Tuesday, May 20, 2025
Blog Page 241

As a Palestinian NUS delegate, I say that tolerance of antisemitism within our student spaces must end

Anas Dayeh
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As a Palestinian NUS delegate, I say that tolerance of antisemitism within our student spaces must end

We cannot call ourselves anti-racists if we let ourselves compromise on the fight for any ethnic group. This was highlighted in a recent Cherwell article, which showed first-hand the vile antisemitism that exists within the NUS. As the National Union of Students, the job of the organisation is to represent and champion students across the country; however, it is clear is that it is failing in this task. Oxford SU must stand with all of the students it is supposed to represent, and as one of its NUS delegates, it is so disappointing to see our Student Union offer weak statements without consultating any of us delegates.

Antisemitism plagues every part of the NUS. Nowhere is this quite so obvious as in some of the statements and tweets made by the new President-elect of the NUS, Shaima Dallali. These clearly provocative tweets are masked as statements claiming to be in support of Palestine, but it is impossible to see how comments like “‘Khaybar Khaybar O Jews … Muhammad’s army will return”, in the knowledge that the Battle of Khaybar represented an invasion of Khaybar and a massacre of its native Jews, are supposed to advocate for human rights. As a Palestinian, I find it deeply offensive that support for Palestinian human rights is being used to mask blatant antisemitism.

The Oxford SU’s statement is yet another example of how antisemitism plagues our student structures. Jewish students at Oxford should feel safe and secure in the knowledge that their student body is supporting them wherever possible; however, our SU chose to argue that the issue of antisemitism “has been co-opted by the Government and media to further the culture war and silence those who are advocating for Palestinian rights”.

The conflation between the conflict in Israel-Palestine and British Jews must stop. Our Jewish students cannot be made to feel responsible for a conflict that is being waged thousands of miles away. They cannot be made to feel unsafe, as they are hounded and targeted at our university. Instead, we must listen to them and act on their concerns. The advocation of Palestinian rights and valid criticism of the Israeli government should never lead to or justify racism against Jewish students in Britain.

As an NUS delegate and a Palestinian, I feel very strongly about this. I have signed the letter written by the Union of Jewish Students to the Trustee Board of the NUS and included the concerns in my NUS report for the SU’s Student Council on the 26th of April, with the suggestion that the SU retract the previous statement and issue a new one which wholeheartedly supports our Jewish peers. I will be pushing for a motion to stand firmly against antisemitism and strongly in support of an investigation into antisemitism in the NUS.

I urge anyone reading to attend the ‘Campaign Against Antisemitism’ organised by the Oxford University Labour Club every term. The next talk will be in Michaelmas Term, and will provide information on what antisemitism looks like, how we can identify it, and how we can fight against it.

It is time to stand in full solidarity with Jewish students as we fight against all forms of prejudice and racism on campus and in the country. I urge my fellow friends and students not to stand by, but actively to call out antisemitism.

Photograph by Anas Dayeh

In conversation with Elaine Hsieh Chou

Sonya Ribner
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In conversation with Elaine Hsieh Chou

Disorientation – a state of mind or a play on words? It seems like both when 29-year-old PhD student Ingrid Yang’s academic and personal life are upended by her discovery that the Chinese American author, Xiao-Wen Chou, whose work is the subject of her dissertation and eight years of scholarship, is, in fact, the fabrication of a white man, John Smith. 

Over the course of Elaine Hsieh Chou’s stunning debut novel, Disorientation, the fabric of Ingrid’s life frays as the director of the East Asian Studies department and her dissertation supervisor, Michael Bartholomew, launches a defense campaign of Smith in the name of ‘free speech’, which is a thinly veiled call to arms for white supremacists. At the same time, Ingrid’s fiancée, Stephen, dismisses her concerns regarding his objectification and exotification of Asian women (both in his translation work and through his physical actions) as an overreaction. Ingrid, whose greatest excitement up to her discovery is a night of take-in with Stephen, finds herself sparking a – literally – heated debate (book burnings and student protests shake the university scene) when she questions who controls the narratives of our stories. Ingrid also develops a friendship with her former sworn enemy, the effortlessly cool and brilliant activist Vivian Vo, and engages in espionage with her friend Eunice Kim, all to expose the truth. 

Sayre’s Law postulates that academic disputes are bitter because the stakes are so low. Yet, in Disorientation, Elaine Hsieh Chou brings to the fore the complexity of issues gripping college campuses, with a pen as incisive as it is poignant. I spoke to Elaine Hsieh Chou about her recent book, her journey as an activist and her approach to write a satirical novel.

SR: In Paris you helped organized protests and rallies. How did your activism shape your approach to Disorientation?

Elaine Hsieh Chou: Before moving to Paris in 2014, I had never had any experience organizing or protesting. It was an entirely new world to me. Once I entered, I felt at a loss. Most people had already been doing this work and knew the language. In the novel, Vivian is the star activist of Barnes, and Ingrid tries to infiltrate [the POC caucus]. It was able to poke fun at my own [initial] experiences through Ingrid’s point of view; she navigates a space where she is both terrified that she might say the wrong thing and honored to be entrusted with the fight for people’s lives. Once I became familiar with organizing and read the literature and planned protests, there were moments where I also became more like Vivian, wanting to lecture other Asian Americans who I felt had to unpack their unconscious biases and examine their anti-Blackness.

In Disorientation, we see the paradox of Asian students being recruited for research in the East Asian Department in the name of inclusivity. For Ingrid, “writing her dissertation on Xiao-Wen Chou was like waking up in a doorless, windowless room without knowing how she’d gotten inside.” Does something as deceptively simple as selecting a dissertation topic convey where language and civilization studies are going wrong at academic institutions?

It comes down to feeling pigeonholed – the expectation that Asian American literature should look a certain way or address only a few tried and true topics because they sell is very real in both academia and the fiction world. Most East Asian departments in the US have been run and dominated by white professors and scholars. When you look at an English department, you don’t traditionally see as many POC running or dominating those departments. When I worked on Modernist literature for my PhD, the field was dominated by white scholars and professors. I felt like the odd one out. In undergrad, I remember classmates constantly being surprised that I was studying English – it was like they were questioning if I should be an expert in this language and literature because I’m Asian. Those feelings were percolating during the moment that Ingrid is coerced into writing her dissertation on a topic that she doesn’t want to study. 

Stephen takes liberties with the Japanese texts he translates. To what extent is language the conveyance of culture, and how does this impact who should be translating texts?

