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Between beer gardens and picnics: Climate Culture Care at the Ashmolean

Leo Maudsley-Barton
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Between beer gardens and picnics: Climate Culture Care at the Ashmolean

When I returned to Oxford this term, just as England teased us with the sixth heat-wave of the year, I found myself at a loose end. With the deadline for two vacation essays still far in the distance, the sun lit up the sign for Soma Surovi Jannat’s Ashmolean Now exhibition, Climate Culture Care. I went in to see it (rather grateful for the museum’s air conditioning, if nothing else), and I was directed to the basement level. 

From the first few lines of her introduction, the importance of Surovi’s exhibition is clear. Her work is groundbreaking: “The first solo presentation of any Bangladesh-based artist in a UK museum.” Looking at the list of her exhibition’s supporters (including The Patrons of the Ashmolean Museum, British Council Bangladesh, Samdani Art Foundation, Charles Wallace Bangladesh Trust and Gallery Espace, New Delhi), the weight of this presentation should not be underestimated. Her work is tucked between the bustling cafe and gift shop. 

Like the other viewers who came in behind me, I was first struck by Surovi’s “ephemeral work”, She Carries the River in Her Skin. A single piece, the work bends around the corner and spans almost the length of the back wall. Drawn directly onto the wall in March, when the exhibition opened, the white plaster is a mighty canvas, but the black skeletal shape that arches over it does not overwhelm the space. Surovi seems to trust you to come closer to see the intricate details of her strokes. I do, as do the others. We find the figures wrapped around each other, hands that become trees, then scissors which slice through a single flower. The different parts of the wider body are all kept in individual, connected ovals. They start to feel like eyes watching us, a gaze which I am forced to drop, while it remains unblinking. 

The wall text beside it is a sobering description: “Surovi examines the impact of climate change on women and children.” The words explain that this work is focused on the social challenges that women face after losing their husbands to tiger attacks in Bangladesh. She also draws attention to the health risks posed to those who find their home in the Sundarbans (the world’s largest mangrove forest). They have reduced access to clean water: “A basic human right that remains unfulfilled for many.” Her artwork is beautifully detailed, but perhaps does require the accompanying commentary to be properly appreciated. The final line especially really resonated with me: “While the work has been carefully documented, it will be erased at the end of this exhibition.” 

I find that sense of erasure – the art’s self-proclaimed ephemeral nature – more compelling than the physical work itself. I think of the plants, the houses, the people, the lives that were just as uniquely intricate and detailed, then so brutally erased by the unforgiving violence of wildfires and storms. The eyes keep watching me. 

I turn to take in the wall opposite, and find another impressively expansive artwork. Between the Sea and the Sky, Who Holds the Ground? is a scroll nearly 10m long. Unlike the black-and-white wall piece behind it, this artwork is an archival ink-on-paper work with acrylic colour, gold and silver leaf. This time, I read the description first: “Surovi’s work reflects the strength of ordinary people facing migration challenges, depicting a long scene of climate refugees, including both animals and humans.” As suggested, I follow it from right to left, appreciating the representation of shifting ecosystems and “cosmic transformations” caused by climate change. Again, I am not sure it would be as impactful if the meaning was not explained beside it.

Then, about halfway through, I am suddenly stopped by a ceramic hand mounted above the scroll. It was not mentioned in the description. I think it is one of the “Ashmolean inspirations” scattered throughout the exhibit, historical artefacts that influenced Surovi in her creation of the exhibition. The raised red hand is held upright, as if urging us to stop, but it has lost its thumb and forefinger. It is one of the most striking images in the basement room. It feels like the past is reaching out and begging us to change, desperate for us to stop the destructive consequences of climate change. But then I, like everyone else, move past this warning. We leave it behind as the reality of those consequences continues on the scroll. 

In the middle of the room, a few smaller artworks are organised on free-standing displays. They are circular and part of a series which “delves into the emotions of animals, and the feelings of being trapped in the human world”. Looking around, they are not getting as much attention as the bigger pieces, but as I weave in and out of them, something suddenly catches my eye. An air purifier sits at the end of the room, wafting cool air through the displays. I am quickly beside it, enjoying the breeze it allows. 

From my cold haven, I cannot help but mark the uncomfortable irony of this exhibition. Surovi’s works warn us of the pressing danger of climate change, and the museum must plug in units to cool the room down. She constructs works whose gaze you cannot look away from, and the exhibition is fitted underground at level minus one. It takes a committed viewer – who doesn’t mind the occasional shriek of an excited child in the cafe – to find it. 

