Spring 2018 marks a very special occasion for the Department of Classics at King’s College London: the fifth anniversary of the Jamie Rumble Memorial Fund.

Since 2013, when the Rumble Fund was established, the Department has organised five student trips to classical lands: three trips to Greece (in 2013–2014, 2014–2015 and  2016–2017), and two to Italy (in 2015–2016 and  2017–2018). Over the last five years, 122 students have benefited from Rumble Fund trips – a mixture of BA (102), MA (18) and PhD (2) students. All costs have been covered thanks to the generosity of the Fund, and the trips have been embedded within the Department’s teaching programme. 

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: our Rumble Lecturers have been Verity Platt (Cornell University: 2014), John Onians (University of East Anglia: 2015), Whitney Davis (UC Berkeley: 2016), Elizabeth Prettejohn (University of York: 2017) and Mary Beard (University of Cambridge: 2018). 

On the occasion of the Fund’s fifth anniversary, the Department has contacted a number of students who benefitted from the Jamie Rumble Memorial Fund. We asked them to share their memories – and to pass on some photos; we also invited students to say something about what they have gone on to do, and how their Rumble Fund experiences have informed their subsequent working lives.