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What are you looking at? A reflection on the Ashmolean’s Aphrodite exhibition 

Abigail Riley
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What are you looking at? A reflection on the Ashmolean’s Aphrodite exhibition 

The woman crouches, nude. A gauzy blue curtain hangs where she hides her chest; behind it I can just see the other artefacts. She isn’t looking at me. Over one white shoulder, she stares into the distance. This is Aphrodite, or perhaps the later Venus – not Mesopotamian Inanna, or Assyrian Ishtar. I know she couldn’t be the Cypriot Aphrodite either.

The plaque calls her Crouching Aphrodite; she’s the first of many images in this room that depict the goddess bathing. Some Romans sculpted her in the second century, but she is really only a copy; there was a Greek original. In many ways, the image of her is a succinct summary of the Ashmolean’s exhibition. The voyeuristic pose, the elaborate up-do, her naked back; these are the marks of beauty and desire. She implies sex, perhaps looks towards love. When I sit down later to write about her, however, I realise I didn’t truly notice much at all about her date, her body or her history. All I know is that she looked right past me.

The first room of the exhibition, Aphrodite: The Making of a Goddess at the Ashmolean, is painted a dark blue. Statues and friezes glow, though they were originally brightly-coloured, and the vases shine above their small lights. We have begun in media res, if you like to think of the goddess’ journey through time as one long story – which I, and presumably the curators, would. The next room takes us from the second century to around 3000 BC. We are now with Ishtar, Inanna, the goddess of love, as she began in the Middle East and, later, as she was in Cyprus; the goddess when she wasn’t a goddess of love at all. 

It makes sense to begin there, though, with the classical: we know her image the best. When I walk into the second room, I see that familiarity cast against the strange. Small fertility statues line the left wall. Etched into their features are some of the same rough lines I made in clay at school, using wooden pottery tools. A huge pink circle illuminates the space from the opposite end; everything is bright and quite literally rose-tinted. The sense of time is enormous, only matched by the weight of the goddess’ gaze; here, she looks right at me. 

Where the classical goddess looked away, her Middle Eastern ancestor was almost always facing straight ahead. Of course, there are logical explanations. Classical sculptors had very consistent ideas about which poses best displayed the body, and thus statues rarely looked straight ahead. Similarly, the function of these older statues fits a straight, forward-facing structure far better. Many were made for small shrines, for personal luck. 

But I do not believe that the sole purpose of an exhibition like this should be education. There is something valuable in how we respond to it, which parts stand out and why. I know it is probably a coincidence that the more powerful the goddess is in her culture, the more ancient and remote from my own imagination, the more direct her eyes are. It still feels a little like we have lost something there, and I cannot quite put my finger on it.

The final room reinforces my vague sense of loss. A replica of the Venus de Medici stands there, nude and shy as Crouching Aphrodite. On the opposite wall hang drawings that detail her precise measurements. They believed, in the Renaissance, that the Venus de Medici portrayed the perfect feminine form. The drawings thus measure out every limb, every joint. Little numbers and dotted lines scatter her body; drawn from the front, drawn from the side. I know that these were made, at least ostensibly, for artistic education. And yet, I can only imagine that these men were getting ready to cut the goddess open and sell her body for parts, like a pig or a side of beef. And, if she can be cut open like this, as though Venus de Medici lay on the table of the butcher’s shop and not on a pedestal in The Uffizi, then Aphrodite must no longer be a goddess. Now, she is only another woman. 

Hanging next door is A Girl Drawing by Peter der Werff, small and perhaps even unassuming. Of everything I have seen, though, I feel the closest to that little girl. She sits at a table, drawing the Venus de Medici. Between her and the statue, a boy holds the bust of another woman and tries to distract her. The girl’s gaze is unchanged and her mouth a little slack. I can’t see what’s on her page, but something tells me she isn’t trying to measure the goddess’ breast size. As always, Venus does not look back. Like the Crouching Aphrodite, the goddess looks over her shoulder and into the background. In this little painting, I feel maybe we have found something of what we lost from the statues of Inanna and Ishtar. Aphrodite might not be looking back at us just yet, but we at least are trying to catch her eye.

The early bird gets the worm

Alice Sanders
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The early bird gets the worm

At least, that is the age-old adage. It is what many Oxford students, often cast as the ‘ambitious type’, will have heard time and time again. Whether it be early entry undergraduate applications or job interviews, we as a society are obsessed with being first at everything, and those who are first are, inevitably – so we are told – successful. However, while this may just be symptomatic of the world we live in, there is one race that I will never compete for first place in: that of waking up first.

