Tuesday 18th November 2025
Blog Page 4

Oxford University launches equitable innovation partnership

Arina Makarina and Gaspard Rouffin
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Oxford University launches equitable innovation partnership

A regional partnership, Equinox, launched at Rhodes House on Monday. Equinox stands for Equitable Innovation Oxford and includes the University of Oxford, the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT), and Oxfordshire County Council. Vice-Chancellor Irene Tracey, Anneliese Dodds, MP for Oxford East, and Chair of Oxford Growth Commission Neale Coleman were among the speakers at the launch. 

Speaking at the launch, Lord Patrick Vallance, Minister for Science, Research, and Innovation, described Oxfordshire’s innovation ecosystem’s success as “vital for [the UK’s] national missions of growth”. 

One of the flagship measures of the new initiative is to dynamise the local economy, particularly through the development of local transport infrastructure. Keynote speakers emphasised the reopening of the Cowley branch line, the construction of the East-West rail line to Cambridge via Milton Keynes, as well as the synchronisation of bus schedules and train arrivals to avoid long wait times at the station. 

Neale Coleman OBE, Chair of the Oxford Growth Commission, also highlighted the need to transform the Oxford railway station, including plans to “build two new platforms” and “two new station buildings”. He added that there was a “need to transform the entrance to the city”, describing it as “not worthy of Oxford”, particularly given the popularity of its touristic activity.

A recurring theme underscored by the various speakers was the “equitable” aspect of the Equinox initiative, each eager to ensure the interests of all actors and communities were represented. A senior official speaking to Cherwell said they took particular attention to “think about who wasn’t at the table”.

The Oxford Cambridge Arc, initially announced in February 2025, was described as playing a key role in the Equinox initiative. The Vice-Chancellor particularly stressed the creation of a “super-cluster” of competitiveness in the two university towns, that others would struggle to rival with.

The Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT) is an Oxford-based commercial research institution, housing departments focusing on artificial intelligence (AI), clinical medicine, generative biology, and sustainable energy. EIT was founded by the Chief Technology Officer of Oracle Larry Ellison, who recently earned the title of the “world’s richest man”, and is reported to be a close ally of Donald Trump. EIT has recently launched a number of projects, including a £118 million investment in Oxford AI vaccine research.

The Chief Operations Officer of the EIT stated: “By connecting leading universities, businesses, and government, this partnership addresses a critical investment gap and will help groundbreaking ideas reach their full potential.”

Another initiative announced at the Equinox event was the launch of the NatWest Accelerator for early-stage ventures. This aims to encourage entrepreneurship in the region, particularly among those graduating from Oxford University, and to provide “tailored growth support with specialist banking expertise to help start-ups”, in order to access funding and scale their businesses. 

Tracey said: “Oxford University has always been a place where great and ground-breaking ideas begin – but our responsibility is to ensure they can develop, thrive and have impact here in our region. Equinox brings together the extraordinary talent, research and entrepreneurial drive of Oxfordshire to create a more connected, equitable innovation ecosystem where everyone benefits. 

“By working in true partnership – across universities, business, government and communities – we can turn discovery into opportunity, and opportunity into shared prosperity. This is the power of Oxford’s innovation: generous service to society.”

Why we’re obsessed with Greek myth retellings

Hannah Becker
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Why we’re obsessed with Greek myth retellings

In every bookshop today, from Blackwell’s to Waterstones, an unmistakable pattern emerges: Greek myth is everywhere. Madeline Miller’s Circe and The Song of Achilles, Natalie Haynes’ A Thousand Ships and Stone Blind, Jennifer Saint’s Ariadne and Elektra – the shelves are lined with new voices reanimating old gods. TikTok’s #BookTok feeds are filled with passages from the Iliad rephrased as feminist manifestos. At first glance, it might seem like another publishing trend, a convenient recycling of familiar stories. Yet, the deeper one looks, the more this modern fascination resembles something much older: the Renaissance revival of classical antiquity.

In the fifteenth century, figures such as Erasmus and Petrarch championed what became known as imitatio – the creative imitation of classical forms not to replicate them, but to revive moral and intellectual life through them. Humanist education taught that returning to Homer, Virgil, and Ovid was not an act of nostalgia, but of renewal. The ancients were the mirror in which one might learn how to be human. The irony is that, half a millennium later, our own culture appears to be doing the same thing – but with an entirely different goal. Our retellings are not about perfecting eloquence or virtue. They are about recovering lost voices, rewriting the silenced, and reinterpreting old myths for a fractured modern world.

The principle of imitatio still stands, but it has mutated. In Miller’s Circe, the once-marginal witch of The Odyssey becomes a self-determining woman, a figure of autonomy rather than enchantment. Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls retells the Iliad through the enslaved women of the Trojan War, transforming an epic of heroes into a testimony of trauma. In both cases, imitation becomes dialogue: the ancient story is kept intact, but its meaning is reconfigured. The authors imitate less the style of the ancients than the act of reinterpretation itself. They do to myth what the Renaissance did to antiquity, just with a different set of moral priorities.

The Renaissance humanists sought harmony; we seek empathy. Where Erasmus believed that reading the ancients refined the intellect, we turn to them to process identity, loss, and power. That shift reflects our time and zeitgeist. We live in an age of endless digital noise, political fatigue, and moral uncertainty. Myths offer structure in the chaos – not moral clarity, but continuity. Their archetypes persist precisely because they are so elastic: gods and mortals, fate and free will, hubris and punishment. These are the recurring cycles through which human experience can still be traced.

