Hi, I'm Dr. Prieur Atwell and I'm a historian. I was born and brought up in nearby Buckinghamshire.
But I studied for my undergraduate and master's degrees in history at Oriel College from 2008 to 2011.
And then again from my doctorate. A Lady Margaret Hall from 2012 to 2017.
But I'm not actually going to talk about those colleges. I'm standing in the lodge or entrance to Summerville College on Woodstock Road.
Somerville was built from 1879,
so has more of a redbrick feel than many of occupant's other colleges is slightly away from the hustle and bustle of the High Street.
But there's still plenty of buses and bikes going up and down the road connecting North Oxford with the city.
Like Lady Margaret Hall, Somerville was set up to be the first of Oxford's colleges to admit women as students.
However, because some Somervell was nondenominational,
it allowed for women of diverse religious but also ethnic and cultural backgrounds to join from quite early on in its history.
What fascinates me most about the college is how it was home to the first Indian female students from the late eighteen eighties onwards.
This included no less than two princesses Bumba and Catherine Deepsea, both sisters.
The father of these two princesses was Maharajah Deep, the last ruler of the Sikh empire.
Now I'm British, Asian and Sikh myself, but I only learnt about the existence of this empire from a talk that I attended
at Oxford Student Sikh Society when I was in my first year at university.
This kingdom once was spread across the Punjab in the 19th century, but is today divided between India and Pakistan.
I was shocked to learn as an undergraduate that it was taken over by the East India Company in 1849 when the LEAP thing was just 10 years old.
After two wars between the British and the Sikhs, the man who was responsible for taking it over was also an Oxford graduate.
Dalhousie, who studied at Christchurch as an exiled Maharajah Duleep Singh,
went on to make life for himself in Britain and was one of the first Indian settlers in the UK.
He had six children with his first wife, of whom Bumba and Catherine were the two eldest daughters.
Born in 1869. In 1871, by the time the princesses became teenagers, however,
their father was deeply in debt and increasingly embittered against the British imperial government.
In 1886, he embarked upon a desperate, dramatic rebellion against the government to fight for the restoration of his kingdom.
Duleep Singh attempted to take his family with him to India, but was blocked from doing so.
So Bumba and Catherine ended up returning to England.
Tragically, though, their mother died within a year of that happening, and so they were left in the care of their guardians.
Author Oliphant and his wife. The princesses spent an unhappy three years at Folkston, where they were home schooled by Mrs Oliphant.
It was clear that their education had dramatically suffered as a result of the turmoil in their family.
But it was in the spring of 1890 that they were involved to study at some of your home.
As the college was then known, Bamba was about 21 and Katherine was 19.
Really, the girls were nowhere near ready enough to study an institution like Oxford.
But my research in the Somervell College Archives and at the Royal Archives in Windsor
Castle show that really they were sent to university for predominately political reasons.
Bamber, in particular, was considered to be a troubled soul.
She felt that her family had suffered a great injustice and was inwardly supporting her father's rebellion.
Catherine was a calmer sort of person,
but Arthur Oliphant was worried that the two sisters together might have a bad influence on their younger siblings.
And so was keen to send the girls away for the rest of their education.
There was also considerable pressure on all of the children to become accomplished young adults,
since their prominent aristocratic status meant that one day they would have to be presented at the court of Queen Victoria.
And no one really wanted them to turn out like their father in British high society.
And so the two princesses were packed off to Oxford to increase their stock of learning, as Oliphant put it.
Now, I was 18 when I got my offer to study Oxford.
I remember being a bit worried at the time that as an Asian girl, I'd be a minority Oxford and I wouldn't really fit in.
Luckily, the C Society was a home away from home for me and my first year or so.
But I can't imagine what it must have been like for Bumba and Katherine when they first arrived at Somerville.
Then there was just one other Indian female student at their college,
Cornelia Surabi, who was actually the first ever Indian woman to ever study Oxford.
Cornelia helpfully left behind a letter in which she wrote about their anticipated arrival.
It gives a fascinating insight into the rather awkward welcome that Bumba and Katherine received.
She notes the special treatment that was to be given to the sisters.
Most unusually, they were to be accompanied by their governess, who was going to stay with them throughout the duration of their studies.
I reckon this is probably because their education wasn't quite up to par when they got to Oxford.
But what most annoyed the Somerville girls was the other important thing
mentioned by Cornelia that everyone was expected to refer to them as princesses.
Unfortunately, we don't know much about what Bumba and Katherine themselves made of their time at Oxford.
They didn't. All that well in their studies. And only Katherine achieved a third in modern languages.
However, they do seem to have joined in with college life more than perhaps even Kornelia expected.
There were photos in the Somerville College archives that tell us that they played
in the college hockey team and also that they became friends with Kornelia.
They're sitting next to her in over college pictures and her later letters tell us that they continue to meet up for lunch much later in life.
These two princesses would go on to have quite difficult lives as adults.
Princess Bumba would eventually marry and settle in Lahore, which was the former capital of her family kingdom.
And Catherine would actually a former relationship with her governess and lived together as a lesbian couple in Germany during World War Two.
Their story is admittedly one of privilege, but also of imperial politics and tragic cultural displacement.
It was so inspiring as an undergraduate student to learn and stumble upon really the story of these two women of colour
who had managed against all odds and in great difficulty to make a place for themselves at Oxford and to make friends.