Friday 5th September 2025
Blog Page 28

Being loved in a loveless environment

Ava Doherty
-
0
Being loved in a loveless environment

“You overloved me.” These are the words Maggie Marshall utters to her parents in Everything I Know About Love. With thick, long brown hair and panda-ringed eyes, Maggie embodies the archetypal home counties girl – her life comfortable yet adrift, with no apparent reason for her poor choices. While our circumstances differ slightly (no matter how hard I try, I’ve never successfully had bangs), Maggie’s declaration about the problem of overloving resonates deeply with me. It jolted me out of a haze of late-night energy drink-fueled productivity – a chaotic frenzy to finish my never-ending backlog of work. I felt like I was living the epitome of modern exhaustion in those moments.

It’s a universal truth that you don’t realise how fortunate you are until something changes. For me, that awareness came through my relationship with my parents. Thankfully, they are still alive, though my mother often jokes that I’m driving her into an early grave, but leaving home for university was a monumental shift. Experts would say that separation is essential for growth. I embraced it enthusiastically, confident in my independence and secure attachment to them. Yet, despite my readiness, university unearthed some brutal truths.

One of the most jarring was this: nobody cared about my opinion, not in the way my parents, peers, or teachers once had. Attention wasn’t given; it was earned. It sounds narcissistic, I know, but that wake-up call made me realise just how privileged my upbringing had been. The greatest advantage in life, I now believe, is having good parents and emotional stability. This foundation enriches every aspect of your life, but with that blessing comes a challenge – it sets your standard for love incredibly high.

My parents’ warmth, security, and unwavering support created an expectation that the world simply couldn’t match. And it didn’t – particularly not at Oxbridge. When I arrived at Oxford, I had unknowingly set myself up for disappointment by imagining friendships, romantic relationships, and deep emotional connections that never quite materialised. For months, I pretended otherwise. Whenever someone asked how I was finding Oxford, my voice would go an octave higher. I’d chirp, “Well, I am loving it!”—as if auditioning for a McDonald’s ad. It wasn’t that I disliked Oxford itself—it was more that the emotional side of life hadn’t developed at all.

Despite countless late-night conversations in Spoons about people’s lives, hopes, and dreams, I struggled to form meaningful connections. I could understand others, but they couldn’t quite reach me. The problem was that I expected to be understood in return. I spent so much time chasing a kind of love, whether platonic or romantic, that mirrored the ease and reciprocity I’d known at home, that I overlooked the quieter, more subtle offerings of connection around me. Maybe love wasn’t unattainable—just different. Slower. Less certain. More ordinary. I searched for an ideal instead of accepting reality. And that was okay. In learning to love myself more, I’ve come to accept the challenges I face—both external and self-imposed. Through this, I’ve realised that my expectations needed adjusting. Rather than mourning what I lack, I’m learning to appreciate and return the love I do have—especially that of my parents, however imperfect or occasionally grumbly it may be.

Interestingly, I’ve found that my friends at other universities, with whom I initially put on a front, suffered the same struggle—the ache for friendships that don’t always materialise on schedule, especially at Oxford, where there’s an unspoken code of self-containment. People strive to appear more stoic, emotionally self-sufficient, and unaffected than they are. It reminds me of Sebastian Flyte in Brideshead Revisited, who hides behind his charming, carefree facade while masking deep emotional turmoil and loneliness. Like Sebastian, many in Oxford suppress their vulnerability, presenting a polished, emotionally impermeable front. And that makes forming genuine connections all the more difficult. We’re all so desperate to appear fine that we forget vulnerability is not only okay—it’s necessary.

Bev Thomas, in her writing, argues that parents—especially mothers—should be “good enough.” I’ve realised that mine was—and is—and always will be far more than good enough. She is a great mother, and I’m slightly ashamed to admit it took me a term and a half at university to realise that. But moving forward, to all the misguided teenagers searching for platonic and romantic love, my advice is to be open and hopeful. It’s easier said than done, and some days will feel more challenging than others. But, fundamentally, I’ve learned that I must keep searching for love.

As Maggie’s mum says, “I think you are looking for an extraordinary kind of love, but I don’t think that you want to be loved in an extraordinary way. For what it’s worth, I think what you want is to be loved plainly and quietly, without spectacle or anxiety—like Birdy loves you.” I think I am, too. But, at Oxford, even in the “Birdy department,” I’m still searching. But it will come in time—hope does spring eternal.

From cloisters to concrete: Oxford’s architectural evolution

Sophie Price
-
0
From cloisters to concrete: Oxford’s architectural evolution

As a proud member of one of Oxford’s younger colleges – one that didn’t make it into the set of Saltburn – the magnetic pull of the old Oxford cloisters appeared alive and well when overhearing an incoming fresher express disappointment about not being pooled to one of the “fancy old colleges.” They imagined the Oxford of postcards and films: cloisters, gargoyles, and stained-glass chapels. St Peter’s College may not frequently appear on corner shop merch, but its campus, nestled near Oxford Castle and St George’s Tower (the oldest surviving structure in the city), is home to an eclectic blend of Georgian architecture and 20th-century additions.

Despite my collegiate bias, the city I call home for half of the year is nothing short of stunning. With its alluring architecture embedded within the stone of its old colleges and libraries, the kind that turns gold when touched by the sun and (unfortunately) slows the packs of tourists who flood Broad Street on a weekend. Colleges, whose stone is home to the footsteps of writers, prime ministers, and other ghosts of Oxfords’ past, form an iconic backdrop to the city, no matter which college crest you wear on your puffer.

