The Queen's College Record 2025

THE QUEEN’S COLLEGE

COLLEGE

RECORD 2025

THE QUEEN’S COLLEGE

Visitor

The Archbishop of York

Provost

Craig, Claire Harvey, CBE, MA PhD Camb

Fellows

Robbins, Peter Alistair, BM BCh MA DPhil

Oxf

Taylor, Robert Anthony, MA DPhil Oxf

Langdale, Jane Alison, CBE, BSc Bath,

MA Oxf, PhD Lond, FRS

Mellor, Elizabeth Jane Claire, BSc Manc,

MA Oxf, PhD R’dg

Owen, Nicholas James, MA DPhil Oxf

Rees, Owen Lewis, MA PhD Camb, MA Oxf,

ARCO

Bamforth, Nicholas Charles, BCL MA Oxf

O’Reilly, Keyna Anne Quenby, MA DPhil Oxf

Louth, Charles Bede, BA PhD Camb,

MA DPhil Oxf

Norbury, Christopher John, MA Oxf,

PhD Lond

Sarooshi, Dan, LLB UNSW, LLM PhD Lond,

MA Oxf

Doye, Jonathan Peter Kelway, BA PhD Camb

Buckley, Mark James, MA DPhil Oxf

Aldridge, Simon, MA DPhil Oxf

Timms, Andrew, MA Camb, MPhil PhD Brist

Meyer, Dirk, MA PhD Leiden

Papazoglou, Panagiotis, BS Crete, MA PhD

Columbia, MA Oxf, habil Paris-Sud

Lonsdale, Laura Rosemary, MA Oxf,

PhD Birm

Beasley, Rebecca Lucy, MA PhD Camb,

MA DPhil Oxf, MA Berkeley

Crowther, Charles Vollgraff, MA Camb,

MA Cincinnati, MA Oxf, PhD Lond

O’Callaghan, Christopher Anthony, BM BCh

MA DPhil DM Oxf, FRCP (Lond)

Phalippou, Ludovic Laurent André,

BA Toulouse School of Economics,

MA Southern California, PhD INSEAD

Gardner, Anthony Marshall, BA LLB MA

Melbourne, PhD NSW

Tammaro, Paolo, Laurea Genoa, PhD Bath

Guest, Jennifer Lindsay, BA Yale, MA MPhil

PhD Columbia, MA Waseda

Turnbull, Lindsay Ann, BA Camb, PhD Lond

Parkinson, Richard Bruce, BA DPhil Oxf

Hollings, Christopher David, MMath PhD

York

Kelly, Steven, BSc Dub, DPhil Oxf, ARIAM

Metcalf, Christopher Michael Simon,

MA Edin, MPhil DPhil Oxf

Whidden, Seth Adam, BA Union College,

AM PhD Brown, MA Ohio State

Prout, David, MA Oxf, PhD Lond

Keating, Jonathan Peter, MPhys Oxf,

PhD Bristol, FRS

Abell, Catharine Emma Jenvey, BA Adelaide,

PhD Flinders

Weatherup, Robert Stewart, MEng PhD

Camb

Carrillo de la Plata, José Antonio, BA PhD

Grenada

O’Brien, Conor, BA Cork, MSt DPhil Oxf

Rota, Gabriele, BA Padua, MPhil PhD Camb

Leedham, Simon, BSc MBBS PhD QMUL

Ono-George, Meleisa Patarica, BA MA

Victoria, PhD Warw

Al-Hosni, Rumaitha Nasser Ali, BSc Kent,

MSc UCL, PhD Camb

Leeder, Karen, BA DPhil Oxf, FRSA

Egger, Dennis, BA Oxf, MSc LSE, PhD

Berkeley

Reynolds, Frances Susan, BA PhD Birm

2 The Queen’s College | College Record 2025

Ghassim, Farsan, BSc LSC, MA Yale,

DPhil Oxf

Khalighinejad, Nima, MD Isfahan University

of Medical Sciences, MSc PhD UCL

Perkins, Marina Webster, BA Brown,

MPhil Camb

Slack, Emma, BA Camb, PhD London

Research Institute

Hudson, Emily, BSc LLB LLM PhD

Melbourne

Wettimuny, Shamara, BSc MSc LSE,

DPhil Oxf

Fink Shustin, Paz, BSc MSc PhD Tel-Aviv

Salomone-Sehr, Jules, MSc Paris School of

Economics, MA Sorbonne, PhD CUNY

Wright, Matthew, BEng PhD UNSW

Bowles, Alexander, BSc Port, MSc Imp,

PhD Essex

McGirr, Lisa, MA MPhil PhD Columbia

Atkin, Tamara Jane, BA Dub, MSt, DPhil Oxf

Crisóstomo Wainstock, Daniel, BA Stanford,

PhD Brown

Duffy, Kirsty Elizabeth, MPhys DPhil Oxf

Goodwin, Zachary, MSci MSc PhD Imp

Gujral, Diva, BA Delhi, MA PhD UCL

Kelly, Dearbhla, MB BCh NUI Cork,

MSc Edin, MSc Danube Krems, MSc DPhil

Oxf

Leucht, Lukas, BA BS Munich LMU,

MS Barcelona Graduate School of

Economics, PhD Berkeley

Pugh, Alexandra, BA MSt Oxf, PhD KCL

Xie, Junqing, BM Shandong, MSc Peking,

DPhil Oxf

Honorary Fellows

Hoffmann, Leonard Hubert, the Rt Hon Lord

Hoffmann of Chedworth, Kt, PC, BA Cape

Town, BCL MA Oxf

Morgan, Kenneth Owen, Lord Morgan of

Aberdyfi, MA DPhil DLitt Oxf, FBA, FRHistS

McColl, Sir Colin Hugh Verel, KCMG, MA Oxf

Berners-Lee, Sir Timothy John, OM, KBE,

MA Oxf, FRS

Kelly, the Rt Hon Ruth Maria, PC, BA Oxf,

MSc Lond

Atkinson, Rowan Sebastian, BSc Newc,

MSc Oxf

Bowman, Alan Keir, MA Oxf, MA PhD

Toronto, FBA

Gillen, the Hon Sir John de Winter, BA Oxf

Lever, Sir Paul, KCMG, MA Oxf, Hon LLD Birm

Phillips, Caryl, BA Oxf, FRSL

Stern, Nicholas Herbert, Lord Stern of

Brentford, Kt, CH, MA Camb, DPhil Oxf,

FBA, FRS

Reed, Terence James, MA Oxf, FBA

Low, Colin MacKenzie, Lord Low of Dalston,

CBE, BA Oxf

Beecroft, Paul Adrian Barlow, MA Oxf,

FInstP

Bogdanor, Vernon Bernard, CBE, MA Oxf,

FBA

Eisenberg, David Samuel, AB Harvard,

DPhil Oxf

Carwardine, Richard John, MA DPhil Oxf,

FBA, FLSW, FRHistS

Hacker, Peter Michael Stephan, MA DPhil

Oxf

Margalit, Avishai, BA MA PhD Hebrew

Laskey, Ronald Alfred, CBE, MA DPhil Oxf,

FRS, FMedSci

Barrons, Sir Richard Lawson, KCB, CBE,

MA Oxf

Abbott, Anthony John, MA Oxf

Griffith Williams, the Hon Sir John, MA Oxf

Turner, the Hon Sir Mark George, MA Oxf

Donnelly, Sir Joseph Brian, CMG, KBE,

MA Oxf

Watt, James Chi Yau, MA Oxf

Booker, Cory, BA Oxf, BA MA Stanford,

JD Yale

Garcetti, Eric, BA MA Columbia, MA Oxf,

PhD LSE

College Record 2025 | The Queen’s College 3

James, Ioan Mackenzie, MA DPhil Oxf, FRS †

Sloboda, John Anthony, OBE, MA Oxf,

PhD Lond, FBA, FBPsS

Wills, Clair, MA DPhil Oxf

Madden, Paul Anthony, MA Oxf, DPhil Sus,

FRS, FRSE

Barber, Sir Michael, Kt, BA Oxf

Frood, Elizabeth, BA MA Auckland,

DPhil Oxf

Gordon-Reed, Annette, BA Dartmouth,

JD Harvard

Ramakrishnan, Sir Venkatraman, Kt,

PhD Ohio, FRS

Sillem, Hayaatun, CBE, PhD UCL,

MBiochem Oxf, FIET

Taylor, Clare, MBE, BA Oxf

Khan, Asma, PhD KCL

Emeritus Fellows

Kaye, John Marsh, BCL MA Oxf †

Dimsdale, Nicholas Hampden, MA Camb,

MA Oxf

Foster, Michael Antony, MA DPhil Oxf

Rutherford, John David, MA DPhil Oxf

Baines, John Robert, MA DPhil Oxf, FBA

Pearson, Roger Anthony George, MA DPhil

Oxf, FBA

Bowie, Angus Morton, MA PhD Camb,

MA DPhil Oxf

McLeod, Peter Duncan, MA PhD Camb,

MA DPhil Oxf

Salmon, Graeme Laurence, BSc Tasmania,

MA DPhil Oxf

Harries, Phillip Tudor, MA DPhil Oxf

Rowland, The Revd Christopher, MA PhD

Camb, MA DPhil Oxf

Ball, Sir John Macleod, MA Camb, MA Oxf,

DPhil Sus, FRS, FRSE

Blair, William John, MA DPhil Oxf, FBA, FSA

Davis, John Harry, MA DPhil Oxf

Robertson, Ritchie Neil Ninian, MA Edin,

MA DPhil Oxf, PhD Camb, FBA

Hyman, John, BPhil MA DPhil Oxf

Nickerson, Richard Bruce, BSc Edin,

MA DPhil Oxf

Supernumerary Fellows

Maclean, Ian Walter Fitzroy, MA DPhil Oxf,

FBA, FRHistS

Constantine, David John, MA DPhil Oxf

Dobson, Peter James, OBE, BSc PhD S’ton,

MA Oxf

Irving-Bell, Linda, MA DPhil Oxf

Jacobs, Justin Baine, BA Tulsa, MPhil PhD

Camb

Ryland, Charlotte, BA Camb, MSt Oxf, PhD

UCL

Davis, Christina, AB PhD Harvard

Browne Research Fellow

Raulo, Aura, BSc MSc Helsinki, DPhil Oxf

Beecroft Junior Research Fellow

(in Astrophysics)

Aurrekoetxea, Josu, BSc Bilbao, MSc Imp,

PhD KCL

Laming Junior Fellows

Cantrill, Aoife, BA MPhil DPhil Oxf

Pishbin, Shaahin, BA MSt Oxf, MA PhD

Chicago

Full-time Lecturers

Wolf, Franziska, BA MA Tubingen, PhD Birm

Chaplain

Watson, The Revd Alice, BA Oxf, MA Durh


CONTENTS

From the Provost 6

Provost Elect Paul Johnson 9

Reports and College Activities 11

Senior Tutor’s Report 11

News from the Fellowship 14

Academic Distinctions 36

Final Public Examinations 38

First Public Examinations 41

University Prizes 2025 43

College Prizes 45

From the Bursar 46

A Tribute to David Goddard,

Former Clerk of Works 48

Outreach 50

A Year in the Library 53

A Year in the Archive 55

A Year in the Chapel 57

A Year in the Chapel Choir 59

The Queen’s College

Translation Exchange 61

Centre for Manuscript

and Text Cultures 65

A Year in the MCR 68

A Year in the JCR 69

Student Clubs and Societies 71

Old Members’ Activities 84

Development and Old Member

Relations Report 84

Gaudies – Future Invitations 96

650th Anniversary Trust Fund Award

Reports 97

Publications 120

Articles, Interviews, & Features 122

Treasures from the Library:

Gutenberg’s Catholicon 122

Geopolitics and understanding the

global economy 124

Interview with Distinguished Visitor

Peter Brathwaite FRSA 129

Even Bananas: An interview with Fellow

in Physics Dr Kirsty Duffy 136

Books and Bindings: An interview

with Fellow in English Professor

Tamara Atkin 139

Killing the Dead: An interview with

Professor John Blair FBA, FSA 145

What would Caroline think? 154

Obituaries 158

David Bryan 159

Jonathan Bousfield 160

Paul Godsland 161

David Goodall 162

Ioan James 163

John Kaye 167

Peter Newsam 168

Mario Rinvolucri 171

Philip Wood 173

Estcourt Zolile Mbali 174

Benefactions 177

Information 187


FROM THE PROVOST

From the Provost

Credit: David Fisher

My final year as Provost has seen some wonderfully varied

individual and collaborative achievements by members of

the Queen’s community, and ended with a beautifully

sunny Trinity Term and warm summer evenings, including

the College Ball and a very special London Reception with

Old Members at the Royal Academy.

In addition to continued strong academic results, students

Dr Claire Craig, Provost presented their research to Parliament and co-authored

Parliamentary briefings, addressed the International Law

Commission and, in the case of graduate student Hans Chan, was named as one

of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 List in recognition of work “using science, entrepreneurship,

and AI to tackle global waste, one material at a time”. The College Ball was themed

on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the Eglesfield Summer Musical was

Fiddler on the Roof, both events making imaginative use of the College buildings

and gardens with the former including an amazing projection of a chocolate river

onto the walls of Front Quad.

Fellows’ academic achievements included Professor José Carrillo receiving the

International Tartufari Prize in the “Mathematics, Mechanics and their applications”

category, Lobel Fellow in Classics Dr Christopher Metcalf receiving the Friedrich

Wilhelm Bessel Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and

Schwarz-Taylor Chair of German Language and Literature Professor Karen Leeder

winning the Griffin Prize for Poetry. Meanwhile, Professor Robert Taylor, who retires

this year, kindly stepped in as Pro Provost for my Sabbatical leave during Hilary Term.

Looking back over the last six years as a whole, I realise that, like so many of us, I

have felt at home in Queen’s since the first moment I walked up the steps from the

High Street, through the forbidding doors, and into the beauty and calm that is Front

Quad. I am grateful to staff, students, and Old Members who have welcomed me

and made the time such a pleasure.

Of course, when I started my term as Provost I knew I was the first woman to hold the

position, but I did not expect also to be the first Provost to have to shut the College.

The national lockdown of Trinity 2020 may have been the first time the main College

buildings closed during termtime since 1341 as, for example, they remained open

even during the two world wars of the 20th century. So I am proud that the culture

I inherited was one of deep commitment to the College’s purposes of education

and research for the public good and that this commitment guided what we did

during the tough times of the pandemic. The privations of those years reinforced

the recognition that it is the physical coming together of people united by common


goals and interests, particularly through the tutorial system, which is what makes

the College such a transformative place for so many lives.

One of the things I have found most inspiring is the way people in College live and

work together across the boundaries of nation, religion, and culture. Members of

our community hold strong views, and are often directly personally affected by

external events such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Hamas-Israel conflict, or

the reactions to the death of George Floyd. So the College aims both to embrace

passionate, reasoned debate, and to require civility – even kindness – to each other.

In that spirit, during this period we acknowledged for the first time publicly that

the College benefitted – through Joseph Williamson – from the Transatlantic trade

in enslaved West African people. We also decided to add to our First World War

memorial the names of German and Hungarian Old Members who died fighting

the Allies. These steps helped us to remain true to the core values of the College

that those committed to education and research are welcome here, wherever they

come from.

From the Provost

I see that welcome as being a natural continuation and extension of the College’s

origin story, as a College for boys from the North West of England – which in 1341

was six days’ journey away. So I am delighted that, with the support of many Old

Members, we have also refreshed that heritage. This year the Governing Body

Provost’s Lecture 2025 with Professor Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation.


From the Provost

decided to back a second phase of partnership working in the homelands of our

founder, Cumbria and Blackburn with Darwen, to support the brightest young

people whose social and economic disadvantages mean that they are at risk of

missing out on the opportunity to go to a top university. Meanwhile, the wonderful

Queen’s Translation Exchange continued its outreach work with a record-breaking

22,000 schoolchildren from around the UK taking part in its Anthea Bell Translation

Prize competition.

So we didn’t just survive the global pandemic and external shocks and trends, we

are thriving. The College is in excellent academic and social health. In addition to

the teaching and learning that is central to College life, Fellows are researching the

big issues of today, of 5,000 years ago, and of the future. Due to Old Members’

generosity, we have endowed five more of our Tutorial Fellowships. This moves us

closer to the full academic independence that recent events in the US and elsewhere

have shown is so important.

Building on the strong foundations laid by generations of Fellows, students, and staff,

Queen’s has moved beyond its occasional 20th century reputation as a friendly, but

perhaps not always academically top-performing, college. It is still a friendly college

but, by many measures, including those that replace the now defunct Norrington

League Table, in recent decades it has consolidated its academic position as a top

tier college at perhaps the world’s top University. With my successor, Paul Johnson,

and you all, I know that it will be in good hands.

Credit: David Olds


PROVOST ELECT PAUL JOHNSON

Credit: Fisher Studios

Paul Johnson, Provost

Our new Provost writes about his background and his

thoughts about the College and its future

Hello. It’s a huge pleasure and privilege to be introducing

myself just one term into my time as Provost. I took up

post over the summer, which just about gave me time to

meet most of the staff and Fellows of the College before

the whirlwind of Michaelmas Term. Since then, I’ve met all

of the first-years, many of the other students, and a good

few of you, the Queen’s Old Members.

From the Provost

After nearly 15 years as director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and a working

lifetime focused on the economics of public policy, this is very much a new venture

for me – though some of you may have noticed that I haven’t entirely given up on

writing and commenting on economics. It is a venture in which I am pleased to say I

am joined by my partner Nicola, who is playing a full role in College life, and without

whose enthusiasm and support I doubt I could ever have taken this on.

I am not a Queen’s Old Member myself. I attended Keble back in the 1980s where I

studied PPE, coincidentally at exactly the same time as the current Queen’s politics

Fellow, Nick Owen, was studying it at Christ Church. For me, a gauche 18-yearold

from a south coast comprehensive, the chance to do PPE at Oxford was a

transformative experience. For better or worse I’m pretty sure I would never have had

the opportunities and the career that have followed had I not had the advantages

of an Oxford education.

In part it was that transformative experience that tempted me back to Oxford; in part

my experience as an employer recruiting some of the brightest and the best from

this University. How could I not jump at the chance to help preserve that excellence,

to help continue to find the most talented young people from all backgrounds, and

to meet, work with, and support all our amazing students.

I’ve also seen through my career in government, consulting, and the IFS the vital role that

academic research plays both in supporting decision making and, of course, in driving

innovation and a dynamic economy. I have been delighted to see the phenomenal work

being carried out across Oxford, and especially by the Fellows at Queen’s, across the

humanities, sciences, and social sciences. Much of it is world leading, and is research

which will help make a difference to our world over the coming decades.

There are plenty of challenges ahead for the higher education sector, and for the

country. Funding for teaching at universities has been frozen in cash terms for a


decade. Funding for postgraduate study, especially in the humanities, has been

hit hard just as gaining a postgraduate degree has become both more important

for career success, and more expensive to access. I want to ensure not only that

Queen’s continues to attract the best undergraduates, and reaches out to those

from backgrounds who might not historically have aspired to come to Oxford, but

also to do what we can to make graduate study possible for the best of those who

want to pursue it. Nearly half benefit from support via the College’s scholarship

schemes which form a vital addition to what is available from the university and the

research councils.

With a well-managed endowment, and with the support of our Old Members,

Queen’s is in a privileged position to be able to continue to provide the wonderful

undergraduate experience that the tutorial system affords, as well as to support

the research of our Fellows. But we are not immune from the challenges facing

the sector, nor indeed from some special challenges of our own, especially around

accommodation in this very constrained and expensive city. What we continue to

provide, though, really is remarkable. It stands in even greater contrast to what is

available to students in most other higher education institutions than was the case

when I was a student in the 1980s.

Let me end by saying just what a wonderful experience the first three months of

my tenure has been. All those working in and running the College are devoted to

its success. All the staff and Fellows have been welcoming and supportive. The

Old Member events have been an absolute pleasure. The students are everything I

could have hoped they would be. If only my waistline wasn’t suffering quite so much.




SENIOR TUTOR’S REPORT

Prof Seth Whidden

Senior Tutor

This year the College once again enjoyed numerous

academic successes. While the recently discontinued

Norrington Table focused solely on examination results, we

continue to measure excellence in teaching and research

in other ways: in all aspects of scholarly pursuits, at every

rung on the academic ladder. Students’ awards can be

found elsewhere in this College Record; some notable

distinctions, arrivals, and departures from Fellows and

visiting scholars are below.

Catharine Abell (Fellow in Philosophy) was invited to be

Anderson Distinguished Fellow at the University of Sydney. Dennis Egger (Fellow in

Economics) was awarded a Future Leaders Fellowship by the UKRI. Anthony Gardner

(Fellow in Fine Arts) took up the Sir William Dobell Visiting Chair in Art History at

The Australian National University during Trinity Term. Nima Khalighinejad (eJRF in

Experimental Psychology) was awarded an eight-year Wellcome Trust Fellowship

to establish his own laboratory in Oxford to study the function of the serotonergic

system in the primate brain. Karen Leeder (Schwarz-Taylor Professor of German)

won the 2025 Griffin Prize for Poetry for her translation of Durs Grünbein’s Psyche

Running: Selected Poems 2005-2022. The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation gave

Christopher Metcalf (Lobel Fellow in Classics) its Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research

Award, in recognition of his academic record to date. And Ludovic Phalippou (Fellow

in Finance) received the Jury’s Special Recognition Award at the International Film

Festival in The Hague.

Reports and College Activities

We look forward to welcoming eight new colleagues in 2025/6:

Nakita Noel (BSc (West Indies), DPhil (Oxon)) will be our new Tutorial Fellow in Physics.

Dr Noel’s research focuses on semiconductor materials, at the intersection of

condensed matter physics, chemistry, and materials science: specifically, she seeks

to better understand the fundamental processes governing thin-film crystallisation

and defect formation in new and emerging semiconductor materials – including

halide perovskite precursor inks – and to provide important guidelines for developing

new solvent systems and deposition modalities for these, and similar, energy

materials. Ultimately her work stands to leverage the fundamental chemical insights

gained into practical applications, including the development of high-performance

optoelectronic devices.

The next Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Visiting Professor of American History will be

Eliga Gould (AB (Princeton), MSc (Edinburgh), MA, PhD (Johns Hopkins)) from the

University of New Hampshire, USA. Professor Gould is a specialist of the American



Revolution, with particular focus on the connections with the rest of the Americas,

as well as with the rest of the world. His current book project, Crucible of Peace,

examines one of the least studied of the United States’ founding documents: The

Treaty of Paris (1783), which formally ended the American Revolutionary War.

Juan Rubio-Ramírez (BA (UAB/Barcelona), MSc (CEMFI/Madrid), PhD (Minnesota))

will be our Academic Distinguished Visitor. An economist with expertise in monetary

policy, finance, and Bayesian econometrics, Professor Rubio-Ramírez is Charles

Howard Professor of Economics at Emory University, and during the coming

academic year he plans to continue working on methods to solve stochastic

difference equations using neural networks.

David Ewing (BA, MSt (Oxon), DPhil (Cam)) was elected to a Career Development

Fellowship in French. A specialist of French literature of the modern period, Dr Ewing

is interested in how literary fiction published in the centre of the collapsing French

empire can inform historico-philosophical enquiry into the way lives are configured

with the promises and devastations of modernity.

Clément Salah (BA, MA (Sorbonne)) was elected to the Junior Research Fellowship in

Manuscript and Text Cultures. His research seeks to reframe the scholarly community

of medieval Kairouan (9th to 11th centuries) by analysing its manuscript corpus

as a testament to socio-economic practices, cultural exchanges, and intellectual

networks, alongside a comparative analysis with manuscript cultures of the medieval

Latin West, the Byzantine Empire, and Jewish and Christian communities from the

Middle East.

Extraordinary (both in the quality of their work and collegiality and, as it pertains to

their title, non-stipendiary) Junior Research Fellows include Camilla Di Mino (Laurea

Triennale, Laurea Magistrale (Roma Tre), PhD (UCL)) in Chemistry, in conjunction

with her being awarded a prestigious Glasstone Fellowship. Dr Di Mino is particularly

focused on neutron diffraction, supported by ab initio and Monte Carlo simulations,

to elucidate the structure of an array of solvents in bulk, at interfaces, and under

confinement.

Mats van Es (BSc, MSc, PhD (Radboud)) will be our new eJRF in Experimental

Psychology. Dr van Es specialises in computational methods for neuroimaging,

specifically magnetoencephelography (MEG). Driven by a fundamental interest

in understanding how synchronisation organises neural processing, much of his

research is focussed on resting state, (spatial) attention, vision, movement, and

memory.

We closed the academic year by electing Jeremy Page (BA, MA (Southampton),

PhD (Uppsala)) to a Career Development Fellowship in Philosophy. Dr Page’s main

research areas are value theory (especially in relation to aesthetic value), meta-


aesthetics, and aesthetic normativity; as such, he works across parallel debates in

relation to ethical value theory, meta-ethics, and practical normativity.

The Governing Body also successfully bid on a second Tutorial Fellow in Biochemistry,

to bring the subject in line with its provision in other colleges and ensure that our

students have the breadth and stability that two Fellows can bring to a subject. We

anticipate the recruitment exercises taking place next year, and the new colleague

joining us during the 2026/7 academic year.

On the flip side of the ‘comings and goings’ coin, Steve Kelly resigned his Tutorial

Fellowship to become Chief Scientific Officer of the food security and sustainable

agriculture program at Ellison Institute of Technology, while remaining Professor

of Plant Science in the University’s Biology Department. We’re pleased that he’ll

continue his longstanding connection with the College, from now on as Senior

Research Fellow. Finally, two early-career Fellows have taken up permanent

opportunities elsewhere; Farsan Ghassim (JRF, Politics) is going to University College

Dublin, and Jules Salomone-Sehr (CDF, Philosophy) is going to Birkbeck, University

of London.


As we continue to attract scholars of the highest calibre, the College’s academic

activities are sure to remain along this trajectory. They’re all the more assured as

they will be guided by my successor, Prof Chris Norbury, who returns to the role of

Senior Tutor.

Governing Body, Trinity Term 2025. Credit: David Olds



NEWS FROM THE FELLOWSHIP

Links to full lists of Fellows’ publications can be found on their profile pages on the

College’s website

John Ball (Mathematics Emeritus)

John Ball completed his term of office as President of the

Royal Society of Edinburgh (Scotland’s National Academy)

in April 2025. He continues to be employed as Professor of

Mathematics at Heriot-Watt University. During the year he

visited the Hong Kong Institute for Advanced Study, Jilin

University, Carnegie-Mellon University, and the University

of Bonn. He gave an invited lecture at the 20th anniversary

meeting of the Korean Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics in Busan,

South Korea, and also delivered the Clifford Truesdell lecture of the Society for

Natural Philosophy at its June 2025 meeting in Crete. He continues his research into

martensitic microstructure, liquid crystals and computer vision.

Rebecca Beasley (English)

I began the year in Hong Kong, where I was Visiting

Professor in the Department of English at City University.

I very much enjoyed discovering the department and the

city, and it was wonderful to catch up with former Queen’s

students Hayley Chow (English and French, 2020) and

Alice Wong (English Language and Literature 2018). Hong

Kong was the perfect place to finish off an article on the

circulation and selling of foreign literature in the early twentieth century that should

be out next year. Research leave from my College and Faculty duties in Hilary Term

meant that I was able to push two projects forward: an article on Yeats, forthcoming

from International Yeats Studies next year and the anthology of modernist art and

literature by the so-called ‘Whitechapel Boys’ and their circle, which has taken far

longer than expected, but with any luck will only make one more appearance in

this part of the College Record, next year. I’ve just sent off to the journal Modernist

Cultures a collection of essays on the theatre critic Huntly Carter, which includes my

own essay on Carter and the Workers’ Theatre Movement in the 1920s.


Credit: John Cairns

Jose Carrillo (Mathematics)

My research in the 2024-2025 academic year has been

focused on advancing most of the topics of my ERC

Advanced Grant in its fifth year and my NSF-EPSRC grant

with my team of four Postdoctoral Research Associates

(PDRAs) and six DPhil students. We have continued our

search of novel results in nonlocal Partial Differential

Equations (PDEs) for complex particle dynamics. More

precisely, we have worked in understanding nonlocal approximations of aggregationdiffusion

equations, interaction potential learning in PDE models for cell-cell adhesion,

numerical schemes for inhomogeneous collisional plasma physics, mean field

derivation of Landau models for Maxwellian molecules, graph limits for singular

interactions, symmetry transitions in neural column formation in drosophila brain

development, and interactive particle systems applied to inverse problems, sampling

and global optimisation among others. The common point of these research topics

is the description of the collective motion of a large ensemble of interacting particles.


This super intensive research period has led to publications of the highest quality

in my field receiving international attention. I was awarded the International Tartufari

Prize for Mathematics, Mechanics and their Applications 2024 of the Accademia dei

Lincei, the Italian national academy for my contributions to Applied Mathematics.

I advanced my Royal Society project with China on numerical aspects of kinetic

models in mathematical biology with Professor Min Tang at the Shanghai Jiatong

Technical University and organised a mathematical biology summer school there. I

also organised an international summer school in Westlake University at Hangzhou

(China), an international conference on kinetic equations in Wuhan (China), and an

international workshop on aggregation-diffusion equations in Anacapri (Italy), as one

of the last events related to my ERC Advanced Grant.

I continued my service to the scientific community as board member of the ESMTB,

European Society for Mathematical and Theoretical Biology, Head of the Division

of the European Academy of Sciences, Section Mathematics and elected for a new

term of three years, and as ICIAM officer at large, International Council for Industrial

and Applied Mathematics, the most important international committee on Applied

Mathematics. I continued my service to the society by participating as the only

mathematician at the scientific committee of the Spanish Research Agency. I also

continued my participation in a scientific project panel in Lithuania, and as a regular

referee of Hong Kong, ERC and Horizon 2020 projects.

My dedication to high level teaching has been equally delivered by continuing the

course in Optimal Transportation at the Mathematical Institute. This is a popular

topic in current mathematical research with ramifications in mathematical analysis,



probability theory, computational mathematics, and many applications in stochastic

analysis, data science, and optimisation. The fantastic group of PDRAs of my ERC

and my EPSRC projects (Alexandra Holzinger, Andrea Medaglia, Yurij Salmaniw, and

Jakub Skrzeczkowski) delivered a superb range of applied mathematics tutorials at

Queen’s and other colleges, intercollegiate classes, and supervised several student

summer projects, and master theses at the Mathematical Institute.

Daniel Crisóstomo Wainstock (Economics)

My research this year has advanced three projects that

trace the deep origins of inequality, cultural diversity, and

fertility norms.

My working paper ‘Roots of Inequality’ addresses the

fundamental question: why does inequality vary so

markedly across societies? My co-authors and I argue that

in market economies, where income differentials reflect productive traits, enduring

variation in interpersonal diversity – rooted in humanity’s prehistoric Out-of-Africa

migration – explains a significant share of these disparities. Using detailed ancestrylinked

data in the U.S., we show that groups whose ancestors originated closer

to East Africa display greater dispersion in education, ability, and labour supply,

resulting in higher inequality. The contribution of this research is to highlight a deep

evolutionary mechanism underpinning cross-societal inequality, beyond institutions

and preferences for redistribution.

‘Gene-Culture Coevolution and the Dynamics of Human Diversity’ introduces a

unified theory of how genetic and cultural evolution jointly shaped human diversity.

Cultural evolution in each environment reflects the interplay of vertical transmission

within lineages, designed to foster adaptation to a fitness-maximising trait, and the

currents of horizontal diffusion across lineages. The theory predicts that societies

with greater ancestral genetic diversity – those closer to the cradle of humanity

in East Africa – retain a broader range of cultural expressions in the long run,

highlighting the role of genetic diversity in shaping the spectrum of inherited cultural

predispositions. Empirically, we draw on novel diversity measures – encompassing

folkloric and musical traditions as well as modern norms and values – to show

that societies whose ancestors migrated farther from Africa exhibit markedly lower

cultural diversity. The contribution of this research is to illuminate the prehistoric

roots of persistent global variation in cultural expressions, and to advance a new

conceptual framework for studying the dynamics of gene–culture coevolution.

‘A Culture of Human Capital Formation in Africa’ investigates persistent

fertility differences across African ethnic groups. I construct a new measure of

precolonial human capital investment – capturing traditional schooling intensity


from ethnographic sources and oral traditions – and link it to modern fertility

outcomes using Demographic and Health Surveys. Ethnic groups with higher

precolonial schooling invest more in child “quality” over “quantity” today, exhibiting

lower fertility, higher education, and smaller desired family size, even when living

outside their ancestral homelands. The contribution of this research is twofold: to

demonstrate the long-running persistence of norms associated with human capital

investment, and to introduce a new method for recovering cultural traits from oral

traditions.


Charles Crowther (Ancient History)

Fieldwork this year has taken me from the Philae obelisk

at Kingston Lacy in Dorset to Philae itself, to Alexandria

and the Fayum, and to southeast Turkey. My research in

Egypt has seen the completion of the second volume, to

be published by OUP in November, of a multilingual Corpus

of Ptolemaic Inscriptions from Egypt, of which I have been

the principal editor with my colleagues Queen’s Honorary

Fellow Alan Bowman, Simon Hornblower, and Rachel Mairs, following the publication

of the first volume and a companion collection of essays in 2021. From my fieldwork

in Turkey, I have finished journal articles with my long-term collaborator Margherita

Facella of the University of Pisa for Syria. Archéologie, art et histoire on new texts

from Güzelçay, an isolated site in a flooded tributary valley of the Euphrates, and for

Anatolian Studies on a sanctuary site on the 2000m high Kımıl Dağı (Mount Koeros)

which promises to be the most significant discovery from the Commagene region

of southeast Turkey in a generation.

In addition to my regular teaching, I contributed to the Corpus and Queen’s Ancient

Worlds Network residential course for 6th-formers in March and taught a graduate

training course in the Corinium Museum in Cirencester.

Christina Davis (Visiting Professor of PPE)

My year as a Visiting Professor at Oxford University

has been an extraordinary experience that was both

intellectually invigorating and personally rewarding. The

Queen’s College community was very welcoming, and I

appreciated the wide-ranging lunch conversations that

brought together an interdisciplinary group of scholars. The

College’s beauty – its grand architecture, tranquil gardens,

and exceptional dining – offered daily reminders of Oxford’s unique charm.



One of the highlights of the year was the honour to deliver the Centenary PPE

Lecture, where I shared some of my ongoing research and exchanged ideas with

faculty and students. As someone who studies the politics of trade and economic

sanctions, it has been an extraordinary year. The turbulent global economy regularly

brought the headline stories from The Financial Times, which I often read in the Senior

Common Room, directly into my research. I enjoyed meeting PPE undergraduates

for informal conversations about these issues during Michaelmas Term. Being in the

UK allowed me to view the U.S.-China trade war and broader economic shifts with

a more reflective lens.

Oxford’s vibrant international relations community provided an invaluable environment

for collaboration and exchange. I was fortunate to begin a new joint research project

on economic security with two colleagues in IR, and we are now applying for grants

to support data collection and workshops. I was pleased that several graduate

students from the Department of Politics and International Relations reached out to

discuss their own research. The Blavatnik School’s events, often featuring visiting

trade officials, deepened my understanding of UK trade policy. I also found an

intellectual home at the Nissan Institute, where I presented my research on Japan’s

economic security strategy and enjoyed engaging with others interested in Japanese

politics and foreign policy.

The year gave me the time and space to begin my new book on Economic Diplomacy

and the Balance of Power. I completed several other projects, including a chapter

on constitutions and trade powers for the Oxford Handbook on Comparative Trade

Law, two journal articles on economic sanctions, and a new paper exploring how

the World Trade Organization can respond to Chinese economic coercion – work

I was pleased to present at the World Trade Institute in Bern and to share with

WTO officials in Geneva. Throughout the year, I traveled across Europe for invited

talks, conferences, and research interviews, sharing my work on how states balance

economic security in their trade strategies.

While my home institution, Harvard University, has faced its own challenges this year,

I have been grateful for the stability and intellectual energy of the Oxford community.

Bringing my family with me made the experience even more special. My daughter

thrived as a student attending the Matthew Arnold School and made many close

friends, and my husband Kosuke Imai benefited from his own academic affiliation

at Nuffield College as a scholar of statistics and political science. Living in a historic

university town and exploring England and Europe together has been a precious

family experience.

As we return to the United States, I leave Oxford with appreciation for the

opportunities, conversations, and friendships this year has offered. It has truly been

a remarkable time for learning, reflection, and connection.


Peter Dobson (Engineering, Emeritus)

I have stepped down from the Strategic Advisory Board of

the National Quantum Technology Programme after serving

on it for 10 years. This programme is very successful and

has put the UK in one of the leading positions in the world

in Quantum Technology.

I am able, therefore, to spend more time assisting new

companies and helping tenant farmers, in particular, to combat the rush to instal

solar panels and large Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) on their farmland.

The Government’s haste to rely on renewable but unpredictable energy is very

misguided and has very significant hidden costs and it is reducing energy resilience

and reliability. This policy ignored the need for massive electrical energy storage via

lithium-ion batteries and very significant additional power cables and infrastructure.

The large (BESS) facilities have serious safety issues regarding explosion and fire

and currently there is no regulatory framework. I have highlighted this in a recent

publication: Remarks on the Safety of Lithium-Ion Batteries for Large-Scale Battery

Energy Storage Systems (BESS) in the UK (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10694-024-

01682-x).


Kirsty Duffy (Physics)

I joined Queen’s in September 2024 and have found it to be

a very welcoming and inspiring academic community. My

research is in experimental particle physics, focusing on the

properties of neutrinos. This year I have continued to serve

as Physics Coordinator (lead scientist) for the 180-person

MicroBooNE Collaboration, with five new publications

showcasing advances in liquid argon detector technology,

the understanding of how neutrinos interact with matter, and investigations into

ongoing anomalies. My research group in particular led a new measurement of

electron neutrino interactions that produce pions (a type of interaction that will

be critical for future experiments but has so far not been measured), which was

published as a cover article in Physical Review Letters.

On a personal note, I welcomed my first child this year – a baby girl born on New

Year’s Eve. However, my research team of two postdoctoral research associates

and two graduate students have been active throughout my maternity leave! Another

graduate student I supervised graduated this year, having performed a state-of-theart

measurement of neutrino oscillation with the T2K experiment, and a number of

studies that will inform the analysis of data from the future DUNE experiment (Deep

Underground Neutrino Experiment) to be built at the end of the decade. One of my



graduate students was awarded a Neutrino Physics Center Fellowship from Fermi

National Accelerator Laboratory in the USA.

I am very interested in public engagement with science, and host a YouTube

video series in conjunction with Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory called

Even Bananas, which brings neutrino physics to a general audience. This year we

published a video called “The most neutrinos ever?” about a new experiment called

SBND (Short-Baseline Near Detector) that has just collected its first year of data;

I am looking forward to getting back to this after my maternity leave, and we have

many more episodes lined up for this academic year!

Farsan Ghassim (Politics)

The academic year 2024-25 marked the final period of my

Junior Research Fellowship at Queen’s. I would therefore

like to use this opportunity not only to report on my work

this year, but also briefly on the three-year period as a whole.

First of all, in terms of research output – the core of my job

as a JRF – the past academic year was very successful.

In August 2024, I published the article “Who on earth wants a world government,

what kind, and why? An international survey experiment” (with Markus Pauli) in the

International Studies Quarterly. The article currently ranks among the most read

articles of the journal and has received widespread media attention – from the

Australian Outlook to the South China Morning Post. I published two further articles

– one on international perceptions of global democratic deficiencies in Perspectives

on Politics and a methodological article on response requests in surveys in the

British Journal of Political Science – two top journals in the field of Political Science.

Besides publishing my work, I also presented it at various workshops across Europe

that I was invited to. An especially noteworthy aspect here is that some of these

workshops were in adjacent academic disciplines, showing that my research is

appreciated beyond my field of Political Science / International Relations. I presented

my work at Bristol University’s Law School in February 2025; at an international

law workshop at Leiden University, a Political Science workshop at the LSE, and a

global governance conference in Stockholm – all in May 2025; as well as workshops

organised by colleagues working in Astrobiology and Political Theory at Birkbeck

College and the University of Sheffield respectively, in August 2025.

In addition to research, I also taught an Oxford summer school in August 2024. Over

three weeks, I had a relatively small group of undergraduate and graduate students in

weekly seminars and tutorials, deepening the lecture contents, grading their essays,

and providing our signature one-on-one feedback.


In terms of my public profile, the most important addition was the creation of my

personal website (www.farsanghassim.com), which has made my work more

accessible to readers and audiences – along with an active LinkedIn profile.

I have now moved on from my JRF at Queen’s to a professorship at University

College Dublin – a permanent position for which there were around 600 applications,

showing how intensely competitive the academic market has become. I would like to

thank the Queen’s community – from my wonderful colleagues to all our benefactors

– for three wonderful years as a JRF, which put me in a position to pursue my

dream of an academic career, while hopefully offering academia and the public some

valuable research and education on global governance and survey methodology.

Thank you very much and I promise not to be a stranger!


Zac Goodwin (Materials Science)

My first year as an extraordinary Junior Research Fellow

(eJRF) in Materials Science has been a productive and

enjoyable one. I’ve published two original, open access

research articles during this period, and submitted several

more for publication. The first was published open access

in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces on a new theory for

the electrical double layer of water-in-salt electrolytes, a

promising new electrolyte formulation for batteries which is resistant to catching

fire, in collaboration with researchers at MIT and the University of Illinois at Urbana-

Champaign. My second paper, in collaboration with researchers at MIT and Brown

University, was on the development of a new theory to describe the Helmholtz layer

of conventional battery electrolytes in contact with electrified interfaces, which was

published open access in ACS Applied Energy Materials. I’ve also been actively

working with researchers at Harvard and Imperial to develop machine learning

interatomic potentials to simulate charge density waves in two-dimensional niobium

diselenide, which has been submitted to publication and posted to open-access

archive arXiv.

I have presented these works at several conferences this year, being an invited

speaker to a number of them. I presented at the LJC machine learning interatomic

potential workshop at the University of Cambridge in January, the APS Global

Physics summit in Anaheim in March, and The Centre Européen de Calcul Atomique

et Moléculaire (CECAM) flagship workshop on the simulation of electrochemical

storage devices in Paris in July. I’m grateful for my eJRF position and its research

allowance, which has supported me to travel to these conferences.



Credit: John Cairns

Christopher Hollings (History of Mathematics)

Much of my research this year has continued along two

largely separate paths: topics relating to mathematics

in 19th-century Britain, and ongoing work on the

historiography of ancient Egyptian mathematics, in

collaboration with Richard Bruce Parkinson.

During the past year, I have given seminars in Oxford,

London, and Cambridge. As usual, I co-organised ‘Research in Progress’, the annual

postgraduate meeting of the British Society for the History of Mathematics (BSHM),

which was held in Queen’s at the end of February. In addition, I was a co-organiser

of the programme ‘Modern History of Mathematics’ which took place at the Isaac

Newton Institute in Cambridge between January and May. I therefore spent much

of the first part of 2025 in Cambridge, where I was able to study a broad range of

archive materials that will fuel several ongoing and future projects.

On the teaching side, I have continued to teach pure mathematics to the first- and

second-year mathematicians in Queen’s, and to teach history of mathematics to

third-years in the Mathematical Institute, but this year for the first time I also taught

some history of mathematics to Masters students in the History Faculty.

The following is a list of my publications during this period:

Christopher D. Hollings, ‘Oxford mathematics at a low ebb? An 1855 dispute over

examination results’, Annals of Science 81(4) (2024), 563-596

https://doi.org/10.1080/00033790.2023.2290187

Christopher D. Hollings and R. B. Parkinson, ‘Ancient Egyptian mathematics in the

early 20th century: A mathematical view from Kiel, 1926’, British Journal for the

History of Mathematics 39(2) (2024), 101-154

https://doi.org/10.1080/26375451.2024.2379705

Christopher D. Hollings and R. B. Parkinson, ‘Triangulating ancient Egyptian

mathematics’, Notices of the American Mathematical Society 72(4) (2025), 406-421

https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/202504/rnoti-p406.pdf

Christopher D. Hollings, ‘Mathematical study in Berlin 1906-1911: The notebooks of

A. K. Sushkevich’, The Mathematical Intelligencer 47(2) (2025), 145-156

https://doi.org/10.1007/s00283-024-10365-y

Christopher D. Hollings, ‘Abraham Robertson, the Binomial Theorem, and the Nature

of Plagiarism in Mathematics’, The American Mathematical Monthly 132(6) (2025),

501-511

https://doi.org/10.1080/00029890.2025.2474377


Emily Hudson (Law)

This year I have continued to be active in ongoing debates

in relation to law and artificial intelligence. In February

2025, Dr James Parish (King’s College London) and

I submitted a response to the UK Intellectual Property

Office’s consultation on Copyright and AI. In our

submission, we argued that while a case could be made

to reform the copyright statute to better facilitate the use

of AI for scientific and academic purposes, we do not support the government’s

proposed approach of introducing a new data mining exception subject to rights

reservation. I have discussed this submission and the research underpinning it at a

number of conferences and public events. This included presenting a paper at the

conference, Intellectual Property and Technology in the 21st Century: Challenges

in the Next Decade, hosted by the National University of Singapore; speaking on

developments in US litigation on AI and fair use at the PLS Conference 2025 hosted

by Publishers’ Licensing Services; and giving the 2025 Charles Clark Memorial

Lecture at the London Book Fair. During the latter, I also discussed my ongoing

research on pastiche in copyright law, my work having been cited by Advocate

General Emiliou in his opinion in the Pelham II reference to the Court of Justice of

the European Union.