And yet, it would be unfair to dismiss the revival as purely aesthetic or therapeutic. Greek mythology is uniquely built for reinvention. Its stories are broad enough to absorb every cultural anxiety. Today, feminist writers use it to reassert female subjectivity; queer authors find in it the fluidity of identity and desire. The Song of Achilles’ tender portrayal of love between Achilles and Patroclus has resonated profoundly with a generation newly attuned to queerness and emotional vulnerability. The myths’ capacity to change shape without losing their essence is what allows them to thrive now just as they did two thousand years ago, and again in the Renaissance.

It is not insignificant that these retellings are also aesthetically seductive objects. The modern publishing market has been quick to capitalise on the trend, packaging ancient tragedy in pastel covers and gold-leaf lettering. Myth has become a commodity of beauty, marketed as both literary and accessible. Yet, the commodification doesn’t necessarily diminish its value. After all, ancient myths were also commercial in their own way: performed, copied, and reinterpreted for different audiences and city-states. The endless retelling of these stories is what has kept them alive. Still, there is an undeniable tension between revival and marketing, between rediscovering meaning and reproducing it for aesthetic consumption.

Perhaps the question, then, is not whether our fascination with Greek myth is genuine, but what kind of meaning we expect it to provide. The Renaissance returned to the ancients to find order; we return to it to find ourselves. We reimagine Medusa not as a monster but as a woman punished for her violation, a mirror of modern rage. We turn to Icarus not as a warning against ambition, but as an emblem of yearning for transcendence. The myths change shape, but the human need behind them does not. We use myth to articulate what cannot otherwise be said – the unspeakable, the repetitive, the archetypal.

Our retellings are, at heart, exercises in humanist thinking. Erasmus might not recognise his doctrine of imitatio in #BookTok, but he would recognise the impulse. To rewrite an ancient story is to participate in the same ongoing project of self-definition that the humanists began: using the past to refine, and in some sense define, the present. Our current mythic revival is therefore not an escape from modernity but a confrontation with it. Through the ancients, we rediscover our capacity for meaning, even when meaning feels endangered in the times we live in.

Down the rabbit hole: illustrating ‘Alice in Wonderland’

Verity Fleetwood-Law
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Down the rabbit hole: illustrating ‘Alice in Wonderland’

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has long proved an endless source of inspiration to illustrators. Hundreds of artists have illuminated Lewis Carroll’s vision, with many viewing it as the crowning jewel of their illustrative achievements. Alice is a story more preoccupied with posing questions than providing answers: on its publication in 1865, Carroll broke away from the tradition of didactic children’s literature, instead gifting us with an endlessly imaginative realm of wonderment. It is Wonderland’s enigmatic nature that has allowed artists the liberty to creatively re-interpret its landscape and characters, whilst drawing inspiration from their predecessors.

Though Lewis Carroll himself was the first to illustrate Alice in Wonderland, it was John Tenniel, a political cartoonist for the magazine Punch, who was chosen to illustrate the text in print. Tenniel developed his theatrical style through observing both zoo animals and actors on stage, which proved to be an excellent training for Wonderland’s cast of anthropomorphic characters. One of his most celebrated illustrations is that of the White Rabbit looking at his pocket watch. Tenniel’s Rabbit is both anatomically accurate and incredibly individualistic – his expression of timidity and apprehension humanises the character and renders the tardy Rabbit believable to his young audience.

Tenniel established the key tenet of illustrating Wonderland as being doubly fantastical, and eerily close to reality. Elements of Oxford life seem to have inspired him – the White Rabbit, with his checkered coat and pocket watch, is reminiscent of contemporary dons. The Queen of Hearts’ banquet, high table and gowns included, is akin to a formal. This verisimilitude recalls the most intriguing question of the book – how real is Wonderland, and how much of it is composed from real elements of Alice’s (or our own) lives?

Queen of Hearts banquet, filled with robes, dons and a High table
Image Credit: rawpixel CC0 Licence

Though Tenniel’s illustrations are undoubtedly iconic, many other artists have created novel oeuvres from Carroll’s classic. The first American edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was printed in 1899 and illustrated by Blanche McManus. Her illustrations are charming with their firmly American essence. The red, green, and black colour palette lends Wonderland a kitsch feel, evoking the illustrations of Dr Seuss. McManus’s Alice is rendered more cherubic than Tenniel’s slightly sour little girl. She fashions Alice in a full 1860s-style skirt and gives her round cheeks and soft curls to match.

Some of the most visually striking and beautiful illustrations of Alice in Wonderland came after the Second World War. Leonard Weisgard’s 1949 illustrations are stunning in their vibrancy and geometric patterns. Far more static than Tenniel’s images, they function as set pieces which expand our conception of Wonderland and its flora and fauna. Alice and her cat gaze at us pensively from the topsy turvy splendour of flowers, creatures, and chess pieces.

The decade of psychedelics, the 1960s, proved fertile to the imagination of Alice illustrators. One such was Tove Jansson, the Finnish author best known for creating the Moomin books. Despite the delicate touch and pastel colours of her illustrations for the Swedish edition, Jansson nevertheless maintains a more sombre, contemplative tone than her predecessors. Instead of the Cheshire Cat’s leering grin, we see the back of his head as he turns towards a pensive Alice, who is demurely clad in white.

Salvador Dalí’s 1969 photogravures of Alice in Wonderland are typically abstract. Dalí maximises his medium (which combines the processes of etching and photography), using it to highlight the book’s eerie blend of the imaginary and the real. In The Pool of Tears, Alice’s tears take on a life of their own, seeming to swim across a muted palette of blues, greens and purples. Alice herself becomes a tiny, shadowy figure, relegated to a corner; Dalí challenges the predominance of Alice in her own story. Wonderland mightily dwarfs Alice and the reader, who is her double and fellow initiate in this new realm.

