Congregation Membership FAQs
On this page you can find a number of frequently asked questions regarding Congregation membership.
If you can't find an answer to your question, please have contact congregation.membership@admin.ox.ac.uk for further advice
Membership of Congregation allows voting in elections by both Congregation and Convocation (e.g. Professor of Poetry): Information about Elections by Congregation or Convocation | Governance and Planning (ox.ac.uk). Any two members of Congregation can jointly submit a notice of opposition and/or amendment to proposed new University legislation or changes to legislation (legislative proposals) published in the Gazette. Twenty or more members of Congregation can also submit a resolution on any topic concerning the policy or administration of the University; they can also submit topics for discussion, which provide an opportunity to discuss any topic of concern to the University. If a meeting of Congregation is required, all members of Congregation are eligible to attend
No, to remain a member of Congregation you must satisfy the eligibility requirements. So, if you leave the university or change to a role that is not eligible, you will no longer be a member of Congregation. The exception to this rule is for retired Professors who are granted Emeritus status, who can remain members of Congregation until the age of 75.
Yes, we update the University Card Office of new Congregation members once a month. Once the Card Office receives the latest list of new members they will produce a new ID card confirming your Congregation membership which will be sent to your department. This process can take several weeks.
You can attend a meeting of Congregation even if you have not received your new card marked ‘Congregation’, as your eligibility to attend can instead be checked by pre-registering for the meeting.
Yes, to keep our membership database up to date we periodically carry out checks to determine if existing members remain eligible. To ensure that we have your most recent details, you can send updates to congregationmembership.ox.ac.uk. Please note, we do not record postal addresses.
No, you don’t need an MA by Resolution to be a member of Congregation. You may however require an MA to satisfy the requirements of other roles at the University.
You can apply for an MA be Resolution retrospectively, once you have been admitted to Congregation. There are two separate web forms on the Congregation membership website to allow for this.
Your membership of Congregation will be published in the University Gazette. A Register of Congregation listing all members is also published in the Gazette annually. A small number of University teams (Examinations, Proctors Office, Events, the Elections Officer) sometimes need to check membership, they are permitted to see a full/redacted version of our database as required. Once membership has been revoked, records are retained as per the University’s records retention schedule, they are then deleted.
