Oxford University has announced the creation of the Oxford-UBS Centre for Applied AI, a research partnership between Swiss wealth manager UBS, Oxford’s Saïd Business School and the University’s Mathematical, Physical, and Life Sciences division.
The Centre will be led by a newly endowed UBS Professor for Applied AI at Oxford Saïd and supported by a team of 20 researchers. The team’s focus will be on AI governance, the application of AI in the business world, and emerging developments in AI models.
In a public statement, Oxford’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Irene Tracey, said that the partnership would lead to “pioneering new AI research solutions and practical applications at a time of unprecedented technological change”.
UBS Group Chief Operations and Technology Officer Mike Dargan said that the partnership is an opportunity to “develop practical tools and solutions that can be implemented at scale across” the bank, with AI representing “a fundamental opportunity to change how we operate and create value for clients”.
UBS has previously worked with other universities, including the University of St Gallen, ETH Zurich, and Singapore Management University. Its work at these institutions has focused on the development of Switzerland’s financial services sector and on boosting recruitment into finance, investment, and scientific careers.
UBS partnership with Oxford comes after strong financial performances by the wealth management group last year, but also amid resurfaced controversy over the 2008 rate-rigging scandal. The spotlight has returned to the bank following former trader Tom Hayes’s legal action, after his conviction for manipulating interbank rates was quashed by the UK Supreme Court.
The Centre adds to a growing list of AI research facilities at Oxford, including the Machine Learning Research Group at the Department of Engineering Science, the Applied Artificial Intelligence Lab at the Oxford Robotics Institute, and the Oxford AI for Science Lab at the Department of Computer Science.
UBS and the Oxford Saïd Business School have been approached for comment.
This Christmas vac, I made up my mind to get out of my reading slump. I find that the best way to do this is to choose a book that isn’t necessarily about a topic I know I’ll be interested in, but is a book recommended by critical consensus.
As a result, I turned to the shortlist for the Booker Prize. I went into this without preconceptions, normally choosing books outside of my degree for their ‘easy reading’ value (Emily Henry is talented in her own way). I picked the winner, Flesh by David Szalay, and then randomly chose The Rest of Our Lives by Benjamin Markovitz.
This randomness turned out to reveal a much-observed theme across the Booker Prize shortlist: toxic masculinity. This reflects the rise in discourse around issues specific to men, partly due to the need to create positive role models to counteract those preaching the messages of the manosphere.
The books weaved this theme into their narratives in different ways: the key moments in the life of Ivstán, Slazay’s protagonist, are framed as his sexual experiences. They seem to define him. In his teenage years, a twisted relationship with an older woman leads to him spending time in prison, and a whole chapter records him taking a friend to a hotel, where he tries and fails to sleep with her. Later, he begins a relationship with Helen, a married woman bored with her life with her older, wealthy husband, marrying her himself after her husband’s death from cancer. Towards the end of the book, he begins to perpetrate sexual violence against his housekeeper, whom he sleeps with after his wife’s death.
In The Rest of Our Lives, the theme is directly described, as the main character Tom Layward is placed on leave after refusing to add his pronouns at the end of emails, and supporting the case of an NBA player accused of racist and sexist comments. His situation is in many ways a reversal of Ivstán’s – twelve years ago, his wife Amy cheated on him, and he had vowed to leave her once his teenage daughter Miri leaves for college.
Both books started in a way that was pretty alienating – I’m not sure I would have persevered if it wasn’t for their critical acclaim. The blurb of Flesh markets the book as a story about the aftershocks of a warped relationship the protagonist experiences with an older woman when he is a teenager. This doesn’t mitigate the difficulty of reading the sections in which she repeatedly beckons him to her house, and coaxes him into destroying his innocence. The Rest of Our Lives opened with a different kind of tough read, the voice of a middle-aged man moaning about the state of his marriage. In his words, his marriage is locked at the status of ‘C-minus’ ever since his wife’s affair. He has a vague intent to leave her, which, as the novel progresses, the reader realises he will never act upon.
I put each book down unsettled. Both main characters crumbled. Ivstán lost his money and marriage, arguably the only two assets he had, and Tom is diagnosed with a tumour that will likely kill him, trapped in hospital with his wife, any talk of leaving her now irrelevant.
What frustrated me the most was the lack of emotional depth that either of the men experienced. They were not particularly likeable characters. This is of course, not a new idea in literature – I recently had a conversation with a friend about how a good book should put you inside the head of a character whose decisions you disagree with. As you’re forced to live their reality, you find yourself, through understanding their psychology, endorsing their decisions in a concerning way. That works if there’s an explanation of the characters’ own rationale for their actions, however twisted. The unsatisfying aspect of these novels for me was that it felt like the characters had no idea what they were doing.
