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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, some Oxford academics fled northeast to Cambridge, where, in 1209, they established 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 43 constituent colleges, consisting of 36 semi-autonomous colleges, four permanent private halls and three societies (colleges that are departments of the university, without their own royal charter), 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. The university 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 31 prime ministers of the United Kingdom and many heads of state and government around the world. As of October 2022,^[update] 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 election in 1860 for the position of Boden Professor of Sanskrit was a hotly contested affair between two rival candidates offering different approaches to Sanskrit scholarship: Monier Williams (pictured), an Oxford-educated Englishman, and Max Müller, a German-born lecturer specialising in comparative philology, the science of language. Both men battled for the votes of the electorate (the Convocation of the university) through manifestos and newspaper correspondence. The election came at a time of public debate about Britain's role in India particularly after the Indian Mutiny of 1857–58. Although generally regarded as the superior to Williams in scholarship, Müller had the double disadvantage (in the eyes of some) of being German and having liberal Christian views. At the end of the hard-fought campaign, Williams won by a majority of over 230 votes, and held the chair until his death in 1899. Müller, although deeply disappointed by his defeat, remained in Oxford for the rest of his career, but never taught Sanskrit there. (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 Catherine's College (commonly known as "St Catz" or "Catz") was established in 1963 and is one of the largest of the Oxford colleges, with about 450 undergraduates and 160 postgraduates. It grew out of the Delegacy of Non-Collegiate Students, founded in 1868 to offer university education at Oxford without the costs of college membership. Its students met as "St Catherine's Club" for social events, named after the hall in Catte Street where they met; it became St Catherine's Society in 1931, and later achieved full college status. It was one of the first men's colleges to become co-educational, in 1974. The college is on an 8-acre (32,000 m²) site acquired from Merton College on the banks of the River Cherwell, to the east of the city centre. The buildings, which were given Grade I listed status in 1993, were designed by the Danish architect Arne Jacobsen; he also designed the cutlery, furniture and lampshades. The Master is the engineer Roger Ainsworth; the first Master was the historian Alan Bullock. Alumni include the Nobel Prize winners John Vane and John E. Walker, the politician Peter Mandelson, the rower Matthew Pinsent and the author Jeanette Winterson. (Full article...)

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Credit: Steve Cadman

The Garden Quadrangle at St John's College, built between 1989 and 1993 by MJP Architects. The college was founded in 1555 by Sir Thomas White, a merchant and Master of the Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors. A number of buildings in modern styles have been added to the college since the 1950s.

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