Queen's Now

Viewing archives for Student

In Hilary and Trinity terms of 2025, the second-year students in German worked on a collaborative translation of Hedwig Dohm’s novella Werde, die du bist! (1895), edited by their tutor Marie Martine.

It was published as a bilingual edition by the Taylor Editions as part of its Writers in Residence series. More information on the Taylor Editions and the translation. We asked them about the process.

Questions for Marie

What drew you to this particular nineteenth-century text?

I discovered this text during my DPhil on women’s writing at the end of the nineteenth century in Germany, France, and Norway. Hedwig Dohm (1831-1919) is a fascinating figure: despite having received a limited education, she actively participated in Berlin’s intellectual circles and eventually established herself as a prominent essayist. Her feminist essays respond to contemporary misogynistic discourses that argued that women cannot participate in the public sphere without putting themselves and society in danger.

This text is interesting not only for its political resonance but also for its poetic quality.

Her fiction adopts a more pessimistic stance, describing the constrained lives of contemporary women struggling to liberate themselves from social expectations. Her novella Werde, die du bist! (which we translated as ‘The Woman You Become’) was published in 1895 and tells the story of Agnes Schmidt, a widow who tries to find herself after a life of sacrifice as a wife and mother. This text is interesting not only for its political resonance but also for its poetic quality. Agnes writes about her connection to the natural world and her existential interrogations in a beautiful and sometimes complex prose. Dohm’s fictional writing has only been recently rediscovered by feminist scholars, but it has its place among other canonical nineteenth-century texts. It was an honour to edit a collaborative translation of this text aiming to give it a contemporary resonance and to make it accessible to English-speaking readers.

What’s unique about translating literature in a collaborative environment?

Translation is often perceived as a solitary activity, especially within the university context where students typically complete their assignments independently and are assessed through individual exams. But translation can also be a dialogue: a dialogue across time between a writer and a translator, a dialogue across cultures and languages, and it can also be a dialogue among translators. Collaboration sparks creativity: when a student was stuck on a sentence, a paragraph, they could always count on the discussions in class to come up with creative solutions together. Collaboration can also carry a political dimension: as we worked together to convey Dohm’s political message, we reflected on what it means to collaborate on a translation. At times, our discussions flowed smoothly; at others, they became more animated, as students passionately defended their interpretations. Yet the shared goal remained consistent: to reach a compromise that reflected the collective voice of the group and do justice to Dohm’s own feminist project.

Collaboration sparks creativity.

Were there moments where the students’ perspectives changed the way you saw the text?

Translating this text with a group of four brilliant students reminded me, again and again, of the poetic quality of this text. In my research, I mostly focus on Dohm’s political message and her dialogue with contemporary discourses on womanhood. But witnessing how the students tried to convey the fluidity and the beauty of Dohm’s descriptions was a reminder of Dohm’s unique style and how she plays with language to convey her message. We hope to have conveyed the evocative power of Dohm’s style through our creative translation.

Questions for the student translators

What does it mean to have the work published in the Taylor Editions Writers in Residence series and go into the Queen’s College library?

Emily Dicker: When I first applied to Oxford, I would never have dreamed that I’d be a published author by the end of second year! It’s been amazing to work on this project over the last two terms and see how translation, which is often seen to be a somewhat mechanical exercise confined to the classroom, can be brought to life in an extremely creative process with very concrete results. We’re very lucky that the Taylor Editions’ Writers in Residence series makes this possible and, although I still can’t quite get my head around it, it’s going to be so exciting to see our names among the authors we study in the Queen’s library!

When I first applied to Oxford, I would never have dreamed that I’d be a published author by the end of second year!

How do you hope readers, or future students, will engage with this edition?

Emily Dicker: Predominantly, I hope it will serve as a huge source of inspiration for the fun which can be had by doing a Modern Languages degree at Oxford. But I also think it’s amazing to have a bilingual copy of this incredible text so that it becomes more accessible to all readers, and not only those who understand German. It would be amazing if, as a result, readers gained a new favourite book which would otherwise have been inaccessible to them or even if, upon reading the German and English in parallel, they were inspired to learn a bit of the language for themselves.

I hope it will serve as a huge source of inspiration for the fun which can be had by doing a Modern Languages degree at Oxford.

What did you learn from the translation process?

