A leading research-intensive university, the University of Birmingham is a vibrant, global community and an internationally-renowned institution, in the top 20 in the UK and 100 globally. With approximately 28,000 students and 6,000 members of staff, its work brings people from more than 150 countries to Birmingham.
The University of Birmingham has been challenging and developing great minds for more than a century. Characterised by a tradition of innovation, research at Birmingham has broken new ground, pushed forward the boundaries of knowledge and made an impact on people’s lives.
We continue this tradition today and have ambitions for a future that will embed our work and recognition of the Birmingham name on the international stage.
Universities are never complete. They develop as new challenges and opportunities occur. At the University of Birmingham we innovate, we push the frontiers of understanding; we ask new research questions, we turn theory through experiment into practice – because that’s what great universities do.
Crimeans have voted by a huge margin to secede from Ukraine. According to early reports released after 50% of the ballots had been counted more than 95% of votes were in favour of joining Russia. EU foreign…
The media are always fascinated by medical “breakthrough” stories: tales of hope that scientists have found cures for our most threatening diseases and tales of woe that our lifestyles are doing us harm…
Antarctica’s ozone hole has just got four new sources.
PD-USGOV-NASA
Scientists at the University of East Anglia have discovered new man-made gases that are contributing to the depletion of the Earth’s ozone layer. Three new Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which act to destroy…
Vladimir Putin, Dimitry Medvedev and sports minister Vitaly Mutko oozing cool in Sochi.
EPA/Mikhail Klimentiev/Ria Novosti
The founding fathers of the Paralympics must be turning in their graves. The Sochi Paralympics is the latest in a long list of sporting events to be marred by politics. The 1980 Olympics in the then USSR…
Foreign owned firms could be next on the menu.
Misha Japaridze/AP
With the Crimean parliament voting to join Russia, and EU leaders discussing potential sanctions, the Ukrainian crisis continues to escalate. But what if Russia’s next seizure wasn’t further territory…
Since the 1970s, economic orthodoxy has suggested that inequality might be the price worth paying for economic growth. Following a new report from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the evidence is…
The UK doesn’t yet have the infrastructure for fracking.
Green Energy Futures
If fracking is to be a viable option for energy production, the industry must find a way to deal with the naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM) that are released as a byproduct of the process…
The situation in Ukraine is still highly volatile, especially in relation to Crimea and continuing uncertainty about Russia’s intentions. But there is a need to consider what a longer-term solution might…
It is increasingly difficult to predict what the future holds for Ukraine. One scenario sees the country becoming divided along roughly ethnic lines, with an ethnic Ukrainian western state and a more Russia-oriented…
GCHQ has been making friends online. Shame it didn’t tell them.
Magic Madzik
News that government intelligence agency GCHQ has been intercepting and storing webcam images from 1.8 million users of Yahoo’s chat service under the codename Optic Nerve is a reminder of how close we…
Hands off: a protester confronts Russian troops in Balaklava.
AP Photo/Andrew Lubimov
After days of heightening tensions and increasingly aggressive rhetoric, Russian president Vladimir Putin requested, and was promptly granted, authorisation to deploy Russian troops in Ukraine until the…
When is an occupation not an occupation?
Artur Shvarts/EPA
As events in Crimea escalate and become a focal point in the broader struggle within Ukraine, between Ukraine and Russia, and between Russia and the West, one key question is about Russia’s larger game…
Oxfam has announced the latest set of results from its Behind the Brands project to influence ten leading food and beverage companies to reform their supply chains. The charity’s efforts are only the most…
Barriers erected and loyalties made clear.
Anton Pedko/EPA
These are dangerous times in Crimea. While the ongoing crisis in Ukraine has exposed the division between the country’s pro-Western and pro-Russian populations, another divide is more clear-cut and arguably…
Harriet Harman and Patricia Hewitt in the good (or bad) old days.
PA
The Daily Mail has been exploring the relationship between the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL, now known as Liberty) and the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) in the 1970s, and has embroiled…
Hospitals where nurses are qualified to bachelor’s degree level and have lower patient-to-nurse ratios have lower mortality rates. In a cross-European study published in The Lancet, researchers found every…
It was just last Friday that the Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych and three leaders of the parliamentary opposition – Vitaliy Klichko, Oleh Tyahnibok, and Arsenij Yatseniuk – signed an agreement…
Four years after mass protests, dreams of going to uni are dropping.
Tim Ireland/PA Archive/Press Association Images
It was clear that recent fundamental changes to the way we pay for university in England would have longstanding ramifications for young people’s plans for their future. Two years into the new fee regime…
The work of the Greek polymath Plato has kept millions of people busy for millennia. A few among them have been mathematicians who have obsessed about Platonic solids, a class of geometric forms that are…
Superheated plasma inside the tokamak reactor, a split second before a fusion reaction.
Scott Silburn/James Harrison/Alex Meakins
Paul Norman, University of Birmingham and Lee Packer, Culham Centre for Fusion Energy
The latest results from the National Ignition Facility in the US represent the passing of a nuclear fusion power milestone and come after a year of significant progress at projects in France and the UK…
Professor of International Migration and Forced Displacement and Director of the Institute for Research into International Migration and Superdiversity, University of Birmingham