University College, Liverpool
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The University of Liverpool (abbreviated UOL) is a
public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociology, sociological concept of the ''Öf ...
research university A research university or a research-intensive university is a university that is committed to research as a central part of its mission. They are "the key sites of Knowledge production modes, knowledge production", along with "intergenerational ...
in
Liverpool Liverpool is a port City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. It is situated on the eastern side of the River Mersey, Mersey Estuary, near the Irish Sea, north-west of London. With a population ...
, England. Founded in 1881 as University College Liverpool,
Victoria University Victoria University may refer to: * Victoria University (Australia), a public research university in Melbourne, Australia * Victoria University, Toronto, a constituent college of the federal University of Toronto in Canada * Victoria University of ...
, it received
Royal Charter A royal charter is a formal grant issued by a monarch under royal prerogative as letters patent. Historically, they have been used to promulgate public laws, the most famous example being the English Magna Carta (great charter) of 1215, but ...
by
King Edward VII Edward VII (Albert Edward; 9 November 1841 – 6 May 1910) was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 22 January 1901 until his death in 1910. The second child and eldest son of Queen Victoria and ...
in 1903 attaining the decree to award degrees independently. The university withholds and operates assets on the
National Heritage List The Australian National Heritage List or National Heritage List (NHL) is a heritage register, a list of National heritage site, national heritage places deemed to be of outstanding heritage significance to Australia, established in 2003. The li ...
, such as the
Liverpool Royal Infirmary The Liverpool Royal Infirmary was a hospital in Pembroke Place in Liverpool, England. The building is now used by the University of Liverpool. History The infirmary has its origins in a small building on Shaw's Brow which was opened by the 11th ...
(origins in 1749), the
Ness Botanic Gardens Ness Botanic Gardens are at Ness, Cheshire in the Wirral Peninsula. This is near the cities of Liverpool and Chester and close to the English-Welsh border. They occupy a site of 64 acres overlooking the Dee Estuary. The Ness Botanic Gardens wer ...
, and the
Victoria Gallery & Museum The Victoria Gallery & Museum (VG&M) is an art gallery and museum run by the University of Liverpool in Liverpool, Merseyside, England.
. Organised into three faculties divided by 35 schools and departments, the university offers more than 230 first degree courses across 103 subjects. It is a founding member of the
Russell Group The Russell Group is a self-selected association of twenty-four public research universities in the United Kingdom. The group is headquartered in Cambridge and was established in 1994 to represent its members' interests, principally to governme ...
, and the research intensive association of universities in
Northern England Northern England, or the North of England, refers to the northern part of England and mainly corresponds to the Historic counties of England, historic counties of Cheshire, Cumberland, County Durham, Durham, Lancashire, Northumberland, Westmo ...
, the
N8 Group The N8 Research Partnership is a partnership created in 2006 of the eight most research-intensive universities in Northern England – Durham, Lancaster, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Sheffield and York. The N8 Research Partnersh ...
. The phrase ''"redbrick university"'' was inspired by the Victoria Building, thus, the university is recognised as the original redbrick university. Liverpool was the first UK university to establish departments in
oceanography Oceanography (), also known as oceanology, sea science, ocean science, and marine science, is the scientific study of the ocean, including its physics, chemistry, biology, and geology. It is an Earth science, which covers a wide range of to ...
, civic design,
architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and construction, constructi ...
, and
biochemistry Biochemistry, or biological chemistry, is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology, a ...
(at the
Johnston Laboratories The Johnston Laboratories at the University of Liverpool in Liverpool, England, performed a variety of pathology and medical research during the 20th century. They are now located in the Johnston Building. The Laboratories were founded by earl ...
), and also the first to establish an independent university campus in China, known as
Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University Xi'an is the capital of the Chinese province of Shaanxi. A sub-provincial city on the Guanzhong plain, the city is the third-most populous city in Western China after Chongqing and Chengdu, as well as the most populous city in Northwestern Chi ...
. Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University#cite note-0 The university has the ninth-largest endowment of any university in the UK and in 2023/24, it had an income of £705.3 million, of which £123.3 million was from research grants and contracts, with an expenditure of £515.8 million. As of 2024, the university holds four academic fellows of the
Academy of Social Sciences The Academy of Social Sciences (AcSS) is a representative body for social sciences in the United Kingdom. The academy promotes social science through its sponsorship of the Campaign for Social Science, its links with Government on a variety of m ...
and one of the
British Academy The British Academy for the Promotion of Historical, Philosophical and Philological Studies is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences. It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the sa ...
. Ten Nobel prize laureates have been affiliated with Liverpool as alumni or academic staff, with notable alumni leading fields in medicine, law, business, engineering, arts, politics, and technology. Graduates of the university are styled with the
post-nominal letters Post-nominal letters, also called post-nominal initials, post-nominal titles, designatory letters, or simply post-nominals, are letters placed after a person's name to indicate that the individual holds a position, an academic degree, accreditation ...
, ''Lpool'', to indicate the institution.


