In memory of Alan Mears

We are sad to announce the death of Alan Mears, a former colleague and friend in LSE’s Catering Department.

Alan passed away on Tuesday 27 December in Mountbatten hospice on the Isle of Wight with his family present after a long period of ill health and Parkinson’s.

Alan was the Chef Manager at Rosebery Hall from 14 August 2004 – 31 December 2017.

Despite his illness, Alan continued to manage the running of the second largest catered hall with great humour and aptitude, and we were sad that he had to take early retirement.

The Catering Department have very fond memories of Alan and our deepest sympathies are with his family.

A donation page has been set up by his family for Parkinson’s UK and Mountbatten Isle of Wight.

In memory of Colm O’Sullivan (1968-2022)

It is with great sadness that we share the passing of Colm O’Sullivan, Support Officer in Data and Technology Services (DTS), who has been a part of our LSE community for the past seven years.

Chief Information Officer Laura Dawson and Service Line Manager Adam Gale share their reflections, and messages of support from fellow DTS colleagues and our School community, below.

Last week, we had the sad news that our colleague and friend Colm O’Sullivan passed away after a long battle with leukaemia.

Laura Dawson shared:  “Colm was the first person in DTS (Information Management and Technology or IMT as it was then called) to provide me with desk-side support when I first arrived. He was always calm, with dry sense of humour and a passion for travel. He was much loved by colleagues and his understated and caring approach was a hit across our School.

“Colm was someone who just got on with his job quietly and confidently but the great thing about him is he really cared about people both from the point of view of helping them with technology but also in ensuring their time at LSE was as good as it could be. He was a staunch advocate for workers rights and often would quietly but effectively challenge the status quo to the benefit of everyone in the team and leadership.”

After hearing about Colm’s passing, we received messages of support and remembrance of our brilliant colleague from across our School:

“Colm was incredibly helpful, competent, and a pleasure to work with. He had helped me many times over the years, always friendly, professional, and proactive in his approach.

“A great colleague who always worked hard to find a solution to a problem.”

“Colm always made time to have a chat, he was always happy to see you and was curious and optimistic. It was always a positive encounter.”

“He was such a friendly face. He’s another colleague who I don’t think I would ever walk past him without a smile at the very minimum, and most often we would have a friendly chat. He was such an easy-going sort of fellow, and so friendly on both a personal and professional level. I’m so sorry I didn’t know he was unwell. I looked back at our messages when I heard the news and one of those, I sent him was 2 years ago to thank him for sponsoring me for one of my runs, and he was very gracious about it. He was a hidden treasure in our department, and will be very much missed. Thinking of his family at this awful time. We are very lucky we also had Colm in our lives, however brief by comparison.”

“Colm always took the time necessary to make sure I was up and running, always polite, always helpful, always considerate of my capabilities. A true gent and champion for DTS.”

Adam Gale added: “Colm joined LSE In August 2015. I can remember his interview well. He shone as a candidate, both in the formal interview and in our scenario support test we carried out at the time. With his naturally calm and quiet approach, he stood out as the best candidate.

“He soon established himself as a member of the team – which is always daunting, especially when joining a long-established group of colleagues. It didn’t take long for him to join in with the regular team banter.”

In addition to the team, Colm was well loved and respected amongst colleagues in the rest of the division and the LSE family in general. His collegiality in the workplace was recognised as part of a divisional awards nomination where a colleague submitted the following supporting statement:

“Colm clearly takes his role here seriously and has no qualms about taking ownership of his workload, but also full accountability should anything need further attention. He is courteous, professional, and always willing to help me when he can, even when the workload here is very stretched and staff levels are particularly low. Colm is approachable, fair, and equitable, and a great asset to the team – intelligent, and fun to be with. I enjoy his company and find him easy to work with.”

Adam continued: “As his line manager, I agreed wholeheartedly with this nomination at the time, and throughout the time we worked together. His calm approach and gentle mannerism, along with his knowledge and experience were the perfect mix. I also received regular positive feedback from colleagues across LSE thanking him for his support and guidance.

“Colm was well travelled and loved to talk about his many trips he had made. He often stored his leave up to enable him to make some of those longer distance trips to the other side of the globe. He also used to enjoy his shorter European trips, and of course his visits back home to Cork. I know from our conversations in the past months that he was so very keen to travel again, or at least visit friends and family back home.

“In more recent months, I have had the privilege of talking with Colm on a regular basis, keeping him abreast of the various news and stories from around campus and DTS, as well as hearing from him how he is getting on. From the time he first let me know of his diagnosis to the last time he spoke, he was determined to overcome his illness and get back to work and his travelling. We’ve also been keeping each other amused by sharing various jokes and comical videos throughout. Alas, we didn’t manage to meet up for the coffee or lunch we had hoped, nor the beer or three we had been looking forward to.”