None of us are conduits of pure, unbiased information. We all come with specific perspectives and baggage and history. So, when a white translator approaches a language in which they have no stakes and which they were not raised speaking, they approach it from the outside-in. When we talk about wanting to control our narratives, it is not just writing the story, but how we present the actual culture from our native countries. There is a new wave of translation that views [the text] as a sort of historical reparations before it was very normal that your personal identity had nothing to do with the text you were translating. For example, Murakami’s stories were distorted by white translators who translated the Japanese into English according to what they believed white American audiences would find most titillating about Japanese culture. Those parts were emphasized, while other sections were left out. When I learned this, I thought that explains so much! These translators have immense power because they are responsible for how Japan is seen by Americans.

In the novel, Michael raises Roland Barthes’s argument on The Death of the Author as justification for the irrelevancy of whether Xiao-Wen Chou is Chinese American or a white man. Is reading a book without considering the context of its author shortsighted? 

I think that was something Barthes could get away with in the 60s. I find Deconstructionist readings to be directly antagonistic toward Postcolonial Studies. The latter say that there is no escaping the past because, literally, the past shaped the conditions we live in now and the people we are. Postcolonialism does not allow you to cut the threads of any cultural product, whereas Deconstruction and the New Criticism acted as if there was a purity or universalism to writing. Propagating that idea would relieve a lot of guilt and prevent people from recognizing that a text is informed by history or trauma or colonialism. [Critics like Barthes] erased all of that to argue, let’s just look at the sentences and grammar. However, the writing of those sentences and grammar does not exist in a vacuum. Barthes’s theories are convenient for the argument Michael makes because they are based on the idea that we do not live in a society informed by history. 

Disorientation seems the gradual unspooling of Ingrid Yang. She’s a high-strung woman at the beginning and, by the end, she’s attacking her supervisor on the floor of her Dissertation Defense. During her birthday party, Ingrid entertains the idea of throwing a tantrum – breaking something, slamming the door – but she keeps her urge to tear her world apart inside. Is making a physical or emotional mess a privilege?

It is absolutely a privilege to be able to make a scene. Marginalized people learn certain tactics of survival to move through the world, and I think one of them is holding rage in. Because there are repercussions if you show that rage: you could lose your job or be arrested. Some minorities even fear for their lives if they show that rage. For Ingrid, who suffers many microaggressions, not being able to express her rage takes the form of an internal deadening of the self. Ingrid, who has been so walked on her entire life, has internalized that she has to bear things – which is, of course, very problematic; when you bear something, you are not asking for accountability. Only when you speak up and demand recognition can any sort of accountability happen. 

At one point, Ingrid asks Stephen, “How do you know it’s really your choice to like something and not, I don’t know, someone telling you to like it?” When in the novel would you say Ingrid thinks and acts for herself? 

Ingrid contorts herself to do what she thinks Stephen wants or what he explicitly tells her to do. Then, when she’s around Vivian and the POC caucus, she contorts herself again in a different way. I think we first glimpse Ingrid’s body rebelling and saying no to Stephen in the scene after they come back from the County Fair and Stephen tries to massage her. Ingrid can’t articulate what she is thinking so her body responds first and says, Get off me! Do not touch me! She literally propels him across their bed. Then, of course, at the dissertation defense, Ingrid’s thoughts finally mirror the rage that she has been feeling.  

In the chapter “Hollywood,” Ingrid’s struggle to assimilate (despite being born and raised in America) deprives her of meaningful connections with both her immigrant parents and friends at school. This scene is juxtaposed with Ingrid’s discovery that Chou is John Smith. What relationship, if any, is there between her acts of performance and Smith’s?

It is all about power. What we call intracommunity violence is very different from violence that comes from outside of your community done by your oppressor. In a white supremacist society, a white man’s power is so skewed. The harm Smith does is irreparable. When the violence is lateral – for example, within the Taiwanese American community – it is very different because neither of you can truly oppress the other, but there is a lot of bringing in or shutting out. Within the Asian community, you’ll have conservatives like Timothy Liu, and then you’ll have radical activists like Vivian Vo. I think what you have is a lot of pain over why are we not seeing eye-to-eye? Do I disavow you completely? Do I take away your “Asian card” because you’re not representative of our community? I think the more honest thing is to consider that because someone exists, they are representative of the community, so why do they exist? What conditions have led them to exist? How do you bring someone in like Timothy who is actively hurting your community? At the end, Ingrid comes to see some of her past self in Timothy. It’s very easy to dismiss Timothy as despicable, but when Ingrid looks at him, she recognizes so much of his self-contorting in her past self when she was trying to fit in too. Is empathy the answer? Is open dialogue the answer? Or does it work best to set boundaries and cut people off? I don’t have the answers.

You note that in earlier drafts of the novel, the protagonist had two children and the narrative was first-person. Could you take me through the judgment calls that resulted in the current form of Disorientation we have now?   

A lot of failure. It’s hard to understand how you feel about something when you’re in the thick of it. In the first version, Ingrid is 49 and married to a congressman with two college-age children. I thought that was the novel I set out to write, that it was the final version. When I was writing it, I didn’t give myself a lot of room to question it because I had meticulously over-planned it. After finishing that draft, I was like, oh, I really hate this. For a while, I thought I had failed. I was like, well, I tried to write a novel and clearly, I don’t know how. But a few months after that, I got the idea to save Ingrid’s storyline and focus on her. I rewrote the story in the first person. I think that was necessary for me to get inside her head and simplify the novel’s main concerns. But similarly, when I finished that draft, something was missing. A lot of the problem was that Ingrid is quite clueless and, in the first person, we don’t have distance from her. I had to be able to show that Ingrid had things to learn. Again, I was disappointed, oh no, I have failed once more, and I just wrote 70,000 words! But it was necessary to write that draft before returning to the third person and finding the specific voice and narration that worked. 

Disorientation deals with difficult questions of identity and unearths some of the most twisted human compulsions. Yet, there are laugh-out-loud moments. What role does humor play in the novel?

I didn’t set out to write anything satirical or humorous, but I think it emerged as a coping mechanism for me to discuss situations and create characters that would otherwise be very triggering for me to spend a lot of time with – like Michael or Stephen. With humor, I could distance myself from those emotions and feel like I had more control and power. Writing is always hard, but it allows me to look forward to the process and think how can I make myself laugh rather than how can I get this published or how can I make it good? When you’re reading about dark [subject matters], humor makes it easier to swallow. On the other hand, when describing certain incidents and people, humor can highlight their darkness. 

