9 2 N O I T I CLARE NEWS D SPRING/SUMMER 2012 E University Challenge History repeats itself Summer Blues Rising Talent Six Questions Clare sport in Harriet Muller Dr Alice Welbourn Olympic year Artist HIV awareness CLARE NEWS I Alumni News Alumni News I CLARE NEWS WHERE ARE THEY NOW? University Challenge – drama of the quarter finals Clare’s Olympian professor Paul Klenerman 1982 BA Medical Sciences lare’s 2012 and 1973 University Challenge Cteams met similar success in their quest Then for glory: they stormed through to the Fenced for the British Olympic quarter finals but lost out to the eventual team at Los Angeles 1984 as a winners Manchester University and Trinity College, Cambridge, respectively. Clare undergraduate This year’s team were captain Jonathan Burley (Natural Sciences), Daniel Janes Now (History), Kris Cao (Mathematics) and Professor of Immunology and Jonathan Foxwell (Natural Sciences). medical researcher, Oxford Highlights included walking to their University, trialling vaccines for places on the studio set in Manchester to Hepatitis C the Rocky theme music . Their mascot was Then Paul chose Clare because he “liked Question from 1973: the look of it” and it had a reputation for Who was the French friendliness and being good all-round. He commander at Trafalgar? l Today’s team – Kris Cao, arrived as the GB Under-20 Fencing Daniel Janes, Jonathan Burley Question from 2012: Champion, having taken up the sport “to l David Holmes and Jonathan Foxwell give it a go” at City of London School. “I Etymologically unrelated, didn’t win a single fight early on and got what short name links a David Holmes (1972): “The radical ever our opponents appeared to be doing (1972) semi-retired investment manager; thrashed by bigger kids, but must have French départment, named students of the 70s, sporting pro-Marxist too well. (It replaced our banned mascot of appointed captain of the team because he thought it was fun! I received great after a tributary of the badges to subvert this bourgeois TV pap? a box of Smarties.) found out about train times to Manchester. encouragement and attended two World Loire, with a US singer and Not quite. “The team was a well-oiled (make what Dr Alan Powers (1973) is a published Championships”. actress whose films include “Even close examination will not reveal you will of that) quizzing machine and did author on architecture and Professor in At Cambridge, “sport was still amateur The Witches of Eastwick and that our captain is actually wearing a Donny pretty well. Philip Jenkins went on to win Architecture and Cultural History at the and fencing was maybe the most amateur Moonstruck? Osmond badge, while my preference was Mastermind, while I was once banned from University of Greenwich. of all”. The team was showered with Mars Slade. playing on a pub quiz machine because I Dr Philip Jenkins (1970) is the Edwin Erle Bars because “one of the selectors knew “Nor does the photo show our somewhat was diminishing the landlord’s rake-off. Sparks Professor of the Humanities at Penn someone at Mars and got sponsorship”. inherited from the 2010 team’s choice –a Priapic mascot, kindly donated by a member “Ah, the success that a Cambridge State University. Selection for the British team for LA stuffed stoat. of the Clare kitchen staff, and used to gener- education brings!” David Holmes (1972) is a writer and became a possibility in 1983-84 and he The 1973 team’s efforts are described by ate disconcerting audience laughter when- Where are they now? Jeremy Fairhead is a prankster. received the good news by “popping down to get a newspaper from the shop opposite Magdalene”. There might have been a “phone call to our communal l Paul Klenerman: then and now RISING TALENT Harriet Muller (2001) artist house in Castle Street, which someone else answered…the days before mobiles Now It was the immunology course that ave any alumni been caught trying to explored her friends’ life-changing and emails”. Paul describes his celebration he undertook at Cambridge which Hclimb into Memorial Court? Harriet experiences and painted them. Changing as low-key, partly because of his exams convinced Paul that he wanted to be a Muller was rescued by the porter whilst Lives was published in 2010 and can be but also because the team’s chances of medical researcher, so three years at New half way up the main gate on her first night found on her website harrietmuller.com winning were remote in the face of College, Oxford followed, as well as stints at Clare and told that her swipe card would Reading Languages at Clare (under stiff competition