In January 2015, following the terrorist attacks on the Paris office of the satirical magazine 'Charlie Hebdo', colleagues in the French Studies department of the University of Manchester decided to hold a public event to discuss the attacks and their aftermath, and to bring together representatives of all religious persuasion, and of none, in a spirit of inter-cultural dialogue. We needed quick financial and administrative support from the School of Arts to rent a large lecture theatre after teaching hours, and to pay the travel expenses of a former journalist on the staff of Charlie Hebdo, our guest of honour at this event (Olivier Cyran). When approached with this idea and the impossible time-scale it involved, Liz was immediately and incredibly supportive. She was instrumental in getting the proposal approved outside of the normal application deadlines for such things, and her generous, quick-thinking, morally principled attitude enabled us to run this event successfully, and in the best of conditions (over 300 people turned up). Without her support and quick decision-making, this event wouldn't have occurred, and I can proudly say that she made the first-ever scholarly response to the Charlie Hebdo attacks possible. I, and my colleagues in French, remain eternally grateful to her for this reason (among others). Barbara Lebrun.