When we meet Ingrid, she has incredibly low self-worth. As facts come to light that undermine her reality, we see her undergo painful dissociation rather than grapple with her desire for a different life. By the end of the novel, does Ingrid get what she wants?

I think so. What she wanted was freedom to no longer be trapped under the thumb of men like Michael or Stephen. She had these white men controlling her moves and an internalized sense of this is what I should be doing. Ingrid is forced into this box, and by the novel’s end, she’s out of the box. It doesn’t mean she knows what to do next. After being in the box for so long, Ingrid just wants to walk around, hang out with her parents, work at a minimum wage job where she doesn’t have to worry about being a brilliant researcher. A lot of pressure is taken off her shoulders by just doing her job. I wanted her to have the freedom to not know what she is doing next. And, of course, she’s planning her trip to South Korea and Taiwan with Eunice, which I love for her. 

In a recent essay in The Cut, you note horrific acts committed by white men against Asian women and a perverted worldview that many hold. You wrote down and kept track of their crimes “obliviated from society” to clarify your own reality. While Disorientation is a work of fiction, does it perhaps provide a more “real” portrayal of life than some may see in the real world?

The other day, a reader from the Bay Area wrote to me on Twitter, saying, “this is the most realistic thing I have read (possibly ever).” I felt so affirmed because the novel is billed as a satire – the word absurdist is used a lot in descriptions – but I made certain that the most outrageous events in the novel happened in real life. Even things I didn’t add to the endnotes like “The Sanctuary,” a safe space for white students, actually existed at a university in Michigan. Marginalized people are gaslit all the time – you’re inventing or exaggerating your pain, stop being so sensitive, stop being a victim – all these narratives try to get us to think our reality is imagined. It was important to me to show that the violence that Ingrid endures is all real and has historical precedent. Stephen and Michael treat her like an infantile, small East Asian woman based on centuries-old ideas of Asian women from Madame Chrysanthemum (turned into Madame Butterfly) to Mean Girls. It felt very affirming to have this reader say the story rang true to them because everything in the novel happened to me, or to my friends, or in the real world.

Which authors excite you right now?

My friend, Sabrina Imbler, has written an essay collection that I feel transforms the genre; they write about their life through sea creatures in How Far the Light Reaches from Little Brown coming out in December this year. I can’t wait for everyone to read it. Another friend, Ryan Lee Wong, who was my conversation partner for a virtual event, has written a novel, Which Side Are You On, that comes out from Catapult this October. It is about the Black and Asian community, and the difficulties that they have had to go through together. When Peter Liang, an Asian police officer, killed Akai Gurley, a Black man, in 2016, it sparked a lot of difficult conversations. I’m really excited for [Ryan’s] book to be out soon.

Puzzles Answers: TT22 Week 0

Ifan Rogers
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Puzzles Answers: TT22 Week 0

Here are the answers for the week 0 edition of Trinity term 2022.

Medium Sudoku:

Hard Sudoku:

Cryptic Crossword:

Pencil Puzzle – Marupeke:

The answer for the Cherdle was SWIRL

There Ain’t No Party Like a Conservative Party!: Oxford, the Tories, and the preparation for life without consequences

Anna Davidson
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There Ain’t No Party Like a Conservative Party!: Oxford, the Tories, and the preparation for life without consequences

During a stint in the 1990s as editor of magazine the Spectator, Boris Johnson would claim that the modern ordinary British male was ‘useless’ – “if he is blue collar, he is likely to be drunk, criminal, aimless, feckless and hopeless”. The then-journalist was fresh from a degree largely spent violently drunk, destroying property, mass-vandalising and harassing staff, and a graduate post from which he had been fired for lying. Twenty years later, and after a process which I can only imagine consisted of tallying up the results of the Conservative cabinet’s chunder chart, checking Dominic Cummings’ BeReal, and trying to figure out which members of staff were beneath the big sunglasses and sombreros in the photo booth prints, the authorities investigating the Downing Street parties would hit Johnson, now Prime Minister, with a fixed-penalty fine for his participation in law-breaking lockdown parties. Following the 20 members of his staff who had received £50 fines the week before – an amount which would hit them especially hard after they had to pay for their own booze – Johnson and Chancellor Rishi Sunak would receive the fines as part of ongoing investigations by the Met Police into twelve separate get-togethers and parties across 2020 and 2021. Criminality, hopelessness, drunkenness – they all applied, but hey, nothing’s that serious when you’re wearing a suit.

For men like Johnson and Sunak, for whom dodging meaningful penalties began with carving the family crest into the Eton bunkbed, continued through Oxford, and then all the way to parliament, the fines they have now received amount to below petty change. The consequences faced by top politicians and civil servants partying in years when 170,000 people died of Covid-19 seem to vary from being extra nice to your wife that week, to having to cut down the ice budget next time. From the circle of public schoolboys defining their youth, to that exact same circle of public schoolboys defining the rest of their lives, the PM and Chancellor’s attitudes reflect the institutions which have prepared them for a life in which consequences and judgement is something reserved for the ‘blue collar’ worker Johnson was so frustrated by. Private school, Oxbridge – institutions which have failed to teach their wealthy students lessons in self-denial or responsibility – have facilitated a culture of self-indulgence and contempt for the rules which bind normal people, even if you’re the one making them.

To track the development of this decadence and corruption, let me take you back to their university days. Picture it. Oxford, 1980s. Starship tops the charts, mullets are in, meritocracy hasn’t been invented yet, life is sweet. It is especially sweet for students like MP son Bartholomew Smith, who a decade prior is found guilty of “dangerous driving causing death”, his fifth driving charge, after four people die in a three-car pile up he causes after driving intoxicated ‘at maniacal speed’ after a Bullingdon Club dinner – and who is given a fine and ten-year driving ban. This scene, where Boris Johnson first learns to see a fine as a sign of a night of jolly good fun, eagerly welcomes him and equally well-educated friends George Osbourne and David Cameron, who spend their university days at the same lavish, rowdy dinners which Smith had (allegedly) attended before orphaning the children of 31-year-old Peter Houseman. Various sources have testified to future members of various Conservative cabinets engaging in criminal behaviours, causing havoc, and solving potential issues with extensive family wealth. Former member of the club Radek Sikorski would recall shaking Johnson’s hand after returning to his room to find it trashed and vandalised, champagne sprayed across the walls. A similarly raucous scene would be described by a source for the Observer, who testified to a culture in the Bullingdon Club in the mid-1980s which “was to get extremely drunk and exert vandalism.” She would assert that Johnson was “one of the big beasts of the club. He was up for anything. They treated certain types of people with absolute disdain, and referred to them as ‘plebs’ or ‘grockles’, and the police were always called ‘plod’.” Her description of the messes the club left staff members to clean up – recalling one instance in particular in which every piece of furniture in a recently-refurbished room was smashed, liquid poured down the walls and the mess left in a pile in the centre of the room, prompting “the clerk of works looking at the mess in complete dismay” – is testament to a group for whom consequences were deemed impossible, and cleaning something that happened once you left the room.

