The University of Liverpool (abbreviated UOL) is the "original red brick" research university situated in Liverpool, England. Founded in 1881 as University College Liverpool, Victoria University, it gained independence by Royal Charter in 1903 attaining the decree to award degrees. The university owns and operates some of the nation's historical and cultural assets, such as the Victoria Gallery & Museum, the Ness Botanic Gardens, the Liverpool Royal Infirmary, and the more recent, Yoko Ono Lennon Centre. Organised by three faculties divided into 35 schools and departments, the university offers more than 230 first degree courses across 103 subjects. It is a founding member of the leading research-intensive association of British universities, the Russell Group, and in Northern England, the N8 Group. As of 2024, the university holds four academic fellows of the Academy of Social Sciences and one of the British Academy. Among its alumni and faculty are 10 Nobel prize laureates, with notable alumni leading fields in medicine, law, business, engineering, arts, politics, and technology. Liverpool is consistently ranked among the top 1% of global universities for a range of subjects. The university was the first in the UK to establish departments in oceanography, civic design, architecture, and biochemistry (at the Johnston Laboratories). It was also the first UK university to establish an independent university campus in China, known as Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University. The Interdisciplinary Centre for Sustainability Research (ICSR) was established in 2024 to tackle the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As of 2023, Liverpool withheld total net assets of £1.169 billion, with a turnover of £675.1 million, including £118 million from research grants and contracts, the ninth-largest endowment among all universities in the UK. Graduates of the university are styled with the post-nominal letters, 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. In 1894 Oliver Lodge, a professor at the university, made the world's first public radio transmission and two years later took the first surgical X-ray in the United Kingdom. The Liverpool University Press was founded in 1899, making it the third-oldest university press in England. Students in this period were awarded external degrees by the University of London.

University status

Following a royal charter 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's discovery of the synapse and William Blair-Bell's work on chemotherapy in the treatment of cancer. In the 1930s to 1940s Sir James Chadwick and Sir Joseph Rotblat made major contributions to the development of the atomic bomb. From 1943 to 1966 Allan Downie, Professor of Bacteriology, was involved in the eradication of smallpox. In 1994 the university was a founding member of the Russell Group, a collaboration of twenty leading research-intensive universities, as well as a founding member of the N8 Group 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 at CERN, 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, 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. The Nobel laureates include the physician Sir Ronald Ross, physicist Charles Barkla, physicist Martin Lewis Perl, the physiologist Sir Charles Sherrington, physicist Sir James Chadwick, chemist Sir Robert Robinson, chemist Har Gobind Khorana, physiologist Rodney Porter, economist Ronald Coase and physicist Joseph Rotblat. Sir Ronald Ross was also the first British Nobel laureate in 1902. The university is also associated with Professors Ronald Finn and Sir Cyril Clarke who jointly won the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award in 1980 and Sir David Weatherall who won the Lasker-Koshland Special Achievement Award in Medical Science in 2010. These Lasker Awards 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. There was formerly a marine biology research station at Port Erin on the Isle of Man 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. 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 in London, 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 work spaces 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 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.

Organisation and structure

The university is ranked in the top 1% of universities worldwide according to Academic ranking of world universities 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. 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 established in 1835 is today one of the largest medical schools in the UK. It also has strong links to the neighbouring Royal Liverpool University Hospital. The university has a students' union to represent students' interests, known as the Liverpool Guild of Students. The university previously had a strategic partnership with Laureate International Universities, a for-profit college 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. The following have served in that role: The professional head of the university is the vice-chancellor. The following have served in that role:

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 Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences Faculty of Science & Engineering

Academic profile

Admissions

In terms of average UCAS 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. 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

In the Complete University Guide 2013, published in The Independent, the University of Liverpool was ranked 31st out of 124, based on nine measures, while The Times Good University Guide 2008 ranked Liverpool 34th out of 113 universities. The Sunday Times university guide recently ranked the University of Liverpool 27th out of 123. In 2010, The Sunday Times has ranked University of Liverpool 29th of 122 institutions nationwide. In 2008 the THE-QS World University Rankings rated University of Liverpool 99th best in the world, and 137th best worldwide in 2009. In 2011 the QS World University Rankings 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. 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. In the 2021 Research Excellence Framework (REF), which assesses the quality of research in UK higher education institutions, Liverpool is ranked joint 25th by GPA (along with Durham University and the University of Nottingham) 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 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-Liverpool University is the first Sino-British university between research-led universities, exploring new educational models for China. The campus is situated in Suzhou Industrial Park in the eastern part of Suzhou in the province of Jiangsu, 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 3 new on campus halls, while refurbishing existing accommodation. The accommodation offered currently by the university for 2019/2020 academic year are listed below: Greenbank Student Village 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.

Sport

The University of Liverpool has a proud 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 scale. BUCS is the body which 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 Championships and the Varsity Cup. The Christie Cup is an inter-university competition between Liverpool, Leeds and Manchester. The Varsity Cup is a popular "derby" event between Liverpool John Moores University and the University of Liverpool.

