University of Leeds

In 1831 a group of young men established the Leeds School of Medicine so that medical students no longer had to study in Scotland, London or abroad.⁠[1]

The university’s Health Sciences Library originated in the Leeds Infirmary Library, founded in 1786 by the surgeon William Hey and given to the Leeds School of Medicine in 1865.⁠[2]

The Yorkshire College of Science was founded in 1874, partly because the local wool and textile industries feared that new European technologies would hurt the local cloth trade. For the sons of local families, it was one of the first colleges open to students of all faiths and backgrounds.⁠[1]

The college shared the aims of University College LondonUniversity College LondonUniversity College London (UCL) is a university in London, England, United Kingdom. Founded in 1826, it is a member of the Russell Group.Open the full entry and Owens College, Manchester, which sought to break the hold of Oxford and Cambridge on wealthy Anglican men; these institutions admitted students of all religions, including dissenters, Catholics, Jews and agnostics, and responded to the technical needs of the fast-changing Victorian period. The college began with a strong emphasis on science, later added classics and modern literature, and was renamed Yorkshire College.⁠[1]

In 1884 Yorkshire College merged with the Leeds School of Medicine. Three years later the two Leeds institutions joined Owens College, Manchester, and University College Liverpool in the federal Victoria University; on November 3, 1887, Yorkshire College was admitted as a college of the Victoria University by resolution of its Court.⁠[1][3]

Unlike Owens College, Yorkshire College admitted women from the start; their numbers rose markedly after special facilities were provided at the Day Training College in 1896, and the first women graduated in 1905.⁠[1]

After Manchester and Liverpool set up their own universities, Leeds followed, and in 1904 King Edward VII granted the University of Leeds its Royal Charter; the university counts this as the year of its founding. When the charter was granted, seven in every eight students came from Yorkshire.⁠[1]

The university operates as an independent corporation under the Charter; its objects, powers and governance framework are set out in the Charter and its supporting statutes, and changes to the statutes require Privy Council approval.⁠[4]

Since 1904 the university has awarded honorary degrees to people in science, the arts, academia and entertainment.⁠[1]

Student numbers grew quickly after the charter, and reforms to state education meant students arrived better prepared. The decade before the First World War was a period of growth and consolidation in which the university developed the research tradition for which it is still known.⁠[1]

William Henry Bragg was Cavendish Professor of Physics at Leeds from 1909 to 1915. His work with his son William Lawrence Bragg in 1913–1914 founded the X-ray analysis of crystal structure as a new branch of science, and father and son were jointly awarded the 1915 Nobel Prize in Physics.⁠[5]

Edward Allen Brotherton (Lord Brotherton, 1856–1930), a chemical manufacturer who served as Mayor of Wakefield and as its Member of Parliament, endowed a Chair in Bacteriology at the university in 1922. In February of that year, after failing to buy the 15th-century Towneley manuscript of plays relating to Wakefield at auction, he bought a first edition of Andrew Marvell’s Miscellaneous Poems (1681), which became the first book of his collection. Over the next eight years he gathered more than 35,000 printed books and pamphlets, 30,000 letters and 400 other manuscripts, including all four Shakespeare folios.⁠[6]

In 1927 Brotherton gave £100,000 to build the Brotherton Library, designed by Lanchester, Lucas and Lodge, whose plans had won the university’s Architectural Prize Scheme of 1927. He laid the foundation stone shortly before his death; after he died in 1930, a further £100,000 and his collection of rare books and manuscripts passed to the university. The library opened in 1936; its domed reading room was modelled on that of the British Museum but is slightly larger in diameter.⁠[6][2]

William Astbury worked at the university from 1928 until his death in 1961, latterly as Professor of Biomedical Structure. From the late 1920s he used X-rays to study the molecular structure of wool fibres for the West Yorkshire textile industry, pioneered X-ray fibre diffraction methods for deciphering molecular structure and made the very first studies of the structure of DNA; he coined the term “molecular biology” during his career at Leeds.⁠[7][8]

In 1999 the Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology was formally constituted as an Interdisciplinary Research Centre of the university.⁠[8]

The Parkinson Building, the university’s grand frontage with the Brotherton Library behind it, opened in 1951.⁠[2]

The Parkinson Building’s patron was F. Parkinson. With the Brotherton Library and the Chemistry and Engineering building, opened in 1932, it belongs to a group designed in 1929, which was listed at Grade II on January 19, 1988.⁠[9]

In 2016 the Treasures of the Brotherton Gallery opened in the Parkinson Building to display items from Special Collections, attracting 20,000 visitors in its first year.⁠[2]

With student numbers growing after the war, the university appointed Chamberlin, Powell and Bon, winners of a limited competition, in 1959 to plan a teaching precinct. The practice produced a master plan in 1960 and published a review in 1963 to cater for a larger projected student population; its buildings at Leeds were constructed between 1964 and 1976.⁠[2][10]

