fleet Commander and Deputy Chief of Naval Staff.

Philip was made a Companion of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath in 2012, promoted to Knight Commander in 2014 and Knight Grand Cross in 2020. In 2016 he became First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff, the professional head of the Royal Navy. He retired from the navy in 2019.

Mansfield’s lively programme of public Friday Talks continued throughout 2020, moving online for Michaelmas term and as a result attracting record numbers of attendees. This enabled us to share these fantastic talks with more people than we could ever hope to fit into the Sir Joseph Hotung Auditorium.

Our Friday Talks and annual lectures are an important way of the College reaching outside our community and encouraging people in. Free and welcoming to the public, they are emblematic of how Mansfield wants to open up its academic community to the world, encouraging the sharing of ideas and debate about important issues. Two recent highlights were our Principal in conversation with Baroness Hale, as part of the Friday Talks series, and our annual Hands Lecture which took place online for the first time, both in late November 2020.

Baroness Hale, former President of the Supreme Court and new Honorary Fellow of Mansfield, discussed her remarkable life and legal career with Helen Mountfield QC. This fascinating conversation encompassed breaking glass ceilings in the Law; media and political criticism of judges; and current challenges for the judicial system.

Founded by Bancroft Fellows, Guy and Julia Hands, the Hands Lecture is a major annual event for Mansfield, when we invite a leading figure from the world of politics or current affairs to speak at the College. We are enormously grateful to Lord (William) Hague of Richmond who gave this year’s Hands Lecture on the state of Western democracies – the threats we face, what we might expect from the next 20 years, and what can be done to protect democracy in the face of multiple global crises.

Please join in with our Friday Talks programme at: www.mansfield.ox.ac.uk/ mansfield-college-public-talks.

Catch up with the Friday talks you missed on Mansfield’s YouTube Channel: https://bit.ly/371L1PW

The following is an excerpt from Mansfield College’s submission to the University’s ‘Oxford and Colonialism’ project. This project seeks to highlight and showcase the efforts ongoing across the collegiate University to redress the legacy of coloniality.

Mansfield’s founders, George and Elizabeth Mansfield and Sarah Glover, were ideologically opposed to slavery. In 1841, while still in its Spring Hill incarnation at Birmingham, the College signed a letter to its American counterparts, calling for the abolition of slavery. The letter describes slavery as ‘a system in which heartless cruelty unceasingly panders to the most contemptible avarice’.

Although Congregationalists, as missionaries, had a complex relationship to black histories and imperialism, many of Mansfield’s alumni took from its theological training a profound belief in human equality and dignity. Adam von Trott, who studied at Mansfield in the 1930s, was executed for his participation in the plot to assassinate Hitler, and the late Alex Boraine (Theology, 1960), head of the Methodist church in South Africa at the height of apartheid, took a firm stand that the Church should be multiracial. He was later an architect of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Many members of Governing Body today engage in scholarship and practice on issues of race, colonialism and diversity, and are active in working to broaden the curriculum and raise awareness of issues of colonial legacy and racism in their teaching.

History Fellows, Professor Kathryn Gleadle and Dr Helen Lacey, have ensured that study of historical and theoretical approaches to ‘race’ is a compulsory component of the undergraduate syllabus within College. Kathryn has been active in the History faculty in revising the curriculum to include texts authored by formerly enslaved people, and by women of South Asian and Caribbean descent.

Professor Michèle Mendelssohn, Tutorial Fellow in English, curated ‘Making History’, an exhibition and event series celebrating Oxford University’s first black African undergraduate, Christian Cole; the first African-American Rhodes scholar and midwife to the Harlem Renaissance, Alain Locke; and Oscar Wilde.

Principal Helen Mountfield QC has spent a 30-year career specialising in equality law, and – as a barrister and judge – has been involved in developing its principles, including on equal access to education and on modern slavery. Dr Amber Murrey, Human Geography Fellow, has written widely on race, neo-imperialism and extraction in African societies, including on Pan-African politics, and has collaborated in a variety of ‘decolonising the university’ projects.

