News

How have plants adapted over centuries or millennia to survive and recover from human interference? David Moreno-Mateos and his team are analysing tree species in Brazil’s Amazon Rainforest to find out, and to help inform and improve future restoration practice.

In a thought-provoking feature for The Conversation, Dr Rich Grenyer, Associate Professor in Biodiversity and Biogeography, examines the ethical and ecological concerns surrounding de-extinction, arguing that the allure of reviving species like dire wolves risks diverting attention from the ongoing human-driven destruction of the natural world.

In The Conversation, Valentina Montoya Robledo from the Transport Studies Unit highlights the challenges of women who cross the Colombia-Venezuela border every day to work. 

Six new social sciences projects from across the University of Oxford and Oxford Brookes University have been awarded £80,000 to pursue knowledge exchange activities in pursuit of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. The projects were selected from a field of applicants to Oxford's SDG Impact Fund.

Pathogen evolution and disease emergence have been happening for thousands of years, and continue to do so. And even though they can affect all parts of the world, they thrive in conditions of inequality, disproportionately affecting the world’s most vulnerable populations. 

Who exactly is most at risk? And how do structural inequalities shape disease spread and public health outcomes? Bottom line: they make things worse for vulnerable populations, but that doesn’t mean that people better-off countries should feel too sheltered from the realities of disease emergence. For World Health Day 2025, Dr Janey Messina takes a closer look at the key factors that drive spread and vulnerability to infectious disease outbreaks.

Tesla's troubles may be an opportunity for EVs to widen their target market. As EVs become more affordable and the technology more mature, more diverse and inclusive messaging from trusted sources is needed to truly widen their appeal. Dr Hannah Budnitz discusses this in her latest article for The Conversation.

A global research initiative led by the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford has exceeded its target of improving water security for 10 million people across Africa and Asia, demonstrating a scalable approach to tackling one of the world’s most pressing challenges.

The University of Oxford is establishing a new multidisciplinary research initiative for sustainable natural resources. The Oxford EARTH programme (Ensuring equitable Access to sustainable Resources for a Thriving Habitat) aims to address the challenges in natural resources underpinning the net zero energy transition. This includes critical raw materials needed for the generation, storage and transmission of renewable energy, and the social license needed to extract them from the Earth.

Dr Jan Rosenow, an award-winning international expert in energy and climate is returning to the Oxford University department where he completed his doctorate in Energy Policy 13 years ago. Dr Rosenow has been appointed the new Energy Programme lead at the Environmental Change Institute (ECI) and a Jackson Senior Research Fellow at Oriel College, Oxford.