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the Queen’s Collegenewsletter

07/10issue sixteen Trinity Term 2010

A letter from the Provost 2 New kitchen and catering facilities 3-5 News 6-8 Choir Notes 9 A Fellow in English

10-11 New Lecture Theatre 12 Shedworking 13 A Cure for HIV? 14-15 A Letter from the Old Members’ Officer 16

Amidst the financial doom and gloom, the completion of the kitchen project has been a real cause for celebration. The facilities are wonderful and the new dining room is a strikingly beautiful addition to the

College; these are the most substantial changes to the main College buildings for 300 years. The dining room is not only beautiful in its own right; it also reveals and complements numerous features of the original buildings which have been hidden or obscured for years. It has been a joy to watch the excitement of staff and Fellows as they have entered the new facilities for the first time. Hats off, then, to the genius of the architects, the builders, and to Linda Irving-Bell, our Home Bursar, for leading the project.

In looking back on the two years that it has taken to get to this point, though, I take most satisfaction from the way that the College as a whole has coped with the disruption. Back Quad has been disfigured throughout and been noisy from 7.30 each

morning; although this might have had the positive effect of getting students out of bed a bit earlier than would be their wont, it has certainly not improved the conditions for study in the Library. The kitchen staff have worked in a tent for the best part of two years, enduring two particularly cold winters, but continuing to produce excellent meals. Inevitably there has been tension at times, but remarkably little complaint and a general sense of being ‘in it together’ has prevailed. I would like to think that there is a particular “Queen’s” aspect to this, a sense of mutual support and respect within the community, of getting on with the job, and of taking pride in being distinct from other places. The students have been particularly impressive. Although the College has gained wonderful and enduring facilities, the disruption has happened on their watch and the benefits will be felt largely by their successors. That they quickly pick up the character of the place is a mysterious process but, very soon, expressions like ‘it couldn’t happen here because our Porters are the best and know everyone by name’ become a commonplace. The College nurse commented to me the other day that she had spent a tenth of the time here dealing with the consequences of examination stress than she had in one of her other Colleges.

The last moments of the project have had to be choreographed precisely. The builders moved out on the Friday of 8th week and the marquees for the Ball began to be erected the following day! In a couple of weeks the lawns will be re-turfed and the external appearance of the main College will return to the familiar one. We are not finished with building, though, as the lecture theatre project is well underway. However, in this case the disruption is limited to the western end of the College (especially the Lodgings!). Within another year we should have another marvellous addition to the College which respects the beauty of the site.

A letter from the Provost Professor Paul Madden FRS FRSE


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Contributors:Rebecca BeasleyAndrew JohnsonPaul MaddenOwen ReesChris Scanlan

Editors:Andrew Timms& Emily McLeod

Cover photograph:Andrew Timms

Published by:The Old Members’ OfficeThe Queen’s CollegeOxfordOX1 4AW

[email protected]

T: +44 (0)1865 279214

F: +44 (0)1865 279150

The College’s new catering facilities were opened in June

Perhaps the most breathtaking development has been the construction of a new dining room, which sits on the first floor and runs from the Hall across to Back Quad, which it overlooks. This space is split by an elegant semi-circular Hawksmoor window, previously hidden by plywood outside a vegetable preparation room. The section of the new room between this window and those of the Hall was formerly a void between the Hall and Back Quad, dotted with various bits of plant and the odd dead pigeon.

new dining room

We are delighted to announce the completion of the new kitchen and catering facilties.

3the Queen’s Collegenewsletter

the servery

Old Members may well recall the dingy surroundings in which they queued for meals. The old kitchen, opposite the Buttery, has been transformed into a stunning new servery, which offers a clean and light cafeteria-style space adjacent to the Hall. Particularly notable are the rediscovered stone arches which sweep majestically across the ceiling of this space, and which sharply (and beautifully) juxtapose the historic shell of the building with its contemporary function.

4 the Queen’s Collegenewsletter

The new kitchen

The new underground kitchen stretches from the cloister outside the Hall right across to Queen’s Lane, and offers vastly improved conditions for the Chef and his team. It also enables us to obey many current legislative requirements which were impossible to meet in the old kitchen.

Old Members will recall that the building works have lasted nearly two years and they temporarily caused the conversion of Back Quad into a building site. The Quad has now been restored to its former state, and the result of this mammoth project is a first-class catering resource for the College that will be central to its care of its members - as well as enabling it to move to new levels of commercial activity in the vacations.

