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Live DJs and projected brainwaves light up Oxford’s first ‘biohacking party’

Mair Andrews
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Live DJs and projected brainwaves light up Oxford’s first ‘biohacking party’

Oxford Town Hall hosted the city’s first “biohacking party” last Friday. The event, organised by Oxford University’s Biohacking Society, aimed to “bring biohacking out of the lecture theatre” and encourage students to “engage with technologies and ideas around human performance and longevity”.

The party included wearable EEGs, usually used to detect epilepsy and brain injury, to show the impact of socialising and dance on brain activity. Wearers could see their brain waves hooked up onscreen above a live DJ booth. 

Another activity included a headset ‘game’ that used a headband to track “neurofeedback” and make a ball rise or fall depending on the user’s concentration. Some partygoers sampled “nootropic drinks” to help with concentration and brain power. There was also the opportunity to measure glucose and blood oxygen levels. Following recent ailments sustained at a sports social the evening before the event, Cherwell’s correspondent struggled with more demanding cognitive tests. 

Lulu Frisson, a second-year undergraduate at Lincoln College who spoke to Cherwell at the event, dubbed it “the best event I’ll ever go to at Oxford”. She added that she came away with a “genuinely greater interest in the world of biohacking and self-improvement”.

Biohacking Society formed in 2024 with the intention to bring together students and organisations to promote health, longevity, and human performance. This particular event was organised to “experiment with a very different format to combine science and technology with nightlife”.

“Given the growing interest in longevity, wearables, and self-optimisation among students”, the society’s founder, Marie Kruth, told Cherwell that she hopes to “build a community around biohacking”. 

The society, which has over 1,000 members, aims to promote “scientifically based information” in the face of “lots of false information” surrounding biohacking. Events focus on practical engagement with biohacking and improving mental well-being, including hypnotherapy. Sponsors include leading biotech businesses UndoAge, an age-reversing coffee producer, and Growing Life, a leading researcher into longevity.  

After completing her undergraduate degree in Biotechnology and Business, Kruth now studies digital engineering and focuses her research on regenerative medicine. Upon arriving in Oxford, she felt that the city “was a bit behind” in engaging with biohacking and exploring how we can “optimise ourselves”.

The society is interested in monitoring cognitive performance and improving “healthspan”, the amount of time we are healthy in our lives. Kruth was inspired by conversations with people who suffer from chronic diseases, wondering “what they could have done to avoid it or push it back”.

Previous events include talks led by Oxford professors specialising in psychedelic research, ethics philosophers, and a ‘biohacking on a budget’ series led by health consultants. 

Later this term, they are hosting a talk with American endurance runner Hillary Allen and a keynote speech on sleep by neuroscience specialist Professor Russell Foster. 

Kruth is interested in approaching health with a “prevention mindset”, particularly optimising sleep. Lifestyle changes, she explains, include using a glucose monitor to track responses to different foods and a red-light panel when ill to help with mitochondria production. Unfortunately for Cherwell’s representative, no red-light panel was on offer during the party. 

Listen to the latest episode of Cherwell Spoken to hear the full interview with Kruth. 

Additional reporting by Stanley Arlidge. 

Oxford University wins at local climate awards

Orla McMahon
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Oxford University wins at local climate awards

Oxford University Raff Lab and Wadham College were among the winners at this year’s Oxford Climate Awards. 

The event awards individuals, businesses, and institutions in the Oxford area for their environmental work. This year’s awards, which were given at Oxford Town Hall earlier this month, were hosted by Oxford City Council in partnership with The Oxford Times, Oxford Mail, and digital marketing company LocaliQ.

Individuals or groups can be nominated for climate in up to twelve categories, including the Innovation in Climate Action, Sustainable School of the Year, and Youth Climate Action Awards. Nominations were assessed by a panel of independent judges.  

Raff Lab, part of the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, won the Innovation in Climate Action Award and was also named Overall Winner for its efforts to incorporate sustainable practices into its work. 

Dr Saroj Saurya, winner of the Climate Action Champion Award and laboratory manager of the Raff Lab, told Cherwell: “We were absolutely delighted and genuinely surprised when the Raff Lab was announced as the Overall Winner of the Oxford Climate Awards. It is a wonderful recognition of years of hard work, persistence and collaboration.

“These awards are not just about one laboratory or individual. They reflect the growing culture of environmental sustainability across the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, made possible through the encouragement and support of our Head of Department, Professor Matthew Freeman, the dedication of Green Group volunteers, and the contributions of our technical and facilities teams and colleagues across the department.”

Saurya is chair of the Dunn School Green Group, which aims to promote environmental sustainability within the Dunn School and the wider community.

Saurya told Cherwell: “One of our priorities is to develop a circular-economy approach in which laboratory plastics that cannot be reused are collected, processed and potentially turned into new laboratory products, rather than being discarded as waste.”

