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THE CLARENDON CHRONICLE
VOLUME 3 ISSUE 1 | MICHAELMAS TERM 2013
IN THIS ISSUE
1. Editor’s note 2. Message from the President 3. Bon voyage! 4. Bombaywalla 5. Life of Neolithic farmers 7. Clarendonians on the run 8. Word score 9. Summer in Cambodia
EDITOR’S NOTE Dear Reader, One of the joys of being the editors of the Clarendon Chronicle is to be able to document the achievements of our fellow Clarendon scholars. In this issue, you will be brought from the streets of colonial Bombay (p. 4) to neolithic farming landscapes in Northern Greece (p. 5) then to Angkor Wat in Cambodia (p. 9). We also see how one scholar broke the Guinness World Record for playing the greatest number of simultaneous Scrabble games (p. 8). And if you have made some friends in the boat trip during freshers’ week (p. 3), why not form a Clarendon team for the upcoming Santa-run in Oxford (p. 7)? We hope that you will enjoy this term’s Clarendon Chronicle and be inspired to achieve great things yourselves. And when you do, don’t forget to tell us about it! Thomas Tam Chief Editor, Michaelmas 2013
Clarendon Chronicle Team | Chief Editor: Thomas Tam | Designer & Editor: Erica Lombard | Editors: Robert Daly, Pramila Rijal | clarendonchronicle@gmail.com
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THE CLARENDON CHRONICLE – Newsletter of the Clarendon Scholars’ Association
Message from the
President
Dear Scholars and Alumni, Welcome back Clarendon Scholars! Whether you’re a fresh new face in Oxford, or a seasoned doctoral candidate writing up the final draft of your ground-breaking thesis, you’ll always be a lifelong member of the burgeoning international community of Clarendon Scholars, and have exclusive access to our networking resources and events held here in Oxford—and around the world.
new traditions and opportunities established this year for Clarendon Scholars here in Oxford, I’m excited to report one more the Council has been working on: an inaugural Clarendon Scholars End-of-Year Dinner and Reception, which will bring together Scholars and representatives from the Oxford University Press to further strengthen ties between our students, our major benefactor, and our Fund’s administrators.
2013 Year in Review
As our Council’s year in office slowly comes to an end, it’s worth reflecting on some significant changes that will affect this year’s elections for the 2014 Council Officers, and the future development and growth of the Clarendon Scholars Association. Earlier this year, Scholars successfully voted to amend the constitution and double the size of the Clarendon Council by establishing 4 new officer positions: an Alumni Officer to liaise with our growing Alumni body, an External Relations Officer to help promote the Clarendon community and organize more career recruiting events, an IT Officer to develop the web page, and a third General Officer to assist with general event planning. We are excited that there will be so many more opportunities for new Scholars to get involved with leading the community forward, and encourage everyone to consider running for an Officer position in the upcoming elections for the 2014 calendar year.
2013 has proven to be the busiest year in the Clarendon Fund’s history, and our Council promises to continue this momentum throughout Michaelmas, having already kicked off with an exciting schedule of welcome events before the start of term for all incoming scholars. This has been the first year incoming Clarendon Scholars have been able to participate in a series of welcome week events upon arrival in Oxford, and the highlight was undoubtedly a boat cruise along the Thames for 150 Scholars. We hope this Welcome Week will be repeated by Councils in future years to not only help Scholars and their families settle in to Oxford upon arrival, but also to help build strong friendship ties across our diverse Scholarship community, which extends across nearly every faculty and division at Oxford University. This is also the first year our Scholars have been able to participate in exclusive careers events both here in Oxford, and in the City of London, and the Council has been working tirelessly to establish relationships with companies from around the world representing many sectors and industries to connect with and recruit Clarendon Scholars. These career events have been very well attended by Scholars, along with other opportunities and events that the Council has organized this year including numerous theatre outings, academic skills seminars, concerts at the Sheldonian, and day trips around England. In addition, this term the Council has also organized the first ever set of welfare events for Clarendon Scholars—which will include a series of mindfulness and meditation skills workshops. We’ve also responded to long-standing demand from the community to organize the first ever stash order for Clarendonbranded clothing, bags, and stationery. With so many
Even though it is our Council’s last term in office, we are still very keen to hear feedback about how we can better achieve our shared vision and mission, and so I encourage all Scholars and Alumni to please contact me if you would like to share your ideas for how we can better govern our dynamic community, and more effectively serve YOU. On behalf of the Clarendon Scholars Association Council – which includes Dansie, Hong-Sheng, Nick, Timson, and a host of General Assistants and other volunteers – I’d like to thank all Scholars and Alumni for their support throughout the year thus far; to welcome our newest cohort of Clarendons into our burgeoning global network; and to wish the best of luck to next year’s elected officers in leading this community forward. Ramtin Amin President of the Clarendon Scholars’ Association 2012-2013 Volume 3 Issue 1 – Michaelmas Term 2013
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Bon voyage!
