News

Thanks to the generosity of Majid Boustany, President of the Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation, a new scholarship has been created for graduate students coming to the University of Oxford to study for a masters degree in History of Art and Visual Culture. 

One of the world’s largest privately held collection of letters, photographs, books, illustrations and other materials by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832–98), known internationally under the pen name 'Lewis Carroll', has been donated to Christ Church. The unique collection was gifted by the American businessman, philanthropist, book collector and author–editor Jon A. Lindseth, who also donated historically important works by the English artist, poet, author and musician Edward Lear (1812–88). 

At Christ Church, we began our 500th anniversary year by scouring the latest New Year Honours List for members of our College community. We are delighted to disclose that four of our alumni have made it onto this year’s list. Read on to learn about these remarkable individuals and their celebrated achievements and service. 

The recipients of the 2024 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant – one of the globe’s most prestigious awards of its type – has been announced, and among the grantees this year is Christ Church alumna, former Junior Research Fellow and former postdoctoral researcher Dr Leah Broad. She and her fellow grantees are recognised by the Whiting Foundation as being ‘in the process of completing a book of deeply researched and imaginatively composed nonfiction,’ each author receiving $40,000 to support their works, which the Whiting Foundation regards as being ‘essential to our culture’.

Xiaolan Deng, a second-year student of Computer Science and Philosophy at Christ Church, has been announced as this year’s winner of the Bernard Williams Essay Prize, awarded by the University of Oxford’s Institute for Ethics in AI. This year, the essay competition’s participants were asked to tackle the complex question: ‘Is AI a threat to human creativity?’

The British Society for Heart Failure has awarded this year’s Early Investigator Award to Christ Church DPhil candidate in Medical Science Dr Sarah Birkhoelzer. Dr Birkhoelzer, who is also a Cardiology Registrar and Clinical Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, has been recognised for her exceptional and innovative research into the crucial, often overlooked role of muscle in cardiovascular health.

On 4 November the University of Oxford’s Department of Chemistry hosted its second-ever Oxford Women in Chemistry (OxWiChem) Day. Among the attendees this year was Christ Church Junior Research Fellow Dr Clare Rees-Zimmerman, who was awarded a prize for the best physical and theoretical chemistry poster.

Alongside his work as Rare Books Librarian at Christ Church, David Stumpp is a committed photographer – so much so that his newly published collection of photographs is the culmination of a decade’s work. The Lunchtime Portraits: Oxford, 2010–2020 offers a 10-year portrait of Oxford through 180 individual photographs of the daily life with which the city teems. 

Ahead of the launch of his book on 20 November, we caught up with David to uncover the story behind this long-term creative project. 

We are delighted to announce the opening of the annual Christopher Tower Poetry Competition, which offers the UK’s most valuable prize for young poets. The competition is free to enter and open to students between 16 and 18 years of age who are educated in the UK. This year, participants are challenged to write a poem on the theme of 'ROOTS'.

What is our new Regius Professor of Divinity, Andrew Davison, doing writing about AI? We caught up with him to find out. 

Last month an intrepid team from Christ Church travelled to the other place for this year’s Sports Day with Trinity College, Cambridge. Held annually, the event sees staff from the sibling colleges go head to head in a friendly bid to claim the Sports Day trophy. After last year’s win, did the House keep the cup? Christ Church teammate Jackie Billington has the story. 

From operating on broken bones and treating malaria to managing childbirth, hospitals in rural Africa provide essential services to their local populations. Yet such services are rarely provided by specialist doctors, and resources are typically scarce. This can have severe consequences for patient safety, with the few reports available suggesting that harm to patients is common. How might this situation be remedied? 

Dr Edward David, a postdoctoral research fellow in Theology and Religion at Christ Church, has received a generous grant in support of his project investigating the religious and spiritual role models of 18- to 27-year-olds. The grant, provided by the John Fell Fund, will facilitate a workshop with young people from across the globe. 

As the House prepares to welcome its next cohort of undergraduates, we are delighted to introduce our new Welfare Manager Adrian Childs. In his new role, Adrian coordinates the Welfare Team and is available to all members of the Christ Church community to discuss any matter in confidence, be it personal or academic. 

Christ Church undergraduate Neha Jamal has been awarded the 2024 Reaktion Book Prize. Each year independent non-fiction publisher Reaktion bestows the prize on the author of the best extended essay submitted in the first year of the University of Oxford’s History of Art Degree.

The Physiological Society has awarded the 2024 Undergraduate Prize for Physiology to Christ Church medical student Thomas Angell for research completed in the final year of his BA in Medical Sciences. Thomas was nominated for the prize by University of Oxford examiners who identified his third-year research project as the best in his cohort.