OXCEP @ St Edmund Hall is currently hosting its first Academic Medicine course for 40 academic clinicians from the West China Center of Medical Sciences at Sichuan University in China.

Over the last three years, St Edmund Hall has entered into an academic cooperation agreement to promote international links with Sichuan University in Chengdu, China. This four-pronged agreement incorporates Visiting Fellows, Visiting Students, lecture series and academic courses. The courses are organised by OXCEP (the Oxford Chinese Economy Programme), which is a collaboration between St Edmund Hall and Dr Frank Hwang, designed to foster links with Chinese institutions. OXCEP is a task force specifically established for St Edmund Hall and solely based at the College, in order to spearhead and implement projects including the related forums and workshops, distinguished speaker lectures, economics courses, and the Visiting Fellow and Visiting Student programmes. So far, previous academic courses have focussed on economics, and this is the first in medicine.

Guests arrived on Sunday 13 March to stay at St Edmund Hall, and have been enjoying a daily programme of academic presentations, highlighting horizons in medical sciences research and education at Oxford. Sessions are conducted in English, with serial translation also provided. The delegates received a warm welcome from St Edmund Hall Principal Professor Keith Gull and Senior Tutor Professor Robert Wilkins at a dinner in College on Monday evening.

As well as the ten-day academic programme, the visiting clinicians have had the opportunity to look around Oxford on a walking tour, and take in some of its many cultural attractions, including a viewing of some of the treasures of the Bodleian at the Weston Library and visits to the University Church of St Mary the Virgin and the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. They leave Oxford on Thursday, to visit Cambridge and then Windsor before flying home on 26 March.