CAMBRIDGE Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 - Wolfson College ...

Wolfson College
CAMBRIDGE
Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32

Published in 2008 by Wolfson College Cambridge
Barton Road, Cambridge cb3 9bb
© Wolfson College 2008
Compiled and edited by Conrad Guettler
Front and back cover images of Wolfson College by Sheila Betts and
Gordon Johnson.
Pond in the President’s Lodge garden
Designed and printed by
Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org/printing
As in previous years this magazine is printed on
environmentally friendly paper

Wolfson College
CAMBRIDGE
Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32

Contents
page 1. From the President
8. The Senior Tutor
10. The Bursar
17. The Development Director
The Student Record
24. Prizes 2007–2008
26. Degrees Approved 2007–2008
30. Freshers 2008
32. Matriculation and Graduation Blog
Profiles and Articles
38. What is the State? The Question that “will not go away”
40. David Crystal: Research Profile
42. Patricia Hyndman: Research Profile
45. Benjamin Kipkorir: Research Profile
47. The Future of History in New York: The New-York Historical Society
49. Dawn Muddyman: Research Profile
51. Christopher Taylor: Research Profile
53. Wolfson is in my Life
56. The Hon Justice Susan Kiefel
57. Judy McGregor
58. Facing up to Change
64. The Climate Change Debate
66. Nuclear Dreams bring on Climate Nightmare
70. Some Global Strategic Implications of the US Election
79. Music-Science Research at Wolfson
82. Press Fellow interviews Anne Murray
83. Where Learning is in the DNA
86. Return to Cambridge
90. The Arcadia Fellowship Programme
92. Midland Railway Furniture in the Lee Room
95. The Lee Library 2007–2008
97. The ‘Garden Rooms’ of Wolfson College

Societies and Events
102. Wolfson College Research Colloquia
105. Wolfson Science Day
106. Lunchtime Seminars
107. The Wolfson Humanities Society: A New Life
109. Professor George Steiner: ‘A Line from Dante’ and a Humanities Society Success
111. Contemporary Reading Group
112. Music at Wolfson
114. Performing Arts Society
117. Art Exhibition
118. June Event: Viva Las Vegas!
Wolfson Sport
120. Blues and other Outstanding Achievements
122. Wolfson College Boat Club
130. Football
131. Men’s Cricket
133. Other Sport Reports
News
138. Members’ News
148. Recent Books by College Members
151. Recent University Appointments
152. Donations to the College
Fellowship, Membership and Staff
156. College Officers
157. Fellowship in Order of Seniority
163. Honorary Fellowship in Order of Seniority
164. Emeritus Fellowship in Order of Seniority
165. Senior Members
169. Visitors 2007–2008
176. College Administration
177. Obituaries

From the President
Gordon Johnson
So many people have told me that it must be true:
never have the gardens looked so fine. Throughout the
past year we’ve enjoyed a seasonal sequence of flowers
and foliage, one corner of the garden coming into its
own as another slips into the background for a while.
The informal layout of the grounds has enabled Phil
Stigwood and his colleagues to add interest with a
huge variety of plant species, mixing colour and form in
delightful ways. It gives the College a calm and secluded
atmosphere – ideal conditions in which to live and work
and to enjoy each other’s company.
The gardens also attract favourable notice from our
many visitors; and during this past long vacation the
Bursar decided that the main gates to the College should be opened throughout the
day, and a sign be placed welcoming all who come up the drive to Wolfson.
Of course, we have always prided ourselves as being the most international college
in Cambridge and the one that has consistently recognised the importance of drawing
into the College people from the town and the county. From the very beginning, we
have encouraged non-academic professionals to join our society.
The combination of seclusion, permitting study and reflection, whilst maintaining
good connections with the wider world is an essential characteristic of a great
university. If education and scholarship are to thrive, they need both time and space
to get on with things, but they must also be grounded in the contemporary world.
Any view of Cambridge’s 800-year history is sufficient to make this point clear.
A university has thrived in Cambridge over so many years because it has adapted
to changing needs and has responded (not, it must be admitted, always speedily) to
major shifts in society. Cambridge is not now as it was in 1209 anymore than the British
Parliament is when first summoned in the thirteenth century. Both institutions have
evolved under pressure and seen staggering transformations. But they have continued
to exist because they have proved their worth, and in each succeeding generation they
have renewed their purpose.
I’ve been struck recently how much the town of Cambridge, host to our university,
enjoys this characteristic. It is a relatively small and, to a degree, a self-contained
settlement; but it lies at a crucial point in a wider network with the rest of Britain
and beyond. Helen Cam, in the opening paragraph of her superb contribution to the
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 1

Victoria County History, makes the point simply: Cambridge owes its position to the
crossing of two natural lines of communication: the river, flowing from the south-west
to the north-east which was the main artery for traffic through the fenland before the
coming of the railway, and the chalk and gravel ridge running south-east to north-west
that carried the road which crossed the river by, as Professor Maitland wrote in his
great study, Township and Borough, ‘the one bridge in England which gives its name
to a county.’
We’re so used to thinking of Cambridge as a ‘university town’ that it is easy to
forget that the town came first or to reflect why the town proved so conducive to the
establishment of a university to begin with. When scholars fled from Oxford in the
troubled political times of the early thirteenth century, seeking safety and patronage
elsewhere, there were other promising places they sought out as well as Cambridge:
Reading, Northampton, Stamford, among them. But it was at Cambridge where a
new settlement of scholars prospered and became permanent. Partly this was
because some of them came from the area and knew it well, drawing on friends
and the support of the Bishop of Ely to make life bearable; but Cambridge was
a significant place in its own right. Before the university took shape, it was a
major regional headquarters surrounded by a rich countryside. Until at least the
eighteenth-century there were major annual fairs in and around the town that traded
internationally, shifting huge volumes and values of goods. Consequently, the town
supported a cosmopolitan population, and from an early period had been a favoured
location for religious houses, schools and hospitals, drawing in settlers from across
northern Europe.
Cambridge’s distinctive culture, then, has always been a mix of the secluded
parish and the networked city; of being a place at once aside but of the main stream,
attracting and accumulating wealth, drawing people in from all over.
Wolfson is part of twenty-first century Cambridge. It shares with the region, the city
and the university a determination to prosper and to be open to change. The College,
with its lovely garden, is an attractive place to be a student and to pursue research:
a place of its own, but vitally sustained by the interest and support of its members
across the world.
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Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32

The President and Mrs Johnson outside the Cambridge University Press office in Delhi, 4 January 2008
The Vice Chancellor, Professor Richard
(Honorary Fellow), addressing alumni in
Delhi, 4 January 2008
Two Wolfson generations: the President and Mrs Johnson with Mr
Arvind Kaul (matric 1984), Dr Muni Kaul and their daughter
Mandakini Kaul (matric 1996) at their home in Delhi
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 3

Cambridge Alumni Reception in Mumbai, 12 January 2008. The President with Mr Anshuman Goenka (matric 1996) left,
and Mr James Nedumpara (matric 1999) right
The President (front row, fifth from left) and Mr Manas Saikia (Senior Member, front row seventh from left) with the staff
of the Mumbai office of Cambridge University Press
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Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32

Professor Lau, Vice Chancellor of the Chinese
University of Hong Kong, visited Wolfson on
25 February 2008; the President and Mrs
Johnson visited Professor Lau in Hong Kong
on 20 March
Professor Lau, Dr Sally Church (Fellow) and Anthony Teo (matric
2006) on the occasion of Professor Lau’s visit to Cambridge
The President and Mrs Johnson with Mr David T C Lie (Senior Member and President of the Friends of Wolfson College
Hong Kong) at a lunch hosted by Mr Lie in the China Club, Hong Kong, 20 March 2008
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 5

A dinner party was
held at the University
of Melbourne on 26
March 2008 for 27
alumni and guests.
Top left: Penelope
Pollitt (matric 1971),
Alan Bishop (Fellow
1974–1992, Visiting
Fellow 1999) and
Zane Ma Rhea
(Visiting Fellow
1997–1998); top right:
Charles Schencking
(matric 1995, Fellow
1998-2000), Carolyn
Jones (Press Fellow
1997) and partner
John Scury; middle
row left: Suzanne
Cory (matric 1966, Honorary Fellow), her husband Jerry
Adams and the President; middle right: the President
speaks after the dinner; lower left: Margaret Easterbrook
(Press Fellow 1997)
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Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32
On 31 March 2008 Dr Johnson presented the Royal Asiatic
Society’s Sinor Medal to Dr Igor de Rachewiltz, at the
Australian National University. The President also spoke
at the Cambridge Society’s Dinner in Canberra which was
well attended by Wolfson alumni

Professor Shih Choon Fong, Vice Chancellor (seated fourth from the right between Dr Lee Seng Tee and the President)
hosted a dinner party at the National University of Singapore for Dr and Mrs Johnson on 5 April 2008. Mrs Betty Wu Lee
is seated front left
Dr Lee Seng Tee (Honorary Fellow), the President, and Mrs Johnson, at a lunch hosted by Tharman Shanmugaratnam
(matric 1981, Honorary Fellow and Finance Minister in the Government of Singapore), 6 April 2008
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 7

The Senior Tutor
David Jarvis
It’s now more than four years since I arrived at Wolfson.
As I was reflecting recently on how quickly this time
had flown by, it occurred to me that this might be
an appropriate point for me to say something from a
personal perspective about the unique character of the
College. As assiduous readers of previous issues of the
Magazine may remember, I have studied and worked in
a variety of institutions, and in my various Cambridge
incarnations I have gained direct experience of several
different Colleges. My current work also regularly brings
me into contact with other colleges and colleagues
working within them, and as a result I have by now some
insight into the question: ‘what makes Wolfson special?’
Lest this copy of the Magazine falls into the wrong hands, let me say hastily at the
outset that in seeking to define Wolfson’s USP (apologies for marketing jargon: ‘unique
selling point’), I mean to imply no criticism of either my previous colleges or those
so beloved of my colleagues on intercollegiate committees. In all seriousness, I have
never ceased to be struck over the last twenty years by the remarkable degree of
professionalism and civic-mindedness embodied throughout the Cambridge collegiate
system and those who work within it. Yet while acknowledging that the core functions
of all colleges are the same, Wolfson has several distinctive qualities that I at least
have not encountered to the same extent elsewhere in Cambridge.
One of the most obvious and most refreshing characteristics of the College is its
diversity. There are other colleges with high proportions of international students,
and other colleges that admit only mature students. Surely nowhere else in Cambridge,
however, is there the same consistently intoxicating mix of undergraduates, graduates
and academic visitors from all over the world.
Combined with this diversity is the College’s healthy reluctance to ‘stand on
ceremony’. No-one would surely want to jettison all of the ceremonial and historic
elements of Cambridge life, but at times within the University an apparent obsession
with hierarchy at the expense of common sense detracts from the good work that is
done here. Not everyone fits in the traditional categories of Junior Combination Room
(JCR), Middle Combination Room (MCR) and Senior Combination Room (SCR), and
anxieties about so labelling people in some other colleges have not only wasted a lot
of people’s time but also prevented other very able people from being admitted to
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Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32

colleges. Wolfson is mercifully free of such status distinctions, and our intellectual and
social life is all the richer for it.
A related distinctive feature of the College is the extent to which it engages with the
non-academic world. This was of course always an integral element of the College’s
mission, embodied for so many years in activities such as the Wolfson Course, and it
remains central to the College’s present and future. The Press Fellowship, to take but
one example, not only allows distinguished international journalists the opportunity
to work on extended research projects free from daily editorial deadlines, it allows us
to engage with a range of key opinion-formers in an atmosphere of lively academic
debate. Anyone who has attended one of the Press Fellowship’s termly seminars will
confirm that these regularly give rise to some of the most stimulating (and occasionally
controversial) discussions of our academic year. The composition of our Fellowship
and Senior Membership is also testament to the permeable barriers existing within
the College between academe, commerce, and the professions. Throw into this mix
hundreds of part-time students, many of whom are combining their studies with
full-time jobs in teaching, architecture and a range of other careers, and you have
an environment that could scarcely be more different from most people’s stereotype
of a ‘typical Cambridge college’.
For all of the above reasons, and other similar features space does not permit me
to expand upon, Wolfson has an enviably distinctive reputation within Cambridge
and outside. Many students, researchers and visitors are drawn here by this outwardlooking,
informal and creative atmosphere. This is our greatest strength, and in looking
forward to our fiftieth anniversary and beyond, we must continue to build on it. In
doing so we must also, however, be wary of fetishising difference: independence
should not preclude active collaboration and co-operation with other colleges and
the wider University – the ‘Cambridge way’, as eight hundred years of experience
suggests, often is the right way. This is the spirit in which Gordon Johnson has led the
College, and it is reflected in the career paths and work patterns of our entire senior
management team. I’m tempted to end with some apposite parallel with a system of
federal government, but have thought better of it. Would Wolfson be Texas? California?
Nebraska? I see a can of worms opening up: always a good time to sign off, in my
experience.
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 9

The Bursar
Christopher Lawrence
A year ago I was writing this equivalent article having just arrived at Wolfson as the
new Bursar, looking forward to the challenges that lay ahead, while keeping an eye on
the past and the traditions that I was inheriting. In particular I have found it invaluable
to have Jack King’s excellent 40-year chronicle of the College to hand in shedding light
on current issues. The year has rushed by, and hopefully I have now seen most things
once, such is the cyclical nature of an academic year. ‘Year 2’ undoubtedly poses fresh
challenges, as well as a chance to fine-tune some of the decisions taken in the first
year, and the benefit of the experience gained in those twelve months cannot be
underestimated. I’ve got to know Wolfson, and Wolfson has got to know me; and
we seem to be making progress together.
The Staff
One of the challenges I recognised early on in my first year was to make sure that the
staff size and structure met the needs of what had become a large college. After the
building programme of the previous decades – itself to match the rapid growth in
student numbers – it was apparent that in some areas of the College’s operations the
staff numbers and roles needed to catch up. The first stage was to clarify reporting
lines and the organisational structure, followed by working out where the possible
gaps were. This led to the creation of the new role of Deputy Head Porter, ably filled by
Michael Wignall and providing much-needed support to the Head Porter, David Luhrs,
and the team of four porters who work on a shift rota. A similar development was the
resurrection of the role of Assistant Housekeeper, in which capacity Christine Jarv
now works alongside the Housekeeper Anne Saunders in leading a team of more
than 30 cleaners throughout the College.
The workload of the College Office grows each year, and there was a clear need to
provide greater support for the College Accountant, Jonathan Beart: thus the creation
of a fourth Accounts Assistant role led to Barbara Aloi joining the staff. Likewise the
Tutorial Office has increased administrative burdens placed on it by the University
and outside bodies. This, combined with a recognition that the College could do more
to integrate its ever-larger cohort of part-time students (now over 200 in a year), led
to the creation of a new Tutorial Office Administrator post alongside the existing
Undergraduate and Postgraduate Administrators. Janet Smith took on this new role –
and went on to surprise her colleagues by producing wonderful Egyptian statues for
the June Event’s ‘Viva Las Vegas’ theme. Another addition to the Tutorial team is Sue
Sang, taking up the new role of Student Financial Officer for a day per week. Student
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funding is a labyrinth in
the 21st century, and
Sue is here to help both
students and staff to find
their ways through that
labyrinth, and to face the
challenges that it poses.
The Tutorial team is now
headed up by Kim Allen,
who joined the College
from the Education
Section of the University’s
Old Schools.
When I arrived at
Wolfson a year ago, the
Tutorial Administrator Janet Smith and one of her sculptures for the June Event
role of Bursar included
the role carried out in
most colleges by a separate Development Director. After a few months of combining
the roles, it became very clear that to undertake fundraising and alumni relations
properly, more time and resources had to be allocated to it. The College Council
therefore agreed to establish the post of Development Director to head up a new
Alumni & Development Office, and you can read elsewhere in the Magazine of Karen
Stephenson’s appointment to this role. In parallel to my own experience of trying to
combine roles, the workload and sheer variety of responsibilities of the Registrar,
Michelle Searle, had grown such that there was an opportunity to divide that role into
two parts: one concentrating on the College’s 8,500-plus members and how best to
communicate with them and maintain their data; the other managing the Tutorial
Office, the role undertaken by Kim Allen. A more clearly defined role of Registrar
therefore fitted naturally into the new Alumni & Development Office.
There are one or two other areas of the staff structure that still need addressing,
but the positive impact of the developments outlined above has not only made an
immediate difference to the smooth-running of the College but has also opened
up new possibilities in terms of the service the College can offer to its various
constituencies.
With a headcount in excess of 80, it is inevitable that there will be a certain degree
of staff turnover within a year. As well as several departures and new arrivals in the
Housekeeping department, we were joined by Simon Milton and Carmine Maio in
the Kitchens to fill vacancies. There has also been a handful of retirements among
the staff in the last year, as follows: porter Brian Ross retired after eight years at
Wolfson, and was replaced by Larry Pulley; Oliver Bowen from the Maintenance
Department retired having worked for the College since 1985, and has been replaced
by Tony Richmond; Anita Stone retired having worked in the College Office since
1994 and has been replaced by Aikaterini Gargaroni; and Hilary Pennington had
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 11

looked after ten years’ worth of Press Fellows before retiring at the end of the summer.
I have been impressed not only by the quality of the staff at Wolfson but also by their
loyalty, and the College has benefited from the commitment shown by such longserving
members of staff.
The College was saddened by the death during the year of Trevor Brown, one of the
members of the Housekeeping team. The Bursar and several other members of staff
represented the College at Trevor’s funeral in Sutton, near Ely. We were also informed
during the year of the death of retired member of staff, Heather Tyler.
The College takes the training and development of its staff very seriously, and
among the various courses attended and qualifications gained I would highlight two
strands in particular: in the Housekeeping department, a dozen or so staff are studying
for NVQs in Customer Service; and sixteen heads of departments and others with
supervisory responsibilities sat and passed the British Safety Council Certificate in
Health & Safety at Work. The opportunity to gain this qualification has now been
extended to all the staff in the College as part of our desire to make sure that safe
working practices are at the heart of everyone’s daily work at Wolfson.
The Buildings and Fabric
The biggest development in terms of the College estate in the last year has been the
purchase of the leasehold of No. 2 Barton Close (the College having been given the
freehold as a 25th anniversary gift by St John’s College in 1990). This is the house next to
our Norton House, which has traditionally been used to accommodate Press Fellows,
and completes a trio of houses in Barton Close, with the President’s Lodge the third.
Morrison House
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Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32

The Dining Hall and the College coats of arms
A certain amount of work on the new house is necessary before it is incorporated into
the College estate, but its acquisition increases the footprint of the site and gives the
College more options in the future.
With the Clerk of Works, Paul Chapman, I have drawn up a schedule of maintenance
work we hope to complete over the next five years, to make sure the investment by my
predecessors in new and acquired buildings is matched by appropriate investment in
their upkeep and improvement. One of the ways the College has grown has been
through the gradual purchase of residential houses along the Barton Road and in
Barton Close, and these are in varying states of repair. Therefore we will tackle one
or two houses each summer; and it was Morrison House in the main drive which was
overhauled in the summer of 2008. Likewise the purpose-built residential blocks also
need regular upkeep, and it was the turn of the ‘Eastern Building’ (M, N, O and P) for
attention over the summer months.
In the public areas of the College I am on a mission to brighten spaces which have
either never been well-lit or have grown darker over time. Whether it is the removal
(and non-replacement) of ancient net curtains, the replacement of the sun-blackened
roof ‘lights’ throughout the northern end of the main building (and in the ‘B’ flats for
Visiting Fellows and Scholars) or just a fresh lick of paint where needed, gradually
Wolfson is becoming a lighter place for those who live and work here. In particular
the main Dining Hall has had some attention over the summer, with the old oatmeal
wallpaper having served its time and now replaced by a lighter painted surface; and
with the replacement of the faulty lights around the perimeter of the whole room.
Further developments along this theme include the replacement of the ‘safety’ film
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 13

which covers most of the glass in the Gallery and Dining Hall and which has degraded
in the sunlight over the years to the extent that in some panes natural light struggles to
get through the opaque surface. An accidental outcome of the decoration of the Dining
Hall is that it has created some hanging space for pictures and the like, and the two
handsome documents detailing first the creation and then the augmentation of the
College’s Coats of Arms now hang impressively at the south end of the Hall, having
previously lain out of sight in a storeroom.
As well as wanting to maintain all the residential accommodation to a high
standard – which will be a task of ‘Forth Road Bridge’ proportions – I do think it
important that the public areas such as the Hall are both shown at their best and also
fully utilised. There are one or two parts of the College which are clearly under-utilised
and therefore somewhat out of sight and out of mind – I am thinking in particular of
the ‘Old Library Building’ containing the Seminar Room downstairs and the Lee Room
upstairs. Such spaces need attention, firstly in terms of deciding on their best use, and
secondly in terms of improving them to fulfil such a use. First impressions count, and
although some aspects of the front of the College have been tidied up, whether through
paint or carpets or signage, the Club Room stands out in presenting a challenge as both
the first room most visitors walk into and also the student bar which is heavily used
throughout the term. I will be working closely with our new Development Director to
tailor some of our fundraising activity towards such projects.
One happy occasion during the year took place just before the annual
Commemoration Dinner, when Mrs Margaret Smart, the niece of much-missed
Fellow Karen Spärck-Jones, officially opened the re-named Karen Spärck-Jones Room,
The Karen Spärck-Jones Room
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Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32

formerly known as the Parlour. Karen had generously remembered the College in her
Will, and as well as a significant financial legacy she had donated her collection of
books, just some of which we are able to display on shelves especially commissioned
for the purpose. This collection was in fact built up as much by her husband, Roger
Needham, another Wolfson Fellow who died in 2003 and who is remembered by his
own room, the domed Roger Needham Room at the centre of our Chancellor’s Centre.
The Finances
The College’s annual turnover of £4m and endowment of about £9m continue
to be tightly managed. The Finance committee oversees the College’s financial
arrangements, and is assisted by an Investment sub-committee which focuses on the
endowment. Several new faces on the Investment sub-committee – including one of
my fellow Bursars from another college – bring a wealth of experience not only in the
traditional areas such as equities, but also in alternative asset classes such as hedge
funds. The College has adopted a total return policy for the endowment with a
formalised draw-down policy. Because the annual income to the endowment –
in particular from the University’s Colleges’ Fund, of which Wolfson is the biggest
beneficiary, receiving just under £0.5m in the last year – exceeds the calculated drawdown
amount, there is therefore no need to withdraw cash from the endowment.
For example, the recent purchase of No.2 Barton Close was made using a bank loan
with very favourable long-term rates, rather than by deploying the endowment. This
allows the asset allocation for the endowment to focus on capital growth rather than
on income, with very little need for liquidity, and this provides greater flexibility in
asset choices when making decisions with a time horizon of over twenty years, as is
appropriate for an institution such as a Cambridge College. Such long-term horizons
provide a little comfort when confronted with plunges in the world’s stock markets
and the resulting paper losses.
As I outlined in last year’s Magazine, over 80% of our annual income comes from
fees and rental income and so is very sensitive to student numbers. Fortunately, our
student numbers are buoyant currently, but no assumptions about the future can
be made, not least because the post-graduate ‘market’ is becoming increasingly
competitive, the competition being felt especially from the direction of US universities.
It is therefore imperative that Wolfson, along with the University itself, continues to
make itself attractive to prospective students.
While the endowment remains small, annual income of ca. 4% from the endowment
can only contribute so much, and I want increasingly to focus endowment income
on regular student support, such as bursaries and studentships. Much of the College’s
fundraising activity in the past has been either for large sums to fund capital projects
or for growing the endowment. The need for capital funds is less pressing but
increasing the endowment remains a major priority. However, the effect of a gift to the
endowment makes a small difference immediately, while of course having a very-long
term effect, especially when combined and invested alongside other such gifts. Some
donors, however, want their gifts to have a more immediate impact, hence the launch
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 15

of the Annual Fund as described in the Development Director’s report. The success of
the Annual Fund will have an effect on the pace of improvement in the College, both in
terms of maintaining the existing fabric and also in the introduction of new facilities.
Looking ahead
To sum up, the restructuring and strengthening of the staff, the attention to the
physical estate of the College, and the careful custody and management of the
finances together allow Wolfson to plan ahead with confidence. If you are reading
this from afar and have not visited your College for some time, do come back and
experience this confidence for yourself.
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New roof-light in the main building
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32

From the Development Director
Karen Stephenson
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can
change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.
Anthropologist Margaret Mead’s words could apply
as easily to the first years of what was then University
College, as to the Wolfson of today. When alumni from
1968, 1978, 1988 and 1998 returned to College during
the last weekend of September for our first Decennial
Reunion event, it was to a place structurally much
changed from that which they remembered. Indeed,
many referred to the temporary structure which had
been attached to the College’s only building at the time –
Bredon House – and which had formed the Dining Hall:
it was later sold to Hughes Hall, serving them well for
the same purpose for many years.
That small group of students and Fellows who found
a home at University College in the 1960s were indeed thoughtful and committed
citizens, and have gone on to make significant contributions in their fields throughout
the world. And the formation of our then small College for post-graduate – and later
mature undergraduate – students has changed the world of Cambridge too. Formed
as the first co-educational College, outward-looking, international and inclusive,
Wolfson is now the model to which other colleges aspire.
There is no doubt that Wolfson is different from other colleges; and in these
times of global competition, our distinctiveness is a great strength. We compete in
an international market to attract the best students and teachers and, in turn, the
academic work carried out at Wolfson contributes to the world’s knowledge base.
And although the fabric of Wolfson College has changed since the earliest days, there
is still an absolute belief in Wolfson’s core values: it is a place with education, research
and learning at its heart. And it is now poised to begin a new phase in its history.
Wolfson has taken the important decision to join most of the other Cambridge
colleges in establishing its first Alumni & Development Office. We begin as a small
team of two, situated in the same Bredon House which constituted the entirety of
the College in its earliest days. My background in the City led me via a degree at Lucy
Cavendish, through several years’ teaching, to the Development Office at St Catharine’s
College and then to Wolfson. College Registrar Michelle Searle has also joined the
department, following her previous role in the Tutorial Office, and is managing the
complexities of our large database.
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 17

New York Alumni at the drinks party in Central Park
Our aims are threefold:
Firstly, to develop a strong alumni relations programme. We have already held
the College’s first Decennial Reunion Event (see below) and we plan to make such
reunions a regular element of the annual events programme, with the dates set for the
next five years. We have also held drinks parties in San Francisco and New York, and
have plans for further overseas and UK events soon. In addition, several Formal Halls
in College have been designated as subject-specific evenings and we intend to extend
the range of subjects over the next year. A list of events can be found on page 21 and
we do hope that you will join us.
Secondly, to build on the alumni communications which are already in place. This
Magazine, Ring True and the e-Bulletin are all channels through which the College is
able to communicate with its members. We aim also to introduce an online Events
Calendar to allow alumni to keep up with the many new and existing events taking
place in College; to implement an email for life scheme which will not only provide
members with a forwarding email address but will also enable members to network
and contact one another direct; and to introduce e-commerce to allow members to
make bookings and purchases online.
Thirdly, to embark on a fundraising programme to build for the future of Wolfson
College. The launch of our Annual Fund Appeal (see leaflet enclosed) marks an
important point in the College’s history. There is no question that we still aim to
increase our endowment. However, we also aim to raise money which can be used
immediately to support the core activities of the College.
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Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32

We have been extraordinarily fortunate in the past: our benefactors have given
us our College, our buildings and even our name. And now we are working towards a
regular stream of income: income which will allow us to maintain our wonderful, but
ageing, buildings and gardens; income which will support the students and academics
for whom we compete on a worldwide basis; and income which will contribute to the
long-term stability of the College.
Of course, we find ourselves in uncertain economic times, but this gives us even more
reason to tackle the challenges head-on. We aim to build a regular giving programme
and find a diversity of income streams. And, if a student of English may be forgiven a
literary reference, in these early days of the Development Office, we must screw our
courage to the sticking-place and we must not fail.
Our launch of an Annual Fund Appeal is significant in the history of the College,
and we might well think of the words of 18th-century writer and Anglican Clergyman
Sydney Smith:
It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do a
little. Do what you can.
We recognise that it is not only the grand, life-changing gifts, but also the smaller,
regular donations which make a real difference to the life of a college, and it is through
our Annual Fund Appeal that we seek such support now. Steady income will allow us
to plan for Wolfson’s future and to build on the College’s many strengths.
We do face extraordinary challenges: our alumni are spread far around the world; many
of our members were with us for only the nine short months of their MPhil course; and
we face one of the most difficult global economic climates since the Great Depression.
But there is much to celebrate. Our global population is diverse and well-connected;
our one-year students all made an active decision to spend time at Wolfson and have
many happy memories of their time here; and we are taking advantage of the
economic situation to consolidate our borrowing.
There is no question that we have mountains to climb, but the establishment of the
Development Office is an important step towards building a strong future for Wolfson.
Winston Churchill’s oft-quoted view that ‘We make a living by what we get; we make a life
by what we give’ still holds true, and every gift we receive will help us towards our goal.
We might well take heed of the words of one of the world’s great reformers, Martin
Luther King:
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort
and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
As those early members of University College have adapted to the changes and
challenges of time, so shall we today.
US academic Paula Brownlee asserted that ‘It is impossible to be the best we can
be in isolation’. More than ever before, we look to build on the excellence of Wolfson
College and we hope that you will join us in our endeavour: in going forward together
we can achieve extraordinary things.
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 19

The Decennial Weekend 2008
Alumni Events
We were delighted to see many of our alumni from 1968, 1978, 1988 and 1998 during our
first Decennial Reunion event, which was held on 27 September to coincide with the
University’s Alumni Weekend.
The day’s programme began with a fascinating lecture by the College Librarian Anna
Jones, who explained the history of the Library, the challenges faced in terms of space
for valuable paper records and the developments in electronic media. The lecture was
accompanied by an exhibition, compiled by Anna and student Helen Cavill, entitled
‘Wolfson: Then and Now’.
After lunch Dr Ian Cross gave an enthralling lecture on music and science, focusing
on the ways in which humans respond to sounds. Afternoon tea gave returning alumni
an opportunity to meet one another, and the President then gave an informative tour
of the College in the afternoon sunshine, revealing the secrets of the early days through
to the placing of Prince Albert’s statue in our newest building, the Chancellor’s Centre.
Head Gardener Philip Stigwood took a large group of College members on an
enchanting tour of Wolfson’s beautiful gardens before alumni and current College
members assembled for dinner, during which the President’s speech focused on the
historical trade and wealth of Cambridge, prior to the formation of the University
some 800 years ago.
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Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32

Members then retired to the Bar, where they were entertained by piano music from
Marta Machala, one of Wolfson’s recently graduated students.
It was marvellous to see members of College returning for their ten-year reunion
and we were delighted to hear so many interesting stories of their time here. The
reunion for those having come to College in a year ending in a 9 will take place on
26 September 2009, with the date for the zeros being 25 September 2010: do put the
date in your diary.
As well as our Decennial Reunion event, we were fortunate to be able to hold
alumni receptions in San Francisco and New York this September.
The President and Mrs Johnson very kindly hosted a drinks reception at the
Huntington Hotel in Nob Hill, which was attended by many of those living in the Bay
Area, and as far away as Santa Cruz. Two days later, we also held a drinks party in Central
Park, New York, where we were very pleased to see local members and their families.
We are planning more overseas and UK functions, so do please keep an eye on the
website at www.wolfson.cam.ac.uk/alumni/events, where we will publish notices of all
forthcoming alumni events.
Subject-related Formal Halls:
10 February: Economics
17 February: Vets and Medics
20 February: Computer Science
28 April: History
Alumni Receptions:
29 January 2009: London
4 February 2009: Washington DC
Decennial Reunion Dinners:
26 September 2009: 1969, 1979, 1989, 1999
25 September 2010: 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000
24 September 2011: 1971, 1981, 1991, 2001
22 September 2012: 1972, 1982, 1992, 2002
28 September 2013: 1973, 1983, 1993, 2003
27 September 2014: 1974, 1984, 1994, 2004
26 September 2015: 1975, 1985, 1995, 2005
For updates and details of further alumni events, please check
www.wolfson.cam.ac.uk/alumni/events
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 21

The Student Record

Prizes 2007–2008
University Prizes
Henry Roy Dean Prize
Guy Negretti
College Prizes
Jennings Prize
(For a First Class or a Distinction in a University Examination)
Yi Li Engineering IIB
Daniel Edmonds Law II
Kyriacos Mouyis MVST 1A
Laura Spence Graduate Course in Medicine
Asad Kiyani LLM
Floris De Witte LLM
Guy Negretti Graduate Course in Medicine (3rd year)
Gregory Giecold Part III Maths
Antoine Labatie Part III Maths
David Leduc Part III Maths
Norman Metzner Part III Maths
Francisco Pedro Part III Maths
Youssef Tazi Part III Maths
Rishi Vyas Part III Maths
Bevan Prize
(For the most distinguished performance by a Wolfson student in the LLM)
Floris De Witte
Williams Prize
(For the best performance by a Wolfson student in Part II of the Law Tripos)
Daniel Edmonds
Previous page: Dr Alan O’Leary, Congregation 19 July 2008
24
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32

Named Studentships 2007–2008
Guan Ruijun
Xuesheng You China MPhil Economics
O’May
Stephen Sharples UK BA History
Patrick Skinner UK PhD Archaeology
Roger Needham
Rupert Gill UK PhD Philosophy
Wolfson Domestic Research Studentships
Daniel Birnstiel Germany PhD Oriental Studies
Ioannis Giannopoulos Greece PhD Engineering
Wolfson Cambridge Commonwealth Trust
Continuing:
Jeanine Van Order Canada PhD Pure Mathematics
Luke Barnes Australia PhD Astronomy
Harankahathanne Mallikarachchi Sri Lanka PhD Engineering
New:
Ragini Madan India BAff Economics
Joanne Wallis Australia PhD International Studies
Wolfson Cambridge Overseas Trust
Continuing:
Ana Toribio Uruguay PhD Biochemistry
Sharon Geva Israel PhD Neurology
Yuguo He China PhD Computer Science
New:
Suzana Brandao Brazil MPhil Engineering for
Sustainable
Development
José Detta Silveira Mexico MPhil Engineering for
Sustainable
Development
An Pham Vietnam MPhil Development Studies
Huang Zhao China PhD Pure Mathematics
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 25

Degrees Approved 2007–2008
Doctor of Philosophy
Zulkiflee Abdul Samad: Intangibles in the built environment: explored through UK
primary schools
Julian Asher: Identification and characterisation of candidate regions for susceptibility
genes linked to auditory-visual synaesthesia utilising a whole-genome scan
Shalom Benaim: Regular variation and smile asymptotics
ZhiQiang Chen: Passive network synthesis of restricted complexity
Maria Eracleous: The pathway of the heart: a study of the education of emotions in
pre-school settings in Cyprus
Phillip Ernest: History and the individual in the Sanskrit Mahabharata
Maria Gaiyabu: Ekereri in the lives of teachers, parents and pupils: a path to school
effectiveness and improvement in Nauru
Seng Yew Gan: Recognition of people, objects and places
Jiro Hasumi: A critical examination of the aims of political education as a constituent
part of citizenship education: with particular reference to the contemporary policies
of England and Japan
Rex Hughes: The British Response to Global Telecommunications Convergence,
1997–2007
Michael Hurley: Analysis and prediction of the protein folding nucleus using
computational and experimental techniques
Marco Iamoni: Transition or shift? The LBA in Central Western Syria and its possible
genesis in the MBA from the perspective of Qatna
René Keller: Predicting change propagation: algorithms, representations, software tools
Ahmad Kueh: Thermo-mechanical properties of triaxial weave fabric composites
Phing-How Lou: Mitochondrial uncoupling in obesity & ageing
Eric Yu-En Lu: Distributed proximity query processing
Zerihun Mohammed: Resource competition and inter-ethnic relations: the case of Arsi
Oromo and Sidama in south-central Ethiopia
Christoph Mueller: Fundamental studies of fluidised bed reactors
Alan O’Leary: Tragedia all’italiana: Italian cinema and Italian terrorisms, 1970–2006
Richard Persaud: The structural behaviour of a composite timber and concrete floor
system incorporating steel decking as permanent formwork
Lauri Pesonen: A capability-based access control architecture for multi-domain
publish/subscribe systems
Russell Phillips: Conformational Studies of Proteins in Disease
Elena Pollacchi: The evolution of the Chinese film industry and new urban heroes in
Chinese cinema (1989–2004)
26
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32

The Praelector with Catherine Head before taking her
PhD degree on 19 July 2008. Dr Head is the 2,000th
graduand to have been presented in person for their
degree by Dr Cox
John Prendergast: Simulation of unsteady
2-D wind by a vortex method
Syed Rizvi: The role of trust in ethnic
business networks: a study of the Indian,
Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities
in Leicester
Rebecca Simmons: Reducing the burden
of type 2 diabetes: public health aspects
of primary prevention
Jagjit Srai: Configuration of international
supply networks
Anna Taylor: CD4 T cell allorecognition
pathways and the provision of help for
generating CD8 T effector responses and
alloantibody production
Mamta Thangaraj: Transport measurements in two dimensional electron-hole
bilayer devices
Russell Thompson: The representation of behavioural relevance in human
prefrontal cortex
Angeliki Triantafyllaki: Instrumental music teachers’ professional identity and
practice in a Greek University Music Department and a Conservatoire workplace
Olga Ulturgasheva: Ideas of the future among young Eveny in Northeastern Siberia
Yi Wang: The transformation of Beijing’s urban structure in the 20th century:
the case of housing
Shellyanne Wilson: Achieving mix flexibility in the Caribbean flour milling industry
Master of Arts (under provision of Statute BIII6)
Professor Philip Arestis
Master of Law
Mohammed Aslam
Stefanie Bledoeg
Edward Dalmas
Floris De Witte
John Di Paola
Natia Gikoshvili
Master of Philosophy
Mukaddas Achilova
Reuben Alper
Amanda Anderson
James Anderson
Alexander Appelbe
Katharine Glover
Najeeb Huda
Reshad Imam
Asad Kiyani
Tomás Mach
Faris Nasrallah
Kalliopi Armara
Augustin Artru
Michael Bigg
Rebecca Blyth
Thomas Bunnik
Dorothy Ochola
Robert O’Driscoll
Olamipe Okunseinde
Gabriel Onagoruwa
James Rogers
Ran Chen
Xiao Cheng
Joon Huang Chuah
Joo-Won Chun
John Comerford
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 27

Dongxiao Dai
Anthony Dede-Benefor
Anthony Douglas
Helen Engemann
Carol Enright
Saman Fahimi
Samar Faruqi
Alan Finnerty
Belleh Fontem
Sosthène Grandjean
Jeffrey Ho
Alyson Horne-Douma
Fan Huang
Ling Yee Hung
Andrew Hunt
Asma Khalid
Abdel Khan
Maiko Kurosawa
Renata Lemos
28
Lu Li
Hao Liu
Tze Lin Loo
Aiesha Maxwell
Mathieu Michalet
Dawn Muddyman
Seden Mutlu
Georgina Oduro
Hugo Oliveira
David Papst
Thi Thanh An Pham
Clément Pilliaire
Luis Poulter
Jaroslaw Purwin
Christopher Roe
Sergio Ropero
Duane Rowe
Christopher Rumball
Eskandarian Samsudin
Master of Engineering and Bachelor of Arts
Yi Li Lovelace Soirez
Master of Business Administration
David Benkelberg
Atsushi Fujino
Manuela González
Shachi Jain
Robert Kerr
Carsten Kuhnert
Master of Education
Nana Asante-Ansong
David Bennett
Andrew Celano
Janice Chalmers
Peter Creber
Master of Studies
Roy Ball
Alexander Carlos
Montserrat Chivite
Tzen Sheng Lim
Francis Maguire
Bakur Maisuradze
Tharitamon Meesook
Ricardo Misraji
Masaaki Nakamura
Kari Esterhuizen
Nancy Freeman
Tracy Gaiteri
Jennifer Hopping
Anne Kenney
Peter Choo
Jonathan Clegg
Sean Cross
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32
Henrik Schoenefeldt
Jeremiah Schwarz Jr
Yan Shao
Divya Sharma
Jiayin Shi
Amir Shroufi
Vanja Stani˘sić
Kamila Staryga
Muhammad Syed
George Theodoulou
Hugh Turner
Virginie Vinson
Patrick Vogl
Dan Yue Wang
Kelley Wong
Chi Wong
Wooi Huen Yap
King-Chung Yip
Efthymios Ypsilantis
Johannes Parensen
Theerawan Ratitamkul
Michael Sprong
Soraiya Verjee
Caroline Mander
Helen Pritchard
Paul Rose
Tracey Sinton
Tanya de Hoog
Jennifer Dimambro
Paul Fastrès

Graeme Gidney
Ian Greaves
Hiroshi Hamasaki
David Johnston
James Kempton
Mark Key
Anna Kosicka
Bachelor of Medicine
Elizabeth Adegbenro
Helen Cliffe
Oliver Jardine
Bachelor of Surgery
Elizabeth Adegbenro
Helen Cliffe
Oliver Jardine
Bachelor of Veterinary Medicine
Anthony Thompson
Bachelor of Arts
Daniel Hao Edmonds
Karan Gokani
Riti Karnad
Maria Khan
Susan Lister
Emily Manning
Paul Colin Miller
Susan Lister
Emily Manning
Paul Colin Miller
Marta Machala
Thu Ha Nguyen
Debashree Roy
Danilo Scholz
Laura Spence
Christos Tziotzios
Kate Willis
Laura Spence
Christos Tziotzios
Kate Willis
Jacqueline Seymour
Kenneth Stoltz
Miao Wu
Victoria Yu
Bachelor of Theology for Ministry
Sylvester Liyanage Nicolas McKee Caroline Yandell
Certificate of Advanced Study in Mathematics
Grégory Giecold
Paul Howe
Antoine Labatie
David Leduc
Hong Luk
Norman Metzner
Rick Mukherjee
Francisco Pedro
Diploma in Computer Science
Inam Ur Rahman Liang Su
Diploma in Economics
Christian Thorda
Chau Leow
William Meere
Aleta Moriarty
Christian Mutter
Christopher Owen
Joe Power
Michael Procter
Tracie Reed
Joanne Sear
Yin Shen
Gareth Siddorn
John Walter
David Wickham
Jason Wilson-Max
Youssef Tazi
Rishi Vyas
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 29

