SUSS-EX CLUB

NEWSLETTER No.16 SEPTEMBER 2010

® Theatre Trips ®

Here are the latest suggestions for possible Suss-Ex theatre trips – an attractive selection. The plays are:

· Sheridan’s The Rivals, directed by Peter Hall and starring Penelope Keith (as Mrs Malaprop) and Peter Bowles – prior to the West End; October 18-23.

· Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit, directed by Thea Sharrock and starring Alison Steadman; November 16-20 (no Monday performance). ‘A classic of high English comedy’.

We can get a group reduction on the price of tickets for the performances listed if at least ten people want to go. For both plays the price would be £23.50 for Monday to Thursday evenings and the Saturday matinee, while the Thursday matinee will be £16. Dinner together beforehand, or after a matinee, will be booked at Carluccio’s for those who would like it.

If you are interested, let Jennifer Platt know by Sep. 17th (preferably by e mail to j.platt@sussex.ac.uk - or phone 01273 555025, post to Freeman Centre [n.b. no longer Arts D] on campus, or 98 Beaconsfield Villas, Brighton BN1 6HE).

A booking needs to be made promptly to ensure that tickets are available, and your money then has to be sent in time for the total bill to be paid in advance; hence the lead times. Please use the slips at the end of the newsletter: just mark all days/times which would be OK, number those in order of preference, and indicate the number of tickets wanted and whether you would like to join dinner before (evening) or after (matinee). You will be notified of the outcome very soon after Sep. 17th.

Autumn Event 2010

Talk and supper with Professor Mary Kaldor

“The Ultimate Weapon is No Weapon”

6.30pm, Friday 12 November 2010

Conference Centre, Level 3, Bramber House, University of Sussex

We are delighted that Prof Mary Kaldor will join us to talk about her recent book with the above title, written jointly with Lieutenant Colonel Shannon D Beebe. Come and find out how a renowned peace advocate (Mary) managed to find common ground with a career military officer in the US Army Deputy Chief of Staff, Intelligence! Mary Kaldor is currently Director of the Centre for the Study of Global Governance at LSE. She spent many years in Sussex, first at the Institute for the Study of International Organisation and later at SPRU (Science & Technology Policy Research).

Welcome drinks will be served in the Conference Centre lounge at 6 pm, with Mary’s talk starting at 6.30 pm. This will be followed by a buffet supper (including another drink), at which there will be plenty of opportunity to catch up with friends and former colleagues.

There is a booking form at the end of this Newsletter, to be returned before Friday 29^th October.

Other Future Events

Wednesday 15 December 2010 12.30-2.30 Christmas party in the Meeting House Quiet Room. Further details and a booking form will appear in the next Newsletter.

Friday 28 January 2011 6 pm Professor John D Barrow

Better than a Thousand Words

A talk about influential pictures in the development of science, followed by supper. There will be a booking form in the next Newsletter.

Friday 17 June 2011 6 pm Professor Harry W Kroto

Science and Science Education in the 21st Century

Followed by supper. More details later.

Suss-Ex activities are organised by a steering committee, which currently comprises

Gordon Conway, Chair G.Conway@imperial.ac.uk

Robert Benewick r.j.benewick@sussex.ac.uk

Sue Bullock sue.bullock@hotmail.co.uk

Jackie Fuller jkfuller21@hotmail.com

Charles Goldie c.m.goldie@sussex.ac.uk

Arnold Goldman a.goldman@cowbeech.f9.co.uk

Jennifer Platt J.Platt@sussex.ac.uk

Steve Pavey miniperson2003@yahoo.co.uk

Adrian Peasgood adrian@peasgood.plus.com

David Smith j.d.smith@sussex.ac.uk

Michael Tribe michaeltribe@btinternet.com

Ken Wheeler kenneth.wheeler@ukonline.co.uk

We are always seeking ideas for social occasions when we can meet former colleagues. Please let us have your suggestions or volunteer to join the committee. We meet once a term.

Additional 2009 publications

See also list in Newsletter no 15.

