Thatcher Development Awards

Second year musician, Finlay Dove, planned to spend the summer of 2020 in Kisii County, Kenya, conducting a music ethnography project with the twofold intention of exploring the music of the Abagusii tribe and considering the intersection between ancestral tradition and globalised modernity in Kenyan music. When the pandemic struck, however, Fin had to put these plans on hold, instead conducting his interviews with musicians online.

By Christmas 2020, with very few cases in Kisii, Fin was able to travel to Kenya and immerse himself in the Kenyan musical culture, producing Afro-Fusion music with popular local musician Moses Arati and in the process gaining the attention of a Canadian World Music producer. Fin was also able to build on his previous work with the community, when he helped install a water gathering and filtration system and new science laboratory, by securing a position with Education Partnerships Africa. In this position, he delivered musical talks, performances and workshops in rural secondary schools, encouraging students to keep playing and hopefully sharing some inspiration.

“Musically, my eyes have been opened to a new musical culture. Blending my trumpet and piano with the obokano and traditional singing was a valuable experience that has bolstered my training as a musician. I developed my ethnographic fieldwork skills and the partnership between Moses and I gives me great hope for future projects.”

Gideon came to Somerville in 2017 to study for an MSc in Economics for Development. In 2018, he received a £2,000 Development Award to support his project to bring electricity to remote communities.

Travelling to India that summer, Gideon implemented sustainable energy solutions in six villages, including solar-powered charging, rechargeable LED lamps and other energy-enabled devices that villagers could rent. Full capacity was soon reached, with initial results showing kerosene usage down by 70% while brighter LED lamps enabled students to study longer and the women who earned extra income making leaf-plates to double their output. Gideon’s business received angel investment soon after and Gideon is now working full-time on his company’s expansion.

A Clarendon Scholar and DPhil candidate in Medieval and Modern Languages, Rebecca used her Development Award to fund a three-stage project enabling her to expand her own academic work while also engaging other members of the College in her doctoral thesis on Dante and the personification of love from Antiquity to the Italian Middle Ages.

The first stage of her project was to involve the SCR, MCR and JCR more closely in the appreciation and conservation of Somerville’s Dante holdings, which date to the college’s earliest days, and thereby deepen the connection between her studies and the college. Rebecca did this by organising an exhibition in the college library with items from the special collections, focused on the history of Dante Studies at Somerville and involving members of the SCR, MCR, and JCR. The exhibition led to a successful crowd funding campaign that raised over £20,000 to conserve treasures from the college library for future readers.

Items relating to Dante studies from Somerville’s special collections, in an exhibition organised by Rebecca.

Next, in January 2019, Rebecca combined the remaining funds from her Development Award with a small grant from TORCH to found the interdisciplinary network PERLEGO: Critical Perspectives on Image and Text. After several successful seminars at Somerville, Rebecca and her co-founder, Vittoria Fallanca (New College), were able to build PERLEGO into a thriving research network that hosted its first international conference in October 2020.

Finally, Rebecca’s receipt of a Development Award and subsequent work organising exhibitions and seminars both with Somerville and PERLEGO gave her the confidence to explore her interest in material culture via practical experience working in museums. After working in public and academic engagement at the Ashmolean in the winter term of 2019, Rebecca was able to travel to San Francisco in January 2020 to take up an internship in exhibitions at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

“These initiatives are all deeply rooted in my connection to Somerville and so it is to the college that I owe the greatest thanks for being the home and the launchpad for the intellectual adventures that have propelled me from master’s student to PhD.”

A fourth-year Chemist in 2017, Ben travelled to Kenya to undertake voluntary work in a refugee camp on the outskirts of Nairobi. His work was primarily as a teacher of English, but he also got involved in projects such as improving water sanitation and developing sustainable farming. Having previously volunteered at the Calais refugee camp, Ben’s experience in Kenya confirmed his determination to pursue a career in international development.

“I saw first-hand the migrants’ desperate need for support and also how valuable this help can be, which motivated me to seek opportunities to support refugees.”