Jon Keating (Mathematics)

My research into the theory of random matrices continues.

I have focused on the calculation of certain quantities,

joint moments of the characteristic polynomials, that have

resisted evaluation for over 25 years but which we now

know how to compute. I have also worked on developing

applications to machine learning, physics, and number

theory. I have published several papers over the past year

and have spoken at numerous conferences, from China to California.

My teaching continues to centre on supervising DPhil students.

I contribute to the work of the Development Committee, and in that context was

pleased to meet Old Members in London and Bristol.

I continue to serve as Treasurer and Vice-President of the Royal Society.



Dearbhla Kelly (Pathology)

During the period August 2024 – July 2025, I became a

Fellow of the European Stroke Organisation and I was

awarded the Eberhard Ritz Award for Young Investigators

in clinical science from the European Renal Association in

June 2025. I was also awarded the bronze medal for ‘Actes

de courage et de dévouement’ from the Préfet de la Haute-

Savoie in France in November 2024 as I was involved in a

successful out-of-hospital resuscitation event in Chamonix.

The following is a list of my publications during this period:

2025 Kelly DM, Kelleher EM. ‘Acute Febrile Encephalopathy with Rigidity’. J Intensive

Care Med. 2025 May 30.

2025 Kelly DM, Jones ESW, Barday A, Arruebo S, Caskey FJ, Damster S, Donner

JA, Jha V, Levin A, Nangaku M, Saad S, Tonelli M, Ye F, Okpechi IG, Bello AK,

Johnson DW. ‘Global access to medications and health technologies for kidney

care: A multinational study from the ISN-GKHA’. PLOS Glob Public Health. 2025

Feb 10;5(2):e0004268.

2025 Sandal S, Onu U, Fung W, Pippias M, Smyth B, De Chiara L, Bajpai D,

Bilchut WH, Hafiz E, Kelly DM, Bagasha P, Jha V, Ethier I. ‘Assessing the role of

education level on climate change belief, concern and action: a multinational survey

of healthcare professionals in nephrology’. J Nephrol. 2025 Jan 29.

2025 Kelly DM, Kelleher EM, Rothwell PM. ‘The Kidney-Immune-Brain Axis: the

Role of Inflammation in the Pathogenesis and Treatment of Stroke in CKD’. Stroke.

2025 Jan 24.

2024 Kelly DM, Engelbertz C, Rothwell PM, Anderson CD, Reinecke H, Koeppe

J. ‘Age- and sex-specific analysis of stroke hospitalization rates, risk factors and

outcomes from German nationwide data’. Stroke. 2024 Sep;55(9):2284-2294.

Nima Khalighinejad (Psychology)

This academic year, I received the Wellcome Career

Development Award, a prestigious grant that will support

my research over the next eight years, enabling the

establishment and growth of my lab, the Neuromodulatory

Systems and Cognition Lab.


Our research focuses on understanding the role of neuromodulatory systems in

cognition and behaviour, leveraging cutting-edge, non-invasive methods. A key area

of our work involves the use of transcranial ultrasound (TUS) to transiently open the

blood–brain barrier (BBB), facilitating targeted drug delivery in non-human models.

This innovative approach offers substantial translational potential due to its noninvasive

nature and its applicability to human neuroscience and clinical research.

In terms of research outputs, I published a lead senior-author paper in Science

Advances this year. Additionally, I contributed to two other papers published in PNAS

and Nature, reflecting a productive year of interdisciplinary collaboration.


I was also invited to present my recent findings at the Focused Ultrasound

Neuromodulation Conference in Hong Kong, where I gave a talk as an invited

speaker, showcasing our work on TUS and neuromodulatory modulation.

Karen Leeder (German)

This year I have been pleased to take up invitations

to lecture in Germany, Austria, China, Ireland, Italy,

Switzerland, and the US. I also hosted two workshops:

one as part of a grant with Oxford and the Universität der

Künste on ‘Anachronism’ and another ‘Enter the Ghosts,’

the centrepiece of my Einstein Fellowship in Berlin. A

special experience was being part of the Queen’s alumni

event in Berlin: ‘Mind the Gap, Germany in the World’, hosted by the UK Ambassador

to Germany Andrew Mitchell (Modern Languages, 1986), in the residence in Berlin.

But it has been an especially exciting year for translation, with a wonderful residency

in Hellerau just outside Dresden to work on my next project The Zoo Years which

will appear next year. I was also delighted to see last year’s translations making

their mark: Ulrike Almut Sandig’s Shining Sheep was shortlisted for the American

Literature in Translation Award 2024 and longlisted for the Oxford Weidenfeld Prize.

We also took it on tour to India at the invitation of the Kolkata International Book

Fair and the Goethe Institute. Durs Grünbein and I also gave several readings,

including a moving event, ‘From Ruins to Reconciliation’, at the German Embassy

in London: to mark 80 years since the Allied bombing of Dresden. I was delighted

that my translation of his Psyche Running: Selected Poems (2024) was awarded the

prestigious Griffin Poetry Prize 2025 in Toronto. This is timely as we launch Oxford’s

new ‘Creative Translation’ Masters in October 2025 for a first cohort in 2026.



Credit: John Cairns

Christopher Metcalf (Classics)

The past academic year has seen the publication of my

book Three Myths of Kingship in Early Greece and the

Ancient Near East: The Servant, the Lover, and the Fool

(CUP), which picks up and develops various strands of my

research and teaching at the College over the last 10 years

or so. The book addresses itself to those with interests in the

Mediterranean, Biblical, and Near/Middle Eastern worlds,

as well as to anyone who enjoys thinking about ancient mythology and religion. I like

to combine this kind of wide-ranging work with more detailed philological studies of

particular texts, and along the latter lines I have in the past year published an edition of

a beautifully well-preserved but neglected Sumerian cuneiform tablet in the Musée du

Louvre, which contains a fascinating literary lament for the temples of a Mesopotamian

mother-goddess. Increasingly I am turning towards collaborative research projects,

and in this connection I was honoured to receive a Bessel Award from the Humboldt

Foundation that will support my work with colleagues in Germany. I was similarly

honoured to obtain a Recognition of Distinction from the University of Oxford this

summer, and to receive the title of Professor of Ancient Literature and Religion.

Dirk Meyer (Chinese Philosophy)

In the academic year 2024–2025, I published one academic

paper, ‘Antiquity resurfaced: Critical reflections on the

ethics of manuscript-acquisition for the study of early China

(https://mtc-journal.org/index.php/mtc/article/view/55/77),

Manuscript and Text Cultures 3/1: 2024: 30–58. The paper

reflects methodologically on the pros and cons of using

unprovenanced manuscripts in academic discourse.

I have presented aspects of the paper at special lectures at Tsinghua University,

Beijing (September 2024) and Nanjing (April 2025) (both in Chinese). I have moreover

delivered a special lecture on ‘World-antiquities in conversation: Theoretical

underpinnings and challenges’ ( 世界古典學的互鑒 : 理論基础和挑戰 ) in December

2024 at Nanjing University (in Chinese), and I have delivered a special lecture at

Nanjing University (NJU) April 2024 on ‘Silence in the Songs tradition’ as seen from

newly discovered manuscript texts from the fourth century BC (in Chinese). In May

2025, I delivered a special lecture at Tsinghua University on ‘Argumentation or

accretion: Constructing concepts in the Analects tradition’ ( 論辯抑或累積《論語》

傳統中概念的建構 ) (in Chinese).

In my capacity as Director of the Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures, I have

organised an international bilingual conference at Tsinghua University on ‘Ethics


and Practice of Acquiring, Preserving, and Accessing Global Heritage’ (20–23

September 2024).

I have also launched a new book series, Text Cultures ( 寫本本文化 ) (with Fenghuang

Publishing ( 凤凰出版社 )). The series publishes Chinese translations of seminal books

on manuscript and text cultures that would otherwise not be accessible in China.

For my contribution to bringing Chinese antiquity into global perspective, I was

awarded the honorary title of ‘Mei-an University Chair Professor at Nanjing

University’. Mei-an is the pen name of the Founder of the Faculty of Arts at NJU. The

title is awarded to international academics for exceptional contributions to Chinese

humanities. I am the first scholar to receive the honour.


I have continued to work on two book projects (‘Buried sayings of Confucius’ and

‘Silent argumentation: philosophy as performance in Early China’), which are currently

under review with Bloomsbury and OUP. I have also submitted an entry (12,000

words) to ‘A Cultural History of Chinese Literature, vol. 1: Antiquity’ (Bloomsbury) on

‘Religion and Philosophy’.

Chris O’Callaghan (Medicine)

Understanding the inflammatory aspects of atherosclerosis,

the major cause of death globally, remains central to the

work of my research group. Fatty thickenings in the walls of

arteries reduce the bore of the arteries and this can restrict

blood flow. These thickenings are alive with active immune

cells and the inflammation that they cause weakens the

artery wall and promotes more thickening. We have been

looking at the impact of oxidised low density lipoprotein cholesterol (‘bad cholesterol’)

on each of the different types of cells that are involved. To do this, we use recentlydeveloped

techniques that allow us to look at the entire human genome and how it is

being used in each cell individually. Analysis of these data require high performance

computing and is yielding intriguing insights into the pathways that are active in these

cells and so into potential approaches to block damaging processes. In parallel with

this work, we have been developing technology for assembling very large pieces of

synthetic DNA and have recently been awarded a multi-million-pound grant that will

support us to develop this further.

On the teaching front, the final assessment of students studying medicine is being

harmonised across UK universities under the oversight of the General Medical

Council and this has resulted in some reorganisation of the examinations. This means

that there are now major examinations at the end of the fifth year as well as in the

6th year and we are adjusting our teaching in line with this.



Credit: John Cairns

Richard Bruce Parkinson (Egyptology)

A British Academy Leverhulme Senior Research Fellowship

allowed me to complete the long-term project that I came

to Oxford to work on, The Life of Sinuhe: A Reader’s

Commentary to the Middle Kingdom Version(s) for the

series Lingua Aegyptia Studia Monographica. This will

be the first full commentary on the most famous work of

Ancient Egyptian literature since Alan Gardiner’s in 1916,

drawing on my earlier publications of the main papyri (2012, 2013), on teaching the

text at Oxford and on experimental performances with the actress Barbara Ewing. It

tries to connect issues of palaeography, the materiality of the manuscripts, philology,

performance and poetry in a single illustrated volume. During the year, I collated two

fragmentary copies in the Petrie Museum, London, and spent a week with the two

main papyri in Berlin, subsequently working with infra-red images to re-check one

scribe’s erasures and self-corrections. A grant from the Edubba Foundation allowed

two trips as a visiting researcher in Copenhagen. Dr Anne-Claire Salmas, who was

appointed to cover my teaching, gave the commentary a first independent ‘test drive’

in classes in Michaelmas Term and subsequently read through the whole final draft,

offering many valuable corrections, revisions, and improvements.

Coincidentally, the fine press publisher Consensus Press published a revised

translation of Sinuhe in a limited edition of 80 copies. Research has continued with

C D Hollings with the publication of a paper on ‘Triangulating Ancient Egyptian

Mathematics’ in Notices of the American Mathematical Society, bringing together

mathematics, papyri and Egyptian poetry.

Shaahin Pishbin (Asian and Middle Eastern Studies)

My first year at Queen’s College has been a highly

productive period of fieldwork, research, and publication,

enabled by the Laming Junior Research Fellowship’s

support for archival study abroad. My research has centred

on South Asian repositories of Persian manuscripts, which

have proven crucial for the advancement of my monograph

project on wonder and Persian poetics in the early modern

Islamic world. I spent most of my time in archives at Aligarh Muslim University

(Aligarh, India), The National Library of India (Calcutta), and the Asiatic Society of

Bengal (Calcutta), working on a range of unpublished literary materials from the

17th century.

I also visited several Persian and Islamic archives in Dhaka, Bangladesh. One archive

proved to be the highlight of this trip: the Alia Madrasa Library, where I encountered


a remarkable but uncatalogued and deteriorating collection of Persian and Arabic

manuscripts that once belonged to the institution’s more famous, pre-partition

forerunner in Calcutta. With colleagues in Bangladesh, I am hoping to develop a

collaborative project to preserve and catalogue this valuable collection.

I have presented my work internationally, giving lectures at The University of Toronto,

The Children’s House Cendekia Harapan International School in Bali, Indonesia

(online), and Dhaka University, where I also led a class on the ghazals of Amir

Khusraw. Two articles have resulted from my research this year, one of which has

now been accepted with the Middle Eastern Literatures journal: “Fresh Lyric Pieties:

Figuring the Prophet Muḥammad in the Safavid-Mughal Persian Ghazal.”


David Prout (Professorial Fellow)

On 17 September I stepped down as Pro-Vice-Chancellor

(Planning and Resources) after eight years in post. I will

continue to work on special projects for the Vice Chancellor

for two days a week. In addition, starting on 22 September,

I was appointed by the Government as Chair of the

Ebbsfleet Garden City Development Corporation.

Alexandra Pugh (French)

I have spent the first year of my Junior Research Fellowship

embarking on a research project on reproductive justice in

contemporary French culture. I had the chance to speak

about this at the Oxford Modern French Seminar in May

and the Women in French UK-Ireland conference in Leeds

in June. I published an excerpt of this new research in

Les Temps qui restent, the newly launched reincarnation

of the French journal Les Temps modernes. For the first time, I also ran an option

module on Oxford’s MSt in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies: it was a

pleasure to think alongside a group of engaged, creative graduate students on

topics related to my research.

Alongside this new research project, I have been preparing a monograph based on

my PhD thesis, entitled Towards a Queer-Feminist Aesthetics: Virginie Despentes’s

Political Art. This is under contract with Liverpool University Press. Together with Dr

Kathryn Robson (of Newcastle University), I am coediting the Routledge Handbook

of French Feminisms, and I recently joined the editorial board of Annie Ernaux

International Studies.



Aura Raulo (Biology)

My research considers the transmission of healthy gut

microbes in social networks, a bit like spread of health

instead of disease. To study this, I use wild mice as a model

system, as with mice unlike humans, we can track and

trace major part of their social relationship across their

life. This past year I have been working to launch a new

study system with two research assistants working with

me. We have caught hundreds of wild wood mice in Wytham Woods and tagged

them with a microchip, and released them back to their territories. The microchips

allow us follow their movements and social interactions while they go on with their

normal mousey lives.

I also planned and completed a field trip to Finnish Archipelago in the Baltic Sea, to

collect some soil samples from bogs on isolated islands. I will next sequence the

DNA of all bacteria in those samples to figure out if these highly isolated ecosystems

feature endemic island microbes that may have only evolved on one island and may

only be living there. This has been inspired by the diversity of endemic animals and

plants found in tropical oceanic islands (like lemurs of Madagascar or finches of

Galapagos). Now we will know if the invisible biodiversity of islands, the bacteria,

viruses, and microscopic fungi in the soil, may also evolve local endemic variants

on isolated environments.

Credit: John Cairns

Owen Rees (Music)

During a period of sabbatical leave in Trinity Term I

completed four projects. The first was a study (to be

published as a book chapter) of the Queen’s Chapel of

Catherine of Braganza (wife of Charles II) at St James’s

Palace and Somerset House in London, during the 1660s

and 1670s, exploring the links between the devotional and

ceremonial objects (including relics) commissioned for or

belonging to the chapel and the music that may have been written for the chapel

or performed there, with a principal focus on John Blow’s famous motet Salvator

mundi. Two other projects developed my work on polyphonic Requiem Masses in

the 16th and 17th centuries, my focus in these cases being on Masses preserved in

manuscripts in Barcelona and elsewhere in Catalunya. I spoke on this subject at a

conference in Barcelona, and the outcomes of the research will be published in the

proceedings of that conference and in a multi-author book. The final project was

the editing work for the choir’s next CD (recorded just after Michaelmas Term 2024),

featuring another major (and hitherto unrecorded) work by Queen’s alumnus Kenneth

Leighton (Classics, 1947): his Missa Christi, composed in the last year of his life.


Frances Reynolds (Assyriology)

This was a busy year in Oxford and further afield.

My research stay at the University of Würzburg was very

productive and I also collated Late Babylonian astronomical

tablets at Columbia University, New York.

Publications included ‘The cuneiform reception of Enuma

Elish’ in J. Haubold et al. (eds), Enuma Elish: The Babylonian

Epic of Creation (Bloomsbury: 2024). This volume launched the open-access Library

of Babylonian Literature, a series that aims to share these rich poems with a wider

audience.


Through invited workshop papers in Münster and Prague, I explored how cuneiform

scholars used Enuma Elish in the first millennium BCE to develop ideas about failed

kingship. It was also a pleasure to give a talk on ‘How to Read the Stars in Ancient

Babylonia’ for the Looker-Uppers Society at Queen’s.

My Faculty post combined undergraduate and graduate teaching and supervision

with committee responsibilities. Working as a consultant for the Oxford English

Dictionary took me down some interesting etymological byways.

Across the year, the celebration of women academics at Queen’s, past and present,

stands out as a unique and happy highlight.

Ritchie Robertson (German, Emeritus)

Although retired, I continue to be busy with academic

projects. My main task is as general editor of the series

of new Thomas Mann translations, forthcoming in Oxford

World’s Classics in 2026, the year when his work comes

out of European copyright; I have supplied introductions

and notes, besides checking and proof-reading all the

translations. The first three volumes – Death in Venice

and Other Stories, translated by Nicola Luckhurst and Ritchie Robertson; The

Buddenbrooks, translated by Mike Mitchell; and Doctor Faustus, translated by Ritchie

Robertson – will appear in January. Translations of The Magic Mountain by Simon

Pare and of Mann’s later stories by Iain Galbraith will follow later in 2026.

In autumn 2024 I published German Political Tragedy: The Machiavellian Plot and

the Necessary Crime (Cambridge: Legenda). I contributed the article ‘Aufklärung

und Romantik’ to the Zauberberg-Handbuch, published by Metzler (a kind of

encyclopaedia of Mann’s novel The Magic Mountain). In June 2025 I was a keynote



speaker at the conference ‘Feminism and the Enlightenment’, held at Monte Verità

near Ascona in Switzerland, where I gave a paper entitled ‘Speaking up for Women

in the Early British Enlightenment: Mary Astell and Judith Drake’.

Emma Slack (Molecular Immunology)

Our research focuses on understanding all aspects of

how the immune system interacts with the complex (and

not always friendly!) microbial communities found in the

mammalian gut. The major highlight of the past year is

the publication of our work showing that it is possible

to combine very safe oral vaccinations with selected or

engineered probiotic bacteria to drive complete sterilising

immunity in the gut lumen against pathogenic Salmonella and E. coli (Lentsch et al.

Science. 2025). By eradicating asymptomatic gut colonisation, as well as preventing

disease, this approach eliminates infectious reservoirs allowing us to generate a type

of “herd immunity” against bacterial infections (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/

science.adp5011).

We also carried out a major study of fermentation products generated by the gut

microbiome of different human populations, revealing that in typical humans in

Europe and the USA, the gut microbiota only contributes around 1-2% of our energy

recovery from food, in contrast to 10-30% reported in rodents (Arnoldini et al. Cell.

2025) https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(25)00794-9.

Robert Taylor (Physics)

This last academic year, my final year before retirement,

has been very productive and I have published 11 papers

on a range of topics ranging from ways to improve the

efficiency of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen

for green energy use, through Raman spectroscopy of

magnetic systems understanding the optical dynamics of

perovskite quantum dots. I am currently in the process of

handing over my research equipment to colleagues so that the research work can

continue after I retire.

Papers published are:

11. ‘Magnetoelastic Dynamics of the Spin Jahn-Teller Transition in CoTi 2 O 5 ’.

K. Guratinder, R. D. Johnson, D. Prabhakaran, R. A. Taylor, F. Lang, S. Blundell, L. S.

Taran,S. V. Streltsov, T. J. Williams, S. R. Giblin, T. Fennell, K. Schmalzl, and C. Stock


Accepted May 2025 for publication in Physical Review Letters. DOI: https://doi.

org/10.1103/sr9s-ll1y

10. ‘Temperature-independent emission in a [(CH3)NPh]2MnBr4 single crystal

analogous to thermally activated delayed fluorescence’. Mutibah Alanazi, Atanu

Jana, Won Woong Choi, Robert A. Taylor, Chang Woo Myung and Youngsin

Park Applied Materials Today 44, 102763, 2025. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.

apmt.2025.102763

9. ‘Plasmon-Enhanced Photo-Luminescence Emission in Hybrid Metal–Perovskite

Nanowires’. Tintu Kuriakose, Hao Sha, Qingyu Wang, Gokhan Topcu, Xavier

Romain, Shengfu Yang and Robert A. Taylor Nanomaterials 15, 608, 2025. DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3390/nano15080608


8. ‘Interleaved frequency comb by chipscale acousto-optic phase modulation at

polydimethylsiloxane for higher-resolution direct plasmonic comb spectroscopy’.

San Kim, TaeIn Jeong, Robert A. Taylor, Kwangseuk Kyhm, YoungJin Kim and

Seungchul Kim PhotoniX 6:12 2025. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s43074-025-

00170-x 7. In vivo photoacoustic and ultrafast ultrasound doppler assessment

of vascularity for potential thyroid cancer diagnosis: A comprehensive review

Accepted March 2025 for publication in the Journal of Physics: Photonics

6. ‘Harnessing solar energy for ammonia synthesis from nitrogen and seawater

using oxynitride semiconductors’. Yiyang Li, Mengqi Duan, Simson Wu, Robert

A. Taylor, Shik Chi Edman Tsang Advanced Energy Materials, 2406160, 2025.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/aenm.202406160

5. ‘Complex refractive index spectrum of CsPbBr 3 nanocrystals via the effective

medium approximation’. Sang-Hyuk Park, Jungwon Kim, Min Ju Kim, Min Woo

Kim, Robert A. Taylor, Kwangseuk Kyhm Nanomaterials 15, 181, 2025. DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3390/nano15030181

4. ‘Water-mediated optical and morphological tuning of highly stable orangeemitting

Mn-doped perovskite for white light-emission’. Sangeun Cho, Vijaya

Gopalan Sree, Akash V. Fulari, Sanghyuk Park, Ming Mei, Minju Kim, Atanu

Jana, Deblina Das, Hyunsik Im, Kwangseuk Kyhm, Robert A. Taylor Journal of

Colloid and Interface Science, 680, 215-225, 2025. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.

jcis.2024.10.193

3. ‘Surface plasmon-mediated photoluminescence boost in graphene-covered

CsPbBr 3 quantum dots’. Youngsin Park, Elham Oleiki, Guanhua Ying, Atanu

Jana, Mutibah Alanazi, Vitaly Osokin, Sangeun Cho, Robert A. Taylor, Geunsik

Lee Applied Surface Science 681, 161601, 2025. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.

apsusc.2024.161601



2. I’nhibiting the Appearance of Green Emission in Mixed Lead Halide Perovskite

Nanocrystals for Pure Red Emission’. Mutibah Alanazi, Ashley R. Marshall,

Yincheng Liu, Jinwoo Kim, Shaoni Kar, Henry J. Snaith, Robert A. Taylor, and

Tristan Farrow* Nanoletters, 24, 12045-12053, 2024. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1021/

acs.nanolett.4c01565

1. ‘Thermally activated delayed fluorophore and plasmonic structures integrated

with halide perovskites for efficient X-ray scintillation and imaging’. Atanu Jana,

Sangeun Cho, Kandasamy Sasikumar, Heonkgyu Ju, Hyunsik Im, Robert A.

Taylor Matter 7, 3256–3289, 2024. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matt.2024.07.004

Shamara Wettimuny (History)

The second year of my Junior Research Fellowship was

most fulfilling. Throughout the academic year 2024-2025

I focused on editing and writing new chapters including

an epilogue for my book manuscript Ceylon Disturbed:

A History of Ethno-Religious Violence, 1853-1915. I was

invited to speak at various academic events, including the

seminar for the MA in South Asian Studies at Oxford as well

as public history events in Sri Lanka, including the HSBC Ceylon Literary Festival.

Together with my colleagues, I co-convened ‘The Modern Sri Lankan History Workshop’

at Brasenose College, to which we invited early career researchers from across the

UK in May 2025. I was delighted to teach a second-year undergraduate module for

the Queen’s history students, Disciplines in History, during Trinity Term, alongside

my colleagues Conor O’Brien and Eli Bernstein. It was my first opportunity to closely

engage with our wonderful undergraduates and a very gratifying experience for me.

During this year, I took on a more active role in College life, including being the Early

Career Research Fellow on Governing Body, 2024-2025 and the Food Seneschal in

Hilary Term. I enjoyed both these experiences thoroughly and relished the opportunity

to learn more about governance at Queen’s, and, indeed, our fabulous kitchens!

Matthew Wright (Materials Science)

This has been the final year of my Marie Skłodowska-Curie

Fellowship at Oxford, which has focussed on developing

interconnection layers for high efficiency solar cells. One

of the key outcomes of this year has been the application

of x-ray absorption spectroscopy to measure our solar

films, which has meant several trips to the Diamond


Light Source, the UK national synchrotron facility located just outside of Oxford.

Throughout the year, my work was published in Solar Energy Materials and Solar

Cells, APL Electronic Devices and ACS Applied Energy Materials. Additionally, I

presented my work on characterising solar cells during collaborative research

visits to UNSW Sydney, Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology and the

Universitetet i Oslo.


Credit: Matt Shaw



ACADEMIC DISTINCTIONS (* denotes distinction)

D.Phil

Kieran J. Agg (Physical and Theoretical Chemistry)

Elisa Cozzi (English)

Faye Curtis (International Relations)

Emma C. Felin (English)

Alejandro Fernández Jiménez (Mathematics)

Charlotte C. Hancox (Interdisciplinary Bioscience – Inorganic Chemistry)

Florian Haslbeck (Particle Physics)

Matthew D. Haynes (Inorganic Chemistry for Future Manufacturing)

Chenyang Hu (Inorganic Chemistry)

Zoë R.M. Jennings (Classical Languages and Literature)

Gabriel D. Jones (Women’s and Reproductive Health)

David M. Kaufman (Classical Languages and Literature)

Heeyeon Kim (English)

Weijun Li (Particle Physics)

Joe D. Morrow (Inorganic Chemistry for Future Manufacturing)

Jakke S. Neiro (Interdisciplinary Biosciences – Zoology)

Yue Ren (Pharmacology)

Hannah Scheithauer (Medieval and Modern Languages (French and German))

Ryan M. Schofield (Materials)

Xinyi Shen (Condensed Matter Physics)

Kathryn H.M. Smith (Ion Channels and Membrane Transport in Health and Disease)

Samuel G. Teague (Music)

Ziyi Wang (History)

B.Phil

Charlotte F. Dorneich*

MFA

Cyrus Hung

Cerena N. Parkinson

M.Phil

Yu Hei Lam (Traditional East Asia)

Marie-Rose Sheinerman* (History (Modern European History 1850-present))

Klara J. Zhao (Egyptology)

MPP

Long Ching Sharon Chau

Omotayo M. Dada


Wei V. Lin

Hatem S.A. Zakir

M.Sc

Rina Ariga (Clinical Trials)

Govert W. Bettman* (Financial Economics)

Aleeza Dar (Clinical and Therapeutic Neuroscience)

Monica P. Groth* (Biodiversity, Conservation and Management)

Audrey N. Kang* (Clinical and Therapeutic Neuroscience)

Adella Kristi (Law and Finance)

Cheryl K. Mageto* (Law and Finance)

Mikaella T. Ngo (Neuroscience)

Minh Phuong Nguyen (Biodiversity, Conservation and Management)

Vincent M. Rau* (Mathematical Modelling and Scientific Computing)

Anna R. Wyeth* (Biodiversity, Conservation and Management)


M.St

Miriam R. Alsop (English (650-1550))

Dillon Austen* (Theology)

Freddy Conway-Shaw* (English (1830-1914))

Victoria K. Harwell (Global and Imperial History)

Arthur Z. Kleinman* (Ancient Philosophy)

Sadie G. Mansfield* (History (US History))

Alina A. Mohaupt (Modern Languages (German))

Amelia K. Morton* (English (1830-1914))

Elizabeth A. Ogle* (Greek and/or Latin Languages and Literature)

Joseph P. Osmond* (Theology)

Ella M. Shattock* (English and American Studies)

Luke E. Sitaraman (Music (Musicology))

Maggie E. Stanton* (English (1700-1830))

Anna V. Stewart-Yates* (History of Art and Visual Culture)

Benjamin G.E. Watson (English and American Studies)

Daniel Wordsworth (History (US History))

Diyuke Wu (Traditional China)

BM

Bethan L. Storey

P.G.C.E

Edmund Dhanowa (History)

James C. Jolley (Mathematics)

Annalisa Pepe (Modern Languages)

Nan Sun (Physics)

Megan Veres (English)



FINAL PUBLIC EXAMINATIONS

Ancient and Modern History

Second Class, Division One

William M.H. Davis

Rachael O. Naylor

James Thatcher

Asian and Middle Eastern Studies

First Class

Theodore Nze (Japanese with Chinese)


and Classics

First Class

Christian A. Sanders

Biology

First Class

Elyse L. Airey

Anna Kalygina


Rosemary Cowden

Zoe M. George

Mikolaj Marszalkowski

Madison Merritt

Cell and Systems Biology

First Class

Ellen Laker

Chemistry

First Class

Chihiro Kinumaki

Frederick W. Simpson


Angelica Z. Kanu

English and Modern Languages

First Class

Eva M. Bailey (French)

Oisin Byrne (Spanish)


Holly Milton-Jefferies (French)

English Language and Literature

First Class

Clara Hartley


Florence Hall

Danielle Hiles

Fine Art

First Class

Jarad Jackson


Ruthie Y. Liu

Aparna K. Mitra

History

First Class

Benjamin D. Harcourt-Sharpe

Yu Hang Hui

Lily Kinnear


Sophie M. Cook

Megan Swann

Harvey Turner

History and English

First Class

Thomas Greany


History and Modern Languages


Elliot L. Armstrong-Reed (Spanish)

Stella J. Horrell (Spanish)

History and Politics

First Class

Demetrios M. Sergi


Felicite Baroudel

Jurisprudence

First Class

Evangelia Tsintza

Rach W.X. Tan


Annalise Dodson

James A. Gallagher

Lwandle T. Ntshangase

Ella Stone

Zara P. Watson (English Law with Law

Studies in Europe)

Second Class, Division Two

Ihsan S. Hussain-Espinar

Literae Humaniores


Eva Boyce

Anna E. Jeffries-Shaw

Katie Mewawalla

Yun Son


I-Cenay R. Trim

Materials Science

First Class

Milo Coombs

Charlotte J. Wheatley


Enyala Banks

Thomas A. Batchelor

David E. Craven

Emily Weal


Zhuojun Hou

Mathematics

Distinction

Daniel J. Kelly

Helen C. Tyson

Merit

Matthew Buckley

Mathematics and Philosophy

First Class

Ami Chen

Mathematical and Theoretical

Physics

Distinction

Shuiwaner Liu

Yanzuo Yu

Medical Sciences

First Class

Daniel McAlea


Neil A. Beaton

Arun Gopal

Ziyad Mahmoud

Arsh Patankar

Harry Pratt

Modern Languages

First Class

Esme W. Buzzard (French and Russian)

Alexander R. Coleman (German and

Czech with Slovak)





Katarina Harrison-Gaze (French and

Italian)

Antonia G.H. Johnson (French)

Luke J. Nixon (Spanish and

Portuguese)

Rebecca A. Stevens (Spanish)

Modern Languages and Linguistics

First Class

Anna Vines (German)

Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry

First Class

Matthew Rogers

Samuel Z.C. Toulmin


Harry R.J. Dewhurst

Harry C. Kyd

Jonathan W.C. Le

Music

First Class

Edward Freeman

Felicity C.E. Howard

Jemima Price

Harriet Twigger-Ross

Oriental Studies


Cosmo Siddons (Chinese)

Philosophy and Modern Languages

First Class

Hannah Davie (French)


Elizabeth A. Lee (French)

Ruby E. Turner (French)

Philosophy, Politics and Economics

First Class

Charvi Jain

Joseph Stala-Smith


Bulut Taylor

Zhihao Wu

Celine Z. Yang


Edua Borbely-Soproni

Yineng Xu

Physics

First Class

Wei Heng Liu (BA)


Dara J. Collins (MPhys)


Henry Coop (MPhys)

Sana Khalil (BA)


FIRST PUBLIC EXAMINATIONS

First BM

Jennah Amin

Ghazal Ershadi-Oskoui

Katy L. Hallas

Arashk Motevalli Ali Abadi

Ali D. Mousavi

Hamza M.Y. Uddin

Honour Moderations

Literae Humaniores

Tudor Mendel-Idowu

Audrey Montfort

Moderations

Law

Muskan Goyal*

Robin D. Hall

Dylan Hexter

Anna Higgins

Alex K. Sidebottom*

Ming Peng Yap


Preliminary Examinations

Ancient and Modern History

Lucie J.E. Lindsay


Nell C. Gray (Chinese)

Siddharth S. Stenning (Sanskrit)

Biology

Samuel C Davies

Alina Miah

Lydia M.C. Pinches

Daisy Robins

Daniel J. Sleight

Julia Z. Sosinska*

Biomedical Sciences

Amelie S. Brownridge*

Michael Wu

Chemistry

Louis Davie*

Tianxing Shi*

Xiao Xiao

Classics and English

Theodore J. Wood

English Language and Literature

Callum Beardmore*

Hannah Becker*

George Burton-Davies*

Madeline Gillett

English and Modern Languages

Anna Gillings (French)

Leo Jones (Spanish)

Fine Art

Kadijah O.Y. Dumbuya

History

Thomas P. Butterworth

George Fothergill*

Raphael Fox*

Alfie T. Gibson

Amélie Raymond

History and Politics

Alex P. Banhidai

Materials Science

Amelia K. Bolla

Rowan Flanagan*



Arsene M.P. Gudin

Ziyang Qi

Chenyu Yang

Lily S.H. Yang

Giulio A. Ziglio*

Mathematics

Yaodong Chen

Alexander J. Forman

Alex J. Pentland

Shenghao Sun

Mathematics and Philosophy

Yunxuan Bo

Music

Arthur Barton

Sam Chichester-Clark

Thomas Constantinou*

Sydney G. Haskins

Philosophy and Modern Languages

Daniel S. Yoon (French)

Philosophy, Politics and Economics

Joan Alabi

Dean Gregory

Aina E. Kapferer*

Ria Seth

Modern Languages

Lauren E. Atkins (French and Italian)

Anton Davies (Spanish and Russian)

Samuel A. Edwards (French and

German)

Ariana K. Larizadeh (French and

Spanish)

Sophie-Amelie Skoczylas (German and

Russian)

Anna Standish (German)

Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry

Kitty E. Arnold

Patrick J. Connolly

Lola Parsons*

Lauren Smith*

Physics

William Gladston

Kathiravan Johnson*

Daniel Krol*

Cameron Ryle

Hanrui Wang*

Hanyuan Zhou*

Psychology, Philosophy and

Linguistics

Amy C. Chamberlain* (Philosophy and

Linguistics)

Ottillie L.Y. Chung* (Psychology and

Linguistics)

Maggie S. Patmore (Experimental

Psychology)

Kokil Sehgal (Experimental Psychology)


UNIVERSITY PRIZES

Prelims Prize for the best performance in Introductory Economics: Jacob

Perry (Philosophy, Politics and Economics)*

Armourers and Brasiers’ Company / TATA Steel Prize for Best Team Design

Project in Materials Science: Devajna K. Gopal (Materials Science)

Armourers and Brasiers’ Prize for Year 2 Business Plan team presentation in

Materials Science: Sebastian Travis (Materials Science)

British Pharmacological Society Clinical Undergraduate Prize for

Intercalated Research Project: Daniel McAlea (Medical Sciences)

Commendation for Individual Presentation in Physics Department Speaking

Competition: Daniel J. Beck (Physics)

David Gibbs Prize for best submitted work in Modern Languages in a

Dissertation Paper: Anna Vines (Modern Languages and Linguistics

(German))

Diversity Prize I for the best performance in a dissertation essay, portfolio

of essays, or linguistics project that engages with issues of race and

racialization: Anna Vines (Modern Languages and Linguistics (German))

Gibbs Book Prize for performance in the Honour School of Chemistry: Part

IB: Bowen Guo (Chemistry)

Gibbs Book Prize for performance in the Honour School of History and

English: Thomas Greany (History and English)

Gibbs Prize for performance in the Honour School of English Language and

Literature: Clara Hartley (English Language and Literature)

Gibbs Prize for excellent performance in the Part C Mathematics

Dissertation: Daniel J. Kelly (Mathematics)

IMA Prize for excellent performance in the Final Honour School of

Mathematics (Part C): Daniel J. Kelly (Mathematics)

James Naughton Prize for the best performance in Czech (with Slovak):

Alexander R. Coleman (Modern Languages (German and Czech with Slovak))

Letter of Distinction for the Preliminary Examination in Psychology,

Philosophy and Linguistics: Ottillie L.Y. Chung (Psychology and Linguistics)

Marilyn Butler Prize for the best MSt Dissertation in English: Ella M. Shattock

(English and American Studies)

MLF Prize for Best Performance in Law and Economics of Corporate

Transactions (LECT): Cheryl K. Mageto (Law and Finance)




Prize for Excellence in the Preliminary Examination of Biology: Julia Z.

Sosinska (Biology)

The Research Project Prize in Genome Diversity and Evolution: Anna

Kalygina (Biology)

Second Prize for Prelims and Commendation for CP4 paper: Hanyuan Zhou

(Physics)

Wronker Grant for excellent performance in the Honour School of Medical

Sciences: Daniel McAlea (Medical Sciences)

*Awarded in 2024

Credit: Matt Shaw


COLLEGE PRIZES

Blake Prize in History: Joseph Thomas (History and Politics)

Chandrasekhar Prize in Physics: Alika Ho (Physics)

Christine Peters Essay Prize for Women’s and Gender History: Lily Kinnear

(History)

Gwanghoon Lee Prize in Materials Science: Giulio A. Ziglio (Materials Science)

Henrietta McCall Prize in Egyptology and Assyriology: Christian A. Sanders

(Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and Classics)

Jack Wooding Prize (for greatest contribution to the Boat Club by a firstyear

undergraduate): Amélie Raymond (History)

J.A. Scott Prize in Natural Sciences: Wei Heng Liu (Physics)

Many Prize in English: Lia Neill (English and Modern Languages (German))

Markheim Prize in French: Elizabeth A. Lee (Philosophy and Modern Languages

(French))

Markheim Prize in French (proxime accessit): Esme W. Buzzard (Modern

Languages (French and Russian))

Pippa Koller Prize for Sporting Endeavours: Katie Mewawalla (Literae

Humaniores)

SJZ Ali Prize in History: Benjamin D. Harcourt-Sharpe (History)

Temple Prize in Mathematics: Jim Yeung (Mathematics and Statistics)




Credit: John Cairns

FROM THE BURSAR

The College’s financial performance in 2024–25 continued

to be satisfactory: our own measure of our performance

showed that we are living comfortably within our means,

and indeed that some modest expansion of activity is

viable. The Governing Body thus oversaw an exercise in

which a number of proposals for new activity were

gathered and then ranked in order of priority. The result of

this will be increased expenditure on means-tested

Dr Andrew Timms postgraduate and undergraduate support, increased

research allowances for early-career Fellows and

improvements to the remuneration of Stipendiary Lecturers, and a programme of

commissions of new portraits to update the current, very dated collection. These

initiatives will sit alongside other expansions of the activity of the College, including

the appointment of a second tutorial Fellow in Biochemistry (and a small increase in

the number of undergraduates admitted in this subject) and the creation of a Junior

Research Fellowship in climate change research. In total the College expects to

spend around an additional £500k per annum on these various activities, which is

a modest but noticeable increase in its overall unrestricted expenditure on educational

purposes (which, by our own measure, was roughly £12m in 2024–25).

The College’s endowment achieved a total return of around 10.7%. This was notably

ahead of our inflation benchmark but below the return enjoyed by (say) a global

market-capitalisation-weighted tracker fund. The latter is unsurprising given that the

College is underweight US equities at the moment (something that a recent review

of asset allocation has decided to address, to a certain extent) and returns on our

property assets were lower than those seen in many stock-markets. Partly as a result

of sales of assets, the endowment as a whole is actually quite underweight property

at the moment (in comparison with our target portfolio): we nowadays aim to have

around 28% of our wealth in commercial and agricultural property, but to achieve

this would require purchases in excess of £60m. So we are currently searching

for appropriate commercial property investments and long-term land holdings (to

replace the land sold for development at Keresley, upon which I reported last year).

In the meantime the College’s holdings of public equities are overweight (by around

seven percentage points at the end of July), which demonstrates an appetite for risk

that has paid off in recent years.

We also hold a lot of cash at the moment. Attentive treasury management in the

Bursary has led to the College receiving respectable amounts of interest on its

deposits (around £1.8m of interest on deposits which amounted to £34m at the

start of the year and gradually increased thereafter). You might wonder why we have


maintained such high cash balances, and part of the answer is that the College is

looking to make major improvements to its student accommodation and is actively

searching for new buildings (to replace the accommodation formerly provided by the

Florey Building), which can be expected to lead to significant expenditure over the

next few years. It is not easy to find good sites in central (or not-so-central) Oxford,

but with luck next year’s report will contain news of some major developments on

this front.





A TRIBUTE TO DAVID GODDARD,

FORMER CLERK OF WORKS

David Goddard retired on 30 June 2025. He had most

recently, from 2020 to 2025, been the steward of the

College’s almhouses at God’s House and Childrey, as well

as overseeing the maintenance of Pamber Priory. Before

that he was the College’s Clerk of Works from 2007 to

2020, responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of the

College’s buildings and latterly the de facto project

manager of a number of large capital projects. The most

significant of these was the construction of the extension

to the Library, which was expertly overseen by David (and which, as a result, came

in below budget: an extraordinary outcome in Oxford). The replacement of the

Chapel and Hall roofs, another large project that was concluded in the pandemic

lockdowns, was similarly delivered with care and precision. Earlier in his career he

had helped to guide us through the rebuilding of the College’s kitchens; the

acquisition and complete refurbishment of our student house in James Street,

Oxford, was a further notable achievement.

David’s association with the College had in fact begun in 1986, when he joined as a

joiner (so to speak). There are Fellows who still remember him from those days. One,

John Blair, commented that ‘I first got to know David when he was rebuilding the

staircase where I had my room (BQ III). I shall always remember the huge baulks of

seasoned oak which were delivered, and which he handled with such strength and

skill to make the magnificent job that resulted. I could see what a superb craftsman

he was, and how much pride he took in that.’

It is completely uncontentious to say that David was an outstanding employee. In

his role as Clerk of Works he set exemplary high standards of performance and

professionalism, and was one of the most respected and wise members of staff of the

College. His courteous and calm dealings with the Fellows won him universal acclaim,

and he instilled in the College’s maintenance staff a respect for the academic workings

of the College which meant that major building work would avoid the pressure-points

in the academic year and often go almost unnoticed. He contributed markedly to the

breaking down of older distinctions in the College, and was (so far as is known) the first

Clerk of Works to be elected to additional membership of the Senior Common Room.

I would add from a personal perspective that David was a great help to me, as a

new and relatively young Bursar, and was unfailingly constructive and kind, and

willing to tell me gently but firmly when I was wrong. A particular memory is of us

together assembling a portfolio of houses that are now rented to Fellows, and I much

enjoyed shuttling around Oxford with him in his van, always learning something about


buildings and building methods as we went. Several colleagues commented with

amusement that David was often rather more nattily dressed than I was, and on more

than one occasion hapless estate agents greeted him as the Bursar. He certainly

had the political skill necessary for the role: it was during those conversations ‘in the

van’ that he adroitly persuaded me of the need for a new one! His early retirement

was an enormous loss to the College, but we were fortunate to keep him on in the

almshouse role, which was similarly performed with care and sensitivity. Now that

he is properly beginning a well-deserved full retirement, we wish him and Fiona a

long and happy future.


Dr Andrew Timms, Bursar


David was Project Manager for the New Library, which opened in 2017.



Credit: David Olds

OUTREACH

Molly Lockwood,

Schools Liaison,

Outreach, and

Recruitment Officer

This year, our core outreach work reached over 4,800

students across 101 schools. This is the first of many

figures which will be peppered through this year’s report to

illustrate the reach and scale of our access activity. But, the

figures alone do not tell the whole story nor communicate

the full impact of our work; drawing on feedback from

pupils and reflecting on the conversations in the classroom

from our in-school visits provides some context and

narrative to those headline stats.

