My name is Tim Clack. I'm one of the tutors in Archeology and Anthropology, here on the Oxford degree program. I provide lectures tutorials and supervision on parts of the degree, including, for example, human evolution, cultural heritage and anthropological theory. And I've been involved in the admissions process here for over 15 years. I'm Neil Armstrong, I'm an anthropologist, um I also teach you on the Arch and Anth program, um a little bit less time than Tim. I teach kind of core bits of anthropology. My own research really is about mental health and mental health care, but but the teaching that I do are kind of core, kind of classic topics in anthropology. Great, so um, part of this first session is to, um provide a bit of an introduction to admissions interviews in, in Archeology and and Anthropology. So we're going to take the opportunity to, um, explain what happens, how, where and, and kind of so on. Now there is we've got a disclaimer up front, there is a little bit of variation in terms of how different colleges run their interviews, um, but but there is a kind of, um, a kind of broad consistency. We all do things in broadly, um, the same, the same way. So we'll go..., what we'll cover is, is that kind of consistent, um, area. So, if you're shortlisted for interview, you will be interviewed by at least two colleges. These interviews are conducted completely separately from each other. And there's no conferring between the colleges, in terms of their assessment of your performance until after all of the interviews have been completed. The reason applicants are interviewed twice is to help ensure that each, each gets to show off their, um, their abilities in two contexts, which are independent of each other. So it's kind of designed as a way to maximise chances of you the applicant being able to show what you can do, how you respond, and, and how you think. I've also been told by applicants over the years that it makes them a lot less anxious knowing that they have two interview opportunities, because it takes away a bit of, a bit of the pressure. There's kind of two, two attempts at kind of going through the process. At each College interviews usually last between 30 and 40 minutes. Typically you'd expect to be interviewed by at least two interviewers at each college, and these will be tutors centrally involved with the teaching on the Archeology and Anthropology degree. The interviewers are likely to be from the different disciplines so you'll get both an archaeologist and an anthropologist, so both sides of the degree are represented in the kind of interview process. Let me also discuss the detail of what an interviewer is looking for in a candidate when we interview them. From the outset it's worth noting that, um, in the Oxford Archeology and Anthropology interview, um, we don't assume the applicant has any deep prior knowledge or background in either of the disciplines. So we're not looking for specific content in answers, um, to our, to our questions. But rather we're exploring how you think, how you respond You know, how you, um, adjust to new arguments and new evidence being kind of put in front of you. So it's about kind of creativity innovation, judgment and care in your thought processes. We'll certainly look to challenge your position on on any issue that we discuss, um, even if we happen to completely agree with everything that you're saying, um, we'll pretend that we don't and we'll kind of play Devil's Advocate, and we'll challenge your position to kind of see how you, how you respond. There's no special preparation required, there's no written test to interview. The selection criteria for the degree is outlined on the website, but it's the ability to think independently, the potential and motivation to study for the degree, obviously, enthusiasm to learn the disciplines, in a, in a combined way and that's important. You know that kind of, um, enthusiasm, and kind of commitment to both sides of the degree and and the way that they kind of play together, um, and obviously to meet the other kind of requirements of the of the course. So we're looking for an interest in, enthusiasm for um, the kind of study of humans and their, and their material worlds. There's lots of ways to show this. For example through field work, um, through volunteering at museums, at archives at Heritage sites, through travel, through visiting and thinking about museums and Heritage sites, and of course by reading up on the on the topics. Doing some kind of independent, independent learning. One thing to make especially clear, in the context of this demonstration interview, is that every year the questions will be different. It's important to kind of get that across, um, but what's always the case is that the questions are not there to trip you up. They're there to help you show us your abilities and your aptitude for the course. And at this point I'll hand over to my colleague Neil, so that he can add his thoughts as well. Thanks Tim. I, I was, my first kind of, uh, word of advice in a way is, be yourself. Don't try to be something different from who you are, don't be taken in. There's a lot of hype around these interviews, that we're, you know, we're looking for a certain kind of person, someone who presents in a certain kind of way. We're really not, we're going to listen to you, we're going to try to engage with you as a, kind of, unique individual. So, um, yeah don't be someone that you're not. Try not to be nervous, we'll try to put you at your ease, but, but obviously it's not ever going to be the most relaxed