J.R.R. Tolkien’s academic field in the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship was Anglo-Saxon.
“Anglo-Saxon” was the traditional academic term for the language and culture of early medieval England, especially Old English. Tolkien held the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford from 1925 until 1945. His work involved Old English texts, philology, historical linguistics, and related Germanic languages.
This scholarly background influenced his fiction in visible ways. Tolkien drew on Old English names, heroic traditions, and textual forms when developing settings such as Rohan. His expertise also shaped his translations and lectures, including his influential work on Beowulf. Anglo-Saxon in this context is an academic field, not the name of a fictional people in Middle-earth. Tolkien later occupied the Merton Professorship of English Language and Literature, broadening the title of his Oxford chair while continuing related linguistic and literary work.