University of Sussex
The University of Sussex is a public research university located in Falmer, East Sussex, England. It lies mostly within the city boundaries of Brighton and Hove. Its large campus site is surrounded by the South Downs National Park, and provides convenient access to central Brighton away. The university received its royal charter in August 1961, the first of what later was called the plate glass university generation.
More than a third of its students are enrolled in postgraduate programmes and approximately a third of staff are from outside the United Kingdom. Sussex has a diverse community of nearly 20,000 students, with around one in three being foreign students, and over 1,000 academics, representing over 140 different nationalities. The annual income of the institution for 2024–25 was £346 million of which £39.8 million was from research grants and contracts, with an expenditure of £372.9 million.
Sussex counts five Nobel Prize winners, 15 Fellows of the Royal Society, 10 Fellows of the British Academy, 24 fellows of the Academy of Social Sciences and a winner of the Crafoord Prize among its faculty. By 2011, many of its faculty members had also received the Royal Society of Literature Prize, the Order of the British Empire and the Bancroft Prize. Alumni include heads of states, diplomats, politicians, eminent scientists and activists.
History
20th century
In an effort to establish a university to serve Sussex, a public meeting was held in December 1911 at the Royal Pavilion in Brighton to discover ways to fund the construction of a university; the project was halted by World War I, and the money raised was used instead for books for the Municipal Technical College.The idea was revived in the 1950s, and in June 1958 the government approved the corporation's scheme for a university at Brighton, to be the first of a new generation of what came to be known as plate glass universities. The university was established as a company in 1959, with a Royal Charter being granted on 16 August 1961. This was the first university to be established in the UK since the Second World War, apart from Keele University. The university's organisation broke new ground in seeing the campus divided into Schools of Study, with students able to benefit from a multidisciplinary teaching environment. Sussex would emphasise cross-disciplinary activity, so that students would emerge from the university with a range of background or 'contextual' knowledge to complement their specialist 'core' skills in a particular subject area. For example, arts students spent their first year taking sciences while science students took arts.This experimental interdisciplinary educational model was famously described by Professor Asa Briggs as pioneering "a new map of learning".
The university grew from 52 students in 1961–62 to 3,200 in 1967–68. After starting at Knoyle Hall in Brighton, the Falmer campus was gradually built with Falmer House opening in 1962. The campus was praised as gorgeously modernist and groundbreaking, receiving numerous awards. The student union, as is typical, organised events and concerts, bringing in acts like Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix and Chuck Berry to perform at the University Common Room.
Academically, Sussex was home to figures such as Asa Lord Briggs, Helmut Pappe, Gillian Rose, Christopher Freeman, Norman MacKenzie, Fernando Henriques, Jennifer Platt and Tom Bottomore. In its first years, the university attracted a number of renowned academics such as Sir John Cornforth, John Maynard Smith, Martin Wight, David Daiches, Roger Blin-Stoyle and Colin Eaborn. Similarly, renowned scholars like Marcus Cunliffe, Gabriel Josipovici, Quentin Bell, Dame Helen Wallace, Stuart Sutherland and Marie Jahoda also became central figures at the university and founded many of its current departments. Additionally, a number of initiatives at the university were started at this time, such as the Subaltern Studies Group, founded by Ranajit Guha who was Reader in History at Sussex between 1962 and 1981.
In the late 1960s, the United Nations asked for science policy recommendations from a team of renowned academics at Sussex. The ensuing report became known as the Sussex Manifesto.
Sussex came to be identified with student radicalism. In 1973, a group of students prevented United States government adviser Samuel P. Huntington from giving a speech on campus, because of his involvement in the Vietnam War. Similarly, when the spokesperson for the US embassy, Robert Beers, visited to give a talk to students entitled 'Vietnam in depth' three students were waiting outside Falmer House and threw a bucket of red paint over the diplomat as he was leaving.
In both 1967 and 1969, Sussex won the television quiz University Challenge.
In 1980, Sussex edged out the University of Oxford to become the university with the highest income from research grants and contracts.
21st century
In an attempt to appeal to a modern audience, the university chose in 2004 to cease using its coat of arms and to replace it with the "US" logo.In 2011, Sussex celebrated its 50th anniversary and saw the production of a number of works including a book on the university's history and an oral history and photography project. The university launched its first major fundraising campaign, Making the Future, and gathered over £51.3 million.
In March 2011, a sex trafficking ring, involving one of the university's Park Village accommodation flats, was uncovered after a university building manager received an email advertising sex services, eventually leading to the conviction of a British woman and 4 Hungarian men for blackmailing foreign women into working in illegal brothels across the country.
The university underwent a number of changes with the Sussex Strategic Plan 2009–2015, including the introduction of new academic courses, the opening of new research centres, the renovation and refurbishment of a number of its schools and buildings as well as the ongoing expansion of its student housing facilities.
