Sir John Swire, Honorary Fellow of University College, Oxford, has made a generous gift from his family trust of £1m towards the creation of an endowment specifically for the support of postgraduate historians at Univ.

The Swire benefaction for Graduate Scholarships in History will attract an additional £667,000 of funding through the University of Oxford’s matched funding scheme. Under the scheme new gifts secured by a college are supplemented with additional funds from the University on a 60:40 basis.

Thanks to this generous gift, Univ will be able to offer for 2013 entry a fully-funded scholarship for a three-year DPhil graduate and a fully-funded scholarship for a one-year MSt graduate in partnership with the Faculty of History. Sir John Swire’s gift will enable these scholarships to support the students fully, covering university fees, college fees and living costs, and will help to support the College’s contribution towards graduate travel, conference and research costs. The gift will fund the equivalent of one doctoral student and one master’s student each year in perpetuity.

Sir Ivor Crewe, Master of University College, said “We are immensely grateful to the Swire family for making the Oxford-Swire Scholarships possible. Their generosity will help to ensure that History at Univ has a very bright future, during a period when funding for the humanities – particularly for graduate studies – continues to be squeezed.”

The Swire family has a long-standing connection with Univ – both Sir John Swire (1948, History) and his brother Sir Adrian Swire (1952, History) are alumni of the College, along with Sir John’s sons Jonathan Swire (1981, History & Modern Languages) and Barnaby Swire (1982, History & Modern Languages), and Sir Adrian’s sons Merlin Swire (1993, Classics) and Samuel Swire (1999, History). John [Jock] Swire (1912) was also an Old Member of the College and his ancestor Samuel Swire was a Fellow of the College from 1766 to 1788.

Published: 21 November 2012

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