Alumni Relations & Engagement

Covid-19 has directed an intense spotlight on to scientific research, instigating a call to arms for scientists from a wide range of disciplines. Mansfield’s Ian Griffiths, a Professor of Industrial Mathematics at Oxford’s Mathematical Institute, reveals one distinctive avenue of research.

When we think of the kind of scientists that are working on the pandemic challenge, the people who usually spring to mind are bioscientists toiling away in a lab to develop a vaccine, or statisticians analysing data to understand how to mitigate the spread of the disease. However, in addition to these vital research endeavours there’s a host of other scientific disciplines all working in very different ways in an effort to gain understanding into how we can overcome the virus together.

A significant proportion of the research that I conduct in my Industrial Mathematics group is centred on the development of mathematical models that describe filtration processes. This could be anything from the cleaning of air by a household air-purifier, to an industrial-scale filter that removes sulphur dioxide from cooling towers in a power plant by converting it into sulphuric acid via a catalytic reaction. The mathematical models we derive have the effect of reducing, or in some cases even eliminating entirely, the need for costly and time-consuming experiments.

One project that we have been working on recently is in collaboration with start-up company Smart Separations. Its newest product, Gino, is a portable home air purifier capable of removing coronavirus from the air by neutralising it, using a biocide-coated surface (https://smartseparations.com/gino/). When designing these air purifiers, one of the first questions that Smart Separations faces is how to position the filters within the air purifier. This involves a delicate balance between the need to maximise purification efficiency, by packing in as much filter material as possible, and minimising the energy required to run the air purifier, which necessitates enough space in the device for the air to pass through easily. The problem can be distilled into an optimisation question, to which our mathematical models have provided the answer. In another project, we have been looking at the behaviour of the non-woven material used for face masks. When someone breathes in while wearing a face mask, the filter material becomes compressed, which hinders the air passing through and so makes breathing more difficult. This poses an interesting design question: how should we manufacture the face mask filter such that, when the material becomes compressed, we are still able to breathe comfortably? Here we have an example of an inverse problem: we know the required output – a filter that has enough air space for us to breathe through – and we wish to know how to manufacture the mask in a factory to achieve this requirement. Again, our mathematical models provide the answers by allowing us to perform ‘mathematical experiments’, which enable us to ‘reverse’ the manufacturing process, going from the final product back to its construction.

In our group we are always looking to help industries overcome challenges by using our mathematical modelling toolkit. If you would like to learn more about our work, please visit our website: https://people.maths.ox.ac.uk/griffit4/.

Professor Ian Griffiths joined Mansfield as Tutorial Fellow in Industrial Mathematics in 2019. His interests lie in a broad range of fluid dynamical challenges, from water purification strategies to the manufacture of glass for computer tablet screens. His approach is to use a blend of modelling, asymptotic, and numerical techniques to enable predictions to be made for the behaviour of such physical systems, and in particular, to give insight into their optimal operating strategies.

In July 2020, after many year’s of loyal service, John Oxlade stepped down as Director of Music at Mansfield. In this article, John reflects on his final year at College.

In Michaelmas term 2019, we welcomed some very talented new instrumentalists to Mansfield – Samuel Spencer (clarinet and piano), Flora Walker (clarinet), Leila Hua (flute) and Nathan Walemba (piano). Our choir was also replenished by gifted new members – Emily Broughton, Vincent Elvin, Amélie Henle, Haley Howard, Joanna Korey, Anna Obernoster, Henry Olree, Victoria Roskams and Flora Walker.

