Homepage for the University of Oxford finite element methods reading group, run by Thomas Higham and me (Boris Andrews). To hear about upcoming talks, join the mailing list by emailing fem-reading-group-join@maths.ox.ac.uk.
Meetings this term will be hosted on Friday from 15:00–16:00 UK time, in S2.37. You can join on Teams by clicking here, or using the details:
2026–2027
Michaelmas term
| Week | Date | Topic | Presenter |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 16.OCT | Geometric multigrid (Briggs, Henson & McCormick, 2000) | Thomas Higham |
| 2 | 23.OCT | Static condensation & hybridisation | Me (Boris Andrews) |
| 3 | 30.OCT | The Regge complex | Puchun Zhou |
| 4 | 06.NOV | (TBA…) | Benjamín Venegas |
| 5 | 13.NOV | (TBA…) | John Papadopoulos |
| 6 | 20.NOV | Analysis for Maxwell’s equations | Olav Tyssvang |
| 7 | 27.NOV | (TBA…) | Tim van Beeck |
| 8 | 04.DEC | (TBA…) | (TBA…) |
Click here to view references for upcoming presentations.
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) | Thomas 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) | Thomas Higham |
Slides and notes can be found, when available, by clicking the topic titles.
Click here to view references for past presentations.