The strongest parallel between the books that stuck out for me was the men’s complete detachment from the circumstances of their own lives. They both seem to know that they were unsatisfied, and getting things wrong. It was like shouting at a screen because a character in a movie can’t see what’s right in front of them. In the midst of his relationship with his housekeeper towards the end of the novel, Ivstán vaguely considers if he is a bad person, then leaves the thought alone. I disagreed with some reviewers’ suggestion that the reader’s empathy towards him increases as the novel goes on – bluntly, he disgusted me throughout. Any sense of affection towards his relationships manifested in a delayed way – only after his wife Helen’s death does he acknowledge the impact she made on him, the fact that he thinks in certain ways only because of her presence in his life.
Markovitz’s character Tom was likewise frustrating because of his total lack of direction. This was literalised in the road trip that he embarked upon to avoid his own life. He displayed a chronic inability to act on his thoughts. Naturally, leaving one’s partner is a difficult choice, but one that he had been harbouring for twelve years, remaining bitter without making a decision as to whether he could proceed with Amy. This was made more jarring when he encountered an old girlfriend, met all of her friends, and left her behind as if nothing had occurred. All the while, lurking in the background was his deteriorating health condition which, in typical fashion, he ignored, refusing every single offer of support from his family members. He, too, looked at his past life in a detached way: he describes his former relationships without much fanfare, in a long internal monologue about how he reached his unsatisfied state. He makes unqualified grumbles about ‘woke youth’ without describing his political stance in detail.
The frustration induced by both narratives was of course engineered by the authors. These were descriptions of two men, whether intentionally or not, refusing to examine their emotions. The result was chaos, emotionally and literally, for those around them. Initially, I questioned whether the minds of ‘the worst men ever’ are the ones readers have an appetite for entering, but on reflection, these are exactly the psychologies that demand exploration. I had the sense that the men would have stood a chance at solving their problems – for Ivstán, his former trauma, and for Tom, the decision about his marriage – if they had felt capable of facing them head on.
Art used to come with a warning label. Movies made people walk out, video games stirred controversy, and comedians could drop a joke and split a room. And that was the point. Being edgy meant something.
Now everything is scared. Like, visibly scared. Content today feels like it was made by a focus group that collectively cried during a meditation retreat. Edgy has been replaced by “elevated”, and offensive has been downgraded to “misaligned with brand values.” The spirit of rebellion now has to submit its talking points in advance and wait for legal to clear them.
And if you’re thinking, “Hey, maybe we’ve just evolved,” consider this: we now live in a world where Paw Patrol was accused of copaganda, and jeans ads are compared to fascism. That’s the vibe now.
The Culture of Caution
The shift crept in through risk-aversion, social media outrage cycles, and cancel culture. Once, you could write a movie with morally repulsive characters and trust the audience to distinguish right from wrong. You could release a game like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and the backlash was part of the marketing.
Now, we don’t even make things unless we’re sure no one, anywhere, will be confused, upset, or sent into a spiral on X.
Everything comes pre-sanitised. Studios no longer avoid controversy — they pre-visualise it, pre-regret it, and pre-apologise for it.
Movies now live in a remake/reboot/sequel purgatory, where nothing’s allowed to be bold unless it was already test-marketed in 1998 — and even then, it comes with a disclaimer that it was a “product of its time” and must now be scrubbed, softened, and retrofitted to align with modern sensibilities. Every script reads like it was written by a committee of HR reps and Reddit mods trying to avoid “the discourse.”
Where Edginess Goes to Die: Modern Video Games
Gaming, once considered the edgelord of culture, is now part of the squeaky-clean rebrand. AAA studios don’t want to offend anyone — not because they care, but because offended people stop spending. Games used to have actual bite: Postal, Manhunt, Grand Theft Auto – these games shocked and offended on purpose.
Try pitching that today, and you’d get walked out by someone holding a kombucha and a LinkedIn post about “safe storytelling.”
Now, instead of pushing boundaries, studios reskin maps into birthday parties and call it innovation. If Manhunt dropped in 2025, the only thing getting executed would be the pitch meeting.
Now you log in to your favorite multiplayer arena, and your sniper rifle has a glitter trail. A battle-hardened warrior is dressed like a carnival plushie. The Call of Duty points now unlock skins so cheerful you’d think you were playing a sponsored Pride parade.
Again, inclusivity is great. But when every character looks like a birthday cake with a gun, maybe we’ve lost the plot.
Comedy Is Now a Crime Scene
Don’t even get started on comedy. If a joke doesn’t come with a content warning and an infographic explaining its intent, someone will screen-record it, tweet it out of context, and then demand the comic be ejected from society via Change.org. Chappelle, Gervais, even comedians you’ve never heard of — all fighting for the right to say things without a post-joke seminar attached. You can’t tell edgy jokes when half the room is already typing.
