Jack Muir on returning from Oxford during the worst of it

Jack Muir, General Sir John Monash Scholar, on returning from Oxford to Sydney during the worst of the pandemic, the work he came back to do, and the difference between studying a system and operating inside it.

Jack Muir holds a General Sir John Monash Foundation scholarship and returned to Sydney from Oxford in 2021 to begin work on the research project his scholarship funded. The bureau spoke to him in June 2021.

"Oxford was hard to leave and harder to return from."

Oxford was hard to leave and harder to return from. By the time I came back the city I had grown up in had changed in small permanent ways I did not anticipate. The scholarship work bridges that gap. The research is about Australia. The Oxford year gave me the distance to see it.

There is a difference between studying a system and operating inside it. The scholarship cohort tends to do both, in that order. The Oxford year is the studying. The years after are the operating. I am at the start of the second part.

The Scholars · Jack Muir · 21 June 2021 · Archived by Bridge Street Bureau