Introduction

Blackfriars Hall is one of the forty-four Colleges and Permanent Private Halls of Oxford University, and is located right in the heart of the city. We are a small, supportive and international academic community who welcome postgraduate and undergraduate students (aged 21 or above), as well as researchers, all of whom, from different backgrounds and religious traditions, value our distinctive ethos.

Among our teaching staff, student body, and alumni are found eminent religious leaders and policy makers, pastors and entrepreneurs, academics and teachers, contemplatives and activists from across the globe.

Blackfriars Hall is a Permanent Private Hall, where academic study is informed by a common life of friendship alongside the Dominican community of Blackfriars Priory. As such, it continues the historic mission of the Dominicans, a religious order of the Catholic Church, to engage with contemporary thought by participation in the life and work of a modern university that is committed to excellence in teaching and research.

We sustain a global vision, especially through our long-established visiting student programme, as well as through our links with the international Dominican family. Our Aquinas Institute specializes in the thought of St Thomas Aquinas and its modern relevance. The Las Casas Institute provides an open and influential centre for the development of rigorous scholarship, debate and new leadership in the fields of social justice and humanitarian rights.

The establishment of Blackfriars Hall on 1 January 1994 was not the beginning of Dominican involvement in the life of Oxford University. This began not long after the first priory was founded in 1221, when Robert Bacon, a Regent Master of the University, joined the Order. Dominicans, along with friars of other Orders, came to hold a pre-eminent position in the University's Faculty of Theology. Distinguished Dominican academics at the medieval University included Robert Kilwardby (later Archbishop of Canterbury), Richard Fishacre, Robert Holcot, Nicholas Trivet and Thomas Walleys.