Dragons, dialogues and development grants: A Foundation Year student’s Summer School story
When Daphne stepped into Keble College as part of the Astrophoria Foundation Year in 2024/25, she brought with her a love of literature and a curiosity about the worlds it could unlock. Now a first-year undergraduate studying English Language and Literature, Daphne continues to explore those worlds, most recently through the Oxford-Bloomsbury Fantasy Summer School, a week-long deep dive into the magic, myth, and meaning behind fantasy fiction.
With support from the Foundation Year Academic Development Grant, which offers up to £500 to help students pursue academic projects, Daphne was able to attend the summer school in September. The experience gave her the chance to engage with leading scholars, meet fellow fantasy enthusiasts, and develop her own creative and critical voice.
In the piece below, Daphne shares her reflections on the summer school: the seminars that sparked new ideas, the stories that stayed with her, and how the experience has shaped her journey from Foundation Year student to undergraduate.
I attended the Oxford-Bloomsbury Fantasy Summer School this past September, sponsored by leading publisher Bloomsbury, and hosted at Exeter College. During my Foundation Year I became familiar with Oxford’s unique role in shaping modern fantasy as we know it. During a Preparation for Undergraduate Studies presentation, I briefly covered the influences Oxford has had on fantasy giants such as C.S. Lewis and Tolkien, as well as on more recent students of the university like Katherine Rundell and R.F. Kuang. Further, my extended essay focused on Alan Garner, another Oxford-educated fantasy author. With these interests in mind, being offered the opportunity to attend the Oxford-Bloomsbury Fantasy School was a privilege. Each lecture, workshop, and taster talk left me with a greater sense of understanding and curiosity about the genre.
The school lasted for three days, organised so that each day would represent the past, present, and future of fantasy. What particularly struck me was how clearly influential medieval literature has been on the genre. Fantasy texts can be brilliant examples of medievalism, with authors having researched extensively on narratives and mythologies in Norse, Celtic, and Old English. Texts like The Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, and its prequel House of the Dragon were used as case studies to outline the importance medieval narratives and culture have had on both fantasy texts and how readers perceive the genre. In light of these talks, the importance of my own Old and Middle English classes this year as an undergraduate has been emphasised, and I am eager to explore the relationship between medievalism and fantasy further.
The summer school was not solely centred around academic lecturers and workshops. On Wednesday afternoon Bloomsbury’s CEO, leading editors, and authors came to discuss the fantasy genre from a publishing house’s perspective. Bloomsbury is launching a new imprint this autumn called Archer. This imprint will be entirely dedicated to fantasy literature. I was lucky enough to hear how Katherine Rundell (Impossible Creatures) tackled the research process for her children’s fiction from an unconventional angle, such as learning to fly a plane, practicing trapeze, and doing a weightlessness experience. Later, Samantha Shannon (Priory of the Orange Tree) did a Q&A about her writing process, where she revealed she often turned to travel to immerse herself within the culture and spaces she wrote about.
I also met Bloomsbury’s CEO and founder Nigel Newton, sitting next to him at lunch. We spoke about libraries, my past experience as a bookseller, and even found common ground over our university colleges being sisters! Bloomsbury’s leading editors in Children’s Literature, Academia, and Fantasy also gathered to do a roundtable discussion about what elements in manuscripts were most striking when coming across their desk. Things like character-driven plots, identity, and well-structured narratives echoed how academics had described various successful and enduring fantasy works across the week. These afternoon events provided an intimate and rare insight into the methodology and practices of modern fantasy authors and their editors. I left the Oxford-Bloomsbury Fantasy Summer School eager to witness what fantasy writers, scholars, and texts will do next to expand and shape the genre further.