Freshers 2008
Row 10: S J Randle, M A Abedin, O Souidi, S Thomas, A Young, Y L Chan, A E Kentikelenis, R C Y Fong,
S K Chan, H Yannakoudakis, D D Martinez Criado, N J Casey, S Ruan, S Y Chuang, E Pala, N Muller,
E Feygelson, N Maciolek, Z Yu, G Heller Sahlgren, M Breidenbach, D Patterson, G A Joel-Carbonell
Row 9: F Clark, D Krug, U Chong, P C Haycock, P Vikashini, S Wongsuwarn, J Connor, D Cheng, I Wolf,
P Zhang, K Shin, T A Wu, D Ninsiima, T C Roelants, T Zhu, W Tang, S Scholtz, A Nikonov, A Gerbershagen,
N Szpiro, R Cantarero, J Ash, Y Xia, D B Carter, I Balis
Row 8: M Levy, X Ho, N Uwechue, J Morton, B Silvestri, D A Chemla, P Endleman, D Johns, L Dai, F Crucifix,
N Krishnan, U Najmudeen, V van Hees, T Jones, R Shaw, R Flynn, G Mason, B Lambert, I Dillon, H K Wong,
B U W Schwab, R K Lauza, L E Blomqvist, W C Y Choi
Row 7: J Verma, J Li, M Gleave, M Gaschler, C N Popa, C A J Wingfield, C S Shields, J Stewart, M Green, C Li,
L P Magiera, A Horne, A J Roberts, G Bortuzzo, W Meuleman, G Kragt, S L Goerl, M Sims, C H Reese, R Mattock,
M Hallan, C Parrott, K Stevenson
Row 6: M Kasa, J Corsi, P Datta, T Sandoval, F Schoofs, D P Sherrington, P Scollo, A R J Cooper, P Paschali,
S R Barlow, A H F Kwong, A A Meiling, C P May, G G Goujon, M A O’Keeffe, F M Bourdais, G Wax, R Arie, A Ras,
T Karkantzos, I Prevezas, I Matthaiosdakis, T Levi
Row 5: P Panagopoulos, C Wilkinson, A Rodriguez Garcia, M E Phillips, I Fyfe, C Jones, J C Buggins,
W Steinhuber, T W H Martin, J D Grant, T J Harrington, B Yeh, D Hostert, B Miltner, Y Jung, A K Bhojwani,
M Tai, H Williams, O Roche-Newton, C Vignault, K Gupta, S Heikkila, W Y Chan, M J Datiles
Row 4: L Westerlind, W Kim, X Wang, T Alonzo, H Xze, J Wu, H Hong, S Assefa, V Samokhvalov, A Aufderhorst,
T Wittenberg, M Bischoff, G Pluck, W Baumker, A Bhasin, N Chernenko, M Kelly, Z Lovett, S Jain, K Funabashi,
B Ganesan, B Li, M Iversen, W M Chang, J D Mitchell, O Bolat
Row 3: L Del Villar Arias, D F Han, S Mohammed, N A Nikolov, N Von Muhlinen, J Abraham, S Dinanauth,
W S Robinson, A C Kershaw, G R Wilson, J P Eaden, J H Stephenson, F A Hay, A McCalister, B Oruc,
N R Vallabhaneni, P S Hurst, Y H Lai, Y S Teng, T Y G Ng, A Shiotani, L E Liu, G Privitera
Row 2: Y Chen, S Kelly, D Chia, N Pengkul, P Teerasuwatpong, L Li, A Meyer, M Constantiniiyescu, C Kelliny,
A Staniszewska, I Manasi, J Denton, J Kanoria, S Loizidou, A Arnaiz, J Hefler, S Kedia, X Mao, X Li, A Do
Front Row: C Y Hsiang, C M Freitas, Y Y Liu, H E Jameson, K Millen (WCSA), Dr C Granroth (Tutor),
Dr M Lovatt (Tutor), Dr N Kettley (Tutor), Dr J Flowerdew (Tutor), Dr L MacVinish (Tutor), Dr D MacDonald
(Vice-President), Dr G Johnson (President), C S M Lawrence (Bursar), Dr D Jarvis (Senior Tutor),
Dr M Hrebeniak (Tutor), Dr S Church (Tutor), Dr B D Cox (Praelector), D Luhrs (Head Porter),
A Maderspacher (WCSA President), C Potterton, E R Haj, S Javadi, T D Toy, P S Parandkar, A Huok
30
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32

Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 31

Matriculation and Graduation Blog
Alden Yap, Alumnus
Matriculation blog
Sunday, October 22, 2006
Gryffindor House, Hogwarts School and Harry Potter
32
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32
Duane, Ian, myself and Eskandar from Jamaica,
US and Malaysia are all dressed up in suit and
gown for the matriculation dinner. Cantab is
steeped in its 800-year old tradition (since 1209),
where students officially become members of the
university after going through the matriculation
dinner. In other words, you are a member of
Cantab after you have matriculated...oh well.
Here is a piece of dialogue between the Praelector and I on the day of my
matriculation (17 October 2006):
Me: Hi. Good evening, Sir, I am here to matriculate.
Praelector: Do you have the green form*?
Me: Here it is...
Praelector: Okay**Paused to read through the green form (a surrogate to the invoice
confirming that you have already paid the necessary fee to the college).
**Very well, please sign on the register list over there **finger pointed at
a table**
Me: Right. Here?
Praelector: Yes, sign there please.
Me: **Silent while signing the registry**
Praelector: I, representing the authority of the University, now pronounce you a member
of the University of Cambridge for life...**paused a while to interject a cheeky
joke**..well, unless you do something very nasty to us..**eyes winked** Now,
go and do your best and achieve what you have set to come here for...
Me: Thank you Sir! **And I left the room**

Basically the collegiate system here works like this: you are a member of a college
(in my case, it’s Wolfson College) and the colleges are the limbs to the entire
university systems. However, the colleges are independent of the university’s
funding. Apparently, some colleges like Trinity and Peterhouse (the oldest college
in Cambridge) are so rich and financially sufficient that they could sponsor the
entire student population in their colleges for ten years, or run the university without
government funding for four years! That sounds outrageous but it seems Peterhouse
has a large wine cellar in college with huge stocks of wine dating back more than a
hundred years. You just imagine how much one bottle would fetch in today’s market!
Think about a warehouse filled with it!
So, you can’t just say that you are a Cambridge graduate without saying which
college you came from. In other words, tourist souvenirs, peripherals and novelties
in the shops selling “University of Cambridge” do not actually bring the correct
message or any at all, to the people who later give the items to others as souvenirs.
Having said that, it’s so easy to differentiate who are the students here and who
are not. The students here would usually wear t-shirts or sweaters like “Wolfson
College-University of Cambridge” or “Trinity College-University of Cambridge”
unless they belong to a club or society which is not based in a particular college.
Then it would be “Rowing Club – Cambridge University” or “Cambridge University
Triathlon Society” etc. Confused? Haha...try to decipher the 800-year old tradition.
The Harry Potter-style matriculation dinner. Formal halls are similar to matriculation dinners too.
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 33

About Me
Whenever he’s not out swimming in the English Channel, he
will be out pounding the pavement in his running shoes. He’s
an outcast in his family of bankers the day he decided to become
an Engineer (read with a capital E!). He has lived in Kuala Lumpur
all his life. You’d expect him to be a little more street smart. He
has attempted the Oscars with some of his YouTube videos but
didn’t quite make the cut. So he settled to do an MBA in Japan
but without much success. Between Guantanamo and Cambridge,
he chose the latter to live a solitary life for a year. That’s when he
found out that life is not a box of chocolates. It’s T-shaped. He is
currently attempting to be a change agent in London. You know, save the world, that
sort of thing. And what better way to do that than in the Square Mile. His blog does
not focus on a particular subject, it covers a range of stuff. Sometimes he can be
misconstrued as someone full of “that”.
Graduation blog
I have finally attended graduation in Cambridge after months of planning.
I started planning for my family to come over since January 2007, way before
I finished my MPhil. I had initially wanted to graduate in November 2007 but
decided on a less miserable time of the year to do it.
So I chose May 2008 – plenty of daylight, mild temperature, stable weather
conditions and cheaper flight tickets. Knowing that the third is a lie, I prayed
hard for good weather since Christmas! I guess my prayer was answered.
In fact, I read in the papers a day after graduation that it was the hottest day of
the year for the past 30 years! 28 degrees C in May??!! No wonder I had a wet forehead.
Even though it wasn’t difficult to convince my parents, brother and friends to
attend, I was asking myself the question if it was really worth it for them to fly
13 hours all the way from Malaysia to attend a 20-minute ceremony.
There are so many other logistics challenges on top of that – accommodation,
transportation, food, travel to other places, making sure everyone’s RSVP-ed and
their flights are booked and confirmed, making sure everyone’s got a place during
the congregation lunch and ticket to the Regent House, etc. You know all those
arrangements you’d normally have to sort out for a wedding ceremony as well.
Indeed, I felt like I was planning for a wedding! I’m glad I do not have plans
for another MPhil or PhD at the moment.
There were five family members and friends who attended the ceremony. I was initially
worried that five was quite a stretch of Wolfson’s allowance of three guests per student to
the Regent House. The College allowed the additional two after several email exchanges
with the Praelector. I am still very grateful for his generosity and understanding.
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Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32

With my parents and the President of Wolfson College, Dr Gordon Johnson, who, as Deputy Vice Chancellor, officiated at
the ceremony. What a coincidence!
The day started in the Wolfson College President’s Garden where drinks were served.
We had champagne, wine and fruit juice followed by the President’s and Praelector’s
speeches. We were fortunate that both the President and Praelector came to our group
for a chat despite the large number of students graduating in May.
After that we proceeded for lunch in the College hall. I could understand most of
the guests were excited for lunch as we were. I overheard a conversation, “Is this the
Harry Potter thing you were saying?” I found it amusing that this is the way people
relate such unique experiences which would otherwise be a lot harder to describe.
There was a three-hour gap after lunch until the next event. After that, we reconvened
in the Lee Hall in College. There was a 15-minute rehearsal of what we must do before
we walked to the Senate House. Walking from College to the Senate House was one of
the proudest moments of being a student of Cambridge.
When we passed nearby Darwin College, they too were walking in the same
direction. There, I met a few familiar faces from other MPhil programmes. We
chatted and caught up on news. It was really nice meeting familiar people and
seeing everyone so smartly dressed and for once not on bicycles! Haha!
The Praelector is the person who would present us to the Deputy Vice-Chancellor
of the University of Cambridge (the person awarding us the degree) in the Senate
House. I was seated in alphabetical order – third in row and second in line.
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 35

We were briefed about the order
of the event. We were required to
hold on to a finger of the Praelector
while he leads and presents us to
the Deputy Vice Chancellor.
We were supposed to kneel
in front of him and put our palms
together (in prayer mode) while
he clasps his hands on ours and
confers us with our respective
degrees; MPhil, MBA or PhD.
The entire ceremony is done in
Walking to the Senate House
Latin and in the name of the Holy
Trinity: “...in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.” This is the Cambridge custom
of 800 years old. However, students do have a choice if they don’t want to kneel or be
conferred with the Trinitarian formula for personal or religious reasons.
This is one of those experiences that I wanted my parents, brother and friends
to have and share with others about Cambridge when they return. This unique
experience is not something that will happen everyday, everywhere or to everyone –
at least not in Malaysia!
I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the following people: my
parents for their support and guidance and my brother for the same; my two aunts
on the maternal side for their well wishes and angpaos, my two grandmas for their
support, well wishes and angpaos, and all my friends for their best wishes. A special
mention has to go to: Farouk for lending us his place in Cambridge; to Evelyn Lee
for lending us her place in London; to Fr Charles Serrao, Ferdinand, Gregory and
students in their College for their great hospitality in showing us Rome; to CP Yap for
lending us his place in Paris; to Irene for helping ever so much with the logistics; to my
housemates – Paul, Brendon and DD for their kind understanding when my parents
were here.
Finally but most importantly: To God for giving me the life, ability, scholarship,
knowledge, inspiration, motivation and direction to Cambridge in the first place!
With my family
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Profiles and Articles

What is the State?
The Question that “will not go away”
Professor Quentin Skinner, Regius Professor of History
at Cambridge, delivered the inaugural Lee Seng Tee
Distinguished Lecture in College on 24 October 2007.
The Lee Hall was full to overflowing to hear a brilliant
and scintillating lecture on ‘What is the state?’
In the lecture, Professor Skinner challenged modern
notions that no single person or institution can any longer
be taken to exercise state sovereignty. He argued that the
contemporary sceptical view about the state was a
“serious mistake”, and he laid the groundwork for his
case by tracing the history of how the question had
been tackled in Anglophone legal and political thought.
The state is the name normally assigned to the agency
that wields sovereign power over some determinate territory. But this is scarcely a very
illuminating definition, for what we basically need to know, in order to grasp the concept
of the state, is whose actions properly count as actions of this agency, and hence as
authentic expressions of the sovereignty of the state. The lecture proceeded by way
of offering a genealogy of various rival answers that had been given to the question
“What is the State?”.
The earliest answer, the one we encounter among the parliamentarian and radical
writers of the 17th-century English revolution, is that the power of the state can be
equated with the power of the whole body of the people. This understanding was
instantly challenged by Thomas Hobbes, whose Leviathan seeks to insist that the
power of the state is that of a fictional Person distinct from both rulers and ruled. This
conception of state power had a considerable influence in the course of the ensuing
century. Notably, it is the understanding of the state that underpins William Blackstone’s
Commentaries on the Laws of England. With Jeremy Bentham’s attack on Blackstone,
however, and with the growing influence of utilitarian legal and political theory, this
vision was in turn challenged by a purportedly commonsensical view, present in
Bentham, John Austin and later utilitarians such as Henry Sidgwick, according to which
the power of the state is nothing other than the power of an established government.
The lecture concluded with an assessment of the sceptical view of the state now
prevalent in much contemporary political science. If, the sceptics argue, we take the
state to be the bearer of sovereignty, and if we ask whose actions can properly be
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identified as actions of the state, we have to admit that there is no specific person
or body of persons whose actions are equivalent to the actions of the state, simply
because there is no specific person or body of persons who can any longer be said to
exercise untrammelled sovereignty. The lecture ended by asking whether this marked
the end of the road for the theory of the state. Professor Skinner’s case was that the
issue is still very much alive, and indeed a question that “will not go away”. Such is
the importance and nature of the debate, however, that how the question is to be
answered in our times remains wide open.
The full version of the lecture can be seen and heard on
www.wolfson.cam.ac.uk/lee-lecture
Dr Lee Seng Tee (Honorary Fellow) in his office in the OCBC building, Singapore April 2008
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 39

David Crystal: Research Profile
Honorary Fellow
One theme has dominated my research over the
past twenty years: the evolution of language in
electronically-mediated communication (EMC) –
a term which includes the many domains encountered
through personal computers (such as the Web, chat
rooms, and email), the use of spoken and written
language on mobile phones, and the linguistic
content of communication devices such as satnav.
It is a field characterized by rapid change. I wrote an
initial account of it in Language and the Internet,
which appeared in 2001. A mere four years later the
book needed significant revision, for it made no
mention of instant messaging and blogging – two
developments which were virtually unknown in 2001 but which had become fastgrowing
areas of internet activity by 2003. The second edition of my book came out in
2006. Already it needs significant revision, for it makes no mention of such interactive
domains as YouTube, MySpace, and FaceBook, which again were virtually unknown in
2005. Text messaging provides another illustration. It seems to have been with us
forever, and yet for almost all users it is less than ten years old.
EMC presents linguistics researchers with some unusual problems. Getting hold
of the data, for a start. It proves to be extremely difficult to build a corpus of emails,
chat room conversations, or text messages. People are remarkably reluctant to share
their e-exchanges. Would you let me see yours? And even when people do agree to
provide messages, a certain amount of sanitization takes place. People send me only
what they want me to see. Knowing I am a linguist, someone once told me ‘Yes, I’ll
send you some, but I’m cleaning up my grammar first!’ – thereby, of course,
misunderstanding what linguistics is all about.
The lack of uncontaminated data is one of the reasons why linguistic research in
EMC has been slow to develop – and why so many urban myths abound about its
character. For example, virtually everyone believes that text-messaging is full of novel
abbreviations (such as C U L8r): in fact, typically less than ten percent of the words used
in texts are abbreviated in this way, and almost all the common abbreviations can be
traced back to a period long before mobile phones were invented (code-puzzles such
as Y Y U R, Y Y U B... were popular in Victorian England). A related myth is that texting
harms children’s language growth – something that research studies are now
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demonstrating to be false. On the contrary, the more children text, the better their
literacy scores.
This is the descriptive and experimental side to research into EMC: establishing
the linguistic facts. How is language actually used? How much variation is there? How
fast does e-language change? Are there differences of age, social background, gender
...? One tiny observation to illustrate: women texters use far more exclamation marks
than men. A small point, which by itself is of little significance, but when seen in
association with other points of gender difference allows us to make some interesting
deductions about how people vary the emotional content of texts and what the
functions of text-messaging are.
The other side of EMC research is applied in character. Three problems illustrate
the need.
• You type the word depression into Google, wanting results in economics, and
you are annoyed to get thousands of hits from psychiatry.
• You type mobile phones into an online retail site, and the site says it has no
mobile phones (but you know it must have them).
• A news report about a street stabbing has ads down the side of the screen
which say, appallingly, ‘Buy your knives here’.
The research goals are clear. Search engines need assistance to improve the
relevance of results (by devising lexical filters which exclude pages irrelevant to
your search interest). E-commerce needs to improve the accuracy of online enquiries
(by anticipating all variables – in the above case, only the search-term cellular phone
was being accepted by the software). And advertising agencies need to improve the
appropriateness of ad placement on web pages by not relying on oversimple word
frequency counts (which highlighted only knife/knives, in the above example).
These solutions depend on a single methodology. The task is to anticipate the
words that users employ when interacting with websites. Which words will you be
likely to use when talking about depression in the meteorological sense? Which,
if it is the psychiatric sense? Which, if it is the economic sense? To ensure
comprehensiveness, the initial research task was to work through an English
dictionary, assigning all content words and their meanings to appropriate knowledge
categories, and to build a device (which I call a sense engine) that would take web
pages and classify them accurately. This has now been done, and the technology is
being used initially in the advertising domain. Further applications include automatic
document classification, to facilitate the retrieval of information in large electronic
databases; and internet security, to monitor sensitive or dangerous online content.
It is a long-term programme, for it needs to be applied to all languages which have
a significant Web presence. So far a translation/localization has begun for just four
languages. Internet linguistics will keep a lot of linguists happily employed for quite
some time.
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 41

Patricia Hyndman: Research Profile
Emeritus Fellow
My research interest in the field of international human rights law began by
circumstance. In the early 1980s, while teaching at the University of New South
Wales in Sydney, I was asked to help LAWASIA (a regional association of lawyers) to
establish a regular publication on the human rights issues of that part of the world.
While collecting material for the first Bulletin I was brought face to face with
brutalities which occur daily and affect ordinary people – often simply by
happenstance. The resultant suffering appalled me, as did the fact that these horrors
were occurring despite the existence of a considerable body of international human
rights law which obliges governments to protect the rights of their populations.
One item was a report from an Indian lawyer outlining the case of dozens of people
in his city who were in jail and who had, in many instances, languished there for over
twenty years. These prisoners had not been charged with any crime and would never
be brought to court. They had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, for
example, rounded up on an occasion of street violence. To their families they had
vanished inexplicably and without trace. They had become statistics, people without
Patricia Hyndman with her daughters Alexandra (left) and Natasha (right) sitting on a rock in Thailand
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identity and without rights, and many of them had been tortured. Two forms of
torture were described by the lawyer: in the first, the prisoners were forced to lie on
their backs then the jailers jumped on to their knees causing terrible injuries; in the
second, bicycle spokes were forced into the prisoners’ eyes and then acid was poured
in to the wounds.
One thing led to another. During the following decade, while at UNSW, I
became involved with LAWASIA’s Human Rights Committee which was composed
of representatives from a number of member states and had the impossible
mandate of dealing with human rights issues throughout Asia and the Pacific.
The geographical area in question stretched from Iran in the west to Japan in the
east, covered the Indian sub-continent and south-east Asia, Papua-New Guinea,
Australia, New Zealand and the island states of the South Pacific.
I became involved in various activities, firstly with the LAWASIA Human Rights
Committee and later with organisations such as the Commonwealth Secretariat,
various UN agencies, government bodies, different University Human Rights
Institutes and a variety of NGOs and, after moving to Cambridge in 1992, in issues in
Africa. Activities included the dissemination of information regarding human rights,
through both publications and seminars, on topics such as the rights of women,
of minorities, of stateless persons, of indigenous peoples, of refugees, and on the
need to safeguard freedom of expression. There were attempts, with lawyers in
the Asia-Pacific region to bring about constitutional change, and to encourage the
establishment of Ombudsman offices. Seminars were run to alert judges and lawyers
to the relevance of international human rights law in the domestic sphere. Support
was given to efforts to establish sub-regional Human Rights Commissions and
Charters of Rights. LAWASIA observers were sent to countries with serious human
rights problems and to trials raising important issues. Reports from these different
activities were used in efforts to persuade, or shame, governments into adhering
to their international human rights obligations.
Of course, the protection of basic rights can never come from legislation alone.
Many of the countries in which child labour is rampant have not only ratified the
relevant international instruments but also have adequate domestic laws. These laws
go unenforced. In one huge city in South East Asia only two factory inspectors were
employed to enforce the child labour laws there. Apart from the fact that their mission
was impossible, these inspectors were paid a meagre wage. The inevitable result:
factory owners, through a small bribe, could secure an acceptable report.
When confronted with child labour, the inclination is to rush in to stop the
practice, abolish the factory, remove the children, or do something equally decisive,
but such actions do not bring about any permanent solution. The children who work
in unbearable conditions – as in the case of a glass factory in southern India, walking
bare foot over shards of broken glass, working in intense heat with no protective
clothing, crawling under moving machinery to fix it or retrieve some dropped item –
do so for a reason: abject poverty. The socio-economic conditions which produce
child labour affect the cultural attitude as to what is acceptable, both locally and at
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 43

government level. Changing these conditions and this attitude requires time, the
education of, and collaboration with, the parties involved: i.e. the children, parents,
employers, unions, doctors, teachers, lawyers, purchasers of the products, local
organisations and government. Recognition of the rights and needs of the children
has to spread throughout the whole society. Alternative forms of support, work
practices, local networks and strategies need development.
These activities require funding and this has come from a variety of sources:
some from University Institutes such as the Norwegian, Netherlands, Hawaiian and
Taiwanese Institutes; some from NGOs such as Radda Barnen, the Swedish Save The
Children Fund, the Law and Society Trust in Colombo; some from Foundations such as
the Joyce Mertz Gilmore Foundation in New York, the Ford Foundation, the J. Roderick
McArthur Foundation, the Asia Foundation; some from Bar Associations, for example
of Fiji, Malaysia and the Philippines; some through UN agencies, and some from
bodies such as the Osaka City Council when concerned about the plight of illegal
immigrant workers in Japan.
I arrived, almost by accident, at my research interest in the area of international
human rights and I have found it absorbing. It is multi-dimensional, inter-disciplinary
and cross-cultural in its remit. Through it I have met remarkable people and
encountered complex and fascinating, though often heart-rending, situations.
It is certainly never boring, and there are those wonderful occasions when it is
clear that something really worthwhile has been achieved.
Tea picking in Sri Lanka
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Benjamin Kipkorir: Research Profile
Visiting Fellow
When I was born in the remote Cherang’any Hills of the Rift Valley Province of Kenya, my
country, which the British had carved out into a colony 50 years before, was about to be
engulfed in the Second World War. An uncle, and many of his fellow tribesmen, would
join the British forces in East Africa that were responsible for clearing both Mussolini’s
armies from Somalia and Ethiopia and the Vichy French presence in Madagascar, and
would thereafter join the South Asian theatre in India and Burma. I was the third of six
sons of a missionary’s cook, who was struggling with life in a fast changing world. Yet,
I made it through the tough colonial educational hurdles of the time and graduated in
History at Makerere University in Kampala in 1965. After a spell in local government
administration, I came over to Cambridge where, under Professors Ronald Robinson
(of The Africa and the Victorians fame) and John Lonsdale, I obtained my PhD in 1970.
Thirteen years of teaching at Nairobi University surprisingly gave me little joy but I
had sense enough to apply my energies to other activities, which eventually led to
my appointment as CEO of my country’s largest bank, and subsequently as Kenya’s
Ambassador to the United States during Bill Clinton’s vintage years, 1994–1997. With
such a background, it is easy to see why two of my former professors, one an African,
the other a Briton, should consider it worthwhile for me to write a memoir.
Reluctantly at first, but buoyed by support from friends and generous grants from
both the Ford Foundation and Canada’s IDRC, I began collecting material in 2004. All
along I suspected that what would interest observers most is what I might reveal about
the dynamics of representing an African country in the capital of a nation that bragged
about its sole super power status. With that in mind, I brushed up on my knowledge of the
theory and practice of representation through as thorough a re-acquaintance as I could
with Satow’s magnum opus and the works of other lesser known but no less informative
writers. I then reflected on the major problems I encountered as ambassador. As I saw it,
I really faced two problems, one open and the other distinctly hidden.
The first was one of monitoring and reporting on the implementation of agreements
between the Kenya Government and the United States. This entailed looking at the fine
print of Memoranda of Understanding between the Kenya Government and different
Departments of the US government, for strictly speaking, there are very few
agreements reached and signed at the sovereign government level although those
between the Kenya Government and the different US departments have the effect of
sovereign protocols as interpreted by the US side only! Nothing illustrated this more
graphically than the understanding (or more correctly, misunderstanding) on Kenyan
textile exports. It so happened that, despite her many problems of governance, access
to foreign exchange, budgetary deficits and balance of trade shortfalls, Kenya had
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 45

somehow managed to build up its garments exports to the US to the extent of
accounting for 1.25% of US imports of pillow cases. Small as the item is in the overall
context of US trade volumes, it was colossal for Kenya and had registered on the
statistical radar of the US Trade Representative Office, popularly known as USTR,
which had threatened to impose import quotas on the nascent Kenyan textile industry.
Thus on my appointment as ambassador, I was charged by the then young minister of
trade and industry in the Kenya Government, who was a technocrat and understood
the mechanics of trade relations, to vigorously follow up the matter with a view to
defending Kenya’s position and thus to prevent the collapse of the textile industry.
The USTR argued from its knowledge of the Kenyan scenario, that the Sub-Saharan
African nation was being used for dumping purposes by nations which, unlike Kenya,
had been placed on specific quotas under a Congressional protocol. To tackle this
problem effectively, I had to have a dynamic mandate supported by my home ministry,
that of Foreign Affairs. This brought to the fore the second of my problems, only this one
was hidden. The United States conducts its foreign policy with smaller nations through
her ambassadors in those countries. What was I, as ambassador, with my limited staff and
expertise, to do to confront a position that was being aggressively canvassed directly with
officials in my government at home by a powerfully staffed and well-positioned office
of my counterpart? I seek to document my experiences in seeing through this problem.
What of the other, less glamorous, part of my life’s story? With my mind cluttered with
a mass of chaotic diplomatic practice material, I sought advice from an experienced
New Zealand journalist about the best way for me to approach my memoir. He was then
among the crop of Wolfson’s Press Fellows with whom I was sharing accommodation
in Norton House that summer. What he said to me set my mind thinking about a little
incident when I was but three years old. Quite rapidly, my mind ran forward along
the recollection track. When I returned to Kenya, I pursued this train of thought more
vigorously and within a year I had such a mass of information on my early life’s journey,
beginning with the period even before I went to school, that for the past four years,
I have been engaged in what a current Visiting Fellow has suggested might be called ‘a
conversation with my five-year old self.’ I have also been ‘conversing’ with my grandfather,
who died in 1963 on Kenya’s Independence Day then aged approximately 90 years, and
with my other ancestors. In other words, I have had to ask the perennial question, ‘Who
am I?’ In returning to Wolfson four years after the commencement of this discourse,
I am no nearer to being able to answer the question, but neither am I too far. I have been
writing about events that, and people who, have been part of my life during the past 70
years. In that period I saw British colonial rule, that at the beginning of my ‘conversation’
was firmly entrenched in the firmament, convulsed by Mau Mau and then confronted
by African nationalists, with power finally surrendered to a new genre of rulers.
One of the grant-giving agencies asked me to employ my memoir as a canvas on
which to depict the important and not so important events of my time. During the many
hours spent in the Wolfson PWF I have been struggling with crafting my story in such a
way that that mandate is fulfilled while keeping in mind the centrality of my narrative.
Whether I succeed should shortly become evident, for I am just about done with writing.
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The Future of History in New York:
The New-York Historical Society
Louise Mirrer, Honorary Fellow and Alumna
My appointment in 2004 as President and CEO of
the New-York Historical Society, New York’s first
museum, coincided with the twin celebration of the
Society’s bicentennial and the opening of its first-ever
‘blockbuster’ exhibition, “Alexander Hamilton: The
Man Who Made Modern America.” Hamilton died
tragically in a duel with Aaron Burr in 1804, just as the
Society opened its doors. In fact, one of the Society’s
eleven founders was Dr David Hosack, who attended
Hamilton on his deathbed.
In commemoration of both bicentennials, Mayor
Michael R. Bloomberg stood in the Society’s Great Hall
on 9 September 2004, before a crowd of 850 people that
included thirty-three Hamilton descendents, and invoked the history of our venerable
institution as well as the early immigrant from the West Indies, who arrived orphaned
and penniless in New York as a teenager, and dared to dream that his new home would
someday occupy a place of privilege in world politics, finance and culture. Following
the Mayor’s remarks, guests walked through 6,000 square feet of specially-programmed
gallery space, astonished to see amassed in one place so many of the original
documents, art and objects that spelled out the thoughts and life of Alexander
Hamilton, quintessential New Yorker and the nation’s most ‘modern’ founding father.
The Society was able to ‘think big’ in 2004 because of a vision shared by the institution’s
trustees and by me, the Society’s new President, that we could become the address for
history in New York; that our collections, second only to the Library of Congress in
documents, rare books and manuscripts of the early American period and on a par with
the Metropolitan Museum of Art in American painting of the 19th century, could form
the centerpiece of a great destination for all those who love history, and for scholars and
filmmakers for whom our resources had already enabled great books ranging from The
Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge (David McCullough),
to Alexander Hamilton (Ron Chernow), to Rough Crossing (Simon Schama), and films
such as The Age of Innocence and Gangs of New York (Martin Scorcese).
We worked hard during a short period of time to engage scholars in planning future
exhibitions. I was fortunate to succeed in hiring a great Museum Director, Dr Linda
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 47

Ferber, renowned chair of American art at the Brooklyn Museum, and a great Library
Director, Dr Jean Ashton, who had headed the rare book division at Columbia
University. I also brought on board Dr Richard Rabinowitz, an enormously talented
and creative historian-curator, with whom I shared a passion for uncovering – and
telling – unknown or underappreciated histories. The Society’s board encouraged our
ambitions to present cutting-edge history shows. They treasured, as did I, our new
‘stars’ in the Museum and Library divisions, and were determined to provide all of us
with the resources we needed to make our vision a success.
When the Mayor returned to the Society almost exactly one year after his bicentennial
visit, for the opening of Slavery in New York, the first exhibition developed under my
presidency, he found a building virtually bursting at the seams with new audiences
representing the entire demographic of the city. During the run of Slavery in New York,
visits to the Society by schoolchildren increased 1,000%, and our attendance nearly
tripled. Hundreds of thousands of visitors wanted to learn about the history of a group of
immigrants to New York whose contribution to the city’s prosperity was huge, despite the
fact that, unlike other immigrants – for example, Hamilton – their arrival was involuntary.
The Society had changed irrevocably in the public eye, and visitors now included
not only New Yorkers, but also people from across the globe. With an energized board
and new administration firmly in place, the Society set down its mission for the next
decade in a new strategic vision guided by two principles:
A deep conviction that telling the story of American and New York history is
important, and a sense that history is inadequately known, taught and understood
today.
and
An understanding that the Society’s unique Museum and Library collections, its
central and accessible location, and its wealth of intellectual capital drawn from
historians who serve as education and exhibition consultants offer a remarkable
platform from which to examine the people, ideas and institutions that shaped our
country and city, and influence the lives we lead today.
To be successful, the Society’s strategic vision will require a transformation not only
in program, but also in the physical spaces to which it welcomes the public. A new
design, completed by award-winning preservation architects Platt Byard Dovell
and White, was conceived to meet the requirements of continued, record-breaking
numbers of visitors over the next several years. And just this summer, ground was
broken on a $60 million renovation of our landmark building on Central Park West.
Over the next three years, as we mount blockbuster history exhibitions on “Grant and
Lee in War and Peace,” “Lincoln and New York,” and “Nueva York,” and spectacular art
shows from our permanent collection, work will continue so that, by 2011, the New-
York Historical Society will look like the preeminent institution we have envisioned.
The future of history in New York is indeed bright. I am lucky to be a part of it.
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Dawn Muddyman: Research Profile
Senior Member and Department of Physiology, Development & Neuroscience
After seven years in Cambridge, I still find myself
having the same conversations at formal hall, beginning
with the usual, “And what is it that you do?” The answer?
“Disease” (note to self: this is never a good topic for the
dinner table). For those kind enough to enquire further,
I’m an epidemiologist by trade – interested in studying
disease spread at population level (unfortunately not
an expert in skin conditions, which is what several
people have assumed after a few glasses of wine).
Disease is the great leveller of men, and as a
biology undergraduate I was particularly struck by
the vulnerability of living things to microbial pathogens
– those unseen agents of disease able to invade,
parasitize and/or kill an organism so much greater and more complex than itself.
I went on to specialise in plant pathology, and in particular how fungal diseases
spread through crops. My rationale was that one route to improving human health
was to ensure better food quality, food security and nutrition – which could be
achieved by reducing crop losses due to disease. In 2001, I came to Cambridge and
to Wolfson College to undertake a PhD in botanical epidemiology, and to study
disease dynamics further. For several years my ‘populations’ were plant seedlings
grown in uniform grid formations, to which I was able to introduce foci of pathogenic,
soil-borne fungal inoculum, and observe how disease spread through replicate
populations over time. I went on to identify a biological control agent – another
fungus, able to parasitize my pathogen (and a more environmentally friendly
alternative to conventional fungicide treatments), and introduced these into
my plant populations. By creating my own ‘mini epidemics’ under controlled
environmental conditions, I was able to identify primary and secondary episodes
of disease spread, and see how disease dynamics were affected by different biological
and chemical control agents.
I became fascinated by the intricacies of epidemics, and went on to manage
the UK’s Crop Pathogen Virulence Survey at the National Institute of Agricultural
Botany for two years. I was principally responsible for monitoring epidemics in cereal
crops across the UK, and advising crop growers which varieties of wheat, barley and
oats should be cultivated, to ensure the best resistance against prevalent pathogen
varieties in their region.
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Having worked with plant diseases for several years, I was intrigued as to how
things were ‘on the other side of the tracks’, and in 2006–2007 took a break to complete
an MPhil in human epidemiology, at the Institute for Public Health here in Cambridge.
Again I was drawn to the challenge of understanding the spread of disease, this time in
human populations – which unlike plants (rather inconveniently) do not stay put, and
exist in a much more complex environment! I was fortunate to spend a summer
working at the World Health Organisation following my MPhil, and was based in
the Department for HIV/AIDS where I was able to witness the translation of learned
theories into testing and counselling initiatives to reduce rates of HIV infection.
Since returning to Cambridge I have been engaged on an EC-funded project
based in the Department of Physiology, focusing on the mouse as a model organism
for the study of human disease. The project aims to make it easier for researchers and
clinicians to draw parallels between genetic traits in different organisms (such as the
human and the mouse), by coordinating and integrating databases across Europe
into which experimental data and genetic sequences are deposited. Ensuring that
this information is stored and made accessible in a standardised format between
countries will not only help to shed more light on some of the genetic conditions
afflicting people, but it will also reduce a (costly) duplication of research effort
across Europe.
Although my interest in the study of disease remains fundamentally unchanged,
I feel very lucky to have been able to move between research fields and disciplines as
I have, and owe much of this to the supporting environment and the encouragement
I’ve received over the years from College. Now a Senior Member, wherever I go in
the future I shall take with me a very deep affection for Wolfson, a place that has
been my home for many years. I will also take many fond memories of formal halls.
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Christopher Taylor: Research Profile
Senior Member and former Head of Archaeological Survey, Royal Commission on the
Historical Monuments of England
The Royal Commission, now absorbed into English
Heritage, was established in 1908 in order to identify
and record ancient monuments, both buildings and
archaeological sites, worthy of preservation. It was
born out of the late Victorian concern to define what
would now be termed The Heritage in the face of what
then seemed to be large-scale destruction. For over
80 years the Commission compiled lists of monuments
and published their detailed descriptions in lavish
inventories. These grew in size and content as the
increasingly academic staff sought better to understand
the monuments they recorded. I joined the Royal
Commission in the early 1960s and for nearly forty
years, working first in Cambridgeshire, Dorset, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire
and subsequently in almost every other part of England, recorded archaeological
sites. These ranged from early prehistoric habitations to twentieth-century nuclear
bunkers. As a result of this work I wrote or contributed to some seventeen Royal
Commission publications.
Working at a time of increasing concern for the whole environment, it became
clear that identifying ‘monuments’ was all very well, and the process met the needs
of planners, developers, politicians and tourist managers, in that the monuments
could be detached and ring-fenced from the real world. In academic terms however,
it was increasingly obvious that neither the understanding of monuments nor their
true value as part of the cultural heritage could be assessed without the investigation
and analysis of the wider environment to which they had once belonged and of which
they often remained a part. Thus, particularly towards the end of my official working
life, more and more time was spent on research into the setting of monuments. This
approach was much influenced by the writings of the late Professor W G Hoskins
whose book The Making of the English Landscape (1955) was, and still is, regarded
as one of the seminal works of history of the twentieth century. In 1988 I was
honoured to be asked to produce an updated version of this marvellous book.
Gradually both my official research for the Royal Commission, and even more so
my private research that went on apace alongside it, moved from the investigation and
description of monuments to landscape history. That is, from individual sites to the
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 51

understanding of complete landscapes over the entire span of human existence.
This private research led to my publishing over a hundred articles in academic
journals and a number of my own books, among them Fields in the English Landscape
(1975), Roads and Tracks of Britain (1979), Village and Farmstead (1983) and Parks and
Gardens of Britain (1998).
As a result of the need to set in context individual monuments, both sites and
landscapes were better appreciated. For example, the study of deserted medieval
villages led to the clearer understanding of all of the villages that still exist. It revealed
that they have expanded, contracted, moved about and been bodily removed ever
since they were first established in Saxon times. The fact that change not stability is
a recurrent feature in the history of the landscape has allowed us better to appreciate
and perhaps accept change in our own time. The planned landscapes of motorways
and housing estates of today are merely speeded-up versions of the industrial and
urban ones of the nineteenth century, the deliberately created rural landscapes
of the eighteenth century and the newly planned towns and villages of the tenth
to thirteenth centuries. In Roman times and even as far back as the Bronze Age,
around 1500 BC, field systems stretching for kilometres across the countryside,
all laid out from common axes, have been found that show that massive changes
in the landscape have always occurred. While such landscapes have always been to
the fore in my research, whole new aspects have also emerged from the continuing
work on monuments. After finding and puzzling over dozens of grass-covered
terraces enclosed by earthen banks and ditches I recognized that most were
abandoned gardens that dated from medieval times to the twentieth century. As a
result I became known as ‘the inventor of garden archaeology’ (The Archaeology of
Gardens 1988). A spin-off from this interest was membership for fifteen years of the
English Heritage Historic Parks and Gardens Advisory Committee.
All of these discoveries and the research that followed have enabled my students,
who have ranged from primary school children to post-graduates, better to
understand the origins of the world that surrounds them. Since formal retirement
I continue with my writing and research, although now at a reduced level. But
I remaín determined to continue to analyse and explain landscapes.
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Wolfson is in my Life
James Yudong Yao, Alumnus
I spent five years in Wolfson College between 1995 and 2000. This period is certainly
the most memorable and happy time in my life. On 1 May 1997, I was elected President
of the Wolfson AMAL Club and became one of a few Chinese students who has won a
college election in Cambridge history. My campaign team members came from several
countries and they helped me choose an always-politically-correct and appealing
election slogan which was “Wolfson deserves better”. My supporters came from a large
number of countries and my election victory is strong evidence that Wolfson is the
most cosmopolitan college in Cambridge.
Later on, I was also elected President of the Chinese Student and Scholar
Association (CSSA) at Cambridge. Wolfson, as my home College, offered me solid
support for my CSSA duties by providing excellent facilities to several major activities
of CSSA including a Chinese New Year Party in 1998 for free. Also, I established life-long
friendships with a number of Wolfson members including our dedicated President,
Gordon Johnson. All this support and friendship are strong evidence to me that
Wolfson is one of the friendliest colleges in Cambridge. Wolfson College also helped
me to gain an international perspective and world compassion. After graduating
from Wolfson with a PhD in economics, I joined the World Bank as an economic
consultant and the International Monetary Fund as an economist. Of course, my
Wolfson experience helped a lot in my work at these two international organizations.
Once you know Wolfson, you know the world. Finally, I also met my wife, a Girton
College student, at Wolfson in 1998. There is no doubt that Wolfson gave me the
biggest fortune in my life, and I feel I owe Wolfson so much, and therefore hope to
contribute to Wolfson during the rest of my life.
Returning to my homeland was my long-term dream and when I returned to
China in 2005, I started serving as a senior officer with the Investment Promotion
Bureau of Heilongjiang Provincial Government. Heilongjiang is the largest province
in the Northeast of China and the geographic centre of the Northeast Asia. In terms of
area it is equal to the size of Germany! Over the past three decades, China introduced
substantial reforms and experienced fast economic growth, including in Heilongjiang.
Yet Heilongjiang is currently facing economic and social issues due to a number of
reasons, including its economic structure and the fact that it lagged in economic
development relative to other parts of China. In 2003, the Chinese government
announced a strategic move; that is, to accelerate the revitalization process of the
old industrial bases in the Northeast of China. In order to rejuvenate Heilongjiang’s
economy, there was a need for a number of reforms, and a key one was that of
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 53

