The Queen's College Record 2021

THE QUEEN’S COLLEGE 

1341-2021: 680th Anniversary 

COLLEGE 

RECORD 2021

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 

Hyman, John, BPhil MA DPhil Oxf 

Nickerson, Richard Bruce, BSc Edin, MA 

DPhil Oxf 

Davis, John Harry, 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 

Kringelbach, Morten Lindtner, BSc MSc 

Copenhagen, DPhil Oxf 

Norbury, Christopher John, MA Oxf, PhD Lond 

Sarooshi, Dan, LLB NSW, 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 

Robertson, Ritchie Neil Ninian, MA Edin, MA 

DPhil Oxf, PhD Camb, FBA 

Phalippou, Ludovic Laurent André, BA 

Toulouse School of Economics, MA Southern 

California, PhD INSEAD 

Yassin, Ghassan, BSc MSc PhD Keele 

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 

Hunt, Katherine Emily, MA Oxf, MRes PhD 

Birkbeck 

Hollings, Christopher David, MMath PhD York 

Kelly, Steven, BSc Dub, DPhil Oxf, ARIAM 

Gault, Joseph Frederick, MSc Imp, PhD 

Institut Pasteur & École Polytechnique 

Metcalf, Christopher Michael Simon, MA Edin, 

MPhil DPhil Oxf 

Whidden, Seth Adam, BA Union College, AM 

PhD Brown, MA Ohio State 

Mȕller, Carolin Anne, Dip Ulm, PhD Nott 

Stacey, Jessica Anne, BA MA PhD KCL 

Prout, David, MA Oxf, PhD Lond 

2 The Queen’s College | College Record 2021

Kasberger, Bernhard, BSc Vienna University of 

Economics and Business, PhD Vienna 

Robertson, Alexander William, MPhys Durh, 

DPhil Oxf 

Smith, Michael Ambrose Crawford, BA 

College of William and Mary, MA PhD 

Princeton 

Turner, Jonathan, BA MSt BCL MPhil DPhil 

Oxf, LLB Birkbeck 

Seigal, Anna, BA MMath Camb 

Keating, Jonathan Peter, MPhys Oxf, PhD 

Bristol 

Abell, Catharine Emma Jenvey, BA Adelaide, 

PhD Flinders 

Mancall, Peter Cooper, BA Oberlin, PhD 

Harvard 

Weatherup, Robert Stewart, MEng PhD Camb 

Walden, Daniel Kitt Schelly, BA Oberlin, MPhil 

Camb, PhD Harvard 

Kiener, Maximilian, BA Regensburg, BPhil 

DPhil Oxf 

Ariga, Rina, MBBS Imperial, DPhil Oxf 

Muhammed, Kinan, MBBS Imperial, DPhil Oxf 

Marinkov, Viktor Vidinov, BSc Utrecht, MSc 

Barcelona 

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 

Edwards, Jennifer Jane, BA MA PhD RHUL 

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 

Hill, Hugh Allen Oliver, BSc PhD Belf, MA DSc 

Oxf, FRS 

Reed, Terence James, MA Oxf, FBA 

Low, Colin MacKenzie, Lord Low of Dalston, 

CBE, BA Oxf 

Beecroft, Paul Adrian Barlow, MA Oxf, FInstP 

Budd, Sir Alan Peter, GBE, BSc Lond, MA 

DPhil Oxf, PhD Camb 

Bogdanor, Vernon Bernard, CBE, MA Oxf, 

FBA 

Morris, Colin, MA Oxf, FBA, FRHistS 

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, 

FMedSci, FRS 

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 

College Record 2021 | The Queen’s College 3

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 

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, FIET, PhD UCL, 

MBiochem Oxf 

Taylor, Clare, MBE, BA Oxf 

Emeritus Fellows 

Foster, Michael Antony, MA DPhil Oxf 

Kaye, John Marsh, BCL MA Oxf 

Salmon, Graeme Laurence, BSc Tasmania, 

MA DPhil Oxf 

Dimsdale, Nicholas Hampden, MA Camb, MA 

Oxf 

Neumann, Peter Michael, OBE, MA DPhil DSc 

Oxf 

Rutherford, John David, MA DPhil Oxf 

McLeod, Peter Duncan, MA PhD Camb, MA 

DPhil Oxf 

Edwards, Christopher Martin, MA DPhil Oxf 

Harries, Phillip Tudor, MA DPhil Oxf 

Baines, John Robert, MA DPhil Oxf, FBA 

Rowland, The Revd Christopher, MA PhD 

Camb, MA DPhil Oxf 

Pearson, Roger Anthony George, MA DPhil 

Oxf, FBA 

Bowie, Angus Morton, 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 

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 

Browne Research Fellow 

Fayet, Annette, MSc ESPCI Paris, MSC DPhil 

Oxf 

Beecroft Junior Research Fellow (in 

Astrophysics) 

Bellini, Emilio, BA MSc Trento, PhD Padova 

Laming Junior Fellows 

Bardazzi, Adele, BA RHUL, DPhil Oxf 

Arnaldi, Marta, BA Turin, MA Pavia, MSt DPhil 

Oxf 

Full-time Lecturers 

Sienkiewicz, Stefan, BA MSt DPhil Oxf 

Chaplain 

Price, The Revd Katherine Magdalene, MA 

MSt Oxf, BA Sheff 


CONTENTS 

From the Provost 6 

Reports and College Activities 9 

Senior Tutor’s Report 9 

News from the Fellowship 14 

Academic Distinctions 26 

From the Bursar 35 

Outreach 37 

Admissions 39 

A year in the Library 40 

A year in the Chapel 43 

A year in the Choir 46 

The Queen’s Translation Exchange 48 

A year in the MCR 50 

A year in the JCR 52 

Student Clubs and Societies 54 

Athletic Distinctions 60 

Old Members’ Activities 61 

Director of Development’s Report 61 

From the President of The Queen’s 

College Association 63 

Gaudies 67 

Appointments and Distinctions 68 

Publications 74 

Articles 78 

The challenges of academic 

medicine during a pandemic 78 

Modelling a pandemic 81 

Papyri and performance: the 

problems of ancient poetry 84 

Obituaries 88 

Prof A D Barker 89 

Dr R E Blackburn FRSA 91 

Dr M J Cullen 92 

His Hon Judge Curran QC 94 

Prof K Davies 96 

Mr J R England 97 

Mr P J Firth 98 

Mr R L Hartnoll 100 

Mr M E Herman 102 

Prof H A O Hill FRS 104 

Mr A W S Mundy 105 

Dr P M Neumann OBE 107 

Mr J W A Okell OBE 108 

Dr Z A Pelczynski OBE 110 

Ms H Sowerby 113 

Mr E D Wetherell 114 

Benefactions 116 

Information 124 


From the Provost 

Credit: David Fisher 

FROM THE PROVOST 

Queen’s has had a year to be proud of. Obviously, it has 

been tough on everyone: students, academics, College 

staff, and Old Members. We have all faced continual 

uncertainty, risk, and restrictions, each of us has had 

to deal with difficult personal circumstances and some 

with tragedy. Collectively, however, as a College we have 

been amazingly resilient and not only survived but, often, 

created opportunities out of disruption. 

The College focused on what it has always been here 

Dr Claire Craig CBE for: to educate and to support research for the public 

good, in the best ways that it possibly can. From the 

start, we chose to stay true to our principles, including 

thinking for ourselves as we picked our way through the law, guidance, and evidence. 

This meant that we did as much in-person as we possibly could, consistent with 

safety. Tutorials were face-to-face where they could be, even while University lectures, 

exams, and admissions were all online throughout the year. 

Each term had its own flavour, reflecting the academic cycle and the various stages 

of the pandemic. Michaelmas Term saw most students in residence, but with many 

self-isolating at any one time and with all lectures online. Careful choreography 

meant that, where they could, students and tutors came together: Freshers’ Week 

sessions and mid-term tutorial dinners were repeated so they could be held in 

smaller groups; meetings throughout the term were often held in person, but with 

various combinations of mask-wearing, the placing of Perspex screens (that made 

conversations across the table at lunch or dinner impossible), outdoors in marquees 

and under heaters, and people sitting the required distance apart in the larger rooms. 

Even so, we all got very familiar with online meeting formats. Some Fellows were 

hardly able to get to their labs or archives at all, while others were able to conduct 

research from home. Many staff were also fitting work alongside home-schooling their 

children. Together with the high levels of uncertainty, of risk, of extra effort and care 

that even the most routine activity required, it was a difficult time for everyone. 

At Christmas we sorely missed the Gaudies, and some international students had 

to stay throughout because they could not return home or, if they did, would not 

be able to come back for Hilary. One of them created midwinter cheer by magically 

“wrapping” the front door in brightly coloured gauze. However, the first part of Hilary 

Term was probably the darkest time of the year, actually and metaphorically. Only a 

small proportion of students were in residence, the UK’s national lockdown meant 

restrictions were very tight, and the daylight hours were short. 


By Trinity Term the days were brighter, restrictions were a little less, and most students 

had returned. For one-year Masters students and for Finalists, the desire to make 

the most of every possible day was particularly strong. Queen’s continued to support 

in-person events wherever it could and by July we had even managed to fulfil our 

commitment to the Finalists of 2020, to invite them back to carefully choreographed 

formal Halls for a belated celebration. It was particularly satisfying because the 

Norrington league table for 2020 had just been published, with Queen’s placed 3rd 

– the best outcome anyone could remember. (I must remind readers that the league 

table is a flawed measure, subject to massive fluctuations – but it would be churlish 

not to celebrate the very real underlying achievements of students and tutors.) In 

addition, the College had its best Torpids performance since 1840, and the Men’s 

first boat achieved Blades. As a newcomer to the way bumps work, the fact that the 

riverside was shut off resulted in a bonus: the organisers provided both an excellent 

live-feed and an incredibly helpful set of graphics, making it much easier to follow all 

the boats’ progress wherever in the world you were. 


Seeking those opportunities created by disruption, we will all want to learn what we 

can about new ways of doing things. A lot of our activity this past year has brought 

our good works to a much wider audience, making the College, in some senses, more 

porous. For example, we introduced the Translation Exchange Book Club for Sixth- 

Formers; the live-streaming of Chapel services, organ recitals, and choir concerts; 

and the imaginative online events for the OM community around the world from Mayor 

Garcetti’s Lecture, to the “two Roberts’” tour of the wine cellar. We conducted the 

Credit: John Cairns 



search that resulted in six new Honorary Fellows with a fascinating range of interests, 

and we finalised the partnership with The Access Project that will see Queen’s 

investing careful time and effort leading in-depth engagement with selected state 

schools in its areas of historic interest in the North West of England. At a time when the 

average attainment gap between children in rich and poor households appears to be 

widening, this is an important part of the College’s continuous determination to enable 

all the brightest young people to benefit from the best possible education. Far from 

locked-down housebound navel-gazing, the College has reached out more than ever. 

I want to finish this article with a brief reflection on how the move of so much of 

life online also forced us to recognise afresh the value of Queen’s as a physical 

community-in-place. The practices of working, eating, and sometimes living together 

are integral to the College’s character and its success. They have their origins in the 

scholarly, social, and religious habits of the College’s first centuries. While the details of 

some of the practices are very different now and some of the reasons for them have 

changed, others remain strong or have evolved to take new forms. 

That character and success still depend on people being together, on the liminal 

conversations: those over lunch, at a feast or seminar, or in the quads. College 

conversations happen with a mix of formality and serendipity and it is the essence of a 

College that people talk across boundaries in ways that they would not do anywhere 

else: across cohorts and generations, across subjects and disciplines, across teams 

and specialisms. This fluidity, absorbing the mood, paying attention to each other in 

ways that require all the skills of one human being noticing another, building bonds, 

is what enables challenge and support. It cannot be exactly replicated online and is 

an important part of what makes excellence possible. It is the associated freedom of 

expression, intellectual enquiry and reasoned arguments that will help to tackle the 

problems of today and create the opportunities for tomorrow. You could say that an 

ideal Queen’s conversation, whether about climate change or the menu, combines 

passion with respect: decorous passion, perhaps, or passionate decorum. 


SENIOR TUTOR’S REPORT 

A year ago, the Senior Tutor ended his report with a 

wish that the 2020/21 academic year would mark a 

return to normality. Such has, unfortunately, not been 

the case. Teaching and meetings this year were a mix 

of online and in person, and admissions interviews 

were held completely online, as they will be this coming 

December. Students spent much of Michaelmas Term 

limited to their ‘household’ (often a staircase in College 

accommodation), and then away from College during 

the second lockdown, which pushed Hilary Term fully 

Prof Seth Whidden online. Trinity Term saw the return of most students 

to College, although nearly all examinations were sat 

online, as they had been a year earlier. Despite these 

challenges, I’m pleased to report that the College pressed on with great resolve, 

in teaching and research alike. Against such strong headwinds, persistence alone 

would be admirable; that the College was able to be so successful despite such 

unfavourable conditions is noteworthy indeed. 

Reports and College Activities 

As last year’s College Record was being sent to the printer, we elected four new 

Fellows who began in post at the start of this academic year. Conor O’Brien is a 

new Fellow in History, specialising in religion and identity in the early Middle Ages. 

After research fellowships in Cambridge and Durham, Dr O’Brien has returned to the 

College where he wrote a doctoral thesis on the Anglo-Saxon monk Bede. That thesis 

was the basis for his first book, Bede’s Temple: An Image and its Interpretation (OUP), 

which received the Best Book Prize from the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists. 

His next book is part of a wider project exploring the possibility of a religion/secular 

distinction in the early Middle Ages, and he is also working on issues of community 

and identity in the early medieval world. 

Gabriele Rota was elected to a Junior Research Fellowship in Classics. A product of 

the Italian state education system, Dr Rota read Classics at the University of Padua 

and completed postgraduate study in Cambridge, where he wrote a doctoral thesis on 

the textual history of Cicero’s letters to Atticus. His current projects include producing 

a critical edition of Cicero’s entire correspondence and studying attitudes towards 

the inclusion of non-authorial matter into Latin classical texts from Antiquity to the 

Enlightenment. 

To cover much of my teaching while I serve as Senior Tutor, the College elected Macs 

Smith, who was our Hamilton Junior Research Fellow, to a Career Development 

Fellowship in French. Dr Smith’s first book Paris and the Parasite: Noise, Health, and 

Politics in the Media City, announced last year (see 2020 College Record, p. 27), was 



published by MIT Press this May. After articles on street art and graffiti representations 

of the 1871 Paris Commune, and of Dante in contemporary Italian society, he is 

working on his second book project, which examines the impact of screen culture and 

new technologies on the conceptualisation of the body in contemporary French theatre. 

Also interested in aspects of theatre is Jennifer Edwards, our new Career Development 

Fellow in early modern English. Previously Research Coordinator and Lecturer at 

Shakespeare’s Globe, London, Dr Edwards’ research focuses on the intersections 

of early modern literature (primarily Shakespearean), medicine, and philosophy, with 

a particular interest in emotion and embodiment. Her current projects include a 

monograph that considers how experiences of ecstasy captured the early modern 

imagination, and a study that aims to show how distraction at Shakespeare’s Globe 

creates theatrical meaning. 

During the course of this academic year, the College elected ten new Fellows. Meleisa 

Ono-George was elected to be the first Brittenden Fellow in History. A social-cultural 

historian of race and gender with a focus on Black women’s histories in Britain and the 

Anglo-Caribbean, Dr Ono-George was most recently Associate Professor and Director 

of Student Experience at the University of Warwick. She is currently conducting 

research for a book that focuses on the lives of several Black women in nineteenthand 

early twentieth-century Britain, as well as looking ahead to her next project, 

on the history of Black mothering in Britain and the politics of historical production. 

Readers of the College Record are well aware of one point which bears repeating: the 

Brittenden endowment enabled the College to secure the early release of this post, 

despite the University’s recruitment freeze that had been occasioned by COVID-19. 

The College will fund the post for the first five years, after which it will be jointly funded 

with the Faculty of History. 

The pandemic left the Harmsworth Visiting Professorship of American History unfilled 

in Michaelmas and Hilary Terms. Last year’s postholder, Peter Mancall, was invited 

to return for Trinity Term, to make up for the summer term that he lost in 2020. The 

College’s connection to the Harmsworth Professorship remains a source of great 

strength; recent Harmsworth Professor Barbara Savage (University of Pennsylvania) 

was on the selection panel for the Brittenden Fellowship. Her scholarly expertise and 

her familiarity with, and fondness for, the College made her an invaluable contributor. 

To round out the College’s coverage of history, we elected Sadie Jarrett to a Career 

Development Fellowship in early modern history. Her research examines the Welsh 

gentry within the power structures of the English state and disputes the existing 

narratives about the Welsh gentry. Her approach to viewing the Welsh people through 

lenses of colonialism is one of a number of examples of College members who are 

engaged with matters to do with race and diversity within their disciplines. Dr Jarrett 

has most recently been a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute of Historical 

Research at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. 




Simon Leedham FRCP was elected as our new Professorial Fellow in Molecular 

and Population Genetics. Professor Leedham’s research focuses on the signalling 

pathways that control intestinal stem cells and how they can be manipulated by drugs 

in diseases like inflammatory bowel disease and colorectal cancer. He is also Director 

of the Oxford Centre for Personalised Medicine, which runs 15-20 engagement events 

throughout the year. 

The College also elected a new Junior Research Fellow in Law: Jan Petrov comes 

to us from the Judicial Studies Institute of Masaryk University, in Brno, where he 

completed his doctorate. He also worked as a law clerk at the Supreme Administrative 

Court of the Czech Republic, and he holds an LLM from New York University. Dr 

Petrov’s primary scholarly interests are comparative constitutional law, human rights, 

EU law, and public international law, and during his Fellowship he plans to articulate 

a theory of judicial reactions to executive dominance with particular help from three 

case studies: Brexit, post-2015 judicial reforms in Poland, and the Israeli government’s 

response to COVID-19. 



Our new Browne Research Fellow is Finaritra Raoelijaona. Originally from Madagascar, 

she holds degrees from the Universities of Strasbourg and Bordeaux. For her research 

Fellowship, she will focus on G protein-coupled receptors (GPCR), which represent the 

largest family of cell surface receptors encoded by the human genome. Specifically, Dr 

Raoelijaona will be investigating a unique receptor known as the very large G proteincoupled 

receptor 1 (VLGR1). The largest protein known in the GPCR superfamily, 

VLGR1 is highly subjected to mutations which are directly related to genetic disorders, 

including Usher syndrome type 2 (commonly associated with deafness and blindness). 

Rachel Achs was elected to be the next post-doctoral research Fellow in Philosophy 

as part of Senior Research Fellow John Hyman’s European Research Council project 

on ‘The Roots of Responsibility: Metaphysics, Humanity, and Society’. At Harvard, she 

wrote her doctoral thesis on self-righteous sentiment, and she is continuing to work on 

blame, its meaning, and its value. Dr Achs aims to consider the relationship between 

blame and voluntary control: specifically, what sort of freedom is required for the type 

of moral responsibility that we should care about having. 

The Laming Junior Research Fellowship was recast — thanks to the strength of its 

endowment — and the first year of it being offered as a three-year Fellowship (instead 

of one year with possibility of renewal) led to the election of two new Laming Fellows: 

Coraline Jortay and Annalisa Nicholson. Dr Jortay’s primary research interest is the 

history of literary translation from English and French into Chinese at the turn of the 

twentieth century, with a special focus on the impact of literary translation on language 

reform. Dr Nicholson works on the rhetorical strategies (particularly aspects of distance 

and alienation) of Huguenot women in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 

We also elected two ‘extraordinary’, or non-stipendiary, Junior Research Fellows, in 

Physiology and in Physics. These ‘eJRFs’ enable association with the College to postdoctorate 

scholars whose research activity is already supported through grant funding. 

We look forward to welcoming them to our already vibrant group of Early Career 

Researchers: Rumaitha Al Hosni (Physiology) and Josu Aurrekoetxea (Physics). 

These new Early Career Fellows will have big shoes to fill, as our track record of 

attracting the leading scholars of the future invariably leads to departures for greater 

pastures; of our Junior Research Fellows, Daniel Walden is leaving for a permanent 

position as Assistant Professor in Music Analysis at Durham University, and Bernhard 

Kasberger will join the Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE) at 

Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf. Recent eJRFs Max Kiener and Adele Bardazzi 

will pursue new postdoctoral fellowships with support from the European Research 

Council and the Irish Research Council, respectively. 

As I write this report, the selection panel completed its work for the new Schwarz- 

Taylor Professorship in German. As with the Brittenden Fellowship, this post 

(previously called the Taylor chair) is now fully endowed, and it continues to be 

associated with a Fellowship at the College. The new Schwarz-Taylor Professor, 


Karen Leeder, is a specialist in and prize-winning translator of contemporary German 

literature, film, and culture. Among Professor Leeder’s numerous current projects is a 

study of contemporary German poetry. We look forward to welcoming her next year. 

Turning to our existing Fellowship, it gives me great pleasure to note that Fellow in 

English Rebecca Beasley and Fellow in Fine Art Anthony Gardner were both given the 

title of Professor in the annual Recognition of Distinction exercise. 

If I have devoted so much space to profiles of individual excellence, it’s because they 

can better convey the College’s activities over the past year than, say, numerical 

results such as the Norrington Table. While we are always a bit wary of league 

tables, since such a focus on exam scores is only one (crude) way to measure 

student success, that scepticism is no less important in a year in which students sat 

examinations during a pandemic, in far from optimal conditions. The College’s results 

are impressive when compared to previous years — we achieved a ‘Norrington score’ 

of 81.7%, whereas our previous high had been 76.43% and the mean over the last 

15 years was 69.9%. And while many colleges enjoyed similar increases (aided by a 

general dearth of third-class degrees or lower), the College came third in this year’s 

table: the highest position on record, and a notable achievement in a uniquely difficult 

year. Most importantly, our standing in this league table shows that our finalists were 

not disadvantaged by the pandemic last year; their resilience is a testament to their 

focus and determination, impressive in light of such unfavourable conditions. In 

addition to their strong showing as a year group, students excelled in a number of 

individual accomplishments when compared to their cohort across the University, as 

the list of examination prizes in this Record attests. 


What will we accomplish next year? If the last year has taught us anything, it’s that 

predicting the future is a fool’s errand; even the meteorologist gets caught in the rain 

sometimes. But with vaccines in our arms and a year’s worth of pandemic-related 

experience under our belts, we are eager and committed to return to as much inperson 

work as will be permitted. Having made it through this year’s storms in such 

good shape, the College’s academic future remains bright. 



NEWS FROM THE FELLOWSHIP 

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

College’s website. 

Catharine Abell (Philosophy) 

Since the publication of my book, Fiction: A 

Philosophical Analysis (OUP) in July 2020, I have 

participated in an author meets critics session on the 

book at the American Society of Aesthetics meeting in 

November 2020 (held online). I have also written a précis 

of the book and response to critical commentaries (in 

addition to offering some critical commentaries of my 

own on other recently-published books on the topic) 

for a special issue of the British Journal of Aesthetics on fiction, to be published in 

January 2022. I have also started working on a project about artistic media and how 

they affect our interpretation and evaluation of artworks. As an extension of that, I have 

been thinking about the role of various kinds of non-perceptible features of artworks in 

determining their aesthetic properties. 

Rebecca Beasley (English) 

This year I’ve enjoyed setting several new projects in 

train. With Alex Grafen (UCL) and Evi Heinz (Münster), 

I’m putting together an anthology of modernist art 

and literature by a group of East End Jewish writers 

and artists (the group is usually referred to as ‘The 

Whitechapel Boys’—but there were Whitechapel girls 

too); I’ve started editing Wyndham Lewis’ Men Without 

Art for the Oxford University Press edition of Lewis’s 

writings; and I’ve made the very first forays into research for a new book project on 

ornithology in modern literature and culture. At the time of writing, I’m researching 

a chapter about the poetry debates of the 1920s for a volume commemorating the 

centenary of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, to be published next year. 


Angus Bowie (Classics – Emeritus) 

All attempts to go abroad having been scuppered by 

the virus and its variants, I have been compelled to 

work from home, largely on my Homer commentary. 

One novelty was giving a series of graduate seminars 

on Greek dialect texts ‘in’ the Goethe-Universität in 

Frankfurt, which took me back 40 years to my earliest 

work on Lesbian poetry and showed me how well 

teaching online can go with good students. I also 

gave a lecture there on ‘Epic Humour: How Funny Are Homer’s Gods?’ (answer: ‘it’s 

complicated’). I published an article ‘The Ritual Role of Honey in Ancient Egypt, Hatti 

and Greece’ in the Serbian journal Istraživanja. 



Jose Carrillo (Mathematics) 

Despite all the complications with the COVID-19 

restrictions, my first year at Queen’s has been both 

fantastic and challenging. Adapting to new duties and a 

totally different environment has been eased due to the 

nice and friendly welcome from colleagues and students 

at the College. My research in the 2020-2021 academic 

year continues the development of theoretical and 

numerical tools and applications of Partial Differential 

Equations (PDE) in the sciences. They constitute the basic language in which most 

of the laws in physics or engineering can be written and one of the most important 

mathematical tools for modelling in life and socio-economical sciences. I have been 

interested in long-time asymptotics, qualitative properties and numerical schemes for 

nonlinear diffusion, hydrodynamic, and kinetic equations. I have also worked in the 

modelling of collective behaviour of many-body systems with application in charged 

particles transport in a plasma, cell movement by chemotaxis or cell sorting by 

adhesion forces. 

The first year of my ERC Advanced Grant has allowed me to further explore and to 

launch new aspects of my research in nonlocal PDEs for complex particle dynamics 

such as phase transitions, patterns, and synchronization. I have advanced in the 

analysis of concentrations and properties of local minimizers of interaction energies, 

phase transitions driven by noise/relative strength of repulsion versus attraction and 

synchronization of neural networks. David Gomez-Castro joined the College as Post- 

Doctoral Research Assistant (PDRA) associated with this project and three more 

PDRAs will be joining in the next academic year. I have been named as Highly Cited 

Researcher for six years in a row by Clarivate Analytics. I have given the QJMAM 

lecture at the joint British (Applied) Mathematical Colloquium meeting 2021. 



Credit: David Fisher 

Claire Craig (Provost) 

The last academic year has been a challenging time 

for those interested in the provision of science advice. 

I was therefore delighted to be elected Vice-President 

(Evidence) of the International Network for Government 

Science Advice and to start to work with INGSA as it 

attempts to ensure that the experience of the pandemic 

is used to strengthen the provision and use of evidence 

in national, city-based, and regional jurisdictions around 

the world. I also contributed to work by the British Academy, commissioned by the UK 

Government Chief Scientific Advisor, using humanities evidence to develop plausible 

futures for the “Covid decade” ahead, in order to inform future policy priorities. 

I have continued to work with Professor Sarah Dillon, of Cambridge University, on new 

ways to incorporate narrative evidence as part of a plural evidence base. Storylistening: 

narrative evidence and public reasoning is published in November 2021. 

Peter Dobson OBE (Engineering – Emeritus) 

I continue to work in all of the areas that I described last 

year, namely: Quantum Technology, aspects of COVID-19 

detection, new concepts to reduce carbon emissions 

and a lot of work in helping small companies start up. I 

was an author on several papers during the year and in 

particular three papers in Nature and associated journals 

and have continued to file patents on new methods of 

rapid and sensitive virus detection, and new types of 

coatings to improve heat exchangers, and ultimately, we hope, heat pumps. Methods 

of decarbonising the energy sector remain a passion and I am increasingly involved in 

hydrogen generation and applications. The COVID-19 restrictions have badly affected 

a lot of the experimental work I undertake, especially in universities. It is also making 

fund-raising for new companies extremely difficult and much of my time in the past six 

months has turned to keeping companies alive. My work with the UKRI and associated 

government agencies is associated with the road-mapping of some sectors that use 

Quantum Technology, and also the implications for Intellectual Property and export 

control arising from the National Security Investment Bill and legislation. 

