Imprint Lincoln College News SEPTEMBER 2017
Editorial
Contents
A lot has happened at Lincoln since the last edition of Imprint went to press; Fellows have come and gone; students have matriculated and graduated; and the College has launched a new Campaign, The Road to 2027 #watchthisspace.
COLLEGE NEWS
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THE ROAD TO 2027 #WATCHTHISSPACE JULIA UWINS
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DISCOVER LINCOLN LINDSAY McCORMACK
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BAKING AND BURIALS: ART AND CLASS IN ANCIENT ROME JOSHUA THOMAS
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IN CONVERSATION WITH... BARBARA HAVELKOVÁ
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A full article on our Campaign aims, and the launch parties we held around the world, can be found on pages 2-4. An interview with one of our Campaign speakers, Alexander Baker (2003), is on pp.28-9. As part of our Campaign, we have also launched an exciting new initiative, ‘Discover Lincoln’, where our people share stories about their favourite Lincoln places and objects (p.5). Our Fellows have also been as busy as ever, carefully balancing teaching commitments with their own research, and we are grateful to them for contributing articles to Imprint. Joshua Thomas (Lavery-Shuffrey Early Career Fellow in Roman Art and Archaeology) debates the existence and role of class in ancient Rome, whilst Fellow in Engineering Science, David Hills, sheds light on his research group and their collaborative work with Rolls-Royce. Meanwhile, Barbara Havelková (Shaw Foundation Fellow in Law) and Timothy Michael (Fellow in English Literature) discuss their recently published books, Gender Equality in Law: Uncovering the Legacies of State Socialism and British Romanticism and the Critique of Political Reason respectively. Our student section begins with reports from the JCR and MCR presidents, before examining the importance of welfare at Lincoln and the fun ways in which it has been integrated into daily College life. We also explore studentled initiatives, from the new seminar series, Lincoln Leads, to the first ever College musical revue. The choir report back from their summer tour of Poland, whilst Ruby Gilding (2015) picks her highlights from the Turl Street Arts Festival as it celebrates its twentieth anniversary. On the sports-side, it was another eventful year for LCBC, the highs and lows of which are reported by President Thomas Frost (2012), alongside sports reports from the JCR and MCR. This edition of Imprint takes a closer look at the role of access and outreach, with a full interview with Lincoln’s Schools Liaison Officer, Claire White, on pp.14-5. We also hear from alumni involved with access work; Naomi Kellman (2008) who has launched ‘Target Oxbridge’, aimed at increasing diversity at Oxbridge, and George Hoare (2002), the founder of ‘Universify Education’ (pp.30-1). Another alumni article comes from an interview with adventurer and entrepreneur Oliver Rampley, who gave up life in London in favour of conducting organised wildlife trips in Italy and Spain. His advice? ‘Learn how to make a strong gin-and-tonic, then go for it.’ Our final alumni segment focuses on poet and former member, Edward Thomas, who was sadly killed in action during the First World War. As we mark the centenary of his death, Lincoln’s Rector, HR Woudhuysen, looks back at Thomas’s life and literature. To wrap things up, we take a look at news from the alumni community, with a more in-depth piece focusing on the achievements of alumni Jane McAdam (2001) and Ahilan Arulanantham (1994), both of whom recently won prestigious awards for their work defending human rights. We hope you enjoy the 2017 edition of Imprint.
Julia Uwins Alumni and College Communications Officer 42 | College & Fellows
MAKING CONTACT DAVID HILLS
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POST-TRUTH POLITICS, REVISITED TIMOTHY MICHAEL PAGE 12 INTRODUCING THE SCHOOLS LIAISON OFFICER AN INTERVIEW WITH CLAIRE WHITE
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JCR REPORT
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MCR REPORT
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LINCOLN LEADS HEATHER MANN (2015)
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HEARTS AND MINDS: WELFARE AT LINCOLN
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STUDENT NEWS
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ON THE RIVER LCBC REPORT
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COLLEGE SPORTS
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EVENTS REPORT 2016–17
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MY LINCOLN ALEXANDER BAKER (2003)
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NOT SO RARE: ENCOURAGING DIVERSITY AT OXFORD NAOMI KELLMAN (2008)
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KEEPING FAITH WITH DH LAWRENCE AN INTERVIEW WITH OLIVER RAMPLEY (2003)
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IN PURSUIT OF SPRING – REMEMBERING EDWARD THOMAS H. R. WOODHUYSEN
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HUMAN RIGHTS AWARDS FOR LINCOLN ALUMNI
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ALUMNI NEWS
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Front cover image by John Cairns
A portrait of Nigel Wilson An oil portrait of Mr Nigel Wilson (Supernumerary Fellow in Classics) was commissioned in 2016 and funded thanks to a kind donation from Roger Michel. Some of Nigel’s former students joined the Rector, Fellows and friends for the official portrait unveiling on Wednesday 22 February 2017. There was a reception, with music from Seana Davey (harp) and Margaret Cameron (soprano). The portrait, by artist Sharman Buechner, is now hanging in the Williams Room and alumni are warmly encouraged to view it when they are next in College.
Lincoln appoints its first Artist in Residence In Michaelmas Term, we welcomed Patrice Moor to the Lincoln community as our first James Watson Artist in Residence.
public - he is the author of more than 70 books which aim to increase public understanding of chemistry.
She has previously held the position of Artist in Residence at Somerville College and Oxford’s Botanic Gardens, amongst others. Patrice’s website, and work, can be found here: www.patricemoor.co.uk. RIBA awards for the Berrow Foundation Building We are delighted to announce that the Berrow Foundation Building has won the RIBA South Award 2017 and RIBA South Building of the Year 2017, as well as a RIBA National Award.
Admission of Assessor Lincoln’s Tutorial Fellow in Jurisprudence, Professor Stefan Enchelmaier, has been admitted as the University of Oxford’s Assessor.
Designed by Stanton Williams with Rodney Melville and Partners, the building officially opened in 2015 as an extension and restoration of the existing 1905 building.
The formal ceremony of admission took place at the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford on Wednesday 15 March. A procession travelled from Lincoln College to the Sheldonian where Stefan was presented to the University and admitted to office.
The ‘careful reading and continuation of key lines, retention and balancing of existing neo-classical features with contemporary ones’ is described by RIBA as ‘exceptionally successful and demonstrates what can be achieved if maturely handled’.
The Assessor, along with the Senior and Junior Proctor, is a senior officer and trustee of the University. Together, they oversee University business and scrutinise its decision making process. The Assessor is particularly focused on student welfare and finance.
We are thrilled that the hard-work and careful design of the building has been recognised by RIBA, and we would like to thank everyone involved for making the project such a success.
‘I am very glad I took on this role: it affords me a unique insight into the workings of the University; I also get involved in many interesting questions that I did not even realise arise; and I met a great number of interesting people from all over the University. Most importantly, my case works enables me to help many students in difficulties.’ – Professor Stefan Enchelmaier. n
RIBA awards are given to buildings which are seen to have made a significant contribution to architecture in the UK and are an internationally recognised mark of excellence. Grady Stack Award for Professor Peter Atkins Congratulations to Professor Peter Atkins (Supernumerary Fellow in Chemistry) who was the recipient of the 2016 Grady-Stack Award from the American Chemical Society. The award recognises Professor Atkins’s contributions to the interpretation of chemistry for the
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College news
During her time here, Patrice will engage herself in the life of the College and will respond by producing work which will form the content for an exhibition towards the end of Trinity Term 2018.
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The Road to 2027 #watchthisspace The aim of our new Campaign is to pave the way for the College’s 600th anniversary and to ensure that Lincoln is in the best possible condition when we reach this landmark. This means addressing some of the most pressing issues the College currently faces, both in terms of funding posts and supporting our students, but also with respect to our buildings and collections. We want to secure the future of both our people and our places. Safeguarding the tutorial system remains our primary goal; we believe that it remains the most effective and beneficial way to teach our students. However, it is an expensive model to maintain, and we need to build up our endowment to preserve it for future generations. Most Lincoln Fellows hold a joint post between the College and the University, which is at risk of being lost should the University choose not to continue funding the post after a Fellow leaves or retires. With this in mind, Lincoln has identified the five posts currently without endowments, and
The Campaign’s hashtag - #watchthisspace – works in two ways: in one sense it’s about keeping track of what’s going on at Lincoln, especially as we draw closer to the 600th anniversary; but it’s also about inviting past and present students to be part of the ‘space’ we’re creating, both digitally and in the College. 2 | College & Fellows
therefore the most vulnerable should a Fellow leave: Mathematics, Philosophy, Politics, Economics, and Engineering. Raising funds to endow posts in these subjects and to guarantee their future at Lincoln is a top priority for this Campaign; of course we also welcome support for other subjects, and we are delighted that a gift from Simon (1966) and June Li will allow us to establish a Fellowship in Chinese Art History, enabling us to teach History of Art at Lincoln for the first time. The other group of people we aim to support are our students. In recent years much has been done to secure funding for undergraduates, and so this Campaign sees the focus move to our graduate students. With cuts to government funding and large debts from their undergraduate degrees, it is a difficult time to be a graduate student. It
is therefore vital that we are able to offer generous bursaries and scholarships to continue to attract the best students, and to ensure that all those who wish to embark upon postgraduate study at Lincoln are able to do so. The Elman Poole Scholarship, to support a masters student from New Zealand, has been recently awarded to Anan Chai, thanks to the generosity of Elman Poole (1953), a native New Zealander who came to Lincoln as a graduate student in medicine. The success of the scheme has led Elman to pledge funding for four additional scholarship students, and we hope others will join Elman in his support of graduate students over the course of the Campaign. The other pillar of Lincoln College, and of this Campaign, is our places. We want to support our physical buildings,
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particularly through the refurbishment of our historic spaces including the Chapel, the Beckington Room, the Kitchen and the rooms formerly occupied by V. H.H. Green in Staircase 14. In addition, we are committed to improving access to our collections, and through our Lincoln Unlocked initiative, we offer a unique opportunity to support research and study within our Library and Archive. Our goal is to catalogue and digitise our collections to make them more accessible, and to foster interdisciplinary research on private and institutional collections by drawing on Lincoln’s own resources and expertise.
love of the College buildings, reliving memories of rooms and places that mean a lot to us, and celebrating how lucky we are to be part of this special ‘space’. THE LONDON LAUNCH PARTY On Thursday 9 March, 2017, over two hundred alumni, students, Fellows and friends, gathered at the Banking Hall in central London to celebrate the launch of our Road to 2027 Campaign.
The Grade II listed building, designed in the 1930s, with towering marble columns and a unique Art Deco charm, was the perfect space in which to entertain our guests. The balcony overlooking the Hall became home to our band, the Oxford University Jazz Orchestra, who we would like to thank for keeping us entertained all evening. Dotted around the room were large screens, which were used to display a live feed of social media engagements with the hashtag
The other aim of the Campaign is to encourage engagement and to create a sense of a global Lincoln community, through participation in events, social media, and giving. The Campaign’s hashtag – #watchthisspace – works in two ways: in one sense it’s about keeping track of what’s going on at Lincoln, especially as we draw closer to the 600th anniversary; but it’s also about inviting past and present students to be part of the ‘space’ we’re creating, both digitally and in the College. It’s about sharing our College & Fellows | 3
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#theroadto2027. It was fantastic to see our guests tweeting and instagramming about the event online, and to hear from alumni at other launch events around the world. Later, the screens took centre stage as they debuted the official Campaign video (available on theroadto2027.com). Hanging from the ceiling were two large banners illustrating the Campaign’s two areas of importance; the College’s people and its places. Familiar faces graced the ‘people’ banner, with Katie Ali (Hall Supervisor), Carmella Elan-Gaston (Graduate Officer), Richard Malloy (Chef) and Simon Faulkner (Bar Manager) taking their place alongside students and Fellows. Guests enjoyed a selection of canapés, wines, and a Lincoln signature cocktail (made with gin and a few other secret ingredients) throughout the evening. Later on there was also a very popular crumble bar, where our guests could customise their own dessert. As well as networking, socialising, and catching up with old friends, our alumni were also entertained by talented magician, Jason Davison, who wowed the crowd with his card tricks. It was then time for the Campaign to be officially launched – with speeches from the Chair of the Development Committee, Richard Hardie (1967), the Rector, Professor H.R. Woudhuysen, and alumnus Alex Baker (2003). Richard
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began by welcoming all those present and thanking them for supporting the College, before drawing attention to the Development Committee, the Rector’s Council, and the Lincoln for Life Committee, all of which had members present. Richard then handed over to the Rector, who introduced the Campaign and touched upon its main priorities – safeguarding and protecting the people and places that make Lincoln special. As the Rector reminded us, “this place is our place” and we must do our utmost to preserve it for future generations. Finally, we heard from Alex Baker (interviewed on pp.28-29), who gave an insightful and inspirational talk focusing on what makes Lincoln special, the transformative effect it had on his life and why he now chooses to support the College financially. Alex also discussed other ways to support Lincoln – by sharing the Campaign video online, engaging with social media and news, and by attending events. Multiple screens around the room then played the Campaign video before Richard proposed a toast to Lincoln College; to its people and to its places.
A GLOBAL REUNION To coincide with the London launch, and for alumni living overseas, we organised a series of international events with help from our Chapter Leaders. Melbourne held their first regional event, in conjunction with the Launch, and we thank Sir Rod Eddington (1974) for hosting drinks at his company offices in the city centre. Our alumni in North America and Canada celebrated with drinks events in Washington, DC (organised by Chelsea Souza (2012)), a dinner at Postino Wine Café in Denver (thanks to David George (2014)) and drinks in Vancouver (thanks to Susie Benes (2009)). In Europe, meanwhile, there were drinks receptions held in Zurich, Paris, Dublin and Brussels, thanks to the Chapter Leaders and volunteers in each city: Ramin Gohari (2010), Alison Culliford (1986), Kathryn Segesser (2008) and Caroline Calomme (2014) respectively. n Julia Uwins Alumni and College Communications Officer
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Discover Lincoln
As you may know, Lincoln has recently launched Lincoln Unlocked, with the aim of showcasing, and improving access to, the College’s archives, books and collections.
Lincoln has many distinctive items, spaces, and places that make it special and we will be highlighting these through the Discover Lincoln series – a look at the unique objects and historic places of Lincoln told through Lincoln’s best asset – its people. We will be introducing a new object at least once a month on our website (http://lincolncampaign.com/our-places/ lincoln-unlocked/).
Below, please find our first entry by Archivist, Lindsay McCormack, describing a lantern in the Lincoln Archive. Please get in touch if there is a space or object at Lincoln that is special to you, or for which you have a story to share with others. We would love to include alumni perspectives in this series! Jane Mitchell Deputy Development Director
Simple, functional, beautiful Recently, I have had the enjoyable occasion to sort some of the objects in the Archive into what has become the unofficial College museum. One of these items is a lantern which is likely to date from the early 19th century. It appears to be constructed of tin plate which has oxidised over time, giving it a warm, coppery-red tone. It is cylindrical with a conical top and probably had a looped carrying handle, now missing. The lantern is punched to make an attractive decorative pattern of hearts, circles and ornamental slits. The light has a single candle socket in the base behind a cracked bulls-eye glass lens to transmit the glow. It also has a space for a door to change the candle and let out more light. Perhaps the lantern was removed from the Hall during the restoration by T G Jackson in 1889-91, or when electric lights were introduced in 1903. Its function would allow a candle to be taken from place to place without going out and illuminating the space in situ, perhaps like modern task lighting. This lantern might have accompanied College servants going about their duties, or provided additional lighting in Hall to the tables already lit by candelabra.
