News
D-Day for SPRU students
Eighteen DPhil students are to present their research in progress at an internal conference in the Terrace Room, Refectory on 29th May. This will be an opportunity for students to share their current work in the field of science and technology policy.
Presentations will each be ten minutes long and include topics such as how mechanical technology can be complemented by communication and information technologies, the need for an international standard in biosafety of living modified organisms, and how the diffusion of technologies affects economic structure.
The programme also includes talks by external speakers from Berkeley, Karlsruhe, Maastricht and Pisa. Research student Tim Venables commented, "This conference organised by students for students, will enable us to receive feedback on our work at an early stage from both our peers and senior members of faculty."
A Course in Sussex - a print by Tom Phillips
Following our reports of hidden treasures around campus, we will be featuring well-known pieces of art owned by the University. Simon Lane introduces Bulletin readers to a work by Tom Phillips
"UNIVERSITY is a place one comes to change into oneself," according to a print by Tom Phillips. The print, A course in Sussex, was commissioned by the University to mark its silver jubilee in 1986.
It is one of the few works which is both owned by and has a direct relationship to the University, with many of its images taken from Sussex itself. On one level it tells the story of university life, with six panels over-printed on a page of the book A Human Document. Each panel leads the viewer on the journey of a student, starting with an image of the entrance to the University on the first panel (top left) and continuing through to the farewells and new horizons of the last panel (bottom right). Within the print, there are references to the arts, sciences and other typical student preoccupations such as leisure, travel and friendships.
Tom Phillips was born in 1937. He went to Oxford where he studied Anglo-Saxon literature and later took evening classes ar Camberwell School of Art, which led to full time study. For those wishing to see it, the print can be found in Arts A, outside room A133.
Another 'hidden treasure' has been found in the Lancaster House storeroom. Rita Pickett, Lancs House Porter, found an oil painting by Timothy Sainsbury which had been lost since 1976.
Sussex joins world leaders in Birmingham
MEMBERS of Third World First and the University chaplaincy joined 50,000 protesters in lobbying the G-8 summit in Birmingham last week (May 16) to demand cancellation of the debt of the world's poorest nations. The contingent included people from as far afield as Japan, Ghana, Lesotho and St.Kitts, plus members from IDS, AFRAS and the Institute of Education.
Richard Boris Ford (July 1917 to May 1998)Boris Ford, literary critic and educationist, who died on 19 May, was Professor of Education. and founding Dean of the School of Cultural and Community Studies. Derek Oldfield, former Reader in English in CCS, now retired, writes: When this University was born, the Founding Fathers could not agree on what to do about the study of Education. So it was only three years after the place had started that Boris Ford was appointed to sort it out. What emerged was a School of Education and Social Work that, in turn, rapidly became the School of Culture and Community Studies and bore an uncanny resemblance to Boris' own values. It was eclectically 'cultured', welcoming music as well as literature and later the history of art; it was innovative and it was dedicated to improving people's quality of life. Boris Ford was, as are most good people, vulnerable - too involved in the struggle for right thinking "to see (themselves) as others see them". So he could upset people. Moreover his own low pulse rate - first cultivated as a chorister at King's - concealed, even though it did not prevent, some painful bruising and that very surface equanimity of his could exasperate his opponents still further. I, however, had too many reasons to be grateful to him to remain exasperated for long. Together with David Daiches it was Boris Ford who gave me my first University job at Sussex. I could not have been more fortunate in my introduction to the essentially democratic and egalitarian task of Higher Education where ideas matter more than age or status. As well as being a great editor, Boris was a great facilitator and encourager, both of his colleagues and his students, so that we in our turn were enabled to show that intellectual and personal respect for each other which has always, I believe, characterised this University at its best. His last act for Sussex was to ask for water to be allowed back into the moat. |