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Research Clusters<br />
The Ancient World Cluster sponsored a number of events in Wolfson, the<br />
most notable being a Day (7 December 2012) to celebrate the publication of the<br />
hundredth volume of the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle Project led by<br />
Professor Richard Sorabji, and a three-day Workshop (12–16 March <strong>2013</strong>) on<br />
Translation and Bilingualism in Ancient Near Eastern texts, to which speakers<br />
were invited from Paris, Amsterdam and elsewhere. The Cluster has also worked<br />
with colleagues in Oxford and at the British Museum to bring the Leverhulmefunded<br />
project Empires of Faith to Wolfson, and has continued to sponsor a wide<br />
range of individual research projects covering all aspects of the Ancient World.<br />
The Tibetan and Himalayan Cluster organized the conference ‘Beyond Biography:<br />
New Perspectives on Tibetan Life-Writing’ on 28–29 September 2012. The first<br />
JRF in Tibetan and Himalayan Studies, Lama Jabb, was appointed. In Michaelmas<br />
Term Jeff Watt (VS 2012) gave inspiring lectures and seminars on Tibetan Buddhist<br />
art. In Hilary Term there was an evening of Tibetan film and poetry, and Arjia<br />
Rinpoche was a visiting scholar.<br />
For information about these and other clusters, see https://www.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/<br />
clusters<br />
How to be a Research Cluster: the South-Asian experiment<br />
A centre for the study of China at Wolfson was proposed in 1987, on the site where<br />
the new Auditorium now stands, but the <strong>College</strong> was not then ready physically<br />
to house thematic disciplines focused on countries, however big and consequential<br />
they might be. In the case of South Asia, while it welcomed South-Asian scholars,<br />
the <strong>College</strong> awaited three kinds of trigger: a growth in the number of Fellows<br />
working on the sub-continent, the emergence of new ways of creating knowledge<br />
appropriate to the times, and the President’s vision of dynamising the <strong>College</strong>’s<br />
intellectual life by creating ‘clusters’ of scholarship. In late 2011, the green light<br />
was given to Wolfson’s biggest regional grouping, the South Asia Research Cluster.<br />
Rapidly Tibetan and Himalayan Studies to the north were also consolidated as a<br />
research cluster under Ulrike Roesler.<br />
So what have we done with this opportunity? It’s a case of herding cats!<br />
Matthew McCartney has been responsible for the mailing-list of interested<br />
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