The lantern has recently had a bespoke box made for it by the Packaging and Display Service at the Bodleian Library. The lantern is now inserted into a plastazote base in a heavy archival card tray with a slot for its lid. The top of the box is full-depth, enabling the lantern to be shown without removing it from its packaging; this will help preserve the fragile metal. The growing ‘museum’ is now located on static shelving to ensure objects do not slide off the rolling racking. I love that the lantern still has the last candle in situ even though it is now wilted in the base: evidence of its final outing. This piece exemplifies the beauty of many of the everyday objects which feature around Lincoln, adding collectively to its visual culture. The lantern could have been admired or even taken for granted by those students, Fellows, staff and visitors having meals in the period when it was in service, but it illuminated the Hall which has always been a central part of College life. Who basked in its glow, I wonder, and what were their stories? n Lindsay McCormack Archivist
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Baking and Burials: Art and class in ancient Rome Joshua Thomas is currently the LaveryShuffrey Early Career Fellow in Roman Art and Archaeology at Lincoln, having completed his DPhil here in 2016. He is particularly interested in the art of the Hellenistic and Roman worlds, and is in the process of revising his doctoral thesis into a monograph entitled Taxonomy and Zoology in Hellenistic Art and Society. The past few years seem to have been accompanied by more than their fair share of unpredictability. I read somewhere recently that a £5 bet on Leicester City winning the Premier League, Britain voting to leave the E.U. and Donald Trump winning the U.S. Presidential Election would have returned a cool £15,000,000. Pocketing that kind of money would improve anyone’s year. While the footballing world seems to have reverted to type since the triumph of messrs Ranieri, Mahrez and Vardy, the effects of Brexit and Trump will undoubtedly be more long-lasting. In the aftermath of these events many of us found ourselves asking how and why they had happened. ‘Post-truth’ politics and politicians? Perhaps. Deeply divided societies in which the gap between the ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ of globalisation has grown into a chasm of fear and despair? So I’m told. Within these divided societies, ideas like social class and identity seem more difficult to pin down than ever. This being the case in 2017, our chances of defining and evaluating social class in ancient Rome seem, on the face of things, rather slim. But this hasn’t stopped some scholars from trying, notably Emanuel Mayer, who in 2012 published an exciting new monograph entitled The Ancient Middle Classes. This study has since elicited a very mixed critical response. According to one commentator, ‘[t]his is a splendid book written in an engaging style’. According to another, ‘[t] he argument is so riddled with unchallenged 6 | College & Fellows
L Joshua Thomas
[T]he most pressing problem is one of definition. Which groups of Roman society belonged to the middle classes? Which belonged to the upper and lower classes? How should these classes be defined in relation to one another?
assumptions and internal contradictions that one wonders how this book passed serious scholarly review.’ So, why the controversy? The argument at the heart of Mayer’s book is that ‘middle classes’ existed in ancient Rome, and that the members of these ‘middle classes’ possessed a shared set of values that together constituted something like a common cultural identity. One of the ways in which this common identity could be expressed was through the art that these people produced for their houses and for their tombs. A famous example: in the second half of the first century B.C., a freedman (former slave) named Eurysaces built a large tomb on a main road leading into Rome. The tomb incorporated a series of nine cylindrical openings that imitated the bowls in which kneading machines were installed in contemporary Roman bakeries. It was decorated with a frieze showing men making bread and by an inscription telling us that the ashes of Eurysaces’ wife were placed inside an urn shaped like a breadbasket. Eurysaces the star baker? Not exactly. More like Eurysaces the star baking contractor who, judging by the size of his tomb, had amassed a considerable fortune through his mastery of his chosen profession. For Mayer, this is an eye-catching example of ‘middle-class pride’: Eurysaces the ex-slave broadcasting precisely how he had become enormously wealthy. Other funerary monuments articulated this sense of pride in a comparable way, depicting the everyday work of the cobblers, sculptors, building contractors, butchers, and cutlers that they commemorated. We can hardly doubt that such men took a certain amount of pride in their professional lives. But whether these work scenes were also symptomatic of an all-pervading ‘middle-class pride’ seems rather less certain. For one thing, the numbers don’t quite stack up. Recent studies have shown that the quantity of funerary monuments incorporating work scenes paled in comparison to the numbers of other kinds of funerary monument in contemporary Italy. The upshot is that it is very difficult to use them as a reliable index of a widespread social identity.
For Mayer, these mythological sarcophagi were ‘middle class’ products, a view that he supports with reference to a handful of examples that were definitely displayed in tombs built for sub-elite members of society. But the fact remains that we lack any sort of context for the majority of sarcophagi, making it difficult to say anything concrete about the social and political status of the individual(s) who were originally buried inside.
L Tomb of Eurysaces the Baker l Detail of the frieze which decorates Eurysaces’ tomb depicting bakers at work
Is this then ‘post-truth’ art history? Not in my opinion. The beauty of Mayer’s book lies in its demonstration of the important role played by sub-elite people in influencing artistic fashions and stimulating artistic production in ancient times. According to a more traditional view, the art of the middle levels of Roman society simply mimicked that of the ‘upper classes’. In other words, it was derivative, aspirational and somehow impure. Mayer goes some way to demonstrating that this kind of model is much too simplistic. It is clear that middle level consumers were capable of making conscious and well-informed choices about the products that they bought, and these men and women helped to shape the trends and fashions that we can still detect in the domestic and funerary art produced under the Roman empire. n
K Sarcophagus depicting the massacre of the Niobids in the Glyptothek Museum, Munich
Joshua Thomas Lavery-Shuffrey Early Career Fellow in Roman Art and Archaeology
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Much more numerous were the carved marble sarcophagi featuring dramatic scenes from Greek mythology that became popular in the Roman world from the beginning of the second century. A good example is supplied by a sarcophagus in Munich, which depicts the gods Apollo and Artemis killing the innocent children of Niobe in retribution for her crimes against their mother Leto. Although such sarcophagi were previously thought to carry sophisticated messages concerning beliefs in the afterlife, most scholars now agree that they were in fact designed to provide ‘help for the bereaved’ following the death of a loved one. In the case of the Munich sarcophagus, the infanticidal iconography may have been designed to mediate the grief of a parent following the death of a young son or daughter.
For Mayer’s detractors, the very concept of ancient Roman ‘middle classes’ has a whole host of other problems that are not very easy to shake. Leaving aside the thorny issue of how useful it is to apply modern terminology like ‘the middle classes’ (or, say, ‘racism’ or ‘capitalism’) to the ancient world, the most pressing problem is one of definition. Which groups of Roman society belonged to the middle classes? Which belonged to the upper and lower classes? How should these classes be defined in relation to one another? Were they consciously defined in relation to each other during antiquity? All of these questions lack straightforward answers, suggesting that ancient society was infinitely more complicated than broad ideas like ‘the middle classes’ and ‘middle class identity’ can possibly account for.
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IN CONVERSATION WITH…
Barbara Havelková
Barbara Havelková joined Lincoln College in 2014 as our Shaw Foundation Fellow in Law. She also works as an advisor to the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic on issues of gender and law, and was awarded the Golden Frog Award in 2016 for fighting against gender stereotypes and prejudice in the public sphere. Her book, Gender Equality in Law: Uncovering the Legacies of State Socialism, has just been published by Bloomsbury. © Milan Jaroš
Barbara, please could you tell our readers a little about yourself and your academic background? I completed my first degree in law at Charles University in Prague. This took five years - law degrees in the Czech Republic include an integrated masters in law. It was during this period that I became interested in gender equality, and I published a book about equal pay in Czech shortly after I finished my degree. I then focused on European Union Law and did my LLM in Germany on that topic. I had the Fulbright scholarship in the US with Catherine McKinnon for a year, before coming to Oxford for my doctorate. I have now been at Oxford for seven years, with a short break which I spent teaching in Cambridge for a year. I now teach Constitutional and EU Law to Lincoln undergraduates and Feminist Jurisprudence to undergraduates across the Law Faculty. I started that module three years ago and it’s the first time, that I know of, that a specialised feminist jurisprudence course has been taught at Oxford. Previously, there were just a few lectures on the topic. Law undergraduates are now able to take a ‘mini-option’ in jurisprudence, which allows them to pursue legal philosophical enquiry in an area of their particular interest. Academics can teach what is close to their heart and students can be more specific about what they want to pursue. At graduate level, I co-teach the Comparative Equality Law course with Sandra Fredman. 8 | College & Fellows
...a pregnant woman getting fired the day before she goes on maternity leave for example, or a woman earning half the wage of a man, despite holding the exact same position within the same company. These cases are not being won...
Alongside your teaching, you have also recently published a book called Gender Equality in Law: Uncovering the Legacies of State Socialism – please can you tell us about it? As part of the EU, the Czech Republic, as with all member states, has been required to implement EU laws into its own legal system. During the process of transposing EU directives on anti-discrimination law, I noticed great hostility towards it from Czech legislators. In Parliament, when the Anti-Discrimination Act was being adopted, statements were made about how differences between men and women were natural, and any inequality was just their understandable consequence. There was resistance to the idea that the law should intervene. There was a clear perception that the Czech Republic was special and didn’t really have discrimination. This disbelief that there is any discrimination along the axis of sex/gender in Czech society has led to the new EU-mandated equality and anti-discrimination law being overwhelmingly ineffective. There were also a lot of myths about the state socialist past which I noticed harmed the project of gender equality today. For example, some felt that we already had feminism under state socialism (that is not true) and therefore we don’t need to do anything further; that it’s just Brussel’s state feminism replacing Communist state feminism. Others took the view that the
That got me thinking about the particular development of gender equality in law in the post-socialist Central and Eastern European region (CEE). Many in the West assume that gender equality was achieved earlier and more comprehensively in the socialist states, and that this should have continued, strengthened by the EU membership obligations. It’s true that some equalisation or liberation happened early – for example access to divorce or abortion was granted, and women were pulled into the labour market in the 1950s. But this ‘public equality’ was always accompanied by ‘private difference’. The socialist state did not change the division of roles in the family. It even cemented them in the 1970s and 1980s when it supported women in staying at home with children. The family policies were generous, but they were pro-population growth and not pro-women. So there was also ‘first equality, then difference’. At a time when there was a bottom-up movement for women’s rights in many Western countries, the Czech Republic was moving to a more gender-conservative set-up. The idea of liberation was for a woman to be able to stay at home, basically the opposite of what the feminist movement in the West was fighting for. So that has made the notion of equality be perceived differently in CEE countries. On top of that, the region missed the nature-nurture debate and a critical assessment of the assumption that gender-differences are biologically determined. So as I said before, many assume that any differences in the position of women in society are natural and therefore justified. This makes pursuing a gender equality agenda, and implementing gender equality legislation, very challenging. Currently, at the level of legal regulations per se, things seem reasonably good, but that’s partly because of international or EU obligations – many provisions, from anti-discrimination law to a comprehensive definition of trafficking in criminal law, would not have been adopted had it not been for EU or Council of Europe membership. What is missing is the underlying intellectual grounding or understanding about inequality, its causes and the necessity of addressing them in legal regulation. This is the real focus of my research, and of my book itself. I call it a feminist legal genealogy; it looks back at the history of gender equality in
law in the Czech Republic. It examines and explains the roots of the antipathy towards gender equality law that is common amongst other formerly socialist countries. Can you give us an example of gender inequality in the Czech Republic? If you look at the anti-discrimination cases in the Czech Republic that have made it to the Supreme Court level, there have been seventeen relating to sex or gender, and only two cases were won (and only partially at that). This is despite the fact that these cases were textbook examples of discrimination on the basis of sex – a pregnant woman getting fired the day before she goes on maternity leave for example, or a woman earning half the wage of a man, despite holding the exact same position within the same company. These cases are not being won – the courts are not seeing the problem. Are these issues not covered by EU law? Yes and no. They are covered by EU law in the sense that there are directives instructing member states to adopt particular laws, but that is all. There is no follow-up to make sure that member states are actually enforcing or implementing the law to its full extent. So whilst the Czech Republic has transposed these measures into its legal system, they are not, in most cases, being enforced.
K Barbara receiving the Golden Frog Award in 2016
The European Commission has the power to institute proceedings against a member state which is deemed to be not fulfilling their obligations and take them to the European Court of Justice. Until recently, this only happened if a member state failed to transpose a law, and didn’t consider whether the law was being implemented fully. However, it does look as though this may be beginning to change. For the first time, the European Commission has instituted proceedings against the Czech Republic for the segregation of Roma children in education. But this is a well-known issue, one the European Court of Human Rights has already adjudicated on. I don’t think it necessarily shows a change of trend. And at the moment the EU is yet to step in on cases regarding sex discrimination. But I’m not holding my breath. I think the EU is, probably rightly in the current political climate, relatively selective about where to bring its Member States to heel. Ultimately, we Czechs need to start acknowledging gender inequality by ourselves, and stop being only guided externally. n College & Fellows | 9
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Communists tried to achieve equality between the sexes and failed, so there was no point trying again.
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Making Contact Professor David Hills has been Fellow in Engineering Science at Lincoln since 1984. His research interests lie in solid mechanics, in particular structural integrity, metal fatigue and problems involving contact between bodies, and he is Director of the University Technology Centre in Solid Mechanics, which is supported by Rolls-Royce.
I have written in these pages before that what I find so interesting about working in an Oxford college is that the job is varied; and sharing my time between undergraduate education, helping to construct the College’s policies on its future, and conducting advanced research is stimulating. The undergraduate course here is also quite general, and covers all the principal branches, but while some of my leisure interests revolve around the intersection between mechanical things and electronics (that awful word ‘mechatronics’, and the fruits of which we see all the time in very small well integrated consumer products), my research interests are firmly in applied mechanics. One further job I do, and very much enjoy, is to edit a research journal, the International Journal of Solids and Structures. In the 21st century it is hardly possible or even desirable to work solitarily, and I am fortunate in having joined a small group of only four people (in 1984) in solid mechanics in the Department of Engineering Science, just as it started to blossom in terms of its relationship with RollsRoyce plc. Towards the end of the 1980s, RollsRoyce realised that it was placing an increasing amount of research work with the group and formed, towards the end of 1989, a ‘University Technical Centre’ with us, to provide continuity of work and establish an enduring, stable, working research relationship with the group. We were the first of its kind, and there are now more than thirty throughout the world. We are also unusual in that we continue to be willing to turn our hands to a wide range of problems for the company, as and when they arise. But inevitably, we have specialised in a small number 10 | College & Fellows
L Rolls-Royce Power Gearbox Image courtesy of Rolls-Royce
...all undergraduates get a ‘taster’ of research through either summer vacation work or the final year project. These have been proving exceptionally enticing recently... The background image is David’s lab
of themes where there are recurrent needs. One of those is concerned with designing the fan, which provides the engine’s thrust, to resist the effects of damage caused by the ingestion of birds. Even a small bird can cause quite a lot of damage, and, of course, a flock of larger birds causes proportionally more damage. The UTC has some facilities at the University’s Science Park at Begbroke, some five miles north of Oxford, and, at one time, housing a Weed Research Organisation. Small cylinders of gelatine represent a bird, about 30mm in diameter and 90mm long, fired in a gas-driven gun, at speeds as high as 700 m/s (it is the rotational speed of the blade, rather than the forward speed of the aircraft, of course, which causes the relative velocity to be so high). These are launched at samples of the blade, and their effects studied. It was the loss of thrust following flight into a flock of geese which led to the ditching of the Airbus A320 in the Hudson river in January 2009. Other, related work, is aimed at ‘catching’ a blade in the extremely unlikely event of its becoming detached, so that it cannot escape and do even more damage, such as cutting control lines or perforating the aircraft cabin. A failure of this kind was responsible for the serious incident leading to an emergency landing with loss of life of a DC10 rather longer ago, in July 1989, at Sioux City, Iowa. But it is not just exceptional events such as colliding with birds which can hazard the fan. The growth of cracks, popularly called ‘metal fatigue’, but usually just ‘fatigue’ in the business where, under cyclic load, a crack gradually grows until eventually the component it lies in becomes unsustainable and fails, is probably the
Weight means everything, of course, and the move to carbon fibre fan blades is well on the way. But, for real efficiency, as well as getting the gas temperature up (which means alloys resistant to creep at high temperatures and that, in turn, means alloys which potentially have other susceptibilities), a real step change is needed, and Rolls-Royce is achieving that by developing engines with ever larger fans, which must turn more slowly. This means that a gearbox is needed in the engine, and the demands on it are extremely severe -and it must be totally reliable. The new servo hydraulic fatigue testing laboratory in the Engineering Department will help to ensure that the design is safe, by carrying out carefully controlled fatigue tests. Here, we carry out simulations of the loading that critical components will experience, and observe any cracks such as the one shown above, where a blade root dovetail has a severe crack almost completely severing the root. The wires go to ‘strain gauges’ which are used to monitor the state of stress experienced.
