LONDON’S GLOBAL UNIVERSITY
ABOUT UCL
Cover image (bottom right): Jing Xu (UCL Bartlett School of Construction & Project Management) Produced by UCL Communications. Printed on 100% recycled paper.
UCL was founded in 1826 to open up higher education in England to those who had been excluded from it – becoming the first university in England to admit female students on equal terms with men in 1878. Academic excellence and research that addresses real-world problems inform our ethos to this day. We are one of the world’s leading multidisciplinary universities. We operate in a global context and are committed to excellence, innovation and the promotion of global understanding in all our activities. Our central location in London enables close interaction with Bloomsbury’s cultural and intellectual vibrancy, Westminster and Whitehall, the City and our world-class hospital partners. UCL’s ideas and discoveries are improving lives and having a massive impact on London and the wider world. Support our philanthropic campaign ‘It’s All Academic’ and help us transform how the world is understood: www.ucl.ac.uk/campaign
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01 Since 1826, we have championed independent thought by attracting and nurturing the world’s best minds.
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UCL Special Collections
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1 Alexander Graham Bell (UCL Phonics 1868) is credited with the invention of the telephone. 2 Students in the zoology lab
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3J unichiro Koizumi (UCL Economics 1968) became Prime Minister of Japan in 2001. Harris & Ewing
William Bullimore
The Centre for Longitudinal Studies, part of the UCL Institute of Education, runs four of the UK’s cohort studies: the 1958 National Child Development Study, the 1970 British Cohort Study, the Millennium Cohort Study and Next Steps. Cohort studies follow the same group of people throughout their lives, charting social change and investigating the reasons behind it.
UCL was one of the first universities in the world to be involved in making scientific observations in space. The UCL Mullard Space Science Laboratory has contributed to numerous satellite missions and rocket experiments since 1966, and it continues to build equipment for future space science missions including the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope and the European Space Agency’s Mars Rover.
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Commonwealth Secretariat
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Patricia Scotland, Baroness Scotland of Asthal PC QC (UCL Laws 1976), is a British barrister and former Attorney General for England and Wales. Baroness Scotland is the first black woman to be appointed a Queen’s Counsel and became a life peer in 1997. In April 2016, she took up the position of Secretary-General of the Commonwealth Nations.
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Vast amounts of data from sources as diverse as vehicle movements, grocery shopping and social media are a key driver for the economy. UCL is one of five partner universities in the new national centre for data science, the Alan Turing Institute, which will attract leaders in academia and industry from around the world.
© UCL/Royal Free Hospital
UCL is home to the world’s longest running birth cohort study: the Medical Research Council National Survey of Health and Development follows people born in 1946. In a landmark study, Insight 46, UCL researchers are assessing 500 of the participants to gain crucial insight into how life experiences and genetics combine to determine an individual’s risk of dementia.
Professor John O’Keefe (UCL Biosciences) was awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of our ‘inner GPS’: cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain and enable us to orient ourselves.
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Sue Omerod
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Rachel Whiteread (UCL Slade 1987) is an English sculptor and the first female winner of the Turner Prize. She is one of the Young British Artists who emerged in the 1990s. House, her 1993 Turner Prize-winning work, was a cast of 193 Grove Road, a Victorian terrace house that was due for demolition.
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The UCL Institute of Making is a multidisciplinary research club for those interested in the made world: from makers of molecules to makers of buildings; synthetic skin to spacecraft, soup to diamonds, socks to cities. Its public programme of symposia, masterclasses and open days explores the links between academic research and hands-on experience, and celebrates the sheer joy of stuff.
Nicholas Hare Architects
The Small Library opened at UCL in 1828. UCL Library Services now consists of 18 libraries, with expert staff to help navigate outstanding collections of print and e-resources. We manage thousands of learning spaces, including, from 2019, the New Student Centre, an inspiring hub for student life, providing information and support services as well as 1,000 study spaces.
