Foundation Day

The University of Manchester in its current form was created in 2004 by the amalgamation of the Victoria University of Manchester and the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST). We mark this occasion every October by celebrating our Foundation Day.

Traditionally a celebration is held in the historic Whitworth Hall but, due to the continuing impact of COVID-19, this cannot happen this year. Instead, the University has produced this short film to pay tribute to its staff, students and alumni for the work they have done, and are continuing to do, to help mitigate the impacts of the virus.

The year in review

Reacting to COVID-19 has undoubtedly been a major focus for the University since March, but there have also been many other achievements of which our people can be proud.

In the past academic year the institution has maintained its highest ever ranking at 27th in the QS World University Rankings and remained the most targeted university by the UK’s top 100 graduate employers. Manchester was also the UK’s top ranked university in the Times Higher Education Impact Rankings for work on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

The University also launched its new vision and strategic plan, Our future. The vision is for the University to be recognised globally for the excellence of its people, research, learning and innovation, as well as the benefits it brings to society and the environment.

Manchester’s researchers continue their work on some of the world’s most pressing problems. These include discovering a way to stop the spread of a devastating childhood cancer, revealing the highest-ever level of microplastics on the seafloor, and finding ways to tackle the UK’s regional inequality. They have also helped to investigate hints of life on Venus, discovered rare dinosaur embryos, and travelled to Buckingham Palace to collect the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for the outstanding research of our Manchester Institute for Biotechnology.

The Queen’s prize wasn’t our only award; there were also three new National Teaching Fellows, 11 Manchester scientists winning prestigious Royal Society of Chemistry awards, and three of our staff being elected as Fellows of the British Academy.

We were also able to make awards of our own. We are hopeful that we will soon be able to confer Marcus Rashford with his honorary doctorate in recognition of his campaign against child poverty and his outstanding sporting achievements. Marcus will be our youngest ever recipient of an honorary degree. We had planned to honour Dorothy Byrne, Sir Alan Langlands, Martin Lewis, Dr Helen Pankhurst and Maggie Philbin with honorary doctorates at our Foundation Day. We will confer these awards as soon as it is possible to do so.

Further demonstrating our commitment to sustainability, we announced that we will end investments in fossil fuel reserve and extraction companies by 2022, and decarbonise all investments by 2038.

Our staff and students continue to play an important role in social, cultural and economic recovery. Creative Manchester is supporting the arts and culture industry in the north-west and beyond, while development continues at our cultural institutions such as Manchester Museum and the First Light Pavilion at Jodrell Bank, our UNESCO World Heritage Site.

In support of the economy, we announced that Alliance Manchester Business School will head up a £32m Productivity Institute, and our procurement process to find a development and investment partner to deliver a £1.5 billion new world-class innovation district, ID Manchester, is ongoing.

Foundation Day

The University marked its Foundation Day 2017 by celebrating its commitment to social responsibility.

The University of Manchester in its current form was created in 2004 by the amalgamation of the Victoria University of Manchester and the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST). We mark this occasion each year with our Foundation Day celebrations.

This year our prestigious Foundation Lecture was given by our graduate Gulwali Passarlay, who at the age of 12 took the perilous journey from Afghanistan to Britain seeking asylum.

Recalling his heartbreaking, but ultimately inspiring story, he told the congregation: “When I was doing the Manchester Access Programme I truly felt – this was my family, this was my home.”

Following the Foundation Lecture, Honorary Degrees were conferred upon Professor Dame Janet Finch, Dr Eli Harari, Professor Cornelia Parker and Mr Nazir Afzal.

Nazir, the Chief Crown Prosecutor of the Crown Prosecution Service for North West England from 2011–15, who led the prosecutions of the Rochdale sex trafficking gang, summed up the spirit of the proceedings by recalling the city’s cohesive and resilient response to the Manchester Arena bombing earlier this year: “We are Manchester and this is Manchester University and we will not be turned by hate.”

You can watch the celebrations in our film.