The position of Laudian Professor of Arabic was established at Oxford in 1636 by William Laud (pictured), who at the time was Chancellor of the University of Oxford and Archbishop of Canterbury. The first professor was Edward Pococke, who was working as a chaplain in Aleppo in what is now Syria when Laud asked him to return to Oxford to take up the position. Laud's university regulations provided that the professor's lectures were to be attended by all medical students and bachelors of arts at the university, although this seems not to have happened since Pococke had few students. In 1881, a university statute provided that the professor was to lecture in "the Arabic, Syriac, and Chaldee Languages", and attached the professorship to a fellowship at St John's College. Successive professors had few students until after the Second World War, when numbers increased because of the reputation of Sir Hamilton Gibb and because some British students became interested in Arabic culture while serving in the Middle East during the war. Julia Bray, the Laudian Professor as of 2015, was appointed in 2012 and is the first woman to hold the position. (Full article...)

St Edmund Hall, often referred to as "Teddy Hall", was established at some point in the 13th century, probably in about 1278. The college is named after St Edmund of Abingdon, Oxfordshire, the first known Oxford Master of Arts and the first Oxford-educated Archbishop of Canterbury, who lived and taught on the college site. The name St Edmund Hall (Aula Sancti Edmundi) first appears in a 1317 rental agreement. It was the last surviving medieval academic hall at Oxford, only obtaining college status in 1957, and retaining the term "Hall" for reasons of history. It is based on a small central site on the north side of the High Street: the old dining hall dates from 1659, the chapel and old library from the late 17th century, and the library is the 12th-century former church of St Peter-in-the-East. The college has about 375 undergraduates and 175 postgraduates. The Principal is the microbiologist Keith Gull. Alumni of the college include the comedians Terry Jones and Stewart Lee, the former England rugby international Stuart Barnes, the journalist and broadcaster Robin Day, and Ken Macdonald and Keir Starmer, former Directors of Public Prosecutions. (Full article...)