Durham University is a globally outstanding centre of teaching and research based in historic Durham City in the UK.
We are a collegiate university committed to inspiring our people to do outstanding things at Durham and in the world.
We conduct research that improves lives globally and we are ranked as a world top 100 university with an international reputation in research and education (QS World University Rankings 2024).
We are a member of the Russell Group of leading research-intensive UK universities and we are consistently ranked as a top 10 university in national league tables (Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide, Guardian University Guide and The Complete University Guide).
“Can a leopard really change its spots?” “Does everyone deserve a second chance?” “Do perpetrator programmes work?” These are some of the questions we are being asked this week as we release findings from…
When asked in 1977 what he would do now that Elvis was dead, his manager Colonel Parker allegedly replied: “Why, I’ll just go right on managing him!”. In Parker’s mind, neither Elvis’ name, image, likeness…
It’s now ok to step out of line.
Hopscotch via bikeriderlondon/Shutterstock
Academics love games. We can’t resist playing them – but the Research Excellence Framework (REF) is our favourite. As the results of the UK’s 2014 assessment of university research are digested, academics…
Scan it, stamp it, forget about it?
Charles Taylor/shutterstock
Ed Miliband has unveiled his party’s second pledge for the forthcoming general election, promising to “control immigration with fair rules”. The Labour leader promised to strengthen the enforcement of…
Feeding Britain, a new report of the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Hunger and Food Poverty, has been greeted with some fanfare. It details the full extent of the UK’s food poverty crisis and urges…
Measuring progress on tackling the impact of poverty.
Dominic Lipinski/PA Archive
Overcoming educational disadvantage is not easy. Even before they enter the school gates for the first time, a variety of factors including inheritance, social class, parenting style and family income…
I wish … I was born a few months later.
Boy with birthday cake via Ilya Andriyanov/Shutterstock
Is your birthday in June or December? An irrelevant question for most adults, but for children whether they were born in the summer or the winter can have a real impact on how well they perform at school…
Cameron should tend his own garden before criticising the EU.
Joe Giddens/PA Wire
Before the 2010 General Election, David Cameron promised to reduce net migration to “tens of thousands” and not hundreds of thousands. This pledge is in ruins now that net migration has hit levels even…
Evolutionary psychology, the field that uses the process of natural selection to provide a theoretical framework to explain human behaviour, gets in the press a lot. And if there’s one thing that gets…
Still shady after all these years.
Brian A Jackson
A report from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary has revealed that police in England and Wales fail to record in excess of 800,000 crimes a year. That’s one in five offences; over one-quarter of…
If cyber-crime is the tier one (most serious) threat that we are told it is, and we are experiencing upwards of 2-3 million cyber-threats each year, then why have we only had 350 or so prosecutions under…
Bringing education to life.
Students in class via Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock
An article we wrote last week for The Conversation on Seven “great” teaching methods not backed up by evidence prompted a large amount of comment and discussion. One of the main questions has been, ok…
Moving on up: supporters of Call of Tunisia celebrate their victory.
EPA/Mohamed Messara
Looking at the results of the 2014 Tunisian elections, it’s easy to assume that Islamism in the country has been driven to the political periphery. This would be premature. The Islamist party, Ennahda…
We know what doesn’t work.
Teaching via Shutterstock/michaeljung
What makes “great teaching”? It’s a complicated question, made more difficult by trying to measure how teachers make decisions in the classroom and what impact those decisions have on what pupils learn…
Just what British politics needed: a new row over Europe. The revelation that the UK is expected to make a one-off payment of €2.1bn (£1.7bn) towards the European budget by December is probably the last…
‘Trespassers will not be prosecuted’.
Giles Gasper
Bringing together great academic minds and diverse perspectives from different disciplines can transform university research. A recent project at Durham University called “Hearing the Voice” challenges…
An increasingly popular weekend pastime among fans of Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple, Inspector Morse and others, are murder mystery parties at which participants pit their wits against secret killers. But…
We’ve come a long way since Tetris.
PodPad/Shutterstock
The digital game industry is a relative baby in comparison with other entertainment industries. The earliest known examples of digital games were created in the 1950s. Initially created on large university…
Brenda Leyland, a 63-year old woman from Leicestershire who had been accused of publishing a stream of internet abuse about the family of missing child Madeleine McCann, has been found dead in a hotel…
As the House of Commons voted overwhelmingly to take action against Islamic State in Iraq, I was reminded of The Big Lebowski, one of my favourite films. Set in August 1990, the opening scene introduces…