To open the doors of opportunity.
To create a truly inclusive environment, building on our cherished cultural diversity, where students and staff flourish, reach their full potential and are proud to be part of the University. Dedicated to the public good, we will generate new knowledge, challenge existing knowledge, and engage locally, nationally and internationally to create a better world.
We will be inclusive and maintain our proud tradition of nurturing and supporting talented students and staff regardless of their background and circumstances, and continually enhance our strong engagement with our local and global communities.
We are proud of the difference we can all make when we work collectively.
We are ambitious and we will foster innovation and creativity, disrupt conventional thought, and respond with imagination to new opportunities to further our vision, mission and academic ambitions.
We will be collegial and promote a strong collegial community through openness, listening, understanding, co-operation and co-creation, ensuring focused delivery of our collective vision and strategy.
We will act with the highest ethical standards, and with integrity, in all that we do.
Saving lives Trauma science Queen Mary’s Centre for Trauma Sciences is a world-leading centre of excellence for translational trauma research. Our research has underpinned significant reductions in trauma deaths.
It is an honour and a privilege to be the Chair of the Council of this extraordinary University.
I began this role in September 2017 and was immediately struck by both the differences and similarities between Queen Mary and other Russell Group universities. Queen Mary has world-leading research across wide-ranging disciplines, but we should be much more ambitious about highlighting them. The University also has extraordinary student demographics. More than 90% of our home students come from state schools, with 40% of our home students being the first in their family to go to university. In addition, there are over 160 nationalities represented on the University’s London campuses. Queen Mary’s student population is a wonderfully diverse mix, where people who grew up around the corner exchange ideas in corridors with those from the other side of the world. Our students need to be nurtured and developed. Student support in all its forms is critical for all students, but particularly for those who are a long way from home, have overcome significant obstacles to get to university or have many other competing priorities in their lives, such as caring responsibilities. There are also the joys – and challenges – of educating a diverse group of students. It is surely more rewarding than teaching a more uniform group but it requires different techniques, and an ongoing commitment to the development of excellent education and student support by the University.
Never has it been more true that the only constant, for the higher education sector, is change. It is impossible to predict what will happen over the course of the next few years in the sector, or to accurately predict the labour market for which we are preparing our students. Looking beyond higher education we also do not know whether the current economic and political turmoil in countries across the globe, including our own, will spiral or settle. We do know, however, that students preparing for university are evermore savvy and socially conscious. They understand the importance of a well-rounded education, lifelong learning, adaptability and personal resilience. As a society, we are continuing to battle the ingrained issues of the economic divide, to ensure that everyone has the chance to fulfil their potential, irrespective of their background.
I am confident this strategy will deliver: for Queen Mary, for its communities, and for society. It is a bold strategy, which builds on the University’s strengths – its fabulous communities. It is built on firm foundations and a continual commitment to excellence, to furrowing the University’s own path, and to financial sustainability. I commend to you Queen Mary’s Strategy 2019 – 2030.
Improving lives Transforming lives through the arts.People’s Palace Projects (PPP) is an independent arts charity founded in 1996 by Professor Paul Heritage of Queen Mary’s School of English and Drama. PPP brings artists, activists, academics and audiences together for projects that address a wide range of social justice and human rights issues. An example People Palace Project is ‘With One Voice’: a choir formed by people with experience of homelessness in Brazil. In this picture the choir is performing on the stairs of the Municipal Theatre Rio, as part of Rio 2016 Cultural Olympiad. Photo by Lorena Mossa
Queen Mary has a long, proud and distinctive history built on four historic institutions stretching back to 1785 and beyond. Our founding institutions are the London Hospital Medical College, St Bartholomew’s Medical College, Westfield College and Queen Mary College.
The vision of our founders, for each institution, was to provide ‘hope and opportunity’ for the less privileged population in East London and the suburbs of the City of London. These four, historic institutions now make up Queen Mary University of London, a global University committed to improving lives locally, nationally and internationally.
Today, Queen Mary is unique. True to our founders’ vision, we continue to open the doors of opportunity by seamlessly combining world-leading strengths in both education and research. We have an impressive and well-deserved reputation for attracting national and international students from all backgrounds, whilst retaining a deep and enduring engagement with our local community. Our potential to address some of society’s long-standing, and frustrating, issues with social mobility is unrivalled. We offer a Russell Group research-led education and attract local, national and international students from diverse backgrounds, actively seeking out and recruiting students from backgrounds currently under-represented at universities like ours.
Our strategy is based on our two main core areas of activity: education and the student experience, and research and innovation. Global and public engagement, shaping policy, economic and societal impact, entrepreneurship and developing partnerships are embedded in all our activities.
