OBCAMS

Oxford Brookes University Coaching and Mentoring Society

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The aim of the Oxford Brookes University Coaching and Mentoring Society (OBCAMS) is to bring together researchers and practitioners of coaching and mentoring in order to explore evidence based practice and areas of interest to the field.

OBCAMS provides collaboration and networking opportunities for academics and professionals from a wide spectrum of coaching and mentoring interest. We introduce a range of coaching and mentoring topics in an informal setting and stimulate lively discussions and debates online. 

The society has approximately 150 members, comprising academics, students and practitioners from across the region.

People sitting at a large conference room

Society meetings

The society meets monthly on Thursday evenings between 5.00pm and 6.30pm unless otherwise stated on the programme. Please note that the recordings will not be available in order to encourage open discussions.

How to become a member?

Membership of the Society is available free-of-charge to anyone interested in their own professional development as a coach or mentor (practitioners, students, academics, etc).

Sign up to our newsletter to receive details of forthcoming events. New members are always welcome.

Upcoming sessions

‘What's All the Fuss About? How Are Coaches Making Sense of AI’ with Zunaira Awan.

15th October 5.00 to 6.30pm

AI has arrived in coaching, and the conversation about it is often polarised. But what lies behind the fuss? Drawing on a published grounded theory study of twelve coaches across seven countries, this session explores how practitioners are making sense of AI. Coaches are neither simply for nor against it; they are negotiating where the line falls between help with the work and a substitute for it. Beneath the light-hearted question lies a serious concern. Much of the case for AI in coaching is made in the language of the market (efficiency, scalability, access), and AI itself is often presented in human terms, as though it were a coach. Together, these ways of speaking quietly redefine what coaching is. The session invites participants to consider what is at stake when coaching is described as a product to be optimised, and what we want to protect.


Speakers’ profile

Zunaira Awan is a doctoral candidate in the Doctor of Coaching and Mentoring programme at Oxford Brookes University's International Centre for Coaching and Mentoring Studies. Her research, supervised by Dr Ioanna Iordanou and Dr Francisco Trincado Munoz, explores how coaches understand their own formation, and what happens to that process as AI enters the spaces in which coaches have traditionally learned their craft. Her MA study on coaches' perceptions of AI has been published (September 2026) in the International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring, and she has written an article for Coaching at Work about the formation of coaches as well as co-authored the 'Research Matters' column with Dr Joanna Molyn. Zunaira is an EMCC UK and Association for Coaching accredited coach, trained at the University of Cambridge, and holds a first degree in Psychology.



Past sessions