Teach in small rooms
No seminar exceeds eight. The tutorial — two students, one scholar — remains the whole of the method.
The Institute
Founded on the belief that teaching is a conversation, not a broadcast.
Minerva opened its doors on Bedford Square in 1921 with forty students and a single rule: no lecture may go unquestioned. A century later, the rule holds.
The Institute was endowed by a group of scholars who had grown weary of the lecture hall. They wanted rooms small enough for disagreement, a library open past midnight, and terms measured by what a student had read rather than what they had attended.
That founding shape never really changed. Minerva remains deliberately small — six faculties, one square, one library — and teaching is still done two or three students at a time, across a table, with the reading already done.
The Institute takes no more students than it can teach this way. It is not the largest institution in Bloomsbury, and it has never wished to be.
The founding charter, in four lines
Keep the library open
The reading room has closed at midnight, not before, every night in term since 1921.
Admit on the argument
We read what a candidate thinks, not only what they have scored. The interview is a conversation, not an exam.
Publish without hurry
The Institute journals answer to the work, not the calendar. A paper appears when it is right.
The Fellowship
Prof. Eleanor Vance
Provost
Prof. Idris Rahman
Dean of Sciences
Dr Cordelia Ashworth
Dean of Humanities
Dr Samuel Okonkwo
Librarian & Keeper of Records
Reading for the coming year?
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