Chris Riddell credits the original Alice pictures with sparking his passion for illustration. In his recognisable style of bright, primary colours (that emphasise a sense of childlike wonderment) Riddell pays homage to Tenniel in his 2020 illustrations. His protagonist takes inspiration from the real-life inspiration for Alice, Alice Liddell, and his Mad Hatter becomes an androgynous figure. This androgyny fits the enigma of Wonderland, which after all is a place where rules may be broken – why shouldn’t this include the binaries of gender?

Riddell’s approach to the Mad Hatter highlights what makes Alice in Wonderland so unique, as each generation of artists can adapt the story anew. Some past illustrations now seem delightfully anachronistic – take Willy Pogany’s 1920s flapper-style or Helen Oxenbury’s trainer-clad Alice for example. The ingenuity of Carroll’s textual creation birthed an expansive space for illustrators to explore their craft, and it is thanks to him and the work of Tenniel, whose iconic artwork has inspired countless others, that the momentum for Alice illustrations has not decreased since its publication.

The Vice-Chancellor’s oration lacks a story

Finlo Cowley
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The Vice-Chancellor’s oration lacks a story

The Vice-Chancellor’s annual oration certainly seems like one of those arcane procedures for which Oxford University is renowned. Professor Irene Tracey delivered her speech standing in front of a gilded throne in the Sheldonian Theatre, flanked by academics in mortar boards and suspiciously animal-like capes. Despite its out-of-date presentation, Professor Tracey’s annual address to the University community matters, setting the tone for the coming academic year and sending signals to the wider public about Oxford’s role in British society. A keen marathon runner, she used the tale of Pheidippides as the starting point in a speech centred on the importance of stories. The story of Oxford, according to Tracey, is one of innovation, achievement, and progress but also of hope, truth, and kindness.

However, the oration also made plain the difficulties Tracey will face in selling her story of Oxford. It was hard to miss the glaring contradictions in her speech. Take the several thinly veiled jabs at President Donald Trump. Her pledge to “seek truth, no matter the headwinds” was surely an allusion to the academic climate in America, with the Trump administration threatening several higher-education institutions with reductions to federal spending over what critics say are ideological grievances. 

More obviously, Tracey directly challenged Trump’s claim that climate change is a “con job”, asserting the reality of climate change and seeming to dig at the Trump administration’s dubious health claims when saying that “climate change is not caused by paracetamol”. The contrast with her announcement of the new Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities was stark. Stephen A. Schwarzman, the businessman and philanthropist who has given the largest single gift to the University since the Renaissance, is a friend of Trump’s and a Republican megadonor who gave $40 million to Republicans during the 2024 election cycle. This “wonderful addition to our Oxford family” flies in the face of the values Professor Tracey set out in her speech. 

The same disconnect is apparent in the most reported-on section of the speech where Tracey sets out Oxford’s commitment to Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI). Whether or not the Vice-Chancellor’s assertion that “no-one is excluded if you have the smarts” was a reference to the Oxford Union’s embattled President-Elect George Abaraonye as some outlets claimed, the contrast with Schwarzman, whose political beneficiary has spent much of the past year railing against such policies, is striking. The simple platitudes of Professor Tracey’s Oxford story are perhaps not so simple.  

The trend continues. The Vice-Chancellor’s pronouncements on freedom of speech are juxtaposed with her announcement of changes to the University’s disciplinary policies, which have been opposed by a number of academics over its new ‘illiberal’ clauses. A commitment to harnessing the power of AI by giving all students access to ChatGPT-5 is confused by blunt messaging on its dangers. A note on “celebrating the humanities” seems like an afterthought next to the lavish praise doled out to the sciences. Perhaps mixed messaging will always be the case when the University hosts, for instance, both a Department of Computer Science committed to innovation and an Institute for Ethics in AI housed in the Philosophy department. But it also suggests there are deeper, more intractable tensions in Oxford’s story. 

One story of Oxford that went unmentioned in this year’s oration is that of politics. This has been the ever-present backdrop to Professor Tracey’s first years as Vice-Chancellor. From the controversy over Kathleen Stock’s attendance at a Union debate in her first year to the Gaza encampment and Oxford Action for Palestine protesters occupying her office, politics has dominated the public’s perception of Oxford during her tenure. Unfortunately for Professor Tracey, this has also meant that it has overshadowed much of what Oxford has done well over the past few years. 

This is the real point of storytelling in Oxford – politics skews every University announcement. So ubiquitous is Oxford in the public imagination that it occupies two ends of an exaggerated spectrum. On the one hand, a backward institution, clinging on to its traditions (and endowments) like its privileged toffs to their trust funds. On the other, a tragic symbol of a once-great British institution hijacked by radical, left-wing academics interested only in gender studies and “decolonising” curricula. It is not surprising, then, given our polarised political climate, that Professor Tracey’s attempts to avoid ruffling any feathers instead expose deep contradictions. 

The real shame is that, under Tracey’s careful if confusing balancing act, there are some important messages that go missing. The fact that Oxford already provides a bursary equivalent to 60% of a full government maintenance grant to one in four undergraduates was news to me, as was the fact that the cost of teaching an undergraduate at Oxford is around £25,000. Whilst the recent tuition fee cap rise strikes many as unfair, students would certainly benefit from knowing the wider financial context facing universities and the generous support Oxford offers. These announcements go largely unnoticed by the student population as the oration takes place before the majority of us have returned to Oxford.

The challenges facing the Vice-Chancellor’s mission to redefine Oxford’s story for a new age are formidable. It seems like the story that Professor Tracey is destined to tell might be less a marathon, more of a tightrope walk. 

