The Wadham Experience through the lens of philosopher, Tom Sinclair

The Wadham Experience is a five-day intellectual retreat for senior leaders and curious minds, held in residence here at Wadham. Rooted in the college’s long-standing tradition of radical thought and interdisciplinary exchange, the programme invites participants to step outside routine, challenge assumptions and reimagine what leadership and learning can be.

Among the faculty is Wadham’s Tutorial Fellow in Philosophy, Tom Sinclair, whose sessions explore some of the most enduring and urgent questions around justice, power and perspective. We sat down with Tom to hear about his reflections on the programme – not just as a tutor, but as a fellow explorer of ideas.

It’s been a huge pleasure and a real privilege. Participants in the Wadham Experience combine the intellectual curiosity of an academic mind with practical experience and understanding that you only get from engagement in the world beyond the academy. So they have a genuine drive to get somewhere with the deepest questions and the most challenging ideas, rather than remaining content with superficial takes that are good enough to get by. But at the same time their experience outside the academy gives them a sense of the necessity and value of space to think about these questions and ideas, and come at them from a range of perspectives and with a dynamism that make the sessions fizz with energy.

My role is to provide a space and stimulus and encouragement for the kind of thinking that is the point of the Wadham Experience. I can bring philosophical training, a sense of some of the right questions to ask and the intellectual connections that might be forged. But the joy and fulfilment of the week lies in the intellectual (and sometimes practical!) creativity and discovery that flows from exchanges between the participants, convenors, and speakers and session leaders involved. In the sessions I lead, these exchanges are sparked by philosophical questions and problems whose contours I try to bring out. But my hopes for the cohort are that they will come away from these sessions (and the week more generally) not with a big heap of information to ingest, but excited by the ideas they’ve been exploring and by a deepened appreciation of their significance and interest—both in themselves and for the practical and intellectual questions the participants grapple with in their lives beyond Wadham.

I’ve learned all sorts of things. But perhaps what’s stood out the most is just how much interest there is beyond the walls of the academy in the big questions of history, philosophy, art, culture, and psychology (among others) that the Wadham Experience creates space to engage with—and how impressive and creative the thinking is that people from such diverse backgrounds and professions can do given the time, a beautiful environment, and convivial company in which to do it!

Thank you, Tom!

Join us for The Wadham Experience – an invitation to reflect, explore and be intellectually revitalised in one of Oxford’s most historic and progressive colleges.

Find out more and book your place now.