In 2018, the university moved all of its investments out of fossil fuels after a four-year student union run campaign.
In October 2021 a student campaign called for Kathleen Stock's dismissal. In October 2021, the university's vice-chancellor Professor Adam Tickell gave his support to Stock who has been accused of transphobia. The Times reported students have called for Stock's dismissal and claimed that she has been victimised. Following Tickell's statement, the Sussex branch of the University and College Union called for an investigation into "institutional transphobia" at the University of Sussex. Students have accused the university management of being "anti-student and pro-transphobia". Taiwo Owatemi, the Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities, called UCU's statement "strong and principled".
In 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Sussex was one of few universities that returned to real-world teaching. Most lectures at other universities chose to remain online-only.
In March 2025, Sussex was fined £585,000 by the Office for Students, which said it had failed to uphold freedom of speech in its trans and non-binary equality policy statement passed in 2018. The policy stated that course materials should "positively represent trans people" and that "transphobic propaganda" would not be tolerated. The OfS gave the case of Kathleen Stock as an example of the "chilling effect" this had on expression of lawful views. Professor Sasha Roseneil, the university’s vice chancellor claimed "the way the OfS has conducted this investigation has been completely unacceptable, its findings are egregious and concocted, and the fine that is being imposed on Sussex is wholly disproportionate." The university initially said that it will legally challenge the penalty in the High Court but, as of November 2025 is yet to do so.
Campus
The University of Sussex is situated near the city of Brighton and Hove, next to the Stanmer Park reserve, and extends into the Lewes District in its eastern fringe. The closest train station is Falmer railway station, located at about nine minutes from Brighton station. The campus is also close to the medieval town of Lewes and is approximately an hour away from London. Located within the South Downs National Park, it is the only English university existing in a National Park.The campus, designed by Sir Basil Spence, is next to the village of Falmer but mostly within the city boundaries of Brighton and Hove. It is close to the South Downs, which influenced Spence's design of the campus. In 1959, the Basil Spence and Partners company began planning and designing the campus, to be built over a 15-year period. In 1971, 17 buildings had been designed and built winning numerous awards including a medal from the Royal Institute of British Architects and a Civic Trust award. Spence expressed his awe at the beauty of the surrounding region and designed the campus as a stream of low buildings so as not to disturb the natural scenery around. Brick was chosen throughout as it was the dominant material used across Sussex. As the campus developed, Spence connected the buildings by a series of 'green, interlocking courtyards that he felt created a sense of enclosure'.
The campus is self-contained, with facilities including eights cafes/restaurants, a post office, a Co-op Food store, a market, a bank, a pharmacy, a health centre and childcare facilities. Spence's designs were appreciated by architects; many of the campus buildings won awards. A number of features define these buildings, including the materials used and the fact that many of them have planted and tree-filled courtyards. The gatehouse-inspired Falmer House won a bronze medal from the Royal Institute of British Architects. In 1993, the buildings which made up the core of Spence's designs were given listed building status, with Falmer House being awarded the highest designation, Grade 1, as a building of "exceptional interest". A number of the original buildings are now Grade II listed buildings.
The Meeting House at the University of Sussex is a striking circular chapel designed by Spence and completed in 1966. Built from patterned brick with a dramatic, light-filled interior, it serves as a multi-faith space for worship, reflection, and events. Its distinctive modernist design makes it a landmark on the university’s campus. In 1969 it won the Civic Trust award and was listed in 1993 alongside other buildings on the campus. Inside, adorning the organ loft, is a large, colourful tapestry designed by John Piper commissioned in 1976 to celebrate 10 years since the building was completed. It was inspired by the university’s motto ‘Be still, and know’, which is taken from Psalm 46. Its colours echo the honeycomb of coloured glass panes.
Sussex laid claim to being the "only English university located entirely within a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty". It is now entirely surrounded by the newly founded South Downs National Park.
The Gardner Arts Centre, another of Basil Spence's designs, was opened in 1969 as the first university campus arts centre. It had a 480-seat purpose-built theatre, a visual art gallery and studio space, and was frequently used for theatre and dance as well as showing a range of films on a modern cinema screen. The Centre closed in the summer of 2007: withdrawal of funding and the cost of renovating the building were given as the key reasons. Following an extensive refurbishment, the Centre reopened as the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts in the autumn of 2015, and a public performance programme started in Spring 2016. The centre is now a national arts and performance hub hosting various kinds of performances year-round.
The campus has facilities such as the Genome Damage and Stability Centre; the medical imaging equipment at the Brighton and Sussex Medical School ; and the university's Library, until 2013 the home of the Mass Observation Archive, which relocated to The Keep, a purpose-built archive facility nearby.