Let me just clarify: I am, resoundingly, not a morning person. The precise moment at which my alarm clock begins to beep and my phone begins to buzz is, without fail, the worst of my day. Add a grey sky, cold room, and soft duvet to the mix, and I think few would dare suggest I am overexaggerating.

Then comes the slog: snooze, snooze, snooze, but eventually it has to be time to get out of bed and, in the murkiness of the delightful British autumn, start my day. It is a process certainly not unfamiliar to any student, but one made all the more pertinent today, when the proverbial ‘early bird’ has become an even greater icon of success than it has been before. More than ever, too, we have become obsessed with maximising our productivity in every aspect of our lives, streamlining our time to push our busyness to its capacity.

This busyness is certainly no stranger to an Oxford student, for whom ‘doing everything’ is not so much a choice as it is a doctrine. Inscribed in early sporting commitments, the morning essay deadline and 9am lecture are, inevitably, alarms variously beginning with a seven, six, or even five. This is often supplemented with copious amounts of coffee and usually makes for a begrudging start to the day.

For some, however, this is the ideal lifestyle: an early night, an early start, and an undeniable sense of achievement obtained before the sun has even peeled back its sheets, and ditched the pyjamas. It is a way of life sustained by the modern cult of productivity, in which the very act of doing is an invaluable social currency that feels impossible to escape. In our desperation for constant advancement, we capitalise on the doing of everything. We are told that two cooked breakfasts, a workout, meditation, a walk, coffee, and the completion of all our work is possible before the (I would argue still early) hour of 10am, and, honestly, I am sceptical.

Some call the discipline necessary to engage in this morning routine ‘self-improvement’, but it can hardly fail to be self-destructive in the immensity of its expectation. I don’t know about you, but I will not be making any seismic decisions before breakfast. In fact, it is unlikely I will have even decided what I’ll be wearing. Perhaps this is narrow-minded, for there is an undeniable (if egotistical) reward in being able to reel off the imposing list of tasks you completed all while your friends and family slept, letting the early bird start hunting.

However, I cannot help but doubt this 5am alarm and the gloating that accompanies it. Under constant pressure that this is the right, the healthy, the committed, and the successful way of life, it is impossible for guilt not to shadow those who hesitate to admit that no, they have not ‘done’ anything yet, even though it is 11am. There is a certain shame in accepting you haven’t ‘achieved’ anything yet with your day, and one that is only exacerbated by the cacophony of blaring opinions on social media and ‘productivity guidelines’, in which we are baited with success, and teased with the ever superior successes of others.

Perhaps this comes only as some form of self-vindication for the many days that I, red-faced, have admitted to having wasted my morning, those precious hours in which time is endless and potential is limitless. And yet, I do not seem to be alone in this feeling, and we are not scientifically unjustified in it, either. It is an uncontested fact that circadian rhythm changes with age, and is set to a later schedule in the years of twenties and teenagedom, meaning it is only natural to sleep later, and to wake later in accordance. Studies have proven not only this, but also that students’ performance in cognitive activities (such as taking exams) is better at 1.30pm, than either 9am or 4.30pm.

Bolstered by such evidence, this unmatched productivity and glamour of the early morning is marred: while the choice of some, this obsession with the early hours is unfounded as a miracle solution to the perfect life, and its propaganda is not enough to tempt me. After all, while so often confounded by our academic environment, there is much more to our day than the achievements perceived as ‘productive’ in the traditional sense. Although a midnight essay crisis is a situation where I know I’m not alone, the evening often lies in wait with open arms for so much more. Social events, in particular, are usually hosted in the evening, stretching into the hours of the night. Evenings are not exempt, either, from those pursuits typically associated with the morning. It is only at the cost of these evening hours that the early bird can rise.

I imagine that I will always be a night owl, taking advantage of the dying light for everything that can be achieved before dawn, and more. While this avian foil is the most well-known image, the appended ending of the early bird proverb is an even greater favourite of mine: “The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.” Perhaps some of us will never be first to the mark, chased by the growing light, but we should all take our rewards when they come, without rising to an impossible standard of what is productive or admirable, for there is no shame in choosing to bide our time, and rising, if just a little later. 

