University of Huddersfield

The University of Huddersfield (informally Huddersfield University) is a public research university located in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, England. It has been a University since 1992, but has its origins in a series of institutions dating back to the 19th century. It has made teaching quality a particular focus of its activities, winning the inaugural Higher Education Academy Global Teaching Excellence Award, and achieving a Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) Gold Award, both in 2017. It has consistently been ranked among the leading universities in England for the proportion of its staff with a teaching qualification, and in 2022 was at the top with 94%. The University has also put an increasing focus on research quality, and as of 2022 more than three quarters of its academic staff hold a doctorate, the third highest rate in England. Its chancellor George W. Buckley, a graduate of the university and a former boss of 3M, was appointed in 2020. The present University of Huddersfield can trace its history back through several predecessor institutions. In 1825 there was an attempt to set up a Scientific and Mechanics Institution in the town. Supported by a group of donors, its patron was leading Whig and large local landowner Sir John Ramsden. Its aims were to instruct local mechanics and tradesmen in scientific principles relating to their work, through lectures and a circulation library, which by 1827 contained over 700 volumes. The financial crisis of 1825–1826 led to the failure of the institution’s bankers, and it faltered and later became part of the Huddersfield Philosophical Society, an organisation with which its rules now more closely aligned. Some 19th-century students earned qualifications as external students of the University of London. The history of the university is usually traced to 1841. It was in that year that five young men who were employed by local industrialist Frederic Schwann, who had been born in Frankfurt, approached their employer for support in establishing a new subscription library and some elementary educational classes, ‘to supply in some cases the deficiency of early instruction, and to procure for others the means of further improvement’.