New videos for sixth-form students offer a window into the diversity of research interests at Oxford University, as the Springboard project goes live.
The Springboard super-curricular video project is an initiative by Balliol, Hertford and Wadham Colleges to support sixth-form students during the pandemic, because many are missing out on vital university visits, lectures and academic workshops.
In the videos, intended for school pupils in Years 11, 12 and 13, Oxford graduate students (including Balliol students) share their research in a range of areas, from climate change and colonialism to microbiomes and machine learning. Each video offers an introduction to a topic, plus activities and further resources to explore, aiming to be the first step in the viewer’s own exploration of academic ideas outside the classroom.
The first Springboard videos have now been released and more will be added in the coming months. You can watch the Springboard videos here.
Anyone can watch the videos, and we hope that Balliol people will share them with others who might be interested.
The Springboard project is one of the ways in which Balliol, Hertford are working together as the Oxford for East England consortium to support schools and students from the East of England region.
To date, the Balliol students whose videos are available are:
- Ellen Baker (DPhil Environmental Research): ‘Why are flowers so important for bees?’
- Hollie Booth (DPhil Zoology): ‘Saving sharks: what, why & how?’
- Sian Wilcox (DPhil Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics): ‘Sleep tight: the science of sleeping’
- Charlotte Kelly (DPhil Socio-Legal Studies): ‘The law about teenage kissing’
- Kate Reed (MPhil Economic and Social History): ‘Introducing oral history’
- Sam Shepherd (DPhil Mathematics): ‘Serious about symmetries’
- Petros Spanou (DPhil History): ‘Cartoons of the Crimean War’
- Rhea Stark (MPhil Islamic Art and Archaelogy): ‘Talking trash: our rubbish as history’