University of London
The University of London is a collegiate federal research university located in London, England. As of October 2018, the university contains 18 member institutions, central academic bodies and research institutes; the university has over 52,000 distance learning external students and 161,270 campus-based internal students, making it the largest university by number of students in the United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836, as a degree-awarding examination board for students holding certificates from University College London and King's College London and "other such other Institutions, corporate or unincorporated, as shall be established for the purpose of Education, whether within the Metropolis or elsewhere within our United Kingdom", allowing it to be one of three institutions to claim the title of the third-oldest university in England, moved to a federal structure in 1900, it is now incorporated by its fourth royal charter and governed by the University of London Act 1994.
It was the first university in the United Kingdom to introduce examinations for women in 1869 and, a decade the first to admit women to degrees. In 1948 it became the first British university to appoint a woman as its vice chancellor; the university's colleges house the oldest teaching hospitals in England. For most practical purposes, ranging from admissions to funding, the constituent colleges operate on an independent basis, with many awarding their own degrees whilst remaining in the federal university; the largest colleges by enrolment as of 2016/17 are UCL, King's College London, Queen Mary, the London School of Economics, Royal Holloway, Goldsmiths, each of which has over 9,000 students. Smaller, more specialist, colleges are the School of Oriental and African Studies, St George's, the Royal Veterinary College, London Business School, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, the Royal Academy of Music, the Courtauld Institute of Art, the Institute of Cancer Research.
Imperial College London was a member from 1907 before it became an independent university in 2007, Heythrop College was a member from 1970 until its closure in 2018. City is the most recent constituent college, having joined on 1 September 2016; as of 2015, there are around 2 million University of London alumni across the world, including 12 monarchs or royalty, 52 presidents or prime ministers, 84 Nobel laureates, 6 Grammy winners, 2 Oscar winners, 3 Olympic gold medalists and the "Father of the Nation" of several countries. University College London was founded under the name “London University” in 1826 as a secular alternative to the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, which limited their degrees to members of the established Church of England; as a result of the controversy surrounding UCL's establishment, King's College London was founded as an Anglican college by royal charter in 1829. In 1830, UCL applied for a royal charter as a university; this was rejected, but renewed in 1834. In response to this, opposition to "exclusive" rights grew among the London medical schools.
The idea of a general degree awarding body for the schools was discussed in the medical press. And in evidence taken by the Select Committee on Medical Education. However, the blocking of a bill to open up Oxford and Cambridge degrees to dissenters led to renewed pressure on the Government to grant degree awarding powers to an institution that would not apply religious tests as the degrees of the new University of Durham were to be closed to non-Anglicans. In 1835, the government announced the response to UCL's petition for a charter. Two charters would be issued, one to UCL incorporating it as a college rather than a university, without degree awarding powers, a second "establishing a Metropolitan University, with power to grant academical degrees to those who should study at the London University College, or at any similar institution which his Majesty might please hereafter to name". Following the issuing of its charter on 28 November 1836, the new University of London started drawing up regulations for degrees in March 1837.
The death of William IV in June, resulted in a problem – the charter had been granted "during our Royal will and pleasure", meaning it was annulled by the king's death. Queen Victoria issued a second charter on 5 December 1837; the university awarded its first degrees in 1839, all to King's College. The university established by the charters of 1836 and 1837 was an examining board with the right to award degrees in arts and medicine. However, the university did not have the authority to grant degrees in theology, considered the senior faculty in the other three English universities. In medicine, the university was given the right to determine which medical schools provided sufficient medical training. In arts and law, by contrast, it would examine students from UCL, King's College, or any other school or college granted a royal warrant giving the government control of which colleges could affiliate to the university. Beyond the right to submit students for examination, there was no other connection between the affiliated colleges and the university.
In 1849 the university held its first graduation ceremony at Somerset House following a petition to the senate from the graduates, who had received their degrees without any ceremony. About 250 students graduated at this ceremony; the London academic robes of this period were distinguished by their "rich velvet facings". The list of affiliated colleges g
Bedford Square
Bedford Square is a garden square in the Bloomsbury district of the Borough of Camden in London, England. Built between 1775 and 1783 as an upper middle class residential area, the square has had many distinguished residents, including Lord Eldon, one of Britain's longest serving and most celebrated Lord Chancellors, who lived in the largest house in the square for many years; the square takes its name from the main title of the Russell family, the Dukes of Bedford, who owned much of the land in what is now Bloomsbury. The architect Thomas Leverton is known to have designed some of the houses, although he may not have been responsible for all of them. Bedford Square is one of the best preserved set pieces of Georgian architecture in London, but most of the houses have now been converted into offices. Numbers 1-10, 11, 12 -- 27, 28 -- 38 and 40 -- 54 are grade; the central garden remains private, but is opened to the public as part of the Open Garden Squares Weekend. The square is Grade II* listed on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.
