Celebrating Sandra

As many of you will know, Sandra Koa Wing, the project officer for the Mass Observation Archive, passed away in May (see obituary below).

Sandra had a great many friends and colleagues from the Mass Observation Archive, in the Library and from her time as a student at Sussex.To recognise this, and the enormous contribution Sandra made to the work of Mass Observation, her family and colleagues established a memorial fund.

The fund closed on 31 October 2007 and the money rasised will be used to buy a lasting and fitting memorial to Sandra which will be valued by visitors and researchers using the Mass Observation Archive. The exact nature of the memorial will be announced in 2008.

 

Sandra Koa Wing , Mass Observation Project Officer

1979-2007

From Debby Shorley, Chair of the Mass Observation Archive Trustees:

Sandra Koa Wing’s recent death from cancer aged 28 has shocked all her many friends and colleagues at the University.

Sandra came to Sussex as an undergraduate in 1997 and was awarded a First in English in 2000. She went on to do an MA in Life History Research, winning the Asa Briggs History Award. Typically, her dissertation topic was The social meanings of humour; typically too, she was awarded a distinction for it.

After spells working in the main Library, first in Teaching Support and later as a research assistant in Special Collections, and in SPRU, she was appointed Mass Observation’s first Development Officer, which she described as her dream job. And Sandra was the dream colleague - smart, creative, and totally committed to Mass Observation. Intellectually rigorous, she was at the same time a brilliant communicator, just as comfortable with groups of schoolchildren as with academic colleagues.

The Folio Society is about to publish her book Mass Observation Britain in the Second World War.

But above all the Sandra we shall remember was a dear and much loved friend - gentle, thoughtful, and irrepressibly cheerful. (She really was always smiling.) She had a tremendous future ahead of her, and her untimely death is almost unbearably cruel. We shall all miss her dreadfully.

Her husband Pete Simmons, who worked in the University's Press Office from
2000 to 2003 - in Sandra's own words 'literally my rock' - was at her side
throughout. We offer him, her parents and her brothers Mike and Adrian our
heartfelt sympathy.

 

From Dorothy Sheridan, Director of the Mass Observation Archive:

There isn't much more I can add to Debby's moving tribute to Sandra. All of us in Special Collections loved her and will miss her keenly and we send our sympathy to dear Pete, Sandra's husband and to their families.

For me personally it is particularly poignant because as many people know, Sandra was my special pal in the Mass Observation Archive. She joined us in 2003 as our Development Officer, the first professional appointment to be made in the Archive since I started years before. She arrived full of challenging ideas about how the Archive should move forward - recruiting new Archive Friends, re-designing the look and feel of our image, utilising new technology to update our activities, planning a brand new website, negotiating with potential and actual local and national partners, working to produce digital versions of the archive for use in teaching. She was energetic, imaginative and supremely well organised. And it was a credit to her charm and diplomacy that she persuaded us to change the way we did things without ever upsetting any of us!

I am so pleased that she was able to finish her work on the diary anthology for publication with the Folio Society. Thanks to her publishers, she saw a copy of the final book before official publication. The rest of us are looking forward to seeing the finished product. It is a fitting testament to her commitment and affection for Mass Observation.