College Record 2017

And the ‘now’ brings me to a delicate matter. Michael Brock correctly noted that an
Oxford college which contains undergraduates is forever bound to regard them as
having first claim on its Fellows’ attention. But he conceded that already by 2003
these colleges had improved their provisions for graduate students. Indeed, it is
rather sobering for me to see how many of my own graduate students who are in
traditional colleges seem to be happily ensconced there. As for the entitlement issue
for academics, this is also no longer a problem in Oxford.
So one might be forgiven for thinking that the early raison d’être of the College
has been largely overtaken by events. After all, if graduate teaching is supposed to
have such importance in a leading university, in Oxford it is the University, not the
graduate colleges, that provides it. Of course whether the University yet attributes
sufficient importance to its graduate programmes is debatable.
Be that as it may, I confess that there have been times when I wondered what the
purpose of a modern graduate college really should be. Despite Wolfson’s friendly,
informal atmosphere, I have at times been tempted to describe the College as a
wonderful answer in search of a question. It is heretical of course to say that Wolfson
is a hall of residence. But the much lauded features of the College, its egalitarianism
and cosmopolitan spirit, only went so far for me in addressing this conundrum.
Well, I have come to see that a graduate college is in a constant process of reinventing
itself. And how well it does this depends in good part on the vision of its President.
Everyone knows how Dame Hermione’s introduction and support of the research
clusters in Wolfson have revitalised the academic life of the College. Her President’s
Seminar series, which brings together Governing Body Fellows, post-doctoral
members and graduate students to speak on different aspects of a central theme, has
also been an inspired addition to College life. But less well known perhaps amongst
Dame Hermione’s many initiatives is one more closely linked with the early purpose
of the College related to the entitlement issue. The post-doctoral community in
Oxford, which barely existed in the 1960s, is today not only an essential source
of the University’s research output; it is the new disenfranchised sector of the
University. Dame Hermione has actively supported the College’s unique open-door
policy towards post-doctoral researchers, and in 2011 proposed the creation of a
remunerated college post in the service of its Research Fellows, many of them post-
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