Dr Oliver Cox

As Heritage Engagement Fellow I lead Oxford Humanities Division's engagement with the UK and international heritage community by co-ordinating, supporting and brokering projects between the University of Oxford and external partners through encouraging and enabling individual researchers, research groups, students and professional services to develop mutually beneficial collaborations.

I am co-lead of the Oxford University Heritage Network, part of the team delivering the University of Oxford's strategic partnership with the National Trust, and co-convene the Heritage Pathway training programme. I am Humanities Innovation Champion for Oxford University Innovation and part of the teaching faculty at the Said Business School for Oxford Cultural Leaders and the Oxford Strategic Leadership Programme.

Outside of Oxford, I chair the Heritage Alliance's Digital, Learning and Skills Advisory Group; act as a Trustee for Compton Verney House Trust; and sit on the Heritage 2020 'Helping Things To Happen' Working Group, and Arts Council England's Designation Panel. I am also an Industry Champion for the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre at NESTA.

See page on TORCH and Oxford University Heritage Network websites.

Twitter: @OliverJWCox

Research Interests

I am a historian with particular interest in the social and cultural history of the eighteenth-century British Atlantic World. My research in heritage focusses on the social, cultural and political position of the British country house in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. I am particularly interested in broadening the range of academic disciplines and approaches that use the country house both as a source of archival material and as a site for knowledge exchange and public history.

I received my undergraduate, masters and doctoral degrees from the University of Oxford. My doctoral project explored how, and why King Alfred (848/899) became a national hero in England and America between 1640 and 1800. I continue to be  interested in the ways in which the past was experienced through different types of media, including plays, poetry, art and architecture – in the eighteenth-century British Atlantic World. 

I am co-convenor of the Graduate Seminar in History 1680-1850 and part of the tutorial teaching team for the undergraduate paper 'English Architecture 1660-1720' in the Faculty of History. I supervise relevant undergraduate, masters and doctoral Masters theses in the fields of eighteenth-century cultural history and the British country house.