moment of your life, but try not to be too much. And don't be concerned about pauses, if we ask you a kind of question, and you think I want to take a moment and think about that, just say that. We're not, we don't think smart people are people who find the world simple, you know. Quick answers are not necessarily what we're looking for, we think smart people find the world confusing and complicated and something that you want to kind of think through. So, in a way if we see that in you, we're likely to, to, kind of reward that, we're gonna, we're gonna rate that kind of quite highly. So for example, sometimes students talk throug h their thought process. You know, they'll say well you've asked me this, but this makes me think of that, and so on. You might see it in a few minutes time when we do the mock interview. But I would really, you know, you can show us your your thinking, show us your working, if you like You're likely also to be given a number of different kinds of questions. So you might be given an artifact talk through, and there you really want to kind of take your time and think through, you know, think it through following the guidance you've been given, but it's sensory qualities might be important ,to see what you, you know, describe, what you see, describe the, the qualities of the artifact. You may be, if you mention things in your application like books that you've read we may ask about that. So don't write don't write things that you haven't read, uh, because that doesn't look, uh, very good. Generally, we're just looking for your strengths. We want to see, we want to hear you at your best, and and see what that looks like. Yeah, I think that's probably the, that maybe is an upbeat way to end talking in, in general. Great, so I think that completes the, um, the first kind of introductory contextual kind of session, and we'll, we'll end here, and then we'll move on to the to the demonstration interview. Thank you. Hello, is this Amy? Yes, hi, nice to meet you. Hi, great, thank you very much for joining us. We can see and hear you, can I check that you can hear and see us? Yeah, all good on my end, thank you. Excellent, um, right well, um, thank you for your application. We're obviously very pleased to have the opportunity to interview you for Archaeology and Anthropology, or Arch and Anth, as we call it here. This is your first interview, um, and as you'll be aware you'll have another interview at a second college tomorrow. By way of introduction, I'm Dr Tim clack, I'm a tutor in Archaeology and Anthropology on the degree. I have research interests in culture, conflict and heritage, and and here also, um, in the interview is my colleague, Dr Neil Armstrong. He's an anthropologist and also a tutor on the degree. His interests are varied and include mental health and the organisation of mental health care. This afternoon's interview will last approximately 20-25 minutes, um, both Neil and I will ask you various questions and, and at the end, if there's time and, and completely unrelated to the assessment, you will have an opportunity to ask us a question or perhaps even, perhaps even, two. Now, just say a few things by way of kind of administration, um, I know it's very easy for for me to say, um, and probably much harder in practice but please try not to be nervous, be yourself. We've shortlisted you for interview because we want to, we want to hear from you, we want to, we want to learn more about you. Also please don't be put off if you see us look away, um, kind of eyes move away from the screen, or we start writing things down. We are actively listening, um, we just need to make notes as we're, as we're going along. Okay. Thank you Okay, uh, if you don't understand the question at any time, you'd like us to rephrase it, please ask us we'll we'll obviously do so. If there's an issue with the technology, please flag that to us, and we'll obviously take steps to to rectify but, you know, touchwood the intertubes will work, will work fine. And if that all makes sense and you're happy, um, we can begin, and I will hand over to, to Neil to ask the first batch of questions. Great, thank you. Hi Emmy. Hi. Nice to meet you. You too. Can I, can I just begin with with a kind of a very simple question? Why are you interested in studying Arch and Anth here with us at Oxford? When I first sort of started thinking about what I wanted to study at University going forward, um, I had a lot of different options from sort of History, English. I loved the humanities subjects at school, and I just knew that I wanted to do something that involved people, involved culture, and involved sort of marrying those two together to see how they work, both in the ancient past and, and the modern present. I hadn't really thought too much about either Anthropology or Archaeology, but when one of my teachers at school suggested it to me I thought that it was, you know, right up my street, did some more reading. I actually started, my first book was about mud larking, um, that I read, that I really enjoyed, and thought 'wow it's so amazing that you can learn so much about people through the objects in which they interact.' So that was my motivation. I could ask, I don't know that book 'mud larking,' could you tell me, tell me what that is? It's a book called Mud Larking' by Lara Maiklem - I think that's how you pronounce her last name - who, um, I think had a corporate job and then decided against it, decided that she wanted to know more about the past, more about London and she took the opportunity to visit various sites