The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology on Beaumont Street, Oxford, England, is the world's first university museum and Britain's first public museum. Its first building was erected in 1678–1683 to house the cabinet of curiosities that Elias Ashmole gave to the University of Oxford in 1677.
The present building was erected 1841–1845. The museum reopened in 2009 after a major redevelopment. In November 2011, new galleries focusing on Egypt and Nubia were unveiled. In May 2016, the museum opened new galleries of 19th-century art.
The Examination Schools of the University of Oxford are located at 75–81 High Street, Oxford, England.
The building was designed by Sir Thomas Jackson , who also designed the cricket pavilion in the University Parks. The designs for the building were prepared in 1876 and it was completed in 1882, in Clipsham stone.
The Examination Schools building is Grade II listed.During the First World War, the Examination Schools together with Somerville College and other Oxford buildings were requisitioned by the War Office to create the 3rd Southern General Hospital, a facility for the Royal Army Medical Corps to treat military casualties. The headquarters of the hospital were at the Examination Schools.The main purpose of the Schools is for the organisation and administration of the university examinations. Many of the final and other examinations for the University's students take place in the building, especially during Trinity Term. There is access to the building from both the High Street and Merton Street. Traditionally there have been parties in the street by students who have finished their exams, although the University tries to take measures to prevent this. At their height, traffic has been disrupted in the High Street.
In Michaelmas Term, the Examination Schools are host to the university's Freshers' Fair.
The building provides a major lecturing facility for the University and is also used as a meeting and conference venue outside term time. It is one of the largest buildings owned by the University.
The Ruskin School of Drawing & Fine Art is located at 74 High Street to the east of the Examination Schools and University College is to the west.
The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, Oxfordshire, 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 often jointly called Oxbridge.
The university is made up of 39 semi-autonomous constituent colleges, six permanent private halls, and a range of academic departments which are organised into four divisions. All the colleges are self-governing institutions within the university, each controlling its own membership and with its own internal structure and activities. All students are members of a college. It does not have a main campus, and its buildings and facilities are scattered throughout the city centre. Undergraduate teaching at Oxford is organised around weekly small-group tutorials at the colleges and halls – a feature unique to the Oxbridge system. These are supported by classes, lectures, seminars, laboratory work and occasionally further tutorials provided by the central university faculties and departments. Postgraduate teaching is provided predominantly centrally.
Oxford operates the world's oldest university museum, as well as the largest university press in the world and the largest academic library system nationwide. In the fiscal year ending 31 July 2019, the university had a total income of £2.45 billion, of which £624.8 million was from research grants and contracts.Oxford has educated a wide range of notable alumni, including 28 prime ministers of the United Kingdom and many heads of state and government around the world. As of November 2019, 71 Nobel Prize laureates, 3 Fields Medalists, and 6 Turing Award winners have studied, 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.
The Bodleian Library is the main research library of the University of Oxford, and is one of the oldest libraries in Europe. With over 12 million items, it is the second-largest library in Britain after the British Library. Under the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003 it is one of six legal deposit libraries for works published in the United Kingdom, and under Irish law it is entitled to request a copy of each book published in the Republic of Ireland. Known to Oxford scholars as "Bodley" or "the Bod", it operates principally as a reference library and, in general, documents may not be removed from the reading rooms.
In 2000, a number of libraries within the University of Oxford were brought together for administrative purposes under the aegis of what was initially known as Oxford University Library Services , and since 2010 as the Bodleian Libraries, of which the Bodleian Library is the largest component.
All colleges of the University of Oxford have their own libraries, which in a number of cases were established well before the foundation of the Bodleian, and all of which remain entirely independent of the Bodleian. They do, however, participate in OLIS , the Bodleian Libraries' online union catalogue. Much of the library's archives were digitized and put online for public access in 2015.
Oxford Brookes University is a new university in Oxford, England. It can trace its origins to 1865, when it was founded as the Oxford School of Art. It became a university in 1992 and was renamed to honour its former principal, John Henry Brookes.
Oxford Brookes University is spread across four campuses, with three primary sites based in and around Oxford and the fourth campus located in Swindon. In 2020 Oxford Brookes University won its appeal against the local council to demolish its Wheatley campus and build houses on the site. Brookes has approximately 18,000 students, 2,800 staff and over 130,000 alumni in over 189 countries. The university is divided into four faculties: Oxford Brookes Business School, Health and Life Sciences, Humanities and Social Sciences, and Technology, Design and Environment. Oxford Brookes University's partnership with the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants allows ACCA students to earn a BSc in applied accounting with the submission of a research and analysis project work while taking their ACCA examinations. The university also has schools of architecture and law. Brookes is a member of the University Alliance mission group.
Somerville College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Founded in 1879 as Somerville Hall, it was one of the first two women's colleges in Oxford, and counts among its alumnae such major international figures as Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Dorothy Hodgkin, Iris Murdoch, Vera Brittain and Dorothy L. Sayers. The college started admitting men in 1994.Somerville has one of the largest college libraries in Oxford and is known for its varied architecture and liberal atmosphere. This character traces back to its foundation by social liberals as the first non-denominational college in Oxford, deliberately unlike the strictly Anglican Lady Margaret Hall, the other women's college opened in the same year. Somerville is one of the few Oxford colleges where students may walk on the grass and, in 1964, became one of the first colleges to abandon the policy of locking its gates at night to prevent students staying out late. No gowns are worn during Formal Halls.
Somerville is one of only three Oxford colleges to provide on-site accommodation for all undergraduates throughout their course. The college is located near the Science Area, the University Parks, the Oxford University Press and Jericho, close to Green Templeton, St Anne's, Keble and St Benet's. Somerville is home to about 600 students, of which more than a third are international. Over half the UK students admitted to Somerville are educated at state schools, which is close to the university average. Its total net assets in 2018 were £225.0 million, the seventh highest total for an Oxford undergraduate college.
Its sister college in Cambridge is Girton College, Britain's first residential college for the education of women at degree level.
Harris Manchester College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. It was founded in Warrington in 1757 as a college for Unitarian students and moved to Oxford in 1893. It became a full college of the university in 1996, taking its current name to commemorate its predecessor the Manchester Academy and a benefaction by Lord Harris of Peckham.
The college is one of very few mixed-sex higher education colleges in the UK whose postgraduate and undergraduate places are exclusively for students aged 21 years or over.
Balliol College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. One of Oxford's oldest colleges, it was founded around 1263 by John I de Balliol, a rich landowner from Barnard Castle in County Durham, who provided the foundation and endowment for the college. When de Balliol died in 1269 his widow, Dervorguilla, a woman whose wealth far exceeded that of her husband, continued his work in setting up the college, providing a further endowment, and writing the statutes. She is considered a co‑founder of the college.The college's alumni include the incumbent Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson, as well as three former prime ministers , Harald V of Norway, Empress Masako of Japan, five Nobel laureates, and numerous literary and philosophical figures, including Shoghi Effendi, Adam Smith, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Aldous Huxley, as well as socialite and Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell. John Wycliffe, who translated the Bible into English, was Master of the college in the 1360s.
Pembroke College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England, located in Pembroke Square. The college was founded in 1624 by King James I of England, using in part the endowment of merchant Thomas Tesdale, and was named after William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke, Lord Chamberlain and then-Chancellor of the University.Like many of Oxford's colleges, Pembroke admitted its first mixed-sex cohort in 1979, having previously accepted men only. As of 2019, Pembroke had an estimated financial endowment of £63 million. Pembroke offers the study of almost all the courses offered by the university.
Sir Ernest Ryder, a former Lord Justice of Appeal, has been Master of the College since July 2020.
