Three legacy stories
A Powerful and Lasting Act of Kindness
A gift in your Will can have an incredible impact. And it can become many things such as life-changing research, or access to a world-class education for a talented student who might otherwise miss out. It can create opportunities for education and research for generations to come, helping to shape our future for the better.
Read the stories of three people who have been impacted by a legacy gift to Queen's below:
Buchanans' legacy in memory of their daughter Catherine
A legacy gift can become many things. This one's helping protect us from asteroids.
When Richard Buchanan’s father died in 2021, Richard and his wife Julie were in the unusual position where they could give a legacy gift during their lifetime. They chose to vary the terms of Richard's father's Will via a Deed of Variation to make a generous donation supporting the study of physics at Queen’s in memory of their daughter Catherine, a keen physics enthusiast.
A part of the legacy gift was used to support the Catherine Buchanan Scholarship that Richard and Julie had established in 2019 to support young women in physics. The rest of the legacy gift was used to help refurbish the University’s Astrophysics lab with 14 screens and a high-quality audio-visual system.
The new lab equipment funded by this legacy gift supports the collaborative work between Queen’s and Oxford University to scan the sky on a daily basis, searching for hazardous asteroids, planets around other stars and the most energetic explosions in the cosmos.
This generous legacy gift is not only supporting female physics students with an aim to increase representation of women in science, but is also helping to monitor our skies keeping us safe from asteroids.
A legacy funding the next generation of researchers
A legacy gift can become many things. This one's supporting cutting-edge medical research.
Professor Denise Fitzgerald’s research into multiple sclerosis (MS) is set to benefit from a generous legacy gift that will greatly expand the scope and ambition of the research her team can undertake. The team works to understand the details of how our brain tissue can become repaired after it has been damaged.
At 21, Prof. Fitzgerald was diagnosed with a rare condition called transverse myelitis (TM) which caused inflammation and damage to her spinal cord. She was paralyzed and had to learn to walk again.
It was this personal experience that led her in her pursuit to understand why and how the damage in her spinal cord repaired so well, and why that doesn’t happen with MS and other neurodegenerative diseases.
This legacy gift will help to train the next generation of researchers and to push the boundaries of their research to help improve the lives of patients who are affected daily by a neurodegenerative disease.
The gift of an world-class education
A legacy gift can become many things. This one's providing extra support to students who need it.
From a young age Jessica Murphy admired doctors. She always wanted to study medicine but believed it could be beyond her reach. However, when the Queen’s Pathway Programme team visited her school and outlined the additional support available to students who might need it, Jessica knew that medicine was possible for her.
Many people choose to leave a gift in their Will to support students, like Jessica, with a scholarship, prize or bursary, to ensure our students maximise their experience, expand their ambition and achieve their potential.
Through the Pathway Programme students receive an annual bursary in addition to other support such as an introductory course to the different areas of study at Queen’s and visits to campus.
The first in her family to go to University, the third year medical student says the Programme gave her the confidence to come to Queen’s and is the reason why she felt so comfortable away from home. The generosity shown by donors is something Jessica believes she will never forget.
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If you have any questions about leaving a gift in your Will to Queen's, or how your gift can help, please contact our Legacy Manager at l.carey@qub.ac.uk
or on +44 (0) 7727 234 282.