Visiting schools across our link regions is a vital part of

our work; from Carlisle to Carshalton, and from Burnley

to Brockley, we delivered 61 talks and workshops across

41 different link schools, reaching students at various stages of their school career.

One of my personal highlights was delivering a session for over 50 Year 6 pupils at

Unity Academy in Blackpool, whose enthusiasm for learning about life at university, a

completely new concept for most, was truly infectious (though, I think the promise of

not wearing uniform nor having a fixed bedtime at university may have had something

to do with it!). At the other end of the spectrum, we supported Year 13 Oxbridge

applicants with their interview preparation during my Cumbria and Lancashire school

tour in November, supplemented by a virtual workshop for the link schools that we

couldn’t reach in-person.

We contributed over £3,000 directly to school coach costs to support visits to the

College for non-selective state schools in the North West for whom the travel costs

are prohibitively expensive. This allowed us to host 31 events at Queen’s for students

aged 11-17, giving pupils the opportunity to meet and ask questions of current Oxford

students, to gain first-hand understanding of university-style learning, and to become

more confident in navigating the university admissions process.

We welcomed 49 prospective applicants on our two flagship residential programmes

for Year 12 students; the long-running North West Science Residential, and the

Ancient Worlds Network, in collaboration with Corpus Christi College. As well as

Oxford application support, attendees gained some insight into their preferred

degree subjects through taster seminars, and got a taste of student life by staying

in undergraduate accommodation and hanging out in the JCR.

It has been so rewarding to see that the impact of last year’s residential programmes

has filtered through into the Oxford application cycle for 2025-entry. 20% of attendees

across the two programmes in Easter 2024 were successful in gaining an Oxford offer,


including from Queen’s. Toby, a student from

Cockermouth School in Cumbria, attended our

North West Science Residential in April 2024

and will start his Chemistry degree at Queen’s

this October. Karol, a student from St Mary’s

Catholic Academy in Blackpool, attended that

same residential and will be studying Medicine

at LMH. He explained how his attendance on

the science residential had supported his

application:

“Going on the North West Science Residential

at Queen’s really helped me feel confident that

Medicine at Oxford was the right path for me.

Doing some research in the library and getting

“The whole residential

was brilliant, all the

student ambassadors

and outreach team were

so kind and answered all

my questions. I now have

a much clearer vision of

what I want to apply for at

both Oxford and a general

university level.”

– 2025 Ancient Worlds Network

residential attendee

a taste of what a tutorial is like was a real eye-opener. It made me realise how much

I wanted to study there. Although I’ve been accepted to study at LMH this October,

I’m really looking forward to reconnecting with some of the friends I met on the

residential who got into Queen’s.”


20 Year 8 students have engaged in the first year of the Think Like a Linguist project

in Blackpool and the Fylde. We have been delighted to collaborate with Dr Charlotte

Ryland and the team at the Queen’s Translation Exchange (QTE) to roll out their

existing programme into one of our link areas, building on our strong relationships

with local schools. This year’s programme culminated in a celebration event at

Queen’s in June, where pupils presented their excellent and creative ideas on the

future of languages to current undergraduate linguists and tutors, and ‘graduated’

from the programme, with gowns and caps to boot.

We are proud to have committed to a further three years’ partnership with The

Access Project, to expand the programme in the North West. As well as continuing

to support The Whitehaven Academy and Workington Academy, we will support The

Access Project’s growth strategy in reaching new sixth form providers in Lancashire

through their new Accelerate programme. This year, we hosted an academic

residential visit for 12 sixth form students from West Coast Sixth Form and D6 (a new

sixth form provision in Darwen, and a new Queen’s partner school from September

2025), as well as a day visit packed with taster sessions and chance to meet current

Queen’s undergraduates for Year 10 students from Darwen Vale High School.

A third of our undergraduate students are trained ambassadors – they lead tours of

Queen’s, answer questions about university life, and support the smooth running of

residentials, offer holder events, and open days. Put simply, current student voice

is one of the most impactful parts of our outreach work.



Alongside our undergraduates, a large number of Queen’s postgraduate students,

lecturers, and Fellows have been involved in our outreach work, whether delivering

academic taster sessions or answering queries from prospective students on Open

Days. The widening participation ethos really is part of the fabric of the Queen’s

community. If you would like to find out more about the outreach work at Queen’s,

we would love to hear from you.



Credit: John Cairsns

A YEAR IN THE LIBRARY

Dr Matthew Shaw FSA

College Librarian

Looking back, the theme of this ‘Year in the Library’ is one

of maintaining high standards and incremental improvement.

Generous bequests by Old Members have allowed

the Library to acquire several items for the special collections,

supporting research and College teaching, as well

as adding to the material history of the College and the

richness of its holdings. Notable highlights include several

items intimately connected to former College members: a

unique copy of the poet Edmund Blunden’s annotated and

grangerized biography of John Clare, long-held by the

family; and two commonplace books containing snippets

of humanistic texts and glosses gathered by two Fellows in the 1640s, revealing

something of the intellectual life at the College during those turbulent times.


Guided by responses to the annual student survey and with input from Fellows,

the circulating collection has also been updated, helping to support modern day

intellectual life. Classics, science, medicine, and the law holdings have been a

particular focus. A serious amount of librarians’ time has also been usefully expended

on reclassification of the ‘reserve’ collection, making this resource much more

accessible. Particular thanks go to Felix Taylor (Library Assistant) for doing the bulk

of the relabelling. A popular ‘General Collection Election’ social media campaign

run by Lauren Ward (Assistant Librarian) elicited enthusiastic responses from the

MCR and JCR to help select novel additions to the ‘General’ reading collection.

The Library is also grateful to the Old Members who have donated copies of their

own publications, which have been added to the shelves showcasing these works.

Current members have been able to attend a series of ‘show and tells’ by the

Librarian in the Upper Library and Feinberg Special Collections Reading Room.

These events offer a rare opportunity to see up close some of the treasures from

the College, as well as some of the more unusual items, such as a selection of the

Library’s smallest items.

The College’s Junior Members made use of the Library’s special collections in

hands-on seminars. Professor Tamara Atkin’s Literature in English and Dr Christopher

Hollings’ History of Mathematics students spent several hours with some of the

original texts central to their studies.

And from reading books to making them: in the dark of Hilary Term, Sarah Arkle

(Deputy Librarian) and Lauren hosted a ‘zine workshop’ for students, exploring

analogue production in an increasingly digital world for Wellbeing Week. The

Librarian published Libraries and the Academic Book in the Cambridge University



Press ‘Elements’ series at the end of Michaelmas Term. Sarah and Lauren continued

to develop their expertise in historical bibliography at the London Rare Book School

in June. The course included talks by the librarian of the Warburg Institute and a visit

to the St Bride Library. Expertise developed will help the team curate the College’s

remarkable collection of over 100,000 rare books and make links between them

and current members.

Felix curated two displays in the New Library, drawing on work reappraising the

College’s late-Victorian holdings. The first highlighted the donations from George

Augustus Simcox (1841-1905) and his literary connections, and the second some fine

press editions of works connected to the group of writers known as the ‘Decadents’,

notably the College’s own Ernest Dowson (1867-1900). You can read more about

them on the College’s blog. The Upper Library display cases explored the College’s

academic theme of ‘Perception’, with books ranging from the fifteenth to the twentyfirst

centuries. The Library also marked the 175th anniversary of the Public Libraries

Act with a display in the Shulman Auditorium of materials relating to Edward Edwards,

former cataloguer at the College and campaigner for public library provision.

The Library continues to combine the best of the analogue and the digital worlds.

Several of the exhibitions can also be seen online on the College’s library pages.

The Collections continued to be made more accessible online, with several of the

College’s treasures digitised and added to the ‘Digital Bodleian’ site, of which the

College is a partner. These include one of the oldest Western manuscripts in the

College’s collection, the mid-tenth century Isidore’s Etymologiae (MS 320), Johannes

Gutenberg’s Catholicon [1460?], and architect Inigo Jones’ annotated copy of

Sebastiano Serlio’s Five Books of Architecture.

The Library continued to host more traditional research visits to the Feinberg

Special Collections Room, including an increase in final-year and master’s students

interested in the materiality and marginalia to be found on the College’s shelves,

as well as scholars and researchers from around the world. The Upper Library has

hosted several memorable ‘show and tells’ for the Old Members’ Office and Collegehosted

symposia, as well as tours for Open Days and other schools visits. It remains

a much-valued space for study by students and Fellows alike. The Library is grateful

for their forbearance during the chill of winter, when the trench heaters struggled

against the elements due to an elusive Back Quad leak in the hot water pipe feeding

them. Repairs are underway this summer, but the provision of blankets helped to take

the edge off the chill, and perhaps recreated something of the original, seventeenthcentury

feel of the room. We have yet to bring out the braziers, tended overnight by

watchmen paid in brandy revealed in an old account book in the Archive, perhaps

an improvement too far. Incidentally, the Upper Library can be seen in all its glory on

the cover of the new Bodleian Libraries Oxford Libraries: An Architectural History,

which would make an ideal graduation gift.


Credit: David Olds

A YEAR IN THE ARCHIVE

Michael Riordan FSA

College Archivist

When deciding what to keep for permanent preservation,

we archivists often talk about preserving records of

transactions (not necessarily financial transactions) that

document the functions of an institution. By any reckoning,

the core function of Queen’s must be teaching. However,

though the tutorial system is without doubt the gold

standard for undergraduate education, it doesn’t lend itself

well to record-keeping, so teaching is arguably the least

well documented function in the Archive. We are therefore

extremely grateful to Professor Tim Connell (Modern

Languages, 1968) who has donated to the Archive all the

essays that he wrote for his tutors. These will prove invaluable to future historians of

education who will be able to get a glimpse of how the tutorial system worked and

what was being studied. They sit very well with another group of essays, given by

Derek Robinson (Chemistry, 1961) in 2013, so that we now have evidence of how

both a humanities and a sciences subject were taught in the 1960s.


Much better documented in the Archive are the rights and privileges of the College.

These were of much greater interest to earlier generations in the College – Bishop

Foxe in his statutes for Corpus (written 176 years after our own statutes) summed

this thinking up nicely when he told the College to keep an Archive ‘so that we do

not march to the pitched battled unarmed’! In other words, records must be kept in

case they were needed as evidence in court. One such case was in 1754 when the

College accused one Isaac Topping of breaking into the College’s land at Renwick

Account of fees and expenses

charged by the College’s lawyers in

the case against Isaac Topping

Expenses paid to witnesses at the trial of Isaac Topping



in Cumbria (land given to the College by the Founder) and digging up and ‘carrying

away’ (i.e. stealing) coal to the value of £100 (about £20,000 today). Alan Mitchell

(Engineering, 1968) – a serial donor to the Archive! – has kindly given us a bundle of

documents relating to this case. They consist of a series of accounts and receipts for

payments by the College to its lawyers, most interestingly recording the payments to

residents of Renwick for their travel and accommodation expenses when attending

the trial at Carlisle as witnesses for the College’s case. You will all, I hope, be pleased

to hear that the College won the case!

As ever, one of our highlights of the year was our ‘pop-up’ six-hour exhibition for

members of the College curated by our Assistant Archivist, Dr Amy Ebrey. The theme,

to tie in with the College’s academic theme for the year, was ‘Perception’ and Amy

brought together a dozen documents

that showed different perceptions of

the College over time. Amongst the

highlights were a letter from (probably!)

Anne of Bohemia, wife of Richard II (c.

1384) noting the College’s duty to say

masses for the souls of the royal couple;

an ordinance issued by Parliament in

1653, after Parliamentary forces had

taken control of Oxford from Charles I,

ordering the College to maintain ‘godly

exercises’ and to train preachers; and

a letter from the Archbishop of York,

as Visitor, in 1872 about the abolition

of compulsory Chapel attendance after

the Universities Test Act abolished

the need for College members to be

Anglicans.

Parliamentary Ordinance, 1653, instructing the

College to train preachers

Between highlights, our work on longterm

projects continues, rehousing

records in modern boxes and envelopes,

recataloguing the Archive, and continuing the conservation project on our

large collection of medieval deeds and rolls. We also welcome researchers to the

Archive – 27 this year – and answer many more enquiries by email – 177, of which

78 were from College members, staff, or our agents. The enquiries included the

Queen’s Easter Ball of 1973 ‘that never was’, a rumour that the wisteria in the Provost’s

garden is the oldest in England (unproven!), and the novelist Russell Thorndike,

whose anti-hero Dr Syn was a Kent vicar, pirate, smuggler – and Fellow of Queen’s!

Film versions of the books make Dr Syn the only alleged Fellow to be played by both

Peter Cushing and Patrick McGoohan! We are yet to find Dr Syn in the College’s

entrance books…


A YEAR IN THE CHAPEL

Revd Alice Watson

Chaplain

It has been another wonderful year in Queen’s Chapel – I

feel like I must say this every year, but the quality of music

from the choir and organ scholars has been outstanding,

sermons have been varied and thought provoking, and,

thanks to this year’s Chapel Clerks, Duanran Feng and

Elizabeth Lee, Chapel has never been so well organised!

As someone who is not naturally gifted in this area, I have

been very thankful for their assistance this past year. There

have been other changes behind the scenes, including the

switch to a combined Chapel term card and music list,

which feature cover art from across the College community,

and better publicity, in part due to the hard work of the Choir Administrator, Alaw

Grug Evans. All of this has no doubt contributed to the highest Chapel numbers for

quite some while, and it’s been a joy to see so many people, from within and outside

of the College community, from regular students, to tourists, coming to appreciate

choral evensong and the stillness and wonder found in the Chapel space.


Michaelmas term started well. One of my favourite parts of the year is Freshers’ week,

where I meet all students one-to-one for a brief chat; it’s a hectic week, but a great

chance to get to know new faces. Remembrance Sunday was well attended, as

were prayers by the war memorials. Throughout the year we have continued to pray

for peace, which seems more important then ever, in our international community.

Guest preachers this term included The Revd Helena Bickley-Percival, an alumna

of Queen’s choir who is now at Westminster Abbey, and it’s always a highlight to

invite those connected with the College to come back to preach. Services of Prayer

and Praise with the Christian Union continues, and Michaelmas ended on a high, in

a flurry of tinsel, and a packed carol service.

Hilary’s sermons were again centred around a theme, which this year was ‘women

in the biblical and Christian tradition’. Preachers were invited to choose a woman

to preach about and the term saw sermons on: Dorothy L. Sayers (The Chaplain),

Elizabeth (The Revd Dr Melanie Harrington-Haynes), Anna (The Chaplain), Eve

(Fr Damian Howard SJ), Evelyn Underhill (The Revd Canon Prof. Jane Shaw),

Hildegard of Bingen (The Revd Lyndon Webb), Jesus our Mother (The Chaplain),

and Esther (Jemima Price). Enabling students to preach on Sunday evenings is a

great highlight for me, and this year, Jemima (Hilary Term) was joined by Antonia

Johnson (Michaelmas Term) and Clara Price (Trinity Term). It’s such a privilege to hear

students preach so thoughtfully and inspiringly. We were also joined by a placement

ordinand, Evan Rieder. Evan is studying at Ripon College Cuddesdon, and has been

on Sunday evening placement this year.



Hilary brought again the most nerve-wracking day of the year, the BBC radio

recording, which this year was doubly so as we not only recorded a BBC Radio 3

evensong, but were also invited to record Sunday Worship for Radio 4, which was

broadcast on 29 June, around the music of Orlando Gibbons. The choir and readers

were in excellent voice, and intercessions were expertly led by postgraduate student

Monica Groth.

The pastoral and welfare side continued apace, with Friday afternoon craft and

cookies proving again popular – ending the week with a packed office, and running

out of cups is a lovely problem to have. The year has, more than ever, shown the real

need for welfare and pastoral support, and I’m very grateful for the rest of the welfare

team, not least the Welfare and Student Support Officer, Luke Young.

Trinity Term was unusual for a few of reasons: a new Director of Music, Ben Parry

(covering Professor Rees’ sabbatical), and the persistent presence of two pigeons

in Chapel – worship was regularly accompanied by cooing, and my patience for our

feathered-friends was tested at times! We escaped Oxford for our yearly trip to a

Queen’s Parish, this year Holy Rood, Sparsholt, celebrated Ascension Day with a

well-attended service in Back Quad, followed by the kitchen team’s incredible hot

chocolate, and before we knew it, the end of term was upon us. This year, Trinity

Sunday and the University Sermon fell on the last Sunday of Term and our preacher

was another Queen’s Old Member, Br John Church (Classics, 2013). Br John is now

a Dominican friar, and was ordained to the priesthood this summer, we wish him

all the best for his future ministry. The year ends with scaffolding, as investigatory

works are carried out on the ceiling plaster.

This year saw the baptisms of current student Matthew Rogers and the daughter,

Iris, of Old Members Sara-Jane and Henry Begg, the weddings of Hannah Reynolds

and Thomas Wells, Charlotte Philips and Guy Stevenson, Rosie Miller and Nicolas

Moore, and Joe Morrow and Kimberly Webb, and the thanksgiving for the marriage of

Joanna Cousins and Sven Eichmeyer. My thanks go to the Conference Office and the

Steward’s team for all their help in making sure these special days go without a hitch.

This year is my final year here as Chaplain of Queen’s; in September I will be installed

as Vicar of Glastonbury and Meare in the Diocese of Bath and Wells. I’ve had the

best three years here in Oxford, and have enjoyed chaplaincy immensely, but it is

time to put down roots in a parish. And no doubt many of the skills developed in

chaplaincy will prove useful for the weird and wonderful world of Glastonbury! I shall

miss Queen’s immensely, and I’m so grateful to the entire community for their support

and kindness over the years, and especially to Prof Owen Rees for ensuring that the

music of the Chapel is always approaching that of heaven.

The new chaplain, The Revd Liam Cartwright, begins in September, please do hold

him, and the whole community in your prayers.


A YEAR IN THE CHAPEL CHOIR

Professor O L Rees

Organist

Officers: Organist Prof Owen Rees; Organ Scholars

Rudyard Cook, Arthur Barton; Maurice Pearton Choral

Scholar and recipient of the Hilde Pearton Vocal Training

Matthew Rogers; Hildburg Williams Lieder Scholar Jemima

Price; Librarians Jess Norton Raybould, Jemima Price

(Michaelmas Term), Sebastian Evans (Hilary Term), Sòlas

McDonald (Trinity Term); Choir Administrator Alaw

Grug Evans

The rich variety of the choir’s schedule of concert

engagements was exemplified by the early part of this

academic year. Shortly before Michaelmas Term we performed once again in the

Martin Randall Travel festival The Divine Office, presenting a concert of Restorationera

works by Purcell, Blow, and Pelham Humfrey together with the vocal ensemble

Contrapunctus and Instruments of Time and Truth. With term underway, we gave

a launch concert at Queen’s for the choir’s new CD, That Sweet City, featuring two

major works written for the EMS in the early 1950s: Kenneth Leighton’s Veris gratia

and Ralph Vaughan Williams’s An Oxford Elegy. The CD, on which the choir is joined

by the Britten Sinfonia, enjoyed an excellent critical reception, and was Critics’

Choice in Gramophone. In November the sopranos and altos of the choir travelled

to Birmingham to sing Debussy’s cantata La dameoiselle élue in the University’s

Elgar Concert Hall, then repeating the performance in the ‘Song at Wolfson’ series

at Wolfson College. Both concerts were under the banner of the Oxford International

Song Festival. The term ended with three days of CD recording sessions – 20thcentury

works by Rebecca Clarke, Imogen and Gustav Holst, and Harold Darke,

and Kenneth Leighton’s last major work, the Missa Christi – followed by our annual

performance of Handel’s Messiah in the Sheldonian. The CD (The Crown of Life) will

be released on the Signum Classics label in March 2026.


The academic year also featured two BBC broadcasts: a live broadcast of Choral

Evensong on Radio 3 during Hilary Term, and an edition of Radio 4’s Sunday Worship

Credit: John Cairns



in June which marked the anniversaries of the accession of Charles I and the death

of the composer Orlando Gibbons, in 1625.

During Trinity Term, while I was on leave, the choir was under the talented and

immensely experienced direction of Ben Parry, director of London Voices and

formerly artistic director of the National Youth Choir. For the usual Music for a

Summer’s Evening concert towards the end of term, Ben introduced to the choir’s

repertory Bob Chilcott’s thrillingly virtuosic Weather Report and his own exhilarating

My spirit sang all day. Ben Parry comments about his term at Queen’s: ‘It was my

pleasure and privilege to take over directing the chapel choir for Trinity Term 2025.

As I mentioned to them and others on many occasions, I found the choir members

hugely committed, delightfully enthusiastic and dangerously sociable! It did not take

us long to find a strong and positive working relationship, allowing us to discharge

our choral duties successfully. Having stepped down from a couple of professional

positions in recent years which enabled me to work with young people and in an

ecclesiastic setting, it was so rewarding for me to return to roles which I love and

thrive in.’

Our choir tour this year was to France, with

public concerts in the Festival de Gensac,

the extraordinary Romanesque Basilica of

Saint-Sernin in Toulouse, and the church of La

Madeleine in Paris. The first performance of the

tour was at a reception generously hosted by

Old Member Rick Haythornthwaite (Geology,

1975) and his wife Janeen at their stunning

home, the Château La Tourbeille, overlooking

the Dordogne River. The concert the next

evening in the beautiful Église Notre-Dame in

nearby Gensac was given to a capacity and

highly enthusiastic audience, and we also

sang for Mass in the vast Catedral St André

in Bordeaux. The success of the tour owed an

enormous amount to the tireless work of Alaw

Grug Evans, our choir administrator.

Concert in Gensac.

Following the tour, we bade farewell to our wonderful Chaplain, Revd Alice Watson,

who took up her new position as Vicar of Glastonbury in September: it was a delight

to be able to contribute to her licensing service at St John’s Church with an octet

of singers from the choir.

It is a joy to work with such a talented team of musicians, and profound thanks as

always are due in particular to the organ scholars, the choir administrator, the senior

choral scholars, the librarians, and to the Chaplain for all her work and support.


Credit: John Cairns

THE QUEEN’S

TRANSLATION EXCHANGE

Dr Charlotte Ryland

Director of The Queen’s

Translation Exchange

One of the many pleasures of leading the

Translation Exchange is the interactions with teachers and

school leadership: virtually at our regular webinars, in

person at conferences, and through the feedback that

floods in every year as our Anthea Bell Prize draws to a

close. This prize for schools has grown from extremely

modest beginnings during the Covid pandemic to a major

national programme, which this year engaged over 22,000

young people from over 400 schools across the UK.

This feedback usually comes electronically, but in July I

received a letter from the principal of a large Sixth Form

college in the Midlands, which included these words:


“In an era when it is becoming increasingly difficult to offer a broad range of A Level

Languages due to the lack of uptake at GCSE, we will use any opportunity to

celebrate and show the importance of Languages to our students for their careers.”

The subtext here is that those opportunities to ‘celebrate and show the importance

of Languages’ are few and far between – in many schools, we know, they are nonexistent

– and that young people are therefore not able to make informed choices

about their options at GCSE, A Level, and Higher Education.

At QTE, addressing this information gap has always been our ambition and our

greatest challenge. This academic year, we have been reflecting on how we can use

our considerable reach and reputation to address it: by communicating widely the

value of a Languages education. To do so, we need to move far beyond the utilitarian

understanding of language learning, which ‘mistakenly reduces language-learning

to a process of training students to “convert” one language into another. Languages

education is better articulated as the development of a ‘linguistic mindset’. 1

Marketing Languages

In the subject marketplace – which we must accept is how GCSE and A Level/

Highers options function – Languages loses out time and again because students

are being ‘sold’ a curriculum that feels irrelevant and useless. At A Level/Highers,

this is a competition that Languages now overwhelmingly loses to STEM subjects.

If we are to address this, we need to reflect on why it is the case. Again, we learn

a lot from our Anthea Bell Prize teachers, who consistently report that the teaching



resources designed by QTE offer a vision of languages education that contrasts

to the current curriculum, especially for learners aged 11-14. Teachers refer to the

‘great classroom discussion’ that the resources initiate; to the ‘critical thinking’ and

‘creativity’ that it draws out in their classes. While the school languages curriculum

in England reserves most of this critical, creative content to the A Level, Anthea Bell

Prize entrants experience it from age 11, and participants in our Creative Translation

Ambassadors workshops from age eight. It’s this shift – bringing the approach of

an A Level curriculum right down through the year groups – that I see articulated in

this comment from one of our partner teachers:

‘With your well-designed resources, I feel like I don’t have Year Eight [12-13-year-old]

pupils in front of me, but Sixth Formers.’

And it’s for this reason, we think, that this year 76% of participating teachers reported

that the Anthea Bell Prize has raised the profile of languages in their school.

At a conference towards the beginning of the year, I had two further conversations with

teachers that underlined this shift. One reported that their large state comprehensive

had started to award Anthea Bell Prize certificates at their school speech day,

remarking that it is rare for languages to have high-profile recognition of this kind

within their school. STEM subjects, meanwhile, provide multiple opportunities for

this. A second conversation, with a teacher at an independent secondary school,

underlined this further. ‘It’s starting to feel like the Physics or Maths Olympiad’, they

remarked, since many of their pupils now start the year by asking about the prize –

seeing it as a core part of their languages study.

This is already more than we’d hoped for when we launched the prize in 2020, and

underlines the impact that challenging, stimulating programmes combined with the

Queen’s and Oxford ‘brands’ can have. Those brands, we know, can nonetheless

have a limiting effect: they can put off pupils and teachers who might feel that

an Oxford education is not for them. Our work at QTE is consistently directed at

breaking down those barriers and pushing beyond those preconceptions, to craft a

languages education that is genuinely inclusive. This is hard, but it is clear that our

approach is working in many schools, and quotes like this from one of our partner

teachers motivates us to keep going:

“A large percentage of our pupils come from some of the most deprived areas

of central Scotland. Engaging with this competition has been an inspirational,

motivational and confidence-boosting experience for many of them.”

Russian for Beginners

We continue to work to expand this offer and to meet the need from schools: this

year with a brand-new strand in Russian, made possible by a generous donation


from a Queen’s Old Member. 70 schools took part in this first year, once again

exceeding expectations, with this increase fuelled almost entirely by teacher wordof-mouth.

For the first time, we included an ‘ab initio’ strand as part of the Russian

materials: an opportunity for teachers and/or pupils with zero Russian to engage with

its literature, culture, and language. Teachers have welcomed this as an opportunity

to stretch and challenge their linguists – again, this is the kind of opportunity that

STEM already offers in spades.

Think Like a Linguist


We increasingly see our national role at QTE as an advocacy one, encapsulated

best in our sustained intervention programme for Year Eight pupils. In ‘Think Like a

Linguist’ (TLAL), 12–13-year-old pupils meet monthly with languages academics and

professionals to reflect on and learn about languages from multiple perspectives.

TLAL shows them the breadth, excitement, and relevance of a Languages education

before they take their GCSE options, and so supports informed decision-making at

that crucial stage.

This year TLAL doubled in size, as we partnered with Queen’s Access & Outreach

to run the series in Blackpool. Following a series of local sessions for pupils from

a group of schools, all participating teachers and pupils travelled to Queen’s in

July for the TLAL celebration and graduation day. Seeing the Shulman Auditorium

humming with multilingual activity is always a highlight of this work for me, and a

representation of the ‘Exchange’ that is core to our identity. Queen’s is increasingly

the place where people of all ages can come together to explore and develop

their ‘linguistic mindsets’, and where young people can see in the flesh where a

Languages education can take them.




The Shulman also hosted our public events with Argentine and Slovak authors, in

partnership with national organisations, and the training sessions for our new cohort

of student ambassadors. These 28 undergraduates and postgraduates were our

most diverse cohort yet: representing 12 faculties from Medicine to Law (including

Modern and Medieval Languages, naturally) and speaking 24 languages. The fact

that this programme is now attracting such a diverse group suggests that awareness

of the importance of Languages advocacy is growing across Oxford. The 1,185 pupils

from 26 schools who experienced ambassador-led workshops this year have now

seen this diversity first-hand, seeding awareness at an early age that there is no one

way of being a linguist.

A Gateway to Languages

This awareness is only going to spread further through effective collaboration, and

I’m pleased to be supporting new initiative The Languages Gateway (TLG), which

aims to do just that. As chair of TLG’s editorial group, I am working to support

collaboration and coordination across the sector, from primary school teachers

to policymakers. This work goes hand in hand with my own policy engagement

activity, which was supported this year by funding from Oxford Policy Engagement

Network, and includes engagement with the Cross-Government Languages Group,

the National Consortium for Languages Education, and the Association for Language

Learning.

It is only through collaboration of this kind that the dial will really shift for languages

nationally. In the meantime, we are pleased to see numbers applying to study MML

at Queen’s resisting the downward trend seen elsewhere, with many undergraduates,

postgraduates, and postdocs citing QTE as a reason for their application. We remain

aware that QTE’s grounding in the superbly multilingual community at Queen’s,

where the value of languages study has always been well understood, is one of

its greatest strengths. If you would like to find out more about how you can get

involved with and support our work at the Translation Exchange, we would love to

hear from you.

www.queens.ox.ac.uk/translation-exchange


CENTRE FOR MANUSCRIPT

AND TEXT CULTURES

Dirk Meyer

Professor of Chinese

Philosophy and

Director of the Centre

for Manuscript and

Text Cultures

Now in its seventh year, the Centre for Manuscript and Text

Cultures (CMTC) remains highly active both in the UK and

on the international stage.

Our annual offering, that includes an international

conference (to be held either in Oxford or at one of our

partner institutions), regular work-in-progress seminars, a

termly distinguished lecture where issues of manuscript

cultures are presented and discussed from different

disciplinary perspectives, and a lecture series on the

matter of the academic engagement with unprovenanced

manuscripts, remains popular. Work has furthermore

begun to introduce a new lecture series that will probe

the physiology behind human knowledge production.

‘Deep structures of knowledge’ will see the collaboration

of academics working in the humanities, experimental psychology, and AI to think

collectively about the correlation of technical change such as writing, printing, and

the internet, and human knowledge production.


2024–2025 moreover opened another page in our efforts to disseminate our work

globally.

The week before Christmas, a small delegation from the CMTC went to Nanjing,

China, to attend the formal launch of the Centre for the Study of Excavated

Manuscripts. The new centre at Nanjing University is directed by Dirk Meyer,

Professor of Chinese Philosophy at The Queen’s College and director of CMTC

Oxford, and it works as an extension of CMTC. Together, the innovative Oxford-

Nanjing Centres take a global lead in the interdisciplinary enquiry of pre-modern

texts and the manuscript forms in which they are preserved, and they will enable a

strong presence of CMTC in Asia to foster the pollination of knowledge across the

study of literate societies.

CMTC is already in collaboration with the Centre for the Study and Protection of

Excavated Manuscripts at Tsinghua University, Beijing, through a six-year research

partnership, and the three centres will coordinate international conferences

and workshops on different aspects of textual cultures and their role in human

communication and knowledge.

The new Nanjing centre will also serve as the Asian distribution centre for the CMTC

journal, Manuscript and Text Cultures (MTC): https://mtc-journal.org/index.php/mtc.



Through our Nanjing hub, CMTC

has also launched a new book

series, Text Cultures ( 寫本本文

化 ). The new series publishes

Chinese translations of seminal

books on manuscript and text

cultures that would otherwise

not be accessible in China. The

series publishes translations of

new works and classics in the

field. Dirk Meyer serves as Senior

Editor of the series. It is published Cover image of the joint

by the prestigious Chinese press, Oxford-Nanjing MTC

release

Fenghuang Publishing ( 凤凰出版

社 ), one of the oldest and most respected presses in China.

Logo of the new Nanjing

Centre. It shows multiple

graphs sitting on top of

one another, reading 南大

(‘Nanjing University’) 出土文

獻 (‘Excavated manuscripts’)

in the official colour scheme

of Nanjing University.]

CMTC’s most recent international conference was held at Tsinghua University,

Beijing from 20–23 September 2024. Under the Oxford-Tsinghua research umbrella

of The Life Cycle of a Manuscript, the conference studied the ‘Ethics and Practice of

Acquiring, Preserving, and Accessing Global Heritage’. The conference gathered a

diverse group of speakers from China, the UK, and Germany with the goal of fostering

a lively debate on the matters such as ‘Profiling, Preservation, and Developing

Artefacts’ (Panel 1), ‘Continued access to Text and Manuscript’ (Panel 2) ‘Material

Form and Use of Manuscripts’ (Panel 3) and ‘Restoring, Collecting, and Extracting

the Text’ (Panel 4) of manuscript texts from different premodern traditions, including

Greece, Medieval Europe, China, Japan, Korea, India, ancient Egypt and the Middle

East. The conference was bilingual. Translators offered simultaneous translation from

Chinese into English and vice versa to facilitate an all-inclusive discussion.

Highlights of CMTC lectures at Oxford in 2024–2025 include the Michaelmas Term

Lecture 2024 by Dr Annick Payne (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia) on ‘Anatolian

Participants of the joint CMTC-Tsinghua

University conference

The joint

international CMTC-

Tsinghua University

conference

Professor Máire Ní Mhaonaigh

(Cambridge) delivers her

lecture on ‘Early Irish

Manuscripts in Cambridge:

Chances and Challenges’


Hieroglyphs: Drawing a Picture of the Ancient Mind’. The lecture discussed aspects

of the Anatolian Hieroglyphic script, a mixed logo-phonetic writing system, which

was used ca. 1500-700 BCE by the Hittite Empire and its successor states. Studies

of the script not only enable us to read texts written several thousand years ago,

but the script itself is also an informative resource on the ancient mind, and on the

environment of its users.

The year’s ‘Provenance Unknown’ lecture by Christopher Whittick, ‘“I found it in a

skip” – provenance and priorities in British archives’, examined the often tortuous and

occasionally dubious routes by which documents eventually reach their destination

in an archive repository.


The Hilary Term Lecture 2025 was given by Dr Elizabeth Frood (Egyptology, 1999;

Oxford), ‘An unexpected script for an unexpected text: the tomb autobiography of the

Egyptian Royal Secretary Tjay’. Sometime between 1213 and 1204 BC, Tjay, a high

official responsible for royal correspondence, commissioned an autobiographical text

as part of the decoration of his monumental tomb cut into the desert escarpment on

the west bank of Thebes (modern Luxor). This alone would have been a surprising

choice: autobiography, which been a central monumental genre since the third

millennium BC, was not popular for elite self-presentation at this time. Even more

extraordinary was the decision to carve the text in hieratic, the cursive, ‘documentary’

form of the Egyptian script, rather than hieroglyphs, the monumental script par

excellence. This lecture presented some of the work in progress of Fredrik Hagen

(Copenhagen University) and by Dr Frood to reconstruct and analyse what remains

of this damaged text, drawing especially on epigraphic drawings held in the Griffith

Institute archive in Oxford. Dr Frood considered features of this script in the tomb

context and in relation to the few other known monumental uses of hieratic, exploring

themes relating to materiality of script, display of artistic and scribal creativity and

virtuosity, and implications for Tjay’s self-display.

The Trinity Term Lecture 2025 by Professor Tamara Atkin (English Faculty and Fellow

in English at The Queen’s College), ‘On Fragments’, discussed the collection of early

printed books given to the Bodleian Library by The Foundation of Christ’s Hospital

at Lincoln. The collection is rich in sixteenth-century tooled bindings, many of which

preserve manuscript and printed waste in the form of pastedowns, endleaves, and

endleaf guards. Using this collection as a case-study, the talk explored the interactions

between manuscript and print in the bindings of sixteenth-century books.

Submissions to Manuscript and Text Cultures are currently outstripping our ability to

find room for them in the journal, so we are in discussions with Liverpool University

Press to start a CMTC book series, Manuscript and Text Cultures Monograph Series.

https://cmtc.queens.ox.ac.uk



Credit: David Olds

A YEAR IN THE MCR

President:

Maximilien MacKie

Sadie Mansfield.

The academic year began with a fantastic Freshers’ Week,

including a new on-site College Family Dinner to strengthen

familial bonds within Queen’s. Starting out as a small

committee, we quickly expanded to 17. This amazingly

hard-working committee organised a non-stop term card

for Michaelmas which averaged one event per day across

weeks three to nine. Events included exchanges with seven

colleges and pumpkin carving to make decorations for our

Hallowe’en BOP. An emphasis on welfare shone through

with our new flagship weekly event, Welfare Wednesdays,

led by our two new Welfare Officers Audrey Kang and

This momentum carried through to Hilary and Trinity, featuring the return of Queen’s

annual chess tournament organised by new Sports Secretary Taha Almasri, the

introduction of an MCR run club with `Honorary President’ Olivia Hamilton, and the

year culminated in our annual Summer Dinner, where MCR members come together

to celebrate the end of a fantastic year at Queen’s.

Alongside these social events, we made long-overdue improvements to the physical

space of the MCR. The MCR committee came together to refresh the study room,

which has now become a usable shared workspace overlooking the beautiful Front

Quad. Other upgrades include replacing our much-loved but aging foosball table

with a top-of-the-line table worthy of the great MCR foosball tradition, as well as a

new games console which has attracted record engagement in the MCR.

At the same time, the committee has been steadfast in advocating for MCR members.

Notably, our Vice-President and President-Elect, Kyle Siwek, successfully negotiated

with the Bursar to reform the Kitchen Establishment Charge. Going forward, students

living out of College will receive a portion of this fee back as credit – a meaningful

win for the MCR.

The most important thing an MCR can do is be a home away from home. This year,

we have done just that. I have been incredibly proud to contribute to the awesome

and vibrant community Queen’s has to offer. I have every confidence that the coming

year will build on the successes of the 2024/2025 Queen’s MCR.



A YEAR IN THE JCR

President:

Freddie Simpson;

Vice President:

Archie Powell

This past year in the JCR has been nothing short of

incredible. Throughout my four years at Queen’s, this one

has stood out thanks to the strong sense of unity and

integration between all of the year groups. The new wave

of Freshers brought a spirited energy and enthusiasm for

college life and the JCR, reinforcing the long-standing

reputation of Queen’s being the friendliest college in

Oxford. Close collaboration between the JCR and MCR

Committees to organise joint events and dinners

throughout the year has also played a key role in

strengthening the wider College community.

Michaelmas Term got off to a flying start with a jam-packed

Freshers’ week. Social events and dinners were organised by the JCR Committee,

introducing more events centred around welfare to ensure that the Freshers could

settle into college life before the term officially began. Throughout the term, the

Social Secretaries and Welfare Representatives organised BOPs, subject-specific

events, pub quizzes, and a pool tournament, bringing a welcome buzz to the Beer

Cellar and encouraging students from different years to mix. JCR meetings were

well attended (most likely due to the copious amounts of free food offered), with the

attendees unanimously agreeing on all the motions this year. Harmony was not only

present in the JCR meetings but also throughout the EMS Blues night organised

by Matilda Bates, an event that never fails to impress. Festivities reached their peak

with the final event of the term bringing the JCR and MCR together: the Christmas

End of Term Event.


Hilary Term brought its fair share of rain, wind,

and snow, but the grey British weather failed

to dampen the spirit of the JCR. Prior to the

start of term, JCR students worked with the

Old Members’ Office for the 2025 Telethon,

sharing recent updates at Queen’s with Old

Members. Kyla Murray and Anna Vines truly

burned bright organising this year’s Burns

Night; the ceilidh dance practices had the

best attendance in years, and the dinner

was delicious, making this the best Burns

Night in recent memory. On the sporting

front, the annual Torpids rowing competition

took place, garnering support from both the

JCR and MCR. Throughout the races, a BBQ



organised by the Queen’s College Boat Club and the JCR Food Reps added to

the atmosphere, making the event a true highlight of the term. Frowns from midterm

blues were flipped upside down on pancake day in the JCR kitchen, with the

Chaplain and I cooking up a storm. At the end of Hilary, Rachael Naylor (JCR Arts

Representative) and the Arts Fund Committee put together the first ever JCR Arts

report, a comprehensive record of arts projects over the past three years at Queen’s.

The report has been instrumental not only in boosting student engagement with the

arts but also in highlighting the true impact of the generosity shown by Old Members

through donations to the Arts Fund and Queen’s Fund.

Despite Trinity being exam season for many, the JCR still managed to squeeze in

as many events as possible. Summer soirées and garden parties organised by the

JCR Reginae and 1341 societies were blessed with sunshine and great company.

The JCR Arts Fund Committee was proud to support the EMS musical, Fiddler on

the Roof, and help to send Oisín Byrne’s Unprofessional to the Edinburgh Fringe.

We were fortunate that this term concluded with The Queen’s College Ball. Harry

Orwell and his committee did a stellar job in creating the perfect night for both

current students and Old Members to come together and celebrate not just the

end of the academic year, but everything that Queen’s has represented over the

past three years.

When I reflect on the past year, I am proud of

the many small improvements made by the

JCR committee to enhance the daily lives of

students at Queen’s. However, arguably more

importantly, I feel that the sense of community

within Queen’s is stronger than ever, and this

couldn’t be possible without each and every

member: staff, Fellow, or student. It has been a

privilege to be a small part of such an incredible

establishment; Queen’s is truly a home away

from home. I wish nothing but the best for the

JCR in the years ahead, and I am certain that

the JCR is in safe hands with Kyla Murray as the

new President.


STUDENT CLUBS AND SOCIETIES

Prof Paolo Tammaro,

Senior Treasurer of the

Amalgamated Sports

Club

The Senior Treasurer of the Amalgamated Sports Club has

the great privilege of meeting students at least once each

term to discuss their sporting activities, understand their

needs, and learn about their progress. Having much

enjoyed sports myself when I was the age of our students,

I feel particularly fortunate to continue engaging with them

about sports including the challenges, rewards, and joy

that sports entail.

Many of our students are highly accomplished athletes and

some go on to compete for the University. However, the

purpose of sports in College is not only to support those

who excel or compete at the highest level, but also – and

equally importantly – to encourage all students to participate and perhaps discover

a new activity. In my view, this truly reflects the spirit and values of our College.


In this issue of the College Record, you will find reports from the various clubs

detailing their progress and achievements over the past year – another remarkable

year for sports at our College.

1341 SOCIETY

Megan Swann, President

The 1341 Society has enjoyed a highly successful fundraising campaign this

academic year, driven by progressive, strategic changes from within the committee

and ongoing support from our mailing list. A broader marketing strategy, aimed

not only at Queen’s students and their guests but also the broader University

community, resulted in a 30% increase in ticket sales for our most recent event,

the Summer Garden Party, which took place in June. This success contributed to a

gross income of over £10,000 from the

ticket sales of our three events this year

including the sell-out Oxmas Luncheon

last November.

Thanks to this financial achievement, we

were proud to partner with the Queen’s

Ball Committee to subsidise ticket

prices for some students at Queen’s,

reducing the cost by 40% for this year’s



Commemoration Ball. In addition, we continued to support individual students

and societies by awarding a number of grants through the 1341 grant scheme,

first introduced in 2023. Applications we received ranged from supporting Blues

appearances in University sport, to subsiding the Addison Debating Society Hilary

dinner with their special guest, current MP, Caroline Nokes.

We are incredibly grateful to our guests for their ongoing support. As my tenure as

President comes to an end, I leave with a sense of bittersweet pride. I’m confident

that our Vice-President, Ellen Pepper, will thrive in the role, and while it’s difficult to

step away, I’m excited to see the Society’s continued growth, including the upcoming

Oxmas Luncheon later this year.

If you would like to be the first to hear of upcoming events and schemes we offer,

please contact president.1341society@gmail.com to sign-up to our mailing list.

THE ADDISON SOCIETY

Nancy Locke, Harvey Turner, and Jimmy Sergi, Co-Presidents

The Addison Society is an inclusive dinner-debating society. We aim to invite guest

speakers who spark thought-provoking discussion. Across our three termly dinners

this year, we welcomed a total of 69 students and hosted distinguished speakers

from political and diplomatic circles.

In Michaelmas Term, we welcomed His Excellency Leigh Turner CMG, former British

Ambassador to Ukraine and Austria. He delivered a speech covering the war in

Ukraine, Britain’s post-Brexit global role, and the importance of seeing opportunities

in perceived failure. We successfully tempted His Excellency to join us in the Beer

Cellar!

In Hilary Term, we hosted The Rt. Hon. Caroline Nokes MP, Deputy Speaker of the

House of Commons and former Immigration Minister. Ms Nokes spoke powerfully

about her experiences as a woman in politics, highlighting the challenges she has


encountered as Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee. Discussion ranged

from the impact of social media on body image to reflections on the Conservative

Party losing the 2024 General Election.

To conclude the year, in Trinity Term we were privileged to host The Rt. Hon. The

Lord Heseltine CH, PC. Lord Heseltine recounted his path from the Oxford Union to

Cabinet, offering lessons from his successful career in business and politics. Lord

Heseltine focused on local government and his role in the urban regeneration of

Liverpool.


