Newnham in America

We look forward to welcoming Dame Patricia on her farewell visit to meet US alumnae before her retirement as Principal of Newnham College in July 2012. For more information, see the Events page.

Ella Fung, who won the US Committee's 2011 Travel Award, has sent us a report of her time at Ottawa Hospital Research Institute in Canada, investigating the molecular and cellular mechanisms of chemoresistance in ovarian cancer.

Ella says, "This summer has given me the means to pursue research and the guts to try my hand at scientific communication for the first time (scientific writing has always been a dream of mine!). Thank you all so much, not just for your generous support, but also for your faith in my summer project before it had even begun!"

Read the full report here.

We are delighted to announce that T.S.Eliot’s widow, Valerie, is making a donation of £1,125,000 to support the teaching of English at Newnham. It seems particularly appropriate that the proceeds from the hit musical Cats should be used to secure English at Newnham. We are thrilled and very grateful to Valerie for her generosity.

You can read the full press release here.

Congratulations to Ella, who has been named this year's Travel Award winner! Ella, who is a second-year Biological Natural Sciences undergraduate, will receive $4000 to help fund her trip to Canada. Ella plans to take up a placement at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute investigating the molecular and cellular mechanisms of chemoresistance in ovarian cancer.

For more information about this year's finalists, click here. 

Mary Beard was chosen to give this year’s A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

Established in honor of Andrew Mellon in 1949, the Mellon Lectures are Washington’s annual opportunity to see top scholars think in public.

Mary lectured on the subject of ‘The Twelve Caesars: Images of Power from Ancient Rome to Salvador Dali’.

To read the Washington Post’s review, click here.

The new literary archive has been established to celebrate Newnham's authors and inspire the next generation of women writers. Around 30 authors have already donated material to the archive, including manuscripts, memoirs, letters and photographs.

According to Newnham College Principal Dame Patricia Hodgson: 'Newnham wants to celebrate the achievements of its writers by inviting them to contribute something of their creative work towards a literary archive. Letters, diaries and photographs form a more personal link between women writers and their work. As the archive grows we hope it will inspire current and future students, and encourage an interest in writing.'

Among items so far donated to the new archive is the typed manuscript of Nicola Beauman's A Very Great Profession – complete with comments from Virago co-founder Carmen Callil – and letters and photographs from journalist Katharine Whitehorn.

Writing has long been an important creative outlet for women, whose careers were – until the late 19th and early 20th centuries careers – largely limited to being either a writer or a governess. 'One of the ways women have, since the times of Jane Austen, been able to express themselves and be successful is to write. This opened a means of fulfilment and expression to women that was otherwise closed. Women continue to write well – they are empathetic. Newnham has been the cradle for some of the greatest female writers of the 20th and 21st centuries', Hodgson adds.

Inspiration for the new literary archive came from Virginia Woolf who, although she was not a student at Newnham, visited the College at the invitation of its Arts Society in 1928. The talk Woolf gave on women and fiction at Newnham, along with one given at Girton College, became A Room of One's Own, an essay that has inspired women writers for the past 80 years.