Eventually, I climb back up to the ground floor of the Ashmolean. I am quickly blinded by the light of the unseasonably hot September day flooding in through the main doors. Climate Culture Care is an important reminder that between the beer gardens and picnics, our world is being destroyed. Walking home, I find it is not so much the individual works that stay with me, but that final sentence: “It will be erased at the end of this exhibition.”

What else is being lost, as the world above us gets warmer?

This free exhibition ends in November, and I would suggest that if you have time, stop by the Ashmolean to visit it. Before it is erased.

Oxford offer holders “speechless” after court rejects challenge to visa brake

Mair Andrews
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Oxford offer holders “speechless” after court rejects challenge to visa brake

A high court case by four women prevented from studying at Oxford by the government’s visa brake was rejected in August, with an appeal pending.

At least 15 students offered places at Oxford have been prevented from taking up their places this October after the government introduced a student visa “brake” on nationals of Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar, and Sudan.  The policy, introduced in March, was challenged in the High Court by women from the four affected countries, including Oxford offer-holders. 

The Home Office introduced the measure following an increase in asylum claims from people who had initially entered the UK through study and work routes. Measures are intended to “prevent abuse of the visa system” and ensure that study and skilled-worker routes were used for their “proper purpose”. The government estimated that the policy would prevent around 4,300 student visas being issued over 18 months, while reducing asylum claims from people on student visas by around 1,300. 

Claimants challenged the process by which the four countries were selected and alleged that the Home Secretary failed to consider or investigate the discriminatory impact of the student visa brake on women. 

Zeinab Mohamed, a current Sudanese student at Somerville College, attended the court case. She told Cherwell: “For many of us, this case was about more than visas. It was about whether students from countries already going through war and crisis would still have a fair chance at an education… The visa brake closes one of the few doors that were still open.”

The Court recognised that the policy had “dashed the hopes and expectation” of students who had secured places at prestigious universities, including students who had received or been shortlisted for scholarships. 

Safar Amin, a student from Afghanistan who had an offer to read an MPhil for development studies, told Cherwell: “For me, Oxford represented a possibility: the belief that, if people with the fewest resources are given an opportunity, they can become catalysts for change within societies that have endured decades of war and violence.” His offer has now been withdrawn. He told Cherwell that there was no option to defer it because the visa brake is expected to remain in place for at least 18 months, into the next application cycle. 

Another affected offer-holder, Afghan human rights activist Aisha Khurram, had planned to read for MSt in Diplomatic Studies in Oxford this October. Khurram told Cherwell that studying her offer to study in the UK was part of a life-long plan: “I somehow wanted to pursue the dream I had left off in Afghanistan which was this diplomatic studies in Oxford.” 

She told Cherwell: “Studying in Oxford is a dream in itself, but also a dream that started in Afghanistan. I wanted to take it to the next level, I would have been studying in Oxford.” 

Alongside her studies, Khurram has piloted an e-learning programme providing university-level, certified education to women in six Afghan provinces. She said she had hoped to use her time at Oxford to expand the programme through the University’s networks. “One of the reasons I also wanted to join Oxford was to bring that idea into that network and expand it with their support,” she told Cherwell. 

The Court acknowledged the “appalling systemic eradication” of women’s and girls’ access to education in Afghanistan, but ruled that the Home Secretary was not legally required to consider the impact of an immigration measure on gender inequality overseas. Since the Taliban took over Afghanistan in August 2021, women have been barred from secondary and higher education. 

Khurram added that she was “quite speechless” about the court’s resolution: “people have been finally able to survive the Taliban, then they are faced with policies that are only based on a prejudice that excludes them from opportunities or from their right to stabilise themselves and have a dignified future, just because they have a certain passport, not because they are not qualified.”

A spokesperson from the University of Oxford told Cherwell: “’We receive a significant number of talented students from countries affected by war and persecution. As a University of Sanctuary, we are committed to ensuring that outstanding offer-holders from crisis-affected backgrounds can take up their places at Oxford.”

Alongside the University, Mansfield and Somerville became Oxford’s first Colleges of Sanctuary in 2021. In a joint statement, the colleges told Cherwell: “When the student visa brake was announced earlier this year, we said that preventing talented scholars from travelling to the UK on legitimate student visas would do nothing to address the complex causes of irregular migration.

We continue to believe that ability and potential, not birthplace or background, should determine who has access to education at Oxford.”

Botley Road reopens after three and a half years

Orla McMahon
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Botley Road reopens after three and a half years

Botley Road, which has been closed since April 2023 to accommodate expansions to Oxford railway station, reopened to the public this week. 

