Homepage for the University of Oxford finite element methods reading group, run by me (Boris Andrews) and Tom Higham.
Meetings this term will be hosted on Tuesday from 15:00–16:00 GMT, in S2.37 (when available).
2026–2027
Michaelmas term
| Week | Date | Topic | Presenter |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 13.OCT | (TBA…) | (TBA…) |
| 2 | 20.OCT | (TBA…) | (TBA…) |
| 3 | 27.OCT | (TBA…) | (TBA…) |
| 4 | 03.NOV | (TBA…) | (TBA…) |
| 5 | 10.NOV | (TBA…) | (TBA…) |
| 6 | 17.NOV | (TBA…) | (TBA…) |
| 7 | 24.NOV | (TBA…) | (TBA…) |
| 8 | 01.DEC | (TBA…) | (TBA…) |
Click here to hide the records of past presentations.
–2025
For prior years, see Charlie Parker’s page here.
2025–2026
Michaelmas term
| Week | Date | Topic | Presenter |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 17.OCT | Long steps in gradient descent methods (Grimmer, 2024; Zhigljavsky, Pronzato & Bukina, 2013) | Me (Boris Andrews) |
| 2 | 24.OCT | Sparse direct solvers (Duff, Erisman & Reid, 2017) | Kars Knook |
| 3 | 31.OCT | Group meeting | Everyone |
| 4 | 07.NOV | Preconditioners for PDE timesteppers (Southworth et al., 2022) | Charlie Parker |
| 5 | 14.NOV | From classical thermodynamics to fluid motion (Málek & Průša, 2018) | Jakub Cach |
| 6 | 21.NOV | Turbulence (Layton, 2018) | Mingdong He |
| 7 | 28.NOV | (Break…) | |
| 8 | 05.DEC | Grad–Shafranov: MHD equilibria and how to find them (Schnack, 2009; He et al., 2025; Blickhan, Stratton & Kaptanoglu, 2025) | Tom Higham |
Hilary term
| Week | Date | Topic | Presenter |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 23.JAN | Differential forms and virtual elements (Arnold, 2018; Beirao da Veiga et al., 2023) | Olav Tyssvang |
| 2 | 30.JAN | Finding equilibria of Hamiltonian systems (Bressan et al., 2025; Bressan et al., 2018) | Mingdong He |
| 3 | 06.FEB | Mollifiers & applications in FEMs (Evans, 2010) | Me (Boris Andrews) |
| 4 | 13.FEB | Free-boundary and two-phase MHD (Gerbeau, Le Bris & Lelièvre, 2006; Gu, Luo & Zhang, 2024) | Ganghui Zhang |
| 5 | 20.FEB | (Break…) | |
| 6 | 27.FEB | Distributional elements (Braess & Schöberl, 2008; Christiansen, 2011) | Yizhou Liang |
| 7 | 06.MAR | Unfitted FEM (Nitsche, 1972; Hansbo & Hansbo, 2002; Burman, 2010; Burman et al., 2025) | Xinpei Zhang |
| 8 | 13.MAR | Contact manifolds (Arnold, 1989; Rumin, 1994) | Yuechen Zhu |
Trinity term
| Week | Date | Topic | Presenter |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 28.MAY | (Break…) | |
| 2 | 05.MAY | (Break…) | |
| 3 | 12.MAY | (Break…) | |
| 4 | 19.MAY | (Break…) | |
| 5 | 26.MAY | (Break…) | |
| 6 | 02.JUN | Material robustness in elasticity (Brubeck, Parker & Zerbinati, 2026; Arnold & Hu, 2021) | Me (Boris Andrews) |
| 7 | 09.JUN | High-order spaces of differential forms (Christiansen & Rapetti, 2016) | Olav Tyssvang |
| 8 | 16.JUN | C¹ elements and the biharmonic problem (Kirby & Mitchell, 2019) | Tom Higham |
Slides and notes can be found, when available, by clicking the topic titles.
Click here to view references for past presentations.
Click here to view the list of suggested papers.