University of Leicester
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Leicester , England, UK 52°37′17″N 1°07′28″W / 52.62139°N 1.12444°W | |
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The University of Leicester (/ˈlɛstər/ ⓘ LEST-ər) is a public research university based in Leicester, England. The main campus is south of the city centre, adjacent to Victoria Park. The university's predecessor, University College, Leicester, gained university status in 1957.
The university had an income of £368 million in 2022/23, of which £70.3 million was from research grants.[1]
The university is known for the invention of
History
Desire for a university
The first serious suggestions for a university in Leicester began with the Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society (founded at a time when "philosophical" broadly meant what "scientific" means today).
In the late 19th century the co-presidents of the Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society, the Revered James Went, headmaster of the
Establishment
The old asylum building had often been suggested as a site for the new university, and after it was due to be finished being used as a hospital for the wounded, Astley Clarke was keen to urge the citizens and local authorities to buy it. Fortunately, Clarke quickly learned the building had already been bought by Thomas Fielding Johnson, a wealthy philanthropist who owned a worsted manufacturing business. He had bought 37 acres of land for £40,000 and intended not only to house the college, but also the boys' and girls' grammar schools. Further donations soon topped £100,000: many were given in memory of loved ones lost during the war, while others were for those who had taken part and survived. King George V gave his blessing to the scheme after a visit to the town in 1919.[8]
Year | No of students[9] |
---|---|
1944–45 | 84 |
1945–46 | 109 |
1946–47 | 218 |
1947–48 | 448 |
1948–49 | 568 |
1949–50 | 706 |
1950–51 | 730 |
1951–52 | 764 |
Talk turned to the curriculum with many arguing that it should focus on Leicester's chief industries hosiery, boots and shoes. Others had higher hopes than just technical training. The education acts of
In 1927, after it became University College, Leicester, students sat for the examinations for external degrees of the
University status to modern day
In 1957, the University College was granted its
Leicester University won the first ever series of University Challenge, in 1963. The university's motto Ut Vitam Habeant –"so that they may have life", is a reflection of the war memorial origins of its formation. It is believed to have been Rattray's suggestion.[15]
The university medical school, Leicester Medical School, opened in 1971.
In 1994, the University of Leicester celebrated winning the
In 2011, the university was selected as one of four sites for national high performance computing (HPC) facilities for theoretical astrophysics and particle physics. An investment of £12.32 million, from the Government's Large Facilities Capital Fund, together with investment from the Science and Technology Facilities Council and from universities contribute to a national supercomputer.[17]
In September 2012, a ULAS team
In January 2017, Physics students from the University of Leicester made national news when they revealed their predictions on how long it would take a zombie apocalypse to wipe out humanity. They calculated that it would take just 100 days for zombies to completely take over earth. At the end of the 100 days, the students predicted that just 300 humans would remain alive and without infection.[19]
In January 2021, around 200 UCU members at the university passed a no-confidence motion in Vice Chancellor Nishan Canagarajah because of proposed cuts putting 145 staff members at risk of redundancy. There was anger at his claim that redundancies are needed to "continue to deliver excellence".[20] In April, the UCU urged academics to boycott the university due to the planned redundancies, including encouraging people to not apply for jobs at Leicester or collaborate on new research projects.[21]
Campus
The main campus is a mile south of the city centre, adjacent to Victoria Park and Wyggeston and Queen Elizabeth I College. The skyline of the university is punctuated by three distinctive, towering, buildings from the 1960s: the Department of Engineering, the Attenborough Tower and the Charles Wilson Building.
Fielding Johnson Building
The Fielding Johnson Building was designed by William Parsons in a late Georgian provincial style as the Leicestershire and Rutland County Asylum. From 1921 the building was home to most of the university departments until purpose-built accommodation was created, and it was renamed the Fielding Johnson Building in 1964. It now houses the university's administration offices, the Faculty of Law, faculty of criminology and a lecture theatre.[22]
Attenborough Tower
The 18-storey Attenborough Tower is home to the College of Social Sciences and has undergone extensive renovation.
Engineering Building
The Engineering Building was the first major building by British architects James Stirling and James Gowan. This Grade II* listed building[23] comprises workshops and laboratories at ground level, and a tower containing offices and lecture theatres.
Other buildings
Opposite the Fielding Johnson Building are the Astley Clarke Building, home to the School of Media, Communication and Sociology, and the Danielle Brown Sports Centre.
The Ken Edwards Building, built in 1995, lies adjacent to the Fielding Johnson Building and is home to the School of Management.
Built in 1957, the Percy Gee Building is home to Leicester University's Students' Union. Percy Gee was one of the first treasurers of the University College.