The College owes a significant debt of gratitude to all on the project team, including in particular the architects (Berman Guedes Stretton, led by Alan Berman and supported by his team including in particular Joelle Darby and Bruce Cockburn), Dr Linda Irving-Bell (our Home Bursar), and David Goddard (Clerk of Works). It is also right to recognise the great forebearance of the junior members whose years in College were considerably affected by the work, not to mention the entire catering team, led by Dawn Grimshaw (Catering Manager) and Andy Field (Head Chef), who worked tirelessly to effect a seamless transition from the temporary arrangements (a tent in the Fellows’ Garden) to the new facility.

We will arrange opportunities for Old Members to view all of these new rooms and facilities at our forthcoming events.


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Newsfrom the College

North American ReunionsIn late April the College hosted a number of events for Old Members in North America. We were delighted to visit Washington DC, Toronto, Boston, and New York, and are very grateful for the hospitality of Old Members throughout our stay. The focal point of this trip was our annual reception in New York City, held this year in the Patron’s Lounge at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (courtesy of James Watt [Physics, 1956]). The trip was unexpectedly extended due to the volcanic ash cloud and the subsequent cancellation of many transatlantic flights. The College’s Director of Development, Andrew Timms, and Old Members’ Officer, Emily Downing, took advantage of the delay to visit Old Members in Southern California. They are very grateful for the kindness of Old Members in Los Angeles in particular.


Michael Boyd named Distinguished Friend of OxfordWe are delighted and very proud to announce that Michael Boyd (1958, Social Sciences) was recently named a Distinguished Friend of Oxford, the highest status awarded to those who have assisted the University as volunteers. Michael received his award from the Chancellor in New York on Saturday 17 April, at the University’s biennial North American reunion.

Retirement of Peter SouthwellAt the end of this academic year Peter Southwell retires from the Chaplaincy after some 28 years in post. The College will miss him greatly. In order to recognise Peter’s very great contribution to the welfare of the junior membership, and his assiduous maintenance of links with Old Members, this year’s Old Members’ Dinner will include a vote of thanks to Peter as he begins his retirement.

Football First XI promoted to Division OneWe congratulate the College’s Football First XI, which won Division Two of the inter-collegiate league, thereby gaining promotion to Division One.

Appointment of new ChaplainWe bid a warm welcome to Michael Lloyd, who takes up the role of Chaplain in September.

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Queen’s elects a Proctor

This year it was the turn of Queen’s College to elect a Proctor. The College chose to elect Nicholas Bamforth, one of the current Tutors in Law, to this ancient and important role. His duties include the maintenance of University discipline and conduct of University examinations, as well as acting as a kind of internal ombudsman.


JRF awarded distinguished prizeDr Laura Valentini, Junior Research Fellow in Politics, has been awarded the Sir Ernest Barker Prize by the UK Political Studies Association for the best dissertation in political theory. Laura’s thesis is entitled Global Justice: Cosmopolitanism, Social Liberalism, and the Coercion View; the judges said that it “explores the question of “global justice” by challenging the validity of the two main approaches to the topic. Both “cosmopolitans” and “social liberals”, it is claimed, are so entrenched in their existing positions that they find it impossible to confront the theoretical and practical difficulties inherent in their arguments. In an attempt to break the deadlock, Valentini proceeds to develop her own approach to global justice - the coercion view - which steers a middle course between the two standard alternatives and is consistent with the Kantian/deontological foundations of Rawlsian liberalism.

With exemplary clarity and rigour, she demonstrates that principles of justice can be coherently extended from the domestic to the global arena, without assuming that all cases of world poverty will generate duties of justice for rich societies. In its originality, its theoretical subtlety, and its masterful analysis of the existing literature, the thesis undoubtedly constitutes an impressive contribution to a philosophical debate of great importance.”

Laura received her prize at the PSA Annual Conference dinner at the Balmoral Hotel, Edinburgh on Wednesday 31 March.

