ACADEMIC STAFF
Admissions
We admit nine PPE students each year.
Although a background in Mathematics is not formally required for admission, PPE applicants should have sufficient interest in, and aptitude for, mathematics to cope with the mathematical elements of the course. Mathematics is a particular advantage for the Economics component of the course, as well as for the first year logic course in philosophy, and for first and second year courses in politics.
In recent years over 90% of the applicants who were offered places for PPE had studied Maths to at least AS-Level, or equivalent. You may like to consider taking Maths to AS-level, or an equivalent qualification, even if you do not pursue it further. It is useful at least to have learnt the basics of differentiation before starting your university course in PPE, whether as part of a formal, examined mathematics course or more informally; the same would be true of elementary probability theory and statistics.
The Course
Students study all three subjects in the first year. The PPE Preliminary Examination is taken at the end of the first year. Students can then choose to continue with all three branches or to drop one of them. Second year work mainly covers core papers in the branches chosen, followed in the third year by further subjects from a wide range of options permitting considerable specialization. PPE is a flexible course; it permits everything from an even blend of the three subjects, to a strong concentration (amounting to around two-thirds of the work for the final examination) on one of them. PPE at Brasenose has a reputation for challenging, exciting work, undertaken in a mixture of tutorials and class teaching.
Anyone reading PPE can expect to be taught by most of the tutors below at some point during their degree.
Dr Dave Leal has a particular interest in ethics and philosophy of religion, but also teaches logic, early modern philosophy, epistemology, and philosophy of mind. Professor Christopher Timpson, a philosopher of science, particularly of physics, has interests in philosophy of mind and language and in the history of 20th Century Anglophone philosophy. Dr Simon Shogry came to Brasenose in 2017 and is a specialist in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy. His research focuses on epistemology and ethics in Plato and the Stoics. Dr Katerina Tertytchnaya's research interests include comparative behaviour and authoritarian politics. Banu Demir Paakel is an associate Professor and Tutorial Fellow in economics, whose research interests cover international trade and development. Dr Sergio de Ferra's research interests cover international macroeconomics, soverign debt and default, fiscal policy, capital flows and the Euro area.
Read more about PPE at Oxford.
Careers
Former Brasenose PPEists can be found among other places in Parliament, the Bank of England, the Treasury, the Foreign Office, international organisations, banking and finance, domestic and multinational business, consultancy, teaching and academia, and the media. Some of them are ambassadors, barristers, film producers, schoolteachers, writers, and university professors all over the world.