Wadham won the Sustainable Further Education School of the Year award. 

Director of Sustainability Frances Lloyd told Cherwell: “There has been a significant effort across the college to ensure Wadham plays its part in developing and demonstrating solutions to reduce its climate impact while contributing actively to nature recovery. Recognition like this demonstrates our commitment and determination to make a difference and will hopefully inspire others.”

Oxford researchers find potential prostate cancer risk more than a decade before diagnosis

Jeremy Azzopardi
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Oxford researchers find potential prostate cancer risk more than a decade before diagnosis

Certain blood proteins are associated with future risk of developing prostate cancer, research led by Oxford University has found. Twelve proteins were tied to prostate cancer diagnoses more than 15 years after blood samples were collected.

The investigation is the largest population-based study to date of blood proteins and future prostate cancer risk, with an emphasis on aggressive diseases. The researchers assessed more than 6,000 blood proteins and examined traits linked to the later development of prostate cancer. Researchers tracked participants for around 16 years.

Dr Zhe Huang, the leading author of the study and a postdoctoral epidemiologist at Oxford Population Health, told Cherwell: “Our findings suggest that biological changes linked to prostate cancer may be detectable in the blood many years before diagnosis, and some proteins may play a causal role in its development. This could eventually open up new opportunities for earlier detection and prevention.” He added that these findings are at the research stage and do not yet change clinical practice.

Published in European Urology, the collaborative research was led by Oxford Population Health and part-funded by Cancer Research UK. Oxford researchers, including DPhil student Trishna Desai, contributed to the study design, data analysis, interpretation, and manuscript preparation.

Over 50,000 cases of prostate cancer are diagnosed each year, making the disease the most common form of cancer for men in the UK.  Dr Iain Foulkes, Executive Director of Research and Innovation at Cancer Research UK, told Cherwell: “Prostate cancer is one of the biggest cancer killers of men, yet we still don’t fully understand why some tumours grow slowly and may never cause harm, while others become aggressive and life-threatening. Understanding what drives these differences is crucial if we are to identify those most at risk and ultimately save more lives.”

Next steps include validating the findings in larger-scale investigations and analysing the underlying biological mechanisms through experimental study. Researchers at the University’s Prostate Cancer Aetiology and Prevention Programme (PCAP), funded by Cancer Research UK, will also explore whether these findings could lead to better ways of predicting or preventing prostate cancer. Foulkes told Cherwell: “While there is more work to do, discoveries like this could pave the way for better ways to identify men at risk and, ultimately, prevent aggressive prostate cancer before it develops.”

At least 12,000 men die from prostate cancer each year in the UK, with an estimated 1 in 8 men diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime. A 2023 report by Prostate Cancer UK highlights a substantial North-South divide in relation to prostate cancer diagnosis, with men in Scotland and England’s North far more likely to be diagnosed at too late a stage to be cured. 

Lack of awareness of the risks of prostate cancer are a key driver of mortality. A survey study published in 2024 shows that less than half of men are sufficiently informed of prostate cancer’s symptoms. Huang told Cherwell: “University health campaigns, public lectures and student-led events could all play a valuable role in raising awareness. Although prostate cancer mainly affects older men, it is important for younger people to understand the disease and its risk factors, particularly age, family history and genetic susceptibility.”

Reuben College becomes Oxford’s first postgraduate College of Sanctuary

Ilya Rosenbaum
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Reuben College becomes Oxford’s first postgraduate College of Sanctuary

Reuben has joined Mansfield and Somerville Colleges as Oxford’s third College of Sanctuary, the first postgraduate college to do so. More than ten Sanctuary Scholars have been supported by Reuben since 2021 through the University’s Refugee Academic Futures and Crisis Scholarship programmes. These scholarships cover living costs and tuition fees, with further funding raised by the college’s student community. 

The College of Sanctuary status recognises colleges for their ongoing commitment to welcomeness, safety, and inclusivity for those in unstable situations seeking education. Reuben is also the first college to be recognised by the Oxford University’s own Sanctuary status process.

Reuben’s commitment to being sanctuary-friendly began with its founding President, Professor Lord Tarassenko, who devised the University’s undergraduate scholarship scheme for Ukrainian refugees within weeks of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Lord Tarassenko himself is the grandson of a refugee from eastern Ukraine. He told Cherwell: “We are immensely proud to receive College of Sanctuary status. From Reuben’s foundation, we have sought to build a community in which people from all backgrounds feel that they can belong and flourish.”

Sanctuary scholar Viktoria Podvorchanska, who has completed an MSc in Translational Health Sciences, explained that the environment of “community and care” reminded her that “life was continuing”. Yangdon Tenzing, a sanctuary scholar who completed her MSc in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies last year, described the Graduate Common Room space as one of her favourite aspects of the College. Tenzing said her opportunity at Oxford has helped her navigate career uncertainty. 