So while other students were doing boring student-type things (Jo Johnson was publishing articles about marijuana, Jacob Rees-Mogg was writing articles about how gay people shouldn’t have rights) here were Boris Johnson and David Cameron, attending excursions to smash restaurant windows, breakfast events with hired prostitutes, and parties at which Ros Wynne Jos would describe “smashed up rooms, vomit-strewn carpets, turds in bathtubs, and other ‘hilarious’ japes involving other bodily fluids…someone had to clean all this up… long before the minimum wage.” Two of the future prime ministers, alongside various MPs, businessmen and civil servants, had spent university partying, drug-taking, smashing up furniture, spraying a tuition-fee’s worth of money across walls, destroying antiques, setting fires, making life hellish for staff and paying off any potential problems – in short, preparing themselves for a life devoted to public service. 

Let’s flash forward. It’s 2011, Katy Perry tops the charts, meritocracy is in (or at least Tony Blair has said he’s got it started, and we can believe him because he was very well-educated). David Cameron returns to the UK from an Italian holiday with his good friend from Bullingdon Club days Sebastian White to deal with the London Riots. And suddenly he’s not so keen on fines, or on allowances for the ‘youthful indiscretion’ which saw him engage in petty crime. No, the same man who had spent his university days in a cycle of criminality would now say that “these riots were not about government cuts… this was about behaviour. People showing indifference to right and wrong. People with a twisted moral code. People with a complete absence of self-restraint.” Funnily, the same man running from police after nights of smashing windows, gorging himself on attacking people’s livelihoods, and treating those he deemed beneath him as if their purpose in life was to clean up his mess, now preached ‘morality’, against those who lacked ‘self-restraint’. Breaking the law was suddenly not so cool; in fact, in David Cameron’s own words, this was now “Crime without punishment. Rights without responsibilities. Communities without control. Some of the worst aspects of human nature tolerated, indulged – sometimes even incentivised.” It is certainly a shame that nobody told Nicolas Robinson, 23, who was imprisoned for six months for stealing a £3.50 case of water, or the unnamed twelve-year-old given a six-month youth detention order for smashing a window (which he had done the previous year, at age eleven) that what they were doing was fine, they just had to do it in a £1,200 tailcoat. 2011 – coincidentally, the same year that Bullingdon-club member Nick Green would so seriously injure a fellow student that he had to be hospitalised, with no charge – would see over 2,000 people prosecuted for involvement in the riots. In 2012, the BBC reported an average sentence length for the riots of 16.8 months, with prison sentences overall totalling over 1,800 years. A 2011 interview with the Prime Minister questioning his behaviour during his university days in the context of this administration of ‘tough justice’ saw Cameron give the delightfully vague response that “we all did stupid things when we are young and we should learn the lessons.” Some, it seems, were to learn the lessons in prison, while others could reflect upon them fondly from an Italian yacht.

George Osbourne, another Bullingdon club member and Cameron’s chancellor (who was photographed in the early 2000s with his arm around escort Natalia Rowe and with speculated cocaine in front of him) would similarly bemoan the ‘moral collapse’ of rioters – the challenge for the government going forward was, he suggested, “dealing with people… helping them feel… that they know the difference between right and wrong,”. George had picked up morals from an early age from his baronet father and Eton education, but not everyone was so lucky. When Osbourne would be asked about the time he spent as a young person smashing up property with the Bullingdon club, his response was that when looking at old photos “you cringe a bit.” 

Flash forward again. Boris Johnson is in power, not quite ready to put his partying days behind him. Meritocracy is something Rishi Sunak is taking care of by making £100,000 donations to Winchester College. Since 2016, the Prime Minister has attended at least six meetings of the Leader’s Dining Club, in which members pay £50,000 to “receive regular private dinners, lunches and drinks receptions with the prime minister and other senior Tory figures”. In 2021 – having in 2013 described his Bullingdon days as a “truly shameful vignette of almost superhuman undergraduate arrogance, toffishness and twittishness” – Johnson shows how far he had left his university days behind by appointing former club member and university friend Ewen Fergusson to Whitehall’s independent sleaze watchdog. The City solicitor and participant in the infamous 1987 photograph (where he stood behind Johnson! Ha!) was selected in 2021 after the committee passed over 171 candidates. And while some might suggest that if they were looking for someone with a close personal history and extensive experience with sleaze and corruption, they had found the right man for the job, Fergusson’s ability to claim £240 for each day he worked on committee business was a reminder that hypocrisy never had, and never would mean anything to this circle.

And why should COVID put a stop to all of this fun? Here we come to the gatherings – presumably slightly tame affairs in comparison with the university days of many participants, but these were trying times. 2020 was a summer of wine, cheese and garden parties. First up, ITV would report 40 staff members attending a 20th May party which Johnson and his wife had attended – the defence: Johnson ‘categorically’ denied knowing about the event beforehand (they must’ve hid the piñata well) or receiving warnings that it breached the rules he set for the public (a stirring defence, if only he’d known someone who could tell him). Next, 19th June was Johnson’s 56th birthday, with 30 people alleged to have attended a party at Downing Steet at a time when social gatherings outside were limited to six people. At the party Johnson was presented with a Union Jack cake, in case you were worried he didn’t stand in solidarity with his country. Upon his dismissal, adviser Dominic Cummings would allege that a second, raucous party took place later that night in the PM’s Downing Street apartment, at a time of second lockdown when indoor gatherings were forbidden. And endless was the rest of the social events calendar for the Downing Street fraternity – November was a speech in a room of 50 people, December was indoor gatherings at party headquarters during the London Tier 3 ban, a Number 10 Christmas zoom quiz, a Cabinet Office staff social event (attended by senior civil servant Simon Case, initially tasked with investigating other party claims) and another gathering on the same day.

