Showing 613 results

Nitin Sawhney was made an Honorary Fellow of the University in 2006.

Nitin Sawhney CBE is a British musician, producer and composer, as well as former comic actor. A recipient of the Ivor Novello Lifetime Achievement award in 2017, among several other awards throughout his career, Sawhney's work combines Asian and other worldwide influences with elements of jazz and electronica and often explores themes such as multiculturalism, politics, and spirituality. Sawhney is also active in the promotion of arts and cultural matters, and is a patron of numerous film festivals, venues, and educational institutions.

Rt. Rev Dr Tom Butler was made an Honorary Doctor of Letters of the University in 2005. He was the ninth Anglican Bishop of Southwark from 1998-2010.

Tyrone Goh was made an Honorary Doctor of Science of the University in 2005.

Victor Adebowale was made an Honorary Fellow of the University in 2005.

Victor, Baron Adebowale has done ground-breaking work as both a campaigner and a leader for the homeless, the unemployed, the disadvantaged and those with learning disabilities. He is currently Chief Executive of one of the UK's leading social care organisations and prior to this, he held a number of posts at the helm of some of the most important UK organisations dealing with social care and exclusion. He is also one of the first People's Peers elected to a life peerage in 2001.

Victor points out that his role is "not to vote on things I know little or nothing about but on those matters I've got an interest in". Despite the 'modernisation' of the House of Lords, becoming a member still includes a lot of tradition and Victor admits to unwittingly breaking many of the rules, but he says "I don't have a problem with tradition. I do have a problem with bigotry, racism and poverty".

Born in 1962, in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, Victor Adebowale was educated at Thornes House School before going on to the University of East London.

Experiences from early in his life in Wakefield have helped to inform Victor's sensibility to social needs and exclusion. He has talked in the past with fondness of a family friend, 'Janet', who had a learning disability: "She went to a school up the road and she used to come round to the house everyday." That contact clearly influenced Victor's insight into people with learning disabilities leading an ordinary life.

Victor and Turning Point, where he is Chief Executive Officer, have been campaigning hard for the rights of people with learning disabilities with the publication in 2003 and 2004 of two hard-hitting reports, focusing on their exclusion. These reports have already had an impact at many levels of Government, but Victor believes that the work has only just begun and too often "people with learning disabilities are treated like second class citizens" and he equates the level of prejudice faced by those with learning disabilities, with the situation black people faced in sixties America.

Victor is known for his direct approach and quality of leadership. As he says, "Growing up in poor housing is why, early on, Lazlo's hierarchy became apparent to me – where complex systems depend on the simpler one and I valued the need for clothing, shelter and food". He has continued to exercise this theory – and he believes that if Turning Point can provide a service that works for the poorest and hard to reach, it will make access and implementation of those services easier for the rest of society. One winter, he used Admiralty Arch as a shelter and controversy ensued. "But", as he pointed out, "here was an empty building, it was cold and people needed shelter. We put the two together."

Victor began his career in Local Authority Estate Management before joining the housing association movement. He spent time with Patchwork Community Housing Association, then became the Regional Director of Ujima Housing Association, the largest Black-led housing association, followed by Director of the Alcohol Recovery Project. He was Chief Executive of the youth homelessness charity Centrepoint for five years, before taking up his current post at Turning Point which has more than 200 services nationwide.

To name but a few, Victor is Patron of Rich Mix Centre Celebrating Cultural Diversity, of Tomorrow's Project and of the National College for School Leadership. He was a member of the Social Exclusion Unit's Policy Action Team on Young People and Chair of the Review of Social Housing Co-ordination undertaken by the Institute of Public Policy Research. In 2000, Victor was awarded the CBE in the New Year's honour list for services to the New Deal, unemployment and homeless young people.

He was voted 'Britain's Most Admired Charity Chief Executive Officer 2004' in the Third Sector Awards, for his work at Turning Point, achieving more votes than heads of renowned international charities and national government organisations, which had also been short listed for the awards.

Victor has a great affection for London and the city has continued to inspire his work. He cites Sir Christopher's Wren's St Paul's Cathedral in his list of 'inspirational art and architecture'. He remembers seeing a picture of St Paul's rising up out of the smoke during the blitz. For him that photograph and the building itself are inspirational, reminding him of just how robust people and society are and that something important survives whatever the circumstances.

