The Queen's College Record 2020
Reports and College Activities Identity’, based on earlier work, reached the last of its five venues. Over 260,000 people visited the exhibition during the run, making it the most successful British Museum touring exhibition for the last six years. During the year, two doctoral students submitted their theses. My publications include an article for a volume on Ancient near Eastern traditions of libraries (OUP) and one for the Routledge Handbook of Sensory Archaeology. Jim Reed (German – honorary) My new book, Genesis. The Making of Literary Works from Homer to Christa Wolf is due to be published in New York on 15 September. An earlier book, The Classical Centre. Goethe and Weimar 1775-1832 was re-issued this year. Last autumn I gave a Kafka lecture in Prague, ‘Kafka häuslich’, since published in Oxford German Studies. With no new project in hand, I am currently writing some informal memoirs. Owen Rees (Music) My research this year reflected intersections between historical musicology and performance, focusing on the period from the late fifteenth century to the seventeenth, with particular emphasis on music in England and the Iberian Peninsula. A long-term project to record – with my ensemble Contrapunctus – music from the most important manuscript source of Tudor sacred music, the Baldwin Partbooks, reached its final stage with the editing work on an album of motets with psalm texts, by such composers as White and Mundy. Editorial reconstruction of many of these works was required in order for them to be performable, and several pieces had not been recorded before. Within the sphere of Iberian music I completed a book chapter and musical editions for an international project on Spanish and Portuguese polyphonic styles c.1500, examining the evidence for modular and formulaic ways of creating polyphony, the traces of which survive in a group of works preserved in Portuguese sources. A busy performing schedule between the autumn and the spring included a concert by Contrapunctus of fifteenth-century Burgundian works as part of the Laus Polyphoniae Festival (Antwerp), and a concert at Queen’s as part of Contrapunctus’s Oxford University residency, presenting little-known sacred music from seventeenthcentury Italy by Giovanni Legrenzi and contemporaries. I also spoke on Radio 3 about Contrapunctus’s new CD Salve, salve, salve: Josquin’s Spanish Legacy (Signum Classics), which explores how Spanish composers such as Morales, Guerrero, and Victoria emulated a favourite compositional device of Josquin Desprez. 24 The Queen’s College | College Record 2020
Alex Robertson (Materials) I’m now in a position where I finally feel that I’ve secured the founding of my group. My two DPhil students are well on their way to finishing their projects: one student (Shengda Pu, of Queen’s) has already published his first major lead author paper in the high impact journal ACS Energy Letters, where he identifies and films in real-time the growth of calcium metal dendrites in an operating calcium-ion battery cell at nanoscale resolutions. I’ve managed to secure a few modest grants, including one with enough funding to hire my first post-doctoral researcher – Dr Sapna Sinha – albeit only for less than a year! She will be researching how the atomic level structure of catalysts affects their performance, how this structure changes over their lifetime, and how those changes lead to performance loss. This work has important applications in making certain crucial reactions for energy applications commercially viable, and is being done in collaboration with my partners at the Korea Institute of Energy Research. The shutdowns of the past few months have rather stymied our research recently unfortunately, as we are heavily laboratory based, so we are glad that things are opening up now in the latter half of the year – and hopefully won’t have the need to reverse! Reports and College Activities Ritchie Robertson (German) I translated from German into English a 600-line poem in classical metres about Finland written by August Thieme (1780-1860). Originally published in 1808, the poem has now been issued by the Aue-Stiftung (a foundation dedicated to cultural relations between Finland and Germany) in a scholarly edition and accompanied by translations into Finnish, Swedish and Russian as well as English. I spoke at a symposium marking the public presentation of this edition in Helsinki in September 2019. Otherwise I have published an article on seventeenth-century German drama, ‘“Verdammte Staats-Klugheit / die Treu und Bund heist brechen!” Reason of state in Lohenstein’s Cleopatra’, Journal of European Studies, 50, i (Feb. 2020), 77-90. I was elected an Honorary Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge, and attended a ceremony and dinner there in November 2019. College Record 2020 | The Queen’s College 25
- Page 1 and 2: THE QUEEN’S COLLEGE COLLEGE RECOR
- Page 3 and 4: Kets, Willemien, BSc MSc Nijmegen,
- Page 5 and 6: CONTENTS From the Provost 6 Reports
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- Page 9 and 10: SENIOR TUTOR’S REPORT The College
- Page 11 and 12: In association with the Department
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- Page 19 and 20: Bernhard Kasberger (Economics) This
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- Page 23: them if they are admitted to hospit
- Page 27 and 28: In January I gave a plenary outreac
- Page 29 and 30: ACADEMIC DISTINCTIONS (* denotes di
- Page 31 and 32: FINAL PUBLIC EXAMINATIONS Biologica
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- Page 35 and 36: COLLEGE PRIZES Alan Webster Prize:
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- Page 41 and 42: ADMISSIONS Jon Doye Tutor for Admis
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- Page 63 and 64: A YEAR IN THE MCR President Nadia H
- Page 65 and 66: A YEAR IN THE JCR Hattie Bates JCR
- Page 67 and 68: Later that term, Dr Jennifer Cassid
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- Page 73 and 74: QCAFC Captain: Matt Suter Following
Alex Robertson (Materials)<br />
I’m now in a position where I finally feel that I’ve<br />
secured the founding of my group. My two DPhil<br />
students are well on their way to finishing their projects:<br />
one student (Shengda Pu, of Queen’s) has already<br />
published his first major lead author paper in the<br />
high impact journal ACS Energy Letters, where he<br />
identifies and films in real-time the growth of calcium<br />
metal dendrites in an operating calcium-ion battery<br />
cell at nanoscale resolutions. I’ve managed to secure a few modest grants, including<br />
one with enough funding to hire my first post-doctoral researcher – Dr Sapna<br />
Sinha – albeit only for less than a year! She will be researching how the atomic level<br />
structure of catalysts affects their performance, how this structure changes over their<br />
lifetime, and how those changes lead to performance loss. This work has important<br />
applications in making certain crucial reactions for energy applications commercially<br />
viable, and is being done in collaboration with my partners at the Korea Institute of<br />
Energy Research. <strong>The</strong> shutdowns of the past few months have rather stymied our<br />
research recently unfortunately, as we are heavily laboratory based, so we are glad<br />
that things are opening up now in the latter half of the year – and hopefully won’t<br />
have the need to reverse!<br />
Reports and <strong>College</strong> Activities<br />
Ritchie Robertson (German)<br />
I translated from German into English a 600-line poem in<br />
classical metres about Finland written by August Thieme<br />
(1780-1860). Originally published in 1808, the poem<br />
has now been issued by the Aue-Stiftung (a foundation<br />
dedicated to cultural relations between Finland and<br />
Germany) in a scholarly edition and accompanied by<br />
translations into Finnish, Swedish and Russian as well<br />
as English. I spoke at a symposium marking the public<br />
presentation of this edition in Helsinki in September 2019.<br />
Otherwise I have published an article on seventeenth-century German drama,<br />
‘“Verdammte Staats-Klugheit / die Treu und Bund heist brechen!” Reason of state in<br />
Lohenstein’s Cleopatra’, Journal of European Studies, 50, i (Feb. <strong>2020</strong>), 77-90.<br />
I was elected an Honorary Fellow of Downing <strong>College</strong>, Cambridge, and attended a<br />
ceremony and dinner there in November 2019.<br />
<strong>College</strong> <strong>Record</strong> <strong>2020</strong> | <strong>The</strong> Queen’s <strong>College</strong> 25