Centre – OCMCH Annual Report 2023/24

The Centre has published its Annual Report for 2023-24 – an acknowledgement and celebration of our achievements over the past twelve months. OCMCH Director, Professor William Gibson, had the following to say about the Centre’s work over the last year,

The final annual report of the Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church History is a moment to reflect on the achievements of the Centre over the last seventeen years and its predecessors over
thirty years. The Centre was formed in 2007 when the lease on the Harcourt Hill Campus was reviewed at a break point. The existing Wesley Centre which offered distance learning degrees in theology was dissolved due to the problems arising from funding from the Westminster College Oxford Trust and HEFCE. In its place a research centre was formed whose mission was to support and develop Methodist related research activities and to engage with wider academic life. It was also to care for and make available the collections of books, archives and art.

At that time the opportunities to develop such activities were few and the initial years of the Centre saw the creation of the Methodist Studies seminars, the journal Wesley and Methodist Studies, and later the Journal of Religious History, Literature and Culture, the Ashgate (and later Routledge) Methodist Studies series as well as establishing the annual Ecclesiastical History Colloquium, John Wesley Lecture, and other seminars and events. Publishing through the Centre’s KDP publications has also shown that Methodism and religion have an appeal in print. The system of visiting fellows brought scholars from a broad range of academic interests to Oxford, and conferences in the UK and USA were also opportunities to engage with wider academic activities to promote the Centre. Over the last seventeen years over fifty academics have held fellowships and bursaries which has supported their research and publications. During this time we have benefitted from opportunities to collaborate with, among others, the Dr Williams Library and the University of Hull, as well as institutions further afield, such as Brigham Young University and Point Loma Nazarene University.

Recent years, and especially the COVID lockdowns, have turned our focus to digital activities, so that ventures like British Methodist Buildings, Methodist Portrait Prints, ArtUK and Bloomberg Connects have brought millions more people to the Centre and its collections. These are the unseen consumers of the Centre’s work.

I want to thank and acknowledge the outstanding contributions to the Centre from its key staff: Dr Peter Forsaith, Dr Daniel Reed and Dr Tom Dobson. They have worked tirelessly in the service of the Centre and its research activities. Without their commitment and energy the Centre would not have reached so many people.

You can download a digital version of the full Annual Report, here.