Founded by the late Professor Lisa Jardine, the groundbreaking Centre for Editing Lives and Letters (CELL) uses new techniques to make archives matter. Concentrating on the years 1500–1800, the centre has helped graduate and doctoral students, researchers, teachers and writers to develop methods of digitisation and interpretation that illuminate the early modern period. 07
UCL’s Legacies of British Slave-ownership project is tracing the impact of slave-ownership on the formation of modern Britain. The project hit the news in 2015 with its involvement with Britain’s Forgotten Slave-owners, two BBC programmes that went on to win the Royal Historical Society Public History Prize. © British Library Board
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Christopher Nolan (UCL English Language and Literature 1993) is a film director, screenwriter and producer famous for films such as Inception and the Batman Dark Knight Trilogy. He made films as a child before becoming President of UCL Union’s Film Society and returned to UCL in 2009 to film scenes for Inception in the Flaxman Gallery.
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02 UCL students are directly involved in research, equipping them for the future and inspiring a lifelong curiosity.
Matt Clayton
Matt Clayton
Kirsten Holst
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Kirsten Holst
ChangeMakers brings students and staff together to make changes that enhance learning at UCL. A panel of staff and students awards funding for projects that investigate an educational issue and make improvements, or that pilot and evaluate a change. These schemes include UCL ChangeMakers scholars: students helping to improve assessment and feedback practices.
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Christine Ohuruogu MBE (UCL Linguistics 2005) is a British track and field athlete specialising in the 400m. Christine is an Olympic gold medallist and double World Champion.
Owen Humphreys/PA Archive/PA Images
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Jo-Anne Wilson is a student on the Lloyds Scholars Programme. As part of her scholarship, Jo-Anne takes part in at least 100 hours of community volunteering. Every week, she visits Alzheimer’s patient Tommy in his care home – going for walks to the local park, having a pint in the pub or simply listening to his old records. UCL Volunteering Services Unit
UCL’s Arts & Sciences BASc allows students to create bespoke interdisciplinary programmes, focusing on the subjects that interest them most. Core courses help students make new and interesting connections between disciplines and provide them with valuable research skills. Students study a language and are given dedicated support for sourcing internships. 11
Connected Curriculum is a unique educational model developed to break down barriers between teaching and carrying out world-class research at UCL. The approach gives our students better preparation for the workplace by making learning practical and authentic, with tasks that closely resemble real-life problems. Matt Clayton
UCL graduates have created a mobile DNA testing lab the size and cost of a laptop that can extract, copy and visualise DNA. Bento Lab co-founders Philipp Boeing and Bethan Wolfenden, who had the idea as UCL undergraduates, won a UCL Bright Ideas Award and raised more than ÂŁ150,000 in a Kickstarter campaign.
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Wellbeing and the practice of mindfulness are built into learning at the UCL Academy, a secondary school sponsored by UCL. The academy is also participating in a large-scale trial to assess whether mindfulness improves the mental resilience and concentration of pupils and the most effective ways to teach it.
Kirsten Holst
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The UCL Centre for Holocaust Education responds to classroom needs revealed by research with more than 10,000 teachers and students. Its national teacher development programme and powerful educational resources enable young people to explore challenging issues arising from a deeply traumatic past and reflect critically on the continuing significance of the Holocaust in the modern world.
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Team Hydrone – one of UCL Mechanical Engineering’s racing teams – designs, builds and races hydrogen-powered vehicles to compete in the Shell Eco Marathon Europe. The team of undergraduates develops vehicles optimised for maximum fuel efficiency, capable of travelling more than 100 times further than a normal car, with equivalent fuel.
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Colin Chapman (UCL Structural Engineering 1950) was a design engineer, inventor and builder who founded Lotus Cars. Using his knowledge of aeronautical engineering, Colin led Lotus to seven Formula One Constructors’ titles in the 1960s and ‘70s. Despite Colin’s early death, Lotus is one of the few remaining successful British car manufacturers.
Paul Varga (MSc Technology Entrepreneurship) invented a gaming device to encourage children to brush their teeth. He co-founded Playbrush to market and develop the product, which is now in commercial production. Playbrush won a UCL Bright Ideas award, which provided seed funding for the company.
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03 We combine our strength across all areas of research to tackle the most pressing challenges of the 21st century.
