University of Essex

University of Essex

Motto	Thought the harder, heart the keener.
Type	Public
Established	1965 – gained University Status by Royal Charter 1964 – beginning of first academic year
Endowment	£6.9 million (2015)
Chancellor	Shami Chakrabarti, Baroness Chakrabarti
Vice-Chancellor	Anthony Forster
Academic staff	736 full-time equivalent, including research staff (2014)
Administrative staff	1272 full-time equivalent (2014)
Students	14,435 (2014/15)
Undergraduates	11,085 (2014/15)
Postgraduates	3,350 (2014/15)
Location	Colchester, Essex, UK
Campus	Wivenhoe Park – Over 200 acres. Also campuses in Southend and Loughton
Colors	Red and Purple
Affiliations	Eastern ARC
Website	www.essex.ac.uk

The University of Essex is a public research university in Colchester, Essex, England. It was established in 1963 and received its Royal Charter in 1965. The university's largest campus is located within Wivenhoe Park in the English county of Essex, less than a mile (1.6 km) from the town of Wivenhoe and two miles (3 km) from the town of Colchester. Apart from the Wivenhoe Park campus, there is a rapidly developing campus in Southend-on-Sea (Essex's largest town), and the East 15 Acting School is based in Loughton. The university's motto, Thought the harder, heart the keener, is adapted from the Anglo-Saxon poem The Battle of Maldon. The university enjoys collaborative partnerships with a number of institutions across the eastern region. These are University Campus Suffolk (now the University of Suffolk), Colchester Institute (University Campus Colchester), Kaplan Open Learning (KOL), South Essex College and Writtle College.

The university exhibits an international character with 132 countries represented in its student body. The Research Excellence Framework (REF) in 2014 ranked Essex in the top 20 universities in the UK for the quality of its research and the top 5 for social science. The university is referenced by QS World University Rankings as being in the top 2% of universities in the world, and as a world leader in social sciences (top 150) and management, with internationally recognised strengths in the arts and humanities (top 250). The QS statistics ranked Essex the 5th most international university in the UK for staff and the 11th most international student body.