All Souls College: Website Rebuild & Research Platform
All Souls College is a constituent college of the University of Oxford, founded in 1438. Every member automatically becomes a Fellow, and the College has no undergraduates. All Souls supports research across the humanities and social sciences, and holds one of Oxford's most significant historic libraries and archives.
Challenge
The All Souls College website hadn't kept pace with the College itself. Navigation was hard to follow, and each section- People, Research, News, Events had its own structure rather than one shared system.
The College's digital library resources sat on ageing infrastructure, largely managed by the College Librarian by hand, with years of accumulated material that needed a proper home. Fellows' research profiles had no automated way to stay current, so academic publications had to be added manually.
Any changes to the site also needed buy-in from all 80 Fellows, who vote on decisions affecting the College. The technical foundations had to be solid enough to support a redesign without introducing new problems, and flexible enough to handle feedback from a large group of stakeholders. The university website accessibility was also overdue for review, with no recent audit against WCAG 2.1 AA standards.
Goals
- Run a full technical and accessibility audit before any redesign work began
- Rebuild the site on an up-to-date, secure Drupal foundation
- Give People, Research, News and Events a consistent content structure
- Keep Fellows' research profiles current without manual data entry
- Move the College's library and archive material off outdated infrastructure
- Meet WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility standards
- Structure delivery so Fellows had clear points to review and approve progress
Background
All Souls College is a constituent college of the University of Oxford, founded in 1438. It's unlike any other Oxford college. Every member automatically becomes a Fellow, and there are no undergraduates. The small number of Examination Fellowships awarded each year go through one of the most competitive academic exams in the world.
The College supports Fellows working across the humanities, social sciences and beyond, backed by its historic library and archives, home to around 200,000 volumes and material dating back to the 12th century. With a research community this active and a governance model built on collective Fellow decision-making, All Souls needed a website that could keep pace with both.
Approach
We worked as All Souls College's technical development partner. Bounce led the visual design and branding; we delivered the build behind it, the audit, the Drupal development, the migration, and hosting through to go-live.
The audit came first: hosting, the existing Drupal setup, third-party integrations, content structure, accessibility. We took those findings to Bounce and turned them into a phased plan across five stages, from discovery through to post-launch support. Fellows reviewed progress at the end of each stage before we moved to the next.
That stage-by-stage structure mattered because any real change needed sign-off from the whole Fellowship, not just the College office. Breaking the build into checkpoints meant Fellows weighed in as we went, rather than reacting to one finished site at the end.
Solution
This Drupal 11 rebuild replaced the previous setup with a structured, maintainable CMS. Fellows' profiles, News, Events and the College's building pages now sit in the same system, with one consistent way for staff to manage them.
Beyond day-to-day content, the rebuild solved two problems that mattered most to the College: keeping Fellows' research profiles current without manual work, and giving decades of library and archive material a proper digital home. We also restructured navigation and closed the university website accessibility gaps (WCAG 2.1 AA) identified in the original audit.
We also manage the site's hosting ourselves, moving All Souls onto a dedicated UK-based server built for the College's current needs and future growth.
Key features of the website
Simplified Navigation
The site's full range of content, from Fellowships and buildings to library services, is grouped into a handful of clear sections with expandable menus, so visitors can find what they need without digging through nested pages.
Automatic Research Profiles (Symplectic Integration)
A Symplectic integration connects each Fellow's profile directly to external academic databases, Scopus, ORCID and others, pulling in publications and citations automatically. Nobody in the College office needs to track down and enter new papers by hand, and profiles stay current as soon as a Fellow publishes.
Digital Library & Archives Platform
A dedicated home for the College's manuscripts, maps, architectural drawings and early printed books, previously scattered across older, harder-to-manage systems.
Structured Content Types
The site runs on eight dedicated Drupal content types, Fellowship, Person, Publication, Research, News, Events, Building and Staff Vacancy, each with its own template. Publishing a News story or listing a vacancy follows the same straightforward process, with no code and no developer required.
Role-Based Access
Custom roles, Content Editor, Content Publisher and Events Admin, give College staff access to only the tools their job needs. An Events Admin can manage the calendar without touching Fellows' research profiles, and a Content Editor can update pages without full administrator access.
Search & Filtering
Research and Events pages both include a live search field with filters, so visitors can narrow hundreds of research topics down by subject area, or find events by date, without scrolling through everything.
Dedicated UK Hosting
A dedicated server built for the College's needs, with data held in the UK for GDPR compliance.