Even Fiction Can’t Fiction Anymore
We used to let fiction be… fiction. Now we audit it. Characters can’t just be flawed — they have to be redeemable. Villains can’t be evil — they need trauma. We are spiritually incapable of letting a character just suck without explaining their backstory via flashback and soft piano.
Apu from The Simpsons? Gone. Speedy Gonzales? Canceled, then uncanceled, depending on which social group got there first. We’re at the point where writers have to worry about fan backlash, not because the story is bad, but because it’s complicated.
Vibes: Flattened
The aesthetic shift is subtle, but total. Movies are now required to be “healing.” Games must be “accessible.” Everyone’s “on a journey.” YouTubers pre-apologize for sarcasm, censor negative words, and edit their tone like they’re filing HR reports instead of making videos. Their content sounds less like a personal opinion and more like a brand trying not to get demonetized by the algorithm’s anxiety disorder.
We went from Fight Club and Trainspotting to every film being about reconciliation, identity, and a gentle zoom into someone’s tearful, reflective eyes. There’s no room for edge when everything is a personal growth arc.
So yeah. Our culture is losing its edge. We’ve replaced dangerous ideas with dopamine. Controversy with consensus. Complexity with clean lines and confetti. We’re told what’s problematic instead of being allowed to make up our own minds.
Sure, nobody gets offended anymore. But also… nothing makes you walk the morally grey lines.
Dr Patrick Fahr, a senior health economist at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences and a leading author of this study, told Cherwell: “This is potentially on the order of billions of pounds per year.”
The study analysed 4.37 million patient records from 244 GP practices in England, along with daily temperature data to estimate the relationship between temperature and healthcare.
Fahr told Cherwell: “The study sits within the Oxford Martin School’s Programme on the Future of Cooling, which examines how rising temperatures and extreme heat are driving growing demand for cooling, and how societies can meet cooling needs without worsening climate change.
“While a substantial body of recent work has focused on heat-related mortality, there has been comparatively less evidence on morbidity and what temperature exposure means for day-to-day healthcare utilisation and costs.”
The authors’ aim therefore was to “quantify how temperature affects the clinical chain or care, and what this implies for NHS resource use and spending in England”.
The study argues that climate change’s broader impacts on healthcare systems have been largely ignored by researchers, leaving substantial gaps in our knowledge of the relationship between suboptimal temperatures and healthcare- making the new findings extremely valuable in the field of climate-related health.
The findings also show that colder days (on average between 0°C and 9°C) were “associated with cumulative increases in consultations with general practitioners, inpatient admissions, and deaths”, whereas hotter days (above 23°C) were associated with “sharp same-day surges in A&E attendances and prescriptions”. Older adults were consistently the most vulnerable group to temperature extremes throughout the investigation.
As these extreme temperatures become more frequent due to climate change, more people are suffering adverse health effects, which demonstrates the need for further research on the topic and a greater allocation of resources to healthcare systems during extreme-temperature events.
The study found that total daily healthcare costs per 1000 individuals increase by £114 at colder temperatures of 0 to 3°C, and by a steep increase of £486 per 1000 individuals for temperatures exceeding 23°C. There is also an average increase in daily costs of £84 per 1000 individuals for temperatures outside the reference range of 18 to 21°C.
The authors of this study constitute an extremely multidisciplinary team, comprising researchers working in the fields from engineering to social sciences, which, according to Patrick Fahr, “the work greatly benefited from” and “helped shape the framing, interpretations, and connect the results to the wider Future of Cooling agenda”. These findings could inform resource allocation and aid healthcare systems in adapting to the ever-increasing burden of climate change. Patrick Fahr tells Cherwell that this work “provides an evidence base to support year-round service resilience planning… [and] can also help inform adaptation measures, including cooling and heat-protection strategies, by linking them to measurable health-system impacts”.
Christ Church College and the Bodleian Libraries have received Lewis Carroll’s copy of the 1865 first edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The book, known as the ‘Michelson Alice’, is one of only 22 known surviving copies of the withdrawn first printing. The volume includes Carroll’s own handwritten annotations and ten original drawings by John Tenniel, the story’s first illustrator. It has never been exhibited in the UK before.
The first editions of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland were printed by Oxford University Press in 1865, including the copy that would become known as the Michelson Alice. However, Caroll quickly withdrew them when Tenniel expressed dissatisfaction with the poor printing quality of his illustrations. Carroll attempted to quickly recall the copies he had already given away, but a few escaped. An improved edition was then published later that year.
