Visiting Professor of Creative Media

The Visiting Professorship of Media was established in 1996, as part of a generous benefaction from Rupert Murdoch. It is an annual appointment and the Professor will give a series of lectures during the academic year (usually in January/February).

The 2025/26 postholder is Bernardine Evaristo.

Bernardine Evaristo won the Booker Prize 2019 with her eighth book, Girl, Woman, Other, the first black woman and black British person to win it. The novel went on to become a global bestseller which was translated into nearly forty languages. The author of essays, journalism, literary criticism, poetry and drama, her other books include a memoir, Manifesto, On Never Giving Up (2021) and her award-winning novel, Mr Loverman (2013), adapted into a BAFTA-winning BBC miniseries in 2024. She has received over 90 awards, honours and nominations, including two British Book Awards and the Women's Prize Outstanding Achievement Award in 2025. As a literary activist she has set up many schemes for writers including the Brunel International African Poetry Prize (2012-2022) and the Complete Works Mentoring Scheme to develop poets of colour to publication (2007-2017). Her two ongoing projects, both with the Royal Society of Literature, are the RSL Scriptorium Awards, offering her seaside cottage to writers who need a place to write, and the RSL Pioneer Prize, for a living woman writer over 60. The first recipient was Maureen Duffy in 2025 (b.1933). She is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University London, an Honorary Fellow of St. Anne’s College, University of Oxford, an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and a President Emerita of the Royal Society of Literature. www.bevaristo.com

As part of the Professorship, Bernardine Evaristo will give a lecture on 6 May at the Sheldonian Theatre. Further details about the lecture will be shared on the English Faculty's events page in the near future.

Previous Professors have included:

Stephen Fry, comedian, actor, writer, and presenter.

'Words Words Words — The Lure of Language' (24 January 2025)

David Baddiel, comedian, author, screenwriter, television presenter and Jewish activist.

In Conversation with Professor Robert Douglas-Fairhurst on the topic of 'Storytelling across different media' (31 January 2024)

Jeanette Winterson CBE

The Word Tardis (May 2023)

The Word-Zoo: Language in the time of Tabloids, TikTok, Conspiracy Cults, Brexit, and AI. Evolution? Conservation? Extinction? (October 2022)

Zing Tsjeng, Executive Editor of VICE UK, and author of the Forgotten Women series.

'Yellow Peril' in the UK (October 2021)

Everything is online now – how the internet blurred fact and fiction (May 2021)

Samir Shah, Chief Executive and Creative Director, Juniper TV, who delivered his 2019 lectures:

'Truth, Lies and Videotape - drawing the line between acceptable artifice and unacceptable deception'

'Mercury’s perihelion and The Donald'

Stig Abell, Editor, The Times Literary Supplement, who delivered his lectures on 'The End of Journalism?'.

Lecture transcripts are available here:

Visiting Professor of Creative Media lecture – The End of Journalism? (1)

Visiting Professor of Creative Media lecture – The End of Journalism? (2)

Dawn Airey, CEO of Getty Images, who delivered a lecture series on 'No Filter – Power and Pictures in a Post-Truth World'.

Matthew Engel, the journalist and sports writer, who gave a series of lectures entitled 'Please, mister, can we have our ball back? Sport, the media, and the people'.

Lecture transcripts are available here:

Lecture 1: Life and death? No, much more important than that

Lecture 2: It's the cat's whisker

Lecture 3: From Reith to wreath

Lecture 4: You are the earth and the sky

Stephen Garrett, the man who brought Spooks and Life on Mars to our screens, who gave the series:

Lecture 1: How to Grow a Creative Business According to the Laws of Chance

Lecture 2: Why the Only Rule is that there are No Rules

Lecture 3: No More Heroes

Lecture 4: Tomorrow Got Here Yesterday

Paul Gambaccini, who gave a series of lectures entitled 'Face the Strange'.

Anthony Lilley, Chief Executive, Magic Lantern Productions