Fostering the Humanities at Keble

The College is investing in the Humanities through the endowment of two Tutorial Fellowships, and through the support of events, such as the highly successful Poets at Keble series.

These are exciting times for the Humanities at Oxford and at Keble. The opening of the University’s Schwarzman Centre in 2024 will create a new dynamic hub for the Humanities in the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, making Keble ideally located to benefit from the centre’s state-of-the-art academic, exhibition and performance spaces. The College is investing in the Humanities through the endowment of two Tutorial Fellowships, and through the support of events, such as the highly successful Poets at Keble series.

We are delighted to celebrate the partial endowment of two Tutorial Fellowships in humanities subjects at Keble: Dr Ian Archer will hold The Robert Stonehouse Tutorial Fellowship in History, and Professor Diane Purkiss will be The William F Pollard Tutorial Fellow in English Literature. We are extremely grateful for the two transformational gifts–from The Stonehouse Foundation and from alumnus Professor William Pollard (1983 Visiting Student Programme)–which enable us to secure the future of these key subjects at Keble, at a time when the College is facing great financial challenges, and when the Humanities more widely are under increasing threat.

The opening of the University’s Schwarzman Centre will create a new dynamic hub for the Humanities at Oxford

It costs £2.1m to endow a Tutorial Fellowship in perpetuity. The History Fellowship appeal is very nearly completed, thanks to many generous History alumni who have contributed via the recent Giving Day. We will be launching an appeal to raise the remaining £400,000 to endow the English Fellowship later this year. Endowing Academic Fellowships serves the double purpose of securing the future of Oxford’s unique tutorial system, and immediately relieving pressure on College finances whilst we navigate an extremely challenging period. In this climate, gifts which offset core annual costs, such as endowing Tutorial Fellowships, are more valuable than ever.

In recent years, Keble has become a hub for stimulating humanities events. The Poets at Keble series, established in 2012, is going from strength to strength; it has attracted emerging and established poets from diverse backgrounds and has been a great success in the University community and beyond (attracting audiences of up to 140). This series has helped to consolidate Keble’s reputation in recent years as a major centre for poetry and poetics.

As an alumnus, the former Oxford Professor of Poetry Sir Geoffrey Hill (1950) had a close connection with the College and, through the generous support of Honorary Fellow Robin Geffen, enjoyed taking part in the early years of the Keble Debates. Now fully endowed, the termly Debates feature leading figures from the arts, including Nicholas Hytner and Rufus Norris from the National Theatre, actors Robin Soans and David Haig, author Nicholas Shakespeare, and our own Vincent Gillespie (1972), Emeritus Tolkien Professor of English, and actor and writer Ell Potter (2014). The events are open to all and are recorded for viewing online.

Geoffrey Hill taking part in conversations at the Salutation & Cat Reading Group

Professor of English Matthew Bevis has recently arranged a series of events with the current Professor of Poetry, Alice Oswald, and he also runs three other initiatives: The Salutation & Cat Poetry Reading Group; The Poet’s Essay series with psychoanalyst Adam Phillips; and the Poetry and Painting series with Professor T J Clark, one of the world’s most renowned art historians. We are very grateful to a Keble alumnus for supporting this latter series. As Professor Bevis notes, “All these initiatives and events are free and open to the public, and have proved popular with an exceptionally wide range of people—from students and tutors across different disciplines, to health professionals and psychologists, to members of the general public who are interested in poetry and its relations with other forms of social and cultural expression.” Many of Keble’s humanities applicants talk about being attracted to this focus on poetry. For more information, please visit: https://www.keble.ox.ac.uk/teaching-research/poetry-at-keble/