Lanisha Butterfield, Head of Communications at the Bodleian Libraries, told Cherwell thatCarroll’s handwritten notes in the margins “reveal the author’s thinking” as he worked on The Nursery “Alice”, an abridged version of the novel intended for children of five and under. The marginalia offers Carroll scholars valuable insights into the author’s thought process.
According to a detailed Christie’s catalogue entry for this annotated 1865 issue, the book passed through a long chain of collectors and dealers. These included political activist Louis Samuel Montagu, the rare book dealer A.S.W. Rosenbach, and the American industrialist Eldridge R. Johnson. Later owners included Francis A. Kettaneh and the children’s book specialist Justin G. Schiller. The same entry records that the volume was exhibited from 1953 to 1954 at the Grolier Club in New York, a historic American bibliophiles’ organisation.
In its latest move, Christ Church and the Bodleian Libraries said they worked jointly to secure the book through a competitive process initiated by philanthropist Ellen A. Michelson, in which institutions were invited to make a case to receive the gift. Michelson, distinguished collector and member of the Grolier Club, chose to donate it jointly to Christ Church and the Bodleian so it would be preserved and made available for research and public appreciation, returning the book to what she described as “its spiritual home in Oxford”.
Butterfield told Cherwell: “The University is the rightful home of the manuscript and it will sit within our collections alongside the rest of Carroll’s archive.” The Reverend Professor Sarah Foot, Dean of Christ Church, described the acquisition as a ‘homecoming’, saying that: “following many years in the US, this edition is coming home to Christ Church and the Bodleian”. She added that Carroll “had a lifelong connection to Christ Church and its library, and would undoubtedly be pleased this historic copy, which contains his original thoughts and reflections, has ended up here” and that the College hopes the book will “inspire future generations of scholars and budding writers at Christ Church and beyond.”
The Michelson Alice will be on public display from Friday 16th January to Monday 19th January in Blackwell Hall at the Weston Library. It will then feature in the Bodleian Libraries’ exhibition Pets & their People beginning on 11th March, which will look at how some real life pets inspired Carroll’s animal characters, including the Cheshire Cat. Christ Church will also mark the book’s return in its own Upper Library exhibition,Beyond the Appliances of Art: Lewis Carroll and His Illustrators, from the 27th January to the 26th February 2026.
The Faculty of Music has announced the creation of the new Nigel Nettheim Scholarship for Schubert Studies, for one DPhil student joining in the 2026/27 academic year.
The scholarship is funded by Australian musicologist, Dr Nigel Nettheim, who has established the scholarship before his will comes into effect. He told Cherwell: “For about sixty years I have enthusiastically studied Schubert’s music. In an attempt to continue this work beyond my life I included a bequest in my will.”
Franz Schubert, an Austrian composer of the Romantic period, produced an enormous body of work during his short lifetime; as well as opera, symphonies, and chamber music, he is particularly well-known for his work in the Lieder genre, art songs typically written for one person accompanied by the piano. The DPhil student will explore Schubert’s extensive work to “throw new light onto his compositions”, following on from Dr Nettheim’s research.
Dr Nettheim told Cherwell that he was “first drawn to Schubert’s personal character via a biography. I then found, to my delight, that his music truly reflected that personal character”. Dr Nettheim hopes that the scholarship will allow “insight into how Schubert’s amazing mind worked. The main evidence is contained in his scores, whose comparative analysis can contribute to building up the sought-after picture of his otherwise-hidden mental activity”.
Dr Nettheim decided that Australia, his home country, “has many attractive features but it is probably less suited to this research than is, for instance, the UK. Hence the Oxford scholarship”.
The award will cover the full DPhil course fees at the Home rate and a living stipend for three years.
During their time in Oxford, the DPhil student will reside at Wadham College, an apt home for a music student due to its proximity to the Holywell Music Room and an active music-making culture amongst Wadham students.
Also available to the student will be the facilities in the new Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities, where the Faculty of Music is housed. The incoming DPhil student will be able to make the most of the facilities and performance spaces, including practice rooms and a recital hall.
December saw the announcement of Netflix’s $72 billion deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery. What followed was a veritable moral panic amongst cinephiles, and I count myself as one of those who fear for the future of the theatrical release. I have therefore set out to better understand my loyalty towards the cinemas that have the nerve to charge £20 or more per ticket, and to dive deeper into the possible future complexion of the film industry.
I get the impression that the question of streaming as an existential threat to the cinema industry has become somewhat tedious. Is the movie theatre destined to keep bouncing back as a cultural pillar? And does the perpetual sink-or-swim narrative play a role in driving people to see a film on the silver screen? I for one am always convinced that my ticket purchase is going to single-handedly save cinema.