Victor's achievements in challenging the social exclusion faced by the homeless, unemployed and those with learning disabilities is an inspirational, and in particular to many of LSBU's students. Consequently, Victor, Lord Adebowale was awarded the honorary fellowship of London South Bank University.

Sir Peter Mansfield was made an Honorary Doctor of Science of the University in 2005.

Nobel Laureate Professor Sir Peter Mansfield is an inventor who has changed the lives of millions, a scientist who has created revolutionary new pathways for physics, and a role model for people everywhere who want to achieve success from the most humble backgrounds.

Sir Peter's own background did not exactly prepare him for a distinguished scientific career, let alone winning the Nobel Prize, the highest accolade possible. He grew up in Lambeth and his father was a gas fitter, one of nine children. After the war broke out in 1939 when he was just six, he was evacuated twice and he spent some of his childhood in Torquay. When he returned to London, he did not succeed in getting into the local grammar school and was educated instead at a Central School in Peckham, which was later to become William Penn School. However, he left this school at 15 and started work as a printer's assistant. At this point in his life he was judged an academic failure and in particular was told by one of his teachers that science wasn't for him – an all too familiar story and in this case, spectacularly misjudged.

Even before this, as a young boy this fascination with science was sparked by his experiences when the V1 flying bombs and V2 rockets were falling on London – hence Lord Sainsbury's comment on the inspiration of bomb shrapnel of which the 11 year old Peter Mansfield amassed a considerable collection. This fascination became deep rooted and by the age of 19, he had taught himself enough about weapons and explosives to get a job as a scientific assistant in the Rocket Propulsion department, part of the Ministry of Supply, near Aylesbury. After National Service, he took up academic study again and did evening classes to get some A levels at what was then Borough Polytechnic and what is now today, of course, London South Bank University. Peter then won a bursary to study Physics at Queen Mary University as a mature student, a late career trajectory with which so many of our own students recognise. The mature student blossomed and Peter Mansfield graduated in 1959 with a 1st class Honours in Physics, which was followed by a PhD in 1962 under the supervision of Dr Jack Powles.

With his wife Jean, he spent two years as a Research Associate at the University of Illinois, before returning to the UK and a lectureship in Physics at the University of Nottingham, where he was appointed Professor in 1983 and has remained ever since albeit after formal retirement.

Peter Mansfield's work focused on the utilisation of gradients in the magnetic field. He showed how the signals could be mathematically analysed, which made it possible to develop a useful imaging technique. This was a major breakthrough not least because of the speed of the imaging. Within a decade of his developing his theory, the first medical applications were being developed. The commercial development of magnetic resonance imaging in the 1980s provided a breakthrough in medical diagnostics and research from which millions of patients around the world have benefited. There are now more than 22,000 MRI scanners in use worldwide, carrying out over 60 million examinations a year.

The use of MRI of course is expanding exponentially in line with health capacity demands and the increasing use of technology and even in this country, it is estimated that its use will increase by 60% over the next two years.

We, at London South Bank University, have a particular interest in these applications, since we hold a major contract to train diagnostic radiographers in the NHS while our researchers in Electrical Engineering are working with Peter Mansfield's colleagues at Nottingham in using superconductors.

Sir Peter Mansfield's career has been illuminated with honours and distinctions of the highest kind, including the Gold medal of the Royal Society, the Duddell Prize of the Institute of Physics, the Silvanus Thompson Medal by the British Institute of Radiology, the Antoine Beclere medal of the International Radiological Society, The Gold Medal of the European Congress of Radiology, and honorary degrees from universities including Strasbourg, Krakow, Kent and Nottingham. He was also knighted in 1993.

But his highest accolade came in 2003 when he shared the Nobel Prize for Physics with Professor Paul Lauterbur of the University of Illinois.

Accepting his award at the Nobelfest, Sir Peter expressed the feelings of many patients after their diagnosis, "What comes through to me is the strong sense of relief at knowing the details of their illness and the hope inspired by the vigorous evaluation of their problems using MRI."