investment promotion, to create a good image for the province and to remove
impediments to investment. An improved investment promotion effort is likely
to enhance the quality and quantity of investment, which in turn would lead to
more beneficial economic activities, increased employment, more tax revenues
and economic growth. Investment promotion in Heilongjiang has therefore taken
first priority in the efforts devoted to revitalizing the region.
As a public servant, one of my achievements was to help create an investment
platform for Heilongjiang. In 2004 the Heilongjiang Provincial government proposed
the setting up of the Harbin-Daqing-Qiqihar Industrial Corridor, along which lies one
of the most important industrial bases of China. The Corridor is an ideal place for
investment and finance, given that its development is important to the whole of
Northeast Asia. In July 2006, together with a few colleagues, I put forward a proposal
to organize an investment and finance fair during the Harbin Snow and Ice Festival
held every January, so as to speed up the revitalization of Heilongjiang’s old industrial
bases and to introduce the Industrial Corridor to the world. Surprisingly, this proposal
was adopted by the provincial government, and thus we created the new “Harbin
International Fair for Investment and Finance”. The primary purpose of the Harbin
Fair is to play a sustainable and pivotal role in attracting private investment to the
Northeast by creating not only a channel for international capital to enter but also
opportunities for the domestic private sector to invest in the Northeast of China. In
addition, Harbin Fair serves as an important platform for the regions, municipalities
and private firms from the Northeast of China to showcase their investment
environment, policies, projects and so on. In the long run, the Harbin Fair expects
54
Yudong Yao with his wife Jiaping Wang, and daughter Emma
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32

to become the sole nation-wide international winter event that focuses on
promoting both domestic and foreign private investment and finance. As one of
the key organizers of the Harbin Fair, I have contributed to its two subsequent
successes in 2007 and 2008. The Harbin Fair served its purpose very effectively,
and as a result I feel I have achieved quite a lot.
As a Cambridge-educated economist, I have witnessed rapid growth in Heilongjiang
and elsewhere in China. Every city in China is innovative and ordinary people are
increasingly becoming entrepreneurial. One year in China is equal to four years
in the US because our fast growth brought about rapid changes in culture, society
and life styles. I am currently writing my second book in Chinese on ‘New Wealth of
Nations’ and expect to publish it next spring. My hope is that China’s development
experience might be of interest to the wider world, especially the many developing
countries.
The theme of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games was ‘One world, one dream’.
Please allow me to borrow this theme to elaborate on the true character of Wolfson
in my eyes: Wolfson is a nano-level global village. Students who chase dreams, travel
thousands of miles to meet in Wolfson. Today, Wolfson is our physical home;
tomorrow, Wolfson is our spiritual home. I love Wolfson.
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The Hon Justice Susan Kiefel
Sir David Williams, Honorary Fellow and former President
Justice Susan Kiefel, who matriculated at Wolfson
College in 1984 and who was elected to an Honorary
Fellowship in March 2008, has had an unusually
distinguished career both as a practitioner from 1975
and as a judge since 1993. She was admitted to the
Queensland Bar in 1975, she became a Queen’s Counsel
in 1987, in 1993 she was appointed to the Supreme Court
of Queensland, and late in 1994 she became a member
of the Federal Court of Australia. In 2007 – while she
was on a walking holiday in Norway – she heard that
she had been appointed by the Governor-General of
Australia to be one of the seven Justices of the High
Court of Australia. She was welcomed formally at a
Special Sitting of the High Court held in Canberra on 3 September 2007.
Justice Kiefel’s progress has been remarkable by any standards. She was never an
undergraduate at University, and she qualified professionally through the three-year
course of the Barristers’ Board of Queensland. After several busy years in practice she
decided to take time out by reading for the LLM at Wolfson College in the academic
year 1984–1985. Her application was strongly supported by the then Chief Justice of
Queensland, Sir Walter Campbell (later a highly regarded Governor of the State), and
his confidence in her was rewarded by a happy academic year in which she achieved
great success, particularly in Comparative Law (marked by the award of the C.J.
Hamson Prize at University level), and by a happy social and boating year during
which she met her future husband, Michael Albrecht, who was also a student of
Wolfson. Justice Kiefel and her husband have maintained close contact with the
College and they have been generous benefactors.
In welcoming Justice Kiefel as an Honorary Fellow, we are confident that in her
new role she will contribute significantly and consistently to the law of Australia
and to the reputation and standing of the High Court. Wolfson College is proud of
her achievements to date and fascinated by the prospect of so much more to come.
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Judy McGregor
John Naughton, Fellow and Director of Wolfson Press Fellowship Programme
Dr Judy McGregor, who is now the Equal Employment
Opportunities (EEO) Commissioner on the New Zealand
Human Rights Commission, was one of the College’s
earliest Press Fellows (she was here in Michaelmas Term
1982) and is the first member of the Press Fellowship to
be elected an Honorary Fellow of the College.
Judy has an arts degree and a doctorate (her research
was on political communication) and is a qualified
lawyer. She has distinguished careers in journalism,
academia and public service. She spent twenty years
in the newspaper industry and held two editorships –
of the Sunday News and the Auckland Star. As an
academic she was head of the Departments of Human
Resource Management and Communication and Journalism at Massey University.
She was founder and convenor of the New Zealand Centre for Women and Leadership,
served as a member of the Massey University Council and chaired its Research
Committee for a number of years. She is still the Australasian editor of Women in
Management Review.
As EEO Commissioner she is currently working on pay equity, ageism in the
workplace and extending equal employment opportunities in the public and private
sectors. Her current voluntary work in the community includes work improving
Maori journalism through the Mana Trust, working on the barriers faced by mature
job-seekers, helping women in public life with media campaigns and lobbying for
better media coverage of women’s sport.
Bill Kirkman, the founding Director of the Press Fellowship, remembers Judy’s
time in Wolfson as a pivotal point in her career. It gave her the international exposure
that may have contributed to her appointment as New Zealand’s first female editor
of a national daily paper. And her Press Fellowship kindled a desire to study law – and
thence to the interest in human rights which eventually led to her present eminence.
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 57

Facing up to Change
Don MacDonald, Vice-President
It may seem odd to write about the educational challenges facing the University
of Cambridge when that institution is riding high in the academic league tables.
These place Cambridge at the top of the UK leagues on nearly every metric, and if
you believe in such league tables, it looks as if we are in the Manchester United class
of academic institutions. An optimist would say that we are doing really well so what
we are doing must be right and by implication all we have to do is continue, while a
pessimist would counter with the view that if you are on top of the heap, the only way
is down. As with any such polarized opinions, the truth (probably) lies somewhere in
the middle.
We do a lot of things well, better perhaps than most other universities. Our research
activity in many areas is world class, bringing with it large amounts of outside funding,
at least for science, technology and medicine, although arts, humanities and the social
sciences are having a much tougher time. Much of the teaching in Cambridge is of
immensely high quality and we have a steady stream of highly-intelligent, motivated
students queuing up to do our courses.
So, why should we worry? We have good research, good faculty and good students,
and relatively for the UK Higher Education sector, a good stream of research income.
However, we do face difficulties going forward, and here I want to give a personal view
on what I see as the problems and challenges facing undergraduate and postgraduate
education in Cambridge. I’m not going to talk about research, or governance or any
of the other topics which form the substance of daily gossip among colleagues. By the
way, throughout this article, you should take ‘University’ to mean both University and
the Colleges. Whether we like it or not, people in the outside world don’t make that
distinction, and neither should we.
Universities don’t operate independently of the world outside, and this is
particularly true in terms of our undergraduate intake. Any University can only be as
good as the students it manages to attract to its courses. We currently face a challenge
over access issues, where our intake of pupils from state schools has flatlined at about
slightly less than half of our intake. Set against the fact that more than 80% of 18 year
olds are in state schools, we consistently admit more pupils from the private school
sector, and we attract criticism for this. This criticism, of course ignores the basic fact
that pupils from independent schools have a head start in the educational stakes, and
regrettably, although being at a public school can’t guarantee your entrance, it can
increase your chances of admission to Cambridge. Private schools can coach their
pupils, groom them for admissions tests and prepare them better for the admissions
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process in all sorts of ways which are not available to the public sector. Whether such
students are better prepared for actual study is another question altogether. Contrast
the situation fifty years ago, when admittedly far fewer students went to University, but
the chances of a bright student from a poor family of getting in to a good University
were actually higher than they are now.
So, money (parental investment, if you like) can give you a better chance of entry
to higher education, and as a result Universities generally are less of a source of social
mobility now than they ever were. Whether you think this is a good thing or a bad
thing depends to some extent on your political stripe. However, it does seem that
as a result of these monetary and other inequalities, we are not recruiting from the
whole pool of talent available, and we should be concerned about this.
Changes in A-levels and the way they are taught have also changed the way our
students instinctively think about the learning process, and this has huge consequences
for us as a University. Modular courses at GCSE and A level, and a proliferation of tests
throughout the years at school encourage an approach to learning which is at worst
utilitarian, exemplified by the “what do I need to know to pass the next exam” mentality,
and at best encourages a ‘park and ride’ approach to learning (done the module, done
the assessment, move on), rather than a holistic and integrative understanding of
subjects. It is futile to grumble about these changes, because they are part of the UK
education system, and we have to work with what the system provides us. It is also
wrong to say that students are not as good as they once were; students are just as
intelligent, but they are differently prepared, and they are in some ways not well
prepared for the courses which we want to deliver. This means that many have
trouble adjusting to the culture and environment of Cambridge, something that
is a challenge for us, and something which we have not yet fully engaged with.
Access and student preparation are external issues, but we also have some internal,
systemic problems. Most of us, if asked to name the jewels in the crown of educational
provision at Cambridge, would point to the Tripos system and the collegiate pastoral
and supervision system. These parts of the system are what make Cambridge and
Oxford distinct and special in many ways. The Tripos is widely advertised as providing
a flexible and adaptable system, which allows students a wide choice of paths through
to their final degree, while the supervision system with its small group teaching ethos,
adds to and extends the learning process of individual students. Paradoxically perhaps,
I feel that some of our biggest challenges relate to both these institutional props of the
Cambridge system.
It is true that the Tripos system is flexible and offers a lot of choice – but mainly
within an individual Tripos. Setting aside for a moment the more vocational and
targeted subjects like Law and Medicine (and I realise that some hackles will be raised
even by calling them vocational), as a student you are largely locked in to the subjects
available in your particular Tripos, and it can be quite difficult to combine study across
different Triposes. One could ask why this matters, and what in any case are the
advantages of combining subjects across Triposes? For most students who want to
read English or History or Mathematics, it doesn’t matter, but what for example
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happens if you want to combine the study of geography with language, or biology with
engineering? I mention this latter possibility because that happens to be precisely the
area in which some of the most exciting developments in modern biology are taking
place, at the complex interface between biology, physics and engineering. We have
students whose intellectual interests straddle these interfaces, but we do not currently
have the courses or a structure which can deliver the knowledge and skills involved.
Attempts to foster such interdepartmental study often founder on the mundane
details of clashes of timetabling and incompatibility of examination papers. At a
very fundamental level, our Tripos teaching and more importantly, our exam system
is geared to examinations within a Tripos, and with few exceptions does not allow
students to ‘borrow’ papers or exams from a different Tripos. We have a huge diversity
of assessment policies and systems across the University and that makes for further
difficulties in crossing the boundaries between subjects. I’m not making a plea for
uniformity of assessment, but if we want interdisciplinary courses, we have to work out
something like an internal credit transfer mechanism which can allow this to happen.
Then there is the survival of the college pastoral and supervision system.
Undergraduate teaching in Cambridge is highly dependent on the supervision system
because of short terms, but also because of pressure of the learning experience. Much
of the teaching in arts subjects is actually done through supervisions rather than
through formal lectures, but even in the sciences, supervisions are an essential part
of the teaching programme, and the Tripos system would not work without them.
Traditionally, most supervision was delivered by university lecturers and professors but
that has now changed and some subjects depend almost exclusively on College teaching
officers and other non-University
teaching officers, postdoctoral
workers and graduate students. Most
of these do their job extremely well,
but it can and does lead to inequalities
in provision of supervisions across
colleges and subjects.
The real danger in this however
is the fact that the pressure on young
academics to develop their research
at the beginning of their careers has
also led many to shy away from taking
college positions, because this would
be a distraction from their ‘real’ job,
and is seen as detrimental to their
promotion prospects. These young
academics are of course the very
people best equipped to inspire the
next generation of undergraduates,
and currently the system actively
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discourages such individuals from becoming involved in teaching, putting further
strain on an already stressed system. It is also a real worry for the collegiate system
itself, because some of these young academics should be forming the next generation
of tutors and directors of studies.
Funding of teaching is also a real concern. It is difficult to work up enthusiasm
for reading the University’s financial accounts, and most of us probably just look at
the bottom line to see if the figure is red or black. However, over the last decade there
has been a decline in the money the University gets from government to run its core
teaching activities, from about 50% of the total income in 1998 to just over 30% in 2008.
This represents a substantial decrease in the amount of money for undergraduate
education, and although it is difficult to be exact about these figures, we now lose at
least £4,000–£5,000 per year for every student we teach. This is the stark economic
reality which drove the introduction of the £3,000 undergraduate fee a few years
ago. The problem is that a fee of £3,000 is not enough, a fact all higher education
institutions recognise, and this fee will probably have to rise again – the only question
is when.
Some of our competitors in the Russell group have tackled this problem in the
short term by recruiting students from overseas, who of course bring with them
a higher fee. Our overseas undergraduates make up perhaps 7–10% of our total
undergraduates compared to 25–30% in some other UK universities. Thirty percent
of our applicants are from overseas, and most are extremely well qualified, so why
do we not bolster our finances by admitting more overseas students? There are two
problems with this solution, one being that, quite rightly, we have a commitment to
educating largely UK students (and we are already facing criticism for being too
selective about these). The second is that the supply of good overseas undergraduates
is not guaranteed in the long term, as the new economies of, for example, China and
India begin to invest more heavily in their own higher education systems.
Graduate study has expanded enormously in Cambridge over the last ten years,
with most of the increase coming in the form of MPhil courses and most of the student
expansion being in terms of students from overseas. Underlying this expansion is the
worrying trend that the numbers of UK students applying for postgraduate study are
declining, arguing that careers in research and academic life are not being seen as
attractive to the best of our home students. These top undergraduates are the core of
the next generation of researchers and academics, and if we don’t train them, we are
going to have to rely on the products of other universities for our postgraduate intake,
and that in itself is becoming more difficult to achieve. Recent experience has been
that when we recruit postgraduates, we are in direct competition not only with
universities in the UK but with other universities across the world, and that
competition for recruitment of the top graduates is getting harder. Added to the
external competition, we have serious problems with our postgraduate application
system. Graduate applications are complicated by the fact that each student has to be
accepted by a faculty or department and also by a college. Getting decisions from two
separate sets of institutions, together with uncertainties about funding in many cases,
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makes the whole process cumbersome and slow in comparison to our competitors,
and is now clearly hampering our efforts to recruit the best students. There is no point
in having lots of postgraduate students unless you can recruit good ones, and the
difficulties we currently have in recruiting and funding such students seem to me to
seriously undermine the arguments for becoming a research-only university, which
were current a few years ago.
Perhaps the biggest challenge these difficulties in undergraduate and graduate
education pose is to the future of the collegiate system itself. In bald figures, it costs
more to send a student to Cambridge or Oxford than to, say, UCL because of the
college fee component. In a culture where public spending is accountable, people ask
the blunt question of how much added value the college system delivers in educational
terms? We can all reel of a list of what we perceive as the benefits of collegiality
in terms of interactions between academics and students, and intellectual and
philosophical stimulation that (sometimes) ensues. However, such a recital is bound
to elicit the response, yes that may be true, but what are you actually adding to the
student experience? And that is where the question becomes really difficult to answer.
For undergraduates, we can point to the pastoral care delivered by the colleges and
the benefits of the supervision system, but it is not so easy to quantify the benefits for
postgraduates, many of whom live their lives in laboratories and departments. What do
such students get out of being a member of a college? The question is being asked by
our competitors in the UK, but also in many departments and faculties round the
University, and there is an active debate about whether college membership is
necessary or desirable for postgraduates. If, as some suggest, the college fee for
postgraduate students were to be abolished, the arithmetic is not encouraging.
About a third of Cambridge students are now postgraduates, and the consequences
for many Colleges, and particularly Wolfson, would be disastrous. If we want to defend
the principle of college membership for all students, then we have to come up with
some good and convincing answers to such questions.
This is a personal view of some of the challenges which I think confront
Cambridge and its collegiate system, and I’m conscious that it is in a lot of ways,
a rather downbeat appraisal of the difficulties we face but then I’m a dour old
Calvinist at heart. I often wonder how the University manages to operate at all,
given the problems that I see, and I think the answer is that we still have people in
the University who work very hard to keep the whole creaking edifice in operation.
There are huge areas of the University education system which work extremely well,
and we should be proud of those. That pride should not blind us to the fact that
there are major concerns in many areas of our current educational setup, and those
concerns are going to become more acute if we fail to tackle them. I have listed a lot
of problems, without advocating any solutions, deliberately so, because I do not think
that there are easy solutions to many of these problems. However, the first step to
resolving these problems is to acknowledge that they exist.
If we want to continue as a top class university, we need to recruit the best students,
both undergraduate and postgraduate, and we need to give them the training and
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support that they require to achieve their potential. We need to look hard at the
process of how we recruit students (undergraduate and postgraduate), what we offer
to these students in our educational programmes, and how we fund these students
and those who teach them. We need to raise the profile of teaching within the
institution, and reward and support those who do it well, and we need to do this in
face of increasing competition from inside and outside the UK. All that is a hard task
in a research-focused culture.
In corporate terms the University and Colleges have to start thinking hard about
some of these problems, how to loosen the constraints of the Tripos system, ensure
the continuation of small-group teaching and provide evidence that having a collegiate
structure actually adds value to the educational experience. We as a university do not
exist in isolation from the world outside, and that world is changing very rapidly. We
need to try to preserve the best features of our current system, while adapting to the
huge changes in school education and the outside world into which we launch our
graduates. As a geneticist, I know that if organisms lose their ability to adapt to
changing environments, then they put their survival at risk.
Is the University able to do this? Broadly speaking, I’m optimistic, because the
University today has changed markedly from the one I joined nearly forty years ago.
Going further back in its history, the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the
twentieth century also marked a period of major changes, when the University faced
up to growing competition from the big city universities. Institutions do not survive for
800 years without learning how to change to stay ahead of the game, but the process
of change can be painful. If we want to maintain the quality, diversity and standard of
the education we provide we have to look hard at some of our cherished Cambridge
institutions and be prepared to face up to the possibility that some of them may have
to change and adapt in quite radical ways.
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The Climate Change Debate
Frank McDonald, Press Fellow
Global warming seemed like a distant, almost theoretical threat when I started covering
UN climate change summits in 1995. But the whole discourse has changed utterly since
then, and it’s now widely accepted as real – indeed, something that’s already happening.
It’s no longer a question of ‘if’ but ‘when’ tipping points will be reached.
Sceptics, naysayers and those who actively worked against making progress
have been routed by the British government’s Stern review and the IPCC’s Fourth
Assessment. I well remember after Stern was published in October 2006 that it had
a remarkable effect on the Nairobi Summit some weeks later. The US delegation was
at sea, having had George Bush’s central argument that dealing with climate change
would hurt the economy cut to ribbons.
Tragically, throughout Bush’s presidency, the world has lost a precious eight years
in confronting the issue. And although global warming barely featured among the
major issues in the 2008 US presidential election, it was mentioned repeatedly by
Barrack Obama as a serious problem that needed to be addressed. John McCain has
also acknowledged the problem, although he didn’t refer to it as much – mainly
because so many US Republicans are still ‘climate sceptics’.
It is obvious that the Kyoto Protocol, with its 5% average cut in greenhouse gas
emissions, is just a pilot project compared to cuts that will be required to prevent
dangerous climate change. Many thought it would never come into force after Bush
reneged on it in March 2001. The attitude was ‘well that’s it, it’s not going to happen
now’. But Kyoto did happen after Russia finally ratified the protocol in November
2004, and now we’re already into ‘first commitment period’ covering 2008–2012.
At the Bali summit in December 2007, it was amazing for those of us sitting in the
press gallery to witness international consensus on the need for much deeper cuts, to
watch the US delegation being verbally assaulted and even booed for not going along
with it, and to hear little Papua New Guinea saying that if the US wasn’t prepared to
provide leadership, it should ‘get out of the way and leave it to the rest of us’. They
can all take comfort from the fact that there will be someone else in the White House
before the end of January 2009.
Things are changing in the US too. Big corporations generally now favour taking
action – for example, by adopting a ‘cap and trade’ emissions trading system. Cities
and states are taking the lead, inspired by the likes of Jeff Rickles, Mayor of Seattle, and
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California. In Bali, we watched Mayor Michael
Bloomberg of New York City and then London’s deputy mayor Nicky Gavron signing
an agreement to cut emissions by at least 60% by 2050, in line with IPCC targets.
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Much of the running in the US has been made by Cool Cities, a growing movement
involving hundreds of cities – large and small – whose mayors pledge to take action on
climate change. Spawned by the Sierra Club, one of the longest established environmental
organisations in the US, it goes beyond paying lip service – as well as showing that the
world’s biggest carbon emitter is far from being monolithic in its approach to the issue.
Closer to home, Ireland’s first Green Party Minister for Environment imposed a 40%
increase in energy efficiency for all new homes from 2008 onwards while the vehicle
registration tax for new cars is now based on CO2 emissions, rather than engine size,
from 1 July 2008. (In Britain, a similar change in the car tax regime takes effect from
1 January 2009). But the unmitigated extent of Ireland’s suburban sprawl – which in
Dublin’s case now extends to a 100km commuter belt – has generated such a level of
car dependency that this in itself constitutes a ‘tipping point’.
Meanwhile, Marks & Spencer aims to be carbon neutral within five years. All of its
stores in Britain are being switched over to renewable energy sources. The slogan is ‘Plan
A – because there is no Plan B’. And this from a company that had difficulties six years
ago when the Irish Government imposed a 15 percent levy on plastic supermarket bags –
incidentally, one of the more successful environmental initiatives ever taken in Ireland.
The European Union is continuing to provide global leadership on climate change
by allocating draft targets for member states in January 2008 for an overall 20% cut by
2020, relative to 2005 levels; it might be as high as 30% if a wider agreement is reached
on such ambitious targets for developed countries in the UN negotiations process.
Either way, achieving such targets will be a real challenge for EU member states
because they would effectively mean moving towards ‘de-carbonising’ our economies.
As for those who think it is all pointless when China’s emissions have been soaring,
the Chinese have got the message too. Not only did they manage to clean up Beijing’s
notorious smog for the 2008 Olympic Games, but the government is committed to
taking a broader range of measures under a climate change action plan, unveiled in
June 2007. These include generating more electricity from renewables, increasing
energy efficiency and giving more support to public transport.
Although China has repeatedly said it will not commit to any quantified emissions
reduction targets, ‘that does not mean we will not assume responsibilities in responding
to climate change’, according to Ma Kai, director of the National Development and Reform
Commission, which is in charge of policy in this area. Indeed, the likelihood is that China’s
fast-developing wind turbine industry will be the world’s largest within 10 years.
There are also plans for a new ‘eco-city’ called Dongtan, on Chongming Island, just
north of Shanghai, which is intended to chart a new course for urban development
in China. The £1 billion project is being spearheaded by a consortium involving the
Shanghai Municipal Industrial Corporation and Irish property developers Treasury
Holdings, who have also put forward ‘carbon-neutral’ plans to redevelop the Battersea
power station site in London.
The next year or so will be crucial – and a UN summit in Poznan in December will
show if we’re on target to reach a deal in Copenhagen in December 2009. As Nicholas
Stern said in Bali, “We really know what to do, and the challenge is just to get on with it”.
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 65

Nuclear Dreams bring on Climate Nightmare
Paul Brown, Press Fellow
British governments have repeatedly announced
ambitious plans for a new nuclear age. Over 50 years
successive governments have made a series of promises
to build families of identical reactors producing cheap
power. Each plan has faltered. Delays, U-turns and cost
overruns have turned successive plans into a financial
headache for the taxpayer – while the electricity
consumers’ bills have been pushed up to pay the
extra costs.
It is about to happen again.
This was the start of a paper I wrote earlier this year
at the end of four months’ study of the current state of
the nuclear industry in the UK and the government’s
decision in January this year to encourage a new generation of atomic power stations
as soon as possible.
The new research was combined with the information gained from 25 years
of writing about the industry both in Britain and round the world. Together the
accumulated evidence convinced me that the claims made by the enthusiasts for
nuclear technology will prove wildly optimistic. Critics of the industry have correctly
referred to industry calculations that nuclear stations will produce cheap power as
‘voodoo economics.’
Nor is nuclear power the answer to the climate crisis. On the government’s own
figures a new generation of nuclear power stations will only reduce the UK’s carbon
emissions by 4% by 2050 compared with the 60% necessary. If anything believing in
nuclear technology and banking on its promises will make matters worse by diverting
effort and resources away from technologies that could make a difference. Over the
same time as I have been writing about nuclear power and the environment global
warming has moved from a distant threat to a real and present danger. Renewable
forms of energy have also developed from pipe dreams, through expensive prototypes,
to create a number of new European mainstream industries. Nuclear technology has
hardly moved forward over the same period.
The new nuclear stations the government wants to build in Britain are a so-called
third generation nuclear reactors. Their most significant features are that they are
larger than any other reactor ever built, but there is nothing revolutionary about the
designs. There are several possible alternatives but the main contender for the UK is
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an updated design of an existing French plant. This became a virtual certainty when
British Energy was taken over by EDF, the French government owned national utility.
Versions of this Evolutionary Power Reactor are already being built in Finland and
France, around 1,600 megawatts in size. This is 50% larger than Britain’s largest
nuclear plant the Sizewell B power station Suffolk, finished in the 1990s.
The main features of this new Finnish and French building programme so far are
two-year time delays and massive cost overruns. History is repeating itself. The real
costs of the electricity produced will never be known, the cost of the stations is being
heavily subsidised. Part of the problem of delays is the lack of skilled people needed
to build the reactors. There is a worldwide shortage and it is chronic in Britain.
Almost ignored in the government’s calculations are the costs of disposing the
spent fuel from this new generation of reactors. It is of higher burn-up and greater
radioactivity adding to the still unsolved problem of waste disposal. The
decommissioning costs of the stations are supposed to be paid from a fund created
from the revenue during the station’s lifetime. So far the cost of all decommissioning
work on reactors has fallen on the taxpayer, and the outstanding cleanup bill for
existing nuclear ventures stands at £78 billion and has been rising every year.
Considering how much is now known about the science of climate change, and
how easy it would be to begin to tackle the problem by tapping plentiful supplies of
renewable energy, it is astonishing that the government is still putting most of its
money and time into promoting nuclear power. There are those that see conspiracies
in this failure to take action. After all every country in Europe is ahead of the UK
in building renewables except Belgium, Cyprus and Malta. Across the Atlantic in
America, while the government is resistant to carbon dioxide targets the renewable
industry is already vast and expanding very fast.
This lack of UK investment is more remarkable when it is accepted that Britain has
the most renewable energy potential in Europe, about 40% of the total, and could be a
world leader in creating jobs and new industries. Denmark alone has 20,000 jobs in the
wind industry and Germany many more installing insulation, solar power and wind. In
most cases the expertise exists to exploit this potential in the UK but what government
still lacks is the political will to make it happen. It is not a conspiracy but incompetence.
Before we review some of these existing technologies, all of them already
operating in the UK, there must be a mention of energy efficiency and combined
heat and power. Britain is the least energy efficient country in northern Europe
with appalling standards in housing stock and offices. Successive governments have
resisted improving standards for a generation, and even now politicians are only just
beginning to catch up with minimal EU standards. Combined heat and power is a long
established technology, which reduces carbon emissions substantially on both large
and small scale. Government policies have again discouraged its widespread use in
Britain. If both these sensible options were adopted new nuclear power stations
would not be needed – as the German government has demonstrated,
But let us look at the other exciting technologies which are still trying to win the
whole hearted support of the government and their backward civil servants – wind,
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wave, tidal, small-scale hydro, solar, biomass. The propagandists for the nuclear revival
claim that none of these is reliable, but together they could produce 100% of the UK’s
electricity needs, in a far shorter time frame than the atomic option. Remember that
a single nuclear station takes between 10 and 20 years from planning to completion.
On wind Britain is at last catching up, particularly offshore, but progress is still
slow. Denmark, the pioneers, have a major export industry, and 20% of their electricity
comes from wind, more than the UK gets from nuclear. Germany, Portugal, Spain and
other European states less windy than the UK have already embraced this technology.
Wave power, invented in Britain, has been installed by Portugal using Scottish
technology. The UK has built and is still considering a number of scaled up prototypes.
The cost of wave power will come down dramatically as prototypes are refined and will
be comparable with nuclear generation where costs have remained stubbornly high.
The capital cost of building the stations and the infrastructure is the main barrier in
both cases.
Tidal power is the single most exciting technology being developed in Britain.
With powerful tides around islands like Anglesey and the Isle of Wight underwater
tidal turbines can be built in relays like wind turbines. The difference between tidal
turbines and wind is that the tides are totally predictable and so is the volume of
electricity produced at any given time. These machines are up and running in
Northern Ireland. The electricity industry is optimistic that this will be a major
contributor to the energy mix in the UK.
Small-scale hydro plants and run of the river turbines are now being installed all over
Britain. Almost every country in Europe is ahead of the UK in these technologies, which
have been in large-scale use since the 1920s. With hundreds of old mill sites and millraces
no longer used in this country the potential is enormous. The Scottish government has
just announced ambitious plans to exploit this technology north of the border but in
England its huge potential for locally based power has been largely ignored.
Solar is an expensive technology and in a country like the UK needs government
support and large-scale production to bring down costs. Germany, with a comparable
climate, has done this successfully. Germany is also supporting, along with France
the development of concentrated solar power. This is not a new technology either
but works by directing the sun’s rays with the use of mirrors onto tanks of liquid,
which boil and drive turbines. CSP as it is known is up and running in Spain and the
United States. The plan is to have a super-grid from the Sahara supplying Europe’s
electricity needs. One percent of the Sahara’s desert covered in mirrors would keep
all of Europe in electricity.
Biomass, that is burning waste wood, chicken droppings, straw, sewage sludge
and a variety of other materials to produce electricity has been heavily supported by
the UK government, partly because farmers hoped that it would be a money spinner.
It has less potential in the UK with its limited land area than almost any other form
of renewables, but has received most encouragement. Some power stations already
burn biomass alongside coal to cut carbon emissions and incinerators for household
rubbish also produce power, but its potential is limited.
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This last technology, biomass, gives a clue to what has gone wrong with the UK’s
energy policy. Wind, wave, solar, tidal turbines and other promising renewables have
no big lobby in their favour, only environmentalists and small businesses hoping for
encouragement. The nuclear industry on the other hand, which has an appalling track
record of cost overruns and broken promises, has powerful industrial and trade union
lobbyists. The farmers support biomass. A number of industrial concerns and councils,
with the ear of government, support burning rubbish to produce power. But apart
from the lobbyists there is another factor – the love of politicians for mega-projects.
Nuclear power stations fit the bill but apart from offshore wind renewables are small
scale and mostly local.
The only renewable project the government has shown real enthusiasm for is the
mega-Severn barrage. This grandiose scheme has been considered for a generation.
There is a better, cheaper, simpler and less controversial alternative, a series of powergenerating
tidal lagoons, which will not destroy the estuary and could be built far
quicker, but there is no powerful lobby group for these. Hence in government terms
they are a non-starter.
My argument is that with the economic situation, the price of energy, and the
anxieties over security of supply of electricity, renewables seem to provide hope for a
new, cleaner and more prosperous future. Nuclear on the other hand, with imported
technology and fuel, and the long and expensive time frame required before a watt of
electricity is produced, seems a diversion from the real task of tackling global warming
and a dead end. Currently the government is going for the latter option – a bleak
prospect for Britain and the planet.
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 69

Some Global Strategic Implications of the
US Election
Adam Cobb, Visiting Fellow Easter Term 2008 and Professor of International Relations,
United States Marine Corps Command and Staff College, Quantico VA*
The outcome of the US election was not known at
the time of writing but it is certain that the 2008 US
Presidential election will be a turning point in US history
and not just because a female or African American will
enter the White House for the first time on a presidential
ticket. Key global strategic outcomes are in the balance.
While Iraq and Afghanistan are part of that story they
are far from the whole story. This brief survey will touch
on some near and long term vital strategic issues that
will await the new President when he is sworn in on
20 January 2009.
Near Term
In the near term a great deal rides on the outcome of the US election. With both its
international reputation and economic, financial and military capabilities diminished
by multiple wars lasting longer than WWII, and a domestic economic collapse on a par
with the 1929 Wall Street crash, the international system is transitioning to a multipolar
world more rapidly than anticipated pre-911. Historically, rapid change rarely results
in even and stable outcomes. The weakening of the US hegemony will coincide with
a period of extant instability where leadership will be central to crisis management.
In short, we are all in for quite a ride in the coming five years.
More specifically, the election will set Iraq on one of two very different paths.
The central issue in both cases will be how to transition Iraq to true sovereignty and
security – the policy difference between the McCain and Obama platforms will be
the speed with which that outcome is attempted.
Realizing that it was in trouble in Iraq, the US military went to work on a new
Counterinsurgency doctrine. In December 2006 Field Manual 3–24 (FM 3–24) was
released. A joint undertaking by the Marine Corps and US Army, led by two senior
Iraq veterans, Generals Amos and Petraeus, the new Counterinsurgency or ‘COIN’
manual was a watershed in the US approach to the conduct of the war.
*DISCLAIMER: THIS WORK DOES NOT REPRESENT THE POLICY OR POSITION OF THE US MARINE CORPS,
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE OR GOVERNMENT.
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Subsequently, there has been a stark turnaround on the ground in Iraq. It is rare in
military history that the author of a new doctrine then sallies forth to put the principle
into practice, but such was the case with General Petraeus. After leading the COIN
doctrine effort at the Army’s Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, General
Petraeus was appointed US commander in Iraq and found himself responsible for
implementation of his own doctrine. What some analysts don’t understand is that
the surge without the new doctrine would have been merely throwing more people
at the problem without changing the strategy.
Counterinsurgencies are measured in decades. The foremost pressure on US
policy in Iraq is time. Because false expectations were set (intentionally or not) in
the beginning (weapons of mass destruction, self funding war, bad assumptions
regarding post-war stability and allied support, etc.), polls show very clearly that the
US public has grown disillusioned with the cause.
The crux of the surge issue is as follows. The democracy project in Iraq, that by
definition befitted the Shia majority, has largely been abandoned in favor of pragmatic
deal making with the Sunni minority. The ‘Sunni awakening’ grew out of a calculation
on the part of Sunni tribal leaders that siding with the US was the lesser evil than the
all-out civil war that the minority Sunni were almost certain to lose. The problem is
that when the US eventually leaves, the fragility of the underpinning of the awakening
will be revealed. Consequently, the only hope, and it is a hope, is that the increasingly
secure status quo will be adequate to bind the highly fraught society together when
the US security blanket redeploys stateside.
If Iraq comes undone much will depend on which way Iraq splits. If it falls to radical
Shia control, Iran’s prestige and power will be enhanced more than it is already. That
will empower Iran to bring even greater Persian pressure to bear on its Arab enemies
in the Gulf. However, counter-balancing that possible trajectory is the strength of
extant Persian-Arab identity divisions within and between Iraq and Iran. Iranian
influence inside Iraq might consequently be more checked than some analysts assess.
The rising Iranian-inspired Shia crescent might also be checked if Iraq falls to
radical Sunni forces. It is important in this respect to remember that Al Qaeda (AQ)
is a Sunni group. The consequences of a descent into further Sunni-inspired chaos
in Iraq will be felt widely in the region and beyond. Oil prices will escalate further
possibly tipping the world into a much deeper recession than already appears on the
horizon. In the absolute worst-case scenario, if the house of Saud were to fall, Sunni
Islamic fundamentalist extremists would be empowered and enriched in truly
unthinkable ways. No one would be safe.
The fall of Saudi Arabia would change everything. It is hard to envisage the
continued security of Jordan and the Gulf states in such a scenario. Domestic opinion
in the US would quickly escalate to overwhelming pressure to return in force to the
Middle East to ‘finish the job’ once and for all. Just exactly how an invasion and
occupation of the whole pan-Arabian region would be more successful than the
current Iraq intervention is hard to envisage. Indeed, the US would likely have to
re-occupy Iraq as well as the other affected areas and be engaged in a prolonged
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 71

egion-wide counterinsurgency that would make the current effort in Iraq pale by
comparison to the scale and cost of a pan-Arabian intervention. As will be shown
below, the crippling effect of the economic crisis of late 2008 and the extant cost
of war may in fact prohibit the US from engaging in just such an undertaking.
The development of a nuclear deterrent is a rational policy choice for Tehran.
Iran’s rejection of offers of international nuclear fuel cycle assistance to ensure it
cannot start a weapons program, belies the fact that it is seeking just such a program.
And why wouldn’t it? Iran is surrounded on every single border by the US, directly
or indirectly in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, the Gulf States, and Turkmenistan. The
Iranian leadership, note Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not specified in this context,
has no doubt calculated that the only way to deter the US from invading Iran is to
develop a nuclear deterrent.
Much has been made of Iranian rhetoric towards Israel, however the principles of
mutually assured destruction will apply in the event Iran is able to develop a nuclear
weapon and a reliable and accurate delivery system (in this area it is quite advanced).
Moreover, as a Pakistani colleague reminded me recently, nuclear weapons detonate in
a circle – not a line. Thus by attacking Israel, Iran would wipe out Palestine, Lebanon,
Jordan, much of Syria and parts of Egypt and Iraq.
The real dilemma here is that if Israel is to strike it must do so before Iran develops
a weapon. Another timing consideration is the US election. Observant readers will
note that at about the same time as Israel initiated major ‘war games’ including
practicing long range in-flight refueling and related mission packages in June 2008,
emissaries from both US parties, as well as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
all independently traveled to Israel for meetings. 1
The impact of an Israeli attack on Iran during the US election would depend on
when it happened in the election cycle, whether it was successful or not and what the
Iranian response might be. A successful attack before the election with no counter
strike would be a huge boost to Senator McCain. Failure would boost Senator Obama’s
chances. Because of the stakes involved, Israel will likely strike in the brief window of
opportunity between election day, 4 November, and inauguration day, 20 January 2009.
The blame would fall on the outgoing Administration while consequence management
would fall to the next Administration. Such an outcome would be particularly
acceptable for Republicans if the Democrats win and would be reminiscent of George
H W Bush’s fateful invasion of Somalia just before President Clinton took office. Bush
the Elder looked like a humanitarian statesman for that intervention but going in with
such a small force and mismanaged rules of engagement and subsequent mission
creep conspired to make Clinton and the US look weak and helpless. The appearance
of weakness only encouraged America’s enemies.
Not only has Israel been very publicly preparing for a strike on Iran, it follows on
from the 6 September 2007 attack on a nuclear target in the Deir ez-Zor region of
1 Wright, Robin, “Israel Conducted War Games, US Officials Report”, Washington Post, 2008–06–08, viewed
2008–09–10.
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Syria. 2 Damagingly for Iran, Syria promptly found itself at the negotiating table after
the strike, which it initially said never happened – a frankly damming indictment
from which it could not escape.
It remains to be seen whether Iran would respond in the same way as Syria.
Chances are it would be much more bellicose in its response to an Israeli attack.
With far greater military capabilities than Syria, although nowhere near as impressive
as Iranian demonstrations of force in recent times might look to a layman, Iran could
do some serious damage to the US effort in Iraq, to shipping in the Gulf, to regime
stability in small countries around the Gulf, and other options best not canvassed here.
The Syrian precedent is an alarming one for Iran but more so for the US. For the
latter, Israeli attacks on Iran will almost certainly be through Iraqi airspace, for which
the US is solely responsible. No other option really works for Israel – it will avoid
Turkey due, inter alia, to NATO considerations, via Saudi Arabia it runs the risk of
being attacked, via Syria the same issues apply plus it still has to go via Iraq. It could
fly all the way around Saudi territory but the longer the mission the greater the
chance of detection and thus loss of surprise.
Chances are the Israeli government has judged that the Bush Administration
will turn a blind eye to what Washington would likely see as a ‘necessary mission’.
Vice President Dick Cheney is on the record as caring little for domestic, let alone
international opinion. An Israeli surprise attack through Iraq, while implicating the
US, is not the same as a direct US attack. The difference might be semantic, but the
lame duck Bush Administration will likely judge that its ratings in the region can’t go
any lower and that a set back for Iran would be worth the pushback.
For a setback is all an air strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities would be. The key
reason is that the Iranians have learnt from the successful Israeli attack on Iraq’s
Osirak reactor in 1981, and have dispersed and hardened their facilities. One hundred
percent success is highly unlikely and while one can bomb a centrifuge one cannot
bomb the knowledge it took to build it. Consequently, any attack by any party will
merely set the program back, not end it. Gaining the valuable strategic resource of
time might not be an altogether fruitless accomplishment if in the interim the political
picture changes in Iran in favor of reform. However, a bombing campaign, like the
intemperate and counter-productive ‘Axis of evil’ pronouncement, would likely set
back the cause of reform in Iran by quite some years.
Domestically, Iran is in a precarious position. Inflation is running at 26% and the
country suffers from unemployment, food shortages and long lines at petrol stations. 3
Student and other pressure groups have been speaking out across a range of issues.
Iranian economist Saeed Leilaz has been quoted as summarizing: “Iran is on the verge
of economic collapse. A large portion of the economic turn for the worse is due to
2 Oren, Amir. “IDF lifts censorship on air strike against Syria target”, Haaretz, 2007–10–02. Viewed on
2008–09–08. See also Mahnaimi, Uzi (2007–09–16). “Israelis ‘blew apart Syrian nuclear cache’”, The
Sunday Times. Viewed on 2008–09–08.
3 “No end in sight to Iran’s inflation crisis”, Persian Journal, Sept 9, 2008, accessed 2008–09–10. See also
Iran Country Briefs, The Economist Intelligence Unit, may 30, 2008. Accessed 2008–09–10.
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 73