Lia Neill: The process of trying to translate an entire short story – rather than the shorter excerpts which we usually translate in classes or exams – raised lots of different challenges. It was interesting to keep track of repeated descriptions and motifs across the text, and think about how we wanted to translate these in each instance – could we use the same word to mimic the repetition of the original, or did it make more sense to adapt our previous translation to the new context? The editing process was also an exciting new opportunity – I really enjoyed reading back our previous work, reflecting on the decisions we made and scrutinising our translation to see how it could be improved, both as a standalone piece of English prose and in relation to Dohm’s original German.

What was it like working so closely with one another, and with your lecturer, on a creative academic project?

Lia Neill: Collaborating on a translation has been a really rewarding experience. It was great to hear what everyone else had been working on each week and come up with creative solutions together – I can’t imagine completing a literary translation without this group support! The opportunity to work more collaboratively has definitely brought us closer as a cohort, on an academic as well as a personal level – I feel like I now have a stronger awareness of each of our individual “voices” as writers and translators. It was really nice to read the final short story as a whole and see where each of our voices come through, and to remember the various discussions and (sometimes heated) debates we had along the way!

copies of the book 'The Woman You Become' piled up on a table in the foyer of the Shulman Auditorium. The Drawda garden is visible through the window.

We asked Sam Troy, current President of the Lobel Society to tell us about the Society.

What is the Lobel Society?

The College Classics Society, but not only that: Classics at Oxford is known as ‘literae humaniores’, which literally means ‘more human literature’, so this broader sense of Classics is of interest to other subjects as well. The audience regularly features students of Asian and Middle Eastern studies, theologians, philosophers, and more. The aim is to break a little out of the trammels of curricula and to bring some ‘studium’ (Latin for eagerness, devotion) to our studies of the Classical World!

What sort of lectures do you have?

There’s a huge variety. Only this term we’ve had lectures on everything from Christopher Metcalf’s A new myth of Ancient Kingship, to Nell Mulhern Barnes’ Prudentius’ Warrior Women, with a time range of roughly 2,500 years. A thread that usually runs through the lecturers is that they have some connection to Queen’s, which has a very strong tradition of fostering young scholars: Matthew Nicholls, for instance, a current Fellow at St John’s, is a former Queen’s Junior Research Fellow, and gave a fascinating lecture on the architecture of Roman Libraries.

The audience is diverse as well: at the last lecture, Robin Lane Fox was sat in the audience next to a first-year undergraduate! (Robin Lane Fox, for context, is a retired Ancient History fellow from New College who taught my mother when she was studying at Oxford in the 1980s, so I couldn’t quite believe it when he came along). We’re particularly proud of how varied our audiences are. 

What is the most interesting thing you’ve learned at the Lobel Society?

There’s been so much. The most fascinating thing has probably been seeing a photo of a marble sign from a Roman Library in a talk by Matthew Nicholls, with opening hours and their no-lending policy. It also mentioned that the librarians were bound by oath to keep to these rules, so you couldn’t bribe them to let a book be taken home with you.

What would you say to anyone considering applying to study Classics at Oxford?

My first reply would be, ‘Do it!’, and then I’d think for a bit, and say something more like this:

The most important thing in choosing your degree is that you love it, which means it’s worth doing Classics if you like at least one of language learning, literature, history, and philosophy. Tutors are interested in where you might be after four years of education, rather than where you are now, so a real desire to learn is one of the key things that they look for. Make sure that you have read a few books about Classics that you’re enthusiastic about. It’s the most amazing course, so the tutors will want to teach someone who enjoys it as much as they do!

What do you like about Queen’s?

I always feel that Queen’s is ‘the smallest big college’: it looks huge and splendid from the outside, but inside it’s quite friendly and cosy. There are fewer students than even the tiny Teddy Hall across the road, but we have the communal spaces of a much larger college: the library, chapel, dining hall, beer cellar – all of these have a good claim to be one of the best, if not the best, in Oxford. Having such amazing shared areas along with comparatively small student numbers means that the community is really strong.

What is your favourite thing about Queen’s (apart from the Lobel Society, obviously)?

The Choir! I’m biased, because I’m in it, but it always amazes me that it produces music of such a high standard in the middle of a hectic term – Owen Rees (the Waverley Fellow in Music and our conductor) is a genius. It’s a very friendly group of people as well, and it’s always wonderful to end the day with a bit of peace and quiet in the chapel. 

Can you recommend a book?

