Research and Impact @ Manchester (June 2025)
24 Jun 2025
A message from Colette Fagan, Vice-President for Research
Dear colleagues,
Welcome to the June 2025 edition of Research & Impact @ Manchester.
I’m glad to say we remain as busy and, more importantly, as impactful as ever, as we draw to the close of the academic year – as proven by our latest QS World University and THE rankings.
I’m extremely proud to say our research contributed significantly to the QS World University Rankings. We are now ranked 31st in the world for academic reputation – up two places from last year. Our International Research Network scored above 99.4. We ranked 7th globally for our international research collaborations – up from 12th last year. And we remain in the QS global top 10 for sustainability, ranked 9th in the world.
Our University has also taken first place in the UK and Europe and second in the world in the Times Higher Education Impact Rankings. Again research contributes significantly to our unique commitment to addressing the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the world’s call to action on the most pressing challenges and opportunities facing humanity and the natural world, on which the rankings are based.
Our University’s research excellence is rooted in a culture of curiosity, collaboration and purpose; your collaborations across the globe are crucial in tackling some of the major issues facing the world today. I would encourage all of you to stop for a moment and take pride in all that our community is achieving.
Manchester 2035
Building on our excellent and impactful work, Manchester 2035 is gathering pace with many exciting and innovative ideas provided by our talented community.
For accelerating the path from research excellence to impact, you saw potential for more interdisciplinary research, stronger research culture and investment in people and ideas – something we have focused on this academic year. You also raised issues such as recognition for impact that isn’t easily measured and suggested better support for collaboration.
When it came to making our University a powerhouse of innovation, you welcomed the emphasis on entrepreneurship and innovation, particularly where it delivers local benefit and social value. You were in favour of stronger support for early-stage spinouts and better connections with external partners and cared that our values were reflected in any partnerships we create.
Taking this further to making us the university to partner with, we saw your pride in the dual focus on our civic responsibility and international connections and in us making the University more open, accessible, and embedded in its communities. But as you have reminded us, there’s more to do here.
Our next steps will be to take your ideas and shape them into a clear strategy statement, while also using your feedback to make continuous improvements. We’ll be ready to share a preview with you in September and the final strategy statement will launch in October.
I want to thank those of you who took part for all your thoughtfulness, insight and efforts so far – it has been inspiring to see how many colleagues take pride in working here and in making suggestions for our future.
Celebrating our impact
We now have an amazing eight colleagues on the panels for the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2029 and I am incredibly proud that they will play vital roles in the development of our national research excellence efforts.
Congratulations are also due to Professors Dave O'Brien and Richard Allmendinger, who will be supporting arts and AI investment initiatives as advisors to the national funding and investment body, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).
Our Award of Impact for our most recent submission to the national Technician Commitment initiative reflects our continued dedication to supporting, empowering and celebrating our invaluable technical community. A perfect example is Jen Adcott, a Specialist Technician at our Henry Royce Institute who features in UKRI’s 101 jobs that change the world. You can watch a lovely film about her impact on colleagues and their work in the Our People section below.
Our impact can be seen across the decades.
John Rylands Library, a dynamic community of scholars and curators, imaging and conservation specialists, and research impact and engagement professionals at the forefront of innovative and impactful collections-based research, celebrates its 125th anniversary this year.
While this month’s Universally Manchester Festival showcased the good work we do to our University’s friends and neighbours right here on campus. Thank you to all of those who took part.
Congratulations to members of our research community whose work has been celebrated with University awards.
They include our Making a Difference Award winners – Professor Stephen Fowler and team, who won the Outstanding benefit to society through research award after their work informed new UK-wide clinical guidelines for asthma diagnosis and enabled a single test to be available to every GP for the first time. Highly commended were Lucy Frith and the ConnecteDNA team, Petra Nordqvist, Anna Nelson and Caroline Redhead, who engaged with lawmakers to advocate for policy changes to better address the needs of the donor conception community, made key recommendations for law reform and co-produced support materials.
I’m particularly impressed by our postgraduate MDC award winners and Volunteer of the Year winner, Luman Zhou. Luman’s innovative platform, Global PhD Network in Education won the Students Helping Students award – and glowing comments from her peers. All their stories can be found in our PGRs section below.
And well done and good luck to the innovative entrepreneurs whose business ideas, with the potential to create real-world impact, were awarded funding at the Venture Further Awards 2025.
Finally
Thank you to our Vice-President for Regional Innovation and Civic Engagement, Professor Richard Jones. Richard will step down this September, having made an invaluable contribution to building and sustaining relationships with our city, our region and beyond. We wish you all the best.
Colette