Explore the wealth of academic extras on offer at St John’s College — from travel grants and access to our unrivalled Designated Special Collections, to palaeography lessons and more. These supracurricular opportunities help you deepen your subject knowledge, spark new interests, and support your intellectual development beyond your degree.
St John's is proud to collaborate with a number of great institutions to provide exciting cultural and academic exchanges. Our current exchange partners include Caltech Scholars exchange, Collegio Ghislieri di Pavia University Exchange, Heidelberg University Exchange, Nagoya University Exchange Scheme and NUS Research Exchange Programme.
There are currently more than 20 travel grants available to students of St John's, made possible by generous donor funding. These funds are available to help students extend and develop their subject knowledge by, for example, travelling to archaeological sites abroad, further international understanding, undertake adventurous travel and much more.
Our Special Collections include various grammars, histories and texts published in later centuries that shed light on historical subjects. These unique resources provide fantastic source material for dissertations and research projects. Students can make an appointment to consult special collections material at any time of the year.
The College's Writer-in-residence programme brings award-winning professional writers into the St John's community to interact with students and encourage participation in the contemporary literature scene.
As well as organising guest readings and other events that are open to anyone across the University, the Writer-in-residence runs informal reading and discussion groups exclusively for St John's students and staff, and offers one-to-one meetings to any St John's students who are keen to experiment with and develop their own creative writing.
As well as providing access to more books than you could ever read, the College Library houses an extensive collection of films, music and language materials to support and supplement your studies. The DVD collection includes a wide range of western European cinema, a smaller selection of Russian and Japanese titles, and an assortment of film versions of literary works.
The CD collection consists mainly of classical music plus numerous recordings of the College Choir. There are also multimedia language-learning materials available in more than 20 languages. All items can be used in the Library's AV Room or borrowed. Headphones and external CD/DVD drives can also be borrowed from the Library.
Our generous Summer Bursary scheme enables St John's undergraduates to pursue their academic or educational interests or career-development opportunities for a period of up to eight weeks during the Long Vacation.
Any activity which would clearly add value to your career and personal development can be considered, and students have used their Summer Bursaries to fund a wide range of activities including research projects, summer courses at other institutions, intermediate and advanced language courses, unpaid work experience and volunteering work in the UK and overseas.
St John's offers a number of grants to undergraduates who want to pursue academic research projects or Summer School courses related to their subjects at a University (including Cambridge) or other approved academic institution during the Long Vacation.
In addition to a general fund which covers all subjects, several subject-specific funds are also available. The Peter Munn Fund is dedicated to supporting Engineering projects. The Parsons Fund provides grants towards projects with links to Greece (Modern or Ancient) or the Eastern Mediterranean, as well as funding music-related projects. The Robert Tong Bursary offers free accommodation and access to the Library at Queen Mary, University of London during a set period.
All undergraduate students, including finalists, are eligible to apply for these awards.
Acclaimed violinist and Director of Performance in the Faculty of Music, Professor Margaret Faultless is Musician-in-Residence at St John’s. Internationally renowned as a specialist in historical performance practice and an interpreter of 18th century repertoire, she previously specialised in contemporary music earlier in her career.
Margaret provides unrivalled musical and academic support to our music students, helping to ensure that the musical environment at St John’s is lively, friendly, and both intellectually and artistically stimulating.
We offer students full financial support for taking one of the University's language courses, where this is different from a language that you have selected as part of your course.
This gives AMES, MML and History & MML students the opportunity to add another language to their collection, or students in other subjects to take up a language alongside their main discipline.
Our annual Newell Classical Event celebrates all that is exciting, creative and forward-thinking in the world of Classics, bringing it to the attention of a wide public.
Past speakers include Emily Wilson, Emily Greenwood, Natalie Haynes and Alice Oswald.
St John’s has an outstanding student law library, part of it designated the John Hall Law Library, with a wide range of books to support and extend your studies.
Law students who distinguish themselves academically are eligible for academic prizes and for McMahon Studentships, offering substantial funding assistance to St John's graduates taking the approved courses necessary to progress to legal practice.
The College Library has a bookable sound-proof booth, which students use for online meetings or supervisions, for listening to resources or for small group discussions.
For Linguistics students, the booth is useful for working on course components like practical phonetics, that require you to produce more and less usual sounds, or where you need to listen to recordings, for example concerning varieties of English, language acquisition or psycholinguistics.
Our Dean of Chapel Revd Dr Vicky Johnson and Chaplain Revd Graham Dunn are actively engaged in wider explorations of faith, enriching the academic and social dialogue for students of all faiths and none.
They provide support to any student of any faith and welcome discussion of philosophical or theological points to widen our community's awareness of the world around us. They are running a new College-wide Common Good programme, providing students with a route to explore ethics, community leadership, the understanding of faith and contributing to civic life in the world beyond university.
St John’s provides outstanding facilities for use by all students who are interested in contributing to the College’s rich musical culture, not just those studying music.
A wide range of practice and performance spaces are available, including individual practice rooms, a modern recording studio, atmospheric recital rooms, a fully equipped theatre/auditorium, and even the historic Chapel, where our world-famous Choir performs throughout the year and a variety of individual musicians and groups showcase their talents at the annual May Concert.
Our students have access to first-class instruments, including three Steinway grand pianos, three Boston grands, a harpsichord and a recently refurbished organ. Music undergraduates can borrow an electronic keyboard for use in their College room for the duration of their studies.
The College Music Society and the Master’s Concert series together ensure a full programme of evening concerts and lunchtime recitals including live music nights in the College bar. St John’s is also known for its jazz scene, thanks to the long-established Jazz @John’s, which hosts professional-standard student concerts, and the annual Reinstein Prize for Jazz.
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St John's is one of the few Colleges with an in-house art room, located right in the heart of College. It is open 24/7, which means our Architecture and Design students are able to carry out design work outside the opening hours of the departmental studio. It is also used by History of Art students, and is open to those on other courses.
St John’s also provides Architecture and Design undergraduate students with a drawing board, installed in their College room, for the duration of their studies. The space required by necessities such as model-making is also taken into account during the annual accommodation ballot.
Each year at St John’s, students who excel academically and contribute to the life of the College are nominated for the prestigious Larmor Awards, which are presented by the Master.
The Awards are named after the 20th-century physicist and mathematician Sir Joseph Larmor FRS, a former student at St John’s who made great innovations in the understanding of electricity and thermodynamics.
Winners of a Larmor Award receive a unique handcrafted piece of silverware engraved with the College crest and their name, as well as a financial prize.
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Deciphering old handwriting is a valuable skill when you're studying texts from the past. Our experienced Archivist offers free palaeography sessions during term time to any student interested in learning more about working with historical documents and manuscripts.
The College Archive collections are particularly rich in medieval material, and classes are held in our state-of-the-art Archive Centre inside the ancient School of Pythagoras (the oldest extant secular building in Cambridge). Students of any subject can also sign up to a general 'Introduction to the Archives' session at the start of each academic year.