from the French. in Switzerland, Bath and London. gain her entry. No mountaineering antics Professor Alison Sinclair) gave Harriet an Watching Chariots of Fire after the He runs a team of twelve at his were actually needed. intellectual aspect to her art which became opening ceremony at an open-air cinema laboratory in the Peter Medawar Building This episode didn’t inhibit Harriet’s essentially literature-based. She did pottery in the Olympic Village gave Paul visions of for Pathogen Research. They are currently progress to becoming a solo exhibition in the studio in Memorial Court, played the winning gold, but it was not to be. Great trialling a vaccine for Hepatitis C with artist by the age of 30, a career that started piano and flute, and is now very nostalgic Britain was eliminated from the team some success, as reported in the news at the age of 3 with the gift of her first about her time at College. She was the event in the qualifying rounds by Italy recently. He also has a clinic at the John easel. first member of her family to graduate who won a bronze. Radcliffe Hospital and teaches Indeed, she has now sold hundreds of from Cambridge. Despite being an Olympian “there was postgraduate students as a Fellow at paintings and is also variously a published Her most recent exhibition at the not a lot of fuss about it at Clare”. He did Brasenose. author, art teacher, artist-in-residence at a Hampstead School of Art was entitled lend his GB dressing gown to Louise Fryer Clare was “the formative time” he says. “I centre for eating disorders, art therapist The Seven Mu'Allaqat, Three Important (1982) to walk across Old Court to realised that you could discover things as for teenagers, boxer, actress, Gospel choir Translations, to be published this year by E staircase for her showers. He fenced for opposed to learning them. It was the best director, belly dancer, and radio chat-show Parliament Hill Press. Oxford against Cambridge as a university experience.” host. Harriet has just moved to Bournemouth postgraduate and won six Blues in all. Free time is spent with his wife and Harriet used to illustrate her father’s “for the sea and the light” and wants to be After the World Student Games in 1985, two children , fencing occasionally at the books. Dr Ralph Muller was a leading found in the future “in the sun, surrounded l Harriet Muller with he “retired” from international Oxford club and playing saxophone for a authority on worms and human diseases. by paint in my studio”. She is also open to her most recent exhibition competition as he felt he had reached his local band The Immposters. Inspired after his death in 2008, she commissions. peak and work commitments began to Paul has tickets for the Fencing at the impinge. London Olympics, but no spares… 2 www.clarealumni.com Spring / Summer 2012 Spring / Summer 2012 www.clarealumni.com 3 CLARE NEWS I Alumni News Alumni News I CLARE NEWS In every issue of Clare News, we ask SIX QUESTIONS: DR ALICE WELBOURN ON AIDS AWARENESS one of our alumni six questions about Most people still assume that their work. ONE the face of HIV is black or male Why did you chose to work in HIV? Because I was diagnosed with HIV in 1992 or gay or ill or poor. I don’t fit when I was expecting a baby. This was into any of these boxes. So I am Dr Alice Welbourn before the medication, which now keeps able to challenge people’s (1979) was elected as me alive, healthy and fully productive, was assumptions about what HIV is developed. and what it isn’t. HIV is just a bug Clare’s 2012 Alumnus of So in those days my diagnosis was a death sentence. Because of this and because the in my body, yet there is still so the Year and spoke to baby would have had at least a 30% chance much stigma and discrimination second year students of having HIV too, I was advised not to have out there about it. the child. at their Halfway Hall I couldn’t tell any but a very few close dinner in February. family and friends because of the stigma that existed (and still exists) around HIV. Their support was immense but it was still devastating. FIVE She has been I decided that, since I was lucky enough to What are you campaigning on right now? HIV-positive for twenty have that crucial support, I would do what I So many things! There have been some could to try to make that support the norm huge scientific advances. Anti-retroviral years and takes daily rather than the exception. medication is extraordinary. If someone is stable on treatment, like me, it is now really medicine to survive. hard to pass HIV to someone else, even TWO without condoms.