Annette Fayet (Biological Sciences) 

After a year working from home, I was delighted to resume fieldwork for my research 

this year. I spent most of the spring/summer 2021 on Skomer Island off the coast 

of Wales, continuing my long-term study of the migration of Atlantic puffins (now 


in its 13th year!) and starting a new project on Manx 

shearwaters. This project, for which I secured funding 

from the British Ecological Society (BES) and the 

Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour (ASAB), 

aims to understand the long-term consequences on 

seabirds of breeding, or migrating, in unusually easy or 

hard conditions (which they may experience more and 

more, with climate change driving greater environmental 

variability). 


I published several papers this year (see www.annettefayet.com for details and links to 

the papers) but I was particularly pleased to see an important paper about a key project 

of my Junior Research Fellowship, aiming to uncover the causes of puffin population 

declines in the northeast Atlantic, published in the Journal of Animal Ecology. 

Despite working from home I continued to take part in outreach events online. This 

included a lecture to prospective Oxford students with The Queen’s College North- 

West Science Programme, as well as lectures to primary and secondary school 

classrooms with the Exploring By The Seat and National Geographic Learning 

programmes, which reached over a thousand students worldwide, and hopefully 

inspired a few to pursue studies in biology and wildlife conservation. 

Last but not least, I was delighted to accept a tenured research position at the 

Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, starting in winter 2021, where I will continue 

to conduct independent ecological research and contribute to monitoring important 

seabird populations in Norway. While I hope to continue my long-term study of puffins 

on Skomer Island in Wales, I am also excited to develop new research projects on 

seabird colonies in the Lofoten Islands. 


Christopher Hollings (History of Mathematics) 

This year, I have continued to work with Richard Bruce 

Parkinson on our historiographical project concerning 

the reconstruction of ancient Egyptian mathematics 

during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. 

Our paper on the 1920s correspondence between 

the Egyptologist Thomas Eric Peet and the historian 

of mathematics Otto Neugebauer appeared in print 

in mid-2020 (‘Two letters from Otto Neugebauer to 

Thomas Eric Peet on ancient Egyptian mathematics’, Historia Mathematica 52 

(2020), 66–98) and we have published accounts of the ongoing research for various 

readerships. The writing of a follow-up piece is well advanced. Our work considers the 

attitudes of mathematicians, historians of mathematics, and Egyptologists towards 

the mathematics of the ancient world, their motivations for studying it, and the uses 



to which they put it. We delivered a joint online talk on this work to the Invariants, the 

Oxford undergraduate mathematics society. 

This year provided an opportunity for some very varied writing, and I produced two 

chapters for different edited collections: one on the financial and reputational capital 

earned by mathematical textbooks writers in Britain during the nineteenth century, and 

another on the eighteenth-century Savilian Professors of Geometry in Oxford, the first 

of whom was the College’s own Edmond Halley. 

I have continued my involvement in various projects spanning several Oxford 

departments whose goal is to present a more diverse image of the subjects taught 

at undergraduate level. With a view to emphasising the mathematical traditions that 

exist beyond Europe, I produced a series of posters on ‘world mathematics’ that will 

eventually be displayed in the Andrew Wiles Building: https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/ 

node/37473. 

Jon Keating (Mathematics) 

In my research, I have been working mainly on 

developing the theory of random matrices, and on 

applications to machine learning and number theory. My 

group has focused, in particular, on the characteristic 

polynomials of random matrices, their extreme value 

statistics, and their connection to Gaussian Multiplicative 

Chaos. I have written a number of papers on these 

topics. With a visitor from the Sorbonne Université, Dr 

Henrik Ueberschaer, I also made progress on a longstanding problem relating to the 

statistical properties of the wave functions in a family of singular quantum billiards. 

I gave lectures at a number of conferences, and a Mathematical Institute Public 

Lecture on the extreme values of random landscapes, all without leaving the confines 

of my home. Unfortunately, a visit to the Republic of the Congo, to give a lecture at the 

four-yearly Pan African Congress of Mathematicians, had to be postponed because of 

the pandemic. 

My teaching was focused on developing a new undergraduate course in the 

Mathematical Institute on Random Matrix Theory. 

I continued to act as President of the London Mathematical Society, where one sad 

duty was to mark Dr Peter Neumann’s passing. Peter was a hugely popular figure in 

the Society, as well as in College. 


Max Kiener (Philosophy) 

My academic year 2020/2021 happened primarily 

online. It was an unusual and very challenging, yet 

also productive, year that led to four peer-reviewed 

publications, in which I focused on the ethics of 

nudging, the use of artificial intelligence in healthcare, 

the predicaments that people face in the context of 

living organ donation, and questions about how exactly 

the law gives us reasons to comply with it. In addition, 

I wrote two articles for The Conversation, asking whether it is okay to manipulate 

people into getting vaccinated against COVID-19 as well as how cyberthreats could 

change physicians’ duties of disclosure to their patients. 


Based on my role in John Hyman’s ERC-project Roots of Responsibility, I then also 

organised a workshop on questions about moral and legal responsibility, which was 

scheduled to be held at Queen’s but then, unfortunately, had to proceed as an online 

event due to pandemic restrictions. 

Finally, I am happy to say that I received the CEPE IACAP Best Paper Award 2021 for 

a paper on the ethics of artificial intelligence, that I was offered a book contract for a 

project on moral responsibility, and that I accepted a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship 

(ECF) at Oxford, beginning in October 2021. My Leverhulme ECF will be based at Univ., 

but I hope to keep close ties with Queen’s as well, which has been an ideal home for me 

during my two-year fellowship on John Hyman’s ERC-project Roots of Responsibility. 


Laura Lonsdale (Spanish) 

Last year brought the publication of The Island (Penguin), 

my translation of a coming-of-age novel by the Spanish 

novelist Ana María Matute, originally published as 

Primera memoria in 1959. Set in Mallorca during the 

Spanish civil war, the novel is a lyrical account of a girl’s 

encounter with the violent realities of both the present 

and the past, and a thinly veiled attack on the moral 

hypocrisy of Franco’s regime. It’s a great novel for 

young people, and I enjoyed presenting it at the inaugural sixth-form event held by the 

Queen’s Translation Exchange last summer. The year also brought the publication of 

a chapter on the Galician poet Manuel Rivas in Multilingualism and World Literature 

(Bloomsbury), edited by Jane Hiddleston and Wen-chin Ouyang, a volume that brings 

together many of the ideas developed in the World Literature strand of the AHRCfunded 

Creative Multilingualism project. My own chapter explores the notion of linguistic 

ecology and biodiversity in a collection of poetry that Rivas published simultaneously in 

four Iberian languages (Galician, Castilian, Catalan and Basque). Before the pandemic 



Credit: John Cairns Credit: John Cairns 

struck, I was lucky enough to give a lecture in Sweden on the way multilingual poetry 

leaves space for the incomprehensible, exploring, with reference to a poem by Charles 

Tomlinson, the metaphors of the bridge (translation) and vacancy (the untranslated). 

Christopher Metcalf (Classics) 

If asked to define the ‘Classics’, many would probably 

reply that the term refers to the Greco-Roman 

foundations of Western culture. The influence of Greek 

and Roman antiquity on the West, and beyond, is of 

course enduring, and controversial. But what about 

the reception of non-‘Classical’ cultures by the ancient 

Greeks and Romans: to what extent did they not only 

give, but also receive? One area in which this question 

seems particularly important and intriguing is early Greek poetry and myth―a 

uniquely rich and important corpus of evidence that becomes accessible to us from 

about the 8th century BC onwards, but that clearly presupposes a very deep and 

complex history which we cannot recover from the Greek sources alone. It is on this 

topic that my colleague Adrian Kelly and I have this year published an edited volume 

entitled Gods and Mortals in Early Greek and Near Eastern Mythology (Cambridge). 

If you are wondering why any of this might matter, consider that the most influential 

Greek myth on the birth and rise to power of the chief god Zeus undoubtedly drew on 

earlier, non-Greek myths about the rise of the Near Eastern Storm-god. Much remains 

to be discovered, including instances where the evidence points in the other direction: 

surprising though it sounds, there is good reason to think that an enigmatic passage in 

the Biblical book of Genesis, which mentions ‘the heroes of old, the men with a name’ 

in early human history, reflects the kind of Greek heroic myths that are familiar to us from 

Homer’s epics. Our volume explores these and many other topics, including such wellknown 

stories as the tale of Pandora and the myth of the Golden Age, in a comparative 

perspective – which is the only perspective in which they can be fully understood. 

Conor O’Brien (History) 

Amidst the miseries of COVID-19, I was very pleased 

to join the Fellowship of Queen’s in October 2020, 

almost exactly a decade after I started at the College 

as a doctoral student. My career since 2010 has taken 

me via Sheffield, Cambridge, Durham, and London, 

but I cannot think of anywhere better to have settled in 

the middle of the global pandemic than Oxford. While 

teaching was, of course, highly disrupted this year, we 

were still extraordinarily lucky to be able to do much of our tutorial teaching in person 

– a privilege that colleagues and students at many other universities did not have. The 


opportunity to work closely with students in small groups remains one of the most 

enjoyable and uplifting aspects of academic life at Oxford. 

A combination of COVID-19, fatherhood, and starting a new job has meant that 

the research for my second book ground to a halt for much of this year, but I was 

pleased that I could continue to publish. A major article, ‘Chosen Peoples and New 

Israels in the Early Medieval West’, appeared at the beginning of the academic year in 

Speculum (the journal of the Medieval Academy of America), while a special issue of 

Early Medieval Europe that I edited, on ‘The Early Medieval Secular’, was published 

in January. Hopefully, over the long vacation I will be able to make some long-delayed 

progress on my book: The Rise of Christian Kingship. 



Richard Bruce Parkinson (Egyptology) 

The pandemic hiring freeze initially prevented us from 

appointing a Departmental lecturer to cover a colleague’s 

sabbatical during this past academic year, but fortunately 

a trust fund left by the Egyptologist and Queensman A.H. 

Gardiner enabled us to secure a one-year appointment 

and to run all our usual courses in Egyptology. Research 

on Egyptian mathematics with Christopher D. Hollings has 

continued with several joint publications, including one in 

Danish as a result of my recent sabbatical visit to Copenhagen. A paper on E. M. Forster 

and queer museum spaces, that was originally intended for the cancelled conference 

‘Re-Orientating E. M. Forster’ in Cambridge, has now been submitted for publication. 

Research time has been taken up by helping prepare for the anniversary of the discovery 

of the tomb of Tutankhamun, as the co-director of the Griffith Institute which holds 

Carter’s archive. The Bodleian will stage an exhibition ‘Tutankhamun: Excavating the 

Archive’ (April to December 2022) with around 200 key items from the Institute. I have 

edited and co-authored the accompanying publication which we hope will provide a 

fresh view of the controversial discovery. For me, this has been a nostalgic and enjoyable 

return to museum work, collaborating closely with the Bodleian exhibition team and 

designers; I’ve also written for catalogues for an international exhibition on Byblos and for 

another on the anniversary of the decipherment of the hieroglyphic script (also discussed 

on In Our Time: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000s2qd). My own main research 

project on The Life of Sinuhe is on hold again, and the full draft of the commentary that 

was completed during my sabbatical year, has been placed in the Egyptological archive 

of the Griffith Institute as an unfinished manuscript, to be resumed in retirement. 

Owen Rees (Music) 

My research has continued to be divided between work on Iberian and Tudor music. 

My recent book The Requiem of Tomás Luis de Victoria (1603) received the Robert M. 



Stevenson Award of the American Musicological Society 

at the November meeting of the Society. In that book I 

contribute to a fresh understanding of the relationships 

between Iberian and Italian sacred music in the sixteenth 

and seventeenth centuries, particularly in settings of the 

Mass, and this year I pursued such themes in a paper 

at the Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference 

in Lisbon, and in an article to appear in the journal Die 

Tonkunst. Early in 2021 the latest CD recording of my 

ensemble Contrapunctus was released: The Sweetest 

Songs (Signum Classics) focuses on – mainly little-known – motets with psalm texts 

from the mid to late sixteenth century, and is the last recording in a series exploring the 

music of the Baldwin Partbooks, preserved in Christ Church library. 

Alexander Robertson (Materials) 

My group has continued its research into the behaviour 

and failure modes of electrodes for future rechargeable 

battery technology. We have been exploring the socalled 

metal anode, a type of electrode which promises 

significant gains in battery performance and weight 

efficiency, yet are particularly volatile. Our recent 

publication looked at these anodes for lithium batteries, 

where we imaged the charge and discharge process of 

the electrode at sub-micron scales and in real-time, giving us important insights into how 

to modify the battery electrochemistry to prevent electrode failure. Following on from this 

and our other previous work, we are now exploring conceptually similar processes for 

other rechargeable battery chemistries based on either zinc or sodium ions rather than 

lithium. We’re hoping that these studies will help inform future battery designs. 

Ritchie Robertson (German) 

My book The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness 

1680-1790 was published in London by Penguin Books 

in November 2020, in New York by HarperCollins in 

February 2021, and has attracted numerous reviews, 

most recently by Keith Thomas in the London Review 

of Books (20 May 2021). The paperback version will 

probably appear in 2022. 

Since then I have completed a short book on Nietzsche in the series Critical Lives 

published by Reaktion Books (London). It should appear in 2022. 


Before lockdown, I attended a conference in Freiburg on the reception of the Italian 

poet Ariosto in German-speaking countries. My contribution, dealing with his reception 

in nineteenth-century Switzerland, has now appeared as ‘Ariost aus Schweizer Sicht. 

Keller, Burckhardt, Meyer, Spitteler, Widmann’, in Achim Aurnhammer and Mario 

Zanucchi (eds.), Ariost in Deutschland: Seine Wirkung in Literatur, Kunst und Musik 

(Berlin: de Gruyter, 2020), pp. 337-58. 

During lockdown I gave remotely the annual Thomas Mann Lecture in Zurich. It will be 

published as ‘Aufklärung und Gegenaufklärung auf dem Zauberberg’ in Thomas Mann 

Jahrbuch for 2021. 



Macs Smith (French) 

2021 saw the publication of my first monograph, Paris 

and the Parasite: Noise, Health, and Politics in the 

Media City (MIT Press). The book argues that Parisian 

urban planning and politics have been organised around 

eliminating various so-called “parasites” from the city, 

whether they take the form of noise, disease, or the 

people who live on the socio-political margins. I argue 

this approach to the city is both doomed to failure 

and destructive, and I argue for the value – both aesthetic and ethical – of messy, 

unpredictable, open cities, where nothing and no one is treated as a parasite. 

This year I also published an article on references to the Paris Commune in 

contemporary street art, part of a special issue of Nineteenth-Century French Studies 

co-edited by Fellow in French, Seth Whidden, marking the 150th anniversary of the 

Commune. I was very proud to contribute to such an extraordinary volume. I’m currently 

completing another article on street art, this time on its engagement with Dante Alighieri, 

for a book entitled Dante Alive (Routledge), marking 700 years since the poet’s death. 

Robert Taylor (Physics) 

This year I have continued to work on the optical 

properties of nanostructures, and I am Chair of the 

Physics Examiners for Finals. I was fortunate in April to 

hear that I was successful in a grant application to the 

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council 

and the project entitled “Plasmon-enhanced light 

emission from hybrid nanowires: towards electrically 

driven nanowire lasers” commenced on 1 August 2021 

for three years, where I will be working jointly with Dr Shengfu Yang at the University of 

Leicester. During this academic year I have published eight papers. 



Lindsay Turnbull (Biology) 

Last year was a year like no other. I am deeply involved 

in the organisation of teaching and took on the Director 

of Undergraduate Teaching role, as my predecessor 

had semi-retired. We managed to keep the teaching 

going, including operating the Teaching Lab for most of 

the year, enabling our students to gain crucial practical 

experience. We are also bringing in a new four-year 

MBiol degree to replace the old three-year Biological 

Sciences BA. With hindsight, this wasn’t the best timing, but of course hindsight is a 

wonderful thing! On the research side, it was crucial to support DPhil students, as they 

were often facing difficult constraints on both lab and field work. Two of my students 

successfully defended their DPhils in the last year – and I’m very proud of both of 

them. One student also managed to produce a high-profile paper in the journal PNAS, 

which was the culmination of several years’ work. This paper showed how legume 

plants (peas in this case) are able to regulate the symbiotic bacteria that they house 

in specialised root structures, called nodules. The bacteria ‘fix’ nitrogen from the air in 

return for the plant’s sugar, and the plant monitors their efficacy, cutting off those that 

don’t provide enough nitrogen, while continuing to support those that do. We have 

shown, for the first time, that the plant can make conditional decisions. It might choose 

to support a bacterial strain that isn’t great at fixing nitrogen, if it doesn’t have any other 

choice, but it will cut off that same strain when a better one is available. The lesson? 

Never underestimate our green friends. They are always smarter than you think. 

Daniel Walden (Music) 

This was my second year as a Junior Research Fellow in 

Music. Most of my attention was dedicated to my book 

manuscript examining the global history of pitch studies 

during the nineteenth century. The project is developed 

from my doctoral dissertation, “The Politics of Tuning 

and Temperament,” which last November received 1st 

Honourable Mention in the Outstanding Dissertation 

Award from the International Musicological Society. 

My Fellowship has also afforded me the opportunity to pursue several related projects. 

I am currently assembling an edited volume with Dr David Trippett (Cambridge) 

focused on the history of pitch studies during the long nineteenth century, as well as 

a collection of translations of the German and Japanese musical writings of Tanaka 

Shōhei (1862-1945) with Dr Jonathan Service (SOAS) for Bloomsbury Press. My 

two book chapters on just-intonation theory in British India and Meiji Japan are 

forthcoming in edited volumes Sound and Sense in Britain (Cambridge University 

Press) and Schola Cantorum Basiliensis Scripta (Schwabe). I also received a 




British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant to pursue a multi-year project 

involving the digital reconstruction of nineteenth-century enharmonic keyboards, and 

workshops discussing their pedagogical and practical applications. 

In addition to my research I delivered tutorials on topics including Programme Music 

(FHS) and Study Skills (Prelims), and a graduate seminar at the Faculty of Music titled 

“Pitch, Timbre, Loudness” examining the relationship between musical perception 

and society, culture, and politics. I am also pleased to report that I will be starting as 

Assistant Professor in Music Analysis at University of Durham in September 2021. But 

my delight is tempered by the fact that it means leaving my Fellowship early. I have 

greatly enjoyed my time at Queen’s—despite the impositions of a global pandemic— 

and feel extremely fortunate to have met such wonderful colleagues and collaborators. 

I look forward to returning to College often. 



ACADEMIC DISTINCTIONS (* denotes distinction) 

D.Phil 

Hamza A. Alawiye (Partial Differential Equations) 

Clare H. Carolin (Fine Art) 

Deborah L. Cross (Paediatrics) 

Daniel De Moraes Navarro (Experimental Psychology) 

Tristan P. Giron (Partial Differential Equations) 

Jonathan D. Goult (Structural Biology) 

Andrew W. Holland (History) 

Joseph Lawrence (Theory and Modelling in Chemical Sciences) 

Ta-Chun Liu (Oncology) 

Christine Lo (Clinical Neurosciences) 

Romina O. Mariano (Clinical Neurosciences) 

Guillaume Matthews (Materials) 

Avi Mayorcas (Partial Differential Equations) 

Simon Nadal (Chemical Biology) 

Kyung Chan Park (Cardiovascular Science) 

Natalia V. Reis (Inorganic Chemistry) 

Toni Scharle (Partial Differential Equations) 

Edward S. Scrivens (Oriental Studies) 

Archna R. Shah (Structural Biology) 

Alicia Smith (English) 

Beojan Stanislaus (Particle Physics) 

Florian Stocker (Medieval and Modern Languages) 

Paolo Strampelli (Environmental Research) 

Maarten Swart (Molecular and Cellular Medicine) 

Teodora P. Trendafilova (Ion Channels and Disease) 

Aleksandra B. Wenta (Oriental Studies) 

Timothy J. Westwood (Partial Differential Equations) 

Samuel J. Wheeler (Materials) 

Christopher R. Woodham (Plant Sciences) 

Yufei Zhang (Mathematics) 

Ili A.B. Zulkifly (Inorganic Chemistry) 

BCL 

Youcef Boussabaine 

Luke Gibbons* 

MJur 

Anna-Mira Brandau* 


M.Phil 

Jasmine Chia (International Relations) 

Venunye C.F. Gunu* (International Relations) 

Gilang A.G. Lukman* (Modern Middle Eastern Studies) 

Nadine S. Lützelschwab* (Modern Middle Eastern Studies) 


M.St 

Natasha H. Arora (English) 

Emma C. Felin* (English and American Studies) 

Milo G. Nesbitt* (English and American Studies) 

Laurence F. John (Musicology) 

Anna S. Glieden* (Modern Languages) 

Arthur G. Wotton* (Modern Languages) 

M.Sc 

Stella Adu-Donkor (Law and Finance) 

Yongsheng Jia (Mathematical Scienes) 

Linke Li (Japanese Studies) 

Po Kwan Li* (Law and Finance) 

Gregory D. Royston (Financial Economics) 

Axel Schmid* (Theoretical and Computational Chemistry) 

Pattarin Taechamahapun (Law and Finance) 

Zecheng Yi (Mathematical Sciences) 

Máté Zombai-Kovacs* (Financial Economics) 

BM 

Heather A. Boagey 

Charlotte H. Harrison 

Lydia Parker* 

P.G.C.E 

Victoria Lee-Stevens 

Kate Orlandi-Fantini 

Alice J. Tarbert 

Diploma in Legal Studies 

Laura León Maestre 



FINAL PUBLIC EXAMINATIONS 

Chemistry 

First Class 

Harry G. Mark 

Imogen A. Ramskill 

Yi Xiao 

Second Class, Division One 

Henry Gray 

Calvin A. Wilson 

Fujia Zhu 

Experimental Psychology 

First Class 

Xiaotong Ding 

Hannah E. Gray 

Jemima F. Greenhalgh 

Fine Art 

First Class 

Zoe Harding 

Classics and Modern Languages 


Gurdip S. Ahluwalia (French) 

Classics and Oriental Studies 

First Class 

Joost W.P.M. Botman 

English and Modern Languages 

First Class 

Rachel Kevern (French) 

English Language and Literature 

First Class 

James R. Murphy 

European and Middle Eastern 

Languages 


Anna L. Griffin (Spanish and Arabic) 

History 

First Class 

Harriet Bates 

Isobel L. Cox 

William D. Parry 


Julia Duddy 

Isabelle L. Gibbons 

Emily J.E. Jones 

Ada F. Taggart 

Findlay G. Thompson 

History and Modern Languages 

First Class 

Isabella H. Massam (Italian) 

History and Politics 


Hannah Brock 

Angharad Kellett 

Matthew Suter 


Jurisprudence 

First Class 

Noel Y.Z. Low 


Zara Everitt 

Joshua W. Forshaw 

Oliver K. Reinius 

Alison Y.Z.C. Tan 

Xiaojian Zhou 

Literae Humaniores 

First Class 

Gareth J. Smith 


Rory E.C. Booth 

Materials Science 

First Class 

Jessica J.Q. Wen 

Mathematics 

Distinction 

Sam I. Lachmann 

Merit 

Thomas Judge 

Xiaoyan Zhao 


Krit Patarapak 

Mathematics and Statistics 


Ruizhen Ma 

Medical Sciences 

First Class 

Zuzanna Borawska 

Rebecca S. Howitt 

Imogen G. Wilkinson 


Elfreda Baker 

Yedidiah Tilahun 

Modern Languages 

First Class 

Marte F.E. van der Graaf (German) 


Jake A. Duxbury (Spanish) 

Modern Languages and Linguistics 

First Class 

Eleanor R. MacLeod (Spanish) 


Francesca Duke (French) 

Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry 


Cameron J. Brooks 

Second Class, Division Two 

Keith I. Yardley 

Music 

First Class 

Rachel J.F. Howe 

Tamsin E. Sandford Smith 


Thomas Dilley 

Bethan E. Rose 




Oriental Studies 

First Class 

Eleanor Collard (Chinese) 

Mary O. Oboh (Chinese) 

Sam A. Watkins (Chinese) 


Lauren J. Burke (Chinese) 

Philosophy, Politics, and Economics 

First Class 

Hugo E. Till 


Ethan M. Adams 

Julia Hussain 

William T.K. McCathie 

Man Siu Pun 

Physics 


Adarsh P. Raghuram 

Rohan S. Rao 

Maurice Gedney 

Psychology, Philosophy, and 

Linguistics 

First Class 

Emily B. Elstub 

FIRST PUBLIC EX AMINATIONS 

First BM 

Ibrahem Al-Obaidi 

Oliver W.A. Meek 

Sophie A. Payne 

Ciaran Sandhu 

Karthik Saravanan 

Moderations 

Law 

Nadia Kashoo 

Irewamide I. Sofela 

Zara P. Watson 

Honour Moderations 

Literae Humaniores 

Frederick Foulston 

AJ Jeffries-Shaw 

Cyrus Tehranchian 


Preliminary Examinations 

Ancient and Modern History 

Benjamin Grinyer* 

Biology 

Daniel Bowen* 

Elias S. Formaggia 

George A. MacKay* 

Henry A. Portwood* 

Martha Rigby* 

Emily M. Scott 

Biomedical Sciences 

Daniel Gunn 

Evie J. Rosette 

Hannah C. Sutton 

Chemistry 

Joshua O. Abioye* 

Tihomir I. Gluharev 

Edwin L. Hughes* 

Shuiwaner Liu* 

Ben Naylor 

Fine Art 

Loveday M.P. Pride 

Angus G. Wood* 

History 

Rebecca Boettcher 

Caitlin E. Gill 

Elisabeth E.J. Harris 

Alexia North 

Henry O’Sullivan 

Omira Pitigala 

Chanté D.M. Price 

Evelyn S.Turner 

Katerina Zagurova* 

History and Modern Languages 

Stella J. Horrell (Spanish) 

Rhiannon Petteford (Czech) 

History and Politics 

Daniel F.G. Craig-McFeely* 

Phoebe Hornor* 


English and Modern Languages 

Hay Yin Chow (French) 

Kylah N. Jacobs (French) 

Etta Selim (Spanish) 

English Language and Literature 

Katie H. Bowen 

Sarah Hutchence* 

Niamh Ward 

Experimental Psychology 

Rosie A. Jephson* 

Jasmine Nieradzik-Burbeck* 

Maria Richards-Brown* 

Materials Science 

Jacx K.Y. Chan* 

Milo Coombs* 

Ruijie Gu 

Thian D. Iskandar 

Andrew Sturt 

Mathematics 

Daniel N. Bell 

Hao De* 

Injune Hwang 

Jiahe Qiu 

Ziyang Zheng* 



Modern Languages 

Olivia G. Coombs (Italian and Spanish) 

Joshua J.D. Dixon (French and German) 

Ella Holliday* (French and Spanish) 

Fenella Lamle (French and Spanish) 

Eleanor Maidstone* (Spanish) 

Katie St. Francis (French and German) 

Joseph J. Wald (German) 

Cara P. Williams (French) 

Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry 

Molly R. Bower 

Magdalena K. Lechowska* 

Music 

Isaac J. Adni 

Cormac Diamond 

Alaw G. Evans 

Oriental Studies 

Cicely D.M. Hunt (Chinese) 

Philip J. Mercado (Japanese) 

Madeleine Ridout (Japanese) 

Beau J.J. Waycott (Japanese) 

Philosophy and Modern Languages 

Madeleine M.A. Hamilton (German) 

Philosophy, Politics and Economics 

Johannes R. Haekkerup 

Ayesha Khan* 

Rani J. Martin* 

Max Ronte 

Ka L.J. So* 

Physics 

Jacob Dawe 

Sana Khalil 

Erin Malinowski 

Gian-Galeazzo S. Salvatorelli-Naraghi 

Samuel T.W. Wood 



UNIVERSITY PRIZES 

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

Project: Chanisa Phutrakul 

Best Overall Performance Prize Proxime Accessit in Clinical Studies Finals: 

Lydia Parker 

Best Practical Portfolio Prize for Experimental Psychology/Psychology, 

Philosophy and Linguistics: Emily B. Elstub, Jemima F. Greenhalgh (shared prize) 

