What if you could return to Oxford for a week, not as a nostalgic visitor, but as a full participant in its intellectual life?
This is precisely what the Wadham Experience offers – through 5-day intellectual retreats at Wadham, designed for leaders, thinkers and doers. Fully residential, it’s a chance to step back into Oxford's scholarly world, not to relive your undergraduate years, but to immerse yourself in the humanities, to indulge in thinking for pleasure, and to engage with Oxford with the new perspectives, curiosity and appreciation that come with time.
The Wadham Experience: A space to think
Through academic seminars and creative engagement with the humanities (history, music, ethics, literature and architecture) you’ll find space to think, expand critical thinking skills, explore fresh perspectives and unlock new ways of navigating challenges. And each programme culminates in an oxford tutorial, during which you’ll discuss your own topic or question with an oxford fellow.
What could you do with a change from business-as-usual thinking?
Some participants see this as a leadership development programme; an opportunity, amongst a diverse senior peer group, to further develop the ‘human skills’ that give leaders a valuable advantage within a workplace of increasing AI and automation.
Or you may be at a crossroads or looking for a mini sabbatical. During this immersive week you’ll sleep and dine within the walls of 400-year-old Wadham College. Open to alumni and non-alumni to apply, this is a taste of the Oxford undergraduate experience albeit with boutique-hotel style bedrooms, optional morning yoga, and fine-dining – you’ll return with renewed motivation, energy and clarity.
As featured in:
The Times "Wadham College's first mind-altering thinking retreat" (Dec 2025)
TRAVEL + LEISURE “I Played Scholar for a Week at Oxford—and Discovered Why Deep Thinking Might Be the Ultimate Luxury” (Feb 2026)
Next programme dates
Thinking Clearly: Attention in a Cacophonous World, 6-11 September 2026
Thinking Critically: Civilisation on the Edge, 13-18 September 2026
Offer for alumni
10% fee discount applied to all applications from University of Oxford alumni. You must have completed a degree-bearing programme at the University of Oxford to qualify.
For 2026, final fees are then £8,820, down from £9,800; this includes all tuition, accommodation, meals, programme materials, and activities such as morning yoga.
How to claim
No additional application is required; 10% discount will automatically be applied to applications from University of Oxford degree alumni.
We will use the details you supply in the Wadham Experience online application form or the wider application process to determine eligibility.
Visit the website to download a brochure, book a call to find out more, and apply.
Find out more
“Most corporate training is short, packed and transactional: you’re pulled out of production, trained in new skills and pushed straight back in. The Wadham Experience is the opposite. The time to think and explore ideas is, maybe contrary to instinct, but much more powerful. Experiencing history through debate and conversation has a much bigger impact on your perception of what works in leadership than a slide deck ever will."
Jojo Sanders, Managing Director, J.P. Morgan,
BA Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, Wadham College, Oxford
“I think the framing of this (Thinking Critically: Civilisation on the Edge) was really intriguing; a chance to engage over a good period of time with some really meaty topics. It was also comparable to retreats, where you might go away for reflection or personal development. But I've often found a lot of them to not have an intellectual depth - whereas this offers both the break from the real world, and really substantive intellectual stimulation.”
Robin Clyfan, Writer and presenter,
BA History, Wadham College, Oxford, 2005
