Founded on principles of excellence, equality and opportunity for all, the University of York opened in 1963 with just 230 students. In 2018 it is the home of more than 17,000 students across more than 30 academic departments and research centres. Since its founding, York has become one of the world’s leading universities, joining the prestigious Russell Group in 2012. The University of York has won six Times Higher Education (THE) Awards and five Queen’s Anniversary Prizes, and is proud of its association with Athena SWAN, holding 12 awards in support of gender equality, representation and success for all, with gold awards for Chemistry and Biology and a University-wide bronze award.
Of 154 universities that took part in the Research Excellence Framework (REF) in 2014, York ranked 14th overall and 10th for the impact of our research. The University is consistently in the top ten UK research universities and attracts over �60m a year of funding from research alone.
Our seven research themes (Creativity; Culture and communication; Environmental sustainability and resilience; Health and wellbeing; Justice and equality; Risk, evidence and decision making; and Technologies for the future) underpin a vision to make the University of York a world leader in the creation of knowledge through fundamental and applied research, the sharing of knowledge by teaching students from varied backgrounds and the application of knowledge for the health, prosperity and well-being of people and society.
Our Policy Unit (due to launch formally in early 2019), will be housed within the Research Centre for Social Sciences, part of the Faculty of Social Sciences, a large and diverse grouping of nine departments, including three research-only departments. The majority of social science departments were ranked at or near the top of their Units of Assessment in REF2014. Through our membership of the White Rose Consortium, we have strong links with the Universities of Leeds and Sheffield. Similarly, our membership of the N8 Research Partnership (a collaboration of the eight most research intensive Universities in the North of England) has generated valuable networking opportunities, most prominently around Agrifood and Policing.