Brunel University

Brunel University   (University)
Formation	1966
Headquarters	London, England
Type	Public
Subpage	•Brunel University/Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies
London university

Brunel University London is a public research university located in the Uxbridge area of London, England. It was founded in 1966 and named after the Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. In June 1966, Brunel College of Advanced Technology was awarded a royal charter and became Brunel University. The university is often described as a British plate glass university.

Brunel is organised into three colleges and three major research institutes, a structure adopted in August 2014 which also changed the university's name to Brunel University London. Brunel has over 12,900 students and 2,500 staff, and had a total income of £200.7 million in 2014/15, of which 25% came from grants and research contracts. Brunel has three constituent Academic Colleges: College of Engineering, Design and Physical Sciences, College of Business, Arts and Social Sciences and College of Health and Life Sciences. The university won the Queen's Anniversary Prize in 2011. Brunel is a member of the Association of Commonwealth Universities, the European University Association, and Universities UK. The university is ranked as one of the top 400 universities in the world by QS World University Rankings 2021 and the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2021.

History

Origins

Brunel is one of a number of British universities which were established in the 1960s following the Robbins Report on higher education. It is sometimes described as a "plate glass university". The university's origins lie in Acton Technical College, which was split into two in 1957: Acton Technical College continued to cater for technicians and craftsmen, and the new Brunel College of Technology (named after Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the British engineer) was dedicated to the education of chartered engineers.

The campus buildings were designed in the Brutalist style of architecture by Richard Sheppard, Robson & Partners, Architects.

1966 to present

The royal charter granting university status was awarded on 9 June 1966. The university continued to use both campuses until 1971, when it left the Acton site.

In 1980, the university merged with Shoreditch College of Education, located at Cooper's Hill, Runnymede. This became Brunel's second campus. In 1995, the university expanded again, integrating the West London Institute of Higher Education, and adding campuses in Osterley and Twickenham. This increased the number of courses that Brunel University was able to offer. Traditionally the university's strengths were in engineering, science, technology and social sciences but with the addition of the West London Institute, new departments such as arts, humanities, geography and earth science, health and sports science were added, and the size of the student body increased to over 12,000.

Brunel has been the subject of controversy as its approach to higher education has been both market-driven and politically close to the Conservative Party. The decision to award an honorary degree to Margaret Thatcher in 1996, following the University of Oxford's refusal to do so, provoked an outcry by staff and students, and as a result the ceremony had to be held in the House of Lords instead of on campus. In the late 1990s, the Departments of Physics, Chemistry, and Materials Engineering were all closed, and, in 2004, the then Vice-Chancellor Steven Schwartz, initiated the reorganisation of the university's faculties and departments into schools, and closed the Department of Geography and Earth Sciences. The succeeding Vice-Chancellor, the sociologist Christopher Jenks, took office in 2006. He was followed by Julia Buckingham, previously at Imperial College London, who took up the position of Vice Chancellor at Brunel in 2012.

In June 2011, Brunel University licensed Creative Barcode, an automated idea sharing platform which protects ownership of early stage ideas. The name was changed to Brunel University London by a supplemental charter dated 16 July 2014.

Notable Alumni

• Joyce Anne Anelay, Baroness Anelay of St John's, politician, Minister of State of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office
• Guillaume, Hereditary Grand Duke of Luxembourg, royalty
• John Leech (History and Politics), politician, MP for Manchester Withington
• John McDonnell, politician, Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer
• Ralph Miliband, political theorist
• Ville Skinnari, (LLM), Finnish politician, Minister for Development Cooperation and Foreign Trade
• Reza Moridi, (MTech and PhD in Physics), Canadian politician
• Hamdullah Mohib, (PhD Computer Systems Engineering), Afghan politician and diplomat, Ambassador of Afghanistan to the United States
• Anastasios Papaligouras (Master's in Comparative European Law), Greek politician, former Minister of Justice
• Pekka Sauri (PhD 1990), Finnish psychologist, politician, writer and cartoonist
• Seng Han Thong (MBA 1993), Singaporean politician
• Sarah Dines (Law), Conservative Party politician, MP For Derbyshire Dales (UK Parliament constituency)
• Rosena Allin-Khan (Medical Biochemistry ), Labour Party politician, MP For Tooting (UK Parliament constituency)
• Diana Johnson (Law), Labour Party politician, MP For Kingston upon Hull North (UK Parliament constituency)
• Jenny Chapman (Psychology), Labour Party politician, MP For Darlington (UK Parliament constituency)
• Rudi Vis (PhD Economics), Labour Party politician, MP For Finchley and Golders Green (UK Parliament constituency)
• Alec Shelbrooke (Mechanical Engineering), Conservative Party politician, MP For Elmet and Rothwell (UK Parliament constituency)
• John Tomlinson (Health Services Management), Labour politician and life peer
• Shailesh Vara (Law), Conservative Party politician, MP for North West Cambridgeshire
• Claire Ward (MA Britain and the European Union), Labour politician, former MP for Watford (UK Parliament constituency)
• Marina Yannakoudakis (BSc Government, Politics and Modern History), Conservative Party politician, MEP for London
• Abang Johari Openg, 6th Chief Minister of the State of Sarawak, Malaysia
• Gagan Sikand, Member of Parliament for Mississauga—Streetsville Constituency in Canada

 

Employee on Wikispooks

Employee	Job	Appointed
Richard Sykes (Big Pharma)	Chancellor	2013

 

Alumni on Wikispooks

Person	Born	Nationality	Summary	Description
Takis Arapoglou		Greece	Central banker	Former Chairman and CEO of the National Bank of Greece.
Polona Florijančič			Activist Lawyer	Founding member of "Lawyers for Assange".
John McDonnell	8 September 1951		Politician
Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens	1984	US	Propagandist Neoconservatism
Ali Milani	1995
Marina Yannakoudakis	16 April 1956		Politician	A member of the European Parliament

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