About Us

In 2022, Worcester College decided to start offering its certificate programmes to students from high schools and universities as well as professionals, so that we could share our educational excellence with the world. Since then, hundreds of participants have joined us here in Oxford, with some coming back more than once in just these last few years. This is due to our commitment to only having scholars of Oxford and Cambridge as our instructors, and our team being almost exclusively made up of current Worcester staff and students. This means our courses always deliver cutting edge academic content, coupled with having the best in local knowledge for all of our activities and excursions in and around Oxford.

This page details some of the fantastic academics we have teaching for us, as well as the team who operate the programmes.

Our Lecturers

Dr Chloe Bracegirdle received her DPhil in Experimental Psychology from Oxford in 2020 before becoming a postdoctoral research fellow at Nuffield College. She studies how social networks shape individuals and societies, focusing especially on outcomes regarding intergroup relations and wellbeing. Her past research has, for example, shed light on how friendship networks influence ethnic prejudice and perceptions of discrimination. She now holds a British Academy postdoctoral research fellowship at Oxford’s department of Sociology, where she investigates the socio-psychological drivers of ethnic segregation in UK schools. She is also a Non-Stipendiary research fellow at Nuffield college, and she teaches Sociology and Psychology on our University programmes.
 

Prof Simon Cowan is an economist and is the Wigmore Clarendon Fellow in Economics at Worcester College. His research is on theoretical models of pricing in imperfect competition, with a recent focus on price discrimination, oligopoly theory, and mergers. He has also worked on the regulation of privately-owned utilities. Regulatory Reform: Economic Analysis and British Experience (MIT Press), written with co-authors Mark Armstrong and John Vickers, was published in 1994. He has papers in the American Economic Review, The Economic Journal and the Rand Journal of Economics, and he is a former editor of Oxford Economic Papers. He is currently an Associate Editor of the Oxford Review of Economic Policy. He is also an Associate Professor in Economics at Oxford’s Department of Economics, and he gives lectures on our University programmes.
 

Dr Ximeng Fang is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford and a Senior Research Fellow at INET Oxford. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Bonn. His research focuses on understanding the role of non-monetary motives and cognitive limitations for social and economic behaviour. He has previously taught economics and business for both our high school and university programmes.

Dr Cosima Gillhammer teaches many of the old and middle English papers for Oxford’s English faculty, and her research currently focuses on the translation of the Bible into English in that period. As well as two academic books on this field, Cosima has also written the high succesful Light on Darkness, a work for the more general reader on liturgy has influenced literature, art, and music down to the present day. She therefore teaches not only our Shakespeare course but also our Victorian writers course for Univesity students, as well as the English literature course for High school students. Cosima first gained a double degree in English linguistics and Medieval English at LMU Munich, before studying for her doctorate at Trinity College, Oxford. She was then a Junior Research Fellow at ChristChurch College, before becoming the Career Development Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. She was also previously the Erika and Kenneth Riley Fellow at the Huntington Library, California.

 Prof Keith Hawkins retired from regular departmental teaching in October 2006. His research is on the sociology of legal decision-making and his courses focus on the realities of legal processes and criminal justice and punishment. He was previously a fellow of Oriel College and is Emeritus professor of Law and Society. He teaches on our law programmes for university students and our executive programmes.
 

Prof Emilio Martínez-Pañeda is Associate Professor of Engineering Science and a Fellow of Harris Manchester College. He was previously at Cambridge University and Imperial College, London. His research spans a wide range of challenges lying at the interface between mechanics and other disciplines, such as materials science, geology, chemistry, biology, and structural engineering. He combines experiments, theory and computer simulations to develop mechanistic models that can reliably capture material deformation and fracture. He teaches Engineering on our univeristy programmes.
 

Prof Benjamin Morgan specialises in German intellectual history, and he has published widely on key issues and figures from Meister Eckhart in the fourteenth Century to contemporary German philosophers such as Christoph Menke. He is Professor of German and Comparative Literature and Chair of the German Department at the University of Oxford, as well as being a fellow of Worcester College. As well as teaching on our university programmes, he is also co-director of the Certificate Programmes at Worcester College.
 

Prof Eva Schlinwein previously studied at Friedrich Schiller University Jena before becoming a postdoctoral researcher there, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the Centre for Corporate Reputation at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford and Jesus College. As well as continuing her research at Oxford and remaining an External Lecturer at Saïd Business School , she is also Professor of ESG and Sustainable Management at Bern University of Applied Sciences (Switzerland). Her research examines how organizations navigate social expectations and ethical challenges, informing her teaching on leadership and strategic management in complex institutional contexts. Eva is one of longest standing lecturers, having taught on the certificate programmes since 2022.
 

Prof Olivia Spiegler is a psychologist who earned her diploma from Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena (2010) and her PhD from Ruhr-University Bochum (2016) for work on the cultural and social integration of Turkish migrants in Europe. She has held research and teaching posts at Ruhr-University Bochum, FernUniversität Hagen, and the University of Oxford’s Department of Experimental Psychology. Before joining Oxford’s Department of Sociology in 2025, she was a postdoctoral researcher on the IntegrateYouth project (PI Jan O. Jonsson) and a Research Fellow at Nuffield College. In 2023 she became Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Applied Sciences in Göttingen. She teaches Sociology on our University programmes.
 

Prof Harrison Steel completed a BEng in Mechanical Engineering and a BSc in Physics and Mathematics at the University of Sydney (Australia). He then came to Oxford for his doctoral studies as a Monash Scholar. Following his studies he was a postdoctoral researcher in the Department’s Control Group, before joining as an Associate Professor in 2020. He is also a tutorial fellow of Harris Manchester College. His research group works on interdisciplinary challenges at the intersection of Synthetic Biology, Robotics, and Control Engineering. He teaches Engineering on our univeristy programmes.
 

Prof Nir Vulkan is a Professor of Business Economics at the Saïd Business School, Oxford. He is also a member of the Oxford Man Institute for Quantitative Finance and a Fellow of Worcester College. His research focuses on algorithmic trading; fin tech and market design. He was the Chairman of the Banking and Finance Committee on Ethical AI advising the EU. He is the Director of the Oxford Programs for Algorithmic Trading and for Fin Tech. He lectures for our university and executive programmes.
 

Our Programme Team

Prof. Dominik Wanner has served as the founding co-director of the Oxford Certificate Programmes here at Worcester College since 2022. He has operated and advised on programmes at several colleges of the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge since 2007. He first studied Law and Business Management in Munich (Germany) and St Gallen (Switzerland) before carrying out his doctoral studies at Shanghai Tongji University (China). In 2019 he was made a visiting professor at Peking University (China), whilst in 2024 he was also named as a visiting professor at Renmin University (China). His research focuses mainly on the economic links between ASEAN and its members with China.
 

Prof Benjamin Morgan is co-director of the Oxford Certificate Programmes at Worcester College. As well as being a fellow of the college he is professor of German and Comparative Literature, and is currently Chair of the German Department at the University of Oxford. His research concerns German intellectual history.
 

Dr. Maximilian Lau is the Programme Manager of the Oxford Certificate Programmes, handling the operation of all programmes and managing the team at the college. He read History at the University of St Andrews (Scotland) before coming to Oxford to do his Master’s and Doctorate. He then held a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo (Japan), before he returned to Oxford as a Junior Research Fellow. At Oxford he teaches for the Faculties of History and Theology, whilst at Worcester he is a Research Member of the Senior Common Room, as well as being the Director of Rowing and Head Coach. His research mainly focuses on Byzantium and the Crusades, but also included subjects as diverse as the 18th century coffee trade and changing global political economies in comparison.
 

Olive Holding is a Programme Officer for the Certificate Programmes, handling outreach, onboarding, student communication and programme preparation. She graduated from Worcester College (University of Oxford) with a BA in French and Linguistics in 2024, and previously worked at an international education provider in France.