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 expanded rapidly from 1167, when Henry II prohibited English students from attending the University of Paris. When disputes erupted between students and the Oxford townspeople, 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 that are organised into four divisions. Each college is a self-governing institution within the university that controls its own membership and has its own internal structure and activities. 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 2024, the university had a total consolidated income of £3.05 billion, of which £778.9 million was from research grants and contracts. In 2024, Oxford ranked first nationally for undergraduate education.

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. Its alumni have won 160 Olympic medals. Oxford is home to a number of scholarships, including the Rhodes Scholarship, which is one of the oldest international graduate scholarship programmes in the world. (Full article...)

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The position of Boden Professor of Sanskrit was established in 1832 with money bequeathed to the university by Joseph Boden, a retired soldier who had worked for the East India Company. He wanted a Sanskrit professor to assist in converting British India to Christianity. The first two professors were elected by Oxford graduates; the 1860 election, in particular, was hotly contested. Reforms of Oxford implemented in 1882 removed all mention of Boden's original purpose, removed the power to elect the professor from graduates, and gave the holder of the professorship a fellowship at Balliol College (pictured). To date, Sir Monier Monier-Williams (professor 1860–99) has held the chair for the longest, although a deputy carried out his teaching duties for the last 11 years of his life. The current holder (as of 2014), Christopher Minkowski, was appointed in 2005 and is the eighth Boden professor. It is the only remaining Sanskrit professorship in the United Kingdom. (Full article...)

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Harold Davidson (1875–1937), rector of the Norfolk parish of Stiffkey, was a Church of England priest who was convicted in 1932 on charges of immorality and defrocked by the Church. Ordained in 1903, he worked among London's poor and homeless. Styling himself the "Prostitutes' Padre", his declared mission was to rescue young girls he considered in danger of falling into prostitution. In this role he approached and befriended hundreds of women, and although there was little evidence of improper behaviour, he was often found in compromising situations and his neglect of his parish and family caused difficulties. A formal complaint led to church disciplinary proceedings, in which his defence was damaged beyond repair by a photograph of him with a near-naked teenage girl. Davidson then pursued a career as a showman to raise funds for his reinstatement campaign, performing novelty acts such as exhibiting himself in a barrel on the Blackpool seafront. He died after being attacked by a lion in whose cage he was appearing. Later commentators have accepted that however inappropriate his behaviour, his motives were genuine and he did not deserve the humiliations he endured. (Full article...)

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Keble College was established in 1870 as a memorial to the Church of England clergyman John Keble, a leading member of the Oxford Movement that sought to emphasise the Catholic nature of the Church of England. The college is to the north of the city centre on Parks Road, opposite the University Museum of Natural History and the University Parks. The original buildings, designed by the architect William Butterfield, used bricks in an assortment of colours and patterns – a contrast with the traditional stone-clad colleges, and views on the merits of the design have varied. The college's alumni magazine is called The Brick. Women were first admitted in 1979, and there are now about 680 undergraduate and postgraduate students, making it one of the larger colleges. Keble owns the original of William Holman Hunt's painting The Light of the World, which is hung in the side chapel. Former students include the musician Thomas Armstrong, the journalist Andreas Whittam Smith and the cricketer Imran Khan, as well as many bishops, reflecting the long tradition of theological studies at Keble. (Full article...)

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Credit: David Iliff

Established in 1870 as a memorial to the clergyman John Keble, a leading member of the Oxford Movement, Keble College (chapel pictured) remains distinctive for its neo-gothic red-brick buildings designed by William Butterfield.

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Did you know

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

... that Seymour King, Member of Parliament for Kingston upon Hull Central for 25 years, was the first climber to reach the summits of Mont Maudit and Aiguille Blanche de Peuterey (pictured)?
... that Andrew N. Meltzoff's research revealed that infants of only a few weeks of age can imitate facial expressions and hand gestures?
... that civil engineer Robert Wynne-Edwards was the first President of the Institution of Civil Engineers to be elected while still working as a contractor?
... that Irish cricketer and artist Robert Gregory was the subject of four poems by W. B. Yeats?
... that when a rival took over an estate belonging to Sir Walter Clarges, Clarges used his position as a Member of Parliament to send the interloper to jail?

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To the University of Oxford I acknowledge no obligation; and she will as cheerfully renounce me for a son, as I am willing to disclaim her for a mother. I spent fourteen months at Magdalen College: they proved the fourteen months the most idle and unprofitable of my whole life.

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— Edward Gibbon

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