Headlines

Striking workers demonstrate at Oxford University Press

News Stanley Arlidge -
A demonstration in favour of striking finance workers was held outside the Oxford University Press (OUP) last week, as the dispute over offshoring at the world’s oldest publishing house continues.  Last week’s strike, which began on 28th September and ended on 9th October, marked the second round of strike action by the affected workers, who first went on strike between 1st and 11th September. The dispute began over OUP’s plans to offshore 48 finance department jobs to India-based EXL Services.  On...

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Features

Feeling fresher: How to be casually healthy whilst going out in Oxford

Barbara Kempny -
Freshers’ Week is drawing to a close, and the first lectures are rolling around alarmingly fast. The past week has been a cycle of pub, club, and grub alongside a whirlwind of people you’ll...

After the glut: A renaissance for the AI age?

Agatha Crowther -
Erasmus had a content problem. By 1525, Europe’s most famous humanist was being pirated, misquoted and buried beneath unreliable editions. “Is there anywhere on earth exempt from these swarms of new books?” he demanded in...

From Oxbridge to Silicon Valley: The rise of student entrepreneurship

Emma Heagney -
Does a university education remain valuable for these young entrepreneurs, or can entrepreneurship serve as an increasingly popular alternative to traditional routes to success?

The BNOC List 2026

Cherwell Features Section Editors -
As the academic year draws to a close, the most anticipated list in all of Oxford is finally here! This year’s BNOC nomination form received 331 responses over the course of ten days, with the final response coming in just 14 seconds before the form closed (you’ve got to admire the procrastination of an Oxford student).

The life and death of a library

Alice Sanders -
I feel slightly like a fraud when I confess that I never swore Bodley’s above oath, displayed on the entrance desk to Duke Humfrey’s Library. That isn’t to say that I would ever act against it.

The Oxford students who can’t read books

Anish Vedantham -
It is difficult to think of a university more entangled with the idea of reading. The institution remains organised around libraries, primary texts, and tutorial reading lists that have become semi-mythological in undergraduate culture. Even maths students do not simply study maths; according to their Bod cards, they “read for” a degree. Entire pedagogies here rest on assumptions that students will disappear into novels, criticism, and archives before resurfacing with an essay and an original argument.

Profiles

‘If not me, then who?’: George Abaraonye’s return to Oxford

Madison Garrett -
The jubilance in George Abaraonye’s demeanour matched my memory of our first encounter, coincidentally placed at the location where his university career may be defined: the Oxford Union. I first met the student – who has subsequently become a polarising figure among the politically conservative and a victim of online racial persecution approximately a year prior – at the Oxford African and Caribbean Society (ACS) meeting, Say It With Your Chest.

“What makes us human and why it matters”: In conversation with Frédérique Duyrat, Director of Collections at the Ashmolean Museum

Melissa Eddon -
At a time when Britain feels more polarised than ever, Duyrat’s creed offers a guiding hand to a kinder, more empathetic way of engaging with material culture, art, and the world more broadly.

Tanjil Rashid on diversity and the future of journalism

Hassan Akram -
Fifty or a hundred years ago, it was in book reviewing and literary journalism that the great journalists were to be discovered.

‘The ocean was this big, unknown, sometimes scary place’: Sarah Outen on becoming the first woman to row across two oceans

Angelina Mirraslavska -
The ocean crossings were extraordinary, but they were never really the destination.

Culture

The return of the surreal 

Sylvie Quick -
Mythical, dreamlike, phantasmagorical, and absurd: Surrealism, which took the art world by storm in the early 20th century, has enjoyed a huge resurgence in the past decade.  The original pioneers of the movement have been receiving new attention and admiration. Early this year, Salvador Dali’s painting ‘Bacchanale’ sold for a...

Must theatre be so dire? Thoughts on the “unworthy scaffold”

Saul Grenfell -
If 'art est celare artem' (true art is to conceal art), then theatre is pretty poor art. You ain't fooling me into thinking that's a storm.

Seasonal reads: On childhood hobbies, growing up, and guilt

Elizabeth Gammaidoni -
Reconnecting with reading is something many people tend to do on a summer holiday, and statistics suggest it is one of the only times the majority of  adults read throughout the year. WalesOnline reports that 25% of its 5,000 respondents only ever read whilst away on holiday. Perhaps more...

Between beer gardens and picnics: Climate Culture Care at the Ashmolean

Leo Maudsley-Barton -
When I returned to Oxford this term, just as England teased us with the sixth heat-wave of the year, I found myself at a loose end. With the deadline for two vacation essays still far in the distance, the sun lit up the sign for Soma Surovi Jannat’s Ashmolean Now exhibition, Climate Culture Care.

Life

Hidden in plain sight: the bakery behind Oxford’s café counters

Priya Burrow -
You may not know the name, but you have almost certainly eaten the pastry. Does the bakery behind Oxford’s favourite cafés hold its own at the counter?

Why are we so afraid of being bored?

Jessie Jukes -
We’ve come to think of boredom as an inevitable but unpleasant gap between activities, or as space to fill, but we’ve stopped seeing that space as worthwhile in itself.

Corn-ish at Oxford: A reflection on identity

Oliver Crosher -
Cornish folk are few and far between at Oxford. As a Cornishman myself (albeit half Cornish), I can vouch for how little people know of our nation.

Dosa Darlings, we need to get a move on…

Ellie Pemberton -
Along Cowley Road, a taste of south India sits within a rather inviting building, complete with burnt red accents and the occasional fairy light: Dosa Darlings.