L Fatigue crack in dovetail root
K Rolls-Royce The Ultimate Turbofan Image courtesy of Rolls-Royce
all the elements receive or pass on the forces within them by pressing against other components. This is universally true – bolted joints in building frames, gears pressing together, the dovetail joints discussed above – they are all points where the loads within the components are localised, and this is why their study is important. Their common feature, which seems counter-intuitive to many, is that parts of the contact usually slip whilst the contact overall remains stationary. This is because even steel and other alloys actually behave more like Edam cheese at the kind of loads they experience (they are not, despite what the eye may suggest, completely rigid). Parts of the contact are ‘stuck’ while other bits, because of the elasticity of the material from which they’re made ‘slip’; and understanding slip is the key to understanding fretting, and the way metal fatigue starts. Although it would not really be accurate to say that research actually has a direct influence on undergraduate teaching, what is true is that all undergraduates get a ‘taster’ of research through either summer vacation work or the final year project. These have been proving exceptionally enticing recently, with three of Lincoln’s current Engineering finalists looking to pursue research at Oxford or with one of the Department’s spin-off companies. And, currently almost completing his DPhil with me, working on partial slip contacts, is Rango Ramesh (2011), who read Engineering Science at Lincoln, and whose father also obtained his DPhil with us (in Engineering) about eight years ago; and then he went to Rolls-Royce plc. So, it can go full circle. n David Hills Professor and Tutorial Fellow in Engineering Science
These relatively applied pieces of work go hand-in-hand with more fundamental longer term considerations. My own research is concerned with the details of how ‘contacts’ behave. If you think about it, in any piece of machinery, almost College & Fellows | 11
College & Fellows
most common cause of mechanical failure in all heavily loaded mechanical equipment. It came to public prominence in the late 1950s when the ‘Comet’ airliner developed severe cracks from the almost-square windows, and a number were lost, putting the British civil aviation industry back, and from which it never really recovered. An important part of this fatigue process is understanding how cracks start (nucleate). One serious potential problem is where components rub together (fret), and one such point is where the fan blades are held into the rotor of the engine. Many may be surprised to learn that this is by means of dovetails, not very different from the joinery dovetails which hold drawers together, and it is the centrifugal action of blades being pulled into their sockets which keeps the rotor stable.
College & Fellows
Post-Truth Politics, Revisited
Dr Timothy Michael has been a Tutorial Fellow in English Literature at Lincoln since 2013, when he moved to Oxford from the US. He teaches literature in English from 1760 to the present, and supervises graduate students in eighteenth-century and Romantic literature. His own research focuses on literary and intellectual history in the eighteenth-century, and his first book, British Romanticism and the Critique of Political Reason, was published last year. That we have entered a ‘post-truth’ political age – with its attendant ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts’ – has become a common refrain and lament in much public discourse in the West. The philosopher Daniel Dennett, who is accustomed to taking the long view on such matters, remarked earlier this year: ‘We’re entering a period of epistemological murk and uncertainty that we’ve not experienced since the middle ages’. This, unfortunately, may be true, and the causes and consequences of this shift remain to be studied by scholars in a number of disciplines. If we are, in fact, entering a period of epistemological murk and uncertainty that realises itself most clearly on the level of politics, then we are experiencing a reiteration of a late eighteenth-century phenomenon (the subject of my recent book, British Romanticism and the Critique of Political Reason). Writers such as Burke, Wollstonecraft, Godwin, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley were preoccupied with questions that very much remain with us: What role should reason play in the creation of a free and just society? Can we claim certain knowledge in a field as complex as politics? How can the cause of political rationalism be advanced when it is seen, as it was in the years following the French Revolution, as having blood on its hands? Throughout the eighteenth century and then peaking in the heated political debates of the 1790s, these questions were pursued with the energy and intelligence characteristic of the age. At the heart of these debates was the possibility of particular mental faculty (what was called at the time ‘political reason’) and the possibility of a particular epistemic category (‘political knowledge’). In 1795, two years into Britain’s decades-long war with revolutionary France and 12 | College & Fellows
I The Feast of Reason (1793), from the French Revolution Digital Archive
at the height of Pitt ministry repression, William Godwin wrote: The great problem of political knowledge, is, how to preserve the advantages of freedom, together with an authority, strong enough to control every daring violation of general security and peace[…]Great is the error, or sinister and alarming the policy, of those, who tell us that politics is a simple science, where the plainest understanding is in no danger of a fatal mistake. Politics[…]is the masterpiece of human sagacity.
K Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772–1834
The register of Godwin’s remarks, in which the stakes of political epistemology are high, reflects the tone of much 1790s radicalism and the intensity of 1794-95 in particular. Mary Wollstonecraft attacked in 1794 the ‘pseudopatriots’ of France as ‘men without principles or political knowledge, excepting what they had casually gleaned from books, only read to while away an idle hour not employed in pleasure’. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in a Bristol lecture the next year, criticized the ‘professed Friends of Liberty’ – he had Godwin himself in mind – who feel no urgency in forming concrete plans of action: ‘theirs is not that twilight of political knowledge which gives us just light enough to place on foot before the other’, using for the first time the phrase under which he would collect his most systematic political thought (‘On the Principles of Political Knowledge’ in The Friend of 1818). Godwin, Wollstonecraft, and Coleridge joined a number of contemporary writers in their concern with ‘political knowledge’, a category that became increasingly prevalent as the eighteenth century progressed. ‘Political knowledge’ is not in general part of our present vocabulary, even if the two constitutive terms of the phrase very much are. Outside of
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epistemological or meta-ethical contexts, we tend to speak of politics and knowledge as inhabiting two separate spheres: one defined by the organization of objective power relations and the other defined by the organization of subjective mental events, both their coherence with each other and their correspondence with an objective world. Furthermore, questions of freedom have been decoupled from questions of knowledge for good reason: given the nature of modern political and social justice movements around the globe – struggles that typically depend on popular mobilization around basic and widely shared moral principles – it might seem strange, even perverse, to insist on the close relationship between political and epistemological questions. It is difficult, for instances, to see how problems like war, poverty, and environmental degradation bear any relation at all to debates about how to justify certain kinds of knowledge. Hume adopted something like this attitude in his 1748 essay ‘On the Original Contract’ when he asks if there is anything discoverable in the entire human record but ‘force and violence’. From this perspective, knowledge as such seems to play little role in the history of politics: emphasis on the conditions of knowledge in political contexts may seem fruitless at best, antidemocratic at worst. The hard distinction, though, between political and epistemological concerns has not always been present, and one aim of my book is
...we tend to speak of politics and knowledge as inhabiting two separate spheres: one defined by the organization of objective power relations and the other defined by the organization of subjective mental events...
to reintroduce the discourse of ‘political epistemology’ – by which I mean, in its broadest sense, a discourse concerned with the relationship between knowledge and freedom – by examining what was, until now, the period of its greatest crisis. The separation of questions of knowledge and freedom is ours, a contingent phenomenon with its own history. In the most ambitious logic of the eighteenth century, there is no reason to think that human beings, including their organization into social and political units, are immune in any way to the techniques of scientific inquiry. The Romantics, far from being the antirationalists so often supposed, were the heirs of a century-long project to ‘reduce’ politics to a science – a project they sought to modify and extend. We are now told by figures in positions of real authority that people have had enough of experts; industry-fuelled climate scepticism is, astonishingly, a political force to be contended with; and the person in the Trump administration charged with solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has said that ‘We don’t want a history lesson’ and, all evidence to the contrary, ‘We’ve read enough books’. Reading books, of course, will not by itself solve this situation or any other, but it’s a start. Timothy Michael Tutorial Fellow in English Literature College & Fellows | 13
College & Fellows
Introducing the Schools Liaison Officer – an interview with Claire White Claire White joined Lincoln in 2015 as the College’s first fulltime Schools Liaison Officer. In this interview, Claire will explain the significance of her work, and the how it fits into the College’s unwavering commitment to access and outreach. Could you tell our readers a bit about your background and what being a Schools Liaison Officer involves? I come from the Wirral, where I attended a state grammar school, and first moved to Oxford as an undergraduate. I read Biochemistry at Brasenose between 2009 and 2013. Though I loved every minute of my study in Oxford I decided that lab work wasn’t for me, and instead pursued a career in education. I was Schools Liaison Officer at St Edmund Hall for two years after graduating, before moving to Lincoln in late 2015. The role of a Schools Liaison Officer is huge and constantly evolving! I design, market, run and evaluate a range of different events and activities for schools, colleges, families and individuals with an interest in applying to Oxford. Lincoln is the main point of contact at Oxford for schools and colleges across both Lincolnshire and the West of England. We offer Oxford-specific application support to Sixth Form students, aspiration raising activities for younger students, and information, advice and guidance for teachers and career advisors. What does a typical week look like for you? We have a very busy calendar of events, meaning I’ll typically meet over 3500 young people each year from more than 100 different schools and colleges. About 60% of my events are in Oxford, and primarily these are Taster Days for Year 10 students involving an ‘Oxford Explained’ talk, College tour, student Q&A and lunch. 40% of my time is spent travelling, out in our link regions, moving between 14 | College & Fellows
conferences and talks at different schools and colleges. Any remaining ‘down time’ is spent planning for the term ahead, or looking at other projects such as redesigning the admissions pages on the College website and prospectuses. If you’d like to follow some of my activities and adventures, you can do so via Twitter, @LincolnOutreach! What has been your biggest achievement so far? In my first few months at Lincoln I was successful in winning a funding bid which provided money to run our first ever Access Roadshow. Alongside two volunteers from the JCR, I spent a whole week travelling around Lincolnshire, and delivered 16 different presentations in 9 schools and colleges, covering the entire
length of the county. Normally when I travel, I do so on my own, and many of these Lincolnshire schools struggle to afford to run trips to our Taster Days in Oxford. It was therefore fantastic to take some of our students to them! Getting to hear from current Oxford students often has a huge impact on students in schools, and our ambassadors do a wonderful job in encouraging people to apply. The Roadshow was so successful that Lincoln has now committed to funding more of these events throughout the year. What are the main challenges you face? A big challenge in my work is trying to squeeze everybody in! Our events are in high demand and it often calls for some very careful scheduling on my part to
College & Fellows
L Students attending our English Year 12 Study Day as part of Oxford Outreach k Our Student Ambassadors get ready for Open Days
make sure we reach as many students and teachers as possible. Another major difficulty is in evaluating the success of my projects. Most of the students who I meet are still a few years away from making a university application, so it takes a lot of waiting before we’ll know if any of them have been inspired to apply to Oxford. However, I am not deterred, as feedback from students and teachers certainly suggests that our contributions are valuable, and the number of repeat visitors would suggest that we’re doing something right! Do you have any fun Lincoln facts that you like to share with prospective students? Lots of our visitors come from Lincolnshire, so they’re often interested to see our copy of the famous Lincoln Imp. Mostly though, they’re interested in student life, and in hearing about some of the more unusual University societies like Quidditch or the Assassins Guild. Personally, I’m a big fan of large numbers. Did you know that there are more than 37,000 different university degrees to choose from in the UK? Or that there are more than 12 million books in the Bodleian Library?
How important is it for current students to be involved in the College’s outreach activities? Lincoln has a team of 25 volunteer Student Ambassadors, led by the JCR Access Rep. They contribute hugely to the events we run, and their impact on the students they meet is larger than they know. Our ambassadors lead tours of the College, answer questions from students, contribute to workshops on student life, A-level and degree options, and generally help our events to run smoothly. They represent a range of different subjects, interests and backgrounds, and prove conclusively that there is no one ‘Oxford type’. Without support from current students, I could not run such a large number of events, and the programme would certainly be far less successful. In what ways can alumni help with Lincoln’s outreach work? We are always keen to hear from alumni who are working in teaching or education, and would be delighted to welcome them and their students to Lincoln. I hope to launch an Alumni Teachers’ Network, allowing current and retired teachers from different schools and areas to share best practise and expertise, particularly when it comes to encouraging and supporting the brightest students.
Alumni parents too are always welcome back to Lincoln. If your child or grandchild would like to visit us and meet with one of our Student Ambassadors, then please get in touch (claire.white@lincoln.ox.ac.uk). More broadly, much of our outreach work is funded directly by alumni donations. Alumni contributions allow us to provide these opportunities for schools and young people, and also support students from disadvantaged backgrounds whilst they are here at Lincoln, through generous bursaries and scholarships. What are your plans for Lincoln’s outreach programme in the future? Do you have any particular goals? I always have new goals for our outreach programme. This summer I am partnering with tutors in three different subject areas to deliver a newly devised series of Subject Study Days for sixth formers. I’m also planning our most ambitious roadshow yet, in County Durham and the North East. I also hope to increase Lincoln’s involvement with other Oxford outreach networks, in particular the Oxford Pathways Programme, which delivers a sustained contact programme for targeted students in Years 10-13 across the country. The Pathways events are collaboratively owned and manged by the Oxford colleges, and Lincoln has always been part of the Pathways management team. n College & Fellows | 15
Students
JCR President’s report 2016–17 It has been another fantastic year for undergraduates at Lincoln! As President, it’s been really pleasing to see the JCR community flourish, build in strength and push through lots of positive changes. It has been such an incredible experience to manage this year’s team of representatives and facilitate their projects, and an honour to represent the JCR body. So let me tell you what’s happened! Over the course of the year we have achieved some really important goals. Governing Body approved our proposal to substantially increase the memorandum paid to students who volunteer to help out at interviews. The figure now reflects an £8 an hour salary, which we’re really pleased about. It also gave approval for the Rainbow flag to be flown for the whole LGBTQ+ history month of February for the first time at Lincoln. This means a lot to the JCR; flying the Rainbow flag is a really visible and effective means of demonstrating the College’s support of equality and diversity. In addition, through surveys of the student body and discussions with the new Domestic Operations Manager, Michele McCartney, a number of new hall arrangements have been put in place. Items to note include: lengthening meal times, introducing Saturday brunch and more ‘Great Halls’, increasing the guest allowance, making breakfast buffet-style instead of plated, and moving to a more flexible two-course self-served first Hall, giving students much more choice. Furthermore, this year we’ve tried to tighten up the JCR machine. We’ve been working on collating all JCR documents onto an online drive, not only for ease but in order to be able to build up some institutional memory. Our JCR Treasurer, Angelos Vakalis (2015), has been working with the Bursar, Alex Spain, to keep a much more rigorous track of expenditure by making our accounts more professional. And we’ve now got a brand new JCR website, where former, current and future 16 | Students
L Members of the JCR Committee
Lincolnites can find out more about what’s going on in the JCR and keep track of the events and happenings in College (www. lincoln-jcr.co.uk). At this stage, we’re still finalising content and how best to use it, but we hope to have this process completed by Michaelmas term. We’re also developing better handover documents and methods to smooth the transition between reps. This goes hand-in-hand with the way we have organised more meetings with the wider Committee to set and achieve more goals. This has led to a number of exciting things. For example, our Environment and Ethics Rep, Lizzy Hardy (2015), has been negotiating with College about becoming Fairtrade certified, along with our Charities Rep, Nick Linfoot (2017). Our Equalities, Liberation, and Gender Reps have been reviewing the harassment policy and kick-starting lots of important conversations. One off-shoot of this has been the creation of a new society for discussing and promoting feminist and gender-related issues, called GenderLinc. As always, there have been lots of JCR events to bring the community together. Our new Sports Rep, Ed Abbott (2016), ran another successful sports day at Barties, along with a variety of JCR competitions. The Entz team have put on some excellent bops, ranging from ‘London
Calling’ to ‘Tropical Fruit Punk-ch’. Our Arts Reps, Laurence Belcher (2015) and Ella Langley (2015), have run a number of great open mics in Deep Hall and outside on Grove Quad. And it’s been a really busy year for welfare: peer support sessions, very popular welfare teas, dog-walks, self-defence classes, yoga and Zumba classes, and pamper evenings. It’s going to be exciting to build upon all of this moving forward. The dynasty continues: like my College father, I too will be passing the reins onto my College son, Timothy Mallinson (2016), who was elected President following a JCR vote in Trinity term. He’s got many great ideas lined up and a great team to work with. I wish them all the best in continuing to build upon the fun, inclusive and friendly community that we’re so fortunate to have here at Lincoln! n Ollie Matovu (2015) JCR President 2016-17 Three-legged fun at the JCR sports day
Students
MCR President’s report 2016–17 The Lincoln MCR continued to thrive in 2016-17, maintaining its reputation as the finest graduate common room in Oxford. The outgoing MCR Committee certainly proved a hard act to follow, but the new Committee rose to the occasion to welcome another record-breaking intake of graduate freshers to the College in Michaelmas term. The social team of Glenn Cahilly-Bretzin (2015), Michael Ben Yehuda (2015), Aisling Leow (2010), Jessica Milligan (2015), Lucie Kaempfer (2015), Grace Turner (2015), and later Mat Veal (2016) and Lewis Arthurton (2015), put on a freshers’ week to remember. The social team continue to put on an impressive range of events throughout each term. The fortnightly MCR dinners are as popular as ever, featuring cuisine from locations as varied as Germany, India and the Swiss Alps. MCR lunches and exchange dinners gave our guests the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of our kitchen’s hard work, and the introduction of a fortnightly Great Hall has proven a great success. This year also marked Lincoln’s turn to host the now traditional annual Venison Feast between the ‘deer colleges’ (Hertford, Jesus, Lincoln and Magdalen), an event to be remembered for years to come. More food was on offer at events to celebrate Thanksgiving and Superbowl Sunday, and Simon’s famous Deep Hall quizzes continue to provide a different flavour of academic stimulation for MCR members! Other highlights include the MCR Garden Party, again kindly hosted in the Rector’s garden, the biennial black-tie Boat Party along the Thames, and our annual ‘Lincoln goes to Lincoln’ trip to visit Lincoln
Cathedral. It is only through generous contributions from the Annual Fund that the MCR can make these activities possible and affordable for all MCR members, for which we are immensely grateful.
