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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 Boat Race, also known as the "University Boat Race" and "The Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race", is a rowing race between Oxford University Boat Club and Cambridge University Boat Club each spring on the River Thames in London. The course (map pictured), which is 4 miles 374 yards long (6,779 metres), runs from Putney to Mortlake, passing Hammersmith and Barnes. The clubs' presidents toss a coin before the race for the right to choose which side of the river (station) they will row on: the north station ("Middlesex") has the advantage of the first and last bends, and the south ("Surrey") station the longer middle bend. Members of both teams are traditionally known as "blues" and each boat as a "Blue Boat", with Cambridge in light blue and Oxford dark blue. The first race was in 1829 and it has been held annually since 1856, with the exception of the two world wars. The 2012 race was won by Cambridge, after an interruption by a protestor swimming across the river into the path of the boats. As of 2014 Cambridge have won the race 81 times and Oxford 78 times, with one dead heat. The event is a popular one, not only with the alumni of the universities, but also with rowers in general and the public. (Full article...)

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Sir Bernard Williams (1929–2003) was an English moral philosopher, described by The Times as the "most brilliant and most important British moral philosopher of his time". He was the author of 11 books of philosophy, including Problems of the Self (1973), Moral Luck (1981), Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (1985), and Truth And Truthfulness: An Essay In Genealogy (2002). He studied Literae Humaniores at Balliol College, Oxford before becoming a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. As Knightbridge Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge and Deutsch Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, Williams became known internationally for his attempt to reorient the study of moral philosophy to history and culture, politics and psychology, and, in particular, to the Greeks. Oxford philosopher Gilbert Ryle once said of him that he "understands what you're going to say better than you understand it yourself, and sees all the possible objections to it, all the possible answers to all the possible objections, before you've got to the end of your sentence". (more...)

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Keble College was established in 1870 as a memorial to the Church of England clergyman John Keble, a leading member of the Oxford Movement that sought to emphasise the Catholic nature of the Church of England. The college is to the north of the city centre on Parks Road, opposite the University Museum of Natural History and the University Parks. The original buildings, designed by the architect William Butterfield, used bricks in an assortment of colours and patterns – a contrast with the traditional stone-clad colleges, and views on the merits of the design have varied. The college's alumni magazine is called The Brick. Women were first admitted in 1979, and there are now about 680 undergraduate and postgraduate students, making it one of the larger colleges. Keble owns the original of William Holman Hunt's painting The Light of the World, which is hung in the side chapel. Former students include the musician Thomas Armstrong, the journalist Andreas Whittam Smith and the cricketer Imran Khan, as well as many bishops, reflecting the long tradition of theological studies at Keble. (Full article...)

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Credit: Arnaud Malon

All Souls College, seen from the tower of the University Church of St Mary the Virgin, was founded by King Henry VI in 1438. Uniquely at Oxford, the college does not have any students – only Fellows.

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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 Scots American War Memorial (detail pictured) has a poetic line by Ewan Mackintosh who was killed while observing fighting at Cambrai?
... that William David Davies was the first Welsh non-conformist to obtain a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Oxford?
... that former Gloucestershire cricket captain Sir Derrick Bailey founded an airline and based the colour of its planes on the racing colours of his South African father?
... that English mathematician and geographer Robert Hues served his master Thomas Grey, the last Baron Grey de Wilton, while Grey was imprisoned in the Tower of London?
... that Rev William Cotton, vicar of Frodsham, Cheshire, introduced the skills of beekeeping to New Zealand in the 1840s?