Online Event: #EnglishCreates Careers: Where can a degree in English take you?

Hosted by the University of Oxford’s Faculty of English as part of the University English #EnglishCreates Campaign.

Join Professor of English Kate McLoughlin and Careers Advisor Julia Sadler in conversation with English Faculty alumni Patience Agbabi, Dhruti Shah and Flo Graham-Dixon. They will reflect on their career journeys since graduating with an English degree and speak to their rich and varied professional experiences. Moderated by Oxford’s English Outreach Coordinator, Kimberly Glassman.

Register on the University of Oxford’s English Faculty website. All welcome!

Speaker biographies

Patience Agbabi is a poet much celebrated for paying equal homage to literature and performance.  Her work moves fluidly and nimbly between cultures, dialects, voices; between page and stage.  After reading English at Pembroke College, Oxford, she completed an MA in Creative Writing at Sussex University. Agbabi has lectured in Creative Writing at Greenwich, Cardiff and Kent Universities and her poems and writing are studied in schools and universities. In 2004 she was named as one of the Poetry Society’s ‘Next Generation’ poets. Her collection, Telling Tales (Canongate, 2014) was shortlisted for The Poetry Society’s Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry. In 2017 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In the last four years, Patience has turned her talents to writing a tetralogy, The Leap Cycle, for children aged 8 to ∞. The debut novel, The Infinite won the Wales Book of the Year: Children & Young People Award and was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. Internationally, she has performed in the US, Southern Africa and Europe widely, and she had a short residency at Yale earlier this year.

Flo Graham-Dixon has worked in retail & hospitality strategy for a decade, with high profile clients including Burger King, Pret a Manger, Ottolenghi, Hawksmoor and Gail’s as well as private equity clients TriSpan, Bridgepoint and Graphite. Flo spent a few months at Christ Church College studying Classics before reapplying to study English at St. Peters College. Today, Flo is the co-founder of Juniper Strategy Ltd, a consultancy firm specialising in restaurants and hospitality, as well as Head of Strategy at Prepline Holdings, a restaurant group with over 70 sites across the Middle East. Alongside her work for operators and investors, Flo has a deep understanding of property and place-making. She was personally involved in bringing to life Alserkal Avenue – now the primary contemporary arts district in Dubai and co-authored Destination Food – Klépierre’s manifesto for creating F&B hubs across their diverse portfolio of 70 European malls.

Dhruti Shah is a multi-award-winning journalist, storyteller and freelance creative practitioner whose work encompasses coaching, consultancy, investigations, facilitating, training and public speaking. She read English Literature at Oxford’s Mansfield College and honed her craft during 14 years at the BBC. She has written for The Guardian, The Washington Post, The New Humanitarian, New Humanist and Fortune Magazine on many different topics. The author of illustrated award-winning financial literacy guide Bear Markets and Beyond: A Bestiary of Business Terms, she is also an advisor for the Museum of Colour, a Clore cultural leader and a Board Trustee and Senior Fellow for the John Schofield Trust. She is also a Rotary International Peace Fellow, an Ochberg Fellow at the Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma, and was the first recipient of the University of Kent’s Centre for Journalism honorary journalism practitioner fellowship. A published poet and short story writer, she hosts the Have You Thought About podcast.

Kimberly Glassman is an English PhD researcher at Queen Mary University of London in partnership with Kew Gardens and works part-time as the Outreach Coordinator for Oxford’s Faculty of English. Kim has worked in marketing, communications, research and curation at Canadian institutions such as the McCord Museum, SBC Gallery of Contemporary Art, Nuit Blanche x Art Maters Festival, Concordia University’s Ethnocultural Art Histories Research Group, and the Museum of Jewish Montreal. After obtaining an MSt in History of Art & Visual Culture from the University of Oxford, Kim worked for two years at The North Wall Gallery as Front of House Manager before returning to her studies at QMUL. Kim has published in SciArt Magazine (2019), The Oxford Mail (2020), Litinfinite Journal (2021), and the Nineteenth Century Gender Studies Journal (2022) and is currently based in Oxford.

Kate McLoughlin is a Professor of English at the University of Oxford and Official Fellow of Harris Manchester College, Oxford’s college for students aged 21+.  Having read English as an undergraduate at Oxford, she qualified as a barrister and worked for the Government Legal Service for seven years, with stints at the European Commission, the French Conseil d’Etat and the UK Office of the Parliamentary Counsel.  She returned to Oxford at the age of 31 for a DPhil in English and subsequent academic career.  Kate is keen to reach out to anyone who is considering an English degree as a mature student and/or thinking about a mid-career change.

Julia Sadler is the Link Careers Advisor for the English, Classics and Law faculties at the University of Oxford Careers Service. Before joining the careers service, Julia worked in publishing for 20 years as a commissioning editor at the legal publishers, Lexis Nexis, followed by managing editor at GTI, the company that produces the TARGETjobs series of the graduate careers publications and websites. She has also worked as a publishing manager in the charity sector and as a TEFL teacher in Japan and London. Julia has a law degree from Reading and graduated from the Legal Practice Course at The University of Law, before going into legal publishing. With her focus on careers in publishing, Julia manages the ‘Insight into Publishing’ programme each Hilary term. You can book an appointment with Julia or any of our careers advisers on the Career Connect platform.