Falmer No. 54

Falmer The University of Sussex magazine

No 54 04 12

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N E W S Events, breakthroughs and milestones at Sussex.

PEO PLE Comedian Sara Pascoe, Small Batch Coffee duo Alan and Nick,

Everest climber Jayanthi and windmill engineer James. 26 / F E AT U R E S A closer look at Brexit, mental health and water security. 39 / FO RWA R D A N D B AC K Remembering Sussex ‘greats’ and student digs, celebrating those who go the extra mile, recent authors and an alumni competition.

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• Enhance your critical and strategic thinking.

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• You receive individual support and innovative teaching in small groups.

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FIND OUT MORE www.sussexmba.com Or contact the MBA team by email at mba@sussex.ac.uk, or call +44 (0)1273 873522

Welcome Sussex is different. Since our foundation in 1961 we’ve valued – and encouraged – a pioneering spirit.

As universities change and the world around us changes, we continue to challenge, question and engage with local, national and global issues through our research and our teaching.

We also celebrate the achievements of members within our impressive community of alumni and friends for whom intellectual curiosity lasts a lifetime.

In this year’s Falmer magazine, we’re proud to highlight pioneers, such as Jayanthi Kuru-Utumpala, Sri Lanka’s first person to climb Everest, alongside features on our leading research and the latest University and alumni news.

Paying tribute to two Sussex greats, former students share their memories of Lord Asa Briggs and Professor Sir Harry Kroto.

Did you live at East Slope? Read the memories alumni have already revealed and hear how two friends who met in Flat 28 now run a successful coffee roastery and cafe chain.

I hope you enjoy your new-look magazine – we’d love to hear what you think of it and receive your news, photos and ideas for the next edition. So do get in touch!

Sally Atkinson, Editor

Falmer Magazine

E D I TO R Sally Atkinson C O N T R I B U T I N G E D I TO R Tom Furnival-Adams C O P Y E D I TO R Julia Zaltzman C O N T R I B U TO R S John Atack, L Alan Winters, Kamala Dawar, Rorden Wilkinson, Martin Todd, Jonathan Hare, Tom Kemnitz D E S I G N Baxter and Bailey

The University would like to thank and credit the following for the use of photographs and illustrations: 05 Miss Aniela, 06 (Life Sciences building) Brick Visual, 10 (main photo) Hugo Glendinning, 11 (interior and on-stage photos) Briony Campbell.

Other images have been supplied by alumni or their representatives.

All other photography by Stuart Robinson, University of Sussex.

Every effort has been made to trace the holders of copyright.

The University regrets any unwilling infringements of copyright and would be pleased to hear from copyright holders.

Falmer is produced annually by the Development and Alumni Relations Office.

Views expressed are those of the contributors and not necessarily those of the University. While every care is taken to ensure accuracy, we cannot be held responsible for information originating outside the University.

The Editor is keen to hear readers’ views of the magazine and welcomes articles, news and photographs, although publication cannot be guaranteed.

PLEASE ADDRESS ALL CORRESPONDENCE TO: Development and Alumni Relations Office Sussex House University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9RH, UK or email us at alumni@sussex.ac.uk www.sussex.ac.uk/alumni +44 (0)1273 678258 Stay in touch: facebook.com/sussexalumni University of Sussex Alumni Network @sussex_alumni

F E AT U R E S

U N I V E R S I T Y N E W S Keeping abreast of Sussex developments taking place on campus and around the world. 0 8 / U N I V E R S I T Y Q & A Our new Vice-Chancellor Adam Tickell on today’s challenges and Sussex’s future. 10 / AT T E N B O RO U G H C E N T R E FO R T H E C R E AT I V E A R T S Refurbished and delivering world-class performances.

26 / M I N D M AT T E R S Professor John Atack explains how the Sussex Drug Discovery Centre has established itself as the UK’s only centre pursuing drug discovery for mental health disorders.

3 0 / B U I L D I N G A B E T T E R B R E X I T The UK Trade Policy Observatory addresses the complexity of uncoupling the UK from the EU, in the wake of Brexit. 3 3 / R E S E A RC H N E W S The latest in pioneering research and scientific achievements from the University. 3 6 / WAT E R FO R A LL Professor Martin Todd hones in on the pressing need for groundwater management in Africa.

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SUSSEX PEOPLE

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S A R A PA S C O E Comedian, author and reluctant role model. 16 / JAYA N T H I KU R U - U T U M PA L A The first Sri-Lankan to climb Everest reveals what it’s like to reach the top, as a woman. / 1 9 A L A N TO M LI N S AND NICK BARLOW A trip down memory lane for the East Slope flatmates turned Small Batch coffee gurus. 2 2 / JA M E S TA S KE R An interview with the engineer who rebuilt Ashcombe Windmill, 100 years after it was destroyed in a storm. 24 / A LU M N I N E W S Career milestones, sporting success, awards and reunions.

BAC K PAGE S

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39 / G I F T O F T I M E Meet alumni who are making a difference to current students’ lives.

41 / M A KI N G T H E F U T U R E Looking at the impact of the University's 50th Anniversary campaign.

42 / A LU M N I M E M O R I E S After years as the archetypal student digs, we bid a fond farewell to East Slope. 4 4 / S U S S E X I C O N S The late, great, Lord Asa Briggs and Sir Harry Kroto are fondly remembered. 47 / B O O K S H E L F An eclectic selection of books written by alumni. 4 8 / C O M PE T I T I O N Win a 4-star weekend in Brighton.

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CONTENTS

UP FRONT

News in Brief Sussex and Hong Kong universities to launch dual PhD A dual PhD in C A N C E R S C I E N C E , jointly run by scientists from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, one of the world’s top 50 universities, and the Genome Damage and Stability Centre at Sussex, is due to commence in 2018.

All together now Professor of Music Ed Hughes and his team have developed an app that H E L P S P R I M A RY S C H O O L C H I L D R E N P L AY M U S I C at the same speed and rhythm as each other. Professor Hughes said: “I love how it can really help take the fear factor out of playing in an ensemble for children. The improvement in confidence can be amazing.”

UP FRONT | UNIVERSITY NEWS

Syrian refugees arrive at Sussex The first SY R I A N R E F U G E E S C H O L A R S to arrive on campus have started their English language courses. The University has extended the reach of its Refugee Scholarship, made possible by the generous support of Sussex alumni and friends.

Changes include making the scheme open for students wishing to continue to further study or work, and opening it to refugees in the Sussex area who have expert knowledge.

Sussex Masters course in Corruption launches in Qatar The P R I M E M I N I S T E R O F QATA R has launched a twoyear Sussex MA in Corruption, Law and Governance, in collaboration with the Rule of Law & Anti-Corruption Centre.

Professor Dan Hough, Director of the Sussex Centre for the Study of Corruption, said it is “the perfect vehicle for professionals across the Gulf region to gain in-depth knowledge of the fight against corruption.”

Construction to start on new ‘East Slope’ The first phase of C O N S T R U C T I O N O N N E W E A S T S LO P E AC C O M M O DAT I O N , which will house 2,100 students and a new Students’ Union, is expected to finish by Autumn 2018, with all work completed by 2020. A ‘farewell bash’ is being held on 24 June 2017 at East Slope Bar for any alumni wanting to see their old accommodation before its planned demolition.

Record numbers volunteer for Sussex Runs to Prevent Podo On 9 April 2017, over 100 Sussex alumni, staff and students will run in the Brighton Marathon and BM10k in our largest ever community fundraising event in support of world-leading research into podoconiosis (podo). Thank you to everyone who is helping us reach our £50,000 target. Find out more and add your support at W W W. S U S S E X . AC .U K /P R E V E N T I N G P O D O

EXHIBITION

Photographic portrait exhibition launched in House of Commons Inspired by the still and sombre paintings of 17th century Dutch artist Rembrandt, fine-art photographer and Sussex alumna Natalie Dybisz (English 2005), a.k.a Miss Aniela, has created a series of portraits that capture the lives and work of a dozen high-flying academics in subtle and intriguing ways.

Entitled ‘Twelve Women in Academia’, the exhibition was launched in Parliament on 16 January 2017.

Visiting the exhibition, Deputy Pro-Vice Chancellor (Equalities and Diversity), Professor Claire Annesley, said: “I believe there should be a real universities-wide debate about how women are acknowledged and rewarded for their achievements, and how we smash the glass ceiling on promotion to reader and professorial roles.”

The exhibition has now returned to the University library, where the portraits can be viewed in the permanent display or you can view them online at: www.bit.ly/TwelveWomen

I believe there should be a real universities-wide debate about how women are acknowledged and rewarded for their achievements.

EXPERTISE

INNOVATION

Scientists create ‘floating pixels’ using soundwaves and force fields Researchers at the Universities of Sussex and Bristol have used soundwaves to lift many tiny objects at once before spinning and flipping them using electric force fields.

The technology – called JOLED – effectively turns tiny, multi-coloured spheres into real-life pixels, which can form into floating displays or bring computer game characters to life as physical objects.

Leading the research, Professor Sriram Subramanian said: “We’ve created displays in mid-air that are free-floating, where each pixel in the display can be rotated on the spot to show different colours and images.

“This opens up a whole new design space, where computer and mobile displays extend into the 3D space above the screen.”

Ten alumni are among the top executives from banking, finance and industry who have joined a new advisory board for the School of Business, Management and Economics, chaired by alumnus Dominic Rossi (SOC 1982), Global Chief Investment Officer of Equities at Fidelity International.

Professor Steven McGuire, Head of the School of Business, Management and Economics, said: “We’re honoured to have such a distinguished group of businesspeople give up their time to help us achieve our goal of becoming one of the world’s top business and management schools.

“Many have extensive experience of international business through their work in countries across the world, which fits in perfectly with our strong international outlook.

“This will open up a world of opportunities for our students, from new placements with top firms, to re-energised courses that are more responsive to industry needs.”

EVENT

Celebrating 50 In the past year, celebrations and reunions have been held to mark 50 years of teaching and research in Engineering, Astronomy and Science Policy at Sussex.

At the beginning of September, SPRU hosted an international conference ‘Transforming Innovation’ as the highlight of a year-long programme of events celebrating 50 years of world-leading science policy research. The conference was attended by more than 550 delegates from across the globe and from academia, civil society, business and government.

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Earlier in the year, over 120 former staff and students from the Engineering department gathered on campus to hear about the latest research, meet old friends and tour the facilities. In October, staff past and present joined alumni and current PhD students to hear talks from eminent astronomers who had worked at the Sussex Astronomy Centre during the past five decades.

UP FRONT | UNIVERSITY NEWS

New advisory board for School of Business, Management and Economics

I N T E R N AT I O N A L

UP FRONT | UNIVERSITY NEWS

Writivism: Nurturing Africa’s future writers Writivism is a pan-African initiative designed to seek out and nurture emerging literary talent across the continent. The School of English, The Sussex Africa Centre and the International Office at Sussex were official funding and programme partners for Writivism 2016, the fourth annual festival.

In addition to the sponsorship of the Short Story Prize, Sussex also supports such initiatives as the #WritingGamesNG in partnership with Goal.com to show how writing and sports can promote individual and national development, as well as the University of Sussex/Uniserv Education Essay Competition, where students at Kenyan independent high schools were invited to compose pieces addressing the value of an international education.

Dr John Masterson, lecturer in World Literatures in the School of English, played a key role in the festival during his visit to Kampala, Uganda in August 2016.

Dr Masterson joined an academic panel dedicated to the topic ‘What does it mean to teach African literature?’ alongside scholars from Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda and South Sudan, amongst other African countries, as well as Europe and North America. He also accompanied several of the creative writers involved in Writivism, including the shortlisted authors for the Sussexsponsored prize, in visiting local secondary schools to engage with students and teachers in the importance of reading and writing, and to learn about the particular challenges they face in a context where access to books, let alone further education, can be limited.

Talking about his time in Uganda, Dr Masterson said: “From students and staff to creative writers and academics, I learned a great deal over the course of my Writivism week.

“It is heartening to see the University directly engaging with issues and practices around critical

and creative literacy on the African continent, and I look forward to continuing work with colleagues in Africa and closer to home on similarly stimulating projects in the future.”

S T U DENT INNOVATION

HONORARY DEGREES

Student’s award-winning graphene battery could slash electric-car charging times

Remarkable people honoured at summer graduation

Josh de Wit, a second-year Mechanical Engineering student, has won a national car industry award for designing a new battery that could revolutionise electric vehicles.

The 21-year-old’s concept uses an innovative graphene battery that makes best use of the material’s conductivity, lightness and strength to introduce a completely new design.

The stacked-graphene battery design drastically shortens charging times and the flexibility of the material means far less is needed, which reduces cost, weight, storage capacity and size, as well as maximises efficiency.

Josh is about to begin a six-month work experience tour of some of the biggest names in the motor industry, including Honda, Jaguar Land Rover, McLaren, Nissan, Peugeot and Toyota.

He is also working with the Sussex Innovation Centre to develop a prototype and bring his concept to market.

A folk heroine, an historical novelist, a policy and diversity advisor, and a leading South African judge are among the 10 remarkable people who received honorary degrees at last summer’s University of Sussex graduation ceremonies.

Shirley Collins MBE, Dr Philippa Gregory (History 1975), Baroness Lola Young OBE, and Justice Edwin Cameron delivered moving and inspirational speeches to a record number of graduates.

Chancellor Sanjeev Bhaskar OBE said: “It is always such an honour to meet those who have been recognised for excellence. Their stories are always inspiring and humbling, and remind us that truly great achievements involve determination and endeavour as much as brilliance.”

