University of Birmingham

The University of Birmingham stands on a 25-acre site in the city’s Edgbaston district. Its red-brick buildings, grouped around the 100-metre Joseph Chamberlain Memorial Clock Tower, form one of England’s earliest redbrick universities. The tower is a landmark visible from many parts of Birmingham. Inside the campus lie the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, the Shakespeare Institute and the Cadbury Research Library. The Lapworth Museum of Geology shows fossils and minerals collected since the 19th century. The university’s reputation rests on its research strength and its long list of notable people. In the 2021 Research Excellence Framework it ranked equal 13th among UK institutions. Eleven Nobel laureates have studied or worked here, alongside former prime ministers Neville Chamberlain and Stanley Baldwin. The Cadbury Research Library holds the Mingana Collection of Middle Eastern manuscripts gathered by Alphonse Mingana in the 1920s. Visitors walk past the clock tower into the Aston Webb Building, where the Great Hall once served as a military hospital during the First World War. The Barber Institute displays paintings by Van Gogh, Picasso and Monet in a gallery designed by Robert Atkinson. The Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon offers research rooms and seminar spaces for scholars. The Lapworth Museum displays dinosaur bones and mineral veins in rooms named after early geologists.