The Campaign for the University of Oxford Campaign Report 2016/17
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The Campaign for the University of Oxford Campaign Report 2016/17 Thanks to Fostering your support a brighter future How your donations are The vital work of the Rees Centre for making a difference Research in Fostering and Education p.4 p.14 The complexity Improving of modern outcomes for conservation preterm babies Liesl Elder How social, ecological and How the development of a global Chief Development Officer behavioural factors affect key standard is informing clinical practice University of Oxford conservation issues p.16 Celebrating the impact of our donors’ p.6 generosity is one of the great pleasures of my role here at Oxford. Across the University, there are many wonderful A polymath’s Chinese art at stories of how philanthropy is enabling remarkable things to happen. legacy the Ashmolean I am delighted to share with you the The impact of the Placito family’s The Chinese paintings team explains Campaign Report for 2016/17, which commitment to Oxford the significance of the Ashmolean’s features just a few of the highlights Chinese art collection of the work made possible thanks p.8 to your support. From furthering our p.18 understanding of the societal impacts of foster care, to creating opportunities Paving the way for students at both undergraduate and News in graduate level, this work is generating for success real benefits around the world. Two students communicate the Your donations help to create an brief importance of scholarships inspirational environment in which Short stories from students can fulfil their potential. p.10 across the campaign They also motivate our world- p.20 leading academic community to drive forward ground-breaking Securing research and innovation. I hope you enjoy the report. Arabic at Oxford An historic Chair in Arabic is preserved for the future p.12 Main photography: John Cairns. Front cover photography: Copyright © Oxford University Images / Gurinder Punn – all rights reserved. Further reading Additional photography: Oxford University Image Library, Whitaker Studio, Discover more about Rob Judges Photography, Wadham College, the impact of your support at: PS: Unlimited Photography, Bogdan Sonjachnyj/ www.campaign.ox.ac.uk/report16-17 Shutterstock.com, Ian Wallman Photography, CURE Clubfoot. Design: Spy studio. Thanks to your support this year… … opportunities for graduate students in history have been created More than £70,000 has been given by alumni and friends of the Faculty of History toward the History Tomorrow Fund. The fund will support scholarships for graduate students and will provide opportunities for the brightest scholars to come to Oxford, regardless of their background. In 2016, 52% of students who were accepted onto a graduate course declined their place and lack of funds was cited as the primary reason. Professor Martin Conway, Chair of the History Faculty Board, says: ‘Graduate study is the lifeblood of history as a discipline. It is the way that knowledge advances and that the profession renews itself. Our graduate students gain the knowledge and intellectual confidence that equips them to go on to play active roles in every part of society.’ … Oxford can build The support that the faculty has received from this fund will be used directly to assist the scholars of the future. a LIFE-changing game More than 100 donors were inspired to give in excess of £60,000 to a project aimed at protecting the health of children in Africa, following the launch of a crowdfunding campaign last year. Through the development of an innovative scenario- based mobile gaming platform, the LIFE project (Life- saving Instruction For Emergencies) aims to give healthcare workers the knowledge they need to provide life-saving treatment to newborns, children, mothers and others. The money raised is now enabling the team to construct a prototype of the game, which is being user tested in Kenya and the UK. It teaches healthcare workers the latest World Health Organization guidelines, and contains built- in reminders to stay up to date and refresh what has been learned. There are also plans to link it with a professional accreditation strategy. Professor Mike English, Consultant Paediatrician and Senior Research Fellow at KEMRI-Wellcome Trust in Nairobi, says: ‘Face-to-face training is very expensive to provide, and is hard to deliver at high coverage across large countries with dispersed health facilities. If you set up the correct infrastructure, you can reach a much greater number of people far more efficiently through a platform like LIFE.’ 4 Oxford Thinking Campaign statistics Amount raised this year £192m 01/08/16 to 31/07/17 including cumulative college data to 31/01/17 Amount raised since the start of the campaign £2.66bn Including cumulative college data to 31/01/17 Where donations come from (University only) … the Watlington Hoard has been