TFP 2025 – Attending the Symposium

Venue

The conference will take place in Lecture Theatre 2 (the Bill Roscoe Lecture Theatre) in the Wolfson Building of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford, from 13th to 16th January 2025. The main entrance is on Parks Road.

Travel

The University maintains a page of information about travel to Oxford. Note that non-Europeans will need an Electronic Travel Authorisation in order to travel to the UK from 8th January 2025.

The most convenient airport is London Heathrow, from where there is the frequent 24-hour Oxford Airline coach service taking about 90 minutes. The same company also serves London Gatwick airport, taking about two hours. Some budget airlines fly to Birmingham International Airport, which is conveniently on the rail line north of Oxford about an hour away. London Luton and London Stansted are connected to Oxford by National Express coach, but they are 2 hours and 4 hours away respectively, not on motorways, so not such attractive choices. Technically Oxford does have an airport, but it is not actually in Oxford, and it also has no scheduled flights.

Oxford is well connected on the UK rail network: from London Paddington and London Marylebone to the South East, Reading and Didcot from the South and West, and Birmingham from the North. There is also the very frequent 24-hour Oxford Tube coach service from London, and National Express and Megabus coaches from elsewhere in the UK. From northern Europe it can be better to take the Eurostar from Paris or Brussels to London St Pancras, then the train from Paddington, instead of flying.

If you try hard enough, you can cycle to Oxford, which is at the confluence of NCR 5, 51, and 57. But don’t even think about trying to drive.

Accommodation

NEW I have reserved some accommodation (nine eight seven six five four three two one none left! single room, shared bathroom, continental breakfast, £69/night) at Wycliffe Hall, very convenient for the conference venue. You’ll need a booking code: please contact me.

My top tip for accommodation in Oxford is University Rooms, which serves as a brokerage for spare rooms in Oxford’s colleges. There is no better way to get the student experience! The conference is (just) outside term time, so there should be a few rooms available. However, not all colleges make their rooms available this way; my own Kellogg College is one that does not. All the colleges are within walking distance of the Department.

Of course there are many options through sites such as AirBnB and booking.com. The tourist information accommodation page has some additional recommendations. For accommodation outside the city centre, to the north up Banbury Road or Woodstock Road is most convenient for catching a local bus to the Department; but the other arterial routes all have frequent buses into the city centre, depositing you 15 minutes walk away.

Wi-Fi

If you have Eduroam, you should be able to connect automatically to wifi around the University. For those without Eduroam, we hope to provide visitor wifi access.

Other Info

To follow.

Excursion and Banquet

The excursion and banquet will take place on the afternoon and evening of Wednesday 15th January. The excursion will be a visit to the History of Science Museum, which among other exhibits has a world-class collection of astrolabes. We will take a break in a cosy pub, before proceeding to Kellogg College for the banquet.