DEMENTIA AWARDS

SCIENCE FESTIVAL

Europe’s leading science festival comes to Brighton The Universities of Sussex and Brighton will co-host the British Science Festival, which will run from 5–9 September 2017. The annual event was last held in the city in 1983 and this year will comprise more than 100 events, specially curated by the British Science Association in partnership with the Universities.

Visitors can expect to find talks, debates, workshops and performances about cutting-edge

science from leading academics.

Topics will cover the scientific spectrum including technology, engineering and social sciences.

Professor Michael Davies, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research) at the University of Sussex, said: “We are thrilled to welcome the festival back to our city.

“Collaboration sits at the heart of our approach to scientific discovery and impact through combining disciplines, working with a wide range of partners and most importantly engaging and encouraging brilliant minds to be involved. We look forward to a fantastic festival in September 2017.”

Brighton and Sussex Medical School’s Time for Dementia project won two major national awards in November 2016.

Professor Sube Banerjee MBE, Director of Time for Dementia, and his team received the award for ‘Innovators and Leaders: Excellence in Training’ at The LaingBuisson Awards 2016. The prestigious awards celebrate industry excellence and innovative UK health and care services in the public, private and third sectors.

Time for Dementia pairs health students with local families affected by dementia, and is the first of its kind on such a scale.

The win follows on from the team’s award for Best Dementia Training Initiative at the 2016 National Dementia Care Awards earlier in the same month.

CAMPUS

Plans underway for new Life Sciences building A new Life Sciences building is soon to commence build at the University of Sussex. Intended to be in keeping with the original vision of the University’s founding architect, Sir Basil Spence, it is due to include the distinctive use of glass, concrete and brick that we’re all familiar with.

Designed by Hawkins\Brown Architects, the new development is set over five floors, built using the very latest sustainable materials, and will include collaborative spaces for staff and students to work in.

Head of Life Sciences, Professor Laurence Pearl, said: “Science is a team activity. If you can bring people from different disciplines together in an open, flexible laboratory structure – the ecologist, the neuroscientist, the drug discoverer and the cancer biologist – they can learn from one another and phenomenal things can happen.

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“The new building will transform the way research is conducted at Sussex, fostering greater collaboration by bringing a range of disciplines under one roof, and allow for more engaging teaching experiences.”

The building’s modern laboratories will provide high-tech teaching spaces for students and will also include a new Bio-Innovation Centre, which will be a hub for growing bio-medical businesses, and in turn strengthen the University’s partnerships with industry, creating more jobs in the region.

UP FRONT | UNIVERSITY NEWS

Double win for ground-breaking dementia project

The new Vice-Chancellor, Professor Adam Tickell, speaks candidly about the current challenges and opportunities for Sussex, and the integral role played by the University’s lifelong alumni.

A vision for Sussex UP FRONT | UNIVERSITY Q&A

Q1 Vice-Chancellor, what attracted you to Sussex?

I was very happy in my previous job and not looking to move. However, when the opportunity at the University of Sussex came along, it was too good to pass by.

Sussex has a history characterised by challenging conventional wisdom as to how universities should be and a strong shared-values commitment. I felt that my background – as an academic, a university leader and as a person – dovetailed well with the University.

Q2 What areas do you think particularly stand out as the University’s main strengths?

It’s almost impossible to answer this without missing out much of our excellence. We provide an outstanding education; provide sector-leading support for students from non-traditional backgrounds – and then provide opportunities few other universities can match; are in the top echelon for getting our graduates into graduate jobs and further study; and have world-leading research in areas of the sciences, humanities and social sciences.

Examples include our researchers in genomics, quantum physics, international development, history, English, neuroscience, science policy and so on.

Just to list these, however, is to miss out many other brilliant academics.

All universities face major challenges at present. We’ve moved from a controlled system to, in effect, a free market for students; the inclusion of international students in the net migration count puts pressure on our ability to attract bright people to study here. Brexit will impact more adversely on universities than on most other sectors, and the effects of continuing austerity will affect us all.

However, the government has announced a major investment in UK R&D, much of which will be channelled through universities because they recognise that we can help to shape the UK’s economic and social future.

The University of Sussex will need to respond to this difficult environment with boldness and agility, rethinking our role both as a great educational provider and by focusing our research.

Q4 Sussex students have always been passionate in speaking out and campaigning for causes they believe in. What’s your approach to activism on campus and beyond?

I strongly believe that university is a place where students should explore ideas and develop themselves. Sometimes that plays through as activism and, whilst more vocal and visible forms of this aren’t always comfortable, they are as much a part of university life as our sports teams, religious groups and social societies.

I hold regular ‘open office’ sessions in the Students’ Union so that students understand that they don’t need to shout to be heard. For me, though, there is a quid pro quo: I believe that students of all political persuasions need to be respectful of each other and sometimes people forget that there is a full spectrum of opinions among our student body.

Q5 In your view, what is the role of alumni?

A degree isn’t simply transactional or academic – it is the start of a lifelong emotional relationship with the University.

Sussex alumni are an integral part of the University’s family and I genuinely enjoy meeting with, and hearing from, them.

Our alumni help us in a myriad of ways: working with students, advising us on what we are doing well (and badly), and – of course – through philanthropic support for our students and our research.

Q6 How do you see the role of the University within the local community?

There is already a lot of excellent engagement with our local community, including arts activities through the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, student volunteering, and free legal clinics for local residents. However, Sussex has engaged less with our neighbours in Brighton and Hove and in East Sussex over the past couple of decades than we might have done. As local authorities feel a real financial squeeze, we are talking with both councils about how we can work with them to ensure that our city and surrounding towns and villages can continue to thrive during a period of austerity. We will be trialling a ‘Community Day’ in June where we will invite our neighbours onto campus to show them that we are not only the University of Sussex, but we are also a university for Sussex.

Q7 What is your vision for Sussex?

I am working on refreshing the University’s strategy and have invited alumni to make their views known, so my vision remains embryonic. However, I am convinced that we need to be mindful of the legacy that our pioneering founders – Lord Asa Briggs, Lord John Fulton and Professor John Maynard Smith amongst others – bequeathed us, but reinvent that spirit of intellectual enquiry and pedagogic innovation and excellence in a context that is very different (and more challenging).

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S ECON D S W I T H V I C E – C H A N C E L LO R P R O F E S S O R A DA M T I C K E L L FAVO U R I T E B O O K? I rarely read a book more than once, though I never throw them away. Different books speak to different times of my life: when I was a teenager, it would have been Lord of the Rings, in my 20s, The Tin Drum, but the most recent book that haunts me is But You Did Not Come Back

by Marceline Loridan-Ivens.

FAVO U R I T E A L B U M ?

Mahler’s Fifth Symphony (or The Coral’s Magic and Medicine).

FAVO U R I T E F I L M ?

I have recently loved The Forgotten Kingdom and The Eagle Huntress.

W H AT Q UA L I T I E S D O YO U M O S T A D M I R E I N OTHER PEOPLE? Honesty, integrity, fun and a Stakhanovite capacity for work.

W H AT C A N ’ T YO U L I V E WITHOUT? Food.

FAVO U R I T E P L AC E I N T H E WO R L D ?

Kingairloch, on the west coast of Scotland.

FAVO U R I T E P L AC E I N BRIGHTON? The beach at Hove.

FAVO U R I T E P L AC E ON CAMPUS? The Downs overlooking the campus.

W H AT I S T H E M O S T I M P O R TA N T L E S S O N L I F E H A S TAU G H T YO U ?

Humbleness is to be admired (and I’m still learning this one).

W H AT D O YO U D O T O R E L A X? Yoga (but only since I started at Sussex in September).

UP FRONT | UNIVERSITY Q&A

Q3 In the current political and economic climate, what do you consider to be the main challenges and opportunities for Sussex?

U P FRON T | AT TE NBORO U GH C E N TRE FOR THE C RE ATIVE AR T S

Now in its second season showcasing an eclectic programme of music, performance and film, the refurbished Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts (ACCA) is on course to thrill.

ACCA’s got talent!

Nearly a year after opening, the newly-refurbished Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts (ACCA) has wasted no time in building a reputation as a cutting-edge interdisciplinary arts hub, both on campus and in the local community.

2016 saw an exciting and forward-thinking programme of music, theatre, dance, film and live art that established its place in the wider national and international arts communities.

The Grade II listed building will be remembered by many alumni as the Gardner Arts Centre, which played a central role in Sussex student life right from its inception in 1969.

After a nine-year period of renovation, it was re-opened and re-named last year in tribute to Lord Richard Attenborough, the University’s former Chancellor, and his family, thanks in part to a host of generous donations from alumni and friends.

Michael Attenborough CBE (ENGAM 1969), said: “The Centre is a stunning tribute to my dad.

He was extremely touched when the University announced that the Centre was to be renovated and renamed in his honour. I can tell you he would have been delighted with the final result.”

April saw the arrival of a Steinway piano, a generous gift from alumnus Tony Banks (MAPS 1968), composer and member of rock group Genesis.

The Centre is a stunning tribute to my dad.

I can tell you he would have been delighted with the final result.

Families can visit ACCA during the Easter holidays. Lone Twin’s interactive experience for children, Beastie, comes to ACCA for the Spring break (10-12 April). It’s an innovative participatory performance for those aged 6–10.

ACCA is also pleased to be partnering with Brighton Festival as a co-producer on multiple events for the 2017 edition. The venue will host a wide range of international dance, theatre, debate and poetry during May. Laura McDermott commented: “We received such a warm reception for our autumn season and we’re really excited to continue building on that with new partnerships and wonderful experiences for our audiences. This season we’re particularly proud of our partnership with SICK! Festival, bringing you world-class international performances, installations and panel discussions. The rest of the programme is also packed with truly diverse and unique art – from kinetic sculptures to performances on headphones, to an interactive adventure for kids. We look forward to welcoming you back – or for your first visit – with us this spring.”

Left: The Forced Entertainment group bring ACCA’s refurbished stage to life.

Above: Performances include innovative participatory adventures for kids.

Above middle: The ACCA café is open to the public Monday-Friday for lunch, snacks and refreshments.

S U S S E X A L U M N I are entitled to a 20% discount on selected performances using the code ALUM20.

Visit W W W. AT T E N B O R O U G H C E N T R E .C O M or call the box office on +44 (0)1273 678822 10 — 11

U P FRON T | AT TE NBORO U GH C E N TRE FOR THE C RE ATIVE AR T S

The UK premiere of Forced Entertainment’s Real Magic and Complicite’s trip into the depths of the Amazon, The Encounter, were just some of the highlights from a pioneering first year.

Music fans were treated to performances from ‘folktronica’ trailblazer Beth Orton and Mercury Prize-nominated experimental jazz trio GoGo Penguin, while filmmaker and honorary graduate Andrea Arnold OBE gave students valuable insights into film direction during a masterclass in June.

Sussex academics showed off their research to staff, students and members of the public in a series of dynamic, TED-style talks during the first Making the Future day.

Laura McDermott, ACCA’s Creative Director, has been busy building partnerships with local organisations such as Brighton Digital Festival, CINECITY and South East Dance. This collaborative spirit will be central to ACCA’s ethos as it seeks to support the development of emerging artists and facilitate a variety of community-led projects in the future.

Alongside colleagues in Developmental Psychology, Laura has joined discussions around Our Future City, a major city-wide initiative in Brighton & Hove, focused on utilising culture and the arts to transform the city and increase creative opportunities and positive life outcomes for children and young people.

So, what’s next? 2017 kicks off with SICK! Festival, a multidisciplinary arts programme looking at the physical, mental and social challenges of life. Festival highlights include Before I Die, a public participatory art project by Taiwanese-American artist Candy Chang asking people to contemplate life, death and personal aspirations, and #negrophobia, a piece in which American curator and artist Jaamil Olawale Kosoko examines the erotic fear of the Black body.

ACCA has co-commissioned a new work for Spring 2017 by interdisciplinary artist Sheila Ghelani. Sulphur (4 April), a poetic and choreographic ensemble performance, considers the history and mythology of the element, its role within industry and climate change and its existence within our own bodies.

SUS SE X PEOPLE | SARA PASCOE

Writer, comedian and actor Sara Pascoe (English 2001) confides in Tom Furnival-Adams about life choices, the bigger picture, and arguing with strangers in her head.

Stand-up and be counted

I was working in Nottingham in a hotel and I was earning £100 a week as a backing singer for Robbie Williams’ dad, and I came up with this master plan to get a student loan. That would be enough to pay off my overdraft and then I could leave this job that I hated. I applied through clearing and, because I had an A in English, I was accepted onto an English course at the University of Sussex. It was only afterwards that I realised it was a really brilliant course. I’ve always been so poor, so it seemed like such a scam on the government that they lent me money to go to university, which I thought I would never be able to pay back. I banked the cheque and, obviously, it was going to take a week to clear, so I thought, ‘Well, do you know what, I do like books so I’ll go to one of these lectures’. It was just an introductory lecture to English literature and I was like, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to do this degree!’.

It was all accidental.

I met my two best friends, Cariad and Vanessa, in my first term, in a rehearsal for a production of Our Country’s Good by Timberlake Wertenbaker.

I just thought they were the most brilliant women. Cariad is a comedian like me, and Vanessa is doing stand-up and acting. We loved it because we performed all the plays in venues like the Hot House, the Debating Chamber and the Gardner Arts Centre; there were lots of performance spaces. »

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SUS SE X PEOPLE | SARA PASCOE

You click into a kind of survival mode once you’re up there in front of everyone and afterwards you just feel exhilarated, which is a wonderful feeling.

