Birkbeck, University of London, is a public research university located in London, United
Kingdom, which specialises in evening higher education, and a constituent college of the
federal University of London. It offers many Master's and Bachelor's degree
programmes that can be studied either part-time or full-time, though nearly all teaching is
in the evening. It also admits full-time students for PhDs. Its staff members have excellent
research reputations in subjects such as English, Economics, Statistics, History, History of
Art, Philosophy, Psychology, Spanish and Science. It also offers many continuing education courses
leading to certificates and diplomas, foundation degrees as well as other short courses.
Birkbeck counts four Nobel prize winners and a British Prime Minister among its former
students and faculty.
History Founding
In 1823, George Birkbeck, an early pioneer of adult education, founded the then "London
Mechanics' Institute" at a meeting at the Crown and Anchor Tavern on the Strand. Over
two thousand people attended. However the idea was not universally popular and some
accused Birkbeck of "scattering the seeds of evil."
Two years later, the institute moved to the Southampton Buildings on Chancery Lane. In
1830, the first female students were admitted. In 1858, changes to the University of London's
structure resulting in an opening up of access to the examinations for its degree. The Institute
became the main provider of part-time university education.
The Institute changed its name to the "Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institution" in 1866
and in 1885 it moved to the Breams Building, on Fetter Lane, where it would remain for
the next sixty-seven years. Birkbeck College
The early twentieth century saw further developments, with Birkbeck Students' Union being established
in 1904, and in 1907 the institute's name changed once more, to "Birkbeck College".
In 1913, a review of the University of London successfully recommended that Birkbeck become
a constituent college, although the outbreak of the First World War delayed this until
1920. The Royal Charter for the college was granted in 1926. The college's first female
professor, Dame Helen Gwynne-Vaughan began teaching botany in 1921. Among the other distinguished
faculty in the of the inter-war years were Nikolaus Pevsner, J. D. Bernal and Cyril Joad.
During the Second World War, Birkbeck was the only central University of London college
not to relocate out of the capital. In 1941, the library suffered a direct hit during The
Blitz but teaching continued. During the war the College organised lunch time extra-mural
lectures for the public given by, among others, Joad, Pevsner and Harold Nicolson.
In 1952, the college moved to its present location in Malet Street.
Current status In 2002, the college was renamed, becoming
simply Birkbeck, University of London; the term Birkbeck College is still in use, and
survives on the façade of the main building itself. The following year, a major redevelopment
of the Malet Street building was opened. It was announced in 2006 that Birkbeck had
been granted £5 million by the Higher Education Funding Council for England to expand its
provision into east London, working with the University of East London. The partnership
was formally launched on November 21, 2006 and is called Birkbeck Stratford.
It is the largest College of the University of London not to award its own degrees, though
it has Degree Awarding Powers, Birkbeck has chosen to hold these in reserve whilst it
can award University of London degrees. The School of Continuing Education
The School of Continuing Education, which specialised in extra-mural studies did not
become an integral part of Birkbeck until 1988 but has a long separate history. It has
now been integrated into the main College. In 1876, the London Society for the Extension
of University Education was founded, boosting the aims of encouraging working people to
undertake higher education. In 1988, the Department of Extra-Mural Studies of the University of
London was incorporated into Birkbeck, becoming at first the Centre for Extra-Mural Studies.
In 1903, it became the Department of Extra-Mural Studies of the University of London and it
was integrated into Birkbeck in 1988. In 2009, the Faculty of Lifelong Learning was incorporated
into the main College structure. Campus and location
Birkbeck's main building is located between Malet Street and Woburn Square in Bloomsbury,
with a number of buildings on nearby streets. The School of Arts, including the Department
of English & Humanities, is housed in Virginia Woolf's former Gordon Square residence in
Bloomsbury. Other notable former residents of this house include Leslie Stephen, Vanessa
Bell, John Maynard Keynes and Lydia Lopokova. Many Birkbeck classes are taught at other
locations across the Bloomsbury area, due to a combination of Birkbeck's widening participation
strategy to make higher education accessible and also because nearly all classes on one
day are taught at the same time, resulting in heavy competition for limited space.
In 2006, it was announced that Birkbeck will be expanding into east London, in conjunction
with the University of East London. Initially space will be rented as well as utilising
the University of East London Stratford Campus, but the aim is to construct a dedicated facility
in Stratford. The project is known as Birkbeck Stratford.
Research and teaching
While part-time undergraduate teaching remains the focus and mandate of Birkbeck, the college
has recently begun to focus on research in the arts and humanities.
The Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities was established in 2004, with the renowned
but controversial Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek appointed as International Director.
According to its website, the Institute aims to, among other things, "engage with important
public issues of our time through a series of open debates, lectures, seminars and conferences"
and "foster and promote a climate of interdisciplinary research and collaboration among academics
and researchers". The launch of the Institute wasn't without controversy, provoking an article
in The Observer newspaper titled "What have intellectuals ever done for the world?" which
criticised the ostensible irrelevance and elitism of contemporary public intellectuals.