Grieving in Oxford: Tips from a bereaved student

Eve Ryder
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Grieving in Oxford: Tips from a bereaved student

Grief touches all of us, and yet none of us in quite the same way. My grief is different to yours, to his, to hers, and to theirs. This can make it feel isolating at times. At Oxford, the relentless pace of academic output, the churning mill of essays and tutorial work, allows little time for indulging in sadness. Not feeling up to it is no excuse, we are told. For me, grief is inseparable from the geography of the city itself. It’s in the cobbled streets that I’ve cried along on the way to class, it’s in the reflection of the river, the stillness of the meadow, the library. After multiple bereavements during my time here, memories of my own distress overlay one another in an unsettling repetition.

Grief has fundamentally altered my university experience. It has led me to miss important emails, struggle to concentrate for extended periods, lose a sense of purposeful organisation. My academic life has become a constant test of self-forgiveness and self-compassion. It’s difficult to watch others completing in just a few hours an assignment that took me several days. At the same time, bereavement has taught me crucial perspective – sometimes there are more important things in life than Prelims.

The stifling effects of grief haven’t inhibited my productivity alone, but also my ability to socialise. My increased anxiety levels leave me feeling overwhelmed by the smallest of tasks, and I often zone out of social situations. My friends and I laugh about how long I spend staring into space, but the blank look is less a sign of disinterest than a reflection of my lack of presence. The rapid swings of my emotions have become uncontrollable and unpredictable. It happens at the most inconvenient moments – a ball, a formal, a musical performance – but I’m lucky to have friends at hand to offer a tissue.

Beyond my fluctuating moods, I have come to realise the extent to which seasons can affect the intensity of grief. I found summer time particularly difficult, characterised by listless days and sleepless nights. Everyone seemed to be enjoying their Trinity, punting and picnicking in the sun. Yet for me the sunshine felt much heavier and melancholic. Instead, I spent a lot of time inside, burying myself in my work. Certain dates brought painful anniversaries. It can be difficult to know how to spend the time, whether to memorialise the day with others or simply get through it. I found myself collating commemorative Instagram posts, but while meaningful, this never feels enough. 

The title of this article is ironic because, in my experience, there is nothing more frustrating than advice on how to deal with grief. How can I regulate something so omnipresent, so bound up with my existence? The assumption that it is resolvable is absurd; the attempt, though well-intentioned, is audacious. But perhaps there is something to be gained from sharing our experiences. Hope? Or maybe a sense of unity and empathy. After all, the prerequisite for grief is, in fact, love. Could it be that the desired result isn’t resolution, but simply understanding? 

First and foremost, my advice would be to accept support from your loved ones. It may help to communicate how they can be there for you. This can mean a phone call, a sweet treat, or simply leaving you to your own devices for a while. For some, professional support can be extremely beneficial. Counselling, although awkward at first, as I struggled to open up fully, became fundamental to my healing process, and I still contact my counsellor from time to time. Likewise, I would suggest reaching out to your College Welfare services. I used to book a weekly appointment and would always leave feeling much lighter thanks to their support and encouragement.

Believe it or not, your support network also includes your tutors. It may help to let them know you’re feeling overwhelmed, and at the very least, it gives them context for potential underperformance. Giving yourself grace academically is important: unsurprisingly, I began my second year feeling completely unprepared. Try to absolve your mind of self-judgement. It may take time, but there is nothing you cannot bounce back from. 

It helps to observe the little things, a drink or a sweet treat, that brighten your day, and indulge in them (my blueberry matcha latte obsession grew exponentially). This can also include hobbies and activities. I reconnected with my life-long love of tap dance, and this became the only time of the week I could completely switch off. At Oxford, I’ve also found escape in the cinema. Even if Moana 2 didn’t quite live up to my expectations, it did distract me from the stresses of university life. As time passes, you might also find relief in creativity, be it writing, poetry, singing, or art.  

Finally, know that grief comes in waves. The intensity can wax and wane over time, even if it always stays with you. My dog passed away while I was editing this article and I’ve strangely found myself consulting my own words, grounding myself once again. Throughout university I have often felt that things will never get better. Yet, despite my pessimistic disposition, I find myself surprised by how, in time, life changes in ways I never anticipated. When the time comes, and it will, lean into moments of lightness and laughter. Oxford is far from easy, even without the echo of grief. I hope you find solace in the knowledge that you are not alone and take pride in your strength in persisting, in spite of it all.

Sending warmth and my condolences this Michaelmas.

Ethics versus economics: The WTA Finals in Riyadh

Gavriella Epstein-Lightman
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Ethics versus economics: The WTA Finals in Riyadh

I am a tennis aficionado. I follow tennis year-round, and each tournament has a special place for me – except for one. 

The WTA Finals, an elite competition open exclusively to the top eight female singles and doubles players, started on November 1st. It is described as the ‘crown jewel’ of the tennis season. The showpiece. Yet I feel a gnawing sense of discomfort as this tournament proceeds. 

For the second year, the WTA Finals is being held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as part of a three-year contract. Hosting the WTA Finals is part of Saudi Arabia’s efforts to establish a foothold in tennis in order to rehabilitate its global image. The lucrative sums Saudi Arabia has offered to host the Finals have proved too tempting to resist for the WTA, which is under pressure to deliver on its pledge to achieve equal prize money for men and women by 2029. Whilst there is equal prize money at the four Grand Slams, pay equity is far away on the regular tour. The Italian Open, for instance, awards women 75% of the total prize money that the men receive. WTA prize money this year was a record $249 million – a 13% increase on 2024. Beneath this apparent success story lies the troubling reality that WTA prize money lags far behind the ATP tour, which offered $348 million in prize money this year. At the WTA Finals, however, prize money will be a record $15.5 million, a staggering sum which is on par with the money on offer at the ATP Finals in Turin. 

