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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 Council of Keble College, Oxford ran the college (in conjunction with the Warden) from its foundation in 1868 until 1952. The council – a group of between nine and twelve men – has been described as "an external Council of ecclesiastical worthies", as most of the members came from outside the college, and many were not otherwise linked to the university. Keble was established by public subscription as a memorial to the clergyman John Keble. The first council members were drawn from the committee whose work had raised the money to build the college. By keeping matters relating to religion and the college's internal affairs in the hands of the council, the founders hoped to maintain Keble's religious position as "a bastion of 'orthodox' Anglican teaching" against the opponents of Tractarianism. In total, 54 men served on the Council, 11 of whom were college alumni; in 1903, Arthur Winnington-Ingram (Bishop of London) became the first former Keble student to join the council. It ceased to exist after 9 April 1952, when new statutes of the college placed full management in the hands of the Warden and Fellows. (Full article...)

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William Morris (1834–1896) was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement. His best-known works include The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems (1858), The Earthly Paradise (1868–70), A Dream of John Ball and the utopian News from Nowhere. He was an important figure in the emergence of socialism in Britain, founding the Socialist League in 1884, but breaking with the movement over goals and methods by the end of that decade. Born in Walthamstow in east London, Morris was educated at Marlborough and Exeter College, Oxford. In 1856, he became an apprentice to Gothic revival architect G. E. Street. That same year he founded the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, an outlet for his poetry and a forum for development of his theories of hand-craftsmanship in the decorative arts. In 1861, Morris founded a design firm in partnership with the artist Edward Burne-Jones, and the poet and artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti which profoundly influenced the decoration of churches and houses into the early 20th century. His chief contribution to the arts was as a designer of repeating patterns for wallpapers and textiles, many based on a close observation of nature. (more...)

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St Benet's Hall is one of the Permanent Private Halls (PPHs) of the University of Oxford. Unlike the colleges, which are run by their Fellows, PPHs are run by an outside institution – in the case of St Benet's, Ampleforth Abbey. Established in 1897, it was the first Benedictine foundation in Oxford since the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the mid-16th century. Historically its principal function was to allow Benedictine monks to study at Oxford, but nowadays most members are lay undergraduates and there is no requirement that students should be Catholics. It became a PPH in 1918, when it was named after Benedict of Nursia, the founder of the Benedictine order. It is the last Oxford institution to admit only men for undergraduate degrees: women are admitted for postgraduate study, and will be admitted as undergraduates when new housing facilities are obtained. Until 2012, the Master of St Benet's had always been a Benedictine monk; the current Master is Werner Jeanrond, a lay Catholic theologian. Alumni include Cardinal Basil Hume, the philosopher Sir Anthony Kenny, the politician Damian Collins and the England rugby international Simon Halliday. (Full article...)

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Credit: Akoliasnikoff

Stained glass in Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford. The chapel of Christ Church also serves as a cathedral for the Diocese of Oxford, a unique combination of university chapel and cathedral.

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Did you know

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

... that before Charles Aitken installed electric lighting, the Tate Gallery (pictured) was cleared of visitors on dark and foggy days?
... that in 1964 J. N. L. Baker, Bursar of Jesus College, became the first member of the university to hold the post of Lord Mayor of Oxford?
... that although George Bernard Shaw called fellow Edwardian playwright St John Hankin's death "a public calamity," his work was largely neglected until the 1990s?
... that "many-sided" priest Father Patrick McLaughlin promoted links between the church and the world of literature by staging plays, and by commissioning lectures from T. S. Eliot and Dorothy L. Sayers?
... that in 1612 Jewish teacher Jacob Barnet was arrested and imprisoned by officials of the university for changing his mind about being baptized?

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“

Oxford is on the whole more attractive than Cambridge to the ordinary visitor; and the traveller is therefore recommended to visit Cambridge first, or to omit it altogether if he cannot visit both.

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— Karl Baedeker

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