2021 was a tough year, with Boris Johnson trying to cope with the Partygate scandal, the extent of his own constant lying and story-changing, and presumably a big hangover at the same time. Having gone from telling MPs that “no rules were broken” to now stressing that people focus on Ukraine or the cost of living rather than worry about him being fined for attendance, the Prime Minister truly showed his background. This was a man who was used to throwing around hush money, who was used to letting other people clean up his mess, who was used to those he thought beneath him taking the blame for his own faults, who was used to breaking the law and laughing about it. The only part of Partygate which was new for Boris Johnson – not criminality, not lying, not failing at his job, not being fined an amount he could lose without batting an eye – was that there was a risk people might notice him doing what he had been doing since age 18.

Image Credit: David Sedlecký / CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

University College shortlisted for prestigious award

Elena Rotzokou
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University College shortlisted for prestigious award

A university development has been shortlisted in the Project Category for the Housing Design Awards 2022.

The Univ North development in North Oxford, an appendage to University College Oxford (Univ), will soon be underway. University College is in the pre-qualification stage at the moment with five contractors. Evaluation will be taking place over the course of April and May, with selection due to be finalised in the summer of 2022. Demolition of the present site is scheduled for this autumn and building work is due to begin in spring of next year.

The project was designed by architect Niall McLaughlin, shortlisted for the Stirling Prize, and celebrated landscape designer, Kim Wilkie. Permission for the project was granted in 2020.

The new community has been described as being “complementary” to the main campus of University College Oxford, which is situated on High Street.

Univ North will be collegiate and landscape-driven. It will provide extra accommodation for students, housing 150 ensuite study bedrooms. It will also consist of a gym, study, café, meeting and lecture spaces, as well as a nursery with outdoor space that can accommodate up to 54 children. It will further be the seat of the existing Fairfield Residential Home.

Additionally, Univ North will consist of rejuvenated historical orchards, landscape gardens, and an environment centred on “wellbeing, sustainability and shared purpose.”

The community aims to serve three functions: to be a living, study, and social space for University College students and fellows.

Four thematic tours have been organised on-site thus far: Nursery, Project Planning, Intergenerational Living, and the History of Stavertonia. They have attracted a mixture of student and staff members, old members of the university, local residents, and other people interested in the development project.

Excitement has been running high amongst college attendees. Sam Williamson, current student and JCR President, said “…Univ North will be a fantastic addition to the College and I’m very excited to see it start to become reality.”

Stuart Taylor, a 1980 alumnus, has echoed this sentiment: “…The plans for Univ North are impressive indeed and I’m looking forward to seeing it take shape over the next couple of years.”

The prestigious Housing Design Award was created originally for the purpose of explaining how residents understand innovative design and whether it is replicable. It is the sole award promoted by all major relevant professional institutions: Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI), Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), Landscape Institute, Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), and Chartered Institute of Architectural Technologists. The Award’s panel will consist of government officials, industry experts, and enthusiasts.

Credit for the award shortlisting has been given to University College and its partners and contractors. Andrew Grant, University College’s Finance Bursar, noted: “We’re delighted to be shortlisted for the prestigious Housing Design Awards.” He went on to point out: “Our Univ North scheme can only be realised thanks to the dedication, hard work and commitment of our team at University College, our partners with whom we’re working on the project, our excellent architect and landscape designer, and of course, our wonderful Old Members and friends.”

Winners for the Award are scheduled to be announced in July of this year.

English Fans and European Football – In Conversation With Julien Laurens

Oliver Hall
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English Fans and European Football – In Conversation With Julien Laurens

French football journalist Julien Laurens has spent the last few years becoming the definitive voice in the English media on European football.  His work with the BBC, most notably on their ‘Euroleagues’ podcast, has brought insight from across Europe to millions and he now regularly appears on BT Sport, ESPN, Premier League TV, and many other broadcasters across the continent.  All of this meant that when I was looking for someone to speak to about the relationship between English fans and leagues from around the world, there was no one better to speak to.  Gone are the days of millions tuning in to Sky Sports to watch Ronaldo and Messi face it off in La Liga every week and dramatically declining viewership numbers have seen all of Europe’s so-called ‘big 5’ leagues move to different pay-to-view broadcasters, only worsening the situation by making them harder for fans to access.  Laurens offered fascinating insight on not only the reasons behind these developments but also on the value to football fans of staying across different leagues from around the continent and the rest of the world.

Oliver Hall:  Thanks a lot for taking the time to speak to me Julien.  So as a massive fan of global football, over the last couple of years, I’ve really noticed that leagues other than the Premier League have become so much harder to watch and far less popular in England.  Have you noticed the same thing and what your thoughts are on it?

Julien Laurens:  I mean, for sure there’s some that.  Lots of people don’t really care about, you know, France or Germany or Spain, Italy or whatever. And you see some of the reactions: they call every other country, apart from the Premier League, farmers leagues. Exactly. Always sh*t or is this or that or the other.

There’s actually not many more people who like (other) football and can watch it legally even if they want to.  If you want France it is on BT Sport, if you want Germany it’s on Sky. If you wanted all of the big European leagues, you’d have to pay three different subscriptions to get it to get La Liga, Bundesliga, and Serie A. And so, it’s incredibly expensive.

O:  Other countries like Spain also have this problem with different broadcasters but don’t seem to have had the same declining viewers, why do you think that is?

J:  I think that yeah, there was interest in La Liga when Beckham went over that kind of stuff. But really, you’re an island and you are very focused on yourselves.  You don’t really care about anything else those outside the island, not just with football but in general.  So maybe it is cultural.

Also, your league is the best in the world.  If you have the best league then there is less reason to watch anywhere else.  I mean, if you look at obviously the BBC it is almost entirely Premier League apart from Euroleagues. That’s literally the only half an hour you get of European football on the BBC.

O:  In recent years you have really managed to carve out a niche and become somewhat of a figurehead for European football in England.  How have managed that?

J:  Yeah, I mean, it’s super cool. I won’t lie to you.  I think there are a few things, I think the accent plays a big role for sure, people love an accent!  And the energy too:  if the talking is a bit slow and the guy has a voice that doesn’t change, it sounds almost like the guy is boring himself talking, you know and then I don’t think people listen.  If you’ve got that energy, and that positivity, I think you bring people with you when you tell the story. And if you make it fun and punchy, I think that people start to really, really listen.

