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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 blade colours of Jesus College Boat Club

Jesus College Boat Club, the rowing club for members of Jesus College, was formed in 1835. Rowing at the college predates the club's foundation, as a boat from Jesus was involved in the earliest recorded races between college crews at Oxford in 1815, when it competed against a crew from Brasenose College. In the early years of rowing at Oxford, Jesus was one of the few colleges that participated in races. A number of college members have rowed for Oxford against Cambridge in the Boat Race and the Women's Boat Race. Barney Williams, a Canadian rower who studied at the college, won a silver medal in rowing at the 2004 Summer Olympics, and participated in the Boat Race in 2005 and 2006. Other students who rowed while at the college have achieved success in other fields, including John Sankey, who became Lord Chancellor, and Alwyn Williams, who became Bishop of Durham. The college boathouse, which is shared with Keble College's boat club, dates from 1964 and replaced a moored barge used by spectators and crew-members. (Full article...)

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Richard Bellingham (c. 1592 – 1672) was a colonial magistrate, lawyer, and several-time governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the last surviving signatory of the colonial charter at his death. He studied law at Brasenose College and became a wealthy lawyer in Lincolnshire prior to his departure for the New World in 1634. He was a liberal political opponent of the moderate John Winthrop, arguing for expansive views on suffrage and lawmaking, but also religiously somewhat conservative, opposing the efforts of Quakers and Baptists to settle in the colony. He was one of the architects of the Massachusetts Body of Liberties, a document embodying many sentiments also found in the U.S. Bill of Rights. Although he was generally in the minority during his early years in the colony, he served ten years as colonial governor. Bellingham notably refused a direct order from King Charles II to appear in England, an action that may have contributed to the eventual revocation of the colonial charter in 1684. Bellingham is immortalized in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The New England Tragedies, both of which fictionalize events from colonial days. (Full article...)

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Christ Church (sometimes known as "The House" from its Latin name, Ædes Christicode: lat promoted to code: la , or "House of Christ") is one of the largest Oxford colleges, and is also the site of the cathedral church of the Diocese of Oxford, namely Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford. The college can trace its history from 1525, when Cardinal Thomas Wolsey suppressed the Abbey of St Frideswide in Oxford and founded Cardinal College; he fell from favour before it was completed. King Henry VIII refounded it as King Henry VIII's College in 1532, and then (after the break from the Roman Catholic Church) as Christ Church in 1546, making it the cathedral of the new Oxford diocese as well. The buildings also include Tom Tower designed by Sir Christopher Wren, where "Great Tom" rings 101 times every night. Christ Church has produced thirteen British prime ministers, the two most recent being Anthony Eden (1955–57) and Sir Alec Douglas-Home (1963–64). The college is the setting for parts of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, as well as Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland – Carroll was a Fellow of the college and taught mathematics. Christ Church has been used in the filming of the movies of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series and the film adaptation of Philip Pullman's novel Northern Lights. (Full article...)

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Credit: Adam Hopkinson

Tyrannosaurus rex, one of the exhibits on display at the Pitt Rivers Museum. Founded in 1884 by Augustus Pitt Rivers, the museum holds about 500,000 items donated to the University relating to archaeology and anthropology.

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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 Indian Institute (pictured) in central Oxford was founded by Sir Monier Monier-Williams in 1883 to provide training for the Indian Civil Service?
... that sports car racer, yachtsman and rower Robert Hichens was also the most highly decorated officer of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve during the Second World War?
... that Daniel Ernst Jablonski in the 1690s tried to bring about a union between Lutheran and Calvinist Protestants?
... that the English historian Sir Raymond Carr was knighted for services to History in the New Year Honours List, 1987?
... that John Percival, when headmaster of Rugby School, gained the nickname "Percival of the knees" because he was concerned about "impurity" and insisted that boys secure their football shorts below the knee with elastic?