Reuben has also formalised its support for Oxford Phoenix Rising Football Club, which provides free football sessions to refugees and asylum seekers in Oxford.  

The recognition of Reuben’s status comes at a time when refugee and international students’ places at Oxford have been put into question. Since the Home Office’s visa brake policy in March, which prevented nationals of Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar, and Sudan from obtaining student visas, at least 15 students with Oxford offers were unable to take up their place at the University. 

In response to the visa brake, Mansfield and Somerville issued a joint statement: “Conflating [students] with wider migration challenges is both unfair and misguided.”

The psyche behind a museum gift shop

Abigail Christie
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The psyche behind a museum gift shop

Like most soon-to-be finalists, I spent the majority of my summer vacation after second year researching and preparing for my dissertation. But in the face of blistering British heat, and seduced by the temptation to soak up the opportunity to do very little, extensive research proved, under no uncertain terms, to be mildly challenging. However, what eventually incentivised me to put pen to paper was the excitement of seeing the objects of my study in person, at the British Museum. But, once I had made the very long and arduous journey from my middle-of-nowhere hometown to London, it wasn’t necessarily the museum that I ended up being desperate to see before anything else. Quite shamefully, it was the gift shop.

Bathed in sunlight under the sweeping glass ceiling, the museum’s gift shop was almost an exhibition in itself: it was the epicentre of buzzing activity, sprawled across the vast expanse of the circular Great Court. At the British Museum, the gift shop was not simply a means of exit, snagging your attention as you dragged your tired feet. It was as carefully organised, and as thoughtfully curated as the museum’s galleries.

But there was something that tugged at my undulating admiration of the sea of souvenirs and replicas dotted across the shop. Maybe it was in the way an artefact as revolutionary and monumental as the Rosetta Stone was now available as a mass-produced box of bite-sized chocolates. Or perhaps it was the amusement at what appeared to be a Roman soldier, equipped with a shield and spear, but now reincarnated as a collectable rubber duck. But such gimmicks certainly aren’t unique to the British Museum. Up and down the country, and across the world, there will be something in a museum gift shop that is so bizarre, and so far removed from its historical context, that it will make you pause and raise an eyebrow.

The bemused scepticism towards what might be for sale in a museum gift shop isn’t, of course, a revelation. Each time I’ve found myself meandering through a gift shop, there is a quote that perches front row in my mind, one that guides my hand as I sift through the colourful displays, and squints disdainfully as I choose something to add to my ever-growing collection of miscellanea:

“Endless processions of people in graceless clothing file through these palaces, staring at the gold cups and the silver bowls, which are not even used any more. Then they go to a sort of market inside the palace and buy pictures of these things, or miniature versions of them that are not real silver and gold. That is why I say trash.”

Margaret Atwood, in The Penelopiad, puts these words in the mouth of Penelope, as she talks to the reader from the Underworld and reflects on the events of her life, as described in Homer’s Odyssey. In this particular quote, Penelope is perplexed by the farce of modern museums: we are the “people in graceless clothing”, museum gift shops are the “market inside the palace”, and the historically-inspired souvenirs and knickknacks for sale are the “trash”. The disdain towards this particular niche in the consumer market is palpable – to Penelope, we are philistines fumbling through the materiality of the past, and certainly not ‘connoisseurs’ of history.

Many people will doubtless share Penelope’s criticisms, because there absolutely is something ever-so-slightly absurd about a Roman-duck hybrid, and its relevance to wider cultural history is questionable. Should this be perceived as reducing the achievements and culture of entire civilisations to mere merchandise? By their very nature, museums are institutions that are dedicated to preserving the often priceless, and typically one-of-a-kind, archaeological remnants of the past. There is a certain irony to all of this: these priceless objects, which thousands will flock to admire and observe every year, are replicated, mass-produced, packed in storage containers, stocked on shelves, and slapped with a price tag rounded to the penny.

Yet as someone whose desk is littered with ceramic miniatures – the Colosseum, an assortment of Greek vases, the Parthenon, you name it – and has carried a Roman coin replica on a keychain for years, this disparity has always felt difficult to reconcile. But now, having visited many gift shops, it seems this very contradiction is also its greatest strength. For many, an interest in history is limited to the words of scholars on a page and an artefact sealed carefully behind glass panes. Replicas and souvenirs offer access to history in ways the original objects cannot. 

At Oxford, I am in the unique and privileged position to be able to handle ancient artefacts as frequently as I write essays about them. For most, opportunities to tangibly interact with history, whether by handling an ancient vase or tracing the outline of a mosaic, are few and far between. The physicality of history has been an enduring passion of mine, so although I appreciate that reproductions and replicas cannot replace originals, what’s inside a museum gift shop can sometimes offer something just as unique: history that can be carried home, where its provenance can become intimately intertwined with an identity and heritage of your own. 

