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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 in 1209, some academics fled north-east to Cambridge where they established what became the University of Cambridge. The two English ancient universities share many common features and are jointly referred to as Oxbridge.

The University of Oxford is made up of thirty-nine semi-autonomous constituent colleges, four permanent private halls, 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.

It 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 2023, the university had a total consolidated income of £2.92 billion, of which £789 million was from research grants and contracts.

Oxford has educated a wide range of notable alumni, including 30 prime ministers of the United Kingdom and many heads of state and government around the world. 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 university's position of Keeper of the Archives dates from 1634, although its records pre-date this, and Oxford claims to have one of the longest continuous record-keeping traditions in Britain. Records were initially kept in the Priory of St Frideswide, moving to the University Church of St Mary the Virgin in the 14th century. The archives were left in considerable disarray by a burglary in 1544, and remained in chaos until Brian Twyne was appointed the first Keeper of the Archives in 1634 as a reward for his work preparing new statutes for the university. Under Twyne and his successor as Keeper (Gerard Langbaine), the archives were moved into one of the rooms in the Tower of the Five Orders in the Bodleian Library; three of the wooden presses that were built at that time to store them are still in use. The third to hold the position, John Wallis (pictured), prepared an index of the collection that was still used in the 20th century. (Full article...)

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Hensley Henson (1863–1947) was a controversial Anglican priest and scholar, who was Bishop of Hereford (1918–20) and of Durham (1920–39). The son of a zealous member of the Plymouth Brethren, Henson was not allowed to go to school until he was fourteen, and was largely self-educated. He gained a first-class degree from the University of Oxford and was elected as a Fellow of All Souls. After his ordination, he served in the East End of London and in the high-profile post of vicar of St Margaret's, Westminster. While there, and as Dean of Durham (1913–18), he wrote prolifically and sometimes controversially. Anglo-Catholics took exception to his liberal theological views and tried to block his appointment as Bishop of Hereford. In 1920, Henson returned to Durham as its bishop, an area badly affected by an economic depression. Henson was opposed to strikes, trade unions and socialism, and for a time his views made him unpopular in the diocese. He campaigned against efforts to introduce prohibition, exploitation of foreign workers by British companies, and fascist and Nazi aggression, and supported divorce law reform, a controversial revision of the Book of Common Prayer and ecumenism. (Full article...)

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St Peter's College became a college in 1961, having existed as "St Peter's Hall" since 1929. It is on New Inn Hall Street, on the site of two of the university's oldest academic halls, New Inn Hall and Rose Hall, founded in the 13th century. St Peter's was founded by Francis Chavasse, Bishop of Liverpool, who was concerned at the rising cost of education in British universities. His aim was to enable students who might be deterred by the costs of other colleges to obtain an Oxford education. Its buildings include an 18th-century rectory, which houses the college's entrance and library, and the Church of St Peter-le-Bailey, built in 1874, which is used as the college chapel. There are about 350 undergraduates and 130 graduates. Alumni include the former President of Ghana Edward Akufo-Addo, the Revd W. Awdry (creator of Thomas the Tank Engine), the chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and the author Mike Carey. Mark Damazer, a former Controller of BBC Radio 4, has been the Master of St Peter's since 2010. (Full article...)

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Credit: Pointillist

The course of the Boat Race on the River Thames in London; Oxford and Cambridge first rowed against each other in 1829, and the Boat Race has been held annually since 1856 apart from the two World Wars.

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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 Laura Spence Affair was a major UK political row started over comments made by Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown (pictured) accusing Oxford of elitism?
... that in his first murder case, real estate and divorce laws specialist Frederick Geoffrey Lawrence saved suspected serial killer Dr John Bodkin Adams from being hanged?
... that former Anglican clergyman and Liberal Party life peer Tim Beaumont was the only Green Party representative in the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1999 until his death in 2008?
... that Kenneth Woollcombe, a former Bishop of Oxford, was a member of the Court of Ecclesiastical Causes Reserved when it granted a faculty for the controversial altar by Henry Moore?
... that despite being personal secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Francis Charles Lawley's attempts at insider trading resulted in losses?

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“

Oxford is not intellectually stimulating – but that would be a good deal to ask of a university atmosphere... It is a dreadful climate, I know, but one seems able to eat and sleep very well, and keep very healthy.

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— T. S. Eliot

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