On behalf of DTS and LSE we are deeply saddened by Colm’s passing. He truly fought his illness and we will miss him so much.

In memory of Bruno Latour (1947-2022)

It is with great sadness that we share the passing of Bruno Latour, who had a long–standing association with the LSE. This began with his position as a Visiting Professor in the Department of Information Systems (1997–2000) was followed by a part–time Centennial Professor position (2013–2015). Here, Edgar Whitley, who helped facilitate his first visiting position at LSE, remembers the person as well as the scholar.

I first met Bruno at an Information Systems conference in Cambridge in 1995. He was one of the keynote speakers and his talk was accompanied by a paper reflecting on social theory and the study of computerized work sites. Written with typical Latourian insight and humour, the paper starts with a detailed description and deconstruction of a “program of action” based around the protagonist, Hélène, and her friend Adam arranging to meet in London. It also includes asides about possible reasons for the different time zones between Britain and the Continent, the (lack of) investment in British railways and a reflection that the name of the location where they were meeting, the Eurotunnel Gate at Waterloo station, is “not such a nice label for welcoming a French woman”.

Following conversations at the conference the possibility of a visiting position at LSE was discussed the School eventually agreed a visiting appointment in Information Systems. This resulted in Bruno making weekly trips (via Eurostar to Waterloo) to spend time at LSE.

At first sight, the idea of a trained anthropologist and sociologist of scientific practice being based within information systems might not have seemed an obvious choice. However, there are strong resonances between the socio–technical approach to studying information systems and Bruno’s exploration of the hybrids of nature and culture in his 1993 book “We have never been modern”. These resonances continue to influence debates in the study of information systems. His visiting position also meant that he more explicitly considered the role of information technologies alongside the scientific practices in some of his later writings.

As part of his appointment, Bruno gave two courses open to anyone in the School (and beyond). The first, “The Politics of Nature” (later called “Nature and Society: The contribution of science studies”) was an open, unassessed lecture course allowing him to develop arguments that became the basis for his 2004 book of the same name. The relationships between nature and society continue to be seen in his more recent ecologically focused work. The second “Information Systems or Networks of Transformation” (later renamed as “Regimes of Enunciation: A critique of pure information”) was available as an assessed course but was also open to PhD students at LSE. I particularly recall his sense of excitement when he arrived in London one week having (re)discovered the work of Gabriel Tarde, work that he later claimed foreshadowed much of his own thinking.

Alongside his teaching responsibilities, Bruno took full advantage of the academic environment at LSE and each week would look through the (printed) guide to LSE Experts to find interesting like–minded colleagues to meet during his weekly visits to London. In this way he engaged with colleagues studying legal theory, accounting and anthropology and participated in events organised by the European Institute and the Department of Sociology. In 1999 he hosted a first interdisciplinary workshop based on his colleague Michel Callon’s book on the Laws of the Markets (1998).

His time in London overlapped with the so–called “Sokal affair” and in 1998 LSE hosted a public debate between Latour and Sokal. On the day of the debate, Bruno invited Alan Sokal for lunch at the LSE Staff Dining Room and brought along a bottle of his family’s famous burgundy wine as a gift. I’m sure this typical gesture of collegiality helped ensure the actual debate ran more smoothly than it might have done, given the very different intellectual positions of the two panellists.

Bruno’s time in London wasn’t just spent on teaching and research and he regularly joined us for drinks after work in the Beaver’s Retreat or arranged for a group of friends to go with him to the theatre to see plays like Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen. His offer to refund the cost of the tickets I had bought for these shows with wine was always appreciated (and taken up).

In June 2000 I joined Bruno at a midsummer workshop in Tromsø on Actor–Network Theory and IT organised by Norwegian colleagues. One of the social events for the workshop was a trip where we all tried our hand at fishing for cod and I have fond memories of the varying degrees of success we had in this endeavour.

For the workshop I was asked to give a short presentation of how I was using some of Bruno’s ideas in my own work and that simple request ended up shaping a whole portfolio of research as I sought to better understand the role that technology actors play in the development of policy initiatives like digital identity. More recently, I could see how the challenges that politicians would face when claiming that they were just “following the science” in responding to the pandemic were foreseen by Bruno’s deconstruction of what we understand by science and society / facts and values.