The David Wilson Library was opened by
The Bennett Building, Physics and Astronomy Building, the Chemistry Building and the Adrian Building lie beyond the Charles Wilson Building. Across University Road, linked by pedestrian bridges, lie the Maurice Shock and Hodgkin Buildings. Further along University Road is the George Davies Centre building (built 2016), home to Leicester's Medical School.
The Adrian Building was built in 1967 and designed by Courtald Technical Services which became W.F Johnson & Partners.[25] It was named after Edgar Adrian the first chancellor of the university (1957–1971). The Charles Wilson Building was designed by Denys Lasdun and completed in 1967.
Along London road is the Brookfield campus home to the school of business and the post-graduate centre. It was sympathetically renovated, with the original building being built in 1870 and was home to Thomas Fielding Johnson, the founder of the University of Leicester.
Further along University Road and on Salisbury Road and Regents Road are the Department of Education and the Fraser Noble Building.
On Lancaster Road there is the Attenborough Arts Centre, the university's arts centre.
Leicester's halls of residence are noteworthy: many of the halls (nearly all located in Oadby) date from the early 1900s and were the homes of Leicester's wealthy industrialists.
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The Physics and Astronomy Building, part of a larger complex by Leslie Martin
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Eye of Time sundial
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Vaughan College, the university's former adult education college, is Grade II listed and faces the Jewry WallRoman ruins
Development
In recent years, the university has disposed of some of its poorer quality property in order to invest in new facilities, and is currently undergoing a £300+ million redevelopment. [citation needed] The new John Foster Hall of Residence opened in October 2006. The David Wilson Library, twice the size of the previous University Library, opened on 1 April 2008 and a new biomedical research building (the Henry Wellcome Building) has already been constructed. A complete revamp of the Percy Gee Student Union building was completed in September 2010, and another is underway, due for completion in spring 2020.[26] Nixon Court was extended and refurbished in 2011.
Organisation
The university's academic schools and departments are organised into colleges. In August 2015, the colleges were further restructured with the merging of Social Sciences and Arts, Humanities and Law to give the following structure:[27]
College of Life Sciences
The college has the following academic schools:[28]
- Leicester Medical School
- School of Biological Sciences
- School of Psychology
- School of Allied Health Professions
The research departments and institutes:
- Cardiovascular Sciences
- Genetics and Genome Biology (including the Leicester Cancer Research Centre)
- Health Sciences (including the Leicester Diabetes Centre)
- Infection, Immunity and Inflammation
- Molecular and Cell Biology
- Neuroscience, Psychology and Behaviour (including the Centre for Systems Neuroscience)
- Leicester Precision Medicine Institute (including Leicester Drug Discovery and Diagnostics)
- Leicester Institute of Structural and Chemical Biology
Leicester Medical School
The university is home to a large medical school, Leicester Medical School, which opened in 1971. The school was formerly in partnership with the University of Warwick, and the Leicester-Warwick medical school proved to be a success in helping Leicester expand, and Warwick establish. The partnership ran the end of its course towards the end of 2006 and the medical schools became autonomous institutions within their respective universities.[citation needed]
College of Science and Engineering
The college comprises the following departments:[29]
- Chemistry
- Informatics
- School of Geography Geology & the Environment
- Engineering
- Computing and Mathematical Sciences
- Physics and Astronomy
There are also interdisciplinary research centres for Space Research, Climate Change Research, Mathematical/Computational Modelling and Advanced Microscopy.
