News Articles

The comedian Viv Groskop will be bringing her Edinburgh Festival show to Selwyn on Saturday January 30^th for one of the opening events in the College’s celebration of 40 years of co-education. Viv is a Selwyn alumna who’s also known as a festival director, writer and broadcaster, and her comedy routine “Say Sorry to the Lady” was acclaimed by audiences when it was first performed last year.

For more information about this and other attractions in 2016, please visit our online calendar:  http://www.selwynalumni.com/eventscalendar. Viv Groskop’s website can be found at http://vivgroskop.com/

Selwyn is staging a series of events in 2016 to mark the 40^th anniversary of the admission of women as students and Fellows. The College was one of the earliest in Cambridge to change its statutes to make co-education possible, and the first female undergraduates arrived in October 1976. Forty years on, there will be reunions, debates, speaker sessions, music and comedy to mark this milestone. Details can be found at https://www.selwynalumni.com/eventscalendar.

The College has also commissioned a series of portraits of Selwyn’s women of today by the award-winning photographer Jeff Overs. Some of them are now on display in the Hall, and all of them are online: https://www.flickr.com/photos/selalum/albums. The current photograph on the homepage and below shows Dr Jean Chothia, who was the first woman Fellow in 1976 and went on to become Vice-Mistress of Selwyn.

We’ll be launching a special section on this website soon giving details of all the activities that are planned, as well as some of the history and achievements of the last four decades. In the meantime, the Cambridge News published a feature on January 6^th about the photographic project: http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Selwyn-College-Cambridge-puts-women-wall-mark/story-28469398-detail/story.html. It includes a portrait of our head porter Helen Stephens, the first woman to take that role in a Cambridge college, and of women officers of the JCR.

Selwyn Fellow Ken Coutts, along with former Fellow Graham Gudgin, published a UK economic forecast report in
December, taking issue with the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) for the way they do their forecasts, and coming up
with a less optimistic view about economic prospects. You can download the report here href="http://www.cbr.cam.ac.uk/publications/special-reports/"
target="_blank">http://www.cbr.cam.ac.uk/publications/special-reports/ and there's a summary along with an audio blog
also online: href="http://www.blogs.jbs.cam.ac.uk/cbr/uk-economy-forecast-report/">http://www.blogs.jbs.cam.ac.uk/cbr/uk-economy-forecast-
report/. The report was covered by a range of media including The Guardian and the Evening Standard, and there were
further pieces on the Social Europe blog http://www.socialeurope.eu/ and on the
Policy Research in Macroeconomics site href="http://www.primeeconomics.org/articles/">http://www.primeeconomics.org/articles/.

The Master of Selwyn, Roger Mosey, gave one of the Madingley lectures towards the end of 2015. He spoke about his
time in broadcasting and some of the challenges facing the BBC. The video is now available online href="http://www.ice.cam.ac.uk/what-we-do/madingley-lectures/broadcasting-past-and-future">http://www.ice.cam.ac.uk/what-we-d
o/madingley-lectures/broadcasting-past-and-future; and you can read more about the series of lectures on the Institute of
Continuing Education's website target="_blank">http://www.ice.cam.ac.uk/what-we-do/madingley-lectures.

This has been an exceptional year for the Selwyn College Choir. The summer saw their sell-out tour of the Pacific Northwest, and they arrived home to find that their latest recording was album of the week on Classic FM – and then in the top 10 of the specialist classical chart. Concerts in the UK, and appreciative reviews, have confirmed that this is a choir that excels.

To mark the busiest time of year for the Choir – with Carol Services in Cambridge, London and beyond – we’re releasing a video of a performance of ‘Once in Royal David’s City’, specially recorded in the Chapel. It’s a chance for College members and friends, wherever they are in the world, to share some of the spirit of Christmas.

Click the image below to open the video on youTube.

If you want to support Selwyn students, to ensure access to the College whatever an individual’s financial circumstances, you can make a gift of £5 by texting SELW37 £5 to 70070. Thank you.

Selwyn's Novice Women rowers came second in Division 1 at this year's Emma Sprints. The crews row in fancy dress, and Selwyn opted for the Von Trapp family look. Our correspondent on the Cam tells us:

“In fabulous fancy dress, we stormed our first three races, winning all of them by over two boat lengths. An unfortunate technical issue in the final straight meant Fitz gained a length on us, and although we put in a determined performance and closed the gap considerably it wasn't quite enough to win.”

Many congratulations to those involved for a very promising performance. You can read more about the Boat Club’s activities on their Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/SelwynCollegeBC/?fref=ts
 

Selwyn College is pleased to announce that its former student Tom Hollander has been elected as an Honorary Fellow by the Governing Body. Tom, who came to the College to read English in 1985, has had a distinguished acting career. This year he was named the Royal Television Society Best Actor for his portrayal of Dylan Thomas in ‘A Poet In New York’; and he won considerable acclaim for the BBC comedy series ‘Rev’ which he co-created. His film roles run from the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ series through ‘In The Loop’ and ‘Gosford Park’ – and he has also starred on the stage and on radio. He will soon appear on BBC Television in ‘The Night Manager’, written by John Le Carré and co-starring another Selwyn alumnus, Hugh Laurie. Tom Hollander regularly returns to Cambridge, and he was one of the speakers at the 2015 Selwyn English Society dinner. We offer him many congratulations on his Honorary Fellowship.

All Selwyn’s first year undergraduates are invited to a series of informal dinners in
the Master’s Lodge during their early weeks in College. It’s a chance for students to talk to the Master and
some of their tutors or directors of studies about how they’re finding life at Selwyn, and it also
enables different subject groups to have a lively conversation with food and drink supplied. Our
picture shows some recent visitors with the Master, Roger Mosey; and this group was made up
predominantly of students studying medicine or veterinary medicine, with the addition of one
economist.

Selwyn's sports day for Old Boys and Girls took place in late October, and pitted past generations against current students. There were contests in football, rugby, hockey and netball; and, as our photo from the hockey shows, the events took place in the friendliest of atmospheres.

There was also a group who took to the river, and you can read their account at https://selwynrowing.wordpress.com/2015/11/01/selwyn-alumni-go-for-a-paddle/. More photographs from the day can be found on the College Flickr account, https://www.flickr.com/photos/selalum/albums/72157660706555971.

The artist Monika Beisner visited the College on Tuesday October 27^th to show her spectacularly beautiful illustrations of Dante’s ‘Paradise’. There was also a round-table discussion between the artist and Cambridge Dante scholars Robin Kirkpatrick, Heather Webb and Katherine Powlesland. Professor Kirkpatrick read from his Penguin Classics translation of Dante's 'Divine Comedy'. The event attracted a large attendance, and our photograph shows Ms Beisner (left) with Selwyn Fellow and Italian specialist Dr Heather Webb.