along the Thames, as the tide went down. And, um, as you can imagine when the tide went down various objects, of various dates and various, um, times came, came to the shore. She did this for about six or seven years preserving everything in her garage, I think it was, um, before she published this book. So what kind of stuff was she, sorry to interrupt, but I just wanted to ask what kind of stuff was she finding? There was, there was a few sort of pieces which she called treasure which I think she had to declare. Things like, um, old, like old Roman coins, or pieces of sort of gold in sort of a ring, or something like that. But more often than not there was like, clay pipes, or, um, bits of leather shoes, and there was also, um, some typewriting pieces, the typewriting sort of letter piece, which she was particularly interested in. Ah, okay, so what what can you learn from bits of leather or pieces of a typewriter? Well you could learn a lot about the people who lived in these various areas of the Thames, um, both sort of at a short-term sort of historical perspective and a long-term perspective. I think she found, forgive me if I can't remember the dates correctly, but I think she found a tooth of, I want to say a shark, but some sort of animal that had been in the bodies of the Thames, um, before the sort of city of London was even created which I think is just a really fascinating way of sort of extending these temporal landscapes through, sort of archaeology. But also with things like the shoes you could tell, I think, I think it was, um, somewhere in East London she found um, a really dense selection of leather shoes - both the soles or some that was like perfectly preserved, and so I think she gathered from that that this was an area of London that specialised in leather working or um cobbling. You know that sort of thing. So trying to find out these sort of areas of specification was really interesting as well. That sounds great. Tim do you want to take over? Yes, um, I'd like to, um, ask you about something else that you've mentioned on your, um, UCAS forms. Your kind of paperwork that you've submitted. So you you mentioned an interest in, in human evolution. What kind of areas do you find, do you find interesting? and have you followed this up with any independent research or reading? Well, um, I sort of take human evolution from sort of two standpoints. I think my interest in it was probably a social one. Like I, um, was really interested in symbolism and ritualism and that sort of period of time when, um, we started to engage with objects that meant more than just sort of survival, that were used for more than just, sort of, gathering food for, sort of, subsistence that were use to sort of display hierarchy, or ceremony. I think that's very interesting from, sort of like a social, evolutionary standpoint. But I was lucky enough to go on an excavation to South Africa where um we were looking at hunter-gatherer and Iron Age peoples and how they interacted from both a social and a sort of biological evolutionary standpoint. Particularly with regard to, sort of, where they lived, in what sort of groups they lived and how they organised themselves. And how the sort of arguably, arguably primitive, 'more primitive', in quotation marks, huntering, hunter-gatherer, forager people's interacted temporally with the sort of, arguably, more sophisticated or civilised Iron Age people So that's interesting, you've got issues there of kind of cultural contact, um, and, and so on. You also mentioned an interest in ethnography And I wonder if you could kind of pull some of that together? You're interested in human evolution ethnography and perhaps your field work in in South Africa, um, and and kind of speak to how, um, how ethnography is on kind of modern community, human communities today might help researchers, um, in human evolutionary kind of um time periods learn about the deep past. Yeah, um, well from sort of starting my research, from doing my research, one of the things that's really sort of strikes me as important is the sort of um determinism and necessity of research, sort of both ethnographic and archaeological, um, in dictating how people view the past and how people sort of use societies from sort of a very ancient perspective. So sort of from an ethnographical perspective you have sort of prejudices and biases of racism of colonialism that greatly sort of cloud the objectivity of, um, research and then from a sort of archaeological perspective you, have sort of biases of preservation and biases of confirmation as well that dictate the way in which you undertake your research. I think this is, strikes me as something that I don't believe should be happening, but in almost every situation does. And from some sort of modern ethnographic studies of societies in the present, um, which we did a little bit in South Africa, I think you can not only learn about the different social structures, different cultural structures that may have been occurring in the ancient, um, temporal landscape in which you're studying. But I think also the very act of engaging with modern ethnography helps you to break down those sort of walls, those biases and prejudices that sort of greatly cloud the sort of objectivity and accuracy of research. Great, thank you, you've actually answered my second question there. My second question was going to be in what ways is it potentially kind of ethically or kind of representatively problematic to use, um, to use ethnographies in that way, and you've covered off, you've covered off both