Academic Summit for Young Leaders

Oxford Global Academic Summit for Young Leaders is a unique event combining intensive academic short courses with the opportunity to engage with solutions to global problems. ASYL consists of intensive short courses designed to give high school students the opportunity to learn in depth about topics and subjects that they would not normally have the chance to engage with at school, and consider how the new skills they will learn can be applied to address global challenges. We have held two editions of Academic Summit for Young Leaders so far, online, with in-person events in development for the future

The course structure

Academic Summit for Young leaders is divided into subject streams, each of which focuses on a different subject with a focus on its application towards solving a real-world challenge. In this way, we give our students the opportunity to engage with their studies outside of an exclusively academic contents, and reveal how the skills they are learning give them the agency to become future global leaders. Past ASYL subject streams have included mathematics, chemistry, psychology, biomedicine, economics, and computer science.

The ASYL courses are taught by researchers at the University of Oxford, and they aim to teach the students to develop their understanding of the subject and academic writing and presentation skills to the standard of Oxford undergraduate students.

Each stream consists of lectures delivered every day by the stream leaders, followed by small-group discussion sessions with the course facilitators following the Oxford tutorial system. The end point of the course is the writing of group essays on a specific topic, choice of which is provided at the start of the course, as well as a presentation on the same topic. Over the course of this process, students develop their interpersonal cooperation and collaboration abilities, as well as their academic writing and presentation skills.

After each Academic Summit, the essays written by each group are collated into a journal, which is available for viewing on that event’s page as testament to the high level of understanding and writing ability attained by the participants.

We hope that each graduate of ASYL leaves the course with not only deepened knowledge of their chosen subject areas, but also increased confidence in their communication and writing abilities and a heightened sense of agency in being able to confront and solve future global challenges.