Ahmadinejad’s policies and management style … [which] have prompted many to
publicly criticize [him]. … The administration has increased government expenditures
so much that we will face an enormous budget deficit in the coming year.” 4
There is much fodder for reformists to work with in the internal debate. With
more than 45% of the population of 70m under the age of 14 with a high literacy rate,
disaffection with the lack of economic and social development could impact Iranian
politics in complex and unanticipated ways that may run counter to the aspirations
of the ruling elite.
Afghanistan remains home to Al Qaeda. Seven years after 911, its perpetrator, Osama
bin Laden is still at large. The initial stunning US successes in 2002 slowly gave way to
stalemate and more recently creeping advances for AQ and the Taliban. Afghanistan
is a failed state and an ungovernable space. It has been that way for centuries and it
would be left that way were it not for the fact that it provides sanctuary to killers with
a global mass murder agenda. In September 2008 the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, Admiral Mullins admitted “I’m not sure we’re winning it in Afghanistan,” 5
Even by 1938 it was anachronistic of Neville Chamberlain to discharge any obligation
to Czechoslovakia because it appeared to Britain at the time to be a ‘far off place’. Of
course it was nothing of the kind. By 2008 globalization is such that Afghanistan might
be on the other side of the world literally and figuratively from Main Street USA but if
its capacity to destroy Main Street is not dramatically reduced then Afghanistan might
as well be in the middle of Iowa. Note the highest standard of the end state the author
thinks can be realistically achieved is not a western style liberal democratic capitalist
paradise. The best end state that can be realistically hoped for is a reduced capacity
for cataclysmic damage to an American city. Much more beyond that is probably
unrealistic given the complexity of the environment, culture and people.
NATO cohesion and the transatlantic relationship are in the balance in Afghanistan.
Managing alliance relationships is never easy, especially in war. NATO has had its
fair share of tension in relation to Afghanistan. These problems are exacerbated by a
disproportionate distribution of the burden, disunity of effort and gains made by the
enemy. With little infrastructure and no economy to speak of except a narco-crop,
with wide open borders and multiple competing ethno-linguistic groups all vying for
control, Afghanistan is a tremendous challenge. But the necessity of the challenge is
as intractable as the myriad obstacles to progress. NATO priorities have been skewed
as expansion has diluted its coherence, which has been increasingly evident in the
conduct of its operations. The metric for success is not how many seats there are at the
table or how isolated and embittered a resurgent petro-dollar Russia feels, it is whether
NATO can be successful in Afghanistan. Note, the term victory was not used. That
concept is redundant in COIN wars. It takes decades after operational success (using
4 Stalinsky, Steven, Iran’s Economic Crisis, January 31, 2007, accessed 2008–09–10. See also Taheri, Amir,
Iran’s Economic Crisis, Wall Street Journal, May 9, 2007. Accessed 2008–09–10.
5 Scott Tyson, Top Military Officer Urges Major Change in Afghanistan Strategy, Washington Post Sept 11, 2008.
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all tools of the interagency system and NGOs etc, not just the military) to transition
to a political resolution. To quote Mullins again “we can’t kill our way to victory”. 6
If NATO fails in Afghanistan, NATO fails, full stop. No amount of expansion can
gloss over failure. Indeed, it only serves to highlight the irrelevance of the institution.
NATO powerlessness in the face of the Russian invasion of the sovereign state of
Georgia underscores both the stakes involved and the consequences of failure. Strong
statements of support for the vanquished are meaningless if they cannot be backed
up with credible force. President Bush said on 15 August “The United States and our
allies stand with the people of Georgia and their democratically elected government.
Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity must be respected.” 7 The unanswered
question hanging in the air was “or else, what?”
The US position was further undermined by the apparent contradiction between
the US invasion of Iraq and the Russian invasion of Georgia. President Bush stated
on 11 August: “Russia has invaded a sovereign neighboring state and threatens a
democratic government elected by its people. Such an action is unacceptable in
the 21st century.” 8
Thus from the Bush Administration perspective apparently the only difference
between US and Russian policy concerns the political system of the vanquished,
not the violation of sovereignty. This is a novel normative development in recent
international affairs and contradicts extant international law. Indeed, with respect
to the outright violation of sovereignty issue at least, it may be argued the precedent
for Russian action was set by the US in its 2003 invasion of Iraq. We have returned to
a Thucydidian world where ‘the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what
they must’. The problem for the US and NATO is that, despite their rhetoric, they are
no longer as strong as they once were and the Russians know it. 9
US weakness extends beyond central Europe to Asia. In order to feed the incredible
manpower needs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US has been quietly shifting
land forces out of Asia and re-balancing those reductions with naval and air assets.
Geography dictates that many contingencies in Asia are likely to be maritime in nature
and susceptible to conventional combat operations, both US strengths. The most
important exception to that rule also happens to be the most likely flashpoint – the
Korean peninsular. Any Korean scenario will require large numbers of land forces. Due
to the unpopularity of the regime in Pyongyang, intra-Korean identity issues, and South
Korean policy, it is unlikely that a conflict would turn into an intractable insurgency in
the North. Hence the rebalancing of air and naval assets will apply in that context, but
the draw down of land forces should be a major concern to policy makers.
6 Ibid.
7 President Bush Discusses Situation in Georgia, White House Press Release 2008–8–15.
8 President Bush Discusses Situation in Georgia, White House Press Release 2008–8–11.
9 The introduction of this essay noted the US is fighting multiple wars. Beyond Iraq and Afghanistan, the US
has long been engaged in a number of related struggles that do not gain as much attention as the two major
fronts. The US is mounting small to medium sized operations against Islamic radicals in a number of places,
in particular, the Horn of Africa and the Philippines. There have been success stories in these locales.
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 75

There are many other short-term trends one might consider in building an estimate
of global security on the eve of 2009, however space constraints limit discussion to
the highest priority items above. Yet this agenda does not adequately reflect long term
problems confronting the US and the world. Taking a longer view unravels some
significantly more disturbing trends which can only be outlined very briefly.
Long-term trends
Looking out to the future, there is a range of interconnected problem areas that do not
bode well for stable international relations. These issues make the current short-term
problems noted above seem manageable by comparison. There is a core set of issues
that interconnect via globalization and will have an impact in varying degrees on us
all. From the state of the US economy through energy and climate issues to global
demographics and their impact on Asia and Europe, the 21st century is shaping up
to be no less hostile than the 20th.
In 2007 US GDP was worth $13t, which is around a quarter of the global economy.
Total US Government receipts were $2.4t and total Government spending was $2.8t.
The pre-bailout national debt at time of writing was $9.889t 10 The 2008 Wall Street
crash will cost much more than the initial $700m. To that figure must be added the
indirect costs spread far and wide across the economy of the recent turmoil and
its consequences. Calculating that sum accurately is next to impossible but it is a
reasonable assumption that it will be of a similar order of magnitude if not much more.
The scale of the bailout becomes clear when compared to the second most
expensive war in US history. Since 2002 the Iraq/Afghanistan wars have cost more
than the US Civil War; WWI where one million Americans served on the Western front;
more than Korea and Vietnam where millions more served; and more than the Gulf
War and other short duration conflicts. Only WWII cost the US more. Total costs to
date (not including interest on borrowed money) is calculated at $800b in direct
military spending and does not account for all the military and support contractors,
Iraqi/Afgan reconstruction, intelligence gathering, diplomacy, and post conflict troop
costs (veterans association, medical). 11 As of 2007 the current amount of interest on
funds borrowed to mount the war is project to be over $800b. Combining direct costs
plus interest gives $1.6t in war costs as of 2007. Stiglitz and Bilmes estimate that by
2017 combined costs for both wars with interest will be between $2.3 to $3.4t.
Using the Stiglitz and Bilmes numbers – if taxation is not raised and other
expenditures not drastically cut – the interest on the Wall Street bailout can be
expected to be around the same as the interest on the war, $800b. Thus interest
alone on both the bailout and the war will at least double the Stiglitz and Bilmes
2017 estimate (that is a conservative estimate given the compounded rate would
be much higher than simply adding the two interest bills together).
10 Department of Treasury, “The Debt to the Penny and Who Owns It”, accessed 2008–09–29.
11 Joseph Stiglitz, Linda Bilmes, The Trillion Dollar War: The True Costs of the Iraq Conflict, New York:
Penguin, 2008, p.6.
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Add to these costs indirect costs such as increasing demand on Social Security, the
rising price of energy, and the costs of the resultant economic slow down due to funds
being diverted from infrastructure improvement and social services that improve the
economy, to defense spending, which does not spur growth. It seems hard to imagine
the consequences of this debacle being short of a depression.
The federal bailout of Wall Street is a national security issue because, combined
with the extraordinary costs of the war, it fundamentally weakens the US economy
and removes drivers of growth. The long-term impact of the combined forces of the
bailout and the war will substantially weaken the US economy and thus its capacity to
project power. With regard to the financial meltdown, the US has suffered a critical self
inflicted blow which could not come at a worse time. Had another country perpetrated
a surprise military strike on the US occasioning the same net economic consequences,
it is not much of an exaggeration to note that a nuclear retaliation might be judged by
US policy makers as a proportionate response.
The macro-economic position of the US will affect its role in the world. Increasing
debt and decreasing revenues will place a range of new constraints on US foreign and
domestic policy. With funds diverted from the capital account to pay for a series of much
needed boosts in troop strength, and unexpectedly high wear rates of combat platforms,
US military capabilities are not only likely to decline in the medium term but the rate of
decline might be alarming to those who depend on the US to underwrite world peace.
This is not to suggest that the US military will disappear overnight, and the force
structure can be manipulated over the course of a decade to cover certain short falls.
But the long term US financial-economic-military outlook seems to be one of marginal
decline in national power. It is inevitable that America’s leadership in world affairs will
experience a corresponding erosion of position. It is supremely ironic that the neo-con
agenda that was designed to extend and prolong US preeminence has instead resulted
in a precipitate contraction of national power and prestige.
As America settles into a gradual decline, the People’s Republic of China is on the
rise. It is a truism to note the ying-yang quality of the interrelationship of recent Sino-
American power shifts. China’s economy has been doubling every ten years for more
than two decades and the various elements of its national power and prestige have
grown correspondingly. However, China started from a very low base when Deng
Xiaoping initiated the four modernizations of 1978. Since then agriculture, industry,
technology and defense have grown roughly in order of priority. Here it is notable that
defense modernization is last. China is highly unlikely to have twelve carrier battle
groups able to roam the world at will in under 50 years. Indeed, given its extraordinary
economic reach, it is hard to envisage why China would seek that kind of capability
and the global leadership costs that go with it.
The Chinese have been very judicious in their business acquisitions, buying top
Fortune 500 firms in the US and like companies around the world. The Wall Street
crash of 2008 has further aided this strategy by cutting the price of major businesses
across the board and offering some for a song. Yet how threatening this really is, is a
matter of dispute. The degree of complementarity between the two economies is such
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 77

that a state of economic mutually assured destruction might be said to exist between
them. China owns US debt and America remains for now at least as the world’s biggest
market. It is in neither country’s interest for the US or Chinese economies to decline.
This is why the Chinese have joined the rest of the global banking community in
pumping billions into the world financial system in an attempt to prop it up.
This is not to say that Sino-US tension will be inhibited by economic relations,
far from it, but it does highlight the stakes. Should tensions rise to the extent that
the financial-economic trigger is pulled by either side, it would be very dire for both
parties. Yet it is likely to be most dire for the PRC because its internal security is
contingent on economic growth. The parallel here is the fall of Suharto in Indonesia
in 1998. The dramatic weakening of the once vibrant Southeast Asian ‘tiger economy’
of Indonesia caused by the Asian Financial Crisis fuelled a political backlash that
toppled the hitherto untouchable strongman of SE Asia. As a long-standing institution,
the Chinese Communist Party is qualitatively stronger than a single dictator, but the
lessons of 1998 will not have been lost on Beijing.
The energy-climate-demographic matrix is the ultimate long-term sword hanging
over the global community. From fears of the early arrival of global peak oil – due to
stable or declining supply and unanticipated demand from China and India, to access
to water, to global movement of people escaping increasingly difficult economic or
climatic conditions, the energy–climate–demographic matrix will fundamentally
reshape the world much more profoundly than Islamic radicalism or a trade war
between a rising China and a falling (but well armed) America.
Conclusion
These issues are too complex to assess here, suffice to say the next Administration
will be in overload just managing the short-term crises. Many have observed that the
Bush Administration has been overwhelmed by Iraq and lost its focus on Asia and
the other long-term issues identified above. Governments are human institutions
and the complexity and potency of global problems are such that they threaten to
overwhelm the capacity of any group of people to effectively address them. The
challenge of the new Administration will be to take a long view and effectively
prioritize short and long term threats. They will have to triage out those problems
that are not amenable to solution via government programs or that will cripple state
treasuries if attempted. That is the harsh reality of global security affairs in the 21st
century, and it remains to be seen if the next Administration will accept and work
within that reality or continue to pretend that it can be all things to all people
thereby further agitating enemies and friends alike.
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Music-Science Research at Wolfson
Matthew Woolhouse, Research Fellow
Music is a complex environment, containing many variables that interact in
unexpected and, hitherto, inexplicable ways. Such an environment, if it is to be
understood from a scientific perspective, requires an inter-disciplinary approach,
utilizing, for example, techniques from varied fields such as experimental psychology,
computer science, archaeology, human evolution, and ethology. These fields, and
others, are represented by Wolfson people studying music to such an extent as to
make Wolfson without question the dominant music-science college within the
University.
The leader of this band of researchers is Ian Cross – Director of the Centre for Music
and Science, Reader in Music and Science at the Faculty of Music, and Director of
Studies at Wolfson (to mention but a few of his many responsibilities). Included in
the current list of research interests and projects by Ian on his home webpage are the
perception of tonal structures, the role of culture and education in shaping musical
cognition, the relation between music and evolution, and violin acoustics – the latter
project being conducted with, amongst others, Wolfson’s Brian Moore and Claudia
Fritz. However, in truth this list is highly conservative, the real extent of Ian’s research
endeavours being far greater. For example, so far in 2008, in conjunction with
numerous collaborators, Ian has published no fewer than a dozen papers on music
and science. A few titles will suffice to give a flavour of this publishing marathon:
Musicality and the human capacity for culture; The evolutionary nature of musical
meaning; Music as a communicative medium; Music and meaning; and The evolution
of music. Add to this, papers on generative grammar and the mathematical principles
underpinning music perception, and one begins to get an understanding of just how
interdisciplinary both Ian and the subject of music and science have become.
Working alongside Ian are two of Wolfson’s Research Fellows, Claudia Fritz,
Fellow since 2005, and Matthew Woolhouse, Fellow since 2007. As already mentioned,
Claudia, who is soon to leave Cambridge to take up a research position in Paris, is
part of a cross-department research team headed by Brian Moore in Experimental
Psychology, Jim Woodhouse in Engineering, and Ian Cross. Among the core aims of the
project have been to establish why one violin sounds better than another, a question
that has fascinated musicians but eluded scientists for a long time. Whether or not
a is better than b is, of course, to put things in crude and simple terms. In reality the
problem is profoundly deep, and has required measuring the forces on a violin bridge
recorded by piezoelectric sensors to finding the detection-threshold of changes in
violin-related frequency spectra. Needless to say, despite these difficulties the project
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 79

has been a resounding success, as Claudia’s publication record over the past three
years attests to.
Based at the Centre for Music and Science, I came to Wolfson after completing my
masters and doctoral work at Churchill. My postgraduate research centred on the
development of formal models of music perception, a pursuit that might at first
appear prosaic or even pointless. After all, why, and more importantly how, can
a thing of beauty such as music be understood scientifically, let alone formalised?
Underpinning this research, however, is a growing realisation that the cognition of
music is nothing if not highly constrained and, for the most part, ordered according
to certain clear principles, many of which can be expressed mathematically.
Understanding these principles tells us a great deal about human cognitive abilities,
which with respect to western tonal music appear to require a level of structural
abstraction hitherto unobserved in the arena of cognitive science.
Of the seven PhD students currently based at the Centre for Music and Science,
three are at Wolfson: John Bispham, Elizabeth Blake, and Ghofur Woodruff who is
also President of the Music Society.
John Bispham’s research aims are
to describe the psychological and
behavioural ‘design features’ of music
that distinguish it from other forms of
animal and human communication.
This is not a particularly easy thing to
do, especially given that there is not
yet, surprisingly, a fully agreed upon
definition of what music actually is.
John’s approach is to describe music in
terms of three low-level features that he
believes, until evidence is found to the
contrary, to be specific to homo sapiens:
motivation (the cultural context in which
music has particular significance), tactus
(our ability to entrainment to a pulse),
and pitch (the hierarchical use of
recognisable intervals). Without this
groundwork, the findings of many
researches are likely to remain locked
within the confines of a music-equals-
Mozart mindset.
According to Elizabeth Blake, sounding
stones, or lithophones, are instruments
that have been used in many societies
(see figure). However, until recently,
Elizabeth Blake’s drawing of a lithophone
there have been no diagnostic criteria
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for identifying lithophones archaeologically. Building upon an earlier lithoacoustics
project (Cross et al, 2002) and her own MPhil research, Elizabeth has developed
use-wear guidelines for lithophone identification. The criteria have been developed
through experiments, which determined the likely survivability of ‘playing’ evidence
post-deposition, and through analyses of lithic ‘instruments’ attributed to Upper
Palaeolithic sites (c. 40,000–10,000 years before present). Such instruments, if indeed
that is what these remarkable objects are, include those associated with some of the
earliest known bone pipes, dating to around 36,000 years.
Most of us can agree that music has meaning – 50,000 people singing at a football
match bears witness to this – the problem comes when we ask what does music mean
and why it is such a powerful communicative medium. Ghofur Woodruff’s research
proposes that musical meaning, which he characterises as ‘musical semantics’, is
derived according to the same rules as those governing animal vocal communication
and human speech prosody. Music’s semantic rules can be represented as a series of
isomorphisms that map the meaning from the acoustic profile of a signal according
to natural, biological, and socio-biological principles. Ghofur also argues that the
semantic content of music is defined in terms of a primitive intentional state, a sort
of distant ancestral memory, which is both descriptive and directive at the same time.
Interdisciplinary approaches are best nurtured in situations in which people are
free to discuss their ideas and seek help when straying off the beaten tracks of their
specialities. The Centre for Music and Science and Wolfson – in which music making
is wonderfully supported by Lyn Alcántara, the College’s Director of Music – provide
students and researchers with this environment in abundance.
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 81

Press Fellow interviews Anne Murray
Frank McDonald, Press Fellow
Dubliner Anne Murray has been Deputy Librarian of Cambridge University Library for the
past eight years, surrounded by some eight million books on 100 miles of shelves as well as
extraordinary collections of manuscripts. “I’m very fortunate to work in such an inspiring
environment,” she says. From Butterfield Avenue in Templeogue, Murray graduated in
1984 from Trinity College Dublin with a BA in history, then did a diploma in library and
information studies at University College Dublin, followed by a master’s degree in
communication and cultural studies at Dublin City University.
While working as a sub-librarian in Trinity, she applied for the post of Deputy Librarian
in Cambridge and, much to her surprise, she got it. “When I came over here in February
2000, I didn’t know anybody. I was fortunate, however, that Wolfson College offered me a
fellowship, which helped me to get settled in. Since then I’ve never looked back.” Murray
was subsequently elected vice-president of Wolfson in 2005, but had to resign two years
later when she married the college’s Dean and Senior Tutor, Welshman David Jarvis, to
avoid any conflict of interest. By then, she was well established at the University Library,
a massive brick pile from the early 1930s designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott.
One of the leading libraries of the world, it serves as the university’s principal place for
research. It is also one of the six institutions – the others being Oxford, the British Library,
the national libraries of Scotland and Wales, and Trinity College Dublin – entitled by statute
to receive a free copy of every book published in these islands. “Actually, Cambridge has
over 100 libraries. Every college has its own, as do all the faculties and departments, so
there’s no shortage of books,” she says. “Magdalene has Pepys’ library and Trinity holds
AA Milne’s wonderful manuscripts of Winnie the Pooh.” The University Library also has
a treasure trove of ancient texts, including Chinese oracle bones dating from 1400 to 1200
BC, Charles Darwin’s letters and Isaac Newton’s own copy of the Principia. Currently, it is
running an exhibition on the life and work of John Milton, another Cambridge graduate,
to mark the 400th anniversary of his birth.
“Here I am, working in the middle of it all,” says Murray, who walks to work every day
from her home off Huntington Road. “It’s an incredible place to live. I could be walking home
in the evening through Clare College, see the sun setting on the ancient college buildings,
with the sound of Evensong from King’s College Chapel. That makes it really special.”
She would not hesitate to recommend Cambridge as a place to study. “Some people
come here as undergraduates and never leave. The drop-out rate is so low here, less
than 2 per cent, because of the tutor system that the colleges provide. So no student in
Cambridge is anonymous.”
Reproduced by kind permission of The Irish Times
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Where Learning is in the DNA
Frank McDonald, Press Fellow Lent Term 2008
Cambridge University – 800 years old next year – is a
very civilised place. Drinking port after dinner remains
in favour and punting on the Cam is still a delight, writes
Frank McDonald.
When Nobel Prize-winning chemists James Watson
and Francis Crick cracked the DNA double-helix in
February 1953, they bounded out of Cambridge
University’s Cavendish Laboratory and straight into the
nearby Eagle Tavern to tell an astonished barmaid that
they had “just discovered the secret of life”.
The barmaid’s response is not recorded, but there’s a
blue plaque on the wall of the old coaching inn opposite
St Benet’s Church, with its Saxon tower intact, recording
the momentous event. And this story about Crick and Watson is one of the most
repeated tales about the interface between the university and city of Cambridge.
The whole place reeks of countless generations of scholarship, going back to the
university’s foundation in 1209 during the reign of King John – six years before he signed
the Magna Carta. The oldest of its 31 colleges is Peterhouse, dating from 1284, and –
incredibly – there are some buildings from the 14th century that are still in use today.
Cambridge University’s vice-chancellor, Prof Alison Richard, is the 344th holder of
the post in an unbroken line from the Middle Ages, and she has set an ambitious target
to raise £1 billion for its 800th anniversary next year from wealthy benefactors and
former students, to ensure that it remains in the top rank of universities worldwide.
The “800th Campaign” embraces all 31 colleges and the university’s 100 departments,
as well as its great institutions, such as the Fitzwilliam Museum and University Library,
where Dubliner Anne Murray is deputy librarian. She was previously vice-president of
Wolfson College, where I’m privileged to be in residence for the Lent Term.
A majority of the 18,000 students at Cambridge now are postgraduates, and in Wolfson’s
case the ratio between them and undergraduates is as high as four to one. This makes for a
quieter life than you’d have in Christ’s, Jesus, Trinity, Girton, New Hall, Gonville and Caius
(pronounced “Keys”) and other colleges where undergraduates predominate.
Some 9 per cent of undergraduates and more than 40 per cent of postgraduates come
from outside the UK. As in Oxford University (known in Cambridge as “the other place”,
and vice versa) an increasing number are from Ireland – 30 undergraduates and 82
postgrads in the last academic year. Annual tuition fees are steep at £3,070.
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 83

Last month, student newspaper Varsity led with a story headlined “Fake ‘Oxbridge
educations’ for sale over the internet”. It was following up a BBC expose of the bogus
Irish International University, run by a Monaco-based chartered accountant styling
himself as Baron Knowth, which had been renting rooms in Oxford and Cambridge.
All over town – and Cambridge feels more like a large town than a city – the students
are everywhere, walking or cycling between the colleges where they live and the
university’s teaching and research buildings, which are gathered together on six main
sites. The older colleges are nearly all cheek-by-jowl with each other in the city centre.
“Town and Gown” are intertwined in a way that’s difficult to imagine anywhere else in
these islands, apart from Galway and St Andrew’s, in Scotland. The university’s official
map of Cambridge shows the spread of the colleges and university sites throughout the
city, as well as vast swathes of green space, particularly along the River Cam.
Every college has its own dining hall, with fully-staffed kitchens dishing up breakfast,
lunch and supper at ridiculously low (subsidised) prices, as well as more formal dinners.
One of ours featured curried parsnip soup, roast loin of pork with sage and apple
fritters and chocolate mousse, served with a 2000 Chateau Patache d’Aux and a
2003 Montbazillac.
Drinking port after dinner is still in favour, at least among those who can deal with
its hangover. But there are innovations, such as the vegan tapas menu introduced this
term in the buttery at Pembroke College (founded in 1347). For those who want them, the
catering manager is providing “individual sachets of butter and pots of grated cheese”.
Pembroke enforces a rule that “anybody of inappropriate appearance will not
be allowed to proceed to their degree”. Facial jewellery, “other than one pair of stud
earrings”, is not permitted, nor are “exaggerated hairstyles or colours”. Postgrads must
wear “appropriate academic gown and hood”, though clerical or military dress is
“acceptable”.
Other colleges are more relaxed, though male students must wear a suit or equivalent
to “Formal Hall” dinners. These are convivial occasions at Wolfson (founded by the
university in 1965 and later named after its chief benefactor, the Wolfson Foundation).
It also bills itself as “the most cosmopolitan college in Cambridge”, with 70 nationalities
represented.
All colleges are no-smoking zones now, and this ban extends to their courtyards,
gardens and even private rooms. There’s a sign up inside the door of our house saying:
“It is illegal to smoke in these premises.” Taking photographs in the dining hall is also
prohibited, though some broke this rule on Burns Night (January 25th) when the haggis
was piped in.
As for what the students get up to, an online survey by Varsity of more than 1,000
in Cambridge revealed a high correlation between sexual promiscuity and academic
under-achievement. Students at poorly-performing colleges are more likely to have had
more sexual partners, while there were more virgins in the better-performing colleges.
Robinson, the university’s newest college, was established in 1981 with an endowment
of £17 million from Sir David Robinson, who made his fortune from TV rentals. The
richest college by far is Trinity, which has an income of some £30 million a year, mainly
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from property investments, including land in Suffolk that’s now occupied by the port of
Felixstowe.
Prince Charles is a Trinity graduate, following in the footsteps of such luminaries as
Isaac Newton and Lord Byron, while his brother Prince Edward attended Jesus College,
as did the likes of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Alistair Cooke. Prince Philip, who never
went to any college, has served as chancellor of Cambridge University since 1976.
There’s an ancient rule that all students must live within a three-mile radius of Great
St Mary’s Church, in the town centre. The building nearby at the corner of Trinity Street
had been a bookshop for centuries and still is, now run by Cambridge University Press;
some years ago, planning permission to convert it into a McDonald’s burger joint
was refused.
Cambridge is a very civilised city, with cycle lanes running in almost every direction
and not much traffic in the town centre. There’s also a market in the Guildhall square
every day, with stalls selling everything from fresh vegetables to clothing and bric-a-brac.
The city has only one shopping centre, but a bigger one – the Grand Arcade – is due to
open in April.
But there are less materialistic delights, such as punting on the Cam (though it’s a bit
cold for that at this time of year) or attending Evensong in King’s College Chapel. With its
fan-vaulted ceiling and magnificent stained glass windows from the early 16th century,
this spectacular Renaissance Gothic chapel is one of the great glories of England, and
of Europe.
Reproduced by kind permission of The Irish Times
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 85

Return to Cambridge
Nick Glakas, Visiting Fellow
Like so many great adventures, it began over lunch. We had been invited by an old
friend, John Nolan, a prominent Washington lawyer and former Visiting Fellow at
Wolfson, to meet dear friends of his from Cambridge. John knew that Katy and I had
been graduate students there in the early 1970s and thought we might enjoy meeting
Professor Sir David and Lady Williams.
After a delightful afternoon of updates on Cambridge and reminiscences about
John’s time at Wolfson, Katy’s time at Clare Hall and mine at Queens’, the discussion
turned to whether we had ever given any thought to returning to Cambridge. Not
really, but we had been giving a great deal of thought lately as to the next chapter in
our lives since I was soon to step down from my position as president of the college
association I had been with for the past eight years.
By the end of lunch, the idea of returning to Cambridge was front and center in our
thoughts. Our year there as graduate students in 1974 had been one of the happiest in
our 40 years of marriage
and the thought of
returning to a place we
loved at this new time in
our life seemed perfect.
But what of the obvious
dilemma of trying to
replicate a wonderful
experience long after it
has taken on the golden
glow of memory?
Returning to a place
where you have been happy
is generally regarded as
a mistake. Memory is a
notoriously biased and
sentimental editor, selecting
what it wants and invariably
making cosmetic changes
to past events. With rosecolored
hindsight, the good
Nick and Katy before Commemoration Dinner
times become magical; the
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ad times fade and eventually disappear. One is left with the seductive blur of sunlit
days, golden daffodils, magnificent medieval buildings and wonderful memories.
Was it really like that? Would it be like that again? There was, of course, only one
way to find out.
At Sir David’s suggestion, I wrote and made application to become a Visiting
Fellow at Wolfson for the Easter term of 2008. When the letter from Dr Johnson arrived
notifying me of my acceptance, we were ecstatic. It was too good to be true. We were
really going back to a place we loved and to be part of a whole new experience at this
time of change in our lives.
And so, what was it like – to close up our home in Washington, say good bye to
our friends and family and head back to Cambridge after 35 years? Stated simply, it
was marvellous! It turned out to exceed all expectations and was one of the most
wonderful experiences we have ever had.
When we arrived at our rooms at Wolfson on 1 April, we had a note waiting for us
from Sir David and Lady Williams. Could we join them for dinner in town that evening
at the Thai restaurant down by Newnham Road and the Fen Causeway. We would walk
down together. And that is how a wonderful friendship began.
The Williamses introduced us to so many wonderful people and places in
Cambridge – the President and Fellows at Wolfson, high table at Emmanuel with
Lord and Lady Wilson, the newcomers group at the University Centre that Lady
Williams had started, and those attending this year’s Sir David Williams lecture
and dinner with the Chief Justice of New Zealand.
We loved living at Wolfson. It was such a far cry from our earlier time as graduate
students in our Dickensian neighborhood, across Parker’s Piece, up Mill Road. At
Wolfson, we were part of a wonderful College community, interacting on a daily basis
with students, Visiting Fellows, faculty and staff from Cambridge and all over the world.
On our second day in Cambridge, we walked down to the market and bought
our bicycles. Although we paid more than we had for the used car we had bought
back in 1974, our bikes gave us the freedom that a car simply couldn’t in modern day
Cambridge. We rode everywhere, everyday, regardless of the weather or the distance –
normal activity for the populace of Cambridge but a far cry for those of us from
Washington.
The Rupert Brooke pub in Grantchester became our second home. Out the front
gate of Wolfson, down the country road with the playing fields and meadows on either
side, into the lovely hamlet made famous by the student from King’s who died on the
Greek Island of Skiros. His words ring true to this day:
I only know that you may lie
Day long and watch the Cambridge sky
And flower lulled in sleepy grass,
Hear the cool lapse of hours pass,
Until the centuries blend and blur
In Grantchester, in Grantchester …
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I gloried in my early morning runs through Cambridge. Out the back of Wolfson with
the sun coming bright on the eastern horizon, down Selwyn Gardens where the old
Victorian red brick homes have names and not numbers – Grange House, Holy Trinity
Vicarage, Tyndale House – through the manicured gardens of Newnham, towards Silver
Street where the backs begin. And there, in a row, like great ships of the line, are the
magnificent colleges of Cambridge – Queens’, King’s, Clare, Trinity and St. John’s. In
and out I ran, waving to the porters, marveling at the daffodils and manicured lawns,
crisscrossing the River Cam and the cobble stone streets of Cambridge.
Every day we rode our bikes into the market to shop and run our errands. Often
we would meet for lunch at the Eagle, the Varsity Grill on St Andrews Street, the
University Centre or back at Wolfson. Afternoons would be spent at the University
Library, at Heffers or at the Cambridge University Press in town. My research was
focused on politics in the Elizabethan era and Katy’s interests took her to the
University’s language centre to perfect her French.
We often rode out to explore the countryside – to visit the American Cemetery
where 3,812 gravestones stretch into the distance, to lunch with our new friend, Allen
Packwood, director of the Churchill Archives Centre at Churchill College, to stop in
and see our oldest friend, Sir Roger of Trumpington, who has lain in silence for over
700 years in the little parish church of St Mary and St Michael. Over his tomb we read
again the wonderful poem by Hugh Chesterman:
88
Here lies his boisterous journey done
Sir Roger, Knight of Trumpington.
Beneath his head a casque of steel,
A spindle hound beneath his heel;
Two golden trumpets on his shield
Were blazoned on an azure field;
His helm of silver did outshine
The burning suns of Palestine.
The wheeling years have run their round
And nought but dust are knight and hound.
Lord Jesus Christ have pity on
Sir Roger Knight of Trumpington.
Evenings were spent reading, going to the Cambridge Arts Theatre or joining friends
and colleagues at concerts, lectures, movies and plays. We especially loved the Sunday
concerts at the Fitzwilliam Museum, lectures, discussions and musical events at
Wolfson, garden parties at the homes of friends and afternoon walks through the
Botanic Gardens. We visited each and every one of the 31 Cambridge colleges, politely
peering into many of their secret little corners that lie hidden from view.
Day trips became part of our itinerary when friends and family came to visit –
Lavenham, Stamford, Ely, Warwick Castle, Burleigh House, Blenheim, London and
the Cotswolds.
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32

Slowly the weeks passed. Our great adventure was coming to a close. Like many of
our newfound friends, we too would soon be leaving Cambridge. Our last formal event
in College was the annual commemoration dinner the last week in June. It was simply
splendid. Like so many delightful evenings at formal hall, we gathered with the college
community of Wolfson, to say thank you to so many who had made our stay so
memorable.
After the boxes were packed, the good byes were said and our two wonderful bikes
were donated to the Wolfson Bicycle Society, I took my final morning run through
Cambridge. Coming through the first courtyard in St John’s, I noticed the sign alerting
visitors to the rooms where the poet William Wordsworth had lived when he was a
student. And into my mind came his memorable lines:
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now forever taken from my sight
And though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendor in the grass or glory in the flower
We will grieve not
Rather find strength in what remains behind.
It had been a glorious three months – a marvellous and great adventure. To all who
made our time at Wolfson so memorable, especially to Sir David and Lady Williams,
to President and Mrs Johnson, and to the Fellows, staff and porters of Wolfson, we can
only say: Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 89

The Arcadia Fellowship Programme
John Naughton, Fellow and Director of Wolfson Press Fellowship Programme
In 1985 a well-known Internet commentator, Howard Rheingold, asked a perceptive
question: “Where is the Library of Congress when it’s on your laptop?” The question
seemed far-fetched to many at the time, but Rheingold was anticipating a time when
a combination of computing power, storage capacity and communication bandwidth
would enable a digitized version of every book held in the world’s biggest library to
be conveyed instantly to a computer desktop anywhere in the world. This, he thought,
would be a different world. Up to then, if people wanted to use the resources of a library
then they had to go to a physical place; but in a comprehensively networked world,
physical attendance would no longer be necessary. What would that mean for libraries?
Just over two decades later, Rheingold’s question is beginning to seem urgent.
Most of the students now coming to university are ‘digital natives’ – inhabitants of
Cyberspace since birth. They have never known a world without Google, the Web,
email, instant messaging, file sharing and e-commerce. They have expectations that
all information is instantly available online 24x7x365 (as the service-industry cliché
puts it). They think that doing research involves typing queries into a search engine
and are puzzled about what a university library has to offer them beyond a place to
do revision, have coffee and perhaps to meet friends who are in the same boat.
Academic librarians are wondering how to respond to the challenges posed by
these new generations of users. What services should be developed for them? At the
same time university administrations are puzzled about the role(s) that university
libraries might play in the emerging digital ecosystem. What should be done locally,
and what at the national or network level? Does it make sense, for example, for every
library to do its own general cataloguing? What are the implications of the Google
Books programme? Of new open-access publication models in scholarly journals?
How should curatorial roles (looking after large historical collections) be balanced
against the resources needed to develop new digital services? And how should digital
resources be curated?
These are large, open-ended and important questions and they cannot easily
be answered by hard-pressed professionals in the interstices of busy working days.
Earlier this year, the Arcadia Trust made a substantial donation to the University
Library to fund a three-year Fellowship programme that will bring talented librarians
and information scientists to Cambridge to explore the role of academic libraries in
a networked world. The Fellows will be based in the University Library but – as the
Academic Advisor to the programme – I was keen that they should have a college base,
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too. A collegiate university can be a forbidding place to those who are not members
of a college; after all, that was one of the reasons why University College – as we
were once known – was founded by the University! To my great delight, the Council
has agreed to the proposal and so for the next three years, Wolfson will have a new
category of academic visitors – Arcadia Fellows. Our first Fellow, Lihua Zhu, is already
in residence, and we aim to have an average of three per Term from Lent 2009. We are
also planning a lively programme of seminars and lectures. And – who knows? – one
day we may even invite Howard Rheingold to give one.
Lihua Zhu, the first Arcadia Fellow
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 91

Midland Railway Furniture in the Lee Room
Michael Sharman, Emeritus Fellow
Some time ago four large items of furniture – three obviously old stud-backed sofas
and one arm chair – appeared in the Lee Room and a number of people have asked
what they are and where do they come from? It has taken me at least ten years to
unravel the story but even now there are unanswered questions.
After the 1963 Beeching report on the future of railways in Britain many stations, lines
and much infrastructure was closed and resulted in large quantities of redundant items
being accumulated in warehouses throughout the country, one of which was at Derby. It
was decided to sell as much as possible, and here Nicholas Stedman Lord – known as
Nick – stepped in. He had become fanatically interested in collecting memorabilia from
railways and he came to an agreement with the Stores Controller at Nottingham whereby
he would do the job. As he wasn’t a railwayman, he couldn’t be paid but it was agreed he
could have any items he liked “at an advantageous price”. At that time I was building up
my own collection of railway handlamps and asked the same Stores Controller if any had
been brought in from the Great Northern and London North Western Joint Railway. I was
told that someone called Nick Lord had all that were left and was given his address.
Contacting him was the start of a long friendship between us.
When Nick decided to dispose of his railway items, I helped him to process the
first batch and on his early death, I helped again to get rid of the rest. The final items
presented a major problem – three settees and an armchair. These were obviously of
significance and should be kept together but they were too large for a normal house.
I managed to acquire the set and persuaded the College Bursar that the furniture
could be accommodated somewhere in Wolfson College. After restoration, the
furniture was put into the Lee Room where it looks fine. Two further questions remain:
what were they and where did they come from? During my search for answers, many
interesting sources came to light.
A starting point was the emblem at the top of each item – a gothic letter ‘M’ –
which is the symbol of the Midland Railway, though here it is a raised letter whereas
it is usually inset. Although the Midland had other major centres, such as St Pancras
Station in London, and British Rail disposed of items at various locations, it was likely
that the furniture had come from the Derby area, but it had to be connected with
somewhere or someone significant and my instinct was either Chatsworth House
(the abode of the Duke of Devonshire) or Haddon Hall (one of the subsidiary
establishments of the Duke of Rutland).
In 1845 another proposal was for a line to be constructed through The Peak District
from the Manchester area at Cheadle to Ambergate, and construction begun at
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Ambergate and the line from there to Rowsley, which lies on the river Derwent beyond
Matlock, was opened on 1 June 1849. To continue north from Rowsley towards Buxton
would mean passing through one of the two Dukes’ lands. The most direct route was
via the Haddon estate, but Rutland initially refused to allow this, so the Midland
approached Devonshire whose gardener persuaded him that it would be to his
lordship’s advantage if it were to go through his land. Unfortunately the Duke died and
his son refused to entertain the idea, so the directors of the railway had to go back to
the Duke of Rutland and eventually persuaded him to allow them to go through his
land. However, he insisted that the line had to go though a tunnel at the section where
it would be visible from the Hall.
It was decided that three stations should be built to service the Dukes’ requirements,
at Bakewell; a new station at Rowsley; and Hassop, this last one to serve Baslow even
though it lay more than 2 miles from that town. Devonshire focused his interests on
Rowsley where between 1885 and 1902 there was an official Goods Agent. Because
the road from Haddon Hall to Hassop station went through Bakewell itself, Rutland
used Bakewell instead, though there is evidence that he also made use of Rowsley.
According to an 1870 edition of Bradshaw’s timetable, Hassop was billed as ‘Hassop
for Chatsworth’ thereby implying that at least they expected Hassop to be the main
station for the estate, but even then most of the traffic was dealt with at Rowsley, the
full title of which was ‘Rowsley for Chatsworth’ from 1867 to 1965. It is certainly true
that, when particular dignitaries, including members of the Royal Family, visited
Chatsworth, they all used Rowsley station when journeying from London,
Sandringham, etc.
Neither Chatsworth House nor The Duke of Rutland were able to help so the hunt
ceased for the time being. Then by chance I was reading a book on ‘Railway Relics and
Regalia’ and came across an entry entitled ‘Station Lamps and Other Accessories’ that
could be relevant to my search. It stated “At Rowsley, the station for Chatsworth, however,
the Duke of Devonshire’s guests had to share the ‘Gentlemen’s Room First Class’, which
as recently as 1962 was fully furnished with two leather sofas, and armchair – inscribed
with the Midland Railway’s inevitable ‘M’ – and an assortment of travelling rugs.” This
sounded too good to ignore and, since the station at Rowsley had closed in 1967 at the
time when Nick was working
at the Derby warehouse, it was
worth following up. Apparently
Chatsworth itself supplied little
– if anything – for Rowsley
station, even the flowers for the
Royal visits came from a florist
at Matlock.
I chanced to mention this
discovery to a colleague of
mine who recalled that a
former colleague of his, Peter The Midland Railway motif
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 93