It is perhaps for this reason that museum gift shops have remained so steadfastly popular. The innate human desire to connect with the past and make sense of what came before is inextinguishable. So whilst there still might be an element of ridiculousness to the shelves of mass-produced plush scarab beetles, if museums are there to make history accessible, perhaps the gift shops are merely an extension of such a purpose.

Oxford-led AI lab among recipients of Nvidia’s $250m UK AI Safety Pledge

Barnaby Carter
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Oxford-led AI lab among recipients of Nvidia’s $250m UK AI Safety Pledge

Computer chip maker Nvidia’s $250 million donation to UK AI security research will be partly distributed to Oxford AI labs over five years. 

The donation by the world’s first $5 trillion company is a compute donation, meaning no money will be transferred. Instead, UK laboratories, universities, and government projects will be able to use Nvidia’s computing power up to that value.

Part of the donation is expected to be allocated to the British Open-Ended Learning and Discovery Lab (BOLD), a laboratory hosted and led by the University of Oxford in partnership with University College London (UCL) and Imperial College London. 

BOLD’s founding director, Jakob Foerster, is an associate Professor in Engineering Science and a Fellow of St Anne’s College. He has emphasised that the UK cannot compete in AI by outspending big tech firms and urged focus on “new paradigms for learning, rather than only scaling existing methods.”

Nvidia has not confirmed which labs will receive various proportions of the donation.

According to a University announcement, BOLD plans to recruit 12 fellows and 18 PhD students across Oxford, UCL, and Imperial in its first phase. Nvidia’s donation will give students involved access to Nvidia’s compute for parts of their research. 

The announcement comes as concerns over the security of AI systems grow. In July, OpenAI announced that an AI model had gone beyond the isolated test environment and broken into the systems of another major AI startup. That same month, Anthropic also announced that its AI agents had broken into the systems of outside organisations during safety testing. 

It remains unclear whether Nvidia will control the direction of AI safety research or whether control over research will be fully devolved to labs and the government. 

The donation will also go to the Science of Fundamental AI Research Lab, led by UCL in collaboration with Cambridge, Oxford, and Edinburgh. While Nvidia did not discuss the role the UK AI Security Institute (AISI) will play with respect to the donation in their statement, the £4.1tn firm pledged more broadly to “support the wider UK AI safety and security research community”. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said: “The UK brings world-class scientific rigour to this essential engineering challenge.” 

The UK AI Security Institute were approached for comment.

The Vinted paradox: Consuming our way out of overconsumption

Agatha Crowther
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The Vinted paradox: Consuming our way out of overconsumption

There are few pleasures quite like finding a jumper that sells for £70 new listed for £14, “worn twice” by someone in Leeds. It is cheaper, potentially more individual, and crucially already exists. No new jumper is manufactured on my behalf. I can congratulate myself on my thrift, environmental consciousness, and extraordinary eye for a bargain all at once. The problem is that I rarely close the app there.

Vinted’s innovation may not simply be making fashion circular, but bringing the doomscroll to shopping. Opening the app resembles opening Instagram or Pinterest: an endless stream of images invites the same absent-minded scroll, becoming uncannily attuned to my taste with every search, click, and favourite. Here, however, my For You Page comes with a price tag and a buy button. The infinite feed has entered the wardrobe.

Yet within that apparent abundance is individual scarcity, as each listing offers a single garment, with another buyer potentially hovering over it. Every bargain comes with a countdown: deliberate too long, and someone in Bristol gets your next vintage, one-of-a-kind going-out top. Missing out triggers a push notification that a favourite has sold, followed by an obliging carousel of ‘similar items’ ready to inherit your attention. Scarcity creates urgency, and recommendations ensure the cycle continues. The garment is finite; your scroll, unfortunately, is not.

Vinted’s ecological proposition to circulate existing clothes rather than manufacture new ones is compelling. But circularity describes what happens to clothes, not necessarily what happens to our appetite for them. When I asked four Oxford students whether Vinted had reduced their purchasing, one admitted the opposite: lower prices meant freedom to buy more. Another described that spending on the app felt less like a “real purchase”. Asked whether second-hand status made unnecessary purchases easier to justify, the consensus was striking: “yes, definitely”, “all the time”, and, most revealingly, “it’s fine because it’s Vinted.” 

Behavioural economists have names for my amateur theorising. The ‘rebound effect’ describes how cheaper, more efficient consumption can encourage more of it; ‘moral licensing’, how virtuous behaviour makes indulgence easier to justify. Hence three unnecessary second-hand tops somehow feel more defensible than one bought new. 