Rep, Alex Foley (2015), kept us up to date with events going on around Oxford, and the Freshers Rep, Gabriel Lawson (2013), made the daunting task of ordering the popular Lincoln College branded sweatshirts look easy.
Lincoln MCR benefits greatly from the efforts of our dedicated Welfare Team. Welfare Officers Rose Mortimer (2015) and Hansjochen Kockert (2015) organised a huge range of welfare events, including fitness classes, countryside excursions, relaxing movie nights, and the now infamous weekly Welfare Tea.
As the MCR grows so does its Committee, and this year we had our first Diversity & Equality Representatives, Matt Pierri (2016) and Maayan Ravid (2014), who launched a photo exhibition to increase the diversity of visual representation at Lincoln. We also welcomed two Sports Representatives, Arutyun Arutyunyan (2015) and Tom Pert (2015), who kept us informed about the College’s sporting exploits.
Redefining what it means to be the Academic Representative of the Lincoln MCR Committee, Heather Mann (2015) and the newly-formed Academic Team organised the overwhelmingly successful series of seminars, Lincoln Leads. These events, also generously funded by the Annual Fund, saw Lincoln alumni, Fellows and current students come together to discuss topics ranging from Lincoln’s medical breakthroughs to the resurgence of populism, the purpose of education, and what’s next for Britain post-Brexit (read more on pp. 17-18). The MCR Charity Team, led by Beatrice Montedoro (2013), organised an impressive range of events, including a Shakespearean-themed casino night and the always-successful charity auction. The Environment Rep, Holly Hathrell (2015), was active in reducing the environmental impact of the MCR and engaging members in the Zero Waste challenge. The Food Rep, Jessica Milligan (2015), liaised with the kitchen and was instrumental in the innovation of Great Hall. Our LGBTQ
Finally, the MCR Executive Committee has been instrumental in the success of the MCR this year. Secretary Adam Steel (2014) took on the considerable task of renovating the MRC website (www. lincolnmcr.co.uk) with great success, whilst Treasurer Josh Abbott (2014) ensured our finances were in a strong state, and provided invaluable assistance in his dual role as Deputy President. It has been an incredible honour and pleasure to work with such an enthusiastic and dedicated Committee, and I would like to thank each of them for their efforts this year. Lincoln’s MCR is a community that its current and former students should be very proud of. I have every confidence that the MCR will continue to prosper, and maintain its reputation as the finest graduate common room in Oxford. n Kevin Ray (2013) MCR President 2016-17
The MCR boat party on the Thames
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Students
Lincoln Leads
MCR to join a newly formed ‘Academic Team’ and developed a multi-disciplinary seminar series aimed at bringing together the Lincoln common rooms, alumni and staff to celebrate the areas in which, without doubt, Lincoln Leads.
DPhil student and Academic Representative for the MCR, Heather Mann, discusses her inspiration behind the student-led seminar series, Lincoln Leads.
After settling into my Bear Lane accommodation in Michaelmas 2015, the first Lincolnite I met was Max, who had just graduated from ‘the other place’ and was now looking to complete his DPhil in Synthetic Biology. As we took in the beauty of the Lincoln quads on a tour led by the incumbent MCR committee, he talked about the internship he had completed at Gen9 Bio, a Boston-based next-generation DNA synthesis startup. I nodded along and made a mental note to look up what synthetic biology was. Post-tour, I found myself in the MCR having a cup of tea with Lucie, who was eager to start her research into the role of emotion in Medieval Literature, and was looking forward to her first supervision where she wanted to discuss ‘joy’ in The Canterbury Tales. I hadn’t read Chaucer since I was sixteen and was out of my depth in a conversation where K Lincoln Leads in History seminar © Holly Hathrell
Lucy’s passion equalled my ignorance. I was overwhelmed by the expertise and enthusiasm of the MCR and it seemed apparent that my education at Lincoln was set to be much broader than just my research question and discipline. But then term started, and as I approached my graduation for my MSt in British and European History, it dawned on me that after a whole year at Lincoln, I knew little more about medieval happiness and even less about biological engineering. I was determined not to make the same mistakes when I returned to start my DPhil, and instead chose to celebrate the diversity of research and acumen in Lincoln College, and the successes nurtured by the College. Perhaps overstepping my mandate as the elected Academic Representative for the MCR, I invited members of the
During Hilary Term 2017, Lincoln College played host to eight consecutive panel discussions; inviting a Lincoln Fellow, a Lincoln alum and a Lincoln student to discuss and debate topical questions, ranging from the purpose of scientific research to the legal consequencesThe Grove of Brexit. The series started on a high, as Professor Margaret Stevens (Senior Research Fellow in Economics), David Weston (1998, Chief Executive of the Teacher Development Trust) and Garima Jaju, (DPhil candidate in International Development) formed the panel ‘Lincoln Leads in Economics’ and deliberated over the question, ‘Are we taught to become ‘economically viable products’?’ Week 2 brought us the impassioned words of Professor Peter Atkins (Supernumerary Fellow) and Professor Çiğdem Işsever (Fellow in Physics) who argued against Max Jamily (DPhil Synthetic Biology) about the pursuit of new knowledge above scientific research’s commercial viability. The panel sat well as a prelude to Week 6, when ‘Lincoln Leads in Medicine’ explored the past, present and future of Lincoln’s biological breakthroughs. Dr Eric Sidebottom (former Fellow in Medicine) put Lincoln at the centre of his history of Howard Florey’s penicillin lab, Professor David Vaux (Fellow in Medicine) highlighted key discoveries made by Lincoln students in his laboratory and MCR student Mustafa Aydogan positioned cell biology as the future of research in the Dunn School. The success of the first two weeks meant that the remaining panels were fully booked, with over one hundred people securing tickets to listen to our third panel, ‘Lincoln Leads in Politics’. Coinciding with the parliamentary vote on Brexit, Lincoln alumnus Lord
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Students
The debates were attended by Oxford dons, students and alumni, as well as the general public, and the feedback we received was overwhelmingly positive. Lisvane (1963, the leading expert on parliamentary democracy and former Clerk of the House of Commons), Graham Child, (Supernumerary Fellow, Partner at Slaughter & May and co-author of EU law of competition) and Daniel Kozelko (2016, BCL) discussed the timely question of ‘What is the future for Britain post-Brexit?’ In Week 4, 1960s historian and Fellow, Dr Sam Brewitt-Taylor, current DPhil student George Artley and Richard Spencer (1984, Middle East Correspondent at The Times) debated the long standing historical question, ‘Is revolution always about religion?’ The panel failed to agree on anything other than that it all rested on what you defined as revolution and how you defined religion. Debate continued in the following week’s lecture, as ‘Lincoln Leads in Law’ provocatively discussed ‘Should misogyny be a crime?’ , with a panel composed of Dr Barbara Havelková (Shaw Foundation Fellow in Law), Zoe Williams (1991, journalist and author) and Patricia Jimenez Kwast (DPhil in Law). Week 7 saw Robert Kerr (1971, former executive at Burberry), Dr Joshua Thomas (Lavery-Shuffrey Early Career Fellow in
Roman Art and Archaeology) and Sarah Bochicchio, an MCR historian of Elizabeth I’s wardrobe, all decisively agreed on the incessant power of the image in society and politics. In our final week we were joined by student David Rochat, English Literature Fellow Dr Timothy Michael and comedian Kate Smurthwaite (1994), who each explored the language used by the media in support of contemporary populist movements. The session concluded with a particularly amusing and witty analysis of tropes used by ‘trolls’ commenting on Kate’s YouTube videos. Kate was one of a number of Lincoln Leads speakers who were subsequently invited to speak at the Oxford Union. The debates were attended by Oxford dons, students and alumni, as well as the general public, and the feedback we received was overwhelmingly positive. We were grateful to receive generous funding from the Annual Fund and Senior Tutor’s Fund, which allowed us to hold a post-seminar wine reception for the audience, and to entertain our speakers
K The Lincoln Leads debates always attracted a large audience © Holly Hathrell
at High Table where lively discussion and conversation continued. The first lectures are now available as podcasts at https:// podcasts.ox.ac.uk/units/lincoln-college. Make sure to subscribe to the Lincoln Leads series to be notified when further podcasts are released! Lincoln Leads offered a platform for students to professionally present their research alongside experts in that field, and united the College in celebration of its educational successes. It was an opportunity to showcase the incredible research and ideas that come from our Lincoln community; whether Fellow, alumni or student. It was heartening for so many alumni to eagerly return to Lincoln and offer their time and expertise as part of this project, and the Academic Team look to welcoming more alumni speakers in Hilary 2018 as Lincoln Leads ‘Again’. n Heather Mann (2015) Academic Affairs Officer 2016-17 “I am incredibly grateful that I was given the opportunity to be involved with the Lincoln Leads lecture series. It was rewarding to talk about important legal and political issues with such learned co-speakers, responding to perceptive questions from the audience. My discussions with both Lord Lisvane and Graham Child were challenging and engaging in equal measure, and I hope that others at Lincoln get the chance to experience similar opportunities in the future. I believe that the lecture series is commendable, and is evidence of Lincoln’s commitment to fruitful academic debate between all of the College’s members.” Daniel Kozelko (2016)
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Students
Hearts and minds: Welfare at Lincoln “If we were happy every day of our lives, we wouldn’t be human beings. We’d be gameshow hosts.” So opines one of the Heathers (played by Winona Ryder) in the cult 80s film of that name. Not many of those currently studying at Lincoln can remember the 90s in any detail, still less the 80s. But adulthood comes to us all, and with it acceptance. No one is happy all the time.
per year), but in foot-print. One hall, one bar, three tiny quadrangles, and a single entrance and exit on the main site: it’s hard for anyone to go off-radar for long.
The aim of welfare in College is not for everyone to wake up each morning feeling as though they had just finished painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It is for all of us, as far as possible, to be okay. Okay enough to get up and washed and dressed, and go to the lab or library; okay enough to concentrate on what we’re doing when we get there. And to have something left over for a pint, or a film, or a natter with friends in the evening.
Most of welfare work is using these resources to good effect. Year by year, the MCR and JCR elect Welfare Reps who make sure that welfare is always on the agenda, and who work hard to make sure that care and friendship are constantly visible in the common rooms. The friend with the gift for listening can be trained to listen to others in College; the Hall, the Bar, the Lodge and the Grove are the Chaplain’s haunts, where chats just happen - as are the common rooms. I’ve introduced ‘Crafternoons’ where every Wednesday we bring our knitting, our drawing, or just ourselves to the Chaplain’s rooms, and while away half the day eating donuts and putting the world (or just Oxford) to rights.
By far the richest welfare resource in the College is the College community itself. Friends offer the love and support, the laughter and the care that we need to get through the term. I’m often grateful that Lincoln is so small - not only in numbers (around ninety undergraduates
Sometimes we choreograph chats to a more pointed purpose. Tackling exam stress is a particular focus, and in our Q&A workshops we involve the doctors, nurse, and whole welfare team (as well as some survivors from last year). Sleep, study, alcohol, sex, and mental wellness
K OUSU mental health day
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have all been tackled over pizza and wine. The students often host the best conversations. I’m not sure I convinced anyone when I addressed the GenderLinc group on feminism and Christianity - but what a discussion! Lincoln people are just people - we become or remain ill, mentally or physically; we encounter crises and shocks, or suffer from bereavement, despondency, fear. Sometimes professional help is sought, and sometimes a spell away is recommended. But as long as we are together at Lincoln, my hopes are two. First, that everyone knows where to look for help when they want it. That’s why the Chaplain’s name is never long out of our email inboxes. And, my more fervent hope: for everyone to know that to listen to what is on their heart is not only the Chaplain’s duty, but her joy. We are all loved and precious. I’ll be proud if Lincoln is a place where that is known. n Rev. Dr. Melanie Marshall Chaplain and Student Welfare Coordinator
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WELFARE IN THE JCR
I was the JCR Welfare Officer from 2016-17, alongside Connor Thompson (2015). I found the role to be incredibly diverse, with tasks ranging from providing welfare supplies, to liaising with the Student Union and other welfare officers, hosting welfare teas, raising awareness for mental health issues, undergoing Peer Support training and speaking to students whenever they felt they needed a chat. My first impression of Lincoln was of how friendly and kind everyone was, an atmosphere I aimed to continue over the year. It’s the little things, like stopping to check in on friends around College, dropping a weekly email with reminders of our numbers, and leaving chocolates in the JCR for others to find after a tute, that make a massive difference and contribute to the warm community feel. I was keen to introduce lots of new initiatives, so I set up monthly pamper evenings, a compliments page, coordinated 5th week Welfare Week events like film and games nights, and expanded the female sanitary scheme. One of my fondest memories is helping out with the dog borrowing scheme, where we would collect a dog from her owner, and sit with her at the Lodge, to greet passing students on their way to class! It was incredibly rewarding to see the difference our efforts made. The role involved a lot of hard work and commitment, but I’ve learnt so much, and would definitely consider a career in welfare in the future. I am excited to see the great work that the new officers, Noah and Sophie, will achieve, and look forward to returning from my Year Abroad, when I can hopefully continue being a Peer Supporter! n Jenna Noronha (2015) JCR Welfare Officer 2016–17
WELFARE IN THE MCR
As ever, the welfare officers remain active within the MCR, hosting a range of events from weekly welfare teas, with an abundance of delicious baked goods, to movie nights, weekly Zumba and yoga classes, and welfare runs in the picturesque Christ Church Meadow. Due to generous Annual Fund donations from Lincoln’s alumni, the outgoing welfare officers, Rose Mortimer (2015) and Hansjochen Köckert (2015), were able to organise “Crafternoons” for the MCR. This year the students were encouraged to express their creativity through ceramic painting, a watercolour workshop and learning how to sew. We now know that there are some incredibly talented MCR members! Aside from planning and executing fantastic events, which help to build a strong and compassionate MCR community, the welfare officers also coordinate the MCR’s Peer Supporters. These students have volunteered their time to undergo an intensive training course, teaching them how to become supportive active listeners. They then use these skills to provide a judgement-free, confidential, supportive space, where any student can discuss problems they may be facing; from academic issues with supervisors and thesis writing, to personal problems at home, no problem is too great or too small.