At LSE as elsewhere, Bruno was always particularly supportive of PhD students and junior faculty, particularly as they engaged with his ideas. For example, Amany Elbanna recalls: “Professor Latour taught me to live not only a life of sociological and anthropological observations of all humans and non–humans but also a life of reflection. I remember him sitting at the LSE’s restaurant for an hour–long hot lunch sipping a small glass of wine and inviting us PhD students to join him. He did not approve of us just eating a sandwich in 15 minutes and going back to work as we used to do. He invited us to reflect more on what we do and the observations we make. He was talented in simplifying concepts and drawing ideas on the board, so we could get a visual understanding of the complex connections he was making. I continued to email him after the LSE course and he was always generous and willing to experiment with new challenges in the world of IT and how we can explain them. With all the books and papers he wrote, he will certainly never die but I will miss him catching up with new topics”.

Mary Darking, who particularly enjoyed his writing seminars, recalls: “Bruno was a true egalitarian. No matter how eminent the company, he always made time to warmly greet and speak with his students. He was our (somewhat) Socratic Professor and through his intriguing teaching method he empowered us to push convention aside and forge our own pathway through our chosen empirical wilderness. His sense of humour was a joy. I will never forget him commanding us, at the top of his voice, to put down our ordinary spectacles and “put on your virtual reality goggles [which he pronounced ‘googles’]”. For weeks we followed his instruction—“just describe”—sharing our descriptions with one another, spotting the tropes and clichés we had reproduced and learning to look beyond them. It was co–learning at its best”.

Peter Erdelyi writes “Bruno Latour’s generosity towards students was legendary and we were absolutely thrilled when he agreed to participate in an event a group of Information Systems PhD students organised in 2008, sharing with us his latest thinking and helping us work out our own intellectual quandaries. He will be greatly missed and remembered with affection by generations of former and current students”.

Bruno’s links with the School continued with his Centennial Professorship and I occasionally bumped into him in the corridors of LSE. Always generous with his time, these accidental meetings ended up being longer conversations and catch–ups and reminded me of how influential his thinking had been on me. Indeed, ideas and insights he shared continue to shape my approach to research and life as well as those of my colleagues.

With his death, the LSE community loses both an influential, inspirational and provocative thinker but also a dear friend and colleague.

In memory of Professor Ian Nish (1926-2022)

It is with deep regret that we announce that Emeritus Professor Ian Nish died on 31 July 2022 at the age of 96. Ian was a member of the Department of International History from 1963 until his retirement in 1991. He was one of the world’s leading scholars on the foreign relations of modern Japan and had an exemplary career as both a researcher and a teacher.

Ian was born in Edinburgh in 1926. Towards the end of the Second World War he started to learn Japanese as a young soldier in India. Having graduated from the School of Japanese in Simla in 1946, he was sent the following year to Japan to serve with the British Commonwealth Occupation Force in Kure where he engaged in interrogation work. Ian was therefore the last member of the great generation of Japanologists who emerged from the war, which also included similarly eminent figures such as the late Ron Dore.

In 1948 Ian returned to the UK and began an undergraduate degree at Edinburgh University, before embarking on a PhD at SOAS under the supervision of W.G. Beasley. His first academic post, before he moved to the LSE, was at the University of Sydney. In 1966 he published his first book, The Anglo-Japanese Alliance: The Diplomacy of Two Island Empires 1894-1907, and this was followed in 1972 by Alliance in Decline: A Study in Anglo-Japanese Relations 1908-23. These two volumes remain fifty years later the standard histories of the alliance. In addition, Ian wrote several other major books that continue to influence the field, including The Origins of the Russo-Japanese War (1985) and Japan’s Struggle with Internationalism: Japan, China, and the League of Nations (1993).

Outside of his writing, Ian made a great contribution both to the School and to the field of Japanese studies. As well as his departmental duties at the LSE, Ian was closely associated with the founding and running of STICERD. He sat on its steering committee and contributed greatly to its International Studies programme, bringing a brilliant range of both young and established scholars of East Asia to speak at its seminars. He was also a chairman of the School’s publication committee, of the Centre of International Studies, and of the senior common room.

In the field of Japanese Studies, Ian was one of the key individuals in nurturing this discipline in the UK. He was an instrumental figure in the establishment in 1974 of the British Association of Japanese Studies and became involved in the running of the European Association of Japanese Studies, acting as its president from 1985 to 1988. In addition, He chaired the Japan Foundation Endowment Committee from 1983 to 1991 and served as a member of the DTI’s Advisory Committee on the teaching of Japanese language in the UK. Ian was also an enthusiastic member of the Japan Society, served on its Council, and played a major role in its scholastic activities.

In 1990, Ian received a CBE for his contribution to Japanese studies and then in the following year, on his retirement, the Japanese government awarded him the Order of the Rising Sun.

