The Vice-Chancellor's foreword

The academic year on which we reflect in this Annual Review has once again been significant for the exceptional achievements of our scholars and talented students. In many fields, we are at the forefront of work to tackle the world’s most pressing problems. In these pages we focus on human genetics, the environment and mathematics – just three of the many areas in which new ground is being broken. 

We also continue to extend the boundaries of our endeavour, establishing new schools and student programmes, investing in widening access and reaching deeper into many communities. We continue to record impressive growth in funded research activity throughout the University and colleges. In the year just completed, our research revenues leapt 15 per cent to around £285 million. Almost £390 million of new contracts were signed, so that we can expect a further lift in revenues in the coming year.

But for all that, considerable uncertainties lie ahead. It is clear that the current financial crisis will have far-reaching political and policy consequences. Government fiscal settlements are likely to be tighter and research council budgets will face closer scrutiny. This tougher external environment, coupled with unusual pressure on the University’s costs, should be a sharp spur to our philanthropic endeavours. We would do well to build on levels of our endowments and philanthropic support to the point where our collective aspirations can no longer be compromised by external cyclical vagaries, whether political or economic. This will not be a simple or straightforward undertaking, especially in the current climate, but it is one that we can and must approach with seriousness of purpose for the long-term future.

This is the guiding principle of Oxford Thinking, The Campaign for the University of Oxford, which we launched in May. It is the most sustained, coordinated fundraising effort ever undertaken by a European university, and we are already more than halfway towards the target of £1.25 billion. The Campaign will support both existing and new posts, undergraduate bursaries and postgraduate scholarships, as well as the infrastructure projects which continue to improve the quality of the University’s built environment. Across Oxford, there are examples of investment creating landmark new buildings and facilities. Among the most prominent are the development of the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, the completion of the new Biochemistry building, progress on the Ashmolean project and the opening of a new cancer research building at the Churchill Hospital campus.

Further exciting developments are in the pipeline, three of which – a new building for Earth Sciences, a purpose-built home for our new China Centre and the planned refurbishment of the New Bodleian Library – are featured in this Review. Here, too, philanthropy is playing a major role, especially, fittingly, in the case of the libraries which owe so much to the earlier efforts of Sir Thomas Bodley. His aspirations for academic philanthropy are a compelling example, as appropriate to the University’s cause today as in his own time.