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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 founding Fellows, Scholars and Commissioners of Jesus College were appointed in 1571 by Elizabeth I (college's portrait of her shown). She founded the college at the instigation of a Welsh clergyman, Hugh Price. Her royal charter appointed a Principal, Fellows to educate the Scholars and to run the college (under the overall direction of the Principal) and Commissioners to draw up statutes for the governance of the college. Jesus College was founded to help with the increased numbers of Welsh students at Oxford, and the founding Fellows included a number of individuals with links to Wales. The Commissioners included prominent individuals such as William Cecil, Lord Burghley, the Principal Secretary of State. Whilst the foundation process of the college started in 1571, it took more than fifty years and a further two charters, one in 1589 from Elizabeth and one in 1622 from her successor, James I, to complete the process. One Principal lost a draft copy of the statutes; the next kept the next draft in his study for several years without taking steps to have them confirmed by the Commissioners. It was not until after the 1622 charter that statutes were approved by the Commissioners and the college was fully constituted. (Full article...)

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Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 10th Earl of Shaftesbury (1938–2004), was a British peer from Wimborne St Giles, Dorset. His father predeceased him, making him next in line to his grandfather, Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 9th Earl of Shaftesbury. When the 9th Earl died in 1961, Ashley-Cooper became the 10th Earl of Shaftesbury, Baron Ashley of Wimborne St Giles and Baron Cooper of Pawlett. Educated at Christ Church, Oxford, he was a wealthy landowner of over 9,000 acres (3,600 ha) in East Dorset, and received honours and awards for his philanthropic and conservationist work, which included planting over a million trees. He served as president of the Shaftesbury Society, pursuing the same goals of the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, who had founded the organization in 1840. He also served as the vice president of Sir David Attenborough's British Butterfly Conservation Society. In November 2004, he went missing in France, prompting an international police investigation. His remains were found at the bottom of a remote ravine in the foothills of the French Alps. His brother-in-law and his wife, Jamila M'Barek, were convicted of his murder. (Full article...)

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The Queen's College was founded in 1341 by Robert de Eglesfield, chaplain to Queen Philippa of Hainault (the wife of King Edward III), and is named after her. The main college buildings are in the centre of Oxford, on the High Street, and the front of the college was designed by the 18th-century architect Nicholas Hawksmoor. The college has traditionally had strong links with the north of England: the founder's family had land in the area of Eaglesfield, Cumbria, and until the 20th century a number of scholarships were reserved for men from 20 schools in Yorkshire, Westmorland and Cumberland. The Neda Agha-Soltan Graduate Scholarship, named after an Iranian student who died in the 2009 Iranian election protests, was established at Queen's in 2009. There are about 350 undergraduate and 130 postgraduates. The Provost of the college is the chemistry professor Paul Madden. Former students at the college include the astronomer Edmund Halley, the comedian Rowan Atkinson, the internet pioneer Tim Berners-Lee, the neurologist Oliver Sacks and the theologian John Wycliffe. The Dean Ireland's Professorship of the Exegesis of Holy Scripture is one of the university posts linked to the college. (Full article...)