Originally scheduled for August, the reopening was pushed back to 20th September due to repairs to the gas network under the road. The road is now open to both pedestrians and vehicles. The reopening also brings improved bus services, a new walkway and a cycleway that runs under the rail bridge.

The road serves as a main passage into the city centre. It spans from Botley, which sits on the A34 to the west of the city, to Frideswide Square, near Oxford railway station and next to the Said Business School. 

These developments form part of the Oxfordshire Connect programme. According to an information pamphlet provided by Network Rail, this infrastructure project seeks to build “a bigger, better station for everyone” and add “additional rail capacity for the future”. Plans include a new line linking Oxford and Cambridge and the reopening of the Cowley branch line. Network Rail estimates that the total cost of this scheme so far is £237.4 million, well above the initial estimate of £161 million.

Oxfordshire Connect justified their decision to close the entire road, rather than just one lane, with the intention to complete construction before the end of 2024. However, construction was delayed multiple times due to unforeseen circumstances, including the discovery of a Victorian brick arch under the road and complications with utility infrastructure. 

Local residents have previously expressed their frustration at these delays. Following the closure of the road in 2023, many local businesses reported that their trade was negatively affected. Layla Moran, MP for West Oxfordshire and Abingdon, took the issue to Parliament and met with Minister of State for Rail Peter Hendy in 2024 to discuss the ongoing closure. 

In response to the reopening, Layla Moran told Cherwell: “Whilst I feel relieved that the Botley road has reopened, it has come at long last after three and a half years of terrible disruption to the lives of my constituents…I promise to push for accountability, having requested that the National Audit Office carry out an investigation into why the cost of the project has now soared to £237.4 million”. 

Network Rail have released a statement upon the road’s reopening which acknowledged that the road closure had a “significant impact” on Oxford residents and that they are “sorry for the disruption and the frustration it has caused”. 

Although no date has been confirmed, the station renovations are expected to resume at a later point.

Traffic filters trial replaces congestion charge in Oxford

Orla McMahon
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Traffic filters trial replaces congestion charge in Oxford

Oxfordshire County Council has introduced a traffic filters trial in Oxford to replace the congestion charge. 

The scheme began on 28th September and can run for up to 18 months. Like the previous congestion charge, it aims to reduce traffic in and around Oxford. 

Drivers will no longer be able to pay the £5 congestion charge when travelling into the city. Instead, any drivers who pass through the traffic filters without a permit will be liable to a fine of up to £70, reduced to £35 if paid within 21 days. For the first six months, drivers will receive a warning without a fine the first time they travel through the filters without a permit. 

The traffic filters only apply to cars and motorhomes. Oxford residents, including students, can apply for permits allowing 100 days of travel through the filter zone, while Oxfordshire residents can apply for a 25-day permit. Some groups, such as blue badge holders or community health and care workers, are exempt from the traffic filters scheme.

Filters have been installed at the same six points across the city as the congestion charge: Hythe Bridge Street (near Said Business School), St Cross Road, St Clements Street, Thames Street, Marston Ferry Road, and Hollow Way. All parts of Oxford can still be reached without passing through a traffic filter, due to the reopening of Botley Road. 

The new scheme will cost £6.56 million and is funded by the government. Under UK law, any money it raises must be invested into local transport initiatives.

Councillor Gareth Epps, Cabinet Member for Transport at Oxfordshire County Council, told Cherwell: “The county council’s transport policies are designed to make it easier for people to travel into and around Oxford and make the county a better place to live, work and do business.” 

To help determine the success of the traffic filter scheme, Oxfordshire County Council has opened a public consultation, and residents can give feedback by completing an online survey. When asked whether the traffic filters will continue after the trial period, Councillor Epps told Cherwell: “The council’s future decisions about traffic filters will be influenced by many factors, including monitoring data, feedback from the six-month public consultation, the costs of operating and maintaining the scheme, legal advice, and relevant local and national policy.” 

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

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

“What is a good life?” This axiological question, asked earnestly in the opening lines of James Graham’s The Standard of Living – playing at Theatre Royal Haymarket until December 12 – is often overlooked by the fractured and hyper-specialised discipline of economics. Yet for John Maynard Keynes, whose ideas motivated the ‘Keynesian revolution’ towards government intervention into the economy during the mid-20th century, it was the core motivation underpinning his life’s work. To Keynes, this so-called ‘good life’ is one replete with art and human connection, wherein the value of work lies in the leisure which it affords. However, Keynes’ dogged refusal to accept the state of the world tells us that, perhaps more fundamentally, a ‘good life’ is one characterised by a radical imagining of what a ‘better life’ might entail, and a tireless striving towards its realisation.  