Tony Inglis

Walter Scott, Woodstock [1826]. Tony Inglis, J. H. Alexander, David Hewitt and Alison Lumsden, Eds. Edinburgh University Press, 2009. [The Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels, volume 19.]

Laurence Lerner

Obituary essay on Tony Nuttall Proc. Brit. Acad. 2009, 161, 313-330.

Reading Women’s Poetry , Sussex Academic Press (ISBN 978-1-84519-334-8).

Book on English usage, You Can’t Say That, Georgian Press 2007. Reissued by Cambridge University Press (ISBN 978-0-521-14097-3).

Mike Wallis

Wallis, M. Mammalian genome projects reveal new growth hormone (GH) sequences. Characterization of the GH-encoding genes of armadillo (Dasypus novemcinctus), hedgehog (Erinaceus europaeus), bat (Myotis lucifugus), hyrax (Procavia capensis), shrew (Sorex araneus), ground squirrel (Spermophilus tridecemlineatus), elephant (Loxodonta africana), cat (Felis catus) andopossum (Monodelphis domestica). General and Comparative Endocrinology 2008, 155, 271-279.

Wallis, M. New insulin-like growth factor (IGF)-precursor sequences from mammalian genomes: the molecular evolution of IGFs and associated peptides in primates. Growth Hormone and IGF Research, 2009,19, 12-23.

Wallis, M. Prolactin in the Afrotheria: characterization of genes encoding prolactin in elephant (Loxodonta africana), hyrax (Procavia capensis) and tenrec (Echinops telfairi). Journal of Endocrinology, 2009, 200, 233-240.

Donald Winch

Société civile et l’État chez Adam Smith in Magali Bessone and Michael Biziou Eds., Adam Smith philosophe; de la morale à l’économie ou philosophie du libéralisme, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2009.

Intellectual History and the History of Economic Thought: A Personal View, History of Economics Review, December, 2009.

Outing to Bexhill

Suss-Ex group at the De la Warr Pavillion 2 June 2010

From left: Dave Glasson, Christine Glasson, Sue Bullock, Ian Bullock, Mike English, Charles Goldie, Pauline English, Jackie Fuller, June Bushell, Peter Bushell, Natalie Lerner, Sandy MacGillivray, Larry Lerner, Adrian Peasgood, Denise MacGillivray, Rita Goldman, Geoff Oldham, Brenda Oldham.

Obituaries

James Shiel (1921-2010)

Dr James Shiel, who died in July, came to Sussex in 1963 as a Lecturer in the History of Classical and Medieval Thought in the School of European Studies. Subsequently Reader in the History of Hellenic Thought, he stayed at Sussex until his retirement in 1980. His appointment by Martin Wight, founding Dean of EURO, reflected Wight’s wide-angled interdisciplinary vision of Europe and the long evolution of European culture.

Before Sussex, James had made his mark as a Lecturer in Classics at University College Dublin where he had taught since 1954. For a time he had been a member of a religious order and had studied classics and ancient philosophy at the University of London. He then undertook an Oxford D.Phil. thesis on Boethius’ Commentaries on Aristotle, which had played a significant role in making Greek thought and Aristotelian logic available to the churchmen of the Latin Middle Ages. The religious and classical strands of his background remained closely entwined. He would always claim that the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church and the Oxford Classical Dictionary were his two favourite reference books and the links between the development of Christianity and classical philosophy were at the heart of his professional life. A painstaking and meticulous scholar, he translated a collection of sermons by St Ambrose of Milan (1963) and published a wide–ranging study of Greek Thought and the Rise of Christianity in 1968. He was also fascinated by calligraphy, particularly in classical manuscripts, and published in Scriptorium, the international review of manuscript studies. His early work on Boethius and Aristotle eventually led to his 1998 revision of the standard scholarly edition of Latin versions of Aristotle’s Prior Analytics.

James’s erudition and his relish for good writing, extending across the centuries from Plato to Padraig Colum, were not always immediately apparent to his students. Shy and diffident in manner, a cautious perfectionist with an appearance of nervous fragility and a certain vagueness and waywardness in practical matters, he had little appetite or talent for bold declamation or for administrative tasks. He was at his best in unpressured informal discussion when his sharp mind, his wisdom, his rich learning and his impish sense of humour came to the fore.