Ian clearly deserved a long and happy retirement after the above labours, which came on top of his being an inspired guide to the history of Japan to undergraduates, postgraduates and his PhD students. Indeed, soon after retirement Ian looked younger as the worst stresses of administration fell from his shoulders. Being Ian, though, this did not mean that he had decided to rest.

In 1995 Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama announced that, in order to understand the Second World War and Japan’s role within it, the government would finance a programme of historical studies of its most significant bilateral relations. This led to the formation of the Anglo-Japanese History Project in which Ian acted the convenor for the British contributors, while his long-standing friend, Professor Chihiro Hosoya, was chosen as his Japanese counterpart. The Project involved a series of conferences and workshops being held in Britain and Japan in the late 1990s. This work, in due course, led to the production of six volumes of essays, published in both English and Japanese, covering the political/diplomatic, economic, cultural, and strategic interactions between the two countries. It was an immense undertaking but proved invaluable for the field. Following this strenuous endeavour, Ian continued avidly with his own research. In 2016, at the age of 90, he produced his last publication, a two-volume History of Manchuria, 1840-1948. Even after that, he did what he could to keep up with the field.

Ian will be remembered as a giant in his field, but, in addition, as many of the messages of condolence to his family and friends reveal, he will also be thought of warmly for his great kindness. Ian was a true gentleman, always polite, and never speaking ill of anyone, but also armed with a dry and sometimes mischievous sense of humour. He and his late wife Rona delighted in inviting guests to their house in Oxshott, and those of Scottish blood would come down in January to share a haggis on Burns Night. He will be greatly missed by very many people across the world.

We send our deep condolences to his two daughters, Fiona and Alison.
_________________________

With thanks to Professor Antony Best, from the Department of International History, for sharing this tribute.

The date of Professor Ian Nish’s passing has been updated to 31 July 2022, with apologies for the initial oversight. 

In memory of Ray Paul

It is with great sadness that we inform you of the passing of Ray Paul, who died on Tuesday 29 March 2022. Our deepest sympathies are with Jasna and the rest of Ray’s family.

After a BSc, MSc and then PhD in mathematics and operational research at the University of Hull, Ray’s academic career was spent at two institutions – LSE and, later, Brunel University.  He arrived at LSE in the early 1970s initially doing teaching and research in operational research where his former undergraduate student (and later colleague) Tony Cornford reflected on his teaching style “Ray was the one who had the most direct and student focused approach. He looked at you, not the back of the room or the blackboard, but straight in your eyes. He asked questions and expected a response.  His technique with the coloured pens and the overhead projector was exemplary, and his lecture notes were also a cut above—readable, coherent and with blank sections for the difficult bits that you had to fill in for yourself. You really felt that he had thought about his teaching and his students, and was on your side”.

Over time, Ray came to specialise in the area of simulation modelling and, particularly, discrete event simulation modelling where he brought together a stream of successful PhD students who explored a range of phenomena around the building and visual representation of simulation models.

Ray supervised over 55 PhD students during his career and one frequently bumps into one of his PhD “children”, “grandchildren” and even “great grandchildren”, a community he took great pride in.

When the Department of Information Systems at LSE was created following the dissolution of the Department of Statistical and Mathematical Sciences (SAMS) Ray moved across from Operational Research to Information Systems, working closely with the new Head of Department, Ian Angell to build on the distinctive approach to the social study of information systems at LSE.

Alongside departmental duties as Ian’s deputy, Ray also took on a number of school wide roles including as Dean of Admissions and developed many of the person management skills that would support him well in his later career.  He worked closely and collegially with professional services colleagues and always found it more effective to have a quite word about a particularly contentious piece of business beforehand than to have the issue end up being argued about in a meeting itself.

As colleague Chrisanthi Avgerou noted, “Ray was the voice of witty optimism in everyday LSE life and of cool reasoning whenever there was trouble”.  Many colleagues have recollected this mix of a dry sense of humour, sharp analytical thinking and warm kindness since hearing of Ray’s passing.

Ray’s ongoing connections with Operational Research (he was awarded the Companionship in Operational Research by the Operational Research Society in 2009) was instrumental in the launch of the European Journal of Information Systems (EJIS) as a publication of the Operational Research Society in 1991.  Ray wryly describes the origins in an editorial entitled “Changeover and celebrating change: 20 reasons for celebrating 20 years” published in 2007.

