A Term of Ambition and Achievement! Rector Roe looks back at Michaelmas Term 2025
It has been a wonderful start to the academic year with much to report. The College programme has been packed with events, activity, and successes. Although the emphasis for some has been centred on the launch of the fundraising campaign – ‘Our Story is Your Story’ – and the public consultation of ‘EXOq’ – Exeter’s proposed digital innovation district, alluded to in the Vice Chancellor’s annual Oration – the real focus has been on promoting academic excellence and supporting our students, both new and old. Examples include the Scholars’ Dinner, where a packed Hall of Fellows and students celebrated excellence in research, teaching, scholarship, and wider service to the College, and two Subject Family Symposiums – languages and literature, and social sciences. The latter events serve several purposes. They bring together graduates and undergraduates; they emphasise the opportunities of academic research; they encourage scholarly interchange among those in adjacent disciplines; and they create an opportunity to bring into College those who are otherwise on its academic periphery, such as stipendiary lecturers, Visiting Fellows and so on. Talks included: ‘Clutching at Ghosts: Reading the Iliad with the Ancients’ by Charles Baker, ‘Leonard Woolf in Ceylon: Colonial Administration and British Dissent’ by Han Au Chua, and ‘The Gendered Governance of Victorian English Women’s Colleges, including contributions from Exeter College’ by Josephine Carr.
It is also worthy of highlighting the significant number of Exeter students who have achieved University Prizes. These are awarded by Departments to students who have excelled in a hard-charging University-wide cohort. Several of our undergraduate students even achieved more than one prize, which is no mean feat. Success breeds success, and examination results for 2025 bode well for the future: 25% (21% in 2023/2024) of students achieved a Distinction in their Prelims and 74% of our Post Graduate Tutorial students gained a Distinction or Merit – including some students who were partially funded by the College. In such a packed programme of academic activities, students have even found time for other important related events. For example, Hanks Chong teamed up with two Merton students to secure third place in the UK & Ireland Programming Contest 2025 (UKIEPC), part of the International Collegiate Programming Contest series. The UKIEPC is a contest where teams of three students are given five hours to solve 11 to 14 problems. Teams can submit their solutions to any problem during the contest by writing ‘program code’ and submitting them to a website where the program code is checked against many hidden test cases for accuracy and efficiency.
On 29 November we launched an exciting new 10-year fundraising campaign ‘Our Story is Your Story’ in Turl Street. Despite inclement weather earlier in the day, under star-covered skies, circa 300 alumni, friends, staff, students, and mini-Honorary Exonians attended the event, which started in the late afternoon in Hall. After introductory remarks, including some uplifting comments from Sir Ronnie Cohen, the audience listened to a special performance of ‘O Radiant Dawn’ from the College choir, who sang from the Benefactors’ Gallery, then watched a short campaign video, followed by a second recital from the choir. It was then outside into the front quad for a spectacular Luxmuralis light and sound show, some mulled wine and a hot roll. The stained-glass windows in the Chapel were brought to life in a separate installation and provided some welcome respite from the crisp cold. All in all, it was a wonderful event brilliantly organised by the Alumni and Development Team, headed by Yvonne Rainey. It celebrated everything that makes Exeter unique, and underlined the College’s untiring dedicated to securing a future that will continue to grow a succession of pioneers, visionaries, and innovators – like Sir Roger Bannister, Sir Ronnie Cohen, Claire Coutinho, His Excellency John Kufuor, Helen Marten, Lady Flora McDonnell, Sir Philip Pullman, Amy Sackville, David Webb, and Qian Zhongshu, to name but a few. We are determined that Exeter students will continue to shape and influence the world. I invite all of you to support us in whatever way you can to ensure that Exeter continues to educate and inspire todays and tomorrow’s students. Please continue to keep a close watch on the ‘Our Story is Your Story’ campaign. I hope you agree that it is now time to reimagine – and get behind – a future Exeter characterised by improved facilities, accommodation, and infrastructure, greater graduate access and funded fellowships, and better-quality career transition support.