Our students deserve an outstanding education, coupled with tailored personal support. At Queen Mary, we co-create our pedagogical approach with our students to deliver a gold-standard education. Our wrap-around student support ensures our students are able to fulfil their potential and get the most from their studies and experiences. See ‘Education and Student Experience’ for more about this part of our strategy.
We have research strengths across wide-ranging disciplines: true, world-leading highlights. Areas such as Law, Medicine, Dentistry, Linguistics, English, History, Drama, Engineering and Life Sciences are nationally and internationally leading. The quality of our research speaks for itself. Through this strategy we will significantly build the quantity and capacity of our research, whilst maintaining our world-leading quality, through supporting our scholars at all stages of their careers. Through the creation of interdisciplinary University Research Institutes, Centres and Networks, we will build opportunities for scholars from different disciplines to work together to address the major challenges facing society. Our University Institutes will be vibrant hubs, both physical and virtual, in areas that align with our strengths and societal challenges including Global Health and Inequalities, Digital Environment, Ethics and Governance and Creative Industries. These will be underpinned by world-leading University Centres of Excellence and University Networks. All University Institutes, Centres and Networks will be continually reviewed and refreshed to ensure that they align with our core strengths and allow new and focused areas to develop in a creative and responsive way. See ‘Research and Innovation’ for more about this part of our strategy.
There is no doubt we are living in interesting times. The turbulence in the national and international sector, and in politics and economies, across the world, is unprecedented. Personally, I doubt this will settle down. Our contribution as a university will always remain the same, irrespective of external pressures. We will remain true to our vision of opening the doors of opportunity through our education and research. We will continue to expand the boundaries of knowledge through our research, to help tackle inequalities and other global challenges facing society. We will also build on our success of attracting students from traditionally under-represented groups and ensure we serve them well.
By the end of the term of this strategy we will be the most inclusive research-intensive university in the world.
We will prepare our graduates to take their place in an ever-changing world as the next generation of leaders in their chosen fields.
We are already a global university, with footprints in Paris, Malta, Athens and Singapore, and significant transnational education in China. Our staff collaborate all over the world, and the impact of our research is felt across the world. We have a strong sense of place in East London, which is combined with a global outlook and a full understanding that we must prepare our students to be global citizens. Over the course of this strategy we will further develop the global Queen Mary family and footprint. We will continue to build strategic partnerships with the very best universities and businesses overseas, further developing global policy relationships and expand and bring greater coherence to our physical and virtual international footprint. We will ensure our alumni retain a close connection with their University throughout their lives, and enable them to be our advocates and ambassadors as well as giving them the opportunity to contribute to the future development of Queen Mary.
The heart of this strategy is the Queen Mary community: our students, staff and alumni. We will support, develop and nurture our people so that they can be the best they can be. We want our staff and students to be entrepreneurial, and we will support them to realise their ambitions and dreams. We will embrace a culture of creativity and innovation and support our staff and students to take risks, within a managed framework. We will build resilience with our communities to understand that sometimes ideas and projects will fail, and it is how we deal with and move on from failure that sets us apart.
We are incredibly proud of, and cherish, the diversity and quality of our student and our staff communities. We know from experience that diversity is a potent catalyst for ground-breaking ideas: in conversations in corridors snatched between lectures; when science and the humanities work together; and between students who grew up round the corner and those from the other side of the world. We will continue to embrace and enhance this diversity of thought and opinion in everything we do in the firm belief that when different views collide, disciplines interact, and perspectives intersect, truly original thought takes place.
Writing award-winning lives Professor Julian Jackson, Head of Queen Mary’s School of History, won the Duff Cooper Prize for his biography of Charles De Gaulle, A Certain Idea of France: The Life of Charles De Gaulle.Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970), French President, inspecting the Chelsea Pensioners in London during a state visit to Great Britain, April 1960.
We will deliver an outstanding, inclusive, world-class education and student experience, co-created with our diverse student body, enhanced by our world-leading research and latest technological developments.
The potential and adaptability of Queen Mary students is unnerving. We attract some of the brightest and best students from across the world and from all walks of life. Our students themselves do not always realise just how far they can go and how high they can aim. All our students bring their own unique premium of talent to get into Queen Mary. We will ensure that premium is embellished at our University and translated into greater attainment and opportunities.
In some cases, our students do not have the networks and in-built confidence to enable them to aspire to the careers they deserve. In addition, they do not always have the support they need to manage the many conflicting demands of their lives whilst at university. It is our responsibility to provide that support, tailored to each and every student, to ensure that they can reach their full potential. To realise this ambition this core area of our strategy is delivered through our education and student experience principles, supported by four pillars of excellence outlined below.