Shedding selves, one term at a time

Eva Zielke
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Shedding selves, one term at a time

A week after returning from visiting my friend studying in Reims, a charming city in the Champagne region of France, I sent her a text: “I miss your friends.” I had known them for three days, an embarrassingly short time to claim such an attachment. And yet, there I was, staring at a reading list with an inexplicable nostalgia for people I barely knew. I missed a flat I’d visited a handful of times and the Thursday tradition at Saint Maurice bar I’d borrowed for one evening. Stranger still, I missed a person: a slightly louder, more spontaneous, French-phrase-attempting version of myself who stayed behind in France, and neglected to board the Eurostar home.

My friend was amused by my sentimentality for a city she had lately associated with mid-term preparation. Seeing Reims through my eyes, she told me, had reminded her to appreciate it. For three days, I inhabited the most romanticised version of her ordinary life. No deadlines, laundry, or the type of mundane grievances that inevitably accumulate, even in the loveliest of places. But I realised that, just as my visit had briefly changed her relationship with the city, it had changed mine with myself. I missed being me there as much as I missed being there.

I think William James would have understood my text. In Principles of Psychology, he argued that a person has “as many social selves as there are individuals who recognise him”. This, he suggested, is just how selfhood works: we step into a different version of ourselves with each group that knows us, each a partial expression of who we are. Susan M. Andersen and Serena Chen’s concept of the ‘relational self’ suggests we carry mental models of the people close to us that shift how we behave when they’re around. This isn’t necessarily dishonesty or performance. Some people make you funnier, others more thoughtful, others capable of talking to strangers in broken French. It might take leaving their company to notice how much of ourselves they brought out, for better or for worse.

University, it turns out, is an extraordinarily efficient machine for manufacturing these selves, and Oxford seems particularly fertile ground for it. There is the college self, who you become when you queue for the dining hall, do your laundry, and collect parcels from the porter’s lodge. There is the tutorial self, who says things like “encapsulates” with an ease that is rarely demonstrated outside oak-pannelled rooms lined with books. There is the rowing self, the library self, the Spoons self, and, in due course, the home self. 

Each belongs to a slightly different world, sustained by the company in which it exists. People often talk about Oxford’s sense of identity as a single, unified, aesthetic experience: bookish students moving through spires and candlelit libraries. In reality, however, the selves we occupy come from the many intense, smaller components of our lives. We belong to so many different places and people that leaving any one of them behind can feel like leaving something of ourselves behind too.

I find this most apparent in Michaelmas. I’m sure I’m not alone in wanting it to promise a fresh beginning: a better work ethic, a more packed social calendar, a newfound commitment to attending lectures, and maybe, just maybe, a sustainable sleep schedule. Social media only adds to the feeling. As I scroll, the instructions to begin a ‘winter arc’ seep into my subconscious. Reinvention in October is a trend as old as TikTok, and it feels almost compulsory. New wardrobes, timetables, and fresh seasonal coffee options offer us every opportunity, and every pressure, to become a slightly improved version of ourselves.

This year, the transition felt even more abrupt. I had only just returned from France when noughth week demanded an entirely different version of me. Suddenly, I was no longer babbling rusty GCSE French over drinks, but a second-year student, expected to have acquired some wisdom, academic discipline, and general competence over summer. I was caught between affection for the self I’d left behind, and anticipation of the one I might become.

Yet, what might offer some comfort is how quickly this new self begins to feel ordinary. By fifth week, some novelty has worn off, and your routines may have settled. You know when Michaelmas-you wakes up, where they like to study, and which newly familiar faces they’ll encounter on the way there. We develop our own small geography each term, and soon enough it’ll become second nature for a short time.

This can make Michaelmas bittersweet. Autumn is conventionally associated with endings, retreating indoors, hibernating. Yet at university, it is the season in which so much begins. New friendships form under trees already shedding their golden leaves, and new routes back from the library will become familiar as the daylight disappears and tries to draw you home. We spend October becoming people that we get to know only in November, before December arrives to take them away. 

Because then it all reverses. Eight weeks on, even more weeks off, and the communities we’ve assembled scatter across the country and the world. 

So, somewhere between college Christmas dinner and packing a suitcase in a freezing room, the person you’ve spent Michaelmas becoming begins to slip into the past. Perhaps it’s only in January, scrolling through your carefully curated end-of-term Instagram dump, that you realise how attached you’d become to October-to-December-you.

We have plenty of language for missing people and places, but less for missing the person we were in their company. 

