University of Leicester

The University of Leicester ( LEST-ər) is a public research university based in Leicester, England. It was established as a university college in 1921. In 1957, the university's predecessor, University College, Leicester, gained university status by royal charter. The main campus is south of the city centre, adjacent to Victoria Park.

The university had an income of £395.0 million in 2024/25, of which £84.9 million was from research grants, with an expenditure of £407.3 million.

The university is known for the invention of genetic fingerprinting, and for partially funding the discovery and the DNA identification of the remains of King Richard III in Leicester.

History

Desire for a university

The first serious suggestions for a university in Leicester began with the Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society (founded at a time when "philosophical" broadly meant what "scientific" means today). With the success of Owens College in Manchester, and the establishment of the University of Birmingham in 1900, and then of Nottingham University College, it was thought that Leicester ought to have a university college too. From the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century university colleges could not award degrees and had to be associated with universities that had degree-giving powers. Most students at university colleges took examinations set by the University of London.

In the late 19th century the co-presidents of the Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society, the Revered James Went, headmaster of the Wyggeston Boys' School, and J. D. Paul, regularly called for the establishment of a university college. However, no private donations were forthcoming, and the Corporation of Leicester was busy funding the School of Art and the Technical School. The matter was brought up again by Dr Astley V. Clarke (1870–1945) in 1912. Born in Leicester in 1870, he had been educated at Wyggeston Grammar School and the University of Cambridge before receiving medical training at Guy's Hospital. He was the new president of the Literary and Philosophy society. Reaction was mixed, with some saying that Leicester's relatively small population would mean a lack of demand. With the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, talk of a university college subsided. In 1917 the Leicester Daily Post urged in an editorial that something of more practical utility than memorials ought to be created to commemorate the war dead. With the ending of the war both the Post and its rival the Leicester Mail encouraged donations to form the university college. Some suggested that Leicester should join forces with Nottingham, Sutton Bonington and Loughborough to create a federal university college of the East Midlands, but nothing came of this proposal.

Establishment

The old asylum building had often been suggested as a site for the new university, and after it was due to be finished being used as a hospital for the wounded, Astley Clarke was keen to urge the citizens and local authorities to buy it. Clarke quickly learned the building had already been bought by Thomas Fielding Johnson, a wealthy philanthropist who owned a worsted manufacturing business. He had bought 37 acres (15 ha) of land for £40,000 and intended not only to house the college, but also the boys' and girls' grammar schools. Further donations soon topped £100,000: many were given in memory of loved ones lost during the war, while others were for those who had taken part and survived. King George V gave his blessing to the scheme after a visit to the town in 1919.

Campus

The main campus is a mile south of the city centre, adjacent to Victoria Park and Wyggeston and Queen Elizabeth I College. The skyline of the university is punctuated by three distinctive, towering, buildings from the 1960s: the Department of Engineering, the Attenborough Tower and the Charles Wilson Building.

Fielding Johnson Building

The Fielding Johnson Building was designed by William Parsons in a late Georgian provincial style as the Leicestershire and Rutland County Asylum. From 1921 the building was home to most of the university departments until purpose-built accommodation was created, and it was renamed the Fielding Johnson Building in 1964. It now houses the university's administration offices, Leicester Law School (including the original university library Harry Peach Law Library, the Legal Advice Clinic, moot court), and the university's council chambers. The south wing of this building includes the university's Accessibility service for disabled students and access to the Peter Williams lecture theatre and Ogden Lewis Seminar Suite in the lower storeys of the David Wilson main library building.

Attenborough Tower

The 18-storey Attenborough Tower is home to the College of Social Sciences and has undergone extensive renovation.

Engineering Building

The Engineering Building was the first major building by British architects James Stirling and James Gowan. This Grade II* listed building comprises workshops and laboratories at ground level, and a tower containing offices and lecture theatres.

Other buildings

Opposite the Fielding Johnson Building are the Astley Clarke Building, home to the School of Criminology and Sociology, and the Danielle Brown Sports Centre.

The Ken Edwards Building, built in 1995, lies adjacent to the Fielding Johnson Building and is home to part of the School of Computing and Mathematical Science, the School of Modern Languages and learning spaces shared by a variety of the university's schools.

Built in 1957, the Percy Gee Building is home to Leicester University's Students' Union. Percy Gee was one of the first treasurers of the University College.

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 Bennett Building, Physics and Astronomy Building, the Chemistry Building and the Adrian Building lie beyond the Charles Wilson Building. Across University Road, linked by pedestrian bridges, lie the Maurice Shock and Hodgkin Buildings. Further along University Road is the George Davies Centre building (built 2016), home to Leicester's Medical School.

Organisation

The university's academic schools and departments are organised into colleges. In August 2015, the colleges were further restructured with the merging of Social Sciences and Arts, Humanities and Law to give the following structure:

College of Life Sciences

The college has the following academic schools:

• Leicester Medical School
• School of Biological Sciences
• School of Psychology
• School of Allied Health Professions

The research departments and institutes:

• Cardiovascular Sciences
• Genetics and Genome Biology (including the Leicester Cancer Research Centre)
• Health Sciences (including the Leicester Diabetes Centre)
• Infection, Immunity and Inflammation
• Molecular and Cell Biology
• Neuroscience, Psychology and Behaviour (including the Centre for Systems Neuroscience)
• Leicester Precision Medicine Institute (including Leicester Drug Discovery and Diagnostics)
• Leicester Institute of Structural and Chemical Biology

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.

