Laureation Address: Professor Stefan Collini FBA
Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters
Laureation by Bishop Wardlaw Professor Richard Whatmore FBA, School of History
Thursday 2 June 2026 – morning ceremony
Chancellor, it is my privilege to present for the degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, Professor Stefan Collini.
As you graduate from our glorious institution, the question is worth asking, how do universities maintain themselves? Why do these great walls stand? One answer is resources – institutions
of higher education always need funding. Leadership matters too, as any organisation can be broken at speed. Further there is history, if a reputation for excellence is longstanding; naturally, St Andrews is fortunate in that regard. But the greatest ingredient is scholarship. Without the learning of your tutors, where would you be? And every student needs to be taught, ideally to learn from the best and the brightest. Stefan Collini, Professor Emeritus of Intellectual History and English Literature at the University of Cambridge is one of the great Arts and Humanities scholars of our time. His research is impeccable and imaginative, he is a prose master of our era, his judgement is ever acute and often surprising, and his writing is laced with humour. Above all, he undertakes the labour that underpins true research.
Professor Collini was educated at Cambridge and at Yale, teaching at the University of Sussex before moving to a post in the Cambridge Faculty of English in 1986, retiring as Professor in 2014. He is Fellow of the British Academy, gave the Ford Lectures at Oxford in 2017 and the inaugural Winch Lectures at St Andrews in 2022. He is a regular contributor to The London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, The Nation, The New Statesman – let us just say he publishes a lot and esteemed publications ask him to write for them. He has been a prominent teacher throughout his career, the best of colleagues, someone who has forever helped younger scholars and never shirked the time-consuming, unpopular, administrative or leadership roles that faculty periodically undertake. And I know from personal experience that he is the most generous of collaborators; we edited two books together long ago – in the late 1990s – it is no exaggeration to say that he did just about all of the work.
Professor Collini’s research is interdisciplinary. Often when you use that term no-one knows what it means. In Professor Collini’s case, he has made significant contributions in five research fields. Firstly, the history of political thought, explaining the transition from laissez-faire Liberalism to the sociologically-obsessed New Liberalism between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Secondly, literary history broadly conceived, including its history as a discipline
and the overlap with criticism, including commentary on the ethical as well as literary life of the nation – his latest book, of 2025, is entitled Literature and Learning. A History of English Studies in Britain. Thirdly, of intellectuals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including pathbreaking work on T.S. Eliot, F.R. Leavis, Orwell, William Empson, and Raymond Williams.
His book Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britain of 2006 has become a classic, exploding the mythical Anglo-French comparison that Britain, unlike France, is a land without intellectuals. Fourthly, Britishness and national identity, including engagement with Scottish, Irish, Welsh (and French) identities and their relation to Englishness. And finally, the role of universities, including
critical evaluations of higher education policy under several governments. His books What are Universities For? (2012) and Speaking of Universities (2017) need to be read by everyone.
Professor Collini, in one of his early books, used the term ‘public moralists’ to describe prominent figures in Victorian and Edwardian intellectual life. A public moralist was someone who wrote for the broadest educated audiences, seeking to shape national culture, regularly questioning contemporary politics and policy; the foundational belief was that it is vital to have a healthy public culture. And such a culture relies upon universities, those who work in them and those who graduate from them – all of you. Professor Collini is now the very model of a public moralist. And there is no-one who would inspire greater confidence in the role.
Chancellor, in recognition of his singular contribution to the study of literature, political thought and intellectual history, I invite you to confer the degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, on Professor Stefan Collini.