College Record 2017

Cluster activities at Wolfson have continued to be varied, exciting, and multifarious,
as readers of the Record will see in their reports, but are too numerous to be listed
here. They have included the Ancient World’s workshop on London’s First Voices,
the early Roman tablets deciphered and published by Roger Tomlin; the Foundation
for Law, Justice and Society’s staging of the Putney Debates on the subject of the
EU referendum; the Aris Lecture for the Tibetan and Himalayan Cluster, given by
Charles Ramble on the dark side of Tibetan studies, and the annual Tibetan New Year
party; the Digital Research Cluster’s day conference in honour of Sebastian Rahtz on
his digital legacy; the South Asia Cluster’s day seminar for members of the Foreign
and Commonwealth Office, and its conference for the seventieth anniversary of
Indian Independence; and the Life-Writing Centre’s international day-conference on
the Lives of Houses, and its Weinrebe Lecture series on Writing Global Lives, with
Patrick French, Lyndal Roper, Roy Foster and Elleke Boehmer (the next director of
OCLW).
We thank in particular the outgoing heads of the Ancient World Cluster, Peter Barber
and Susan Walker, and Donna Kurtz of the Digital Cluster, which will now be led
by David de Roure. I am very glad that two new science clusters are currently being
created, one in Trauma, and one in Quantum Foundations, a major expansion of
our current Quantum activities. And I am delighted that our Acting-President and
President-Elect are committed to the continuation and expansion of the Clusters.
We have had a very active cultural year. The Fournier Trio, ever more dazzling,
are working their way through the complete Beethoven string trios. Our choir is
thriving. As a parting gift from me to the College, the world-renowned pianist
Imogen Cooper gave us a superb piano recital of Haydn, Beethoven and Adès on 19
June. She warmly praised our Steinway and the acoustics of the Leonard Wolfson
Auditorium. Our excellent Creative Arts Fellow, Nick Pierpan, had a new play on
Wordsworth and Coleridge launched at the Theatre by the Lake in Keswick. The
Arts Society has run some excellent exhibitions, currently one of Wolfson College
Portraits by New York photographer Mariana Cook. AMREF is doing splendidly.
The President’s Seminars have been going strong, with seminars on Power, Space
and – appropriately – Change. I am delighted to learn that the Acting President plans
to continue them next year.
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