OxTalks will soon move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events.' There will be a need for an OxTalks freeze. This was previously planned for Friday 14th November – a new date will be shared as soon as it is available (full details will be available on the Staff Gateway).
In the meantime, the OxTalks site will remain active and events will continue to be published.
If staff have any questions about the Oxford Events launch, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
This paper explores how the normative values which govern the mainstream undergraduate admissions process at Oxford are impacted by the introduction of the Astrophoria Foundation Year (AFY). The AFY offers a route for students from disadvantaged backgrounds to access undergraduate study at Oxford with lower grades than normally required, challenging some internal narratives concerning merit and fairness. The project explores how the meaning of the AFY is constructed by admissions stakeholders and how this inflects their actions towards it: how narratives of permeation or compartmentalisation are deployed, how actors various support, oppose, accommodate and co-opt the AFY, and the impacts these actions have on both the AFY and the mainstream admissions process itself.
