Durham University

The University of Durham, which operates under the trading name of Durham University, is a collegiate public research university in Durham, England, founded by an Act of Parliament in 1832 and incorporated by royal charter in 1837. It was the first recognised university to open in England for more than 600 years, after Oxford and Cambridge, and is thus identified by historians as the third-oldest university in England. As a collegiate university, its main functions are divided between the academic departments of the university and its 17 colleges. In general, the departments perform research and provide teaching to students, while the colleges are responsible for their domestic arrangements and welfare.

The university is a member of the Russell Group of British research universities and is also affiliated with the regional N8 Research Partnership and international university groups including the Matariki Network of Universities and the Coimbra Group. The university estate includes 83 listed buildings, ranging from the 11th-century Durham Castle to the 1960s brutalist students' union. The university also owns and manages the Durham World Heritage Site in partnership with Durham Cathedral. The university's ownership of the world heritage site includes Durham Castle, Palace Green and the surrounding buildings including the historic Cosin's Library.

Durham graduates have long used the Latin post-nominal letters Dunelm after their degree, from Dunelmensis (of, belonging to, or from Durham).

History

Origins

Between around 1286 and 1291 the Benedictine monks of Durham established a hall at the University of Oxford to provide them with a seat of learning. In 1381, the hall received an endowment from Thomas Hatfield, Bishop of Durham, becoming Durham College. Durham College was surrendered to the Crown in 1545 following the Reformation. The strong tradition of theological teaching in Durham gave rise to various attempts to form a university within the city itself, notably under King Henry VIII and then under Oliver Cromwell, who issued letters patent and nominated a proctor and fellows for the establishment of a college in 1657. However, a proposal to allow the college to confer degrees met with opposition from Oxford and Cambridge universities, and the whole scheme was abandoned at the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. Consequently, it was not until Parliament, at the instigation of Archdeacon Charles Thorp and with the support of the bishop of Durham, William van Mildert, passed the Durham University Act 1832 (2 & 3 Will. 4. c. 19 Pr.), "an Act to enable the Dean and Chapter of Durham Cathedral to appropriate part of the property of their church to the establishment of a University in connection therewith" that the university came into being. The act received royal assent from King William IV on 4 July 1832.

The church university, 1832–1909

The university opened on 28 October 1833. In 1834, all but two of the bishops of the Church of England confirmed that they would accept holders of Durham degrees for ordination. In 1835, a fundamental statute was passed by the Dean and Chapter, as governors of the university, setting up Convocation and laying down that Durham degrees would only be open to members of the Church of England. Regulations for degrees were finalised in 1836 and the university was incorporated by royal charter granted by William IV on 1 June 1837 as the "Warden, Masters and Scholars of the University of Durham", with the first students graduating a week later. At the opening of the university, accommodation was provided in the Archdeacon's Inn (now Cosin's Hall); in 1837, an order of the Queen-in-Council was issued granting the university use of Durham Castle, which had previously been a palace of the bishop of Durham, for further accommodation.

In 1846, Bishop Hatfield's Hall (later to become Hatfield College) was founded, providing the opportunity for students to obtain affordable lodgings with fully catered communal eating, a revolutionary idea at the time, endorsed by a Royal Commission in 1862 and later spread to other universities, one of the first being the new Keble College Oxford in 1870. Those attending University College were expected to bring a servant with them to deal with cooking, cleaning and so on. The level of applications to Bishop Hatfield's Hall led to a second hall along similar lines, Bishop Cosin's Hall, being founded in 1851, although this only survived until 1864. Elsewhere, the university expanded from Durham into Newcastle in 1852, when the medical school there (established in 1834) became a college of the university. This was joined in 1871 by the College of Physical Sciences (renamed the College of Science in 1884 and again renamed Armstrong College in 1904). St Cuthbert's Society was founded in 1888 for non-collegiate, mostly mature, male students as a non-residential society run by the students themselves. Two teacher-training colleges – St Hild's for women, established in 1858, and The College of the Venerable Bede for men, established in 1839, also existed in the city and these merged to form the mixed College of St Hild and St Bede in 1975. From 1896, these were associated with the university and graduates of St Hild's were the first female graduates from Durham in 1898.