so, um, so thank you for that that very full answer. The, the final thing for me linked to your, um, UCAS form is I know that you, um, are an avid, um, uh, chorister, um, and you, and you enjoy, you enjoy singing, um, I just wondered if you could put your anthropological hat on and tell us what's going on when people sing. Why might group singing be a kind of a attractive enterprise for people? What do people in societies get out of it? Sure, um, I've never really thought of singing, particularly choral singing, from sort of an anthropological perspective, um, but it very clearly is one that sort of needs unpacking, um, I've sort of done a lot of singing in sort of more pop, pop groups, sort of acapella wise, as well as some sort of choral stuff as well, um, which they're both obviously very different but they definitely share, um, social similarities of I guess sort of shared experience and shared sort of passion for something. I think music making in particular is arguably very like, like a very, very vulnerable thing, um, and it's something that is more than just objective, it's inherently subjective and when you share that with people and you create bonds of sort of community, culture and shared experience. From an anthropological perspective I think that's really, um, key in creating community in creating identity and, sort of, your aspect your sort of understanding of your own personhood. Great, thank you, thank you very much. Neil would you like to, um, ask, um, any further questions on the UCAS side? I, well I was going to move into the next, uh, section if that's all right Tim? So you've talked about ethnographic work in, in South Africa and you've also speculated, uh, a little bit also about choral singing, I'd like you to imagine that you're an ethnographer and you go to your school. Okay. To conduct an anthropological or, you know, ethnographically informed study of your school. Where might you begin, what, what might, what for example might be a research question or a research theme or a topic that might jump out as being something that an anthropologist could think about? Okay, um, I think because obviously the school is my school I would have to be quite careful in not sort of prejudicing the ways that I approach this, because obviously I'd have my own friends, I'd have my own community in which I would interact with. I think I would have to make sure that um all aspects of school life were covered so, um, the people who really like academics, the people who really like music, the people who really like sport. And actually from that it might be interesting ethnographically to see if there's any overlap between these sort of three, let's call them distinct parts, sort of, school life, I guess. Let's call them academic, artistic and sport. Okay, okay. I think, often speaking to my peers at my school, these seem to be, um, distinct categories but in actuality I don't believe that to be the case. I would like to work out ethnographically how far these discrete groups inform identity, or whether they are, um, sort of more dynamic than they can be be seen. Interesting, so, so are you thinking that there might be kind of groups of students, some of whom are drawn more to academic things some more to sports some more to arts? Well I think that's the generally perceived notion of people. Almost that there are tribes almost that there were in, in the kind of inverted commas? Yeah, exactly. So how would you how do you go about, if you're an anthropologist, how would you go about investigating this? I think the easiest approach for myself as a student would be to integrate, and to sort of, um, explore my experience of, this is a sort of situation in which I deal with. But I would also undertake interviews perhaps in both groups and individual settings to see how much these factors influence each other. You know these sound like, kind of, very good techniques to employ, but, but I wondered, you know at the beginning you were saying to me you were worried that you already have friends at school and so that might lead to kind of bias and you had spoken before about worries about biases that might come from you know the colonial past or, or, you know, an unwanted, uh, uh, kind of moral inheritances and so on, but to me it sounds like this, this might be an opportunity though at school. Wouldn't it be helpful to have an in with people? Wouldn't it be quite handy in a way to know people already, to have relationships with people, is that really a problem? I guess it depends on sort of the knowledge that you want to gain from it. The conclusions that I would draw from, say, an interview, um, with my peers of people I already know could be really interesting and could be in depth because there's already that rapport there, there's already that sort of connection. However, um, there may be aspects of my sort of relationships, my sort of social standing, my grouping within this school environment that could harm my sort of objectivity. Just thinking again, I think perhaps maybe like a survey of, like an anonymous survey, um, might be a better way of gaining objectivity. But I guess... I just wanted to pause, you not because you're not speaking very fluently, but because I don't think I know what you mean by objectivity here. Okay. I mean, are you, because it seems to me that if, if people who you really know and who trust you and you have a kind of history of friendship, if they're going to be more honest and more open because of those sorts of feelings, even if they wouldn't be to me if I, if I turned up, you know I don't