Queen's University Belfast

Queen's University Belfast   (University)
Abbreviation	QUB
Motto	Pro tanto quid retribuamus
Formation	1845
Type	Public research university
Other name	QUB
Northern Ireland university

Queen's University Belfast is a public research university in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The university received its charter in 1845 as "Queen's College, Belfast" and opened four years later.

Queen's offers academic degrees at various levels, with approximately 300 degree programmes available. The current (2021) president and vice-chancellor is Ian Greer. The annual income of the institution for 2019–20 was £400 million of which £88.7 million was from research grants and contracts, with an expenditure of £372.7 million.

History

Queen's University Belfast has roots in the Belfast Academical Institution, which was founded in 1810 and which remains as the Royal Belfast Academical Institution. The present university was first chartered as "Queen's College, Belfast" in 1845, when it was associated with the simultaneously founded Queen's College, Cork, and Queen's College, Galway, as part of the Queen's University of Ireland – founded to encourage higher education for Catholics and Presbyterians, as a counterpart to Trinity College, Dublin, then an almost exclusively Anglican institution. Queen's College, Belfast, opened in 1849.

At its opening, it had 23 professors and 195 students. Some early students at Queen's University Belfast took University of London examinations.

The Irish Universities Act, 1908 dissolved the Royal University of Ireland, which had replaced the Queen's University of Ireland in 1879, and created two separate universities: the current National University of Ireland and Queen's University of Belfast.

Parliamentary representation

The university was one of only eight United Kingdom universities to hold a parliamentary seat in the House of Commons at Westminster until such representation was abolished in 1950. The university was also represented in the Parliament of Northern Ireland from 1920 to 1968, when graduates elected four members.

Notable alumni and academics

Queen's has a large number of famous alumni, including former president of Ireland Mary McAleese; Nobel Prize winners poet Seamus Heaney and politician Lord Trimble; former Prime Minister of Northern Ireland Lord Faulkner of Downpatrick; Lords Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, Lord Hutton and Lord Kerr of Tonaghmore, justice of The Supreme Court of United Kingdom; former Speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly Lord Alderdice and former and current Northern Ireland ministers Sir Reg Empey, Mark Durkan, Nigel Dodds and Conor Murphy, and former Irish Free State minister and prominent Sinn Féin member Eoin MacNeill. Irish Ambassador to Nigeria Sean Hoy graduated from Queen's. Also Thomas Andrews (1813-1885) was a longtime professor of chemistry at Queen's University of Belfast. Other alumni include poet Paul Muldoon; actors Liam Neeson and Stephen Rea; comedian and presenter Patrick Kielty; novelists Patrick Hicks and Brian McGilloway; broadcasters Nick Ross and Annie Mac; journalist Chris Smith; scientists John Stewart Bell, Frank Pantridge and Thomas Henry Flewett. Other alumni include John Bodkin Adams, Trevor Ringland and David Cullen (2007 winners of the Arthur Ashe for Courage Award), David Case (Air Commodore, the highest ranking Black officer in the British Armed forces), Tim Collins (former Commanding Officer of the 1st Battalion, Royal Irish Regiment), Drew Nelson former Grand Secretary of the Orange Order, and Elizabeth Gould Bell, the first woman to practice medicine in Ulster.

Notable academics who have worked at Queen's include Paul Bew, Baron Bew, Sir David Bates (physicist), Sir Bernard Crossland, Tony Hoare, Michael Mann, poet and critic Philip Hobsbaum, John H. Whyte and poet Philip Larkin was a sub-librarian at the university in the early 1950s.

Four alumni had very long and distinguished careers in the Far East. Sir Robert Hart was the Inspector-General of China's Imperial Maritime Customs for almost 50 years. Sir Hiram Shaw Wilkinson served in British Consular Service in China and Japan for 40 years retiring as Chief Justice of the British Supreme Court for China and Corea. Sir James Russell was Chief Justice of Hong Kong. John Carey Hall served in the British Japan Consular Service for more than 40 years retiring as consul-general in Yokohama.

 

Employee on Wikispooks

Employee	Job	Appointed	End
Eric Ashby	Chancellor	1970	1983

 

Alumni on Wikispooks

Person	Born	Died	Nationality	Summary	Description
Patrick Cockburn	5 March 1950		Eire	Author Journalist
Diane Dodds	16 August 1958		UK	Politician
Nigel Dodds	20 August 1958		UK	Politician Lawyer	Northern Irish barrister, unionist politician and life peer, who was deputy leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) from June 2008 to May 2021.
Mark Durkan	26 June 1960			Politician	WEF NI politician who voted to support mandatory Covid certification
Arlene Foster	3 July 1970				First Minister of Northern Ireland
Chris Hazzard	20 August 1984			Politician
H. Montgomery Hyde	14 August 1907	10 August 1989	UK	Author Spook Politician Lawyer	Spooky UK politician and lawyer who attended the first Bilderberg and one more.
Eamonn McCann	10 March 1943		UK Irish?	Activist	Northern Irish journalist, writer and activist. He was one of the organizers of the march against internment without trial which in 1972 gave rise to the events of Bloody Sunday.

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