Braddick Prize Proxime Accessit for best overall performance in the Preliminary 

Examination in Psychology, Philosophy and Linguistics: Jasmine Nieradzik-Burbeck 

Claude Massart Prize for the best performance in French Literature: Ella Holliday 

Commendation for practical work in Honour School of Physics Part A: 

Jonathan J. Thio 

Comparative Philology Prize for the best performance in the Philology and 

Linguistics papers in the Honour Schools of Literae Humaniores, Classics & 

English, Classics & Modern Languages and Classics & Oriental Studies: 

Joost W.P.M. Botman 

Cyril Jones Memorial Prize for the best performance in Spanish: Etta Selim 

David Gibbs Prize for the best performance in Modern Languages in Preliminary 

Examinations: Ella Holliday 

Dean Ireland Prize for the highest overall average in the FHS of Literae 

Humaniores, Classics & English, Classics & Modern Languages, Classics 

& Oriental Studies, Ancient & Modern History and Classical Archaeology & 

Ancient History: Joost W.P.M. Botman 

Gibbs Prize for best overall performance in Part I: Louis Makower 

Gibbs Prize Proxime Accessit for best overall performance in Experimental 

Psychology: Jemima F. Greenhalgh 

Herbert Hart Prize in Jurisprudence and Political Theory: Daniel Gilligan 

Iversen Prize Proxime Accessit for best overall performance in Psychology 

Papers – Part I: Bik Ying Wong 

Law Faculty Prize in Constitutional Theory: Daniel Gilligan (shared prize) 

LIDL Prize for the best performance by a non-German sole candidate, including 

Joint Schools (considering only German Papers): Eve P.G. Mason 

Physics Prize for an MPhys Project in Condensed Matter Physics: 

Adarsh P. Raghuram 




Physics Prize for practical work in Part B: Jinwoo Kim 

Physics Prize for practical work in Part B: Kornel Ksiezak 

Physics Prize for practical work in Part B: Krzysztof P. Stempinski 

Society for Endocrinology Undergraduate Achievement Award: Jessica S. Zhang 

Society for Endocrinology Undergraduate Achievement Award for the best 

performance in the Endocrinology option: Bryony Davies 

Susan Mary Rouse Memorial Prize for best overall performance in the subject 

‘Introduction to Psychology’ in the Preliminary Examination for Psychology, 

Philosophy and Linguistics: Jasmine Nieradzik-Burbeck (joint winner) 

TATA Steel Prize for best overall performance in Part I Practicals: Adam A. Suttle 

Weiskrantz Prize in Psychological Studies for best performance at Part I for the 

Honour School of Experimental Psychology: Daniel E. Storey 

Wronker Grant for excellent performance in the Honour School of Medical 

Sciences: Rebecca S. Howitt 

COLLEGE PRIZES 

Benefactors’ Prize (for non-academic service to the College): Seren K. Ford 

Chowdhury-Johnson Prize in Medicine: Triya A. Chakravorty (Medicine), Imogen 

Wilkinson (Medicine) (joint first prize) 

Ives Prize: Stephanie E. Budenberg (Materials Science) 

J.A. Scott Prize: Eve P.G. Mason (English and German) 

Many Prize: Ella Farmer (English Language and Literature) 

Many Prize Proxime Accessit: Leonardo Hessian (English and Spanish) 

Markheim Prize: Florence E. Darwen (History and French) 

Markheim Prize Proxime Accesserunt: Rachel Kevern (English and French) & 

Anna Migone (French) 

Palmer Prize: Olivia Winnifrith (History and French) 

Palmer Prize Proxime Accessit: Lionel A.B. Whitby (French and Russian) 

Temple Prize: Kexin Wang (Mathematics) 



FROM THE BURSAR 

Dr Andrew Timms 

Bursar 

In last year’s Record I wrote that I hoped the 

forthcoming year would be thoroughly dull in 

comparison to 2020. My aspiration was not fulfilled: 

from a financial perspective the past year has been 

bumpy. Student tuition income proved resilient and 

came in well ahead of budget, but most of the other 

categories of income showed notable negative 

variances. In particular, student accommodation income 

was lower than normal (principally as a result of the 

national lockdown in Hilary Term), and income from our 

vacation conferences and other commercial activities— 

which, in a better year, amounts to over £1 million—was 

close to zero. In total, our budget planned for almost 

£5 million of operating income, and in the event we 

earned £4.7 million, so our performance was not wholly surprising; however, if the 

pandemic had not happened, we would probably have budgeted for total operating 

income of c. £6 million. The impact of the crisis is thus tangible. 


Expenditure grew modestly, but was generally well controlled, with almost all 

committees spending less than their budgets. In one sense it is reassuring that the 

partial curtailment of many activities of the College during the pandemic led to less 

expenditure; in another sense, of course, even the Bursar rues the fact that it was 




not possible to spend a little more. The College was fortunate to be able to press 

ahead with its programme of improvements to the main site: a project to refurbish 

the bathrooms under the east range of Front Quad was tendered and work began 

just before the end of the financial year. Once this is complete, we will (hopefully) be 

in a position to press on with the plans for a new accessible Lodge, for which we are 

currently awaiting planning permission and listed building consents. 

Investment performance in 2020–21 was mixed. The overall total return was just 

under 15%, but the performance of the component asset classes varied significantly. 

Our equity investments tracked the generally robust performance of global stock 

markets, generating a total return of over 22% (our performance reflects our strategic 

underweighting of the US and overweighting of the UK, Asia-Pacific, and emerging 

markets). Our agricultural property saw modest rises in capital values, reflecting the 

fact that land values have held up well. The situation was rather different with respect 

to commercial property, however, where the College’s retail investments suffered a very 

difficult year, with several tenants struggling to clear arrears or to put forward viable 

recovery plans. 

The outlook is marked by uncertainty on almost all fronts. A key concern is the swift 

recovery of our conference and summer school activities, which supplement the 

educational income of the College. There are also persistent suggestions that tuition 

fees for UK students may fall, which would be financially unwelcome. Payroll costs are 

expected to rise (perhaps quite significantly), not least because of the well-publicised 

difficulties of the USS pension scheme. And of course the investment outlook is 

notably ‘interesting’, as we all wait to see whether current inflation (which has returned 

like an old, and not entirely beloved, friend) is transient or persistent—and what 

happens to asset prices if interest rates rise. 

I wrote last year of my admiration for the College’s staff and their efforts in keeping the 

place going (thriving, indeed). The same applies this year, with the level of admiration 

now raised to a higher power. I am also grateful to many (but not all!) students for 

paying their batells in a period in which many have seen their expectations of student 

life substantially ruined by the pandemic. A final thank you must also be said to the Old 

Membership, which has continued its philanthropic support of the College at a time 

when this is especially welcome. 


OUTREACH 

Katharine Wiggell 

Schools Liaison, 

Outreach and 

Recruitment Officer 

As an Oxford Outreach Officer, I would normally find 

myself travelling up and down the country between 

our link regions multiple times a month to visit schools 

and colleges, to deliver talks to pupils about life at 

Oxford University. However, as I sit writing this report 

in summer 2021, my suitcase has sat untouched for 

18 months (and my railcard is currently missing in 

action). Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, lockdowns, 

and school closures, visits to schools – as well as 

inviting students to visit us here at Queen’s – have 

simply not been possible. But not being able to interact 

with students in person has not stopped us finding 

new ways to actively support our link region schools 

throughout this difficult year. 


Throughout the 2020-2021 academic year, all of our outreach work has taken place 

virtually. Presentations on making a competitive application and demystifying the 

student experience at Oxford took place over Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Google 

Meet. This change in delivery format did come with some challenges, including 

frozen screens and sometimes questionable Wi-fi connections, but it allowed us 

to maintain contact with schools to whom we had previously provided outreach 

support, and to develop relationships with new schools too. It was really rewarding 

to be able to interact with students even when schools had to carry out the majority 

of their learning remotely. Many academically high-achieving students felt frustrated 

at being forced out of their classrooms and relegated to working at home with the 

distractions and disruptions that can bring, so it was great to be able to run sessions 

for them and remind them of the importance of keeping up with their studies in 

challenging circumstances so that a university like Oxford could be an option for 

them in the near future. 

One of my favourite outreach projects from this year was our North-West Science 

Programme. Despite some initial reservations as to how this programme would 

translate into an online format, I was delighted with how well it was received and 

how fantastic the students selected to participate were. Over the course of three 

days, science-loving students from Blackburn with Darwen, Blackpool, Cumbria, 

and Lancashire took part in a variety of different academic taster sessions, including 

workshops, talks, and tutorials. They found out about the cutting-edge scientific 

research that is taking place within the University – from the microscope technology 

that is being used to detect COVID-19, to research on seabird migration and what 

their flight patterns can teach us about global conservation. The academic sessions 

were met with overwhelmingly positive feedback from the participants who were 



really interested in exploring new material and topics that they don’t cover within their 

A-Level subjects. They also had the chance to interact with our Student Ambassadors, 

who shared their own experiences of life at Oxford in Q&A sessions and offered advice 

on how to navigate the admissions process. Feedback from the event suggested that 

the majority of students would now be planning to make an Oxbridge application for 

2022 – and I am, of course, looking forward to seeing how many of these Year 12 

pupils apply to Queen’s! 

As well as delivering our own outreach programmes, we supported outreach work 

taking place across the collegiate University, and had the opportunity to communicate 

with prospective applicants from all around the globe. We participated in virtual 

University Fairs – including ‘Meet the Russell Group’, ‘UCAS Discovery’, and ‘UK 

University Search’ days, where Outreach Officers and Student Ambassadors joined 

forces to answer 100s of questions from prospective applicants. The University’s 

Remote Interview Workshops – a new initiative to support Oxford applicants from UK 

state schools in the lead up to their admissions interviews – were also a huge success, 

with academic and administrative staff coming together from across the collegiate 

University to support applicants with their interview preparation. The outreach 

community at Oxford truly banded together during this year, supporting each other 

with delivering online sessions and sharing best practice as we all navigated how best 

to deliver virtual sessions that were as engaging and inspiring as in person sessions. 

I am very excited to return to face-to-face (or mask-to-mask!) interactions with 

students, but we will certainly be making the most of the technology that we have 

been using throughout the course of the pandemic to reach an even wider audience 

of prospective applicants through our outreach work. There is always more work that 

we can do, and I am anticipating that this year may be more challenging than most as 

we see the knock-on effects that over a year of disrupted education has had on some 

of the country’s most disadvantaged young people. However, I am looking forward to 

supporting these students as they deliberate their future choices and helping them to 

find out more about why Oxford University may be the place for them. 



ADMISSIONS 

This was my first year as Tutor for Admissions, and it 

turned out to be a year full of interesting challenges 

– most obviously, the need to rework the entire 

admissions process to take place online. It was all too 

easy to imagine the possible pitfalls of online interviews, 

but happily the process ran smoothly, thanks to the 

adaptability and combined effort of the interviewers, 

administrators, and IT advisors – and indeed the 

applicants. 


Dr Jennifer Guest 

Tutor for Admissions 

One serious concern was whether the move online 

would pose disproportionate problems for students 

from disadvantaged backgrounds, who in many 

cases were already dealing with additional levels of 

disruption to their studies due to the pandemic. But although data on a college scale 

must be handled with caution due to the small numbers involved, the proportion of 

students from state schools joining Queen’s in 2021 is slightly higher than ever before, 

continuing to roughly match the University’s overall rising average, and this goes 

for our proportion of students from the most disadvantaged backgrounds as well. 

We’re continuing to look for ways to expand our outreach activities and our efforts 

to demystify the admissions process, so as to make sure all academically driven and 

capable students can succeed. 

One important step this academic year has been to divide the previous role of the 

Tutor for Admissions between two Fellows, creating an additional position of Tutor 

for Access and Outreach who can work closely with the Outreach Officer on our 

College-based outreach strategy and initiatives. At the same time, Queen’s continues 

to participate actively in University-wide initiatives, including the Opportunity Oxford 

programme; at an individual level, many tutors have also taken part in new events like 

online interview workshops, which have helped us make admissions advice accessible 

to a wider range of applicants than ever before. 

With admissions interviews taking place online again in the coming cycle, we will have 

plenty of chances to think about the pros and cons of this format and how it intersects 

with our efforts to make sure admissions to Queen’s is as fair and accessible as 

possible. In the meantime, we’re very much enjoying welcoming the new 2021 cohort 

of students. 




A YEAR IN THE LIBRARY 

Matthew Shaw 

College Librarian 

The most important thing, perhaps, is that it has been 

a year in the library, since our doors have been open 

continuously since the relaxation of the first lockdown 

in the summer of 2020. More personally, it has been 

my first year as Librarian, after joining the College in 

September from the Institute of Historical Research 

and previously the British Library. During this time, the 

Library has been able to welcome College members and 

external scholars to socially-distanced reading rooms 

and to put collection items in their hands. After an initial 

pilot with seat booking, readers have been able to come 

and go as they wish, making use of a one-way system, 

which, in something of a silver-lining, provided a view of 

the Provost’s Garden when departing via the fire escape. 

The College’s carpenter produced book return boxes that were the envy of other 

college libraries, and a new click and collect system meant that books could circulate 

with relative ease; the latter is an innovation that is set to remain even as we return to 

more normal operations. By Trinity Term, the reading rooms were full of concentrated 

study, with the spaces and collections continuing to support the College’s academic 

work, as they always have. By the end of June, 24-hour opening returned. 

Not everyone, of course, could come into the Library, with many students necessarily 

remaining away from Oxford and others needing to isolate. How to get materials to 

them? When appropriate, we could post items as well as scanning chapters and 

articles, but more often digital alternatives were available, as publishers and online 

libraries temporarily expanded what was available and the Bodleian and the college 

libraries, including Queen’s, increased the amount spent on electronic resources. The 

full-time Library team – Sarah Arkle, Dominic Hewett, and Tessa Shaw – helped to 

provide the link between reader and digital book where they could, helping to hyperlink 

reading lists and offering a guide through the variety of digital experiences. For special 

collections materials, most of which are not constrained by copyright in the same way, 

camera phones provided an excellent way of supplying materials for research and 

for allowing Zoom consultations of books and manuscripts (one of which provided 

important information about the date of the volume being examined). The Library was 

also able to contribute details of its holdings to international bibliographical projects, 

such as the Census of Newton’s Principia and the Shakespeare Census. 

Among this activity, there have been moments when it has been possible for me 

to slip among the shelves and start to become acquainted with the remarkable 

collections. Many connected to Old Members of the past seemed keen to make 

themselves known: Sir Joseph Williamson’s copy of the third Shakespeare folio (1664), 



Thomas Shaw’s Travels (second edition, 1799) 



perhaps the rarest of the folios thanks to the Great Fire of London; a Boston edition 

of William James with Archbishop William Temple’s ownership mark; a first edition of 

Drummond Allison’s posthumous Second World War poetry, The Yellow Knight printed 

on paper conforming to war-regulations; Oliver Sacks’ inscribed gift to the College 

of his Awakenings in the Upper and New Libraries (now all upgraded to the Vault); 

and – the first book I pull in the Upper Library on my arrival in September – Thomas 

Shaw’s Travels (second edition, 1799), which has as its dedication an engraving of the 

College’s cupola and façade. A good sign, perhaps? 

The collections have also contributed to teaching and research. At first, this was limited 

to a librarian’s contribution to Dr Jennifer Edward’s online seminar, talking through 

images taken of some of these texts, but by Trinity Term, a small group of junior 

members was able to examine the first folio for themselves, paying close attention 

to the printing for clues about the text’s composition. Another of the College’s great 

treasures, Myles Coverdale’s Goostly Psalmes and Spiritual Songes (c. 1535) – the 

first hymnbook printed in English – took centre stage in a well-attended Zoom virtual 

reunification ‘broadcast’ from the Upper Library in a seminar held in collaboration with 

the Centre for the Study of the Book at the Bodleian Libraries. Around 150 participants 

from Britain and the US were able to compare the text with the two other surviving 

fragments of the text, held at the Bodleian and at Yale. Building on these investigations, 

we contributed to a UNIQ+ Digital Humanities summer internship programme, helping 

to expand graduate access to Oxford. The entire volume is now digitised and is 

available to view online at Digital Bodleian, and an edited and transcribed version 

can be found on the Taylor’s Editions website. Other digital experiments included the 

beginning of a YouTube series ‘Parchment and Paper’ in collaboration with the Centre 

for Manuscript and Text Cultures, with College and other experts discussing collection 

items and their meaning. The series began with a discussion with Dr Edwards on the 

Shakespeare Folio. The Library team also curated two online exhibitions, ‘Contagion 

on the Page’, and ‘Queen’s War Poets’ (curated by Library Assistant Dominic Hewett) 

and a series of blog posts highlighting collection items for LGBTQ+ History Month. 

Nor have the Library’s physical collections been neglected. Several items have 

returned from the Oxford Conservation Consortium, including a large folio-sized 

hand-coloured copy of Pennant’s British Zoology (1766), and the collections continue 

to grow judiciously. Notable donations include a range of titles from Old Members 

and Fellows, and Lord Salisbury’s gift of his William Simpson and the Crisis in Central 

Asia (2020), on which Old Member, Ollie Randall, worked as a research assistant. The 

collections are also making their imprint elsewhere in the College. Selections from 

the collections photographed by Technical Services Librarian Sarah Arkle, including 

plates from the Bridgewater Collection of Cumberland and Westmorland, now grace 

College notecards and some of the redecorated entertainment areas of the Provost’s 

Lodgings. The Library looks forward to another academic year, whatever it may bring. 


A YEAR IN THE CHAPEL 

Even youths will faint and be weary, 

and the young will fall exhausted; 

but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, 

they shall mount up with wings like eagles 

(Isaiah 40.30-31) 


The academic year that started in Michaelmas 2020 

has very much been a year of three terms. Each 

term, and sometimes each week, has seen a different 

configuration of the College community between 

Revd Dr Katherine Price resident and non-resident, along with a different set of 

College Chaplain 

laws and guidelines to navigate in the College and in the 

Chapel. It has also been an exhausting year. The energy 

and creativity which helped us all push through the first 

lockdown has given way to a pragmatic need to conserve strength for the long haul. 

For many people, the restrictions on singing have been among the most keenly felt 

deprivations of the past year. For a Chapel whose life centres on choral music, it has 

been an existential challenge. Early in the year, we invited professional film-makers 

to produce The Story of the Queen’s College Chapel which you can view now on the 

College YouTube channel. I’m embarrassed to admit how many takes were needed 

before yours truly walked through the Chapel door to the director’s satisfaction! It also 

features current and former choral scholars, and it was humbling to hear what this 

place has meant to them. In the intensity of the Oxford term, the Chapel has been a 

place of peace, a place to find a wider perspective, both historical and spiritual. The 

challenge this year has been to keep that true. 

Live-streaming has been one of the main ways for the Chapel to remain present in the 

lives of College members, wherever they are in the world. Through the generosity of 

donors (who have chosen to remain anonymous) the Chapel has been able to install 

cameras to match the quality of the existing top-end sound recording system. This 

work was completed in Spring 2021 and we were able to premiere our first public 

broadcast evensong in June. However, our live-streaming experiments didn’t start 

there: much kudos is due to our organ scholars Tom Dilley and Isaac Adni for their 

ingenuity earlier in the year (initially with just a phone!) as well as David Olds for his 

support on the IT front. 

The Chapel re-opened in Summer 2020 for what we then hoped would be an 

unbroken run of in-person worship for the rest of the academic year. The Chapel 

was in fact the first part of the College to ‘unlock’, with two weddings that summer, 

including our very own Dr Angus Bowie and Dr Almut Fries, respectively Emeritus 



Archbishop Stephen Cottrell with confirmation candidates 

Fellow and Lecturer in Classics. It was a delight to celebrate with them in the 

Chapel where they have often worshipped, and particularly touching to see Dr 

Peter Neumann, on what I believe was his last visit to the College before his death. 

His funeral took place in the Chapel in January 2021, watched online by over 500 

mourners, and a memorial event is planned for 2022. 

As the Chapel was the first part of College to resume operations, it was also the first 

to get to grips with COVID-19 risk assessments. This gave us some moments of 

comic relief: the Archbishop of York administering the sacrament of confirmation with 

a paintbrush, or the remarkable logistics entailed in getting a wedding ring from best 

man to groom without touching any shared surfaces – not to mention the debut of 

the choir’s high-tech singing masks, colour-coordinated with the cassocks in fetching 

purple! But the humour soon wore thin. There were tough decisions and difficult 

compromises, as distancing made it impossible to accommodate the whole choir with 

any space for congregation. The mini-lockdown in November 2020 hit particularly 

hard, as Chapel services were closed down when most other activities in educational 

settings were able to continue. 

Fortunately, just a week before lockdown, we were honoured to welcome Archbishop 

Stephen Cottrell, the new Archbishop of York and thus the College’s latest Visitor. He 

baptised and confirmed members of the College, and was enormously gracious, even 

when we had to send him away with a pack of sandwiches – quite a step down from 

the College’s customary hospitality! I was thankful too that lockdown lifted in time for 


‘Oxmas’ and the carol service, which this time was held twice on two consecutive 

evenings, with a hugely oversubscribed draw to allocate seats. A highlight for me was 

our new History Fellow (and Old Member) Dr Conor O’Brien almost bringing the house 

down with words from Evelyn Waugh: a prayer to the Magi or wise men on behalf of 

“all who are confused with knowledge and speculation … the learned, the oblique, the 

delicate.” But the words which best captured the mood of the year were those read by 

the Provost from Isaiah, at the head of this article. 

Hilary Term saw our Creation Justice 2021 season. Launched by Tearfund’s Ruth 

Valerio, it brought together Christian preachers with speakers from other faith and 

secular backgrounds to explore the ethical, spiritual, and psychological aspects of our 

response to ecological crisis. The initiative came from the Provost, who recognised 

that the College is uniquely placed to bring together different perspectives, being at 

one and the same time an academic institution, a place of worship, and a community 

needing to make practical decisions about its own values and way of life. The project 

was months in gestation, but had to be moved online in just days. Nevertheless, the 

online audience was able to hear some fascinating perspectives on topics from ethical 

investment to food labelling to the psychology of changing behaviour. A number of the 

talks are still available online. For me, the programme illustrated how environmental 

threat is not a purely scientific question, but first and foremost a question of how 

human beings can motivate themselves to change their lives for the greater good – 

surely a central concern of faith! 


Our lives have already changed this year, to a formerly unimaginable extent. Yet, 

far from eclipsing other concerns, the pandemic seems to have given us a greater 

urgency about long-term challenges, be that climate change or structural racism. 

Perhaps living through this time has taught us that we are capable of enduring greater 

sacrifice than we thought. I have been humbled by the resilience I’ve encountered in 

the College community, in students and staff alike. It may be no coincidence that this 

year saw the first students in my four years here to make the Christian commitment of 

confirmation (with more due to take place in the coming year) as well as the first ‘Quiet 

Day’, held at a local convent. The monastic tradition, of course, has always found 

value in a radically constrained and simple life. At the same time, being unable to plan 

for the future has been draining, not least for the couples who are or were due to be 

getting married in the Chapel this year. For me too the future is unclear, as I embark 

on my final year as Chaplain. This year more than ever I am grateful for the Chapel’s 

witness to the faithfulness of past generations, that in the words of the monastic night 

prayer, “we who are wearied by the changes and chances of this fleeting world, may 

repose upon Thy eternal changelessness.” 



A YEAR IN THE CHAPEL CHOIR 

Organist: Prof Owen Rees; Senior Organ Scholar: 

Tom Dilley; Junior Organ Scholar: Isaac Adni; 

Maurice Pearton Choral Scholar and recipient of the 

Hilde Pearton Vocal Training: Rory Booth; Hildburg 

Williams Lieder Scholar: Rachel Howe; Librarians: 

Jake Sternberg, Charlotte Jefferies 

Professor O. L. Rees 

Organist 

It was a year of innovations, challenges, and 

perseverance. After months of silence, it was a great joy 

to hear the Chapel filled with choral and organ music 

once again in Michaelmas Term. During that term, 

whilst I was on leave, the choir was under the inspiring 

direction of Eamonn Dougan, Associate Conductor of 

The Sixteen, and a professional baritone. The climax 

of the term musically was the production of a video-recorded replacement for our 

traditional Carols from Queen’s concert, which reached an audience of about 25,000 

online. In the new year we took a tremendous step forward in making the choir’s 

work more accessible to audiences worldwide by installing a live-streaming system 

in Chapel during Hilary Term, made possible by an extremely generous donation in 

support of the choir’s work. We began to use this system to stream some choral 

services and organ recitals during Trinity Term, and a regular pattern of streaming 

services and all of the choir’s concerts in Chapel begins in Michaelmas Term 2021. 

The new live-streaming system for the College Chapel 



Bononcini recording session at St Michael & All Angels, Summertown 

In Trinity Term the choir embarked on a project to perform and record music by the 

eighteenth-century composer Giovanni Bononcini, leading to a concert performance 

and a CD recording at the end of term. Bononcini, who worked in London from 

1720 until 1732, was Handel’s principal London rival in the field of opera: the names 

Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee were coined by John Byrom in a contemporary 

satirical epigram about their competition for public esteem. Bononcini’s music 

continued to be performed in England in the decades following his departure, but 

it suffered almost complete neglect in modern times. Among those who prized and 

copied Bononcini’s music were the members of the original Academy of Ancient 

Music in London, to which Bononcini belonged, and – marking this association – 

our project to bring some of his music back to public attention was conceived in 

collaboration with the modern Academy of Ancient Music, which is one of the world’s 

principal original-instrument orchestras. The works selected for the recording included 

Bononcini’s imposing funeral anthem When Saul was King over us for the first Duke of 

Marlborough, and a spectacular setting of the Te Deum. Three of the four works were 

edited from copies of the original manuscript sources, which was one of my major 

tasks during Hilary Term. The project came to fruition in thrilling and rewarding fashion 

during three days of recording sessions in a North-Oxford church after the end of 

Trinity Term, and we are looking forward eagerly to the CD’s release early in 2022. 

Warm thanks go to all those who completed their time in the choir at the end of this 

academic year, and particularly to our two organ scholars – Tom Dilley and Isaac Adni 

– for their tireless work. 



THE QUEEN’S TRANSLATION EXCHANGE 

For the Queen’s Translation Exchange (QTE), 2020-21 

was a year of virtual activities. While we hope that we 

are never forced into this position again, it remained a 

huge pleasure to open up our activities to people of all 

ages across the world, with participants in our book 

clubs and translation workshops joining us from every 

continent and time zone. 

Charlotte Ryland 

Director of The Queen’s 

Translation Exchange 

Alongside this international breadth, our prime focus 

rested on young language-learners in the UK. We 

launched our most ambitious project to date, a national 

translation prize for learners aged 11-18. The Anthea 

Bell Prize for Young Translators quickly developed into 

the perfect hybrid: virtual activity at Queen’s translating 

into real-life activity in hundreds of schools across 

the country. The prize is named after the great translator Anthea Bell, acclaimed for 

her translations of Astérix, of Freud, and of a huge range of contemporary authors. 

By providing teachers with mini translation workshops that they can run in their 

classrooms, the prize brings the excitement and creative energy of literary translation 

to learners throughout their schooling. It introduces them to a range of texts, from 

comics to concrete poetry (an arrangement of linguistic elements in which the 

typographical effect is more important in conveying meaning than verbal significance), 

classic novels to literary non-fiction. These interactive encounters with great literature 

show them what it can mean to be a linguist, and how that energy and pleasure can 

carry them through their lives. 

Having originally set our sights on engaging 50 schools in this first year of the prize, we 

quickly adapted to accommodate hundreds of registrations, and ultimately involved 

over 500 schools. Teachers were generous in their feedback, helping us to hone the 

resources as the year went on, and sharing their enthusiasm. Teaching languages 

at secondary schools has become increasingly challenging in recent years, and 

immensely so during the pandemic, so we have welcomed this opportunity to support 

teachers as well as pupils: 

“We have had a brilliant time delivering these resources. Year 7 all the way 

through to Year 13 have engaged brilliantly and students have responded really 

well to the challenge. We loved it. The resources were so well thought through, 

so easy to use, and an absolute joy to teach.” 