New Honorary FellowsThe Governing Body has recently elected a number of Old Members to Honorary Fellowships, in recognition of very great distinction in their fields:

Professor Vernon Bogdanor (PPE, 1961)

Professor of Politics and Government and Fellow of Brasenose College

Reverend Professor Colin Morris FBA FRHistS (Modern History, 1945 / Theology, 1948)

Emeritus Professor of Medieval History at the University of Southampton

Sir Jim Ball (PPE, 1954)

Emeritus Professor of Economics and former Principal of the London Business School

Professor David Eisenberg (Chemistry, 1964)

Director of the University of California (Los Angeles) - Department of Energy Institute for Genomics & Proteomics

Professor Richard Carwardine FBA (DPhil Modern History, 1968)

President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford and formerly Rhodes Professor of American History

Professor Tony Honoré QC

Formerly Fellow & Praelector in Law at Queen’s (1948-64), as well as a Fellow of New and All Souls Colleges, and Regius Professor of Civil Law at Oxford

Dr Harvey McGregor QC (Law, 1948)

Latterly a Fellow and then Warden of New College, Oxford


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A medal for Allen HillWe are delighted to announce that Professor Allen Hill FRS, Tutor in Chemistry from 1965 until 2004 - and now an Honorary Fellow of the College - has been awarded the Royal Medal by the Royal Society for his pioneering work on protein electrochemistry, which revolutionised the diagnostic testing of glucose and many other bioelectrochemical assays.

The Royal Medals, known also as The Queen’s Medals, are awarded annually for the most important contributions to the advancement of natural knowledge and for distinguished contributions in interdisciplinary or applied sciences.

Allen Hill commented: “I really appreciate the help the College gave me, particularly in 1985. It was the generosity of the College that made it possible to push forward into commercial success. It so happens that the very first publication on the electrochemistry of a protein, cytochrome c was by M. J. Eddowes and H. A. O. Hill: Eddowes was an *undergraduate* of The Queen’s College!”

We are very proud to announce that Professors John Blair and John Hyman have both been awarded Leverhulme Major Research Fellowships to allow them time to complete research projects of “outstanding originality and significance”.

John Blair’s project is entitled People and Places in Anglo-Saxon England, and will be a comprehensive historical reassessment of social, economic, settlement and landscape change in England during c.650-1100, based on first-hand review of all the written, archaeological, topographical, artefactual and numismatic sources. Themes to be explored include the eighth-century economy and ‘productive sites’, transport by road and water, the geography of commerce, lordship and manorial organisation, consumerism, urbanisation, and perceptions of sacred landscapes. A central approach

will be thorough scrutiny of the great mass of still largely undigested data recovered through developer-funded archaeology and metal-detecting. This work will be the basis for the Ford Lectures in British History to be given in 2013.

John Hyman’s project is entitled After the Fall: Action and Cognition in Human Life. He writes: ‘The philosophy of action and epistemology have opened out dramatically as the orthodoxies and agendas set in place in the 1960s have been set aside. I plan to develop a new approach to thinking about action and cognition, replacing a story about sequences of mental and physical events with a story about human agents and their distinctive abilities and causal powers, and cutting across traditional boundaries between philosophy of action, epistemology and philosophy of mind. The heart of the project is a series of chapters about the nature and value of knowledge, and its place in human life.’

These appointments mean that Queen’s now has three Fellows in receipt of Leverhulme Major Research Fellowships, since

Professor Roger Pearson is already on leave, working on a project entitled Orpheus or Moses? The poet as lawgiver in nineteenth-century French literature. This project investigates how French nineteenth-century poets envisaged the poetic act, and focuses on the central persona of the poet as lawgiver (legislateur). It examines the problematic interaction of differing codes of law within this self-definition (e.g. divine, natural, moral, civil, harmonic, prosodic, ludic), and uncovers a fundamental ambiguity that is a defining characteristic of the literary. Does the poet bring the law, like Moses, a privileged messenger communicating pre-existing dispensations that govern the world of human experience, or does the poet make the law, like Orpheus, using song to bring order and harmony to a contingent and chaotic universe?

Professors Blair and Hyman awarded Leverhulme Fellowships

the Queen’s Collegenewsletter8

Queen’s is constantly seeking ways to ‘spread the news’ about the fine choral opportunities here as widely as possible. Last year we began to offer ‘choral taster’ sessions for those interested in applying for a Choral Scholarship at Queen’s, or wishing to find out whether such a Scholarship might suit them. Those attending meet Dr Rees to discuss the Choir and choral awards, and are shown around the College, after which they join the choir for a rehearsal and Evensong, followed by dinner in hall with the current choir.