To avoid exaggerating, we ought to turn to what Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos has said on the matter: “My pushback has been mostly in the fact of the long exclusive windows, which we don’t really think are that consumer-friendly.” You’ll have to forgive my scepticism about the altruistic capacity of the CEO of a company worth $413 billion, but I take issue with this statement. Firstly, if cinema ticket prices continue to increase, will anyone be able to justify trips to the cinema to see films that will be available for free (or at least, it feels that way) 30 days later? This is not an exaggeration: according to film blog Dark Horizons, theatrical windows now average a length of just 32 days. Furthermore, I worry about a future in which, after having established something of a monopoly on films available to watch on streaming, Netflix continues to price-gouge the consumer. This profiteering was made even more abundantly clear by the introduction of geographic limits to Netflix accounts. Considering this is the same company that once, on Valentine’s Day, tweeted: “Love is sharing a password”, you have to acknowledge the hypocrisy.
Another defence of the cinema worth exploring is its ability to bolster our attention spans in a culture increasingly dominated by short-form content. While the opportunity to pause a film and make a cup of tea is always appreciated when watching at home, the more general possibility of distraction, far less so. I don’t think the time has yet come for a full-scale “it’s those damn phones” moral panic, but we do need to think seriously about safeguarding a hobby that forces you to focus on one thing for a couple of hours. In the spirit of exemplarity, I hereby promise to resist the temptation to start drafting my Letterboxd review before the film has finished.
It may well be that we’re obsessing over new releases when the saving grace of cinemas lies in rereleases. Perhaps inspired by the Netflix model of a constantly changing catalogue, both chain and independent cinemas are increasing the number of classic films they show. Distributor Park Circus’ CEO Doug Davis cited research from Gower Street and Comscore which shows that box office returns in the UK for classic films grew by 133% in 2023 compared to the pre-pandemic average between 2017-2019. I can personally attest to the mental health benefits of going to see It’s a Wonderful Life the week before Christmas with a glass of white wine included in the ticket price.
The adventures of the film’s protagonist George Bailey also represent something fundamental and necessary about the cinema experience: “Remember, no man is a failure who has friends.” The same can be said of going to see a movie, however terrible it turns out to be, amongst people you love. There’s joy to be found in sitting and laughing through a film rather than DNF-ing it on Netflix and choosing something else. The shared act of viewership provides something inexhaustibly exciting to the cinematic experience.
At its most extreme, this sense of communality can spark a wider cultural phenomenon of cinema-going. I think it’s possible that dressing up in a suit to watch the Minions movie reignited a love of cinema-going amongst at least a handful of teenage boys. I certainly don’t think either Barbie or Oppenheimer would have achieved such box-office returns if they had been released straight to streaming. This seems to suggest hope for the future of the movie theatre, and I certainly appreciate the whimsical and sentimental illusion of social unity that such trends create. I enjoyed crying through America Ferrara’s Barbie monologue about girlhood while sitting in a row filled with my girl friends. Sue me.
As it turns out, I’m not just rambling sentimentally. According to researchers at UCL, a shared social focus has been shown to have long-term benefits for our brain function, memory, focus, and productivity. As a true humanities student, I will point out that this benefit is artistic as well as scientific: if film, like all art, nourishes itself on its own œuvre, I don’t think we can afford to sever the association between the cinema and the film. Would Brief Encounter or La La Land achieve their desired effect if the protagonists were sat watching a film on the sofa? Would Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood look the same if Sharon Tate merely switched on the television to watch herself on screen?
You may have concluded that I am a Luddite, and you may well be right. I am certainly a hypocrite, who advocates for the necessity of multiple streaming service memberships while requesting that my dad includes me in our family plan. I can appreciate the choice and ease of streaming, and the ability to watch films that don’t make it to the Oxford Curzon, but nothing quite makes me feel as alive as when I leave the cinema and feel ever so slightly changed for the better by a good film. For the time being, the Academy shares my opinion, and only awards films that have some kind of theatrical release, but is this the last bastion of the movie theatre’s defence? Or have I merely been conditioned by the industry to respond to a non-existent perceived threat by spending my money at their cinemas? I suppose we’ll have to see (you at the movies).
Worcester College has elected Professor Santa Ono – the current Global President of the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT) and President of EIT Oxford – to a senior research fellowship.
A former biomedical researcher, Ono has previously served as President of the University of Michigan, the University of British Columbia, and the University of Cincinnati. A member of several academic bodies, such as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he now also leads EIT – an Oxford-based commercial research organisation focusing on AI, clinical medicine, generative biology, and sustainable energy.
Regarding his election, Worcester told Cherwell: “Professor Ono’s stellar research career, his research plans and role at EIT Oxford, as well as his track record of university leadership and commitment to music, made him an excellent addition to the Worcester fellowship.”
