Danielle Kohfeldt will serve as your course instructor, intrepid travel guide, and tea-drinker extraordinaire. She earned a Ph.D. from UC Santa Cruz in Social Psychology, and taught at Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts for two years before landing her current position at CSU Long Beach. Her first love, though, was literature. As an undergraduate English major at the University of San Diego, she spent 4 bookish months abroad in Oxford, studying Shakespeare and wandering in the footsteps of J.R.R. Tolkien (Lord of the Rings), Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland), and Percy Bysshe Shelley (The Masque of Anarchy). She has found a way to blend her dual interests in social psychology and fandom to study identity, sense of belonging, and engagement amongst diverse fan communities. Students are warmly invited to geek out over Harry Potter along with her while in Oxford. (Note: Harry Potter fandom not mandatory for course credit.)

Danielle has traveled extensively around the United Kingdom and Europe, and looks forward to sharing Oxford, a truly magical city, with her own students.

Program Goals

I had three primary goals in creating the Oxford Summer Abroad program. I wanted students to understand the major tenets of social psychology in a uniquely immersive fashion, applying concepts in the real world. Second, I wanted students to experience living and studying in one of the oldest and most prestigious university towns in the world. Third, rather than hopping from city to city, I wanted Oxford to feel like home. With that in mind, I designed a program long enough (4 weeks) to allow students to develop a sense of place while also creating community amongst their peers.

Contact Danielle

If you have questions about the program, I am happy to answer them! Contact me at danielle.kohfeldt@csulb.edu