Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
The coronavirus pandemic greatly impacted traditional universities, with closures happening globally and students turning to remote learning. But what impact is COVID-19 having on institutions that historically teach mainly online?
In roughly 7 out of 10 workplaces in the US, HR professionals use cybervetting to get to “know a person” beyond information provided on a resume. But what are cybervetters really attempting to learn, what inferences do they make, and what does any of this have to do with how a candidate will perform on the job?
If you’re lucky enough to be able to simply open a webpage and engage with the content hosted there, the likelihood is that you rarely think about what it would be like if you couldn’t do that. What if you were visually impaired but the page was indecipherable to your screen reader?
We all know the joyful anticipation of that exciting phrase. Whether getting ready for a “race” with my granddaughter or waiting for the gun at the start of a half-marathon, just the thought of it brings a bit of an adrenaline rush. This mindset transcends culture, space, and time, and presents itself structurally in Classical Era music.
In this blog post, the Oxford Etymologist explores the origin of “dear” and the development of the various senses of the word.
Son preference is a phenomenon that has strong historical roots in many western and non-western cultures. The positions of men and women in modern societies are becoming more aligned. In this context, it is natural to ask whether son preference is yet another social phenomenon that is losing its historical ground. Could it even be that in some domains of life such preference is already a thing of the past?
At his recent press conference, President Biden said that he came to the Senate 120 years ago. I knew exactly what he meant because I got there three years after him when I joined the Senate Historical Office in 1976, and it was a different world.
This summer will mark the 85th anniversary of the start of the Spanish Civil War, a brutal struggle that began with a military uprising against the democratic Second Republic and ended, three years later, in victory for the rebels under General Francisco Franco. The enduring fascination of that conflict, its ability to grip the global imagination, belies its geographical scale and is testament to the power of art.
During the past decade, the eyes of the world have often been directed toward Gaza. This tiny coastal enclave has received a huge amount of diplomatic attention and international media coverage. The plight of its nearly two million inhabitants has stirred an outpouring of humanitarian concern, generating worldwide protests against the Israeli blockade of Gaza.
Increasingly, two of the largest publicly supported healthcare programs, Medicaid and Medicare, are administered by for-profit insurance companies. The privatization of the Medicaid long-term care programs has been implemented largely through state managed care contracts with insurance companies to administer Medicaid LTC funds.
Successful word-coinages—those that stay in lingual currency for a good, long time—tend to conceal their beginnings. In The Hidden History of Coined Words, author and word sleuth Ralph Keyes explores the etymological underworld of terms and expressions and uncovers plenty of hidden gems.
In this blog post, the Oxford Etymologist revisits the word “bodkin” and its kin.
For Fascination of Plants Day on 18 May this year, we talked to Professor Mitchell Cruzan about his research into the evolved adaptations that distinguish plants from animals.
Once again, we are exposed to daily doses of “border crisis” news. Calling the groups of immigrants arriving at the US Southern border a crisis has become an easy shorthand with sensationalist overtones. It provokes reactions across the range of political opinions, as well as among government officials and civil society actors alike. But is there really a crisis at the border? Or is this crisis located elsewhere? And whose crisis is it?
OUP have recently announced our support for the newly created SHAPE initiative—Social Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts for People and the Economy. To further understand the crucial role these subjects play in our everyday lives, we have put three questions to four British Academy SHAPE authors and editors—social and cultural historian Lucy Noakes, historian of objects and faith Eyal Poleg, historical sociolinguist Laura Wright, and Lecturer in Contemporary Art History Mary Kelly—on what SHAPE means to them, and to their research.
Dear Fellow Nurses, I am honored to bring Nurse Week greetings, especially in this year of unprecedented demands. You may be heaving a sigh of relief as the pandemic winds down. You are fantasizing about “getting back to normal,” whatever “normal” means to you. However, your life as a practicing nurse is forever changed as a function of living through the crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic.