Courses Offered:

• BA (Hons) Oriental Studies
• BA (Hons) Classics and Oriental Studies
• BA (Hons) European and Middle Eastern Languages

Current Fellows and Lecturers

Dr Margaret Hillenbrand (Tutorial Fellow in Chinese)
Professor Edmund Herzig (Professorial Fellow in Iranian Studies)
Mr Shio-yun Kan (Lecturer in Chinese)
Dr Domenico Ingenito (Lecturer in Persian)

Admissions
We accept about eight people each year. Within Oriental Studies our main emphasis is on Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Persian and Turkish, but we welcome candidates in other subjects within Oriental Studies as well as in Classics and Oriental Studies and European and Middle Eastern Languages.

It is not necessary to have studied in advance the Oriental language for which you apply, but it is advisable to inform yourself of the nature of the language and culture that you will be committing yourself to study for three or four years. The number of Oriental Studies students in the University is small, compared with Modern European Languages, but Wadham was one of the first colleges to take such students and it has built up a strong tradition with a large contingent of Orientalists, especially in Chinese.

The Courses
The courses are organised centrally from the Oriental Institute or Institute for Chinese Studies (about ten minutes’ walk from Wadham) where classes and tutorials shared with undergraduates from other colleges are usually held.

The Tutors
Wadham has two Fellows in Oriental Studies, Dr Hillenbrand (Chinese) and Professor Edmund Herzig (Persian), and one lecturer in Chinese, Mr Shio-yun Kan as well as a lecturer in Persian, Dr Domenico Ingenito. The tutors will oversee your work and help you with organising your schedule, and you will also be taught by them depending on the subject you are studying. Your other teachers will be University Lecturers who are also Fellows at other colleges and Language instructors.

The College Library provides subjects such as Chinese, Japanese, Arabic and Persian with specialist books. The Chinese section, having been built up over many years, caters especially well for undergraduates, offering a valuable alternative to the Faculty Library in the Institute for Chinese Studies. The College Persian Library which is of national importance, would be of interest to graduates researching in this field, as well as to undergraduates reading Arabic, Persian, Islamic History, and Persian Literature and Art in particular.

Careers
You will find Oriental Studies opening new horizons. Education in the fullest sense is still what we aim for, rather than just job training, but most of our recent graduates have found their knowledge of languages and culture of great value in a variety of careers, such as commerce, finance, law, the civil and diplomatic service, journalism, as well as academia.

We have an exchange scheme with Hiroshima University, where each year one of our students in Japanese studies can choose to study. We also support students who go on periods abroad as part of the course with travel grants.

Further Information
For more information on the course or applying please see the Undergraduate Prospectus.

Student Profile

Oliver Kerr, 3rd Year, Chinese

I applied to do Chinese because I love languages, but was slightly bored of the European languages I’d done at school; I wanted a fresh new challenge! In Chinese I have found an immensely rich subject that is not just the study of a language but of a whole culture, as fascinating as it is ancient. We have the opportunity to study both modern and classical Chinese, history, philosophy, art and more. It was a bit of a leap into the void, never having studied an oriental language before, but most people were in the same position and since the pace moves very quickly, everyone is at more or less the same level soon enough. Oriental studies is definitely one of the more challenging courses offered by Oxford, but all the more rewarding for it. All those hours poring over funny-looking symbols pays off as soon as you have your first conversation with a native person and realize that they actually understand you- and what’s more, you can understand them! You also get the fantastic opportunity to go abroad; my time in China has proved one of the best experiences of my life, let alone degree! Wadham is a brilliant college to study at: fun, liberal and generally unstuffy. I’m now in my third year and have taken up Japanese as a subsidiary language. I definitely have no regrets and couldn’t see myself studying anything else.  祝您学习成功!