We would like to thank everyone across College who has helped The Addison Society

this year. We are grateful to Dr Conor O’Brien, our senior member, for his support.

Thank you also to members of staff from the Conference Office for organising our

events, particularly Mohammad Abdulhamid, and to the Junior Common Room and

the 1341 Society for subsidising ticket prices and making our events accessible.

QUEEN’S COLLEGE BOAT CLUB

Yu Hang, President

This year of rowing was defined by remarkable resilience and grit. In an unfortunate

sequel to last year, heavy rainfall and high river levels interrupted training for most

of Michaelmas and Hilary terms. Rowing taster

sessions were conducted on rowing machines,

the Michaelmas Novice Regatta was cancelled

(again), and novice coxes were barred from the

river. Despite that, QCBC witnessed record

engagement from the Queen’s MCR and

Wycliffe Hall; novices eagerly joined erg and

tank sessions, and senior crews made the

most out of their sporadic outings. A women’s

4+ crew notably reached the semi-finals of the

Autumns IVs Regatta in November. It was not

until mid-Hilary that novices could train onwater

regularly, and W2 and M2 exceeded all

expectations by being among the fastest crews

to qualify in rowing on. Yet, the weather struck again. The lower divisions of Torpids

were heartbreakingly cancelled owing to ‘red flag’ conditions, and W1 and M1 were

only able to race (going +2 and –2 respectively) with the substitution of senior-status

coxes into crews.

The start of Trinity term imbued new optimism and confidence within the Boat Club.

The synchrony and camaraderie within crews improved immensely during a training

camp in Gloucester for the men’s side, and a weekend lock trip to Abingdon for



the women’s side; the return of two Lightweight Blues

heralded renewed precision and vigour in training; and

for once, sunshine was steadfast. A total of six boats

qualified in rowing on for Summer VIIIs. W1 continued

the momentum from the previous two years by going

+4 overall and bumping up into Division 2; the recent

downward trend of M1’s bumps campaigns showed

signs of abating with a –1 (… perhaps a resurgence is

in the cards next year); W2 and M2 again proved their

tenacity with an incredible over-bump on Friday and

going +3 respectively. With the generous funding of the

Queen’s JCR and MCR, as well as the culinary expertise

of representatives from Wycliffe Hall, the boathouse

roof hosted a spectacular barbeque for members, friends, and alumni of QCBC.

The successes of Summer VIIIs were the culmination of a year of hard work and

preservation, and a thank you must go to the captains, committee, and coaches for

pushing us through a year of challenges.

Women’s side

Olivia Kurali, Women’s Captain

QCBC women have continued their success streak with another excellent year. As

always, the start of Michaelmas brought in a multitude of keen novices, with great

representation from not just the JCR, but also the MCR and Wycliffe Hall. While the

weather once again kept us strapped to the ergs, motivation within the novices was

high, and we entered a strong crew for the Michaelmas Novice Regatta (which was

unfortunately cancelled due to the rain). The senior women also reached the semifinal

of Autumn IVs; the race against Green Templeton in particular showcased the


physical and mental strength of the crew as they managed to overtake halfway down

the course to secure the win.

Hilary Term again had its fair share of challenging weather. Nevertheless, the energy

remained high, and we made the most of every training session as the novice women

learned the ropes and the seniors increased their training load in preparation for

Torpids. The women’s second boat qualified among the fastest crews (though their

races were cancelled due to weather conditions), while the first boat secured two

bumps and two row-overs.


This momentum was carried over into Trinity Term, which brought sunny days and

excellent water-training conditions for both rowers and coxes. A highlight was the

weekend W1 spent rowing from Oxford down to Abingdon and back again through

the stunning countryside, which cemented the technique and team spirit we needed

for Eights. Indeed, the W1 put in a stellar performance on all four days of Eights to

go +4 overall, with plenty of excitement each day. Day two brought a bonus bump

against the trees of Greenbanks after a clash with Trinity, and with Worcester right

on their tails, both crew and cox showed incredible tenacity as they managed to pull

away before the finish line. Saturday even brought two bumps, the second of which

secured our position in Division II – our highest since 2010.

W2 was no less remarkable, with their excellent qualifying followed by an overbump

on day three, putting them at +3 overall. This year, we were also able to enter a W3

boat comprising mostly novices who picked up the sport at the beginning of term.

It is no easy feat racing bumps after only four weeks of training, yet they showcased

some great rowing and team spirit.

I feel incredibly lucky to have been Women’s Captain this year and could not have

done it without the support of the College and Boat Club. Firstly, a massive thank

you to our women’s Vice-Captain, Charlotte Dorneich, for her endless work and

support, as well as to the rest of the committee, who keep this club running (and

running well!). Thank you also to our coaches, for their bank-riding in even the rainiest

of January sessions, and to the College and the 1837 Society for their continued

support. Finally, thank you to all the people who have rowed with QCBC this year –

the club would not be where it is without you.

Men’s side

Jack Harper-Hill, Men’s Captain

This year has been a truly rewarding season for the men’s side of QCBC. Early

mornings, tough erg sessions, and hours on the water paid off, with the squad

welcoming a fantastic intake of novice rowers who quickly became an integral part

of the club. Each new addition raised the standard across the side, ensuring that

the men’s crews continued to grow both in strength and spirit.



Michaelmas saw the return of our senior athletes alongside the new novice intake.

Training together as a single squad, we mixed boats and held joint erg sessions,

deliberately blending experience with fresh energy to raise the overall standard before

selection. The improvement in the novices was quick, as they became competitive

rowers, setting themselves up for a strong year ahead.

As Hilary arrived, we were confronted by the challenge of Torpids. M1 and M2 were

selected and trained hard throughout the winter, braving icy rivers and the early

mornings. Sadly, river conditions prevented the lower divisions from racing, denying

M2 the chance to prove themselves on the water. This was especially frustrating

given the hours and effort that they had put in. M1, meanwhile, fought through a

fiercely competitive week. Although the crew finished with a result of –2, this did not

reflect the quality of their performances or the determination showed.

At the close of Hilary, the men’s side embarked on a training camp at Gloucester

Rowing Club. Just under a week on a beautiful long stretch of river, with sunshine

and space to refine technique proved crucial. Under the guidance of coaches Evie

and Jack D., the tour was a productive training opportunity and a brilliant bonding

experience for the squad.

With the summer came Eights, and

training was ramped up under the

leadership of our new head coach, Kai,

a Henley champion whose expertise

pushed the side to new levels. Crews

were reselected to reflect the progress

made across the year, and for the first

time in my memory the men’s side

entered three complete VIIIs.

M3, composed largely of novices, did the

club proud, rowing over solidly and

coming agonisingly close to bumps on

several days. M2 delivered one of the

standout campaigns of the entire club,

narrowly missing out on blades and

demonstrating a real show of talent, led

fantastically by our vice-captain Vlad. M1

set themselves the goal to maintain their

position in Div 2 and while facing tough competition, were successful in defending

their position – a massive success.

QCBC’s success this year was not limited to the Isis. We were immensely proud

to see James Hopkinson, alongside Charlotte Wheatley of the women’s side, earn


their spots in the Lightweight Blue Boats against Cambridge, representing Oxford

at the highest level. Two athletes in dark blue from the same college is no small

achievement.

None of this would have been possible without the extraordinary dedication of our

coaching team. Kai and Jack gave their all to the men’s crews, while Evie and Olivia,

coaches on the women’s side, also contributed generously to our progress. It was

also a pleasure to work alongside Olivia K, Vlad and James, whose help made every

outing as smooth as possible. Finally, our thanks go to our President, Yu Hang,

whose tireless work behind the scenes ensured the smooth running of the club and

made this entire season possible.


I now gladly pass on to Raph Fox and Rowan Flanagan who I know will continue to

lead the men’s side with ambition, using their experience to the club’s advantage.

CULINARY COMBINATION CLUB

Benjamin Tozer, President

Despite being a new society, we have pushed the boundaries of gastronomy, through

pain-staking research which has cost friendships, sanity, and sometimes even

our taste buds. Our artful self-sacrifice has led to the discovery of many culinary

wonders. Merging both the fields of science and art, this society has expanded our

minds in the pursuit of culinary excellence.

Each time our society meets, we have an extremely rigorous process to record the

results of our investigation. This involves giving each sample a rating out of ten based

on a mixture of flavour, texture, and how likely we would be to eat it again.

Some of our most commendable discoveries include fishfingers and custard, banana

hot dog with peanut butter and BBQ seasoning, and vanilla ice cream with soy

sauce and peanut butter. Amongst our less well-received dishes are pickle juice icelollies,

porridge with mincemeat, cinnamon and pesto, and a particularly abominable

mushroom smoothie, whose contents shall remain classified. We have even fulfilled

our childhood dream of eating green eggs and ham, but unlike Sam-I-Am, we would

not eat them on a train, we would not eat them in the rain.

Every scientific endeavour has a theme. From porridge to ice-lollies, nothing is offlimits.

If you have any ideas or recommendations of culinary combinations, please

let us know @_theccclub.



EGLESFIELD MUSICAL SOCIETY

Matilda Bates, President

The year got off to a great start with two concerts: the first performed by current

students for the new Freshers, which was excellently attended, and the second

in third week, with performances by the Freshers. It was a lovely opportunity to

see all the new talent at Queen’s, of which there is a lot! EMS drinks were very

well attended, and it was lovely to meet new Queen’s members. There were big

measures as always!

Other notable events in Michaelmas were our a capella performance at the 1341

Society Christmas Luncheon, and our end of term concert, which was attended by

the Master of Balliol – a result of our orchestra’s collaboration this year with Balliol

College orchestra. The concert involved some avant garde performances, such as

feeding the piano a bucket of hay, which was enjoyed by Balliol’s Master and us all.

In Hilary Term the EMS Dinner was a big success, as always. It was attended by

members of Queen’s and members of other colleges affiliated with the society, such

as the director of our musical. The orchestra performed at Balliol College Concert,

which was a brilliant evening and the end-of-term concert in Hilary featured lots of a

capella performances, such as I Want it That Way and Stacey’s Mom, and as ever,

lots of English Cadences!

Trinity was taken up by our production of Fiddler on the Roof, held in 4th week. This

was a massive effort from members of the committee: produced by the President

Matilda Bates and conducted by recital manager Kyle Siwek and Freshers’ Rep, Tom

Constantinou. We sold a record number

of tickets, and the show received rave

reviews, a testament to our talented cast

and band, incredible tech team, and

amazing direction and choreography. We

all had so much fun putting it together

and it was a fantastic collaborative

experience, featuring students from

over 15 colleges. It was most definitely

a highlight of the year. In 8th Week we

held our finalists’ concert, where members who are leaving Queen’s performed. It

was a lovely way to say goodbye to those leaving us.

Throughout the year, our Saturday recitals were very well attended thanks to our

recital manager’s advertising strategies. The performances were of the highest

quality as always, and we received many donations from the public.

EMS had a fantastic year, and next year is sure to be even better!


WOMEN’S FOOTBALL

Katarina Harrison-Gaze, Captain

The Queen’s College Women’s Football team had

a successful 2024-25 season, winning the Football

Cuppers plate and coming second in Futsal

Cuppers. The team, made up of Queen’s and

Magdalen women, defeated St John’s/St Anne’s

4-3 and then St Catz 3-0 to claim victory in the

Football Cuppers plate final. We also saw success

in the Futsal Cuppers, coming runners up in a hardfought

final, losing 0-3 to Worcester after a

dominating run through the knockout stages with

scorelines as big as 10-0 against Jesus/New and a 7-3 victory over LMH/St Hugh’s.

For those interested in the Oxford-Cambridge rivalry, you will be pleased to know

that we defeated Magdalen Cambridge 7-1 in our annual matchup!


My time as Captain was extremely fulfilling, helping me develop as a person, providing

me with a great respite from exams as a Finalist, and leading to close friendships

across years and across colleges which will last for life. This year would have not

been as enjoyable for me without football. It was an honour to captain the Eagles

and watch players come into themselves, both on and off the pitch. I can only thank

the girls at Magdalen for being so welcoming to the Queen’s players and such an

integral part of the team! My heartfelt thanks go to Rhiannon Petteford (Queen’s) who

showed up to every single match alongside me, and the two Magdalen co-Captains,

Isabella Hawkins and Aysha Kalvenas. Our success on the pitch is a testament to

the dedication our players showed throughout the season. Here’s to many more

successful seasons yet to come!

MEN’S FOOTBALL

Freddy Conway-Shaw, Captain

2024/25 was an excellent year for football at Queen’s, filled with success and trophychasing.

The Men’s first team were promoted, after a successful season saw the

team narrowly miss out on the title to Oriel. For the first time in three years, they also

got through the first round of Cuppers with a storming 8-2 win against Hertford.

The ANIMALS (men’s 2nd team), in true ANIMALS fashion, lost more games than

they won, but continued to provide a platform for many players to enjoy football at

Queen’s. In that vein, an end-of-year mixed gender 7-a-side tournament held at

Fortress saw over 60 players, and promises a great future for the club.



HOCKEY

Ollie Meek, Captain

Queen’s hockey has a history of strong

performances over the years, having won

Cuppers four years ago. Despite the fact the

club is currently on the smaller size, the

College hockey society continues to run after

teaming up with Wadham and Trinity colleges

over the last couple of years. This year in

particular was very successful for the team,

competing in games against other colleges

typically once a week during termtime. Hilary term saw Queen’s Hockey Club being

promoted back to Division One in the college Hockey League, having slipped into

the Second Division a couple years ago. Admittedly this was largely due to our team

being able to field enough players… I guess it shows that taking part really is the

main thing that counts!

The Queen’s/Wadham/Trinity team additionally had a successful Cuppers

tournament in Trinity term. The club managed to successfully qualify for the main

draw of the Cuppers league by beating not just one but two teams – including St

Hugh’s/Christchurch and winning a close penalty shootout against the favourites

New College. Defeating St John’s/Keble in the quarter final, our team managed to

reach all the way to the semi-finals. Unfortunately, a narrow loss to Teddy Hall in

the semis knocked our team out and prevented us making it to the final. Overall,

we had an enjoyable and successful year of hockey and were impressed with our

performance. We hope to recruit even more players in Michaelmas 2025 to grow

the club and most importantly to ensure Hockey at Queen’s continues to thrive for

years to come.

LACROSSE

Anna Vines, Captain

This year the Lacrosse team at Queen’s

was glad to receive a new set of balls

and sticks, with which we played multiple

college matches and most notably, beat

Magdalen College 14-5 on the Fortress

grounds. Dan Kelly and Olivia Hamilton

were our chief goal scorers, whilst M1

rower Tom Batchelor continued to

maintain an essential presence on the

field. We also ran an introductory event


in Freshers’ week, where we attracted a new crop of young players. This is always

an excellent opportunity to encourage total beginners to try out a brand-new sport,

thanks to the equipment funded by the College. Among our new players was next

year’s Captain Kitty Arnold, who plays for the University Mixed Lacrosse team and

is delighted to be taking over the reins.

LOOKER-UPPERS

Klara Zhao, President


The Looker-Uppers emerged from obscurity this

academic year, after having been awarded the

princely sum of £500 from College in support of our

programme of events for 2024/5, which centred on

the academic theme of ‘Perception’.

The symposium series was an immense success,

with speakers from all corners of the Queen’s

community taking us on a journey through lookingup

in diverse disciplines, resulting in an exhibition of

all the different kinds of Looker-Uppers in the world,

past and present, and feeding into the future. This

would not have been possible without the genius

and generosity of our speakers: in Michaelmas

term, Cameron Quinn, Matthew Shaw, Christopher

Hollings, Lindsay Turnbull, Rebecca Beasley, and Michael Riordan, guided us

through Perceptions and Conceptions of ‘Up-Looking’, and in Hilary term, we were

Looking Up Across the Ages with John Baines and Frances Reynolds, who led

us through Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. We had brilliant student speakers in

the second half of term, too, and thanks must go to Rhiannon Petteford, Katie St.

Francis, Monica Groth, Benjamin Harcourt-Sharpe, Elizabeth Lee, and James Jolley,

for an exciting symposium that exhibited a medley of interests in diverse senses and

contexts of looking-up: from seeing through the eyes of birds to investigations of

the self-perception and mentality

of a 19th century architect at the

forefront of the Greek Revival

Movement, from proprioception

and feeling up in the art of ballet

to the changing perception of

the stars through the lens of

general relativity, and, finally, on

reconciliation of looking-up and

looking-down in terms of Hume’s

philosophical tract on suicide.



Thank goodness we had a balloon ride lined up, in order to process all these farreaching

reflections. There, we became the subject of our looking-up, looked up

at rather than looking up. Never before had we experienced such up-ness, and

we were able to celebrate this glorious experience at our Trinity term event, which

featured the premiere of a short film made in the wake of the balloon ride (with rescreenings

in 7th Week), some live music by a local, muntjac-inspired folk duo, and

final reflections on this exciting year. The Looker-Uppers will now take a few years’

rest, awaiting the next revival.

QUEEN’S COLLEGE MEDICAL SOCIETY

Danny McAlea, President

The Queen’s College Medical Society is a tight-knit community of medical and

biomedical students, spanning all years of the medical science courses. The QCMS

calendar began with the annual Michaelmas dinner which brought together over 50

Queen’s students and tutors, and hosted author, Dr Monty Lyman, who discussed

his latest book, The Immune Mind. Additionally, a QCMS conference “Conversations

in Medicine” hosted by previous QCMS President Bethan Storey invited a range of

speakers into Queen’s, including author Dr Caroline Elton and previous NICE chair,

Sir David Haslam. An annual QCMS trip to watch the Tingewick production of Beauty

and the yeast infection did not fail to amuse and doubtless assured many QCMS


members that the 4th-years had chosen wisely to pursue a career in medicine.

This year also marked the first QCMS Christmas dinner, with a lavish spread provided

by the 6th-years, undoubtedly a new tradition to look forward to in years to come.

Hilary Term saw the revival of QCMS curry night, as well as the return of QCMS

karaoke. As ever, Professor Chris Norbury did not disappoint and left the stage to

raucous applause from a packed “Mad Hatter” karaoke bar. Finally, Trinity Term saw

a QCMS football-match, along with a sneak-peek into the IMMposters upcoming

set at Queen’s ball.

It has been a privilege to be President of QCMS this year. I am grateful to the

support, and laughs, afforded by my fellow committee members: Harry Pratt (Vice

President), Neil Beaton (Treasurer), and Tom Gibson (Social Secretary) and wish all

the best to Tom Gibson and Olivia Kurali who will take on the role of co-presidents

in the forthcoming academic year; they will make a fantastic team. Thanks also go

to previous member, Dr Ian Bayman (Physiology, 1964), whose generous donation

will provide QCMS with the opportunity to host events which champion the best of

medical sciences in the coming years. Finally, I thank the members of QCMS: my

close colleagues and friends, who truly make this society so special.


ATHLETIC DISTINCTIONS

BLUES

David E. Craven (Men’s Gymnastics)

Candela Ferrer Diez (Women’s Water Polo)

Chloe-Marie Hawley (Women’s Rugby Football)

Katie Mewawalla (Women’s Water Polo)

Christopher E. Mingard (Men’s Cricket)

Joe D. Morrow (Men’s Cross Country)

Harry Pratt (Men’s Rugby Football)

Daniel S. Yoon (Men’s Ice Hockey)

HALF BLUES

Kitty E. Arnold (Women’s Lacrosse)

Dillon Austen (Men’s Lacrosse)

Thomas A. Batchelor (Men’s Handball)

Leo Burton (Mixed Ultimate Frisbee)

Alejandro Fernández Jiménez (Mixed Korfball)

Anna Higgins (Women’s Golf)

James Hopkinson (Men’s Boat)

Lucie J.E. Lindsay (Women’s Fencing)

Atila M. Schrieber (Mixed Rifle)

Charlotte J. Wheatley (Women’s Lightweight Rowing)


Old Members’ Activities

Credit: John Cairns

DEVELOPMENT AND OLD MEMBER

RELATIONS REPORT

The 2024-25 academic year at Queen’s marked another

busy and successful one for Old Member relations and

fundraising. From Oxford and London to Berlin and the

south of France, there were opportunities aplenty for Old

Members to stay connected and give back to Queen’s.

Dr Justin B. Jacobs

Director of

Development &

Supernumerary Fellow

Old Members’ Events

Each September, the College springs back to life as Old

Members begin to return, signalling the end of the Long

Vacation and setting the stage for an always busy Old

Members’ events calendar. In the first half of the year,

our events tend to focus on reunions that welcome Old

Members and their contemporaries back to Oxford; in the second, we set out to

reconnect with Old Members and Friends further afield.

For nearly a century, the Old Members’ Dinner has traditionally opened the season –

a lively event that fills the Hall and brings together generations in conversation and

Credit: Kois Miah

The Old Members’ Office team pictured at the 2025 Old Member Reception at the Royal Academy

of Arts


laughter. In more recent years it has also offered a chance to showcase the College’s

current work and ideas.

Before this year’s dinner Queen’s joined the University’s celebration of the 100th

anniversary of Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis with a panel discussion in the Weston

Library Lecture Theatre, co-hosted with St John’s College. A panel of Queen’s

Fellows – including Professors Karen Leeder, Ritchie Robertson, and Charlie Louth –

explored Kafka’s legacy from diverse perspectives.


As the afternoon’s academic programme gave way to an evening of socialising, Old

Members arrived for Evensong, followed by pre-dinner drinks in the Upper Library.

A large group of 1994 matriculands returned for a self-organised 30th anniversary

reunion, adding vibrancy to the evening, which was presided over by Professor

Robert Taylor. In a break from tradition, post-dinner drinks were held in the newly

refurbished JCR, as the SCR was undergoing its own renovations.

October saw the College move into its annual year-group reunions, first with the

Jubilee Gaudy Lunch for those who matriculated in 1954, 1964, and 1974. With Old

Members watching nervous Freshers gather in Back Quad for their matriculation

photo, it was a poignant reminder of how the College naturally pulls together past,

present, and future.

In November, two new events were introduced. First, the Centenary Visiting

Professor in PPE lecture, an endowed post created and shared between Queen’s

and University Colleges, hosted this year by Queen’s. In this first Politics lecture of

the series, Supernumerary Fellow Professor Christina Davis (Harvard) delivered a

sold-out talk to undergraduates and graduate students on Economic Diplomacy

and Balance of Power in the Shulman Auditorium. She was joined on the evening

by each of the Philosophy, Politics and Economics Department Heads, colleagues

from the Blavatnik School of Government, and senior members and Fellows from

both Queen’s and Univ.

The second new event in November was a revised version of an event held for our

newer Old Members – the “Ten Years Later-ish Lunch”, hosted by Fellow in History

Dr Conor O’Brien (Theology, 2010), which welcomed back the 2012–2014 cohorts.

This biennial event will be complemented by a London-based gathering for those

marking their first decade since joining Queen’s.

Bookending the holiday period were the two traditional Gaudies: the Boar’s Head

Gaudy, for 1988 and 1989 matriculands, and the Needle and Thread Gaudy in

January 2025 for the 1978 and 1979 cohorts. The latter was significant because

it also marked the beginning of mixed-year reunions for this event. These two

gatherings offer cherished opportunities to revisit Queen’s around the holidays, reflect

on enduring memories, and observe what has remained and what has changed.



In January, the Provost and her partner hosted a dinner in Bristol, where we have

70 Old Members now residing. Over dinner and drinks at the Hotel du Vin, this was

a welcome opportunity to get outside of Oxford and share news with some who

hadn’t returned to College in years.

February brought the Provost’s Lecture, featuring Professor Laurence Tubiana, CEO

of the European Climate Foundation. Live-streamed from the Shulman Auditorium,

she was joined by Supernumerary Fellow Professor Christina Davis and MCR student

Victoria Harwell (MSc in Global and Imperial History, 2024). Their conversation

spanned local initiatives – like solar panels in Back Quad – to global climate policy,

continuing themes from the previous year’s London Reception at the Arboretum.

The final reunion of the year was the subject dinner for Physics, Materials Science,

and Engineering Old Members. Held in March, it was a chance to not only reconnect

but also bid farewell to Professor Robert Taylor, who stepped down after 34 years

as Tutorial Fellow in Physics. Before the dinner, Old Members were invited to ask

questions about efficiency in solar cells as part of an engaging presentation in the

Shulman Auditorium given by Extraordinary Junior Research Fellow in Material

Sciences Dr Matthew Wright.

In 2020, the College was set to travel to Berlin as part of the University’s Meeting

Minds alumni programme. Sadly, the pandemic led to its cancellation – the first of

Credit: Till Budde

Reunion in Berlin at the Ambassador’s Private Residence.


many. So it was with great pleasure that we were able to make the trip in April, and

it proved to be well worth the wait.

Graciously hosted by HM Ambassador Andrew (Modern Languages, 1986) and

Helen Mitchell at the Ambassador’s Private Residence, the evening began with a

panel discussion featuring leading experts on Germany. Chaired by Professor Karen

Leeder, Schwarz-Taylor Professor of German Language and Literature, the panel

included Honorary Fellow Sir Paul Lever (Lit. Hum., 1962), former Ambassador to

Germany; author and commentator John Kampfner (History and Russian, 1981); and

Ambassador Mitchell. Germany is home to the third-largest group of Old Members

outside the UK and the US – a testament to the College’s historic strengths in

Modern Languages, the Laming Fund, and previous Florey Scholarships. It was a

delight to see so many people gathered in such a splendid setting, including many

who were attending their first Old Members event.


The spring calendar continued to gather momentum in May with two of our largest

annual events taking place in London and Oxford. On 14 May, Old Members

attended the London Reception at the Royal Academy of Arts, where they explored

the collections with Rebecca Lyons (Modern Languages, 1991) and bid a public

farewell to Provost Claire Craig. A sell-out crowd was on hand to reconnect with

friends, browse the Collection Gallery, and (perhaps unsurprisingly) spend some time

in the bar. In her farewell address, the Provost reflected on her six years at Queen’s

and the many enriching conversations she has had with Old Members around the

Credit: Kois Miah

Claire Craig speaking at the 2025 Old Member Reception at the Royal Academy of Arts.



world, while paying particular attention to the many changes that had taken, and

were taking, place both in and outside of Oxford. It was a wonderful send-off that

was made all the better by the many generations of Old Members gathered around

the room.

Later in May, members of the Taberdars’ Society – those who have pledged a legacy

to the College – gathered for their annual lunch. With over 300 members, the Society

is a source of pride for Queen’s, and the lunch remains a popular occasion. This

year’s event featured a performance in the Shulman Auditorium by the OXUS string

quartet, including Spike Wilson (Music, 1979), alongside a wonderful meal in Hall.

As spring turned to summer, the College hosted one final gathering in Hall to honour

its Eglesfield and Philippa Benefactors. Over 75 Benefactors and guests returned

for this special event, which also marked the Provost’s final opportunity to meet Old

Members. In her closing remarks, she spoke of the vital role philanthropy plays in

supporting Queen’s educational mission and expressed gratitude for the generosity

shown during her tenure, while encouraging continued support for the College’s

future.

Our Old Members’ Office team attended the Oxford Alumni Leavers’ Fair, where

we had the pleasure of meeting this year’s leavers. It was wonderful to celebrate

their achievements, wish them well for the future, and welcome them into the Old

Member community. We shared information about the many benefits available to

Old Members, and handed out some lovely mementos and freebies, including the

exclusive Queen’s luggage tag, to mark this exciting new chapter.

Typically, the Benefactors’ Dinner concludes the Old Members’ programme – but

this year ended on a different note, quite literally. Thanks to the recent Waverley

endowment for the College Choir, the Waverley Fellow in Music, Professor Owen

Rees led a summer tour in France, with performances at the Gensac festival, La

Madeleine in Paris, and Toulouse Cathedral. The tour began with a concert of

madrigals at the lovely home of Rick (Geology, 1975) and Janeen Haythornthwaite.

Guests enjoyed al fresco dining, stunning sunset views of the Dordogne, and a

tasting of four wines brought over from the College cellars, specially selected for the

occasion by SCR Wine Steward Professor Robert Taylor. With over 30 Old Members

and guests in attendance, it was a fitting finale to a vibrant and busy year for the Old

Members’ events calendar.

In addition to these wonderful and varied Old Members’ events, the Director of

Development was warmly hosted by Old Members and Friends during visits to

Bethesda, Washington DC, San Francisco, Palo Alto, Philadelphia, Boston, and,

perhaps in a College-first, Stamford, Connecticut.


Fundraising and Access All Areas

Keeping Old Members connected to Queen’s is the core mission of the Old

Members’ Office and it is this enduring connection that inspires so many to support

our community each year.

2024–25 was no exception. We were delighted to receive over £1.8 million in new

funds and more than £2 million in cash gifts from Old Members and Friends,

supporting the College’s three fundraising priorities: access and outreach, student

support, and academic excellence.


We are deeply grateful to the over 700 donors whose generosity strengthens our

students, researchers, buildings, and so many other aspects of the College. This

financial support helps to ensure Queen’s will remain a special and life-changing

place for generations to come.

Every gift this year contributed to the continued success of our Access All Areas

fundraising programme. Launched in 2016 following the successful completion of the

New Library appeal, Access All Areas focuses on supporting the people of Queen’s:

our exceptional undergraduate and graduate students, those reached through

expanding access and outreach efforts (especially in northwest England), and our

world-class tutors and researchers. Now in its second phase, the programme has

raised nearly £40 million for these vital areas.


History Fellows, past and present pictured in the Prestwich Room: from left to right, Dr John Davis,

Dr Meleisa Ono-George, Prof John Blair and Dr Conor O’Brien.



This year there were three particular fundraising events that saw Old Members and

Friends come together to support the College:

• The John Prestwich Fellowship in History was fully endowed after nearly

25 years of fundraising, reaching its £3.3 million goal. Now held by Dr Conor

O’Brien (Theology, 2010), History becomes a fully endowed subject alongside

Chemistry, Modern Languages, Medical Sciences, and Music. In a time

when humanities face increasing challenges in the UK and elsewhere, this

achievement is both significant and timely. We look forward to celebrating this

success with History Old Members at the subject dinner in spring 2026.

• History also benefitted significantly from the creation of two student support

funds:

– The Christine Peters Prize for Women’s and Gender History was

established thanks to gifts received by family, Old Members and former

colleagues of former Stipendiary College Lecturer in Early Modern History

Dr Christine Peters. Christine sadly passed away in April 2024 and in a fitting

tribute the College will now be able to recognise her many years of service

to the College and its history undergraduates with a named essay prize to

be awarded every Trinity Term.

– The Accomplishment Scholarship was created to enable UK students

from disadvantaged backgrounds to read for a Master’s degree in

History. The scholarship – an 8-year commitment and the first scholarship

to take advantage of internal endowment funding made available by

Governing Body in 2024-25 to help disadvantaged UK students – is funded

through The Accomplishment Trust, established and chaired by Honorary

Fellow Sir Michael Barber (Modern History, 1974).

• The return of the College telethon after a decade-long hiatus. Over two

weeks in January, current students called Old Members worldwide to share

updates, reconnect, and invite support for Access All Areas. They spoke with

474 Old Members, updated 303 contact details, and raised over £280,000

in donations and pledges. The telethon continues to highlight the value of

personal connection and the tremendous value of storytelling and sharing of

advice between students and Old Members.

As we reflect on another year of generosity, connection, and shared purpose, the

Old Members’ Office is reminded that Queen’s thrives because of the enduring

support of its global community. Every conversation, every gift, and every moment

of engagement helps shape the future of the College. Thank you to everyone who

played a part in these successes.


QUEEN’S WOMEN’S NETWORK

The Queen’s Women’s Network (QWN) enjoyed another successful 12

months, extending our reach and impact across our community of Old

Members and current students.

In October 2024, we began the academic year by connecting with newly matriculated

students at Queen’s Freshers’ Fair, with QWN represented on the Equalities stand

and at the Women & Disabilities event.


We held our annual anchor event in February 2025, ahead of International Women’s

Day. This year, our focus was the theme of Change, blending and balancing how we

manage, manifest, and ignite change through our professional and personal lives.

The event was hosted in London, in the beautiful Nave at St Ethelburga’s Centre for

Reconciliation and Peace on Bishopsgate in London. More than 40 QWN members

from across generations, and guests, came together to hear a lively panel discussion

with Q&A, followed by informal networking in a friendly and supportive environment.

We are thankful to our wonderful panel for such enlightened and inspiring insights

from their experiences.

Credit: Christine Baro-Hone

QWN London 2025



Credit: Edmund Blok

QWN Committee Lunch, June 2025

QWN Committee members past and present were delighted to join the outgoing

Provost, Dr Claire Craig, for lunch in College in June 2025, to celebrate our

collaboration during her tenure and give thanks for her unswerving support for our

Network. The current Committee took the opportunity to meet in advance, reflecting

on our aspirations and planning for the academic year ahead.

In addition to our events, we are excited to launch a mentoring scheme for recent

Queen’s graduates. We have already begun to line up prospective mentors, drawn

from alumnae spanning generations of Old Members, who are keen to connect

and offer support from their own experiences and learnings. For our pilot, we invite

graduates from 2024 and 2025 to contact us at qwnetworkcontact@gmail.com if

interested in participating, or if they would like to learn more.

Our next main event, again for International Women’s Day, will take place in March

2026. After our 2025 gathering in London, we will return to College for this event. We

look forward to reinforcing our bond with students in the Junior and Middle Common

Rooms as we make plans for the coming year.

As ever, we extend our sincere gratitude to the Old Members’ Office for their

collaboration on QWN events and initiatives. Many QWN members attended the

London Reception in May 2025 at the Royal Academy of Arts, with fascinating

speaker Rebecca Lyons (Modern Languages, 1991), Director of Collections and

Learning at the Royal Academy, also the Commemoration Ball in College in June,


which proved popular across year-groups. We look forward to the “New” Old

Members’ drinks (for those who matriculated from 2010 onwards) in the City of

London in November 2025, and to the Garden Party in College in July 2026, where

QWN will again have a stand for members and friends to drop by.

For the new academic year, we join the wider College community in welcoming Paul

Johnson as incoming Provost. We aim to continue building momentum through our

programme of activities in 2025-26, looking ahead to the 50th anniversary of coeducation

at Queen’s in 2029.


We are always keen to hear from Old Members with feedback and suggestions,

and welcome input from anyone with ideas and energy to shape and deliver

future QWN initiatives. You can reach us at qwnetworkcontact@gmail.com. You

can also connect with us online through our LinkedIn group (https://www.linkedin.

com/groups/9088494/), now at 300 members and growing. Details and recaps of

previous QWN events are available on our webpage: https://www.queens.ox.ac.uk/

join-our-networks/the-queens-womens-network-qwn/.

Warmest thanks to founding and former QWN Committee members for their

continued encouragement and counsel, and to the current Committee for their

candour and spirit in advancing our mission.

Elizabeth Pilkington, (Mathematics, 2000)




Credit: Edmund Blok

A Celebration of Women Academics event

Cleaning

Oxford United celebrate promotion to the Championship with High Street bus parade

Into the Upper windows Library in Front Quad Outreach session with medical Graduation student Bethan Day in Storey 2025



Easter Science Residential

sample tutorial

Easter Science Residential lecture



Setting up for the Eglesfield

Musical Society’s

Summer Musical

Credit: Matt Shaw

Credit: Matt Shaw

Scraping ice off the

New Library skylight


Student Ambassadors

on Members the Open of Day the Choir


GAUDIES – FUTURE INVITATIONS


Boar’s Head

Year Matric Years

2026 1990 & 1991

2027 2002 & 2003

2028 1992 & 1993

2029 2004 & 2005

Needle and Thread

Year Matric Years

2026 2008 & 2009

2027 1980 & 1981

2028 2010 & 2011

2029 1982 & 1983

Jubilee Matriculation Gaudy Lunch

Year Matric Years

2026 1976/1966/1956

2027 1977/1967/1957

2028 1978/1968/1958

2029 1979/1969/1959

Old Members’ Dinner

Saturday 19 September 2026 All Old Members welcome


650TH ANNIVERSARY

TRUST FUND AWARD REPORTS

650th Award-winners

Dillon Austen

£500 towards participating in the England Universities Aspire Talent Pathway, which

is designed “to nurture athletic potential through world-class training and support

with the ultimate goal of fast-tracking athletes into the England Lacrosse Men’s

National Team”


Matilda Bates

£250 towards The Eglesfield Musical Society’s Trinity Term production of Fiddler

on the Roof

Harrison (Harry) Beckett

£375 towards undertaking a course in ‘Introduction to Research Methods and

Statistics’ at UCL’s Centre for Applied Statistics Courses

Lily (Yunxuan) Bo

£500 towards the production of a Chinese Play, which will take place next academic

year. The play will adapt Fang Siqi’s First Love Paradise, a novel by Yihan Lin

Matthew Buckley

£500 towards the cost of a training and outdoor skills trip in Scotland, in preparation

for a larger Oxford University Expedition in the future

Oisin Byrne

To be awarded an exceptional award of £750 towards the cost of running their play,

Unprofessional, at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this summer

Georgia Campbell

£171.90 towards the cost of attending the Student Publication Awards National

Conference 2025, representing Cherwell (Oxford’s largest and only independent

student publication) as its Editor-in-Chief

Henry Coop

£500 towards the cost of supporting an ensemble of singers, many associated with

The Queen’s College Choir, to tour to Cumbria from Thursday 3 to Monday 7 July

2025, visiting sites and areas historically associated with Queen’s



Samuel Edwards

£225 towards the cost of participating as a volunteer as an Assistant Leader for a

week on a camp called Lymington Rushmore

Chloe-Marie Hawley

£500 towards the cost of an international pre-season tour for the Blues Women*s

Rugby Team, as the newly appointed Women*s Blues Rugby Captain

Alika Ho

£500 towards the cost of volleyball training sessions to create a Queen’s volleyball

society and to participate in the Trinity Term Cuppers tournament

Aidan Hill

£350 towards the cost of supporting participation in the British University Ice Hockey

Association’s National Championships in Sheffield as captain of the Oxford Vikings

B team

Jarad Jackson

£250 towards the overall cost of a week’s travel to Rome to explore the legacy of the

artist and architect Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) and his enduring ubiquity

within the city’s landscape, and to produce a suite of drawings and architectural

models

Xinyue Liu

£500 towards the cost of documenting and developing the work of The BEIMA

(Bureau of Environmental Imaging and Memory Analysis) through filming a dance

performance at The Queen’s College and Port Meadow, as well as an upcoming

live performance at the ASLE-UKI Biennial Conference in Ireland in August 2025

Katie Mewawalla

Awarded the Pippa Koller Prize for water polo

Rohan Navaratnem

£250 towards a contribution of the overall cost of a cultural exploration trip to

Indonesia

Luke Nixon

£500 towards the cost of taking a student-production, Nuts, to the Edinburgh Fringe

Festival

Rafael Perez Evans

£250 towards developing a podcast series focused on Crip and critical disability

voices


Kit Renshaw-Hammond

£319.80 towards the cost of train travel to the Edinburgh Fringe, taking the production

For Revue Dollars More, as well as undertaking a stand-up slot

Marnie Rodriguez-Skellon

£284.39 towards cost of participating in the UK’s longest running 48 hour-short

film competition

Etta Selim

£240 towards the cost of the subscription service needed to host their new podcast,

Global Shakespeare, which explores the intersections of Shakespeare and global

theatre


Anna Vines

£500 towards visiting Namibia to build upon research on the German colonisation of

Namibia, visiting German-speaking areas like Swakopmund and Windhoek

Yi Zhou

£150 towards the cost of participating in fencing competitions and fencing equipment

fees


Selected reports


Dillon Austen

Participating in the England Universities Aspire Talent Pathway

I am very grateful to the 650th Anniversary Trust Fund for supporting my participation

in the England Universities Aspire Talent Pathway through a £500 grant. This

opportunity would not have been possible without the generosity of the College,

and I am pleased to share an account of what I have been able to achieve with this

support.

I first began playing lacrosse while at Oxford and very quickly discovered that it

was far more than a casual pastime. My commitment deepened as I progressed

through the college and university ranks, culminating in representing the Blues in

the Varsity match against Cambridge, where I was awarded the Citi Most Valuable

Player award. That match was a turning point, giving me the confidence to pursue

the sport at a higher level. Last year I represented the South of England at the British

National Championships, earning caps against Ireland and Scotland, and shortly

afterwards I was invited by national selectors to join the England Universities Aspire

Talent Pathway.

The Aspire Programme is specifically designed to identify and develop athletes with

the potential to reach the England Men’s National Team. From January to April, I

travelled to Nottingham and Loughborough for four intensive training weekends, led

by England Lacrosse’s professional coaching staff. Each session demanded a great

deal, combining tactical drills, physical conditioning, and competitive match play.

The grant covered the cost of squad fees, travel, and accommodation, enabling me

to take part fully without financial difficulty. Completing the programme in its entirety

was a significant achievement, and I hope to continue with the squad in the next

season following my graduation from Oxford.

There were many highlights during these months. One that stands out was during a

competitive training match in Nottingham, which required me to implement complex

tactical systems under pressure. Beyond this moment, perhaps the greatest reward

was the opportunity to train alongside some of the best university players in the

country, several of whom already have international experience. The exposure to

this level of competition and coaching has raised my own standards in a way that

will continue to shape my development.

The benefits have been both personal and communal. Personally, I have grown in

technical skill, fitness, and mental resilience, but also in leadership. I have brought

these lessons back to Queen’s, where members of our College competed alongside

St Catz and Jesus to win the 2025 summer Cuppers tournament. More broadly, I


believe my experience has contributed to a culture of sporting ambition and inclusivity

within the College and University, showing how opportunities at a higher level can

inspire participation and commitment at every stage.

Looking back, I feel that the England Aspire Programme has been a transformative

step in my athletic journey, and it has come at an especially exciting moment for

lacrosse as a sport, with its return to the Olympic Games in 2028 for the first time

in over a century. The support of the 650th Anniversary Trust Fund has been vital

in enabling me to take this step, and I am very grateful for the chance to represent

both myself and Queen’s in this way.


Harry Beckett

Undertaking a course in ‘Introduction to Research Methods and Statistics’ at

UCL’s Centre for Applied Statistics Courses

I am very grateful for the grant from the 650th Anniversary Trust Fund to be able to

do the Introduction to Statistics and Research Methods (Online) course with UCL.

The course covered the fundamentals of statistics and research methods (including

the development of research questions, study design, different types of data,

graphical displays of data and results, summarising numeric and categorical data,

numeric and categorical differences between groups, hypothesis testing, confidence

intervals and p-values, parametric tests, non-parametric tests, bootstrapping, and

regression analysis). Having returned to some papers from my degree that are more

heavily reliant on statistics (namely the psycholinguistics readings), I feel much more

comfortable with data and I’m more confident engaging with the papers. Beyond my

original aims to become more confident with statistics, to be able to explore options

for further study, and to be prepared to take on independent research projects on my

year abroad, the course has also helped me with engaging with the content of my

degree. Due to the fact that linguistics is a very broad field, there can often be quite

a jump in skills required between different papers, and so supplementary help with

aspects that I have less experience in seems to have been very beneficial.

Without the grant, it wouldn’t have been possible for me to have gained the knowledge

of statistics and confidence with data that the course has given me. The 2025/2026

academic year is my year abroad, which will give me time to consider further study,

and what specifically I would like to go into. There are lots of opportunities to get

experience with neighbouring fields to linguistics and to take on independent projects

throughout the year, as study placements allow students to get experience in a broad

range of subjects without the pressure of exams at the end. Before the course, I

wasn’t confident with the prospect of applying to courses for which I didn’t have

sufficient experience with data (as fellow students in these classes are often from

STEM degrees and will have had to gain some training in statistics as a precursor to

entry), but now I am looking forward to using the foundations that the Old Members



have provided to be able to properly explore my options and feel confident for further

study. The grant, then, has allowed me to fill a skill gap and improve my confidence

in aspects of my degree and the prospect of exploring new subjects.

Matthew Buckley

Attending a training and outdoor skills trip in Scotland, in preparation for a larger

Oxford University Expedition in the future

Thanks to the support of the 650th Anniversary Trust Fund, I and five members of the

Oxford University Exploration Club travelled to Dartmoor in July for an Arctic Training

weekend. The purpose was to prepare for our 2026 trips to Svalbard, Greenland, and

Iceland. The Oxford University Exploration Club was founded in 1927 with the aim

of supporting expeditions abroad for research and adventure. As we approach the

2027 Centenary of the Club, we are preparing to run these three Arctic expeditions

in 2026, and again in 2027, to conduct interdisciplinary fieldwork across biology,

glaciology, and anthropology, and celebrate the legacy of Oxford exploration.

We arrived in Princetown, a small town in the centre of Dartmoor, on Friday evening.

The team then spent time on Saturday and Sunday with James, an experienced

outdoor guide, covering awareness and dynamic risk assessments, wildlife and polar

bear behaviour, camp set-up and defence, weapons safety, and the basic principles

of marksmanship. We put the techniques together during a wild camp on the moor

on Saturday night, setting up perimeters and simulating a polar bear encounter.

