Tutors and Colleges

Photograph of staff members in discussion over coffee. They are stood at the end of a bar top in the researcher's common room.

The Department of Earth Sciences has undergraduate tutors in seven colleges. Many colleges also have additional non-tutorial fellows who teach on the undergraduate course whilst pursuing their own research interests.

The Oxford collegiate system can seem quite confusing for newcomers and the prospect of having to select a college during your application may feel daunting. You can state a preference for a particular college on your application form, or you can submit an open application and one will be assigned for you. Ultimately, what matters is the course you apply for. If you apply to Earth Sciences and are successful in securing a place on the course, you will have secured a place at one of our seven colleges.

Please note, the list of tutors below is not an exhaustive list of the people who offer lectures and tutorials. Undergraduate teaching is provided by a combination of suitable specialists from our faculty, researchers, and postgraduate students.

Exeter College

Professor Conall Mac Niocaill teaches first years during their introductory courses, as well as leading their first field course to Pembroke. He also teaches on palaeomagnetism, and leads the field course to Arran, Scotland.

Associate Professor Paula Koelemeijer is a seismologist interested in using seismic waves to understand the world around us, ranging from planetary-scale processes to social seismology. She finds it fascinating that the tiny signals recorded at the Earth’s surface allow us to answer fundamental questions about its deep interior, and yet also provide detailed information about human and animal behaviour.

Find out more about Exeter on the college website. 

St Anne's College

Associate Professor Don Porcelli uses trace element distributions and isotope ratios to provide a better understanding of planetary composition and formation, weathering, ocean geochemistry and reconstruction of palaeoenvironments. Don teaches on the early history of the solar system, basic aqueous chemistry, radiogenic isotope geochemistry, and mathematical methods.

Professor Stuart Robinson uses field and lab observations to understand past environments, past climates and the impacts of major environmental change, in order to test predictive models of future climate scenarios and inform the debate about the likely consequences of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Find out more about St Anne's on the college website.

St Edmund Hall

Associate Professor Claire Nichols uses magnetism as a novel tool to understand Earth and planetary formation, the environment of the early Earth and planetary habitability. By interrogating the magnetic signals preserved by ancient terrestrial and extraterrestrial materials, much insight can be gained as to how our solar system and planet formed and how life subsequently emerged.

Associate Professor Luke Parry is a palaeobiologist working on understanding the origin and early evolution of animals, based on exceptionally preserved early fossils from the Cambrian Period, over 500 million years ago. By combining study of ancient fossils, living organisms and inferring the animal tree of life, this work seeks to understand how and when animal diversity arose and how different groups became so different from one another

Find out more about St Edmund Hall on the college website.

St Hugh's College

Associate Professor Thomas Aubry works at the crossroad of climate science and physical volcanology, and aims to help societies face climate change and natural hazards. He will be contributing to teaching topics in volcanology, climate science, quantitative methods and geophysics.

Find out more about St Hugh's on the college website.

St Peter's College

Professor Bob Hilton is a geochemist who studies the exchange of carbon between the atmosphere and rocks, and how these carbon transfers respond to and drive climate change. His research quantifies how erosion and weathering processes act as CO2 sinks, and CO2 sources, and transfer CO2 between the atmosphere, hydrosphere and oceans, and long-term, geological storage in sedimentary deposits.

Find out more about St Peter's on the college website.

University College

Associate Professor James Bryson’s research focuses on using meteorites and ancient terrestrial samples to study the evolution of the early solar system and the first planetary bodies. Recently, his work has involved using the magnetism recorded by meteorites to place the formation locations of their parent bodies throughout the solar system and reconciling the isotopic signatures of different meteorites to better understand the very earliest stages of solid formation in the solar system.

Find out more about University College on the college website.

Worcester College

Professor Hauke Marquardt’s research focuses on the experimental exploration of material properties at extreme pressure and temperature conditions typical for planetary interiors. The goal of his research is to understand and quantify processes occurring deep inside the Earth; processes that ultimately relate to surface plate tectonics and the habitability of our planet.

Find out more about Worcester on the college website.

Frequently Asked Questions

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All of the colleges are slightly different in location, age, and architecture. Some will may have different student societies or facilities. If you’re unsure which college you might like to apply to, we would recommend that you have a close look on each of their websites and if you can, attend one of the undergraduate Open Days. Choosing a college can be exciting and even a little daunting, but it’s important to remember that it will not affect your application. College loyalty develops pretty quickly and most students find themselves very much at home and happy within their eventual college.

No. The education you receive is not college-dependent. Unlike other courses at Oxford, all of the Earth Sciences teaching is coordinated by the Department. All students receive lectures and practicals together. Although you will have some of your tutorials (small group teaching sessions) with your college tutors in your first and second year, there is a high degree of coordination on subject teaching between tutorial staff. As you progress into more specialised topics in your second and third years, tutorials may move outside of your colleges, to be taught by staff or researchers from these expert fields.

No. You will need to specify a choice of college when you apply, but our admissions process in Earth Sciences is ‘college-blind.’ This means that when you are interviewed, none of the Earth Sciences tutors involved in admissions will know which college you have applied to, so your college choice (or the number of spaces available at that college) has no influence over you application; your chance of receiving an offer is the same. If candidates are accepted onto the Earth Sciences course, only then will the admissions team look at your college preference and try to match you to your college of choice. It is not always possible to allocate students to their preferred college, but if you are offered a place on a course, you will have a place in one of the seven colleges.

We try to honour your college choice, and thus if you think it would help you to visit a college before you choose it, please do so. However it is by no means essential. The best times to visit are on Open Days, but you can also find a lot of information on the college websites.