The magazine for alumni and friends of City, University of London
2018 issue
INSIDE
The story of Emmeline Pankhurst’s nurse Detecting pollution in India’s rivers The women leaders of tomorrow
Novel approaches Harriet Tyce, Imogen Hermes Gowar and Peng Shepherd offer advice to budding fiction writers
Contents 1 Welcome
City Magazine 2018
Letter from the Director
2 Dispatches
The latest news from your alma mater
8 Research
Leading research from across City
12 Diary An update on City’s global alumni network
18: Novel approaches
16 Fundraising
Inspiring projects made possible by the generosity of City alumni and partners
18 Novel approaches
Three City alumnae with hotly tipped debut novels share their ideas about creating fiction. A must-read for budding novelists everywhere, the article contains fascinating insights into the writing process
24 5 to watch
24: 5 to watch
City alumni going places
26 Cleaner than the speed of light
City’s Professor Azizur Rahman is leading a major research project using advanced photonics to detect contamination in Indian rivers. This pioneering work could make a real difference to human health
30 Inspiring women to be the leaders of tomorrow Profiling the Cass Global Women’s Programme, along with two of its scholars and its Director, Dr Canan Kocabasoglu-Hillmer
26: Cleaner than the speed of light
34 She kept Emmeline Pankhurst alive
The story of City alumna, Catherine Pine, who nursed Emmeline Pankhurst after hunger strike and was steadfastly committed to the suffragette cause
36 In profile
As the NHS celebrates 70 years, City alumna and Chief Executive of St Clare Hospice, Sarah Thompson explains why strong leadership in the hospice sector is vital to alleviate pressure on hospitals and communities
30: Inspiring women
The magazine for alumni and friends of City, University of London produced by the Development & Alumni Relations Office. Editor Chris Lines Staff Writer Zhuliyana Boyanova Contributors Anna Anikeeva, Catriona Ayre, Cristina Feliz, Jessica Holland, Isabella Kaminski, Rebecca Ley, Mylen Namocatcat, Mickella Nikoi, Amy Ripley. Design and production Fabrik Brands Print and distribution Sterling Solutions Photography Richard Boll, Susie Chan, Rachel Crittenden, Julius Cruickshank, Emily Lupton, Don Mammoser, Duncan Phillips, Tarynne Quirk, Peter Schiazza, Gary Yim. The archive photograph on p35 of Emmeline Pankhurst’s 1913 arrest is used with kind permission of Museum of London. Illustration Diego Pedauye www.instagram.com/ diegopedauye Imagery on this page, from top: Emily Pedder and Harriet Tyce outside City’s main entrance on Northampton Square; Nashwa Hassanaly, Project Planner for Mount Anvil; Professor Ken Grattan OBE FREng and Professor Azizur Rahman in the Optical Sensors Laboratory; Dr Canan Kocabasoglu-Hillmer, Cassie Newman and Artis Kakonge in the Cass MBA lounge at Bunhill Row.
Welcome
Welcome It has been another interesting year for universities. Two years ago, the UK referendum had just taken place and last year we explained that there was still much uncertainty for the sector as we awaited plans for exiting the European Union. That uncertainty remains and, as we move towards the date of the UK’s departure, we are keen to reassure our current and future students that despite this confusion and many unanswered questions, we are still very much open for business. Brexit, increasing global competition for the sector, the changing policy agenda with a government freeze on undergraduate tuition fees and increased competition in the domestic market, as well as pressure on costs, including the outcome of the Universities Superannuation Scheme reform proposals, all place the higher education sector in a position of uncertainty. More than ever before, we need the support of our alumni to help charter City, University of London through these choppy waters. Despite this, there is a lot of good news about. Our students continue to be among the most satisfied in London and we continue to develop our estate which becomes more impressive each year. In 2020, The City Law School will be moving into new premises in Sebastian Street where our undergraduates, postgraduates, academics and professional service staff will all be sited. We anticipate this improving the satisfaction of our students even further with state-of-the-art facilities and a more interconnected School. Our School of Health Sciences continues to push the boundaries of improving the lives of the population’s wellbeing and Cass Business School continues to climb business school rankings. And in 2019, City celebrates its 125th anniversary of the founding of the Northampton Institute, the forerunner to today’s
globally respected institution. We do hope you will return to City and see us, or if you are further afield, keep in touch through our digital media and webpages, or even attend events that take place throughout the year. Many alumni are currently playing a key role in supporting City. Approximately 250 mentor current students through our Professional Mentoring Programme which won a THELMA (Times Higher Education Leadership and Management Award) last year; the education sector’s equivalent of an Oscar. We now have Alumni Ambassadors in 47 countries supporting City and its Schools in organising events, aiding the recruitment of new students and helping to raise City’s profile. Other alumni are giving their time to attend careers-related events and helping to support our students as they progress to the world of work. Others (almost 1,000 this year) are supporting us financially by donating. This muchneeded support directly benefits current students. All this support, for which we are truly grateful, really does help to change lives and I hope that some of the stories in this edition will whet your appetite and encourage you to get involved too. We look forward to hearing from you.
David Street Director, Development and Alumni Relations
City in numbers
City is now in contact with 140,000 former students in
180
countries
4,000
alumni in Greece makes it City’s biggest alumni community outside of the UK
9,441
alumni ‘like’ City on Facebook
City’s academic staff hail from over
75
countries
City Magazine 1
After a busy year for City, we round up the biggest stories. An impressive, modern new home for The City Law School begins to take shape, a City academic’s work features in a BBC Two documentary on peregrine falcons, City’s first-ever delegation to Malaysia, a partnership with Google to help combat fake news and much more.
Dispatches
Work begins on new Law building
LAW BUILDING
Construction work is underway on a significant new investment in City, University of London’s estate. The Sebastian Street building, due to open its doors in 2020, will provide a new home for The City Law School. The modern seven-storey building will provide 7,200 sq m of world-class educational facilities for City’s students and staff and will allow the School to operate on a single site. 2 City Magazine
The £63 million Sebastian Street building complex will replace two underused buildings on City’s estate which were demolished earlier this year. Another two buildings (former factories at the corner of Sebastian Street and Goswell Road) will be retained and integrated into the new complex. Edward Kevin, Head of Projects, Properties and Facilities at City, said: “As our first new building in over ten years, the project represents
An artist’s impression of how the exterior of the Sebastian Street building will look.
an exciting development that will transform and maximise the potential of the Sebastian Street site. Designed by signature architects WilkinsonEyre, the building will create a prominent marker for the University on Goswell Road and provide an outstanding new home for the consolidated City Law School.” The new building will feature a dedicated library, 160-seat lecture theatre, modern study space, staff
Dispatches
offices, restaurant and central atrium with a glazed roof. The atrium will link the new building to the existing structures. City’s President, Professor Sir Paul Curran, said: “Back in 2010, we started to invest in and revitalise our estate and infrastructure. This included new engineering labs, underground lecture theatres and our splendid new front entrance that was opened by Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal last year. But we are not resting on our laurels. We aspire to be a leading global university and this building shows our continuing commitment to investing in City and its future.” Green credentials of the project include harvesting rainwater, green roofs, ground source heating and cooling, energy-efficient lighting and lifts and solar panels, all contributing to a reduction in City’s carbon emissions. Prior to construction starting, City collaborated with Museum of London Archaeology for an archaeological dig to ensure the preservation of the rich local history. During the excavation, artefacts dating back to the pre-Bronze Age era were found, in addition to remnants of a Civil War fort, trenches, glazed pottery and tokens from the 1640s.
Elsewhere on campus, City has undertaken a complete refurbishment of the Drysdale Building’s ground floor to provide upgraded PC labs, improved building access and new flexible study spaces for students.
A central atrium will bring natural light to the inside of the building.
The building will include plenty of study space.
City greenest university in London SUSTAINABILITY
City has been named the greenest university in London for the third consecutive year by People & Planet, the UK’s largest student network campaigning for social and environmental justice. Its annual league table ranks over 150 UK universities by 13 different measures, from environmental policy and carbon management to waste and recycling. With a total score of 65.8 per cent, City won a First Class Award and a spot in the top ten green universities in the UK. City scored full marks for having progressive policy and management systems that hold the University to account on environmental factors, such as waste and water reduction across all campuses. Since last year, City has reduced both its carbon emissions and water consumption by 15 per cent and has recycled 63 per cent of its waste. The previous academic year saw 35 sustainability projects completed on
campus, showcasing the commitment of staff and students to embed sustainability within all of the University’s activities. Jason Clarke, Head of Sustainability at City, said: “It is great to see that our efforts to make City a more sustainable and ethical university are paying off. Our performance hugely benefitted from the introduction of a combined heat and power system and the implementation of strong efficiency requirements for construction and refurbishment projects, enabling City to exceed our target of a 42 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2020.” Hannah Smith, Co-director of Research and Campaigns at People & Planet, said: “City’s position in the league is one to be proud of. The ranking is credit to the work of staff and students committed to driving real, sustainable development at their institution.”
City recycles 63 per cent of its waste.
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A fruitful delegation to Malaysia MALAYSIA
An academic delegation from four City, University of London Schools, led by City’s President, Professor Sir Paul Curran, travelled to Malaysia in May 2018 to promote dialogue between City and key regional stakeholders and identify opportunities for international partnerships. Professor Elaine Fahey, Associate Dean (International) at The City Law School and Professor Nigel Duncan were part of City’s Strategic South East Asia delegation, which included visits to Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. The academics travelled to meet the Dean and staff at the Faculty of Law, University of Malaya, which was ranked 46th in Asia in 2018, to discuss student mobility, clinical legal education and possible areas of collaboration. The delegation also met with the director of the Asia-Europe Institute (also based at the University of Malaya) and the Faculty of Law at Multimedia University (Cyberjaya campus), following a recent visit to The City Law School.
A group photograph ahead of a dinner at the Palace of Justice in Putrajaya, Malaysia.
Professors Fahey and Duncan were joined by alumna Mary-Ann Ooi Suan Kim, barrister and head of her Kuala Lumpur-based law firm OS Kim & Associates, in a dinner with the Inns of Court Malaysia at the Palace of Justice in Putrajaya. Professor Fahey said: “We really enjoyed joining the University
delegation in its strategic visit to South East Asia. The City Law School received incredible support from outstanding alumna Mary-Ann Ooi Suan Kim. We look forward to working with her and the Inns of Court Malaysia on providing judicial training and continuing professional development.”
Alumni win British Council awards ALUMNI AWARDS
City, University of London alumni have been named regional winners at the Study UK Alumni Awards held in April 2018. The prestigious ceremony, organised by the British Council, celebrated the achievements of international students who have studied in the UK and returned to their home country as ambassadors for UK education, bringing positive change to their communities, industries and countries. Isabella Cota Schwarz (MA Erasmus Mundus Journalism, Media and Globalisation, 2010) from Mexico and José Ignacio Valenzuela (MSc Health Informatics, 2006) from Columbia were among the regional winners, who are considered leaders in their field and had demonstrated outstanding achievements. Cota Schwarz, a freelance journalist who has previously worked for Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters, was awarded a 4 City Magazine
Professional Achievement Award for her influence in the way foreign exchange is reported in Mexico. She believes her time at City was crucial for her success. “The highlight of my UK education was the first class I had with Tony Bonsignore, a broadcast journalist at the BBC,” she said. “He asked us to question whether the current financial system was functional, something I had never been asked to do in class. This was when I knew that I would learn to question everything at City. And I most certainly did.” Valenzuela, who was the first Colombian formally trained in health informatics, was recognised in the Entrepreneurial Award category for his work on the first health e-learning programme and Doctor Chat, the first medical orientation service in Latin America. He went on to win the British Council’s Global Alumni Award (also in the Entrepreneurship category) in May 2018.