This ethical framework seizes The Standard of Living, turning what might have become a dull affair about aggregate demand and the death of laissez-faire into a colourful portrait of a remarkable man. The play flits between Keynes’ bohemian life as a member of the Bloomsbury Group, and his attempts to influence the British government to intervene in the economy across two world wars and the Wall Street Crash. Throughout, Keynes’ deployment of economic theory is portrayed as an act of profound artistic expression, akin to the literature of Virginia Woolf or the painting of Vanessa Bell (fellow members of the Bloomsbury Group). Keynes’ affinity to the arts, which saw him found the Arts Council of Great Britain shortly before his death in 1946, is reflected in the incorporation of paintings by Cézanne and Degas into the stage design. Additionally, the frenzied ballet numbers which mark scene transitions foreshadow his marriage to the ballerina Lydia Lopokova (much to the shock of his friends and colleagues, who believed him to be homosexual). 

Rory Kinnear plays a reserved yet charming Keynes, providing glimpses of the charisma which convinced Douglas LePan to describe him as “the most beautiful creature I have ever listened to”. However, Natalia Osipova steals the show, in her theatre debut on sojournment from the Royal Ballet, playing a sharp, witty, and comedically Russian Lydia Lopokova. The highlight of the play is the meeting between Keynes and his great rival, the proto-neoliberal Friedrich Hayek, on the roof of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge. The almost unbelievably true encounter sees Keynes and Hayek on fire warden duty during a Nazi bombing raid, still arguing the merits of their respective worldviews. The pair meet again during a feverish tango scene which places Hayek’s “we must tighten our belts” against Keynes’ “buy a new belt”. Other standout performances include Pip Carter’s drippingly sardonic Lytton Strachey, a fellow member of the Bloomsbury Group and a former lover of Keynes, and Laurie Kynaston’s Hayek, whose thin veneer of self-confidence masks both a bitter ideological resentment of Keynes the economist, and a deep personal admiration for Keynes the man. 

Those searching for a deep engagement with the economic arguments for and against government intervention in the free market may find themselves disappointed (much to the relief of the rest of us). Cursory context is provided regarding the debate between Keynes and Hayek, typically followed by a quip from a less economically –minded character about just how complicated it all is, reassuring the audience that the graphs and equations espoused by these characters are not at all the point of the play. Rather, the fundamental tension between Keynes and Hayek is captured in their differing worldviews, which shape the research they produce. Keynes’ good-natured belief in the capacity of governments to influence the world for the better, and the importance he places on leisure and the ‘good life’, stands in stark contrast with the cynical zealotry of Hayek, who draws on his experience of the hyperinflation in 1920s Vienna to justify his distrust of central bank interventions. Therefore, although Graham seemingly writes Keynes to be the ‘hero’ of the story (if there even is such a thing), this should not necessarily be taken as an endorsement of his economic ideas, but rather a simple admiration for his uncompromising style of living, and the way in which it shaped his life’s work. 

Therefore, by highlighting the virtue inherent to Keynes’ radical imagination of a better life for all, influenced by his deep personal engagement with the moral philosophy of fellow Cambridge ‘Apostle’ G.E. Moore, The Standard of Living stands as a philippic against the state of political and economic thought today, implicitly lamenting those who sacrifice ideology and philosophy at the altar of pragmatism and incremental change. Morgan McSweeney’s pragmatism-over-principle may have achieved the largest British electoral victory this century, but it was this same lack of philosophical imagination which doomed Sir Keir Starmer’s premiership from the start. Through his exploration of John Maynard Keynes in The Standard of Living, James Graham implores us to not repeat these mistakes, but rather to learn from the ethos embodied by Keynes. By doing this, we might just be able to imagine a better way to live.  

Antisemitism at UK universities 79% higher than before October 7th attacks

Gavriella Epstein-Lightman
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Antisemitism at UK universities 79% higher than before October 7th attacks

CW: Antisemitism

The University of Oxford was among ten universities to record five or more antisemitic incidents from 2024-2026, a new report on antisemitism at UK universities shows. 

The Community Security Trust (CST), a UK charity which monitors antisemitism in Britain, has published a report tracking recorded antisemitic incidents affecting Jewish students, academics, university staff, and campus organisations between 2024 and 2026. Its executive summary warns that “the 7 October attacks ha[ve] resulted in a baseline level of antisemitism that is significantly higher than before”.

