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SU provides updates on Transformation Period

The Oxford Student Union (SU) has released further details on the 12-month transformation period, which it entered late in March, denying reports of a “closure” or “shutdown”. However, it is still unclear which “essential” services the SU will continue to offer over the course of its reduced operation. The SU is due, over the course of the transformation period, to focus on what it deems as “essential” activities for the rest of this academic year. These include facilitating student-led campaigns, operating the Student Advice Service,...

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Features

Making Art in the Age of Generative AI

When they told us that AI is coming for people’s jobs, most of us didn’t think that they were talking about artists. Our popular imaginings of artificially intelligent futures often seem to bracket the...

Flights to Rwanda? Navigating political, economic, and moral turbulence 

“Batshit crazy”, was how one cabinet minister (James Cleverly) described the Rwanda policy.  In his former role as chancellor, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was characteristically more reserved, saying “it won’t work”.  Human rights organisations...

Sharron Davies, the Oxford Literary Festival, and the place for transgender athletes in professional sport.

The bell chimed for 2 o’clock on Thursday the 21st of March and the doors closed for the Oxford Literary Festival’s most controversial talk: ‘Sharron Davies, Unfair Play: The Battle for Women’s Sport.’ I...

2024: The year of elections

In his classic 19th-century work Democracy in America, the politician-cum-philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville looked to the democratic system in America with deep envy. In this system, he perceived a largely egalitarian society in which the virtues of industry and social cooperation contributed to America’s functional democracy; a state which...

“Diesmal schweigen wir nicht!” (“We won’t be silent this time”)

Germany’s right-wing factions push forward In another spectacular repeat of European history, a group of right-wing politicians met with an Austrian neo-Nazi last November in a small German town called Potsdam, known for being the seat of residence of Prussian kings and the German Emperor until 1918 The meeting ignited...
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Oliver Twist, a Sceptical 9th Grader, and an Orthodox Monastery: The Making of a New Generation in Northern Kosovo

Eager hands reach toward the ceiling as children at the Ismail Qemali school in Mitrovica, northern Kosovo, desperately try to attract the attention of an author who has come to talk to the pupils about her new book. They want to know more about the central character - a...

Profiles

‘Theatre is, at it’s best, one of the most democratic of the arts’

I had the chance to sit down with Gregory Doran, Oxford University’s Cameron Mackintosh visiting professor and the former artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, to talk all things Shakespeare, contemporary theatre and the importance of accessibility in the Arts. Greg Doran is Oxford University’s Cameron Mackintosh visiting professor...

An interview with Federico Enciso, Paraguay’s First Openly Gay Politician 

I am not going to lie. I myself was pretty much oblivious to Paraguay’s existence before being introduced to the documentary, 108: Cuchillo de Palo. Set during Stroessner’s dictatorship, it goes in search of the truth surrounding the director’s uncle, a gay ballet dancer who was found dead in...

Culture

The Mermaid

The mermaid is dying, and no one cares.She does not belong here, here in the suburbsWhere council-mandated hedges block her from the sea.She does not belong where houses must fit an aesthetic.She does not belong where those in mansions spit on the poor,Where they would not deign to spit...

Freida Toranzo Jaeger’s Prophetic Glitter

Freida Toranzo Jaeger names her paintings like items in a manifesto: Extinction is the price we pay for our existence (2023), Open your heart because everything will change (2023), For new futures we need new beginnings (2022), Create to Destroy, Destroy to Create / On Taste and Poetry. Fuego...

Life

Byte-sized buzz: The craze for short-form media 

It feels essential to state that ‘short-form’ media, in its clips and images, is inevitably never a short-term experience. We’ve all opened our phones searching for some momentary respite, only to look up after what feels like seconds to see the hours have flown by, a deadline has been...

Sushi Bowl: A sensational start

There is a new sushi restaurant in town! More than just another Wasabi and Itsu, Sushi Bowl in the Covered Market is a well-located new spot for a roll or poke bowl on the go. On the corner of the Covered Market, next to the fruit stand and Sartorelli’s,...