6 minute read
news in Brief
Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell has been appointed Pro-Chancellor at the University of Dublin (also known as Trinity College, Dublin). Jocelyn, a Professorial Fellow in Physics at Mansfield, comments: ‘This means I have to pretend to be a competent Latin speaker (with Protestant not Catholic pronunciation – did you know there was a difference?) and preside at some degree ceremonies (called Commencements in TCD) when the Chancellor, Mary Robinson, is absent.’
RGS Award
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At the 2013 AGM of the Royal Geographical Society, held on June 3rd, Dr Richard Powell, Tutorial Fellow in Geography at Mansfield, received the Gill Memorial Award for research on historical and polar geography. Richard is in the final year of his second term as Chair of the Society’s ‘History and Philosophy of Geography Research Group’.
Reporting Environmental Change
Mansfield’s Dr Pam Berry, Senior Research Fellow at the University’s Environmental Change Institute, is part of the group of senior scientists that has begun work this year on a series of ‘Report Cards’. These cards summarise emerging themes from the body of recent scientific studies, to provide an overview of key trends. The work is being produced for the Living With Environmental Change Partnership, a group of organisations concerned with the funding and use of environmental research. The online, click-through Report Cards will advise policy makers, environmental consultants and researchers about current evidence.
www.lwec.org.uk/resources/report-cards
In May of 2013, Dr David Lincicum, who in 2012 was elected to the G.B. Caird Fellowship in New Testament Theology vacated by the retiring Rev Dr John Muddiman, travelled to Heidelberg to receive a Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise. The award is given annually to an international selection of ten young scholars, and was on this occasion awarded for dissertations on the topic of ‘God and Spirituality’. As a part of the award, David will be offered the chance to propose an interdisciplinary colloquium on a relevant theological topic.
Accolades for the Principal
Our Principal, Baroness Helena Kennedy, was this year elected to an Honorary Fellowship of the British Academy. The Honorary Fellowship is the highest honour that the British Academy awards for service to scholarly learning. Baroness Kennedy was also voted 2013’s ‘Peer of the Year’ by the national newspaper Asian Voice’s Political and Public Life Awards panel, which praised her report on Human Trafficking for the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Asian Voice is the major news weekly for British Asian communities, with a circulation of over 200,000.
Yale Fellowship
Dr Michèle Mendelssohn, University Lecturer in English, and Tutorial Fellow at Mansfield, has been awarded the 2014 Donald C Gallup Fellowship in American Literature at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The award is in support of her research on the legacy of 19th-century British decadence for early 20th-century African American artists and writers, especially during the Harlem Renaissance.
Dr Emma Howard
Career Development Fellow in Economics
Dr Howard has a BA, MSc and PhD in Economics from Trinity College Dublin. Her PhD thesis is entitled 'Spatial Networks, Clustering and Spillovers: Lessons for Development'. Her research interests are Development Economics, Applied Microeconomics and Network Analysis.
Prof Peter Keevash
Tutorial Fellow in Mathematics
Prof Keevash has PhDs in Mathematics from Princeton University and the University of Cambridge. He joins us from Queen Mary University of London. His research interests are Extremal Combinatorics, Graph Theory, Hypergraphs/Set Systems, Algebraic and Probabilistic Methods in Combinatorics, Random Structures, Combinatorial Optimisation and Combinatorial Number Theory.
new staff
Philip Egerton
has joined the Accounts Office. Philip is a Geography graduate and former primary school teacher who recently decided on a career move into accountancy. Neil McCarthy, our new Catering Manager, was appointed early in 2013 to replace the long-serving Lynn Partridge. Neil joins us from St George’s House, at Windsor Castle.
Gemma Lamb,
Senior Development Officer, joined the team in September with a focus on major gifts and legacies. Her background is in charity and social enterprise fundraising and development.
Aparajita Kashyap
is our new Alumni Relations Officer. An Oxford graduate in Sociology, she joined the Development Office in late October from a role in the Department of Politics. Eleanor Crawford, our new Development Officer, joined us from the University of East Anglia, where she managed the annual telethon and worked in trust fundraising.
Departures
Dr Antoni Chawluk
Tutorial Fellow in Economics
Dr Chawluk retired in September 2013. Dr Chawluk joined Mansfield in 1991, when he was appointed to a Fellowship in Economics at Mansfield and a University Lectureship in Soviet-type Economics and their Transformation. He served as Dean in 1994-95 and 199697, and was also the Tutor for Graduates for a term in 2001-02. September 2013 also saw the retirement of Dr Janet Dyson, beloved Tutorial Fellow in Mathematics, who tells us about her time at Mansfield on pages 10-13.
We were also sad to see the departure of
Dr Jonathan Marchini
Senior Research Fellow in Statistical Genomics, and
Dr Cari Morningstar
Director of the Visiting Student Programme.
Mason Lowance English Prizes Renamed
Over the past several decades, generations of Mansfield students studying English have received recognition for excellent work in the course of their studies by the award of a ‘Mason Lowance’ prize. These prizes were endowed by Professor Mason Lowance who holds a professorship at the University of Massachusetts where he teaches and publishes on American literature with a special interest in anti-slavery debates and writing.
Professor Lowance and his wife, Susan Lowance, visited Mansfield College in summer 2013, when we were delighted to agree to his request to honour the tutors in English at the College who first fostered his love for the subject, by renaming the College prizes he has so generously endowed.
Prize for best distinction-level performance in English Prelims.
Malcolm Parkes was appointed to teach for Mansfield in 1960, holding a full fellowship at Keble College. He taught Old and Middle English and his achievements in palaeography led to the award of a personal chair at Oxford in the field. Malcolm passed away in 2013 (see obituary by John Creaser on page 52).
The Mason Lowance Prize in memory of Stephen Wall
Prize for best performance in English Finals.
Stephen Wall was appointed to teach for Mansfield in 1960, holding a full fellowship at Keble College. He taught and published in Victorian literature, and was chief editor of the important Oxford journal Essays in Criticism. Stephen passed away in 2010.
The Mason Lowance Prize in honour of John Creaser
Prize for best performance in English language and/or literature second-year work.
John Creaser was the first full Fellow in English from 1966 to 1985, and his research specialism is in early modern poetry and drama. He also served as Vice-Principal of Mansfield. Professor Creaser retired from teaching in 2002 as Hildred Carlile Professor of English Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London; in ‘retirement’ he has returned to Mansfield, initially as a Senior Research Fellow, and now as an Emeritus Fellow.
Friday Inspires
For information about the Mansfield Lecture Series 2014, see the College website. When our Principal, Helena Kennedy, arrived in 2011, she immediately set about arranging for a weekly lecture series to take place during term time, every Friday at 5pm in the Chapel. Since then we have welcomed a fantastic array of speakers as part of the Friday lecture series, but also at a range of other lectures, including our yearly Hands Lecture.
In the past academic year we were lucky to hear, among many others, the science writer and journalist Simon Singh, former Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral Dr Giles Fraser, Chief of the UN’s Development Programme and former Prime Minister of New Zealand Helen Clark, child psychotherapist Camila Batmanghelidjh, and legendary TV comic, presenter and explorer Michael Palin.
