Royal Holloway and the Performing Arts

The QS World University Rankings produce annual league tables of university institutions broken down by subject. They are measuring reputation and impact and they ask the opinions of other academics and employers and gather data about the impact of research based on citations and other measurements.

Very pleasingly, my institution, Royal Holloway, has been voted 14th in the world for Performing Arts and 6th in Britain.

1. Royal College of Music
2. University of Oxford
3. Royal Academy of Music
4. Royal Conservatoire of Scotland
5. Guildhall School of Music and Drama
6. Royal Holloway, University of London
7. University of Cambridge
8. King's College London
9. University of Southampton
10. University of York

The rankings reflect the strength of Drama and Music at Royal Holloway but you'll note that all of the institutions above us on the list are either conservatoires or academic institutions that don't teach Drama (Oxford), so of institutions that teach an academic degree in Drama, we're first. (Not that it really works like that.)

This is particularly pleasing because we've done a lot of work focusing our research activity, rebuilding the research staff, raising the profile of the research and creative practice, and reshaping the undergraduate and postgraduate curricula. This already had a strong impact on our REF score last time and this is further evidence of our growing reputation.