City, University of London is committed to research excellence, focused on business, practice and the professions. We leverage a deep understanding of practice and partnership to ensure our work is relevant. We think hard about practical problems and find meaningful solutions. We are comfortable with edgy, risky, and long-term work. We eschew easy answers.

At City, we are making a real difference to people’s lives and contributing to the global good of society. Our researchers are working to improve health and wellbeing, achieve social justice, protect minorities’ rights, tackle climate change, reform food supply chains, prevent violence, shape human culture, and provide innovative engineering solutions for industries among other issues. Our challenge-led and curiosity-driven research is conducted to the highest standards of quality and integrity, allowing us to support and improve lives across the world.

Since 2014, we have invested £200 million in our resources and facilities, doubled the proportion of academic staff undertaking world-leading or internationally excellent research, doubled our research grant income, and increased the number of PhDs awarded by 75 per cent. We secure external income from the full range of UK funding bodies and the European Commission, as well as receiving direct funding from industry to build capacity and to help drive our cutting-edge research agendas.

In 2016 City joined the University of London, a federation of independent member institutions of outstanding global reputation, further confirming our position in the sector.

Our research culture

We aim to create a collaborative and inclusive environment where students and staff flourish, reach their full potential and feel proud to be part of City. We demonstrate this commitment through our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy, which sets out how we will achieve real and lasting progress for inclusive excellence, research integrity and staff wellbeing.

We use Advance HE’s Athena SWAN Charter to progress gender equality across City and on a School level, where it is built into strategies to support all staff and students. We are committed to the Race Equality Charter and aim to improve the representation, progression and success of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic staff and students. Although we have made significant progress on equality and diversity, we understand that true equity is constant work-in-progress. Our ambition is to continue to work closely with our researchers and external communities so that protected characteristics are not a barrier to undertaking high-quality research.

Our Doctoral College works closely with our academic Schools to meet the personal and professional needs of our community of doctoral researchers, supporting their research journey and helping them develop their careers.

City is a signatory of the UK Concordat to Support Research Integrity and is committed to maintaining the highest standards of rigour and integrity in all aspects of research. City’s Research Ethics Committees oversee all aspects of the ethics of research involving human participants and personal data carried out in the institution by its Schools, staff or students.

Our research centres

City has dynamic research centres bringing talented colleagues together to pursue cutting-edge research agendas that are not reflected within the standard university structures. We have invested more than £3 million in interdisciplinary research centres to explore key issues across disciplines, departments and Schools, and to work closely with external partners. Merging theories and methodologies, our centres are home to innovative projects that deliver immediate and long-term benefits to society through their research.

You can read more about the work of our centres here.