And I think and the other thing is always trying to, for you to learn something.  If you’re paying your BT subscription towards the Goal Show or you know if you pay the licence fee for the BBC you deserve to learn something.  That’s always what I try to do with the energy, the positivity, telling nice stories to captivate the listeners or the viewers and then trying to come up with things that people might not have realised or seen or known before and to try to help people to learn.

O:  If you had to recommend one other league for English fans to watch to broaden their horizons, what would it be?

J:  I would say France, not just because I’m French but because it feels like every summer and every January, English clubs come and do their shopping in France anyways.  We are a feeding league there is no doubt, it is unfortunate but that is how the business model works.  We have more u-23s starting in our first teams than anywhere else so clearly there’s so much talent, the academies are so active.  For the next big players and big names, I think this is good. I think Belgium is very interesting as well for the same reason. You don’t have to watch every single game it could even just be the highlights.  

O:  Other leagues such as La Liga have made such clear efforts to market themselves to emerging markets such as Asia and the US but have still proved unsuccessful compared to the Premier League. Why do you think that is?

J:  The language, to start with.  There is a lot more interest in English than in Spanish or German or Italian.  But also, there aren’t as many big clubs.  If you take away Barcelona, Real Madrid, and Milan, then there aren’t that many historically big clubs.  The Premier League sides are also the ones that now most often get to the later stages of the Champions League and that is incredibly important.

And also, I think marketing-wise, it’s not just football, in the UK, especially in England, you’re the masters of selling.  The product that was created with the Premier League in ’92 and the way that has been developed with such aggressive marketing by Sky has been incredibly successful.  Now the presence is too strong and has been too strong for too long for others to compete.

O:  The last thing that I wanted to ask you about is the upcoming changes to the Champions League and how they safeguard certain clubs.  Do you think that the changes endanger the rest of European football in any way?

J: Yeah, that’s the one I think it was inevitable that at some point, they will want to change the format of the Champions League, especially with the pressure from the top clubs for the Super League.  We knew that the format was always going to be changing and evolving towards something that was a bit like the Super League. The two groups of 10 that are going to come soon are very much two leagues really if you think about it.  It won’t last long though.  For example, you might get Manchester United qualifying next season even though they are sh*t.  It is counterproductive.  Fans don’t want to see their side underperforming in Europe and it also damages the brand.

A lot of people will be very angry, especially with how Villareal are performing this season because that is what football is all about.  If your team finished eighth and qualified for the Champions League then it wouldn’t mean as much.

O:  Thanks so much for taking the time to speak to Julien, it has been such a fascinating conversation.

As well as those fascinating topics we went on to talk about global football, MLS, and a plethora of other topics.  For the full interview head over to our website to listen.

Image: Courtesy of Julien Laurens

GROW British Rowing: A step in the right direction or not far enough?

Emma Grummit
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GROW British Rowing: A step in the right direction or not far enough?

This year the river Thames was home to the 167th men’s boat race between Oxford and Cambridge and the 76th women’s race. It was televised by the BBC for the 84th time with millions watching it at home on their televisions. Here in the UK, there is relatively little coverage of varsity sport in the mainstream media, especially in comparison to our neighbours across the pond. However, there is a major exception: The Boat Race. Regardless of your investment or involvement in rowing, it is an event akin to Wimbledon, key to signalling the incoming tide of British Summer Time. The BBC televises the event in a feature that runs for approximately two and half hours covering the races, interviews with key British rowing figures, and a halftime feature. 

This year the halftime feature covered a new British Rowing initiative run by Rebecca Clephan, programme manager of London Youth Rowing. Clephan introduced a new programme run in Leeds that aims to get young people from diverse backgrounds into rowing. The feature was introduced by Kyra Edwards, a British rower of high acclaim, who has recently made her name, not in this year’s Olympics, but in advocating for increased diversity in the sport. However, her genuinely heartfelt interview, and the programme that followed it, seemed somewhat discordant with the rowing on display that day. In an interview with a BBC sports correspondent on the program, Edwards stated that ‘every single rower I know is down to earth, passionate and determined, yet all of us are absolutely unique and different’ and ‘there is a perception that rowing is exclusive but I don’t believe, for a second, that anyone in the rowing community believes that.’ 

These words and the Leeds initiative were then followed minutes later with the men’s 167th boat race, with both crews exclusively made up of tall, white men from Oxbridge, many Olympians in their own right. In contrast, Edwards, who did not make the Tokyo GB squad, but is seen by many as a strong contender for Paris 2024, would have been the first black member of Great Britain’s team. Edwards is herself from Nottingham but really developed her rowing career in North  America at UCLA. She now lives with her partner Saskia Budgett, another member of the GB squad in the UK. 

In a piece entitled ‘Generation Next: Kyra Edwards on tackling stereotypes and changing the face of rowing’, written by the BBC’s Nick Hope, Edwards stated that increasing diversity and accessibility in the sport would mean more to her than an Olympic medal. Fortunately, in the last decade, British Rowing has made an attempt to address some of the issues within rowing’s seemingly exclusive community. It has recently launched its own GROW initiative which funds coaches to work at local clubs in order to reach more young people, as well as already providing initiatives in Leeds and areas in London where involvement with the sport is low. 

Similarly, it is important to remember how far British rowing has come in the last years through recognising the achievement and skill of its female rowers. Only in 2015 was the women’s boat race held on the same day as the men’s giving the two races equal standing for the first time in The Boat Race’s history. In 2022 astute watchers may have noticed that Oxford University Men’s Boat Club and Oxford University Women’s Boat Club were introduced in that format regardless of gender, rather than the typical OUBC and OUWBC. The same went for Cambridge, although it is interesting to note that, for Oxford at least, the official websites still go by their original titles. 

British Rowing is undoubtedly moving in the right direction, however, whether it is moving with the appropriate speed and urgency is another matter. Despite Edward’s words, that the exclusivity of rowing is a ‘perception’, it is a perceived insularity that still has a great deal of concrete bias in our rowing community today. Take for instance the Henley Royal Regatta, a ticketed event, that is sponsored by Bremont Chenometers, Moet and Chandon Champagne, and the Crew Clothing Company. Not exactly a diverse list of companies that speaks to the needs of your average football fan for example. Although millions go to watch The Boat Race, The Henley Royal Regatta is like a day at the races, everyone dressed up to the nines. The cost of a rowing blazer worn by most athletes to this illustrious event is often upwards of £300. For many of these institutions keeping traditions alive is extremely important, and also part of the fun, but it undoubtedly comes with a hefty price tag. 