He could often be found in a quiet corner of the library after his retirement, a scholar and a seeker after truth to the end. A visiting professorship at Eastern Mediterranean University in Cyprus engaged him in philosophical discussions with a group of professional people which led to a little book of meditations, Letters to Cyprus (2nd ed. 2008). The attitude of mind that he attributed to his fellow-Irishman, the Oxford classicist E.R. Dodds, whom he greatly admired, also described his own questing outlook, ‘something strangely cognate with religious insight ... some Socratic reticence facing the questions that baffle our limited apparatus of awareness.’ Modest and unassuming, he would be surprised to hear how much those who knew him learnt from him. Our thoughts will be with his wife and family.

Norman Vance

Patric Michael O’Reilly (1932-2010)

Paddy died on 28^th April, aged 78. With his death the University lost someone who, during his time at Sussex, had been well placed to observe the life of the institution in all its aspects. At a time when the University seems to be losing the collective memory of its own past, his loss, with his store of memories, acquires a dimension over and above the personal.

Paddy came to Sussex first as a mature student. After graduating he became, in 1973, the Administrator of the Students Union. To this post he brought a width and variety of experience, allied with personal qualities, which for the next fourteen or so years made the Students Union an extraordinarily happy and stimulating, if often stressful, place to work.

The job was never plain sailing. Balancing its often conflicting demands called for all Paddy’s skills as he simultaneously had to advise and support elected student leaders while continuing to fulfil his responsibilities to his University employers - with whom the students were not infrequently at variance! As few others could have done, for most of his fourteen years in the Union Paddy successfully maintained that balance – and gave every appearance of relishing the challenge this presented.

He was a man of many enthusiasms and interests – a voracious reader, a great book collector and a student of philology and the Celtic languages, to name but a few. And he was also an enthusiastic member of the Rugby Club, with a lively interest in most other campus sporting activities.

As administrator in an organisation whose political leadership changed every year he needed to stay in tune with the students he served. It helped that, as well as caring about them personally, he shared many of their ideals and aspirations – and in the ’70s and early ’80s at least there was space for that idealism. It was then that he was instrumental in setting up the Mandela Scholarship Fund – an outstanding expression of Sussex’s stance against apartheid.

Paddy’s remit was so wide-ranging it gave great scope for innovation. Among the student initiatives he brought to fruition were shops and bars, a café, a travel agency, a second-hand bookshop – all originally geared to providing cheap services to the student membership and, by the way, to the wider University community. Then, with the Thatcher years, came the need to steer through a time of change, turning many of those same enterprises into sources of funding for all the other services the Union aimed to provide for its membership.

Turning his attention elsewhere, Paddy and a friend in the administration, Steve Carter, identified a gap they proceeded to fill when they launched the former Sussex Staff Association – the precursor of today’s Suss-Ex.

Paddy had a fierce hatred of cruelty, oppression and injustice but a wide tolerance of the oddities of human behaviour. And, although opponents who encountered him on the rugby pitch or, in an earlier incarnation, in the wrestling ring, might not have suspected it, his occasionally pugnacious manner hid the kindest of hearts.

When he died it was no surprise to those who knew him well to find that, following a life in which he had tried to adhere to the principle of non-harmfulness to all living beings, he and his family had elected to have his friends say goodbye to him at a Buddhist funeral.

It was an appropriate farewell for someone who, in his working life at the University, had tried to create a caring environment in which, as a past Union President remarked at the ceremony, ‘We were all like a family in those days.’

Bernice Ryan (former member of staff in the Students Union)

NOTE: Paddy was a Patron of the Mandela Scholarship Fund and the family asks that, if anyone wishes to make a donation in his memory, it should be sent to: Sue Cornford, current Administrator of the Fund at the University of Sussex Students Union, Falmer House, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QF.

