Tuesday 24th February 2026
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Portrait of Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai revealed at Lady Margaret Hall

Siyeon Lee
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Portrait of Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai revealed at Lady Margaret Hall

A portrait of Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Oxford alumna Malala Yousafzai was revealed last week at Lady Margaret Hall. Yousafzai, a former college member, graduated from Oxford with a degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) in 2020.

The artwork was commissioned by Lady Margaret Hall in collaboration with the Oxford Pakistan Programme, on whose advisory body Yousafzai sits.

The portrait was revealed at Lady Margaret Hall’s annual Founders and Benefactors Dinner early this month. In the Lady Margaret Hall news update, Yousafzai said: “I am incredibly grateful to Lady Margaret Hall for commissioning this portrait and for the trust it represents. I accept this honour with the hope that it helps open doors for many others.”

Yousafzai also hoped that the portrait would serve as an encouragement for other women: “More than anything, I hope it serves as a reminder that a girl from Swat Valley belongs here – and that the next girl from a village in Pakistan, Afghanistan, or anywhere else, belongs here too.”

In a news update on the Lady Margaret Hall website, the painter, Isabella Watling, expressing gratitude for the opportunity: “It was a huge honour to paint Malala’s portrait.In the picture, I wanted to try and capture some of her strength and grace. I found it was unusually challenging to finish, because of the pressure of painting such a well-known face.”

Yousafzai, a Pakistani activist who has championed the right to girls’ education, remains the youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate in history. She grew up in Swat Valley, Pakistan, and survived a 2012 assassination attempt by the Taliban after criticising the militant organisation’s restrictions on women’s educational opportunities.


Alongside her father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, Malala Yousafzai has headed the non-profit organisation Malala Fund since 2013. The organisation “invests in civil society organizations who are challenging the systems, policies and practices that prevent girls from going to school in their communities”.

Techno, tragedy, and medieval monologuing: ‘Brew Hill’ in conversation

Charlie Bailey
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Techno, tragedy, and medieval monologuing: ‘Brew Hill’ in conversation

Oxford’s student drama scene has plenty of original writing based on fractured relationships, but none quite this random. Kilian King’s Brew Hill watches the deterioration of the romance between Nat (Trixie Smith) and Gordon (Jem Hunter), two broke former art students. Their romance is unusual in more ways than one: Gordon has an anxious condition which he comforts exclusively by checking flights to Berlin. The onstage action is interrupted by the presence of Flemish Renaissance painter Pieter Bruegel (Hugh Linklater), who appears in Nat’s ‘visions’. As the play progresses, the lines between the couple’s story and Bruegel’s become blurred. Cherwell went behind the scenes to find out more about what audiences can expect. 

I watched the latter half of a full run of the script, sat behind a busy stage management team (Matida Lambert and Lucy Davis) taking notes on scene changes. Though outside of the performance space, the actors were highly energised. At points they leapt out of their seats to mimic the onstage blocking. The scenes I watched were highly comic, with Hannah Wiseman (Kirsty) especially making the mini audience (myself and the crew) laugh. Audiences will be surprised by how easy the cast makes it to laugh at the word ‘mmm’ alone. 

After this light-hearted run had finished, the rehearsal turned to a more serious scene, exploring Nat and Gordon’s relationship. The jokes from before were laid aside and the cast became highly focused. The differences between Smith’s joyful, chaotic portrayal of Nat and Hunter’s quietly insufferable Gordon became evident. King’s feedback was both emotion-based and vibes-based, asking for a “little bit more deflation” in their tone, and later explaining one moment as “this is them when they’ve reached flow state.”

The cast have been active participants in creating the final product. Co-producer Marlene Favata explained that the script was only finalised about two weeks ago. Brew Hill has been with King for much longer. He told Cherwell that the historical aspect of the plot first wedged itself in his head a year ago, as whilst visiting family in Berlin he resolved to turn his love of Bruegel’s artistry into a play. The idea has now developed into an unusual mixture of techno and tragedy, with a side of medieval monologuing. Delving deeper into the metaphor behind the inclusion of Bruegel, King explained that, while the artist’s paintings look bucolic at first glance, “there’s a lot of darker, nastier stuff” revealed when one looks closer. This parallels the imperfections in the play’s central relationship. 