2004 also saw Birkbeck enter into a research and teaching collaboration with the Institute
of Education, jointly founding the London Knowledge Lab. This interdisciplinary research
institute brings together social scientists and computer scientists to address research
questions about technology and learning. Meanwhile, the London Consortium graduate
school — a collaboration between Birkbeck, the Tate Galleries, the Institute of Contemporary
Arts, the Architectural Association, and, until 1999, the British Film Institute - has
been running since the mid-1990s, offering masters and doctoral degrees in the interdisciplinary
humanities and cultural studies, resourced and jointly taught by all the participating
institutions. Its permanent and adjunct faculty include figures such as Tom McCarthy, Colin
MacCabe, Laura Mulvey, Steven Connor, Marina Warner, Juliet Mitchell, Stuart Hall, Roger
Scruton, Salman Rushdie, Tilda Swinton as well as Slavoj Žižek. Its current chair
is Anthony Julius. Science research at Birkbeck has a notable
tradition. Physicist David Bohm who made notable contributions to the theory of Quantum mechanics
was professor of Theoretical Physics from 1961–87 and Nobel Laureates Aaron Klug and
Derek Barton both worked in the faculty of crystallography. Birkbeck is part of the Institute
of Structural Molecular Biology, which includes the Bloomsbury Centre for Structural biology,
established in 1998. This is a collaborative venture between Birkbeck College and University
College London and is a leading academic centre for translating gene sequences and determining
protein structure and function. It also includes the Bloomsbury Centre for Bioinformatics,
a collaborative venture also between Birkbeck College and University College London for
research into Bioinformatics, Genomics, Systems Biology, GRID computing and Text mining.
Rankings
Birkbeck is often not included in rankings of British universities, since these are usually
based on the statistics for full-time undergraduates. Birkbeck ranked 13th in The Guardian's 2001
Research Assessment Exercise league table and 26th in Times Higher Education's equivalent
table. In the 2008 RAE results, Birkbeck ranked in the top 25% of UK multi-faculty Higher
Education Institutions. The RAE rated the quality of research in a range of subjects
at 159 Higher Education Institutions in the UK. Birkbeck submissions from Earth Sciences,
Psychology, History, Classics and Archaeology and History of Art, Film and Visual Media
were rated in the top five nationally. The 2010 QS World University Rankings placed
Birkbeck at 93rd in the world for Arts and Humanities. In the same year the Times Higher
Education World University Rankings placed Birkbeck 152nd overall, ahead of five Russell
Group universities - Newcastle University, University of Liverpool, University of Leeds,
University of Nottingham and University of Exeter. In 2011 QS World University Rankings
placed Birkbeck at 111th for Arts & Humanities. In the 2011-12 Times Higher Education World
University Rankings Birkbeck was ranked 149th in the world. The data also shows that Birkbeck
is ranked 23rd in the UK and is rated above several large Russell Group universities,
including the University of Warwick, University of Exeter, and Cardiff University. In the
2012-13 Times Higher Education World University Rankings Birkbeck is ranked 200th in the world
and 31st in the United Kingdom. In the QS ranking Birkbeck climbed up two places to
109th for Arts and Humanities. In 2010, Birkbeck was shortlisted for the
prestigious Times Higher Education University of the Year Award.
Departmental The Guardian's 2001 RAE subject ranking league
tables put Birkbeck in the top 10 for research in the following subjects: English, History,
History of Art, Philosophy, Psychology, Iberian and Latin American Languages, Earth Sciences,
Law, Economics and Econometrics, and Politics and International Studies.
Birkbeck's School of English and Humanities was rated 5* in the 2001 Research Assessment
Exercise, as were the School of History, Classics and Archaeology, the School of Crystallography,
and the section for Spanish and Latin American studies within the School of Languages, Linguistics
and Culture, and the Dept. of Psychological Sciences in the School of Psychology—ranking
these departments with, and in some cases above, Oxford and Cambridge University.
Student life As Birkbeck primarily offers part-time courses,
often in the evenings, student life is less centralised than in other universities. It
does not offer its own halls of residence, for instance, though Birkbeck students do
have access to the University of London's intercollegiate halls.
Birkbeck Students' Union offers a number of societies for students, as well as a football
club that competes in the University of London league. It also provides student representation
and support, a student magazine, a student shop and a bar. Birkbeck students also have
access to the societies and clubs of the University of London Union. Accordingly, London Student
distributes at the Union. The college arms include a lamp and an owl,
symbolising the college's motto 'In nocte consilium'. Because of this, the student magazine
was called Lamp and Owl. Its name was changed in 2010 to 'Lampanelle', and after an 18 month
hiatus returned in February 2012 with the name having reverted to The Lamp And Owl.
The original name of the institution was the London Mechanics' Institute. For this reason,
the annual literary magazine published by the Birkbeck MA Creative Writing programme
is called The Mechanics' Institute Review. University challenge
The college has entered teams in 'University Challenge' over the years, with varied results.
In 1997, a team scored just 40 points - at that stage the lowest score since the series
had been revived, though this has since been broken by New Hall, Cambridge, the University
of Bradford and the University Challenge: The Professionals team of Members of Parliament.
1998 saw a reversal of fortunes when Birkbeck reached the final, losing to Magdalen College,
Oxford. In 2003, Birkbeck again reached the final, facing another team of mature students
from Cranfield University. On this occasion, Birkbeck won.
In the past two decades Birkbeck, University of London has consistently done well in University
Challenge, ranked among the best since the TV series was revived with Jeremy Paxman.
Mooting Birkbeck's School of Law actively competes
in national and international mooting competitions of simulated court proceedings. At the 2012
Inner Temple Inter-Varsity Moot Birkbeck went through to the quarter-finals, being selected
as one of the final eight teams of the 28 UK Universities which competed for the prestigious
Inner Temple award. In 2012 Birkbeck was entered in the prized University of Oxford-based Price
Moot Competition and finished within the top 15 Law Schools in the competition. The competition
draws Law Schools from universities all around the world and focuses on international law.
Notable people
See also List of Nobel laureates by university affiliation
References
External links BBK.ac.uk - The official Birkbeck website
Birkbeck, University of London student lists Birkbeck, University of London military personnel,1914-1918