Dean's message to alumni - Trinity Term 2026

This academic year, we have taken many steps forward with our ambitions for the St Cross Building. I’m delighted to share with you some details. 

The St Cross Building was opened in 1964. Designed by Sir Leslie Martin, it is a leading example of postwar modernist architecture, and has Grade II* listed status. The English Faculty moved out of the building last summer. In Michaelmas Term the University allocated the vacated space to the Law Faculty, a sixty per cent increase in our floor space. However, it needs a comprehensive refurbishment to be fit for our needs. 

We have for the past eighteen months been working intensively with a design team led by Associated Architects, who specialise in higher education and have experience of working with other Leslie Martin buildings. Together we have created an exciting set of plans for the new space. 

The project’s goal is to improve the building’s functioning as a place for us to meet and have conversations about ideas. In an increasingly digital world, in-person interaction remains central to our activities. Making the building an appealing space is critical to getting people to join these conversations. There will be four principal components.

First, new space for teaching. Our teaching revolves around pedagogical conversations in which we contest ideas. However, our current teaching spaces are of very mixed quality. We have acquired a suite of new seminar rooms around the perimeter of the building, with wonderful built-in bookcases and abundant natural light, along with a 100-seater lecture theatre. We will refurbish these to retain their character, but with modern facilities. An important addition will be a new Moot Court, flexibly arranged to permit other teaching use as well.

Second, new spaces for work. Effective co-location of workspaces enables colleagues to have the functional conversations they need to work effectively, whether as research or operational teams. The Centre for Socio-Legal Studies will relocate to the St Cross Building from the Manor Road Building. We will also gain working space for our growing team of professional service staff, for our extensive cohort of research students, and for academic colleagues who do not have offices in colleges. 

Third, we will improve the accessibility of the building to ensure that the conversations that take place will be inclusive for all members of our community. 

Fourth, new spaces specifically for conversations. A suite of bookable rooms to host research workshops, group work project discussions, and other formally planned conversations; more open spaces in which casual conversations can be held, creating serendipitous opportunities to talk about ideas and develop them together. There will be a range of common spaces including in what was formerly the English Faculty Library. With an accompanying café, this will be an exciting venue where building users can work informally or start a new conversation. It will give people reason to stay in the building, which in turn will bring other people to the building to talk to them. 

We are hugely excited by these opportunities, and look forward to sharing more details with you as the project progresses.

It was with enormous regret that last week we announced the death of our esteemed colleague Professor Sir Roy Goode CBE KC FBA. Over the course of an extraordinary career, he contributed so much across a wide range of fora -- to legal scholarship, to the legal profession, to the Oxford Law Faculty,  to St John’s College and to law reform both in the UK and internationally. I have shared a fuller message about Roy on our website, which I encourage you to read.