Research suggests this is more than hypothetical. A 2025 Journal of Cleaner Production study identified a ‘circular rebound effect’ on Vinted itself, linking lower prices to increased demand, and time spent on the platform to impulse buying and overconsumption. A separate 2025 Scientific Reports study of 1,009 American consumers found a positive correlation between purchasing second-hand and new clothing. The enthusiastic thrifter need not be the antithesis of the fast-fashion shopper, for the same appetite finds another marketplace. 

This is not to collapse the distinction, for I welcome a fashion economy in which second-hand eclipses fast fashion. But Vinted is far removed from meandering through the rails of Mind or Cancer Research. It borrows social media’s algorithm of personalised feeds and frictionless transactions, applying it to consumption already furnished with an ethical halo. It makes our appetite for novelty less destructive without asking us to desire less.

Take the Vinted balance. Sell a dress for £20, spend £18 on another, and somehow I have not spent £18; I have practically conducted a swap. Richard Thaler’s paper on ‘Mental Accounting and Consumer Choice’ offers one explanation: consumers mentally code and budget money differently despite its objective fungibility. £18 remains £18, even when Vinted has helpfully quarantined it from my bank account; psychologically, however, the proceeds of selling clothes can feel remarkably like credit for buying more. Apparently pounds become Monopoly money once they acquire a Vinted balance.

There is an irony here. Co-founder Milda Mitkutė has traced Vinted’s beginnings to her “overflowing wardrobe”, revealing that: “I was surprised at the 100 pieces of clothing that I had worn only once or not at all.” Vinted converted those unused possessions into circulating value, yet its balance system complicates that solution, as sale proceeds remain poised to fund the next purchase unless manually withdrawn. Once an unwanted dress becomes £20 of in-app spending power, decluttering funds re-cluttering. 

The prospect of resale also changes our commitment to ownership. A questionable purchase can always be defended with promises that “I’ll sell it again”. My interviewees admitted that potential resale made buying easier to rationalise, while photographing, listing, packaging, and posting the item was quite another matter. Vinted can therefore lengthen a garment’s material lifespan while shortening our psychological commitment to it.

None of this should obscure what Vinted gets right. The Apparel Impact Institute reported in 2026 that fashion industry emissions rose 6.3% between 2023 and 2024, driven principally by growing fibre use, particularly petroleum-based polyester. Against rising material throughput, circulating existing garments is not cosmetic environmentalism. Vinted’s own 2026 Impact Report estimates that 76% of its 2025 orders displaced the purchase of a new item. Even with the caveat of company-commissioned research, this suggests that resale can meaningfully substitute for primary consumption.

But perhaps substitution is not the end of the question. If Vinted successfully changes where we satisfy consumer demand, what happens to the demand itself?

My interviews exposed this tension. Asked how many of their last five Vinted purchases they would have made without the platform, answers ranged from one to two. Though hardly representative, this raises a distinction between the environmental benefits of individual purchases and the consumption habits the platform encourages. Unlike the charity shop, constrained by opening hours, physical stock, and the effort of getting there, Vinted is always open, endlessly replenished, and rarely more than a thumb’s movement away. Clothes become not merely things we acquire, but content we consume; shopping doesn’t always start with wanting something, sometimes boredom is enough. 

Yet expecting Vinted to discourage that impulse is perhaps to misunderstand what Vinted is: a marketplace that, in 2025, generated roughly £930 million in revenue and £52 million in net profit. Its business is transactions, even if those transactions are materially preferable to fast fashion. The Vinted paradox is therefore structural rather than hypocritical: a more circular marketplace can prosper within, and perhaps intensify, a culture of perpetual wanting.

My criticism is therefore directed as much at consumers like me as it is at Vinted. When buying second-hand is demonstrably preferable to buying new, ‘better’ can quietly become ‘blameless’. I will continue using Vinted (you would have to pry my £14 cashmere jumper from my hands). But perhaps the most sustainable wardrobe is not simply one that is pre-owned; it is one where, occasionally, the scroll ends without a parcel on its way. 

Oxford’s art scene: A picture still being painted

Miriam Hussain
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Oxford’s art scene: A picture still being painted

Who gets to make art, who gets to see it, and whose art history gets told? Oxford’s artistic identity may seem firmly established: the Ashmolean’s collections, the portraits and sculptures tucked away in university colleges, and the dreaming spires that have made the city famous. This is only part of the picture, look closer and a more varied artistic landscape begins to emerge.

This Michaelmas, the city offers new ways of thinking about art and its place in the world. From Mike Nelson’s unsettling installation at Modern Art Oxford and Rhodes House’s exhibition exploring the meaning of home, to the Ashmolean’s exhibition on Aphrodite’s artistic legacy and display of work by contemporary Bangladeshi artist Soma Surovi Jannat, a city is revealed whose artistic heritage is as much about asking new questions as preserving old answers.

