magazine - Somerville College - University of Oxford

Somerville Magzine | 9
When Thilo’s daughter, Elizabeth McLean (née Hunter) came up in 1950, Dame
Janet was in the Principal’s Chair and Jean Banister just starting her long and
infl uential tenure as Physiology Tutor. Jean had been allowed a large group (fi ve)
for Somerville from the then quota of women entrants to Medicine, a group that
included Shirley Summerskill, later a minister in the Labour Government, 1974–9.
Liz went on to two half-careers, the fi rst during her childrens’ early years in Pathology
research, the second in NHS Psychiatry where, as Medical Director of the Victorian
Asylum housing the inpatients of St George’s Hospital Medical School, she laboured to
accustom staff and patients (alike heavily institutionalised) to the potential advantages
of the new policy of Community Care. Later she led one of the earlier Community
Psychiatric Teams in Inner London. This team, after taking a hard look at its patient
base, set itself a principal aim of prioritising care to those patients with long-term
mental health problems. To this end they devised a simple, clinical-based checklist
designed to defi ne the “long-term” patient and to separate such from the “others”.
With this tool they were able to audit their success or failure vis-à-vis their chosen
aim. To graduates working in other clinical specialities, this device must appear
so elementary as to be hardly worth mentioning. Psychiatrists and administrators,
however, will recognise that it represents a level of accountability in mental health
service delivery which is too rarely achieved.
Angela’s imaginative application of the Mathematical training she got from Somerville
is described above. As for Florence, not yet half way through her second year, history
awaits. To date it can be said that she takes seriously the need to organise a social
side to College life. She was an animating spirit of Somerville Freshers’ Week 2009,
and continues as an active member of the Bop Committee.
Other current
Somervillian FRSs
Professor Dame Kay Davies
(Partridge, 1969, Chemistry)
Professor Dame Julia Higgins
(Stretton Downes, 1961, Physics)
Professor Judith Howard
(Duckworth, 1966, Physical Science)
Professor Dame Louise Johnson
Hon. Fellow
Professor Dame Carole Jordan
Emeritus Fellow
Professor Anne Treisman
(Taylor, 1957, Psychology)
Baroness Margaret Thatcher
(Roberts, 1943, Chemistry)
Fellow
Profile:
PROFESSOR
KATHERINE
DUNCAN-JONES
Senior Research
Fellow
Professor
Fiona Stafford
Professor Fiona Stafford was elected to a Tutorial
Fellowship in English Literature in 1992. She came
to Somerville from Lincoln College, where she wrote a
doctoral thesis on James Macpherson and The Poems
of Ossian, subsequently published as The Sublime
Savage, and held a British Academy Post-Doctoral
Junior Research Fellowship. In 2008, her scholarly
distinction was recognised by the University with the
award of a titular Professorship. In 2006, she was
elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Fiona has written extensively on Scottish, Irish and
English poetry from the eighteenth century to the
present day, as well as on the novels of Jane Austen.
In her current project, Local Attachments: The Province
of Poetry, to be published in July 2010 by Oxford
University Press, she studies connections between
poems and places and considers the crucial role of
poetry in society.
Fiona has always been an extremely active teaching
member of the English Faculty, supervising large
numbers of graduate students both at Master’s
and Doctoral level, as well as of the College. She very
much enjoys teaching undergraduates in Somerville,
and for other Colleges, and appreciates the variety
of life as a Fellow.
In 2008/09 she performed a key role for Somerville
in chairing the committee appointed to elect a new
Principal in succession to Dame Fiona Caldicott.
She has also served as Tutor for Admissions, Tutor for
Graduates and Secretary to the SCR, and was actively
involved with managing the College Nursery, where both
her children were cared for before they went to school.
She has also been actively involved in alumni events,
and – as a tutor for seventeen years in the always
populous English school – she has many former
pupils of her own. She is one of two Fellows sitting on
the Somerville Association Committee as representatives
of Somerville’s Governing Body.