Portal:University of Oxford

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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), 4 are permanent private halls (owned by religious organisations), and 3 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...)

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The Registrar of the University of Oxford is one of the university's senior officials, acting (in the words of the university's statutes) as the "head of the central administrative services", with responsibility for "the management and professional development of their staff and for the development of other administrative support". The workload of the role, which has a 550-year history, has increased over time. In the 16th century, it was regarded as a lucrative position and one registrar reacted violently when the university voted to remove him from office for failing to carry out his duties for a year, leading to his temporary imprisonment. A commission headed by former Prime Minister H. H. Asquith recommended in 1922 that Oxford should improve its administration and that the registrar should become a more significant figure. As the historian Brian Harrison put it, Oxford's administration was "edging... slowly from decentralized amateurism towards centralized professionalism." The growth in Oxford's administration led to a move in 1968 to purpose-built accommodation in Wellington Square (pictured): until that time, the administration had been housed in the Clarendon Building in the centre of Oxford. About 4,000 of the university's staff of approximately 8,000 are under the Registrar's control. (Full article...)

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Izzy Westbury (born 1990) is an international cricketer who has represented the Netherlands national women's cricket team in one One Day International (ODI) in 2005. She has also been part of the England women's academy. A right-handed batsman and off break bowler, she has played for Somerset women since 2007. Beginning her career in the Netherlands, Westbury progressed quickly within the national side, appearing at both the 2004 and 2006 Women's European Under-21 Championships, and made her senior international debut at the 2005 Women's European Championship. During this tournament, she also made her only ODI appearance, playing for the Netherlands against Ireland. She moved to England in 2006 to study, reading physiology at Hertford College, Oxford. She joined Somerset for the 2007 season, where she has played ever since. In 2010, she was selected as part of the England women's academy, travelling to India for the High Performance Camp. She won her blue for hockey by playing in the varsity match against Cambridge University in 2010, and was President of the Oxford Union in 2011. (Full article...)

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Lady Margaret Hall (generally known as "LMH") was established in 1878 and was the first college for women at the university. It began to admit men as students in 1979, and was the first of the women's colleges (along with St Anne's) to become a mixed-sex institution. The college, set in spacious grounds in Norham Gardens to the north of the city centre, is named after Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of King Henry VII and a renowned patron of learning. Its first principal was Elizabeth Wordsworth, the great-niece of the poet William Wordsworth. Giles Gilbert Scott, famous for designing Liverpool Cathedral and the K2 red telephone box, designed the college's Byzantine-style chapel. There are approximately 600 undergraduate and postgraduate students; former students include the former prime minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto, the writer Antonia Fraser, the former director general of MI5 Eliza Manningham-Buller, and the actor Samuel West. LMH's motto is "Souvent me Souviens", an Old French phrase meaning "I remember often". (Full article...)

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Credit: Godot13

The Codrington Library of All Souls College, named after Christopher Codrington and completed in 1751

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Did you know

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

... that it was the British geologist Joseph Prestwich (bust pictured) who confirmed the findings of Boucher de Perthes?
... that a Regius Professor of Civil Law was elected to parliament, gaoled, exiled, re-elected, kidnapped, put in the Tower, tortured, hanged, drawn and quartered, then beatified?
... that Mike Woodin was the Principal Speaker of the Green Party of England and Wales for six years and a city councillor for Oxford for 10 years?
... that A.W. Lawrence, the former Professor of Classical Archaeology at Cambridge University, was the brother of "Lawrence of Arabia"?
... that the winners of the university's Gaisford Prize for Greek Verse include the fictional Duke of Dorset in Max Beerbohm's 1911 novel Zuleika Dobson?

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“

The Griffine, Bustard, Turkey & Capon
Lett other hungry Mortalls gape on
And on theire bones with Stomacks fall hard,
But lett All Souls' Men have ye Mallard.
CHORUS:
Hough the bloud of King Edward,
By ye bloud of King Edward,
It was a swapping, swapping mallard!

”

— Mallard Song, sung once a century at All Souls College

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