Portal:University of Oxford

The Registrar of the University of Oxford is one of the university's senior officials, acting (in the words of the university's statutes) as the "head of the central administrative services", with responsibility for "the management and professional development of their staff and for the development of other administrative support". The workload of the role, which has a 550-year history, has increased over time. In the 16th century, it was regarded as a lucrative position and one registrar reacted violently when the university voted to remove him from office for failing to carry out his duties for a year, leading to his temporary imprisonment. A commission headed by former Prime Minister H. H. Asquith recommended in 1922 that Oxford should improve its administration and that the registrar should become a more significant figure. As the historian Brian Harrison put it, Oxford's administration was "edging... slowly from decentralized amateurism towards centralized professionalism." The growth in Oxford's administration led to a move in 1968 to purpose-built accommodation in Wellington Square (pictured): until that time, the administration had been housed in the Clarendon Building in the centre of Oxford. About 4,000 of the university's staff of approximately 8,000 are under the Registrar's control. (Full article...)

V. Gordon Childe (1892–1957) was an Australian archaeologist and philologist who specialized in the study of European prehistory. He wrote many influential books and was an early proponent of culture-historical archaeology and Marxist archaeology. He studied Classics at the University of Sydney and Classical archaeology at The Queen's College, Oxford, where his involvement with the socialist movement prevented him from working in academia on his return to Australia. Emigrating to London in 1921, he continued his research into European prehistory, introducing the concept of an archaeological culture into British archaeology. He was the Abercromby Professor of Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh (1927–46), overseeing excavation of the unique Neolithic settlement of Skara Brae and the chambered tomb of Maeshowe, both in Orkney, Scotland. After serving as director of the Institute of Archaeology (1947–57), he returned to Australia and committed suicide. He is widely regarded as one of the most important archaeologists and prehistorians of his generation, and was renowned for his emphasis on revolutionary technological and economic developments in human society. (Full article...)

St Anne's College began life as "The Society of Oxford Home-Students" in 1879, which was renamed "The St Anne's Society" in 1942, finally taking its present name in 1952 when it received a charter. It was originally an institution for women only, but men have been admitted since 1979. It is one of the larger colleges in Oxford, with around 440 undergraduate and 190 postgraduate students, in a roughly equal mix of men and women. The college is to the north of the city centre between Woodstock Road and Banbury Road, on land donated by St John's. Hartland House, built in 1937 and designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, was the first purpose-built college building; other buildings include the Wolfson Building from the 1960s and the Ruth Deech building (2005), named after a former principal of the college. The current principal is the journalist and television executive Tim Gardam. Alumni include the novelists Penelope Lively and Helen Fielding, the politicians Edwina Currie and Danny Alexander, magazine editor Tina Brown, and Cicely Saunders, pioneer of the hospice movement. The novelist Iris Murdoch was a fellow of the college. (Full article...)