The Jamie Rumble Memorial Fund

Study the classical world not only in London, but also in Greece, Turkey, Italy and other Mediterranean lands – with all expenses paid by the King's Department of Classics!

Here in London, our students have unparalleled access to Greek and Roman antiquities – via the British Museum, City of London Museum, and Victoria and Albert Museum (among other places). But studying Archaic sculpture in Athens – or for that matter Roman wall-painting in Pompeii, as indeed Bronze Age archaeology in Cyprus – can give a very different perspective.

That’s why, thanks to the generous donation of a former student in 2013, the King's Department of Classics set up the Rumble Fund: each year, the fund pays for around 25 BA and MA students to visit Classical lands; most importantly, the costs of these field trips (which are carefully integrated within our department-taught modules) are fully covered by the Department.

The Rumble Fund offers something unparalleled within other British university Classics departments. Our field trips are organized by departmental lecturers in conjunction with a specific module each year: students are accompanied by their module lecturer and at least one other member of the department throughout the trip. Working together with our research partners (including the British School at Athens and British School at Rome), the department acquires special permits to guide participants around sites that are normally closed to the public (inside the Parthenon, for example); students are also led around the latest excavations – sometimes by those who have recently excavated them.

To find out more about the Rumble Fund – and plans for future trips – please contact us.

You can read the full Jamie Rumble Memorial Fund brochure here

The Rumble Fund Trips

King’s is extremely proud of the Jamie Rumble Memorial Fund, which is the only Classics department in Britain to offer such extended field trips to the Mediterranean; integrated within our undergraduate and graduate programmes, and without cost to our students. Similar trips to Classical lands – accompanied by departmental teaching staff, and integrated within our courses – are offered each year, and are open to all King’s BA and/or MA students.

The latest trip in 2023

Students from the Department of Classics went on a fully funded five-day visit to Greece, made possible by the generosity of the Jamie Rumble Memorial Fund.

In June 2023, 14 students from the Classics Department travelled to Greece, exploring ancient and modern highlights of Athens. Koraes Professor Gonda Van Steen led the field trip, which was part of the undergraduate module, Adventures in Ancient Greek Drama.

Click here to see our previous trips

Rumble Fund Lectures

The Jamie Rumble Memorial Fund has supported the annual Rumble Fund Lecture, an open guest lecture which invites a leading academic in the field of ancient art history.

9th Annual Rumble Fund Lecture (2023)

Guest lecture: Rubina Raja, Professor of Classical Art and Archaeology at Aarhus University, Denmark.

Palmyra Undone: Reconstructing knowledge through archaeology and legacy data - 14 March 2023. The Rumble Lecture 2023 presents the results of the Palmyra projects based at Aarhus University in Denmark.

It ties together the various strands of information and data into a larger narrative about the value of classical archaeology, cultural heritage and deep knowledge about the past to our modern society. It underlines that without knowledge of the past, we cannot situate ourselves in our present.