Involving university students in our outreach work has always been central to QTE, 

and these collaborations continued to blossom while teaching remained virtual. In this 


third year of our Creative Translation Ambassadors programme, we trained over 70 

students in Oxford, Norwich, Sheffield, London, and Durham to design and deliver 

translation workshops in schools. The training and the workshops themselves were 

delivered virtually, with students making videos, slides, and worksheets for primary 

and secondary pupils across the UK. Our ambassadors contributed to the Anthea Bell 

Prize too, making videos for pupils and developing teaching resources. 

We launched a virtual International Book Club for 15-18-year-olds in summer 2020, 

which sits alongside our existing International Book Club. Held in partnership with 

Queen’s Outreach department, the club meets termly via Zoom. As well as the short 

talk or interview that the translator records for the participants, the strength of these 

clubs lies in undergraduate involvement. Each breakout room is moderated by a 

student, and they also contribute to the Q&A about studying languages at university, 

which follows discussion of the book. We’ve recently published a guide to running an 

International Book Club in school, for sixth-formers and teachers, as well as guides 

to a number of novels in translation. Translated fiction takes centre stage in our 

‘Reviewing the World’ project, too. In partnership with Queen’s Outreach department, 

this gives pupils the opportunity to review books in translation, with the best reviews 

published on our website. 


Both virtually and in person, and across a range of languages, QTE has reached 

thousands of young people in every area of the UK this year. As of this new school 

year, we are bringing our programmes together under the umbrella of the Anthea Bell 

Prize. All registered schools will have access to all our programmes, from book clubs 

to workshops, resources to prizes. By working closely with languages teachers in this 

way, we hope to bring inspiring international culture to increasing numbers of pupils, at 

every stage of their learning. 



Credit: John Cairns Credit: John Cairns 

A YEAR IN THE MCR 

Samuel Teague 

MCR President 

President: Samuel Teague; Victualler: David Kaufman 

At the beginning of this academic year, it was universally 

hoped that we might begin to return to some semblance 

of normality following such major disruption, the likes of 

which had not been seen since the Second World War. 

However, what has since transpired is a year of further 

lockdowns, concessions, and limitations unprecedented 

in scale and turbulence. All this being said, the entire 

MCR membership has overcome these considerable 

obstacles exceptionally admirably. 

On behalf of the MCR, I wish to thank the College 

and its officers, notably the Provost and the Tutor for 

Graduates, who have ensured that the graduate community was always considered 

when decisions were being made. Profound thanks should also be given to the library 

team, headed by Matt Shaw – who arrived in his new position as Librarian at possibly 

the most uncertain time possible – who have worked tirelessly to ensure that all 

College members have had access to the facilities and resources that they’ve required 

even during the depths of Hilary Term and the midst of the third lockdown. Finally, we 

are exceptionally grateful to the College Porters, Domestic Bursary, Steward, Scouts, 

and all those members of staff who made it possible for the College community to stay 

operational and, most importantly, safe across the year. 


Before proceeding any further, I wish to acknowledge the actions of Sean Telford 

during the first portion of this year. He was responsible for negotiating and securing an 

expansion of the physical MCR space from the Governing Body that will open for the 

beginning of Michaelmas Term 2021 – an exceptionally exciting prospect as we look to 

the return of in-person activity. 

Freshers’ Week is invariably the largest and most intensive period for any common 

room, yet the burden was lightened by the cooperation and support of the entire 

executive committee. As part of our preparations for Freshers’ Week, we completely 

rewrote and redesigned the MCR Handbook to provide a comprehensive guide 

to both our new and current members. Particular thanks go to Gayatri, our Social 

Secretary, for managing to organise multiple in-person events despite myriad 

limitations and guidelines, and Andrew Orr, for creating an incredible Freshers’ Week 

micro-site on the MCR website. 


The presence of the MCR at Queen’s has been supported by multiple ‘Queen’s 

College Symposia’ events, organised by our QCS & SCR Liaison Officer, Tristan 

Johnston-Wood. Events have seen multiple members of the MCR present talks on 

their academic work, as well as a series of panel discussions on a number of topics, 

including ‘which discipline best describes the human experience?’, which have 

stimulated thought within both the MCR and SCR communities. In addition, Tristan 

successfully set up a mock interview scheme with the SCR, allowing our members to 

benefit from the diverse skillset of the Senior Common Room and, hopefully, providing 

some excellent interview experience. My thanks go to Tristan and all the hard work he 

has done this year. 

Trinity Term has seen the return of many activities that one might associate with normal 

times. These include the joint JCR-MCR Punt scheme which has allowed our members 

to explore the waterways of Oxford (my thanks to Mary O’Connor, our Treasurer, for 

setting this up), croquet on Front Quad, the return of beautiful sung services by the 

Chapel Choir, and fantastic graduate formals that took place in 5th and 6th week – as 

the words of the ‘Boar’s Head Carol’ tell us, no Queen’s experience is complete without 

a proper meal in Reginensi atrio! 

As I sit writing this, I look back at what has been, all things considered, a largely 

successful year for the MCR. My sincere gratitude goes to all the members of the 

executive committee, and the wider MCR membership, whose continued support 

and enthusiasm has helped make, what would have otherwise been, an exceptionally 

difficult period an honour and a privilege to oversee. We have successful weathered 

two entirely unprecedented years of uncertainty, and as we hopefully sail clear of the 

stormy seas, I have no doubt that the MCR will continue to go from strength to strength. 




A YEAR IN THE JCR 

President: Alfred Mowse; Vice President: Aqsa Lone 

Defined above all by the pandemic, it will be no surprise 

to hear that this year has been an unusual and often 

tough one for the JCR, as it has been for many others in 

College and in all walks of life. 

Alfred Mowse 

JCR President 

Things started well in October: it was a huge relief to 

be returning to university again after being unable to 

come up for Trinity 2020. There were restrictions, of 

course, but generally things appeared to be moving on 

a trajectory of slow return to normality. It was a pleasure 

to welcome a new cohort of Freshers, who, while facing 

a very difficult first year, have settled in relatively well to 

the community. I’ve been impressed by the extent to which they’ve managed to get 

involved in College sport, social events, and the JCR Committee. 

For the more optimistic among us, then, it was something of a painful surprise when 

the national situation in January led to a third lockdown and large numbers of students 

had to face another term wholly online. As well as the immediate difficulties of paused 

independence and studying from childhood bedrooms, many JCR members faced 

significant uncertainties with their upcoming finals exams and with travel plans. 

Thankfully, things had improved by the start of Trinity term and most students were able 

to return to Oxford. Through the weeks of good weather, it was a pleasure to see many 

people working (sunbathing) together in the Fellows’ Garden, and we enjoyed several 

much-needed opportunities for social events which helped to bring together a fractured 

student body. There remained some JCR members, mostly international students or 

those who are particularly vulnerable, who decided that returning posed too many 

difficulties and we were deeply sorry to miss these members of our community. 

Despite these difficulties, indeed often because of them, there has been much to 

celebrate in the JCR this year. With everything faced by students (and by so many 

others), just to do the bare minimum would be praiseworthy, and everyone should be 

proud of what they’ve managed to achieve this year. But beyond this, Queen’s JCR 

students have continued to show their creativity, skill and hard work, being involved in 

everything from plays and magazines to blues sport. Students have also been active 

participants in College committees and initiatives such as the Race, Diversity and 

Access project, engagement which I hope will continue into the next year. This year 

we’ve also initiated what will be a closer long-term relationship between the JCR and 

the Queen’s Women’s Network, which will serve to forefront the contributions and 




achievements of the College’s alumnae whilst providing junior members with further 

opportunities for valuable career support. 

Throughout, the JCR Committee has worked really hard to help students in many 

ways, from welfare to trying to maintain a roster of social activities. We’ve also had to 

work closely with College, and I’d like to thank tutors, scouts, catering, and library staff 

for their continued support of students, despite personal risk in some cases. There’s 

no doubt, though, that the university experience this year has been wildly different 

to the one that any of us would have wished for, and I think a sense of loss will be 

something shared by this cohort of students. Like everyone, then, I’m hoping above 

all that the situation as we return for next year will be one that allows us to close this 

significant chapter in the College’s history, and to safely rebuild our JCR community, 

which has been so strained this year. 



STUDENT CLUBS AND SOCIETIES 

THE 1341 SOCIETY 

President: James McGhee 

Like many other societies within College, the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly 

curtailed the activities of the society over the course of the last academic year. While 

we have been unable to hold our usual termly luncheons for current parents, I am 

pleased to say that the society has still been able to pursue some of its charitable 

endeavours, most notable its continued support of the College book grant scheme. 

I am immensely indebted to the work of the many presidents and committee members 

of the society since its inception 20 years ago in 2001; without their sustained 

commitment to fundraising over the years, the society would not be in such a 

financially secure position to maintain its commitments throughout the pandemic. 

Finally, I would like to thank our secretary, Klara Zhao, and our treasurer, Annabel 

Vago, for their work for the society over the last year, despite all the frustrations of 

being unable to run any of our usual events since Hilary Term 2020. I wish the society 

all the best as I hand over to Siobhàn Bridson for what should hopefully be a more 

normal years of events; I am sure she will work hard for what is likely be another 

challenging year for the society. 

CROQUET 

Co-Captain: James McGhee 

Trinity Term 2021 not only saw a return to a degree of normality as restrictions were 

lifted in part, but also the return of the highlight of the Queen’s sporting calendar 

– that of course being the ever-popular game of croquet – to Front Quad. It was a 

pleasure to see the game constantly in play and we have to commend the near-daily 

dedication of certain students to the game, despite the callings of collections, public 

examinations, and the other trappings of Trinity Term hedonism. 

The croquet season started off on an unusually strong note, with the purchase of two 

new croquet sets for College use, and with it, straight hitting mallets – a novelty among 

play on College grounds. The main event of the year was of course the University-wide 

Croquet Cuppers; this year we were unfortunately limited to entering one team owing 

to the pandemic. The first round saw the team head off against Worcester 2nd’s – a 

team with an unexpected tendency to engage in long range, accurate and vicious 

roqueting – a challenge that was valiantly met by a selection of Queen’s best. Yet, 

while an early start was clinched in one of the two games played, Worcester equalised 


at the final hoop and narrowly secured a posting out. Special mentions go to Ben 

Norbury and Julian Whitaker for what was an excellent performance. 

In a first for College croquet, and owing in part to the inability to enter our usual 

number of teams for Cuppers, an internal croquet tournament was set up with an 

unexpectedly high turnout of 16 teams! However, while Croquet may have finally 

returned to our great lawns in summer, so too did a typically wet British Summer 

and about five weeks of rain throughout the term, and so the tournament was 

unfortunately left unfinished. Many thanks to everyone who participated and we look 

forward to hopefully being able to host a full tournament come next Trinity. 


THE EGLESFIELD MUSICAL SOCIETY 

President: Charlotte Jefferies 

As was the case with almost every society during the COVID-19 pandemic, the 

Eglesfield Musical Society’s regular activities were somewhat hampered. However, 

both the Committee and the JCR proved resolute and resilient in the face of adversity. 

Throughout the year, members of the College and of the wider University successfully 

continued our virtual recital series. A special mention should go to Lizi Vineall and 

Maxim Fielder for finding willing recitalists and editing these weekly videos (and 

unfailingly uploading them in such a timely fashion!). 

A virtual performance of One Day More 



In Michaelmas Term, we began the year on a high, with record numbers of people 

partaking in rehearsals with EMS A Capella. We were tantalisingly close to our regular 

7th Week concert when disappointment struck, and rehearsals had to be called off to 

keep the College as safe and COVID-free as possible. 

While the committee was initially stumped as to how to sustain music-making during 

the virtual Hilary Term, we prevailed, and came back stronger: over 30 members of the 

JCR, MCR and staff, including our Chaplain, Katherine Price, participated in a virtual 

performance of ‘One Day More’ from Les Misérables. We had singers, guitarists, 

violinists, and bassoonists galore; all worked together to create a joyous final product, 

expertly edited by Rhiannon Harris. The video can still be viewed on our Eglesfield 

Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram pages. 

Our activities remained restricted in Trinity Term, despite the increased availability of 

College facilities. Our College musical, which typically takes place in 4th Week of Trinity 

Term, was unable to happen. As compensation, the Society will be organising two (!) 

musicals next year. Despite this disappointment, a particularly poignant moment for 

the Committee this year was a concert of Latin American Baroque music, organised 

by Prof John Sloboda OBE FBA, an Old Member, Honorary Fellow, and former EMS 

President. This was the first and only concert we were able to organise this year, but 

its success proved that live music is still alive and well at Queen’s. 

A final mention should go to next year’s committee, and especially to our President- 

Elect, Jemima Kinley. On behalf of the whole College community, I wish them all the 

best for next year, and hope that we will once again be able to resume our regular, 

busy musical schedule. 

HOCKEY CLUB 

Captain: Henry Patteson 

Mixed college hockey matches 

played throughout the 2021 

Trinity term have given Queen’s 

an opportunity to re-establish 

a strong hockey culture 

throughout the undergraduate 

year groups. Despite COVID-19 

difficulties, QCHC has flourished 

in its first year as a “Queen’s 

College Only” club. We won all 

our matches and hence took 

our place as champions of the 

Oxford College Hockey league. 


Often coming from behind, in each match Queen’s fought hard and found a way to 

win – most notably in the final where passion and determination turned the tables in 

the favour of blue and white. In addition to good results, it has been wonderful to see 

a broad range of abilities and personalities take the field for The Eagles and hopefully 

new friendships have been formed as a result. 

Next year, QCHC will look to soar higher and further with a bright, new committee. The 

loosening of restrictions offers an opportunity for the social aspect of the club to grow 

in a bid to match our success on the pitch. There are even rumours of a tour. 


NETBALL 

Captain: Pandora Mackenzie 

Despite activities being significantly curtailed this year, QCNC has had a spectacular 

Trinity term. We found ourselves in the top division this year, playing against teams 

that regularly fielded multiple blues players. At the time of writing, the league results 

are yet to be announced but Queen’s can expect to be in a respectable tophalf 

position and retain their place in Division 1. This year saw a Cuppers league 

lasting only one term of five matches but nevertheless the netball team played with 

enthusiasm and positivity every time. We managed to field a consistent team which 

consisted of a true mix of years – a great improvement on inter-year mixing. The 

year’s shooting was phenomenal thanks to Ying Wong, Ella Farmer, and Harri Kellett 

whose partnership brought in many goals for the team. At the other end of the 

court, Ire Sofela and Evelyn 

Turner made an unbeatable 

and intimidating defence 

duo. In centre court, Flora 

Brown, Josie Kucera, and 

Katie Zagurova’s lightning 

attacks on the wings meant 

the whole team ran centres 

smoothly and with utmost 

skill. The skill and quality of 

playing has greatly increased 

this year and this shows in 

our scores. Despite a loss 

to Exeter in our first match, 

we brought it back with 

three wins in a row against 

This photograph has been reproduced by kind permission of 

Gillman & Soame photographers and can be ordered online 

at https://www.gsimagebank.co.uk/queens/t/fhsl62xcr2021 

St Catz (13-5), St John’s 

(8-5) and Pembroke (9-3.) 

Unfortunately, our last 

match was a disappointing 



loss against Wadham, although not all in vain for one player managed to secure 

themselves a date from it. 

Outside cuppers, this year saw a flurry of friendlies against Magdalen, Oriel, and 

Brasenose, as well as new Sunday netball practices with Exeter. We also had a civilised 

black tie social with QCAFC at Wetherspoons, in which next year’s social secretary, 

Phoebe Horner, played an integral role in drumming up first-year attendance. The 

highlight of the year, though, has to be QCNC’s rather unorthodox sport photo which 

comprised of some very tactically-placed netballs to preserve modesty. 

All in all, it has been a wonderful term and I am very honoured and excited to continue 

the captaincy for next year. The club would also like to pay homage to outgoing 

members Harri Kellett and Daisy Southern for their long-standing dedication and to the 

former’s brilliant past captaincy. 

QUEEN’S COLLEGE MEDICAL SOCIETY 

President: Yedidiah Tilahun 

Coming into this year plans and visions for QCMS were plentiful, yet as many societies 

and our College as whole faced the unpredictability of the COVID-19 pandemic, 

adaptability has been the keyword. A quality especially pertinent in the medical 

profession, it is hoped that as our students move to become junior doctors they would 

avail themselves of this attribute. Yet, the QCMS committee of 2020-2021 proved that 

maintaining an adaptable approach may not be solely the reserve of graduates but 

can be developed early on within the medical career. As exemplified in Michaelmas 

term; QCMS, for the first time since its inception, held its annual dinner virtually rather 

than physically. 

In accordance with our Society’s raison d’etre, we saw a coming together of students, 

graduates, and tutors of Queen’s albeit in a social capacity. Further to the spirit of 

lockdown, our speakers for the evening were all “in-house”, Prof Chris Norbury and Dr 

Paolo Tammaro, who each gave splendid accounts of their experiences and journeys 

within medicine. As the event progressed many more tutors, inspired by the riveting 

discussions, similarly provided their own personal accounts – whereby, the many 

different perspectives highlighted the varying opportunities presented within medicine 

with ultimately the same objective of helping people. A thoroughly encouraging event, 

it left all members emboldened in their ambitions to affect the medical fields. 

With the oncoming return to a sense of normalcy, QCMS envisions our Medical 

Innovation Conference to be included in this return, and to become part of the norm 

of our Society. Thus, with a view to the future we rest assured that the incoming 

committee of Bethan Storey, Emily Thompson, and Annie Roberts will do excellently. 



The Shulman Auditorium set up for QCS 

QUEEN’S COLLEGE SYMPOSIA 

President: Tristan Johnston-Wood 

The Queen’s College Symposia was set up to strengthen links between the MCR and 

SCR, provide a platform for students and Fellows to present their research, and to 

enable Queen’s members to listen to and discuss the ideas presented. This year has 

been no exception. We have seen newly appointed Fellows give talks on a range of 

topics and also introduced a new QCS format: The QCS Panel Discussion. 

The year kicked off with mathematics (Prof José A. Carrillo) and classics (Dr Gabriele 

Rota), followed by a panel discussion on ‘The Uncertainty of Knowledge’. Hilary term 

saw a switch to medicine, with talks by Prof Simon Leedham and Hannah Willis, 

and with another panel discussion addressing the question of ‘Which discipline best 

describes the human experience?’. 

Finally, we finished the academic year with Dr Conor O’Brien discussing religion and 

Elisa Cozzi presenting her research on Irish-Italian Connections, with a final panel 

discussion about Marine Science and Women in Science. We made the best of the 

available streaming technology to broadcast the events across the city, country, and 

world and we look forward to hosting many more talks and discussions in person in 

the 2021 academic year. 



ATHLETIC DISTINCTIONS 

Blues 

Agamemnon Crumpton Lightweight rowing 

Daniel Craig-McFeely Lightweight rowing 

Daniel Stoller 

Rugby union 

Fred Newbold 

Hockey 

Henry Patterson 

Hockey 

Half-Blues 

Jack Wilson 

Tal Jeffrey 

Rugby league 

American football 




DEVELOPMENT AND OLD MEMBER 

RELATIONS REPORT 

Justin B. Jacobs 

Director of Development 

& Supernumerary Fellow 

Despite the challenges presented by an entirely remote 

2020-21 academic year, the Old Members’ Office was 

perhaps more connected to the College’s Old Members 

than at any point in its history. Over 850 Old Members 

attended at least one of our nine online events and they 

joined us from over 20 countries. We were delighted 

to see this level of at-a-distance engagement with 

the College, and we are excited that many of these 

new events will continue in future Old Members’ and 

donors’ event programmes. Highlights from the past 

year’s Old Members’ events programme can be found 

in the report of the President of the Old Members’ 

Association. 

Old Members’ Activities 

In turning to the College’s fundraising over the same 

period we are thankful that the challenges posed by the pandemic did not dramatically 

affect our efforts to raise support for our students, researchers, and the wider Queen’s 

community. Fundraising at Queen’s during 2020-21 remained buoyant with 610 

donors contributing to a new funds raised figure of £3,955,550. 

Of note for the 2020-21 academic year were the following gifts received by Queen’s: 

• A legacy gift from Old Member Anthony Gwilliam (Modern History, 1948) to support 

History teaching at Queen’s and the continued endowment of the John Prestwich 

Fund.* 

• The Richard E Stewart (Jurisprudence, 1955) and Barbara Dickson Stewart Student 

Support Gift, set up by Barbara in honour of her late husband, which has enabled 

Queen’s to endow: 

º The College’s contribution to funding a full Rhodes Scholarship for students from 

Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine to come and study at Queen’s. 

º A Commonwealth shared scholarship (with the Blavatnik School of Government 

in the first instance) to attract and support students to Queen’s from the Global 

South. 

º The creation of a tech support fund to help students at Queen’s with financial 

assistance for acquiring technology related to their courses. 



• An anonymous endowment gift from an Old Member to create the Centenary 

Visiting Professorship in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE), a post shared 

with University College, Oxford that will bring the world’s best international academic 

talent into the colleges to work with students and Fellows and to provide global 

perspectives across the three subjects. 

These are but a few of the ways in which our Old Members and Friends have supported 

Queen’s over the past year and in the College Record we are pleased to recognise the 

support and generosity of all of those who have contributed to ensuring that the College 

can continue to thrive as an institution and a community. The names of all those who 

donated to Queen’s in 2020-21 can be found in the Benefactions section. 

In 2020-21 Governing Body was also able to recognise key milestones in the amount 

of lifetime support received from certain Old Members and friends. Over the past year 

Governing Body elected six new Eglesfield Benefactors (in recognition of lifetime giving 

of £100,000 and above) and five new Philippa Benefactors (in recognition of lifetime 

giving of £10,000 and above). The College always takes a special pride in being able 

to bestow these important Benefactorships on those whose lifetime giving to Queen’s 

has merited special recognition.** 

This year was also significant as it marks the completion of the first phase (2016-2021) 

of Access All Areas, which covers three key priority areas for the College’s fundraising: 

student support (undergraduate and graduate), academic excellence, and access and 

outreach. 

In this initial phase the College received gifts from 1,623 Old Members and Friends, 

who collectively contributed £23m to support our students, the Tutorial System and 

our efforts to make Queen’s a more accessible and open place for students regardless 

of their background or geography. We are excited with how far we have come and 

look forward to sharing the opportunities to support the second phase of Access All 

Areas shortly. 

On behalf of Queen’s thank you again for your help in making this such a special place 

for everyone who has the privilege to study and work here. We look forward to seeing 

you back in College just as soon as we can. 

* The Prestwich Fund was created by the College in 2003 in memory of John Prestwich (1914- 

2003), medieval historian, Librarian and Fellow at Queen’s from 1937-1981. The fund is currently 

at 2/3 of the £3 million total required for full endowment and when complete will sit alongside the 

recently created and permanently endowed Brittenden Fellowship in History – thus securing both 

History Tutorial Fellowships at Queen’s in perpetuity. 

** Old Members and Friends interested in their lifetime giving totals can find this out by contacting 

development@queens.ox.ac.uk or by writing to the Old Members’ Office. 


FROM THE PRESIDENT 

It seems as if the whole of the past year has been spent 

observing lockdowns and social distancing. I feared 

having to write lamely about a dearth of Old Members’ 

events, but this is not the case. Instead, the College 

is to be congratulated on the enormous efforts made 

to produce a packed programme of virtual gatherings 

as well as sneaking in an Old Members’ Picnic in the 

College gardens in the summer and re-instating the Old 

Members’ Dinner for September. 


Paul Newton 

President of The Queen’s 

College Association 

The virtual gatherings provided agreeable alternatives 

to physical meetings. The Queen’s Women’s Network 

kicked-off the year hosting an online event in September 

2020 on the theme: How volunteering can support 

career progression. Former Chair of the Surrey Bench 

Jane Macaulay spoke about her life and experiences, and Alison Sanders (PPE, 

1979) discussed volunteering during her varied career as well as reflecting on her 

experiences as a new magistrate. There were over 50 attendees using breakout rooms 

for further discussions and networking. 

Some virtual gatherings have now established themselves as welcome and permanent 

fixtures on the Old Members’ calendar. The hugely successful Inaugural Provost’s 

Lecture held in November 2020 is a case in point. Our guest speaker Mayor Eric 



College Conversation event 

Wine-tasting event 

Garcetti (International Relations, 1993), Mayor of Los Angeles, Honorary Fellow and 

Old Member of Queen’s, gave an especially pertinent presentation on “Leadership in 

a time of crisis”. The second Provost’s Lecture is, at the time of writing, scheduled 

for November 2021 when Dr Venki Ramakrishnan, Nobel prize-winning biologist, 

whose many scientific contributions include his work on the atomic structure of the 

ribosome, will speak. With the precedent of any university event occurring more than 

once naturally becoming an Oxford or College tradition, so will it be with the Provost’s 

Lecture. Distinguished guest speakers will now share their knowledge and experience 

of contemporary issues with the Queen’s community in an online lecture each year. 

The format will be a conversation between the Provost and the guest speaker with the 

facility to take questions from a live audience. 

Several extremely enjoyable and informative presentations live-streamed from College 

were held to bring together the Old Member community virtually throughout the 

year. The Old Members’ College Conversation in October provided updates from 

the Provost and senior academics on key topics impacting the College, including: 

COVID-19, admissions, outreach, and the College finances. The online platform, 

developed by Hopin for the College, provided the opportunity for attendees to hold 

discussions on the key themes in virtual breakout rooms and to network one-toone. 

There was unsurprisingly a more genial gathering courtesy of a Virtual Wine- 

Tasting in December with Prof Robert Taylor, SCR Wine Steward, and Mr Robert 

Saberton-Haynes, SCR Butler. Attendees were offered the opportunity to join in 




Wine Steward Prof Robert Taylor and SCR Butler Robert Saberton-Haynes 

Head Chef Sean Ducie during the cookalong to make a beetroot Wellington 



with tasting wine from home by ordering the suggested bottles from a national wine 

merchant in advance. The event included a pre-recorded tour of the College’s Wine 

Cellar and discussion on some of the wines stored there. A Virtual Cookalong was 

held in January with Sean Ducie, Queen’s Head Chef and Thom Elliot (Experimental 

Psychology, 2003), Co-Founder of the restaurant business Pizza Pilgrims. Sean talked 

through a recipe for an intriguing dish of Beetroot Wellington and Thom discussed the 

impact that COVID-19 has had on the hospitality industry, including his company’s 

innovative idea of Pizza in the Post. The Virtual Potting Shed in March by Dr Lindsay 

Turnbull, Gardens Fellow, and Mr Alastair Mallick, Head Gardener, offered attendees a 

tour of the gardens, with top tips and advice. 

As a final mention of online events, in April there was the celebration of the College’s 

680th Anniversary run in two sessions to be GMT and Eastern Time friendly. One 

highlight was a presentation by the College’s Archivist, Michael Riordan, on ‘Queen’s 

and the North’ followed by a live Q&A chaired by the new Librarian, Matthew Shaw. 

There are huge advantages to such events. First, they are accessible to a much wider 

audience from anywhere in the world and second, they can be viewed on the College’s 

YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/c/QueensCollegeOx/videos) at any time. 

All of this would have been completely unimaginable in 1341 and even today it would 

be unimaginable if it were not for the enormous efforts of the Old Members’ Office. So 

again, on behalf of all Old Members, I wish to thank Jen Stedman and her team, as 

well as Justin Jacobs for the oversight provided as the Director of Development. They 

have done some excellent and inventive work in another difficult year. 

Tales from the Potting Shed with Head 

Gardener Alastair Mallick and Garden 

Fellow Dr Lindsay Turnbull 

Queen’s and the North event with 

Michael Riordan, College Archivist 


GAUDIES – FUTURE INVITATIONS 

Due to cancellations caused by COVID-19, invitations for the Boar’s Head Gaudy and 

the Needle and Thread Gaudy have been rescheduled as follows: 

Boar’s Head 

Needle and Thread 


Year Matriculation years 

2022 1998/1999 

2023 1988/1989 

2024 2000/2001 

2025 1990/1991 

2026 2002/2003 

Year Matriculation years 

2023 2006/2007 

2024 1978/1979 

2025 2008/2009 

2026 1980/1981 

2027 2010/2011 

Old Members’ Dinner 

17 September 2022 All welcome 

650 TH ANNIVERSARY TRUST FUND 

AWARD REPORTS 

Due to the pandemic, no awards were made this year. 