The cohort of six from this summer will split across the three 2026 expeditions and

help other team members prepare for each expedition in a safe and responsible way.

Our highlights included sheep (polar bear) spotting on the moor, practising our

protocols as we encountered the white, fluffy predators. As a group, we developed

increased awareness while on the move, learning to communicate and coordinate

our response. There was an opportunity to practise camp watches and bear drills

on Saturday evening, where we ran watch shifts and scanned our surroundings for

wildlife while James simulated a polar bear approaching. We put our classroom

knowledge into action, practising the use of flares and self-defence techniques.

In addition to learning new skills, it was fantastic to spend quality time together

outdoors, bonding as a group. We returned as a close team with lovely memories

and refreshed excitement for our next steps. Memorably, it was one of the hottest

weekends in the UK this summer, and the closest we got to Arctic temperatures was

at the Princetown ice-cream van.

The trip was an important step in gaining practical experience for our 2026

expeditions. Going forward, we will complete further team training (for example,

cold camping and polar travel), as well as consult additional experts on logistics and



planning. Though Dartmoor in July might not have felt like the Arctic, we developed

a clear understanding of the preparation needed and began our journey to conduct

research safely and effectively on our expeditions. I am grateful to the 650th

Anniversary Trust Fund for their generosity and making this opportunity possible.

Matthew Buckley was a Queen’s undergraduate from 2021-2025 and is currently

preparing for the 2026 Oxford University Exploration Club expeditions. Queen’s was

the home of OUEC in 2023-24, when both the President (Matthew) and the Secretary

were undergraduates of the College. One of the historians on the Centennial

Expeditions Project was a Queen’s student this year, and we look forward to sharing

the project’s progress with the College and Old Members over the next two years.

Georgia Campbell

Attending the Student Publication Awards National Conference 2025, representing

Cherwell (Oxford’s largest and only independent student publication) as its Editorin-Chief

Back in April I attended the Student Publication Association’s National Conference,

representing Oxford’s largest student paper, Cherwell, as its Editor-in-Chief. The

conference, this year hosted by Exeter University’s student paper, Exeposé, brought

together student journalists from across the country and consisted of two days of

talks and workshops, culminating in an awards ceremony.

Thanks to the generosity of the Queen’s 650th Anniversary Trust Fund, I received

£171.90 to help cover the cost of travelling to and attending the conference.

The remaining £80 was covered by Cherwell’s parent company, Oxford Student

Publications Limited – which is also run entirely by Oxford students.



A key takeaway from the conference was the need for publications to diversify

across media platforms. I had the chance to attend a fantastic workshop on podcast

development by BBC Sounds podcaster, Ellie Ajao. A month later, Cherwell’s first

weekly podcast, Cherwell Spoken was launched! Hosted and produced by myself

and fellow Queen’s student, Juliette McGrath, we published eight 15-minute episodes

where we spoke to significant members of the Oxford community – from Olympians

to student DJs – as well as discussing weekly news and audience responses (all

episodes are available now on Spotify and Apple Music).

I recently got back in touch with Ellie, after creating the podcast, who has been

really generous in supporting and offering feedback on the show. There is no doubt

that the SPA conference gave us the impetus and know-how we needed to get the

project off the ground.

The second and final night of the conference was the highly anticipated awards

ceremony. This year, Cherwell was nominated for 10 awards – the highest number

of nominations for any of the papers entered. The ceremony itself had a wonderful

atmosphere, with everyone in black tie and hosted by two journalists from The

Times. To our delight, Cherwell came away with four awards: two individual awards,

including Best News Story, won by Queen’s student and now Cherwell Editor-in-

Chief, Eilis Mathur, and two publication awards, Highly Commended for Best Digital

Media and Winner for Best Website.

The latter award was particularly special for me, having promised to reform the

Cherwell website when I took on the role of Editor-in-Chief. It was the first time

Cherwell had ever been nominated for the award, so to be able to go up and collect

the award in person with the team was a really poignant moment. We even got to give

mini Oscars-style acceptance speeches, which was a lovely (albeit daunting) touch!

The event was also a wonderful opportunity to spend time with the Cherwell team

outside of the chaos of termly deadlines and print runs (I attended alongside my

co-Editor-in-Chief, Selina, as well as the two incoming Editors). The stint as Editor-in-

Chief is only a term-long so on a personal level it was lovely to take the time to reflect

on everything we’d achieved together over a very hectic 12 weeks. We also had the

chance to get to know student journalists from across the country and hopefully will

be organising some newspaper ‘socials’ to visit them next year.

In all, the generosity of Queen’s through the 650th Anniversary Fund was invaluable

in enabling me to attend the conference, which proved so rewarding both personally

and professionally. I would like to express a heartfelt thanks to the Committee for

their support.


Henry Coop and Dr Samuel Teague

Supporting an ensemble of singers, many associated with The Queen’s College

Choir, to tour to Cumbria

Oxford would (obviously) appear much different to the city in which Robert de Eglesfield

founded The Queen’s College in 1341, but we wonder to what degree the same can be

said for his home county. The rolling landscapes of the Lake District seem to capture

something of a bygone era, with the reverie only being shattered when you spot the

flash of a bright (and certainly not medieval) coat somewhere off in the distant hills. We

like to think that, nearly 700 years on from inception, our founder would be proud of

Queen’s members keeping the link with the North of the country alive.


2025 marked the fourth consecutive year in which we’ve taken a group of musicians

up to Cumbria and Northumberland and doubled down on the patterns which have

started to become routine. This year saw an ensemble of six singers, as well as an

organist and director, on the trip, and visited the two primary sites in the region linked

to Queen’s: Renwick and Grasmere.

One of the objectives of our initial tours was to perform outstanding music at these

locations linked with Queen’s, in order to ‘strengthen and forge new links with the

area’ (College Record 2023). We are pleased to say that – as far as this and future

trips are concerned – this objective is now outdated, and that we are now maintaining

and building upon the links which we have created since the first trip in 2022. Through

the music we performed we have been able to engage ably with the communities in

the area, enriching their worship (adding an important missional aspect to our work)

and increasing the visible (and audible) presence of Queen’s in the region.

Our trip to All Saints Renwick was glorious, with the largest congregation we have

had since first visiting in 2023; indeed, several people recounted to us that, before

we announced the service this year, they had been pestering the priest and PCC

as to whether there would be a return trip! The following has since been said by the

priest in charge:

Our small rural communities do not have the resources to create such music

locally and it is such a joy to hear it in our little church. As Priest in Charge of

Renwick and neighbouring parishes, I am always seeking to broaden people’s

experience of worship. Your visit encourages us to think about how we can

use a wider variety of music in different ways when we meet together and

therefore your visit will have an impact beyond the evening itself.

– Revd Fiona Jenkins, Priest in Charge of Kirkoswald, Renwick with

Croglin, Great Salkeld and Lazonby

At a new venue – which we had unwittingly discovered the previous year – we

performed a concert at Jesus Church Troutbeck on the Saturday evening. This was



a fantastic experience, as the church was

full to capacity and, through the talents

of Henry Coop, we were able to fully

exploit their newly refurbished and refitted

digital organ.

The Sunday saw our return to St Oswald’s

Grasmere, which we have visited since

the inception of these trips in 2022. We

took on both services for the day, singing

for the Eucharist in the morning and then

running a ‘Come and Sing’ Evensong in

the afternoon; the latter building on the

success of the same event we piloted in 2024. In both services, we were supported

to great effect by Ian Hare, the organist at St Oswald’s, who provided the voluntaries

in both services. We are very glad to say that the Come and Sing Evensong was a

resounding success, with a total of sixteen people in the ensemble who sang an

astonishingly polished service on a comparatively short rehearsal; this is now a

proven format, and we hope we will be able to repeat this event for several years to

come. One of the vicars who led our worship on the Sunday said:

My thanks to all the musicians for the very high quality of the music on Sunday

afternoon which was much appreciated by worshippers both local and visitors

at St. Oswald’s on Sunday afternoon. This was classic Anglican choral fare

to a high quality indeed, and those who joined as ‘Come-and-Sing’-ers were

made seamlessly welcome by the choir. Good clear leading from the director,

and the vocal hospitality of the choir enabled them (including me!) to have

the pleasure of being part of a beautiful act of worship.

– Revd James Richards, Team Rector of the South Lakes Team

The ensemble performed beautifully across the duration of the trip, and we were

able to capture recordings of our concert in Troutbeck, which we hope can be made

available for Old Members to view in due course. We repeated what has become

another tradition: singing from canoes, albeit now from Coniston Water – perhaps,

in time, we will be able to tick all the Lakes from the list…

Through support of the Old Members’ and Development offices we have been able

to reach more Old Members in the region than ever before, and this was borne out

in the increased attendance at each of our engagements. Indeed, whilst we received

a generous grant through the College’s 650th Anniversary Trust Fund, without their

additional support in finding a donor, we would not have been able to run this trip.

Planning for the next trip – the fifth anniversary – is already underway, for which we

have some big plans. As well as returning to our mainstays, we hope to perform a


concert at a larger, more central venue where we can engage as many Old Members

in the region as possible!

Samuel Edwards

Participating as a volunteer Assistant Leader for a week on Christian holiday camp

Lymington Rushmore

I am extremely grateful to have received a grant of £225 from the 650th Anniversary

Trust Fund this year, which enabled me to be an Assistant Leader on a Christian

holiday camp called Lymington Rushmore for a week over the Easter holiday.


The camp was for students sitting their GCSEs or A-levels this summer, so it was

revision integrated with playing games, going to the sea, and talks about faith. It

took place in an absolutely scorching week from 6th April to 12th April in Wiltshire.

As an Assistant Leader, I helped to run the camp by helping out with various tasks

and where an extra pair of hands was needed.

A standard day would start with our daily meeting at 7.45am

before helping out with breakfast. Without wanting to get

cocky, I became pretty efficient on the rotating toast machine

peaking with gaps of no more than a centimetre in-between

each slice. We also had some fun wheeling trolleys into the

hall – or racing them as it turned out – and surely I can’t be

the only one that sees Vincent van Gogh in the hot chocolate

container on the right? Talk about Impressionism.

The next part of the day was our least favourite because

it involved mops, hoovers, and occasionally a rubber glove

(much to the dismay of the Assistant Leaders). It was briefly helped by one of my

friends bringing a speaker and blasting some ABBA but this was short-lived, because

apparently A-level students struggle to concentrate with Dancing Queen playing for

the fifth time in a row.

Next up was a coffee break – not for us, but for the students who had just spent the

last two hours revising. This was another chance for us to use the trolley which was

largely successful although not all the coffee made it from the kitchen to the main hall.

After this was the invigilation part of the day, which to be completely honest was a

varied experience. I was first assigned to the most disruptive, annoying and noisy

group you could possibly imagine – it was like having ten Jeremy Clarkson’s in the

room. It was worsened by the heat which made the room like a sauna – even worse

as I’d only packed trousers. I was then moved to a much quieter A level set for the

rest of the week, which was much better, as most of them were probably hoping



to make their university offers. It was really nice to see how supportive they were of

each other though – and I helped out with the odd French word or two when needed.

Lunch was always a blur as it was a rush to get the food out quickly before a room

full of hungry teenagers became impatient. The food was absolutely fantastic though,

the breakfasts being especially good: pastries, yogurts, cereals, and porridge – and

whoever prepared the crispy toast had obviously nailed it.

The afternoon was our free time, where students and leaders all went off campus to

have a break from work. Many games were played, including ‘Hunt the Leader’ in a

local town, where students had to shoot the leaders (dressed in disguise) with water

pistols. They were quite good at this, apart from one or two who had to flee Costa

for getting it wrong. It’ll have to be Starbucks for them from now on.

The picture below was one of our outings to the seaside. This was my favourite,

taken at Lulworth Cove. We also went to town with the ice cream as it was pushing

30 degrees – and this was a great chance for us to get some exercise and come

together as a group. I had some really interesting conversations with one or two

leaders about faith, work, and family too, although these became more and more

sparse the higher up the headland we got.

The evening was more revision for the students and a bible study for Assistant

Leaders. This did involve reading the bible but was much more of a group

conversation about things we didn’t understand or things that we thought didn’t

make sense. On a more serious note, this was really useful for me as a Christian

because I had a lot of questions about things like suffering and other religions. I think

that not being afraid to ask tough questions and challenging things is what helps

me grow the most – not just with faith but also in everyday life, including things like

tutorials. This was the most useful part of the day and a nice way to wrap up the

afternoon in time for dinner.

The evening’s entertainment was really varied – swimming, talks, board games,

quizzes, and a main meeting where we would sing a hymn or two – although

PowerPoint became a bit confused

once or twice and we ended up singing

the chorus to Praise My Soul, The King

of Heaven three times in a row. Overall,

though, it was a brilliant experience. I

made new friends, played new games,

and strengthened my Christian faith.

There are too many highlights to name,

with the food and walks faring pretty

well – although next year I think I’ll bring

a pair of shorts.


Aidan Hill

Supporting participation in the British University Ice Hockey Association’s National

Championships in Sheffield as captain of the Oxford Vikings B team

I became captain of my ice hockey team for the University at the beginning of this

year and despite being newly promoted to Division One South, we have had a hugely

successful season. We went undefeated in the league, with 10 wins, 0 losses, and a

goal difference of +115. Following this massive achievement we beat Cambridge in

our varsity match for the first time in three years and by the biggest margin ever – all

that was left to do was go and win Nationals against the best teams from across

the country. After the team got promoted to Division One of Nationals last year and

proceeded to lose every single game (some may say due to my absence), we had

a lot to prove. I have been unable to attend Nationals throughout my time here due

to my final exams always landing on the same weekend, but it has always been

regarded as the highlight of the year, with the team going up to Sheffield for a long

weekend of hockey and socialising. This year, Nationals ended up being slightly

earlier, one week before my exams, and thanks to the grant I received from the

650th Anniversary Trust Fund, I was able to attend.


After convincingly finishing 1st in the Southern division, we were confident in our

chances heading into Nationals. The Northern teams, however, were renowned for

being better. With professional coaches, massive ice hockey clubs and especially

playing at their home ice rink, they were the favourites for the tournament. We did

well in the group stage, beating Cambridge for the fourth time this year, but due to

a frustrating draw against Kent, our seeding meant that after victories in the first two

knockout stages, we would face the Nottingham Mavericks in the Semi-final. The

Mavericks were the clear favourites to win, and they had almost double our players.

It was a close match, but they scored more chances and with just three minutes left

on the clock, we were down 2-0. I got the sense, however, that no one on our team

was under the impression we were about to lose; we kept on playing with even more

intensity and a hunger to win, eventually scoring our first goal. That intensity grew

further, and with a bit of magic, by the end of the game we had clawed it back to

2-2 – all the friends we had made over the weekend watching in the stands as we



began the shootout. Following some astonishing saves from our goalie, stopping all

three of Nottingham’s attempts, we scored on the very final shot and knocked out

the tournament favourites, feeling on top of the world as we entered the final for a

rematch against our rivals Kent. In the end, we dominated the finals, winning 3-1 to

become National Champions.

This win, combined with our other achievements this year, led to my team being

nominated for, and winning, Oxford University Sports Team of the Year at the Oxford

University Sports Awards. Aside from winning the tournament, being able to attend

Nationals was such an enjoyable experience and one of my favourite memories from

this year. The £350 received to fund the tournament fee, transport, and hotel allowed

me to not only have a wonderful time with some of my closest friends but gave me

the opportunity to win Oxford University’s Sports Team of the Year as captain which

I think is pretty cool.

Xinyue Liu

Documenting and developing the work of The BEIMA (Bureau of Environmental

Imaging and Memory Analysis) through filming a dance performance at

The Queen’s College and Port Meadow, as well as a live performance at the

ASLE-UKI Biennial Conference in Ireland in August 2025

Thanks to the generous support of the 650th Anniversary Trust Fund, the BEIMA

(Bureau of Environmental Imaging and Memory Analysis) collective was able to bring

a long-held vision to life, restaging and professionally filming our performance.

BEIMA is a fictional future institution that interprets dreams and memories generated

by nature. In performance, we embody its bureaucrats, translating ecological

information into movement and images. Our work is shaped by my doctoral research

on ecological grief, Dr Alice Baldock’s expertise in the history of women butoh

dancers, and Mingyu Zhu’s studies on the neuroscience of memory.

Because of this grant, I was able to travel from Edinburgh to Oxford and work with

two videographers, both of whom are Ruskin School of Art graduates. We filmed

our performance in the vast, open space of Port Meadow, as it offered an expansive

sense of place and connection to the natural world.

The footage became the centrepiece of my presentation at the ASLE-UKI Biennial

Conference in Ireland, which explored the theme of environmental erosion. Being

able to show the film alongside my talk brought my research to life for the audience

in a way words alone could not.

One of the most memorable moments came during filming: a sudden shift in the wind

set the grasses rippling, and without speaking, we adjusted our movements to echo



that motion. Horses grazed nearby, unbothered by the cameras, and I felt an intense

awareness of the more-than-human world we were moving within. Reconnecting

with Alice and Mingyu in Oxford was also a joy. We first met years ago through the

Oxford University Dance Society, and working together again, now as fellow artists,

was deeply fulfilling.

For me, this project marked the conclusion of my DPhil in a format that felt true to

the spirit of my research: as both a work of art and a piece of scholarship. Presenting

it at the conference led to enthusiastic feedback from my supervisors and peers,

affirming the value of combining academic inquiry with creative practice. For Alice

and Mingyu, the professionally filmed record is a vital resource for future residencies,

performances, and funding applications. And for the wider community, the project

shows how dance, environmental thinking, and neuroscience can intersect to

address urgent ecological questions.

Kit Renshaw-Hammond

Taking the production For Revue Dollars More to the Edinburgh Fringe, as well as

undertaking a stand-up slot

During August 2025, an award from the 650th Anniversary Trust Fund enabled me

to travel to the Edinburgh Fringe from Penzance, and to stay there from the 14th

to the 24th of August. For the last two years at Oxford, I have been a member of

the Oxford Revue, the comedy society founded in the mid-1950s by Michael Palin

in order to take a group of students up to the Fringe to perform a ‘Revue’ show.

Over 70 years later, we have never missed a year, apart from when the Fringe was

cancelled in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic. With the rising cost of taking a

show to the Fringe, the rising costs of accommodation and living more generally,

however, the process has become harder and harder for people. I’m enormously



grateful to the Fund: without it I simply

would not have been able to do this.

While there, we performed two shows

– at 3:30 pm, our afternoon show in the

Fancy Room at The Caves, Cowgate

was For Revue Dollars More – a sketch

show that had almost nothing to do

with cowboys. It was an hour-long

show we all wrote, produced, and

performed together, and I’m happy to

say (with two hours of flyering per day,

and savvy marketing) we broke even on the costs of hiring the venue – a genuine

rarity for a student Fringe show. Later in the evening, at 10:30 pm at Home Bar in

the west of the city, we put on another show: Stand-Upping Citizens. This was more

of a showcase for individual performers, for us to do stand-up, characters, music,

with five- and ten-minute slots open every night. I did this seven (or eight – it’s a bit

of a blur) times, and it was one of the most fantastic runs of success I’ve ever had

with my material.

Being at the Fringe, I was going around seeing other

shows (Nate Kitsch, ACMS, and Elf Lyons were some

of the highlights) and every day, writing new material,

changing my act, and really honing it to be the tightest

five or ten minutes of jokes I felt capable of. The show

ended up being a triumph – an ‘outstanding act’, an

‘array of snarky and zany acts’, ‘fresh-faced and witty’,

‘sharp and gratifyingly unpredictable’ as the reviews

would have it. My own act at Stand-Upping Citizens was

described by reviewers as a ‘highlight of the evening’

and ‘laced with sardonic self-awareness’. All in all, it was

a completely brilliant experience, and one I’m eternally

grateful for the 650th Anniversary Trust Fund for helping me have. Without them,

the £250 for my accommodation, the £90 train ticket (Penzance is a Long Long

Way from Scotland), and my general food and existence expenses would have been

insurmountable.

Anna Vines

Visiting Namibia to build upon research on the German colonisation of Namibia,

visiting German-speaking areas like Swakopmund and Windhoek

I spent three fascinating weeks in Namibia this summer, immersing myself in an

entirely different community of German speakers and tracing historical landmarks


of the colonial occupation about

which I wrote my dissertation.

This trip was enabled by the

generous award I received from

the 650th Anniversary Trust Fund.

As soon as I landed in the capital

city of Windhoek I was struck by

the peculiar hybrid of cultures.

Streets went by the names of

Liszt, Stein, Berg, and Schröder,

and castles by the names of

Schwerinsburg and Sanderburg.

I dined one night at Joe’s Beerhouse, where I feasted on Schnitzel and Radler as

though I were in Munich. Planted at the city centre was the Lutheran Christuskirche

designed in mixed neogothic and art nouveau styles. At its shoulder stood the

Independence Memorial Museum; there I found traditional wear of the Herero and

Nama people and graphic images of their suffering under German rule. From the

balcony of the museum, I could see the famous Reiterdenkmal; an equestrian

monument honouring German troops killed in the Herero and Nama genocide, which

has since 2010 been hidden within the walls of the Alte Feste. In front of this old

colonial HQ stands the Genocide Memorial Statue, which by contrast commemorates

Herero and Nama people killed. I also visited Heroes’ Acre, a memorial comprising

gravestones of resistance leaders who fought for independence against Germany

and South Africa.


Departing from Windhoek I headed south to Lüderitz: a ghostly coastal town home to

Shark Island, which had previously been a concentration camp during the genocide.

The island has since been connected as a peninsula jutting out into the sea and is

marked by a marble statue. A highlight of my stay here was visiting Kolmanskop,

an abandoned diamond mining town, whose houses have been overtaken by

sand. I attended a walking tour by Nicole, a sixth-generation German Namibian,

whose ancestors had been colonisers but she herself felt no sense of connection to

Germany. This was the case for most Germans I met; the communities in Lüderitz

and Swakopmund, especially, considered themselves entirely divorced from the

country of their mother tongue. Though they had developed their own distinct

identity, their accents were usually, surprisingly and conveniently Hochdeutsch.

Swakopmund, a quaint seaside town is known for its German architecture and

vast sand dunes, appeared to be a microcosm of German civilisation, though

rather traditional in its beliefs; it seemed to attract those dissatisfied by the German

government. One shop called ‘Peter’s Antiques’ sold imperialist merchandise, from

Wehrmacht boots to manuscripts of colonial anthems to branded tin mugs. I found

this very disturbing.



Lastly, I hiked the Waterberg Plateau, a battle site in 1904. At its base was a

cemetery for the German officers and soldiers who died fighting. I stayed with a

lovely old German couple on their farm and couldn’t help but discuss the issue of

land distribution, a common topic of debate since the land was expropriated from

the Herero people.

The opportunity to have such discussions with locals was truly eye-opening and

could never be replicated by my books in the Upper Library; nor could the chance

to practise my German on soil further afield. Having never seen Africa before, this

trip was the most thrilling experience of my lifetime so far: culturally, linguistically,

and environmentally. I am incredibly grateful to the 650th Anniversary Trust Fund for

such an enriching few weeks.


NEWS FROM OLD MEMBERS, INCLUDING

APPOINTMENTS AND AWARDS

1960

Brother Anthony of Taize

Brother Anthony, a naturalised Korean and pioneer in translating Korean poetry,

shared insights on his nearly 40-year career translating Korean literature into English

in a recent interview for The Korea Times. His work gained attention following Han

Kang’s Nobel win, reflecting his dedication to bridging Korean and global readers

through authentic and accessible translations.


1963

Tariq O. Hyder

In October 2023, Tariq Hyder published the op-ed “Send Aid to Gaza” in The Nation

(Lahore). By 2024, he had completed compiling material for his forthcoming book,

The Evolution of Pakistan’s Strategic Export Controls. In August 2024, he delivered

a keynote address at a seminar, alongside the Indonesian Ambassador and leading

academics from both countries, focusing on the bilateral relations between Indonesia

and Pakistan, both before and after Independence.

1967

Philip R. Schlesinger

Professorial Fellow at CREATe, University of Glasgow, researching digital regulation.

Guest of the Institute Senior Fellow at the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom

Menschen (IWM), Vienna, May–June 2025.

1968

Tim Connell

Professor Connell has been appointed to the Court Emeritus at the Worshipful

Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers in the City of London. This is in

recognition of 20 years’ exemplary service.



1972

Matthew Kangas

Seattle’s Center on Contemporary Art (CoCA) presents Hiding from the Nazis: The

Art of Johannes Kunst, a new exhibition curated by Matthew Kangas. The show

highlights work by Dutch-American artist Johannes Kunst (1938–2017), focusing on

paintings inspired by his experience hiding from Nazi conscription into slave labour

during World War II in his grandparents’ attic in Opeinde, Holland.

1974

Paul Jackson

Paul is director of the Oxford Improvisation Festival, which had its first run at the

beginning of February 2025 at the Old Fire Station, Oxford. Bringing together Oxford’s

improv community in a well-attended programme of a dozen shows and workshops.

1981

Charles Walker

After 33 years with the British Council, Charles has retired from the position of

Director International Operations. In recognition of his service to UK cultural relations,

he has been awarded a CMG, as announced in the recent King’s Birthday Honours

in the Diplomatic and Overseas list.

1982

Susan C. Diab

The exhibition Palimpself at The Byre Theatre in St Andrews, commissioned by St

Andrews University, showcases new artwork inspired by Nobel Prize-winning author

Annie Ernaux. Susan created this work in conjunction with the first English-language

conference on Ernaux, coinciding with the October release of the English translation

of The Use of Photography.

1982

Philippa Hird

Appointed as a Non-Executive Director of Cambridge University Hospitals NHS

Foundation Trust (CUH), the organisation responsible for Addenbrooke’s and The

Rosie hospitals.


1984

Guto Harri

The Boat Race Company has announced the appointment of Guto Harri, former

Downing Street Director of Communications, as a non-executive director. In this role,

Harri will provide consultancy on communications and brand reputation strategy,

particularly as the company prepares for two major milestones: the 100th anniversary

of the Women’s Race in 2027 and the 200th anniversary of the Men’s Race in 2029.

A passionate rowing enthusiast for over 40 years, Harri first took up the sport during

his time at Queen’s.


1985

Hugo Shorter

In October 2024, Hugo was appointed His Majesty’s Ambassador to Iran. Prior to

this role he was the Chargé d’Affaires ad Interim of the UK Mission to Afghanistan

in January 2022.

1986

Richard Salway

Appointed Professor of Roman History, University College London.

1989

Mark T. Gallagher

Appointed Ambassador of the European Union to the Lao People’s Democratic

Republic.

1992

Samuel Paul Jones

Awarded a Quintin Hogg Trust PhD studentship at the University of Westminster,

funding research into potential applications of Artificial Intelligence in monitoring

the vocal health and performance of professional singers, beginning January 2026.



1993

Eric M. Garcetti

The 26th U.S. Ambassador to India recently participated in a conversation with

The Indian Express as part of a special interview series with foreign ambassadors

about his experiences living in New Delhi. His reflections offer a glimpse into the life

of a diplomat adjusting to the vibrant and multifaceted nature of the capital of India.

1993

Laura Tunbridge

Professor Tunbridge is currently a Professor of Music and a Fellow of St Catherine’s

College. From October 2025 she will take up the Heather Professorship in Music

and become a Professorial Fellow at Wadham College.

2001

Matthew Jones

Promoted to Professor of Sensory Biology at the University of Glasgow in 2025.

2011

Ashley Francis-Roy

Director Ashley Francis-Roy’s ground-breaking new Channel 4 documentary series

To Catch a Copper won the BAFTA Television Award for Best Factual Series at the

2025 BAFTA TV Awards.

2011

Rose Rands

and

2013

Marco Galvani

Opera singer Rose Rands and composer Marco Galvani have created a brand-new

song cycle, inspired by ten of Aesop’s fables and written especially for Rose’s voice.

Conceived in January 2024, the work will receive its world premiere at the National

Opera Studio, ahead of its development into a staged chamber opera for a summer

2026 festival.


2020

Hans Chan

Hans has been named on the Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe list for his work as CTO

and Co-Founder of Matoha Instrumentation Ltd., a green-tech company producing

AI-powered spectrometers that identify waste materials for recycling. Since its

founding in 2018, Matoha has raised $334,800 in funding and now serves customers

in 45 countries. With ongoing AI and robotics advancements, the company aims to

help sort one million tonnes of waste annually by 2030.


Peter Hill

Former Laming Junior Fellow

Now an associate fellow at IPPR, Peter Hill formerly served as CEO of COP26 and

as principal private secretary to the prime minister. He has held senior roles in the

Foreign Office, Home Office, and European Commission, and at IPPR will focus on

climate, industrial strategy, and foreign policy.


PUBLICATIONS


Coghlan, Nicholas (1973) Under Wide and Starry Skies – Fifty Sailing Destinations

in Seas Less Travelled (Bloomsbury/UK, 2025)

Collinson, John (1961) with Brian Rosen. The Southern Pennines (Liverpool

University Press, 2024)

Gillies, A. (1980) Healthcare Management: Global Perspectives (Taylor & Francis,

2024)

Grayson, Richard S. (1992) “Beyond the Somme: Northern Ireland’s Great War

Ex-servicemen” in Alan F. Parkinson and Brian M. Walker, eds, Ulster 1912–22:

Change and Controversy and Conflict (Ulster Historical Foundation, 2024), pp.

42–59

Hacker, Peter (1960) Solving, Resolving, and Dissolving Philosophical Problems:

Essays in Connective, Contrastive and Contextual Analysis (Wiley-Blackwell, 2025)

Hoffbrand, Victor (1953) Hoffbrand’s Postgraduate Haematology, 8th edition, Eds:

Adam J. Mead, Michael A. Laffan, Graham P. Collins, Deborah Hay; Consulting

editor: A. Victor Hoffbrand (Wiley-Blackwell, 2025)

McPherson, Andrew (1961) William Gillies: Modernism and Nation in British Art

(Edinburgh University Press, 2023) and The Life, Times and Work of William Gillies,

1898–1973 (Edinburgh University Press, 2024)

Johnson, Alexander (1988) A Book of Book Jokes (The British Library, 2022); The

Book Lover’s Almanac (The British Library, 2023); While There Is Tea There Is

Hope (Imperial War Museum/HarperCollins, 2024); Studios of Their Own (Frances

Lincoln/Quarto, 2024); 100 Words for Rain (National Trust/HarperCollins, 2024);

My Year of Reading Welshly (Calon Books, 2025)

Peak, Daniel (1992) Grimstink (Firefly Press, 2025)

Rahman, Sunniyat (2005) with Bloye G, Farah N, Demeulemeester J, Costa JR,

O›Connor D, Pocock R, Rapoz-D›Silva T, Turna A, Wang L, Lee S, Fielding AK,

Roels J, Jaksik R, Dawidowska M, Van Vlierberghe P, Hadjur S, Hughes JR,

Davies JOJ, Gutierrez A, Kelliher MA, Van Loo P, Dawson MA, Mansour MR.

“Focal deletions of a promoter tether activate the IRX3 oncogene in T-cell acute

lymphoblastic leukemia” Blood, Vol. 144(22), 2319–2326 (Nov 28, 2024). doi:

10.1182/blood.2024024300. PMID: 39316719


Robertson, Fiona (1990) Stone Lands: A Journey into the Darkness of Britain’s

Deep Past (Robinson, June 2025)

Skyte, Peter (1968) Allotment Plots: A Round of 7 Deadly Arable Parables (2024)

Stacey, David B. (1960) “In search of the Romans: Sir Richard Colt Hoare in Wales”

Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 47, No. 3, 217–231 (2024)



ARTICLES, INTERVIEWS, AND FEATURES

Articles

Credit: John Cairns

Treasures from the Library: Gutenberg’s Catholicon

Dr Matthew Shaw

Among the treasures of the College Library is a book

closely related to an invention that transformed human

history. Acquired in the 1840s, the Catholicon is the only

book held by an Oxford college attributed to Johannes

Gutenberg (d. 1468), the former goldsmith famed for the

invention of the moveable-type printing press at Mainz. This large printed book of

nearly 400 folios is also at the heart of a lively academic debate about the origins

of printing.

The genius of Gutenberg’s process was in part its coordination of several technologies

and systems. He drew on goldsmithing techniques to create moulds for the casting of

reusable type and devised a recipe for printing ink created from lamp soot, varnish,

urine, and egg whites. Benefiting from pre-existing markets for manuscript books,

an understanding of papermaking derived from the Arab world, and an appetite

for religious, legal, and mercantile

texts, his press helped to usher

in a world increasingly shaped by

the written word. By 1500, print

historians estimate that at least nine

million books had been printed.

Gutenberg’s best-known product

was the 42-line Bible, also known

as the ‘Gutenberg Bible’, designed

in almost every detail to resemble

a manuscript, including some that

were printed on vellum. Just under

50 copies are known to survive;

only 25 are complete. The Bodleian

acquired its ‘Gutenberg’ (shelfmark

Arch B b.10,11) in 1793 for £100

after it was auctioned by the cashstrapped

Cardinal Loménie de

Brienne (who owned two copies).

The College does not yet possess

a Gutenberg Bible, but since the


1840s, it has held a copy of the Mainz Catholicon: the first printed version of a

dictionary of medieval Latin, originally composed by the Dominican friar Giovanni

Balbi (d. 1298). It contains four treatises on grammar and an alphabetical vocabulary

of some 15,000 Latin words and their definitions. Always in demand by scholars,

Balbi’s text was a good bet for the new technologies of print. While the Latin-verse

colophon (the statement about its production at the end of the text, from the Greek

for ‘finishing touch’), notes the ingenuity and skill of the printer who fashioned the

book ‘without the use of a reed, stylus, or pen’ and includes for the first time in a

printed text the place of publication (Mainz), it does not name him. But since at least

1471, when Guillaume Fichet, a Sorbonne professor, wrote about the spread of

printing, the anonymous work has been identified as a Gutenberg. Certainly, when

the College acquired it in the 1840s, it was sold as ‘Gutenberg’s Catholicon’, and

was recorded in the catalogue as such.

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…this noble book, the Catholicon, has been printed and completed as the

years of the Lord’s incarnation number mcclx [1460], in the city of Mainz within

the great German nation… without the use of a reed, a stylus, or a pen, but

rather by the wonderful concord, proportion and measure of punches and

forms. [Catholicon, colophon]

Closer examination of the surviving copies of the book raises a host of questions that

have been exercising scholars. The colophon records 1460 as its year of completion,

but it was issued in four variants: three on paper and one on vellum. The date of

the paper used in the various issues is puzzling. Watermarks and comparisons with

other texts date the papers to after 1460, 1469, and 1473, with the latter two dating

from after Gutenberg’s death. Most curiously, the setting of the type in the various

editions is identical, meaning that the ‘moveable type’ must have remained in place

for several years; a puzzle for a time of tumult in the new print shops when type was

limited and expensive.

Various ingenious explanations have been put forward, based on observations such

as the apparent pairing of lines of type, the use of nail heads on the paper, and the

hint of wires wrapped around slugs of text. Perhaps, Paul Needham has suggested,

the type was tied together and placed into clay, allowing metal casts of two-line

slugs to be made for future impressions. In contrast, Lotte Hellinga argues that the

mix of editions and papers suggest a collaborative project between the various

printers in Mainz, who each used their own presses and stock of papers to make

up the books. The debate continues today, both in scholarly publications and in

lively online discussion.

Even in this digital age, physical copies, such as the one held by the College,

preserve evidence that may one day resolve this conundrum from the birth of print,

or at least give us a richer understanding of what was involved in the making of a

book. Mindful of this, the Library has recently digitised the College’s copy, making


it available online for future study, continuing the expansion of knowledge begun by

Gutenberg, and underscoring the College’s ongoing support for global scholarship.

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The Catholicon will shortly be available to view on Digital Bodleian: https://digital.

bodleian.ox.ac.uk/partners/queens/

Geopolitics and understanding the global economy

PPE Centenary Visiting Professor Christina Davis

In Michaelmas Term 2024 Professor Christina Davis joined

Queen’s from Harvard as the College’s PPE Centenary

Visiting Professor. She gave the PPE Centenary lecture on

13 November and ahead of this event, we asked her about

her research in international relations and why the effects

of complex trade-offs between nations are felt across industries.

What first interested you in geopolitics and international relations?

I have been studying international relations for many years and looking at how

international law can both constrain states and help them cooperate. I wanted

to think more about the conditions that make states willing to accept constraints

and reduce their freedom by joining an international organisation that has rules of

conduct. In my most recent book I was looking at the politics of joining international

organisations. I have long been a scholar of international trade, and this new research

was a chance for me to examine how the World Trade Organisation was able to

expand to include almost all countries when it had started as just a very small group.

I am interested in how the decision is made by a country to try to join an organisation

like this, and how others decide if they are willing to let new countries join.

Your recent book Discriminatory Clubs: The Geopolitics of International

Organizations reveals what you refer to as ‘the discriminatory logic at the

heart of multilateral institutions’. Can you explain what you mean by this?

Sometimes international organisations pretend to be rule-based but allow great

discretion over who can join. It’s the nature of geopolitical ‘clubs’ like the World

Trade Organisation that they can decide both whether they want free trade and with

whom they want free trade. I study how geopolitics can raise tensions with the ideal

that international law serves an objective principle. One part of ‘joining the club’ is

access to specific benefits, and one part is the social status of closer association

with a particular group. It’s the value of association that encourages discrimination,

which is something we see when we look at a golf club or a social club, for example.


Too often we study international organisations and think of them in terms of an

abstract contract. I argue that it’s more than a contract: states are making decisions

to cooperate based on more than who’s the best trading state or who has the best

law for environmental protection.

Too often we study international organisations and think of them in terms of an

abstract contract. I argue that it’s more than a contract: states are making decisions

to cooperate based on more than who’s the best trading state or who has the best

law for environmental protection.

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States introduce other criteria that are not in the law, for example about their allies

and cultural factors. What I find overall with a lot of international politics is that the

discrimination quotient is on security: states favour their friends and security interests.

Even if it’s an organisation about economics, you still find a large security component

that favours cooperation among allies. When I use the social club analogy, I say that

international organisations are more like the golf club than the football club: there’s

no try-out to see who’s the best player, the most qualified to participate, it’s much

more about who you would like to work with. A long-term relationship of mutual

interest and valued association makes states want to join some clubs over others.

Does your research show how we might support cooperation within these

organisations given the nature of the framework that you have uncovered?

There’s a role for a small group of like-minded states that share common interests

and security to make compromises necessary for hard cooperation. In this case

discrimination that favours a small group could be advantageous to moving forward.

However, we should consider the costs of excluding a state. Are we closing off

cooperation that might otherwise help to achieve a more stable trading system or

wider action to protect our environment? Such concerns might lead one to expand

the club beyond the small group of like-minded states, which is what happened in

the World Trade Organisation. It’s important when we’re looking at why organisations

are more or less successful at cooperation to think about the trade-offs. Some

organisations are less effective because states don’t trust each other and don’t share

enough commonality. Part of the process of trade-offs is that if you expand to be a

very diverse group, it’s harder to achieve a single goal.

Can you tell us about your research into the effects of peer conformity on

economic sanctions?

There is a recognition in international relations that there are spheres of influence and

clubs of states that act together on a whole range of issues. One way to demonstrate

your unity with your group of states is to form an alliance and another is to join the

same international organisation and take similar positions on the critical issues in

the world. We see this when G7 nations make a common statement in support of


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sanctions against Russia or on another issue, and there are many countries that get

caught in the middle because they don’t want to take sides. We need to recognise

that it’s sometimes difficult to join an international organisation when the decision is

not just perceived to be about joining the common market but about appearing to

take sides. That is why Ukraine wanting to join the EU was a threat to Russia. I have

also been analysing UN voting and looking at the informal politics that can inform

a group of countries and their approach to each issue brought before the General

Assembly of the UN. There are patterns of association; it’s not just a country acting

on its own interests but following a group of states who have similar policies.

While my book engages with how states can show club behaviour, I also work on the

effect of peer pressure on firms who can get caught in the middle. You might think

that firms are just looking at the bottom line and cost/benefit maximisation and yet

increasingly, even firms are being pressured into taking sides on geopolitical issues.

You might think that firms are just looking at the bottom line and cost/benefit

maximisation and yet increasingly, even firms are being pressured into taking sides

on geopolitical issues.

This can be difficult because their managers are more trained to study profit margins.

Deciding whether to continue trading in the context of war if you have a subsidiary

in the country is a statement about your perception of the conflict. For example,

government sanctions didn’t require the withdrawal from Russia but we’re finding

that some businesses are going beyond what’s required.

That’s where it’s interesting for me to study the peer pressure that emerges. A

company hears that x and y have withdrawn and might think that it should also

withdraw. One of my favourite examples was a survey experiment I conducted that

looks at Japanese business decisions toward sanctions against Russia. In this

research, my co-authors and I discovered a balancing act of influence – hearing

of European and American firms’ withdrawal made managers more likely to think

Japanese firms should also withdraw but, at the same time, seeing that their Chinese

competitors were continuing to do business had an off-setting influence which

made some Japanese managers cautious about whether to reduce their economic

transactions with Russia. I am interested in the strategic interactions that go beyond

an anonymous firm looking at the market.

Have you seen a growing influence of the role of geopolitics in market

decisions? And, if yes, why do you think that might be the case?

Yes, I think that it has become increasingly important to think about geopolitics to

understand the global economy. If we were to go back 20 years, it might not matter

as much to think about nationality when making a trading decision. Now, everything

from concern about possible future sanctions harming the value of a transaction,


to the views of your shareholders and consumers affects decisions. I think we’re

seeing more and more firms taking these questions into consideration and there

have been studies looking at how joining (and exiting) international organisations can

shape your risk evaluation. I also see more students who are studying sanctions

and politics who go on to work in consulting firms. These firms are then increasing

their geopolitical risk assessment, and law firms are expanding their compliance

offices. This is also true for banking and consumer goods. Trade is no longer set by

economic principles alone.

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As a graduate student you spent time overseas; how did this affect your

approach and methods as a researcher?

It is always good to see the country you are studying and often a chance experience

there can help you rethink a problem. I studied agricultural trade and why Japan

protects their rice market and was interested in when governments should use

protection and pay subsidies within an industry to ensure economic security. I was

in Japan as an exchange student in the summer of 1993 when they had a bad

harvest and a shortage of rice. I queued up with everyone at the grocery store to

get the last bags of Japanese rice and nobody wanted to buy the imported Thai rice.

Fortunately, I was happy to buy the imported rice. This experience showed me that

you can achieve food security through many paths: if you think you have to produce

everything at home then there’s the risk that when something like a bad harvest

happens, you won’t have enough to eat.

I talk to my students about how our academic questions are much more interesting

when you experience them in person. For me, standing in a line to buy rice

highlighted that trying to achieve self-sufficiency wasn’t necessarily the safest

approach. At the same time, I also met farmers and learned about the value of

their role in the community and as providers of food. International exchange is all

about understanding different people’s perspectives. I gained a lot from talking to

politicians and farmers in Japan because it gave me more insight into how they

viewed a problem. It’s important to look at an issue beyond the academic question.

What are you looking forward to most about your time in Oxford?

It’s great to be given this opportunity to meet a new intellectual community. Oxford

has incredible scholars in international relations, but I am also already meeting many

scholars in other fields and there’s so much to be learned from subjects outside your

own field. I am particularly looking forward to this intellectual exchange. I have started

a new project on trade diplomacy and it’s great to have the time in Oxford, and the

connection to the PPE programme, to take an interdisciplinary approach when thinking

about my research questions. I hope that I can bring an interdisciplinary and historic

approach to the current interest in advancing economic security in a global economy.


Tell us about your PPE Centenary lecture.

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I discussed the complex trade-offs brought about when we have rivalry between

nations at the same time as deep interdependence. We need to think about how we

make choices so I explored the following questions: What are the types of goods

where a country is comfortable depending on others for supply? At what price do

we want economic security by raising protection or spending taxpayer money to

subsidise domestic production? This is an old problem. We can go back in time and

think about why countries have supported their shipping or steel industries, and then

look ahead to why today we are making choices about semi-conductors or whether

it’s safe for our kids to use Tik Tok. It’s a fundamental question of how the nation

relates to the international economy. It requires us to think about ethics, the role of

government, and trade-offs between competing interests for economic efficiency,

global supply chains, and caution about depending on others. Some would argue

we should only rely on countries we know and trust, but then we must decide what

counts as trust among nations.

I hope that people who haven’t thought much about economic problems can

recognise that the costs of sanctions are being borne by many of us and that

the risks of interdependence are important across spheres. For example, if you’re

working at an international firm, you might be trying to comply with sanctions policies;

or you might be developing the latest technology and need to consider who is

the end user. If you are a researcher in the lab or engineer designing new robotic

technology, how widely will you share your scientific ideas? All of us have to make

these trade-offs about whether to openly engage with the international society and

economy.

Can you recommend a book?

Global Discord: Values and Power in a Fractured World Order by Paul Tucker. This

is a fascinating book about international institutions and how to think about why

there’s been so much backlash today about cooperating in a rules-based order.