Aside from the financial considerations, the WTA leadership has also argued that a move to Saudi Arabia could help encourage women’s sports in Saudi Arabia and inspire future generations. ‘I’m a huge believer in engagement,’ Billie Jean King said in 2023, as talks regarding holding the WTA Finals in Riyadh were ongoing. ‘I don’t think you can change unless you engage.’ But it is naïve to think that hosting a tennis tournament will change the situation for women and girls in Saudi Arabia. By holding the WTA Finals in Saudi Arabia, the WTA won’t only fail to bring about change – it will be complicit in Saudi sportswashing. 

It is true that some positive changes have occurred in Saudi Arabia. Women can now obtain passports without male approval and there are new protections against employment discrimination. Women can drive. 

This veneer of liberalisation cannot conceal the reality that Saudi Arabia continues to imprison, interrogate, and torture women’s rights activists. The country is ranked 132nd out of 148 countries on the 2025 Global Gender Gap index. The liberalisation laws passed by Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, touted as ‘progressive’, actually enshrine male guardianship over women, and include provisions which facilitate domestic violence and sexual abuse in marriage. A new law requires women to obtain a male guardian’s permission to marry, and fathers remain the default guardians of their children. 

The Saudi human rights record is not just dubious when it comes to women’s rights. Homosexuality is illegal and can carry the death sentence. Elsewhere, the Saudis are part of a coalition conducting a military campaign against the Houthi rebels in Yemen, including strikes which have killed thousands of civilians. Saudi border guards have killed hundreds of Ethiopian migrants and asylum seekers who have tried to cross the Yemen-Saudi border.

Many have asked how tennis can hold a prestigious event in a country with such a persistently atrocious human rights record. Holding the WTA Finals in Riyadh legitimises the actions of the Saudi regime and does a disservice to the hundreds of women’s rights activists imprisoned in the pursuit of equality. It’s also true that the WTA can and has relied on other sources of revenue, including broadcast rights, sponsorship deals and profits from the grand slams. 

The WTA was founded in 1973 by Billie Jean King, with a commitment to advancing women’s equality and opportunity. The decision to succumb to Saudi deep pockets is one sorely at odds with the values on which it was founded. Let’s hope this decision is a short-term misstep, and not the start of a new, worrying status quo. 

Richard Ovenden: “We are guardians of facts and truth, rights of citizens, and identities of communities”

Hattie Simpson
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Richard Ovenden: “We are guardians of facts and truth, rights of citizens, and identities of communities”

From his office in the Clarendon building on Broad Street, Richard Ovenden calls libraries “the infrastructure of democracy.” These words are spoken with the authority of someone who clearly sees preservation not as nostalgia, but as a duty – a form of stewardship for knowledge itself. As the 25th Bodley’s Librarian, Ovenden is custodian of one of Europe’s oldest libraries, and he makes a simple but radical claim: that protecting the archive is an act of public service. 

It’s a belief that clearly shapes every part of his work at the Bodleian, where the boundaries between scholarship and politics are never entirely clear. As Ovenden admits, the archives are “capital P political” – home to the papers of prime ministers as well as the official archive of the Conservative Party, the records of Oxfam and the anti-apartheid movement. But he also recognises that every decision about what to preserve is, in itself, political. “Archivists are human beings”, he says; while they follow collection development policy, they are inevitably guided by their own interests and conflicts. His own interest lies in photography – a passion that has shaped recent acquisitions and exhibitions, most notably ‘The Camera Helps’ at the Weston Library, the first retrospective of the works of British social documentary photographer, Paddy Summerfield. As he puts it, “humans who have worked in the Bodleian for over 400 years have all played their role”, and this, too, is part of its lineage; his personal curiosity will undeniably leave a lasting institutional trace.

Ovenden is deeply conscious of the Bodleian’s long and sometimes fraught history. The library first opened its doors to the public on the 8th November 1602, celebrating its 423rd birthday earlier this month. Decisions made by predecessors continue to shape the archive today: historical collection biases, for instance, meant that works by some major women authors of the 19th century were turned down. As Ovenden admits, the decision to reject the first-editions of Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, and the Brontë sisters, “totally haunts me” hundreds of years later. These gaps still resonate within the collection, reminding us that archives were never neutral, and that each generation of librarians leaves its imprint.

These choices about what to preserve are rarely straightforward. As Ovenden explains, there’s always an element of serendipity in what survives – a “supply and demand equation”, as he calls it, that relies as much on timing and luck as on policy. Occasionally, this can decide whether something is lost forever, as with the collection of glass-plate negatives acquired by the Bodleian from the Old Royal Observatory ten years ago. Nearly discarded, they were saved after a quick decision and are now being digitised with the Paris Observatory – a model for how the Bodleian collaborates internationally to preserve vulnerable material. Stories like this illustrate how easily the boundary between loss and survival can blur – and how much of an archivist’s work still rests on timing.

This sense of uncertainty runs through much of Ovenden’s work. With over 13 million printed items, and a rough total count of 23 million items, he admits that “there’s hidden material in there” –  documents, images, and artefacts that haven’t been uncovered yet. It’s clearly a prospect that excites him and one that he sees as central to the Bodleian’s future – particularly as technological developments allow even well-known items to be seen in a new light. Through the ARCHiOx project, alongside the Factum Foundation, the Bodleian has been experimenting with photometric stereo technology to capture the surface of manuscripts in microscopic detail, revealing indentations and marks invisible to the eye. One of the most brilliant discoveries has been to uncover faded etchings and doodles in an 8th-century manuscript – inscriptions that hint at a woman named Eadburg, probably a nun, drawing little characters; not unlike students in a boring tutorial. These hidden marks, invisible to the naked eye, illustrate how new tools are reshaping what ‘preservation’ means. 