Worcester added that Ono, as a research fellow, will “play a key role” in supporting the college’s “thriving research community”, contributing to its research strategy and wider academic life. Although Ono will not be based full-time in Oxford for the foreseeable future, the college said it is still “excited about the research and other insights that he will bring”.
Ono’s affiliation to both Worcester and EIT may also open further opportunities for “strong ties” between the two institutions, according to the College. EIT, founded by Oracle co-founder and centibillionaire Larry Ellison, has already launched several projects at the University, including a £118 million investment in AI vaccine research. However, there are indications that Ellison’s financial commitment to the Institute is being scaled back. Ono’s predecessor as EIT President, Sir John Bell, left his role in September after clashing with Ellison over his “downgraded vision” for the project.
Ono told Cherwell it is “an incredible honour” to be awarded the fellowship, and that he is “very much looking forward to getting to know the faculty, staff, and students there”. He added that the fellowship, alongside other connections between the EIT and wider university, “will only strengthen what I see as a powerful and genuinely synergistic relationship”.
Looking ahead, Ono told Cherwell: “I hope to have a positive impact by sharing my experiences with students, and by doing everything I can to support faculty at Worcester College and throughout the University.”
Oxford City Council approved their Local Plan to make Oxford a 15-minute city on 14th September 2022. In response, conspiracy theorists organised a mass protest. With some of the new traffic regulations now in place, it’s time for a deep dive into the conspiracist movement and its sunset legacy in Oxford.
When students stepped outside their colleges on 18th February 2023, a strange sight may have confronted them. They might’ve seen someone in the guise of Karl Schwab (head of the World Economic Forum) and another of Greta Thunberg wearing an East Berlin border guard uniform. Or maybe their attention was caught by people carrying placards reading “No to Subversion, Surveillance and Control!”, “There is NO climate emergency” and “15 Min City communism – we do NOT consent”. These were the scenes of a protest against the City Council’s proposed traffic policies aimed at alleviating the city’s chronic traffic issues; making Oxford more like a 15-minute city.
What is the conspiracy theory?
The 15-minute city was originally an urban planning concept devised by Carlos Moreno, a professor at the Sorbonne University in Paris. Its aim was to have all key amenities accessible for residents within a 15-minute walk or bike ride. In Moreno’s own words, the driving force behind the concept was to “improve the quality of life for inhabitants”, ultimately “changing our traditional lifestyle based on long distances”. Oxford City Council endorsed this in their Local Plan of September 2022. When the council later introduced new traffic city controls in November 2022, conspiracy theorists conflated the two plans, fashioning the Council’s approach as a governmental ploy to restrict the freedom of movement – effectively, following the months of COVID-19 restrictions, a lockdown 2.0.
Professor Peter Knight, from Manchester University, has written extensively about conspiracy culture both in the United States and Europe. He told Cherwell that the conspiracy theory emerged at first from isolated blog posts by climate deniers. One online blogger wrote: “Oxfordshire County Council yesterday approved plans to lock residents into one of six zones to ‘save the planet’ from global warming. The latest stage in the ’15-minute city’ agenda is to place electronic gates on key roads in and out of the city, confining residents to their own neighbourhoods. . .Under the new scheme, if residents want to leave their zone, they will need permission from the council who gets to decide who is worthy of freedom and who isn’t.”
Following this, the theory was taken up by anti-lockdown activist groups and subsequently amplified by an existing web of conspiracy influencers. Knight explains: “Traffic control was reframed as a restriction of personal liberties. An existing network of anti-lockdown and anti-vaxx activists, as well as culture warriors tapping into conspiracist fears, pivoted towards traffic control schemes.” The BBC even reported that Emily Kerr, a member of Oxford City Council, was confronted by local residents about whether the measures were an attempt to curb personal freedom. Kerr said: “People have come up to me and said: is it true that we’re not going to be allowed out of our houses, that it’s going to be just like the coronavirus lockdown?”
It wasn’t all fringe conspiracy theorists though – the fear even got airtime in the House of Commons. Then Conservative MP Nick Fletcher called the 15-Minute City in February 2023 an “international socialist concept” during a parliamentary debate. According to Fletcher, the step threatened to “take away personal freedoms”.
Michael Barkun calls umbrella conspiracy theories “superconspiracies”. The 15-minute city conspiracy theories endorsed by those who protested in Oxford are part of a much larger paranoid narrative known as the Great Reset. The Great Reset was, in fact, the name given by the World Economic Forum to its agenda during COVID-19. It was a document setting out a new approach towards a fairer, greener version of capitalism. Conspiracy theorists saw it differently. To them, the Great Reset was a plan to use different forms of surveillance to keep people enslaved. For them, this included using technologies like digital cash, biometric facial recognition, and traffic cameras. During the pandemic, conspiracist ideas and protest became more widespread and that energy, Knight tells me, has been repurposed to new causes. Climate change is presented as a hoax intended, again, to keep the masses subservient.