Yes. Bernard Knox’s The Heroic Temper: Studies in Sophoclean Tragedy. It sounds dense, but Knox writes so compellingly that it is an absolute joy to read. He also wrote long enough ago that modern scholars tend to regard this book as heroically wrong in most of its conclusions – and it’s always a pleasure to disagree with a scholar.

A stylised black and white version of the Queen's college coat of arms featuring three eagles. Text reads: The Lobel Society, The Queen's College, Oxford

Rhodes Scholar Tori Harwell (Missouri and Queen’s, 2024) is a passionate researcher and advocate for environmental justice with a strong commitment to global Black communities.

During Tori’s latest research project as a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow, they focused on cocoa cash crop farming in Ghana, employing auto-ethnography and archival research to explore the impacts of colonialism in Kukurantumi, Ghana. Tori’s work is grounded in community-based projects that address the lack of infrastructure supporting Black communities working to heal their connection to the land itself. As a Goldman Fellow, Tori developed a dual-strategy project to connect Black urban famers in St. Louis with free legal support while addressing their immediate capacity needs. We asked Tori to explain the impact of their research and tell us what they enjoy about being at Oxford.

You read African and American Studies and Environmental Analysis at Washington University in St Louis.  What have been some of the big differences between studying at Oxford compared to back at home?

There are plenty of differences! I didn’t understand the college system at all, at first. Queen’s chose me in a sort of great sorting hat moment. I’m very happy to be here and have found friends from all different subject areas. At Oxford, I think you can deeply question one subject, and the tutors don’t give you an answer but lead you to more questions. You have the capacity to make your experience here what you want it to be.

At Oxford, you can deeply question one subject, and the tutors don’t give you an answer but lead you to more questions.

You apply queer and black theoretical frameworks to cocoa farming practices in Ghana.  Can you tell us a bit about what you have discovered by doing this?

My research has been guided by the community that I’m working with, I don’t assume people are black or queer, but I use specifically black/queer rhizomatic frameworks to understand kinship ties — how someone like me, who has no direct connections to the African continent due to slavery, can still connect back in through family structures that are not visible to people who live in a nuclear family.

I didn’t go to Ghana thinking I’d be studying chocolate, but I was asking questions about environmental degradation in the region and time and time again people would mention chocolate. I then went to the Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana. There was a dream present there but also conflict. So much of chocolate’s history in Ghana is one of liberatory practices and it’s causing environmental degradation. Chocolate’s material history going from Tetteh Quarshie, the Ghanaian man who brought cocoa to the Gold Coast, to the idea of a large factory mogul, the Cadbury Firm from Europe, who came into Ghana and reorganised the space. And now it’s one of the few crops you can sell to build limited generational and social wealth for families.  I am interested in how those two stories align with each other and the ways in which people engage with land and one another. I want to explore the overlapping outgrowth of their dreams and intentions for that same space.

What motivates you in your research?

I want to know why the narratives we have around climate change are the majority narratives and how colonisation continues to exist in the way that we interact with places and people. I think it’s at the essence of Oxford but in Ghana and South Africa, capitalism, racism, and colonization are at the organisational core of a lot of our current systems. I don’t think we can truly create climate adaptations or mitigations without deeply questioning those systems. For example, we need to question whether we should even continue with monocrops like chocolate.

Farmers are wrapped up in the consequences of this history too. Often, cocoa farmers and researchers will speak of the industry with great pride in spite of the fact that chocolate is not indigenous to Ghana. Ghana is the second largest producer of chocolate worldwide, but Ghanaians don’t see the majority of the wealth that comes from this industry because that lies with European chocolatiers.  There’s an argument to stop exporting raw cocoa and instead produce chocolate bars in Ghana. The Fair Trade scheme helps somewhat, but I don’t think anything will be fair unless the people who are farming see the majority of the profit which is currently made in the sales, not in the production of the raw material. Fair Trade makes the current system fairer, but the current system itself will never be fair.

Cocoa beans curing in the sun.
Cocoa beans curing in the sun.

What’s the value of interdisciplinary research?

Other disciplines have shaped how I do what I do. I have applied theoretical frameworks from different areas to material history. I think when you start engaging with people who are coming at problems from different perspectives, you see that there’s actually a lot of crossover in the questions that we’re asking. I think everyone has something that they’re really focussing on but by having those conversations you can bridge gaps in a way that you can’t if you’re siloed. It’s hard, though, because there are a lot of different fields to read so I think it’s best if you work among team members. I’m excited to engage in research with people who are doing things across the world.

