Oxford Action for Palestine (OA4P) is protesting at matriculation today and disrupted a ceremony. A student in subfusc unfurled a flag and made a speech inside the Sheldonian, while members of the group have been handing out Palestinian flags to freshers.

Earlier in the morning, a student unfurled a large flag and walked in front of the ceremony to deliver a speech. According to video footage shared by OA4P, she said: “…Humanitarian crisis in the Middle East, there is a genocide happening right now. You will not use the language of genocide. You will not be honest about that, and you talk to us about truth. It is disingenuous.” Two security officers escorted her outside.

There were no Bod card or ID checks for students entering the Sheldonian.

As thousands of freshers in subfusc walk down Broad Street, OA4P members in keffiyehs are handing out small Palestinian flags to the queue, and occasionally freshers accept. However, once inside the Sheldonian gate a University official is taking away some of the flags, according to video footage shared by OA4P. A student told Cherwell that she was able to take her flag inside by hiding it in her trousers.

In the afternoon, protestors staged a “die-in” where they lay on the floor, attempting to prevent students entering the theatre to matriculate. Each time the students were directed to enter through a new gate, the protestors moved to block it, causing long queues and crowds outside the Clarendon Building. Matriculants eventually were able to enter, walking past a banner which read “While you read Gaza bleeds”.

The scene echoed similar protests during graduation ceremonies throughout summer.

The University told Cherwell: “Oxford is committed to ensuring that we are an inclusive and welcoming place for all of our community. We are disappointed with OA4P’s attempt to disrupt and spoil the event for our incoming students at two of the 10 matriculation ceremonies today. We are pleased to report that all ceremonies were completed and there was much joy. We would like to congratulate all those students who matriculated, and we extend to them a very warm welcome to Oxford.

The University supports peaceful protest, in line with our commitment to freedom of speech, and provides clear guidance on demonstrations and protests. Actions which disrupt University events are not acceptable. Students in breach of University rules may face disciplinary action, fines or suspension.”

A matriculating DPhil student participating in the disruption said:  “I had to say something because why would I be silent in front of someone who is meant to lead our University but is actually friends with terrorists. Our fellow students deserve to know this. The entire central management of this University does not care about my Palestinian and Lebanese friends and alumni or their family in the Levant. If they did, they would end the University’s complicity in the murder of their people. The only explanation is racism. When they look at black and brown skin, they don’t see human value, they see profit from their slaughter.”

Biotracks technology is fitting the “smallest harmonic radar tag ever” onto bees. A cross-department team at Oxford University, led by Dr. Tonya Lander, is using these chips to improve understanding of pollinator habits and migration behaviour.

Harmonic radar tags were invented by the team to investigate declining insect and bird populations and how to help them.

Associate Professor of Engineering Science Chris Stevens explained that tracking the bees includes two systems. The first “converts radar signals to a higher frequency”, which is then picked up with receivers carried on drones, illuminating the bee. This then “pings back a higher frequency signal”, which can be located with another radio receiver. The second system uses LED lights which reflect off the bee’s tags and are then picked up by a camera.

Lander said that Biotracks technology “will change our understanding of insect use of landscapes at the large spatial scale”. Biotrackers extend the viewing range of insects, thus allowing researchers to better understand how bees maintain the ecosystem in order to form conservation strategies.

Many species of insects are in decline, posing a risk to the 35% of global crop production and 85% of wild flowering plants that rely on pollinators. Lander explained in a video for the University’s website that this means: “[the pollinators will] set fewer or possibly no seeds, which means no fruit for us to eat but also no reproduction of those plants for the next generations.”

Although Lander doesn’t know exactly how this technology will be used, she is hopeful others may find “exciting new applications” for the equipment beyond insect and bird migration.

Nearly £1 million has been awarded to Oxford University to strengthen its conservation and heritage science initiatives.

The Oxford Collaboration in Heritage Science Research and Engagement (OCHRE) project received the funding from the UK Research and Innovation Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The University is a leading player in AHRC’s £80 million investment project.

Aiming to foster collaboration between arts and sciences, OCHRE will involve the departments of Geography, Archaeology, Materials Science, Engineering, and Chemistry at the University – as well as institutions like the Bodleian Library and Ashmolean Museum. 

OCHRE is part of the national Research Infrastructure for Conservation and Heritage Science (RICHeS) programme, which aims to utilise improved technology to safeguard the UK’s cultural heritage. RICHeS seeks to improve access to heritage collections, stimulate the UK’s heritage economy, and drive innovation in material science.

Led by Professor Heather Viles of the School of Geography and the Environment, OCHRE will create a sustainable heritage science hub connecting eight laboratories that will be equipped with advanced tools. Viles told Cherwell that the hub would take the form of “a modest, hot-desking space” and “a series of events to showcase what [they] do.” 