Viewers may wonder what breweries have to do with a Flemish painter. The answer is nothing, but King thought Bruegel and ‘Brew Hill’ sounded close enough to work a brewery plotline into the script. Once he realised they actually sound pretty different, he was undeterred: “I thought, that can still work if the character is as dumb as me.”

Such self-deprecation doesn’t hold given his cast’s evident excitement towards his concept. There were points where cast members directed questions at King themselves, equally as curious to understand King’s starting intentions. On their reasons for getting involved, Smith cited her love of art, and Hunter told Cherwell he was “very interested in dreams”. These themes are reflected in the set, which aims to capture the play’s modern, naturalistic and historic, abstract elements. The back half of the stage holds the couple’s flat, and the thrust arrangement allows the front part of the stage to incorporate a variety of settings.

In answer to the question of why King cast each actor, he mentioned the chemistry between Smith and Hunter as well as Linklater’s strong monologue skills. The workshopping process seemed to have given the cast a charming closeness. Wiseman remembered lengthy discussions, one about Gordon’s character for “four hours” which brought up “every relationship trauma”. Much emphasis was placed on how much Hunter hates Gordon, while remaining convinced that he is a ‘self-insert’ from King. King was cautious to comment on whether Gordon bears his likeness.

The question of what the audience should leave thinking was difficult. The play can be interpreted in so many different ways. King joked that he’d like the audience to start their own breweries. Linklater wanted them to high-five (as one does after a good play). More seriously, King explained that the audience can reflect on the unease created when “one person wants to stay and one person wants to go”. For Favata, this reminds her of school friends left behind when she moved to Oxford. Wiseman also related it to friendship. Hunter’s idea was most poignant: his takeaway from playing Gordon is that “just because you have good intentions doesn’t mean you can’t hurt someone.”. 

I’d already been partially convinced by Assistant Director Roselynn Gumbo’s promotional coasters (ingenious, given the play’s focus on beer). Spending time with Pecadillo Productions made it even clearer that their work is something unique. The play is a nod to Renaissance artistry that stays on the right side of pretentious. In one word? After some scrambling, different cast members suggested ‘community’, ‘escape’ and ‘techno!’. Without a doubt, something good is brewing. 

Brew Hill runs at the Burton Taylor Studio, 17th-21st February. 

It’s 2016’s world, and we’re just living in it (or are we?)

Jiayue Shi
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It’s 2016’s world, and we’re just living in it (or are we?)

Barely a month has passed since we made our flustered entry into 2026. But it seems like the verdict is already in: your honour, we’ve had enough. Bring back 2016. Tastes were bad, but times were better. You’ll find this nostalgia in the vines and 2016 outfit inspo reels on your Instagram feed. It’s in the colourful return of Zara Larsson’s Lush Life. Many influencers I follow, from pop culture satirists to the guy who sings ballads about the Louvre heist, are posting pictures of themselves from ten years ago. My generation on Anglophone social media have decided to fall back in love with fidget spinners, Snapchat filters, and sappy Tumblr quotes.

2016 is childhood. It’s an aesthetic. It’s kitsch. It’s embarrassing, therefore sincere. It’s collective. It’s everyone’s “last normal year”, because, so it goes, the first Trump presidency ruptured the timeline and the American timeline is universal. And above all, best of all, 2016 is gone forever. The past is the absolute elsewhere. If it were not so, we couldn’t have shaped it in the exact likeness of our longings. If we could actually have 2016 back, we would no longer make it our cathartic refuge.

Was 2016 really so great? You’d have to be sufficiently affluent and unperturbed to enjoy that year as a paradise lost. The 2016 divide would be nonsensical to those for whom the world has always been on fire. As for myself, I was in my early teens in 2016. My feelings towards it are fond but illusionless, and the year doesn’t stand out among the others. I was semi-familiar with the pop culture references that the trend reminisces today, but not raised in it. China’s 2015 military parade lodged itself more intimately in my political memory than Brexit and Trump did in 2016. What it’s making me see is that the trend exists only in a depersonalised and depoliticised memory. There you have an aesthetic, a utopian field of signs.

