Rebecca Bullard

As Senior Tutor, I am 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. It's a wonderfully broad role that involves working with colleagues and students from across the whole range of arts, social sciences and sciences. I work closely with the Access Office and academic colleagues at Trinity to make the college a supportive and welcoming place for students from all backgrounds. 

I grew up in Cardiff, and first came to Oxford in 1998 to study English. At the end of my degree I won the Gibbs Prize for the best overall performance in English Language and Literature. I then gained funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council for an MPhil at the University of Cambridge, and a DPhil at Oxford. I taught as a college lecturer for two years, and then I spent four years as a Junior Research Fellow at Merton College, Oxford. 

Before coming to Trinity in 2021, I was an Associate Professor in the Department of English Literature at the University of Reading, where I taught and researched eighteenth-century English Literature. I am especially interested in kinds of literature that blur the boundaries between history and fiction - for instance, political secret histories that offer 'alternative' versions of the past, and posthumous life-writing like obituaries, epitaphs and the kind of 'gallows biography' that accompanied the deaths of criminals in eighteenth-century England. I'm curious about the relationship between these oddities of eighteenth-century literary culture and forms of literature that are now more familiar to us, like biography, autobiography, and the novel.

I use my broad academic experience - as a student, an early career researcher, and an academic post-holder - to inform my work as Senior Tutor. 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.