Thomas L. Kelly
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Elaine Perks
A groundbreaking biomedical discovery institute, the Francis Crick Institute is using multidisciplinary research, emerging talent and novel ways of partnership to investigate new ways to prevent, diagnose and treat diseases such as cancer, strokes and heart disease. It is a consortium of six of the UK’s most successful scientific and academic organisations, including UCL.
Ben Gilbert, Wellcome
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Dame Kathleen Lonsdale DBE FRS (UCL Physics 1924) was an Irish crystallographer and the first female tenured professor at UCL. Among her other achievements, Kathleen was one of the first women to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and the first female president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Courtesy of Dr Judith Milledge
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Combating climate change requires climate scientists to play a central role in informing policy and guiding public debate. To make this happen, the UCL Policy Commission on Communicating Climate Science recommends, in particular, extending scientists’ skills and establishing a professional body for climate scientists.
UCL Press is the UK’s first fully open access university press. Re-established at UCL in 2015, UCL Press publishes peer-reviewed, scholarly monographs, edited collections, textbooks and journals by both UCL and non-UCL academics. All of its books are made available as free downloads, in affordable print editions and via an online browser-based platform.
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UCL Chemical Engineering PhD student Donal Finegan was part of a team of researchers that investigated what happens when lithium-ion batteries overheat and explode. The UCL-led study used sophisticated 3D imaging to understand how the batteries fail, with the aim of improving their design to make them safer to use and transport.
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Steph McGovern is an award-winning Business Correspondent for BBC Breakfast (Science Communication and Policy BSc 2005). “Sometimes it feels like I haven’t really left UCL. I have been back to lecture on the media and speak at events, and I have attended various reunion parties. The UCL family is one that I am proud to be part of.”
DNA damage caused by smoking can be detected in cheek swabs, a study led by Professor Martin Widschwendter (UCL Women’s Cancer) has found. The researchers discovered that this damage could predict cancer risk and that it was reversed in ex-smokers who quit 10 years or more before the trial.
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HIV spreads through the body via ‘hybrid spreading’, the same way that some persistent computer viruses spread via the internet, researchers from UCL Infection & Immunity have discovered. The breakthrough means that in future, doctors will be able to predict more accurately a patient’s disease progression to AIDS.
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The UCL-Lancet Healthy Cities Commission Report, and its briefings for policymakers and practitioners, made recommendations about how urban planning can reshape cities to make them healthier. Developed by 19 experts, from disciplines as diverse as development planning and philosophy, the recommendations included the use of experimental projects to enhance planning and improved dialogue between stakeholders.
UN Photo/WFP/ Amjad Jamal
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Tackling climate change is one of the greatest global health opportunities of the 21st century. To map out a comprehensive international response, the Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change is becoming the Lancet Countdown to 2040, publishing annually. The Countdown is a multidisciplinary collaboration between European and Chinese academies, based at UCL.
UCL in numbers Rankings First university in the UK for research strength* Seventh best university in the world* 1st
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Students 2005–06 12,084 undergraduate 7,215 postgraduate Total 19,299 2015–16 17,846 undergraduate 20,467 postgraduate Total 38,313
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* REF + QS World Ranking 23
Innovation and Enterprise 307 students with business ideas advised during 2015/2016 51 new businesses started by UCL students in 2015/2016
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Clubs and societies 250+ clubs and societies run by UCLU 8,000 students become members of student-run clubs and societies each year
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Prospects 90% of undergraduates enter work or further study within six months of graduating 25% of UCL undergraduates spend time studying abroad
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Global community 200,000 UCL alumni live in 190 countries Our students come from 154 countries
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Staff 840 professors among our academic staff 29 Nobel laureates 3 Fields Medals
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Structure 46 research themes 11 faculties 6 Grand Challenges 46
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04 Inclusivity and engaging with the community is at the heart of all that we do.
Š Diogo Real
Kirsten Holst
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Through an online ‘Transcription Desk’, UCL’s award-winning Transcribe Bentham project is engaging the public in transcribing thousands of manuscripts written by our intellectual inspiration, Jeremy Bentham. In January 2016, we hit 15,000 transcribed pages and became part of the READ project, which is developing new technologies to read and search historical documents.