Jackson, had been Station Master at Rowsley from 1949 to 1957. Although he is 88,
Peter is still very active, so I sent him some photographs of the furniture to ask if he
remembered them, which he did.
His letter contained the following “…. I was at Rowsley (i.e. Chatsworth) from 1949
to 1957 and although the Duke didn’t travel by train from Rowsley; as its Goods Agent I
had a lot of business with His Grace’s various departments; e.g. forestry, gardening and
farm (particularly Spanish Goats which traveled in the guards van on passenger trains,
the appropriate stamps being stuck to their horns!). About the furniture; yes I do well
remember the pieces in the waiting rooms. There was a Ladies Waiting Room, housing
one sofa; the other two sofas and chair being in what we called the First Class Waiting
Room. These rooms were seldom used except for the toilets (during my time of
course). I can’t remember doing any business with the Duke of Rutland’s estate.
No doubt you will know that the Duke of Devonshire opposed the routing of the
Midland Railway through his Estate and so the line terminated in what became my
Goods Yard (and is now a modern shopping mall). In a similar way Rutland would
only agree to the line following its existing route if a tunnel took the line beneath his
Estate – hence Haddon Tunnel – about a mile in length….”.
This letter clinches at least the later stages of the furniture’s time on the railways
but there is still more to discover such as was it always at Rowsley or had it started life
at Hassop and then been moved, and where was it made and by whom?
Note: A much fuller version of this contribution has been deposited in the Wolfson
archives. The author would be very happy to supply further information to anybody
interested.
The Midland Railway furniture in the Lee Room
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The Lee Library 2007–2008
Anna Jones, Lee Librarian
Cambridge is renowned for its rich network of library resources. Apart from physical
access to the University Library, its Dependent Libraries, and numerous faculty and
departmental libraries, current students can also make use of a vast array of electronic
subscription services, including journals, books, databases and cross-searching tools,
available via password authentication direct to their desktops around the world.
Such variety can seem bewildering at first, particularly to those students and visitors
familiar with a more conventional campus set up, but at college level choice is much
more straightforward. College libraries are for the exclusive use of College members,
and as such are able to respond closely to the needs of the communities they serve.
At Wolfson, as elsewhere, our priorities are to provide congenial workspace for the
current student body, and books to support the courses offered. After 14 years in use,
the Lee Library building continues to inspire admiration, and readers of the latest
University’s Undergraduate Admissions Prospectus will have noticed shots of the Lee
Library featuring prominently among the illustrations of student life in Cambridge
today. On the strength of a further feature in a book entitled Furtherance of academic
excellence: Documentation of new library buildings in Cambridge, comp. Alison Wilson,
ed. Elmar Mittler (Göttingen, Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche,
Architecture Group, 2006), we were visited during the year by librarians from Hughes
Hall and Schlumberger Cambridge Research looking at models of small libraries to
help in the planning of their new building projects. We in turn have spent time looking
at models of ‘information commons’ and other flexible and multi-function work
spaces springing up in universities around the country to accommodate changing
study habits amongst internet natives as we plan a new permanent study area in the
former Quiet Room, due to open for the Michaelmas Term 2008.
There was a steady increase on the previous year in the number of regular users
of the Reading Room in the Michaelmas and Lent terms, following the shift to more
congenial wi-fi access via the University’s Lapwing service in time for the start of the
academic year. The new Library Users’ Group met for the first time in the Lent Term,
following the committee reorganisation that transferred formal Library business to the
College’s Educational Policy Committee. The Users’ Group is one of several channels
of communication that involve students in the development of the service. One of the
most important of these contributions is through suggestions for book purchases, which
highlight new material added to reading lists during the course of the year, and help
identify where there is high demand in faculty and departmental libraries. Our collection
development priorities in 2007–2008 included Geography, Classics and History of Art,
to support the first Wolfson undergraduates in these subjects for a number of years.
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 95

By far the most remarkable event of the year for the Library was the arrival of the
domestic library of the late Professors Karen Spärck Jones and Roger Needham following
the former’s death in April 2007 (reported in last year’s Magazine). The progress of
these 5,000 books from their cases on three floors of the Needhams’ converted barn in
Willingham to the basement stack of the Lee Library one grey August day in 2007, and
thence of a representative selection of 1,000 to the newly commissioned shelves in the
Karen Spärck Jones Room for the official opening before Commemoration Dinner in
June 2008 was a long and at times anxious one. However, we hope that the breadth of
the recreational collection now available for browsing in this central public room will
provide a fitting memorial to the eclectic interests of two of the College’s distinguished
former Fellows, and an inspiration to future generations. Of the remainder, a number
of books relevant to the History, SPS and History of Art Triposes have been set aside for
addition to the main Lee Library collection, and a small selection of titles was made by
the Librarian of Newnham College, according to the terms of the bequest. The proceeds
of the sale of the final books will go to College Funds. I should like to record special
thanks to Sue Brooker, Library Assistant, for support in maintaining the regular Library
service while work on the bequest took place, and to recent Alumna Marta Machala
for practical help in preparing the books for the Karen Spärck Jones Room.
Support for the Library by way of presentations to the collection was received from
the following members during the year, and is acknowledged with grateful thanks.
Professor Robin Alexander
Professor Hugh Bevan
Mr Paul Brown
Mr Adam Clark-Joseph
Dr Erik Christiansen
Lord Justice Lawrence Collins
Dr Ian Cross
Dr Jennifer Davis
Dr John Dawson
Dr Talal Debs and Professor
Michael Redhead
Professor Grayson Ditchfield
Mr Karan Gokani
Mr Marcus Granado
Mr David Hall
Mr Justice Ken Handley
Miss Ling Yee (Kirsty) Hung
Miss Riti Karnad
Mr Bill Kirkman
Miss Sarah Kups
Dr Seng-Tee Lee
Dr Max Lieberman
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Mr George Liebman
Professor Tshilidzi Marwala
Dr Don MacDonald
Mr Alexander McCarthy-Best
Mr John McClenahen
Dr Derek McDougall
Mr Alan O’Leary
Dr Susan Oliver
Dr Nina Persâk
Dr Manuel Alejandro Rodríguez
de la Peña
Mr Jeremy Schwarz
Mr Stephen Sharples
Professor Andrew Simester
Mr Anthony Soon Chye Teo
Miss Hatice Tuncer
Dr Cordula van Wyhe
Professor Tuija Virtanen
Professor Malcolm Warner
Miss Kim Whitaker
Professor Sir David Williams
Professor Howard Wolf

The ‘Garden Rooms’ of Wolfson College
Phil Stigwood, Head Gardener
Many of the famous English gardens have evolved a series of garden ‘rooms’ within the
garden as a whole. Good examples are Hidcote manor in Gloucestershire, Sissinghurst
Castle in Kent, and our very own botanic garden in Cambridge. Dividing a garden into
a series of outdoor rooms creates a ‘journey’ through the garden, each room with its
own character, based on colour or plant habitat e.g. shade loving plants, sun loving
plants, scented plants, draught tolerant plants etc.
Wolfson’s garden evolution has largely involved the amalgamation of gardens
belonging to private homes which have been bought by the College, thus inheriting
many fine mature trees in the process. However, individual garden rooms have also
been created as the new buildings have been built, for example the Lee garden
(Chinese garden).
The building of the blocks of student accommodation created the ‘courts’ or
enclosed areas, which tend to have their own ‘micro climate’ allowing plants, which
would not otherwise survive our winter frosts, to survive and thrive. The large expanse
of walls also provide winter warmth, soaking up winter sun and radiating the heat
slowly through the night preventing severe frosts from occurring in the plant borders
adjacent to them. This allows some exotic and tropical climbers and shrubs to be
grown on the walls of their buildings (see Lee Court plantings).
The following garden rooms are quite distinctive, and most of the plants discussed
here have been planted in the last six years during my time here as head gardener.
Some are quite rare, recent introductions to British gardens, many coming from China,
which the great plant hunter E H Wilson, described as the ‘mother of gardens’. In fact
plants originating from China make a greater contribution to United Kingdom gardens
than plants from any other country in the world! Chinese plants do well in the UK as
the average temperatures are similar to those in Britain, although it can be warmer in
summer and colder in winter making most Chinese plants extremely hardy. In many
parts of China the soil is alkaline, which is true of much of the soil in Britain, especially
East Anglia, again making Chinese plants thrive here in Cambridge. Many Maples
(acer) will thrive in our soil (see Wolfson ‘winter garden room’), despite a common,
misplaced conception that they require acidic soil. Viburnum, Abelia Osmathus,
Prunus, Ginkgo and Chaenomeles also thrive on the alkaline soil here at Wolfson
The ‘Winter garden room’
Situated in the corner behind Lee Hall, adjacent to the tennis court, is a garden room
full of winter colour, interest and scent providing an invigorating place to sit and take
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 97

in the rare plants (many from China) and intoxicating scents from the winter flowering
shrubs (Viburnum, Daphne, Chimonanthus wintersweet). On a sunny winter day, one
almost forgets that it is winter; there are so many colourful stems, barks, flowers, bulbs
and evergreens (foliage) in this garden room.
The star performers here are rare plants, such a Cryptomeria Sekkan-Sugi (Japanese
cedar); Acers ‘orange dream’, ‘aureum’, ‘phoenix’ (shrimp pink bark and stems in
winter), Griseum (paper bark maple), Phyllostachys bamboos (gold and black canes),
Dwarf conifers (under 3 feet tall – no leylandii here!) also add intense colours of gold,
yellow, silver, blue and cream in winter. There is a prostrate dwarf Californian redwood
(sequoia adpressa) here, which is particularly striking and rare.
Lee Garden: the ‘Chinese garden room’
Lee Garden was designed as a Chinese ‘minimalist’ garden, a garden of contemplation
and serenity. The garden is simply laid out with a lawn, a China rose bed and Chinese
wisteria on the house wall. To the east side is a wall, painted very pale green, onto
which shadows are cast from the dwarf Japanese Cedar and coral bark Acer planted
here. Chinese water stones and a stone horse complete the picture.
The star plants here are Acer Sango-Kaku, whose bark turns coral red in winter, the
same colour as the red colouration of the Lee Hall. Its leaves colour apricot-orange
in autumn. Acer griseum, the Chinese paper bark Acer, was introduced into the UK
in 1901. The leaves turn bright scarlet red in autumn, making a spectacular display
at the front of the Lee Hall, where two of these trees are planted in the raised beds.
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The ‘scented garden room’, Fuchs House
This is situated on the east side of Fuchs house and is enclosed by a yew hedge. This
is a garden room to sit in under the archway, clothed with blue clematis and white
scented star jasmine, and enjoy the simplistic colour pallet of blue and white flowers
and heavenly scent. This garden room provides colour and scent in most months of
the year, even in winter!
Bulbs such as scented Iris, Bluebells, Snowdrops, Scilla, Anemones and Hyacinths
carpet the ground in Spring, followed by blue leaved Hostas, numerous perennials
such as Electric blue Anchusa, white flowered geraniums, blue campanula, aubrietia,
corydalis ‘china blue’ etc. In summer – autumn the white Japanese anemones flower
for weeks on end right into November. In winter the Clematis ‘freckles’ braves the
cold on the second archway entrance and Daphne fill the air with the sweetest scent
of all in February to March along with Sarcococca (whose scent can be smelt up to ten
metres away!). This garden room provides the best example of an enclosed, separate
area within a larger garden, designed to fill the air with scent, which would otherwise
be diluted and less dramatic.
Lee Court: a ‘courtyard garden room’
The courtyard is probably the oldest example of a garden room created by the
surrounding buildings and providing a sheltered environment in which plants can
flourish. Lee Court has high-sided buildings on three sides and the wisteria pergola
on the south side, sheltering the borders from harsh north and easterly winds. Thus
even some of the half-hardy shrubs and climbers can survive the cold winters in such
an environment. Will cold winters become a thing of the past?
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We have four rare and unusual climbers in Lee Court. Firstly the trumpet vine
‘Campsis’, with spectacular large orange trumpet flowers in summer and autumn.
Secondly the bluebell climber, whose small blue flowers resemble the woodland
bluebell and whose foliage is evergreen with attractive dark green leaflets. There
is also a pink form here, the pink bell climber. Both are forms of Sollya, originating
in Australia. These also have attractive purple berries. Thirdly the South American
shrub/climber, Sophora ‘sunking’, with large pendulous clusters of yellow flowers
in spring and lovely, glossy evergreen leaflets. Lastly and truly wonderful, not for its
cream flowers, but for its glossy metallic purple berries (which look good enough
to eat but are not!) is Billardiera ‘cherry berry’ from Tasmania. Once again this is
growing against a warm radiator wall to help it through the winter.
Other unusual shrubs to admire in Lee Court are: Melianthus major (huge
architectural blue serrated leaves); Albizia rosea, the silk tree discovered by Earnest
Wilson in China. The silk tree has delicate tri pinnate leaves (fern like), and lovely
dark pink, silk like flowers; Salvia ‘bethellii’ and Salvia ‘black and blue’ are tall
perennials with pink and black/blue flowers, rarely seen but stunning border plants.
Other unusual plants in the gardens at Wolfson include a foxglove tree (Paulwinia),
Ginkgo biloba (a member of the conifer family and shown to be around in Dinosaur
times by fossil records), Nandina domestica and Firepower (sacred bamboo), Betula
‘septronialis’ (Chinese red birch – this cultivar has cream, grey and pink bark!) and
Cercis ‘forest pansy’, in my opinion, the best new introduction to the UK garden in
recent years: a small tree with large heart shaped, purple, translucent leaves and
stunning autumnal leaf colours.
I hope you enjoy plant hunting in the Wolfson gardens. There are many rare gems
to be seen and enjoyed, at all times of the year
Melianthus major (front), Salvia
‘Bethellii’ (rear)
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Cercis ‘forest pansy’ Billardiera (purple beauty berry)
and Cotoneaster

Societies and Events

Wolfson College Research Colloquia
Dr Thomas D’Andrea, Fellow and Colloquia Organiser
For the second year running the College has sponsored an integrated Research
Colloquium programme, drawing on the full range of academic disciplines across
the humanities and the natural and social sciences. The breadth of College membership
was also well represented; among our speakers we heard from Fellows, visitors and
students alike. A particular highlight of the year, bringing vividly to mind continuity
in the College from its early history, was the colloquium of Dr Anna Snowdon on her
recent work in forensic biology. Dr Snowdon had not addressed the College since,
as a PhD student at Wolfson some 36 years ago, she spoke to a similar audience
about changes in the topic of her PhD research. Floreat inquisitio scientifica in
perpetuitate!
Dr Anna Snowdon and Christian Fink, Science Colloquium organisers, write
that one of the great pleasures of being at Wolfson is the opportunity to meet people
from disciplines other than one’s own, and the regular Thursday colloquia provided a
stimulating environment for learning and discussion. Both of us have much enjoyed
finding speakers for our science colloquia. For the record, the list below includes the
science seminars held during Lent and Easter Terms 2007 as their titles were
inadvertently not included in the Magazine volume for 2006–2007.
Lent Term 2007
102
1 March
Dr Wolfgang Huber (European Bioinformatics Institute, Hinxton, Fellow, Wolfson
College)
From genes to phenotypes and how mathematics helps us with biology
15 March
Dr Giles Yeo (Wellcome Trust Intermediate Fellow, Addenbrookes Hospital, Senior
Member, Wolfson College)
The genetics of obesity
and Ms Rebecca Simmons (MRC Epidemiology Unit, PhD student, Wolfson College)
The primary prevention of Type 2 diabetes – where next?
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32

Easter Term 2007
26 April
Dr Ann Copestake (Reader in Computational Linguistics, Fellow, Wolfson College)
Computational Grammars: from the sublime to the sublimate
and Mr Ulrich Paquet (PhD student, Wolfson College)
Creating machines that learn
17 May
Dr Paul Murdin (Institute of Astronomy, Senior Member, Wolfson College)
Cosmology today – the past and present of the universe
and Mr Roger Benson (Department of Earth Sciences, PhD student, Wolfson College)
Dinosaurs, a Great British invention, and the context of British dinosaurs on the
World stage
12 July (Joint meeting with Wolfson Wildlife Society)
Ms Shaenandhoa Garcia-Rangel (PhD student, Wolfson College)
Andean bear – Sierra de Portuguesa Project
and Mrs Helen Morrogh-Bernard (PhD student, Wolfson College)
Orang-utan and gibbon behaviour and ecology
Michaelmas Term 2007
18 October
Professor William Block (Emeritus Fellow at the British Antarctic Survey in
Cambridge, Senior Member, Wolfson College)
Antarctica – a natural biological laboratory
1 November
Dr Anna Snowdon (Independent Forensic Biologist, Senior Member, Wolfson College)
‘Of shoes – and ships – and sealing wax…’: forensic biology in the international
fruit trade
22 November
Mr Andrew Robinson (Writer, Visiting Fellow, Wolfson College)
Thomas Young: the last man who knew everything
29 November
Ms Jaqueline Ramos (Environmental journalist, Wolfson Press Fellow)
and Dr Anabela Pinto (Research Associate, Department of Biological Anthropology,
Senior Member, Wolfson College)
Threats to animal biodiversity in Brazil
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 103

Lent Term 2008
104
31 January
Dr Olwen Williams (Department of Ecology, Open University, Senior Member,
Wolfson College)
West of Java: scientific expedition to Krakatau 2007
14 February
Dr Laurence Smith (Fellow of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research,
Senior Member, Wolfson College)
History, archaeology and development at Suakin, a Red Sea port in Sudan
6 March
Dr Ivor Day (Rolls-Royce Research Fellow, Whittle Laboratory, Department of
Engineering, Fellow, Wolfson College)
The jet engine and you!
Easter Term 2008
15 May
Professor Tshilidzi Marwala (School of Electrical and Information Engineering,
University of Witwatersrand, Visiting Fellow, Wolfson College)
Making sense of South Africa’s HIV epidemic
29 May
Dr Casey Israel (Department of Materials Science & Metallurgy, Research Fellow,
Wolfson College)
Why design a new sensor when you can make one for a cent?
12 June
Dr Adam Cobb (Professor of International Relations, Command and Staff College,
United States Marine Corps, Quantico, Virginia, Visiting Fellow, Wolfson College)
War in cyberspace?
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32

Wolfson Science Day
Christian Fink on behalf of the Wolfson Science Team
On the evening of 12 March, students, Fellows and guests came together to celebrate
the second Wolfson Science Day, organized by Christian Fink, Oksana Trushkevych,
Lisa Ehrenfried and Sharon Geva.
The evening began with an introduction by the President about the importance
of communicating scientific methods and findings to the general public, after which
three PhD students presented their work.
Luke Knowles enlightened us with some basic key concepts regarding climate
change. Sharon Geva explained about language impairments after stroke, giving the
listeners the opportunity to hear how such impairments sound and are experienced
by stroke patients. Finally, Dave Wright engaged the audience with a talk about deer
invasion in New Zealand. With such an inspiring start, the audience was ready for the
scientific exchange session, which was accompanied by drinks and nibbles provided
by the College.
Students from all fields of science presented their work in a creative and exciting
way, which included colourful posters, computer simulations, laboratory samples,
and videos. Similarly, topics covered a wide range from animal behaviour, ecology and
molecular biology, to physics and engineering. A team of judges carefully examined
the presentations and after some deliberation awarded third prize to Shanna
Shaenandhoa, second to Christian Fink and first prize to Neil Jordan.
After two consecutive
years of this successful event,
it is clear that students and
Fellows alike are enthusiastic
about the opportunity to
come together and share
their diverse knowledge
and interests in a relaxed
and open atmosphere. The
team would like to thank
all those who contributed
to the success of the science
day, and hope that this will
have been the beginning of
An interested participant with Sebastian Albert-Seifried (right) and Fernando
Abegão (second right)
a beautiful and long College
tradition.
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 105

Lunchtime Seminars
Rebecca Simmons, Research Fellow and Alumna
In the Easter term, Wolfson College was pleased to host a new informal lunchtime
seminar series. This series was designed to enable and encourage students of the
College, as well as Visiting Fellows, to speak in an informal setting about their research.
Participants brought their trays into the Combination Room and had lunch during
the talks, and friendly debate was encouraged over coffee. Our first presentation
was delivered by Christopher Oldstone-Moore, a Visiting Fellow from Wright State
University, Ohio, who talked on the history of beards and masculinity. Christopher’s
topic and pictures attracted some interesting anecdotes and questions from the
audience, and was well received by members of the College both with and without
facial hair! Our second talk was by Deborah Baumgold, from the University of Oregon,
who was also a Visiting Fellow at Wolfson. Deborah is an expert on 17th century
political thought and her talk was entitled “Of Sages and Slavery”. Deborah discussed
the contradiction between the explosion of the horrific African slave trade and the
expansion of domestic liberty in the later half of the 17th century (the ‘freedom/slavery
paradox’). Her topic generated some heated debate over coffee, with knowledgeable
members of the audience happy to add their opinions to develop and expand the
discussion. Finally, our first brave student, Justin Basile Echouffo-Tcheugui, gave
a talk on his PhD research looking at the early detection of type 2 diabetes. This
growing public health problem presents some serious challenges for both developed
and developing nations in the 21st century, and Basile succinctly addressed the
question of whether or not countries should implement national screening
programmes for this condition.
We are currently in the process of arranging the informal seminar series for the
2008–2009 terms and would love to hear from any College members, particularly
students, who would be willing to give a short, informal talk on their research.
Seminar topics are invited across all academic disciplines and talks will take place
every Wednesday of full term.
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The Wolfson Humanities Society: A New Life
Carolina Armenteros, Research Fellow
Since its rebirth in May 2007, Wolfson’s Humanities Society has been an increasingly
vibrant forum of College cultural life. Exploring interests in the most diverse areas of
the arts and humanities – philosophy, history, literature, theatre, religious studies –
it has drawn large audiences to its talks, and enthusiastic participants to the cultural
activities it organises in the Cambridge area. The irony is that, although specialists in
the scientific and technical fields predominate at Wolfson, the College now has one
of Cambridge’s most successful humanities societies – indeed, probably the best
attended one by far.
The quality of the Society’s talks, now held on a roughly fortnightly basis, and
the calibre of its speakers, have contributed largely to this success. In January 2008,
George Steiner, Fellow of the British Academy and one of the world’s most renowned
literary critics, did Wolfson the great honour of giving his first public lecture at the
Humanities Society after nearly a decade of private life. No fewer than 240 people
came from all over Cambridge to the Lee Hall for what can only be described as
an inspiring experience. Since then, leading scholars have succeeded each other as
guests of the Humanities Society – John Dunn, Rosamond McKitterick, John Morrill,
David Runciman, and Gareth Stedman Jones. Each has attracted a Cambridge-wide
audience whose numbers have tested the seating capacity of the Quiet Room.
This level of excellence will be sustained during the 2008–2009 academic year.
The programme contains two past Regius Professors of History, Patrick Collinson
and Quentin Skinner, as well as the current one, Richard Evans. These speakers reflect
the strong representation of historians among humanists at Wolfson, as do other
upcoming speakers like David Abulafia, Joad Raymond and Robert Tombs. Yet the
Society also includes among its guests experts in a wide diversity of other fields,
ranging from philosophy and political science to Theravada Buddhism. In this
connection, Timothy O’Hagan, a world expert on Jean-Jacques Rousseau, has
graciously accepted to give a paper to the Society in 2009. As a professor at the
University of East Anglia, he testifies to the fact that the Society’s ambitions are
not limited to Cambridge. This was already evident at the Society’s re-launch talk
in 2007, when Edward Bujak of Harlaxton College gave a passionate exposition of
landholding practices in nineteenth-century England, stirring such a lively discussion,
and so much excitement, that I was at pains to end the session before the dinner gong.
In 2008–2009 the Humanities Society will also commemorate the 400th anniversary
of the death of John Milton with a seminar series on his work directed by Enrique
Bocardo-Crespo. This seminar, funded by a Spanish institution, signals the Society’s
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 107

dawning role as an international setting for scholarly meetings and publications.
For in addition to bringing together Milton scholars at all stages of their academic
careers, Professor Bocardo-Crespo has also obtained funding to publish the seminar
proceedings. This is not the first time the Society exercises intellectual influence:
I recently found myself marking a first-class MPhil thesis, destined for publication,
which cited a Society presentation in making part of its argument.
In addition to its talks and seminars, the Society has also organised expeditions
to the Cambridge Arts Theatre, the Archaeology and Anthropology Museums, the
Imperial War Museum Duxford, and King’s College Chapel. All have been very well
attended, showing the strong interest of College members in humanities-related
activities. Further trips are planned to the Leper Chapel, the oldest building in
Cambridgeshire, and St Giles Cemetery, one of Cambridge’s forgotten jewels,
sure to attract G E Moore and Wittgenstein aficionados. In this way, the Society
combines cultural exploration with the opportunity for College members to socialise.
Finally, the Wolfson Humanities Society seeks to represent college interests in the
humanities. Any Wolfson member having suggestions about future talks and activities
can therefore contact Dr David Adams, whose indefatigable efforts on behalf of the
Society have contributed greatly to making it what it is today. College members are
likewise invited to sign up for formal hall on the evenings when Society talks are
held, should they wish to meet and exchange ideas with guest speakers after the
discussion session. Hopefully, such initiatives will render the Wolfson Humanities
Society into an ever livelier and more participatory forum.
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Professor George Steiner: ‘A Line from Dante’
and a Humanities Society Success
Emma Cavell, Senior Member and former Fellow
The Lee Hall was filled beyond capacity and all the nibbles were gone within minutes
of being set out. Something was definitely going on. It was a freezing January evening
and George Steiner, Emeritus Professor of Comparative Literature at the University
of Geneva and a familiar figure about Cambridge, was at Wolfson to address the
Humanities Society’s seminar series. His paper was entitled – somewhat mysteriously –
‘A Line from Dante’; but many had come just to hear him speak.
He didn’t disappoint. He began with some insight from Samuel Beckett, namely
that the definition of human happiness was to ‘sit down, fart, and read Dante or books
about Dante’. You knew he couldn’t agree more, except for the problem that there is no
end to such books. Yet so much is unknown about the work of this medieval Florentine
poet-cum-statesman, about the transmission of the Commedia, and about the man
himself – except, of course, that he incurred the wrath of the pope at one point and
was threatened with death by burning:
‘We have no Dante manuscripts; we know almost nothing about the circumstances
and chronology of the composition of the Paradiso. He was wandering from city to
city under the interdict of Florence, the sentence being that … he was to be burned
alive if ever he returned to his native city’.
Nice. The miracle is that the Paradiso, the last part of the Commedia, not only managed
to be written as Dante journeyed from Verona to Ravenna and so on before his death
in 1321, but that it has survived to this day. In fairly reliable form, say philologists.
So, what was one actually to make of Dante’s poetry? The language of the Commedia
was a mix not only of the poet’s native Tuscan, but also of Latin, Provençal, certain
touches of Sicilian, and perhaps even some Arabic borrowings. Clearly not for the
fainthearted. Even though Dante’s consciously created lingua vulgare (his own
expression) was quickly translated into the lingua franca of educated medieval Europe –
Latin – who actually, really understood him? And if contemporaries, who at least had
similar frames of reference to Dante, had to wade through all those interpretive layers that
build up around any communication and/or translation, what were we supposed to do?
In truth – said Steiner – we were never going to get back the Dante of 1300, never
going to ‘know exactly [his] horizons of personal reference’. The Commedia had come
down to us ‘like a distant stellar source surrounded by an aura, by Saturn rings, of eight
centuries of research’. Indeed, the piece has been worked over so much that the study
of the study of Dante has become an industry in itself!
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 109

110
And so we were introduced to that single ‘line from Dante’ promised by Steiner’s title:
‘… which makes Neptune marvel at the shadow of the Argo’.
(Paradiso, book 33, verse 96)
The image is this: Neptune is lounging at the bottom of the ocean; he looks up; he sees
the shadow of the Argo pass overhead. He is absolutely stunned because he has never
seen a ship before. He hasn’t seen a ship before because to the medieval mind the
Argo, piloted by Jason, was the first ship ever built by man. There was plenty more,
too, that the medieval reader would have recognised in Steiner’s favourite line.
This probably did make sense to the medieval imagination; but the medieval
imagination, it happens, is a rare beast nowadays. How were we in the Lee Hall, on a
cold night in January 2008, supposed to understand the line? In Steiner’s words: ‘What
reality[ies], psychological, aesthetic, materially inconceivable to Dante, are now present
to us?’ Well, there’s surrealism for a start, and psychoanalysis (or ‘that bullying shadow
of psychoanalysis’, as the speaker put it), and a host of other theoretical frameworks.
But Steiner had something more sinister in mind than psychoanalysis, namely
that anyone who has ever dived or snorkelled has seen the shadow of a water-borne
vessel of some description overhead. The experience is not new, it’s not special, and it’s
definitely not astonishing. Yet shock and awe of the kind Dante’s Neptune experienced
is exactly what we need to appreciate this line fully: we need access to a ‘shockrichness’,
which just isn’t much available these days.
Steiner’s two-part remedy was the key. For us to appreciate this line we need to do
two things. Firstly, try to open our imaginations to that shock that we have now lost
(i.e. pretend we are bottom-of-the-sea gods in the era of the first boat), before coming
back to the details, difficulties and meanings of the text. And secondly, and this was
particularly novel to the ‘save and restore’ generation, memorise the line. Without
memorising there is no love in understanding. Lodged within our memories the text
becomes an organic part of us as we go through life:
‘As you learn something by heart and then repeat it to yourself it grows richer in
you, because the rest of your psychic experience, your growing older, your joys and
disappointments, build around a passage an aura of personal association’
We were always going to get it a bit wrong, always going to be fumbling with that ‘shot
silk’ effect of shifting meanings. And yet, in fact, the shock-richness is actually well
within our grasp. A certain ‘millennial’ thread binds Neptune’s experience onto our
own; for the first sea voyages are now our own space voyages, journeys into the
unknown which are typically viewed with as much astonishment and awe.
To memorise such lines invites a limitless pleasure, and limitless pleasure was
where all readers should begin. We’d been told. There was no longer any excuse not
to memorise our texts.
And so Steiner’s talk came to an end. In the words of one audience member, it was
‘one of the most intellectually devastating performances’ he had witnessed; and having
seen A J P Taylor and A C Grayling in action, he was in a position to know. One really
couldn’t feel too bad, after all, about missing out on the nibbles.
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32

Contemporary Reading Group
Anna Jones, Lee Librarian
The WCRG was convened by Wolfson Fellow Adrian Kent in 2005 to provide an
informal forum in which to discuss published works of contemporary literature. In
theory this might include any form, from poetry to drama to prose; in practice our
selections to date have favoured the latter, with a particular emphasis on fiction, travel
and biographical writing. The popularity of reading groups has risen sharply in the UK
in recent years with miscellaneous groups of friends, strangers, colleagues and even
prison inmates meeting regularly around the country to share responses to a piece of
writing. The nature of the community at Wolfson, the most cosmopolitan college in
Cambridge, means that there is a particularly rich mix of reactions to our chosen texts,
informed by different cultural, geographical and previous reading experiences.
Sometimes a consensus verdict is reached by the end of the evening, seldom without
lively discussion of the characters and imagery along the way, but the variety of initial
responses is always interesting. One of the benefits of the Group sought by most
members, both regular and occasional, is the encouragement to read beyond one’s
habitual comfort zone, and explore works by authors and in genres not previously
encountered.
The Group met four times in 2007–2008, first during the Michaelmas Term to
discuss Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, a work of speculative fiction positing
a future world where progress has been allowed to continue unchecked. Over the
Christmas vacation we each considered and then gathered in January to discuss
W G Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn (translated from German to English by Michael
Hulse). Described by James Wood in The Guardian as ‘a great, strange and moving
work’, Sebald weaves into his account of a walking tour of the county of Suffolk
‘a phantasmagoria of fragments and memories, fraught with dizzying knowledge
and desperation and shadowed by mortality.’ Louise Erdrich’s Last Report on the
Miracles at Little No Horse, the subject of the March meeting, looks back on the life
of a fictional priest on a reservation in North America who contemplates the discovery
of a lifelong secret. Finally, in May, the Group was introduced to Amos Oz’s A Tale
of Love and Darkness by its translator, Nicholas de Lange, Fellow, who brought to life
the background to this semi-autobiographical account of Oz’s upbringing in 1940s
Jerusalem.
The Group looks forward to another varied year in 2008–2009, beginning with a
trip to the Pacific island of Bougainville in the company of Charles Dickens, as we
prepare to read Lloyd Jones’s Mister Pip. We also look forward to welcoming new
members with fresh ideas of examples of contemporary literature for us to explore.
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 111

Music at Wolfson
Ghofur Woodruff, Student and President of Wolfson College Music Society
The activities of the Wolfson College Music Society centre around the Wolfson College
Choir, the Music and Madeira evenings, and the Lunchtime Concerts. In addition to
strengthening the cultural and social ties within Wolfson, the Music Society also
engages the wider Cambridge community.
The choir performed three concerts this year under the baton of Lyn Alcántara,
Director of Music. In ‘Songs from around the World’, we celebrated the cultural
diversity of the College with pieces from Britain, Liberia, the Antipodes, and beyond.
The individual talents of Marta Machala (piano), Ian Cross (guitar), and Natalie Mayer-
Hutchings (Soprano) were also showcased. During the Lent term we hosted the Italian
choir Amici di Musica, with whom we joined forces for a performance of Faure’s
Requiem. The Italians sang with great gusto and it is always exhilarating to perform in
their presence. The soloists were Yuri Takenaka (soprano) and John Bispham (bass),
from Italy and Wolfson, respectively. Wolfson’s hospitality was reciprocated in June as
the College Choir embarked on a five-day tour of Rome, reuniting with Amici in Musica
Fauré’s Requiem, Lent 2008 at St Mark’s, Newnham
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to sing Mozart’s Coronation Mass and Vivaldi’s Gloria. There was ample time between
performances for all of us to enjoy the sites and tastes of Rome. The choir also shared
the spotlight with the University Brass Band at the Wolfson College Garden Party,
which ended the official programme for the academic year. Later that day the worldclass
Klenke quartet made their British debut at the summer concert at Wolfson.
The Music and Madeira evenings combine the tradition of formal hall with firstclass
musical entertainment. We were privileged this year to have the Prime Brass
Quartet, featuring Wolfson’s own Christopher Lawrence, as well as cellist Heather
Moseley and Australian classical guitarist Craig Ogden. The Michaelmas 2008
Music and Madeira will feature the well-known tenor Andrew Kennedy who
appears frequently as soloist at the Royal Opera House and English National Opera.
The Lunchtime Concert series hosts talent from within and outside the College.
In the Michaelmas term virtuoso violinist Charles Siem displayed his prowess on a
three hundred year old violin previously owned by Yehudi Menuhin. The violin alone
drew its share of the audience. Christopher Lawrence deftly handled Bach’s first Cello
Suite on solo tuba, whilst Guy Llewellyn (horn) and Maurice Hodges (piano) teamed
up to perform duets from the Romantic period. To close the series, Wolfson Fellows
Claudia Fritz and Ian Cross played a lively set of dances for flute and guitar – a stylish
performance that attracted a large audience. Other notable performers in the Lunchtime
series included Inga Maria Klaucke and Dan Tidhar (recorder and harpsichord), Daniel
Hill (violin), Francis Knights (harpsichord), and Edmund Hastings (tenor).
The full range of activities of the Music Society are perhaps too numerous to
mention here. We are always keen to attract new members so if you are a performer
looking for an attractive venue and warm audience, please do contact the Wolfson
College Music Society by following the link to our website from the College site. The
Committee would also like to thank Wolfson College for its continued support.
Dr Matthew Woolhouse (left) and Dr Thomas Stainsby (right) sang with the Choir at the Decennial Reunion Dinner on
27 September 2008.
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 113

Performing Arts Society
Claudia Fritz, Fellow and Loreto Valenzuela, Director/ Educator in Performance Practice
as Research
The 2007–2008 academic year was an exciting time
for the Wolfson College Student Association: Wolfson
College saw the revival of dramatic arts. The Drama
Society, which had not been active for a while,
was resumed but slightly transformed into a more
general Performing Arts Society. We started recruiting
members at the beginning of Michaelmas Term and
the enthusiasm of Claudia Fritz (treasurer) and Loreto
Valenzuela (artistic director) engaged an exciting
group of people, who wanted to perform and be
part of a creative collective odyssey.
Wolfson Performing Arts Society’s (WPAS) aim
is to attract all the people who want to explore their
creativity, not only in terms of performance but also in other fields, like movement or
dance, craft, photography, music and writing. It is an experimental art group, and for
us, to be experimental means ‘to be far out and in front’.
Our starting point was to focus on body and its physicality in performance. Most
of our members had some kind of experience in theatre performance, but mainly in an
amateurish manner. Workshops aimed at developing the performer’s physical presence
by extending and increasing their awareness of their body in performance. The typical
questions we tried to address initially were: What do we mean by stage presence? How
shall we position ourselves in space? What are the possible choices on stage? With the
expertise and leadership of Loreto Valenzuela, the workshops began to flourish.
It was proposed to the society to devise a new version of AflordePiel, a live
performance previously presented at the Festival of Emergent Arts, held at the Central
School of Speech and Drama, London in September 2007. AflordePiel explores the image
of the Latina woman artist with a focus on the relationship between testimonies and
public representations of womanhood. Although it was organised by the Society inside
Wolfson, collaboration with other artists was encouraged. Two Hispanic musicians,
Margarita Carter and Elena Vasques, took part in the project and one of the previous
performers of NeoM Experimental Art Company, Helena Suarez, was invited to join.
The work presented some exciting challenges to the members of the society, and it
was fascinating to see how the members pooled ideas to artistically and technically
solve them together. We would like to thank Mick Radford for his precious help with the
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lighting and his technical support. As challenging as it was, the society accomplished
the work successfully and presented it to the Wolfson community in an event held in
the Lee Hall on 27 November 2008. The audience was quite large and enjoyed the way
we transformed the space of the Lee Hall and created an inspiring performance.
Here are some comments from the audience:
“I’m very impressed, a great piece of work, well done to the whole team, great
imagination and very creative”
“Very creative, minimal stage prop, very convincing and expressive! Keep it up.
Would love to see more performances from you guys”
“ Very pleasant and makes one think!”
“Very well choreographed and I loved the music”
The year continued with a busy schedule for WPAS. We started off working in the
traditional way: exercises and games using images and/or language. The theme for
Lent Term was encounters between people and worlds. We were interested in exploring
what happens when the audience is asked to respond to a presentation of a certain
world by the performers: how does the audience interpret and modify this world,
and how does it interact with the performers?
Being the director, I observed the members and recorded their improvisations, in
order to derive suggestions for new themes and directions. I was particular interested in
a performance that seeks a means to understand one’s own problems and to try to find
one’s own solutions rather than investigating only a character in a particular play or text.
Workshops were organised to explore different types of interactions such as body and
object, body and voice, body and space, body and text and self and others. For the latter
we used similar techniques to those used for contact improvisation. It was delightful to
see how members of the Society responded to this work despite the physical challenges
of the movements; the imaginative and creative processes were astonishing.
In Easter Term, we started devising our second performance by adding and
recycling most of the material and exercises recorded during the previous workshops.
The second performance was mainly meant to explore the interaction between
audience and spectators. The idea would be to invite some members of the audience
to participate. We created several short performances during the workshops in order
to explore these interactions in different ways. Moreover, devising all these short
performances involved the exploration of the participants’ own ideas and creativity;
this is why the work was centred on improvisations rather than on an existing play.
These improvisation workshops led us to the idea of a ‘happening’ type of
performance. InvisibleNeighbours would be an outdoor performance, seeking to
explore the paradoxical relationship that exists between different spaces: inner,
physical, spiritual, public, or social spaces. Some questions we wanted to address were:
Is it possible to reinvent our spaces? Which spaces are we talking about? How can we
achieve that? Is it possible to interpret these spaces?
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The date was set as Thursday 26 June, and Parker’s Piece was chosen as the venue to
maximize the interaction with the audience as many people were expected to traverse
the green on a warm and sunny evening. Unfortunately, we chose a very rainy day but
despite the weather, the members of the society decided that the ‘show must go on’. We
had planned this performance to be interactive and although it was rehearsed and had
a fixed structure, certain elements were left open to what would happen on that day. It
was very impressive to see how we managed to engage the few members of the public
even if it was really wet! The performers as well as the audience enjoyed this happening,
even if, of course, it was sad not to have a larger audience. Surprisingly, Parker’s Piece is
really empty on a wet evening! At least, we showed that the invisible neighbours were
there, creating a different picture of the space.
From the beginning, the idea of this happening on Parker’s Piece sounded rather
extravagant, but the challenge it presented to us was really motivating. The interaction
between space and people, audience and performers, was an interesting experience for
our members. We discovered that the search for concrete solutions to our problem is
not necessarily linear, and some alternatives needed to be found. There are moments in
which imagination and creativity can be interesting antagonist and protagonist and
both are constantly changing. In other words we should not be afraid of becoming
simultaneously subject and object of the space. After all, “all the world is a stage”.
For the next academic year, we plan to continue our creative process and maybe
adapt a novel, although it is too early to decide. We also hope to encourage more
members to join our group.
WPAS will again be directed by me, but we
are sorry to lose our treasurer, Claudia Fritz.
We wish her a successful time in her new
position in Paris and are looking for somebody
to replace her. I would like to finish with some
acknowledgements. We would like to thank
Ekaterina Averina for dealing very kindly with
all our requests for room bookings and WCSA
for its great financial support, without which
nothing would have happened.
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Art Exhibition
Helen Cavill, Student and Art Society President
The annual Wolfson College Art Exhibition has been growing each year, with more
artists and greater variety every time. It makes for a wonderful spectacle, but I must
confess there was a last-minute panic as to whether everything would fit into the
room this year! After some reorganising manoeuvres as complex as one of Rubik’s
cubes, everything eventually fit in time for opening night back in June.
This year there was the greatest diversity yet – oil paints, acrylics, watercolour,
pastels, printmaking, photography and sculpture all featured. The exhibition proved
very popular, with dozens of people attending the official opening night and a steady
stream of visitors throughout the week. Thank you to everyone who came along and
more importantly to all those who exhibited! Hopefully next year’s exhibition will be
just as successful.
The Art Society is also responsible for a semi-permanent exhibition in the Sir
David Williams Room of the Lee Library. Each term there will be a different selection
of artwork on display, supplied by one or two Wolfson artists. The aim is to make
the environment more inspiring for studying in, whilst showcasing the talent within
Wolfson. Details on each term’s artist will be included in the Lee Library’s web pages.
Art exhibition contributors 2008: Tom Alexander, Jonathan Ashley-Smith, Kristi
Bledsoe, Daniel Bryan, Helen Cavill, Ann Copestake, Tom Davies, Claudia Fritz, Anina
Furness, Olga Goulko, Maggie Guite, Anthony Hopkinson, Sylvia Hopkinson, Seyi
Latunde-Dada, Ingrid Lucas, Rebecca Merry, Larry Pulley, Henri Schmitt, Janet Smith,
Casey Synge, Rashmi Tripathi and Elzbieta Urbaniak.
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June Event: Viva Las Vegas!
Helen Cavill, June Event President 2009
“Bright light city gonna set my soul, gonna set my soul on fire!”
On Friday 20 June, Wolfson College
was transformed into a dazzling vision
of Las Vegas for the 2008 June Event.
The quality of decorations was
astonishing this year due to the sculptural
talents of Janet Smith (enthusiastically
helped by the rest of the girls from the
Tutorial Office). Janet custom-made
polystyrene sculptures akin to the statues
in Las Vegas’s most exuberant casinos.
We had Roman busts for Caesars’ Palace,
The casino in full flow
Egyptian mummies guiding the way to
Luxor, a larger than life wedding cake in
the Little White Wedding Chapel and, most impressive of all, two golden winged horses
rising from the ground at the entrance to the event. The atmosphere was enhanced by
the top quality entertainments on offer – from the bustling casino to the fairground rides,
with many different styles of live music performers and dancing throughout the night.
The headline act was ‘Johnny Flynn and the Sussex Wit’, a critically acclaimed folk and
bluegrass band featuring Wolfson alumnus Matt Edmonds on the drums. Of course, it
would not be Las Vegas unless Elvis himself made an appearance too and he duly obliged.
The party continued until dawn, food and drink never stopped flowing and the rain
stayed away – all helping to produce one of the most populous survivors’ photos for
many years. We may have been conjuring up Las Vegas but a ticket for the Wolfson June
Event is far from a gamble. This year’s success helped cement our position as one of the
best value May Week events for graduates and mature students across the University.
What will the theme be for 2009? That
is a closely guarded secret until the launch
in Lent term, but it will not disappoint!
Wolfson June Event Committee
2008: Richard Brown (President),
Alois Maderspacher (Vice President),
Nathan Thomas, Kat Millen, Helen
Cavill, Heather Goodwin, Karan Gokani,
Shanna Isaacson, Fraser Mashiter, Emma
Wiggins, Rob Williams, Eric Rees and
Henrik Schoenefeldt.
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Headline band ‘Johnny Flynn and the Sussex Wit’