The odd thing is that, come Hilary, I’ll probably return to many of the same people and places, and become a slightly different person all over again. For all my attempts to make a fresh start, I was equally determined to mourn my last self. Maybe that’s the real Michaelmas tradition: spending eight weeks reinventing ourselves, then the vacation looking back at who we became.

 Four colleges invest in revitalising local businesses

Jeremy Azzopardi and Miriam Ilderton
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 Four colleges invest in revitalising local businesses

All Souls, Brasenose, Lincoln, and Oriel are working together to revitalise Oxford’s historic Market Quarter, with a particular focus on encouraging independent businesses. 

The quarter makes up much of the city’s centre, including Turl Street, High Street, and King Edward Street. All four colleges own properties in the area, many of which are occupied by small businesses. Alongside restoring and redeveloping specific properties, the project is also designed to promote greater collaboration between businesses and the colleges. The colleges have launched a website to boost footfall, and also plan to hold events in the future. Lincoln is already paying for extra cleaning on Turl Street and working on improving lighting. 

Many of the colleges have historic connections to businesses in the area. Lincoln, for example, has owned the Mitre Inn, now occupied by Gusto Italian, since 1475. Today, more than 40 cafés, shops, and restaurants sit on property owned by the four colleges. The colleges hope that their long-term approach to managing their properties will help give independent retailers the confidence to settle in the area. 

In a joint statement to Cherwell, the colleges said that they plan to work with existing businesses to “build on what makes this part of Oxford distinctive”. They hope the investment will improve the experience of students, residents, and tourists who use the streets by encouraging “a strong mix of independent and specialist retailers, alongside interesting places to eat and drink”. The colleges have decided to work together on this project so they can “develop a particular feel to the area” and provide “a distinctive and attractive shopping and leisure experience”, compared with destinations like Westgate, which focuses on national brands. 

Shepherd and Woodward on Turl Street agreed, telling Cherwell: “Whilst we recognise that there is a demand for T-shirts and memorabilia, Oxford would be a less attractive area if every shop sold tourist goods or Harry Potter goods.”

Students also stand to benefit from the income generated by this investment. The rent businesses pay helps subsidise student accommodation – often in the flats above – as well as tuition and financial support, which at Lincoln amounts to £1.8 million annually.  

Cherwell spoke to several local businesses, many of whom expressed gratitude for the support offered by the colleges. This includes Vaults and Garden, a cafe now located on King Edward Street, which faced a prolonged legal battle over their previous location in Radcliffe Square. The cafe owner, William Pouget, told Cherwell that Oriel’s support has “really mattered” when the businesses faced “unprecedented difficulties”. “In my experience,” he added, “Oxford colleges are understanding, compassionate and responsible landlords who take their ethical obligations seriously”.

Missing Bean, a cafe on Turl Street, also emphasised the “good relationship” they have with Lincoln. Ori Halup, Co-Founder and Director of Missing Bean, told Cherwell: “The colleges can play a big part through their investment and the businesses they bring into their properties.” The business hopes the college’s investment will lead to expanded outdoor seating and a curation of “a thoughtful mix” of shops, restaurants, and cafés. 

For some local businesses, this town-and-gown partnership is relatively recent. All Souls only purchased its High Street properties in 2020. The College plans to restore the historic shopfronts and create space above for seminar rooms and offices. A spokesperson for All Souls told Cherwell: “We believe that the project will be very much to the benefit of the Market and city centre generally, as well as to the academic mission of the College.” 

According to plans displayed on their website, the project is also designed to help preserve the “historic features of the buildings… wherever possible, including early stonework, roof timbers and historic ceilings.”

The midterms and the YA novel: Impossibly happy endings

Ruya Oral
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The midterms and the YA novel: Impossibly happy endings

Given its intense media coverage and everything that seems to be on the line, I feel as though I have been anxiously awaiting the results of the 2026 US midterm elections for weeks, months – maybe years. Having lived in Central America in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential elections, I had become utterly disillusioned with the idea that shared identity could ever guarantee political solidarity. I had watched people around me sport MAGA hats and post AI-enhanced pictures of Donald Trump as Jesus on their Instagram stories; people with skin like mine, who spoke English with an accent (or not at all), people who joined me in holding up the passport queue at the Houston border. It made my stomach turn to think that the win had been secured with the help of people I considered my kin and, no matter what they had been led to believe, people I knew Washington would quickly alienate if they were to ever step out of line. The horrific acceleration of ICE activities across the country, but particularly around the Mexican border, had been a predictable, but nonetheless more upsetting development under the current administration. So, despite Zohran Mamdani’s landmark win in New York (which I saw announced in an A&E waiting room in Oxford at 2am, heart beating out of my chest unrelated to any medical issues), I did not have high hopes coming into the midterms. 