Throughout the year, the choir embraced its customary wide range of music and styles in concerts and during the Wednesday evening service, as well as singing at the University Sermon on 3 November 2019. The carol service was a particular highlight and the singing of the congregation in a packed Chapel resounded wonderfully with the more exuberant hymns and more gently with ‘Silent Night’. There were also memorable solos from Jeremy Beard and George Klaeren, and beautiful readings from Daniel Scotson, Dr Tony Lemon, Greg Jennings (IT Manager) and Tess McCormick (Development Director). The Michaelmas concert featured Yuan Wang in Shostakovich’s second piano concerto and choral items by Fauré, Karl Jenkins and Mozart, with solo contributions by Samuel Spencer (piano), Joschua SpiedelJohnson (cello), Nick Watt (viola), Joshua Gei (violin), Jeremy Beard (oboe) and Leila Hua (flute). Our Sunday recitals included an extensive repertoire, from Elizabethan madrigals to a first performance of music composed by Professor Stephen Blundell played by Nathan Bentley (saxophone) and accompanied by the composer, and repeated in the delightful lecture-recital by Errollyn Wallen on the last Friday of Michaelmas term.

Our Hilary term concert – the last public musical event held at Mansfield before the national lockdown – included Welsh music (for St David’s Day) by Welsh female composer Morfydd Owen, and orchestral works by Vaughan Williams (‘Rhosymedre’), along with a symphony by Johann Christian Bach; George Klaeren was soloist in the aria ‘Es ist vollbracht’ from J S Bach’s Cantata 159, and the choir sang the choral finale of Elgar’s oratorio The Light of Life. A rare cantata by Johann Christian Bach Domine ad adiuvandum, sung by the choir and accompanied by the College’s instrumental ensemble, made a most accomplished and affirmative conclusion to the programme.

Our final service included music by Orlando Gibbons, Edward Bairstow and J S Bach – all immaculately performed by our superb choir. We say goodbye to leavers Jessica Williams, Liyang Han, George Klaeren, Jordan Jones, and Jeremy Beard: all long-standing, committed leaders of a wonderful team. We shall also miss the perfection of Jeremy’s oboe playing and his incredible musicianship. Special thanks also to George Manning and Patryk Imielski for their assistance with the Choir Library – part of a now very large and comprehensive College Music Library.

Our success over the years has been possible due to the exceptional talents and commitment of our students, and it has been the greatest privilege to work with them. However, none of our achievements would have been possible without the support of our faithful audiences including the Fellows, other students and friends of the College, and all those who helped behind the scenes – including the administrative staff, the catering department and the Porters’ Lodge – to all of whom I give my most grateful and enduring thanks.

In July 2020 we said a very fond farewell to Mansfield Director of Music, John Oxlade. Here, Professorial Fellow in Physics and music enthusiast, Professor Stephen Blundell, reflects on the myriad ways in which John has enriched the musical life of the College over many years.

John Oxlade, who is stepping down as Mansfield’s Director of Music after 14 years of devoted service, has transformed the College’s musical life, leading the Chapel choir and organising numerous recitals.

John’s musical training started young, as a boy chorister at Southwark Cathedral, and though he read History as an Exhibitioner at Corpus Christi, Cambridge, he returned to the musical path with postgraduate diplomas at the Royal College of Music. A highly accomplished pianist, harpsichordist and organist, he has performed from a wide repertoire during his time at Mansfield, but perhaps his most important contribution has been in coaxing some dazzling performances out of the highly gifted student body.

Mansfield does not have any students reading Music, but many Mansfield students are extremely musical. John has been able to persuade soloists to come out of the woodwork and perform, or emerge as singers to join the choir. He has had an uncanny knack of extracting and nurturing latent talent. As students inevitably graduate, John has had to endure the annual loss of strong singers from the choir. Nevertheless, each October he has welcomed new, less experienced voices to join and has slowly brought them up to standard; watching this growth of talent and confidence has been deeply encouraging and in John’s patient guidance we have seen a true teacher at work.

Was it his historical training that made John’s programme notes such a treasure trove of interesting nuggets, and indeed influenced his programming? A 2010 performance of Rossini’s La Cambiale di Matrimonio was on the 200th anniversary, to the day, of the première of Rossini’s first opera, and there are countless examples of John’s brilliant sensitivity to anniversaries. But equally impressive is the wide historical scope of his musical choices, with the choir’s repertoire ranging from Tudor music to works specially written for them, including premières by students Josie Bearden and Dennis Christensen. Largescale works performed include Bach’s St John Passion, Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle, Fauré’s Requiem, Bellini’s Gloria, Vivaldi’s Gloria, and Elgar’s Spirit of England.