Isabella Cota Schwarz learned to “question everything” at City.
“The education I received and the multicultural environment filled me up with ideas, changed my way of thinking and reshaped my mentality,” he said. “Coming back to Colombia with a degree from City empowered my voice and helped me become a pioneer in health informatics in my region.”
CONCERT
A forgotten composer’s symphony has been performed for the first time in more than 100 years thanks to an investigation by a City academic.
The BBC Concert Orchestra played Leokadiya Kashperova’s work at a special BBC Radio 3 concert, broadcast live on International Women’s Day 2018. The symphony is among a trove of compositions discovered by Dr Graham Griffiths, an Honorary Research Fellow in City’s Department of Music. Radio 3 chose Kashperova and four other women for an initiative, run in collaboration with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, which set out to revive the work of forgotten female composers.
came up during his research for the book, Stravinsky’s Piano: Genesis of a Musical Language. He found she was the piano teacher of the great Russian composer Igor Stravinsky, but little else was known about her life. As part of his research, Dr Griffiths embarked on several trips to St Petersburg and Moscow, during which he uncovered the composer’s biography and her lost compositions, including a symphony, which was completed in 1905. He said: “One of the great thrills of my most recent visit to Moscow
was the discovery of many musical manuscripts. Not sketches, but complete works, ready for publication and performance. Kashperova herself never heard them except in her head.
Leokadiya Kashperova
Dr Graham Griffiths
“In 2014, I located her symphony, her greatest work. It’s utterly beautiful. It was a magical experience to hear it performed by such an excellent orchestra here in London.” Kashperova’s ‘Symphony in B Minor’ closed the Radio 3 concert, held at LSO St Luke’s in Old Street, London.
Dr Griffiths said: “As soon as I began uncovering Kashperova’s lyrical and beautifully crafted music I realised that she had been unjustly overlooked. Truly, I feel that after a century of neglect, this long-forgotten and quite excellent composer thoroughly deserves rediscovery.” Leokadiya Kashperova, born in 1872, was a Russian pianist and tutor who wrote Romantic songs and instrumental music. After marrying a revolutionary with links to Lenin, she was forced to leave her home city during the 1917 Russian Revolution and her music was never published or performed again. She died in 1940. Dr Griffiths has been studying Kashperova since 2002, when her name
Academic featured in BBC documentary DOCUMENTARY
Research demonstrating Professor Christoph Bruecker’s studies in the biologically inspired modelling of a peregrine falcon’s flow was featured on BBC 2’s Natural World programme, ‘Super Fast Falcon’ in April 2018.
Professor Bruecker is City’s Research Chair in Nature-Inspired Sensing and Flow Control for Sustainable Transport and the BAE Systems Sir Richard Olver Chair in Aeronautical Engineering. With spectacular and breathtaking videography, the programme featured a peregrine falcon (the world’s fastest animal) in diving flight off the North Lake District cliffs and in the wind
tunnel facilities in City’s Handley Page Aeronautical Engineering Laboratory. The research earned Professor Bruecker a President’s Award for Outstanding Research Engagement: Media and Outreach at City in June 2018. City’s President, Professor Sir Paul Curran, said that Bruecker’s work had “significantly raised the profile of City’s aeronautical engineering research”. “It is a splendid example of the way fascinating STEM themes around nature and aviation can be blended and brought to the attention of the general public,” he said. Professor Bruecker (left) with his award.
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Dispatches
Lost symphony performed
City and Google working to combat fake news DMINR PROJECT
City, University of London received a €335,000 grant from the Google Digital News Initiative (DNI) fund in July 2017 to develop a web-based tool called ‘DMINR’. The DNI is a partnership between Google and publishers in Europe to support high-potential ideas to benefit the news ecosystem, in areas such as automation, verification and news storytelling. Academics from the Department of Journalism and the Centre for Human-Computer Interaction Design will spend two years working on the DMINR application to help journalists make connections in data, verify information and combat the issue of fake news. Tom Felle, Senior Lecturer in Digital Journalism at City, who leads the DMINR project, said: “Separating the news from the noise is key to the verification of digital information. DMINR serves to empower journalists by supporting them in identifying and
Tom Felle leads the DMINR project.
visualize those connections. It will be designed and evaluated from a usercentred perspective to ensure it delivers a high-quality user experience. “The easiest way to think about what the API aggregator does is via the use of mobile apps that allow us to check bus timetables or flight information. These apps use timetables published by transport companies, as well as realtime information, to give a result,” said Felle. “We will then build an algorithm to find the most useful and relevant answers, similar to how Google finds what it thinks are the top answers to the questions one might type into a search bar.”
making sense of connections in large, complex datasets.”
The DMINR team, which also includes Dr Glenda Cooper (Lecturer in Journalism), Dr Stephann Makri (Senior Lecturer in Human-Computer Interaction) and Dr Andrew MacFarlane (Reader in Information Retrieval), will collaborate with data teams from news organisations including The Guardian and The Telegraph to test the application.
The tool will utilise lateral search and application programme interface (API) aggregation to find connections in big data and multiple lateral search locations. It will incorporate a highly advanced search capability, artificial intelligence mark-up language (AIML) and a visual connection finder interface to then make sense of, verify and
Cass awarded PRME status by UN PRME
Cass Business School was named a United Nations PRME Champion at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January 2018. The Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) are a voluntary United Nations-supported initiative with 650 signatories worldwide. Cass was among 39 business schools around the world presented with the award as a result of their effort to raise the profile of sustainability and equip business students with the skills and understanding to attain the United Nation’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and align with the work of the UN Global Compact initiative. The initiative was founded in 2007 with the aim of strengthening the relationship between the United Nations and business and management-related higher education 6 City Magazine
institutions and equipping the schools with the understanding and ability to deliver change. As a PRME Champion, Cass is expected to contribute to thought and action leadership, collaborate with other Champions on strategic projects and integrate the UN sustainable development goals into its curriculum, research and partnership activities. Professor Marianne Lewis, Dean of Cass Business School, said: “We are at a turning point in our relationship with people and planet. Business schools can no longer shy away from thinking about their place in this relationship. At Cass, we encourage our community – faculty, students and alumni – to think about their relationship with the environment.” As part of its commitment to develop and disseminate a blueprint for socially
Staff and students at Cass are encouraged to consider sustainability.
responsible engagement with the local community, Cass presented secondyear BSc Management and Business Studies students with the opportunity to complete a Mentoring and Coaching module. Upon completion, students applied their knowledge and mentored first-year students at risk and secondary school pupils from underprivileged backgrounds through Cass’s Schools Engagement Programme.
MARATHONS
April 2018 was a significant month for three City, University of London alumni and staff members as they took part in one of the world’s most arduous sporting challenges.
BBC news presenter Sophie Raworth, a household name for UK-based readers, took part in the Marathon des Sables (a gruelling event held annually in April in the Sahara desert), keeping her participation a secret until she had completed the challenge. Also known as ‘the toughest footrace on earth’, the six-day ‘ultramarathon’ sees over 1,000 participants running 251km (156 miles) in southern Morocco. Raworth told the BBC: “It turned out to be the toughest, at times hellish, but most wonderful, rewarding experience I have ever had. Running down the dunes, wearing gaiters to stop the sand getting in my shoes, is something I will never forget.” The ultramarathon also challenged Cass Business School academic and Associate Dean for the MSc Programme
Dispatches
Alumni in desert endurance test Dr Nick Motson and alumnus Jonathan Jenkins. The two lifelong friends, who met 30 years ago during their BSc Banking and International Finance course at Cass Business School, raised over £92,000 to help London’s Air Ambulance exceed its sponsorship target. This is the second time Dr Motson and Jenkins have attempted the event. In 2016, Jenkins, who is Chief Executive of London’s Air Ambulance, had to drop out at the final stage. In April 2018, the two friends teamed up with doctors, paramedics, pilots, patients and supporters to try again. Dr Motson said: “Being part of a team made a huge, positive difference. I was truly honoured to take part with the London’s Air Ambulance team. Their professionalism and dedication are outstanding and humbling.” To read Raworth’s photo essay about her experiences in the Marathon des Sables, visit: www.bbc.co.uk/news/ in-pictures-43867390
Sophie Raworth (right) and running partner Susie Chan pictured with their Marathon des Sables medals.
NEWS IN BRIEF • City, University of London was delighted to learn that four of its Professors were recognised for their achievements in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List 2018. Professor Ken Grattan FREng and Professor Tong Sun from the Department of Engineering were awarded OBEs for their contributions to the science of measurement and to engineering, respectively. Professor Jennifer Temkin, from The City Law School, was awarded a CBE for services to criminal justice. And Professor Jane Marshall, a speech and language therapist, was awarded an OBE for services to aphasia, a condition which can lead to communication difficulties and the loss of speech following a stroke. This follows City’s Social Media Officer Sabrina Francis being awarded a British Empire Medal in the New Year Honours for services to strengthening the community at City and for her work as a local councillor. From left to right: Professor Ken Grattan FREng, Professor Tong Sun, Professor Jennifer Temkin, Professor Jane Marshall.
• Cass Business School undergraduate and 400m athlete Cheriece Hylton (BSc Management) was part of the Team England squad for the 2018 Commonwealth Games, held in Australia in April. • City’s School of Health Sciences has unveiled a new, leading-edge radiography system after the University’s Development and Alumni Relations Office secured a generous £150,000 donation from the Wolfson Foundation. • Angela Jackman, Senior Law Lecturer and Continuing Professional Development Consultant in The City Law School and Partner at Simpson Millar LLP, won the coveted Lawyer of the Year Award at the Eclipse Proclaim Modern Law Awards 2017/18.
• City of London Academy Islington (sponsored by City) achieved another outstanding set of examination results in September 2017. A-level and BTEC results were the strongest ever, with a 100 per cent pass rate. • A group of staff and students from Cass Business School will once again be heading to Hanna’s Orphanage in Ethiopia in summer 2018 to spend time teaching English and leading activities at the orphanage’s summer school. • Former City academic and joint-oldest man in the UK, Bob Weighton, celebrated his 110th birthday on 29th March 2018. Weighton joined City’s Engineering department in 1947, working as a Senior Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering until 1973.
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City, University of London is proud of its research pedigree that spans more than a century. During that time, the University has made notable contributions through basic and applied research to a wide range of social, economic, cultural and professional fields. City’s research focuses on excellence, creativity, innovation and interdisciplinary collaboration. Here is just a brief sample of recent research activity.
Research
Infants prefer toys typed to their gender
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The study, by academics from City, University of London in collaboration with academics from University College London and Glasgow Caledonian University, found that as boys got older the time spent playing with male-typed
toys increased, whereas the equivalent pattern was not found in girls. The academics believe this effect might be due to developmental and social factors arising at different ages. The increase in boys’ play with male-typed toys reveals that stereotypical social effects may persist longer for boys or that they have a stronger biological predisposition for certain play styles.
Opposite: Dr Brenda Todd
girls have started to play increasingly less with female-typed toys over more recent decades, which may possibly indicate moves towards greater gender equality in Western societies where most of the study has been conducted.” Sex difference in children’s object preferences is likely to originate from biological differences which are subsequently influenced by cognitive development and supposedly social factors. The impact of society on such toy choice is likely to change as boys’ and girls’ brains develop and as they become aware of their own gender and the associated societal norms.
Dr Brenda Todd, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychology at City, said: “What we have found is that as boys get older we see an increased play with toys typed to their gender. We also saw that
Better modelling of the cryptocurrency market demonstrate that a simple evolutionary model reproduces several key empirical findings such as the distribution of the cryptocurrencies market capitalisation or the turnover rate in the top rank positions. The results, published in their paper titled ‘Evolutionary dynamics of the cryptocurrency market’, suggest that the evolution of the cryptocurrency market has so far been ruled by “neutral” forces, where no cryptocurrency has shown any strong selective advantage over the other.
