Open Days 2018: June and September

Open Days provide an excellent opportunity to visit the Faculty and meet our tutors and students. We welcome prospective applicants to have a look at libraries and classrooms, and to learn more about the admissions process and studying at Oxford.

The University of Oxford Open Days 2018 will take place on Wednesday, June 27th, Thursday, June 28th, and Friday, September 14th. The Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages will be holding information sessions pm on all three dates; booking is required. To reserve your place at an Open Day, please, follow this link.

Clara Florio Cooper Memorial Lecture 2018

We are pleased to announce that the 2018 Clara Florio Memorial Lecture will be given by Professor Diego Zancani and titled 'Italian Renaissance Food and its Representation in Britain and Italy'. Taking place on May 8th at 5 pm, the lecture is open to all and will be followed by a drinks reception.

Joining the evening will be a delegation from the University of Padua and the Comune, celebrating a unique collaboration and possible twinning of cities and universities.

Modern Languages Open Day: Spaces Released

We are pleased to announce that more spaces have been opened on our Modern Languages Open Day, taking place on Saturday, April 28th at the Examination Schools. The event will run from 10.50 am to 4 pm and will offer an overview of Modern Languages at Oxford, as well as a chance for prospective students to ask our tutors any questions they might have about the degree.

Please, note that booking is required.

Dreaming Romantic Europe - AHRC Network Grant

The Arts and Humanities Research Council has awarded a network grant to ‘Dreaming Romantic Europe’, a project led by Catriona Seth, the Marshal Foch Professor of French Literature here at Oxford, as co-investigator, and by Professor Nicola J. Watson of the Open University as Principal Investigator.

The award will make it possible to draw together individual academics, but also scholarly associations and cultural heritage institutions across Europe, which are devoted to the study and presentation of Romanticism.

The Open Days for spring 2018 have now been announced! We welcome prospective applicants to meet our tutors and students, to have a look at libraries and classrooms, and to learn more about the admissions process and studying at Oxford.

The main Open Day at the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages is taking place on Saturday, April 28th, with additional language-specific days from February to March.

15cBOOKTRADE Project in the International Media

The 15cBOOKTRADE Project (2014-2019, PI Cristina Dondi) has received considerable attention from the international media over the past two months.

In memoriam: Dr Paola Tomè

Dr Paola Tomè, who was a Marie Curie Fellow in the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages at Oxford (2015-17), died on 24 December 2017 after a long and brave struggle against cancer. She was a very active presence in the Faculty with her seminars, lectures and conferences and she also forged strong links between MML and the Faculty of Classics: her loss will be keenly felt by all of us.

If you, or any of your students, are interested in applying for 2018 entry, the Faculty is holding an information session on Modern Languages Masters courses.

Professor Martin McLaughlin Wins Serena Medal for Italian Literature

We are delighted to announce that The British Academy has awarded the Serena Medal for Italian Literature to Professor Martin McLaughlin.

Paget Toynbee Lecture 2017 - CANCELLED

We regret to announce that the Paget Toynbee Lecture 2017 has been cancelled.



Professor Ascoli is an eminent scholar in Medieval and Early Modern Italian culture. His interests include the relations between literary form and history; the author-reader relationship; the construction of Italian national identity; literary politics of gender; Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Machiavelli, Ariosto, Shakespeare. He is the author of the celebrated study, Dante and the Making of a Modern Author (Cambridge, 2008), and has recently completed editing the Cambridge Companion to Petrarch (2015).

Oxford Ranked Second in Complete University Guide 2018

The University of Oxford has been ranked second in the Complete University Guide for 2018 entry, and very highly across the board for language subjects.

Oxford Modern Languages Ranked 3rd in World QS University Rankings

The University of Oxford has been ranked 3rd in the prestigious QS World University Rankings for Modern Languages, just behind Harvard University and the University of Cambridge, with the coveted top five-star rating for research, innovation, and teaching.

Referendum Statement

The University of Oxford, founded some nine centuries ago, has enjoyed the closest links, throughout its long history, with the great centres of learning across Europe.

Modern Languages Faculty ranked top in the QS World University rankings

Oxford University has come top in the 2016 QS World University Rankings for Modern Languages. The annual QS World University Rankings is a comprehensive guide to the world’s top universities in a range of popular subject areas.

Faculty to lead major interdisciplinary research project on Creative Multilingualism

Researchers from six universities with joint expertise in over 40 languages will collaborate with 16 external partners to investigate the connection between languages and creativity in an ambitious research programme funded by the AHRC. The £4 million Oxford-led programme on Creative Multilingualism forms part of the Open World Research Initiative (OWRI), together with programmes led by Cambridge, King’s College London and Manchester. Over four years, they will seek to place languages at the heart of academic and public life.

Visibility Award 2: Promoting Minority Languages via Poetry Translation

The EHRC committee is pleased to announce the first recipients of the new Visibility Award Scheme for staff and students in Modern Languages. Number 2 up is the project to roll out a successful blog on poetry and translation

EHRC Challenge: The Visibility of Modern Languages

Bids are invited for EHRC small grants (£2,500) that enhance the visibility of research in Modern Languages. This challenge stems from the idea that there is much going on in Modern Languages which would profit from showcasing.

The challenge should be to encourage everybody working in Modern Languages (faculty, librarians, students) to:


think about the visibility of their research in ways which profit their ongoing work
share best practice in documenting outreach, using social media
link up within the university as much as with external partners

5 Aug 2015: Martin McLaughlin has been elected President of the Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA) for 2015. Each year, the MHRA chooses as President a scholar of international repute. Professor McLaughlin’s Presidential Address, entitled ‘Rewriting in the Italian Literary Tradition: Dante to Calvino (but not everything in between)’, will be delivered as a keynote lecture at the MHRA annual conference: this year’s conference is entitled ‘Rewriting(s)’ and will be held on Friday 16 October 2015 at the Senate House, London. More information is available here and here.

The OUSU Teaching Awards Ceremony was held in the Weston Library on 28th May 2015. For the category of Outstanding Tutor there were 250 nominations, with a shortlist of four in the Humanities section, including two Modern Languages Tutors. The winner was Dr Vilma de Gasperin, Senior Instructor in Italian, to whom we offer warmest congratulations.

Dr Christina Roaf, former University Lecturer in Italian, has died on 18th June at the age of 96.

Dr Roaf was born on 17 November 1917 and named after Christina Rossetti, who had once lived in the house. An account of her childhood appeared in the 2003 Somerville Magazine in the "Life before Somerville" section. Much of her childhood was spent travelling around Europe in the company of her mother, Vera Waddington, an exhibition of whose work she helped put on in 2007-08.

Taught by the legendary Enid Starkie, she gained a First in Modern Languages from Somerville, thanks in part to her proficiency in spoken French and Italian. During the War, she worked for the Foreign & Commonwealth Office research department, and was later posted to the British Consulate in Milan (1945) and the British Embassy in Rome (1946).