I think when you start engaging with people who are coming at problems from different perspectives, you see that there’s actually a lot of crossover in the questions that we’re asking.

During your undergraduate studies, you have advocated for accessibility to complete humanities research by minority students.  Can you tell us a bit about that work?

At my previous institution I worked at the Office for Undergraduate Research and helped people who wanted to get into research figure out how to go about it. This might mean applying for fellowships or funding and putting your ideas into words effectively to make proposals for this. In my work I found, a lot of the time, the epistemologies and ontologies of minority groups are wholly disregarded so it’s important to have their voices in research.  Often the ways their communities engage with the world isn’t present in the academy and it’s extremely important to me to make research accessible to all. As much as I love my work in Ghana, I find myself questioning why only 1% of global research output is by Africans.

How does your project connecting Black urban farmers in St. Louis with free legal support help to address both structural racism and the climate crisis?

The summer before I went to Ghana, I was working in St. Louis with black farmers and connecting them to free legal resources. The way I see it, these farmers are at the forefront of climate mitigation and adaption. Their efforts create tree canopy cover, and their work improves water absorption in the city which helps alleviate flooding because a lot of the concrete infrastructure gives rise to water run-off which exacerbates the flooding problems in the region. These Black farmers are at the forefront of climate mitigation and we should support them.  In the US, as well as in Ghana, the number of Black farmers has been decreasing because there are lots of structural inequalities, such as not being able to get access to USDA loans.

One farmer I worked with was share-cropping so he didn’t own the land he was farming.  I spoke to my boss at Great River’s Environmental Law Center, a not-for-profit law firm, about this situation and we discussed what legal support might be beneficial. This led to the farmer looking at his leasing contract and, after taking the free legal advice, he managed to negotiate a better deal. This impacted on his ability to continue farming in the same location. Another Black farmer was arrested for protesting the inaccessibility of locally grown organic foods in the grocery stores. The store called the police which resulted in him being given a ‘disrupting the peace’ charge, which meant he faced jail time.  The legal team were able to meet the judge and explain the context, improving his legal outcome.

The project targeted some of the most unprotected people but also some of the people doing the most valuable work. And an important part of it for me was that the work should continue after my project finished.  My boss continued providing legal aid for the farmers to continue to create sustainable change.

You participated on a panel event at Rhodes House that examined the impact of colonialism and racism on the climate emergency. What have been your first-hand experiences of this impact on your work in Ghana?

In Ghana, like in St. Louis, I also saw that the farmers, perhaps unknowingly, are at the forefront of climate mitigation. In tropical climates, topsoil formation can take a lot longer. So what the farmers plant, like trees and other shrubs, is incredibly important to reduce soil erosion and increase water absorption during monsoon season. Yet, currently in Ghana’s Eastern Region, land is viewed as more valuable for the sand underneath the topsoil. Sand-weaners actively destroyed the topsoil layer for concrete production.  So, the farmers are the ones who are protecting that topsoil because the production of food staples is providing a protective barrier for any use of the land in the future.

Farmers, perhaps unknowingly, are at the forefront of climate mitigation.

Where the sand has been mined the soil can no longer support tree growth creating pockets that are hotter in Harmattan. The ground temperatures are becoming hotter and dangerous.  While it may not seem important, polyculture farmers are planting trees that serve as protective cover for the cocoa trees and are also a major protective factor against climate change in the region.  It’s interesting to see how farmers, although they are not seen as major advocates for climate mitigation, are the ones at the forefront of it but not being paid or recognised for it. The average “Cocoa farmers earn a per capita daily income of approximately USD $0.40-$0.45 on cocoa. This amounts to an annual net income of USD $983.12-$2627.81 and accounts for two thirds of cocoa farmers’ household income”.

Land degradation in Kukurumtuni, Ghana caused by sand weaning
Land degradation in Kukurumtuni, Ghana caused by sand weaning

What do you find most challenging about your work?

The inequalities. I have the immense privilege of having the time to devote to reading this incredible archival material and the financial support to do it. The majority of documents are found in Europe. For example, The Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana’s library houses only a few primary documents. The librarian explained how it’s a very underfunded area of the institute because most of the funds go towards scientific research to make cocoa production resilient.  I then went to the University of Birmingham and there’s a special collection there called the Cadbury Papers and there were boxes upon boxes upon boxes of information.  There’s a wealth of information but at the same time it’s extremely inaccessible. Even the person I was staying with in Ghana, when she needed a map to protect some of the lands in a legal case, the Research Institute wouldn’t give her access to the material.  As an international researcher, I was the only one able to get access to that document. In the other parts of my work, I found that the people who are on the front line living the work, don’t necessarily even have the chance to talk to a legal firm and ask for support. It took me, someone who had studied in elite institutions, to connect the community to what it wanted and needed. I find it very hard to be significantly more privileged than the people with whom I work. It makes me question why academia has that power in the first place.

