go_girl illustration by Julia Hayes CC BY-NC-SA

(by Anne Geniets)

go_girl: code + create is an interdisciplinary project at the Department of Education. In line with Oxford’s targets in its Access Agreement with the Office for Fair Access, the project set out to complement existing programmes aimed at widening access to the University of Oxford, but tackles the problem in a fundamentally new way using technology. The research is supported by the University of Oxford IT Innovation Seed Fund.

Over the course of a year, the project has trained young women from non-traditional academic backgrounds in IT-, research- and media skills through weekly sessions. The programme culminated in a symposium on 8th June, at which some of the young women presented their (work-in-progress) projects to an interdisciplinary audience.

Pictureboard illustrating the day. By Julia Hayes CC BY-NC-SA

The Symposium focused on the issue of ‘Women and Technology: How can we challenge inequalities in higher and further education?’. An excellent set of presentations, panel discussions and artwork by symposium delegates from the media- and IT Sector (BBC Make it Digital, LEO, IT Services of the University of Oxford, Department of Computer Science, Trinity College Oxford and The Restart Project) and Widening Participation programmes (Department of Education, LMH Foundation Year, the Trinity Access Program, and the Widening Participation Team of the University of Oxford) contributed to an engaging debate about this important issue. For more information about the event or the go_girl: code+create project more generally, please visit our blog – www.gogirloxford.org