̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Helen Strudwick

Vice-Chancellor’s awards showcase ̽��ֱ��’s societal impact and public engagement

ta385 — Mon, 14 Oct 2019 14:54:26 +0000

Now in their fourth year, the awards were made in four categories: collaboration, early career, established researcher/academic champion and professional service.

Winners in the collaboration category included PhD student Christoph Franck for an initiative creating a global air pollution sensor network driven by citizen science.

̽��ֱ��early career researchers included Jessica Miller whose project has changed understandings of mental health and trauma in UK policing, informing a new wellbeing service and leading to discussion in Parliament.

Among those commended as established researchers, Vincent Gnanapragasam developed a new tool to predict an individual’s prognosis following a prostate cancer diagnosis to help make decisions about the value of treatment. In a very different field, David Trippett was recognised for bringing an ‘indecipherable’ opera back to life through international performances, broadcasts and recordings.

In the professional services category Naomi Chapman from the Polar Museum Education team developed maps to enable young and partially sighted people to explore the Arctic and Antarctic by touch.

̽��ֱ��announcement was made at a prize ceremony held at the Old Schools on 14 October 2019.

Professor Stephen Toope, Vice-Chancellor of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, says: “This year’s nominations recognise impressive and inspirational individuals, and strongly reflect our mission to engage the public, tackle real-world problems and improve people’s lives. ̽��ֱ��award scheme focuses attention on the increasingly important role that institutions such as ours have to play in restoring faith in experts.”

̽��ֱ��Vice-Chancellor’s Research Impact and Engagement Awards were established to recognise and reward outstanding achievement, innovation and creativity in devising and implementing ambitious engagement and impact plans that have the potential to create significant economic, social and cultural impact from and engagement with and for research. Each winner receives a £1,000 grant to be used for the development and delivery of engagement/impact activity or relevant training.

This year’s winners are:

Collaboration Award

Emily Mitchell (Department of Earth Sciences)

Researchers and museum specialists collaborated on a museum exhibition and public programme, engaging a range of public audiences with research on the earliest fossils to illuminate the start of complex life.

Helen Strudwick ( ̽��ֱ��Fitzwilliam Museum)

This collaborative project engages audiences with our pioneering research on ancient Egyptian coffin construction and decoration, through a major exhibition, ‘Pop-Up’ museum targeting underserved audiences and digital resources.

Open-Seneca

Open-seneca is a student-led initiative creating a global low-cost mobile air pollution sensor network driven by citizen science. ̽��ֱ��aim of the initiative is to empower citizens with air pollution data to raise awareness, initiate behaviour change, and inform policy makers on environmental issues. ̽��ֱ��team are: Christoph Franck, Charles Christensen, Lorena Gordillo Dagallier, Sebastian Horstmann, Raphaël Jacquat and Peter Pihlman Pedersen.

Early Career Award

Saumya Saxena (Faculty of History)

Saumya’s research focuses on family law and gender in India. She advised the twenty-first Law Commission of India on reform of family law and worked with the Verma Commission on amendments to law relating to rape in India.

Jessica Miller (Department of Sociology)

Jessica’s project involved engaging with over 18000 police officers and staff to change the face of trauma resilience in UK policing, and inviting commitment from decision-makers to inform national policy and operational change.

Matthew Agarwala (Bennett Institute for Public Policy)

Matthew’s research on valuing natural resources is helping in the transition to sustainable economic growth. Having been adopted by the United Nations and other bodies, his work is shaping standards for measurement.

Zoë Fritz (School of Clinical Medicine)

Zoë’s research around resuscitation decisions led to the development of the ReSPECT process (“Recommended Summary Plan for Emergency Care and Treatment”), which has replaced problematic ‘DNACPR’s with tremendous impact on policy, practice, guidelines and beneficiaries.

Established Researcher and Academic Champion

Nicholas Thomas (Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology)

In 2018, Nicholas co-curated the landmark exhibition 'Oceania' at the Royal Academy in London. Based on collaborative research at Cambridge, the exhibition brought a dynamic, contemporary view of the art of an extraordinary region to European audiences.

Vincent Gnanapragasam (School of Clinical Medicine)

Vincent is the Chief Investigator for PREDICT Prostate, the first individualized prognostic tool accessible to both clinicians and patients to help make unbiased informed decisions about the value of treatment for newly diagnosed prostate cancer.

David Trippett (Faculty of Music)

An unheard opera by 19th-century composer Franz Liszt languished silently in a manuscript thought fragmentary and illegible. David’s meticulous reconstruction brought it to life, to global acclaim, through international performances, broadcasts and recordings.

Professional Service

Oliver Francis (Centre for Diet and Activity Research, and the MRC Epidemiology Unit)

Oliver’s leadership in communications has transformed the impact strategies at CEDAR and the MRC Epidemiology Unit. His innovative contributions span all aspects of the communications and impact portfolio.

Naomi Chapman (Scott Polar Research Institute)

With a local artist, Naomi developed innovative maps of the Arctic and Antarctic with which hundreds of young and partially sighted people have enjoyed a touch tour of polar research.

Twelve students, academics and professional members of staff from across the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge have received Vice-Chancellor’s Research Impact and Engagement Awards in areas as diverse as prostate cancer, family law, museum public engagement and police mental health.