What do you enjoy about being at Queen’s?

I love the dinners at Queen’s. It’s fun engaging with people you wouldn’t usually meet. The College is a cool entrance point to conversations I wouldn’t normally have. Last night on one side of me I spoke to someone studying the intersection of American History and Indigenous history and how indigenous governance systems impacted the constitution.  And the person next to her was studying soil bioacoustics for conservation.  At the core, we shared a lot of our research, but I would never have imagined that until the conversation happened. On top of this, there’s amazing food and I think you have the best conversations about anything over a good meal. Food is so fundamental to how humanity interacts with one another.

What’s your favourite place in Oxford?

I love my daily walk through Port Meadow into town. It’s just one of those Oxford spots that people remember with a smile.  It’s very peaceful and even on a January day when there’s no sun, there’s a serene fog and you can imagine being in Pride and Prejudice. The walking here is my favourite part of the city; there are hidden passageways and footpaths that you just don’t get in America.

Can you recommend a book?

There are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak.  This is such an interesting story that explores the Turkish water crisis through fiction over different times and place.  It’s a great book that I didn’t know I needed to read.

Tori Harwell standing with 146-year-old cocoa tree planted by Tetteh Quarshie.
Tori Harwell standing with 146-year-old cocoa tree planted by Tetteh Quarshie.

The Eglesfield Society’s summer show is an annual highlight in the Queen’s Trinity Term calendar of events. This year, our beautiful gardens provided the backdrop for Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods. Director I-Cenay Trim (Literae Humaniores, 2021) recalls her vision for the show and the process of staging it at Queen’s.

“Without doubt, directing Into The Woods has been the highlight of my time at Queen’s. Seeing that there was an annual summer musical is what led me to apply to Queen’s originally, and I cannot express how fabulous it was to get involved with the Eglesfield musical in such a major role. I have loved Into The Woods for many years, so getting to direct the musical was a dream come true for me.

Into The Woods is a beautiful and mind-boggling musical written by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, set in a fantastical world of beloved fairytales and featuring characters such as Cinderella, Rapunzel, Little Red Ridinghood and Jack (of the Beanstalk). The story follows a Baker and his wife, who wish to have a child; Cinderella, who wishes to attend the King’s Festival; and Jack, who wishes his cow would give milk. When the Baker and his wife learn that they cannot have a child because of a Witch’s curse, the two set off on a journey into the woods to break the spell. Everyone’s wish is granted, but the consequences of their actions return to haunt them later with disastrous results.

We used the entire garden as our stage for the show, focusing mainly in a cross-section, with stage platforms of different heights allowing for audience viewing in the round. Our 17-person live band were stationed in Drawda garden, and our cast were constantly running around “through the woods”, trying and failing to avoid the dangers of the unknown. Sondheim writes his lyrics with the utmost intention and deliberation, and Into the Woods was written for a proscenium stage, thus it was important to me that we did not lose the intimacy of certain moments throughout the musical with such a larger playing space than originally intended. I worked a lot with the cast on shifting tone between Act One and Act Two to make sure we were able to have fun exploring the world and the archetypal, silly, unassuming characters of Act One whilst simultaneously allowing the stakes and rising danger of Act Two to feel real and threatening to our audience.

It was important to me to ensure we keep the allusion that we are no longer watching a musical in Queen’s College Oxford, but we are now in the woods, entering the unknown.

My creative vision for the musical could not have been realised without the support of Ben Gilchrist, our producer, Harry Brook, our set designer, our music directors Hattie Twigger-Ross and Kyle Siwek, and the staff at Queen’s. Transforming the garden into the woods was no easy feat, but to explore that space with our 16-person cast in such an innovative, all-encompassing way was exhilarating. We worked on the musical for four months, scheduling and leading countless of rehearsals a week with behind-the-scenes preparation alongside our degrees. Whilst it was certainly the busiest I’ve ever been, it was also the most fun I’ve ever had. If you ever get the chance to get involved with a musical at Queen’s or anywhere else in the world, take it!

