The College Record 2022

FROM THE PROVOST
From the Provost
Credit: David Fisher
Dr Claire Craig
Reading about all the activities chronicled in this edition of
the Record brings home again just how wonderful it was
to be able to do so much more in person by Trinity Term
2022, than had been possible for the previous two years.
Things had begun to improve in Michaelmas Term, when
we started by welcoming not only the graduate and
undergraduate Freshers, but also the ‘ReFreshers’:
students who had worked hard through such variable and
challenging circumstances; and by saying thank you again
to all staff who worked or were furloughed during the
pandemic, for their flexibility and mutual support.
However, College in-person activity was still constrained. Although we held the
All Saints’ Gaudy to celebrate academic achievements, sadly we had to cancel
the Boar’s Head and Needle and Thread Gaudies because they coincided with
uncertainty about the Omicron COVID-19 variant; and the Provost’s Lecture with
Nobel Laureate and Honorary Fellow Sir Venki Ramakrishan was held both in-person
and online. Such hybrid arrangements are one example of the College trying to retain
some of the advantages of the forced experiments during the worst of the pandemic,
while enjoying the return of activities as they were before.
Despite the operational challenges, and as the JCR President said to me partway
through the year, over time in-person normality became, itself, a little more normal.
Taking advantage of the new freedoms, the College held a ‘Dining Right’ initiative:
this was three weeks of imaginative menus, spread over two terms and developed by
Head Chef Sean Ducie and the Queen’s team, together with leading external chefs,
blending Queen’s centuries-old gift for hospitality with new and more sustainable
ways of enjoying food. I wouldn’t have put all the plant-based meals at the very top
of my personal menu (although some of them were superb and I found a taste for
pickled walnuts in particular), but experimenting in this way was exactly what we
should be doing: being disruptive, reflecting, discussing, taking the best and making
it our own.
In the Easter Vacation, some of us also enjoyed hospitality with Old Members in
Edinburgh and in Manchester for the first time in several years. Then, and for the
first time for most undergraduates, and for many Fellows and staff, we all delighted
in a full Trinity Term in College. We had end-of-year Schools Dinners; Graduation
Ceremonies; the Fettiplace Gaudy; the 2022 College Ball with an Alice In Wonderland
theme lighting up the cupola and importing flocks of flamingos and inflatable
mushrooms; the Eglesfield Musical Society’s outstanding production of Little Shop
of Horrors, which means the trees in the Fellows’ Garden will never seem to me quite
6 The Queen’s College | College Record 2022