University of Oxford

Authored by Dr Jasmin Abdel Ghany, Nuffield Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow at Nuffield College and Associate Member of the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science and the Department of Sociology, along with Dr Joshua Wilde, Senior Scientist and Researcher, Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, and Professor Ridhi Kashyap, Professor of Demography & Computational Social Science, Department of Sociology and Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, the study analyses more than five million births across 33 sub-Saharan African countries and India. By linking large-scale survey data…

Dr Stuart Jenkins, Oxford Net Zero Research Fellow Last week an Oxford Net Zero report laid out our views on the future for the global oil and gas sector. Helpfully for stimulating conversation, the next day the Tony Blair Institute (TBI) released their own policy brief discussing the challenges for the current UK energy strategy.TBI’s brief suggests there are missed opportunities for UK oil and gas, which, if unlocked, would…

The ground-breaking study, funded by Wellcome, carried out a randomised controlled trial of 99 healthcare workers exposed to trauma at work during the Covid-19 pandemic. The results demonstrate huge potential to implement a highly scalable, low intensity, easily accessible digital treatment that could transform how we prevent and treat PTSD for people who have been exposed to trauma worldwide.The global prevalence of traumaAccording to the World Health Organization, psychological trauma –…

A new multinational study from the INTERCOVID Consortium, led by researchers from the University of Oxford, has found that COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy, particularly when combined with a booster dose, significantly reduces the risk of preeclampsia, a serious and potentially life-threatening pregnancy complication. The findings offer unprecedented insight into preeclampsia prevention, independent of the direct effects of COVID-19 infection. The study, published in eClinicalMedicine, analysed data from 6,527 pregnant women…

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 10.5% of medicines worldwide in low- and middle-income countries are substandard or are falsified (i.e. fake). These medicines and vaccines fail to prevent and treat the diseases for which they are intended and risk additional adverse health consequences if the ingredients used in the falsified products are harmful, resulting in a threat to global health.By repurposing a clinical chemistry analyser to detect and measure…

Professor Peter Grindrod. Artificial intelligence (AI) has already transformed how we see the world, and how the world sees us. To date, however, most AI systems fall into a small number of familiar categories. Some are analytical engines operating in data-rich environments: for instance, pattern and object recognition, supervised classification, anomaly detection, control systems, and forecasting across images, video, sensor streams, and high-throughput machines. Others are generative, including large language…

The new study, led by the Oxford Internet Institute and the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford, carried out in partnership with MLCommons and other institutions, reveals a major gap between the promise of large language models (LLMs) and their usefulness for people seeking medical advice. While these models now excel at standardised tests of medical knowledge, they pose risks to real users seeking…

Around 4600 years ago, the Shijiahe developed an advanced, complex culture in China’s Middle Yangtze River region – complete with palaces, city walls, sophisticated water management, and jade and pottery industries. But within a thousand years, this culture had collapsed and migrated out of the region. Until now, the reason behind this was unclear – could this civilization have been driven out by raiders from the Central Plains? Or were…

'The Power of Activism' delivered a stimulating evening of discussion as the theme for this term's Sheldonian Series event on Wednesday 4 February 2026.It was a brilliant evening of discussion and a lively crowdDominique PalmerThe event, which is open to all and aims to promote freedom of speech and inclusive inquiry, saw a robust exchange of views on themes including the relationship between democracy and activism, the ethical and legal limits…

An adult puma with a blood stain on the paw. © Joel Reyero 2024 Should we protect an emblematic species if it may come at the cost of another one – particularly in ecosystems that are still recovering from human impacts? This is the conservation dilemma facing Monte Leon National Park, on the Patagonian coast in Argentina.Since cattle ranching was abandoned in southern Argentina in 1990, pumas (Puma concolor) have…

The UK Pharmaceutical Sector lies at the heart of the life sciences ecosystem, providing one of the key growth engines in the UK economy. In 2022, the £9 billion of pharmaceutical R&D accounted for 18% of all R&D performed by all UK businesses - the highest of any product area (UK Government). GSK has invested heavily in data-driven approaches to pharmaceutical R&D that are both informed by and provide new insight…

Our study demonstrates how geography, social organisation, and historical circumstances can preserve ancient genetic patterns in certain regions long after they have become altered elsewhere.Lead author, Associate Researcher Dr Leonidas-Romanos Davranoglou (Oxford University Museum of Natural History)Set among rugged mountains, dramatic coastlines, and distinct stone tower houses, the Mani Peninsula of the Peloponnese, Greece, has long captivated travellers, historians, and writers, most famously, Jules Verne and Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor.…

By fostering deep integration between leading UK and Japanese teams and their respective programmes, we aim to create a coherent, full-stack architecture and deliver concrete integration outcomes that amplify the value of current national efforts, rather than duplicating foundational developments.Professor David Lucas, Department of Physics, University of OxfordInstead of working through problems step by step, quantum methods can explore many possibilities at the same time, making them much faster at certain…