CURRENCY
The first complete study of the entire cryptocurrency market between 2013 and 2017 has concluded that no cryptocurrency has shown a strong selective advantage over the other and that all cryptocurrencies face an uncertain fate. Led by City, University of London’s Dr Andrea Baronchelli, along with postdoctoral student Laura
Alessandretti and doctoral student Abeer ElBahrawy, the study, published in the Royal Society’s Open Science journal, found that investors in cryptocurrencies appeared to allocate their money without considering factors such as the price of a cryptocurrency or the properties of its underlying technology. By treating cryptocurrencies as ecological species, the authors
Dr Andrea Baronchelli
Dr Baronchelli, a Lecturer in the Department of Mathematics, coauthored the study with academics from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany and Polytechnic University of Catalonia in Spain. He said: “Bitcoin has been steadily losing ground to the advantage of the immediate runners-up and users do not seem to have paid much attention to technological advancements, so far. Rather, our findings are compatible with a scenario in which investors choose which cryptocurrencies to invest in, proportionate to those cryptocurrencies’ market share and nothing else. “Bitcoin is not alone or invincible and we believe that our work represents a first step towards a better understanding and modelling of the cryptocurrency market,” he added. City Magazine 9
Research
TOYS
Boys’ and girls’ toy preferences develop differently between the ages of one and eight, according to research published in the journal Infant and Child Development. The statistical analysis combines the results of 16 observational studies of free selection of toys among children aged between one and eight conducted from 1980 to 2016.
Smart action needed to end malnutrition NUTRITION
Research published in The Lancet Global Health led by City’s Professor Corinna Hawkes and members of the World Health Organization warns that the world is facing a “double burden of malnutrition”. Professor Hawkes, Professor of Food Policy and Director of the Centre for Food Policy at City, is part of several international initiatives on nutrition and food systems and was recently appointed as Vice-Chair of the London Child Obesity Taskforce by London Mayor Sadiq Khan. The report takes a two-pronged approach to global nutrition challenges, with both malnutrition and obesity given equal weight regarding the pressing issues these conditions present to millions of people worldwide and what steps need to be taken to reduce them. Malnutrition has many forms. Undernutrition can cause children to be dangerously thin for their height (wasting), or to have their growth permanently impeded (stunting). Conversely, diets rich in calories well beyond the body’s metabolic needs drive the burden of overweight and obesity, while excess dietary fat, sugar and salt can increase the risks of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). There are also biological connections between the different forms of malnutrition – for example, a stunted child is more likely than a child of
Children awaiting a food handout in Pakistan. Around one third of the global population is experiencing some form of malnutrition.
normal height to be overweight or affected by NCDs as an adult. Professor Hawkes said: “Most countries are doing well, most countries are not on target for reducing stunting or wasting. And there isn’t a single country that is doing well enough at reducing anaemia and micronutrient deficiencies, nor are there any countries doing well at reducing overweight and obesity. “We estimate that around one third of the global population is experiencing some form of malnutrition. We also found that there is inadequate action. Around 62 per cent of countries do not
have any policies in place designed to encourage healthier diets. And only 15 per cent of children in lower middleincome countries are achieving an adequate diet; so there’s a lot of work to be done.” The research recommends that countries put into place ‘SMART’ targets, policies and objectives, i.e., those which are Specific, Measurable, Attributable, Relevant and Timebound. Such measures will then hold those countries significantly more accountable. “That is our number one recommendation and we call on countries, businesses and NGOs to do so,” said Professor Hawkes.
Collaboration keeps financial markets strong FINANCE
Competition can, paradoxically, mean collaboration, as individuals working in global syndicated financial markets take a relational approach to competition, academics from Cass Business School have found. Rather than engaging in price wars and retaliation and undercutting their competitors to win at all costs, firms in a direct, transactional relationship will incorporate collaboration and reciprocity, taking steps to support the long-term health of the overall market. The study, led by Professor Paula Jarzabkowski, Professor of Strategic 10 City Magazine
Management at Cass and Dr Rebecca Bednarek of Birkbeck, University of London, is titled ‘Toward a social practice theory of relational competing’ and was published in the Strategic Management Journal. To produce the research, academics examined data from 25 reinsurance and brokerage firms in the reinsurance industry to explore everyday practice of reinsurance underwriting managers as they priced, negotiated and allocated their firms’ capital to deals. Reinsurance is a global syndicated financial market that insures insurance companies against large-scale losses,
which sees multiple competitors take shares in a deal or a product at the same price.
Professor Paula Jarzabkowski.
Professor Jarzabkowski said: “Syndication does not mean a lack of competition. Market players remain highly competitive in wanting a share of the best deals. However, they are compelled to act in a relational manner to ensure buoyant pricing, maintain longstanding relationships with clients and to contribute positively to the overall health of the market. Ultimately, this behaviour may ensure the survival of competitors.”
WITNESSES
The use of intermediaries during police interviews with vulnerable witnesses, such as children, may increase significantly the recall of correct details, according to a new study from City, University of London and the University of Winchester. The academics found that, with the assistance of a Registered Intermediary (communication specialists who facilitate vulnerable witnesses to give evidence during police investigations and at trial), typically developing primary school age children mentioned over 60 per cent more correct details compared to comparable children who received a police interview in line with current best practice, without any
intervention. The study is the first to measure the positive impact of intermediaries on recall levels in child witnesses. The academics also looked at primary school age children with autism but found that intermediaries did not increase their volume of recall. Therefore, more research is needed to find out other important ways intermediaries may help this vulnerable group. The paper is published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. Professor Lucy Henry, Professor of Speech and Language in the Division of Language and Communication Science at City and lead author of the study, said: “The current study offers
Professor Lucy Henry’s research shows the benefits of using Registered Intermediaries to assist typically developing children in police interviews.
the first empirical evidence to support the use of Registered Intermediaries in 6- to 11-year-old typically developing children, as they produced highly significant increases in correct recall without compromising the children’s accuracy. Although intermediaries did not improve the volume of recall for children with autism, they are likely to have other helpful effects in real cases, reducing the stress and trauma associated with giving evidence. “As a result, our new findings strengthen the case for using intermediaries for younger children in the justice system and further research is needed to explore the wider aspects of the intermediary role in more depth, particularly for children with autism.” City Magazine 11
Research
Intermediaries may increase children’s recollection in interviews
This year’s Diary showcases a wide range of the outstanding City alumni events around the world over the past academic year. Alumni events offer a wonderful opportunity to network, rekindle old friendships and learn how City is constantly changing for the better.
Diary
Events in 2017/18 1
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City Magazine 13
Diary
1. Muhtar Kent Masterclass: ‘The role of diversity in the workplace’, September 2017 2-4. Cass at 50 Closing Party at the London Transport Museum, October 2017 5. Athens Alumni Networking Reception, November 2017 6. Alumni Masterclass and Reception in Beijing, November 2017 7. Alumni Masterclass and Reception in Shanghai, November 2017 8. Alumni Masterclass and Reception in Hong Kong, November 2017 9. Jakarta Alumni Gathering, December 2017 10. Moscow Alumni Gathering, February 2018 11. Scholarships, Bursaries and Prizes Reception, February 2018 12. Music Alumni Reception, March 2018 13. Launch of City MENA Alumni Chapter in Dubai, March 2018 14. Law Alumni Networking Reception, April 2018 15. Entrepreneurship Networking Breakfast in Dubai, April 2018
16. New York Alumni Gathering in April 2018. An exclusive evening with Sandra Navidi, author of SuperHubs: How the Financial Elite and Their Networks Rule our World, a Bloomberg Best Book of the Year winner. The event was hosted at the apartment of alumnus Jeremy White (EMBA, 1985) and his wife, Kim. 17. Golden Anniversary Alumni Celebration, April 2018, attended by over 70 alumni who graduated in 1967 and 1968. 18. Alumni Masterclass and Reception in Singapore, with Dr Dirk Nitzsche, May 2018. 19-20. Alumni Reception in Kuala Lumpur, May 2018, hosted by Professor Sir Paul Curran with an academic delegation and the Alumni Relations team.
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Events in 2018/19 Highlights will include: • Frankfurt Alumni Gathering, September 2018 • Munich Alumni Gathering, September 2018 • Athens Alumni Gathering, October 2018 • Alumni Masterclass and Receptions in China, November 2018. To receive our monthly events bulletin and sign up for the events you would like to attend, please select your communications preferences at: forms.city.ac.uk/forms/75660
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City also hosts a range of public lectures, seminars, conferences and concerts throughout the year, which all alumni are invited to attend. For details of events being hosted at City over the year ahead, please visit: www.city.ac.uk/events
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14 City Magazine
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Stay connected City launches MENA Alumni Chapter in Dubai. More than 150 alumni came together in April 2018 to celebrate the launch of the City, University of London Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Alumni Chapter at the Bvlgari Marina and Yacht Club on Jumeirah Bay Island. The MENA Chapter is the latest in a series of global initiatives aimed at strengthening ties between City and our graduates, while providing them with a platform to grow their personal and professional networks. Hosted by Viola Polakowska, Head of Alumni Relations at City and Rehan Pathan, founding President of the City MENA Alumni Chapter, the evening was a great opportunity to reconnect and reminisce with alumni and faculty members, engage with professionals working in top companies and hear more about MENA Alumni Chapter activities.
Guests at the launch of the MENA Alumni Chapter in Dubai.
The celebration featured speeches by Polakowska, Pathan, Dr Kevin Dunseath (Regional Director of MENA and Head of City’s Dubai Centre) and Professor Stephen Thomas, Professor of Finance. Calling the launch of the MENA Alumni Chapter “a fantastic achievement”, Polakowska was delighted to have so many alumni members attend the gathering.
“We have 20 Alumni Ambassadors in the MENA region who are instrumental in helping us engage with our alumni by hosting events on behalf of the Alumni Relations team,” she said. “As part of the MENA Chapter, our Alumni Ambassadors in Dubai have started hosting monthly gatherings to ensure the alumni community is regularly engaged.” Pathan, who has been instrumental in setting up this chapter, said: “The spirit of this chapter is alumni helping alumni. We’ve set up three initiatives: the Entrepreneurs’ Club, the Professional Women’s Club and
an employment initiative which will focus on helping alumni to find work opportunities. We have 2,000 graduates based in the region, so if we can figure out how to keep alumni employing alumni, we’re on the right track.” Additionally, in May 2018, as part of an effort to inspire and support the next generation of entrepreneurs, the Dubai Centre and Alumni Relations team hosted a breakfast networking session ahead of a newly launched four-day New Venture Creation course led by Professor Costas Andriopoulos, Professor of Management and Associate Dean for Entrepreneurship.
International Alumni Ambassadors event roundup Ambassador-led events are happening all around the world. Here’s a snapshot of some of the alumni events held over the past year: • Our alumna Bronwyn Cosgrave (International Journalism, 1993), along with the US Alumni Board and our Alumni Ambassadors in the area, hosted a Send-Off Party for new students coming to City, University of London at her home in New York. Following this successful initiative, our Alumni Ambassadors in New York continued organising monthly evening drinks gatherings during the autumn of 2017. • In Lagos, the Nigerian Alumni Group organised an Alumni reunion in September 2017 hosted by our Ambassador Bode Adewoju. • In Doha, Qatar Ambassadors Osama Javaid and Mahmoud Barraj organised the first official alumni event in December 2017.
