People

Conference honours professor

The Department of Sociology has hosted a conference to mark the retirement of one of the University's longest serving members of staff.

Professor Paul Thompson joined the Department in 1964, the year the first cohort of undergraduate students was admitted to the University.

He went on to pioneer the development of oral history and life-story research in Britain, founding the Oral History Society, which publishes Oral History, and playing a key role in the founding of the National Life-Story collection at the British Library; journals such as Recite de Vie and Memory and Narrative, and Qualidata.

Author of numerous volumes, Professor Thompson has written on, amongst other topics, architecture and design; fishing and industrial communities; ageing; city workers; step-families; social mobility and family transmission; myth and memory; and most recently on Jamaican trans-national families, and on pioneers of qualitative research. He has also continued to be active as a local and community historian, founding Wivenhoe’s oral history project, and a similar project on Brightlingsea and Rowhedge.

The international conference, held last month, was entitled 'Community, Individuality and Creativity: A Life Stories Perspective' and reflected Professor Thompson's varied contributions to the Department, social history and sociology over the past 43 years.

 

Tango raises cash for charity

A student has raised more than £1,600 for children with HIV in Buenos Aires through a series of tango-related events.

In February’s Wyvern we reported on Michael Aidan’s efforts to raise funds for Casa Manu which provides a home for children who have the virus but do not have immediate family to care for them. At this time he had already raised over £400.

Proceeds from tango classes and a performance have brought the total raised to £1,600

Michael said: 'Casa Manu works miracles. Children often enter the home in a state of deteriorated health and within a matter of months, from the love, care and medication that they receive go from having Aids to having undetectable viral loads (HIV).

'The funds raised are going directly into the project to refurbish the new premises offering more space, better living conditions and a viable long term option for the children.’'

Michael, a Modern Languages student, has been supported by the Latin American Centre.

Michael (in the white shirt) performs a fight dance at the recent performance

Also in the printed June edition of Wyvern:

• Special appointment for graduate
• Human rights investigation observers resign