Headlines

Oxford-Cambridge “Growth corridor” falls behind global competition

News Gavriella Epstein-Lightman -
The “growth corridor” connecting Oxford and Cambridge is falling behind its global rivals despite its world-leading research output, a new report has warned.

Comment

Features

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?

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.

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.

From sub fusc penguins to college puffer herds: The ‘uniforms’ of Oxford

Aaron Butters -
With all these sightings of homogeneous clothing, it seemed to me as though people spent more time in ‘uniform’ at Oxford than they would have done in sixth form or high school beforehand. But does Oxford really have ‘uniforms’? How might we define them? And what purpose might they serve?

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

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.

“What is a good life?”: The Standard of Living in review 

Eoin Ware -
“What is a good life?” This axiological question, asked earnestly in the opening lines of James Graham’s The Standard of Living – playing at Theatre Royal Haymarket until December 12 – is often overlooked by the fractured and hyper-specialised discipline of economics.

Diverse voices: ‘Inshallah, Madonna, Inshallah’ by Miljenko Jergović 

Abigail Riley -
‘When he created Earth and these lands upon it, when he divided people into believers and infidels, the crescent moon and the cross, the good Allah made us all different except for one thing. We die easily without seeking reasons; the reasons come on their own. And He sits...

Life

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.

The elusive career paths of humanities students: Does the ‘Oxford bubble’ breed employment anxiety? 

Bella Hughes -
Strong-minded and academically-driven undergraduates are certainly not something found lacking at the University of Oxford.

An accidental archive: The same seat, the same drink

Priya Burrow -
By the end of Michaelmas, darkness had begun to arrive before dinner, and I was still figuring out how to make Oxford feel like a life rather than a place I was passing through.