Landmark partnership announced with the John Porter Charitable Foundation

8 October 2021

Hertford College recently announced our aspirations for the next decade: Hertford 2030. Alongside excellent teaching and research, we aim to be an academy that prepares students for life, work and citizenship, and a frontline for a better society. These aspirations will be underpinned by world-class facilities for our students and researchers.

Today, we are pleased to launch a partnership with the John Porter Charitable Foundation that will kick-start this transformational period for the college. With a landmark donation of £25m, the largest ever made to Hertford, we will build the John Porter Graduate Centre. This project will combine the best of sustainable contemporary design with Hertford’s record as a pioneer of educational opportunity to bring together our graduate community for the first time. Situated between Winchester and Banbury Roads, the centre will provide exceptional living, working and social spaces for Hertford’s graduate students, while supporting our strategic priority of carbon neutrality and significant biodiversity net gain by 2030 at the latest.

This partnership will also allow us to create the Sir Leslie Porter Quad on Catte Street. At the beginning of the 20th Century, these iconic ‘new’ buildings were a foundational part of Hertford’s success. Today, their renewal as an exceptional space for our community to live, work and study will ensure that we can meet the challenges of our own century.

But this initiative is not just about world class facilities. As part of the partnership, we will launch the Porter Centre for Diplomacy. This will generate innovation for the great peace processes of the 21st Century, from stability in the Middle East to climate change, and from reform of the international architecture to the challenges and opportunities of emerging technologies. The Centre will support scholarships, research and peace making.

John Porter is an entrepreneur working across the technology and healthcare sectors who read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Hertford College in 1971.

Hertford Principal, Tom Fletcher said: “John Porter has led a remarkable life of innovation and impact. This donation is transformational for Hertford. It will change the lives of generations of Hertford students and help us contribute ideas and energy to the great global challenges which we all face. We are thrilled to be launching this partnership and I look forward to welcoming John back to Hertford for the launch.”

John Porter said: “Hertford helped to make me who I am today. I am excited by the vision and ambition of Principal Tom Fletcher and the college’s fellows. We see this partnership as the beginning of an era of great growth and impact for Hertford. Watch this space.”