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Birkbeck, University of London, formerly known as Birkbeck College, is a research university located in London, England, and a proud member of the University of London. Established in 1823 as the London Mechanics’ Institute by Sir George Birkbeck and his supporters including Jeremy Bentham, J.C. Hobhouse, and Henry Brougham Birkbeck is one of the UK’s few universities specializing in evening higher education.

Birkbeck’s headquarters are located in Bloomsbury, in the London Borough of Camden in Central London. Birkbeck offers over 200 undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. Birkbeck’s academic program is organized into five departments which are divided into 19 departments. The university is a member of academic institutions such as the Association of Commonwealth Universities and the European University Association. The University is also a member of the Screen Studies Group, London. The University’s School of Brain Function and Development was awarded the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for brain research in 2005.

Birkbeck graduates, and past and present staff include five Nobel laureates, many political leaders, members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom and British prime ministers.

History

Sir George Birkbeck, founder of Birkbeck, University of London

Part of the grounds of Birkbeck School in Bloomsbury, showing the main entrance (right).
In 1823, Sir George Birkbeck, a physician and graduate of the University of Edinburgh and the first pioneer of adult education, founded the “London Mechanics’ Institute” at a meeting at the Crown and Anchor Tavern on the Strand. More than two thousand people attended.[6] However, this view was not universally popular and some accused Birkbeck of “scattering the seeds of evil”.[7]

In 1825, two years later, the school moved to Southampton Buildings in Chancery Lane. In 1830, the first female students were admitted. In 1858, a change in the structure of the University of London opened up the possibility of taking examinations for its degrees. The school became a major provider of undergraduate education for a while.[6]

In 1866, the Institute changed its name to the Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institution.[6]

In 1885, Birkbeck moved to the Breams Building, in Fetter Lane, where it would remain for the next sixty-seven years.[6]

In 1904, the Birkbeck Students’ Union was formed.

Birkbeck School

In 1907, the name of Birkbeck was shortened to “Birkbeck College”. In 1913, a review of the University of London (revised in 1900) strongly recommended that Birkbeck become a constituent college, although the outbreak of the First World War delayed this until 1920.[6] Royal Charter was granted in 1926.[8]

In 1921, the college’s first female professor, Dame Helen Gwynne-Vaughan, began teaching horticulture.[7] Other prominent faculty during the war years include Nikolaus Pevsner, J.D. Bernal, and Cyril Joad.

During the Second World War, Birkbeck was the only Central University of London college that did not move to the capital. In 1941, the library suffered a direct hit during the Blitz but classes continued. During the war the university organized an extramural luncheon with public speeches given by, among others, Joad, Pevsner and Harold Nicolson.

In 1952, the college moved to its present location on Malet Street.[6]

Current position

In 2002, the university was renamed Birkbeck, University of London, removing the word College from its preferred name, but Birkbeck College, University of London remains the full legal name.[9] In 2003, following a major development, the Chancellor of the University of London, The Princess Royal opened her Malet Street home.

In 2006, Birkbeck announced that the Council’s Higher Education Funding Fund had given it £5 million to expand its provision in east London, working with the University of East London. The partnership was established on 21 November 2006 and was named Birkbeck Stratford.

Birkbeck is the largest college in the University of London not to award its own degree. Although it has been able to award its own degrees since 2012, Birkbeck has chosen to keep these on the safe side, preferring to award degrees from the University of London. It also offers many continuing education courses leading to certificates and diplomas, foundation degrees, and short courses.

At the end of October 2022, the University and College published a newsletter in which it announced that Birkbeck plans to reduce its staff significantly due to a multi-million pound deficit, in a restructuring that could lead to forced redundancies. In the same release, it was revealed that the local UCU branch had passed a motion of no confidence in the senior leadership. Protests took place at the university in November 2022 on the proposed job cuts.

In 2022 Birkbeck, a history of the University, was published by Oxford University Press to mark its 200th anniversary.

The original entrance to Birkbeck College; The new door is on the other side of this building.
A school of continuing education
In 1876, the London Society for the Extension of University Education was founded, promoting the goal of encouraging working people to pursue higher education. In 1988, the Department of Extra-Mural Studies of the University of London was incorporated in Birkbeck, becoming the first Center for Extramural Studies. In 1903, it became the Faculty of Extra-Mural Studies of the University of London and was incorporated into Birkbeck in 1988 as a School of Continuing Education. In 2009, a lifelong learning department was added to the college’s campus.

School and location

Inside the new school.

Birkbeck College Hotel
Birkbeck is located between Malet Street and Woburn Square in Bloomsbury, with a number of schools, teaching hospitals and scientific laboratories on the road nearby. The School of Arts, including the Department of English & Humanities, is located in Virginia Woolf’s former Gordon Square residence in Bloomsbury. Another popular type Residents of this building include John Maynard Keynes, Vanessa Bell, and Lydia Lopokova. Gordon Square House includes Birkbeck’s theatre and the Peltz Gallery.

Many Birkbeck classes are taught elsewhere in the Bloomsbury area, due to a combination of Birkbeck’s expanding plans to make higher education accessible and because almost All classes on the same day at the same time, resulting in fierce competition for limited space. .

