The university’s foundations lie in University College Nottingham, a constituent college of the University of London set up in 1881, which was then granted its own Royal Charter in 1948. It was the first British university to establish a campus in Malaysia, in 2000, and the first foreign university to open a campus in China, in 2004.
Across the three countries it has more than 8,000 staff, 32,800 undergraduates and 9,500 postgraduates. At its main Nottingham campuses, 23% of students are from overseas, as are a third of academic staff.
The University of Nottingham conducts wide-reaching, world-class research across and between disciplines at all three of its locations. In the most recent assessment of research quality in UK universities 32% of the university’s research was rated world-leading, and a further 49% rated internationally excellent. One example of great research that has had global impact is that of Professor Sir Peter Mansfield, who was awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of magnetic resonance imaging, now used in hospitals worldwide.
