ECONOMICS · 14 WEEKS
The Firm — Why, and Why Now
A Coasean tour of why companies exist, read through Hayek, Ronald Coase, Oliver Williamson, and Brynjolfsson. Essay requirements: 3 × 1,800 words.
◆ AUTUMN 2026 · APPLICATIONS OPEN UNTIL MAY 15Come back
Come back
to the desk.
The Northfield Institute runs continuing-education programmes for working adults who want to think hard again. We teach in 8-, 14-, and 22-week cohorts across economics, design, writing, history, and data. 3,480 alumni. 87% finish. No MBAs. No certificates you hang on a wall. You take a class, you read, you meet twelve strangers on a Thursday evening, you write something you did not know how to write before.
14years teaching adults
3,480alumni worldwide
87%cohort completion
AUTUMN 2026
Twelve seminars.
Two thousand hours of reading.
Each programme runs once a year. Classes meet on Thursdays 19:00–21:30 at 42 Bedford Place in Bloomsbury, or live online in the same 2.5-hour window. Ten to fourteen students per seminar. We do not record, we do not lecture, we do not hand out certificates you can frame.
WRITING · 22 WEEKS
The Long Essay — Form, Voice, Discipline
A 22-week workshop in writing 8,000-word essays. Fortnightly submissions, hard critique, read Baldwin, Didion, Robertson, Laing. Ends with one essay sent out.
◆ FILLING FAST
DESIGN · 8 WEEKS
Reading Buildings — Architecture Without Drawing
Walk Bloomsbury, South Bank, Spitalfields, and the Barbican. Read Venturi, Jacobs, Holl, Sheil. 8 Saturday mornings on foot + 8 Thursday evenings in class.
HISTORY · 14 WEEKS
Mid-Century Britain — 1945 to 1979
From Attlee to the Winter of Discontent. Primary sources, Hansard, kitchen-table oral histories, 20 films, 9 books. Final: 3,000-word policy memo from 1971.
DATA · 8 WEEKS
Statistics Without Stats — Reading Numbers in Public Life
For people who run the world but quietly don't understand the numbers in the reports. Read Rosling, Silver, Wheelan. Homework in your own spreadsheet.
PHILOSOPHY · 22 WEEKS
Practical Ethics — Questions That Won't Go Away
The serious questions, slowly, over 22 Thursdays. Trolleys, euthanasia, AI, strangers, ancestors. Text-heavy: Singer, Scanlon, Parfit, Williams.
◆ Six more seminars open in January · full 2026 catalogue by email · financial aid covers 18% of our students
HOW A SEMINAR WORKS
Four steps, four months.
01
Apply
A 600-word letter explaining what you are trying to understand. No CV, no references. We read every one. Replies in 14 days.
02
Pre-reading
Four weeks before week one, a reading pack arrives. Between 260 and 420 pages per programme. We ask you to do the work.
03
The seminars
Thursday 19:00–21:30. Everyone has read. You're expected to speak. Twelve to fourteen in the room. Tea at 20:15. Pub from 21:30 if you want.
04
The essay
One long essay at the end, marked by the tutor, read aloud to the cohort if you choose. We keep it. We do not publish it.
THE FACULTY
Twenty-four tutors.
All of them teach, all of them publish.
Our tutors are working academics, critics, and practitioners. They are paid properly (£148 an hour, starting), their reading packs are paid work not volunteer labour, and they all teach this way because seminar teaching is what they missed in the institutions that no longer do it.
Nine of our tutors are Oxbridge-affiliated, eleven hold chairs elsewhere, four are working critics, and three are journalists. We do not hire self-taught enthusiasts, however charming. We do not hire anyone who has not taught for eight years or more.
Meet the full faculty →
Dr Helena MarshEconomics · ex-LSE
Amelia RutherfordWriting · Granta
Prof Idris OkonkwoDesign · Bartlett UCL
Dr Piotr LekkiHistory · QMUL
Dr Nadia SayedData · ex-ONS
Revd Michael AtanasoffEthics · Heythrop
WHAT STUDENTS SAID
Six voices.
Three thousand more behind them.
★★★★★
"I'd been a barrister for 22 years and had stopped reading. The Long Essay forced me to write 9,400 words about Attlee's health reforms and my late grandfather's stroke care. It's the best thing I've ever written. It took 22 weeks."
Samira Chaudhry KCThe Long Essay, 2023
★★★★★
"Walking South Bank with Professor Okonkwo and seven strangers on eight Saturday mornings was the most serious attention I've paid to London in nineteen years of living here. Now I see buildings. I used to see rooms."
Theo Dalrymple-WardReading Buildings, 2024
★★★★★
"My company runs on spreadsheets I never really understood. Eight Thursdays with Dr Sayed and a cohort of twelve — I now read our P&L properly and, more importantly, I know when the numbers are hiding something. £760 well spent."
Martin WeatherbyStatistics Without Stats, 2024
★★★★★
"Mid-Century Britain made me understand my parents. I finished the reading pack on a train through Manchester and cried about the 1972 miners' strike. That is what Dr Lekki does. He un-flattens the past."
Petra EklundMid-Century Britain, 2023
APPLY
A 600-word letter.
No CV. No fuss.
We read every application, usually in a chair at home on a Sunday. Tell us what you are trying to understand, what you have read lately, and what seminar you want to join. Write as yourself.
◆ Autumn 2026 deadlineFriday 15 May · 23:59 BST
Replies by Friday 29 May
Replies by Friday 29 May
◆ Financial assistanceFee-assistance covers up to 90% for those on under £38,000.
18% of our students take it. Ask us: hello@tilkly.com
18% of our students take it. Ask us: hello@tilkly.com