I was very serious about theatre. I always thought comedy was stupid.

I hated it. There are loads of plays that I really love to read but I saw the worst theatre of my life at Sussex – and created some of it. I remember, occasionally, there was a comedy night, people would go and I was just like, ‘Why do you want to be shouted at by white men?’

Nothing is as hard as writing a dissertation. There’s so much self-doubt, it feels so important. Your life is more confusing then because it’s the first time that you have to motivate yourself. Writing a book is a lot easier because you can only do as much as you can that day and you can move deadlines. You can’t do that at university. The night after I handed my book in and everything was done, I remember having a beer with some comedians in Soho Theatre and thinking I’ll never feel happier than this.

It was the first night for a year I’d been out not thinking, ‘Why are you out drinking? You’ve got to get up tomorrow at 5am to write!’.

Sussex was the first time I'd come across activism. I come from a very working class background where people might moan about the news or they might hate Margaret Thatcher, but that’s kind of it. There were die-ins for Syria and people were painting themselves red and lying down in Library Square. Obviously, as a drama student, I was very much into it, but I didn’t understand why. Because I didn’t know anything about anything, quite often I’d find myself in the Students’ Union bar being lectured by someone from the year above. I didn’t know who the politicians were and I didn’t want to appear stupid. I just stayed really quiet!

I did queer theory as one of my electives in my first year and that was a great building block. That’s when I found out about things like boycott and social movements and oppression leading to something positive. So, I did understand things a lot better when I left. I read The Badger and I tried to catch up with everyone else, but I wasn’t at all political.

Stand-up is liberating because there’s a prescribed place for it. Everyone has their allocated time and people give you the benefit of the doubt for however long that time is. It is incredible because you get to work out what you think about stuff. That could be huge issues, such as what you think about socialism or Donald Trump, but mostly it’s things like ‘What do I think about the fact that robots are doing our jobs in Sainsbury’s now?’ or ‘What do I think about my relationship with my dad?’. It focuses your thoughts and, with comedy, you kind of manipulate that because you’re trying to be flippant or surprising. In a way, stand-up gave my life such structure that I know the happiness I have now is because it’s a form of therapy. You’ll often go into stuff that you find the most embarrassing and think, ‘No, I’m going to tell everyone about my vibrator’. It’s a connection with other human beings through that. You click into a kind of survival mode once you’re up there in front of everyone and afterwards you just feel exhilarated, which is a wonderful feeling.

There are some women in comedy who are bored of talking about gender. I do still find it interesting because I’m 51 per cent of the population essentially, but I have a job in which I’m considered a subculture – but I don’t feel like one.

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SUS SE X PEOPLE | SARA PASCOE

I hadn’t watched much comedy when I began performing. I thought standup was improvised. I found out not long before starting out that you’re allowed to write it down and work out what you want to say. I’d seen Jack Dee, Harry Hill and Billy Connolly on TV and I thought they were all improvising; I thought you had to be a genius. When I went to an open mic night in 2006 and saw all of these boys holding pads with notes in them, I thought, ‘Are you allowed to take notes up with you?!’ I discovered all of my heroes after starting out, which is good in a way because people tend to emulate the person they think is the funniest and through that they find their own voice.

In a lot of the discussions that we’re currently having, there’s this binary thing of right and left and everyone thinks they’re good and so-and-so is bad. With Brexit, for example, there are a lot of people who disagree with each other but think they’re the only ones trying to do good. But it’s not that, it’s two sides who disagree on how to do good.

People shouldn’t see themselves as role models. If I make a terrible mess of my life, I wouldn’t then want to think, ‘Oh, I was a bad role model’.

All you really want to show children is to be brave and to be kind. I feel that, at present, our society isn’t very generative for people who don’t have their own kids to take care of. Something that’s quite nice about my job is occasionally getting to do workshops in schools, and I think there should be more of that. There should be sharing so that everything isn’t left to schools and parents. Every young person should have access to a range of people and be able to see that adults care. Youngsters are everyone’s future, whether they’re someone’s genetic relation or not.

I deal with criticism very badly. I thought I’d get better at it, I thought I’d harden. I’ve stopped going on the internet because I get too sad and I spend all day arguing with a stranger in my head. My book is very well reviewed on Amazon, I’ve got loads of five-star reviews, it’s great. But there are some one-star reviews too. I haven’t read them, but when you’ve spent a year of your life on something, you think, ‘Mate, one star is like I didn’t spellcheck it, come on’.

There are some women in comedy who are bored of talking about gender.

I do still find it interesting because I’m 51 per cent of the population essentially, but I have a job in which I’m considered a subculture – but I don’t feel like one. I think it is already getting a lot better. It’s always been said that you can’t be it, if you can’t see it. Because they’re putting more women on TV, that instantly means that now 13-year-old girls can say to their parents, “I’m going to be a comic”. They won’t respond with, “You can’t, there’s Jo Brand, that’s it.” Instead they’ll say, “Yes, you can, there’s loads of them and you can be young and you can be attractive.” I think it will change, but I still think that maybe we’ll all have to talk about it a little bit more.

S U S S E X PEO PLE | JAYA N T H I KU R U - U T U M PA L A

On 21 May 2016, women’s rights activist Jayanthi Kuru-Utumpala (Gender Studies 2008) became the first Sri Lankan to summit Mount Everest. Here she tells Tom Furnival-Adams about the road less travelled.

Life without limits

I had already worked with the Sri Lankan women’s movement for four years before I came to the University of Sussex. My Gender Studies MA provided me with the theoretical aspects, which were almost like the missing pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. I’m going to sound like a nerd, but I loved the library very much – especially as it had such a wide variety of books on queer theory.

It was love at first sight when I got to Sussex.

I was lucky to get accommodation at Stanmer Court, across the road from campus and next to Falmer train station, which was just a perfect location. I loved Brighton because it was not a big city. I’m an outdoorsy person and I loved the rolling hills and the pebbly beach on long summer days.

There were many academics who inspired me.

Professor Sally Munt was my dissertation supervisor and I was introduced to Professor Andrea Cornwall by a women’s rights activist from Sri Lanka. I deeply respect and admire them both very much.

It was during my time at Sussex that I sharpened my skills in rock climbing, particularly after I joined Vertigirls – a women’s climbing club in Brighton. Whenever I had writers’ block and couldn’t complete an assignment, a full day of climbing with the Vertigirls would help me to complete my assignments on time.

Climbing Mount Everest was a childhood dream and something I wanted to do since I was about six or seven-years-old. It was not something I vocalised as I was worried that people would think I was mad! My friends and family were supportive when I told them I was going to do it as they knew I was crazy about mountains and rock climbing. There were some friends who thought it was a crazy idea, but they didn’t tell me until I was back safe and sound! »

16 — 17 S U S S E X PEO PLE | JAYA N T H I KU R U - U T U M PA L A

S U S S E X PEO PLE | JAYA N T H I KU R U - U T U M PA L A

Preparation for the climb took five years. It began in 2011 and included summiting two other high altitude peaks with my climbing partner Johann Peiris: Island Peak in the Himalayas of eastern Nepal in 2012, and Mount Kilimanjaro in 2014.

In 2015 we intensified our training by following a strict regime that included interval training, core strengthening, cardio and stretches. We had to be as fit as we could ever be. In 2003 and 2004 I completed two month-long courses in Basic and Advanced Mountaineering from the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute in Darjeeling, India.

I never imagined I would climb Everest one day, but everything I learned during those courses came into use when I was 8,000 metres above sea level.

The first thing I did when I reached the summit of Everest was hug my Sherpa, Ang Karma. I thanked him, as I would never have made it to the top without his guidance.

It was a surreal experience and to this day I sometimes wonder, ‘Did I really climb Everest?’.

I was fortunate to reach the summit at 5am, just as the sun was rising. I was above the clouds and had the same view you would have if you looked out of a plane window – the only difference was that my feet were on the ground.

It was just amazing.

There are different pressures on female climbers, for biological and physiological reasons.

Due to the extremely cold temperatures beyond Everest Base Camp, everyone was advised to urinate into a wide-mouthed water bottle, which was designated as the pee bottle. For obvious reasons, the girls would always say that it was easier for the boys to pee into a bottle. I also had to deal with menstruating on the mountain, despite taking a contraceptive pill, which failed due to the high altitude; that was a challenge in itself.

Most of all, never give up – small incremental changes are sometimes more important than big dramatic changes.

The biggest lesson I learned was to think positively. If you believe in yourself and put your mind to it, you can make the impossible possible.

It’s all in the mind, and our minds have the power to change things.

I would love to build an indoor rock climbing gym in Sri Lanka as we don’t have one yet. I want to promote rock climbing in my home country as I think it’s one of the best sports in the world, not only to stay fit, but also to build self-confidence.

I will keep climbing mountains, as each adventure offers a new learning experience.

Becoming the first Sri Lankan to climb Everest has meant that I am now able to use my experience as a public platform to talk about gender equality and women’s rights. I have been working as a women’s rights activist for 14 years, and mountaineering and gender equality have been the two things I have been most passionate about since my early 20s.

My advice for aspiring women’s rights activists would be to stand up for what you believe in and don’t let anyone tell you that you cannot do something because of your gender. Most of all, never give up – small incremental changes are sometimes more important than big dramatic changes.

It is important for men and boys to deconstruct masculinity and challenge ways in which dominant norms can lead to discrimination and violence against women.

As Jackson Katz says in his famous TED talk, “violence against women is a men’s issue” and we therefore need men to play a role in challenging patriarchy, as patriarchy affects us all.

IN C ONVERSATION

Mighty roasteries from little coffee beans grow, as Sally Atkinson discovers when she takes a trip down memory lane with the entrepreneurial duo at Small Batch.

18 — 19

SUSSEX PEOPLE | ALAN TOMLINS AND NICK BARLOW

Single origin

It’s 16 years since former flatmates Alan Tomlins (American Studies 2001) and Nick Barlow (History 2001) first met in Flat 28, East Slope, but their enthusiasm for the place is contagious as they bound up the narrow steps to see if they can spot what has changed in the intervening years.

Not much by the look of it, although their old dining table is not there, much to Alan’s disappointment: “It had a long birthday message to me on the underneath,” he reveals.

Memories come flooding back as Nick remembers how quickly everyone got to know one another, partly thanks to their flat having the only microwave in the block. Alan loved the ‘party central’ nature of the accommodation: “You felt like you were right in the centre of everything, and everyone else would always gravitate towards East Slope.” »

SUSSEX PEOPLE | ALAN TOMLINS AND NICK BARLOW

There wasn’t much training around in those days; you had to learn everything on the job.

Not all memories are rosy, however. Alan’s mountain-biking through Stanmer Park woods was curtailed halfway through the first year when his bike got stolen, and Nick remembers a “pretty grubby” flat with “piles of washing-up”.

As we stand in the bright winter sunshine looking towards the Downs, both are clearly keen to extol the virtues of the surrounding countryside, but as 19-year-old students, the attractions of the University of Sussex were far more about the social life: hip-hop night at the Hot House, World Cup football on the TV in East Slope Bar with a pint of tea, kick-arounds on the grass with students from all continents, and

a fiver from the HSBC cash machine getting you three pints of Carling with 50p to spare…

And whilst they weren’t necessarily burning the midnight oil studying for their degrees, both assert that their Sussex experience has had an influence on the ethos they have worked hard to develop at Small Batch.

“We’ve always been very focused on ethics and sustainability, whether that’s choosing the producers we work with or looking after our staff – or what kind of packaging we use,” explains Alan, who co-founded the company in 2006 with Brad Jacobsen.

20 — 21

It’s the only place where Arabica coffee still grows in the wild.”

He goes on to explain why the quality of Ethiopian coffee is so good; how over the years the coffee bushes have cross-bred to create a huge diversity of fruit: “They just have these crazy, intense flavours that you can’t get from coffee anywhere else in the world.”

Ethiopia is also at the forefront of our minds thanks to Professor Gail Davey’s work on the prevention and treatment of podoconiosis, a debilitating form of elephantiasis affecting the feet and legs. Small Batch already support a number of good causes, including fellow alumnus Liam Hackett’s anti-bullying charity Ditch the Label, and now Alan and Nick plan to get involved in supporting Gail’s work too.

Details are still to be finalised, but at the time of going to print, they are working on a special Ethiopian ‘coffee of the month’ to go on sale in all Small Batch outlets (and online) with a donation going to the cause. They are also throwing their weight behind our Sussex community who are running the Brighton Marathon and BM10k in April by providing them with a quality cuppa as they flop past the finish line to the Sussex Runs to Prevent Podo tent.

And just before they turn to leave campus, Alan and Nick take me by surprise by suggesting they field a Small Batch group of runners, as well as volunteering to run the 10k themselves.

For me this encapsulates their down-to-earth attitude on getting involved with all aspects of their work and, despite more senior roles nowadays, the responsibilities they share throughout the business: “We’re brewing coffee from the source and overseeing the process right through to serving it to the final customer. Yes, there are efficiencies of scale but it also gives us the kind of quality control we want as well. We’re not asking anyone else to take care of it, to do the job right. It’s all down to us.”

