Wednesday, February 5, 2025

Features

My music doesn’t break tradition: It is traditional. Chinese New Year at Oxford

"It is precisely because I love Oxford’s traditions that I’m inviting my culture to be part of it."

MLK Day: Anti-Blackness isn’t just a Western problem

"If we truly believe in equality, it’s time to hold up that same mirror to ourselves and confront what we see. Change begins when we stop making excuses."

£450,000 for a two-bed in Cowley: Oxford is at the centre of the UK’s housing crisis

A two-bed, one-bath home in Cowley is currently listed for £450,000. In 1998, it...

What Gisèle Pelicot can teach us about student consent workshops 

"Consent is not just a rule dictated in an isolated workshop."

Things can only get… worse? Why 2024 is no 1997 for the Labour Party

One of the characteristic features of the 1997 Labour Party general election campaign was their use of D:Ream’s song "Things Can Only Get Better"...

The Art of Being Bored

Today, every corner of our lives seems to be filled with never-ending streams of information and vibrant entertainment. The concept of being bored has...

The 2024 BNOC List

"Here it is! After three weeks of voting, the results are in. With slight adjustments made according to which BNOCs gave consent to be on the list and the addition of some whose fame strictly speaking surpasses that of BNOC-hood, the list is true to those initial nominations."

Making Art in the Age of Generative AI

When they told us that AI is coming for people’s jobs, most of us didn’t think that they were talking about artists. Our popular...

Flights to Rwanda? Navigating political, economic, and moral turbulence 

“Batshit crazy”, was how one cabinet minister (James Cleverly) described the Rwanda policy.  In his former role as chancellor, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was...

Sharron Davies, the Oxford Literary Festival, and the place for transgender athletes in professional sport.

The bell chimed for 2 o’clock on Thursday the 21st of March and the doors closed for the Oxford Literary Festival’s most controversial talk:...

WaterTok, Stanley cups and the half-empty glass of consumerism

We all need to drink more water. A 1998 New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center survey of 3003 Americans found that 75% of those interviewed...

Philosophy and Technology: Science’s moral afflictions

On March 28th in a dingy Manhattan courtroom, unrepentant crypto-mogul Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison. This landmark sentence came after...

2024: The year of elections

In his classic 19th-century work Democracy in America, the politician-cum-philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville looked to the democratic system in America with deep envy. In...

“Diesmal schweigen wir nicht!” (“We won’t be silent this time”)

Germany’s right-wing factions push forward In another spectacular repeat of European history, a group of right-wing politicians met with an Austrian neo-Nazi last November in...
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Oliver Twist, a Sceptical 9th Grader, and an Orthodox Monastery: The Making of a New Generation in Northern Kosovo

Eager hands reach toward the ceiling as children at the Ismail Qemali school in Mitrovica, northern Kosovo, desperately try to attract the attention of...

Tristram Hunt: the Politics of Repatriation

If you came here for a vicious takedown or a strident defence of Tristram Hunt’s position on “colonialism and collecting”, you might be slightly...

How To Grieve a Stolen Diary

Elizabeth Bishop’s poem ‘One Art’ is beautiful because of its hypocrisy. The speaker exalts loss - of places, names, houses, their mother’s watch -...

Taiwan’s 2024 Elections: What Taiwan can teach the UK about democracy

It’s 8am in Taipei, on the 24th November 2022. This morning as I walk to class, negotiating my way around the noodle carts and...

Why are men still getting more firsts than women?

Why are men still getting more firsts than women? Oxford University’s Strategic Plan for 2018 to 2024 claims to prioritise the need to reduce the...

The 2024 Sextigation

Cherwell’s "Sextigation" is back and better than ever. After 450 responses and some pretty groundbreaking analysis that followed, the results are in.  This year, 55%...

“This war has no borders” – An Interview with Ukrainian Human Rights Lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize Winner Oleksandra Matviichuk

Two years after the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Sofia Johanson speaks to Oleksandra Matviichuk about her organisation’s efforts to document war...

Crops, Commoning and Colonialism: Lessons from the Oxford Real Farming Conference

For anyone strolling around Oxford over the 4th to 5th of January, make no mistake: the abundance of tweed-clad range-roverists had nothing to do...

The Language of Cooking

Under Oxford’s dreaming spires and overlooking Magpie Lane’s centuries-old cobbles is a simple modern kitchen. I like to think of it as my friends’...

Tiddlywinks, Quidditch, and Psychedelic Drugs: Inside Oxford’s Strangest Student Societies

It’s Monday night. My friends have invited me to go clubbing, my essay is overdue, and I can’t remember the last time I got...

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