• Indonesia Ambassadors Usman Lodhi and Wijaya Surya hosted a year-end celebratory dinner for fellow alumni in Jakarta in December 2017. • Once again our Zurich Ambassador Amrit Sohal organised networking drinks for our alumni community. We are very grateful for their continued support. • In April 2018 we had the first Alumni Gathering in Montreal, Canada, hosted by Professor Neil Maiden, Professor of Digital Creativity at Cass Business School and supported by our new Ambassador in Montreal, Didem Cataloglu. • The MENA Alumni Chapter in Dubai has started planning a series of events named ‘First Sunday’, which will be monthly alumni
gatherings. During the holy month of Ramadan they also hosted a late-evening alumni suhoor (pre-dawn meal) in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. • Our Alumni Ambassadors in Beijing and Shanghai coordinated a highly successful mentor dinner event, pairing up recent graduates with established alumni mentors in November 2017 and again in April 2018. • Our Ambassadors in Greece launched a bi-monthly drinks gathering in March with 200 alumni attendees at the first event.
Find out more: www.city.ac.uk/alumni/ international-ambassadors
City Magazine 15
Throughout its history, City, University of London has been the recipient of significant donations from many former students, staff, trusts, foundations, corporate entities and the City of London livery companies. City is extremely grateful for this support, which has helped to change the lives of many. In increasingly challenging financial times, the institution needs such generous support more than ever. Those wishing to donate can help to provide scholarships and bursaries, fund world-changing research or help us to develop our estate.
Fundraising
A bright future for City’s Aphasia Clinic APHASIA CLINIC
Out of 1.2 million stroke survivors in the UK, more than 400,000 people live with aphasia, a communication disorder which may have a severe impact on a person’s life, negatively affecting their relationships and ability to work and pursue social activities.
City’s School of Health Sciences is exploring how to continue to improve people’s ability to communicate after stroke through the CommuniCATE Aphasia Clinic project. Making use of life-changing interventions through modern technologies, the project will enable face-to-face provision of vital therapy to stroke survivors in London and beyond. The School is the largest provider of speech and language therapy courses in the UK, with an international reputation for research into stroke-related communication issues. Recent research has specifically explored applications of modern technologies, such as Skype in communication therapy. Between 2014 and 2017, City academics Professor Jane Marshall OBE and Dr Celia Woolf led a research project called CommuniCATE, funded by the Barts Charity. It drew on expertise within City and beyond to establish how technology can both improve language and communication in people with aphasia and support skill development in NHS clinicians and among City’s students so they can facilitate positive outcomes for stroke survivors. 16 City Magazine
Building on what was learnt and achieved for stroke survivors through past projects, City’s School of Health Sciences academics would now like to run a new two-year Aphasia Clinic at City from January 2019, making the above treatments available to more people through face-to-face interventions. This will: • Provide therapy to people living with aphasia. Stroke survivors will be referred to the clinic from across London, receiving at least six weeks of intervention, targeting reading, writing or conversation skills
Aphasia is a communication disorder that can severely affect the lives of stroke survivors.
• Explore new models of delivery, such as greater employment of group therapy and the increasing number of applications that can be run on tablets and smartphones • Continue training NHS/other clinicians, students and alumni via group training sessions, placement opportunities and internships.
Find out more: blogs.city.ac.uk/communicate
Fundraising
Supporting startups
Healthcare in Togo HEALTHCARE
In January 2019, City, University of London is seeking to roll out a two-year healthcare development project which aims to upskill midwife trainers and senior nurses in Togo. The project intends to improve healthcare for future mothers and babies in the West African nation.
STARTUPS
Encompassing student enterprise programmes, startup support and investment opportunities, CityVentures is City, University of London’s entrepreneurship programme inspiring and engaging the next generation of entrepreneurs. Supported by the Higher Education Funding Council for England, corporate supporters such as Santander Universities and individual donors, CityVentures ties together entrepreneurship activities across City and is a holistic programme that provides support to entrepreneurs and startups at every stage of their journey. Students and alumni from across the University are inspired and encouraged to challenge the status quo, innovate and explore the option of starting their own business. CityVentures’ educational programmes, developed at Cass Business School, are designed to nurture and equip aspiring entrepreneurs with the crucial knowledge and skills that are critical to launching a business. Supporting startups and growing businesses is another strand of the CityVentures programme. The City Launch Lab is the City’s incubation hub, providing free desk space and facilities, coaching and mentoring
for alumni and student startups. The hub has hosted a range of businesses, from food and restaurant companies such as Eat Chay (a successful vegan food business), to Twipes, a potentially game-changing company which has invented a flushable wet wipe that breaks down in a matter of hours rather than days or weeks. Since its inception, CityVentures has enjoyed great success with Launch Lab startups collectively turning over £10 million in investment and employing 300 people. Support from alumni, friends and partners of City has funded additional projects that have enabled CityVentures to be more accessible to individuals who might otherwise be deterred from taking up a course or starting their own business. With the help of supporters, CityVentures aims to position itself as the leading institution in entrepreneurship, developing further research and initiatives to support and grow the entrepreneurial community, not just within City but around the globe. For information on how to get involved and support CityVentures, please contact Mylen Namocatcat: Mylen.Namocatcat@city.ac.uk
The Launch Lab team.
Togo is one of the smallest and poorest countries in Africa, with over 80 per cent of the rural population falling below the poverty line of $2 a day. A significant shortage in health workers and lack of training has led to a high infant and maternal mortality rate. In a country of over seven million people, there are only 1,500 midwives. Based on previous visits to Togo and existing partnerships with Togo’s Ministry of Health and educational establishments in the Togolese cities of Lomé and Kara, City aims to improve the level of teaching in Togo. This would be achieved through adapting City’s lecturer preparation programme specifically for academics in Togo and delivering reciprocal training visits between Togo and UK staff to observe teaching and clinical practice. This will enable Togolese nurses and midwives to improve their skills and for City students to learn about intercultural midwifery practices. There is an urgent need to improve the quality of care, make a difference and save the lives of future mothers and their newborn babies. We hope to make this a reality for hundreds of women in Togo now and in the future. City Magazine 17
Novel approaches 18  City Magazine
F
eel like you’ve got a book in you? Well, join the queue. Sometimes it feels like it’s everyone’s longharboured dream to have a novel published.
For many, it remains just that. But the graduates of City’s creative writing short courses are making it a reality. There are several City alumni with hotly anticipated novels either just published, or about to be so. But three in particular stand out. Imogen Hermes Gowar’s The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock was released in February 2018 to glowing reviews. While Peng Shepherd’s “eerie, dark and compelling” The Book of M, was released in June 2018. And Harriet Tyce’s eagerly awaited debut thriller Blood Orange is set for release in early 2019. All three are on track for the holy grail of creative writing: critical and commercial success. Hermes Gowar was reportedly paid an advance of £215,000 after a ten-way bidding war. Shepherd was immediately snapped up after receiving an “offer so generous” she immediately accepted, while Tyce also got a sixfigure bid from Wildfire.
And they are not alone. Other strongly tipped City alumnae include Deepa Anappara (shortlisted for the 2018 Deborah Rogers Writers’ Award for Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line) and Hannah Begbie (a former literary agent, who won the 2018 Romantic Novelists’ Association’s Joan Hessayon Award for New Writers for her novel, Mother). It’s enough to beg the question: what are they putting in the water on the creative writing courses at City? Emily Pedder, Writing Coordinator for creative writing short courses at City, as well as Course Director for The Novel Studio postgraduate course, tutored Shepherd and Tyce, while Hermes Gowar studied under Katy Darby, Visiting Lecturer in Creative Writing. Pedder, who also runs her own editorial consultancy (TheBookEdit.co.uk), says: “I know how transformative it is to be taught well and have someone engage with you at an early stage in your writing career and make it feel possible. We have got a terrific group of tutors.” For all three writers, establishing the genre they were working in was key. “It’s like finding the right pair of gloves,” says Pedder. “We’re also not
snobbish about genre writing at City; we just want good stories to be told.” Certainly, all three novelists credit their time at City as pivotal, both in terms of taking themselves seriously as writers, but also in the sense of learning the essentials of their craft.
CONTRIBUTOR: Rebecca Ley (PGDip Periodical Journalism, 2003) is a freelance features writer and editor. She writes regularly for the Daily Mail, wrote an acclaimed column for The Guardian and is an obituarist for The Times. She is also currently working on a novel. Illustrations by Diego Pedauye.
At this point, I should perhaps offer a quick disclaimer. It’s possible I find the trio’s trajectories particularly riveting because I’m also a City alumna (PGDip Periodical Journalism, 2003) who aspires to be a published novelist. So such stories of literary success are simultaneously inspiring and a tiny bit galling, if I’m completely honest. But while the path to having their names running down the spines of books may seem frustratingly smooth, the truth is somewhat more complex. Behind every hyped City alumna with a whopping book deal and effusive reviews, there lies a story of research, redrafts and hours of solitary toil. So what could they teach me, or any of us who daydream of literary success, about how to write a standout novel? Read on to find out… City Magazine 19
Novelists
City, University of London’s creative writing short courses have a reputation for helping budding writers to take the formative steps in penning their debut novels. But how does an aspiring novelist go from having a good idea to actually writing something as unwieldy and challenging as a debut novel? In the hope of some inspiration, Rebecca Ley met three alumnae making a big splash in publishing.
Imogen Hermes Gowar Imogen Hermes Gowar’s novel, The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock, is a confection. As delicate and painstakingly whipped-up as one of the syllabubs that her character, the courtesan Angelica Neal, enjoys. Set in the 1780s and progressively more steeped in its titular magical realism as it progresses, it’s one of those books that everyone seems to be talking about. On the process of writing it, she says: “I was working in a café for the minimum wage and had nothing to lose. So I was pigheaded about it. I hated the idea of spending the rest of my life thinking I could have done it. The fear was of letting myself down.” Hermes Gowar, 30, is the real deal; as bright and self-assured as you might expect from someone who has pulled off such a literary coup. She was a keen writer from childhood, she says: “But my parents impressed upon me that it wasn’t a real job and I always loved history and museums, so that’s what I planned to do.” She was working as an assistant at the British Museum when she started making up stories about the objects she saw and first had an idea about a mermaid, after seeing the fake one in the museum’s collection, made from the top half of a monkey stitched onto a fish’s tail. After experimenting with an evening writing class at another London university, which didn’t feel right, she alighted on one at City. Immediately, things started to slot into place. “I knew that I was doing well in the class,” she says. “I felt like I was flourishing. It was fantastic.” Her progress led her towards an MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia (UEA) where she found her experience from City invaluable, particularly the workshop-style format. During a historical writing module at UEA, she started to experiment with the idea that would eventually become The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock. But instead of writing it immediately upon graduating, she chose to spend ten months researching the period in the British Library’s rare texts. She says: “It was daunting to feel that I hadn’t started writing, but I just felt that if I wasn’t fully immersed in the [midGeorgian] period, how could I write 20 City Magazine
the novel? I wanted to know things like how long it took to get dressed and how you moved around your home.” Hermes Gowar’s careful research extended to the physical. She walked around London to understand its geography as her characters would have done. “I also made and wore a robe de la reine, which is a flimsy muslin dress some women of the era wore. I was surprised at how freeing and radical it felt to wear something so unstructured,” she says. She also cooked using a cookbook from the period, Frederick Nutt’s The Complete Confectioner. “We forget how rare things like ice and sugar were. We don’t think about the luxury of achieving these things nowadays,” she says. Only after all of this did Hermes Gowar begin writing her novel and the depth of research is evident everywhere in the flawlessly rendered late-18th century milieu. She worked in the café in the mornings, before writing in the afternoons after making a deliberate decision not to distract herself with a professional career. She says: “I’d wanted to write a novel for so long, that I didn’t want to blow it. My boyfriend recently told me that he was really worried about me because I was so single-minded.” Once she finally started writing, she set herself a target of a thousand words a day. “I usually managed it, but I’m never doing that again. There were days when I had to chain myself to the computer to achieve it and sometimes I ended up churning out stuff I had to lose,” she says.
