6 minute read
Reaching further than you’ve travelled
Every year, Mansfield welcomes around 40 students from universities across the world to study as part of our Visiting Student Programme (VSP). Our VSPs, past and present, form a huge part of the diverse and multicultural community that defines Mansfield, and many have wonderful recollections of their time here, and the impact it had on their lives.
Tyler Ambrose (VSP, 2015)
Coming across the pond from a small, close-knit liberal arts college in New England, USA, I quickly realised I was exchanging one family-like community for another. Only this time, my new home offered a window to a much wider world. I went from a relatively homogenous northeastern suburb to a place where you could casually pull up to a table at the Crypt and find a global representation that would make the UN General Assembly blush.
The languages, accents, origin stories, and diverse perspectives of my Oxford friends stayed with me long after I left. They sparked a lifelong global curiosity. After my year as a VSP, I pursued further studies abroad in Cuba, researching the island’s economy and its relationship with the USA.
Mansfield’s courses have had a lasting impact on my career. While my home institution had a robust academic catalogue, it lacked traditional business courses like management and finance. My Mansfield tutorials in these subjects piqued my interest, and when I returned to the States, I accepted an internship at JPMorgan. Eight years later, I’m still with the bank.
I vividly remember the bittersweet feeling of leaving my home institution and heading to Oxford for an entire year. Looking back now, I wouldn’t trade the experience for the world. I still keep in touch with my Mansfield friends and always reflect on that year with deep fondness. My only regret, perhaps, is indulging in too much ‘Champagne’ and not enough ‘Chocolates’ (or water) on certain Friday nights. But overall, it was a year that profoundly shaped who, and where, I am today.
Samantha Cocco-Klein (VSP: Economics, 1993)
I spent my VSP year at Mansfield studying Development Economics. The VSP programme assembled an amazing array of courses and tutors, from Economics professors to a Rhodes scholar. But the tutor who made the most lasting impression was a former Oxfam staff member turned English Literature don.
In a class on NGOs and Development, she asked what I would recommend for a given situation (the details of which are long forgotten). Having no experience in developing countries or NGO management, I was hesitant to offer a response. But she encouraged me to reply, observing that international development would throw me into situations where I would not have the answers, but nevertheless, needed to find solutions. The exercise was prescient.
From my early work with children affected by conflict in West Africa and the Balkans, to my current assignment with UNICEF (as a Senior Climate Advisor) re-envisioning humanitarian response in a changing climate, I have always looked for a way forward, guided by evidence and expertise, along with a fair dose of hope and imagination.
Indirectly, the tutor also taught me that it was never too late to go back to school and study what we love, which I took to heart, pursuing a PhD in Public Policy in my 40s. So, in addition to my UNICEF work, I am now an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Hunter College, City University of New York.
Eric Hannis (VSP, 1989)
My time at Mansfield was among the most memorable and enjoyable of all my college years. While it would sound better to claim that the tutorials were what I remembered most, it was the people and extracurricular activities that made my time as a Visiting Student unforgettable.
As a previous member of the rowing team at my home institution of Hamilton College, New York, I was able to secure the stroke position on the College’s Third VIII for both the Torpids and Eights Week races. Though our eight did not place in either race, the thrill of competing in those bump races on the Isis is something I will never forget.
Feeling the need to ‘give something back’ to our host country and to Oxford University, fellow Mansfield Visiting Students Dana Benner (VSP, 1989), Seth Miller (VSP, 1989), Anthony Ewing (VSP, 1989), and I teamed up to support a great UK charity. In the early morning hours of Comic Relief’s Red Nose Day, we adorned a Roman bust on the Sheldonian Theatre’s fence with a moustache, glasses, and a large red nose. While we convinced the Oxford police officer who caught us that our creative contributions would really help the charity, the spiked wrought-iron fence almost ended up ensuring we would have a childless future!
My time at Mansfield allowed me to make lifelong friends from other countries and awakened an interest in international affairs and working with allied and partner nations – as I did while a military officer, and as I continue today in the aerospace industry.
Akaela Michels-Gualtieri (VSP: English, 2023)
At 18 years old, as my peers headed off to university, I packed my bags and moved to Italy with the dream of becoming a professional trapeze artist. By the age of 30, I had achieved more than I had ever imagined possible: starring as a solo swinging aerialist with Cirque du Soleil and Ringling Brothers. Then, a debilitating injury during a rehearsal left me incapacitated. Like Kafka’s Gregor Samsa, I awoke one morning in a body I did not recognise, and was forced, without warning, to reinvent myself. I had to reimagine my future given the very real possibility that I might never heal from my injury.
That path carried me first to Brown University, and then to Mansfield. One of the highlights of my time at Oxford was Mansfield’s interdisciplinary approach to academic scholarship. I was able to merge my passion for history and Shakespeare by charting how the implementation of anti-miscegenation legislation in Jacobean England, Antebellum America, and Imperial Germany shaped the textual evolution of Othello. I am thrilled that my paper, ‘Othello: A Moor Rorschach Test,’ was published in October 2024 in New Theatre Quarterly (Cambridge University Press).
I recognise that my path has been anything but traditional. I will be forever grateful to Mansfield College, and Dr Helen Lacey in particular, for taking a chance on me. I have never felt more at home than I have at Mansfield, which is truly a College for nonconformists like me. I am grateful for the incredible opportunity I had to embrace a new type of flight – to soar once again. But this time with my feet firmly planted on the ground.