Cardiovascular disease results in around 20 million deaths worldwide and causes around a quarter of all deaths in the UK. Statins are highly effective drugs that lower LDL ('bad') cholesterol levels and have been repeatedly proven to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. However, there have been concerns about possible side effects.The researchers gathered data from 23 large-scale randomised studies from the Cholesterol Treatment Trialists’ Collaboration: 123,940 participants in 19…

Dr Héloïse Stevance. Credit: Elise Manahan. Recently one of the most prestigious artificial intelligence (AI) conferences (NeurIPS) was caught accepting submissions with hallucinated citations. Not a handful either - over 100 instances. The response form the NeurIPS board is pretty telling of the times we live in: ‘Even if 1.1% of the papers have one or more incorrect references due to the use of LLMs, the content of the papers themselves are…

The Academy for the Mathematical Sciences (AcadMathSci), founded in September 2023, brings together academia, education, business, industry, and government from across the UK to provide an authoritative, persuasive, and influential voice for the whole of the mathematical sciences. The Academy’s new Fellowship will bring together the UK’s ‘hidden problem solvers’, whose breadth of experience and depth of expertise will make the Fellowship much greater than the sum of its parts.Working…

The study, published in the American Heart Association's Journal Hypertension, examined how much salt people in the UK currently consume from packaged and takeaway foods, and estimated what would happen if all food categories covered by the government’s 2024 salt targets met those goals.The 2024 salt targets set maximum and average salt limits for 108 categories of everyday packaged and out-of-home foods - from bread and ready meals to takeaway…

Most of the impacts will be felt early on as the world passes the 1.5°C target set by the Paris Agreement, the authors warn. In 2010, 23% of the world's population lived with extreme heat, and this is set to grow to 41% over the next decades.Published in Nature Sustainability, the findings have grave implications for humanity. The Central African Republic, Nigeria, South Sudan, Laos, and Brazil are predicted to see…

The University of Oxford has been ranked first in the world in the Times Higher Education (THE) Subject Rankings for Medicine and Computer Science. Oxford leads in Medicine for the 15th consecutive year and in Computer Science for the 8th. The Times Higher Education World University Rankings are widely regarded as one of the most authoritative indicators of academic excellence, drawing from a rigorous set of criteria, including research influence,…

His Majesty The King has approved the appointment of Professor Wim Decock, of the Universities of Louvain and Liège, as the new Regius Professor of Civil Law at the University of Oxford. He will take up the post on 1 October 2026 and succeeds Professor Wolfgang Ernst. Professor Wim Decock Founded in the 1540s by King Henry VIII, the Regius Professorship of Civil Law at Oxford is one of the oldest of…

The use of medications for Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) has increased substantially across Europe over the past decade, with the steepest rises seen among adults - particularly women - according to a large population-based study published in The Lancet Regional Health - Europe. In the context of the Data Analysis and Real World Interrogation Network (DARWIN EU®), researchers in the DARWIN EU® Coordination Centre analysed electronic health records from five…

Dr Victoria Nash, Oxford Internet Institute On 10 December 2025, many younger Australian teenagers woke up to a tough new reality: attempts to access TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram or YouTube were met with screens showing locked accounts and instructions to verify age.This is the result of legislation introduced by the Australian government to stop young people under the age of 16 from using major social media services, in an effort to protect them…

The study, The Silicon Gaze: A typology of biases and inequality in LLMs through the lens of place, by Francisco W. Kerche, Professor Matthew Zook and Professor Mark Graham, published in Platforms and Society on Tuesday 20th January, analysed over 20 million ChatGPT queries.  When AI learns from biased data, it amplifies those biases further and can broadcast them at scale.  That is why we need more transparency and more independent scrutiny of how these systems make claims about people and places,…

What blows me away is the power of evolution: we don’t yet know how to design a really good biological quantum sensor from scratch, but by carefully steering the evolutionary process in bacteria, Nature found a way for us.First author Gabriel Abrahams, Department of Engineering ScienceIn the study, the researchers created a new class of biomolecules called magneto-sensitive fluorescent proteins (or MFPs), that can interact with magnetic fields and radio…

A decade-long study led by Penguin Watch, at the University of Oxford and Oxford Brookes University, has uncovered a record shift in the breeding season of Antarctic penguins, likely in response to climate change. These changes threaten to disrupt penguins’ access to food and increase interspecies competition. The results have been published today (20 January - World Penguin Awareness Day) in the Journal of Animal Ecology. Chinstrap penguin with its…

Professor Erin Saupe. Credit: Charlie Rex. The findings, published this week in Science, provide new insight towards understanding patterns of biodiversity distribution throughout Earth history to the present day, and highlight which modern species may be more at risk of extinction due to climate change.The researchers analysed over 300,000 fossils for over 12,000 genera of marine invertebrates, combining these with reconstructions of continental arrangements at different times in the past.…

Dr Federica Fedorczyk, Institute for Ethics in AI Over the past few weeks, Grok, Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, has been in the eye of the storm for creating sexualised images of children and women without their consent in response to simple user requests.The mechanism is extremely straightforward. Users can upload a picture and ask Grok to remove the clothes of the person depicted, leaving them in underwear, bikinis, transparent attire,…

Professor Robert House (Department of Materials) and Professor Moritz Riede (Department of Physics) have both been awarded one of the Royal Academy of Engineering’s first ever Green Future Fellowships. The first cohort of 13 Fellows will each receive £3 million over 10 years to develop solutions that tackle multiple causes of the climate crisis, as well as mitigate and adapt to its impacts. UK Science Minister Lord Patrick Vallance said:…

The findings come as real-world data shows around half of people discontinue GLP-1 receptor agonist treatment within 12 months, and just months after NICE published quality standards recommending post-treatment support for at least one year.Across 37 studies including 9,341 adults, weight increased by an average of 0.4 kg (0.9 pounds) per month after weight management drugs were stopped. Researchers estimate that, at this rate, people would return to their starting…

Professor Janina Dill Four days after the United States bombed targets in Venezuela to capture President Nicolas Maduro, it is barely contested that the operation was a violation of international law.“Operation Absolute Resolve” – which by military standards was undoubtedly successful – violates one of the most fundamental rules of international law, the prohibition on the use of force in international relations, enshrined in Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter.US…

About the Oxford winners:Professor Suzanne Aigrain (Department of Physics) – Awarded the George Darwin LectureshipI am delighted and honoured to receive this award, which recognises both my research and my commitment to communicating it to a variety of audiences, something I very much enjoy. In the next decade, we hope to find habitable planets in the Solar neighbourhood, paving the way to searching for signs of life in their atmospheres,…

Following his admission as Chancellor of the University of Oxford in February 2025, Rt Hon The Lord Hague of Richmond, CVO, will confer honorary degrees on distinguished individuals at a Special Honorary Degree Ceremony on Tuesday 24 February 2026.The ceremony will take place at 11.30am in the Sheldonian Theatre, where honorary degrees will be awarded to Lady Elish Angiolini, John Kerry, Dinah Rose, Professor Irene Tracey, Professor Sir John Curtice, Christina…

Published today in Nature Communications Earth & Environment, the researchers analysed more than 27 million commercial flights in 2023, covering 26,000 city pairs and nearly 3.5 billion passengers. This revealed enormous variability in emissions efficiency, with some routes producing nearly 900 grams of CO₂ per kilometre for each paying passenger - almost 30 times higher than the most efficient, at around 30 grams of CO₂ per kilometre.Our results clearly show…

Over the weekend, the US carried out a surprise military operation in Venezuela that led to the capture of Nicolás Maduro, who is regarded as having ruled illegitimately after disputed elections.This came after months of a major US military build-up in the region, including ships such as USS Gerald R. Ford, the world's largest warship, numerous aircraft, and 15,000 troops.Maduro, whose illegitimacy was accompanied by years of repression and human rights…

Physicists at the University of Oxford have contributed to a new study which has found that iron-rich asteroids can tolerate far more energy than previously thought without breaking apart - a breakthrough with direct implications for planetary defence strategies. The findings have been published in Nature Communications. The Campo del Cielo iron meteorite used in the study. Credit: Eric Halwax. Recent missions such as NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART),…

Dr Carissa Véliz Everywhere I look there is talk about AI and digital technology. It’s not only that I work in this field. Chatter about AI follows me at dinner parties, the conversations of strangers in restaurants and public transport, it’s on the radio, podcasts of every kind, and on every morning show on TV.Tech enthusiasts talk about AI like nothing more important has ever happened in history, like it…

The King’s New Year Honours 2026 have been announced, marking the achievements and service of extraordinary people across the UK, including members of the University of Oxford. Professor Irene Tracey, CBE FRS FMedSci, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford, said, ‘My warmest congratulations to all Oxford colleagues recognised in the New Year Honours. Their achievements embody the finest traditions of our University: rigorous scholarship, world-leading research, and a deep commitment to excellence and public service.’  The Rt Hon Lord Hague of Richmond has been appointed…

Using linked patient records from 4,366,981 people registered at 244 English GP practices between April 2007 and June 2019, the researchers estimate that exposure to average daily temperatures outside a mild reference range (18°C to 21°C) accounts for around 3.0% of recorded health-care costs in their dataset.Historically, the winter season has been and remains associated with additional health risks, which occur routinely each year, however heatwaves are emerging as a…

The DEN-HOST trial - a multi-site, placebo-controlled, randomised adaptive trial - is being delivered through a collaboration between the Pandemic Sciences Institute, the Programme for Research in Epidemic Preparedness and REsponse (PREPARE) under the Communicable Diseases Agency in Singapore, and the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit (OUCRU). It will initially involve trial sites in ten countries across Asia and Latin America, where dengue is endemic and represents a major public…

The University of Oxford has launched the world’s first Phase II clinical trial of a Nipah virus vaccine candidate.The trial, conducted in Bangladesh in partnership with the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b), and funded by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), will assess the safety and immune response of the ChAdOx1 NipahB vaccine in a region where the virus causes recurrent outbreaks.The trial started earlier this…