My political pessimism, however, has not extended to my taste in literature. I don’t know how many of my coursemates would admit this, but my decision to study English was partly propelled by my love of young adult (YA) literature. If I ever find the time in between reading lists, I am most likely to be found with my nose buried in some trashy Harry Potter fanfiction with the names changed for copyright purposes. I enjoy unadulterated fluff. I yearn for inconceivable happy endings. I don’t want realism in my YA – I want happiness against all odds, and refractory periods that bend the rules of biology. As such, Casey McQuiston’s 2019 novel Red, White & Royal Blue, with its queer romance and almost aggressively optimistic vision of American politics, has been my comfort read for many years. 

For the uninitiated, Red, White, & Royal Blue tells the story of Alex Claremont-Diaz, son of the US president, and Prince Henry George Edward James Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor (average Oxonian number of middle names), fourth in line to the British throne. Despite long-standing animosity, after an incident that could threaten the president’s re-election campaign, Alex and Henry are forced into a PR friendship that soon unravels into something more. The enemies-to-lovers façade is shattered, as the two come to realise they have loved each other all along. The fictitious stakes for their relationship are very high – Alex doesn’t want to put his mother’s career at risk, and Henry fears being estranged from his family. However, the story is sold on its lack of realism: though it’s impossible not to invest in Alex and Henry’s relationship, just a quick scan of the list of characters tells you that something like this could never happen, so it’s easy to infer that everything will work out in the end. Alex is half-Latino, and his mother Ellen is the first female president in US history. She is a divorced, middle-aged woman, and the Democratic candidate from Texas. She has one trans and one pansexual Secret Service agent on her security detail. One of her closest allies is Rafael Luna, an openly gay, Latino senator from Colorado. Henry’s older sister is a recovering cocaine addict. McQuiston imagines a true woke-gone-wild, blue-hair-and-pronouns takeover. In the book’s final chapter, Ellen wins her re-election. Her home state, Texas, is the last to be called: “Texas is grey for five more seconds, before flooding beautiful, beautiful, unmistakable, Lake LBJ blue.” It is utter nonsense, and the only conceivable end to a narrative filled with things going right at the last second for the most unexpected people. 

The Venn diagram for literary scholars and queer activists overlaps when it comes to tangible prejudice against gay pop-lit. It’s not entirely uncalled for; there is a concern that people write about a community they aren’t part of in ways that don’t adequately depict queer lived experiences or aren’t conducive to relatability for those peering in from outside the bubble. The medium seems too flat to convey the varied lives of people within the community without making caricatures out of them. I sympathise – it is difficult not to perceive stories like Red, White, & Royal Blue as indulgent and mocking, particularly at a time when it feels like stereotypes are being used to demonise and legislate against us. But I also think there is value in shameless positivity and, much like mainstream music, I charge the elites to approach the corny YA novel poptimistically. To turn a blind eye to the suffering we have long endured would be a disservice to the progress we have made in being unashamed of who we are and of the people we love, but part of that progress is also learning to be comfortable in the idea that we can be happy, in the same cheesy, tooth-rotting way as anyone else. We are not doing ourselves any favours by self-flagellating, and just as we shouldn’t be expected to justify our identities to anyone else, we also shouldn’t have to justify any fantastical romances we revel in to ourselves.

The Democratic platform for the midterms was built almost entirely in reaction to the decreasing quality of life under the Republican administration. Candidates emphasised the cost of living and claimed unaffordability to be a direct result of corruption in the White House. For once, it was almost impossible to claim what the right always does, which is that liberal candidates sideline economic issues in favour of trivial social problems that affect only a small minority of people. Still, the character list for Democratic wins in the midterms rivals the diversity of Red, White, & Royal Blue. Chris Pappas became the first openly gay man elected to the US Senate in New Hampshire; Abdul El-Sayed is the first Muslim man to win a seat in the US Senate in Michigan; Keisha Lance Bottoms, in Georgia, is the first Black woman governor of any US state. Hakeem Jeffries remains the frontrunner for Speaker of the House of Representatives, a position that is second in the presidential line of succession. And of course, as the prophecy of Red, White, & Royal Blue foretold, James Talarico won the Senate seat in Texas, flipping the state blue for the first time since 1988. We now live in a world where deep-South, Bible-belt Texas is being led by a man who five years ago claimed that God is nonbinary. “The Lometa Longshot and a long-awaited blue Texas.” Who would’ve thunk it.