Notable alumni

• Michael C. Morgan, photographer • Gwen Alston, aerodynamicist and educationalist • Clive Barker, fantasy and horror fiction writer and film director • Wade Barrett, professional wrestler • Hossein Bashiriyeh, Iranian professor of political science • Stephen Bayley • Torben Betts, playwright • Steve Froggatt, Father of James, Shortbread connoisseur • Roger Bolton, broadcaster and television producer • George Henry Bolsover Director, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, London, 1947–76 • John Brophy, soldier and author • Dariush Borbor, Iranian architect, urban planner, civic designer, writer • Daasebre Oti Boateng, Ghanaian statistician, 1st black chairman of the United Nations Statistical Commission • Paula Byrne, biographer • Mary Cannell, educator, historian and biographer • George Checkley, modernist architect • Ong Teng Cheong, 5th President of Singapore • Philip Clarke, CEO Tesco PLC • Steve Coppell, footballer and manager • Alexander Critchley, M.P. for Liverpool Edge Hill 1893–1943 • Frances Crook, Chief Executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform • Victoria Derbyshire, journalist and newsreader • Irene Desmet, paediatric surgeon • Frank Duckworth, statistician, developed the Duckworth–Lewis method • Carol Ann Duffy, Poet Laureate • Colum Eastwood, Northern Irish politician and SDLP leader • Steve Firth, musician • Maxwell Fry, modernist architect • Ernest Gibbins, dipterist • Simon Gilbert (journalist), journalist and author • Rob Grant • Nick Grimshaw • Brian Hall, footballer • Rose Heilbron, barrister and judge • William Holford, Baron Holford, architect and town planner • John Holt, physicist • Barry Horne, journalist and pundit • Beverley Hughes PC, former Member of Parliament (MP) • Dr Robert Roland Hughes, pioneer in Neuroscience and Electroencephalography • Irshad Hussain, Chemist and Materials scientist • Frank Irving, aeronautical engineer, glider pilot and author • Sir Dawda Kairaba Jawara, first President and Prime Minister of The Gambia • Rory Jennings, actor • Sanjay Jha, Co-CEO Motorola, Inc. and CEO of Motorola's Mobile Devices business • Syed Kamall • Alfredo Kanthack FRCP FRCS, pathologist • Brian Keaney, children's author • Sir Frank Kermode, literary critic • Sir Ian Kershaw, historian • Peter Kilfoyle • Robert Legget, civil engineer, historian, and non-fiction writer • Sir Leigh Lewis, permanent secretary • Dr Ann Limb CBE DL first woman Chair of The Scouts • William Lindesay OBE, English conservationist • Oliver W F Lodge • Chris Lowe, musician • Diarmaid MacCulloch, historian • Emma Mbua, palaeo-anthropologist • Alden McLaughlin, Premier of the Cayman Islands • Rex Makin, solicitor and philanthropist • Helen Marnie, member of the band Ladytron • Anna Maxwell Martin, actor • Rod I. McAllister, architect • Tony McNulty, Labour Minister • Brian Millard, leader of Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council from 2005 to 2007 • Ben Mosley, expressive artist • Margaret Murphy, crime writer • Doug Naylor, co-creator of Red Dwarf • Sir John Neale, historian of Tudor England • Ernest Newman, music critic and biographer of Wagner • Lord Nicholls, retired Law Lord • Charlotte Nichols, Labour MP for Warrington North 2019– • Paddy Nixon, Vice-Chancellor & President of the University of Canberra • Gordon Oakes • Stel Pavlou, author and screenwriter • David Andrew Phoenix OBE, biochemist • Dee Plume and Sue Denim, musicians from the band Robots in Disguise • Ceri Powell, geologist and senior Royal Dutch Shell executive • John Preston (1950–2017), music industry executive • James Quincey, CEO The Coca-Cola Company • Phil Redmond, television producer • Sir Leonard Redshaw, shipbuilder • Gordon Jackson Rees, paediatric anaesthesiologist • Aki Riihilahti, former football player and current football executive • Wolfgang Rindler, physicist • Dame Stella Rimington, Director-General of MI5 • Roy Roberts, actor • Winifred Robinson, broadcaster • Michael Rosen, children's writer • Patricia Routledge, actress • Barham Ahmad Salih, 8th President of Iraq • Amha Selassie of Ethiopia • Sir Robin Saxby, former chairman of ARM Holdings • Maeve Sherlock OBE, social reformer and life peer • Margaret Simey, social and political campaigner • F.E. Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead • Martin Smith, vehicle designer • Jon Snow, Channel 4 television news presenter • Edward Snowden, system administrator and counterintelligence trainer • Olaf Stapledon, novelist and philosopher • Sir James Stirling, architect • Lytton Strachey, biographer and essayist • Edward Stringer, Deputy Chief Defence, Royal Air Force • Matt Taylor, project scientist for the Rosetta mission. • Heidi Thomas OBE, screenwriter and playwright • Sir Michael Thompson, academic • Tung Chee-hwa, first chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region • Emma Jane Unsworth, writer • Steve Voake, children's author • Lee Bee Wah, politician • Baroness Walmsley, politician • Helen Walsh, novelist • Sid Watkins, former Formula 1 chief medical officer • Emma Watkinson, entrepreneur • Sir David Weatherall, Regius Professor of Medicine, 1992–2000 • Laurence Westgaph, social historian and activist • Jim Woodcock, professor of software engineering • Verna Wright, evangelist, physician and research scientist • Warrington Yorke, Professor of Tropical Medicine, University of Liverpool

Nobel Prize winners

There have been ten Nobel Prize Laureates who have been based at the university during a significant point in their career.