Paul Tucker was a very senior British banker (the Deputy Governor of the Bank of

England) who left banking to enter academia. He advocates for a more thoughtful

approach to the ethics and politics of international finance. The reason I like the book

is because it’s one of these incredible cases of a very senior policymaker engaging

in academic debates and I really value it when practitioners take the time to engage

with academic work. I think any PPE student should read this book.


Interview with Distinguished Visitor Peter Brathwaite

FRSA

British-Barbadian opera singer Peter Brathwaite FRSA, a

graduate of the Royal College of Music, London, works

across art forms to uncover and amplify the stories of

suppressed voices. In addition to performing on major

international opera stages, he creates his own theatrical

productions. As a broadcaster for BBC Radio 3, he has

authored and presented programmes on Black portraiture and the cultural legacy

of enslavement in Barbados. He has written for The Guardian and The Independent,

and is a prominent speaker on performance, identity, and restorative justice in the

arts. Getty Publications released his book Rediscovering Black Portraiture in spring

2023, and he is currently writing a family history of Barbados, due for publication

in 2026/27. In recognition of his contributions to music and culture, his alma mater

Newcastle University awarded him an Honorary Doctor of Music degree in 2023.

Since October 2023, he has been a visiting artist with the Humanities Cultural

Programme at Oxford, supported by the Bodleian Libraries, where he curated

Mischief in the Archives, an exhibition exploring his ancestors’ connections to the

Codrington plantations in Barbados. He joined Queen’s as a Distinguished Visitor

in Trinity Term 2025.

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Tell us about your time at Queen’s in Trinity Term 2025 and, in particular,

your work-in-progress sharing performance exploring generations of your

family – both enslaved and enslavers – brought to life through AI technology.

It’s been excellent – it’s really felt like we’ve had time to create something. I’ve been

working with composer Dr Robert Laidlow, Fellow at Jesus, on a performance

exploring slavery, colonialism, and empire. It’s always special when you’re able

to share work as part of the creative process. We spent several days working

intensively, and then Rob and I presented our ideas in a scratch performance in the

Shulman Auditorium. Having staff, students, and Fellows there was important to

us, because a big part of this work is about gathering audience feedback on what

we’re doing. I also met some history students and spoke with them about how I

use archives – especially here at Oxford – to inform my creative practice, whether

through singing, writing, or visual art.

Your career bridges opera, visual art, and historical research. How do these

disciplines inform and enrich each other in your work?

Much of my work is rooted in my heritage. I’m British Barbadian: my mother is from

Barbados, and our family is descended from both enslaved Black Africans and

the white plantation owners who enslaved them. This complex legacy has always

fascinated me and driven my desire to learn more. Through personal research, I’ve


come to see how this history can be illuminating on a broader scale – informing,

educating, and at times even entertaining, particularly through the medium of visual

art.

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One example is my Rediscovering Black Portraiture project, where I restage historical

portraits featuring Black sitters. I’m also writing a book that tells the history of

Barbados through characters based on my ancestors, set during a pivotal moment

at the end of the 18th century. Their stories shed light on the intricacies of British

plantation society and the hierarchies that shaped it.

Because so much of the historical record is fragmented, I use creativity to offer new

perspectives on the lives of Black people during and after British slavery. That sense

of incompleteness is what drives me: it’s the fragments themselves, and the pursuit

of them, that shape so much of my work.

For instance, I’m developing a production with the Royal Opera House that explores

this history, drawing on a wide range of influences, including Barbadian folk songs.

Some of that music was shared at Queen’s as part of my Oxford-based project.

My goal is to spark curiosity and encourage others to undertake their own research

and exploration.

In your project Rediscovering Black Portraiture, you reimagine historical

artworks featuring black subjects. What inspired you to embark on this

work, and how has it evolved over time?

It started during lockdown, when, like so many others, I found myself at home with

my work on hold, wondering what to do. Around that time, the Getty Museum

launched an online challenge inviting art lovers to recreate their favourite artworks

using whatever they had at hand. That was the spark that set the project in motion.

Many of the images being submitted didn’t reflect the full scope of art history. I knew

there had to be more – more stories, more representation. That’s what led me to

dig deeper, using the project as a way to reflect on and meditate on the histories I’d

been researching, particularly those connected to my own heritage.

I chose to include family heirlooms in the portraits as a way of engaging with the

objects more intentionally. These were items I’d taken for granted – things I’d been

given but hadn’t really looked at or considered. That period gave me the time

to reflect deeply on their meaning and to understand how objects can serve as

gateways into untold histories.

https://www.waterstones.com/book/rediscovering-black-portraiture/peterbrathwaite/cheryl-finley/9781606068168


You’ve delved into archival research to uncover stories of black individuals

in European art history. Can you share a discovery that particularly stands

out for you?

It’s all the nameless individuals. I feel like I’ve conjured them back to life in my

recreations, and I always say they inhabit the spaces I inhabit now – they follow me

around. What’s been powerful about the project is that it’s prompted questions and

dialogue. Sharing the work on social media felt a bit like replicating the performer/

audience dynamic – the kind of back-and-forth you get on stage. That’s really

important to me as a performer. I do lots of different things, but at the core is my

identity as a singer, performer, and communicator.

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Being able to communicate these stories and receive questions about the different

possibilities – that’s why I do creative work. Often, we’re left with only fragments, and

imagination becomes an essential tool. It allows us to reanimate what’s been lost,

opening up new ways of engaging with history. That kind of storytelling, sometimes called

critical fabulation, gives space to what’s missing and lets us build something greater

from what remains. It’s a practice that feels both creatively rich and ethically charged.

I do have some favourite portraits. One is of a singer called Joseph Johnson, who

performed on the streets of Covent Garden with a ship on his head. In the early

1800s, during fierce parliamentary debates over the transatlantic trade in enslaved

African people, it wouldn’t have gone unnoticed that a Black man was performing

‘below decks’ in the heart of London with a model ship balanced on his head.

He’d dart through the crowds singing songs by Charles Dibdin and George Frideric

Handel – radiating charisma. He often comes to mind when I walk through Covent

Garden. He’s one of the figures who really stays with me.

How does your background in philosophy influence your interpretation and

presentation of historical narratives through art and performance?

I’ll say that background was a very, very long time ago – I studied Philosophy and

Fine Art as an undergraduate. Still, some threads have lingered. I did an extended

study of the American artist Mike Kelley and his use of objects. Kelley used found

materials to critique American cultural memory, and through performance, he blurred

the line between art and life. That stuck with me.

In my own practice, I’ve leaned into everyday objects – not just for their familiarity,

but for how they hold memory, identity, and political weight. They’re not neutral.

They speak. And that tension between the personal and the systemic is something

I keep coming back to.

Philosophy has shaped how I sit with this complexity. It’s about staying with the

hard questions – the ones that don’t have neat answers. It’s rare to have the time


and space to think deeply, and that kind of quiet interrogation of stories, power, and

history is what I try to bring into the work, especially in performance, where those

ideas are lived and felt.

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Your upcoming book, Not All of Me Will Die, delves into your family’s history

in Barbados. Are you mainly writing for yourself or for the reader?

Both, really. I’m writing to document my personal journey – how I encountered this

material and worked to understand it – and to invite readers along with me. I want to

open up new ways of looking at these histories. This book isn’t a traditional historical

account. It’s expansive and eclectic. As someone who isn’t primarily a historian, I’m

constantly making connections to deepen my understanding, and hopefully that

helps readers too.

My white ancestors arrived in Barbados in the 1640s; by the end of the 18th century,

they had owned around eight plantations. Meanwhile, some of my Black ancestors

were freed before emancipation in 1838. These stories are deeply specific. One

ancestor was born enslaved on a Brathwaite plantation. My four-times-greatgrandmother,

Margaret, is central to the book, along with her husband, Addo

Brathwaite, who we believe was born in Ghana around 1742. Together, they had 18

children and helped shape a new, educated Black middle class – starting businesses

and transforming the colony.

The book covers surprising dimensions of Barbados’s history, including the English

Civil War era in the mid-seventeenth century, and how it reshaped the island. I explore

photographs of Black Victorian and Edwardian ancestors, and dig into the literature

they consumed – details that aren’t always expected or necessarily welcomed. I’m

also exploring how African cultural expressions endured within my family, and how

they found ways to assert their identity despite having so much taken from them.

Ultimately, I want to show that Afro-Barbadians weren’t passive observers. They

intervened in, and disrupted, the colonial project. That resistance was deeper and

more sustained than commonly thought. Barbados is often portrayed as a peaceful

colony, but it witnessed powerful uprisings, including the 1816 Easter Rebellion –

Bussa’s Rebellion – and several other attempted revolts that are rarely acknowledged

in mainstream narratives.

This book aims to reveal those hidden struggles and how they shaped the culture

we’ve inherited.

Your research at the Bodleian culminated in an exhibition called Mischief

in the Archives. This title alludes to the varied acts of resistance carried

out by enslaved people. Can you tell us about the process of your archival

research and how your artistic response offers a counter-archive?


Credit: Ian Wallman

The counter-archive is what takes over in my

writing. It focuses on the heirlooms, the stories,

the things that exist beyond the walls of libraries

and archives.

So much of what inspires me is the oral tradition,

and the ‘language of the hurricane’ – as the

late Barbadian poet and academic Edward

Kamau Brathwaite calls it – is the perfect way

of describing it. He’s actually a distant relative,

which makes his words resonate that bit deeper.

The people have been shaped by the land,

as well as by what they brought with them to

the Caribbean. There’s a real force moving

through the counter-archive: disruptive, blowing

everything else away.

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Mischief in the Archives

Brathwaite also talks about the inner and

outer plantation – the outer being the physical

machinery of colonial control: the fields, the estate, the systems of exploitation.

The inner plantation is more insidious. It’s the psychological imprint, the cultural

conditioning, the inherited trauma carried in bodies and language. That, to me, is

what the counter-archive holds: it’s what lives within, and the truths that come roaring

down through history with such force they pin you to the wall.

I’ve been researching in the Bodleian for the past 18 months, and it’s astonishing

what’s there. All these little fragments – and when you start piecing them together,

especially alongside the counter-archive, fuller figures begin to emerge. People who’d

been passed over in the official record suddenly come into view. It’s invigorating.

What have you found in the College’s own archive that relates to your

ancestors?

The Brathwaite family is a huge clan from Westmorland. They first came to the

country from Iceland in 925 AD. In 1674, the Brathwaites gave a whole collection of

ancient medals of Roman antiquities – amounting to six of gold, 66 of silver, and 250

of brass, mostly of Roman emperors – to the University of Oxford via the Provost

of The Queen’s College. The coins never turned up here, but still, the Brathwaites

forged a close association with Queen’s, and Oxford more generally.

A multitude of Thomases came to Queen’s; one was elected a Fellow in 1649, and

his son, also Thomas, graduated from Queen’s and went on to become Warden of

New College and then Vice Chancellor of the University in 1709. So, there are quite


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a few strong connections. My four-times-great-grandmother, who was mixed race,

had her freedom papers organised through Christ Church. It feels quite powerful

talking about these Oxford connections – the Queen’s connections – especially

during my time in College.

Did you enjoy your time at Queen’s and what were you hoping to get out

of it?

I’ve been drawing on the brilliant minds here at Queen’s and making the most of how

open and welcoming the community is. It’s been exciting to connect with the Fellows,

and when we opened the floor to questions after our work-in-progress performance,

people really responded. It’s not often you see creative work overlap with academia

in this way, and it was something I was keen to build into the programme at Queen’s –

and I’m pleased to say it absolutely delivered.

Second-year historians were interested in exploring Barbadian history, particularly the

genres of music performed in Barbados during the 18th century. I introduced them to

an act called the Act for the Governing of Negroes, which is known as the Barbadian

Slave Code. This was amended to ban all African instruments and drumming, which

led us to discuss the suppression of music. That sparked rich dialogue around

music and culture as forms of resistance. I sang some Barbadian folk music for

them, alongside songs composed by plantation owners – the enslavers – for

enslaved people to sing. These pieces are violent instruments of propaganda and

indoctrination.

I think it genuinely surprised them to learn that music was used in this way – alongside

the physical traumas and violence that enslaved people endured. I also shared a

passage about singing from the book titled Instructions for the Management of a

Plantation in Barbados and for the Treatment of Negroes, which was co-authored by

one of my ancestors. It lays out the rationale for using music as a tool of suppression.

It’s a deeply disturbing document, but it’s something I felt I could confront in this

space, where the community feels safe and open enough to hold meaningful

conversations around such material.

How does your forthcoming project use AI to give life to previously

hidden voices?

We’ve been using AI to animate objects drawn from both the traditional archive and

my personal history. The technology brings these items – from plantation ledgers to

family heirlooms – to life sonically, generating new sounds in real time that respond

to how I interact with them on stage. For instance, the AI-generated sounds might

literally evoke the material textures of the archive, like the rustle of old documents, or

more abstractly suggest what a physical encounter between two previously unrelated

archival fragments might sound like.


To deepen this, we’ve been building a digital sound bank of me singing folk songs

and speaking from some of the texts. These recordings include songs once sung by

enslaved people, songs they were forced to sing – violent pieces of imposed culture –

as well as field recordings I’ve made over the past couple of years in Barbados.

We’ve fed these into the models on Rob’s computer, and he’s been reordering and

remaking the material to create a patchwork of sound, which can then be used to

animate objects.

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Rob has also been able to sonically activate personal Barbadian artefacts, including

my grandmother’s patchwork quilt, my grandfather’s ‘cou-cou’ stick – used to stir

Barbadian cornmeal – and the Barbadian Shaggy Bear masquerade costume that

I wear. Each object carries its own cultural and familial resonance. The probabilistic

nature of the AI systems introduces a balance between structure and unpredictability

in performance, echoing the historical forces held within the archive. These objects

form a bridge between past and present, grounding the performance in personal

memory while expanding it into broader historical narratives.

The technology gives the sense of a conjuring, a magic trick.

Can you give us a book recommendation?

In the Shadow of Slavery: Africa’s Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World by Judith

A. Carney and Richard Nicholas Rosomoff is a book I keep returning to. It focuses

not just on the crops that enslaved people were forced to produce, but on what they

managed to grow and create for themselves in the Americas – drawing from their

own deep-rooted knowledge of the African nations they came from. It explores the

festivals that survived and evolved in the Americas, and how they connect to ones

still practiced. These food traditions carry echoes of pre-enslavement freedoms and

are still alive in homes across the diaspora today.

One of the parts I find most moving is the attention given to kitchen gardens. These

small patches of land were often the only spaces enslaved people had any control

over. Learning about how they used these spaces to feed their families, sell their

own food, and preserve cultural practices passed down through generations opens

up a vivid sense of their daily lives, their ingenuity and resilience.

I love this book because it reminds me of how I first started to understand these

histories – not in big sweeping narratives, but in quiet domestic things. Like a jar

of Scotch bonnet pickled peppers under the kitchen sink in my childhood home in

Manchester, or the cou-cou stick my grandfather carved.


Even Bananas

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An interview with Fellow in

Physics Dr Kirsty Duffy

We spoke to new Fellow in Physics

Dr Kirsty Duffy about her research

into neutrinos: the most important

particles you’ve (probably) never

heard of.

What first fascinated you about physics?

The first time I got interested in Physics is when I was very young. I had a book called

The Big Book of Incredible Facts which taught me things like a cockroach can live for

a year without a head and that someone had once survived falling from an aeroplane

with no parachute because they hit trees on the way down and landed in a snow drift.

One of the other things I read in there was the fact that atoms are made of smaller

particles called protons, neutrons, and electrons and I strongly remember a teacher

subsequently telling us that everything was made out of atoms and that these were

the smallest things, and I knew that this wasn’t the case! Since then, I have always

been fascinated by how things work and wanted to understand how everything works

and fits together. To me, Physics is the underlying thing that explains everything else.

Your research in particle physics focuses on neutrinos. Can you explain

what kinds of questions you ask and why they are interesting and

important?

Neutrinos are the most important particles you’ve never heard of. They are absolutely

everywhere; they are the most abundant particle in the universe after photons

(particles of light). Neutrinos are produced in nuclear reactions so in the sun, in the

centre of the earth, in nuclear reactors, in particle accelerators, and also in things

like bananas that contain a lot of potassium, which is radioactive. What is interesting

about neutrinos is that despite their abundance, they almost never interact and

when they do, it’s only weakly (literally – via the weak force!). About a hundred million

neutrinos will go through your thumbnail every second and these come almost

entirely from the sun. They actually go through your body all the time but in your

lifetime, on average, only one neutrino will actually hit an atom in your body and

interact. This makes them very difficult to study because when they don’t interact,

it’s impossible to see them. Consequently, they are one of the particles about which

we know the least.

The biggest question that my work is trying to answer with neutrinos is why the

universe exists. Scientists think that in the big bang equal amounts of matter and


anti-matter were created. Physics is all about symmetry so it makes sense that

you would have the same amount of each, but the question is, if there were equal

amounts in the beginning, why do we now have a universe which, as far as we can

tell, is only made of matter? The answer has to be that there must be some difference

in the physics of how matter and anti-matter behave such that all of the anti-matter

disappeared. We can calculate that we need about a one in a million difference – that

is, if you had about a million and one particles of matter and a million particles of antimatter,

a million could annihilate and just one particle left over is enough to create the

universe. What we need is some physics that will create a one in a million difference.

We have already measured differences in matter and anti-matter in particles called

quarks in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN and we have seen some differences,

but it’s very small and not enough to explain the amount of universe that exists. Our

next guess, therefore, lies with neutrinos. The experiments that I’m doing are trying

to see whether we can measure the difference between neutrinos and the anti-matter

version, called anti-neutrinos.

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What is your favourite fact about neutrinos?

One really interesting thing about neutrinos is that they come in three types that we

call flavours, and it was discovered fairly recently (in academic terms) that they can

change type from one flavour to another. This was very unexpected, and in fact the

2015 Nobel Prize was given to two of the people who discovered and proved this.

Now the work that I am doing is to try to understand the mechanism of how they

change. We create neutrinos in a controlled environment, in particle accelerators,

and they are about 99% one type and then we send them over a long distance and

there is some probability that over that distance they will change into one of the other

two types. Because neutrinos almost never interact, you don’t have to dig a tunnel

to send them over this distance, you can just fire them straight into the ground. They

will travel through the ground over 100s of kilometres, during which time they will

change, and then at the other end we measure them again and look for the new

types. Specifically, if we can do this with neutrinos and then do it with anti-neutrinos,

we can examine the differences in the way that they change to help us understand

that fundamental difference between matter and anti-matter.

What is your role in the MicroBooNE collaboration and what does this

project investigate?

I am Physics Coordinator for the MicroBooNE, which is the lead scientist position in a

collaboration of around 180 people. I work with people from many different countries

and institutions to further the same goal. My role involves setting the goals and managing

all the different interests that people have to produce our collaboration-wide results.

MicroBooNE is the first in a programme of experiments in the US where we use a

particular kind of detector called a liquid argon detector. We have a huge tank of


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liquid argon which is at minus 186 degrees Celsius, and we use this to try and see

neutrinos. What happens is that when a neutrino comes in, if we’re lucky, it interacts

with an atom of argon and it produces charged particles. As those charged particles

travel through the detector, they ionise the argon leaving a little trail of electrons

where they have been. We put an electric field over the whole experiment so that

the electrons drift to one side and we measure them with wires. The key thing about

this technology is the incredible precision: we can put the wires three millimetres

apart and get a three-millimetre pixel size over a detector that’s about the size of a

single-decker bus.

This US-based programme, of which MicroBooNE is the first, will eventually culminate

in an experiment called DUNE which will have four detectors, each the size of a

Dreamliner plane. DUNE will be able to conduct large scale observations of the

flavour-changing matter/anti-matter neutrinos. So MicroBooNE’s role is therefore

partly to demonstrate the technology for this. What I am particularly interested in

is seeing how neutrinos interact in the detector because no one has ever seen a

neutrino directly. Even in the best particle detector we’ve ever built, we can only see

the particles that have been produced or affected by the neutrino, not the neutrino

itself. This means we have to try and backtrack from what we measure to understand

the role that the neutrino must have played. It’s a difficult problem because we don’t

fully understand the nuclear physics of how neutrinos interact with particles inside

an atom, and there’s a lot of potential for misunderstanding.

What excites you about your work?

The thing that is most exciting is the fact that we are learning new things that no one

knew before. There is the potential to discover something really big about how the

universe evolved but even if we don’t, every measurement that we do is something

that hasn’t been done before and is adding new knowledge to the world.

What do you enjoy about being part of the College?

I enjoy getting to know people from lots of different subjects. I did my post-doctoral

research at a particle physics lab in the US, which was great, but I really enjoy

also having colleagues who work in the humanities and the other sciences. The

conversations that you have in a College setting just over lunch can often lead to

new ideas. You might talk to someone who is facing very similar problems to you

but in a different field and realise that there are ways you can work together or learn

from each other.

What do you enjoy about teaching?

Teaching often reminds me of why I like Physics. I teach things that first got me

interested in Physics and I really enjoy talking to the students. At Queen’s the students


are all fantastic: they have great ideas and often ask very insightful questions that

make me think about my own work in ways I hadn’t thought about it before.

Can you tell us about your YouTube series Even Bananas and who it’s

aimed at?

I have a YouTube series with Fermilab, which is the US particle physics lab and

the home of the neutrino experiments I am working on. The series is called Even

Bananas because neutrinos are produced by almost everything, even bananas. The

idea behind the series is to give a fun introduction to neutrino physics. Our aim is to

make it accessible to everyone, particularly to people with no science background.

We feature guests who are experts in various aspects of neutrino physics who come

and tell us about their experiments and specific problems that they are working

to solve, as well as answering viewers’ questions. My favourite episode was in an

answer to someone who asked how big neutrinos are, and it involves my husband

throwing beach balls at me from behind the camera.

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Neutrino by Frank Close. This gives a great overview of the history of neutrino

physics and an excellent description of the experiments that went into discovering

that neutrinos can change from one type to another.

Even Bananas series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvNTnvQMEM8

Books and Bindings

An interview with Fellow in English Professor Tamara

Atkin

We spoke to new Fellow in English Professor Tamara Atkin

about her research into the material conditions that shape

literary production and reception.

Your research examines the material conditions that shape literary

production and reception. Can you tell us a bit about what this means?

The really short answer to this question is that whilst there is nothing especially

material about a text, its transmission is very often predicated on it being given

physical form (there are some exceptions here, and even in predominantly literate

cultures, there remain some genres and modes associated with orality). I’m interested

in studying the technologies that enable material transmission – writing, printing –


but also thinking about the ways in which the affordances of manuscript and printed

textual production mediate the receptive possibilities of a given text.

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I realise that might be a bit hard to grasp, so perhaps I can explain what I mean with

a concrete example. In the epilogue to Thomas Dekker’s satirical play Satiromastix

(1601, published 1602), Captain Pantilius Tucca encourages the audience to goad

Ben Jonson into writing a rebuttal satire declaring, that in so doing, Jonson ‘shall

not loose his labour, he shall not turne his blanke verses into wast paper’. What’s

interesting to me about this quotation is the way that Tucca suggests that when

lost or wasted, intellectual labour – that is, the immaterial work of writing dramatic

poetry – is transformed into physical waste paper – which in an early modern context

typically meant printed or manuscript leaves recycled for another use.

In practice, what all this means is that whilst my research takes the material text

as its object of study, I try to use codicological* and bibliographical practices

and techniques as a way of thinking through quite broad questions about literary

production, authorial labour, and textual reception.

What are your findings on premodern drama?

The first ever texts I read as an undergraduate were the late-medieval morality plays

Mankind and Everyman, and I have remained fascinated with pre-Shakespearean

drama ever since then. Most critics of medieval and Tudor drama have written about

the theatricality of these plays, and a lot of really great and important work has been

done to reconstruct their original performance conditions. In contrast, I’ve always

been interested in their textual history because, when you think about it, it’s not

self-evident that plays should always be written down. Do dramatic texts represent

a record of performance or are they designed to enable it? When did reading drama

as an activity apart from or separate to performance become a ‘thing’?

These are the sorts of questions I set out to answer in my last book Reading

Drama in Tudor England (Routledge, 2018). I wrote this book because I wanted

to understand the print reception and status of drama before Shakespeare et al.

began writing for the commercial stage. I learnt that early on printers developed

conventions for articulating drama as a printed form – by this I mean that they

established norms that determined the look of drama on the printed page, like the

use of stage directions to indicate stage business and speech prefixes to organise

dialogue. It has often been said of these features that they encode and thereby

enable performance, but in writing Reading Drama I became increasingly convinced

that printers developed and used features like character lists and stage directions

not to enable performance but rather to signal the idea of performativity. These

readily recognizable features, these conventions, act as a guide to tell us how to

read the book and imagine it as a play.


In the context of Tudor drama this point is really important because a lot of these

plays are routinely dismissed as sub-literary, crude precursors to the more literary

drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. My work on Tudor drama suggests

something different, namely, that as early as the 1550s and 1560s, drama was being

printed for leisure-time consumption, as a genre of writing worthy of reading.

Your Leverhulme-funded work on the reuse and recycling of old books

explores literary ideas about waste and reuse. What conclusions have you

drawn about the role of old books in early modern culture?

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So many! Right now, I’m thinking about the ways that binding waste – which is to

say, the dismembered bits of manuscript and printed texts recycled in the bindings

of other, newer books – highlights the inherent instability and unfinishedness of the

early modern book. All books are unfinished insofar that the making of meaning lies

with the reader. But early modern books, which were typically sold stab-stitched

but otherwise unbound, often with errata lists calling on the reader to correct errors,

draw attention to their status as unfinished objects that required reworking.

Manuscript and printed waste represent examples of objects so heavily reworked that

they simultaneously lose their materiality and are reduced to it. Binding fragments

survive because they have been repurposed to secure the durability of other books.

As fragments, however, they are also ghost-witnesses to texts that have become

immaterial, incomplete, and unknowable. When these fragments coalesce with the

leaves of the texts whose bindings they strengthen, they offer a stark reminder that

textual value is contingent on readerly taste and judgement, and that irrespective

of the author’s ambitions, all texts are subject to market forces that makes them

susceptible to dismemberment and reuse.

The College’s Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures looks at pre-modern

epigraphic traditions across cultures. What observations have you made

about the interactions between manuscript and print?

Like other members of the College’s Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures, I

value the ways that working on pre-modern books creates unique opportunities

for inter- and multi-disciplinary collaboration. For instance, I have recently been

working on a collection of books in the Bodleian once owned by the twentiethcentury

collector and bibliophile Albert Ehrman. The collection has some incredible

early sixteenth-century books in contemporary bindings, many of which contain

uncatalogued manuscript and printed fragments. Identifying these fragments – some

of which have proven to be very rare or otherwise unusual – has led to opportunities

to collaborate with leading scholars in other fields, which has been an amazingly

stimulating and often humbling experience.


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Reproduced with kind permission under Creative Commons licence CC-BY_NC 4.0

Oxford, Bodleian Library, Lincoln CHS 36. Missal

fragment recycled as spine support. The crust of red ink

indicates this fragment served an intermediatory function

as a frisket sheet for the printing of red ink.

Working on the printed and

manuscript fragments that turn up

in the bindings of other books has

also challenged me to think about

the relationships between different

forms of textual technology. Again,

I can probably best explain what

I mean by way of example. In

the Bodleian, there’s a copy of a

1572 edition Plutarch’s Moralia

in a binding that makes use of a

fragment from an early fourteenthcentury

mass book as a spine

support. It is clear from the heavy

red ink that stains this fragment

that it once served an intermediary

function as a frisket sheet before it

was repurposed as binding waste.

For printing in red, printers used friskets, from which holes were cut out to allow

selected areas of the inked metal type to be printed. In the crust of red ink on the

missal fragment it is possible to make out the words ‘patri[s] ⁊ filii’ (Latin for ‘father

and son’, as in the phrase ‘in the name of the father, son, and holy ghost’). These

words make it clear that this frisket sheet was used for the printing of a ‘black letter’

liturgical text. Black letter is a print typeface based on a medieval handwritten script

known as textualis quadrata. Though produced using a different technology, the

printed words caught on the manuscript leaf therefore mimic the appearance of

the handwritten missal, and in doing so, blur the distinction between printed and

handwritten text.

Is there an item in the College’s book collection that you’re particularly

keen to see (and, if so, why)?

It’s very hard to pick one! I’m excited to go and spend some time with the card index,

as I am interested to know more about the kinds of readers who have interacted

with the College’s historical collection and the sorts of ways they recorded their

engagement. To give an example: I have for many years been interested in the

writings and other activities of the notorious Protestant polemicist John Bale (d.

1563). The College holds several books associated with him, including a copy of

an English translation, very likely by Bale, of a Latin tract in defence of the Royal

Supremacy. The College’s copy remains in its original sixteenth-century blind-tooled

binding, and the card catalogue enticingly notes that the margins and endleaves

are full of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century manuscript notes and additions. Who

was or were the reader or readers responsible for interacting with this book in this

way? What can we learn about the status and value of books as objects from these


manuscript additions? And how do such marks of readerly engagement nuance our

understanding of religious controversy in the sixteenth century?

Alongside evidence of ownership and reading, I’m excited to think about the ways the

College’s historical holdings can enliven my current research into both manuscript

and printed waste, and the early modern second-hand book trade. The catalogue

entry for the book I’ve just mentioned describes a calf binding over wooden boards

with remnants of metal clasps. This style of binding is typical of bindings produced in

the first half of the sixteenth century, and it is very common to find wasted manuscript

fragments used as pastedowns on the insides of the boards. By surveying books in

historical bindings, I’m excited to discover new manuscript and printed fragments

that have thus far escaped cataloguing!

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In my work on the second-hand trade, I’ve been making an inventory of booksellers’

notes, since these can offer a glimpse into little known or understood trade practices.

For instance, in the early modern period, when books were sold second-hand, if

they were especially old, big, or valuable, it was not uncommon for a bookseller

to add a ‘warranted perfect’ note, guaranteeing the completeness of the copy for

sale. I’m looking forward to spending time with the College’s holdings in sixteenthand

seventeenth-century bindings, as notes like these were typically added to

pastedowns or flyleaves. I’m keen to learn more about the lives of these books

before they came to Queen’s.

What do you enjoy about being at Queen’s?

As you can probably tell from my answer to the previous question, the Library is a

huge draw, and I am excited to work with and alongside Librarian Dr Matthew Shaw

and the rest of the Library team as I get to know the collection better. I’m especially

keen to encourage undergraduates to work in and with special collections with

confidence, and I can see various opportunities for bringing Queen’s students into

closer contact with the College’s amazing collections.

Queen’s has an incredibly welcoming and rich community of academics, staff, and

students. I’m really looking forward to getting to know colleagues and students better

and building on the conversations I’ve already had over lunch and dinner to work

collaboratively and across different disciplines.

Do you use the special collections in your teaching?

Yes. Last week I took my second-years to the Weston Library and we looked at a

selection of early modern manuscripts, including Bodleian MS Tanner 307, a scribal

manuscript containing 167 poems by George Herbert, which were subsequently

published as The Temple (1633). This manuscript may have been prepared to obtain

a licence for that edition, and it was fantastic for students to have the rare opportunity


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to compare the manuscript and print versions. We also use the College Library to

examine items selected by students that complement their work. It can be quite

intimidating to work with special collections, particularly for undergraduates, and

I’m so grateful to Librarian Dr Shaw for enabling sessions like this, which can really

transform the way students think about and work with literary texts.

What are you working on at the moment?

I’m currently finishing a monograph, Reusing Books in Early Modern England, that

considers the long lifecycle of manuscripts and books after their initial production

and reception. Work for this project has been supported by a Leverhulme Major

Research Fellowship, which has allowed me to spend a lot of time digging around

in libraries and archives – a huge luxury! Once finished, the book will bring together

several of my longstanding interests: the cultural and intellectual habits formed by

the Reformation; early modern book history; and the interplay between material and

metaphorical language. It’s been enormously fun and rewarding to research, and

I am now enjoying the challenge of turning that research into a piece of long-form

academic writing.

My next project is about the early modern second-hand book trade, which

surprisingly has been very little written about. I’m currently putting together an

application to secure funding for a team to undertake this research collaboratively;

it’s a big and ambitious project and will benefit from scholarly expertise across a

range of different areas. I want to know who bought and sold second-hand books,

where they came from, how they were valued, and what role they played in the

making and unmaking of both private and public collections. In answering these

sorts of questions, I think we can begin to challenge conventional wisdom about

the English early modern book trade, which has mostly focused on new books

produced in London.


This is such a hard question. I recommend The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden.

Why this book? For me reading is so often a professional activity, something I do at

a desk, in a study, or in the library. I read this book on holiday, largely whilst lying in

a hammock next to a swimming pool where my children were playing. I’m sure part

of the pleasure I took in reading it was in the heat of the air, the nearby sounds of

my children, the whole aural and sensorial experience of being at rest. And as I lay,

prone, reading, I enjoyed the way that van der Wouden was able to manipulate my

response to the main character.

I started out with little sympathy for Isabel, a young woman living in a rural area

of the Netherlands in the aftermath of the second-world war. She seemed pettily

parsimonious, obsessive, and controlling. But over the course of the novel, as she


struggles to come to terms with her mother’s death, with her insecure hold on the

house she calls home, and with her feelings for her brother’s girlfriend Eva, I found

myself liking her more and more, becoming increasingly invested in her material

and emotional fate. Add to that the wider context of life in postwar Holland as the

country struggles to make sense of the years of Nazi occupation, and I found it a

compelling and thrilling read.

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The Safekeep was one of the first books I read on my new Kindle. As I’ve already

indicated, I’m really interested in thinking about the ways different textual technologies

mediate the reading experience – how reading a printed book differs to reading a

manuscript book – and I think these sorts of questions are equally pertinent to

newer forms of text. Reading novels on my Kindle is great for travelling, but I miss

the tactility of holding a book, of flicking back to cross-check a reference, and I love

that my physical books hold traces – in dog-eared corners, forgotten bookmarks,

the occasionally underlined word etc. – that record my experience of reading them.

I’m not getting rid of my Kindle just yet, but if anything it’s reminded me how great –

how irreplaceable – books are!

*Pertaining to the study of the book; taken from the Latin word codex meaning book,

codicology refers to the study of the whole manuscript book, all its physical and

historical characteristics

Killing the Dead

An interview with Professor John Blair FBA,

FSA

What do vampire panics, grave mutilations, and

ancient demons have in common? According to

Professor John Blair, quite a lot, although much of it

has been misunderstood. In his latest book, Killing

the Dead: Vampire Epidemics from Mesopotamia to

the New World, the Emeritus Fellow and distinguished

historian of the medieval world turns his scholarly

gaze to the vampire.

Far from the gothic clichés of fiction, Professor Blair

reveals a darker and more complex truth: that across centuries and continents,

societies have enacted gruesome rituals on the dead not out of superstition

alone, but as a strange, sometimes therapeutic, response to collective trauma.

From Mesopotamian demonology to 18th-century Serbia, and from medieval

England to modern Haiti, Killing the Dead weaves archaeology, anthropology,


and neuropsychology into a gripping

global history of why humans feared

the undead.

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We spoke to Professor Blair about

what drew him to this macabre

subject, what vampire panics reveal

about the human condition, and why,

sometimes, killing the dead is better

than harming the living.

Why did you become interested in

the history of vampires?

A Finnish Vampire? Detail of Doom from series

of paintings by Mikael Toppelius of Oulu, 1774, in

Haukipudas church.

It was a coincidence. When I was an editor of Oxford Medieval Texts, I saw through

the press a collection of miracles of Saint Modwenna of Burton-on-Trent written in

c.1150 which referred to events going back to around 1100. Among those miracles

was a cure of people who had been attacked by walking corpses. It gives a vivid

account of two dead men whose corpses walked around carrying their coffins on

their backs, banging on doors, and people subsequently died. Locals then dug up

the two men, found that the bodies were incorrupt (free from decay), and that the

cloths over their faces were stained with blood. The community beheaded them, cut

out their hearts, and burned them. Afterwards, the remaining sick people recovered.

Anyway, I was reading that, and I happened to be sitting in a library browsing rather

idly among the folklore section, and I found a book about 19th century Romanian

folklore. I was astonished to find these

same motifs recorded by folklorists

from Romanian villages, 150 years ago.

I thought this was an extraordinary

example of the transmission of

complex ideas across time and space.

I became increasingly interested in the

phenomena of believing in the walking

dead, to what extent it’s cultural,

and to what extent it’s organic and

Nineteenth-century Romanian peasants killing a

vampire by moonlight. The man on the right has just

driven a stake into the heart of the corpse; the others

are finishing the job with guns.

psychological. I was also interested in

why the phenomena appear at certain

times and not others because there’s

no doubt that belief in the dangerous

dead is very widespread across the world, but it’s not universal. There are many

societies that have never had it and there are also societies, for example in England,

that held those beliefs strongly at one point, and then they disappeared. It has an

epidemic quality.


How did you approach researching such a wide-ranging topic?

I approached it in three ways. First, I had to engage with cultures and countries about

which I knew very little. I wanted to make the project worldwide, so I looked at, for

example, China and Southeast Asia and tried to work out if I could see a sequence

of beliefs from various kinds of demon to identifying those demons as actual dead

people, which is a widespread process. Second, I looked at the folkloric evidence

and mythological patterns: how stories travel, how they get changed, and how

there’s often a feedback loop between what people believe and literate culture.

So, it doesn’t just go one way: people tell stories, scholars write them down, those

books get disseminated, and they can feed back into oral culture. Third, I examined

the psychological aspects. The research took me into aspects of neuropsychology,

which I came to find fascinating. The research is something I’ve only been able to

do in the luxury of retirement, and it’s been a great change and breath of fresh air.

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You cover vampire fears from ancient Mesopotamia to modern Haiti. What

do these diverse cases have in common?

The common element is the belief that the dead are doing harm to the living in the

form of physical corpses. The crucial thing is that they are not ghosts. It’s the idea

that either physical corpses are getting up and walking around at certain times

and preying on people, or a belief, very common for example in Lutheran Central

Germany in the 16th century and in New England, America in the 19th century, that

the corpse is inert in its grave, but its organs are in some mysterious way doing harm

to the living by causing disease or death.

Is there a correlation with events like pandemics?

Yes, there is. I conclude that there is a latent human propensity to have these

beliefs given certain conditions. Freud thought they were universal but that’s clearly

not the case. However, they are very widespread and I think it’s a combination of

mythological, religious, and storytelling traditions which raise the possibility that this

could happen, along with certain cultural elements, one of which is dominant female

religious or magical specialists, or social structures where matriarchs are dominant.

For example, Babushkas in 19th century Russia are people who are feared in life and

there’s a sense that if certain dominant individuals are dangerous or oppressive in

life, they could continue to be so after death. One very interesting point, contrary to

what people tend to believe, is that the great majority of the dangerous dead have

been female, not male.

The other factor is trauma, and the trauma can take various forms. It could be in the

form of disease, like plague in early modern central Europe, or tuberculosis in 19th

century America. It could also be political, like ethnic movements and disruptions

of populations. Or it could be religious trauma: the Reformation, for example, or in


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earlier cultures, the replacement of polytheistic

by monotheistic religions. One important

consideration is the move from cremating

societies to inhuming ones. So, when people

converted either to Christianity or to Islam, their

religious change caused them to practice burial.

Of course, if you’re used to a situation in which

the body is changed into something completely

different by burning, and now you have to bury

your dead, you might wonder: “Are they really

dead or are they actually doing some damage

in the grave?”

A typical Romantic-era visualisation of

vampires, in an engraving of 1820.

Were there unexpected things that you

uncovered in your research?

I’ve uncovered so many surprises; several in

particular stand out. The dangerous dead occur

in many past cultures but it’s rather more remarkable to find them in more recent

times. For example, in early 18th century Moravia, now the Czech Republic, there

was an occurrence which was supported by the bishop of the local cathedral, and

it’s an interesting case where, a bit like witchcraft persecution, there’s a feedback

loop between popular fears and educated demonological ideas. There are many

similarities to witchcraft persecution.

Even more extraordinary are some of the very recent cases, because this practice

is not dead. There is an area of southern Romania, west of Bucharest, where these

beliefs are still alive. The most recent case that I know about was in 2019 where

a grave had a hole in it after it had sunk. In my book I include a photograph from

a local Romanian news channel that shows the sunken earth and a hole, which is

where people thought that the vampire was coming in and out. The locals dug up

the body and staked it through the heart and the local priest recited the liturgy. When

the bishop found out, he suspended him. The matter reached court, and, in fact,

the case was only settled last February.

The other dramatic case was in 2004, where a farmer had fallen under his horse

and died, and then his niece believed that the dead man was preying on her and

sapping her energy. A neighbour, fortified with a lot of plum brandy, went to the

cemetery, broke into the tomb, cut him open, cut out his heart, burnt it, mixed the

ashes with tea, and gave them to the niece to drink, whereupon, of course, she

recovered. Meanwhile, another relative had got annoyed and gone to the police. The

police raided the cemetery and a journalist filmed the tomb broken open, police cars

all round, and the man brandishing a pitchfork saying: “Look, this is the pitchfork I

stuck through his heart.”


The interesting thing there, and I

think this applies to cultures across

time and space, is the reaction of

the villagers. Some disapproved,

but most said: “What’s the

problem? It’s good for the living,

it’s good for the dead. It’s what

we’ve always done. It just reestablishes

the natural balance.” I

think this is how people have often

viewed it, and there’s an important

point in this. When I talk to people

about what I’m working on, they

question how I can work on such

a gruesome, disgusting topic but

actually plenty of people work on

Vâlcea, south-western Romania: the hole in the grave and

its ghastly message, in a video by Stirile Pro-TV. The idea

that vampires make holes through their grave-earth as

they come and go is often mentioned, but this may be the

only photographic record of the phenomenon. This corpse

was exhumed and staked in 2019.

witchcraft. There’s a long tradition of the study of witchcraft in early modern Europe.

So, I respond: “Is it more disgusting to burn living people alive as witches than to

burn corpses? Surely ‘killing’ the dead is better than killing the living.” One of my

arguments is that this is a relatively harmless outlet for the kind of fear, sorrow, and

paranoia that can produce persecution of the living. With a belief in the living dead,

there’s usually no persecution of witches, heretics, minority groups, or any people

perceived as being ‘other’ in communities.

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What role did religion and folklore play in shaping vampire beliefs in various

societies?

I think the important question here concerns beliefs surrounding the transition from

life to death. In our society death is quite a clear cut and sudden thing but many

people have believed that it’s a process, not an event. This includes even in recent

times in the British Isles, where the wake was an important time when the body

is laid out in the house, and people watch over it. Why do they watch over it? In

origin, it’s because it’s a dangerous time: the person has died but their personality

and spirit have not yet departed, they’re still in the body. There’s a belief that things

could still go wrong and it’s really important that the right rituals are performed

from the point of death to the point of burial, or even sometimes beyond the point

of burial, for example in societies that exhume the body and put the bones in an

ossuary. In many cultures really bad things could happen if something untoward

happens during that period. The most dramatic cases are from rural Greece and

there’s a wonderful study on this from Euboea in the 1970s by Juliet du Boulay, an

anthropologist who worked in these rural communities. It shows how, during the

wake, if a creature, particularly a cat, jumps over the body, then it doesn’t matter

how good the person was, they become a vampire, and then they’ve got to be

extinguished.


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There are also particular beliefs about people who have been bad in life. The practice

in some rural Greek communities was to bury the body for about 10 years and then

exhume the bones and put them in an ossuary during a public event. People would

gather to watch and the repute of the family would depend on how clean and white

the bones were when they came out. If the bones were clean and white, it means

the person’s passed on but if flesh remains, that’s very bad because it means the

person hasn’t really moved on and there are still dangerous forces lurking in the body.

The state of incorruption is one of the key things generally and there’s a deep

ambiguity here because there are two categories of the ‘special dead’ who are

incorrupt: one is vampires and the other is saints. How do you know which is which?

There’s a story from 16th century Russia where a parish priest goes into a forest and

finds an incorrupt body. He proclaims to have found a saint but when he takes the

body back to the church, the locals say, hang on, you should put that body out on

the landing just for the time being and don’t take it into the church because it might

be a saint or it could be a vampire, and you’ve got to find out which.

Both are categories where special supernatural conditions are preventing the normal

dissolution of the body and it won’t be clear if it’s for bad or good reasons until either

people start suffering or witnessing miracles.

How does the idea of purgatory relate to all this?

There were many early medieval concepts of purgatory, but the idea of purgatory

becomes more developed from the 12th century onwards. It’s interesting that in

northern Europe, the 12th century is the point when beliefs in the living dead fade

away. In central Europe the beliefs start really getting going in the 15th and 16th

centuries but in the British Isles, there’s archaeological evidence from much earlier

(the 7th century) and literary evidence from the 11th to 12th centuries. (In fact, William

of Newburgh, a chronicler writing in about 1190, says that are so many walking

corpses that it’s boring to talk about them!) But only 50 years later, about 1250,

it’s almost disappeared from English consciousness. So it may be that the rise and

development of the doctrine of purgatory has something to do with that because it

provides a midway stage that’s not in the body but somewhere else.