History


University College Liverpool

The university was established in 1881 as College Liverpool, admitting its first students in 1882. In 1884, it became part of the federal
Victoria University Victoria University may refer to: * Victoria University (Australia), a public research university in Melbourne, Australia * Victoria University, Toronto, a constituent college of the federal University of Toronto in Canada * Victoria University of ...
. In 1894
Oliver Lodge Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge (12 June 1851 – 22 August 1940) was an English physicist whose investigations into electromagnetic radiation contributed to the development of Radio, radio communication. He identified electromagnetic radiation indepe ...
, a professor at the university, made the world's first public
radio transmission Radio is the technology of telecommunication, communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 3 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transm ...
and two years later took the first surgical
X-ray An X-ray (also known in many languages as Röntgen radiation) is a form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength shorter than those of ultraviolet rays and longer than those of gamma rays. Roughly, X-rays have a wavelength ran ...
in the United Kingdom. The
Liverpool University Press Liverpool University Press (LUP), founded in 1899, is the third oldest university press in England after Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press. As the press of the University of Liverpool, it specialises in modern languages, lit ...
was founded in 1899, making it the third-oldest
university press A university press is an academic publishing house specializing in monographs and scholarly journals. They are often an integral component of a large research university. They publish work that has been reviewed by scholars in the field. They pro ...
in England. Students in this period were awarded external degrees by the
University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a collegiate university, federal Public university, public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The ...
.


University status

Following a
royal charter A royal charter is a formal grant issued by a monarch under royal prerogative as letters patent. Historically, they have been used to promulgate public laws, the most famous example being the English Magna Carta (great charter) of 1215, but ...
and act of Parliament in 1903, it became an independent university (the University of Liverpool) with the right to confer its own degrees. The next few years saw major developments at the university, including Sir
Charles Sherrington Sir Charles Scott Sherrington (27 November 1857 – 4 March 1952) was a British neurophysiologist. His experimental research established many aspects of contemporary neuroscience, including the concept of the spinal reflex as a system involving ...
's discovery of the
synapse In the nervous system, a synapse is a structure that allows a neuron (or nerve cell) to pass an electrical or chemical signal to another neuron or a target effector cell. Synapses can be classified as either chemical or electrical, depending o ...
and William Blair-Bell's work on
chemotherapy Chemotherapy (often abbreviated chemo, sometimes CTX and CTx) is the type of cancer treatment that uses one or more anti-cancer drugs (list of chemotherapeutic agents, chemotherapeutic agents or alkylating agents) in a standard chemotherapy re ...
in the treatment of cancer. In the 1930s to 1940s Sir
James Chadwick Sir James Chadwick (20 October 1891 – 24 July 1974) was an English nuclear physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1935 for his discovery of the neutron. In 1941, he wrote the final draft of the MAUD Report, which inspired t ...
and Sir
Joseph Rotblat Sir Joseph Rotblat (4 November 1908 – 31 August 2005) was a Polish and British physicist. During World War II he worked on Tube Alloys and the Manhattan Project, but left the Los Alamos Laboratory on grounds of conscience after it became ...
made major contributions to the development of the
atomic bomb A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission or atomic bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear weapon), producing a nuclear expl ...
. From 1943 to 1966 Allan Downie, Professor of Bacteriology, was involved in the eradication of
smallpox Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by Variola virus (often called Smallpox virus), which belongs to the genus '' Orthopoxvirus''. The last naturally occurring case was diagnosed in October 1977, and the World Health Organization (W ...
. In 1994, the university was a founding member of the
Russell Group The Russell Group is a self-selected association of twenty-four public research universities in the United Kingdom. The group is headquartered in Cambridge and was established in 1994 to represent its members' interests, principally to governme ...
, a collaboration of twenty leading research-intensive universities, as well as a founding member of the
N8 Group The N8 Research Partnership is a partnership created in 2006 of the eight most research-intensive universities in Northern England – Durham, Lancaster, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Sheffield and York. The N8 Research Partnersh ...
in 2004. In the 21st century physicists, engineers and technicians from the University of Liverpool were involved in the construction of the
Large Hadron Collider The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. It was built by the CERN, European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008, in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists, ...
at
CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in Meyrin, western suburb of Gene ...
, working on two of the four detectors in the LHC. In 2004, Sylvan Learning, later known as Laureate International Universities, became the worldwide partner for University of Liverpool online. In 2019, it was announced that Kaplan Open Learning, part of
Kaplan, Inc Kaplan, Inc. is an international educational services company that provides educational and training services to colleges, universities, businesses and individuals around the world. Founded in 1938 by Stanley Kaplan, the company offers a variety o ...
, would be the new partner for the University of Liverpool's online programmes. Laureate continued to provide some teaching provision for existing students until 2021. The university has produced ten Nobel Prize winners, from the fields of science, medicine, economics and
peace Peace is a state of harmony in the absence of hostility and violence, and everything that discusses achieving human welfare through justice and peaceful conditions. In a societal sense, peace is commonly used to mean a lack of conflict (suc ...
. The Nobel laureates include the physician
Sir Ronald Ross Sir Ronald Ross (13 May 1857 – 16 September 1932) was a British medical doctor who received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1902 for his work on the transmission of malaria, becoming the first British Nobel laureate, and the f ...
, physicist Charles Barkla, physicist
Martin Lewis Perl Martin Lewis Perl (June 24, 1927 – September 30, 2014) was an American chemical engineer and physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1995 for his discovery of the tau lepton. Life and career Perl was born in New York City, New York. H ...
, the physiologist
Sir Charles Sherrington Sir Charles Scott Sherrington (27 November 1857 – 4 March 1952) was a British neurophysiologist. His experimental research established many aspects of contemporary neuroscience, including the concept of the spinal reflex as a system involving ...
, physicist Sir James Chadwick, chemist Sir Robert Robinson, chemist
Har Gobind Khorana Har Gobind Khorana (9 January 1922 – 9 November 2011) was an Indian-American biochemist. While on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, he shared the 1968 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Marshall W. Nirenberg and ...
, physiologist Rodney Porter, economist
Ronald Coase Ronald Harry Coase (; 29 December 1910 – 2 September 2013) was a British economist and author. Coase was educated at the London School of Economics, where he was a member of the faculty until 1951. He was the Clifton R. Musser Professor of Eco ...
and physicist
Joseph Rotblat Sir Joseph Rotblat (4 November 1908 – 31 August 2005) was a Polish and British physicist. During World War II he worked on Tube Alloys and the Manhattan Project, but left the Los Alamos Laboratory on grounds of conscience after it became ...
.
Sir Ronald Ross Sir Ronald Ross (13 May 1857 – 16 September 1932) was a British medical doctor who received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1902 for his work on the transmission of malaria, becoming the first British Nobel laureate, and the f ...
was also the first British Nobel laureate in 1902. The university is also associated with Ronald Finn and Sir
Cyril Clarke Sir Cyril Astley Clarke (22 August 1907 – 21 November 2000) was a British physician, geneticist and lepidopterist. He was honoured for his pioneering work on prevention of Rh disease of the newborn, and also for his work on the genetics of the ...
who jointly won the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award in 1980 and Sir
David Weatherall Sir David John Weatherall (9 March 1933 – 8 December 2018) was a British physician and researcher in molecular genetics, haematology, pathology and clinical medicine. Early life and education David Weatherall was born in Liverpool.Geoff Watt ...
who won the Lasker-Koshland Special Achievement Award in Medical Science in 2010. These
Lasker Award In 1945 Albert Lasker and Mary Woodard Lasker created the Lasker Awards. Every year since then the award has been given to the living person considered to have made the greatest contribution to medical science or who has demonstrated public ser ...
s are popularly known as America's Nobels. Over the 2013/2014 academic year, members of staff took part in numerous strikes after staff were offered a pay rise of 1% which unions equated to a 13% pay cut since 2008. The strikes were supported by both the university's Guild of Students and the National Union of Students. Some students at the university supported the strike, occupying buildings on campus.


