Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, is establishing a Fund in memory of Dr Marie Battle Singer, who was Britain’s first black psychoanalyst and one of the earliest Research Fellows at Clare Hall. Marie was born in Okolona, Mississippi, in the American South in 1910. She grew up in a family of African American educators, just one generation removed from slavery. In the summer of 1950, Marie moved to England to work and study with Anna Freud at her Hampstead Child Therapy Clinic.

 

Later on and for many years, she was one of only two psychoanalysts in Cambridge, and her practice became focused on university students and postgraduate adults as well as children. During Marie’s years at Clare Hall, she developed friendships and associations with numerous Cambridge scholars and students. Among her many close friends and collaborators were physicist and Founding Fellow of Clare Hall, Professor Richard Eden, biochemist and historian Joseph Needham, philosopher John Wisdom, and anthropologist Polly Hill.

 

By the early 1970s, Marie taught courses on psychoanalysis in the Experimental Psychology department, the first to do so since Karin Stephen in the 1930s. She also taught training physicians at Addenbrooke’s Hospital and helped Oxford University students create a psychoanalysis study group. Helping patients was always her passion, as she enabled several generations of young people to lead fruitful and productive lives.

 

The Marie Battle Singer Fund will generate bursaries for postgraduate students, with a preference for transatlantic or international students, working within the fields of psychology or race relations, or any other closely related subjects at Clare Hall. These bursaries will support them with the costs of their academic-related activities. In the event that an award cannot be made to either transatlantic or international students, awards may be made to UK-domiciled students who are working within the relevant fields.

 

Clare Hall aims to endow the Fund in perpetuity with at least £100,000. This will provide around £3,000-£4,000 per annum, to be overseen by the Senior Tutor and Bursar of Clare Hall.

 

The College would be delighted if you could consider making a gift of any size in support of this new Fund at Clare Hall. To donate, please click on the following link: https://www.clarehall.cam.ac.uk/online-donation-form/ (Kindly ensure to select the “Marie Battle Singer Fund” from the drop-down list in the “Designation” box)

 

For further information about supporting The Marie Battle Singer Fund, please contact Francé Davies, Director of Alumni & Donor Relations at Clare Hall: director.adro@clarehall.cam.ac.uk