Campus

Durham University owns a 257 ha (640-acre) estate, of which 251 ha (620 acres) is in Durham. This contains part of the Durham Castle and Cathedral UNESCO World Heritage Site and multiple other heritage assets, including three ancient monuments (the Maiden Castle Iron Age promontory fort, Cosin's Library and Divinity House), four grade I listed buildings (including Kingsgate Bridge, the Exchequer Building on Palace Green, the gatehouse, keep, north range and west range of Durham Castle, and multiple listings covering surviving sections of the castle walls around the north of the castle and along the top of the river bank behind Hatfield College and St Cuthbert's Society) and 79 grade II or II* listed buildings. As of 2023, the estate in Durham included 112 ha (280 acres) of woodland scrub (with 46 ha (110 acres) of woodland designated as Areas of High Landscape Value, including the 32.4 ha (80 acres) of Great High Wood, Hollingside Wood and Blaid's Wood additionally designated as Ancient Semi-Natural Woodlands, Sites of Nature Conservation Importance and Sites of Ecological Value), 53 ha (130 acres) of farming and grazing land, and 27 ha (67 acres) of amenity grassland, alongside 51.4 ha (127 acres) of built environment. The estate also includes the Queen's Campus in Stockton-on-Tees.

One of the major public attractions in Durham City is the 10 ha (25-acre) Botanic Gardens, established (on the current site) in 1970, with more than 80,000 visitors annually. As of 2021, the university estate contains more than 380 buildings with a floor area of 424,600 square metres (4,570,000 sq ft), including 189,400 square metres (2,039,000 sq ft) of residential area in 170 residential buildings (not including the independent St Chad's and St John's colleges, which are not owned by the university). The insurance reinstatement value was estimated as close to £850 million in 2014.

Durham City

Durham City is the main location of the university and contains all of the colleges and academic departments. The Durham City estate is spread across several different sites.

The Peninsula

The Bailey and Palace Green form the historic centre of the university and contain five colleges, as well as the departments of music, history, classics and ancient history, and theology and religion, the Institute of Advanced Study, Palace Green Library (housing the university's special collections), the archaeological museum, the Durham Union Society, and the Assembly Rooms Theatre. The Bailey is linked to Dunelm House, home of Durham Students' Union in New Elvet, by the university's Kingsgate Bridge.

Organisation and administration

Academic year

The academic year at Durham is divided into three terms: Michaelmas term, which lasts 10 weeks from October to December; Epiphany term, which lasts ten weeks from January to March; and Easter term, which lasts nine weeks from April to June. All terms start on a Monday. The weeks of term are called "Teaching Weeks", numbered from 1 (start of Michaelmas) to 29 (end of Easter), although this period is used for teaching and exams. Additionally, there is an "Induction Week" (informally known as "Freshers' Week" or Week 0) for first year students prior to the start of Michaelmas term, starting on the first Monday in October.

Colleges

Durham operates a collegiate structure with the colleges being "listed bodies" under the Education Reform Act 1988, as bodies that appear to the Secretary of State "to be a constituent college, school, hall or other institution of a university which is such a recognised body" (the "recognised body" being, in this case, Durham University). Though most of the Durham colleges are governed and owned directly by the university itself (the exceptions being St John's and St Chad's), the legal status of the Durham colleges as listed bodies is similar to those at Oxford and Cambridge, setting them apart from those at the universities of Lancaster and York. However, unlike at Oxford and Cambridge, there is no formal teaching at Durham colleges (with the exception of Cranmer Hall theological college within St John's), although colleges are active in research. All of the college heads are ex officio members of the university senate.

Formal dinners (known as "formals") are held at every college; gowns are worn to these events at just over half of the colleges. There is a great deal of intercollegiate rivalry, particularly in rowing and other sporting activities. There is also rivalry between the older "Bailey" colleges and the newer "Hill" colleges on Elvet Hill.

