Which university employed J.R.R. Tolkien as a professor from 1920 to 1925?

J.R.R. Tolkien worked at the University of Leeds from 1920 to 1925.

He first joined Leeds as a reader in English language, later becoming professor of the English language. During this period, he continued his scholarly work in philology and collaborated with E.V. Gordon on the influential 1925 edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Leeds was Tolkien’s first university teaching position after his work on the Oxford English Dictionary. His time there also included the formation of a student group devoted to the study of language and literature, an activity that reflected his lifelong interest in collaborative scholarship.

Tolkien then returned to Oxford in 1925 to take the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon. Leeds is therefore an important part of his academic career, even though Oxford is more strongly associated with his later teaching and writing.