Mike Nelson: The past is never past

At Modern Art Oxford, the past acts as a starting point for new perspectives. Mike Nelson’s Double Negative (The Clown), on display from 3rd October 2026 to 11th April 2027, revisits an installation he created at the gallery 22 years ago. His dilapidated desert shack, once evocative of the turmoil of the Iraq War, returns more weathered and broken than before, its exposed foundations laying bare a disillusionment that continues to haunt the present. Visitors must navigate the fragmented structures and objects, from left-wing pamphlets and travel books to a projector flipping through self-portraits, piecing together their significance for themselves.

Constructed on-site from remnants of the original exhibition and newly created sculptures, the installation collapses together two moments in time into one unsettling environment. Nelson forces us to ask ourselves what has changed in the decades between – and what, more troublingly, has not.

Rhodes House: A home of one’s one

While Nelson asks how we reckon with the past and cope with the present, Show Me Why You Love Home at Rhodes House explores how memory and cultural traditions shape our sense of belonging. The exhibition brings together work by Rhodes Scholars and fellows from across the world. Lana Alabbasi’s mixed-media piece Carrying a Starry Home reimagines Van Gogh’s The Starry Night through Saudi memory and heritage, while Palestinian embroidery and Nadine Pinede’s poetic exploration of Haiti, diaspora, and remembrance illustrate how artistic expression allows us to preserve shared histories across generations and borders.

In a city that prides itself on international exchange and communication, these works reveal how Oxford’s artistic life is shaped by the people who come here and the stories and traditions they bring with them. Home, after all, is not a fixed place, but something we continue to build.

Aphrodite: Beauty through the ages

Just as home can mean different things to different people, so too can beauty take many forms. Yet, for thousands of years, artists have turned to Aphrodite as its enduring symbol. At the Ashmolean, Aphrodite: The Making of a Goddess (8th October 2026 – 11th April 2027) traces her evolution across more than 5,000 years through over 150 objects, spanning ancient Cyprus, the Greek and Roman worlds, Renaissance Europe, and contemporary culture.

As successive societies have reshaped Aphrodite in their own image, the goddess has come to embody shifting ideals of beauty, femininity, love and desire. Yet, beneath these changing interpretations lies a figure whose image remains remarkably recognisable across the millennia. With free admission for University of Oxford students, the exhibition brings ancient and contemporary art together into one space, encouraging us to reflect on how our ideals of beauty have evolved, and what has remained unchanged.

The Ashmolean: Beyond the colonial gaze

However, the Ashmolean’s engagement with art extends far beyond simply preserving historic works. In its Ashmolean NOW series, contemporary artists are invited to create new artwork in response to the museum’s collections. In Climate Culture Care, the fifth exhibition in the series, Bangladeshi artist Soma Surovi Jannat draws inspiration from the Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest, to explore the intersection between climate change and social inequality. On display until 1st November, her work, including a thirty-foot-long scroll and imagined landscapes, places art in conversation with urgent environmental concerns. As the first solo exhibition by a Bangladesh-based artist in a UK museum, it also broadens the range of voices represented within these institutions.

A different perspective emerges in Colonial Views of India, on display until 13th December. The exhibition presents photographs taken by nineteenth-century British colonial officer Eugene Clutterbuck Impey, documenting people, landscapes and religious sites across India. Taken during, and by a proponent of, British colonial rule, the images are far from neutral records and were often used to reinforce cultural distinctions that underpinned imperial power. Displaying them today raises questions not only about what they show, but whose perspectives they privilege, and how their colonial context informs our understanding of them.

While Jannat uses the museum’s historical objects as a starting point for imagining environmental futures, revising Impey’s photographs invites us to question how British colonial rule shaped the images of India that have survived. Neither exhibition requires us to abandon the past; rather, both ask us to look at it more critically.

Oxford’s art scene is not simply a compendium of what past generations have valued, but an ongoing conversation about what matters to us now. By stepping beyond our usual galleries and seeking out unfamiliar perspectives, we may discover just how many stories the city’s art still has to tell.

Behind glass: Lighthouse Productions’ ‘The Seagull’

Jas Mauj
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Behind glass: Lighthouse Productions’ ‘The Seagull’

I want to tell you how this play ends, but I think you should watch it yourself. The thematic potency and the overall success of Lighthouse Productions’ iteration of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull all came together in a great and terrible revelation.  I say this not to diminish the preceding three hours in favour of a single line, but to compliment how masterfully and intentionally they were crafted, for the final sentence to have the power it had. 