Interestingly, the Orthodox Church did not have a clear concept of purgatory and

in Orthodox Greece, in particular, the idea of the incorrupt corpse, almost uniquely,

actually becomes embodied in theology. In Greece, there are two kinds of incorrupt

corpse: the vrykolakas, which is what we would think of as the vampire that walks

around (the church tends to deny its existence or to disapprove of actions against

it) and the tympanos, a corpse that is swollen up like a drum and just lies inert and

harmless. With the tympanos it’s like the person is in a state of purgatory and often

this is because the person is excommunicated and unable to move on.


You suggest that corpse-killing acted as a therapeutic outlet for fear and

paranoia; could you explain what you mean by this?

The earliest evidence for this is from a series of enigmatic texts from ancient

Mesopotamia, from the 7th century BC, in the context of Ashurbanipal’s empire.

The evidence is too fragmentary to be certain, but it may be that those first recorded

beliefs are emerging in that context of the violent construction of a new empire.

Clearer cases are from 7th century England where we know from archaeology that

the corpses are all female and the bodies have been mutilated in a particular way

involving turning it over, pulling off the head, and separating the cranium from the jaw.

It’s very consistent. It’s clearly ‘killing’ the corpse. This is in the same period when

many rich nunneries were being founded and I think the common factor is traditional

wise women: powerful women who were magical specialists. These women either

went down the Christian route of becoming an Abbess and ruling a nunnery, or

remaining a wise woman and then after death, maybe being seen as dangerous.

This represents the trauma of losing your religious system, going from the polytheistic

system of the Germanic Anglo-Saxons up to the 7th century, and then adopting

monotheistic Christianity.

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Another time when there seems to be a big eruption of cases is in the 11th or 12th

century in Iceland. It may be part of the general changes happening in Europe

around and after the year 1000, with some aspects of life becoming more violent,

and culture changing rapidly. At that point there’s a complete gender reversal and

the living dead are all male. Then it occurs in Lutheran Saxony, in the 1540-60s, and

at a time when purgatory has been abolished so the idea that you can intercede for

the souls of the dead in purgatory has gone. There you get a very peculiar idea of

the ‘chomping dead’: they’re chewing their shrouds, and lying in the grave making

chomping noises, which is when you know you have to dig them up because they

are spreading plague. The example in very recent times is tuberculosis in America

and this seems to go back in origin to Pennsylvanian immigrants from Germany

who brought with them this idea of chewing the shroud. There was also a curious

idea in New England that the heart of a victim of tuberculosis who has been buried

is somehow spreading disease among the living relatives in the same family. So,

you have to dig up the corpse, cut out the heart and burn it, and this was widely

practised in New England between the 1780s and 1890s. The last known New

England vampire exhumation was in Rhode Island in 1892. The last one I know of in

any non-Balkan Western society was at Altoona in Pennsylvania in 1949.

How has literature and popular culture shaped our understanding of

vampires compared to historical accounts?

When you go back before the 18th century, the boundary between literature and folk

story is a bit of a hazy one because the stories that people tell get printed and people

believe the stories they read. There’s one case from Moravia, in the 1590s where


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although the actual pamphlet is lost, there’s enough evidence to suggest there was

a popular printed pamphlet for the mass market, which had got a lot of lurid stories

that emphasised a sexual element in vampire stories. This is something which you

get in later vampire literature as well. When you get into the 18th century, scholars are

taking an interest in the stories first as possibly a real phenomenon and then as an

illustration of, initially, the devil playing tricks, and then just a phenomenon in humans,

a sort of misunderstanding and delusion. In the 1740s, Benedictine Abbot Augustin

Calmet published a book mainly based on the Moravian stories that brought it into

the framework of scholarly discourse. In the course of the 18th century, we then get

the idea of the vampire as a metaphor for exploiters. It’s fascinating if you look at the

words of the French revolutionary national anthem: “Let the impure blood of tyrants

water our furrows…”; these metaphors are actually coming out of the vampire stories

that were now circulating in print. Karl Marx says that capital is like a vampire: it’s

dead labour, which preys vampire-like on living labour.

When it comes to fiction, vampire stories became increasingly popular through the

nineteenth century, starting with Lord Bryon and Dr Polidori. Sheridan Le Fanu’s

story Carmilla was based on a genuine motif, but the most popular of them all, Bram

Stoker’s Dracula, which is actually very misleading, swept the board and almost

blanked out the last traces of genuine beliefs.

What do vampire epidemics reveal about human psychology, particularly in

times of crisis?

I think what they show is that one has to have a cause, an explanation. When religious

change occurs, it is very traumatic. Likewise, a disease you can’t understand is

terrifying. People are powerless so they look for explanations. A folklorist was

recorded in the 1970s saying: “Do I believe in vampires? No, I don’t believe in

vampires and I’m not sure my ancestors did either, but they just had to find an

answer.” We’re all only too familiar with contexts in which traumatised societies have

found fictional scapegoats in living groups. Whether it’s an ethnic minority living

among you, or the idea that certain people are doing magic, it’s all a fantasy of how

living people are doing you harm. This is fantasy also, but it’s fantasy about the dead.

Why do you think vampire myths have remained so enduring, even in

today’s world?

Well, of course, they haven’t in the sense that people don’t, in most places, really

believe in them now. No educated person, with the exception of the occasional

eccentric, has seriously believed in vampires since the mid-18th century. But, of

course, where real belief declines so fiction takes over. I think that what we see

now with the enduring popularity in fiction, is still the same thing: something which

is frightening and lurid but tangible. It’s not like a ghost. You can’t attack a ghost,

it’s immaterial, but vampires, like witches, can be tracked, caught, and imprisoned.


You can then try them, punish them, behead them, and destroy them. I suppose

like any sort of sensational fiction, the enemy needs to be there to be destroyed and

you can do that with a vampire.

Do the places that don’t have vampire myths have anything obvious

in common?

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One thing in Europe is that the places that don’t have the vampire myth do at various

times have persecution of heretics and witches. They’re geographically almost

mutually exclusive. If you compare England and France in the 12th century, there’s

always been a bit of mystery about why you’ve got so much heresy in 12th century

France whereas England is almost completely free of heresy, as reported. England

does, however, appear to have an epidemic of walking corpses during that period

and France does not. I’m sticking my neck out a bit here but it’s almost as if they’re

alternatives. I think the answer to that may be that where you don’t get walking corpse

or dangerous corpse beliefs you have other beliefs that fulfil the same function.


There are many books on vampires, some dreadful, some mediocre, and some quite

good. I think the best current book on vampires is probably Vampires, Burial, and

Death by Paul Barber, which is a very entertaining examination by somebody with a

medical background but who is also a folklorist. He proceeds from a physiological

point of view: incorruption of the body is a physiological fact and there are certain

circumstances which cause corpses not to decay or that produce the illusion that

they are still alive.

However, the problem with that line of argument, is that if that if it were just that,

then it would be a universal belief. It doesn’t explain why it turns up at some times

rather than others. I think what it shows is that incorruption is in the eye of beholder,

and you don’t worry about it if you don’t think about this kind of thing but if you are

already primed to think about different sorts of supernatural incorruption, then you

will notice it. A good example of this is of a saint’s cult in Russia where the Patriarch

sends a commission to examine a body to see if is incorrupt. The report comes back

that it’s a bit shrivelled, one of the fingers has fallen off, but basically, they can say it

just about counts as incorrupt. So, it is a bit in the eye of the beholder.

If you could dispel one major misconception about historical vampire

beliefs, what would it be?

In a word: Dracula. Dracula is the major misconception; I think it’s misleading

in almost every sense. A lot of people only know about the living dead through

the fictional versions. Dracula was the determinative work of fiction on which all

subsequent vampire fiction has been based, and it is very misleading indeed.


This is mainly because the vampires in which people actually believed are nothing

whatsoever like Count Dracula.

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Count Dracula is centuries old, he’s a nobleman, he’s wily and resourceful. We see

him in action, biting and sucking people. Then the people he bites become vampires.

In actual folk belief, that particular belief that people whom vampires bite become

vampires is only recorded in one context. It just happens to be the context that Bram

Stoker read when researching for writing Dracula. It’s not widespread at all and nor

is bloodsucking. The main belief is in the dead doing harm in more subtle ways.

Most of the dead are not centuries old, they’re quite recently deceased, and most

of them are not aristocratic.

https://www.waterstones.com/book/killing-the-dead/john-blair/9780691224794

What would Caroline think?

Francois Gordon (Jurisprudence, 1971)

The discussion last year around modest

changes to the planting in the borders of the

Front Quad prompted me to consider what

Queen Caroline, were she to turn her stony

gaze to the quad which her legacy helped

build would prefer? She would certainly have

had an opinion, having been both personally a

keen gardener and also a significant innovator

in British garden design, one element of her long

and successful campaign to use cultural change to

enhance the esteem in which the Hanoverian

dynasty was held by their British subjects.

Jernegan’s Lottery Medal commemorating

Caroline; Kent Hermitage for Caroline

When Caroline arrived in Britain in 1714 on the accession to the throne of her fatherin-law

George Louis, George I, she must have been shocked by the contrast between

the German royal establishments in which she grew up and the London court.

In Germany, it was taken for granted that the (usually male) rulers were exclusively

responsible for domestic and foreign policy and military affairs whilst their spouses had

free hand setting the artistic and cultural tone and direction of the court. This division of

labour was especially clear-cut in Hanover, where George Louis’ blue-stocking mother,

Sophia, took a keen and pragmatic interest in science and philosophy and chaired

the most intellectually prestigious salon in Europe, in which middle-class savants and

philosophers rubbed shoulders on a basis of near-equality with the nobility.


One result of this (relative) social promiscuity was that during her lifetime Sophia was

always far more in touch with the mood of her working- and middle-class subjects

than had been, say, the Stuart monarchs whose social intercourse was limited to

members of the aristocratic elite. There is no reason to suppose that after 1705

either Caroline’s father-in-law or her husband felt the need to monitor, let alone

cultivate, public opinion in Britain. Caroline, however, understood that the sole reason

the former had been invited to assume the thrones of England and Scotland was

religious intolerance – “better a German king than a Catholic one” – and that if the

Hanoverian dynasty wanted to endure then it was essential to develop a measure of

public affection for the family and to shed, or at least temper, their German identity

in favour of a British one.

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Caroline, moreover, was the only senior royal with a good grasp of the English

language; George I never mastered more than a few words – throughout his reign

he communicated with his Prime Minister in schoolboy Latin – and her husband,

the future George II, never achieved real fluency or lost his strong German accent

(to be fair, having been schooled by an Irish governess, Caroline herself never lost

her Irish accent!)

Against this background, it’s not surprising that from the moment of her arrival

in London Caroline reached out to eminent British scientists and opinion-formers

including Isaac Newton, Alexander Pope, Robert Boyle and John Locke. She

encouraged her old friend Gottfried Leibnitz to correspond publicly with the

distinguished Cambridge divine Samuel Clarke who had effectively been appointed

as her British spiritual mentor and who was one of the leading lights of the then

highly influential “deist” theological movement which emphasised the concept of

‘natural theology’, i.e., that God’s existence is revealed through rational analysis of

Nature, including by studying the works of ancient sages such as Plato and Aristotle,

by scientific study as pursued by Newton and Boyle and by simply contemplating

‘natural’ landscapes. Deism provided a politically opportune Protestant antithesis to

the absolutist de haut en bas Catholicism practiced in France and by the Jacobite

‘Pretenders’ and most of their supporters. It also dovetailed neatly into the Whiggish

concept of ‘natural (British) genius’ in which a hodge-podge of Arthurian legends and

Saxon and Norman history were said to

have given rise to ‘English liberty’.

In 1730 Caroline commissioned William

Kent to design and build a garden

pantheon, ‘The Hermitage’, in the

grounds of her rural retreat at Richmond.

The building was the very first attempt

by Kent to marry classical formalism and

a semi-ruinous architectural style which

served to honour rationality of science

‘The Hermitage’ by Kent


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Credit: John Cairns

Queen Caroline in the Cupola

and observation and to emphasise the inevitable triumph of divine Nature over any

impertinent attempt by Man to impose his own idea of order. A rustic three-part

temple with a prominent pedimented central bay and a miniature bell-tower, the

whole building was built of rough rusticated stone and set into a mound surrounded

by trees. The Gentleman’s magazine helpfully explained to its readers the message

behind the design, describing the building as “a heap of stones, thrown into a very

artful disorder and curiously embellished with moss and shrubs to represent rude

Nature”.

The rough outside of the building was in sharp contrast to the elegant classical

interior which served as a showcase for busts by Rysbrack of five well-respected

English scientists and philosophers (tellingly, despite his long friendship with Caroline

and his personal eminence as a natural philosopher, Leibnitz did not figure). The

sub-text of the décor was that this was a space in which the Hermit – Caroline hired

one Peter Duck to fill the role – could, under the Queen’s patronage, serenely devote

himself to contemplating questions of philosophy and religion.

The Hermitage made a considerable stir in polite society and prominent Whigs

including Lord Burlington at Chiswick and Viscount Cobham at Stowe adopted the

new style of landscape and garden buildings, in part as a public display of loyalty to

the Hanoverian dynasty. Over the next few years Caroline herself had Kent and, later,

Charles Bridgeman expand the gardens at Richmond to include, inter alia, ‘Merlin’s


Cave’, a setting for a waxwork display affirming the legitimacy of the Hanoverian line,

a pavilion and a rotunda.

The buildings are long gone, swept away after Caroline’s death by ‘Capability’ Brown,

and the gardens are now part of the Royal Botanical Garden at Kew. The ‘Serpentine’

lake in Hyde Park created by Caroline in deliberate contrast to the rectangular ‘canals’

and ‘mirrors’ favoured by European formal garden designers survives, although few

people today remember its significance in the history of garden design, let alone the

political thinking behind it. Nonetheless, Caroline and Kent can fairly be said to have

started the avalanche of the English landscape garden style which swept away the

formalism and kaleidoscopic geometry of previous centuries and which is indelibly

associated with the great eighteenth century English country house, possibly the

single most successful and widely imitated artistic export of these islands.

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What, if anything, does the above tell us about what Caroline might have thought

of the planting in Front Quad? A thoroughly pragmatic woman, she would have

recognised that the scope for informality in a relatively confined and symmetrical

space is limited. It’s unlikely that she would have expected a ruined temple off-centre

somewhere within the quad, but we might suppose that she would have liked to

see some informal shrubbery, maybe even a few small trees, where today we have

lawn and some ivy or Virginia creeper softening the façade of the Hall and Chapel

and hinting at the inevitable future triumph of Nature. She would, I think, be happier

with the planting adjacent to the Old Taberdars’ Room, but all in all it’s perhaps just

as well that her face is firmly turned to the bustling High Street.

Front Quad


OBITUARIES

Obituaries

We record with regret the deaths of the following people:

Old Members

1943 Mr J S Mason

1949 Sir Peter Newsam

1951 Mr D M Ames

Dr B M Savory

1952 Professor K R Jennings

Dr R A Lee

The Revd Canon Keith Wood

1954 Mr D B Bryan

Mr A H Gordon Clark

Mr B R Haley

1955 Mr D M Collins

Mr R E Hunt

1956 Dr M B Dabo

Mr J R A Hirst

Mr C J Stephenson

Dr J W Thompson

1958 Professor V J Porter (died in 2022)

Mr M F G Rinvolucri

Mr P Sankey

Mr A P Wilson

1959 Professor D M Goodall

Mr R W Snaith

1960 Mr J F Young

1961 Mr J V Eason

1962 Mr R N Higgins

1963 Mr P D R B Hoffman

Dr F Reid

Mr T J Shaw

1964 Dr J H Coulter

Dr J M Lewis

Mr P Wood CB OBE

1966 Mr E J R Lee

Mr M R Owen

1968 Mr M A Mackenzie-Smith

The Revd Canon E Z Mbali

1971 Dr A J Clarke-Sturman

1975 Brigadier J H Skinner MBE

1977 Mr P Godsland

Dr J G Gough

1979 Mr M A Pitkänen (died on 3rd

September 2018)

1980 Mr J Bousfield

1981 Mr R J Dixon

1991 Mr S Kaneko

College Staff

Helen Powell, former Queen’s College

Librarian

Former Academics

Professor A Hamnett (JRF 1972-74)

Dr B Hesp (JRF 1965-68)

Emeritus Fellow

Mr J M Kaye

The news of the deaths of Old Members comes to the notice of the College

through a variety of channels. The College is unable to verify all these reports and

there may be some omissions and occasional inaccuracies.


DAVID BRYAN

David Bryan was born on 20th July 1933 and brought up

in Bromley, Kent, entering Queen’s in October 1954 after

National Service in the Royal Army Education Corp in which

he trained for, and became, an instructor. David was one of

a group of four reading English but the College had nobody

to teach us so we had to be “farmed out”. This proved to

be to St Anne’s for Anglo Saxon, where the formidable but

ultimately delightful and supportive Elaine Griffiths addressed us as Mr------ but could

never remember our surnames! “I never use Christian names till after Prelims , but I’ll

have to make you an exception. What are yours?” “Brian Turner, Brian Simmill, David

Howard, David Bryan”. “Now I am even more confused!” she said.

Obituaries

We all moved on towards Schools in due course with typical Oxford lifestyles of

the 1950s, with acting, singing, rowing (we were Head of the River in Torpids 1956

and Eights 1957) being our interest areas. In David Bryan’s case it was watching

the University side playing what was then its first-class series of games against the

counties and tourists. He also worked hard for the Congregational Society not least

by mustering a cricket team to play the John Wesley Society, for which, in the spirit

of Ecumenism, he recruited an Anglican bowler who so devastated the Methodists

that after four overs they were all out and the match ruined as a social event amongst

the Dissenters! As well as being a good selector David was a good fielder, having

taken five of the catches that his unqualified import (I was the bowler) had induced.

After graduating, he stayed up to take the Diploma in Education course starting his

teaching career at Bancroft’s School in Essex, before moving on in 1962 to teach

in Kings Lynn at King Edward VII Grammar School acting as Deputy Head of the

English Department. In 1961 he had married Sallie his wife, for over 60 years of

happy and successful marriage. Their daughter Katharine was with them in 1964

when they made their first overseas move for David to teach at Brummana High

School in Lebanon in the hills above Beirut, where their son Timothy was born in

1965. The family returned to the UK in 1968 when David was appointed Head of

Department of English at a school in Gravesend in his native county of Kent. But

the Middle East called again when, under the British Council, he was appointed

Headmaster of the English School for Boys in Istanbul in 1971, where he had the

honour of accompanying HM Queen Elizabeth II around the school. This was his

final school appointment, but not his final educational contribution, as he worked

on for the next 30 years as examiner, assessor, advisor, and consultant to various

exam boards, schools, and Local Education Authorities.

And his love of cricket continued too. Born in Kent and resident of Middlesex, he

chose to join Surrey, not least for regular access to the Oval, where we would sit

together with Tim, analysing events out in the middle after lunch in the pavilion.


Obituaries

In his final years his commitment to family closed in on him as cancer took over for

a ten-year struggle. Sallie’s part increasing from encouragement from the start to

wheelchair pushing, then home nursing and finally daily visits, with the children and

grandchildren supporting, to the Catholic nursing home, where, despite his Quaker

roots and membership of the Non-Conformist Church, David was warmly welcomed.

My final vision is of David in his wheelchair at a Taberdars’ Lunch (he joined the Tabs’

Society at its beginning) with Sallie steering him through the crowded Upper Library.

David Howard (English Language and Literature, 1954)

JONATHAN BOUSFIELD

Like father, like son, Jonathan read history at The Queen’s

College; but unlike his father, went on to pursue a career

in travel writing, becoming a public figure in Croatia, his

second home.

Born on 9th May 1962, in Otley (West Yorkshire) to father

Neville Bousfield, headmaster of Prince Henry’s Grammar

School, and mother Barbara (née Hinsby), a former school-teacher, Jonathan went

on to attend his father’s school, before gaining a place at The Queen’s College,

Oxford.

In childhood he was subjected every summer to long caravan holidays across

Europe, gaining a knowledge and taste for travel: to France, Germany, Austria,

Switzerland, Italy, the former Yugoslavia, and Greece. At the same time, in his youth

he began to develop an interest in music, from his teenage passion and playing with

friends in post-punk bands, to his later serious engagement with music in a social,

historical, and even political context in his newspaper articles.

After graduating from Oxford, he went on to spend a year at Belgrade University,

studying eastern European history and politics, while at the same time developing his

interest in the contemporary culture of that part of Europe, which would determine

his later writing career.

Settling in London, he forged a career with the Rough Guides publishing company,

which enabled him to satisfy his thirst for travel, by exploring, researching, and

writing about the countries that so interested him. He became the author of many

of the Rough Guides, notably the Baltic States, Poland, Bulgaria, Austria, Slovenia,

and Croatia.

Jonathan moved on from London to settle in Zagreb, in Croatia. On 12th April 2014

he announced, by ’phone calls to his mother and brother in the UK, that on this same


day he was getting married! With characteristic lack of ceremony, he was thus joined

with his Croatian partner Gordana Košćec, with whom he subsequently raised two

beautiful and very talented sons, Jura and Niko.

Jonathan distinguished himself in Croatia, where he became well known for

promoting the nation’s culture and attractions. His Rough Guide to Croatia was first

published in 2000. He went on to write for the national journal Jutarnji List, for Globus,

and for Svijet Kulture; becoming respected as an expert on eastern European culture,

travel, and contemporary music. Much of his work is preserved, either in guide books

or on his own web-site: www.straysatellite.com.

Obituaries

Jonathan also wrote for Time Out Croatia, Calvert Journal and New Eastern Europe.

Notably, he collaborated with a respected Croatian illustrator, Igor Hofbauer, to

produce the graphic novel Grimizna Laguna (Crimson Quays), a surreal and dark

tale set in a fictitious Mediterranean resort.

One of his last articles describes how his grandfather, a former soldier, had attended

the so-called “white horse” FA cup final at Wembley stadium in 1923. Despite a polite

refusal from the British press, this found interest with Jutarnji List in Zagreb! Awaiting

publication is his most recent work, a book on the history of tourism on the Adriatic.

Sadly, Jonathan spent his last few years fighting cancer and succumbed in a care

home in Zagreb on 1st April 2025, tragically not an April fool. He lived life as he had

wanted, doing the things he loved, and earning respect both in the travel community

and in Croatia, his second home. As friends and colleagues put it: “An exceptional

author”; “ A true scholar and a gentleman”; “A great guy”; “One of the best”.

He is survived by his mother, Barbara, and elder brother, David, in the UK; his widow,

Gordana, and two sons, Jura and Niko, and brother-in-law, Hrvoje in Croatia.

David Bousfield

PAUL GODSLAND

Paul’s college friends were deeply saddened to learn of his

sudden and unexpected death on the 4th of October 2024.

Given one word to describe Paul, I would choose ‘ebullient’.

His warmth, his humour, both subtle and slapstick, and

his lively intelligence made him a great friend. Through

that combination of qualities, he had that very rare gift

of making you feel better about life just by being there. He was talented too – we

were both referred to the French assistant to have our Northern accents surgically


Obituaries

removed and in Paul’s case it was successful. His fluency in, and knowledge of,

French were highly impressive. Paul was also an able sportsman though it was

not something he took very seriously at the time. He played football with more

gusto than grace. Gerry Hackett (1977-1980) and I attended the Memorial Service at

Malvern College and were surprised to learn that he had become an avid Sunderland

supporter and a regular squash player, attributes hitherto unknown to us.

On leaving Queen’s, Paul took a PGCE in Modern Languages (also at Oxford) and

secured a post at Malvern College where he stayed for the rest of his professional

life, ending up as Deputy Head and then, on retirement, leading the Old Malvernians

Association with great success. It was clear from the warm and moving tributes

at the Memorial Service that he was held in the highest regard by both staff and

pupils as a generous colleague, an inspiring teacher, and a devoted family man. The

chapel was packed with people whose lives he had touched in different ways and

the affection for him was palpable. He left a deep impression on that community, as

indeed he did on all who met him.

Ivor G Timmis, Modern Languages (1977)

DAVID GOODALL

David Murray Goodall died peacefully on January 15th

2025 after a short illness. Born in Manchester in 1941 and

educated at Manchester Grammar he came to Queen’s

in 1959 on a Hastings Scholarship to read Chemistry.

He was an exemplary and diligent student who, besides

a year rowing in one of the College eights, was only

infrequently diverted from his studies. Following his first

class degree he stayed on for a DPhil investigating reaction kinetics in the Physical

Chemistry department under the supervision of R (Ronnie) P. Bell. Like so many of

his contemporaries he then crossed the Atlantic for a year’s postdoctoral position

at Cornell University as a Fulbright scholar.

At this time (circa 1965) a number of brand-new universities were recruiting and

David was earmarked by one, York University, and attracted back as a lecturer

to their Chemistry Department. There he remained for the rest of his academic

career being promoted through Readership (1994) to Professor (2001). During

this time David became a major international expert on the physical chemistry of

separation methodology. He published 160 papers and patents, was awarded the

Chromatographic Society Jubilee medal for development of an optical rotation chiral

detector in 1991, and in 1999 was recognised by the Royal Society of Chemistry for

‘a significant contribution to the theory and development of capillary electrophoresis,

chiral analysis and miniaturised detectors’.


After retirement in 2007 he formed a small spin-out company Paraytec which

continued the development of novel detectors for the biopharmaceutical industry and

research. During his academic career he supervised many doctoral and postdoctoral

co-workers and was loved and admired by them all for his gentle and scientifically

astute leadership. Their easy relationship with him can be exemplified by the ‘PIZZA

DELIVERY’ notice which they once attached to the Honda 50 which was his regular

mode of transport to the university.

Obituaries

David carried his scientific desire to learn into all aspects of his life, always interested

to know how, why, and where. This was typified during his final illness when he

wanted to know the full medical facts both using Google and interrogating his doctors

to the extent they had probably not come across before. In addition to his interest

in friends and acquaintances, he would stop in any place or situation and enter into

deep conversations with complete strangers as if he had known them for years.

One major part of his life outside of chemistry was the Liberal Democratic party.

Involved in initially setting up a Liberal presence in York, he went on to be elected as

a Councillor serving on the North Yorkshire County Council from 1985-1993. Both

he and Denise continued with their support for the party through its good times and

less good times and, in the approach to elections, would always be found canvassing

and distributing leaflets around the area.

He inherited chemistry genes. Both his parents were Edinburgh University chemistry

graduates: his father then working for ICI, his mother’s degree all the more impressive

as she’d only arrived in the UK for sixth form as a German Jewish refugee in 1933.

Many of her family died in concentration camps. David was very proud of this

inheritance and made several trips to Germany throughout his life, finally getting

German citizenship in 2024.

David leaves a widow, Denise, whom he married whilst still a DPhil student at

Queen’s, three children, Simon, Rachel, and Sarah and two grandchildren, Jasper

and Ozzy.

Professor Peter Williams, Chemistry (1959)

Credit: John Crossley

(former student of Professor James)

IOAN JAMES

Ioan was born in 1928, an only child, in Merton Park,

London SW19. He became a Foundation Scholar of St

Paul’s School, which was then located in Hammersmith

before its move to Barnes, but it was evacuated to

Crowthorne during the War, when he would have been

there.


Obituaries

From St Paul’s, Ioan won an open scholarship to The Queen’s College, Oxford,

matriculating in 1946 and graduating, with various prizes, in 1950 after losing a

year due to illness. During his illness he read very widely and after graduation,

he joined the research group of Henry Whitehead, then the Waynflete Professor

of Pure Maths. Whitehead was distinguished for his work in differential geometry

and in topology, specifically homotopy theory. Whitehead also owned a farm, at

Noke towards Otmoor, and was particularly attached to his pigs. He claimed to

find mathematical inspiration while scratching the backs of his pigs, and he would

organise annually something between a progress and a garden party, taking the

whole maths department to Noke. Ioan and Whitehead wrote a string of papers

together starting in 1952.

After completing his doctorate in 1953, Ioan won a Commonwealth Fund Scholarship

which took him to America for two years, 1954-56. He describes this time in a

memoir: travelling over on the Queen Mary, he first visited Princeton University, which

was acknowledged as the American capital of topology at the time. Steenrod from

Princeton, who Ioan particularly wanted to meet, was spending the second part of

that year at UC Berkeley, so with two others, the four of them drove to Berkeley via

Florida and Texas in Steenrod’s 1954 Buick, a large and beautiful machine. At the

end of the summer Ioan returned to Princeton to spend the rest of his two years

at the Institute for Advanced Study, with, we may suppose, a taste for travel and

for large American cars. His time in the Americas culminated in August 1956 in an

International Symposium on Algebraic Topology in Mexico City.

After this, Ioan’s career took off quite fast. He was a JRF in Cambridge in 1956-57

and then came back to Oxford as Reader in Pure Mathematics in 1957, a post he held

until 1969. When he came back to Oxford, Ioan lived for a time on Whitehead’s farm,

and his memoir recalls: There was never a dull moment where the Whiteheads were

concerned (or their pigs, presumably). At that time, and for a while afterwards, there

were just four statutory professors in mathematics at Oxford, the Waynflete and the

Savilian on the Pure side, and the Sedleian and the Rouse-Ball on the Applied side.

You could fit all the Oxford maths Professors into a Morris Mini Minor, the original mini

that appeared in 1959. There are now about a dozen maths professors, depending

on how you do the counting. In 1959 Ioan was elected Senior Research Fellow at

St John’s, Oxford, with the understanding that he would look after the mathematics

undergraduates. The category of Tutorial Fellow had not been introduced at that

time, and Roger Elliott had been taking care of maths as well as physics – as a sign

of how the subjects have grown, this is now a task for which there are five Tutorial

Fellows and two Supernumerary Fellows (though of course the subjects are bigger

now and undergraduates then typically had eight tutorials a term and now have 20).

Ioan arrived just when the Beehive became available for use, and moved into a set in

there. A cultured man, he was always interested in modern architecture and modern

art, as though he responded to the urging “One must be absolutely modern”. He


was very proud of a large, four-feet square print of a Matisse cut-out ‘The Snail’, the

original of which is in the Tate. After its time in the Beehive, our ‘Snail’ was prominent

in the old Maths Institute, outside Ioan’s office, and is now to be seen in the Andrew

Wiles Building.

I’ve been told that, in the Beehive, Ioan slept on a futon, an unfamiliar object in 1959,

also that he painted the ceiling black, and, most strikingly, as I’ve heard from many

sides, that he had a sand-pit in there. The sand-pit has also been described to me as

a scaled-down Zen rock garden – some picturesque rocks surrounded by carefully

raked sand or gravel representing water. One might recall the Zen saying: “A flower

does not talk but a rock has the voice of water”. There is a famous Zen garden in

Kyoto and there has been one in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco since 1953,

which Ioan could well have seen when visiting Berkeley. At that time, hip Buddhism

was approaching its apogee in San Francisco. Also from this time, we have a

photograph of Ioan at the Edinburgh International Congress of Mathematicians in

1958; the photo was taken on the conference excursion, a boat-trip on the Clyde,

and Ioan is a slight and very youthful figure.

Obituaries

The next big change was Ioan’s marriage, in 1961, to Rosemary Stewart who was

establishing a reputation for her work in management studies, and was later a Fellow

of Templeton College and its successors. They lived in 17 Blackhall Road, one of the

college’s modern houses on that street, and Rosemary had some interesting stories

about the status of women in St John’s and in the University at that time: of being

advised that she would need a hat, for garden parties, and that the ladies were expected

to withdraw at High Table dessert. From around this time, Ioan and Rosemary had a

succession of large American cars, including at least one white Cadillac, but all with the

cherished number plate 5MV, initials which have significance in topology.

This is the period that can be seen as Ioan’s prime: Whitehead had died suddenly

and unexpectedly in 1960 while in Princeton, and Ioan edited his complete works, in

four volumes; Ioan was the first editor of the new journal, Topology, which Whitehead

had persuaded Robert Maxwell to publish but had not lived to see; Ioan was elected

to the Royal Society in 1968, and then to the Savilian Professorship of Geometry in

1970, which led to his leaving St John’s and moving into an office in one of those

charming 17th Century houses at the top of New College Lane. By this time Ioan

and Rosemary had bought Drake House on Hinksey Hill, and that had become the

centre of their life. They were known for their kindness to younger and particularly

incoming University staff. My wife and I benefitted from this ourselves after I started at

St John’s in the 1980s, and I remember Drake House as a house on the hill, among

trees and full of sun and artworks.

Ioan continued to attract honours. The London Mathematical Society is the principal

learned society for mathematics in the UK. It publishes journals, funds conferences

and summer schools, and awards prizes. Ioan won their Berwick Prize in 1959, was


Obituaries

treasurer of the Society from 1969-79 (in which role he was known for his financial

ability), won the Senior Whitehead Prize (named for his supervisor) in 1978, and

was President of the Society, a major distinction, from 1984-86. He was elected

Honorary Fellow of St John’s in 1988, made Honorary Professor of the University

of Wales in 1989, a recognition of his lasting Welshness, and elected an Honorary

Fellow of Queen’s in 2017.

Ioan retired from the Savilian Professorship in 1995 and quite soon after that became

a familiar figure in St John’s; a very regular luncher, he had foresaken his dapper

appearance. I think he wore trainers exclusively from the time they arrived on the

UK market in the late 1960s, and he was an intrepid wearer of shorts, summer or

winter, rain or shine. I never witnessed Ioan in a dinner suit with a Hawaiian shirt,

but I have heard reports of it…

In retirement, he embarked on a remarkable series of books, with some support from

Leverhume. From long before, there had been two classic Pelican volumes of short

mathematical biographies first published in 1937 and read by every mathematicallyinclined

sixth-former, certainly into the 1970s and probably including Ioan at St

Paul’s, and called, though this was not the fault of the author, Men of Mathematics.

They gave you the stories but had a reputation for axe-grinding to go with the

everyday sexism. Ioan’s book Remarkable Mathematicians from 2002 was altogether

more sophisticated and in due course he followed it up with Remarkable Physicists,

Remarkable Biologists, and Remarkable Engineers. In the course of writing the first

volume, he was struck by the number of distinguished mathematicians who could

then (2002) have been said to be suffering from Asperger’s Syndrome, though

now ASD is the preferred term. Ioan communicated with the experts in that field,

notably Ute Frith of UCL, and this led to two more books, including The Mind of

the Mathematician. Finally, and again stimulated by the research he did for the

first two books, he wrote a book called Driven to Innovate: a century of Jewish

mathematicians and physicists. That was seven books in eight years, starting when

he was 74, a remarkable sequence.

Ioan and Rosemary had a serious road accident in about 2010 from which they

struggled to recover. Rosemary sadly died in 2015: she was 90, and they had been

married for 54 years. Both Rosemary and Ioan were only children and they were

themselves childless, and Ioan faced a lonely time. However, he had the great good

fortune to have a loyal and supportive friend in Sue Dopson, who took care of him

even to the extent of accompanying him, with a carer, on holidays to exotic places. If

ever at lunch in the SCR you overheard a conversation involving the Seychelles or the

Maldives, you could be confident it was Ioan reporting on a past trip or announcing

a future one. Ioan also took in lodgers at Drake House, usually graduate students,

often Rhodes Scholars, and they clearly added to his life, and he to theirs. There is

a very charming article of reminiscence from a New Zealand newspaper, the Otago

Daily Times, by a columnist who was one of Ioan’s Rhodes Scholar lodgers.


During the period after Rosemary’s death, Ioan made some very generous

donations, to Queen’s towards the New Library and to St John’s for the support of

undergraduate and graduate study, of mathematics and other subjects. Ioan died

at his home, Drake House, on 21st February, having become unwell on a final visit

to an exotic place, Oman, with Sue.

Adapted from the eulogy given by Professor Paul Tod,

Emeritus Research Fellow in Mathematics, St. John’s College

Obituaries

JOHN KAYE

John Marsh Kaye, who died on 26 February 2025, was

the College’s Praelector in Law for over 40 years. He

had been an undergraduate at Magdalen, taking a 1st in

Jurisprudence in 1954 and the BCL in 1956. He taught at

Pembroke College before his election, in 1957, as a fellow

of Queen’s and Praelector in Law. After Tony Honoré

moved to New College in 1964 Kaye was the sole Law

tutor at Queen’s until his retirement, and election as an Emeritus Fellow, in 1999.

Kaye taught Roman Law, Legal History, Land Law, and Tort, which reflected his

interest in medieval law. He published several articles on medieval and early modern

law, and edited the thirteenth century legal treatise, the Placita Corone, for the

Selden Society.

In 1977 AA Williams retired as Bursar and it was felt that some responsibilities

traditionally held by the Bursar might profitably be held by others. One of these was

custody of the College Archive. Given that the bulk of the early records related to

land transactions and that the Archive had been originally been created to protect

the College’s legal rights, Kaye was naturally interested, and he became the College’s

first Keeper of the Archives.

He did the College great service in the role, arranging for new storage in the College

and the repair of certain documents, and he reorganised the post-medieval records.

Perhaps his greatest service was in obtaining the return to the College of the manorial

records of the manor of Renwick, the College’s foundation estate, that had sat,

disregarded, in the safe of a Cumbrian solicitor’s firm for half a century.

The College Archive became Kaye’s research dataset, and his lectures on Land

Law were illustrated with deeds from the College’s land transactions. However,

when he published his magnum opus, Medieval English Conveyances, in 2009, he

felt it necessary to draw his examples from much wider material. He had, though,


already published two significant tranches of material from the College Archive in

the Southampton Record Series.

Obituaries

The first of these, published in 1976, was the Cartulary of God’s House, Southampton.

Queen’s has been, since almost our foundation, the Warden of God’s House, also

known as St. Julian’s Hospital. The cartulary, compiled in the fourteenth century,

consisted of almost 200 deeds of lands belonging to the Hospital, which Kaye published

in one volume, accompanied by another volume consisting of historical notes on every

tenement included in the Cartulary. He published another volume called A God’s House

Miscellany in the Series in 1984, consisting of some medieval rolls, and a calendar of

early-modern correspondence in the College relating to God’s House.

Kaye also compiled a history of the College, focusing on its estates and finances

which have not been well treated in the standard histories, from 1450 to 1620. A

pdf of this work, without notes or index, runs to 917 pages. It proved impossible to

publish the book, but a copy is in the College’s Archive, where it proves invaluable

to a wide array of legal, financial, and local historians. Another unpublished work,

intended for internal College use, was a history of the College livings, compiled in

1985, but still of great use in College business today.

John Kaye was also a member of the Queen’s Bench Society and, for several

decades, the Senior Treasurer of the Eglesfield Musical Society. A proud

Yorkshireman, he valued the College’s traditional culture and was correspondingly

suspicious of innovation; by modern standards his views were not progressive. To his

students he could be very reserved and quite a private person; older colleagues will

remember him from the days when smoking was still allowed in the Senior Common

Room, puffing at his pipe and holding forth in his sardonically entertaining style.

Michael Riordan, Archivist and Prof John Blair, Emeritus Fellow

Credit: Neil Turner / Alamy

PETER NEWSAM

Shortly after Peter Newsam took on the top job at the Inner

London Education Authority (Ilea) in 1977 he told a friend:

“It’s rather like playing a pinball machine. You pull the lever,

and lights flash everywhere and all the bells ping. Then the

answer flashes up. Zero.”

As education officer, he inherited a workforce demoralised

by a rapid turnover of staff, an organisation reeling from the William Tyndale affair in

which pupils effectively took over their school, and a constant round of reorganisation

that was barely keeping pace with the capital’s plummeting pupil numbers.

“The many efforts being made to improve this or that feature of the system were, in


a phrase I used at the time, no better than rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic,”

he told The Times six years later.

Yet Newsam’s quiet determination, calm authority and hands-on approach prevented

these pressure points boiling over into anger and resentment. He made himself

accessible to individual parents and became known for replying within 15 minutes to

the primary school head teacher complaining about new procedures. He also made

every effort to attend public meetings, where he listened politely to the concerns

being voiced while not shying away from taking tough decisions on school closures.

Obituaries

Running the Ilea was a politically charged position. On the one hand, he was based at

County Hall, which in his latter years was run by Ken Livingstone, the left-wing leader

of the Greater London Council. On the other, Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives came

to power across the river at Westminster during his tenure with a very different agenda.

Newsam’s approach was inspired by a visit in 1976 to New York, where he spent

two weeks sitting in classrooms and talking to teachers and education officials.

He returned with dire warnings that if children are made to sit universal tests of

minimum skills, the teachers will teach only to the minimum standard and nothing

else. He also found among ethnic minority groups in New York a sense of anger,

hostility and isolation that was not being expressed in London, but which he was

determined to head off.

He became one of the first educationists to advocate abandoning Ilea’s traditional

“colour blind” approach to teaching and instead responded to the growing multiethnic

population. This led to Sir Keith Joseph, the education secretary, appointing

him to the Rampton (later Swann) committee looking into the education of children

from minority backgrounds.

Indeed, Newsam’s work at Ilea increasingly became as much about race relations as

education. Even 45 years ago more than 125 different languages were being spoken

among London’s pupils and he set about recruiting advisers to design a multi-ethnic

curriculum for the capital’s schools.

In 1982 William Whitelaw, the home secretary, invited him to become chairman of

the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE). He left behind Ilea’s staff of 80,000 and

budget of £800 million for a staff of 220 and a budget of £8 million, while also taking

a pay cut of more than 20 per cent. He was now in the middle of an organisation

that attracted contempt from the black community and scathing criticism from the

select committee on race relations. It was also beset by internal fighting.

While tackling these tensions Newsam turned his attention to improving race

relations, though he soon realised that the government had no real interest in what

lay behind the previous year’s Brixton race riots. “Oh, they’re worried by the political


implications of the riots, and they’ll make calculations to stop them from happening

again,” he said. “But they’re not interested in the causes at all.”

Obituaries

Critics of his time at Ilea and the CRE accused Newsam of not moving fast enough,

to which he responded by telling the Times Educational Supplement: “How much

major surgery can you expect to carry out at once without sending the body into

institutional shock?”

Peter Anthony Newsam was born in Gloucester in 1928, the youngest of four sons

of William Newsam, a customs officer from Barbados who had come to Oxford on

a scholarship and became a judge in colonial India, and his French wife, Delphine

(née Lelievre), a teacher. His early years were spent in Bangalore, but he returned to

Britain to attend the Dragon prep school in Oxford, where he was a contemporary

of Timothy Raison, the future Home Office minister. He was 18 before he saw his

father again. He was a scholar at Clifton College, Bristol, did National Service with

the army “peeling potatoes and frying breakfasts”, and read philosophy, politics and

economics at The Queen’s College, Oxford.

While on a family skiing trip he met Joy Greg, who was studying at Rada and later

ran a kindergarten. They were married in 1951 and had five children: Anita, Nicholas,

Anthony, Paul and Robert. The marriage was dissolved in 1987 and the following

year he married Sue Addinell, a teacher; they had a daughter, Georgia. That too was

dissolved and in 2017 he married Sarah King, a librarian who had been his partner

for many years and who survives him together with his children.

Having passed the civil service exam he spent three years at the Board of Trade,

where he was curious to understand why the critical and creative abilities of his

university contemporaries seemed not to flourish. Thinking the reason might lie in

their schooling he abandoned the civil service, returned to the Dragon school for

classroom experience and took a teaching diploma at the University of Oxford.

His teaching studies had brought him for the first time into contact with state schools

which, in contrast to his own privileged education, proved a revelation and he set

about finding ways to improve the quality of children’s learning. He went on to

become head of humanities at Alderman Peers secondary school, Oxfordshire, but

was drawn to school administration and in 1963 was appointed assistant education

officer in the North Riding of Yorkshire.

After posts in Cumberland, in charge of primary education, and the West Riding

of Yorkshire, where he was a protégé of Sir Alec Clegg, the leading educationist,

he joined Ilea in 1972 as deputy education officer. In his early days he was all but

frozen out by Eric Briault, the chief education officer, who later disagreed with his

plans for mini-comprehensive schools. Nevertheless, his silver tongue soon talked

40 grammar schools into turning comprehensive and in 1977 he succeeded Briault.


After five years he moved to the CRE and five years later became secretary to the

Association of County Councils. From 1989 to 1994 he was director of the Institute

of Education at the University of London, overseeing the competition of an extension

in Bedford Way that now houses the Sir Peter Newsam Library. He later published

two volumes of memoir, The Autobiography of an Education (2014).

Slightly built, youthful looking and with a quiet voice, Newsam retired to Thorntonle-Dale,

near Pickering in North Yorkshire, where he kept a series of rescue dogs,

followed his lifelong passion for cricket and enjoyed poetry and Shakespeare. He

remained involved in educational policy, advising ministers, serving on quangos and

writing frequent letters to the broadsheet newspapers.

Obituaries

Newsam always remained a teacher at heart, understanding how education could

transform lives. He was firmly of the view that attention to detail mattered. On one

occasion, when an education minister answered criticism of government proposals

to establish a new type of primary school with the reassurance that “this is only a

very small thing”, he was heard to remark: “Like a virus.”

