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 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 the home of numerous scholarships, including the Rhodes Scholarship, one of the oldest international graduate scholarship programmes. (Full article...)

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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...)

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Sir William Blackstone (1723–1780) was a British jurist, judge and Tory politician of the eighteenth century. He is most noted for writing the Commentaries on the Laws of England. Born into a middle class family in London, Blackstone was educated at Charterhouse School and Pembroke College, Oxford. He became a Fellow of All Souls, Oxford and was later called to the Bar. Following a slow start to his career as a barrister, Blackstone became heavily involved in university administration. On 3 July 1753 he formally gave up his practice as a barrister and embarked on a series of lectures on English law, the first of their kind, which were massively successful. Blackstone was the first Vinerian Professor of English Law, became a successful barrister and Tory Member of Parliament for the rotten borough of Hindon. In 1766 he published the first volume of Commentaries on the Laws of England, considered his magnum opus. After repeated failures, he successfully gained appointment to the judiciary as a Justice of the Court of King's Bench in 1770, leaving to become a Justice of the Common Pleas later the same year. He remained in this position until his death, on 14 February 1780. (more...)

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St Catherine's College (commonly known as "St Catz" or "Catz") was established in 1963 and is one of the largest of the Oxford colleges, with about 450 undergraduates and 160 postgraduates. It grew out of the Delegacy of Non-Collegiate Students, founded in 1868 to offer university education at Oxford without the costs of college membership. Its students met as "St Catherine's Club" for social events, named after the hall in Catte Street where they met; it became St Catherine's Society in 1931, and later achieved full college status. It was one of the first men's colleges to become co-educational, in 1974. The college is on an 8-acre (32,000 m²) site acquired from Merton College on the banks of the River Cherwell, to the east of the city centre. The buildings, which were given Grade I listed status in 1993, were designed by the Danish architect Arne Jacobsen; he also designed the cutlery, furniture and lampshades. The Master is the engineer Roger Ainsworth; the first Master was the historian Alan Bullock. Alumni include the Nobel Prize winners John Vane and John E. Walker, the politician Peter Mandelson, the rower Matthew Pinsent and the author Jeanette Winterson. (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 the statue of the Virgin and Child in the porch of the University Church of St Mary the Virgin (pictured) was cited as evidence in Archbishop Laud's execution trial, and has bullet holes made by Oliver Cromwell's troops?
... that the great-granddaughter of Mahatma Gandhi, Leela Gandhi, is a senior lecturer at La Trobe University in the English program?
... that British Conservative MP Richard Hornby unsuccessfully challenged former Prime Minister and Labour leader Clement Attlee before securing a safe seat?
... that cyber law author and professor Jonathan Zittrain co-founded StopBadware.org to distribute the task of collecting data about malware to Internet users at large?
... that the military theories of the 18th-century Welsh soldier Henry Lloyd were studied by George Washington and George S. Patton?