Engineering
The department offers MEng and BEng degrees in Aerospace Engineering, Embedded Systems Engineering, Communications and Electronic Engineering, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and General Engineering. Each course is accredited by the relevant professional institutions. The department also offers MSc courses.[citation needed]
Physics and Astronomy
The department has around 350 undergraduate students, following either BSc (three-year) or MPhys (four-year) degree courses, and over 70 postgraduate students registered for a higher degree.[30]
The main Physics building accommodates several research groups—Radio and Space Plasma Physics (RSPP), X-ray and Observational Astronomy (XROA), and Theoretical Astrophysics (TA)—as well as centres for
The department is home to the university's ALICE 3400+ core supercomputer[32] and is a member of the UK's DiRAC (DiStributed Research utilising Advanced Computing) consortium. DiRAC is the integrated supercomputing facility for theoretical modelling and HPC-based research in particle physics, astronomy and cosmology.[17]
College of Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities
The college has 10 schools including:
- American Studies
- Archaeology and Ancient History
- School of Arts
- School of Business
- Criminology
- Education
- History, Politics and International Relations
- Leicester Law School
- School of Media, Communication and Sociology
- Museum Studies
Archaeology and Ancient History
The School of Archaeology and Ancient History was formed in 1990 from the then Departments of Archaeology and Classics, under the headship of Graeme Barker. The academic staff currently (as of January 2017) include 21 archaeologists and 8 ancient historians, though several staff teach and research in both disciplines.[33]
The School has particular strengths in Mediterranean archaeology, ancient Greek and Roman history, and the archaeology of recent periods; and is also home to the University of Leicester Archaeological Services (ULAS).[34]
Business
The School of Business was founded in 2016, bringing together the expertise of the School of Management and the Department of Economics. The new school now has approximately 150 academic staff, 50 from Economics and 100 from Management. In 2010 the former School of Management was ranked 2nd after
The School of Business provides postgraduate and undergraduate programmes in Management, Accounting and Economics. The School of Business, is one of the approximately 270 Schools/Universities in the world accredited by AMBA.[36]
English
The School of English teaches English at degree level. The school offers English studies from contemporary writing to Old English and language studies. It contains the Victorian Studies Centre, the first of its kind in the UK. [citation needed]. Malcolm Bradbury is one of the department's most famous alumni: he graduated with a First in English in 1953.[citation needed]
Historical Studies
The School of Historical Studies is one of the largest of any university in the country. It has made considerable scholarly achievements in many areas of history, notably urban history, English local history, American studies and Holocaust studies.[37] The school houses both the East Midlands Oral History Archive (EMOHA)[38] and the Media Archive for Central England.[39]
Law
The School of Law is one of the biggest departments in the university. According to the Times Online Good University Guide 2009, the Faculty of Law was ranked 8th, out of 87 institutions, making it one of the top law schools in the country.[40][needs update]
Academic profile
Admissions
|
New students entering the university in 2015 had the 42nd highest UCAS Points in the UK at 374 points (the equivalent of BBC at A Level and BC at AS Level).[44] According to the 2017 Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide, approximately 2% of Leicester's undergraduates come from independent schools.[45]
Teaching
The university is held in high regard for the quality of its teaching.
Leicester was ranked joint first in the 2005, 2006, and 2007
Rankings and reputation
National rankings | |
---|---|
Complete (2024)[48] | 38 |
Guardian (2024)[49] | 48 |
Times / Sunday Times (2024)[50] | 34= |
Global rankings | |
ARWU (2023)[51] | 301–400 |
QS (2024)[52] | 272= |
THE (2024)[53] | 201–250 |
The university was named
In 2017, the university ranked 25th in The Sunday Times Good University Guide.
Research
The university has research groups in the areas of astrophysics, biochemistry and genetics. The techniques used in
Leicester Physicists (led by Ken Pounds) were critical in demonstrating a fundamental prediction of
Leicester is one of a small number of universities to have won the prestigious
The 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF) exercise for the School of Archaeology and Ancient History, 74% of research activity, including 100% of its Research Environment, was classed as 'world-leading' or 'internationally excellent', ranking it 6th among UK university departments teaching archaeology and 1st for the public impact of its research.[citation needed]
The
In 2019, the university of Leicester ranked 76th in Reuters top 100 of Europe's most innovative universities. University of Leicester excelled in molecular and cell biology. [citation needed]
Leicester has been ranked as one of the top performing universities in the UK for COVID-19 research, after being awarded more than £10.8 million of government funding since the pandemic began. The university now sits alongside the University of Oxford and University College London and has been recognised globally for its work, including being the first in the world to discover the link between people from black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds being more susceptible to severe cases of coronavirus. [citation needed]
Library special collections
Local history collections
The Library has one of the largest local history collections in the country. The main collection contains circa 37,000 items covering all the major counties of England. Much of this material has been collected for the Centre for English Local History since its founding in 1948.[61] In addition, there are several rare book collections and archives:
- Hatton Collection. This collection is focused on the early English county histories and works by the antiquarians. Thomas Hatton (1876–1943), a local businessman whose collection of nearly 2,000 books on English local history was donated to the Library of Leicester College in 1920. This was one of the first major donations to the Library.[62]
- Chaproniere Collection. Photographic archive of English parish churches organised by geological region. Donated by Donna Chaproniere.[63]
- Fairclough Collection. Portrait prints and topographical illustrations of 17th century Britain. Donated by A. B. R. Fairclough in 1970.[64]
- Thirsk Collection. Notes and data collected by Joan Thirsk for volumes 4 (1500–1640) and 5 (1640–1750) of The Agrarian History of England and Wales. Thirsk was the editor of these volumes and a research fellow at Leicester in the 1950s.[65]
In recent years, the Library has digitised, and made available online, collections relating to local and urban history, including The Historical Directories of England and Wales[66] and the East Midlands Oral History Archive.[67]
Modern Literary Archives
The library also holds a number of collections of 20th century writers and illustrators:
- The Joe Orton Collection. Joe Orton (1933–1967) was a Leicester-born playwright, the collection contains his manuscripts and correspondence.