Yet as much as technology allows us to uncover the past, it also forces reflection on the present. Ovenden tells me about his lunch earlier that day, where he spent some time discussing social media archiving – how future scholars might want to use the material we produce today, and therefore how we should preserve it. It’s a question that clearly fascinates him partly for its practical implications and partly for what it reveals about the assumptions we make about ourselves. He agrees that “we always think of the current time as the best”, but history, he suggests, teaches otherwise. The choices we make about what to keep – the tweets, the videos, the messages – will shape what the future can know about us, and we have to make those choices now, with imperfect insight. Beyond its value to researchers, this kind of preservation has tangible consequences: records of online communication are already being used in war tribunals and human rights investigations. The challenge, he explains, is that we must make our best estimations of what will be wanted in the future – “and we almost always get it wrong.” 

“I’m a preserver”, he says. It’s not a grand statement, but it captures something central to his work: the quiet insistence that some record, however uncertain, is always worth keeping.

That instinct to preserve extends beyond the Bodleian. In recent pieces in The Observer, Ovenden has repeatedly returned to the question of what happens when societies fail to protect their records – when libraries are closed, books removed from shelves, or archives left to decay. His concern is not nostalgia but accountability. He has written about the closure of public libraries across Britain –  almost 200 since 2016 – which disproportionately affect the most deprived areas of the UK, arguing that they have a direct impact on the freedom of readers. Public libraries, he reminds us, are “the infrastructure of democracy itself”, places that allow everyone to “read freely from well-stocked shelves”, regardless of background or means.

In another piece, Ovenden turns his attention to the United States, where libraries have become “the frontline of the battles over knowledge.” He charts an alarming rise in book bans and political interference – librarians dismissed, data deleted, and the heads of major national institutions forced out. What connects these episodes, he suggests, is not censorship but a deliberate effort to control the public record. As he writes, the “war on libraries” is a warning of how fragile the principles of open access and free inquiry can be. Across both pieces, Ovenden’s message is clear: when the institutions that safeguard knowledge are undermined, democracy itself is weakened. The Bodleian, the public library, and the digital archive all stand on the same foundation – the belief that access to information is a public good, not a privilege. 

The Bodleian’s reach, though, extends far beyond Oxford’s colleges and quads. As Ovenden is quick to point out, it isn’t simply a university resource, but a national one – a library of legal deposit, holding a copy of every book in the UK, and a partner to hundreds of institutions worldwide. Its collections belong not just to scholars in Oxford but to anyone seeking to use them. “The library is more than just an immediate resource for the academic community”, he says in his measured way, describing partnerships with museums, schools and archives that make its vast collection more publicly accessible.

That sense of duty carries particular weight in Oxford, where some of the most deprived communities in the country sit just a short distance from the dreaming spires. Few students ever see that contrast, but Ovenden is acutely aware of it. For him, the Bodleian’s responsibility doesn’t end at the edge of the University. Much of its recent work has focused on finding ways to open up the collections to those who might never otherwise encounter them, through free public exhibitions in the Weston Library to collaborations with local schools, and digital projects that allow people around the world to access material from the reading rooms. Beyond that, innovations such as “tea trolley teaching” designed to provide library services to local hospitals, and the ‘Oxford Reads Kafka’ project of last year, reflect his belief that libraries are not static institutions but “palaces for the people”. As he puts it, “we have a duty as a place of preservation and dissemination of knowledge” – a warning that the work of the Bodleian is not only to safeguard the past, but to ensure that it continues to speak to the present. Therefore, the act of preservation itself is ultimately about the future, not the past; “we are guardians of facts and truth; rights of citizens; and identities of communities.”

When I asked Ovenden about these ideas of legacy – what he hopes will endure beyond his tenure – his thoughts turned immediately to one of the first collections he helped acquire: the Abinger Archive, the papers of Mary Shelley and her parents. At its heart is the manuscript of Frankenstein, accompanied by a series of journals between Percy and Mary Shelley, including the haunting Journal of Sorrow, which Mary kept following Percy’s death in 1822. “Fantastically interesting and important”, he reflects. Being involved in that acquisition, to fundraising to publishing and mounting exhibitions, clearly left a lasting impression on him. It was a concrete reminder that the choices librarians make – what to save, how to preserve and present it – determine what survives, what is remembered. For Ovenden, legacy doesn’t appear to be about monuments or titles, but about ensuring that the traces of human thought and experience – especially those vulnerable to loss – remain accessible and meaningful to future generations.

That sense of responsibility extends into his reflections for students. “I was a history student at Durham and here I am as the Bodley’s Librarian”, he says, almost matter-of-factly, a reminder that curiosity and persistence can take you far. He describes the current moment as a fascinating, if challenging, time to work in the “profession of knowledge” – particularly as access to information is increasingly shaped by commercial platforms and private “superpowers.” This makes the role of librarians and archivists all the more vital: the decisions they make about what to preserve and how are not just about collections – they shape how society remembers, questions, and understands itself. 

Even beyond professional considerations, Ovenden’s personal reading life offers insight into how he thinks about value and preservation. When I asked him for a single favourite book, he hesitated and then asked if I could possibly stretch to two. The first was The Lord of the Rings, which he fell in love with as a teenager after it introduced him to long-form prose and the pleasures of collecting. The second was Olivia Manning’s Balkans Trilogy, which he describes as “the most brilliant writing… more than comfort reading, it’s a balm to the soul.” For Ovenden, these personal attachments are inseparable from his work; they are a reminder that libraries exist not only to safeguard facts but to preserve the imaginative and emotional threads that connect readers across generations. 

