We are the trustee of over 100 trust funds, used to support academic activities at our member institutions, the central academic bodies and Senate House Library.
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Languages Trust Funds
We are the trustee of over 100 trust funds, used to support academic activities at our federation members, the School of Advanced Study and Senate House Library.
The trust funds were established following generous donations from supporters. Some are almost as old as the University itself, dating back to the 1850s, while many others have been created since 2000. Please find details of our Languages Trust Funds below.
Language Trust Funds
Jethro Bithell, who had been Reader and Head of the German Department at Birkbeck, and his wife Dr Alice Emily Bithell, a Birkbeck graduate, left their estates in trust to the Institute of Germanic Studies, which is now the Institute of Modern Languages Research.
The Trust Fund is overseen by the Germanic Trusts Committee and supports various activities at the Institute: an annual Bithell Memorial Lecture, two Bithell prizes, publications and book purchases.
The Esmond Trust was created in 1972 to fund the awarding of scholarships and the promotion of education and research at the University of London Institute in Paris. The trust fund is now used to fund student bursaries at the Institute.
The Fund was created from a gift in Miss Ford’s Will “for the advancement of relations between Great Britain and France”. Her executors and trustees decided to make an award to the British Institute in Paris, now the University of London Institute in Paris.
The Trust Fund is used to buy books for the University of London Institute in Paris library and to support the publishing of the Institute’s bi-annual journal Francospheres.
Mrs Etta Sylvia Naish made a gift to the Institute of Germanic Studies, now the Institute of Modern Languages, to promote research and scholarship in German language and literature. The Germanic Trusts Committee, based at the Institute, oversees the Fund. Fellowships and scholarships enable graduates in the UK or in one of the German-speaking countries to spend time at the Institute. The Institute also runs the annual Sylvia Naish Research Student Lecture.
The Nathan Scholarship fund was intended to provide a scholarship to be tenable at the University of London Institute in Paris. It is used along with two other funds to subsidise student bursaries at the University of London Institute in Paris.
The Ouseley Scholarship fund was established in 1909 following a gift to the University from Louisa and Mary Ouseley in memory of their father Colonel Joseph Walker Jasper Ouseley, an Irish officer in the Bengal Army, later appointed Arabic and Persian Professor at the East India College. The Fund is for “encouraging the study of “Arabic, Persian, Hindustani and other Oriental Languages” in the United Kingdom. SOAS hosts Ouseley Scholarships and will share the Fund with the Warburg Institute from 2019-20.
The A. E. Quinn Bequest was given to the University for the purpose of supporting students at the University of London Institute in Paris. The Fund has supported student bursaries since 2008.
Established in 1980 as a memorial to Professor W.D. Robson-Scott, Honorary Director of the Institute of Germanic Studies from 1968 to 1973, the Trust Fund supports the Robson-Scott Travelling Scholarship. The Scholarship is awarded annually each spring by the Institute of Modern Languages Research and is designed to assist postgraduate students at a University in the United Kingdom to travel abroad in connection with research relating to the languages and literature of the German-speaking countries, the Netherlands, or Scandinavia.
The Keith Spalding Bequest was established in 1993 and supports German Literature in a number of ways at the Institute of Modern Languages Research (IMLR). Professor Keith Spalding, whose gift created the fund, was a pacifist German scholar who fled Nazism in the early 1930s, fought in the Second World War and become one of Britain’s most distinguished lexicographers.
The Trust Fund is overseen by the Germanic Trusts Committee and supports lectures and conversation events, and other Ango-German literary projects such as special events and publications in the field.
The Cassal Endowment Fund was established in 1957 following a gift to the University left in the will of Mrs Dorothy Beatrice Staunton. The fund was named in memory of Mrs Staunton’s father, Celestin Cassal, and grandfather, Charles Cassal Chevalier, who was a Professor of French at University College London. Mrs Staunton wished the Cassal Endowment Fund be used “for the promotion exclusively of study of the French language”. In 1958 the University created a scheme for administering the fund that established the Cassal Lecture in French.
The Cassal lectures are now hosted by the Institute of Modern Languages Research. The Research Promotion and Facilitation Committee of the School of Advanced Study oversees the Fund.
