This term, we are holding a seminar series in support of Central European University Budapest, which is threatened with closure. Many of us are deeply concerned about this, and our VC Louise Richardson has joined the Board of CEU Budapest in a gesture of support.

The seminars will be held in Oxford on Thursday May 4, 2 pm until 4 pm; Thursday May 25, 2 pm until 4 pm both in the Maths Lecture Theatre ROC site and June 15, 4 pm until 6 pm in the Worcester Lecture Theatre.

CEU Budapest is an outstanding university, and their History Faculty is excellent. Many members of our Faculty have worked closely with members of their History Faculty, have visited them, and they have been visitors here or in many cases were trained or worked in the UK. The rector of CEU is the historian Michael Ignatieff. Theirs is an exciting, mixed student body, including people from Eastern and Western Europe as well as from all over the world. CEU stands as a bridge between East and West. We are devastated that this intellectual community faces closure.

In a joint venture, Cambridge and Oxford have decided to invite as many historians as we can to visit us, so that both universities can see the sheer range and excitement of what they do. The seminar series is entitled We Stand with CEU: New Directions in History. In three meetings, three or four members of CEU History, professors, early career people, postgraduates, will come and speak to us in a roundtable presentation of what they do. They will speak at Cambridge and then Oxford. The event is initiated by the two Regius Professors Chris Clark at Cambridge and Lyndal Roper at Oxford, and is organised with the help of CEU and many colleagues at both universities. The support we have received is amazing; Maths donated space for free, so has Worcester College, the History Faculty, as well as many individuals.