Research

Oxford University is world-famous for research excellence. Our core commitment is to maintain originality, significance and rigour in research within a framework of the highest standards of infrastructure, training, and integrity.

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.

Chemical synthesis of magnetic nanoparticles

Helen Townley and Xerion

Entrepreneurial academics

I think my personal goal, if it was ever achievable, would be to have chemotherapy with no side effects. There are lots of examples of plants and animals which make ‘poisons’ to protect themselves from predation. But they don’t want to self-poison, so they keep the two components separate so they can attack the predator without harming themselves.
Amateur artist painting at his easel.

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.

People travelling by Tube found alternatives during the strike.

The London Tube strike 'brought economic benefits for workers'

News

New analysis of the London Tube strike in February 2014 finds that it enabled a sizeable fraction of commuters to find better routes to work, and actually produced a net economic benefit due...
Image of a connected world

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's company 'MeVitae'

Riham Satti and MeVitae

Entrepreneurial academics

Riham is a female clinical neuroscientist turned entrepreneur in a male-dominated start-up field. She is the co-founder and CEO of MeVitae, a cognitive recruiting system that makes intelligent and personalised hiring decisions.
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Dominique Piche and UPROSA

Entrepreneurial academics

Dominique is the co-founder and Creative Director of UPROSA. Her business ventures started at age 15 when she created an ice cream parlour & café with her mum on the Isle of Wight. She then went on to university and is now studying for a DPhil in Nanoscience at the University of Oxford whilst she pursues UPROSA, a brand that aims to bring real science into the consumer market with a range of fashion & tech accessories created with real scientific imagery.
Programming code abstract screen of software developer. Computer script.

Professor Stephen Pulman

Acquiring Language

In some ways, getting computers to understand language about particular technical domains (like, say, maths or logic) – is less challenging, because those domains do have a logical structure, which you can use to guide the understanding of the text.
Little girl is doing her homework for elementary school.

Professor Victoria Murphy

Acquiring Language

I’m a strong advocate for teaching children second languages at the earliest possible ages, but we have to be careful how we implement it. In England, unfortunately, there tends to be very limited amounts of time devoted to foreign language instruction in schools.
definition word from a free dictionary, close up

Professor Charlotte Brewer

Acquiring Language

Because the Oxford English Dictionary was based on examples of real usage it wasn't just a history of the language but a history of 'English' thoughts, history and lived experience over the course of the time that the language had been in existence and written down... a wonderful cultural as well as linguistic record.
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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.'

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Professor Roger Crisp

Unequal World

'Morality (or ethics) is to do with how well people’s lives go, it’s not to do with some abstract relation between people – it’s not impersonal in that sense.'
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Professor Jo Boyden

Unequal World

'The single biggest surprise is the incredible importance of education to all the children, all the families, even to the children who are not always able to go to school. Education is the single thing that everybody cares about the most and everybody aspires to.'
Rugby team huddle

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

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.

Classroom 300

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

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.

Study highlights important role played by grandparents.

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

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.

Study shows decline in church weddings.

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.

Crowded street in London.

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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