Chris Freeman (1921-2010)

Professor Christopher Freeman, who died on 16 August aged 88, did more than any other to create the research field of innovation studies. He was passionate in his belief that technology and innovation could make the world a better place, and that the ‘dismal science’ of economics could be transformed into ‘the economics of hope.’ In pursuing these aims, he opened major new areas of research in evolutionary economics, the institutional analysis of technological change and the industrial economics of innovation.

As a student, Chris had been inspired by J.D. Bernal’s 1939 book on The Social Function of Science. After the war he became aware of the growing levels of research and development (R&D) conducted by major firms. This led him to recognise the economic importance of science, technology and innovation. From 1959 to 1966, while working at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, he carried out pioneering studies on industrial research and attempted some of the very first international comparisons of R&D funding. In a report for the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (‘the Frascati Manual’), he set out the now universally accepted definitions of ‘basic research’, ‘applied research’ and ‘experimental development’.

In the mid-1960s the University of Sussex, under its Vice-Chancellors John Fulton and Asa Briggs, set out to ‘rewrite the map of learning’ by establishing an organisational structure for the new university that would encourage such ‘interdisciplinary’ developments. In 1966 Chris was invited to set up a Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU).

With his colleague Geoffrey Oldham he quickly built up an impressive array of talented researchers drawn from a variety of disciplines. From the start SPRU’s research was intrinsically interdisciplinary, long before this became fashionable. That research soon attracted international prominence. In ‘Project SAPPHO’ in the early 1970s SPRU researchers identified the main factors affecting success and failure in the management of industrial innovation, a study that is still influential in industry today. Then, when the Club of Rome published its famous 1972 book on The Limits to Growth arguing that the world would shortly run out of resources, SPRU produced a trenchant critique, showing that the MIT authors had failed to give sufficient attention to technology and innovation. In 1974 Chris published The Economics of Industrial Innovation, which (along with two later editions) was to be the definitive textbook on the subject for the next 30 years.

Under Chris’ leadership and as the result of the ideas he pioneered, SPRU became a central hub in a growing international network of scholars working on innovation. Visiting researchers came from all round the world, as did hundreds of postgraduate students, many of whom have since gone on to eminent careers in academia and government. Along with colleagues in SPRU and Germany, Chris founded the journal Research Policy, editing it for the next 30 years and establishing it as the pre-eminent journal in the field.

In 1982 Chris stepped down as SPRU Director to focus on his research. In 1986, on his formal retirement, he became Visiting Professor at the University of Aalborg in Denmark and Professorial Fellow at the University of Limburg (Maastricht) in The Netherlands, where he helped Luc Soete to establish the Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT). In 1992 he published his book on The Economics of Hope and in 2001 he and Francisco Louça published As Time Goes By, revisiting and revising Chris’ ideas on long-term economic change. During this time he continued to interact with new generations of scholars in the rapidly growing field of innovation studies. In 2003 SPRU moved into a new building, which was named ‘The Freeman Centre’ in his honour.

For Chris the purpose of research was not just to understand the world, but to change it – and to make it a better place. He will be remembered as an incredibly inspiring lecturer, of a type now sadly almost extinct in an age of soporific PowerPoint presentations. Without notes he was able to speak fluently and to enthral his audience (as a video of his 2001 lecture for the Vega Science Trust attests). He had another remarkable skill – that of synthesis; at conferences he would sit quietly until near the end, when he would succinctly synthesise and clarify the main points from previous presentations and discussion. Yet he will be remembered first and foremost as an individual –a determined and rigorous scholar, a deep thinker with an eye for detail, someone of principle and integrity with the utmost humanity and compassion. He was one of the most intellectually generous researchers and one of the most admired social scientists in the second half of the 20th Century; as well as one of the best liked. He was awarded five honorary doctorates as well as the Bernal Prize and the Schumpeter Prize in recognition of his contributions.