Last year saw 95 reported incidents across UK universities, a 14% increase on previous years. This figure remains below the “unprecedented” 272 incidents recorded during the single academic year of 2023/24 but is 79% higher than the last academic year before the Hamas attacks on 7th October. 

CST’s report shows that the city of Oxford had the joint seventh most incidents of University antisemitism in the UK. Of the five incidents reported in Oxford, the majority occurred online. The report also references an incident in October 2024 where a swastika was drawn on a sign for the David Slager Jewish Students society on George Street. 

A significant proportion of antisemitic incidents concerned Israel, Gaza, Hamas, the October 7 attacks, and the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East. A reported 62% of incidents “contained such references alongside anti-Jewish language, motivation or targeting” while 55% of incidents “demonstrated explicitly anti-Zionist motivation alongside antisemitism”. References to Hitler, the Nazis, or the Holocaust appeared in 26% of incidents. 

The CST findings follow the Union of Jewish Students’ (UJS) ‘Time for Change’ report, published in March 2026, which found that “antisemitism on campus is normalised”.It urges universities to “make clear the difference between anti Israel speech or activity, and antisemitism – and enforce this difference through disciplinary action when students, staff or societies cross the line”. The charity also suggested that educational institutions “make reporting of incidents accessible and worthwhile” in order to “build trust in university processes”.

In response to the report, a spokesperson for the Oxford Jewish Society told Cherwell that they “value the continued engagement of the University with the Jewish community to resolve issues of antisemitism”. However, they said that “the collegiate structure of the university and the unaffiliated nature of key institutions means that there is a deficit of accountability across the University”.

“Jewish students should not have to become less visibly Jewish, less openly Zionist or less willing to speak in order to feel comfortable at university”, the society added. “Antisemitism does not cease to be antisemitism because it is expressed in the language of anti-Zionism. Hostility towards Jewish students because of their real or assumed connection with Israel is not legitimate.”

A spokesperson for the University of Oxford told Cherwell: “Oxford is unequivocal: there is no place for antisemitism, harassment, or discrimination within our community.

“The University condemns, in the strongest possible terms, any form of racial hatred, including any actions or language urging violence against groups of people.”

When asked about measures taken to counter antisemitism at Oxford, the University spokesperson highlighted efforts to promote racial and religious inclusion. These include an annual Student Racial and Religious Inclusion Forum, first held in March 2026, which brought students together to share their experiences. The University also said its Equality and Diversity Unit has facilitated antisemitism training from the Union of Jewish Students for student-facing staff.

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

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

‘When he created Earth and these lands upon it, when he divided people into believers and infidels, the crescent moon and the cross, the good Allah made us all different except for one thing. We die easily without seeking reasons; the reasons come on their own. And He sits on His celestial throne and is surprised by how little we cherish life while we have it, and how many tears we shed once it’s gone.’

Hiding in the woods, the narrator of Jergović’s eighth story ponders the push and pull of religion in Bosnia. His is one of the trickier voices in Inshallah, Madonna, Inshallah. Obsessed with the sins of a lightning-struck Hodža, the disappearance of a young refugee from the town’s memory, he resolves to be the saviour. He answers the call of God, who is “testing us just as an old grandfather tests his coffee with the tip of his tongue to see if it’s hot”. As he falls asleep in the cold, his mind is fragmented with fantasies of sin and punishment. The details of “the Charred Mosque minaret” slip away; he remembers that “the Hodža was bald and smooth-faced”, but he cannot remember why. When he sneaks back into the town, forgetting the stories he has told himself and the crimes he is supposedly avenging, our narrator commits a confused final act of violence. Jergović, through translators Ellen Elias-Bursać and Mirza Purić, delivers: “We both heard the same thing, and by that, on judgement day we will be judged as men – the woosh of the paddle like the woosh of the wind that brings the snow and the winter.”

Whilst the delusion of Alkatmer’s narrator is perhaps more complex than some other voices in this collection, the understatedness of his story and the winding, folkloric tone are definitive of Inshallah, Madonna, Inshallah. Every story is characterised by the universal intimacy of the voice of a stranger telling you strange tales around a fire. Sometimes there is magic explicitly at play, like the talking bird of ‘Zulum’. Sometimes, with the freedom of unreliable narrators and prophetic dreams, reality in Jergović’s stories bends only slightly; such is the case in “Tespih” and “Misir”. 

As he describes it, Inshallah, Madonna, Inshallah is the author’s attempt to capture “the unusual documentary spirit of Bosnian and Dalmatian lyrical songs.” Every short story begins with a note describing the “lyrical song” (or songs) that inspired it, thus each is framed explicitly by the culture and history in which Jergović writes. The natural, and surely intended, product of this form is the sharp focus, every time, no matter the length or style of the story, on the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The book stands as a record of Jergović’s people, a collection of mythical voices that can speak to God, to Allah, to birds, and dead brothers. 