In 2017, Somerville Modern Languages finalist Rebecca Heitlinger used a Development Award to take her comedy sketch show Dates to this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival. From Tudor Tinder to Let’s Pay Tribute to the Patriarchy, the sketches offered a feminist take on the trials and tribulations of dating in the modern age.

“After a sold-out run and positive reviews at the Burton Taylor Studio, we realised that our anarchic show would be perfect for the Edinburgh stage,” Rebecca said at the time. “Many of the cast and crew hope to pursue careers in the arts and the experience of putting on a show in Edinburgh will give us all a springboard to future opportunities.”

In 2017, first year Biological Scientists Jai Bolton and Daniel Simonsen headed to Guyana supported by a Development Award to work as research assistants with Operation Wallacea. ‘This allowed us to fulfil our ambitions of doing rainforest research,’ they explained. ‘We learned about project planning, real-world data gathering and how to conduct scientific investigations in the field.’

Building on their experiences in Guyana, Jai and Daniel launched a Science and Society Forum at Somerville, which features external speakers and panel discussions on topical science issues. ‘We plan to share our knowledge and experience with school students, to help them make decisions about future study.’

Postgraduate student Avani received a Development Award to support her establishment of The Pind Collective, a collaborative online space that brings together young artists from India and Pakistan.

“In 2013, I made a trip that very few young Indians ever make, travelling across the Wagah border to Lahore,” says Avani. “I was confronted with a history of prejudice and violence that I have carried with me all my life. The Pind Collective was born out of a desire to enable people to reach out and connect across the border, to give visibility to new art, to connect young creators and to redefine the relationships that that exist between our nations.”

Avani is currently a Gates scholar and PhD candidate in the English Faculty at the University of Cambridge, and an International Fellow 2020 of the India Culture Lab. She continues to run the Pind Collective.

Inspired by their love of Somerville’s Brutalist buildings (Vaughan and Margery Fry), Charles and Alistair undertook a journey to Mongolia in the summer of 2019 to document Brutalist architecture of the Soviet era.

During their trip, they unexpectedly stumbled upon the decaying remains of Chagan, an abandoned town in north-east Kazakhstan, once home to the pilots who dropped nuclear weapons tested across the region. Close by is Semipalatinsk, the Soviet Union’s primary testing site for nuclear weapons. Between 1949 and 1989, the USSR conducted 456 tests in Semipalatinsk, making it the most ‘nuked’ region on earth.

Charles and Alistair made a short film about the experience of visiting this landscape haunted by the legacy and ideology of the Cold War. The film was screened at the Oxford Science and Ideas Festival in 2020, with additional commentary from Pete Bryant, the President of the Society for Radiological Protection, and Josh Steinert (who produced the film) for a discussion of Soviet history and their experiences filming in central Asia.

You can watch the full event below.

Environmental sustainability and protecting biodiversity were at the heart of Ella Davies’ four-week expedition with Raleigh International in Costa Rica. As a chemist passionate about climate change, Ella gained an unparalleled insight into the country’s approach to the environment, as well as one of its internationally respected climate campaigner and diplomat, Christiana Figueres.

During her time at the Volcán Irazú National Park, Ella and 14 other volunteers were tasked with trail maintenance, clearing over 20% of the park’s trails, and assisting Park Rangers with visitor management. Ella also worked on water management projects in the local community, engaging with a local school to deliver an awareness-raising day on water pollution and recycling to over 100 students aged 4-12. The trip concluded with a challenging four-day 70 km trek, through undulating stunning scenery, laden with camping equipment.

“Completing this trek had a huge impact on how I view the climate crisis and the role we can play in tackling it. Costa Rica is a country not just of amazing biodiversity, but also innovation, light years ahead of us in the UK in its environmental changes. My trip experience has strengthened my determination to work in a field that will have a positive impact on the environment, where I can use my Chemistry degree to mitigate the effects of the climate crisis.”