So, despite her cartoonish faith that the good guys will always win, McQuiston has won this particular battle in the culture war. The ideological optimism that Red, White & Royal Blue upholds has been reaffirmed by real changes in the American political climate, and though there is still a long way to go and now is certainly not the time to relax our hold, I think that we have at least reminded ourselves that hope and solidarity go a long way. I’m embarrassed to say that I had forgotten. And if the next time you see me I’m reading a book with a bright pink cover, maybe you’ll hold off the ridicule for a couple of seconds longer.

Oxford Chancellor delivers lecture on  Britain’s relationship with Europe

Jeremy Azzopardi
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Oxford Chancellor delivers lecture on  Britain’s relationship with Europe

Chancellor of the University of Oxford, Lord William Hague, delivered the 2026 Europaeum Annual Lecture at the Sheldonian Theatre on 4th November. Hague called for closer UK-EU ties as a matter of urgency, including strengthening cooperation on technology, defense, and climate change, whilst upholding democracy and doubling down on multilateralism. 

Hague’s wide-ranging speech is the second ever Europaeum Lecture. The series brings together high-profile speakers from top European universities to discuss Europe’s challenges. Describing the current era as “the most dangerous period since 1945”, Hague outlined his vision for Europe to escape decline by rebuilding through renewal and resilience. In response to Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s call for the UK to eventually rejoin the EU, Hague expressed scepticism about the move’s feasibility, but declared that “our fate is as entangled with the fate of the continent as it has ever been”.

On technology and the rise of artificial intelligence, Hague warned that Europe risks becoming either a “digital colony of the US or a tech dependency of Beijing”. He urged the continent to “take back control”, including by ensuring the “free cross-border flow” of global talent. The Chancellor portrayed universities as “engines of ideas” crucial to spurring innovation. Oxford ranks as Europe’s leading university for spinout value creation, accounting for 20% of all investment into spin-outs across Europe.

Noting Britain’s record summer temperatures, the Chancellor called for new measures to adapt to the effects of climate change and greater investment into “novel technologies”. These included  carbon capture, geoengineering, and genetic engineering. Citing Greece’s recent launch of a satellite system for wildfire prevention, Hague urged the UK and EU to work together on a similar scaled-up Europe-wide solution. He also encouraged both sides to unify carbon markets and simplify trading of electricity.

Cherwell asked the Chancellor about possible reductions in tuition fees for EU students at UK universities, currently under consideration as part of UK-EU negotiations. In his reply, Hague told Cherwell: “We’d love to see it easier for EU students to come to our universities, but it does require governments to reach agreement.” He expressed support for a youth mobility scheme enabling young British and EU citizens to live and work in each other’s countries. However, Hague also referred to negotiating conflicts over equalising tuition fees for EU nationals with British citizens to pour cold water over a deeper UK rapprochement with the EU.

In exchange for a youth mobility scheme, the Chancellor encouraged the EU to involve Britain in its “Made in Europe” industrial policy. He also endorsed closer defense cooperation through the EU’s €150 billion Security Action for Europe (SAFE) loan scheme, as well as joint UK-EU leadership on international governance of new technologies, including creating guardrails against artificial intelligence.

Founded in 1992 by former Oxford Chancellor and the only-ever British President of the European Commission, Roy Jenkins, Europaeum offers postgraduate programmes to students across 17 European universities. The network describes itself as “an alliance of pre-eminent universities” focused on interdisciplinary learning to tackle Europe’s major issues. The University of St Andrews is the only other UK member of the organisation, which continues to be headquartered at St Antony’s College, Oxford.

Sport Spotlight: Robin Munday

Freddie Lewis-Hedley
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Sport Spotlight: Robin Munday

When I sit down to interview second-year Ancient and Modern History student Robin Munday, he happens to be wearing his Swiss Glacier Pistol Club fleece. The Oxford University Pistol Club (OUPC) captain is right to sport his discipline with pride. In his first year at the club, the team beat Cambridge twice: in an official varsity match in Hilary, and an unofficial competition in Switzerland during the long vacation. A few further victories against other university teams in the summer also contributed to OUPC’s “moderate success” last year, he tells me. 