The city’s architecture adds an intangible richness to everyday life for students. A mental health walk across Christ Church Meadows, with the spires piercing the treeline in the distance, becomes endeared with a touch of romance that reminds you how lucky you are to be surrounded by buildings older than certain empires. There is a quiet romance in passing through archways that have stood for centuries or writing essays in rooms older than most modern nations. It is in these spaces that history embraces you. 

Yet Oxford is not static. Modern architecture is gradually asserting itself on the peripheries of its medieval core. Contemporary architecture is steadily making its presence known within the university, dispersing the old stone walls with pockets of white tile. The Blavatnik School of Government embodies transparency and openness with its wide panes of glass and spiral form. At the same time, the boxy buildings of Oxford’s newer colleges take on a more functional and minimalist architectural form to catch up with the modern educational landscape. 

However, for all their practicality, these buildings rarely capture the affection reserved for Oxford’s older landmarks. Places like the Radcliffe Camera, functionally impractical, remain one of the most beloved sites in Oxford, an ‘X’ on the map from which the rest of the city orbits. Designed by James Gibbs in a baroque style, it serves as a reminder that between the clinical modernity of the Glink and the domed grace of the Camera is a sense of enduring tradition, which happens to make for a quality photo opportunity on a sunny day.

Many of Oxford’s oldest colleges have married tradition and progress, either through modernised interiors or the addition of a few new buildings around the old architectural spine of the college. Walking through college grounds, one might pass from a 15th-century dining hall into a 21st-century library without leaving the place’s spirit behind.

For students living in less storied accommodations, such as the 20th-century sprawl of the Saints Club, the magic of Oxford is never far away. A stroll through Radcliffe Square, a detour down Ship Street, or an aimless meander along the High Street will bring you face to face with centuries of architectural heritage. The beauty of studying here is that even if your accommodation was built in the 1960s, you’re always just a few steps from a portal to the past.

While newer colleges don’t miss out entirely on the architectural legacy of the city they inhabit, the gravitas etched into the older architecture of Balliol College, Merton College, or University College Oxford, anchors the university’s identity in ways that the modern locations struggle to replicate.

After all, where else can you justify spending £5 on an iced coffee if not beneath the weathered stone of a medieval Pret?

Adolescence: Can TV spark radical change in young men?

Tom Cockburn
-
0
Adolescence: Can TV spark radical change in young men?

Adolescence is just another example of art acting as a conversation piece. The recent series has inspired much conversation after it has highlighted how harmful online misogynistic and ‘incel culture’ content can influence young boys. Netflix’s announcement that the series will be available to screen freely in UK schools shows the cultural importance that has now been placed on Adolescence’s messaging. 

Afterall, it was Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer who called for Netflix to make such a move. But can four hours of television tackle something as enormous as online misogyny and incel culture? Or does it just scratch the surface? And are we now in a ‘govern by TV’ show doom-loop? 

Adolescence, if you haven’t seen it, is about a 13-year-old boy, Jamie (played by Owen Cooper), who’s arrested for the murder of a female classmate. As the series unfolds, we start to learn about Jamie’s dark motives, and we’re shown how horrific the consequences of online toxic masculinity and misogyny can be. 

The series also demonstrates how Jamie’s parents (Stephen Graham and Christine Tremarco) deal with their son’s horrendous crime. It explores their second-hand guilt for Jamie’s actions, and their confusion surrounding his motivations. 

The series is important. It is a direct response to the rise of hateful ‘red pill commentary’ amongst teenagers. It’s the canary in the coal mine of this huge societal challenge which is staring us right in the face. What Adolescence does well is raise questions, and integral ones, at an important time. But what it doesn’t do is answer them – and, in all fairness, I don’t think it was ever meant to. 

However, the politicisation of Adolescence as the answer could be problematic. Politician’s overeager responses to the Netflix drama risks an epidemic of condescending conversations between adults and children if adults don’t grasp the nuance of the problem itself first. 

Critically, the series shows how young boys in general find it incredibly hard to talk about social media and incel culture, whilst also illustrating adults’ ignorance of those very problems in the first place. This is exemplified when the confused Ashley Walters’ DI Bascombe and his son (played by Amari Bacchus) have an awkward conversation about this mysterious online content at school in episode 2. 

However, the exchange demonstrates not the naivety of teenagers to the challenges Adolescence presents, but the naivety of adults. This one scene highlights the need for politicians, teachers, and parents to truly get to grips with this issue before presenting solutions. Anything other than this will result in similar ill-informed conversations happening nationwide. 

Furthermore, the laziness in which Andrew Tate’s name is briefly mentioned in episode two feels slightly forced. It’s an obvious signpost to older viewers of the crux of the show – like they were worried all the ‘red pill chat’ would go over people’s heads. 

This is not to mean that young people don’t need education on the issue – they really do. However, will positive change be enacted by simply showing the Netflix show in classrooms without any other guidance accompanying it? 

Unless teachers, parents, and all adults generally can comfortably and confidently engage with these issues in a non-condescending way, then there’s no hope anything will ever be solved. Showing kids films or shows in class doesn’t always lead to great results – look at Mr. Malik in episode 2 of the show. 

