Vice-Chancellor's Oration 2024

Dear colleagues,

By now many of us have heard that our dear friend, Professor Ian Shipsey, Head of Physics, died suddenly yesterday. Our first thoughts are with his wife, Professor Daniela Bortoletto, and their daughter at this time of grieving. Ian was one of a kind. He was one of the most impactful particle physicists of his generation: he transformed our understanding of heavy quarks, discovered new physics around b-quark & Higgs bosons and broke new ground in understanding dark matter. Ian was charming, determined, funny, energetic and an indefatigable advocate for world-leading physics. He was also a powerful voice for those with disabilities; his YouTube videos on the physics of his own deafness and cochlear implant have had thousands of views. Let us take a minute’s silence to honour our beloved colleague, Ian. 1 minute… Thank you.

Let me now take you on a journey to the evening of 6 May 1954. It was an unusually blustery one, but when the wind dropped the conditions were right… to run. 3 minutes 59 seconds later, the time was right too, and Roger Bannister had achieved something everyone said was impossible: a sub-4-minute mile. A feat of will, endurance, team-work through his pacers, careful research and planning, astounding physiological strength and ability, and a passionate desire to reach for the seemingly impossible. What’s so special about running a randomly demarcated distance in an equally arbitrary time, and what on earth has this got to do with our purpose as a modern university?

It's simple: our role is to strive for the seemingly impossible. We don’t do easy. Were we confident we could make a COVID vaccine, at pace, to conquer the pandemic? Did Adrian Hill’s team have doubts, during those 20 years of developing a malaria vaccine, before success with the R21/Matrix-M™? They must have: doubts are the currency of academia. But doubts don’t deter our pursuit of excellence. The Department of Physics is the new international headquarters for Breakthrough Listen – the largest-ever astronomical programme searching for ‘technosignatures’ of life. Will we find life in the universe? Who knows, but we’ll keep listening. If you are too frightened to fail then you’ll never know what it is to succeed; and this applies to debate about the texts, theories and evidence that define history, literature, language, philosophy, and the rest of social sciences and the humanities. Brilliant individuals, with teamwork and interdisciplinary collaboration, solving the greatest challenges of our time is what we’re about; and that includes running 1 mile in less than 4 minutes.

Thank you for all the outstanding work you do to support our core mission of teaching and research. I am grateful to you and the leadership teams across this great collegiate university for your many contributions and willingness to embrace challenges set by me and those of the wider environment. When I became Vice-Chancellor almost 2 years ago, I set out an ambition for the University focused on 4 areas: teaching and education; research and innovation; local, national and global engagement; and people – all underpinned by necessary steps to ensure our financial resilience and a re-imagined development and alumni team that is ‘campaign ready’. It is great to see new schemes and changes already taking effect.

Like you all, I have very high expectations of Oxford, our students and staff, so as far as I am concerned the pace will not lessen, and I remain marathon-fit! I have so enjoyed the many and varied ways I have interacted personally with students and staff – nearly 100 student breakfasts, dog-walks or society meetings and events, departmental visits, round tables, evensongs and college visits – all alongside wonderful openings of college developments, tree-plantings and ribbon-cuttings.  I will continue to be a very present Vice-Chancellor.

In a world that is constantly changing, and with worldwide elections, financial pressures and the many heart-wrenching conflicts, including in Ukraine and the Middle East, we lead and stand strong by working together with kindness and generosity. Kindness is often under-rated – I tell my children it’s the one thing I want them to have. I discovered recently that our brilliant Professor Dame Carol Robinson shares this philosophy, and named her Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Discovery so that its initials spells KIND to emphasise it can go hand-in-hand with excellence. There’s a lot of kindness in Oxford and we’re all motivated to do what is best. So, while the world and our own students and staff are struggling to make sense of ongoing conflicts and have found different ways to express their frustration, remember that kindness, generosity, sympathy and understanding will be essential to take Oxford forward in putting that empathy into useful action for those suffering, and to remain focused on delivering our core mission: to teach and deliver ground-breaking research. And we all naturally hope and pray for peace.

On 6 May this year, we celebrated the 70^th anniversary of Sir Roger Bannister’s world record with a fantastic event organised by Oxford University Athletic Club and the University of Oxford, with support from Oxfordshire County Council and the Bannister family. Over 1,000 children and adults alongside elite athletes ran a community mile from St Aldate’s to Iffley Road where everyone, including me, received their finisher medals. We had a presentation by World Athletics with a video message from Lord Sebastian Coe to commemorate Sir Roger’s achievements and the extraordinary history of Oxford University Athletic Club, while the Bodleian Libraries featured highlights of Roger’s never-before-displayed archive. The day concluded with elite races, with the men’s setting off at exactly the same time as Bannister’s race in 1954. Hundreds of spectators, including elders who witnessed the original, were treated to four sub-4-minute miles, including a course record by Italian international athlete Ossama Meslek. Human flourishing was plain to see. Dinners at Merton, Pembroke and Exeter – all colleges associated with Roger – bookended the events and athletics alumni from around the world returned to celebrate.

