It has been a busy week at the Bodleian Libraries, with the news just announced that Richard Ovenden, Bodley’s Librarian and the Helen Hamlyn Director of the University Libraries, has been awarded Honorary Fellowships of the British Academy and the Royal Society of Literature, and has also been awarded the Royal Society of Literature’s prestigious Benson Medal.
Having held the position of Bodley’s Librarian since 2014, he became Director of Gardens, Libraries and Museums at the University of Oxford in 2022. He also serves as President of the Digital Preservation Coalition, and as a member of the Advisory Council of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, based in Berlin.
Ovenden is renowned for his commitment to the role of libraries in underpinning scholarship, research and education. He has been committed to both building collections: acquiring the Abinger Shelley Archive, the Oxfam Archive, and the personal archive of William Henry Fox Talbot during his time at the Bodleian, as well as expanding digitisation and digital preservation at the Bodleian. He led the transformational Weston Library development, which completed in 2015, and has overseen significant growth of the libraries’ endowment.
He has written extensively on the history of the book, on the history of photography, and on current concerns in the library, archive, and information worlds, and writes regularly for the Financial Times, The Observer, The Atlantic, and Prospect. He is widely known for his impassioned commentary on the social importance of libraries and archives, and as the author of Burning the Books: A History of Knowledge Under Attack (2020) which was shortlisted or the Wolfson Prize in 2021. He was awarded the OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2019.
The British Academy
Founded in 1902, the British Academy is the UK’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences. It is a fellowship consisting of over 1800 of the leading minds in these subjects from the UK and overseas. Current Fellows include the classicist Professor Dame Mary Beard, the historian and China expert Professor Rana Mitter and philosopher Professor Baroness Onora O’Neill. The British Academy is also a funder of both national and international research, as well as a forum for debate and public engagement.
Ovenden is one of 58 UK Fellows, 30 International Fellows, and 4 Honorary Fellows who were nominated for election to the British Academy Fellowship this week.
The Benson Medal
Founded in 1916 by scholar, author, and RSL Fellow AC Benson, the Benson Medal honours service to literature across a whole career. Ovenden is in great literary company as an honorand, with previous recipients including JRR Tolkien, Wole Soyinka, and SuAndi, who received the accolade in 2024.
Richard Ovenden said:
I am utterly delighted to have received these honours from two organisations for which I have the highest respect. I am deeply grateful to those who nominated me for the Fellowships and for the Benson Medal, and received them in respect of the whole of the library and archive profession.
View the full list of all new British Academy Fellows.
View a full list of previous Benson Medal recipients.