Sitting with Richard Ovenden, it becomes clear that the Bodleian is more than just a repository of books and manuscripts; it’s a living testament to the choices societies make about what to remember and what to forget. His favourite books, the ones that first drew him into reading and collecting, serve as a quiet reminder that preservation is about curiosity, imagination and connection, as much as it is about facts. Underpinning it all is the conviction that libraries are, in his words, “the infrastructure of democracy” – a place where knowledge is protected, shared, and made available to all, not just the few. This conviction feels more urgent than ever in a moment where both libraries and democracy are under pressure – from political interference, book bans, and the erosion of public access. His work is a reminder that preservation is not just about safeguarding the past, but about defending the foundations of an open society. In the choices he makes, from rescuing fragile manuscripts to shaping national and international collections, he demonstrates that the survival of knowledge – and with it, the health of democracy – depends on vigilance, curiosity, and the quiet insistence that some record, however vulnerable, is always worth keeping.

Lord Peter Mandelson resigns as honorary fellow of St Catherine’s College

Arina Makarina
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Lord Peter Mandelson resigns as honorary fellow of St Catherine’s College

Lord Peter Mandelson has resigned from his honorary fellowship at St Catherine’s College. A College spokesperson confirmed Lord Mandelson’s resignation, telling Cherwell he resigned because “he has decided to step back from public life”.

The resignation follows Mandelson’s dismissal as the UK ambassador to the US by Sir Keir Starmer in September, which was triggered by the revelation of supportive emails from Mandelson to Jeffrey Epstein after the latter’s conviction as a sex offender in 2008. Mandelson has said he deeply regrets the friendship.

The 238-page book of birthday messages to Epstein, released by the US congressional panel in September, contained entries from Mandelson. One of the documents is a letter, in which Mandelson called Epstein “my best pal”. The book also includes several photographs of Lord Mandelson and Epstein in various of the latter’s properties.

Acknowledging the news of Mandelson’s resignation, St Catherine’s JCR President told Cherwell: “The JCR feel that certain activities and associations of Lord Mandelson do not align with their values as a student body.”

In September, Manchester Metropolitan University stripped Mandelson of the honours that it gave him, including an honorary doctorate and a commemorative medal, over new information about his ties with Epstein.

Mandelson ran for the position of Chancellor at Oxford University last year, but was knocked out in the first round of preference voting. 

During his campaign for Chancellor, Mandelson was questioned about his ties to Epstein. Answering a question at the Oxford Union about whether he knew of the sexual abuse allegations against Epstein, he said: “I’m not, I’m afraid, going to go into further detail about this. I’ve said publicly that I regret meeting him in the first place. Everything that needs to be known about him is now known. There’s nothing further I can add.”

Jeffrey Epstein was an American financier and convicted child sex offender. He was found dead by suicide in 2019 in prison where he was awaiting trial for sex trafficking. 

Speaking at the time of Mandelson’s appointment as the UK ambassador to the US and before the birthday book was released, St Catherine’s College Pro-Master Professor Bart van Es said: “We are proud and delighted to hear of Peter’s appointment and know he will do an excellent job in the role. St Catherine’s is lucky to have Lord Mandelson as an Honorary Fellow and hope, in the near future, to host him again for an event in College.”

Peter Mandelson graduated from St Catherine’s in 1976 with a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE).

Mandelson was approached for comment.

The performance of watching: Cinema in the Letterboxd age

Eve Thomas
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The performance of watching: Cinema in the Letterboxd age

While watching Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another (2025) a few weeks ago, I found myself asking a rather disturbing question: “I wonder what people on Letterboxd are saying about this?” The thought led me to wonder about my own viewing habits: my tendency to search out reviews before I’ve watched a film, to be naturally more interested in or laudatory towards films generally considered ‘great’, or seminal and, my tendency to, unfortunately, denigrate films based solely on some sort of received wisdom that they are bad. This in turn led me to consider whether the whole culture of cinema is changing, becoming increasingly commodified, so that films become just another way of ‘performing’, of distilling a part of ourselves for public consumption. 

Letterboxd presents perhaps the most attractive – and addictive – means of performing the act of watching, allowing users to log, rate, and review every film they watch in a public forum with followers and comments sections to boot. Unlike a legacy review website like Rotten Tomatoes which gives more credence and airtime to professional critics or film journalists, Letterboxd democratises reviewing and makes it entirely public. A review of Todd Haynes’ Carol (2015) which reads “all i want for Christmas is a milf” has the same chance of being seen by thousands of eyes as a 2000-word review which discusses the influence of the Freudian death drive on the protagonists of the film, replete with references to Beauvoir and Friedan. Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with this: I am a Letterboxd user myself and can acknowledge that as a concept it is certainly a successful one. It is also an inevitable one. Goodreads has existed as a means of logging books read since at least 2007, and Spotify wrapped day has attained the status of national holiday as a means of categorising, ranking and, crucially, publicising one’s ‘taste’ or consumption of music. 

So what is the particular fascination with categorising and ranking films watched and enjoyed? Organising one’s taste in this way, quantifying and “gamifying” the act of watching films is a means of distilling one’s cultural personality into rapid and digestible bites which can serve as representations of the individual. It also allows viewers to establish a strict hierarchy of films; the rating of films forces the user to consider them against each other, to consider the relative ‘goodness’ of a film on a numerical scale. In other words, it requires the viewer to quantify a qualitative property. Of course, film rankings, and the snobbishness and general desire for esotericism that comes with them, have existed for decades. The Sight & Sound poll published every ten years by the BFI since 1952 has long been considered the gold standard of film rankings, 100 films chosen by the foremost directors, producers, and critics in the world. And certainly, I’m not disputing the idea that certain films have long been considered more cerebral, artistic and generally “better” than others – with less mainstream, less commercial films usually (unfairly) considered in this former category – yet, what is noticeable is a marked intensification and diffusion of this line of thinking as our taste becomes public to the world. There was some discussion when the 2022 Sight & Sound poll was released surrounding director Ti West’s 10 film choices, which were deemed by certain internet users to be too basic, too generic. The list included films like Citizen Kane (1941), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Jaws (1975), and The Godfather (1975), all films virtually universally considered as masterpieces, yet the Letterboxd generation objected to West’s lack of individualism, the subtext being his lack of obscure choices. 