At the heart of Adolescence, though, is one thing: a girl who’s been murdered because of the internet – this should, importantly, not be forgotten. Jamie’s crimes, however, demonstrate the worst-case scenario of misogynistic online radicalisation. This is because not every teenager will be a Jamie. Some may just feel confused and isolated – scared of social media and its effects. These children deserve more than Sir Keir and Netflix’s ‘govern and educate by TV’ strategy. 

In future, the government should be more proactive in investigating the underlying causes behind the issues Adolescence presents. It’s short sighted to believe that a TV series is going to fix all online misogyny. It’s also patronising to young boys to group them all together as potential Jamie’s – they’re not. Education on this issue needs to be done with subtlety and nuance. What the writers of Adolescence have given society is a prompt. Sometimes that’s all that’s needed. Although the current reaction to the series is both encouraging and potentially problematic, no one can argue that it hasn’t started conversations. And without conversations, great societal challenges can never be solved. The hope is that Adolescence kickstarts the fight-back against online misogyny and incel culture and isn’t just treated as the cure itself.

Hand over Heart

Briony Arnott
-
0
Hand over Heart

Through the blankets of night
and the soft silk sheets of our bed you slip 
out of sight, the door creaking as you ease it open. 
I watch as you pad your way to the hall
lioness caged in a fleshy being, long-limbed
and elegant even in haste. You turn,
the moonlight a guilty eye – mine are closed.
Faking sleep in the silence. So bite the heel
that walked you home in the rain,
our skirts half torn and my top undone,
that midnight hour – don’t you remember how we ran?
I would give you half of my liver, nearly did
when the doctor pumping your stomach
came out with such a sad, sorry look on his face.
I held your hand so tightly I swear I knew the shape. 
My Galatea, refashioned in your image, 
marble skin cool to the touch as you change
your colours with ease – flighty as the leaves
on the trees. New green, fresh God. I’ll arch my back
for a novel deity this April. I’ll hand over
my heart in a basket; my hands too, nearly did – 

The door makes such a soft noise when it 
closes. 

Oxide Radio is a breath of fresh, musical air

Milo Man
-
0
Oxide Radio is a breath of fresh, musical air

Almost all music can now be listened to on demand online, if not smugly on vinyl, or smugly on CD. Sometimes it can feel like there’s no room for more methods of consuming music, but here’s why Oxford University’s own Oxide Radio has earned a place in my regular listening habits.

Its highlight is undoubtedly the diversity of shows, reflected in its packed schedule. They’re not always live in the traditional sense; during term time, about half of them are broadcast live from their studio on Worcester Street, while the others are pre-recorded and streamed over the website. While this could be argued to be needlessly complicated, this provides convenience for the hosts’ busy term-time schedules and serves as an imitation of the kind of analogue inconvenience that drives some music-lovers wild.

Each show lasts around an hour and is hosted by its own student volunteer. They provide an expert’s (or at least a passionate enthusiast’s) insight into their own musical niche. For example, Radio Ant, the host of Make Noise!?, describes their show as “a place for all things weird, funky, strange, and unconventional”, testing the boundaries of what is considered music. Cállate focuses on songs from “Latin America, Iberia, and beyond”. Funny Internet experiments with exploration of the humorous and abnormal corners of the internet sonically. The theme of Jamuel L. Jackson is even more fluid, changing from week to week according to the host’s whims.

The enormous variety of shows ensures appeal to every listener and expression to every host, which station manager Luis Hewitt describes as their top priority. He told Cherwell: “Our top priority is giving students an uncensored platform over which they have full creative control. We have over 80 shows and each one is a student expressing the things that are important to them. We do not censor opinions, we do not edit or micromanage any shows, and we’re not pretentious about what kind of content can air – we have everything from tipsy gossip panels, to experimental DJ mixes, to rich journalistic podcasts. During my two terms as station manager, I haven’t rejected a single show proposal on account of its content, and don’t plan to (though let me affirm that we wouldn’t tolerate anything particularly hateful or incendiary).”

Of course, being run by a small group of busy student volunteers, it’s not without its flaws. The automated transitions to and from shows can be stuttery. Additionally, the hosts are occasionally too quiet and difficult to discern behind their tracks, and the hostless Oxide Mix that plays in-between the shows is unfortunately short. However, considering the station acts as a “platform for students to […] learn how to broadcast”, difficulties are understandable.

In Hewitt’s words, the Oxide Mix is a “chance for student musicians (and other local acts) to have their music played on Oxide”. It currently features Keble College student Lucy Peer’s ‘Who Are You’ – a moody and grounded rock song with dramatic bite and plenty of confidence, as well as Oxfordshire band The Scarlet Chevrons’ ‘Why So Robotic?’, a funk song heavy on slap bass, sci-fi synth, and imitatively mechanical vocals. EXHERMITT’s (Hewitt himself) ‘Creu De Gaudí’ features as a more experimental and ambient track. Inspired by the temptation of the devout Catalan architect Gaudí, he wrote it to reflect the language of modern masculinity and the sentiments of the archetypal “stoic male”. The mix is a way of engaging with Oxford’s music scene and providing listeners with local talents, making the station relevant to its student demographic. It could definitely do with expansion, though, and Oxide’s planned Trinity term campaign and future collaborations aim to deal with this.

In the future, Oxide Radio plans to get its show on the road, interviewing students live at big events in the Oxford calendar. Through another of their campaigns, they also aim to be broadcast in some of Oxford’s shared spaces, such as JCRs and local cafés, providing an opportunity for community integration. In addition, the next term should be populated with events hosted by the station.