Campus and facilities

The university is mainly based around a single urban campus approximately five minutes walk from Liverpool City Centre, at the top of Brownlow Hill and Mount Pleasant. Occupying 100 acres, it contains 192 non-residential buildings that house 69 lecture theatres, 114 teaching areas, and research facilities. The main site is divided into three faculties: Health and Life Sciences; Humanities and Social Sciences; and Science and Engineering. The Veterinary Teaching Hospital (Leahurst) and Ness Botanical Gardens are based on the
Wirral Peninsula The Wirral Peninsula (), known locally as the Wirral, is a peninsula in North West England. The roughly rectangular peninsula is about long and wide, and is bounded by the Dee Estuary to the west, the Mersey Estuary to the east, and Liverpo ...
. There was formerly a marine biology research station at
Port Erin Port Erin ( 'lord's port' or originally 'Irish port') is a seaside village in the south-west of the Isle of Man, in the historic parish of Rushen. It was previously a seaside resort before the decline of the tourist trade. Administratively it ...
on the
Isle of Man The Isle of Man ( , also ), or Mann ( ), is a self-governing British Crown Dependency in the Irish Sea, between Great Britain and Ireland. As head of state, Charles III holds the title Lord of Mann and is represented by a Lieutenant Govern ...
until it closed in 2006. Fifty-one residential buildings, on or near the campus, provide 3,385 rooms for students, on a catered or self-catering basis. The centrepiece of the campus remains the university's original red brick building, the Victoria Building. Opened in 1892, it has recently been restored as the Victoria Gallery and Museum, complete with cafe and activities for school visits. In 2011 the university made a commitment to invest £660m into the 'Student Experience', £250m of which will reportedly be spent on Student Accommodation. Announced so far have been two large On-Campus halls of residences (the first of which, Vine Court, opened September 2012), new Veterinary Science facilities, and a £10m refurbishment of the
Liverpool Guild of Students Liverpool Guild of Students is the students' union of the University of Liverpool. The guild was founded in 1889, with the building constructed in 1911. The title also refers to the Guild of Students building, which is the centre point of activ ...
. New Central Teaching Laboratories for physics, earth sciences, chemistry and archaeology were opened in autumn 2012. In 2013, the University of Liverpool opened a satellite campus in
Finsbury Square Finsbury Square is a square in Finsbury in central London which includes a six-rink grass bowling green. It was developed in 1777 on the site of a previous area of green space to the north of the City of London known as Finsbury Fields, in the p ...
in
London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
, offering a range of professionally focussed masters programmes.


