The College Record 2022

Reports and College Activities
QUEEN’S COLLEGE SYMPOSIUM
President Tristan Johnston-Wood
The 2021-22 academic year brought another fantastic round of research talks and
discussions at the Queen’s College Symposium (QCS). QCS is a twice-termly event
when members from the MCR and SCR give talks on their research or discuss
a topic in a panel discussion. After the event, a buffet dinner is held in the SCR
where audience members and speakers alike can continue the interesting intellectual
discussion.
This year, we started with research talks from two new SCR fellows: Dr Finaritra
Raoelijaona (Browne Junior Research Fellow in Biochemistry) and Dr Meleisa Ono-
George (Brittenden Fellow in History). This was followed by a panel discussion on
‘How do we determine whether our net impact is positive or negative?’. In Hilary
term, we heard from Samuel Teague (DPhil Music) and Professor Richard Parkinson
(Professor of Egyptology). The final two speakers of Hilary term saw Hector Papoulias
talk about Gauge Theory and Dr Paul Docherty speak on Digital Archaeology.
To finish off the year, we hosted the Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures
seminars, where Dr Selena Wisnom and Alberto Corrado spoke on Mesopotamia
and Oenoanda. The final QCS event of the year, and of my position as QCS organiser,
involved a panel discussion on ‘Does language restrict our ability to understand and
communicate reality?’, seeing our best attendance numbers to date and excellent
debate during the event. I very much look forward to next year’s QCS events, hosted
by Seb Wilkes.
RUGBY CLUB
Captain Max Higdon
With the disruption of the pandemic resulting in no rugby being played the previous
season and multiple stalwarts leaving over the past two years, the season began
with much uncertainty. However, a strong Fresher intake bolstered the squad,
and Michaelmas began with a close loss in a friendly to Lincoln. The first round of
Cuppers was up next and despite dominating for large parts of the game, Queen’s
suffered a narrow 12-0 defeat to Oriel. We were left without fixtures for much of the
remainder of the term with a high-scoring 45-34 defeat to Brasenose the only other
match. Hilary began with the first win of the season against a strong Worcester side.
The rest of the term saw significant disruption as multiple winnable games were
cancelled, while we struggled with numbers in close defeats to Brasenose and Oriel,
and a rather more convincing defeat to Balliol.
Trinity began with the Cuppers bowl semi-final against Jesus, a team littered with a
number of blues and who would go on to lift the trophy. Queen’s put in a tremendous
68 The Queen’s College | College Record 2022