The practice’s Roger Stevens Building was built in 1970 and listed at Grade II* on June 10, 2010. The South Library, built as the undergraduate library and later named the Edward Boyle Library, was opened in 1975 by the former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and received Grade II listed status in 2010. The Medical and Dental Building, including the Health Sciences Library, was unveiled in 1977.⁠[10][2]

The university was one of the 17 original members of the Russell Group, which was established in 1994.⁠[11][12]

In January 2000 it was settled that the university’s merger with Bretton Hall would go ahead in 2001, creating a new faculty of visual and performing arts. Leeds had validated Bretton Hall degrees for 50 years, and the college’s estate included an 18th-century Palladian mansion and 260 acres of parkland and lakes.⁠[13]

In January 2001 the university council endorsed the plan to merge with the West Yorkshire college after 30 months of discussions; the university said the merger was scheduled to take place on August 1, 2001, and would safeguard the future of the college and broaden the academic portfolio of Leeds.⁠[14]

The Laidlaw Library opened in 2015 as a dedicated undergraduate study space. Named after Lord Laidlaw of Rothiemay, it was supported by him, the Wolfson Foundation, the Garfield Weston Foundation and many individual alumni donors.⁠[2][15]

In December 2017 the university announced the polar scientist Jane Francis as its Chancellor, succeeding Melvyn Bragg (Lord Bragg of Wigton), who stepped down after 17 years; she was formally installed at a ceremony in the university’s Great Hall on July 9, 2018.⁠[16][17]

Director of the British Antarctic Survey since 2013, Francis had spent 22 years at Leeds from 1991 to 2013, becoming Professor of Palaeoclimatology, directing the Centre for Polar Science and serving as Dean of the Faculty of Environment from 2008; Leeds awarded her an honorary Doctorate of Science in 2014.⁠[17]

Nexus, the university’s innovation hub, was officially opened on campus in May 2019 to give outside organisations access to the university’s capabilities and talent so that they can innovate, become more productive and grow. The £38 million project was completed in January 2019 and provides 6,684 square metres over six floors.⁠[18][19]

By 2024/25 the Nexus community of more than 180 businesses and organisations had raised £134 million of private investment since 2019 and created more than 290 jobs.⁠[20]

On September 1, 2020, the university welcomed Simone Buitendijk as its Vice-Chancellor.⁠[21]

After about three years leading the university, Buitendijk announced that she would pursue new leadership opportunities in higher education; she served as Vice-Chancellor and President until October 31, 2023. Provost and Deputy Vice-Chancellor Hai Sui Yu then served as interim Vice-Chancellor and President while the university ran a global search for a successor.⁠[22][20]

Hai Sui Yu served as interim Vice-Chancellor and President from November 1, 2023, until October 31, 2024, and continued as Provost and Deputy Vice-Chancellor from November 1, 2024.⁠[20]

On May 12, 2022, the university published its results in the Research Excellence Framework (REF 2021): over 90% of its research had an overall quality rating of “world leading” or “internationally excellent”. REF divided research into 34 disciplinary Units of Assessment; Leeds made 28 returns to 27 of them, including more than 120 unique impact case studies, and its overall profile for 16 Units of Assessment was over 90% in those two categories.⁠[23]

The Sir William Henry Bragg Building, named after William Henry Bragg, was officially opened on June 6, 2022. The seven-storey glass and steel complex is home to the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences and houses a mock operating theatre for engineers and clinicians developing medical robots, the Wolfson Imaging Facility and the Bragg Centre for Materials Research, and brings together the Henry Royce Institute’s work at Leeds.⁠[24]

In June 2024 Shearer West, Vice-Chancellor of the University of NottinghamUniversity of NottinghamThe University of Nottingham is a university based in Nottingham, England, United Kingdom. Its predecessor, University College, Nottingham, opened in 1881, and it became a university under a royal charter in 1948. It has overseas campuses in Malaysia and in Ningbo, China, and is a founding member of the Russell Group.Open the full entry since 2017 and the first woman to hold that post, was named the next Vice-Chancellor of Leeds.⁠[25][26]

West became the university’s fourteenth Vice-Chancellor and President on November 1, 2024. An art historian, she began her academic career at the University of Leicester, moved to the University of BirminghamUniversity of BirminghamThe University of Birmingham is a research university in Birmingham, England. It grew out of Mason Science College, founded by Josiah Mason in 1875, received its Royal Charter from Queen Victoria in 1900 and is a member of the Russell Group.Open the full entry in 1996, and later served as Director of Research at the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Head of the Humanities Division at the University of OxfordUniversity of OxfordThe University of Oxford is a university in Oxford, England, where teaching existed in some form by 1096; it describes itself as the oldest university in the English-speaking world and is organised as a federal system of the university and dozens of self-governing colleges.Open the full entry and Provost and Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of SheffieldUniversity of SheffieldThe University of Sheffield is a research university in Sheffield, England, United Kingdom. It grew out of three predecessor institutions, the Sheffield School of Medicine (founded in 1828), Firth College and the Sheffield Technical School, received its royal charter as a university in 1905 and is a member of the Russell Group.Open the full entry.⁠[26]