NEWS FROM OLD MEMBERS, INCLUDING 

APPOINTMENTS AND AWARDS 

1960 

Donald Ratcliffe 

Awarded the Sally and Morris Lasky Prize for the Best Book on American Political 

History in 2016, and the Richard E. Neustadt prize for the Best Book on United States 

Government and Politics by a British-based scholar, for his The One-Party Presidential 

Election: Adams, Jackson, and 1824’s Five-Horse Race (University Press of Kansas, 

2015), which was reprinted in paperback in February 2021. 

1963 

Tariq Hyder 

Represented Pakistan in the 9th EU Conference on Nonproliferation and Disarmament, 

wrote two papers in the Hilal military journal on ‘Pakistan’s External Challenges 

since 1947’, and on ‘Pak-Russia Relations: The Way Forward’. Has spoken and 

participated in several webinars; on the NPT & the NSG (Islamabad) and on ‘NFU of 

Nuclear Weapons: Asia-Pacific Perspectives’ (Wellington, New Zealand) and remains 

a Security Expert at the Centre for Peace, Reconciliation and Reconstruction Studies, 

established to counter violent extremism. 

1965 

Andrew Connell 

Re-elected Chairman of Eden District Council, 2020-2021 and Elected Vice-Chairman 

of Cumbria County Council for 2021-22. 

1968 

Richard Carwardine 

Appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in the 

Queen’s Birthday Honours List 2019, for services to the study of American history in 

the UK and the US. He specializes in the era of the early Republic and Civil War, with 

a particular interest in the presidency of Abraham Lincoln. Professor Carwardine is a 

Distinguished Fellow at the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford. He 

was formerly President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford and Pro-Vice-Chancellor of 

the University of Oxford. 

1970 

Andrew Myers 

Moved to Colorado, and now two-fifths retired. 


1973 

Samuel Nan Chang Lieu 

Elected to the Fellowship of the British Academy in recognition of his contribution 

to the humanities and social sciences. Professor Lieu is the current President of the 

International Union of Academies (Union Académique Internationale), an organisation 

founded after the First World War to promote peace through research collaboration 

among national academies. Professor Lieu’s field is the history of pre-Islamic 

Central Asia, especially the history of religions transmitted along the Silk Road (e.g., 

Christianity and Manichaeism). 


1974 

(Patrick) Kieran Quinlan 

Retired from the English Department of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, 

USA, in June, 2020, and has since been appointed as a Professor Emeritus of the 

institution. His retirement coincided with his most recent book publication, Seamus 

Heaney and the End of Catholic Ireland. 

1977 

John Morewood 

Completed a PhD at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. The 

subject was ‘Henry Brougham and Anti-Slavery 1802-1843’. John was also appointed 

President of St Albans and Hertfordshire Architectural and Archaeological Society. 

(Peter) Mike Thompson 

Awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2021, for services to medicine 

supply, resilience, and development. Mike was the Chief Executive of The Association 

of the British Pharmaceutical Industry from 2016-2019 and is currently Chairman of 

Brevia Health, a dedicated division at Brevia Consulting that focuses on Life Sciences 

and Healthcare issues. Mike was heavily involved in ensuring that the UK could 

continue to supply medicines through any Brexit scenario, and worked in partnership 

with the Department of Health and Social Care, bringing forward policy proposals to 

ensure the system would cope. 

1980 

Cathryn Edwards 

Awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2021, for services to medicine. 

Appointed Visiting Professor to the Division of Gastroenterology at the University of 

Cape Town in July 2021. 

Dr Edwards is currently Registrar of the Royal College of Physicians – the first woman to 

hold this position in the College’s 400-year history. She is also a consultant physician 

and gastroenterologist, working in South Devon. Cathryn was the first female Secretary 

of the British Society of Gastroenterology (BSG) and its second female president. 




1981 

Peter Vicary-Smith 

Has stepped down after 14 years as Chief Executive of the consumer organisation 

Which? to pursue a non-executive career. He is currently Chair of the Board of 

Governors of Oxford Brookes University. 

1983 

Valerie Gibson 

Awarded an OBE in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours 2021, for services to science, 

women in science, and to public engagement. Professor Gibson is a professor of high 

energy physics at the University of Cambridge. She was a Fellow in the Experimental 

Physics Division at CERN (1987-89) and came to Cambridge in 1989 as an SERC 

Advanced Fellow, held concurrently with the Stokes Senior Research Fellowship at 

Pembroke College (1989-1994). She was appointed as University Lecturer and Fellow 

of Trinity College in 1994, Reader in 2006, held a Royal Society Leverhulme Trust 

Senior Fellowship (2007-08) and became a Professor in 2009. 

Robert Hughes 

Appointed Member of the Executive Editorial Board (Consell de Redacció) of the 

Arxiu de Textos Catalans Antics (The Archive of Ancient Catalan Texts), an annual 

publication of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans and the Faculty of Theology of Catalonia, 

intended for the edition, study and information of Catalan texts prior to the 19th 

century. 

1984 

Nigel Poole 

Appointed a High Court Judge in October 2020 and assigned to the Family Division. 

Nigel was Called to the Bar in 1989 and took Silk in 2012. He was appointed as a 

Recorder in 2009 and as a Deputy High Court Judge in 2017. 


1987 

Colin Cook 

Elected Oxford City Councillor (Labour Party) for Osney and St Thomas ward in May 

2021 and appointed Chair of the Council’s Licensing and Gambling Acts Committee. 

1988 

Iain Osborne 

Installed as Rector of the United Benefice of Ramseys and Upwood, in north 

Cambridgeshire. 


1989 

Matthew Owens 

Released a music album in July 2021: Johann Pachebel: Organ Works vol.1. Matthew 

played the Queen’s College Organ for the recording. https://www.resonusclassics. 

com/johann-pachelbel-organ-works-volume-1-matthew-owens-res10285 

1991 

Teresa Bridgeman 

Awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2021, for services to flood 

preparations in West Somerset. Teresa founded the West Somerset Flood Group in 

2014. 

1993 

Eric Garcetti 

Nominated by US President Joe Biden as US Ambassador to India, in July 2021. Eric 

is currently Mayor of Los Angeles. 

Laura Tunbridge 

Awarded the Dent Medal by the Royal Musical Association in June 2021. The Dent 

Medal, created in memory of the distinguished scholar and musician Edward J. Dent 

(1876-1957), has been awarded by the Royal Musical Association annually since 

1961 to recipients selected for their outstanding contribution to musicology. Professor 

Tunbridge has been commended for both her dedication to the historical specificity 

and contingency of musical meaning, and her productive intertwining of performing 

and cultural histories. 

1997 

Adam Watt 

Appointed Associate Dean for Research and Impact for the College of Humanities, 

University of Exeter. Prior to this he was the Head of Modern Languages and Cultures 

(2018-2021) and Director of Research for the department (2014-18). 


2000 


Holger Kockelmann 

Appointed full Professor in Egyptology at Leipzig University, Germany. His main 

research interests are the cultural history of ancient Egypt, the Egyptian religion, hieratic, 

hieroglyphic and demotic texts and the Ptolemaic and Roman temples of Egypt. 

Simon Dobnik 

Appointed Professor of Computational Linguistics at University of Gothenburg, 

Sweden, in September 2020. His research interests include computational models of 

language and perception, human-robot interaction, situated spoken dialogue systems, 

and computational representations of meaning (semantics). 

2002 

Ava Lau 

Appointed to the judging panel for the UK Pensions Awards 2021. Ava is Group 

Director, Head of Reward Analytics, at the London Stock Exchange Group and won 

the Pensions Manager of the Year award at Professional Pensions’ inaugural Rising 

Star Awards in 2019. 

2005 

Esther Daponte Brazil 

Appointed by The Bishop of Oxford as Assistant Curate at St Mary Magdalen Church, 

Oxford, following her diaconal ordination in July 2020. This is a four-year post. 

2011 

Merryn Davies-Deacon 

Appointed Lecturer in French Linguistics at Queen’s University, Belfast. 

Ashley Francis-Roy 

Directed two award-winning documentary films in 2020. The Real Eastenders (July 

2020); for which he has been nominated for a 2021 BAFTA Television Craft Award in 

the ‘Emerging Talent: Factual’ category, and won the Edinburgh TV Festival Debut 

Director New Voice 2021 award. 

Damilola: The Boy Next Door (October 2020, Channel 4) won the RTS Programme 

History 2021 Award. 

2013 

Charlie Hicks 

Elected Oxfordshire County Councillor (Labour Party and Co-operative) for Cowley 

Division in May 2021. 


2015 

Guillaume Matthews 

Granted a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Department of Materials, University 

of Oxford, in the field of Li-ion batteries manufacturing. Awarded a Lectureship in 

Materials at St Catherine’s College, Oxford. 

2016 

Will Smith 

Awarded the ZSL (Zoological Society of London) Charles Darwin Award and Marsh 

Prize, in October 2020, for an outstanding zoological research project by a (then) 

undergraduate at a UK university. 


His project was entitled, ‘Are wild rock doves in the British Isles distinct from feral 

domestic pigeons? A phenotypic and genetic analysis’. 

2017 

Myron Phua 

Awarded Second Prize by the Judging Panel of the 2020 Society of Construction Law 

Hudson Prize for his essay, ‘The proper case for the inapplicability of Fiona Trust to 

statutory adjudication after Bresco’. 




PUBLICATIONS 

Carey Jones, Paul (1992) 

Giving It Away: Classical Music in Lockdown and other fairytales (CJAC Publishing, 

2020) 

Cecil, Desmond (1960) 

The Wandering Civil Servant of Stradivarius (Quartet Books, 2020) 

Concollato, Luke (2016) 

‘Optical observation of needles in upward lightning flashes’, Scientific Reports 10, 

17460 (2020), with co-authors https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-74597-6 

Connell, Andrew (1965) 

‘The Woman, the Politician and the Will: Charlotte Smith’s Literary Assaults on John 

Robinson, ‘The Lowest Rank of Human Degradation’, 1650-1850 Ideas, Aesthetics 

and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era vol. 26, (Bucknell University Press, 2021) 

Diab, Susan (1982) 

‘Spinning in Higher Education: an autoethnography of finding space to be human 

in academic life’, in International Perspectives on Innovative Approaches towards 

Teaching and Learning: Humanizing Higher Education, eds. Kapur, E. & Blessinger, P. 

(Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2021), with J Moriarty 

Elliot, Thom (2003) 

Pizza: History, recipes, stories, people, places, love (A book by Pizza Pilgrims) 

(Quadrille Publishing Ltd, 2020), with J Elliot 

Fleming, Michael (1971) 

and Christopher Page (eds.), Music and Instruments of the Elizabethan Age: the 

Eglantine Table (Boydell: Woodbridge, 2021). 

Gibson, Anthony (1967) 

Westcountryman – a life in farming, countryside, cricket and cider (Charlcombe Books, 

2021) 

Gill, Dipender (2005) 

Numerous journal articles, including: ‘Genetic evidence for repurposing of glucagonlike 

peptide-1 receptor agonists to prevent heart failure’, Journal of the American 

Heart Association, Vol: 10 (2021) and ‘Testing for antibodies to SARS-CoV-2’, British 

Medical Journal, Vol: 371 (2020) with M J Ponsford 


Gordon, Jean Francois (1971) 

Will Purdom, Agitator, Plant-hunter, Forester. (Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, 2021) 

Gotelee, Simon (1984) 

‘Brand Bordeaux vs Appellation Burgundy’ in On Bordeaux, ed. Keevil, S (Académie 

du Vin Library, 2020) 

Hall, Nadia (1992) 

The Devil (Book 5 in the Leone Scamarcio series, published under the name Nadia 

Dalbuono) (Scribe, 2020) 


Hoegfeldt, Cecilia (2016) 

‘From attachment to mental health and back’, The Lancet Psychiatry vol 7, Issue 10, 

Octo 2020, pp 832-834 (2020), with co-authors 

Hoffbrand, Victor (1953) 

Memoirs of Victor Hoffbrand (Lavenham Press, 2020) 

Hollands, Gina-Marie (1999) 

Yours, Trudy (Ruby Fiction, 2021) 

Howard, Anna (1995) 

EU Cross-Border Commercial Mediation (Wolters Kluwer, 2021) 

Hughes, Robert (1983) 

‘Ramon Llull and the Rhetoric of Prayer: A Brief Commentary’, in Qui fruit ne sap 

collir: Homenatge a Lola Badia, eds. Alberni, A; Cifuentes, L; Santanachm, J; Soler, A; 

(Edicions de la Universitat de Barcelona, 2021) 

‘Refrain Songs in Fourteenth-Century Catalan Poetry: A Reassessment’, in, 

Polyphonic Voices: Poetic and Musical Dialogue in the European Ars Nova, eds. 

Alberni, A; Calvia, A; Lannutti, M (SISMEL-Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2021) 

Co-translator. ‘Ramon Llull: Cent noms de Déu / Hundred Names of God’, in 

Manícula: Taller d’edició i anotació de textos, Online. First ever translation from Old 

Catalan into English. 

‘Oratio, Verbum, Sermo and “Les paraules de sa pensa”: Internal Discourse in Ramon 

Llull (1271/1272-1290), its Sources, Implications and Applications’, Studia Lulliana, 

Vol. 57 (online, 2017) 

Translator from Spanish into English and revision of English. Extractiones de Talmud 

per ordinem sequentialem, Corpus Christianorum. Continuatio Mediaevalis CCCM 

291, eds. Cecini, U; de la Cruz, O (Brepols, 2018) 

Kojima, Andrew (1997) 

No Sushi (Away With Media, 2020) 



Page, Sebastian (2010) 

Black Resettlement and the American Civil War (Cambridge University Press, 2021) 

Pickford, Eleanor (1993) 

Translator of R Muchembled, Smells: A Cultural History of Odours in Early Modern 

Times (Polity, 2020) 

Price, John Roy (1960) 

The Last Liberal Republican: An Insider’s Perspective on Nixon’s Surprising Social 

Policy (University Press of Kansas, 2021) 

Quinlan, Kieran (Patrick) (1974) 

Seamus Heaney and the End of Catholic Ireland (Catholic University of America Press, 

2020) 

Randall, Oliver (2012) 

Editor William Simpson and the Crisis in Central Asia, 1884-5, self published in 

conjunction with Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 7th Marquess of Salibsury (2021) 

Rundell, David (1975) 

Vision of Mirage: Saudi Arabia at a Crossroad (Bloomsbury, 2020) 

Sagar, David (1965) 

Reflections On an Empty Grave: Songs of the Heart and Soul (Lodge Books, 2020) 

Sancton, Andrew (1968) 

Canadian Local Government: An Urban Perspective, 3rd edition. (Toronto: Oxford 

University Press, 2021) 

Scholar, Richard W (2001) 

Émigrés: French Words That Turned English (Princeton University Press, 2020) 

Strachey, Nino (1986) 

Rooms of their Own (National Trust, 2018) 

Teague, Anthony (1960) 

English translations from Korean, under the name Brother Anthony of Taizé. Hope is 

Lonely, Sung-Hui Kim (Arc Publications, 2021) 

Lonesome Jar : poetic fables, Jeong Ho-Seung (Seoul Selection, 2020) 

Loving, Jeong (Seoul Selection, 2020) 

Theng, Brian Hong Seng (2015) 

‘Finding the Social Life of Rural Non-Elites in Roman Italy’, Theoretical Roman 

Archaeology Journal 4(1): 2, pp. 1–32. (2021, DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/traj.4345) 


Timmis, Ivor (1977) 

‘Talking a good game: football language explained’ Late Tackle 73 (online, 2021) 

‘Mass Observation in Bolton, 1937-1940: a case of accidental dialectology?’ in 

Honeybone, P. and Maguire, W. (eds.) Dialect writing and the North of England. 

(Edinburgh University Press, 2020) 

van Bolhuis, Frederik (1969) 

Arcs of the Arts? A New Reading of Western Art History (Self Published; available via 

www.politics-prose.com, 2020) 


Watt, Adam (1997) 

Editor The Cambridge History of the Novel in French (Cambridge University Press, 2021) 



ARTICLES 

Articles 

The challenges of academic medicine during a 

pandemic 

Prof Chris O’Callaghan, Fellow in Medicine 

From my perspective, the past two academic years 

blended into one long disrupted period from which I 

hope we are emerging—although I reflect warily that I 

expressed a similar aspiration a year ago. 

In addition to my College duties, I lead a research group, including a laboratory in the 

Nuffield Department of Medicine and am clinically active as a consultant in both acute 

general medicine and nephrology (kidney medicine and transplantation). 

Normally, most of my time is spent on research and teaching and having completed 

a 5-year term as Dean of the College just before the pandemic, I was eagerly looking 

forward to having more time to devote to my research. However, as the pandemic 

unfolded the University closed laboratories that were not working on COVID-19 

projects, such as vaccines and virus testing technology. In parallel, the University 


encouraged clinical academics, such as me, to support the NHS and for me that 

meant playing my part in the acute general medicine service at the John Radcliffe 

Hospital. The acute general medicine service assesses people who come to hospital 

with medical emergencies and cares for these patients if they are admitted to the 

hospital. These medical teams in Oxford and elsewhere are usually under great 

pressure during the annual winter influenza outbreaks and there was concern that they 

would be swamped during the pandemic. 

Articles 

The graph shows that in the first peak in 2020 the number of people coming to our 

hospital fell. However, as many of these people had COVID-19, this made the hospital 

very busy and sadly many patients and some staff died. Within the University, intense 

effort went into developing the vaccine, establishing the Recovery trial of possible 

treatments and research on testing and tracking COVID-19 infection. We were able to 

recruit many of the patients we saw into the Recovery trial and started to see the real 

survival benefit of the trial results as the pandemic continued. 

Then cases dwindled and hopes were high, but the second wave with new viral 

variants hit hard. During the first wave many people with non-COVID-19 conditions 

stayed away from hospital, but in the second wave this did not happen to the 

same extent and the hospital was overwhelmed. This was exacerbated by major 

Graph of COVID-19 in Oxford hospitals 


Articles 

staff shortages caused by illness or the need to self-isolate because of COVID-19 

exposure. The situation was very much worse than the previous year and the pressure 

on staff was immense, but fortunately with vaccination, personal protective equipment 

and infection control measures there were no staff fatalities in our hospital over this 

time. It was, for a second year, both a privilege and inspiring to work with such 

dedicated and positive colleagues. 

It has not been an easy year for research and we are still not allowed to have 

all members of our laboratory team on site at the same time, which slows our 

experimental work. However, for some time I have been trying to develop academic 

activity in acute general medicine and we were fortunate to obtain funding to move 

these plans forward through our AcuteCare academic initiative. Acute general 

medicine services bore much of the hospital burden of the pandemic, but although 

almost all of us will need acute general medical attention, particularly when we are 

older, there is surprisingly little academic activity in this area. I am keen that we rectify 

this and develop this as an academic strength in Oxford. 

Many of the ongoing challenges facing healthcare arise from remarkable improvements 

in life expectancy and disease survival, such that on average we can live much longer 

than our ancestors. However, as we do so, many of us will accumulate multiple longterm 

conditions, such as high blood pressure, diabetes or raised cholesterol levels 

and these can lead to problems such as strokes, heart and kidney disease. These 

multiple long-term conditions often trigger visits to multiple disconnected specialty 

services and we have obtained further pilot funding to bring multiple teams together to 

integrate this care in one place and to develop the latest science and technology for 

this healthcare. 

In the laboratory, we work on understanding the role of the immune system in disease 

and how the DNA we are born with influences our immune responses, especially to 

changes in our metabolism. We are particularly interested in how this affects our risk of 

atherosclerosis, which underlies many other conditions including heart attacks, strokes 

and much kidney disease. We seek to identify new ways of altering these disease 

processes to improve health. 

Of course, one of our enduring strengths in Oxford is our students (especially those 

from Queen’s!). As the chief examiner in medicine, a further pandemic challenge 

was to organise the final qualifying BM BCh 6th year examinations—postponing the 

examinations was not an option as the NHS needed newly qualified doctors more 

than ever. The examinations usually include written papers and observed interactions 

with real patients, but the latter was not possible with COVID-19 precautions, so we 

substituted remote video assessment and direct interactions with healthy actors. 

Our students are the future and we need to keep our research and our teaching 

relevant and up to date, so that they can hit the ground running when they graduate. 

This remains true even during a pandemic! 


Modelling a pandemic 

Dr Jasmina Panovska-Griffiths, Lecturer in 

Probability and Statistics 

I recently re-joined Queen’s as a Lecturer in Probability 

and Statistics. I am also a Senior Research Fellow at The 

Big Data Institute within the Department of Medicine and 

I am affiliated with the Wolfson Centre of Mathematical 

Biology within the Mathematical Institute at Oxford. 

Articles 

I was at Queen’s during my undergraduate and graduate studies in Mathematics at 

Oxford University between 1996 and 2005 supported by an academic Scholarship 

from Queen’s. I loved my time at Queen’s – studying in the Upper Library, playing 

Tennis for the College (and University) team, acting in a couple of drama productions 

and being part of the Committee in the MCR. Queen’s has always been my “home 

away from home”. I have always loved mathematics and my College Tutors, Peter 

Neumann and Martin Edwards, managed to make learning complex aspects of pure 

and applied maths even more fun and enjoyable. Alongside helping me extend my 

mathematics’ skills, they also gave me habits which I still keep to this day – marking 

students’ scripts with a green pen, always responding politely to invitations and 

always doing rough calculations on the “back of the envelope”. I stayed at Queen’s 

during my doctoral studies and completed my DPhil in Mathematical Biology under 

the supervision of Prof Philip Maini and Prof Helen Byrne in 2005. Following academic 

posts at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and at UCL, in June 

2021 I joined Christophe Fraser’s Pathogen Dynamics Group at the BDI and took up a 

Lecturer post at Queen’s. I love teaching at Queen’s and I hope that I can transfer my 

love for mathematics and modelling to my students. 

My research is in applied mathematics and statistics with a focus on using mathematical 

modelling and statistical analysis to deliver innovative research in infectious diseases 

modelling. Over the last 20 months I have been undertaking responsive and timely 

modelling to inform and advice decision making in the UK. 

An important contribution from me in modelling the pandemic has been in the 

development and application of agent-based models (ABMs) as an alternative 

to the classic compartmental models for infectious disease transmission. ABMs 

allow transmission between individuals, rather than populations, to be tracked and 

represent a natural framework in which testing and tracing of infected people can be 

modelled. I was part of the team that developed the agent-based model Covasim, 

the methodology for which was published at PLoS Comp Biol in July 2021. I have 

impactfully applied Covasim on the epidemic in the UK since the onset. My work, 

widely reported in the media, and published in the Lancet Child & Adolescent Health in 

August 2020, highlighted the importance of adequate Test-Trace-Isolate (TTI) strategy 

in controlling the spread of the virus when schools reopened fully in September 2020. 


Articles 

Follow up work, published in Nature Scientific Reports in April 2021, highlighted the 

importance of mask wearing in schools and workplaces for transmission mitigation 

as part of the reopening strategy (Figure 1). Additional work currently in submission 

at the Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications explored different strategies 

of reopening schools in March 2021 (Figure 2). Application of Covasim to the USA 

epidemic, published in Nature Communications in May 2021, added to the growing 

evidence of the importance of TTI and mask wearing as part of a safe reopening. As 

well as developing ABMs, in late 2020 I also led work on extended compartmental 

models for infectious disease spread to include contact-tracing, using probabilistic 

theory, highlighting the linking of compartmental with agent-based models; this work 

was published in PLoS Comp Biol in March 2021. 

Figure 1: Heatmaps of cumulative 

infections for different trace (x-axis) and 

test (y-axis) levels across the scenario 

of mask wearing in parts of community 

with and without schools masks’ wear. 

Higher cumulative infections are shown 

in darker shades of red, while lower 

values are lighter colours. The region of 

a light orange colour where cumulative 

infections remain below 500,000, 

represents a region where the second 

wave of COVID-19 after September 2020 

is avoided with combinations of adequate 

test-trace and mask usage. 

Figure 2: Model predicted estimated daily (a) and total (b) infections in the period from February 

22 to April 20, 2021 from the calibrated model across the five different scenarios: Full National 

Lockdown (FNL), Staggered Partial National Lockdown, Full-return of schools PNL, Primary 

schools-only PNL and Part-Rota schools PNL under the assumption that susceptibility in 0-10 

years old is 50% less than across other ages and that community transmission remains the same 

as in November lockdown between March 8, 2021 and April 19, 2021. In (a) we show the point 

estimates as well as the uncertainty range around this for each scenario. 


Complementary to mathematical modelling, I have also used statistical analysis during 

the pandemic. My work published in Influenza and Other Respiratory Diseases in 

September 2021, identified a number of factors associated with increased risk of 

hospitalisation, intensive care unit admissions and mortality in North East London 

during the first UK COVID-19 wave. Additionally, together with public health colleagues 

in Austria I modelled the COVID-19 epidemic in Austria. Across two papers, in 

the Lancet EClin Med in July 2021 and in the BMJ Open in August 2021 we used 

statistical analysis to evaluate the accuracy of RT-PCR tests and compare it to Lateral 

Flow Diagnostics (LFDs) in diagnosing COVID-19 infection. The findings in the BMJ 

Open paper suggest that RT-PCR testing in primary care can rapidly and accurately 

detect SARS-CoV-2 among people with flu-like illness in a heterogeneous viral 

outbreak. The Lancet EClinMed findings suggest that LFDs have high sensitivity and 

specificity, and hence high accuracy, in capturing early infection when administered 

properly in primary care settings. 

Articles 

As different variants of SARS-CoV-2 started to appear in the autumn of 2020, 

genomic surveillance became an important aspect of pandemic preparedness and 

response. To explore this, over the last 10 months I have been involved in modelling 

and genomic surveillance studies of different variants, collaborating with the COVID-19 

Genomics UK Consortium. Collaborative work published in Nature in October 2021, 

reconstructed the dynamics of different SARS-CoV-2 variants in England between 

September 2020 and June 2021. The findings showed that while a number of different 

variants were circulating in England 

in 2020 and 2021, the Alpha 

and the Delta variants became 

dominating in early 2021 and over 

the summer 2021 respectively, due 

to their infectiousness advantage 

over other variants (Figure 3). 

I am also a guest Editor of a 

special issue of the Philosophical 

Transactions of the Royal Society 

A and I look forward to sharing that 

with you in early 2022. My modelling 

work is ongoing with current work 

focusing on exploring the impact 

of different vaccination strategies, 

exploring waning profiles of 

different vaccines and developing 

the next generation of more 

capable and adaptive models for 

better pandemic preparedness 

taking onboard everything we have 

learned during this pandemic. 

Figure 3: SARS-CoV-2 surveillance sequencing 

in England between September 2020 and June 

2021. a. Positive Pillar 2 SARS-CoV-2 tests in 

England. b. Relative frequency of 328 different 

PANGO lineages, representing approximately 

7.2% of tests shown in a. c. Positive tests (top 

row) and frequency of 4 major lineages across 

315 English lower tier local authorities. 


Articles 


Papyri and performance: the problems of ancient 

poetry 

Prof Richard Bruce Parkinson, Professor of 

Egyptology 

The discovery of the Rosetta Stone during the 

Napoleonic wars is a useful reminder for Egyptologists 

of how translation is often embedded in colonialism. 

Modern translations of Ancient Egyptian poetic texts 

have often trivialized and exoticized them, or valued them only as sources of historical 

or linguistic data. The Life of Sinuhe is the most famous work to survive, written in 

the Middle Kingdom around 1875 BCE (contemporaneous with the final stages of 

Stonehenge). By 1600 BCE it had become a classic text used in training officials and 

was read for at least another six centuries, and it still remains a set text for students 

today. Around 575 lines of verse describe an Egyptian courtier’s life in self-imposed 

exile in the Levant, as a vivid narrative of adventure but also of psychological trauma 

and self-realization. Although extensively studied, the last integrated commentary was 

in 1916 by the Queensman, Sir Alan Gardiner (1879–1963), and only now is a new 

one being prepared. 

