Research

Three new Roman fortified camps have been identified across northern Arabia by a remote sensing survey by the University of Oxford’s School of Archaeology. Their paper, published in the journal Antiquity, reports the discovery may be evidence of a probable undocumented military campaign across south east Jordan into Saudi Arabia.

New research reconstructs how a generation of Chinese lawyers turned the post-war order's own promise of equality against the "unequal treaties" that bound their country — and why the order was built so that none of its own machinery could deliver what it promised.

If you visit the archives of St John’s College, Oxford University and turn to the years 1924–25, you’ll discover something remarkable. In the photographs of the hockey team and the records of the debating society, a striking figure stands out: a dashing, Indian-looking young man, seated confidently at the centre of the hockey team, of which he was captain. His poised expression, high cheek bones, and knowing smile suggest not just charm, but leadership.

A newly discovered fossil site in southwest China has transformed our understanding of how complex animal life emerged on Earth, revealing that many key animal groups had already evolved before the start of the Cambrian Period. The study, led by researchers at Oxford University’s Museum of Natural History and Department of Earth Sciences as well as Yunnan University in China, has been published today in Science.

A new study, by an international team of scientists including Dr Ruairidh Macleod, Professor Christopher Ramsey and Professor Rick Schulting, published today in Nature reconstructs the earliest known plague genomes and for the first time shows that early forms of plague caused deadly outbreaks – long before the Black Death killed up to half the population of Europe.

The regions of the Atlantic west of Europe are often considered peripheral to the Mediterranean world of the Roman Empire and its early medieval successors. Yet, new research is revealing the remarkable cultural connections that linked these two worlds, even after the collapse of the western Roman Empire.

The most famous portrait of Marie Antoinette as a child is really of her sister, according to new research. Catriona Seth, Marshal Foch Professor of French Literature and Fellow of All Souls College at the University of Oxford's Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages made the discovery while researching a book and working with the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire (MAH) in Geneva.