Central Teaching Hub

The Central Teaching Hub is a large multi-use building that houses a recently refurbished Lecture Theatre Block (LTB) and teaching facilities (Central Teaching Labs, CTL) for the Departments of Chemistry and Physics and the School of Environmental Sciences, within the university's Central City Centre Campus. It was completed and officially opened in September 2012 with an estimated project cost of £23m. The main building, the 'Central Teaching Laboratory', is built around a large atrium and houses seven separate laboratories that can accommodate 1,600 students at a time. A flexible teaching space, computing centre, multi-departmental teaching spaces, and communal workspaces can also be found inside. The adjoining University Lecture Block building contains four lecture rooms and further social spaces.


Sustainability

In 2008, the University of Liverpool was voted joint seventeenth greenest university in Britain by WWF supported company Green League. This represents an improvement after finishing 55th in the league table the previous year. The position of the university is determined by point allocation in departments such as Transport, Waste management,
sustainable procurement Sustainable procurement or green procurement is a process whereby organizations meet their needs for goods, services, works and utilities in a way that achieves value for money on a life-cycle basis while addressing equity principles for sustaina ...
and Emissions among other categories; these are then transpired into various awards. Liverpool was awarded the highest achievement possible in Environmental policy, Environmental staff, Environmental audit, Fair trade status, Ethical investment policy and Waste recycled while also scoring points in Carbon emissions, Water recycle and Energy source. Liverpool was the first among UK universities to develop their desktop computer power management solution, which has been widely adopted by other institutions. The university has subsequently piloted other advanced software approaches further increasing savings. The university has also been at the forefront of using the Condor HTC computing platform in a power saving environment. This software, which makes use of unused computer time for computationally intensive tasks usually results in computers being left turned on. The university has demonstrated an effective solution for this problem using a mixture of Wake-on-LAN and commercial power management software. The Interdisciplinary Centre for Sustainability Research (ICSR) was established in 2024 to tackle the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).


Organisation and structure

The university is a research-based university with 33,000 students pursuing over 450 programmes spanning 54 subject areas. It has a broad range of teaching and research in both arts and sciences, and the
University of Liverpool School of Medicine The University of Liverpool School of Medicine is a medical school located in Liverpool, United Kingdom and a part of the University of Liverpool. It is one of the largest medical schools in the UK, and in 1903 became one of the first to be inc ...
established in 1835 is today one of the largest medical schools in the UK. It also has close links to the neighbouring
Royal Liverpool University Hospital Royal Liverpool University Hospital (RLUH) is a major teaching and research hospital located in the city of Liverpool, England. It is the largest and busiest hospital in Merseyside and Cheshire. A major redevelopment of the hospital began in 20 ...
. The university has a
students' union A students' union or student union, is a student organization present in many colleges, universities, and high schools. In higher education, the students' union is often accorded its own building on the campus, dedicated to social, organizat ...
to represent students' interests, known as the
Liverpool Guild of Students Liverpool Guild of Students is the students' union of the University of Liverpool. The guild was founded in 1889, with the building constructed in 1911. The title also refers to the Guild of Students building, which is the centre point of activ ...
. The university previously had a strategic partnership with
Laureate International Universities Laureate Education, Inc. is a company based in Miami, Florida, United States. The firm owns and operates Laureate International Universities, with campuses in Mexico and Peru. The company is publicly traded on the Nasdaq. Corporate history Beg ...
, a
for-profit college Proprietary colleges are for-profit colleges and universities generally operated by their owners, investors, or shareholders in a manner prioritizing shareholder primacy as opposed to education provided by non-profit institution (such as non-se ...
collective, for University of Liverpool online degrees. In 2019, the university announced a new partnership with Kaplan Open Learning for delivery of their online degrees.


