Headlines

Oxford University Proctors accept one in eight sexual misconduct reports for investigation

News Christina Scote -
A Cherwell investigation found that only 5 of 40 sexual misconduct complaints reported to the University of Oxford’s Proctors’ Office in the past 7 years were accepted for investigation.

Comment

Features

Oxford’s obsession with being busy is pretty performative, right?

Finbar Dinnen -
At Oxford, it seems like we get used to talking about our lives as nothing more than a summary of the things we’ve accomplished lately, or at least are just about to. The longer your list, the better you must be doing, because to be busy is to be making the absolute most of your time here – and who doesn’t want to be doing that?

No Greek life doesn’t mean no rape culture

Ruya Oral -
Perhaps the most effective tool we have at our disposal against casual sexism is casual feminism.

All work and no pay: Why Oxford students aren’t allowed to have jobs

Emma Heagney -
Strangely enough, however, the ‘vac’ is also the only opportunity for an Oxford student to work, not through problem sheets and essays, but in the most fundamental sense of the word.

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?

Visual politics in Oxford’s streets

Jiayue Shi -
One of the most enduring images of grassroots politics is the pamphlet and the pamphleteer: the putting up of flyers, the taking over of public surfaces, the giddy circulation of agitational print, the vexation of the powers that be.

Academic tourism: Oxford University and its summer schools

Timothy Blackburn -
As anyone who has remained in Oxford over the long vacation knows, thousands take up the offer of a 'study holiday'.

Profiles

‘We were the poor relations’: Naomi Lightman on life as a woman at Oxford in the 1960s 

Gavriella Epstein-Lightman -
The year Naomi Lightman came to study at Oxford – 1962 – was the first in which women were allowed to become members of the Oxford Union. Four years earlier, the five women’s colleges had finally been granted equal status with the men’s colleges.

“I am proud of being a Jew, and equally proud of being an Arab”: Professor Avi Shlaim on Iraq, Zionism and belonging

Saba Ahmadzadeh Noughani -
Long before he became one of Israel's ‘new historians’, Avi Shlaim was a boy in Israel, self-conscious about the sound of his first language. Years earlier, that same boy had been growing up in Baghdad, a city that had been home to Iraqi Jews for two millennia, in a...

‘We have to end the complicity of Western countries with Israel’: Peter Beinart on Purim, Palestine, and the importance of changing your mind

Stanley Smith -
Peter Beinart knows the importance of admitting when you’re wrong. A professor of journalism and political science at City University of New York, a New York Times columnist, and Editor-at-Large of Jewish Currents, he has spent the last three decades as a leading liberal voice in the United States. But, unlike other pundits who pin their flags to the mast in order to pay the bills, Beinart’s writing is characterised by subtlety, self-reflection, and a remarkable political transformation.

‘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.

Culture

Oxford’s art scene: A picture still being painted

Miriam Hussain -
Who gets to make art, who gets to see it, and whose art history gets told? Oxford’s artistic identity may seem firmly established: the Ashmolean’s collections, the portraits and sculptures tucked away in university colleges, and the dreaming spires that have made the city famous. This is only part...

Behind glass: Lighthouse Productions’ ‘The Seagull’

Jas Mauj -
The thematic potency and the overall success of Lighthouse Productions’ iteration of Anton Chekhov’s 'The Seagull' all came together in a great and terrible revelation.

The paradox of uniformity: Who do we dress for?

Tilly Stanley -
Walking to chapel on a mid-winter Wednesday morning, you could almost be certain to hear a teacher’s anguished cry: “Take those hoop earrings out!” Until two years ago, my sixth-form had only admitted boys for nearly six and a half centuries. There was still a strange ring of uncertainty...

How cinema has taught us to see Autumn

Amalia Dasgupta -
Autumn is clearly a time for comfort and reflection, a fact the film industry has learnt very well and pumps into new releases.

Life

Acts of time, physical giving, and words of touch

Sahana Narayan -
Ask someone their love language, and they’ll probably have an answer. They might even pull out online test results.

Cooking for friends: An apology, served hot

Eva Zielke -
“It’s probably a bit bland,” my friend said tentatively in the first week of living out of college, just after they had put down a delicious plate of fish and rice.

Beyond the Rad Cam: My quest to visit all 22 Bodleian Libraries

Jade Kosche -
Between March 2025 and October 2026, I visited all 22 Bodleian libraries, from the reading rooms of central Oxford to the obscure medical libraries.

The art of reaching out to old friends

Ilya Rosenbaum -
Coming to university, I realised that the stable, effortless reliability of my friends from home was, all of a sudden, precarious and difficult to maintain.