Dean's message to alumni - HT 2026
The few months of 2026 so far have felt unusually long, through a combination of events in the world. It is a great relief against this backdrop to see the sun shining at last, daffodils open, and the days visibly lengthening.
I’d like to thank all those of you who took the time to complete the survey we sent with our newsletter at the end of Michaelmas Term. The results sent a very clear, and helpful, message: what you valued most from your time studying law at Oxford was the skill and judgement of learning to think for yourselves. It was heartening to see how strongly this resonates with what we as a Faculty see ourselves as trying to do. And it helps ensure that our major innovations in teaching – the ongoing review of our undergraduate programmes, and the launch of new masters’ and professional development programmes – are focused squarely on what is most valuable for our students to take with them as they move to greater things.
Thinking for ourselves matters most because the law and its application are never fixed. To pick a couple of salient examples from the world right now: AI is reshaping how lawyers work, and its application in society is generating many new legal issues. At the same time, conflict and frictions in the global order are challenging assumptions about international governance. Domestically, our visions of the role of the rule of law, and the judiciary in particular, are increasingly contested in many parts of the world. We all need critical thinking skills more than ever to understand how to chart paths for ourselves as individuals, and for the people and organisations we variously represent and lead, through this turmoil. Thank you too, for all that we know you are doing in these respects.
Our Faculty members are individually engaging with these challenges in their research. We feature in today’s newsletter two brilliant examples of this – work by Nicole Stremlau and Juliana da Cunha Mota on fact checking in the age of AI, and a report from researchers at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights detailing the value to us as a society of our membership of the European Convention on Human Rights. If you have a few moments, you can click here to see our current showcase of ongoing work on Law and AI – bringing together in an accessible way insights from a range of colleagues.
We are also collectively seeking to ensure that the way we prepare our students continues to empower them to think critically for themselves. All our students now have equal capacity to engage and experiment with AI through the University’s partnerships with major platforms. We are working to ensure that students are tested on their human critical thinking skills, and we are encouraging them to use AI as a tool to help augment their development of these skills, rather than a substitute for them. We will extend engagement with AI for students taking our new MSc in Law, Governance and AI – to be launched in 2027/28 – with practical project work that will involve building, as well as using, these tools.
Thank you for your support for what we do, and I look forward to seeing as many of you as possible in the coming months.