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The university has established itself as a leading research-led university and has been named University of the Year of 2008 by the Times Higher Education. The University of Leicester is also the only university ever to have won a Times Higher Education award in seven consecutive years. In 2016, the university ranked 24th in the The Complete University Guide and 32nd in the The Guardian. Recent REF 2014, the University of Leicester ranked 49th among 126 universities. The 2012 QS World University Rankings also placed Leicester eighth in the UK for research citaThe main campus is a mile south of the city centre, adjacent to Victoria Park and Wyggeston and Queen Elizabeth I College.
The central building, now known as the Fielding Johnson Building and housing the University's administration offices and Faculty of Law, dates from 1837 and was formerly the Leicestershire and Rutland Lunatic Asylum. Opposite the Fielding Johnson Building are the Astley Clarke Building, home to the School of Economics, and the University Sports Centre.
The Ken Edwards building, built in 1995, lies adjacent to the Fielding Johnson Building and is home to the School of Management.
Built in 1957, the Percy Gee building is home to Leicester University's Students' Union.
The David Wilson Library was opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 4 December 2008, following an extensive refurbishment with a budget of £32 million.
The university campus is home to several notable examples of Brutalist architecture, including the Grade II listed Engineering Building and the Charles Wilson Building. Another prominent building on campus is the 18-storey Attenborough Tower, home to the College of Social Sciences.
The Bennett building, Physics and Astronomy building, the Chemistry building and the Adrian Building lie beyond the Charles Wilson Building. Across University Road lies the Maurice Shock and Hodgkin buildings, home to Leicester's Medical School.
Further along University Road and on Salisbury Road and Regents Road are the Department of Education and the Fraser Noble buildingtions. AAcademic profile[edit]
Teaching
The University is held in high regard for the quality of its teaching. 19 subject areas have been graded as "Excellent" by the Quality Assurance Agency – including 14 successive scores of 22 points or above stretching back to 1998, six of which were maximum scores.
Leicester was ranked joint first in the 2005, 2006 and 2007 National Student Survey for overall student satisfaction among mainstream universities in England. It was second only to Cambridge in 2008 and again joint first in 2009.
Science
The University has research groups in the areas of astrophysics, biochemistry and genetics. The techniques used in genetic fingerprinting were invented and developed at Leicester in 1984 by Sir Alec Jeffreys. It also houses Europe's biggest academic centre for space research[citation needed], in which space probes have been built, most notably the Mars Lander Beagle 2, which was built in collaboration with the Open University.
Leicester Physicists (led by Ken Pounds) were critical in demonstrating a fundamental prediction of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity[citation needed] - that black holes exist and are common in the universe. It is a founding partner of the £52 million National Space Centre.
Leicester University is one of a small number of universities to have won the prestigious Queen's Anniversary Prize for Higher Education on more than one occasion: in 1994 for physics & astronomy and again in 2002 for genetics.
Physics and Astronomy
The Department is host to around 350 undergraduate students, following either BSc (three-year) or MPhys (four-year) degree courses, and over 70 postgraduate students registered for a higher degree.
The main Physics building accommodates several research groups—Radio and Space Plasma Physics (RSPP), X-ray and Observational Astronomy (XROA), Condensed Matter Physics (CMP) and Theoretical Astrophysics (AG)—as well as centres for supercomputing, microscopy, Gamma and X-ray astronomy, and radar sounding, and the Swift UK Data Centre. A purpose built Space Research Centre houses the Space Projects and Instrumentation (SPI) group and provides laboratories, clean rooms and other facilities for instrumentation research, Earth Observation Science (EOS) and the Bio-imaging Unit. The department also runs the University of Leicester Observatory in Manor Road, Oadby, with a 20-inch telescope it is one of the UK's largest and most advanced astronomical teaching facilities.[14] The department has close involvement with the National Space Centre also located in Leicester.
The department is home to the University's ALICE 3400+ core supercomputer[15] and is a member of the UK's DiRAC (DiStributed Research utilising Advanced Computing) consortium. DiRAC is the integrated supercomputing facility for theoretical modelling and HPC-based research in particle physics, astronomy and cosmology, areas in which the UK is world-leading. It was funded as a result of investment of £12.32 million, from the Government's Large Facilities Capital Fund, together with investment from the Science and Technology Facilities Council and from universities.[16]
The department is a member of the Pi-CETL collaboration of three university physics departments with a track record in teaching and learning innovation. The Physics Innovations CETL is one of 74 Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, over all academic disciplines, and the only one in physics. It was funded for five years (2005-10) by the Higher Education Funding Council for England's (HEFCE). Pi-CETL involved collaboration between the Open University and the Universities of Leicester and Reading.
In 1994 the University of Leicester celebrated winning the Queen's Anniversary Prize for its work in Physics & Astronomy. The prize citation reads: "World-class teaching, research and consultancy programme in astronomy and space and planetary science fields. Practical results from advanced thinking".