to continue the fantastic work of Rose and Jochen, as well as bringing my own ideas to the role. I would like to thank all of our alumni who have so kindly made donations; many of these events would not be able to continue without your financial support. Also many thanks to the welfare team, both incoming and outgoing; the wellbeing of the MCR would not be the same without you all. n Shazeaa Ishmael (2016) MCR Welfare Officer 2016–17
L Examples of crafts from the Watercolour Crafternoon and painted ceramics by MCR members K A delicious spread at the Welfare tea, fan favourites including Oreo brownies, giant German apple cake, lemon tart and many more
The welfare team work incredibly hard to foster a family-like atmosphere to support graduate students who may be experiencing incredible amounts of stress, or whose family may not be nearby. My first term alone has already been exceptionally rewarding and I hope Students | 21
Students
I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change This year, the JCR and MCR came together to put on the first ever Lincoln musical revue; a performance of ‘I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change’ in the Berrow Foundation Building. This wonderful musical revue showcases the ridiculousness of many stereotypes witnessed in the ‘world of love’ through a series of sketches and musical numbers. Our particular production also showcased a wealth of talent at Lincoln, so often hidden in the library behind that fifth-consecutive essay crisis. It is remarkable how many of our peers are secret singers or comics, so it was a wonderful opportunity for us to take ourselves a little less seriously whilst still achieving something of a high standard. Whether it was Scott Challinor’s (2013) portrayal of the crazed new parent, Frankie Bell Davies’s (2015) stunning soprano solo, or perhaps even the poignant end-note with the funeral song, something went right on the night, and it all culminated in a thoroughly brilliant and endearing Lincoln event. All of the cast and crew worked incredibly hard to make the musical revue a success. We are also extremely grateful to the Annual Fund, Elman Poole Fund and Lincoln JCR for making it possible. It was an expensive project and it was wonderful not only to be able to take it on, but to be able to give free tickets so that every Lincolnite could benefit from watching the performance. Although challenging and costly, I believe both cast and audience were proud of the project and felt it was worthwhile to say the least. So much so, that the project will continue next year (and hopefully for many years after that). 22 | Students
Thanks again to the funding we received, and we look forward to next year’s production of ‘Salad Days’. Do consider coming to watch what is bound to be another brilliant show! n Ellie Williams (2013)
Choir tour of Prague In July, the Chapel Choir ventured to sunny Prague for five days of singing, exploring and winding down after the madness of the academic year. A very early rendezvous at Gatwick did nothing to dampen our spirits, heading into rehearsal practically straight off the plane, and giving a tremendous performance at St Martinin-the-Wall on next-to-no sleep! Under the expert hand of Chapel Precentor Jacob Ewens, the tour programme was framed around Duruflé’s four motets, comprising unaccompanied works across
a range of periods including those of Bach, Guerrero, Tallis, McDowall and others. This was interspersed with organ and piano interludes from organ scholars Arthur Vickery (2016) and Grace Turner (2015). After a successful first concert, we made our way to a railway bar for a rewarding drink, which arrived by model trains. The following day we took a full-sized train to Kutna Hora, a nearby town which boasts the impressive Cathedral of St Barbara. After some wandering and donning our hard hats for an exciting descent into the 14th-century silver mines, the choir climbed up to the cathedral gallery to perform a short recital in its huge, astounding acoustic – quite a different experience to Lincoln College chapel! Wednesday was a day to rest our voices, with many choir members heading to a nearby lake to swim and others exploring the old cobbled streets of the city, before a twilight boat cruise along the Vltava river. Thursday was the day of our final concert at Pražský Hlahol, a beautiful Art Nouveau venue. Having sung our finale, Byrd’s Sing Joyfully, for the last time, we retreated to a restaurant on the island of Žofín to continue the evening in the same spirit. A celebratory meal set the evening’s festivities in motion, and the choir stuck loyally to the itinerary: “22.00: mayhem ensues”. Friday was a lie-in, thankfully – we then made the most of our final hours in the city before a sleepy flight back to Gatwick in our green tour jumpers. Great fun was had by all and we are very grateful to those who made it happen: especially the JCR and the Annual Fund. Special thanks must go to
Students
Chapel Precentors Jacob and Grace for their hard work this year – they will be greatly missed. Thanks are also due to the fantastic deps who joined us on tour and to Mother Mel for her companionship and continuing support. n Amelia Parker (2016)
Turl Street Arts Festival: 20 Years In the fifth week of Hilary term, the stars were set to descend on Turl Street in a spectacular festival of the arts. For twenty years, the Turl Street Arts Festival has proudly offered a platform for creatives from Exeter, Jesus and Lincoln to work together. We celebrated our twentieth anniversary with an appropriately starry theme: the Zodiac. This year’s host college was Exeter, and the committee was led by co-Presidents Eleanor Begley, a 2nd year Ruskin Art student, and Ed Wignall, a 3rd year classicist at Exeter. For the second year running, our opening ceremony was held in the beautiful Exeter Chapel. The Oxford University Jazz Orchestra were back with a stellar performance; guests danced in the nave, and glitter and temporary tattoos were liberally applied. The highlight of the evening was a light show which projected animated
fireworks and constellations onto the ceiling of the chapel to the sound of Bowie’s ‘Life on Mars’. Lincoln’s own chapel also played an important role during the festival as it was transformed into an intimate performance space. A rehearsed reading of Twelve Times Twelve exhibited Katherine Knight’s new writing about what unfolds when the zodiac world is plunged into crisis and Eastern and Western signs collide in an argument over the calendar. The second performance was Hlifige under Heofenum; a play devised by students specifically for the festival. This new theatre piece explored fate, mythology and mysticism – a poignant combination for the setting of Lincoln Chapel. Appropriately, given the chapel’s stained-glass windows, the final event was a rendition of the contemporary dance production ‘Illuminated’, which explored the relationship between light and movement through the human body. The festival encouraged students from different colleges to engage with one another creatively, and this aim was best realised in an art and poetry exchange – the results of which were exhibited in KL A moon dial (below) and one of the life drawing classes (top) Photo’s by Begley and Wignall (the presidents)
the Berrow Foundation Building’s gallery space. Sonnets responded to sculptures, and sketches were drawn to short stories. Lincoln’s own artist in residence, Patrice Moor, kindly lent one of her works to be exhibited and was enthusiastic to meet with students and discuss their ideas about the festival. As well as showcasing established artists and budding Ruskin students, the exhibition was an opportunity to reveal hidden talents in Lincoln’s own student body. The most popular event of the festival was a life drawing class, held not with human models, but avian ones! Birds of prey including a hawk, falcon and owl posed for participants whilst their handler gave an insight into the birds’ anatomies and habitats. The Zodiac theme continued with a relaxed arts and crafts workshop held in the Lincoln JCR alongside the week’s Welfare Tea. Students from Exeter and Jesus were invited to help create decorations for Turl Street. Each college was assigned its own Zodiac narrative and designed a dream catcher to match: a star for Lincoln, a moon for Jesus and a sun for Exeter. The finished ornaments were then hung up around a street fair – the big finale of the festival. Stalls included Lincoln’s JCR charity VacProj, the Crepes-oMania van and the Ruskin art sale, which sold students’ artwork to fund the finalist degree show. The corner of Brasenose Lane was taken over by bunting, chalked constellations and a large ‘TSAF 2017’ banner. Next year will be Lincoln’s turn to hold the presidency, and we hope that TSAF 2018 continues the starry aspirations of the festival as it goes into its third decade. n Ruby Gilding (2015) Students | 23
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Boat Club report J LCBC vs LCBCS race
On the river
Lincoln College Boat Club report 2016-17
It has been an exciting year for Lincoln College’s Boat Club, as we welcomed a fresh batch of novice rowers alongside our new Head Coaches, Harry Brightmore and Kirstin Bilham; gained a brand new men’s boat and refurbished second boat (more on that later); and overall continued our tradition of being Lincoln’s largest sports club! Michaelmas began with the appointment of two new head coaches. Kirstin Bilham (2010), an old LCBC and OUWLRC member, took charge of the women’s side, whilst Harry Brightmore, an U23 GB cox and former LCBC W2 coach, stepped up to the role of men’s head coach. Whilst these coaches took the seniors through their paces, the novice coaching team of André Nemeth (2014) (men) and Bernadette Stolz (2013), Annina Graedel (2013) and Sophia Koepke (2014) (women) did their best to take a cohort of fresh Lincolnites and teach them their catches from their crabs, and the basics of rhythm and drive! At the end of the term, we were able to enter three men’s eights and two women’s eights into the Christ Church Novice Regatta… a total of 40 novice rowers! Over the Christmas break, a kind donation from College and our alumni society, LCBCS, allowed the men’s second
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boat (Spy) to be given a new lease of life via refurbishment. Once Hilary began, the novices were quickly integrated into the senior squad, and work got underway for the Torpids 2017 races near the end of Hilary. The women entered three senior boats, including an ‘all-stars’ W3 boat of former senior rowers, which effortlessly qualified in ‘Rowing On’ and went on to collect three bumps and put W3 into ‘fixed’ divisions (Div IV) for next year! W1 began as a fairly inexperienced crew, but rose to the challenge and ultimately rowed from Division 2 into Division 1, a feat that hasn’t occurred since the ‘Golden Age’ of rowing in 2004! W2 had an exciting week of bumps, getting bumped, and row-overs. An equipment failure on day 4 sadly caused W2 to drop two places, which failed to reflect their strong efforts. The men entered four senior boats, with two boats competing in ‘Rowing On’ the
previous week. M3 and M4 gave their best efforts in ‘Rowing On’, but sadly couldn’t quite make it through. However, they were strong supporters of M2 and M1, the former of which began in Division 5 and managed to secure two bumps, finishing a place higher than they began. M1 began near the top of Division 2, but despite a term of high commitment and strong training scores, they finished 2 places lower. The Easter break brought with it several exciting events. Early on in the vacation, LCBC members Lucy Cross (2013) and Anthonie Jacobson (2013) were selected to compete in the women’s lightweight blue boat and men’s heavyweight reserve boat, respectively (with the latter winning his race by several lengths on the Tideway course). Following that race, we held the annual Easter training camp which took place on the Tideway in London, hosted at the University of London Boat Club and coached by me, the 2016-17 LCBC President. Between 14-16 Lincoln rowers attended the camp throughout the week, with two sessions each day. Finally, the purchase of a new Salani eight was made for the men (to match our beautiful women’s Salani eight from 2011), using the generous combination of funding from College and our alumni society (LCBCS). We thank them both for their exceptional kindness. Trinity Term marked the start of some furious training by both sides, with only five weeks to prepare for Summer Eights. kK M1 and W1
Overall, it was a good year to be a second boat, with both the M2 and W2 boats bumping up 3 and 2 places respectively in Division IV. The men also succeeded in mustering the numbers for an M3 in spite of ‘finals’ season, a boat that valiantly tackled the challenges of the bottom division in style, in particular by avoiding ‘spoons’ on their second day! M1 and W1 were faced with the inevitable challenge of racing against returning blues in the boats around them – W1 dropped several places in Division 2 without Lucy Cross (who was lost to her finals exams), and even the presence of Isis rower Anthonie Jacobson in M1 wasn’t quite enough to prevent a twoplace drop for the men. However, the boat-naming ceremony on the final day was considerably more heart-warming, with the new Salani being named ‘John Hollingsworth’ in honour of a founding member of LCBCS. We wrapped up the year with our annual Summer Eights dinner, and subsequent LCBC-LCBCS race the following day… won by LCBCS in their new boat! As always, the support from College and LCBCS is vastly appreciated, especially during this interim period where we are without sponsorship – if you are interested in sponsoring the Boat Club, please get in touch with the Development Office. Lastly, I would like to say farewell to a brilliant committee and coaching team, and to welcome the new committee, led by Johanna Rankin (2012), who I am sure will succeed us in grand fashion. n Thomas Frost (2012) LCBC President 2016-17
JCR netball team
LINCOLN JCR SPORTS Lincoln’s JCR sports teams have yet again played an integral part of College life this academic year. There has been an been an astounding resurgence of the Football 2nd XI under Jonny Bell (2015), going from the worst team in the University last year to the dizzying heights of 58th best and narrowly missing out on promotion. Unfortunately, the fortunes of the Football 1st XI were not so bright. Despite a strong run of form in Hilary Term, only one win in Michaelmas meant that they were unable to avoid relegation. Their annual Old Boys game resulted in a convincing win for the Old Boys, rounding off a promising, yet unfruitful season for the 1st XI. The College rugby team gained promotion early on and had a decent Cuppers run, but dropped off towards the end of the season. The netball team was competitive throughout the season, putting in a number of good performances in the league, and entered teams for both netball Cuppers and mixed netball Cuppers. Whilst the cricket team failed to win a lot of games, they came close in many, with a large number of participants playing cricket for the first time this season. Lincoln hockey, despite playing matches early on a Sunday morning, always had a good turnout, and were unfortunate to be relegated by close rivals Exeter in the final
term. Undergraduates also competed in mixed lacrosse, tennis and volleyball, with the tennis team progressing through Cuppers until the latter rounds. Next year, hopefully some of the relegated teams will make successful promotion bids and sport will continue to play a key part of college life. n Ed Abbott (2016) JCR Sports Rep 2016-17 LINCOLN MCR FOOTBALL In a season which might politely be described as ‘transitional’, LCMCRAFC managed to maintain our proud status as a Premier Division side, admittedly by the skin of our teeth. Having promptly decided that silverware was beyond our reach, we made the bold decision to flirt with relegation throughout the year in order to keep something on the line. A number of new faces impressed, with Tino Bardelli (2014) forming one half of a swashbuckling Swiss-Italian partnership in central defence, and Jasha Trompf (2016) proving capable both of stunning finishes past ‘keepers and shocking confrontations with officialdom. Champagne moments were provided by Dutch magician Gijs Zonderland (2016), who won the Player of the Year award in a landslide. If our goal difference was negative, our team spirit was anything but, and a final ribald evening at Chutney’s will live long in the memory. Looking forward to next year, new captain Will Nathan (2014) shall undoubtedly bring some transatlantic glamour to the role: here’s hoping for some silverware, too! n Joe Kelly (2013) MCRAFC Captain 2016-17
JCR men’s 2nds XI
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College sports
Events
Events reports 2016–17 Another year, another full programme of events at Lincoln – the highlight undoubtedly being the Campaign Launch Party at the Banking Hall in March (for a full report, please see pp. 3-5), which ran in tandem with other events around the world. Aside from that, it was business as usual, with our schedule of Gaudies, Year Dinners and subject, regional and Lincoln Society events proving as popular as ever. At the beginning of Michaelmas term we held a Garden Party to bid farewell to beloved Fellow in History, Dr Susan Brigden, retiring after 36 years at Lincoln. Susan’s former colleagues and students joined us in the Berrow Foundation Building for music and afternoon tea, before Susan was presented with a Tudor Rose, to be planted in College
in her honour. Other Oxford based events took place, with the annual Lincoln Society Dinner coinciding with the University’s alumni weekend, and providing a wonderful opportunity for alumni and guests to dine in Hall. There were also Year Dinners for alumni who matriculated in 1996 and 1966, and a Luncheon for those who matriculated in 1956 – celebrating 20, 50 and 60 year anniversaries respectively. 1977 and 1987 Year Dinners took place in Hilary term, with a 1957 Year Luncheon held in Trinity. We were also pleased to welcome back large numbers of alumni for our Gaudies – this time for those of 1959-1963 and 1968-1972 vintage. Summer events took the shape of the annual Lincoln Society Garden Party and, for the first time, a Lincoln evening at the Oxford Playhouse,
thanks to Director and CEO of the Playhouse, Louise Chantal (1987). Alumni enjoyed a drinks reception, followed by an energetic performance of ‘Bring on the Bollywood!’. Outside Oxford, we held our usual programme of London events. Thanks to Chris Webber (1998), we hosted a Lincoln for Life drinks reception at Squires Patton Boggs in November, and a more informal drinks event took place at the Crown and Shuttle pub in Shoreditch over the summer. Our London Dining Club moved to May this year and, as ever, we remain grateful to Chris Willy (1950) for helping us hold the dinner at the magnificent Cavalry and Guards Club. Thanks are also due to our after-dinner speaker, Matthew Haley (2000), Head of Books at Bonhams, who gave a fascinating talk about the market for rare books in the digital age. Another impressive venue was found for our dinner in Cambridge, thanks to Graham Allen’s (1976) close ties with Wolfson College. We also visited Scotland in July for reunion dinners in both Glasgow and Edinburgh, whilst the Crewe Society Dinner, organised by Peter Kolker (1957) and always an enjoyable event, was held in Chester. For those who have recognised the College in their wills, we held two Murray Days – one in October and one in June. Our Autumn Murray Day took place in Oxford, with lunch in Hall before a talk by Professor Peter McCullough (Sohmer Fellow and Tutor in English Literature) on the Vesey Family and their collection of books, now residing in the Senior Library. Our Spring Murray Day, meanwhile, took place at Greys Court in Henley-on-Thames. We were fortunate to have a tour of the Mansion led by Sir Hugo Brunner, former Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire and friend of Lincoln College, whose family formerly owned the house. It was particularly interesting to see the collection of furniture and decorative items, many of which were of Swiss origin and dated back to the l Susan Brigden with some former students at her retirement party J Dinner at Wolfson College, Cambridge
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Events
16th century. In the afternoon there was an opportunity to see the extensive and impressive gardens, accompanied by Lincoln’s Head Gardner, Kyle Rix. We are pleased to report that our Fellowship Clubs are going from strength to strength, with a host of subject-centric events taking place over the past year. Our CAAH Club enjoyed a tour of the Ashmolean exhibition ‘Storms, War and Shipwrecks’, kindly led by Alexandra Sofroniew, daughter of alumnus Michael Sofroniew (1981), whilst Jonathan Thornton (1965) hosted our PPE-ists, who were treated to a talk by Jamie Shea (1978) on the emerging security challenges faced by NATO. At November’s meeting of the Science Fellowship Club, Dr John Vakonakis (Tutorial Fellow in Biochemistry) gave a talk on his research around malaria and, after lunch, Dr Eric Sidebottom (Former Tutor in Medicine) conducted a fascinating tour of the penicillin exhibition at the Museum of the History of Science. Our final subject event of the year saw the launch of the Maths Fellowship Club, where Tutorial Fellow in Applied Mathematics, Professor Dominic Vella, gave a talk on his work surrounding elastic instabilities. Conversation continued over lunch in the Beckington Room, before Dyrol Lumbard (External Relations Manager) gave the group a tour of the new Mathematical Institute, the Andrew Wiles Building.
