News Articles

The Selwyn College Choir completed five Carol Services in less than a week during its busiest period in December: two in Cambridge, two in London and one in Bury St Edmunds.

Our first photograph shows the service in the College Chapel, after the lights had been dimmed and the candles lit for the final Carol “Hark The Herald Angels Sing”.

 

Below is the congregation at the service for alumni in St Botolph-without-Aldgate in London on Tuesday December 9th. More than 200 people attended. The following night the Choir performed at the NSPCC’s Carols by Candlelight in Spitalfields, with the celebrities in attendance including actors James Norton and Christopher Eccleston.

 

To hear the Choir singing one of Music Director Sarah MacDonald’s arrangements of a traditional Carol, just click here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qizaB6Og5I

Selwyn College is pleased to announce that it will be offering six Graduate studentships with effect from the next academic year. They will be:

2 Selwyn/AHRC PhD studentships (fees and maintenance for three years)

1 Selwyn/EPSRC PhD studentship (fees and maintenance for four years)

1 Selwyn/NERC PhD studentship (fees and maintenance for 3.5 years with possible extension to 4 years)

2 Selwyn/Newton Trust MPhil scholarships (@£12k)

This is a new initiative which reflects the College’s wish to continue to attract the best graduate students, and to strengthen what it offers to the graduate community. To be considered for one of these graduate studentships, candidates need to make it their first choice College on their GRADSAF. Useful information can be found on these links:

http://www.ahrcdtp.csah.cam.ac.uk/

http://www.epsrc-cdt.group.cam.ac.uk/

http://essdtp.esc.cam.ac.uk/

http://www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/5070/

http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/students/studentregistry/fees/funding/ahrc/index.html

http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/students/studentregistry/fees/funding/chess/mphil.html

http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/students/studentregistry/fees/funding/chess/

Details on how to contact our graduate office are also on this website:

/prospective-students/graduate-admissions/contact-us/

 

Students in the Selwyn College Gardens

The refurbished Cripps Court was officially opened on Wednesday December 3^rd by Robert Cripps, whose family’s Cripps Foundation was the major benefactor for the original building in the 1960s and for its refurbishment in the past two years. Mr Cripps unveiled a plaque on the wall of Cripps Court commemorating the re-opening.

 

Robert Cripps is Director of Philanthropy for The Cripps Foundation, which has supported projects internationally in education, health and the Anglican Church. It was his grandfather, Sir Cyril, and his father, Sir Humphrey, who undertook the major part of the funding for the construction of Cripps Court. Two Selwynites attended both the opening and today’s re-opening: former Master Sir David Harrison, and Professor John Spencer. The photo below shows Robert Cripps looking at an archive display about the 1969 opening with College archivist, Elizabeth Stratton.

 

Afterwards, Robert Cripps met Selwyn’s JCR President-elect, Rebecca Lawrence.

 

Below are some of those attending today’s ceremony. From left to right, Helen Stephens (Head Porter); Roger Mosey (Master); Robert Cripps; Jan Cripps; Nick Downer (Bursar), who oversaw the project; James Keeler (Senior Tutor); and Sir David Harrison (former Master).

 

The College is delighted to announce that next year?s Ramsay Murray Lecture will be given by the award-winning broadcaster Bridget Kendall, who is the BBC?s diplomatic correspondent. Ms Kendall was educated at Lady Margaret Hall and St Anthony?s College, Oxford, and was a Harkness Fellow at Harvard. She will lecture on the subject of Russia and President Putin, sharing her extensive experience of the country in recent decades. The lecture will take place on Friday May 1st, and there will be more details nearer the time.

 

 

Photographs, painting and crafts were on display in the Chadwick Room under the banner of “Selwyn’s Got Talent”. This was an initiative by the Staff Social Committee to find our artistically-gifted Fellows, students and staff, and to display their work.

 

 

The winner in the photography competition was this image by Hannah Doyle, who is studying for an MPhil in English at Selwyn.

 

 

 

 

She told us how it came about: “I took this at the Grunewald S-Bahn Station in Berlin last year, where I was then living. The station was empty save for myself and a small family also making their way to the famous Charlottenburg Christmas Market. This happy child strayed briefly from his mother and I stole the chance to photograph him against the late-afternoon December light.”

 

 

Congratulations also to Nicholas Jamieson and András Csuri, who took 2nd and 3rd prizes for photography. Best in Show was Ian Buck for his animal paintings, with maintenance head Doug Benzie voted reserve Best in Show.

 

 

 

 

Selwyn bell-ringers rang a half-muffled peal of Cambridge Surprise Major to commemorate the College alumni who died in the two World Wars and subsequent conflicts. It took 2 hours 47 minutes, and involved about 5,000 different bell changes. One of the ringers said afterwards that the peal was never in danger of “firing out”, ringers’ parlance for a poorly-struck peal. Pictured outside the Parish Church in Trumpington are the ringers (left to right): Rod Lebon, Nigel Gale, Robin Heppenstall (who conducted), Camilla Haggett, Paul Seaman, Nicholas Haggett, Mark Norris and Vivian Nutton. We congratulate them on their marathon effort.

 

Selwyn College is deeply saddened by the death today of Professor William Brock at the age of 98. Born in May 1916, he became a Fellow of the College in 1947 – and remained a much-respected part of College life for the next 67 years. We express our condolences to Professor Brock’s family and friends, and to all who knew him at Selwyn during his long and greatly-distinguished career.

 

Women in German Studies (WIGS) is an annual meeting and acts as a professional network to support female Germanists throughout their careers. The WIGS conference was held at Selwyn this year, and hosted by the College’s Fellow in German, Dr Charlotte Woodford.

There was an afternoon workshop for early career researchers, providing a valuable opportunity to share expertise on public engagement and the use of social media (tweeting on #wigs2014); and sixteen speakers gave presentations on the latest research in German studies, on topics ranging from medieval pilgrimages to hip-hop. Ina Linge from Cambridge was awarded first prize in a new competition for the best postgraduate essay.

 

The College was saddened to hear of the death of Dr Tony Hillier, a Selwyn Fellow in Physiology from 1971 to 1998. He was an undergraduate at Trinity College, coming to Selwyn to study for his PhD. After a brief spell at Trinity as Research Fellow, he returned here for the rest of his academic career. In later life Tony Hillier became known as a metal sculptor, and he was interviewed for an article about his work: http://www.bbc.co.uk/cambridgeshire/content/articles/2007/08/07/tony_hillier_feature.shtml

Tony Hillier 1942-2014. Our condolences to his family and friends.

 

Selwyn’s acts of Remembrance this year include:

• 
  Sunday, November 9^th, at 10am: the morning Communion service starting half an hour later than usual to enable it to lead into the traditional Two Minute Silence at 11am.
  


• 
  Later in the day, the choir’s performance of Duruflé’s Requiem during a Choral Eucharist beginning at 6pm. The names recorded on the College War Memorials are read aloud during this service.
  


• 
  On Tuesday, November 11^th, the Silence is also kept at 11am in Chapel.
  

Our photograph, by Andrew Flather, was taken in November 2014 in the Selwyn College Chapel.