An Ambitious Vision for Oxford Classics
Classics must be one of the most fascinating subjects to be taught at Oxford. Undergraduates undertaking the “Literae Humaniores” course have a vast array of topics to choose from when deciding which subjects to take for Greats: literature, ancient history, philosophy, art and archaeology, linguistics or papyrology. Some students will choose a Joint Honours course and pair the study of Classics with English or Modern Languages. At graduate level, lovers of the ancient world can take their interest further and explore one of these areas under the supervision of world experts in their field. Both undergraduate and graduate numbers remain stable, with people coming from all over the world to read Classics in one of Oxford’s many colleges. Alumni go on to excel across all manner of professions, using skills honed in tutorials and seminars, such as critical thinking, textual analysis and cultural nuance.
Our aim now is to build on the Faculty’s continued eminence by launching a fundraising campaign to ensure its existence many centuries into the future. As is the case for many Humanities subjects in the UK and globally, government funding has been greatly reduced. Increasingly we are looking to philanthropy to support key areas such as academic posts, graduate scholarships and language teaching.
In the past financial year, the Faculty of Classics raised over £900,000 from three new donors, supporting the three areas above. A grant from Schmidt Sciences is funding a two-year papyrologist and 4 graduate students, to train them to decipher carbonised Herculaneum papyri using AI, as part of the 'Meeting the Vesuvius Challenge' research project. We also received an unrestricted gift of £500,000, which the Faculty plans to use for posts and scholarships, and a gift of £100,000 for language teaching. We are incredibly grateful for each of these gifts and what they will enable for the Faculty.
The aims of the overall campaign are to endow key academic posts, especially the Faculty’s six statutory professorships; to fund graduate scholarships to enable the best students to study here, regardless of financial background; and to endow a language teaching programme which will allow us to bridge the gap between students who arrive at Oxford with no background in Latin or Ancient Greek, and the Faculty’s commitment to teach the texts in the original languages.
The campaign is organised around three key themes. The first approaches Classics as the ultimate Humanities subject, showing how contemporary politics, law and culture are rooted in Greco-Roman understanding of society, governance and belief. The second theme, 'Crossing Time, Crossing Cultures' examines cultural influences beyond Ancient Greece and Rome. Finally, the third theme of 'New Tech, Ancient Scholarship' shows how emerging new technologies, especially AI, can shed fascinating new light on the past.
If you would like to find out more about this campaign, please get in touch at emily.winstanley@dae.ox.ac.uk as I will be delighted to tell you more. Donations of any size are very much appreciated – you can make an online gift by visiting the University's dedicated webpage.
Emily Winstanley
Exeter College, 2002, Literae Humaniores
