Reader (academic rank) in the context of "New universities"

Robin James Lane Fox, FRSL (born 5 October 1946) is an English classicist, ancient historian, and gardening writer known for his works on Alexander the Great. Lane Fox is an Emeritus Fellow of New College, Oxford, and Reader in Ancient History, University of Oxford. Fellow and Tutor in Ancient History at New College from 1977 to 2014, he serves as Garden Master and as Extraordinary Lecturer in Ancient History for both New College and Exeter College. He has also taught Greek and Latin literature and early Islamic history.

His major publications, for which he has won literary prizes including the James Tait Black Award, the Duff Cooper Prize, the Heinemann Award and the Runciman Award, include studies of Alexander the Great and Ancient Macedon, Late Antiquity, Christianity and Paganism, the Bible and history, and the Greek Dark Ages. In addition, he is the gardening correspondent of the Financial Times.

The term "docent" is derived from the Latin word docens, which is the present active participle of docere ('to teach, to lecture'). Becoming a docent is often referred to as habilitation or doctor of science and is an academic qualification that shows that the holder is qualified to be employed at the level of associate or full professor. The title of "docent" is conferred by some European universities to denote a specific academic appointment within a set structure of academic ranks at or below the full professor rank, similar to a British readership, a French maître de conférences (MCF), and equal to or above the title of assistant professor.

Docent is the highest academic title in several countries, and the qualifying criteria are research output that corresponds to 3–5 doctoral dissertations, supervision of PhD students, and experience in teaching at the undergraduate and graduate level.

Honorary titles (professor, president, fellow, lecturer and reader) in academia may be conferred on persons in recognition of contributions by a non-employee or by an employee beyond regular duties. This practice primarily exists in the UK and Germany, as well as in many of the universities and colleges of the United States, Australia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, New Zealand, Japan, Denmark, and Canada.

Examples of such titles are honorary professor, honorary president, honorary fellow, honorary senior research fellow, honorary lecturer, honorary reader, (normally applies to non-teaching staff, who give occasional lectures), visiting fellow (normally applies to students carrying out further studies and research programmes), and industrial fellow.

The ACM A. M. Turing Award is an annual prize given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for contributions of lasting and major technical importance to computer science. It is generally recognized as the highest distinction in the field of computer science and is often referred to as the "Nobel Prize of Computing". As of 2025, 79 people have been awarded the prize, with the most recent recipients being Andrew Barto and Richard S. Sutton, who won in 2024.

The award is named after Alan Turing, also referred as "Father of Computer Science", who was a British mathematician and reader in mathematics at the University of Manchester. Turing is often credited as being the founder of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence, and a key contributor to the Allied cryptanalysis of the Enigma cipher during World War II. From 2007 to 2013, the award was accompanied by a prize of US$250,000, with financial support provided by Intel and Google. Since 2014, the award has been accompanied by a prize of US$1 million, with financial support provided by Google.

John Hutchinson (born 1949) is a British academic. He is a reader in nationalism at the London School of Economics (LSE), in the Department of Government.

Frederic William Maitland FBA (28 May 1850 – c. 19 December 1906) was an English historian of medieval England and jurist who is regarded as the modern father of English legal history. From 1884 until he died in 1906, he was Reader in English Law at Cambridge. He was Downing Professor of the Laws of England. He came from a distinguished intellectual family. Maitland was educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge. Leaving for the bar after an initial failure to obtain a fellowship at Cambridge, he returned to academia in 1884 and quickly became one of the most distinguished historians of his generation.

The University of Oxford introduced Titles of Distinction for senior academics in the 1990s. These are not established chairs, which are posts funded by endowment for academics with a distinguished career in British and European universities. However, since there was a limited number of established chairs in these universities and an abundance of distinguished academics it was decided to introduce these Titles of Distinction. 'Reader' and the senior 'Professor' were conferred annually.

In the 1994–95 academic year, Oxford's Congregation (the university's supreme governing body) decided to confer the titles of Professor and Reader on distinguished academics without changes to their salaries or duties; the title of professor would be conferred on those whose research was "of outstanding quality", leading "to a significant international reputation". Reader would be conferred on those with "a research record of a high order, the quality of which has gained external recognition". This article provides a list of people upon whom the University of Oxford has conferred the title of professor.