Born in Sheffield, Chris’ Yorkshire roots were reflected in his life-long support for Sheffield Wednesday Football Club and Yorkshire Cricket Club as well as his love of nature, especially birds. Growing up in the crisis of the 1930s and influenced by the economic and social circumstances of the time, he joined the Communist Party, although he left it after the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. After attending the progressive Abbotsholme School in Staffordshire he won a place at the London School of Economics, which was subsequently evacuated to Cambridge. There he attended lectures by Keynes and Laski. During the War, he served in the army, enjoying a posting to Balmoral to protect the royal family before joining an anti-tank unit in Normandy.

He first married Peggotty Selson (who died in 1971), then Margaret Young (marriage dissolved), and finally (in 2007) Carlota Pérez, with whom he also had a fruitful academic partnership. She survives him, along with two sons and two daughters from his first marriage and one daughter from his second.

Ben Martin

Jenny Shaw - An Artist’s Open House

A part of the Brighton Festival, which has been running for over twenty years, the Artists Open Houses scheme is generally a popular event. Individual artists turn their homes into temporary galleries and wait for visitors to stroll around and turn up. There is no selection process, and each year more people give it a try. This year I was one such and while I have nothing with which to compare the experience, I gratefully recall Marie Jahoda commenting on how rare ‘new firsts’ are in old age. Putting oneself out as an artist is quite different from putting oneself out as an academic, though both involve self exhibition. People react to art work more directly than happens in academia and often tell you quite directly whether they do or do not like the (your) work; but even the ‘not my thing’ does not feel like a personal judgement. Originality, which in principle is valued in academia but is actually largely avoided and often condemned, is in the art world taken for granted. Partly as a result, very few artists make a living through their art work. Coming out as an ‘artist’ is not easy, you feel a bit ‘up yourself’ and there is little or no institutional infrastructure. However it is serious stuff, and not a ‘hobby’. I don’t consider myself an amateur and still smart/laugh remembering the man at the Inland Revenue seminar on ‘becoming self employed’ who, after hearing me reply ‘write, lecture and paint’ to the question of what activity I was planning to embark upon, objected ‘to this lady’s hobby being supported through the tax system’. Though this year will be the first in which I will include receipts from art in my tax return, my earnings from this are more than I have got from lecturing, external examining or writing, in a year that includes a book.

Some of this income is commission as the owner of the Open House, and some from sales of my own work. Right now the costs of running the Open House far exceed earnings, but some might be spread over the next couple of years. And though immediately after the Open House I thought, ‘never again’, I have already found myself thinking about what to hang next year, who to invite and, following some lessons learned, how I must be very firm about equal shares in the work of the hanging, invigilation, making good, about the dates for bringing and taking away work, and not worrying about who sells, or doesn’t. I hope that I will also be sanguine about the weather. This year, the first three weekends were cold and wet, which meant that I spent them largely hugging the radiator nearest to the open front door, behind which the gas meter ticked, waiting to greet possible visitors. It was a huge relief at 6.00 p.m. on the first Sunday (May 2nd) to close the door, make up a fire and cook popcorn. The final weekend the weather changed, and it was so hot that the call of the beach was stronger than any Open House banner. The flow of visitors was very erratic throughout the four weekends, and quite often the kind friends who had offered to help ‘invigilate’ outnumbered the visitors. While I don’t know if being a ‘new house’ meant that we fared less well than others, being on the perimeter of our ‘trail’ and suffering a map that muddled us up with a house known as ‘The World of Sheep’ can’t have helped. Still, one man walked in and bought two pictures that, together, cost over £2,000, just like that.

Overall the jewellery and photographs sold quite well, some very finely turned wooden boxes were much admired, but only one was bought. The pottery admired for its glazes by other ceramicists did not sell well, and much to my surprise the prints from an artist who sells well in London and New York did not sell at all. All three of the painters sold work and received positive comments, and I was gratified to be congratulated in my role of curator by both the curator of Pallant House and the director of the Phoenix. Nevertheless I am not sure what most people made of the work and while I know that many of the AOH visitors are more interested in the houses than stuff on the walls, when the most frequent comment on entering the house was ‘What a nice plant, what a nice light, and what a nice garden’, it did seem to miss the point. Still, I undertook to run an Open House in the first place to encourage a friend who doesn’t quite see how good her work is, as well as to showcase my own work and that of some other friends. The show was a serious one, and it helped us to take ourselves seriously too. Because we were part of the AOH we received an email inviting submissions for a competition to show in a Cork Street exhibition, and while three of us submitted only one, my nervous friend, got through. And she wouldn’t have entered this without the Open House. Though not all the contributors pulled their weight, however for the core who did there was a real sense of shared purpose, collegiality, and delight in others’ success. There were also some wonderful moments, especially the sunny mid April day of the hanging. This started on time with coffee and warm chocolate cake, the pictures went up easily and the bungeroosh walls did not give us the hard time we feared; midday we feasted on chicken, sage and olives, had more cake for tea, and finished on time too.

