2025-2026 Outreach Activities
Our Outreach Team started early during 2025. While our colleagues were still digging archaeological trenches and making the most of their last precious drops of summer research time, we greeted the start of the school year by welcoming 100 pupils aged 7-9 from Wolvercote Primary School into the Ioannou Centre. In partnership with the Highgate Roman Kiln Project we introduced an engaged young audience to the world of Roman pottery before helping them to create their very own Roman drinking vessels, modelled on finds from Roman London.
The year also saw another set of Classics Outreach Competitions. Our creative writing competition drew 124 entries across all three age categories. Our winners produced short stories based on three artefacts from the ancient world chosen by staff at the Ashmolean Museum. Their prize was a trip to Oxford for an object handling session, led by Dr Alison Pollard. We also ran an artistic competition: Make Your Own Classical Meme. We were impressed by the originality of the entries, and the nuance of the Classical knowledge that allowed our young winners to make us chuckle at their humorous creations.
2025-2026 was another great year for our Classical Conversations programme. This initiative, which began during the lockdowns and aimed at Zoom-ing an Oxford academic into classrooms throughout the UK, has since expanded to embrace in-person visits, and has allowed pupils up and down the country to enjoy at first-hand the fruits of the cutting-edge research our academics are producing in the texts and subjects of today's school syllabi.
Taking that exercise a step further, the Faculty of Classics continues to collaborate on the Oxford Teachers Day with The Classical Association (via Dr Tristan Franklinos). For the 2026 iteration, we focused our attentions on the new A Level Latin syllabus. Teachers who signed up for this CPD enjoyed talks from our academics on recent development in scholarship surrounding the texts recently added to the syllabus. Our grateful thanks to Prof Matthew Leigh, Prof Simon Malloch, Dr Gail Trimble, Dr Barnaby Taylor and Dr Andrew Sillett for their talks. As part of our partnership with Classics for All we also welcomed Charlie Andrew from Maximum Classics, who shared her perspective on how to secure Classics teaching in feeder primary schools.
Finally, the Outreach Team would like to highlight the magnificent work carried out by Dr Emma Searle and Elena Vacca in the OxLat scheme. Once again, Emma and Elena took a group of pupils from local state schools through a Latin GCSE over two years of Saturday morning classes in the Ioannou Centre. The majority of our 32 pupils achieved grades in the 7-9 category (equivalent to A-A* in pre-2017 scales).
