REGENT’S NOW FEATURES
A Tribute to Dr Robert Ellis
A
t the end of the 2020/21 academic year Dr Robert Ellis will step down as Principal of Regent’s Park College after fourteen years in the role. Reflecting on the considerable legacy he leaves for the College and beyond, alumni pay tribute to a Principal whose wise and gracious leadership will be sorely missed by all.
I
first met Rob Ellis at the beginning of Michaelmas Term 1974 when we were both freshers at Regent’s, Rob reading Theology while I was a lay student studying Geography. Assisted no doubt by much late-night coffee drinking and his mother’s much-appreciated home-made Welsh Cakes, we quickly became good friends, developing a firm friendship that continued beyond our time together at Regent’s through to the present day. As undergraduates enjoying the collegiate life of Oxford, we both somehow got elected to the Junior Common Room Committee, Rob as JCR Secretary and myself
as Treasurer, before we each held the role of JCR President, myself in 1976/77 and Rob as a postgraduate in 1980/81. But, despite both achieving these ‘lofty heights’ of college life, I can’t say it ever entered my mind, while studying at Oxford, that forty-three years later, I would be writing this tribute to mark the retirement of Dr Robert Ellis after serving fourteen illustrious years as the Principal of Regent’s Park College. My visits to the Principal’s house to talk with Rob as a friend have proved much less daunting than the weekly discussions I attended there as JCR President over forty
years ago with the formidable Dr Barrie White, College Principal between 1972 and 1989. To describe those meetings (ostensibly about life within College but, more often it seemed to me, about the meaning of life) as challenging would be something of an understatement. But I remember them now with much fondness, often pondering about their possible influence on my eventual career choice as a psychotherapist. But what of the possible influence of my friend, Dr Robert Ellis, on the countless number of students and lives that his lectures, tutorials, sermons and writings have touched over his years as the Principal? Certainly, I’ve never encountered another theologian who has inspired so much thinking about the ‘interface of belief and practice in theology, religion and sport’, nor one who has written and taught about the intersectionality of theology, cinema and film. Sport and cinema, in my humble opinion, are an important strand in the lifeblood of a very sizeable proportion of humanity. They provide not just accessible fora for experiencing hope, aspiration, success and failure, but also avenues for pondering the meaning and significance of themes such as loyalty, tradition, the breaking of records and new ground, and of our own understanding of our place in the world. It seems abundantly clear to me that, in addition to encouraging both ministerial and lay students to reflect on the wider significance of their beliefs, Dr Ellis has also achieved considerable success, as a tutor and as College Principal, improving general access to and outreach from the College, both to college alumni and to university applicants. This has led to many lay students applying directly to Regent’s where, via a now much broader range of disciplines, they are challenged both to reflect on the potential of their own lives and to consider what they can each contribute to the world. Those of you who have shared the privilege of knowing my friend Rob will also no doubt agree that, in addition to his undoubted intellectual acuity and creativity as the Principal of Regent’s Park College, he has also conducted his own life with kindness, warmth, humanity and an endearing sense of wit and good humour. Enjoy your retirement, Rob... live long and healthily... you deserve no less.
Rod Thomas is an alumnus of the College (Geography, 1974), now a counsellor and psychotherapist.
REGENT’S PARK COLLEGE
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OXFORD
