University of Liverpool

A committee of 30 local leaders planned a college for the people of Liverpool. University College, Liverpool, was founded in 1881 with gifts from benefactors, including £80,000 raised with the help of the Liverpool merchant William Rathbone VI, and a site donated by the City Council; the Earl of Derby was President, William Rathbone VI and Christopher Bushell were Vice-Presidents, and Robert Gladstone was Treasurer.⁠[1]

The college opened in 1882 in its first building on Ashton Street, with 45 students, six chairs and two lectureships.⁠[1]

The physicist Oliver Lodge was Professor of Physics at University College, Liverpool, from 1881 to 1900, before becoming Principal of 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.⁠[2]

The university states that Lodge made the world’s first public radio transmission at the university in 1894 and the first surgical X-ray in the UK in 1896.⁠[1]

In 1884 the college joined the federal Victoria University alongside colleges in Manchester and Leeds. Philanthropic funding then paid for laboratories in chemistry, engineering, physiology and pathology, and eight more chairs were endowed in the 1890s.⁠[1]

The School of Architecture was founded in 1894, and Liverpool University Press in 1899.⁠[1]

Construction of the Victoria Building, designed by the architect Alfred Waterhouse and funded largely by Liverpool donors, began in 1889. Sir William Hartley paid for the tower’s clock and bells, and Sir Henry Tate funded the library block, now Tate Hall. Lord Spencer officially opened it in 1892.⁠[1]

In the early 1900s the college established schools of architecture, commerce, law, public health and tropical medicine, as well as a teacher training college.⁠[1]

A royal charter established the University of Liverpool in 1903. By 1907 it had five faculties, arts, science, medicine, law and engineering, with arts the largest, and enrolment had passed 1,000 students. New buildings included the George Holt Physical Laboratory, the William Johnston Laboratory of Medical Research, a medical school building and laboratories for zoology and electrical engineering.⁠[1]

A sizeable School of Archaeology was established in this period, and Professor John Garstang founded the Garstang Museum in 1904; in 1906 E. K. Muspratt built the first physical chemistry laboratory in Britain.⁠[1]

The School of Social Science was founded in 1905 with help from Eleanor Rathbone, who in 1909 became the first woman elected to the University Council.⁠[1]

The Harold Cohen Library opened in 1938; in 1939 the Rathbone family began donating their family estate, Greenbank, to the university; Leahurst Campus was established in 1941 to house the Veterinary School’s clinical facilities; and in 1948 Arthur Bulley’s daughter gave the university the gardens at Ness, on farmland Bulley had bought in 1898.⁠[1]

Building of the University Sports Centre began in 1963 and it opened in 1966; the Sydney Jones Library was completed in 1977.⁠[1]

In 1994 the university became one of the founding members of the Russell Group, which now brings together 24 leading research-intensive UK universities.⁠[1][3][4]

In 2006 the university founded Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU) in partnership with Xi’an Jiaotong University. The university states that XJTLU has become the largest international joint venture university in China.⁠[1][5]

In 2008 the Victoria Gallery and Museum was renovated as a public venue, and Liverpool physicists worked on building detectors for the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. In 2012 new Central Teaching Hub laboratories for physics, earth sciences, chemistry and archaeology opened.⁠[1]

The Materials Innovation Factory, built with Unilever, opened in 2018.⁠[1]

The university responded to COVID-19 in 2020 and launched the Pandemic Institute in 2021; the Digital Innovation Facility and the Yoko Ono Lennon Centre opened in 2022.⁠[1]

Tim Jones became Vice-Chancellor on January 3, 2023, succeeding Janet Beer, who retired in December 2022 after nearly eight years in the post. Jones had previously been Provost and Vice-Principal at the University of Birmingham for more than six years.⁠[6]

On January 18, 2023, the university announced United States District Judge Wendy Beetlestone as its eleventh Chancellor, succeeding Colm Tóibín, who held the role from 2017 to 2022; the University Council approved her appointment after a nomination process in 2022. Born in Nigeria and educated in Yorkshire, Beetlestone earned a BA in Philosophy at Liverpool in 1984 and worked as a television journalist before becoming a lawyer a decade later.⁠[7]

On July 18, 2023, Vice-Chancellor Tim Jones installed Beetlestone during a Faculty of Science and Engineering graduation ceremony in Summer Graduation week; she is the university’s first woman and first Black Chancellor.⁠[8]

In 2025 the Victoria Gallery & Museum was revealed again after three years behind scaffolding, and the refurbishment marked the reopening of the Tate Hall Museum with its new exhibition “Lightbulb moments”. That year the university also launched the Interdisciplinary Centre for Sustainability Research (ICSR), announced a multi-year partnership with Northern Gritstone to boost investment in deep-tech spinout companies, and announced plans for AIM-HI, a new £100 million AI-driven materials chemistry facility.⁠[9]

On May 26, 2025, at an event in New Delhi, India’s Education Minister formally granted the university permission to open a campus in Bengaluru; the university states that the plan was approved by the University Grants Commission. The initial subjects were to include Business Management, Accounting and Finance, Computer Science, Biomedical Sciences and Game Design, and the campus was scheduled to open for its first intake of undergraduate and postgraduate students in August 2026.⁠[5]

In December 2025 the university held a groundbreaking ceremony for the new campus at Alembic City, Bengaluru.⁠[10][9]

In the 2024/25 financial year the university’s total income was £726.3 million and total expenditure £722.1 million. Income came from tuition fees, competitive research grants and contracts, government teaching and research funding, residences, catering and conferences, and other sources such as commercial activity, investments and donations.⁠[11]

As of November 2026 the university’s website states that it has three faculties, 35 departments and schools, more than 400 courses and over 30,000 students.⁠[1]

The university was rated Gold in the 2023 Teaching Excellence Framework; in REF 2021, 91% of its research was rated world-leading or internationally excellent; and it was placed 139th in the QS World University Rankings 2027, up from 165th in 2025. Its strategic framework is called Liverpool 2031, and it has a net zero target of 2035.⁠[12]

The university describes itself as “the original redbrick”; since 1881 its stated aim has been “the advancement of learning and ennoblement of life”.⁠[1]

The laureates the university lists are Sir Ronald Ross (Physiology or Medicine, 1902, malaria transmission), Charles Glover Barkla (Physics, 1917, X-rays), Sir Charles Sherrington (Physiology or Medicine, 1932, neurons), Sir James Chadwick (Physics, 1935, the neutron), Sir Robert Robinson (Chemistry, 1947, alkaloids), Har Gobind Khorana (Physiology or Medicine, 1968, the genetic code), Robert Porter (Physiology or Medicine, 1972, antibodies), Ronald H. Coase (Economics, 1991, transaction costs and property rights) and Sir Joseph Rotblat (Peace, 1995, nuclear arms).⁠[1]

Alumni include Dame Stella Rimington, the first female Director General of MI5; Dame Rose Heilbron, the first female judge to sit at the Old Bailey; and Tung Chee-hwa, the first Chief Executive of Hong Kong. Among staff achievements, Sir Charles Sherrington discovered the synapse, William Blair-Bell worked on chemotherapy for cancer and Allan Downie, Professor of Bacteriology, was involved in the eradication of smallpox from 1943 to 1966.⁠[1]

University of Liverpool: Official website: https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/ (opens in a new window).⁠[13]

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://uk.linkedin.com/edu/university-of-liverpool-12709 (opens in a new window).⁠[13]

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://www.youtube.com/@LivUni (opens in a new window).⁠[13]