know these people, I'm obviously way older and I'm like, you know, this kind of middle-aged dinosaur walking down the corridors, people are going to respond differently to me definitely. They're not going to say the same things, but in a way I'm more interested in what they would say to you, I mean aren't people going to be more open, a little bit more candid, a bit more revealing? I guess objectivity in this sense is how people, I would say it's how people truly feel. Excuse me. Like authentically, um, without any sort of barriers in terms of social, any sort of social barriers. Okay. So I think potentially with people who I have a good social rapport with they could be particularly honest they could be particularly open, um, and authentic. But say for example that I associate with the arts group. Yeah. My interpretation of the arts group would probably be much more well informed than that of the sport, or that of the academic group because I don't have as many sort of associations with those groups, and therefore comparing those three groups, which is of course the sort of purpose of my study would be much more difficult. I wonder if people really do though have a kind of single authentic version of themselves, you know, and it strikes me that say the way that I might speak to, let's just say, um, my doctor, my mother and my wife, do you know they all get slightly different versions of me and I don't think any of them are necessarily false. They're all in a way, you know, kind of relatively sincere, relatively open, but they're all slightly different as well. Do you, I mean, can we really say that there's a kind of authentic, you know, Amy who's who's kind of lurking within, who if only you spoke to the right person that will be the the full version of you? Yeah, I think it's true that, um, it's a it's sort of not correct that there is one identity, there is one personhood, um, because of the sort of temporal, spatial cultural, political, economic differences that we're exposed to. I guess it's sort of obvious that your reality is at any given point in time, would be very different. I guess that could be the aim of the study, would be to evidence cross sort of, I was going to say cross-cultural, cultural. Yeah, yeah. You know, sort of evidence similarity between what people perceive to be distinct groups. That's interesting, so in a way you would build into the study the fact that you get on very well with let's say the art students, but but the kind of the sports people, the jocks, I don't know, uh, maybe they don't open up to you. And in a sense, it's not so much you're looking for an objective account, but you're recognising that your different relationships are part of the data. Yeah, um, and so maybe that would involve me taking an introspective look at me as the sort of ethnographer, um, and then understanding how my relationship and my identity, um, interacts in different ways with people who are perceived to be in different groups. Yeah. What a wonderful sentence, thanks Amy. I'll hand you back to Tim. Okay, so, so now for something a little bit different, I'm going to share a screen. So this is, um, a, a photograph and there's a kind of newspaper headline from the, um, from the time and this relates to one of the the football stadia, or stadiums, in Qatar from the FIFA World Cup, um, last year, so in in 2022. And, and, and football of course is a game that probably has more global reach, um, than probably any other, any other sport. Before I ask you some questions about this, I want to make it absolutely clear, um, that you're not expected to have seen this newspaper report, you're not expected to have seen, uh, this image before, you're not expected to be a fan of football or be knowledgeable about football. We're just using this as a kind of vehicle to kind of pick your, pick your brains a little bit. So, so the newspaper headline went with this, with this image, um, was 'where sport and and culture meet'. What do you think is being, is being kind of captured there? What, what is the the report or the journalist trying to, um, trying to kind of get across with that headline, linked with that, linked with that image? Immediately from the image I can see lots of people in the, in the bottom of the image, um, wearing clothes of bright colours and some of them holding flags. I think, I guess depicting either countries or by football teams, as this is the World Cup. Obviously this is a stadium, it's where sport, particularly football, is, um, played and that's sort of a huge, a huge thing. Particularly as it's the World Cup, it's very famous. But having, um, so many people in the bottom sort of shows the sort of difference in identity from, sort of, a cultural, a cultural standpoint. I guess culture in this sense, I mean it has sort of a myriad of different meanings, but culture in this sense would be people's, um, identity as part of their team, as part of their country, um, within sport. So it's sort of the idiosyncrasities of One's own, um, identity with their country, and therefore their football team, and also with the sport of football. Great, thank you. And, um, I think that's all, um, very relevant. What about the architecture, the kind of material culture that's on, that's on display, is, is there anything kind of being, kind of resonated there and kind of linked to that question - why would the communication of culture and national identity be important to the host nation Qatar, in this case? Okay, um so the first question was about the sort of physical materiality of the stadium? Yeah. Well