This year does not look set to disappoint either. Competition has not started yet, but since an appearance at Freshers’ Fair, the club’s weekly training sessions at Iffley Road Sports Centre are fully booked, and its group chat has over 200 members. “There are some very talented freshers,” Munday tells me. “By and large most have never touched a gun before, but some of them have and are very promising shots.” Munday mentions how some of the new members are getting to grips with trickier techniques, like aiming at targets that collapse when the bullet hits. 

The incoming pistol shooters could not be in safer hands. “I’d always grown up around shooting,” Munday says. “The first time I was on a shooting range I was a few weeks old, and I started shooting aged five, with an air pistol I got for Christmas. When I was six, I was on centre-fire, more powerful revolvers.” Munday started competitive shooting at the 2015 Swiss Federal Shooting Festival aged ten, the youngest of around 35,000 competitors. He went on to win the under-21 division of the Swiss Feldstich contest in 2024, and a year later placed third. 

His affiliation with OUPC, though, started well before its recent successes. Munday’s parents met at OUPC as undergraduates. His father served as “one of the early captains” after the club broke off from the Rifle Club in 1976, and his mother became captain a few “generations” later. He still owns and occasionally wears a size XS OUPC polo shirt which the club gave his parents as a gift for him.

“For a very long time, I’ve wanted to become captain of the OUPC – I’m proud partly because I’m following in my parents’ footsteps,” Munday tells me. The club’s events lined up for this year will certainly make his tenure an exciting one. “In a couple of weeks there’s the Oxfordshire Rifle Association Gallery Rifle Championships, and, like every year, there’s the Faded Blues.” In part of the latter event, Munday tells me, OUPC alumni compete against current members, who, he adds, “are almost always defeated”. Whatever the case, there cannot be anyone better placed than Munday, with his unique overview of OUPC’s history, to take part. 

Plans for new public square at Oxford’s Clarendon Centre approved

Gavriella Epstein-Lightman
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Plans for new public square at Oxford’s Clarendon Centre approved

Oxford City Council has approved plans to transform Oxford’s Clarendon Centre into a new public square, with trees, seating, and a water feature. 

The redevelopment, proposed by the site’s owner Goldmoney Properties, will involve removing the shopping centre’s roof to create an open-air square measuring approximately 41 by 42 metres. The pedestrianised space is intended to host events including Christmas markets, ice skating, and outdoor concerts.

Council planning officers concluded that “the proposal would make best and most efficient use of the existing site” and that “economic benefits would be derived from the provision of high-quality retail, food and beverage and office uses”.

Plans for Clarendon Square were first submitted earlier this year. On 24th February, Goldmoney Properties Ltd submitted an application for planning permission, proposing the demolition of over 8,000 square metres of existing floorspace and the removal of the centre’s roof to create a large public square open to the sky. 

The 3.5-acre site, located on the corner of Cornmarket Street and Queen Street, was conceived by Roy Sebag and designed by Quinlan Terry CBE. Terry’s design features classical stone facades along both streets. 

Goldmoney Properties acquired the site in a £30 million deal after its previous owner, Lothbury Property Trust, entered liquidation. Sebag, the investor behind the redevelopment, outbid a joint venture involving the Crown Estate, Pioneer Group and Oxford Science Enterprises.

The Council accepted a previous application, submitted in July 2024. It also aimed to remove the roof of the Clarendon Centre and create a new public space, but included plans for student accommodation that are not in the current proposal.

The approval marks a significant step toward the redevelopment of one of Oxford’s central shopping sites. Sebag told Cherwell: “I am delighted that Clarendon has received planning approval and grateful to everyone who has helped us reach this point. My intention is to create a beautiful public square in the heart of Oxford: somewhere people can meet, sit and enjoy the city.” 

A spokesperson for Goldmoney Properties Clarendon Square Ltd told Cherwell: “At Clarendon, we have made a deliberate and quite radical choice: to reduce the amount of built space and open the estate to the sky, creating a substantial outdoor square and open-air streets.”

They added: “We believe the relative scarcity of this kind of setting in central Oxford, together with the quality of the architecture and the interest we are seeing from prospective occupiers, gives the scheme a strong commercial foundation.”

Councillor Susanna Pressel, who previously welcomed the plans, told Cherwell: “I’m glad this planning application got permission – with some sensible conditions. I think the new Clarendon Centre will be a great asset to the city.

“Students are lucky to have access to dozens of college quads, but most townspeople would never think of going through those private-looking doors, so a new green space will be very welcome.” 

