Research and Global Partnerships

Research at Oxford Brookes enjoys an international reputation, attracting high-quality staff and students.

Our strategy for research and knowledge exchange, sets out the University’s future ambitions in the higher education sector, including developing our recognised research portfolio across the faculties whilst nurturing our emerging strengths and fostering greater international collaboration.

Our Research Support team supports research activities by aiding the commercialisation of research, protecting intellectual property, and providing research data management facilities. They also support and guide academic and research staff through the process of bidding for external funding.

Two people working at a microscope

We were successful in the last Research Excellence Framework (REF 2014), which showed 94% of Brookes research to be internally recognised and 59% judged ‘world-leading’ or ‘internationally excellent’. We were in the top ten universities for increase in research power since REF 2014.

Investing in individuals and groups of researchers at every stage of their career is central to our success.

“Research is very highly valued at Oxford Brookes University. There is an ambitious research culture offering a wealth of excellent opportunities including support from senior and experienced colleagues, generous workload planning allocations and training up to and including PhD degrees.”

Shahab Resalti

We have retained the HR Excellence in Research Award from the European Commission for seven years, which recognises our commitment to supporting research staff.

Our Research Excellence and Impact Awards support research-active academics with funding towards research leave, employment of a research assistant or project travel costs.

We introduced Vice-Chancellor Fellowships in 2017 across our faculties, offering an excellent opportunity for researchers who want to develop their careers, with funding and start up support tailored to discipline needs.

Oxford Brookes received a total of £5.5m in research grants for 2018/19.

Major funding comes from research councils, charitable trusts, industry and government, UK Research & Innovation, the national funding agency, has provided funding through the Global Challenges Research Fund.  This enables our researchers to work with colleagues in developing countries to tackle significant challenges facing people in these areas.

Our income from intellectual property (IP) was more than £4m in 2018/19. 

Through Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs), we have produced significant benefits for our partner businesses.  We have a strong record of award-winning KTPs with industry.

“Our REF results recognise our commitment to developing a thriving research community at Oxford Brookes. That so much of the research at Oxford Brookes has been shown to be internationally significant is testament to the high quality of our researchers.”

Alistair Fitt as Vice Chancellor

Global Partnerships

Oxford Brookes is a university with an international outlook and reach. We already have a number of successful international partnerships and we are looking to strengthen these, as well as seek out new opportunities. We believe a key to success is to forge university-level, multi-dimensional strategic partnerships across a range of disciplines.Visit Research for more information.