Sport is a great democratiser. It builds bridges, so we have used sport to build connections with the local community. Over the past year, we have delivered a new Sport Leaders Programme to more than 60 year 8 students from Greyfriars Secondary School, the Oxford Academy and Oxford Spires. The children spend a day a week here, with elite sports coaching in the morning followed by lunch in a different college, and then an afternoon being taught mathematical modelling for football, law and rules in sport, the anthropology of crowd behaviour, and neuroscience and brain injury by our academics. Hugely successful; I am grateful to our colleagues and student athletes for getting involved. Through additional funded partnerships we will expand this programme, and continue to inspire the next generation. However, it is still a fact that we must offer our students and staff much higher-quality facilities for their sport and wellbeing, as well as build further our research efforts, such as those described above and our newly opened Podium Institute. The scale of our ambition for the Iffley Road site is enormous, as are the funds required, but the opportunity is great too, if anyone is listening…

Because sport is not just about science, physiology, stopwatches and progress, but also about aesthetics, play, friendship, community, laughter, mystery and memory: the attributes of art and the humanities, or what it means to be human. I learnt as much on playing fields or the river as I did in the classroom, and as others do in the theatre, or concert hall. Our students’ extracurricular activities are part of their learning and development: college tutors take note. Sport is not for everyone, but it weirdly captivates even the most ardent couch potato. Which of us did not spend 2 weeks this summer a world expert on the keirin, the pommel horse or triple jump? Why? It is deeply human to want to push frontiers and compete, or to be entranced by people who do, whether on the track or mountain, in space, music, art. We cannot help but be inspired by people who strive to achieve excellence – especially when it’s despite the odds.

So it’s important for us also to inspire the world by what we do in our core mission. To do that well we have to communicate our purpose and value to the wider world. It’s been a great year. For example, our Public Affairs Directorate team won national and international prizes or commendations for their work, such as the AI at Oxford Campaign. Professor Ben Ansell delivered the BBC’s 2023 Reith Lectures on ‘Our Democratic Future’. Humanities, in collaboration with the Bodleian and the Cultural Programme, hosted a spectacular range of events to celebrate Franz Kafka’s centenary. Nearly 3,000 people visited the Metamorphosis-inspired tent, Jitterbug, in the University Parks, illustrating the new life this cultural programme brings to our university. And let me congratulate and thank Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra for their outstanding 25 years as Orchestra in Residence delivering music, education and outreach. Professor Mike Wooldridge’s Royal Institution Christmas Lectures on AI showcased Oxford’s broad strengths in this vital area, and Oxford Sparks won the 2024 'Best University or Research Centre Award' at the #LabMeCrazy! Science Film Festival.

The list goes on… and it’s inspiring, because it reflects our excellence and our evolution to be a university where we have deep expertise and knowledge, but where we are better able than most to tackle global challenges because of our ability to ‘speak across the interdisciplinary divide’ – so rooted in our collegiate model and culture, where we learn the language of others over breakfast, lunch, dinner, and especially on the playing fields…

Celebrating excellence

Excellence is synonymous with Oxford, and our retiring Chancellor – the extraordinary Lord Patten of Barnes, Chris – exudes excellence, as does his wonderful wife, Lady Patten. He exemplifies what a great Chancellor should be and has overseen an extraordinarily successful period in Oxford’s history these past 21 years. I would like to once again thank Chris for his years of service, mentorship, fundraising, speeches, wise counsel and dedication – all delivered with charm, humour and kindness beyond measure. Thank you, Chris, and we look forward to welcoming you as Chancellor-emeritus anytime.

For 8 consecutive years Oxford has been ranked, by our favourite ranking system, the Times Higher Education, the top university in the world. And I remain optimistic for the announcement tomorrow that would see us achieve a record-breaking 9^th consecutive year at the top. 18 colleagues drawn from academia and professional services were recognised in the New Year and King’s Birthday Honours list for 2024. 9 Oxford scientists from the Divisions of Medical Sciences (MSD) and Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences (MPLS) were elected as Fellows of the Royal Society; 8 colleagues from MSD and MPLS were elected Fellows of the Academy of Medical Sciences; 8 academics from Humanities and Social Sciences were elected Fellows of the British Academy; 3 colleagues were elected to the Academy of Social Sciences; and 2 were elected to the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Colleagues won countless medals and prizes; a few notable ones include: the Davy Medal to Professor Véronique Gouverneur for her contributions to fluorine chemistry; Mike Kendall’s Royal Astronomical Society Gold Medal; and the Robotics Institute’s Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Innovation with a wonderful celebratory event at Buckingham Palace – their fantastic robotics work is discussed in my latest Fire & Wire podcast.

Beyond the external, we re-imagined our internal awards that recognise achievements across the collegiate University. What was previously 5 award ceremonies became a University-wide celebration in 2024 – the Vice-Chancellor’s Awards, with 11 categories spanning strategically important areas, such as the North Korea Crisis Simulation, Master of Public Policy (MPP), winning the Innovative Teaching and Assessment Award; GLAM’s Inclusive programming for adults with learning disabilities winning the Community Partnership Award; and the Africa Oxford Initiative winning the VC award for Outstanding Contribution – to a standing ovation in the Sheldonian, such was the joy felt by all.

