20th August 2016

Call for Submissions


Ex Aula - Logo4-cropped

How many times have you explained your research to someone not in your field? Had to simplify complex concepts and paradigms? Do you enjoy it?

This year the MCR is introducing a new opportunity for students to write about their work for a general audience, in the form of an research journal called Ex Aula: Research from the Hall (Latin for “of the Hall”). Informal articles discussing the research of graduates will be posted regularly, and the best submission will be rewarded with a monetary prize.

The aims of this initiative are to encourage inter-faculty communication, promote MCR/Teddy Hall graduate research and to provide graduate students with the opportunity to expand their writing/editing skill-set away from thesis, dissertation and manuscript preparation. The MCR’s online journal, Ex Aula, will provide a platform for students to present their work to the outside world.

Whether your research focuses on 12th century history, socio-economic policies or neurobiology, this is your chance to have fun with your writing.

Articles should aim to answer one of or a combination of the following questions – Why is my research important? What does my research project contribute to the field? Why is my work/field relevant to the general public? – in a short 800-word laymen’s terms essay.

The project will be launched in Michaelmas term with a call for articles, but we encourage early submissions this summer. If you are interested to contribute an article or would like further details, contact Timothy Donnison (timothy.donnison@seh.ox.ac.uk) and Trent Taylor (trent.taylor@seh.ox.ac.uk), St Edmund Hall.

Recent Research Highlights

2nd August 2017

Winner of Inaugural MCR Writing Competition: Ex Aula

The winner of the first Ex Aula prize, for the best article submitted to the Teddy Hall MCR online journal, has been announced as Elizabeth Raine (2014, DPhil in Zoology). Elizabeth receives the £500 prize for her intriguingly-titled article, ‘Dung Beetles: We Should All Talk More About Poo’, in which she discusses the fascinating and often underestimated role played […]

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1st June 2017

The Molecules of Life That Trigger Death

Layal Liverpool, DPhil in Infection, Immunology, and Translational Medicine Nucleic acids –  DNA and RNA – are the molecules of life. Without them we wouldn’t exist but, ironically, they are the very molecules used by viruses to hijack our cells. Viral nucleic acids act like a virus-blueprint, containing all the instructions necessary to make more […]

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24th May 2017

The Death of the Brainstem: Should Each Person be Permitted to Define Death for Themselves?

  Jake White,  Law Established understandings of when death occurs have been critically undermined by technological advancement and medical innovation. Conceptions of what ‘it’ is that is constitutive of human life has been destabilised as medical intervention makes possible the continuation of major organs that would otherwise succumb to failure. Where a patient is in […]

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18th May 2017

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: Developing Antibiotics

Hannah Behrens, DPhil Infection, Immunology and Translational Medicine (m.2015) Although first discovered in 1928, it was only during the Second World War that Penicillin was developed into a drug that could cure people of bacterial diseases. This started the “antibiotic era” and is considered to be one of the most important medical discoveries of the […]

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12th May 2017

‘Good entertainment & civill mirth’: English Provincial Fairs in the Eighteenth Century

  Jessica Davidson, DPhil in History On 24 May 1702, 18 year old John Cannon set off with his friend John Berryman for Binegar fair, 12 miles from their home in West Lydford, Somerset, ‘being joyous of seeing this great fair’. There they were to set up a stall to sell hats made by Berryman’s […]

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