The UCL Academy builds on our extensive engagement with state schools in Camden and our conviction that academies will be best promoted by organisations that specialise in education. Founded in 2012, the non-selective secondary school specialises in mathematics, science and languages, with a mission to educate global citizens.
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UCL Special Collections
As Europe’s largest education library, the UCL Institute of Education’s Newsam Library and Archives holds an extensive collection of materials on education and social sciences, dating from 1797 to the present day. The library is open to students, staff and applications from members of the public.
UCL offers an extensive portfolio of expert-led short courses, continuing professional development and executive education. We also offer bespoke training for organisations in any sector. The Life Learning team runs an online catalogue that brings together our short courses in one place: access our wealth of knowledge and research expertise.
Alejandro Walter Salinas Lopez
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Paul McGovern
Target Medicine is a widening participation project delivered by medical students from UCL Medical School, with support from our staff. The project aims to inspire students from non-selective state schools to consider a career in medicine and to mentor and support them through the process of applying to medical school.
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UCL Volunteering Services Unit
UCL values the importance of volunteering to the university as a whole, our students and to London’s communities. The UCLU Volunteering Services Unit is a dedicated facility for students who want to get involved with volunteering projects, enabling them to learn new skills, make friends and contribute to other people’s lives.
We are investigating how we can use museums to connect elderly people to their community. Museums on Prescription has received a £1 million grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council to explore ‘social prescription’: the idea that community support can improve health and wellbeing.
The Sackler Trust has funded a new Chair in the UCL Institute of Mental Health. This newly formed institute will aim to understand the biological mechanisms of psychiatric disorders to improve prevention, intervention and treatment for mental health patients. The donation will allow us to combine our strengths in neuroscience, psychology and psychiatry to establish a major force in global mental health research. 31
UCL Culture is a creative team active across the university, curating and animating UCL content. We manage museums, theatres and collections. We facilitate engagement by bringing diverse performers and audiences into the heart of UCL to energise our community with cutting-edge, creative cultural experiences.
The UCL Art Museum contains more than 10,000 prints, drawings, sculptures, paintings and media dating from the 1490s to the present day. The collection includes works by Turner, Rembrandt and John Flaxman, whose sculpture models marked the foundation of the museum in 1847.
UCL’s Grant Museum of Zoology is London’s only remaining university zoological museum, housing around 68,000 specimens. In 2015, the museum used innovative 3D printing technology to replace the lost leg of its quagga skeleton, as part of the Bone Idols project. The quagga – a half-striped zebra – became extinct in 1883. Matt Clayton
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With an estimated 80,000 objects, UCL’s Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology houses one of the largest collections of Egyptian and Sudanese archaeology in the world. Artefacts include the world’s oldest woven garment, the oldest wills on papyrus paper and a unique bead-net dress of a dancer from approximately 2400 BCE. Matt Clayton
The Bloomsbury Theatre opened in 1968 as UCL’s purpose-built auditorium. Since then, it has hosted professional comedy, dance and drama performances alongside UCL student productions. With the theatre due to reopen in 2018 following renovation, current students are making use of the Bloomsbury Studio – a new, flexible performance and media space.
John Reading
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05 Our position in London brings unique benefits, enabling us to contribute to everything that makes it the world’s greatest city.
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UCL’s Festival of Culture offers more than 80 free opportunities across five days to discover and be inspired by our world-leading research across the arts, humanities and social sciences.
UCL Careers helps students through all stages of job-hunting, from talking through future options, to coaching in interview, CV and assessment centre techniques. The team also offers one-on-one support, in addition to a variety of events and workshops, including programmes for Master’s students, researchers, international students and recent graduates.
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UCL Careers works closely with a diverse range of employers, who last year contributed 10,985 hours to educating and developing the skills of UCL students. Employers meet and work with students, giving them insight into specific career sectors, and offering advice and support during careers fairs, skills development workshops and one-on-one coaching.
Matt Clayton
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Amaliah, a global platform focused on modest fashion, has been covered by BBC Four, Metro, the Daily Mail and Forbes Ones to Watch. It was co-founded by UCL alumna Nafisa Bakkar (BSc Natural Sciences 2014) to cater for changing fashions for Muslim women, with the help of a UCL Bright Ideas Award.
