Cherwell District Council and Oxfordshire County Council have been instructed to pay Merton College’s appeal costs after an inspector deemed they acted unreasonably over a planning application. In July 2021, Merton College applied to build 540 homes on farmland to the west and north of Yarnton village, alongside a community work hub, two community woodland areas, playing pitches, a local natural reserve and an elderly care space.  The plan was part of the 4,400 new homes allocated by the Cherwell District Council in Kidlington, Yarnton, and Begbroke to meet Oxford’s housing needs. Reside ..read more

The Oxford Student can reveal that the lineup for student speaker society Oxford Speaks this Trinity includes former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, and Baroness Brenda Hale, the former president of the U.K. Supreme Court. Pelosi, a veteran Democratic politician who served as Speaker of the House under Presidents George Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, will appear in Week 1. Nimko Ali, a British-Somali social activist and CEO of The Five Foundation, a campaign to end female genital mutilation, will also speak that week. Baroness Hale will speak ..read more

A leaked email from the University of Oxford has revealed that “members of legislatures or those active in politics” will be barred from running for Oxford University chancellor, possibly disqualifying Boris Johnson and Theresa May as speculated candidates. Oxford’s current Chancellor, Lord Christopher Patten, announced in February that he will be stepping down after 21 years of service.  After his announcement, it has been speculated that former Prime Ministers Tony Blair, Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Imran Khan, the jailed former Prime Minister of Pakistan, may take up Lord Patten’s ..read more

Cancer Research UK (CRUK) will award a £9 million funding to the University over the next five years to train early-career clinician-scientists.  Under its Clinical Academic Training Programme, CRUK will invest a total of £58.7 million in nine research centres, including the Cancer Research UK Oxford Centre. Clinician scientists are doctors who also carry out medical research. CRUK said they “play an essential role” in helping to bridge the gap between scientific research and clinical research involving patients Training as a clinical scientist involves taking time out of their medical t ..read more

Oxford City Council faced a ‘significant risk’ of workforce equality over concerns about its high level of staff turnover, according to a recent report.  Oxford City Council’s staff turnover has increased by 15.29% over the past 12 months. The report highlighted that 27% of staff absences between January 2023 to 2024 were due to stress, anxiety and depression. The Workforce Sustainability Report aimed to provide a “comprehensive update on the actions in place to improve the sustainability of the workforce.”  While nationally the sector is struggling to recruit, the report noted that ..read more

“You’ve spent a lot of your time at Oxford doing student drama and music. Why haven’t you fully engaged with finance societies?” Up until this point, I’d thought my interview for a summer internship with a big bank was going well. I’d prepared a decent stock pitch, extensively researched the firm’s values, and flawlessly taken the (very) stern interviewer through a DCF model. The moment those words came out of his mouth, though, I was paralytically rooted to my seat and speechless. It took me a solid few seconds before I could muster up any kind of answer, which, to the best of my memory, was ..read more

Following an investigation by The Oxford Student, it can be revealed that Taylor Swift will be coming to speak in Oxford next term. The international pop star, on tour in the UK from the 7th to the 23rd of June, will be addressing students at the Oxford Onion. Swift will be singing in Edinburgh from the 7th to the 9th, in Liverpool from the 13th to the 15th, in Cardiff on the 18th and in London from the 21st to the 23rd, and again in August. According to exclusive sources, the pop star should come talk in Oxford between her Edinburgh and Liverpool shows, at the beginning of 8th week. It is sp ..read more

While most eyes were today fixed on the Varsity boat race in London, the gamers of the University tuned in to NSE_GG on twitch to watch the final of the British Universities Esport Championships (BUEC) Spring 2024. The match of interest to Oxonians: Oxford Omnics against the Warwick Angels. The game? Overwatch. Overwatch, the current version of which was released in 2022, is a multiplayer first person “hero shooter” game, played in teams of 6. Set 60 years in the future, the name refers to a fictional UN task force, designed to combat the threat of the ‘Omnics’, robotic technology that turned ..read more

Ethel Smyth’s Mass in D, performed in Christ Church Cathedral and conducted by third-year music student Alice Knight on Friday 8th March, marked the end of the RETUNE festival: a collaboration between the Alternative Canon Project (ACP), Oxford University Music Society (OUMS), and the Faculty of Music that aimed to “reflect the diversity of under-represented groups in music, both past and present, including performers, composers/arrangers, teachers, patrons, curators, writes and activists”. Attempts to promote the music of under-represented composers and musicians, who do not feature in ..read more

When a professor asks a question, what goes through your mind before deciding whether to raise your hand? Research shows that, if you identify as a woman, the list is likely to be longer. “Joke’s on you, writer”, you may be thinking. “I never even considered raising my hand.” Well, you are not alone. Though recent research has shown that gender performance gaps have closed or will close soon – that is, women, in most academic and professional fields, perform as well as men –, a different gap persists: the “confidence gap”. This distortion refers to the perception that men and women have about ..read more