instinctively the stadium is very grand, it's, I'm not sure whether this is because I know it from reading the news, but I know that it's purpose built and there's quite a lot of contention around the way that it was built, um, the sort of human rights of the people who built it. And so I know that it's a contentious building, however looking, sort of putting the contention to the side for a little bit, it's a hugely grand building. Like even the perspective of the lamp, the street lights, the trees, the people, even what seems to be a large building in the bottom left, it's, it's huge. It's grand and it's very imposing, it's also not got any windows or any sort of way in to, to look into the building, certainly not from this perspective. I guess that also makes it seem a little bit more imposing, um, and sort of, I guess, raises sport, um, particularly football onto a pedestal of, you know, you need tickets to get in, um, it's a really important event where certain countries are allowed in. You know it's sort of, I guess what I'm trying to say is it politicises the game of football, because it's such an imposing structure materially. Right, and that's great. And then the second question was about why Qatar would be kind of keen to project its own cultural and national identity through, um, through such media. Well I think hosting these big events, like the Olympics, the Paralympics, the Commonwealth games, um, the World Cup, is a really sort of important chance for a country to, to economically and politically ameliorate themselves. The sort of opportunity to host this event would, um sort of allow lots of people lots of tourists to come to the country um, where it sort of may have not been as densely populated by tourists before, it's also sort of a great way of showing economic, sort of, success and prowess within, sort of, the global scale within, sort of, like the powerhouses of economic growth. I think it's an important opportunity for them to be perceived as powerful to both the government's the press and to citizens as well. Great, thank you. I'd like to, if we had more time I'd ask you questions about about notions of of power and projection and, um, and, and political identities and so on, but we haven't got time for that, but I do have, um, another slide to show you. Hopefully you can see that? Yeah. And, um, so the the kind of, um, the words there, the words there well, many thousands of Moroccan fans travelled to Qatar to cheer on the Atlas Lions, um, who did particularly well in the tournament. Other supporters did the journey in reverse, and they travelled from all over the world to Morocco to, to watch the football match kind of televised, televised from there. Why do you think that kind of reverse process was also was, was also happening? So the photo in the top left is the Moroccan fans in the stadium in Qatar? That's right. And the one at the bottom is, is fans in Morocco? That's right yeah. I guess sort of instinctively, you would travel, if you, if you support Morocco, um, there is sort of an underlying feeling that you would in some way identify with Morocco, with the Moroccan identity, whether that's sort of, um, through blood, through being related to people who are Moroccan, being Moroccan yourself, um, or particularly identifying with the culture, with your experiences of Morocco. It's highly unlikely that you would support a team so much and you would travel to the country if you had no links to it culturally, politically, economically, etc, um, but I think here we see perhaps an economic difference, um, in that people who can afford to go to Qatar to see the World Cup would, would do, but that people who who couldn't sort of would stay at home, or would travel to Morocco if it was potentially closer. But I guess more pressingly is the sort of cultural point of identity and association of identity with not only the people and the customs of Morocco, but also I guess the sort of physical environment, the sort of, everything, the idiosyncrasties of the temperature, the sort of topography, the landscape, the just sort of even the general feel, um, is such a huge part of identity. And football is so powerful, it's so popular, um, and sort of, um, expressing your identity with Morocco is probably easier and more, more sort of pertinent if you are in the place itself with people who are feeling the same. Great, thank you. Just one, one final question, um, linked to this, and it's a word you used earlier. You mentioned kind of ritual in relation to, um, kind of various, um, kind of live.. parts of the lived experience. I just wanted to ask what is ritual, and what can you, what might be going on in some of these pictures? You say, oh there's, there's something ritualistic happening there as well. Yeah. I would say that ritual, ritualistic activity or ritualistic material culture is something that extends beyond the need of just survival. So it's something that serves a purpose beyond the sort of functional uses that you need to survive in the world. And this sort of, I think, the outputs of this sort of extended materiality would be a sort of a ceremonial aspect, um, which involves sort of faith, non-religious and religious faith. It would be sort of identity who you see yourself as, who you perceive yourself as, And sort of within these two things you have the sort of material culture that enables you to sort of project these things, to show these things, to believe these things. In, um, these pictures the sort of instinctive, the first thing that jumps out of me is the colours that particularly