As part of Urban Alchemy, roofing zinc becomes etching plate; slate and bricks become ink. The work of UCL Chemistry Leverhulme artist-in-residence Hilary Powell, the project explores the material stories and processes of urban change through salvage and chemical print experiments. An accompanying book was launched in the UCL construction workers’ canteen.
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Neuroscientists can now measure and manipulate the activity of many individual neurons, but have yet to understand how neural networks function. At the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre, UCL Neuroscience has partnered with the Wellcome Trust and the Gatsby Charitable Foundation to meet this next great conceptual challenge.
The UCL Institute of Advanced Studies is a research-based community that provides a cross-disciplinary space for critical thinking and engaged enquiry into the political, ethical and intellectual issues of the world today. Among the research centres housed under the institute are the Health Humanities Centre and the UCL Centre for Collective Violence and Genocide Studies. 38
Matt Clayton
UCL East, our major new campus at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, will be a home to innovative, cross-disciplinary research, advanced academic facilities and residential units. Welcoming students by 2019/20, UCL East will engage with local communities and business, encouraging exchanges and supporting a sustainable development.
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Mark Hayden
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Dutch twins and UCL School of Management alumnae Joyce and Raissa De Haas launched Double Dutch Drinks, their premium drinks business, while studying at UCL. They received funding from UCL’s Bright Ideas Awards scheme, as well as expert business advice and support. In 2015, they agreed a major distribution deal with US retail giant Target.
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Growing social isolation among the elderly is partly caused by their idea of what they can and cannot do. RecommendME! is a digital platform that connects the elderly with personalised services, helping them to be more active and independent. It was the winner of our Grand Challenge of Human Wellbeing Ageing Research Prize Workshop.
06 We are global: through our outlook, people and enduring international partnerships.
UCL Development Planning Unit
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UCL is co-ordinating a £16 million project sharing clinical and academic knowledge to improve understanding of inflammatory and fibrotic diseases, unaddressed by current therapies. Combining the academic and drug development expertise of five universities and GlaxoSmithKlein, the Experimental Medicine Initiative to Explore New Therapies will produce innovative breakthroughs in patient treatment.
The history and the future of Africa, problems and threats facing African people and inspiring stories that go unreported were among the subjects discussed by prominent African academics at ‘African Question Time’. The session was part of ‘African Voices’, a series of events that launched our new African Studies Research Centre.
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The risks of tsunamis are hard to predict. In response, our Urban Waves project is developing Europe’s largest tsunami testing simulator. Funded by the European Research Council and led by Professor Tiziana Rossetto (UCL Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering), the research is featured in the Science Museum’s three-year ‘Engineer Your Future’ exhibition.
Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa was the only Prime Minister of independent Nigeria, before it became a republic. Abubakar studied at the UCL Institute of Education in 1944 as part of his early teaching career. Abubakar served as Prime Minister between 1960 and 1966, before his government was overthrown in a military coup.
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The UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies celebrated its centenary in 2015. The school, whose inaugural lecture was delivered by the future first President of Czechoslovakia TomĂĄĹĄ Garrigue, is a world-leading institution specialising in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe.
The Choshu Five was a group of Japanese noblemen who came to UCL in 1863, when travel beyond Japan was banned and UCL was the only English university open to international students. They played important roles in the modernisation of their country on their return, including Kaoru Inoue, who became the first Prime Minister of Japan.
University of Glasgow Archives
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Matt Clayton
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Farshid Moussavi RA RIBA (Bartlett MArch II 1989) is an award-winning British architect known for buildings such as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland. Alongside her commercial work with her practice FMA, Farshid has been Professor In Practice at Harvard University Graduate School of Design since 2005.
The philosophy of global citizenship extends our responsibilities to an ever more closely connected world. Our Global Citizenship programme is open to all undergraduates. By taking on global challenges – such as coming up with sustainable improvements to water infrastructure, or a way to negotiate between different groups in one city – students gain skills and prepare for a career as global citizens.
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