Alumnus elected to All Souls Fellowship

One of the most exclusive and prestigious Fellowships in academia, the college normally elects two fellows from 150 or more candidates. An All Souls Examination Fellowship is for seven years and cannot be renewed. Petrauskas hopes to use the first two years of the Fellowship to write his thesis and finish his current MPhil in Politics (Comparative Government). “In the next five years I hope to either pursue a doctorate or embark on a career in the EU affairs field or, ideally, combine the two!” he says.

Famed as the hardest examination in the world, Petrauskas’ advice is, “My general tip would be to approach it, first and foremost, as an exciting intellectual challenge. In the age of decreasing attention spans, having an opportunity to sit down for a couple of hours and think and write about what one believes to be interesting and important is not something that happens often.”

The exam involves a written examination, consisting of four papers of three hours each. Two are from the candidate’s chosen specialist subject and two are general. The exams involve answering a number of questions but the one that stuck with Petrauskas was a question from the ‘Politics Specialist’ paper: Do we owe it to the dead to remember them?

Petrauskas says he approached it the same way he thinks contemporary political theory should be done in the ideal scenario: “Engaging carefully with initial personal intuitions we tend to have about important moral and political questions, and then proceeding to examine more deeply, first, the logical structure of the arguments we can construct based on these intuitions and, second, the implications of these arguments on wider considerations relating to our coexistence in diverse political communities.”

He adds: “Having thought about how I intuitively think about my relationship with those in my family and community who are no longer with us, I eventually came to argue that while there may not be a duty of remembrance owed to the dead themselves, there may well be a similar duty directed to the living. Being members of the same memory community, we owe it to the living to remember the dead to preserve this ‘memory common’ that we share with others.”

Petrauskas credits his Oriel experience as critical in shaping his academic interests and choices. He embarked on his PPE degree not knowing what he wanted to specialise in, he explains. “My time in Oriel allowed me to discover my interest in the intersection of political theory and comparative politics. In any other place, more divided along the disciplinary boundaries, this would not have happened, but Oriel’s community and its commitment to academic rigour and free and equal expression have made this fairly unlikely interdisciplinary crossing possible.”

The other aspect of his Oriel experience he credits are “the fellow students I’ve met who shaped my views and beliefs, and Oriel tutors — especially Professor Teresa Bejan, Dr Eloise Davies, Dr Richard Coggins and Professor Chris Bowdler — who guided me in my academic journey.”

Petrauskas is not the only Orielensis with fond memories of Oriel. All Souls current Warden Sir John Vickers says that philosophy tutorials were his favourite part of being at Oriel. Asked if he had any advice for aspiring students from Oriel, Vickers says: “Apply to be a reader in the All Souls Library!”