The balance of folklore and monotheistic religion is a fine one, but Jergović seems well practised at spinning plates. One does not detract from the other: the presence of everyday myth lives alongside the honest faith of his characters. Nor does Jergović shy from the conflict between Christianity and Islam. The suffering of religious war is present, as are its justifications, its heroes and its victims. The form of a short story collection is, in this way, ideally suited for Jergović’s project, which does itself seem to extend a little beyond “lyrical songs”. Or rather, as I would believe myself, Jergović’s valuation of the music extends far beyond that first experience of hearing them. The crises of life, death, love, and faith are all within the bounds of “lyrical songs”,

It is fitting, then, that such a diverse chorus of voices is published in English by the independent publishing house Archipelago Books. Founded in 2003 by Jill Schoolman, the small team specialises in translated fiction “from the margins”. It publishes around 15 to 16 books a year, exclusively translations into English. In a 2018 interview for Publishers Weekly, the translator Bill Johnston describes working with Jill and her team. “It’s an unusual, collaborative dialogical approach,” he says, “and I find it very conducive to doing good work”. At the risk of understatement, it seems this same process has been successful for Elias-Bursać and Mirza Purić: Inshallah, Madonna, Inshallah is some pretty “good work”.

Unique writing can come from all kinds of directions, but I don’t think it is a coincidence that Jergović’s writing is coming into English through an independent publishing house, one known for its “dialogic collaborative approach,” the same one that has published his work in English three times before. You might say the same for Mathias Énard and Fitzcarraldo, or the 2026 International Booker winner Yáng Shuāng-zǐ and & Other Stories. Independent publishing houses are taking risks that larger organisations cannot, and as readers we stand to benefit enormously from this. 

I’ll finish with this bit of advice. Contrary to popular belief, not everything goes in one ear and out the other. Some stuff gets kept, and it would be nice if it was interesting. It would be nice if it was the kind of voice you hadn’t heard before. So keep an ear out because Inshallah, Madonna, Inshallah is coming out on 13th October. 

Art as protest on university campuses

Lara Solie-Tuluie
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Art as protest on university campuses

CW: rape.

This week, Cornell University has made headlines as prosecutors reopened an investigation into the alleged rape of a student at the Ivy League in 2024. The case is characterised by extreme violence and the university’s apathy towards the anonymous Jane Doe. When victims are ignored, and perpetrators’ punishment is to write an essay, what can we learn from those who use art as protest on campus?

In 2015, Columbia University student Emma Sulkowicz carried her dorm room mattress across her graduation stage. She had been carrying it for months: every day the university failed to expel the man she accused of anally raping her. Having reported the assault to the university in April of 2013, Columbia found her attacker, Paul Nungesser, “not responsible” for his alleged crimes. She filed a report with the New York City Police Department to no avail.

In response, the visual arts student embarked on a performance art piece entitled Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight), as her senior thesis. Starting in September 2014, Sulkowicz carried a 23kg, dark blue, extra-long twin mattress, identical to the one on which she was raped, with her constantly while on campus. Dubbed by Sulkowicz to Columbia Spectator as an “endurance art piece”, she described the mattress as “the perfect size for me to just be able to carry it enough that I can continue with my day, but also heavy enough so that I have to continually struggle with it”.

Her performance was intended to travel by “word of mouth”. Having written the rules of engagement for lugging the heavy mattress around the walls of her studio space, she left the rest of her performance unexplained: a student walking around campus with a blue rectangle of springs and plastic.

On the steps of university buildings, at coffee shops, covered in a sheet matching the shade of Sulkowicz’s graduation gown, the mattress is always there. The mattress’ out-of-placeness is off-putting, interrupting a space of efficiency, learning, and practicality. It is cumbersome, attention-grabbing, and unsettling. It’s a weight not only to those who carry it, but a disruption to the lives of those around it. Its presence speaks to an absence of accountability and justice in the space it inhabits. Notably, under Sulkowicz’s regulations, the mattress was not allowed to be removed from the university campus, even when she was elsewhere. The burden of truth and violence was made big, blue, and bold. It’s difficult to move and impossible to ignore. In a piece written for TIME, Sulkowicz accused Columbia of being “more concerned about their public image than keeping people safe”. When the words of victims have limited consequence and perpetrators fail to be held accountable, art speaks in a tongue that cannot be twisted.

