Letter from the Dean

The 2021 edition of Spotlight shows, once again, just how amazing Arts and Humanities alumni really are. As Dean of the Faculty for the past 10 years, I have met hundreds of our alumni. I never fail to be impressed by their life stories – marked as they are by creativity, imaginative plot twists, resilience and real success. As the pages of this edition show, Arts and Humanities graduates can be found in all sorts of likely and unlikely places, always doing the most diverse and remarkable things. And you can see that they are connected by their passionate engagement with the core ideas and experiences of our common humanity. In this past year, in a world turned upside down by pandemic and social/political strife, we have all relied on art, film, language, literature, philosophy and the critical exchange of ideas, like never before. We have needed them to entertain us, sure. But we have also relied on them to engage us and to help us make sense of a complex and challenging world. These are all parts of the vital contribution that Arts and Humanities practitioners make to the society around them.

I hope you will enjoy reading about this incredible group of alumni – their stories are simply extraordinary.

Dean of Arts and Humanities