But this is nothing new. We’ve always been nostalgic, and its utopias have always been consumable. No matter how jaded we are with Disney remakes, they just keep coming, in the hyper-real image of our childhood. Studio Ghibli aesthetics are nostalgic: already, generative AI has pushed out numerous stylistic replicas. 90s Britpop is nostalgic, and it still sells – ask anyone who got an overpriced Oasis ticket in 2024. Cottagecore is nostalgic: a quick Pinterest search shows us the quaint white curtains and garden paths of a pre-internet pastoral, with its tactful amnesia of the real labours of country life. Post-socialism is nostalgic: I’ve seen the inert left-wing melancholia that is best pictured in vintage Sputnik pins and revolutionary internationalist posters. It goes with the embarrassed awareness that we’re wistful not for the past our grandparents lived, but for its unrealised ideals, now safely buried in a dead future. In nostalgia, there is a present futility that we dance around by being self-conscious, ironic, and entertained.

Last term my college hosted a 1920s-themed black tie dinner. The cheerful email reminded us that we, too, are in the hedonistic 20s, living through economic recession and authoritarian ascent. Happily for us, there would be live jazz in the bar afterwards. It was a great night, I committed to the bit. There I was, dancing Lindy Hop with my friend. I wore qipao in homage to the fashionable Shanghai ladies of exactly a century ago. We took pictures on a thrifted 2000s Fujifilm camera.

Yet inevitably, this was accompanied by the wry knowledge that the 1920s, too, were nostalgic. Europe’s traditional Right lamented the passing of religion and order. The Nazis were nostalgic for a mythical Germany of the pure-blooded Volk. Revivalist right-wing nostalgia today is sellable and iconographic, from MAGA hats to algorithms that push St. George’s flags and trad wife content to the right audiences. We’re buffeted on all sides by nostalgia of every kind. Absent-mindedly, industriously, we produce a great desire for pasts, and create desirable pasts to match. Then we buy them up.

The thing we really don’t know what to do about is the future. Late-night conversations with friends my age reveal the uneasy suspicion that we’re incapable of creating a future – individual or collective. We speak anxiously about graduating Oxford and the job market, about wasted potential, about the daily injustice that descends on others in our phone screens and not ourselves. It’s easy relief, especially now, to miss the 2010s. Through the cringy filters, it emerges as an innocent time where many futures felt possible.

Now that we’ve arrived, we’re convinced that we’re living – and responsible for – the worst possible one. Is the 2016 nostalgia trend not just pop culture brought back from the dustbins, but endlessly recycled facsimiles of lost hope? Is the power to multiply and consume our one truly democratic cultural power?

There’s something reassuring about the nostalgia that tells us our best years are behind us. Agency lost in the present regains dignity in an uncomplicated collective past. If now is the time of monsters, they’re happy we’re distracted. But it’s also the now that demands action and imagination from us. I’d like to think that the present, narrowing between desirable pasts and inconceivable futures, is still ground enough to stand on. Nostalgia gives us much-needed relief and fun, as long as it’s not paralysing. If the future struggles to be born, we need to start preparing for a livable one.

John Radcliffe Hospital hosts new institute for trauma, emergency, and critical care

Angelina Wu
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John Radcliffe Hospital hosts new institute for trauma, emergency, and critical care

A new Kadoorie Institute of Trauma, Emergency and Critical Care has been established within the University of Oxford. Based at the John Radcliffe Hospital, the new institution formalises a long-term collaboration between the Oxford Trauma and Emergency Care at the Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences (NDORMS) and the Critical Care Research Team at the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences (NDCN).

The Kadoorie Institute’s close collaboration with its host, the John Radcliffe Hospital, is designed to enable research into clinical effectiveness. Matthew Costa, Professor of Orthopaedic Trauma Surgery at NDORMS and one of the Institute’s directors, told Cherwell that the department aims to streamline research into Emergency Departments, trauma operating theatres, and Intensive Care Units. The institute will analyse “these three acute care specialities together so that our research spans the whole patient pathway”.

Both research and education form the focus of the Kadoorie Institute. Professor Costa told Cherwell: “Our educational work aims to provide the ‘outputs’ from this research in a way that is easily accessible to healthcare professionals and patients, whether it be online materials or face-to-face teaching.”

The Kadoorie Charitable Foundation, the Institute’s namesake, has played a pivotal role in its financial support. Professor Costa told Cherwell: “The Kadoorie Charitable Foundation has been supporting acute case research and education in Oxford for 20 years… Without their support, the Institute would not have been possible. We hope to continue this incredible relationship for many years to come.” The Institute’s launch comes at a time of increasing strain for the NHS, particularly in the field of emergency medicine. Costa told Cherwell: “Acute care in the NHS is seldom out of the press. Research to improve the outcomes for patients who need urgent treatments is therefore a key priority for the NHS. With ever increasing pressure on NHS resources, there is also a need to make sure that all new treatments are cost-effective as well as better for patients’ recovery.”

