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Oxford Brookes University

university in Oxford, England

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 24, 2026
Entity authorityQ132478 ↗
Source-derived summary

Oxford Brookes University (OBU; formerly known as Oxford Polytechnic) is a public research university in Oxford, England. It is a new university, having received university status through the Further and Higher Education Act 1992. The university was named after its first principal, John Henry Brookes, who played a major role in the development of the institution.

Oxford Brookes University is predominantly based at a campus in Headington, Oxford. A second campus is located in Swindon. Two campuses located on the outskirts of Oxford, the Wheatley campus (originally Lady Spencer-Churchill College) and the Harcourt Hill campus, closed in 2024 and 2025 respectively, with all activities moving to Headington.

As of November 2021 the Brookes web site said that the institution had 16,900 students, 2,800 staff and over 190,000 alumni in over 177 countries. The university is divided into two faculties: the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences and the Faculty of Health, Sciences and Technology. Oxford Brookes University's partnership with the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) allows ACCA students to earn a BSc (Hons) in applied accounting with the submission of a research and analysis project work while taking their ACCA examinations. The university also has schools of architecture and law.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Oxford Brookes University” as university in Oxford, England. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Oxford, Brookes and University.

Editorial reviewA strong contextual entry point for chronology, institutions and public events when official records are distinguished from later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1992, 2024, 2025, 2021—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1865. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Oxford, Brookes and University providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Oxford Brookes University”, the useful work is to connect “university in Oxford, England” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q132478. VIAF identifies the subject as 149218573. The Library of Congress control number is no94032247. Authority coordinates are 51.754, -1.223. 5 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1992, 2024, 2025 and 2021.

Critical limits

Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Oxford Brookes University”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Oxford Brookes University primary sources, Oxford Brookes University archive and Oxford research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Oxford Brookes University”?
  2. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
  3. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Oxford Brookes University” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.