We awarded honorary degrees to 6 remarkable individuals from science, politics, economics, entertainment, music, business and academia at Lord Patten’s last Encaenia, and how wonderful that we were finally able to honour Her Majesty the Empress of Japan with an honorary degree during their Majesties’ State Visit to the UK, where they shared a precious day with us in Oxford.

Resilient in the face of headwinds

However, all this success must not lead to complacency. The headwinds are here – and they are strong. While UK inflation thankfully eased in 2024, the University still faces many financial pressures. Media coverage and public commentary, from me and others, highlight the pressing need for reform in how we finance our public higher education sector, including a conversation about fees… frozen for 12 years and now worth only £6,000 at 2012 prices. Oxford is a very British undergraduate university with nearly 80% intake from the UK; therefore, we are heavily subsiding our teaching of UK students. So, while it is welcome that the new government recognises the importance of universities for their growth and prosperity agenda – we are an engine room for the economy after all – now is the time for a radical reimagining of how we fund the higher education sector if we are to realise our full potential.

Fortunately, Oxford has additional sources that make us less vulnerable: Oxford University Press (OUP), philanthropy, an endowment and a rapidly growing innovation ecosystem. However, we also have higher costs compared to many other universities: 80% UK undergraduates; high research output that requires cross-subsidy; Grade I-listed buildings and historic real estate; and some of the national treasures of the world curated and cared for in our libraries, museums and galleries. It is not cheap to run Oxford. Despite these challenges, and thanks to efforts to diversify our funding sources, we have still been able to deliver key projects, including the short-term recommendations arising from my Pay & Conditions Review and digital transformation. Our balance sheet remains strong. For the first time this year, we hosted a series of webinars to explain our finances and improve financial literacy across the University. This means we can have more informed conversations regarding our priorities – thank you for your enthusiastic engagement – these will continue next year.

Our total research income reached £789 million in 2022/23 – the highest research income in the UK higher education sector by a country mile. It says a lot about the resilience and motivation of our researchers, who, despite the demands on their time, have accomplished this quite extraordinary feat with the terrific support of professional services. And it’s great that we’re back in Horizon Europe after some skilful persuasion and pressure. We are benefiting already with multiple ERC grants secured across all divisions by colleagues – congratulations. We have renewed our commitment to the Oxford–Berlin Research Partnership but with a more strategic focus, as well as to the Oxford–Universite Libre de Bruxelles partnership supported by the Wiener–Anspach Foundation – both providing gateways for wider collaboration with and across Europe.

And because of the extraordinary generosity of our alumni and philanthropists who want to invest in our excellence, we stand not just resilient but strong. Thank you all.

With that in mind and to make us campaign ready, we have made significant changes over the past 2 years in the Development Office: with new leadership and a united Development, Alumni and International Engagement global fundraising team we are looking good. In 2023 we posted our best year on record, driven largely by college fundraising success, and this year we are posting the largest total ever received for the University in a single year at £262 million – combined with the colleges, the figure currently stands at £375 million, but with more to come… The University’s return on investment is now an impressive 15:1. Examples of visionary philanthropic support during this period include: the endowment of the Larsson-Rosenquist Foundation Professor in Endocrinology of Human Lactation; funding from Kirsten Rausing for the Gad Rausing Associate Professorship of Viking Age Archaeology; and one that we celebrated just last week – transformational funding from the Uehiro Foundation on Ethics and Education means that the Uehiro Oxford Institute is secured in perpetuity.

I’m very grateful that our alumni are so engaged and willing to give back and make visible how important Oxford was for their subsequent careers and lives. A fantastic part of my job is to meet alumni around the world – to minimise my carbon footprint, I compress a lot of visits into single trips – meeting so far over 1,000 alumni. September’s Meeting Minds alumni gathering here in Oxford was knockout, with 40% of alumni coming who had not attended an alumni event before. Enormous thanks to all those academics and staff members for providing such a tempting offer. And over 26,000 alumni have registered for and will be participating in the Chancellorship election online – a first in our history, the changes meaning our international community can remain engaged and included.

Using our excellence and interdisciplinarity to tackle the local, national and global challenges of our time

I said at the start of my tenure that Oxford must – to coin a phrase from John F Kennedy, as we think about US presidential elections – ask of ourselves: what can we do for our country? And to ask of our fellow citizens of the world, what together we can do for the future of humanity? Let us bring that generosity, collaborative spirit, interdisciplinary brilliance and sharing of our talent and resources to the fore as we think about tackling the global challenges of our time. Over the past year, we have seen many examples of just this, such as the What Works Hub for Global Education at the Blavatnik School of Government – how to implement education reforms at scale, with the ultimate goal of increasing literacy, numeracy and other key skills in low- and middle-income countries. With a £30 million investment, its work will affect millions of children for the better. The Humanities-based AHRC-funded Modern Slavery and Human Rights Policy and Evidence Centre highlights the value of the humanities in response to major global challenges and emphasises a move towards more interdisciplinary research and training. Chemistry is to lead SCHEMA – a major UK government investment of £11 million (plus £22 million from partners) in research to improve the sustainability of chemical and polymer production, bringing together researchers from across the UK along with a large consortium of commercial, technology translation and civic partners. In July, the UK government announced the launch of 5 new research hubs to develop quantum technologies in areas ranging from healthcare and computing to national security and critical infrastructure. Oxford will lead one of these hubs. In health, the successful rollout this year of the new R21/Matrix-M™ malaria vaccine, potentially saving millions of young lives, is an inspiration, as is our work to fight antimicrobial resistance thanks to generous support from INEOS and a closer working relationship between MSD and MPLS under the leadership of Professor Stewart Cole – our best wishes go to the INEOS Britannia team and Sirs Ben and Jim for the America’s Cup!

