EU FUNDING FOR RESEARCH INTO MOSQUITO-BORNE DISEASE

Professor Paul Eggleston, pictured, Professor Hilary Hurd and Dr Frederic Tripet, Research Institute for Science and Technology in Medicine, have been awarded £221,495 by the European Union FP7-Infrastructures Programme to support their research into novel technologies for the control of mosquito-borne disease. The funding is part of a major €8M international initiative entitled INFRAVEC - "Research Capacity for the Implementation of Genetic Control of Mosquitoes", which is co-ordinated by Imperial College and involves 31 international partners from Europe and Africa.

The aim is to bring together the expertise and facilities of the participating institutions into a new and widely accessible European Infrastructure that strengthens research capability and fosters scientific excellence in novel approaches to the control of mosquito-borne disease.

INFRAVEC will draw together the leading experts in mosquito biology, genetics, epidemiology, genetic engineering, ecology and population biology. They will seek to develop a series of infrastructures to facilitate the research, including facilities for the mass rearing, genetic modification and confined release of mosquitoes, together with state-of-the-art bioinformatics facilities.

KEYNOTE ADDRESS AT INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

Professor Pnina Werbner, Professor of Social Anthropology, has returned from Pakistan where she was a guest at the prestigious Lahore University of Management Science (LUMS). She presented a keynote address on 'Beyond Division: Women, Pilgrimage and Nation Building in South Asian Sufism' at the LUMS Fifth Annual Humanities and Social Science international conference, 2010, on 'Pakistan and India: Shifting Identities in Culture, History and Justice.'

The conference was attended by well-known Indian scholars and performing artists as well as speakers from Britain, the USA and Pakistan. Professor Werbner, pictured, gave two additional public lectures, on vernacular cosmopolitanism and return migration, to LUMS staff and students; she presented a seminar to the postcolonial academic circle at Punjab University on 'The Place(s) of Transgressive Sexuality in South Asia: From Ritual to Popular Culture' and participated in a debate convened by Shirkat Gah, the feminist NGO based in Lahore.

Professor Werbner has also given two public lectures, 'Mothers and Daughters in Historical Perspective: Home, Identity and Double Consciousness in British Pakistanis' Migration and Return' and 'Appropriating Social Citizenship: Women, Labour, Poverty and Entrepreneurship in the Manual Workers Union of Botswana',  at the University of Lisbon's Institute for Social Science Research and presented a keynote at the University of Frankfurt, as part of a semester long Cornelia Goethe Colloquiem, on the subject of 'Gender and "the Political" in a Postcolonial World: Negotiating Normativity.' Her paper was titled 'Towards a New Cosmopolitanism: Rooted, Feminist and Vernacular Perspectives.'

PARIS LECTURE

Professor Barbara Kelly, Music, was invited to participate in a series of seminars organised by the Centre national de la recherche scientifique at the Institut de recherche sur le Patrimoine musical en France, Paris.  They focused on Henry Prunières, a musicologist and director of the most important musical journal in France in the inter-war period, La Revue musicale. She was invited because of her British Academy-funded work on the Archives Vallas in Lyon and her recent invitations to work in the private archives of Henry Prunières and to consult documents in the Institut de recherche sur le Patrimoine musical en France.

Her contribution concerned the 'Affaire' Vallas-Prunières and the battle to shape the legacy of French composer, Claude Debussy, who died at a moment of political crises in 1918.  Prunières objected to Vallas' biography of the composer, claiming it was detrimental to the composer's memory, which resulted in violent exchanges in the press and in private letters.  

Professor Kelly, pictured above, has also been invited to participate in the 2012 Debussy celebrations in Paris to mark the 150-year anniversary of his birth.  She has just had a paper accepted on Debussy's legacy for the American Musicological Society's Annual conference in Indianapolis in November.

GUESS WHO WINS PHOTO COMPETITION

Hannah Moore, from the Research Institute for the Environment, Physical Sciences and Applied Mathematics, has been named winner of the Graduate School's first Photography Competition. Entrants were invited to submit images associated with their research that have an aesthetic appeal.

