The University of Manchester

About us

Location Manchester, United Kingdom Funding Type Public
No of Students 40490 Establishment University
Founded In 2004 Estimated Cost of Living 9207 GBP
Address Oxford Rd, Manchester M13 9PL, United Kingdom

The University of Manchester is a public research university in Manchester, England, formed in 2004 by the merger of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology and the Victoria University of Manchester. The University of Manchester is a red brick university, a product of the civic university movement of the late 19th century.

The main campus is south of Manchester city centre on Oxford Road. The university owns and operates major cultural assets such as the Manchester Museum, Whitworth Art Gallery, John Rylands Library and Jodrell Bank Observatory—a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In 2016/17, the university had 40,490 students and 10,400 staff, making it the second largest university in the UK (out of 167 including the Open University), and the largest single-site university. The university had a consolidated income of £1 billion in 2017–18, of which £298.7 million was from research grants and contracts (6th place nationally behind Oxford, UCL, Cambridge, Imperial and Edinburgh). It has the fourth-largest endowment of any university in the UK, after the universities of Cambridge, Oxford and Edinburgh. It is a member of the worldwide Universities Research Association, the Russell Group of British research universities and the N8 Group.

In global university league tables, the university was ranked 27th in the QS World University Rankings 2020, 57th in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2019, and 33rd in the Academic Ranking of World Universities 2019, while in national tables it was ranked 15th by the Complete University Guide 2020, 34th by the Guardian University Guide 2020 and joint 19th by the Times/Sunday Times Good University Guide 2019. Manchester was ranked 15th in the UK amongst multi-faculty institutions for the quality (GPA) of its research and 5th for its Research Power in the 2014 Research Excellence Framework.

The University of Manchester has 25 Nobel laureates among its past and present students and staff, the fourth-highest number of any single university in the United Kingdom. Four Nobel laureates are currently among its staff – more than any other British university.

Why?

Our ambition is to be a world-leading university, where researchers produce work of the highest significance and impact. We will be distinguished by our interdisciplinary research, for training outstanding researchers and giving parity of esteem to discovery, application, knowledge transfer and impact. Our research will reflect the ambition, focus and distinctiveness as embodied in the Strategic Vision 2020, whereby we will be celebrated for: the strength and scale of our work across science, engineering, humanities, life and medical sciences; the excellence and breadth of our research, particularly its interdisciplinarity, for training outstanding researchers and giving parity of esteem to discovery, application, knowledge transfer and impact; the diversity and quality of our students and the ability of our graduates to contribute to society; making a difference to the social and environmental well-being of our communities and wider society, including through the quality and accessibility of our cultural institutions; being a truly international institution which is a major contributor to the economic, social and cultural transformation of the Manchester, the North and the country more widely. This document develops and builds on the Research Strategy published in 2011 and is intended to guide an integrated strategy across the institution, driving and coordinating actions at Faculty, School and Institute level. The success of the strategy will depend on changes in the ambitions and behaviour of research groups and individuals. These behaviours are encapsulated in the University’s Statement of Research Expectations for staff which is available here1
.
The strategy is presented under seven headings. The three central pillars are to achieve research of
the highest quality, to support and develop excellent people, and to have an impact beyond
academia which yields economic, social and cultural benefits.
Supporting these are four enabling areas of action, providing focus and capitalising on our critical
mass and interdisciplinary capabilities, providing the right financial, physical and knowledge
resources, meeting the highest standards of research integrity, and ensuring alignment of strategy
at all levels of the University.