For all his services to science and to medicine, for the transformation of the health of so many people, and for providing such a powerful role model for so many, Professor Sir Peter Mansfield was named as Doctor of Science honoris causa from London South Bank University.

Anne Owers was made an Honorary Fellow of the University in 2005.

Dame Anne Owers DBE was the first woman to be appointed to the post of Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons. But more significantly, she was one of the most renowned campaigners for human rights and law reform.

Anne Owers was educated at Washington Grammar School County Durham before going on to study at Girton College, Cambridge from where she graduated with a degree in History. From 1968 to 1971 she taught in Zambia undertook research for a PhD in African History. For four years from 1981 she worked as a researcher at the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, and then she held the post of General Secretary there until 1992.

During her distinguished career she has chaired the Board of Trustees of the Refugee Legal Centre between 1993 and 1996. She was a Member of the Lord Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Legal Education and Conduct from 1997 to 1999 and after that a member of the Home Office's Task Force on the Human Rights Act for two years. In addition, she served on the Legal Services Consultative Panel from 2000 to 2001.

However it was as the Director of the human rights and law reform group Justice from 1992 to 2001 that she gained national recognition as a Human Rights campaigner. Under her, Justice (which boasts 300 judges among its members) produced reports urging reform of the law in many important areas: investigating miscarriages of justice, life sentences, juvenile justice, and asylum law. Justice supported key cases in international and domestic courts, for example, to remove Ministers' powers to determine the length of detention for individual life sentenced prisoners.

Many believe that Anne's background has labelled her an "outsider"; a status she believes is an "advantage", allowing her a fresh perspective on her work. The plight of prisoners was one of Justice's main concerns. Perhaps her greatest achievement during her time at Justice was to help secure the setting up of the Criminal Cases Review Commission which was created to investigate more effectively possible miscarriages of justice.

Anne's reports on the conditions and treatment of inmates in prisons and immigration detention centres have shed light into these hidden places. Building on four key tests – that prisoners and detainees should be held safely, treated with respect, allowed to engage in purposeful activity and prepared for release – she has succeeded in improving conditions in individual prisons, and highlighted the effects of prison overcrowding. She has drawn particular attention to suicides in prison, the treatment of children, the extent of mental illness among prisoners, and the need for effective rehabilitation. Under her, the Inspectorate has developed human rights based criteria which are accepted internationally, and have been used outside England and Wales. Using the same approach, her reports into immigration detention facilities have exposed shortcomings and achieved some improvements.

Anne Owers has contributed much to the cause of human rights through her work both in the past, and in her current role as Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons. She has raised the profile of prison reform and contributed to the protection of the human rights of all detainees in this country. She has also maintained her commitment to issues of diversity which she first became involved with in the 1970s as part of the Race Relations Commission in the diocese of Southwark.

David Grayson was made an Honorary Doctor of Laws of the University in 2005. He is a former chairman of the charity Carers UK championing the role of 6.5million Britons caring for a loved one; and of one of the UK's larger social enterprises and largest eldercare providers, Housing 21 during which the organisation made corporate history by becoming the first-ever not-for-profit successfully to acquire a publicly quoted group of companies. David received an OBE for services to industry in 1994 and a CBE for services to disability in 1999.

The Council of Students and Members represented the social and sporting clubs of the Borough Polytechnic.

Spotlight is a magazine for University stakeholders aimed at promoting the benefits that higher education can bring to businesses and the advantages of partnerships between the two.

The Nathu Puri Institute, based in the university's Faculty of Engineering, Science and The Built Environment was established in order to foster enterprise amongst engineers and support the UK engineering industry.

The Borough Group was made up of artists who attended David Bomberg's classes at the Borough Polytechnic between 1945-1953.

'Bomberg and his Students' was an exhibition of paintings and drawings by members of the Borough Group and by some associated artists who attended Bomberg's classes at the Borough Polytechnic between 1945-1953. The exhibition was held as part of the University's centenary celebrations.

The Unicorn was the student magazine of the City of Westminster College and usually published once a term.