Singers may either attend in groups of up to four, together with a teacher, or individually. The scheme now operates throughout the academic year, and those interested can register through a form on the College website. Offering such a wide range of dates allows schools and individuals

to select days that suit them within busy school calendars. In the current term groups from three schools have attended, as have a number of individual singers.

These ‘taster’ afternoons provide a vivid insight into what it is like to hold a Choral Scholarship at Queen’s, of the excitement of belonging to such a choral establishment, and of singing in the acoustically and architecturally inspiring surroundings of the Chapel. We are delighted that feedback from those attending and from their teachers has been uniformly enthusiastic and positive. The scheme will run again in the academic year 2010-11, and we hope that many more schools and young singers will take up the opportunity.

Owen ReesTutor in Music


the choir

Choir Notes

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Rebecca Beasley, the first Fellow in English in the College’s history, read for her undergraduate degree in English at Clare College, Cambridge. She then went on to study for an MA at the University of Cailfornia, Berkeley before returning to Cambridge, this time to King’s, for her PhD.

During her MA course she was able to study courses in art history, and this led to a PhD thesis on the relationship between early twentieth-century literature and the visual arts. Her first book, Ezra Pound and

the Visual Culture of Modernism (Cambridge University Press, 2007), explored the impact of the visual arts on the poetry and critical prose of the American poet, Ezra Pound, and discussed how the language generated by art critics to describe new styles and movements, such as impressionism, Futurism, and Cubism, was taken up by literary critics to explain and promote new developments in literature.

This new shared vocabulary both defined and limited appreciation of the literary production of the early twentieth century. Her second book, Theorists of Modernist Poetry: T.S. Eliot, T.E. Hulme and Ezra Pound (Routledge, 2007), provided an introduction to the critical theories of three modernist poets.

A Fellow in English


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What is your current research?

My current work is a broad study of British modernism, focusing on the reception of Russian and Soviet culture and politics in early twentieth-century Britain, and, in particular, the production and dissemination of translations of Russian texts. My aim is to reassess the critical landscape by looking not only at the significance of Russian literature in the work of the major figures, such as Joseph Conrad, D. H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf, but also by bringing to light the importance of translators and reviewers whose names have since disappeared, editors and publishers who brought Russian works into the public realm, and minor authors who modeled their work on Russian examples. It is somewhat of a cliché to state that British modernism was profoundly influenced by Russian literature but there’s still a lot of work to do on the details of what this meant. Oxford is an ideal place to pursue this kind of research—not only because of its library collections, but also because of the strength in foreign language research and training in the University. I’ve been very fortunate, in fact, to undertake some of this research in collaboration with an Oxford colleague in Russian.

What are your teaching commitments?

In Queen’s I teach undergraduate papers on the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries, and in the English Faculty I give undergraduate lectures, primarily on modernism, and teach MSt and DPhil students working on twentieth-century topics. During the next academic year I’ll be convening the MSt in English and American Studies. Since I took up my post last September, I’ve been immersing myself in the wonderfully broad Oxford syllabus. Alongside the busyness of writing several lecture series, I’ve been enjoying the intensity of tutorial teaching, which allows one to track the development of individual students week on week and provide very detailed feedback and support.

What does it mean for Queen’s to have a Fellow in English?

Queen’s has long offered the opportunity for students to study English as part of a joint degree with Modern Languages, Classics or History. But this autumn, for the first time, the College will be inviting applications to the single-honours English degree course. It’s an exciting change: the Oxford English Faculty is the largest and most successful in the country, so competition is very high and the students are extremely good. And it makes sense to teach English in a college like Queen’s where the cognate arts subjects

are so strong. Having said that, I’m keen to keep up the College’s commitment to joint courses, because I firmly believe that English is a subject that benefits from interdisciplinary knowledge.

What are you reading?

I’m finally getting to the end of Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu, which I’ve loved, and I’m also trying to fill in my many gaps in Russian literature. Trying to keep up with the undergraduates, I’ve got a long list of Victorian novels to re-read.

What are the undergraduates reading?