Protest is often remembered through its material objects. We picture the hourglass of Extinction Rebellion, the peace sign of the anti-Vietnam War movement, the crouching panther of the Black Panther Party. The visual memorabilia and graphic art of protest leave a lasting cultural and personal impression. In an interview with Tate, artist Jeremy Deller recalls the impact the protest art of the 2017 Women’s March had on him: “It was kind of the first time you saw… those body parts being drawn or in public being displayed, those sort of reproductive organs.” Really, women’s reproductive systems have been displayed on museum walls with varying accuracy for centuries. Think only of Gustave Courbet’s 1866 L’Origine du monde: it’s all the ‘taboo’ bits and nothing else. Possibly, it is the presence of these taboo bits paraded so pointedly, with overt political sentiment behind them, as well as the real-life person holding the placard, that makes protest art, at least to Deller, so remarkable. It discards any question of whether art should be political and forces it to be so. It gives the aesthetic political purpose; it upsets how we understand, use, and display art. In Sulkowicz’s case, it makes the mundane, purpose-driven object an aesthetic anomaly that first surprises, and then frightens. 

Sulkowicz’s performance art protest draws on the visual interruption caused by something being in the wrong place, detaching the signifier from the sign. The spatial anachronism of mattress-in-library, or mattress-in-cafeteria, creates an unsettling instance of a stubborn, physically cumbersome dedication to truth-telling. The mattress is impossible to ignore; so is the silent system of gender-based violence that permeates university culture. Sulkowicz makes the location of violence mobile, unavoidable, and universal. While the weight of assault can be carried by anyone anywhere, the mattress is a reminder that the perpetrators of such violence are just as present. 

The tool of oppression deployed by universities like Cornell and Columbia is language in the form of excuses and essays. Language is fortified to protect the guilty and complicit from the consequences of their actions. Art, at this moment, confuses the schemes of language. It evades clear distinction, forces itself to be acknowledged, and upsets the campus’ playhouse of power and punishment. 

Good grief! Why do we feel for the death of fictional people?

Jas Mauj
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Good grief! Why do we feel for the death of fictional people?

I always cry at the depiction of death in plays. Considering that, during my first year at Oxford – the first time I engaged seriously with theatre – the listings almost seemed pointed for someone as weepy about grief as I am. From the beautiful, slow reflections of Tidal Theatre’s Launa to the raucous yet still moving titles like Blackstar Productions’ Teen Spirit and Greyjoy, I had some sort of physiological reaction to all of them. Whether it’s a mild sniffle or full-blown tears, I always end up feeling a bit ridiculous about the whole ordeal when it’s over. I mean, it’s not real, is it? Why do I waste my grief on things that haven’t happened, that will never happen?

That question – why I feel sadness for fictional grief – is at the heart of the ‘paradox of fiction’, a philosophical dilemma that asks how we feel anything at all for things we know don’t exist. It could be that, caught in the moment, I am so immersed in the play that I treat it as real. But that fails to explain how one of the most gut-wrenching portrayals of grief in theatrical history – Mother Courage’s silent scream upon seeing the corpse of her son in Mother Courage and Her Children – takes place in the context of a Brechtian production that deliberately distances the audience. The perceived ‘realness’ may not matter to our emotional reaction, but it raises the question of how fiction on the stage crosses boundaries to generate effects in the real world of the theatre stalls. 

Theatre has many unique devices up its sleeve that make it, in my opinion, superior to every other art form in the domain of audience manipulation. Namely, theatre is rife with ritualistic elements: the surreal stiffness of monologues and of stage blocking, the very practice of dressing up to sit silently in a dark room. Of course, one could argue that these are also features of certain films, but film lacks theatre’s trump card: the sense of immediacy between actor and audience. As the influential Polish director Jerzy Grotowski put it: “Theatre cannot exist without the actor-spectator relationship of perceptual, direct, ‘live communion’.” 

In a sense, the actor, inhabiting the ghostly space between unreality as a character and immediacy as a body for the audience member, can use it to be possessed by the emotions it would be impermissible for many of us to feel in real life. When watching theatrical portrayals of grief, we mourn through the actors as much as we mourn with them. We need not necessarily mourn the same thing they do on stage. But even if all the play gives us is catharsis, a reflection the narrative gives us of the ‘real’, I think what is important is that it offers a socially valid space, separate from everyday life, for doing so.