John has also used his many contacts to bring in professional musicians to play for us and augment performances. However, for me, some of the most memorable recitals have been duets between a Mansfield student, perhaps playing oboe, clarinet, violin, viola or saxophone, and John, delivering a beautifully sensitive accompaniment on the piano.

With the creation of Choral Scholarships and the instituting of Instrumental Awards, the profile of music in Mansfield has remained on an upward trajectory. John has been there at the centre, quietly encouraging and guiding, contributing in a very special way to the spiritual life of the College, and adding something unique to a whole generation of Mansfield students. During services he has made the singing of the choir, the voluntaries and hymns all an integral part of the Chapel life, and they have always added to, and been sympathetic to, the spiritual purpose of the services.

It is a measure of the affection in which he is held at Mansfield that John was made an Honorary Fellow in 2011, meaning of course that he is not really leaving us. We wish him well in his future musical endeavours and hope to see John and Susie back in College – often!

Mansfield College is full of poetry: we talk about it in our tutorials, we read it in study bedrooms, we compose it on scraps of papers and on beautiful lined notebooks. Never more so than this Michaelmas term 2020 when tutors and students (undergrads and postgrads) have had the opportunity to attend workshops led by poet Kate Clanchy.

Kate won the Forward Prize in 1997 for her first collection, Slattern, the 2013 Costa Book Award for her first novel, Meeting the English and the 2020 Orwell Prize for Political Writing for Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me. She is much in demand as a tutor of creative writing and especially admired for the work she has done over decades nurturing young poets from disadvantaged and migrant backgrounds in state schools (and in particular Oxford Spires Academy). Most recently she edited an anthology Unmute:Young Voices from Lockdown (2020) and a handbook How to Grow Your Own Poem (2020) for aspirant bards.

So how lucky we are to have Kate work with us for an hour each Sunday afternoon: first under socially-distanced arrangements in person in college and then online.

Not so different from yoga it turns out. We start with a ‘warm-up’: each submitting a line speaking to a prompt from Kate and putting together a ‘group poem’. And then we have to work (with increasing concentration and attention) on our own poems taking our cues from an example provided by Kate. We’ve worked on ‘praise’ poems (for individuals), poems about ‘what we miss’, poems about the lasting memories of stories from our childhood, ‘list’ poems. As we sit wrestling with words whether on screen or on paper, Kate’s voice talks us through the process, encourages us to focus on specific images and memories and make them concrete in language, guiding us to move on to the next phrase or phase, warning us to back away from the general and the specious. We are/I am amazed that I can indeed produce a poem – I can even experiment with rhyme schemes and meter – in twenty minutes.

We read our poems – or not if we aren’t happy with them or we are just unhappy: some prefer to keep themselves hidden, some read their poems from the screen in close up and we can trace the lines in their eye-movements, there are pairs and groups of three sharing one screen and their creative processes at once. It’s a mix of staff and students. I’ve learned that our Principal Helen Mountfield needs to have a pen between her teeth when she composes. I’ve got to know every feature of the faces and tone of voice of students I have never and will never teach.

We’re learning too to deliver our poems as readers, to make them part of our speaking voices. First poem first reading and you are shaky and nervous, the poem very raw and close to your immediate feelings. A few meetings on and it’s somehow become part of a shared past, part of our writing identity, something that belongs more to the group and to the world of poetry we are all so curious to be part of as morethan-readers.

Kate tweets some of the poems she helps to grow with the authors’ permission. @KateClanchy1 tweets a poem by Brennig Davies, a third-year student. It’s called ‘What I Miss When I’m Away’ and it made us all cry. it goes viral, being viewed 400,000 times. There is so much love for and in this hymn to home.

We will meet again next term and carry on growing our poems and growing ways of relating to each other in the Mansfield community through poetry. In the meantime, and with her permission, a poem by Chantale, one of our number(s) has written the poem on the next page. For me, it captures the unusualness of the experience of a term of social distance at University and the absolute usualness of learning to be a student at Oxford.