“ I hated the idea of spending the rest of my life thinking I could have done it. The fear was of letting myself down.”
After entering her novel into the Mslexia Novel Competition [Mslexia is an organisation committed to helping women writers progress and succeed] and becoming a finalist, she sent her manuscript out to seven agents. She attracted widespread interest but showed characteristic astuteness in taking her time to work out who to sign with. “You’re so grateful as a writer when somebody wants to represent you but the right agent is so important. I’ve seen people have a bad time with the wrong ones and it’s so dispiriting. I talked to the ones I met with about where they would position the novel and what edits they would want done,” she says.
first got in touch when she was at UEA and who negotiated her dazzling deal with Vintage; the very imprint that she had always hoped for.
She plumped for Karolina Sutton from literary agent Curtis Brown, who had
Nonetheless, I think it’s safe to expect good things.
With the book now released and enjoying superb reviews, further good news has swiftly followed. The film and television rights to The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock have been secured by BAFTA and Golden Globe-winning producer Colin Callender’s company, Playground. And Hermes Gowar is now at work on a second book. She says: “It will be very different from my mermaid book. I’ve written one book, but I’m back at the beginning with this one.”
Peng Shepherd’s debut, The Book of M, is about a mysterious plague that causes people’s shadows to disappear. Strange as the idea may sound, it’s not entirely fictional.
“I think that experience was invaluable. I don’t know if I would have kept going if I had felt like what I wanted to write wasn’t accepted. They were so important to me,” she says.
Shepherd says: “I knew that I wanted to write something about shadows. They are used across cultures as symbols and myths, but I just had the image and not really a story, so I started Googling things and stumbled across Zero Shadow Day.”
Pedder herself says that Shepherd’s star quality was easy to spot: “If I were betting on one of my alumni doing well, in my honest opinion, it would be Peng. She has all the attributes you need to succeed in the tough world of publishing... I taught her many years ago and was impressed then not just with her writing but with her ambition and motivation.”
This turns out to be an astronomical phenomenon which occurs when the earth’s rotation causes a certain area of land to become perfectly aligned with the sun, so that the sun is exactly over that place for a few minutes. In such a location, for the few minutes that the sun is overhead, people lose their shadows. It happens in a region of India, where a portion of Shepherd’s novel is set and there the real Zero Shadow Day is apparently a kind of mini-holiday, complete with activities, social media hashtags and gatherings. Yet in Shepherd’s hands, this becomes a terrifying epidemic dubbed the Forgetting, which robs large swathes of the world’s population of their shadows – and their memories. It was in 2010 that Shepherd, 32, who grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, but had ended up working for a risk consultancy firm in London, resolved to take her writing seriously. “I saw that City had these six-week short courses,” she says, “so I thought I’d take one and see if it worked for me. I ended up taking four or five; they were so helpful. They gave me a community of writers and readers to share my work with and learn from, but what was also really impactful was how accepting my tutors were of my genre-tinged work.” She adds: “Writing programmes have since become more genre-friendly, but back then literary fiction was definitely the main focus and I think a lot of writers felt pressured to write that way to be seen as talented, even if it wasn’t their true style. I was really nervous and sometimes embarrassed to submit my pieces that were so fantastical or science-fiction-esque, but my instructors Emily Pedder and Katy Darby were so encouraging, which really gave me the confidence to keep writing the way I wanted to write.
Novelists
Peng Shepherd
Her City experience convinced Shepherd that she wanted to do a creative writing postgraduate course and she ended up on a full scholarship to the New York University MFA Creative Writing course (“no mean feat” as Pedder says). After that, she found an agent by researching and making a list of her favourites, before querying them all with a letter, synopsis and the first few chapters. “It was absolutely terrifying,” she says, “but I was lucky to get multiple offers.” This level of interest was sustained when her novel was submitted. “My agent sent the manuscript out and we started hearing back from several imprints that they loved it... but my now-editor at Harper Voyager UK was extremely interested and moved very quickly. My agent and I were very happy with the match because both imprints really seem to understand and embrace novels that blend literary and genre elements, rather than making them more into one or the other.”
“ I saw that City had these six-week short courses, so I thought I’d take one and see if it worked for me.”
Like Hermes Gowar, Shepherd has a quiet confidence about her. But she admits that she “tried and quit” writing several novels before she finished The Book of M. “The lesson I learned is that sometimes when a story isn’t working, it might not be yours to write,” she says. What turned out to be seminal, for her, was switching to the word-processing program Scrivener for her creative writing. It enables you to move around chunks of text more easily and see the structure of your book at a glance. She says: “I switched over when I started The Book of M and I truly think it’s a not insignificant part of the reason I finished the novel. Almost none of my writer friends use it actually, but I would be lost without it.” City Magazine 21
Harriet Tyce Harriet Tyce’s debut thriller Blood Orange follows main character Alison Wood, a criminal barrister, as she leads a murder case, while in her personal life an affair threatens to cause repercussions. Firmly positioned in the domestic-noir genre, its psychological suspense and shocking twists have prompted the now-familiar comparisons to books such as Gone Girl. But Tyce, 45, who studied law at City and practised as a criminal barrister for a decade, before returning to City to take the Novel Studio short course, is perhaps better equipped than most to explore the nuance of the genre. Unlike her character Alison, she “never got as far as having a murder” but her experience of the complexities of the criminal justice system informs the book. This is an intelligent, considered, feminist domestic noir. Tyce says: “Violence against women isn’t going anywhere but what you can do is to ignore the lingering shots on the naked body. I really tried to make sure that Alison has agency.” As a mother-of-two, Tyce says that she was drawn early on in her writing to the “ambiguities of motherhood. The themes of motherhood and guilt.” As a working barrister herself, she found it hard to reconcile her career with having children. “After I had my first child I did try working part-time but the nature of the bar is that you get these last-minute calls. You might need to spend months living in a Travelodge in Nottingham,” she says. So, after shelving her law career, the success of Blood Orange is a thrill. “I’d been out of things professionally for a long time before. It was an absolute godsend because I am ultimately an ambitious person.” She adds: “I still can’t believe it’s happening. It’s beyond my wildest dreams. I’m very happy and slightly shell-shocked. I sometimes feel like I’ve entered this alternate reality where everyone is just being really nice to me.” City was crucial. “It was just a fantastic starting point in terms of structuring things and provided a systematic approach to the craft. The workshops where we had to share our work with the group were terrifying, but so instructive,” she says. 22 City Magazine
She went on to do an MA in Creative Writing Crime Fiction at UEA, a new and remote course. It was during this that she attracted agent interest. She is refreshingly unpretentious about the process of writing: “Once I’ve done all the planning I can write quite fast. I try to aim for about 1,000 words a day, which I sometimes can do in an hour. I love a bit of distraction. I can do ten intense minutes and then spend some time on Twitter. I don’t necessarily believe you have to write every day, or any of those other rules some people have.”
“ The workshops where we had to share our work with the group were terrifying, but so instructive.”
Unlike Shepherd, she doesn’t use Scrivener: “It’s just too damn easy to move your chunks around.” With rights to her book already sold in ten territories around the world, Tyce is on track for commercial success. She says: “It wasn’t a cynical decision to write in a commercial genre but that’s where I found my comfort zone.” Unsurprisingly, she loves reading crime fiction herself, but also adored the Patrick Melrose novels and is a keen fan of television show, The Great British Bake Off. Such a combination of dark and the cosily familiar sounds about right for the newest queen of domestic noir.
Opposite: Emily Pedder (left), Writing Coordinator for creative writing short courses at City, in conversation with Harriet Tyce about the latter’s upcoming book launch.
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Research, research, research. Take the method writing route. Eat, walk and even dress like someone from your book. Once Imogen Hermes Gowar had done this, she felt ready to inhabit her characters. Work out what genre you’re writing in. When it feels right and ‘fits like a glove’, you’re good to go. All three of the books by City alumnae are genre novels and stronger for it. Write for a set period each day rather than getting hung up on the word count. For The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock, Hermes Gowar set herself a target of 1,000 words a day, but for her new novel she has chosen to write for at least two hours a day instead. Distract yourself regularly with amusing Twitter threads, funny videos and gifs like Harriet Tyce. Concentration is important, but you don’t need to be a social media refusenik to write something good. And you’ll probably need a social media profile if you ever publish it. If the lure of Instagram really does get too strong, install Freedom, or another internet-blocking tool, as Tyce sometimes does to avoid distraction. Get started on your fiction before 10am like Peng Shepherd or the rest of the day will swallow you up. Go high concept. Hang your novel on one really memorable idea or motif, like Shepherd and Hermes Gowar. Use Scrivener. It allows you to analyse the structure of your book at a glance. For Shepherd it was key to her success. Don’t use Scrivener. For some the ability to easily move chunks of text around can get too confusing (as Harriet Tyce found). Don’t be too precious or get hung up on ‘rules’ for how to write a novel.
Need help with your novel idea? City offers a diverse range of fiction short courses from short stories to novel writing and has a strong track record of published alumni. For more information on the University’s flagship one-year Novel Studio course and all City’s other courses visit: www.city.ac.uk/ study/courses/short-courses/writing City Magazine 23
Novelists
Ten tips: How to write a bestseller the City way
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In this year’s Five to Watch, we meet City graduates going places in the worlds of invention, entrepreneurship, construction, marketing research and travel writing.
watch
to
Peter Greedy BSc OPTOMETRY, 1987
Mary-Ann Ooi Suan Kim POSTGRADUATE DIPLOMA IN PROFESSIONAL AND LEGAL SKILLS, 2007 Mary-Ann Ooi Suan Kim is the winner of the 2017 British Council Entrepreneurial Award, which celebrates the outstanding achievements of alumni and the impact of UK higher education. Currently a practising lawyer and head of her Kuala Lumpur-based law firm, OS Kim & Associates, Mary-Ann is also the founder of Builders Biomass, an environmentally friendly business which aims to alleviate global warming by incorporating protection strategies into business models and providing renewable sources of energy. “Winning this award was a humbling experience and inspired me to aim higher for excellence in my professional life. The award also gave me visibility and recognition, which helped me expand the growth of my professional network,” she says. Mary-Ann graduated in 2007 from The City Law School with a Postgraduate Diploma in Professional and Legal Skills. She was then admitted to the Bar and developed a passion for trade, sustainability, climate change, renewable energy and innovation. Mary-Ann recently joined City’s Strategic South East Asia delegation, which visited Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia to host alumni reunions but also foster collaboration with the Faculty of Law at the University of Malaya.
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Peter is a practising optometrist and the inventor of Greeper Laces, which are awardwinning shoelaces with fasteners designed to prevent tied shoes becoming untied. Born and raised in Newport, Peter studied and worked in optics for over three decades. After graduating, he worked in high-street practice and later joined the healthcare company Bausch & Lomb. In 2001, Peter’s life changed after he took inspiration from the frustration of his children’s shoelaces constantly becoming untied. Equipped with a pair of trainers and an idea in his mind, he went into his shed and invented a prototype of Greeper Laces. After getting a patent for his invention, Peter travelled to China to find a suitable manufacturer and launched the product in 2009. The innovative laces quickly received endorsements from successful athletes in triathlon and other endurance sports. “The original concept was all about preventing shoelaces from untying,” says Peter. “But discovering that my product has become the choice of several world champion athletes has been brilliant.” Greeper Laces also quickly found a significant application in assistive technology. The invention is now heavily used among people who living with conditions such as autism spectrum disorder, dyspraxia, Asperger syndrome and Down’s syndrome. “It is very rewarding to receive emails and letters from parents and customers who tell me how much the product has helped them and their family members to be independent.” In the future, Peter hopes Greeper Laces will become the standard lace system in the footwear industry.
