Oxford University: A research legacy that deserves better storytelling.

Oxford is one of the world’s best universities. With impact this incredible, why is it failing to tell its own.

19th March 2025

Screenshot of the current front page of the Oxford University website (March 2025)

Oxford: The greatest hits

I was watching the TV series Prime Target the other day, and a character gave a speech about Cambridge’s legacy that inspired me. 

If I were to shamelessly steal and repurpose that speech into one about Oxford, here’s what I’d say: 

It was in this city, at this university, that some of the greatest minds in history revolutionised our understanding of the world. 

Howard Florey and Ernst Chain transformed Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin into a life-saving antibiotic, saving millions of lives and changing medicine forever. Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin advanced a novel technique, X-ray crystallography, to map the structures of vital biomolecules like penicillin, Vitamin B12 and insulin, paving the way for mass production of life-changing drugs. 

Professor John Goodenough’s research led to the development of  lithium-ion batteries, powering everything from smartphones to electric cars and reshaping modern energy storage. Brian Bellhouse invented no-needle injections, delivering medications painlessly and transforming healthcare delivery. Sir David Butler pioneered the field of election science, psephology, and introduced a framework to analyse election swing – changing how we interpret political shifts across the globe.

And most recently, Sarah Gilbert and her team responded to a global pandemic by developing the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, saving countless lives worldwide.

As Oxford alumnus Stephen Hawking said, "We are by nature explorers—compelled to seek answers to nature's deepest mysteries." This pursuit of the unknown is not just Oxford's legacy—it's its enduring purpose.

Why don’t we see speech-worthy messaging anywhere?

A concise, powerful summary could be:

From pioneering penicillin to the groundbreaking Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, the lithium-ion batteries powering everything from smartphones to electric cars, and innovative political frameworks, Oxford’s impact on science and society is undeniable. We inspire generations to push boundaries and solve some of the world's most challenging problems. 

Oxford's Vice Chancellors undoubtedly deliver such speeches. Yet the university’s website fails to reflect their profound impact. Oxford’s page on Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, for example, doesn’t even reference her work mapping insulin and enabling its mass production—I got that from Wikipedia!

Even as a science publisher and journalist, I found it challenging to locate the details. I had to search far beyond Oxford’s online resources to fact-check this newsletter. And I’m writing this from a supporter’s position, as someone who firmly believes that research is an important public good.

Having your impact narrative buried like this makes it extremely difficult to make your case for increased profile, awareness and funding. 

If it’s hard for me, imagine the challenge for the public, politicians, media, philanthropists, industry partners and—just as importantly—future students.

And while I in no way blame universities in the USA for the pernicious attacks on them by the current administration, the failure or inability to share the impact of their research has left universities and other research-based organisations vulnerable to political attacks. The positive narrative is missing, and this gap is easily exploited. As I’ve said before, if you aren’t telling your own story, someone else will tell it for you—but they will use it for their own agenda. We are already seeing this.

If you haven’t given your staff, alumni, students, community, politicians and media the narrative, language and stories how do they understand and support you? How can they defend you? How can they promote your work?

The verdict on Oxford’s website: A missed opportunity

Regular readers may recall my recent review of Harvard University’s website, which is world-leading. Harvard has adopted a publisher’s perspective, transforming its website into a media hub. This strategic approach places the audience at the centre of the experience. While it could have done more to highlight their research impact, it demonstrates the courage to say less—which ultimately achieves more.

Unfortunately, unlike Harvard, Oxford’s approach does not impress me at all.

Despite its undeniable status as a research powerhouse, Oxford is letting itself down.

Let’s take a look at the front page. 

Screenshot of Oxford’s homepage as of March 2025.

The first thing that stands out: research impact is nowhere to be found. Instead, there’s a carousel with hero stories, then News, Events, Discover, and Studying at Oxford. These hero stories, as of March 2025, are more or less all aimed at prospective students: An online conference for applicants, a news story about their OpenAI partnership, and information for graduate students. 

A link at the bottom of the OpenAI announcement story takes you to a page about Oxford’s generative AI work, but this is one of the only news stories that links to a broader theme—and even then, you have to click another link to get to Oxford’s AI research impact. Why isn’t this on the front page? 

One of their other featured stories is about climate change research—a topic at least as important as AI. Yet this story is a dead end. If I want to know how Oxford is tackling climate, I can’t go from this individual story to understand the bigger picture. It’s neither visionary nor strategic.

Gen AI is an offering for students and researchers – so it does make sense to highlight it for this important audience. But what about the general public, whose taxes fund the research? Or partners, or (for example) philanthropists funding the work? Aren’t they just as valuable an audience?  

News has its place, but it isn’t impact. And isn’t impact just as important?

Making the audience work too hard

It’s clear from the lack of strategic messaging, cohesive content, and website design that Oxford hasn’t got its head around its own impact—or at least how to talk about it.

There is no overarching narrative or curated storytelling. No narrative at a country, economic, sector or field level. Rankings are given preference over impact. Overall, the front page is a firehose of disconnected news stories, press releases, events, interviews and other miscellaneous information.

They are far from alone in this, but it’s deeply frustrating to see universities fail to effectively communicate their brilliant research stories. Indeed, it’s ironic that Oxford struggles with an outdated and confusing website when it is home to institutes like the Oxford Internet Institute (dedicated to studying the social science of the internet), and the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (focused on advancing journalism globally). 

In Oxford’s last strategy, their vision for engagement and partnership is: “By enhancing the public engagement, knowledge exchange and innovation culture of the University, we aim to ensure that our research and education benefit wider public in the Oxford region, across the UK and globally. To this end we will work in partnership with public, private, voluntary and commercial organisations, and our alumni.” 

While this provides a solid foundation, I’d love to see greater ambition. World-changing research deserves bold communication and creative approaches that resonate with diverse audiences and make a real impact.

Recommendations and room for improvement 

So how can they improve? Some recommendations: 

• It starts at the top: include public engagement with your impact as a crucial and resourced priority in internal strategies–and ensure that these strategies are implemented across the organisation. Oxford’s focus on research impact is important and a great start. But without a strategic focus on communicating your impact, how will people know what your research has done for them or the world at large? 

• Identify key themes and highlight them prominently. Instead of putting individual news stories front and centre, identify key themes and hero stories against those themes. Instead of making readers follow a series of buried links, make themes easily accessible from the front page.

• Ensure the messaging for these themes is tailored to Oxford, and not something any uni could say. The generative AI page is a good start. Although the headline is a bit generic (“Oxford experts are applying AI to society's greatest challenges”), the copy is clear and specific, referencing research from identifying psychiatric disorders to monitoring illegal wildlife trade. More of this, please!

• Simplify! Have the courage to say less, as Harvard does. Unlike Harvard, Oxford’s website is a real labyrinth–another indicator that audience engagement isn’t a strategic priority for them. By identifying and highlighting only key themes, you can eliminate all the noise and draw the audience’s attention to what’s most important.

  
  

Imagine if politicians, industry and the general public had the language to talk about how Oxford research has changed their lives. Universities would be less susceptible to shifting political winds. There would be public outcry at funding cuts. The conversation would move from the stuff of culture wars to the ways that research has transformed our society for the better. The opportunity to take control of the conversation is enormous–and it starts with taking control of the research impact narrative.