Oxford and the global community

The University has a permanent network of tropical medical research programmes in Kenya, Thailand, and Vietnam, plus satellites in Laos and Indonesia. Each involves collaboration between Oxford, the Wellcome Trust (the core funder) and local institutions such as the Kenya Medical Research Institute, Mahidol University in Thailand and the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Vietnam.  The outstanding success of these collaborations has directly influenced the World Health Organisation’s policies - currently recommended treatments for malaria, dengue shock syndrome, typhoid, melioidosis, TB, meningitis, diphtheria and leptospirosis are all based on the programmes’ work. 

For many across the world, Oxford defines the English language. This is because of OUP, the world’s leading publisher of English Language Teaching (ELT) materials. Arguably its most famous publication is the Oxford English Dictionary, which is, in reality, an ongoing research project designed to capture the ever-evolving landscape of the English language.

OUP is the world’s largest university press. Eighty-five per cent of its £492 million turnover comes from outside the UK, and worldwide it has publishing operations in 16 countries, sales offices in 90 countries, and 5,000 employees. Today, 146 academic institutions from 27 developing countries have free online access to its scholarly journals collection. Worldwide,16 million students, 600,000 teachers as well as organisations for unaccompanied minors seeking asylum in the UK use the press’s ELT materials. 

From first contacts in the 16th century, Oxford's relationship with India has grown to encompass a wide range of activities. A leading centre for the study of India in the West, Oxford introduced a new MSc course focused on the study of Contemporary India in 2008, complementing its two-year MPhil in Modern South Asian Studies. The University’s annual Oxford India Business Forum brings together business leaders and academics to discuss important business challenges. This year's Forum, in Delhi, focused on health and the environment. Researchers in Oxford collaborate with their counterparts at Indian institutions, generating new insights in fields such as physics, earth sciences and women's health, and running India's leading academic oncology network. 

One way in which Oxford students work to alleviate poverty and build social capacity in the developing world is through charity TravelAid. In recent years, TravelAid volunteers have established an HIV/AIDS clinic in Kenya, taught English to the Masai in Tanzania, developed a microfinance scheme in Cambodia and led summer camps in Ecuador. The charity was conceived in 2000 by three Oxford students who returned from working in Georgia impassioned by the mutual benefit the visit had brought to themselves and the local community. Today, TravelAid provides students from all disciplines and backgrounds with the chance to undertake 4-6 week volunteering projects with partner charities. Projects currently span four continents and range from education and microfinance, to health and social inclusion. 

Oxford is one of the world’s leading centres for the study of China, with more than 40 academics. The University’s largest-scale involvement is medical. Oxford’s Clinical Trial Service Unit has collaborated with top medical institutes in China since the early 1980s, carrying out some of the world’s largest studies of the causes and treatments of diseases such as heart attack, stroke, and cancer. Its Kadoorie Project, launched in 2004, is studying the health of 500,000 people in China over 15-20 years to analyse the genetic and environmental causes of common diseases.

The James Martin 21st Century School, founded at the University in June 2005, is a unique collaborative research effort to find solutions to the challenges facing humankind in the 21st century – the school aims to give University scholars the resources and space to think imaginatively about problems and opportunities that the future will bring.

The Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford’s Saïd Business School offers scholarships to social entrepreneurs from poor or marginalised communities. Each year, the Skoll World Forum brings together some 800 social entrepreneurs, academics, financiers, politicians, policy makers and others from more than 60 countries around the world, who assemble in Oxford to look at new ways to tackle the challenges facing humanity: poverty, climate change, disease and more.

"The Skoll Centre is the Davos of Social Enterprise"
Will Hutton, Writer, Columnist, Executive Vice Chairman of the Work Foundation.