College Record 2017

We run a series of discussion panels in collaboration with the Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography. This year’s topics have included ‘Beyond the Book’ (9 March),
ways of presenting biography in non-traditional formats, with Susan Walker, Rachel
Cooke and Donald Mcleod; and ‘Constructing Lives’ (29 November), with Alexander
Masters, Victoria Van Hyning and Philip Carter. Also in conjunction with ODNB,
we appoint a Visiting Scholar for one year with funding from Oxford University
Press, to work on any aspect of the Dictionary’s collection of life-stories.
We work with the Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH) to give
DPhil students and post-docs the opportunity of organizing a major conference. We
offer funds, administrative support and advice, and the possibility of hosting the
event at Wolfson. This year’s conference was two days on Tibetan Life-writing,
‘Global Lives and Local Perspectives’ (12–13 May). We are also working with the
Oxford Story Museum on a writing biography education project for 2018; with
Oxford Arts Consultants to apply for Arts Council funding for a Performing Lives
festival of staged biography at Wolfson in 2018; and with Oxford Lieder Festival
to host baritone Roderick Williams for a masterclass, talk and recital in May 2017.
We are keen to build links with other Centres for Life-writing, and are in the
preliminary stages of developing a proposal for a Network Grant with the Sussex
Centre for Life-writing and the Centre for life-writing at King’s College, London.
We have invited both their Directors to speak here in the past year.
The Centre has now been operating successfully for five years, thanks to the generous
support of the Dorset Foundation. At the current rate of spending, we expect it to
continue until 2021. This year we were delighted to attract two donations, £3,000
from Jacek Mostwin, a previous Visiting Scholar, which we will use to invite highprofile
speakers from the medical humanities; and £1,000 a year from the Wolfson
alumnus and editor, Tony Gray. This will fund a Gray Visiting Scholarship in Lifewriting
for a DPhil student or post-doc resident here, giving them research expenses
of £500 and a further £500 for speakers’ expenses in an event to be organized by
them with our support.
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