Senior leadership

The figurehead of the university is the
chancellor Chancellor () is a title of various official positions in the governments of many countries. The original chancellors were the of Roman courts of justice—ushers, who sat at the (lattice work screens) of a basilica (court hall), which separa ...
. The following have served in that role: * 1903-1908:
Frederick Arthur Stanley, 16th Earl of Derby Frederick Arthur Stanley, 16th Earl of Derby (15 January 1841 – 14 June 1908), known as Hon. Frederick Stanley until 1886 and Lord Stanley of Preston between 1886–1893, was a Conservative Party (UK), Conservative Party politician in the Un ...
* 1908-1948:
Edward Stanley, 17th Earl of Derby Edward George Villiers Stanley, 17th Earl of Derby (4 April 1865 – 4 February 1948), styled The Hon. Edward Stanley from 1886–93 and Lord Stanley from 1893 to 1908, was a British peer, soldier, Conservative Party (UK), Conservative politic ...
* 1948-1950:
Oliver Stanley Oliver Frederick George Stanley (4 May 1896 – 10 December 1950) was a prominent British Conservative politician who held many ministerial posts before his early death. Background and education Stanley was the second son of Edward Stanley, 1 ...
* 1951-1971:
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 5th Marquess of Salisbury Robert Arthur James Gascoyne-Cecil, 5th Marquess of Salisbury (27 August 1893 – 23 February 1972), known as Viscount Cranborne from 1903 to 1947, was a British Conservative politician. Background Nicknamed "Bobbety", Salisbury was the eldest ...
* 1972-1979: Sir Kenneth Clinton Wheare * 1980-1993:
Philip Lever, 3rd Viscount Leverhulme Philip William Bryce Lever, 3rd Viscount Leverhulme (1 July 1915 – 4 July 2000) was a British peer and racehorse owner. Early life He was the only son of the 2nd Viscount Leverhulme and his first wife, Marion Beatrice Smith. He was bor ...
* 1994-1995:
Alastair Pilkington Sir Lionel Alexander Bethune Pilkington (7 January 1920 – 5 May 1995), known as Sir Alastair Pilkington, was a British engineer and businessman who invented and perfected the float glass process for commercial manufacturing of plate glass. E ...
* 1996–2009: David Owen, Baron Owen * 2010–2013: Sir David King * 2017–2022:
Colm Tóibín Colm Tóibín ( , ; born 30 May 1955) is an Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist, critic, playwright and poet. His first novel, ''The South (novel), The South'', was published in 1990. ''The Blackwater Lightship'' was short ...
* 2023–present: Wendy Beetlestone The professional head of the university is the
vice-chancellor A vice-chancellor (commonly called a VC) serves as the chief executive of a university in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia, Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Kenya, other Commonwealth of Nati ...
. The following have served in that role: * 1903-1919: A W W Dale * 1919–1926:
John George Adami John George Adami (; 12 January 1862 – 29 August 1926) was an English pathologist. He was the head of the pathological department of the Royal Victoria Hospital. From 1892, he was professor of pathology in McGill University, Montreal, Canada. ...
* 1926-1927:
Lionel Wilberforce Lionel Robert Wilberforce (18 April 1861 – 1 April 1944) was a British physicist. He is best known for the invention of the Wilberforce pendulum, which exhibits a curious motion in which periods of purely rotational oscillation gradually alt ...
(acting vice-chancellor) * 1927–1936: Hector Hetherington * 1936–1937:
John Leofric Stocks John Leofric Stocks DSO (26 October 1882 – 13 June 1937) was a British philosopher and was briefly Vice Chancellor of the University of Liverpool in 1937. Biography Stocks was born the sixth of twelve children to John Edward Stocks, the vicar ...
* 1937-1945:
Arnold McNair, 1st Baron McNair Arnold Duncan McNair, 1st Baron McNair (4 March 1885 – 22 May 1975) was a British jurist and judge of the International Court of Justice and later the first president of the European Court of Human Rights. Early life and education McNair was b ...
* 1945-1963: Sir James Frederick Mountford * 1963-1969: Winston Herbert Frederick Barnes * 1969-1976: T C Thomas * 1977-1984: R.F. Whelan * 1986–1991:
Graeme Davies Sir Graeme John Davies (7 April 1937 – 30 August 2022) was a New Zealand engineer, academic and administrator. During his career, he was Vice-Chancellor of three universities: the University of Liverpool, the University of Glasgow and the ...
* 1992-2002: Philip Love * 2002–2008:
Sir Drummond Bone Sir James Drummond Bone, FRSE, FRSA (born 11 July 1947), is a Byron scholar and was Master of Balliol College at the University of Oxford until April 2018. He previously served as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Liverpool from 2002 to 2008 ...
* 2008–2014: Sir Howard Newby * 2015–2022: Dame Janet Beer * 2023–present: Tim Jones


Faculties

Since 2009, teaching departments of the university have been divided into three faculties: Science and Engineering, Health and Life Sciences, and Humanities and Social Sciences. Each faculty is headed by an Executive Pro-Vice-Chancellor, who is responsible for all schools in the faculty. Faculty of Health & Life Sciences * School of Dentistry *School of Health Sciences *School of Life Sciences *
School of Medicine A medical school is a tertiary educational institution, professional school, or forms a part of such an institution, that teaches medicine, and awards a professional degree for physicians. Such medical degrees include the Bachelor of Medicine, ...
*School of Psychology * School of Veterinary Science Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences *School of the Arts *School of Histories, Languages & Cultures *School of Law & Social Justice *Management School Faculty of Science & Engineering *School of Engineering *School of Physical Sciences *School of Electrical Engineering, Electronics and Computer Science *School of Environmental Sciences


Finances

In the financial year ending 31 July 2024, the University of Liverpool had a total income of £705.3 million (2022/23 – £673.2 million) and total expenditure of £515.8 million (2022/23 – £662.5 million). Key sources of income included £367.1 million from tuition fees and education contracts (2022/23 – £342.5 million), £93.4 million from funding body grants (2022/23 – £94.6 million), £123.3 million from research grants and contracts (2022/23 – £118 million) and £22.7 million from endowment and investment income (2022/23 – £15.6 million). At year end, Liverpool had endowments of £193.8 million (2023 – £182.7 million) and total net assets of £885.6 million (2023 – £679.8 million). It holds the ninth-largest endowment of any university in the UK.


