Simon Schama

Humanitas Visiting Professorship in Historiography (2015-2016)

The Humanitas Visiting Professorship in Historiography is an ambition initiative at the University of Oxford that explores the many ways in which history is made, recorded, and shared. The Visiting Professorship in Historiography is hosted by Trinity College, Oxford. It has been made possible by the generous support of the Blavatnik Family Foundation.

Simon Schama is University Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University and a Contributing Editor of the Financial Times. He is the author of sixteen books and the writer-presenter of more than forty documentaries on art, history and literature for BBC2.

Simon Schama’s art criticism for The New Yorker won the National Magazine Award for criticism in 1996; his film on Bernini from The Power of Art won an Emmy in 2007 and his series on British history and The American Future: a History, Broadcast Critics Guild awards. He won the NCR non fiction prize for Citizens, National Book Critics Circle award for Rough Crossings, the WH Smith Literary Award for Landscape and Memory. He writes on cooking and food for GQ; fashion for Harpers Bazaar and on everything else for the FT. He curated the Government Art Collection show Travelling Light at the Whitechapel Gallery in London and has collaborated with Anselm Kiefer, John Virtue and Cecile B. Evans on contemporary art exhibitions and installations. His The Story of the Jews was broadcast on television and published as a book in the UK in autumn 2013, and in the US in spring 2014; the second volume of the book will be out in 2016. His latest project is Face of Britain, a book, television series and display at the National Portrait Gallery in London in autumn 2015.

The Humanitas Visiting Professorship in Historiography is made possible thanks to the generous support of the Blavatnik Family Foundation