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The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the world's second-oldest university in continuous operation. It grew rapidly from 1167, when Henry II banned English students from attending the University of Paris. After disputes between students and Oxford townsfolk in 1209, some academics fled north-east to Cambridge where they established what became the University of Cambridge. The two English ancient universities share many common features and are jointly referred to as Oxbridge.

The University of Oxford is made up of thirty-nine semi-autonomous constituent colleges, four permanent private halls, and a range of academic departments which are organised into four divisions. Each college is a self-governing institution within the university, controlling its own membership and having its own internal structure and activities. All students are members of a college. Traditionally, each of Oxford's constituent colleges is associated with another of the colleges in the University of Cambridge, with the only exceptional addition of Trinity College, Dublin. It does not have a main campus, and its buildings and facilities are scattered throughout the city centre. Undergraduate teaching at Oxford consists of lectures, small-group tutorials at the colleges and halls, seminars, laboratory work and occasionally further tutorials provided by the central university faculties and departments. Postgraduate teaching is provided in a predominantly centralised fashion.

Oxford operates the Ashmolean Museum, the world's oldest university museum; Oxford University Press, the largest university press in the world; and the largest academic library system nationwide. In the fiscal year ending 31 July 2023, the university had a total consolidated income of £2.92 billion, of which £789 million was from research grants and contracts.

Oxford has educated a wide range of notable alumni, including 30 prime ministers of the United Kingdom and many heads of state and government around the world. 73 Nobel Prize laureates, 4 Fields Medalists, and 6 Turing Award winners have matriculated, worked, or held visiting fellowships at the University of Oxford, while its alumni have won 160 Olympic medals. Oxford is the home of numerous scholarships, including the Rhodes Scholarship, one of the oldest international graduate scholarship programmes. (Full article...)

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The main buildings of Jesus College are located in the centre of Oxford between Turl Street, Ship Street, Cornmarket and Market Street. Jesus College was founded in 1571 by Queen Elizabeth I, upon the petition of a Welsh clergyman, Hugh Price. The foundation charter gave to the college the land and buildings of White Hall, a defunct academic hall, to which new buildings were added. The first quadrangle, which included the hall, chapel, and principal's lodgings, was completed between 1621 and 1630; it has been described as "small and pretty" and possessing "a curious charm". Construction of the second quadrangle began in the 1630s and was completed in about 1712. Further buildings were erected in a third quadrangle during the 20th century, including science laboratories, a new library, and additional accommodation. The chapel was extensively altered in 1864; one historian of the college described the work as "ill-considered". The Fellows' Library, restored in 2007, contains 11,000 antiquarian books. A project to build new student and teaching rooms opposite the college was completed in 2010. Eleven parts of the college are listed buildings. (Full article...)

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Robert Catesby (c.1572–1605) was the leader of a group of provincial English Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605. He was educated at Gloucester Hall, Oxford, but left without taking his degree, presumably to avoid swearing the Oath of Supremacy. He married a Protestant in 1593, but when in 1598 his father and wife each died, he may have reverted to Catholicism. Catesby planned to kill James I by blowing up the House of Lords with gunpowder, the prelude to a popular revolt during which a Catholic monarch would be restored to the English throne. Early in 1604 he began to recruit friends to his cause, including Thomas Wintour, John Wright, Thomas Percy, and Guy Fawkes. He helped bring a further eight conspirators into the plot, whose gestation was planned for 5 November 1605. An anonymous letter alerted the authorities, and on the eve of the planned explosion, during a search of Parliament, Fawkes was found guarding the barrels of gunpowder. News of his arrest caused the other plotters to flee London. Catesby made a final stand at Holbeche House in Staffordshire, where he was shot, and later found dead. As a warning to others, his body was exhumed and his head exhibited outside Parliament. (more...)