Despite Sinuhe’s acknowledged artistry and its ability (in Ben Okri’s words) to speak 

about ‘the mystery that makes us human’, translations have often been executed for 

a narrowly academic audience: the phrase ‘I was depilated’ in one recent rendering is 

technically correct in terms of ancient practices but is a stumbling block for general nonspecialist 

readers. Given our incomplete knowledge of Early Egyptian, Egyptologists 

have often prioritized producing a single ideal text and a single definitive translation, 

rather than exploring poetic ambiguities and emotional impact, or the ways in which the 

poetry has changed through time. Much has been lost from this extraordinary poem. 

The 12th Dynasty manuscript of Sinuhe, copied by an unknown man around 1800 BCE at Thebes, 

rapidly and with many self-corrections (P. Berlin 3022, Frame H). © Ägyptisches Museum und 

Papyrussammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin; photographer: Lisa Baylis, the British Museum. 


Articles 

The view from the heights of the Gebel Ahmar in 2019, now built over by Nasser City. 

Poetry cannot easily be abstracted from its material or cultural contexts, and it often 

uses these to create meaning beyond the literal sense of the words. In terms of literary 

form, Sinuhe is modeled on a culturally central Egyptian genre, the official funerary 

autobiography that was inscribed on tomb walls. The unknown poet plays with this 

in order to test the cultural norms of this official discourse against Sinuhe’s imagined 

experiences. The poem’s complex meaning is created with subtle changes in register, 

style and genre, all of which are unfamiliar to modern audiences. This is a familiar 

problem for translators dealing with texts from radically different cultures, but it is one 

that Sinuhe poses in an extreme form, because it focuses on culturally specific aspects 

of being Egyptian. Embedding the poem in its material contexts assists understanding. 

One minor and concrete example is a place-name mentioned by the poet: Sinuhe 

travels past the ‘Red Mountain’ but this is opaque and meaningless until one has 

experienced the physical location, now named Gebel Ahmar on the outskirts of modern 

Cairo. When one knows something of this hillside with the remains of desolate desert 

quarries, one can start to feel the meaning of the verse. Without a fully contextualizing 

approach even the most central aspects of the plot remain unintelligible: the poet 

narrates how Sinuhe hurriedly left Egypt at the death of Amenemhat I in a deliberately 

oblique manner, and this has caused immense speculation about his motivation since 

the poem was re-discovered in the nineteenth century. A commentary can list all the 

surviving parallel passages with the same words from contemporaneous texts and 

compare them with visual evidence for relevant social practices, and in such a way 

reconstruct (albeit rather laboriously) a sense of the resonances that the words had for 

the original audience. When the passage is read with an ear for these, instead of only 


Articles 

the literal linguistic meaning, it becomes clear that the ancient poet is narrating Sinuhe’s 

reaction in such a way as to evoke an unspoken sense of grief at the old king’s death, 

rather than a sense of guilt at a political assassination that has often been imagined 

by modern critics. A commentary, however, inevitably betrays the force of the poem: 

parallels and footnotes can reconstruct the context for a specialist reader but they 

destroy the immediacy of the original. 

Sinuhe provides the modern world with a wonderfully intimate and subjective sense 

of an ancient culture seen from the inside. But for an unannotated translation to 

communicate these culturally specific aspects to modern audiences it must somehow 

re-imagine them in modern terms, becoming in effect a new adaptation rather 

than a ‘free’ translation. Recently at the Young Vic, Ben Okri’s Changing Destiny 

developed the storyline of Sinuhe’s life into an action-filled drama in order to explore 

universal themes about identity and immigration, avoiding any culturally alien forms of 

expression. This reworking inevitably shifted the focus away from the original poem’s 

presentation of its own specific culture, and lessened the sense of autobiographical 

interiority. As with a commentary, something is lost from the original in any free 

translation or adaptation. 

The original text itself was arguably written for performance in the Middle Kingdom. 

While starting to write a new commentary, I worked with actress and author Barbara 

Ewing on a recital. These experiments confirmed the philological awareness of how 

open it is to different readings, and how dramatically it is conceived: in the central 

soliloquy, the grammatically ambiguous syntax of a phrase articulates Sinuhe’s 

shifting self-realization even as he speaks the words. During rehearsals, Barbara and I 

discussed what meanings could be re-imagined from the surviving textual world of the 

Middle Kingdom and the degree to which these might be communicated to modern 

audiences. We kept close to the original phrases as possible in order to preserve the 

original distinctive texture of feeling. Even if the translated words remain remote, an 

actor’s voice can convey their emotional tone and intensity, and translate the visceral 

meaning with immediacy. Performance offers one way of minimizing what is often lost 

in a translation or a commentary. 

On a purely textual level, these experiments had an incidental revelation for me as 

editor. The manuscripts of the poem from a few centuries after its composition show 

quite extensive textual variations from the earliest manuscripts. During rehearsals, 

Barbara insisted on certain changes to the translation in order to clarify the meaning 

for modern audiences, and I was struck that the majority of her alterations exactly 

mirrored the manuscript variations, suggesting that these ancient variations were also 

interpretative interventions, probably made when the original poem was becoming 

remote from its ancient readers. Performance is, after all, another embodiment of the 

text as much as any surviving manuscript or modern edition. Working with a skilled 

performer can enable a more holistic sense of textuality than is provided by editorial 

procedures or academic theory. 


Copyists, performers, editors and audiences all interact to create a poem’s meaning, 

and meaning is always diverse and contingent, continually shifting in a work’s different 

embodiments. Experiences with both the physical manuscripts and with performances 

argue against the traditionally privileged stance of the academic commentator, who 

has usually been a Euro-American male intent on rescuing a text from its messy 

transmission history at the hand of supposedly incompetent ancient copyists. 

The scribe who copied the main early papyrus of Sinuhe in ancient Luxor certainly 

wrote messily and made many corrections, but an examination of these physical 

features shows that he was not incompetent, but deeply engaged with the creation 

and transmission of the poem’s meaning as he wrote. Such considerations can be 

a step towards decolonizing textual studies and re-valuing the ancient copyists. 

As a commentator, I am not so different from that ancient copyist or Barbara as a 

performer, all of us having a shared aim of mediation, 

helping the poem to interact with new audiences 

and create new meanings. From this perspective, a 

commentary should not try to determine a poem’s 

meaning, but simply to supply the information that 

modern readers (whoever they might be) might need 

for their experience of the poem to be as coherent 

and as open-ended as possible. This role is an 

inherently humble one which fits uncomfortably with 

the authoritative stance demanded by the modern 

academic ethos, but in the end the commentator should 

simply tell the reader, in the words of the poet Stevie 

Smith: ‘well, here is the poem; work it out for yourself’. 

Articles 

Barbara Ewing’s recital of Sinuhe: https://podcasts. 

ox.ac.uk/life-sinuhe 

Barbara Ewing 


OBITUARIES 

Obituaries 

We record with regret the deaths of the following Old Members: 

1932 Dr T Sutton-Coulson 

1941 The Venerable A H Woodhouse 

1942 Mr J C P Boyes-Watson 

Mr K V Jones FRCM 

Dr F J Long CVO 

1943 Mr T S Acton 

Mr K M Leslie 

Mr W R Lomas 

1944 Mr N G Brodrick 

1945 Wing Commander D B D Hamley 

Mr E D Wetherell 

1948 Mr A B Gwilliam 

Capt J H Macdonald 

1949 Prof K Davies 

Mr M E Herman 

Mr R A Higginson 

Dr Z A Pelczynski OBE 

Dr C J S M Simpson 

1950 Mr H T Searle 

1951 Mr P M Brannan 

Mr A I Obiyan 

1953 Mr K J R Capper-Johnson 

Mr J R England 

Mr J G Glasspool 

Mr R S Kent 

Mr J W A Okell OBE 

Dr A Richmond 

Mr J M White 

1955 Mr L Harrison 

Mr J W Maslen 

1956 Mr J S Morris 

Mr A W S Mundy 

Dr J Place 

1957 Mr M H Elliott 

Mr G B Jubb 

Mr P Swain 



1958 Mr J E Bellamy 

Dr R E Blackburn FRSA 

1959 Ambassador H Ahmadu 

Mr G M A Barker 

Mr H E Fleming 

Dr B E Lowe 

Dr P M Neumann OBE 

(Emeritus Fellow) 

1960 Mr M S Harrington 

1961 Prof A P Cracknell 

The Revd M P Wadsworth 

1962 Professor A D Barker 

His Hon Simon Hawkesworth QC 

1963 Dr M J Cullen 

1964 Mr N C P Winstanley 

1965 Mr D P Ansell 

Dr R A Leeper 

Mr L N Marcelin-Rice 

1966 Mr R L Hartnoll 

1967 His Hon Judge Curran QC 

1969 Mr D N Wilson FRSA 

Mr R Winters 

1970 Mr P J Firth 

1972 Mr S G O’Mahony 

1973 Mr I Drummond 

Mr J G Odom 

1974 Mr D W F von Bodelschwingh 

1977 Mr P S C Gray 

1991 Mr D Hilton 

Honorary Fellow Prof H A O Hill FRS 

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. 

Obituaries 

ANDREW DENNISON BARKER 

My father, Andrew Dennison Barker, was born in Derby 

on 24 April 1943. He spent his early years exploring 

the wildlife of Hampshire and Sussex with his older 

brother George (who also went on to undergraduate 

studies at Queen’s, reading Zoology), acquiring a lifelong 

interest in the natural world. He gained a scholarship 

to Christ’s Hospital, from where he went on to read 

Literae Humaniores at Queen’s in the early 1960s. On 

graduating, he went to the ANU in Canberra to write 

his PhD thesis, on forms of explanation in evolutionary 

biology. Before setting sail for Australia, his mother Nancy (a powerful woman) told him 

that whatever else he did, he was not to get married out there. 

Andrew returned to these shores with his first wife Susan in 1970. She was heavily 

pregnant with their first child, Jonathan. Though tempted to try out a self-sufficient 

life on a Welsh mountain, that summer he joined the Philosophy department at the 

University of Warwick. 


Obituaries 

He and Susan settled in Leamington Spa, where their second son, Nicholas, was born 

in 1972. Always a keen amateur musician with an excellent tenor voice, Andrew began 

researching ancient Greek music and musical theory during the mid-1970s. Working in 

this somewhat neglected and frequently misunderstood area, he became the foremost 

student of ancient Greek music of his generation, a field of study which engaged and 

fascinated him for the rest of his life. Along with various articles and edited volumes 

on Greek music, philosophy, literature and science, his seven books and annotated 

translations on Greek musical theory and its historiography have transformed the 

field. Starting with his two volumes of Greek Musical Writings in 1984 and 1989, 

and including his landmark The Science of Harmonics in Classical Greece (2007) 

and his Ancient Greek Writers on their Musical Past (2014), his work cast new light 

on our understanding of Greek culture, and had consequences for our perceptions 

of medieval and subsequent musical theory. He was elected a Fellow of the British 

Academy in 2005 in recognition of the importance of this work. 

Andrew was a family man. He married his second wife, Jill, in 1978. They had 3 

children together: Michael (that’s me), Kate and William. Growing up, our house 

was filled with music, as well as prototype and model Greek musical instruments 

our father had built, and on which he would test his various hypotheses. I’ve been 

told from countless sources what a brilliant teacher and supervisor my father was, 

and that these home-made instruments often made their way into lecture theatres 

for demonstration purposes. The collection travelled with us when the family moved 

to New Zealand (my father took a Readership at the University of Otago in 1992, 

stepping down from his role as chair of the philosophy department at Warwick), and 

then re-turned with some further additions when he returned to the UK to become 

Professor at the University of Birmingham in 1995. In his years at Birmingham, he 

combined teaching and PhD supervision with his research (while doing his best 

to avoid university politics, of which he was less fond). He held a British Academy 

Research Professorship from 2000 to 2003. He retired in 2008. 

In 2007, Andrew co-founded MOISA (International Society for the Study of Greek and 

Roman Music & its Cultural Heritage), with which he was heavily involved for 10 years 

until his health began to deteriorate. In 2012 he became founding editor of the journal 

Greek and Roman Musical Studies (published by Brill). 

He is survived by his wife, his children and 14 grandchildren of whom he was very 

fond. We will miss him very much. 

Michael Barker 


ROBERT BLACKBURN 

Robert Blackburn, who has died aged 80, attended 

Bolton School from 1948 to 1958. He came from 

Chorley (as did many Bolton school boys and girls) 

where his father was Borough Librarian, and his mother 

a well-known local Infants’ Headmistress. Robert 

became well-known at the school as a classical pianist, 

playing every year on Speech Days and later in school 

concerts. In the sixth form he ran the Poetry Society 

and the Philharmonic Society, and was a keen Literary 

and Debating Society member. He attended Stratford 

Camp from 1955 to 1958, regarded as one of the school’s most inspired outdoor / 

educational ideas, instilling a lifelong love of live theatre in Robert. 

Obituaries 

Robert went up to Queen’s College, Oxford in 1958 on a Modern History Open 

Scholarship. After Oxford, Robert took the Bachelor of Music degree at Manchester 

University, which was where he met his first wife Barbara. His first post in 1964 was 

on the Music Staff at Repton School in south Derbyshire, and in 1968 he and Barbara 

moved to Durham, where he became Senior Lecturer in Music at the College of St Hild 

and St Bede. They lived in the village of Witton Gilbert outside the City of Durham, and 

had two daughters, Melissa and Donna. 

While in Durham, Robert completed a PhD in early 20th Century German and 

Austrian opera. In 1980-81, in a sabbatical year, he took a Master’s degree, again at 

Manchester University in Comparative Literature Studies – a year he always said was 

perhaps his most purely enjoyable academic experience. Robert taught part-time for 

the Open University from 1970-80 in the North East, and again in the Bristol region in 

1986 – 1991. Happily, in the spring of 1981 he was appointed Head of Department in 

Music at Bath College of Higher Education, which later became Bath Spa University. 

Robert became Assistant Dean (Research) of the new Faculty of Arts and Music 

from 1984, and retired in 2003. He was a passionate and knowledgeable teacher, 

particularly around 18th, 19th and 20th century music history and interrelated arts and 

literature. A generation of Bath music students knew him affectionately as Dr. Bob. 

Robert’s first marriage came to an amicable end, and in 2003 he met Isabel Love and 

they married the following year, just after his retirement. Retirement did not slow him 

down; he became a voluntary Convenor for Literature & Humanities at the Bath Royal 

Literary & Scientific Institution in 2008 and between 2010 and 2019 he organised five 

symposia on the historical arts. Robert and Isabel travelled widely, and on moving to 

Chippenham in 2008 became deeply involved in the Chippenham Civic Society and 

the Wiltshire Victoria County History Trust. They became grandparents to Cassian in 

2007, Cora in 2010, and Jonah in 2011, and the children were delighted to have not 

two but three grannies as they grew up. 


Obituaries 

Robert was lucky to have the loving support of Isabel through his final years and last 

illness – theirs was a deep and lasting love. He was an incredibly knowledgeable, 

thoughtful, and kind man all his life, and his devotion to music, literature and the arts 

has been passed down the generations through his students and children. 

Melissa Blackburn 

MICHAEL CULLEN 

Dr. Michael J. Cullen, a pioneer in the use of electron 

microscopy to dissect the minutiae of skeletal muscle 

structure and pathology, died on September 8th 2020 

from kidney cancer, leaving Anne (his wife of 54 years) 

and sons James and Malcolm, as well as a large 

devoted group of fellow academics who long admired 

his intellect, collegiality and scientific generosity. I am 

honoured to be a member of a very select group who 

Mike fostered and nurtured as Ph.D students in the 

late 1970’s-1980’s, and feel fortunate to be asked to 

memorialize him as best I can. 

Mike was born at the end of the second World War to James Leslie and Constance 

Cullen and grew up in Merseyside with his brother and sister. His childhood curiosity 

about the local flora and fauna likely fostered his lifelong fascination with nature. Following 

amateur experiments in rearing caterpillars and tropical fish, both he and his brother, 

John, went on to study Zoology, John at Cambridge and Mike at The Queens’ College, 

Oxford. Mike was certain Entomology would form the core of his future scientific life, and 

following his marriage to Anne in 1966, he relocated to Trinidad to study the biology and 

life cycle of giant water bugs under the tutelage of the late, great, J.W.S. Pringle. 

Pringle was known for being thoughtful, focused and meticulous in all his scientific 

endeavors, and I have always thought that Mike’s essential care and attention to detail 

must have sprung from his training during this period. On his return from Trinidad to 

Oxford Mike started his formal D.Phil. studies and became immersed in the basic biology 

of insect flight and more specifically in the use of electron microscopy as a tool to dissect 

the structure/function relationships within the skeletal muscle that allowed insect flight. 

Fortunately for biomedical science and more particularly neuromuscular disease 

research, Mike was pulled away from the world of academic entomology by the 

practical need to feed a growing family. In 1972, he received a job offer from Lord 

Walton of Detchant (then simply Dr. John Walton) to lead the electron microscopy 

research group at the Muscular Dystrophy Research Laboratories in Newcastle upon 

Tyne. His first seminal contribution to the field was to dissect the various stages of 

muscle fiber breakdown in Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy at the ultrastructural level. 


This paper cemented Mike’s position as one of the leading proponents of electron 

microscopy as both a diagnostic and “discovery” tool in neuromuscular pathology, 

and was continually augmented by serial, thoughtful ultrastructural articles and book 

chapters throughout his professional career. 

Mike was first and foremost an observer. As a child, and throughout his entire life he 

took great joy from exploring and studying nature, whether it was the pond creatures 

of Merseyside, the Giant Water Bugs of Trinidad, or the complexities of the human 

muscle cell. For him, the electron microscope was simply part of the tool set he used 

to examine the world around him. Perhaps his greatest professional asset was his keen 

ability to detect minute differences and/or changes in what he was observing. In his 

early career he certainly did not adhere to quantitation as an essential tool. In fact, in 

the article cited above there were 20 figures with only a single table of measurements. 

Obituaries 

Mike was generous both professionally and personally. His career spanned one of 

the most exciting periods in the study of Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy, from the 

days when description of pathology predominated, through the identification of the 

fundamental molecular cause of the disease and the continuing efforts to develop 

useful effective therapeutics. Immediately after the cause of the disease was identified 

as mutations in a previously unidentified protein (dystrophin) by Lou Kunkel’s group 

at Children’s hospital in Boston (3-5), one of Lou’s fellows (Eric Hoffman) approached 

Mike to collaborate on the localization of the protein as an obvious step in defining 

its function. Rather than taking on the task himself, he told Eric to “go next door 

to the Farber and look up one of my former students” (your biographer). Using the 

same immuno-gold approaches that Mike would have used, I worked with Eric, and 

others on Lou’s team culminating in a series of publications in Nature, the Journal of 

Cell Biology and elsewhere which essentially kickstarted my academic career. This 

collaboration, and the opportunities afforded by its success, would not have happened 

without this completely selfless gesture from Mike. 

Mike retired in 2001 and moved to one of his and Anne’s favourite places, Dunvegan on 

the Isle of Skye where the stark beauty of the island continued to engage Mike’s love of 

the natural world. My last, and among my fondest, memories of Mike in retirement are 

of exploring the gardens he cultivated against the stormy, rocky landscape of the island; 

and his success in charming the locals into doing crosswords with him over a pint. 

Mike Cullen’s career spanned a period in biomedical science when the fundamental 

toolsets underwent seismic shifts from observation to quantitation, and from 

reductionism to discovery. His contributions to the field of muscle biology and 

pathology were timely, consequential, seminal and critical. His approach was 

methodical, creative and above all rigorous and sound. Mike was a gentleman, a 

dedicated and thoughtful scientist, a caring and supportive mentor and a kind and 

deeply valued friend. He is, and will be, missed. 

Professor Simon C. Watkins – first published in Science Direct 


PATRICK CURRAN 

Obituaries 

Patrick was a larger-than-life character in so many ways. 

With a loud, infectious laugh and the broadest of smiles, 

his sheer joie de vivre was immensely attractive to all 

who met him. His smile occasionally got him into trouble 

and, on one memorable occasion, he was told by a High 

Court Judge to “take that f…..g gwin off your face”. 

Generous to a fault and highly sociable, the camaraderie 

of the Bar was Patrick’s natural habitat. He had an 

endless fund of amusing anecdotes for every occasion 

and could recite swathes of Shakespeare and poetry faultlessly. Patrick was an avid 

reader with an encyclopaedic knowledge of a wide range of subjects. With an endearing 

sense of old-fashioned courtesy and chivalry, Patrick was scrupulously polite and rarely 

spoke ill of anyone. He lived by a very clear moral code and could not abide any form of 

injustice; always speaking up for anyone he considered to have been treated unfairly. 

Patrick David Curran was born on the 2nd March 1948, the fourth of five children 

of David Alban Curran and Noreen Curran (neé Cliffe). David Curran was a director 

of Edward Curran Engineering, a large engineering company which, during the war, 

employed thousands of people including a young Shirley Bassey. 

In 1975 Patrick met Anne (neé Pathy) at court when she was an articled clerk. 

They married eight months later in the heat of the summer of 1976 and would have 

celebrated their 45th wedding anniversary this year. Anne became a solicitor and, with 

Patrick’s encouragement, a tribunal judge. She became the Regional Tribunal Judge 

(SSCS) for Wales & SW England until her retirement in 2019. 

Patrick was educated by the Rosminian Order at De La Salle School, Cardiff and 

then at Grace Dieu Manor and Ratcliffe College in Leicestershire, where he was 

Captain of Boats and Head Prefect in his final year in 1966. Patrick has maintained 

his connection with the school via the Old Ratcliffian Association and by visiting his 

second cousin, Father William Curran, who taught him history and is currently living in 

Surrey with other members of the Order well known to and admired by Patrick. 

Patrick became a member of the National Youth Theatre under the directorship of 

Michael Croft from 1965 to 1969, and appeared in several productions with notable 

alumni such as Helen Mirren, Timothy Dalton, John Nightingale, John Shrapnel, Richard 

Hampton and many others. Patrick took the lead role in Coriolanus in 1969 and toured 

with the play to Germany, preceded by Julius Caesar in 1968. Recently Patrick reestablished 

contact with Richard Hampton and they enjoyed convivial lunches whilst 

reminiscing about their experiences with the NYT. It was at the NYT that Patrick met 

Bruce Houlder who was best man at his wedding to Anne. Bruce has remained a 

lifelong close friend together with his wonderful wife, Stella, and their two daughters. 


Patrick went up to The Queen’s College, Oxford in 1967 to read Law. He remembers 

meeting a bearded Bill Clinton as they had a mutual friend in common, the late Frank 

Aller. Patrick pursued a wide range of interests whilst at Queen’s including directing 

the production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night for the Queen’s College Eglesfield 

Players. Gyles Brandreth expressed a keen interest in a role and played the Sea 

Captain, friend to Viola, played by Michele Brown who subsequently became his wife. 

Patrick’s extracurricular interests may have had some bearing on the fact that one 

of his friends at Queen’s recalled how Patrick discovered with indignation, the day 

before his Finals, that the Library closed at lunchtime! Patrick was strongly influenced 

by two of his tutors, a young John Mummery and also John Kaye. He maintained a 

lifelong and close friendship with John Mummery and was instrumental in organising 

a “Conversazione” at Queen’s to commemorate John’s retirement as a Lord Justice 

of Appeal in 2014. During his time at Oxford Patrick made many friends with whom 

he has maintained regular contact, in particular meeting up for the annual “Fiends” 

lunch usually held at the RAC Club in Pall Mall. Whilst at Queen’s Patrick continued his 

interest in rowing and was captain of the Queen’s College Men’s 1st VIII. 

Obituaries 

Patrick maintained a close association with Queen’s via the alumni association and 

attended numerous events with Anne including trips to Madrid and Rome. He loved to 

visit Oxford with his family and friends, celebrating key milestones at Queen’s including 

his 60th birthday and 40th wedding anniversary. He remained a passionate supporter 

of the dark blues and took great delight in any notable performances and victories 

against their light blue rivals in the boat race and on the rugby field. 

Patrick was called to the Bar in 1972 and joined Gray’s Inn, becoming a Bencher in 

2005. He completed his pupillage at Farrar’s Building, Temple, where he was fortunate 

to be a pupil first to John Leighton Williams and then to John Mummery. After 

pupillage, Patrick returned to Cardiff and joined the chambers of David Glyn Morgan 

QC at 55 Park Place (now at No. 30) where he established a busy practice in civil and 

criminal law. 

Patrick was admitted to the Bar of Ireland in 1993. He was appointed an Assistant 

Recorder from 1988 – 1992; Assistant Commissioner Parliamentary Boundary from 

1994 – 2007; Legal Member of the Mental Health Review Tribunal for Wales from 

1995 – 2008; Legal Assessor GMC from 2002 – 2007; Recorder from 1992 – 2007; 

a Circuit Judge from 2007 and also sat as a Deputy High Court Judge mainly in the 

Administrative Court until his retirement. Following his retirement, Patrick continued to 

sit as a Deputy Circuit Judge and became a member of the Worshipful Company of 

Arbitrators. Patrick finished where he had started when he accepted a door tenancy 

at Farrar’s Building at the invitation of the Head of Chambers, his close friend Patrick 

Harrington QC. 

Having taken Silk in 1995, Patrick left Cardiff and joined the chambers of the late 

Edmund Lawson QC at 9-12 Bell Yard, London. He prosecuted and defended many 

high-profile murder and corruption cases but, more importantly, he embraced life at 


chambers and made a new set of friends whose company he enjoyed particularly 

when cases settled early. 

Obituaries 

In 1993/4 Patrick began work on a book for personal injury practitioners entitled 

Personal Injury Pleadings, the first edition of which was published by Sweet & Maxwell 

in 1995. It proved to be successful and the publication of the 6th edition in 2019 was 

celebrated by a party at Gray’s Inn generously hosted by Patrick Harrington QC and 

Farrar’s. Patrick had a deep commitment to his Roman Catholic faith. A week before 

his death he was deeply honoured to receive the Last Sacrament from George Stack, 

Archbishop of Cardiff, whom Patrick had known from his time as Administrator of 

Westminster Cathedral and whom he regarded as a friend. Patrick always preferred 

the Latin Mass (he was a member of the Latin Mass Society) and despaired at some 

of the changes wrought by the Second Vatican Council, which he regarded as 

diminishing the beauty of the liturgy. He and Anne regularly attended the Latin Masses 

at the Oratory of St. Philip Neri at St Alban-on-the- Moors, Cardiff. Patrick was due 

to be admitted to the Order of St. Lazarus of Jerusalem but was unable to attend the 

investiture in December because of his health. 

Patrick is survived by his four children and four grandchildren Xavier (Xavi), Lucia (Lulu), 

Elowyn (Wynny) and Hugo. We have lost a wonderful, dear man and although a bright 

light has been extinguished in our lives, his influence runs deeply through each of us. 

May he rest in peace. 

Anne Curran and family 

KEITH DAVIES 

Professor Keith Davies was immensely proud of his time 

at The Queen’s College, where he read Modern History 

from 1949 to 1952. Indeed, the College’s coat of arms 

was kept on permanent display in the family home. 

His love of history remained with him throughout his life, 

yet it was in law that he found his calling. After gaining 

his LLB from King’s College, London (he was later 

awarded an LLM), he was admitted to the bar at Gray’s 

Inn in 1959. A friend persuaded him to dedicate his skills 

and knowledge to the education of others and he became a lecturer in Law, first at 

Southampton University and then, for the remainder of his long and impressive career, 

at Reading University. 

Highly respected and popular with staff and students alike, he became Professor, then 

Head of Department and ultimately Dean of the Faculty of Letters and Social Sciences. 

His speciality was Land Law and he wrote or co-wrote a number of academic books 


which became essential reading for aspiring lawyers across the country. In 1986, he 

was granted honorary associate membership of the Royal Institution of Chartered 

Surveyors. 

Throughout much of his time at Reading University, he also immensely enjoyed 

applying his expertise and wisdom as a magistrate, first on the Winchester Bench and 

later at Basingstoke. 

