RAE 2008 Results

Research receives international respect and financial reward

In 2009, the University was awarded almost £2 million in recognition of our research excellence. This was a testament to our hard working staff, and a mark of the University’s constant drive for discovery and innovation.

The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) announced the funding allocation for UK universities, which included a 1,290% increase for Wolverhampton’s Quality Research (QR).

The QR allocation of £1.905 million for Wolverhampton was the highest amount for a new university in the West Midlands and followed the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), a peer review exercise to evaluate the quality of research in UK higher education institutions.

Wolverhampton had elements of research rated as four-star, equivalent to the best in the world, and staff were delighted that this was recognised in the funding allocation.

Professor Caroline Gipps, Vice-Chancellor, said: “The funding announcement was a fitting reward for our dedicated staff.

“We were extremely pleased with our RAE performance, and the funding allocation showed research excellence had been given the recognition it deserves.

“Our research has an important role to play in the economic future and regeneration of the region. We have developed dedicated institutes and centres that work with industry and commerce as well as producing first-class research outputs.

“We have linked our research and knowledge transfer strategies and re-invested our commercial earnings in our research activities."

The RAE 2008 confirmed the University of Wolverhampton had research ranked as "world-leading" - the highest accolade - for a percentage of work in eight of the areas submitted. All 11 units of assessment had work deemed to be "internationally-recognised" - the second highest grade.

Particular research strengths at Wolverhampton include Library and Information Management (ie advanced analysis of web content and traffic), Computational Linguistics (ie natural language processing, advanced computer language analysis etc) and Art and Design, and Built Environment.