St Hilda's College
St Hilda’s warmly congratulates Professor Christine Gerrard on her election as the new Principal of Lady Margaret Hall (LMH). She will take up the role in Michaelmas Term 2025, succeeding Professor Stephen Blyth, who stepped down at the end of September.
Professor Gerrard read English at St Hilda’s from 1977 to 1980 before beginning her long association with LMH. She joined LMH as a Domus Fellow in 1988 and was appointed Fellow and Tutor in English in 1990, teaching and inspiring generations of students over more than three decades.
She has served the College in several senior leadership roles, including Vice-Principal (2020–22) and interim Principal during 2021–22. Most recently, she was appointed Director of The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH) in 2023. In that role, she has played a pivotal part in preparations for the Humanities Division’s move into the University’s landmark £150m Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities, which opened in October 2025.
A distinguished scholar, Professor Gerrard’s research spans eighteenth-century poetry, political literature, and women’s writing of the long eighteenth century. She is completing The Oxford History of English Poetry: The Eighteenth Century and has published widely on Swift, Walpole, and women’s writing in eighteenth-century Ireland, including articles such as ‘What the Women of Dublin did with John Locke’ and ‘Laetitia Pilkington and the Mnemonic Self’.
Her recent work also looks towards the future of higher education. With Professor Robert Frodeman, she is co-editing The Oxford Handbook of Knowledge Production and the Research University (Oxford University Press, 2027), which considers how universities can adapt to the challenges and opportunities posed by Big Tech and AI. She is also developing projects on the relationship between AI and creativity in European universities and cultural organisations, as well as public and community engagement with research. One such initiative, Poetry, Heritage, Community, in collaboration with English Heritage, will culminate in a major spoken word festival for school students in 2026 at the new Schwarzman Centre.
In her statement to LMH, Professor Gerrard described it as “an honour to have been elected to lead LMH during such an exciting and pivotal period in the College’s history”, adding that LMH is “a truly special place which nurtures excellence in a supportive and tranquil setting.”
St Hilda’s is proud to celebrate this achievement and warmly congratulates Professor Gerrard on her appointment.