The Seagull is a simmering, slow play, written to subvert the theatrical conventions common in Chekhov’s time. It’s theatre laid bare, which is why the choice of a minimalist set works so well for this production. Beauty still flickers incandescently across the austere, almost empty, stage in the form of a talented dance crew choreographed by Anya Fuller, showing that the symbolist techniques derided within the story still have their uses. With their changing clothes, all evoking birds, they act as a sharp contrast to the monotonous blue costumes of the characters in the story. Clara Woodhead and Sophia Harris have both done well as costume designers for such an extensively large cast, and the symbolism in their clothing comes across clearly without being gaudy. Lucian Ng’s original score, which evokes the glacial minimalism of a Hildur Guðnadóttir film soundtrack, adds further depth to the interplay of sterile calm and quick bursts of movement we have already seen with the costumes and staging, the string quartet expertly evoking horror when it was needed. I did find that the score could be overbearing for my tastes at some times, though that was more an issue of volume, exacerbated by microphone issues on stage on the night I attended.

Much of what I have talked about with the play’s minimalism focuses on how it changes the experience of theatre through what it omits. But what makes this staging unique is what it does show, through a plexiglass box designed by Max Antoniou. 

Chekhov intended for the play’s principal actions to take place off-stage. Here, these key moments, including that ending, take place inside the glass box. This is an audacious move for a play that relies on subtlety for its subversive effect, and it would certainly have failed if not for the cast’s tactful performances. This is an audacious move for a play that relies on subtlety for its subversive effect. It would certainly have failed if not for the cast’s tactful performances. The cast handled the comic and tragic aspects of this polytonal play exceptionally well. I cannot commend all of them, as this ensemble is absolutely massive, but that none of the characters felt two-dimensional is a testament to both the play’s enduring greatness and the cast’s ability. Ezana Betru and Rufus Shutter, Chekhov veterans from Fennec Fox’s Uncle Vanya (Michaelmas 2025), continue to impress. Danya Griver makes a welcome debut on the Oxford stage as Nina: it takes an exceptionally talented actress to play a rather mediocre one. I have particular praise, though, for Rowan Brown as Irina, a self-absorbed matriarch who could have easily become a shrill caricature of an ageing, vain woman, but whom she plays with exceptional life and sympathy. Because of these sublime performances, this production adds a darkly ironic and almost voyeuristic dimension to Chekhov’s script, rather than reducing emotional complexity and subtlety. It changes the purpose of the story, from a revolution in theatre to an indictment of its audience. There is the excitement that comes with seeing, with being in on the secrets of these characters, followed by a sense of guilt: it almost implicates you for watching. Chekhov’s Trigorin looks at a dead seagull and sees only material for a short story, and the glass invites us to do something not too different with someone else’s suffering.

Lighthouse Productions’ The Seagull is not a play to be missed. In her Director’s Note, Alys Young writes that she hopes to leave us “feeling more sure of the power of theatre than ever before”. By this metric, she is surely successful. Staging a lengthy, character-driven and understated play like The Seagull — so poorly received in Chekhov’s own day that he almost resolved to never write again — for an audience with a beleaguered attention span is no easy task. This production indicts our world’s lurid appetite for other people’s tragedies from TMZ to LiveLeak. Three hours long and unhurried, it still kept me perched on the edge of my seat, complicit and captivated in equal measure. A conventional part of me, however, wishes the play retained some of Chekhov’s tendency to hide the action, in defiance of our demand to know and to see. It would’ve surely strengthened the great, explosive ending all this work built toward, that final line I cannot yet tell you about.

‘A symptom of our divided society’: Stuart Jeffries on Oxford, philosophy, and the present state of protest 

Leo Maudsley-Barton
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‘A symptom of our divided society’: Stuart Jeffries on Oxford, philosophy, and the present state of protest 

It’s safe to say that Stuart Jeffries has a complicated relationship with the University of Oxford. He is now a freelance arts journalist, writing regularly for The Guardian, Financial Times, Spectator, and Mail on Sunday. Earlier in his career, he also wrote as a jazz critic for the communist newspaper Morning Star, under the pseudonym Lew Lewis and penned his first book, The Oxford Handbook. Since then, he has written four more. He published his most recent, A Short History of Stupidity, last September. Before that, he was the first person in his family to attend university, matriculating at Exeter College.

As we settle down at a table just around the corner from his third-year accommodation, he tells me: “I really hated it. I came from Solihull Sixth Form. Oxford was really loud, really boorish… and it was very rugby-oriented, which was just not part of my culture.”

Jeffries recounts a specific evening when the team had been on a club dinner. He says: “They were scrumming down, in the quad, and just being absolute a***holes.” He then describes his retaliation. He and the drummer in his short-lived band “got a fire extinguisher and… sprayed it on [the rugby team]… which, of course, is just like a red rag to a bull. They all came tanking up the staircase and… there was a bit of a fight.” He stops for a moment, then adds somewhat more bashfully: “In retrospect, we were the people who started the trouble.”