Obituaries 

Keith’s sharp intellect was balanced with a genuine humility and a strong sense of 

fairness. A true gentleman, he was also blessed with a quick yet gentle wit and a kind 

heart. 

Sadly, Keith passed away in May, aged 91. He is survived by Liz, his wife of over 60 

years, four of his five sons, eight grandchildren, and one great-granddaughter. His was 

a life well led and he is sorely missed. 

Michael Davies 

ROBIN ENGLAND 

Robin England was born on 24 October 1933 in 

Bangkok, where his father worked in shipping. He 

and his elder brother spent their earliest years in the 

care of an ayah. Shortly before the outbreak of war 

his mother brought them to England, installing them 

in a prep school at Felixstowe before she returned to 

Thailand. Confined to the school for both term-time and 

holidays, Robin did not see his parents again until after 

the war, when his father was released from a Japanese 

internment camp. The reunited family then moved from 

Suffolk to Chalfont St. Peter, Bucks. 

At 13 Robin won a scholarship to Bradfield College. He made much of his time there, 

taking part in the open-air theatre Greek play, the Debating Society, the Shakespeare 

Society, the Bradfield Chronicle, boxing and hockey, and was appointed a school 

prefect. 

After two years’ National Service in the Royal Artillery, and promotion to Lieutenant, 

Robin came up to Queen’s in Michaelmas Term, 1953, with an Open Scholarship. 

He was one of a group of nine reading Modern History. More mature than some of 

the others, he was friendly, easy-going and affable, yet noticeably reticent and selfcontained. 

He took his academic work seriously, planned carefully, and read in depth 

– which soon won the favour of the exigent History Tutor, John Prestwich. 


Obituaries 

His other interests lay within College rather than the wider University. He played 

hockey enthusiastically and regularly for the 2nd XI. In his second year he took 

on organising duties: College NUS Secretary, Secretary of the Eglesfield Players, 

Secretary of the Food Committee, Secretary of Taberdars’ Room. His efficiency and 

drive were rewarded when he was elected President of Taberdars’ Room (the Junior 

Common Room) in Trinity Term 1955. He received a Benefactors’ Prize for contribution 

to the life of the College. 

Robin was well cast as Sir Toby Belch in the summer 1955 production of Twelfth Night 

in the Fellows’ Garden. 

It came as no surprise when, the following year, he was awarded a First. 

Determined on a career in commerce or industry, he assiduously attended 

Appointments’ Board interviews, concluding that BP offered him the best prospects. 

He remained with BP all his working life, an oil company executive “downstream” in 

marketing and planning, until he retired in 1990 at the age of 57. In earlier years much 

of his time was spent in postings abroad – Nigeria, Malta, Gibraltar, Sicily, Sardinia; 

latterly, he was at London Head Office. His colleagues recognised him as a canny 

operator, financially astute. 

He met Gillian Fisher, an HR officer, at an airport on the way to a skiing holiday. 

She was booked at a different resort, so Robin, resourceful as ever, changed his 

destination to hers. They married in 1972. 

In retirement Robin enjoyed the many facilities of the Hurlingham Club, played chess 

regularly, and maintained his lifelong close interest in current affairs. He died on 24 

April 2021, leaving his wife Gillian, daughter Katie, son Charlie, and four grandchildren. 

Edward Mirzoeff CVO, CBE 

PAUL FIRTH 

I write with the sad news of the death of my great friend 

Paul Firth (Queen’s 1970-73), at the age of 69. Paul 

was diagnosed last October with a brain tumour and 

underwent surgery, but passed away peacefully on 8 

April at his home in Liverpool, with his family by his side. 

I will always be grateful that my wife Sue and I were 

able to spend some time with him and his wife Ann the 

previous week and say goodbye to the friend who had 

been the Best Man at our wedding 38 years ago. Paul 

was my ‘go-to’ man who could be relied on for sound 

counsel on an array of subjects, and as comments from many people on social media 


since his passing have testified, he was terrific company. He leaves Ann, his son 

David, daughter-in-law Mel, and his young granddaughter Ellie, of all of whom he was 

very proud. 

I got to know Paul initially in my last year at Bradford Grammar School, and our 

friendship developed after he arrived in Oxford to join me at Queen’s where I had 

already spent a year. Paul had a quiet confidence and showed an ability to lead 

and inspire others, such that when in my last term at BGS as Head Prefect the then 

Headmaster asked me who in the Prefects’ Room I thought should succeed me I had 

no hesitation in saying ‘Paul Firth’s the lad you want, Sir. He’s outstanding’. And so it 

turned out, Paul taking over from me for his last year at school. 

Obituaries 

Paul went to Oxford to read Classics, but had a rethink at an early stage, wanting 

to move from studying the ancient world and focus more on ‘real life’, choosing to 

switch to PPE, in particular Politics and Philosophy. A football fan from an early age, he 

became a regular member of a Queen’s team which valued his robust contributions at 

centre-half (unlike some of his opponents who felt the strength of his tackling!). Paul’s 

leadership qualities led to him being chosen to represent the JCR as its Food Member 

in any necessary dealings with the Domestic Bursar; little did he think when appointed 

that the major issue would be a College-wide outbreak of food poisoning which was 

blamed on a rogue meal of Chicken a la King in the College Dining Hall 

Not many jobs have more to do with ‘real life’ than the Magistrates’ Courts Service. 

Paul carved out a successful career beginning at his local court in Bingley before 

moving on to Leeds, Manchester, Rotherham and Liverpool and rising to fulfil the 

roles of Clerk to the Justices, Stipendiary Magistrate and District Judge, developing a 

facility for rapid analysis and summing up of case evidence, for insightful writing and 

for speaking without notes. He had an extraordinary ability to retain facts and statistics 

and to quote them at will and on demand. Moving back from the professional to the 

personal, this ability was clear to us as young students when he was regularly able to 

give us chapter and verse on particular football or cricket matches and players of the 

past or present. This went on throughout his life and I recall afternoons at Headingley 

being entertained by his memories of previous Yorkshire cricketing ups and downs. 

Paul’s major legacy to the football world is his 2005 book Four Minutes To Hell: The 

Story of the Bradford City Fire, sales of which have raised thousands of pounds for the 

Burns Research Unit set up at the University of Bradford in the wake of the tragedy 

which claimed 56 lives as well as causing hundreds of injuries. The match against 

Lincoln City, on 11 May 1985, came at the end of a season when City had become 

Champions and the crowd were in celebratory mood. I was sitting at the back of the 

old wooden stand at City’s ground, Valley Parade, with Paul and his father-in-law 

Arnold Whitehead when, just before half-time, small flames started to flicker under 

the seats in the next block to us. Within a mere four minutes the whole stand was 

ablaze. The three of us were lucky to escape. The book led to a stage production, 

The 56, since adapted for radio, and to a TV film, One Day in May. Paul’s book had 


Obituaries 

the great merit of enabling those who had been involved on the day in whatever 

capacity to process their thoughts and feelings about what had happened, perhaps 

for the first time. This year’s commemoration of the disaster on 11 May, in addition 

to the important annual agenda, will offer an opportunity for people to remember 

Paul and his assistance with the grieving processes of many. In an article Paul wrote 

in 2013 shortly before City were due, somewhat incredibly, to make an appearance 

at Wembley in a major final for the second time that season, he said this: ‘Some of 

those who can remember that day 28 years ago wish they could forget. They need 

no reminding. Its aftermath is with them every day of their lives – mentally, emotionally, 

physically. For those who can just about bear the pain of thinking back, there is the 

enormous comfort that young fans keep us in their hearts, that they offer their silent 

thoughts to the injured, the bereaved and, most of all, those 56 supporters of two 

football clubs who never returned home.’ 

Robert I. Hamilton, Modern Languages (1969) 

RICHARD LIONEL HARTNOLL 

Richard was an international authority in the field of 

drug addiction epidemiology, noted also for his work in 

many related areas and for his success in influencing 

policy and practice at national and European levels. He 

was also a talented professional photographer, a loving 

husband and father, and a good friend and colleague. 

He was one of those rare, charismatic, people who are 

fun to be with, yet really touch the lives of others and 

make a difference. 

Richard was born and grew up in Bristol, the third of four children. He was a bright 

child and won a scholarship to Clifton College, where he flourished academically and 

captained the rugby team while also being competent with a gun and a fishing rod. He 

came to Queen’s in 1966 as an Exhibitioner to read Engineering, but quickly changed 

to PPP (Psychology and Philosophy). His sharp intelligence helped him to hone his 

academic skills, and his lust for life ensured that he took full advantage of all the social 

and sporting opportunities available. He was an adept practitioner of the essay crisis, 

often staying up all night to prepare for the next morning’s tutorial. Richard was a 

prominent and popular member of the College and, like many of his generation, he 

was also politically committed, though not in mainstream party politics, and was often 

to be found at demonstrations. 

Further studies at the Cambridge Institute of Criminology and at the London School 

of Economics showed him a possible career path as a research psychologist, which 

was well-suited to his determination to do socially relevant and rigorous work. He then 

followed this path for many years at prestigious London research centres including 


Birkbeck, UCH, UCL and the Institute of Psychiatry. His work at Birkbeck on the 

Drug Indicators project was particularly important and opened the door to many 

fruitful contacts with counterparts in Europe. His work on drug addiction and drug 

dependence attracted widespread interest, partly because even at an early stage of 

his career he had ensured that his research, and the work of the groups he led, had 

very practical applications. 

Obituaries 

As a young researcher Richard attended his first major international conference 

on Drugs Policy at the United Nations in Geneva in 1972. The conclusions of the 

conference clearly reflected his influence, calling for better education and services for 

marginalised groups, and promoting a thinking that later became widely known as 

the Harm Reduction approach. This was quite a change of direction from the then 

prevailing strict and punitive attitude to drug dependency, and it fitted in well with his 

voluntary work at music festivals supporting people with drug problems. 

Richard’s increasing renown – greater in Europe than at home – and his co-operative 

style led first to a sabbatical year as a research scientist in Barcelona and then to 

an invitation from the European Commission to lead the scientific preparations for 

establishing the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) 

in Portugal. He moved to Lisbon as Head of the Department of Epidemiology, and spent 

seven very productive years there, during which time he managed to continue with his 

own research and writing in such areas as drug prevalence in Madrid and Barcelona. 

As the operation of the Centre became more routine Richard was able to give more 

time to consultancy, which he thoroughly enjoyed. It enabled him to have a clear 

impact on policy while also leaving time for getting to know (and, of course, to 

photograph) interesting places in Europe and America. Richard left EMCDDA in 2002 

to focus on his consultancy activities. Among many other contributions he kept alive 

his links with EMCDDA, assisted the Swiss Government’s evaluation of new narcotics 

legislation, worked on a mid-term review of the Irish National Drugs Strategy, and 

continued working as a consultant to the Pompidou Group of the Council of Europe, 

having previously coordinated their epidemiological and training programmes. He 

wrote and published prodigiously, with seven books to his name as well as over 90 

chapters and journal articles. 

All the while Richard had been enthusiastically pursuing his interest in photography, 

often wandering round Lisbon looking for that special angle or shaft of light. He came 

to realise that keeping one foot in the world of academia was not going to give him the 

satisfaction he sought, nor the opportunity to really use his artistic talents, so he made 

the break and became a full-time photographer (Please refer to richardhartnoll.com 

for some examples of his commercial and artistic work.) This gave him more time with 

his family, and enabled him to pursue his, and their, interest in travel, always with a 

camera in hand. His work was quickly recognised, and he was encouraged to mount 

exhibitions in France, Germany and Portugal. 


Obituaries 

Richard had long suffered from breathing difficulties and chest problems, which 

he bore with fortitude, but he finally succumbed to a cancer of his lung. During the 

final months he read voraciously, with a fine view over Lisbon from his balcony and 

surrounded by a rich concert of birdsong. His last weeks were spent peacefully at 

home, surrounded by his loving family. 

Richard’s vast knowledge of drug epidemiology and policy, his inspiring artistic 

production, and his sense of humour will be missed by all who knew him, He is 

survived by his wife Dagmar and daughter Noa, and from his first marriage his children 

Kate and Sean, and grandsons Arthur and Ivan. 

Tony Kerr, PPP (1966) and Paul Willner, PPP (1966) 

MICHAEL HERMAN 

Michael Herman’s career in British intelligence began 

just after the start of the Cold War and ended just before 

the thaw. Liberated by retirement to study and lecture 

on the thrust and counterthrust of spying, Herman came 

to the conclusion that western intelligence agencies had 

largely done their job. 

At the end of his 35-year career, mainly spent in signals 

intelligence at the Government Communications 

Headquarters (GCHQ) in Cheltenham, Herman 

attempted to put right the severe lack of literature for young people entering the 

service. He had risen to the top of GCHQ by learning from his mistakes and wanted to 

pass on a rulebook of sorts. 

“We didn’t read books. For most of the time there was little serious intelligence 

literature,” he remarked in 2016 of his career at GCHQ, which was punctuated by 

a spell as secretary of the Joint Intelligence Committee in the early Seventies. “The 

prevailing attitude was that intelligence books were dangerous and discouraged.” 

As a trailblazer in the academic study of intelligence, Herman cracked open his world, 

producing a number of trusted works as a fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford and the 

founder of the Oxford Intelligence Group (OIG). 

Michael Herman was born an only child in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, in 1929 to 

Kitty and Carl Herman, who worked for the family bacon-processing business and was 

also an artist. Michael attended Scarborough High School. National Service from 1947 

took him to Egypt as a junior officer in the Intelligence Corps and his first exposure to 

signals intelligence. In 1949 he went to The Queen’s College, Oxford, to read modern 

history, graduating with first-class honours. 


His tutor was the medieval historian John Prestwich, who had spent the war in Hut 3 

of Bletchley Park, decrypting signals and releasing them to commanders in the field. 

Herman joined GCHQ in 1952 on Prestwich’s recommendation to Eric Jones, another 

veteran of Hut 3 who had recently taken over from Edward Travis as the head of 

GCHQ. Unhappy, Herman was poised to return to academia after a year and was 

persuaded to stay only after joining GCHQ’s rugby team. 

Obituaries 

Over the years he was put in charge of V Division, responsible for radar signals and other 

technical intelligence, and Z Division, responsible for intelligence policy and external 

relationships. The highlight of his time at GCHQ was running J Division in the late 

Seventies and early Eighties, which focused on the Soviet target. “I was running nearly 

1,000 people in Cheltenham and half our collection resources worldwide, and with all the 

American and other foreign contacts this entailed: the sort of job you dream about.” 

Between 1972 and 1975 Herman had been seconded to the Cabinet Office as secretary 

of the Joint Intelligence Committee. Much of his time there was spent on Northern 

Ireland; such was the threat to the British mainland that it was seen as an equal priority. 

In the last year of service Herman worked in the Cabinet Office as adviser to the 

Chief of Defence Intelligence. All the while he collected material for his first book, 

overcoming fierce resistance in Whitehall with a mixture of doggedness and charm. 

On retiring from GCHQ in 1987 he went to Nuffield College, Oxford, on a Gwilym 

Gibbon Research Fellowship. Nine years later Intelligence Power in Peace and War 

was published. 

He conceived the work as a “thoughtful textbook”. Anyone expecting the excitement 

of a spy thriller would be disappointed by the sober overview of his craft. What it did 

do was unpack a subject still considered out of bounds, arcane, increasingly technical 

and littered with acronyms, even in the days of more open government. It became 

a standard text and Herman began to lecture widely and wrote several more books. 

‘11 September: Legitimizing Intelligence’, produced after the 9-11 attacks in 2001, 

analysed the acceleration of a new intelligence paradigm: targeting “non-state”, 

“partial state” or “rogue state” entities and supporting multinational action. 

Herman gave evidence to Lord Butler’s Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass 

Destruction in 2004. His recommendation to bolster the woefully inadequate technical 

expertise in the civil service (with many seconded from other departments to deal with 

intelligence matters) was taken seriously. 

His lectures would tell the story of early postwar western surveillance techniques in the 

days before satellites with US and UK surveillance aircraft, manned and unmanned, 

being shot down by the Soviets, and how embassies, converted into something 

resembling medieval castles, became important listening posts around the world. 


Obituaries 

Herman’s latest book, Intelligence Power in Practice, will be published this year. 

A collection of essays, it also contains recollections on the development of the 

Teufelsberg SIGINT station in Berlin, which had been built on a hill made from the 

rubble of bombed buildings and was a highly successful surveillance facility, logging, 

among other things, the mass exodus of Soviet soldiers at the end of each summer to 

help with the harvest in the motherland. 

Another gripping tale in the book is the Soviet reaction to NATO’s Able Archer exercise 

in 1983, a large-scale wargaming operation. Acting on intelligence from the KGB 

double agent Oleg Gordievsky, the West was alerted to the fact that the Soviets had 

taken the exercise so seriously that they had readied their nuclear warheads. 

Herman married Ann Wedel in 1977. They had met at a sailing club near Cheltenham. 

In his eighties he would sail a single-handed catamaran. He was also a regular patron 

of the real tennis court in Oxford. 

Before his death, Herman called for intelligence to be studied in a worldwide context, 

so that different approaches could be compared. “The modern challenge is for 

intelligence to support international co-operation,” he said, “while at the same time 

developing international ‘rules of the game’.” Michael Herman, intelligence expert, was 

born on June 1, 1929. He died of frailty of old age on February 12, 2021, aged 91. 

Originally printed in The Times and reproduced here with kind permission 

ALLEN HILL 

Credit: Veronika Vernier 

Allen Hill dedicated his life to scientific discovery in 

Chemistry. His crowning achievement was the discovery 

of a method to measure blood glucose, revolutionising 

diabetes measurement via the blood sugar pen tests 

used by millions today 

Allen was born and raised in Belfast. His father was a 

shop-owner and choir-master and his mother a full-time 

mother. As a child Allen sang in the church choir and 

was keen on rugby and cricket. He studied chemistry 

in Belfast at Queen’s University. After graduating he came to Oxford’s Department of 

Chemistry in 1962 and became a Fellow of Queen’s College in 1965. 

On a lecture tour visit to Hungary in the 1960s he met his wife-to-be Boglarka Hill, a 

PhD student of pharmacy at the time. They fell in love, and Allen returned to Hungary 

a year later to marry her (her family required him to first learn at least 100 words in 

Hungarian!). In 2017 they celebrated 50 years of marriage. 


His work at Oxford University in the early 1980s paved the way for the development 

of electronic blood glucose sensors which came to market in 1989 and which have 

revolutionised the management of diabetes globally. He was fond of pointing out how 

the idea for the breakthrough in this work came over knocking around ideas with his 

students over a post-work pint in a local pub. 

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1990 and he received the prestigious 

Royal Medal of the Royal Society in 2010. His work in bringing the glucose sensor 

to market in the 1980s also paved the way for many subsequent spin-outs from the 

University. 

Obituaries 

In addition to his work as a research chemist Allen Hill was an inspiring tutor and he 

will be remembered for his warmth and good humour by former students. Both his 

family and former students and colleagues will remember him for his charm, quick wit, 

and mischievous sense of humour. 

Outside of work Allen was a talented gardener and would like to spend weekends 

applying his scientific rigour to his love of growing flowers. Allen delighted in 

introducing his family and others to new experiences, be it food or travel, and was a 

generous and loving father. 

He is survived by his wife, three children and two grandchildren. 

Roderick and Natalie Hill 

ADRIAN MUNDY 

Adrian William Stenhouse Mundy was born on 20 

November 1935 at Famagusta in Cyprus. The Mundy 

name came from his English father but his mother was 

Armenian and from a family numbering at least one 

illustrious legal practitioner in Sir Vahe Bairamian, Chief 

Justice of Sierra Leone, Judge of Appeal in Nigeria and 

the first Armenian to be knighted. So, opting to study 

law came with something for my uncle, Adrian, to live 

up to. 

He certainly rose well to the challenge, leaving school, St Paul’s in Hammersmith, to 

take up a National Service commission in the Royal Signals of Corps before his Oxford 

matriculation in 1956. The Signals had given him the opportunity to travel, to improve 

his language skills and to explore the potential in the technology of the day. This last 

experience (manipulating anything mechanical) remained a source of satisfaction to 

him for the rest of his life and was an expression of his practical and enquiring nature. 

His interest in making things work was coupled with dexterity: in his younger days he 


was very able with both boxing gloves and the violin (not at the same time – although I 

wouldn’t have put it past him to try). 

Obituaries 

Once at Queen’s, Adrian studied jurisprudence under John Kaye (as did I some 25 

years later), relishing the Latin parts of the syllabus and the opportunity to test his 

logical and rational mind against the facts and judgments in the long case lists. His 

dedication to academic study was rewarded with a First. 

He qualified as a Solicitor and, after a couple of early roles, took a job in the office of 

the Solicitor of Inland Revenue in Somerset House. From this point until his retirement, 

he worked for large organizations specialising in tax including Esso (where he was 

posted to the US) and the merchant bank Samuel Montagu & Co. He returned to 

the Treasury Solicitor’s department at the Inland Revenue for his final role; here at 

Somerset House, he was able to enjoy both the historic building and its proximity to 

the cultural life of the city. 

Law was a lifelong passion and he collected several thousand law books. After officially 

retiring from employed practice, he continued his legal career privately, although 

this may have been an excuse to retain access to the Law Society library for his 

researches. In a wine bar late at night after a few glasses of red wine he would lower 

his voice, check if anyone was listening and mention the law book he was writing on a 

subject that no one had yet properly covered. Sadly, this was never completed. 

Live performance and creativity was something that he fed on to the end of his days, 

together with other avenues for enjoyment more numerous than is sensible to mention 

here. A smattering would include books and more books, strong coffee, tobacco in a 

pipe, observation and keeping a note of things observed, pubs and other gatherings 

where conversation thrived, anything made of cast iron (when I arrived at Queen’s he 

gave me a substantial, cast iron mantel clock because he thought it appropriate to 

my newly acquired student status!), hoarding through viewing disposal as betrayal, ink 

and mixing ink, the pursuit of the perfect pen, reducing anything to its essence, finding 

value always, keeping things going, not making a fuss. 

He displayed many of the best qualities of his generation, being frugal but generous, 

patient and durable, independent but not selfish, self-reliant but involved, dignified 

but not clinging to the formal, not materialistic but loving materials, balancing a 

serious turn of mind with the understanding that to play is essential. Sane, sound and 

sanguine. 

Adrian spent his retirement years happily in Sussex, not least in the Clown pub in 

Hastings, where regulars remember him for his enthusiasm for dancing and practical 

advice. He died of pancreatic cancer in London on 11th August 2020 after a short 

illness. He is much missed by son, Christopher, and by his wider family. 

Edwina Towson, Jurisprudence (1981), with help from Chris Mundy 


Credit: Veronika Vernier 

PETER NEUMANN 

For my father, Peter Neumann, who has died aged 79, 

two things were the overriding loves of his life: family 

and mathematics. 

Peter continued the mathematical tradition of his parents, 

Bernhard Neumann and Hanna (née von Caemmerer), 

both professors of mathematics. Born in Oxford and 

raised in Hull, where he attended Hymers College, 

Peter returned to Oxford, to Queen’s College, as an 

undergraduate in 1959. He remained there ever after. 

Obituaries 

At Oxford he met Sylvia Bull, a fellow mathematics undergraduate. They married in 

1962, before he graduated. Peter became a Fellow of Queen’s, and he and Sylvia 

established a family life in Oxford, where I and my sister and brother were born. Peter 

was a familiar sight cycling from home to Queen’s and the Mathematical Institute, and 

would sometimes disappear for a long cycle ride, claiming that that was when his best 

mathematical thinking was done. 

Peter’s research covered areas of algebra, in particular group theory, and the history 

of algebra. His own research led to his DPhil and later DSc and he supervised almost 

40 DPhil students. Many students remained great friends. Peter enjoyed conferences 

abroad, lecturing in German – picked up from his parents and other mathematicians 

– as well as English. He took great pleasure in hosting gatherings at home, and in 

college, sometimes musical, playing his violin or viola – learned at home and at school, 

and continued throughout his life. 

Peter retired in 2008 after over 40 years of college and university teaching. He had 

held numerous voluntary posts in mathematics and its education for the London 

Mathematical Society, the Mathematical Association and the British Society for the 

History of Mathematics. He was the first chair of the UK Mathematics Trust. For 

services to mathematics education he was made an OBE in 2008. 

In retirement he continued teaching, lecturing and training new lecturers, but he 

was also able to improve his French and to spend time researching another lifelong 

interest, which led to the publication of The Mathematical Writings of Evariste Galois, 

published for the bicentenary of Galois’ birth, in 2011. 

A stroke in 2018 limited him physically. He moved to a care home, but remained devoted 

to Sylvia, with whom he collaborated daily in person or over Facetime on the Guardian 

cryptic crossword. He is survived by Sylvia, their children, Jenny, James and me, by 10 

grandchildren and a great-grandson, and by his siblings, Irene, Walter, Barbara and Daniel. 

David Neumann, originally published in The Guardian (Copyright Guardian News & 

Media Ltd 2021) 


JOHN OKELL 

Obituaries 

A gentle giant of Myanmar studies has left us. John 

Okell died painlessly at home. At the time of his death, 

John was perhaps the English-language world’s preeminent 

teacher of the Burmese language. He stood on 

the shoulders of other giants, but his many textbooks, 

dictionaries and early adoptions of new technology, 

such as publishing learning materials on personal 

cassette tapes, CDs and MP3s and pioneering the 

Avalaser Burmese computer font, uniquely enabled 

and opened the study of Burmese to thousands of 

new learners. John also created the most widely used romanisation scheme for 

transliterating the Burmese language into the Roman alphabet. 

John’s name graces dozens of acknowledgements sections in theses, articles, books, 

and other publications on Myanmar. He was a true denizen of the scholarly community 

as well as a much-loved linguist, teacher, friend, father, and husband. Simply put, 

everyone studying Myanmar knew John or wanted to know John. He showed enviable 

generosity in helping his friends, colleagues, and students and was deft in assisting all 

learners of Burmese in achieving their particular goals. 

John was also Chairman of the Britain-Burma Society, where he was widely respected 

as a fair and generous host. I remember at one of the Society’s sessions in 2017 

which premiered a documentary stridently critical of the military regime, John patiently 

listened to the many complaints from elderly British members of the Society who 

had had their family’s assets expropriated or nationalised. He was always tactful and 

understood deeply the humanity and sadness of the people living in Burma, who were 

the real victims of the slide into poverty that the country underwent during the first 

40 years of his teaching career. John was committed to teaching Burmese to help 

Myanmar reconnect with the outside world, whenever it should become politically 

feasible once more, which it did eventually. 

John first began studying Burmese in 1959 at SOAS, University of London under 

Saya Hla Pe and others. He was sent to Burma in September 1960, where he 

quickly moved out from his assigned university dormitory to a homestay arrangement 

in Amarapura. John also lived in a monastery for a time, in a rural village out past 

Shwebo and he even accompanied a theatre troupe for a month, performing in 

Bhamo, Indawgyi, and Mogaung. He roamed to Dawei, Sittwe, and Inle Lake, and 

came back to SOAS a year later speaking fluent Burmese. Being made first Lecturer 

and Senior Lecturer there, he was eventually hired as Professor of Burmese. John 

taught or was connected to SOAS in some capacity until his death. 

While he did “officially retire” at age 65, John continued publishing on Burmese and 

teaching for the British government and elsewhere. 


John also taught classes in Chiang Mai, Thailand for several years, and beginning in 

2009, he started teaching intensive courses in Yangon, Myanmar, which he continued 

for eleven more years. John would make an annual remark about the absurdity that 

he, a British person, was still being invited to teach Burmese in Myanmar, but there 

was an insatiable and growing demand by foreigners living in Myanmar for John’s 

inimitable in-person pedagogy. 

Obituaries 

In 2018, the British Embassy in Myanmar held an event celebrating the tenth 

anniversary of the in-country Bamazaga Burmese intensive language course. John and 

his co-teacher Justin Watkins described the early years of running the course, when 

Myanmar was starting to “open up” but it was by no means clear that the radical notion 

of British linguists teaching Burmese in Myanmar would be tolerated. The surreptitious 

small class first sat in an improvised environment above an art studio in downtown 

Yangon, before moving to the French Institute when the course became official. 