Oxide Radio is genuinely impressive in its quality and dedication to the sounds of Oxford, be that what its people are producing or what interests they’re sharing. While there are aspects that could do with some polishing, the station seems committed to its improvement. This free station is worth a listen.

Exhibition 004: Oxford artistry across all mediums

Dara Mohd
-
0
Exhibition 004: Oxford artistry across all mediums

When I first walked into Exhibition 004, my gaze was immediately met with Magda Adamczyk’s Nightmare. A demon, swirling with hellish strokes of red, stared at me. The demon invades. It conquers the viewer’s mind, through the floral dream of the foreground, and then swallows them all into the darkness, tongue first.

To escape, I glanced rightward, chasing a way out of the nightmare, and Aman de Silva’s Window Shopping installation of garments and printed photographs roused me awake. What particularly caught my eye was a shirt – wet-looking and glistening, as though it were still clinging to a rain-soaked body. De Silva told Cherwell that he achieved this effect by moulding a shirt to his body with slow curing epoxy resin. Next to it, a Union Jack fashioned dress and waistcoat – “bizarre white middle-class British uniforms”, De Silva told Cherwell – both white-colored and contrasted against brown. De Silva said this piece was inspired by the “anti-immigration riots” which generated a dissonance in his once-comfortable British-Indian identity. And thus, De Silva uses this piece to navigate these emotions, through the use of the themes of brownness, whiteness, uniforms, and performance, rewriting his own sense of self through his artistic innovation. 

Visual Arts Worcester’s Exhibition 004 showcases art across all forms and mediums. While being only two artworks in, I began to think that I was already knee-deep in its immersive diversity. However, unbeknownst to me, the exhibition had already begun before I even knew it. Upon entering Worcester College, I passed a cello drawing made against the cloisters. Lewis McCulloh, president of the Exhibition 004 committee, told Cherwell:  this was a “live drawing from the launch night”, a symphony of lines created by Rowan Briggs Smith in collaboration with the playing of cellist Matthew Wakefield. 

Tiger Huffinley, Head of Installation, told Cherwell: “there was a large variation in the mediums.” As a result, a priority of the exhibition was to find a configuration that would make the pieces complement one another. Huffinley also told Cherwell: “we were lucky with the space we were given to make that happen” – that is, the Sultan Nazrin Shah Centre in Worcester. The idea here is to integrate the diverse mediums and thereby create a sense of balance. 

The concept of culture and identity is prominent in Exhibition 004. Right on the mark is Camilla Albernaz’s photograph Carnival in Salvador: A Celebration of Culture and Identity. The outsider is dropped straight into Salvador’s Carnival, a deeply rooted Brazilian tradition, becoming another among the colorful, laughing, singing people. The photograph calls both sonder and oneness to mind; the people dance together yet each to the sound of their own respective tunes. “I aim to offer a new perspective of Brazil”, Albernaz told Cherwell, “one that reveals the strength of a community which, even in the face of historical inequalities, reclaims public space.”

Lisha Zhong, too, reflects identity and culture in the eye-catching piece Like a thousand cranes. The artist used their mother’s suitcase to build a bridge between British soil and their ancestral Chinese home. Inside the suitcase, Chinese immigration cards hang from a laundry rack, airing out their lineage in the sun and illuminating it. But as Fern Kruger-Paget’s My F**king House shows us, in the form of polystyrene and knitted panels, displacement, at all levels, is never easy. Kruger-Paget told Cherwell that the piece was created after receiving news that their family had to move out of their childhood home, which “sparked some incredibly intense emotions.” 

Our memories can then be begged by Kian Swingler’s Witnesses: He organizes photographs of memories – loving and painful, unforgettable and forgotten – on white fabric, hung in the air with red string. These memories make us who we are. In the same vein, Oliwia Kamieniecka preserves their memories as visual poems—this is uniquely shown through Sand Alphabet, a 16-second stop motion animation completed on a printer scanner and displayed on a television. Paper bag poems are just as enthralling: Julia Strawinska suspends memory in time, the clock hands pointing to the liminal space between love and pain. Julia, too, speaks of dreams, but in all capitals this time: “…I’VE BEEN DREAMING OF YOU ALL SUMMER.”

The exhibition makes space for the anatomical, the scientific, and the mathematical. Untitled by Alice Byfield is a gory self-portrait that pulls skin back to reveal the sfx beneath, autopsying the sensation of losing oneself to plastic surgery. Se Lyn Lim’s Anastasis draws from the titular Greek word, meaning ‘resurrection’, by showing a bizarre hybrid organism emerging from a shell in a fashion reminiscent of Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus. Cici Zhang’s Notes from a Nervous Hand pleasantly surprised me with its use of recycled handwritten notes and mathematical scribblings, a novelty I would love to see more of in art. The viewer can also find a number of ornate pottery pieces from the Oxford University Pottery Society throughout the exhibition.

Finally, I end this exhibition with a journey around Luke Hewson’s series of photographs entitled Winter at Worcester. The artist captures Worcester in the snow at the tail end of his first ever Michaelmas. The photographs create an immersive experience; they drew me in, making me feel as though I was there when they were taken. This piece quietly reminds us what a privilege it is to be at Oxford, surrounded by all its beauty and creativity. 

To me, Exhibition 004 is a love letter to the raw artistry that comes out of this city, from both students and other artists, and it bleeds through every canvas, stitch, and shutter-click.