Joint schools students take two English papers in their first year. On the compulsory Introduction to Literary Studies the set texts are Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and the book of Genesis and St John’s Gospel in the King James version of the Bible, with Andrew Bennett’s and Nicholas Royle’s An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory as recommended reading. I also recommend Terry Eagleton’s Literary Theory: An Introduction—twenty-seven years old now but still readable and inspiring—and the incisive and approachable Literary Theory by Clare Connors, who was Lecturer in English at Queen’s. On the paper covering 1900 to the present day, the first years begin with modernist novels and poetry (Ford, Woolf, Joyce, Eliot, Pound), move through the middle of the century (Auden, Djuna Barnes, Beckett, Stein), and end up thinking about postmodernism (Barth, Nabokov, Pynchon, Atwood, Carter) and postcolonial fiction (Dabydeen, D’Aguiar, and Phillips). It’s a lot to read and digest in eight weeks, but there are common ideas that tie the authors together—changing conceptions of realism, the experience of everyday life, the relationship between formal experimentation and political commitment, and the representation of history and memory.

What do you think about Queen’s?

Everyone has been enormously welcoming and helpful—and keen to tell me about the strong tradition of Old Members of significance to English studies! There’s quite a list: Thomas Middleton, Joseph Addison, William Collins, Walter Pater, Ernest Dowson, Edmund Blunden, John Heath-Stubbs and, more recently, Caryl Phillips, who in fact did read English at Queen’s (by changing subject after he’d arrived) and returned to give seminars and lectures last year.

Interviewed by Emily McLeod

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Old Members who visit the College in the next 12 months will find that, although Back Quad is back (so to speak), the thin strip of the Nun’s Garden next to All Souls College is now a building site. Readers of this Newsletter with good memories will be aware that some years ago the Governing Body decided to build a lecture theatre on this site. Elegant plans by the architects Berman Guedes Stretton were subsequently chosen in an architectural competition, and work finally began on the project earlier this year. The theatre, which will seat about 120 people, will be complete by next summer, and subsequently the Drawda Garden as a whole will be re-landscaped - partly to carry out much needed improvements, but also to compensate the students for the space they are losing to the new building.

It is, of course, regrettable that green space in College is being lost. A number of Old Members have made this point to us, and doubtless many more will do so over the course of the coming year. It is often difficult to accept that the College of one’s memories is changing. Similar emotions were voiced when the underworld beneath Back Quad was ripped out in preparation for the new kitchen. My own College in Cambridge has demolished beautiful Victorian houses in order to build new Quads (or Courts, as they call them), and one’s response on returning and seeing the changes is usually a mixture of regret (“how can they have done this?”) and bafflement (“why on earth are they doing this?”)—so I can well understand why some Old Members are upset at the loss of the Nun’s Garden.

However, it should be made clear that the plans for the theatre are generously sympathetic to the surroundings in which it will be placed. The medieval walls of the garden will remain, and they will in fact become the walls of the new building. The beautiful wisteria will remain, and will indeed be visible to audiences in the building. The tiled roof will resemble that of the old brewhouse (now the carpenters’

shop) in the Provost’s Yard. So although the garden will be different, the new building will not stick out like a sore thumb.

But why are we doing this? The answer is simple. We desire the building as a resource for College and all its members. We have no suitable modern space for lecturing such large groups. We also have no suitable space for small musical recitals (one may only perform sacred works in the Chapel). We think that we will all benefit from the space that the lecture theatre provides. The experience of other Colleges has been instructive in this regard.

And there is of course another angle. As you know, Queen’s is forced to subsidise its operating activities very substantially, using income drawn from its endowment investments. As you also know, we do not feel we have enough endowment to support our activities adequately. To help balance the books each year, it is essential that the College makes as much money as possible from commercial activities during the long vacations. Other Colleges—some of which virtually become conference centres in the summer—earn revenues of well over £2 million from this source. Queen’s is currently earning around £500,000 per annum, and we believe there is significant scope for improvement. A lecture theatre is an important variable in this equation: we have learned, through bitter experience, that our ability to attract large and lengthy conferences is severely compromised if we cannot offer an adequately sized lecture facility on site.

So it is pointless to deny that there is a financial as well as a spiritual justification for the lecture theatre. But that should not cloud the fact that we believe that the building will be a wonderful addition to the main site, and it will indeed push forward the programme of modernisation that is continuing to ameliorate so dramatically the facilities the College offers to all of its members.

A lecture theatre - but why? Andrew Timms Director of Development

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My book Shedworking is an illustrated handbook which no shed-owner will want to be without.

The book features shed-workers and shed-builders from around the world who are leading the alternative workplace revolution, and looks at why shed-working is a greener way of working, improves work-life balance and accelerates your productivity.

