Which university employed J.R.R. Tolkien as a professor before Oxford?

Before Oxford, J.R.R. Tolkien was a professor at the University of Leeds.

Tolkien joined the University of Leeds in 1920 as a reader in English language, later becoming a professor. His Leeds years were important for his academic development and for his collaboration with E. V. Gordon on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, published in 1925.

The Leeds position came before Tolkien’s long Oxford career. In 1925 he became Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, and in 1945 he moved to the Merton Professorship of English Language and Literature. His work at Leeds therefore forms an important bridge between his early professional life and his better-known Oxford period.

People sometimes remember Tolkien only as an Oxford professor, but his university career began at Leeds. He also taught at Leeds during the years when he was developing ideas and stories that would eventually connect with the mythology of Middle-earth.