Bedford College, the first place for female higher education in Britain, was located in Bedford Square. No. 1: Sir Lyonel Lyde Bt. first occupier of the building for ten years until his death in 1791 No. 4: Paul Weidlinger – structural engineer No. 6: Lord Eldon — Lord Chancellor No. 8: Frederick Warne & Norman Warne — publishers, of Frederick Warne & Co. who published the Beatrix Potter books No. 10: Samuel Lyde Charles Gilpin — MP No. 11: John Scarlett Davis - artist.
Elizabeth Jesser Reid
Elizabeth Jesser Reid was an English social reformer, anti-slavery activist and philanthropist. She is best remembered as the founder of Bedford College. Elisabeth Jesser Sturch was born in 1789 in London, her father, William Sturch, was a wealthy Unitarian ironmonger. In 1821, she married Dr John Reid. Dr Reid had inherited land on the River Clyde at Glasgow that had become valuable as the port grew in size, his death in July 1822 gave Mrs Reid an independent income, which she used to help various philanthropic causes. Active in liberal Unitarian circles, Reid was an anti-slavery activist, attending the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840, she met Lucretia Mott and the other American female delegates, denied the right to speak at the convention. And taking a close interest in the American Civil War, she was in contact with leading figures in the revolutions in France and Germany in 1848, the struggles for Italian independence. In 1849, Reid founded Bedford College at Bedford Square in the Bloomsbury area of London.
The college was a women-only higher education institution that aimed to provide a liberal and non-sectarian education for female students – something no other institution in the United Kingdom offered at the time. Bedford College played a leading role in the advancement of women in higher education, in public life in general; the National Archives U. K. holds a number of letters written to Reid that reference noted Victorian advocates of female education, including Harriet Martineau and Frances Lupton. Reid founded the Reid Trust, which continues to support women's education with small grants to this day. Reid died in 1866. There is a green plaque on Reid's house in Bedford Square. Bedford College became a college of the University of London in 1900, merged with Royal Holloway College in 1985 to become Royal Holloway and Bedford New College. One of the halls of residence on the current campus is named "Reid Hall" in memory of the Bedford College founder. History of Royal Holloway and Bedford New College Genesis website page on Reid's archived papers Genesis website page on Bedford College's archived papers Beginnings website page on history of Bedford College
Royal Society
The President and Fellows of the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge known as the Royal Society, is a learned society. Founded on 28 November 1660, it was granted a royal charter by King Charles II as "The Royal Society", it is the oldest national scientific institution in the world. The society is the United Kingdom's and Commonwealth of Nations' Academy of Sciences and fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, recognising excellence in science, supporting outstanding science, providing scientific advice for policy, fostering international and global co-operation and public engagement; the society is governed by its Council, chaired by the Society's President, according to a set of statutes and standing orders. The members of Council and the President are elected from and by its Fellows, the basic members of the society, who are themselves elected by existing Fellows; as of 2016, there are about 1,600 fellows, allowed to use the postnominal title FRS, with up to 52 new fellows appointed each year.
There are royal fellows, honorary fellows and foreign members, the last of which are allowed to use the postnominal title ForMemRS. The Royal Society President is Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, who took up the post on 30 November 2015. Since 1967, the society has been based at 6–9 Carlton House Terrace, a Grade I listed building in central London, used by the Embassy of Germany, London; the Invisible College has been described as a precursor group to the Royal Society of London, consisting of a number of natural philosophers around Robert Boyle. The concept of "invisible college" is mentioned in German Rosicrucian pamphlets in the early 17th century. Ben Jonson in England referenced the idea, related in meaning to Francis Bacon's House of Solomon, in a masque The Fortunate Isles and Their Union from 1624/5; the term accrued currency for the exchanges of correspondence within the Republic of Letters. In letters in 1646 and 1647, Boyle refers to "our invisible college" or "our philosophical college".
The society's common theme was to acquire knowledge through experimental investigation. Three dated letters are the basic documentary evidence: Boyle sent them to Isaac Marcombes, Francis Tallents who at that point was a fellow of Magdalene College and London-based Samuel Hartlib; the Royal Society started from groups of physicians and natural philosophers, meeting at a variety of locations, including Gresham College in London. They were influenced by the "new science", as promoted by Francis Bacon in his New Atlantis, from 1645 onwards. A group known as "The Philosophical Society of Oxford" was run under a set of rules still retained by the Bodleian Library. After the English Restoration, there were regular meetings at Gresham College, it is held that these groups were the inspiration for the foundation of the Royal Society. Another view of the founding, held at the time, was that it was due to the influence of French scientists and the Montmor Academy in 1657, reports of which were sent back to England by English scientists attending.
