Scanning service goes live

All printer/photocopiers at the Senate House Library can now also be used to scan digital copies. This is a charged service (to cover the cost of providing machines, maintenance etc) at 6p per scan.

Users must enter an email address at the machine before you start scanning, and scans will be delivered to this address. The service does not allow scan to USB.

Scanning defaults to A3 and will scan everything on the copier glass at 200dpi and save as a Compact PDF
file. If you want to schange these options please refer to the guides at each machine.

New this month - New Jewel Movement publications

Newly added to the collections are important primary sources for the study of Grenada, consisting of one issue (Aug 1981) of the Newsletter of the New Jewel Movement National Women’s Organisation and a number of issues from 1981-1983 of the New Jewel, the newspaper of the New Jewel Movement.


The New Joint Endeavour for Welfare, Education, and Liberation, or New JEWEL Movement (NJM), was a Marxist-Leninist vanguard party in the Caribbean island nation of Grenada. The NJM was established in 1973 as an alliance of the Joint Endeavour for Welfare, Education and Liberation (JEWEL) and the Movement for Assemblies of the People (MAP), and was led by the lawyer Maurice Bishop. The movement was an opposition political party through the 1970s and took control of the country with a successful revolution against the government of Eric Gairy in 1979 ruling by decree until being deposed by the US military after its 1983 invasion.

These new additions add to our collection of secondary sources on Grenada, Grenadian politics, the revolution and the invasion, as well as primary material published by the New Jewel Movement and support groups (established after the invasion) which include earlier issues of the New Jewel Movement’s newspaper entitled New Jewel : let those who labour hold the reins. The collection also includes material published by the Grenada National Party, National Democratic Party, and the Grenada Seamen and Waterfront Workers' Union and Grenada Commercial and Industrial Workers' Union, as well as speeches by Maurice Bishop, when he held the post of Prime Minister

The Media Reform Lanka Initiative Website Launch

The Media Reform Lanka Initiative, based at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, has launched its website http://mediareformlanka.com/.

The Initiative aims to broaden and inform the perspectives in which media law, media policy and regulation are debated and determined in Sri Lanka and the wider South Asian region. It is led by Colombo-based senior legal advocate and media columnist Kishali Pinto-Jayawardena, in association with Dr David Page and Dr William Crawley, Senior Fellows at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies and Co-Directors of the Media South Asia Project. Their work to date has generated two core papers on Media Freedom and Social Responsibility in Sri Lanka: A Review of the Legal, Institutional and Educational Framework Relating to the Print Media (co-authored by Kishali Pinto-Jayawardena & Gehan Gunetilleke) and on the Political Economy of the Electronic Media (co-authored by the late Tilak Jayaratne and Sarath Kellapotha).

Commonwealth Research Seminar Series

Commonwealth Research Seminar Series


All seminars are on Wednesdays and begin at 1730

TERM 1

14 November 2012
Ben Muda, Commonwealth Business Council, London: Malaysia at Fifty: The Commonwealth in Malaysia's Foreign Policy
Filippo Menozzi, University of Canterbury, Kent, The Boundaries of Politics: Arundhati Roy's Transversal Activism

12 December 2012
Lanver Mak, Visiting Fellow ICwS, Unveiling the Veiled Protectorate: The Untold Stories of British Labourers and Criminals in Egypt, 1882-1922
Maria Mut Bosque, Visiting Fellow and PhD student, ICwS, Gibraltar: National Identity and Language Issues

TERM 2

16 January 2013
Peter Fraser, Visiting Fellow ICwS: An exemplary life: Arnold Hamilton Maloney and Trinidadian intellectual history
Giorgios Charalambous, Visiting Fellow ICwS: The Cypriot Left in Government: A Preliminary Assessment

13 February 2013

Bill Clarance, Visitng Fellow ICwS: Understanding Leonard Woolf : his role in decolonization
Paulo Rigueira, Doctoral Student ICwS: Globalisation & Human Rights: A Conceptual Approach


13 March 2013

Mandy Banton. Senior Fellow ICwS: Title TBA
Yiannos Katsourides, Visiting Fellow ICwS: Political conflicts in Cyprus in the 1940s and 1950s


TERM 3

17 April 2013
Abess Taqi, Doctoral student, ICwS: Arab perspectives on Western efforts to promote democratic reform in the Arab world
Sue Onslow, Senior Fellow ICwS, The Commonwealth & election monitoring: the Zimbabwe success story?

