OxNet Students Take Part in Heritage-360 Programme

On 4 March 2025, this year’s OxNet Heritage-360 cohort travelled to Southmoor Academy in Sunderland for a day of workshops to develop their study skills. This was the final OxNet Study Skills Day of 2025, with six others taking place across the North West and West London in early February. Each Study Skills Day is dedicated to one of OxNet’s seven subject programmes: English, Humanities, Languages, Philosophy and World Religions, Science, Social Science, and Heritage-360.

The Heritage-360 programme, spearheaded by Prof. Giles Gasper (Durham University), is an initiative that seeks to connect natural and cultural heritage research and practices in the region. Heritage-360 draws together a wide range of disciplines and themes, from biosciences to visual arts, through sustained collaborations across departments and institutions. The programme’s interdisciplinary approach focuses on heritage and its diverse meanings, be they tangible, intangible, or narrative-based. Throughout the year, seminar discussions will foreground climate change, wellbeing, resources management, and sustainability goals.

Photo Credit: Claire Porter

The pupils involved in the multidisciplinary Heritage-360 programme are taking A Levels in subjects across the Arts, Humanities, and Sciences, with aspirations to study History, Politics, Psychology, Engineering, and the Natural Sciences, among others, at research-intensive universities such as Oxford and Durham. OxNet pupils are invited onto the Heritage-360 team not just as participants, but as thinkers and researchers in their own right.

Following a rousing introduction by Head of School Mr Sammy Wright, the day began with a presentation by Prof. Gasper about the programme’s ethos and research focuses. Together, the group considered the meaning of interdisciplinarity and discussed how Heritage-360 brought disciplines – from medieval history to computer science, environmental thinking to creative media – together. Pupils discussed the differences between preservation and conservation, and shared wide-ranging reflections (in dialogue with their chosen subjects) on what we ought to preserve, conserve, and do away with.

The day continued with an interactive session on study skills by Pembroke Access Fellow Dr Peter Claus, in which pupils were encouraged to become independent learners – learners who not only take notes and ask questions but also think critically and analytically and challenge received ideas. We were then joined online by Lennon, Emma, and Callum, all former OxNet pupils from the North East, who are now reading History, Theology, and Medicine at Pembroke College, Oxford, respectively. They shared their experiences of OxNet’s Access Week, Oxford’s admissions process, and student life at Pembroke, and answered questions regarding their subject and university choices.

The Access and Outreach team would like to express their sincerest thanks to Prof. Giles Gasper, Mr Sammy Wright, Dr Peter Claus, Lennon, Emma, Callum, and also to Mrs Claire Porter and Ms Amy Knott, our OxNet School Hub Coordinators, for welcoming us and the Heritage-360 cohort so warmly to Southmoor Academy.

For more information about Access and Outreach at Pembroke, visit our website here.