come from the flags. I think the flag is such a symbol of national identity, um, it's something that regardless of who you know, where you come from, you can identify with it, you can associate with it, and particularly in this sort of, in this context. With sport it's the colours that your team are wearing. It's how you show who you are, not just to yourself, but to other people. And that sort of flag is, and then the colours themselves, it's sort of a way of identifying who you are to, sort of, other people as well as to yourself, of saying 'I am supporting the Moroccan football team, I'm wearing their colours, I'm holding their flag, this is who I am'. Great, thank you. I'm going to stop you there, um, not because this isn't fascinating, just because we're, we're now running out of, running out of time, but, but I particularly like your point about faith. I haven't considered that before, but obviously you know, it's a faith-based enterprise isn't it, supporting, supporting football teams, so, um, yeah so, so thank you for that. I'm now going to stop, um, stop sharing these slides. Can you, let me know when that's gone? Yeah. Great, so um we've kind of reached the end of our um allotted time, so thank you very much for sharing your, your kind of thoughts and responses with us. You've obviously, we've heard from you, you may want to kind of hear something something from us, so um we've got time for, for one question if you do have a question, for either kind of Neil, Neil or myself. Yeah, um, I obviously have sort of undertaken fieldwork myself, but is this, is that sort of, um, a sort of a necessity and a degree, do you get examined on your field work? Neil, do you want to take that one or? No, as an as an applicant you don't need to have done any field work at all. We will, we will, go with what, what you've what you kind of tell us really, so um, I think we'll be disappointed if there weren't signs of enthusiasm, signs of interest, so perhaps we would we would be a little bit disappointed if if there was, you know, you for example if, if I, if I asked somebody, you know, have you read anything by an anthropologist, have you read an article, have you read a book, have you seen the documentary film? If the answer is no to all of those things, I might feel well I don't have evidence that you're really interested in anthropology, but you don't need to have gone on you know trips, you don't need to have of, um, yeah, any, nothing like that is, is required at all. Yeah, I think we're really interested in genuine enthusiasm, um, and you know that can be, um, you know that can be evidenced simply from reflecting on, on documentary films. That doesn't require, you know, special activities. Great, thanks. Great, so that brings us, um, to the end of our allotted time. Amy, thank you very much for um for speaking with us, um, you know where you're going for your next interview tomorrow, so at this point we will, we will terminate the call, um, but thank you again. Thank you very much. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. That was the the end of the demonstration interview. If we were doing this in kind of real life what would happen now is the interviewers, um, would have a discussion amongst themselves, they would compare notes, and they would make a kind of overall assessment as to the, um, the candidates kind of takeability, um, to, to coin a phrase. We're not going to do that now, obviously, what we're going to do here instead is have a discussion between the interviewers and the interviewee. Again, in kind of real life, the interview, the interview, um, kind of candidate doesn't get to engage with the interviewers again at any point in the, in the process but, but I think in the kind of context of this session it'll be useful to hear, to hear from Amy, Amy as well. But from my perspective, um, I was impressed with that as a, as an interview. There were elements that were inevitably stronger than, um, than others. There was an impressive range of knowledge kind of demonstrated. We covered a real diversity of ground on, both the archaeological and anthropological sides. Amy responded well to a number of questions, um, some of which she's likely never kind of thought about before, um, and I think I would characterise her, her answers as generally being kind of considered and and thoughtful. I thought the, um, the elements on, um, use of ethnography in human evolution, um, the the kind of music and singing the tribes in schools, um, the architecture and kind of theatre performance of identity and, um, uh, the kind of extended materiality of, of rituals in that kind of FIFA World Cup example, I thought those were the were, the were, the highlights. I'm just kind of going through that list, kind of demonstrates the kind of breadth of, um, breadth of the conversation, which is, um, which is, which is, positive. Lots of - I've just made some other notes here - lots of relevant ideas, lots of insights to, to share. At times we had to cut the conversation down, just simply so we could move on to the next element but there was, you know, clearly lots we could have discussed at, kind of greater, greater depth, so, you know, as, as an interview, um, you know, a demonstration interview, a little bit artificial, but as an interview, that was a, um, that was that was pretty decent. Well done Amy. Any feedback points from Neil? Yeah, look I'm, I agree with all of that. I'm, I'm, happy to you know you've got a place, uh, Amy, um, I thought that the, yeah, I found you kind of fluent and articulate throughout. We