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Headlines

Students join demonstration to keep Campsfield House immigration detention centre closed

News Cherwell News -
Approximately 50 protesters staged a demonstration outside the Campsfield House immigration detention centre in Kidlington, Oxfordshire, this afternoon. The protest included students from the University of Oxford and was organised by the Coalition to Keep Campsfield Closed. The group are campaigning to prevent the government from reopening the detention centre after it closed in 2018 following concerns about safety and living conditions. The coalition was founded by Asylum Welcome, a charity providing support and advice to asylum seekers and refugees...

Comment

Features

An offer is only half the story: The challenges facing college outreach

Leo Jones and Fin Dinnen -
Microsoft Forms and student satisfaction polls mark our email inboxes each year as the University-wide drive for tour guides, alumni testimonials, and the best college-branded pens and tote bags begins. From TikTok trends to...

Across the Atlantic: American academics are finding a new home at Oxford

Anish Vedantham -
As political and financial pressures mount across American higher education , a quiet migration is underway. A growing number of US academics are relocating elsewhere, and Oxford, with its collegiate community, institutional stability, and...

How to build a ball

Mair Andrews -
Students have started reaching out to Oxfess to solve the annual dilemma: which colleges are hosting balls, and which are the best to go to?  Within weeks of unpacking in Michaelmas, inboxes fill with calls...

(A call to) Action: Oxford’s clash of real and reel

Leo Jones -
Hogwarts students run up the Christ Church stairs. Saltburn’s stars roll cigarettes on a Brasenose College quad. And My Oxford Year’s Anna and Jamie wander up to Duke Humphrey’s Library.  Walking through Oxford, you’d be forgiven for thinking there are two levels of reality. First, the actual, which involves hungover...

Half the world away: How regional transport issues impact far-flung friendships

Frank Duffy -
Travelling cross-country has never been easy, but UK transport is, predictably, delayed in its arrival to the 21st century. Long journey times and sky-high train fares make travelling difficult, frustrating, and expensive. With friends spread across the country, students feel this acutely, but not always equally, as regional differences in...

‘A dangerous moment of repression’: How is the US higher education crisis affecting the UK?

Mary Huan -
Over the last year, universities have become flashpoints of protest and backlash. Student protest is nothing new, but the heavy-handed government response is notable. In the US, President Donald Trump’s administration has utilised the federal government’s power against higher education institutions, particularly those in the Ivy League. Spending cuts,...

Profiles

Dominic Sandbrook: “I want to understand the past through the past’s own eyes”

Sophie Price -
Few historians can claim household-name status. Fewer still can boast of podcast audiences rivalling chart-topping musicians. However, typing “The rest is…” into Spotify now summons a miniature empire of spin-offs, politics, money, and film, all descendants of the original The Rest Is History, which Dominic Sandbrook co-presents with Tom...

Richard Ovenden: “We are guardians of facts and truth, rights of citizens, and identities of communities”

Hattie Simpson -
From his office in the Clarendon building on Broad Street, Richard Ovenden calls libraries “the infrastructure of democracy.” These words are spoken with the authority of someone who clearly sees preservation not as nostalgia, but as a duty – a form of stewardship for knowledge itself. As the 25th...

Interview with Mishal Husain ahead of the Romanes Lecture

Conor Walsh -
Mishal Husain is an award-winning journalist, author, and broadcaster. She was a household name at the BBC for over two decades, working as the broadcaster’s Washington Correspondent and as a presenter on Radio 4’s Today Programme for eleven years. Husain is now Editor at Large at Bloomberg Weekend, and...

In Conversation with Cherry Vann, Archbishop of Wales

Magdalena Lacey-Hughes -
“I have a strongly-rooted faith that my gender and my sexuality is part of who I am and part of what God created, and that therefore is part of what I bring to my ministry.” The recent election of the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Dame Sarah Mullaly, was front-page news,...

Culture

‘An evening of refined fun’: ‘An Ideal Husband’ reviewed

Lara Machado -
An Ideal Husband is a guaranteed evening of refined fun. Carfax Productions’ take on Wilde’s classic play is charming and does the text’s wittiness justice. But don’t be deceived by its sparkling surface: a lot of thought and consideration has obviously gone into staging this and all its cast...

An architectural tour of the Schwarzman

Fredrik Mitchell O'Reilly -
The product of a controversial £150 million donation, the new Schwarzman building is a dominating new presence for the city and university, built within the architectural patchwork of  the Radcliffe Observatory, Somerville College, and the Blavatnik School of Government. But whilst the Blavatnik takes its cue from the sleek,...

One of the most urgent films of the year: ‘Urchin’ review

Toby Bowes Lyon -
There are few films which have the power to change how you interact day-to-day with the world. Urchin (2025) is one of them. Far from an easy watch, it seeks to capture the chaos and sheer emotional pain that comes with being homeless. It will make you stop and...

A Sunday in the Park with Marianne.

Briony Arnott -
She wears no rings. Her ears are double-pierced, hanging with astrolabes and star-studded. She wears two necklaces—one is a golden cross, and the second is a white diamond. Her wrists are thick with bracelets. But no rings.  She no longer wears gloves. I wonder if this is by her choice,...

Life

Demystifying PMDD: The missing conversation

Amy Lawson -
Women’s health is a curious thing. It’s not unusual to come home from a GP appointment with an unshakeable sense of disappointment, and often more questions and frustrations than you had in the first place. Symptoms are often diminished or disregarded altogether; women are consistently treated as inadequate authorities...

The best Quod in Oxford: Dining on the High Street

Beatrix Arnold -
A landmark of the High Street, Quod boasts an opulent facade, its name reminding me of my doom on the way to my Latin lectures. And so, when they extended an invitation to review the restaurant, I welcomed the chance to dispel its previous negative associations. On a gloomy...

Never safe again: Consent and the college campus

Anonymous -
CW: Sexual assault; mention of suicide. When you walk into college on the first day, you experience community, a sense of stepping into belonging. Consent talks are delivered between icebreakers; there’s a seemingly endless cycle of club nights and coffee trips for people to get to know each other. Everyone...

Girlhood will not save you

Lilly Law -
I spent a good deal of time last summer trying to work out why bows made me so irrationally angry. Twice, walking while on the phone to my mum, I burst into a rant after just seeing one. To have one bow-induced word vomit on Cornmarket Street is a...

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