This view was held by Jean-Baptiste du Hamel, Giovanni Domenico Cassini, Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle and Melchisédech Thévenot at the time and has some grounding in that Henry Oldenburg, the society's first secretary, had attended the Montmor Academy meeting. Robert Hooke, disputed this, writing that: makes Mr Oldenburg to have been the instrument, who inspired the English with a desire to imitate the French, in having Philosophical Clubs, or Meetings. I will not say, that Mr Oldenburg did rather inspire the French to follow the English, or, at least, did help them, hinder us. But'tis well known who were the principal men that began and promoted that design, both in this city and in Oxford, and not only these Philosophic Meetings were. On 28 November 1660, the 1660 committee of 12 announced the formation of a "College for the Promoting of Physico-Mathematical Experimental Learning", which would meet weekly to discuss science and run experiments. At the second meeting, Sir Robert Moray announced that the King approved of the gatherings, a royal charter was signed on 15 July 1662 which created the "Royal Society of London", with Lord Brouncker serving as the first president.
A second royal charter was signed on 23 April 1663, with the king noted as the founder and with the name of "the Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge". This initial royal favour has continued and, since every monarch has been the patron of the society; the society's early meetings included experiments performed first by Hooke and by Denis Papin, appointed in 1684. These experiments varied in their subject area, were both important in some cases and trivial in others; the society published an English translation of Essays of Natural Experiments Made in the Accademia del Cimento, under the Protection of the Most Serene Prince Leopold of Tuscany in 1684, an Italian book documenting experiments at the Accademia del Cimento. Although meeting at Gresham College, the Society temporarily moved to Arundel House in 1666 after the Great Fire of London, which did not harm Gresham but did lead to its appropriation by the Lord Mayor; the Society r
Suffrage
Suffrage, political franchise, or franchise is the right to vote in public, political elections. In some languages, in English, the right to vote is called active suffrage, as distinct from passive suffrage, the right to stand for election; the combination of active and passive suffrage is sometimes called full suffrage. Suffrage is conceived in terms of elections for representatives. However, suffrage applies to referenda and initiatives. Suffrage describes not only the legal right to vote, but the practical question of whether a question will be put to a vote; the utility of suffrage is reduced when important questions are decided unilaterally without extensive, full disclosure and public review. In most democracies, eligible voters can vote in elections of representatives. Voting on issues by referendum may be available. For example, in Switzerland this is permitted at all levels of government. In the United States, some states such as California and Washington have exercised their shared sovereignty to offer citizens the opportunity to write and vote on referendums and initiatives.
Referendums in the United Kingdom are rare. Suffrage is granted to qualifying citizens. What constitutes a qualifying citizen depends on the government's decision. Resident non-citizens can vote in some countries, which may be restricted to citizens of linked countries or to certain offices or questions; the word suffrage comes from Latin suffragium, meaning "vote", "political support", the right to vote. The etymology of the Latin word is uncertain, with some sources citing Latin suffragari "lend support, vote for someone", from sub "under" + fragor "crash, shouts", related to frangere "to break". Other sources say; some etymologists think the word may be related to suffrago and may have meant an ankle bone or knuckle bone. Universal suffrage consists of the right to vote without restriction due to sex, social status, education level, or wealth, it does not extend the right to vote to all residents of a region. The short-lived Corsican Republic was the first country to grant limited universal suffrage to all citizens over the age of 25.
In 1819 60-80,000 men and women from 30 miles around Manchester assembled in the city's St. Peter's Square to protest their lack of any representation in the Houses of Parliament. Historian Robert Poole has called the Peterloo Massacre one of the defining moments of its age.. The film Peterloo featured; this was followed by other experiments in the Paris Commune of 1871 and the island republic of Franceville. The 1840 constitution of the Kingdom of Hawai'i granted universal suffrage to all male and female adults. In 1893, when the Kingdom of Hawai'i was overthrown in a coup, New Zealand became the only independent country to practice universal suffrage, the Freedom in the World index lists New Zealand as the only free country in the world in 1893. Women's suffrage is, by definition, the right of women to vote; this was the goal of the suffragists, who believed in using legal means and the suffragettes, who used extremist measures. Short-lived suffrage equity was drafted into provisions of the State of New Jersey's first, 1776 Constitution, which extended the Right to Vote to unwed female landholders & black land owners.
