J.R.R. Tolkien worked as a professor at Oxford University in Oxford.
Tolkien spent much of his academic career at the University of Oxford. He was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon from 1925 to 1945 and Merton Professor of English Language and Literature from 1945 until his retirement in 1959. His academic work focused especially on languages, medieval literature, and Old English and Middle English texts.
Oxford was not merely Tolkien’s workplace. He lived and taught there for decades, met fellow writers in literary circles, and helped form the informal group known as the Inklings. His scholarly interests strongly shaped his fiction, particularly its use of invented languages, heroic traditions, and northern European mythology. Some readers assume Tolkien held a Cambridge post because of the university’s prominence in English studies, but his major academic appointments were at Oxford.