Pillars
1 Quality
The University will perform research of the highest quality and continue to raise the level and
ambition of our activities to world leading standards of excellence. In so doing we will take active
steps to ensure that the quality of our research is reflected by leading performance in any measures
of quality that may be applied including international rankings and the Research Excellence
Framework, and by publishing in leading outlets and attracting high levels of citations for the great
majority of our outputs.
2 People
To achieve our goals we must attract, develop and nurture the careers of excellent researchers
and become the location of choice for staff at all career stages. An integrated approach will begin
at postgraduate level where the Manchester Doctoral College will provide outstanding research and
training. Doctoral researchers will be an integral part of our research effort and we must ensure that
this first career step is properly resourced and that their research reaches an internationally
excellent level, notably through the President’s Doctoral Scholar Award Scheme. Support for early
career researchers in post-doctoral or early academic positions will include the mentoring and
support needed to develop independent reputations and we will recruit and invest in the best
independent fellows through a new prestigious University scheme. We will identify potential
research leaders and help them to secure major awards and come to the forefront of their fields.
Finally we will provide an environment that attracts and retains those at the peak of their research
careers.
3 Impact
Our work must have an impact beyond academia and yield economic, social and cultural benefits
whenever the opportunity arises. We will be the partner of choice for business and other external
organisations worldwide through the quality and focus of our research, and the efficiency of our
outward interfaces. We will identify and strengthen our key external relationships and manage
them strategically for the long-term benefit of the research agenda.
Manchester’s heritage, image and population will give our research a distinctive identity, attract
knowledge-based investment to the city and ensure there is a high value legacy from the
Euroscience Open Forum, European City of Science, and other major events.
We will ensure that we identify and communicate widely the substantial body of our work that
addresses societal challenges such as sustainability, energy, security and the ageing society. In this
and other ways research will also contribute to the University’s goal on social responsibility. Our
cultural institutions will also be used to support and distinguish our research. We will seek to bring
to market the intellectual property arising from our work and support student and alumni
enterprises. We will ensure that individuals receive parity of esteem for translational research and
knowledge exchange.

Enabling actions
A Focus and Interdisciplinarity
The critical mass and interdisciplinary scope of the University will be used to secure a position
among world leaders in targeted fields. Building upon existing successes and our five beacons:
Addressing Global Inequalities; Advanced Materials; Cancer; Energy; and Industrial Biotechnology,
we will identify those themes where through key recruitments and investments we can construct a
broad front of excellence. We will work in partnership with international research leaders. At the
same time we will exploit our wide range of capabilities to form new and ground-breaking
interdisciplinary combinations across the full range of subjects. The University of Manchester
Research Institute and its constituent institutes and networks will play an important role in taking
forward this agenda but no internal structure, process or system should be a barrier to
interdisciplinary working.
We will not let success in these themes distract us from the critical importance of investigator-led
research and the freedom and creativity needed to achieve excellence and impact. We will nurture
and support scholarship and fundamental research.
B Resources
To achieve our research ambitions we will draw upon a broad range of financial, physical and
knowledge resources. While seeking to increase our share of research council and UK charitable
sources, we will also diversify to achieve a substantial increase in funding from business, European
and other international sources. This in turn will help us to engage our research more effectively in
the agendas these funders are pursuing. We will strive to provide and make effective use of state-ofthe-art facilities and equipment. Our administrative support will be integrated, using fit-for-purpose
information systems, and ensuring that the needs of our researchers and sponsors are met
comprehensively. Recognising that the time of researchers is a scarce and valuable resource we will
seek to organise commitments to maximise quality time for research and teaching.
C Integrity
The highest standards of research integrity are an essential element of quality. Building on recent
progress, we will further improve our communication and procedures to ensure that research ethics
and all other dimensions of integrity are central to the values of our staff and govern our behaviour.
D Alignment of strategy at all levels
Our research strategy will be based upon mutual commitment and alignment at institution, faculty
and school levels.
The Research Strategy must be coordinated with strategies for the University’s other main goals:
outstanding learning and student experience and social responsibility. A university which is excellent
in research and research impact is far better equipped to meet and exceed the expectations of its
students and wider stakeholders. The success of our research strategy depends on close
coordination with our strategies for business engagement, commercialisation, internationalisation,
estates, human resources and finance.
We will only be able to capitalise on our strengths, including the wide scope of our capabilities both
in terms of expertise and in spanning the spectrum from research to innovation, if we have joined up
strategy with wide buy-in. We also need a joined up approach to implementation. This can in part
be achieved by a more open approach in which up-to-date data on our research, its environment
and its impact are made available to all staff. Increasingly external opportunities require a rapid and
highly coordinated response. While not losing sight of our long term objectives, the changing
environment and the opportunities research creates means that we need regularly to update the
content of this strategy.
Key Performance Indicators
We will aim for 90% of our staff with research in their contracts to be judged as producing
world-leading or internationally excellent research and for our share of the top 10% of cited
papers in their field to be in line with that for the UK’s top 5 institutions.
We will increase our PGR-to-staff ratio to be within the top 5 UK institutions and ensure that
at least 90% of doctoral students complete on time.
We will generate a cumulative £1 billion of economic impact by 2025 from the intellectual
property we generate.
We will seek to double our total research grant and contract income by 2020 from a 2010
baseline, ensuring an increase in both international and business income as a percentage of
total income and an increase in Manchester’s share of UK research grant and contract
income.