Our goal is to create a building with enhanced facilities for learning, teaching and research, including practice-based research, interdisciplinary research and collaboration with external partners. This will transform our ability to showcase our research and engage with the public through an ambitious cultural programme and a range of new spaces and facilities, including a 500-seat concert hall.
The Centre will be a unique combination of an academic building with performance and public engagement venues. Its (many) strands will include:
- Spaces for several Humanities Faculties, which will each retain their individual identities in the new building. Each will have an identifiable and dedicated “hub”, which will act as a home for its staff and students, and which will feature pictures, books, and other materials that capture the diverse personalities, histories, and priorities of each discipline
- Space for two key groups of researchers – postdoctoral researchers and doctoral students – providing them with high-quality facilities and a dedicated “home” for the very first time.
- A cutting-edge digital hub for the generation and exploration of new research methodologies and immersive creative practices in the Black Box.
- Performance and public engagement spaces which will be integral to the way in which Oxford Humanities will communicate its research and teaching externally and co-create ideas and content with external partners from the cultural, university, and commercial sectors.
Ultimately, our aims for the building are:
- To maintain the distinctive breadth, depth and quality of Humanities at Oxford and remain the most attractive possible place for researchers and students to come.
- To support a wide range of research activities, as well as new initiatives, and maintain our ability to bring in high levels of research funding.
- To engage more effectively with a wider range of audiences.
- To reduce our energy use and carbon footprint by developing a remarkably sustainable building for one of this size.