The education and student experience principles informing this strategy are to:
Our four pillars of education and student experience excellence that inform this strategy are:
The four pillars of excellence are presented below:
The education we provide is led by world-class academics: our students are taught by the people who wrote the textbooks. Our strategy builds on existing excellence to ensure that students are co-creators in their education and the learning environment. Our teachers are equipped to meet the needs of diverse learners, and can support students to achieve their full potential and be leaders in their chosen fields. We will ensure:
We will continually develop new approaches to support students in their learning and make sure they have a clear voice in the development of the University, working closely with Queen Mary Students’ Union. We will ensure that:
We will ensure our students are supported in obtaining the careers to which they aspire. We will provide:
Providing a world-class digital and physical learning environment for students is crucial for their success. At Queen Mary, students are partners in the development of their environment. To ensure we keep pace with and predict their future needs we will:
Searching for life Proxima b.Dr Guillem Anglada-Escude, Reader in Astronomy from Queen Mary’s School of Physics and Astronomy, led the team that discovered the new planet, Proxima b. Dr Anglada-Escude was named one of TIME Magazine’s 100 world’s most influential people in 2017.
We will be recognised for our distinctive, world-leading, curiosity-driven and applied research, and will continually build our research capacity for social, cultural and economic impact. Creating communities of diverse scholars across the globe is at the heart of our approach.
Leading research to cure haemophilia; a revolutionary new political theory; the latest advances to underpin the treatment of cancer and heart disease; pioneering developments in artificial intelligence; an acclaimed biographyof one of the 20th century’s greatest leaders. These are just some of the many recent outputs of research at Queen Mary. The quality of our research and impact is recognised all over the world. We will build upon our success, specifically by significantly increasing capacity in key focused areas and bringing research excellence together with real impact at all times. In keeping with our ethos, we attract scholars from all over the world and will create more opportunities for them to work together and make sure we are supporting and nurturing them at all stages of their careers.
Entrepreneurship, innovation and engagement are an embedded part of our research culture. We will maintain our commitment to achieving impact and involving end users, patients, policy-makers and the public in the research we do. This core area of our strategy is delivered through our research and innovation principles supported by three pillars of excellence shown below.
Our three pillars of research excellence that inform this strategy are:
The three pillars of excellence are presented below:
To support our researchers at every stage of their careers we will:
To achieve excellence in research outputs and impact we will:
Understanding life Rewriting the bumblebee rule book.Professor Lars Chittka, from Queen Mary’s School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, is a world-leading expert in explaining the behaviour of bees and how they shape our lives.
This strategy will be supported by detailed enabling plans, which will be regularly updated, covering:
We will measure our progress via Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) under the following headings:
We will also monitor these enablers of our Strategy:
We will ensure that we remain financially sustainable in all that we do.
Given the challenging turbulent funding landscape we must ensure that our University’s finances are carefully managed and that our appetite for risk is appropriate to the environment in which we are working. We must continue to invest in the development of our staff and our infrastructure.
As a campus university in London, we have a costly estate and a need to invest in our physical and digital infrastructure to keep pace with and where possible outstrip the expectations of our students and scholars. These investments are carefully planned out over the next 10 years. This will include the development of new buildings, refurbishment and significant maintenance on each of our five London campuses, investment in IT infrastructure, investment in equipment, and investment and expansion of our residential footprint.
We are committed to working with alumni and friends of Queen Mary to help us achieve our ambitions and diversify our income streams. We will expand the use of our estate and make sure our facilities are fully utilised and our campuses vibrant in the evenings and at weekends. Where possible, we will ensure that our campuses and facilities are open to and used by the public. We will also find further efficiencies in the way we run our University, ensure our administration is lean and agile, and make best use of cutting-edge technology to underpin all the work of the University.
Our finances are overseen by our Finance and Investment Sub Committee, which reports to our Executive and to our Council Committees.
Artificial life Robotics and Artificial Intelligence (AI)World-leading robotics and AI research and innovation at Queen Mary spans areas including human-machine interaction, design and materials and perception. We host a Doctoral Training Centre in Artificial Intelligence and Music, which focuses on music understanding, intelligent instruments and interfaces, and computational creativity, guided by real application needs from digital music partners across the world.
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Actual Experience plc was founded in 2009 following a decade of research by Queen Mary academic Professor Jonathan Pitts. Actual’s unique approach to analysing a digital service enables organisations to fix and relentlessly improve their digital business. Actual Experience provides analytics-as-a-service to some of the world’s largest service providers (including Verizon, Vodafone and Accenture), and its research for Ofcom has directly influenced UK government policy regarding the Universal Service Obligation for broadband. The company is listed on the London Stock Exchange (ACT) and now employs more than 80 people.
A PDF of the Queen Mary University of London Strategy 2030 document is available to download below:
Queen Mary University of London Strategy 2030 document [PDF 17,616KB]