To sustain this impactful research effort, we must further develop the pipeline of talent – training deep in focused subject areas, but with opportunities to be exposed to other disciplines. And we’re doing well: in March, the UK announced its biggest-ever investment in engineering and physical sciences doctoral skills, totalling more than £1 billion nationwide. It includes funding for over 300 fully funded DPhil studentships at Oxford in AI, quantum technology, new materials, engineering biology, and net zero. The new UKRI Intelligent Earth Centre for Doctoral Training will combine the University’s strengths in artificial intelligence, machine learning, Big Data and environmental sciences. Over the next 8 years, we will train nearly 100 DPhil students in cutting-edge AI to address environmental crises. The new Centre for Advanced Social Sciences Methods, supported with internal SRF funding, will deepen engagement with quantitative and computational interdisciplinary research in the social sciences. And £18 million in renewed funding for the Grand Union Doctoral Training Partnership in Social Sciences supports a new package of innovative tailored training in areas such as behavioural science, big data, machine learning and AI.

Impact through innovation

A fantastic way to fast-track our research impact for the betterment of the UK, our economy and the world is through innovation. And it turns out we’re really good at it. Oxford is again in 2024 the leading UK university for spinout creation. Of our companies, over 300 have secured more than £7.4 billion of equity investment. This last year we created 15 companies, including spinouts, start-ups and social ventures. Increasingly, many of these companies remain headquartered in Oxfordshire, such as OrganOx or Nucleome Therapeutics and Oxford Ionics, but we are passionate too about sharing success and talent with other areas of the UK – we are aiming to support a new innovation park at Birmingham where we can also place our companies. We have seen new vaccine licence agreements roll out this past year and our recent signing of a drug discovery and development collaboration with Apollo Therapeutics will enable many more such licences to be created. And when companies are bought out, like Oxford Semantic Technologies, the returns are reinvested to encourage further innovation at Oxford. I am particularly proud of the fact that 28% of Oxford’s companies have at least one female founder, compared to 13% for UK as a whole – go us!

But we must push ourselves to do more. Last year I co-chaired, with Dr Andrew Williamson from Cambridge Innovation Capital, an independent report for the Treasury and the then Chancellor of the Exchequer on how to improve and expand the economic and societal impact of university-inspired innovation through spinouts. Published at the end of 2023, following 8 months of extensive consultation with key stakeholders, the government accepted all 11 recommendations. I am pleased to report that an impressive 39 universities, including Oxford, have signed and are implementing the recommended best practices.

But to truly realise the ambition I have for how Oxford and wider UK university ecosystem can contribute to Britain and the world, we need to be better coordinated and more collaborative and to share a collective vision for just what is possible. It is fantastic to have Mairi Gibbs, the new CEO of Oxford University Innovation, and Ed Bussey, the new CEO of Oxford Science Enterprises, as colleagues. We share a vision. And with other like-minded individuals at the local National Laboratories at Culham and Harwell, our city and county councillors, Oxford Brookes University, other major regional businesses and stakeholders, and our friends at the Ellison Institute of Technology, we are now actively working on a collective narrative for what we believe we can achieve in collaboration here in the Oxford Valley – to coin a phrase – and drawing on our extraordinary convening power and all the interdisciplinary strengths anchored in this great institution. And this must include our students – 21% are interested in entrepreneurship; we have created a 4,000-strong student entrepreneurial community and trained 400 students in entrepreneurship. In April, Oxford start-up Onfido was sold, signalling the largest-ever student-led company return on investment for the University – proceeds reinvested to support more students. And Christ Church is leading work to set up a new Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation on St Giles’ for undergraduates and postgraduates in direct response to our students’ thirst for more entrepreneurial education at Oxford.

Work has finished on 2 new science and innovation buildings at Begbroke Science Park this spring – the first facilities completed with Legal & General funding and a step towards realising our greater ambition to create in Begbroke a new and unique innovation district alongside housing, shops, cafes, schools, leisure and community facilities, and extensive wildlife-friendly green space. I’m delighted to announce that planning permission has just been granted for this landmark development and vision. With Magdalen expanding Oxford Science Park and St John’s developing Oxford North, it’s wonderful to have our amazing colleges part of a collective vision around innovation in Oxford.

Last year, I mentioned the extraordinary benefits that having the Ellison Institute of Technology on our doorstep would bring. And now we have our very own former Regius Professor of Medicine, Professor Sir John Bell, at its head as their President. John has given so much to Oxford over his many years here from student days through to his significant leadership roles in the University. The Medical School, the University and indeed the country owe much to John and his visionary efforts to make us competitive on the world stage. Thank you, John, for all you have done, and we look forward to celebrating your remarkable achievements next summer with a Festschrift. It is great to have him in this new role – and in turn, it’s great for the mission of EIT to have John at the helm.

