Director’s Welcome
The Oxford Summer Academy Programme here at Lincoln College has been designed to provide international students and young professionals with the opportunity to experience what is most distinctive about an Oxford education, in the inspiring setting of a historic College, founded in 1427 and located in the heart of Oxford.
Academically rigorous, taught in small student groups (max. 8), and with a strong emphasis on developing critical skills as well as subject-specific knowledge, all our courses are taught by experienced academics affiliated with the University of Oxford, its Colleges, Departments, and Institutes. As well as giving you a unique insight into the traditional methods of teaching developed by the ‘Oxford Tutorial’, however, our courses have also been developed specifically to address highly critical contemporary topics and issues in a range of different subjects – from psychology and engineering to global geopolitics, computer science, law, business, and economics – balancing tradition and innovation.
In addition to personalised teaching of the highest quality delivered by experts in your field, you will also receive dedicated and personalised feedback from your tutors, and will have the opportunity to work on a personal project to enhance your research-, writing-, and presentation skills. You will also participate in a number of interdisciplinary academic workshops focusing on topics such as research skills, essay-writing skills, soft skills, and professional development, and dedicated guidance session on applications for postgraduate academic programmes in the UK. The Summer Academy Programme is particularly useful, therefore, for those of you who are interested in developing a more solid grasp of UK academic standards, or who are planning to pursue further study in a University in the UK, in Oxford or elsewhere.
You will live in a private en-suite room in the beautiful historic surroundings of Lincoln College, where all of our teaching rooms are also located. You will be able to participate in a full social programme, including meals in the 600-year old college hall, visits to local sites, libraries, and museums, day-trips, round-table conferences, and evening talks by high profile guest speakers from the University of Oxford and beyond.
We look forward to welcoming you to Lincoln College for a memorable experience this summer.
Dr Marco Nievergelt (Oxon)
Biography: Marco Nievergelt has studied at the Universities of Lausanne, Aberdeen, and Glasgow, and has received his DPhil in English Literature from the University of Oxford in 2008, where he was funded by a Berrow Scholarship at Lincoln College. Since then, he has held a variety of teaching and research appointments at the Universities of Lausanne and Geneva in Switzerland, at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Paris and at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (EPHE), France, and a t the Universities of Warwick and Oxford in the UK. Between 2020 and 2024 he has led on the development of all academic operations at Forward College, an innovative International startup College with campuses in Lisbon, Paris, and Berlin, working in partnership with the University of London. He is delighted to have returned “home” to Lincoln College in October 2024 to direct the International Programmes, overseeing their development, delivery, and quality assurance
Marco’s area of expertise is in medieval studies. His interests lie in English and comparative literature, cultural history, and intellectual history in the period c. 1200–1600. Areas of specialisation include allegorical poetry, the relations between medieval literature and philosophy, chivalric literature and romance, Anglo-French cultural and literary relations, and medieval translation. His recent work includes The Roman de la Rose and Thirteenth-Century Thought, co-edited with Jonathan Morton and with the help of John Marenbon (Cambridge University Press, 2020), and a monograph, Medieval Allegory as Epistemology: Dream-Vision Poetry on Language, Cognition, and Experience (Oxford University Press, 2023).