Images from the ‘Our Story is Your Story’ launch.
In early November, Exeter unveiled proposals for a new UK research and innovation district, known as ‘EXOq’, located adjacent to Oxford Parkway Station. The plans are designed to balance world-class scientific infrastructure with extensive new public amenities, including high-quality parkland and community facilities for the nearby community of Kidlington. The project, named EXOq (Exeter Oxford) with the ‘q’ representing its suitability for quantum computing, will be a significant investment in both national research capability and the local community. Central to the proposal is a Sovereign High-Performance Compute infrastructure, designed to power and accelerate research of global significance in fields like health, climate, space and satellites, engineering, advanced materials, robotics, and quantum computing. Analysis suggests that the development would create 7,000 jobs and provide a gross value add of around £1.4 billion per year to the economy when fully operational. The proposals also include a new further education college to provide skilled local employment opportunities, a low-carbon heat facility for the area, and a new foot and cycle bridge across the A34 and railway to improve access to Parkway Station. Further details can be found at www.exoq.co.uk. It should be noted that EXOq is a high-risk long-term proposal that complements the traditional fundraising campaign highlighted above. The two are not in conflict but reinforcing. After a positive public consultation, the next step for EXOq is to submit outline planning permission in early 2026.
From left to right: two proposed images of what EXOq will look like and two images from the public consultation of EXOq
Finally, Exeter hosted the Oxford Centennial Arctic Expeditions – 2026 Launch event in Cohen Quad on 22 November. Organised by the Oxford University Exploration Club to celebrate 100 years of exploration since its foundation in 1927, three small teams will be travelling to Greenland, Iceland, and Svalbard in summer 2026 to conduct ‘reconnaissance expeditions’, before the centenary expeditions occur in 2027. Research areas include anthropology, glaciology, ornithology, and other Artic disciplines. From a College perspective, Dr Lukas Krone (Sir Henry Wellcome Fellow, Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour and Staines Medical Research Fellow, Exeter College) is the expedition medic for the 2026 Svalbard team and Oisín McManus (second-year DPhil student studying nineteenth-century Arctic Gothic literature) is part of the historians’ team, resurfacing and reconstructing the untold stories of Oxford’s Arctic expeditions since the 1920s. In wider support, Exeter held a special black tie guest night linked to the launch and hosted Dr Cat Burford, a dentist from Cornwall who completed a solo ski expedition to the South Pole in January 2025. Dr Burford gave an informative talk at the dinner, having earlier provided an exclusive opportunity for Exeter students to meet her for a sold-out brunch conversation in Hall, organised by Evie Bazley, a third-year medical student, climber, and aspiring expedition doctor. During her weekend visit to Exeter College, Dr Burford highlighted her advocacy for women’s health and shared insights into her impending role as the leader of an all-female team undertaking a northwest traverse of Svalbard in summer 2026.
From left to right: two images of Dr Lukas Krone preparing for the Svalbard expedition, Dr Cat Burford presenting at the launch, Edward Kingsbury (Merton), Evie Bazley (Exeter), Daisy Rogers (Merton) and Dr Lukas Krone in the SCR
In closing, Exeter College is in rude health: kind, welcoming, and sure-footed, but also full of ambition, fizzing with ideas, and dedicated to achievement. I am clear that we are taking the brightest and most questing minds and turning them into leaders, pioneers, innovators, and visionaries, who will make the world a better place, tackling the global challenges of the future head-on. ‘Our Story is Your Story’ is all about shoring-up the many interlinked foundations that will make this possible in an ever-changing world and helping position Exeter as a first-in-class college for the future. I invite you all – alumni, friends, students, Fellows, staff – to join us in realising this important vision. I end this update by congratulating David Webb MBE on his award of a Prideaux Fellowship, for exceptional philanthropic support to the College, including tireless dedication to academic achievement and betterment.
Exeter College alumnus David Webb MBE (1983, Mathematics)
With season’s best wishes,
