Portal:University of Oxford

The University of Oxford portal

The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England - colloquially known just as Oxford. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the world's second-oldest university in continuous operation. It grew rapidly from 1167, when Henry II banned English students from attending the University of Paris. After disputes between students and Oxford townsfolk, some Oxford academics fled northeast to Cambridge, where they established the University of Cambridge in 1209. The two English ancient universities share many common features and are jointly referred to as Oxbridge.

The University of Oxford comprises 43 constituent colleges, consisting of 36 semi-autonomous colleges, four permanent private halls and three societies (colleges that are departments of the university, without their own royal charter). and a range of academic departments which are organised into four divisions. Each college is a self-governing institution within the university, controlling its own membership and having its own internal structure and activities. All students are members of a college. The university does not have a main campus, but its buildings and facilities are scattered throughout the city centre. Undergraduate teaching at Oxford consists of lectures, small-group tutorials at the colleges and halls, seminars, laboratory work and occasionally further tutorials provided by the central university faculties and departments. Postgraduate teaching is provided in a predominantly centralised fashion.

Oxford operates the Ashmolean Museum, the world's oldest university museum; Oxford University Press, the largest university press in the world; and the largest academic library system nationwide. In the fiscal year ending 31 July 2024, the university had a total consolidated income of £3.05 billion, of which £778.9 million was from research grants and contracts.

Oxford has educated a wide range of notable alumni, including 31 prime ministers of the United Kingdom and many heads of state and government around the world. As of October 2022,^[update] 73 Nobel Prize laureates, 4 Fields Medalists, and 6 Turing Award winners have matriculated, worked, or held visiting fellowships at the University of Oxford, while its alumni have won 160 Olympic medals. Oxford is home to numerous scholarships, including the Rhodes Scholarship, one of the oldest international graduate scholarship programmes in the world. (Full article...)

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The position of Laudian Professor of Arabic was established at Oxford in 1636 by William Laud (pictured), who at the time was Chancellor of the University of Oxford and Archbishop of Canterbury. The first professor was Edward Pococke, who was working as a chaplain in Aleppo in what is now Syria when Laud asked him to return to Oxford to take up the position. Laud's university regulations provided that the professor's lectures were to be attended by all medical students and bachelors of arts at the university, although this seems not to have happened since Pococke had few students. In 1881, a university statute provided that the professor was to lecture in "the Arabic, Syriac, and Chaldee Languages", and attached the professorship to a fellowship at St John's College. Successive professors had few students until after the Second World War, when numbers increased because of the reputation of Sir Hamilton Gibb and because some British students became interested in Arabic culture while serving in the Middle East during the war. Julia Bray, the Laudian Professor as of 2015, was appointed in 2012 and is the first woman to hold the position. (Full article...)

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Jake Seamer (1913–2006) was an amateur cricketer who played for Oxford University and Somerset either side of the Second World War. A bespectacled cricketer, Seamer was a right-handed batsman who played with a defensive streak to his game which was rarely seen among amateur batsmen of his time. He was described as a leg break googly bowler, but in truth he rarely bowled at all, and claimed just four first-class wickets. Seamer played the best of his cricket while at Brasenose College, Oxford. All four of his first-class centuries were made for the university side, and his average for Oxford was 35.30, significantly higher than his career average of 20.35. He made his highest score against Free Foresters in his second year, during which he accrued 858 runs, more than double he managed in any other season. On completion of his studies at Oxford, Seamer joined the Sudan Political Service, which limited his first-class cricket appearances to periods of leave. He was named as one of three amateurs to captain Somerset in 1948, leading the team during June and July. That season was his last for Somerset, and he made only one further first-class appearance. He became a district commissioner in the Sudan, and after leaving the service, he taught at Marlborough College and was twice mayor of Marlborough. (more...)