and dinner. It is wonderful to see our alumni participating in these regional events, and we are grateful to the effort and enthusiasm shown by our regional Chapter Leaders. If you are interested in becoming a Chapter Leader, or would like to hear about events in your area, please get in touch with Jane Mitchell (jane. mitchell@lincoln.ox.ac.uk). Alongside these regional chapter events, the College also arranged a series of overseas reunions throughout the year. Jane visited both coasts of North America during a two-week trip in September, with events held in LA, San Diego, Denver and NYC. Later in the year Jane was back for pre-Christmas drinks in New York and Washington, DC. Thanks go to Nick (1999) and Lisa Woodfield for providing some holiday cheer and hosting drinks at their home for the second year running. Lincoln’s spring trip to North America saw the Rector and his wife, Deborah Woudhuysen, join Jane across the pond as she organised events in Boston, NYC, LA, San Francisco and Seattle. Special
thanks go to Jennifer Chi (1996) for enabling us to visit the Institute of the Study of the Ancient World in New York, where over 50 alumni and guests congregated for a tour and reception. At the time of writing, Jane is clocking up more air miles with summer events in Washington, DC – Pimms at the Potomac Boat Club – and a Garden Party at the home of Darren Marshall (1984) and Mary Garrett in New York. Susan Harrison and the Rector visited Hong Kong and Singapore in March, events arranged to coincide with the University’s alumni weekend in Asia. It was great to see such a good turnout at both events, and special thanks must go to Su-Shan Tan (1986) for hosting a buffet supper at her home in Singapore. We look forward to our 2017-18 programme of events and hope to see many of you over the course of the year. n Julia Uwins Alumni and College Communications Officer
Our regional groups, originally set-up by Jane Mitchell (Deputy Director of Development), now operate in 26 cities worldwide. Each group has at least one Chapter Leader who organises a range of informal events for alumni in their area. Some highlights this year include a Christmas dinner, hosted by Richard Morris (1970) at the Hong Kong Club, and a tour of the new East Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, led by Chelsea Souza (2012). Roland Huber (1989) organised a ‘secret tour of Brussels’ in December, which showcased some of the most interesting parts of the city before concluding at a Christmas market, whilst Jerome Ellepola (1995) arranged a guided tour of the Rijks I Tour of the East Gallery, Washington, DC Events | 27
Alumni
My Lincoln Alexander Baker (2003) Where are you from, when did you matriculate, and what did you read Lincoln? I grew up in Cambridgeshire. I matriculated in 2003 and read Philosophy, Politics and Economics. During my A-levels, I decided I wanted to study politics and also wanted to study at Oxford, so accepted philosophy and economics as the quid pro quo. Although I probably wouldn’t have predicted it when I matriculated, I’m now a professional economist.
I still feel like I was a Type 1 error. I was Independent Chair of the JCR for a year. It mainly involved chairing JCR meetings, and we also revised the JCR constitution. It generated more drama than I’d anticipated. The Ascension Day rituals are a bit nuts – I think I may have been in one of the last groups that was allowed to throw hot pennies from the tower at primary school children below. Many of my most vivid memories involve alcohol: Halfway Hall was particularly fun.
What are your most vivid memories of your time at Lincoln? My interview process is seared on my mind. I was woefully underprepared and had little idea of what I was doing, but then I didn’t go to a school with a strong history of sending students to Oxbridge so had no frame of reference.
Are there any people that made a mark on your time here? Too many to mention. Katie Ali (Hall Supervisor) and Simon Faulkner (Deep Hall Manager) are fantastic members of staff, who looked after us very well. Many of my closest friends were those I met in my first few weeks. More
K Alex at his matriculation in 2003
broadly, there were so many bright and interesting people who added colour to my time at Lincoln – lots of talented overachievers and lots with razor-sharp wit. And of course my tutors, to whom I owe a great deal personally. I still see some of them from time to time – Professor Kelemen, who is now at Rutgers, gave me a tour of Philadelphia when I visited last November. What do you think is special about Lincoln? One of the reasons I applied to Lincoln in the first place was its beauty (in truth I really didn’t do much else by way of due diligence, which was a bit naïve in hindsight). Front Quad, with its sea of virginia creeper and perfectly manicured lawn, is still one of my favourite places in the entire city. The Library is stunning. Deep Hall is a gem. Perhaps because of its size, the College also has a strong community feel. Is there anything you would do differently if you had your time at Lincoln again? Boring as it sounds, I probably would have spent more time in lectures and the library. I tended to prioritise extracurricular activities over studying, yet still managed to scrape through with a decent degree. Since I left Lincoln, a lot of
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Alumni
L Alex addresses our audience at The Road to 2027 Campaign launch
the issues we covered in tutorials have become more salient and increasingly I find myself dipping into the texts I kept from my course, particularly those relating to philosophy and politics. I gave up rowing after just one 5am start, and I don’t regret that decision. How did your time at Lincoln shape your future? Trivially, it paved the way to me becoming a professional economist. On a deeper level, the tutorial system gave me a number of skills which have proved incredibly useful in my professional career. There is something quite brutal about having to produce two essays a week for three years to present to tutors who are experts in their field. I’m also grateful for the friends I made while at Lincoln, who remain an important part of my life. Have you remained actively involved with College and, if so, how? I’ve attended the odd event at Lincoln, and various events in London through the Lincoln for Life programme. The programme is a great way for younger alumni to maintain links to the College. It was a great honour to help
The [Lincoln for Life] programme is a great way for younger alumni to maintain links to the College. It was a great honour to help the College launch its ‘Road to 2027’ Campaign at the Banking Hall in London earlier this year. the College launch its ‘Road to 2027’ Campaign at the Banking Hall in London earlier this year. In recent years I’ve started making monthly contributions to specific projects. Why do you think it is important to support the College? It is hard to underestimate the profound impact that Lincoln has had on my life. I grew up in a family where there wasn’t a history of going to university, and the school I attended was adequate but not exceptional: although I could see the teachers cared about their students, I felt there was a poverty of aspiration. My career, my friends, my outlook on life, the opportunities available to me – I am certain these all would have turned out quite differently had I attended somewhere else. When I consider the personal impact it has had, it’s hard not to want that for others: I’d love more people from
backgrounds like mine to be able to benefit from the education and the experience you get at Lincoln (and Oxford more broadly). We shouldn’t take the tutorial system for granted. There is no guarantee that because it has always been thus, it will forever be thus. Public funding isn’t guaranteed and the College is unable to support that system of education independently. If those who have benefitted from that unique experience are unwilling to support it, then we shouldn’t expect others to. I’m also conscious of the number of amazingly bright people I met while at Lincoln, and who have studied there in the past. Supporting the College is also an investment in all the beneficial things current and future students will go on to do in later life, supported or inspired by the education they have received. n Alumni | 29
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Not so Rare: encouraging diversity at Oxford Naomi Kellman (2008) studied PPE at Lincoln. Since then she has worked on education policy at the Department for Education and HM Treasury, and has founded Target Oxbridge, an access project to increase diversity at Oxbridge. Diversity is something I took for granted growing up. Attending comprehensive schools in Croydon meant I met people from different backgrounds on a daily basis. Diversity was also one of my family’s defining characteristics, with my grandparents hailing from Jamaica, Barbados, Nigeria and England. So arriving at Lincoln in 2008 to find I was the only black student in my year was, as you can imagine, a pretty big shock to my system! Applying to Oxford can be intimidating at the best of times, and being the eldest of six girls, with parents who didn’t go to university, made the process even more daunting. On top of this I was worried I would be the only person ‘like me’, both in terms of my ethnic background and my socioeconomic background. I was concerned I might not fit in culturally,
and nervous that I wouldn’t enjoy university life. I took longer to settle in than some of my peers, but by the end of my first year I had a great group of college friends. I also had a wonderful support system in the form of the Oxford African and Caribbean Society (ACS), which I thought of as my ‘home away from home’. I joined the ACS committee in my second year, wanting to give back to the society that had helped smooth my transition to life at Oxford. A few months after I graduated, a media storm erupted around David Cameron’s claim that only one black student had been accepted to Oxford that year. I knew that this statistic was inaccurate – the ACS would have gone into crisis mode otherwise! Whilst the media storm blew
over within a week or so, I was sure its message had had a damaging impact on the confidence of black students aspiring to a place at Oxford. I was working at Rare at the time, an organisation that helps ethnic minority and lower income students to secure jobs with top firms. Rare’s Managing Director, Raphael Mokades, shared my concern about the coverage, having worked on Oxford access whilst a student. He gave me the freedom to design and set up Target Oxbridge, a programme to help black African and Caribbean students apply successfully to Oxbridge. I decided that Target Oxbridge would need to address the three main barriers for black applicants. Firstly, the myth that black students did not belong at Oxbridge. Secondly, the lack of access to good support and advice when navigating the application process. And finally, the tendency to cluster around competitive subjects such as law, medicine and economics because they are perceived as the only route to top careers. L Target Oxbridge students taking part in the three day Oxford residential in 2016 © John Cairns J A Target Oxbridge event for students and parents © Leo Hoang
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Target Oxbridge busts the ‘not for people like me’ myths by connecting our students with black Oxbridge students. I always enjoy the mixed look of shock and joy on the students’ faces as they realise that there are people like them flourishing at Oxford and Cambridge. Conversations at the networking sessions range from questions about course structure and colleges, to concerns about access to familiar food, music at social events, the availability of black hairdressers and experiences of racial bias.
Students also receive a subject specific mentor and mock interviews.
With our students convinced that Oxbridge is for them, we can focus on the application process. As Rare is a graduate recruitment specialist, we are well placed to allay parents’ and students’ fears about subject choice. For example, we ask our legal clients to host events whilst sharing the fact that 50% of their lawyers did not study law. Preparation for the application process takes place in one-to-one and group sessions that help the students become more confident when tackling challenging questions.
A recent positive viral news story about black male students at Cambridge demonstrates how things have changed since the negative media storm in 2011. There is still a lot of work to be done however, with the success rate of black applicants to Oxford and Cambridge still lagging behind that of the average – 11% vs 22% and 12% vs 26% respectively.
Since 2012 Target Oxbridge has helped 46 students to secure Oxbridge offers. This year Oxford and Cambridge became official partners of the programme, funding its expansion to 60 places by 2018 – ten times as many as when it launched. Target Oxbridge now also includes a three day residential in Oxford, and a one day visit to Cambridge, providing students with access to university tutors and lectures.
The next barrier to tackle is the A Level attainment gap, which limits the number of black students who can apply
competitively to Oxbridge. Only 4.7% of black students achieve three A grades or better compared to 10% of Asian students, 11% of white students and 24% of Chinese students. We hope to expand Target Oxbridge to Year 10 and 11 students, as we believe earlier interventions are needed to close this gap. I am also part of a team working to establish a network for black Oxford alumni. The network’s aim will be to provide support for its members as they venture into careers where they might again find themselves the only black person in their cohort. We also hope that by sharing our stories of success, we can encourage more black students to target the Oxford education that we’ve benefitted from. n Naomi Kellman (2008) For more information about Target Oxbridge please contact Naomi Kellman at naomi.kellman@rarerecruitment.co.uk or visit www.targetoxbridge.co.uk.
Universify Education Set up by former Lincoln student George Hoare (2002) after finishing his DPhil at Nuffield College and teaching at Hertford College, Universify Education (universifyeducation.com) is a registered charity that aims to widen access to highly selective universities like Oxford.
undergraduates, and come to a refresher and revision booster residential at Easter. So far, Universify has been able to provide all courses at no cost for students or schools, and is looking for trustees to help expansion and to help keep the programme free.
Universify works with Year 10 students from non-selective state schools, and asks teachers to select students who might not be thinking about going to university or lack confidence to apply to a highly selective institution like Oxford. Students go on a week-long residential summer course in Oxford, get year-round life-coaching from current
The residential summer course that forms the heart of Universify’s programmes is a great way to introduce students to the reality of what university life and study can be like. Research suggests that summer courses for Year 10 students can have a real impact on aspirations and attainment, and Universify rigorously measures the impact of all activities
on students’ confidence, aspirations, and attainment (read more at https:// universifyeducation.com/impact/). If you might be interested in becoming a trustee (no particular experience required), know someone who might be, or just would like to hear more about the programme, please email George Hoare (george.hoare@universifyeducation.com). ‘Probably last year I wouldn’t have even thought about going or coming to university....It’s really, really shown me the bright side to it...One of the best weeks I’ve had in my life.’ Ben Meir, Haywood Academy, Stoke-on-Trent
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Keeping faith with DH Lawrence – an interview with Oliver Rampley
Oliver Rampley read English Language & Literature at Lincoln in 2003. After seven years working in London, Oliver decided to pursue his passion for nature full-time. He has since launched Altana Europe, organising tailor-made fishing and birdwatching trips in Italy and Spain. Can you tell us about your current job and the projects you are working on? I run a business called Altana Europe that creates experiences based around fishing, birdwatching and conservation management. In Italian, an ‘altana’ is a high seat or stand from which one watches wildlife. Used figuratively, an ‘altana’ signifies a vantage point, or in architecture refers to a private loggia characteristic of Venice. We’re HQ-ed in San Niccolò in Florence, and much of our work takes places across Tuscany or Andalusia in Spain. I spend about half the year in the field with clients, working as a fishing or birdwatching and wildlife guide. The rest of the time I oversee the running of the business and visit new sites for future trips. I also spend three weeks of the year on press trips with journalists. In terms of current projects, last week I was on a site visit in the Dolomites in South Tyrol, and now I’m in East Lothian in Scotland looking at collaborating with the Lammermuirs Moorland Group around birdwatching. Yesterday I shadowed a gamekeeper on a 32 | Alumni
managed grouse moor, learning about a conservation method called ‘diversionary feeding’ that is used to protect birds of prey such as peregrine falcon and goshawk. At the end of the month, I go to Andalusia in Spain for two weeks of bird and ibex watching, then to Yellowknife in Canada to (hopefully) see wolves hunt caribou. What made you want to move to Florence? In many ways, I ended up in Florence thanks to my professor at Lincoln, Stephen Gill. As an undergraduate reading English, I worked on DH Lawrence’s time in Italy and Stephen kept a weather eye on it all. The week after my Finals I got into a conversation with the historian Andrew Beaumont, who was Junior Dean of Lincoln at the time, about walking from Venice to Rome to partially retrace Lawrence’s footsteps. I ran the idea past Stephen, and the following year I left St Mark’s Square on foot for a formative adventure that lasted four months. I spent time in Florence on the way and the city captured my imagination. I promised myself I’d live there one day, and I relocated five years ago. In the months before the walk, I exchanged letters with
Stephen, and my circumstances now all trace back to that period. I remember Stephen writing me to ‘keep faith with DHL’, as well as a coda that read, ‘Italy sunshine, tomatoes, girls’. Tell us about some of your most exciting collaborations. My business partner is the chef Mark Hix, so I’m lucky to do a lot of fun work with Mark and other chefs. Mark was head chef at London restaurants including Scott’s, Le Caprice, J. Sheekey and The Ivy, and went on to open his own restaurants and a hotel. His reputation as a chef and writer is based on a focus on provenance and sustainability, underpinned by a profound personal connection with the outdoors. Mark became a partner because my values as a guide and his as a chef overlapped, and because he loves fishing. We’ve consequently had many adventures. Last year we worked off the Argentario peninsula in Tuscany, demonstrating how to target European barracuda and then preparing sashimi and ceviche on a boat. On another trip we stalked wild boar in the Alps of the Moon in Umbria and then Mark created four boar curries. On cooking-centric trips like that, I lead a technical and tuitional
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J Fly fishing in the historic centre of Florence at sunset. Altana Europe’s fishing trips under the Ponte Vecchio made the front page of the Financial Times in 2014 I Ollie leading clients to see Great Spotted Cuckoo and Glossy Ibis at the Oasi di Burano wetlands in Tuscany in collaboration with the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF)
introduction to the fieldcraft involved and principles of selective management hunting as part of conservation, then Mark steps in to do demonstrations of seam butchery and knife skills, and then obviously there’s lots of cooking (and wine). We’re doing demonstrations and talks on wild boar at two of the larger UK food festivals this month. I’ve also been lucky to spend time on location in Italy with other British chefs including Angela Hartnett, protégé of Gordon Ramsey, and Fergus Henderson, founder of St. John in London (once named best restaurant in the world). Last week in the Dolomites, my team was with two Michelin-starred Italian chef Norbert Niederkofler, learning how to forage for wild edible Alpine flowers. What was the inspiration behind starting the company Altana Europe? Altana evolved naturally rather than due to a causal moment of inspiration. I started from scratch as an independent fly fishing and coarse fishing guide five years ago, and this developed into a small business. I was occasionally taking friends and clients referred by local hotels to see birds in Florence’s private and public historic gardens, and then I started to get calls from the UK about creating weekends around that. I started looking at sites on the coast and realised that there was no one coherently offering a guiding service for fishing or birdwatching in Italy. I’d also become interested in wild
boar and been studying and following the discourse on the species in Europe, and I published a few articles in Italy and England. I was subsequently asked to sit on an advisory panel on boar put together by Pol Roger, and this led to calls from wildlife photographers and specialist hunters. At this point, I decided to string the three elements together under one holistic brand. What is different about your trips to a typical eco-holiday? I wouldn’t describe our trips as eco-holidays, as I think that implies something scaleable and pre-packed in dull way. I hope that what differentiates us is the depth of experience, and we achieve that by just focusing on three elements: location, expertise and narrative. We work in the most dramatic and uniquely beautiful locations we can find, we provide truly expert guiding and instruction in the field, and we house everything in a narrative about local culture that italicizes the overall experience when we’re not standing in a river or sitting in a bush. Aside from Stephen Gill’s influence, how else did your time at Lincoln affect your career trajectory? Certain texts I studied at Lincoln had a lot of impact on the past fifteen years,
especially when it came to taking difficult decisions about what I should be prioritising, and I think I was as much influenced by the lives of two or three of the writers I studied as the works I read. The teaching, both at Lincoln and other colleges, helped me to reason that it is very possible to try and create a working reality for one’s self - i.e. assess what you love to do most, what your strong abilities are, where you most like to be in order to be happiest, and make a composite of those elements that also pays all the inevitable bills. Working towards that is sometimes scarily stressful, and I think that being able to hold my nerve is a vital skill that Oxford developed. You originally left a career in London to pursue fishing – what advice would you give to people who want to turn a passion or hobby into a career? Learn how to make a strong gin-andtonic, then go for it. The worst that can happen is failure, and that’s relative. The most surprising and inspiring days in the last five years have all been on trips with clients, and on top of that I met the love of my life in a meeting about wild boar, so I’m deeply grateful for a good attitude towards risk. n Find out more at www.altanaeurope.com
Sus scrofa scrofa - the central European wild boar. Ollie has become an expert on the behaviour and management of this misunderstood species Alumni | 33
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In Pursuit of Spring – Remembering Edward Thomas
Edward Thomas was one of 496 men from Lincoln who served in the First World War and one of 59 who died in action or as a result of their active service. His name, along with all who lost their lives in conflicts of various kinds, is displayed in the Junior Common Room and is read out annually at the College’s Remembrance Day service in Chapel. The centenary of his death has been widely commemorated, not least at Lincoln, where Professor Jem Poster gave a fascinating talk about Thomas’s lesserknown life as a biographer. Educated in London at Battersea Grammar and at St Paul’s School, whose competitive ethos he disliked, Thomas matriculated at Oxford as a non-collegiate student in October 1897, having already published the first of many books, The Woodland Life, the year before; at this time, his lodgings were in the Cowley Road. Having failed at Balliol and Merton, he won a History scholarship at Lincoln in March 1898 (he wrote on both of the subjects set in the examination, combining essays on Vox Populi, Vox Dei with Might is Right) and graduated with a second-class degree in 1900. Before then in June 1899, he had married Helen, whose father James Noble had encouraged him to pursue a literary career; by the day of their marriage, she was pregnant with their first child. The complications of his private life, his regular visits to Helen who was then living in St Peter’s Square in Hammersmith, his being slightly older than his contemporaries, his growing writing career, as well as his having been 34 | Alumni
‘What a thing it is to be an undergraduate of the University of Oxford!’ he wrote in 1903.