He was editor (with Editor–in–Chief the late Bob O’Keefe) of EJIS between 2000 and 2003 and then Editor–in–Chief, sharing the role with Bob and Richard Baskerville between 2004 and 2007.  In these roles he sought to continuously improve EJIS in all ways possible.  Ray was understandably proud when EJIS was named as one of the AIS Senior Scholars’ basket of 8 leading journals in the field and, more recently, when it was recognised as publishing some of the most original and best–executed research in the field in the 2021 CABS Academic Journal Guide.

Alongside Ray’s role in launching EJIS, Ray was also pivotal in creating the first European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS) which organised by the Operational Research Society.  The 30th ECIS conference takes place this June in Timisoira, Romania.

In 1992 Ray left the LSE to take up a chair at Brunel University and he was soon appointed as Head of Department and then Dean of the Faculty of Technology and Information Systems.  For a while, he was also acting Dean of the Faculties of Science and Life Sciences at Brunel.  When asked how he could manage such a diverse portfolio, he outlined one of his key management tips that he gladly shared with junior colleagues.  If one of the Heads of Department asked him to sign a document, he did so automatically because he knew he could trust his Heads of Department to flag up anything where he would be needed to make a judgement call on the issue.  Moreover, if he felt he couldn’t trust the judgement of his Department Heads and had to check what they were asking him to sign then that was what needed fixing not the particular documents he had been asked to sign.  In this way, he nurtured a generation of now senior academics who continue to embody the positive, supportive role he played in their careers in their own institutions.

Ray was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease whilst at Brunel although it took him quite some time to come to terms with his diagnosis, not least because it meant he had to take sickness retirement soon after it became public knowledge.  Nevertheless he continued to remain active as a scholar including a Visiting Professorship at LSE and became President of the UK Academy for Information Systems (UKAIS) in 2012–13.

He wrote about his experiences with a Parkinson’s diagnosis in his 2009 book “Living with Parkinson’s disease: Shake, rattle and roll”.  The title played to his sense of humour and reflected his experience of the beneficial role that dancing could bring as both a source of pleasure wherever there was a good tune playing as well as being a form of mental and physical resilience to those living with Parkinson’s disease.  The book gave hope to many who were coming to terms with their own or a loved one’s Parkinson’s diagnosis.

Alongside his love of great music to dance to, Ray was also an avid table football player and many people have fond memories of (typically) being repeatedly thrashed by Ray in games.

In lieu of flowers, Ray’s family would welcome donations to Parkinson’s UK https://www.parkinsons.org.uk/donate.

 

In memory of Stephen Dunn

LSE’s Stephen Dunn

It is with great sadness that we inform you of the passing of Stephen Dunn, who died on Tuesday 29 March 2022. Our deepest sympathies are with Stephen’s family. 

Stephen joined LSE as a Lecturer in the Department of Industrial Relations in 1985. Steve (as he was known) was a wonderful writer, colleague and teacher. Steve graduated from Oxford in history before moving into the field of industrial relations having experienced it first hand as a shop steward in the Bowyers meat processing factory in his hometown of Trowbridge in Wiltshire. Steve became an expert on closed shop, publishing The Closed Shop in British Industry (London: Macmillan) in 1984 with John Gennard. He published extensively in the 1980s and 1990s on the closed shop and other British industrial relations issues such as the content of British collective agreements (Dunn and Wright 1994), employee share options (Dewe, Dunn and Richardson 1988) and the legacy of the Donovan Commission (Dunn 1993). Later he developed an interest in industrial relations in South Africa via his former PhD student Eddy Donnelly, publishing on post-apartheid industrial relations (Donnelly and Dunn 2006). 

Steve’s flair for writing was legendary. As Sir David Metcalf, Emeritus Professor and former head of LSE’s Department of Industrial Relations, put it, Steve “wrote like a dream.” Punchy openings and ringing phrases were Steve’s trademark. He advised colleagues “never to start an article with the letter ‘T.’”  The implication was to avoid beginnings such as “This article will argue…” and try something more arresting – perhaps something like “Love it or loathe it,” the phrase with which Steve began his article on strikes in essential services for the Employment Policy Institute. Even Steve’s lecture notes were written with panache.  

Colleagues remember Steve as sociable and supportive. Rafael Gomez, Director of the Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources at the University of Toronto, recalls, “Stephen was a real support to me in my first year at the LSE. I was young, alone, living outside of Canada for the first time and he was really generous with his time.” He was also a fount of knowledge regarding industrial relations. Steve’s deep and broad knowledge was an invaluable resource for colleagues. As Sir David Metcalf noted, “you learnt so much talking to him.” Conversations with Steve were always thought-provoking, often involving passionate debate as well as humour.   

