Welcome letters from the presidents 2026
Amelia Sinclair, JCR President 2026-2027
A welcome from the JCR
Dear Univ freshers,
A massive welcome to Univ and to Oxford! I’m your JCR President this year and I, alongside the rest of the JCR, am looking forward to having you join our College community.
You should be so proud of your achievement in getting your place here, and I hope you’re looking forward to the time that lies ahead. Oxford is an amazing place to live and study, surrounded by people from all sorts of backgrounds, with all sorts of interests and talents. Amongst them, you will hopefully make amazing friends, find people who introduce you to new things and, alongside them, you will figure out the trajectory of your journey here.
Arriving at university is exciting but also daunting. College and the JCR are here to support and help you. Living away from home for the first time, the stress of tutorial work and meeting new people were all things that were on my mind upon arriving at Univ, but very quickly College began to feel like home. Do not forget that nobody expects you to have everything figured out in your first week – adjusting to College life takes time, and everyone has their own pace.
The JCR, or Junior Common Room, is Univ’s undergraduate student community. We represent the undergraduate students, organise events, support clubs and societies, and aim to make life in College as good as it can be. We have JCR meetings every two weeks, where you can come to raise issues and ideas and vote on decisions. There is also free pizza!
We hope that you enjoyed Welcome Week and had a positive introduction to Univ, Oxford and each other. As the term continues, there will be a lot of fun things going on, but don’t feel pressured to do everything. Take things at your own pace and try new things, but remember that your time here consists of more than these first weeks!
There is so much here to enjoy and look forward to. Be yourself, be open to the people and opportunities you encounter, and make your time here your own. I can’t wait to meet you all in person in October.
Best wishes,
Amelia
JCR President 2026-27
Gabriel Pereira, WCR President 2026-2027
A welcome from the WCR
Dear all,
Welcome—or welcome back—to Univ for another year.
For those joining us for the first time, congratulations! I hope you are looking forward to arriving in Oxford, or enjoying it if you have made it here already. There will be a lot to take in: a new course or research project, a new city, an alarming quantity of institutional quirks and terminology, and a great many people whose names you will most likely do a patchy job of remembering. I do hope Univ will quickly become one of the most helpful parts of it all.
Among the things I value most about College life as a graduate student is that the WCR gives us a community somewhat apart from the departments, labs, libraries, and other places in which we spend our working days. Our members have a wide range of academic as well as extracurricular interests, and we come from all over the world; facilitating this dimension in your student lives is, in my view, perhaps the most important function of our Common Room.
We hope that the events that we planned in the two weeks leading up to Michaelmas term gave you plenty of opportunities to meet new people. Even then, you should not worry if you were busy with something else during this time and not able to take part. Our Committee puts on a range of events for new and returning students to spend time together throughout the academic year, from formal dinner exchanges and pub trips to board game nights and meadow walks.
To those returning: welcome back. I hope you have had a great summer, with at least some degree of rest. The intangible character of a College is largely made by the people already in it, so I hope you will continue making use of the WCR, all the while joining us in making the newest members feel at home.
Finally, the Committee and I are here not only to organise the WCR’s usual activities, but to represent you. If something at Univ is confusing, inconvenient, could be better, or you simply do not know whom to ask, please do get in touch. We may not always have the answer, but we can usually help you find it.
I hope you all have a very good Michaelmas term. I look forward to seeing familiar faces again, meeting many new ones, and seeing another year at our wonderful College unfurl.
All the best,
Gabriel Pereira
WCR President 2026–2027
See further details on our New Students page.
Published: 14 October 2026
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