Academic profile


Admissions

In terms of average
UCAS The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS ) is a charity and private limited company based in Cheltenham, England, which provides educational support services. Formed on 27 July 1993 by the merger of the former university admis ...
points of entrants, Liverpool ranked 40th in Britain in 2014. The university gives offers of admission to 83.1% of its applicants, the 7th highest amongst the
Russell Group The Russell Group is a self-selected association of twenty-four public research universities in the United Kingdom. The group is headquartered in Cambridge and was established in 1994 to represent its members' interests, principally to governme ...
. According to the 2017 ''Times'' and ''Sunday Times'' Good University Guide, approximately 12% of Liverpool's undergraduates come from independent schools. In the 2016–17 academic year, the university had a domicile breakdown of 72:3:25 of UK:EU:non-EU students respectively with a female to male ratio of 55:45.


Rankings and reputation

The university is ranked in the top 1% of universities worldwide according to
Academic ranking of world universities The ''Academic Ranking of World Universities'' (''ARWU''), also known as the Shanghai Ranking, is one of the annual publications of world university rankings. The league table was originally compiled and issued by Shanghai Jiao Tong Universi ...
and has previously been ranked within the top 150 university globally by the guide. It is also a founding member of the Russell Group and a founding member of the Northern Consortium. In the Complete University Guide 2013, published in ''
The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...
'', the University of Liverpool was ranked 31st out of 124, based on nine measures, while ''
The Times ''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...
'' Good University Guide 2008 ranked Liverpool 34th out of 113 universities. ''
The Sunday Times ''The Sunday Times'' is a British Sunday newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of N ...
'' university guide recently ranked the University of Liverpool 27th out of 123. In 2010, ''
The Sunday Times ''The Sunday Times'' is a British Sunday newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of N ...
'' has ranked University of Liverpool 29th of 122 institutions nationwide. In 2008 the
THE-QS World University Rankings The ''QS World University Rankings'' is a portfolio of comparative college and university rankings compiled by Quacquarelli Symonds, a higher education analytics firm. Its first and earliest edition was published in collaboration with ''Times Hig ...
rated University of Liverpool 99th best in the world, and 137th best worldwide in 2009. In 2011 the
QS World University Rankings The ''QS World University Rankings'' is a portfolio of comparative college and university rankings compiled by Quacquarelli Symonds, a higher education analytics firm. Its first and earliest edition was published in collaboration with '' Times ...
ranked the university in 123rd place, up 14. In the Times Good University Guide 2013, the University of Liverpool was ranked 29th. Liverpool is ranked 122nd in the world (and 15th in the UK) in the 2016 ''
Round University Ranking Round University Ranking (RUR Ranking) is a Moscow, Russia-based world university ranking, assessing effectiveness of 700 leading world universities based on 20 indicators distributed among 4 key dimension areas: teaching, research, international ...
''. The 2018 ''U.S. News & World Report'' ranks Liverpool 129th in the world. In 2019, it ranked 178th among the universities around the world by ''
SCImago Institutions Rankings The SCImago Institutions Rankings (SIR) since 2009 has published its international ranking of worldwide research institutions, the SIR World Report. The SIR World Report is the work of the SCImago Research Group,Research Excellence Framework The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is a research impact evaluation of British Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). It is the successor to the Research Assessment Exercise and it was first used in 2014 to assess the period 2008–2013. REF is ...
(REF), which assesses the quality of research in UK higher education institutions, Liverpool is ranked joint 25th by GPA (along with
Durham University Durham University (legally the University of Durham) is a collegiate university, collegiate public university, public research university in Durham, England, founded by an Act of Parliament (UK), Act of Parliament in 1832 and incorporated by r ...
and the
University of Nottingham The University of Nottingham is a public research university in Nottingham, England. It was founded as University College Nottingham in 1881, and was granted a royal charter in 1948. Nottingham's main campus (University Park Campus, Nottingh ...
) and 19th for research power (the grade point average score of a university, multiplied by the full-time equivalent number of researchers submitted). The ''
Research Excellence Framework The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is a research impact evaluation of British Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). It is the successor to the Research Assessment Exercise and it was first used in 2014 to assess the period 2008–2013. REF is ...
'' for 2014 has confirmed the University of Liverpool's reputation for internationally outstanding research. Chemistry, Computer Science, General Engineering, Archaeology, Agriculture, Veterinary & Food Science, Architecture, Clinical Medicine, and English, are ranked in the top 10 in the UK for research excellence rated as 4* (world-leading) or 3* (internationally excellent), and also performed particularly well in terms of the impact of their research. The Computer Science department was ranked 1st in UK for 4* and 3* research, with 97% of the research being rated as world-leading or internationally excellent – the highest proportion of any computer science department in the UK. The Chemistry department was also ranked 1st in the UK with 99% of its research rated as 4* world leading or 3* internationally excellent


Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University

In 2006 the university became the first in the UK to establish an independent university in China, making it the world's first Sino-British university. Resulting from a partnership between the University of Liverpool and
Xi'an Jiaotong University Xi'an Jiaotong University (XJTU; zh, p=, c=西安交通大学, labels=no) is a public university in Xi'an, Shaanxi, China. It is affiliated with and funded by the Ministry of Education of China. The university is part of Project 211, Project 9 ...
,
Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University Xi'an is the capital of the Chinese province of Shaanxi. A sub-provincial city on the Guanzhong plain, the city is the third-most populous city in Western China after Chongqing and Chengdu, as well as the most populous city in Northwestern Chi ...
is the first Sino-British university between research-led universities, exploring new educational models for China. The campus is situated in
Suzhou Industrial Park The Suzhou Industrial Park () is a development region in Suzhou, Jiangsu, China. The industrial park was established in February 1994, as part of the Chinese economic reform, reform and opening up campaign in the 1990s, and is unique in its joint ...
in the eastern part of
Suzhou Suzhou is a major prefecture-level city in southern Jiangsu province, China. As part of the Yangtze Delta megalopolis, it is a major economic center and focal point of trade and commerce. Founded in 514 BC, Suzhou rapidly grew in size by the ...
in the province of
Jiangsu Jiangsu is a coastal Provinces of the People's Republic of China, province in East China. It is one of the leading provinces in finance, education, technology, and tourism, with its capital in Nanjing. Jiangsu is the List of Chinese administra ...
, 90 km west of Shanghai. It is a science and engineering university with a second focus in English, recognised by the Chinese Ministry of Education as a "not-for-profit" educational institution. The university offers undergraduate degree programmes in the fields of Science, Engineering, and Management. Students are rewarded with a University of Liverpool degree as well as a degree from XJTLU. The teaching language is English.


Student life


University halls

The university offers a wide selection of accommodation that are on campus as well as student villages off campus. As part of a £660 million investment in campus facilities and student experience, the university has built three new on campus halls, while refurbishing existing accommodation. The accommodation offered currently by the university for 2019/2020 academic year is listed below: ; On-campus *Crown Place *Philharmonic Court *Vine Court *Dover Court *Tudor Close *Melville Grove ; Off-campus Greenbank Student Village * Derby & Rathbone Halls * Roscoe & Dorothy Kuya Halls In 2018, the university faced strong criticism from the student body that the university provided halls were too expensive, by the Cut the Rent campaign. Privately accommodation owned Apollo Court ranked 3rd and Myrtle Court ranked 4th in the UK for value for money on a university review platform StudentCrowd. In 2021 "Gladstone Halls" was renamed after leading communist and anti-racist leader
Dorothy Kuya Dorothy Kuya (16 March 1933 – 23 December 2013) was a leading British communist and human rights activist from Liverpool, the co-founder of Teachers Against Racism, and the general secretary of the National Assembly of Women (NAW). She was a ...
.


Sport

The University of Liverpool has a sporting tradition and has many premier teams in a variety of sports. The current sporting project comes under the title of Sport Liverpool and offers over 50 different sports ranging from football, rugby, cricket and hockey to others such as windsurfing, lacrosse, and cheerleading. Many of the sports have both male and female teams and most are involved in competition on a national level.
BUCS British Universities and Colleges Sport (BUCS; ) is the governing body for higher education sport in the United Kingdom. Founded in 2008, BUCS is responsible for organising 54 inter-university sports in the United Kingdom, as well as represe ...
is the body that organises national university competitions involving 154 institutions in 47 sports. Most sports involve travelling to various locations across the country, mainly on Wednesday afternoons. Two other prominent competitions are the Christie ChampionshipsThe Christie Championships – SPORT
. University of Liverpool. Retrieved on 14 September 2011.
and the Varsity Cup. The
Christie Cup The Christie Cup is an annual varsity match between the Universities of Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester in numerous sports and has been held since 1886. After the well-known rivalry between Oxford and Cambridge, the Christie's Championships is t ...
is an inter-university competition between Liverpool, Leeds and Manchester. The Varsity Cup is a popular "derby" event between
Liverpool John Moores University Liverpool John Moores University (abbreviated LJMU) is a public university, public research university in the city of Liverpool, England. The university can trace its origins to the Liverpool Mechanics' School of Arts, established in 1823. This ...
and the University of Liverpool.