It’s worth recognising that such concerns about the “globalist plots” are not just populist expressions of resentment but also a regurgitation of deeply held historical antisemitic myths about who secretly pulls the strings. Antisemitic conspiracy theories such as the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which claimed to expose a Jewish global plot but were quickly revealed as fraudulent (and later plagiarised), still influence discourse on certain pockets of the internet. These tropes reared their head in the slogans of some of those at the Oxford 15-minute city protest, a worrying reminder how concerns over something as innocuous as traffic policy can be exploited by those with more sinister agendas.
The Protest
Tensions over the Oxford City Council’s decision came to a climax in February 2023. Conspiracists from all over the UK took to the streets of Oxford, chanting, carrying placards, and even livestreaming the event on their social media accounts. Annie Kelly, journalist and reporter at the protest, told Cherwell about what she observed on the day. On the one hand, she recalled the “lively, carnival atmosphere” and the “strong sense of community” between campaigners where “lots of people knew each other”. On the other hand, though, the protest was poisoned by aggression and polemic rhetoric. Kelly described a cameraman from the BBC who was heckled by protestors. They shouted: “Shame on you!” Members from Patriotic Alternative, the far-right group described by The Times in 2023 as “Britain’s largest far-right white supremacist movement”, were also present on the fringes of the protest.
Big names on the conspiracist scene appeared too. Piers Corbyn, the conspiracy theorist brother of Jeremy Corbyn, and Lawrence Fox, the ex-GB news host, were amongst those who took to the stage. The former proclaimed that all forms of traffic zoning have “the same aim” – “to control you, to cost you, and to con you into believing in the man-made climate change story”. He linked the new Oxford measures with those in London: “break ULEZ and break Sadiq Khan.” One of the most circulated videos online from the protest was that by Katie Hopkins, the right-wing culture warrior. In a video published on her YouTube, Hopkins speaks to the camera on her way to the protest. She appears incensed by the media who want to “smear the people who are going to protest locking down a city into fifteen-minute zones”. When at the protest itself, Hopkins films the supposedly high numbers of police, taking their presence as evidence that the council’s decision is about more than just traffic controls. She wonders if “they’re practicing for when there is a low traffic network and they have to catch criminals.”
The demographic
The divide on 18th February was, unlike so many of those in Oxford, not a tale of town versus gown. Both locals and members of the University were united by their absence at the protests. Some protesters showed frustration at this, feeling abandoned particularly by the students. One woman said to Kelly: “I had hoped that the students would come and support us.” Here we see the tension between the right and higher education that so dominates our politics today.
In fact, the vast majority of campaigners travelled into Oxford for the event; they neither lived in nor were from the city. Kelly said: “If it had of [sic] only been locals, it would have been a much smaller protest.” Out of all those whom Kelly interviewed, only two were from Oxford. They were “very much a rarity”, also anomalous for their lack of knowledge about or investment in the conspiracy theories driving the protests. One of these local women said to Kelly: “We’re not anti-COVID … We’re just nice normal people.” She even clarified to Kelly that she had gotten “all of [her] jabs”. As a mobile hairdresser, she opposed the congestion charge not because she thought it a ploy by the global cabal to subjugate humanity, but because of the impact it would have on her access to her clients.
Yet the political demographic of the protesters can be hard to decipher. It’s hard to pin down the varying politics of some of the conspiracy theorists. A concern over sovereignty can lean in different directions: national sovereignty can lean right, heightening tensions over immigration, for example, whereas bodily sovereignty can lean left, towards new age spiritualism. The political scientists William Callison and Quinn Slobodian call this ‘diagonalism’. They write: “Born in part from transformations in technology and communication, diagonalists tend to contest conventional monikers of left and right (while generally arcing toward far-right beliefs), to express ambivalence if not cynicism toward parliamentary politics, and to blend convictions about holism and even spirituality with a dogged discourse of individual liberties.” The author of Doppelganger, Naomi Klein, calls this situation “a conspiracy smoothie”. She laments how the “far right” have become bedfellows with the “far out” today.
What now?
Today, some of the much lamented traffic regulations are now in effect. They began on 29th October 2025 with a temporary five-pound daily charge for motorists driving at certain times without a permit. The tax applies to only six roads in Oxford, including Hythe Bridge Street, St Cross Road, St Clement’s Street, Thames Street, Marston Ferry Road, and Hollow Way. It seeks to both ease the city’s chronic congestion and help alleviate the climate crisis.
