Wadham Experience

Wadham Experience A residential intellectual retreat for leaders at Wadham College, Oxford | 13-18 or 20-25 Sept 2026

We’re delighted to see the Wadham Experience featured in the Financial TimesIn this week’s Working It, the FT’s Isabel B...
01/10/2026

We’re delighted to see the Wadham Experience featured in the Financial Times

In this week’s Working It, the FT’s Isabel Berwick explores a real shift in leadership and executive education – away from traditional business school terrain and towards something more intellectual and humanities led – and names the Wadham Experience as her lead example of where serious leadership development is heading.

Stefan Stern, author, visiting professor at Bayes Business School and former FT writer, attended as our guest and said: “We had philosophy, we had music, we had Kafka, we had the birth of modern 17th-century science. All taught, or led, really, by Oxford academics who love their subject and love talking about it.”

The piece also notes endorsements from senior leaders at JPMorgan, Deloitte and Goldman Sachs – a reflection of the people choosing to spend time with us and what they take from it.

At a moment when leaders are navigating genuine complexity, we believe the biggest questions, in philosophy, ethics, science and beyond, belong in how we develop them. It’s heartening to see the FT recognise that too.

Read the piece here: https://www.ft.com/content/b1029c32-2486-4073-9a09-204d7d48b294

With thanks to Isabel Berwick and Stefan Stern.

Some of the most interesting questions in a room may not come from the person standing at the front.The Wadham Experienc...
30/09/2026

Some of the most interesting questions in a room may not come from the person standing at the front.

The Wadham Experience is built around small seminars, group debate and exchange with specialist academics and peers from different disciplines and sectors.

That changes the nature of the room.

An idea can be introduced by one person and challenged by another. A question can expose an assumption nobody had noticed. Someone approaching the subject from a different professional background may see something others have missed.

For experienced leaders, that kind of exchange matters.

Much of professional life rewards certainty: knowing the answer, making the decision, moving forward. Wadham creates space to question, listen properly and test a position against people whose experience may be very different from your own.

When did you last change your mind because of a question somebody else asked?

Across the week, the programme draws on Oxford’s tradition of debate and enquiry, but the value lies not only in hearing from experts. It’s also in what happens when different perspectives meet in the same room.

The people taking part shape where the discussion goes next.

See what a different kind of learning environment can offer: https://we.wadham.ox.ac.uk/

Some places have a way of changing the pace of a day.At Wadham, centuries of history sit alongside the everyday life of ...
28/09/2026

Some places have a way of changing the pace of a day.

At Wadham, centuries of history sit alongside the everyday life of a working College, creating a setting that feels both established and very much alive.

For participants on The Wadham Experience, that sense of place becomes part of the week itself. Time is spent moving through historic spaces, quiet quadrangles and corners of the College that gradually become familiar.

Perhaps that’s part of Oxford’s appeal: the past is always present, but never static.

What might change when you spend several days thinking, learning and exchanging ideas somewhere so far removed from the everyday?

Experience Wadham this September: https://we.wadham.ox.ac.uk/

What can the past reveal about questions that feel urgently present?That idea has run through Thinking Critically: Civil...
26/09/2026

What can the past reveal about questions that feel urgently present?

That idea has run through Thinking Critically: Civilisation on the Edge, bringing history, politics and philosophy into conversation across a week at Wadham.

Participants moved from questions of history, memory and tradition to Ancient & Modern: Democracy and Demagoguery, before turning to philosophy and Democracy and Discontent. The Oxford tutorial experience brought another dimension to the programme, creating space for participants to explore intellectual interests of their own.

These are subjects with deep histories, but they do not remain comfortably in the past. Questions about the stories societies tell, the pressures placed on democracy and the sources of political discontent continue to shape the world around us.

The Wadham Experience deliberately draws on disciplines outside the conventional professional frame, creating space for experienced leaders to encounter persistent questions from different perspectives. Thinking Critically has been a particularly fitting example of that approach.

The 2026 programme has now come to an end. Thank you to everyone who took part, contributed to the discussions and helped bring the week together.

Return to the questions behind Thinking Critically: https://we.wadham.ox.ac.uk/

Thinking Clearly began with a subject that’s becoming increasingly difficult to take for granted: attention.Across the w...
24/09/2026

Thinking Clearly began with a subject that’s becoming increasingly difficult to take for granted: attention.

Across the week, participants approached it through very different disciplines. Historical perspectives on attention and distraction gave way to ways of listening, philosophical questions around the ethics of attention and, later in the programme, the Oxford tutorial experience.

