Jump to content

Nuffield College, Oxford

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 81.158.207.21 (talk) at 11:25, 26 March 2009 (Teachers/academics: Introduced brackets for greater consistency). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Nuffield College
Oxford
Nuffield College Courtyard, from the west
Established1937
Named forLord Nuffield
Colours                         
Sister collegeNone
HeadStephen Nickell
UndergraduatesNone
Postgraduates74
WebsiteHomepage

Nuffield College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. It is an all-graduate college and primarily a research establishment, specialising in the social sciences, particularly economics, politics and sociology. It is a research center in the social sciences. Despite being one of the newest and smallest of the colleges, its architecture is designed to conform to the traditional college layout, and its modernistic spire is a landmark for those approaching Oxford from the west.

As of 2006 the college had an estimated financial endowment of £146m[1].

History and purpose today

Wardens

Nuffield is a graduate college of the University of Oxford specialising in the Social Sciences, particularly Economics, Politics, and Sociology. It aims to provide a stimulating research-oriented environment for postgraduate students (about 75 in number) and faculty (approximately 60 academic fellows of the College). Nuffield College, which was founded in 1937, is located in the centre of Oxford. It is housed on a site on the western side of the city centre, donated by William Morris, 1st Viscount Nuffield (Lord Nuffield), which was formerly the city's principal canal basin and coal wharfs. Owing to restrictions on construction after World War Two, it was the 1950s before work on the college was completed.

The original plan for the college to occupy the entire plot, on both sides of Worcester Street, was scaled down as a result of budget and material shortages, and to this day the land to the west of the college is occupied by a "temporary" car park. The architectural aesthetic of the final design has attracted some criticism, the spire in particular, since unlike the other "dreaming spires" of Oxford, Nuffield's tower is in fact just a masonry-clad steel-framed book-stack - it houses the college library.

Around a third of Nuffield's fellows hold appointments at the University of Oxford as lecturers, readers or professors. In addition the College fully funds around a dozen Official Fellowships, which the College views as tenured research professorships (although most also teach on the University's graduate programme), and about a dozen three year post-doctoral research fellows. The College also houses a number of young scholars who hold distinguished awards, such as British Academy post-doctoral fellowships, some senior research fellows and a group of research active emeritus & honorary fellows.

The College has been the source of some of the major research developments in social science. These include the British Election Studies and the major programme of research on Social Mobility in Britain. It was the birthplace of the "Oxford School" of Industrial Relations; it pioneered the development of cost benefit analysis for developing countries; and it has made a major contribution to the methodology of econometrics.

From its foundation, Nuffield College pioneered within Oxford and Cambridge a number of trends. It was the first College to have both women and men in the same College. It was the first to be have graduate students only and the first to have a subject focus --- social sciences.

Notable former students

Teachers/academics

A more complete list is available here

Former Fellows

References