Regent's Now Magazine 2019 WEB

REGENT’S NOW PROFILES
background, or to enter higher education via a
conventional route in order to excel. This is nowhere
more clear than when she is taking part in the
Admissions process: Lynn’s questions of applicants
are demanding, but she asks them in a way that makes
it obvious that she believes deeply in the ability of
whoever is sitting opposite her to deliver an insightful
and interesting answer – and she is never surprised
when they do.
“Lynn is convinced of the obvious truth
that Oxford students don’t need to
be a particular age, from a particular
background, or to enter higher education
via a conventional route in order to excel.”
Lynn’s commitment to broadening access to
education has also led to a number of international
connections with students and academics from all
over the world, creating opportunities for students
across the globe to experience Oxford-based learning.
Having grown the Visiting Students’ Programme
since taking over as its director in 2007, Lynn recently
helped establish the Oxford Prospects Programme,
encompassing exchange possibilities for students
between Oxford and China as well as summer
programmes, pedagogical training for teachers and
educators (particularly in matters of welfare) and an
international writing centre. Developing relationships
with others seems to come naturally to Lynn, and this
is patently obvious to anyone who has been fortunate
enough to work closely with her in any of her various
roles within the College.
As well as her commitments to teaching, welfare,
admissions and a number of other aspects of College
life, Lynn is also an innovative researcher, making full
use of her periods of research leave to make exciting
in-roads into new areas of the field of early modern
literary studies. A common thread throughout her
research and teaching is Lynn’s interest in looking
at literature in new ways, with particular attention
to what happens to literature in performance: she
plays an active role in developing new ways of looking
at literature in her undergraduate teaching, on the
Master of Studies Course in Women’s Studies, and in
the work she continues to do for the Department for
Continuing Education. Lynn’s undergraduate students
at the College benefit from her investment in literature
coming alive off the page, too: for many years she
has convinced them of the merits of seeing drama
in performance, making regular trips to Stratford
and London to see Shakespeare’s (and others’) plays
onstage, and even setting up a College fund to off-set
the costs of her students experiencing literature in
this way.
In writing this article, as when writing any of the
many things I write on a daily basis as an early career
academic, I have in the back of my mind what the person I have called
variously over the last decade a teacher, scholar, co-interviewer, colleague
and friend – and am now delighted to call a Fellow of Regent’s Park College
– might make of the words emerging onto the page in front of me. I think,
in the characteristic way that Lynn is often heard making light of the huge
impact she has had and continues to have on the lives of her students,
colleagues and the College, she might say that all of these things for which
she is so rightly celebrated – pastoral care and emotional intelligence,
solidarity and cooperation with colleagues, commitment to those who have
not been among the most privileged in society – are really just part of what it
means to be a good reader.
Dr Marchella Ward read Classics and English (2009) at the College, before
pursuing postgraduate studies at St Hilda’s College, Oxford. After a spell as
Access Officer at Regent’s, she became the inaugural Tinsley Outreach Fellow at
Worcester College, Oxford.
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