Engineering
The Grade listed Engineering Building
The department offers MEng and BEng degrees in Aerospace Engineering, Embedded Systems Engineering, Communications and Electronic Engineering, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and General Engineering. Each course is accredited by the relevant professional institutions. The department also offers MSc courses in Embedded Systems and Control, Information and Communication Engineering, Advanced Mechanical Engineering, and Advanced Electrical and Electronic Engineering.
The department has an extensive range of industrial partners including: ARM Holdings, BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, Jaguar, Siemens, Corus, Mercedes-Benz. Many undergraduate and postgraduate projects are carried out in collaboration with industry.
Arts, humanities and social sciences
The Attenborough Tower, home of many of the university's arts departments
More recently, novelist Adele Parks graduated from the university in the 1990s, and the university library now holds the writings of both Joe Orton and Sue Townsend.
College of Arts, Humanities & Law
The School of Archaeology and Ancient History was formed in 1990 from the then Departments of Archaeology and Classics, under the headship of Graeme Barker, FBA. It was headed from 2006 to 2012 by Colin Haselgrove, and the current head is Lin Foxhall, Hon. MBE. The academic staff currently (as of July 2012) includes 21 archaeologists and 6 ancient historians, though several staff teach and research in both disciplines; seven staff hold the rank of Professor.In the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise, 65% of its research was placed in the top two classes of excellence making it second equal among UK archaeology departments and first equal among departments teaching both archaeology and ancient history.
The School has particular strengths in Mediterranean archaeology, ancient Greek and Roman history, and the archaeology of recent periods; and is also home to the University of Leicester Archaeological Services (ULAS) In April 2008, the Centre for Historical Archaeology was opened. The Leverhulme-funded "Tracing Networks" project is based in the School.
In September 2012, the University of Leicester exhumed the body of King Richard III, discovering it in the former Greyfriars Friary Church in the city of Leicester, England. The university announced on 4 February 2013 that the body had correctly been identified, and was Richard's body "beyond all reasonable doubt"
The School of English teaches English at degree level. The School is committed to offering the whole spectrum of English Studies from Contemporary Writing to Old English and language studies. It contains the distinguished Victorian Studies Centre, the first of its kind in the UK.
Malcolm Bradbury is one of the Department's most famous alumni: he graduated with a First in English in 1953.
The School of Historical Studies is, with 35 full-time members of staff, including 11 Professors as of 2009, one of the largest of any university in the country. It has made considerable scholarly achievements in many areas of history, notably Urban History, English Local History, American Studies and Holocaust Studies. The School houses both the East Midlands Oral History Archive (EMOHA) and the Media Archive for Central England .
The School of Law is one of the biggest departments in the University. The Faculty maintains links with many top law firms, including the Magic Circle firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, who offer a one-year scholarship to a Leicester student studying for the dual Law and French degree. According to the Times Online Good University Guide 2009, the Faculty of Law was ranked 8th, out of 87 institutions, making it one of the top law schools in the country.
The School of Museum Studies has the highest proportion of world-leading rated research in any subject in any UK university (RAE 2008).In its 40-year history the school has played an influential role in the reinvention of museum theory and practice.
The School of Geography and Geology, housed in the Bennett building, is notable for its collection of maps dating back almost a century, and equally for the Geology department's fossil collection. Both departments feature highly in rankings for the UK.
Also within the College of Arts, Humanities, and Law are the Department for the History of Art and Film and the School of Modern Languages.
Mass Communication Research
Within the College of Social Sciences, the Centre for Mass Communication Research, now part of the Department of Media and Communications, is one of the longest established academic centres at Leicester, engaging in pioneering research in the 1970s and 1980s and now specializing in Masters courses, as does the Department of Museum Studies, in terms of both campus-based and distance-learning Masters.
Management
The Ken Edwards Building, in which the School of Management is based
Within the College of Social Science, the School of Management is dedicated to the advanced study and teaching of the subject matter of Management. In 2010 the School of Management was ranked 2nd after Oxford University by the Guardian.
The School of Management encourages the development of innovation and creativity through dialog, criticism and integrative learning. Professor Gibson Burrell's attempt to develop a critical management school at the University of Leicester, has been recognized in the academic literature.
The School of Management provides postgraduate and undergraduate programmes in Management. The School of Management, is one of the only 168 Schools/Universities in the world accredited by the Association of MBAs.
Learning Innovation and Technology-Enhanced Learning
The Institute of Learning Innovation within the University of Leicester is a research and postgraduate teaching group, directed by Grainne Conole. The Institute has and continues to research on UK- and European-funded projects (over 30 as of August 2013), focusing on topics such as educational use of podcasting, e-readers in distance education, virtual worlds, open educational resources and open education, and learning design.
Leicester Medical School
Main article: Leicester Medical School
The university is home to a large medical school, Leicester Medical School, which opened in 1971. The school was formerly in partnership with the University of Warwick, and the Leicester-Warwick medical school proved to be a success in helping Leicester expand, and Warwick establish. The partnership ran the end of its course towards the end of 2006 and the medical schools became autonomous institutions within their respective universities.
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