Grammy-nominated musician appointed Christ Church Composer in Residence

Angelina Wu
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Grammy-nominated musician appointed Christ Church Composer in Residence

Christ Church has appointed American composer Nico Muhly as its first ever Composer in Residence. Based in New York, Muhly has been collaborating with Peter Holder, Director of Music of Christ Church Cathedral for several months. Muhly has previously been Composer in Residence at Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge, and a collaborator with Magdalen College.

The role of a Composer in Residence within Christ Church’s community is still largely undefined. Reflecting on the unique position, Muhly told Cherwell: “There doesn’t exist a handy document from Henry VIII’s HR department saying what it is that I should get up to.” Muhly sees his role to be a provider of music, both in the form of a complete set of service music, and for festivals and holidays throughout the year. The first of these musical contributions, With Harte and Hande, a carol inspired by a 16th century mystery play, received a performance on 17th January in Christ Church Cathedral.

Muhly’s relationship to the cathedral’s choristers has greater definition. He plans on introducing contemporary music to the music traditions of choristers, bridging the gap between the varying practices. Muhly told Cherwell: “I think my ability to speak their language can be useful in showing them music which wouldn’t normally come across their desks or headphones.”

In honour of the College Cathedral Choir’s 500th year anniversary, Muhler plans to premiere a new cantata this summer. Christ Church has long been a source of inspiration for Muhly, who has been “listening to their recordings since the beginning of time”. Muhly told Cherwell: “The goal is to write something that relates to the greater ChCh community, but also something which will have – as the saying goes, legs – which is to say that other choirs will want to perform it.”

Muhly’s experience includes commissions by Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall, the Tallis Scholars, the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the BBC. He has also worked with artists including Sufijan Stevens, the National, and Paul Simon, and has scored screen productions such as The Reader, Kill Your Darlings, and Pachinko. 

Muhly was nominated for a Grammy in 2022 for his composition ‘Throughline’, performed by the San Francisco Symphony. 

Reflecting on his role with regards to current and future music undergraduates, Muhly said: “I find that it’s often useful to have a composer Just Around [sic] the place, in the same way it’s good to have the number of a reliable cobbler or seamstress or somebody who can reliably read hieroglyphs – we can do a lot more than you think.”

University raises concerns over proposed cuts to Oxfordshire fire service provision

Beatrix Arnold
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University raises concerns over proposed cuts to Oxfordshire fire service provision

The University of Oxford has joined others in expressing concerns over Oxford County Council’s proposed cuts to the Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue Service (OFRS). The proposals, which would see reductions in the number of fire stations, fire engines, and firefighter posts, follow a review of fire service resources and emergency response capabilities across the country. 

The County Council’s public consultation on the reforms was open from last October until 31st January. It was extended beyond an original deadline of 20th January to allow for more feedback. Since then around 1500 responses have been received. 

The University of Oxford submitted a response to the consultation, expressing concerns over the plans. A spokesperson from the University told Cherwell that the proposed cuts “will significantly increase response times to the areas of highest risk, undermining protection for the city’s historic buildings, laboratories, and college estate, and reducing vital day-to-day fire safety engagement with the University”. 

The proposed changes include the closure of fire stations in Woodstock, Henley, and Eynsham, and the removal of six fire engines. Fire stations in Kidlington and Rewley Road, near the city centre, could be merged and replaced with a new station in North Oxford.  

The restructuring plan looks to prioritise the daytime availability of emergency fire services. Cherwell understands that, were the cuts to be implemented, there would be only five fire engines guaranteed to be available to cover all of Oxfordshire at night, leading to an increase in response times. Twelve-hour day shifts would be introduced for firefighters across the county, and 42 OFRS employees are at risk of being made redundant.  

In the consultation, Oxfordshire County Council stated that the closures have been considered because many employees are “unable to commit to offering the hours that they once might have”, leading to “persistent low fire engine availability”. It is stressed that the changes “are forecast to have a minimal impact on overall response performance”. 

More than 150 firefighters from across the county protested the cuts outside Oxford’s County Hall on 9th December. The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) have launched a campaign under the banner “Cuts Kill”, including a petition to have the proposals withdrawn. 

