Lancaster University Ranked Joint 1st in UK for Design, Art, Music and Theatre
The Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts (LICA), which combines four academic groups; Art, Design, Music and Theatre Studies, Film and New Media and three public arts facilities; the Peter Scott Gallery, the Nuffield Theatre and the International Concert Series, has been ranked joint 1st in the UK for research quality in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise.
The RAE measures the quality of research conducted in universities and other higher education institutions in the UK against international standards of excellence. This confirms the world-leading status of LICA’s research, with over 80% of its research classed as world (4*)or internationally(3*)leading.
LICA is a renowned centre for leading contemporary practice in art, design, music, performance and cultural studies, and for scholarly and critical research into the historical, social and cultural context of creative practice. LICA is also home to a £3m international design research team. Deputy Director of LICA, Dr Andrew Quick, said that he was delighted that Lancaster’s decision to invest in the Arts at Lancaster has paid off.
“LICA is a unique combination with Art, Music, and Theatre and this result shows our success in driving interdisciplinary research that can have real applications on how people live . We work with other universities, industry, public and NGOs to develop new creative approaches toliving and working environments, how we interact and travel, the objects we use, and even the clothes we wear.”
- Work will start in July 2009 on a £10 million project to create a new ‘hub’ for (LICA) which will be the public face for the LICA groups.
- Since 2001 LICA has had 149% growth in research staff numbers
- LICA has secured over £7m from research councils and other external sources since its launch in 2007.
- LICA will play a major role in Lancaster’s new Digital Economy Innovation Centre to educate a new generation of PhD students. £5m of EPSRC funding will enable around 50 PhD students over 5 years to become the innovators of the future - trained to work at the cutting edge of the Digital Economy which will bring together Lancaster’s core strengths in Computing, Management and Design in innovative ways.
Professor Tony McEnery Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences said:‘This Research Assessment success validates our future plans and developments across Art, Design, Music, Theatre, Film and Digital Media as being one of the places leading the research agenda in the UK.’
Overall 92% of the University’s research is recognised as world leading or internationally significant and some key areas of research are ranked top in the UK such as Sociology which is ranked 5th in the country.
To work out the overall rankings of LICA and Biomedicine, Lancaster University has used a methodology which produces a consolidated score for any institution that made more than one submission within these units of assessment.