Senior Copyright Officer

About the role

Working within the Ashmolean Museum’s Digital Collections service, you will lead a focused project to research, verify and clear rights so that more of the Museum’s collections can be published online. You will collaborate closely with colleagues across the museum to improve rights workflows and support digitisation priorities.

Your work will include reviewing existing agreements, conducting rights holder research, undertaking risk assessments, negotiating licences within agreed budgets, improving orphan-works guidance, and ensuring rights information is accurately recorded in Resource Space and Museum Plus. You will provide clear guidance to colleagues, support data cleaning and analysis, and help shape a consistent rights management culture across the Museum.

This is a full-time, fixed-term (project) post for 2 years. The role will be based onsite at the Ashmolean, but with flexibility for home working arrangements.

You will have a relevant undergraduate degree or equivalent experience, with in-depth knowledge of copyright law at national and international levels and practical experience applying rights and risk management in a cultural heritage or publishing setting.

You will be confident working with digital asset management systems and comfortable undertaking precise data analysis and bulk data cleaning.

Excellent interpersonal skills, with the ability to build effective relationships across teams, are essential, together with strong influencing and negotiation skills to manage licence discussions and stakeholder expectations.

As an employer, we genuinely care about our employees’ wellbeing and this is reflected in the range of benefits that we offer including:

• An excellent contributory pension scheme
• 38 days of annual leave
• A comprehensive range of childcare services
• Family leave schemes
• Cycle loan scheme
• Discounted bus travel and Season Ticket travel loans

More information is available at

You will be required to upload your CV and a supporting statement as part of your online application. Your supporting statement should list each of the essential and desirable selection criteria, as listed in the job description, and explain how you meet each one. CVs alone will not be considered.

Only applications received online by 12.00 midday (GMT) on Tuesday 6 January 2026 can be considered. Interviews are expected to take place on 16 January 2026.

* An automatic annual increment each year will be paid up to (and not including) the discretionary range within the University of Oxford’s Grade 6 salary scale.

From £35,681. Grade 6