First Academic Skills Fellow
25 September 2019
We’re delighted to welcome Oxford’s first Fellow for Academic Skills in an exciting new role developed to support our students at Hertford College.
Dr Catherine Sloan has started as our inaugural Porter Fellow, a new role with responsibility for providing on-course academic skills support. Alongside this, Catherine takes up a role as Career Development Fellow in History, working on her own research into the history of childhood.
As a new role – and the first of its kind in any Oxford college – there is plenty of scope for Catherine to try out new ideas. From this October, she’ll be organising new weekly study skills seminars for our students, with topics including essay planning and writing, taking lecture notes and how to conduct academic research. She will also be available for one-to-one support, with students able to book individual meetings to discuss their own specific skills and progress.
I can’t wait to meet Hertford students and start working together on ways we can support their studies
While at Hertford, Catherine will also be completing the University’s Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. Catherine recently completed her DPhil in History at Oxford, having previously studied at the University of Glasgow and Trinity College Dublin. She is qualified to instruct English as a Foreign Language, and has taught in Glasgow, Poland, Latvia, and Italy, including working with international students transitioning into UK higher education.
Dr Sloan’s research is in the social and cultural history of modern Britain. Her particular field is in the history of childhood, youth, and education. Her current project is on ‘The School Magazine in Victorian England’. Although young people are often described as too innocent, vulnerable and obedient to have shaped the society around them, they nonetheless had lively social and cultural practices of their own. School magazines exhibited their sophisticated knowledge of contemporary literature and showcased their cultural activities at school, and the magazines are a rich source on a group often missing from studies of social and cultural change.
