Treasurer’s Report

SOMERVILLE WAS RECOGNISED AS A UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF SANCTUARY IN FEBRUARY 2021

Extending access to Somerville will always be a fundamental priority of the College. I was so very proud, therefore, to see our Tutor and Fellow in Music, Samantha Dieckmann, gain national attention for her programme offering Oxford music students the chance to teach in local schools. A whole generation of young people have had their lives narrowed by lockdown, and Sam’s programme offers a pathway out of that cul-de-sac through music and culture more generally.

Given the appalling crisis occurring in Afghanistan, it is only fitting that Somerville has been working harder than ever to make our College a place of refuge and transformative opportunity for vulnerable students and academics. We began in October by welcoming our first Sanctuary Scholar, Dr Marwa Biala from Tripoli, to study for an MSc in Radiation Biology. Then, in February, we learned that our joint application with Mansfield College to become the UK’s first Colleges of Sanctuary had been successful.

Becoming a College of Sanctuary formalises our commitment to ensuring that Somerville offers a safe and welcoming space for refugees and asylum-seekers. It is also a living, breathing part of our culture. That much was evident when our Tutorial Fellow in Medicine, Professor Daniel Anthony, approached us in June to see if we could help his new colleague, the Yemeni neuropathologist Dr Anwar Masoud. Dr Masoud and his family had just arrived in the UK thanks to CARA, the Council for At-Risk Academics, and it was a great privilege not only to help Anwar and his family, but to see the Somerville community coming together in support of its founding principles.

The work will continue. This October, we will welcome our second Sanctuary Scholars to Somerville. Asif Salarzai is a phenomenal young Afghan who came to the UK as a refugee aged 14 having never attended school in his life. Now, thanks to his own extraordinary tenacity and happening upon a Somerville at Home event featuring one of my great heroes, Lord Alf Dubs, he will come to Somerville with a full scholarship to read History and Economics.

In coming to Somerville, Asif is joining an outstanding community of young minds, just a few of whom I’ll mention here. Dr Cristian Trovato (2017, Computer Science) won Best Research Paper of 2020 from the Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology for his doctoral research on computer modelling to understand specialised Purkinje cells in the heart. Also from the Department of Computer Science, Alex Pay (2019, Computer Science) won first prize in the Department of Computer Science’s annual Group Design Practical.

In medicine, Abi Punt (2019, Medicine) and Eva Zilber (2015, Medicine) were both named proxime accessit for their performances in the First and Second BM examinations, respectively. Eva was also selected for the University of Oxford’s Academic Foundation Programme alongside her fellow finalist John Aaron Henry (2015, Medicine), which will enable both doctors to conduct research in an area of their choice while completing the Foundation Programme Curriculum.

In postgraduate medicine, Young Kim (2016, DPhil ) was selected as the Nuffield Department of Medicine’s overall prize winner for best DPhil student based on publication records, references and the impact and novelty of his research. I was also delighted that Eoghan Mulholland, a Somerville JRF, won the Lee Placitio Research Fellowship in Gastrointestinal Cancer.

In postgraduate humanities, Rebecca Bowen (2016, Medieval and Modern Languages) won the Society for Italian Studies’ 2020 prize best postgraduate thesis in Italian studies. She inspired us all in 2019 with her fundraising campaign to conserve our library’s holdings on Dante and other archival materials, so I have no doubt she’ll inspire us again in the future.

DR ANWAR MASOUD AND HIS FAMILY

Photo by John Cairns

PRATISHTA DEVESHWAR FROM LEFT: TRAVON FREE, MARTIN DESMOND ROE AND JOEY BADA$$ ON THE SET OF TWO DISTANT STRANGERS. PHOTO: ELMO KEBOUR/NETFLIX

On the subject of inspiration, few people could claim to have inspired more people than Pratishtha Deveshwar (2020, MSc Public Policy). An activist for persons with disabilities following a car accident aged thirteen which left her unable to walk, Pratishtha has gone from campaigning on the streets of Delhi to speaking before the UN – and this year she was recognised with a Diana Award, the UK’s highest recognition for young people creating social change.

On a slightly less awe-inspiring, yet no less essential note were the refurbishments undertaken to the Somerville kitchens. For the entire year, we sacrificed the use of our Hall and much of the Quad so that the kitchens and buttery could be reconfigured and new equipment (including energy-efficient convection ovens) installed. Now our catering team will be able to create the delicious food for which they’re renowned with more confidence and creativity than ever.

The passion and hard work of our development team, led by Sara Kalim, have enabled us to increase the number of Thatcher Scholars to 24 next year and the number of Oxford India Centre Scholars to 21– thereby meeting the target we set ourselves back in 2018 of having 20 fully-funded scholars per programme. Such scholarships are life-changing for those who receive them, and they add so much new life to our college. Making those opportunities a reality is, of course, endless but never thankless hard work.

A shining example of our Development Team’s boundless energy was the Somerville Auction back in May. The first auction to take place in College in over twenty years, as well as the first one ever to go online, the auction was made possible by the generosity of our alumni and friends, and culminated in a joyous night of celebration that brought together students and alumni as well as VIP guests such as Susie Dent and Natasha Kaplinsky. I am so very grateful for your support on this occasion, which helped us raise over £100,000 in vital funds for Somerville, with almost the same sum anticipated from the private sale of art donated by our alumni.

Later in the summer, I was equally thrilled to participate in the inaugural OpenAg Symposium hosted by the OICSD and Indian agribusiness UPL. Focusing on global efforts to reshape the role of food systems in the face of climate change, the event featured leading academics such as Director of the Oxford Martin School, Sir Charles Godfray, alongside leading policymakers, industry pioneers and tech investors.

The OpenAg Symposium bears the distinction of being our first fully ‘hybrid’ event, featuring both live and virtual guests. It offers further evidence, if any were needed, that the virtual world is one that our community continues to navigate with elegance and impact. Elsewhere, our Chapel and Choir have continued to produce live-streamed Choral Contemplations, our students have contributed regularly to events through their own platforms or in conjunction with the Development Programme and OICSD, and our Somerville at Home series has gone from strength to strength. If you have a moment to spare, you may wish to catch up on highlights of the latter such as our Climate Change Symposium or our interview with Oscar-winning director Martin Desmond Roe (1997, Lit. Hum.) and Travon Free, Co-Directors of the Black Lives Matter-inspired feature Two Distant Strangers.

Last but not least, our Communications team were hard at work for much of this year developing our new website. We hope you’ll agree that it provides a vibrant online home for our community as well as an exciting window on Somerville for the students of tomorrow.