Steve was equally inspiring as a teacher. He paced the room, drawing on his reserves of knowledge to extemporise. The results were often brilliant and never dull. He always had time for students, dedicating long hours to supervision of dissertations and links projects. He also took great care with feedback and his role as personal tutor. Former students such as Verity Lewis, an alumna of the Industrial Relations undergraduate programme, remember his kindness in the days when the undergraduate programme was small and dominated by the department’s MSc programmes.  

Steve retired in 2012, departing LSE on a high note. Professor Jackie Coyle-Shapiro, then head of the EROB group of the LSE Department of Management, organised a seminar and dinner to honour Steve’s work. It was an exceptionally well-attended and inspiring event at which the affection for Steve was palpable.  Steve, typically modest, had said he didn’t want any speeches, but blushed with delight as he listened to his colleagues’ appreciation.  As Professor Jackie Coyle-Shapiro notes “Steve had much more impact on colleagues and students than he was aware of.  His humility and generosity were remarkable; his flair for writing was unique.”   

Steve’s colleagues are deeply saddened by his death. It was a joy to work and be friends with him. He will be greatly missed. 

 

References: 

Dewe, P., Dunn, S. and Richardson, R., 1988. Employee Share Option Schemes, Why Workers Are Attracted to Them. British Journal of Industrial Relations, 26 (1), pp.1-20. 

Donnelly, E. and Dunn, S., 2006. Ten years after: South African employment relations since the negotiated revolution. British Journal of Industrial Relations, 44 (1), pp.1-29. 

Dunn, S., 1993. From Donovan to… wherever. British Journal of Industrial Relations, 31 (2), pp.169-187. 

Dunn, S. and Gennard, J., 1984. The closed shop in British industry.  London: Macmillan. 

Dunn, S. and Wright, M., 1994. Maintaining the ‘Status Quo’? An Analysis of the Contents of British Collective Agreements, 1979–1990. British Journal of Industrial Relations, 32 (1), pp.23-46. 

In memory of Professor George Philip (1951- 2021)

The Department of Government is deeply saddened by the death, on 13 October, of George Philip, Emeritus Professor of Comparative and Latin American Politics at the LSE.  Born in London in 1951, George Philip received his doctorate from Oxford University and joined the Department of Government in 1976. In a distinguished academic career that spanned over 40 years, he became one of the leading Latin Americanists of his generation.

George Philip’s academic writings addressed key issues of Latin American politics and political economy.  His early works focussed on oil and politics in Latin America (Oil and Politics in Latin America: Nationalist Movements and State Companies), a topic on which he wrote extensively throughout his career. But his work was not defined by narrow specialisms (he defined himself as fox rather than a hedgehog in Isaiah Berlin’s terms). He covered, among others, questions about military power (The Military in South American Politics) the condition of democracy in the region (Democracy in Latin America: Surviving Conflict and Crisis?) and the region’s turn to the left in the early 21st Century (The Triumph of Politics. The Return of the Left in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador). George Philip had a special interest in Mexico, a country in which he had an extensive network of academic and political contacts and from where many of his doctoral students came from. His 1992 book, The Presidency in Mexican Politics, became one the most authoritative works on Mexico’s political institutions of the time.

George Philip introduced several generations of both undergraduate and postgraduate students to the politics of Latin America. He had the talent to make the complex politics of the region understandable and compelling for an audience that may have no previous knowledge of it.  His graduate seminars often adjourned to one of the LSE pubs, where discussions about politics continued and mixed with debates about culture and, of course, his beloved football.  He tutored a large number of PhD students, many of whom went to have important positions in public life in their home countries and made a point of visiting him when back in London.  He was a generous mentor for both postgraduate students and junior colleagues.  Behind the façade of an Oxford-educated English academic, he had a great sense of humour and was easily approachable.

George Philip occupied positions of responsibility in the Department and in the School. He was Convenor (Head of Department) between 2004 and 2007. At School-level he served as Vice Chancellor (Academic) and in several School committees.  Those who worked with him knew his quality. George Philip will be remembered as a top academic, a kind and decent man a generous mentor, and a proud Professor in the Department. He is survived by his wife, Carol.

Contribution by Professor Francisco Panizza 

In memory of David Marsden

It is with great sadness that we inform you of the passing of Professor David Marsden, who died unexpectedly on Tuesday 10 August 2021 following complications of cancer treatment. Our deepest sympathies are with David’s wife, Professor Alice Lam, and his son, Antony Lam-Marsden.

David joined LSE as a Lecturer in the Department of Industrial Relations in 1980. He had a long and distinguished career at LSE, first in the Department of Industrial Relations where he was promoted to Professor, and subsequently in the Department of Management. As his wife Alice has said, David ‘was ultimately an LSE man and totally dedicated to his work.’  This commitment shone through in his scholarship, his teaching and generous collegiality. As David’s close colleague Jonathan Booth put it, ‘David was not only a colleague, he was a friend, mentor, and champion for junior faculty and supportive to many others – from students at all levels to professional services staff.’

