Portal:University of Oxford

The University of Oxford portal

The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. 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 prohibited English students from attending the University of Paris. After escalating conflict between students and the Oxford townspeople, some Oxford academics fled northeast to Cambridge, where they established the University of Cambridge in 1209. The two universities share many common features and are jointly referred to as Oxbridge.

The University of Oxford is made up of 43 colleges – of which 36 are chartered colleges (independent bodies), four are permanent private halls (owned by religious organisations), and three are societies (controlled by the university) – and a range of academic departments that are organised into four divisions. Colleges control their own membership and activities. Typically social life for students is centred around fellow college members. All students are members of a college. Oxford does not have a main campus. Its buildings and facilities are scattered throughout the city centre and around the town. Undergraduate teaching at the university consists of lectures, small-group tutorials at the colleges and halls, seminars, laboratory work and 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 2025, the university had a total consolidated income of £3.02 billion, of which £801.3 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 2025,^[update] 76 Nobel Prize laureates, four Fields Medalists, and six Turing Award winners have matriculated, worked, or held visiting fellowships at the University of Oxford. Its alumni have won 160 Olympic medals. Oxford is home to a number of scholarships, including the Rhodes Scholarship, one of the oldest international graduate scholarship programmes in the world. (Full article...)

Refresh with new selections below (purge)

edit

Selected article

The founding Fellows, Scholars and Commissioners of Jesus College were appointed in 1571 by Elizabeth I (college's portrait of her shown). She founded the college at the instigation of a Welsh clergyman, Hugh Price. Her royal charter appointed a Principal, Fellows to educate the Scholars and to run the college (under the overall direction of the Principal) and Commissioners to draw up statutes for the governance of the college. Jesus College was founded to help with the increased numbers of Welsh students at Oxford, and the founding Fellows included a number of individuals with links to Wales. The Commissioners included prominent individuals such as William Cecil, Lord Burghley, the Principal Secretary of State. Whilst the foundation process of the college started in 1571, it took more than fifty years and a further two charters, one in 1589 from Elizabeth and one in 1622 from her successor, James I, to complete the process. One Principal lost a draft copy of the statutes; the next kept the next draft in his study for several years without taking steps to have them confirmed by the Commissioners. It was not until after the 1622 charter that statutes were approved by the Commissioners and the college was fully constituted. (Full article...)

More articles

edit

Selected biography

Sir Bernard Williams (1929–2003) was an English moral philosopher, described by The Times as the "most brilliant and most important British moral philosopher of his time". He was the author of 11 books of philosophy, including Problems of the Self (1973), Moral Luck (1981), Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (1985), and Truth And Truthfulness: An Essay In Genealogy (2002). He studied Literae Humaniores at Balliol College, Oxford before becoming a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. As Knightbridge Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge and Deutsch Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, Williams became known internationally for his attempt to reorient the study of moral philosophy to history and culture, politics and psychology, and, in particular, to the Greeks. Oxford philosopher Gilbert Ryle once said of him that he "understands what you're going to say better than you understand it yourself, and sees all the possible objections to it, all the possible answers to all the possible objections, before you've got to the end of your sentence". (more...)

More biographies

edit

Selected college or hall

Hertford College can trace its history back to 1282 as "Hart Hall", one of the university's academic halls which was linked to Exeter College for many years, but it does not have a continuous history. During the 18th century, the institution suffered a severe decline leading to its dissolution, and the site and buildings were taken over by Magdalen Hall (founded 1448), another academic hall associated with Magdalen College. Hertford was established as an independent foundation in 1874 by Act of Parliament, with the help of a benefaction from the banker Thomas Charles Baring. Some of the buildings date from the 17th century, but others (including the "Bridge of Sighs" across New College Lane) were built by the architect Thomas Graham Jackson in the late 19th century. The college is in Catte Street, opposite the Bodleian Library. It has about 600 students (undergraduates and postgraduates), and the Principal is the historian John Landers. It was one of the first of the men's colleges to admit women. Fellows of the college include the historian Roy Foster and the philosopher Peter Millican, and alumni of the college or its predecessor institutions include the Prime Minister Henry Pelham, the newsreader Fiona Bruce, the archeologist Bernard Ashmole and the American judge Byron White. (Full article...)

More colleges and halls

edit

Selected image

Credit: James Hetherington

Magdalen Tower, part of Magdalen College, stands above Magdalen Bridge. The college was founded in 1458 by William of Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester, and the tower was built between 1492 and 1509.

More pictures

edit

Did you know

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

... that the Australian lamington cake (pictured) is believed to have been named after Charles Cochrane-Baillie, 2nd Baron Lamington, the then-Governor of Queensland?
... that William Havard, who was bishop of two Welsh dioceses (St Asaph, then St David's), once represented Wales in an international rugby union match?
... that Robert Gentilis graduated from Oxford aged 12 and became a Fellow of All Souls College aged 17, below the minimum fellowship age of 18?
... that cricketer Roger Kimpton also won an Oxford University tennis tournament and a golf blue, and was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross as a Second World War fighter pilot?
... that when scholar Spencer Barrett’s tax return was challenged, he showed that to understand a text of Pindar he had to know how Mount Etna had appeared to a passing sailor?