Birkbeck extends to east London, with links to the University of East London. This work is known as Birkbeck Stratford. The school officially opened in November 2013.

Penoyre Prasad renovated the building on Euston Road to be occupied by Birkbeck in 2021.

In 2021, it was announced that Birkbeck would lease Student Central. After renovations, the building opened during the 2022–23 academic year.

Academic Profile

Research and teaching

The Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities (BIR) was established in 2004, with the renowned and provocative Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek serving as its international director. According to its website, the Institute aims to address significant social issues of our time through a range of open debates, lectures, seminars, and conferences. It also strives to enhance interdisciplinary research and foster collaboration among scholars from diverse fields. The Institute’s launch sparked controversy, inspiring an article in The Observer titled “What have intellectuals done for the world?” which criticized the perceived diminished influence and relevance of intellectuals in society. The current director of the Institute is Costas Douzinas. In the same year, Birkbeck expanded its research and teaching activities by partnering with the Institute of Education to establish the London Knowledge Lab. This interdisciplinary center unites social scientists and computer scientists to explore research questions at the intersection of technology and learning.

Meanwhile, the graduate school of the London Consortium—a collaboration between Birkbeck, Tate Galleries, Institute of Contemporary Arts, Architectural Association, and until 1999, the British Film Institute—has been operating since the mid-1990s, offering Master’s and doctoral degrees in interdisciplinary humanities and cultural studies. These programs are jointly resourced and taught by all partners. Its permanent faculty and contributors have included notable figures such as Tom McCarthy, Colin MacCabe, Laura Mulvey, Steven Connor, Marina Warner, Juliet Mitchell, Stuart Hall, Roger Scruton, Salman Rushdie, Tilda Swinton, and Slavoj Žižek. The current chair is Anthony Julius.

Torrington Square and Birkbeck’s Clore Management Center (right)
Since 2003, when David Latchman of UCL became the Master of Birkbeck, he has established a close relationship between these two colleges of the University of London, and manages the faculty in both. Collaborative research centers include the UCL/Birkbeck Institute for Earth and Planetary Sciences, the UCL/Birkbeck/IoE Center for Educational Neuroscience, the UCL/Birkbeck Institute of Structural and Molecular Biology, and the Birkbeck-UCL Center for Neuroimaging.[citation needed]

Scientific research at Birkbeck has an outstanding tradition. Physicist David Bohm who made a famous contribution to the theory of Quantum mechanics was professor of Theoretical Physics from 1961 to 1987, Nobel Laureates Aaron Klug in the Department of crystallography, Derek Barton in the Department of Chemistry along with the famous physicist Roger Penrose and David Bohm and Department of Physics. Computer scientist Kathleen Booth wrote the first programming language. Birkbeck is part of the Institute of Structural Molecular Biology, which includes the Bloomsbury Center for Structural Biology, which was established in 1998. This is a joint venture between Birkbeck College and University College London and is a leading academic institution for interpreting molecular biology. heredity and determination of protein structure. and work. It also includes the Bloomsbury Center for Bioinformatics, a joint venture between Birkbeck College and University College London for research into Bioinformatics, Genomics, Systems Biology, Grid computing and Text Mining.

Birkbeck ranked 13th in The Guardian’s 2001 Student Assessment Exercise and 26th in the Times Higher Education’s equivalent table. In the 2008 RAE results, Birkbeck placed in the top 25% of UK multi-faculty Higher Education Institutions. The RAE evaluates research across various subjects at 159 UK Higher Education Institutions. Birkbeck’s submissions in Earth Sciences, Psychology, History, Classics and Archaeology, and History of Art, Film and Visual Media were among the top five nationally. In REF2014, half of Birkbeck’s entries ranked in the top 20 nationally, with eight entries receiving a 100% rating for research environment. Seventy-three percent of Birkbeck’s research was rated as ‘world-leading’ (4) or ‘internationally excellent’ (3). In the 2021 REF exercise, Birkbeck excelled across disciplines, achieving outstanding results in English Language & Literature, where it ranked second nationally, and in Art and Design, where it placed fourth in the country.

Quality
National level
Perfect (2025)[31] N/A
The Guardian (2024)[32] N/A
Time / Sunday Times (2024) [33] N/A
Global level
ARWU (2024) [34] 801–900
QS (2025) [35] 408=
NOTES (2024) [36] 301–350

Friends house
Birkbeck’s Center for Brain Function and Development won the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for brain research in 2005. In 2010, Birkbeck was shortlisted for the Times Higher Education University of the Year award.[37]

In 2021, the Times Higher Education World University Ranking ranked Birkbeck 95th in the world for Psychology. The university is always ranked in the top 100 in the world by the QS World University Rankings for English Language & Literature and Philosophy.[38] Internationally, Birkbeck is ranked among the top 350 universities in the world by the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2020 and the QS World University Rankings 2020.

In 2018, Birkbeck announced that he would leave the UK university ranks because the system unfairly penalizes him, since “despite having extensive teaching and research, the again caused by his unique teaching style and lack of connection with his performance causing him to go down in rank” [39]

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