This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Benedict Cumberbatch’s newest role will see him treading the boards in front of university students, after he accepted an appointment as a visiting fellow at Oxford.

Cumberbatch – whose last stage role was as Hamlet at the Barbican in London – will be joined by fellow actor Emma Watson and the Pet Shop Boys singer Neil Tennant among the 11 visiting fellows at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.

The college’s principal, Alan Rusbridger, former editor-in-chief of the Guardian, announced the appointments on Friday.

“They are people drawn from a variety of backgrounds, callings and professions and we want them to form a bridge between our own academic community and the worlds they inhabit and represent,” Rusbridger said.

Other appointees include the former children’s laureate Malorie Blackman, the chief constable of Thames Valley police, Francis Habgood, director Beeban Kidron, musician Mark Simpson and high court judge Rabinder Singh.

The new positions are strictly part-time, however, and are intended to add to the cultural life of the college, according to Rusbridger, who took up his role as head of the college in September 2015.

“At a minimum we’d like them to drop in occasionally at college, eat with us and meet informally with a variety of the LMH community.

“We’d like them to do one thing a bit more structured. It could be a conversation or debate, a performance, a lecture or seminar, a form of outreach – or something we haven’t thought of. We can imagine fascinating interactions or collaborations between them.

“They are welcome to come and stay in college if they’d like a place temporarily to think or work. And some have already suggested other ways in which they might engage with a body of 700 incredibly smart students and tutors in order to stimulate their own thinking or work in progress.”

A list of possible visiting fellows was drawn up by the college’s governing body, and then narrowed down by a committee. Ultimately only one person approached by the college turned it down.

“Some of the names we announce today did not go to university. One left school at 16. We think we can learn much from them – and we hope they treasure their time with us,” Rusbridger said.

Cumberbatch studied for a BA in drama at Manchester University and has an MA in classical acting, while Watson has a degree from the Ivy League Brown University in the US.

Visiting fellowships are more commonly given to scholars and academics, although there are positions such as the Cameron Mackintosh visiting professorship at St Catherine’s, Oxford, that have been filled by luminaries such as the actors Stephen Fry, Diana Rigg and Patrick Stewart.

Only one of the 11 new visiting fellows is an academic: Jennifer Rohn, a cell biologist at University College London who is also a novelist; neurosurgeon Henry Marsh is another of the news fellows.

In a blogpost, Rusbridger said the idea came from his own experience as a visiting fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford.

“Some of those dinners were eclectic affairs. Alongside the students and tutors there would be bishops, bankers, spies, journalists and economists.

“Lord Nuffield, it seemed to me, was on to something: this was a way of enriching the life of a college and its students, and of blowing oxygen through the corridors.”