MAN-10265 MAGAZINE.indd - Mansfield College - University of Oxford

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Fellowship Profi le: Janet Dyson For as long as I can remember I wanted to do Maths, and I could never really imagine doing anything else. It can be an intensely frustrating business, but when it goes well it gives me a tremendous buzz. So, despite the fact that at my direct grant school in Brighton, young ladies didn’t do science, and my Chemist parents felt that it wasn’t a suitable career for a woman, I came up to Oxford (St Hugh’s) in 1967 to read Maths, and I’m still here. I’ve been at Mansfi eld since 1977, when I was recruited to teach the fi rst four undergraduate mathematicians to be admitted. We have come a long way since then as we built up expertise in spotting talent, and in the best ways to support students. Our students are doing extremely well and in the past fi ve years more than 55% have got Firsts. Former Mansfi eld students are working successfully in a wide variety of occupations all over the world. In my research I apply rigorous mathematical methods to differential equations arising from various applied Maths problems. In my doctoral thesis I worked on a problem now known as the ‘pantograph equation’. This arose from the modelling of wave motion in the overhead wires delivering electricity to a train pantograph. The pantograph tended to bounce off the wires, unless the wire supports were close enough together. The aim was to fi nd out how close the supports should be, but I was more interested in the Mathematics. The basic equation is a very elegant delay differential equation: y’(t)=ay(kt)+by(t), where t is nonnegative, and a, b, k are constants with 0
An Interview with Dr Mary King Fellow of the Rothermere American Institute, member of Mansfi eld College SCR To Mary, being a member of Mansfi eld means a great deal personally, in terms of both enduring friendships and collegial relations. The size of the College brings people together, facilitating relationships, and its history is unique. She cites the Wednesday Chapel service followed by dinner as exemplifying an important part of the ethos of the College, and thinks the Nonconformist origins and history of the College are to be protected and preserved. To Mary, an institution is defi ned by the individuals associated with it, and Mansfi eld has provided her with a special aperture on Oxford University. Given tensions in the relationship between Britain and the United States of the past few years, Mary feels that the proximity of the neighbouring Rothermere American Institute (RAI), literally next door to Mansfi eld, can be a focal point for formal and informal exploration of major, topical issues that face both countries – and the relationship between them that had been trivialized and weakened in recent years. Now that the RAI is well-established, it can fulfi l a broader role in offering opportunities for engagement with ideas, and share in the intellectual life of the College and University through its frequent seminars and conferences. For Mary, the RAI unlocked the riches of Oxford University, and ‘inside I found the secret garden of Mansfi eld College’. During the Carter Administration in the United States, Mary was in charge of overseeing the US Peace Corps. She has worked with President Jimmy Carter since 1971, when he was still governor of Georgia. When he swore Mary into offi ce in the White House Rose Garden in March 1977, he said that Mary ‘has a sensitivity and courage that is absolutely superlative’. I asked her if she and Carter had infl uenced each other’s views of world peace. ‘Jimmy Carter is not a man given to baroque embellishment’, Mary states, but by inference she thinks she can answer this question affi rmatively. On a practical level, for nearly a decade of his post-Presidency, she acted as his envoy with business and political leaders in the Middle East. On a deeper level, Mary says they share values, backgrounds, and worldviews. The U.S. civil rights movement was signifi cant for both of them, in different ways: Mary worked at the heart of the movement for four years, handling the national news media for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; Carter could not have been elected President until the movement began to lift the stain of racial segregation from the American South. In Carter’s introduction to Mary’s 2007 book, A Quiet Revolution: The First Palestinian Intifada and Nonviolent Resistance (New York, Nation Books, 2007; London, Perseus Books, 2008), he says the 1960s civil rights movement ‘made it possible for white citizens to hold their heads high, because white southerners could feel proud that their region had resolved a predicament of centuries, with relatively little bloodshed. . . . The long journey for civil rights became . . . a national struggle for rights and reform, and made it possible for me as a white southerner to be elected by the entire nation as the thirty-ninth President of the United States’. Moreover, both Mary and Carter come from southern Protestant backgrounds – Mary’s father was the eighth Methodist minister in six generations in Virginia. Their mothers were each in the nursing profession. This means a collegiality in their philosophical and ethical frameworks, Mary says, and when they communicate the conversation is not about values, but on concrete steps Mary and Jimmy Carter, and practical solutions. during his visit to Mansfi eld in 2007. Carter – Mary tells me – thinks deeply about the meaning of honour, justice, Truth, standing up for what you believe, taking risks, making one’s life count, and confronting injustice. Mary is Professor of Peace and Confl ict Studies with the University for Peace, an affi liate of the UN, which specializes in Irenology (the study of peace). I asked her to delineate her personal defi nitions of peace, and peace education. Peace is one of the deepest yearnings of the human psyche, Mary tells me, yet defi nitions differ according to cultural traditions, and pressures such as food insuffi ciency, environmental degradation, impoverishment, and injustice. An exponential increase in knowledge on how to build more peaceable societies has occurred since 1978, when the concept of ‘peace-building’ was fi rst used, by the UN in Namibia. Today, the fastest growing area of the social sciences world-wide is peace and confl ict studies, which is expanding both the generation of knowledge and its dissemination. Africa has 26 centres for peace and confl ict studies, and in the United States 400 centres or departments for peace and confl ict studies are at work. Insights from the fi eld are affecting many sectors of human society, from international relations among nation-states to industrial disputes to local matters. Peace education may involve all segments of a society. It teaches in the broadest sense of the word the prevention, management, and resolution of confl icts, and thus may involve the media, mass communications, and non-formal education. An article entitled ‘Sex and Caste’, written by Mary King and Casey Hayden in 1966, is credited by historians with having sparked what is now called second-wave feminism. Feminism has passed through three waves since the 1960s (the bid for equality, the claim of difference, and the search for less restricting defi nitions). I asked Mary where feminism is now. ‘The question of whether women are different or equal to men is still vexing, but probing the question remains important, although it will become less so in the future. Feminist work is centred on women and FELLOWS’ ARTICLES 10 ➥
Page 1 and 2: Mansfield The Mansfi eld College Ma
Page 3 and 4: Student Academic Successes 2007-200
Page 5 and 6: Access at Mansfi eld: Oxford Furthe
Page 7 and 8: SCR Newcomers Dr Carl Anderson Juni
Page 9: Women at Mansfi eld Tutor For Women
Page 13 and 14: instance, is ‘the morning star of
Page 15 and 16: Donald MacDonald English 1984-88, P
Page 17 and 18: From the Archives: the Changing Lan
Page 19 and 20: We aim to do much more than stand s
Page 21 and 22: countries: examining one’s own cu
Page 23 and 24: A Year in the “Chain Gang” Bob
Page 25 and 26: company, trawling through the City
Page 27 and 28: Dana Dunne PPE 1983-84 (VSP) Patron
Page 29 and 30: Alumni News Dhruti Shah English 200
Page 31 and 32: issues.” Dorothy was still busy i
Page 33 and 34: Eighth Annual Hands Lecture “AFTE
Page 35 and 36: Roy Cooper Alexander Dacre Amy Icke

MAN-10265 MAGAZINE.indd - Mansfield College - University of Oxford

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