Wolfson Sport

Blues and other Outstanding Achievements
Christoph Himmel, Student and WCSA Sports Officer
Individual Achievements
Daniel Pennington was a member of the University Men’s Lacrosse Club and was in
the starting line-up for all but two games over the course of the season. He played both
defender and defensive midfield bringing more flexibility into the team. As a starter in
the Varsity match against Oxford, he was awarded a Half Blue for the season.
Paul Miller was President of the Cambridge University Amateur Boxing Club (CUABC).
He played a major role in promoting CUABC within the University and other local clubs
and also competed successfully in Light-Heavyweight and Middleweight bouts.
Lisa Grimes played in the University Women’s Association Football Team for the
past three years and obtained three Full Blues in the three Varsity matches she played
in. In the 2007–2008 season, she was captain of the University Blues team and led the
team to a Varsity victory in Oxford.
Seyi Latunde-Dada was the outstanding goal scorer of the Wolfson College Football
Club. He scored 13 goals in 9 matches and significantly contributed to the success of
the Wolfson football team (Vice-Champion) in the 1st MCR division.
Clare Watkinson was awarded a Half Blue for being in the starting line-up of the
Cambridge University Women’s Ice Hockey Club for the annual Varsity match. She
played a key role in a historical 8–3 win against Oxford University, the first time that
Cambridge women have won in twelve unbroken years, and only the second time that
they have won in the history of the women’s Varsity match. She was awarded the ‘Spirit
of the Match’ trophy at the end of the game.
Team Achievements
The 2007–2008 season was a successful one for the Wolfson College Basketball Team.
The team around captain Florian Karreth finished third in Division One. The team
further advanced to the quarterfinals in the cuppers.
During the 2007–2008 campaign, Wolfson College Football Club showed a
performance not to be matched in the last ten years. Only promoted into the
First MCR Division, the team around captain Christian Fink secured the Vice-
Championship in an impressive manner. The team did not lose any game throughout
the season, winning all but two of the matches and conceding the lowest number
of goals in the MCR Division’s history. The Wolfson FC further advanced into the
semi-final of the MCR Champions Cup.
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Wolfson Football Club vs. Cambridge University Women’s Blues Team
The Wolfson Women’s Badminton Team had a successful year in advancing to the
second division of the Intra-University Ladies’ Badminton League. The team around
captain Ana-Maria Blanaru were the champions in the fourth division during the
Michaelmas Term and were runners-up in the third division during Lent Term. As a
result of these strong performances, the team advanced to the second division of the
ladies’ league and will be commencing the 2008–2009 competitive season within this
division.
Wolfson Women’s Badminton Team
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 121

Wolfson College Boat Club
Men’s Rowing in Michaelmas and Lent Terms
Kenny Stoltz, Student
Going in to the new academic year we were desperately short of men: only three senior
rowers remained from last year despite having two crews competing in the prior May
Bumps. Fortunately a few seasoned rowers showed up on our doorstep, along with a
number of keen novices. We were able to field a senior IV in the big race of the term,
the Fairbairn Cup, but the entire club was focussed on training up the bevy of novices
that had joined the club to learn to row. Starting from a field of over 45 interested
Wolfsonians, we trained 32 men across four novice boats. Notably our First Novice
Men came in a respectable 4th overall in the first competition of the season, the
Queens’ Novice Ergs.
During the notorious early mornings the weather oscillated between permissive
and freezing and windy, but our crews persevered in their training. The poor weather
resulted in the cancellation of the first novice race of the year, Emma Sprints. The
second race of the term, Clare Novice Regatta gave the novice M1 and M3 some side-byside
racing experience. The pinnacle of the term was the Fairbairn Cup in which our M1
came in at 15th, M2 at 64th, M3 at 59th, and M4 at 68th. A set of record-breakingly long
speeches by the Novice M1 crew at the Boat Club dinner wound down the term and
resulted in awes (and sighs) from the crowd, a fitting initiation to rowing life at Wolfson.
The Michaelmas 1st Novice Men dress for success in the campy, cancelled Emma Sprints Regatta
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Lent term rolled straight in to heavy training
with our newly senior members filling out an M1,
M2, and M3, replenishing the ranks to fuller than
last year. We were also blessed with reasonable
weather most days although biting cold and fog
have made some outings more difficult. The M1
crew, captained by Luke Knowles and coached by
Tom Davies, pushed in to serious training given
the very short term before Lent Bumps and went
off-Cam to race at Head of the Nene, a 5,000m
head race in nearby Peterborough, coming in
mid-pack at 8 out of 16 in their division. Early
training forged a strong crew spirit, however,
that lofty idea of effortless speed was elusive;
M1 preferred the pain-and-gain approach. So
Dr Tom Davies
numerous painful outings later, gains were made
and the crew began to move well. At Pembroke Regatta we drew a crew we knew to
be faster than us from our race at Peterborough, King’s, and the race proved that
there were still gains to be made as we lost by a length. However, given that our crew
comprised of five members who had just noviced and three who had past senior
experience, we needed – and used – every outing to get to ideal racing standard.
The M2 crew, captained by Romijn Basters and coached by Abhi Veerakumarasivam,
fielded a crew that consisted 100% of prior novices. The lack of experience inside the
boat was balanced by coach Abhi’s two years of past experience. The crew bonded
quickly and progressed well from its humble beginnings. Their first race was the
Newnham Short Course where they finished 13th out of 18 boats, but ahead of their
4th division rivals. During Pembroke Regatta in their first race, they were ahead but
lost by disqualification only a few strokes from the finish line when the two boats
overlapped oars. According to those on the bank, it was difficult to determine exactly
whose fault the blade collision was. Given the size and strength of the crew compared
to its surrounding crews, M2 looks to do fairly well in this year’s bumps solidifying its
position in the 4th division.
The M3 crew, captained by Nicholas Paul, technically consisted of 12 members,
but was stymied early on by bad weather and forgetful crew members that resulted in
some cancelled outings, putting them below the minimum number of outings required
to compete in bumps. The lack of senior-level crew to coach them meant that their
outings had to be scheduled around those of the first boat, making it that much more
difficult to get out. The most keen of the crew have now formed a IV for training and
racing after the bumps.
In the space of four months the men’s crews have gone from 4 to 28, a fantastic
start to the year, and the hard work that has been put in by every crew member has
rapidly brought everyone up to a high standard.
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 123

1st Men, Lent Bumps 2008
2nd Men, Lent Bumps 2008
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Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32

From left to right: Kat Millen, Jane Batchelor, Heide Holi, William Liechty, Renata Lemos, Patrick Vogl, James Dodds,
Daniel Murrell. In the front: Pranav Chopra (cox)
The Cardinals Team finished
second after six head-to-head races.
With palms and holiday outfits the
team kept warm on a cold and rainy
day. Pirate-themed cakes formed
an essential part of the Cardinals
Regatta to bribe the marshals for
a better starting position. The
mixed VIII was coached by Abhi
Veerakumarasivam
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 125

Crew lists
Lent M1:
Bow: David Chen
2: Kenny Stoltz
3: Daniel Murrell
4: Fraser Mashiter
5: Olivier Faivre
6: James Dodds
7: Luke Knowles
Stroke: Quinton Goddard
Men’s Rowing in Easter Term
Quinton Goddard, Student
After some disappointment in Lent Bumps the men’s 1st boat were a little deflated,
some of those who had rowed in the M1 boat in Lent Bumps had decided it was time
to focus on their exams and so a reshuffle was in order. Romijn Basters was brought up
from the 2nd boat whilst Nick Laugier made a welcome return to Wolfson rowing. Our
search for a permanent cox was proving difficult but our captain Kenny Stoltz agreed to
step up and sit down in the coxes seat. This term Wolfson had one surprise up its sleeve
and we had the good fortune to have Bartosz Szczyrba jump into the boat having just
rowed against Oxford in the Goldie boat. With the new look crew all set we began to train
in the long summer evenings and for many weeks improvement was slow and for a time
we wondered if we would be ready for bumps. As the evenings grew longer and our lycra
tan marks began to show the crew began to pull together and the team spirit got stronger.
The M1 crew made their way to Peterborough Regatta in early June for the chance
to compete on an artificial rowing lake in a multi-lane regatta. The crew decided to man
up and enter both the Novice and Senior 4 categories. In the Novice event M1 made it
through the first round with ease but found the going tougher in the semi-final, eventually
finishing 3rd. The Senior 4 competition proved to be full of strong crews from several top
rowing universities and the crew were forced to settle for their success in the novice event.
In the last few weeks before bumps one of our crew members informed us he was
unable to make the first day of bumps much to the crews disappointment and we were
forced to find a sub for the first day. Unfortunately the result was bad and a very strong
LMBC II crew bumped us on day one on their way to blades. After such a swift battle
on day one the crew found its self somewhat at sea and two more days resulted in the
crew slipping down further in the bumps chart. The last day called for a heroic effort to
resurrect our term of rowing, despite the best row of the bumps campaign a big and ugly
CCAT crew muscled their way close to the M1 crew around grassy corner, the cox steered
a great line to avoid the bump and Girton rapidly closed in on CCAT I, in the end however
M1 fell to CCAT, a sad result which denied Girton I the chance of blades. Although the
result of May bumps was disappointing the crew took a lot from the term and will be
back stronger and fitter in an effort to push themselves back closer to the 1st division.
The men’s 2nd boat hit the term hard on the back of their success in Lent bumps with
a high number of outings and ergo sessions, almost putting the 1st boat to shame. With a
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Lent M2:
Bow: Kunal Vyas
2: Patrick Vogl
3: Jurgen VanGael
4: Romijn Basters
5: William Liechty
6: Ivailo Zhekov
7: Richard Bourgon
Stroke: Juanma Vaquerizas

great crew spirit and some expert coaching from Jason Brown and Michael Gardner the
crew quickly progressed. The crew decided to enter the Head of the Cam in May and
finished a creditable 42 over all out of 129 crews in a time of 10 minutes and 37 seconds.
This set them up for another exciting set of bumps. On day one and with Corpus Christi II
ahead of them we all thought a long battle might ensue but having crashed into first post
corner in Lent bumps the M2 crew decided the cornering was not their strong suit and
bumped Corpus Christi II well before first post corner. With such an emphatic bump
under their belts the crew decided that their plan from day one was the way forward and
on the following days bumped Caius III, Trinity Hall III and Clare III in some style with
all bumps occurring before first post corner. After such an amazing run on both sets
of bumps the May bumps crew was awarded Blades, a much deserved reward for an
excellent year of rowing from a group of individuals most of whom had only started
rowing in Michaelmas term.
Crew Lists
M1
Bow: Nick Laugier
2: Fraser Mashiter
3: Romijn Basters
4: Quinton Goddard
5: Olivier Faivre
6: Bartosz Szczyrba
7: James Dodds
Stroke: Luke Knowles
Cox: Kenny Stoltz
Coach: Tom Davies
Mays M2
Bow: Kunal Vyas
2: Patrick Vogl
3: Ivailo Zhekov
4: Jurgen Van Geal
5: Daniel Murrel
6: Richard Bourgnon
7: Christian Popp
Stroke: Juanma Vaquerizas
Cox: Eric Chiang
Coaches: Jason Brown & Michael Gardner
Women’s Rowing in 2007–2008
Heide Holi, Student
The novice term was a great experience and fun for all, and it was amazing at how
much things came together in such a short time. The Queens Ergo Competition was
an impressive, loud and fun event to kick start the rowing term. Clare Regatta gave the
novices their first taste of racing head-to-head, and to an acquaintance with nasty
underwater creatures.
In The Fairbairn’s Cup the Novice women’s VIII finished very respectively within the top
third of boats. Thanks to the fantastic stirring encouragement of our cox, and some gutsy
rowing, we had overtookaken both Jesus and Queens. By the Chesterton footbridge mark
everyone was exhausted but happy, with spirits cheered by the beautiful play of autumn
light out on the water. The Senior Women’s IV trained hard throughout the term and had
a great race – coming in fourth overall. These successes culminated in very enjoyable
celebrations at the Boat Club Dinner, a glamorous affair swapping boatie lycra for ball
gowns and black tie.
Although winter rowing was expected to be chilly and somehow unpleasant, it turned
out to be quite the opposite. The women’s crew substantially improved their health and
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 127

WI Crew Fairbairn’s 2008
The May Bumps crew waiting for the race
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Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32

The Mays Dinner
fitness levels. Due to changes within the crew it wasn’t possible to fully build upon our
earlier success and vigour, but we were able to enter a women’s boat in Lent Bumps as
well as in Mays. Both events were a testimony to all our hard work: recruiting new rowers,
training and team building. More than twenty women have learnt rowing within the
last year and represented Wolfson College in river races. For all, Bumps will remain
an unforgettable experience: rowing down the river to the starting position with great
tension, the silence whilst waiting for the canon to be fired, and finally rowing for all
one’s worth. Four days of thrill and expectation resulted both terms in moving four places
down and spoons. Though the team anticipated a higher outcome our overall aim was
achieved: the women entered Bumps and saved our following crews from having to start
from the bottom of the last division. All efforts were finally rewarded with a great team
spirit, improved physical strength, and the ever-festive boat club dinner.
The next generation of Wolfson Rowing
Nick Clemons, Senior Member and former Research Fellow
We celebrated Isabella’s first birthday a couple of weeks ago: it is
amazing how quickly that first year has gone. However, it did remind
me of a photo we took a couple of months ago of Isabella modelling
one of her Wolfson ‘rowing’ tops presented to her by John and Jo a
few days before we left the UK. Isabella is doing well, walking on her
own, starting to say a few words and getting up to mischief as soon
as our attention is elsewhere. She’s a happy little girl, which makes
us happy parents.
I’ve not actually done any more rowing since we’ve been back but hoping to team
up with Paul Hayes (former Visiting Fellow and current Student) in the spring to do
some sculling.
Don’t forget to get in touch if you are ever in Melbourne as we would love to see
our friends from College.
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 129

Football
Christian Fink, Student and Captain
15–0! That was the scoreline as newly promoted Wolfson FC welcomed in the new
MCR 1st division league season with a resounding victory over Robinson/Selwyn FC.
This was the highest ever goal margin in the MCR 1st division since 2004 and boded
well for the rest of the season.
More victories were recorded in the following weeks most notable of which was
a battling win over the formidable Queens’ FC. With the scores tied at 2–2 after
WFC had been pegged back twice, Queens’ looked the most likely winners. But with
excellent saves from goalkeeper Gomez, coupled with the counterattacks launched
by the team as a whole, Wolfson FC scored 2 quick-fire goals to record a 4–2 victory!
The unbeaten run continued throughout the season including a deserved 1–1 draw
with Jesus FC to whom Wolfson FC ended up as runners-up. A total of 42 goals, seven
wins, two draws and no losses: an excellent league season had come to an end.
At the turn of the year, the next hurdle posed was the MCR cup. The unbeaten
run continued in the group stages with 3 wins and 1 draw to finish as group winners.
The quarterfinal was a nervy affair against Clare/Fitzwilliam and after 120 minutes of
football the match remained scoreless and the dreaded penalties were called upon.
But never fear, fine saves from keeper Gomez and coolness from our penalty takers
saw WFC win through 3–1. Alas, the semi-final against Queens’ FC proved a game too
far for the boys as they succumbed to their first and only defeat of the season in a
tough game which ended 4–0.
Another season had come to a
close and all things considered,
it was a fine one indeed.
Most of it was down to the
strength, efforts and character of
the team as a whole and excellent
leadership. A solid base has now
been laid for the future and the
new captain, Christoph Himmel,
is eager to continue this success
story. So Wolfson FC is both a
competitive football team and
a fun community to be part of!
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Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32
Robert Cashmore ‘Rookie of the Season’ (left) and Seyi Latunde-Dada
‘Top Scorer’ (right)

Men’s Cricket
Luke Barnes, Student and Captain
Back row (left to right): P K Hemraj, J Hall, S D Hunter-Jones, S J Mann,
C A Petrie, D O Dawson; front row (left to right): T M Barrow, M I Aslam,
L A Barnes (captain), D S D Gunn (secretary), D M Summers
Wolfson Men’s cricket
team enjoyed another
very successful year. As
last year’s finalists in both
the undergraduate (JCR)
and graduate (MCR)
leagues, we were keen to
go one better this year.
Our JCR campaign
began with a chance
to revenge last’s year’s
final against Trinity. A
combination of late order
hitting, safe catching and
four wickets from Karan
Gokani handed us a 14
run win. We next posted
152 off our 20 overs against Christ’s. Tight bowling from Praveen Kumar and wickets
from Reshad Imam restricted Christ’s to 139, handing us a 13 run win.
Against St Catherine’s in the knockout stage, we posted a strong total of 149 thanks to
fast top order runs and big hitting at the end. Wickets were shared around (with Imran
Aslam capitalising on a rare opportunity to bowl) as we won by 41 runs. Fitzwilliam
were our opponents in the semi-final, and they proved our undoing. Our total of 105
was admirably defended, with late wickets giving us a fighting chance, but it proved
not to be enough. To the MCR!
Our MCR campaign started with a 10-run win over Trinity. The highlights included
a traffic-endangering six from Sam Hunter-Jones on his way to 39 n.o., and tight spells
from Najeeb Huda and Neil Jordon, who turned the tide in a tense last few overs.
Cameron Petrie starred in our next win as his 50 retired, combined with hitting from
Reshad and Imran, propelled us to a Wolfson record of 193 for 5 of 20 overs. In response,
Praveen’s 4 wickets for 7 runs in 4 overs put the game beyond doubt, and we won by
105 runs.
More record breaking followed against Selwyn. Retired half centuries from Barnes,
Simon Husson and Joe Hall and big hitting from Praveen and Luke Knowles set up a
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 131

total of 216 for no wickets of 20 overs. A Wolfson-career-best of 3 wickets from our
regular wicketkeeper Husson handed us a 122-run victory.
A tougher test came from Hughes. A rapid opening spell from their opening bowlers
was rapidly dispatched by our top order, and once again our lower order boosted our
total to 150. Three wickets in a Dawson over halted their early momentum. Praveen
took crucial wickets to destroy the middle order (he finished with 5) and we won by
59 runs, sending us through to the semi finals.
The semi final was against Magdalene. On a difficult pitch, we posted 114, thanks
to Joe, Praveen and Cameron. Barnes took early wickets, Steve Mann and Danny took
apart the middle order and, reliable as clockwork, Praveen removed the danger man.
We had a fighting 23-run win and a ticket to the final.
The MCR final was against Churchill. A tidy opening from Steve set the tone as
we restricted the runs, took our chances and removed batsmen regularly. Sam and
Dom Sommers affected runouts, and Joe took two wickets to restrict them to just 79.
Our reply started with a few smashed fours, but was temporarily derailed by wickets.
Praveen and Cameron got us within striking distance before Theo Hunter-Jones
brought up the win with a four smashed over mid on. MCR champions!
All in all, it was another great season. There were some fantastic individual
performances, with special mention going to Praveen’s uncanny ability to produce
a wicket exactly when we needed it, and also David Gunn’s inspirational recovery
(sans appendix) to take his place in the side.
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Other Sport Reports
Tennis
Guy Negretti, Student
Last season was a successful one for the Wolfson College Tennis Club. The tennis
court was resurfaced producing a top class court. There were a large number of keen
players in Wolfson who regularly used the new court. The Men’s team entered the
inter-collegiate Cuppers competition this year and we progressed to the semi-finals
beating Trinity, King’s and Magdalene. Unfortunately we were then narrowly beaten
in the semi-finals by Christ’s College.
The Wolfson Tennis Club provides good quality racquets and sometimes balls to
those in the College who want to play.
Squash
Oliver Jardine, Alumnus
This was only the second year since the revival of the Wolfson College Squash
Team. Photographs in the Club Room testify to its existence in earlier years (1975–1976,
1980–1981, 1982–1983), but at the beginning of 2006–2007 we were unrepresented in the
intercollegiate league.
We began the 2007–2008 season with optimism having won promotion to division
V of the men’s league with relative ease the previous year. However, our confidence
was dented early on by a visit to Trinity Hall’s sumptuous courts at their Wychfield site.
These are by far the best courts in Cambridge and are used by the University team for
training. As a ‘quid pro quo’ the visiting university players coach the College team, a
fact which rapidly became clear! After five tough matches Wolfson managed only one
win, a particularly well fought contest by Rick Mukherjee.
Our remaining matches were somewhat less daunting and we managed to finish
the league with wins against Selwyn, Clare and Downing II. With Lent term came the
Cupper’s competition, where we progressed to the second round before losing to
Trinity I.
Wolfson students continue to have free access to Churchill’s squash courts. This
year, we have also added four squash rackets to the WCSA cupboard for all College
members to use. I would encourage anybody who is keen to play more squash to get
involved in the team and to take advantage of the facilities on offer.
Finally, I would like to thank Rick Mukherjee, Jan van-Dieck, Miguel Abellan, Sam
Hunter-Jones and Dan Edmonds for their efforts this season and I wish Jan all the best
with the captaincy next year.
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 133

Ki Aikido
Eleftherios Garyfallidis, Student and Captain
Back row: Jonathan Mair (Research Fellow of St
John’s College), Eleftherios Garryfallidis (Captain),
Sayan Ulturgashev (Instructor), Vincent Bourret
Front row: Olga Ulturgasheva (Research Fellow
of Clare Hall and Senior Member of Wolfson)
and Baozhen Mair
Aikido, translated as ‘the way of unifying with
the life force’, is a Japanese martial art which was
developed by Morihei Ueshiba during the 2nd
World War and was inspired by other martial
arts like jujutsu, judo and kenjutsu. Aikido’s very
characteristic lies in its emphasis on ‘sphericity’
of the applied techniques used for one’s defence.
These circular movements often seem to
resemble tango movements for novices, however,
the movements used in aikido are extremely
powerful. It is common for an aikido specialist
to be able to defend himself against a knife
or sword attack and avert an attack even of
a group of people. It is also common to see a
small aikidoka girl putting down a tall and strong
man. This is possible because aikido is performed
in a manner that allows one to blend one’s own
movements with the motion of the attacker in
order to redirect the force of the attack rather
than oppose it. This requires very little physical
energy as the aikidoka (aikido practitioner) deflects the attack and its momentum by
directing it against the attacker.
One of the four students of Ueshiba holding the highest rank in Aikido (10th dan),
Koichi Tohei, is known for being his successor and the main promoter of the style of
aikido called Shin Shin Toitsu Aikido, meaning aikido with unified mind and body, also
known as Ki Aikido. Ki Aikido was founded by Koichi Tohei in 1971 and it now has more
than 100,000 practitioners around the world. At the Ki Society, Tohei envisioned a place
where Ki (the life force) could be taught to students of all ages, including the disabled
and frail, and also to those incapable of doing other physically demanding martial
arts. Aikido becomes just one of five disciplines learned by students at the Ki Society
where the other disciplines are ki breathing, ki meditation, kiatsu (personal health
and healing) and Sokushin no Gyo (bell meditation). Much of this teaching is based
on the four basic principles to unify mind and body which are (a) keep one-point
(concentration), (b) relax completely (relaxation), (c) keep weight underside (balance)
and (d) extend Ki (unification). Ki Aikido training emphasises the importance of the
ability to relax the mind and body under everyday stress and also under strain in
dangerous situations. As a martial art it hones one’s defensive skills and enhances
one’s well-being due to its mental aspect which is of key importance for the ki aikido
practitioners.
In the Wolfson Ki Aikido Society I have found a relaxed and friendly atmosphere
where I can develop my coordination, reflexes, defence, respiration, circulation and
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general fitness. Moreover, this approach allows me to practise defence techniques
without fear of hurting myself or my aikido partner. We are lucky to benefit from
the patience and friendliness of our instructor Sayan, who is always ready to help
one in practising every single technique of this amazing art of peace.
The society has been organised by Dr Olga Ulturgasheva, a Senior Member of
Wolfson College, and classes are taught by Sayan Ulturgashev, a member of the UK
Ki Federation and the Brighton Ki Society.
Wudang Tai Chi Chuan
Ismael Al-Amoudi, Senior Member and Alumnus
Wudang tai chi chuan is a recent addition to the Wolfson College sports societies,
training once a week at Wolfson during term in conjunction with the University
society, which has a further two weekly sessions at other venues. While some of
the members of the Wolfson Wudang Tai Chi Society train solely to maintain sound
health and a clear mind, others choose to test their martial skills in martial arts
competitions.
These events usually include grappling competitions (pushing hands) and
demonstrations of graceful series of movements (forms) either empty-handed or
with a traditional weapon: spear, sabre or sword. Last year, the Cambridge University
Tai Chi Chuan Society entered participants, including one member of Wolfson, in the
first inter-university competition in Manchester where they met dedicated martial
artists from a range of universities including Bath, Imperial College, and Manchester.
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 135

Thanks to the training of our two certified instructors and regular guest instructors,
our team did very well. We collected a total of four gold, one silver and three bronze
medals in a wide range of events, from weapons form demonstration to moving step
pushing hands. More importantly, we improved our tai chi, met interesting people and
had good fun in the lively city of Manchester.
We hope to build on this success as the society becomes part of the Wolfson
community with the free classes attracting many to try the art. In the forthcoming year,
we look forward to continuing training in all aspects of the art in and around Wolfson
College. We also hope to welcome many beginners to our classes in order to share our
enthusiasm and success with them.
Rueda Society
Spyros Armosti, Student and President
The Rueda Society has been active for the second year now in the College with many
enthusiastic members.
Rueda is a particular type of
round dancing of Salsa; pairs of
dancers form a circle, with dance
moves called out by one person, a
caller. In many countries Rueda is
considered to be an essential part
of a Salsa party, and so it should
be at Wolfson too!
Rueda looks spectacular from
the outside, but is actually very
easy to learn. Many people have
improved their dancing skills by
attending the lessons. The society
performs regularly at Wolfson
Salsa nights on Wednesdays.
Aerobics Society
Kat Millen, Student and WCSA Ents Officer
The Wolfson Aerobics Society holds weekly aerobics and pilates classes open to
students and staff alike. This year the class sizes have dramatically increased thanks
to the reputation of our instructor George Teoh who manages to make fitness fun!
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News

Members’ News
The Editor has received news of members of the College as follows:
1966
Professor William Block, Emeritus Fellow of the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge,
was elected as a Distinguished Fellow, St Cuthbert’s Society, University of Durham, in
December 2007.
1968
Professor John Bursnall, Professor Emeritus in Geology at St Lawrence University,
retired at the end of 2006 after teaching for 16 years at St Lawrence, and from a nineyear
period as Chair of the Department. However, he is still teaching and helps coach
women’s and men’s rugby and squash teams.
Mr William Kirkman MBE, Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College, contributed to
Reflections of Change 1967–2007, the history of the Association of Graduate Careers
Advisory Services and its predecessor, the Standing Conference of University
Appointments Services.
Baron Professor Dr Raoul van Caenegem, Emeritus Professor at the University of
Ghent, gave a lecture at an International Law Conference in Lisbon, in November
2007 on the ‘Historical Considerations on the Role of Judges’.
1969
Ambassador Mignonette Durrant OJ retired from the United Nations, where she served
as the first United Nations Ombudsman/Assistant Secretary General from July 2002 to
July 2007. A career diplomat, her last position in the Jamaican Foreign Service was that
of Ambassador/Permanent Representative of Jamaica to the United Nations from 1995
to 2002.
Dr Gerald Kendall has retired from the Radiation Protection Division of the Health
Protection Agency. He is now an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Childhood
Cancer Research Group, University of Oxford. He is married with two daughters and
lives in Oxford.
1970
Professor Malcolm Hall retired in 2007 after 43 years as Professor of Ophthalmology at
the UCLA Medical School. He is now an Emeritus Professor but continues teaching
and serving on various committees of the University.
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Professor Martha Harrell founded the Institute of Mathematical Physics, Virginia, in 2006.
Mr John Leonard CBE is now retired and helping to run Kings Worthy Samaritans, RGS
and University of The Third Age.
1972
Dr Anthony Carroll has retired from Glaxo. He and Susan are now living in Jerez,
Andalucia, Spain.
1974
Dr Lee Seng Tee received an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Washington
University, St Louis in recognition of his generous support through the Lee Foundation
of higher education worldwide and of the University’s McDonnell International
Scholars Academy.
1975
Professor Dr Dr hc Rüdiger Ahrens taught as a visiting professor at the State University
of Rajasthan in Jaipur, India during November and December 2007 and attended an
International Conference on Post-Colonial Literatures in Goa. He also gave papers at
universities in New Delhi and Mumbai.
1976
Dr Jette Ashlee, lecturer in anthropology, was one of the recipients of the Thompson
Rivers University Distinguished Alumni Awards in October 2007.
Professor John William Slessor Brown was appointed, in October 2007, to a personal
Chair and the Headship of the newly formed Division of Plant Sciences in the College
of Life Sciences, University of Dundee. Research areas are in RNA biology of plants
and, in particular, alternative splicing and small RNA functions.
Dr Alison Lennox (née Stephens) married Malcolm Lennox on 29 December 2007
(alumnus of Emmanuel College).
1977
Dr Cicely Howell is now retired. He has embarked on a post-retirement career, developing
his interests in Conservation of biodiversity in the South West of Australia. He has found
that the study of Medieval English history has proved to be an excellent training for the
study of biodiversity in an area where so much is still unknown to science.
Professor Frederick Schauer is on leave from Harvard University (where he is Frank
Stanton Professor of the First Amendment) as George Eastman Visiting Professor at
Oxford University and Fellow of Balliol College.
1978
Professor Brian Derby was awarded the Edward de Bono Medal for Thinking for his
radical Printing Skin and Bones concept, at the Saatchi and Saatchi Awards for World
Changing Ideas in New York in January 2008.
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 139

Mr Pakorn Priyakorn was appointed as Professor and Dean at Graduate School of
Public Administration (GSPA), National Institute of Development Administration,
Bangkok in April 2007. He will be in this position for three years.
1979
Mr Stephen Baines continues lecturing, now as Associate Lecturer at the Department
of Anthropology, University of Brasilia. Currently he is undertaking a survey on the
situations of indigenous peoples in the prison systems in Roraima state, Brazil, in
collaboration with a project of the Brazilian Anthropological Association and the
General Attorney’s Department.
Councillor Robert Davis entered into a civil partnership with Sir Simon Milton (then
leader of Westminster City Council and now a senior policy advisor to the Mayor of
London) in May 2008. In June 2008, Councillor Davis was elected deputy leader of
Westminster City Council.
1980
Mr Shahid Siddiqi has been Vice Chancellor of the Ziauddin Medical University
since 2003.
Mr Nanayakkarawasam Weragoda retired from the post of Secretary to the Cabinet
of Ministers in the Government of Sri Lanka in 2004.
Professor Sir David Williams QC DL received an Honorary Doctorate from the
University of Western Ontario on 13 June 2008.
1981
Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Honorary Fellow of Wolfson College, became Finance
Minister of Singapore on 1 December 2007; he remained as Minister for Education
until spring 2008. He read for his MPhil in Economics at Wolfson in 1981 and was made
an Honorary Fellow in 2006.
Professor Edwin George is now an Emeritus Professor.
1982
Mr Keith Hudson is Director and Joint Owner of Toasty Heating Ltd based near
Alnwick, Northumberland, and consultant engineer to a number of commercial and
government organisations. He has been involved in various roles at the Sage Music
Centre at Gateshead and, as a member of the Caedmon Choir, performed at the
National Street Choir Festival in Manchester in 2007. Mr Hudson continues to work
with Newcastle United and Durham Cricket Club on spectator safety issues.
1983
Professor Alfred Aman Jr is Dean of the Law School at Suffolk University in Boston, USA.
Professor Brian Moore, of the Department of Experimental Psychology and Fellow of
Wolfson, received the Hugh Knowles Prize for Distinguished Achievement from the
Hugh Knowles Center for Clinical and Basic Science in Hearing and its Disorders.
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1984
Miss Sabiha Sumar won the highest award at a film competition in Abu Dhabi in May
2008. Dinner with the President was conferred the Grand Award (Gold) at the first-ever
international documentary competition in the United Arab Emirates.
Professor Charles Hampton is retiring after 36 years as a faculty member in
mathematics at The College of Wooster, and moving to Michigan. He was a Visiting
Scholar at Wolfson College in 1984–1985 and 2003.
Mr Michael O’Sullivan was awarded a CMG in the New Year Honours List 2008. He
moved, in October 2008, from a post in Beijing as Secretary General, EU Chamber of
Commerce in China, to take up a Fellowship of Wolfson and the post of Director of the
Cambridge Commonwealth and Overseas Trusts.
Mr Arun Ramanathan is Permanent Secretary to the Government of India in the
Department of Chemicals, Petrochemicals and Pharmaceuticals.
Professor Colin Russell is Emeritus Professor of History of Science & Technology at
the Open University, Milton Keynes.
1985
Dr Carrie Herbert was honoured in May 2008
by the Daily Mail with the title of Inspirational
Woman of the Year. She is an educational expert
who threw open her own house in Cambridge to
serve as a school for bullied children and went
on to found a national charity, which now runs
several centres specialising in teaching and
nurturing troubled youngsters.
1986
Professor John Cummings is now Emeritus
Professor of Gastroenterology at Ninewells
Hospital, Dundee.
Mr Gee Tsang is now retired and is travelling
widely.
Dr Carrie Herbert
1987
Mr John McClenahen’s article ‘Text and Context: Jefferson, Bryan, Agriculture,
Manufacturing and Urbanization’ appeared in the Spring 2008 issue of Confluence:
The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies. An article ‘Incorporating America: Whitman
in Context’, originally published in the Spring 2000 issue, was designated one of the
five most outstanding contributions to the journal during the past twelve years and
republished in the Spring 2008 issue.
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 141

Professor Brian Toft was appointed Professor of Patient Safety in the Faculty
of Health and Life Sciences at Coventry University as of 1 January 2008. He was
presented with The Glyn Evans Memorial Lecture Medal for his work on Involuntary
Automaticity by the Royal College of Radiologists at their Annual Science Meeting in
September 2006.
1988
Professor Anthony Lavers was elected Fellow of The Royal Institution of Chartered
Surveyors in July 2008. Professor Lavers currently occupies the post of Professional
Support Lawyer, White & Case LLP, London. He is also Visiting Professor of Law at
Oxford Brookes University.
Ms Anne Marchal and Mr Vikram Lall are delighted to announce the birth of their
daughter Tara Sophie, on 11 May 2007 in New Delhi.
The Revd Canon Philip Spence is now retired.
1989
Professor Tomoyuki Shiomi retired at the end of March 2008 from his position as Professor
of English at Taisho University, Tokyo. He will now enjoy his retirement as an artist.
1990
Mr Bharat Bhushan is the editor of Mail Today, the Daily Mail’s Indian paper.
André Bywater continues to work as a solicitor specialising in EU law, based in
Brussels where he has been for the last eleven years, but also working for government
agencies in many central and eastern European countries.
Dr Sara Dimitriou is currently undertaking a career break from investment banking
with triplets born in 2006.
Dr Bulent Goekay was promoted to Professor in International Relations at Keele
University in March 2008.
Dr Venkat Iyer has been appointed editor of The Round Table, the leading
Commonwealth journal. He was a Press Fellow in Lent 1990.
1991
Ms Helen Brown, columnist, author and entertainer, was awarded Columnist of the
Year 2007 by the Magazine Publishers Association of New Zealand for her work in
Next magazine.
Dr John Dawson and Mr Andrew Cox entered into a Civil Partnership on 27 October
2007. On 28 October, Dr Dawson’s sixth grandchild was born in Cognac, France.
Dr Clive Sabel was made a Reader at Imperial College, London, in the Division of
Epidemiology, Public Health and Primary Care, as of February 2007.
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1992
Dr John Barnes held a Schoolteacher Fellow position at Selwyn College in 2007–2008
investigating educational issues in relation to the onset of e-learning mechanisms
within the pedagogical medium. He received the 2008 Whiting Memorial Award from
the International Society for Philosophical Enquiry in acknowledgement of the
exploration of academic technological development in e-learning systems.
Mrs Julia Flutter is currently working on the largest Primary Education Review team
led by Professor Robin Alexander (Wolfson Fellow).
Ms Nicole Foster married Mr Nigel Pusey in December 2000. They have two children,
Victoria and Kenneth. She is currently Director of Litigation at the Attorney General’s
Chambers in Jamaica.
Mr Richard Charles Hyde Taylor is now Director of Corporate Affairs at WM Morrison
Supermarkets plc.
Professor Sally Walker is now Vice-Chancellor of
Deakin University.
1993
After several years of living in Switzerland, Roy
Brooke and his wife Sara will soon be moving to
Kigali, Rwanda. Roy will be posted as the United
Nations Environment Programme Coordinator
for Rwanda. Friends are welcome to get in touch
at roybrooke1@yahoo.ca.
Major Tom Meldrum is delighted to announce the
birth of his first child, Florence Elizabeth Janet,
on 4 September 2006.
Professor Sally Walker
1994
Dr Martin Dixon, composer and lecturer in music at Glasgow University, was selected
in September 2008 by Scottish Opera to create a new set of original short operas for the
company’s innovative project, ‘Five: 15 Operas Made in Scotland’.
Mr Paul Deal, Press Fellow at Wolfson in Michaelmas Term 1994, has been promoted
to Manager in the Journalism Recruitment Project at the BBC.
Dr Tomoo Ueda has recently transferred to the Operations Evaluation Department within
the Asian Development Bank, after five years in the South Asia Department dealing with
development projects in India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Maldives and Nepal.
1995
Mr Michael Gleeson and his wife Lurdes are delighted to announce the birth of a
daughter and sister to Monica, Gabriella, on 21 May 2008.
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 143