It is hard to know now whether to repeat the exercise next year, but compared to submitting articles for publication, or writing a book, the responses to the Open House and the work within it were both more immediate and more tangible than happens in academia. European students on Laci Löb’s summer school would rap the table if they appreciated a lecture or seminar, but on the whole one hardly knew what the mainly British students thought. Whether or not making artwork becomes a second career for me remains to be seen, but the rhythm of this work is quite different to and more episodic than academic work which tends to be in the front or back of one’s mind most of the time. Artwork, or at least the sort I do, does not haunt one in the way academic work can, and it is not portable as it can only be done in a fairly large space where making a mess is not a problem, and with substantial chunks of uninterruptable time. Without these conditions the work cannot be done and I do not think or fret about it, but seize the opportunities when they occur. Discounting the time spent setting up the Open House, which was a lot of very hard work and included a major redecoration and shifting of furniture, hampered by two broken wrists, I have probably drawn or painted for about a dozen days this year- which is O.K. and, of course, made possible because of a decent pension.

A message from New Zealand

Do please pass on my good wishes to my other ex-colleagues at Sussex. I am very sentimental about my time there; it had a major impact on my thinking.

Brian Easton, eastonbh@paradise.net.nz

® Theatre Trip booking form ®

Please be sure to submit forms to Jennifer Platt by Sep. 17.

The Rivals	Mon Oct. 18, 7.45	Tues. Oct 19, 7.45	Weds. Oct. 20, 7.45	Thurs. Oct. 21, 2.30	Thurs. Oct. 21, 7.45	Sat. Oct. 23, 2.30
Date & time OK?
Preference?
How many?
Dinner?

Blithe Spirit *	Tues. Nov. 16, 7.45	Weds. Nov. 17, 7.45	Thurs. Nov. 18, 2.30	Thurs. Nov. 18, 7.45	Sat. Nov. 20, 2.30
Date & time OK?
Preference?
How many?
Dinner?

Name: …………………………………………………………………………………………

E mail and/or postal address: ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………

Talk and supper with Professor Mary Kaldor

“The Ultimate Weapon is No Weapon”

6.30pm, Friday 12 November 2010Conference Centre, Level 3, Bramber House, University of Sussex

We’re delighted to announce that Prof Mary Kaldor will join us to talk about her recent book with the above title, written jointly with Lieutenant Colonel Shannon D Beebe. Come and find out how a renowned peace advocate (Mary) managed to find common ground with a career military officer in the US Army Deputy Chief of Staff, Intelligence! Mary Kaldor is currently Director of the Centre for the Study of Global Governance at LSE, prior to which she spent many years in Sussex, first at the Institute for the Study of International Organisation and later at SPRU (Science & Technology Policy Research).

Welcome drinks will be served in the Conference Centre lounge at 6pm, with Mary’s talk starting at 6.30pm. This will be followed by a buffet supper (including another drink), at which there’ll be plenty of opportunity to catch up with friends and former colleagues.

Please complete this form and return with cheque or credit/debit card details by Friday 29^th October to: Jackie Fuller, 21 Pelham Square, Brighton, BN1 4ET.

Alternatively, if paying by card, the form with card details can be returned by email to Jackie at: jkfuller21@hotmail.com

Your Details

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Booking Details

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In case of any query, Jackie Fuller can be reached on (01273) 688538 or jkfuller21@hotmail.com.