15 May 2013
Shihan de Silva, Senior Fellow ICwS: Connecting the Portuguese Burghers to the Commonwealth and Beyond: Language Matters
John Cowley, Fellow ICwS: Numberless Are The Sands On The Seashore : 'The Real Bahamas' and the field recording experience (1935-1965)

12 June 2013
Susan Williams, Senior Fellow ICwS, and Dr Luke McKernan, Lead Curator, Moving Image, The British Library: The screening of decolonisation: from book to film

Convenors: Susan Williams (susan.williams@sas.ac.uk) and Shihan de Silva (shihan.desilva@sas.ac.uk )

November 1-3: access to Senate House Library

On 1, 2 and 3 November, 2012, inclusive, access to the Institute of Commnwealth Studies Library and Senate House Library (SHL) will be via Stewart House only: there will be no access to the ground floor of Senate House while it is being used for filming. There may also be some disruption for a few days before and after these dates.


The Book Drop Box will also be in Stewart House from the morning of 1st to 5th November.

On the above dates, all readers must go to Stewart House, at the Russell Square entrance. The route to the lifts normally used to access SHL will be clearly signposted. There will not be any access to Senate House Library via the stairs.

All SHL readers should be able to access the library unimpeded. Anyone with disabilities may contact us before they visit, although it is not necessary to give us advance warning.

Rwanda Bibliography

Today we wish to highlight a resource on the newest member of the Commonwealth, Rwanda.

François Lagarde, of the University of Texas at Austin, has produced a very comprehensive bibilography on Rwanda, available free on the web, via the University of Texas Institutional Repository.

The bibliography lists all English and French publications on Rwanda from 1990-2011. The six main classes are: witness accounts, social sciences studies, natural sciences studies, legal publications, literature (all genres), and films. It currently consists of 7016 entries and includes an introduction and table of matters in French. The bibliography is intended to be regularly updated.



The bibiography can be found at: http://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/15587    

Witness Seminar: Localisation of the Civil Service in colonial territories before and immediately after independence

Institute of Commonwealth Studies and OSPA (Overseas Service Pensioners' Association) Witness Seminar: Localisation of the Civil Service in colonial territories before and immediately after independence

Event Programme


Thursday 25 October 2012
In the Senate Room, Senate House, South Block, Malet Street, London. WC1E 7HU

11.00-11.15 Registration, tea/coffee

11.15-11.30 Welcome and introduction by Professor Philip Murphy (ICwS)

11.30-1.00 Session One: Education and Training  
Chair: Dr Tamson Pietsch (Brunel University)

Eric Cunningham: (Education Officer, Gold Coast 1952 – 62) Gold Coast localisation: a long history, and reflections on my own experience.
Professor Michael Lee: (University of Manchester; Seconded to Uganda, and Makerere University College) The contribution of Makerere College to Localisation in East Africa.
Peter Wood: (Tanzania 1957 – 69; Oxford University 1969 – 90, ODA and international consultant; Commonwealth Forestry Association (Vice-President) The role of the Commonwealth Forestry Institute, Oxford, in professional education and training.

1.00-2.00 Sandwich Lunch

2.00-3.30 Session Two: Training for the Localisation of Public Administration
Chair: Professor Philip Murphy (ICwS)

Wyn Reilly: (Tanganyika 1956-62; IDPM, University of Manchester. Involved in Public Administration and Training in numerous countries). The Administrative Training Centre, Mzumbe, Tanganyika and management training at IDPM, Manchester and overseas.
Colin Fuller: (Kenya 1956-68; Kenya Institute of Administration, then IDPM, Manchester). Africanisation of the Civil Service in Kenya with special reference to the Administration.
Chris Cochran: (Solomon Islands 1967-82; Public Service Office and then Commissioner for Labour) Localisation of the Public Service in the Solomon Islands 1960-82, either side of Independence in 1978.

3.30-4.00 Tea/coffee


4.00-5.30 Session Three: The Politics of Localisation
Chair: Dr Georgina Sinclair (Open University)

John Ducker: (Aden 1960-67; then with World Bank in Africa and Central Asia). A Comparative Study across the colonies generally.
Simon Gillett: (Served in Cameroons 1960; Bechuanaland/Botswana 1965-72). The political context of Localisation and Government Policies in the Bechuanaland Protectorate and Botswana.
Michael Waters: (Western Pacific –GEIC 1972-76; Hong Kong 1976-97, Civil Service Branch dealing with localisation and handover, and Deputy Political Advisor to the Governor). The security, political and nationality issues affecting Localisation in Hong Kong.

5.30-7.00 Drinks reception

To register and pay online for this event, please click here.

Registration form