The University of Oxford is the oldest university in the English-speaking world. Teaching has taken place at Oxford since 1096. Oxford has the largest volume of world-leading research in the country, rating top in the REF power rankings published by Research Fortnight. Oxford’s research involves more than 70 departments, almost 1,800 academic staff, more than 5,000 research and research support staff, and more than 5,600 graduate research students. The University has 38 independent colleges to which undergraduate and graduate students belong. Oxford has the highest research income from external sponsors of any UK university: £478.3m in 2013/14. The University has pioneered the successful commercial exploitation of academic research and invention, creating more than 100 companies, and files more patents each year than any other UK university.
After ten years of negotiations, Russia’s Gazprom and the China National Petroleum Company (CNPC) have announced they have signed a 30-year gas contract. Russia will from the end of this decade supply…
Britain’s homes are responsible for almost a third of the nation’s energy use, despite decades of gradually improving energy efficiency. For the UK to meet its targets for carbon emissions reductions by…
In 1934, two physicists came up with a theory that described how to create matter from pure light. But they dismissed the idea of ever observing such a phenomenon in the laboratory because of the difficulties…
Romanians take European elections very seriously. These elections affect domestic politics as they do in the UK and other Western member states, but they don’t exist in a separate bubble. In Romania, EU…
New data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has shown a small drop of about 4,000 in the number of Romanian and Bulgarian-born people employed in the UK in the first three months of 2014 – the…
Brace yourself for another round of innuendo and ignorance about immigration as the Office for National Statistics prepares to release its latest figures showing that 30,000 new migrants have arrived from…
The Conversation organised a public question-and-answer session on Reddit in which Anders Sandberg and Andrew Snyder-Beattie, researchers at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, explored…
Gamers around the world are snapping up a new device that promises to give them an edge on competitors by boosting their gaming focus. It is certainly easy to see the appeal of being able to improve your…
In the age of listicles, the life of a science journalist gets harder and harder. Explaining research clearly and accurately while holding onto readers’ attention has never been easy. Doing so when there…
In the age of listicles, the life of a science journalist gets harder and harder. Explaining research clearly and accurately while holding onto readers’ attention has never been easy. Doing so when there…
While a privatised energy market has delivered stable and cost-effective electricity to Britain’s national grid for 25 years, the world and the pressures it faces are changing. A group of Newcastle University…
Britain’s warm, wet winter brought floods and misery to many living across southern England, with large parts of Somerset lying underwater for months. When in January rainfall was double the expected average…
As notorious weather predictions go, the “barbecue summer” of 2009 is up there with Michael Fish’s dismissal of the incoming 1987 hurricane. The summer turned out to be wet and windy, and questions were…
What does the now sustained recovery in the UK and the still tentative signs of recovery in the eurozone tell us? According to some on the right, it says all is good in the world, austerity has been successful…
Universities and schools across the globe are offering an increasing number of courses taught in English. Parents and politicians alike are pushing for this change as English is considered a worldwide…
Declining numbers of zebra, antelope and other big grazers cause rodent populations to rapidly increase, a new study has shown. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Hillary…
A 13th century bishop’s theory about the formation of the universe has intriguing parallels with the theory of multiple universes. This was uncovered by the the Ordered Universe project at Durham University…
Last week, scientists announced the discovery of Kepler-186f, a planet 492 light years away in the Cygnus constellation. Kepler-186f is special because it marks the first planet almost exactly the same…
Pigeons have extraordinary navigational abilities. Take a pigeon from its loft and let it go somewhere it has never been before and it will, after circling in the sky for while, head home. This remarkable…
In 2004, students in the north Indian city of Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, started a club called Generation Nowhere. They met to discuss the hopelessness of their position as educated young men from provincial…
Head of Policy Engagement, Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford and Fellow in Environmental Change, Reuben College, University of Oxford, University of Oxford