David was an original and creative scholar. A talented linguist, David excelled at cross-national comparison and thought deeply about the origins and durability of institutional diversity. In his influential book, A Theory of Employment Systems: Micro-Foundations of Societal Diversity (1999, Oxford University Press), David developed a novel theory of how institutions shaped work organisation and employment relations within firms. He had wide interests in employment relations, publishing important studies on youth employment and training, performance related pay, performance management and individual employee voice. David also made significant policy contributions, authoring numerous reports and acting as an adviser to the European Commission, the International Labour Organisation, the OECD, the World Bank, and to various UK trade unions. Throughout his work, David was concerned to improve conditions for ordinary people, in the workplace and society.

Not only did David publish in all the major industrial relations journals, he also founded two journals. David was a founding editor of Industrielle Beziehungen (the German Journal of Industrial Relations), and, together with Alex Hicks, he also founded Socio-Economic Review (SER), acting as editor from 2001-2006. Establishing journals is a rare accomplishment; these thriving journals stand as a lasting tribute to David’s intellectual enthusiasm and creativity. In addition, David served as an editor of Travail et Emploi (a research journal published by the French ministry of labour), was co-editor of the International Public Management Journal between 2005 and 2011, and served as general editor of the British Journal of Industrial Relations from 2012 until his death. His support for interdisciplinary work was expressed by his long-standing relationship with the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE), serving as SASE President in 2002-2003 and acting as organiser for the network on “Labour Markets, Education, and Human Resources” over several decades, where he welcomed generations of young international scholars into SASE.

David was a dedicated teacher, who enjoyed taking students on an intellectual journey. For many years he taught Comparative Employment Relations and later Comparative Human Resource Management, sharing his sophisticated understanding of cross-national diversity with students. Most recently, David taught Negotiation Analysis, a labour of love which was deeply appreciated by students. He was rightly proud of his successful leadership of this course, for which he received an LSE ‘Excellence in Education Award’ in 2018.

David was also an active citizen of the Department and LSE. Among his many roles, he served as a Member of Council 2008-2013 and Vice-Chair of the Academic Board 2010-2013. He was also Head of the Department of Industrial Relations 2001-2004, and Faculty Group Lead of ER-HR from 2015.

David was hugely appreciated by colleagues not only as a scholar, but for his kindness, warmth and generosity. He was unfailingly considerate and thoughtful, fostering a culture of mutual respect and support. He nurtured and encouraged many young scholars. It was a privilege to work with David; he will be greatly missed.

In David we have lost an inspiring scholar, colleague and friend, who will be long remembered at LSE and across the scholarly community.

In memory Professor Ailsa Land (1927-2021)

Black and white image of Ailsa Land with short hair and a dark jacket, against a white backgroundAilsa H. Land (nee Dicken) died on 16 May, aged almost 94. She was born in West Bromwich, Staffordshire in 1927 and grew up in the West Midlands. In early 1939, in the face of the coming war, she and her mother travelled to Canada.  She remained there for the next five years, finishing school, and in 1943 enrolling with her mother in the Canadian Women’s Army Corps, requiring her to pretend she was older than her actual age. She ended her military service in 1944 in Ottawa at the National Defence Headquarters. She and her mother then returned to the UK to re-join her father who had been in the RAF. She came to LSE in 1946 as a student on the BSc(Econ). LSE was to be the home for her professional life thereafter.

Graduating in 1950, Ailsa became a Research Assistant in the Economics Research Division at LSE. In the same year she met her husband-to-be, Frank Land, who was also an LSE graduate and Research Assistant in the Economics Research Division, and they married in 1953. Alisa’s academic interests were and remained ‘activity analysis’ and its application, in today’s terms mathematical programming, scheduling and optimization. Her PhD was awarded in 1956 on the application of Operational Research techniques to the transportation of coking coal.

Her LSE career developed over the next 25 years as she progressed from lecturer to professor, in 1980, and head of the LSE Operational Research group. She and Frank, who was LSE professor of Information Systems, raised a son and two daughters, and their family grew with 7 grandchildren and 2 great-grand-children. She retired from LSE in 1987 but continued to work on optimization problems.  In her words at the time, ‘Now I’m retired I can do some research!”