For more information on how to help Sussex Runs to Prevent Podo reach its collective target of £50,000, visit: W W W. S U S S E X . AC . U K / P R E V E N T I N G P O D O And you can read more about Small Batch at: W W W. S M A L L B AT C H C O F F E E .C O. U K

SUSSEX PEOPLE | ALAN TOMLINS AND NICK BARLOW

Over the years you build up a library of flavours, recognising what you’ve tasted in coffee – it’s just learning the language really and interpreting it.

Starting out as a small coffee roastery in Goldstone Villas, Hove, Small Batch was Brad’s brainchild, with Alan investing time and working for free in the early days as he learned the art of roasting and the business of producing a quality cup of coffee. “There wasn’t much training around in those days; you had to learn everything on the job,” he says.

The roastery soon led to a small café, and today they source and roast around 100 tonnes of beans a year to supply their own outlets, as well as 200 business customers, including 50 Brighton wholesalers.

Alan is quick to point out that they were lucky in the timing of setting up – just before the coffee boom – as well as with establishing their operation in Brighton, the ‘coffee capital of the UK’, where locals consume more coffee per head than anywhere else in the country, according to research by Greggs and the University of Stirling.

But the first outlet opened just as the recession hit and there have been a lot of early starts and seven-day weeks to build the business from a small friends-and-family outfit to one with eight outlets and over 100 employees.

Now Head of Marketing and Digital at Small Batch, Nick’s face will be familiar to many commuters who have stopped for a brew at the Brighton train station cart over the years.

Working at the sharp end for so long hasn’t dimmed his enthusiasm for creating a fun and friendly work environment for both customers and staff: “We want to be profitable and grow and be successful, but you also want the day to be fun.”

From ‘boozy’ Christmas parties and pub quizzes to the more serious business of training and enabling ambitious staff to grow within the business, Small Batch has managed to retain many of its staff from the early days, often a challenge in the fast-paced hospitality sector.

Both Nick and Alan get involved in the ‘cupping’ tasting sessions with the rest of the staff and describe the process as being incredibly noisy as everyone takes in a fast sip of coffee before expressing it into the nearest spittoon.

Similarities with the wine industry are evident, and I can’t resist asking Alan about the description on one of their coffee bean batches: ‘A syrupy, jammy body gives way to tonnes of blueberry and blackberry acidity and then a sweet cinnamon finish’. The no-nonsense Yorkshireman is almost tempted to play down the skills he’s developed, saying that it’s a case of dull repetition to train the palate to recognise the various flavours on the coffee taster’s ‘flavour wheel’: “Over the years you build up a library of flavours, recognising what you’ve tasted in coffee – it’s just learning the language really and interpreting it.”

As Head of Coffee, another aspect to Alan’s role is visiting the farmers and trade exchanges in Africa, and Central and South America.

Ethiopia in particular has a special draw for him: “I think it has for all coffee people. Ethiopia and South Sudan are where coffee originated.

Once a wind-powered corn mill overlooking the South Downs, Ashcombe Mill’s reconstructed traditional six-sweeps are soon to be converting Sussex sea breeze into electrical energy, thanks to former engineering student James Tasker (ENGG 1969).

SU S SE X PEOPLE | JAME S TA SKER

Winds of change

SUSSEX PEOPLE

More about Ashcombe Windmill A S H C O M B E W I N D M I L L was originally built in 1828 and destroyed by a storm in 1916.

22 — 23

Ashcombe Mill stands out for having SIX SWEEPS instead of the more usual four-sweep configuration, as seen on other Jack and Jill windmills in the county.

Although the upper structure weighs approximately 3 0 T O N S, it can be turned to face the wind by a single person pushing the tail pole.

Inside, the traditional wooden ceiling joists and floors are held together by a M O D E R N S T E E L F R A M E WO R K .

Geologists have confirmed that a layer of volcanic ash in the chalk base of the windmill is called the Southeram Marl which can be traced, on its chemistry, all the way across Northern Europe to Russia. It was formed in the Upper Turonian era, about 8 8 M I L L I O N Y E A R S ago.

PA S S I V E H O U S E is a rigorous, voluntary standard for energy efficiency in a building, reducing its ecological footprint. It results in ultra-low energy buildings that require little energy for space heating or cooling.

SU S SE X PEOPLE | JAME S TA SKER

My lifetime career is as a structural engineer with the same company, but my interest in windmills was ignited early on. Whilst working as a young engineer on the new indoor pool at the King Alfred Leisure Centre for Hove Borough Council they asked for steel stocks (arms that support the sails) to be designed for West Blatchington Windmill. I particularly liked the idea of a structure that could move as I had studied Mechanical Engineering at the University of Sussex before going on to read Structural Engineering as a postgraduate at Surrey.

I came to Sussex on the recommendation of my school’s careers adviser who thought as a new university, the course would be more fun. It also had great course flexibility as there was no need to choose an engineering discipline until the third year. A large part of being at Sussex was living in Brighton with its many attractions and distractions.

Sussex reputedly then had the highest proportion of car-owning students of any university. I drove an Austin 7 that I had bought from an electrical engineering student for £45. I still have it.

I once bought a windmill at auction because no one else was bidding.

During the 1990s I was working on a shopping centre in Kent. Seeing the brick base of a windmill for sale in a nearby property auction, I attended with the intention of offering my limited experience on windmills to the purchaser. Bidding was sluggish and I raised my hand just once. This left some explaining to do when I got home! We then set about reconstructing the windmill, complete with sails, and the interior is now occupied as a house.

Kent was too far away from our children’s schools so we started looking for a former windmill site closer to home. This led to Ashcombe, near Lewes, and the windmill project has now been eight years in the making.

The sails, or sweeps as they are known in Kent and Sussex, have already been turning and the next step will be to install the generator. Once this is connected, the windmill should generate enough electricity to power three houses, and feed any excess back into the grid.

At some point, I’d like to install millstones too, to produce flour by the traditional method. But original French burr stones in decent condition are hard to come by; they all come from one quarry on the outskirts of Paris.

Next year my wife and I will be living here. Although not visible until you reach the mill, there is a house encircling the base, which is being built to Passive House requirements making it highly energy efficient.

Compared to a modern wind turbine, whose sails can turn at 35 rpm, the sweeps at Ashcombe Mill turn at an average 1 2 R P M .

From fresh new starts to accolades for leading the field, Sussex alumni have been busy making their mark across the globe over the past year.

Here is a short selection of their news.

Awards

SUSSEX PEOPLE | ALUMNI NEWS

Congratulations to all alumni and staff whose achievements have been recognised recently.

They include: P R O F E S S O R L E S L E Y FA L LOW F I E L D (B I O L S 1 978), Director of Sussex Health Outcomes Research and Education in Cancer; P R O F E S S O R G E O R G I N A M AC E , C B E F R S (S C I T E C H 1 975), Director of the University College London Centre for Biodiversity and Environment Research; and P R O F E S S O R T I L W Y K E S (B I O L S 1 974), Vice-Dean of Psychology and Systems Science and Professor of Clinical Psychology and Rehabilitation at King’s College London, were made Dames in the 2016 New Year’s Honours list. Professor Wykes also received an honorary degree from Sussex in January 2017.

D-Day veteran D R R . A . AT C H E R L E Y (E D U C 1 9 67 ), who took part in the Liberation of France in 1944; and Malaysian social activist M A R I N A M A H AT H I R (S O C 1 976) have each been awarded the Légion d’Honneur, the highest French order for military and civil merits.

E M E R I T U S P R O F E S S O R R O D K E DWA R D, a key figure in the foundation of the Centre for Resistance Studies at Sussex, received his medal of Commandeur de l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques from the French Ambassador to the UK at a ceremony on campus.

S T E P H E N W E L C H (C C S 1 9 8 4) and his design partner were awarded a gold medal for their artisan garden The Garden Bed at the 2016 Chelsea Flower Show.

Eurostar engineer P R O F E S S O R R O G E R K E M P (E N G G 1 9 6 5) and Sussex lecturer in Education D R J O H N PA R R Y (E D U C AT I O N 1 9 9 4) have been recognised with MBEs, while P R O F E S S O R A . C . G R AY L I N G (E N G A M 1 9 6 8) received a CBE in the 2017 New Year’s Honours list for services to Philosophy.

P E T E R B E A R D (M E D I A P R AC T I C E A N D T H E O R Y 2 0 0 2) won a BAFTA in February 2016 for his Channel 4 documentary My Son the Jihadi, the story of the family of a young British man recruited by East African terrorist group Al-Shabaab.

Leading food and nutrition scientist D R A N D R E W M O R G A N (B I O L S 1 973) was named a DuPont Fellow, the highest technical professional level in the global science and engineering company.

Career Highlights Documentary filmmaker M I C K G O L D (E A M 1 9 6 6) produced and directed BBC2’s The Arc of History, the fourth film in the series Inside Obama’s White House.

Journalist K A I F R I E S E (A F R A S 1 9 8 2) was appointed Managing Editor at fortnightly news magazine India Today.

OW E N S M I T H (E U R O 1 9 8 8), MP for Pontypridd, stood as a candidate in the 2016 Labour leadership election.

BAFTA award-winning The Revolution Will Be Televised duo H E Y D O N P R OW S E (P H I LO S O P H Y 2 0 01) and J O LYO N R U B I N S T E I N (P O L I T I C S 2 0 0 0) launched their latest BBC series Revolting.

D R M A R I A B A L S H AW (H U M S 1 9 91), Director of The Whitworth and Manchester City art galleries, was named as Tate’s first female director in a landmark appointment in January 2017.

Former Polish Finance Minister M AT E U S Z S Z C Z U R E K (E C O N O M I C S 1 9 9 6) was appointed to a new European Commission Fiscal Board in October 2016.

Former Mandela Scholar D O R A H M O D I S E (S O C C U L 2 0 01) was named CEO of the Green Building Council of South Africa in October 2016.

Draw My Life: Mo’s Bullying Story, a film by CBBC Producer H E L E N VA R L E Y (M E D I A P R AC T I C E A N D T H E O R Y 2 0 0 4), was nominated for a 2016 BAFTA award in the children’s short form category.

Electronic music producer A L E X C R O S S A N (P H I LO S O P H Y A N D E N G L I S H 2 01 4) A . K . A M U R A M A S A was featured on the BBC Sound of 2016 shortlist. He went on to collaborate with grime artist Stormzy and US rapper A$AP Rocky.

Sussex Sporting Connections Success Press officer JAC K S T O N E B R I D G E and English teacher K A R I S B A R N E S (B O T H P S YC H O LO GY 2 0 07 ) will marry at the Duke of York’s cinema in Brighton in August 2017, ten years after they met at Sussex as classmates and Kent House flatmates.

Team GB cyclist DAV I D S T O N E M B E (S O C I A L WO R K 2 0 0 3) won silver in the road race and bronze in the time trial at the Paralympic Games in Rio to take his overall Paralympic medal haul to six.

Scientist and Research Director at Building Research Establishment E D S U T T I E (C H E M I S T R Y 1 9 9 8) trekked to the North Pole in April 2016, raising more than £50,000 for various charities.

New Ventures JAC K H I B B E R D (E A M 1 9 97 ) has returned to Brighton 15 years after graduating to become the director of Laine Brew Co, a new craft brewery in Sussex.

S AU M I L S H A R M A (I N T E R N AT I O N A L R E L AT I O N S 2 0 07 ) founded The Tooth Company, a holistic dental care centre in Hyderabad, India. The centre was opened

by Bollywood actor Rana Daggubati.

VeloHalo and Hikari.Bike, an innovative new pair of bike light designs, were launched by JAC K M E R L I N B R U C E (P S YC H O LO GY 2 01 1).

A N N E T H O R E L L (C P E S 1 9 9 6) and her husband D R A L FO N S O AV I L A - M E R I N O (S P R U 1 9 9 8), who met at Sussex in 2000, returned to campus to celebrate SPRU’s 50th anniversary in 2016 – and took time out to capture a photo of their four children posing on the Arts A pathway!

Many alumni have returned to campus recently to celebrate milestones and reunite with old classmates. DAV I D G H O S H (M A P S 1 9 6 5) and friends celebrated 50 years since they started at Sussex with a tour of old campus haunts, while C A R O L A C A R E L E S S (E N G A M 1 9 6 3) N É E R E D DA N and ex-housemates, also marking a half-century anniversary, revisited Spring Street in Brighton where they lived in their second year. A R V E J O H A N N E S S E N (E U R O 1 9 9 4) coordinated a 20-year reunion for the MA in Contemporary European Studies 1995 group, bringing together alumni from the US and nine European countries, and S TA N L E Y V I T T E (S E I 2 0 0 4) reunited old friends from across Europe on campus to mark a decade since they arrived in Falmer.

The Apprentice finalist B I A N C A M I L L E R (B U S I N E S S A N D M A N AG E M E N T 2 0 07 ) launched Bianca Miller London, a new hosiery brand aiming to complement a range of skin tones.

Former Sussex Sport scholar R O S E T H O M A S (B I O M E D I C A L S C I E N C E 2 01 0) was selected to train with the Great Britain women’s hockey team, becoming one of only two Welsh women to receive GB recognition since 2012.

Team GB fencer L AU R E N C E H A L S T E D (P S YC H O LO GY 2 0 0 3) competed in the 2016 Rio Olympics, finishing sixth in the men’s foil team competition following narrow defeat to eventual gold medallists Russia.

See more Alumni News at W W W. S U S S E X . AC . U K / FA L M E R E X T R A and send your latest news to A L U M N I @ S U S S E X . AC . U K 24 — 25

SUSSEX PEOPLE | ALUMNI NEWS

Social activist and alumni consul S H OA I B R A H I M (E C O N O M I C S 2 01 2) was acknowledged as one of Afghanistan’s most inspirational young people by President Ashraf Ghani at a ceremony in Kabul to celebrate World Youth Day 2016.