Hopefully the following is clear: if we get our collective ambition right, we can create an innovation ecosystem here in Oxfordshire, and in the broader Oxford–London–Cambridge triangle and throughout the UK, that will rival, if not beat, anywhere in the world. But it will be distinctively British, built on our strengths and inclusive – incorporating a desire to create social enterprises and creative industry spinouts, while further developing our spinout strengths in life sciences, physical sciences and deep tech. This is how we will help the UK drive growth and prosperity and at the same time solve some of the world’s greatest challenges. But to do all this, as we discuss in the report, we must have more bi-directional flow of people between universities and the private sector; we must challenge ourselves and be imaginative in creating more flexible career paths for our staff that facilitate but also benefit from an increased permeability.

We often tease our Cambridge counterparts that they were our first spin-out… followed by Oxford University Press. And OUP continues to adapt to ever-changing circumstances as it formulates its new strategic plan. OUP will launch Oxford Intersections in 2025 – a new offer that combines research from multiple academic disciplines to inform global policy and decision making – interdisciplinarity on the page. The music publishing department celebrated its centenary by running the Song for All initiative, which provided free resources to choirs worldwide. 2.5 million learners used OUP’s core educational digital product platforms – and additional Oxford Bookworms titles were launched that support positive societal and environmental change while improving language skills, such as Building a Better World and Women Who Made a Difference – all great examples of OUP’s core educational mission. And the Word of the Year was rizz – meaning charisma.

Our national treasures – and I don’t mean Oxford’s amazing Dame Maggie Smith, rest her soul…

Anniversaries abound: 140 years for the Pitt Rivers Museum and 100 for the History of Science Museum; the Museum of Natural History celebrated the 200-year anniversary of Megalosaurus, the first dinosaur ever named. Our duty to be respectful to the provenance of our collections requires us to define what responsible restitution and repatriation of items looks like: I am grateful to colleagues for their sensitivity and respect as we navigate this difficult path. This spring the Ashmolean displayed one of the greatest treasures from the Middle Ages: the Wilton Diptych. Lent by the National Gallery for the first time, it is part of National Treasures, which features 12 simultaneous displays at museums and galleries around the country to celebrate the National Gallery’s 200^th anniversary. The University celebrated the life and work of Franz Kafka, with a new limited-edition imprint of The Metamorphosis given to every Oxford student and copies distributed to schools and libraries around the county of Oxfordshire for the #OxfordReadsKafka. Research is also thriving in GLAM; for example, botanists from Oxford Botanic Garden co-authored a new study assessing the threat to Rafflesia – the genus containing the world's largest flowers – and what needs to be done to protect the plants' habitats.

There is no doubt that the public appreciates our efforts in curating and stewarding these national treasures: our Gardens, Libraries and Museums welcomed 3.5 million visitors, up 13% from last year. GLAM delivered nearly 5,000 educational sessions and led over 2,000 outreach and community engagement activities or sessions to nearly 100,000 people across Oxfordshire and beyond – and all supported by over 700 volunteers giving their time, reflecting the generous and kind citizenship we have in Oxfordshire towards the University.

And the support to our teaching and researcher communities never ceases, with nearly 2 million reader visits made to the Bodleian’s 27 libraries; nearly 15 million searches on SOLO, the University’s library catalogue; and the Radcliffe Science Library reopening last year, after a 4-year redevelopment with Reuben College, seeing over 105,000 reader visits over this academic year – quickly becoming one of our most popular libraries.

I’m delighted to say that, with renewed UKRI/Research England funding – the largest amount of any UK institution, at over £20 million across 5 years – and philanthropy, we can make a once-in-a-generation step forward in the preservation of 32 million collections items held across GLAM, as colleagues finalise their move into the Collections Teaching and Research Centre. GLAM is also making great strides to digitise its collections that will further support teaching and enable Oxford to connect communities across the globe – sharing with generosity our outstanding cultural and scientific resources, as well as supporting new forms of research.

These many efforts are underpinned by a constant need to maintain and evolve our real estate – do not underestimate the importance of a good working environment for wellbeing, creativity, collaboration and interdisciplinary sparks. Our newly approved 5-year Estate Strategy will see us moving towards providing staff and students with consistently excellent facilities that meet our academic needs, both now and in the future, while being truly sustainable in both financial and environmental terms. And we have shining examples of just what is possible: the stunning Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities remains on track to complete Michaelmas 2025; construction of the Life and Mind Building will also finish next year; Engineering Science has embraced the opportunities presented by the redevelopment of Osney Mead. We are working with our partners Oxford Health and a philanthropist towards a vision of redeveloping the Warneford site to create a new mental health hospital, research and commercial facilities, and even a new postgraduate college. And we have started work at Old Road Campus on a new Global Health Building, expected to be finished in early 2026.