5 to watch
Nashwa Hassanaly MEng CIVIL ENGINEERING, 2015 As part of her Civil Engineering degree, Nashwa undertook an industrial placement, which allows students to gain professional experience, develop industry-specific technical skills and gain a competitive edge before entering the job market. Arranged with the help of City’s Careers Service, she spent a year working as a Student Engineer at the civil engineering services specialists Dyer & Butler in Heathrow. “The year out experiencing the industry made my first steps in construction very smooth,” Nashwa says. “My degree taught me all the theory I needed to practise my trade. I sharpened my logical thinking and gained an understanding of how to approach engineering issues and communicate effectively on site.” Nashwa has worked as a Project and Construction Planner for two major engineering contractors: Laing O’Rourke and Mount Anvil. She has been involved in various construction projects, including the redevelopment of the Royal Docks West development, Hampstead Manor and a £160 million cancer research centre at Guy’s Hospital. “My job is very exciting,” she says, “because I get involved at all levels of projects, from design programmes and procurement orders to site construction and technicalities on site.” Nashwa is currently working towards becoming an accredited project manager, which will enable her to advise leadership teams on how to approach site projects. She also dreams of working in the western coast of Africa.
Nancy O’Hare EXECUTIVE MBA, 2014 Nancy O’Hare is a Canadian travel writer fascinated by foreign culture. She previously spent nearly two decades working in the oil and gas industry, culminating in roles at companies such as Encana and Addax Petroleum, based across five continents, in countries including Nigeria and Oman. After completing her Executive MBA at Cass Business School, Nancy decided to give up the corporate world and refocus her energy on travelling and writing. Last year, she published her first book, Dust in My Pack, capturing her favourite travel experiences in lesser-known destinations. Covering adventures such as hiking and white-rafting, Dust in My Pack is based on the experiences Nancy and her husband have had across five continents over 20 years, providing readers with personal insights and advice on how to devise their own trip. “I hope to inspire readers’ inner traveller, build their interest in visiting places they have typically disregarded and spark their cultural curiosity,” says Nancy. Looking back at her time at Cass, Nancy believes the best lesson was the value of tapping into a wider range of strategies and experience. “I was lucky to be part of a dynamic class with people from incredibly diverse backgrounds,” she says. “The MBA revealed an additional level of perspective.” Nancy is just about to publish her second travel book, which will capture unique places such as Bhutan’s protected Sakteng Valley and Iceland’s isolated Lónsöræfi region. Together with her husband, she is also planning a 1,700km, five-month expedition across Nepal to collect stories for a potential third book.
Ian Murray MSc BEHAVIOURAL ECONOMICS, 2017 Ian Murray is a co-founder and partner of house51, a new consultancy specialising in brand, advertising, media and social research. Ian’s idea was to provide an alternative to the traditional agency model and connect global brands with senior consultants across marketing, academia and the creative sector. Brands working with house51 include LinkedIn, ITV, Trinity Mirror and Cancer Research UK. Before founding house51, Ian held leadership roles in several leading marketing consultancies. He enrolled on a master’s degree at City to learn how to apply psychological insights to human behaviour in the real world. Ian says that house51 is driven by groundbreaking academic thinking: “Everything we do is inspired by the work I did on the course. ‘Behavioural science’ has become a buzzword in market research and the hype threatens to dilute its power to transform. By immersing our business in rigorous academic research, I have given our startup a vital point of difference and competitive edge.” This approach is bearing fruit, with house51 shortlisted for Research Agency Team of the Year at Mediatel’s 2018 Media Research Awards. Ian has some high-profile collaborations in the pipeline. “We are working with clients who have embraced behavioural science and are keen to use it to address the biggest questions facing the marketing and media industries,” he says.
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Collaborative research by City, University of London and the Indian Institute of Science is using advanced photonics to detect contamination in India’s watercourses. As Isabella Kaminski reports, this pioneering work could have widespread benefits for India and beyond.
26  City Magazine
Water quality in India
A young girl drinks from a reservoir in Khichan, India.
Cleaner than the speed of light M
any parts of the world experience problems with water quality, but few more so than India. Its poor infrastructure, large and fast-growing population and complex cultural relationship with rivers mean that many watercourses are laden with pollution and pathogens. India was a low performer on the University of North Carolina’s Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Performance Index 2015, ranked 93 of just over one hundred countries. This is a serious, direct health risk for the people that rely on the country’s water supplies and causes further problems down the line as the health of natural ecosystems decline. But there could be light on the horizon due to an ambitious collaborative research project employing City’s expertise in advanced photonics technologies and synthetic chemistry. In 2017, City, University of London’s Professor of Photonics, Professor Azizur Rahman and the Indian Institute of Science’s Professor Sundarrajan
Asokan won a combined £500,000 research grant from the India-UK Water Quality Programme to develop a novel system of sensors to detect contaminants in water bodies. The programme, funded by the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Indian Government’s Department of Science & Technology, supports novel research to improve understanding of the sources, transport and fate of pollutants in water and to determine the risks they pose to people and the environment. Professors Rahman and Asokan’s project, entitled ‘Innovative low-cost optical sensor platforms for water quality monitoring’, will contribute to this by developing optical sensors that detect problems with water more accurately, quickly and cheaply than existing systems by using the emerging technology of ‘guided wave photonics’. It is also supported by the NewtonBhabha Fund, named after the famous Indian scientist Homi Jehangir Bhabha, who played an important part in developing quantum theory. City Magazine 27
The sensors will use sophisticated specialist coated fibre Bragg grating technologies (a special type of reflector constructed in a short segment of optical fibre that only reflects particular wavelengths of light), as well as exploring the potential for nanofibres and plasmonic evanescent sensing to detect a range of different contaminants, be it physical, chemical or biological. “For each specific thing we are sensing, we need to work with, say, chemists or biologists in that area”, explains Professor Rahman. “But ultimately we want to see how the presence of something we want to detect changes the optical characteristics of our device.” These sensors will be attached to optical fibres, the same sort as those used in modern internet connections, because they are cheap, have an extremely high data rate and extremely low loss. “An optical sensor can be ten, twenty miles away and you can send a signal which can come back with minimum loss,” says Professor Rahman.
The team has an excellent pedigree for the research, which is important because this is a multidisciplinary job requiring a wide variety of skills and expertise. Professor Rahman of City’s School of Mathematics, Computer Science & Engineering is the world’s leading academic in photonics modelling. Since receiving his BSc and MSc degrees in Electrical Engineering with distinction from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology during the 1970s, he has published more than 500 papers, received over £10 million in research funds and coordinated numerous funded projects across India and other countries. His latest work has focused on the development of the next generation of optical sensors using nanotechnology, such as microstructured optical fibres, nanofibres, silicon slot guides and microresonators. Last year he was shortlisted for the prestigious Newton Prize [see boxed text opposite] for work on sensor technology in Malaysia. Professor Asokan leads the optical sensor research group at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, which has special expertise in nanotechnology, material characterisation and computing and a very active photonics group spread over many departments. He is the 28 City Magazine
founder of Openwater.in, a water treatment company in India spun off his academic department, so he brings direct and relevant industrial experience to the consortium. They will work alongside coinvestigator Professor Kenneth Grattan OBE FREng, George Daniels Professor of Scientific Instrumentation at the Royal Academy of Engineering and Dean of the City Graduate School, who has a significant international reputation in the field of sensors and instrumentation and has published several papers on water quality monitoring. Together the team has worked with an impressive array of organisations including Serco, Network Rail, Home Office, UK Border Agency, Arup, Fiat, BAE Systems and Amey Consulting. They met in India in May and will work together for at least the next three years. “Work on some parts has already begun,” says Professor Asokan. “It will give us a good opportunity to add the work of two complementary groups and make a very successful project.” Professor Rahman explains that the first part of the project is basic optical design. That is, designing optical sensors – sensors that convert light rays into electronic signals – that can detect specific substances in water and relay them back to a central control point.
Professor Ken Grattan OBE FREng (left) was a co-investigator on the project, which was led by Professor Azizur Rahman (the world’s leading academic in photonics modelling, pictured right) and the Indian Institute of Science’s Professor Sundarrajan Asokan.
Professor Rahman explains that he is experienced in the more theoretical work of design and optimisation, while Professors Grattan and Asokan have a more experimental leaning. “I have worked mostly on optical modelling and there are some sensors that are more advanced in theory,” he says. “Say you’re making a big dam and you’re pouring hundreds of tonnes of concrete and you want to find the temperature as it’s settling down. So you can have hundreds of thermal optical sensors measuring the temperature at different places and they’re sending signals. That we have done. I have also worked on a theoretical design of optical sensors for biosensing. We have published many papers on this.” Professor Grattan, meanwhile, has long worked on developing optical sensors for detecting temperature and physical measurements. For example, he has worked with City’s Department of Civil Engineering to develop sensors that detect deflections in a bridge if it comes under too heavy a load. And he has worked on a project putting hundreds of sensors on a ship’s propeller to detect stress at different locations. Since the team has already developed good temperature, pressure and humidity sensors, it decided to narrow this project to key targets, including biological pathogens such as E coli and cholera, chemical pollution such as arsenic, mercury and copper, as well as pesticides. “We said let’s focus on what is important for India,” says Professor Rahman. “So arsenic, for example, is a critical issue, particularly in West
The next step is to develop integrated systems that enable the information from a whole series of sensors to be relayed to a central control point without being confused. The idea is that many sensors will be ‘multiplexed’ or strung along a single optical fibre sending ‘guided wave’ signals back to a central control unit. This could vary from a couple of sensors to potentially hundreds; the team has already used a network of more than 330 optical sensors in single acoustic sensing system. “I could have ten different sensors – one for chromium, one for arsenic, et cetera – on the same sections of an optical fibre,” says Professor Rahman. “We’re talking millimetres long. Each is sensing a different contaminant, but using guided wave photonics, each of these uses a different wavelength, so the signals don’t interact and you can tell which one is sensing the presence of the target you want to detect.” Professor Rahman says the sensors will be a significant improvement on existing systems for monitoring water quality, which usually rely on electrical feedback or chemical and biological processing. They will be small, light and fast, relaying reliable information directly to the control panel. Chemical and biological analysis can take hours or days, may require a larger sample and have a potentially larger error rate, while electronic cables can be dangerous to use
in some places, such as coal or gas fields. This means problems in water supplies can be spotted much quicker, even in remote villages, providing support when and where it is most acutely needed. It also satisfies growing demand from citizens for real-time information about the water they are drinking. Once the design work has been done, the sensors will be tested in the lab. The Indian Institute of Science’s Department of Civil Engineering has an advanced hydrology laboratory with a complex network of water supply systems where particular substances can be injected and monitored. The team hopes to be testing its sensors there in a couple of years’ time. The next step might be to test out the sensors in a real-life situation but, as Professor Rahman points out, this is tricky; you can’t add arsenic to a public watercourse so you are at the whim of what may or may not be there. One potential location is West Bengal where there is a serious arsenic problem. The arsenic occurs naturally deep in groundwater, but this is increasingly being tapped for agricultural use, so concentrating it in human drinking supplies. The research team will then work alongside key stakeholders, including the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board which has agreed to test and evaluate the systems being developed. Bangalore, which is known as India’s Silicon Valley, does not have a particular problem with arsenic but does have serious water problems of its own, including the dumping of waste (including electronic waste) and untreated sewage into watercourses, which most recently has led to some of its famous lakes spectacularly catching fire.
