Message from the Dean

I hope 2024 has begun smoothly for you all. While Hilary Term has been extremely busy, and the past few months apparently amongst the wettest on record, I am grateful that the sun is shining as I write and that spring has begun.

An exciting piece of news to share with you is that the Law Faculty has adopted a new strategy to guide our activities for the next few years. This follows many months of discussion, consultation and reflection. The headwinds of the pandemic having receded, it seems appropriate for us to take stock of where we are, and to reflect on the future. The new strategy situates the Law Faculty in the context of the Collegiate University, and sets out a series of ambitions to pursue in cooperation between the University and Collerges.  

The first of these focuses on our people, who are at the centre of what we do. With over 100 permanent academic colleagues, we are the largest community of legal scholars anywhere in the UK, and one of the largest in the world. We will work to continue to attract and retain the very best people. Our newsletter highlights two of our fantastic recent appointments, Professor Dapo Akande as the Chichele Professor of Public International Law, and Professor Başak Çali as Head of Research at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights and Professor of International Law in the Faculty. We are this year making nine further appointments to Faculty positions. Of these, three are newly created positions – our Professorship of Competition Law, Associate Professorship for Law in a Digital World (in conjunction with the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies) and Associate Professorship in the Law and Regulation of AI (in conjunction with the Institute for Ethics in AI). These reflect and strengthen our commitment to people.  

Volatility in global events and emerging global challenges have headline implications for us all. More specifically to those of us working in the law, technology is impacting professional careers with newfound intensity, while cuts in the funding of legal infrastructure affect the justice system’s ability to safeguard the rights of vulnerable citizens. We see these challenges as opportunities to show leadership, through the contributions of our research and the way in which we educate the leaders of the future—to ‘embrace’, rather than hide from, the changing world.  

Amongst the associated initiatives, we will review our undergraduate programmes. While we do not plan to change their core focus—intensive contestation of ideas through the tutorial system—we have identified a number of aspects of teaching and assessment that would benefit from review, including: the relationship between lectures, seminars and tutorials; the form and timing of assessment; and the options available to students. The review will take approximately 12-18 months to complete.  

Alongside this, we will consider options for exciting new PGT programmes that engage with global challenges, and executive education initiatives to engage professionals in targeted offerings that draw on the findings of our latest research. We are also creating a new Associate Dean portfolio focusing on External Relations, with a view to considering and reflecting on our portfolio of external partners in a proactive and diverse way.  

Another critical theme concerns support for the Faculty’s facilitation of activities. At the heart of this is our ambition to transform the way in which we work within the St Cross Building. The English Faculty, our long-term cohabitees, are relocating to the new Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities at the end of 2025. This offers us a once in a generation opportunity to grow and reshape our built environment. Our proposal centres around an eatery surrounded by semi-open rooms offering linked spaces where staff and students can engage in both social and professional interactions. We envision new teaching rooms including a moot court; flexible desk space for researchers, research students and visitors; and new seminar and meeting spaces. Oxford’s decentralised structure gives members of our community dual networks: in their departments (within disciplines) and in their colleges (across disciplines). However, the constraints of our current built environment mean that the law-specific part of this network doesn’t function as well as it might. Our ambition is to transform this space to ensure that we are able to capture the full benefits of our Faculty’s scale and scope.  

Another ambition is to redouble our commitment to the fulfilment of outstanding potential. We work together to ensure that all in our community are able to attain their academic potential, regardless of their non-academic characteristics. Our approach to understanding impacts and designing responses is data-led. This spans a number of areas of activity united by a common aspiration. Our recent overhaul of selection processes for undergraduate admissions has ensured greater consistency and strengthened the criteria by which we select for potential. We are currently recruiting a new Careers Liaison Officer, to assist students with their next steps after completing their studies. We have also recently increased very significantly the investment we make in financial support for our graduate students. While we are still far from being able to support everyone who needs it, we have come a very long way forward. We are also enormously grateful to the generosity of our alumni in supporting the Dean’s Scholars Fund, which is enabling us to expand support for graduate students still further. 

Following the retirement of our much-loved colleague Maureen O’Neill, we have also renewed and expanded our Development and Alumni Relations team. We plan to be in touch with you more frequently going forwards to identify ways we can work together across a range of initiatives. This summer, we will be hosting a glittering array of distinguished speakers for public lectures, several of which are advertised in the newsletter. We will be delighted for as many of you as possible to join.  We would like to connect with alumni who may be willing to assist in advising students about career choices—a key part of our plan for helping students to progress will be to connect them with alumni who have made similar journeys to the ones on which they are embarking. We would also very much like to hear more about the successes of our alumni, so please do keep us updated about important developments in your lives.

John Armour