This year’s nominations recognise impressive and inspirational individuals, and strongly reflect our mission to engage the public, tackle real-world problems and improve people’s lives

Professor Stephen Toope

Candy Welz

Airam Hernández and Joyce El-Khoury perform Sardanapalo at Staatskapelle Weimar

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Uncovering the afterlife of ancient Egypt

sjr81 — Thu, 25 Feb 2016 15:31:24 +0000

Going beyond the images of mummies, animal-headed gods, pharaohs and mystery often associated with ancient Egypt, Death on the Nile explores the beliefs and working practices behind these objects and reveals fascinating new information on how they were made.

Golden yellow, and covered from head to toe in bright hieroglyphs and pictures in reds, greens and blues, the set of coffins belonging to the man named Nespawershefyt (also known as Nes-Amun) was one of the very first gifts to the Fitzwilliam collection, given by two members of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge in 1822, just a few years after the Museum was founded in 1816.

̽��ֱ��following year, Giovanni Belzoni presented the ̽��ֱ�� with the seven-ton granite sarcophagus lid of Ramesses III which he had retrieved from the Valley of the Kings. These and other gifts, as well as material from excavations, for which the Museum was a sponsor, created the remarkable collection of Egyptian coffins at the Fitzwilliam today.

̽��ֱ��coffins of Nes-Amun are not only incredibly beautiful, they also contain valuable clues to the man who commissioned them and to precisely how Egyptian coffins in his time were made. It is one of the finest coffin sets of its type in the world and in an outstanding state of preservation.

To uncover its hidden secrets, the coffins have been extensively studied with X-radiography at the Museum. And in February this year, the inner coffin was sent for CT scanning at the radiology department of Addenbrooke's Hospital, part of Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Hospitals (CUH).

Julie Dawson, Head of Conservation at the Fitzwilliam Museum and co-curator of the exhibition, said: “ ̽��ֱ��inner coffin box is made up of a multitude of pieces of wood, including sections from at least one older coffin. Evidence of re-use includes cuts across old dowel holes, patching to change the profile of the coffin sides and a number of places where old mortise holes have been filled in and new ones cut beside them. Wood was a precious commodity and the craftsmen were incredibly skilled at making these complex objects from sometimes unpromising starting materials.

“ ̽��ֱ��radiographs and scans also reveal how people tried to restore or preserve the coffins in the past. Some parts of Nespawershefyt’s coffins are held together with 19th century ironmongery. Without these old repairs the coffins might not have survived so well, but they are quite intrusive on the original object and have rusted into the wood in places, causing damage.”

Examining the surface revealed other surprises, including several 3,000 year old fingerprints, suggesting that the craftsmen moved the lid of the inner coffin before the varnish had dried. NesAmun clearly commissioned his coffins during his lifetime, presumably at the point where he could afford a set worthy of his status as a priest of Amun-Re.

However, by the time of his death he had risen in rank and his new titles — as supervisor of craftsmen's workshops in Karnak and the supervisor of temple scribes of Amun-Re — had to be inscribed over the top of the old ones. This shows the importance attached to being properly prepared for death in ancient Egypt, even while one was still alive.

̽��ֱ��Nes-Amun coffin set is one of many stunning objects in Death on the Nile, the majority from the Fitzwilliam’s collections and complemented by loans from the British Museum and the Musée du Louvre. Through scientific analysis, the woods and the pigments and varnishes used by the craftsmen to make the decoration have been identified.

Evidence of working practices, from the variety of tool marks found on the wood to the drawing and painting techniques used to make the images, have been revealed through close study and a range of imaging techniques.

All this information helps bring us closer to the people who made the coffins as do the very human touches and stumbles – secret repairs hidden underneath a perfect finish, mistakes in drawings that had to be changed in the final painting and even the odd practice doodle on the underside of a coffin box.

A series of reconstructions will show how some of the coffins were made and, in a live conservation area, visitors will be able to examine in more detail the scientific techniques and the materials and construction methods uncovered during the project.

Helen Strudwick, Egyptologist and exhibition co-curator said: “This is a chance for us to encourage visitors to look more closely at these extraordinary objects. A coffin artisan in ancient Egypt had to deal creatively with many practical problems and sometimes restrictions on materials available because of the economic or political climate. Objects always had to be tailored to cost, but the finish had to meet the high aspirations of the customer. ̽��ֱ��coffins show the skill and care with which the Egyptians prepared for the afterlife.

“To us, for whom death is a taboo subject, this seems like a morbid preoccupation. In fact, it was an obsession with life and an urgent wish to ensure its perfected continuation.

“This is also a very appropriate exhibition for our bicentenary year. Not only did the Museum’s collection of Egyptian artefacts start with the gift of a beautiful set of coffins, that gift was also given in the year that Egyptology as a subject was born: 1822 was the year that Jean-François Champollion first announced his theories on the hieroglyphic script. And, as part of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, it is an excellent opportunity for us to bring the research we are carrying out on the Museum’s Egyptian coffin collection to the attention of a wider audience.”

Death on the Nile: Uncovering the afterlife of ancient Egypt is at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge 23 February – 22 May 2016. Admission is free.

̽��ֱ��Fitzwilliam Museum is marking its bicentenary anniversary celebrations with an exhibition on its remarkable collection of Egyptian coffins.

To us, for whom death is a taboo subject, this seems like a morbid preoccupation. In fact, it was an obsession with life.

Helen Strudwick

Death on the Nile - Teaser Trailer

Full length view of coffin from the coffin set of Nespawershefyt, About 1000 BC

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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