Context

Our mission

Our University’s mission to be open to people, places, methods and ideas is delivered through our values of inclusivity, innovation and responsiveness. Within our mission we state a commitment to create world-class research. This commitment has been strengthened by our University Strategy for 2022 to 2027 entitled ‘Learn and Live’, in which a goal is to enhance our societal impact through research, enterprise and skills development.

Current scale and recent successes

With over 650 REF-returned academic and research staff working with teams of professional services and technicians, nearly 1000 postgraduate research students, including 200 research students in 18 Affiliated Research Centres distributed across the world, and projects across all four nations of the UK, we are a large research institution with comprehensive coverage of research fields across all four Faculties.

We publish around 1800 academic outputs per year and collaborate with over 100 external partners. In addition to our Faculty-based research, we have invested in five Strategic Research Areas (SRAs) and benefited from their interdisciplinary approach. This Plan builds on the hard work and successes of the Faculties and SRAs as set out in our previous research plan covering the period of 2018 to 2023.

Benefits of research

Research delivers many benefits to our University. First and foremost, our research contributes to improvements across society and thereby helps us to achieve our core mission. Beyond this fundamental reason, we also undertake research because:

• Our students enjoy a research-informed curriculum and direct opportunities to engage in research projects.
• Research activities enable our staff (academic, technical and professional) to develop their careers.
• Our research generates impacts across all four nations of the UK.
• Research opportunities are essential for recruitment and retention of academic staff.
• Research is a key foundation of our international reputation as a University and our brand.
• Our research underpins public engagement, knowledge exchange, enterprise and scholarship.