Daily schedule
After registration on Sunday afternoon, we invite you to a welcome meeting in the Amersi Lecture Theatre in New Quad, where you will meet your tutors. Join us in Deer Park afterwards for our opening drinks reception, followed by dinner in Brasenose’s historic dining hall (informal dress).
Seminars take place on weekday mornings. Most afternoons are free, allowing you time to explore Oxford, enjoy a variety of optional social events (see details below), or to sit back and relax in one of the college's atmospheric quads.
Your course culminates on Friday evening with a closing drinks reception and gala farewell dinner at which Certificates of Attendance are awarded. For this special occasion smart dress is encouraged (no requirement to wear dinner suits or gowns).
Social programme
We warmly invite all Inspiring Oxford students to take part in our optional social programme, with all events provided at no additional cost. Events are likely to include:
- Croquet on the quad
- Chauffeured punting from Magdalen Bridge
- Expert-led walking tours of Oxford
- Optional visit to an Oxford Library or the Ashmolean Museum
- River Thames afternoon cruise
- Quiz night in the college bar
- Scottish country dance evening (where you do the dancing!)
Seminars
Monday
Law Meets Technology: Setting the Stage
We begin by asking a deceptively simple question: Is technology truly exceptional? From printing presses to AI, societies have repeatedly confronted new tools that disrupt assumptions about autonomy, conduct, and governance. Today we explore whether recent innovations, such as platforms, algorithms and borderless networks, pose fundamentally different challenges, or whether they simply revive age-old tensions in new forms.
Our day closes with a deep dive into 'the Internet problem': a global, decentralised medium that defies traditional notions of jurisdiction, enforcement and accountability.
Tuesday
The Rise of Big Tech and the Challenge to the State
As the digital world expanded, a handful of private companies came to occupy roles once reserved for nation-states: arbiters of speech, custodians of identity, and architects of critical infrastructure. Today you will examine how and why firms like Meta, Google and Amazon have amassed such influence, and what this means for democratic governance.
You will compare regulatory responses across jurisdictions, from the EU’s muscular interventions to laissez-faire approaches elsewhere, while unpacking the political economy of 'surveillance capitalism', where personal data has eclipsed oil as the world’s most lucrative resource.
Wednesday
Moderating the Digital Public Sphere
On Wednesday, the course turns to the contested terrain of content moderation. Who decides what stays online and what must be removed – and under what authority? We will examine the complex interplay of human moderators, automated systems and institutional guidelines that shape online discourse. Ethical and legal questions of responsibility, harm and transparency animate the day, along with an examination of misinformation ecosystems and the rise of fact-checking networks.
Through case studies, we invite you to confront how difficult it is to define 'harm' in a multicultural, digital environment.
Thursday
Digital Rights in the 21st Century
If the internet has become a vital venue for exercising fundamental rights, from expression and assembly to education and healthcare, how should those rights be protected? Today we explore emerging digital rights frameworks, weighing the demands of free expression against the imperatives of safety and equity. You will grapple with complex debates around privacy, data control, and the 'right to be forgotten', asking whether individuals can meaningfully shape their online identities in an era of pervasive surveillance and algorithmic profiling.
Friday
Reimagining Sovereignty in a Digital World
The week culminates in a collaborative seminar on digital sovereignty. As states, corporations and communities vie for control over data, infrastructure and digital identities, traditional notions of territorial authority are being rewritten. You will compare national strategies from TikTok bans to data-localisation regimes, and explore grassroots movements seeking to decentralise power altogether. Through geopolitical and normative lenses, the seminar challenges you to envision what sovereignty might look like in a world where borders blur and platforms transcend them.
