At which university did J.R.R. Tolkien hold his first professorship?

J.R.R. Tolkien held his first professorship at the University of Leeds.

After working at the Oxford English Dictionary and teaching at the University of Leeds, Tolkien became Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford in 1925. Before that Oxford appointment, he was Professor of English Language at Leeds from 1924 to 1925.

His Leeds period was academically important. He collaborated with E. V. Gordon on the influential 1925 edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and he helped establish a student Viking Club. Tolkien later held major Oxford posts, so biographies sometimes lead readers to associate his first professorship with Oxford. The distinction is that Leeds came first, while Oxford became his longest and most famous academic base.