There has been some backlash to the new measures. Open Roads for Oxford is the main organisation leading this. Their concerns are rooted not in conspiracism but rather the economic efficacy of the scheme and, according to their website, “the disproportionate impact on particular groups, including vulnerable people”. In their view, the congestion charge threatens to impact workers in low-paid sectors who offer mobile services and therefore often rely on their own transport for their livelihoods. Consequently, Open Roads for Oxford issued a legal challenge to Oxfordshire City Council over the scheme on 7th October 2025. It was, however, rejected by the council on 4th November 2025.
Yet from the conspiracy theorist groups themselves, no protests have followed those that took place in February 2023. The movement has dispersed, morphed, and shifted focus. Kelly said: “The movement is still around but more diffused than it was a few years ago. . . There is still very much a community but without the animating force of something like COVID it has slightly loosened over the years.” Now, without the animating force of COVID, supporters have moved onto other “passion projects”; seemingly innocuous concerns about 15-minute cities can easily be radicalised and spun into a wider narrative about the “globalist agenda”. For some, according to Kelly, this entails “branching off into educational co-ops”. For others, this involves the endorsement of the anti-vaxx agenda. Though this ideology has a long history, it has been given new vitality by the appointment of Robert F Kennedy Jr. as US health secretary and his Make America Health Again campaign. Conspiracy theories always evolve. They are like a hydra – you can slay one head, only for two more to appear.And so, when you step out of your college on 18th February this year, the streets should be free of Karl Schwab and Greta Thunberg impersonators – providing there isn’t another global pandemic.
Let’s talk about our brain. Or what’s left of it after 37 seconds on TikTok, 2 hours of doomscrolling, and the kind of attention span where you literally need a Subway Surfers video playing in the corner just to read this article.
You were going to read this article, but you got distracted by a 3-minute video essay about which classic literature books are now red flags in dating. It’s fine. It’s now considered modern.
Our brains crave novelty, rewards, motion, a sense that something, anything, is happening.
So when it comes to education, sitting still and listening quietly has become hostile architecture for the brain.
Which is why the white horse of 21st-century pedagogy just clomped into frame: gamified learning. Also known as: what if school, but with a dopamine hit.
What Even Is Gamified Learning?
For the uninitiated, gamified learning is the practice of turning education into a game. Points, badges, levels, leaderboards, or math homework meet the Minecraft server. It’s like tricking your brain into thinking it’s having fun while secretly absorbing knowledge, like hiding broccoli under cheese.
The promise? Engagement, motivation, retention. The reality? Sometimes yes. Sometimes it’s just Candy Crush with a syllabus.
Attention Spans Are Melting – But Not in Games
Here’s the paradox: kids (and, let’s be honest, adults who eat Lunchables by choice) can’t sit through a 30-minute lecture without mentally peeling wallpaper. But they’ll hyperfocus for six hours straight to earn a virtual pickaxe made out of netherite. Why? Because games are engineered to hijack your reward system like it’s the Italian Job.
Gamified learning borrows that same psychological magic. Micro-goals, instant feedback, the illusion of control. It’s not cheating, but meeting the modern brain where it lives now: somewhere between a YouTube rabbit hole and a flashing XP bar.
Are We Teaching… or Just Entertaining?
Of course, critics will say: this isn’t education, it’s brainrot. And, okay, yes, when a spelling app offers you a badge for finishing five levels of word puzzles, that’s not exactly Socratic dialogue. But is it effective? Studies are starting to nod yes. Especially for subjects that typically make students want to chew drywall.
And let’s not pretend traditional learning was flawless. Rows of desks, monotone lectures, and the joyless tyranny of the overhead projector. Gamified systems might be silly, sure, but at least they try to care whether students are awake.
Some classrooms now teach logic gates using Redstone in Minecraft, letting kids build circuits and trapdoors instead of silently diagramming them on a worksheet. And when students spend their Minecoins gift card on a virtual cape or a creeper-themed classroom skin, it somehow feels more rewarding than that dusty “Student of the Week” certificate stapled to the wall since 1997.
Status: Complicated
Like any educational trend with a shiny interface and a TED Talk, gamified learning isn’t a one-size-fits-all fix. Sometimes it’s transformative, and sometimes it’s just digital stickers on a worksheet. But in an age where attention is the rarest commodity (somewhere between lithium and actual in-person conversation), maybe it’s worth giving XP points for trying.
At worst, it’s mildly cringey. At best, it’s the thing that helps a kid finally understand fractions – while collecting gems in a dungeon wearing a customisable hat.
So, can gamified learning save our crumbling, flickering attention spans? Maybe not completely. But it’s one of the few tools that doesn’t require dragging students back to the blackboard like it’s 1957. It meets them in their environment, offers them a quest, and maybe, just maybe, teaches them something before their next notification pings.