SU S SE X PEOPLE | MIND MAT TE R S

Mind matters Building on the University’s existing world-leading academic expertise, the Sussex Drug Discovery Centre has rapidly established itself as the only UK centre for the development of new drug treatments for mental health disorders.

Professor John Atack looks at the opportunities to further the outstanding work of this much-needed initiative.

GLO BAL FIN AN C IAL C O S T O F ME N TAL ILLNE S S

$2 , 5 0 0 B ILLIO N – 2010

The charity MQ, which was recently formed as the first mental health research charity, has reported that funding for mental health research lags way behind cancer and dementia research funding. It is estimated that for every person affected, the research spending per patient is £178 for cancer, £110 for dementia and only £8 for mental illness.

Given the devastating impact of mental illness at present, it is somewhat surprising and disappointing to learn that pharmaceutical companies in the UK are opting to reduce their efforts in this area. The fact that drug discovery for mental health disorders is being systematically deprioritised by drug companies has left a vacuum that the Sussex Drug Discovery Centre (SDDC) aims to fill.

OUR APPROACH Initial funding for the SDDC came from the University and Cancer Research UK to develop some cancer drug discovery projects.

Then, in 2014, we began a project that looked to develop new drugs to treat the cognitive deficit associated with schizophrenia and this attracted a major award of £4.1m from the Wellcome Trust. The project targets a protein in the brain called the AMPA receptor, which is an ion channel that helps to control nerve cell excitability. This technically challenging project required specialist expertise. At this time, SDDC benefited from the closure of the Novartis site in Horsham and were able to recruit Martin Gosling, Professor of Molecular Pharmacology and a scientist with internationally-recognised ion channel technical capability. Professor Gosling is also the Chief Scientific Officer of Enterprise Therapeutics, a small biotech company which focuses on respiratory diseases and is now based within the SDDC. The addition of this ion-channel horsepower enabled the SDDC to secure significant additional funding in 2015 from the Wellcome Trust to identify a drug for treating the cognitive deficit associated with Huntington’s disease, an inherited condition that damages certain nerve cells in the brain. Further Wellcome Trust funding supported a project to identify a novel epileptic drug.

In addition, we secured funding from the Medical Research Council (MRC) for SDDC scientists to identify a novel anxiolytic drug which lacks the sedative effects of drugs such as Valium. »

$6,0 0 0 B ILLIO N – 2030

1 IN 4 ADU LT S E XPE RIE N C E A ME N TAL ILLNE S S E AC H Y E AR – NE ARLY 1 5 MILLION PEOPLE

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SU S SE X PEOPLE | MIND MAT TERS

The scale of the problems associated with mental health is difficult to overestimate. Quite shockingly, deaths due to suicide occur at a rate of one every 40 seconds globally, and easily outnumber those associated with malaria or breast cancer, as well as those of wars, conflicts and disasters. The lifespan of someone with severe mental illness is reduced by 15-20 years.

Aside from the emotional costs to the individual and associated family and carers, the global financial burden of mental illness was estimated to be in the region of $2,500 billion in 2010 and are set to grow to $6,000 billion by 2030.

The economic impact is magnified by the fact that compared to old age-related diseases such as the dementias, mental illness has a disproportionate effect on young- to middle-aged adults and therefore strikes during the most productive years of an adult’s life. Moreover, mental illness is a global issue that can result in human rights abuses such as incarceration, seclusion, isolation and exclusion and denial of basic amenities.

Despite this, there is a relative lack of research funding for mental health. This is particularly disappointing at a time when the emergence of new genetic information is, for the first time, providing insights into disease mechanisms that can provide the basis of new therapeutic approaches to mental illness.

A unique challenge with identifying mental health conditions has been that, compared with neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and motor neuron disease, mental illness presents no clear pathological changes in the brain to provide us with clues to what the underlying disease mechanisms are.

SU S SE X PEOPLE | MIND MAT TE R S

The SDDC’s success in obtaining funding for neuroscience drug discovery projects for schizophrenia, Huntington’s disease, anxiety disorders and epilepsy is, in part, due to the concerns of research funding bodies, such as the Wellcome Trust and the MRC. The concern is that, despite an obvious medical need, research in this area (with the notable exception of dementia) has significantly reduced over the past decade, directly causing pharmaceutical companies to reign in expenditure on neuroscience drug discovery. Where funding has been retained, the focus has been on Alzheimer’s disease at the expense of mental health.

The effects of underinvestment in both basic research and drug discovery have been most acutely felt in the UK, where many global pharmaceutical companies have based the majority of their neuroscience efforts. Over the past decade GSK, Merck, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Eisai, Organon/Schering, Shire and Takeda have all eliminated their UK neuroscience drug discovery efforts.

Moreover, the single remaining company, Eli Lilly, has recently refocused its efforts solely onto neurodegeneration rather than pursuing mental health disorders.

In the face of such economic adversity, the SDDC has continued to gain financial and scientific traction. The Centre is now made up of around 70 people and to date has attracted research funding in the region of £25 million. Even more importantly, additional funding recently awarded by The Sackler Trust will permit the SDDC to sift through large amounts of emerging genetic data and prioritise and prosecute the next generation of drug discovery projects, thereby sustaining its national leadership position, and keeping mental health research at the top of the ladder.

By taking this approach, the SDDC has rapidly established itself as the preeminent drug discovery centre of its kind within the UK and, arguably, Europe.

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN The Sussex Drug Discovery Centre was the brainchild of Professor Laurence Pearl, the Head of the School of Life Sciences. He recognised the potential to define a new model of drug discovery; one that was in close geographical and scientific proximity to world-leading academic science rather than being performed in insular, monolithic pharmaceutical companies.

The vision was to establish the SDDC to build upon the University’s world-leading academic expertise residing within the Genome Damage and Stability Centre, and neuroscience research groups, to develop new drugs for treating cancer and disorders of the central nervous system, respectively. By doing so we are able to address significant unmet medical needs.

In addition, the success of the SDDC has resulted in significant research income, plus the potential to generate income from upfront fees and royalty streams when drugs are commercialised and sold on to pharmaceutical companies.

Furthermore, the training and education opportunities provided by the SDDC in terms of lecturing and undergraduate, Masters and PhD lab-based training for the next generation of drug discovery scientists is invaluable. It was based upon this very clear vision that Professor Pearl was able to secure significant funding from the University’s Research Development Fund.

RE SE ARC H SPE N DIN G PE R PE R S O N

£ 178 – CAN C E R

£ 1 10 – DE ME N T IA

£8 – ME N TAL ILLNE S S

PUT TING A PL AN INTO ACTION

SU S SE X PEOPLE | MIND MAT TERS

The first person through the SDDC door in late 2011 was Simon Ward, Professor of Medicinal Chemistry. Following a career in both large and small pharmaceutical companies, and being a victim of the closure of GSK’s psychiatric drug discovery unit in Harlow, he arrived to an empty office, an empty lab and a blank piece of paper. His first job was to recruit a couple of chemists and a biologist to get things going by refurbishing and equipping labs. Next to join in mid-2012 was John Atack, Professor of Molecular Pharmacology, who again joined having had a career in neuroscience drug discovery with Merck and then Janssen.

A founding and enduring principle of the SDDC is that the two primary disciplines required for drug discovery, namely medicinal chemistry and biology, should be co-localised and intermingled such that there are no barriers between disciplines, which not only facilitates information exchange but also broadens the training and research opportunities.

Although new to the Higher Education environment when they started, Professors Atack and Ward were able to map out their vision for the SDDC, securing the grants and support necessary to establish the excellent reputation it has today.

SU I C IDE I S T HE LE ADING CAU SE OF DE AT H IN YO U NG ME N AND WOME N

28 — 29

FE AT U RE S | BU ILDING A BE T TE R BRE XIT

→ IN

OUT

→

The UK Trade Policy Observatory takes a look at why it could be the political, rather than the legal, climate that may prevent the UK from negotiating a mutually acceptable arrangement with the EU within two years.

Brexit is possibly the largest political shock most of us will see in our lifetimes; it is certainly the largest administrative shock that we shall see.

Uncoupling the UK from the European Union after 44 years affects almost every aspect of our lives.

Even setting aside the political complexity of trying to work out what we want, it requires immense amounts of policy formulation and design, detailed legislation and administration to achieve. You might think that it is exactly the sort of task that we have universities to help with.

That is precisely what we thought when we set up the UK Trade Policy Observatory (UKTPO) days after the EU referendum. But the seed was sown before that: international trade policy and Europe have long been specialisms in the Department of Economics and a few years ago Law and International Relations also appointed trade specialists. In 2013 we formed an interdisciplinary discussion group to do what academics do – explore ideas, discuss each other’s papers and generally have fun.

When we had recovered from the immediate shock of the referendum result we realised that we had exactly what Britain needed – genuine interdisciplinary expertise on international and European trade, experience of the policy world and great team spirit. Alan Winters proposed UKTPO at 9am on 28 June, everyone had agreed by 10am. By the end of the week a generous alumnus donor had covered its costs for six months or more and it was launched, with partner Chatham House, on 21 July.

While it is good to be able to contribute Sussex’s expertise to solving a national problem, it is not without irony. Most of that expertise was developed creating the very structures that we are now dismantling! The University played a key role in analysing the creation of the European Single Market, as, from elsewhere, did UKTPO Director Alan Winters, who worked on it with Chatham House, while Jim Rollo (Deputy Director) worked on UK accession to the European Economic Community in the early seventies as a young government economist. Both Jim and Alan spent much of their time as Government Chief Economists (FCO and DFID respectively) working with EU colleagues on joint concerns.

The UKTPO offers independent advice and training to assist government, parliament and businesses to address the international trade challenges posed by Brexit, and it also aims to inform the public about the issues at stake.

Members of UKTPO have produced several briefing papers and blogs alongside a steady line of high-profile meetings and public appearances (see the UKTPO webpage). Members have met with ministers and government departments, prepared a paper for DFID and advised, participated as expert witnesses at, and submitted evidence to two House of Lords and two House of Commons inquiries. UKTPO is regularly quoted in the national media, including The Times, The Independent and The Economist, as well as international media ranging from The Wall Street Journal and South China Morning Post to The Guardian, Nigeria.

30 — 31

So, what do we say? We have argued that the UK government has two large pressing trade negotiations to undertake over the next two years. First, while the UK is certainly a full member of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), its rights and obligations under the WTO have been submitted to the WTO by the EU. Thus, the UK needs to separate its own position from that of the remainder of the EU within the WTO. In general, this should not be complicated – initially it merely relabels current obligations ‘UK’ rather than ‘EU’ in a process the WTO has for purely technical adjustments to schedules of obligations. But, there are a few more complicated issues in agriculture, such as the right to subsidise agriculture and the obligation to import some goods at low tariffs (so-called tariff-rate quotas), where the EU has made EU-wide obligations. These have to be broken up into UK and EU shares. And the UK will need to sign the Agreement on Government Procurement rather than being part of the EU commitment. Once the dust from Brexit has settled, however, the government can start to think about renegotiating our WTO offer to a form tailored specifically to the UK’s needs. »

Even the withdrawal process set out under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union is ambiguous and without legal precedent because no-one has left before.

FE AT URE S | BUILDING A BE T TER BRE XIT

Building a better Brexit

UKTPO CONTRIBUTORS

FE AT URE S | BUILDING A BE T TER BRE XIT

L A L A N W I N T E R S C B is Professor of Economics at the University of Sussex and Director of the UK Trade Policy Observatory. He is a CEPR Research Fellow and has served most recently as Co-Director of the Centre’s International Trade Programme, and as Chief Economist at the UK Department for International Development (2008-11). He is editor of The World Trade Review, chairman of the Board of the Global Development Network, CEO of the Migrating out of Poverty Research Programme Consortium and a member of the Economic and Social Research Council.

R O R D E N W I L K I N S O N is Professor of Global Political Economy, Chair of the Department of International Relations, Deputy Head of the School of Global Studies, and Member of the UK Trade Policy Observatory at the University of Sussex. He is a published author, whose most recent works include What’s Wrong with the WTO and How to Fix it (Polity, 2014), International Organization and Global Governance (Routledge, 2014), and Trade, Poverty, Development: Getting beyond the WTO’s Doha Deadlock (Routledge, 2013).

D R K A M A L A DAWA R is an international trade and competition law specialist and Member of the UK Trade Policy Observatory. She conducts research, policy analysis and training for academic, intergovernmental and nongovernmental organisations, including the WTO, World Bank, the European Commission and public interest organisations.

Kamala has published articles on trade and development issues including WTO law and governance, public procurement law and policy, and preferential trading arrangements and development issues.

Second, the UK needs to determine its relationship with the EU. The UK and the EU currently have very good access to each other’s markets, with a minimum of bureaucratic costs.

This benefits buyers and sellers alike. The government suggests that UK citizens expect it to restrict inflows of labour from the EU to some extent and the EU is clear that this means that the UK cannot remain as a full member of the so-called Single Market, which currently eases trade by harmonising regulations across the union. The UK should aim to preserve as much as possible of the favourable access by negotiating a bespoke agreement with the EU. Until the WTO and EU relationships are settled other countries will not want to discuss special trade deals (Free Trade Agreements) with the UK, because they won’t know what they are avoiding (the UK’s ‘standard’ trading offer in the WTO) or whether the UK will be an attractive way of accessing the EU. So, once these are settled, further deals will become possible, including with developing countries – a particular focus of research at Sussex.