Sir Peter Newsam, educationist, was born on November 2, 1928. He died on

November 16, 2023, aged 95.

Reprinted with kind permission of The Times where this was first printed on

9 February 2024 © Times Newspapers Limited 2024

MARIO RINVOLUCRI

When Mario Rinvolucri died on 19th February 2025 aged

84, the world lost a giant of a person who had influenced

countless thousands of people in the way that they learned

English and in the way that one teaches languages.

Mario went up to Queen’s from Ampleforth College in 1958

and read Oriental Studies. After a spell working for Reuters

he worked as a teacher of English in Greece, an experience which convinced him

that the methods of teaching he was asked to follow were ineffective because they

were focussed on the belief that one size should fit all and if that one size did not fit

all the learners, then so be it. This convinced Mario that it is the individual (more so

than the textbook/teacher) who is the centre of the learning process. This took him

in the direction of EFL, English as a Foreign Language, a relatively new discipline

at the time, a discipline which, in its newness was open to a number of influences

from other disciplines, influences such as James Asher’s Total Physical Response

(TPR), Caleb Gattegno’s Silent Way, Georgi Lozanov’s Suggestopedia, Bernard

Dufeu’s Psychodrama, and Bandler’s and Grinder’s Neurolinguistic Programming.


Obituaries

Mario had an endlessly inquisitive mind and so embraced all of these influences

and many more, taking from each what he believed was helpful and appropriate

for each individual learner. Above all, his approach was a Humanistic one and it is

not surprising therefore, that one of his contributions to language learning was the

creation of the magazine, Humanising Language Teaching (HLT).

Like a doctor who is constantly looking for new and ever more effective cures, Mario

was an avid reader in search of new influences and ideas. As such he was in constant

demand as a speaker, often the plenary speaker, at international conferences on

language learning. Not only that, but he was also kept very busy running workshops

worldwide, workshops which would change countless lives thanks to the novelty of

the ideas he presented and thanks to the passion with which they were delivered.

Not only was Mario an avid reader, he was also an avid writer, the author of some

34 textbooks such as Grammar Games, Lessons from the Learner, and Challenge

to Think. Mario was an intensely selfless man, ever eager to encourage others and

so each of his books was a joint venture between himself and other trainers he

was inspiring to become writers themselves. He was a man, who in his passion to

encourage others, would always make himself available to others, keenly interested

in each individual and how to make the learning process as enjoyable and effective

as possible to them.

I had the good fortune to work closely with Mario off and on between 1977 and

2019. In the summer of 1977, while teaching History of Art at Benenden School, I

was looking for a summer job and answered an advertisement in the local paper for

teachers of English to foreign adults. I was offered a job on condition that I attended

a three-week course in TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language). Mario was

my teacher. At first, I suffered from culture shock, so different his methods were to

what I had experienced hitherto. For the next 11 years my life would involve teaching

Art History and running the Art Department at Benenden and I would spend my

summers under the influence of Mario, re-charging, as it were, my mental batteries

and learning new and more effective ways of teaching.

In 1988 I was offered the job of directing the international organisation of which

Mario was the guiding light and so I was in the privileged position of deciding with

him which kinds of teacher training courses we would offer to overseas teachers

of English.

His legacy is cemented not only by the special memories he has created for the

thousands of people whose lives he touched worldwide, but also by his numerous

publications. His legacy will last for a very long time to come.

Robert Gillan, Modern Languages (1966)


PHILIP WOOD

Philip Wood’s young life was one of strong contrasts,

probably typical of some other working-class Yorkshire

boys who came to the Queen’s on Hastings scholarships

from grammar schools such as Wakefield’s QUEGS (Queen

Elizabeth Grammar School). The eleven-plus was his route

to a totally unexpected higher education and a Londonbased

career in the Civil Service, including three-and-a-half

years (1975-79) in Downing Street as one of the private

secretaries to Harold Wilson and then James Callaghan.

Obituaries

In Philip’s youth (born 1946) his home-town, Barnsley, offered an option to top 11+

performers of attending the prestigious QUEGS. This all-boys school, offering a

six-day week, was academic and sporting with a strong musical tradition. At school

Philip played rugby and at home passionate soccer on the ‘Rec’, where, in the

1950s, the local football star and Busby boy, Tommy Taylor, would drop by to kick

a ball round.

Philip was off to a good start with strong home background and education. Those

who knew his mother, Eleanor, immediately recognised a selfless, loving, determined

personality with aspirations for her family. Philip got a free, state-funded education

of a truly uncompromised value, with seamless entry to a then well-paid career. He

enjoyed reading History which stretched his excellent brain sufficiently. Integration

in Oxford life was no problem – on a full grant the son of a miner was solvent and

could feel himself rich.

He was also lucky in his Civil Service career, which began a few short weeks

after finals when he joined the Department of Transport, St Christopher House,

Southwark. Shortly after, he was a Resident Clerk living free in the penthouse flat

with its unrivalled view of St Paul’s across the river. The clerks existed to deal with

any night emergencies – train crashes, nuclear attack – and was a good training in

high-pressure team work.

Prime Minister Harold Wilson was openly pro the appointment of Yorkshiremen and

Philip felt his interview for Appointments Secretary warmed after they got onto their

youthful cycle rides round South Yorkshire. Philip may not have anticipated the pace

of life at No 10, but came to relish the pressure and the sense of making history.

Battles to the death involved the press, the establishment, and (sometimes) serving

Cabinet Ministers reluctant to toe the line. I recall Tony Benn standing out as giving

Philip the worst trouble.

The work at No 10 was a killer – no home-life, though compensated for by adamantine

team-loyalty and the humane attitude of Principal Private Secretary, Kenneth Stowe.


Obituaries

In such a well-knit set-up, team members including Civil Servants may take the

political colour of their masters. Philip relished Callaghan’s time as PM, a period

that was almost wholly embattled. By this stage, 1979, Philip was the Parliamentary

Private Secretary, fighting with the Whips and the rest of the No 10 team to keep alive

the government’s slim majority in the House of Commons. ‘Jim’ was quite capable of

ruthless bullying of his staff and others, but could also be markedly kind and grateful,

showering Honours as a last gesture, including an OBE for Philip.

Work in the Department of the Environment (which had absorbed Transport) was

much less exciting and fulfilling than the No 10 years, though no less gruelling. Among

highlights for Philip were the Armitage Report, 1982, designed to determine policy

on heavy lorries, and the privatisation of the railways (The Railways Act, 1993). In

these Philip was in the lead and probably did not earn his country’s lasting gratitude!

He was not a ‘Railways man’ despite a successful two-year secondment to British

Rail. Privatisation was a task which fell to one man to reconcile the irreconcilable.

Colleagues doubted whether the change could be brought off at all, especially as

the lead Ministers constantly changed. For this work Philip was made a CB.

If there are two kinds of top Civil Servants, ‘conciliators’ and ‘bull-dozers’, Philip

belonged to the latter group, though (according to their accounts) he was notably

kind and helpful to those who worked directly for him. As his wife, I am of course

prejudiced about Philip’s virtues, but I think that background, up-bringing and

character fitted him to be the most effectual of men. Luck put him in touch with some

of the teachers, tutors, denizens of Oxford, and the Civil Service who had negotiated

the most challenging years of the 20th Century, including WW2. He tried to match

these ‘types’ while aware that their great efforts were often laid waste.

Philip himself was a mixture of personal modesty, self-reliance, tenacity in his aims,

graft and command of detail. In retirement, his favourite activities were cooking (which

he mastered to the great pleasure of friends and family) and a massive programme

of reading in history and literature. No chips on his shoulder, he remained ‘proud’ of

his Barnsley background, deeply grateful for his early years and family.

Mrs Dilys Wood

ESTCOURT ZOLILE MBALI

The Reverend Estcourt Zolile Mbali who died in Kent on 1

April 2025, entered Queen’s in 1968 to read Theology. He

was sent by the Anglican Province of Southern Africa on

a World Council of Churches (WCC) scholarship. It was

assumed he would return to apartheid South Africa as a

theologian and teacher; but the heart had other reasons.


Zolile was born in Soweto, Johannesburg, in 1940. After a decade in rural Transkei,

herding flocks and attending primary school, he spent time near Johannesburg with

his uncle, Rev. Mokoatle, whose curate was Desmond Tutu. His secondary education

was interrupted by dangerous work on a railway construction site where he caught

typhoid. The care he was given attracted him to ministry and he entered St Bede’s

College, Umtata, the main theological college for black ordinands. Its white Principal

arranged for him take a degree in English and Philosophy at Fort Hare University,

and then, with Desmond Tutu’s help, to go to Oxford.

Obituaries

There Zolile met Charlotte Lebon, a white British postgraduate at St Hugh’s College.

They became engaged; but apartheid would prevent their living in South Africa.

Zolile graduated in 1971, was ordained in Natal, and in 1972 became the first Black

chaplain and tutor at St Paul’s College, Grahamstown (Makhanda) the main college

for white ordinands.

Charlotte obtained a job in Gaborone, Botswana, where the couple secretly planned

to live. Zolile joined her and they married in January 1975. Zolile began six years

of parish work and teaching theology by extension throughout Botswana. Three

daughters were born.

By 1981 raids from South Africa were intensifying, and Zolile was anxious to pursue a

doctorate under David Jenkins, his tutor at Queen’s, now Professor at Leeds. He was

offered the parish of Preston-on-Tees. Mary Hart, a parishioner in Preston, recalls

him as a pastor baptising her son on Easter Eve: ‘Zolile was a very special man who

lived his faith.’ Before Preston he had three months at the College of the Ascension,

Selly Oak, Birmingham, with access to libraries. He continued this access with the

help of grants and by moving in 1984 to parishes near Leicester.

Encouraged by Jenkins, he embarked on an academic study of the British and

South African churches in relation to racism, and in particular to the ‘Programme

to Combat Racism’ (PCR) begun in 1970 by the WCC. The PCR’s Special Fund

dispensed grants for humanitarian use to liberation movements. Furious media-fed

controversy ensued, centring on the legitimacy of violence in response to oppression.

Zolile’s study explores the history, perceptions, myths and realities, fears and

disappointments involved. Originally intended as a doctorate, it was published as

The Churches and Racism. A Black South African Perspective (SCM Press, 1987).

Many of the issues are perennial, remaining relevant. Zolile’s Black experience shines

through: the human sympathy and deep moral sense of a writer for whom, as he

quietly says, racism was constant and existential: ‘It has determined in no small

measure the person I am, and the one I am prevented from becoming.’ (op.cit. 3).

In 1988 Zolile became Community and Race Relations Officer in Leicester Diocese,

and Hon. Canon in 1992. Returning to Durban in 1993, he worked in parishes and

was Anglican chaplain to the University until 2003. To be closer to grandchildren he


and Charlotte moved to Ashford, Kent in 2017. Now suffering from dementia, Zolile

received good NHS care until he died aged 84.

Obituaries

Revd Dr Liz Carmichael MBE, St John’s College, Oxford


BENEFACTIONS

We are delighted to acknowledge the generosity of those donors who made a

gift to Queen’s in the Financial Year 2024-25 (1 August 2024 – 31 July 2025). All

care has been taken to ensure the accuracy of this list. However, if you spot

an error please accept our apologies and notify the Old Members’ Office so

that we can amend our records for future publications.

Benefactions

QS: Queen’s Society member

Eglesfield Benefactors

Mr Michael Boyd (1958) qs

Dr Ray Bowden (1960) qs

Mr Andrew Parsons (1962)

Mr Rick Haythornthwaite (1975) qs

Mr Nick Train (1977)

Mr Mark Williamson (1982) qs

Mr Chris Eskdale (1987)

Mrs Julia Eskdale (1987)

Mrs Nishi Grose (1998) qs

Philippa Benefactors

Anonymous × 2

Mr John Palmer (1949) qs

Mr John Hazel (1951) qs

Dr Bill Parry (1955) qs

The Revd Canon Hugh Wybrew (1955) qs

Mr Tim Evans (1956) qs

Mr Barry Saunders (1956) qs

Mr Martin Bowley (1957) qs

Mr Keith Dawson (1957) qs

Mr Gordon Dilworth (1957) qs

Mr Charles Frieze (1957) qs

Dr Roger Lowman (1959) qs

Mr John Parsloe (1959)

Mr John Rix (1959) qs

Mr Michael Lodge (1960) qs

Mr John Price (1960)

Mr Ron Glaister (1961) qs

Mr David Brownlee (1962)

Mr Philip Hetherington (1962)

Professor Peter Bell (1963)

Dr Dennis Luck (1963)

District Judge Chris Beale (1964) qs

Professor Rod Levick (1964) qs

Professor Lee Saperstein (1964) qs

Mr John Clement (1965) qs

Dr Michael Collop (1966) qs

Mr Andrew Horsler (1966) qs

Mr Gregory Stone KC (1966) qs

Dr Juan Mason (1967) qs

Mr Paul Clark (1968)

Mr John Crowther (1968) qs

Mr Alan Mitchell (1968) qs

Mr Stephen Robinson (1968) qs

Dr Howard Rosenberg (1968) qs

Mr David Seymour (1969) qs

Professor Hugh Arnold (1970) qs

Mr Richard Geldard (1972) qs

Mr Tom Ward (1973) qs

Mr Robin Wilkinson (1973) qs

Mr Philip Middleton (1974)

Mr Stuart White (1975) qs

Mr Fred Arnold (1976) qs


Benefactions

Mr Mark Neale (1976) qs

Mr Gerry Hackett (1977) qs

Mr Charlie Anderson (1978) qs

Mr Nick Beecroft (1978) qs

Dr Chris Ringrose (1979) qs

Mr Gary Simmons (1979) qs

Mr Steve Crown (1980) qs

Mr Donald Pepper (1981) qs

Mr Jonathan Webster (1981) qs

Mrs Diana Webster (1980) qs

Mr Joseph Archie (1982)

Mr Alan Leigh (1982) qs

Mr Mark Ashton-Rigby (1986)

Mr Octavius Black (1986)

Mr Krispen Culbertson (1986)

Mr Bob Burgess (1987) qs

Mr John Stansfield (1987) qs

Mr John Bigham (1988) qs

Ms Sia Applin (1990) qs

Mr Cameron Marshall (1991) qs

Dr Christoph Rojahn (1991)

Mr Jonathan Woolf (1991) qs

Mr Ian Brown (1993) qs

Mr Marc Kish (1993)

Mr Matt Lawrence (1993) qs

Mr John Hull (1994) qs

Mrs Anna Hull (1995) qs

Mr Nick Stebbing (1994) qs

Mr Chris Woolf (1995) qs

Mr Dan Lynn (1999) qs

Mr Gareth Marsh (1999) qs

Dr Janaki Brolin (2000) qs

Mr Ahmet Feridun (2003) qs

Mrs Jayne Saberton-Haynes qs

Old Members

Anonymous × 25

Mr Graham Lewis (1948) qs

Dr Duncan Thomas (1949) qs

Mr Stan Whitehead (1950) qs

Mr Allan Preston (1951)

Mr Hugh Ellison (1952) qs

Professor Keith Jennings (1952) qs

Dr Tony Lee (1952) qs

Mr Geoff Peters (1952) qs

Mr Jim Ranger (1952) qs

His Excellency Michael Atkinson

(1953) qs

Mr Bill Burkinshaw (1953) qs

Mr Donald Clarke (1954) qs

Mr Michael Drake (1954) qs

Dr Frank Eastwood (1954)

Mr Robin Ellison (1954) qs

Mr David Howard (1954)

Mr Gerry Hunting (1954) qs

Mr Don Naylor (1954) qs

Mr Strachan Heppell (1955) qs

Dr David Myers (1955) qs

Dr Bill Roberts (1956) qs

Dr Brian Sproat (1956) qs

Mr Graham Sutton (1956) qs

The Revd Canon Michael Arundel

(1957) qs

Professor David Catchpole (1957) qs

Mr Ian Chisholm (1957) qs

Mr Colin Hughes (1957) qs

Professor Laurence King (1957) qs

Dr Brian Salter-Duke (1957) qs

Mr Martin Sayer (1957) qs

Mr Peter Thomson (1957) qs

Mr Malcolm Dougal (1958) qs

Dr Michael Gagan (1958) qs

Mr Nigel Hughes (1958) qs

Mr Richard Hull (1958) qs

Dr John Reid (1958) qs

Mr Frank Venables (1958) qs

Mr Barrie Wiggham (1958) qs

Mr Michael Allen (1959) qs

Mr Philip Burton (1959) qs

Mr John Foley (1959) qs

Professor John Gillingham (1959) qs

Professor John Matthews (1959) qs

Mr Ian Parker (1959) qs

Mr John Seely (1959) qs


Mr Alan Weyman (1959) qs

Professor Peter Williams

(1959) qs

Mr Robin Bell (1960) qs

Mr George Comer (1960)

The Rt Revd Graham Dow (1960) qs

Mr David Foster (1960) qs

Mr Jim Gilpin (1960) qs

Mr James Robertson (1960) qs

Mr David Ross (1960) qs

Mr David Stacey (1960) qs

Dr David Williamson (1960) qs

Mr Robert Wilson (1960) qs

Mr John Young (1960)

Mr Chris Bearne (1961) qs

Mr Philip Bowers (1961) qs

Dr Norman Diffey (1961)

Mr Luath Grant Ferguson (1961)

Professor Andrew McPherson (1961) qs

Mr Richard Nosowski (1961) qs

Mr Godfrey Talford (1961) qs

Dr Ivan Walton (1961) qs

The Revd Graham Wilcox (1961) qs

Professor Nicholas Young (1961) qs

Professor John Coggins (1962) qs

Mr Bruce Collins (1962) qs

Mr Martin Colman (1962) qs

Dr Steve Higgins (1962) qs

Mr Adrian Milner (1962) qs

Mr Richard Mole (1962) qs

Mr George Trevelyan (1962) qs

Professor Brad Amos (1963) qs

Mr Richard Batstone (1963) qs

Mr Rod Hague (1963) qs

Mr Patrick Hastings (1963) qs

Mr Christopher Higman (1963)

Professor Alan Lloyd (1963) qs

Professor Kevin Rafferty (1963)

Mr Keith Studer (1963)

Mr Alan Wilson (1963) qs

Dr Ian Bayman (1964)

Mr Philip Beaven (1964) qs

Mr Jeff Clark (1964)

Dr Stephen Cockle (1964) qs

Mr John Gregory (1964) qs

Mr David Jeffery (1964) qs

Mr Robin Leggate (1964) qs

Mr Paul Legon (1964) qs

Dr Graham Robinson (1964) qs

Dr Alan Shepherd (1964) qs

Mr Tony Turton (1964) qs

Mr Stephen Watson (1964)

Mr Philip Wood (1964) qs

Mr John Wordsworth (1964) qs

Mr Andy Connell (1965) qs

Mr Peter Cramb (1965) qs

Professor John Feather (1965) qs

Professor Christopher Green (1965) qs

Mr Peter Hickson (1965) qs

Mr Tony Hirtenstein (1965)

Mr David Matthews (1965) qs

The Rt Revd Paul Richardson (1965) qs

Mr Ian Swanson (1965) qs

Mr David Syrus (1965) qs

Mr Alan Beatson (1966) qs

Dr George Biddlecombe (1966) qs

Mr Roger Blanshard (1966) qs

Professor Emeritus Andrew Brook

(1966)

Professor Peter Coleman (1966) qs

Mr Richard Coleman (1966) qs

Dr Alan Cornell (1966)

Mr Peter de Moncey-Conegliano (1966)

Professor Christopher Gilbert (1966)

Mr David Haynes (1966) qs

Mr John Kitteridge (1966) qs

Mr Philip Lipsidge (1966)

Dr Paul Schur (1966) qs

Peter Sugden (1966) qs

Mr Derek Swift (1966) qs

The Rt Revd Peter Wheatley (1966)

Mr Paul Wolfarth (1966) qs

Mr Richard Atkinson (1967) qs

Dr Edward Campion (1967)

The Revd John Clegg (1967) qs

Mr Edward Coviello (1967)

Dr Peter Kelly (1967)

Mr John Ormerod (1967)

Dr David Roberts (1967) qs

Professor Philip Schlesinger (1967) qs

Benefactions


Benefactions

Mr Mike Thompson (1967) qs

Mr Rob Bollington (1968) qs

Mr Peter Burroughs (1968) qs

Professor Tim Connell (1968) qs

Mr Thomas Earnshaw (1968) qs

Mr David Hudson (1968) qs

Mr Andrew King (1968) qs

Professor Andrew Sancton (1968) qs

Mr Jon Watts (1968) qs

Dr John Windass (1968) qs

Mr David Bolton (1969)

Mr Neil Boulton (1969) qs

Professor Mark Janis (1969)

Mr Anthony Prosser (1969) qs

His Honour Erik Salomonsen (1969) qs

Mr Chris Shepperd (1969) qs

The Revd Dr Brian Sheret (1969)

Mr Alan Sherwell (1969) qs

Mr Nigel Tranah (1969) qs

Mr Ian Walton-George (1969) qs

Dr Martin Cooper (1970) qs

Dr Richard Crocker (1970)

Mr Jamie Macdonald (1970) qs

Mr Michael Roberts (1970)

Mr David Stubbins (1970) qs

Mr Andy Sutton (1970) qs

Mr Eric Thompson (1970) qs

The Revd Canon Peter Wadsworth

(1970) qs

Mr Christopher West (1970) qs

Professor Stephen Williams (1970) qs

Dr Ephraim Borowski (1971)

Mr John Clare (1971) qs

Mr Chris Counsell (1971) qs

Prof. J.-D. Dubois (1971)

Mr Winston Gooden (1971) qs

Mr Francois Gordon (1971) qs

Dr Ulrich Grevsmühl (1971) qs

Mr Jonathan Hoffman (1971)

Professor Christopher Huang (1971) qs

Dr Mike Hurst (1971) qs

Professor Ross King (1971) qs

Mr John Peat (1971) qs

Mr Simon Peerless (1971) qs

Mr Robert Pike (1971)

Mr Anthony Rowlands (1971) qs

Mr Gary Stubley (1971) qs

Mr Derek Townsend (1971) qs

Professor Max Wheeler (1965) qs

Dr Stephen Wilson (1971) qs

Mr Alaric Wyatt (1971) qs

Mr Nigel Allsop (1972) qs

Mr Peter Farrar (1972) qs

Dr Stephen Gilbey (1972) qs

Mr Peter Haigh (1972) qs

Mr Jonathan Harrison (1972)

Mr Will Jackson-Houlston (1972) qs

Mr Rhidian Jones (1972) qs

Mr John McLeod (1972) qs

Mr David Palfreyman (1972) qs

Mrs Felicia Pheasant (1972) qs

Mr John Pheasant (1972) qs

Dr Keith Pringle (1972) qs

Mr Andrew Seager (1972) qs

Mr Patrick Smith (1972) qs

Dr John Wellings (1972) qs

Mr Andrew Barlow (1973) qs

Mr Mark Bell (1973) qs

Mr David Langton (1973) qs

Mr Tony Middleton (1973) qs

Mr Robert Perry (1973) qs

Mr Peter Richardson (1973) qs

Mr Dick Richmond (1973) qs

Mr Martin Riley (1973) qs

Dr Alan Turner (1973) qs

Mr Colin Williamson (1973)

Mr James Britton (1974) qs

Dr Mark Eddowes (1974) qs

Mr Simon English (1974) qs

Mr Eric Halpern (1974) qs

Mr Havilland Hart (1974) qs

Mr Richard Prince (1974) qs

Mr Tim Shaw (1974) qs

Dr Jeffrey Theaker (1974) qs

Mr Rob Walker (1974)

Dr Peter Williams (1974) qs

Mr Oliver Burns (1975) qs

Mr James Calder (1975)

Dr Rhodri Davies (1975) qs

Mr Ian Dougherty (1975) qs


Dr Chris Hutchinson (1975) qs

Mr Martin Moore (1975) qs

Mr Nevill Rogers (1975) qs

Professor Peter Clarkson (1976) qs

Mr Michael Elliott (1976)

Mr Martin Goodwin (1976) qs

Dr Nick Hazel (1976) qs

Mr Raymond Holdsworth (1976)

Dr Christopher Tibbs (1976) qs

Mr Paul Bennett (1977) qs

Dr Michael Cadier (1977) qs

Mr Mark Evans (1977) qs

Mr Paul Godsland (1977) qs

Mr Francis Grew (1977) qs

Dr Gregor Jason (1977)

Mr Martin Kelly (1977) qs

Mr Steven McCarthy (1977) qs

Dr John Morewood (1977) qs

Mr Michael Penrice (1977) qs

Dr Allen Stevens (1977)

Mr Mike Thompson (1977) qs

Mr Steve Anderson (1978) qs

Dr Nina Clark (1978)

Mr Paul Dawson (1978) qs

Dr Mike Fenn (1978) qs

Mr John Gibbons (1978) qs

Mr Peter Hamilton (1978) qs

Professor Dr Risto Hiltunen (1978)

Mr Jeremy Jackson (1978) qs

The Revd James Johnston (1978)

Mr John Keeble (1978) qs

Dr Simon Loughe (1978) qs

The Hon Tim Mould (1978) qs

Mr Graham Parnell (1978) qs

Mr Jervis Smith (1978) qs

Mr Neil Summers (1978) qs

Dr Trevor Barker (1979) qs

Mrs Judith Bufton (1979) qs

Dr Nick Edwards (1979) qs

Mr Philip Epstein (1979) qs

Dr Ron Kelly (1979 ) qs

Mr Graham Lofts (1979)

Mr David Nevell (1979) qs

Professor Cath Rees (1979) qs

Mrs Alison Sanders (1979) qs

Mr Donald Sturrock (1979) qs

Mr Simon Whitaker (1979) qs

Mr James Clarke (1980) qs

Mr Graham Davis (1980)

Mrs Nicola Dick-Cleland (1980) qs

Dr Louise Goward (1980) qs

Mrs Carrie Kelly (1980) qs

Mr Peter King (1980) qs

Mr Martin Lehrer (1980)

Mrs Caroline Nuyts (1980)

Dr Andrew Renton (1980) qs

Dr Tim Shaw (1980) qs

Mr Tim Stephenson (1980) qs

Dr Mark Byfield (1981) qs

Mr Edmund Cavendish (1981) qs

Dr Naiem Dathi (1981)

Dr Paul Driscoll (1981) qs

Ms Janet Hayes (1981) qs

Mrs Linda Holland (1981) qs

Mr Gavin McCabe (1981) qs

Dr Maria Queenan (1981) qs

Professor Marcela Votruba (1981) qs

Dr Christian Wolf (1981)

Mrs Cathy Driscoll (1982) qs

Mr Ian English (1982) qs

Mr Richard Lewis (1982) qs

Mr Mark Pearce (1982) qs

Mr Tom Webber (1982) qs

Mr Andrew Wright (1982)

Mr Francis Austin (1983) qs

Mr Andy Bird (1983) qs

Mr Andrew Campbell (1983) qs

Dr Francoise Carter (1983)

Mrs Rose Craston (1983) qs

Dr Robert Hughes (1983) qs

Mr Alastair James (1983)

Mr Alun James (1983)

Mrs Sarah Liebrecht (1983) qs

Mr Adrian Robinson (1983)

Dr Neil Tunnicliffe (1983) qs

Mrs Antonia Adams (1984) qs

Dr Miles Benson (1984) qs

Miss Lindsay Bramley (1984) qs

Mr Mike Cronshaw (1984) qs

Professor Phil Evans (1984) qs

Benefactions


Benefactions

Dr Nigel Greer (1984) qs

Mr Richard Hopkins (1984) qs

Dr Katherine Irving (1984) qs

Mrs Rachel Lawson (1984) qs

Mr Robert Lawson (1984) qs

Mr Tony Lovick (1984) qs

Ms Louise Moran (1984)

Mrs Sarah Mortimer (1984)

Dr Jan Pullen (1984) qs

Mr Christopher Shell (1984) qs

Mr Steve Thomas (1984) qs

Ms Justine Watt (1984)

The Revd Dr David Bryan (1985) qs

Dr Udayan Chakrabarti (1985) qs

Mr Richard Chandler (1985)

Dr Ian Clement (1985) qs

Mr Steve Evans (1985) qs

Mr Ed Kemp-Luck (1985) qs

Dr Philippa Moore (1985) qs

The Revd Canon Matthew Pollard

(1985) qs

Mr Adrian Ratcliffe (1985) qs

Mr Martin Riley (1985) qs

Mr Juan Sepúlveda (1985)

Mrs Julie Smyth (1985) qs

Dr Michele Walsh (1985)

Major Matthew Christmas (1986) qs

Mr Steve Jones (1986) qs

Mr Andrew Mitchell (1986) qs

Dr Richard Newbold (1986) qs

Mr Gerald Rix (1986) qs

Mrs Cathy Sanderson (1986) qs

Dr Susan Schamp (1986) qs

Ms Joanna Scott-Dalgleish (1986) qs

Mr Rob Tims (1986) qs

Mr Derek Wright (1986) qs

Dr Rosalind Bark (1987) qs

Dr Richard Fynes (1987) qs

Mrs Vikki Hall (1987) qs

Mr Mark Highman (1987) qs

Mrs Sarah Kucera (1987) qs

Dr John Morgan (1987) qs

Ms Susan Sack (1987)

Mr Philip Sanderson (1987) qs

Mrs Rachel Thorn (1987) qs

The Hon John Tien (1987)

Mr Adrian Wright (1987)

Dr Andrew Carpenter (1988) qs

Mrs Hilary Corroon (1988) qs

Miss Celestine Eaton (1988) qs

Mr Christopher Fewtrell (1988) qs

Mr Tim Grayson (1988) qs

Dr Jules Hargreaves (1988) qs

Mr Alastair Kennis (1988) qs

Dr Adrian Tang (1988) qs

Mrs Caroline Chartres (1989) qs

Mrs Ann Marie Dickinson (1989) qs

Dr Susan Ferraro (1989) qs

Mr Ben Green (1989) qs

Mr James Horsfall (1989) qs

Mr Jim Kaye (1989) qs

Dr Tim Leunig (1989)

Ms Hetty Meyric Hughes (1989) qs

Mr Marc Paul (1989)

Mr Matthew Perret (1989) qs

Mr Chris Porton (1989) qs

Mr Ian Tollett (1989) qs

Mrs Alex Antscherl (1990) qs

Ms Anna Burles (1990)

Mrs Penny Crouzet (1990) qs

Mr Jason Hargreaves (1990) qs

Mr Keith Hatton (1990) qs

Mrs Morag Mylne (1990) qs

Mr Fabio Quaradeghini (1990) qs

Dr Angela Winnett (1990) qs

Mrs Nicola Don-Wider (1991)

Mr Nik Everatt (1991) qs

Mr Paul Gannon (1991) qs

Mrs Kay Goddard (1991) qs

Dr Philippe Masson (1991) qs

Ms Jess Matthew (1991) qs

Dr Christopher Meaden (1991) qs

Dr Kausikh Nandi (1991) qs

Mrs Victoria Paleit (1991) qs

Dr Naomi Pitt-Francis (1991) qs

Mr Adam Potter (1991) qs

Mrs Joanne Robinson (1991) qs

Dr Vicki Saward (1991) qs

Mr Renaud Seligmann (1991)

Dr John Sorabji (1991) qs


Mr Dev Tanna (1991) qs

Miss Sarah Witt (1991) qs

Dr Jason Zimba (1991) qs

Mr Jonathan Buckley (1992) qs

Dr Rebecca Emerson (1992) qs

Professor Mike Hayward (1992) qs

Mr James Holdsworth (1992) qs

Professor Bereket Kebede (1992)

Mrs Claire O’Shaughnessy (1992) qs

Dr Nia Taylor (1992) qs

Mr Matt Keen (1993) qs

Mrs Jenny Kelly (1993) qs

Ms Olivia McCannon (1993)

Mr Said Mohamed (1993) qs

Mr Neil Pabari (1993) qs

Mr Mark Sansom (1993)

Mr Peter Sidwell (1993) qs

Mrs Helen von der Osten (1993) qs

Miss Danielle Bertfield (1994) qs

Ms Christine Cairns (1994) qs

Mrs Emma Graham (1994)

Dr Jo Nonweiler (1994) qs

Mrs Cecilia Rexworthy (1994) qs

Professor Tim Riley (1994) qs

Mrs Clare Stebbing (1994) qs

Dr Francis Tang (1994)

Mr Alistair Willey (1994) qs

Mrs Cat Wood (1994) qs

Mrs Zoe Barker (1995) qs

Mr Jonathan Chapper (1995) qs

Mr Tim Claremont (1995) qs

Mr Tim Horrocks (1995) qs

Mr David Line (1995) qs

Mr Ian Marson (1995) qs

Mr Sumit Rahman (1995) qs

Mr Torsten Reil (1995) qs

Mr Adam Silver (1995) qs

Mrs Georgina Simmons (1995) qs

Mr Jeremy Steele (1995) qs

Ms Lili Sulejmanovic (1995) qs

Mr Mark Wilderspin (1995) qs

Dr Gavin Beard (1996) qs

Dr Andrew Cavey (1996) qs

Mrs Helen Geary (1996) qs

Mrs Yoko Gutch (1996)

Dr David Law (1996)

Mr Tobias Schulze-Cleven (1996)

Mr David Smallbone (1996) qs

Dr Jonathan Smith (1996) qs

Mrs Rachel Taylor (1996) qs

Ms Angeline Welsh (1996) qs

Dr Linda Bamber (1997) qs

Mr James Bowling (1997) qs

Dr William Goundry (1997) qs

Mr Will Guest (1997) qs

Mr Endaf Kerfoot (1997) qs

Ms Alison McKenna (1997)

Mr Gareth Powell (1997) qs

Mrs Christine Sturt (1997)

Mr James Taylor (1997) qs

Mr Gonçalo Abecasis (1998) qs

Dr Martin Birch (1998) qs

Miss Marie Farrow (1998) qs

Mr Matt Henderson (1998) qs

Mr Oli Henman (1998) qs

Mr James Marsden (1998) qs

Mr Alastair Partington (1998) qs

Miss Jacqueline Perez (1998) qs

Mr Charlie Sutters (1998) qs

Mr David Traynor (1998) qs

Dr Premila Webster (1998) qs

Mrs Kate Cooper (1999) qs

Mr Douglas Gordon (1999) qs

Dr Simon Guest (1999) qs

Mr Jim Hancock (1999) qs

Mr James Levett (1999) qs

Mr Jim Luke (1999) qs

Mr Michael McClelland (1999) qs

Mr Alex Rooney (1999) qs

Mr Leo Smith (1999) qs

Ms Kat Stephens (1999) qs

Mr James Walton (1999) qs

Mrs Laura Andrews (2000) qs

Mr Thomas Brown (2000) qs

Mr Andrew Buchanan (2000) qs

Dr Cecily Burrill (2000)

Mr Rory Clarke (2000) qs

Ms Cécile Défossé (2000) qs

Dr Sophie Evans (2000) qs

Dr Claire Hodgskiss (2000) qs

Benefactions


Benefactions

Mrs Julia Palmer (2000)

Miss Elizabeth Pilkington (2000) qs

Mrs Rhiannon Seah (2000) qs

Mr David Ainsworth (2001) qs

Mrs Laura Ainsworth (2001) qs

Mrs Chrissy Findlay (2001) qs

Mr Mark Hawkins (2001) qs

Mr James Klempster (2001) qs

Mr Nick Kroepfl (2001) qs

Mr Oliver Leyland (2001) qs

Miss Alex Mayson (2001) qs

Dr Emily McLaughlin (2001) qs

Dr Matthew Osborne (2001) qs

Mr Amish Tanna (2001)

Miss Elinor Taylor (2001) qs

Mrs Zoe Wright (2001) qs

Mrs Kathryn Aggarwal (2002) qs

Mr Nikhil Aggarwal (2002) qs

Mr Matt Allen (2002) qs

Mrs Fran Baker (2002) qs

Miss Sarah Berman (2002) qs

Dr Gemma Clark (2002) qs

Miss Elizabeth Meehan (2002) qs

Mrs Anushka Osborne (2002) qs

Mrs Karishma Redman (2002) qs

Mr David Richardson (2002) qs

Mr James Screen (2002) qs

Mrs Rhian Screen (2002) qs

Dr Abigail Stevenson (2002) qs

Dr Ian Warren (2002) qs

Mr Christopher Wright (2002) qs

Dr Jessica Blair (2003) qs

Ms Sarah Buckley (2003) qs

Mrs Olivia Haslam (2003) qs

Dr Jon Hazlehurst (2003) qs

Mr Thomas Lawson (2003) qs

Dr Enrique Sacau (2003) qs

Mr Dane Satterthwaite (2003) qs

Mrs Camilla Tamworth (2003)

Ms Gaby Turner (2003) qs

Dr Guy Williams (2003) qs

Ms Claire Harrop (2004) qs

Mr Rob Hoose (2004) qs

Ms Kate Newton (2004) qs

Dr Philippa Roberts (2004) qs

Ms Katelin Fuller (2005) qs

Ms Cerridwen Mellish (2005) qs

Mr Daniel Shepherd (2005) qs

Mr Arul Umapathy (2005) qs

Mr Ho Yi Wong (2005) qs

Ms Katie Berridge (2006)

Mr Ronan Ferguson (2006)

Dr Matthew Hart (2006) qs

Mr George Kanelos (2006) qs

Mrs Claire Rivington-Kuhns (2006)

Sergeant Tom Whyte (2006) qs

Miss Lauriane Anderson Mair (2007) qs

Dr Caitlin Hartigan (2007)

Mr Tony Hu (2007) qs

Mr Peter Lam (2007)

Mr Matthew Watson (2007) qs

Mr Andy White (2007) qs

Mr Nicholas Burns (2008) qs

Ms Kat Steiner (2008) qs

Miss Emily Hallman (2009) qs

Mr Milo Comerford (2010) qs

Mr James Dinsdale (2010) qs

Mr Chris Lippard (2010) qs

Mr Tom Mead (2010) qs

Miss Amy Down (2011) qs

Mr Joe Kang (2011)

Mr Tom Nichols (2011) qs

Miss Sarah Mansfield (2012)

Mrs Sorcha Zaboronsky (2013) qs

Mr Bill Kroeger (2016)

Mr Alex Prior-Wandesforde (2016) qs

Mr David Mikyska (2017)

Miss Ying Ying Teo (2019) qs

Mr Aidan Richardson (2020) qs


Legacy Gifts

Mr Ray Ogden (1944)

Mr Mike Absalom (1945)

Mr Bob Prentice (1949)

Dr Bill Affleck (1953)

Mr Barrie Craythorn (1956)

Mr Christopher Stephenson (1956)

Mr David Williams (1956)

Mr Alex Wilson (1958)

Mr Richard Messenger (1967)

Mr John Turner (1984)

Dr Christine Peters (1985)

Mrs Daisy Voss

Benefactions

Within College

Professor John Baines qs

Professor Sir John Ball qs

Sir Michael Barber (1974)

General Sir Richard Barrons (1977) qs

Professor John Blair (1973)

Dr Charles Crowther qs

Dr John Davis (1975)

Sir Brian Donnelly (1963) qs

Miss Sophie Elliott (2018)

Dr Phillip Harries (1965) qs

Mrs Catherine House qs

Dr Justin Jacobs (2001) qs

Professor Ron Laskey (1963) qs

Sir Paul Lever (1962) qs

Lord Colin Low (1961) qs

Mr John Maguire

Professor Roger Pearson (1967)

Ms Claire Taylor (1994) qs

Friends

Anonymous x 1 (in memory of Colin

Keith, Modern History, 1962)

Dr Martin Ingram

Professor Timothy Congdon qs

Professor John Robertson

Professor Joshua Getzler qs

Dr Grant Tapsell

Mrs Elma Cunningham

Mr David French qs

Ms Rachelle Goldberg

Mr Jeffrey Jackson

Mrs Alette Lawson

Mrs Christine Mason qs

Sri Owen Owen qs

Mr Abul Rahman Jilani qs

Dr Deborah Safron

Mrs Veronika Vernier

Mr Eric Wooding qs

Trusts, foundations and companies

D. E. Shaw Group

DJANDCO Limited

Elba Foundation

Embassy of Switzerland in the United

Kingdom

Independent Schools’ Modern

Languages Association

Margaret Rolfe Charitable Trust

Sannox Trust

ShareGift

Swire Chinese Language Foundation

The Accomplishment Trust


Matching Gift Partners

Benefactions

AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals Ltd

Coca-Cola Foundation

Google Inc

Patricia Industries

UBS Union Bank of Switzerland


Dinner in the New Dining Room for The Queen’s College Symposium.


INFORMATION

College Record 2026

Please submit your news and details of any awards or publications for inclusion in

the 2026 College Record here: https://www.queens.ox.ac.uk/update-details-sharenews/.

Alternatively, you can send this information by post to the Old Members’ Office

in College. The deadline for entries is 1 August 2026.

Information

Visiting the College

If you are an Old Member visiting Oxford, you are very welcome to visit Queen’s

during your stay.

Please enter the College via the main High Street door and report to the Porters’

Lodge. (If you require level-access to the College, please ring the bell at the new

High Street gate by the new Porters’ Lodge.) Mention that you are an Old Member

wishing to visit and if your visit has been pre-arranged with the Old Members’ Office,

please let the porter know so they can contact the office. The Porters will need to

check your Old Member credentials, so you can either show your University of Oxford

Alumni Card (‘My Oxford’ card) or answer a couple of questions so the Porters can

locate you on the database.

Do I need to book my visit?

You do not have to pre-arrange a visit, but we do encourage it, so we can check

there are no restrictions on the areas you want to see. You can bring friends or family

with you, including children, but if you are a group of six or more, please let us know

in advance, if you can.

Generally Old Members are able to walk around the cloisters, quads, gardens, and

Chapel and Hall, if the spaces are not being used for other purposes. The Lodge

Porters will advise on which areas are not accessible.

You will need to let us know in advance if you would like to look around the Library.

The Library has different visiting times to the main College – as visits can only take

place when the Library is staffed – and this varies depending on whether you plan

to visit during term, vacation time, or at a weekend. The Library is also sometimes

closed for events. Read more about Library access on the Library’s web page.

When are you open?

The College is generally open to Old Member visitors most of the year, with the

exception of the two-week closure period over the Christmas vacation and on

occasions where there are large events taking place in College, such as the College


Ball. Visits between 9am-5pm are preferable, and the College is open at weekends

and on most of the public holidays (except Christmas/New Year).

Information

Bloomberg Connects Digital Guide

The College now has a digital guide on Bloomberg Connects, the free arts and

culture app. Our guide contains an exhibition of Library treasures, Chapel stained

glass, and the Hall portraits, along with further details on the history and current

use of various locations around the main College site. Please take a look and let us

know what you think:

Degree ceremonies

An MA can be taken by anyone who has completed a BA or BFA, 21 terms after their

matriculation date. Old Members can either attend a University degree ceremony or

receive an MA in absentia. To take your MA in person or in absentia, please email

college.office@queens.ox.ac.uk.

Transcripts and certificates

If you matriculated before 2007 and require proof of your exam results, or a transcript

of your qualifications for a job application or continuing education purposes, please

contact the College Office on 01865 279166 or college.office@queens.ox.ac.uk.

If you need a copy of your certificate, or confirmation of your degree if you have

not attended a ceremony, then all the information on acquiring these can be found

at the University’s Student Records and Degree Conferrals Office: www.ox.ac.uk/

students/graduation/certificates.

For those who matriculated after 2007, transcripts/proof of degree documents can

be ordered online: www.oxforduniversitystores.co.uk/product-catalogue/degreeconferrals.

Updating your details

If you have moved or changed your contact details, please complete the online

update form: https://www.queens.ox.ac.uk/update-details-share-news/ or email

oldmembers@queens.ox.ac.uk.


Bed and breakfast

During Term

We have two Old Member guestrooms that can be booked during term-time via the

Lodge or the Old Members’ Office.

One is a twin room, with en suite facilities, in Back Quad; the other is a very basic

small single room, with shared bathroom facilities (NB access is via a steep staircase

and the bathroom facilities are not on the same floor). The rates include breakfast

in Hall.

Information

No payment is required for these rooms when booking, instead you will be invoiced

the month following your stay for payment via bank transfer.

During vacation

College bedrooms are mostly occupied by private function and conference guests,

including the two Old Member guest rooms. Occasionally student bedrooms (single

and twin) are available over the Easter and Summer vacations and can be booked

for bed and breakfast. Old Members are welcome to enquire about room availability,

but dates are often limited.

Email the Old Members Office with your visit dates. If a room is available, we will

confirm the room rate (commercial rate, with a discount applied for Old Members).

We will then provide a link to complete your booking and payment online.

All stays are for a maximum of three nights (unless agreed with the Domestic Bursar)

and under 18s are not allowed in B&B rooms.


The Queen’s College

High Street

Oxford

OX1 4AW

www.queens.ox.ac.uk

news@queens.ox.ac.uk

Edited by Emily Downing and Michael Riordan

Designed & Printed by Holywell Press

Cover image by David Fisher

Holywell Press

The Queen's College Record 2025

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