USING OPTICAL SENSORS TO DETECT LANDSLIDES In 2017, Professor Rahman was shortlisted for the prestigious Newton Prize for his work developing optical rain and pressure sensors to provide an early warning system of potential landslides and ground movements in Malaysia. Malaysia has a regular and serious problem with landslides, which often kill people and devastate homes and communities. Professor Rahman’s department, together with the Photonics Research Centre at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, created a lightweight package of sensors that used little battery power but were robust enough for use in the country’s demanding environment. They enabled remote monitoring of rain-soaked soils
Investment in infrastructure research is very expensive, particularly in the cutting-edge science and engineering that has allowed many of the most exciting developments in photonics to occur. So while some companies have already used real-time remote monitoring systems for measuring water quality, this is the first time such systems will be developed using guided-wave optical approaches. Professor Rahman says that in the future, advanced sensors and techniques could be developed to expand the system to emerging pollutants, such as insecticides, fertilisers, antibiotics and hormonal contraceptives. “We didn’t want to start with 20 things,” says Professor Rahman. “We wanted to show that some of the heavy metals and some biopathogens are possible and then we’ll look at others.”
during the increasingly heavy monsoon seasons that are a precursor to landslides, providing predictions about areas at risk to inform the decisions of policymakers. The project was financed by the Newton-Ungku Omar Fund (which promotes science, technology and innovation collaborations between Britain and Malaysia) and was partnered with the British Council and the Malaysian Industry-Government Group for High Technology. The project also organised workshops for academics and industry representatives from all over Malaysia, helping SMEs work in this field.
From top: optical fibre chemical sensors developed in the laboratory at City; reagents used to make functionalised polymers for sensor coatings; an optical fibre humidity and temperature sensor designed for use in a highly acidic sewer environment.
He says that following the project, if someone wanted to develop a sensor for another metalloid or heavy metal, it might have a similar chemistry to arsenic and so it would be quicker to develop a specific sensor for it. New groups of substances, such as insecticides, could also be achieved but would take longer. Another future development, says Professor Rahman, would be to use silicon waveguides instead of optical ones because they would be even cheaper if the technology is developed on a larger scale. But that is for much further down the line. While the project has obvious benefits for India, it could be useful in many other places too. “If this can be developed in India it can be developed in many other third-world countries, or even in the UK,” says Professor Rahman. “Although cholera is not common, there are other contaminants. That area could be developed with the knowledge we’ve gained.” The work also has a positive secondary benefit to the UK. Photonics and biotechnology are hot topics at the moment, having been identified by the European Union as two of the six Key Enabling Technologies that will shape our world in the 21st century and provide major employment opportunities and economic growth. And while photonics is already key to crucial aspects of technological development, such as the internet, lighting, displays and optical communications systems, there is plenty of scope for further development. “If it can be developed for other countries and there is a big market, then UK industry can really get involved,” says Professor Rahman. City Magazine 29
Water quality in India
Bengal. You also have the leather industry which uses chromium so you get chromium contamination and biopathogens like cholera and typhoid across the country. So with arsenic, for example, we would look and say ‘what sort of polymer would react only with that, so the presence of other things should not affect it?’”
30  City Magazine
Women leaders
CONTRIBUTOR: Amy Ripley is a Senior Communications Officer for Cass Business School. She trained as a journalist at the University of Technology Sydney and has freelanced for the Sydney Morning Herald, The Daily Telegraph and BBC World Service.
Last year saw Cass Business School launch the Global Women’s Leadership Programme, which aims to equip women with all the tools they need to fulfil their career ambitions. Amy Ripley meets the Director of the programme and two of its scholars for insights into why the scheme is so important.
Inspiring women to be the leaders of tomorrow M
any women aspire to leadership roles at work but are unsure how to apply for them. They know that it is important to aim high and have a successful and fulfilling career but how can they learn, develop and nurture the skills that will get them to where they want to go? These questions have been given a great deal of consideration at Cass Business School. Last year, the Dean, Professor Marianne Lewis, decided she wanted to establish a flagship initiative to develop women’s leadership skills at Cass. The Global Women’s Leadership Programme was launched, under the direction
of Dr Canan Kocabasoglu-Hillmer, a longstanding advocate for women’s empowerment and an expert in supply chain management. Canan, who was born in Turkey, grew up in Germany and was educated in the US, began her academic career at the University of Kansas as an Assistant Professor in Operations and Supply Chain Management. While she was there, she served as the mentor for the American Business Women student chapter, which organised events to educate its members on coping strategies for women in the face of workplace challenges. Everything from balancing a career with family life, grappling with the gender pay
Opposite: Artis Kakonge (left) and Cassie Newman are both scholars on Cass’s Global Women’s Leadership Programme.
gap, navigating traditionally maledominated industries or dealing with harassment at work. “My experience with that chapter and those ambitious undergraduate students at the beginning of their career instigated my lifelong commitment to the professional advancement of women,” she says. According to Canan, the purpose of the programme is to ‘inspire, equip and connect’ women throughout their career, from undergraduate to postgraduate to alumnae and beyond. “We inspire by fostering ambition through events with stimulating speakers. We equip by helping
City Magazine 31
skills by coordinating development events spanning across London, Dubai, Hong Kong, Beijing and New York. The issues surrounding women, work and leadership are complex. According to the Office of National Statistics, more women are working today than ever before, with over 70 per cent of women aged 16-64 in employment. The state pension age for women also rose recently from 63 to 65 and is expected to rise again by 2020 to 66, meaning that women will be working longer, making it even more important to be happy at work. However, although the number of women on boards has increased slightly (from 11 per cent to 28 per cent from 2007 to 2017, according to a 2017 Cranfield School of Management report), women are still falling behind in leadership positions. Earlier this year, Women in Business, a 2018 report by Grant Thornton, found that women held just 22 per cent of senior leadership positions.
women develop skills, competence and resilience, either through workshops or by offering financial support to study at Cass. Finally, we connect women via networks, groups and communities supporting each other. All of these things encourage women to develop leadership skills and give them the confidence to apply for those roles or lead within their current role,” she says.
Dr Canan KocabasogluHillmer says the programme will “foster ambition” in its alumnae.
“ Our programme provides our students and alumnae with a platform to develop the leadership skills they need and learn from women who are at the top of their game.” In its first year, the programme awarded four scholarships, funded by the Coca-Cola Foundation, to Artis Kakonge (Modular Executive MBA, London), Kylie Poole (Executive MBA, London), Esra Baykal (Executive MBA, Dubai) and Renee Kroner (Fulltime MBA, London). The existing scholars were recently joined by Cassie Newman, a London Modular Executive MBA scholar. Serving as leaders within their respective programmes, the scholars develop and practise their leadership 32 City Magazine
It is this imbalance that the programme seeks to address, says Canan. “We need to see a dramatic increase in the number of women in leadership positions. We need to ensure a gender balance to make sure that our institutions – whether they are banks, businesses, charities or government – reflect society as a whole and encourage a breadth of perspectives and original thinking. “At Cass we lead by example and our programme provides our students and alumnae with a platform to develop the leadership skills they need and learn from women who are at the top of their game. We are here for Cass women at every stage of their career and beyond.” Artis Kakonge is a barrister specialising in children’s and family law at Garden Court Chambers and was the first scholarship recipient of the Global Women’s Leadership MBA Scholarship. She holds joint American and British citizenship and grew up in East, West and Southern Africa. After reading Law, she went on to gain an MSc in Criminal Justice Policy and an LLM in Law and Development. She was called to the Bar in 2006 after completing the Bar Vocational Course at the Inns of Court School of Law (now The City Law School). Artis decided to study for an Executive MBA (EMBA) and apply for the scholarship after opting to diversify her skill-set to ensure longevity in her career. Choosing a Cass EMBA meant
she could continue working while studying part-time. “I saw how the implementation of cuts to legal aid in 2010 changed the market for children’s law services dramatically,” she says. “It is a much more competitive arena and we must now be much more businessminded, doing more with less and finding creative solutions to deal with dwindling budgets. “I realised that in the long-term, specialist legal knowledge was insufficient to progress my career or to deal with the current challenges that I faced. I noticed that lawyers who were now senior executives in the public sector had an MBA and considered it a good investment.” Her involvement with the programme has also given her the impetus to develop the leadership skills she needs to have an impact in the public sector. “There is currently a ‘diversity deficit’ in the public and voluntary sectors in the UK, particularly at executive level. I think it is important for women to be equally represented in leadership roles and I thought this scholarship would help me break the glass ceiling. I was also attracted to the aims of the initiative and could relate to the importance of good leadership in working with marginalised communities,” she says. Artis recently organised one of the programme’s flagship events, titled ‘Respect at Work: When to command it and when to demand it’. She was joined by Alison Maitland, an Honorary Senior Visiting Fellow at Cass, co-author of Why Women Mean Business and a former Financial Times journalist; Catrin Lewis, a barrister specialising in employment and discrimination law at Garden Court Chambers; and Kate Grussing, founder of executive search firm Sapphire Partners. The panel reflected on their experiences throughout their careers and answered questions from the audience on overcoming the challenges that women typically face in the workplace. Cassie Newman is the newest programme scholar and the Head of Interventions for London Community Rehabilitation Company (LCRC), the largest private sector probation provider in England. Cassie, who grew up in London and holds a BSc in Criminal Justice and a master’s degree in Public Protection, chose to apply for the programme to broaden her experience and learn how to apply private sector knowledge to the public sector.
“It is particularly important to me to raise the profile of public sector legal services because of the important work that is done by social workers and child protection lawyers to achieve better outcomes for children at risk and their families. They are very hardworking people whose efforts are often unrecognised,” she says.
“ There is currently a ‘diversity deficit’ in the public and voluntary sectors in the UK, particularly at executive level.” She says the MBA has already proved useful in terms of developing her leadership skills and giving her a different perspective on her career.
In the long-term, Artis aims to start her own law firm, specialising in children’s law. She says: “This will involve business development; formulating a business and marketing strategy; monitoring compliance with regulatory bodies; the recruitment and mentoring of lawyers – all topics that I will have covered in my EMBA. I want to contribute more to the wider community by ensuring greater access to justice: the very reason I became a barrister.” Cassie says she is delighted with the breadth of experience that her MBA is giving her. She is still deciding exactly what she’d like to do once she graduates but is clear that she already feels she is developing the skills that will get her where she needs to go.
“I’ve been here three months and have already learnt more than I could have hoped for. The quality of tuition is superb and the diversity of my classmates has increased the benefits of attending. Studying for an MBA and my involvement in the programme is giving me the confidence to apply for jobs I would never have thought about before,” she says.
“Whatever I do and whoever I work for, it will need to have a positive impact on someone or something. I would welcome the opportunity to diversify my experience and bring what I have learnt to other aspects of the public
and not-for-profit sectors, but equally I would love to run my own business. I am hoping that the MBA will help me to answer some of these questions over the next two years,” she says. Canan says it is very rewarding to see the impact that the programme has had on Artis and the other scholars and also witness Cassie at the start of her journey at Cass. She says: “Artis, Renee, Esra, Kylie and Cassie are inspirational women and the leaders of tomorrow. They exemplify the best of Cass: tenacity, integrity and compassion. It is very rewarding to watch them progress through the programme and see them develop and thrive.”
The Cass Global Women’s Leadership Programme offers scholarships and leadership opportunities for high potential women and runs regular networking and development events. Forthcoming dates include an In Conversation event with Inga Beale, CEO of Lloyd’s of London on 24th October 2018 and an event with Jane Leslie, Vice President and Senior Portfolio Manager, Global Fixed Income and Currencies, Royal Bank of Canada on 29th October 2018. To find out more, visit: cass.city. ac.uk/global-womens-leadership
The programme is now extending its scholarships to undergraduate and MSc students. Canan is keen to encourage women to apply and suggests interested parties keep an eye on the programme’s website for the next application deadlines. She says the programme offers valuable support and career development for women from a range of backgrounds (both private and public sector) and says the main criteria is genuine ambition and commitment to empowering yourself and other women at Cass. “Every day we meet women who go on to succeed because they allowed themselves to dream big and chipped away at that dream one day at a time. Having a big dream allows us to have ambitious goals and working in small steps can help us not get overwhelmed. Allow us – the programme and Cass – to be your security net,” Canan says. Artis says that after she graduates she anticipates she will be able to take on more management responsibility, creating policy and improving the profile of public sector legal services, in the process.
