Former SPS student appointed as Shadow Scotland Minister

Paul Sweeney, a former UofG Economic and Social History student, has been appointed as Shadow Scottish Minister by Jeremy Corbyn in his recent Shadow Cabinet reshuffle. Paul was only elected as a Labour MP at the recent General Election and is one of 20 new appointments to the shadow front bench.

Paul is remembered from his time at the University as an excellent student who was very keen to enter into the workplace. He worked for BAE Systems in Scotstoun, and was involved with the Business Archives Council of Scotland and the Glasgow University Archives in ensuring that business records from one of the predecessor shipbuilding firms were preserved. Immediately prior to his election, Paul spent a year as a senior account manager with Scottish Enterprise on its company growth, innovation and infrastructure team.

Donna Yates

Dr Donna Yates, the UofG Lecturer in Antiquities Trafficking and Art Crime at the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research, is in the headlines again. Donna, an archaeologist in a criminology department, has been widely quoted in relation to the US arts and crafts chain Hobby Lobby. The company has agreed to pay a $3m fine and forfeit thousands of smuggled ancient Iraqi artifacts that the US government alleges were intentionally mislabeled. The Washington Post quoted Donna: “They put scholars in a situation where it becomes very ethically difficult for someone to engage in those collections in any way, other than to criticize them.”

“Are they going to come to the museum, somebody who’s doing significant Biblical research or linguistic research, where they’re going to publish [about] material that’s very likely to be stolen?”

UofG anti-apartheid campaigner returns to Malawi after 60 years

One of the last survivors of Malawi’s 1964 Cabinet, and an anti-apartheid activist, is returning to the African country on the 60th anniversary of his leaving Scotland for his first visit to Nyasaland, as it was called before Malawi. Lanark-born Colin Cameron (84), a retired lawyer who now lives in Irvine with his wife Alison, was an original member of Malawi’s 1964 Independence Cabinet having played a key role over the previous few years in negotiating Malawian struggle for independence. At the Independence Conference in Marlborough House, London, President of Malawi, Dr Kamuzu Banda insisted Colin sat at his right-hand side.

Colin and his wife have now been invited to return to Malawi as guests of the Malawi Government to take part in the 53rd Independence Day celebrations, precisely 60 years to the day after they set off from Scotland to Malawi – then called Nyasaland - on their honeymoon on the 6th July 1957.

Colin graduated in Law from the University of Glasgow in May 1957. After marrying Alison a month later, a nurse and midwife at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, they sailed to Malawi in August 1957 for Colin to work as a Solicitor and Legal Practitioner. His wife volunteered as a Midwife with the Church of Scotland Mission Hospital.

 

 

 

 

 

First published: 10 July 2017

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