Within our current estate, we now have 216 more sustainable LEAF laboratories producing £300,000 cost savings per year. Biodiversity continues apace: this year 850m² of mini flower meadows were planted by the University community; our incredible 34 Green Impact teams continue to devise ever more thoughtful and creative ways of improving the environmental sustainability within our departments and colleges. Finally, we are a city of bikes – I cycle everywhere – and our Vision Zero campaign, focused on road safety through training, engaged over 2,000 members of our community. And, talking of safety, I call on you all to take a pro-active approach to Health and Safety in our buildings, laboratories, museums, libraries and colleges. A new University Safety Risk Management Campaign – EveryDaySafe – is supporting departments to prioritise their risks, take action and drive continuous improvement. Safety is everyone’s responsibility.

In an exciting development for the Climate Grand Challenge that I set as a priority for Oxford in my oration last year, and whose convening work is progressing well, we will host, with UN Human Rights, Right Here Right Now and the International Universities Climate Alliance, a global summit on Human Rights and Climate Change on next year’s World Environment Day. In what we hope will provide a template for summits to come, the summit will begin in the Pacific and roll around with the sun, through Oxford and on to the Americas, linking Global North and Global South universities in a single conversation. I’m intrigued to see if any of our indefatigable students manage to stay up for the whole thing.

More locally

My new appointment of a Local Global Officer last year is bringing dividends, as we remove Town and Gown barriers by making our presence better known and valued while listening more to the needs of others. The University contributes significantly to the regional economy through employment, spinout companies, procurement and tourism, yet there is shocking inequality within the city and the county, including in terms of income, health outcomes and educational attainment. We are committed to finding ways to support inclusive growth. Therefore, in February, we signed the Oxfordshire Inclusive Economy Partnership (OIEP) Charter. It covers several areas where the collegiate University is making a real difference: providing fair wages; supporting the local and social economy through changes in procurement; creating opportunities to work; sharing resources, skills and assets; recruiting more inclusively; improving training and educational attainment for employees.

A new Local Policy Lab was launched this year, after some pilot ‘policy hackathons’, and represents a new partnership between the University of Oxford, Oxford Brookes University, and Oxfordshire County Council. Funded by the ESRC’s Impact Acceleration Account, the lab connects researchers, graduate students and policy-makers to support evidence-based local public policy. The initial focus is on 2 areas: climate and health policy. 9 initial projects have already delivered insights in areas from social prescribing to decarbonising schools. Thanks to Somerville and Trinity, a college twinning project has launched, matching 10 colleges with state primary schools across the city. This year the University launched a Laidlaw Scholars Programme, funded by the Laidlaw Foundation, and offering an 18-month long programme on ethical leadership and open to 20–25 first-year undergraduates every year – the first cohort have been busy with local and global engagement projects, with a special focus on local schools.

And, building on our long history for supporting refugees, we now have 50 full Sanctuary scholarships awarded both last year and this year. Through a newly created Oxford Sanctuary Community and University of Sanctuary Committee, we have strengthened relationships with local organisations, such as Asylum Welcome. The Cultural Programme has supported local refugee artists, the Mathematical Institute has run activities for maths-literate sanctuary-seekers across the UK, and the Refugee Studies Centre has expanded learning opportunities to displaced people around the world. In June, we co-organised the Oxford Sanctuary Fair at the Town Hall with Asylum Welcome, Oxford City Council, Oxfordshire County Council and Oxford Brookes University. My own DPhil supervisor, mentor and colleague, and one of Oxford’s great and loyal servants, Professor Sir George Radda, sadly passed a few weeks ago. He escaped from Hungary in 1956 and arrived as a penniless refugee to Oxford, finding a home at Merton to study chemistry. If anything exemplifies the best of Oxford, it is George’s life and legacy. He was forever grateful to the University and the UK. And, just last year, I was honoured to receive on behalf of the University of Oxford the Josephi Hlavka Medal from Charles University in Prague, in recognition of our work to support refugee medical students from Charles University to complete their training during the war.

Colleges with colleagues from across the University are once again showing that spirit of generosity and kindness by responding to global events, developing scholarship support for those affected by global crises such as war or natural disasters. Our Palestine Crisis Scholarships scheme, focusing on graduate students from Gaza and the West Bank, will enable students affected by the conflict to receive full funding to begin taught postgraduate degrees in Oxford in October 2025. The aim is that the scheme will serve as a pilot for what may eventually become a Crisis Scholarship scheme that can be applied to future conflict and humanitarian crisis situations. And the University is working on schemes to help with the reconstruction of higher education in Gaza: the Bodleian has already established an online portal for sharing its collections with scholars and students in Gaza and the West Bank, and OUP has made available its journals and many books to institutions and researchers in the region. Thank you all for the support.

Education, education, education

Against all this success, impact and ambition at a local, national and global level, we still also deliver the most outstanding educational and student experience in the world, thanks to the enormous efforts of our dedicated staff and our great colleges.