Review: And Then There Were None – ‘Entertaining, suspenseful and very much worth your attention’

Lara Machado
-
0
Review: And Then There Were None – ‘Entertaining, suspenseful and very much worth your attention’

Hafeja Khanam’s take on Agatha Christie’s classic murder mystery And Then There Were None for this year’s OUDS BAME showcase was entertaining, suspenseful and very much worth your attention. 

This was the first time I’ve walked into the Pilch to a silent audience. Although the house lights were on, Vivi Li’s and Emma Parker’s Mr. and Mrs. Rogers – the house staff – walked about the living room cleaning and rearranging everything. As they did so they held what seemed to be an improvised dialogue. Their squibbling and complaining – successful largely due to the chemistry between the two actors – was a small but effective touch that seemed to immediately demand that the audience pay careful attention to what was about to unfold. 

Set entirely in one location, the show felt progressively claustrophobic, particularly through Khanam’s effective directing. There was a lot of movement at the beginning of the show, with characters constantly exiting and entering – the stage felt almost like a train station. The dialogue was quick-fire, with little time to breathe. However, by the end of the performance the emptiness of the space and physical distance between the actors made us feel the absence of the dead more strongly and the tension more vividly. Although there were less bodies in the room, the feeling of being trapped was no less powerful. After the interval, multiple audience members were quite literally on the edge of their seats. This was intensified by Cayden Ong and Michelle Tse’s simple but effective lighting design; by the show’s second half the survivors sit – all suspicious of each other – with their faces lit only by lantern and candle light. Their fear was palpable. 

The cast were all convincing in their roles. Chelsea Iwunze was particularly memorable as Emily Brent, giving the character such distinct mannerisms that she was always a delight to watch. Ali Khan also gave a standout performance as Sir Lawrence Wargrave, commanding the stage whenever he was on it. Grace Yu as Philip Lombard was charismatic and clearly an audience favourite, while Kapil Narain’s Henry Bore stole many a laugh. Eunbi Han who had the challenge of playing Dr. Armstrong – a very conflicted character – did so with grace, rendering her sympathetic. Finally, Lara Ibrahim gave a subtle and contained performance as Vera Claythorn, which prevented certain scenes from veering into melodrama. 

Aesthetically, the play was very well put together. Vanessa Chan’s careful costume design not only immersed us in the 1930s, but established a gloomy colour palette which enhanced the eeriness of the situation. The set was also cleverly arranged. The Pilch chairs’ inclusion in the living room setting, in pushing the proximity between performer and audience even further, made us feel somewhat implicated in the stage’s events – especially when Claythorn asked Lombard if he did not feel like someone was watching them. The famous little toy soldiers that are surreptitiously removed as characters die kept the audience constantly looking back towards the cabinet and counting in an attempt to anticipate the next death. Mark Tan’s fantastic poster design also deserved a special mention. 

Tone is perhaps And Then There Were None’s main issue. While the humour worked very well at the beginning of the show – Lombard and Bore in particular were good comic relief – the darkness of the ending was marred by genuine laughter from the audience. This was largely a consequence of the humour being played too comfortably into the second half of the show, which features much more graphically disturbing content and dampens the impact of certain scenes. 

Overall, And Then There Were None is a highly entertaining piece of drama, which did justice to the queen of the murder mystery. A second watch is definitely merited for those wanting to put together the clues themselves. 

Construction set to commence for new £190m science park

Conor Walsh
-
0
Construction set to commence for new £190m science park

Construction firm Bowmer + Kirkland secured the contract last week to build Fabrica, Oxford’s largest commercial science park to date, with construction beginning at the end of May. The project is situated on Botley Road and is due to be completed in early 2027.

Valued at £190m, Fabrica is one of the largest science projects to undergo development in the UK this year. The 180,000sq ft. site includes a five-storey building which will house a flexible combination of laboratories and office space. The project will also include 7,000 sq ft. of public facing amenities, including a cafe.

The project originally received planning permission in December 2023 and is set to be Oxford’s first Living Wage Building with the ambition to pay all workers a living wage or higher, as set by Oxford City Council.

Fabrica forms the second phase of a broader project by developers Mission Street and investment manager BGO to create a portfolio of life sciences developments across the UK. This includes developments in Oxford’s West End, along Botley Road, which has been earmarked as the city’s new central science district.

In the first phase of their life sciences portfolio, partners Mission Street and BGO delivered a similar project to Fabrica in a disused retail unit at Botley Road Retail Park. The project, Inventa, opened in 2024 and accommodates 65,000 sq ft. of offices and laboratories.

Mission Street told Cherwell that: “Fabrica will provide five storeys of fully flexible laboratory, office, and collaboration space for commercial occupiers in the science and technology sectors with customisable floorplates designed for university spinouts, as well as established R&D companies.

“Local residents, the local authority and wider stakeholders were consulted extensively during the planning process over a period of more than two years, which included open public consultations.”

Founded in 2017, developers Mission Street have built a property portfolio incorporating 1.5 million sq ft. of science projects across the UK and recently secured a £180m loan to fund its future projects.

Mission Street’s partnership with BGO focuses on life sciences projects in the ‘golden triangle’ of Oxford, Cambridge and London. This focus aligns with the UK government’s plans for the Oxford-Cambridge growth corridor, where the government hopes to create Europe’s Silicon Valley, and their broader goal to kickstart economic growth across the country.