a non-collegiate student or ‘tosher’ – a group who eventually formed themselves into St Catherine’s Society – might have suggested that his links with Lincoln would have seemed a little tenuous. Yet he lived in the College, delighting in ‘the grey, main quadrangle … so quiet and deserted, filled with the gaudy crimson of flying creeper leaves’, joined the Davenant Society (formed in 1891), reading papers to its members and rowed bow for the College in a much-bumped boat in Torpids and then again in Eights Week. One of his close friends in the Davenant Society was Martin Freeman who was the dedicatee of Thomas’s book Feminine Influence on the Poets in 1910. His tutor at Lincoln was the Welsh historian and Liberal MP Owen Edwards to whom he dedicated his second book, Horae Solitariae in 1902. In turn and a year later, Edwards commissioned his former pupil to write an introduction to a selection of the works of the eighteenth-century poet John Dyer in the series The Welsh Library.
Alumni following meetings and a growing friendship with the American poet Robert Frost and after the start of the War. Some poems were published before his death in journals and in a private press edition of Six Poems, all under the name of ‘Edward Eastaway’, and 64 appeared in Poems in October 1917. This was followed by Last Poems (1918) and Collected Poems (1920). He wrote about 140 poems. Recognition of his greatness as a poet and as a prose writer has grown enormously during the last fifty or so years.
‘What a thing it is to be an undergraduate of the University of Oxford!’ he wrote in 1903. He smoked, drank, took opium, sang songs, indulged his aesthetic tastes, caught gonorrhoea and read widely, especially in seventeenth-century English prose, and made several valuable friendships during his time at Lincoln. Much drawn to the writings of Walter Pater, the recently deceased Fellow of Brasenose, he later produced a critical study of him that was published in 1913. Among his friends was E.S.P. Haynes, his contemporary at Balliol, who later gave the manuscript of what is probably Thomas’s best-known work, Oxford (1903), to the Lincoln Library. Thomas himself presented a fine copy of Plautus’ plays, printed by Aldus at Venice in 1522, to the College in February 1903 (pictured, right). Solitary, self-conscious, shy, melancholy, full of self-doubt, anxious, moody, frequently difficult and often silent, Thomas inspired great devotion in men and women, but was not always an easy man to get on with. He liked long, very long, walks in the country and often found family life impossible to bear. He made his living from his pen, thinking of himself as ‘a doomed hack’, producing many thousands of words in books, editions, anthologies, articles, reviews and other journalism. He did not turn to poetry until December 1914,
J Edward Thomas, location and date unknown. Image courtesy of the Edward Thomas Fellowship
J 2nd Lieutenant Edward Thomas on embarkation leave, 1917. Image courtesy of the Edward Thomas Fellowship
Having thought a good deal about his own future, he enlisted with the Artists’ Rifles in July 1915. After training in southern England and various promotions, he volunteered for a posting overseas as a Second Lieutenant with the Royal Garrison Artillery. He arrived in France at the end of January 1917, and was soon in action around Arras. On Easter Day, 9 April, 1917, he was on duty at an observation post and was killed by the blast of a shell at 7.36am, during the first hour of the battle of Arras. The next day, he was buried at Agny Military Cemetery in the Department of the Pas-de-Calais just outside Arras. He was 39 and was survived by his wife and three children. n H.R. Woudhuysen Rector
I Edward Thomas’ memorial stone on a hillside near Steep. Alumni | 35
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Human Rights awards for Lincoln alumni PROFESSOR JANE MCADAM (2001) has been awarded the prestigious Calouste Gulbenkian 2017 Prize, in recognition of her work in international refugee law. In awarding the prize, the jury highlighted the global scope and impact of Jane’s ideas, saying their practical effect on legislation, jurisprudence and policy had led to better lives for thousands of refugees and migrants. Her work on climate change – and disaster-related displacement had been transformative, the jury found, citing her 2011 and 2016 studies for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and her leading involvement with the most significant international project in this field, the Nansen Initiative on Disaster-Induced Cross-Border Displacement, now the Platform on Disaster Displacement. Likewise, Jane’s research on the protection of individuals facing serious human rights abuses has had repercussions throughout civil society and led to major reform in Australian law. Jane shares the Prize with the Hungarian Helsinki Committee. Jane came to Lincoln as a postgraduate in 2001 and obtained her DPhil in 2005, before returning as a Visiting Fellow in 2009. Her thesis was entitled ‘Seeking Refuge in Human Rights: Complementary protection in international refugee law’. Jane holds bachelor degrees with first class honours from the University of Sydney. She is now the Director of the Andrew & Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at the University of New South Wales (UNSW Sydney), and the leader of the UNSW Grand Challenge on Refugees & Migrants. “It is an extraordinary honour to have been selected as the joint recipient of the 2017 Calouste Gulbenkian Prize for Human Rights. There are few greater challenges facing the international community today than how to provide safe, durable and legal solutions for refugees and other forced migrants. With more than 65 million people worldwide displaced from their homes as a result of persecution, conflict and human rights abuses, and another 25 million displaced by the adverse effects of disasters and climate change, we urgently need positive, lasting solutions to ensure that people can live in safety and with dignity.” – Professor Jane McAdam 36 | College & Fellows
Human Rights attorney and Lincoln alumnus, AHILAN ARULANANTHAM (1994), has been awarded a 2016 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, also known as a MacArthur ‘Genius Grant’. He was one of only 23 people to receive the grant, given to those who show ‘exceptional creativity in their work and the prospect for still more in the future’. It is often seen as one of the most generous ‘no strings attached’ grants in the world, and allows the recipient to spend the money as they see fit, with the hope that it will allow them to further their pursuit of innovation and research. Ahilan received the MacArthur Fellowship thanks to his longstanding work protecting the rights of immigrants in the US, particularly those detained and facing deportation. Through a series of landmark cases, Ahilan has established the right to appointed legal representation for immigrants with mental disabilities, determined limits on the US government’s power to detain immigrants as national security threats, and challenged the indefinite detention of immigrants by securing their right to request a bond if they have been detained for six months or more. Ahilan is currently involved in a lawsuit seeking to secure legal representation for unaccompanied immigrant children facing deportation from the US. Ahilan came to Lincoln as a Marshall scholar in 1994, having already completed an undergraduate degree in philosophy at Georgetown University, Washington, DC. He continued his studies in this area, reading PPE under the watchful gaze of his tutors, Michael Rosen, David Goldey and Bill Child (Univ), before returning to the United States where he received a J.D. from Yale Law School. He is currently the Director of Advocacy and Legal Director at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Southern California, a domestic human rights advocacy organisation. In 2010, Ahilan received the Arthur C. Helton Human Rights Award by the American Immigration Lawyers’ Association. n Lincoln is delighted to announce funding for a new MarshallDavid Goldey Scholarship, thanks to Peter Barack (1965) and the many donors to the David Goldey Scholarship. The new scholar will arrive in Michaelmas 2019, and will be reading for a MPhil in Politics/International Relations. n
© John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Lincoln has a strong tradition of producing lawyers with interests and expertise in human rights, and we are very proud to see two Lincoln alumni gain international recognition for their work in this area.
APPOINTMENTS AND PROFESSIONAL NEWS John Bertalot (1953), who is already Cathedral Organist Emeritus of Blackburn Cathedral (where he served for 18 years) and Director of Music Emeritus of Trinity Episcopal Church, Princeton, NJ (where he served for 16 years), has now been elected Organist Emeritus of St. Matthew’s Church, Northampton, where he began his career in 1958. St. Matthew’s is known for its commissioning of works of art and music including Henry Moore’s ‘Madonna and Child’, Graham Sutherland’s ‘Crucifixion’ and Britten’s Cantata ‘Rejoice in the Lamb’. It is unusual for any church musician to be elected to more than one emeritus position. Perhaps John is unique in having three emeriti positions! Robert Waterhouse (1960) is curating an exhibition, ‘Their Safe Haven’, of 14 Hungarian artists who made their lives in Britain before the Second World War, at the Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate, between September 2018 and January 2019. There’s to be a book of the same title. Roger Allen (1961) who retired from his professorial position at the University of Pennsylvania in 2011, is president of the university’s retirees association for the coming academic year (2017–18).
Geoffrey Alderman (1962) has been elected to a Senior Research Fellowship at the Institute of Historical Research. This five-year appointment will enable him to undertake research into the
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Alumni news Jewish contribution to crime in the UK since the Cromwellian Readmission, on which he intends to write the first scholarly study ever of this aspect of the history of British Jewry. Geoffrey has also been elected a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
The Chinese University of Hong Kong as a Professional Consultant, teaching mainly on the Postgraduate Certificate in Laws (PCLL), the Hong Kong equivalent of the LPC. In July 2009 he was appointed Director of the PCLL, a position he held until 31 July 2017.
Raymond Busbridge (1963) has been accepted for the PhD program in English Literature at Concordia University, Montreal.
In the meantime, Paul Mitchard QC (1971) was enjoying a career as Head of Dispute Resolution for Europe and Asia for the law firm Skadden Arps, and was based latterly in Hong Kong. Thanks to the Lincoln Record, the two were able to find each other and met up for a drink which eventually led to Paul joining CUHK’s law faculty in September 2014 to occupy the newly-created position of Director for Career Planning and Professionalism.
Peter Kornicki (1968, Honorary Fellow) has retired as Deputy Warden of Robinson College, Cambridge. Derek McDonnell (1968) and Anne McCormick have moved their rare book business Hordern House, after 32 years in the old colonial building for which it was named, to a warehouse in Sydney’s Surry Hills district (fast becoming known as Silicon Hills). All Lincolnites welcomed either actually there or virtually at hordern.com. Martin Raw (1969) is currently Visiting Professor at NYU Medical School, New York, where he is establishing and fundraising for a new international centre to help people throughout the world stop smoking, the International Centre for Tobacco Cessation. In spring 2017, he was awarded the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT) John Slade Award, which honours SRNT members who have made outstanding contributions to public health and tobacco control through science-based public policy and public advocacy. In August 2008, Richard Morris (1970) joined the Faculty of Law of
On 1 August 2017 Richard was appointed to another new position and became Associate Dean for Alumni and Professional Relations. Asked whether this coincidental duopoly over past and present students of the Faculty had a name, “…just call us the Dynamic Duo” said Richard. Bill Ricquier (1971) is the Joint Managing Director of Incisive Law LLC in Singapore (in alliance with Ince & Co Singapore LLP). The fifth edition of his book on Singapore land law is scheduled for publication in August 2017. He remains an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Law at the National University of Singapore. He continues to produce articles on cricket in various online and print forms, mainly in Asia. These complement his two books, The Indian Masters and The Pakistani Masters, each of which has been published in England and India. He is also the co-author of 100 Greats: Hampshire County Cricket Club. Jonathan (Verney) Luxmoore (1976) has six children and works from Oxford and Warsaw as a freelance journalist. His songs have been played on the BBC and Polish Radio, and his latest book, The God of the Gulag, was published in two volumes by Gracewing in 2016.
David Scott-Ralphs (1976) has left the charity SeeAbility after 13 years as CEO and is now the CEO of St Wilfrid’s Hospice (Eastbourne). Andrew Coleby (1978) is now Ministry Training Officer in the Anglican diocese of Peterborough, working out of Northampton. John Rolley (1979) has left UBS after 10 years, latterly as head of Advisory & Sales and Leadership training delivery in continental Europe. He has launched his own Zurich-based company R&R Value Partners, specialised in corporate performance enhancement, and among the company’s interesting advisory mandates is one which will appeal to all keen golfers – full details under www. rnrpartners.ch. Sabine Jaccaud (1991) joined AstraZeneca in 2015 to lead communications around the move and construction of their global HQ to Cambridge. Dominic Parker (1994) took up the post of Director of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in October 2016. Paul Williams (1995) is now Professor of Atmospheric Science in the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading. The Royal Society University Research Fellowship (URF) that has funded him for the past eight years has sadly ended. His research into atmospheric waves, jet streams, turbulence, and climate change will, however, continue. He remains active on the international lecture circuit, with recent commitments including the Royal Society’s Commonwealth Science Conference in Singapore, and a winter school on atmospheric circulation regimes for PhD students in Les Houches. Elizabeth Ford (née Cory, 1997) has recently been appointed Lecturer in Research Methodology at Brighton and Alumni | 37
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Alumni news Sussex Medical School. She has also been awarded a Wellcome Trust grant and will work with astrophysicists at the University of Sussex to develop statistical models predicting dementia onset using data from general practice patient records. Nathalie Sinyard (2003) has co-founded a consultancy, Jackdaw, to advise on workforce development strategies in response to the accelerating trends towards automation and artificial intelligence.
trends in Trade and Development: An Asia-Pacific Perspective’ at Australian National University (ANU), Canberra. She was invited on a full scholarship for the Asia Pacific Week by ANU from June 25-30, 2017. Nidhi has published three articles on Corporate Laws in a book, international journals and leading newspapers of India. She has also published her work on Competition Law and Trade Law on the blog of King’s College London and Oxford India Policy Blog respectively.