Jonathan Shuker, Acting Brigade Secretary for the FBU, told Cherwell: “No engagement with employees or the FBU was sought before these proposals were sent out to the public.” 

Anneliese Dodds, Labour MP for Oxford East, is among those who have declared their opposition to the cuts. She is urging Oxford residents to sign the FBU’s petition. Numerous local councils, including West Oxfordshire District Council, have also voiced their disapproval of the proposed reforms.   

The University of Oxford has seen several recent fires, notably in Reuben College offsite accommodation last November. On the 23rd of January, fire services were called to Wadham College’s main site after a blaze broke out. Shuker told Cherwell that these incidents “show exactly why OFRS should have city centre firefighting capabilities”. 

Oxfordshire County Council was approached for comment.

‘I don’t like the idea of hope’: An interview with Iya Kiva 

Seán Timon
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‘I don’t like the idea of hope’: An interview with Iya Kiva 

Iya Kiva is an award-winning Ukrainian poet, originally from Donetsk. Since 2014, when war first came to her region, she has lived in displacement. When I speak to Iya, she is in Lviv, where funeral processions for soldiers pass daily and the wounded walk the streets. Iya’s poetry explores her reality: her home, the texture of life under siege, the work of language in wartime.

Cherwell: Please give us a picture of your daily life.

Kiva: I live in Lviv, an old and beautiful city. By Ukrainian standards I am relatively safe, although from time to time there are attacks and civilians are killed and injured here. I live near a military hospital, so every day I see soldiers being treated there. War is not something far away, you see it every day, just by going out into the street.

I live near Lychakivska Street, where funeral motorcades for soldiers pass. They are accompanied by a mournful folk song that became popular after the Maidan in 2014. I can look out the window and see public transport stopping out of respect for the dead, people kneeling. When I go to Kyiv, the situation is different. I hear explosions, listen to the shaheds circling the house where I stay, see rockets or drones shot down. Sometimes the whole night passes like this.

This is my reality, in which I write, translate, edit, read, and think. But this is only from the outside. My internal state is unstable. Since February 2022, I have not had enough intellectual energy for daily tasks, because the events in Ukraine mentally exhaust even those who live in the rear. Cities you love are under attack. People you know are killed or injured. Even when it happens to people I do not know, or cities where I have never been, I feel the tragedy has happened to me. The Ukrainian community is now a big threatened body, of which I am part, and the pain in any part of this body is my pain too.

Cherwell: Your connection to Donetsk is evident in your work. For readers who only know the name of the city through the war, what was its character before?

Kiva: Donetsk appeared on the wave of 19th century industrialisation. My region is a region of resources: coal, salt, limestone, ore for metallurgy. The city arose around a metallurgical plant and mines, with capital from Wales, Belgium, Italy, France. Donetsk is a steppe, a place of heavy human interference in nature. The factories and mines are in the city itself, not outside it. My childhood impressions are of difficult ecology. Waste heaps, artificial mountains, are scattered throughout the city. They can be pink, ashen, black.

Roses are one of its symbols, like coal. There is an interesting dichotomy: hard work underground, which resembles hell, and beautiful roses on earth. Donetsk is also associated with Vasyl Stus, one of the most significant poets and dissidents in 20th century Ukrainian literature. His uncompromising, stubborn nature seems to me part of the Donetsk mentality. Inside me, Donetsk is an internal map: where I was born, studied, worked, and lived longest. A place that shaped me and was shaped by me.

Cherwell: In your writing, personal experience and war seem to merge. Do you construct that deliberately, or does it arise on its own?

Kiva: Poetry for me is a form of thinking, of exploring myself and the world. The war has been going on for almost eleven years now, and through poetry I explore the reality in which I live with, and in, war. With each year, it becomes harder to remember what life in Ukraine was like before, what I was like before, 2014.

I need to enter into resonance with some experience, thought, or reality for a text to emerge. It’s like caring for an orchid for a long time and one day seeing a flower on its stem.

I intuitively explore sound and meaning in language rather than rationally constructing them. I find it more interesting not to know where a thought, metaphor, or line will take me. I would call it the logic of water in a river, which makes its way by mastering the landscape and moving according to its features. This seems close to the pulsation of language itself. Language that unfolds through metaphors cannot know in advance what its new metaphor will be.

Poems are a tension between me and reality. I stretch like a string to extract sound from reality, to find out how it sounds.