Mansfield is also the home of the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, which puts our College at the heart of research and engagement with global, regional and local human rights issues across the University. Professor Kate O’Regan, Director of the Institute and a member of Mansfield’s Governing Body, was a member of the first post-apartheid Constitutional Court of South Africa and gave a series of important judgments on equality law. Dr Annelen Micus is an expert in transitional justice.

Mansfield’s Public Talks series also gives a platform to diverse voices and equality issues. In Michaelmas term 2020 a popular lecture was by Wendy Williams, author of the Windrush Report, Lessons Learned.

People of colour are underrepresented in academic life at Oxford University, including at Mansfield. We are taking active steps to address this. A recent initiative has been the establishment of a Race and Equality Working Group to make recommendations on further steps we can take to enhance our racial diversity through recruitment and employment processes.

Mansfield is a partner college for Oxford University’s new Black Academic Futures Scholarships in the 2021/22 academic year, through which it will contribute to funding UK black and mixed-black students’ graduate study at Oxford. We have seven postgraduate scholars annually from the Global South named after Kofi Annan, in conjunction with the Weidenfeld-Hoffmann Trust; a Reach Scholarship funded by students; and a new Lutheran Council Refugee Scholarship as part of our efforts to work with the founders of the Cities (and Universities) of Sanctuary Scheme to extend our intellectual and human links with refugees and asylum seekers.

Mansfield’s inclusive ethos remains a strong element of the College’s identity.

Alumni Drinks in London on 6 February 2020

Covid has affected everyone, and our 2020 Alumni Programme has been very different to the one I had anticipated and planned for when I took up my post in 2019.

After a wonderful start to academic year 2019/20 – a fun Gaudy with matric years 1998-2008 in my very first week, followed by our ‘on the road’ events with the Principal to meet alumni in Bristol and Manchester, and a lively and well-attended

drinks party in London in February – lockdown hit and the Development team leapt into action, going digital and taking all of our events and communications online.

Responsible for alumni relations and engagement, raising funds, and the College’s communications, the Development team have this year also become filmmakers, Zoom experts, photographers, interviewers, and consummate jugglers, as like virtually and notices from Mansfield, follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

That’s a lot of digital content, and not everyone is online. So we also posted a specially produced card to all alumni who would have had their Gaudy in September. And we sent an Alumni Survey to over 3,000 people in our community, in order that we can better shape our programme.

An engaged alumni network is vital to Mansfield’s future. It is the sharing of your skills and experience, and your willingness to engage your personal and professional networks, that will most benefit our students, the College and one another.

Community is a truly apt theme for this year’s Magazine. As we continue through lockdown, here in Development we shall continue to work hard to create enjoyable opportunities to connect that make being part of the Mansfield community so valuable and rewarding.

Stay tuned for our 2021 programme – details will be circulated in January.

You can contact the Development Office any time at development@mansfield.ox.ac.uk. We are always very pleased to hear from you.

everyone across the globe, we balanced home and work responsibilities, sometimes precariously, certainly like never before.

Wanting to do our utmost to keep our global alumni community connected, we started by creating an Alumni online hub: a dedicated portal on the College website, for alumni by alumni. From sharing Zoom backgrounds of the Mansfield Quad, to recipes, to memories and photos of your time at College, to ‘tracks that take you back’, the hub quickly became a fascinating repository of all things Mansfield, past and present. Find it at: www.mansfield.college

Then we launched a series of virtual events over June and July, encouraging alumni to gather online to hear from Fellows, tutors and special guests. We created films to bring you back to College virtually: for our annual Commemoration Service, and for our Summer Garden Party with a special video-recorded welcome by Admiral Sir Philip Jones GCB DL (Geography, 1978), who was made a Mansfield Honorary Fellow this year (see page 8).

New online Careers Weeks took place for students in June and were both popular and well-received. Panel discussions led by alumni, these centred around the sectors the students wanted to hear about: creative and media; law; and financial services. Thank you so much to all of you who took part.

And in general we increased our presence on social media. For regular news, pics