College Record 2013

The President’s Seminars
Our speakers as in past years responded to the challenge of five broad themes
chosen with the whole range of faculties and departments in mind, ‘Archives’,
‘Ageing’, ‘Hunger’, ‘Ethics’ and ‘Systems’. The President began with an account
of her experiences amongst the papers and letters of her biographical subjects.
She was followed later in Michaelmas by Professor Jon Austyn, who spoke of his
work on dendritic cells and the potential efficacy of vaccine crystals. In Hilary we
welcomed back Professor Barbara Harriss-White, who spoke on ‘Capital’ in 2011;
she now discussed the difficulties besetting food production and food management
in South Asia. The Development Director discussed the ethical dilemmas faced by
fundraisers, and made a convincing case for social-impact investments. In our final
seminar Dr Jonathan Barrett, the newly appointed Lecturer in Computer Science,
discussed the possibilities and limits of quantum computing.
Our research fellows and graduate students were no less interesting and entertaining.
The first seminar gained a Gallic flavour when Dr Glenn Roe described the value
of digital archives in studying eighteenth-century French literary culture, and
Ruth Bush shed light on the archives of publishers associated with the beginnings
of Francophone African literature. In subsequent seminars, speakers explored
different aspects of health. Dr Mark Boyes considered the psychological harms to
which poor South African adolescents are exposed; Francesca Ghillani sketched the
differences in attitudes to beauty and the body found in native and migrant Italian
communities; Dr Carolina Arancibia took us on a tour of the human gut; Darryl
Stellmach surveyed the ways in which humanitarian organizations understand and
respond to famine; Dr Omer Dushek outlined the uses of systems biology in the
study of the immune system; and the Emeritus Chair of General Meeting, Andrew
Cutts, gave an amusing précis of systematic reviews in Medicine. A more sombre
note was struck by Dr Alexander Leveringhaus, who discussed the ethics of robotic
weapons, and by Chris Malone, in his impressive analysis of our thinking about the
moral wisdom of groups.
Once again we thank Louise Gordon and Karl Davies for the support which ensures
the smooth running of the seminars and the enjoyable dinners afterwards. We also
welcomed Nisha Manocha and Christos Hadjiyiannis to the organizing group.
Nisha has now completed her DPhil and has left Wolfson, to our regret, but we
111