Cherwell: My own writing sometimes reveals me to myself. Do you experience something similar?

Kiva: Yes, poetry is a place, almost a physical space, where I am most myself, where I am absolutely naked, defenceless, vulnerable. This vulnerability is also strength, because to expose myself through words requires courage. In poetry I am naked, but also as free as possible. Writing comes naturally to me, but reading poetry in public is still uncomfortable. I feel naked in the presence of other people.

The main principle does not change: write in your own language, rely on personal experience, honestly listen to your time, and recreate its music in poetry. After 2022, a sense of responsibility was added. To the living and dead Ukrainians of many generations. Culture is a kind of flash drive for recovering identity, especially through language. I’ve become more attentive to what I can capture in poetry, not out of compulsion, but by re-adjusting the optics to see more value in the everyday. Like changing the lens on a camera, even though you’re still the same photographer.

Cherwell: Is your poetry an act of resistance? Is language a battle, and are you fighting?

Kiva: I’m a little tired of these formulations. An act of resistance is to be a soldier, a paramedic, a volunteer, to make a donation. Poetry is an art that makes the resistance of Ukrainians visible. It allows me to feel my own experience and the experience of others at the level of specific stories and emotions, to touch this experience with my hands, roll it on my tongue, hold it in my ears, twirl it in my thoughts like music that resonates in the heart.

The war destroys not only people, cities, animals and nature, but also the intellectual potential of Ukrainians as a community. Writing during war is difficult, emotionally, psychologically, practically. In this sense, Ukrainian poetry is an act of resistance to the destruction of intellectual resources and culture.

Cherwell: What is challenging you recently?

Kiva: Since the full-scale invasion, the hardest thing has been trying to control my emotions. Living in a war means living where one grief is replaced by another, one news of death by another. Ukrainian pain today is like sailing endlessly in a stormy sea, not knowing whether you will reach the shore, without seeing the shore. There is much more experience now than emotional, physical, and psychological resources to live it and reflect on it. Taking responsibility for my emotions in such circumstances is not easy, but necessary, in order to be an effective adult on whom other people can count.

Cherwell: What are you hopeful for?

Kiva: I don’t really like the idea of hope. For me, hope is associated with powerlessness, a passive role, shifting responsibility to some imaginary figure; God, another adult, snow, rain, so I don’t like it. To have hope is a great luxury. And in the world of recent changes, our already unfair world has begun to look even less hopeful. I prefer to ask myself: what can I do? You can always find some specific answer to this question if you are honest with yourself.

Oxford University to co-lead UK-Japan quantum technology projects

Apaar Agarwal
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Oxford University to co-lead UK-Japan quantum technology projects

The University of Oxford has been appointed to co-lead one of the three flagship projects of a program of science and technology collaboration between the UK and Japan. This was announced by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi during Starmer’s visit to Japan on 31st January. The projects will pursue the development of quantum technology in computing.

“Distributed and secure quantum computation”, a project led by Oxford’s Professor David Lucas and the University of Tokyo’s Professor Mio Murao, addresses the challenge of moving beyond isolated laboratory experiments towards large-scale, interconnected quantum systems. The project aims to “build the foundations of a quantum internet”.

Funded by the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), the new quantum projects have received a total of £9.2 million. The EPSRC contributed £4.5 million, and the JST provided £5.2 million.

There will also be a project focused on “massive scaling of semiconductor quantum-dot technologies”, co-led by Dr Masaya Kataoka of the National Physical Laboratory in the UK and Professor Tetsuo Kodera of the Institute of Science Tokyo. Another initiative will work on “quantum control and sensing”, co-led by Professor Janet Anders of the University of Exeter and Professor Masahito Ueda of the University of Tokyo.

The main aim of Oxford’s project is to integrate advanced hardware with privacy-preserving protocols, enabling ultra-secure communication and faster scientific discovery, while training future specialists to strengthen global quantum networks over the next five years.

Professor Lucas is an experimental atomic physicist working in the field of trapped-ion quantum computing. This approach to computing uses charged atomic particles, or ions, as physical qubits, the fundamental unit of information in quantum computing, trapped in electromagnetic fields. Professor Murao’s Japanese team will contribute complementary knowledge of quantum communication theory, ion-trap hardware, and advanced manufacturing.