The Brexit debate rarely talks about the 79 countries – 48 in sub-Saharan Africa, 16 in the Caribbean, and 15 in the Pacific – with which the UK has a formal trade and development relationship via the EU (the ACP countries).

These countries get preferential access and development assistance from Europe. The UK also, through the EU’s Everything But Arms initiative and its Generalised System of Preferences, grants other low income and least developed countries preferential access.

Brexit releases the UK from these commitments, which raises questions about the future shape of trade relations of the UK and EU with developing countries. There are opportunities: to improve the Economic Partnership Agreements with ACP countries; or craft a new trade relationship with the Commonwealth. Yet, Brexit will render vulnerable key ACP exports such as bananas, sugar and fish. Exposing the ACP countries to competition from world markets would generate a huge economic shock that would have very dramatic economic consequences in the short to medium term, unless remedial measures are forthcoming.

The UK must ensure that its new trade relationships are not to the detriment of smaller and weaker countries. It should offer these countries no worse access to its market than they currently get under the EU, and commit that within a few years it will revisit trade relations with developing countries to make them even more satisfactory.

Brexit poses not only economic and political challenges but legal ones as well. Alongside the immediate legal question of how the UK extracts itself from the EU, unforeseen existential challenges have also re-appeared in the form of the question of Scottish independence and membership of the EU, the Irish border and ultimately the nature, scope and focus of the remaining 27-member bloc of the EU.

The UK grants other low income and least developed countries preferential access. Brexit releases the UK from these commitments, which raises questions about the future shape of trade relations of the UK and EU with developing countries.

Even the withdrawal process set out under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) is ambiguous and without legal precedent because no-one has left before. Other options for withdrawal have also been proposed: for example, Article 48 TEU process provides for changing the treaties of the EU, or recourse to public international law under Article 54 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties 1969, while others suggest that the UK repeal the European Communities Act 1972 and simply replace it with new UK law.

To provide some certainty, the Government has stated that it will trigger Article 50 on 29 March 2017. Indeed, to refuse to use the Article 50 TEU process and to unilaterally withdraw through express repeal of the 1972 Act would have adverse political and legal repercussions at both the EU and international law level.

Even once Article 50 is triggered the waters are uncharted. Again, there are various potential options open to the UK, including an interim pact or else relying on the minimal safety net of the WTO. All require the UK to act within legal frameworks that are largely untested – for example, the WTO has never had to unpack tariff rate quotas before.

Overall, however, it is the political – rather than the legal – climate that could prevent the UK from negotiating a mutually acceptable arrangement with the EU within two years.

Particularly if – as some EU officials opine – the negotiating language will not be in English.

So, while there are major challenges for both sides, the pressure is on the UK – which has so much more to lose than gain. One is reminded of Robinson Crusoe’s lament: “And now I saw, though too late, the folly of beginning a work before we count the cost, and before we judge rightly of our own strength to go through with it.”

For the latest news, comments and events, visit: B LO G S . S U S S E X . AC . U K / U K T P O

Research News

GENETICS

New disease could signal hope for sufferers of brain ageing conditions A new genetic disease that results in neurodegeneration has been discovered by Professor Keith Caldecott’s team from the Genome Damage and Stability Centre.

The disease, ataxia oculomotor apraxia type XRCC1, is caused by a genetic mutation that disrupts the repair of our DNA. When single strands of DNA are damaged, a mutation in the XRCC1 gene causes a vital DNA-repairing enzyme (known as PARP1) in our bodies to over-activate. In people suffering from the disease, the speeding up of this key enzyme triggers the death of brain cells.

MANAGEMENT

Professor Keith Caldecott said: “Discovering this new disease and its cause is a huge step towards developing drug-based therapies for other rare neurodegenerative conditions.

“Drugs that target this key DNA-repairing enzyme in the right way could prove vital for treating people suffering from diseases caused by the over-activation of this protein – it is now crucial we determine what diseases these are.

“More research needs to be done – but it’s also possible the cause of this newly discovered condition could contribute to the death of nerve cells in people suffering from diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s and Parkinson’s.”

Imposing ‘meaningful work’ leads to staff burnout Strategies to boost staff performance and morale by manipulating our desire for meaningful work often achieve the opposite effect, according to Professor of Management Catherine Bailey.

Previous research has shown that important and meaningful work is the single most valued feature of employment for most of us, bringing a range of benefits for individuals and employers.

Managers have recognised this and employ a range of techniques to harness this natural motivation, such as encouraging us to adopt organisational values, supporting good causes, and linking work to a wider purpose.

However, when executed badly, strategies like this can have a hugely detrimental effect, says Professor Catherine Bailey, leaving workers feeling compelled to act “as if they find their work meaningful, even if they do not”.

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“This may be for career advancement, the wish to feel good about oneself or the fear of negative outcomes, such as job loss, stigma or career blocking,” she adds.

“But faking it in this way, pretending that they believe things that they do not, for instance, takes a huge amount of emotional resource and can leave people exhausted, burnt out or wanting to quit.”

Professor Bailey advises HR professionals to consider the factors giving rise to organisational acting, such as reward systems and structures that emphasise ‘fitting in’ or allow little room for individual choice and discretion.

Additionally, she suggests that training for line managers to help their employees “find their work genuinely meaningful” should be the corner-piece of a meaningfulness management strategy.

FE AT URE S | RE SE ARC H NE WS

Why are we more prone to making mistakes when someone is watching? How will a breakthrough in quantum computing change the way we solve global problems in the future? Here is just some of the latest Sussex research that is changing and influencing the world.

PSYCHOLOGY

ENVIRONMENTAL

Don’t answer that phone!

Largest ever study reveals globally protected areas benefit a broad range of species

FE AT URE S | RE SE ARC H NE WS

Driving while talking on a hands-free phone can be as distracting as talking on a hand-held mobile, according to new research by psychologist Dr Graham Hole.

He said: “A popular misconception is that using a mobile while driving is safe, as long as the driver uses a hands-free phone.

“Our research shows that hands-free can be equally distracting because conversations can cause the driver to visually imagine what they’re talking about.

This visual imagery competes for processing resources with what the driver sees in front of them on the road.”

Driving while talking on a hands -free phone is j u s t a s D I S T R AC T I N G a s talking on a hand - held mobile phone D r i ve r s u s i n g a h a n d s f r e e p h o n e l o o ke d a t an area of the scene a h e a d a p p r ox i m a te l y FO U R T I M E S S M A L L E R t h a n t h e a r e a l o o ke d a t b y u n d i s t r a c te d d r i ve r s .

D r i ve r s h av i n g a h a n d s f r e e p h o n e c o nve r s a t i o n w h i c h s p a r ke d t h e i r v i s u a l imagination DETECTED HALF AS MANY HAZARDS a s u n d i s t r a c te d d r i ve r s .

D r i ve r s h av i n g a h a n d s f r e e p h o n e c o nve r s a t i o n w h i c h s p a r ke d t h e i r v i s u a l i m a g i n a t i o n r e a c te d T WO T I M E S S LOW E R to h a z a r d s t h a n u n d i s t r a c te d d r i ve r s .

The world’s protected areas do benefit a broad range of species, scientists from a collaborative research project led by the University of Sussex have discovered for the first time.

The study, carried out by the Sussex Sustainability Research Programme working together with the Natural History Museum and the UN Environment Programme’s World Conservation Monitoring Centre, is the largest ever analysis of globally protected areas.

Dr Jörn Scharlemann, from the University of Sussex, said: “Protected areas are widely considered essential for biodiversity conservation, but our results show for the first time that they do actually benefit a wide range of species.

“Our results reinforce recent commitments by governments for increased support and recognition of the importance of protected areas worldwide,” he added.

“We cannot deny the global importance of these areas and we must ensure that governments across the world recognise their significance and work to improve their effectiveness.

“Protected areas do not currently benefit all species – but what we have shown in our study is they have the potential to help us conserve some of the most biodiverse areas on Earth, which is why they vitally need increased global support.”

15% NUMBERS OF INDIVIDUAL S P E C I E S W E R E U P B Y 1 5% W H E N F O U N D AT S I T E S I N S I D E PROTECTED AREAS.

11% T H E R E WA S A N 1 1% INCREASE OF DIFFERENT SPECIES FOUND INSIDE PROTECTED AREAS.

Our results reinforce recent commitments by governments for increased support and recognition of the importance of protected areas worldwide.

QUANTUM TECHNOLOGY

Construction of practical quantum computers radically simplified

NEUROSCIENCE

Study reveals why your brain makes you slip up when anxious Neuroscientists at the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science and Brighton and Sussex Medical School have identified the brain network system that causes us to stumble and stall, using functional magnetic resonance neuroimaging.

Scan results showed that an area of the brain that helps us to control our fine sensorimotor functions became deactivated when people felt they were being observed.

In fact, this part of the brain works with another region to form what neuroscientists refer to as the action-observation network (AON). The AON is involved in “mentalisation” processes by which we infer what another person is thinking, based on their facial

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By applying voltages to a quantum computer microchip using Professor Winfried Hensinger’s radically simplified method, the same effect is achieved.

Quantum computers could, in just a few milliseconds, solve certain problems that would take the fastest supercomputer millions of years to calculate. They have the potential to create new materials and medicines, as well as solve long-standing scientific and financial problems.

expressions and direction of gaze.

Dr Michiko Yoshie said: “We realised that AON might also be related to performance anxiety because when being scrutinised we tend to care about how the audience is feeling about us and our performance.”

To help those suffering from performance anxiety she advised: “It’s important to believe that the audience is supporting you and wishing for your successful performance.

“To strengthen such belief, you should sometimes have opportunities to perform in front of your supporters. For example, before an actual public performance, a musician could perform in front of his/her family and close friends and receive a lot of applause. Such experience would help to induce a desirable activation pattern in your brain and boost self-confidence.”

FE AT URE S | RE SE ARC H NE WS

Scientists at the University of Sussex have invented a groundbreaking new method that puts the construction of large-scale quantum computers within reach of current technology.

Professor Winfried Hensinger and his colleagues have invented a method whereby voltages are applied to a quantum computer microchip without the need to align laser beams.

Quantum computing on a small scale using trapped ions (charged atoms) is traditionally carried out by aligning individual laser beams onto individual ions with each ion forming a quantum bit. However, a large-scale quantum computer would need billions of quantum bits, therefore requiring billions of precisely aligned lasers, one for each ion.

FE AT U RE S | WATE R FOR ALL

Professor Martin Todd explains the vital work of the GroFutures project, which is working tirelessly to develop groundwater policy and management resources in Africa that are both sustainable and equitable.

Water for all Groundwater is a vital resource to meet the demands for safe water for drinking, hygiene, irrigation and industry around the world.

Groundwater also sustains rivers, lakes and wetlands when rainfall is low or absent.

In sub-Saharan Africa, much of the population still lacks access to improved, safe and affordable water supply. In addition, most African agriculture remains rain-fed, which leaves farmers vulnerable to losses from poor rains, and limits the number of possible harvests and yields. The 2016 El Niño-related droughts across much of Southern Africa and Ethiopia has left tens of millions of people in need of food assistance.

However, in many regions, African agriculture is changing quickly with increased use of groundwater-fed irrigation by both small-scale farmers and large-scale commercial agri-business.

This allows the intensification of agriculture likely to be necessary to meet demands from increasing population and commercialisation and as a measure to increase resilience to climate variability and change.

Compared to most other regions, groundwater in Africa is underdeveloped, but there is a need to avoid the over-exploitation of the resource that has taken place elsewhere leading to unsustainable development. The multi-disciplinary GroFutures project seeks to establish the

scientific evidence base to inform policy towards development of groundwater resources that is both sustainable and equitable. GroFutures is an international consortium of researchers from across Africa and the UK and France, including Professor Martin Todd from Sussex and John Thompson from the Institute of Development Studies (IDS).

Lack of high quality and long-term data is a major barrier to understanding groundwater resources and to appropriate management of the resources. GroFutures will undertake uniquely detailed observations of groundwater recharge processes through the establishment of a Network of African Groundwater Observatories (NAGO) (Diagram right). This will enable comparative analyses at multiple scales involving sites along topographical transects, thereby providing a means to ‘scale up’ and generalise from specific sites.

In short, we want to be able to inform groundwater management across Africa, but the groundwater recharge characteristics depend on climate and geology. So, by having sites across a set of climate and geological transects we hope to be able to characterise conditions across a wide range of conditions in Africa.

Along with a sister project ‘Chronicles’, we will develop the most comprehensive dataset yet on groundwater in Africa. Long-term data is critical for managing groundwater.

»

A B U R KI N A FA S O

[1978-present] 2 hydrographs Sandstone/Crystalline rocks.

Semi-arid.

NE T WORK OF AFRI CAN GRO U N DWAT E R O B S E RVATORIE S

B NIGER SUB - BASIN

E U G ANDA

[1964-present] 5 hydrographs.

Crystalline rocks. Humid.

F G RE AT R UAHA

Crystalline rocks. Semi-arid.

Expanding irrigated agriculture sandstone. Semi-arid.

C B EN I N

G LI M P O P O

[1970-present] 4 hydrographs Crystalline rocks. Semi-arid.

[1991-present] 6 hydrographs Sandstone/Alluvium. Humid.

D U P P ER- AWA S H

A

FE AT U RE S | WATE R FOR ALL

Expanding irrigated agriculture alluvium. Semi-arid.