Notable alumni


Nobel Prize winners

There have been ten Nobel Prize Laureates who have been based at the university during a significant point in their career. *
Sir Ronald Ross Sir Ronald Ross (13 May 1857 – 16 September 1932) was a British medical doctor who received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1902 for his work on the transmission of malaria, becoming the first British Nobel laureate, and the f ...
(awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1902) for his work with
malaria Malaria is a Mosquito-borne disease, mosquito-borne infectious disease that affects vertebrates and ''Anopheles'' mosquitoes. Human malaria causes Signs and symptoms, symptoms that typically include fever, Fatigue (medical), fatigue, vomitin ...
. * Charles Barkla (awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1917) for discovering the electromagnetic properties of
X-rays An X-ray (also known in many languages as Röntgen radiation) is a form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength shorter than those of ultraviolet rays and longer than those of gamma rays. Roughly, X-rays have a wavelength ran ...
. *
Sir Charles Sherrington Sir Charles Scott Sherrington (27 November 1857 – 4 March 1952) was a British neurophysiologist. His experimental research established many aspects of contemporary neuroscience, including the concept of the spinal reflex as a system involving ...
(awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine in 1932) for his research into
neurons A neuron (American English), neurone (British English), or nerve cell, is an membrane potential#Cell excitability, excitable cell (biology), cell that fires electric signals called action potentials across a neural network (biology), neural net ...
. * Sir James Chadwick (awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1935) for discovering
neutrons The neutron is a subatomic particle, symbol or , that has no electric charge, and a mass slightly greater than that of a proton. The neutron was discovered by James Chadwick in 1932, leading to the discovery of nuclear fission in 1938, the f ...
. * Sir Robert Robinson (awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1947) for his research into
anthocyanins Anthocyanins (), also called anthocyans, are water-soluble vacuolar pigments that, depending on their pH, may appear red, purple, blue, or black. In 1835, the German pharmacist Ludwig Clamor Marquart named a chemical compound that gives flow ...
and
alkaloids Alkaloids are a broad class of naturally occurring organic compounds that contain at least one nitrogen atom. Some synthetic compounds of similar structure may also be termed alkaloids. Alkaloids are produced by a large variety of organisms i ...
. *
Har Gobind Khorana Har Gobind Khorana (9 January 1922 – 9 November 2011) was an Indian-American biochemist. While on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, he shared the 1968 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Marshall W. Nirenberg and ...
(awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine in 1968) for his work on the interpretation of the genetic code and its function in
protein synthesis Protein biosynthesis, or protein synthesis, is a core biological process, occurring inside cells, balancing the loss of cellular proteins (via degradation or export) through the production of new proteins. Proteins perform a number of critica ...
. * Rodney Porter (awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine in 1972) for his discovery of the structure of
antibodies An antibody (Ab) or immunoglobulin (Ig) is a large, Y-shaped protein belonging to the immunoglobulin superfamily which is used by the immune system to identify and neutralize antigens such as bacteria and viruses, including those that caus ...
. *
Ronald Coase Ronald Harry Coase (; 29 December 1910 – 2 September 2013) was a British economist and author. Coase was educated at the London School of Economics, where he was a member of the faculty until 1951. He was the Clifton R. Musser Professor of Eco ...
(awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1991) for his discovery and clarification of the significance of transaction costs and property rights for the institutional structure and functioning of the economy. *
Joseph Rotblat Sir Joseph Rotblat (4 November 1908 – 31 August 2005) was a Polish and British physicist. During World War II he worked on Tube Alloys and the Manhattan Project, but left the Los Alamos Laboratory on grounds of conscience after it became ...
(awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995) for his efforts with
nuclear disarmament Nuclear disarmament is the act of reducing or eliminating nuclear weapons. Its end state can also be a nuclear-weapons-free world, in which nuclear weapons are completely eliminated. The term ''denuclearization'' is also used to describe the pro ...
. *
Martin Lewis Perl Martin Lewis Perl (June 24, 1927 – September 30, 2014) was an American chemical engineer and physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1995 for his discovery of the tau lepton. Life and career Perl was born in New York City, New York. H ...
(awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1995) for his discovery of the tau lepton.


See also

*
Liverpool Knowledge Quarter The "Knowledge Quarter" is an area of Liverpool city centre covering 450 acres, incorporating the vicinity around London Road, Islington, the so called 'Fabric District', Paddington Village and part of Canning, Liverpool, Canning. The Knowledge ...
*
Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) is a post-graduate teaching and research institution based in Liverpool, England, established in 1898. It was the first institution in the world dedicated to the study of tropical medicine. LSTM ...
*
Royal Liverpool University Hospital Royal Liverpool University Hospital (RLUH) is a major teaching and research hospital located in the city of Liverpool, England. It is the largest and busiest hospital in Merseyside and Cheshire. A major redevelopment of the hospital began in 20 ...
*
Liverpool University School of Architecture The School of Architecture is an architecture school in Liverpool, England, and is a part of the University of Liverpool. It was the first architecture school in the United Kingdom to be affiliated with a university, and the first to have degr ...
*
List of modern universities in Europe (1801–1945) The list of modern universities in Europe (1801–1940) contains all University, universities that were founded in Europe after the French Revolution and before the end of World War II. Universities are regarded as comprising all institutions ...
* Cayman Islands Law School *
Liverpool Life Sciences UTC Liverpool Life Sciences UTC, more commonly known as The UTC is a university technical college (UTC) which opened in September 2013 in Liverpool, England. The UTC is located in the Baltic Triangle, in the former Contemporary Urban Centre (CUC), a ...


Notes


References


Further reading

* Rigg, J. Anthony (1968), "A comparative history of the libraries of Manchester and Liverpool Universities up to 1903", in: Saunders, W. L., ed. ''University and Research Library Studies: some contributions from the University of Sheffield Post-graduate School of Librarianship and Information Science''. Oxford:
Pergamon Press Pergamon Press was an Oxford-based publishing house, founded by Paul Rosbaud and Robert Maxwell, that published scientific and medical books and journals. Originally called Butterworth-Springer, it is now an imprint of Elsevier. History The c ...
, 1968.


External links

*
University of Liverpool in London

Liverpool Guild of Students'
{{DEFAULTSORT:Liverpool, University Of Universities and colleges established in 1881 Russell Group 1881 establishments in England Universities UK Institutes associated with CERN