And we continue to bring that experience to students irrespective of background. Remember: talent is everywhere, opportunity is not… yet. But we are getting there. We welcomed over 1,000 school students to our inspiring UNIQ summer residential programme – critical for myth busting what Oxford is about – and we successfully completed our first Astrophoria Foundation Year. With enormous thanks to our benefactor, those participating colleges and Continuing Education, 16 students progressed from a cohort of 22, and 28 new students recently joined us in September. Since the implementation of Opportunity Oxford, more than 1,000 offers have been made by the collegiate University. More than 1,600 Crankstart Scholars are studying at Oxford at any one time, and Crankstart spend will now also provide long-term support for Opportunity Oxford and significant additional support for graduate initiatives and scholarships. I am hugely grateful to great friends of Oxford, Mike Moritz and Harriet Heyman, whose generosity and willingness to reorient spending according to our evolving priorities is so gratefully received. Our undergraduate financial support package now distributes over £10 million in bursary support for students in need, thanks in large part to the Reuben family and Crankstart, and we have improved other support packages to mitigate the impact of cost of living pressures for all our students through my VC fund.

These efforts really do make a difference. Over the past 4 years, and within the total group of UK-domiciled undergraduates admitted, the proportion from state schools rose from 62.3% to 67.6%; the proportion identifying as Black and Minority Ethnic rose from 22.0% to 28.8%; the proportion identifying as Asian rose from 9.6% to 13.1%; the proportion from socio-economically disadvantaged areas rose from 12.2% to 14.4%; and the proportion declaring a disability rose from 9.5% to 19.0%. The Office for Students has recently approved our latest Access and Participation Plan, covering the period 2025–9, that details Oxford’s renewed effort to support students with the highest potential, from all backgrounds, to apply and gain admission to Oxford and then graduate with improved degree outcomes.

Regarding our graduates, and despite trends elsewhere, applications remain strong and show an increase of 12% to reach over 42,000 applications. This was from the UK, EU and the rest of the world – we are a highly international graduate community at 65% – that’s a lot of world talent enriching our University but also soft-diplomacy when students return home, who take a little bit of Britain with them. And I’m delighted that, via our Legal & General joint venture, we will soon have 71 stunning new homes for graduate students and their families at Court Place Gardens in Iffley –meeting our graduate needs. We are well ahead of the sector regarding graduate access, largely thanks to our UNIQ+ research internship programme and our flagship graduate access scholarship scheme, Academic Futures, that continues to grow and now has a cohort of 85 scholars. Bringing in more philanthropic gifts for this important scheme and all graduate scholarships remains a focus.

Against this positive backdrop, there are still challenges faced by our student body and it is devastating for the entire collegiate University that precious students lost their lives this past year. Demand for student welfare and support remains high. Staff work hard to ensure that Oxford offers the best possible provision for its student community. I am grateful to the efforts of colleagues and the colleges for their provision, especially around meeting the needs of our students who have declared a disability. The Sexual Harassment and Violence Support Service has expanded to ensure any affected student can receive timely and effective support. A whole-University approach to consent education is underway, with students engaging in large numbers with new online consent training; sexual harassment and violence in any form is never acceptable and we must build a ‘consent culture’ at Oxford. We will continue the past 2 years’ ongoing work to review Statute XI to ensure it is fit for purpose.

The Counselling Service saw more than 12% of Oxford students for individual or group-based support – anxiety remaining the largest presenting issue, in line with wider societal and sector trends, particularly in young adults. All students requesting counselling are contacted within 1 working day of their initial enquiry, and more than 2,000 staff have now received training in responding to concerns about student mental health over the last 2 years. By joining the University Mental Health Charter programme last year, we hope it will help strengthen our Common Approach to Support Student Mental Health.

New learning and teaching initiatives

Like our research, how and what we teach doesn’t stand still, and we have several new initiatives to support our students and their learning, supported ably by the Centre for Teaching and Learning as well as Continuing Education. We even have a new app – MyOxford! A fantastic official digital companion to student life, it is a one-stop shop, if you will. The Inclusive Student Life guidance was introduced in September to emphasise the University’s commitment to inclusion and freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is the lifeblood of our University and we uphold the right for everyone to openly express their views and opinions with respect and courtesy, within the limits of the law. Discrimination of any kind – whether based on race, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, or any other characteristic – has no place, and is not tolerated, at Oxford, as I have said time and time again.

With that in mind, I am pleased to announce that this year we will launch the Sheldonian Series. It is clear we need to reaffirm the importance of free and inclusive speech, diversity of thought and vibrant exchange of ideas. This will be a termly event open to all students and staff, held here in the Sheldonian. The spirit of these events will be one of examination and exploration, of curiosity and challenge, allowing our students to hear from scholars and voices from a range of fields on some of the big questions of our age. We will start in Michaelmas, in November, by exploring Democracy – just weeks after the US presidential election. I am grateful to Tim Soutphommasane, Julius Grower and David Isaac who have taken this concept forward and are working with me to develop the series. My hope is that it builds on ‘Debating the Difficult’, using the Free Speech Tips developed by Worcester and a number of students, academics and Heads of House.