Thank you to all who supported our production, and I hope you enjoyed watching our wonderful cast as much as I did!”

DPhil Fine Art student Xinyue Liu examines the relationship between the grieving of ecological loss and contemporary art. Here she talks about what this means and why she embraces an interdisciplinary approach.

Please can you tell us a bit about your work on ‘ecological grief’ and how you define this term?

Regarding a definition of ecological grief, environmental philosophers Ashlee Cunsolo and Neville R. Ellis said it best: “the grief felt in relation to experienced or anticipated ecological losses, including the loss of species, ecosystems and meaningful landscapes due to acute or chronic environmental change.” 

My thesis project is focused on a genre that I call the ‘cinema of ecological grief,’ which examines the relationship between the grieving of ecological loss through contemporary art, with film being a prominent medium. I understand the cinema of ecological grief as a collective endeavour amongst artists who care about ecological degradation and carry the task of mourning through their work. In practice, I study the artworks and theories of others as well as make art on my own.

Grief, as I understand it, can be an active force to help us overcome the impasse of ecological trauma. The cinema of ecological grief thus strives to make visible the past and potential losses and move us to a filmed reality in which we have sympathy for our own kind, of course, but also for animal and plant lives, places, and ecosystems.

You recently organised a screening in College of Behemoth, a documentary film that offers a rewriting of Dante’s Divine Comedy as a vehicle for exploring landscape aesthetics and ecological grief.  Can you tell us more about how the film achieves this?

I find the soundscape of Zhao Liang’s (赵亮) Behemoth particularly elegiac. There is an obvious comparison between the miners having to go lower each year to extract resources and the descent through Hell in the Divine Comedy. Yet, unlike Dante’s Virgil, the guide in Behemoth ‘does not know how to write poetry’ but carries a giant mirror on his back.

The film employs a significant amount of silence that is rather reflective. The lack of verbal communication shifted the viewer’s attention to the creases on the miners’ skin, and how their bodies are visibly shaken when muffled explosions threaten to collapse the underground tunnels. The silence itself is humanising. It also hints at the alienated nature of the miner’s work––the act of excavation is numbing, pointless, and brutal, performing which humans are reduced to tongue-tied creatures. 

After the screening, you arranged a discussion that brought together academics from History of Art, Geography, and Anthropology.  Can you explain why you chose an interdisciplinary approach? 

I come from a multi-disciplinary background. My master’s programme in fine art at Simon Fraser University had a specific collaborative focus. I was encouraged to work with people from other disciplines on various projects––dance, theatre, music, etc. I suppose that urge to create with others and for others stayed with me. This urge fits in well with the notion of ‘ecology as intersectionality’. This concept comes from art historian T.J. Demos, who draws on the work of legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw to elucidate that ecological work is situated at the ‘cross section of multiple fields of social, political, economic, technological, and material determinations’. That is to say, no one discipline alone can address the magnitude of the trouble in which we find ourselves.

No one discipline alone can address the magnitude of the trouble in which we find ourselves.

On a smaller scale, when I hear about other people’s research, I always think about how our works overlap and can enhance each other, rather than our differences. In my special issue titled ‘Ecological Grief’ at Art Review Oxford, for example, I chose to include work from historians, artists, and geographers to embrace this interdisciplinary commitment.

What will you be working on next?

I am always multitasking. I am still consolidating the materials I gathered from my visit to the Centre of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Science in Wuhan, and planning to turn the materials I gleaned there into a story on interspecies care, harm, and grief.

What do you enjoy most about being a student at Queen’s?

Being an active member at the MCR. I have thoroughly enjoyed being a Women’s Officer with my friend Melody Li, who is a DPhil candidate in archaeology. Together, we reinstalled the consent workshop, made sure of the distribution of free period products in college bathrooms, and hosted a celebratory story-sharing and dinner event with the Queen’s Women’s Network. 

Can you recommend a piece of art?

I will recommend Palestinian artist Larissa Sansour’s short film, In Vitro. The film is told from the perspectives of a mother and a daughter who live in an ecologically devastated future, where humans live in controlled environments and rely on synthetic memory. Sansour’s film thoughtfully reflects the atrocities of war and the fragility of our ecosystem.

Each year the College holds a Medieval Yule Feast to which everyone who studies English is invited. Current students Bryony and Dani tell us all about this special event.

What is the Yule Feast?

