Legacy donation funds a year of PHD study for French scholar

The first Niklaus-Cartwright lecture was held on the University’s Streatham campus in March this year. The lecture was named after two eminent academics, Professor Robert Niklaus, former Head of French at Exeter and his student Michael Cartwright, an eminent academic in his own right who generously bequeathed funding for French at Exeter. Visiting speaker, Dr David McCallam from the University of Sheffield, spoke at the event about "The Volcano: A Tool for Thinking in Eighteenth-Century France”. 

Previous to the recent lecture, the Niklaus Fund which was set up in memory of Prof Robert Niklaus, was set up to support French at Exeter.

The Fund received a generous legacy donation from Prof Michael Cartwright in 2015 which has since had various positive impacts on the Modern Languages department at the University of Exeter. As well as providing funding for travel bursaries and the Niklaus-Cartwright lecture that took place this year, the legacy donation has since supplied a year of PHD funding for French scholar Edward Mills.

Edward recently wrote to the Niklaus family to express his gratitude and convey just how this funding has positively affected his studies.

He wrote: “I’m thrilled to have the opportunity, thanks to your family’s support, to investigate various French literary texts and to make an original contribution to knowledge in a subject that I have loved for many years”

If you’d like to find out more about leaving a legacy and the profound impact it can have, please visit our legacy webpages.