Usually over the Easter break our Outreach and Admissions staff are on the road with some of our tutors and students, visiting schools and colleges, talking about studying at Oxford, and giving tasters of the subjects we offer. 

We can’t do that just now, so we have started here a series of articles, linked by the common theme of social isolation, to give you an introduction to our subjects and the tutors who teach them. We hope that those of you who are prospective students will enjoy dipping into university study, and that these articles will whet your appetite to learn more.

We also hope that our alumni will enjoy reading about our research, and that you will be reminded of the subjects you used to enjoy.

And for our tutors and students, we are sorry we won’t be in College next term learning and doing research together, so while we are dispersed and teaching and studying remotely, we hope these articles will make our isolation a little bit more social, and remind us of the Mansfield academic community. 

We are adding new voices to this conversation every day or two. If you enjoy them, let us know on Twitter, and pass them on to anyone you know who might enjoy them too.  

The conversation so far:

Our English Literature tutors contributed articles on Medieval anchoresses, Oscar Wilde’s experience of forced solitary confinement, Daniel Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Fears in Solitude and Thomas Nashe as ‘plague’s prisoner’.

Our Physics & Materials tutors have contributed pieces on the magnetic properties of isolated atoms, Solitary Neutrinos and the socialising qubits in quantum computing. 

Watch this page for Maths making waves, earth-shaking Engineering, and more subjects to come … 

See the Mansfield College or Mansfield Access Twitter pages for regular updates about how Mansfield life is adapting during this time.  Find out more about the work we do on our Schools and Colleges Liaison page.

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