The Clarendon community welcomes new scholars with a boat cruise down the Thames
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he Saturday leading into 0th of Michaelmas week saw the Clarendon Community all aboard for a boat cruise down the Thames, organised to welcome the incoming Clarendon Freshers. Armed with some very English cut sandwiches and the allimportant discounted beverage bar, we set forth for an afternoon out on the water. The voyage marched into uncharted territory as scholars old and new mingled. It was a lovely day out and perfect start for the first-ever Clarendon Scholars Welcome Week of events, which also included punting on 3
the River Cherwell, a Welcome Reception with speeches by representatives from the University and the Oxford University Press and an afterparty lasting into the early morning hours, along with a traditional Sunday walk and English lunch. Upcoming events for the term include academic skills seminars, mindfulness workshops, a Beethoven concert at the Sheldonian, an outing to see Romeo and Juliet at the Royal Opera House, a whisky-tasting, and even a day-trip to Bath to see the Abbey and Roman Baths, along with some of England’s most famous Christmas Markets— what better way to end the Michaelmas term!
THE CLARENDON CHRONICLE – Newsletter of the Clarendon Scholars’ Association
Bombaywalla
As Mumbai styles itself as a city of the future, a Clarendon Scholar documents what it forgets about the past.
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ome to Bollywood and as India’s most populous city, Mumbai (Bombay) is a bustling metropolis. But to Clarendon Scholar Simin Patel, a DPhil candidate researching the social history of Mumbai, the beauty of the city lies in its unique cultural history and the hybridity of its architectural styles. Not content to let Bombay’s rich heritage be confined to academic archives, Miss Patel and her team started capturing fragments of history scattered around the city. ‘I think it is imperative that the findings of academic research reach a larger, non-academic audience,’ said Miss Patel, ‘this means thinking of creative forms to present the material.’ The result was Bombaywalla.org—a blog that tells the stories of Bombay though architectural sites big and small.
These creative short anecdotes proved to be popular. Several months after its launch, Bombaywalla has been featured in numerous international and local news articles, including coverage by Lonely Planet Magazine. Popular entries include the story of an unfortunate gentleman who was arrested for drinking tea ‘suspiciously’ one morning (the charge was later dropped because the judge could not imagine how tea can be drunk suspiciously), the not-so-subtly named “fornicator” chair, the Bombay dog riots of 1832, and a tea house that appears to be oblivious to inflation over the decades. Mumbai is going full steam ahead towards the future. But a tea break with its past is likely to remain a tourist attraction.
The Bombaywalla team Simin Patel: DPhil candidate at
Balliol College, her thesis focuses on the social history of colonial Bombay.
Sitanshu Shukla: Graphic designer, based in Bombay. Hersh Acharya: lawyer from Bombay studying intellectual property law in Washington. Hashim Badani: Freelance photographer, based in Bombay. Dj Murty: filmmaker working in Bombay’s ad industry.
The blog can be accessed at http://bombaywalla.org/
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Life of Neolithic Farmers The quest to understand early farming practices takes Clarendon Scholar Petra Vaiglova to the cradles of civilization from Central Europe to the coast of the Aegean sea.
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T
his past year, my research into prehistoric archaeology has taken me on exciting trips from Central Europe, through Turkish Anatolia, and into the Greek Aegean. More than 6,000 years ago, people living in these regions made a crucial step that was to influence the course of human history dramatically. They decided to become farmers. Even though the consequences of this social and economic revolution – the rise of urbanism, the emergence of social hierarchies and the spread of diseases such as tuberculosis and diabetes – are fairly wellunderstood, huge questions still remain
THE CLARENDON CHRONICLE – Newsletter of the Clarendon Scholars’ Association
about what farming was actually like in its initial stages. How “experimental” was early farming? How much labor did people invest in domesticating the first crops and animals? How big were the first cultivated fields and where were they? What were the diets of early farmers like? These are some of the questions that I and others working on a project called Agricultural Origins of Urban Civilizations (AGRICURB) are interested in. To understand where in the ancient landscape the first crop domesticates were being grown, we can chemically fingerprint plant remains
that are recovered during excavation. Plants growing in different geological zones take up different amounts of trace elements from the underlying bedrock. Measuring the composition of ancient grains and seeds thus allows us to trace where the plants grew by comparing these values to reference points from the known geology. The reference points can be established by analyzing the composition of leaves and plants that grow in those regions today. And this is exactly what we did on our fieldwork trips. In Southern Germany, we drove through the beautiful landscape around
Lake Constance, collecting leaves from the geological zones around the Neolithic sites of Hornstaad and Sipplingen. Here, the early farmers lived in lakeshore dwellings, building their houses on wooden platforms that rose from the water. In Turkey, we crisscrossed the Konya plateau, which stretches for miles around the famous archaeological site of Çatalhöyük. The Neolithic people here lived in very close quarters in a village of mudbrick houses which people entered through holes in the roof. In Northern Greece, we set out to explore the area around the extensive Neolithic site of Makriyalos. On the way, we got
to talk to a local shepherd who takes his sheep to what are probably the very same pastures that his Neolithic ancestors did several millennia ago, and also to a local farmer who is starting a business growing a type of wheat grain (emmer) that was grown widely in prehistory but is not commonly grown anymore. After spending several weeks collecting this material, we are now ready to embark on an equally exciting adventure of trying to figure out what it all means for the story of the human past.
