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head of statue of Cecil Rhodes
Job description for research post refers to recent campaign to remove a statue of Cecil Rhodes from Oriel College. Photograph: Carl Court/Getty Images
Job description for research post refers to recent campaign to remove a statue of Cecil Rhodes from Oriel College. Photograph: Carl Court/Getty Images

Oxford college to investigate its own role in colonialism

This article is more than 5 years old

New academic post will enable St John’s to study the part it played in the British Empire

An Oxford college is to examine its contribution to creating and maintaining Britain’s colonial empire, in a pioneering effort to crowdsource and “decolonialise” its own imperialist past.

St John’s College is advertising for a new academic post whose appointee will work on a research project named St John’s and the Colonial Past, alongside Prof William Whyte, the college’s vice-president and professor of social and architectural history at Oxford.

The college said the post would be unique within Oxbridge as an effort to investigate its own history, including the education of both apologists and critics of the empire, and hopes it will “set the standard for future work in other institutions”.

The job application specifically highlights the recent controversy over the Rhodes Must Fall campaign which began in South Africa and spread to Oxford, due to the financial links between Oriel College and its imperialist benefactor and alumnus Cecil Rhodes. The campaign is calling for the removal of a statue of Rhodes at the college.

“The drive to ‘decolonise the university’ or, at any rate, to think through the implications of institutional involvement in the imperial projects of the past – is now a global business,” the college said in announcing the post. “As yet, however, no college in Oxford or Cambridge has seriously undertaken research into its involvement in colonialism.

“This project will explore connections between the college and colonialism, uncovering benefactions to St John’s and the alumni who served in the empire. It will also investigate the monuments, objects, pictures, buildings that evoke the colonial past.”

The appointment is for a full-time two-year position as a research assistant, with applicants expected to have a doctorate or similar postgraduate qualification.

Unusually for an Oxbridge academic post, the job specification says expertise in crowdsourcing is “highly desirable” to feed into reports and workshops on the college’s past, including those alumni who benefited from its colonial links.

“Although, unlike the universities of the US, we believe that the colleges of Oxford did not own enslaved people, several undoubtedly benefitted from the largesse of those who did,” the application states.

“Many of the objects displayed in university museums and some of those owned by the colleges had their origins essentially as loot, stolen from their indigenous owners.

“Oxford in general helped to educate and train colonial administrators; missionaries; apologists for and critics of empire; and significant leaders and creators of newly independent states.”

The researcher is expected to investigate the connections between the college and colonialism, including donations to St John’s from the alumni who served in the empire. One result is to be a report on St John’s colonial past, followed by a series of workshops to discuss the findings and plan the college’s responses.

The post is to be funded by the college. St John’s is the wealthiest Oxford college measured by endowments, with more than £500m in assets. Its former students include Tony Blair.

Last year Oxford’s All Souls College added a memorial plaque commemorating the slaves who worked on plantations in Barbados. The funds from the plantation were left to the college by a former fellow and were used to build the college’s library.

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