1. Faculty of Environment
  2. School of Earth and Environment
  3. Working in partnership
  4. Our reputation

Our reputation

Undergraduate students

The School of Earth and Environment has expertise in areas ranging from geology and geophysics, environmental science, meteorology and climate science, to environmental social science together under one roof. We have just over 1,100 students from almost 80 countries studying with us.

The quality of our research and the funding it attracts means we’re able to invest in world-class facilities and academic staff who are actively engaged in cutting-edge research, which means you will be taught by internationally renowned, inspirational academics working at the top of their fields.

To keep up to date with what’s happening in the School follow us on LinkedIn

Academic excellence

University of Leeds rankings

Gender equality

We have been commended for our strong and continued commitment to gender equality in the form of a prestigious Athena SWAN Silver award. 

Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021

Every six years, the UK’s four higher education funding bodies undertake an exercise to measure the quality of research undertaken by UK higher education institutions (HEIs). The funding bodies use the outcomes to inform the allocation of their research funding to HEIs. The Research Excellence Framework was the framework used in 2021.

Unit of assessment: Earth Systems and Environmental Sciences

  • Our research environment was judged to be conducive to producing research of world-leading or internationally excellent quality, and enabling outstanding impact in terms of its vitality and sustainability
  • Overall, 96% of research activity across our UoA is rated as either ‘world-leading’ or ‘internationally excellent’
  • 95% of our outputs (publications) were determined to be world-leading or internationally excellent in terms of originality, significance and rigour
  • 94% of our impact case studies had outstanding or very considerable impacts in terms of their reach and significance
  • #1 for first for research power – Times Higher Education – ‘research power’ is the overall quality of our submission (defined here by the Grade Point Average (GPA)), multiplied by the full-time equivalent number of researchers submitted