It is inspired by my Shedworking website which has been internationally acclaimed for the groundbreaking scale of its architectural coverage, featuring many previously unpublished images of garden offices and shed-like atmospheres, offices on roofs, sheds inside ‘traditional’ offices and on wheels, as well as cutting-edge Le

Corbusier-designed models for the back garden, all-glass shed offices and buildings ‘built’ using living trees.

Along the way it offers a whistle-stop tour of famous sheds from Pliny the Younger’s summerhouse and the composing retreats of nineteenth-century composers Grieg and Mahler to award-winning twenty-first-century fantasy writer Neil Gaiman’s gazebo.

In short, Shedworking offers a manifesto for those wanting to change their working lives for the better and go to work in the garden.

You’re unlikely to find pots and compost in these sheds, but for home-workers looking for a superior quality of life and dreaming of an ideal working space, these sheds are something to drool over.

Alex Johnson1988, Modern History

Something completely different…


Shedworking

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Dr Chris Scanlan, Browne Research Fellow at Queen’s, is part of a small research group in the Department of Biochemistry which is working on a large problem. 40 million people have been diagnosed with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) but, as yet, there has been no example of anyone ridding their system of it once infected. A vaccine is something of a holy grail and a sense of frustration has been palpable in research carried out over the past 25 years. HIV is now the most studied virus on the planet and the development of a vaccine has continually been thought to be only two years away. The question driving Chris in his research is: why does the immune system fail to control HIV?

A graduate of the University of Bristol, Chris came to Queen’s for his DPhil and, whilst here, traveled to the Scripps Research Institute in California where he completed a joint PhD before returning to Oxford in 2005. Although he now spends most of his time in his University department, Chris values the interdisciplinary experience that comes with being based in a College. He also has the benefit of a continuing collaboration with his colleagues in San Diego; Scripps is the largest non-profit biomedical research institute in the States. Chris’s research group (which has five members) receives funds from the International Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) Vaccine Initiative whose Chair is another Queensman, Dennis Burton (1970).

HIV went largely undetected (and thus un-confronted) until its official discovery by the French in 1981. Since a person dies from AIDS and not HIV, and since AIDS sufferers can have a whole range of diseases any one of which can appear on a death certificate, it was very difficult to pinpoint the virus—a problem exacerbated by the fact that HIV is found predominantly in Third World countries, where public health provision is minimal at best.

A cure for HIV?


HIV

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To comprehend the search for a vaccine, it is necessary to understand how HIV works. Viruses travel light. They try to do as much as possible with as little genetic information as possible, hijacking the cells that they infect. Also, since viruses are inherently lazy, they get the cell to do work for them. HIV does this by telling a cell to put onto the virus itself a camouflage, which consists of, crudely, a kind of stuck-on sugar structure that already covers the cell. The sugars then protect the underlying virus.

Chris uses an analogy from Homer’s Odyssey to explain what happens. At one point Odysseus’s men try to escape from blind Cyclops with whom they are trapped in a cave with some giant sheep. Cyclops can only feel who is getting away so the men cling on underneath the moving sheep and escape undetected. HIV uses a shield of host-derived structures that ‘feel’ like every other cell in the body. (HIV hides what scientists call its ‘selfness’ by doing this.) The immune system is thus fooled into thinking that it does not need to respond to the virus.

However, there is a possible chink in the virus’s armour, and it is this chink that Chris is researching. The sugars that camouflage the virus are normally randomly dispersed. HIV disperses them in a higher density, and, perversely, the camouflage can then draw attention to itself. In the same way in which the pattern of trees in a plantation looks man-made when compared with a natural forest, the camouflage becomes perceptible and, for the immune system, the opportunity arises to make an antibody and eventually a vaccine.

Most vaccines work by creating a natural immune response to a virus. In order to be effective this response needs to be in the body before the body becomes infected with the virus. Flu is a simple comparator – it changes each year and modern medicine can just about keep up with it. With HIV, in a single patient in a single day, there will be more variants generated than there are in the whole of Britain for an entire annual flu pandemic. So something different is required; a straightforward vaccine would never keep up.

There are two main approaches to finding a vaccine. One is to develop an antibody and the other is to take a cell-based approach. Cell-based research is concerned with controlling HIV once a person has it. The white blood cells are quite good at suppressing HIV and can often keep sufferers alive for in excess of ten years. This type of research therefore looks at what the cell is doing to achieve this and is focused on finding a vaccine to counter AIDS, not the virus itself. Chris’s research, in contrast, concentrates on the development of an antibody and thereby a prophylactic solution.

