Widening Access (ED&I)

We are continually working to improve access to our discipline. One such initiative is our collaboration with IntoUniversity which supports young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to attain either a university place or another chosen aspiration. Together we offer a programme of archaeological events for high school students from schools in Hackney, London and Blackbird Leys in Oxford.

We also work with several local state schools in Oxfordshire. We attend their careers fairs, we give extra-curricular talks about archaeology and how to apply to study at Oxford and, we run practical workshops on archaeological artefacts.

We run our UNIQ summer schools each July. UNIQ is a free programme for state-educated students from all over the UK who are in their first year of further education, have good grades and are from diverse backgrounds. Its aim is to help them make successful applications to the University of Oxford.

We also offer UNIQ + Graduate Research Internships. These are aimed at talented undergraduates from under-represented groups, who would find continuing into postgraduate study a challenge for reasons other than their academic ability. Click here to read more about this scheme from some of our UNIQ+ interns who have experienced it. 

Our researchers are coming up with new and creative ways to share their research with new audiences. The Ebb & Flow project team produced several research based art installations near rivers, culminating in an art exhibit and public talks in the gardens of Wolfson College. We have also collaborated with several local businesses in the city of Oxford, testing exciting new ways to entice new visitors to encounter our researchers in unexpected contexts. 

We try to attend and represent the School and archaeology at as many events as our schedules permit. These include the Volcano Day with our Tephrochronology team at the Natural History Museum in London and the annual London Anthropology Day and, University Archaeology Day both held at the British Museum, London. 

If you have an event which you would like us to consider, please get in touch with our Outreach Manager at news@arch.ox.ac.uk