The Yule Feast is an annual dinner, when everyone who studies English in some capacity comes together. We eat traditionally medieval food (well, as close as possible to it; we don’t go out and hunt or anything!), and drink mead. It’s been a tradition since 2011, and is organised by both the English tutors and the second-year students who study medieval literature. The students have the fun of organising the various challenges and games which turn it into much more than just a dinner!

What considerations go into its planning?

One of the Queen’s English tutors is responsible for the menu, which is chosen by looking through genuine medieval recipe books! We’ve had things like pigeon pie, pea pottage, jellied fish, and fruit crumble. Every year there are a few loaves of ‘King Bean Bread’, one of which hides a bean. Whoever finds the bean is then crowned king for the rest of the meal…

We normally have a mixture of games, readings, and music alongside the dinner itself. A recent addition has been some challenges, which everyone has to subtly do during the meal, but can’t reveal to their neighbours. There’s some medieval-themed music too, this year an instrumental version of ‘Down in Yon Forest’, as well as the first- and second-years stumbling through their readings in both Old and Middle English!

What’s the quirkiest part of the evening?

The quirkiest bit has got to be the Old English singing. It’s not the easiest to find translations of modern Christmas carols, but we’ve managed an old and modern English group sing-along to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, where those who can read Old English stand up to sing a line, followed by the same line in its modern form. It’s a bit chaotic!

What’s the purpose of holding the event?

It’s a great way of getting to know everyone studying and teaching English, from first-years to PhD students; having a seating plan which mixes people up is a lovely way to do this, as it creates a sense of community beyond just your year group.

What would you say to anyone considering applying to study English at Oxford?

To those applying to Oxford for English, don’t worry about what it is you have read or not read.  Read the books you genuinely love, rather than because they look good on a personal statement. The tutors are not looking for people who have struggled through books because they are deemed scholarly or complex; it’s much more about how you think about texts, and your own way of approaching them. It might sound a bit cliché, but be yourself and follow your own interests.

What do you like about Queen’s?

The English tutors in particular put in a big effort to organise interesting events, whether that’s a museum archives visit or a trip to the Globe Theatre in London. It means the degree’s a lot more than just time sitting in a library!

And in general… the food at Queen’s is brilliant – it’s a lot cheaper than at most colleges, but really tasty and varied. Being so central is always a plus, too.

Can you recommend a book?

Yes! Read And the hippos were boiled in their tanks by Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs: it’s absolutely insane but also (nearly) true, which you will realise is ridiculous if you do read it!

Polly Barton’s Fifty Sounds is also brilliant. It’s a memoir / musing about Barton’s time in Japan, written in a kind of beautiful prose poetry, and covering everything from onomatopoeia to car crashes.

Dani Hiles (English, 2022) and Bryony Fishpool (English and Spanish, 2022)

Former Junior Research Fellow Dr Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough, now Senior Lecturer at Bath Spa, created the Yule Feast tradition in 2011.

detail of a reindeer from a Medieval manuscript
Detail of a reindeer from a Medieval manuscript

Photo above: David Olds

Established in 2001, the Clarendon Fund has to date supported over 2,500 scholars who have made notable contributions to Oxford’s research and intellectual vigour. 

Tomas Tokovyi, a Clarendon Scholar reading his MSc in Genomic Medicine at Queen’s shares his story from growing up in Ukraine, to studying at Oxford now. Tomas has been selected as the 2023-24 External Secretary for the Clarendon Scholars’ Council Committee.

As a typical Ukrainian child, I spent most of my free time playing outdoors and socialising – football was a huge passion of mine. I grew up specialising in learning foreign languages in Bila Tserkva and at the age of 15, I was one of three students from Ukraine to win a full academic scholarship to study A-levels in the UK. Realising I was not going to become the next Andriy Shevchenko in football or the next Steve Kaufmann in foreign languages, I decided to study sciences (Biology, Chemistry, Maths, and Further Maths) at school. 

The war in Ukraine

I went on to the University of Bristol to study for my Bachelor’s in Biochemistry and was there on 24 February 2022. My family is currently based in Bila Tserkva, a city in the Kyiv region and also my hometown. Since the start of the full-scale invasion, Bila Tserkva has been at times bombarded by Russian military forces and targeted by deadly drones. Unfortunately for my family, these shellings happened very close to our house as we live in the vicinity of the military base. 

