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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. It does not have a main campus, but 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 founding Fellows, Scholars and Commissioners of Jesus College were appointed in 1571 by Elizabeth I (college's portrait of her shown). She founded the college at the instigation of a Welsh clergyman, Hugh Price. Her royal charter appointed a Principal, Fellows to educate the Scholars and to run the college (under the overall direction of the Principal) and Commissioners to draw up statutes for the governance of the college. Jesus College was founded to help with the increased numbers of Welsh students at Oxford, and the founding Fellows included a number of individuals with links to Wales. The Commissioners included prominent individuals such as William Cecil, Lord Burghley, the Principal Secretary of State. Whilst the foundation process of the college started in 1571, it took more than fifty years and a further two charters, one in 1589 from Elizabeth and one in 1622 from her successor, James I, to complete the process. One Principal lost a draft copy of the statutes; the next kept the next draft in his study for several years without taking steps to have them confirmed by the Commissioners. It was not until after the 1622 charter that statutes were approved by the Commissioners and the college was fully constituted. (Full article...)

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The title page of a 1634 version of Hues' Tractatus de globis in the collection of the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal

Robert Hues (1553–1632) was an English mathematician and geographer. He graduated from St Mary Hall, Oxford, in 1578 before making observations of the variations of the compass off the coast of Newfoundland. He later travelled with Thomas Cavendish on a circumnavigation of the globe, taking the opportunity to measure latitudes. In 1589, Hues went on the Earl of Cumberland's raiding expedition to the Azores to capture Spanish galleons. On a further circumnavigation, Hues made astronomical observations while in the South Atlantic, and also observed the variation of the compass there and at the Equator. In 1594, Hues published his discoveries in Tractatus de globis et eorum usu (Treatise on Globes and their Use) which was written to encourage English sailors to use practical astronomical navigation. He became a servant of Thomas Grey, 15th Baron Grey de Wilton, staying with him when Grey was imprisoned in the Tower of London for participating in the Bye Plot. Following Grey's death in 1614, Hues attended upon Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland, when he was confined in the Tower. He died in Oxford in 1632 and was buried in Christ Church Cathedral. (more...)

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St Hilda's College was established in 1893 for women, and was the last single-sex college at Oxford: men were admitted for the first time in 2008. It was founded by Dorothea Beale, who was also a headmistress at Cheltenham Ladies' College. Located in Cowley Place alongside the River Cherwell, it is the most easterly of the university's colleges. It is named after the Anglo-Saxon saint Hilda of Whitby. The buildings include the Jacqueline Du Pré Music Building, named after the cellist who was an honorary fellow of St Hilda's. Opening in 1995, it was the first purpose-built concert hall to be built in Oxford since the Holywell Music Room in 1742. There are about 420 undergraduates and 150 postgraduates at St Hilda's: former students include the literary critic Helen Gardner, the writers Susanna Clarke and Barbara Pym, the historian Bettany Hughes and the politician Gillian Shephard. The Principal is Sir Gordon Duff, appointed in 2014. The college featured in the 2002 documentary series College Girls, which followed students from 1998 to 2001. (Full article...)

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Credit: kamshots

A winter view of Oxford from South Park on Headington Hill, to the east of the city.

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Did you know

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

... that the establishment of the Marshal Foch Professorship of French Literature at Oxford was announced a few days after Marshal Foch (pictured) signed the Armistice with Germany to end World War I?
... that British international rally driver Tony Ambrose was given an MG sports car by his father for winning a scholarship to Jesus College?
... that Bishop Graham Chadwick served as a naval intelligence officer in World War II and was expelled from South Africa for anti-apartheid activism?
... that Somerset cricketer Izzy Westbury made her senior international debut for the Netherlands aged 15?
... that it was speculated that J. K. Rowling based the Harry Potter character Albus Dumbledore on the "splendidly bearded" T. P. Wiseman, her classics professor at Exeter University?

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Neither rope-dancers nor players (who go on the stage for gain's sake), nor sword-matches, or sword players are to be permitted within the University of Oxford. All stage-players, rope-dancers and fencers transgressing are to be incarcerated.

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— William Laud, Chancellor of the University and Archbishop of Canterbury, from his University Statutes of 1636

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