In a press release, Professor Lucas said: “Similar to how the internet connects classical computers, future quantum advances depend on networking quantum processors together. This presents profound scientific and engineering challenges, particularly in ensuring these networks are scalable, secure, verifiable, and integrated.

“By fostering deep integration between leading UK and Japanese teams and their respective programmes, we aim to create a coherent, full-stack architecture and deliver concrete integration outcomes that amplify the value of current national efforts, rather than duplicating foundational developments.”

Oxford Union Librarian steps down following ‘racist’ comments

Cherwell News
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Oxford Union Librarian steps down following ‘racist’ comments

CW: Racism, Islamophobia, strong language

The Oxford Union Librarian, Brayden Lee, has stepped down from his role after making comments described as “racist” by Oxford Union members in an audio recording shared publicly. Lee is heard saying “I don’t know of a time that a British person was running up against a non-British person and won”, and describes the conduct of BAME committee members as “highly tribal”. 
Cherwell has exclusively seen Lee’s resignation, sent shortly before 8pm to the President Katherine Yang and the President-Elect. The Librarian is effectively the vice-president of the Union.

In the recording, Lee remarks that many senior figures at the Oxford Union come from ethnic minority backgrounds. When asked for an explanation for this, Lee says: “The way they see it, for hundreds of years we’ve fucked them over… we’ve tortured them, we’ve killed them, enslaved them, did all these terrible things. 

“Why the fuck now they have some level of power [are] they going to give a shred of it to us, after everything we did to them? Of course, they’re gonna look out for their own when the last time white people had power, look what [they] did to them. They need to make sure that white people will never have power.” 

Cherwell understands that the recording was made covertly. Lee has stated on social media that someone was “deliberately trying to bait [him] into saying racist things” in order to blackmail him. He said: “I have said some terrible things, and I was totally wrong to do so. I am deeply sorry to everyone, especially those affected by what I said.” Lee was approached for comment by Cherwell.

When discussing Indian and Pakistani members of the Union committee, Lee said: “They’ve got the entire fucking Raj behind them no matter what. Why bother getting rid of one of the few people that isn’t a Taliban [sic] just to put another one? It’s stupid.” The Raj is an outdated colonial term used in the 19th and 20th centuries to refer to British rule in the Indian subcontinent. 

Lee also made remarks about former Union President Israr Khan. In the recording, Lee stated that Khan is from Balochistan, “a part of Pakistan that the Taliban operates in”, and alleged that “several of his siblings went on to be in [the] Taliban”. 

President-Elect Arwa Elrayess stated on her Instagram earlier today that “Brayden has made the decision to step down from the Presidential race and will resign from his position”. She “unequivocally” condemned racism and said that it requires “accountability and reflection”. Cherwell understands that Lee was going to run for President of the Oxford Union in the elections in week 7 prior to the controversy.

The Oxford Union Rules and Regulations rule 38 (b)(iv) state that officers who resign will be “succeeded by their immediate junior”, which in the case of the Librarian office is the Librarian-Elect, currently Prajwal Pandey. The Librarian-Elect has been approached for comment.

A number of senior Union officials publicly had called for Lee’s resignation. This included the current Librarian-Elect, who described Lee’s comments as “openly racist”. Some of them pointed out the “double standard”, considering the backlash towards former President-Elect George Abaraonye following his remarks about Charlie Kirk’s shooting and the fact that Lee supported the campaign against him during Abaraonye’s vote of no confidence.

The Oxford Union has previously faced allegations of racism, including an incident in Trinity term 2024 when dozens of senior officials had called the society “institutionally racist” after disciplinary proceedings had been “disproportionately targeting individuals from non-traditional backgrounds”, including the removal of, at the time, President-Elect Ebrahim Osman-Mowafy. 

The Oxford Union declined to comment.

Anna Olliff-Cooper on being a 76-year-old student, her three-month prognosis, and defying time

Selina Chen
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Anna Olliff-Cooper on being a 76-year-old student, her three-month prognosis, and defying time

When Anna Olliff-Cooper applied to Oxford, she had just been diagnosed with a rare form of blood cancer. Doctors said she had three months to live, but she hadn’t quite processed that. “If somebody says to you that you are dying within a few months, it takes an awful lot of time to sink in”, Anna said. “You think, well, they’ve made a mistake. It’s quite bewildering.”

When we spoke, she was studying art history in the Next Horizons programme, taught by Harris Manchester College and Rhodes Trust. At 76 years old, Anna was one of the oldest students at Oxford University.

