downing text 2012_Layout 1 - Downing College - University of ...

DOWNING COLLEGE 2011–2012Richard Stibbs and Julia had in May an excellent visit to the University of Virginiain Charlottesville to renew friendships with many of the Thomas Jefferson Fellowswho have visited Downing over the past 35 years. We were delighted to meetseventeen of them at an evening reception hosted by Professors Richard and EllieWilson. The guests include Professor DeForest Mellon who had been the firstvisitor to Downing in 1979. That visit had been instigated by John Treherne whohad been collaborating with DeForest. John Treherne was, by a happy piece ofserendipity, Richard’s predecessor as President.Bill Adams has recently been involved in a study of the role of computer gamesin biodiversity conservation. Can conservation be fun? Log on and find out:http://www.gamesfornature.org/.Graham Virgo has published the following books this year:The Principles of Equity and Trusts (OUP)Contractual duties: Performance, Breach, Termination and Remedies (Andrews,Clarke, Tettenborn and Virgo) (Sweet and Maxwell).He has been appointed Deputy Chair of the Law Faculty.John McCombie enjoyed two terms sabbatical leave and achieved, as is the wayof these things, far less than he anticipated. However, he enjoyed trips toconferences in Coimbra, Portugal and Trento, Italy as a key-note speaker oneconomic growth and the balance-of-payments constraint and on theshortcomings of the surrogate production function respectively. His bookTechnical Change and the Aggregate Production Function: Not Even Wrong on whichhe has been working with a colleague off and on for a number of years is nowcoming to fruition. From October 2012, he will be Professor in Regional andApplied Economics.Trevor Robbins was appointed as a CBE in the New Year’s Honours List for“contributions to medical research”. He has been on sabbatical leave for the firstpart of the academic year and spent time at the National Institute of Mental Health(Washington DC, USA) and at the Scripps Research Institute (San Diego, USA).He also gave lectures at Hawaii, Austin and San Antonio (Texas), Tel Aviv,Lausanne. Nice, Utrecht, Philadelphia, Barcelona and Stockholm. With theMaster, Professor Barry Everitt, Trevor was awarded the DistinguishedContribution Award of the American Psychological Association in August 2011,at their annual meeting in Washington D.C. A significant publication was thatappearing in Science magazine in February with Karen Ersche and Ed Bullmore onpsychological and neural factors predisposing to drug addiction in human abusers.187