Miss Katherine Pears is Director in the Legal Services Commission. Her partner (Alex
Marshall, Wolfson 1996) was promoted to Chief Constable, Hampshire Constabulary in
2008. Their son, Frederick Robert Pears Marshall, was born on 19 August 2007.
Professor Roman Tomasic has moved from the Faculty of Business and Law at Victoria
University in Australia to the Department of Law at Durham University, UK.
1996
Professor Iain Buchan was promoted to a Personal Chair in August 2008 after building
the Northwest Institute for Biohealth Informatics since 2004.
Professor Wenmin Han spent 2007 working on George Orwell’s output and produced a
translation of his works, in addition to working on a number of Chinese writers, such
as Duan Mu Hong Liang and A Long.
Professor Geoffrey Southworth is Deputy CEO and Strategic Director, Research and
Policy, at the National College for School Leadership. He was awarded an OBE for
services to education in the New Year Honours List 2008.
Mr Kah Wing Tang and Ms Seow-Hui are delighted to announce the birth of a
daughter, Wenxin, on 24 May 2008 in Singapore.
1997
Mr David Harvey is serving with Charlie Company, 40 Commando Royal Marines, in
Afghanistan.
Mr Peter Neyroud, who occupies the post of Chief Constable and Chief Executive of
the National Policing Improvement Agency, is this year’s Sir Leon Radzinowicz Visiting
Fellow in Criminology in Cambridge.
Dr Frank Waldron-Lynch recently completed his Specialist Registrar training in
Endocrinology, Diabetes and General Medicine, and commenced a Fellowship in
Endocrinology and Diabetes at the Department of Endocrinology of Yale University
School of Medicine in July 2008.
1999
Dr Luisa Corrado received one of five Marie Curie Excellence Awards at the European
Science Awards in March 2008 in Brussels for her work on the relationship between
wealth and well-being.
Mr Poh Yoon (Chris) Eng (MPhil Engineering 1999) and his wife Ms Weley Lieu (Post
Graduate Diploma in Management 1999) are delighted to announce the birth of twins,
Josiah Eng De Han and Eleanor Eng Yee Hui, brother and sister to Abigail, on 25 June
2008.
Mr Clive Hinkley retired from the Derbyshire Constabulary on 20 January 2008,
where he held the rank of Chief Superintendent.
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Dr Fritz Kadyoma won a scholarship to study Policy, Planning and Leadership at
doctoral level at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA, between 2001
and 2004.
Mr Joseph Munsanje was re-elected President of the University of Zambia Alumni
Association. He works with Sightsavers International, a UK charity working in 33
countries, including Zambia. Mr Munsanje is the Country Representative in Zambia
managing the Zambia Country Office.
Dr Walther Paravicini married Ms Martina Hacker in June 2007. In January 2007 he
obtained his PhD in mathematics with a thesis on KK-theory for Banach Algebras and
Proper Groupoids.
Mr Gilbert Kuan Yang Tan was a Robinson Student Visiting Scholar assisting the
Fitzwilliam Museum’s Department of Coins and Medals in 1999, and held the position
of 2nd Vice President of the Singapore Numismatic Association between 2004–2007.
Dr Enrico Ramirez Ruiz is one of a group of
twenty scientists and engineers at top US
universities who received $17.5 million in grant
funding, in October 2008, to advance innovative
research projects through the David and Lucile
Packard Foundation's Fellowships for Science
and Engineering programme. Enrico, based at
the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
in the University of California, Santa Cruz,
works in the fields of Astronomy, Astrophysics
and Cosmology, studying the interplay between
black holes, neutron stars and other objects in a
dense environment.
Dr Enrico Ramirez Ruiz
2000
Lord Triesman has become the first Independent Chairman of the Football Association
in its 145-year history, having resigned as Under-Secretary of State at the Department
for Innovation, Universities and Skills. He has also served in Government as Foreign
and Commonwealth Minister and Government Whip in the House of Lords.
2001
Dr David Frost is a Wolfson Fellow and part of an innovative programme aiming to
motivate and inspire teachers. The HertsCam Network, which was set up ten years ago,
is now planning to expand nationally.
Professor Kelly Wrenhaven (née Joss) has been appointed Assistant Professor of
Classical Studies, Department of Modern Languages at Cleveland State University.
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 145

Dr Alejandro Rodríguez was appointed Vice-Master
(Director Adjunto) of San Pablo’s College (Colegio
Mayor San Pablo, Madrid) in January 2007 and
in September 2007 he was appointed Vice-Rector
of Research (Universidad San Pablo-CEU). In
November 2007 his second child, Clara Maria,
was born.
2002
Dr Frédéric Blanqui is delighted to announce the
birth of a daughter Citlalli, born on 7 June 2007.
Mr Krishnan Srinivasan, a fellow of the Swedish Dr Alejandro Rodríguez
Collegium for Advanced Study in Uppsala, and
Fellow of the Maulana Azad Institute for Asian Studies in Kolkata, was awarded the
Chevalier de l’Ordre de la Valeur by the President of Cameroon in 2007.
2003
Miss Carolyn Park married Mr Michael Hurley (Wolfson alumnus 2002) in Cambridge
in August 2008.
Mr Jason Pomeroy has relocated to Singapore to set up Broadway Malayan’s Singapore
Office. In his capacity as Director he continues to undertake architectural and master
planning commissions in the Middle East, SE Asia and Far East.
2004
Dr Alix-Aurélia Cohen took up a lectureship in the Department of Philosophy,
University of Leeds in August 2008.
Professor Robin Alexander has led the largest review of education in Britain to take
place for four decades: the findings published in October 2007 show that primary
school children feel stress and anxiety due to increased levels of testing as well as
general concerns about the world in which they live.
Mr Daniel Fung was re-appointed Chairman of the Hong Kong Broadcasting Authority
in December 2006, elected Council Member of the International Institute for Strategic
Studies and re-elected Vice-Chairman of the Salzburg Global Seminar in November 2007.
2005
Mr Trivikram Arun Ramanathan was a Gates Scholar and undertook his MPhil in
Industrial Systems, Manufacturing and Management (ISMM) at the Institute for
Manufacturing (IfM). He won the Sir Frederick Alfred Warren Prize of the Department
of Engineering for achieving the highest marks in both project work and dissertation.
Professor David Barker was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM)
for service to legal education in Australia and the Pacific Region, to professional
organisations, and to the community in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List 2006.
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He was appointed Foundation Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law in July 2007,
and Emeritus Professor at the University of Technology, Sydney in July 2008.
Ms Deepta Chopra married Mr Martin Krawczsyn on 16 February 2007.
Mr Stuart Kehily was promoted in November 2007 from Chief Inspector to
Superintendent at West Kent in Kent Police, and is now Deputy Commander,
Basic Command Unit for West Kent.
2006
Mr Anubhav Singhvi is currently an Advocate practising at the Supreme Court of India.
Mr Daniel Edmonds is to become a Kennedy Scholar at Harvard University,
commencing 2008/2009.
Ms Jiayin Shi married Mr Matthew Stephen Roberts in Cambridge on 28 March 2007.
The Reverend Keith Riglin, Senior Member and a former Honorary Chaplain,
successfully defended his thesis ‘Animating Grace: The Practice of Authority and Order
in a Reformed Church’, and graduates Doctor of Theology (ThD) of the University of
Birmingham this December. He is now Associate Vicar in the Parish of St Clement and
St James, Notting Hill, London.
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 147

Recent Books by College Members
The books listed below are among works published recently by members of the
College. Some were written during periods of residence in Wolfson.
Seema Alavi: Islam and Healing: Loss and Recovery of an Indo-Muslim Medical
Tradition 1660–1900. Published by Permanent Black, 2007 (Indian editions), 2008
(European editions).
Philip Arestis and Malcolm Sawyer (eds): Handbook of Alternative Monetary
Economics (Elgar Original Reference). Published by Edward Elgar Publishing, 2007.
Jette Ashlee: An Arctic Epic of Family and Fortune. Published by Xlibris,
Philadelphia, 2008.
Michael Belgrave, Historical Frictions: Maori Claims and Reinvented Histories.
Published by Auckland University Press, 2006.
Filipe Carreira da Silva: Mead and modernity; science, selfhood, and democratic
politics. Published by Lexington Books, 2008.
David Crystal: Think on My Words: Exploring Shakespeare’s Language. Published by
Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Talal Debs and Michael Redhead: Objectivity, Invariance and Convention:
Symmetry in Physical Science. Published by Harvard University Press, Cambridge
MA, 2007.
Rebecca Empson: Harnessing Fortune: The Aesthetic Technology of Separating
and Containing in Mongolia. Based on her long-term fieldwork with a group
of nomadic herders called the Buriad who migrated into Mongolia from Siberia
in the early 1900s, the book won her the British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship
Monograph Competition in 2007.
Ian Gentles: The English Revolution and the Wars in the Three Kingdoms. Published
by Pearson Longman, 2007.
Meredith Hooper: The Ferocious Summer: Palmer’s Penguins and the Warming of
Antarctica. Published by Profile Books UK, Allen & Unwin Australia, Greystone
Books USA, 2007. Writer, lecturer, and expert on the Antarctic, she was awarded
the Nettie Palmer Prize for Non-Fiction 2008.
Brian Howe: Weighing up Australian Values: Balancing Transitions and Risks to
Work and Family in Modern Australia. Published by UNSW Press, 2007.
General Sir Michael Jackson: Soldier: The Autobiography. Published by Bantam
Press, 2007.
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Gordon Johnson: University Politics, F. M. Cornford’s Cambridge and his advice to the
young academic politician, Cambridge University Press, 2008. This is the second
edition, celebrating the 100th anniversary of the publication of Microcosmographica
Academia by F. M. Cornford.
Annabel Keeler: Sufi hermeneutics: the Quran commentary of Rashid al-Din Maybud.
Published by Oxford University Press, 2006. Academic Advisor to the Golden Web
Foundation in Cambridge and Substitute Lecturer in Persian at the Faculty for Asian
and Middle Eastern Studies, she was awarded Book of the Year Prize by the Iranian
Ministry of Culture, in February 2008.
Andrew Krivak: A Long Retreat: In Search of a Religious Life. Published by Farrar, Straus
and Giroux, 2008.
Melaine Kuhn: The Hows and Whys of Fluency Instruction. Published by Allyn &
Bacon/Pearson, 2008.
George W Liebmann, Diplomacy between the Wars: Five Diplomats and the Shaping of
the Modern World. Published by I B Tauris, 2008.
John McClenahen: Eight Mile, Selected Poems. Published by iUniverse, Inc, 2008.
Ken McGoogan, Lady Franklin’s Revenge: A True Story of Ambition, Obsession and the
Remaking of Arctic History. Published by Random House, 2006.
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 149

John Nolan, The Run-Up to the Punch Bowl: A Memoir of the Korean War 1951.
Published by Xlibris Philadelphia, 2006.
Sajal Nag: Pied Pipers in North-East India: Bamboo-flowers, Rat-famine and the Politics
of Philanthrophy (1881–2007). Published by Manohar Publishers, New Delhi, 2008.
Susan Oliver: Scott, Byron and the Poetics of Cultural Encounter. Published by Palgrave
Macmillan, London, 2005. Dr Oliver is a Lecturer in Literature and Culture of the
Long Nineteenth Century at the University of Salford and was awarded the Rose
Mary Crawshay Prize for English Literature in 2007.
Krishnan Srinivasan: The Jamdani Revolution: Politics, Personalities and Civil Society in
Bangladesh, Nov 2007. Paperback edition: The Rise, Decline and Future of the British
Commonwealth. Published by Palgrave, March 2008.
Andres Torres Scott: What are you gonna with your million bucks? This is his first novel
and was awarded Mexico’s National Novel Prize, Rosario Castellanos 2007, one of the
most important literature contests in Mexico.
Marion Thain and Michael Field: Poetry, Aestheticism and the Fin de Siècle.
Published by Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Malcolm Warner: Political Economy of the SARS Epidemic: The Impact on Human
Resources in East Asia. Published by Routledge, London, 2007.
Samuel Wells: Power and Passion: Six Characters in Search of Resurrection.
Published by Zondervan Grand Rapids, 2007.
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Recent University Appointments
These appointments and Grants of Title 2007–2008 are reproduced as they originally
appeared in The Reporter.
Appointments
Director of the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust and Cambridge Overseas Trust.
Mr Michael Joseph O’Sullivan, CMG, M.Phil., appointed from 1 October 2008.
Alborada Professor of Equine and Farm Animal Science. Professor James Wood,
appointed from 1 October 2008 to the retiring age.
Reader in Computer Science. Dr Peter Michael Sewell, appointed with effect from
1 October 2008.
Senior Assistant Registrary, University Offices (Academic Division). Dr Catherine
Maxwell, B.Sc., Ph.D., Newcastle upon Tyne, appointed from 1 January 2008 until
the retiring age.
Reappointments
Deputy Head of Department, Experimental Psychology. Professor Brian Cecil Joseph
Moore, appointed from 1 October 2007 for three years.
Deputy Head of Department, Oncology. Professor G. Murphy, reappointed from
1 January 2009 for five years.
Assistant Director of Studies in Public Health and Primary Care. Dr Warwick Jeremy
Stephen Webb, reappointed from 1 October 2007 for three years.
University Lecturer in Pathology. Dr Gillian Margaret Fraser, reappointed from 1 April
2008 until the retiring age.
Grants of Title
Modern and Medieval Languages. David Kenyon Money has been granted the title of
Affiliated Lecturer from 1 October 2007 for a further two years.
Law. Professor Andrew Perry Simester has been granted the title of Affiliated Lecturer
from 1 October 2007 for a further year.
Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. Dr Kate V. M. Daniels has been granted the title of
Affiliated Lecturer from 1 October 2007 for a further year.
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 151

Donations to the College
We are grateful to the following, as well as to those who made donations anonymously
during 2007–2008.
Dr Ismael Al-Amoudi
Professor Jonathan Aldrich
Professor Colin Alexander
Professor Robin Alexander
Dr Tom Alexander
Mr Graham Allen
Mr Robert Amundsen
Professor Jonathan Ashley-Smith
Mr Mirza Baig
Professor David Barker
Dr Peter Beaumont
Dr Samuel Bieber
Mrs Sheila Betts
Professor William Block
Professor Richard Blum
Miss Jeanne Boles
Mr Ernest Bonyhadi
Mrs Susan Bowring
Mr Mark Boyce
Mr Stephen Bragg
Mr Jonathan Brown
Dr Alan Burgess
Cambridge University Press
Mr Samuel Chacko
Professor Owen Chadwick
Dr Carole Cheah
Dr Hong Chen
Professor James Cherry
Dr Cyrus Chothia
Dr John Clark
Mr Andrew Clarke
Lord Justice (Lawrence) Collins
Professor Robert Conti
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Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32
Mrs Johanna Crighton
Dr Penelope Darbyshire
Dr Joy Dauncey
Dr Thomas Davies
Dr John Dawson
Mr Michael DeFrank
Professor Robert Dewar Jr
Dr Jonathan Di John
Mrs Lesley Dingle
Mac Dowdy
Mr Adrian du Plessis
Mr Hugh Duberly
Dr Robert Duplock
Professor George Edwards
Dr Hannah Elson
Mrs Susan Eltringham
Professor Donald Engels
Dr George Erdos
Miss Polly Fahnestock
The Fairleigh S Dickinson Foundation
Dr Fereydoun Faridian
Dr John Firth
Mr David Fisher
Mr Richard Fisher
Mr Aidan Foster
Dr John Fowler
Professors H and S Futamura
Dr Thomas Grant
M R Green
Mr Colin Greenhalgh
Mrs Margaret Greeves
Dr Conrad Guettler
Mr David Hall

Professor Michael Hall
Dr Steven Hand
The Honorable Ken Handley
The Right Honorable Sir Michael
Hardie Boys
Dr Ulrich Hardt
Professor David Hargreaves
Dr Peter Heaney
Mr Randolph Henry
Professor Mary Hesse
Mrs Lynn Hieatt
Dr Suzanne Hoelgaard
Mr Anthony Hopkinson
Mr & Mrs Burr Hughes III
Miss Patricia Hyndman
The Jerrehian Foundation
(Mrs Velda Moog)
Mr Teng Jiang
Dr Christopher Johnson
Dr Gordon Johnson
Dr Roy Jones
Dr Edward Kessler
Mr James Kinnier Wilson
Mr William Kirkman
Professor Gordon Klein
Mr Gary Chun Tak Kwan
Dr Yin-Lok Lai
Professor Peter Landrock
Dr Stephen Large
Mr Christopher Lawrence
Ms Dawn Leeder
Professor Kevin Lewis
Mr George Liebmann
Dr Stephen Livermore
Lloyds TSB Bank plc
Professor Friedrich Lösel
Mrs Angela Lucas
Professor Peter Lucas
Mr Philip Marcell
Mrs Charlotte Marr
Professor Wallace Matson
Professor Thomas McGinn
Dr Stuart McGregor
Professor Frank McKinney
S M McLachlan
Dr Timothy Mead
Mr Richard Meade
Dr Louise Mirrer
Mr Johnston Mitchell
Mr Richard Morgan
Mr Mark Moriarty
G M Morrison Charitable Trust
(Mr Gordon Morrison)
Mr John Mott
Dr Thomas Mullen
Dr Paul Murdin
The Needham Trust
The Revd Professor Ernest Nicholson
Lady Sally Oliver
Professor Steven Olswang
Dr Ian O’Neill
L A Ovington
Mr Richard Owen
Mr Ray Palmer
Dr Richard Peiser
Mrs Hilary Pennington
Mr Putnam Perry
Mr Joe Petty
Professor Rolly Phillips
Dr William Pickering
Professor James Poivan
Mrs Olive Polge
Dr Julia Poole
Dr John Prendergast
Dr Friedemann Pulvermüller
Dr Dorrie Rapp
Professor Michael Redhead
Mr Andrew Reid
Mr Manas Saikia
Mrs Ursula Sainsbury
Mr Sumio Saito
Sansom-Eligator Foundation
(Dr Robert Sansom)
Mrs Akiko Sato
Mr Susumo Sato
Mr Susumu Satomi
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 153

Dr Jochen Schenk
Miss Marlene Schoofs
Ms Frances Sellers
Professor Marshall Shapo
Dr Margaret Shepherd
Mr Richard Shervington
Dr Neville Silverston
Professor Andrew Simester
Dr Laurence Smith
Professor Richard Snedden
Dr Anna Snowdon
Lord (Ernest) Soulsby of Swaffham Prior
The Estate of Professor Karen
Spärck Jones
Sir John Sparrow
Ms Karen Stephenson
Professor Daniel Sutherland
Professor Jim Tattersall
Professor Richard Taylor
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Mr Keith Tibbenham
Mr Nicholas Tippler
Dr Gee Tsang
Mr Witold Tulasiewicz
Dr Ellis Wasson
Mrs Ann Watkins
Miss Kim Whitaker
Professor Victor Whittaker
His Excellency Malcolm Wilkey
Dr Olwen Williams
Lady Sally Williams
Mr Anthony Wilson
Mrs Sue Wiseman
Professor Howard Wolf
Mrs Custis Wright
Professor Toshiki Yamamoto
Dr Kevin Xiaoyu Yang
Dr Xiangwu Zeng
Professor Leo Zrudlo

Fellowship, Membership and Staff

College Officers
as at 1 October 2008
President
Dr Gordon Johnson president@wolfson.cam.ac.uk
Vice-President
Dr Don MacDonald vice-president@wolfson.cam.ac.uk
Bursar
Mr Christopher Lawrence bursar@wolfson.cam.ac.uk
Senior Tutor
Dr David Jarvis senior-tutor@wolfson.cam.ac.uk
Development Director
Ms Karen Stephenson development@wolfson.cam.ac.uk
Praelector
Dr Brian Cox praelector@wolfson.cam.ac.uk
Tutors
Dr Sally Church
Dr John Flowerdew
Dr Christina Granroth
Dr Michael Hrebeniak
Dr Nigel Kettley
Dr Marie Lovatt
Dr Lesley MacVinish
Tutor for Part-time Students
Dr David Frost
Teaching Officer in Law
Dr Jennifer Davis
Press Fellowship Director
Professor John Naughton press@wolfson.cam.ac.uk
Director Emeritus of the Wolfson Course and Programme
Dr Don Wilson
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Fellowship in Order of Seniority
As at 1 October 2008
Title A = Professorial
Title B = Research
Title C = Official (University or College post holders)
Title D = Extraordinary
Dr Marie Lovatt (C) Tutor, Wolfson College
Mr Edward Johnson (D) Linguistics Research, Prolingua Limited
Professor Anthony Minson (A) Professor of Virology, Dept of Pathology
Dr Marguerite Dupree (D) Senior Research Fellow, Wellcome Unit for the History
of Medicine, Glasgow
Professor John Hughes (D) formerly Director Parke-Davis, Neuroscience Research
Centre
Professor Brian Moore (A) Professor of Auditory Perception, Dept of Experimental
Psychology
Dr Joan Whitehead (C) University Lecturer, Faculty of Education
Dr Sheelagh Lloyd (C) University Lecturer, Dept of Clinical Veterinary Medicine
Professor Nicholas de Lange (A) Professor of Hebrew & Jewish Studies, Faculty of Divinity
Professor John Henderson (D) Professor of Italian Renaissance History and Wellcome
Trust University Award Holder in History of Medicine Birkbeck College, University
of London
Mr Duncan McCallum (C) Deputy Academic Secretary, Academic Division
Dr John Seagrave (D) formerly Bursar, Wolfson College
Dr Peter Beaumont (C) Reader in Materials Engineering, Dept of Engineering
Dr John Brackenbury (C) University Lecturer in Veterinary Anatomy, Dept of Anatomy
Dr Ivor Day (B) Rolls-Royce Research Fellow, Whittle Laboratory, Dept of Engineering
Professor Malcolm Burrows (A) Professor of Zoology, Head of Dept of Zoology
Professor John Naughton (D) Professor of the Public Understanding of Technology,
Open University and Director, Wolfson College Press Fellowship Programme
Professor Peter Weissberg (D) Medical Director, British Heart Foundation
Professor Ian Goodyer (A) Professor of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, Dept of
Psychiatry
Dr Donald MacDonald (C) University Senior Lecturer & Director of Medical &
Veterinary Education in the Faculty of Biology, Dept of Genetics and Vice-President,
Wolfson College
Dr Ian Cross (C) Reader, Faculty of Music
Professor Geoffrey Khan (A) Professor, Faculty of Oriental Studies
Dr Norbert Peabody (B) Senior Research Fellow in Anthropology, Wolfson College
Dr Jennifer Davis (C) College Lecturer in Law, Wolfson College
Dr Richard Barker (C) University Senior Lecturer and Director of the MBA Course,
Judge Business School
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 157

Dr John Flowerdew (C) University Lecturer, Dept of Zoology
Dr Timothy Mead (D) formerly Registrary, University of Cambridge
Dr Nadia Stelmashenko (C) Technical Officer, Dept of Materials Science & Metallurgy
Professor Duncan Maskell (A) M&S Professor of Farm Animal Health, Food Science &
Food Safety, Centre for Veterinary Science, Dept of Clinical Veterinary Medicine
Professor Koen Steemers (A) Professor of Sustainable Design, Dept of Architecture
Mr Thomas Ridgman (C) University Lecturer, Dept of Engineering
Dr Sally Church (C) Tutor, Wolfson College, Substitute Lecturer, Faculty of Oriental
Studies
Dr Peter Sewell (C) University Senior Lecturer, Computer Laboratory
Dr Steven Hand (C) University Senior Lecturer, Computer Laboratory
Professor John Sinclair (A) Professor of Molecular Virology, Dept of Medicine
Dr Raymond Bujdoso (C) University Lecturer in Molecular Immunology, Dept of
Clinical Veterinary Medicine
Dr Jeremy Mynott (D) formerly Chief Executive, Cambridge University Press
Mr Michael Bienias (C) Director, Estate Management & Building Service
Dr Charles Jones (C) Reader and Director, Centre of International Studies & Centre of
Latin-American Studies
Mrs Susan Bowring (C) University Draftsman (Senior Assistant Registrary)
Ms Christine Counsell (C) University Lecturer, Faculty of Education
Mr David Hall (D) formerly Deputy Librarian, University Library
Mr Graham Allen (C) Academic Secretary, Academic Division
Ms Anne Murray (C) Deputy Librarian, University Library
Dr Peter D’Eath (C) University Lecturer, Dept of Applied Mathematics & Theoretical
Physics
Professor George Salmond (A) Professor of Molecular Biology, Dept of Biochemistry
Professor Stephen Brooks (A) Professor of Statistics, Dept of Pure Mathematics &
Mathematical Statistics
Professor William Marslen-Wilson (B) Director, MRC Cognition & Brain Sciences Unit
Dr Sijbren Otto (B) Royal Society University Research Fellow, Chemical Laboratory
Dr John Clark (C) Course Supervisor, Graduate Course in Medicine and Consultant
Physician, The Nuffield Hospital, Bury St Edmunds
Mrs Karen Pearce (C) Physical Education Officer, Sports Syndicate
Professor Andrew Pollard (D) Director ESRC’s Teaching & Learning Research
Programme, Institute of Education, University of London
Professor Simon Thompson (B) Director, MRC Biostatistics Unit
Dr John Firth (C) Consultant Physician & Nephrologist, Addenbrookes NHS Trust
Dr David Frost (C) University Senior Lecturer in Education, Faculty of Education
Dr Andrew Herbert (D) Distinguished Engineer & Managing Director, Microsoft
Research Laboratory, Cambridge
Dr Ann Copestake (C) Reader in Computational Linguistics, Computer Laboratory
Dr Markus Kuhn (C) University Lecturer, Computer Laboratory
Professor John Bradley (A) Professor of Surgery & Head of Department, Dept of Surgery
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Mr Timothy Winter (C) University Lecturer in Islamic Studies, Faculty of Divinity
Dr Nigel Kettley (C) Tutor, Wolfson College
Ms Lynette Alcántara (C) Director of Music, Wolfson College and member of BBC
Singers
Professor Edward Bullmore (A) Professor of Psychiatry, Dept of Psychiatry
Mr Andrew Reid (C) Director of Finance, Finance Division
Dr Jin Zhang (C) University Lecturer in Management Studies, Judge Business School
Dr Thomas D’Andrea (B) Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy
Dr Thomas Grant (B) Research Fellow, Lauterpacht Centre for International Law
Dr Margaret Dauncey (D) Senior Research Scientist, Babraham Institute
Dr Adrian Kent (C) Reader in Quantum Physics, Dept of Applied Mathematics &
Theoretical Physics
Dr Susan Oosthuizen (C) Senior Lecturer, Institute of Continuing Education
Professor Nicholas Wareham (B) Director, MRC Epidemiology Unit and Honorary
Consultant, Addenbrookes NHS Trust
Dr Cyrus Chothia (B) Group Leader, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology
Professor Jonathan Crowcroft (A) Professor of Communications Systems, Computer
Laboratory
Professor Gillian Murphy (A) Professor of Cancer Cell Biology, Dept of Oncology and
Deputy Head, Cambridge Institute for Medical Research
Dr Peter Bennett (B) Senior Research Associate, Schofield Centre, Dept of Engineering
Dr Aldo Faisal (B) Postdoctoral Research Associate, Wellcome Trust Programme, Dept
of Engineering
Dr Friedemann Pulvermüller (B) Programme Leader in the Cognitive Neuroscience of
Language, MRC Cognition & Brain Sciences Unit
Professor Peter Jones (A) Professor of Psychiatry, Dept of Psychiatry
Professor Robert Dewar Jr (B) Affiliated Lecturer, Faculty of Archaeology &
Anthropology
Dr Ingo Greger (B) Royal Society University Research Fellow, Laboratory of Molecular
Biology
Dr Rebecca Empson (B) Leverhulme Research Associate, Dept of Social Anthropology
Professor Philip Arestis (B) Director of Research, Centre for Economic & Public Policy,
Dept of Land Economy
Professor Vassilis Koronakis (A) Professor, Dept of Pathology
Dr David Jarvis (C) Senior Tutor, Wolfson College
Revd Dr Chad Van Dixhoorn (B) Associate Minister, Cambridge Presbyterian Church
Professor Robin Alexander (B) Director, The Primary Review, Faculty of Education
Professor Richard Taylor (A) Director of Continuing Education & Lifelong Learning,
Institute of Continuing Education
Dr Lesley MacVinish (C) Tutor, Wolfson College and Senior Teaching Associate, Dept
of Pharmacology
Mr El’vis Beytullayev (B) Research Fellow in History and International Relations
Dr Felipe Garcia (B) College Lecturer, Newnham College
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 159

Dr Jonathan Ingham (B) Research Fellow in Optical Communication Systems &
Photonics, Dept of Engineering
Dr Zhi-Yong Li (C) University Lecturer, Radiology Dept
Dr Max Lieberman (B) Research Fellow in Medieval History
Dr Roberto Polito (B) Research Fellow in Classics
Dr Christopher Town (B) Research Fellow in Computer Science
Dr Christina Granroth (C) Tutor, Wolfson College
Dr Carolina Armenteros (B) British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in History
Dr Nicholas Luscombe (B) Group Leader EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute
Dr Jonathan Oppenheim (B) Research Fellow, Dept of Applied Mathematics &
Theoretical Physics
Dr David Baguley (C) Consultant Clinical Scientist, Head of Audiology, Addenbrookes
NHS Trust
Dr Claudia Fritz (B) Research Fellow in Music
Dr Berry Groisman (B) Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Dept of Applied Mathematics
& Theoretical Physics
Dr Casey Israel (B) Postdoctoral Research Associate, Dept of Materials Science &
Metallurgy
Dr Jin-Chong Tan (B) Research Fellow in Materials Science, Dept of Materials Science
& Metallurgy
Dr Oksana Trushkevych (B) Research Fellow in Engineering
Mr Julien Vincent (B) Research Fellow in History
Dr George Vogiatzis (B) Research Associate, Dept of Engineering
Dr Kevin Greenbank (C) Archivist & Administrator, Centre of South Asian Studies
Dr Wolfgang Huber (B) Research Group Leader EMBL-European Bioinformatics
Institute
Dr Jeremy Webb (C) Assistant Director of Cambridge Graduate Course in Medicine
and GP
Dr Richard Fenner (C) University Senior Lecturer & Course Director, Dept of
Engineering
Professor Nicholas Jeffery (A) Professor of Veterinary Clinical Studies, Dept of Clinical
Veterinary Medicine
Dr Christophe Erismann (B) British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, CRASSH
Mr Simon Pattinson (C) Industrial Tutor, Industrial Systems, Dept of Engineering,
Professor Friedrich Lösel (A) Professor of Psychology, Director of Institute of
Criminology
Mr Christopher Lawrence (C) Bursar, Wolfson College
Mrs Margaret Greeves (C) Assistant Director, The Fitzwilliam Museum
Professor Andrew Simester (D) Professor of Law, National University of Singapore
Dr David Barrowclough (B) Postdoctoral Research Assistant, McDonald Institute for
Archaeological Research, Dept of Archaeology
Dr Richard Bourgon (B) Postdoctoral Research Fellow, EMBL-European Bioinformatics
Institute
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Dr Elena Chebankova (B) Research Fellow in Politics, Faculty of Social & Political
Science
Dr Christian Füllgrabe (B) Research Associate, Dept of Experimental Psychology
Dr Shang-Te Danny Hsu (B) Human Frontier Science Program Long-term Fellow,
Dept of Chemistry
Dr Meena Murthy (B) Senior Research Associate, Dept of Medicine/Clinical
Pharmacology
Dr Daniela Sahlender (B) Research Associate, Cambridge Institute for Medical
Research
Dr Rebecca Simmons (B) Career Development Fellow, Wolfson College
Mr Gagan Sood (B) Research Fellow in History
Dr Juan Vaquerizas (B) Research Associate, EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute
Dr Matthew Woolhouse (B) Research Fellow in Musicology
Miss Felicia Mei Ling Yap (B) Scouloudi Research Fellow, Institute of Historical
Research
Mrs Alice Benton (C) Senior Assistant Registrary, Head of the Education Section,
Academic Division
Dr Vincenzo Vergiani (C) Lecturer in Sanskrit, Faculty of Asian Studies
Professor Linda Wicker (A) Professor of Immunogenetics, Cambridge Institute for
Medical Research
Dr Anthony Short (B) Research Fellow, Dept of Applied Mathematics & Theoretical
Physics
Dr Catherine Maxwell (C) Secretary and Head of Graduate Administration, Board
of Graduate Studies
Professor Gordon Dougan (B) Head of Pathogen Research and Management Board
Member, The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute
Dr Viji Draviam-Sastry (B) Group Leader, Dept of Genetics
Ms Karen Stephenson (C) Development Director, Wolfson College
Dr Chip Coakley (B) Manuscript Specialist on Syriac and Affiliated Lecturer, University
Library
Sir Anthony Brenton (D) formerly British Ambassador to Russia
Mr Michael O’Sullivan (C) Director of Cambridge Commonwealth & Overseas Trusts
Dr Gertrude Abbink (B) Postdoctoral Research Associate, Dept of Medicine
Dr Isabel DiVanna (B) Research Fellow in History
Dr David Gange (B) Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Victorian Studies Group
Dr Max Garagnani (B) Research Fellow in Speech and Language, MRC Cognition and
Brain Sciences Unit
Dr Lucas Goehring (B) Research Associate, Dept of Materials Science & Metallurgy
Mr Daniel Graf von der Schulenburg (B) PhD Student, Dept of Chemical Engineering
Dr Dagmar Harzheim (B) Postdoctoral Research Scientist, Babraham Institute
Dr Virginia Newcombe (B) Student, Graduate Course in Medicine
Dr Mercedes Okumura Martinez (B) Research Curator, Leverhulme Centre for
Evolutionary Studies
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 161

Dr Gregoire Pau (B) Research Officer, EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute
Dr Niketas Siniossoglou (B) Research Assistant, Dept of Philosophy & History of
Science
Dr Mamta Thangaraj (B) Research Associate, Cavendish Laboratory
Miss Rhîannan Williams (B) Research Fellow in Neurophysiology and Pharmacology
Dr Martin Wolf (B) Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Dept of Applied Mathematics &
Theoretical Physics
Dr Michael Hrebeniak (C) Tutor, Wolfson College and University Lecturer, Faculty of
English
Professor James Wood (A) Alborada Professor of Equine and Farm Animal Science and
Director, Cambridge Infectious Diseases Consortium, Dept of Clinical Veterinary
Medicine
Research Fellows of Wolfson College, 4 June 2008
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Honorary Fellowship in Order of Seniority
as at 1 October 2008
Lord Wolfson of Marylebone
Professor Owen Chadwick
Lord Richardson of Duntisbourne
Dr Lee Seng Tee
Sir John Sparrow
Sir Christopher Benson
Sir Hans Kornberg
His Excellency Malcolm Wilkey
Professor Hugh Bevan
The Revd Professor Ernest Nicholson
Professor Sir David Williams
Professor Mary Hesse
Professor Leslie Zines
Sir Michael Hardie Boys
Dame Kiri Te Kanawa
The Rt Hon The Baroness Scotland
of Asthal
Professor Suzanne Cory
Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington
Professor William Brown
The Rt Revd Dr Anthony Russell
Sir Leszek Borysiewicz
Professor Andrew von Hirsch
Professor Alison Richard
Sir Michael Jackson
Lord Soulsby of Swaffham Prior
Professor David Crystal
Professor Neil Gorman
Dr David Grant
Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam
The Hon Justice Susan Kiefel LLM QC
Dr Judy McGregor
Dr Louise Mirrer
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 163

Emeritus Fellowship in Order of Seniority
as at 1 October 2008
Dr Ralph Brown
Mr Frederick Algate
Professor Mary Hesse
Dr Alan Burgess
Dr David Franks
Dr Bridget Allchin
Dr Arthur Jennings
Dr Peter Storie-Pugh
Dr Chu Hsiau-Pin
Mr William Kirkman
Mr Richard Nicholls
Mr Terence Waldron
Mr James Kinnier Wilson
Dr Donald Wilson
Mr William Ridgman
Professor Paul Hirst
Dr Henry West
Dr Peter Whittlestone
Mr Roger Akester
Lord Justice (Lawrence) Collins
Dr Cecil Treip
Dr David Briggs
Dr Owen Edwards
Lord (Lawson) Soulsby of Swaffham Prior
Dr Henry Tribe
Air Vice-Marshal Peter Turner
Dr Stuart McGregor
Dr Eric Miller
Dr John Cathie
Mr Stephen Bragg
Mr Michael Sharman
Dr Rudolph Hanka
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Dr Iain Wilkinson
Mr James Garlick
Dr Roger Connan
Mr Witold Tulasiewicz
Dr Roy Switzur
Professor William Blakemore
Mr John Snaith
Dr David Bostock
Mr Colin Gill
Dr David Clode
Mac Dowdy
Dr Malcolm Warner
Dr Stephen Large
Dr Rex Walford
Professor Michael Redhead
Professor David Hargreaves
Dr Alexander Tait
Dr John Rees
Dr Abraham Karpas
Professor Barry Kemp
Dr Janet West
Mr Michael Richardson
Ms Patricia Hyndman
Dr Margaret Shepherd
Mr Anthony Wilson
Dr Norma Emerton
Dr Ernest Lee
Dr Tyrell Smith
Dr Brian Cox
Dr Thomas Davies
Dr Evelyn Lord
Professor Martin Bobrow

Senior Members
As at 1 October 2008
Our Senior Members contribute to the College in many ways. The list comprises those
who are post-doctoral researchers in Faculties and Departments, holders of University
offices, Wolfson graduates who continue to live and work in and around Cambridge,
and, in a long-standing Wolfson tradition, distinguished non-academic members of
the local community who have been invited to join the College as Senior Members.
Dr Lawrence Abeln
Dr David Adams
Mr Peter Agar
Dr Ismael Al-Amoudi
Dr Martin Allen
Dr Alvaro Angeriz
Dr Dawn Arda
Professor Jonathan Ashley-Smith
Dr Zoltan Asztalos
Mrs Dzifa Azumah
Mr Mirza Baig
Ms Jenny Bailey
Mr Adrian Barlow
Miss Jane Batchelor
Dr Nicholas Baylis
Mr Jonathan Beart
Dr Laura Beers
Revd Professor Jeremy Begbie
Dr James Bendall
Mr David Bennett
Mrs Doreen Bennett
Mr Ronald Bennett
Mrs Sheila Betts
Mrs Mary Bevan
Miss Zerrin Biner
Mrs Pamela Black
Professor William Block
Dr Elisabetta Boeri Erba
Dr Cameron Boyd-Taylor
Mrs Kay Bridge
Dr Roger Briscoe
Dr Luis Briseno-Roa
Mrs Doreen Burgin
Mr Nicholas Butler
Dr José Castrejón-Pita
Dr Emma Cavell
Mr Wing-Kee Chan
Mr Paul Chapman
Dr Alessio Ciulli
Mr Andrew Clarke
Dr Nicholas Clemons
Mr Richard Collet-Fenson
Dr Lorenzo Corti
Mrs Johanna Crighton
Mrs Sally Cullen
Dr Rupert Curwen
Dr Pamela Davis
Ms Penelope Davison
Dr John Dawson
Mrs Barbara de Smith
Dr Jennifer Deegan
Mr Peter Deer
Dr MariaLaura Di Domenico
Mrs Lesley Dingle
Councillor Michael Dixon
Mr Peter Donovan
Mr Adrian du Plessis
Mr Hugh Duberly
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 165

Dr Timothy Duff
Mr Anthony Dye
Professor John Edwards
Mrs Josephine Edwards
Mrs Susan Eltringham
Dr Marie Ericsson
Mrs Sonia Falaschi-Ray
Miss Elizabeth Falconer
Mr Jan Filochowski
Mr David Fisher
Mr Richard Fisher
Sir Ronnie Flanagan
Dr Derek Ford
Dr Anne Forde
Dr Matthew Forrest
Mr Aidan Foster
Dr John Fowler
Mr Daniel Fung
Mrs Briege Gardner
Dr Andreas Georgiou
Dr Siddhartha Ghose
Ms Janet Gibson
Dr Carrie Gillespie
Dr Isabel Gonzalez
Dr Jane Goodall
Dr Gareth Goodier
Dr Philip Goyal
Ms Lesley Gray
Mr Colin Greenhalgh
Dr Emmanouela Grypeou
Dr Conrad Guettler
Revd Canon Margaret Guite
Mr Dennis Gunn
Dr Hannelore Hägele
Mrs Carol Handley
Dr Mila Hanka
Mr David Harris
Mr Kim Harris
Dr Victoria Harris
Dr Catherine Harter
Dr Jürgen Harter
Dr Ralph Hawtrey
Mr Gregory Hayman
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Lord (Nicholas) Hemingford
The Revd Christian Heycocks
Mrs Lynn Hieatt
Dr Sarah Hodge
Dr Suzanne Hoelgaard
Dr Mark Hogarth
Miss Amanda Hollands
Dr Theodore Hong
Mr Anthony Hopkinson
Mrs Sylvia Hopkinson
Dr Günter Houdek
Mrs Beverley Housden
Professor James Hughes
Dr Rex Hughes
Mr Roland Huntford
Dr Stacey Hynd
Ms Mary Jennings
Dr Christopher Johnson
Mrs Faith Johnson
Mrs Anna Jones
Mr Ieuan Jones
Dr Robert Jones
Professor Brian Josephson
Ms Valentine Kang
Dr Kriti Kapila
Dr Annabel Keeler
Mrs Ruth King
Dr Wendy Kneissl
Dr Jennifer Koenig
Dr Julia Krivoruchko
Mallam Kyari
The Hon Justice Bruce Lander
Professor Peter Landrock
Dr Ulrich Lang
Dr Sandra Leaton Gray
Ms Dawn Leeder
Professor Antony Lentin
Dr Scott Levy
Mr Chris Lewis
Dr David Li
Dr Eric Li
Mr David Lie
Dr Tun Lin

Mrs Pamela Lister
Dr Janet Littlewood
Dr Yinglin Liu
Mrs Judy Lowe
Miss Yunzhi Lu
Mrs Angela Lucas
Professor Peter Lucas
Dr Carlos Ludlow-Palafox
Mr David Luhrs
Dr Mary MacDonald
Dr Sebastian Macmillan
Dr Isobel Maddison
Dr Anil Madhavapeddy
Dr Annette Mahon
Mr Paul Malpas
Dr Ferial Mansour
Professor Ivana Markova
Mr Michael Marshall
Mr Louis McCagg
Mr Richard Meade
Dr Anthea Messent
Dr Arnaud Miege
Mr Adrian Miller
Mr Steven Miller
Dr Sarah Monk
Dr Francesco Montomoli
Dr Raquel Morales
Mr Roger Morgan
Mrs Alexandra Morris
Mr Gordon Morrison
Dr Sebastian Mosbach
Mr Matthew Moss
Mrs Marilyn Motley
Mr John Mott
Dr Dawn Muddyman
Mrs Lesley Murdin
Dr Paul Murdin
Mr Simon Murray
Dr Ana Narvaez
Dr Dmitry Nerukh
Mrs Linda Newbold
Dr Jonathan Nicholls
Dr Christine Nicoll
Dr Claire O’Brien
Lady (Sally) Oliver
Dr Susan Oliver
Mrs Beryl O’May
Dr Ian O’Neill
Professor Christine Oppong
Mr Ray Palmer
Dr William Paterson
Dr Elinor Payne
Mrs Hilary Pennington
Dr Fabien Petitcolas
Dr William Pickering
Dr Anabela de Assis Pinto-Poulton
Dr Anthony Podberscek
Mrs Olive Polge
Dr Julia Poole
Dr Jocelyn Probert
Mr Ian Purdy
Mrs Ruth Quadling
Mr Ross Reason
Mrs Jennifer Redhead
Mrs Gwyneth Rees Evans
Dr Alan Rickard
Dr Hauke Riesch
Revd Keith Riglin
Lady (Joan) Riley
Mr David Roberts
Dr Leendert Rookmaaker
Dr Alasdair Russell
Mr Manas Saikia
Mrs Ursula Sainsbury
Mr Sumio Saito
Dr Jennifer Sambrook
Dr Robert Sansom
Dr Alexander Schekochihin
Dr Jochen Schenk
Professor Kevin Schürer
Mrs Michelle Searle
Dr Nick Segal
Mr Andrew Shaw
Miss Rachel Shaw
Mrs Jacqueline Sheldon
Mr Richard Shervington
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 167