There is one documented case in which a patient’s body was able to recognise the densely packed configuration of sugars carried by the virus, and therefore knew to produce an antibody that worked against HIV. In theory this antibody could be replicated for others. However, people need to be able to produce the antibody themselves or it would need to be administered each week (antibodies have short half-lives). Researchers need to find something that, when put into an individual, will create this antibody, and thus protect against HIV later in life and not just once. This highlights the need for a pre-emptive measure so that like flu, once the body makes the antibody, it will continue to be created, and the person will be protected against that strain of flu for life.

Chris’s research focuses on the way in which HIV’s defence mechanism—its camouflage technique—can be turned against itself and thereby trigger the immune system to produce an antibody. To accomplish this, it is possible to make a synthetic copy of the high-density cluster of sugars carried by the virus to educate the immune system so that it recognises the virus. This then acts as a ‘warning system’ so that the recognition of the HIV camouflage provokes an effective response from the immune system. The main constraint in trying to make this happen is that HIV has evolved very quickly and resourcefully to develop a defence that is still pretty much invisible to the immune system. Every HIV uses this strategy so it is actually very difficult to find the chink in the armour.

Even though knowledge of HIV has increased considerably in recent years, it is now thought to be unlikely that a vaccine will be ready in two years. There are positive bursts in the media—last year an antibody trial in Thailand gave a new glimmer of hope—but overall the search is considered to be a long game.

Emily McLeod

The antigenic protein surface of HIV (blue) is covered by the

host-cell derived glycan shield (red). The sugars of HIV form a

dense network of sugar-sugar interactions on the surface, packed

together like trees in a forest which protect the viral protein.

the Queen’s Collegenewsletter 15

Dear Old Member,

You will have learnt from the Provost in this Newsletter that the opening of the new kitchen and servery area has been very much on the minds of everyone in College. When you next come back, I encourage you to take a look at the new servery adjacent to the Hall where fantastic use has been made of the arches that were uncovered during the project.

As I write this, the College is in the throes of preparing for the College Ball, which the students await perhaps more eagerly than ever before, thanks to all the noisy disruptions they have endured over the past two years. Back Quad will, however, finally be restored to its former appearance over the Long Vacation.

The first-ever Needle and Thread Gaudy for Old Members was somewhat disrupted thanks to very cold weather and snowfalls across the country. I was able to track the progress of the cold front according to the steady stream of phone calls from Old Members withdrawing from the dinner. As such a great number of you were unable to attend, alternative arrangements will be made in future years and you will receive another invitation to this Gaudy. If global ‘warming’ means that every January is the same, we may have to reconsider matters more radically…

Thank you very much to those of you who responded to my request for feedback on the Newsletter, its format and contents. A good many of you feel that the Newsletter and Oxford Today contrast and complement each other in the right sort of way. However, we are happy to make changes as and when necessary, and the call for more pieces on our current academics has been met with two interviews in this edition which I hope you will enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed talking to the two Fellows in question.

Lastly, I should like to draw your attention to the fact that my surname is changing and I am soon to become Emily Downing. I shall look forward to seeing many of you for the Old Members’ Dinner in September, a booking form for which is included with this Newsletter.

Emily - for one last time - [email protected]

CalendarSaturday 21 August 2010 125th Anniversary Dinner for the Eaglets

Saturday 25 September 2010 Old Members’ Association Dinner

Saturday 16 October 2010 50th Anniversary Matriculation Gaudy (1960)

Saturday 13 November 2010 ‘Ten years later’ Lunch (2000)

Friday 29 October 2010 Law Dinner for former students of Tony Honoré

Saturday 18 December 2010 Boar’s Head Gaudy (1986 & 1987)

Saturday 8 January 2011 Needle and Thread Gaudy (1960-1963)

Saturday 29 January 2011 Mathematicians’ Reunion Lunch

Saturday 19 February 2011 Taberdars’ Society Lunch

Saturday 26 March 2011 Lawyers’ Reunion Dinner

Tuesday 24 May 2011 *date TBC City of London Reception

Saturday 25 June 2011 Benefactors’ Dinner

Saturday 2 July 2011 Old Members’ Garden Party

A letter from the Old Members’ Officer


the queen’s college · pdf filethe queen’s college ... a letter from the provost 2...

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