I would think so. If those college mages tolerate necromancy then why not voluntary necromancy on someones own body? Think of the D&D series (not sure if you read any of those books) like 'the pirate king' from Salvatore or the 'unclean, unholy, undead' series (I haven't read these yet, but I intend to do so). Almost everybody of the city knows the archmage is a lich trough rumors, though nobody is sure. They are afraid of the lich so they don't try to kill him. The highest ranking wizards, the ones who know for sure of the archmages' true identity are so woven into magic that they don't even care, and are even jaleous. I think this would be the same in winterhold. The townspeople would be to afraid to interrupt, the jarl acts big and mighty, but is just a puppet of the archmage, the lowlevel mages wouldn't see the archmage and the higher ones do not care. This might be too realistic however. The college consists of around ten mages, with an equal number of townspeople... There wouldn't be too much for the lich to 'rule with fear' :(. It would be nice to have a mod that could allow you to rule a city in many ways, select 'puppet rulers' and so forth. But that would require too much scripting. I would settle for a mod wich makes the archmage a real archmage instead, really ruling the college. Or to allow you TO DO SOME OF THE EXPERIMENTS they keep whining about... ow, I am trailing off. Back to the question, I do think they will ignore you. Why would they not? their minds are not clouded with (sometimes true) prejuces. Well it sure would be funny getting to apply to the college as a lich and tolfdir teaching you about wards.