I announced in my last oration that we must skill up our students’ education across the disciplinary divide by creating a new learning and teaching experience for students and faculty. I am grateful to Martin Williams, Bill Finnegan, Tom Crawford, Alice Evatt and Continuing Education for their work designing – at pace – The Vice-Chancellor’s Colloquium: Climate – and thank you to the professors, 20 postgraduate students serving as college-group facilitators and all the participating colleges, as well as the Physics Department for hosting the tutorials and lectures. We centred the interdisciplinary learning on Climate to make the skilling-up part less dry, but it turns out climate was the hook (not maths!) that got them into a lecture theatre for 2 hours every other Wednesday evening during a cold Hilary term. The students listened to 2 professors, from diverse subject backgrounds, talking on a particular climate question and then had the chance to ask questions and interact for the second hour. Alternate weeks allowed small groups of students to work in a more tutorial setting at various colleges. We had 480 expressions of interest, and 200 undergraduate students from all year groups, divisions, subjects and colleges were offered and accepted places in the pilot with an Accredible digital certificate upon completion after finishing a mini-project. It’s been a resounding success and reveals a thirst for new learning experiences at Oxford, but also a desire to know something about climate. In this coming year we aim to significantly increase the number of students able to participate.

People, people, people

When I took up office in January 2023, I set out a commitment to shift the dial in our culture about how we invest in people at Oxford. This once-in-a-generation assessment of the needs of our people has given me a manifesto to continue to implement during my tenure. We announced in June the outcomes of the Pay & Conditions Review, and I am so grateful to all those involved in delivering this awesome piece of work, done at pace and by burning the midnight oil. It represents an additional £129 million commitment in people over the next 5 years. I hope this first successful step reveals my ambition to work towards a market-leading pay and conditions framework that befits our standing as a great international institution. We are shifting the needle.

The newly developing People Strategy acts as a framework that brings together the efforts of Pay & Conditions with Digital Transformation, the People and Finance Service Transformation, the Strategic Review of Professional Services, and the Academic Career & Reward Framework, and will link up with the collegiate University Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan, to ensure together they result in Oxford being a great place to work. The Academic Career & Reward Framework project is looking at clear, consistent and effective career pathways, better workload management, and improved reward and recognition for all our academic staff with teaching and/or research responsibilities across the University. The new framework is due to go through formal consultation and governance in the new year. And we will continue to support our commitments to the Researcher Development Concordat and the University’s Technician Commitment Action Plan. As with our student body, we will not tolerate any forms of sexual or other harassment in the workplace for our staff. In January, we introduced for the first time a Report + Support tool for staff, designed to support those experiencing bullying or harassment. And our new Thriving at Oxford action plan, with a particular focus on the prevention and management of work-related stress, as we recognise this is an issue.

As I think about our people, I would like to thank and acknowledge those who have given so much to this great institution and to thank those who have stepped down as Heads of House or from Council, or who have retired having given years of service as academics, teachers, Heads of Department or Heads of Division. Thank you all. And let me here warmly welcome new members to our great Oxford family. New people bring new experiences and new ways of thinking. And if we are true to our mission of achieving excellence then we must continue to secure the best possible talent from wherever, bringing diversity to Oxford in its broadest sense. This is not new or radical – it’s what we’ve always striven for in our 800-year history – but it is a constant journey. Our new strategic plan for the collegiate University on EDI – which will be formally launched later this month – recognises just that while also emphasising the fact that good EDI is underpinned by a commitment to academic freedom and free speech.

In Trinity 2024, we piloted professional development on EDI at 4 colleges involving more than 230 staff. And, based on a successful pilot of EDI inductions for incoming undergraduates and graduates, we are rolling out an EDI induction for all freshers at 17 colleges this week. Based on findings from a collaborative research project, we know that 62% of the British public believe that EDI is a good thing, with only 12% saying it’s bad. So Oxford is helping to shape how British organisations conduct work on EDI at a time of political polarisation. A model for how to do EDI well – EDI 2.0 if you will.

 Conclusion

Inclusion is about people, not just numbers or awards, so let me conclude by returning to that sodden Iffley Road track last May, as we watched those 4 remarkable athletes run the mile in under 4 minutes, to reflect on what it says about what we do. Like Roger Bannister’s, their achievements were built on many failures: no-one runs a 4-minute mile at the first time of asking. I should know, coming in at 8 mins...!

To succeed, we have to be free to fail, to explore, to be different. I often say that our greatest strength is our people, and I deeply appreciate the sacrifices many of you make to serve here. But, as a global collegiate university, a particular strength is our diversity: diversity of thought, diversity of background, diversity of expression, diversity of endeavour.

Sport celebrates difference, celebrates the exceptional, and we must do the same. By doing things differently, we make the seemingly impossible possible, and, for some of our greatest successes, even routine. A hotly contested paper becomes eventually a paragraph in a textbook, a millionth vaccination, a caption in a museum, a flickering brain trace in an operating theatre, or a sub-clause in a climate agreement. An unassuming student goes on to found a world-changing enterprise, or become leader of their country.

We are going though one of those times in human history when difference – of origin, of religion, of political orientation, of sexual orientation, or simply of ideas or ways of expressing them – is increasingly seen as a threat. As a university, we must nurture and celebrate our differences, confident that those who try to divide us into same-looking and same-thinking tribes, whether by selfish design or accidental algorithm, will ultimately fail. Let us all dare to be different, to do things differently, and to bring forward the day that the world remembers the beauty of the kaleidoscope of humanity.

Thank you.