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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 position of Boden Professor of Sanskrit was established in 1832 with money bequeathed to the university by Joseph Boden, a retired soldier who had worked for the East India Company. He wanted a Sanskrit professor to assist in converting British India to Christianity. The first two professors were elected by Oxford graduates; the 1860 election, in particular, was hotly contested. Reforms of Oxford implemented in 1882 removed all mention of Boden's original purpose, removed the power to elect the professor from graduates, and gave the holder of the professorship a fellowship at Balliol College (pictured). To date, Sir Monier Monier-Williams (professor 1860–99) has held the chair for the longest, although a deputy carried out his teaching duties for the last 11 years of his life. The current holder (as of 2014), Christopher Minkowski, was appointed in 2005 and is the eighth Boden professor. It is the only remaining Sanskrit professorship in the United Kingdom. (Full article...)

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William Beach Thomas (1868–1957) was a British author and journalist known for his work as a war correspondent and his writings about nature and country life. The son of a rural clergyman, he won an exhibition to Christ Church, Oxford, became president of the Oxford University Athletics Club. Finding work as a schoolmaster unpleasant, he turned his attention to writing articles for newspapers and periodicals, and began to write books. During the early part of the First World War Beach Thomas defied military authorities to report news stories from the Western Front. As a result he was briefly imprisoned before being granted official accreditation as a war correspondent. His reportage for the remainder of the war received national recognition, despite being criticised by some and parodied by soldiers. Beach Thomas's primary interest as an adult was in rural matters. He was conservative in his views, and feared that the post–Second World War socialist governments regarded the countryside only from an economic perspective. He was an advocate for the creation of national parks in England and Wales, and mourned the decline of traditional village society. (Full article...)

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Regent's Park College (colloquially "Regent's") 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 Regent's, the Baptist Church. It started as the Stepney Academy in East London in 1810, created to teach Baptists at a time when only members of the Church of England could enter Oxford and Cambridge. It moved to Regent's Park in London in 1855, and took its current name, developing links with the University of London. H. Wheeler Robinson (Principal 1920–42) decided to move the college to Oxford, which he thought was a more congenial setting. A site was purchased in 1927 and fundraising for a new building began. The foundation stones were laid in 1938, and Regent's became a PPH in 1957. Women have been admitted since the 1920s. It has about 100 undergraduates and 90 postgraduates, including those training for Baptist ministry in the UK and abroad. Alumni include the Victorian general Sir Henry Havelock (active during the Indian Rebellion), the legal scholar Malcolm Evans, the theologian Jane Shaw and the Baptist missionary Donald Foster Hudson. (Full article...)

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Credit: Jorgeroyan

The Fellows' Library of Jesus College dates from 1679 but some of the bookcases are even older. John Betjeman called it "one of the best little-known sights of Oxford".

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Did you know

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

... that endocrinologist Sir Raymond Hoffenberg was forced to leave South Africa in 1968 due to his opposition to apartheid, and was later President of the Royal College of Physicians and of Wolfson College (pictured)?
... that Christopher Chavasse was an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, a Bishop of Rochester, and an Olympic athlete?
... that, in 1987, Bolaji Akinyemi proposed the development of nuclear weapons by Nigeria?
... that historian Henry William Carless Davis once served as a member of the British contingent to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919?
... that future Canadian Senator John Gilbert Higgins hung black crêpe paper on his door in mourning the day that Newfoundland joined Canada?

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“

To the University of Oxford I acknowledge no obligation; and she will as cheerfully renounce me for a son, as I am willing to disclaim her for a mother. I spent fourteen months at Magdalen College: they proved the fourteen months the most idle and unprofitable of my whole life.

”

— Edward Gibbon

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