The memorial commemorates the 127 men from the Borough Polytechnic Institute who lost their lives during the First World War. Staff, students and relatives paid for the memorial, which was dedicated in 1921 by the Bishop of Southwark, who hoped it would, 'help to weave into the lives of others who study here and who come within this hall…the memory and the example of those who died... [and make] successive generations feel that they are becoming members of a corporate society, of real fellowship.'

The Polytechnic's student common room (today's digital gallery) was the memorials first home, but when the room was converted into a telephone exchange in the 1960s, the memorial was placed into storage. Rediscovered in 1996, the University restored and re-erected the memorial in the Edric Hall. The hall's refurbishment in 2004 meant the memorial was once again put into storage.

Over the Easter holiday of 2010, the Estates & Facilities Department, in consultation with the Chaplain and University Archivist, arranged for the memorial to be assembled in its current location which provides the memorial with a permanent home as close as possible to its original location and allows room for public commemoration.

University technical colleges (UTCs) are government-funded schools that offer 14-19 year olds technical and scientific subjects in a different way to traditional education. UTCs focus on one of two technical specialisms and operate a longer school day to more closely align with a business working day. Governance is by employers and a local university, who help to develop and deliver the curriculum. UTCs are smaller than traditional secondary schools. They are not academically selective and charge no fees. UTCs typically have 600 students, are sub regional and have a catchment area that may extend across a number of local authorities.

The South Bank UTC specialises in engineering for building and health sectors. Other partners are Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, PURICO and SKANSKA. The College opened in September 2016 on Brixton Hill.

Westminster Publications is an independent company which produces the Parliamentary Review. The Parliamentary Review is a series of independent publications, reviewing the latest events in parliament from a non-partisan perspective but it is wholly independent of government.

It allows private and public sector organisations to share and promote their best practice within policy sectors, with the goal of raising standards. The organisations are also free to use the Review, and their article within it, to promote themselves to a wide audience.

Desmond Gilbert Borton was born in his grandparents’ home in Ealing in July 1919, and grew up in Knollys Road, Streatham. He attended the New School in Streatham, which was the first Rudolf Steiner school in the UK, and on leaving school around 1936 went to the School of Building in Brixton.
In May 1939 Borton joined the Territorial Army in Croydon, and wen to Belgium with the British Expeditionary Force in April 1940. On 31st May that year he was evacuated from Dunkirk to Ramsgate, and was subsequently based at Tenterden in Kent as a Mechanical transport/driver in the Royal Army Service Corps. In 1942 he was deployed to North Africa, travelling via Cape Town, and served running supplies from Sudan across the desert to Tobruk, Tripoli, Alexandria and Cairo with the Sudanese Defence Force.
On being demobbed in April 1946, Borton returned to his grandparents’ home in Ealing and began working for Page and Overton Brewery and resuming his architecture studies at night school. He designed a number of houses in Surrey, Sussex and Kent, including the family home at Woodcote Close in Epsom, before qualifying as ARIBA in June 1955.
After qualifying he worked on a number of buildings for the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works, including AWRE Aldermaston in 1955-1956 and the Safety in Mines Research Building in Sheffield in 1960-1962. In 1962-63 he worked n the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington and then the Surface Mines Research dust explosion gallery in Buxton, before going to work at HQ BAOR, Rheindahlen, Germany in November 1964. Borton subsequently worked on a number of schools and other buildings on Army bases before returning to the UK to work for the Department of the Environment at Croydon in 1969. He worked on the Ship Tank at Feltham, RAF Lossiemouth, Odium and then prisons and young offenders establishments, including Feltham.
In 1981 he retired to Bosham in West Sussex, and died in June 1999.

Compiled with thanks to his daughter, Diana Ashe (nee Borton).

South Bank Polytechnic celebrated its centenary with a year's worth of celebrations, beginning with the Director, Pauline Perry releasing balloons from the Tower Restaurant. Other events included a service of thanksgiving, a special lunch at the Guildhall in London and dinner dance in Edric Hall.
The Centenary Lunch was held at the Guildhall, London and was hosted by the Vice Chancellor, Pauline Perry and the Liverymen of the Worshipful Company of Bakers. A recipe book, "The Lightest Chocolate Mousse in the World" was put together by the National Bakery School as part of the celebrations.