Importantly, change in rowing, like change in any sector only makes serious progress when the institutions that contribute also change their outlook. Oxford University did not become entirely mixed gender in its collegiate system until 2008, with the vast majority of colleges choosing to admit only male undergraduates well into the twentieth century. Many who attend Oxford and Cambridge with a pre-existing passion for rowing are from public schools, largely because these are the schools that can fund such an expensive pass time, and because roughly 30% of Oxford’s intake is from non-state backgrounds, approximately six times the national average, according to The Times’s higher education department. 

Undoubtedly British Rowing’s initiatives are a step in the right direction, but like many journeys towards inclusivity, it cannot be done alone. British Rowing’s valiant efforts will remain simply that, efforts, not results, until the culture that fuels these sports also take action. As a sport, we have made an important first step but there is still a way to go before we see more talented athletes like Kyra Edwards on our screens.

Image: ale/ CC BY-2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Chelsea’s Goalscoring Blues

Eesha Patel
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Chelsea’s Goalscoring Blues

To overcome Real Madrid in the quarter-final of the Champions League would have been the stuff of dreams for Chelsea. Tuchel himself made that very clear ahead of the match. Indeed, to even suggest that defeating Real Madrid might have been possible was a show of great, and, some might argue, misplaced optimism on the part of their manager, for the vast majority of us who watched Chelsea’s frankly dismal performance in the first leg would have quite fairly rendered it an impossibility. 

It was always going to be a mammoth task. Real Madrid had a 3-1 advantage on aggregate, they were playing in front of a home crowd, and, to top this all off, they have, after all, won this prestigious contest thirteen times. In spite of this, the current holders of the Champions League put on a performance to be proud of; indeed, had they won, they would have deservedly been lauded for making one of the finest comebacks in European football. But, they didn’t. Instead, Real Madrid find themselves advancing to the semi-final of this competition for a record-breaking 31st time with a real chance of making this their thirteenth European Cup. 

The question that Tuchel and his team ought to be asking themselves is “how did we let this happen?”.

The answer is plain and simple. It lies in the underwhelming performances of their front three, something which Chelsea fans have become sorely accustomed to. Indeed, their goalkeeping was sound, their defence was incredibly strong, and the team’s mentality was astonishing. They really did put heart and soul into this truly remarkable second leg performance. No one can take that away from them. But, it was their strikers’ chronic inability to find the back of the net that, once again, let them down.

It is all too easy to dismiss this as a serious issue, especially since Mount and Werner (by some minor miracle) were able to get themselves onto the scoresheet, and, together with Rudiger’s sublime (and much-needed) header, the Blues did put three goals past Real Madrid. However, that is three goals out of a grand total of twenty-eight shots on goal; Real Madrid, on the other hand, managed to, in the same match, convert their significantly fewer ten shots on goal into two goals. The issue evidently lies in converting chances into goals; indeed, there comes a point when a striker can no longer afford to just be “unlucky”. And so, to use the scoreline as an excuse not to address Chelsea’s ongoing goalscoring woes would be to overlook the problem entirely. This is something which the Blues simply cannot afford to do. After all, this has already dashed their dream of defending the Champions League title, and, no doubt, it will continue to haunt them should they fail to root it out. One thing is clear: it will not just disappear. So, how should they address it?

To be fair on the Blues, this does seem to be an issue that the past two managers have strived to solve through conventional, and, dare I say it, all too convenient means, that is through transfers. It is certainly striking (absolutely no pun intended!) that Havertz, Werner, Pulisic, Ziyech, and Lukaku have signed, and in the case of Lukaku, re-signed for the club in the past three years. Any club would certainly expect some sort of attacking revolution as a result of these transfers alone. It would only be natural. Perhaps this is to come for Chelsea, perhaps these players will eventually fulfil their potential, or, perhaps, this is just wishful thinking. Maybe it is just too much to ask of these players.

Yet, anyone who keeps an eager eye on the transfer window, would remember how Werner, Havertz, and Pulisic were all lauded as exceptional young talents, players with great ability and with even greater potential. Their price tags certainly suggested so much. And Chelsea certainly put their money (and lots of it, at that) on it; other European clubs were certainly not prepared to do the same. Surely the Blues would not have done so without some conviction of the excellence of these players? And yet, despite these big buck transfers, Chelsea are still lacking in the goalscoring department. Pulisic, for instance, a player who Tuchel tasked with revitalising the team in this match when he took him off the bench, went on to miss numerous vital chances, chances which would have granted the team with the opportunity of, at least, having a fair chance of progressing to the semi-finals. I think its fair to say that it wouldn’t have hurt to let him continue keeping the bench warm. Of course, he is not the only one to have missed excellent opportunities. Havertz, too, though he managed to win quite a few headers from corner kicks, failed to convert any into convincing shots, let alone goals. 

So, in light of this predicament, a little introspection is required. I would suggest that there are (at least) two different explanations that might go some way as to account for their present woes.

Firstly, it might just be that the transfers were just not that lucrative to begin with. It might have been the case that these players were just not as talented as they were made out to be. And yet, they were chosen by the club, who certainly would have had the opportunity to vet these players. So, in light of this, we can only conclude that Chelsea are profoundly (and painfully) lacking the knack of spotting talented, and well-suited players, who would make valuable additions to their team. Perhaps, in this department, they ought to take a leaf out of Liverpool’s book. Liverpool, under Klopp, have, after all, made some excellent, wonderfully savvy, and hugely successful transfers. Indeed, in many ways, their current success is testament to this.

Perhaps, however, Chelsea simply cannot get the most out of their transfers. Indeed, for many players, working with a new team with a new playing style, under a new manager, and, quite often, in a new league can be quite the adjustment to make. And this takes time, but certainly not what looks like it might be a seemingly infinite amount of it. So, change might be in order in the Blues’ training camp. Indeed, it is probably not likely to be the case that all of these players just simply did not gel, if you will, with the club. There comes a point when one has to ask whether the club did not gel with them.

Of course, transfers are not the only way of improving a squad. Academy players, too, make wonderful additions to a team. Liverpool’s Alexander-Arnold is an excellent example of this. Of course, this very option hinges on how much time and effort the club invests in their academy. Furthermore, looking into loan players, which could then sign permanent contracts with the club, might also be a way forward. It is certainly not all doom and gloom for the Blues. But, if they want to be serious contenders for trophies, titles, and important wins, they need to address their goalscoring issues, and fast.

