Overview
History
History has been integral to LMH since our foundation in 1878. As one of our largest, most prominent subjects, we have c.40 History undergraduates and a significant number of graduates and visiting students and any time. We pride ourselves in welcoming History fellows with a wealth of experience who are committed to inspiring and supporting our students to reach their potential.
We want to recruit a more senior College Fellow for 5 years. It is our honour to name this position in recognition of Clive Holmes and his dedication to LMH and History more broadly over his distinguished career. We hope those who benefited from Clive’s time and experience will support this campaign and enable his legacy to live on through this post.
Our place in the university
Despite our successes, as the 7th poorest Oxford College, we are significantly under resourced for a subject of this size and are only able to afford two History Fellows and a temporary junior lecturer. This is in comparison to similar Colleges, like St Anne’s and Somerville, who have three permanent Fellows, and the richest Colleges, like Balliol and Magdalen, who have four.
The effect of our slender History resources is that:
- Fewer courses can be offered ‘in-house’ than at other Colleges, and less choice can be provided for our students in several of the core methodology papers
- Our two Fellows are stretched thinly by having to do the course administration, including admissions, collections, and arranging tuition themselves, thereby reducing the pastoral and academic support time available to our students and reducing the time for the tutors to work on their own research.
- Our comparatively small faculty membership discourages History applicants from choosing LMH – we are simply not one of the more ‘prominent’ Colleges for History.
Our Goal
We want to enhance History teaching at LMH by significantly augmenting the ‘third’ post in College (currently a junior temporary Lecturer) by recruiting a more senior College Fellow for 5 years to provide additional experienced teaching and share pastoral and administrative support. This would commence in 2025 when the existing temporary position concludes
Funding this position would enable us to:
• Improve the quality of our teaching by employing another senior academic with varied areas of expertise to increase the teaching we can provide in College.
• Provide additional embedded capacity for pastoral, practical and academic support.
• Enable our Fellows to spend more time focusing on teaching and research
• Increase our prominence within the History Faculty and thereby our appeal to applicants as a first choice College
How you can Help
The Clive Holmes History Fellowship will cost College £67,430pa for 5 years. To fund this vital position, we would be grateful for one off and multi-year gift pledges. As a registered charity, gifts benefit from charitable tax status.
As this Fellowship will be in post for 5 years from 2025, some alumni are choosing to make a larger gift but split the payment over annual or monthly instalments.
If you would like further information or wish to discuss your gift to the Clive Holmes History Fellowship (including advice on how to donate in the most tax efficient way), please contact our Associate Development Director, Anna Bates. Please note that gifts can be made as lump sums, or regular direct debit gifts (monthly/quarterly/annually) and can be one-off or a multi-year pledge.
Donations (one off and direct debit) can be made online at www.lmh.ox.ac.uk/donate
Here are some illustrations of how you may like to support: