Access Week 2025: From Local to Global

Designed to emulate 'a week in the life of an Oxford undergraduate', Access Week is an annual summer residential at Pembroke College. Select pupils who have participated in the OxNet Access programme, the Pembroke Scholars Outreach programme, and the Thinking Black programme are invited to attend the residential, which took place this year from Sunday 3 to Friday 8 August. In total we welcomed 120 pupils, all from across our target regions of West London, the North West, and the North East of England. These pupils participated in tutorials, seminars, lectures, poster presentations, mock interviews, academic trips, walking tours, team-building activities, the Joseph Owen Formal Dinner, and much more.

Elly Walters from Pembroke’s Access and Outreach team gives us an insight into the residential.

On a sunny afternoon in early August, this year’s cohort of pupils was warmly welcomed to Pembroke by the Access and Outreach team, beginning their time here with a drinks reception and their first dinner in Hall. Access Fellow Dr Peter Claus kicked off the week's programme with an Interactive Tutorial, aimed at demystifying Oxford's small-group, discussion-based teaching model which the students would all experience over the course of their stay. As the week went on, pupils also took part in a library induction, a UCAS Personal Statement lecture, and a series of activities led by our Undergraduate Mentors, from student TED Talks to Oxford walking tours.

Librarian Laura Cracknell introducing pupils to the Library's collections

Each of the pupils experienced tutorials led by over 30 postgraduate tutors, many of whom had previously given lectures as part of our online Twilight Talks series. Topics included book history, tort law, conflict studies, medieval German poetry, dark matter, sea-ice rheology, decolonisation, carbon emission inequality, group theory, Coptic Christianity, women's life writing, and much more. After their first tutorial, pupils were tasked with writing an essay or completing a problem sheet which would then form the basis of the discussion during their second tutorial. 

Between independent work, pupils attended subject-specific seminars and workshops with leading academics at Pembroke and beyond, exploring topics as diverse as forensic psychiatry, classical reception, civil rights movement photography, constitutional studies, and machine learning. They were immersed in Shakespearean drama during a public speaking session with actor and director Paul O’Mahony, and were introduced to a variety of scientific niches during the OxNet Science poster presentations.

The poster presentations are an Access Week tradition, seeing OxNet scientists showcase a year's work and offering them the opportunity to delve deeper into complex scientific concepts as they engage in in-depth discussion and exchange. This year's scientists were commended by Professor Andrew Baldwin, Pembroke's Fellow in Chemistry, and Holly Roach, DPhil student with the Centre of Human Genetics in Oxford, for their enthusiasm and expertise.

All pupils were also invited to attend two evening lectures. The first, an interactive lecture led by Dr Rob Johnson, Director of the Changing Character of War Project at Pembroke, was titled ‘Are You Ready to Be a Strategic Leader? The Strategists’ Accelerator’ and invited pupils to participate in a series of strategy-based games that replicated Johnson’s work on The Wargame (2025).

The second was a galvanising keynote lecture by Dr Simona Capisani, Durham University, titled ‘A Liveable Place’, which drew examples from philosophy, policy, and public discourse to ascertain how and why our right to liveability is at risk in the midst of climate emergency.

In keeping with Dr Capisani’s lecture, the theme of Access Week 2025 was ‘From Local to Global’. Each subject programme – English, Humanities, Languages, Philosophy & World Religions, Science, Social Science, and Heritage-360 – incorporated this theme into its academic as well as its creative activities.

Throughout the residential, our Musician in Residence Helen Jones led evening rehearsals for a choir of over 60 pupils ahead of a much-anticipated performance on the final day. During our prize-giving ceremony, the Access Week Choir performed a number of songs that honoured the ‘Local to Global’ theme and were rewarded by a thunderous standing ovation from the audience. Their performance was followed by an exhibition of drawings, paintings, and collages produced by the other half of the Access Week cohort. Many of these beautiful works of art celebrated Oxford’s architecture alongside symbols of the pupils’ hometowns, from the Manchester bee to the Stadium of Light. Their artwork can be viewed in the virtual gallery below.

On the final night of the residential, all pupils and members of the OxNet team attended the Joseph Owen Formal Dinner in the Hall. This annual dinner is named after Joseph Owen, a former Fellow in History at Pembroke who was born and raised in Oldham. After drinks and photos on Chapel Quad, we were treated to grace sung from the balcony and a candlelit three-course meal.

Following a speech by Academic Director Dr Nicholas Cole, Dr Peter Claus ended the week with one final piece of advice for this year's cohort: Apply!

Thanks

Dr Peter Claus, Miss Morgan Lewis, and Dr Elly Walters would like to thank the following people, without whom Access Week would not have been possible:

• The Master and Fellows of Pembroke College, as well as brilliant staff across the College’s Offices.
• The OxNet Team: Alex Noble, Amy Knott, Claire Porter, Claire Tattersall, David Jones, Guy Smith, Paddy McDevitt, and Sam Royle.
• Undergraduate Mentors: Ayla Samson, Callum Kendray, Éilis Brito, Emma Coates, Grace Greaves, Lennon Airey, Lucy Williams, and Valentine Bachelez.
• Postgraduate Tutors: Amy Morgan, Amy Wells, Annie Gishen, Benjamin Gladstone, Dane Luo, Elizabeth Bloomfield, Estelle McCool, Grace Callaghan, Gregory Evans, Isabela Linares Uscher, John Belcher-Heath, Josefina Jaureguiberry-Mondion, Julia Heide Lorenz, Juliana Choi, Katherine Helmick, Kenneth Novis, Kye Allen, Lily Middleton-Mansell, Luca Siepmann, Mariia Petrovskikh, Ning Xu, Olivia Gauvin, Reanna Brooks, Rebekah Goodchild, Dr Reyam Rammahi, Richard James Foster, Samuel Carwyn Lewis, Sharvi Maheshwari, Smriti Verma, Yue Yin, and Zephyr Ford.
• Academics & Session Leaders: Revd. Dr Andrew Teal, Prof. Andrew Baldwin, Prof. Giles Gasper, Prof. Nick Hawes, Prof. Robin Wilson, Dr Barney Williams, Dr Chloé Agar, Dr Ed Mitchell, Dr Catriona Parry, Dr Emily Brady, Dr Jack Amiry, Dr Nicholas Cole, Dr Richard Lee, Dr Rob Johnson, Dr Tim Farrant, Dr Simona Capisani, Dr Thomas Hird, Dr Yassine Ait Ali, Harriet Strahl, Helen Jones, Holly Roach, Laura Cracknell, Lorraine Lee, and Paul O’Mahony.

You can find out more about the OxNet and Pembroke Scholars programmes here and about the Thinking Black programme here. You can view more photos from this year’s Access Week on the OxNet Instagram page here.