I’m starting to really know my group, and to enjoy the presence of each of my teammates. That’s one of the main takeaways from this summer job. It’s slightly surprising, in a nice way, that our research activities are far from the dry, mechanical routine I was half-expecting before starting the programme.

Instead, the work so far has been dynamic and collaborative. Over the past week, we’ve continued refining our approach to investigating what drives or limits student volunteering at Oxford. Our main focus has been designing and distributing our surveys. We now have preliminary responses from students, which is starting to give us a clearer picture of the broader patterns. We’ve also reached out to relevant stakeholders, including local charities and college Access directors, asking them to fill out a complementary survey. Their insights will help us understand how the volunteering landscape is perceived from the perspective of organisations and facilitators.

A key part of this outreach has involved using our personal networks. Several team members have been able to contact stakeholders directly through previous volunteering roles or college connections. And the networks of Oxford Laidlaw scholars has been absolutely central to this too. This has helped us reach people quickly and encourage them to participate. It’s becoming clear that networks play a central role, not just in research but in volunteering itself. Access to opportunities, and the likelihood of hearing about them or feeling comfortable joining in, often depends on who you know. This is a useful early insight that could feed directly into our recommendations later on.

So far, the preliminary survey responses confirm that time pressure is one of the main barriers to volunteering, but there are also deeper layers to explore. Many answered that they didn’t hear about volunteering opportunities at all, and that anything not organized through their own college tends to go over their head.  Understanding how these perceptions form, and how they vary across different colleges and student groups, will be an important next step.

In parallel with data collection, we’ve been working on developing our skills as a team. The Excel and Nvivo workshops gave us practical tools for analysing survey data and managing spreadsheets more efficiently. Again, it’s been enriching to see how different members of the group bring their own strengths to the project, whether that’s technical skills, organisation, or outreach.

Outside the core research tasks, we also had the chance to visit Blackbird Leys, one of Oxford’s more disadvantaged neighbourhoods. The visit gave us a valuable on-the-ground perspective of community engagement beyond the university setting. We met with local organisers who shared their experiences running grassroots initiatives. Their commitment to building long-term relationships within the community stood out, as did their emphasis on consistency and trust. For us, this highlighted the importance of sustained engagement, rather than one-off volunteering efforts. It also reinforced the idea that volunteering is not just about the activities themselves, but about forming connections that are meaningful for both students and the wider community. This visit deepened our understanding of the local context and the kinds of partnerships that can make volunteering mutually beneficial.

Looking ahead, our main focus will be on expanding the number of survey responses and starting to identify emerging themes in the data. We’ll also continue engaging with stakeholders and building a more detailed understanding of the volunteering ecosystem in Oxford. It’s encouraging to see how the project is taking shape, both in terms of the data we’re collecting and the collaborative atmosphere we’re building as a team. We’re excited to keep moving forward.