This intensified desire to be perceived as esoteric is presumably a product of a number of factors, one being most obviously the increased access to more independent and world cinema driving people to hold ‘commercial’ cinema to a higher standard. Another is a wider and more societal shift, wherein we are increasingly visible to the outside world and are aware of this visibility. So, we curate our online personas in response to our perceived audience. Letterboxd’s “four favourites,” four films which can be chosen to be displayed on one’s profile, represents, perhaps, the epitome of this. Choosing four favourites of anything, but especially of something as diverse and complex as films, very quickly becomes an exercise in curating a particular collection of films that one wishes to represent something about oneself rather than a definitive list of the very best films ever. Which is fine, of course, and certainly not a new phenomenon. There is no significant difference between 18th Century aristocrats using their bookshelves as status symbols and the average Letterboxd user curating their four favourites to display just the right amount of whimsy, intellectualism, and obscurity. 

But this obsession with films watched or enjoyed as representations of one’s personality becomes almost a form of ‘collecting’. Films are consumed and owned as badges of membership to a particular group rather than enjoyed on their own, for what they are. Viewers may begin to go into cinemas with expectations of how a film should be viewed based on a pre-existing consensus. The general trend of logging and displaying films after watching them may also be associated with a general reduction in people’s attention spans as a result of short form video, making the event of actually watching a film all the way through all the more significant and thus worthy of display. 

Of course, none of this is to say that Letterboxd has ruined cinema or that we’ve all become narcissists with taste spreadsheets. Most of the time, it’s really not that deep: people enjoy seeing which films they’ve watched and like to know what their friends think too. Still, there’s something funny about how even the most innocuous hobbies now seem to need an audience.

Film festivals should be more pretentious, actually!

Luisa Blacker Espozel
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Film festivals should be more pretentious, actually!

Film festivals often get a bad rep. We’ve all heard the stereotype before: they are elitist and out-of-touch, filled with arrogant critics watching obscure films in exclusive, luxurious cinemas. The Oxford Student even ran a piece about this perceived pretentiousness in 2012: if a director wants festival success, an anti-Cannes crusader writes, what they ought to have made was a slow black-and-white film about German Protestantism. But a false binary holds up these views – the idea that festival films are just for the ivory tower, while commercial blockbusters are accessible, democratic cinema. Maybe Tony Stark is a man of the people, after all! But with any sort of inspection, this dichotomy crumbles, and we can see the important role these events play in the entertainment industry.  

Before I go any further, though, I have a confession: I am a film festival aficionado. I love getting to see films early, reading reviews as soon as the embargos are lifted, and joining in on the buzz around a particularly riveting watch. I am also the director for the upcoming 2026 Oxford University Short Film Festival this Hilary, and president of Oxford University Filmmaking Foundation (OUFF). But before you dismiss my arguments as the ramblings of a cinephile, I should tell you that I got placed a laughable number 14,733 in the queue for tickets at the recent BFI London Film Festival. So, I have not only a bone to pick, but a claim to neutrality. 

Still, to paint Cannes, Sundance, or Venice as some sort of resistance to ‘the market’ betrays a lack of knowledge about how these events actually work. Festivals are inherently commercial. Not only are big action movies often a key part of festival line-ups, but the events are designed to facilitate film sales to distributors. When OUFF interviews independent filmmakers, for example, our guests often describe festivals as a busy time in their lives not because of the number of films they watched, but the number of meetings it took to sell their film. Here, distributors are looking for the awards players and viral twitter gems, films that will bring them money through their cultural cachet.  

Despite the box-office obsession underpinning this process, festivals are nonetheless a platform to champion independent and world cinema. They have allowed underrepresented films to be watched by increasingly bigger audiences through this very distribution pipeline. A lot of films that went on to be at the centre of the cultural conversation and had great box office performances had their start at a festival. The Worst Person in the World (2021)? Snagged by Neon at Cannes. Past Lives (2023)? A24 at Sundance. Conversely, the films that skip the festival season completely are the ones that have the security of a well-established filmmaker behind them or a giant studio machine banking on their success (think Oppenheimer (2023) or, more recently, One Battle After Another (2025)). Not looking so democratic now, huh! But to prejudge quality based on how a film found a distributor is misinformed: ‘festival’ or ‘straight to theatre’ films are not good or bad because of the path they took to reach our screens. Different films just need different launchpads, and there is nothing wrong with that.

What worries me the most is the aversion to ‘pretension’ that underlies criticism of festivals. “Pretentious” often just means “foreign” or “challenging”. And such criticism is born out of a lack of confidence in the audience, whether it be their willingness to read subtitles, to appreciate an innovative film technique, or to welcome new talent on and behind the screen. This is not only anti-intellectual but extremely patronising to the ‘standard viewer.’  

Festivals are the best answer we have, and fulfil an incredibly important role, but this does not mean that commercial or political concerns are ignored once the lights dim in the theatre. Box office and lack of political resolve keep getting in the way of audiences’ access to great cinema. Just think of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land (2024), which played at the Berlinale but failed to secure American distribution. So many important stories are left only for festival audiences to see – not because of exclusivity or elitism but because of risk-aversion.   

As the entertainment industry gets increasingly formulaic, festivals (and the distributors that attend it) must double down on demanding respect for the audience and ensuring they have the opportunity to watch all kinds of cinema: daring, eye-opening, “pretentious”. This is far from an anti-commercial endeavour: they are simply supplying the consumer with more choice.

So, yeah, give me the slow black-and-white film about German Protestantism. Let pretentiousness run rampant. We could use more of it. 

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