Oxford Spring School

125 students from UK and abroad will be taking part in this year’s Spring School from Monday 31 March to Friday 4 April.

The week-long course offers graduate students and researchers a unique opportunity to learn cutting-edge methods in social science.

Associate Professor of Politics Spyros Kosmidis is Spring School’s Academic Director.

He explains a little about the School’s important history in Oxford:

The Oxford Spring School was established before I joined the University. It used to be—and still is—a great opportunity to welcome students from other universities or from the industry. For one week every year, we are happy to meet with them and teach them cutting-edge methods.

It’s been running for 22 years—how has it changed over the years?

When I joined DPIR, the Spring School was a single course, I believe a different one every year. Later on, more courses were added, but never to the extent we have now. Since I took over, I’ve worked to provide more options for students. We currently offer nine courses, and students can now apply for more than one course. For the past three years, anyone from around the world can also join us online!

What do you enjoy the most about being Academic Director?

While it’s a lot of work, the week when the courses take place is incredibly enjoyable. It’s also great to hear from students who met at the Spring School and are now emailing to share their latest work using methods they learned with us.

What are your aspirations for its future?

We want to continue growing, bringing more students to Oxford, and offering new courses every year.

Here’s what Spring School 2024 students said:

Stella Tsoli: 
“A wonderful experience in Oxford. Grateful for the opportunity to learn from brilliant tutors in such an inspiring academic environment.”

Nethmi Jayaratne Kariyawasam:
"It was a great learning experience focusing on advanced qualitative methods such as thematic and discourse analysis, coupled with excellent networking opportunities. I would like to extend my thanks to the organising team for putting together the event. Their efforts made it possible to deeply engage with these techniques in a collaborative environment.”

Find out more about Spring School and what the Tutors say.