Image: Ungry Young Man / CC BY 2.0 via Flickr

Fulham Stadium Plan Throws Boat Race Future Into Doubt

Oliver Hall
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Fulham Stadium Plan Throws Boat Race Future Into Doubt

The MP for Putney, Fleur Anderson, has warned that Fulham FC’s planned construction of a pier into the Thames risks putting the Oxford Cambridge Boat Race and all watersports on the river in doubt.

The proposal forms part of Fulham Stadium’s redevelopment plans, which has been ongoing for the past three years. They have seen the demolition and reconstruction of the riverside stand, downstream from Putney Bridge, and also include the redevelopment of the area and the new passenger pier which would be used to transport fans to and from the ground.  The expansion would see the capacity of the ground increase from 25 700 to 29 600 and has already cost over £90 million. The planning application for the pier is yet to be submitted to Hammersmith and Fulham Borough council.

Last year saw the Boat Race held in its traditional location between Putney and Mortlake, after a two-year hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic. The event was cancelled altogether in 2020, and held in Cambridgeshire in 2021 before a return to Putney this year, which saw Oxford win the men’s event for the first time since 2017 and Cambridge win the Women’s event in a record time.

The boat race was first held between the two universities in 1829 and has been an annual occasion ever since 1856 save for during both world wars.  A women’s event was introduced in 1927 and in 2018 the two races were held on the same course as part of the same event for the first time.  

As well as the impact on the boat race, Ms Anderson sought to highlight the impact of the construction on the local community.  The clipper pier could make all watersports, including rowing and sailing, impossible.  

The Labour MP said: “The future of Putney Boat Race on the Thames and all sport and all the river clubs on Putney embankment are begin put at risk by a proposal by Fulham Football Club to build an 80-metre pier out into the river which will have then a clipper ferry stop, which if it runs will make sport, rowing and sailing too dangerous on the river, especially for all the young people who use it.

“There are about 4,000 members across 41 clubs along the river who will be impacted, those 4,000 members use this stretch of the river on average about twice a week.

“As well as 30,000 participants in rowing races in the first quarter of the year, there are approximately 1,400 children from clubs and rowing centres near the Fulham Football Club and that part of the river who use it several times a week.”

A public petition over the matter has attracted 12,000 signatures so far in an attempt to put a stop to the plans after backing from both British Rowing and The Boat Race.

The campaign has also attracted cross-party support across the floor of the commons. Conservative MP for Beckenham Bob Stuart said:  “I can’t see how an 80-metre pier into the Thames can actually be allowed to happen in planning terms because it is so much used there, particularly rowing. It is wonderful.”

As for the football club, they have denied the claims, responding by saying that the comments from Anderson are “inaccurate and wrong”.  In an official statement, they said: “For clarity, there is no proposal to extend a pontoon 80 metres across the Thames (nor has there ever been) and there is absolutely no risk whatsoever to the boat race. Fulham’s design would, in addition to creating substantial and obvious benefits to the local community, focus on providing a wonderful viewing platform which would enhance the boat race atmosphere, experience and accessibility.”

Anderson brought her comments to a close by saying that she was “incredulous” at the plans and asking the DCMS to review the proposals so that “the future of the boat race will be secured”.

Image Credit: The Boat Race via https://www.theboatrace.org/news/the-gemini-boat-race-2022-fixture-series-starts-sunday-30th-january

Oxford to receive funding for world’s largest radio telescope

Annie Lu
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Oxford to receive funding for world’s largest radio telescope

The University of Oxford is among six UK institutions that will receive funding from the government’s Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) to develop software and computer hardware for the Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO). In addition to Oxford, the other recipients include the Universities of Cambridge and Manchester, STFC’s Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (Harwell Campus), STFC’s Daresbury Laboratory (Liverpool City Region), and STFC’s Astronomy Technology Centre (Edinburgh). 

SKAO, an intergovernmental organisation dedicated to radio astronomy, is tasked with building and operating the two largest and most complex radio telescopes in history. Its goal is to explore the evolution of the early universe, including processes that culminate in the creation of galaxies like the Milky Way. The telescopes will be able to survey the sky much faster than existing telescopes, according to UK Research and Innovation. In order to process data in real time at the data rate of eight terabits per second, as well as support the regional processing centres managing over 700 petabytes per year, it will require high-performance computing and software design.

The High Performance Computing and Code Optimisation team based in the Oxford e-Research Centre (OeRC), Department of Engineering Science, will work to enable data processing at these extreme rates alongside partners like NVIDIA and Intel. 

“To enable SKAO, we will need to overcome some of the largest computational challenges mankind has faced so far,” Director of the OeRC Professor Wes Armour stated in a University press release. “The volumes and velocities of raw data produced by the telescope and the level of complex processing required to extract interesting scientific results are unprecedented. Specialised software, supercomputers and new computational algorithms must be developed to process data at rates far greater than the current global internet traffic.”

“Using our expertise in algorithm development and GPU computing, we will contribute fundamental software allowing SKAO to realise its scientific potential,” Dr. Karel Adamek, the Oxford team lead, said.

A second team of Oxford scientists is focusing on pulsars and fast-transients in collaboration with physicists from Manchester. Their work centres around mapping our astrophysical understanding onto computer hardware to identify and analyse signals from pulsars and fast radio transients. “We think we will find new rare examples of binary systems to test Einstein’s General Relativity, potentially even a pulsar orbiting a black hole,” Professor Aris Karastergiou, from the physics department, said.

SKAO will comprise 197 15-metre-diameter dishes located in the Karoo region of South Africa and 137,072 two-metre-tall antennae in Australia. In addition to these sites in Australia and South Africa, SKAO is headquartered in the UK on the grounds of the Jodrell Bank UNESCO World Heritage Site. The UK government first signed an agreement to host the SKAO and its global headquarters in February 2021, shortly after the Observatory was launched as an intergovernmental organisation and the UK ratified the SKAO Convention in December 2020. The UK government is the largest contributor to the SKAO, having committed to support 15 percent of the total cost of construction and initial operations from 2021 to 2030.

Construction is expected to be completed by the end of the decade, and the telescopes will operate for over 50 years.

“We have the privilege of working on fundamental science that stimulates the imagination,” Karastergiou added. “The project allows us an opportunity to consider the place of humankind in the universe, at a bleak time.”

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