The University of Sussex has world-leading research in every single department, results from the 2008 national Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) show.
The RAE results, released by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) on 18 December 2008, assess the quality and quantity of research activity in the country's universities. The results also feed in to the research funding allocated by HEFCE to those institutions.
Over 90% of Sussex research activity is rated as world-leading, internationally excellent or internationally recognised, confirming the University among the leading 30 research universities in the UK, on a simple average across all scores.
Initial analysis of the figures shows that, across all subject areas, Sussex's overall grade profile is:
- 16% at 4* ("world-leading")
- 40% at 3* = ("internationally excellent")
- 35% at 2* = ("internationally recognised")
- 8% at 1* = ("nationally recognised")
Sussex submitted the work of over 535 staff to the RAE, nearly 90% of those eligible, with over 485 achieving work that is internationally recognised or better. Taking account of all staff who could have been submitted, with some institutions excluding many eligible staff, Sussex is at 16th place overall - a measure of the research intensity of the institution.
18 subjects at Sussex rank in the top 20 in the UK, across the arts, sciences and social sciences, with the American Studies department rated number 1 in the UK, Politics rated at number 2 in the UK and Art History at number 3.
The Vice-Chancellor, Professor Michael Farthing, said: "These results achieved by Sussex confirm our position as a strong broadly-based research intensive University, producing peaks of world-leading research across all our departments in the arts, sciences and social sciences. I am delighted that 1 in 6 of the research outputs which our staff produce is rated as "world-leading", the highest rating possible.
"So Sussex should be pleased, but not satisfied. During the next five years we should plan to do even better, growing in both research quality and capacity. We will be developing and growing research activity at Sussex, building on these results to strengthen further our world-leading bases. We are focussing on developing new cross-cutting research themes which address real world issues, growing research contract income and attracting high quality postgraduate research students."