Miss Alison Shipley
Dr Yury Shtyrov
Dr Neville Silverston
Mrs Francoise Simmons
Mr Michael Simmons
Mr James Smith
Dr Laurence Smith
Dr Anna Snowdon
Professor Rosanna Sornicola
Dr William Squire
Dr Thomas Stainsby
Dr Christoph Steinbeck
Dr Alison Stephen
Mr Thomas Stevens
Mr Richard Synge
Dr Charles Tahan
Mr David Tang
Mr Christopher Taylor
Mr Donald Taylor
Professor Göran Therborn
Mr James Thompson
Mr Nicholas Tippler
Dr Andrew Troup
Dr Tri Tuladhar
Ms Rachael Tuley
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Mrs Rosemary Turner
Dr Olga Ulturgasheva
Professor Alberto Varvaro
Dr Martin Vestergaard
Dr Maria-Elena Villamil
Dr Shailendra Vyakarnam
Dr Philip Ward
Miss Ruth Webb
Dr Peter Webster
Mr Robin Weyell
Dr Margaret Whichelow
Dr Frank Whitford
Professor Victor Whittaker
Ms Rebecca Whittingham-Boothe
Dr Jean Williams
Dr Richard Williams
Lady (Sally) Williams
Dr Lucy Wilson
Mrs Sue Wiseman
Dr Rosanna Yick-Ming Wong
Mrs Custis Wright
Professor Toshiki Yamamoto
Dr Kevin Yang
Dr Giles Yeo
Dr Elie Zahar
Mr James Smith, Senior Member, guiding the President through technological hazards, Annapolis, February 2008

Visitors 2007–2008
VF = Visiting Fellow
VS = Visiting Scholar
SAV= Senior Academic Visitor
PF = Press Fellow
VV = Vacation Visitor
Colonel Abdul Mohamad VF Royal Malaysian Air Force
Mr Charles Abernathy VS US Senate
Dr Kojo Amanor VF Institute of African Studies, University
of Ghana
Mr Robert Amundsen VF Agder University College, Norway
Professor Konstantin Anokhin SAV P K Anokhin Institute of Normal
Physiology, Russian Academy of
Medical Sciences
Professor Yuko Asaka VS Kawamura Gakuen Womens’ University
Professor Bain Attwood VF School of Historical Studies, Monash
University
Mrs Dzifa Azumah PF Ghana News Agency, Accra
Professor Amiya Bagchi SAV Institute of Development Studies,
Calcutta University
Dr Kadriye Bakirci VV Istanbul Technical University,
Management Faculty, Law Division
Mr Ian Balfour VF York University
Professor Jill Bambury VS Southern University School of
Architecture, Baton Rouge
Professor Stewart Barnes VF Physics Department, University of Miami
Dr Deborah Baumgold VF University of Oregon
Mr Qamar Beg VF Recently retired as Pakistan’s
Ambassador to Italy and Rome-based
UN agencies
Dr Shulamith Behr VF Courtauld Institute of Art, London
Professor Michael Belgrave VF Massey University, School of Social and
Cultural Studies, New Zealand
Dr Emily Bernhard Jackson VF University of Arkansas
Dr David Berry VF University of Évora, Portugal
Professor Enrique Bocardo-Crespo VF University of Seville, Spain
Mr Paul Brown PF Freelance Journalist and Author
Professor Mehmet Bulut VF Baskent University, Turkey
Dr Mikhail Burtsev SAV Keldysh Institute of Applied
Mathematics, Russian Academy of
Medical Sciences
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 169

Mr Justice Joseph Campbell VF Sydney, NSW
Dr Michael Carrel VF CU Lauterpacht Centre for
International Law
Professor Peter Carrington VF University of Waterloo/Canadian
Journal of Criminology and Criminal
Justice, Canada
Mr Liang-tung Chen VS Industrial Development Bureau, MoEA
Professor Yongguo Chen VF Foreign Language Department,
Tsinghua University, China
Professor Mario Citroni VV Università di Firenze, Dept Scienze
dell’antichità
Professor Adam Cobb VF US Marine Corps, Virginia
Professor Roger Collins VS Macquarie Graduate School of
Management, Macquarie University
Professor Luisa Corrado VF University of Rome Tor Vergata/CU
Faculty of Economics
Professor Adrienne Cox SAV University of North Carolina
Dr Anthony Cullen VF CU Lauterpacht Centre for
International Law
Ms Phan Thu Huong Dang VS International Cooperation Dept of the
Vietnamese Ministry of Industry and
Trade
Mr Carlos de Maria y Campos Segura VS CU Law Faculty/University of Galicia
Dr James Delbourgo VF McGill University, Montreal
Dr Raquel DeMarco de Hormaeche VF CU Department of Clinical Veterinary
Medicine
Professor Channing Der SAV University of North Carolina
Professor Evgeny Dobrenko VF Dept of Russian & Slavonic Studies,
University of Sheffield
Dr Sven Dupré VF Centre for History of Science, Ghent
University
Dr William Etges VF University of Arkansas
Mr David Fisher PF Listener Magazine, NZ
Ms Mashaal Gauhar PF
Dr Mascha Gemmeke VS English Department, EMA University of
Greifswald, Germany
Dr Ajit Ghose VF Institute for Human Development, New
Delhi
Professor John Gillroy VF Lehigh University, USA
Mr Nicholas Glakas VF Career College Association, USA
Professor Shmuel Glick VS The Schocken Institute for Jewish
Research, Jerusalem
Dr Naomi Goldfeld-Vogelman VV Retired, Bar-Ilan University, Israel
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Miss Harumi Goto VS Japan Society for the Promotion of
Science
Professor Christopher Grey VF Warwick Business School, University of
Warwick
Dr Junhua Guo VS Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Dr Felicity Hand VF English Department, Autonomous
University of Barcelona
Mr Michael Hands VF CU Dept of Geography
Professor Bruce Harris VF Faculty of Law, University of Auckland
Dr Stefan Heidemann VS Institute of Languages and Cultures of
the Middle East, Jena University
Dr Roger Hillman VF German & Film Studies, Australian
National University
Dr Marja Hinfelaar VF National Archives of Zambia
Professor Thomas Hodgson SAV North Carolina State University
Mrs Meredith Hooper VS Freelance Writer and Historian
Professor Misao Iida VS Graduate School of Integrated Arts and
Sciences, Hiroshima University
The Hon. Justice David Ipp SAV Court of Appeal, NSW
Dr Yutaka Iwami VV Department of Politics, Kokushikan
University
Ms Leila Iyldyz VS British Embassy, Astana
Dr Alice Jenkins VF University of Glasgow
Dr Walima Kalusa VF University of Zambia
Colonel Kamarol Fauzi bin Mohd Said VF Ministry of Defence, Malaysia
Mr Nicholas Kamau VF Egerton University, Kenya
Dr Carolyn King VF University of Waikato, New Zealand
Dr Benjamin Kipkorir SAV Formerly Kenyan Ambassador to the
USA
Dr Benjamin Kipkorir
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 171

Dr Rainer Kulms VF Max Planck Institut, Hamburg
Miss Vuyelwa Kuuya VF CU Lauterpacht Centre for
International Law
Dr Konrad Lachmayer VS Law Faculty, University of Vienna
Dr Kam Hing Lee VS Star Publications (M) Berhad, Malaysia
Dr Helena Lenihan VF Department of Economics, University
of Limerick
Professor William Leslie VS SUNY at Brockport, USA
Mr George Liebmann SAV Liebmann and Shively PA, Maryland
Ms Tshilidzi Ligaraba VS Department of Environmental Affairs
and Tourism, South Africa
Dr Bruce Littleboy VS School of Economics, University of
Queensland
Professor Margaret Malamud VF New Mexico State University
Professor Sandra Marchetti VV Università di Firenze, Dept Scienze
dell’antichità
Mr Jon Marti VF Harper & Marti, Warren
Professor Tshilidzi Marwala VF School of Electrical and Information
Engineering, University of the
Witwatersrand
Mr Frank McDonald PF The Irish Times, Dublin
Ms Tara McGee VS School of Justice/Faculty of Law,
Queensland University of Technology
172
Wolfson in Brisbane, Tara McGee in front of Pillar No
204 in the Great Court of the University of
Queensland, which shows the College crest
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32

Professor Michael McKenzie VS Royal Melbourne Institute of
Technology
Professor John Metcalfe VF University of Manchester
Judge Ian Mill VS Wellington, New Zealand
Dr Adam Mosley VF Swansea University
Ms Iris Müller VF CU Lauterpacht Centre for
International Law
Mr Stephen Mutimba VS Energy for Sustainable Development,
Kenya
Professor Sajal Nag VF Assam University, India
Mr Mpumelelo Ncwadi VS Graduate School of Business, University
of Cape Town
Mrs Celiwe Ntuli VS Graduate School of Business, University
of Cape Town
Mr Sicelo Ntuli VS Graduate School of Business, University
of Cape Town
Professor Takashi Okuhara VS Senshu University, Japan
Revd Dr Michael Okyerefo VF Department of Sociology, University of
Ghana
Dr Christopher Oldstone-Moore VS Wright State University, USA
Dr Jennifer Oldstone-Moore VS Dept of Religion and East Asian Studies,
Wittenberg University
Ms Adriana Oropeza Lliteras VS Instituto Tecnológico de México,
Mexico City
Professor Dr Erik Ostenfeld VF University of Aarhus
Mr William Owusu PF The Ghanaian Times, Accra
Mr Sameer Parker VS South Africa
Ms Damaris Parsitau VF Dept of Philosophy & Religious Studies,
Egerton University, Kenya
Dr Nina Per˜sak VS Scientific Research Centre, Slovenian
Academy of Sciences and Arts
Professor Brian Pinkstone VS School of Economics and Finance,
University of Western Sydney
Miss Molebaleng Pitsoe VS Business Analyst
Professor Anthony Potts VS La Trobe University, Australia
Dr Charles Prior VF University of Hull
Mr Aaron Ralby VS Cornell University
Ms Jaqueline Ramos PF Freelance Journalist, Brazil
Professor John Richards VF University House & ANU College of
Engineering and Computer Science
Mr Andrew Robinson VF Times Higher Education Supplement
Dr Markus Roth VF Max Planck Institut, Hamburg
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 173

Mr Mohmad bin Salleh VF Royal Malaysian Police Headquarters,
Sarawak
Ms Rizka Sari VS Pelangi Energi Abadi Citra Enviro,
Indonesia
Dr Cornelia Schoeck VF CRASSH
Dr Robert Schuetze VS Durham Law School
Dr Antonio Scialà VS University of Padua, Italy
Professor Alan Scott VF University of Innsbruck, Austria
Professor Aleksander Se˛k VF Institute of Acoustics, Adam Mickiewicz
University, Poznan, Poland
Dr Vania Sena VS Aston Business School, Aston University
Dr Falak Sher VS PIEAS, Islamabad
Mr Yaodong Shi VS Department of Industrial Economic
Research, Beijing
Professor George Siedel VF University of Michigan
Ms Renetta Siemens VS Department of Foreign Affairs and
International Trade, Canada
Mr Mauricio Silva de Souza VS Government of Pernambuco
Dr Radhika Singha VF Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal
Nehru University, New Delhi
Dr Deborah Staines VF SCMP, Macquarie University
Dr Gregory Sutton VF Case Western Reserve University
Professor Colleen Taylor VF Wits School of Arts, University of the
Witwatersrand, South Africa
Dr Lee Thompson VF Lamar University, Texas
Dr Nicholas Thompson VS School of Divinty, University of
Aberdeen
Mr Maxim Titov VS International Finance Corporation, St
Petersburg
Dr Peter Towson SAV Sydney
Professor Allan Vaag VF Steno Diabetes Center, Gentofte/Lund
University
Professor Dr Ulrich van Suntum VF Dept of Economics/Center of Applied
Economics, University of Muenster
(CAWM)
Professor Christos Vassilicos VF Dept of Aeronautics & Institute of
Mathematical Sciences, Imperial
College London
Professor Tuija Virtanen-Ulfhielm VF Åbo Akademi University, Finland
Professor Kyoko Wakimoto VS Department of English Language
Education, Okayama University, Japan
Professor Hui Wang VF University of Bologna and Tsinghua
University
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Professor Ning Wang VF Tsinghua University, Beijing
Dr Amanda Weltman VF CU Centre for Theoretical Cosmology,
DAMTP
Mr Matt Wenham VS Cambridge Institute for Medical
Research
Dr Fletcher Wicker VF Communication Architectures
Department, The Aerospace
Corporation, USA
Professor Clark Williams VF University of Richmond, Virginia
Professor Kazufumi Yamane VS Nutrition Faculty, Nakamura Gakuen
University, Fukuoka, Japan
Mr Yanlin Yin VS Office of the Central Leading Group on
Finance and Economic Affairs, PR
China
Dr Hai-Tao Zhang VS Dept of Control Science & Engineering
(HUST), Wuhan, PR China
Ms Lihua Zhu VF Cambridge University Library
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 175

College Administration
Accommodation and Functions Mrs Marilyn Motley
Accountant Mr Jonathan Beart
Butler Mr David Buck
Clerk of Works Mr Paul Chapman
College Secretary and President’s Assistant Mrs Sheila Betts
Computer Officer Mr Mirza Baig
Executive Chef Mr Ray Palmer
Fees Ms Aikaterini Gargaroni
Head Gardener Mr Phil Stigwood
Head Porter Mr David Luhrs
Lee Librarian Mrs Anna Jones
Personnel Officer Mrs Sally Cullen
Postgraduate Administrator Miss Mariken Schipper
Press Fellowship Administrator Ms Glenna Awbrey
Registrar Mrs Michelle Searle
Student Financial Officer Mrs Sue Sang
Tutorial Administrator (Part-time Students) Mrs Janet Smith
Tutorial Office Manager Mrs Kim Allen
Undergraduate Administrator Miss Rebecca Merry
For contact details please consult the College website
Websites
Wolfson College www.wolfson.cam.ac.uk
Press Fellowship Programme www.wolfsonpress.org
WCSA www.wolfson.cam.ac.uk/wcsa
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Obituaries
Tony Adams Fellow 1995–1999
Born 23 September 1933 – Died 3 September 2008
Witold Tulasiewicz
Tony Adams was born on 23 September 1933 and spent
most of his early life in Lincolnshire and Norfolk. He read
English as an undergraduate at Christ’s College where he
was an outstanding student and took a first class degree
in 1954.
He was invited to continue his academic studies and
began research into literature translations with some
enthusiasm. His love of language, however, and his interest
in the power of language in shaping human identity made
him abandon his research and turn to teaching English in
school instead. He was promoted rapidly to become head of department and local
authority inspector.
During that time Tony was intent on placing the National Association of Teachers
of English (NATE) at the centre of debates about English and English teaching and he
became secretary and subsequently chair of NATE. He continued playing a crucial
role in defining the subject until the end of his life.
In 1972 he was appointed lecturer in the Cambridge University Department of
Education, coordinating the PGCE. His scholarship and teaching in this area led to
his gaining a wide reputation both nationally and internationally. He also remained
committed to European Education and Language Awareness where he continued to
further his reputation through keynote speeches delivered at professional meetings he
liked to attend and help organize. During that time he was invited to become a Fellow
of Wolfson College.
In the late 1980s Tony’s contribution to teaching with micro-computers led to his
being made joint editor of two major collections of books on teaching with digital
technologies and other aspects of English education. He was still working on one of
these books during his last illness. The impact of his publications will survive his
untimely death after a short illness on 3 September 2008. His passing is deeply
regretted and he will be missed by a large cohort of friends, collaborators and
colleagues worldwide.
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 177

Dr Tom Alexander Fellow since 1980 and Emeritus Fellow since 1998
Born 7 October 1930 – Died 1 October 2008
Dan Tucker, Meritxell Donadeu, Jake Waddilove and Hank Harris
With Tom’s passing we recall the life of a rare person who
found success and a great deal of fulfilment in a lifetime’s
work that revolved around the central themes of pig health,
production and disease. Tom was a pioneer who helped
move pig production from the backyard into the modern
world of high health intensive rearing systems. Natural
charm and enthusiasm, combined with an encyclopaedic
knowledge and pragmatic but cutting intellect made
him equally successful and comfortable in veterinary
microbiology, clinical practice, business and consultancy.
His legacy is a global network of people in swine research and industry, almost an
alumnus, who, having met, worked, and laughed with Tom, will carry forward his
still relevant guiding principles that underpin modern pig production.
Born in Cardiff on the 7 October 1930, the son of a successful industrialist, Oundle
School prepared Tom well for mixing with the class of 1954 at the Royal Veterinary
College, many of whom had spent the last six years serving their country. There were
many fond memories, often and vividly shared, of the early years in practice – first in
Lambourn in equine practice and then in mixed practice in St Columb Major. These
were also the glory days of Tom’s rugby playing – a life’s love that, while costing him
his knees in later life, gave rise to yet more and innumerable stories – mostly of
‘events’ off the pitch! More latterly, countless happy and vocal hours were spent
with his wife Lenore in the stands at the University Rugby Ground in Cambridge.
Tom’s move to the Ontario Veterinary College in Guelph in 1957 was really the start
of his career in pigs. As Large Animal Houseman, his prodigious equine abilities soon
caused some local embarrassment to the prevailing Faculty – only resolved when he
was offered a research position to investigate the newly recognised Vomiting and
Wasting Disease of pigs. Awarded his MVSc in 1960, Tom gained a Faculty position
at Guelph but the opportunity to undertake doctoral research into the development
of gut flora in pigs and lambs lured him to Cambridge University Veterinary School.
PhD in hand, Tom was briefly tempted back to the Faculty at Guelph but the
growing critical mass of pig expertise at Cambridge (Beveridge, Whittlestone,
Goodwin, and Storey-Pugh to name but a few) brought him back in 1966 to a
Lectureship in Veterinary Microbiology – a post that was to occupy him for the
next thirty-two years, for the last eight of which he was Deputy Head of School.
Tom was a naturally skilled mentor and teacher, primarily in microbiology but
latterly in pig medicine, being held in the highest regard by successive classes of
Cambridge students. Highly astute in University politics, the students could always
rely on Tom to defend their cause with the powers that be. However, having said that,
he never quite forgave the class in 1971; on bounding excitedly into the lecture theatre
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declaring his team had finally jointly cracked the aetiology of swine dysentery,
Brachyspira hyodysenteriae, unbelievably they barely managed a murmur of disinterest
and gazed unexcitedly into the middle distance. A mark of Tom’s congenial yet efficient
social skills was his appointment to Wine Steward at Wolfson College, where he held a
Fellowship.
Tom’s outstanding contribution to veterinary education was recognised in 1999
when he was awarded the Dalrymple Champney’s Cup by the British Veterinary
Association. This contribution extended well beyond undergraduate teaching: Tom
was a founder member of the UK Pig Veterinary Society (voted Honorary Member in
2006), the co-ordinator of the first Congress of the International Pig Veterinary Society
in 1969, and he also chaired the Diploma Board for pig medicine at the Royal College
of Veterinary Surgeons for many years.
His internationally recognised ability in pig medicine, together with a sensibly
flexible University contract, meant that Tom could retain a healthy link with the real
world of the pig industry. One of his greatest contributions to pig production was
in the creation of Medicated Early Weaning (MEW) which initially was designed to
decrease the cost of acquiring disease-free piglets. Unwittingly, MEW became the basis
for how most pigs are now reared around the world e.g. Multi-site Production. Crucial
and repeatedly visionary contributions on health and biosecurity helped move the
Pig Improvement Company (PIC) from being a local outfit of forward thinking pig
farmers in Oxfordshire in the 1960s to being global leader in the supply of high-health
pig genetics by the 1980s. His active contribution to PIC took him all over the world
and was a labour of love that continued to the day of his passing. Additionally, fifteen
years were spent on the Board of Directors at Hanford Farms, but life took a turn
for the unusual when Tom agreed to help the xenotransplant company, Imutran,
optimise health and welfare for its research herd.
His pioneering contribution to pig medicine was recognised at global level in June
2008 when the 20th Congress of the International Pig Veterinary Society, meeting in
Durban, elected him to honorary life membership – ironically, the first IPVS Congress
that Tom had ever missed. Although he published many papers and was widely
recognised for his work on streptococcal meningitis and swine dysentery, it was seeing
his highly popular and accessible book Managing Pig Health and the Treatment of
Disease, co-authored with his close friend Mike Muirhead, sitting on the shelf that
perhaps gave Tom the greatest sense of a job well done.
While his entire and varied career was indeed a job well done, Tom ultimately lived
for his much cherished and equally dynamic family. Every moment of his retirement
was filled to the brim with life and family – racing, painting, investment club, holidays,
the gym and of course consultancy work was also squeezed in until the very evening of
his unexpectedly sudden yet peaceful death on 1 October 2008. Our warmest thoughts
rest with his wife Lenore, their children Jan and Nicholas, and the grandchildren as
they come to terms with his passing.
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 179

Richard Barlow-Poole Senior Member since 1988
Born 28 November 1919 – Died 4 September 2008
Bill Kirkman
Richard Barlow-Poole died on 4 September 2008 aged 89.
Born on 28 November 1919, he was active, and forwardlooking,
throughout his life. A Christ’s man, who for years
edited their college magazine, he greatly relished his Senior
Membership of Wolfson.
For 21 years Richard served in the Colonial Service in
Northern Nigeria, staying on after independence in 1960.
In 1968 he returned to Cambridge as an Assistant Registrary,
and served in that role for 19 years. He threw himself
enthusiastically into University administration, just as
he had done into serving Nigeria as it approached independence. He was one of those
people of whom it could be truly said that his work was not just a job, but a vocation.
Until the end of his life, he continued to take a well-informed interest in Nigeria,
notably through the Britain-Nigeria Society, and he enjoyed meeting Nigerian students
as well as maintaining contacts made, many years previously, with Nigerian colleagues.
In 1949 Richard married his wife Lucie, who was Austrian, at Little St Mary’s Church. On
their return from Nigeria to Cambridge they became active members of the congregation
and in 2005 when Lucie died aged 99 a service of thanksgiving for her was held there.
Richard nursed Lucie devotedly during her final months. After her death, he
continued to lead a busy life, travelling widely, and entertaining: he was a more than
competent cook.
Those who knew Richard benefited greatly from his knowledge and his wisdom. He
knew Nigeria at a crucial period of its history, and contributed much to the country. His
affection for it was always apparent – an affection that was never nostalgic, was critical,
but was always warm.
Professor Lewis (Bunny) Birch, BSc, MA, FBPS Visiting Fellow 1975–1976
Born 24 February 1913 – Died 7 January 2008
Glenn Cartwright
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Professor Birch died at his home in Montreal on 7 January
2008, at the age of 94. He was born in Burton-on-Trent,
on 24 February 1913 and attended Burton Grammar School
and later the University of Birmingham where he studied
zoology. He met his future wife Mary when she was only 16,
and they married just three days after war was declared in
1939. Bunny was sent overseas to India and Burma where he
served as an officer, latterly major, in the Indian Army. He
served in Burma and at the lifting of the siege of the Indian

city of Imphal, and was responsible for the air evacuation of wounded soldiers and
prisoners of war for the entire Burma theatre. He eventually became a Brevet Lt Col
and developed a system of air evacuation that became standard for that theatre of war.
While making a rescue flight, his plane crashed in the jungle wounding the pilot. Birch
was seriously injured but was rescued by local tribesmen and carried for several days
through the jungle and over the hills back to base.
After his return home, he completed a master’s degree at the University of
Birmingham and worked in Burton-on-Trent as an educational psychologist. He
moved to the Institute of Education at the University of Sheffield in 1952. Much
involved in the British Psychological Society, he succeeded Philip Vernon as the
editor of the British Journal of Educational Psychology, a post he held from 1962
to 1967 when he was invited to McGill University in Montreal.
At McGill he was appointed Professor of Education and named Chairman
of the Division of Graduate Studies in the Faculty of Education. As Director of
Graduate Studies from 1969 to 1975, he supervised the rapid expansion of the
Faculty’s graduate programme, established new administrative procedures and
academic admission standards, and became the chief liaison between the Faculty
of Education and the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research. He was named
the fifth Sir William C Macdonald Professor of Education in 1970 and from 1971–1972
was Chairman of the Department of Methods of Research. Tenured in 1972, he
became Chairman of the Department of Educational Research from 1973 to 1975
and for many years was Chairman of the Research Ethics Committee (non-medical)
of the University.
He was Visiting Fellow here at Wolfson College in 1975–1976. As Professor at
McGill in what is now known as the Department of Educational and Counselling
Psychology, he remained Director of Graduate Studies until his retirement in 1979
and continued post-retirement as Professor until 1983.
Academia was only one part of his life. A veritable polymath, he was
extraordinarily interested in everything. He was an outstanding cabinetmaker
and had a passion for gardening. In England he was known for his fabulous rose
garden and in Montreal he quickly developed expertise in local flora and had a
wonderful garden of indigenous flowers, often ‘rescued’ from building sites just
ahead of the bulldozers!
He is survived by his wife of 68 years, Mary, and daughters Katherine and Patricia.
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 181

Lord Bridge of Harwich Honorary Fellow since 1989
Born 26 February 1917 – Died 20 November 2007
Kiaron Whitehead
Nigel Cyprian Bridge had eloquence and tenacity coupled
with handsome features and a wide-ranging and considerable
intelligence. Born on 26 February 1917 to the daughter of a
wealthy Lancashire cotton manufacturer and a Commander
of the Royal Navy – a father who he never met – Bridge went
on to be one of the Country’s leading judicial figures. And a
controversial one at that.
He was educated at Marlborough College, where he won
a scholarship, then at 17 he quit to travel Europe. No slouch
and always knowledge-hungry, he became fluent in French
and German before returning to work for two Lancastrian
regional newspapers. But an allowance from his grandfather distracted him and he used the
free time to write a novel, though it was never published.
In 1940 (after having been rejected by the Fleet Air Arm due to colour blindness), he
joined the King’s Royal Rifle Corps where he received a commission and served in Italy and
Germany. Here his taste for advocacy began to develop and Bridge successfully represented
a soldier court-martialled for desertion. His reputation soon grew. His private life too was
working out nicely and at the age of 27, during his commission, he married Margaret
Swinbank with whom he subsequently had a son and two daughters.
His abilities were obvious, but when he was demobilised in 1946 he had no professional
qualifications or trade. Money was tight and, now a married man with a family, his small
private income was rapidly diminishing.
So he took to the Bar. Top of his year in the 1947 examinations, he was called to Inner
Temple and took up a pupillage and then seat in a young set of personal injury (PI) chambers
from where, although he was not richly rewarded financially, his brilliance was quickly felt
and he inflicted much pain on his opponents. In 1950, after one such brilliant defeat on a
member of another chambers, he was invited to join the chambers – and did. This allowed
Bridge to combine PI law with work for the government.
In 1964, he became Junior Counsel to the Treasury, knowing that it was a direct route to
the Bench. Four years later, he became a High Court Judge where his intellect sometimes
challenged less gifted advocates.
Perhaps ironically (Bridge himself having flirted with journalism), media attention was
never far away from his judicial life. In 1969, he presided over the ‘ownership of Arthur’ case,
having to decide who owned the feline star of the Spillers’ pet food commercial and whether
the cat had had its teeth removed. After examining the cat and finding its teeth, Bridge called
an actor witness “ a brazen liar” which the media pounced on.
But it was as trial judge in the ‘Birmingham Six’ case in 1975 for which he is perhaps best
known. The bombings in November 1974 brought to a crescendo a series of alleged IRA
attacks and there was huge pressure for a conviction. Bridge firmly believed that the six
defendants’ confessions had not been obtained by police beatings and directed the jury
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that claims to the contrary were “simply not credible”. After the jury returned a guilty verdict,
Bridge said that it had been “the clearest and most overwhelming evidence I have ever heard
in a case of murder”. However, he faced considerable criticism in the media for arguing the
case like an advocate in his summing up. Sixteen years later, the convictions were overturned
on the grounds of new evidence. In 1992, in a TV interview, Bridge said that he felt “unhappy”
but not responsible for what had happened. He rightly reminded the interviewer that,
although miscarriages of justice can happen, “it’s easy to be wise after the event...the
important question is how do we prevent it happening in the future?”
The Birmingham Six case was Bridge’s last before being appointed to the Court of Appeal
later in 1975. In one memorable case, he held that a British Rail steward had committed no
crime for selling homemade sandwiches to passengers, commenting that in comparison
with the railway food “who knows, the steward’s sandwiches might have been fresher”.
Five years later, he was elevated to the House of Lords. And this, remember, for a man
with no degree. He excelled in this judicially academic environment and quickly justified
his appointment.
In 1982, he was also appointed Chair of the Security Commission and conducted an
inquiry into the resignation of the Queen’s then bodyguard over a relationship with a male
prostitute finding that the guard had not been a security risk but had left himself exposed to
blackmail. In the same role, Bridge delivered a report into alleged phone tapping of CND
campaigners by MI5, finding that there had been no impropriety. This was pounced on by
the Labour party who called it a whitewash; and Roy Jenkins criticised Bridge of being a
“poodle of the executive”.
However, Bridge showed his teeth and continued to round his career on the bench when,
in 1987, he condemned the government’s behaviour in his dissenting judgement in a House
of Lords’ 3:2 decision to continue the ban of Peter Wright’s Spycatcher book. Bridge stated
that freedom of speech was the first casualty under a totalitarian regime and that the
government’s continued attempts to prevent publication in the UK of a book already
published in other jurisdictions was “a significant step down that very dangerous road”.
Bridge continued his career in the House of Lords, demonstrating the judiciary’s
independence from parliament in a wide variety of cases, including ‘Gillick’ – holding
that doctors should be allowed to prescribe the contraceptive pill to young women under
16 without their parents’ consent; and the ‘McCoughlin’ case, which ruled that a mother
could recover damages for nervous shock caused by discovering that her daughter had
been killed and her husband injured in a car crash.
Bridge retired in 1992 (which at 75 was compulsory), but not before having challenged
the Lord Chancellor’s attempts to reduce the judicial retirement age to 70. Perhaps the one
thing lacking from his CV was a degree. But his tenacity was still strong and, at the age 78,
he took up an Open University mathematics degree.
As president of the Wolfson Law Society in 1997, I invited Lord Bridge to be my guest
speaker. His presence was a resounding success – and his notes were written on the back of
one his OU maths papers. He graduated in 2003, aged 86. Four years later, he died. But what
a life and what an example to us all. His wife Margaret predeceased him in 2006, and he is
survived by his three children.
He will be warmly remembered at Wolfson.
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 183

Stephen Finney Mason CChem FRSC FRS Fellow 1988–1990
Born 6 July 1923 – Died 11 December 2007
Robert Peacock and Brian Stewart
Stephen Mason was born in Leicester in 1923 and
brought up in the village of Anstey. He won a scholarship
to Wyggeston Grammar School and from there took up
an open scholarship in natural sciences at Wadham
College, Oxford.
He graduated BA in 1945 and completed his DPhil in
1947 on the physico-chemical factors underlying the
biological properties of some antimalarial agents.
Mason had become interested in the history of Wadham
College and in particular of John Wilkins, who was a
founder member of the Royal Society. An essay on the history of protochemical ideas
led to the offer of a departmental demonstratorship in the Museum for the History
of Science, Oxford (1947–53) which he held concurrently with a college tutorship
at Wadham. The lectures on science history given as part of the demonstratorship
were augmented and published in 1956 as A History of the Sciences, a pioneering
work which treated the development of science in the context of economic and
social factors. It has never been out of print and has been translated into at least
seven languages.
He had kept up his chemical researches during his time at the Museum and,
feeling that it was easier to do historical research in a chemistry department than
vice versa, took up a Fellowship with Adrian Albert at the Australian National
Laboratory (then in the Euston Road, London). Here began his life long interest
in spectroscopy. In 1955 he attended the first of Charles Coulson’s Summer Schools
in Theoretical Chemistry and from then on the interaction of synthetic chemistry,
experimental spectroscopy and theory characterised his research. While at the ANU
he met and married Joan Banus who was then a Postdoctoral Fellow at University
College London.
In 1956 he took up a lectureship in physical organic chemistry at the University
of Exeter and was promoted to Reader in 1963. He moved to a foundation chair of
Chemistry at the University of East Anglia in 1964 and in 1970 to Kings College London
where he remained until retirement.
Mason is best known for his contributions to Optical Activity in its widest form.
He was particularly interested in the spectroscopy of chiral molecules and, shortly
after arriving at Exeter, built a spectrometer to measure circular dichroism. Early
achievements included the use of exciton theory to determine the absolute
configuration of an organic molecule (calycanthine) in solution for the first time. He also
made the first measurements of single crystal CD spectra of transition metal complexes.
This in turn led to the development of a theoretical understanding of such spectra.
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Understanding the theoretical basis of transition metal optical activity was
paramount and was achieved during the 1970s by the development of Ligand
Polarisability Theory. Instruments continued to be developed during this period
and CD measurements were extended to the vacuum ultraviolet and (for the first time)
to the infra-red regions. As a direct result of the IRCD work, a comprehensive theory
of the optical properties of cholesteric liquid crystals was also published.
During his final decade at Kings, Mason’s attention focussed on interactions
between chiral molecules and particularly the role of the weak nuclear force in the
origin of biomolecular homochirality. The distillation of over twenty-five years of
research into Optical Activity was published as Molecular Optical Activity and the
Chiral Discriminations in 1982, the same year he was elected FRS.
Stephen Mason was an innovative scientist and an innovative historian, who
genuinely bridged C P Snow’s “two cultures”. There was a period (Kings in the 1970s)
when a (today unthinkable) variety of activities took place in Mason’s laboratory:
organic and inorganic synthesis, instrumental development, spectroscopy,
computational and theoretical investigations and historical studies. We embraced
all of chemistry and felt there were no boundaries. In summing up his attitude to
research we can do no better than to quote the man himself. When asked by students
whether they should do A or B, his inevitable mantra was “Its not ‘either/or’ its ‘AND
AND!’ “ which sums up his all inclusive philosophy of research. His many postdoctoral
workers and visitors benefited from being treated as colleagues and co-workers and
were allowed a remarkable freedom to publish alone while enjoying hospitality in
his laboratory.
In 1988 Stephen and Joan retired and moved to Cambridge where he held an
extraordinary Fellowship at Wolfson College (1988–90). A memorial service was held
in the Lee Hall of the College on 30 March 2008.
His final book, Chemical Evolution: Origins of the Elements, Molecules and Living
Systems, was published in 1991. He was an active member of the Chemical Society
(later the RSC) having joined on graduation in 1945. In 1991 he founded the Historical
Group of the RSC and served as its chairman for the first three years.
Stephen’s principal interest outside chemistry was the history and philosophy
of science. He had begun a major revision of A History of the Sciences when Joan died
in 2004, which hit him extremely hard. He is survived by his sons, Oliver, Andrew
and Lionel.
Reproduced in abridged form by kind permission of The Royal Society of Chemistry
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32 185

Graham Pollard Senior Member 1966, Fellow since 1967 and Emeritus Fellow since 1997
Born 25 December 1929 – Died 17 December 2007
Margaret Greeves and Bill Kirkman
Graham Pollard was born on Christmas Day 1929, and
died 78 years later, on 17 December 2007. His wife Maria
died three weeks earlier. They are survived by their
son Lawrence who works for the BBC.
In some ways Graham Pollard was an archetypal
Cambridge man. He was an undergraduate at Pembroke.
He was an international authority on Italian Renaissance
medals. He spent his entire professional life at the
Fitzwilliam Museum, where he was Keeper of Coins and
Medals and Deputy Director. He was elected to a Fellowship
of University College (now Wolfson) in 1967 and was a devoted Fellow of the College,
where he served as College Librarian from 1980 to 1995. He cycled round Cambridge.
He lunched regularly in College.
Archetypal Cambridge man, certainly, but the route by which he came to that
position was not standard. He was born in Kent, where his father was serving in the
Royal Navy at Chatham. His antiquarian interests were fed by his visits, as a child, to
Rochester Museum.
At the end of the war, Graham’s family moved to Cambridge, where his father had
joined the clerical staff of Pembroke College. Graham, still a schoolboy, spent so much
time at the Fitzwilliam that he was offered a job as an attendant at the Museum.
He started working for a London external degree in geography, but stopped when
he began his National Service in 1948. After two years of National Service he returned
home and became a Museum Assistant in the Coin Room at the Fitzwilliam, and,
encouraged by the Director to apply to Cambridge to read History, taught himself
sufficient Latin to pass the entrance examination for Pembroke. On graduating in 1954
he was appointed a junior Assistant Keeper and in 1966 was promoted to Keeper of
Coins and Medals at the Fitzwilliam.
Graham was an industrious curator with a discerning eye for quality acquisitions
and a friendly manner that encouraged both his colleagues and the Museum’s
supporters. He published frequently and through his good offices the unrivalled
collections of European Medieval Coins belonging to Professor Philip Grierson (Caius)
were first lent and later bequeathed to the Museum. He took early retirement from
the Fitzwilliam in 1988 and began to work on his magnum opus, the authoritative,
posthumously published Catalogue of Renaissance Medals in the National Gallery of
Art in Washington.
In 1963 Graham married Maria Seri, whom he had met two years earlier on a visit
to Italy. They were a devoted couple, living for the next 44 years in Cambridge, with
frequent visits to Italy.
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Graham’s active interests ranged far more widely than over his professional work.
Notably, he was for many years a leading member of the Cambridge Preservation
Society, at a period when its major focus was resisting some of the more
undistinguished developments in the city, such as the Lion Yard, which replaced Petty
Cury. He also served as chairman of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society.
Graham’s contribution to the life and development of Wolfson was substantial. As
College Librarian, at a time before the College was in a position to employ someone
full time in that role, he laid the foundations of a library appropriate to a graduate
college, and he played an extremely important part in the design of the Lee Library. He
was a member of the College Council for a total of eight years.
His active involvement in College life continued after his retirement. He had a warm
and friendly personality, and carried his academic distinction lightly. He had a wry and
quirky sense of humour, and a genuine liking for people. Lunchtime conversations
with him were always a delight.
It was no surprise, when my wife and I were enjoying a wonderfully funny
performance of Round the Horne at the Arts Theatre, about a year before his death, to
find that the chortles of enjoyment from the row behind us came from Graham, like us
relishing the journey back to one of the classics of radio comedy.
Distinguished academic, devoted College member, and a thoroughly likeable man,
Graham is sadly missed.
The College has also been informed of the following deaths:
Ms Ilana Abramovitch – notified of her death
Mrs Elizabeth Abrams (widow of Dr John Abrams, Fellow and Emeritus Fellow) –
notified by her daughter Lindy of her death on 21 July 2008
Professor Colin Alexander – notified of his death by Ann Alexander in January 2008
Mr Trevor Brown (member of staff) – notified of his death from a heart attack on
13 January 2008
Mr Gary Coull – notified of his death in October 2006
Mr Marcus Esketh Crahan Jr – notified by Cambridge in America of his death on
29 February 2008
Professor John E Drabble – notified by Cambridge in America of his death on
1 July 2006
Miss Polly Jeanne Fahnestock – notified by her husband Dr Stefan Paetke of her
death on 1 October 2007
Mr Arthur William Galston – notified by Cambridge in America of his death on
15 June 2008
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188
Mr Patrick Joseph Gorry – notified by his widow Christine of his death on
22 December 2007. A Metropolitan Police Officer, one of the oldest Boxing Blues
and friend of the late Jack King
Miss Frances Haywood – notified of her death by G. Toynbee-Clarke in September
2007
Mr Ian Hyams – notified by Stephanie Hyams of his death on 24 April 2008
Judge Brinsley Donald Inglis – notified by his widow of his death on 26 April 2008
Reverend Charles Earl Johnson – notified by Professor Charles Carlton of his death
after an extended illness on 31 December 2007
Professor Peter Lipton – notified of his death on 25 November 2007
Professor Thomas Marr – notified of his death by the Cambridge Society
Dr John William Maunder – notified by his son of his death on 18 October 2007
Dr Diana Lois Stone Peters – notified of her death by Cambridge in America
Dr Herbert Reynolds – notified in February 2008 of his death on 25 May 2007
Professor R L Schnell – notified of his death in 2005
Mrs Margaret Johnson Shaw OBE (widow of Mr John Shaw, Emeritus Fellow) –
notified of her death on the 27 June 2008
Miss Margaret Catherine Spooner – notified by the University Development Office
of her death in December 2003
Dr Ceferino Villalmil-Martinez III – notified by Miss Geeta Alvares Meneses of his
death on 12 December 2006; he is survived by his wife Miss Helen Jeacock, an
alumna of the College
Mr Allan Maxwell Watt – notified by his daughter of his death on 16 February 2008
Professor Phillipa Christine Weeks – notified of her death
Mr Richard Wilson – notified of his death on 2 July 2008
Mr Andrew Thomas Yoxall – notified of his death by Stephanie Yoxall
Wolfson College Magazine 2007–2008 No . 32