Wadham Experience

On this year’s Thinking Critically programme, Warden Robert Hannigan explores one of history's most urgent problem-solving challenges: how to break unbreakable codes under impossible pressure.

Bletchley Park wasn't solved by following an obvious path. It required pattern recognition, lateral thinking, and the willingness to question fundamental assumptions. It demanded creativity under constraint, collaboration across disciplines and the courage to try approaches that seemed counterintuitive.

These aren't historical curiosities. They're lessons directly applicable to the strategic challenges facing leaders today. How do you solve problems when the conventional approach isn't working? When patterns matter but aren't obvious? When the route forward requires thinking differently?

This session brings Bletchley's problem-solving methodology into the present, examining how the principles that broke the Enigma code can illuminate how we approach the seemingly intractable challenges of our own time.

Take a closer look at what awaits during the week: https://we.wadham.ox.ac.uk/

Where might a blank page take you?

On our Thinking Critically programme, creative writing introduces a different rhythm to the week. It’s a chance to step away from familiar forms of discussion and approach an idea through words on a page.

Perhaps it begins with an observation. A half-formed thought. A sentence that takes the writer somewhere unexpected.

The direction it follows will be different for everyone in the room, which is part of what makes the session so intriguing. There is no need to arrive with a finished idea, only the willingness to begin and see what takes shape.

Would you welcome that first blank page or find yourself watching the clock for a while? Do you know why?

Explore Thinking Critically and the 2026 programmes: https://we.wadham.ox.ac.uk/

One afternoon, the seminar room gives way to one of Oxford’s most striking museum spaces.

Participants step beyond Wadham for a visit to the Natural History Museum, continuing the programme in an entirely different setting and surrounded by the museum’s collections.

Exactly how the visit unfolds is something we will leave for those taking part. After all, the most intriguing parts of the week cannot always be captured in a programme overview.

A change of scene. A different way into the day’s ideas. And plenty still waiting to be discovered.

See what awaits beyond Wadham’s walls: https://we.wadham.ox.ac.uk/

There are some Oxford traditions that are familiar even before you experience them.

The tutorial is one of them.

It’s often described as a defining part of Oxford’s academic life, but a description can only reveal so much. The reality is smaller in scale and far more personal: a close exchange shaped by the subject, the people in the room and the direction their ideas take.

During The Wadham Experience, participants are invited to explore an intellectual interest through their own reading and research before entering a tutorial with an Oxford Fellow or subject specialist.

There’s nowhere to disappear into the back row.

Instead, there is space to test an idea, follow a question further and discover what becomes possible when a subject is examined in close company. The conversation cannot be predicted in advance because each tutorial begins with something different.

Elsewhere in the programme, there’s also an opportunity to encounter Wadham’s Library Treasures or spend time in self-reflection. Both offer a quieter change of pace, although what is discovered there is deliberately left for participants to experience themselves.

A timetable can name the sessions.

It cannot tell you which question will reshape your thinking, which book or object will hold your attention, or where a tutorial discussion might lead.

So, what would you bring into the room?

Discover more about the 2026 programme: https://we.wadham.ox.ac.uk/

What changes when an object is no longer behind glass?

During the programme, participants step inside the Ashmolean Museum for a closer encounter with objects from its collection. In a small group setting, there’s time to observe, question and hear what others notice.

The object may be the same for everyone in the room. The response to it rarely is.

That’s part of the intrigue. A detail one person overlooks may become the starting point for somebody else. A question may lead somewhere entirely unexpected.

We could tell you more, but some experiences are better discovered around the table...

It’s your last chance to apply for the 2026 programmes: https://we.wadham.ox.ac.uk/

Not every morning begins around a seminar table.

During the week, participants also have the opportunity to take part in a morning movement session before the day's academic programme begins. It's just one example of how the timetable varies throughout the week, combining seminars, tutorials, cultural visits and creative experiences with moments that invite participants to pause before the conversations continue.

It's this variety that makes the rhythm of the programme so distinctive. No two days unfold in exactly the same way, and each experience offers a different way into the week's central theme.

What kind of week makes space for both rigorous discussion and quiet moments like these?

Discover more about the programme: https://we.wadham.ox.ac.uk/

Few of us have the opportunity to stand in front of the manuscripts that changed history.

One afternoon during the programme, participants step away from the seminar room and into Oxford's extraordinary collections, where remarkable texts and objects become part of the conversation. Suddenly, ideas that have been discussed around the table take on a different kind of presence.

There's something quietly powerful about seeing knowledge in its original form. You begin to appreciate that the questions shaping leadership today are rarely new. They have been examined, debated and reimagined by generations before us.

It's a reminder that wisdom isn't only found in the latest research or newest technology. Sometimes it has been waiting patiently on a shelf for centuries.

Explore the 2026 programmes: https://we.wadham.ox.ac.uk/

Where you stay has a remarkable influence on how you experience a place.

Throughout the programme, participants are accommodated in beautiful rooms within Wadham College, placing them at the heart of the week's activities from the moment they arrive.

Each day begins and ends in the same historic setting where seminars, tutorials and shared meals take place. There is no travelling between venues or stepping away from the experience at the end of the day. Instead, the rhythm of the week unfolds within the College, creating opportunities for conversations to continue naturally between scheduled sessions.

It's a simple part of the programme, but one that helps shape the experience as a whole.

Living within the College allows participants to experience Oxford in a way that is difficult to replicate through a day visit alone.

Where you spend the week becomes part of the story you'll take home with you.

Learn more about The Wadham Experience: https://we.wadham.ox.ac.uk/

Look through the timetable and one thing quickly becomes clear: no two days are quite the same.

One morning might begin in a seminar. Later, participants could find themselves examining remarkable collections, engaging in a creative workshop or continuing a conversation over dinner. As the week unfolds, different settings, disciplines and experiences begin to build on one another, each offering another way into the programme's central theme.

That variety is intentional.

Some ideas are explored through discussion. Others are approached through observation, creativity or close engagement with Oxford's extraordinary cultural and academic resources. The programme doesn't ask participants to think in just one way. It invites them to explore a question from several different directions before arriving at their own conclusions.

What would it feel like to spend a week learning like this?

That's what makes the experience so distinctive. It's not one memorable moment that stays with people, but the way each part of the week connects to the next.

Explore the 2026 programmes: https://we.wadham.ox.ac.uk/

Most people expect an executive programme to involve lectures. Few expect to find themselves listening so carefully to a single piece of music.

Yet moments like these become part of the week. Music isn't there simply to be enjoyed. It becomes another way of thinking about attention, interpretation and what it means to truly listen.

What changes when you're asked not just to hear something...

..but to notice it?

Sometimes the most memorable session isn't the one you expected before you arrived.

Watch the episodes from our Thinking Deeply series to dig deeper into what’s on offer on The Wadham Experience: https://youtube.com/

Or discover more about the programme: https://we.wadham.ox.ac.uk/