The impacts of COVID-19 meant the 2020 course had to move online. John still 

participated as a teacher from his London home but unfortunately fell ill during the 

first week in June, only two months before he passed away. John was a committed 

teacher. He taught Burmese right up until he was literally physically no longer able to. 

In 2016 John was awarded an honorary doctorate from SOAS. In 2014 he was 

deservedly honoured as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to 

UK/Burma relations. An incredibly humble person, John was never comfortable with 

these designations. I asked him several times over the last five years if I could officially 

interview him for the ANU Myanmar Research Centre’s podcast Myanmar Musings. He 

always politely refused. “I’m really not that interesting,” he would say. 

Well, John, the hundreds and hundreds of people that have had the pleasure of being 

touched by your example and conduct, in Myanmar and all over the world, must 

disagree with you there. 

You not only led a phenomenally interesting life, but you have had an incredible, 

indispensable impact on Myanmar studies since you first set foot in Amarapura in 

1960. Your humility, friendliness, openness and patience, your lessons, articles, 

textbooks and – simply put – your example, will remain with all of us who loved you, 

for as long as we shall continue to live. 

Luke Corbin – originally printed in Frontier 


ZBIGNIEW PELCZYNSKI 

Obituaries 

As a politics don at Pembroke College, Oxford, in the 

early 1960s, Zbigniew Pelczynski had the opportunity 

to meet many distinguished visitors. One was Harold 

Macmillan, the prime minister and chancellor of the 

university, who visited the college to open a new quad. 

Pelczynski found himself alone with him and asked about 

the recent “night of long knives”, when Macmillan had 

sacked a third of his cabinet. He was a politics don, after 

all. A bored prime minister ignored the question and 

asked his questioner to mind his glass of wine while he went for a lavatory break. He did 

not return. A crushed Pelczynski was later told that Macmillan would almost certainly 

have stuck around for the conversation if only he had known about Pelczynski’s 

experience of fighting as a partisan in the Polish uprising in Warsaw in September 1944. 

His first-year students, too, might have been on the edge of their seats if they had 

known that at their age Pelczynski had not been talking about politics but living it, with 

a machinegun in hand. 

When the teenage Pelczynski’s regiment of the Polish home army fell into Nazi hands he 

could hardly have anticipated he would survive the ordeal; still less that he would spend 

his long life in Britain, including more than 30 years as a don at Pembroke; or that as a 

social entrepreneur he would help in Poland’s transition to democracy in the 1980s. 

Zbigniew Pelczynski, who was born in 1925 in Grodzisk Mazowiecki some 20 miles 

from Warsaw, had joined the Polish underground aged 18 and within a few months 

was fighting to drive out the occupying troops. The uprising was a disaster and most 

of Warsaw was razed by the Germans. 

His group was trapped in a sewer and as they emerged through a manhole they were 

seized by German soldiers. They were lucky. Others got out through a different exit 

and were immediately shot. 

He spent a few months as a German PoW and after the liberation served under British 

command in Germany in the first armoured division of the Polish army. He landed 

in Britain in January 1946, shortly after his 20th birthday, and it was soon clear that 

the Soviet Union’s grip on his native country made a return to Poland an unattractive 

prospect. Aware of a strong Polish presence in Scotland, he learnt English, enrolled as 

a student at St Andrews University and emerged with a First in Politics and Economics. 

He opted to study for a DPhil at The Queen’s College, Oxford, complementing his 

student grant with short-term lectureships at Trinity, Merton and Balliol. Despite 

his insecure tenure and inadequate supervision of his thesis topic (few dons were 


interested in Hegel then) Pelczynski was enchanted by Oxford. The personal freedom 

of the dons and the students and minimal regulation embodied his idea of civil society. 

Many years later he was to promote these ideas in Poland. 

Having completed his doctorate in 1956, he gained in the following year a lectureship 

and fellowship at Pembroke. Known by a bewildering number of nicknames – 

Zbyshek, Zbig, ZAP, or Pelch – the new fellow was handsome and charming, and his 

accent brought a touch of the exotic. 

Obituaries 

In 1960 a friend tried to find partners for Pelczynski and his colleague, the politics don 

David Butler, both in their thirties, and arranged for them to join a theatre visit with two 

Oxford-educated women who worked at the BBC. The thinking was that Pelczynski 

might be best suited to Marilyn Evans and Butler to Denise Cremona. It did not work 

out like that as Pelczynski ended up courting the Italian-born Denise and Butler 

went off with Marilyn. Yet the evening was a success and both men made enduring 

marriages lasting, in aggregate, more than 100 years. 

Pelczynski married Denise in 1961. They had a son, Jan, a graphic designer and 

photographer, and two daughters, Wanda, a medical researcher, and Tonton (born 

Antonia) a product designer. 

He was a dedicated teacher and generous in making time for students, but if the oneto-one 

tutorial system at Oxford suited his style, lecturing to large groups did not, as 

he found out when he took visiting professorships in Canada and the United States. 

He tutored students with boundless enthusiasm, sometimes while walking them 

around the quads. In turn they retained loyalty to him when, as many did, they went on 

to senior positions in public life. 

One of his students was the future prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban, who 

studied at Oxford for several months. President Clinton recalled, when interviewed in 

1992 about his period as a Rhodes scholar 23 years earlier: “One term I had a tutor at 

Pembroke, named Zbigniew Pelczynski. Extraordinary fellow; I loved him; I thought he 

was terrific.” 

His writings on Hegel, often misunderstood in the early years, did much to revive 

interest in the German philosopher among Anglo-American theorists. His book of 

essays, Hegel’s Political Philosophy, was published in 1970 to mark the bicentenary of 

Hegel’s birth. There followed an edited book (with John Gray), Conceptions of Liberty 

in Political Philosophy. His work led from the 1970s to many visiting professorships. 

Outside the classroom he increasingly became a man of affairs. He was a driving 

force behind the Oxford colleges’ hospitality scheme for Polish scholars, which made 

facilities and helpful contacts available to academics. He persuaded the communist 

authorities (Poland was still under martial law) to allow scholars, including some of the 

leading dissidents, to travel to Oxford. 


Obituaries 

For many, it was their first visit to the West, and in its first ten years the scheme 

brought some 450 Polish academics to Oxford. The impact of the scheme was 

recognised by the government and by the American-Hungarian philanthropist George 

Soros, who asked Pelczynski to organise an equally successful scheme for one-year 

graduate scholarships from all eastern European countries. 

With the victory of Solidarity in the elections of 1989, Pelczynski’s services were in 

demand in London as a member of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s advisory 

board for the Know-How Fund for eastern Europe, and in Poland as an adviser to 

the government. The years following his retirement in 1993, spent in Barton-on-the- 

Heath, Warwickshire, remained productive as he reinforced his ties with Poland. His 

networking skills came to the fore in setting up a school for social and political leaders. 

It helped young Poles to develop organising skills in workshops and practical activities. 

In his late years he received a succession of awards and honorary degrees in Polish 

universities, and a visit to Pembroke by the Polish prime minister. He was also 

appointed OBE. 

After Denise died in 2013 he was cared for by his son Jan. Although blind and less 

mobile because of spinal stenosis, he remained intellectually alert. 

Friends and colleagues often wondered where his primary attachments lay, to Oxford 

or to Poland. He became a British citizen in 1952 when it was clear that he could 

not revisit Poland, and was intensely committed to his adopted country. Yet despite 

refusing high diplomatic positions offered by the post-communist regime in Warsaw, 

he never lost his identification with Poland. Perhaps the best summary of his outlook 

came in a speech by a British ambassador to Warsaw who once introduced him as 

the “200 per cent man” – 100 per cent British and 100 per cent Polish. 

Zbigniew Pelczynski, OBE, academic, was born on December 29, 1925. He died of 

prostate cancer on June 22, 2021, aged 95 

Originally printed in The Times and reproduced here with kind permission 


HELEN SOWERBY 

Helen Sowerby grew up in Cumbria, the oldest of 

five children of John and Anne Sowerby. She was 

academically gifted and excelled at St Patrick’s RC 

Primary School, Workington and St Anne’s School, 

Windermere. 

Obituaries 

To the great pride of her parents, she became the 

first person in her family to attend university, gaining 

her place at Queen’s to study history on her second 

attempt, the only woman of twelve historians in the 

1984 matriculation year. Helen loved her time at Queen’s and was a larger-than-life 

character, principled, outspoken and forthright, with a formidable intellect. She threw 

herself into college life and was a member of the Ball Committee and the Women’s 1st 

VIII that won ‘blades’ in Torpids 1986. She was ideally cast as Lady Bracknell in the 

college production of ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’. She met her future husband 

Steve Thomas in the first term and formed many lifelong friendships. 

Both Francophiles, Helen and Steve passed through Paris on the last leg of their 

honeymoon and decided to move there for a year before Helen took up legal studies. 

One happy, bohemian year became two, with the arrival of their first child. Back in the 

UK, Helen qualified as a barrister with one of the top marks in the country in bar finals. 

After pupillage she worked as a solicitor for leading divorce lawyers Mishcon de Reya, 

but she was drawn back to live in the Lake District, near her parents, and the family 

moved to Windermere where Steve ran a bed and breakfast business and Helen found 

her passion working in childcare law for Cumbria Children’s Services. Leisurely visits 

from old college friends – with a little walking and much drinking and laughter – were 

highlights of their life there. Helen was greatly respected for her legal acumen and for 

her tendency to ask and pursue the difficult questions, a characteristic that earned her 

the nickname ‘the Rottweiler’. When her marriage ended after 21 years, she moved 

her job – and later herself – to Manchester. 

Helen was diagnosed with multiple myeloma late in 2017. Sadly, it turned out to be 

unexpectedly aggressive and resistant to treatments and she faced a worsening 

prognosis with remarkable stoicism. Despite gruelling treatment schedules and 

increasing physical limitations, she was determined to make the most of her remaining 

time, creating memorable experiences with family and friends. This included revisiting 

old haunts in Paris with her children, meeting up with old friends at the Queen’s 

Summer Garden Party, having been disappointed not to be able to attend the 2018 

Boar’s Head Gaudy, and travelling by sleeper train, with wheelchair, to Tuscany for 

the annual family holiday that she would never miss. She attended Old Trafford for 

England and Lancashire cricket matches when she could and continued to work 

in the job that she loved until late in her illness. She became increasingly active in 

campaigning for causes that she believed in. As a passionate Remainer, she took 


part in marches and was a vociferous campaigner against Brexit. She also used her 

regular enforced inactivity to become active on Twitter where she went by the name of 

ManchesterPedant, a reference to her intolerance of poor grammar and nomenclature. 

Obituaries 

Helen was in London for a planned trip to the Royal Opera House with her niece when 

she became acutely unwell. She died the same day in University College Hospital, 

surrounded by her family. 

Old Members from Helen’s time at Queen’s gathered in August 2021 for a memorial 

lunch, sharing memories and paying tribute to our dear friend who was a unique 

character, a force of nature and an intellectual warrior who will not be forgotten. 

Helen is buried in Salterbeck Cemetery, Workington, next to her beloved father and her 

brother Johnny, who was tragically killed in a road accident in 1981. She leaves her 

mother Anne, sisters Jane, Victoria and Alex and children Frank, Joe, Stan and Angel. 

Katherine Irving and Steve Thomas 

ERIC WETHERELL 

My father Eric Wetherell died in the early hours of 31 

January 2021, one month after his 95th birthday. He 

was a remarkable all-round musician, a fine composer, 

writer and biographer, well-respected conductor, jazz 

musician, French horn player, sometime filmmaker, as 

well as a dearly loved husband, father, and grandfather. 

He died peacefully and with great courage. 

In the days following his death, I spent time looking at 

old photos, letters, and recordings. Leafing through 

the 178 pages of memoirs he left behind has been enormously comforting. His 

impressions of the musical world live on after he is gone, and we can hear his voice 

distinctly through these memoirs, via his classic economy of language and effortlessly 

entertaining storytelling. 

He came up to Queen’s in 1945 from Carlisle Grammar School, via a post he had 

held in his late teens as assistant organist at Carlisle Cathedral. Originally arriving with 

a history scholarship, he changed to the music course after a year, and the College 

kindly enabled him nevertheless to retain his scholarship. 

Dad went on to train further at the Royal College of Music. During the course of a 

career spanning well over half a century, he held various positions which included 

BBC Radio 3 producer, principal conductor of the BBC Northern Ireland Orchestra, 

and a staff conductor at Welsh National Opera. His profound enthusiasm for jazz also 


led to a close involvement with the Welsh Jazz Orchestra and the BBC Big Band, for 

whom he both arranged and produced. He was a regular conductor and arranger for 

the popular Friday Night is Music Night on BBC Radio 2 in the early 1970s. In the late 

1950s he was a repetiteur at ROH Covent Garden, where he came in close contact 

with such figures as Britten, Walton, Solti, Giulini, Sargeant, and Kempe. He had 

begun his career as a French horn player in the LPO, under Thomas Beecham. One 

of my abiding memories of him as a musician will be that he was always interested 

in really ‘anything excellent’. This might be a Haydn symphony, a Gesualdo madrigal, 

Stravinsky’s neoclassicism, Beatles song, Ella Fitzgerald, the indigenous musicians 

he heard whilst on holiday in Botswana or a brand-new song by current digital jazz 

wunderkind Jacob Collier. 

Obituaries 

He had an enormous passion also for cinema and an encyclopaedic knowledge of 

films he had seen, and read about, often decades earlier. His huge library of books 

about music and film also contained a typically wide range of topics that interested 

him – history, psychology, philosophy, criminology, languages, etymology. Words 

fascinated him greatly and he and my mother Elizabeth connected over their common 

love of words and a shared passion for the ridiculous. Dad’s passion for language 

and his unending capacity for silliness led to such family in-jokes as his renaming the 

1930s Cole Porter song ‘When They Begin the Beguine’ as ‘When They Commence 

the Commence’. 

He officially retired from the BBC in 1985, and so began a new period of productivity in 

his career, including frequent composing work, commissions to write the biographies 

of various British musical figures, regular performances with his jazz group, and making 

his own documentary films. He continued composing until the end of his life, writing 

two operas in his eighties and even still writing just three months before he died. 

One of Dad’s happiest pastimes, other than music and cinema, was to tell the wealth 

of tales of his time in the music business, many of which became the backbone of his 

memoirs. Even though church music by no means formed a part of his longer-term 

career, vocal music and writing for voices was greatly important to him. After all, back 

in Carlisle Cathedral was where he had started his professional musical life. He had 

this to say about his first impressions of Oxford, when coming up for interview in 1944: 

‘I crossed the road from my hotel and found myself in Magdalen College. It was a cold 

winter’s evening, at 6 pm, already dark, and the chapel was lit only by the candles on 

the choir desks. I realised I was listening to choral singing of a standard I had never 

experienced. In a trice I had discovered what Oxford was about; and the magic of that 

evening and the sense of a thousand years of history have never left me.’ 

Anna Wetherell, Merton College (1999) 


BENEFACTIONS 

Benefactions 

We are delighted to acknowledge the generosity of those donors who have 

given a gift to Queen’s in Financial Year 2020-21 (1 August 2020 – 31 July 2021). 

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. 

QS: Queen’s Society member 

Eglesfield Benefactors 

Anonymous x6 

Dr Brian Savory (1951) 

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Philippa Benefactors 

Anonymous x1 

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Anonymous x29 

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Mr Richard Hopkins (1984) QS 

Dr Katherine Irving (1984) QS 

Mrs Rachel Lawson (1984) QS 

Mr Robert Lawson (1984) QS 

Mrs Liz Patel (1984) QS 

Mr Tiku Patel (1984) QS 

Dr Jan Pullen (1984) QS 

Mr Steve Thomas (1984) QS 

Mr John Turner (1984) QS 

Dr Udayan Chakrabarti (1985) QS 

Mr Steve Evans (1985) QS 

Mr Ed Kemp-Luck (1985) QS 

Dr Philippa Moore (1985) QS 

Revd Matthew Pollard (1985) QS 

Dr Ioanna Psalti (1985) 

Mr Adrian Ratcliffe (1985) QS 

Mr Martin Riley (1985) QS 

Mr Juan Sepulveda (1985) 

Mrs Julie Smyth (1985) QS 

Major (Retd) Matthew Christmas (1986) QS 

Ms Jude Dobbyn (1986) QS 

Mr Steve Jones (1986) QS 


Mr Simon Miller (1986) QS 

Mr Andrew Mitchell (1986) QS 

Mr Gerald Rix (1986) QS 

Mrs Cathy Sanderson (1986) QS 

Dr Susan Schamp (1986) QS 

Mr Rob Tims (1986) QS 

Mr Charles Adams (1987) 

Mr Robert Burgess (1987) QS 

Dr Richard Fynes (1987) QS 

Mrs Vikki Hall (1987) QS 

Mr Mark Highman (1987) QS 

Mrs Sarah Kucera (1987) QS 

Mr John Morgan (1987) QS 

Ms Susan Sack (1987) 

Mr Philip Sanderson (1987) QS 

Mrs Rachel Thorn (1987) QS 

Mr John Bigham (1988) QS 

Dr Andrew Carpenter (1988) 

Mrs Hilary Corroon (1988) QS 

Miss Celestine Eaton (1988) QS 

Mr Tim Grayson (1988) QS 

Dr Jules Hargreaves (1988) QS 

Mr Alastair Kennis (1988) QS 

Dr Adrian Tang (1988) QS 

Dr Susan Ferraro (1989) QS 

Mr Ben Green (1989) QS 

Prof Blair Hoxby (1989) 

Mr Jim Kaye (1989) QS 

Ms Hetty Meyric Hughes (1989) QS 

Mr Marc Paul (1989) 

Mr Matthew Perret (1989) QS 

Mr Ian Tollett (1989) QS 

Mrs Penny Crouzet (1990) QS 

Mr Jason Hargreaves (1990) QS 

Mr Keith Hatton (1990) QS 

Mrs Morag Mylne (1990) 

Mr Fabio Quaradeghini (1990) QS 

Miss Angela Winnett (1990) QS 

Mr Nik Everatt (1991) QS 

Mr Paul Gannon (1991) QS 

Mrs Kay Goddard (1991) QS 

Ms Jess Matthew (1991) 

Dr Christopher Meaden (1991) QS 

Dr Kausikh Nandi (1991) QS 

Mr Adam Potter (1991) QS 

Mr Stephen Robinson (1991) QS 

Dr Christoph Rojahn (1991) 

Dr Vicki Saward (1991) QS 

Dr John Sorabji (1991) QS 

Mr Dev Tanna (1991) QS 

Miss Sarah Witt (1991) QS 

Mr Jonathan Woolf (1991) QS 

Dr Jason Zimba (1991) QS 

Mr Jonathan Buckley (1992) QS 

Dr Rebecca Emerson (1992) QS 

Prof Mike Hayward (1992) QS 

Mr James Holdsworth (1992) QS 

Mrs Claire O’Shaughnessy (1992) QS 

Dr Nia Taylor (1992) QS 

Mr Ian Brown (1993) QS 

Mr Matt Keen (1993) QS 

Mrs Jenny Kelly (1993) QS 

Mr Matt Lawrence (1993) QS 

Mr Said Mohamed (1993) QS 

Mr Neil Pabari (1993) QS 

Mr Peter Sidwell (1993) QS 

Mrs Helen von der Osten (1993) QS 

Ms Christine Cairns (1994) QS 

Dr Jo Nettleship (1994) 

Prof Tim Riley (1994) QS 

Mrs Clare Stebbing (1994) QS 

Mr Nick Stebbing (1994) QS 

Dr Francis Tang (1994) 

Ms Claire Taylor (1994) QS 

Mr Alistair Willey (1994) QS 

Mr Tim Claremont (1995) QS 

Mr Tim Horrocks (1995) QS 

Mr Torsten Reil (1995) QS 

Mr Adam Silver (1995) QS 

Mrs Georgina Simmons (1995) QS 

Mr Jeremy Steele (1995) QS 

Mr Llyr Williams (1995) 

Dr Gavin Beard (1996) QS 

Mrs Helen Geary (1996) QS 

Mr Alex Grant (1996) QS 

Dr Helen Munn (1996) QS 

Mr David Smallbone (1996) QS 

Dr Jonathan Smith (1996) QS 

Mrs Rachel Taylor (1996) QS 

Mr James Bowling (1997) QS 

Benefactions 


Benefactions 

Dr William Goundry (1997) QS 

Mr Endaf Kerfoot (1997) QS 

Mr Gareth Powell (1997) QS 

Mr James Taylor (1997) QS 

Mr Gonçalo Abecasis (1998) 

Ms Jennifer Armson (1998) 

Dr Martin Birch (1998) QS 

Miss Marie Farrow (1998) QS 

Mrs Nishi Grose (1998) QS 

Mr Matt Henderson (1998) QS 

Prof. Owen Hodkinson (1998) 

Mr James Marsden (1998) QS 

Miss Jacqueline Perez (1998) QS 

Mr Charlie Sutters (1998) QS 

Dr Premila Webster (1998) QS 

Mrs Kate Cooper (1999) QS 

Miss Kelly Furber (1999) QS 

Mr Douglas Gordon (1999) QS 

Mr Jim Hancock (1999) QS 

Mr James Levett (1999) QS 

Mr Jim Luke (1999) QS 

Mr Dan Lynn (1999) QS 

Mr Gareth Marsh (1999) QS 

Mr Michael McClelland (1999) QS 

Mr Mark Bowman (2000) QS 

Dr Cecily Burrill (2000) 

Mr Rory Clarke (2000) QS 

Dr Katherine Dammerman (2000) 

Dr Brandon Dammerman (2000) 

Miss Cécile Défossé (2000) QS 

Dr Claire Hodgskiss (2000) QS 

Mrs Holly Pirnie (2000) QS 

Mr Richard Roberts (2000) 

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 

Ms Alex Mayson (2001) QS 

Dr Matthew Osborne (2001) QS 

Mrs Cassie Smith (2001) QS 

Miss Elinor Taylor (2001) QS 

Mrs Zoe Wright (2001) QS 

Mr Nikhil Aggarwal (2002) QS 

Mrs Kathryn Aggarwal (2002) QS 

Mr Matt Allen (2002) QS 

Mrs Fran Baker (2002) QS 

Miss Sarah Berman (2002) QS 

Mr Iain Drennan (2002) 

Ms Hannah Drennan (2002) 

Mrs Anushka Herath (2002) QS 

Dr Fumiaki Ito (2002) 

Miss Ava Lau (2002) 

Mr Tom Pearson (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 

Ms Ling Zhao (2002) QS 

Dr Jessica Blair (2003) QS 

Ms Sarah Buckley (2003) 

Mr Ahmet Feridun (2003) QS 

Mrs Olivia Haslam (2003) QS 

Dr Jon Hazlehurst (2003) QS 

Ms Rebecca Patton (2003) QS 

Dr Enrique Sacau (2003) QS 

Mr Dane Satterthwaite (2003) QS 

Dr Guy Williams (2003) QS 

Ms Claire Harrop (2004) QS 

Dr Philippa Roberts (2004) QS 

Dr Tony Thompson-Starkey (2004) QS 

Mr Daniel Shepherd (2005) QS 

Mr Ho Yi Wong (2005) QS 

Dr Matthew Hart (2006) QS 

Mr George Kanelos (2006) QS 

Corporal Tom Whyte (2006) QS 

Miss Lauriane Anderson Mair (2007) QS 

Dr Caitlin Hartigan (2007) 

Mr Tony Hu (2007) QS 

Mr Matthew Watson (2007) QS 

Dr Emma Adlard (2008) QS 

Mr Nicholas Burns (2008) QS 

Miss Katherine Steiner (2008) QS 

Dr Monica Merlin (2009) 

Mrs Maude Tham (2009) QS 


Mr Vincent Boucher (2010) QS 

Mr James Dinsdale (2010) QS 

Mr Chris Lippard (2010) 

Mr Tom Mead (2010) QS 

Miss Emily Shercliff (2010) 

Miss Amy Down (2011) QS 

Mr Tom Nichols (2011) QS 

Mr William Kroeger (2016) 

Mr Kenichi Oka (2017) QS 

Mrs Caroline Howard (2019) 

The College is grateful to the following Old Members and Friends who gave 

legacy gifts to Queen’s: 

Mr John Whitehead (1931) 

Cmdr Martin Richards (1940) 

Dr Francis John Long (1942) 

Mr Thomas Acton (1943) 

Mr Anthony Gwilliam (1948) 

Mr John Pearson (1948) 

Mr Anthony Petty (1948) 

Mr Charles Peter Lynam (1949) 

Mr John Douglas Peters (1950) 

Dr Barry Hoffbrand (1952) 

Mr Robert Kent (1953) 

Dr David Littlewood (1968) 

Syed Jonathan Zeshaun Ali (1987) 

Mrs Ann Henn 

Benefactions 

We are grateful to receive support from the following people within the College: 

Prof John Baines QS 

Prof Sir John Ball QS 

Dr Claire Craig QS 

Dr Charles Crowther QS 

Mr Chris Diacopoulos QS 

Dr Justin Jacobs QS 

Dr Ludovic Phalippou QS 

Queen’s College Senior College Fellows 

The College thanks the following Friends for their support: 

Mrs Helena Cuthbert QS 

Mr David French QS 

Mrs Moira Harrison 

Mr Henry Head 

Mrs Christine Mason QS 

Ms Susan Poad 

Most Revd Peter Riola 

Prof Dana Scott 

Mr Eric Wooding QS 

The following trusts, foundations, and companies have supported the College 

directly, or through matched giving schemes with Old Members: 

Amazon UK 

Austrian Cultural Forum 

Embassy of the Federal Republic of 

Germany in London 

G F Hamilton Trust & Donal Morphy 

Charitable Trust 

Institut français du Royaume-Uni 

Late Habibur Rahman, Late Rokeya 

Khanum and Professor A H M 

Shamsur Rahman Welfare Trust 

Piper Jaffray 

Sannox Trust 

Swiss Embassy 

The Elba Foundation 

The Waverley Fund 

Ward Family Fund 


INFOR MATION 

Information 

College Record 2022 

Please submit your news and details of any awards or publications for inclusion in 

the 2022 College Record here: https://www.queens.ox.ac.uk/college-record-2022. 

Alternatively, you can send this information by post to the Old Members’ Office in 

College. The deadline for entries is 1 August 2022. 

You are also invited to submit obituaries of Old Members. Please send these to the 

Old Members’ Office. 

Visiting the College 

Old Members are welcome to visit at any time, except during the Christmas closure 

period. Please present yourself at the Lodge with an item of ID (preferably your 

University alumni card) so that the Porter on duty can check your name against the list 

of Old Members. Advance notice, particularly if you’d like to visit the Library, is preferable 

although not essential, but if you are planning to bring a group (other than your 

immediate family) you will need to arrange this in advance. The Old Members’ Office can 

assist you with your visit: call 01865 279217 or email oldmembers@queens.ox.ac.uk. 

If you require level access, please telephone the Lodge on 01865 279120. 



Degree ceremonies 

MAs can only be taken by BA graduates 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. 

Information 

Transcripts and certificates 

If you 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, then all the information 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/degree-conferrals. 

Updating your details 

If you have moved or changed your contact details, please complete the online update 

form: www.queens.ox.ac.uk/update-my-details or email oldmembers@queens.ox.ac.uk. 

Bed and breakfast 

The College is pleased to be able to offer bed and breakfast accommodation to 

Old Members at a reduced rate. You can take advantage of the reduced rate when 

you use the promotional code, which is available from the Old Members’ Office: call 

01865 279214 or email oldmembers@queens.ox.ac.uk. 

A number of en suite student bedrooms will be available over the Easter and summer 

vacations. Rooms are clean, comfortable, and serviced daily. While not equipped to 

a four-star hotel standard, they are provided with towels, toiletries, tea and coffee 

making facilities, and free internet access. 

To book your room(s), please visit www.queens.ox.ac.uk/bed-breakfast. 



The Queen’s College Governing Body in July 2021

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 by Ciconi 

Cover image by Jamie Unwin

The Queen's College Record 2021

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