Oxford’s influencers: Student life, filtered through the screen

Lara Murrani
-
0
Oxford’s influencers: Student life, filtered through the screen

There’s something about Oxford that makes people want to document it. The terms are fleeting, and begging to be captured. While Oxford students have a long tradition of photos, journals, and diary entries, a new way of capturing it all has emerged among Gen Z. You’ve probably seen them around, and you’ve probably watched their TikToks and Instagram reels. You may have even met a few of these quasi-famous figures. Student online personalities are no novelty, but a sign of the times, and Oxford’s storytelling legacy has evolved to make room for a new offshoot in the digital age: Oxford student influencers.

The student influencer online

Of course, the University presents its own perspective online. The University’s official Instagram boasts 1.8 million followers, and college social media profiles routinely attract hundreds of thousands of views. But this sanitised, institutional perspective isn’t what people are looking for. Something else has grown independent of the University’s online personality, something far more intimate: the perspective of the students behind the caps and the gowns.

Many of us searched Oxford online before we arrived. We subscribed to YouTube channels, followed Instagram accounts, and watched TikTok creators who documented their lives as students. Some of us even followed creators from their sixth form days, through the fervour of their results day, and into their fresh first weeks at Oxford. These influencers can almost feel like mythical creatures. We know they’re here, but in a strange way, their specially documented lives seem isolated from our own, mundane student experiences. That is, until we stumble on their posts, and suddenly there is this instant connection: sometimes it’s just a laugh, sometimes it feels more personal, like being seen by a stranger online who may only be 5 minutes from you at any given time, like having something that felt like your own unique experience watched by millions of people online.

The people behind the screens

To understand what it actually means to be a student content creator at Oxford, I spoke to several current and graduated Oxford students whose accounts have documented their lives and times at the University.

Oliver, @oliversoxford across Instagram and TikTok, is famous for his interviews with other students, most notably known for his satirical interviews with ‘Bartholomew Hamish Montgomery’ (‘Barty’), a fictional aristocrat who regales viewers with tales of private jets and endless trust funds. Beyond that, Oliver also puts out some “more down-to-earth content, like interviews with regular students”. Oliver’s interviews with characters like Barty help poke fun at the ancient traditions and privileges at Oxford, while his conversations with real students work to gently peel back the stereotype, revealing a more diverse and grounded reality behind the University’s image.

Next is Meagan (@meaganloyst on TikTok and Instagram), who spoke to me from New Zealand, where she’s currently staying. She shares content that blends the aesthetic Oxford life with behind-the-scenes moments, everything from study sessions to scenic shots of Oxford’s iconic architecture: “My Instagram is basically a living video diary of all my Oxford experiences and beyond”. Meagan’s content walks the line between aspiration and authenticity, trying to show a realistic display of life as a student.

Lastly, rooted in the ‘study-tube’ tradition, Chloe, @chloepomfret on Instagram and @chloerevises on TikTok, is focused on putting out content that highlights the realities of what life is like as a student, especially from a working-class perspective. Chloe’s social media presence seems to challenge the traditional view of life at Oxford, and as her footprint follows her from her years in secondary school and sixth form, it presents a rarer perspective of a journey into Oxford. 

The conversation began with a question about how each first got into content creation. Oliver said he began “during the pandemic, as most people did.” Initially, he wanted to promote his eco-friendly queer fashion brand: “you know how people joke that it took them 25 years to realise they were gay and it took the algorithm 10 minutes?” But it soon fell into Oxford-focused videos, his street interviews were popular, and their conversational style “suited him well”.

For Meagan, it was much more deliberate: “When I got to Oxford, one of my goals was to get good at video editing and hit 10K on TikTok by the end of Michaelmas, so I started posting a video a day!” She also traced her start to the pandemic. “I initially started writing in a diary to document my experiences, but it was way faster to do daily videos instead.”

Chloe, on the other hand, started her social media career before the lockdowns. She told a story from her childhood, explaining the striking visual of being sat in the hospital when her grandfather was admitted, posting her notes online just for something to do, and watching it become the most unexpected escape outlet. She was quick to emphasise how much she values the community she built around her and how it became such an integral part of her life that it just had to continue into university. 

The throughline of the COVID-19 pandemic is obvious. With the lockdown having been the first growth spurt for a lot of online circles, this isn’t a huge surprise. The pandemic was a pivotal moment for Gen-Z around the world. A generation that was already becoming defined by social isolation and a closer connection to screens was suddenly shoved entirely into the digital sphere. TikTok use exploded in 2020. Chloe, whose channel predates the pandemic, explained how she suspects that many people found community in those online groups to fill the absence of lecture halls and communal spaces. Now, even in the ‘after’ times and the real world, in-person Oxford, so much of our lives are still filtered through screens and algorithms.

Oxford: Romantic, elitist, both?

When it comes to the image of one of the world’s most famous universities, there’s an inherent tension between the romantic cobbled streets and the realities of student life: three essay weeks, high expectations, and, of course, the exclusivity at the heart of it all. I asked the content creators how they navigated the paradox that is the many sides of Oxford University when presenting such a complicated place in short videos to millions of people. 

Oliver said: “I think most people realise that the videos are satire. If someone watches one of my posh sketches and decides not to apply without doing any further research, maybe Oxford wasn’t the right fit for them in the first place.” He was undoubtedly referring here to the frequent appearances of ‘Barty’ and his merry men in the oliversoxford sketches. In one video, Barty humorously tries to navigate modern dating, poking fun at the outdated ideas of the Oxford elite. “I try to balance them with more down-to-earth content, like interviews with regular students,” Oliver explained. He went on to stress his view that most students are down to-earth people from all kinds of backgrounds who are just passionate about their subject, not “the insane brainiacs that people often imagine”.

