Vincent Gillespie

BA English Language & Literature 1972
Emeritus J R R Tolkien Professor of English
FBA FRHistS FEA FSA

Vincent Gillespie is Emeritus J R R Tolkien Professor of English Literature and Language at the University of Oxford. He was born in Liverpool, and schooled at St Edward’s College. His parents left school at 14, and, like many working-class Catholics, they saw education as the ticket out of disadvantage. Fortunate to benefit from the social mobility of the 1960s and 1970s, he was admitted as an Exhibitioner to read English at Keble, and, after graduating in 1975, he stayed on as a Senior Scholar to do doctoral work, which he completed in 1981. Keble was a place of intellectual and cultural discovery, where he benefited from the teaching of Stephen Wall and especially Malcolm Parkes, who remains a role model and an inspiration.

“Singing in the Chapel Choir, playing indifferent double bass in orchestras and directing and acting in plays provided a rich and busy cultural education, as did the friendship and stimulus of Keble contemporaries in creating an intellectual and social melting pot.”

He lectured at the University of Reading from 1977 to 1980, and was a tutorial fellow of St Anne’s College, Oxford, from 1980 to 2004. He moved to a Professorial Fellowship of Lady Margaret Hall in 2004 on his election as the third Tolkien Professor (in succession to Douglas Gray and Paul Strohm).

In 2013, he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA). He is an Honorary Fellow of St Anne’s College and Keble College, and a Senior Research Fellow of Campion Hall. From 2024 to 2027, he is an Honorary Professor in the School of English at the University of St Andrews.