threw all sorts of different kinds of questions, so this is not easy to respond to all this kind of thing, um, I felt, I felt slightly sorry that we hadn't put you at ease. I thought you look more nervous at the beginning than I would normally would hope for in an interview, that, a real interview that I was running. I thought the thing I liked best was when, so you know I pushed you a little bit about objectivity and so on? Yeah. And what I liked was the fact that you sort of shifted your position, so, so that as I pushed you, you didn't - it would have been fine to defend but then I would have wanted a new argument, or something stronger than what you were saying, but instead you, you were thinking on your feet and you kind of made an adjustment and said, well maybe a kind of objectivity is slightly a red herring, maybe what we need to do is just think about that kind of inter-subjective kind of changeability of things, and build that into the study. And I thought that's great that's, you know, we we like it when people can kind of think on their feet and, and can kind of make those sorts of adjustments, so for me that was the, um, the thing that I, you know, I kind of rated most highly, or was like a highlight. Yeah and actually I also, um, I, I was, I knew that you were saying interesting stuff on, for Tim's questions because, I wanted to leap in. And I obviously, I didn't, I couldn't, but that's always a kind of good sign, so yeah that was, that was great. Do you have anything to say to us, comments or... Yeah um I mean speaking, sort of looking back on on my interview, um, it's always surprising I think how fast it goes, um, sort of just even like the breadth of things you talk about tend to go very fast. I'm not sure whether that's because it's nerve-wracking or because I'm excited about it, but it's interesting that you mentioned also the sort of changing directions with the ethnography question because in my real interview, and even now, I think that was something that I probably instinctively wouldn't do. I think it's something that I definitely have to force myself to do, similarly I think one of my sort of top tips for people who are interviewing is that, take those conscious pause. Like just stop and actually think for two seconds, because it makes no difference to the people who, um, are interviewing you but just having that time to actually think about formulating like a proper answer that you actually believe, um, makes the world of difference. Also I think it's a good point just to say that I hadn't actually done any, any field work when I did my actual interview, so that's certainly not, not a necessity. And someone told me before I did my interview that, um, like the thing that I held on to was the interviewer really wants you to succeed, and by the time you get to interview you're almost sort of certainly academically proficient enough to have a place. It's just about sort of knowing whether your tutors would like to spend three years teaching you. I think that's sort of a helpful thing as an applicant to hold on to, that it's about being yourself and it's about, sort, of being passionate for your subject. That's much more important than sort of answering things sort of accurately. Right, I mean hopefully you felt all the questions were kind of fair and answerable given your kind of UCAS materials that you submitted and broader knowledge, there was nothing there that you couldn't have answered without having, you know, deep understandings of Arch and Anth was there? No there were, those were certainly, sort of, similar questions to, um, what I had in my actual interview. I probably, in my actual interview, I was, the questions I was probably like 'oh I haven't really encountered this I'm gonna have to think a bit more'. Having done the course for like almost two years like, kind of like, as soon as you say a buzzword I sort of know where to go with it, so for people who are interviewing, don't be stressed if you have absolutely no idea what the question is, just sort of directing it in some way is fine. Great, thank you for that Amy. And that's really, really good context and advice, actually so, um, so it's, so brilliant. I think at that point we'll kind of bring this reflection session to, uh, to a close. Hopefully the demonstration interview has been helpful, um, give you a sense of what we look for, um, in an application. I'd also make the point and Neil will completely agree with me I'm sure, um, but remember getting shortlisted for an interview in itself demonstrates that you're an excellent student. It demonstrates you've got huge potential for, for higher studies whether that is at Oxford or, or elsewhere so, so you know keep that in mind throughout the process. Being shortlisted is, is a real indicator of, of potential. What we're doing, the challenge for, for interviewers like Neil and myself, what we're doing is we're having to through the interview user selection criteria, you know the we went through, um, and then use that to to select from the shortlisted candidates, you know those who are best suited to the degree, and those that are best suited to being taught in the tutor, in the tutorial system. And there are limitations in play as well, each college has a limited number of places, kind of available. So, you know, that, that needs to be kind of bourne in mind as well. But at that point, um, just to finalise by saying, hope the demonstration interview, um, and this context is helpful. We'll conclude, and, and we look forward to your to your application. Thank you. Thank you.