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St John's College was established in 1555 by Sir Thomas White, who was later Lord Mayor of London. He was Master of the Merchant Taylors' Company and also established other educational foundations including Merchant Taylors' School. St John's was established as a Roman Catholic foundation in the time of Queen Mary, on the site of St Bernard's College, a monastery and house of study of the Cistercian order that had been closed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The site, on the east side of St Giles', is to the north of Balliol College and Trinity College. The buildings include Canterbury Quad, the first example of Italian Renaissance architecture in Oxford, and 20th-century additions such as the neo-Italianate Garden Quad, built in 1993. It is one of the larger Oxford colleges, with about 370 undergraduates and 280 postgraduates. Former students include Edmund Campion (Roman Catholic martyr), William Laud (Archbishop of Canterbury), Tony Blair (former British prime minister) and the author Kingsley Amis. The President of St John's is the psychologist Margaret Snowling. (Full article...)

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Credit: David Iliff

Established in 1870 as a memorial to the clergyman John Keble, a leading member of the Oxford Movement, Keble College (chapel pictured) remains distinctive for its neo-gothic red-brick buildings designed by William Butterfield.

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Did you know

Articles from Wikipedia's "Did You Know" archives about the university and people associated with it:

... that John Weston (pictured) became a published poet after retiring from his post as Ambassador to the United Nations?
... that Ivor Bulmer-Thomas, having lost his position on the Historic Churches Preservation Trust (for which he denounced the Archbishop of Canterbury as having "held a pistol to my face while the Dean of Gloucester plunged his dagger into my back"), founded his own, more intransigent, committee, the Friends of Friendless Churches?
... that archaeologist Francis Turville-Petre, discoverer of Neanderthal remains in Israel, was portrayed in works by authors W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood?
... that the highly influential jurist Sir Matthew Hale once said that lawyers were "a barbarous set of people unfit for anything but their own trade"?
... that Richard Cordray, the first Director of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is a five-time undefeated Jeopardy! champion and carried the Olympic Torch in 1996?

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Selected quotation

“

The Griffine, Bustard, Turkey & Capon
Lett other hungry Mortalls gape on
And on theire bones with Stomacks fall hard,
But lett All Souls' Men have ye Mallard.
CHORUS:
Hough the bloud of King Edward,
By ye bloud of King Edward,
It was a swapping, swapping mallard!

”

— Mallard Song, sung once a century at All Souls College

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Selected panorama

Credit: Kunal Mehta

The Old Building Quadrangle of Hertford College incorporates the lodge, library, chapel, hall, bursary and other administrative buildings. It is the only Hertford quadrangle to have a lawn in the centre, in the traditional college style.

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On this day

Events for 8 May relating to the university, its colleges, academics and alumni. College affiliations are marked in brackets.

Births

1858 – J. Meade Falkner (Hertford), novelist and poet
1873 – H. D. G. Leveson Gower, Magdalen), England cricket captain
1873 – Nevil Sidgwick (Christ Church and Lincoln), chemist
1879 – Charles Duncombe, 2nd Earl of Feversham (Christ Church), politician and soldier
1894 – Edwin Morris (St John's), Archbishop of Wales 1957–1967
1897 – Guy Blaikie, cricketer
1920 – Maurice Cranston (St Catherine's), philosopher and author
1904 – John Snagge (Pembroke), radio newsreader and commentator
1921 – Graham Leonard (Balliol), Bishop of London 1981–1991
1925 – Charles Jauncey, Baron Jauncey of Tullichettle (Christ Church), Lord of Appeal in Ordinary 1988–1996
1934 – Leonard Hoffmann, Baron Hoffmann (Queen's), Lord of Appeal in Ordinary 1995–2009
1939 – William Cookson (New College), poet and literary editor
1946 – Jonathan Dancy (Corpus Christi and All Souls), philosopher
1946 – Ruth Padel (Lady Margaret Hall and Wadham), poet
1946 – Andrew Sherratt, archeologist based at the Ashmolean Museum
1969 – Jonny Searle (Christ Church), gold-medal winning Olympic rower

Deaths

1662 – Peter Heylin (Hart Hall and Magdalen), priest and writer
1781 – Richard Jago (University), poet
1860 – Horace Hayman Wilson, first Boden Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford
1883 – Sir Thomas Bernard, 6th Baronet (Christ Church), politician
1904 – Frederick York Powell (Christ Church and Oriel), historian
1926 – W. A. B. Coolidge (Exeter and Magdalen), American historian, theologian and mountaineer
1960 – J. H. C. Whitehead (Balliol), mathematician
1975 – Bram Fischer (New College), South African lawyer and anti-apartheid activist