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APPOINTMENT of GRESHAM PROFESSORS Gresham College Was Established in 1597 Under the Will of the Elizabethan Financier Sir Thoma

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APPOINTMENT of GRESHAM PROFESSORS Gresham College Was Established in 1597 Under the Will of the Elizabethan Financier Sir Thoma APPOINTMENT OF GRESHAM PROFESSORS Gresham College was established in 1597 under the Will of the Elizabethan financier Sir Thomas Gresham, who nominated the Corporation of the City of London and the Worshipful Company of Mercers to be his Trustees. They manage the Estate through the Joint Grand Gresham Committee. A Council administers the College, which is a company limited by guarantee and has charitable status. The College has been based since 1991 at Barnard’s Inn Hall in Holborn, where there is a small office staff. The College has been maintained in various forms since its foundation, but the major continuing activity has been the appointment of distinguished lecturers “sufficiently learned to reade the lectures” in the disciplines of Astronomy, Divinity, Geometry, Law, Music, Physic and Rhetoric. In 1985, the Mercers’ School Memorial Chair of Commerce was established. Our free public lectures in the City now have a history of more than 400 years. The College Council includes representatives from the City of London, the Mercers’ Company, the Gresham Professors and a number of co-opted members. The Professors and Fellows, with the Provost of the College, constitute the Academic Board, which is responsible for formulating the academic programme. The College has no students: it runs no courses, nor does it award degrees or diplomas. But in addition to the historic obligation to provide free public lectures, the College collaborates with institutions of higher education, learned societies and professional bodies. It organises seminars and conferences, offering an opportunity to draw attention to ideas, problems and issues of significance and interest. Although one of its major concerns is to provide these insights to an influential audience in the City of London, it also offers a platform through which a wider audience can be reached. Because of its position of “benevolent neutrality” it can offer opportunities for discussion and debate that are not always available elsewhere. The scope of the disciplines originally identified by Gresham has, of course, changed over time, and appointments now reflect the ways in which knowledge has expanded. So, for example, the Chair of Physic is now considered to extend to all medical and life sciences, and that of Astronomy to represent the physical sciences. Geometry represents the mathematical sciences including Statistics; Rhetoric the arts (except Music), history, education, social sciences and philosophy. The College is currently seeking three Gresham Professors: Divinity, Geometry and Law. The appointment is normally offered for a period of three years and will commence on 1 August 2012. All applicants should include, with a brief curriculum vitae, the names and addresses of at least two referees to whom enquiries may be addressed as to their record and standing. They should also provide an outline of the programme of activity that they would use the appointment to advance, and indicate in detail what their programme would be for the academic year 2012/2013. The deadline for receipt of applications is 12 noon on Monday 13 February 2012. Interviews will be held in London during March 2012. The obligations that Professors are asked to accept reflect the Trustees’ determination to maintain the highest standards of academic activity that are consonant with the limitations that are inevitably associated with the part-time involvement of distinguished incumbents. Professors are expected to offer a total of six lectures each year; some of these occasions can be seminars or other methods of presentation, if desired, but the fundamental requirement is that they should be open to a general audience. This dissemination of the Professors’ presentations is an extremely important aspect of the College’s work; by the very nature of the occasions, the audience that actually attends the lecture or seminar is frequently much smaller than the audiences that may be attracted to the topic. All lectures are web-cast and attract an ever-increasing audience from all over the world. An annual fee of £6,500 (inclusive of VAT where applicable) is payable. Each Professor is expected to provide a text of his or her presentation in advance of the lecture, and the transcripts are published and distributed after the event. The annual programme is prepared well in advance and each year Professors should submit, by 31 March, the dates and titles of their lectures for the next academic year. Professors are expected to attend meetings of the Academic Board, which are held four times a year. Two Professors, chosen by the Academic Board, also represent their colleagues on the College Council that meets up to five times a year. Additionally there are occasional social events, where there are opportunities for Professors to meet the Council and the Trustees. The Academic Board meetings consider the College’s programme of activities. The agenda usually includes proposals for conferences, seminars and initiatives that supplement the lecture programme, and may include proposals for the collective development of activities by more than one Professor. Gresham College, although not a grant awarding body, has a modest amount of funding available to current and past Professors to allow them to carry out analysis of problems which otherwise would not be undertaken. Small grants may in exceptional cases be made for seminars, conferences or original research; many of these will be of a “pump priming” nature to allow a project to begin. The basic principle is that value is added by our funding which could not be found elsewhere, and that projects are related to the College’s aspirations. Applications should be addressed to the Provost, Professor Sir Roderick Floud FBA, Gresham College, Holborn, London EC1N 2HH, or may be sent by e mail to [email protected] Enquiries to Mrs Barbara Anderson, Academic Registrar, telephone 020 7831 0575, e-mail [email protected] .
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