Grieving rituals exist around the world, with ‘professional mourning’ mentioned everywhere from ancient Egyptian records to the Bible. In the deserts of Rajasthan, India, Rudalis – lower-caste women hired as professional mourners in a declining tradition – still carry out the function of wailing and singing at funerals where it would be improper for the upper-caste relatives of the deceased to showcase such emotion. Professional theatre is unique in that it often offers release to the actor as well, whereas the tears of many marginalised mourners throughout history saw no such catharsis.

All of this may help explain why theatre can drive us to tears, but why do we seek out such experiences? Are audiences, voyeurs as they are, the strange ones for going to watch someone whose pain they share for two hours and an intermission, before forgetting it? Or is it the writer, the actors, and the director who work on ensuring their art creates a sense of bereavement in the audience? I believe that Joan Didion holds the answer in her firm indictment of the audience: why we are in the stalls and what we are postponing through it. The starting lines of Didion’s play adaptation of a famously harrowing account of grief following her husband’s and daughter’s deaths, her memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, declare: “And it will happen to you.”

Exeter College to fund data centre in Oxford

Stanley Arlidge
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Exeter College to fund data centre in Oxford

Cherwell District Council will decide next month whether to grant permission for a controversial £900 million data centre development funded by Exeter College. 


The development, named EXOq, is located next to Oxford Parkway station in Kidlington and aims to be a “home for global research innovation and education”, with a particular focus on AI and quantum computing. The plans include a large data centre to provide computing infrastructure, alongside an innovation hub aiming to bring together researchers, government institutes, and investors. 

The plans also include a conference centre, 180-room hotel, and a further education college that focuses on “equipping the young people today with the skills to be the workforce of tomorrow, working in and supporting newly emerging technologies linked to EXOq”. Construction would begin in 2028 with an expected completion in 2040. 

Exeter College finance and estates bursar, Nicholas Badman, told Cherwell: “EXOq is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for Oxford and the region. Exeter College is uniquely placed to deliver the sovereign High-Performance Compute infrastructure the country, and the Oxford ecosystem, needs to compete in quantum computing and AI.” 

The University of Oxford’s Vice Chancellor, Irene Tracey, said that “fundamentally, EXOq fits very well with the university’s needs and it has my full backing”. 

Exeter’s plans come alongside a government drive to grow the UK’s compute infrastructure. The government’s 2025 UK Compute Roadmap forecasts that the UK will need three times as much data centre capacity by 2030 to keep pace with AI developments. 

The plans also tie in with the government’s ambitions for the Oxford-Cambridge growth corridor, which it has dubbed “Europe’s Silicon Valley”. An economic impact assessment produced in support of the application suggests that the gross value added could reach £1.4 billion and create 7,000 jobs total, of which at least 4,600 would be in the local area. 

Local residents have criticised the planned development. Kidlington Councillor and Leader of the Green Party on Cherwell District Council, Ian Middleton, has publicly objected to the proposal, while more than 35 local residents submitted statements opposing the plans during public consultation. One resident urged the council to “be courageous and stop letting the colleges dominate the whole area” while another labelled the development “huge, unwanted, and unnecessary”.

Local campaign groups, such as the Oxfordshire branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, have raised environmental concerns including the development’s impact on the green belt separating Oxford from Kidlington and a nearby ancient woodland. One objecting group, Wolvercote Neighbourhood Forum, explicitly references noise problems caused by data centres in the US in a letter opposing the site. 

In response to queries about the project’s environmental impact, Badman told Cherwell: “The College understands local concerns and is committed to making EXOq an exemplar of sustainable data centre design.” Badman noted that the plans include on-site solar power and would reuse waste heat from the data centre through a low-carbon heat network serving both EXOq and the surrounding area. He added that the College is exploring off-site renewable energy and working with electricity generators and is “committed to ensuring EXOq’s demands will not conflict with local energy needs”.

The most significant local challenge to the project surrounds the provision of golf courses. In 2025, the 118-year-old North Oxford Golf Course, owned by Merton College, Exeter College, and the University of Oxford, closed to make way for a housing project. Greenway, a group set up by former members of the club, told Cherwell that “the college gave assurances that Frieze Farm [the land upon which EXOq would be built] could be used if necessary as a replacement for the golf course”. Such a use is suggested in the Cherwell District Council Local Plan 2031. 

Regarding the potential golf course, EXOq states that “evidence submitted to the Local Plan highlighted that the popularity of golf is declining nationally, and there is insufficient demand locally to justify the EXOq site as a replacement course”. In a statement to Cherwell, Greenway have labelled these statements inaccurate. 

A decision is expected at the start of next month after the council’s independent golf need report is complete. The report will be the third golf need survey attached to the application, after Exeter and Greenway submitted their own competing surveys. 

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