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Newswire
December 2020

Seasons Greetings from the Vice-Chancellor

Dear alumni and friends

As we near the end of what has been a challenging year, the festive season will look a little different for many of us.

Things look a little different here in Durham, too, but some things – you will be pleased to hear – remain exactly the same:

We are proud to be delivering a world-class education for our students, and proud to be providing excellent support for their wellbeing through our Colleges and Professional Services.

We continue to nurture a community of inspiring future leaders who we know will go on to great achievements in their personal and professional lives.

And across our Faculties we are pursuing ground-breaking, transformative research – including our efforts to tackle and alleviate the impact of the pandemic.

I am immensely grateful for the vital contribution that our alumni and supporters make to Durham University and I am especially proud of the way that our global community has pulled together during this challenging year. Thank you all for your continuing support and encouragement.

I wish you all a happy holiday season and send all best wishes for 2021.

Stay safe!

Professor Stuart Corbridge
Vice-Chancellor and Warden

News

Extraordinary 2021: Helping others to discover Durham University

If you have friends or family currently applying to university next year - or who have already applied and marked Durham as one of their choices - we are providing additional student-led resources and support for those interested to learn more about our amazing institution. As part of our 'Extraordinary 2021' admissions campaign, we are asking alumni and friends to please share durham.ac.uk/Extraordinary2021 with those you think could gain the most from the Durham experience.

Unlocking the mystery of the Moon’s formation

We’re using supercomputer simulations to see how the Moon might have formed following a huge collision involving the early Earth 4.5 billion years ago.

Jobs in the Development and Alumni Relations Office

We are recruiting for a number of critical roles in our department. Come and join us, working with our alumni and supporter community across the world.

Michaelmas Mix-tape

In the absence of an in-person musical showcase, the Durham Original Music & Alumni Network have compiled the hard work of many Durham-based musicians into one independent album.

Durham teams raise over £61,000 in this year’s Movember campaign

This year, 469 individuals across 45 Durham University teams signed up to participate. In spite of the pandemic and the changes it brought to people’s usual Movember efforts, the teams completely smashed their original shared fundraising target of £50,000.

Christmas University Challenge Line-up

Support the newly announced Durham alumni team this Christmas on the BBC. Our team for this year are: Editor of the RIBA Journal and architect critic Hugh Pearman MBE, weather presenter Sarah Keith-Lucas, comedian Ed Gamble and YouTube astrophysicist 'Dr Becky' Smethurst.

Events

Feisty 50 Fitness Challenge Coming in 2021!

Hey! Durham Alumni Community! Are you ready to test your fitness? 2020 has been a challenging year for us all, so let’s make sure we start 2021 off right.

Shining Light on Medieval Manuscripts

Chemists and historians have been working together since 2013 to illuminate medieval manuscripts. Professor Andy Beeby of the Department of Chemistry talks to us about the amazing discoveries the team has made. Join us on Thursday 28 January at 6pm (GMT).

View all upcoming events

Check our events pages regularly for all of the upcoming alumni events.

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Thank You for Getting Involved

Fourth Annual Dunelm USA Holiday Appeal 2020

Thank you to everyone who has donated to this year's Holiday Appeal, so far we have raised over $63,000 in donations.

Dunelm Days

Thank you to everyone who got involved this year with Dunelm Days.
We wanted to bring together the global Durham community to celebrate the spirit of support, and everyone’s connection to Durham at the end of a challenging year!

Alumni

Funded PhD Scholarships in offshore wind energy and the environment

We’re looking for the world’s brightest minds to join us in developing cutting edge research which could have a real impact on the environmental and engineering challenges facing the offshore wind industry.

Geology Photobook

Dr Richard Langford (Geology, University College, 1970-73) has put together a Geology Photobook from his time at Durham with some photos supplied from Niall Mateer (Geology, Grey College, 1970-73) and Alan Owen (Geology, Grey College, 1970-73).

Class Notes!