- The Laura Riding Letters. The collected correspondence of the American poet and critic Laura Riding (1901–1991).
- The Sue Townsend Collection. The personal papers of Sue Townsend (1946–2014). The collection contains Townsend's literary correspondence and notebooks detailing her works.[68]
Student life
The university has a number of different societies within its students' union. The Union has over 220 different societies.[69]
Student media
The students' union has three student groups producing media: Leicester Student Magazine, Galaxy Radio, and LUST (Leicester University Student Television).
Leicester Student Magazine was founded in 1957, and has previously been known as The Ripple, The Wave & Galaxy Press.[70]
LUST (Leicester University Student Television) was re-founded in 2002 after a period of dormancy. The station is affiliated to the
Galaxy Radio
Founded in 1996, Galaxy Radio (previously LUSH Radio, LUSH FM) is run and presented exclusively by students and broadcasts a mixture of music, chat and news.[71] Some notable personalities from the early days of the station (LUSH FM at the time) who have gone on to work in the media are Lucy O'Doherty (BBC 6 Music) and Adam Mitchenall (ETV). Niraj Dave hosted a show on LUSH FM from 2007 to 2008 and has worked for Asian Sound Radio and Sunrise Radio, London, two of the largest British Asian radio stations in the country. [citation needed]
Galaxy Radio holds an annual 24-hour charity broadcast. In 2011, £300 was raised for
Galaxy Radio has broadcast live the annual varsity match against De Montfort University for both football from the King Power Stadium and rugby union from Welford Road Stadium.
Notable people
-
Anthony Giddens, sociologist
-
Peter Atkins, chemist
-
Sir Liam Donaldson, medical doctor and university chancellor
-
Natalie Bennett, British politician
-
Norman Lamb, MP
-
Bob Mortimer, comedian
Notable academics from the university include;
Numerous public figures in many diverse fields have been students at the university. Alumni in science include Peter Atkins, physical chemist; Philip Campbell, editor-in-chief of Nature; Sir Liam Donaldson, Chief Medical Officer
Alumni in politics and government include
Alumni in the arts include
The Attenboroughs
The University of Leicester is commonly associated with the Attenborough family.
Both have maintained links with the university—David Attenborough was made an honorary Doctor of Letters in 1970 and opened the Attenborough Arboretum in
See also
- Armorial of UK universities
- List of universities in the UK
- National Space Centre
- Peer English, an academic journal published by the Department of English
- Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust Studies
- University of Leicester Botanic Garden
References
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- ^ a b c "Where do HE students study? | HESA". www.hesa.ac.uk.
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- ^ Simmons 1958, p. 51
- ^ Simmons 1958, p. 58
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- ^ Burch 1996, p. 16
- ^ Simmons 1958, p. 81
- ^ Simmons 1958, p. 94
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- ^ BBC: How Royal visits have changed https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-17300813
- ^ Simmons 1958, p. 93
- ^ "The Prizes". The Royal Anniversary Trust.
- ^ a b [1], Multi-million pound new national supercomputer to perform astronomical feats. Retrieved 22 March 2015.
- ^ Sarah Knapton (30 July 2018). "Richard III expert to help determine if headless skeleton is colonial governor and 'hero' of Jamestown". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 12 January 2022. Retrieved 31 July 2018.
- ^ "Zombie apocalypse would wipe out humankind in just 100 days, according to university research". The Telegraph. 5 January 2017. Archived from the original on 12 January 2022. Retrieved 6 January 2017.
- ^ Martin, Dan (26 January 2021). "UCU members 'overwhelmingly' back no-confidence motion in Leicester University vice-chancellor". Leicester Mercury. Retrieved 3 February 2021.
- ^ Martin, Dan (4 May 2021), "Union calls for global boycott of University of Leicester as redundancy dispute escalates", Leicester Mercury, retrieved 4 May 2021
- ^ Milvaques, Victoria (August 2013). "Fielding Johnson Building". Story of Leicester. Leicester City Council. Archived from the original on 4 September 2017.
- ^ Historic England. "Engineering Building, University of Leicester (1074756)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 9 July 2019.
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- ^ "Finnish PM’s politics formed at the University of Leicester", University of Leicester, 1 May 2013.
Further reading
- Simmons, Jack (1958), New University, Leicester University Press
- Burch, Brian (1996), The University of Leicester, A History, 1921–1996, University of Leicester