New Senior Tutor Appointed

Trinity College is excited to announce the appointment of Rebecca Bullard as its next Senior Tutor. She will join Trinity on 6th September 2021, succeeding Professor Valerie Worth who has held the position since 2009.  

As Senior Tutor she will be responsible for the strategic planning of the college’s academic activities. This includes overseeing the appointment of academics (Fellows and Lecturers), student admissions, and the academic progress of undergraduate students once they are on course. Professor Worth will continue as Tutor for Graduates for another two years until her retirement.

Dr Bullard grew up in Cardiff. She first came to Oxford in 1998 to study English, winning the Gibbs Prize for the best overall performance in English Language and Literature at the end of her degree. She then won funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council to complete an MPhil at the University of Cambridge, followed by a DPhil at Oxford. She started her academic career at Oxford, as a college lecturer at University College and then Junior Research Fellow at Merton College.

Dr Bullard joins Trinity from Reading University, where she is currently Associate Professor in the Department of English Literature. Her teaching and research focuses on eighteenth-century English Literature. She is particularly curious about the relationship between oddities of eighteenth-century literary culture like secret histories, obituaries, and epitaphs, and forms of literature that are now much more familiar to us, like biography and the novel. 

Widening access to higher education has been a significant part of Dr Bullard’s academic career; in addition to her outreach work at Oxford and Reading, she has also created a free, online course on poetry for A-level students.

On her appointment Dr Bullard says: 'I am delighted to have been appointed as Senior Tutor at Trinity College. I'll be able to use my broad academic experience – as a student, an early career researcher, and an academic postholder – to support Trinity's outstanding Fellows, Lecturers and students. I am committed to building diverse and inclusive academic communities, in which every member is enabled to do their best work and to fulfil their potential. I know that colleagues at Trinity share these aims, and I am very much looking forward to working with them to realise our ambitions for the College's future.'