"IV. That all inhabitants of this Colony, of full age, who are worth fifty pounds proclamation money, clear estate in the same, have resided within the county in which they claim a vote for twelve months preceding the election, shall be entitled to vote for Representatives in Council and Assembly. New Jersey 1776 However, the document did not specify an Amendment procedure, the provision was subsequently replaced in 1844 by the adoption of the succeeding constitution, which reverted to "all white male" suffrage restrictions. Although the Kingdom of Hawai'i granted female suffrage in 1840, the right was rescinded in 1852. Limited voting rights were gained by some women in Sweden and some western U. S. states in the 1860s. In 1893, the British colony of New Zealand became the first self-governing nation to extend the right to vote to all adult women. In 1894 the women of South Australia achieved the right to both stand for Parliament; the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland in the Russian Empire was the first nation to allow all women to both vote and run for parliament.
Those against the women's suffrage movement made public organizations to put down the political movement, with the main argument being that a woman's place was in the home, not polls. Political cartoons and public outrage over women's rights increased as the opposition to suffrage worked day and night to organize legitimate groups campaigning against women's voting rights; the Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women was one organization that came out of the 1880's to put down the voting efforts. Many anti-suffrage propaganda poked fun at the idea of women in politics. Political cartoons displayed the most sentiment by portraying the issue of women's suffrage to be swapped with men's lives; some mocked the popular suf
Catherine Ashton
Catherine Margaret Ashton, Baroness Ashton of Upholland, is a British Labour politician who served as the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and First Vice President of the European Commission in the Barroso Commission from 2009 to 2014. Her political career began in 1999 when she was created a Life Peer as "Baroness Ashton of Upholland, of St Albans, in the County of Hertfordshire" by Tony Blair's Labour Government, she became the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department for Education and Skills in 2001 and subsequently in the Ministry of Justice in 2004. She was appointed a Privy Councillor in May 2006. Ashton became Leader of the House of Lords and Lord President of the Council in Gordon Brown’s first Cabinet in June 2007, she was instrumental in steering the EU's Treaty of Lisbon through the UK Parliament's upper chamber. In 2008, she was appointed as the British European Commissioner and became the Commissioner for Trade in the European Commission.
In December 2009, she became the inaugural High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, created by the Treaty of Lisbon. As High Representative, Ashton served as the EU's foreign policy chief. Despite being criticised by some at the time of her appointment and in the early stages of her term of office, for her limited previous experience of international diplomacy, Ashton subsequently won praise for her work as a negotiator in difficult international situations, in particular for her role in bringing Serbia and Kosovo to an agreement in April 2013 that normalised their ties, in the P5+1 talks with Iran which led to the November 2013 Geneva interim agreement on the Iranian nuclear programme. In January 2017, Ashton became Chancellor of the University of Warwick, succeeding Sir Richard Lambert and becoming Warwick's first female chancellor. Catherine Ashton was born at Upholland, Lancashire, on 20 March 1956, she comes with a background in coal mining. She attended Upholland Grammar School in Billinge Higher End, Lancashire Wigan Mining and Technical College, Wigan.
She graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Sociology in 1977 from London. She was the first person in her family to attend university. Ashton lives in St Albans with her husband, Peter Kellner, the president of an online polling organisation, YouGov. Ashton and Kellner have been married since 1988. Ashton has three stepchildren. Between 1977 and 1983, Ashton worked for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament as an administrator and in 1982 was elected as its national treasurer and subsequently as one of its vice-chairs. From 1979 to 1981 she was business manager of a management consultancy; as of 1983 she worked for the Central Council for Training in Social Work. From 1983-89 she was director of Business in the Community, working with business to tackle inequality, she established the Employers' Forum on Disability, Opportunity Now, the Windsor Fellowship. For most of the 1990s, she was a freelance policy adviser, she chaired the Health Authority in Hertfordshire from 1998 to 2001 and she became a vice-president of the National Council for One-Parent Families.
She was created a Labour Life Peer as Baroness Ashton of Upholland in 1999, under Prime Minister Tony Blair. In June 2001 she was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department for Education and Skills. In 2002 she became Minister responsible for Sure Start in the same department, in September 2004 she was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary in the Department for Constitutional Affairs, with responsibilities including the National Archives and the Public Guardianship Office. Ashton was sworn of the Privy Council in 2006, she became Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the new Ministry of Justice in May 2007. In 2005 she was voted "Minister of the Year" by The House Magazine and "Peer of the Year" by Channel 4. In 2006 she won the "Politician of the Year" award at the annual Stonewall Awards, made to those who had a positive impact on the lives of British LGBT people. On 28 June 2007, Prime Minister Gordon Brown appointed Ashton to HM Cabinet as Leader of the House of Lords and Lord President of the Council.