Meagan flattered our entire country when she told me: “As an American living in Oxford, it felt like living in a movie.” She explained that for her, posting about Oxford was a way to highlight the parts of it not everyone gets to see, showing a more realistic view into a student’s day-to-day. 

Chloe explained that since day one, it was her goal to show Oxford for all its beauty while never shying away from the financial realities of studying here. We talked about the ‘work ban’ at Oxford, a rule that stops students from taking on paid work during term time. It’s something a lot of students don’t realise exists until they actually get here. She feels it is an unfair exclusion, barring certain students who may need the money during term time to afford their college rent. On the topic of college rent, she told me about a time when she approached St. Catherine’s College when she couldn’t afford her battels, and was “offered a job working in the college kitchen” to help pay them. She tells me that it’s things like this that can make Oxford feel out of reach for students who don’t have the same financial security as others, leaving them to figure things out on their own. To Chloe, bringing attention to barriers like this for prospective applicants is just as important as her other content.

Juggling TikTok and a degree

Now for the question that was really on my mind: how did they manage to juggle their degree with what was essentially a full-time job?

“I don’t do the degree”, Chloe deadpanned. 

While I must preface, for the sake of her tutors and the Catz academic office, that she is joking, Meagan seconds her point: “You have to make it a priority to give content creation a real shot. Consistency is everything when you’re starting.”

Chloe did go on to explain that for her, content was closely tied in with her daily life and, as a result, flows fairly naturally from it.

Oliver told me that he did struggle at one point. While lawyers are already professional whiners about our workload, Oliver might have more of a right to complain: he’s balancing content creation, his Master’s in Law, and work for a marketing agency. And I thought I had it bad bouncing between Law and Cherwell articles! He stressed that he found discipline was key, and his schedule was not too different from everyone else’s: “Everyone at Oxford does societies and other stuff outside of your work – it just so happened that I could monetise mine.”

Why keep the posts coming?

So, what motivates these stars of the rectangular screen? Chloe told me that she does it for the reactions to her content, both positive and negative. If you look up student life at Oxford online, you are often inundated with a flood of “posh accents” and trips to Bicester Village. She wants to be a part of challenging this, helping people find it easier to imagine themselves walking the many halls and corridors of the University. Oliver, similarly, wants to reflect that Oxford is a “much more diverse place than people think”. Meagan also explained how she knows her videos, originally just a visual diary, have been helpful to incoming freshers looking to learn more about the University: “I’ve had a bunch of students tell me they saw my videos before arriving and it helped them choose their college, get excited about their degree, and beyond.”

I asked all three to tell me about how being content creators at Oxford has affected their lives:

Oliver told me: “It’s rewarding to see how people react to the content. As for the online persona, I try to stay authentic. I’m not trying to be someone I’m not, and I think that helps me balance the two worlds.”  

Meagan really emphasised the connections she’s formed, the friends, the experiences, and the doors it opened up. She is a “huge advocate for the pros of social media, especially from a career perspective, and how you can leverage it to create and even manifest the life you want.”

Speaking about the pros and cons, Chloe mentioned the negative or disparaging comments she sometimes receives, both online and in-person. While those are par for the course, it’s the community she has built and the goals she’s working toward that make her feel incredibly lucky to have a voice and to use it to effect change, both in Oxford and outside of it. She especially highlighted her pride in being able to make Oxford a more welcoming place for student care leavers and being able to talk with them about a future at the University.

Fame, online and on the street

All three creators told me how their online fame often spills over into their everyday offline lives. Chloe has lost count of how many times she’s overheard someone say, “Oh, it’s that girl from TikTok.” Oliver and Chloe were, respectively, #2 and #6 on last year’s BNOC list. Even though it’s easy to think of them as existing solely on the screen, their fame can translate into real life far more than anyone would expect.

Lastly, I asked what’s next for these creators? Chloe discussed her work as co-chair of the Oxford Class Act Campaign, particularly a current project where she’s interviewing students who have been in local authority care or are estranged from their families. The goal is to compile a report for the University, which will use the findings to improve its support for these students. Oliver delved into his research on vaccine misinformation and the legal and ethical implications of censoring health-related misinformation. Meagan has already built up a reputation for Gen Z VCs, a global collective she founded. It’s basically a community for young people interested in investing, starting businesses, or working in startups. Her online fame has helped her get a monthly column in The Times. 

So, that’s it from our cast of Oxford student influencers. Writing this piece made me reflect on just how differently we all move through and document our brief time here. But it also reminded me that even when we feel completely wrapped up in our own lives, we’re often walking different versions of the same story. Our experiences might feel deeply personal, but they’re rarely solitary and can be shared with the people around us. In talking with these people, I was reminded of the long history of Oxford students narrating their time here, the art of storytelling, it may seem, never really dies; it just evolves and evolves.

Pagans and Presbyterians: Experiencing a sort of secular age

Satchel Walton
-
0
Pagans and Presbyterians: Experiencing a sort of secular age

Outside a teepee in rural Kent, a woman waved a smoking bundle of herbs around me, as if I was getting extra attention while going through airport security. I dipped my hand in a bowl of water and dabbed some on my forehead. As instructed, I stepped into the tent, sprinkled tobacco in the fire, and said a prayer.