Hannah's winning image of a fly, called 'Guess who?', pictured, will be used for the cover of the Research Symposium 2010 programme.  The symposium, on 5 May, brings together doctoral researchers and research staff from across the University to present their work.

Hannah says of her picture: "Identifying the species of a fly is tricky business.  One way is by looking at the veins on the wings, which are all named.  Also the hairs on the base of the wings are an important identification key."

STEPPING OUT FOR CHARITY

Two members of staff have hit the road to raise money for charities.

Paul Richards, CFM Senior Operations Manager, completed a sponsored walk over five days that followed the Hadrian's Wall National Trail from Bowness, across Northumberland to Wallsend.

The 84 miles long walk has so far raised more than £1,100 for the Marie Curie Cancer Hospices.

Paula Hughes, from SPIRE, took part in the UK's first overnight walking marathon (26 miles) for the SHINE 2010 event in Manchester last weekend for Cancer Research.

Joining 7,500 other people, Paula set a target time of 8 hours and finished just outside that at 8hr.30mins.42sec.  Her target was to raise £300 but with the support from family, friends and colleagues throughout Keele she has raised nearly £450. Paula is pictured right with her friend Julia Kennerley.

Both are still accepting donations.

FUN-FILLED CHEMISTRY AT KEELE

More than 100 students from 22 schools in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, Cheshire and Derbyshire enjoyed a fun-filled day of chemistry at the Salters' Festival of Chemistry on campus this week.

Each school was represented by a team of four 11-13 year olds.  They used chemistry to analyse samples for glucose and protein, designed fireworks and had to solve a 'murder case' by carrying out chemical analysis. They also competed in a 'University Challenge', investigating the use of hydrogen as a 'green' fuel, and attended a fun lecture by Professor Mark Ormerod about the ways chemistry may help to protect our planet for the future.

All participants were given individual fun prizes and participation certificates and the winning teams were awarded prizes for their schools.

NATIONAL AWARD FOR KEELE ASTROPHYSICISTS

The Keele Astrophysics Group, as a member of the WASP planet-hunting consortium, was this week awarded the 2010 Group Achievement Award for Astronomy by the Royal Astronomical Society. 

The award was presented at the National Astronomy Meeting in Glasgow, attended by several Keele astrophysicists.
 
A press release accompanying the award, and including the announcement of recently discovered planets, was widely reported by the media worldwide and resulted in an article in The Times and in other newspapers as far away as the Los Angeles Times.

DOUBLE SUCCESS FOR AMERICAN STUDIES PhD STUDENT

Marie Molloy, a PhD student in American Studies, has been awarded a $500 Mellon Travel Fellowship from the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond to conduct archival work on single, white, southern women in the nineteenth century south.

To add to her success Marie has also secured an additional £400 from the Royal Historical Society in London towards her three-week research visit to the USA.

The visit will include work in three repositories: Georgia Historical Society in Savannah, South Caroliniana Library and Virginia Historical Society. 

Whilst in the States, Marie, pictured above, will also be presenting a paper on 'Single, White and Southern: Female Singleness in the Nineteenth Century American South, c.1830-1880,' as part of her PhD on single women.

SOCIAL ENTRPRENEURSHIP AWARD FOR JESS

Second year Music and Music Technology student, Jess Bell, has this week received a Higher Education Social Entrepreneurship Award of £2,000.

Former Bizcom winner and current SPEED WM participant at Keele, Jess, pictured above, has received the award to help fund the development of her social enterprise, OCE Music, which aims to provide various opportunities for 16-25 year olds in the music events industry.

The funding, which comes from HEFCE and UnLtd, a charitable organisation that promotes social entrepreneurship, will support Jess's plan for a summer music event in her home city of Oxford.

Alongside the financial support that the award will provide, Jess will also have access to further mentoring and business support.

FROM THE ARCHIVES

22 April 1988

For the first time in the history of the University, the annual summer degree ceremony is to be divided into two parts.

The VC's Committee has decided to replace a single annual degree ceremony with two separate events, due to the problem of accommodating graduands and their families in the King's Hall, Stoke-on-Trent.