We are deeply saddened to share the news of the death of our Honorary Fellow and alumna, Professor Dame Averil Cameron, on Tuesday 7th April.
Dame Averil was a highly distinguished historian of late antiquity and Byzantium. She grew up in North Staffordshire and came to Somerville in 1958 to study Literae Humaniores. Here, she enjoyed seminal encounters with the Professor of Latin, Eduard Fraenkel. She the completed a PhD at Glasgow University, before teaching classical languages and literature as an assistant lecturer at King’s College, London, where she would go on to teach for almost 30 years.
Roscoe, Mark; Averil Cameron, 11th Warden (1994-2010); Keble College, University of Oxford; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/averil-cameron-11th-warden-19942010-222205
Dame Averil was Warden of Keble College from 1994-2010, the first woman to hold this role. Previously she had been Professor of Late Antique and Byzantine History at King’s College London, and the first Director of its Centre for Hellenic Studies. She held a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship in the Oxford Faculty of Theology between 2011-2013, and was Chair of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research until 2020. Her expansive research interests included, among others, the Roman empire, historiography, the roles of women in antiquity, the history of Christianity, early Islam and the dialogue form in Byzantium.
In 2021, Dame Averil published an article in The Catholic Historical Review entitled ‘The Accidental Scholar’, in which she reflects upon the formative moments and defining achievements of a long and illustrious career. In this article, she emerges as the epitome of a Somervillian academic, fiercely intelligent, perennially curious and unfailingly gracious in acknowledging the value and influence of other scholars.
On her decision to apply to Somerville, Averil wrote, ‘No one from my family or my school had gone to Oxford, but [a] teacher took me to a summer school in Greek led by John Pinsent of Liverpool University, and he told me I must go to Oxford and to Somerville College, so that is what I did. For all I knew about either, they might as well have been on the moon.’
Dame Averil was elected an Honorary Fellow of Somerville in 1993, and was appointed a DBE in the 2006 New Year’s Honours.
We will update this page with funeral and memorial arrangements once they are announced.