The 17 colleges are:

Governance

The university is governed by the statutes put in place by the Universities of Durham and Newcastle upon Tyne Act, 1963 and subsequently amended by council and approved by the King in Council, most recently in 2023, and by ordinances passed by council.

Council is the governing body, the corporation and the charity trustees of the university. It is composed of eleven internal and thirteen external ('lay') members. There are three ex-officio members internal to the university: the vice-chancellor and warden, the deputy vice-chancellor and provost, and the president of Durham Student's Union, along with seven appointed members from the university, who may not be members of the university executive committee and five of whom must be members of academic staff, and one appointed postgraduate student nominated by the student's union. There are also twelve appointed lay members (not being teachers or salaried staff in the university or any of its colleges), and the Dean of Durham as an ex-officio lay member. The chair of the council, the deputy chair, and the senior independent governor must be lay members of the council. Since August 2025, the chair of council has been Caroline Johnstone. While there is no formal requirement for alumni representation on the council, six of the appointment lay members (including the deputy chair) were Durham graduates as of the 2024/25 academic year.

Academic profile

Research

The university is part of the Russell Group of British research universities as well as the European Coimbra Group and the global Matariki Network of Universities. It is also a partner in the Arqus European University Alliance, part of the European Union's European Universities initiative, and is part of bilateral groups including the UK-Japan RENKEI network, the UK-Norway North Sea University Partnership, and the UK-Saudi Arabia Joint International Institute for Clean Hydrogen, and other international research consortia including the Virgo Consortium and the University of the Arctic. It is also part of regional groups including the N8 Research Partnership of universities in the north of England; Universities for North East England, bringing together the five universities in north east England; the Northern Accelerator knowledge exchange and research commercialisation partnership; and the Durham Learning Alliance in association with four further education colleges in County Durham. In 2025, it became the first UK university to host a plenary meeting of the European Research Council Scientific Council.

Durham hosts the 'memory intensive' service of the UK's tier-1 DiRAC supercomputer facility, as well as the N8 Research Partnership's tier-2 Bede supercomputer. It has partnered with the Net Zero Technology Centre, SHIFT Geothermal and the Reece Foundation to launch the UK National Geothermal Energy Centre, and also leads the UK National Clean Maritime Research Hub, a consortium of thirteen universities.

Research institutes at the university include the Biophysical Sciences Institute, the Durham Energy Institute, the Institute for Computational Cosmology, the Institute for Data Science, the Institute for Medical Humanities, the Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology, the Institute of Advanced Study, the Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resiliance, the Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, and the Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing. There are also a large number of research centres located within departments, including the IBRU: Centre for Borders Research (Department of Geography) and the Durham Research in Economic Analysis and Mechanisms (Department of Economics), which has a research partnership with the Competition and Markets Authority's Microeconomics Unit at the UK Government's Darlington Economic Campus.

While Durham does not have a medical school, the "Health at Durham" programme takes in 44 institutes, centres, academies and projects from across the university. The programme focuses on non-clinical aspects of health, including physical, mental, social and environmental aspects of health. Durham hosts the Wellcome Trust-funded Black Health and the Humanities Network in the university's Institute of Medical Humanities, and is also one of the lead partners in the Northern Network for Medical Humanities Research. The Durham-led Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases won the Medical Research Council's Impact Prize for Outstanding Team Impact in 2024. The university was awarded a Queen's Anniversary Prize, the UK's highest academic honour, in the medicine and health category in 2018 for "Influential research on parent/infant sleep", in addition to one awarded in 1994 (the first year of the Queen's Anniversary Prizes) in the science and mathematics category for "Improving awareness of sciences and engineering in schools".

Admissions

Durham's student body consists of 16,560 undergraduates and 4,590 postgraduate students (2024/25). The university is consistently designated as a 'high-tariff' institution by the Department for Education, with the average undergraduate entrant to the university in recent years amassing between 157–160 UCAS Tariff points in their top three pre-university qualifications – the equivalent of A*AA to A*A*A at A-Level. Based on 2022/23 HESA entry standards data published in domestic league tables, which include a broad range of qualifications beyond the top three exam grades, the average student at Durham University achieved 181 points – the 11th highest in the country.

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