The programme offers opportunities for inspirational women with tenacity, integrity and compassion.
City Magazine 33
Women leaders
“Some aspects of probation work were recently privatised and so I am now working for a private sector company delivering public services. I was looking at doing either a PhD or an MBA for a few years. The PhD would have been very specific to criminal justice but I knew that an MBA would widen my knowledge and give me the skills from a variety of industries in the private sector which would add more value to the work I was delivering for the public sector,” she says.
She kept Emmeline Pankhurst alive Catherine Pine trained at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, now part of City, University of London’s School of Health Sciences. She went on to become an ally of Pankhurst and the suffragette movement. “I do not come here as an advocate [for women’s suffrage],” Emmeline Pankhurst told a crowd assembled in Connecticut in November 1913, “I come here as a soldier who has temporarily left the field of battle.” In February that year, the women’s rights organiser was sentenced to three years’ penal servitude for inciting the blowing up of a building in Surrey. She immediately went on a hunger strike. The ‘Cat and Mouse Act’ had just been signed into law to prevent suffragettes from starving themselves to death in police custody; a potential PR disaster for the Government. The Act allowed the discharge of prisoners due to ill health, who would then be surveilled 34 City Magazine
and reimprisoned as soon as they recovered. Over the five months that followed, Pankhurst went through that same cycle: starvation almost to the point of death, release, recuperation and rearrest. Throughout this period of “civil war”, as Pankhurst called it, between women and the state, there was an ally who can be seen in photographs of the leader’s arrests and convalescences, who was often by her side and aided in the recovery of her health. This businesswoman and health professional was educated at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, many decades before it was renamed St Bartholomew School of Nursing and Midwifery and
soon after it was incorporated into City’s School of Health Sciences. Her name was Catherine Pine, but in the writings of the suffragettes whom she aided she was occasionally known as ‘Piney’ and, more frequently, simply as ‘Nurse Pine’.
CONTRIBUTOR: Jessica Holland (Magazine Journalism, 2007) is a freelance journalist, copywriter and editor who has written for The Guardian, Vice and Al Jazeera. Illustration by Diego Pedauye.
Catherine Pine was born in 1864 in Maidstone, Kent and educated at St Bart’s between 1895 and 1897. Elizabeth Crawford’s book The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide reports that during her training, she was described as being “punctual, very kind and attentive, very patient and even tempered, obedient, accurate and clean and neat in person and work”. Ward sisters, the entry continues,
In a telephone conversation, author Elizabeth Crawford confirms this account, explaining that Nurse Pine “was never involved in militancy herself”, although records do show that her colleague, Nurse Townend, was injured in a tussle with the police in 1913 at a meeting at Bow Baths Hall at which Sylvia Pankhurst, Emmeline’s daughter, was the speaker. recorded that “she will make a very good nurse” and that she was “a nice, sensible woman”. After qualifying, Pine stayed on at St Bartholomew’s, working as a hospital sister, until 1907. The following year, she and another Bart’s graduate, Gertrude Townend, founded their own private nursing home in a villa called Pembridge Gardens in Notting Hill. The two didn’t just have their alma mater in common; they were also both members of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), the leading militant organisation campaigning for women’s suffrage in the UK. It was to this nursing home that Emmeline Pankhurst took her son Harry when he became seriously ill with polio, with Catherine Pine among those who cared for him. He could not be saved however and died two years later at the age of 20. It may have been this initial connection between Pankhurst and Pine that first forged their friendship; what is known is that Pine and Townend’s nursing home became popular among suffragettes recuperating after imprisonment. After the Cat and Mouse Act was passed, it was there, for a time, that militant campaigners for the women’s vote went to be nursed back to health between stretches of incarceration. Beverley Cook, Curator of Social and Working History at the Museum
The 1913 arrest of Emmeline Pankhurst (centre) in Woking, with an indignant Catherine Pine (black coat) stood by her side.
In fact, she adds, Catherine Pine’s adherence to the law was steadfast; she wouldn’t even be persuaded to allow women on release from prison under the Cat and Mouse Act to escape from her nursing home, because she would have been aiding and abetting. At other houses, these escapes would have been facilitated. “As far as I know, she stayed on the right side of the law all the time while looking after all the suffragettes,” says Crawford. By 1913, it was well known that the nursing home in Pembridge Gardens was housing Pankhurst and other suffragettes. It became “so besieged by detectives and onlookers,” Crawford writes in her reference guide to the suffrage movement, that Pine began caring for Pankhurst at other safe houses in London and Surrey. The bond between the two women continued even after the outbreak of the First World War, when Emmeline Pankhurst decided to halt all militant suffrage activities to show support for Britain, until fighting on the mainland ended. During this period, Pankhurst became an advocate for the war effort and for the plight of so-called ‘war babies’ (children born to single mothers whose fathers were on the front lines). She established an adoption home for these children and placed Catherine Pine in charge of running it. In 1920, Pine joined the Pankhursts, with the four war babies that they had gone on to adopt, as they travelled to
America and then Canada the following year. Pine returned to England in 1923, where she lived until her own death in 1941. She was buried in Chatham, Kent. While her name hasn’t become as well known as the activists she aided, those interested in her story can find artefacts relating to her on display at more than one London institution. A suffragette medal donated by Pine, which may have once belonged to Emmeline Pankhurst, can be found at the British College of Nursing and a collection of photographs assembled by her and donated via a group called the Suffragette Fellowship, in 1950, are in the collection of the Museum of London. These photographs, originally pasted in a series of scrapbooks which have since been dismantled, offer a valuable snapshot of the campaign for the women’s vote. “The images that the collection has of the campaign are very strong and rich,” Cook says, “and the fact that they’re all together in one place is significant. It is a unique collection.” The photographs can be viewed online, while some can be seen in the museum’s permanent collection dedicated to the suffrage campaign, along with a new film that is screening during 2018 at the institution to mark one hundred years of the women’s vote. Among them is a shot of Emmeline Pankhurst being arrested in Woking (pictured), while Nurse Pine stands at her side with her hands on her hips and a defiant expression on her face. There are also images of Nurse Pine, in white cap and apron, standing behind Pankhurst’s bed, in which the suffrage leader was recovering from hunger strike. The nursing school where Pine trained continues to be a boundary-pushing institution today as part of City, ranking first in London for nursing, according to the Complete University Guide 2019. It was Pine’s education there that enabled her to play a supporting role in the fight for the women’s vote, not as a leader who made headlines and tussled with politicians, but as a source of compassion and quiet determination who helped those leaders stay alive. To mark International Women’s Day in 2018, Catherine Pine was one of two additions to the Extraordinary Women wall display in City’s College Building. The other was Nicole Young (International Journalism, 2003), a multiple Emmy Award-winning producer of CBS’s 60 Minutes. City Magazine 35
Catherine Pine
of London, oversees the museum’s collection of artefacts related to women’s suffrage. She says that Pembridge Gardens became the obvious place for suffragettes to recuperate, because “they needed a safe place to recover and a nursing home that was supportive to the campaign was an obvious choice”. This, she adds, “was potentially a difficult thing to do, which could have affected business quite badly if people objected. [Pine] was prepared to risk the reputation of her business. She never served terms of imprisonment herself, or undertook direct action, such as window smashing, but obviously her contribution was huge”.
In profile: Sarah Thompson Amid mounting pressure on its services, in 2018 the NHS celebrates its 70th birthday. Sarah Thompson, Cass alumna and chief executive of a local hospice, explains why strong leadership in the hospice sector is crucial in alleviating pressure on hospitals and local communities. Hospice Leadership and Management module in 2017. It is fitting that in 2018, the 70th anniversary of the NHS, the first intake of students from the Hospice Management pathway will commence their specialist teaching. As Chief Executive of St Clare Hospice and a Cass alumna, Sarah has been nominated to join an advisory panel at Cass CCE. “Strong leadership within the hospice sector is so important,” she said. “This sector grew out of a grassroots movement 50 years ago, with local people deciding that care for the dying wasn’t good enough. They wanted to do something about it. Now, hospices are trying to strike a balance between community-led activism and excessive bureaucracy. It takes a lot of skill and leadership to be able to lead in this environment and to bring the public with you.” Sarah says: “I have loved every minute of my career so far. The master’s degree taught me that it’s the beneficiaries I work for. I’m constantly asking myself, ‘What do I need to do to get this organisation to meet the needs of local people?’”
A
fter a dynamic and successful seven-year career working in senior fundraising positions in the non-profit sector, Sarah Thompson (MSc Voluntary Sector Management, 2013) successfully applied to Cass Business School in order to build her credentials for chief executive roles. “I’ve always felt extremely ambitious,” she said, “I had been continually striving for chief executive but, as a fundraiser, I felt that I needed the breadth and depth of knowledge to prove that I had the skills required to succeed in the role.” The Cass Centre for Charity Effectiveness (Cass CCE) is the leading non-profit and philanthropy centre in the UK and among the best in the world. With a vision to see a strong non-profit sector leading positive social change, the Centre’s reach extends 36 City Magazine
to thousands of skilled leaders and managers across the world. Almost four years after graduating from Cass, Sarah’s dream role of Chief Executive at St Clare Hospice became available. “The master’s degree enabled me to be taken seriously as someone who could cope with complex organisations. I’ve always aspired to work at St Clare’s; I was so happy to hear I’d been given the job,” she says. The importance of strong leadership in the hospice sector is something that Sarah has always felt passionately about: “My mum was a nurse; she always spoke about hospices being better places for people coming to the end of their life.” Against the changing landscape of the hospice sector, Cass CCE teamed up with Hospice UK to launch a new
Sarah Thompson
The hospice care sector supports more than 200,000 people with terminal and life-limiting conditions in the UK each year. With the NHS at a crucial tipping point, the creation of leaders like Sarah, who are equipped to make the best possible decisions, will be paramount to supporting communities up and down the country. Cass CCE is working to widen its sphere of influence in the non-profit sector by appointing a senior academic member of staff to help increase the number of charities receiving free or reducedcost education, advice and support for research to explore new areas. The University is seeking financial support for this outstanding work. If you can help, would like to know more or can introduce us to others who may be able to help, please contact Director of Development David Street on 020 7040 5556 or at david.street.1@city.ac.uk.
City Alumni Network Once a part of City, always a part of City Once you graduate, you automatically become a lifelong member of our Alumni Network. We have over 140,000 members worldwide, including former staff. As part of our Alumni Network, you can access the following: Alumni benefits To access some of our alumni benefits, apply for an alumni card at: www.city.ac.uk/alumni Careers Access the careers services for up to three years after you graduate. Library Services Use your alumni card to access the libraries at Northampton Square, Cass Business School and The City Law School. Senate House Library You can now access the library at Senate House* for private study and non-commercial research only. You must pay the alumni membership rate and need to show a valid alumni card when applying to the library for the first time. Remote electronic resources Gain remote access to many of the online databases. Graduate Loyalty Discount Graduates are offered a discount on fees of at least ten per cent when applying for postgraduate courses. CitySport CitySport offers a 20 per cent alumni membership discount rate. Visit: www.citysport.org.uk City Sight You are entitled to free sight tests and a discount of up to 20 per cent off a complete pair of glasses at City Sight. Visit: www.city.ac.uk/city-sight Lifelong email If you graduated from 2013 onwards, you can continue to use your City email account.
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