As Government Leader in the House of Lords, she was responsible for steering the Lisbon Treaty through the Upper House. On 3 October 2008, Ashton was nominated by the UK to replace Peter Mandelson as the European Commissioner for Trade; because European Commissioners may not engage in any other occupation during their term of office, whether gainful or not, she used the procedural device adopted in 1984 by Lord Cockfield and took a leave of absence from the House of Lords on 14 October 2008, retaining her peerage but not her seat. During her term, Ashton represented the EU in negotiations related to a long-running dispute over beef with the United States, led the EU delegation in an agreement with South Korea that removed all tariffs between the two economies and represented the EU in ending a long-running dispute over banana imports, principally involving Latin America and the EU. On 19 November 2009, Ashton was appointed the EU's first High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security policy.
Her appointment was agreed at a summit by 27 European Union leaders in Brussels. Having pushed for former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to become President of the European Council, Gordon Brown relented on the condition that the post of High Representative be awarded to a Briton. Ashton's relative obscurity prior to her appointment prompted comment in the media; the Guardian newspaper
Ajahn Amaro
Ajahn Amaro is a Theravāda Buddhist monk and teacher, abbot of the Amaravati Buddhist Monastery at the eastern end of the Chiltern Hills in south east England. The centre, in practice as much for ordinary people as for monastics, is inspired by the Thai forest tradition and the teachings of the late Ajahn Chah, its chief priorities are the practice and teaching of Buddhist ethics, together with traditional concentration and insight meditation techniques, as an effective way of dissolving suffering. Ajahn Amaro was born Jeremy Charles Julian Horner in Kent, he was educated at University of London. Ajahn means teacher, he is a second cousin of I. B. Horner, late President of the Pali Text Society. Apart from a certain interest in the theories of Rudolf Steiner—to which he had been introduced by Trevor Ravenscroft, Amaro's principal enthusiasms on leaving university were, by his own admission, pretty much those standard-issue among sceptical students of the day: sex and rock'n'roll. Having completed his honours degree in psychology and physiology, in 1977 he went to Malaysia and Thailand on an undefined "open-ended" spiritual search.
He somehow found himself at the forest monastery of Wat Pah Nanachat. Ajahn Chah's charismatic impact and the encouragement of the senior American monk Ajahn Pabhakaro were decisive, it changed his life. Having become a lay renunciate, four months he became a novice and in 1979 he received upasampada from Ajahn Chah and took profession as a Theravadin bhikkhu, he stayed in Thailand for two years. Amaro went back to England to help Ajahn Sumedho establish Chithurst Monastery in West Sussex. With the blessing of his abbot, in 1983 he moved to Harnham Vihara in Northumberland, he made the entire 830-mile journey on foot, chronicled in his 1984 volume Tudong: The Long Road North. In the early 1990s Amaro made several teaching trips to northern California. Many who attended his meditation retreats became enthusiastic about the possibility of establishing a permanent monastic community in the area. Amaravati, his mother house back in England, meanwhile received a substantial donation of land in Mendocino County from Chan Master Hsuan Hua, founder of the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in Talmage.
The land was allocated to establish a forest retreat. Since for some years Ajahn Sumedho had venerated the Chinese master, both abbots hoped that, among its other virtues, the center would serve as a symbolic bond between the otherwise distinct Theravāda and Mahayana lineages. Care for what became Abhayagiri was placed in the hands of a group of lay practitioners, the Sanghapala Foundation. Ajahn Pasanno was appointed founding co-abbot of Abhayagiri with Ajahn Amaro; the latter announced on 8 February 2010 that he would be leaving Abhayagiri and returning to England, having accepted a request from Ajahn Sumedho to succeed him as abbot at Amaravati. Tudong: The Long Road North Silent Rain Words of Calm and Friendship - by Ajahn Pasanno & Ajahn Amaro The Pilgrim Kamanita: A Legendary Romance - by Karl Gjellerup, Ajahn Amaro ed; the Dhamma and the Real World - by Ajahn Pasanno & Ajahn Amaro Broad View, Boundless Heart - by Ajahn Pasanno & Ajahn Amaro Food for the Heart - by Ven. Ajahn Chah; the Sound of Silence - by Ven.
Ajahn Sumedho. The Island: An Anthology of the Buddha’s Teachings on Nibbāna - by Ajahn Pasanno & Ajahn Amaro Rain on the Nile The Long Road has Many a Turn - by Nick Scott with Ajahn Amaro