—Petra Vaiglova DPhil Archaeological Science
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Claudia Vadeboncoeur (left), Ryan Brown (right) at the Oxford Half Marathon, 13 October 2013
Clarendonians on the run ‘Team Clarendon’ wants you! On October 13th, two Clarendon freshers and a few non-freshers took part in the Oxford Half Marathon. Despite the pouring rain and the cold temperature, everyone had a wonderful experience and finished with great race times! Next race: A team of Clarendon scholars will be running the Oxford “Santa on the Run”, a two-mile charity run held on December 15th. We hope to have a good Clarendon contingent
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THE CLARENDON CHRONICLE – Newsletter of the Clarendon Scholars’ Association
dressed up as Santas at the start line. Registration for the event is open and costs £14 (including the Santa costume). When registering, find us under ‘Team Clarendon’. If you don’t want to run but want to donate for charity, help our team raise money: http://my.helenanddouglas. org.uk/TeamClarendon For any questions or suggestions for future races, email Claudia.Vadeboncoeur@ dph.ox.ac.uk
Clarendon Scholar Chris May breaks the Guinness World Record for playing the greatest number of simultaneous Scrabble games
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’ve played tournament Scrabble since I was 15, and, two years ago, I placed fifth at the World Championships in Warsaw, Poland. Not long after starting my DPhil in Music, it struck me that Oxford would be a great place to tackle the Guinness record for playing the most simultaneous games, which I’d long wanted to do. I approached Oxford University Press, the sponsors of the Clarendon Fund awards, to see whether they would be interested in helping me stage the attempt as a charity fundraiser. As soon as they agreed to host, I knew I had to go through with it! The charity we settled on was Assisted Reading for Children (ARCh), which sends volunteers into Oxfordshire primary schools to help children who are
experiencing reading difficulties. Please check out their website! It took several months of planning to recruit opponents from the Scrabble and University communities, source the equipment, find assistants and independent witnesses, and promote the event effectively. Luckily, there was plenty of goodwill from everybody involved, and everything went to plan on the day. After so much organisation, it was a pleasure simply to be able to play the games— even if there were 28 of them at once, an increase of 3 on the previous record! The whole attempt took place under British tournament Scrabble conditions, supplemented by the Guinness guidelines. I needed 21 wins to claim the record, and, after just over four hours of play, having
made around 380 moves, I’d managed to notch up 25. I felt like I’d invented a whole new kind of fatigue, but managed to find the energy to see off a celebratory Guinness or two. I’m pleased to say that we raised £1200 towards ARCh’s wonderful work. The claim for the record has just been sent off to Guinness, and I’m looking forward to their verification of the result. It’s great to see Oxford University Press and the broader Oxford community showing such amazing support for the extracurricular projects of Clarendon scholars - if anyone else out there has a similarly crazy endeavour in mind, I can only encourage them to go for it!
—Chris May DPhil Music
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Summer in
Cambodia Clarendon scholar Andy Yu spends a summer in Cambodia promoting technology that will turn rice husks into fuels. He also gets to relax and enjoy the country’s many delights.
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THE CLARENDON CHRONICLE – Newsletter of the Clarendon Scholars’ Association
A
fter graduating from my master's at Oxford earlier this summer, I spent two months in Cambodia to do an internship at SNV, a Dutch development organization, in collaboration with the National Polytechnic Institute of Cambodia. Stationed an hour away from Phnom Penh, the capital city, by tuk-tuk (motorcycle rickshaw), I was mainly there to help with the Waste to Energy project to promote the use of rice husk gasification technology among rice millers.
My fondest memories, though, were from exploring the country. Of course, there was the obligatory trip to Siem Reap and nearby Angkor Wat, a magnificent twelfth century temple complex and the largest religious monument in the world. But I also got to see Battambang, one of the more prosperous cities due to the rice industry, and relax in the beachside city of Sihanoukville. The food was delicious and very affordable. My favorite dish was easily fish amok, a rich curry made
from lemongrass and fermented shrimp, and served in banana leaves. I also got to try fried insects and tarantulas, which were quite the treat! Relatively carefree, my time in Cambodia was a welcome break from my studies. But I'm now excited to be back at Oxford, refreshed, and looking forward to pursuing my doctorate.
— Andy Yu DPhil Philosophy
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