Despite the difficult situation back home, I managed to graduate as the top student in my class of 119 people. For the past nine months, I have been doing everything I can to support my family and the Ukrainian community in the UK and Ukraine. I have led different large-scale fundraising events, protests, and educational projects all across the UK and I am not planning to stop!

Coming to Oxford

I was always fascinated by the incredible translational opportunities Biology and Chemistry could provide – anything from agricultural biotechnology to drug development and gene therapies. Thinking about my future, I decided that science would be the best way I could contribute to society. 

My subject here at Oxford lies on the interface of Biology and Data Science – I study what our genes can tell us about our health and the risks of getting different diseases (for example, DNA tests like 23andMe).

Life as an Oxford student

Oxford challenges me both academically and socially and I absolutely love it! My master’s is a taught course, so a large proportion of my time (basically 9am-5pm) I spend in my Department (the Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics at the Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine) in Headington. The cycle up Headington Hill in the morning is definitely something that keeps me fit every day (whether I want it or not).

The social life in Oxford is incredibly vibrant and picturesque! I am part of many different societies and communities, including the Clarendon Scholars’ Association, Oxford Ukrainian Society, Oxford University Biotech Society, Oxford Founders Society, and Queen’s College Boat Club (although it has recently been quite challenging to balance rowing and all the academic events and conferences).

Oxford challenges me both academically and socially and I absolutely love it!

What are you involved in outside of your studies?

As much as I am passionate about biotechnology, what I ultimately care about the most is people. Prior to the war I had already been involved in programmes teaching in economically deprived areas of Bristol. However, when Russia invaded Ukraine, I became especially active.

At the University of Bristol, I gave lectures about Ukrainian history that were attended by hundreds of students and academics. At the University of Oxford, I helped to organise the first-ever festival of Ukrainian culture, which attracted over 10,000 visitors and raised over £110,000 in donations for Ukraine.

I also became the Vice-President of the Ukrainian Society in Oxford and attended the first-ever conference of Ukrainian students in Manchester, joined by 18 universities from across the UK. In partnership with the Ukrainian Embassy in the UK, my friends and I are starting the largest national fundraiser in the UK to buy power generators for Ukrainian cities — including Bila Tserkva, my hometown, which are suffering from power outages due to Russia’s bombardments of civilian infrastructure. 

My efforts have been nationally recognised with news articles appearing in the BBC, The Independent and others. Recently, the University of Bristol awarded me the Good Citizen Award. I also had the opportunity to recently meet the First Lady of Ukraine to talk to her about our projects in Oxford. 

As the 2023 External Secretary for the Clarendon Scholars’ Council, I will be responsible for maintaining and cultivating relationships with external (non-Oxford) and internal (Oxford) scholarship groups, organisations, and companies for the benefit of the Clarendon Family.

Looking to the future

My main goal for the near future is to support my home country’s growth and reconstruction. Although Ukraine has urgent humanitarian needs, it will also require a long-term strategy to prosper. I believe that bio-entrepreneurship is a very promising field in Ukraine, albeit only emerging and struggling due to a lack of equipment, mentoring, and funding.

I would like to develop a strong biotech culture in Ukraine by establishing bio-incubators as well as initiating long-lasting partnerships with British universities and biotech industries. Together with the Oxford University Ukrainian society, we have already started exploring partnerships with Oxford University Innovation and Bioescalator. I hope to help Ukrainian-based start-ups in various industries including defence, education, health, science, and IT.

We also have goals for cooperation between the UK and Ukraine in the digital sector, to provide the exchange of knowledge and expertise of talented IT minds from both countries in line with the Government’s Digital Strategy.

Stay tuned for more!

Follow Tomas’ LinkedIn to keep up to date on his latest activity. 

About the Clarendon Fund

Oxford’s highly competitive and largest graduate scholarship scheme, the Clarendon Fund Scholarship programme, brings together core funding generated for the University by Oxford University Press with partnership funding from Oxford’s departments, faculties and colleges, as well as a number of centrally administered awards from external partners to maximise the number of new Clarendon Scholarships offered each year.

As one of the largest and most competitive scholarships, together with Oxford’s colleges and Oxford University Press, the University is able to fulfil even more Clarendon scholarship places, welcoming 200 students this year. This autumn, the Clarendon Fund welcomed 234 new scholars, the largest cohort ever, bringing the number of on-course scholars to over 550.  

Contact

The Queen’s College,
High Street, Oxford,
OX1 4AW

Find on map

Tel: 01865 279120

© 2025 The Queen's College, Oxford

Site by One