Shawn Anderson (2008) accepted a position with Microsoft Corporation leading their strategy to move to a modern management environment. Previous to this role, Shawn was the Associate Director, Cyber and Space Operations for the Air National Guard. Rhoads Cannon (2009) has graduated from Business School with an Honours MBA from the University of Denver, in Colorado USA. He is pursuing a career in Business Development and/or Management Consultancy. Gunita Bhasin (2013) is delighted to announce the launch of Showcased, her app that connects you to people who share a common passion. The virality of Showcased stems from its unique combination of professional and social networking – it’s a fun and easy place to develop your passions! Gunita introduced the app at her TEDx talk (entitled ‘How You Make a Difference’); speech to Lincoln College students; and interviews with StartupV TV. She has inspired several audiences, and now encourages you to begin your impassioned journey. Showcased is available to download from the App Store, Google Play store, and on www.showcased.org. Nidhi Singh (2015), an alumna of Lincoln College who pursued MSc in Law and Finance as a Weidenfeld Scholar, recently presented a paper on ‘Recent 38 | Alumni
Island of the Blessed: Egon Wellesz’s New Beginnings in Wartime Oxford’, in Sally Crawford, Katharina Ulmschneider and Jas Elsner (eds.), Ark of Civilization. Refugee Scholars and Oxford University, 1930-1945, Oxford, OUP, 2017, pp. 313–324. Paul Crichton (1965) has written, with a former colleague, Steven Greer, a book on the patientdoctor relationship, called When Patient and Doctor Disagree: Autonomous Patient versus Paternalistic Doctor (Kiener Press, 2016) and a collection of poetry called Twin Earth (Kiener Press, 2016). The Australasian Journal of Combinatorics has published (in Volume 68 part 3) a paper written by Fred Rowley (1968) – who now claims the age record for a first academic publication (!). It is entitled ‘Constructive lower bounds for Ramsey numbers from linear graphs’.
PUBLICATIONS Jan Z. Krasnowiecki (1948) published his sixth edition of Krasnowiecki on Real Property Law & Practice, Pennsylvania Bar Institute (PBI) Press. 2017 (962 pp.). Lionel Opie’s (1957) book Living Longer, Living Better; Lifestyle, Exercise, Diet, and Yoga for Heart and Mind (Second edition, 2016; Oxford University Press) should be hopefully be in the Lincoln College Library. Brijraj Singh (1962) published his teaching autobiography, entitled Professing English on Two Continents (Gurgaon, India), in the latter part of 2016. Print copies of the book are available from the publisher and from Amazon.com, and can be downloaded on to Kindles and other devices. Bojan Bujic (1963) has published a chapter ‘Shipwrecked on the
In 2016, the fourth edition of Andrew Waite’s (1969) coauthored book was published by Bloomsbury: Waite and Jewell: Environmental Law in Property Transactions by Andrew Waite, Gregory Jones QC and Valerie Fogleman. In 2017, Andrew joined Prospect Law. Roger Wagner (1975) and Andrew Briggs’s book, The Penultimate Curiosity (OUP 2016), continues
to garner favourable reviews (the Trinity edition of Oxford Today says ‘if you read one book this year read this’) and is to be translated into different languages. The Spanish and Portuguese translations will appear in 2018 and the Chinese translation in 2019. The first instalments of a children’s version of the book called The Great Curiosity Quest are due to be published next year. Peter Ackers (1976) published his fourth co-edited collection in 2016. Ackers & Reid, Alternatives to State Socialism in Britain: Other Worlds of Labour in the Twentieth Century, (Palgrave Macmillan) takes a revisionist approach to British Labour History, which stresses the enduring importance of Liberal-Pluralism, broadly defined. Two articles also appeared: on the writings of Hugh Clegg & Barbara Wootton about post-war Incomes Policy in the Industrial Relations Journal; and on the history and social philosophy of Leicester Worker Co-operation in Labor History. He also edited a symposium on the ‘Oxford School of Industrial Relations’ for Historical Studies in Industrial Relations. During the 2016/17 academic year he was a Visiting Scholar at the Oxford Centre for Life Writing, Wolfson College, Oxford. However, in May 2017, after only 18 months as a Research Professor of Employment Relations at De Montfort University, Leicester, he was put into a redundancy process - with the other 2 Professors in his Department. He retired from full-time academic life at the end of June 2017, but will continue writing on British Social & Labour History and Biographical approaches to this. Juliet Landau-Pope (née Pope, 1982) will publish her first book in September 2017. What’s Your Excuse for not Being More Productive? outlines quick and simple strategies to overcome procrastination.
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Stuart Walton (1983) has written the first volume in a new series of monographs on contemporary theorists from Zero Books. Introducing Theodor Adorno will be published in December 2017. Nick Godfrey’s (1986) latest book, Postcards from the World of Horse Racing: Days Out on the Global Racing Road, was published by Pitch Publishing in June; it is available at www. racingpost.com/shop.
Ed Lawson (1996) is consumed with writing a cookbook following extensive travel in Bolivia: Say Aloe to cooking with Cacti - from Prickly Pear to Beavertail, a follow up to his 2015 title aimed at students, How much of a mangetout is edible? He hopes it will be available in early 2018. David Sergeant’s (1997) second book of poetry, The Pronoun Utopia, was published this year by Green Bottle Press.
Ghislaine Widmer (1993) is glad to announce the publication of a Festschrift for Mark Smith, Professor of Egyptology at the University of Oxford, entitled Illuminating Osiris. Egyptological Studies in Honor of Mark Smith [Lockwood Press, Atlanta, 2017] and coedited with R. Jasnow (Johns Hopkins University). It comprises twenty-seven articles by students, friends, and colleagues of this renowned Demotist and specialist in ancient Egyptian religion. Mark Forsyth (1996) has written a book called A Short History of Drunkenness: How, why, where and when mankind has got merry from the Stone Age to the present. It’s published by Viking Penguin and will be released in November 2017.
Bijan Omrani (1998) has published a new book, Caesar’s Footprints: Journeys to Roman Gaul (Head of Zeus, June 2017). It has received endorsements from Boris Johnson, Justin Marozzi, and Robert Twigger. Andrew van der Vlies (1998), who completed his DPhil at Lincoln and is currently Reader
in the Department of English at Queen Mary University of London, recently published his second monograph. Present Imperfect: Contemporary South African Writing, published by Oxford University Press on 1 June 2017, is the first book-length study of affect in South African literature and explores the response of a range of writers, from the well-known (Coetzee, Gordimer) to others not as widely read outside of South Africa, to the disappointments - and the residual hopes - of the post-transition era. Simon Gikandi (Princeton) has called it ‘one of the most lucid and original reflections on South African writing after Apartheid’.
Paul Keers (1976) won an André Simon Food & Drink Books Award for the first book of his coauthored humorous wine writing as ‘The Sediment Blog’. It has just been published in paperback as I’ve Bought It So I’ll Drink It – The joys (or not) of drinking wine.
PRIZES AND AWARDS William Hartmann (1961) received the Gold Medal from the Acoustical Society of America on June 27, 2017. The medal was received at a joint meeting of the Society with the European Acoustics Association held in Boston. Ian C. Storey (1969) received the Award of Merit from the Classical Association of Canada at its annual meeting in May 2017, this year held in St John’s, Newfoundland. The Award is an opportunity for the Association to acknowledge outstanding service to the discipline, such as, but not limited to, excellent or innovative teaching, mentoring of students and faculty colleagues, promoting knowledge of the ancient Greek and Roman world among the general public, and service to the Association. David Clark (1973), Professor of Experimental Psychology at Oxford, has been made a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in recognition of his contribution to cognitive behavioural therapy and the treatment of anxiety disorders.
John Sutherland (1980) has been elected Fellow of the Royal Society in recognition of his pioneering studies in understanding the chemical origins of life. Deborah Bowman (1987) was awarded an MBE in the 2017 New Year Honours for her services to medical ethics. Fiona McPhee (1987) was a recipient of the American Chemical Society’s 2017 Heroes in Chemistry Award for contributions to the discovery of the combination of the pioneering hepatitis C virus (HCV) NS5A inhibitor, Daklinza® (daclatasvir), and the acylsulfonamide-containing HCV NS3 protease inhibitor, SunvepraTM (asunaprevir), which together demonstrated for the
Simon Roper (1975) was elected President of the Oxford and Cambridge Club of Geneva in April 2017. Alumni | 39
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Alumni news first time that HCV infection could be cured with only directacting antiviral agents.
place in the Cathedral of St Nicholas and the reception took place in the Royal Overseas League.
Susan Healy and Richard Stock (2002) are delighted to announce their engagement.
Debbie Johnson (1988) was named as the winner of the Contemporary Romance of the Year Award at the Romantic Novelists’ Association annual prize-giving. The event was held at the Gladstone Library in London and attended by writers such as Barbara Erskine, Adele Parks and Julie Cohen. Debbie won the award for her book, Summer at the Comfort Food Cafe, and received her prize from author and Great British Bake Off presenter, Prue Leith.
Mark Williams (1989) and Mary Harrington (1998) announce the birth of their daughter Elisabeth Catherine in September 2016.
Hannah Wilson (née Shaw, 2002) and her husband Dave are delighted to announce the birth of their son, Charlie Felix Wilson, on 24 April 2017.
Richard Worrallo (1989) married Katie Wilson on 8 April 2017. He now has three more children (aged 17, 15 and 14) to add to his three from his previous marriage. He has just completed his twenty-fifth year at Hampton School, where he is Senior Tutor responsible for Careers and University entrance. Peter Szolcsanyi (1996) and Daniela Moravčíková are delighted to announce the birth of their son, Matej, born 24 March, 2017.
Naomi Alderman (1993) has won the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction for her novel The Power. Naomi’s first novel, Disobedience, is being made into a film starring Rachel Weisz.
Andrew Holmes, Newton Abraham Visiting Professor, Fellow of Lincoln College (2011-2012) and President of the Australian Academy of Science, was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) in the Australia Day Honours List on 26 January 2017. BIRTHS, MARRIAGES AND ANNIVERSARIES Hamish Dewar (1956) and Sylvia von Hartmann celebrated 50 years of tumultuous marriage on 4 July 2017. Adrian Gannon (1989) married Medea Khasaia in London in October 2016. The service took College & Fellows 40 | Alumni
OJ Wooding (2002) and his wife Eva happily had their second daughter, Felicity Charlotte, on 6 November 2016. Ying Tian (2003) is delighted to announce that her first son, Steven Ziwen Zhang, came into the world on March 6 2017 in Shanghai, China. Steven was born at 10:18am, weighing 3.75kg (8lb. 3).
Jennifer and Michael Gatenby (1997) are delighted to announce the birth of their son, Henry, on November 6 2016 in Long Island City, NY. Jennifer Babington (née Black, 1998) and her husband, Richard, have recently welcomed their second child, a son, into the world on 26 October 2016. Acer Ian Armstrong Babington is doing very well and Tabitha is a wonderful big sister. Arabella Neville-Rolfe (1998) and her wife Lucy Fry (Oriel, 2000) are delighted to announce the birth of their son, Rufus Edmund NevilleFry, on 21 May 2017. Amelia Walker (née Elborne, 2001) and Spencer Walker (Univ, 2001) had their daughter, Persephone Clio Vivienne, in January 2016.
James Nutton (2006) and Emma Hale (2007) married in June 2017 in Surrey. Despoina Magka (2008) and St. John’s alumnus, Dr Bruno Marnette (2007), are delighted to announce that they were married in Paros, Greece on 10 June 2017.
Tom Kabuga (2008) and his wife Suranahi (Keble) would like to announce the birth of their third child, Zavier, on 27 April 2017. Julie Baleriaux (2012) and Paul Vidal de La Blache are delighted to announce their wedding. OTHER Michael Chan (1982) was pleased when his son, Jonathan Chan (2016), was accepted at Lincoln to read for the MSc in Law and Finance. Jonathan had a wonderful year at Lincoln and rowed in the men’s second boat, which had a successful Summer VIIIs (three bumps and a row over!). Jonathan graduated with distinction, and will continue his studies with a DPhil in Law, at Lincoln.
Tom Pearce (2011) ran the 2017 Virgin London Marathon, finishing in a time of 4 hours 40 minutes and raising over £5500 for the British Heart Foundation.
Lincoln College contact information: If you are an alumnus/na with a question about College, please contact the Development Office and we will do our best to help you. You can reach us at: The Development Office Lincoln College, Turl Street, Oxford, OX1 3DR T : +44(0)1865 287421 F : +44(0)1865 279965 E : development.office@lincoln.ox.ac.uk
Susan Harrison, Director of Development and Alumni Relations T: +44(0)1865 279838; E: susan.harrison@lincoln.ox.ac.uk Jane Mitchell, Deputy Development Director T: +44(0)1865 616843; E: jane.mitchell@lincoln.ox.ac.uk Rachel Boswell, Development Officer T: +44(0)1865 279793; E: rachel.boswell@lincoln.ox.ac.uk Julia Uwins, Alumni and College Communications Officer T: +44(0)1865 279841; E: julia.uwins@lincoln.ox.ac.uk Susan Davison, Development and Events Administrator T: +44(0)1865 287421; E: susan.davison@lincoln.ox.ac.uk
The Murray Society Ever since Lincoln’s foundation, bequests have played a vital role in shaping and sustaining its development. Although inspired by an array of motivations, they have enabled members and friends of the College to unite in demonstrating their support for its historic goals. Whether great or small, they have enhanced the College community, providing eloquent testimony to its traditions while helping to chart its future. Legacy gifts not only benefit the College but may also benefit the donor if given efficiently. Making a provision for Lincoln in your estate plans will not affect your current financial situation but will provide for a significant gift in the future. A charitable bequest is deductible for federal estate purposes and there is no limit on the amount of deduction. In addition, bequests are not generally subject to state inheritance or estate taxes. Lincoln has created the Murray Society, named in honour of Keith Murray, who was Rector of Lincoln from 1944 to 1953, and before that Bursar and Fellow of the College, to thank alumni and friends who leave a legacy to the College. Murray Society members are invited to exclusive events including the annual Murray Day luncheon and talk in College which is an opportunity to meet current Fellows and other alumni. They also receive the Murray Society newsletter, have access to informal legal and practical advice about bequests and are given a Murray Society tie and/or scarf in Lincoln colours. If you would like more information regarding the Murray Society please contact Susan Harrison, Development Director at susan.harrison@lincoln.ox.ac.uk or +44 1865 279838. If you are making your gift from the US, please contact Jane Mitchell, Deputy Development Director at jane.mitchell@lincoln.ox.ac.uk or +44 1865 616843. Many thanks for your consideration. College & Fellows | 43
LINCOLN COLLEGE ALUMNI EVENTS 2017–18 Please make a note of the following dates for the academic year ahead. Invitations to events will be sent out by the Development Office approximately two months before the date. This schedule is provisional and may be subject to change 2017 Saturday 16 September – Lincoln Society Dinner Saturday 23 September – 1967 Year Dinner Friday 29 September – 2008-2010 Gaudy Saturday 30 September – 1997 Year Dinner Saturday 14 October – Autumn Murray Day Tuesday 17 October – Women’s Networking Event Saturday 28 October – Science Fellowship Club Luncheon Saturday 11 November – CAAH Fellowship Club Luncheon Sunday 12 November – Lunch and Tour, Los Angeles Tuesday 28 November – Gathering, NYC Wednesday 29 November – Dinner in Philadelphia 2018 Saturday 27 January – History Fellowship Club Luncheon Monday 5 March – London Dining Club, Cavalry and Guards Club, London Friday 16 March – 1964-1967 Gaudy Friday 16-Saturday 17 March – European Reunion, Rome Saturday 17 March – 1978 Year Dinner Saturday 24 March – 1988 Year Dinner Friday 6-Saturday 7 April – North American Reunion, San Francisco Saturday 21 April – Rotherham Circle Lunch Thursday 17 May – 1958 Year Luncheon Saturday 26 May – Lincoln Society Eights Week Family Day We look forward to seeing you at our events during 2017–18. To find out more about The Road to 2027 Campaign please go to: www.theroadto2027.com
DESIGNED BY BASELINE ARTS, OXFORD . 01865-249169
LINCOLN COLLEGE CONTACT INFORMATION TURL STREET, OXFORD, OX1 3DR 01865 279800 development.office@lincoln.ox.ac.uk