Viles said she was excited about “addressing some big challenges for cultural heritage”. She also told Cherwell that she was “really keen to work with all types of heritage organisation, from the biggest and highest profile sites which attract global visitors such as Blenheim Palace” to “much less well-known local sites.”

New technologies enabled by the investment include scanning electron microscopes and enhanced digital and hyperspectral imaging technologies, which will increase the detail visible when artefacts are being studied. Higher-performance equipment for chemical and structural analysis and portable analysis tools will also be introduced, including handheld X-ray devices thought of as a “lab in your pocket”.

The UK had a heritage sector of £31 billion in 2019 according to Historic England, with Oxford itself providing £7.9 billion in research and knowledge exchange activities in 2018-2019.

Oxford researchers found that British adults are healthier than Americans, especially in terms of cardiovascular health. The study compared empirical data from British and American adults aged between 33 and 46, revealing that American adults are much more likely to be obese, face high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and have overall poor cardiovascular health.

Significantly, the study reveals that even the most affluent Americans have health equal to, or worse than, the most deprived Brits. Co-author of the study, Dr Andrea Tilstra, believes that America’s high inequality, alongside an extremely limited welfare state, has contributed to these findings.

In addition to comparing their health, the study asked participants about their self-perception. The researchers found that while British adults have better health, they are more likely to say that they’re in poor health. While 18% of Brits said they had “poor health”, only 12% of Americans said so.

Nevertheless, the UK is by no means in the clear. Deputy Director of the Leverhulme Centre Professor Jennifer Dowd notes that Britain has a large smoker population when compared to the US.

Additionally, Britain has a growing obesity epidemic. The study reports the British obesity rate at 34.5%, trailing narrowly behind the US’s rate of 40.4%. Professor Dowd said that the “worsening health trends in the US could serve as a warning for Britain”, and she is not alone in this.

This study is in line with Prime Minister Starmer’s description of the NHS’s state as “reform or die”. Starmer further detailed that currently one in three British adults are obese, with one in five having high blood pressure by midlife, and that “those from the most deprived backgrounds are twice as likely to be obese by reception age”, indicating the complexity of the problem.

Dr Tilstra further adds that this paper illustrates a unique opportunity for comparative research between the two nations, by specifically comparing “differences in policies and other environmental contexts”.

In collaboration with the UN, a team of Oxford University researchers released a report focused on the legal recognition, land rights, and mobility, including transboundary movement, of Mobile Indigenous Peoples. The Oxford team also organised an event with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) at the UN General Assembly in New York on Monday.

Oxford’s Dr. Ariell Ahearn, a lecturer at the School of Geography and the Environment, and Professor Dawn Chatty, an Emeritus Professor of Anthropology and Forced Migration, led the team responsible for in-person and virtual consultations with Mobile Indigenous Peoples, including the Sámi reindeer herders of Finland and the Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada. 

Dr Ahearn told Cherwell: “[Mobile Peoples] have experienced discrimination and criminalisation based on their mobility and human rights violations. These must be rectified and the rights upheld by states and the UN.” 

The UN event on Monday 14^th aimed to introduce context around this Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of Mobile Indigenous People. Hosted in partnership with several organisations including the UNDP, University of Arizona and the Special Rapporteur’s Office.

The report relates to demands of the Dana+20 Manifesto, which calls on governments, corporations, UN agencies and researchers to create policies that recognise and protect mobile lifeways, through building upon a statement of principles called the Dana Declaration on Mobile Peoples and Conservation (2002) of which Chatty is a committee member. 

The report on the situation of Mobile Indigenous Peoples was presented to the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly on 15^th October. According to the report, Mobile Indigenous Peoples face increasing challenges such as border restrictions, environmental degradation, and loss of land rights, which threaten their way of life and ability to sustain their cultural heritage. The report found conditions including an 8% decrease of precipitation and an average temperature 2.5 times the world average in the Mongolian highlands, killing herders’ livestock and threatening their livelihoods.

“As an academic activist who has worked closely with Mongolian mobile pastoralists and witnessed the destruction of their homelands including sacred sites by mining companies, I consider it my duty to join their fight for justice,” Ahearn told Cherwell.

The Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, José Francisco Calí Tzay, explicitly thanked the University of Oxford in the report for organising the virtual consultation and side event at the twenty-third session of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues this past Spring. 

Since beginning her academic career forty years ago, Chatty has advocated for the rights of Mobile peoples and the power of academics to bring sound research to the table. She told Cherwell: “For decades much academic and development ‘research’ insisted that mobile peoples were backward, irrational, and an embarrassment to progressive, development models of modernity.” 

Instead, she said that: “movement and mobility need to be recognised as an excellent adaptive strategy – in terms of livelihoods as well as current global climate change”. Chatty continued: “We need to get away from the sedentist perspective that sees mobility as somehow threatening.” 

Looking ahead, several Oxford researchers will attend events provisionally set in Mongolia in 2026, which the United Nations has deemed the International Year of Rangeland and Pastoralists.