B C

D E F

Groundwater storage (water depth in mm) 0

G

< 1000 1000 – 10,000 10,000 – 25,000

MacDonald et al. 2012 Environ.

Res. Lett., 7, 024009

25,000 – 50,000

Basin Observatories

> 50,000

Site Observatories

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FE AT U RE S | WATE R FOR ALL

Agricultural innovation founded on exploitation of groundwater resources clearly has the potential to transform livelihoods for small-scale farmers.

For example, our analysis of a 70-year record of groundwater levels at a wellfield supplying the Tanzanian capital city Dodoma shows that these groundwater aquifers are recharged only once every seven years on average, typically during heavy rains associated with El Niño (El Niño brings both drought and heavy rains to different parts of Africa). In anticipation of the 2016 El Niño, we installed equipment to measure the recharge processes in unprecedented detail.

This will support the development of improved models of the surface-groundwater system. Such models are a critical tool for water management of sustainable development. This will allow us to develop and evaluate scenarios of future groundwater use under a range of assumptions about future socio-economic development trajectories and under future climate change.

These ‘development pathways’ will be ‘coproduced’ with a wide range of stakeholders from government agencies to civil society and community water user groups. In this way, we will promote the inclusion of poor people’s voices in long-term groundwater resource planning and development decision-making, to try to ensure equitable distribution of benefits.

To illustrate, during the recent inception workshop in Ethiopia, the GroFutures team visited some of the project field sites in the upper Awash river basin in the Rift Valley region of Ethiopia, about 80km south of the capital Addis Ababa.

Here, they met small-scale farmers who are developing shallow groundwater wells for irrigation of their small one to two hectare plots.

Irrigation allows them to innovate with a variety of crops, including vegetables (legumes, tomatoes, peppers, avocados, carrots, onions) for market, providing a three-fold increase in annual yields.

The Rift Valley region is also experiencing rapid expansion of large-scale commercial farms, notably flowers for export, also based on exploitation of groundwater resources. This type of agricultural innovation founded on exploitation of groundwater resources clearly has the potential to transform livelihoods for small scale farmers. Sustainable and equitable management of the resources should be informed by the best available science and GroFutures is rising to meet that challenge.

Find out more about the GroFutures project at: W W W. G ROF U TU RES . ORG

We are privileged to be in touch with many dedicated and inspirational former students who give something back to Sussex in so many different ways: enriching student life, supporting scholarships, building networks overseas or helping to open doors. Here we introduce you to some of our committed alumni volunteers.

J O H N L E O N I DA (E C O N O M I C S 1 9 81) is a partner in the global law firm Clyde & Co. As well as generously providing his financial support to an exceptional PhD student within the Neuroscience department, he has returned to Sussex many times giving careers talks at Make It Happen events and delivering masterclasses in international marine law.

John explains: “Helping current undergraduates get the most out of their time at Sussex and giving them a gentle nudge when it comes to career choices is such an easy way to give back to the University.

The students value our time more than anything else.”

C AT E H A S T E (E N G A M 1 9 6 3) is a television documentary producer and director, writer and broadcaster. She recently gave a series of masterclasses on documentary film-making to students in the School of Media, Film and Music (MFM).

Cate explains why she volunteered to teach at Sussex: “Though not exactly retired, I was interested in keeping in touch with the mainstream of life from the perspective of the young. So, while I am giving back, I am also being rewarded by being part of the continuing life of a very active and vibrant university community.”

Cate has also made a generous gift to the University to establish The Cate Haste Scholarship to enable MFM postgraduate students in financial need to complete their studies at Sussex.

See more alumni profiles and find out how to get involved at: W W W.S US S E X.AC .UK.A LUMNI/ GETINVO LVED 38 — 39

D R S P I R O S D I M O L I T S A S (E E N G 1 978) is Senior Vice-President for Research and Chief Technology Officer at Georgetown University in the US. He plays an important role in establishing research and other connections between Sussex and Georgetown University: “My continuing relationship with Sussex is an important link to the University, the UK and Europe more broadly. For example, Georgetown University and Sussex share an interest in humanitarian crises such as forced migration. Sussex and Georgetown have been collaborating by contributing their respective areas of excellence in migration studies towards addressing this very current and important issue.”

Spiros is also a long-standing supporter and member of the Board of The American Friends of the University of Sussex, a 501(c)(3) charitable organisation in the U.S.

THE BACK PAGES | GIF T OF TIME

The gift of time

Forthcoming Events We hold events throughout the year both on campus and around the world. Here is a small selection of what’s coming up in the next few months…

T HE BAC K PAGE S | G E T T IN G IN VO LV E D

S U S S E X C O N V E R S AT I O N S : ‘ D E M O C K E R Y ’ A N D T H E M E D I A I N A P O S T- FAC T UA L AG E Chaired by Sarah Montague, BBC Radio 4 journalist and Sussex honorary graduate.

Wednesday 3 May, 6.30pm. Royal Institution of Great Britain, 21 Albemarle Street, London

A M Y H O L D (E N G L I S H 2 0 0 2) met her husband whilst at Sussex. They now live in Perth, Australia. Amy is an alumni consul in Western Australia and she also supports current students as a Sussex Fund donor.

She explains what being a consul means to her: “I love being part of a network that, even on the other side of the world, connects me to like-minded and interesting people. The connections I’ve made are extremely valuable to me (especially now that I live overseas), and I continue to make new friends through the Sussex network all the time.

I would encourage all Sussex alumni to get involved with the University – you never know when being part of such a vibrant, global alumni community will come in handy!”

G E O R G E H UA N G (P S YC H O LO GY 2 01 1) has recently become an alumni consul for Taiwan. As well as helping to organise events in Taipei, George has also helped our new Taiwanese students by giving them a preparation talk before they set foot on campus. He says he finds the experience mutually beneficial: “I volunteered to become an alumni consul because of the passion I have for Sussex. The skills and the experiences I gained at university put me in a great position to pursue my dreams.

In the ‘information age’ it is important for the younger generation to develop a strong international perspective.

“Through sharing my passion and experiences I am able to motivate and encourage local students to experience the world, and help prepare them to face this competitive environment. As an entrepreneur, the volunteering experience gives me the opportunity to network with a range of people from different fields and nationalities.”

Amy Hold and George Huang are just two of our 250-strong network of volunteer alumni consuls, based in over 80 countries around the globe. Consuls can help provide a focal point for other alumni and students wanting to keep the Sussex connection, and many volunteers also offer prospective students an authentic picture of what living in Brighton and studying at Sussex is like.

B R I TA I N A N D E U R O P E : H OW W E G O T HERE AND WHERE WE GO NEXT Alumni reception with guest speaker Jonathan Faull (ENGAM 1973). Thursday 25 May, 6.30pm.

Wall Street, New York FA R E W E L L T O E A S T S LO P E !

Drinks, DJs and your last chance to say goodbye to the infamous East Slope flats. Saturday 24 June, 8pm-2am. East Slope Bar, University of Sussex. Tickets £20 C O M M U N I T Y O P E N DAY The University throws open its doors with talks, tours and activities for all ages. All welcome!

Sunday 25 June, all day. University of Sussex B R I T I S H S C I E N C E F E S T I VA L 2 017 A five-day science extravaganza co-hosted by the Universities of Sussex and Brighton across multiple locations on campus and in Brighton.

5-9 September

S U S S E X L E C T U R E S FO R T H E SUMMER TERM All lectures take place 6.30-8pm, in the Chowen Lecture Theatre, University of Sussex MAKING SENSE OF TEXT David Weir, Professor of Computer Science.

Wednesday 10 May REPRODUCTIVE POLITICS IN INDIA: G I V I N G T H E B O DY A VO I C E Maya Unnithan, Professor of Social and Medical Anthropology. Wednesday 17 May S E E I N G I N C O LO U R Anna Franklin, Professor of Visual Perception and Cognition. Wednesday 7 June Visit W W W. S U S S E X . AC . U K /A L U M N I for further details and booking

See who's in your country and find out more at: W W W. S U S S E X . AC . U K /A L U M N I/ OV E R S E A S

DON’T MISS OUT! All our event invitations are sent out via email, so please ensure that we have your current email address and postal address (so that you get sent details about events in your region).

If you don’t receive your monthly Sussex News by email, we probably don’t have your address!

The Making the Future campaign, which was publicly launched during the University’s 50th anniversary, raised £54 million in support of the University.

The impact of these donations can be seen every day, all over campus: in research centres and programmes tackling global challenges, in new and refurbished facilities, and among our diverse and brilliant students and staff.

None of this would be possible without the support and generosity of over 6,000 of our alumni and friends. We offer our heartfelt thanks to you all.

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THE BACK PAGES | MAKING THE FUTURE

Thank you

After more than 30 years hosting some of Sussex’s most unashamedly, archetypal student shindigs, we bid a fond farewell to the iconic East Slope accommodation ahead of its planned demolition.

THE BACK PAGES | ALUMNI MEMORIES

East Slope: going, going...

J O I N US FOR THE EAST S L OPE FAREWELL PA RTY ON SAT URDAY 2 4 JUNE, 7.30PM–2AM I N EAST SLOPE BAR. Tickets £20 with a portion of the proceeds going to the Sussex Fund, supporting current students in hardship. More information and tickets at: W W W. S U S S E X . AC .

U K /A L U M N I/ E V E N T S Add your photos and memories to FalmerExtra by emailing them to A L U M N I @ S U S S E X . AC . U K

In August 2016, Brighton & Hove City Council Approved plans to redevelop the East Slope accommodation. The existing flats housing 600 students will be demolished and the new development will accommodate 2,100 bedrooms, as well as a new Students’ Union building and social hub.

We are inviting alumni to come and say a last goodbye to the flats at a farewell bash in June at East Slope Bar. In the meantime, here are just a few of the memories alumni have shared with us about their time living in the ‘rabbit hutches’ of East Slope…

East Slope – what an uninspiring name – but perhaps better than one proposal at the time, ‘Passchendaele’, suggested because the mud and the contractor’s cross-shaped wooden markers were apparently reminiscent of the First World War battlefield.

T O N Y G L A S E R (S O C 1 973) With the help of others, I cooked my first Christmas dinner on East Slope for about 15 people. We used the cookers in two flats as there was so much food to cook. It turned out well and was greatly enjoyed – but the leftovers ended up being used for a food fight!

S A R A H C O U R T E N AY (E U R O 1 9 8 4) Everybody drank in the same bar, and we all lived in close proximity in the grottiest accommodation on campus, but that all gave us a sense of camaraderie – that we were all suffering East Slope together and loved it for it.

C A R O L I N E N OA K E S M P (P O L I T I C S/ I R 1 9 91) East Slope Bar had a kinda cool edginess to it.

A dive bar. That was the feeling you got from it.

It was just a cool place to hang out.

A R A M N A DJA R I A H (I R 2 0 0 6)

I loved our six-person flat: after a gap year living in low-cost accommodation in London, it was home and verging on luxury. It was the most radical university housing I had seen – not a hall with long corridors, with bathrooms shared by scores of people, and a big plus was that it was self-catering, so all very non-institutional.

D R R O S I E B U R T O N (B I O L S 1 978) When I arrived as one of the early ERASMUS students, I was delighted to hear that I would be accommodated at East Slope (Flat 34C – even 26 years later, I don’t have to think twice to remember this number), the name itself evoked memories of my birthplace: The Alps!

Now, East Slope conjures up memories of roaming up and down, going to and fro, in the evenings to visit friends living in what was like a village in my eyes. A village where the whole world seemed to be living: during this year, I shared my flat with a Palestinian student, two Americans, a British boy, a Japanese girl, not to mention their Danish boyfriends, Italian girlfriends, Spanish and German mates…

I hope that the future students who are going to live where East Slope used to stand will be as happy as I was living there.

R AC H E L JA R R E (C C S 1 9 9 0) I was in the very first cohort of students moving into East Slope. Life was far from perfect. The sound proofing was non-existent, sleep very hard to come by, and the showers unbelievably leaky.

It was quite an eye-opener. Whilst some of us (I’m afraid there was a gender bias here) had some concept of tidiness, others refused to do any washing-up and spent time hurling porridge at the walls (literally!).

But it was lovely hearing crows and rooks in the morning, and watching clouds through the then excitingly novel dormer windows.

C L A I R E C H O U D H U R Y (E N G A M 1 975)

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I spent my first and third years and part of one summer in the rabbit hutches of East Slope.

I had started life at Sussex at the tender age of 19 in October 1975 with a single suitcase and a box of LPs. When I returned two years later, I had gained a wife and a baby! I only partially blame East Slope.

I spent a lot of my first year in Flat 5 with my then girlfriend. However, Flat 4 felt like my spiritual home. As far as shared self-catering student accommodation goes, Flat 5 was pretty well organised. Most of us gravitated there for anything vaguely civilised, like cooking and eating.

On the other hand, Flat 4 was every man or woman for themselves. It seemed like the University had hand-picked the 12 most impractical, lazy, untidy, and hedonistic undergraduates they could find as part of some experiment. It was party central.

As a family, we remained drawn to East Slope as our elder daughter lived at Flat 3 in her first year at Sussex in 2001.

J I M S K I N N E R (E N G A M 1 975) I got involved working at East Slope Bar as a trainee licensee, learning to pull pints.

We were paid in cider, which was great! One night I wandered back with my couple of bottles of cider and came face-to-face with a badger who was rummaging through somebody’s dustbin.

We just looked at each other for a while and then decided to make our own ways home.

An experience I’ll never forget!