Among Ailsa’s major academic contributions is the Land-Doig algorithm for branch and bound optimization with integer variables, work undertaken with Alison Doig, now Alison Harcourt[i]. Professor Richard Steinberg,  Chair in Operations Research in the Department of Management writes about the Land-Doig algorithm: “It is used to solve mathematical optimization problems where the solutions need to be whole numbers, which includes an enormous number of important practical problems.  The naïve approach to such problems is to enumerate every possible solution and then choose the best one, a Herculean, often impossible, task.  Branch-and-bound is a devilishly clever enumeration procedure that eliminates large swathes of inferior solutions in one go, often saving huge amounts of computation time and, in many cases, making an otherwise-unsolvable problem solvable.   Ailsa’s paper with Alison on branch-and-bound, published in Econometrica in 1960, has been cited and applied literally many thousands of times.”

Notably, Ailsa’s work on optimization took an economist’s perspective rather than that of a mathematician. Her book of Fortran Codes for Mathematical Programming [ii], work undertaken with Susan Powell, set a standard for open shared code and its creative documentation. Throughout her career she engaged with and contributed to the solution of practical problems with an undimmed sense of the potential for radical ideas and she was critical of the abstract and narrow mathematical research focus that became prevalent in Operational Research.

In 1994 she was awarded the Canadian Operational Research Society Harold Lardner Prize, and in 2019 the Beale Medal of the British OR Society, which is given in recognition of a sustained contribution to OR in the UK. The citation for her Beale Medal award well summarised her contributions: “Her work in branch and bound reshaped the field of mathematical programming and its influence continues to this day… In addition, Ailsa Land has advanced the methodology of OR through publication of significant work on shortest path algorithms, quadratic programming, bicriteria decision problems, and statistical data fitting… Since retirement from LSE in 1987, she has continued research projects, resulting in contributions to Data Envelopment Analysis, Combinatorial Auctions, and the Quadratic Assignment Problem.” [iii]

Ailsa was the first woman in the UK to hold a full professorship in Operational Research. In the 1980s, she was a rare woman professor role model at LSE. She led the Operational Research group confidently, avoiding institutional entanglements and creating a research environment that allowed her, her colleagues, and her students to pursue their intellectual interests.  Her impact on the development of her discipline is underlined by the stream of PhD students, who rose to eminence world-wide. LSE now offers an Ailsa Land Prize  for the best overall performance by a student on the MSc Operations Research & Analytics.

The combination of impactful academic work, raising a happy family and being active in your community is a tall order. Ailsa showed us it can be done in a gracious manner, and her reassuring beautiful smile was precious source of encouragement and optimism for all of us lucky to have known her.

Chrisanthi Avgerou and Tony Cornford
Department of Management
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[i] Land, A.H. and Doig, A.G. (1960). “An automatic method of solving discrete programming problems“. Econometrica. 28 (3). pp. 497–520. doi:10.2307/1910129. JSTOR 1910129.

[ii] Land, A. H and Powell, S (1973). Fortran codes for mathematical programming: linear, quadratic and discrete. London; New York: Wiley. ISBN 978-0-471-51270-7. OCLC 814498.

[iii] https://www.theorsociety.com/membership/awards-medals-and-scholarships/beale-medal/previous-awards/

See also her INFORMS interview:  https://www.informs.org/Explore/History-of-O.R.-Excellence/Biographical-Profiles/Land-Ailsa-H

 

In memory of Mike Oliver (1952 – 2021)

Tuesday 28 September 2021
Remembrance Service at LSE

We are holding a remembrance service at LSE on Tuesday 28 September 2021 to celebrate Mike’s life. To find out more about the service and timings, please view this Google form and RSVP by 5pm on Wednesday 15 September 2021. The service will be streamed online for those unable to attend in person. 

It is with great sadness that we report the passing of our dear friend and colleague Mike Oliver.

Mike joined LSE in 1986 as the first external appointee to the newly created Research and Consultancy Office. He saw the Division change name several times and grow from just two members of staff sharing a single desk and telephone to the team it is today. Over the years he built up an in-depth understanding of how LSE works and an encyclopaedic knowledge of sponsors and how best to attract their attention. He supported thousands of research funding applications and generations of researchers with professionalism, efficiency and a willingness to help. In 2015 he was delighted to be presented with the inaugural Director’s Award at the Values in Practice Awards for the “key role he played in launching so many individual and collective achievements”.

Working at LSE was a huge part of his life and, in what should have been his retirement years, he chose instead to continue working full time in a role he loved. He said he could not think of a career that he would have enjoyed as much.

His kindness, sense of humour and love of good conversation over a pint gained him many friends across the whole of LSE and tributes have been flooding in from colleagues old and new. We are privileged to have known him and will miss him deeply.

Share your thoughts and memories of working with Mike.