In February 2025 government ministers confirmed £5 million of funding for the National Poetry Centre, first announced in March 2024 and spearheaded by the university’s Professor of Poetry Simon Armitage, Poet Laureate since 2019. The centre is to occupy Trinity St David’s Church on Woodhouse Lane, on the edge of the campus, with a 250-seat performance theatre, a bookshop, a library, a café, recording facilities and rehearsal spaces, and will work with the university’s Special Collections, Cultural Institute and the University of Leeds Poetry Centre.⁠[27]

In 2024/25 more than 37,200 students studied on 995 programmes and more than 16,000 graduated; the university had a headcount of over 10,400 staff and almost 2,300 postgraduate research students. It had more than 13,000 international students from almost 150 countries and 357,000 graduates in 197 countries.⁠[20]

In the financial year ended July 31, 2025, total income fell 5% to £999 million, including tuition fee income of £511 million, down 10% mainly because of a smaller intake of international postgraduate taught students, and research grant income of £186 million (2023/24: £191 million). Expenditure rose 1% to £1,007 million, and before movement in the USS pension provision the university recorded an underlying operating deficit of £8 million, compared with a surplus of £60 million in 2023/24. The financial statements were approved by the Council on November 27, 2025.⁠[20]

In October 2026 the university announced that it would lead the Leeds Financial Innovation Exchange (LFIX), a £6.5 million programme delivered through Nexus and funded by the Local Innovation Partnerships Fund, a UK Government programme delivered through UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). LFIX aims to connect businesses with university research and innovation, accelerate the adoption of emerging technologies in areas including artificial intelligence, cyber security, fraud prevention and climate risk, and strengthen the international position of Leeds and West Yorkshire as a centre for financial innovation.⁠[28]

As of November 2026 the university’s website describes it as one of the largest universities in the UK, ranked in the world’s top 100 in the QS World University Rankings 2027. It has won the Queen’s Anniversary Prize three times and its staff have received 33 National Teaching Fellowships; in the 2021/22 financial year it contributed £1.9 billion to the Leeds City Region economy.⁠[29]

The university has five faculties: Arts, Humanities and Cultures; Business School; Engineering and Physical Sciences; Environment and Social Sciences; and Health and Life Sciences.⁠[30]

Among the objects set out in the university’s Charter is “to cultivate and promote arts, science and learning”. The university receives substantial public funding and is an exempt charity under Schedule 3 of the Charities Act 2011.⁠[3][20]

The Council is the university’s governing body, and most of its members are lay members; the Senate is responsible to the Council for academic governance and is chaired by the Vice-Chancellor and President; the University Court has about 90 members, most of them lay members, and is chaired by the Chancellor or, in their absence, the Pro-Chancellor. The Chancellor’s is an honorary role. Alastair Da Costa has been Chair of Council since August 1, 2022, and is also Pro-Chancellor.⁠[4][20]

The university’s strategy for 2020 to 2030, “Universal Values, Global Change”, is built on three elements, community, culture and impact, and covers research and innovation, student education, digital transformation and internationalisation.⁠[31]

In February 2025 Shearer West led an institution-wide consultation and review of the strategy, the “One Leeds: Mid-term strategy review”, seeking views on academic vision, people and culture, processes, systems and structures, and opportunities; the resulting White Paper pointed to the need for closer academic alignment and streamlined governance and processes.⁠[20]

Alumni listed by the university include the Nobel laureate in Literature Wole Soyinka (English, 1957), UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer (Law, 1985), President of the Maldives Mohamed Muizzu (PhD Civil Engineering, 2009), the musician Mark Knopfler (English, 1973), IMDb founder Col Needham (Computer Science, 1988), Aviva group CEO Amanda Blanc (MBA, 1999), European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer (Erasmus, 1993) and two-time Olympic triathlon champion Alistair Brownlee (2009).⁠[32]

The university’s coat of arms bears the motto “et augebitur scientia”, meaning “and knowledge will be increased”. An oak-carved university coat of arms hangs above the entrance to the Brotherton Library reading room.⁠[2]

University of Leeds: Official website: https://www.leeds.ac.uk/ (opens in a new window).⁠[33]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/school/7244 (opens in a new window).⁠[33]

YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry: Public channel: https://youtube.com/user/universityofleedsuk (opens in a new window).⁠[33]