That movement between subjects is central to The Wadham Experience. Rather than examining a question through a single professional or academic lens, the programme brings different disciplines into the same week, alongside creative and cultural experiences that change the setting and the way participants engage.

Thinking Clearly asked what attention might mean in a cacophonous world: how we listen, what distracts us and how differently a familiar question can look when approached from another direction.

Now, after several days of study, discussion and life within Wadham, the 2026 programme has drawn to a close.

Thank you to everyone who joined us and to all those who helped make the week possible.

Continue exploring the ideas behind The Wadham Experience: https://we.wadham.ox.ac.uk/

A different set of questions arrives at Wadham today.We’re delighted to welcome participants for Thinking Critically: Ci...
13/09/2026

A different set of questions arrives at Wadham today.

We’re delighted to welcome participants for Thinking Critically: Civilisation on the Edge, the second of this year’s Wadham Experience programmes.

Across the week, history, democracy and philosophy will offer different perspectives on questions that reach far beyond the seminar room. The programme moves from the myths, memories and traditions that shape societies to democracy, demagoguery and discontent, before participants enter the Oxford tutorial environment.

What can become visible when familiar challenges are examined through a much longer historical and philosophical lens?

Thinking Critically creates the space to find out.

Welcome to Wadham and to a week of ideas, discussion and perspectives that may take the questions in unexpected directions.

See what sits at the heart of Thinking Critically: https://we.wadham.ox.ac.uk/

We’re delighted to have welcomed participants to Wadham for Thinking Clearly: Attention in a Cacophonous World.Over the ...
08/09/2026

We’re delighted to have welcomed participants to Wadham for Thinking Clearly: Attention in a Cacophonous World.

Over the coming days, attention will be approached from several directions, from historical perspectives on distraction to ways of listening, philosophy and the distinctive Oxford tutorial experience.

It’s an interdisciplinary week by design. Different subjects, settings and perspectives offer different ways into a question that feels increasingly relevant: in a world constantly competing for our attention, what deserves it?

Alongside the academic programme, creative and cultural experiences will bring another dimension to the week, with Wadham and the wider Oxford setting forming part of the experience too.

A very warm welcome to Wadham. We’re looking forward to the week ahead.

Follow Thinking Clearly and discover more about the programme: https://we.wadham.ox.ac.uk/

Why would an intellectual programme make room for aprons, pencils and paper?Because not every idea is best approached in...
04/09/2026

Why would an intellectual programme make room for aprons, pencils and paper?

Because not every idea is best approached in the same way.

Creative experiences are woven into The Wadham Experience alongside seminars, debate and Oxford tutorials, giving participants the chance to engage with ideas through a different form.

There are moments in the week when the familiar academic setting gives way to something more practical and exploratory. The emphasis shifts from discussing an idea to responding to it in another way.

What do we notice when the process itself is unfamiliar? And what changes when we approach an idea visually rather than trying to explain it straight away?

That change of format is part of the point.

Sometimes a different way of working can reveal a different way of seeing.

See how the humanities are woven through the 2026 programmes: https://we.wadham.ox.ac.uk/

A week like this is shaped by more than its programme.The Wadham Experience brings together experienced professionals fr...
02/09/2026

A week like this is shaped by more than its programme.

The Wadham Experience brings together experienced professionals from different sectors with College fellows and academics, each arriving with their own knowledge, questions and ways of seeing the world.

That mix matters.

An idea raised in one context can look very different when considered by someone whose experience comes from somewhere else entirely. And across the week, there are plenty of opportunities to encounter those different perspectives, both within the academic programme and as the group moves through Oxford together.

Perhaps that is one of the harder things to capture on a timetable.

You can list the sessions. You can name the places.

The people who will experience them alongside you are another part of the story.

Who might you find yourself walking through Oxford with this September?

Meet The Wadham Experience: https://we.wadham.ox.ac.uk/

There comes a point in the day when the notebooks close and Wadham changes pace.Drinks receptions and dinners are woven ...
30/08/2026

There comes a point in the day when the notebooks close and Wadham changes pace.

Drinks receptions and dinners are woven through The Wadham Experience, bringing participants together in historic Oxford surroundings beyond the academic programme.

It’s a chance to experience the College differently: dressed for the evening, gathered around the table and sharing a setting shaped by centuries of collegiate tradition.

Towards the close of the week, there is also a farewell dinner, marking the end of several days spent living, learning and experiencing Oxford together.

The seminars may shape the daytime.

But an evening at Wadham has its own atmosphere entirely.

What would you most look forward to experiencing after the academic day draws to a close?

Experience more of life at Wadham: https://we.wadham.ox.ac.uk/

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