Research
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Search below for a range of research stories by department or topic. These stories include impact case studies, videos, news and the research in conversation series. For more information please see individual department websites.
Helen Townley and Xerion
Entrepreneurial academics
Why the middle class is more likely to sing, act or paint
News
The research involving 78,000 people found that neither wealth nor social status were strongly linked to people taking part in arts activities as amateurs or professionals. Instead, it was the level of education that lay behind arts participation.
The London Tube strike 'brought economic benefits for workers'
News
Wikipedia world view 'shaped by editors in the West'
News
After geocoding Wikipedia edit entries on articles mentioning places, they also found there were more editors in the Netherlands than all of Africa combined.
Riham Satti and MeVitae
Entrepreneurial academics
Dominique Piche and UPROSA
Entrepreneurial academics
Professor Stephen Pulman
Acquiring Language
Professor Victoria Murphy
Acquiring Language
Professor Charlotte Brewer
Acquiring Language
Professor Kim Plunkett
Acquiring Language
'Our ability to acquire, understand and communicate language is unique compared to all other species... the fact a toddler can put words together into real sentences – it's extraordinary.'
Professor Roger Crisp
Unequal World
Professor Jo Boyden
Unequal World
Researchers discover a completely legal performance enhancer: friends
News
Emma Cohen, Arran Davis and Jacob Taylor, from the University’s Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology, carried out two experiments to look at how group exercise and social cohesion influence one another.
Preserving Endangered Trees: A Chilean case study
Video
Working with the Chilean government and NGOs, Tonya Lander's team worked out how the genes of the endangered Gomortega keule (queule) tree can move. Their findings have changed how economically important pine plantations are planned and treated, in such a way that we don't lose this rare species.
Closing the attainment gaps
News
The research shows pupils from most ethnic minority groups are now on average achieving GCSE results that are as good as or better than their white British peers.
Fighting cancer
Video
Prof Eleanor Stride and her team are fighting cancer, one bubble at a time, the new technology she is researching means that drugs can find the exact point of the tumour to fight the disease.
Support from grandparents linked with lower levels of obesity in children
News
According to the study, published in Pediatric Obesity, emotional support from grandparents may have a preventative effect against child obesity, even with the presence of other risk factors.
Designing a ‘base paint’ to fight cancer
Video
Immunocore is harnessing the body’s own immune cells to fight cancer. The biotechnology underpinning Immunocore is based on the science of founder Dr Bent Jakobsen, who led his own research team at Oxford’s Institute of Molecular Medicine until 2000.
Just one in three weddings in England and Wales has a religious ceremony
News
Oxford University demographer John Haskey has charted the history of marriage since early Victorian times by analysing datasets looking at the manner of solemnisation and denomination in England and Wales.
More 'constructive' thinking needed on migrant welfare benefits?
News
Study author Professor Martin Seeleib-Kaiser, from the Oxford Institute of Social Policy, says one solution could be to set up an EU fund for helping local authorities most affected by immigration.
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