College of Science and Engineering

The college comprises the following departments:

• Chemistry
• Informatics
• School of Geography Geology & the Environment
• Engineering
• Computing and Mathematical Sciences
• Physics and Astronomy

There are also interdisciplinary research centres for Space Research, Climate Change Research, Mathematical/Computational Modelling and Advanced Microscopy.

Engineering

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.

Physics and Astronomy

The department has 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 is the primary base for two research groups – Planetary Science and Astrophysics – as well as centres for supercomputing, microscopy, Gamma and X-ray astronomy, and the Swift UK Data Centre. Space Park Leicester, officially opened in 2022, is the main home of the Earth Observation Science and Space Projects and Instrumentation groups. 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. The department has close involvement with the National Space Centre also located in Leicester.

Academic profile

Admissions

In the 2024/25 academic year, the student body consisted of 18,990 students, composed of 14,675 undergraduates and 4,315 postgraduate students. The university is designated as a 'medium-tariff' institution by the Department for Education, with the average undergraduate entrant to the university in recent years amassing between 121–128 UCAS Tariff points in their top three pre-university qualifications – the equivalent of BBB to ABB 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 the University of Leicester achieved 132 points. According to the 2017 Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide, approximately 2% of Leicester's undergraduates come from independent schools.

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.

Rankings and reputation

The university was named University of the Year in 2008 by the Times Higher Education.

The university has consistently been ranked among the top 30 universities in the United Kingdom by the Times Good University Guide and The Guardian. In September 2025, it was announced that the university had maintained its top 30 ranking within the UK, according to The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2026. In October 2025, the university was ranked within the top 30 in the world for research quality, according to the Times Higher Education World University Rankings for 2026.

Research

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, 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 Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity – that black holes exist and are common in the universe. It is a founding partner of the £52 million National Space Centre.

Library special collections

Local history collections

The Library has one of the largest local history collections in the country. The main collection contains circa 37,000 items covering all the major counties of England. Much of this material has been collected for the Centre for English Local History since its founding in 1948. In addition, there are several rare book collections and archives:

Hatton Collection. This collection is focused on the early English county histories and works by the antiquarians. Thomas Hatton (1876–1943), a local businessman whose collection of nearly 2,000 books on English local history was donated to the Library of Leicester College in 1920. This was one of the first major donations to the Library.

Chaproniere Collection. Photographic archive of English parish churches organised by geological region. Donated by Donna Chaproniere.

Fairclough Collection. Portrait prints and topographical illustrations of 17th century Britain. Donated by A. B. R. Fairclough in 1970.

Thirsk Collection. Notes and data collected by Joan Thirsk for volumes 4 (1500–1640) and 5 (1640–1750) of The Agrarian History of England and Wales. Thirsk was the editor of these volumes and a research fellow at Leicester in the 1950s.

In recent years, the Library has digitised, and made available online, collections relating to local and urban history, including The Historical Directories of England and Wales and the East Midlands Oral History Archive.

Modern Literary Archives

The library also holds a number of collections of 20th century writers and illustrators:

The Joe Orton Collection. Joe Orton (1933–1967) was a Leicester-born playwright, the collection contains his manuscripts and correspondence.

The Laura Riding Letters. The collected correspondence of the American poet and critic Laura Riding (1901–1991).

The Sue Townsend Collection. The personal papers of Sue Townsend (1946–2014). The collection contains Townsend's literary correspondence and notebooks detailing her works.

Student life

The university has a number of different societies within its students' union. The Union has over 220 different societies.

Student media

The students' union has three student groups producing media: Leicester Student Magazine, Galaxy Radio, and LUST (Leicester University Student Television).

Leicester Student Magazine was founded in 1957, and has previously been known as The Ripple, The Wave & Galaxy Press.

LUST (Leicester University Student Television) was re-founded in 2002 after a period of dormancy. The station is affiliated to the National Student Television Association (NaSTA) and hosted the association's annual awards ceremony in 2008.

Galaxy Radio

Founded in 1996, Galaxy Radio (previously LUSH Radio, LUSH FM) is run and presented exclusively by students and broadcasts a mixture of music, chat and news. Some notable personalities from the early days of the station (LUSH FM at the time) who have gone on to work in the media are Lucy O'Doherty (BBC 6 Music) and Adam Mitchenall (ETV). Niraj Dave hosted a show on LUSH FM from 2007 to 2008 and has worked for Asian Sound Radio and Sunrise Radio, London, two of the largest British Asian radio stations in the country.

Galaxy Radio holds an annual 24-hour charity broadcast. In 2011, £300 was raised for Comic Relief. In 2013 the station held its first '69 Hour Broadcast', which raised over £450 for Comic Relief. For the 2018 fundraiser GR worked with fellow student group Leicester Marrow to raise £1,000 for Anthony Nolan.

Galaxy Radio has broadcast live the annual varsity match against De Montfort University for both football from the King Power Stadium and rugby union from Welford Road Stadium.

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