The University of Oxford is the oldest university in the English-speaking world. Teaching has taken place at Oxford since 1096. Oxford has the largest volume of world-leading research in the country, rating top in the REF power rankings published by Research Fortnight. Oxford’s research involves more than 70 departments, almost 1,800 academic staff, more than 5,000 research and research support staff, and more than 5,600 graduate research students. The University has 38 independent colleges to which undergraduate and graduate students belong. Oxford has the highest research income from external sponsors of any UK university: £478.3m in 2013/14. The University has pioneered the successful commercial exploitation of academic research and invention, creating more than 100 companies, and files more patents each year than any other UK university.
As debates rage about the best way to organise teacher training and whether teachers should be qualified at all, the findings of the ongoing Carter Review of Initial Teacher Training will be closely scrutinised…
In a world where too many go to bed hungry, it comes as a shock to realise that more than half the world’s food production is left to rot, lost in transit, thrown out, or otherwise wasted. This loss is…
A few doors down from my house, a man is selling drugs. He has herbs to smoke that could leave me happy and stoned and various white powders to ingest that could keep me partying all night. All this would…
Full marks to colleagues at the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London for the Living Planet Report 2014 and its headline message which one hopes ought to shock the world out of its complacency…
Biological brains are unlikely to be the final stage of intelligence. Machines already have superhuman strength, speed and stamina – and one day they will have superhuman intelligence. The only reasons…
It doesn’t matter if a school is outstanding or struggling, or if the majority of pupils are well-off or not – it’s likely that there will be a gap between how well poorer pupils perform compared to their…
Each of the 125 leaders attending the New York climate summit this week has been given four minutes to speak to the world. They (or their aides) may well have dipped into the climate literature to add…
It is a cruel world out there, particularly for young animals born into social groups where infanticide occurs. This dark side of evolution is revealed when adults – often males – kill offspring to promote…
Standing on a stage in San Francisco in early 2010, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced that as internet users had become more comfortable sharing their lives online, privacy was no longer a “social…
Nothing is more certain in life than death. As we age, we become much more susceptible to major diseases like cancer and heart disease because the mechanisms that help prevent them earlier in life start…
By international standards, British universities have extraordinarily high levels of autonomy. They control all of their assets, they employ their own staff, renew their own leadership and governors and…
The geography of knowledge has always been uneven. Some people and places have always been more visible and had more voices than others. But the internet seemed to promise something different: a greater…
In the digital age, one of the most complex challenges for media outlets is how to re-shape the editorial responsibilities of journalism itself. Are the hallmarks of good journalism – accuracy, independence…
The current outbreak of Ebola in West Africa has emerged rapidly and evolved with alarming ease. An unprecedented number of lives have been lost and WHO predictions are that the virus will infect in excess…
Is social media really delivering on its promise of democratising communication? Or have we just replaced one model that privileges those with power for another? Dr Andrea Carson speaks with Professor…
Children’s access to high grades at GCSE is determined by our examination system, which assigns grade limits in some subjects. Known as tiering, this means that some 16-year-olds sit a foundation GCSE…
The Gobi Desert in East Asia conjures images of a remote landscape, with nomads riding across the steppe. In fact, today it is home to herders and farmers, the world’s fastest-growing economy, vast copper…
The number of students entered for a GCSE exam a year early plummeted by 40% this summer. Before 2014, the number of students taking their exams in Year 10 rather than Year 11, particularly in English…
Two studies about the impact of migration on the UK economy have been published which – if media reports are to believed – appear to contradict one another. A closer reading of these reports, however…
Wikipedia is often seen as a great equaliser. Every day, hundreds of thousands of people collaborate on a seemingly endless range of topics by writing, editing and discussing articles, and uploading images…
Global Head of Wildlife Research, World Animal Protection, and Visiting Researcher, Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU), University of Oxford