WHAT'S ON

Sunday 16 June — Clues Trail: this will be the first of two of these popular events in 2019. Location and other details to follow. But reserve the date now!

Wednesday 28 August — Clues Trail: reserve the date now. Further details to follow.

Future iU3A Outings
Our programme of Outings for 2019 so far is:

• Highclere Castle (Monday 15 April) — see above
• Strawberry Hill (June),
• Windsor boat trip (September),
• Christmas market (December).

Further details to follow on all of these.

Hopefully we will also have some others to fill in the year's schedule. Like all iU3A activities it will depend on whether we get people willing to organise future Outings. If you are willing to organise an Outing or just have some ideas for Outings, please send them to our Outings Coordinator here.

  
Monthly Meetings

Our monthly meetings always have an interesting and entertaining speaker (and plenty of time to meet and chat to other iU3A members). Strictly members only (though you can join at the meeting), they are held generally on the fourth Thursday of each month but there a few wrinkles this year. The specific dates are: 28 February, 21 March, 25 April, 23 May, 27 June, 25 July, 19 September, 24 October, 28 November.
They are always at Resource for London, 356 Holloway Road, N7 6PA (next to the Nags Head Waitrose). Registration opens at 9.45am for a prompt 10.30am start. Please remember to bring your membership card and (if you've got one) your plastic badge holder.

28 February — Rosemary Seton, Archivist: 'Others might have buckled … famines and droughts, floods, fire and native customs — Fresh perspectives on British missionary women c. 1800-1950s.' The encounter between missionaries from Britain’s towns, cities and villages with people in Asia, Africa, the Pacific and elsewhere was an unusually close association over a prolonged period of time. Often now castigated, in our post-colonial world, as yet another tainted episode of Britain’s imperial past it requires careful scrutiny to assess its true cultural significance and consequences. In particular the part played by women in the missionary movement forms an absorbing and rich subject of study in its own right. In examining their role my presentation illustrates the work of some of the pioneers, reflects on the changing status of missionary women over the period, and considers how their presence overseas affected the lives of others as well as their own.
 
Rosemary Seton became acquainted with the work of missionaries when she was archivist at the School of Oriental and African Studies which houses a very large collection of missionary society archives, personal papers, publications, photographs and artefacts. Since her retirement she has written a book on British missionary women, co-organises a monthly seminar on Christian Missions in Global History at the University of London and co-ordinates the recently-formed Writing Memoirs Group in iU3A.


21 March — Robin Weiss, Molecular Biologist: 'Two Gentlemen of Verona — a Brief History of Contagious Diseases'. Robin Weiss PhD is Emeritus Professor of Viral Oncology at University College London. He was previously Director of the Institute of Cancer Research, Royal Marsden Hospital. For most of his career Robin studied viruses, especially those that cause cancer or AIDS, focussing on how cancer viruses and HIV enter and alter the cells that they invade. His studies of HIV also led to the screening tests used by blood banks and highlighted the problem of developing an HIV vaccine. Robin’s contribution to our knowledge of viruses has been recognised by his election to the Royal Society and to the US National Academy of Sciences.

Robin's first gentleman is Girolamo Fracostoro (1478-1553), the physician who coined the term syphilis in an epic poem to describe this new disease, which he speculated had recently arrived from the New World. He went on to write the treatise De Contagione in which he postulated a germ theory of infectious diseases 300 years before Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch isolated the incriminating germs. His second gentleman is Domenico Rigoni Stern (1810-1855), a surgeon with a taste for medical records who discerned that the nuns of Verona developed breast cancer more frequently than married women did, yet seldom suffered from cervical cancer. He will discuss the contributions of the two gentlemen in the light of modern knowledge about the causes of transmissible diseases and of cancer.

25 April — Karen Thurman, Art Conservationist 'Photography as Art', RfL Conference Hall + Seminar 5

23 May — Prof Anne Power, subject to be announced, RfL Conference Hall + Seminar 5

27 June — RfL, Seminar 2&3
25 July — RfL, Seminar 2&3
19 September — RfL, Seminar 2&3
24 October — RfL, Seminar 2&3
28 November — RfL, Seminar 2&3

Our iU3A coffee mornings are a popular way of getting to know other members. They take place around the borough, are always at 11.00 on varying days of the week and are free to iU3A members. In order to provide opportunities for all our members to attend, we limit attendance to a maximum of three coffee mornings per member per year (1st January to 31st December). The next coffee morning will be on:

• Thursday 14 February — in Finsbury Park

 Our coffee mornings are now organised by Sally Fox. To book up for any of the above coffee mornings please email Sally here. She will then advise you that you are booked, or if there are no spaces that you have been put on a reserve list. If you can't attend a coffee morning you've booked for, please let us know by emailing Sally (same link as above) to say you can't now make it.