saved for the nation 59%United Kingdom 27%North America The Ashmolean Museum has succeeded in raising £1.35 million to purchase King Alfred’s coins. More than 800 members of the public supported the appeal to give the treasure a permanent home. A lead gift was provided through a Heritage Lottery Fund grant of £1.05 million. The grant helped to acquire the hoard, as well as assisting with conservation, display, touring and educational programmes. Dating from the end of the 870s, the Watlington Hoard contains over 200 Anglo-Saxon coins. These coins can 14% Rest of the world potentially shed light on how the once-great kingdom of Mercia came to be absorbed into the emerging kingdom Destination of campaign gifts of England by Alfred and his successors. by priority area (University only) Dr Xa Sturgis, Director of the Ashmolean Museum, says: ‘The Watlington Hoard is one of the most exciting and important acquisitions we have ever made. To ACADEMIC POSTS AND PROGRAMMES 53% be able to keep the hoard in the county and put it on display with the Ashmolean’s Anglo-Saxon collections, BUILDINGS which include the world-famous Alfred Jewel, was 19% an opportunity we could not miss.’ STUDENT SUPPORT 19% OTHER 9% 5 Tackling the complexity of modern conservation In one such study, Professor Milner-Gulland and her Research at Oxford is team hope to understand the impacts of a hydroelectric dam recently built across the Nile in Uganda. To make revealing the ways in up for conservation loss during the dam’s construction, the Ugandan government conducted a biodiversity-offset which social, ecological project. She explains: ‘As well as seeing if this has had a positive effect on the environment, we’re also interested and behavioural factors in finding out how local people valued these natural resources culturally, and what – if anything – can be interact and affect key done to compensate damage to this cultural value as a result of the project.’ issues in conservation. Professor Milner-Gulland’s research also extends to the illegal wildlife trade – a growing threat to global ‘We come into conservation as nature lovers, as animal biodiversity, which is estimated to be worth up to lovers, and because we want to save the environment,’ $10 billion annually. As part of an interdisciplinary explains E J Milner-Gulland, Tasso Leventis Professor team funded by the Oxford Martin School, she is of Biodiversity and Fellow of Merton College. ‘However exploring how consumer behaviour can be changed. it soon becomes clear that in order to save the species ‘We’re looking at it from a range of different angles,’ you want to save, you need to understand what it is she says. ‘One approach is taking messages from public that motivates people, what drives their behaviour.’ health, where a lot of work is done around changing Professor Milner-Gulland is a firm believer that people’s behaviour. Can we apply that to the wildlife ‘conservation is about people’, and has spent over 20 trade? Well, we’re having a go!’ years examining the incentives, pressures and challenges Professor Milner-Gulland’s positivity about facing individual decision-makers. ‘Once we understand conservation is palpable. In a discipline in which bad news this,’ she says, ‘we can look at how to design conservation and pessimism can often predominate, she feels that ‘it’s interventions that are fair to local people, that improve important to focus on where it has worked, on trying to the lives of local people, that are done with the consent understand why it’s worked, and then on making that case.’ of local people, but that are also going to conserve.’ In early 2017, Professor Milner-Gulland spearheaded Professor Milner-Gulland brought the Interdisciplinary the Conservation Optimism Summit, an event celebrating Centre for Conservation Science (ICCS) with her when positive thinking in conservation. ‘People need to know she moved to Oxford in 2015. Based in the Department that their actions do make a difference,’ she stresses, of Zoology, ICCS brings together conservation scientists, ‘whether that’s governments or businesses or individuals graduate students, postdocs and research assistants to or conservationists themselves. We have to celebrate address some of the key challenges faced by humanity both the small and the large steps forward, in order to in halting the decline of global biodiversity. be able to keep moving in the right direction.’ ‘We don’t do anything that is just abstract; we want everything to have real-world impact,’ explains Professor Milner-Gulland. Researchers in ICCS work in collaboration with NGOs, government agencies and businesses to answer questions that are relevant to them, while also exploring This support has given me the social and cultural impacts of conservation through their projects. ‘We know that in order for our research to so much freedom to develop make a difference, we have to work with end-users right from the beginning,’ she adds.