News round up

Published: 14 November 2017

Royal date for @UofGravity scientist...a piece of shinty history...TEDxGlasgow 2018...Readings and Music for Remembrance...

Royal date for @UofGravity scientist

Dr Borja Sorazu Lucio, Research Fellow (Physics and Astronomy), had an appointment with the Spanish King recently when he represented the University of Glasgow's gravitational waves team when the Ligo scientific collaboration was honoured with the Princesa de Asturias award for technical and scientific research. 

Find out more 

A piece of shinty history

Tomorrow (Wednesday 15 November) the well-known Scottish sports broadcaster and journalist, Dr Hugh Dan MacLennan, is giving a talk at Kelvin Hall to mark the 80th anniversary of the first, 'live' radio commentary on a shinty match.  Hugh Dan will also speak about the sport's coverage on radio and TV. The first commentary was delivered by the Reverend Roderick McSwan Boyd in 1937. Fittingly, Roderick McSwan Boyd studied at the University of Glasgow between 1922/3 and 1927/8 in the College of Arts.  The event is being hosted by the National Library of Scotland.

Venue: Kelvin Hall Screening Room

Time: 6pm - 7pm, Wednesday 15 November

Register via Eventbrite or 'phone: 0845 366 4629

TEDxGlasgow - Speaker nominations are now open

Do you have a life-changing idea? Or, know someone who has something fascinating to share? Is there a concept you’re dying to explore with our community? If so, TEDx would love to talk to you about joining them, and other incredible speakers, for TEDxGlasgow 2018.

TED is a global platform for sharing remarkable ideas. TEDx events are the same as TED Conferences but at a local level. TEDxGlasgow 2018 is an independently organised TED event taking place on Friday, June 1st at the SEC Armadillo in Glasgow. TEDxGlasgow is one of the UK’s largest and most well-established TEDx events. From 2014 until 2016 it has doubled in size every year, welcoming internationally renowned speakers and partners, whilst achieving almost 9 million views of talks online across the globe.

This year TEDxGlasgow will welcome an engaged audience of around 2,000 innovators, thinkers and doers. What all TED and TEDx events have in common is that they feature speakers with “ideas worth doing”. TEDx gives speakers the platform to deliver their big idea in an engaging fast-paced talk, whilst breaking free from the constraints of a more conventional conference.

TEDx is on the lookout for standout speakers for this year’s event, so get applying or nominate someone who you think would light up the iconic red circle.

Find out more

www.tedxglasgow.com/call-for-speakers

This World that We Seem to Inherit’: Readings and Music for Remembrance

Writings from Scottish authors and poets on the First World War will feature heavily in a remembrance event organised by the University of Glasgow.

The free event called “This World that We Seem to Inherit: Readings and Music for Remembrance” has been organised by the University’s First World War Commemoration Group.
Readers will include the University of Glasgow’s Professor Alan Riach and Zoe Strachan, as well as Dr David Goldie and Professor David Kinloch of the University of Strathclyde.


Lady Deborah Stewartby will read from her grandfather John Buchan’s works. Buchan was the author of The Thirty Nine Steps and served in the Great War. The celebrated author’s brother Alistair died at the Battle of Arras.

The University's connection with the First World War Buchan family lives on through the Alistair Buchan Prize which is still awarded for the best poem on a prescribed subject.

In additon to John Buchan, there will be readings from the works of Edwin Morgan, J. Macdougall Hay, Hugh MacDiarmid, Violet Jacob, Marion Angus, Ramsay MacDonald, Joseph Lee and Lewis Grassic Gibbon, from whose classic novel Sunset Song the title of our event This World that We Seem to Inherit is taken.

Music includes short pieces by Ronald Stevenson, Cecil Coles and John Blackwood McEwen.

The venue is the beautiful University Memorial Chapel which was designed by Sir John Burnet and opened in 1929. In addition to being a place of worship and a memorial to the University's 755 Great War dead, the Chapel is a stunning venue for events.

Admission to the event, on Wednesday 15 November 2017, is free but you must book your ticket using Eventbrite

A collection will be made to support the work of the Erskine charity, who have been caring for veterans since 1916.

All welcome. Doors open at 6pm.

Register via the Eventbrite web site 


First published: 14 November 2017