For him, another stark difference between his state comprehensive and university was the quality of teaching: “The teaching I had at sixth form was really, really good, consistently… all the teachers were really passionate. And I didn’t really feel that with many of the teachers I had at Oxford.” Again he stops and counters himself. He considers his consistent love of philosophy: “I had a couple of philosophy tutors who I really loved, and clearly left a mark on me, because I’m still really interested.”

It sets the tone for the conversation. For Jeffries, Oxford “was f***ing hard”. His strong Birmingham accent set him apart, with tutors regularly ‘correcting’ his pronunciation and taking aim at his flattened vowels. He felt out of place with the “ethos” of the college, especially in 1981, when Exeter had gone co-ed only two years earlier. He says that a postgraduate student that he spoke to when he last returned, in 2007, described his time as “specifically… quite a bad era”. But then he soon continues: “Part of the problem was mine. I wish I had been more mature.”

He seems caught between the haunting memories of that “bad era”, which he “suspects” he “probably repressed a lot”, and the opportunities the University offered him. He mentions the weight of his place at Oxford more than once, and it is something he also wrote in his first book, The Oxford Handbook: “There was no question I could drop out… I think I was quite depressed and was probably struggling a bit mentally, but I didn’t feel that I could yield to any of that.” He is smiling as he considers his past: “I can’t remember myself that clearly when I was young… why didn’t I have a breakdown?”

Then he tells me: “You shouldn’t whine too much.” His tone, as it has been throughout, is light and joking. And he admits that Oxford is “absolutely worth it”. He adds: “For that name alone, the name of the University.” After all, it is also at Oxford where he found his love for philosophy. This love manifests clearly in his literary work, and it is obvious as we discuss his most recent book, A Short History of Stupidity. Beginning with the Ancient Greeks and taking us all the way to the artificial intelligence of our modern day, Jeffries looks at humanity’s moments of ‘stupidity’.

He talks to me specifically about intelligence and IQ tests: “They were first introduced in France, in 1905.” This, he says, was in an attempt to help students that the government thought were being left behind: “The psychologists’ idea was that if you introduced some sort of battery of tests… you would be able to help the kids who are struggling… but it very, very quickly became what the eugenics movement made of it… You get a number, and it hangs around your neck like an albatross…The eugenics movement perverted a really hopeful idea of what education could be, and instead became an absolutely racist means of trying to change society.”

“Oxford was absolutely part of it… it’s shocking to me that Rhodes is still up,” he continues,  referring to the controversial statue of Cecil Rhodes in Oriel College. This sparks another memory: “I remember when I was at Oxford there was a massive fuss about putting up the Thatcher statue in Somerville.” Jeffries picketed against it. He also protested against his college’s association with Rio Tinto Zinc, for their involvement in apartheid in South Africa. Although he was demonstrating against the University, he says: “You didn’t feel as though you were necessarily pushing against a closed door… you could do something.”

He is not sure students today have the same opportunity. With rising university fees and the omnipresence of social media, there are “consequences” and “risks” he never really thought about. He thinks about recent headlines, and says that “the panopticon of social media has a chilling effect on… protest”. For him, “being a student was three years in which you were kind of expected to be a pain in the a***… for the powers that be”. Once more, reflecting on his time at Oxford, he adds: “Not that I did all that much.”

Jeffries admits that he thinks his perspective has been “skewed” by the experience of his daughter, who took up a degree in history at Oxford last year. His delight is palpable: “I was just desperately proud… I’m so proud that she went to Oxford.” He also notes the very important impact that access programmes such as Opportunity Oxford (OppOx) have made: “OppOx is extraordinary. I think it is really, really amazing… I could have done with it. It would have really helped me… just getting used to this weird environment.” An environment he felt was made to “wrongfoot” him, in the 1980s.

For the first time, he was very aware of his place in the English class system. He was different from his public school peers, who thought of him as one of “these state school oiks”. He tells me: “I was being completely transported into a world that was… like an old class structure, which was actually the reality of what our country is. This is where the power is.”

As much as Oxford and his perspective might have changed since he was last studying at Exeter, he tells me he thinks the university “is a symptom of our divided society”. According to him, public schools and their “business model” of education must be abolished: “Until that happens, this country is going to be, I think, a very divided and… unfair one.” It is a sober note to end on, and speaks to the difficulty of a university he experienced in 1981, that he otherwise covers with a joke that it is hard not to laugh at.

Stuart Jeffries is not a man who takes himself too seriously, and as he tells me about his time at Oxford, it is easy to smile with him as he manages to make a comedy out of an experience I certainly do not envy. But it is also clear that the University made a profound impact on the arts journalist, and he will always be followed by those three years at Exeter.

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