L I Z K AY E (C C S 1 9 8 5) East Slope’s flats will always be in our heart!

Even if the flats are demolished, many memories will stay forever in our hearts.

M A S S I M O T O S C H I (E U R O 1 9 9 2)

THE BACK PAGES | ALUMNI MEMORIES

We were among the first to occupy the ‘Kier Houses’ in 1969. These were the first houses for families to be built on the Sussex campus.

D R A L L E N C AT O N (A P P L I E D S C I E N C E S 1 9 6 8)

THE BACK PAGES | SUS SE X ICONS

Eminent social historian, academic and ‘founding father’ of the University of Sussex, Lord Asa Briggs passed away in March 2016, aged 94. Here he is remembered by former student Dr Tom Kemnitz (ENGAM 1962).

The embodiment of Sussex

From the perspective of the students in the 1960s, Asa Briggs was the most distinguished intellectual presence at the University of Sussex. We were all aware that he had written many books and was highly honoured beyond the University.

To the students who met him, he exuded a restlessly dynamic warmth. He had a sense that universities had to go beyond tolerance to enfold eccentricities and embrace diversity, and he met each student on his or her own terms. No one ever came away from talking with Asa thinking that Asa’s purpose had been to impress him or her. He was genuinely interested in everyone he met and asked questions to help draw out individual personalities.

He endeavoured to put students at ease, and yet he so quickly grasped what we were saying and was so eager for us to move on to say more that his characteristic burst of “yes, yes, yes” quickened and often shortened interactions with him.

This characteristic extended to his teaching and postgraduate supervision. He heard what we had

repeatedly on their turf were crucial factors in maintaining peace on campus. The police were never called to put down student unrest at Sussex.

Asa Briggs was Sussex. Densely stout and short with white skin topped by red hair, his physical presence seemed to provide the model that Sir Basil Spence was rendering in the architecture of the buildings going up at Falmer. Above all, we knew then that he was the originator of the “new map of learning”, of the highly successful interdisciplinary organisation and the wellspring of the intellectual dynamism and innovative originality that made Sussex a great university in its first quarter century.

P R E V I O U S PA G E : A portrait of Asa Briggs alongside a bust of his face taken in 2016.

ABOVE: Asa Briggs meets with student protesters in the 1960s.

Lord Asa Briggs Lifetime Highlights WO R K E D A LO N G S I D E A L A N T U R I N G A S A C O D E B R E A K E R AT B L E T C H L E Y PA R K D U R I N G T H E S E C O N D WO R L D WA R EMINENT WRITER AND ONE OF B R I TA I N ’ S FO R E M O S T H I S T O R I A N S FO R M E R S U S S E X V I C E - C H A N C E L LO R A N D K E Y F I G U R E I N T H E FO U N DAT I O N OF THE UNIVERSIT Y OF SUSSEX AND THE OPEN UNIVERSIT Y THE FIRST OFFICIAL BBC HISTORIAN A N D AU T H O R O F A F I V E - VO L U M E T E X T O N T H E H I S T O RY O F U K B R OA D C A S T I N G M E M B E R O F T H E I N S T I T U T E FO R A DVA N C E D S T U D I E S I N P R I N C E T O N , NEW JERSEY

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THE BACK PAGES | SUS SE X ICONS

to say, and he understood it immediately. He wanted us to progress, to make the enormous leap from very good to excellent.

He asked terse, penetrating questions; the first draft of my dissertation ran to 300 pages and was returned with fewer than 50 words in the margins. Once I had digested those words, I knew that I had to rewrite it completely.

When the student unrest of the 1960s came to Sussex, Asa responded sympathetically. As Vice-Chancellor, he went to speak in the Students' Union; when he said that “as far as I know there is no CIA-funded research at the University” and received jeers for his qualifying phrase, he said that was all he could say honestly. There might be such research, but if so it was a secret that was being kept from him. His intellectual force, his sympathetic patience, and his willingness to meet the students

Sir Harold Walter Kroto, FRS was an award-winning English chemist who died aged 76 in April 2016.

Dr Jonathan Hare (Chemistry 1989) recounts his time working with the remarkable scientist.

BELOW: Sir Harr y Kroto receiving news of his Nobel Prize win in 1996.

THE BACK PAGES | SUS SE X ICONS

Voyage of discovery In 1985 Harry Kroto and colleagues were trying to understand some intriguing chemistry that had been observed in the vast and beautiful molecular clouds between the stars.

It was scientific curiosity simply for the pleasure of trying to better understand the universe. In a famous laboratory experiment they vaporised graphite (the ‘lead’ in your pencil); heating it up to the temperature of the surface of a star. They then ‘looked’ to see what happened when the atoms cooled and came back together, and discovered a great deal of astrochemistry during these pioneering experiments. By accident, they also uncovered a totally new form of carbon having exactly 60 carbon atoms (formula C60), and amazingly it turned out to be the shape of a tiny football.

C60 is as many times smaller than a football, as a football is to the Earth. It’s a thousandth of a millionth of a meter in diameter – a nanometer. In a wonderful example of serendipity, they had stumbled upon a new area of nanotechnology; a family of ‘cage’ type structures they called the ‘fullerenes’, which would lead the team members to be awarded the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Harry named C60 ‘buckminsterfullerene’ (also known as ‘buckyballs’) after the architect and inventor Richard Buckminster Fuller who developed the structurally similar geodesic domes.

The creative and intelligent use of scientific equipment, along with unbounded curiosity, coupled with the critical detective work of these experiments was classic Harry.

I loved the way he was so free at taking up new ideas and new directions for the sake of curiosity and possibilities – his favourite catchwords were “interesting” and “unbelievable”.

I studied for my PhD with Harry from 1989-1993, working on the extraction of C60, and then stayed on in the group for about 10 years before becoming a science communicator. It was a fabulous time and a real privilege to be able to spend so much time working closely with such a remarkable, inspiring, creative and kind man.

Harry had an ability to get to the heart of a problem; often that meant seeing things clearly – not getting bogged down in details that would put most of us off. I would chat to him about my latest ideas and he would often go immediately to the heart of my confusion – sometimes it was such a shock of clarity I would laugh out loud! These experiences were exhilarating, inspiring and instructive but importantly always done with kindness so you didn’t feel small or stupid. I remember on many occasions how his intense focus seemed to make my own limited concentration feel sharper.

Harry wanted his students to follow up their own ideas; to use their imagination and creativity.

His energy and success also helped a lot of people all around the world to follow their own aspirations and inspirations. He thought freedom of speech and freedom to be creative were as important for the individual as it was vital for the development and future success of humanity.

Sir Harry Kroto Lifetime Highlights 1 9 9 6 N O B E L P R I Z E I N C H E M I S T RY T I R E L E S S WO R L DW I D E A M B A S S A D O R FO R S C I E N C E D I S C OV E RY O F C 6 0 A N D T H E F U L L E R E N E S H U M A N I S T AT H E I S T W H O S P O K E O U T FO R TOLERANCE AND CRITICAL THINKING I N S P I R AT I O N A L T E AC H E R , P O LY M AT H , S T O RY TELLER, MENTOR AND STUDENT SUPPORTER SET UP VEGA SCIENCE TRUST AND GEOSET W W W.V E G A .O R G .U K W W W.G E O S E T. I N FO

M A R T I N B A I L E Y (A F R A S 1 9 6 6), Studio of the South: Van Gogh in Provence, Frances Lincoln.

Leading UK Vincent Van Gogh-specialist Martin Bailey draws on original research to tell the story of Van Gogh’s period in Arles in 1888-89, when the Dutch painter’s powers were arguably at their peak.

S H A R O N D U G G A L (C R E AT I V E W R I T I N G 2 0 0 9), The Handsworth Times, Bluemoose Books Ltd. Selected as Morning Star’s 2016 Book of the Year, The Handsworth Times uses the personal tragedy of the Agarwal family to state the case for community and togetherness against a 1980s backdrop of political and cultural tumult.

P R O F E S S O R A N DY F I E L D (C O G S 1 9 9 4), An Adventure in Statistics: The Reality Enigma, SAGE Publications Ltd. Award-winning Sussex academic Andy Field returns with a statistics textbook designed especially for newcomers to the subject, combining authoritative knowledge with engaging visual storytelling.

K AT E H OWA R D (E N G L I S H 1 9 9 5), The Ornatrix, Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd. A debut novel rich in description and character, Kate Howard’s story of desire and jealousy set in 16th century Italy was chosen as one of Vogue magazine’s essential 2016 summer reads.

S A R A K E N N E Y (B I O L S 1 9 9 3), Surgeon X, Image Comics. A unique and innovative comic book series centred around Rosa Scott, a vigilante doctor who uses experimental surgery and black market drugs to treat patients amidst an antibiotic apocalypse in near future London.

I A N M C E WA N (E U R O 1 9 67 ), Nutshell, Jonathan Cape. The author of Atonement and Enduring Love returns with Nutshell, a story of murder and deceit recounted by a unique narrator – the inquisitive nine-month-old resident of a protagonist’s womb.

P R O F E S S O R C R A I G PAC K E R (S C I T E C H 1 974), Lions in the Balance: Man-Eaters, Manes and Men with Guns, University of Chicago Press. Celebrated lion researcher and conservationist Professor Packer draws on his extensive knowledge and experience to re-map the place of the African lion, increasingly under threat by human beings.

S A R A PA S C O E (E N G L I S H 2 0 01), Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body, Faber & Faber. A combination of autobiography and elaborate evolutionary history, Animal allows Pascoe to expand on her comedy material about femininity and sexuality to make profound and amusing points about the forces that mould 21st century women.

D R D O U G R I C H A R D S (S C I T E C H 1 978), Running Hot & Cold, Pitch Publishing. A real-life

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tale of how a foray into running in later life helped Doug overcome modern-life obstacles, eventually transforming him into a prolific marathon runner.

Winner of the Silver Trophy in the Best Book category at the prestigious 2016 Running Awards.

U M I S I N H A (C R E AT I V E W R I T I N G 1 9 9 4), Belonging, Myriad Editions. An intense and finely-crafted debut novel exploring classic themes of love, loss, race and belonging, sparked by a tragedy in India that leads to a fresh beginning in Sussex.

R O S E M A R Y S U L L I VA N (A R T S 1 972), Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva, Harper Perennial. A revelatory and thoroughlyresearched portrait of Joseph Stalin’s only daughter, a writer and lecturer who spent her life in the shadow of her notorious father.

Winner of multiple literary prizes.

J O N AT H A N W E I S M A N (A F R A S 1 9 8 5), No. 4 Imperial Lane, Twelve. Senior New York Times reporter Jonathan Weisman draws on his time at Sussex to tell the coming-of-age story of an American nearing the end of his year abroad in Brighton in the era of Thatcher, via revolutionary Angola.

See more publications authored by alumni in the past year at: W W W. S U S S E X . AC . U K / FA L M E R E X T R A

THE BACK PAGES | BOOKSHELF

Bookshelf

THE BACK PAGES | COMPE TITION

Win a VIP weekend with Falmer

We are offering readers a chance to win a fabulous weekend in Brighton and on campus on 24-25 June 2017, or two runners-up prizes of Sussex goody bags.

First prize includes: • A two-night stay for two people in a 4-star central Brighton hotel, Friday 23 – Saturday 24 June 2017.

• Two free tickets to the East Slope Farewell Party on Saturday 24 June, plus drinks vouchers.

• Lunch for two at any of the campus café outlets on either Saturday or Sunday.

To enter, register your details in SussexSphere (or log in to your existing account) at www.alumni.sussex.ac.uk, or contact the Development and Alumni Relations Office quoting ‘Falmer 2017 Competition’ by email to alumni@sussex.ac.uk or telephone us on +44 (0)1273 678258.

When you are in SussexSphere, please take a moment to check and update your contact information and communication preferences in ‘My alumni profile’ to ensure that you continue to receive communications from Sussex.

• A Sussex goody bag.

The prize winner and guest will also be most welcome to attend our Community Open Day on campus on Sunday 25 June.

Rules: The draw will be made on Monday 8 May 2017. The winner will be announced on Wednesday 10 May 2017. The winner and runners-up will be notified by telephone and email and the results published on the alumni web pages. There is no cash alternative. Full terms and conditions for the draw can be found at www.alumni.sussex.ac.uk/Falmer2017competition

I make this gift in gratitude for all that Brighton did to educate me when I was left an orphan. â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Helena Normanton QC (1882-1957)

Helena Normanton was a lady of firsts. She was the first woman to practise law at the bar in England, the first woman to conduct a trial in America, and the first married woman to be issued a passport in her maiden name. She accomplished all of this despite losing her parents at a young age and having to provide for her younger sister.

Ms Normanton was able to fulfil her potential thanks to one simple opportunity: receiving a scholarship to a secondary school in Brighton. This experience taught her that to make a lasting difference in the world we must remove the barriers to education.

So it was that Ms Normanton came to leave the capital of her trust to help found the University of Sussex and, in doing so, also became the first person to leave a gift in her will to the University.

You too can follow in these pioneering footsteps and join many of your fellow alumni in starting your own legacy at Sussex.

All gifts in wills, large and small, make a lasting difference to life on campus. For more information, or a confidential discussion about your plans, please contact our Legacy Manager Ben Loxton on b.loxton@sussex.ac.uk or +44 (01273 872820.

Thank you.

We realised that we had exactly what Britain needed â&#x20AC;&#x201C; genuine interdisciplinary expertise on international and European trade, experience of the policy world and great team spirit.

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