I was surely the only Presbyterian at this neo-pagan ceremony, a four-day event of fire tending and singing and storytelling to commemorate friends and relatives who had recently died. This made me stand out not just in the teepee, but also in my own country. In 2018, Pew Research Center found that there were more Americans who identified as pagan witches than there were members of the Presbyterian Church (USA). In the seven years since, the liberal-leaning denomination has only continued its long decline, alongside so many other churches across the Western world.

The statistics hardly need repeating at this point. Across the West, people’s participation in religion, its importance to them, and their belief in it have all declined. Oxford’s college choirs keep singing and chapel bells keep ringing, but only a third of English people in their 20s identified as Christian in the last census. But even as the West becomes less devout, many still experience the world as a deeply spiritual and enchanted place.

Image credit: Oscar Reynolds for Cherwell christian presbyerian

Image credit: Oscar Reynolds for Cherwell

The days of miracle and wonder

For many intellectuals, religion has been falling out of fashion for centuries. The great German philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher ran in a circle of friends in the 1790s so secular that he prefaced his book by acknowledging that it would shock them that he defended religion, something they “so completely neglected”. Thomas Jefferson happily predicted that by the middle of the 19th century, every American would renounce the superstitious elements of Christianity and become a more rational Unitarian. The future Christian apologist C.S. Lewis wrote that during his first years at University College, he was “busily engaged (apart from ‘doing Mods.’ and ‘beginning Greats’) in assuming what we may call an intellectual ‘New Look’. There was to be no more … flirtations with any idea of the supernatural, no romantic delusion.”

Despite religion’s continual death in the academy, Christianity and Islam have hardly ever been so alive as they are now in much of the Global South. Devotion is strong in Africa and Asia, continents with the large majority of the global population. But even in the supposedly secularised West, spirituality has signs of life, even if it’s not what it looked like in centuries past.

Yes, an all-time high of 30% of Americans are ‘nones’ – that is, they claim no religious affiliation. But when you probe them, many are deeply spiritual. In a recent survey, less than a third deny the existence of spirits, most believe in God, and most are open to the ideas of heaven and hell.

There is more reason for Enlightenment rationalists like Jefferson to despair. Half of Americans say they definitely believe in religious miracles, and another quarter say they probably believe. And substantial majorities now say they definitely or maybe believe in a whole range of supernatural phenomena you wouldn’t hear about at Sunday school, like Karma, psychic abilities, and (non-Holy) ghosts.

Edward A. David is an associate member of Oxford’s Faculty of Theology and Religion and a lecturer at King’s College London. In a recent pilot study, he analysed how young people from countries across the world understand religion and who they see as spiritual role models.

David told Cherwell: “I’m coming to view religion – at least perceived by Gen Zers – as being a deeply emotive, affect-based phenomenon, not so much doctrine-based or rationally-based, but very much  ‘How does this make me feel?’ and going from there.”

Dr. David’s participants from the Global South – both Christian and Muslim – tended to have relatively conservative and traditional religious views. But even in England, traditional religious practices show some signs of revival among Gen Z since the pandemic.

Recent data find a large uptick in churchgoing among young people in England over the last six years, especially among young men. As in the U.S., young men now outnumber young women in churches – an unusual pattern, as women in Christian societies have historically tended to be more devout than men. In the same report, commissioned by the Bible Society and conducted by YouGov, the 18 to 24 cohort was the most likely to definitely believe in God, the most likely to pray regularly, and the most likely to participate in other spiritual practices like meditation.

Many among Gen Z see religion as something of a set of self-help practices. Even those who claim a religious affiliation often draw from a variety of spiritual traditions.

“Gen Z is a generation of authenticity and personalisation, which informs their identities, so their notion of categorisation is much more fluid,” David told Cherwell. “They might land on a certain religious affiliation, but I think if you were to actually ask them, there’d be a much wider spread in terms of religion or spirituality from different traditions informing how they view the world.”

Life and death and life

There were only about a dozen people at that pagan ceremony in Kent – but that was nearly as large as the weekly attendance at the 13th century Anglican parish in the nearest village.

Five weeks later, I was in a much more vigorous ceremony on the other side of the continent. Greeks were flocking to central Athens for Holy Week, kissing icons and crosses, lighting candles, and crowding the streets for a midnight procession singing “Christos Anesti” (Christ is risen).

Did the people squeezed into churches for the Easter vigil skew old, or is it just that Greek people are on average more elderly? Was this an impressive display of the faith of Europe’s most religious country, or a pittance compared to the devotion of previous decades and centuries? I couldn’t tell. The most important bits were all there – the emotion on the faces of old women as the incense came by, the spirit with which the priests read the Byzantine-era liturgy, and my own persistent doubts about whether a word of it could be true – but they couldn’t be readily quantified.

While in Greece, I met a nice young Anglican who is set to be ordained this summer. He told me that he is one of 19 seminarians in his program at Cambridge, where there used to be over triple that number. We talked about the state of our college chapels, and the political weaponisation of Christianity in America, and the Church of England’s declining number of clergy. More importantly, along with thousands of people, we sang Christos Anesti.

1...272829...2,521Page 28 of 2,521

Support Student Journalism

Cherwell is Oxford’s oldest independent newspaper, established in 1920. We are entirely student-run. By supporting us, you will contribute to keeping our paper in print and online. Every donation makes a difference.

Donate

Explore

Follow us

More

Oxford Student Publications Limited © 2025 - All Rights Reserved | Privacy Policy

Website by James Ashley