Head of House

The Principal provides leadership to the College as an academic community, serving as a focus for its identity, fostering a sense of common purpose for all its members, and representing the College within the University and to the wider world. The Principal chairs most of the major committees, including Academic, Finance and Human Resources Committee. He also takes an overview of the welfare, performance and personal development of all our undergraduates and graduate students. He leads the College’s fundraising activities and is a point of contact for all senior members. 

Tim Gardam, MA (Camb)

Email: tim.gardam(at)st-annes.ox.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0)1865 274821

Tim Gardam (1956-) read English at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, and received a double First. He is thus not only the first male Principal of St Anne’s but also the first Cambridge graduate.

His career in broadcasting began as a BBC trainee in 1977. He went on to be editor of Newsnight, Timewatch and Panorama, and Head of Current Affairs Programmes for BBC Radio and Television. He was a senior executive at Channel 5 and at Channel 4, where he was Director of Programmes and Director of Television. In 2004 he was a member of the group appointed to review the BBC’s Royal Charter. He is a member of the Board of Ofcom, and, in the University, is Chair of the Voltaire Foundation and the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. He is Deputy Chair of the Oxford Playhouse Trust.

Having left Channel 4 in 2003, he was attracted by the ‘commitment to intellectual emancipation enshrined in the beliefs of the remarkable women who founded St Anne’s’ and has set out to ensure those values of openness, opportunity and academic ambition characterize the modern college.

He has sought to make St Anne’s the best practice example of a modern college in the modern University, at the forefront of developing new University thinking in delivering what Oxford does best: the tutorial system, the close connection of undergraduates to academics at the top of their field and the integration of graduate students into College life. He believes that Oxford’s competitiveness in the global market for Higher Education is founded on the collegiate structure: each college small enough yet diverse enough for students to meet across a range of different subjects, in a cross-disciplinary culture.