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[Anon37]

Hi all - I am considering a 1 year post-doc during my sabbatical (2007).  I am a tenured US prof.  Oxford has housing on campus for me.  Any insights on the town and life there?

The position will be work but not terribly demanding (after all it is sabbatical).  I will travel home several times during the year as well.

I have been to London but not Oxford and will be speaking in Edinburgh this Fall for 2 weks so I may visit then and make the decision after my visit.

[Anon as well]

Campus? Oxford doesn't have a campus.

Are you saying that one of the colleges has offered you accommodation for the year?

If you are considering a standard Oxford post-doctoral post, please bear in mind that "not terribly demanding" is not a phrase one would associate with anything to do with Oxford. One year posts, in particular, are usually associated with masses of work as some poor sod who's just finished their PhD tries to get out the maximum number of papers possible whilst still working like crazy for their research group leader.

As for Oxford, it's a smallish industrial town that just happens to have grown up around a world-class university. Lots of social deprivation as soon as you head up the Cowley road, not helped by the fact that both universities (and Brookes in particular) have fuelled a housing market gone mad making it impossible for locals or junior members of university staff to find anywhere nice to live. A few decent restaurants, but the middle market dining scene is nowhere near as good as it should be. The social scene at the university is heavily college-based, so if you don't have a college affiliation making friends and meeting people can be a hell of a strain.

I do still miss a few of the shops in the covered market (ah, if only Fellers had a branch in London), and Blackwells is the best academic bookshop around by a very long way, but Oxford is a very small, very insular town with far too many students and far, far, far too many tourists, three million of the buggers every year.

Also, if you would let us know which department or college we could give you much better advice.

[Oxford D. Phil]

(also tenured full prof in the US)

The primary question is "what do you want to do on your sabbatical?" Since I'm in the Humanities and the Bodley will find any book I might happen to want within half a day (delivered to my desk), and it's possible to find arcane scholarly conversation with people (both Oxford folks and visiting scholars on sabbatical) at the drop of a pin, I wouldn't consider going anywhere else. On the other hand, everything "Anon as well" says about the place qua place is quite true.

[drooling]

How does one get such a position? I am drooling with temptation.

[Don't believe the hype]

To be situated at the heart of the English class system where your accent is more important than what you have done? Where the "dons" are by and large snobby has-beens, many of whom have not published in (literally) decades? And where you will get your head kicked in BIG TIME if caught out alone by the locals if they think you are a student?

I forgot to mention that Oxford Brookes' History Dept was scored higher than Oxford's - hence the Oxbridge-driven attempted putsch to get rid of the RAE before the two really are exposed as the frauds that all those in the know, know.