Why study at Oxford?

Research excellence

Oxford is one of the world’s top research universities and boasts world-class facilities for study and research. We are famous for our research excellence and innovation, and home to some of the most talented researchers in the world.

The Research Excellent Framework 2021 (REF) show Oxford's submission had the highest volume of “world-leading” (4*) research of any UK institution, submitting over 3,600 researchers (3,405 full time equivalent) into 29 subject areas, over 8,500 research outputs in a range of formats from journal articles to compositions, and 220 case studies about the impact of Oxford research beyond academia. In 2021-22, the University of Oxford received £711.4 million in external research funding. 

The University is at the forefront of research on topics of national, regional and global significance. Our work is ground-breaking, collaborative and interdisciplinary. We're dedicated to fostering research collaborations across the world with research institutions, research agencies, funding bodies, industrial and commercial partners, sponsors and benefactors.

Life as a graduate researcher

Graduate students are central to the University's research efforts. They join our academic staff in working to answer fundamental questions and tackle some of the major challenges facing the world today. We look for the most promising students to join our outstanding departments and faculties.

As a graduate student at Oxford you’ll work alongside your peers and leading experts in your field, who will inspire and support you throughout your time here. You’ll have access to world-class facilities and resources in your subject, and you’ll be encouraged to get involved in the intellectual life of your department and the wider academic community.

An Oxford research degree is an opportunity to immerse yourself in your chosen area, pursue your own ideas and make a significant and original contribution to knowledge. We provide a supportive environment in which researchers at every stage of their career can flourish. Watch some of our current and former students talk about their research at Oxford, from advanced cooling technologies for jet engines to how blood stem cells are made. You can find out more about our graduate research courses on our 'Choosing a course' page.

World-class facilities

Over the last ten years, the University has invested over £400 million in its science facilities and infrastructure.  Here are just some of our newest world-class facilities: 

• The Beecroft Building is a state-of-the-art laboratory and teaching facility for experimental and theoretical physics, with space for some 200 physicists. The high-specification laboratories are capable of housing extremely environmentally sensitive atomic-level experiments, and are among the very best globally. They can maintain temperature to within a tenth of a degree, and reduce vibration down to the width of a few atoms.

• The Li Ka Shing Centre for Health Information and Discovery is a new £115 million interdisciplinary research centre. It is the world’s largest health data institute, and houses both the Targeted Discovery Institute (TDI) and the Big Data Institute (BDI). The centre provides space for six hundred scientists across research areas who are working to define disease more accurately, identify targets for new drugs and to help us to understand how disease responds to treatment.

• The Earth Sciences Building is equipped with a range of specialised laboratories and houses the largest suite of mass spectrometers of any earth science department in the world. In the metal-free labs trace metals can be analysed without contamination, and the basement labs have been modified to remove any trace of the earth’s magnetic field.

Digital resources

Oxford combines a rich heritage with infrastructure and facilities that are adapted to the needs of today’s students and scholars.

Across the University, digital technologies are enabling new kinds of research and learning, from computational approaches to drug discovery to exploring the Colosseum in VR. Oxford has been a centre of excellence for computing and engineering for decades, and is at the forefront of research in areas such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing.

But no matter your subject, we want to enable you to make the most of technology to enhance your study and research. We have one of the largest private networks in the UK, providing high-speed internet and excellent IT facilities and support, with hundreds of computers for use throughout the University. Our virtual learning environments (VLEs) allow students to access course materials and collaborate, and many lectures are captured as audio or video podcasts.

Enhanced research

At Oxford, fantastic research materials are often just a few clicks away. Using SOLO, the University’s main search engine for library collections, students can search almost all of the holdings in the Bodleian, as well as departmental, faculty and college libraries across Oxford — that’s millions of printed books, e-books, online journals, articles, reports and databases at your fingertips.

Our museums and libraries use new technologies to provide digital access to their collections, including many objects and texts you might not otherwise get to see. Digital Bodleian makes the Bodleian’s unique riches freely available to the world. It features over 650,000 digital objects, including images of manuscripts, rare books, maps and ephemera, from medieval Arabic cosmographies to maps of Middle Earth annotated by JRR Tolkien, and from classical papyri to drafts of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The Ashmolean Museum has also embarked on a major project to digitise its collections, with over 60,000 object records available for you to browse or search. 

Oxford’s academic community is committed to providing the widest possible access to its world-class research. We have a policy of open access for publications that result from the University’s research. All researchers are encouraged to deposit their research publications in the Oxford Research Archive (ORA), the University’s digital repository, which holds more than 225,000 works including datasets. 

Skills and development

We provide many opportunities for graduate students to gain valuable digital research skills and develop a better understanding of finding and working with data. The Bodleian iSkills programme offers workshops for graduate students in information discovery and scholarly communications, and training in digital research skills are also run by our graduate schools. The Bodleian Data Library can advise you on finding data and statistics and managing your research data. It also manages access to restricted data collections, and helps researchers apply for access to sensitive datasets held offsite.

The University’s IT Learning Centre (ITLC) runs many classroom-based IT courses, taught in state-of-the-art learning rooms. Courses cover topics such as programming, digital media and platforms, data analysis, data management, data visualisation and high-performance computing.

All University members also have free access to a vast library of video learning courses on LinkedIn Learning. These courses are taught by industry experts and cover thousands of topics, from Python to project management.