Growing up near London, she got a scholarship to her local grammar school and always thought she would love to go to Oxford. But she got an offer from medical school at a time when university education was uncommon for medical students, even less so for women. “I didn’t really feel I was worthy to come to Oxford because that’s where all the very bright people go”, Anna said. Overcoming self-doubt remained a work-in-progress for her.

As a young medic, Anna took care of people with leukemia, lymphoma, and related blood cancers at a time when patients had about six weeks to live. The newly established unit in Southampton only had a portable cabin with a professor and Anna on staff. “We didn’t have computers, but we had huge sheets of graph paper, and we had to plot how people’s blood levels were going up and going down”, Anna explained.

The frontier of medicine was tough. Once, a young boy had died in the middle of the night after receiving some drugs. So the next time Anna administered the drugs, she sat up with the patient and checked blood potassium levels throughout the night. “I saw it going up and up and up, so I gave him anti-potassium treatment, and he survived”, Anna said.

The portable cabin has grown into a major oncology centre today, but Anna, with her characteristic modesty, insisted that she wasn’t a ‘pioneering leukemia researcher’ as her son described her.

Her eldest son, Jonty, who had reached out to Cherwell about this interview, wrote that his mother is “shy as a mouse” and “crippled by self-doubt”. That was despite Anna’s adventures across geographies – and times.

She had some “hairy moments” when travelling the Sahara for six months with a boyfriend. When a spring on their Land Rover broke, someone had offered to swap the part for Anna. “Fortunately, my boyfriend said no, which was quite a relief”, she chuckled.

Then she caught dysentery. “We slept on a mattress on top of the Land Rover, and I remember waking up one morning to see this vulture sitting there. I might have been hallucinating, but I certainly remember seeing this bird and thinking, ‘God, I’m much sicker than I think I am, I need a doctor.’” The borders were closed, however, and the pair had to wait a month. Anna got better – a miracle she would repeat decades later.

“I’ve done time travelling, too”, she joked as she reminisced on her part as Lady Olliff-Cooper in The Edwardian Country House, a Channel 4 reality TV programme that sent her back a century to experience an authentic Edwardian lifestyle. When her family was chosen, the producers sent them train tickets but would not tell them the destination. “We just had to get on the train,” she said, and so she did.

For all her uncertainties, Anna was remarkably candid in our conversation. “I did have an affair with a married man”, she said. “It was a dreadful ménage à trois – so embarrassing in retrospect.”

Anna worked as a GP until her retirement at age 62. She discovered a talent for portraiture, but suddenly lost some vision in the centre of her eyes. With art off-limits, Anna started training to be a therapist, and soon she was working pro bono at a centre for rape and domestic violence survivors.

Then Jonty broke his collarbone while doing a master’s at Stanford University. Anna went over to help, and while there she heard about the Stanford Distinguished Carers Institute. She became a fellow and took courses on everything from blockchains to AI. 

Back home, Anna found herself “getting very tired, then extremely tired, and then ridiculously tired”, she said. “Things started to break: I took something out of the washing machine and broke one rib, twisted suddenly and broke another rib. When I finally got to the hospital, the nurse pulled me up, and another rib gave way.” She was eventually diagnosed with amyloidosis – a disease not unlike what she spent her early years treating. Doctors gave her three months.

Anna didn’t speak in detail about her chemotherapy, but Jonty wrote of the devastating process: “The treatment was gruelling, but it worked, and she bought herself a little more life. How long, we do not know.” She attended her son’s wedding in a wheelchair and applied to Oxford at the encouragement of a friend from Stanford, not knowing if she’d live to attend. 

Just before her course was due to start, she made a recovery. “Oxford is my bucket list thing”, she said. “Other people might want to go on a cruise around the world, but I wanted to come here.”

I told Anna that many students of my age think of Oxford as a stepping stone, a place to build experience for the CV while leaving ourselves little time to learn what we enjoy. Anna instead sees her studies on women’s self portraiture in art history as “of no practical use at all”, but something she’s doing simply because she likes it.

“But I may not have much time”, she said. “The outlook of my condition is not good. If they say it’s coming back, I can probably get re-treated, but you’ve got to go all the way through [chemotherapy] only to get maybe three months with good health again.”

That hasn’t stopped her from thinking about moving to Sweden, where her son is now living with his wife. “It would be another little adventure”, Anna smiled.

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