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Oriel College, in the centre of Oxford on Oriel Square, is the fifth-oldest college at Oxford. It is the oldest royal foundation in Oxford, a title formerly claimed by University College, whose claim of being founded by King Alfred is no longer promoted. The original medieval foundation set up by Adam de Brome (the rector of the University Church of St Mary the Virgin), under the patronage of Edward II, was called the House of the Blessed Mary at Oxford. The first design allowed for a Provost and ten Fellows, called 'scholars', and the College remained a small body of graduate Fellows until the 16th century, when it started to admit undergraduates. Oriel's main site incorporate four medieval academic halls, including St Mary Hall). During the English Civil War, Oriel played host to high-ranking members of the King's Oxford Parliament. The College has nearly 40 Fellows, about 300 undergraduates and some 160 graduates, the student body having roughly equal numbers of men and women (although Oriel was the last of the men's colleges to accept women students). Its distinguished alumni include two Nobel laureates (the biochemist Alexander Todd and the economist James Meade); prominent Fellows have included John Keble and John Henry Newman, founders of the Oxford Movement. (Full article...)

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Credit: Adam Hopkinson

Tyrannosaurus rex, one of the exhibits on display at the Pitt Rivers Museum. Founded in 1884 by Augustus Pitt Rivers, the museum holds about 500,000 items donated to the University relating to archaeology and anthropology.

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Did you know

Articles from Wikipedia's "Did You Know" archives about the university and people associated with it:

... that after Evelyn Waugh (pictured) brought a priest to anoint lapsed Catholic Hubert Duggan on his deathbed, Duggan was reconciled to the church, an event Waugh fictionalised in Brideshead Revisited?
... that for helping endow a professorship of botany at Oxford, James Sherard was granted a doctorate in medicine by the university in 1731?
... that British journalist and Liberal politician Colin Coote was an editor of the The Daily Telegraph for 14 years?
... that Sir Ian Anstruther, 8th Baronet, held two separate baronetcies which on his death went to different sons?
... that George Hargreaves, Christian Party candidate in the 2008 Haltemprice and Howden by-election, has said that the dragon symbol on the Welsh flag is "nothing less than the sign of Satan"?

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Selected quotation

“

I often think how much easier the world would have been to manage if Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini had been at Oxford.

”

— Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax, at the time Leader of the House of Lords and later Secretary of State for War, in a speech in 1937

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Credit: Kunal Mehta

The Old Building Quadrangle of Hertford College incorporates the lodge, library, chapel, hall, bursary and other administrative buildings. It is the only Hertford quadrangle to have a lawn in the centre, in the traditional college style.

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On this day

Events for 8 May relating to the university, its colleges, academics and alumni. College affiliations are marked in brackets.

Births

1858 – J. Meade Falkner (Hertford), novelist and poet
1873 – H. D. G. Leveson Gower, Magdalen), England cricket captain
1873 – Nevil Sidgwick (Christ Church and Lincoln), chemist
1879 – Charles Duncombe, 2nd Earl of Feversham (Christ Church), politician and soldier
1894 – Edwin Morris (St John's), Archbishop of Wales 1957–1967
1897 – Guy Blaikie, cricketer
1920 – Maurice Cranston (St Catherine's), philosopher and author
1904 – John Snagge (Pembroke), radio newsreader and commentator
1921 – Graham Leonard (Balliol), Bishop of London 1981–1991
1925 – Charles Jauncey, Baron Jauncey of Tullichettle (Christ Church), Lord of Appeal in Ordinary 1988–1996
1934 – Leonard Hoffmann, Baron Hoffmann (Queen's), Lord of Appeal in Ordinary 1995–2009
1939 – William Cookson (New College), poet and literary editor
1946 – Jonathan Dancy (Corpus Christi and All Souls), philosopher
1946 – Ruth Padel (Lady Margaret Hall and Wadham), poet
1946 – Andrew Sherratt, archeologist based at the Ashmolean Museum
1969 – Jonny Searle (Christ Church), gold-medal winning Olympic rower

Deaths

1662 – Peter Heylin (Hart Hall and Magdalen), priest and writer
1781 – Richard Jago (University), poet
1860 – Horace Hayman Wilson, first Boden Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford
1883 – Sir Thomas Bernard, 6th Baronet (Christ Church), politician
1904 – Frederick York Powell (Christ Church and Oriel), historian
1926 – W. A. B. Coolidge (Exeter and Magdalen), American historian, theologian and mountaineer
1960 – J. H. C. Whitehead (Balliol), mathematician
1975 – Bram Fischer (New College), South African lawyer and anti-apartheid activist