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New 'Jamie Rumble Travel Fund' to facilitate fully subsidised fieldtrips to Classical lands

The Department of Classics is delighted to announce the newly established Jamie Rumble Travel Fund, which will support our teaching in Graeco-Roman art and its legacy. The fund will enable undergraduate and graduate students (some 25 per year) to visit the sites and objects explored in lectures: specially designed trips, guided by departmental experts, will be provided without cost to King’s students, at once complementing and expanding our extensive provision in Classical art and archaeology. In 2013, 26 students will spend a fully-funded reading-week in Athens, in connection with their course on ‘The Classical Art of the Body’; a series of guided tours and visits will give students access to collections and sites that are usually closed to the public (organised in close collaboration with the British School at Athens: www.bsa.ac.uk). Previous departmental visits have included museums in Berlin and Paris, and future trips have been proposed to Rome, Sicily, Cyprus, North Africa and Turkey. Collectively, such fieldtrips promise our students a truly unique – and fully funded – learning experience, carefully integrated within their chosen programme of study at King’s.

In addition to supporting fieldtrips, the Rumble Fund will subsidise an annual guest-lecture in Classical art, bringing experts from around the world to King’s. This year, Prof. Verity Platt (Cornell University) will speak about ‘Likeness and Likelihood in Classical Greek Art’ in a special celebratory event scheduled for 5:30pm on Wednesday 5th March. Such events will help secure King’s reputation as London’s definitive centre for the study of Graeco-Roman art.

The Rumble Fund comes about thanks to a major donation by a former student in Classical Archaeology (who wishes to remain anonymous). The donor has made the gift in recognition of the passion and dedication of the Classics teaching staff at King’s: ‘I was so inspired by the Classical archaeology teaching at King’s – and especially by the opportunity of being led around the magnificent museums in Berlin and Paris – that I wanted to ensure that similar opportunities would be available to future students at King’s, subsidised as part of their unique learning programme within the College’, the donor writes. Being faced with the actual monuments of the Classical world – and recognising their enduring hold on the western imagination – can give us a unique perspective here. ‘Understanding these ancient civilisations is absolutely fundamental to understanding our present, and can hopefully help us in avoiding the mistakes of the past… My studies in Classics, and in Classical art in particular, have given me the skills and wisdom that stood me in good stead throughout my career’.

The department is hugely grateful to our donor, and much looks forward to the new teaching opportunities that the Rumble Fund will facilitate. To find out more about the fund – and for further information about contributing to it – please contact Dr Michael Squire (michael.squire@kcl.ac.uk).