As a mature student (age 21 or above) at Blackfriars Hall you can study for undergraduate and postgraduate degrees of the University of Oxford in philosophy and theology (including the PGCE in Religious Studies). If you are a Visiting student on our Overseas Student Programme, you can also take supplementary courses in English Literature, British History, and Classics. We welcome applications from men and women of different religious backgrounds and none, who wish to study in the unique context given by Blackfriars and its Catholic identity and ethos.

We offer you access to a specialist teaching staff, a library of some 35,000 volumes in theology and philosophy, IT facilities, and the support of a small and friendly academic community which draws on the strengths of the Dominican tradition of intellectual endeavour. There is a common room, where students can meet one another, relax, make snacks, and socialise, and postgraduate students are able to take lunch on weekdays next door at St Cross college. While Dominican students live in the Priory, we currently offer limited accommodation for other students of the Hall in nearby houses. Priority is given to our Visiting Students.

The University of Oxford is a collegiate university comprising thirty-nine colleges and seven 'permanent private halls', of which Blackfriars Hall is one. The Hall is run by the English Province of the Dominican Order, a religious order of the Catholic Church.

The establishment of Blackfriars Hall on 1 January 1994 was not the beginning of Dominican involvement in the life of Oxford University. This began not long after the first priory was founded in 1221, when Robert Bacon, a Regent Master of the University, joined the Order. Dominicans, along with friars of other Orders, came to hold a pre-eminent position in the University’s Faculty of Theology. Distinguished Dominican academics at the medieval University included Robert Kilwardby (later Archbishop of Canterbury), Richard Fishacre, Robert Holcot, Nicholas Trivet and Thomas Walleys.

Blackfriars Hall is pleased to join with the Von Hugel Institute at St Edmund's College, Cambridge, in a new venture to identify, nurture, develop, and promote young and emerging leaders inspired by their faith and open to the insights of Catholic social teaching. For more information on the International Young Leaders Network, click here and see our news pages.

Blackfriars Hall continues the historic mission of the Dominican Order to engage with contemporary thought by its participation in the life and work of a modern University that is committed to excellence in teaching and academic research.