English Faculty State School Open Day

Are you a state school student interested in studying English at the University of Oxford? The English Faculty at Oxford will be holding our annual State School Open Day on Saturday 14 March 2026, online via Zoom Webinar. Join us to find out more about the course and admissions process. We will have taster lectures and information talks from professors, and an exciting Q&A with current students.

The event is open to all state school pupils and their teachers. It is aimed at students in Year 12 (or equivalent).

Programme

11:00–11:05: Introduction and welcome from Professor Kirsten Shepherd, Director of Schools Liaison

11:05–11:35: Taster Lecture – Professor Gillian Woods – ‘Rhyme and Reasoning’

Found everywhere from playground chants to political speeches, rhyme is language at its most persuasive. Throughout history, it has been understood as giving verse a pulse, forging bonds, and unreasonably making sameness out of difference. Using Shakespeare as a case study, this short talk will show how close readings of form and style can offer a route into understanding the debates of the past, illuminate the ideological dynamics of a text, and offer opportunities for performers in the present.

Gillian Woods is an Associate Professor and Tutorial Fellow in English at Magdalen College, and worked previously at Birkbeck, University of London and the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on early modern drama and she is a General Editor of the forthcoming Cambridge Shakespeare Editions. She has a particular interest in teaching, and was a Series Editor of the Cambridge Elements in Shakespeare and Pedagogy and has worked with school teachers through her Shakespeare Teachers' Conversations series and an English Association Hub. State school educated and a first-generation university graduate, she is committed to outreach.

11:35–12:05: Oxford English (with Professor Kirsten Shepherd)

12:05–12:50: Oxford Admissions + Q&A (with Professor Sos Eltis, Director of Undergraduate Admissions)

12:50–13:10: Break

13:10–13:45: Taster Lecture – Professor Michael H. Whitworth – 'Representing Consciousness in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse'

In her novels Mrs Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927), Virginia Woolf achieved a subtle narratorial method that depicts the world almost entirely from the perspectives of her characters. It eliminates the interpreting narrative voice of her predecessors, but is capable of gesturing to the larger concerns beyond the individual. In this lecture I will look closely at some typical passages from each novel to analyse what her method achieves and what its limitations might be.

Michael H. Whitworth is Professor of Modern Literature and Culture in the English Faculty, University of Oxford, and Tutorial Fellow at Merton College, Oxford. He has published on Virginia Woolf, literature and science, and modernist poetry.

13:50–14:50: Student Ambassadors Q&A

We will be joined by four current students – Emily, Ksenia, Sanvi and Soham – to discuss details of the course and university life. Come along with your questions to find out more!

14:50–15:00: Closing remarks from Professor Kirsten Shepherd.