Emma Watson Appointed Visiting Fellow at Oxford

The latest in a long line of impressive achievements for Emma Watson is prestigious indeed – being named as a visiting fellow Lady Margaret Hall College at Oxford University.

Watson joins ten other visiting fellows from a variety of backgrounds as guests at LMH, including Benedict Cumberbatch, former UK Children’s Laureate Malorie Blackman, High Court judge Sir Rabinder Singh, and several others. The college’s principal, Alan Rusbridger, said of the recent appointments,

They are people drawn from a variety of backgrounds, callings, and professions, and we want them to form a bridge between our own academic community and the worlds they inhabit and represent…Some of the names we announce today did not go to university. One left school at 16. We think we can learn much from them – and we hope they treasure their time with us.

Rusbridger also spoke briefly about what being a visiting fellow entails and how the newly appointed fellows will engage with the college:

At a minimum, we’d like them to drop in occasionally at [the] college, eat with us and meet informally with a variety of the LMH community. We’d like them to do one thing a bit more structured. It could be a conversation or debate, a performance, a lecture or seminar, a form of outreach – or something we haven’t thought of. We can imagine fascinating interactions or collaborations between them. They are welcome to come and stay [at the] college if they’d like a place temporarily to think or work. And some have already suggested other ways in which they might engage with a body of 700 incredibly smart students and tutors in order to stimulate their own thinking or work in progress.

Typically, visiting fellows at Oxford are academics, so for these batch to be drawn from so many different career paths is a little unusual. Rusbridger indicated that his decision to invite fellows from outside the academic community stemmed from his hope that different ideas and experiences would enrich both the college and its students – we certainly know that Emma will have much of value to add to that community!

You can read the original article here.