Skip to main content
KBS_Icon_questionmark link-ico

The Jamie Rumble Memorial Fund

Study the classical world not only in London, but also in Greece, Turkey, Italy and other Mediterranean lands – with all expenses paid by the King's Department of Classics! 

Rumble sunriseHere in London, our students have unparalleled access to Greek and Roman antiquities – via the British Museum, City of London Museum, and Victoria and Albert Museum (among other places). But studying Archaic sculpture in Athens – or for that matter Roman wall-painting in Pompeii, as indeed Bronze Age archaeology in Cyprus  – can give a very different perspective.

That’s why, thanks to the  generous donation of a former student in 2013, the King's Department of Classics set up the Rumble Fund: each year, the fund pays for around 25 BA and MA students to visit Classical lands; most importantly, the costs of these field trips (which are carefully integrated within our department-taught modules) are fully covered by the Department.

The Rumble Fund offers something unparalleled within other British university Classics departments. Our field trips are organized by departmental lecturers in conjunction with a specific module each year: students are accompanied by their module lecturer and at least one other member of the department throughout the trip. Working together with our research partners (including the  British School at Athens  and  British School at Rome), the department acquires special permits to guide participants around sites that are normally closed to the public (inside the Parthenon, for example); students are also led around the latest excavations – sometimes by those who have recently excavated them. 

To find out more about the Rumble Fund – and plans for future trips – please contact Professor Gonda van Steen.

 

Outreach & public engagement

In addition to these student trips, the Rumble Fund has supported other ventures within the Department, focused above all on outreach and public engagement. Each year in March, starting in 2014, the Rumble Fund has allowed us to host an open guest-lecture by a leading academic in the field of Classical art history: Rumble Lecturers have included Prof. Verity Platt (Cornell University: 2014), Prof. John Onians (University of East Anglia: 2015), Prof. Whitney Davis (UC Berkeley: 2016), Prof. Elizabeth Prettejohn (University of York: 2017, Prof. Mary Beard (University of Cambridge: 2018) and Prof. Jaś Elsner (University of Chicago/ University of Oxford: 2019). The lecturers have regularly attracted audiences of up to 400 people, and a number of them are available to watch online. 

 

Recording of the 2022 Rumble Lecture 

The 2022 Rumble Lecture was delivered by Prof. Dimitris Plantzos (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens), with the title Acropolis Adieu: Popular Images of Greece in the 1950s and ’60s.

Watch the full recording below:


 
You can read the full Jamie Rumble Memorial Fund brochure here and enjoy accounts of past Rumble Fund Trips using the links and tabs below: