REF 2014

Archaeology

5^th in the UK for 4* and 3* research (world leading and internationally excellent).

Our research is transforming understanding of key questions in human history, including the origins of our species, the transformation from hunter-gathering to farming societies, the emergence and nature of the world’s earliest civilisations and the archaeology of the UK.

Grants for our projects total c. £3 million pounds and we have c. 110 completed and current PhD students over the past 6 years. Our PhD students have gone on to post-doctoral scholarships and jobs in the archaeology sector, in Universities and Museums around the world.

Our research has benefited international museums and school teachers, providers of educational material, and school children. Successes include Castell Henllys, where excavation and reconstruction of an Iron Age settlement has become a major tourist attraction and provided resources for teaching of the National Curriculum for Wales.

Major investment is creating a suite of new archaeology labs with new high specification analytical equipment for archaeomaterials, archaeobotanical, isotope, lithic studies and experimental archaeology research. This follows on from the £600,000 refurbishment of the Garstang Museum making its rich research resources more accessible.

Classics

80% of outputs rated at 4* and 3* (world-leading or internationally excellent).

Our expertise ranges from Homer to Late Antiquity, with particular emphasis on the ancient economy, Greek and Roman religions, the literary culture of the Roman Empire and Achaemenid Persia, as well as the reception of antiquity in the modern world.

We have a thriving community of postgraduate research students and a strong track record of developing early career researchers for future employment. We have been successful in obtaining a number of prestigious fellowships from organisations such as the Leverhulme Trust and the Marie Curie Foundation.

Our researchers work with a number of non-academic partners, including documentary-makers, secondary schools and the business community.

View our Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences REF 2014 case study and the full results table.