Pressel added: “The developers have promised to seek out lots of independent stores and cafes, and not charge ridiculously high rents, so let’s hope for some interesting new places to go to.” 

The redeveloped Clarendon Centre is set to open in 2028. 

Cherwell Mini #27

Ameya Krishnaswamy
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Built by ZohMyGosh using the online cross word maker from Amuse Labs

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Pro-Palestine march calls for University’s divestment from Israel

Kiera O'Carroll
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Pro-Palestine march calls for University’s divestment from Israel

Pro-Palestine protesters marched from Cowley to the Weston Library on Saturday 31st October, demanding Oxford University’s divestment from Israel. 

Around 120 people attended the protest, including groups such as Oxford Students for Palestine (formerly Oxford Schools for Palestine), Oxford Action for Palestine, Oxford City Green Party and Health Workers & Allies for Palestine. 

The protest started with a speech about Oxford-educated administrators’ role in the creation of Israel, notably through the Balfour Declaration. 

Green councillor Ahalya Bala also commented on the current situation in Palestine: “This is not a war. This is annihilation… The atrocities are still happening. It is just the pace that changes.”

“In the West Bank, forced displacement, seizures, neighbourhoods levelled to the ground, military raids, arbitrary detentions, torture, rape, executions, and land theft for Israeli expansionism are the results of the cruel racial segregation and domination of Palestinians.”

A large banner at the centre of the gathering read: “Israel bombed 36 hospitals in Gaza and murdered more than 1700 healthcare workers. Targeting healthcare is a war crime. Arms embargo & Sanctions now!”

As protesters moved through Oxford, they chanted “blood money on your hands, show us your divestment plans”, “arms embargo right now”, and “Oxford University pick a side, justice or genocide”.

Two march attendees, Lisa and John, have been protesting for Palestine daily outside Carfax Tower. They spoke to Cherwell about the current state of the student movement for Palestine. Lisa, a current graduate student said that:  “For students the consciousness is there and the willingness is there but people are afraid.” John added that Oxford’s prestige meant “there is a lot of power and opportunities to speak up concentrated here”.

Outside the Weston Library, protesters heard speeches from Nick Maynard, an Oxford alumnus and surgeon who has worked extensively in Gaza, and Haya Adams, an activist from the SOAS-liberated zone. Maynard, who went to Exeter College, said in his speech: “There are moments in history when silence becomes a form of complicity… More than 22,000 children have been killed in Gaza in the last three years.” He told the audience about individual patients he had seen in hospitals in Gaza, explaining that, on one occasion, his colleagues were stripped of critical supplies of baby formula by the Israeli military upon entering the strip. 

Regarding the international treatment of Palestine, Maynard later told Cherwell: “We know it’s been failed by our governments, we know it’s been failed by our media, but it’s also being failed by our academic institutions… They have not given students a sufficient platform to talk about the genocide. Students have been fantastic. The university needs to give a much bigger platform to its students.”

Oxford Students for Palestine, one of the groups organising the protest, told Cherwell: “We wish to remind the University and others that Oxford city is extremely pro-Palestine, that we call for the end of the genocide and apartheid, and we call for every Palestinian to be liberated and have the right to return. We are twinned with Ramallah for a reason.”

The group added that “we’re calling on Oxford University and its colleges to disclose and fully divest from any Israeli investments, products, or banks like Barclays”. They also criticised the Oxford University Endowment Fund (OUEM) as “fundamentally resistant to disclosure and divestment”. 

Adams, from the SOAS-liberated zone, told Cherwell: “The most basic and bare minimum thing that Oxford University can do is cut ties with genocide through their investments, through their partnerships. There really are ethical alternatives… Oxford University can also protect the right to free speech by allowing students to speak up for Palestine with no disciplinary action. They need to be held accountable for the arrests that happened during the time of the encampments.”

In response to a right of reply, Oxford University said: “Oxford is steadfast in its commitment to freedom of expression and to the right to peaceful protest within the law. At the same time, we have a legal and moral duty to uphold the rights, dignity and safety of every member of our community. When behaviour, including protest, causes serious disruption, harassment or safeguarding concerns, we will act in accordance with the law and our own established procedures.”

OUEM did not respond to our request for comment.

As the march ended, Oxford Students for Palestine reflected on how it fit with the global student movement. They told Cherwell: “The last thing we will say is that the students united will never be defeated, as we’ve seen across the world.”

Additional reporting by Stanley Arlidge and Freya Robson.

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