Graham Barker (Law, Van Mildert College, 1977-80)'s book Imperial Legitimation: The Iconography of the Golden Age Myth on Roman Imperial Coinage of the Third Century AD is now available.

Aidan Bell (Archaeology, Van Mildert, 2004-07) has published a book entitled Fowler's Bridges about the Victorian engineer Sir John Fowler.

Dr Emma Black (Accounting and Finance, Ustinov College, 2009-14) has been named as the Cash Management Woman of the Year in the National #WomeninFinanceAwards2020

Katherine Evans (Botany, Graduate Society, 1988-1992) has joined the Master of Science in Foreign Service (MSFS) Program.

Professor Elspeth Garman (Physics, St Mary’s College, 1973-76) became a life sciences Awardee for 2020.

Peter Kirby (Engineering, University College, 2011-15) and William Smith (Engineering, University College, 2011-15) have launched tred, a platform to allow you to monitor and understand the impact that your spending has on the environment.

Miguel Neumann (Business Administration, Hatfield College, 2011-16) has co-founded the start-up Ship Shape Search, who have recently secured a grant from Innovate UK to build a scalable platform that allows start-up founders to find the right investors.

Magyna Steger (Business Administration, Hatfield College, 2017-19) has won the European Women of Legal Tech 2020 Awards in the category of Professional Services.

Lucy Woodhead (Music, St Aidan’s College, 2012-2015) has been chosen as a #TechWomen100 Award winner.

Colleges

Collingwood College

Throughout the lockdown period, Collingwood has encouraged students, staff, and alumni to get out and run/walk/cycle. The aim was to travel at least 3754 miles, which is as far away as Durham, North Carolina! So far, Collingwood has run 19,294.5 miles, which puts us well on our way to a third trip to North Carolina! We have also raised (at the time of writing) £1,155 for Student Minds UK, an incredible charity which supports student mental health.

St Cuthbert's Society

Check out the latest news and updates here.

St John's College

The season's greetings from St John's to alumni this year are accompanied by the College Record. It's the first edition to be completely online - we hope you enjoy it and have a very merry Christmas!

St Mary's College

This has been a term like no other – like everyone else, we have adapted week by week to restrictions, tiers, lockdowns and more. But despite the frustrations of the situation, it has also been a learning curve for the College community, as a great number of online events have drawn in friends and alumni from all over the world, leading us to think about ways of continuing online events even when we can eventually get back to normal college life.

Van Mildert College

Wishing a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to our alumni, supporters and friends of the College! Catch up on our recent Carols by Candlelight service via our YouTube Channel here, featuring a special 2020 edition of the 12 Days of Christmas!

Departments

Anthropology

The Covid-19 pandemic has meant we have had to move many of our teaching activities online, but the experience has opened up new opportunities. We welcomed a virtual audience to join the socially distanced attendees at Professor Yulia Egorova’s Inaugural Lecture, while over 1500 people from around the globe joined Professor Helen Ball for a Festival of Social Science public lecture and online discussion on infant sleep. We will be advertising a series of events in the New Year.

Business School

Did you study MSc Finance or MSc Management in 2017/18?

Our students would love to hear about your Durham experience and career since graduating. If you would like to sit on one of our panels in January and talk about your time at Durham and where your degree has taken you we’d love to hear from you.

Please email business.alumni@durham.ac.uk to find out more.

Experience Durham

Our student volunteering group were recently honoured with the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service. We went online for this year’s Fresher’s Fair and had a record number of sign-ups for clubs, societies and projects with over 1500 students expressing an interest in volunteering with the University.

Geography

Introduction to International Boundaries: Definition, Delimitation and Dispute Resolution, is an online training course led by IBRU and Durham University academics as well as invited expert guest practitioners. It provides a simple, contextual overview of international boundaries and the practical measures that can be taken to resolve international boundary disputes.

Law School

Professor Clare McGlynn has been chosen for an eight-member panel of independent experts that will consider the most serious allegations of sexual misconduct or bullying against Members of Parliament (MPs). The panel includes several high ranking former judges.

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