The English Faculty is moving!

Later in 2025, the English Faculty will be moving from our current home in the St Cross Building to the Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities, which has just been built at the heart of the University's Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, between Woodstock Road and Walton Street.

For the first time in the University's history, seven humanities faculties will be housed together with a new humanities library and state-of-the-art academic, exhibition and performance spaces.

The building, made possible by gifts totalling £185 million from philanthropist and businessman Stephen A. Schwarzman, demonstrates the essential role of the humanities in helping society confront and answer fundamental questions of the 21st century.

The Oxford Vice-Chancellor Professor Irene Tracey commented:

“The Schwarzman Centre has enormous potential both to benefit teaching and research in the humanities, and to be a place which makes a genuine contribution to the local community in Oxford as well as the national and global cultural sector.”

The building will include performing arts and exhibition venues designed to engage with the Oxford community and the public at large. A 500-seat auditorium, the Sohmen Concert Hall, will host international performers across a diverse range of musical traditions and will also encourage innovative research collaborations and creative explorations. The auditorium is named after the Sohmen family after a significant gift to the Humanities Division in honour of their father, Dr Helmut Sohmen, and his lifelong love of classical music.

We look forward to welcoming you to our new home soon!

Architectural impression of the Schwarzman Centre. Credit - Hopkins Architects.